Lemonade Stand - Are English Speaking Countries Unhappier? | Ep. 060 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug takes us through the news, Atrioc goes through the news thoroughly, and Aiden thoughtfully discusses tough news. We launched a Patreon! - https://www.patreon.com/lemonadestand for bonus episodes, discord access, a book club, and many more ways to interact with the show! Episode: 060 Recorded on: April 28th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 1:10 Happiness Rankings 4:57 News vs Social Media 10:10 Very Scientific Graph 16:00 Inflation and Housing 21:46 Human Expectations 25:24 Trump 29:55 Mental Health 34:04 Job Market 35:11 Streaming 36:09 Religion 37:51 Trust 42:35 Honorable mentions 48:33 UAE Leaves OPEC 1:01:43 Microsoft and OpenAI's Open Relationship 1:20:23 Trump's most interesting story 1:22:01 Outro New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's O-D-O-O-O-O-D-com. Ladies and gentlemen, we lemonade stand. Today we talk happiness. Now, we saw... Can I say that was articulate and that was beautiful? That was great. Now, we read an article that I think piqued a lot of interest from Derek Thompson. called, if America's so rich, how did it get so sad?

And really, this dives into some data from the, oh my God, I literally, World Happiness Report. I checked it three times right before we started to try to remember the name. I'm bad with names. Essentially, report talking about who is happy or unhappy in the world. And while there's a lot of different factors about why people might feel unhappy in the modern day, one of the particularly interesting things in this article is that English-speaking countries appear to be specifically more unhappy in general.

So if you pull up this, A-Trach. Yeah, this is a, I mean, this is not Derek Thomas, and this is the economist, but similar kind of theme, the World Happiness Report has noticed that the Anglosphere here in red is falling off a cliff. Britain, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand

are all experiencing huge declines in happiness compared to other countries. Even countries that are right around them, their neighbors that are in similar economic circumstances. So it's kind of interesting. And again, this chart real quick from Derek Thompson really says it all. Post-COVID in the 2020s, happiness has fallen

off a cliff. And this is worse in these English being countries than elsewhere. So we're trying to figure that out today. Like what? And it's worth noting here. People obviously were unhappy during COVID. Like that's, but the difference is other countries rebounded after COVID, right? The last couple years it got back to where they were. And then broadly on this, if you look at a 12, 13 year horizon, these countries are broadly happier than they were 13 years ago. And we are less happier than we were 13 years ago, specifically because we speak in Glando, I guess, for some reason. So we have printed out a whole bunch of different topics, a whole bunch of different points we think might be contributing to this overall epidemic in sadness,

and particularly the Anglosphere. And we're going to map it onto this scientific chart where the axes are world versus English and kind of sad versus really sad and give our... I like how there's no app. It's called science. Okay. It's called science. One of them is about negative news and we're doing a kind of sad to really sad axis here.

Any other notes for we get this kick off? We also have some news at the end. We're going to talk about some of the news going on in this world, but we wanted to, this is a good opener. I think it's a good set the stage. People have been feeling this type of way. I think, okay, one thing I want to say that might kick off somebody's interest

because this made me interested. All the explanations you might be thinking of, I want you to factor in that within Canada, French-speaking Canada does not have the happiness to climb the rest of Canada as. Yes. That's how weird it. Like it really is,

something to do with English-speaking countries, and it makes it unique. So I think it is worth going deep. Once I heard that, I was like, okay, there's something here. And sometimes countries that are like really close to English-speaking countries, like Germans, who, let's be honest,

Germans, you all speak flawless English, okay? And that might be really hurting your psyche. The French have the good common sense to not learn English very well. All right, why do you bring up our first topic, the debate? Okay, you got a couple? I mean, we'll get you start with a big one. Let's where we place to it.

Because I think this is like the most obvious not answer. Here. You talk. Okay. This is COVID. All right. COVID as a whole, is that the reason English-speaking countries are more unhappy? I think we know that there is a world problem.

Unless you think we uniquely handled it worse. Well, I don't think so, though. But the whole thing is like we haven't rebounded since COVID. Yeah. So clearly this is an English-speaking problem because many other countries seem to be quite happy since. Oh, yeah. Well, we're trying to figure out why that is, but I don't think it's because of the disease COVID. I think, I think, I think, I think,

I think COVID was like a world, like it hit everybody in the world the same, is what I'm trying to say. We're running into some challenges with the graph. No, the graph is perfect, Aidon. The graph makes complete sense. COVID, was it kind of sad or really? I think COVID.

Okay, that's fair. I think we move on from this one. We say COVID affected everybody. This is not some unique thing to us. Is it an obvious really sad world? Right. Am that crazy? Isn't that that's the benchmark

really sad for the world? Look, I don't, I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't want it. I don't want it. I hate to be vulnerable about my plebeian mind.

Yeah. But I don't like, I don't really know. Are we saying that COVID had an outsized effect on countries in the anglosphere? Or are we saying that if it affected everybody, if it's nothing. If it affected the anglosphere,

it'll be on the bottom, right? It'll be on English. Okay. I see. So if it all, if it affected all the world, it'll be on the top.

This made everybody sad. We can agree on that. We can agree on that. Sad. This made everybody sad, except for streamers who played among us. Except for streamers,

right. Who actually would be down here. And among this ripped. So it's sad. But what about? This one I want to get to. Let's get to this first. You want to do this?

Yeah. Okay. So news. And this is a big topic that keeps coming up repeatedly. And one of the things I was particularly interesting because like it's easy to just say,

oh, it's phones and social media. But both in this article and then I also, Brookings did an analysis on the news coverage over the past six years. And they basically showed that the tone of news has shifted more negative and with an increase in negative tone compared to how it was in the past. And basically looking at economic circumstances versus the negativity of news coverage

are news specifically has been getting more and more negative. And Derek Thompson also makes that argument in the article of like, if smartphones are the reason we're all getting depressed, well, maybe it's less because of the smartphone in social media. And maybe it's because what we're consuming on those things is getting extremely negative relative to what other people are doing. And this has been this like decades long trend. Yeah, he said it's probably not just about phones social media.

When there's American anxiety and happiness, the most obvious subject to start months. Dude, you can't say, if you can't understand me, it's because you haven't put it on point two five speed to get the maximum watch time on this video. Yeah, I think this is an interesting one because it was. most obviously explain English outperformance or underperformance on happiness, right? It would be something about, like you've mentioned this when we talked about it on the walk, which is that that is one thing that is unique to these countries is that they all watch the same English speaking sources of news or social media.

Not even the same, but like... Yeah, I think if we were to kind of step out of social media for a second and focus on news media specifically, I think you could look at the U.S. who kind of like leads the charge with just like raw population here, right? And kind of sets a trend or tone for other English-speaking countries in a bunch of different ways, right?

I think in the U.S., there was the repeal of the fairness doctrine in like 1987. There was all these rules around how news and politics could be covered on TV. And it was this transformation of news media as kind of this source of information

into these 24-hour news channels that are like way more polarized and way more pundit-focused than the news used to be in American history. And those transformations in that industry, I think have an outside effect, outsized effect on other English-speaking countries and their news coverage,

because oftentimes Canada especially, but Australia, the UK, will follow trends in American. business. And the book we've been reading, one of the books, humankind talks about this a ton. News does have a demonstrable negative effect on people's mental health and outlook on the world. I think this is a leading, I think a potentially leading reason of the ones we're discussing. It would also make sense of people in Quebec,

in Canada, are probably not consuming English news, which just might not be as negative. And that's strange to think of. I'm also curious, what do you guys think? How different is this? This concept of news negativity. How distinct is it actually from social media? Because obviously, these are extremely intertwined now. But on the one hand, you could say social media is what's making us unhappy. You're seeing how great other people's lives are, whereas news is more like, here's what's going on in the greater world around inside you. These are intersecting. But how different you think those are? Yeah, what I would say is, if you can pull this chart back up, Perry. I, I agree. that the 24-hour news cycle and if it bleeds, it leads and all that stuff is dogs for people's

mental. But, like, that didn't exist starting 2020. And, like, Americans were broadly, if you look at this, they reported, self-reported, fairly happy for a consistent level of happiness for a long time, certainly during all the 24-hour news cycles, certainly during watching car chases, certainly during, but suddenly post-2020, I feel like if it is that, it's more the social media side of it, then it is the news side. Interesting. Yeah, I think that's... Like, that's what has ramped up more in the past. There is a trend that

takes place, like a downward trend that is taking place here prior to COVID and prior to smartphones and social media, though. Like, there's a beginning of the average being below that line that we're looking at. 100%. Starting like 2000, it seems like it's a bit of a dip. But there's 100% that could be part of it. And I think it's

a slow bleed, too. These things like kind of slowly build and compound on one another. And then it gets to its worst where this fuses with the power of social media spreading these messages around now. Yeah. I mean, we definitely, I don't know who said it, but a lot of trends jump forward 10 years in COVID, like things like work from it, like a lot of things. And it does feel like adoption of social media as your news diet for a lot of people.

they're stuck at home. They're consuming way, way more. If I was to put this on the chart, it's certainly sad. I think we should right now put on, what do we think, social media versus news, both of them.

