Podcasts about Western Europe

Another chilly evening in Western Europe, as Elliot Williams is joined this week by Jenny List to chew the fat over the week's hacks. It's been an auspicious week for anniversaries, with the hundredth since the first demonstration of a working television system in a room above a London coffee shop. John Logie Baird's mechanically-scanned TV may have ultimately been a dead-end superseded by the all-electronic systems we all know, but the importance of television for the later half of the 20th century and further is beyond question. The standout hacks of the week include a very clever use of the ESP32's WiFi API to detect people moving through a WiFi field, a promising open-source smartphone, another ESP32 project in a comms system for cyclists, more cycling on tensegrity spokes, a clever way to smooth plaster casts, and a light sculpture reflecting Wi-Fi traffic. Then there are a slew of hacks including 3D printed PCBs and gem-cut dichroic prisms, before we move to the can't-miss articles. There we're looking at document preservation, and a wallow in internet history with a look at the Netscape brand. As usual all the links you need can be found over on Hackaday, so listen, and enjoy!

MFA Writers is going to Canada! Neil Griffin, wildlife biologist turned poet and essayist, tells Jared about how both ecology and writing require patience, openness, and vision. Plus, Neil talks about whether “creative nonfiction" is a useful label, the pros and cons of a small program, and UVic's emphasis on training students in creative writing pedagogy.Neil Griffin is a poet, essayist, and former wildlife biologist. A former finalist for CBC's Poetry Prize and multiple Alberta Magazine Awards, his writing has appeared throughout Canada and Western Europe. He's an MFA student at the University of Victoria, working on a book-length lyric essay about extinction. In addition, he is the 2023 Artist-in-Resident for Ocean Network's Canada, where he writes about the ecology and history of the abyssal regions of the Pacific Ocean. Find him at his website, neilcgriffin.com, and on Twitter @prairielorax.MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.BE PART OF THE SHOWDonate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.Submit an episode request. If there's a program you'd like to learn more about, contact us and we'll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.STAY CONNECTEDTwitter: @MFAwriterspodInstagram: @MFAwriterspodcastFacebook: MFA WritersEmail: mfawriterspodcast@gmail.com

Two weeks before his 40th birthday, Jeff Cummins contracted shingles - and it took most of the hearing in his right ear. With young daughters at home whose voices he could no longer hear, he became a hearing aid user. A decade later, that experience led him to co-found a company changing how hearing aids are sold.In this episode, Jeff Cummins joins us to share how Immersive Hearing Technologies is using VR to let patients experience hearing aids in real-world environments before they buy - replacing the brochures and guesswork that have defined the industry for decades.The conversation traces Jeff's 25-year career through startups (including scaling Keys Express from $15M to $70M in revenue), a near-miss with NIH-funded cardiac technology, and the path to landing a deal with Sonova - the world's largest hearing aid manufacturer - now deploying Immersive's system across Western Europe. Jeff also shares hard-won lessons on positioning pain over innovation and why Kentucky's startup resources are among the best in the country for early-stage founders.Hosted by Logan JonesMiddle Tech is proudly supported by:KY Innovation → kyinnovation.comAwesome Inc → awesomeinc.org

This week we discuss three fascinating discoveries across Western Europe: a 7,000-year-old underwater stone wall off the coast of France, an exceptionally rare Iron Age war trumpet potentially linked to Boudica's era in Britain, and a mysterious medieval cemetery in Wales dominated by female burials. Join us while we unpack what these finds reveal about prehistoric coastal societies, Iron Age warfare and symbolism, and early religious communities.LinksArchaeologists Discover Mysterious 7,000-Year-Old Stone Wall Beneath the Waves Off the Coast of FranceSubmerged Stone Structures in the Far West of Europe During the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition (Sein Island, Brittany, France)‘Extraordinary' iron age war trumpet find in Britain may have Boudicca linksThe Past Macabre: The archaeology of Boudica Part 1The Past Macabre: The archaeology of Boudicat Part 2Intriguing finds could solve mystery of women in medieval cemeteryContactChris Websterchris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.comRachel Rodenrachel@unraveleddesigns.comRachelUnraveled (Instagram)ArchPodNetAPN Website: https://www.archpodnet.comAPN Discord: https://discord.com/invite/CWBhb2T2edAPN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnetAPN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnetAPN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnetAPN ShopAffiliatesMotion Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This week we discuss three fascinating discoveries across Western Europe: a 7,000-year-old underwater stone wall off the coast of France, an exceptionally rare Iron Age war trumpet potentially linked to Boudica's era in Britain, and a mysterious medieval cemetery in Wales dominated by female burials. Join us while we unpack what these finds reveal about prehistoric coastal societies, Iron Age warfare and symbolism, and early religious communities.LinksArchaeologists Discover Mysterious 7,000-Year-Old Stone Wall Beneath the Waves Off the Coast of FranceSubmerged Stone Structures in the Far West of Europe During the Mesolithic/Neolithic Transition (Sein Island, Brittany, France)‘Extraordinary' iron age war trumpet find in Britain may have Boudicca linksThe Past Macabre: The archaeology of Boudica Part 1The Past Macabre: The archaeology of Boudicat Part 2Intriguing finds could solve mystery of women in medieval cemeteryContactChris Websterchris@archaeologypodcastnetwork.comRachel Rodenrachel@unraveleddesigns.comRachelUnraveled (Instagram)ArchPodNetAPN Website: https://www.archpodnet.comAPN Discord: https://discord.com/invite/CWBhb2T2edAPN on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archpodnetAPN on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/archpodnetAPN on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/archpodnetAPN ShopAffiliatesMotion Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" talks to Ayaan Hirsi Ali about her Somali background and the clan-based system shaping Somali society; how clan loyalty and political Islam operate as alternative moral systems that clash with Western nation-states; how these dynamics inform Somali communities in Minnesota, fraud scandals, and identity politics; the influence of Islamist networks like the Muslim Brotherhood; Democratic electoral strategies built around ethnic blocs and dependency; the broader threat to liberal democracy and Western values; about Ilhan Omar's role at the intersection of clan loyalty, Islamist influence, and Democratic Party politics; how Somali clan dynamics and Muslim Brotherhood networks operate in Minnesota; the red-green alliance between progressives and Islamists; Europe's multiculturalism error and electoral opportunism; the long-term consequences for Western democracy; whether the U.S. and Western Europe can realistically reverse mass immigration, identity politics, and radical ideology through border control, remigration, and political reform; the decline of classical liberalism and why it struggles to defend itself; her intellectual journey from atheism to Christianity as a search for liberalism's moral roots; the choice between Christian and Islamist societies through lived examples; why the danger of abandoning Judeo-Christian values leads societies toward authoritarianism, violence, and collapse; and much more.

Kate Adie introduces stories from Ukraine, Russia, France, Uganda and Morocco.As temperatures plummet in Ukraine, Russia is aggressively attacking the country's energy grid. Ukraine is heavily reliant on its nuclear power plants, which are also being targeted. There are concerns that without proper maintenance, it could trigger another nuclear disaster. Wyre Davies spoke to the head of Ukraine's nuclear authority.President Trump has claimed the threat posed by Russia and China is one of the reasons the US must acquire Greenland - but rather than antagonise the Kremlin, the pro-Kremlin Russian news service has been full of praise for the US president. Steve Rosenberg reports from Moscow.From South Korea to Western Europe, there's deep concern over falling birth rates – and it was one of the reasons behind France's decision a few years ago to amend its policy regarding egg-freezing for non-medical purposes, bringing it in line with other European countries. Carolyn Lamboley recounts her personal experience.1986 was the year Diego Maradona lifted the World Cup - and when Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni first came to power. Last week, the 81-year-old won his seventh consecutive term in office, Sammy Awami was in Kampala where he heard from young people about how they voted.The 2026 Africa Cup of Nations came to a close in Morocco last weekend and aside from missing the chance to lift the trophy for the first time in fifty years, the tournament proved controversial in Morocco due to the vast sums spent on it. Tim Hartley reflects on the discontent over prioritising sporting prestige over public services.Producer: Serena Tarling Production coordinators: Katie Morrison and Sophie Hill Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Western Europe has perfected a dangerous moral fraud. It loudly accuses Israel, the Jewish state fighting for its life in a region of evil jihadi Islam, of war crimes, genocide, and “unacceptable violence,” while simultaneously burying its own historical and present-day atrocities under layers of silence, legal immunity, and media protection.Join Our Whatsapp Channel: https://chat.whatsapp.com/GkavRznXy731nxxRyptCMvFollow us on Twitter: https://x.com/AviAbelowJoin our Telegram Channel: https://t.me/aviabelowpulseFollow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pulse_of_israel/?hl=enPulse of Israel on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IsraelVideoNetworkVisit Our Website - https://pulseofisrael.com/Donate to Pulse of Israel: https://pulseofisrael.com/boost-this-video/

California Gov. Gavin Newsom takes heat on the world stage while Trump lays down the law in Western Europe—teasing a Greenland deal and rattling NATO with tariff talk. Plus, Lou Penrose reflects on his Political Science roots and digs deeper into Trump’s Greenland gambit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jimmy and Americans' Comedian Kurt Metzger discuss claims circulating online confirming that Erika Kirk is connected to Arizona's Fort Huachuca and was seen there with people tied to a now-unmade film project linked to defense and technology themes. Candace Owens and her source, Mitch Snow, provided the basis for this claim, and pushback from others was focused on attacking the informant's character rather than addressing the substance of the assertion, Jimmy says.  The discussion also dives into speculation about broader connections between pundits, intelligence bases, Hollywood projects, and military contractors, mixing personal history with suspicion about influence and "handlers." Plus segments on TPUSA threatening legal action over a critic who pointed out fraud within the organization, Russian plans to nuke Western Europe if the Ukraine War goes south and a Miami Beach resident who was harassed by police over a social media post critical of the mayor. Also featuring Thomas Massie, Stef Zamorano and Mike MacRae. And a phone call from JD Vance!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.theflyingfrisby.comThis has been for ages one of those things that has been going to happen that never actually happens.But on Monday there were signs it is actually going to happen.I'm talking about some kind of financial crisis in Japan, whether in its currency, its debt markets or a bit of both. Because it's so far away, we tend to overlook in Western Europe what a big deal Japan is: but it's the world's 4th largest economy - only the US, China and Germany have greater GDP.But its debt-to-GDP is 230% - 4 times Germany's (~63%), more than double the UK's (100%) and almost double the US's (~124%). But it has sustained these “unsustainable” levels for so long it's now normal. Shorting the yen has been the great widow maker.In addition to roughly $10 trillion of government debt, Japan also carries around $8 trillion of non-financial sector debt, including corporate and household borrowing. This is not new. What may be new is the market's willingness to continue absorbing it at the margin.On Monday Japan Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi called a snap election for February 8th, seeking a stronger mandate for her coalition government. She has high approval ratings, I read, and is looking to capitalise on them, restoring the Liberal Democratic Party's majority in the powerful lower house. Even so, though she is favourite, this is also a gamble.If you live in a third world country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound will be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Takaichi will run on a platform of more stimulus. The worry is how she “pays” for her proposed cuts to food taxes. It's not totally unlike the Liz Truss situation, when she proposed tax cuts without material cuts to spending.How much is enough?I just don't get it with governments. Something doesn't have the desired effect. Instead of stopping and reassessing, they do more. Ooh, this petrol isn't putting out the fire. Let's add more petrol.But the result of her announcement was that Japanese borrowing costs rose sharply to all-time highs (again). 30-year yields posted their biggest daily jump since 2003, and 10-year yields surged 19 basis points. Not quite such a record breaking rise but the sharpest since 2022.Japan's bond market, long regarded as the safest and dullest corner of global finance, is suddenly being treated as risky. Compounding the problem is the fact that Japanese insurers, historically reliable buyers of long-dated bonds when yields rose, have become net sellers. That removes a key stabilising force.Charlie Morris monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there. Get your copy here. No pay nada.At some point the Bank of Japan may step in and buy bonds to calm things down. That's what usually happens. The risk, however, is that Japan is deemed even more fiscally permissive, the yen weakens further, and inflationary pressures stoke.If the yen carry trade unravels - that is the financial world borrowing Japanese yen at low rates and using the money to invest elsewhere - then everything unravels, and we get the 2020s version of 2008. It's been threatening to happen a long time, but it never quite does. But hot money - aka liquidity - will get sucked out of everything from gold and silver to the stock market to the bond markets to bitcoin, and the world gets a massive margin call. The bottom line is that this raises the risk of more global market volatility. If Japan, long the calmest corner of global finance, becomes unstable, everything priced on the assumption of low and stable interest rates needs to repice. Risk-on flips to risk-off. Speculative assets get hit.Add all the Greenland stuff to the mix and everything looks very shaky all of a sudden.Periods like this are not necessarily about bold calls. They're about deciding where you refuse to be sloppy. So I am taking some action.

Register free at https://brightu.com to watch the full Wartime Homefront Essential Skills stream - Trump's First Year Anniversary and Military Humor (0:10) - Interview with Marjorie Wildcraft and Sodium Sulfur Battery Breakthrough (1:36) - European Leadership and Military Acquisitions (3:01) - Trump's Impact on European Governments (10:11) - Local Authoritarianism and Police Intimidation (15:17) - Rogue Print Shop and MBA Programs (22:46) - AI Article Creation and Future Technologies (26:43) - Economic Implications of Sodium Sulfur Battery Breakthrough (54:20) - Challenges and Opportunities in Battery Technology (1:19:15) - Nitric Acid Fumes and Robot Damage (1:22:33) - Skepticism About New Battery Technology (1:26:55) - Sodium Ion Battery Technology and Market Potential (1:31:08) - Introduction of Marjorie Wildcraft and Food Self-Reliance (1:36:54) - Impact of Hyperinflation and Economic Disruption (1:38:19) - Introduction of Wartime Home Front Essential Skills Course (1:38:36) - Preparation for Economic and Food Crises (2:32:43) - The Role of Digital Currencies and CBDCs (2:33:01) - The Importance of Local Knowledge and Community (2:33:17) - Final Thoughts on Preparedness and Self-Reliance (2:33:37) For more updates, visit: http://www.brighteon.com/channel/hrreport  NaturalNews videos would not be possible without you, as always we remain passionately dedicated to our mission of educating people all over the world on the subject of natural healing remedies and personal liberty (food freedom, medical freedom, the freedom of speech, etc.). Together, we're helping create a better world, with more honest food labeling, reduced chemical contamination, the avoidance of toxic heavy metals and vastly increased scientific transparency. ▶️ Every dollar you spend at the Health Ranger Store goes toward helping us achieve important science and content goals for humanity: https://www.healthrangerstore.com/ ▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: https://www.naturalnews.com/Readerregistration.html ▶️ Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/hrreport ▶️ Join Our Social Network: https://brighteon.social/@HealthRanger ▶️ Check In Stock Products at: https://PrepWithMike.com

On this episode, we dig into how global wealth trends—rather than hype cycles or short-term market noise—are reshaping the luxury watch industry. Drawing on reporting originally published by ScrewDownCrown (Substack), we use the UBS Global Wealth Report to examine the rapid rise of the “EMILLI” cohort: individuals with $1–5 million in net worth. This group has quadrupled since 2000 and now represents the core audience for sub-$10,000 to $50,000 watches, helping explain why mechanical timepieces remain viable luxury goods in 2025 despite their declining practical relevance. We then look at how this wealth is distributed geographically—and why that matters. The U.S. remains a structural engine for the watch industry thanks to strong millionaire growth and a powerful wealth effect driven by real estate and equity markets. China's growth is slowing, Western Europe is shrinking, and while markets like India offer long-term potential, today's addressable audience is far smaller than population headlines suggest. The result is a global landscape with fewer obvious growth levers than brands would like to admit. Finally, we explore how inequality itself fuels luxury demand. Drawing on academic research and firsthand experience, we look at how hierarchical workplaces and concentrated wealth amplify status-driven consumption across income levels. Watches operate not just as objects of desire, but as social signals—markers of success, belonging, and aspiration. Understanding these structural forces, not just products or trends, is key to understanding where the watch market goes next. Hosted by Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly, co-founders of Collective Horology, Openwork goes inside the watch industry. You can find us online at collectivehorology.com. To get in touch with suggestions, feedback or questions, email podcast@collectivehorology.com.

