Ambitious Crossover Attempt
A podcast that ambitiously attempts to crossover various topics from the raw unfiltered feed of the internet. Noam Blum and Jen Monroe break down the past week's madness and explore the intersection points of different areas of online discourse.
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Episode 179 - Policing Gone A-Rye
08/18/2025
Episode 179 - Policing Gone A-Rye
Jen and Noam discuss the ongoing situation in DC and the agents from…well we can’t tell which agency they’re from since they don’t have ID and their faces are completely covered. Of course, we can’t not talk about the infamous DC Subway attack and the staged re-arrest of sandwich thrower Sean Dunn. From there, we move to GQ’s ill-advised profile of Hasan Piker and the quest to make him the left wing Joe Rogan. Unfortunately for Piker, this doesn’t go well. We wrap up by talking a bit about the new horror movie Weapons (warning - there are spoilers!) and the tendency modern audiences have to read into a movie more than what is actually there.
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Episode 178 - Piece Talks
08/12/2025
Episode 178 - Piece Talks
Noam and Jen return to discuss the back half of last week, which had more going on than most full weeks. We talk about the Gaza occupation that may or may not happen, the upcoming peace summit with Putin and Trump but not Zelensky, how Noam is not a Mossad agent sent to infiltrate American social media, and the ick of online sports betting.
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Episode 177 - Jean Therapy
08/06/2025
Episode 177 - Jean Therapy
Jen and Noam record a late episode this week discussing the American Eagle nontroversy and the end of the culture war, Trump firing the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the job numbers, Jim Acosta's insane decision to interview a dead kid, and the ongoing situation in Gaza.
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Episode 176 - Spilling The Tea
07/28/2025
Episode 176 - Spilling The Tea
Noam and Jen did an extra long episode, because it was an extra long week. We start by discussing the tea on Tea, the vibe-coded app that was long on 2018 nostalgia but short on information security. Aside from the irony of repeating past mistakes, we discuss the shortfalls of relying on LLMs to do your heavy lifting for you, especially if you don’t have the knowledge needed to check the outcome. We move on to discussing the Macrons suing Candace Owens over the flagrantly insane (but also defamatory) things she has said about Brigitte. While the Macrons are completely within their rights to sue Owens and are justified in doing so, it also gives her more material for her content mill. So what to do? We also take a brief detour into the Mehdi Hasan vs MAGA trainwreck that demonstrated how siloing can rot your sense of reality. Gaza is back in the news again, over an impending famine, and whose fault is it anyway? Also, the NYT published a piece citing one anonymous IDF source saying that they have no proof that Hamas has stolen humanitarian aid regularly, which is all some folks needed to blame Israel. Does it make sense? No, but when has that ever mattered. The Trump-Epstein story keeps getting further off the rails, this week with the news that Bondi informed Trump he is mentioned in the DOJ’s investigation files. And maybe Ghislaine Maxwell is getting a deal to testify that Trump did nothing wrong? Or maybe Obama will be arrested? Finally, we get to the movie part of the pod because we saw two movies this week, Eddington and Fantastic Four - First Steps. There is a lot to unpack with Eddington, but not as much with Fantastic Four.
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Episode 175 - It's A Wonderful Secret
07/21/2025
Episode 175 - It's A Wonderful Secret
Jen and Noam kick off this week with a tradlife PSA - don’t cheat on your spouse, and don’t have meaningless sex. Also, don’t let a handler ruin your big chance at connecting with Emma Stone. Next we explore the not-so-curious case of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert getting the axe (well, in 10 months from now) and how, despite this all being fairly SOP for a company getting ready for a merger, media folks want to make this about Trump. And, of course, we can’t not talk about Trump’s big week in Epstein news, from his telling his base he doesn’t want their support if they refuse to believe the Epstein story is a hoax to the Wall Street Journal reporting on a letter that Trump signed (we are trying to not get sued here) for Epstein’s 50th birthday book. Haters say it’s fake, but we highly doubt that so what now?