Are they the same? Do we feel like they're distinct? Do we feel like one is more impactful than the other? Because this is one of the leading suggestions for many people. The smartphone theory of everything is smartphones are why we are being miserable, but there's multiple ways we use smartphones, right?

Where's the problem? Is that news? What are these pictures? There's one of Team Fortress 2. I don't know what that's. Team 4th or 2 is the biggest cause of sadness. If they brought it back. And it was only English speaking.

I'm trying to. Big English spirit game. Because Germa used to play it and it was fun to watch. And now it's gone. Which one of these is social media, Perry? Here, use the Ferrari one as social media. Oh, that's actually good.

No, no, no, we're good. Because we haven't used that for anything. What was the Ferrari one before? Ferrari's. It was a Chevrolet. You know what? I'm sorry. It's a huge part of sadness.

But here's the thing. News would be down here. But phones and smartphones would be up here. Because that is ever, everyone all over the world is using phones for, we were in China, everyone's on their phone getting news from social media. Not only news from social media.

News about American, like American cities being bad. We talked to like four people who are like, yeah, well, we know it's very bad in America. We see that TikTok of the street in Philadelphia. And they're talking about that, you know, the street with like a lot of drug users.

And it's like, a thing. So they're consuming our shitty social media, which is wild. But if you're someone who's like, yeah, it's, you're from a foreign country watching that. It's, you're, you're watching that being like, my place is fucking sick. It makes you feel better. Yeah. So is our conclusion that social media is a sort of worldwide problem that is making us kind of sad or maybe even really sad, whereas the news cycle being so negative appears to be more English focused. And that's one of the things that appears to be like us specifically. Yes. Okay. I would say, I'd say these are both equivalent. Actually, I would say

social media is more sad. I would say than the news. Yeah. You think, okay, so you think news is English sort of sad? I don't know how the graph works. I don't get it. It's a quadrant.

How hard is it to see? If it's not hugely impactful on sadness, it's over here. We're going to see comments and they're going to say, I was really lost until they put it in the English really sad quadrant and then it started to click.

Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, I think, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm fucking sorry. I, I, let me, hear me out. Here me out. Fox News is kind of, I feel, give me this post.

All right, go ahead, Edie. Go ahead. You're saying that social media. Okay, social media is, you think news is kind of sad. That's insane. But, but you, I understand what you're saying that it's used by, but the argument is who,

how impactful is it to the Anglosphere in the context of this conversation? and social media is so siloed. Like everybody is developing their own, like if you're a Japanese Twitter user, you primarily consume Japanese content on Twitter. That's shifting a little bit with auto translates, but not much.

You could have a very different vibe on that platform because of the language you're consuming than what we consume in English. and I actually think social media is one of, because of the silos and like the echo chambers, if you want to call them on the internet, I think it's one of the most impactful things. Yeah, that's where we have it right there.

Wait, I don't know. But you put it closer to world, this is what I'm saying. Yeah. You see why I'm confused. No, no, no, I agree that this makes complete sense. So what he's saying is that because everybody's siloed, our version of social media is actually more sadness-inducing

than the worlds. the rest of the world's. Yeah, I think there's, there might be a, so where would you put it on the quadrant, Eden? Fuck, you know, I don't, I don't care. I don't care. I don't understand what we're not getting about it.

To figure out what is causing status in the anglosphere, things will be in this quadrant. Oh, I talk to the microphone. This is a podcast. Yeah, that's what I thought. That's what I thought, okay. The solution will be in this quadrant.

But for the audio listeners, where we, the Y access is world at the top, English at the bottom. Yeah. And the X axis is kind of sad on the left. Okay. Really sad on the right. You put it on the Y. What I'm saying is like you're, you led this conversation with that social media is

something that everyone uses. Phones are something that everyone has. Not everyone is consuming American news media. Yeah. A hundred percent. What I'm saying is in the same way that like somebody in China isn't watching Foxx like American Fox News. Like when you consume stuff on your phone,

your social media feed isn't this neutral worldwide news feed that you consume. I think we're using social media different. I'm saying social media as the concept of people spending a lot of time on their phone, getting news from their phone. Which is broadly sad for the world. People are generally more atomized. They're more isolated. Their friendships are down.

Like that is what I'm saying social media. I'm not saying social media as in our pundits on social media are being read all over the world. Yeah. So I think it's more of a world. I guess what I'm saying is I don't think social media is uniquely causing sadness here. I think it is if it's a sad thing, it's mostly around the world, right? I think I largely agree with that.

It's hard to know because everybody's experience of social media is so different now. You know, it is so fragmented. I would be hesitant to speak for everybody and be like, nah, it's not that sad. But if I, you know, we're going through China, people are doom scrolling. So here's what I definitely agree with. The entire world is on social media right now. They're all doom scrolling.

100%. I'll table this. I think it ties in with the housing one we'll get too late. Yeah. And in fact, let's move on with this extremely helpful chart, which is inflation and housing. Let's tie these together. So obviously, massive, massive increase in the price of basically everything over the past several years. Some of the stats from this article that I thought were particularly shocking. General consumer prices increased between 2007 and 2020 for a 13 year period. They increased. 25%. And then they increased by 25% again just between 2020 and 2025. Housing from 2004 to 2020 to 2020 increased by 50%. So 50% increase in our houses over 16 years. And then there was another 50% increase from 2020 to 2025. So we in the last five years in, you know, particularly in America, have experienced a tripling of the rate at which prices go up. And so that seems like a pretty shut and dry case. What do you think? Well, on inflation, I would kind of push back. I'm intentionally over simplifying that. But go ahead. The world had inflation. Like everyone has had it.

And in fact, during COVID, America was a little bit less impacted. So this is what I had looked at. The inflation of the Anglosphere, UK leads the charge when we're looking at these five countries that people generally consider a part of it. even if you're looking at the past 10 years, when you compare it to the rest of like the OECD, it's, most of the countries are below average among that group of countries on inflation. And the UK is like touching average

or like right around average. Now, it's worth saying the UK is the unhappiest of all the English speaking countries. They are the most upset. So there's something to that. But I wanted to bring up housing because I think that's different. Housing is uniquely bad.

I think, okay. So let's separate that. If we're going to unbury the lead here, Let's focus on housing. My fucking guess. If you could pull this up, this chart kind of says it all. Like the red is housing prices in anglophone countries.

The blue is like comparable European countries. And like, for audio listeners, it's way more expensive. It's just skyrocketing in New Zealand, Canada, UK. And we're talking what like over 100% more on average versus Western Europe? More than 100%. This is a crazy increase for English speaking countries specifically. So, yeah, the Anglosphere as an average is way up Western. So yeah, exactly.

So that seems to track a little bit more than inflation broadly. Than inflation broadly. Like, again, this is young mental adult health is far lower in Anglosphere than Western Europe. So, yeah, I think economically they're both, like the idea that France and Germany and the UK are all getting vastly different levels of inflation does not. seem to hold up. No. But they do have a higher housing price. They're just building less housing. I was looking into this. Some part of it seems to be, some part of it is zoning laws and all things you've talked about, but there is some part of it, which is there's a preference,

revealed preferences of people in anglos spheres for less interest in apartments to own. They have less interest in owning apartments. I don't know if it's historical preference or like they used to be so wealthy that they could have the space for everything and now they don't anymore. I mean, I do think a lot of unhappiness boils down to expectations. And a lot of people in these countries had very good times in recent living memory that are now tantalizingly out of reach. They're all, you can look at the boomers and they can remember it and they had it and you don't have it. And I think that's a bigger part of it. So any complaints with inflation being, it's a little sad.

All right, inflation clearly a worldwide problem. Yeah, very angry about it. But if our goal here is to try to identify this quadrant, what is specifically affecting the English-speaking world so much, housing is- I think it's bottom right, bro. Yeah. Probably one of the absolute biggest.

And I think, go ahead. This was like the number one thing we had looked at before this. I think there's a funny, I mean, it's not funny in the consequences of it. Experiment you could do when you look up most, like, housing affordability compared to median income. And you pull up the list of countries that are on that. Like, what are the least affordable places in the world?

