Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/30/25: AI Mass Layoffs, Nvidia Bubble, Healthcare Costs Spike, Kash Patel Freaks Over Kirk Assassin Probe

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss mass AI layoffs, Nvidia bubble watch, healthcare costs spike, Kash Patel rages over Kirk foreign ties probe.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from Smartless Media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he's still,

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And on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now.

But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals.

And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult. Hold up. A real life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. To find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free,

and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. So mass layoffs have begun.

We've got the list of large, companies that are laying off thousands of workers. The Fed also announced that they're going to be doing another rate cut, but future rate cuts are uncertain. So a lot to dig into there in terms of economics. We're also getting a look at the health insurance premium rates for next year. And boy, oh boy, does not look good for literally anyone. We've got some interesting revelations with regard to the investigation of Charlie Kirk's murder assassination. So Cash Patel pissed off at Joe Kent, because Joe Kent was looking at some of the evidence and exploring potential outside ties, including potential foreign national ties. So we're going to take a look

at that. Also, some good news. A man who had been arrested for posting a Charlie Kirk meme has been released after public pressure and some local reporting. So some good news there. But he did spend a month in prison plus before he was released. Absolute insane situation. We're going to do a little bit of a dive into the races that are happening, the electoral races that are happening next week. We got New Jersey. We got Virginia. We, of course, have the New York City mayoral race. We've got some brand-new polling out this morning that is very interesting. So you definitely want to stay tuned for that. We're also taking a look at J.D. Vance confronted over Israel at a T.P. USA event. And Jank Yugar threatened with deportation by Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, live on

Pierce Morgan. So that's an interesting moment for you. I'm saving perhaps one of the most sexist public comments also. I might be there with you. I don't take you over. be there with me. I think even the most radical feminist will be there with me. Thank you to everybody. It's been subscribing, breaking points.com for our premium membership. We deeply appreciate it. By the way, while we're on that, we do have a new promotional. Let's go and put this up here on the screen. This is holiday merch. It's right around the season. So it's 20% off for our breaking points members. We've got our sweater. It's back. Our Christmas sweater, which of course sold out last year. And the breaking point socks. I can attest. I wear. I wear.

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helps other people find the show. But let's go ahead and start, as you said, Crystal, with the economy. There is a lot going on here in terms of the Federal Reserve. Let's put this up here on the screen. Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, lowered interest rates for the second meeting so far. But it was not a lot. And he also cast out on expectations of a further rate cut later this year. This sent markets into a little bit of turmoil immediately after. He uttered the phrase, quote, far from it whenever he was asked specifically about market expectations from a rate cut of the next gathering in December. This was a little bit of a surprise erasing some of the gains on the day. It wasn't a crash or

anything like that. But the point is, is that Powell's comments, as they write, underscore the easiest part of unwinding the central bank's aggressive rate increases might be over as he navigates a committee with what has identified as a growing course of officials who are also wondering whether rate cuts are even warranted. All of this results entirely on the back of inflation, but also the data blackout. So this is really important for people to understand. The data blackout because of the government shutdown. So right now, the immense amount of data gathered by BLS and others from the federal government has now been shut down. What is it, 25, 26 days, something like that. So they're actually kind of flying blind. That's part of the reason why he said in December,

I genuinely don't know. In addition to tariff policy is all over the map. President Trump and President Xi met this morning, or whatever, this evening in South Korea. Recently for some hour and a half meeting, they did announce a reduction in the overall number of China tariffs. Still waiting for some market reaction. Things look flat right now in terms of the futures. It was relatively expected. It was probably priced in. It was effectively. They kind of were telegraphing some of that. We'll get to that in the NVIDIA chapter. But the whole point really around all of this is precarity, lack of data, flying a bit blind. And when you combine it with some of the job data, things are not looking

particularly good right now. Yeah. Let's put A2 up on the screen. Speaking of that, you know, we covered earlier in the week some of the Amazon and the UPS layoffs. We can add to that list. Just look at this. UPS 48,000 employees, Amazon up to 30K, Intel 24. Nesley, 16, Accenture 11, Ford 11, Nova Nordisk 9,000, Microsoft 7,000, PWC, 5600, Salesforce, 4,000, Paramount, 2000, Target, 800, Kroger 1,000, Applied Materials, 1,44, meta, 600. We can go to the next one. GM is also announcing thousands of layoffs. This is specifically in their electric vehicle plants, which, you know, makes some sense since we've been on again, off again, with the push towards electric vehicle. Obviously, the Biden administration was in favor, set up some incentives, both for consumers and also for automakers to move in that direction. Trump administration running 180 degrees in the other direction. So GM now laying off 3,300 of their workers associated with EVs. And, you know, one of the reasons is that Wall Street rewards, you know, all their stock prices surge when they can show that they're able to get rid of human beings.

Another piece is that you have AI coming in, and especially with white-collar jobs, they're thinking, okay, well, we can push some of our, you know, spreadsheet jockeying and analysis and some of that basic level work. We can push that on to AI and have fewer people actually at the organization. As people leave, we also are not going to rehire. And then the other component here is that you have a massive amount of uncertainty because of the, you know, because of a variety of reasons, but one of them certainly being the erratic nature of this presidency and never knowing what the hell, this man is going to do next. So that doesn't exactly inspire confidence if you are a business owner, something we can attest to as well in the future and in, you know, making large-scale investments or certainly building out your workforce. So for all of those reasons, you have companies not only putting a pause on hiring, but actively laying off thousands of workers at this point in what appears to be a very troubling trend. Yes, that's right. Let's go ahead and please put A5 on the screen. This is from the Wall Street Journal. Tens of thousands of white-collar jobs are now disappearing as AI starts to bite. What they say is, and, you know,

they point to some of the job losses that we already covered in our last show from Amazon, from UPS. However, they highlight a few that I actually wasn't even necessarily aware, about Target cutting some 1800 jobs. They also said white-collar workers from companies like Rivian, Moulson Coors, Booz Allen Hamilton, General Motors, and others, all receiving pink slips just ahead of the holidays, adding up to absolutely tens of thousands of jobs. now so far. Exactly as you said, a lot of this is just like grunt work and, you know, administrative cost, HR, legal, et cetera. Behind the waves, they say, is the embrace of artificial intelligence. Executives now hoping they can handle more of that work than the well-compensated white-collar

employees. Investors have pushed the C-suite to work more efficiently with fewer employees. Altogether, the factors are remaking what office work looks like in the United States, leaving managers that remain with more workers to supervise, less time to meet with them, while saddling the employees fortunate enough to have jobs with much heavier workload. So you're going to work more money or more hours for the same amount of pay. Yeah, not more money. Not great. Well, somebody's making more money.

Yeah, the people at the top. You know, and the investors. Doler made a good point about that. He was like, well, they're claiming all of this, you know, increase in productivity and decrease in costs from AI, but I'm, you know, you're not seeing them lower prices now, are you? No, of course not. And there was an interesting statistic here in this Wall Street Journal piece. they say the college class of 2025 submitted more job applications than class of 2024.

So put in more work into the job search while receiving a smaller number of offers, according to the National Association of colleges and employers. So they're having to send out more applications and they're getting fewer job offers. We continue to see that unemployment rate for new college grads tick up. Again, there's a variety of reasons, but AI is certainly one of them. You know, as companies, look, the entry-level work is exactly the sort of thing that you could potentially use AI. And even companies, I think, that haven't fully figured out how to incorporate AI in a way that does save labor and, you know, makes their employees more productive such that they don't need as many human beings. They anticipate being able to do that.

And they want to get the Wall Street rewards from a big headline saying that they're laying off a bunch of workers because, you know, our society's structured, such that sort of thing is rewarded, actually. You know, they highlight a really sad case here, a 33-year-old guy. So this guy is exactly the same age as me. He has three children. He has spent 10 months looking for work. He's a technologist, has requisite experience. They say that he applied to over 1,000 jobs to make ends meet covering food, gas utilities. He emptied his 401K, sold stocks, crypto, and the Pokemon cards he collected with his son.