IWhat is our children's future? What skills should they be developing? How should schools be adapting? What will the fully functioning citizens and workers of the future look like? A look into the landscape of the next 15 years, the future of work with human and AI interactions, the transformation of education, the safety and privacy landscapes, and a parental playbook. Navigation: Intro The Landscape: 2026–2040 The Future of Work: Human + AI The Transformation of Education The Ethics, Safety, and Privacy Landscape The Parental Playbook: Actionable Strategies Conclusion Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Entrepreneur in Residence at Red River West, co-founder of App Annie / Data.ai, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show: Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Bertrand SchmittIntroduction Welcome to Episode 72 of Tech Deciphered, about our children’s future. What is our children’s future? What skills should they be developing? How should school be adapting to AI? What would be the functioning citizens and workers of the future look like, especially in the context of the AI revolution? Nuno, what’s your take? Maybe we start with the landscape. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Landscape: 2026–2040 Let’s first frame it. What do people think is going to happen? Firstly, that there’s going to be a dramatic increase in productivity, and because of that dramatic increase in productivity, there are a lot of numbers that show that there’s going to be… AI will enable some labour productivity growth of 0.1 to 0.6% through 2040, which would be a figure that would be potentially rising even more depending on use of other technologies beyond generative AI, as much as 0.5 to 3.4% points annually, which would be ridiculous in terms of productivity enhancement. To be clear, we haven’t seen it yet. But if there are those dramatic increases in productivity expected by the market, then there will be job displacement. There will be people losing their jobs. There will be people that will need to be reskilled, and there will be a big shift that is similar to what happens when there’s a significant industrial revolution, like the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century into the 20th century. Other numbers quoted would say that 30% of US jobs could be automated by 2030, which is a silly number, 30%, and that another 60% would see tremendously being altered. A lot of their tasks would be altered for those jobs. There’s also views that this is obviously fundamentally a global phenomenon, that as much as 9% of jobs could be lost to AI by 2030. I think question mark if this is a net number or a gross number, so it might be 9% our loss, but then maybe there’re other jobs that will emerge. It’s very clear that the landscape we have ahead of us is if there are any significant increases in productivity, there will be job displacement. There will be job shifting. There will be the need for reskilling. Therefore, I think on the downside, you would say there’s going to be job losses. We’ll have to reevaluate whether people should still work in general 5 days a week or not. Will we actually work in 10, 20, 30 years? I think that’s the doomsday scenario and what happens on that side of the fence. I think on the positive side, there’s also a discussion around there’ll be new jobs that emerge. There’ll be new jobs that maybe we don’t understand today, new job descriptions that actually don’t even exist yet that will emerge out this brave new world of AI. Bertrand SchmittYeah. I mean, let’s not forget how we get to a growing economy. I mean, there’s a measurement of a growing economy is GDP growth. Typically, you can simplify in two elements. One is the growth of the labour force, two, the rise of the productivity of that labour force, and that’s about it. Either you grow the economy by increasing the number of people, which in most of the Western world is not really happening, or you increase productivity. I think that we should not forget that growth of productivity is a backbone of growth for our economies, and that has been what has enabled the rise in prosperity across countries. I always take that as a win, personally. That growth in productivity has happened over the past decades through all the technological revolutions, from more efficient factories to oil and gas to computers, to network computers, to internet, to mobile and all the improvement in science, usually on the back of technological improvement. Personally, I welcome any rise in improvement we can get in productivity because there is at this stage simply no other choice for a growing world in terms of growing prosperity. In terms of change, we can already have a look at the past. There are so many jobs today you could not imagine they would exist 30 years ago. Take the rise of the influencer, for instance, who could have imagined that 30 years ago. Take the rise of the small mom-and-pop e-commerce owner, who could have imagined that. Of course, all the rise of IT as a profession. I mean, how few of us were there 30 years ago compared to today. I mean, this is what it was 30 years ago. I think there is a lot of change that already happened. I think as a society, we need to welcome that. If we go back even longer, 100 years ago, 150 years ago, let’s not forget, if I take a city like Paris, we used to have tens of thousands of people transporting water manually. Before we have running water in every home, we used to have boats going to the North Pole or to the northern region to bring back ice and basically pushing ice all the way to the Western world because we didn’t have fridges at the time. I think that when we look back in time about all the jobs that got displaced, I would say, Thank you. Thank you because these were not such easy jobs. Change is coming, but change is part of the human equation, at least. Industrial revolution, the past 250 years, it’s thanks to that that we have some improvement in living conditions everywhere. AI is changing stuff, but change is a constant, and we need to adapt and adjust. At least on my side, I’m glad that AI will be able to displace some jobs that were not so interesting to do in the first place in many situations. Maybe not dangerous like in the past because we are talking about replacing white job collars, but at least repetitive jobs are definitely going to be on the chopping block. Nuno Goncalves PedroWhat happens in terms of shift? We were talking about some numbers earlier. The World Economic Forum also has some numbers that predicts that there is a gross job creation rate of 14% from 2025 to 2030 and a displacement rate of 8%, so I guess they’re being optimistic, so a net growth in employment. I think that optimism relates to this thesis that, for example, efficiency, in particular in production and industrial environments, et cetera, might reduce labour there while increasing the demand for labour elsewhere because there is a natural lower cost base. If there’s more automation in production, therefore there’s more disposable income for people to do other things and to focus more on their side activities. Maybe, as I said before, not work 5 days a week, but maybe work four or three or whatever it is. What are the jobs of the future? What are the jobs that we see increasing in the future? Obviously, there’re a lot of jobs that relate to the technology side, that relate obviously to AI, that’s a little bit self-serving, and everything that relates to information technology, computer science, computer technology, computer engineering, et cetera. More broadly in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, that might actually be more needed. Because there is a broadening of all of these elements of contact with digital, with AI over time also with robots and robotics, that those jobs will increase. There’s a thesis that actually other jobs that are a little bit more related to agriculture, education, et cetera, might not see a dramatic impact, that will still need for, I guess, teachers and the need for people working in farms, et cetera. I think this assumes that probably the AI revolution will come much before the fundamental evolution that will come from robotics afterwards. Then there’s obviously this discussion around declining roles. Anything that’s fundamentally routine, like data entry, clinical roles, paralegals, for example, routine manufacturing, anything that’s very repetitive in nature will be taken away. I have the personal thesis that there are jobs that are actually very blue-collar jobs, like HVAC installation, maintenance, et cetera, plumbing, that will be still done by humans for a very long time because there are actually, they appear to be repetitive, but they’re actually complex, and they require manual labour that cannot be easily, I think, right now done by robots and replacements of humans. Actually, I think there’re blue-collar roles that will be on the increase rather than on decrease that will demand a premium, because obviously, they are apprenticeship roles, certification roles, and that will demand a premium. Maybe we’re at the two ends. There’s an end that is very technologically driven of jobs that will need to necessarily increase, and there’s at the other end, jobs that are very menial but necessarily need to be done by humans, and therefore will also command a premium on the other end. Bertrand SchmittI think what you say make a lot of sense. If you think about AI as a stack, my guess is that for the foreseeable future, on the whole stack, and when I say stack, I mean from basic energy production because we need a lot of energy for AI, maybe to going up to all the computing infrastructure, to AI models, to AI training, to robotics. All this stack, we see an increase in expertise in workers and everything. Even if a lot of this work will benefit from AI improvement, the boom is so large that it will bring a lot of demand for anyone working on any part of the stack. Some of it is definitely blue-collar. When you have to build a data centre or energy power station, this requires a lot of blue-collar work. I would say, personally, I’m absolutely not a believer of the 3 or 4 days a week work week. I don’t believe a single second in that socialist paradise. If you want to call it that way. I think that’s not going to change. I would say today we can already see that breaking. I mean, if you take Europe, most European countries have a big issue with pension. The question is more to increase how long you are going to work because financially speaking, the equation is not there. Personally, I don’t think AI would change any of that. I agree with you in terms of some jobs from electricians to gas piping and stuff. There will still be demand and robots are not going to help soon on this job. There will be a big divergence between and all those that can be automated, done by AI and robots and becoming cheaper and cheaper and stuff that requires a lot of human work, manual work. I don’t know if it will become more expensive, but definitely, proportionally, in comparison, we look so expensive that you will have second thoughts about doing that investment to add this, to add that. I can see that when you have your own home, so many costs, some cost our product. You buy this new product, you add it to your home. It can be a water heater or something, built in a factory, relatively cheap. You see the installation cost, the maintenance cost. It’s many times the cost of the product itself. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe it’s a good time to put a caveat into our conversation. I mean, there’s a… Roy Amara was a futurist who came up with the Amara’s Law. We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and overestimate the effect in the long run. I prefer my own law, which is, we tend to overestimate the speed at which we get to a technological revolution and underestimate its impact. I think it’s a little bit like that. I think everyone now is like, “Oh, my God, we’re going to be having the AI overlords taking over us, and AGI is going to happen pretty quickly,” and all of that. I mean, AGI will probably happen at some point. We’re not really sure when. I don’t think anyone can tell you. I mean, there’re obviously a lot of ranges going on. Back to your point, for example, on the shift of the work week and how we work. I mean, just to be very clear, we didn’t use to have 5 days a week and 2 days a weekend. If we go back to religions, there was definitely Sabbath back in the day, and there was one day off, the day of the Lord and the day of God. Then we went to 2 days of weekend. I remember going to Korea back in 2005, and I think Korea shifted officially to 5 days a week, working week and 2 days weekend for some of the larger business, et cetera, in 2004. Actually, it took another whatever years for it to be pervasive in society. This is South Korea, so this is a developed market. We might be at some point moving to 4 days a week. Maybe France was ahead of the game. I know Bertrand doesn’t like this, the 35-hour week. Maybe we will have another shift in what defines the working week versus not. What defines what people need to do in terms of efficiency and how they work and all of that. I think it’s probably just going to take longer than we think. I think there’re some countries already doing it. I was reading maybe Finland was already thinking about moving to 4 days a week. There’re a couple of countries already working on it. Certainly, there’re companies already doing it as well. Bertrand SchmittYeah, I don’t know. I’m just looking at the financial equation of most countries. The disaster is so big in Western Europe, in the US. So much debt is out that needs to get paid that I don’t think any country today, unless there is a complete reversal of the finance, will be able to make a big change. You could argue maybe if we are in such a situation, it might be because we went too far in benefits, in vacation, in work days versus weekends. I’m not saying we should roll back, but I feel that at this stage, the proof is in the pudding. The finance of most developed countries are broken, so I don’t see a change coming up. Potentially, the other way around, people leaving to work more, unfortunately. We will see. My point is that AI will have to be so transformational for the productivity for countries, and countries will have to go back to finding their ways in terms of financial discipline to reach a level where we can truly profit from that. I think from my perspective, we have time to think about it in 10, 20 years. Right now, it’s BS at this stage of this discussion. Nuno Goncalves PedroYeah, there’s a dependency, Bertrand, which is there needs to be dramatic increases in productivity that need to happen that create an expansion of economy. Once that expansion is captured by, let’s say, government or let’s say by the state, it needs to be willingly fed back into society, which is not a given. There’re some governments who are going to be like, “No, you need to work for a living.” Tough luck. There’re no handouts, there’s nothing. There’s going to be other governments that will be pressured as well. I mean, even in a more socialist Europe, so to speak. There’re now a lot of pressures from very far-right, even extreme positions on what people need to do for a living and how much should the state actually intervene in terms of minimum salaries, et cetera, and social security. To your point, the economies are not doing well in and of themselves. Anyway, there would need to be tremendous expansion of economy and willingness by the state to give back to its citizens, which is also not a given. Bertrand SchmittAnd good financial discipline as well. Before we reach all these three. Reaping the benefits in a tremendous way, way above trend line, good financial discipline, and then some willingness to send back. I mean, we can talk about a dream. I think that some of this discussion was, in some ways, to have a discussion so early about this. It’s like, let’s start to talk about the benefits of the aeroplane industries in 1915 or 1910, a few years after the Wright brothers flight, and let’s make a decision based on what the world will be in 30 years from now when we reap this benefit. This is just not reasonable. This is not reasonable thinking. I remember seeing companies from OpenAI and others trying to push this narrative. It was just political agenda. It was nothing else. It was, “Let’s try to make look like AI so nice and great in the future, so you don’t complain on the short term about what’s happening.” I don’t think this is a good discussion to have for now. Let’s be realistic. Nuno Goncalves PedroJust for the sake of sharing it with our listeners, apparently there’re a couple of countries that have moved towards something a bit lower than 5 days a week. Belgium, I think, has legislated the ability for you to compress your work week into 4 days, where you could do 10 hours for 4 days, so 40 hours. UAE has some policy for government workers, 4.5 days. Iceland has some stuff around 35 to 36 hours, which is France has had that 35 hour thing. Lithuania for parents. Then just trials, it’s all over the shop. United Kingdom, my own Portugal, of course, Germany, Brazil, and South Africa, and a bunch of other countries, so interesting. There’s stuff going on. Bertrand SchmittFor sure. I mean, France managed to bankrupt itself playing the 75 hours work week since what, 2000 or something. I mean, yeah, it’s a choice of financial suicide, I would say. Nuno Goncalves PedroWonderful. The Future of Work: Human + AI Maybe moving a little bit towards the future of work and the coexistence of work of human and AI, I think the thesis that exists a little bit in the market is that the more positive thesis that leads to net employment growth and net employment creation, as we were saying, there’s shifting of professions, they’re rescaling, and there’s the new professions that will emerge, is the notion that human will need to continue working alongside with machine. I’m talking about robots, I’m also talking about software. Basically software can’t just always run on its own, and therefore, software serves as a layer of augmentation, that humans become augmented by AI, and therefore, they can be a lot more productive, and we can be a lot more productive. All of that would actually lead to a world where the efficiencies and the economic creation are incredible. We’ll have an unparalleled industrial evolution in our hands through AI. That’s one way of looking at it. We certainly at Chameleon, that’s how we think through AI and the AI layers that we’re creating with Mantis, which is our in-house platform at Chameleon, is that it’s augmenting us. Obviously, the human is still running the show at the end, making the toughest decisions, the more significant impact with entrepreneurs that we back, et cetera. AI augments us, but we run the show. Bertrand SchmittI totally agree with that perspective that first AI will bring a new approach, a human plus AI. Here in that situation, you really have two situations. Are you a knowledgeable user? Do you know your field well? Are you an expert? Are you an IT expert? Are you a medical doctor? Do you find your best way to optimise your work with AI? Are you knowledgeable enough to understand and challenge AI when you see weird output? You have to be knowledgeable in your field, but also knowledgeable in how to handle AI, because even experts might say, “Whatever AI says.” My guess is that will be the users that will benefit most from AI. Novice, I think, are in a bit tougher situation because if you use AI without truly understanding it, it’s like laying foundations on sand. Your stuff might crumble down the way, and you will have no clue what’s happening. Hopefully, you don’t put anyone in physical danger, but that’s more worrisome to me. I think some people will talk about the rise of vibe coding, for instance. I’ve seen AI so useful to improve coding in so many ways, but personally, I don’t think vibe coding is helpful. I mean, beyond doing a quick prototype or some stuff, but to put some serious foundation, I think it’s near useless if you have a pure vibe coding approach, obviously to each their own. I think the other piece of the puzzle, it’s not just to look at human plus AI. I think definitely there will be the other side as well, which is pure AI. Pure AI replacement. I think we start to see that with autonomous cars. We are close to be there. Here we’ll be in situation of maybe there is some remote control by some humans, maybe there is local control. We are talking about a huge scale replacement of some human activities. I think in some situation, let’s talk about work farms, for instance. That’s quite a special term, but basically is to describe work that is very repetitive in nature, requires a lot of humans. Today, if you do a loan approval, if you do an insurance claim analysis, you have hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are doing this job in Europe, in the US, or remotely outsourced to other countries like India. I think some of these jobs are fully at risk to be replaced. Would it be 100% replacement? Probably not. But a 9:1, 10:1 replacement? I think it’s definitely possible because these jobs have been designed, by the way, to be repetitive, to follow some very clear set of rules, to improve the rules, to remove any doubt if you are not sure. I think some of these jobs will be transformed significantly. I think we see two sides. People will become more efficient controlling an AI, being able to do the job of two people at once. On the other side, we see people who have much less control about their life, basically, and whose job will simply disappear. Nuno Goncalves PedroTwo points I would like to make. The first point is we’re talking about a state of AI that we got here, and we mentioned this in previous episodes of Tech Deciphered, through brute force, dramatically increased data availability, a lot of compute, lower network latencies, and all of that that has led us to where we are today. But it’s brute force. The key thing here is brute force. Therefore, when AI acts really well, it acts well through brute force, through seeing a bunch of things that have happened before. For example, in the case of coding, it might still outperform many humans in coding in many different scenarios, but it might miss hedge cases. It might actually not be as perfect and as great as one of these developers that has been doing it for decades who has this intuition and is a 10X developer. In some ways, I think what got us here is not maybe what’s going to get us to the next level of productivity as well, which is the unsupervised learning piece, the actually no learning piece, where you go into the world and figure stuff out. That world is emerging now, but it’s still not there in terms of AI algorithms and what’s happening. Again, a lot of what we’re seeing today is the outcome of the brute force movement that we’ve had over the last decade, decade and a half. The second point I’d like to make is to your point, Bertrand, you were going really well through, okay, if you’re a super experienced subject-matter expert, the way you can use AI is like, wow! Right? I mean, you are much more efficient, right? I was asked to do a presentation recently. When I do things in public, I don’t like to do it. If it’s a keynote, because I like to use my package stuff, there’s like six, seven presentations that I have prepackaged, and I can adapt around that. But if it’s a totally new thing, I don’t like to do it as a keynote because it requires a lot of preparation. Therefore, I’m like, I prefer to do a fire set chat or a panel or whatever. I got asked to do something, a little bit what is taking us to this topic today around what’s happening to our children and all of that is like, “God! I need to develop this from scratch.” The honest truth is if you have domain expertise around many areas, you can do it very quickly with the aid of different tools in AI. Anything from Gemini, even with Nana Banana, to ChatGPT and other tools that are out there for you and framing, how would you do that? But the problem then exists with people that are just at the beginning of their careers, people that have very little expertise and experience, and people that are maybe coming out of college where their knowledge is mostly theoretical. What happens to those people? Even in computer engineering, even in computer science, even in software development, how do those people get to the next level? I think that’s one of the interesting conversations to be had. What happens to the recent graduate or the recent undergrad? How do those people get the expertise they need to go to the next level? Can they just be replaced by AI agents today? What’s their role in terms of the workforce, and how do they fit into that workforce? Bertrand SchmittNo, I mean, that’s definitely the biggest question. I think that a lot of positions, if you are really knowledgeable, good at your job, if you are that 10X developer, I don’t think your job is at risk. Overall, you always have some exceptions, some companies going through tough times, but I don’t think it’s an issue. On the other end, that’s for sure, the recent new graduates will face some more trouble to learn on their own, start their career, and go to that 10X productivity level. But at the same time, let’s also not kid ourselves. If we take software development, this is a profession that increase in number of graduates tremendously over the past 30 years. I don’t think everyone basically has the talent to really make it. Now that you have AI, for sure, the bar to justify why you should be there, why you should join this company is getting higher and higher. Being just okay won’t be enough to get you a career in IT. You will need to show that you are great or potential to be great. That might make things tough for some jobs. At the same time, I certainly believe there will be new opportunities that were not there before. People will have to definitely adjust to that new reality, learn and understand what’s going on, what are the options, and also try to be very early on, very confident at using AI as much as they can because for sure, companies are going to only hire workers that have shown their capacity to work well with AI. Nuno Goncalves PedroMy belief is that it generates new opportunities for recent undergrads, et cetera, of building their own microbusinesses or nano businesses. To your point, maybe getting jobs because they’ll be forced to move faster within their jobs and do less menial and repetitive activities and be more focused on actual dramatic intellectual activities immediately from the get go, which is not a bad thing. Their acceleration into knowledge will be even faster. I don’t know. It feels to me maybe there’s a positivity to it. Obviously, if you’ve stayed in a big school, et cetera, that there will be some positivity coming out of that. The Transformation of Education Maybe this is a good segue to education. How does education change to adapt to a new world where AI is a given? It’s not like I can check if you’re faking it on your homework or if you’re doing a remote examination or whatever, if you’re using or not tools, it’s like you’re going to use these tools. What happens in that case, and how does education need to shift in this brave new world of AI augmentation and AI enhancements to students? Bertrand SchmittYes, I agree with you. There will be new opportunities. I think people need to be adaptable. What used to be an absolute perfect career choice might not be anymore. You need to learn what changes are happening in the industry, and you need to adjust to that, especially if you’re a new graduate. