PODCAST · news
The Bullvine Daily Brief
by The Bullvine
Every article from TheBullvine.com — read aloud so you can keep up with dairy while you're milking, hauling, or driving fence. Daily dispatches on genetics, milk economics, herd management, policy, and the stories the trade press won't touch. No fluff, no PR, no filler — just our journalism in your ears. New articles go live in audio within hours of publication. Subscribe and the day's Bullvine comes with you.
Episodes
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E671 Elevation Still Leads at 15.2%: How Holstein USA’s August 2026 Top 15 All Connect
In 1966, a Virginia A.I. stud gambled $2,800 on a calf named Round Oak Rag Apple Elevation. Three years earlier, illness forced Lester Fishler to disperse his Nebraska herd, sending a pregnant cow to California where Pawnee Farm Arlinda Chief was born. Today, these two foundation sires still sit…
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E670 Dairy Data Pipeline: Milk Recording Herds Fell 17.3% Since 2020, Cows Just 8.2%. What Reaches the Proof?
Canada lost 17.3% of its recording herds since 2020. Your robot logs thousands of data points daily, but what actually reaches the national proof? The show ring measures visible commitment, but national evaluations rely on a fragile data pipeline. On The Bullvine Podcast, we expose the gap…
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E669 Dane County’s Potential $200 Million Plan Starts With the Coliseum. Expo’s Guaranteed Term Ends in 2028
World Dairy Expo’s final base-contract year overlaps planned Coliseum construction. Where will the cattle show run? The Bullvine Podcast examines Dane County’s potential $200 million Alliant Energy Center redevelopment and its implications for World Dairy Expo. The July work plan places Coliseum...
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E668 They Chose Dairy: Eight Women Show What a Dairy Career Can Look Like
Imagine walking onto a 1,600-cow commercial dairy with zero family land, no generational name on the mailbox, and the quiet, crushing feeling that every pair of eyes in the barn is waiting for you to fail. Or picture holding a master’s degree in agronomy and an executive-track resume, only to be...
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E667 Logic-PP’s August 2026 Proof: 3909 LPI, and Two PP Sons Out of His Own Half-Sister
With Logic-PP hitting 3909 LPI, polled genetics have caught the breed's elite, but two of his PP sons carry a 12.5 percent shared-dam loop. The Bullvine Podcast traces Luster-P’s influence down to Canada's top three proven bulls. We dissect the Lambda Leysure P half-sibling mating to show why the...
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E666 The Cow She Wouldn’t Let Go: Alyson Doiron and Ella Win Junior Supreme at World Dairy Expo
You know the feeling of watching a great cow walk onto the trailer for the last time. It’s the harsh, unsentimental reality of the dairy business. But what happens when you’re a teenager, the cow is your absolute favorite, and the people loading her are your own family? Three years ago, Alyson...
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E665 Hank Van Exel’s Parents Milked Grade Cows by Hand. He’s the 84th Klussendorf Winner
Brenda Lee, the World Dairy Expo Holstein show announcer, began reading the citation before the crowd heard his name. But behind the applause and the silver Tiffany trophy waiting on the table was a reality most showmen never have to face: thirty-five years of forty-hour hauls across the desert,...
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E664 Peter Vail, 87, Earns the Honorary Klussendorf and Still Tells Kids to Pick a Calf
In 1964, a young Cornell graduate sold off his small herd of quality Brown Swiss. For most aspiring cattlemen, that dispersal would have been the quiet end of a short-lived dream. But for Peter Vail, walking away was actually the first step in a sixty-year build. He didn't just come back to the...
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E663 Joe Price Wins the 2026 Klussendorf-MacKenzie Award: Butlerview’s Manager Gets Called to the Shavings
Imagine being 13 years old, standing in the barnyard, and watching the trucks load up everything your family has built. For Joe Price, the dispersal of his childhood dairy herd wasn't just a heartbreak—it was the moment that forced a quiet kid to figure out if he actually loved the cows, or just...
