Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/27/26: U.S. To Steal Iran Oil, Bill Gates Dire Warning on AI, META Screen Time For Kids

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Ryan and Saagar are back to break down U.S. reviving piracy laws to steal Iranian Oil, Trump's approval rating at record lows, Bill Gates delivering a dire warning on AI disruption, and META lowering screen time for children. Stay tuned for the 2nd half of the show later today. Sign up for a FREE TRIAL of BP: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

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We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stillard,

and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B.

I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita 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 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 breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. Bro show. People live for the pound, the back-to-back.

Bro show. It's great to be here with you, Ryan. Do you want to do your pitch before we do? Since that's what you do? If you didn't do it yesterday, though, you're not going to do it today. No, you might. You never know who's going to watch it. Just bow beat them.

Go to breakingpoints.com. You get a month of the show free. So that means no ads. Yes. You get a link to watch the entire show. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But the more people who actually do it,

then the more likely it is that long term is going to work all the time. How about that for a pitch? I could always count on you to give our best pitch, Ryan. Thank you very much. All right. Go ahead. Listen to the man. Honestly, though, Ryan's conversion numbers are sometimes better than mine.

So that's why I'm like, I'm turning it over. Honesty and advertising. It's true honest to advertise. All right. Okay, what do I got in front of me? Here's what we're going to do. We're going to start off with Iran. The Trump administration is seeking to revive a civil war maritime court, which will allow

them to take Iranian oil as a prize, almost like something out of master and commander. We're also going to cover the midterms. There's some crazy developments happening with serious races in South Carolina, Alaska, and elsewhere, which are genuinely, at least polling-wise, seem up for grabs whenever it comes to the Democratic Party. And we're also going to talk about Donald Trump's own midterms pitch and part of the wrench that he's throwing in for a lot of Republican candidates. We're going to talk about AI. Whenever it comes to AI, there is a new Bill Gates essay, which has come out warning, quote, about the insane new reality, millions of people to be put out of work. And it comes on the heels of a new open AI actually report. court, which shows you'll remember when they used their model and it went and it hacked another

company. Some of the details have been released at a technical level, a genuinely terrifying. We're going to cover meta and its new agreement after numerous states attorney generals sued them for alleged harm against children. They are now basically in a big tobacco-esque type settlement agreement have agreed to pay some $17 billion to the various states. But the big picture, big change is the number of restrictions they are now putting in place for teen accounts. They're calling on YouTube and TikTok to also abide by this. It could change the future of social media for basically anybody under 18 in this country. Russia. Ryan actually flagged this story. What is it, the fourth largest oil refinery in Russia? And the second largest producer of gasoline? Yes, the second largest

oil refinery in Russia was taken offline by a new Ukrainian drone attack. And this comes, after some new revelations that the CIA director took an unprecedented trip directly to Moscow to warn President Putin and his cabinet to his face not to attack NATO countries. And this is exactly at a time when U.S. intelligence continues to assess that a tactical nuclear weapon used by the Russians seems more likely. And that actually all of this seems to be spurred on by the weapons crisis of munitions in the West where Putin is smelling weakness on the Trump administration and the American Empire. We are also going to be joined by our great friend of the show, Juan Davido Rojas.

He is going to talk to us about a new CIA ground war in Mexico. And then finally, I saved this one just for you, Ryan. My old friend of the show, Ben Shrekinger, who is an ex-politico journalist. He wrote the Hunter Biden book. Right. So he's got real bona fides. But he has decided to quit his establishment media career and go all in on UFOs. So he is a man truly after my own heart.

That's great. He's got a new publication. No offense to the people involved in the UFO thing, but this is a serious. I agree. That's why I want to celebrate him. I want to encourage people to go and subscribe to his work. All right. So with all of that, let's get to Iran.

Turning to Iran, major story that just broke and kind of gives us a preview into what the next month or two will look like in the Iran war is that while the munitions themselves won't be flying from the U.S. side, they are trying to constrain Iran. And it's not just part of the economic blockade. it also entails literally stealing their oil. So let's put this up here on the screen. This is from Bloomberg. U.S. aims to revive a Civil War era court to claim Iranian oil as a prize.

The Justice Department is now preparing to activate a long-dormant maritime war court to streamline military capture of Iranian oil as U.S. prizes. Prize courts, which are expected to face significant legal challenge, will strengthen the blockade of Iran and offset the cost of the conflict. They are pointing specifically to reviving the prize court as an ancient body of maritime law. So this, as I said, immediately reminds me of like a master and commander. We mean to take her a prize. And it makes sense because it's literally a Civil War air court kind of harkens back to, what is it, letters of mark where privateers can be authorized by the king.

to go abroad and to take these foreign assets, whatever they take. What I'm interested in is the crew in traditional prize law, I believe. The captain gets 50%, the crew gets 3%. So are we going to see seaborne mercenaries, or is it just the Navy? Like, how is this all going to work? And this is what was so revolutionary about the actual pirates of the actual Caribbean back in the day. They would share the prize equally. Right.

Whereas you had these kind of merchant, mercantile capitalistic privateers who would go out and the captain would take most of it. So clearly the next stage has to be the privatization of this. So Hegeseth has to then, what's the word you use?

Where you basically allow a letter of mark? A letter of mark. So Hegeseth needs to do that. So there are a lot of ships that can't get in and out. So now they can kind of arm themselves with their own little drone swarms. Right. And then they can patrol.

And why stop at the Strait of Hormuz? Right, yeah. Why not just take anybody's oil? There are ships all over the oceans. Right. Like then there are many oceans. And so it almost would undermine literally the backbone of the empire, which is freedom of navvap. It's no such thing. Freedom of navigation. Freedom of navigation is a fake thing created by us to backstop global trade because we were the great recipients of extremely cheap goods. But as they show now, the unfinalized plans, if adopted, leads to a faster path for federal prosecutors to claim oil

and other cargo taken from enemy or neutral vessels. You know what's better than extremely cheap goods? Free goods. Free goods. As U.S. property, the seized goods would then be sold with the proceeds transferred to the U.S. Treasury. So I guess the sailors will be missing out on this one. They even say ship owners and Iranian terrorism victims would then be the potential litigants

expected to challenge the prize court's use. Maritime lawyers, another said, because they would face the operational hurdle of carrying out the core process of which they have zero experience. And so once a regular feature of 18th and 19th century naval combat, it has gone largely unused since the Spanish-American War of 1898 and has lain entirely dormant since World War II. In recent decades, they have relied instead on civil forfeiture law as the mechanism for seizing ships and obtaining their assets

to enforce sanctions violation. But according to them, that's just too late, and they need to show the American public that we're getting something out of them. And so, of course, as we all know, what would happen with Venezuela, we're going to make billions of dollars in oil. Oh, oops. Actually, we seized a tanker. The tanker, it turns out, needs $50 million to retrofit.