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe we’ll talk a little bit about education, Bertrand, and how education would fundamentally shift. I think one of the things that’s been really discussed is what are the core skills that need to be developed? What are the core skills that will be important in the future? I think critical thinking is probably most important than ever. The ability to actually assimilate information and discern which information is correct or incorrect and which information can lead you to a conclusion or not, for example, I think is more important than ever. The ability to assimilate a bunch of pieces of information, make a decision or have an insight or foresight out of that information is very, very critical. The ability to be analytical around how you look at information and to really distinguish what’s fact from what’s opinion, I think is probably quite important. Maybe moving away more and more from memorisation from just cramming information into your brain like we used to do it in college, you have to know every single algorithm for whatever. It’s like, “Who gives a shit? I can just go and search it.” There’s these shifts that are not simple because I think education, in particular in the last century, has maybe been too focused on knowing more and more knowledge, on learning this knowledge. Now it’s more about learning how to process the knowledge rather than learning how to apprehend it. Because the apprehension doesn’t matter as much because you can have this information at any point in time. The information is available to you at the touch of a finger or voice or whatever. But the ability to then use the information to do something with it is not. That’s maybe where you start distinguishing the different level degrees of education and how things are taught. Bertrand SchmittHonestly, what you just say or describe could apply of the changes we went through the past 30 years. Just using internet search has for sure tremendously changed how you can do any knowledge worker job. Suddenly you have the internet at your fingertips. You can search about any topics. You have direct access to a Wikipedia or something equivalent in any field. I think some of this, we already went through it, and I hope we learned the consequence of these changes. I would say what is new is the way AI itself is working, because when you use AI, you realise that it can utter to you complete bullshit in a very self-assured way of explaining something. It’s a bit more scary than it used to be, because in the past, that algorithm trying to present you the most relevant stuff based on some algorithm was not trying to present you the truth. It’s a list of links. Maybe it was more the number one link versus number 100. But ultimately, it’s for you to make your own opinion. Now you have some chatbot that’s going to tell you that for sure this is the way you should do it. Then you check more, and you realise, no, it’s totally wrong. It’s definitely a slight change in how you have to apprehend this brave new world. Also, this AI tool, the big change, especially with generative AI, is the ability for them to give you the impression they can do the job at hand by themselves when usually they cannot. Nuno Goncalves PedroIndeed. There’s definitely a lot of things happening right now that need to fundamentally shift. Honestly, I think in the education system the problem is the education system is barely adapted to the digital world. Even today, if you studied at a top school like Stanford, et cetera, there’s stuff you can do online, there’s more and more tools online. But the teaching process has been very centred on syllabus, the teachers, later on the professors, and everything that’s around it. In class presence, there’s been minor adaptations. People sometimes allow to use their laptops in the classroom, et cetera, or their mobile phones. But it’s been done the other way around. It’s like the tools came later, and they got fed into the process. Now I think there needs to be readjustments. If we did this ground up from a digital first or a mobile first perspective and an AI first perspective, how would we do it? That changes how teachers and professors should interact with the classrooms, with the role of the classroom, the role of the class itself, the role of homework. A lot of people have been debating that. What do you want out of homework? It’s just that people cram information and whatever, or do you want people to show critical thinking in a specific different manner, or some people even go one step further. It’s like, there should be no homework. People should just show up in class and homework should move to the class in some ways. Then what happens outside of the class? What are people doing at home? Are they learning tools? Are they learning something else? Are they learning to be productive in responding to teachers? But obviously, AI augmented in doing so. I mean, still very unclear what this looks like. We’re still halfway through the revolution, as we said earlier. The revolution is still in motion. It’s not realised yet. Bertrand SchmittI would quite separate higher education, university and beyond, versus lower education, teenager, kids. Because I think the core up to the point you are a teenager or so, I think the school system should still be there to guide you, discovering and learning and being with your peers. I think what is new is that, again, at some point, AI could potentially do your job, do your homework. We faced similar situation in the past with the rise of Wikipedia, online encyclopedias and the stuff. But this is quite dramatically different. Then someone could write your essays, could answer your maths work. I can see some changes where you talk about homework, it’s going to be classwork instead. No work at home because no one can trust that you did it yourself anymore going forward, but you will have to do it in the classroom, maybe spend more time at school so that we can verify that you really did your job. I think there is real value to make sure that you can still think by yourself. The same way with the rise of calculators 40 years ago, I think it was the right thing to do to say, “You know what? You still need to learn the basics of doing calculations by hand.” Yes, I remember myself a kid thinking, “What the hell? I have a calculator. It’s working very well.” But it was still very useful because you can think in your head, you can solve complex problems in your head, you can check some output that it’s right or wrong if it’s coming from a calculator. There was a real value to still learn the basics. At the same point, it was also right to say, “You know what? Once you know the basics, yes, for sure, the calculator will take over because we’re at the point.” I think that was the right balance that was put in place with the rise of calculators. We need something similar with AI. You need to be able to write by yourself, to do stuff by yourself. At some point, you have to say, “Yeah, you know what? That long essays that we asked you to do for the sake of doing long essays? What’s the point?” At some point, yeah, that would be a true question. For higher education, I think personally, it’s totally ripe for full disruption. You talk about the traditional system trying to adapt. I think we start to be at the stage where “It should be the other way around.” It should be we should be restarted from the ground up because we simply have different tools, different ways. I think at this stage, many companies if you take, [inaudible 00:33:01] for instance, started to recruit people after high school. They say, “You know what? Don’t waste your time in universities. Don’t spend crazy shitload of money to pay for an education that’s more or less worthless.” Because it used to be a way to filter people. You go to good school, you have a stamp that say, “This guy is good enough, knows how to think.” But is it so true anymore? I mean, now that universities have increased the enrolment so many times over, and your university degree doesn’t prove much in terms of your intelligence or your capacity to work hard, quite frankly. If the universities are losing the value of their stamp and keep costing more and more and more, I think it’s a fair question to say, “Okay, maybe this is not needed anymore.” Maybe now companies can directly find the best talents out there, train them themselves, make sure that ultimately it’s a win-win situation. If kids don’t have to have big loans anymore, companies don’t have to pay them as much, and everyone is winning. I think we have reached a point of no return in terms of value of university degrees, quite frankly. Of course, there are some exceptions. Some universities have incredible programs, incredible degrees. But as a whole, I think we are reaching a point of no return. Too expensive, not enough value in the degree, not a filter anymore. Ultimately, I think there is a case to be made for companies to go back directly to the source and to high school. Nuno Goncalves PedroI’m still not ready to eliminate and just say higher education doesn’t have a role. I agree with the notion that it’s continuous education role that needs to be filled in a very different way. Going back to K-12, I think the learning of things is pretty vital that you learn, for example, how to write, that you learn cursive and all these things is important. I think the role of the teacher, and maybe actually even later on of the professors in higher education, is to teach people the critical information they need to know for the area they’re in. Basic math, advanced math, the big thinkers in philosophy, whatever is that you’re studying, and then actually teach the students how to use the tools that they need, in particular, K-12, so that they more rapidly apprehend knowledge, that they more rapidly can do exercises, that they more rapidly do things. I think we’ve had a static view on what you need to learn for a while. That’s, for example, in the US, where you have AP classes, like advanced placement classes, where you could be doing math and you could be doing AP math. You’re like, dude. In some ways, I think the role of the teacher and the interaction with the students needs to go beyond just the apprehension of knowledge. It also has to have apprehension of knowledge, but it needs to go to the apprehension of tools. Then the application of, as we discussed before, critical thinking, analytical thinking, creative thinking. We haven’t talked about creativity for all, but obviously the creativity that you need to have around certain problems and the induction of that into the process is critical. It’s particular in young kids and how they’re developing their learning skills and then actually accelerate learning. In that way, what I’m saying, I’m not sure I’m willing to say higher education is dead. I do think this mass production of higher education that we have, in particular in the US. That’s incredibly costly. A lot of people in Europe probably don’t see how costly higher education is because we’re educated in Europe, they paid some fee. A lot of the higher education in Europe is still, to a certain extent, subsidised or done by the state. There is high degree of subsidisation in it, so it’s not really as expensive as you’d see in the US. But someone spending 200-300K to go to a top school in the US to study for four years for an undergrad, that doesn’t make sense. For tuition alone, we’re talking about tuition alone. How does that work? Why is it so expensive? Even if I’m a Stanford or a Harvard or a University of Pennsylvania or whatever, whatever, Ivy League school, if I’m any of those, to command that premium, I don’t think makes much sense. To your point, maybe it is about thinking through higher education in a different way. Technical schools also make sense. Your ability to learn and learn and continue to education also makes sense. You can be certified. There are certifications all around that also makes sense. I do think there’s still a case for higher education, but it needs to be done in a different mould, and obviously the cost needs to be reassessed. Because it doesn’t make sense for you to be in debt that dramatically as you are today in the US. Bertrand SchmittI mean, for me, that’s where I’m starting when I’m saying it’s broken. You cannot justify this amount of money except in a very rare and stratified job opportunities. That means for a lot of people, the value of this equation will be negative. It’s like some new, indented class of people who owe a lot of money and have no way to get rid of this loan. Sorry. There are some ways, like join the government Task Force, work for the government, that at some point you will be forgiven your loans. Some people are going to just go after government jobs just for that reason, which is quite sad, frankly. I think we need a different approach. Education can be done, has to be done cheaper, should be done differently. Maybe it’s just regular on the job training, maybe it is on the side, long by night type of approach. I think there are different ways to think about. Also, it can be very practical. I don’t know you, but there are a lot of classes that are not really practical or not very tailored to the path you have chosen. Don’t get me wrong, there is always value to see all the stuff, to get a sense of the world around you. But this has a cost. If it was for free, different story. But nothing is free. I mean, your parents might think it’s free, but at the end of the day, it’s their taxes paying for all of this. The reality is that it’s not free. It’s costing a lot of money at the end of the day. I think we absolutely need to do a better job here. I think internet and now AI makes this a possibility. I don’t know you, but personally, I’ve learned so much through online classes, YouTube videos, and the like, that it never cease to amaze me how much you can learn, thanks to the internet, and keep up to date in so many ways on some topics. Quite frankly, there are some topics that there is not a single university that can teach you what’s going on because we’re talking about stuff that is so precise, so focused that no one is building a degree around that. There is no way. Nuno Goncalves PedroI think that makes sense. Maybe bring it back to core skills. We’ve talked about a couple of core skills, but maybe just to structure it a little bit for you, our listener. I think there’s a big belief that critical thinking will be more important than ever. We already talked a little bit about that. I think there’s a belief that analytical thinking, the ability to, again, distinguish fact from opinion, ability to distinguish elements from different data sources and make sure that you see what those elements actually are in a relatively analytical manner. Actually the ability to extract data in some ways. Active learning, proactive learning and learning strategies. I mean, the ability to proactively learn, proactively search, be curious and search for knowledge. Complex problem-solving, we also talked a little bit about it. That goes hand in hand normally with critical thinking and analysis. Creativity, we also talked about. I think originality, initiative, I think will be very important for a long time. I’m not saying AI at some point won’t be able to emulate genuine creativity. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that, but for the time being, it has tremendous difficulty doing so. Bertrand SchmittBut you can use AI in creative endeavours. Nuno Goncalves PedroOf course, no doubt. Bertrand SchmittYou can do stuff you will be unable to do, create music, create videos, create stuff that will be very difficult. I see that as an evolution of tools. It’s like now cameras are so cheap to create world-class quality videos, for instance. That if you’re a student, you want to learn cinema, you can do it truly on the cheap. But now that’s the next level. You don’t even need actors, you don’t even need the real camera. You can start to make movies. It’s amazing as a learning tool, as a creative tool. It’s for sure a new art form in a way that we have seen expanding on YouTube and other places, and the same for creating new images, new music. I think that AI can be actually a tool for expression and for creativity, even in its current form. Nuno Goncalves PedroAbsolutely. A couple of other skills that people would say maybe are soft skills, but I think are incredibly powerful and very distinctive from machines. Empathy, the ability to figure out how the other person’s feeling and why they’re feeling like that. Adaptability, openness, the flexibility, the ability to drop something and go a different route, to maybe be intellectually honest and recognise this is the wrong way and the wrong angle. Last but not the least, I think on the positive side, tech literacy. I mean, a lot of people are, oh, we don’t need to be tech literate. Actually, I think this is a moment in time where you need to be more tech literate than ever. It’s almost a given. It’s almost like table stakes, that you are at some tech literacy. What matters less? I think memorisation and just the cramming of information and using your brain as a library just for the sake of it, I think probably will matter less and less. If you are a subject or a class that’s just solely focused on cramming your information, I feel that’s probably the wrong way to go. I saw some analysis that the management of people is less and less important. I actually disagree with that. I think in the interim, because of what we were discussing earlier, that subject-matter experts at the top end can do a lot of stuff by themselves and therefore maybe need to less… They have less people working for them because they become a little bit more like superpowered individual contributors. But I feel that’s a blip rather than what’s going to happen over time. I think collaboration is going to be a key element of what needs to be done in the future. Still, I don’t see that changing, and therefore, management needs to be embedded in it. What other skills should disappear or what other skills are less important to be developed, I guess? Bertrand SchmittWorld learning, I’ve never, ever been a fan. I think that one for sure. But at the same time, I want to make sure that we still need to learn about history or geography. What we don’t want to learn is that stupid word learning. I still remember as a teenager having to learn the list of all the 100 French departments. I mean, who cared? I didn’t care about knowing the biggest cities of each French department. It was useless to me. But at the same time, geography in general, history in general, there is a lot to learn from the past from the current world. I think we need to find that right balance. The details, the long list might not be that necessary. At the same time, the long arc of history, our world where it is today, I think there is a lot of value. I think you talk about analysing data. I think this one is critical because the world is generating more and more data. We need to benefit from it. There is no way we can benefit from it if we don’t understand how data is produced, what data means. If we don’t understand the base of statistical analysis. I think some of this is definitely critical. But for stuff, we have to do less. It’s beyond world learning. I don’t know, honestly. I don’t think the core should change so much. But the tools we use to learn the core, yes, probably should definitely improve. Nuno Goncalves PedroOne final debate, maybe just to close, I think this chapter on education and skill building and all of that. There’s been a lot of discussion around specialisation versus generalisation, specialists versus generalists. I think for a very long time, the world has gone into a route that basically frames specialisation as a great thing. I think both of us have lived in Silicon Valley. I still do, but we both lived in Silicon Valley for a significant period of time. The centre of the universe in terms of specialisation, you get more and more specialised. I think we’re going into a world that becomes a little bit different. It becomes a little bit like what Amazon calls athletes, right? The T-Pi-shaped people get the most value, where you’re brought on top, you’re a very strong generalist on top, and you have a lot of great soft skills around management and empathy and all that stuff. Then you might have one or two subject matter expertise areas. Could be like business development and sales or corporate development and business development or product management and something else. I think those are the winners of the future. The young winners of the future are going to be more and more T-pi-shaped, if I had to make a guess. Specialisation matters, but maybe not as much as it matters today. It matters from the perspective that you still have to have spikes in certain areas of focus. But I’m not sure that you get more and more specialised in the area you’re in. I’m not sure that’s necessarily how humans create most value in their arena of deployment and development. Professionally, and therefore, I’m not sure education should be more and more specialised just for the sake of it. What do you think? Bertrand SchmittI think that that’s a great point. I would say I could see an argument for both. I think there is always some value in being truly an expert on a topic so that you can keep digging around, keep developing the field. You cannot develop a field without people focused on developing a field. I think that one is there to stay. At the same time, I can see how in many situations, combining knowledge of multiple fields can bring tremendous value. I think it’s very clear as well. I think it’s a balance. We still need some experts. At the same time, there is value to be quite horizontal in terms of knowledge. I think what is still very valuable is the ability to drill through whenever you need. I think that we say it’s actually much easier than before. That for me is a big difference. I can see how now you can drill through on topics that would have been very complex to go into. You will have to read a lot of books, watch a lot of videos, potentially do a new education before you grasp much about a topic. Well, now, thanks to AI, you can drill very quickly on topic of interest to you. I think that can be very valuable. Again, if you just do that blindly, that’s calling for trouble. But if you have some knowledge in the area, if you know how to deal with AI, at least today’s AI and its constraints, I think there is real value you can deliver thanks to an ability to drill through when you don’t. For me, personally, one thing I’ve seen is some people who are generalists have lost this ability. They have lost this ability to drill through on a topic, become expert on some topic very quickly. I think you need that. If you’re a VC, you need to analyse opportunity, you need to discover a new space very quickly. We say, I think some stuff can move much quicker than before. I’m always careful now when I see some pure generalists, because one thing I notice is that they don’t know how to do much anything any more. That’s a risk. We have example of very, very, very successful people. Take an Elon Musk, take a Steve Jobs. They have this ability to drill through to the very end of any topic, and that’s a real skill. Sometimes I see people, you should trust the people below. They know better on this and that, and you should not question experts and stuff. Hey, guys, how is it that they managed to build such successful companies? Is their ability to drill through and challenge hardcore experts. Yes, they will bring top people in the field, but they have an ability to learn quickly a new space and to drill through on some very technical topics and challenge people the right way. Challenge, don’t smart me. Not the, I don’t care, just do it in 10 days. No, going smartly, showing people those options, learning enough in the field to be dangerous. I think that’s a very, very important skill to have. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe switching to the dark side and talking a little bit about the bad stuff. I think a lot of people have these questions. There’s been a lot of debate around ChatGPT. I think there’s still a couple of court cases going on, a suicide case that I recently a bit privy to of a young man that killed himself, and OpenAI and ChatGPT as a tool currently really under the magnifying glass for, are people getting confused about AI and AI looks so similar to us, et cetera. The Ethics, Safety, and Privacy Landscape Maybe let’s talk about the ethics and safety and privacy landscape a little bit and what’s happening. Sadly, AI will also create the advent of a world that has still a lot of biases at scale. I mean, let’s not forget the AI is using data and data has biases. The models that are being trained on this data will have also biases that we’re seeing with AI, the ability to do things that are fake, deep fakes in video and pictures, et cetera. How do we, as a society, start dealing with that? How do we, as a society, start dealing with all the attacks that are going on? On the privacy side, the ability for these models and for these tools that we have today to actually have memory of the conversations we’ve had with them already and have context on what we said before and be able to act on that on us, and how is that information being farmed and that data being farmed? How is it being used? For what purposes is it being used? As I said, the dark side of our conversation today. I think we’ve been pretty positive until now. But in this world, I think things are going to get worse before they get better. Obviously, there’s a lot of money being thrown at rapid evolution of these tools. I don’t see moratoriums coming anytime soon or bans on tools coming anytime soon. The world will need to adapt very, very quickly. As we’ve talked in previous episodes, regulation takes a long time to adapt, except Europe, which obviously regulates maybe way too fast on technology and maybe not really on use cases and user flows. But how do we deal with this world that is clearly becoming more complex? Bertrand SchmittI mean, on the European topic, I believe Europe should focus on building versus trying to sensor and to control and to regulate. But going back to your point, I think there are some, I mean, very tough use case when you see about voice cloning, for instance. Grandparents believing that their kids are calling them, have been kidnapped when there is nothing to it, and they’re being extorted. AI generating deepfakes that enable sextortion, that stuff. I mean, it’s horrible stuff, obviously. I’m not for regulation here, to be frank. I think that we should for sure prosecute to the full extent of the law. The law has already a lot of tools to deal with this type of situation. But I can see some value to try to prevent that in some tools. If you are great at building tools to generate a fake voice, maybe you should make sure that you are not helping scammers. If you can generate easily images, you might want to make sure that you cannot easily generate tools that can be used for creating deep fakes and sex extortion. I think there are things that should be done by some providers to limit such terrible use cases. At the same time, the genie is out. There is also that part around, okay, the world will need to adapt. But yeah, you cannot trust everything that is done. What could have looked like horrible might not be true. You need to think twice about some of this, what you see, what you hear. We need to adjust how we live, how we work, but also how we prevent that. New tools, I believe, will appear. We will learn maybe to be less trustful on some stuff, but that is what it is. Nuno Goncalves PedroMaybe to follow up on that, I fully agree with everything you just said. We need to have these tools that will create boundary conditions around it as well. I think tech will need to fight tech in some ways, or we’ll need to find flaws in tech, but I think a lot of money needs to be put in it as well. I think my shout-out here, if people are listening to us, are entrepreneurs, et cetera, I think that’s an area that needs more and more investment, an area that needs more and more tooling platforms that are helpful to this. It’s interesting because that’s a little bit like how OpenAI was born. OpenAI was born to be a positive AI platform into the future. Then all of a sudden we’re like, “Can we have tools to control ChatGPT and all these things that are out there now?” How things have changed, I guess. But we definitely need to have, I think, a much more significant investment into these toolings and platforms than we do have today. Otherwise, I don’t see things evolving much better. There’s going to be more and more of this. There’s going to be more and more deep fakes, more and more, lack of contextualisation. There’s countries now that allow you to get married with not a human. It’s like you can get married to an algorithm or a robot or whatever. It’s like, what the hell? What’s happening now? It’s crazy. Hopefully, we’ll have more and more boundary conditions. Bertrand SchmittYeah, I think it will be a boom for cybersecurity. No question here. Tools to make sure that is there a better trust system or detecting the fake. It’s not going to be easy, but it has been the game in cybersecurity for a long time. You have some new Internet tools, some new Internet products. You need to find a difference against it and the constant war between the attackers and the defender. Nuno Goncalves PedroThe Parental Playbook: Actionable Strategies Maybe last but not the least in today’s episode, the parent playbook I’m a parent, what should I do I’ll actually let you start first. Bertrand, I’m parent-alike, but I am, sadly, not a parent, so I’ll let you start first, and then I’ll share some of my perspectives as well as a parent-like figure. Bertrand SchmittYeah, as a parent to an 8-year, I would say so far, no real difference than before. She will do some homework on an iPad. But beyond that, I cannot say I’ve seen at this stage so much difference. I think it will come up later when you have different type of homeworks when the kids start to be able to use computers on their own. What I’ve seen, however, is some interesting use cases. When my daughter is not sure about the spelling, she simply asks, Siri. “Hey, Siri, how do you spell this or this or that?” I didn’t teach her that. All of this came on her own. She’s using Siri for a few stuff for work, and I’m quite surprised in a very smart, useful way. It’s like, that’s great. She doesn’t need to ask me. She can ask by herself. She’s more autonomous. Why not? It’s a very efficient way for her to work and learn about the world. I probably feel sad when she asks Siri if she’s her friend. That does not feel right to me. But I would say so far, so good. I’ve seen only AI as a useful tool and with absolutely very limited risk. At the same time, for sure, we don’t let our kid close to any social media or the like. I think some of this stuff is for sure dangerous. I think as a parent, you have to be very careful before authorising any social media. I guess at some point you have no choice, but I think you have to be very careful, very gradual, and putting a lot of controls and safety mechanism I mean, you talk about kids committing suicide. It’s horrible. As a parent, I don’t think you can have a bigger worry than that. Suddenly your kids going crazy because someone bullied them online, because someone tried to extort them online. This person online could be someone in the same school or some scammer on the other side of the world. This is very scary. I think we need to have a lot of control on our kids’ digital life as well as being there for them on a lot of topics and keep drilling into them how a lot of this stuff online is not true, is fake, is not important, and being careful, yes, to raise them, to be critical of stuff, and to share as much as possible with our parents. I think We have to be very careful. But I would say some of the most dangerous stuff so far, I don’t think it’s really coming from AI. It’s a lot more social media in general, I would say, but definitely AI is adding another layer of risk. Nuno Goncalves PedroFrom my perspective, having helped raise three kids, having been a parent-like role today, what I would say is I would highlight against the skills that I was talking about before, and I would work on developing those skills. Skills that relate to curiosity, to analytical behaviours at the same time as being creative, allowing for both, allowing for the left brain, right brain, allowing for the discipline and structure that comes with analytical thinking to go hand in hand with doing things in a very, very different way and experimenting and failing and doing things and repeating them again. All the skills that I mentioned before, focusing on those skills. I was very fortunate to have a parental unit. My father and my mother were together all their lives: my father, sadly, passing away 5 years ago that were very, very different, my mother, more of a hacker in mindset. Someone was very curious, medical doctor, allowing me to experiment and to be curious about things around me and not simplifying interactions with me, saying it as it was with a language that was used for that particular purpose, allowing me to interact with her friends, who were obviously adults. And then on the other side, I have my father, someone who was more disciplined, someone who was more ethical, I think that becomes more important. The ability to be ethical, the ability to have moral standing. I’m Catholic. There is a religious and more overlay to how I do things. Having the ability to portray that and pass that to the next generation and sharing with them what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable, I think is pretty critical and even more critical than it was before. The ability to be structured, to say and to do what you say, not just actually say a bunch of stuff and not do it. So, I think those things don’t go out of use, but I would really spend a lot more focus on the ability to do critical thinking, analytical thinking, having creative ideas, obviously, creating a little bit of a hacker mindset, how to cut corners to get to something is actually really more and more important. The second part is with all of this, the overlay of growth mindset. I feel having a more flexible mindset rather than a fixed mindset. What I mean by that is not praising your kids or your grandchildren for being very intelligent or very beautiful, which are fixed things, they’re static things, but praising them for the effort they put into something, for the learning that they put into something, for the process, raising the

