America’s Coach Live!Host: Mark Whitney (America’s Coach)Date: June 5, 2025Episode 2: Live Performance of Today’s New York Times!

🎙️ America’s Coach Live – Show Notes

Episode Title: Diddy Or Didn’t He? Host: Mark Whitney (a.k.a. AMCO – America’s Coach)Length: 31 minutes

📰 What We Covered:

* Opening Bit: Sean “Diddy” Combs & Jury SatireMark riffs on Diddy’s legal woes with a courtroom comedy twist: “If I were his lawyer, I’d rename him Definitely Didn’t.”

* The Network Is the NewsFrom teenage influencers to Chinese manufacturing, Mark connects nearly every front-page story to a single force: the network effect.

* Lemonade Stand Economics 101A heartfelt and hilarious breakdown of how Mark taught his sons business fundamentals using strawberries, chocolate chip cookies, and cold lemonade in the early ’90s.

* China, Manufacturing, and iPhonesWhy American football fans shouldn’t be trusted to assemble your smartphone, and why small hands matter more than you think.

* Skating, Scaling, and the Business PivotMark shares how his son pivoted from Olympic-level figure skating to building a top-500 Amazon store—because sometimes 6’6” ruins your gold-medal dreams.

* Brown University vs. The First AmendmentWhat happens when a student builds a satire database targeting 3,800 Brown administrators? You get a lawsuit—and a teachable moment in constitutional rights.

* Jiu-Jitsu, Harvard, and Institutions Gone SoftShoutout to Ricky, the world-champion jiu-jitsu Toastmaster. Also: how Harvard and the Trump administration are both pretending to care about free speech.

* Sidney Sweeney’s Bathwater & America’s Cultural HierarchyYes, that made it into the New York Times. No, you didn’t mishear that.

* Reddit, AI, and Intellectual TheftReddit fights Anthropic over AI scraping. Why even satire has terms and conditions.

💬 Quotables

“If you’re an institution and you can’t take a joke, you’re in the wrong country.”

“Never explain a smart joke to an idiot.”

“This is a self-help webinar—where I help myself to your wallet.”

💡 Takeaways

* Teach your kids business like you teach them math.

* Technology is lowering the cost of everything—including war.

* You don’t need a network—you are the network.

* Never sign away your rights with an 893-page PDF just to get a dorm key.

* You can’t outsource relevance. You show up every day and earn it.

Unofficial Robotic Transcript

America’s Coach, Mark Whitney:It’s America’s Coach Live, where once again, I perform today’s New York Times. It’s noon on the East Coast, nine on the West Coast. Let’s get into it.

Before we begin, let me just say this. I’ve got a monitor to work with here—are you seeing that? Bit of a delay. There he is—Sean “Diddy” Combs. About a seven-second delay, just like network TV.

I just want to open with the Sean Combs story. I’ve got one thing to say about Diddy. He calls himself “Diddy.” Like, I call myself EmCo—America’s Coach—because I’ve always wanted to be named after a transmission company.

Now, if Diddy gets convicted, as a matter of law, he’s not going to be able to change his name anymore. Right now, before the jury goes out, the judge is going to give instructions, and the jury is going to head into the deliberation room asking one thing: Did he? His nickname is literally the question the jury is going to ask.

If I were his lawyer, I’d advise him to change his last name to “Didn’t.” Then I’d have him change his first name to “Definitely.” So the prosecution would have to refer to him as Mr. Definitely Didn’t. That would help him in this racketeering case.

And with that, we’re off to a big start. Starting the clock—tight 30 minutes. Here we go.

[Start: 29:59]

We begin on page one of the New York Times. I spend about an hour prepping for this show, going through the printed edition. One thing I’m good at? Pattern recognition.

There are two stories in today’s paper about athletes. One’s about SGA—Shai Gilgeous-Alexander—the NBA MVP. Shoe companies spend millions betting on kids who might become stars. They don’t know what’s going to happen between identifying a young athlete and that athlete turning pro. Will they get injured? What’s the family situation? What’s their adult personality?

In a separate story, we’ve got 14-year-old Caden Coleman in Washington, D.C. At 10 years old, people started offering his mom money. She turned them down. But now, at 14, he could make a million dollars by the time he’s out of high school. All of this—because of the network. The internet. It’s the dominant force in every story today. Meanwhile, governments are doing stuff in parentheses.

Forty years ago, I worked in TV. You needed half a million dollars worth of gear, a satellite truck, a union crew. Today, a cell phone, a $1,000 mixer, and a $1,000 microphone—and you’re global.

Back to Caden. When my sons were young, my oldest wanted to run a lemonade stand. I built him one modeled after Lucy’s psychiatric booth in Peanuts. I'm a huge Schulz fan.