His home was put into foreclosure when he couldn't make the mortgage payment. This summer, a friend referred him now to a dealership job. He commutes two hours or more each day, hustles on the floor from the stores 830 to 9. On Tuesday, he's weighing weather to drive in on his day off. So a 33-year-old father of three basically bankrupt. By the way, in New Bronfels, Texas, no disrespect to New Bronfels. I like it there. It's a nice place, but, you know, it's not exactly a very high cost of living area.

This is a place where houses should be no more than a couple hundred grand for a reasonable house for a family of four. So consider, you know, what the mortgage payment and all of that would look like. it would be different stories living in a two, three million dollar house, but that's not, you know, anybody who's done anything particularly wrong. So if you're effectively bankrupt and you have at least a number of skills and you end up working a dealership sales job, I mean, that's, that's rough. No disrespect to that job either at all, but just shows you, you know, that he's like, I have no work life balance. I have three children. I have a two-hour community each way, okay? I mean, that's a nightmare scenario. It reminds me of, I forget, it was his

documentary about the GM plant that closed back in 2008 and the workers where they're like, yeah, you have a job, but it's not here. You have to go somewhere else. That's right. Remember that? And they all had to go live in like housing to get like temporary housing together and then try to commute back on the weekends. Yeah. These are people who are like, you know, generational residents of this area. Exactly. Right. And then their families just boom, God. The entire decimation of the town happened within a decade. And now it's almost been two decades at this point. I actually would like to go back and to check on some of those areas. I'd be willing to bet, you know, that soul got basically sucked out of all of them. And they also, he says, they, they, they, they say in the piece about recruiting firms where they have seen, quote, a number of 40-year-olds are now surging in terms of people who have been let off. They can't keep up with the technology. It's outpacing their skill set. And they are now looking for jobs that are out

there. So there are some 25 years, 27 years, I think, technically, from retirement, right? So they still have 30 prime age working years almost ahead of them. That's really, really devastating. They highlight people genuinely across the income spectrum, across the skill spectrum, and across age just to show you the way that this is all coming together. And it's also being manifested not only in the job loss, but also in the higher prices for all of us through power, through data centers, through the amount of concentration in our stock markets. We've taken an entire bet on AI. If it fails, we're done. Like, we will have a full-on great recession. Actually, it might be worse than 2008. We're also done. I mean, seriously, like, this is the beginning, right?

A.S. still really kind of sucks. And you're seeing these level of layoffs and joblessness skyrocketing for college grads and them, you know, filing a thousand applications and getting no job offers and 40-year-olds getting kicked out of their jobs and not being able to restart and people unable to change career. Like, we are just at the beginning. You will never meet a more radicalized person than the person who, like, did all the things, went to business school, took on all this debt, or went to law school, took on all this debt. And then there is nothing for them. Like, that's, that is the reality now and that is the accelerating future that these companies are aiming for. And like, what are we going to do about this? I mean,

genuinely, what are we going to do about this? As I've said before, the best case scenario is that they never get beyond the phase they're at now of like, you know, it kind of sucks. And you can't really do all that much with it. And so there's some labor force disruption, but it's not cataclysmic. I don't know. You know, the path that they're heading, on what they want to achieve looks like it is a revolution from the top that they are trying to achieve. And I know that there will be a reaction from people who are looking at this landscape for themselves and their kids. And like, I literally don't know what to do to survive now because there's no entry-level positions. You know, certain categories are eliminated completely.

And it's not sector by sector. It's like, you know, a lot of it is the jobs that we were all told, oh, go in to learn to code. That's the job of the future. Those are some of the first jobs that are going. So I don't know. It's pretty dire, and we can see Republicans, this is like, you know, maybe the least important storyline, but Republicans starting to take on water here, A4, on their economic handling because of this whole confluence of events. For the first time in quite a while, we have the Democrats taking the lead and the party better to keep the country prosperous. I doubt anyone has a whole lot of confidence in either party to really guide the ship and steer the course as we head into an incredibly uncertain. uncertain era here. And like I said, I think it's just starting to set in for people what

AI is actually intended to do, which is to replace every single one of you. Let's think about the UPS story. Did you really hear about it anywhere? I mean, we covered it on this show. It was our A-block. Did you hear about it? I mean, it's 48,000 people who are in an industry where it's management and operations. Like a lot of these people, this is middle class, normal people, uh, mobile. probably did everything right. And they're out of a job ahead of the holidays, ahead of the busiest season of UPS. What is UPS telling the entire market? We don't need these people to function. We'll still be able to deliver all these packages on time. And maybe they can, but nobody even particularly cares about any of these. Like, did I see a major national

politician or anybody actually come and speak out? Not really, not one, right? I mean, instead, everybody, this is, I'm borrowing a little bit from Tucker's mullog, because he mentioned this specifically. He recently did one about Venezuela. And he's like, I'm sorry, I don't care about Venezuela right now. In particular, Lindsay Graham was talking about how Venezuela supports Hezbollah or something like that as part of the reason why we need to overthrow. He's like, I'm sorry. He's like, that is just something I don't care about right now. It's not an imminent threat. Like, this is actually an unironic imminent threat to the very foundations of who we are. So it's really, it's really just concerning. The politics, the politics, I think what it highlights

as you're talking about there about the GOP, the GOP advantage on the economy is going away. that's probably a reflection of because they're in power right now. The reason it was high in 2023 is because Biden was... They were out of power, yeah. Exactly. So now, but even at the Democrats, like, plus four, it's not that high. It just shows you, like, nobody has any real vision or attention to the actual things that make society tick. It just seems like it's on autopilot.

It's completely in the hands we covered yesterday of Sam Altman. Sam Altman literally gets to decide whether he's responsible enough to introduce mass AI pornography, into the entire system. Sam Altman gets to decide, and Open AI personally gets to decide whether they are responsible enough in their handling of mental health and of suicidal ideation. And it's completely amoral and also undemocratic. Like, no, that is singularly a subject in issue which should be entirely up to the people. If we decide ultimately that, yes, this is how they should handle it. I mean, I won't like it, but so be it. But we never got to weigh in on any of this. And I, I think that that is the foundation of, you know, our economic relationship to labor since the post-1900

Gilded Age era is we decided, no, it's actually ridiculous to say that these large companies get to run every facet of our life. We will take back democratic control through the one last thing that we have, which is the current government. And we see absolutely none of that. We just want them to let them do whatever they want. It's putting all of us in a tremendous amount of risk, especially retirement, which we're about to get to within video. Look, guys, this is the real great replacement theory. Genuinely. I mean, the politicians in charge right now are funneling money and favors to a few giant corporations and a few oligarchs who want to replace, make your labor irrelevant. Like, it's not hidden. It's not a conspiracy. It's out in the open.

And, you know, it's only a matter of time before people connect the dots between their electricity bill going up right now and these data centers going up all across the country and these increasing layoffs that are starting now, especially in white-collar work, but also we talked about Amazon runs to replace 600,000 of their blue-collar warehouse workers. You know, that's one of the few jobs you can get now where it's like you can come out with a high school degree. It's not a great. It's a very difficult physical job, but you can earn, you know, 20, 25 bucks an hour. At least it's something available to you. And they're trying to automate all of that out of existence. So it is a very dire landscape. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her.

Well, wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, My neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult?

And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tantal. wearing down the patio to find out what's going on with her ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times.

John and Anne Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular circular home high on the top of a hill. But little bit of a hill. By little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it.