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E662 Winners Work: What Elizabeth Hall’s Expo Speech Means for Kids Who Didn’t Get Pulled
You know the walk. Your whites are spotless. Your heifer is set up square. The judge looks your way twice, maybe three times, but the pulls stop one kid short of you. At the World Dairy Expo, 294 out of 339 youth showmanship competitors made that long, quiet walk back to the tack box without a…
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E661 Seven Breeds, One Read: Every World Dairy Expo 2026 Champion and What They Told Breeders
Under the blinding halogen lights of the Coliseum on Friday afternoon, the arithmetic of the modern show ring looked impossible. On one side stood operations with multi-breed strings, seven-figure investments, and teams that move like pit crews. On the other stood an 18-cow tie-stall barn tucked...
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E660 A Mentor, Six Names and a Board: What Three 2026 Expo Honors Actually Have in Common
Imagine being handed a farm checking account the summer before eighth grade and being told that the genetic future of the herd is entirely in your hands. Or sitting in a diner in 1979, staring at a one-month-old bull calf, and risking your career on a pedigree that half the industry would have...
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E659 Five Roads to Madison: The Cows, Families and Decisions Behind Five Elite Programs
It’s the phone call every dairy farmer dreads, usually coming in the dead of night. A prized cow is down. For Tom and Kelli Cull, that agonizing moment arrived when one of the most valuable show cows in the world suffered a severe hip dislocation. The easy, purely financial decision would have…
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E658 Lactanet Gave Murray Hunt Its Distinction Award. He Gave the Room a 3,500-Herd Problem
Imagine standing in front of the most powerful people in Canadian dairy. They’ve just handed you a lifetime achievement award for building the very foundations of the industry's genetic evaluation systems. You’re 81 years old. The polite thing to do is say thank you, reminisce about the good old...
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E657 World Dairy Expo 2026 Holstein Show Preview: 11th Place Is Now The Favorite
Five of nine Madison divisional champions vanished for eleven months while an 11th-place heifer took over the continent. Ryan Krohlow holds the microphone to judge an International Holstein Show where five reigning champions skipped the 2026 circuit entirely. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down the...
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E656 They Mortgaged Three Wisconsin Farms to Build World Dairy Expo. Four Years Later It Was Nearly Bankrupt.
Norm Magnussen, Allen Hetts, and Gene Nelson put their farms behind a $100,000 bank note in 1967 so dairy cattle had a stage. With Howard Voegeli securing state backing, four Wisconsin breeders risked their generational ground for a show that had never opened a gate. Within four years, empty...
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E655 Three Feed Inputs Set the DMC Margin. Diesel Isn’t One, and It Rose 65%.
USDA's DMC margin rose $3.07 through June, but on-highway diesel surged 65%. The statutory formula cannot see your fuel bill. On this episode of The Bullvine Podcast, we break down why a modeled 500-cow herd absorbed $31,980 in added fuel expenses against just $4,317.50 in net program payments....
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E654 Iowa’s Manure Penalty Never Left $5,000. The Restitution Ran 6.7 Times Higher.
An Ohio dairy manager drew a federal conviction and a $25,000 fine over 789 fish. An LLC will not shield your staff from personal criminal liability. The Bullvine Podcast dismantles the myth that state permits protect operations from federal Clean Water Act enforcement. While Iowa administrative...
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E653 Waterloo Warned Us: How the World’s Greatest Dairy Show Died – and What Twelve Years of Expo’s Own Numbers Say Before the Gates Open
Large dairies pay the highest hourly wages in agriculture, yet their labor expense drops to $1.85/cwt while herds under 50 cows bleed $13.18/cwt. ERS data reveals a stark economic reality: operations with 2,000+ cows pay peak wages of $25.81/hour while holding total labor to $1.85/cwt. On herds...
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E652 USDA Raised Make Allowances Up to 42.6% on Self-Reported Processor Costs
USDA added up to 7.15 cents per pound to processor make allowances on self-reported data. On 500 cows, that pulls up to $105,800 out of your pocket every year. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down the June 2025 FMMO formula changes that stripped 85 to 92 cents per hundredweight across all four milk...