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Episode 174 - The Eps Files
07/14/2025
Episode 174 - The Eps Files
Noam and Jen tackle one of the more insane weeks in internet discourse. First, we have Grok going a little off the rails and becoming MechaHitler for 16 hours. Does its meltdown say more about AI, or the humans that it learns from? Then we have the Man Who Never Dies, Jeffrey Epstein, who did not make any lists or files and did indeed kill himself. At least according to the DOJ and the FBI, members of which assured all of us for years that there was indeed a list, files, and that Epstein did not kill himself. We talk about how MAGA is right to be mad, how everyone involved deserves what is happening, and why anyone offered up a definitive answer in the first place. Last, we discussed the very controversial movie Superman. Not controversial because it’s James Gunn’s first outing for DC (but that too) but because people on the internet cannot just let things be.
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Episode 173 - Everyone Is Online Fighting
07/07/2025
Episode 173 - Everyone Is Online Fighting
Jen and Noam take a (slight) break from discussing politics to talk about internet drama. We go over the reveal that everyone’s favorite topic of discussion, Zohran Mamdani, identified as African on his application to Columbia, the Ethan Klein lawsuits and if they will set a precedent for what counts as fair use, Robert O’Neil’s grifter heel turn, the latest Pixar flop, and the value of just letting quirky characters be quirky without tying it to a trendy identity.
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Episode 172 - Primary Concerns
07/02/2025
Episode 172 - Primary Concerns
Noam and Jen finally record this week’s episode! We talk about the big NYC Democratic primary upset of Andrew Cuomo by Zohran Mamdani, what is going on with the Iran-Israel conflict and Syria possibly joining the Abraham Accords chat, the Trump v. CASA that was not about birthright citizenship but nationwide injunctions, and the Fresh Prince of Ipswich deciding that being antisemetic is a easy way to fame.
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Episode 171 - Dropping The Midnight Hammer
06/24/2025
Episode 171 - Dropping The Midnight Hammer
Jen and Noam discuss the war thing that happened last week, including (well, mostly) the US strike on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities. Was it a good idea? What is the state of the Iranian nuclear program now? What happens next? Are we getting a ceasefire? Will Trump get his coveted Nobel Peace Prize? What really happened in the lead-up to the US strike? Is MAGA going to forgive and forget if this all turns out to be a success?
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Episode 170 - War Comes To Iran
06/16/2025
Episode 170 - War Comes To Iran
Noam and Jen spend most of the episode discussing the current escalation of the Israel—Iran conflict and our various thoughts about it. Noam also teaches you how to make a nuclear bomb, kind of. Neither of us is sure where things will go from here, since so far, this attack and counterattack have not gone the way everyone expected. We also discuss Trump’s comments on immigrants and the new directive not to perform workplace raids in specific well-connected industries. To finish it up, we discuss what we know about the assassination and attempted assassination of two Democratic members of the Minnesota state Congress. As of the time of the recording, the suspect was still at large, but was arrested Sunday night.
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Episode 169 - ICE Capades
06/10/2025
Episode 169 - ICE Capades
Jen and Noam discuss…all of the things. We unpack the Trump - Musk breakup (for now), Terry Moran being suspended over a tweet that was correct but not nice, the Trump administration getting involved in places it shouldn’t, Alex Thompson outing a source for lying to him in the past, Karine Jean-Pierre’s new book (and political affiliation), and of course the LA riots and not believing everything you see on social media.
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Episode 168 - The Post-Consequence Era
06/02/2025
Episode 168 - The Post-Consequence Era
Noam and Jen start out by discussing the Glenn Greenwald sex tape, because those are words that go together now. From there we move into discussing the Western media uncritically repeating a Hamas lie that Israel attacked Gazans who were in line for humanitarian aid, since the connective tissue between the stories is Israel being accused of things it did not do. We take some time to nerd out over Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russian airfields using Trojan trucks full of cheap drones, and how the war is showing the next phase of warfare will not rely on money and brute force but tech and skill. To wrap up on a lighter note, we try to figure out what the hell the second season of The Last Of Us is leading to and the annoyance of creators retconning their original plot to make sure you get who the bad guy is.
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Episode 167 - Globalizing The Intifada
05/27/2025
Episode 167 - Globalizing The Intifada
Jen and Noam discuss Biden’s big cancer announcement, the timing, the susness, how people can be very weird when it comes to cancer, and some of the revelations in the book Original Sin. We also talk about the tragic murder of two Israeli embassy employees outside of the Capital Jewish Museum and the difficulty of extending grace to those who never return the favor. Jen also gives her Grand Theory Of Engagement Slop and how it is driving political violence, and Noam gushes about The Rehearsal (again).
