Congratulations to Chiefs Nation on yet another Super Bowl win. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce have now won three rings together, including two in a row. Speaking of rings involving Travis Kelce, last night’s win also means that Swifties — in their first year as football fans — won it all. They went from asking “What’s a down?” to “Where can I get my 2024 champions merch?” in just five months. By comparison, Detroit Lions fans haven’t seen their team play in a Super Bowl, and the first one was in 1967.

Now some good news for non-Chiefs fans: The long-awaited return of the Treasure Hunt is upon us! The first clue is below — good luck.

In today's edition:

And so much more!

–Max, Max, Jen, and Alex

Imran Khan’s party won the most seats in Pakistan’s election despite an overwhelming effort by Pakistan’s government and military to prevent that

Israel began its offensive on Rafah, a city in southern Gaza

Together with Roots

Imagine investing in real estate where the residents want it to succeed as much as you do

Here’s how it works:

…Which lowers turnover costs, minimizes vacancies, and creates solid returns for all

Sea sponges suggest the world has already exceeded the international 1.5ºC warming target

Brown University students ended a hunger strike after eight days

❤️ A study by the French Institute of Public Opinion found that the share of French 18-to-24-year-olds who haven’t had sex in the last year has increased 460% since 2006, from 5% then to 28% today

🎤 Kanye West (Ye) released “Vultures,” his first album since anti-semitism allegations that led Adidas to drop a multi-billion-dollar partnership with him. On the outro track Ye raps, “And I’m still ‘Crazy, bipolar, antisemite’ and I’m still the king”

💸 Donald Trump said he once told a NATO ally that if they didn’t hit their military spending requirement the US would not protect them. “I said: 'You didn't pay? You're delinquent?'...'No I would not protect you, in fact I would encourage them [Russia] to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay’”

🇻🇪 Venezuela is massing troops along its border with Guyana following a referendum where most Venezuelans supported the country’s claim over two-thirds of Guyana

🐘 Mike Gallagher, a prominent moderate Republican Congressional representative from Wisconsin, announced he would not seek re-election. Days before, he bucked his party by not voting to impeach the homeland security secretary, causing the vote to fail

Most news companies repress ideas they don’t agree with. We are different. To prove it, we’re making this a place where people can have a free and open debate. Each week we host a debate with the prompt below and Roca Votes story (after On-the-Ground). We’ll feature responses to those here tomorrow and then replies to those the following day, and so on.

Do you think there is anyone — past or present — who should inherently be “off limits” from a media interview? 

Read the Roca Votes first, then respond by replying to this email!

Answers to Friday’s poll and question are below the Wrap.

Today marks the return of the weekly Roca treasure hunt, brought back by popular demand. The rules are simple:

Clue 1: Bill opened his window for the first time

 Know the answer? Send a street view screenshot to [email protected]!

🍗 This dinner rocks! The USDA issued a public health alert for 14-ounce packages of Trader Joe’s chicken, lentil, and caramelized onion pilaf due to potential rock contamination

🧊 Ice Heist: Two law enforcement agencies in southern Ohio worked together to recover 27 bags of ice stolen from a Family Dollar. The police successfully returned them

🚙 Forget it, Jake…: In San Francisco’s Chinatown, a person attacked a Waymo driverless taxi by jumping on its hood and smashing the windshield, drawing applause

⛳️ Happy Gilmore takes PHX: Drunk golf fans transformed the Waste Management Phoenix Open into a “sh*tshow. On Saturday, officials temporarily halted alcohol sales and ceased fan entry by 2 PM

🦈 Something’s fishy: A North Carolina aquarium anticipates a “miracle birth” from an expectant stingray. There are no male stingrays in her tank, so either a male shark mated with her or she’s cloned herself

🇬🇧 Bro just disappeared: A 46-year-old British man who illegally entered London’s Heathrow Airport and flew to New York’s JFK Airport on December 26 without a passport or boarding pass is missing

We send our co-founder Max Frost to investigate topics around the world and he writes about them here. He’s currently writing from Liberland. Subscribers receive the full stories.

What type of person decides to build a libertarian country on a deserted island in a remote corner of Europe?

When I visited Liberland, there were people from England, the Czech Republic, Croatia, France, Portugal, and Norway there. Two of the groups were couples; the rest were individuals. Most of them were men.

The first settler I spoke to was Anna, from Norway, who identified herself as a singer-songwriter and “verified practitioner of NLP.” That’s “neuro linguistic programming,” a way of “learning how your mind works” popularized by public speaker Tony Robbins. 