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E651 The $128,320 Additive Bill: Why the First Dairy Carbon Credit Wasn’t Bovaer
Feeding 3-NOP costs 35 cents a cow every day you do not get back. That is $128,320 a year on 1,000 cows your milk check cannot absorb. The first U.S. dairy methane credit ever sold did not use Bovaer. Texas dairyman Jasper DeVos banked credits with Rumensin, an FDA-approved efficiency tool that...
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E650 “I Was Wrong. They Were Better.” – The Glengarry Ayrshires That Beat the World
Glengarry Sir Burton was fifteen years past his last show when his progeny swept the 1953 Royal Winter Fair. Both grand championships. Both reserves. The get of sire. The bull came off a 180-acre farm four miles from Lancaster, Ontario, where two brothers owned their herd sires in partnership,...
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E649 $11,525 Buys One Day Off. $14,263 Is Sitting in Hours Nobody Counts.
Buying relief labor to prevent mastitis wrecks is bad math. You would need to stop 60 clinical cases a year just to break even on $11,525 in milker wages. The Bullvine Podcast dismantles the myth that buying time off pays for itself on disease prevention. Teagasc research reveals the real money...
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E648 The 22% Starter Made Better Calves – Not Bigger Ones. Here’s the 3-lb Test.
The study cited to sell 22% calf starter did not produce heavier calves. Empty body weight gains between 18% and 22% starters were identical. On this episode of The Bullvine Podcast, we expose the gap between feed marketing and barn reality. University of Illinois data reveals higher protein…
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E647 9,860 First-Lactation VGs. Three Stress Tests. One Undisputed Winner.
Raw 87-point daughter counts sell semen, but 9,860 Canadian first-lactations reveal only one sire passed every stress test: Blondin Detective. On The Bullvine Podcast, we evaluate 46 major Holstein sires across three tests: stripping show herds, matching dam scores, and tracking two-season...
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E646 The Biggest Dairies Pay the Highest Wages. Their Labor Costs $1.85/cwt.
Large dairies pay the highest hourly wages in the business, yet their labor runs just $1.85/cwt. On herds under 50 cows, labor hits $13.18. When an I-9 records audit stripped 38 workers from a 6,500-cow South Dakota dairy, ownership spent $110,000 bringing in visa workers rather than raising...
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E645 24 Cows Built Half the Holstein Breed. The Other Half Came from One Ontario Barn.
Elmer Dawdy and Doug Dunton built 99.84% of modern Holstein sire lines from 24 crooked cows and one Ontario barn. In 1947, a bull calf left a Wisconsin prison herd bound for Kansas on a cashless trade, while an unyielding dairyman in Brampton, Ontario, swore by an iron-clad cull rule and refused…
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E644 Every Tuesday Dann Brady Throws Out Bulls He Likes. One of Them Wasn’t Logic PP
On any given Tuesday morning at Ferme Blondin, Dann Brady has every reason to fall in love with a genomic profile. The numbers flash green, the index looks like an escalator, and the marketing package practically writes itself. But the moment the second dam turns up blank, or an unclassified…
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E643 127 Days on the List, 82 Hours on the Road: The Cull Cow Math Nobody Runs
UBC tracked 1,171 cull cows across 20 herds. The average cow sat 127 days on the culling list before anyone loaded her, losing condition the whole time. When responsibility travels with the milk check, nobody owns the window where the real damage happens. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down landmark...
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E642 Nordic Holstein Coancestry Rose Twentyfold. Your Inbreeding Percentage Won’t Show You.
Seven of the top ten August 2026 GTPI sires share one father. While herdbook mating reports look stable, underlying genetic diversity is collapsing. On The Bullvine Podcast, we break down why pedigree inbreeding numbers fail to flag real breeding risk. Canadian Holstein inbreeding reached 9.99%…
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E641 94.3% of Trough Samples Had Coliforms. Your Wellhead Test Won’t Show It
Your wellhead tested clean, but 94.3% of troughs carry coliforms. Biofilm lines the pipe, cutting cow intake and costing real milk. When somatic cell count creeps up, farms swap liners and culture cows while ignoring the water trough. In this episode of The Bullvine Podcast, we break down why…
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E640 One Ring, Three Dynasties: The 1989 World Dairy Expo Class That Rewrote Holstein History
Winnie, Laurie Sheik, and Ada walked into Madison's Coliseum in 1989 as young heifers. What followed rewrote global pedigrees. In October 1989 at World Dairy Expo, Judge Howard Binder sorted a Senior Two-Year-Old class after milk-out that seemed like standard ringside drama. Instead, that single...