They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. Hey, I'm Kelpen, and on my new podcast, Here, we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way,

I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again.

with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. But should we check in on how the financial bubble is doing today, Saugger? Yeah, let's hope it's not a bubble because we're screwed. I mean, it's definitely a bubble. Like, I don't think, genuinely, I don't think there's anyone who denies that it's a bubble. It's just a matter of how much the damage is going to be. Let's put it up here. Envidia has now become the first $5 trillion company.

shares have been boosted by the AI boom. You can see there, the market cap, now $5 trillion, just $273 days ago. It was $4 trillion, just $66 days. It took 66 days to go from $2 trillion to $3 trillion, and it took some 180 days to go from $1 trillion to $2 trillion. But you can see the absolute gigantic increase in the overall stock price in the market cap. Shares have been boosted, they say, by AI's potential in recent flurry of deals. Remember that these deals are not actually cash deals. A lot of them are circular round-trip finances the way that they call it vendor finance is another term that goes back several decades. You can go watch our segment with David Dayn if you're interested for the exact mechanics. NVIDIA is now larger than

AMD, ARML, ASML, ROTCOM, Intel, Lamb Research, Micron, Qualcomm, TSMC combined, combined all of those juggernaut semiconductors, manufacturers. Remember, also, TSM actually makes the NVIDIA chip, not that a lot of people even know that. Now, according to the Dow Jones market, its value also exceeds entire sectors of the S&P 500, including utilities, industrials, and consumer staples. The Santa Clara Company designs chips, as they say, about GPUs, has shipped some $6 million of the Blackwell chip. It released just last year, has orders for $14 million more.

That's part of the reason why. And this is why, you know, saying it's a bubble implies that they don't sell anything. They actually do sell a lot of stuff. Like, they have a lot of orders on the books. That's part of the reason why the stock is so high. The question is, are those orders going to continue in the medium to long run to sustain this level of growth and to finance all of the deals that are, you know, propped up by these insane valuations? Just again to stick with this, the market value of NVIDIA now exceeds the entire S&P 500 industrials. It exceeds consumer staples. It exceeds Broadcom. It exceeds the S&P 500 utilities. AMD, A, S&P 500. on Micron, I mean, just consider what percent that that makes up of the entire S&P 500. Ironically, I use ChatGPT to calculate this, it's some 8% alone just of the entire S&P 500.

So just the whole, so if, you know, you're a normal investor, you have your 401k, your Roth IRA, whatever, and you're just on auto buy for a Vanguard S&P 500 fund, which is what most people responsibly should do, you're betting on NVIDIA a lot more than you think. Now, you're not totally, you know, exposed to the risk, but yeah, let's say it goes down. Then that will drag the entire index down. It literally has that power. Like, I mean, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that the retirement portfolio of the entire country is banking on the stock. Well, and I've got some more for you.

So Jacob King crunch the numbers. He says Nvidia's now worth more than two Canada's, 166 Iceland's, a Germany and a half, every U.S. regional bank combined. the world's billionaires three times over, the entire NFL 35 times, every pizza sold in history, every item on Amazon, Visa MasterCard and PayPal, NASA, SpaceX, and Boeing, Toyota, Sony, and Nintendo, Europe's four biggest banks, every oil company on Earth, all of global gold reserves combined, all of L.A., real estate, Manhattan real estate, the whole crypto market, and all 54 African countries combined. Okay, let's think about this whole quote-unquote vendor financing thing again. So basically the idea is that

Nvidia loans money to a company. And or stock. Or stock. And then they buy the Nvidia chips. So they give the money to the company and the company sends the money back to them and gets their chips in exchange. And everybody's stock price goes up, right? Even though you're just round-tripping this money effectively. Okay. So not only do they have to maintain their order flow in order for this stock price to continue going up or even maintain its current valuation, they also have to maintain their price. So let's say that there's some sort of market hit where the price of these

chips goes down or there's some sort of a hit in the AI market where all of these companies go down. Well, not only is Nvidia taking the direct hit because now their chips are worth less and they're able to sell them for less, but now all of these investments, all of this vendor financing that is gone out to these companies, they're being hit there too because the value of those companies is going down as well. So you're getting hit twice just from one market movement. So that's when you look at the precarity of this. I mean, it's some of the same like domino type effects that we all experience firsthand, or those of us are old enough to, experience firsthand during the Great Recession. So, you know, you're set up for something very troubling.

here. And it also begs the question, like, okay, if these chips are so amazing and there's so much demand for them and oh my God, the price just keeps going up and up and up. Why do you need to do these deals if there is so much organic demand for this thing? So a lot of big questions. And like I said, I don't even think there are many people that deny that it's a bubble. There's just all sorts of cope around it of like, okay, yeah, it's a bubble. But you know what, even though it's a bubble, when it crashes, there's still going to be a lot of good that comes down of it or, you know, it's not going to pop for a long time. So don't worry about it. I mean, there are very few people who are actually like, this is fine and this market actually

makes sense. Yeah. Did you put A6B up on the screen? No. Yeah, please. This is the infamous now. Vendor financing charts. Look how beautiful this is, right? It's like a gorgeous graphic where it shows NVIDIA, it shows companies investing in in NVIDIA and VIN investing in back and then various different Open AI is kind of the nexus of a lot of these deals. But each arrow shows either investment. services, capital, hardware, or software, and how intra-related the entire thing is. This is like our whole economy right here, guys. This is it, right here.

It's entire GDP spending. It's everything. And all of it is being powered by data centers. By the way, there is a huge China angle already. Let's go ahead and put that one, please, up on the screen A7, just to show you all. So Bloomberg is now reporting, and remember I mentioned the Blackwell chip, which is one of the more advanced chips here, the AI chip, will be on the negotiating table now in the U.S. trade talks. Any substantial deal here would balance the AI compute balance of power. Trump

has suggested he is open to providing NVIDIA with the Chinese access as part of a larger trade deal, which would represent a major concession, and it would, quote, rile up national security hawks in Washington. AI Blackwell is basically like the last element of our economy where we have some strategic advantage over the Chinese. And Trump is basically worried about the soybean farmers in the Midwest. And so he's decided, I'm happy to give them access to the best technology in the world in our last moat, as long as they can bail out my trade war on soybeans. Even though, by the way, we could have also forced Argentina who we were bailing out to buy said soybeans if we wanted to. We didn't even have to do any of this. Let's put the next one up on

the screen, too, because here's the thing, guys. NVIDIA gensang, he is one of the most sophisticated political actors I've seen in quite a long time. He understands this place exactly. He's here in town actually right now for the NVIDIA conference, laying the groundwork for trying to sell as many chips in China. He's a business. That's what he wants to do, right? So what do you do? He is now joining everyone in donating to the Trump ballroom. I will also remind you that one way he was able to get access to Trump is he donated a significant amount to some super PAC, which held a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. And immediately after that dinner at Mar-a-Lago, it's not confirmed exactly he spoke to Trump. It's almost certainly must have, right? Because immediately afterwards, there was an

announcement of a concession. He has been meeting with every AI figure in Washington over the last like several months because he is desperate to preserve the Chinese bottom line for his business. He even traveled recently to Beijing and said that he would be working as hard as he could to sell the Blackwell chip. Now, what's crazy about this entire thing is that the Chinese openly say, they go, yes, we want access to the Blackwell chip for now. At the very same time, they're like, this is a strategic problem for us. So we are going to massively surge development to make sure that we're not reliant on the Blackwell chip. He doesn't care. Neither does America. Trump needs his soybean bailout, literally, so we could buy more soybeans, so we're going to give away

part of our economic, the last thing that we really have on top of them. And then at the same time, it's all just to juice the NVIDIA stock price in the short term because the Chinese, who are smart, as I always say here, are like, yeah, in the long run, this is a problem for us. They're like, we can't be having this. And they have open orders in their entire economy, which are being massively state funded to find an alternative in the immediate. So this is it. And we had Ben Smith on our show, and it bears a longer discussion. The era of trying to beat China or any of that on trying to beat China in the in terms of full-on decoupling from the U.S. side is over. My current theory is that if China and the U.S. decouple, it will be because the Chinese want to. And they're like, you guys are a problem. You know, you have a degenerate market volatile economy. They're like, we can't deal with this.

You're too unreliable of a supplier to all. And by the way, they're not entirely wrong. I mean, in a lot of ways, they are, they have been taking the steps to do that. Yes, they are. Both in terms of their financial system, you know, they're looking at our sanctions their banking system. Like, okay, this is not, we don't want you to have this leverage over us. Arnaud Bertrand had written up that whole thing about helium.