Hong Kong always leads the charts. That's like the number one city. But then after Hong Kong, it's like all, it's London, all American cities, the big Australian cities, the big Canadian cities. It's, they fill the list. Auckland's up there.

And what I wanted to tie this into is I think this feeds into social media because even if social media becomes the vehicle for this to spiral even further than it would. So if housing affordability in the U.S. or Australia is the worst in these biggest cities, right? Obviously, those larger populations are going to go on social media,

talk about these problems, or maybe just be more negative online because it's rooted in this underlying idea that you can afford a home. Yeah. And then that cascade, into all of the consumers of English-speaking content. So even if I happen to live in a place

that's maybe smaller and more affordable in one of these countries, I'm getting fed the update or narrative about how shit things are. And I think how's it into me, when we've talked about this in the past, is the root, but it's the way social media amplifies that within English social media.

It's like kerosene on a fire. That makes total sense. I agree. So why don't we tie this to another theory, which is much more, let's say, soft and hard to quantify. It's not about pricing or news. It's just about human expectations. I posted in our Discord, our lovely Patreon Discord and asked in all capital letters, are you to press? Tell us about it. And then got some great answers. So I want to thank everybody for posting in. And I would say it's hard to kind of rank obviously what people were saying, but of the several dozen. Rang their depression. Right. So now we're going to rank our Discord members by their

We're ranked at how sad they are. We have a different chart. We have their faces. We printed them out and we're going to put them on how sad day. And it's Chad versus total loser. And are they in the world versus English? So something from Rosa. Westerners are not uniquely depressed.

They're just uniquely ambitious. And increasingly that ambition is at odds with reality. We see the ladder being pulled up before we get a chance to climb it and it's infuriating and discouraging. This isn't as much of an issue in countries that never cared very much for the ladder to begin with. From India Lyme, I think one of the most dominant cultural narratives within the U.S. and within the set and within our sense of self as the entire nation is this idea that if you work hard, you get to a position where life gets better and essentially feeling that that is not happening anymore. Even one, there was two posts from folks who were basically like, I feel like my life is pretty good. I have a girlfriend and a job and things are going well. But I feel like I have a duty to try to make the world outside of my own life better. And I have to know what's going on outside of my life to do that. And so it's making me depressed. I want to jump in on this. If you can pull us up, this.

This really jazz what you're saying. So is it just our expectations are too high? This is a chart on the faith in the idea that hard work is rewarded with success. Young adults in the Anglosphere are losing faith in that idea. They are not seeing that. And I do think that ties in with what you said. And I do think that is something that is deeply demoralizing, especially if you thought that that was the case previously.

Because we talked about this in a previous episode, but there's this book Confidence Map. It's about agency. People feeling they have no agency makes you way more, made more aimless. I feel like you have no ability to turn the ship and you're just adrift is like, is... How much of this do you think comes from the fact

that our parents are, you know, the generation right before us across most of the anglosphere, right? Had it extraordinarily good. No, I think that's a huge part of it. It's like, is that comparison point, rather than the kind of broader concept of we as Americans or Englishmen or whatever, like we believe we should have these incredible things.

It's like we just saw what our parents got. You think like it's really specifically grounded in them. I mean, I think very specifically, it's like if you think you're going to have worse opportunities than your parents, you are likely going to get very pissed. You're going to get depressed or nihilis or angry. Because there's country, like for example, I mean, we talk about some of this that we saw in China. What's interesting to me is that if you, if you, if you, if you disentangled everything and put the stats on a chart, China right now, cheaty people per capita, even in just a person power.

adjust your person's power is lower. Like they're like on a pure numbers basis, there's less. There's less had. They have less money so they should be less happy. I'm not necessarily what I'm saying, but like it's the direction of travel. Do you know what I'm saying? All aspects in China are worse than in the United States.

That's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. But all I'm saying is like if you were to just plot that and you didn't have the lines before it, you could make the like obviously option A. But I think what's so obvious is that if you're heading in the right direction. There's a general sense of like, this is working, this is positive. Whereas if you're even a, I even slightly dilting in the wrong direction, it feels catastrophic. It feels

the world is ending. Is there a world where Trump kind of initiates a great reset so that our expectations can only go up from here? Maybe. And we start to take a five year hit right now. And then we're back at that top right quadrant. Then we're back with the rest of the world being unhappy. It's funny you say that. That's unironically some people. So I have heard that argument in life, the idea that Trump, like, and the destruction that comes around him

with the status quo and also the falling in quality of life for people in the U.S., it has to hit this bottom to kind of reset and then build out of again. Not as a pro to Trump, but like whatever comes in the wake of him. Yeah. And also, I would say,

even if he's not doing it for America, There's like measurable evidence that he's probably doing it for some parts of Europe who were, were like speed running down the Trump route until they saw what happened with Trump in America and are now like, well, it's not, I mean, let's not get so nihilistic and angry. This is legitimately happening. There's like some wild populist parties in, in Europe that are losing support because of, because Trump threatened to invade Greenland and all that stuff. Even arguably the Canadian election, right?

Yeah. His involvement, you know, like him coming to power just like change. We have Trump in here somewhere, right? Do you want to talk about him? Yeah. Because what's interesting is like, this just sounds silly, but if you don't speak English, you hear less Trump. Yeah.

And he is like a destabilizing force that does make it, even for other English for countries, hard to have a coherent worldview or vision of the world. I mean, I know as an American, it does feel for me, my head is more spinny when he says shit like we're going to end a civilization tonight. Like it makes you feel like bad about the country. You know, you feels yeah like disconnected from you disconnected from the ideal that you want to like push towards. Right. I don't think any country hits their ideals by the way. But I think the idea that you're trying to go towards it is nice by making an effort. And it feels like he's not even there's not even an attempt. There's not

even a lip service to the ideals. And it's it's disorienting. Well, so counter. I would assume that folks in other countries would be, if you are in Canada or the UK, that you would be seeing the sort of other world type of happiness because Trump is not your president. So is it just literally you understand English and you can understand Donald Trump? Yeah, I don't think this is the case, but it's an interesting, unique aspect of, uh, of English speaking countries. That's one thing that would be unique. It's definitely English more. In my experience, he usually shores up pride in the other countries, you know? They use it as a reference point of, well, at least we don't. At least we don't have him right now. That's the more frequent thing I hear. And I just want it for the

record, Aetrock said to put Trump as only kind of sad. Well, he's got the swagger. Have you seen him dance to YMCA? It can't be that, man. That's some happiness out in the world. I actually want to ask an open question to the audience because I think we have a unique audience for this. people in the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, who listen to this show are a genre of person who are more tapped in to US politics than the average person from those countries would be. And because the US dominates English media

and English social media, I think people from those countries are weirdly in tune with US politics, right? Yeah. Do you feel like Trump being in power here makes you sad? I genuinely. And I wonder- Shame, right?

If you're in Australia, I can't imagine you don't feel some type of like destabilization. Like it's a signal of the world that was more stable that your parents knew is fraying. The old order is done. You know, all that stuff. I feel like that is generally part of the fog. of the future that makes you unsable, even if you're not in America directly feeling Trump. And the idea that like, okay, this country ostensibly was our ally and now they're terrifying.

All that stuff is like probably throws you out in the off kilter in a little bit too. I don't know. I think he's part of it. But I would agree that it's not the uniquely English speaking thing. Let us know. So we stay involved. So we've got basically the idea of our own kind of culture and expectations being a key part, which, let's just quickly, how important do you guys feel that is?

Like, the expectations that English-speaking countries have set for themselves the last generations, and not just Americans, right? Do we feel like that's as impactful as the fact that our homes are way more expensive? I would say not as much, but it's in there. I think they're tied together. I do think there's a lot of truth here. That kind of comparison is the thief of joy. We have this aversion to loss.

It hurts to lose things and fail much more than it. than to be on the trajectory up, you know? And this is tied to housing uniquely in these places where it's like this is the baseline way to live life and like find success is being stable enough to move out and buy a home. I feel like that's the commonality between these things and it's too expensive to have.

I don't feel like it is unique in that I think young French people and young Japanese people and are struggling with this right now too. Like that feeling's not unique. Struggling with the housing thing or with the sense that things are declining? The sense that things are declining.

