IP... Frequently: A Not-Very Intellectual Business Podcast

A DEI vice president at JP Morgan Chase attended the Knicks' first championship parade in 53 years, spotted a full Nicks-themed trash can, dumped its contents on the sidewalk, and walked home with it as a souvenir. She has since been fired. David Pridham and Brad Sheafe use this as the jumping-off point for a larger conversation about what happens when an entire political movement is built on the same logic: take what you want, leave the mess for someone else, and call anyone who objects a racist. Conveniently, New York's Democratic primary just handed nominations to three candidates whose economic platform is basically that trash can lady, but with tax policy. The guys also check in on Paris banning alcohol sales during a 100-degree heat wave, the Iran ceasefire window, the repair of the National Mall's reflecting pool and the people trying to sabotage it, and the surprisingly complicated instructions on David's new sauna.

Iran gets the full wrath of the United States and lives to tell about it, which David and Brad agree is the worst possible outcome short of nuclear war. They chart a path from regime change fantasy to Marshall Plan optimism to the grim realization that toddlers negotiate the Strait of Hormuz better than world powers do. Then it's the Obamas opening an $850 million library while lecturing everyone about wealth, a Nantucket pastor cancelling the Declaration of Independence, and an internet famous Chinese dog with 1.5 million followers who got sold for 26 bucks and eaten before anyone realized who he was. Also, David has been drafted into attending a flower show and is taking suggestions on what a man drinks at a flower show. #whitewinewithice

When the official White House page declared Harambe a "true patriot" on what would have been his 27th birthday, most people scrolled past. David & Brad take a moment. Because once the government is producing gorilla memorial content while simultaneously installing a UFC octagon on the South Lawn for America's 250th, you have to ask what exactly Valley Forge was for.As it turns out, there’s a through-line from the White House's foray into internet meme governance all the way to Denver International Airport's genius plan to silence the lizard-people conspiracy by opening some of the tunnels for public tours, which just tells every conspiracy theorist on earth that the other tunnels are where the answers are. The fix is always worse than the problem, whether you're running an airport, a cruise ship, or a country.The coconut, however, remains the answer. Roddy Piper knew it. Sister Rose Albert Malloy knew it. And if you've spent any time watching influencers validate each other's feelings on a screen, you know it too.

The economy is in freefall. Democracy is crumbling. The president is an idiot and we're all going to die. That's the story in the news, anyway. Meanwhile, the Dow just hit 50,000. David and Brad take a moment to appreciate how markets, unlike the media, don't have a narrative to protect.Also on the docket: Joey Chestnut, 17-time Nathan's champion and reigning Bologna Showdown king, has been cleared to compete by Major League Eating after a regrettable but jurisdictionally convenient incident outside an Indiana bar. And in the state of California, a woman spent months sending cash and gift cards to a man she believed to be Tom Selleck, who had reached out via Facebook to help honor her late friend. The lesson, delivered with appropriate gravity: if Tom Selleck contacts you on social media asking for a Starbucks gift card, do not send it. Especially not in Seattle, where the mayor has made that particular transaction ideologically complicated.

Eleven people on the planet have hantavirus. The CDC calls the risk "very, very low." The media has labeled it a crisis. Brad Sheafe is slightly more skeptical about a disease you'd have to wallow in rat droppings to contract. Meanwhile, Carnival Cruise Lines is having a week, the Pentagon has released thousands of UFO affidavits featuring aircraft that defy known physics, and Bigfoot is back in Northeast Ohio. The aliens won't make contact. The Sasquatch won't give an interview. And the people actually running this country can't manufacture a semiconductor. At this point, the creatures hiding in the woods might be onto something.

People are dead on a cruise ship because someone thought a garbage dump was a birdwatching venue. The CDC, fresh off its COVID credibility tour and a poster advising Americans to masturbate through monkeypox, wants you to take this seriously. David and Brad are not sure you should. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has released the UFO files. Also: deviled ham is real, the airplane boarding process is a civilizational failure, and no one on a cruise ship has ever gotten their money's worth.

The boys are back and waste no time on the JP Morgan fiasco featuring an office sex slave, Viagra pellets, and seductive cannons. From there it’s full clown world: a Kamala donor sprints through a metal detector at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner waving a shotgun while the President, VP, and half the succession line sip cocktails in the same Hilton where Reagan got shot. Then a California winery millionaire gets trampled to death by the very elephants he flew to Africa to murder for sport. Nature keeps receipts. And because the week wasn’t deranged enough, Iran, with its navy gone and economy on life support, decides dolphin suicide bombers are the answer.