They realized they've had this vulnerability and relied on us for helium, which is apparently really important. And they're all right, well, we got to figure that out. You know, they have been thinking about how actually to become less dependent on us and decouple from us for years now. And, you know, this is the, the chips piece is a really critical piece. You know, I'm not even sure I disagree with the decision. from the Trump administration at this point.

Like, the corrupt part of it is obviously disgusting. And I actually think what it really comes down to as well is that Trump also realizes that the stock market is wholly and completely dependent on invidia. So he's like, he wants that arrow blind to keep going up. So he's going to do whatever Nvidia wants him to do to continue increasing their orders, et cetera. But, you know, when we had these sorts of export controls on, what that did is it did force China into, okay, well, we got to be creative.

We've got to do our own innovation. We've got to do our own development. You know, that's actually what helped to some of the backstory for development of deep seek. They realize how to be more innovative with the chips that they did have access to, et cetera. So, you know, I'm not even sure. Like, I don't know that the export controls were really working at this point. What NVIDIA's argument is, and of course this is a self-interested argument, but their argument is effectively like, no, you don't want to keep the American tech stack out of China.

you want them to be dependent on our tech. And so that's the argument that they've been making. Basically, if you don't allow them to purchase these chips, they're just going to go and develop their own and it'll be a direct competitor. And then, you know, that's more of an issue for you at this point. Now, like you said, I'm sure what China is going to do is both to purchase these chips in the short term

and also continue their development and race to develop this level of advanced technology. Yeah. Right. But, I mean, I think like they're racing towards that whether we provide them with the allow. them to buy these chips or not at this point. Don't sell somebody the rope to hang you, okay? At least make it a little bit more difficult. And this, look, I mean, the problem is talking about this in a vacuum. It's not supposed to be in vacuum. The point is, this is what's so frustrating.

And honestly, deeply sad. Eight years of talk about industrial policy, about competition, about decoupling, about reforming American manufacturing. And it's basically over, guys. Like, it's over. This trade deal put the nail in the coffin. Ironically, it's Trump himself, who 10 years ago was the person who ushered in a new consensus on China where a lot of people agreed. But the point of our discussion with Ben Smith yesterday is he's also the person who, because of political convenience, corrupt, whatever you want to call it, has decided actually it's not going to happen. It's not entirely his fault.

The Biden administration tried, but the truth was, as we always said at the time, it's just not enough. Like, the piecemeal approach, it was never going to work. It would have literally had to take in what the Chinese did that made a commitment made in China 2025. Like I said, I went through their plan. You would be amazed how their 10-year plan actually came to fruition on a number of counts. They have still a few strategic areas, which they're very open about, and they're moving towards it.

And their system is not only not only not collapsing as people predicted and said, oh, they'll never be able to do it. Instead, it's going the opposite. It's consolidating. You know, it looks even more legitimate for the eyes of the people. Of course, they have a lot of problems. No one's saying that they don't. it's a gigantic country with over a billion people in it, but their trajectory is on the right track. You can't say that about our current economy. And so AI is the last thing that we have.

And yeah, if they succeed, I guess it'll destroy us. If it doesn't succeed, it'll also destroy us. I mean, if we're going in the street, can we at least get to buy the BYD cars at this point? You can't in Mexico. I was actually speaking with a friend recently because I was very against allowing these Chinese cars into our market. And he made this point. He said, look, I agree. I understand where you're coming from. But the truth is, is that the American automakers are just so bad and that there's not enough competition currently in the U.S. And that the only way that we could potentially spur things is to allow B.YD, Xiaomi, and all of these other companies here access, but consumers would flock and it would

actually put organic market pressure on Ford, GM, and others to actually try and compete in that second. And I said, you know what? I'm not there 100%, but it's not a bad argument because they're cheaper. It's better technology. And, I mean, again, if we're going to live in this world, we're decoupling and all that's not going to happen, then yeah, we might as well be able to drive a cheap car. Right? You know, if the Japanese car is, sorry, it's better. It just is. I saw the new version of the Carolla. Oh, my God. I'm like salivated. Well, here's, in fairness to the American automakers, especially with the EV development, is like, you know, if you were a Chinese automaker, you knew my government is in for the long term on EVs. And, you know, and by the way,

there were a lot of Chinese EV automakers that failed. You know, it wasn't just this one company. There are many of them. There's hundreds. That's what's very interesting. Some of them have failed. Some of them have succeeded, et cetera. But they all had the confidence of, okay, this is a priority of my government. Not, oh, this is a priority of this four years. But next four years, who the fuck knows? And that's the reality for the automakers here. So, you know, like I said before, you had four years of Biden saying, okay, this is something we want to do,

and we're going to try to build on the charging infrastructure, which is a major pain point as someone who is an EV owner. And by the way, I actually love my Ford Mustang mock news. I really like it. I'm not saying it's better than BYD. It's probably not. I know it's not. It depends.

It depends on the BYD. I mean, you know, the BYDs, they have longer. The battery technology alone is better. But in any case, you know, one of the pain points is a not fully built out charging infrastructure. Biden administration was like, all right, we're going to work on that. We're going to give some subsidies. We're going to help people to be able to make the transition. We're going to support these automakers.

And then, you know, four years go by. And the Trump administration pulls all of that aggressively as like, nope, we don't want to do absolutely any of that. So, you know, in a sense, it's like it really hobbles their ability to have any sort of business certainty and invest for the long term. so I do have some sympathy for them in terms of their trajectory. No, it's not their fault. Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm not saying none of it's their fault,

but it's also a very uncertain policy landscape. You're definitely right. But even on the outcome, this is why outcomes are so important. You know, everyone's like, oh, the Biden administration appropriate funds. The actual chargers that were built out, even with the enormous amount of funds,

it was scant. It was like one in 1,000 of the amount of infrastructure. Right. And the ones that were built, you know, they had long wait times, many of the times that they were down. We just don't have the requisite ability to just go in, bulldoze, build new stuff, put in some transformers.

I will say, credit to Tesla, the new stuff that they're putting in the Northeast corridor with their transformers and the supercharging network is actually very cool. But still, that's only for Tesla owners and some, you know, the other companies that have done deals with them. It's not even close, you know, to, what's the current market penetration of EV? I don't even think it's 10% in terms of the number of... Maybe in California. Right, you're right.

Maybe in California. But here in the Northeast, I would have to look immediately. But it's still not even close to where it is. And by the way, even the power, if you try to charge at a supercharger in the middle of the day, it can get a little pricey there for a couple hundred miles. I mean, yeah, I'm preaching to the choir for people who have to pay for gas. Like, it's obviously a lot more.

But in China, they don't have necessarily that issue. By the way, you know, I was in London about a year ago or so. And you know those pylons that like stick up out of the street? In a lot of places in London, they have charging sports inside. the pylons for street parkers. So you can just roll up, you can park right there, and you can actually charge your car directly from one of those street pylons that's just sitting there on the sidewalk. I mean, London's an ancient city. If they can figure it out, why can't we figure it out? I mean, I will tell you guys, it is a superior technology. Like, not only not having a

acceleration. Yeah, the acceleration is fantastic. The way it drives is great. No maintenance, right? You're not good. You don't have to go get your oil change because there's no oil circulating through it's much cleaner, it just requires a lot less upkeep. So last longer, you're going to the, you know, the dealer or the auto mechanic, much less. You obviously don't have to deal with the ups and downs of how much gas costs and whatever. Like, it is a superior technology, but not if you don't have the infrastructure built out. Then it just becomes impractical for most people. You know, I wouldn't have an electric vehicle if it was my sole vehicle.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to take it on long trips because it's a freaking pain in the butt, you know, to have to, okay, where's my charging station? And where am I, you know, let me plan it all out. And then I'm going to sit there for 20 minutes while the thing gets at charge. And, oh, this one's broken. It doesn't work. What am I going to do now? You know, that's, that is the current reality of EV ownership.