Like that is a shared feeling across a bunch of places. So if that is the case, what makes it unique in this specific situation? Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps

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It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses, have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's O'DOO.com. Hassan Piker has blown up in recent years. After the 2024 election, the popular leftist Twitch streamer became a go-to voice for the Democratic Party, but Pikers' glow-up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice. Hassan Piker is anti-American, he is bigoted,

he's anti-Semitic and he is deeply misogynistic. So in March, a Democratic group called Third Way published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section saying, quote, Democrats are too cozy with Hassan Piker. He is such an extremist that it will only do damage to Democrats and hurt their chances of beating right-wing populism. Now, Piker is controversial, no doubt. But is he toxic? I don't think this helps Republicans at all.

I think, as a matter of fact, Third Way's brand of politics. help Republicans. Their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues to the Republican Party and never focus on economic populism. I'm a Sted Hearnson, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Well, here's a question. Is one of the theories is that we in the Anglosphere are measuring our happiness differently. So that's a common argument. We are more aware of mental health. We have, you know, we talk about it more. It's become, you know, anxiety, ADHD, these diagnoses have gone way, way, way, way up over the past couple decades.

And the argument could be that maybe we aren't actually unhappier compared to the rest of the world. But we have just become much more aware of our poor mental states, whereas another country might hide it. There was an interesting slate article. So Rosa and the Discord linked this. So a slate article talked about how Finland, they're one of the happiest countries, right? But then if you ask them, they're like, no, we're not.

So there's a quote, nobody is more skeptical than the Finns about the notion that we are the world's happiest people. To be fair, this is hardly the only global ranking we've topped recently. When a cabinet member of the Finnish government was introduced at an international conference as, quote, the representative of the happiest country in the world, he responded, if that's true, I'd hate to see the other nations. So. But isn't that just a comment on the human condition?

I feel like they are. I hear that Finns say that. I've heard this saying that all the unhappy Finns killed himself so it makes the stats better. I've heard this, but I, I think people take the word happiness too literally. Yeah, like they're not walking around smile. They're just generally more content with, like they're less, what's the word I'm thinking of?

I don't think, because the report isn't about like which country of people is the most euphoric and walking around. Yeah. But that's what the title kind of makes it sound like. Yeah. It's just a measurement of a bunch of factors that provide stability and confidence and life satisfaction. And like people in Finland have, you know,

measurably lower levels of corruption. They're generally less likely to go into disastrous debt for health. You know, like all this thing. There's like a lot of things that would derail a life that are less common there. And so I don't, I mean, their weather sucks. I'm not,

but I feel like it's, I feel like it's reasonable to think that they are top ranked in happiness. We have the 405 that should cancel out. That's what I've been saying, but nobody believes me. You're joking, dude. They can't even. Imagine that there. What do you guys think about the job market? How influential is this compared to the rest of the world broadly? And we can we can kind of tie AI in here. I think AI is often contributing to the feeling that there's going to be less jobs, but they're sort of intertwined. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, listen, if you take inflation and housing and jobs and all that together, I, you know, it's my core. My core belief is that that is the key thing. But I do think that like the job market's pretty bad all over.

In fact, it could be worse in other countries. So I wouldn't necessarily say that's the... Yeah, I mean, I was talking to friends. I actually talked to friends in Australia and Sweden about this recently, about their struggles, this 20 to 30 range, especially, getting new jobs, what's it like to apply to things right now, layoffs happening. And, you know, without looking at data directly,

I haven't seen anything that says unemployment is dramatically higher in these five countries, right? Or that it's dramatically more difficult outside of them to get jobs. In China, it could even be worse than other. Youth unemployment in China. It's brutal in China. And people told us that in China,

kind of laxidazically, like in Chongqing, when we were talking with our tour guide, and she's like, oh, yeah, it's like 30%. It's insanely hard to get a job right now. And this is just casually like, oh, my God, for reference ours that youth is, what, 10 right now, something like that. So I feel like the only point we've hit so far that actually has a differentiation of these specific countries is housing price. When we put everything in really sad? I don't know if we're sad scales.

Well, here, let's let's quickly chalk this. 2020 is when this all started. Yeah. 2020 is when Atriarch started streaming regularly. Well, that's not. But that is available to the entire world. Well, actually, how much? It's really more English speaking.

You're saying the reason the anglo's sphere is unhappy is because I am streaming. Yeah. When did you start streaming? It ties directly into the news. It ties directly into expectations. You keep telling people they should have a home. It's kind of interlocked with everything. You keep telling your audience they should have jobs.

Counterpoints. I have been streaming so much less and yet happiness has only gone down. That was only this year, though. We don't have data for that yet. The World Happiness Report was through 2025. I keep taking breaks and people get more unhappy. So that can't be possibly. When the Bureau of Atriarch streaming does their revisions at the end of the

I'll do a lot of numbers revisions. All right, look, I think we're starting to wrap it up. A core one, do you think these people just need Jesus? Maybe it's religion, Aidan? Religion. You're a God-fearing heathen, right? God-fearing heathen, right? God-fearing heathen.

Why don't you go to Christ or any of the other ones? Are you, if I were to give, statistically, I think, Scandinavian countries are some of the least religious out of like the OECD, I think. they're at the top of the happiness report. So I think, I don't think that's the case at all. Yeah. So even in the Derek Thompson article, the number of people who are non-religious has been increasing substantially for like 50 years. It used to in this, man, look at the exact numbers. In the 70s, it was like 5%. And then it, like 28. Yeah, yeah, yeah, pull this up. So the number of people who are non-religious has been declining fairly precipitously for 50 years. And,

No, no, no. People have been getting more atheist until COVID. Now they're getting more religious. Right, right, right. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So it does not appear to have any impact whatsoever. Unless religion is making them sad. You could flip it. That's what it is. So it's the people who have become religious in the past five years. But the people who've got religious the last five years are so unhappy with their new. Have you read the news in the Bible? It is depressing. Bible is low-key depressing. I think this is kind of, I'm not putting Jesus. It's kind of sad.

Well, this is religion. This is the picture for religion. And yeah, I don't think it's the big, I don't think it's a big cause of this. Okay. It has been a time's in history, but not now. Trust. What about trust, which we're represented by the spy

and Team Fortress two stabbing the engineer. So as it feels like we're all being stabbed in the back by spies. Trust. Social trust. High trust first. low trust society. It does feel like that's, I don't know if it's the cause, but it feels like a symptom. But people are increasingly feel low trust in some of these anglosphere countries. Yeah. So it's a number, I hate to echo it, but it's another thing that doesn't really come out

in the numbers when you look at how they measure against other countries. So there's a number of ways you can look at this. There's an fixed way to measure trust in a society. Two of the things I looked at were the world value survey. They do a question of, you know, what do you trust your neighbors in your country? Or you're, sorry, do you trust strangers in your country? The average stranger. And just taking people's general evaluation of that.

And the countries that are on the high end, you could probably guess. It might be a little Denmark. Might be a little Finland. And they rank really high. I think Denmark is like 73 per, like, 73% trust the average stranger in their own country. And the Anglosphere countries are lower on this list,

and there has been a decline in the U.S. over the past, like, few decades. But there's actually been an increase in Britain, which was interesting to me, and pretty stable in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, no significant change. And with plenty of other OECD countries, like below,

and above these places. So I couldn't find anything significant there. There's another measurement that you can look at where what is the likelihood that somebody will find a wallet and try to return it to its owner? And this didn't really prove anything either. There was an interesting gap between the U.S., like trust in the U.S. for strangers was really low,

but the amount of people in the U.S. that would try to return the wallet is actually really high. and there's kind of an interesting disparity there of, oh, well, how does this functional, like how does this outlook on strangers functionally interact with an actual task? But again, like no conclusion, no reason to like isolate these five places

in terms of how that trust manifests, at least in these two tests. One thing I want to say is, for me, if you were to break trust into trust in your other citizens, and then trust in institutions, which is hard to categorize.

But I do feel, at least anecdotally, it feels like there's a massive decline in trust in institutions. Yeah. Like specifically, like, you know, I'm someone who would like defend our three branches of government and checks and balances.

But like in modern day, it's harder and harder because they're so gridlocked and there's so little progress. So it like declines your ability to like believe in that value and expouse for it and have trust in that it's gonna do its job.

That if we were to like all follow the rules and you know what I'm saying? I just think that is gotta be some part of it. I don't know if that's worldwide or, uh. I wonder if those, this is another example of something that social media just really exacerbates, right? And I think it just makes the problem seem even worse. Or if you're hearing something about the US all the time

on social media, then it's echoed through the whole silo of English social media, then that makes, you evaluate and feel worse about maybe your own government and it's dysfunction. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if, you know, because these countries all have very similar political systems. You know, there's differences, but I mean, they have largely two major parties. I'm wondering if the gridlock from that is causing problems.