On May 29th, 1453, Constantinople fell—and with it, the last continuation of Rome.But the real story isn't just Ottoman cannons and overwhelming numbers.It's the cold mathematics of power: betrayal, sabotage, and profit-driven neutrality.In this episode of Hidden Forces in History, we follow the receipts behind one of the most pivotal days in world history:why the city was still defensible (if help had come)how Genoa's colony of Galata stayed “neutral” while Ottoman ships passedwhy Venice negotiated safe passage instead of fightinghow Western Europe sent prayers instead of armiesand why the fall wasn't inevitable—it was a series of choicesBecause the most disturbing truth is this:Constantinople didn't fall because it was weak. It fell because powerful allies decided it was convenient to let it fall.If you want history as investigation—documents, incentives, and the people who benefited—subscribe for weekly deep dives into the hidden forces behind the official story.Question for you: Was this “inevitable”… or a calculated sacrifice?

If the stories are to be believed, and the first casualty of war is truth and all that, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro sent some 3.6 million ounces of gold - $16 billion in today's money - to Switzerland before 2017, when the EU brought sanctions against Venezuela.Switzerland last week froze his accounts and the accounts of some 36 others with close ties. We don't know how much money he had in them, or how many accounts there were, but the figure doing the rounds is $10 billion.It has also emerged that Tether has been freezing “wallets identified as being involved in the Venezuelan oil trade.” As much as 80% of Petroleos de Venezuela's oil revenue is believed to be transacted in tether. This could be a total figure in the billions too.We also know that Venezuela was mining bitcoin for many years - when the price was a lot lower - but we don't know what they did with the coins. Did they fall into Maduro's hands? Were they sold? Were they held?The number doing the rounds here that it owns 600,000 BTC (~$60 billion). That would put Venezuela up there with Michael Saylor and Strategy. It's three times the 198,000 coins the US government itself is said to own.There's a seed phrase I'd like to know. Where are the keys, I wonder?And where did the proceeds of Venezuela's enormous oil, gold and other natural resource exports end up, exactly? Only some of them we know. At this point we remind you that the Venezuelan currency itself - the bolivar - collapsed in hyperinflation and has little to no value. Beware national currencies, particularly under socialist regimes. They don't last.There are several things I take away from all of this.First, the US dollar - whether via SWIFT or stablecoin - remains the number one international currency of choice, even for America's enemies.Second, tether and other US dollar stablecoins might be convenient - you don't have to use banks - but Tether will do what the US government tells it to do, and if the government wants your assets frozen, Tether will freeze them.Stablecoins, then, have a central point of failure. If someone can freeze them, they are not sovereign. And just as the US froze Russian US dollar assets after its invasion of Ukraine, so can and will it freeze the stablecoin assets of its enemies too.What did that 2022 freezing of Russian assets trigger? The mother of all bull markets in gold, and then silver and miners.What will this freezing trigger? A bull market in bitcoin. Possibly. Likely.It's already creeping back up.While the US does its geo-political, strategic, critical minerals thing, quaint old Western Europe is sinking deeper into higher taxes and - I'm sure they're coming eventually - capital controls. In fact, capital controls already exist in effect, banks are so heavily regulated and limiting of what you can send and to whom.The value of permissionless, international money just went up.You need to own money that they can't touch, whether by seizure or debasement.Meanwhile …Gold and silver continue to go bananas - the latter especially.So many roads lead to gold at the moment, it's hard to see when this stops.The inevitable debasement of national currencies off the back of uncontrollable government spending. Gold. Dedollarisation. Gold. Increasing geo-political uncertainty - Iran, Venezuela. Gold. Reshoring of US industry - highly inflationary. Gold. Revaluation of US gold holdings. Gold. Looming crisis from Japan as yields spike. Gold. China's ambitions for its currency and trade. Gold. Triffin's dilemma. Gold. AI putting everyone out of work leading to more money printing. Gold. Declining competence of and as a result faith in institutions worldwide. Gold.The dollar has now fallen to a 40% share of global central bank reserves, while gold is now at 30% on the back of its higher price and central bank accumulation. (Note currency and reserves are not the same).We are in a major capital rotational event the like of which occurs only every few decades.Typical portfolios are still underweight gold.If you live in a Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound is going to be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.Own bothAs regular readers will know, I advocate owning both bitcoin and gold. The two assets have many similarities in that they are non-government, independent money. But the fundamental difference is that one is physical and one is digital.Both have their uses, and I have little patience with this notion that one must choose one or the other.In that regard, as with many others, my worldview is aligned with that of Charlie Morris (whose newsletters I urge you to subscribe to. There are lots of free options, including Atlas Pulse, which I love). Remember many years ago Charlie was calling for $7,000 gold by the end of this decade and many thought he was dotty. His call is looking perfectly sensible now, which it was - and which he is. Charlie previously managed a multi-billion-dollar fund for HSBC, before going solo. Aside from his newsletter, one his main endeavours has been BOLD, and he has been trying to get it listed for years. But the UK's Financial Conduct Authority is retarded.BOLD is a fund you can buy through a broker which is 75% gold and 25% bitcoin - all properly audited and backed, of course, with institutional-grade custody.Over the past five years, BOLD has returned 186%, while bitcoin has returned 202%, gold 128%, and equities 77%. The average return of bitcoin and gold together was 165%, yet BOLD was 21% ahead. This is because every month Charlie rebalances the portfolio, effectively buying more of whichever is the weaker asset to retain that 75:25 ratio. This act of rebalancing both strips out the volatility and increases the gains.Since Charlie first conceived of it in 2017, over pretty much any timeframe, BOLD (in blue) has beaten everything.Since its listing in Europe in 2022 BOLD has returned 123% since launch (in GBP to end 2025 including fees) compared to 111% for bitcoin and 113% for gold.It would have been nice to have been able to enjoy these gains in the UK. Thank goodness the FCA has protected us from them.Not for much longer.I was delighted to be at the London Stock Exchange yesterday to see the listing of this product which delivers “bitcoin-like returns with the lesser volatility of gold.”Congratulations, Charlie, for finally getting this listed. I wish you every success.Now we can actually invest.Obviously, if gold AND bitcoin both turn down, BOLD will suffer. But this is a classic buy-and-forget product, perfect for the Dolce Far Niente portfolio. You can own it in your pension, your ISA and it should become a mainstay of any portfolio.The 21Shares Bitcoin Gold ETP, BOLD, has the ticker LSE:BOLD.I am a buyer.PS some brokers such as AJ Bellend have only made this product available to pro investors. The broker I use is Interactive Investor, who are pretty good about getting these kinds of things live. If you open an account via this link you get a year's free. I am just on the phone to them now to get this listed.Disclaimer:The Flying Frisby is not regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) or any other regulatory body as a financial advisor. Therefore, any information provided in this newsletter does not constitute regulated financial advice. It is solely an expression of opinion. Please conduct your own due diligence and consult with a financial advisor, if you have any doubts. Remember, markets can both rise and fall, especially in the case of small and mid-cap stocks. I am not aware of your individual financial circumstances, so only invest money that you can afford to lose. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

In this episode of The Winston Marshall Show, I sit down with Hungarian political director Balázs Orbán for an in-depth conversation on nationalism, migration, the European Union, and the war in Ukraine.We discuss Hungary's vision of an emerging era of nations, the collapse of the liberal global order, and why national sovereignty has returned as the central political question of the twenty-first century. Orbán explains Hungary's historical experience, its defence of Christian culture, and why mass migration has been rejected as a threat to social cohesion and national survival.The conversation explores Europe's migration crisis, parallel societies, border control, deportation, and why Hungary believes Western Europe made irreversible mistakes. We also examine the growing backlash against Brussels, the democratic deficit within the European Union, and why Hungary sees itself as leading a continental revolt against supranational elites.We then turn to Ukraine, Russia, and the future of European security. Orbán argues that the war has become a NATO-Russia proxy conflict, criticises European leaders for pursuing escalation, and explains why Hungary believes that both sides are lying.A wide-ranging and controversial conversation about power, sovereignty, war, and whether Europe can still reclaim democratic legitimacy in a rapidly changing world.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------To see more exclusive content and interviews consider subscribing to my substack here: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA:Substack: https://www.winstonmarshall.co.uk/X: https://twitter.com/mrwinmarshallInsta: https://www.instagram.com/winstonmarshallLinktree: https://linktr.ee/winstonmarshall----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Chapters 0:00 Introduction 2:04 Era of the Nations and European Politics7:14 Hungary's Geopolitical Position and Historical Context14:28 Migration and Integration in Europe25:29 Radical Islam and Antifa in Hungary29:55 Hungary's Relationship with the EU and NATO 36:18 The Ukraine-Russia Conflict and Peace Efforts45:57 Hungary's View on Putin's Ambitions52:18 Hungary's NATO Membership and Military Presence59:21 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What does missions look like in a global city like Paris, France? In this episode of The Missions Show, Alex and Scott are joined by pastor Billy Bean to discuss A City of Light, a short documentary exploring gospel work in Paris, France. Often overlooked as a missions field, Paris is presented as a strategic global city, shaped by history, migration, and secular ideology, whose influence extends far beyond Europe. Billy explains how missionaries and pastors in Paris seek to connect with deeply held French values—such as beauty, freedom, identity, and intellectual rigor—while confronting their limits and fulfilling their deepest longings through the gospel. View the film and learn more at https://christcovenant.com/acityoflight Key Topics Why Paris and Western Europe remain vital mission fields Global cities as strategic hubs for gospel influence The legacy of secularism and expressive individualism in French culture Contextualization: connecting, confronting, and fulfilling culture with the gospel Do you love The Missions Show? Have you been blessed by the show? Then become a Premium Subscriber! Premium Subscribers get access to: Exclusive bonus content A community Signal thread with other listeners and the hosts Invite-only webinars A free gift! Support The Missions Show and sign up to be a Premium Subscriber at missionsshow.com/premium The Missions Show is powered by ABWE. Learn more and take your next step in the Great Commission at abwe.org. Want to ask a question or suggest a topic? Email alex@missionsshow.com.

Richard Sakwa and Volodymyr Ishchenko on what is misunderstood about this war — and why it matters for the peace we need so badly.  In Part Two, Sakwa and Ishchenko turn to NATO's expansion, Russia's internal politics, and the peace proposals now being pushed. Sakwa dismisses the claim that NATO is merely defensive and rejects the idea that Russia poses a serious military threat to Western Europe. He traces the crisis to post-war settlements that shut Russia out of Europe's security order — even after Moscow sought NATO membership. Ishchenko argues that Central European states joined NATO less out of fear of Russia than from a desire to become “European,” while Putin's own political fears at home partly shaped the invasion. Both are skeptical of existing peace plans — yet argue that Trump's blunt proposal, however imperial, may come closer to confronting reality. The priority: stop the killing, save as many people as possible, and prevent the ultimate catastrophe.

Dave Rubin of "The Rubin Report" talks to Scott Jennings about the arrest of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and what it signals for U.S. foreign policy; how the speed and competence of Trump-era military and law-enforcement operations in Venezuela and Iran have shocked the world; the importance of defending and enforcing the Monroe Doctrine against China and Russia in the Western Hemisphere; why Trump's practices are smart, limited engagement—not endless wars; how antisemitism is driving criticism of Israel and Trump, what a post-Maduro Venezuela could look like; the Minnesota fraud scandal and the collapse of Tim Walz's reelection bid; how independent journalist Nick Shirley exposed billions in alleged immigration-linked fraud ignored by mainstream media; how the story shattered the left's immigration narrative; how the Democrats are self sabotaging their midterm election chances by nominating socialist candidates in purple districts; how New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's early actions look even worse than expected; the future of Western Europe, warning that countries like France and the UK face cultural and political decline without strong leadership; how mass immigration, crime, and feckless elites are destabilizing Europe and distorting foreign policy; how fringe radical progressive ideology has hijacked the Democratic Party, pushing it to lose on key 80/20 issues like immigration, climate, and gender politics; why Democrats will struggle electorally unless they shed radicalism ahead of 2028; and much more.

