Latest / The Daily Sarcast / April 6, 2026: Pepsi, Drones, And A Chocolate Drop Cake
Transcript
- 0:00Today's episode is sponsored by Moving Back In With Your Parents When You Get A New Job.
- 0:05You're the first Black in the Five-Timers Club. Tina Fey to Jack Black at SNL this past weekend.
- 0:11Insert theme song here. This is the Daily Starcast. I give you the news and
- 0:15made me a laugh. I'm Lindsay Vernick and it's April 6, 2026.
- 0:19Happy Monday. I'm coming to you guys live today from my parents' house.
- 0:24I moved back in with my parents because I got a new job, which is like the most
- 0:29ironic thing in the world.
- 0:31Like you get a new job and you move out of your parents' house while I move back in with my parents.
- 0:36In real news, Pepsi officially pulled its sponsorship from a UK music festival
- 0:41just hours after the Prime Minister criticized the decision to have Kanye West headline.
- 0:47Pepsi didn't even mention Kanye in their statement. They just quietly pulled
- 0:51out, which is corporate for we'd like to pretend we were never here.
- 0:55The festival used to be called Pepsi Max Presents Wireless, and now it's just
- 1:00called Wireless, Which doesn't really feel like the name of a music festival.
- 1:05It sounds more like your internet cutting out right before you say something you'll regret.
- 1:09Which is exactly what kind of happened.
- 1:12And look, Pepsi has spent decades being associated with things like sugar,
- 1:15caffeine, and a lot of questionable life choices.
- 1:17So for them to draw a line is honestly impressive.
- 1:21A girl went missing in Arizona in 1994 when she was 13, and she has just been found.
- 1:26But plot twist, she wasn't kidnapped. she just ran away and stayed gone for 32 years.
- 1:32Her name is Christina Marie Plant, and she's now 44 years old,
- 1:36and now she has a new name that she will not announce because she wants to stay
- 1:40hidden, and apparently she had help from family members to disappear.
- 1:44It's wild because authorities spent decades thinking that this was an abduction case.
- 1:49Meanwhile, she was just out living her life under a new name like she joined
- 1:52witness protection without the government.
- 1:54One of the original investigators is now like, wait, this was resolved back then.
- 1:59So now there's two timelines. One where law enforcement thought this was a mystery
- 2:03for 30 years, and another where someone was like, yeah, no, she just left.
- 2:07Honestly, the most shocking part isn't that she ran away, it's that she successfully
- 2:12avoided being found for three decades.
- 2:14I can't even avoid people I went to high school with on Instagram.
- 2:17So now a detective just closed a 32-year-old case, all because somebody didn't
- 2:23want to be found, and was successful at it.
- 2:25Greece is moving toward banning social media for children under 15,
- 2:29as the government responds to growing concerns from parents about phones and platform use.
- 2:34The proposed policy comes as many families report increasing issues with social
- 2:39media addiction, cyberbullying, and a general lack of ability for younger children
- 2:42to self-regulate their screen time.
- 2:44This ban would go well with existing restrictions in Greece,
- 2:47where schools already limit or ban phone use during class.
- 2:51The public support for the idea is very strong, and a lot of polls show a majority
- 2:55of people are in favor of some form of restriction.
- 2:59Parents are really struggling to manage their children's access to social media,
- 3:03and they're asking for the government to, like, step in and help with these limits.
- 3:06But also, of course, not everyone is agreeing with this approach.
- 3:10Some critics question how the ban will be enforced and argue that digital safety
- 3:14should be handled within families rather than through government regulation.
- 3:18This really makes you question how early is it for kids to get on social media
- 3:22and how much responsibility should fall on parents versus the government.
- 3:25In lindsay life my family had passover
- 3:28seder this past weekend and for everyone who's not jewish or just a bad jew
- 3:34passover is when you just don't eat yeast or flour or anything like that so
- 3:40my mom made a flourless chocolate cake but then she dropped it after she made
- 3:46it so it became a chocolate drop cake.
- 3:49We all tried it for dessert, and we were confused. Like, it was literally not sweet at all.
- 3:55And everyone was like, hey, Jill, that's my mom's name. They're like, it's not sweet.
- 4:00And she's like, yeah, well, the recipe didn't call for sugar.
- 4:03My grandmother went around whispering in everyone's ear, that's the worst cake I've ever tasted.
- 4:09And thing of this week, this week is school drones.
- 4:13So there's this startup in texas and they're pitching
- 4:16high schools on security drones that are designed to
- 4:19respond to active threats in real time so these
- 4:22drones are called black arrows and they can fly up to 100 miles an hour to reach
- 4:27a threat quickly and once they're there they're built to disrupt not destroy
- 4:31they can physically impact or ram into a person to knock them off balance crash
- 4:36through windows if needed and use strobe lights to disorient and throw off their focus.
- 4:40They can also add loud noises to add to the chaos.
- 4:44So instead of firing off a gun, they rely on non-lethal tools like pepper gel
- 4:49to try to get them to slow down and distract them.
- 4:54So here's the part that feels very modern and slightly dystopian.
- 4:58The drones are piloted remotely by operators sitting in a company headquartered in Texas.
- 5:04So in a crisis, a real person is steering a drone in real time from a very far away distance.
- 5:10A lot of people say it's mostly about speed and saving lives.
- 5:15However, it is a very expensive workaround to a much bigger problem.
- 5:19Either way, this era of school safety has officially expanded into something
- 5:24that sounds like it belongs in a sci-fi war film.
- 5:27Cooking tip of the day. If the cake recipe doesn't call for sugar,
- 5:31you should probably still put it in anyways.
- 5:34Feedback, comments, questions, and if you wish you were looking for a date,
- 5:37email me at lindsay at thedailystarcast.com. Thanks so much for listening.
- 5:40Talk to you guys tomorrow.