For America specifically. But you'd have to identify the gridlock is unique, right? Yeah. I'm not saying that there isn't enough similarities here for a pattern to exist, but who's you know, is... I mean, France's government is notoriously deadlocked, right? Yeah. We've talked about that on the show.

So again, I think it's something that just fails the test of like, do these places stand out as truly unique among all these factors? Yeah. Seems like we lost a lot of trust. That's also outlined by Derek by the economics. Economist Perltsman also show that trust is basically just plummeted for Americans in the last six years. But it just doesn't seem English speaking specific. Okay.

You know what is English speaking? What's the one thing that like unites particularly America, but honestly most of YouTube? Most of YouTube. I guess. Grand theft auto six keeps being delayed. I was pretty close. I would argue the world cares less about the delay than we do. And this is that is a big thing.

Actually worse than housing and topped only by. Atriarch streaming more. Me and Grant Def Otto were probably the biggest causes of unhappiness. If they just released the damn game. If we keep failing to meet expectations. Yeah. And who's the one English speaking president

that has had more impact for the entire Anglo-Sphere than anyone else? Gerald Ford. Also English-speaking. This man, I don't know if you guys saw. Check this hunk of a man out. This is him playing football. I'm sorry.

Podcast, watch your argument that he got old. This is solely for Atrock. he used to be hot and he's not and that's why we're sad. Gerald Ford is a piece of ass. And I mean that the nicest way possible. How is that relevant, dog? To whether or not, I get it actually. When you think about it.

Let's wrap up this conversation. What are you what are your guys' conclusion? So a lot of reasons to be sad in the world. I don't think there's any argument around that. Tapes over here. but I really do agree. It feels like there's a couple things that seem to stand out

that are specific to us. The housing, I would argue, being the biggest. And then our news being so negative relative also seems extraordinarily problematic. I think broad unhappiness is usually rooted in some material reality, like in some way.

So what's the only factor we're able to look at on this board in this 40 minutes of podcast time. It seems to be housing prices. That's what stands out the most to me. I can't really find a clear reason for any of the others that would make the Anglosphere

particularly unique. You're pointing to me. Well, there's one more thing. What is unique about English-speaking countries versus the rest of the world? We speak English. We speak English. Is it possibly that the English language

is so stupid that that is the problem. I before, you, except that they're C, except in the word weird and in the word science. Well, the word red and read are spelled the same

but pronounced differently and mean different things. Like, what if the fucking language is so annoying to deal with that it's causing all this pain? You ever heard how they count in French?

It's fucked up. It's fucked. And you think you, and you're worried about that. Yeah. I have a theory. Yeah, what's your theory? We're so bad at talking.

We can't figure out how to get a house built. Like we keep being like, oh, set up a pillar there. And someone else is like Pilar. I do like the idea of the housing crisis. The housing crisis is rooted in our comms just being pretty good. We have bad comms. Why the fuck is only of English-speaking countries not building housing or bad at making housing affordable? Why is this unique to English speakers?

I mean, I think the data is there. Like if it's much worse, that's such a clear indicator of happiness. But why are we uniquely? It's not like it's just America. We have to go deeper into that. But I do want to say that I just read this piece that was like, there's a proven preference to not owning an apartment. If you want to own, they want to own a house in Anglo-Sphere countries.

And it may be rooted in the fact that historically they were able to do that. And so it's like you feel like you're stepping down. Like people that were doing what? or had a nice middle class job could afford a house. Now I have to get an apartment. That's the downgrade, I'm pissed about that. I want a single family home. Did they explore any other reasons for that being the case?

Like, if you look at America, there's really high demand for SUVs that doesn't exist in other places. Yeah. Or even something like wedding rings. You know, but the origin of these things are often corporate marketing campaigns that were meant to circumvent some sort of regulation or popularized. It's a status thing. Like, is there something here that is similar, you think?

They did not give an explanation, but I do think, yeah, I think it's a status thing. I think human beings are very status-obsessed creatures. And I think there's an idea that it's a downgrade. In some way that you are less than you should. It's expectations versus reality, which I think is at the core of all this. I guess what I'm asking is, could you take a guess as to why those expectations are so ingrained or set? Especially outside of the U.S. I feel like I could make a really good guess why those expectations are set in the U.S.

I mean, I would say even in Anglosphere countries is because they were able to do it until, you know, you go back to 40, 50, 60, 70s, they were able to do it. And now it's harder. And so, but you still want the same marker of success. You want the, what your parents had. I guess that would be my biggest guess. Additionally, I assume it's just harder to build in general. I think there's zoning laws that are unique to these legal systems that have all made, or whatever. I think the political gridlock, those things have combined to make it toxic.

But I think there's a, I don't know, there's an idea that like, hey, I really want them to build a bunch of apartments so that other people can have them. So it brings down the price of home so I can have a home. I think there's a part of that in English for your countries. You want someone else to do it, but you want the same status symbol that your parents had. So expectations, affordability, being blasted with negative news. Let's get away from this. Talk about all the horrible shit that's been happening this week. Aidan, you want to talk about what's going on in Gulf states?

This shit's awful. Whoa. And by the way, if you're living in New Zealand, America, you need to know about this, okay? You need to be tapped. You need to be tapped this. Need to monitor the situation. I want you to crack open a monster. Do you think that people in New Zealand learning about UAE leaving OPEC is really making

them unhappy? I think they got to get their monitor right here, two inches from their face. And they got to crack a monster. And you need to monitor the situation. Prepare to get sad with you. I think if you could learn about this in a house, a big house, you'd be fine. Fucking depressed, guys. Let's get into it.

This isn't even a sad story. Or did we talk about UAE? I mean, yeah, I don't know if I would call this sad. So I don't know if you guys are familiar. Like, he's not a sad about it. Well, we probably depressed for OPEC not having another member. Am I, guy who's sitting in front of a graph that scale is kind of sad to really saddened. It can only be on this chart.

Will you make the chart? I'm not putting OPEC on here or like. And do you feel like OPEC is particularly saddening to English speakers? I would be sad if like a friend's D&D group lost a member, not if OPEC lost a country. Like, who cares? So, I don't know if you guys are caught up on this, but there's been this whole, like, U.S., Israel, Iran war going on. I try to not listen to the news. It makes me sad.

Yeah, yeah, fair enough. And kind of in the fallout of this war, the UAE announced today that it is leaving OPEC. And if you are not familiar, OPEC is a bunch of different countries, many of which are in the Middle East, but, you know, several from Africa. I think some from South America as well, that are a public cartel of oil-producing nations that cooperate on pricing and output of oil in order to influence the global price of oil. And they have done this, I think, since the 60s.

OPEC was formed in the 60s. Been 60 years, I don't know if it's... And the UAE is one of the largest producers in OPEC is the third largest producer behind Saudi Arabia and not super far behind Iraq, which is second. And they have talked for many years about potentially leaving OPEC, the trade-off being that once you leave, you can produce as much as you want. And that has potential financial benefits. It let, you know, you have a certain ability to navigate geopolitical situations like the one we're in right now that you wouldn't otherwise have. And you don't have

to adhere to the ruling of the cartel and let other nations decide how much oil you're going to produce anymore. And the outcome that I think not a lot of people fully understand is the cartel and its ability to influence the global price absorbs price shocks that would happen. So huge swings in supply or demand that would cause the price of oil to spike for short periods or really drop for periods. OPEC, because they control so much of the supply as a block, can choose to control their output collectively in a way that heavily influences the public price of oil that lets them all make a stable amount of money at all times. and the UAE has a big chip at that table because they produce so much compared to the other countries

and they're leaving at a time when the US has also dramatically increased its production which has decreased the power that OPEC has over the market at large. So that's why this is consequential. I'm curious if you wanted to weigh in, had any thoughts? Yeah, I mean, it's just

the OPEC, They all team up and they all say we're going to make less oil so we can all have a higher price and be rich. And everybody in OPEC is incentivized to cheat. They all want everyone else to cut their thing and then they cheat and put a little bit more. And they all have been doing this. Algeria cheated in 2002, Saudi Arabia cheated in 2002.

Qatar cheated for fucking 10 years. Saudi Arabia. They've all, they've all Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia. They've all at different times needed the money more than other people. And so they say, we're going to produce this much and they produce more. And UAE is kind of just over it. They're just kind of over it and they would rather just produce and sell as much oil as they can.

Especially because right now, when oil prices are over $100 a barrel, there is so much money to be made. If you just sell as much as you make, you can fund your guard. You can do everything. And if you're voluntarily holding back, it's kind of frustrating, especially if you think other members of the cartel are cheating. So I think UAE is just like, fuck out, I'm going to get mine. I think it's a symbol, first of all, of kind of what the U.S. has done to all sorts of institutions, but everyone's kind of going into this, what Carney called, multipolar world.

