Podcast · Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 22.3.2025 · 2025-03-22 · 61:41 · In Finnish
Cold realism about Ukraine, who gets to live how they like, and the end of the gambling monopoly — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys
Published as “Viisastelu: Zelenskyi kävi kylässä | Onlyfans-kuvaukset koulussa | Veikkaus-monopolin aika ohi”
Hosted by: Ivan Puopolo
▶ Watch on Viikon viisasteluklubi
Sami Miettinen joined Viikon viisastelu — Ivan Puopolo’s weekly political panel, known in English here as Weekly Wiseguys — on 22 March 2025, alongside MP Atte Kaleva, making his first appearance on the programme.
Unusually for the series, the strongest section is foreign policy, and it is strong because nobody pretends to know. Two competing explanations for Russia’s war are set out side by side — a reaction to alliance expansion, or expansionist restoration — and left open. What the panel does instead is test both against the same question: whichever is true, a treaty binds only as long as keeping it is worthwhile, and a guarantee without the capacity to enforce it is not a guarantee. They correct one common formulation precisely — the alliance does not expand, states apply and members decide — and they also aim criticism in their own usual direction, noting that transactional politics costs trust, including commercially.
The middle section applies a liberal principle where it is uncomfortable. Adult-content filming at an educational institution draws a two-part answer: what consenting adults agree is nobody’s business, but the students’ formally voluntary attendance carried a social threshold, so the criterion of voluntariness deserves examination. The same principle is then applied in the opposite direction to a lifestyle their own side tends to disapprove of. The line they draw — no coercion, no parallel legal systems, constitutional outer bounds — is stated consistently.
It closes on the case for replacing Finland’s gambling monopoly with a licensing system, and on the most practical thing in the hour: before playing, ask whether you can improve at this game. A hundred thousand hands of poker makes you a better player; a hundred thousand lottery rounds does not.
Chapters
- 00:37 — The line-up and a debut
- 01:38 — The world’s happiest country, for the eighth time
- 02:23 — What the survey actually measures
- 03:16 — The criteria, and how they were chosen
- 04:05 — How freedom feels in different places
- 04:55 — Positive and negative liberty, again
- 05:40 — A proposal about naming
- 06:27 — The president’s role
- 07:15 — What was feared, and what happened
- 08:02 — The division of labour at the top
- 08:50 — Slogans, and what is in them
- 09:40 — Domino theory from the Cold War
- 10:26 — Two explanations for the war
- 11:16 — The Ryti precedent
- 12:02 — A leader as an expendable part of a deal
- 12:53 — How NATO expands
- 13:41 — A treaty holds only as long as it holds
- 14:30 — Borders are not permanent
- 15:18 — Can an ally be trusted?
- 16:10 — Condemnation, and what it achieves
- 16:58 — What is our business and what is not
- 17:44 — Campaign promises, kept
- 18:31 — What Finland brings to the table
- 19:18 — The price of trust in trade policy
- 20:06 — A scenario for a deal
- 20:51 — EU membership and agriculture
- 21:37 — An election result annulled
- 22:25 — A coalition of the willing
- 23:12 — Adults and their choices
- 24:01 — What happened to the students
- 24:51 — Where the line runs
- 25:37 — The trad wife phenomenon
- 26:23 — Why it is none of my business
- 27:16 — Overreach on both sides
- 28:04 — A liberal principle against one’s own side
- 28:50 — Do I accept a life unlike mine?
- 29:39 — Universalism and parallel legal systems
- 30:31 — Limits set in the constitution
- 31:16 — What a constitution can bear
- 32:04 — A dream of a tax ceiling
- 32:50 — The canon of fundamental-rights experts
- 33:39 — Is there an upper limit on taxation?
- 34:26 — The politicisation of a committee
- 35:18 — Judicial appointments and their logic
- 36:09 — Idealism at the negotiating table
- 37:01 — When facts do not get through
- 37:53 — Right in theory, wrong in practice
- 38:42 — A vision and a practical objective
- 39:29 — The moral and the fiscal argument
- 40:16 — The landmine treaty and its background
- 41:05 — A justification that does not hold
- 41:51 — Parliamentary commitment in foreign policy
- 42:40 — The ship turns slowly
- 43:27 — Domestic and foreign policy as different things
- 44:16 — When the national interest requires it
- 45:04 — Fear in the face of moralising
- 45:49 — The apology that never came
- 46:35 — Gatekeepers and podcasts
- 47:24 — How much authority to concede
- 48:12 — What remains of a controversy
- 49:48 — From gambling monopoly to licensing
- 50:36 — The gambling that already happens
- 51:23 — Sweden’s experience and the transition
- 52:16 — How the revenue is framed
- 53:02 — Freedom and its consequences
- 53:49 — The alcohol comparison and what actually happened
- 54:37 — The politics of regulation
- 55:23 — How addiction should be addressed
- 56:13 — A pyramid with nothing coming out
- 57:03 — Why people react to colours
- 57:49 — The arithmetic of an evening out
- 58:37 — The test: can you improve at this game?
- 59:22 — The house still wins
- 01:00:10 — What replaces the monopoly
- 01:00:55 — Sign-off
The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it. This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.
A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, in English and in Finnish.
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