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Episode 166 - Abundantly Dumb
05/19/2025
Episode 166 - Abundantly Dumb
Noam and Jen discuss the mind numbing amount of stupid that took place last week, like people pretending to be very upset about James Comey’s dumb 86 47 post, the umpteenth news cycle about Joe Biden’s mental state (not his cancer diagnosis thought, that was announced after the recording), and Sam Seder running into the brick wall that is Ezra Klein and the Abundance plan for making housing more affordable. Not everything is stupid, though! We give our final thoughts on Andor and the portrayal of the Empire as a soul sucking bureaucratic grind that is both evil and banal. Also, the Israeli contestant in this year’s Eurovision contest, Nova attack survivor Yuval Raphael, came in second place overall and first in public voting.
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Episode 165 - In Plane Sight
05/12/2025
Episode 165 - In Plane Sight
Jean and Noam discuss the audacity of Trump accepting a “gift” of a luxury jet from Qatar, how we still have no idea what is going on with the tariffs, the ongoing saga of the media vs John Fetterman, staking one’s reputation on defending someone you don’t personally know, the flare up in tensions between India and Pakistan, and whos ceasefire is it anyway.
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Episode 164 - Politics And Sinners
05/05/2025
Episode 164 - Politics And Sinners
Noam and Jen discuss a politician with alleged mental impairments that would keep him from being able to do his job. No, not Trump, John Fetterman. Also, the tariffs are coming, but the first rule is you don’t talk about the tariffs. To wrap up the politics part of the pod, we spend some time talking about the Karmelo Anthony - Shiloh Hendrix dueling GiveSendGo campaigns and the new fad of taking absolute strangers and making them the avatar for you weird online wars. And because we are cool kids we saw the movie all the cool kids are seeing, Sinners. We give our thoughts on the movie, why it’s not like anything else out there, horror being treated as a legitimate cinematic genre, and how there were indeed Chinese people in the Mississippi delta in the 1930s.
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Episode 163 - Crisis Of Uncertainty
04/28/2025
Episode 163 - Crisis Of Uncertainty
Jen and Noam are not certain what is going on. Businesses are not certain what is going on. The president seems certain about what is going on but is he really? All of this uncertainty is certainly not making the market or voters happy. We do our best to try to figure it out, from tariffs to immigration policy to the bizarre Time interview with Trump. In keeping with the spirit of the show (and because Noam finds the current news cycles to be anxiety inducing) we do a bit of a dive into the controversies surrounding the new seasons of The Last Of Us and Andor. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 162 - ...And Process For All
04/21/2025
Episode 162 - ...And Process For All
Noam and Jen the ongoing immigration saga involving Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Trump administration's refusal to bring him back to the US despite a unanimous SCOTUS ruling to do so, Senator Van Hollen’s very odd trip to check in on Garcia, the virtues of just doing things correctly the first time, another SCOTUS ruling against Trump’s immigration policy, and what happens from here. We also spend a little time talking about how nobody is talking about Governor Josh Shapiro’s home being firebombed on the first night of Passover, and Noam does his best to lighten the mood by giving some entertainment recommendations. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 161 - The Plan Is A Lie
04/14/2025
Episode 161 - The Plan Is A Lie
Jen and Noam talk about tariffs some more because we’re not off that roller coaster yet, and who knows when we will be. Who has tariffs, who doesn’t, how much, and what is being subject to tariffs…well, that may all change by the time you listen to this episode. We also talk about the brewing fight / constitutional crisis over the Kilmar Abrego-Garcia case. SCOTUS says he needs to come back, but Team Trump is pretending they can’t make that happen. This is bad, considering the Trump administration's argument that once they send someone to El Salvador, their hands are tied. There is no way that will get abused in the future. To wrap up, we spend a little time talking about Bill Mahr’s lovely dinner with Trump and Friends, how we don’t care which Trump is the real one and which is the kayfabe, and if Mahr got played. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 160 - Trade Imbalanced
04/07/2025
Episode 160 - Trade Imbalanced
Jen and Noam talk about tariffs. Not just a stream of expletives though, we have a thoughtful discussion about the concepts of tariffs as a policy, their inherent drawbacks, whether any of this is a good idea, how does one measure success when a goal is not defined, Israeli dairy farmers, cronyism, child labor, America’s post-industrial economy, what manufacturing should be reshored, and a rant about owning physical copies of things. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 159 - Sucked Into The Chat