Everyone's kind of looking out for themselves, figuring it out, and pulling back from these institutions that have sort of made cooperation. I don't think OPEC is a particularly good thing. I understand they could absorb price shocks, but essentially at the end of the day, it's a cartel that makes all of our gas more expensive. It does feel like it's a part of that greater trend. think the pressure that this puts on now is because they're one of the largest producers. Like other countries have left OPEC prior to this. I think Qatar left in like 2020. A couple

countries had left before that. But the difference between the UAE and those places is that the UAE's output per day is way higher. And they actually do have a little more influence from their output than it's just not as big of a deal when those countries left. And now Saudi Arabia is in this spot as the biggest producer, kind of the de facto head of OPEC by the amount they output, they have less control than they ever have because of the UAE leaving. And then it forces Saudi Arabia to be like the remaining enforcer and cut their oil production by larger margins in order to try and still have that influence over the price that they once had. It puts a lot of pressure on Saudi Arabia

that didn't exist before. And I guess I'm not really privy to the nuance of this relationship changing over the last few years, but the UAE and Saudi Arabia are like clashing a little more politically in recent years than they did in the past.

Differing takes on how they develop relationships with Israel, for instance. And the UAE is, yeah, cutting and running. Is it fair to say that the weakening of that cartel in the absence of the sort of like global shock where they can sort of help monitor the price is going to be better for the consumer. Like if I go to the local

bodega to buy a barrel of crude, is it going to be cheaper now because UAE is not adhering to these prices. When we take our gas station break between the main episode and the Primo and we get our barrel crew, you get your peaches, you get the sweet beaches, you get some almonds. I get the barrel of crude. And what I appreciate you? You always share it. I always share the crude. No matter how expensive it gets,

you can never tell me I don't share the crude. Sometimes it's that dirty Venezuelan oil, you know? I get that unrefined, sour, vanilla crude. I put it on my skittles. Diffing your skittles and sour Venezuelan crude is a beast

is fucking sick. Uh, you're, the question you asked had a very important line with just like all else being equal or whatever. Yeah, of course. Yeah, definitely. If this was just the only thing that happened, oil prices would go down. Everyone's flooding the market with more. I mean, your example of Saudi Arabia, I, I 100% agree, but like Saudi Arabia is under some financial pressure right now. They, they, they, they, they're like hard for them to cut their oil output. I know, it's tough. They got to finish the line. They got to finish the line. They got to sponsor another. They're going and, yeah. Yeah, wait. What is it? buy esports. The financial pressure being the restriction of moving of the oil through the straight. I'm guessing. No, I'm thinking in general,

the cost overruns of all the things they've been spending on to cut their garbage. So actually the line in a way. No, the line in a way. Like they, all that stuff is very expensive. And it was while they were pumping a lot of oil. If they have to cut the oil,

it's going to be harder. Yeah. So, although they're probably doing the best because they have that pipeline. They're probably doing better than anyone. But yeah. So, I don't know.

Overall, I think it's a decent thing. I think OPEC was not in a lot of people's benefits as a consumer. And I think this is a big pressure to them. They were 40% of the world's oil market before losing UAE. Now they're going to be less. And UAE pumping as much as they can is like, everyone else is incentivized to be like,

well, I don't want to be left behind. Yeah. Did we talk about, do we talk about Iraq's pipeline that they have on the last episode? We talked about a canal. I mentioned the canal if that's what you're thinking. Oh, it's also worth mentioning that another member of OPEC, Iran is firing missiles at the UAE.

So like there's, it also makes the UAE, like, hard to... Probably a small factor. Probably not that big of a deal. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that is fun. It's so funny. They're attacking everybody. Yeah, Iran's number, uh, Iran's number four.

Yeah. Wow. So now, excuse me, number three now. Yeah. Yeah. Moving off the spot. Honestly, if you're... If you're a product manager working at Iran and your job, your KPI, that's the most tech brother you've ever said to war. And your KPI for this sprint is to get Iran to number one on the list. You start bombing number one, two, and three.

Elizabeth Holman would have said that. When I'm a part of the fucking religious theocracy of Iran, and I'm doing, and I'm doing agile. Yeah. And I'm at the scrum. I'm in the morning scrum. I come to Monday scrum. It's like, we build a few more. drones. We're going to get you a out. No, we're going to clear the Jira ticket. We bombed you at E's pipes. I thought we talked about this on the show for some reason.

But Iraq, I didn't know this, has actually a giant, uh, high capacity pipeline as well to get oil to their opposite coast. Isn't it to Russia or, or not to Russia, but I,

I'm not wrong. No. They get to like the Baltic Sea or something. Right. I'm fucking. I gotta, hold on. Give me, give me one, give me one fucking second, dude.

Yeah, I'm trying to remember where it goes out. But there's like, uh, they have restrictions on. Basically, they have a high capacity line to get oil out of the country, which they've, uh, historically,

here I got on screen. Unable to use very effectively because, uh, goes through, uh, and they, and they have beef. They have beef with the Kurtz.

Yeah. So the Kurds threaten the pipeline in order to leverage in their relationship with the Iraqi government because of the issues there that I know so much about

but I won't tell you right now. It's funny because this is the area of the map that we were making a joke like would be impossible to build a canal. Yeah, yeah. But there's a pipeline. There's actually a pipeline. And they, I forget what the number was,

but there actually is an incredible amount of capacity in this pipeline and they have in the wake of this crisis because the straight is closed, they have negotiated something with the Kurds in order to start using this pipeline actively again. Oh, I mean, like, this is the best time. If you have a pipeline, you're the goat. If you're a pipeline exporter in the Middle East who gets around Hormuz, you're just

a money printer. You've literally developed a license to print money. Why didn't we do that? Why didn't we as lemonade stand build a pipeline in the Middle East? Or do you mean America, which we've also done. I'm dead ass men lemonade stand, but I was, to be fair, we do have some pipes coming out of the back wall that as far as I'm aware,

oh, that's the sour crude right there. That's where we store it. We release, we finally released lemonade merch. See that tap? See that tap? Don't push that tab. That's definitely you to fill your vehicle.

It was your SUV needs topping off. All right. Yeah. I mean, that was an interesting piece of news for sure. Sad, sad stuff. Yes. The 2006 Chevrolet Equinox awarded the most dependable compact SUV in the U.S.

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That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. Let's move on to OpenAI and Microsoft. Now, there's been a funny little relationship going on

with some spikes in their relationship this past week. I say relationship, what I'm going to try to do is frame all of this as though it's a romantic relationship to help it be more understood. Okay, real, real brief history. Open AI, I've been around for a while, obviously. And in 2019 to 2023, basically, Open AI and Microsoft were in a monogamous relationship. Okay. Microsoft is the biggest investor. They had exclusivity on IP, specifically with the API IP, but broadly they are the ones who get to

sort of run most of Open AI's products. What? True love. True love. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but there was a funny thing that we talked about a while ago, which is that if Open AI achieves AGI, then they get to like break the contract, which is a very strange funny thing because AGI does not have an actual definable thing. So this has been going on for quite a while. And then as we talked about last year, OpenAI finally after a lot of consternation was able to transition to a for-profit.

So they split into two. They have the OpenAI, but now they have a public benefit corporation underneath it where the nonprofit has a 26% share and Microsoft has a 27% share. So they had a child. Okay. Open AI is the nonprofit.

And they birth the child. And they both have equal ownership and the child. But also the remaining 47% is held by employees who are the family friends. This is all tracks. This is like just like a relationship. So we chatted about this. You know, this is again last October where there was a big question of like what was going to happen. Clearly open AI is angling to IPO angling to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And in their original contract with Microsoft, they had basically kind of shackled themselves and said, we're only going to use Microsoft's services. We're guaranteed to buy this much. There's even revenue. And there's even revenue. share where OpenAI just has to just straight up send. It's estimated 20% of their revenue straight to Microsoft on top of paying them for all the compute that they need to use. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this happened in October, and this was the story of like Open AI has finally become for-profit. Asterisk, they're, you know, the for-profit company is like this child that they have. So in the month since then, things have gotten a little funky. And Open AI is starting to sleep around a little bit. But first, Microsoft has... a little dalliance. I would say this is not cheating. It was emotional cheating. Okay. So what

Microsoft did in November is they partner with Anthropic. You go to the next one. Anthropic happily announced, hey, we're all in a strategic partnership together. Microsoft has agreed to buy, excuse me, we're agreeing to buy $30 billion in Azure compute, which is Microsoft's cloud services. And in return, we, Microsoft, we're going to start running their models. So the relationship with Open AI, that's still their main squeeze, but Microsoft talk in a lot with Anthropos. It's getting a little spicy. Can I quickly ask, is Azure like Microsoft's competitor to something like AWS? Yes.