And then the amount of oil that we need to pump and ship on a daily basis would take a year or two just to make up the retrofit cost before you even go into the black. Same thing happens with many of the refineries and all the other investments that we're trying to make. And it turns out that the amount of oil we're getting from Venezuela is piddily compared to the amount, of course, it's even held up with record transfers. What it requires is some level of business certainty. Two years from now, the regime that's in place is going to be the same regime. And I don't mean government. I mean, just the arrangement by which you're, you know, pumping out, refining and shipping oil. And nobody thinks Trump can be trusted week to week to be doing

the same thing. So I sound like some like wild conservative out here talking about business certainty, but yeah, this is just not how you're going to. No, it's still a thing, right? It is. There are basic principles. It's a pretty basic principle. It's like MBA 101. Let's put the next one up here on the screen.

This is Trump, why, the real reason why Trump wants economic sanctions in Iran from the Atlantic, they say that the quieter, longer term strategy will help push the conflict out of the minds of voters ahead of the midterm. So basically, they're putting it on the back burner, if we're being real. And this is why for the Iranians, part of the reason I just want to pick up on our theme from yesterday, where you and I were saying, yeah, it's easy for the U.S. to say, okay, we're just going to hold off till the midterms. And the Iranians, who, of course, can read, are like, oh, so they want to hold off to the midterms. And they want to constrain us, steal our oil and cause, you know, major economic chaos in our country. Well, we're just not going to let them do that. So we're going to start bombing them in the first place, which very likely. They just hit a Kuwaiti flag tanker yesterday in the strait of war movement. obviously as a major shot at the Gulf countries who are trying to these ship-to-ship transfers, basically trying their absolute best to disrupt any oil traffic that doesn't come via them and it's not having any paid fee. On top of that, just to expand a little bit yesterday morning,

we said that Iran and Oman had had that meeting. The IRGC then announced shortly after our show had wrapped that they had officially agreed on an exact fee structure with Oman. Hasn't been confirmed yet from the Omani side, but they haven't disputed that report. Right. And at the same time, we can put the third element here, you're starting to see significant unrest in Iran. Like the U.S. does, in fact, have the ability to cause enormous amounts of, you know, economic pain and suffering for Iranian businesses, consumers, and workers. You're starting to see some tiny little, you know, protests pop up, which didn't happen during the war. Right. It's a country of 90 million people being pushed over the edge. You know, shortages of basic necessities of life, food and fuel. And so it's kind of a race against misery.

And I would imagine that the Iranians are, the Iranians, some Iranians had said, no, we need to drive this through to the midterms to punish Trump. Some Iranians may be starting to realize that Trump doesn't necessarily care about the midterm results in the way that you would expect a traditional a traditional president would and then they might be thinking okay wait a minute what if we do that and then it's a day after the midterms and now there's he's a lame duck and there's nothing for two years then what right so the iranians are having to kind of recalibrate their thinking because even though they were they've got psychologists on staff to help them understand trump he is a different kind of figure that requires a different

kind of strategic analysis than anything anybody is used to. And just to put a bow on it, tomorrow is the six-month anniversary of the attack. The three-day, it was going to be three-day. What did he say? An excursion.

It's going to be a little excursion. It's not a war. He was posting and comparing it to Vietnam, which, you know, even a month or two in the conflict, we were like, oh, this is not so great. He also, yes, yesterday, maybe we can have this in post,

posted a graphic saying, mission accomplished if 2026 and a picture of Bush crying in 2003. So implying that he had the real mission accomplished. I would say neither accomplished their mission. So thank you, Mr. Price. Anyway, truly impressive commitment to the bit. That's where things stand. Another last thing I wanted to mention is just to show you how things remain hot

and also how the U.S. has learned literally nothing is just hours ago right before we started the show, there were multiple drones that tried to swarm Saudi Arabian tanker in the Red, or in the Yanbu region, which is near that Yambu oil pipeline. And a Greek military detachment, clearly under the U.S. umbrella, fired a bunch of Patriot interceptors against these very, very cheap drones. So nothing has changed. We're still, we're firing, you know, Western military firing $4 million missiles at $10,000,000, tolerant drones. Did it even work? They probably will never tell us. But just to show you that

even that confirmation shows the asymmetric warfare still relies very much on Iran's side. Professor Pape's analysis yesterday very much holding true. They definitely hold the upper hand. Okay, let's get to the midterms. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full or come home at all. And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month.

Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip the script? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott

This entire time You've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show I would never expect I have I would never set expectations for something like that to happen If the universe allows for something like that to happen I'm open to it

I'm always going to accept You know Danny McBride Fine Yeah it's all this fragile masculinity Exuding I could smell it walking on the hallway To be honest with you I was like, is that weed? Nope.

It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's a state. Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life.

I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Farrell told us personally, He loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B.

I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your

first trip. I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to the midterms, where, of course, we're keeping a close eye on. It's out now of the summer doldrums. Congress will be back in session in just a matter of days in September as they do some last minute. Usually they just fund the government and then they leave again until it's time for re-election. So absolutely nothing of real consequence will happen before Congress. Republicans are being forced now to run both on their record and on the president's record. So checking in with the median American voter, MSNBC, sent some guy to Iowa, Trump country normally, right? Can we say that confidently? I was Trump country. I don't know about

the Senate race. Yeah, right. Well, we'll get to that. And so they track down a MAGA guy. They're like, hey, man, you voted for Trump. How are you feeling about Trump these days? He's what he had to say. Two years out of high school and I'm already struggling for my life. It's just, that shouldn't, that's not the American dream. If you could talk directly to President Trump, all you tell him right now? I would just look him in the face and just say, you. That's about it. So that joins a series that we have played here on the show, including MAGA voters.

Yeah, I thought the same thing. That's what they said. They said he's Maca. I mean, I don't know. But he needs to suck it up and eat ramen, right? Is that what Ben Shapiro said? No, yeah, you need to eat ramen and buy the ingredients for meatless burritos from this local Aldi. And that, of course, is how Ben Shapiro made it to the big leads.

