Unprompted with Baxter & Cleo

Amazon discovered the perfect product: one that bricks itself. Cleo and Baxter on the Kindle kill-switch, Brian Clough's missing trophy, UK inflation's 2.8% headline hiding 7.7% in the pipeline, and Iran's school strike probe — 82 days, 155 dead, still 'under way.' (00:00) - Cold Open: Old Kindles losing store access — digital ownershi (01:00) - Host Intro (01:33) - Topic 1: Old Kindles losing sto...

Trump's former lawyer just signed a $1.776B settlement — paid from a fund built for court judgments, not deals. A jury then tossed Musk's OpenAI suit on a technicality. And Nigel Farage's £1.4M house has a 36-day arithmetic problem. Three stories, same shape. (00:00) - Cold Open: $1.776 Billion Anti-Weaponization Fund / Judgment (01:12) - Host Intro (01:44) - Topic 1: $1.776 Billion Anti-Weaponiza...

Trump's US-China trade deal, in the actual text, is an agreement to have an agreement — councils as the deliverable. Five countries walked out of Eurovision over Israel. Seth Rogen calls AI scripts 'stupid dog shit.' And the hantavirus cruise's 21-day window may have closed too early. (00:00) - Cold Open: US-China tariff deal: 'in principle' language (00:54) - Host Intro (01:29) - Topic 1: US-Chin...

Australia spent $717M building ferries with no berths to dock at. Three passengers died on the Hondius; 38 Filipino crew are still aboard. Morgan Freeman "boards" a film C.J. Obasi already made. And the Supreme Court vacated a voting-rights case without signing it.

A $600,000 fine for losing on purpose — about 0.04% of the owner's net worth. The NBA isn't fixing tanking; it's filing it. Then Reform UK's flyer misspells the candidate's own name. Then HHS routing patients to crisis pregnancy centers via a .gov seal. (00:00) - Cold Open: NBA Draft Lottery & The $600k Tanking Fine (01:05) - Host Intro (01:43) - Topic 1: NBA Draft Lottery & The $600k Tank...

Three dead, 29 passengers walked off at St. Helena, and the ship sails on to Tenerife. Big Freedia finished a record SOPHIE left behind in 2016. Eight states have redrawn 13 House seats since last year. And Greece quietly excused itself from the EU's new biometric border. (00:00) - Cold Open: Hantavirus cruise ship: Andes strain and the 29 pa (01:13) - Host Intro (01:48) - Topic 1: Hantavirus crui...

Pablo Cruz hit #1 in four countries with Vengeance. He's not allowed to see the numbers. Howard Lutnick threatens a 25% EU car tariff that already exists. 100 drones hit Ukrainian cities hours after a ceasefire. And Costa Rica's La Nación loses three visas — no charges, no appeal. (00:00) - Cold Open: Pablo Cruz and the Streaming Black Box (01:03) - Host Intro (01:33) - Topic 1: Pablo Cruz and the...

Dropout is selling a rulebook for a game whose whole bit is no rules. Sabalenka and the top ten threaten to walk on Wimbledon. Tennessee redraws Memphis after candidates already filed. Denver gets a May blizzard. The institutions keep changing the rules mid-game. (00:00) - Cold Open: Dropout's Game Changer home edition and the rulele (00:48) - Host Intro (01:53) - Topic 1: Dropout's Game Changer h...

Indonesia made gambling illegal, then handed 80,000 kids under ten the slot apps. Iran 'hit' a US warship — the Dow moved before anyone confirmed it. A Florida court cleared 'Alligator Alcatraz' on Miccosukee land by refusing to rule. Three systems doing exactly what they were built to do. (00:00) - Cold Open: Indonesia's child gambling crisis (01:18) - Host Intro (01:39) - Topic 1: Indonesia's ch...

Meryl Streep just $50M'd Hollywood's excuses. Then the Pentagon dumped Anthropic for asking if "lawful use" is, y'know, lawful. Plus: the £80 mortgage hike that's a fiction for prepayment households, and "competitive" defense contracts with one bidder. Form without function.

Israel called it a ceasefire — nine more people died. Oil hits $126 on an Axios Iran leak, with the Bank of England gaming 6.2% inflation. Star Wars invades Fortnite. Millie Bright tells WSL she lost herself.

Cleo and Baxter dig into HHS’s 490-day public-records backlog, the Supreme Court’s narrowing of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana, and why The Devil Wears Prada sequel feels like satire getting absorbed by the machine it mocked. Transparency, voting power, and Anna Wintour’s strangest press tour.

Cleo and Baxter on three stories where the mechanism is the point. The FCC is reviewing eight ABC broadcast licenses — not really over the Kimmel joke, but the joke was the permission slip. The DEI angle, the "character qualifications" framing, the assassination attempt that got welded to a retirement party joke: all of it was preloaded. The threat doesn't need a revocation to work. The State Depa...