Lemonade Stand - This Week Was Absurd | Ep. 079 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

On this week's show... Aiden stand up, DougDoug stands up, and Atrioc stands up. 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: 079 Recorded on: September 9th, 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 1:06 Alaska Elections Get Weirder 7:24 Trump's Midterm Convention 16:45 Uber Cancels Services in Nigeria and Uganda 22:28 Cybercab Launches 28:10 The Impact on Drivers 34:03 Anthropic Ad 35:35 Jensen Huang AGI Claims 46:40 What AI Can't Replicate 50:50 Do People Prefer Slop? 1:00:09 Gusto Ad 1:01:27 Global Debt Sell Off 1:16:00 China Medical Services 1:21:45 Education Regression 1:31:07 Mamdani Bans AI in Schools 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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Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the lemonade, stand national anthem. Podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast, podcast. Hi, and now the comments can't say it's not lemonade. I think I like it this way. Yeah, you do. A little more. Ladies and you gentlemen, we got a great show for you today. We, Mike, Mike, discipline. You never talk into the microphone. Ah. We got a great show for you tonight. We doing, he's doing Jimmy Fallon. Yeah. This week on lemonade stand, Doug's type five. We got what's your name?

Adrianna, no, no, no, the person who sings. She's a singer. She's in Wicked. We've got Ariana Grande playing for you tonight. We've got, what's his name? The guy who plays the banjo. Steve Martin's coming on. It's going to be a great show.

Talking about his new movie. And Questlove. And the rock will be here. It sucks. Guys gentlemen, welcome to let an end stand. We have actual news to deliver you to you today through your earholes. And I believe. We should start by looking back at something from last week.

Hmm. The great northern state of Alaska. Yes. You see, last week we discussed a incredibly intense race between Dan Sullivan and Dan Sullivan in the Alaska senatorial election. Yes, I remember that. So I want to give you a little update. Actually, not on that election, which, by the way, the Dan Sullivan, the fake one, is on

the ballot still versus Mary Peltola. But Alaska has only 750,000 people. And that is just basically enough to have. a single seat in the House of Representatives. So on top of their two senator positions, they are also doing an election for their single House of Representative rep. And just like the other one, basically anybody can run in this open primary and then the top four move on to the general election. So right now, top four, it is Republican incumbent Nick Begich. Okay.

The independent candidate to Bill Hill, who's a fisherman and a teacher. And in third place, we got Eric Heffner, who is a Democrat. Okay. But what's interesting is that Eric Hafner is currently in federal prison in New York until 2036. In 2022, he was sentenced to- Is there a fourth place? 20 years. There is.

Somebody went behind him. He's beating somebody. He's in third place. While currently in federal prison. Yeah. So he's threatened to kill police officers, judges made bomb threats and did harassment campaigns and tried to blackmail them for money to get them to stop. So this is just, I thought, an interesting.

aspect where you can go vote for this person in Alaska actually coming in this upcoming general election. The U.S. Constitution requires candidates to live in the state that they will represent at the time of the election. Okay. So this shouldn't work on paper. But to counter this, he registered like his information for the election using his mom's address who lives in South Dakota. Quote from the AP, neither has any apparent ties to Alaska. And so I was like, what the hell is. I'm sorry. I'm reading the time. He's never visited Alaska.

According to Alaska news source.com, neither him nor his mom have, quote, ever set foot in the state from his mom, Carol Hafner. I've flown over it as far as boots on the ground. That's in my future. Now, you might wonder why it's in her future. It turns out she's running for Senate.

She lives in South Dakota and also ran successfully for Senate in Alaska. What does successfully mean? They didn't kick her off. the ballot. Okay. She did not advance to the top floor. She's not in jail. Let her run. Yeah, let her. I mean, it's against the Constitution, but let her run. And she's never been there. And yeah. Call me, if you're in jail, you should still be able to run. You think so? You think? Yeah. I think it doesn't inherently, in a weird way, it doesn't inherently disqualify you. I think it's just like, you're very unlikely to win.

You wouldn't be in an Alaskan jail at least. Well, all that. So he's in prison until, if I'm being picky, I think the, the craziest thing about this to me is that it's not in Alaskan jail. Yeah, because he could he could rule it like kingpin. Right. Yeah, yeah. They still, because he just to serve his time even if he wins. Yeah. Yeah. So they have to come to the jail. Exactly. So this transfer him. Because to be clear, he's in prison for another 10 years. It would be the entire term if he were to be elected. Yeah. I mean, again, if it was if it were in Alaskan jail, no problems with it. And the people and the people voted for him, again, he would have to be voted for. You know what? Yeah. Our representatives go

live in D.C. They don't even live in the state that they're representing. It doesn't matter if he's in a prison. Criminal one we have. Am I right, folks? I got to say, her response to have you ever step foot in Alaska is a, that's a generational. Not so much boots on the ground per se.

I've flown over it. That part's coming in the future. I think that's very I like how she's confident. She's going into the future. I think that's a great response. She didn't advance to the top four. That's for the two Dan Sullivan's and Mary Pelotola. But Eric, the guy who's in jail. He did finish top four.

He got 6,000 votes. You can see him in the election. Like if you go to elections. Dot Alaska.gov, he's right there. And legally, it seems like it'll be allowed because, quote, the Alaska Supreme Court determined that Hafner could run for office but cannot take office. So he can't. So he can run.

But if they elect him, he can't become the House of Rapids. What the hell is it? What is the Supreme Court doing? That's fair. No, it doesn't make any sense, AIDA. That's fair. Let him run. It's a waste of everyone's time.

What's going on in Alaska? We have three Dan Sullivan. We have the criminal. The goofy place. People don't even live there. Anyways. Actually, the next time people listening to this go out to vote, because I think I really had this realization this year

when we were voting in the primaries. And we were going through the huge list of people running for governor. And there are some extreme. extraordinary characters running for these positions on state ballots. And obviously a lot of them are not running with like any expectation to win, but they have like crazy campaign websites, insane names that they've changed themselves to. Like just just flip through your your book next time you go, uh, go vote if you get that like similar booklet to California that gives you all the names and, uh, just go to the, go to the bottom of the list. You'll find some interesting people.

I mean, that's probably why he got, because he's the Democratic representative, right? He's the leading one. You don't like get picked as he is a Democrat. Let's put it that way. But there's no other Democrat running, or at least. They're not in the top four, although I don't know what who McDermott is representing as. But technically, look, if, you know, if the Democrats want to flip the seat, they need Eric Hafner to win. So, you know, this could, in theory, there could be a big movement from the Democratic establishment.

I'd rather not flip this. I'd rather not flip this. Can you imagine he goes like, he goes like really pro-Israel and A-PAC just $60 million in? They dump $60 million into the campaign. And they

this is pretty goofy. But it's all real. However, let's go over to Texas. Well, I'll tell you a little midterm, a little bit goofy. I think we're just going to open this episode with some follow-up to last week because we had a lot to cover. in Texas, as we know, the James Talarico, Ken Paxton, blue Texas, possible big senator at waste is coming up.

But as part of a, you know, we talked about last week how Republicans are down on the polls and down on the betting markets. And so they're trying to turn it around. Donald Trump came up with an idea. And his idea is to bring back something that hasn't been done since the 1970s. And even then it was only like once or twice by the Democrats.