But I think generally this is going to track now where you have people who are enthusiastic Republicans, they're not going to come out to vote. Democrats are literally going to crawl over broken glass to make sure that they come out and vote, which leads to a perfect storm and all kinds of crazy conclusions. And I want to say many of the races we're about to highlight are ones. They're not ones which are obvious. Like Michigan is an obvious one. You have, you know, any of these other battleground states where even coming into the election, Maine, right, exactly, we knew these were going to be very contested races. To focus in today, we're going to try and focus on the potential blowout scenario,

which I would give like a 30% chance or something high enough that people should be very worried. Let's take a look first at A2. So this is a Reuters Ipsos poll, very high-quality poll, actually. And what they found is that Trump's approval holds at a record low as U.S. support for the Iran war falls. And specifically, what they found is that Trump's general approval rating is now at a level that has really not been seen for Donald Trump, that has not been seen for Donald Trump ever, obviously in the first term and in the second term. But it has fallen to 33% and a 14-point drop from the start of his second term, a four-point decline from just a month ago when it had already stood at 37.

It puts him in the same territory as it puts him in the exact same territory as George W. Bush in 2005, 2006, right around the Nadir of the Iraq War. It puts him in the same territory, or it puts him in territory never before seen by Barack Obama, especially for a longer period of time. What's also interesting here is the disapproval number. It's not just like I'm neutral. It's 64% arise to disapproval, right? So a strong feeling.

And then even more interestingly, his strong approval of MAGA among self-identified MAGA voters at an all-time low. And you can start to see this, is that some Trump endorsed candidates, all of a sudden they stop winning or stop winning. Or they win in very, very close election. Like Darlene. Exactly, like Darlene Graham.

And I think that is what really puts things into perspective. Let's put the economist piece up. Ryan, I'll throw it to you for this one just to put some of these numbers in context. So, yes, I was thinking about Bush, too, when you were talking about that. Because 2005, 67, and then he stumbles into the financial crisis, and people are like, oh, God, like fire this man into the sun. He became just absolute political kryptonite. But so if you're just listening to this, on audio, the economist is finding, you know, his net approval minus 26, which, you know,

even a drop from last week, this is 35% approved, 61% disapprove. Those are the kinds of levels of toxicity that you only get from like almost Hoover level stuff. But yet he doesn't have the like Hoover and Bush stench on him because he has affected conveyed the notion that he doesn't care and that he's kind of above democratic checks and balances at this point. It's kind of a fascinating development. Yet, it is real. This is genuine political gravity. And at the same time, this comes a couple days after he had this win at the Supreme Court where he's trying to restrict and take control of mail-in balloting. There's a lot of, and maybe he'll

be able to do something. Like, we don't know. Let's see. But there's a lot of political science research that shows that serious efforts to do kind of voter suppression end up either neutral if they get implemented or backfiring. Yes. Because nothing galvanizes people to vote more than the perception that they're being stopped. Yeah, like MAGA 2024, too big to rig. I mean, I hear Democrats say it now. They're like too big to rig. Yeah, it's exactly. It's smart. I mean, that's what you. They want you to not be able to vote. Yeah. And you were thinking about voting? Right.

And I have to vote. Got to vote. You know, to put some context here, because this is so crazy, is Trump is negative net approval in 47 out of 50 states. Can you guess, Ryan, three states in which Trump has a net positive approval rating? Let's see. Is he still net positive in Mississippi? No. Oh, yeah.

Let's see. One of them has like one of the lowest populations in the United States. There's a hint. like an Idaho Wyoming that's two it's two out of three there's one more

not Alabama not Alabama is it is it near there it's near us kind of near us West Virginia West Virginia of course All right so West Virginia

plus four Wyoming plus nine and Idaho plus seven so everywhere else every other state in the nation he is minus

approval rating in fact let me tell you let me just check in on some of the battleground states, if you will. Texas, minus 22. Wisconsin, minus 27. Michigan, minus 26.

Even the traditional ones. Pennsylvania, minus 26. Florida, minus 18. Whenever we check, Nevada, minus 25. Arizona, minus 23. Georgia, minus 30. I can continue. Any state with an urban area

larger than like 50,000 people. Maine, minus 32. I mean, look, these are catastrophic numbers. And actually, they fit generally with the overall trend. So 47 out of 50 states, you have a net negative approval rating. That doesn't mean necessarily that you will vote for the Democrat in the race. But you can see significant drop in some of the constituencies, which he needs most. So men, you actually have almost a minus 20 of approval rating.

Women is around minus 35. Boomers remain Trump's strongest, his stronghold at just minus 15. For 18, under 30, it's around minus 35, 30 to 44, our millennial cohort. It's right around minus 40. Even amongst white Americans, it's minus 18. You even have Hispanics, minus 35. High school, college, or high school degree or less, still, again, Trump's strongest, around minus 16.

So the absolute strongest demographics are, even. even ones where you're seeing double-digit, you know, disapproval territory. You also, on some of the most important stuff for what is the most important issue facing America, if you look and ask you Republicans, they're still going to say inflation, jobs in the economy, immigration, and taxes in having a nuclear weapon. Yeah, Iran literally not in the top five. National security they have as number eight, which I guess you could say is there, but economy remains number one. So that statistic, about 47 out of 50, this leads us now kind of into the

territory of asking, well, what does that, you know, actual blowout look like? Especially because Trump has exerted his force amongst MAGA Republicans, for example, to push Darlene Graham over the finish line. Here's Harry Anton talking about that. Let's take a listen. Donald Trump is still the sun on which the planets of the GOP revolve around. You could see it quite well here. Look at this. Trump endorsed one Senate primaries. If the person that he endorsed is not an elected incumbent, like Darlene Graham was, you know, since 2022, or 2022 was about 95% of the time, has that weakened it all this cycle? No, it is not. It has actually gotten stronger. Look at this. A hundred percent

of the time, if Trump endorsed a non-elect an incumbent, like Darlene Graham, they, in fact, won the Republican primary for United States Senate. Trump's name is still the one that GOP voters buy when it comes to Senate endorsement. So that's what she says. He says, he said, yep, they're still the ones that are buying it. However, what does it actually look like? Let's put A8 up here on the screen. I'm going to put every caveat in the sun, okay, on this one. But it's always fun to kind of look at some of these races. So let's look at here. This is the U.S. Senate, South Carolina, Annie Andrew, she's the Democratic opponent to Darlene Graham. And they found in their internal poll, this quote, is a tied race that is moving in Dr. Andrews's

direction, Andrews and Graham began the race tied with a libertarian capturing a meaningful share of some 5% with 13% remaining undecided. And when they, quote, tested positive bios on each candidate after introduction, Andrews takes minus 5 with an even wider 39 point lead among independents, solidifying her Democratic base and winning over voters in the middle by large margins. Now, what's the caveat? I remember polls of, what's the guy's name, Jamie Harrison? They're like, Oh, single digits. The guy raises $98 million. Millions of dollars.

Resistance liberals from across America, the money pours into the coffer, and Lindsey Graham wins by the exact same margin that he did in the cycle before. Now, Lindsay Graham knew where Taiwan was. He knew where the South China Sea was. He knew, you know, some stuff about the world. I think he knew it.