And since our government can't, you know, build anything and couldn't get its act together to, you know, really invest in this charging infrastructure and is schizophrenic about what they even want to do in this direction, it means that our automakers are, you know, falling behind and sort of are, we're being left in the past. I looked it up. The new, EV penetration for new car sales is 7 to 8%. Okay. So that's just with new car sales even, 7 to 8%.

Yeah. Look, it's not nothing, but, you know, it's still. And you get why, because it's inconvenient right now. Yeah, of course. I've driven 12 hours in the electric car. And, I mean, I will say if you have a new baby, it's not the worst thing in the world because you pretty much have to stop every two hours anyway.

But, yeah, if it was just me, I would definitely have found it a little bit inconvenient. But I mean, you know, the full self-driving can make up for that. It depends on your own preference for the technology and, etc. But yes, look, the fact of the matter is they have abundant cheap power over there. They have a huge amount of government infrastructure and investment behind their technology. It just continues to progress. The people there love it. You know, there's no real organic complaint generally. And it would be nice if we could see something like that. And instead, all of us are just praying to the NVIDIA God that it continues to go up because when it goes down, we're all going to suffer

the consequences. I live below a cult leader and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. Adia knows she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals and now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue. But according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with her ceiling and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did. And now they've been confronting her in

really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult? not? To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans moved to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stunned. But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular, circular home,

high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble, and our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Crying Wolf Podcast is the story of two men bound by injustice, of a city haunted by its secrets, and the quest for redemption, no matter the price.

White victim, female, pretty, wealthy, black defendant. Chicago, a white woman's murder, a black man behind bars. for a crime he didn't commit. I got 90 years for killing somebody I have never seen. He says the police are his friends and then that's it. They turn on it. A corrupt detective.

How he was interrogated the techniques. That's crazy. A snitch and a life stolen. They got the wrong guy. But on the inside, Lee Harris finds an ally in his celly, Robert, who swears to tell the truth

about what happened to Lee and free his friend. If you're with me, your goal to I'll take care of you. I'm going to be with you. You stuck with me for life. Listen to the Crying Wolf podcast starting on October 22nd

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes. All right, let's get to insurance. So we are now getting more of a preview for just how much health care premiums are going up in the Obamacare

marketplaces for next year. We can put this tear sheet up on the screen. The news is very grim. Obamacare prices become public, highlighting big increases. So the Trump administration has released a preview of the available plan sold to Obamacare marketplaces in 30 states, giving Americans who buy their own health insurance a first look at just how much prices would go up. Insurers have increased rates significantly for next year, an average of about 30% for a

typical plan in the 30 states where the federal government manages markets, and an average of 17% in states that run their own markets. that's according to a new analysis from Kaiser Family Foundation. Biggest impact for nearly all Americans covered by Obamacare plans will occur with the expiration of generous subsidies at the end of the year unless Congress extends them. prices on the government website. Healthcare.gov reflect that change using calculations based on a return to the lower subsidy levels offered before 2021. So you have, you know, across the board hit in terms of prices going up. and Sagar part of what they point to, and we can get into, because I think it's still very murky

why prices are going up so much at this point. Certainly some of it has to do with the Ozempic-style weight-loss drugs, which have become incredibly popular. And also, by the way, incredibly impactful. The obesity rate is actually going down for like the first time in modern history. But you also have with this, they talk about how with the loss of the subsidies and prices going up, healthier people are going to drop out. That makes the cost higher for them, thicker people stay in the pool. And so they are pricing in that expectation that healthier, younger people are going to drop out of the pool. And so everybody who remains is going to have to bear more. I mean, it's rational. So hours are not yet public. They will be public,

by the way, November 1st. I will personally post for all of you what it will cost for me, because I'm very curious actually to see what the actual increase will be. But I mean, this is a rational calculus. Let's say it starts to get to the $30,000 a year range. and you include a $14,000 deductible, which is what I currently have right now for the plan. That's $44,000 in the event of a, like, a bad thing happening to you. Maybe roll the dice, just pay it in cash. I mean, honestly, and by the way, with cash, can't you negotiate?

I've heard that before, that if you have a cash bill at a hospital, you can call them up and be like, hey, listen, I'll pay you 50 cents on the dollar, and they'll be like, oh, okay, you know, we'll take it, something like, which shows you how fake the prices the entire time. Yeah, around 40, 50,000 of the box. I mean, it seems reasonable to just say, I'm not sure, not so sure that we shouldn't just basically be self-insured. I mean, that's a horrible place to be.

But if you're going to be out the hole anyway for such an insane amount of money, you're basically buying, like, ultra-disaster insurance at that point. And I don't think that the disaster insurance should cost $40,000 a year, right? Or $45,000, potentially, in the event of a really bad situation. That is an entirely rational choice that would not fault, really, anyone from making. And I think, you know, what we just can't get away from is, this just shows you how bad Obamacare is. And it's one of those where, with the whole subsidy conversation, it just seems missing for this entire – it just seems missing from this entire discussion. Like, the subsidies only existed because of COVID.

I think they're better than nothing. Rationally, people looked at the subsidy and said, oh, that's not affordable, but it's, like, more affordable. Yeah. So they signed up and they actually had health insurance for the first time. What I do find very objectionable is not the GLP1, but it does appear that many of the hospitals have been taking advantage of the newly amount of insured to increase their overall price for the services and including for some of the drugs that have been negotiated because, remember, the PBMs and the interlocutors between all of this are squeezing every dollar that they

possibly can. So the overall price has actually gone up as more people have entered this market-based insurance subsidy system. And so the ultimate reality that you arrive at is healthy people may leave the pool. The remaining number of people in the pool are they're going to be sicker who are going to consuming more health care. That health care price is completely untethered from any market-based demand. And that's how you end up with 20% of your GDP spent on keeping people sick. It's an insane system. And it makes me so angry when I think about it. From housing and to this, I just don't know. Like if you are, we talked previously $25,000 per year, family of four, what are we doing

here? That's usury at a certain point. Where are my AI saving? You know, when's that, when's that going to hit? Yeah, if you're going to deny people care, at least save me a fucking buck. Yeah, where? I'm like, I can't deal with this anymore. Where are the health insurance layoffs and then the accompanying reduction in premiums from all the money that you're saving? Somehow that's not filtering down to the consumer level. And, you know, they dig into who is going to be most affected. So you have this group that makes, you know, four times the poverty level. They were the ones that were really the subsidies were expanded towards. So they're making $65,000 award. That's all going to go away. So their premiums are the ones that are really going to skyrocket the most from like

a few hundred dollars to multi-thousands of dollars. But people who are at the poverty line or near the poverty line, they are also going to see their costs go up significantly. Now, It's still an affordable amount if you make a reasonable income. But if you're at the poverty level, any sort of an increase is potentially dire for you. Potentially means the difference between you being able to have health insurance and not being able to have health insurance. The other thing that they're pointing to here, Sagar, is they're saying that this weekend, November 1st, is a kind of a key deadline. Because if you don't have some sort of a deal figured out in the shutdown, then they're going to price in. the expectation that the subsidies are not going to continue, that the healthy people are going

to drop out, that these premiums are, in fact, going to become reality. So, you know, they're looking towards this weekend as really sort of like a key moment in order to, you know, determine what's going to happen for the year going forward. Now, I will say the expansion of the subsidies was under, during COVID, was very successful in terms of, you know, the uninsured rate is the lowest that it's ever been, I think. you know, there were huge numbers of people who got into the Obamacare marketplaces because of these subsidies that were offered. So it was very successful in that way, but it means now that if those subsidies go away, you're going to have millions and millions of people who are really impacted, not to mention, like I said, the follow one effects of premiums going up. Yeah, let's go to the next one because this highlights something that I'm very passionate about, which we did not even know, Crystal, until we became self-employed.

