Neural Newscast

[00:00] Lila Grant: Welcome to Buzz, your daily roundup of everything moving the needle on social media.
[00:05] Lila Grant: I am Leela Grant.
[00:07] Jonah Klein: And I'm Jonah Klein.
[00:08] Jonah Klein: We've got a massive show today, from a 14-year-old indie gaming project making history to literal Olympic history being written on the ice.
[00:16] Lila Grant: Jonah, we have to start with the cats, specifically the cat army taking over steam.
[00:22] Lila Grant: Mugenics is fantastic.
[00:23] Lila Grant: finally out and the numbers are like absolutely staggering.
[00:27] Jonah Klein: It's wild, Lila!
[00:29] Jonah Klein: This game has been in development for 14 years.
[00:32] Jonah Klein: 14!
[00:33] Jonah Klein: Most internet trends don't last 14 days, let alone a development cycle that long.
[00:38] Jonah Klein: But it hit the number one spot on Steam's top sellers list almost instantly.
[00:43] Lila Grant: Iconic.
[00:44] Lila Grant: And get this, it recouped its entire development budget in just three hours.
[00:49] Lila Grant: People are obsessed with the roguelite cat breeding mechanics.
[00:52] Lila Grant: My TikTok feed is nothing but people trying to breed the ultimate cat to crawl through dungeons.
[00:58] Jonah Klein: It's not organic buzz.
[01:00] Jonah Klein: When a developer sticks with a quirky vision for over a decade and it pays off like this,
[01:06] Jonah Klein: the internet rallies around it.
[01:08] Jonah Klein: The hashtags Mugenics and Cat Army are just flooded with these bizarre, beautiful feline warriors.
[01:14] Lila Grant: Speaking of beautiful, can we talk about what happened at Milano Cortina 2026?
[01:19] Lila Grant: Ilya Malinin is officially not from this planet.
[01:23] Jonah Klein: The quad god, Lila, he did a backflip, a legal backflip in the Olympics.
[01:29] Jonah Klein: We haven't seen that successfully executed and ratified since 1976.
[01:34] Jonah Klein: And he didn't stop there.
[01:36] Lila Grant: The quadruple axle.
[01:38] Lila Grant: He landed the only ratified one in competition.
[01:41] Lila Grant: His spins were clocked at a 350 rpm.
[01:45] Lila Grant: If you watch the viral clips on X, his body looks like a literal blur.
[01:50] Lila Grant: He led Team USA to gold by a single point, 69 to 68 over Japan.
[01:56] Jonah Klein: It was a razor-thin margin, but Malin's technical difficulty is just light years ahead of everyone else.
[02:03] Jonah Klein: He's making figure skating mainstream again.
[02:06] Jonah Klein: Even people who don't follow the sport are sharing that backflip clip.
[02:10] Lila Grant: It was pure cinema.
[02:12] Lila Grant: But while Malinin was soaring, the mood was much darker over at Allen Fieldhouse for the Arizona Wildcats.
[02:20] Jonah Klein: For sure.
[02:20] Jonah Klein: Total heartbreak for Arizona.
[02:22] Jonah Klein: But what a moment for the Jayhawks.
[02:25] Jonah Klein: Kansas was playing without their star freshman, Darren Peterson,
[02:29] Jonah Klein: and they still managed to pull off an 82-78 upset
[02:33] Jonah Klein: over the number one undefeated wildcats.
[02:36] Lila Grant: The rock-chalk reactions are everywhere.
[02:40] Lila Grant: Handing Arizona their first loss of the season at Allen Fieldhouse
[02:43] Lila Grant: is peak college basketball drama.
[02:46] Lila Grant: It really feels like March Madness came early this year, Jonah.
[02:50] Jonah Klein: It really does.
[02:51] Jonah Klein: The energy in that building was insane.
[02:54] Jonah Klein: It was insane.
[02:53] Jonah Klein: But shifting gears to football across the pond, Barcelona fans are currently in a state of crisis.
[03:01] Lila Grant: It's the Marcus Rashford news. He's officially out with a knee injury ahead of the Copa del Rey clash against Athletico Madrid.
[03:09] Lila Grant: This transfer was already being debated to death, and now this.
[03:13] Jonah Klein: The discourse is brutal, Lila. I mean, people are calling it the Rashford curse.
[03:19] Jonah Klein: Barcelona brought him in for a huge impact, and an early injury like this just fuels all the skeptics and the transfer regret memes.
[03:28] Lila Grant: Fabrizio Romano's post about the injury is just a war zone of opinions right now.
[03:33] Lila Grant: Whether it's bad luck or a bad signing, it's the biggest talking point in European football.
[03:39] Jonah Klein: And while Barcelona deals with that, creator culture just reached a massive new milestone in Japan.
[03:46] Jonah Klein: The group top four, Kyo, Retort, Ushizawa, and Gatchman, just announced a Tokyo Dome event.
[03:54] Lila Grant: A two-day event in July, right?
[03:57] Lila Grant: They're expecting 100,000 fans.
[04:00] Lila Grant: That is Mr. Beast level territory, but for the J creator space.
[04:05] Lila Grant: The announcement post had over 127,000 likes in a matter of hours.
[04:10] Jonah Klein: It's wild to see gaming streamers and YouTubers packing out stadiums that usually host the
[04:16] Jonah Klein: world's biggest rock stars.
[04:18] Jonah Klein: It just goes to show how powerful these digital subcultures have become globally.
[04:23] Lila Grant: From cat armies to Tokyo Dome takeovers, it's a big day for the Internet.
[04:28] Jonah Klein: Absolutely. That's all for today's Buzz. I'm Jonah Klein.
[04:32] Lila Grant: And I am Leela Grant. We'll catch you tomorrow with more of what's trending.
[04:37] Lila Grant: Stay savvy. Find us at buzz.neuralnewscast.com.
[04:42] Lila Grant: Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed.
[04:45] Lila Grant: View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.