Central Europe

But if that fails, let's say the Americans begin to move out in a serious way, this threat inflation can help you convince your publics that they should be willing to ante up the money to pay for a serious rearmament program.

So I think all these considerations are at play and are leading the Europeans to make this claim, which you and I both know is a false claim, that the Russians are interested in conquering all of Ukraine and then moving into Eastern Europe and maybe even into Central Europe at some point

pointIt, isn't this, uh, threat inflation about as unpopular with the average Europeans as the Trump-Netanyahu war in Iran is with average Americans?

There's no question that it is unpopular.

So it's a really, if you look at the sort of bleak geopolitical picture, I mean, what has happened, I think, is that the sort of post-1945 rules-based international system where states don't invade each other or menace each other has pretty much collapsed.

And we have, in Putin, we have an imperialist trying to seize Ukraine and recreate a zone of power Soviet-like influence in Eastern and Central Europe.

But in Trump, we have a fellow imperialist who's been threatening Canada, who says he wants to annex Greenland, and has pronounced the whole of North and South America as an American hemisphere.

This is bonkers.

Welcome to part three of the Black Death series.

We conclude this series by following the plague from northern France to England to Germany, Central Europe and beyond.

A continent already on its knees, watching the horizon for the next black flag to rise.

The reach of the pestilence was extensive, relentless, indifferent to borders or belief, even touching the remote frozen island of Greenland, where isolation itself proved no sanctuary.

But back in the day, it was like begging for money, you know, if you did that in Mexico.

But in Europe, it was like normal, you know, it was like, yeah, let's busk.

And we learned that straight away.

And it was amazing.

And so like, But a lot of people knew who we were.

And then Dublin was blooming because they had this Celtic tiger going on, you know, like on fire.

And it was full of young people from Europe and from different parts of the world, but more people from Central Europe.

And young people kind of supporting music.

We're here live.

We'll be here every week at Tuesday at 2 o'clock live, 2 o'clock Central European time.

And I'm joined by my good friends, my co-hosts, Javier Dantedo and Vasiliki Karamuza.

And I've decided, since we're friends, and I like for my friends, my close friends to have nicknames, this year you guys get new nicknames.

So keep that in mind when you make your tips because I assume many of you haven't finalized their roster yet because we have two more days until the first jumble.

So yeah, I think that's the most intriguing part.

Yeah, the action gets going at 6 o'clock Central European time on Thursday with Bayern and Sofia against Sao Paulo, Dubai hosting Real Madrid.

On Friday, Besiktas makes its EuroLeague return.

Oh, if you're giving horses like two darn hot, et cetera, a chance, you're giving him a chance.

What about Central Europe? Drawing the barrier 13.

What do you make of him?

think he's he's got plenty of talent but looking at him in the yard last time like he just he just doesn't look to me like he's quite there like some of these other colts they're big strong very um mature for their age he is not

Or you

could back a Frankel in the golden race.

Central Europe.

When in doubt, back a Frankel.

Here's a story from the world.

Perched beneath one of Central Europe's most imposing medieval castles is the Slovak city of Trenczen.

For centuries, it's been at the crossroads of European history.

It's also one of two European cities named capitals of culture this year.

We'd climbed the steep stone steps of Matusz's Tower, the castle's highest point, named for the local medieval Hungarian ruler, Matusz Csák, who appears to have been something of a gangster.

He still gets a street named after him, as does the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

It was his troops that reached Trencin almost 1,850 years ago, leaving behind a Latin inscription in the Castle Rock, the northernmost known evidence of a Roman army in Central Europe.

The inscription is one of Trencin's oldest claims to fame.

As a Blank Check fan, I can tell you that it was back in like December.

They talked a lot about how they had to schedule certain episodes because, um, Griffin was going to be out of town in Central Europe for reasons we could do.

We'll find out later and we'll be super fun.

And the answer ended up being he was going to be in the Resident Evil movie because as in because Zack Greger is a friend of their podcast and was on an episode or two.

But most of those countries came from communist heritage, were part of the former Yugoslavia that broke up during the 1990s and during the war.

So a lot of economic and political characteristics of the region are much more similar to developing parts of the world than to, let's say, Western Europe or maybe Baltics or even some countries Central European countries that are part of European Union now for more than 20 years.

So the first thing that we need to tackle is the fact that China is dealing with the Western Balkans much more similar to how it is dealing with some parts of, let's say, Africa or maybe Southeast Asia.

than how it is dealing with the countries like Germany, France, UK, the countries with big developed economies.