So Marjorie Taylor Green highlights this. This is for self-employed married parents in their 30s with four. kids. They talk about Obamacare. She says Democrats to this to Obamacare 15 years ago. Johnson says Republicans have a mystery plan that has yet to be revealed to fix it. No one knows what it is. We're told to stay home in our district. She highlights this post from a guy, Mark Meredith. He says, these are the nine options for health insurance in my zip code. Here are the three silver plans. The plans that he posts range from $3,655 per month to $3,810 per month. If you're look at the deductible, it's 8,600, 12,000, and 3,000, the out-of-pocket maximum ranges from the low

of 17,800 to 21,200. This is a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan for a family of six people. Now, notice, she mentions their self-employed. I mean, one of the things that you and I discover, right, when you're self-employed is not only that nobody's going to give you health insurance, but you also have to pay, like, the full freight of Medicare. and social security tax. So think about what this means for entrepreneurship. Like if you are somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur and to start your own business,

which is allegedly the American dream, you actually are a lot worse off statistically in a lot of ways by taking this gamble because $3,600 per year, how much is that annualized? I can't even do the math in my head. That's what, like $40K a year or something like that? Okay, so that's like $40,000 a year in after-tax income. Yes, it's tax deductible, you know, off of the top, that you have to be able to bring home

to make this nut before you make your mortgage or any of your other bill, not to mention profitability and paying for your employers or employees. So if you're self-employed, what is that, or if you were thinking about being self-employed and you're looking at this, what does that tell you? Healthcare attached my job is worth a shitload of money to me. I may be better off staying at this W-2 that makes me miserable because at least that don't have to carry the burden of the payroll tax and of the overall health care. That's really, I think, so bad because it means it will just incentivize more concentration. Of course, Amazon

and those other people, they have great health care because they can negotiate with the insurance company. They can provide preferential rates. So can any other large Fortune 500 company. Part of the reason why in American mythology, we're always like, oh, you know, go work at a big company is because of the benefits, right? But the benefits are a chain. slavery, basically, saying that you can't leave. And that's what I think we really need to highlight because the lack of support, at the very least, it should be easier to start a new business with the concentration of banks, health insurance, payroll tax, a lot of the other tax problems that exist for people who are small business owners, which we've discovered every single

one of those in running this. It is not, it is not simple, it is not easy. And it can very easily drive you to a place of madness. Yeah, it definitely takes out some of the dynamism. from the economy, both in terms of, you know, people not being able to switch jobs because they're so terrified about their benefits, not wanting to go on on their own because they have to have health insurance. There is no, absolutely no doubt about it. I appreciate Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, sounding the alarm on these things. I will say the solutions she's offered are the typical, like, price transparency, which is like, sure. That is not going to solve the problem. I think when you price controls. It has to be, it has to be a much more radical

solution. And listen, the left has been right about Obamacare from day one. Does it have some improvements over the prior system when you could just like get kicked off for any old reason and pre-existing conditions and all this nonsense? Yes. But if even if it had a public option, that would have at least provided some competition in the marketplace. But what you really need is to go back to square one. And I understand how difficult that would be, given how entrenched all of these interests are in our system, how much is built up around it, you know, how much. I've seen people make the point of basically like, you know, countries, yes, we're the only developed country that doesn't have universal health care, but other countries developed this when things

were simpler. And, you know, so it's going to be more difficult for us to do it. I'm sure that there is something to that. But we can, but how is this simple? Like, this is not sustainable either. So we're going to have to figure something out. And it's going to have to be something a lot more radical than like, we need price transparency, which is the only thing Republicans can really ever figure out how to say. The United States spends 70% more of its GDP on health care than any other high-income country in the world without corresponding improvements in life expectancy or outcomes. Spend more, get less, worse outcomes, and the literal incentive in the system is for you to be chronically ill. Oh, yeah. That's how they make money. That is the incentive, because that's how

you make money. So if you have a health care system that is driven around making money, you are going to have a lot of sick people, and lo and behold, we have a lot of sick people. Yeah, I talked about what's dial. I mean, I know I may sound like a broken record on dialysis, but does anybody appreciate how crazy it is that 1% of the entire U.S. federal budget is dialysis? 1%. Hundreds of billions of dollars a year spent on dialysis with no, nobody is thinking or doing anything about that. By the way, do you know how fucked up you have to be to be on dialysis in the first place? That means like 50 things have gone wrong from obesity to preventative care.

You're an end stage renal disease at that point. That is how bad things, and that's how much money we have to spend. How much cheaper would it be to make sure, hey, let's just make sure people aren't fat in the first place. Over 40% of people on dialysis are morbidly obese. The vast majority are extremely unhealthy in many other areas. Many have not have any health care in the previous number of years. It would be so much cheaper just to make sure, hey, never go on dialysis in the first place. And instead, these dialysis clinics, I forget the name exactly of it, these are multi-billionaires who are running this place.

You know, sick that is? statins, you know, and all the other drugs that people have to take for the rest of their lives after they already have blood pressure or heart problems. Yeah, who's paying for that, right? It's just better not to have that problem in the first place. Diabetes, insulin. We know what's yes, insulin prices are bad. You know what's better? Not needing insulin in the first place. How do you do that? Don't get fat. Have some preventative pre-diabetic work. Something like 70% of the U.S. population is on the road to pre-diabetes. COP1 may help with that. Yeah, that's interesting, though, but this also highlights the cost issue.

on the screen. So for the first time, actually ever, this is about the U.S. obesity rate. It peaked at 40% in 2022. It's now at 37. Now, how did it get to 37? Well, a number of people are using these GOP1 drugs is now at some 12% of the overall U.S. population. I think it's the beef tallow fry. Yeah, yeah. It's steak and shake. Actually, it's steak and shake. However, you can still see it only dropped by 2%. Okay, but we're headed in the right direction. Did you notice how it went from 33 before the pandemic to 39 after the pandemic and now it dropped by two? So what does that mean?

It's like, yeah, it's nice. We dropped by two. We're still not even on track to get down to 33. And a lot of these GOP-1 drugs are being paid for out of pocket by people who have obviously a modest amount of income. I mean, from what I've seen from the ads, it's what is it, like a couple hundred bucks a month. I mean, it's a lot of money, but it's not going to break the bank. It's not like plastic surgery or something. Not like health insurance premium kind of money.

Right, it's not like health insurance premium. Exactly right. And if anything, it probably could save you for it. So insurance is not covering it. It is covering it in some instances, but they're paying absolutely insane amounts of money for that coverage. It's still not shit showing up from where we are. And I think it makes sense because the obesity rate was something like 40%. And now it's only dropped to 37. It used to be at 33, something like six, seven years ago. We can get back to that. Maybe, you know, I'm not at this. I used to be against Jill. P-1, I still think I am for children, for anybody under like 25 years old, just because I think messing with the guts of children and all that is still very scary, and we don't know the long-term implications of that. But I do think it is clear, like, for obesity, it just needs to be all hands on deck to make sure that this is crushed as soon as humanly possible, because it will bankrupt us, will bankrupt you, beyond the money, which, you know, whatever, that's replaceable, is it will destroy your health. And there's just not, again, you know, for all the talk of Maha and all of that, et cetera. This is the structural stuff that actually keeps people

deeply, deeply unhealthy. Yeah. It's really bad. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. A golf YouTuber actually, a young guy in his 30s, 35, something like that, that Kyle watched. Oh, I know you're talking about. Yeah. The guy from Barstool. Yeah. Big guy and just just died. Yeah, I don't know what that was about, but they didn't release it to cause it did. But they did say it was an unexpected medical issue. Yeah. So, I mean, it's, look, the health consequences. And the way that being, you know, morbidly obese limits what you're able to do in the world. You know, it is absolutely an emergency. So I'm glad to see that at least there's some movement in the right direction because it just felt hopeless for so long.

And but, and I was just looking, the cost out of pocket for the generic versions is like a few hundred dollars a month. Insurers mostly only cover it when it's like directly linked to diabetes or something like that. So if it's like, you know, a vanity project. Yeah. Do you understand how stupid that? It's only once you're diabetic that they'll pay for. Wouldn't it be better to not get diabetic? Yes.