Never been done Republicans. And it's a midterm convention. So they're having a gigantic Republican midterm convention in Texas. Now normally these conventions exist for a couple of purposes, which is like to officially nominate candidates, you know, set an agenda or whatever, but all that stuff's already been done. So really this only exists is like a drumming up support type beat

where Trump is going to go out, give a speech. They're spending $40 million on this. So it's a pretty big chunk of campaign cash. And the idea, I believe, as has been expressed, is that he wants to get his base that normally only votes for Trump to get out there and vote for Republicans in the midter.

That's the idea. So this, again, this is not a normal thing. It's not like this happens every year. He invented this idea, and a lot of people are, is what the noise coming out is that Republican centers are frustrated at having to go. Like they have to fly out to Texas

to be at this thing. And, you know, as we may have mentioned last week, some of them are trying to kind of distance themselves or say they're more independent. So there's some of, that are dropping out and trying to find excuses to why not go, making up illnesses or whatever. And then others are, you know,

uh, grudgingly going. The speakers are going to be a who's who. It's Trump. Then it's Vance. Then it's RFK. Then it's Scott Bessens. And the idea, I think maybe Todd Blanche is doing one more. The idea is a like reminder to America.

This is all we've accomplished. This is how we're planning going forward. And you need to vote Republican in midterms or it's all going to go to shit. That is the big three messages. And this happens like by the time you see this episode, we're recording the day before, but it starts then. Trump will have probably given his speech by the time you see this. And I'm sure it'll be a legendary one.

But I thought it's worth mentioning because there's been, I think the broader story here is, so all of the fundraising by Republicans, not all of it, but the vast majority has gone to the MAGA super PAC or the MAGA ink. And that is where the money is. And Trump controls the strings on that. So he has all of the Republican cash. And all of the Senate races and House races have been best.

begging him to start deploying some of that cash. And his big ideas, take $40 million and do this big. This is how it's, so there's like some questions as to whether or not this is effective. And it remains to be seen. Maybe getting out his base is what they need. I mean, I imagine the execution of the convention is, you know, different than his campaign rallies. But I do think this is being done with the backdrop of Trump will try to put together these big, events, like things that go on in Washington,

fill out this park, we're throwing some sort of parade, we're trying to do some sort of rally again. And compared to when he was campaigning in the past, his ability to fuel physical turnout at these things seems to have really fallen off. I wonder if it applies to something like this, where like just getting normal people to attend and rally and get excited to vote,

if he has that same capacity to do it, anymore, even with that amount of money and other politicians being present? Yeah, I think it'll be a big bellwether tomorrow to see what happens. I show this quote on my clip, but he did. He's been going around saying, please, please, please, pretend, pretend that I'm on the ballot. Just come out and vote for Trump, pretend my name's on the ballot. So that is the goal of this. That's a direct quote.

That's what he said. So that's the 40 million. 10 million more was unlocked. I want to mention the race. The Paxton-Talorico race in Texas is pre-exas. Probably, I don't know, it's tough to say, but it may be the most important of all the senatorial races. It's the one that'll decide whether or not this is a true flip or not.

Because I think they kind of need it. The Democrats kind of need it. And it is looking, I did look into it more today. Man, the math is so bad for him. All Republican standard ballot, like all, I'm sorry, all standard ballots in Texas. Him meaning bad for. I'm sorry. Bad to Tala Rico.

Okay. It's bad for Tala Rico. It's in like the standard ballot in Texas. is Republican plus seven or something. It's like just by default. So there's going to be people that have to go down the list and vote Republican on most things that they vote on Paxton switch.

And he is such a bad candidate that some people will do that. He is polling under Craig Abbott, the Republican governor. He's pulling under like Ted Cruz. He's pulling under, but he's not, it's just close. Like people have, that's a hard thing for people to do in America. It's like RR, R, R. are, it's just weird. So I actually don't know.

I don't know how this will go, but he, the energy enthusiasm we mentioned last week is all 100% on the Tolerico side. And so anyway, $10 million. So that's what I want to say is, is,

this is their first spend. So this is the big war chest. They finally realize this is an important one. This is probably the one they need to hold and they have the best advantage in. And this is outside the spending related to the convention. But the convention is happening in Texas as well. Convention is happening in Texas.

And again, I guess, are just focusing everything towards Texas as the main baseline of like, we make our stand here. Okay. So there's 40 million on the convention and then 10 million on ad buys, which are going to call Calerico a government. Alarigo, pedophile, or whatever.

That's the thing. And if that moves the needle, then this race is probably cooked. It's like, I would be honest, like this one's the closest one, it seems like. As unpopular as he is, and Paxton being as bad as he is, it's still such an uphill battle for this race. Maybe blue Texas in the future with 24 years.

Yeah, I just like can't let my hopes get up. Again, I feel like this is the narrative my entire life is like Texas. Texas gets more purple every year. Get more purple every year. Yeah. And then it's just, and it's right every time. Yeah.

And it's not to say that it can happen. I think it's really important to get out there. And, uh, because it's like you always say, Aidan, don't bother. It's not going to change anyways.

I have sold just a message on never trying. Haven't I? It just feels bad to fail. And you don't learn anything anyway by trying. Yeah. Wait, so help me understand this. So the MAGA coalition or maybe the explicit, like, organization is raising more money than the Republican. Way more.

Okay. The small donor base of the Republican Party gives it all to this MAGA pack. Okay. And that is worth of money. And they have a $400 million war chest. Jesus. Which is pretty big. And that's what they're ready to spend on elections and whatever.

but they haven't deployed any of them. And there's been begging to deploy it. Help me understand. How many Kwai Leonard's is that? Well, it depends on the books or off the books? Off books. Oh, we don't even know the extent of how much Kauai Lairn. I will round this out by saying in all seriousness,

if you do care about this race and you do care about Tala Rico winning, you please show up and go vote in Texas. There are still months leading up to. election day right now. And you have time to turn the tide. Don't get complacent. And if you, and if you like Paxton, it's let's,

you've been a day one. Let's put him in like a class for charisma or something. For our gigantic Paxton loving audience, get out there and do your Democratic Party. Come on Lemonade State. We'll teach you the intangibles. That's three of John Paxson. It would be a fucking funny episode, dude.

That would be. Kind of a banger. We all just kind of sit and like twiddle our thones. Let's bring back a previous guest. It'll be like, debate, Markiplier versus Paxton. Like just our real out of left field episode.

I didn't want to say there was one ad. I saw this earlier this today. I'll be sure I get this correct. There was a person who was a staffer on Ken Paxton's team, formerly, who is now appearing in a semi-viral ad. in Texas to counter this $10 million spend, where he says, I worked for Ken Baxter for years.