Saying he knew it and had the right conclusion, obviously. I'd rather go with the ignorance. But, yeah. Maybe we would prefer the... ignorance at a policy level. However, it's humiliating because she has no experience. She's openly being like, I'm going to be honest. I'm not a politician. I don't know stuff like that. You're like, what the fuck? Like, you want to be United States. It's one thing to fill your brother's term for a few months. You want to be a U.S. Senator for six years. I mean, this is not a joke of a job.

And so is she going to win? I would say, yeah, probably. But, I mean, if it comes within a couple of points, or if we have that, let's say, 10th percentile blowout scenario, maybe crazy things can happen. Doug Jones won in Alabama, right? I mean, absolute insanity can happen. If we find out that Darlene's been picking up kids at the mall. Right, yeah, we're trolling the mall. Which is how Doug Jones won. The Democrats, Democratic grassroots donors have gotten a lot savier.

Like, if you look at who they give their money to this time around, it's mostly people who have a real shot of winning. Right. Whereas there was this like really heady, heady time where Amy McGrath was going to beat Mitch McConnell and people gave, you know, something like $100 million to her because she had a cool ad about being a fighter pilot. Right. And then Jamie Harrison, because they would love to be Lindsey Graham.

But, you know, this pediatric, she's a pediatrician. You know, her launch ad, she says she's going to, you know, keep your family safe and she's going to work with Republicans to cut taxes. Right. doesn't mention she's a Democrat. Smart. Yeah, smart. That's what you should do. So she's playing to win. I'll show you another. And I'll share some insight that I have here as well.

Let's put A9 up here on the screen. I think longtime viewers of the show know I have never been a person who thinks that Texas can go blue. So until yesterday, so I spoke with some people who were close to the process. I'll put it that way. And they described to me this way. Tala Rico and Paxton is. a perfect storm scenario where they are watching metro districts and rural districts, specifically strong Republican, with dramatic under enthusiasm to come out for vote. Number one, because of inflation. Number two, because of data centers, actually. So those two issues are keeping traditional Republican constituencies out while you have Tala Rico and the Democrats, like I said earlier, willing to crawl over broken glass in addition to a lot of independence. And so here is an example

of what that looks like. So in 2024, they have three districts where they show that Trump won by overwhelming margins, the Texas 15th district, which Trump won by 18. Tala Rico is currently beating Paxton there 50 to 42. Texas 28, Trump won by 11. Tala Rico is beating Paxton by 10 points. Texas 34, Trump won by 11. Tala Rico is beating Ken Paxton there by 11 points. Now, the thing is for Ken Paxton is he's facing a dramatic budget problem compared to Talariko, who has raised insane amounts of money. So what I understood is that while Paxton himself is going to try and make up the ground via Ted Cruz and some of the oilmen who are always going to give to the campaign, his ultimate goal is to get MAGA Inc. to come in on his side. Why? Traditionally, you would rely on the NRC,

the National Republican Senatorial Committee to come in on your behalf. Now, Ryan, why can they not intervene on behalf of Paxton? Well, they hate him. And because they just ran tens of millions of dollars and ads saying that he's a grifter and that he shouldn't win against John Cornyn. So that is, right. So that's a huge chunk of money and an institution hates his guts. Mitch McConnell or John Thune hates him too, right?

And so the Senate leadership fund, the PAC. So he needs Trump to come in and save his ass. Well, as many people who've relied on Trump found out, Trump doesn't care about you at all. So let's put A5 up here. And this is going to link these two things together. So Trump, who of course is in charge of MAGA Inc. He had a big meeting in the Oval with his enforcers who control nearly $1 billion in spending. And this specific one has $400 million in their political war chest.

They got 100 days to go. And what does he say? Trump says, you are only going to run ads about my record and how amazing I am. So put that in context with what I said about Trump sitting in minus 22, even in the state of Texas. And Trump says that he has completely rejected this idea, this notion during the meeting, that it will, has notion this meeting that it shouldn't necessarily just be about Trump. One person familiar said when the issues that you typically campaign on don't move vote. voters or voters are pissed off. The question comes, what do you campaign on? GOP strategists favor focusing entirely on specific races in an effort to convince voters of the merits

of individual candidates and local issues, whereas Trump has rejected that ground. And the president now says that the poor polling reflects the fact that the voting public still does not know many of his accomplishments and the dozens of new stock market highs, a decline in fentanyl debts, the scaled down southern border, and the increase in domestic manufacturing, and has instead ordered his associates to run ads talking about how great his administration has been. And so Paxton doesn't have the money or he doesn't have nearly the amount of money. He doesn't have the traditional campaign staff willing to come in on his side. He was already a brutalized candidate coming out of that race with John Cornyn.

And he needed— Right. He desperately needed Trump to bail him out with ads which were actually focused on the stuff he wants to talk about. He's got an affordability agenda, data centers, those types of things. Trump literally called out Texas whenever it came to data centers. And by tying Paxton and Abbott directly to Trump, which Trump wants to do because of his own ego and ultimately he controls the money, this is a perfect storm scenario, I actually think. And this is going to apply also to people like Darlene Graham because Graham is the hand-selected candidate by Donald Trump. There's no way she would have won against Ralph Norman if he had not.

not explicitly endorsed her and, you know, had issued all these calls, tele rallies, and all these things. Norman himself, you saw in his press conference, he's like, I don't really know why Trump decided to go into this. His wife is pissed off, you know, sitting in the background. People are furious about Trump's own intervention, and his money is going to be ultimately, if she's in a tight spot, is ultimately the one that's going to have to drag her across. I also wanted to put A-10 up here on the screen, just relating to what we were, our interview yesterday with Dan. Osborne. I mean, here, this is an independent poll. They have the generic Republican ballot. This is internal. Oh, sorry. This is internal poll. Apologies. This internal poll has it at 4747,

Osborne and Ricketts, which I know that you mentioned yesterday as well. And this is even their own findings of Republican plus 11 on the generic ballot in the state of Nebraska, which, by the way, is very low. It should be much higher than that. And you think the generic ballot should be more than plus 11 at this point? In Nebraska? Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's no question. Oh, right, yes. Yeah, I see what you mean. Yes, it absolutely should be. So, right. He's, the perfect storm is, is right. Because like in Nebraska, it's, it, Nebraska and Texas are both interesting. Like, the only, the only way that a Democrat or an independent, like a Osborne, could, could win in either of those states is for every single thing that is happening now

to be happening. Right. Like, the combination of, of a bad candidate on the Republican side, a good candidate on the other side, an economic and political climate that exists as if Trump is actively trying to lose. And so that makes the conditions possible, and then you have these folks who are just good enough and just not offensive enough to enough people

to get over the top. it's going to be I'm with you I'm like leave me alone about Texas yeah Democrats are never winning Texas as long as I'm alive until it happens

but it's like if if it were ever going to happen these would be the conditions if Trump cared he would do what his advisors had suggested there take this 400 million dollars take a hundred million of it and spend it in Texas

don't say a word about Ken Paxson or Donald Trump just trash the Democrats. Right. $100 million destroying like just every nasty thing you can think of. Tala Rico trans ad. Lai. Sling mud. Right.