This is the sickness in the system. It's like this for everything. Oh, man, I could go on forever, but it is something that's just, you know, from the dialysis, from the amount of money that is spent every year. And it's not just, it's not like it's abstract money. It's taxpayer dollars in a lot of ways that funnels this entire system. the billionaires and the multi-millionaires that it mince all throughout, you know, all of this, for what end?

And yeah, I get it. It's trite. We've been talking about it for 20 years. But it's literally an imminent crisis with this health care premium expiring. There are going to be vast numbers of people that are just going to be uninsured, period. And like I said, if it comes to the $45,000 mark, I'm probably going to roll the dice. I probably just go uninsured. I mean, why you'd be stupid not to?

And life expectancy continues to go down. And like this, you know, this ties into that story as well. Right. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her. Well, wait a minute, Sophia. You know she's a cult leader. Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast, so you'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor's been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals, and now my ceiling is collapsing.

I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they may be part of a cult. Hold up, Sophia, a real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, but according to this person, contractors are tearing down the patio to find out what's going on with their ceiling, and her neighbors are not happy. Well, she needs to report them ASAP. She did, and now they've been confronting her in really creepy ways all the time. So do we find out if this person survives their neighborhood cult or not?

To hear the explosive finale, listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In the new podcast, Hell in Heaven, two young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one will end up dead. The other tried for murder. Not once. People went wild. Not twice. Stunned.

But three times. John and Ann Bender are rich and attractive, and they're devoted to each other. They create a nature reserve and build a spectacular sales. circular home, high on the top of a hill. But little by little, their dream starts to crumble. And our couple retreat from reality. They lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of went nuts.

Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here, we. go. Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? You may know me as the second hottest actor from the Harold and Kumar movies, but I'm also an author, a White House staffer, and as of like 15 seconds ago, a podcast host. Along the way, I've made some friends who are experts in science, politics, and pop culture. And each week, one of them will be

joining me to answer my burning questions. Like, are we heading towards another financial crash like in 08? Is non-monogamy back in style? And how come there's never a gate ready for your flight when it lands like two minutes early? We've got guests like Pete Buttigieg, Stacey Abrams, Lily Singh, and Bill Nye. When you start weaponizing outer space, things can potentially go really wrong. Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now, because it is. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to here we go again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the Charlie Kirk investigation, some very strange developments happening

at the very top of the U.S. intelligence community and the FBI. Let's go to put this up here on the screen. Officials access to FBI files in Charlie Cake case draw a pushback. That's a very New York Times way of putting some of the details. here. So let me set the stage. So the person who is in front of you, if you're just watching, is Joe Kent. He is the National Counterterrorism Center Director. He is a deputy to Tulsi Gabbard, the ODNI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Now, currently, there is a long brewing fight, apparently in the administration over the Charlie Kirk case, because Joe Kent examined FBI files in the last several weeks to, quote, investigate whether the man charged with

assassinating Charlie Kirk, had support from someone else, a foreign power, or another entity. The inquiry by Kent, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, alarmed Cash Patel, the director of the FBI. Mr. Patel and other senior official believed Mr. Kent was overstepping, treading on FBI responsibilities, and potentially interfering with the investigation and the prosecution of the suspect, Tyler Robinson. But supporters of Mr. Kent say he was doing his job, running down leads, making sure no foreign or domestic groups were linked to Mr. Kirk's death. Robinson was accused of killing Kirk last month.

Kirk, Mr. Kent, is the confirmed Senate director of the Counterterrorism Center. Quote, Mr. Patel was troubled that Kent had gone through FBI material related to the case. Mr. Kent's efforts were a topic then at a White House meeting, a top meeting with Patel, Kent, Gabbard, J.D. Vance, and the White House Chief of Staff. The people interviewed by the times were granted anonymity, they say, FBI and the DOJ generally keep tight control. over these evidence in criminal cases when they're preparing for trial, where the government documents may have to be turned over the defense and could be used to poke holes in the prosecution's case.

So what they say specifically is that while Robinson is currently only facing state charges, they were concerned that his effort could provide fodder to defense lawyers who could use the notion that there more than one person was involved to raise reasonable doubt in the minds of jurors about the case itself. Well, Cash has raised plenty of reasonable doubt in his own operative. Of the, look, I mean, I'm, I got to tread lightly here. There's so much conspiracy stuff, you know, around all of this. I will say it's pretty weird that they're getting, first of all, it's a state case, okay?

So this doesn't even have any to do with the feds. Now, number two, like technically, would they even have subpoena power over what the national counterterrorism director is doing? Like, no, right? I mean, technically would be a secret inside this entire time. Two, again, I mean, I can see how if you look at this, you're like, wait, so Cash Patel freaked out at Joe Kent for saying, are there any foreign governments or powers involved in this? That's what he freaked out at him for?

That's a legitimate question, right? I mean, look, it could be a turf war and a pissing match over the FBI and the counterterrorism director. But the very fact that this came out is a really bad look, I think, for Cash Patel. It also just, I mean, you know, considering the circumstances of the case, like, we have not learned anything new in weeks. And there's still a lot of people, obviously, Candace and others who are like raising questions about the whole thing. I do think a lot of it goes pretty insane and far, you know, being like Israel killed Charlie Kirk or any of that. I don't think there's a lot

of evidence to back that up. But you and I both know that when something like this is happening and the agencies are acting sketchy, maybe, I'm not saying that happened. I'm saying maybe something sketchy is happening behind the scenes. We have no, genuinely no earthly idea. And I think the fact that it was leaked too, by the way. You can only leak something like this if the people directly involve are the ones who can confirm it does tell us that people inside the building are trying to sound the alarm. And that also makes me ask a lot of questions about the circumstances here. This is another interesting section. By the way, this is the first mainstream outlet that I've seen publish any new journalism with regard to Charlie Kirk's assassination in weeks, if not months.

So that, to me, has been frustrating as well because, you know, you had Ken Klippenstein immediately after, able to get in touch with people around Tyler, get some understanding of who was he, how did this happen, like, you know, at least glean some sense of who this person is. And no mainstream outlet has done that kind of legwork. In any case, listen to this section of the New York Times report, they say in the hours after Mr. Kirk's killing, before Mr. Robinson was identified as the suspect, officials across American intelligence agencies were investigating whether any foreign government was involved in a plot to kill Mr. Kirk. Some officials inside the government raised questions about the assassin's abilities and training.

After security footage was released of him jumping from a high ledge, early in the investigation, evidence was collected that contained words often associated with anti-fascist writing, namely in the inscriptions on bullets found in the rifle that killed Mr. Kirk. So in any case, that's also a new piece of information that right after this happened, our own government was looking into whether there were any foreign governments that were involved in this. Now, you also have, you know, the use of Charlie Kirk's murder as a pretext by this administration to, you know, you've got NSPM 7 and this creation of a mythology around Antifa being some nationwide terror network, et cetera. You know, it wouldn't surprise me if Joe Kent was also looking into, oh, well, what, you know, left-wing groups might he have been associated with, et cetera. And as Sagar said, it could be just a turf war, and it could be that Cash Patel, for whatever reason, really wants to keep his hands wrapped around this and keep other people out. The other thing that really comes out of this is, you know, Kent and Tulsi Gabbard are allies, apparently, in the administration. And just as she was sort of shunted to the side during the buildup to the Iran strikes. It appears that she is still very much on the ounce in terms of, you know, her influence and sway within the administration as well and has, you know, rubbed a number of people the wrong way and doesn't seem to have a lot of power on the inside.