I told my kids: If it says "ice cold lemonade," it better be ice cold. We picked strawberries, baked cookies, bought concentrate on sale—10 cents a can. My boys—ages 5 and 8—learned business basics. They’d sometimes do $50, $60, $80 a day.

My youngest son kept at it. He bought used CDs and DVDs at yard sales, sold them on eBay. Then he invented an Xbox repair kit and sold it on Amazon—hundreds of thousands in revenue. He partnered with China.

Speaking of China: Today’s Times breaks down what it costs to make jeans. In the U.S.? $4,000/month for a Sony machine operator. In China? $500. Guess where your jeans get made.

Your iPhone? A million made per day. That’s one billion parts. You don’t want an NFL fan building your iPhone—fat fingers. Apple likes China because Chinese women have small hands. That’s real.

The point is, if a kid is going to make money from sports, let it be a gateway to business. Most of them won’t go pro. My son was a national figure skating star. People thought he’d go to the Olympics—he won gold every time. Then? Grew to 6’6”. And that was that. Too tall. No 6’6” Olympic singles skaters.

We spent years training with champions—New England, California, you name it. Now he’s 38, back in the rink, probably going to coach. But he also built one of the top 500 Amazon stores in the country. Why? Because we taught him how to run a business.

If you’re a parent or grandparent, your conversations with kids need to change. The network has changed the world. Kids need to know how to apply reading, math, theater—even business law—to real business opportunities.

Most kids will not get a sports scholarship. But they’ll be asked to sign for student loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. That’s the real game.

[13:19]

Now, let’s speed through the rest of the paper.

Jay Leno has a battery-powered car from the 1880s. Electric cars are not a new idea—Elon Musk just mass-customized it.

Page A7, Lara Jakes covers how drones are now essential. Not just for war—drones do everything. And because technology lowers costs, even small nations can wage war affordably. That makes war both more likely and less necessary.

My Toastmasters club includes a world champion jiu-jitsu fighter named Ricky. That’s his name. Don’t call him Rich or Dick. Ricky. Built like a fire hydrant. And if he corrects you, just say, “Won’t happen again.”

[16:48]

Brown University and Harvard are in the news. The Trump administration and Harvard are playing a zero-tolerance game on free speech. Neither really believes in it. But Harvard will win if they hold on.

Here’s my message: If your law firm entered into an unconstitutional contract with the government—fire them. First Amendment includes access to the courts. Don't weaken it.

At Brown, a student named Alex Shieh built a database of all 3,800 university administrators. Then he emailed them, asking them to justify their jobs—satire. And they freaked out. That’s what I’m doing here: satire.

Brown then filed a trademark suit because he reused an old student paper name. But listen—if you're a public institution, you will be satirized. It comes with the territory.

Too many universities want to control their little world. But satire is American. You don’t get to be thin-skinned when you’re funded by tax dollars.

They want you to give up your rights. You show up on campus at 18 and sign an 893-page PDF “values” agreement. Not principles. Values. Vague, corporate mush.

[23:09]

What we want is for kids to think and create freely. The network makes that possible. But the robots are coming—for all of us. Huge opportunity, huge risk.

Page A20: Jim Marshall, Vikings, 1994. Ran the wrong way, scored for the other team. Died at 87. Great obituary, but that’s what he’s remembered for. Classic football folly.

Also today: Sidney Sweeney’s bathwater. Front page. Same page as Sean Combs and Harvey Weinstein. Combine that with Michelle Goldberg’s op-ed on John Proctor is the Villain—now that is a play I want to see.

[25:34]

Also: Reddit. Before the graphical web, we had bulletin boards. Now we have Reddit. But AI companies—like Anthropic—are allegedly scraping Reddit to feed their models. And Reddit’s suing.

You can’t just scrape data. The New York Times did a deal with Google. If you want to use someone’s data, you get permission. That’s how this works.

This show is free, but I’d love your support. Go to AmericasCoach.com, subscribe for $9.95/month. No ads. Just live weekday shows—executive summaries of the day’s chaos.

You get the news, the laughs, and the network effect—daily.

[29:40]

SGA could’ve flamed out. Injuries, conflict, bad luck. My son? Just outgrew his sport. But he’s thriving. Taking care of himself. Eating right. He’s autistic—it’s been a journey.

Steve Huffman, Reddit CEO—look him up. Impressive guy.

[End: 9:30]

So that’s the show. Go to americascoach.com and subscribe. No ads. Just support the work. Email me at [email protected].

This has been America’s Coach Live. Remember: Never explain a smart joke to an idiot. Stick to principles, not values. Help me replace my coffee-stained veneers.

I’m going to be 70 in four years. Soon to be a grandfather—our first grandchild. Another little version of me on the way.

See you tomorrow—9 a.m. Pacific, noon Eastern. Until then...

For the love of God, motherhood, and apple pie... Keep Banging!™

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