Anna had come to Liberland with her boyfriend of many years, Christian. After arriving as settlers, they finally decided to get married and had scheduled the wedding for the following weekend. The bachelor party had just happened the night before. But why did she come to Liberland? 

“In January a friend told me about it,” she said. The idea resonated with her because she was “sick and tired of the political system in Norway,” which she considers irreparably corrupt. In April she visited Liberland for the first time.

“Morale was low and people were close to calling the whole thing off,” she said. “Christian and I wanted to help so we came down here in August and bought radio equipment.”

“It was a whole process to get in – trying and getting turned back. Then finally one night they made it to the island. ‘Oh my god, we’re in Liberland!’” she said. “The borders were opened soon after and they’ve been opened since.”

While Anna said politics had motivated her to come, it was clearly a passion project for her.

“The friendships that are made here…” she started. She said she had cried the prior night because of how beautiful the bachelor/bachelorette party had been and she was giddy for her wedding the following Sunday.

Christian, also from Norway, told me he came to Liberland because of politics. “The taxes are killing us. Someone in the US told me that if they taxed our gas like Norway did, we’d have riots and civil war.”

“If things fall apart in Norway this is Plan B. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist and I’m not, but if they continue like this…” he said. “A friend of mine uses this expression, ‘Deep State.’ The policies come from the World Economic Forum in Davos.”

“What do you think about environmental policy?” I asked.

“It’s bullshit, all of it…I don’t trust politicians. And it’s sad because their job is to make sure their population has a good life but they do the opposite.” 

I asked the whole group what the common thread between them was. Was it that they’re all libertarian?

“Yes,” most said, nodding.

But three people said they didn’t even know that world before arriving. What did they think of themselves as?

One woman, from the Czech Republic, shouted out, “Free-minded!”

She and her boyfriend had been in Liberland the longest, a couple months, and I asked why.

“We want to be free!” she said.

Next was Quentin, an 18-year-old from Paris who had just graduated high school.

“My dad is the Liberland representative from Mauritius,” he said. His dad had turned Quentin onto libertarian ideas, and Quentin told his dad that when Liberland “opened, I had to go.”

“What made you decide to come here?” I asked.

“The idea. Free country! It’s become a fascist dictatorship [in France]. In Covid, they made a law that the president can make a law with no permission. I want to believe in a free country.”

Quentin also told me that it’s a well-paying job.

“How much do you make?”

“7,065 merits”

“How much in euros?

“I asked for everything in merits,” he said. “I don’t ask for euros, I don’t believe in euros.”

We founded RocaNews because we wanted news companies to give us just the facts – not tell us what to think. That inspires us each week to do the “Roca Votes” Wrap, in which we summarize a controversial topic and see how Roca Nation feels about it.

When Tucker Carlson announced his interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, he sparked a furious debate in the media.

Critics argued he was wrong – some said even traitorous – to give a platform to the man who invaded Ukraine; supporters dubbed him a journalistic hero. Carlson released the interview at 6 PM EST on Friday, February 8th, and within 18 hours the video had over 120M views on X and over 750k “likes.” Then the debate shifted to how he conducted the interview.

The backlash over Tucker’s interview with Putin started days before its release.

To many, including self-proclaimed conservatives, the sheer act of interviewing Putin was wrong. Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger called Tucker a “traitor” in a February 3rd post on X. The same day, prominent never-Trump conservative Bill Kristol suggested banning Tucker from re-entering the US.

The Wall Street Journal’s chief correspondent for foreign affairs chimed in as well, saying, “Poor, poor Vladimir Putin. Until now, nobody in the West has had the chance to hear him explain all the excellent reasons for why he had to invade Ukraine.”

The praise was equally as vigorous as the criticism.

Podcaster and MIT researcher Lex Fridman said, “Tucker interviewing Putin is important for opening more channels of communication. We need more conversations, not less.” Others, like Tristan Tate, the brother of the highly controversial internet personality Andrew Tate, called Tucker a “hero” and dubbed him the “last real journalist” in America. Anticipation for the interview exploded, earning the video the “must-see TV” label.

The controversy surrounding the interview centers on two facts: 

1) It was Putin’s first interview since his invasion of Ukraine and imprisonment of WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich

2) The interviewer was Tucker Carlson, who’s been highly critical of Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky

Before the Ukrainian invasion, though, Western media had done numerous Putin interviews. Megyn Kelly (NBC) interviewed him in 2017; Bloomberg interviewed him in 2016; AP in 2013; and The New York Times published an op-ed he wrote in 2013.

Unlike with these previous interviews, Carlson’s critics feared he’d cast Putin in a favorable light. Others, including the Financial Times, said he serves the role of Putin’s “useful idiot.”