He should not be your senator. I mean, so that's going on right now. Because although Paxton was acquitted of the crime he's accused of, this guy believes he is guilty of it and that he is one of the accusers. This is like when Spencer Pratt, my friend, just total coincidence, had worked for Spencer Pratt for a few years on and off. like before he was running for mayor

and we were talking about it and he was just like, I work for that guy he should not be the mayor. He is not a responsible person. Okay, well why don't we skate on over to this is a super tiny piece of news but I thought it was kind of silly interesting. Uber

announced that they are immediately canceling service in Nigeria and Uganda and because they are doing this, they are only keeping service in four remaining African countries. They've been really limited spread of operations on the continent in general. And the main reasons that they're citing are there have been like continuous disputes with drivers around fares in the country because of rising fuel costs, drivers basically saying they aren't getting paid enough, and also disputes around discounts or fair programs that Uber has

run in the country before. And I saw this story, and then I imagine this clip was circulating around the same time for the same reason, which is a clip of Trevor Noah, a South African comedian, uh, that is explaining the story of how Uber drivers

in Nigeria, uh, took advantage of Uber's strategy of how they approach like new countries, right? So you guys are pretty familiar with the general idea of like Uber launches somewhere. The fairs are really cheap. Yeah. And they give the majority of the fare to the drivers

because they need to encourage people to start driving for the platform and they need to encourage people to start using it. And that was like the golden age of Uber for everybody, right? From the user perspective, it was fucking amazing. But eventually, because the company has to start making money, they kind of rugpole,

I don't even know if you could call it a rugpole because it's like a slow bleed over time is they start taking more and more of the fare. thing, yeah. People feel like it's worse, yeah. And it gets worse for both the drivers and the users. And this experience is pretty universal, I would say. This is my new, like, go-to conversation topic with Uber drivers right now

is just asking them, like, how it's changed over time, if they've worked for Uber for a long time. And in Nigeria, Trevor Noah is explaining that when Uber had initially announced that they were launching in the country, one of the programs to get drivers to sign up for the app was if you drove people back and forth to the airport, you could get a special bonus on your fare. And this was a benefit to encourage drivers to get on the platform.

So what a bunch of Nigerian drivers started doing at the time was they would take two phones with two Uber accounts, go to the airport, call for a ride with their own phone, because the fares were low, confirm the ride, drive away from the airport, get the rebate,

and repeat that, and live off the rebates. Wow. And I don't know if this was happening in Uganda, but there's this general idea that over time, Uber had dealt with, like, so many issues with,

like, drivers basically taking advantage or combating them or that they have given up on service in Nigeria altogether. And I think the idea of drivers like just taking two phones and driving themselves around all day is like really funny. Wait, I remember someone doing this in the early days of, what's the Uber Eats compared, DoorDash and Uber Eats. Yeah.

And there was restaurants because they wanted to get restaurants to signups. They would give them these incredible, you could upcharge or whatever and they would give you all the cut. Yeah. And so I remember one guy had his own pizza place and he sold, like 5,000 pizzas to himself. And he had to take a photo for it or whatever. It was just empty boxes, but he snacked him up and took a photo and then got.

And it's just like these weird little niches in the, in the investor cash burn. Exploing the system. At least be forced to eat the pizzas. Yeah. Yes, he's on camera while the CEO watches. It's like, I feel like it's those like random, like in the older days of the internet when there was like less ID security around things. you could, maybe you could sign up for a platform and get like a $5 bonus in your account or something like that.

Yeah. And then you made a bunch of accounts with like proton males. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's fun. I, do you guys, this kind of reminds me of when, you remember movie pass?

Yeah. How they were, movie pass was insane. That's the goat. That's the gold standard of like, we're just going to burn money on things. Yeah. But I don't know if you guys knew what took them down was Mission Impossible 3 was such a popular. movie that everyone went to see it and use movie pass and they literally could not afford to buy the tickets out of loss anymore and that's what killed the company like they were kind of keeping it

going but tom grus's movie had such a big opening weekend the business only worked if movies were kind of bad it's so funny they couldn't see too many movies it's kind of a glorious couple years i'm thinking about all my smash uG co-workers that had movie pass living in san francisco and it was like Uber was still cheap Movie Pass existed All these like VC funded startup ideas that just had no long term legs

At least to like actually become profitable But you existed in this like glory time Of them being cheap and accessible They call it the millennial One month boot camp and get $100,000 At those companies I know people who did that literally I know people

And as far as I understand They're not great engineers Yeah They're like fine and the millennial VC subsidy from like 2012 to 2016 or that was a really glorious uh anyway okay Uber Uber shuts off service in these couple places

but I want to know about all these videos in Austin right now because I've been seen like way way more videos of cybercabs flying around Austin Texas and presumably other places back to Texas nope just Texas okay cyber cab from Tesla has launched We've talked a bunch about robotaxies and all the first episode. There's a very first episode, or second maybe. I think second. Oh, yeah.

And I think we can now officially say, I won the debate. Cybercab is here. Here is a video plucked off of YouTube. There are a number of these videos of people taking cybercabs. So these have launched. And what this is, is different from the traditional Tesla that you go by as a consumer, which now has that sort of like self-driving feature. This is a car custom made to not have a steering wheel.

There is no driver. there are two seats at the moment, and then you kind of sit there in front of this little like TV iPad type thing, and it has launched, it's out. And so this happened last, oh God, the other videos of, there's a lot of funny memes about this. But yes, last week on September 3rd, this launch, it is limited in Austin, Texas.

As far as I can tell, it's maybe like hard to get or only influencers. The information in typical Tesla fashion is hard to get and understand. But Perry, if you can pull up my third. mystery. My favorite sort of recap of the weekend and how it went overall is from this website Basnor. This is from Basnor and the headline recapping the weekend was Cybercab completes launch weekend with no fatalities. Let's go. Oh, we freaking did it. Um, one thing I thought was particularly crazy here. Uh, and this is within, I'm not really sure who the publication is, but they talk about

how with the cyber cab, there is no ability for a remote driver to like take control of it. So unlike the other ones, this is built up. So this is the first one that's out there. It's like, whatever happens, happens, you can't come take this over. Yeah. So it seems like it's going fine of the couple videos I saw. People, you know, like it's mostly very pro Tesla influencers, basically, is who's using this stuff. Yeah, because they had an event recently, right, where they invited Tesla specific influencers to be a part of the showcase or something.

I mean, it's kind of how they launched their robo taxis. So the first stage of this, which we talked about, was they had cars that were driving around Austin, but with a safety driver. And now this is their, like, this is a model that is fully meant for robo taxis. But it's kind of, they're pushing it farther, it seems like, than other cars where, like, Waymo, you can still remote control one of these things. Is there any explanation for the lack of that control? Because, you know, ideally the product, like, works fine without it. I think the idea in my mind of, oh, this security measure for like a Waymo exists is good. But yeah, because there's still a lot of problems with these, these cars are not perfect yet.

I mean, they're getting better, but they're, they're not like ready to go. Most people would would argue. Yeah. So, I mean, I don't, I don't know how they argued this, but I will say is it ties to the broader story here. And this is from TechCrunch, which is that they are now immediately Tesla being probed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for not following the specific safety requirements that you have to have in a car. at a federal level. So at the Texas level, the Texas state level is like kind of loose on regulation.

Sure. But at the federal level, there is an organization, the NHTSA, that basically says, hey, to be a motor vehicle in America, you have to have these certain things,

like certain brake systems or steering systems, or crash protocol, you know, ideas, steps, all these different things. And the weird thing is that companies to say, yeah,

our car is valid to be on the road, they self-certify. So they just report to the NHTSA, yeah, we followed everything. So Tesla did that. They're like, yep, we check out, we're following all the rules.

Okay. But how could you possibly follow the rules about steering systems when there isn't a steering system? Obviously... This the airport rule. What do you mean by that? You don't have to follow the steering system rules

if you don't have a steering system. That's actually what is happening. Yes, that is actually the argument and what a lot of these autonomous vehicle makers have been doing, which is saying, well, that thing doesn't apply to us because we don't even have a human driver. It's NA.

It's just NA. Yeah. So immediately they opened a probe. You can tell that this organization wants to be very pro like robo taxis. Their statements are all about that. Like we fully support the safe development and deployment of automated vehicles. But as the federal regulator, we need to ensure that our laws are followed. So they've kind of said like, hey, you're clearly not following stuff.