03/31/2025
Episode 159 - Sucked Into The Chat
Noam and Jen return from an unplanned break just in time to discuss a titanically bad week in American politics. We have Cabinet members inadvertently sharing classified information with the editor in chief of The Atlantic, a president who is out of the loop on important matters of national security, pardons and commutations for sale, and and the debate around due process for potential deportees. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 158 - Lasting Consequences
03/17/2025
Episode 158 - Lasting Consequences
Jen and Noam work their way through another week of news; the tariff rollercoaster, another Ukraine - Russia policy fail, and the case of Mahmoud Khaili. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 157 - Defending The Indefensible
03/11/2025
Episode 157 - Defending The Indefensible
Noam and Jen muster the strength to talk about the week that was, as crappy as it was. We go over the ongoing saga of the Tate brothers and those who feel the need to platform them, Jen finally gives her rant on the right-wing podcast sphere and how fake it all is, how antisemitism is the new cool thing, Europe getting it together, the insanity of the US’s new policy of turning off military tech when it feels like it, and the end of Pax Americana. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 156 - Unsuitable Deals
03/03/2025
Episode 156 - Unsuitable Deals
Jen and Noam spend her birthday breaking down an extremely chaotic week in news. We discuss the new Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper book about Biden, the botched release of the Epstein Files, the Tate Brothers returning to the US, and the blowup at the White House between Zelensky and Trump and Vance. At the end of the episode we give an ode to the S2E7 episode of Severance, which is just a beautiful example of visual storytelling while advancing the plot. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 155 - Elon's Email Emergency
02/24/2025
Episode 155 - Elon's Email Emergency
Noam and Jen go over Elon’s not so great week and his not so great reactions to his personal dramas. Specifically, his decision to send out an email to every federal employee asking them to give a five point summary of what they did on the job last week or else. Since he decided to send this email on a Saturday night the reactions from various government agencies are still coming in but the FBI and DOJ did not find it at all amusing. Where do Elon and DOGE go now that they are receiving institutional pushback? We also discuss another disaster - the Trump 2.0 administration’s first foray into serious foreign policy affairs in holding “peace talks” between the US and Russia. If it seems like someone is missing there, that’s because he was, and he made it very clear before the meeting that Ukraine would not be accepting any deal that didn’t include their input. With the talks DOA, the rare earth deal scotched, and nothing to show for the attempt, Trump decided to launch a full-scale social media attack on Zelkensky and Ukraine. It seems that calling Zelensky a dictator was a bridge too far for some conservatives however, and the cracks in the conservative coalition are starting to show. Finally we discuss the ongoing ceasefire/hostage release going on in Gaza, including Hamas finally returning the deceased members of the Bibas family. The details are horrid, and Israel’s response is still not set, but it seems we may be reaching the end of the pro-Hamas movement in the US. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 154 - The Gulf Between
02/17/2025
Episode 154 - The Gulf Between
Jen and Noam once again try to shove a week’s worth of events into one pod episode, which is getting harder and harder because everyone refuses to just be normal. We start off by discussing the unexpected news that Elon Musk has indeed welcomed (?) his 13th child, this time with tradgirl influencer Ashley St. Clair. Question mark because Elon does not seem to want to acknowledge the child or its mother. While we try not to have too much fun at Ashley’s expense, we do discuss the realities of trad influencers not living their message, a new name for baby mamas, showing feet in a NYP photo spread, and the hypocrisy of it all. After thoroughly discussing all of that we move on to actual news, such as the possible upcoming negotiations to end the Ukrainian war. Considering we can’t figure out who’s on first, let alone who is going to be invited to the negotiations and what exactly will be negotiated and what the US’s role will be in any negotiated ceasefire, it’s a little hard to say if this is a good idea. Also not at all certain is how the Ukrainian people feel about a potential deal, whatever that may end up being. We also talk about the Department of Justice dropping its corruption case against NYC mayor Eric Adams and the extreme fallout from it, both in people quitting their jobs and reactions in the online sphere. Given that the quid pro quo is a bit hard to miss, and conservative lawyers resigning over being asked to sign off on dropping the case, how does this square with the whole draining the swamp ethos Trump promised? Finally we get to the big news that the Gulf of Mexico is now the Gulf of America. And if you don’t call it that, you’ll get kicked out of the White House. Obviously this is peak stupidity and nobody asked for it but what were Trump voters asking for exactly? And speaking of Trump, what’s up with him lately? He seems a bit disinterested in the whole being president thing. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 153 - Wag The DOGE
