Greenland

Yeah, totally.

Like, I'd rather go to Greenland and do the Arctic Circle Trail.

Mm.

Like, that's way higher on my list.

Have you-

Have you heard of that? The what?

The, the one in Greenland.

Yeah, the Arctic Circle Trail.

For your third question in round one, category is This Is Trivial Warfare.

The Whiskey War was a nearly 50-year-long trivial dispute for control of Hans Island, fought in the Nares Strait just north of Greenland.

The war, which had a total of zero casualties for both sides, but several trades of national flags and spirits, was fought between what two countries?

All right, we're locked in.

Carmella, Ben.

Yeah.

So, so Carmella typed out, "Doesn't Denmark control Greenland?" I say, "Yeah, that sounds right." And then as I'm reading the question, I said, "This sounds like some [beep] Canada would do." [laughs] So-

[laughs]

All these things are being coveted by the big powers of this world, and the EU wants to plant its flag.

Yeah, and you know Donald Trump has been talking about Greenland for a while now.

Obviously, he wants a piece.

Uh, Russia and China want a piece, so it's definitely a pretty key geopolitical hotspot.

Absolutely, and this is right after von der Leyen visited Greenland last week.

She unveiled a 200 million euro investment package, and the reason for this now in Finland is to do a temperature check with the capitals before this Arctic strategy lands.

Yep, and this is gonna be interesting, and there are a few things that we're reporting.

They had a vote to change because the map we currently use, the Makeda version, we've been using it for fucking centuries, everything's distorted, right? Because it makes navigation easier because obviously the globe is round.

So that's why Greenland looks so big on the fucking map, but it's really not that big.

It's just as things go further from the equator, they get stretched.

So that's why the stuff at the top looks stretched and down the bottom shit looks stretched.

So the size of the countries and continents isn't... to scale right so the new vote was to update the map because we don't travel by sea anymore we don't really need it to look like that so it's a bit more accurate so africa the main thing is africa's kind of bigger africa on the current map looks like it's the same size as australia or the u.s when really australia the u.s europe they can all fit in fucking africa combined So the new map basically just makes Africa bigger, makes everything a bit more to scale.

So if you look at the new map, Greenland's a lot smaller, like more realistic.

Everything's just basically a bit more to scale.

It can't be perfect because the globe's round.

Okay? He basically said, "Rather than fight me, let me give you Sicily, and you can go run that any way you want, as long as you stay loyal to me." So what Trump will do is he will basically colonize the entire Western Hemisphere.

Okay? Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Venezuela, Latin America, it will all come under American control.

And what Trump will do is he will partition the, um, colonies, to powerful American factions, like multinationals.

Okay? So maybe Exxon gets control over the Alberta tar sets.

Okay? This is not a, a, a...

This is not, um, a fight.

Okay? So, um, I think Trump will take over Greenland, Iceland, Canada, uh, Mexico, um, Cuba, Venezuela, basically all of, uh, Latin America and North America, and then give it to all his friends.

Okay? Which includes, uh, multinationals, but also includes, um, private individuals and families as well.

Absolutely

... or Greenland.

Yep.

So it's, um, alarming, and-

And I think that makes the Arctic particularly interesting.

And as competition over these routes in the Arctic intensifies, and we're seeing a lot of European countries, obviously America, We've heard a couple of comments from the US president about Greenland and the interest in that chunk of land.

Can you tell us about Alaska? What makes it so strategically valuable and strategically perhaps indispensable to the United States?

Well, strategically, first of all, where it is on the planet is very strategic.

the history of North America would have looked a whole lot different if the Black Death never happened.

Viking settlers in Greenland all but completely died out due to the plague and attacks by natives, so they were never able to get a foothold on mainland North America and properly settle the place.

Norway was enfeebled by the plague as well, so it couldn't get supplies to the settlements in Greenland founded centuries prior by Erik the Red.

Things got so bad that Greenland had to be rediscovered in 1585.

Metalheads and Halloween lovers have the Black Death to thank for the popular image of death as a grim reaper.

The widespread death and disease changed the visual arts at the time to focus more on death and dying to a macabre degree.

Yeah.

I think we need, even though it's a Greenlander core book, I mean, we could just focus on like one or two characters at a time.

Like at the end of 19, then John and Katma saying they're going to earth.

Let's, let's take an issue or two.