We need to do an investigation and see what's actually going on. And this seems like a pattern where Elon's companies kind of just charge forward and then they deal with the regulation impact. Yeah, that's always been his MO. Afterwards, yeah. There's some of success and some detriment. Yeah. So Zooks is another company you might have heard of, which is a smaller. They're mostly in Las Vegas right now.

And they're also a vehicle that is on public roads that has no driver and no steering wheel. So that's the other one that is like notable. But they had the same problem. In 2022, they also were sort of investigated by the NHTSA. they had to slow down their development a whole bunch Zooks is sort of behind. They're owned by Amazon. They're like Amazon's player. You quite possibly have not heard of them yet.

But it's interesting right now because like all these companies are, yeah, here's the Zooks. They're trying or are launching cars with no steering systems. And to be honest, it looks fucking cool to like sit in a car where there's no steering wheel. There's more space and all that stuff. But obviously you have to like make sure shit is safe. So that's where it's at right now. Cybercab is actually out. And I will end this.

by giving a Doug take, which we all value deep. Don't take. Which is, I've said this before. I think it is a bummer. I think the real value of autonomous vehicles is going to be on the consumer side. The average person driving a car, having some kind of safety system and automated driving,

because the average person are the idiots who get into car accidents and kill people and do all this horrific damage. The average Uber driver or taxi driver is incentivized to be very safe. So on the safety side, the real value is consumer vehicles, not replacing Ubers. And so I think it's a bit of a bummer

that like this is the big push from Tesla rather than saying, hey, let's get the Tesla vehicle ready because that's the one that would like make the biggest impact if your argument is this is going to make humanity safer. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the angle is the monetary incentive, right? Like this is just the path forward to like monetize this project quicker. Yeah. And get more reps and.

Yeah. Yeah. Plus, I mean, you know, you know how like young people nowadays are getting their driver license later and later? It's pretty common. Yeah. Like if this technology continues to grow at scale, yeah. Oh, people don't have consumer vehicles. That's like a real, that's like a possible future. Yeah. To me, to me, like the idealistic version, like the, the end point that's somewhere in the future is like you live in some sort of city. You have some sort of like robust like metro and public transportation systems. For all the areas and things within the city, you have this network of vehicles that are automated or can communicate with each other that lower the rates of accidents or the fault of drivers.

You can tell us to Sweden. You're able to rent, you know, you're able to easily access or rent like some sort of larger one if you like need to move things from a store or something like that. The weather is cold and depressing. And it's cold and depressing. And the sun has gone down at 2.m.

And we all say, hey door, when we go by, When we say goodbye to each other. Yeah. We all want that. That's your dream future, paradise. I agree. That's going to be awesome in many ways. I think the bummer is that if you imagine a, let's say, 20-year timeline from where we are now

to getting to the point that all vehicles are automated on the road and we've mostly gone away with the enormous amount of death and destruction that happens from human beings driving cars at each other. That's the steps to get there. It would be cooler if we started by eliminating the average consumer accident rather than the first step being eliminate all the jobs of people who do this work and aren't really causing the accidents anyways. I guess it's really hard to incentivize a bunch of people that already have cars to spend a bunch of money on this new vehicle. It's extraordinarily hard. It makes logical sense that this

is where they're going, right? It's just a bummer. It's funny to think about what the core of that message is in a way. Like you can package it differently, but it's like, hey, you're a shitty driver. And that's why you need our car. That's why you need to give me $30,000 to $60,000. Plus a recurring monthly fee probably. And there's a subscription. Speaking of the millennial subsidy, it kind of applies here because I saw that the Austin Cybercab prices are extraordinarily low.

$6.5. Well below even Waymo, who's probably going to have to drop their prices in response. Yeah. And so we're looking to a few years here probably of you can go to the airport back and forth or whatever in your self-driving car because it seems like there's a big race. in this and LMs and all this that they're just, they're subsidizing it for you. It seems like it's all happening pretty quick, to be honest.

At least maybe the TBD, right? Because it feels like the regulatory part has always been the slowest thing. And that doesn't, I don't see it going that. Maybe it's like a thing where the dam breaks, you know, somebody gets it. Dude, nobody died. We're going to go. Maybe. Listen, that we know of.

There's a feature in the car where it then hides the body. Scraps it. Something. So the other part of what I've been talking to Uber drivers about lately is this and how they feel about Waymo's and automated vehicles come in. It's interesting. There has been a theme so far across every person I've asked. From their perspective, they're like,

I don't think the cars are good enough. I'm not really worried about not being able to do this anytime soon, which is interesting to me because I do think they're clearly getting, very good. Like, especially in LA, you have examples flying around everywhere already. And I'm not, uh, so instead of, I expected

people to be more like worried or maybe even angry that this is happening and potentially threatening their work, but they were all every single person I talked to was with the air of this isn't even going to be a big deal

for a while. I'm not even stressed about it, which, which, which surprised me. And this is, you know, this is only a sample, this is a sample size. Right, right, right. It's like five people in the last few weeks that I've talked to, right?

But the fact that all five of them had a similar error to that. Is this in L.A.? Yeah. L.A. is the craziest ways to do it because we see Waymos all the time. Yeah, I know. They're like, they'll get a little close.

One guy's, he was just so insistent. He was just like, I'll always be a better driver than that thing. And I was like, yeah. That could be true. And maybe he's the goat. I don't know. Even if you're the goat driver,

it's not like when I'm drunk at night going over the bar. I'm like, let's rank these on who could do the fastest lap or whatever. I just, I don't know. Yeah, genuinely my criteria is don't kill me.

Get me home. Yeah, don't kill me. The driver's name, Max for Stappan. Times are tough. On up one. Max is doing a little sidehors between race weeks.

He was at the airport going back. Support. for lemonade stand comes from Anthropic, the team behind Claude. You guys have been using a Claude for language learning lately. You're not really hanging out with me anymore. You're talking to your Swedish quad.

You're talking to your Japanese Claude. And then you guys talk to me and I could teach you things about language. I can't think of one thing you could teach me that. Just outside of language even really. Unless you could have a basic conversation with me about whether you like sushi or not in Japanese, you've been quizzing on whether it likes watermelon or something.

This is real. I, like I just went on a trip with a bunch of Swedish friends. It was like me and 15 Swedish people. And I've been learning Swedish with the help of Claude for a long time. And it was like my first trip with them where I could like have a conversation with it. It was so awesome. Yeah. I found that for language learners being able to ask a lot of follow up questions. Like I still have for example a tutor. I use other resources. But being able to at any point ask about, hey, what's actually going on with this sentence structure? Help me generate examples. Help me go back and forth. And there's a voice mode on the Claude app that you can use. and just have a conversation in that language as well, including saying things like, can you talk a little more slowly? It's really a fascinatingly helpful tool, I think. That's cool. If you have problems worth solving,

get started with Claude.a.ai slash lemonade. That's claw.a.ai slash lemonade. Check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode. That's Claude.a.ai slash lemonade. And now, Aidan, will say goodbye in Swedish. Hey, do I. More for this show comes from Gusto.

All right. Cool, Aden. Gusto, online payroll benefit software. Super good, super helpful. I've used it as an employee and an employer for years, including someone's employer. Someone has to look at you with this hat and then say, you sign my paycheck. Do you know how many

employees report to me? Collectively, it's more than 20. Isn't that insane? Isn't that insane? Isn't that insane? And Gusto was really great for handling all the paperwork related to their employment, getting them paid every two weeks, but that stops now. I'm done paying them.

