reports, 9,000 reports of Russia using chemical weapons to attack Ukraine's forces, 9,000 times that we know of. And apparently they're loading the chemicals into their own drones and they're gassing the Ukrainians who are hiding in trenches and other places. And it gets them to leave their protected areas so they can breathe and then they kill them with their drones.

So apparently chemical warfare is just raging over there and this is the first time I've heard of it. Does it make sense to you that Russia is routinely gassing the Ukrainians and today's probably for some of you the first day you've ever heard of it? Why would that be? Is it to prevent us from getting involved? Because if we think they're gassing people, we say, hey, you know, we have to get involved because it's like weapons of mass destruction. I don't know. I can't understand why I'm only hearing about this today. Was it always out there? Maybe it was always out there and I just missed every story about it. Or maybe it's not real. Don't know.

So I was checking today to see if my idea about Zohran Mamdani, the potential mayor of New York City — so I told you that the best attack is to attack his creepy smile because once you hear it called creepy, you'll always see a smile as creepy. You just have to hear it once and it just becomes part of you. So it's spread a little bit. You know, there are some notable people who have posted it, but I feel like it could get a lot bigger. And I suspect it hasn't had any impact on actual voters in New York City yet. So it would have to get a lot bigger or somebody like Trump would have to say he has a creepy smile because otherwise it won't get to the voters. You know, it's not like the New York City population is watching this podcast, but they definitely have to pay attention to anything that Trump says. So if he went after him for his creepy smile, I think you would remember that forever. So we'll see if that happens.

Well, President Trump said on Friday that Iran had not agreed to nuclear inspections and it had not agreed to give up its enriching of uranium. But there are apparently some talks coming up according to Mediaite or whatever that is. They say that the US and Iran are going to be talking. Does that sound real? Do you believe Iran and the US are going to have any productive high-level discussions? I don't know. I'm not sure I believe it yet. But if it happens, they would be talking about all these things. I don't imagine anything good could come out of that. So we'll see. Trump has pulled some rabbits out of some hats, so anything's possible in the golden age.

Well, this is the end of my prepared comments. You saw how dull and boring the news was today. And I know a lot of you just use this to fall asleep to my voice. By the way, if you want a recommendation for another content to fall asleep to, try very old black-and-white TV sitcoms, you know, like The Dick Van Dyke Show and Newhart, if you're old enough to remember those. There is nothing happening in those shows. The jokes are not jokes. The issues are not controversial. It's just people talking and talking about ordinary stuff. So even My Favorite Martian. It's not provocative. There's no swearing. There's nothing that will make you laugh. There's nothing so interesting that you'll really want to hear it. It's just like ASMR. And I can fall asleep to that so easily.

The other thing I can fall asleep to, just in case you want to test it for yourself, is I'll put on a YouTube video about ancient ruins like Göbekli Tepe. Well, you know that place. Because there are hundreds of them and they all say the same stuff. Well, we found some rocks and we don't know how they possibly could have carried these big rocks and cut them to such precision. We also don't know how they understood the zodiac or astronomy so well that they're lined up perfectly with the North Star. And it's the same content over and over again. It's usually some boring person talking about it. You can go to sleep to that really well. There's nothing new in those. Well, we were wrong about when hunter-gatherers created civilization. All right. I've heard it a million times.

Anyway, so if you're using my podcast to fall asleep, good for you if it works. And this one will be especially good because there was no good content today. Not my fault. It's a boring holiday weekend.

Anyway, it's time for me to say a few words to my beloved local subscribers, but I'll keep it short and give Owen Gregorian just enough time so he can go get the Spaces ready. So Owen, you're still in the comments, I see. But in a very few short minutes the Spaces event will be opening up for people who want to get a little extra talk about today's stories and whatever else I guess you want to do. So just search for Owen Gregorian on X and you'll see a link at the top of his feed for when to join, how to join the Spaces.

All right, that's enough of that. Hey locals, I'm going to come to you privately. The rest of you, I'll see you tomorrow. Same time, same place.

In 30 seconds we'll be — uh oh. Is that not working? Well, it looks like we have a technical problem. Let's try again. So I don't have the ability to go private with Locals today. Just the button is not responding. It's happened a few times. All right. Well, we don't need to. I'll catch up to you on the Spaces event and so I'll just say see you later. See you later. I make sure that I see somebody else say see you later before I go. There we go. See you later.

Oh, it also doesn't let me end the stream. So I have to sign off and then restart back on just —