This week we focus on the Trump Administration's seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro as Ralph welcomes legendary former ambassador, Chas Freeman, who calls it nothing more than a “gas station stick-up.” Then our resident Constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein, lays out some of the legal ramifications of the whole affair.Ambassador Chas Freeman is a retired career diplomat who has negotiated on behalf of the United States with over 100 foreign governments in East and South Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and both Western and Eastern Europe. Ambassador Freeman was previously a Senior Fellow at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires in the American embassies at both Bangkok and Beijing. He was Director for Chinese Affairs at the U.S. Department of State from 1979-1981. He was the principal American interpreter during the late President Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972. In addition to Chinese, Ambassador Freeman speaks French and Spanish at the professional level and can converse in Arabic and several other languages.We have been engaged in murder on the high seas, people who are suspected on flimsy grounds of carrying narcotics. If they are carrying narcotics, it is not to the United States [but] between Venezuela and Trinidad, from which the drugs go to Western Europe and West Africa. We have been guilty of acts of piracy, seizing vessels on the high seas, on the basis of no authority. And (very dangerously) we have seized a Russian-flagged tanker…And we are risking a war with a nuclear-armed superpower over an issue that is peripheral to Venezuela.Ambassador Chas FreemanDomestically, we have a constitutional crisis. We are the most powerful country on the planet, and our domestic constitutional crisis has turned out to be contagious to the international system. And so we're seeing the disappearance of well-established norms of human behavior, interactions between states. It will not be easy to resurrect those. The precedents we've just set could come home to trouble us.Ambassador Chas FreemanI think we have scared everybody around the world. If there is no protection from international law, people will arm themselves as heavily as they can to defend themselves. So diplomacy is not prospering in this environment. And I would just conclude by saying that the Trump administration has more than decimated our diplomatic service. About one third of the diplomatic service has left or is in the process of leaving public service of the government. So they join scientists and engineers in trying to bail out from what they consider to be an increasingly intolerable situation. Not a happy picture.Ambassador Chas FreemanBruce Fein is a Constitutional scholar and an expert on international law. Mr. Fein was Associate Deputy Attorney General under Ronald Reagan and he is the author of Constitutional Peril: The Life and Death Struggle for Our Constitution and Democracy, and American Empire: Before the Fall.The fact is, if you read the NATO Charter Article 5—I think right now we've got 32 members of NATO, and 31 countries would be obliged to take up war and arms against the United States. [The United States' intervention in Venezuela] is an invasion. It's every bit as much of an invasion as Hitler going into the Sudetenland after Munich. Everybody knows this isn't going to be a voluntary secession. If it isn't by military conquest, it'll be by coercion, by threats. So we may be at war with all the other NATO members. That's why I liken this to the Napoleonic Era when France and Napoleon were against all of Europe. He had no allies anymore, and I think we will have no allies either. Bruce FeinNews 1/9/25* Our top story this week is, of course, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro, who has served as president of the Bolivarian Republic since 2013, was abducted from his home, along with his wife, by the Fort Bragg-based Delta Force squadron. Maduro was then transported to New York and is now being held in detention pending trial. Before getting into the fallout of this operation, it is critical to note the complicity of the mainstream press. Semafor reports, “The New York Times and Washington Post learned of a secret US raid on Venezuela soon before it was scheduled to begin Friday night — but held off publishing what they knew.” The preeminent American newspapers justified their decision to withhold this critical information from the public by claiming that publishing what they knew could have endangered American soldiers. This decision however raises longstanding questions about what the role of the media should be in national security matters. Is it their responsibility to protect American forces as they carry out legally dubious missions? Or is it their responsibility to inform the public of their own government's shadowy operations if they might endanger all Americans?* Meanwhile, the future of Venezuela appears deeply uncertain. Despite pressure from the Venezuelan exile community to install one of their own to lead the country, such as Maria Corina Machado, Trump has shown little interest in this path, saying Machado “doesn't have the support within or the respect within the country,” per Reuters. Instead, he has so far supported the elevation of Vice President Delcy Rodríguez. Rodríguez, who has been “likened…to a sort of Venezuelan Deng Xiaoping,” according to NBC, has sought to court Trump in the past and it seems that for the time being at least, he is content to keep her in place so long as she is willing to accede to the demands of the American oil companies.* Whatever the long-term outlook for Venezuela in general, this incident is sure to have certain short-term consequences. At the administration level, this operation was seen as a rousing success and is likely to embolden them to attempt similar operations in other countries deemed adversarial. The Hill reports Trump said “Colombia…[is] Run by a sick man,” referring to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, but won't be for “very long.” Similarly, he remarked that “We're going to have to do something [about Mexico].” Cuba, he said, is “ready to fall.” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, traveling with Trump, added that Cuba's days are “numbered.” It remains to be seen how far Trump will go with regime change operations in these sovereign nations, but the success of the Maduro abduction makes each one – and the inevitable blowback from these actions – that much more likely.* Beyond Latin America, Trump is again pressing for an American annexation of Greenland. According to the BBC, the administration is discussing “a range of options” including military force. Ironically, the White House is claiming that the acquisition of Greenland – a semi-autonomous region of Denmark – is a “national security priority,” despite Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen's warning that any attack would mean the end of NATO, rattling the foundations of U.S. international security architecture. Nevertheless, Trump has continuously returned to the idea of annexing Greenland, so do not count on this quietly fading away, consequences be damned.* Moving to domestic politics, the AP reports the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private entity created in 1967 to shepherd public funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country, has voted to dissolve itself. The CPB has been under heavy assault by the Trump administration, which pushed Congress to defund the entity last year. Patricia Harrison, the organization's president and CEO, is quoted saying “CPB's final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks.” With the shuttering of CPB, the future of public media hangs in the balance. It will be up to the next Congress to restore funding, or allow these cherished institutions to fall into the dustbin of history.* Alongside the federal assault on public media, the federal government continues its assaults on public health. The New York Times reports Jim O'Neill, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has “announced dramatic revisions to the slate of vaccines recommended for American children,” drawing down the number from 17 to just 11. The six vaccines on the chopping block, those for hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus – which, the Times notes, is the “leading cause of hospitalization in American infants,” – will only be recommended for some high-risk groups. Meanwhile, the New York Post reports Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has unveiled new federal guidelines recommending alcohol use. Dr. Oz is quoted saying “Alcohol is a social lubricant that brings people together…it does allow people an excuse to bond and socialize, and there's probably nothing healthier than having a good time with friends in a safe way.” He added that the takeaway should be, “Don't have it for breakfast.” Given the well documented health risks of alcohol consumption, it is difficult to see this as anything besides a sop to the alcohol industry.* In more local news, the primary race between incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman and former Comptroller Brad Lander in New York's 10th congressional district is turning into nothing short of a proxy war between different factions within the Democratic Party. Goldman, who officially announced his reelection bid this week, was immediately endorsed by New York Governor Kathy Hochul and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, per the New York Daily News. Lander on the other hand, can boast the endorsement of Mayor Zohran Mamdani along with support from Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among other local progressives, per ABC7. With so much political muscle on both sides, this primary is sure to have important ramifications for the future direction of the Democratic Party.* For his part, Mayor Zohran Mamdani has hit the ground running. On January 5th, Mamdani signed Executive Orders No. 9, on combatting hidden junk fees, and No. 10 on fighting subscription tricks and traps. Among other things, these executive orders will Establish a Citywide Junk Fee Task Force, to be cochaired by Deputy Mayor of Economic Justice and former Biden Administration Secretary of Labor Julie Su. This announcement ends with a message stating that Mayor Mamdani “takes the protection of New York consumers and tenants seriously,” citing his recent “executive order to hold ‘Rental Ripoff' hearings in every borough,” which will “provide an opportunity for working New Yorkers to speak about the challenges they face – from poor building conditions to hidden fees on rent payments,” to be followed by a report and policy recommendations. This all from NYC.gov.* A fascinating new poll has been released by “Speaking with American Men,” also known as the SAM Project, which seeks to understand young American men of various backgrounds. One startling number from this study is that 31% report having been homeless or near-homeless in the past five years. In more direct political findings though, only 27% say Trump is delivering for them, and slightly less, 25%, say Republicans are delivering. However, despite these abysmal numbers, just 18% say Democrats are delivering for them. Clearly, while young men are not joined at the hip to the Republican Party, the Democrats have a long way to go to win them back and won't get there without profoundly changing their approach to courting this key voting bloc.* Finally, the battle between Netflix and Paramount over corporate control of Warner Bros. Discovery continues to drag on. This week, WB announced they would formally reject Paramount's latest bid, their eighth so far, arguing that it is inferior to Netflix's proposal, citing the “extraordinary amount of incremental debt,” Paramount would have to incur in order to take over the larger company. This is estimated to be over $50 million. Although Paramount's hostile bid is higher per share than Netflix's offer, Paramount's bid includes WB's cable assets, such as CNN, which the company believes will be worth more if spun off from the rest of the company. This from CNN itself. Meanwhile, Paramount – led by the Ellison family – is calling in political favors on their behalf. In a letter to the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim, who led the Antitrust Division of the DOJ under Trump 2017-2021, accused the proposed Netflix WB merger of being “presumptively unlawful,” because it would “further cement [Netflix's] dominance in streaming video on demand,” per Deadline. Congress cannot directly block a merger or acquisition, that power rests with the DOJ, but it does possess oversight power in that realm and can exert pressure to this end. Given the high stakes of this fight, expect all parties to call in their chits on Capitol Hill and in the administration in order to win the big prize.This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven't Heard. Get full access to Ralph Nader Radio Hour at www.ralphnaderradiohour.com/subscribe

We take a look at the life and politics of Delcy Rodríguez, who spent years as part of deposed President Nicolás Maduro's inner circle, and is now Venezuela's de-facto leader. Also, Cubans are watching the developments in Venezuela with growing unease as fuel shortages worsen in their own country. And, winter storm Goretti disrupts travels across much of Western Europe. Plus, experts unearth a 2,000-year-old war trumpet. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

UnHerd's Freddie Sayers speaks with author and Cambridge professor Helen Thompson, economist Pippa Malmgren, and Danish MEP Henrik Dahl about the Trump administration's escalating rhetoric and strategic moves to acquire Greenland. Covering the historical legal underpinnings of Danish sovereignty while analysing modern geopolitical drivers such as the Monroe Doctrine, Arctic militarisation, and the essential role of the region in a new space race for strategic security dominance, they explore how the Greenland situation is symptomatic of a profound breakdown in trust between Washington and Western Europe, with the administration increasingly viewing European leadership as obstructive political rivals in a shifting global order. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It's that time of year again.What's going to happen? What does the future hold?We all want to know. Knowing what's going to happen makes you feel better.NostreDominic is here to tell you.Here are 19 predictions for 20261. Gold Breaks $5,000Gold doesn't quite have the year it had in 2025, but it has a good year nonetheless and rises above $5,000/ozOn which note: Charlie Morris's monthly gold report, Atlas Pulse is, in my view, the best gold newsletter out there. Get your copy here. No pay nada.2. S&P 500 FrustrationThe S&P500 will spend much of 2026 in a frustrating range trade with a couple of nasty pullbacks. We see an interim peak in April-May, followed by a weak summer, but a strong final quarter means we end the year with a 10-15% gain.The problem of disproportionately few stocks (41 is it?) being responsible for most of the gains remains.3. Inflation Finds New FormsInflation doesn't die, it mutates. Headline inflation looks reasonably controlled (by recent standards), enabling leaders to declare that it is controlled or some other BS. Despite this “victory”, inflation finds other ways to rob you.4. Bitcoin Hits $150,000Bitcoin has a good year. With escalating geo-political conflict, as well as capital controls and tax grabs, more and more people wake up to the value of permissionless, apolitical currency. Falling trust in fiat - never mind government institutions - becomes more culturally entrenched. Bitcoin goes to $150,000.5. Starmer Survives (Just)Prime Minister Keir Starmer manages another year. His position gets even more precarious after a bad showing in the May local elections, but it is still only 2026 and the next General Election is not till 2029. Too early to oust him just yet.6. Government Spending: The Unstoppable ForceGovernment spending keeps on increasing. Even if they wanted to, they just can't stop it. Western Europe continues, therefore, its great march on the road to serfdom7. But No Sovereign Debt CrisisDespite the mathematics verging on the impossible, government debt continues to outpace GDP (it has grown at three times the pace this century) but the inevitable sovereign debt crisis that is coming to the UK, Western Europe and perhaps even the US, is somehow averted.By saying it won't happen, it will happen. I know it.8. British Stocks Shine Despite Economic StagnationBritain's economy continues to stagnate, but British stocks do well. Rather like Japan circa 2015, the valuations are so cheap that mergers and acquisitions are inevitable. Foreign money takes advantage.9. Oil RecoversOil, currently lagging metals, begins to turn around. Brent crude stays above $55 and flirts with $80 a barrel.10. UK Energy Costs Stay ElevatedEnergy costs in the UK remain high because Millibrain. Limited growth is the result.If you live in a Third World Country such as the UK, I urge you to own gold or silver. The pound is going to be further devalued. The bullion dealer I recommend is The Pure Gold Company. Pricing is competitive, quality of service is high. They deliver to the UK, the US, Canada and Europe or you can store your gold with them. More here.11. Critical Minerals BoomI would venture that the decision to overthrow Venezuelan President Maduro was as much about critical minerals - so-called strategic metals et al - and China's chokehold on them, as it was oil and gas, narco-terrorism, Russian drones and liberating the poor suffering people.To the US's credit it is trying to put the China chokehold problem right. The UK and Europe are hopeless. But this process, especially re-shoring industry, is highly inflationary, hence my comment about inflation finding new forms.It is a good year to be invested in both industrial and critical minerals, and the related stocks end the year considerably higher than when they began.This is something I'll be looking at a lot next year12. Emerging Markets RallyEmerging markets have a good year. Commodities, innit.13. The Pound Weakens A BitThe pound gradually weakens against the US dollar. High is $1.37, low is $1.25. Or thereabouts.14. Silver. Triple Digits.Silver goes above $100. There I've said it. Now watch it crash.15. AI-Powered Government OverreachA highly worrying development. Government Blob bodies, such as Ofcom and HMRC in the UK (though this problem is global), make increasing use of AI to make their processes more efficient. This enables them in a really bad way.This is already happening. In 2026 people start to wake up to the fact.I like AI. But it enables Big Bureaucracy. Beware.16. UK Property: More Stagnation The stagnation, particularly at the upper end of the market, continues. And why wouldn't it? Moving is too expensive.While nominal prices might be flat or slightly up, real prices are down, liquidity is poor, transactions fall.17. Rents Stay ElevatedBecause so many now prefer to rent so they don't have to pay moving taxes, and because the game is now over for amateur landlords, who continue to exit the market due to the increased cost of regulations, rents stay elevated.18. Official Reassurance = The Biggest MistakeThe biggest mistake of 2026, as with every year, will be trusting official reassurance. Governments and central banks remain behind the curve. Markets lead, policymakers follow. The crisis won't come from what they warn us about, but from something they've missed.19. Your Bruce-y Bonus Sports PredictionArsenal win the League. West Ham, Burnley and Wolves all get relegated.Have a wonderful 2026. Let's hope as with last year I'm wrong about everything and we make a potload of dosh. Until next time Dominic This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.theflyingfrisby.com/subscribe

Darrell Castle ushers in 2026 by talking about the world as he sees it today along with some year-end thoughts about the past, the present, and the unknown future. Transcription/Notes BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS Hello, this is Darrell Castle with today's Castle Report. This is the 2nd day of January in the year of our Lord 2026. In this Castle Report I will be talking about the world as I see it today along with some year-end thoughts about the past, the present, and the unknown future. “Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God.” Those are the words of the Prince of Peace whose birth we just celebrated, and his words have been the bed rock of Western Civilization for over 2000 years. The decorations, gifts, and celebrations are just one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western Civilization together throughout its history. My thanks once again for Dr, Ron Paul's recent Liberty Report where he so eloquently sets these concepts out. Somehow it all seems different now. The mayor of New York City has been sworn in on the Quran rather than the bible. The nation itself with debt having surpassed $38 trillion Continues its enforcement of the Wolfowitz Doctrine which is part of the project for a new American century. Paul Wolfowitz put his name on a policy that still seems to drive the American government even under the America first president. Simply put, that doctrine says that American hegemony will dominate the world and no competitor which threatens that policy will be allowed to rise. The U.S. military will be used to destroy any competition. In practical terms, it means that the U.S. government will continue to use its military to bankrupt the country while exporting misery and suffering to others in pursuit of a global military empire on the framework of ancient Rome. My argument for you today is that this policy places the U.S. government in direct opposition to the title of this Castle Report. This year marked the first time the Defense budget item has surpassed the $1 trillion mark. Congress was so enthusiastic about it that they voted more money than the president asked for. The $1 trillion doesn't include interest on the defense related debt, veteran's affairs such as hospitals and lifetime care for the wounded and components of other agencies and departments with items related to defense so it is much larger than the published amount. Those who are responsible for such things probably still have a chance to save the economy if they did the responsible thing but instead they repeatedly do the opposite of the right thing. President Eisenhower was the last president to recognize what was happening and to refuse its allure. He also warned President Kennedy who tried to heed the warning but he died for those efforts. I paraphrase President Eisenhower's famous speech from 1953 entitled “The Chance for Peace” each of these dollars spent on military offense and the maintenance of the US global empire rather than on defense of our own nation is taken from the mouths of the hungry and off the backs of hardworking American families.” The new National Security Strategy document recently released by the Trump administration has set off a firestorm among those who favor warfare to solve every perceived problem. The document seems to be a reversal of the foreign policy doctrine that has existed since the end of World War ll. That policy included the formation of NATO with the US as the unofficial guarantor of military security. The US would accept responsibility for the defense of Western Europe and ensure that the Soviet Union was held intact. In return the US would have reserve currency status and would through that status control the world's economy. Reserve currency status ensured that the US would have the means through the accumulation of debt to fund its military in all circumstances. This was also a recognition by Europe that it was free to devote virtually all of its resources to rebuilding and to the welfare projects that would keep its citizens comfortable and thereby avoid revolution. The new strategy document seems to refute that policy and it appears to place Europe in some responsibility for its own defense. The Europeans don't like the policy shift at all but they are at least verbally adjusting to it. They came up with a way to obtain loans of up to $100 billion for Ukraine to continue the war to the last Ukrainian. The last few years have seen them trying to provoke a new war with Russia and this new policy might have a chilling effect on that desire. The US also included $800 million in the defense bill for Ukraine. Joan and I were talking about all this over breakfast the other day and she pointed out that people are starting to see fraud despite media refusal to discuss it. Some of those things like the fraud of the Somali community in Minnesota and the election fraud in Georgia now freely admitted are obvious. We also have the American people seeing their standard of living eaten away by inflation and an economy declining because it's burdened by debt. People are becoming aware of all this more and more as they see their country committed to the defense and foreign policy of a country far away. The people have come to realize that if they express criticism of that country's foreign policy the argument requires them to defend a charge of antisemitism instead of the policy. The same is true of the billions of fraud in Minnesota because the Governor of that state said that criticism was white supremacy so the argument is a defense of that charge instead of the fraud. Joan's position is that people are not ignorant despite media's refusal to report and investigate they are aware of what is going on. My response to her was yes, you are right but that puts us in the most dangerous position possibly ever. People see rampant crime and theft by government and they see government saying America first but its foreign policy seems to put another country's interest first, and that creates a dangerous, revolutionary atmosphere. I'm afraid that people are becoming aware that one of the founding principles which helped make America great is being erased and that principle is the empowerment of the individual over the power of the collective to demand obedience and compliance. In the American culture the individual counts and I'm afraid many are losing sight of that. The individual can take a stand against injustice without fear of reprisal from government. When governors have no argument against fraud except those who uncover it and point it out are white supremacists, and when senators have no response to pointing out the foreign policy faults of another country except to accuse those who object of antisemitism it means thee government officials have lost the argument because they have nothing to say. The real problem happens when government loses the argument as it has currently, which makes fraud and waste obvious to anyone. People try to change the system through voting but they see that it does not change very much. The worst frustration is that the dangerous revolutionary civil war tension is created when people see it, understand it, but nothing is ever done. They see fraud costing billions and they know that is just the tip of the iceberg. They see their money taken by the IRS to fund the wars in favor of other nations. They see fraud at every level and yet they are struggling to get by and they cannot get by without accumulating debt, which becomes unpayable. They know the difference between their debt and government debt is that they actually have to answer for theirs. Some of the things which have changed the lifestyles of the American people since the end of the covid confinement are really startling for the American families. Since covid, gas for utilities up 48.8%, car maintenance and repair 48.8%, car insurance 56.1%, coffee 46.1%, electricity 40.4%, meat 38.1%, used cars 33.6% bread 29,4%, milk 24.1%. I could go on and on with these numbers but just ask yourself if your income since covid has increased by anything close to these numbers. So, we can see the elements of an explosion building and smoldering. Couple this to the knowledge people have that they must send their children to schools which are run by people who hate them. Their children will be indoctrinated by teachers who hate them so their children will become like those who hate them and look to people who have caused the problem for the answer thus the inauguration of the mayor of our greatest city on the Quran. I know what you must be thinking, it's not everyone of them and there are some officials who really do care. Yes, I know about those people, but the truth is that the ones who claim to care make some angry speech to that effect and then go on about their business as if nothing happened. That is the demoralizing truth that we face here in the first month of 2026. In conclusion, whether we know it or not, we are all beneficiaries of the religion created by the one who is the author of the title of this Castle Report. The moral doctrine created by that religion has curbed power and defended the weak and helpless for over 2000 years. When you lay aside those moral principle you have power unleashed, enforced through force, and not limited by anything, to paraphrase Lenin. Finally, folks, as we start 2026 I close with another quote from President Eisenhower or at least I paraphrase him,” the people of the world are so desperate for peace that sooner or later the governments will have to step aside and let them have it.” At least that's the way I see it, Until next time folks, This is Darrell Castle, Thanks for listening.