I'm done paying them. All together. If I were paying them and keeping them employed, I would use gusto because it's a great piece of software that works really well. But that's Front Hat Aden. And I'm getting rid of all of them. I'm doing it all my own. And doing it all by myself.

And then for the last part of that episode of the ad read, let's bring back. Front ad ain't. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. You're probably interested in. trying gusto today at guso.

I don't know where that came from. Slimeon. You just try to just get there for three months for free when you run your first payroll. That's three months for free payroll at gusto.com slash lemonade. Gusto.com slash lemonade. You're all still, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I don't know.

Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad. I get it. I'm Siaia and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions. that didn't end up the way I planned. And today, I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better.

Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem. All right, I have been, I'm just overwhelmed by all this stuff I hear about AI. Could somebody here explain it to me? No, yeah, this has to be collaborative here, or let me know what you've heard, because I'm teeing up this story because I wanted to bring it up

and it ties in what we just said. Jensen Wong, my old boss, and the CEO of OpenAI, two people, Greg Brockman, two people who have no incentive to lie have both said something to the effect of AGI is here. Jensen Wong, he literally said

AGI has arrived. Yeah. It's actually funny because Greg Brockman sort of was like trying to give himself a little bit a wiggle room. He's like, this model may not exist. So the context is that OpenAI just released their latest model, Astra. It's a leap in performance. And he said, maybe it's not this exact model, but we're so close that the era of AGI is here. And then Jenzo Wong goes, no, we've got it.

We got it, bro. It's here. Lock it in. It's been achieved. So if he hasn't know, AGI, artificial, general intelligence is the idea of basically a machine that is better than humans at all tasks? Is that the idea or is it like human level performance on any intellectual task? I'm not, uh, I mean, that's the criticism of it is there's no solid definition of that term. People do not disagree. People do not agree about what it actually means. So whether or not you've arrived at it is contentious to begin with. And then of course, you have the financial relationship between both of these parties. Yeah. Which makes them incredibly incentivized to compliment the other in regards to this being achieved.

Especially as Open AI prepares for its massive IPO. Anthropic, the same thing. Both have them coming up. They're a very big deal. There's a lot of financial things here. But I do want to say, as someone who's not an expert, the demos and tests and things that have been coming out from Astra, I don't know about AGI. It doesn't seem to get you out of me, but are spookily impressive.

And as someone in the melee community, I don't know if you saw, they finally, after a year's long project, decompiled. the full melee code. Yeah, they were at a roadblock for a really long time with it. And Astra is what broke the roadblock. And I saw an example that really stuck to me is,

so the Grand Theft Auto of Vice City is a game I liked growing up. And it has horrible mobile, it has no mobile port, and it has a horrible PC port. And they just, I guess, fed this game in and it made a mobile port and the mobile port

ran way higher FPS. And it's like things where, I don't know if it's not, Like if it's not novel breaking new ground, I don't know how good it is at that. But on things where it's like, this is a pain in the ass and would take a lot of time and maybe the code base is all understood.

It's like doing things that are genuinely, I would be incredibly impressed with a human team taking the time to do that. So it's like, it is valuable. That is a valuable thing. Like that is, Rockstar took it down instantly because it's like showing them up. But like that, I saw it play

and I was like, that is a smooth mobile port of GTA4. That is interesting. If I was a dismissive, cynical, lemonade stand commenter who has no friends. I might be typing. I might be typing right now. Oh my God.

He says it's so important. AGI, but then he gives two examples that are just fucking video games. I can already see that comment by the way. I know you are. I know where you live. You're connecting two dots.

I don't, I haven't seen anything that makes you go, holy fuck, I'm talking to the fucking robot from Davis X. Mocky. I don't think that. But I am starting to see examples of like, damn, that's a project

that I know would take people a lot of time and effort, and it is done quickly, and that is, like, and a lot of these examples are like... He just replied, video games kill yourself. He just replied.

Well, video games are an area where I have some, like, context so I can like know this would take away. I have, I've downloaded mods, I've worked with mods, I know people. Decompiled things, yeah.

I haven't decompiled things, but I've worked with a game developer. Okay? And I just, it is interesting. And I, I think, you know, Rutger Bragman, we talked about him before, a guy who is extremely in the left wing space.

But the one area he diverges on is like, hey, I think AI is pretty important here and it's worth discussing. And he's been going crazy about that. He's just putting me about it all the time. So I just think, I don't think AGI's here seems like a bit of a marketing hype, but I sometimes think people go,

oh, marketing hype, well, let's dismiss it out of hand and there's nothing to even look at here. And when I look at what's happening with Astra, it's like, damn, I'm seeing performance leaps again. This is better at things than it was before. And so, especially, especially. And this is something I do know about

because I've seen the process. Even when I made the game, I fucking funded the game but worked on it. He made me design a level in blender and make a model. Like I had to go through the process. We made videos about that. And so I've seen how fucking painful that process is.

And there is some insane examples of someone feeding an image into it and it generates a full blender model in 3D that can be used. It is, that is a time saver. At the very least. Look, I have to call these out when I see them because I still think there is a theory among some people that this is crypto, where it's just fucking useless years on. Yeah.

This is useful for all people. Like, this is going to do something. I actually have a great story about the practical application of AI in somebody's work that I'm saving for the Patreon that a viewer shared with me. We had called this week. It's amazing. We'll tease. Sure. Well, I'll give you a practical application right now.

my wife designs cosplay props professionally. And people commission her to create cosplay props. And she created a light up sword. She has no coding experience, really. And she was able to get it with a Raspberry Pi to set up the light show thing for the sword. And she programmed it through the quad. And it just did the work for her. I'm just seeing these real world examples of like shit getting done.

And it makes me think I have to update my priors here and constantly mention to me. I think it's being ignorant not to. There's something happening. So I still doesn't change much on my thoughts on the financial reality of these IPOs. I can talk about the anthropic one, which is coming up, $2 trillion. There's a lot I want to say about it. I don't know if we want to go into it, but whatever. Two trillion.

Yeah. Could you give some thoughts about that? The one thought I want to give is they are being real. Everybody is incentivized, like in these quotes, to talk up the amount of revenue that they're creating. So they can justify the valuation. And Anthropic is doing something really sneaky with their revenue, which is that they are, it's like if you're Best Buy and I am a video game manufacturer,

okay, and I sell you a copy of my game, give me a game, Mario. Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy, okay? And it retails for 60 bucks, and I sell it to you for 30 or 40, and then you sell it for 60 and collect the upside.

They are record, this is what like, Anthropic does. through model providers like Microsoft or whatever, they have these middlemen. They are taking the final listing price the middleman sell it for, recording that is their revenue,

and then recording the cut that they get as an outside expense that doesn't get recorded in EBITA right here. So it makes it seem way fucking bigger. It's like the end result if you go down to the fine print is correct, but the way they're recording it is not the normal accounting practice. So it makes them seem like their revenue

is much, much, and growing much, much faster than it probably is. And they are a fast-growing company. Again, it's tough because there's shades of truth, but everybody is incentivized to be a little fucky with it. And additionally, so you guys, we watch Big Short together. There's a big scene where the woman with the blind glasses on is talking about, she's the ratings agency.