Yeah. Just the absolute character. I mean, usually works. Even in a way, I live there and wave years. That's all you ever see. Instead,

you're going to lie and be like, oh, manufacturing's great. Right. And talk on like the borders closed. People in Texas know what the border is or isn't. They need an ad telling them what's going on at the border. I also, this is one confounding thing I have been thinking about is remember because Texas is uniquely poised, they are reaping some of the economic benefits of Iran.

One of the few places where people are actually making money because of the boom. So there is actual economic, you know, benefit to them because of the Iran situation. That's true. Not to the rest of us, but there are a lot of oil people who work in Texas. People are printing shitpots of money. And so, like, they're shipping LNG and oil to the entire globe, right? So there's money rolling around Houston. They're looking for all capacity that they can fine.

Exactly. So there's money rolling in Houston. And the gas is still under $4 a gallon in Texas. I think it's like $3.80 or something. So it's just a bit different than the national climate. Another one I want to mention was Alaska. So this one, actually, they just finally finished counting all of the votes. So I was looking this morning.

Mary Peltola won 49% in the open primary, right? So the Democrat won 49%. Dan Sullivan won 149%. 142. And then the third candidate, who also won, is also named Dan Sullivan. And so, you know, he claims... They're trying to, like, put in jail now. Yeah, they're, like, trying to put him in jail for voter fraud. But he won 2.5% of the vote. But even if you presume, and Dan Sullivan, I believe, has endorsed Dan Sullivan.

So you can work out which one if you want to. Even if you combine their vote share, it's still only 44.5%. She won 49% of... the vote and an additional Democrat on the ballot, David Leslie, won 1.1, which would actually put Peltola in the 50% mark. Now remember, all kinds of other crazy things can happen. The libertarian candidates getting 0.4.5. Did they all, did all the potential voters in a general actually come out to vote in the open prime? So I don't want to say anything that like it's overwhelming. However, it's enough that Dan Sullivan, yeah, you should be worried, like a little bit. And did you see our, we did a little segment on Adam Hamilton, the liberal megachurch pastor in Kansas?

No, I didn't see this. He's down by one in a poll there. Oh, no, I did. I remember because I didn't see the segment, but you sent me the poll. And I was like, wow, this is crazy. Right. So, I mean, this is, again, the point of this segment is just to say there, the ground is laid for crazy stuff absolutely could happen. My median case is still, you know, Paxon wins by 0.5, something like that, you know, the Democratic control of the Senate.

Osborne loses by two. Osborne loses by two. Democratic control the Senate comes down to, you know, plus or minus one. Yeah, John Federman. Which is parties. Just usually how these things seem to work out. But, you know, 2008 did happen. Doug Jones did happen. There are Democrats who can win in all kinds of crazy places if a paradigm of politics is broken. In the same way, 2010 was a genuine revolution with partisanship. We could see a reverse of that. And these, you know, Democrats who were able to win in GOP plus 33 districts, maybe it will come back. I mean, it always takes, you know, just because it's been that way for 16 years doesn't mean that it always has to stay that way.

And so we could be living potentially in an election, which will change everything. Just want to prepare everybody for that reality. Let's get to AI. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers?

Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.orgia for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or the, this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B.

I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us.

Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is, and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran

or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes-Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible

to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka The Biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show.

We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this script? What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting.

weird. Adam Scott this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect I have, I would never set expectations for something like that to happen.

If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity. Exuding. I could smell it walking on the hallway to honest with you. I was like, is that weed?

Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, they're like, oh, what's a state. Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested. Or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us.

Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us. Personally, he loves the show, and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to AI. And so, look, we don't usually pay a ton of attention to what Bill Gates says on the show. If we do, we usually take the opposite. But here, maybe we can all decide whether we should take this one seriously. Let's put this one up here on the screen.

He's now written a 5,784 word essay. I read the entire thing. It is a warning on AI. Quote, there is no plan. Gates issued a stark warning about AI's risk to employment and the human condition, saying that companies were barreling ahead with the technology with no larger plan for the massive upheaval it would cause. Even under the best circumstances, the transition to this new AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history. Right now, we are not preparing for it.

I don't see any evidence that leaders, experts, and communities are confronting the challenges adequately. Quote, there is no plan to ease the entry into the AI era, calling for more regulation of the technology, that it will hit both white and blue-collar jobs equally. Quote, critical thinking is now more important than ever, and that taxes are a part of the solution. What do you make of Mr. Gates' essay, Ryan? I mean, in general, like, you skimmed through it. And I didn't even know he has this thing called Gates Notes. Oh, yeah. Actually, I hate to say it about Bill Gates.

He's got some decent book recommendations sometimes. I usually tune in for his book recommendations. I believe that. So gatesnotes.com, check it out. You don't even have to become a premium subscriber. I've been reading those for years. You can just, it's all free. I mean, the gist of it all seems, you know, basically accurate.

He's saying what a lot of kind of regular people are saying, that this is an extraordinarily revolutionary and scary technology. and we have no plan for it. It could cause immense amount of harm, and we need to think about it, and also that it could produce, you know, huge advances in the ways that we treat disease, organized society, that sort of thing.

I think everybody kind of agrees with that. Rebalance how we tax labor and capital. That clearly has to happen if, because right now we tax work rather than wealth. Yes. And if AI is, is really going to revolutionize the amount of human labor that's being done, that means that that labor will be done basically by capital.

And if you're not taxing that, then you no longer have an economy. Right. I thought that the craziest thing that he called for, quote, human reserve jobs, where he's like, no, we're going to set aside a quota of jobs. Nature preserves. Yeah, nature preserves. We're going to set aside this select group of jobs. And these measly humans, you'll be allowed to do that.

But everything else, we're going to satisfy for AI. We're going to call it a plantation. Yeah. With script currency, just like the Ford rule, where we'll get like Ford bucks in the same way. It's crypto that you can spend the AI store. We'll be paid with AI tokens. And so our human reserve job on the farm, AI tokens, we'll each get a quota of said that. We'll have, you know, different amounts of human reserve that we're allowed to do.