Let's put C4 on the screen just to. That's what I'm saying. It doesn't necessarily have to be conspiracy. It really could be like a turf war. C4 shows this. The FBI now opposes a push for Gabbard to take the lead on counterintelligence. So the backstory here is that the FBI made this disclosure in a pointed letter over the concern. that Tulsi Gabbard, who's the director of national intelligence, would take the lead on all counterintelligence issues. I will say, I mean, here's the thing. If you look at where things are right now in the admin, this is technically not how it's supposed to work. And let me just explain a little bit. For years, the FBI did have the lead in counterintelligence. Now, the reason why after 9-11, we established the office of the director of national intelligence was because the FBI, the CIA, the geospatial intelligence agencies, all these other agencies were not working together under a centralized figure. That's how 9-11 happened because the FBI and the CIA

were in a pissing contest, literally like what you're seeing right now. So they said we need to establish this office like the ODNI to oversee all of them that they report up to. It hasn't materialized in practice. The CIA remains vastly powerful. The FBI remains vastly powerful. The FBI remains vastly powerful, and the ODNI has been a bit of a joke over the last 20 years. Nonetheless, they have statutory authority, technically, to be the actual intelligence director for counterintelligence, specifically also, to make sure, again, that you just have the FBI and the NSA, everyone working under a unified directive, let's say, for a counterintelligence measure. Now, if you're the FBI, you don't want to give that up, because spy investigations

is like a long history of Hoover and of using his blackmail, basically, over the last 50, 60 years. I think what this comes back to is some of it is incompetence, a lot of it is turf war, but in that there's a lot of room for screwery, right? In terms of when you have turf over this investigation, then you can control what's getting leaked and what's not, and you're getting upset about Tulsi getting involved in counterintelligence. Like, why would you be upset about that? Are you trying to cover something up? Like, maybe not. It really may just be turf war. But in the interim, like, maybe you are, right? And And that's why just watching all of this, I think something weird is happening at the time.

I think it's a turf war struggle because, look, Tulsi, I've criticized her a lot, obviously, over Iran, et cetera. I will say at the very least, her and Joe are much more in an anti-war anti-neocon stance inside, even inside this administration than a lot of people may be able to appreciate. And I think that they are being punished for that. Yeah, they've been sidelined. That's right. Very clearly. Yeah. Let's put C2 up on the screen.

And, yeah, also, that's not, it's not to let Tulsi off. Yeah, I'm not letting along with it. They can resign if they want to. We're just talking about the internal dynamics here and who does have the ear of the president, who does have the power, which is very clear from the reporting you've done on Venezuela Sager. So this is, you know, this is one avenue.

Lance, the trans lover, has gone missing. Where is he? You know, like, there's a lot of questions people have. I mean, that's weird. It's weird. Right. About, and again, And, you know, the New York Post, it actually makes sense that they did this reporting.

And they did some of, if memory serves, like in the early days, right, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, you know, they had some of the initial leaks and were able to be out first with a variety of information. But, you know, the lack of additional information on Lance, I think, is also when Lance's identity, the government is asserting as a key part of Tyler Robinson's radicalization to this point. you know, that is noteworthy as well. There's another track of this, too, that I just wanted to update everybody on. I don't know if you guys have been following this case. We could put C3 up on the screen. They actually, in Tennessee, arrested this dude for literally posting a Charlie Kirk meme. Okay?

And it was not even a really crazy thing. Like, it was, you know, I was a little edgy. It was like the president, it was a picture of Trump. And then, I think it was after a school shooting, he said something like, they're going to have to get over it. And he included that quote. And that's literally just that is what he was arrested for. He was held on $2 million bond. He has been in prison for over 30. So over a month, this man who's former law enforcement, by the way, held in prison for over a month for posting a meme on Facebook. Okay? And, um, Credit to some, you know, intercepted this report here, but I watched yesterday. There was a local journalist who did an interview with the sheriff and showed him the meme and was like, where's the threat? Because the reason the bond was so high is they claimed that it was a threat against a school,

again, utterly preposterous because the context of Trump's quote was about a school shooting. So they construed this as a threat against a school. Okay, so the journalist is showing the sheriff like, where's the threat in here? And, of course, he has really no answer. He's like, oh, well, I think he knew what he was doing, et cetera, et cetera. So after, I think, public pressure and people I know have been calling into the sheriff's office, whatever, they finally, you know, the local prosecutors decide, okay, we're going to drop the charges and this guy has been set free.

But crazy situation held in prison for over 30 days for a Facebook meme. And I hear a lot from the right about whatever's going on in the UK, okay? And that's fine. You know, I think I prefer our speech laws to theirs. But where are you on this one? Because this is complete and total insanity that someone could be denied their liberty for over a month because of a slightly, not even really, like slightly edgy Facebook meme that they posted. Yeah, we do have the report that he is free now, which I guess is good.

I think what's actually crazier about this is that this was a local state case, which I still have no idea how you get a $2 million. I mean, I've literally seen reports about murderers and rapists who get less of a bond. and spend less time in prison or in jail awaiting release than this guy. How you even brought the case or the charges against him is literally totally nuts. So apparently Tennessee passed some law about these sorts of quote-unquote threats that at the time people were raising concerns about. Like, what do you mean?

What was it? What was the justification? I don't know the origin of the law or why they did it. This is something that happened like, I don't know, maybe last year. And that was the law that they cited. So all of the concerns about the way this could be abused to quash speech, I basically come to fruition in this case where they're arresting someone over a Facebook meme. This is crazy. So, yeah, I'm looking into the actual law itself.

I don't know, wow, this is actually crazy. Probably unconstitutional. I'm sure it should, you know, he should sue. He should be challenged. He should sue. He should sue for damages for emotional distress of being held in prison. I agree with you. I think it's totally absurd.

And yes, you're right. I mean, I don't know. A certain point, too, we've been covering this now for a long time. Like, we just yesterday did the Hamdi case where the guy was detained. And, I mean, okay, like he said, some not nice things about October 7th. Whatever. It's about October 7th. That's not about us.

It's literally enforcement for a foreign country. And he's still being held. And he's being held in ICE attention. I'm like, okay, I mean, look, I'm not saying it's great. good. I don't think it's a great thing that he said. I definitely don't think it was artful in the way that he said it. But the equivalence that I come back to is like, I literally see posts of Israelis being like, remember that guy in the Israeli podcast who said it makes him feel better to watch baby starving in Gaza? Remember that? He's like, it makes this

happen. It makes me enjoy my food more. It makes me enjoy my life more when I see that. Okay. And this guy's speaking like perfect English. Like I'm presumably, he's come to the U.S. many times. I was like, okay, well, then deny that guy's reason then, right? If we're going to be the police here, then we've got to do that, too. But we don't. And so it just falls apart to me. You know, all this, like, moral outrage about all of this. I don't know.

I just find it really sick. Well, we'll get later in the show, too, as Stephen Miller's wife threatening jank with deportation, because she accused him of being anti-Semitic. So a lot going on there. I mean, I'm laughing, but it's not fun. It's actually not fun. It's a genuine threat, given who her husband is. Crazy.

Hello, America's sweetheart Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless, Hillbilly Heist, from smartless media, campside media, and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high-functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from rich and gives to the poor.

I'm not that generous. It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million that had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying, like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do? That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crimless, Hillbilly Heist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and on my new podcast, here we go again. We'll take today's trends and headlines and ask, why does history keep repeating itself? Each week, I'm calling up my friends like Bill Nye, Lily Singh, and Pete Buttigieg to talk about everything from the space race to movie remakes to psychedelics. Put another way, are you high? Look, the world can seem pretty scary right now. But my goal here is for you to listen and feel a little better about the future. Listen and subscribe to Here We Go Again with Cal Penn on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I live below a cult leader, and I fear I've angered her.

Wait a minute, Sophia. How do you know she's a cult leader? Well, Dakota, luckily it's I'm not afraid of a scary story week on the OK Storytime podcast. So we'll find out soon. This person writes, my neighbor has been blasting music every day and doing dirt rituals. And now my ceiling is collapsing. I try to report them, but things keep getting weirder. I think they might be part of a cult?

Hold up. A real-life cult? And what is a dirt ritual? No clue, Dakota. Find out how it ends. Listen to the OK Storytime podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast.