From media-studies dropout to international jihadist to Syria’s ruler, Ahmed al-Sharaa has an unlikely résumé. He speaks with our editor-in-chief, sharing hopeful-sounding hints of his vision—but precious little detail. Japan’s economy has been hobbled by low inflation for years; is that now in the past (14.05)? And the lucrative media gigs of Britain’s lawmakers (21.30).
Special thanks to Mamoon Alhidayat, our interpreter in Syria.
Cory O'Daniel has had an interesting path to technology, growing his career in a number of cloud architect roles at Ripple, DealScience and The RealReal. He has rich experience in DevOps, the cloud and platform engineering. But outside of tech, he is married with 2 kids, living in Southern California. He loves driving (and destroying) RC cars - like the ones that go 65-70 miles per hour. He jumps them off a lot of ramps, his highest jump behind 20 feet upwards... which of course, he landed.
Cory noticed that there is a huge knowledge gap regarding the cloud, especially during his time doing professional services. He would leave a project post completion, and see a major gap in how the client understood what was built. He and his co-founders had the idea to build a product to allow platform engineers to diagram their infra - and fuel developers engineering process.
Did you know that Joseph Stalin could sing with perfect pitch? Or that he was so scared of his wife that he would hide from her in the bathroom? Did you know that Peter the Great liked to surround himself with naked dwarfs? Did you know that Catherine the Great—long smeared as a nymphomaniac—was actually a lovelorn monogamist? Or that King Herod’s genitals once exploded with maggots?
Most historians bore you with dry accounts of battles and treaties, and it’s hard to remember any of it. But not Simon Sebag Montefiore, who writes 900 pages that you cannot put down.
While most of Sebag’s books are biographies of people, Jerusalem is a biography of a city—a city, as he writes, that is “the house of the one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions, and the only city to exist twice in heaven and on earth.” The book takes you through Jerusalem’s 3,000-year history, from King David to Bibi Netanyahu. It is a must-read. It has sold more than a million copies, and it has just been reissued in paperback.
With the ceasefire deal underway in Israel and with Trump a few weeks into his second presidency, we could not think of a better person to talk to than Simon about this moment and how to understand it.
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Ann Schmiesing, Ph.D. is Professor of German and Scandinavian Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder, with research interests spanning 18th and 19th-century German and Norwegian literature and culture. In our interview we discuss her new book, The Brothers Grimm: A Biography(Yale UP, 2024), their first biography in over half a century. We talk about what led her to Germanic studies and fairy tales in particular. We discuss the revelations in her book dealing with their lives and work, their antisemitism as reflected in their correspondence and the stories they published and its long-ranging consequences. We talk about some of her favorite fairy tales and what makes them special.
As of Monday evening, President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs on Canada and Mexico are on hold for at least 30 days. But that could all change as the Trump administration continues to negotiate with U.S. allies. Scott Lincicome, Vice President of General Economics and Trade Policy at the Cato Institute, tells us what a trade war is and how it affects all of us.
And in headlines: Democrats put out a 10-part plan to “push back against the far-right extremism,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he’s the acting director of USAID, and President Trump signed an executive order to create a sovereign wealth fund.
We'll explain why President Trump paused tariffs against America's top trade partners.
And there is new pushback over his plan to close one government agency.
Also, where are people seeing more than a month's worth of rain in just a couple of days?
Plus, a new government investment fund could end up saving TikTok; OpenAI is figuring out how to be persuasive, and the NBA is making big moves. We're talking about what's being considered the most shocking trade of all time.
Those stories and even more news to know in about 10 minutes!
Join us every Mon-Fri for more daily news roundups!
With Donald Trump's blessing, Elon Musk and a small crew of inexperienced software engineers take near full control of the government, moving to shut down USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and taking control of a critical payment system at the Treasury Department. Trump delays his trade war with Canada and Mexico by a month after securing minor concessions that were probably already in the works. Meanwhile, congressional Democrats begin to push back harder—though whether it'll be enough is still an open question. Jon, Lovett, and Tommy break down all the latest, and Lovett speaks with former Obama and Biden economic adviser Brian Deese about just how bad things could get if a real trade war kicks off over the next four years.
For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
In this episode, the Goods from the Woods Boys are, once again, hangin' out all by their lonesome at Disgraceland Studios. We start this one off by talking about weird ass ice cream flavors. Then we chug a DELICIOUS energy drink that our friend Chica Marx picked up for us in Texas. We check out a manifesto that Rivers and Sam were given by a guy on the street while streaming live on Hollywood Blvd. Rivers puts the renegade dentist "Painless Parker" in the Goods from the Woods Hall of Fame and we've got a JAM OF THE WEEK from Uncle Kracker! Give us a listen, y'all. Follow the show on all the socials @TheGoodsPod Rivers is @RiversLangley Sam is @SlamHarter Carter is @Carter_Glascock Subscribe on Patreon for the UNCUT video version of this episode as well as TONS of bonus content! http://patreon.com/TheGoodsPod Pick up a Goods from the Woods t-shirt here: http://prowrestlingtees.com/TheGoodsPod