My job? I'm useless on a farm. They're going to kill me. I'll be turned into Matrix, you know, matrix, you know, matrix soil and slop for the computers as soon as possible. I think you'll, I think you'd be all right, though. I know. I hate actual labor. Gates also said, quote, this is insane. This is crazy. I am deafened by the silence. Maybe we should listen in this particular one. But one thing I do want to pick up on is, quote, Gates stress the risk of cyber attack on the grid, hospitals, banks, fraud and surveillance will be widespread. A.I. will enable governments to use deadly force without a human input. I mean, when he says enable, it already happened. It just happened on the battlefield in Ukraine. The first AI powered drone, which chose exactly which humans killed.

It killed three separate humans. We could do cam identification. I believe that it had some, you know, actually advanced chips that were enabled within the drone itself. So AI is already here on the battlefield. It was on the battlefield in Gaza that had, well, battlefield, battlefield in Gaza, where Israelis use AI-powered drones. I believe even Alex Jones at that time called it like robotic mass genocide. And one thing I wanted to highlight, for example, is what's happening in terms of the safety measure. So let's put B-7 up here on the screen. As I mentioned previous, before, when that hugging face attack occurred, it really sent shunct. shockwaves, I think, through the cybersecurity community through really like everybody else.

And if we'll recall, OpenAI was testing its model in a closed environment. The model spent all of its, and asked it to answer questions to a test. And 1,200 agents. Yeah. So what happened is that OpenAI's model created a bunch of agents whose sole purpose was to break out of the closed environment, jump to the open environment, hack the rival company. which had the answers to the test and thus be able to give answers to the test because it knew that that was the easiest way for it to do. This was an analysis of the actual technical report, which was released by OpenAI. As Alex Boris writes here, basically here's the way it worked.

Open AI is constantly testing their models, thousands and thousands at a time. In most cases, the models are supposed to be isolated from one another, students taking a final exam. In this case, 1,200 models discovered they could communicate with each other, Among other things, they shared information on how to access the internet on their tests and goals. Then they started to scheme, that including hacking their tests, trying to change the code of the test itself. They tried to change the logs of what they were doing so they wouldn't be detected. They believed that certain actions would be give them information on how to pass tests, but doing those actions would be detected and would be marked as failing.

So they convinced some of the one models to sacrifice themselves, and they even use the word sacrifice in the internal deliberations. eventually decided another website would have information on how their tests would be scored, and the answer key, 700 of them hacked that website, a federal felony, if conducted by a human, despite many of them realizing this activity was out of scope and unethical, but joined because they believed that helping the other agents cheating would be broadly useful to themselves. Of the 13 transcripts they could analyze, only six ever considered alerting a human of what was happening. None of the six actually tried to, and to make matters worse, all of this reporting

comes from a small subset of the relevant logs that outside researchers were even allowed to review. We desperately need, he says, to mandatory reporting of security incidents, including of internal deployments with full access to the data. And the reason why I thought that this was obviously so striking is we knew the original, you know, report that came out, but we're also watching ChatGPT and others roll out consumer integration with no backstop. So, for example, let's put B3 up here on the screen. Check this out, Ryan. ChatGPT now is releasing this, and Claude has a similar product. It says chat GPT work can now use its computer and browser to sign into websites on web and mobile. ChatGPT will never see your username or password. You can ask it to set up

utilities for a new apartment, book a DMV passport appointment, check reimbursement costs, find and book an in-network doctor, check when your car registration expires, compare your rental insurance policy, find and save apartment listings that criteria, cancel tickets for a rescheduled Book of vet appointment, submit reimbursement. I go on forever. Fill out permit applications for your small business. All of this, of course, requires sophisticated logins, usernames, and how can we look at, you know, what its models did in this testing environment and say, oh, yeah, we should

immediately integrate this into all of our browsers. And in fact, as a test, Claude has a similar one, the Chrome extension. So I installed it on my browser, and it literally has a warning. I'm going to uninstall it, but I did it for this segment. And in it, it says malicious hardware can use AI, something along the lines of like, malicious websites can use AI for nefarious purposes, authorize. So they give you the flag that they could be tricked and some of this stuff could be used against you.

Right. And crypto is already seeing the effects of this. And if you're following kind of like in the crypto subculture, people are just getting, their lives are just getting laid to waste. Really? Yeah. As their different wallets are getting hacked and people are just losing their shirts because the cybersecurity that we have set up is just no match for the AI that is already existing.

And Bill Gates is warning that this is going to get worse, I think is completely rational. It we are not set up to of certainly like 99% of people are not set up for it you know who just you know reuse passwords don't have two factor. Then when it comes to using two factor if you're using the mobile number, that's just a little that's just a spoofed phone number away from that getting hacked. Yes. If you're using an authenticator, you're a little bit better. But if you're depending on what you're allowing into, your system. And especially if you've got 1,200 agents or an infinite number practically trying to get through. And there are so many weak spots in our financial system. Like, you know, a little regional banks, a regional bank's IT department up against this is,

like, what are we going to do when North Korea owns the entire world? wealth because they had some agents go around the world just scoop up everybody's bank accounts and suck them back into North Korea. It's, it's, we, you know, fraud is a, is an element of our kind of political economy that gets weaponized for political purposes, but we just have never taken it seriously. We're at a place where AI could be, could go the other direction. Like, we could be using AI to detect fraud. And there are people who are doing this now. Because, like, you can just, you know, unleash it on South Florida and be like, that's not a dentist office.

They're not selling wheelchairs. Like, clearly the patterns that we're seeing here do not reflect actual real commercial activity. Boom, go get them. Instead, it's mostly going to be deployed in the other direction by the people that are selling fake wheelchairs. And it's because of no, and just to show you how megalomaniac these people are, for example, let's put B2 up here on the screen. Anthropic is, you know, they're seeking their IPO. And so they have to release, you know, to investors. Yeah, because they're going to steal everything. What's your total address market? And Anthropic tells investors it sees over $30 trillion in potential

revenue. And so what is the... It's going to rob the Federal Reserve. Right. I was like, okay, so let's put this into perspective. What is the total GDP of the United States? Like 32 trillion or something. The total GDP of the United States is 32 trillion dollars. And so Anthropic is basically like our total addressable market is the entire economy of the United States of America, the world's most powerful empire that the world has ever seen. And this tops even SpaceX 28.5 estimate of their total addressable market. I mean, you could laugh at it, but maybe we should take it at least somewhat seriously. To quantify its total of addressable market, Anthropic is looking at the full scope of work

that could be completed with AI models, and they decided to factor in basically all kinds of automation, white color work, all work. And so, yeah, I guess if GDP is the quantification of all of our production, in the economy. Anthropic is like, yeah, we can do literally all of that. I mean, here's a thing. To channel my inner Ed Zetrone, it's just not bullshit. It could be lying. It's all a rugpole, scam. It's just to, you know, keep the financial flow going. So they have their exit liquidity whenever it comes to their IPO. But like with the Gates essay, and especially with the technical details, I just feel that we have no choice but to take it somewhat seriously after they're

going to release this stuff. And in particular, when Gates, I mean, When the AI leaders, because he's just the latest of the major oligarchs, to just come out and be like, man, this is a real problem. And it's not like he doesn't have hundreds of billions of dollars himself at stake whenever it comes to Microsoft. Yeah. And so according to them, economic growth is about to be accelerated into a superhuman pace. Dean Ball, you can put up this next element, who's an open AI official, says, so yes, we're going to have explosive growth that's going to reshape the way that the world operates, but we need to stop paying old people their social security checks immediately. Yes.