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E639 The Access Fight Is Worth 5¢. Class III Already Took 64¢.
The Canadian dairy access dispute is worth 5 cents per cwt. Real Class III market swings already cost four times more than the entire trade battle. The Bullvine Podcast cuts through trade-war headlines to run the barn math on Canada counter-tariffs taking effect September 8, 2026. While political...
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E638 Rumination Drops Five Days Early. The Payback Takes Six Years.
Her rumination dropped five days before diagnosis, but paying off the hardware takes six years on health alone. On The Bullvine Podcast, we break down the real economics of precision dairy monitoring. Wearables now sit on cows in 64.2% of surveyed large herds, flagging metabolic disorders 2.1…
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E637 The Real Price of World Dairy Expo: $3,800 a Cow, Ten Days, and What Nobody Writes Down
Hauling a five-cow string to Madison costs $3,800 per cow. Expo charges just $280 of it. The other 93% is the cost nobody writes down. On this edition of The Bullvine Podcast, we break down the kitchen-table math behind ten days at World Dairy Expo. While entry fees represent only 7% of your…
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E636 That cull cow brings $2,340. Her replacement costs $3,500.
Cashing a $2,340 cull check today leaves an immediate $1,160 hole when replacement heifers cost $3,500-plus in the tightest inventory since 1978. On this edition of The Bullvine Podcast, we break down why shipping a sound, bred cow milking under herd average is no longer an automatic load. USDA...
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E635 500,000 Gallons a Day: A Ceiling to the City, a Floor to Its Challengers
A judge tossed the challenge on standing, not hydrology. The numbers on the record reveal exactly what your next dairy expansion will have to prove. North Dakota approved up to 500,000 gallons daily of municipal water for Riverview's 12,500-cow Abercrombie Dairy. Wahpeton holds 2,130 acre-feet...
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E634 The Colostrum Standard Moved — and 39% of Your "Passed" Calves Are Losing Milk
Ninety percent of calves pass the old colostrum test. Under updated standards, nearly 40% land in Fair or Poor—costing 187 lbs of first-lactation milk. The Bullvine Podcast challenges the outdated 10 g/L pass/fail colostrum test. Reclassifying USDA NAHMS data under Lombard's four-tier consensus...
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E633 DOJ Signals “Ongoing” A.I. Bid-Rigging Probe: The $100M Exposure, the Unnamed Co-Conspirators, and the Safeguard Nobody Requires
A bovine A.I. manager pleaded guilty to rigging cattle auctions, and the DOJ signaled its criminal antitrust probe is just getting started. On The Bullvine Podcast, we break down what court filings establish after Herbert Lutz admitted to six years of coordinated auction bidding across $1.6…
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E632 One Cow, Seven Bulls, Six Countries: What August 2026’s Proof Run Really Tells You About Your Semen Tank
One sire owns 7 of 10 US GTPI slots and one cow backs 7 bulls across top lists. Buying off the A-list without checking pedigrees is a costly trap. The August 2026 proof run across six countries exposes an alarming genetic bottleneck. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down why your semen tank is far…
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E631 August 2026 USA Proofs: Four Sires Are Driving the Entire Top 10 – Is Your Semen Tank Truly Diversified?
If three or more straws in your current tank trace back to Ripcord, Delux Dominance, or King Doc, you aren’t diversifying—you are buying the same genetics. Every USA Holstein Top 10 in the August 2026 proof run traces back to basically four sire lines. The GTPI floor climbed 77 points in just…
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E630 87% Can’t Point to the Agreement. 92% Never Got Paid. October 2 Is the Deadline.
