Hey, everybody. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Bucking podcast. I'm Jared Yates

and I'm here with Dick Alciman. Sprung it on me. We're going live. That's the way we

apparently do around here is we just improvise. That's right. Nothing is scripted in case you're

wondering, we did not get on beforehand and write anything out. Actually, we did, though.

One of the enjoyable things I've got to say in terms of tone and tenor of the podcast,

Nick and I want this to sound like we're having a spontaneous conversation as this stuff is happening.

So we're living that forward, and tonight we're going to do that for those who are not here right now.

This is a Patreon exclusive live recording of the Weekender.

That means dozens of our closest patrons and Muckrake community members are hanging out tonight.

They've got a good chat going on over here.

They're debating the Muckrake merchandise that we still need to get out there

into the world, particularly into my closet. You too can join in these things. If you're listening to

preview, all you got to do is go over to patreon.com slash muckrake podcast. We have a lot to talk about

tonight. We're taking questions from the audience. We have a developing situation right now

where it seems like Vladimir Putin was pulling troops out. Well, it started out. It looked like

there was going to be war. He pulled some troops out. It sounded like maybe things had calmed down.

Now it appears that the possible war is back on. We've got all kinds of things.

We're going to cover this as it emerges.

But tonight we're going to do these questions.

And we're going to talk about an article that I found really interesting and fascinating. And there's not much of this stuff out there that is actually like thought provoking and actually brings up subjects

that need to be discussed in America. But I will say when those things do come out, every now and

then you'll have somebody like a George Packer. And for people who don't know, George Packer is a

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