There is a massive push right now from Anthropic, OpenAI, and honestly, Invidia, even though they're fine, to once these companies, IPF, and they're listed to be listed as investment grade, which is above triple B, which means pensions and life insurance funds and safe things can buy them. Now, normally, this process takes a lot longer,

but SpaceX was able to get through really quickly with this, and they're trying to do it for these guys. A company like Meta or Google took years after being listed to be on these lists because it is just you're not investment grade if you have, like the one below it is called speculative grade or junk, but the idea is like you're still not making money yet.

There's still a risk to loaning you money, which is basically what buying their bonds is. And there's a lot of pressure on this because if it goes through, these guys borrow money all the time. They're borrowing money like crazy. If they start borrowing money not just from VCs, but from life insurance funds,

then it publicizes their problem. You know what I'm saying? It puts it on the public, things that are likely to get bailed out. So those are my financial worries around all this, whether or the technology, I think, like I honestly see things that impress me.

Maybe I'm being fooled by marketing, but I continually see things that impress me. Maybe not for society's all good, but they're like, they're doing things that were hard. So I don't know. I don't have any thought. I'm talking for a lot.

Can you remind me? Because wasn't there, there was a big pushback on XAIs or SpaceX's IPO. Yes, that was their inclusion in like retirement funds like the S&B 500, like track. They didn't get included in that. But this is like when, SpaceX goes to borrow money, the rating agencies will give their bonds a grade, and much like

mortgage bonds, mortgage-backed securities. And if you get above Triple B, it is like the unlock, it's the holy grail unlock where you can get access to a lot of things that are that are legally not allowed to buy you under that. And so there's a big push. Like they're putting a ton of pressure on rating agencies. They're hiring the best lobbyists. They're hiring lawyers. They're trying to crack that thing.

And it's just from the general public perspective, you're like, you don't want see any of that. You don't want that to happen. You want it to be an honest ratings assessment of like how risky is loaning these guys a ton of money. Sorry, this is for their issuance of stock or the bonds they've been issuing. This is the bonds that OpenAI and Anthropic and the other companies are issuing. Okay. And they're issuing a lot of them. It's like they're issuing so many bonds, which is them asking to borrow money, IOUs, that it's crowding out government debt. That's the idea. Government debt is being crowded out. Which is like, there's never been something at scale, borrowing this much money.

They probably transitions. That's an insane transition. That's perfect. I hope I land this. Well, on that note, that was awesome. The holy eye segment, I said final fantasy and nothing else.

You were looking at me with like soulful eyes. I was just lost. I was lost in your piece of explanation. I want you, I don't know if you have any thoughts. I want you to speak. I would honestly like to hear your thoughts. Even if it's like just an unstructured

because I, it's a genuinely interesting thing to me. And I'm, I'll, okay, I'll pose one interesting thing, and then we can move over to Bonzo, what Aidan said. Primogen, who we've had on the show and is a lovely tech YouTuber who has much more deep experience with programming than I do, released a video, what, two days ago now, and said this. This is basically his feelings on these new models being released that are increasingly competent. But at the same time, I'm still going to have the real problem I have, which is how do you make

someone's life better with the code, which is really how do I make it better with the project? And so it really doesn't absolve me of the hardest part of programming, which is making something awesome. And so when I see all these slop games that you see, like there's a reason why I feel upset. And it's because the actual hard part about making a game isn't putting together a demo. It's making something that's repeatable and fun. And when I look at that, I go, okay, yeah, that took you some money and then waiting for a prompt to finish. But the actual fun part, it's not, there. There's nothing fun about what you built. And really that's a reflection of me, which is that given infinite resources, can I build something fun? Can I?

So I thought that was pretty interesting. He, I've really, I mean, so I've been able to chat with him a whole bunch over the years. So his perspective's been evolving quite a bit as well. And he's sort of in the middle camp, as I would say I am. I'm obviously 100% AI is good. But other than that, I'm very much in prime's camp of like, this shit is getting really, really powerful and good. And, you know, he has shown or talked about many examples where he's seeing this stuff. Every software engineer I talk to now, I ask like, are you using AI? Most, but importantly, not all have said, like, it's just too good to not use now. At the same time, it's really interesting to where to see it get to a point. And I've certainly experienced this as

well, where it kind of, you now have to just actually have a good idea. You have to actually create value. And we've seen so much slop on the internet where somebody goes, look, I made Tetris in one shot. I made GTA 5 in one shot. And none of these games are fucking good. Nobody's made one of that is actually compelling or interesting. And there's something sort of like raw and very human about the idea of so many people who clearly thought for a long time. If I had all the money in time, I could make such a sick game. And now those same people can, this technology can make it in 30 minutes with $20 in tokens. And then it turns out, hey, your idea isn't very fucking good, actually. And it's this really strange thing of like for the first time, you know, we're

opening up access to for many people to be able to create whatever they thought. And it turns out, hey, actually, ideas are really fucking cheap and easy to come by. And it's going to take real deep design and creative skill to make something that anybody cares about. I think it's like a fascinating dynamic that's happening. Okay. I actually have, before we get to the bond off. I actually have a pushback that I want to run by you guys. Yeah. And it's this conversation I had recently with a friend who

he has worked he he worked in recruiting for a long time. But more recently he's been talking to a friend to help him build his like YouTube and media business basically. And

that friend works in and around like Roblox a lot. And because of this he's been trying to get to know and understand Roblox, like what makes for a popular game, how do people build these things? What's the scale of the dev team? How do people monetize this stuff? And he was giving me these notes on how what trends on Roblox and the way thumbnails work and the way that like games will pick up really hard for short periods of time and then fade away

and how there will be a ton. you know how on YouTube like if a trend hits it's like a bunch of people making a similar type of video all the same time then it fades out he's saying Roblox is really like that but with video games it's like these little miniature games that aren't really games

in the traditional way that we would look at them as like millennials or even like Gen Z might they are like these little interactive experiences that are more about like the thumbnail than the actual gameplay itself and a lot of the games aren't like fun or fulfilling experiences

in the way that people our age would look at video games. And with that in mind, as someone who doesn't play Roblox, it's like, I think my fear with a lot of this stuff, and when people levy this argument against like art,

how art is more about like what you make and like the merit of it and the human experience behind it and how AI doesn't replace that part, my fear is a lot of people don't care. A lot of people do play the slop. The slop is getting copy pasted under Roblox and tens of thousands of people who just like to, kids who just like to eat candy and don't

really care if the game is like fun in this like holistic sense that we like to parade or I think Prime is kind of like alluding to there. It's like the game sucks and 10,000 people are playing it right now on Roblox and the person who made it and like pumped it out is actually making a lot of money making that. Yeah, I totally, but that doesn't show the thousand other people who also made slop and it didn't pick up. Sure. You're right. Like if you shoot enough slop into the slop cannon at a bunch of children, they're going to play some of them, right? Yeah. But 99 out of those people are going to go like, yeah, I have this really sick idea for a Roblox game and vibe code it and it's going to suck shit because they don't actually have any deep design skills. They haven't built up

any real true development ability. That's what he said his view of the landscape is, like has these interviewed developers and he's like tried out games and he's tried to develop stuff himself. He's like a lot of this is like developers who just pumping out stuff with AI literally hoping something hits for like a couple weeks so they can make their bag for like the year. And then repeating that process pumping out the slop until they hope they get another like hit again, which is crazy to me. I had the exact same feel. You talked about Chinese microdramas recently on this show. Yeah. My team and I did a deeper dive on this.

And I watched some. I watched a bunch of real shorts, which is the big Western Chinese company that is making them here in L.A. And they have an astronomical number of views, and they are truly, truly slop. Like on the most fundamental level, I'm not being an art critic here.