02/10/2025
Episode 153 - Wag The DOGE
Noam and Jen talk too much again this week and still don’t cover everything that happened. What didn’t happen are the tariffs on Canada and Mexico, because…well trade wars are not fun and easy to win after all. At least not where there is way more fun stuff to do, like threaten to have the US annex Gaza and turn it into the Las Vegas of the Middle East. Speaking of, Jen and Noam don’t agree on Trump’s intentions or what exactly he’s trying to accomplish. More importantly, if he is serious about the US getting directly involved in Gaza, who is gonna tell him it’s a really really bad idea? Is Trump trying to finesse Egypt and Jordan? Will any of this actually solve the very real problem of what to do with Gaza going forward? And of course this past week was the week of DOGE. From hijacking the Treasury payment portal, getting access to secure information, unconstitutional power grabs, turning USAID into Public Enemy #1, Trump’s interesting disinterest in DOGE’s dealings, and wasting a valuable opportunity to effect actual reform a la BLM. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 152 - There's A New Tariff In Town
02/03/2025
Episode 152 - There's A New Tariff In Town
Jen and Noam cannot fit all of the events of this past week into one episode so we decide to focus on the upcoming slate of tariffs and the horrible American Airlines / Blackhawk collision. We discuss what tariffs may or may not mean for you and your grocery bill and try to figure out what exactly the tariffs are supposed to accomplish in the first place. Is Trump trying to stem the stream of fentanyl into the US? Bring manufacturing back to the states? Address trade imbalance? Replace the income tax? We don’t know. After that, we move on to the accidental collision of an Army Blackhawk helicopter and an American Airlines passenger jet in DC and what is to blame. We do agree that it wasn’t DEI that caused the accident, despite what the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and random morons on social media say. Also discussed is the knee jerk reaction of blaming Trump despite him only being in office two weeks and the issues with the FAA going back decades. We do manage to touch on some of the other horrible awful no good that happened this past week, like the purge of government workers that Trump doesn’t like and Elon now literally having the keys to the Treasury. It was a bad week, and it was only week two. Noam decides to add a new segment to the end of the show because he wanted to talk about the latest Sanderson novel to you. He does not, however, give a Slay The Spire update. We will be back on Twitch this week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 151 - Wave Analysis
01/27/2025
Episode 151 - Wave Analysis
Noam and Jen try their best to ride the wave of news from Trump’s first week back in his old office. We try to decipher what Musk’s, er, heartfelt wave to the crowd / possible Nazi salute means and why he can’t just apologize for being weird in public. We then move into discussing the J6 pardon bonanza and our theories about whether the Trump camp was lying when it said each case would be evaluated individually or if Trump just noped out of doing the work. After that, we discuss the confirmation proceedings of Trump’s various Cabinet nominees, including the one whose confirmation seems to be moving at a snail’s pace (it’s Tulsi). The two biggest confirmations from the past week were Marcio Rubio as Secretary of State and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, and we discuss the merits and demerits of each one. We will be back on Twitch this week to discuss the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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Episode 150 - TikTok FlipFlop
01/21/2025
Episode 150 - TikTok FlipFlop
Jen and Noam kick off the Trump presidency by discussing their first thoughts on his inaugural performance, Melania’s choice of head and face covering, if either of them was happy to be there, and the missed opportunity for a beautiful inauguration picture. We also spend a little time on Biden’s pardon frenzy and why it does (or does not) matter. From there we spend a little time not discussing the Gaza ceasefire / hostage release deal and why we both have mixed feelings on the subject. We will discuss it at some point, just not today. Finally we get to the really important story from this past week - what’s going on with TikTok? The Supreme Court upheld the law, but does it matter if nobody wants to enforce it? Will anyone make Trump enforce the law? What good would a half sale of TikTok US do, if the CCP still has access to the app’s data? Can e-girls cause a color revolution in China? We will be back on Twitch next week, discussing all of the TV we’ve been watching over the past few weeks. Click below to subscribe!
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