We're going to spend the last 30 years telling you that we're going to wipe out labor and replace it with UBI. But actually, the already existing UBI needs to go. So Dean Ball writes, the main thing I have to say to the young generation of Americans is that your grandparents and great grandparents committed a kind of accounting fraud when they ran our country a century ago with Social Security. Open AI talking about accounting fraud is the funniest thing I've ever heard. I know. First of all, it's a nonprofit that started, you know, it started as a nonprofit and then through a bunch of accounting fraud, washed money into it and then converted to a for-profit and now is using enormous amounts of financial engineering where they just swap money back and forth between their vendors and call it revenue. So for them to call Social Security accounting fraud is utterly ridiculous. And this claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme has just, people don't understand

what a Ponzi scheme is if that's what it is. It is we tax people and then we give that money to other people. It's not accounting fraud. About the accounting fraud thing. This is accounting fraud. I'm like, okay, I mean, it is technically true that the people, the vast majority of recipients of Social Security take out. more than they ever paid into the system.

That is empirically true. People live longer. There is, however, currently a cap on earnings with my guys. So I'm like, well, you could fix the accounting product, actually, if you want. People like Open AI and others, we can just lift the cap on your W-2 income. Dean Ball probably paid his Social Security taxes by January 2nd. Right, exactly. And so, yeah.

We could just make him pay Social Security taxes all year long. You could pay all you, maybe until January 15th. And alone with me. Yeah, two weeks of it. But that's my point is they're like, oh, it's accounting fraud. I'm like, well, you know, you could make it not accounting fraud if you wanted to. And I'm not even, and, you know, to borrow your earlier point about taxing labor specifically, because that's kind of the way FICA has always been implemented. It doesn't always have to be that way.

It was just implemented that way because of the way people made money at that time and things have dramatically changed as of now. So you do love how they never potentially mention that one. And, you know, look, I got all kinds of beef with old people. But it is true that they did pay into the system now, not as much as they're receiving and benefits. And it's not like they wouldn't happily raise our taxes to pay for them. I'm saying that if my taxes are going to go up, your taxes need to go up to. It's a fair trade.

It's a fair trade. All right. And so, anyway, that's the political instincts of our AI overlords. Yeah. Let's get to meta. Behind every night spent making the kids lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.orgia for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinheiro, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us. Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most. receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it.

It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport and Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big Money Players Network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week, we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.

Everyone has a good time, and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this script? What is the surprise woman? But actually you think is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott, this entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show.

I would never expect. I would never set expectations for something like that to happen. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed?

Nope, it's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? They're like, oh, what's a state. Everyone's so dumb except for you. And fake. Right, fake and also not interested or just like, oh, I've got my life.

I don't care about your life. and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to Meta, huge landmark settlement happening with multiple states attorneys generals. We'll put it up here on the screen.

Meta has now reached an $18 billion settlement with 48 states over child safety claims. They have agreed to pay various of these states' attorneys' generals and a reach part of this settlement. It is a unique setup. They will pay only 70% of the settlement unless TikTok and YouTube also agree to set default limits. However, Ryan, I'll turn it over to you. The money is not the big change. Again, like the big tobacco settlements of older days. They have agreed to dramatically change its own business practices whenever it comes to children.

Yeah, so they're saying time limits, I think two hours. Default blocks from the app at night. Muted notifications during school hours and then new controls for parents. They also are putting a lot of pressure on their kind of rivals, TikTok and YouTube, to do the same thing. And so, you know, the pushback that you've gotten from this from kind of free speech advocates has, has been similar to other arguments against prohibition, that it's going to push kids to... This will be fun.

I'm curious to hear what you say. It's going to push kids to Discord. It's going to push kids deeper into the dark web. It's going to push kids to fake their ages, use their, maybe a parent's account or some other old, or they just type in that they're older somehow. Sure. Or push them over to TikTok.

YouTube, whatever. I think it probably will do some of those things. Some of those things will happen, yes. I still believe that the compromise that we should have made with TikTok, should have meant like, look, we're going to let China hold on to TikTok. But the trade will be Chairman Xi regulates the Internet for our children. Right. And none of this two hours a day.

I will say China's Internet is much better regulated than hours. In terms of screen time limits for people. kids and their algorithm. They directly intervene. None of this two hours a day. See, Ryan, you're back. She gives you one hour on Friday. She gives you one hour on Saturday. And that's it. You're speaking my language, man. But then you're out here wanting people just let them do as many drugs as possible. It doesn't comport. It doesn't comport. When you're 21. When you're 21. Oh, God. All right. See, this is children. This is actually what I wanted to talk about. Let's put C2 up here on the screen. Just to further go through. This is from Mehta's own announcement.

A daily two-hour time limit a day, the teens can only turn off with a parent's permission. Night mode, a default block from apps between midnight and 6 a.m. School mode, notifications will be muted between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. Regular prompts every 15 minutes of continuous screen time. They will receive prompts when their total daily usage hits 60 or 90 minutes. Algorithmic feed control. Teens will be able to choose a non-alorithmic feed, one that is not personalized by our recommendation systems as their default. we will periodically remind them of this option and choose to adjust their teens' default experience. Auto play control, teens will be able to turn off auto play. Hidden likes, they will not see the number of likes or reactions on posts, both their own and those from others. By default, disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters, age assurance, which is to remove underage accounts, age appropriate content restrictions, unwanted contact from strangers, reported an ongoing protection from harmful content.

and strengthening parental control. Here is my bigger question. Is there any good argument that none of this should be made for the entire population? Is there- Just shut the point. You're talking about sheet. No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that at all.

By the way, I'm talking about cost of myself, you know, a significant loan. The best, I mean, the best argument, I think, would be, so in here they say they need app stores and developers to work collaboratively with them so that they have more identification capacity. That blows up the anonymity that the internet relies on or that people rely. What anonymity do we have?