It's like my werewolf alpha billionaire boyfriend impregmated me nine times. Is the title. Really? What's the URL? Is the title? Wait. There's like 50 different ones called like the billionaires.

Like there's one where it's like I married a homeless CEO billionaire. That's one. And that's like, and these are like in the top 20. Do you know what I'm saying? And they have 500 million views. Kind of bang. That's a great title.

And I watch them. That's not slop. And a good trunk of them now are made with pure AI. And it is slop. It is slop on a fundamental level and people love it. And so there's like on some level, it is, it is, the sad reality of it is that people like it. If it was like being forced on people, they would be like, we have to fight against this

fucking tyranny. But it's, it's, it's, it's, it's worth, it's brave new world, bro. It's people that fucking enjoy it. They, they, they prefer it. And, uh, you know, I don't know if you mention this. It's like people who want to eat. It's like people, people want to eat sour patch kids, bro. They want to eat them.

And I guess I do. And you could, and I, and people want to eat, some people will eat a lot of them. Yeah. But you know what it feels like is like we have these fundamental weaknesses in our brain and we the technology is getting so much better at Pressing that fucking button and that that other stuff is getting crowded out and Yeah, I got like a like a really kind of like I don't know. I felt like dizzy I was watching these and there's just so many of them. They're doing so well and and what's interesting is like even in the microdrama space, which I think you mentioned, which was normally shot with human actors crazy schedules very slops. I I watch the human, I watch a human one.

The script is terrible. They're barely reading. It's all one take. You can just tell what they've been replaced largely with AI. They just, they make AI ones. And they interviewed, we got interviews with people that work on it. And they said, yeah, we thought there might be some pushback, but the consumer doesn't seem to care. The consumer just keeps that scarfing down the slop.

And so I don't know. I do wonder what percentage of people really are watching this stuff, because we've said this a number of time. And I don't know. What I do know is that we have been talking for two weeks now about how the views on YouTube just got ridiculously inflated because they started changing how the views are actually counted. Presumably, these real shorts are doing the exact same thing.

And then even while we hear these stories of like, oh, this AI song or whatever just topped Spotify, correct me if I'm wrong, you guys have heard otherwise. The vast majority of music that people are listening to is still human-made. It is still human-made YouTube videos. It is still human-made video games. and while yes, it's growing and there's this increased audience

that seems to be down to just like ingest slop all day long, I'm probably being naive here. I would like to believe that that caps out at like 20% of humanity and the rest of us are like, hey, I actually don't want that. Yeah, I'll hopefully be too.

Is there an industry where it's actually taken over rather than carved out a niche? Maybe Roblox is an example. Well, I would say like if you look at where we're at in our media consumption environment and where China is at, which is ahead of us on this, it is like whether the numbers are inflated

and revenue is massive and the number of people are met and people that talk to me you know one of our researchers is she's Chinese and her mom watches these all the time and so it's like it's a real thing like and it's if you look at five years ago

it's zero and now it's a lot I'm just the trend line scares me whether or not it's a hit majority status and you know I'm hopeful too that it hits a thing and caps out or even like smoking you know the smoking graph in America it goes big and then it's like

maybe it's a thing where we get antibodies to it, people realize this fucking sucks. Yeah. Things like soda has had, people realize it's kind of bad for you. You hear about Gen Z doing more run clubs or getting outside and touching grass more. Like maybe it's a thing where humans,

we always get one shot by something new and then we figure it out. I'm hopeful. I think it's possible. I might have copium, but I think, look, before all this AI stuff, Jimmy Fallon was popular. Okay? And if you were to imagine, people have always like slop. People have always liked slop. People have always liked slop.

And there's always going to be a percentage of people that like slop. And now there's a new version of slop that they can get in this very intense endless format. And I, most people don't watch Jimmy Fallid, right? Most people don't, I guess it's, I was about to say, don't play Roblox. And that's not true. They have five billion users. It's a lot. I don't know. Maybe it's Copium. I would like to believe that the majority of people don't want to watch this stuff. Because yeah, these numbers are huge and you're right. And the numbers for people who watch human content on Netflix is way, way, way, way bigger. Sure. And so maybe we hold the line. You know?

Come on. It could happen. Hey, I'm with you. I don't want to give up, bro. I want to hold the fucking line. I'm down. I just want to like not bury my head. I don't want to be like the guy like, I don't know, pretending it, there's nothing happening.

This is like, this is fine. Yeah. No, no, we're on the same page. I just, I want to believe that there's a cap on how many people are willing to do this stuff. That, for example,

that you and you and me and every person that I know in my life is not going to suddenly go, you know what, I do like this now? None of the people in my life would at any point you're like, you know, what, I'm going to watch Chinese microdrama Slop. Like, they're not going to do that. And so I want

to believe that the majority of humans, even if it's just 51% over 49, like that's enough. I think we can hold the bulwark. Yeah? You know what? And with the important caveat that all AI is good. And that's the lemonade stand stamp of approval on Slop.

That's the promise. Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on fashion neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on fashion neurosis, I welcome Charlie XX. To be childlike as an adult, I think, takes a lot of bravery, because there's always this fear of being embarrassed, I suppose. You also have to kind of like be willing to completely fall on your face all the time. Pursuing that childlikeness can sometimes really open you up to

ideas that maybe you would feel too embarrassed to have if you weren't doing that. And I think that's quite a scary thing, but a really beautiful thing. Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Bella Freud. Each week on fashion neurosis, I invite guests from the world of fashion, art, film, music, sport, and literature to lie on my couch and explore the connection between identity and fashion. This week on fashion neurosis, I welcome Shania Twain. I didn't really want to flaunt it. I just wanted to be myself and be natural. Like, you know, this is my body. And so why shouldn't I wear things that flatter it and that I enjoy wearing that make me enjoy my body instead of not wanting my body. I resisted it until I started

making videos. And then, man, I feel like a woman was that was, oh, now I'm like, oh, you know, this is way too much fun. Like, this was blowing my mind. Find fashion neurosis on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. So like any good millennial, I have a love-hate relationship with Gen Z. It's the phenomenon rattling millennials. They just look at you. They want something bigger themselves. Lifestyles are a priority. Motivation is being inspired.

But regardless of how you feel about Gen Z, it's undeniable that they're changing national politics. Generation Z is increasingly showing less loyalty to traditional political parties. Many now more likely to identify as independent. So what is going on with the kids? I think the biggest misconception about Gen Z's politics right now is that all of a sudden they're all socialist. That is just not the case. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are embracing candidates who are offering new bold ideas in the absence

of those ideas from establishment Democrats. This week on America, actually, Gen Z researcher, Rachel Jamfaza joins us to separate Gen Z fact versus fiction. It's not rocket science. And this is, you know, I keep saying like, young voters aren't that complicated after all. It's pretty simple. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Well, why do we, we mozy on. over to this global bond sell-off that has been going on. And you said

$2 trillion, the expected market cap of Anthropics IPO. I thought that was an interesting number because $2 trillion is the amount that countries are expected to spend on debt servicing this year.

As in paying interest on government debt across all nations. And the story, the story here is bonds across pretty much every, like, OECD country right now, the bond yields on that are climbing right now. So like U.S., like 10 year, 30 year bonds, French bonds, German bonds, it's all increasing at the moment. The yield for U.S. Treasury bonds specifically is climbing well, I think quite a bit above 5%. And I was going over this and I was trying to dig into

my mind. And I was like, you got a graph you want to show it. You know, I went to school for this. I learned about this stuff. I learned all the terms. Yeah, you have no excuse. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do a little refresher.