Eighty-seven percent of surveyed producers couldn't say they'd signed a data-sharing agreement. Ninety-two percent have never been paid a cent for the data. Those numbers come from the American Dairy Coalition's poll of 657 dairy producers, conducted February 24 to March 14, 2026. The Bullvine...
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E629 At $3,010 a Heifer, Your Worst Cow Just Got a Reprieve
Five cows on the cull list this morning. Run the retention math at $3,010 a springer, and three of them are worth more in the stall than any heifer you could buy. Replacement heifer inventory just hit its lowest level since 1978. That single number rewrote the keep-or-cull decision on every dairy...
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E628 The 18,855-Cow Permit and a 92¢ Formula Change Your Lender’s Already Run
Your lender has already run this math. A federal formula change pulled 92¢/cwt out of Class III last June — $88,320 a year on 400 cows, with no line item on the statement. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down what USDA's June 2025 make-allowance change actually did to your milk check, and why it...
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E627 $4.17 a Straw for Polled. The A2A2 Premium Isn’t Reaching You.
Purdue set the polled semen break-even at $4.17 a straw — $5.70 in 2026 dollars. Check that against tonight's semen invoice. Two traits get sold to you as the future. Only one has a testable number behind it. The Bullvine Podcast works through the Journal of Dairy Science figure on homozygous...
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E626 The $1,300 Gap Between the Bull You Want and the Bull You Should Buy
A 96th-percentile LPI bull can rank 31st for Health and Welfare. Pro$ puts that gap at $1,300 a daughter in lifetime profit. Most producers never look. The Bullvine Podcast runs the barn math on Canada's 20 most-used Holstein sires against Lactanet's six new subindexes — the analysis that found...
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E625 The $93,300 Cow Family: Why the Breeding Fight at Your Kitchen Table Is Really a Succession War
That $575 beef-cross calf premium isn't free money. Every beef service on a replacement-eligible cow trades away roughly $585 in future heifer value. The math looks obvious at the calf pen and falls apart at the heifer barn. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down why the question was never how much…
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E624 $20.11 Under Water on Every Hundredweight – Before the Bad Month
USDA puts the cost of making milk in a sub-50-cow herd at $42.71/cwt. Milk sold for $22.60. That's $20.11 underwater before anybody has a bad month. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down why the 40-cow tie-stall isn't losing a bad year — it's losing a structural argument. ERS data shows 2,000-plus-cow...
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E623 Two Barns Run 60 Cows Per Robot. One’s Broke
Two barns run 60 cows per robot. One prints money; one's bled cash for six years. Same headcount, opposite milk cheque — and cows-per-robot never saw it coming. The dealer quotes 66 to 70 cows per box. Real North American barns average 50.5. The Bullvine Podcast breaks down why that gap decides...
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E622 Your Oldest Cow Isn’t a Cull — She’s a $3,000 Heifer You Don’t Have to Buy
At $3,010 a replacement heifer — a record — the cow you're about to cull might be the cheapest one in your barn. Here's the math most farms skip. Replacement heifers hit $3,010 a head in July 2025, up 164% since 2019, with US inventories at a 47-year low. This episode of The Bullvine Podcast runs...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Every article from TheBullvine.com — read aloud so you can keep up with dairy while you're milking, hauling, or driving fence. Daily dispatches on genetics, milk economics, herd management, policy, and the stories the trade press won't touch. No fluff, no PR, no filler — just our journalism in your ears.
New articles go live in audio within hours of publication. Subscribe and the day's Bullvine comes with you.
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The Bullvine
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Bullvine Daily Brief have?
The Bullvine Daily Brief currently has 667 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Bullvine Daily Brief about?
Every article from TheBullvine.com — read aloud so you can keep up with dairy while you're milking, hauling, or driving fence. Daily dispatches on genetics, milk economics, herd management, policy, and the stories the trade press won't touch. No fluff, no PR, no filler — just our journalism in your...
How often does The Bullvine Daily Brief release new episodes?
The Bullvine Daily Brief releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 667 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
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You can listen to The Bullvine Daily Brief on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Bullvine Daily Brief?
The Bullvine Daily Brief is created and hosted by The Bullvine.
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