In addition to its on-air criticism of Carlson’s decision to interview Putin, CNN published an article with the following headline: “Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin.”

Yet CNN has a long history of interviewing world leaders the US deems villainous. In the 1990s, CNN interviewed both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The network had also requested an interview with Putin in the time since the Ukraine invasion.

This debate doesn’t apply only to world leaders. It also applies to serial killers and cult leaders, whose interviews have been broadcast at the risk of inspiring more evil, and the so-called “Columbine Effect,” which claims that the spotlight given to the Columbine shooters in 1999 inspired more acts like theirs.

All of this leads us to this week’s debate: Do you think there is anyone — past or present — who should inherently be “off limits” from a media interview? 

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

We founded RocaNews because we wanted news companies to give us just the facts – not tell us what to think. That inspires us each week to do the “Roca Votes” Wrap, in which we summarize a controversial topic and see how Roca Nation feels about it. Subscribers get full access.

en Tucker Carlson announced his interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, he sparked a furious debate in the media.

Critics argued he was wrong – some said even traitorous – to give a platform to the man who invaded Ukraine; supporters dubbed him a journalistic hero. Carlson released the interview at 6 PM EST on Friday, February 8th, and within 18 hours the video had over 120M views on X and over 750k “likes.” Then the debate shifted to how he conducted the interview.

The backlash over Tucker’s interview with Putin started days before its release.

To many, including self-proclaimed conservatives, the sheer act of interviewing Putin was wrong. Former GOP Congressman Adam Kinzinger called Tucker a “traitor” in a February 3rd post on X. The same day, prominent never-Trump conservative Bill Kristol suggested banning Tucker from re-entering the US.

The Wall Street Journal’s chief correspondent for foreign affairs chimed in as well, saying, “Poor, poor Vladimir Putin. Until now, nobody in the West has had the chance to hear him explain all the excellent reasons for why he had to invade Ukraine.”

The praise was equally vigorous as the criticism.

Podcaster and MIT researcher Lex Fridman said, “Tucker interviewing Putin is important for opening more channels of communication. We need more conversations, not less.” Others, like Tristan Tate, the brother of the highly controversial personality Andrew Tate, called Tucker a “hero” and dubbed him the “last real journalist” in America. Anticipation for the interview exploded, earning the video the “must-see TV” label.

The controversy surrounding the interview centers on two facts: 

1) It was Putin’s first interview since his invasion of Ukraine and imprisonment of WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich

2) The interviewer was Tucker Carlson, who’s been highly critical of Ukraine and its president Volodymyr Zelensky

Before the Ukrainian invasion, however, Western media had done numerous Putin interviews. Megyn Kelly (NBC) interviewed him in 2017; Bloomberg interviewed him in 2016; the AP interviewed him in 2013; and The New York Times published an op-ed he wrote in 2013.

Unlike with these previous interviews, Carlson’s critics feared he’d cast Putin in a favorable light. Others, including the Financial Times, said he serves the role of Putin’s “useful idiot.”

In addition to its on-air criticism of Carlson’s decision to interview Putin, CNN published an article with the following headline: “Tucker Carlson is in Russia to interview Putin. He’s already doing the bidding of the Kremlin.”

Yet CNN has a long history of interviewing world leaders the US deems villainous. In the 1990s, CNN interviewed both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The network had also requested an interview with Putin in the time since the Ukraine invasion.

That leads us to this week’s debate, which is broader than Tucker’s interview with Putin: Do you think there is anyone — past or present — who should inherently be “off limits” from a media interview? 

The question here doesn’t merely apply to world leaders like the ones we’ve discussed. It also applies to serial killers and cult leaders, whose interviews have been broadcast at the risk of inspiring more evil

One manifestation is the “Columbine Effect,” which claims that numerous mass shooters were inspired by the Columbine shooters in 1999, thanks to the spotlight the media gave them.

Reply to this email to let us know what you think!

This was an example of a Roca Deep Dive. Try a free two-week trial for Roca Premium and you’ll unlock:

Do you know what the word chauvinist means?
Yes: 88%
No: 12%

For those of you who answered no, our Friday newsletter explained its meaning — and the very first chauvinist!

Just 20 Questions! As always, we’ll feature those answers — and the next set of questions — next Friday.

We suspect many of you are reading this from home, recovering from the Super Bowl and using your “sick day” — like an estimated 16M Americans are today. While Super Bowl Monday may be one of the country’s most unproductive days of the year, we hope this newsletter brought a bit of worthwhile information your way.

See you tomorrow!

—Max and Max