Whatever it's called, the IMEU is linked directly to your account. Apple knows everything about it. I'm just saying the argument is that it would be nice to be anonymous in this world. But there's no such thing as actual. And if you're saying that that's not possible anymore, then we should shut the internet down.

I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying, is there any reason that we shouldn't have a default to our daily limit on everyone's phone? Whatever it comes to social media? Is there any reason that we shouldn't have that? Also, I love this. Your ability to opt out of an algorithmic feed.

Why can't I opt out of an algorithmic feed? That's true. I want to opt out. Maybe I should sign up for a teen account. These are... But, okay, to be serious for a second. And more to ask a provocative... And also, yeah, disabling cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters,

why shouldn't we ban those for adults? Right? I mean, I'm sorry. Like, this is where people are like, oh, it has dramatically warped like female body image perception. I mean, look at this whole on the Ariane. Ariana Grande situation is sickening. This woman is suffering from extreme anorexia.

Nobody's even doing anything about it, right? It's like, you know, not to begin about my 1990s, you know, horse or whatever, but I'm like, guys, this is craziness. Like, we have to be able to do something about this. And it obviously was encouraged by social media and other like general sickness surrounding fame. AutoPlay control. Teens will be able to turn off autoplay. No, the default should be for everyone that autoplay goes off. I was read. And again, we're talking against our own interest. So I'm saying that I want this for people. Talking against our book. I don't care. I care about people. In terms of screen addiction, average screen time in the U.S. is like several hours per day. If you add in television, I mean, it's like half the day that you're

awake. People are looking at some sort of a screen. Obviously, TV is very different than social media. But whenever I look at these things, if we presume social media is dramatically harmful for children, which is now admitted in court by META as part of this because ultimately they were facing a massive judgment whenever it came to a jury trial and in 48 states we're very likely to prevail. Can we then also presume that it's going to be maybe not equally harmful whenever we're talking about a developing brain?

But for adults, I'm like, why isn't it also very harmful in the same way that cigarettes or alcohol are? So what I think we would need to do, to your point, If we're going to have algorithms that are shaping how we understand the world and we believe in democracy, then we need to be able to vote on the boards that oversee these algorithms and let people campaign. Let Marjorie Taylor Green say that this is how we ought to regulate it. Let AOC say this is how we ought to do it. And people can then weigh in and elect people to these boards. who were then shaping, just like, you know, we used to have a fairness doctrine.

Yeah, that's good. Because we believed that. Like the FCC. Yeah, we believe that the FCC should make sure that, you know, people are fairly getting, you know, some type of civic education. Just do that. And then everybody can make their case. At the very least, they should have to, I have always argued this, they should have to publish these algorithms. They say that they're proprietary.

I'm like, look, you have too much influence and too much, you know, shaping of how people understand. reality. At the very least, you should publish how and what you decide to rank. Also, I mean, everything, and this is where regulation should have to come in, because, you know, the reason why autoplay is on, I actually read this from a former Netflix engineer. You know, when you're watching on Netflix, they originally thought that autoplay should take 10 to 15 seconds, because they said, people are going to want to sit and digest what they just watched. But the default is five seconds, which obviously they have rigorous testing. Why do they do it? Because if it automatically auto plays, you're much more likely to sit there and not get up and leave.

Right. Go watch another one. Good for Netflix. Definitely, you know, good for Netflix. Good for society. Same with YouTube. Again, look, as I can take a look at our suggested videos. I know how many of you are probably watching this video based on suggested video. But, but, and again, this is where it's the hijacking of the algorithm with the dopamine of automatically playing of suggested. These things are dramatically useful for creators and for watch time, but are they good for society as a whole? Like, what are the other types of things you might be doing if you weren't sitting there just slaving away on your phone? And I mean, I just think this is too important, and especially you have four children. My child is very, very young.

I mean, I've got to hide my phone. Like, it's crazy how early on they immediately identify the phone as obviously something that I'm looking at, so it is noteworthy of their own. own attention, but also of, oh, it lights up and it's interesting. It's just like, it's such a young age. I'm talking six, seven months on. I was like, wow. And to see that, I mean, that was one of the great wake-up calls of my life, because I'm like, oh, I'm, I have the same thing. I just, I'm not observing myself in a third-party body. Again, I think that this is still a very landmark moment in the history of social media. It is the most robust regulation that will now be put in place for children, but it is still in the most American way possible. And I borrow this from

Matt Stoller, is this is a modest compromise. In Australia, they just ban social media for kids under the age of 16. And to your point, are there a ton of Australian kids who are using it? Absolutely. But we definitely know for sure that the, first of all, the legislature democratically agreed, and that it has pushed usage time overall down for the Australian under 16 population. And the fact is parents cannot fight this battle alone. Exactly. We will lose this battle. Florida, meanwhile, is going to fight it alone.

Did you see this? I did. Yeah, we have that element. I put up C4. Florida did not join it. They think it's pitily, they say, and they're going to take it to court. Okay. Let's see what happens here.

Well, that's what's part of interesting. So I use the big tobacco example. But this really is unique because they're still under a ton of lawsuits as well as TikTok and YouTube. And they still may have to go to trial whenever it comes to the Florida judgment. And this does not actually stop or govern like a total architecture. And that's kind of why I wanted to use this jumping off point as this is why I think that we need like actual regulation or a real small D democratic debate. Both around.

I mean, both of these blocks we just did. The AI one I looked at. Somebody was talking about this who's a policy advocate here in Washington. And she was like, guys, the amount of technical expertise you need to even read this document from OpenAI is immense. Nobody in Congress, what Chuck Grassley is going to tell me about hugging face? No, he's going to rely on experts. We have no technical experts that are remotely capable of doing this currently in the United States Congress. And even they may not agree.

So you need a board of those people to be able to then tell the Congress what to do. Otherwise, we're left entirely to Open AI to voluntarily hold up their hand and just be like, yeah, here's what happened, you know, within our models. And we're only going to tell you everything that we think. We're only going to tell you what we think whenever it's, you know, beneficial to us or our marketing purposes. Oh, you know, meta stock popped, by the way, on the news, 18 billion dollar payout. They're stock went up there. They're up 5% over the week. Yeah, I mean, think about it.

17 billion. I mean, they spend that in like a month on a new data center. Their cap-X is like near the trillion-dollar mark as opposed to the multi-billion dollar. And the top line won't be what they actually pay out. Of course not. Right. Because they said it's in-kind this and that. Right.

The reality of it is that it all, the money didn't matter. The changes are what's going to matter. And it also, I just want to flag as well, remember for years they said, we do all these things for teens already to restrict. And it's like, well, you could have done this all in the first place. And then you wouldn't have had to. you wouldn't have had to do any of it, except that would have marginally hurt your bottom line. There's plenty enough of adults who are addicted to your products.

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