Western civilization is being tested like never before. Victor Davis Hanson argues to the contrary, saying that while much of Western Europe and America's blue states continue down a failing path, signs of renewal are emerging in unexpected places—Eastern Europe and America's red states. These countermovements are pushing back against cultural nihilism, restoring free speech, […]

For the podcast's annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:Which sphere of influence is Western Europe in today?What should we make of President Trump's lawsuit against BBC?After nearly a year of the Trump Administration, how do you view the record of Attorney General Merrick Garland?What does the military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers tell us about checks and balances within the U.S. system around the use of military force (or lack thereof)?With the escalating rhetoric in the Caribbean, what lessons should we be keeping in mind from the lead-up to the Iraq War?What can be done to reverse Americans' tolerance for the slide towards illiberal democracy?And importantly, is Ben's martial arts challenge to Putin still on?For object lessons, our listeners really came through! Blake recommends a couple of coffee table books right up Tyler's alley: “Building Stories” by Alastair Philip Wiper and "Closure: The Final Days of the Waterford Bicycle Factory" by Tucker and Anna Schwinn. Keenan points out a good companion listen to this podcast in NPR's Sources and Methods. Liz really embraces the variety show that is “object lessons,” introducing us to Danylo Yavhusishyn—a.k.a., Aonishiki—a Ukrainian-born sumo wrestler, hyping Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as her Game of the Year, waxing poetic about The Sun Eater book series, and log-rolling her work on the Final Fantasy TCG. Speaking of variety shows, Lisa spotlights the Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection exhibition at UT Austin's Harry Ransom Center. And Riley asks the crew about their top fiction recommendations for 2026. Tune in to find out what they are!And thank goodness, that's it for 2025! But don't worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what's to come in national security in 2026!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For the podcast's annual end-of-year episode, Scott sat down with co-host emeritus Benjamin Wittes, Senior Editor Anna Bower, and Managing Editor Tyler McBrien to talk over listener-submitted topics and object lessons, including:Which sphere of influence is Western Europe in today?What should we make of President Trump's lawsuit against BBC?After nearly a year of the Trump Administration, how do you view the record of Attorney General Merrick Garland?What does the military campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers tell us about checks and balances within the U.S. system around the use of military force (or lack thereof)?With the escalating rhetoric in the Caribbean, what lessons should we be keeping in mind from the lead-up to the Iraq War?What can be done to reverse Americans' tolerance for the slide towards illiberal democracy?And importantly, is Ben's martial arts challenge to Putin still on?For object lessons, our listeners really came through! Blake recommends a couple of coffee table books right up Tyler's alley: “Building Stories” by Alastair Philip Wiper and "Closure: The Final Days of the Waterford Bicycle Factory" by Tucker and Anna Schwinn. Keenan points out a good companion listen to this podcast in NPR's Sources and Methods. Liz really embraces the variety show that is “object lessons,” introducing us to Danylo Yavhusishyn—a.k.a., Aonishiki—a Ukrainian-born sumo wrestler, hyping Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 as her Game of the Year, waxing poetic about The Sun Eater book series, and log-rolling her work on the Final Fantasy TCG. Speaking of variety shows, Lisa spotlights the Live from New York: The Lorne Michaels Collection exhibition at UT Austin's Harry Ransom Center. And Riley asks the crew about their top fiction recommendations for 2026. Tune in to find out what they are!And thank goodness, that's it for 2025! But don't worry, Rational Security and the whole Lawfare team will be back with you in the new year to help make sense of what's to come in national security in 2026!To receive ad-free podcasts, become a Lawfare Material Supporter at www.patreon.com/lawfare. You can also support Lawfare by making a one-time donation at https://givebutter.com/lawfare-institute. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Western civilization is being tested like never before. Victor Davis Hanson argues to the contrary, saying that while much of Western Europe and America's blue states continue down a failing path, signs of renewal are emerging in unexpected places—Eastern Europe and America's red states. These countermovements are pushing back against cultural nihilism, restoring free speech, reinforcing the nuclear family, and demanding legal immigration with full assimilation. He breaks down these emerging trends on today's episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In a Few Words.” “'It's a verdict for the future of Western civilization. We've had the revolution for 50 years, but we haven't seen a counterrevolution to the degree that's taking place. Western European elites in the former British Commonwealth and blue state elites all are very critical of the Yahoos in Eastern Europe and the Yahoos in the red states. But only for a while because their paradigm is collapsing as we speak. And the people who are gonna save Europe are the people who they thought they were embarrassed of. It's quite ironic, but it's also a hopeful time for Western civilization.” (0:00) Introduction (0:48) Symptoms of Decline in the West (1:58) The Impact of Ideological Choices (2:47) Open Borders and Assimilation Issues (3:32) Counterrevolutions (4:40) A New Paradigm for Renewal We need your help to ensure The Daily Signal can continue to counter the liberal media's lies with the truth. Support The Daily Signal's work today by becoming a Signal Elite Supporter.    Your tax-deductible monthly gift will help: 

After World War II, political parties championing redistribution, full employment, and egalitarianism gained power across the globe, especially in Western Europe. But why did these social democrats give up the ambition to transition to socialism? In this episode of Confronting Capitalism, Vivek Chibber explains why the golden age of capitalism was a rare period of triumph for the Left, even though the movement faced serious challenges from class enemies, state structures, and tensions within its own coalition. Any leftist trying to change the balance of class power would benefit from understanding why social democracy achieved such lasting success even as it remains in the political minority today. The latest issue of Catalyst is out and you can subscribe for just $20 using the code, CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM: https://catalyst-journal.com/subscribe/?code=CONFRONTINGCAPITALISM Have a question for us? Write to us by email: confronting.capitalism@jacobin.com Confronting Capitalism with Vivek Chibber is produced by Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and published by Jacobin. Music by Zonkey.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is a country in central Africa the size of Western Europe and rich in arable land and minerals, including those critical to the military industrial complex, such as cobalt and coltan. Since the CIA-backed assassination of Patrice Lumumba in 1961, the DRC has been ruled by puppets who answer to the United States and its allies. 2025 has been a devastating year for the DRC. Clearing the FOG speaks with Maurice Carney, the executive director of Friends of the Congo, about the occupation by Rwandan forces, mass displacement of millions of people, and the recent 'peace agreements' that rob the DRC of its riches and sovereignty. He discusses this in the context of Kwame Nkrumah's work, "Neo-colonialism: The last stage of imperialism." For more information, visit PopularResistance.org.

Dive into Christmas true crime, Santa Claus history, and holiday folklore with the real medieval relic heist that helped shape the legend of Santa. In 1087, sailors from Bari, Italy break into the tomb of St. Nicholas in Myra (modern Turkey)—and the world's most famous Christmas icon gets a disturbingly real origin story.Inside the candlelit crypt, witnesses claim the tomb is flooded with mysterious liquid—the “manna” of St. Nicholas—and the thieves interpret it as a sign the saint approves. But back on shore, the people of Myra collapse into grief and fury, pleading for even a single fragment. And when the relics reach Bari, the celebration turns volatile: church power struggles, blood spilled in the saint's name, and a brand-new basilica built to lock the prize in place.Then the rivalry escalates. Venice returns to Myra and scoops up what Bari left behind—tiny fragments, crushed pieces, a second claim to the same saint. Centuries later, science steps into the story: anatomical studies, missing bones, and the unsettling realization that Santa's “origin story” includes grave-robbing, propaganda, and a relic war that rewrote Europe's holiday traditions.Inside this episode:The 1087 relic heist: how Bari's sailors infiltrate Myra and break into the tomb“Furta sacra”: the medieval logic that framed theft as holy rescueThe grief of Myra: a town begging for any piece of their protectorBari's power play: riots, control of the relics, and a basilica built for a stolen saintBari vs. Venice: the second “collection” of bones and a centuries-long relic rivalryMiracles and manna: the eerie liquid linked to St. Nicholas and why skeptics argue backThe Santa connection: how this crime helped carry St. Nicholas into Western Europe's Christmas traditionWe're telling that story tonight.

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe Tren De Aragua gang tried to insert malwar into the ATM system to steal millions. Was this the first stage of the [CB] trying to hurt the economy? Trump’s economy is accelerating, the job numbers don’t reflect it because of the manipulation calculation and the jobs that he is removing from Gov. Trump is winning against the [CB]. The [DS] agenda is failing. The D party is on the wrong side of history and everyday that passes the people are waking up to this fact. The only way out is a war and this is why the [DS] is continually pushing back on Trump’s peace plan. Putin has agreed to it, [DS] is fighting it. Trump’s message is clear, we are taking back the country and in the end the D’s and the [DS] will cease to exist. Economy (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Tren De Aragua Members and Leaders Indicted in Multi-Million Dollar ATM Jackpotting Scheme  December 18, 2025 – United States Attorney Lesley A. Woods announced that a federal grand jury in the District of Nebraska has returned two indictments charging 54 individuals for their roles in a large conspiracy to deploy malware and steal millions of dollars from ATMs in the United States, a crime commonly referred to as “ATM jackpotting.” An indictment returned on December 9, 2025, charges 22 defendants with offenses corresponding to their role in the conspiracy, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank burglary and fraud and related activity in connection with computers, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment also alleges that Tren de Aragua (“TdA”) has used jackpotting to steal millions of dollars in the United States and then transferred the proceeds among its members and associates to conceal the illegally obtained cash.   Source: .justice.gov  https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/2001781948465746206?s=20 https://twitter.com/profstonge/status/2001993417291960468?s=20   Political/Rights Soros DA Ignores ICE Detainer, Releases El Salvadorian Illegal Who Allegedly Commits Murder the Next Day  Marvin Morales-Ortez, 23, an illegal from El Salvador, was released from custody after the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office, led by Soros-backed Attorney Steve Descano, dropped a case against him for charges of allegedly brandishing a gun and assaulting and injuring someone. Fox News' Bill Melugin notes he was released back onto the streets after an ICE detainer was ignored. The next day, it is alleged he is responsible for the murder of a man found dead in a home in Reston, Va., according to the Fairfax County Police Department. Before the latest incident, Morales-Ortez already had a lengthy criminal record. WJLA News reports, “court records indicate that since 2020, Morales-Ortez had been charged with at least seven crimes in Fairfax County.” Per WJLA: Source: thegatewaypundit.com BREAKING: Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan Found GUILTY of Obstruction For Helping Illegal Alien Evade ICE Agents – Faces 5 Years in Prison Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan on  evening was found guilty of obstruction for helping an illegal alien evade ICE agents. Dugan was acquitted of count 1 – the misdemeanor but she was found guilty on count 2 – the felony obstruction. She is facing five years in prison. AP reported: Source: thegatewaypundit.com https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2001976516876681590?s=20 https://twitter.com/Brooketaylortv/status/2001867929940574469?s=20   help crack this case since there was no clear image of the shooter entering the building. The suspected shooter was found dead six days after he opened fire at Brown University and killed two students and critically wounded nine. The shooter has been identified as 48-year-old Claudio Neves-Valente. He was a Brown University student and a Portuguese national. https://twitter.com/JohnDePetroshow/status/2002000197124075699?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002000197124075699%7Ctwgr%5E4fa4b47b64971deb3c6bff71f8f137f50b1c8efc%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Frevealed-here-is-how-homeless-man-blew-brown%2F https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/2001937671115923906?s=20   TARGETED https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2001808961906016366?s=20 https://twitter.com/AutismCapital/status/2001865134214647920?s=20  the apartment building in Brookline, Massachusetts, where MIT professor Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro lived and was fatally shot has security cameras. Surveillance footage from the building was used in the investigation, including video showing the suspect entering the premises   authorities have not publicly released the security camera footage from the Brookline apartment building where MIT professor Nuno F. Gomes Loureiro was shot.   https://twitter.com/ColonelTowner/status/2001995157093200088?s=20   his actual storage unit never gets unlocked, and he's found dead in the one next door. I noticed last night that the DOJ AAG was very careful to say he was found dead. Then the following news reports all said he committed suicide. Those are not the same thing. Someone needs to ask about the possibility of him being murdered after his mission was completed. Keep your eyes and ears open No Leads, No Leads, No Leads finally a lead from a homeless man and reddit So the shooter lived in Miami, flew to Providence, waited for Ella, knew her schedule, then drove to Massachusetts, to shoot the professor that he knew in Portugal, then drove back to his storage unit that was in New Hampshire  . He had a foreign phone that couldn’t be pinged and tracked.  So what was the motive https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/2001878709385728416?s=20   including the NYC ISIS truck ramming terrorist. Our ENTIRE immigration system needs to be SCRAPPED and REBUILT at this point. ENOUGH! https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2001724267906691531?s=20   Texas and Arizona. Total spending on border construction: $8 billion so far. The full plan: 1,418 miles of “Primary Smart Wall,” 536 miles of waterborne barriers, and 708 miles of secondary barriers. Funded through Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” passed in July – $46.5 billion allocated specifically for border wall completion through 2029. The “Smart Wall” isn’t just rebranded concrete. It’s steel bollards combined with patrol roads, cameras, lighting, advanced detection sensors, and in some locations waterborne or secondary barriers. CBP calls it an integrated border security system – not just a physical barrier but surveillance infrastructure covering gaps where terrain makes construction impractical. Here’s the funding story: Biden canceled wall contracts when he took office in 2021. The appropriated money – FY2021 funds – never expired. Trump returned in January 2025 and immediately restarted construction using those leftover billions. Then Congress passed his budget package allocating $46.5 billion more for multi-year construction. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued nine waivers since October to fast-track construction by bypassing environmental review requirements. The contracts are moving – $4.5 billion awarded in September, $3.3 billion now, with more queued through 2029. The system includes 536 miles where physical barriers won’t be built due to terrain – those sections get detection technology instead. Another 549 miles will add tech to barriers Biden left incomplete. Trump built 455 miles in his first term, mostly replacing existing fencing. This time the scale is bigger and the tech integration is real. Whether it achieves the enforcement outcomes CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott is promising remains to be seen, but the construction is happening and the funding is locked in.  https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/2001837612487840164?s=20 Import IsIamists. Disarm Australians. What could possibly go wrong? https://twitter.com/Patri0tContr0l/status/2001745373052936625?s=20 https://twitter.com/ShadowofEzra/status/2001719516422676556?s=20 DOGE Geopolitical Tren De Aragua Members and Leaders Indicted in Multi-Million Dollar ATM Jackpotting Scheme  December 18, 2025 – United States Attorney Lesley A. Woods announced that a federal grand jury in the District of Nebraska has returned two indictments charging 54 individuals for their roles in a large conspiracy to deploy malware and steal millions of dollars from ATMs in the United States, a crime commonly referred to as “ATM jackpotting.” An indictment returned on December 9, 2025, charges 22 defendants with offenses corresponding to their role in the conspiracy, including conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit bank burglary and fraud and related activity in connection with computers, and conspiracy to commit money laundering. The indictment also alleges that Tren de Aragua (“TdA”) has used jackpotting to steal millions of dollars in the United States and then transferred the proceeds among its members and associates to conceal the illegally obtained cash. One of the individuals named in the Indictment is Jimena Romina Araya Navarro, an alleged Tren De Aragua leader and Venezuelan entertainer who was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).  OFAC's press release alleged that Araya Navarro reportedly helped the notorious head of TdA, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores (a.k.a. “Niño Guerrero”) escape from the Tocorón prison in Venezuela in 2012, and others in this network have laundered money for TdA leaders.  Jimena Romina Araya Navarro was indicted by the grand jury for the District of Nebraska for material support to Tren De Aragua for factual allegations stemming from TdA's nationwide ATM jackpotting scheme that included burglaries of many ATMs located in Nebraska. Jimena Romina Araya Navarro has been publicly photographed at parties and social events with the alleged head of TdA Nino Guerrero. Source: .justice.gov  https://twitter.com/BasilTheGreat/status/2001917147963101255?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002018167611408489?s=20 Foreign Office has been hacked – ministers ‘fairly confident’ individual data not at risk Foreign Office data has been compromised by hackers, a minister has confirmed to Sky News, but he said the government is “fairly confident” that no individual data has been accessed. Trade minister Sir Chris Bryant told Sky’s Mornings with Jones and Melbourne that the government first became aware of the hack in October, and was now “on top of it”. Sky News understands that the data stolen was on systems operated on the Home Office’s behalf by the Foreign Office, which detected the breach. The Sun reported last night that a Chinese groups of hackers known as Storm 1949 targeted Foreign Office servers and had accessed information relating to visa details, with “thousands” of confidential documents and data stolen. But the minister told Sky News that it is “not entirely clear” who is responsible for the hack, and he could share “remarkably little detail”. Source: skynews.com Denmark blames Russia for destructive cyberattack on water utility Danish intelligence officials blamed Russia for orchestrating cyberattacks against Denmark’s critical infrastructure, as part of Moscow’s hybrid attacks against Western nations. In a Thursday statement, the Danish Defence Intelligence Service (DDIS) identified two groups operating on behalf of the Russian state: Z-Pentest, linked to the destructive water-utility attack, and NoName057(16), flagged as responsible for the DDoS assaults ahead of November’s local elections in Denmark before the 2025 elections. Source: bleepingnews.com War/Peace https://twitter.com/WallStreetMav/status/2001727675950383572?s=20 https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2001987088586354804?s=20 https://twitter.com/MyLordBebo/status/2001987615856476213?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2001804678045274293?s=20   holding Russia financially accountable for the destruction. Zelensky: “Basically, as of today, now Ukraine must close this problem and have the money, that’s number one. About the prospects, the most right form is reparation loan, so that we all understand, so that Russia understands that it’s guilty and that it will have to pay reparations.” This push ties into the crunch EU summit over a $105B package funded partly by profits from frozen Russian assets, even as legal concerns and U.S. warnings hover. Zelensky says it's moral, fair, and the pressure tool needed to make Putin back down. https://twitter.com/clashreport/status/2001953679491109013?s=20 https://twitter.com/aleksbrz11/status/2001656372220301547?s=20 https://twitter.com/philippilk/status/2001918505957134742?s=20 https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/2001973600405049683?s=20 ”  some offers and they invited us to certain compromises.’ And with that in Anchorage, back in Anchorage, I said that this would be difficult decisions for us. But we agree to the compromises that are being proposed to us. So it’s incorrect to say that we are refusing something.””So that’s completely incorrect. So the ball is totally on the side of our Western opponents, of the head of the Kiev regime and its European sponsors. https://twitter.com/CynicalPublius/status/2001773196727713853?s=20   other EU countries rattling their sabers and demanding that their native populations gear up to fight Russia in a war that would rival WWI in terms of exterminating a generation of young European men, is it possible that this is part of a New World Order scheme to eliminate native Europeans in favor of their migrant replacements? After all, that would be the ultimate expression of the guilt-ridden, cultural suicide Western Europe has been hellbent on achieving for the past thirty years. Conspiracy theory? YES. Reflective of current sentiments? YES. Take it for what it is worth. Medical/False Flags https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/2001457867614798265?s=20 [DS] Agenda https://twitter.com/GuntherEagleman/status/2001766583757394263?s=20 https://twitter.com/JoeLang51440671/status/2001871246141567421?s=20 Trump HUD Hunts Down Fraud in Colorado: 221 Dead People Were Getting Housing  That’s right. 221 dead people, out of almost 3,000 people in Colorado who were improperly receiving benefits from HUD. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is investigating whether Colorado providers helped nearly 3,000 people swindle taxpayer money from Uncle Sam, The Post has learned. The investigation comes after an internal HUD audit found that benefits were granted to 221 dead people, while another 87 were otherwise ineligible. The department also said that another 2,519 beneficiaries will need to undergo additional verification. Here’s the question: Were these just mistakes, the results of bad record-keeping, or deliberate fraud? Not that either is exactly a comfortable finding; when the answer is either criminality or gross incompetence, the taxpayers take a bath either way. And HUD is calling this apparent fraud. Source: redstate.com https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/2002067526977720452?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2002054582202200131?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2002054582202200131%7Ctwgr%5E9511fa92be723c1b11f9bd872529227569dc1dd9%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2025%2F12%2Fsecretary-state-rubio-confirms-ending-ngo-foreign-aid%2F President Trump's Plan https://twitter.com/FBIDirectorKash/status/2001794199046287594?s=20  the American people. These will be changes that you may not have read about in the media over this last year – but they're just as important for the new FBI. December 18: The FBI reporting structure. When Deputy Bongino and I arrived, FBI leadership was constructed to have all 50+ field offices report to one office in Washington D.C. This created inefficiencies and bureaucracy through no fault of the agents working hard in the field. When we got here, we sent personnel out to the field and then broke down the reporting structure giving a team of Operations Directors regional authority over each office. This allowed us to much more effectively manage each field office and get them the resources they need to do the job and protect the American people. The results speak for themselves: 100% increase in violent crime arrests, 35% increase in espionage arrests, 31% increase in fentanyl seizures, 500% increase in NVE arrests, and more. Making FBI leadership more responsive to the field allowed for the field to be more responsive to the American people – who we work for. https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/2001754813034533328?s=20 https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/2001699622553592254?s=20 https://twitter.com/Peoples_Pundit/status/2001817750952440044?s=20 https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2001837345113542864?s=20 https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/2001723271771726246?s=20  the center is not officially renamed solely based on the board’s vote. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was established and named by an act of Congress (Public Law 88-260 in 1964, codified in 20 U.S.C. § 76h et seq.), making its official name part of federal statute. While the Board of Trustees can vote to recommend or propose a name change—as they did unanimously on December 18, 2025, to add “Trump” to the name—the actual renaming requires legislative action to amend the law.The Process: Board Proposal: The Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees (which includes presidential appointees, congressional ex officio members, and others) can discuss and vote on a proposed name change. In this case, the Trump-appointed board voted to rename it the “Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts,” citing Trump’s contributions to renovations and fundraising. Congressional Legislation: To make the change official, Congress must pass a bill amending the relevant statutes. For example: Legislation has already been introduced in the House by Rep. Bob Onder (R-Mo.) to codify the rename. The bill would need to pass both the House and Senate, then be signed into law by the President (or overridden if vetoed). Potential Challenges and Approval: Ex officio board members (e.g., congressional Democrats like Rep. Joyce Beatty, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Leader Hakeem Jeffries) have stated that federal law prohibits name changes without congressional action, calling the board’s move unauthorized or illegal. reuters.com They dispute the “unanimous” vote claim, noting some were muted or unable to oppose. Kennedy family members, such as grandnephew Joe Kennedy, have opposed it, arguing the board lacks authority. reuters.com If passed, the change could face legal challenges, but congressional approval would make it binding. Until Congress acts, the center retains its current name, though the White House has begun referring to it as the “Trump-Kennedy Center” in announcements.  https://twitter.com/OpenSourceZone/status/2001373638654841181?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2001373638654841181%7Ctwgr%5E686532e3ba9f23547c3b85b453c29e8ca105954e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fredstate.com%2Fbobhoge%2F2025%2F12%2F18%2Fschizophrenia-dem-approval-rating-falls-off-a-cliff-but-voters-still-want-them-to-retake-the-house-n2197259 Trump announces ‘Patriot Games,' with 2 high school athletes from each state President Trump   announced plans for a “Patriot Games” next year that will pit top high school athletes from across the country against one another as part of a series of events to mark 250 years since the nation's founding. Trump announced the launch of Freedom 250, an organization that will lead the administration's efforts to celebrate the country's 250th birthday in 2026. One of the events that will be featured as part of the festivities will be what Trump called the “first-ever Patriot Games, an unprecedented four-day athletic event featuring the greatest high school athletes — one young man and one young woman from each state and territory.” The event is slated for next fall. Source: thehill.com https://twitter.com/BehizyTweets/status/2001758550067155179?s=20 (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");