Okay. Yeah. So you hear about Google Cloud or Azure or AWS. This is all companies that basically are selling servers that can do stuff. Yeah. So Microsoft is trying to position themselves instead of saying, hey, we offer open AI products. They're trying to say, we offer open AI products, but also don't tell my partner, but we can also slip you some anthropic too.

So they're starting to put more and more models. on here. So then February 27th happens. This is quite recent now. OpenAI announces a massive new round of fundraising with Amazon. So as a reminder, they signed this whole deal and when they went for profit that Microsoft still had exclusivity, right? Microsoft is still the one that gets their IP. They have this great balance back and forth. And Open AI just comes out and it's like, we've partnered with Amazon. We're really happy with this. They're investing $50 billion. But there's some weird things. They say, AWS from Amazon

is going to be the exclusive provider for this new joint product we're going to make, this new runtime environment called OpenAI Frontier. But they're explicitly not supposed to do that in the contract. When they wrote the marriage contract,

yeah, when they wrote that, when they signed the pre-up, they specifically said that they're not like everything from OpenAI still has to run on Microsoft if it's an API. Amazon announces very happily, we're investing 50 billion. dollars in Open AI. But it's actually $15 billion followed by quotes another 35 billion in the coming months when certain conditions are met. What does that mean? Who knows? What is opening I doing with Amazon? Where are their hands actually going on each other? I don't know. So this appeared, this is, you know, two months ago, appeared to directly conflict with this big, you know, deal that had taken years for them to sort out with Microsoft. So that same day, if you go to the next one, Perry,

Microsoft comes out and has to basically say, uh, no. And they say our IP relationship continues unchanged. Uh, we have exclusive license and access to the property. Azure is still the exclusive cloud provider. We're supposed to have exclusive providing for stateless APIs. Um, and any, anything that comes from a collaboration with a third party, including Amazon has to be hosted on our stuff. And so Microsoft is kind of going, wait, what the fuck is going on? We had this deal. In March, the FT runs report. and says Microsoft is considering suing OpenAI. We know our contract, a source told the FTE. We will sue them if they breach it. If Amazon and OpenAI want to take a bet on the creativity of their contractual lawyers,

I would back us, not them. So they, Open AI sort of appeared to just be flaunting the contract that they had signed with Microsoft, which, by the way, as a reminder, they couldn't have even gone for profit unless Microsoft gave the okay. That's how important Microsoft is in OpenAI's business. So now, as of one day ago, if you go to the next one, Microsoft and Open Eye come out and they say, we've revised our contract again. So now they're saying, look, in quotes, Open AI products will ship first on Azure unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities. Open AI can now serve all of its products to customers across any cloud provider.

that I don't know what that means. That's all they said. There's no additional context. They're saying it has to ship first on Azure unless Microsoft doesn't want to. Is that for a certain amount of time? I don't know. But it's now non-exclusive. Microsoft has officially given up.

They're seeing other people. They're officially in an open relationship, which is kind of wild because, again, Microsoft is like the biggest contributor to Open AI for a long period of time. And a key part of that was that they would have exclusive IP access. to Open AI. And they're finally giving that up. The other thing that they're giving up is Microsoft no longer has to pay any RevShare to Open AI, but OpenAI has to pay RevShare back. So the way of to, you know, kind of summarize all this, Open AI has convinced Microsoft to be non-exclusive. This is after years of them basically trying to finagle around the details of their contract. Microsoft seemingly is like saving money on this. They still have a lot of equity. But they're

partnering with other people. Open AI is partnering with other people. And what was this key central partnership across all of, you know, AI is sort of falling apart, probably in, in, wake, in anticipation of Open AI, um, IPOing soon. And so if you feel like that's a little convoluted and confusing, if you go to the next one, Perry, there's this lovely graph by Bloomberg that really shows all of it. Scroll down until you'll see it. You'll know it when you see it. Keep going. That. So this graph really kind of drives home. Audio listeners, this craft doesn't look like anything. It's incredibly confusing.

There's about 20 circles with lines interweaving between all of them, essentially showing how incredibly incestuous all of these companies are with each other and how many deals and relationships there are. And there was this degree of sort of like key exclusivity partnership between two of these giants

and now with that gone, everybody's going to be sleeping around with everybody. Yeah. What's wrong with starting the polycule? It's a polycule. It's definitely a, an AI fuck fest going on here.

What I will say is you know, and Nvidia is hidden. Open AI is hidden. Yeah, opening eyes. They're the, they're getting around. No loads refutes.

No loads refuse in the open AI party. 100%. Uh, it's a lot of arrows going to. It's a lot of arrows. They're the center. They got money promised to everybody

and they, they, uh, take money from everybody. everybody. I got two headlines here. Perry, if you pull them up. Amazon, in addition to at the same time, they're investing in Open A.I. Put 25 billion in Anthropic. And Google, which has their own platform, Gemini, is also putting 40 billion in Anthropic and money in Open AI. Yeah. And there just seems to be a sense among every one of these big tech companies that they just don't want to lose. Yeah. Like they, they just like we're going to do our thing. We're as hard as we can. But we better to God,

better not be out of the loop if someone's ahead of us. or like, they just, AI is such an existential threat for their future. Yeah. But they have to have billions of dollars into every one of the competitors to make sure that it's... Just to clarify, this is basically just these companies hedging. They see this as so critical that they have to invest in competitors because they literally have no choice. That's what it feels like. Part of it is also, a lot of it is circular.

So like if Google puts 40 billion in Anthropic, they're saying there's a condition that you have to use our cloud or whatever. Right. And so their cloud gets a boost and anthropic gets a boost and everyone's has, you know, it's the circular circle or circle thing. But it does feel like part of it is that like I don't care if they're my direct competitor, just make sure that we're a part of anything that's winning. Yeah.

Another way to put it is so Saddam and Adela talked about this with War Cash like six months ago. And basically the crux of his strategy is, we want to be a hyper-scaler. We want to have massive data centers that can run anybody's model. So we want to invest in basically everybody is that no matter which model wins, no matter which person manages to spend

the whatever $30 billion to create the AGI. We have the system right there ready to go that's ready to use it. So that's why most of these deals include things like Open AI has to buy. Like the contract says Open AI has to buy $250 billion of Azure usage, which is crazy.

That's an insane amount of money. So a lot of these investments are like, you just need to make sure you're running it on our servers. So that no matter who wins like the model of, you know, the model has to, no matter what AI you build, it has to run on computers. And so if Google or Amazon or Microsoft are all setting themselves up to have to be the cloud provider, they kind of don't care who wins to some degree. Yeah. And all those promises from no loads refuse open AI do not run. up well against this headline, which just came out, which is from their CFO, where they have missed both revenue and user targets and I think were recently just passed in business revenue by Anthropics.

So these are all things that are kind of spooky for the dark center of this web. Because again, they've just made so many promises on money. And they had estimated to hit a billion users. they have not hit it. They estimated to hit a certain amount of revenue targets to be on track to pay those things back. They have not hit it. The ads platform has so far not produced the returns they expected.

Obviously, SOR didn't produce the returns expected. And all the money in AI right now is coming from business clients who are spending through the nose. And a lot of that is going to quad. So yeah, it's a weird thing. I will say this woman, the CFO of OpenAI, is apparently getting left out of meetings by Sam Altman. He's like icing her out.

because she keeps talking about this stuff and not like going with the flow. He apparently wants to just vibe his way to, you know. Vibe his way to the IPO. To the IPO. Because the IPO is where they all cash out. I don't mean to talk ill of Sam Altman, who by all accounts is impeccable.

By all accounts. But it is, it's like even just this Microsoft story is wild. You spend years getting your biggest partner to agree, to like let you become a for-profit company to change a bunch of the deal that you guys had. And then a couple months later,

you go basically explicitly violate that with Amazon and get them to a, you know, they're basically just continuing to kind of push Microsoft a little bit farther out, which maybe they're fine with. But it, dude, it does not seem like a loyal partner. And it's gonna be fine. I just want to like see some other people,

some things. And Microsoft's like, okay, well, you can't bring, him home and then Sam Altman started bringing him home. And like, and Sam Altman's like, and by the way, I love you and I want to be with you, unless I have like the greatest orgasm of all time, artificial general orgasms. And that would change that. That would say, but I do love you.

Oh yeah. And you know that. And thank for the money, by the way. Thank you so much for them. We need a little more. And I just need a little more. I just know a little bit more because I got to date with Amazon tonight. like I want to look good.

Yeah, I don't know. You know I like Amazon. Yeah, it's weird. I agree. He doesn't not seem like a good partner. It seems like he, I mean, you could chart, even, I mean, I'm no supporter of you on, but you can go every step of the way.

And he like, he'll use them for what is useful at the time. And then the second he doesn't want something more, it can be benefited more. He just cuts the partnership, please. And, uh, yeah, it's, it's honestly, it's, it's one black mark on a flawless record. A flawless record. This guy's out of an impeccable life and career.

I know we haven't talked about this at all. But Open AI seems to have a lot of financial obligations. So many, bro. So many. I just, like you said in that article, it's like that was one $250 billion obligation. And that's one of the things. His deal making spree last year put Open AI on the hook for 600 billion in future spending

commitments. And for just context, Q3 of last year, it might have been Q4. I apologize. But they lost $11 billion. So they just give you a sense of what they're doing in a given three-month period. They are losing $11 billion. But like that'll turn around. It's just, have you seen the new chat GBT?

Did you see the pictures? They're really good. I heard it's good. I was going to ask you about it. I don't know if you know anything more about the new chat DBT. I heard it's good. It's just that there's a limit. You can't promise $600 billion and then make no.

money. Like something, I mean, America's done it for a long time. So maybe it's not impossible. But for a company that doesn't work. It doesn't, I don't know. It's so wild. I'll quickly give the counter argument. We've talked about this. I believe on a Patreon episode like six months ago. As part of these announcements that Open IAHA has been doing, they announced that they have 900 million weekly active users on chat TBT. That is a bafflingly large amount of people. Even if it's not hitting a billion like they promised, even if it's not going to generate whatever, or $600 billion in the next year. That is an insanely huge amount of users

that currently, the vast majority of which are not paying. I believe it's 6% are paying. They actually talked about this in their recent announcement. But the point is they have what, 800 billion people. They have 800 billion people.

800 billion people. They have 800 million people for whom they are using Open AIs products and not paying. Okay, so 900 million weekly active users, 50 million are paying subscribers. That is 850 million people using their products, costing them money and not making them anything.

And then if you compare that to the tech giants where we have often said, hey, Google spending crazy amount of money, but they are profitable. They make a lot of money. Meta spending a crazy amount of money on AI, but they are profitable. The reason both of those are profitable is because of ads. They have a really sophisticated ad network.

And in theory, if Open AI, can start monetizing the literal fucking almost billion people they have using their apps, that could be an absolutely momentous revenue stream. So it's not like there's no formula for how to get there. There being like a reasonable company. I don't know if it's there like $650 billion constantly, but it's just, it's worth acknowledging the amount of users they have on chat is absolutely insane. And there's almost no monetization, which is kind of wild. Yeah. They just have to, it's just harder to crack than they thought. Like social media is harder cracked than they thought was.

They just they keep jumping into these things. They need like a social like a vertical scrolling app with videos. Go back into it. Yeah. Soar three. They didn't do sore two. Yeah, I don't know. I, I have just been overwhelmed by their ad products and financially it's been

nothing so far. So I don't know. I don't see them. When you see their ad product, what do you mean by that? They have keyword ads. Yeah. in free open AI right now. Okay.

And it just has not. I thought for some reason, the way you're saying it, I'm like, does the separate ads from the, I thought they're just, they're putting ads. No, they're just putting ads. Okay, yeah. But they're not like integrated in a way

that's gonna get a bunch of marketing dollars. Yeah. So I don't know. I, it just feels, again, the thing is, it's not one of those things where it's like your deadbeat son who's in the garage, like learning,

guitar and he'll figure it out given time. Like they don't have a lot of time. All these promises are soon. The deadbeat son is 38. Yeah. And he's got a lot of credit card debt. The dead meat. Yeah.

It's like, okay, he needs to figure it out. Crazy pollicule he's in. He owns a lot of money. And he's fucking everybody. He's bringing them all over. He's no loads refuse. He brings him home. He's 38.

He doesn't make any fucking money. It's a problem now. It's a, they got to figure it out. So. Darren, this can't be your plan. Well, we could talk about the boring Trump news about another assassination attempt. Third one, yawn, we're over it. We've seen it. You can talk about how there's a widespread conspiracy theories,

which I think is a sign of the times more than any truth to them. I think it's just like people are, people are. But I think what's more interesting, more interesting Trump story is that starting now, the U.S. is issuing passports that have done. Trump's face on them. So I really think this will finally crack what we've been missing. When I go overseas, the problem when I say I'm American is they're like, well, are you an American who supports Donald Trump and then like can show them off?

Hold on. Is this optional or this is going on my passport? I believe this is the new passport. I guess it doesn't say. We can find out. It just says we'll begin. I guess I don't know how many options you have on this. Right now for non-Americans.

It's a fucking eagle. It's awesome. At least my old one from five years ago. American passports last 10 years, meaning those bearing Trump's image would expire years after the president's second term ends in 2029, which is why we need a third term, first of all. Yeah.

Is what I've been saying. Probably the number one reason for it. Probably the number one reason. I got to say, it's a good looking photo. So there's something to that. I have to renew mine so soon. I'm just, Dude, I can't wait for Aiden and his Trump passport.

It's going to be safe. Flip that open. All right. It's going to be hard for you to pretend you're Canadian when you're overseas. When you have this bad boy. It's really time to start using the Canadian one. It's time to bust it out. Questions to wrap this up.

One for each of you. Spicy. One. A. Track, I saw you stream this morning talking about the White House shooting. Saying that people wanting the ballroom as a conspiracy. Seems like we need a fucking ballroom.

How do you answer that? Secondly, Aiden, um, is every smasher? Good, big question, bro. Who plays ultimate player, me, who plays ultimate. I play the one for the game. What? Why exactly do you think that the shooter plays smash ultimate and not your favorite game smash melee? I play the one for the game. Give it's so funny. Just say to here is, I can't look. Hold on, hold on. I want to actually, you joked about this on your stream.

Yeah. And you said, Aiden probably has a friend who's friends with this guy. Oh, 100%. You 100%? I have never been more confident

that I am like one degree of separation away from a person. Wait, so is, I, sorry, what's wonder? I know somebody who knows them 100%. 100%. Yeah.

So can you reach out? This already happened with Luigi Mangione. What? You know a Luigi Mangione? No, like one degree of... Was it a Luigi Maine? Or two degrees, two degrees, which is not a Luigi Maine.

But I was thinking about this because Luigi Mangiote also played competitive smash. Wait, really? Yeah. Oh my God. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And I was still looking at GameCube or... That just shocked me. And I was like, I was thinking about it.

I was like, are there they training them there? Is that the Siamt program is competitive smash tournament? Bring him into SoCal. You're just going to be Aiden next. It's going to be next, bro. Oh, don't piss me off, you know. I'm sorry. Tucker Carlson is good.

The next, the next Patreon clip, you post up Big A? I'm going to. I'm telling you, I might not make you through it. I might not stay stable. If I see you play one game, ultimate, I'm flinging the country, bro. Thank God. You're on melee.

Oh, my God. I'm on R slash Atriac, which is the worst of, read it all time. It's the word. Say every Patreon. We're going to discuss it. Which, by the way, if you want to wait an extra hour of content every week,

we have a Patreon bonus episode. Sometimes I put 10 minute clips of it on Big A, but it's actually a full hour. And there's 50 more minutes of HIPD and stuff. Sometimes you're going to get into that right now on the Patreon. Thanks guys for watching this week. Hopefully, it made you a little bit happier

to counterbalance our Anglo-Sphere's decline. Bye, everybody. Thanks for watching. Bye. Formula One, so hot right now. It's like if traders in succession had a baby on wheels. Teams lying. Drivers beefing. Celebrities everywhere.

And scandals. Lots of scandals. So we made a show about it, the Red Flag's podcast where we recap races and break down all the latest F1 headlines. But no nerdy tech talk. We only cover the stuff you want to hear about. Yeah, and the only thing hotter than the drivers are our takes. And now we're doing it all. on Vox.

Oh, we're so legit now. We're basically thought leaders. TED Talk incoming. And we do a podcast with Gunter Steiner called Venka Hours. I still can't believe that's true. Well, believe it. There is so much for the beautiful Vox media audience to enjoy. So come check out the Red Flax podcast every Monday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.