If you understand the Operation Gladio program that NATO ran in Western Europe from the 1950s through the late 1970s, then you have a head start in understanding Operation Condor in South America, which happened during a 15-year period beginning in 1968.America's interests in South America created the justification in the eyes of Washington DC to exert its massive financial and military influence over the region in order to stop the potential spread of Communism, which never actually materialized. What did materialize was authoritarian anti-Communist dictators that America installed and controlled through its many tentacles, but this subversion program took on a new look when the Church was added to the decision-making process.—Watch the video version on one of the Macroaggressions Channels:Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/Macroaggressions YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MacroaggressionsPodcast—MACRO & Charlie Robinson LinksHypocrazy Audiobook: https://amzn.to/4aogwmsThe Octopus of Global Control Audiobook: https://amzn.to/3xu0rMmWebsite: www.Macroaggressions.io Merch Store: https://macroaggressions.dashery.com/ Link Tree: https://linktr.ee/macroaggressionspodcast—Activist Post FamilyActivist Post: www.ActivistPost.com Natural Blaze: www.NaturalBlaze.com —Support Our SponsorsC60 Power: https://go.shopc60.com/PBGRT/KMKS9/ | Promo Code: MACROChemical Free Body: https://chemicalfreebody.com/macro/ | Promo Code: MACROWise Wolf Gold & Silver: https://macroaggressions.gold/ | (800) 426-1836LegalShield: www.DontGetPushedAround.com EMP Shield: www.EMPShield.com | Promo Code: MACROChristian Yordanov's Health Program: www.LiveLongerFormula.com/macro Above Phone: https://abovephone.com/macro/Van Man: https://vanman.shop/?ref=MACRO | Promo Code: MACROThe Dollar Vigilante: https://dollarvigilante.spiffy.co/a/O3wCWenlXN/4471 Nesa's Hemp: www.NesasHemp.com | Promo Code: MACROAugason Farms: https://augasonfarms.com/MACRO —

In today's podcast: Indiana's feckless redistricting flop. Have we so quickly forgotten the dysfunction and pain of Democratic-led government? President Trump warns Western Europe of an impending "civilizational erasure" unless they reverse course. Woke churches exacerbate the illegal immigrant crisis by hijacking the Christmas story. Find out more at https://ron-johnson-discipleship-podca.pinecast.co

Trump and MAGA see European values and societies as the real enemiesNick Cohen talks to the leading US commentator Charlie Sykes about the impact of the highly controversial US National Security Strategy 2025 which has overturned 80 years of post-war security strategy and threatens the very social and political fabric of Europe, as well as its security.Incredibly, in this document, the US says it will support nationalist far right parties in overturning European governments and says it will do all it can to destroy the European Union. The document - described as "obscene" by one former US ambassador to the EU - also strikes a dagger to the heart of NATO, clearly marking out its former security partners in the Alliance as the real enemies while failing to criticise the brazen illegality and aggression of Putin's Russia.The US has "switched sides" to stand shoulder to shoulder with our enemiesCharlie's stark conclusion: "This is what they're saying to the entire world. And again, the loathing for the democracies of Western Europe, the loathing for the allies who have been with us since World War II really can't be overstated. It is deep and, quite frankly, there has to come a moment when I think the rest of the world has to say that the United States has switched sides."Discussion summaryCharlie and Nick discuss the implications of the new strategy for American foreign policy, particularly regarding relations with Russia and Europe. The discussion explores how the strategy aligns with Moscow's vision and promotes radical right-wing parties, while contrasting conservative reactions between the US and UK. The conversation concluded with an examination of Trump's presidency and its potential dangers, including immigration policies, weaponisation of justice departments, and the broader implications for American democracy and political norms.Read all about it!Charlie Sykes @SykesCharlie is a leading highly respected United States conservative political commentator who was formerly editor-in-chief and founder of the highly influential website The Bulwark. Charlie has been a leading Never Trump Conservative since Trump stood for the presidency in 2015. Charlie's Substack - To the contrary is a must read, and his regular podcast - also called To the contrary - a must listen. He has also been a columnist and author for the progressive channel MSNBC.Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S2 Underground Nexus (Submit Tips Here): https://nexus-s2underground.hub.arcgis.com/ Research Notes/Bibliography can be found here: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground Common Intelligence Picture: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=204a59b01f4443cd96718796fd102c00 Border Crisis Map: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=7f13eda1f301431e98a7ac0393b0e6b0 TOC Dashboard: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/ebe374c40c1a4231a06075155b0e8cb9/ 00:00 - Global Strategic Concerns 04:06 - Strategic Movement 07:30 - Kinetic Events 08:52 - Washington D.C. 09:19 - New York 12:18 - Illinois 13:29 - North Carolina 17:08 - Georgia 18:56 - Western Europe 23:34 - GhostNet Reports Download the GhostNet plan here! https://github.com/s2underground/GhostNet The text version of the Wire can be found on Twitter: https://twitter.com/s2_underground And on our Wire Telegram page here: https://t.me/S2undergroundWire If you would like to support us, we're on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=30479515 Disclaimer: No company sponsored this video. In fact, we have ZERO sponsors. We are funded 100% by you, the viewer. All of our funding comes from direct support from platforms like Patreon, or from ad revenue on YouTube. Without your support, I simply could not do this work at all, so to those of you who chose to support my efforts, I am eternally thankful. Odysee: https://odysee.com/@S2Underground:7 Gab: https://gab.com/S2underground Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/S2Underground BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/P2NMGFdt3gf3/ Just a few reminders for everyone who's just become aware of us, in order to keep these briefings from being several hours long, I can't cover everything. I'm probably covering 1% of the world events when we conduct these briefings, so please remember that if I left it out, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's unimportant. Also, remember that I do these briefings quite often, so I might have covered an issue previously that you might not see if you are only watching our most recent videos. I'm also doing this in my spare time, so again I fully admit that these briefings aren't even close to being perfect; I'm going for a healthy blend of speed and quality. If I were to wait and only post a brief when it's "perfect" I would never post anything at all. So expect some minor errors here and there. If there is a major error or correction that needs to be made, I will post it here in the description, and verbally address it in the next briefing. Also, thanks for reading this far. It is always surprising the number of people that don't actually read the description box to find more information. This content is purely educational and does not advocate for violating any laws. Do not violate any laws or regulations. This is not legal advice. Consult with your attorney. Our Reading List! https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/133747963-s2-actual The War Kitchen Channel! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYmtpjXT22tAWGIlg_xDDPA 

******Support the channel******Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thedissenterPayPal: paypal.me/thedissenterPayPal Subscription 1 Dollar: https://tinyurl.com/yb3acuuyPayPal Subscription 3 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ybn6bg9lPayPal Subscription 5 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/ycmr9gpzPayPal Subscription 10 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y9r3fc9mPayPal Subscription 20 Dollars: https://tinyurl.com/y95uvkao ******Follow me on******Website: https://www.thedissenter.net/The Dissenter Goodreads list: https://shorturl.at/7BMoBFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/thedissenteryt/Twitter: https://x.com/TheDissenterYT This show is sponsored by Enlites, Learning & Development done differently. Check the website here: http://enlites.com/ Dr. Peter Turchin is Emeritus Professor at the University of Connecticut in the departments of ecology and evolutionary biology, anthropology, and mathematics. He is a project leader at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna and a research associate at the School of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. He is a complexity scientist who works in the field of historical social science that he and his colleagues call cliodynamics. He is the author of books like War and Peace and War, Ages of Discord, Ultrasociety, End Times, and The Great Holocene Transformation. In this episode, we start by talking about what causes political communities to cohere, and what causes the collapse of complex societies. We discuss the phenomenon of elite overproduction, its social and political consequences, and modern elite overproduction since the late 1970s. We talk about social unrest in the US and Western Europe in the current decade. Finally, we discuss whether violence is inevitable, and how we can solve elite overproduction in a non-violent way.--A HUGE THANK YOU TO MY PATRONS/SUPPORTERS: PER HELGE LARSEN, BERNARDO SEIXAS, ADAM KESSEL, MATTHEW WHITINGBIRD, ARNAUD WOLFF, TIM HOLLOSY, HENRIK AHLENIUS, ROBERT WINDHAGER, RUI INACIO, ZOOP, MARCO NEVES, COLIN HOLBROOK, PHIL KAVANAGH, SAMUEL ANDREEFF, FRANCIS FORDE, TIAGO NUNES, FERGAL CUSSEN, HAL HERZOG, NUNO MACHADO, JONATHAN LEIBRANT, JOÃO LINHARES, STANTON T, SAMUEL CORREA, ERIK HAINES, MARK SMITH, JOÃO EIRA, TOM HUMMEL, SARDUS FRANCE, DAVID SLOAN WILSON, YACILA DEZA-ARAUJO, ROMAIN ROCH, YANICK PUNTER, CHARLOTTE BLEASE, NICOLE BARBARO, ADAM HUNT, PAWEL OSTASZEWSKI, NELLEKE BAK, GUY MADISON, GARY G HELLMANN, SAIMA AFZAL, ADRIAN JAEGGI, PAULO TOLENTINO, JOÃO BARBOSA, JULIAN PRICE, HEDIN BRØNNER, FRANCA BORTOLOTTI, GABRIEL PONS CORTÈS, URSULA LITZCKE, SCOTT, ZACHARY FISH, TIM DUFFY, SUNNY SMITH, JON WISMAN, WILLIAM BUCKNER, LUKE GLOWACKI, GEORGIOS THEOPHANOUS, CHRIS WILLIAMSON, PETER WOLOSZYN, DAVID WILLIAMS, DIOGO COSTA, ALEX CHAU, CORALIE CHEVALLIER, BANGALORE ATHEISTS, LARRY D. LEE JR., OLD HERRINGBONE, MICHAEL BAILEY, DAN SPERBER, ROBERT GRESSIS, JEFF MCMAHAN, JAKE ZUEHL, MARK CAMPBELL, TOMAS DAUBNER, LUKE NISSEN, KIMBERLY JOHNSON, JESSICA NOWICKI, LINDA BRANDIN, VALENTIN STEINMANN, ALEXANDER HUBBARD, BR, JONAS HERTNER, URSULA GOODENOUGH, DAVID PINSOF, SEAN NELSON, MIKE LAVIGNE, JOS KNECHT, LUCY, MANVIR SINGH, PETRA WEIMANN, CAROLA FEEST, MAURO JÚNIOR, 航 豊川, TONY BARRETT, NIKOLAI VISHNEVSKY, STEVEN GANGESTAD, TED FARRIS, HUGO B., JAMES, JORDAN MANSFIELD, CHARLOTTE ALLEN, PETER STOYKO, DAVID TONNER, LEE BECK, PATRICK DALTON-HOLMES, NICK KRASNEY, RACHEL ZAK, DENNIS XAVIER, CHINMAYA BHAT, AND RHYS!A SPECIAL THANKS TO MY PRODUCERS, YZAR WEHBE, JIM FRANK, ŁUKASZ STAFINIAK, TOM VANEGDOM, BERNARD HUGUENEY, CURTIS DIXON, BENEDIKT MUELLER, THOMAS TRUMBLE, KATHRINE AND PATRICK TOBIN, JONCARLO MONTENEGRO, NICK GOLDEN, CHRISTINE GLASS, IGOR NIKIFOROVSKI, AND PER KRAULIS!AND TO MY EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS, MATTHEW LAVENDER,SERGIU CODREANU, AND GREGORY HASTINGS!

Three prize-winning authors in today's discussion programme hosted by Tom Sutcliffe:The German Peasants' War of 1524–1525 was the greatest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. Tens of thousands of peasants rose up to demand a new, more egalitarian order—only to be crushed in a brutal counterattack that left up to 100,000 dead. The historian Lyndal Roper argues that this rebellion was far from chaotic: it was a coherent mass movement inspired by the radical ideals of the Protestant Reformation. Her book Summer of Fire and Blood is the winner of the 2025 Cundill History Prize. The neurologist Masud Husain explores the human mind through the stories of seven patients. In asking what it is that makes us who we are, he explores how our identity can shift when we lose just a single cognitive ability. He examines the stories a man who ran out of words, a woman who stopped caring what others thought, and another who, losing her memory, believed she was having an affair with her own husband. His account of the science of identity, Our Brains, Our Selves, won the Royal Society's 2025 Trivedi Science Book Prize. The historian Hannah Durkin explores the stories of the survivors of the Clotilda, the last ship of the Atlantic slave trade. Based on her original research she uses first hand accounts to tell the stories of the enslaved in their own words. Survivors: The Lost Stories of the Last Captives of the Atlantic Slave Trade is the winner of the 2025 Wolfson History Prize. Producer: Ruth Watts

- Situation in Europe and Predictions for 2026 (0:11) - AI Avatars and Their Convincing Nature (3:19) - Cyber Crime Warning and AI Avatars in Mini Documentaries (7:11) - Russia and Europe: The Escalating Conflict (11:06) - Historical Context and Lessons from Russian Wars (26:27) - The Future of Western Europe and the Russian Empire (31:03) - The Role of AI in Government and Society (54:29) - Predictions for 2026: Economic and Social Trends (1:18:25) - The Impact of AI on the Real Estate Market (1:23:43) - Preparation for Economic Collapse in 2026 (1:26:48) - Psychological and Social Impact of Economic Collapse (1:29:09) - Personal Preparedness and Compassion (1:31:33) - Access to Knowledge and Resources (1:32:32) - Final Thoughts and Call to Action (1:34:45) For more updates, visit: http://www.brighteon.com/channel/hrreport  NaturalNews videos would not be possible without you, as always we remain passionately dedicated to our mission of educating people all over the world on the subject of natural healing remedies and personal liberty (food freedom, medical freedom, the freedom of speech, etc.). Together, we're helping create a better world, with more honest food labeling, reduced chemical contamination, the avoidance of toxic heavy metals and vastly increased scientific transparency. ▶️ Every dollar you spend at the Health Ranger Store goes toward helping us achieve important science and content goals for humanity: https://www.healthrangerstore.com/ ▶️ Sign Up For Our Newsletter: https://www.naturalnews.com/Readerregistration.html ▶️ Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/channels/hrreport ▶️ Join Our Social Network: https://brighteon.social/@HealthRanger ▶️ Check In Stock Products at: https://PrepWithMike.com

It's Thursday, December 4th, A.D. 2025. This is The Worldview in 5 Minutes heard on 140 radio stations and at www.TheWorldview.com. I'm Adam McManus. (Adam@TheWorldview.com) By Jonathan Clark European country of Monaco expelled Swiss evangelist Evangelical Focus reports officials in Monaco recently detained and then expelled a Swiss evangelist without much explanation. Monaco is a sovereign city-state in Western Europe, bordered by France to the north, east, and west, with the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Stephan Maag has shared the gospel on streets across 28 European countries. He's known for carrying an 80-pound collapsible cross, generating conversations about Jesus. His evangelistic walks were well-received until he visited Monaco, a microstate in south-eastern France. Police detained Maag, telling him what he was doing was not allowed there. They even told him his cross was too big! The evangelist said, “Nothing like this has ever happened to us in Europe.” In Romans 1:16, the Apostle Paul wrote, “I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes.” Germany beefs up security for iconic Christmas markets German cities are tightening security in preparation for opening their iconic Christmas markets this year. Renardo Schlegelmilch with Germany's largest Catholic radio station said, “There are more than 3,000 Christmas markets every year in Germany, with around 170 million visitors — more than twice the population of the country. They set the tone of Advent, even for people who are not active in the Church.” The security cost for this centuries-old tradition has skyrocketed in recent years. Security concerns have risen since 2016 when an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people. Mississippi evangelist makes case before Supreme Court The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case involving a Mississippi evangelist yesterday. Gabriel Olivier is an evangelical Christian who desires to share his faith with others. However, the City of Brandon, Mississippi passed an ordinance to effectively silence his evangelism. Lower courts sided with the city. Now, First Liberty Institute is representing Gabriel before the U.S. Supreme Court. The group noted, “Gabe's case could overturn decades of bad precedent in the lower courts. A clarifying opinion from the Supreme Court will bolster the rights and religious freedom of millions.” More U.S. soldiers identify with Christ while U.S. more secular U.S. military members are becoming more religious even as America becomes more secular. That's according to a study by Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis. The study compared 18- to 45-year-olds in the military and outside the military. Members of the military are more likely to identify as Christians than the rest of the population. Military members are also more likely than civilians to attend church. And church attendance in the military has actually increased over the past 12 years. U.S. military abortions are down The Dallas Express reports that military abortions are down to their lowest level in five years. The military's TRICARE health service program covered five abortions this year as of June, down from 49 abortions in 2021.  This follows efforts by President Donald Trump to cancel abortion-related policies.  Although taxpayer-funded abortions at military facilities are down, the general use of medication-induced abortions has skyrocketed in recent years. Republicans won Tennessee special House of Reps. election The Grand Old Party won the special election for Tennessee's 7th Congressional District on Tuesday.  Republican Matt Van Epps beat Democrat Aftyn Behn by nine percentage points with 53.9% of the vote, reports the Nashville Banner. The victory means Republicans will have a 220-213 majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Listen to comments from Epps, thanking God and his supporters for the victory. EPPS: “We did it. Thank you all. This is just an incredible win. Tonight, you've sent a message, loud and clear. The people of Middle Tennessee stand with President Donald J. Trump. First and foremost, I want to thank God for His guidance and grace every step of the way.” Martyred U.S. medical missionary in Congo featured on Time in 1964 And finally, medical missionary Paul Carlson appeared on the covers of Time Magazine and Life Magazine on December 4, 1964, sixty-one years ago today. The successful doctor left a comfortable life in California to be a missionary in Africa. Carlson arrived in the Congo with his wife and two children in 1963. He continued to care for people despite political unrest. However, communist-inspired rebels eventually arrested him and falsely accused him of being an American spy. On November 24, 1964, the rebels opened fire on a group of prisoners, including Carlson. He died helping other prisoners escape the onslaught. Carlson's wife, Lois, carried on her husband's work, supporting medical care and education in the area. His tombstone bears this inscription from John 15:13, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Close And that's The Worldview on this Thursday, December 4th, 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. I'm Adam McManus (Adam@TheWorldview.com). Seize the day for Jesus Christ.

What happens when a simple idea—men working out around a fire and following Christ—jumps across the ocean into post-Soviet Europe?In this episode, we sit down with Pro from Braveheart Tribe in Budapest, Hungary to talk about how Men's Alliance has taken root in Europe and why Hungary might become a hub for Christian men's ministry.Pro shares his story of growing up in the Netherlands, moving to Central Europe after the Iron Curtain fell, meeting his wife in Hungary, and slowly moving from career-first to ministry-first. We dig into: • The difference between Western Europe and Central Europe when it comes to faith • Why Hungary is still largely Christian while other European nations are turning secular • The rise of Islam in Europe and why we must train ambassadors for Christ • How Braveheart Tribe launched in Budapest and what MA looks like in an urban European context • Why hard workouts, cold weather, and real discomfort are essential for discipling men • How Carry the Fire apologetics training is preparing men to share and defend their faithYou'll hear how God used a doctor who had been in a Men's Alliance tribe in Alaska… moved him to Budapest… and then used that connection to help launch multiple tribes in Hungary—including Braveheart and a neighboring tribe led by “Blade Runner.”If you've ever wondered what God is doing among men outside the U.S., or how to reach a culture that's forgotten its Christian roots, this conversation will fire you up and give you a bigger vision for Men's Alliance.Follow Men's AllianceInstagram - https://www.instagram.com/mensalliancetribe/Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/mensalliancetribeTiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@mensalliancetribeWebsite - https://www.mensalliancetribe.com/Explore Battlefield Coaching today and find yourself a Coach with experience overcoming a battle you are currently facing - https://battlefieldcoaching.comOrder the Book - Answer With Truth: The Ambassador's Field Manual for Leading Your Family Spiritually - https://amzn.to/3BmnuKV

Few things are more glorious than opening up a fantasy book and seeing a gorgeously detailed map right up front. So what goes into making that masterpiece for you to feast your eyes and imagination upon? In this episode, we discuss our love of maps, some of the ways we make maps, and the relationship between the map and the text. We also share some of our favorite maps, as well as exploring some non-traditional types that we'd love to see more of in fantasy and sci-fi novels. Creating a solid map for your world is something that might seem basic at first, but doing it well involves a lot of different skills and knowledge bases: everything from geology and plate tectonics to linguistics and political science. A map really can be a microcosm of your world and its story. How are you going to create yours? And, as promised, here are some of the links we said we'd drop in the show notes! Inkarnate (a classic fantasy map generator) Watabou City Generator (make a town or city) Azgaar (spin up some worlds!) Tectonic Explorer (lets you play with crashing continents into each other) The enormous maps of our co-created world Time lapse video of border changes in Western Europe (ie, smash the HRE with a hammer) The Holy Roman Empire Germany in the 18th century Cross-section of life in a medieval castle Official Star Wars galaxy map Less official but more granular Star Wars galaxy map The medieval-style Star Wars map Star Trek galaxy map [Transcript for Episode 169]

Mali, a vast country larger than most of Western Europe added together is a country whose central authority has largely collapsed and whose capital city Bamako is surrounded by radical Islamist militants. There seems to be a pattern here, with Syria and Afghanistan having fallen as Western countries lose interest. As with Syria, the corrupt Malian government had allied itself with Russia, apparently to little effect. I spoke to Tessa Devereaux of SOAS about Mali and the wider Sahel, and what it means for all of us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a recent interview with podcast host Alan Skorski, historian and author Uri Kaufman discussed his forthcoming book, American Intifada: Israel, the Gaza War, and the New Antisemitism, arguing that progressive support for Hamas following the October 7, 2023, massacre stems from cognitive dissonance and a racialized worldview that casts Israelis as “white oppressors” and Palestinians as “people of color.” Kaufman, whose previous work on the Yom Kippur War was named a top history book by the Financial Times, pointed to former President Barack Obama's post-October 7 comments as a prime example. Obama stated that “nobody's hands are clean” in the conflict and described the situation for Palestinians as “unbearable,” partly attributing it to Israel's “occupation.” “There was no occupation,” Kaufman said, noting Israel's full withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, including the removal of all settlements and even the exhumation of Jewish graves. He called Obama's reference to an ongoing occupation factually incorrect and not merely an instance of cognitive dissonance, but a deliberate distortion. Cognitive dissonance, Kaufman explained, occurs when individuals alter facts to preserve deeply held beliefs rather than adjust those beliefs. For many progressives, he argued, an obsession with race leads them to view Gazans as oppressed people of color and Israeli Jews — regardless of the country's ethnic diversity — as privileged whites. This framework, he said, allows supporters to justify calls for humanitarian aid to Hamas-ruled Gaza even after the group's October 7 attack killed 1,200 people, involved widespread rape and the burning of infants, and resulted in 250 hostages being taken. “Imagine if white supremacists controlled Gaza and committed the same atrocities against Black Israelis,” Kaufman posed hypothetically. “No one on the left would demand aid for them. But because Palestinians are seen as people of color, the same rules don't apply.” Kaufman also addressed Israel's intelligence failure leading to October 7, attributing it to the “Conceptzia” — a prevailing assumption that Hamas would never risk its lucrative arrangements with Israel by launching a full-scale attack. Prior to the massacre, he noted, Israel supplied Gaza with massive amounts of aid: in 2022 alone, 5.7 billion gallons of water, two-thirds of its electricity, all of its fuel, 67,000 truckloads of goods, and work permits for 17,000 Gazans. “Hamas was willing to sacrifice everything for jihad,” Kaufman said. “Israel had no Plan B because it never imagined an enemy would choose national suicide over survival.” On shifting global attitudes, Kaufman described a “moral collapse” in Western Europe and parts of the English-speaking world, including Canada, Australia, France and the United Kingdom. Yet he highlighted strong pro-Israel sentiment in Central and Eastern Europe — such as Hungary, Poland and Serbia — as well as in Asian democracies like South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore. -VIN News Alan Skorski Reports 25NOV2025 - PODCAST

By the autumn of 1944, the Allies had driven across France and Belgium and reached the borders of Germany. Ahead of them lay the Rhine — a vast natural barrier and the last line of defence protecting the heart of the Reich. What followed was some of the most intense and costly fighting of the war in Western Europe. From the bitter battles around Aachen and the Hürtgen Forest, through the crossing operations of Plunder and Varsity, to the dramatic capture of the bridge at Remagen, the campaign for the Rhineland was brutal, chaotic, and often overshadowed by the more famous Battle of the Bulge. Yet it was here, on both sides of the Rhine, that the final collapse of Nazi Germany truly began. To help tell that story, I'm joined by military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones, author of Rhineland, which charts the campaign from the German border battles of late 1944 through to the end of the war in 1945. Rhineland is also available on Audible and Spotify.   patreon.com/ww2podcast  

Our Hindi Heartland has more people than the USA and Western Europe combined -- and is arguably more diverse. Ghazala Wahab joins Amit Varma in episode 431 of The Seen and the Unseen to describe her research into those states -- and much else, including being an outspoken Muslim woman in India, and the future of warfare.  (FOR FULL LINKED SHOW NOTES, GO TO SEENUNSEEN.IN.) Also check out: 1. Ghazala Wahab on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Amazon, the Wire and Force. 2. The Hindi Heartland -- Ghazala Wahab. 3. Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India — Ghazala Wahab. 4. Dragon On Our Doorstep — Pravin Sawhney and Ghazala Wahab. 5. The Peacemakers -- Edited by Ghazala Wahab. 6. Force — The magazine edited by Ghazala Wahab. 7. Being Muslim in India — Episode 216 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ghazala Wahab). 8. The Future of War -- Episode 112 of Everything is Everything. 9. A Deep Dive Into the Indian Military -- Episode 31 of Everything is Everything. 10. A Deep Dive Into Ukraine vs Russia — Episode 335 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 11. The State of the Ukraine War — Episode 14 of Everything is Everything. 12. The Innovator's Dilemma -- Clayton Christensen. 13. Tanhaiyaan and Parchaiyan. 14. What Just Happened Between India & Pakistan? -- Episode 418 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Pranay Kotasthane & Aditya Ramanathan). 15. The Age of Hybrid Warfare -- Episode 84 of Everything is Everything. 16. The Broken Script — Swapna Liddle. 17. Swapna Liddle and the Many Shades of Delhi — Episode 367 of The Seen and the Unseen. 18. The Refreshing Audacity of Vinay Singhal — Episode 291 of The Seen and the Unseen. 19. Stage.in. 20. Gods, Guns and Missionaries: The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity — Manu Pillai. 21. The Forces That Shaped Hinduism — Episode 405 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Manu Pillai). 22. Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From — Tony Joseph. 23. Early Indians — Episode 112 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tony Joseph). 24. Who We Are and How We Got Here — David Reich. 25. Caste, Capitalism and Chandra Bhan Prasad — Episode 296 of The Seen and the Unseen. 26. How the BJP Wins — Prashant Jha. 27. The BJP's Magic Formula — Episode 45 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Prashant Jha). 28. We Are All Amits From Africa — Episode 343 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Krish Ashok and Naren Shenoy). 29. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen that touched on women's participation in the labour market with Namita Bhandare, Shrayana Bhattacharya and Ashwini Deshpande. 30. Another India -- Pratinav Anil. 31. Influence of Islam on Indian Culture -- Tara Chand. 32. Political Economy of Colonial and Post-Colonial India -- Aditya Mukherjee. 33. The Identity Project -- Rahul Bhatia. 34. Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa -- Kundan Shah. 35. Ahmad Faraz on Wikipedia and Rekhta. 36. Pretty Woman -- Garry Marshall. 37. Harry Potter : The Complete Collection -- JK Rowling. 38. Home Fire -- Kamila Shamsie. 39. Yeh Hawa Yeh Raat Yeh Chandni -- Song from Sangdil. 40. Madhumati -- Salil Chowdhury. 41. Andaz -- Naushad. 42. Amar -- Naushad. 43. Elvis Presley and Perry Como on Spotify. 44. Na To Karvan Ki Talash Hai -- Song from Barsaat ki Raat. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader and FutureStack. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Amit Varma and Ajay Shah have launched a new course called Life Lessons, which aims to be a launchpad towards learning essential life skills all of you need. For more details, and to sign up, click here. Amit and Ajay also bring out a weekly YouTube show, Everything is Everything. Have you watched it yet? You must! And have you read Amit's newsletter? Subscribe right away to The India Uncut Newsletter! It's free! Also check out Amit's online course, The Art of Clear Writing. Episode art: 'Heartland' by Simahina.

Send us a textGUEST: ALEX NEWMAN, president, Liberty Sentinel MediaIt's America's largest and most well-known city. It's the financial center of the country and even the world for free markets. Twenty-four years ago, the most prominent buildings in the city—the World Trade Center—crumbled to the ground after Islamists hijacked commercial airplanes and flew them into the buildings, causing nearly 3000 deaths.So how to explain that New York City just elected a Muslim socialist to be its mayor?Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is not moderate. He is anti-Israel at his core. And he's anti-American—he is a self-identifying member of the Democratic Socialists of America, which opposes traditional American values of limited government, individual liberties, and free markets. In short, Mamdani is the personification of the “Red-Green Alliance,” the intersectional partnership of Communists and Islamists with the common goal of toppling America and Christianity.The left won almost everywhere in the first election since President Trump entered the White House this past January. Virginians voted for a Democrat super-majority in their state. Seattle elected a Democrat Socialist for mayor and Minneapolis nearly did as well.In a recent program, we discussed the rise of Islam in Western Europe and how the line may have been crossed for an Islamic future. But is the same thing happening in America, in places like New York City, Dearborn, Michigan, Minneapolis, and in Texas, where a large Islamic development is being proposed near Dallas?Alex Newman, Christian author and journalist at Liberty Sentinel Media, joins us this weekend on The Christian Worldview to discuss the rise of Islam in America and why it needs to be stopped. He will also discuss other events nationally and abroad, including the rise in political violence on the left and anti-Israel sentiment on the right.----------------------Manger in Danger for a donation for $30 or more - A new family Christmas tradition!

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:17532056201798502,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-9437-3289"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs");pt> Click On Picture To See Larger PictureThe [CB] system causes inflation, the housing market has become so expensive that people can no longer afford it. Trump and Bessent are now putting the blame on the D's shutdown because it is hurting the economy, [CB] failed again. Trump funding Argentina, not the IMF, boom. Fed ready to tighten, they are trying to raise long term rates, this plan will not work. The [DS] is in panic mode. All they have left is protect what they have here in this country, if they lose the illegals and the ability to cheat in the election they are screwed. The Supreme Court is hearing arguments in regards to the Voting Rights Act. If the SC rules against the D's they will lose 19 seats. Trump is pushing the [DS] down the path of war. "To Know Your Enemy, You Must Become Your Enemy" Sun Tzu. Every Battle Is Won Before It's Ever Fought.   Economy   https://twitter.com/Barchart/status/1978420195581448671 (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:18510697282300316,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-8599-9832"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="https://cdn2.decide.dev/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1978461005668606355  https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1978458451048116621 Trump Warns Argentina: Back Milei or Lose US Funds In a rare presidential endorsement in a foreign election, President Donald Trump has thrown his political cachet into the reelection campaign of Argentine President Javier Milei on Tuesday night. "Great meeting today with Javier Milei!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. "He is doing the right things for his Country. I hope the people of Argentina understand how good a job he is doing, and will support his work during the upcoming Midterms, so we can continue to help him achieve Argentina's incredible potential. "Javier Milei has my Complete and Total Endorsement — He will not let you down. MAKE ARGENTINA GREAT AGAIN!" Trump said at the White House on Tuesday he would endorse Milei for reelection and previously had already indicated during the U.N. General Assembly in September he was endorsing Milei, when he handed the Argentine leader a print-out of a Truth Social post with his endorsement. Trump threatened to pull assistance for Argentina — led by a political kindred spirit whose philosophy aligns with that of the Republican administration — if the nation's internal politics don't go the U.S.' way in its upcoming elections. The comments came during a meeting with Milei, whose country is set to hold midterm elections for its legislative body later this month. Source: newsmax.com https://twitter.com/JoeLang51440671/status/1978170213301399633   an extraordinary bailout of Argentina.” “The U.S. is providing a $20 billion currency swap line with Argentina's central bank — essentially exchanging stable U.S. dollars with volatile pesos.” https://cnbc.com/2025/10/13/the-us-has-stepped-in-with-an-extraordinary-bailout-of-argentina-heres-what-it-means.html Did you know that Argentina used to be one of the most wealthy countries in the world? Guess when they were considered one of the wealthiest countries and the significance of what happened in America that year? “By 1913, Argentina was among the world's wealthiest nations per capita, with its income comparable to that of Western Europe and even surpassing countries like France, Germany, and Italy.