And I wanted to just walk it back and kind of explain to people how these things work. So, uh, you might be familiar with treasury bills. These are like the shorter term bonds that have been issued. Uh, those are like a year or less. Dude, you've got to turn off notifications on Discord, man.

What if somebody sends my address to you right now? What if I send my address to you? Oh, who would do that on a podcast? Who would share someone's address? I mean, it's... Who would do that? So I feel like a lot of people are familiar with treasury bills, which are, have a year or less of a term.

The way these work is, say I buy a 5% treasury bill for $1,000 and then I get my $1,000 back with a 5% return on it, and a lot of people were doing that a couple years ago because the time, the interest rates on like six month bills were at historic highs. So even like normal people were just putting their small amount of savings into treasury bills because it was like,

oh, this is a free 5% over six months. But for treasury bonds that are longer term, like say a 10 year or a 30 year bond, the way they work is you don't like, you're not buying the bond and then just getting that interest back at the end. you're getting coupon payments. And with U.S. bonds, you get semi-annual coupon payments. So say you buy that $1,000 bond for 30 years.

What you get is twice a year, you'd get a $25 payment if that bond was at 5%. And you could use this coupon like at Walmart. And you could, it's $25 in Walmart credit. That's actually how the U.S. ones work. It's all in Walmart credit. Walmart and Raytheon. Walmart and Raytheon store credit. You would pick the option when you buy the bond goes to two great.

American companies. And if Anthropic gets their way with regulators, there'll be a third Anthropic bond. Hell yeah. That's the news. That'll be the big three. But so the, you get that over the entire lifetime of the bond if you own it, right?

You get $25, or sorry, $25 every six months for the full period of the bond. But if you own that bond, you can also sell it. And there is another value that's not the interest that gets talked about all the time, which is the yield. or the yield to maturity, which is a calculation of the coupon payments, the face value of the bond, and how much more time it has left until it matures. So right now, because a bunch of people are selling bonds all at the same time, what does that mean? It means the face value of what that bond is going to sell for is being driven down. So say I gave that example of the $1,000 bond I bought

earlier. Maybe now, because a bunch of people are trying to sell at the same time, I'm actually get to sell mine for like $900 or $800. And as a result, whoever is buying that bond has a perceived higher yield than just that 5% right? Because they're getting at the end term of the bond, they still get $1,000 paid back to them because it's a $1,000 bond. That's what it was initially bought for. So so many people are doing this all at once right now that it's pushing yields higher

and higher. And also, in order to compete with the amount of people that are putting or selling these bonds in the market, governments in order to continue selling bonds or service, sorry, selling bonds of their own have to raise interest rates on existing new bonds that are being put out in order to remain competitive with these higher yields. And this is pushing yields in the broader bond market higher and higher and higher. And one of the main reasons this is happening right now is not only are governments, like, competing for this, like governments are usually the largest issuers of bonds, but large AI companies for the first time,

in kind of history, from my understanding, are issuing huge amounts of competitive bonds of their own. And part of that is because a lot of these AI companies are hitting a wall where they can no longer, like companies like Google are, you know, they're having a time period where they're facing a negative cash flow on a quarter for the first time in history, right? Or a negative posting a net loss for a quarter for the first time in history. So as the expectations of AI get higher and higher and these companies are under more and

more financial pressure, they're issuing these bonds in order to get more cash to continue pushing this AI race forward. And it's having this insane effect on the larger bond market where all of these things are going up at the same time. And the consequences for governments are at a time when the global debt is at like 300 trillion or something. And the debt surfacing cost of the debt now is at this like $2 trillion high. All of these governments are issuing bonds at the highest percent of interest that they've ever, that they have had to list at in a while. And they will have to continue to pay on that interest way down the line. So debt servicing costs as a part of their budget become a higher and higher portion of their budget, putting like more strain on them financially.

And it's weird to see this like massive financial effect, like be fueled by the issuance of like private bonds. Like things are so rarely issued at this scale that it could have this effect on the global bond market. Yeah. Only I would say is I don't know. I think that's, that's, uh, it's part of it. I mean, there's a couple other things too. Like I, uh, okay, do you help me understand. So presumably the reason the bond prices are being pushed down.

Yeah. Many people like you said are selling. Yeah. What is the incentive to sell right now for $800 or $900 if you know you can just wait it out and get that back? Is it just you need a bunch of short-term cash? Yeah, I don't think, I don't think I really know the answer to that, to be honest. Maybe they don't.

Why people want, I know there's a general sentiment that like the, because of like the Iran war and like economic instability or inflation, people want access to cash or don't perceive U.S. Treasury bonds as safe as they used to. So they want to move their money to other things. But I feel like there's a larger story that I don't understand. I think that's the main reason. It's like this,

this gigantic spike in yields is partially because they have to compete with this massive issue by AI companies, but partially it's like everyone waking up. And it kind of started when Scott Besant stepped in and tried to buy some bonds ourselves with printed money and like people started looking at it and they're looking at it all over. And they're just realizing that almost every one of these major developed economies has no real plan to ever, not just like balance the budget, to ever do it. They have no real way to pay back what they borrowed. And their plans for the future are all to like borrow even more.

Like the bar even, like to accelerate. And so if you're loaning a human being money and they, you notice that they are, they show up with a new Ferrari and then a new Bugatti and then they're, like, it's, it's just obviously like, oh, you are never going to pay me back. Or like, if you're going to pay me back, it's going to be not in the way that I intended. And so the risk is higher. Are they, are the bonds like not working or something? Presumably that you're still going to be paid back.

Or are you saying that people are now worried that these governments are going to default and not pay them? Yes. So it's a county. It's accounting for the risk of default. It's the same reason why, like, Ukrainian war bonds have, like, such a high percentage of interest, right? They need to accommodate for the risk of that not being paid at some point in the future

or the coupon payments failing. And there's just broad, decreased trust across all governments now, basically. But a company, or a company, we've done this in the show a couple times, a country like the U.S. or Japan or the U.K. or the Eurozone, really, they can't actually default because they can always print new money. So the real risk is that I am going to get that $1,000 back, but you're going to print so much money.

It won't be worth anything. Okay. So I want to get my money now. I go my $100 in real money now and I buy something with it that's valuable. Yeah. So maybe you understand this part a little better than I do. Warsh, Kevin Warsh is, I think I brought this up a while ago, is like there, he has this outlook of not guiding the markets, so to speak.

So the previous Fed chair, like Powell and the previous Fed chairs for like quite a while. since the 2008 crisis, had this general idea of let's hint at what we're about to do in order to give the market a sense of security so that they feel more confident of where to put their money.

But Warsh doesn't really want to do that. Yeah, I guess I would say Warsh is interesting. He has talked a big game. He has seemed tough. And yes, he did get rid of forward guidance. So they no longer like... I think that might have been a good idea

because Powell was like basically telling everybody what he was going to do well before the meeting, and then the meeting would just be an exercise. And if they did anything off script, the markets would fucking panic. And I think it's better to be, but he's just talking a lot.

And so far he hasn't done anything. And Trump does not want him to raise rates, which is what he need to do to, like, kind of fight this problem. And he says, I could do it. I could fight it. I could raise it, but he hasn't done it yet. So it's kind of a TBD till the next meeting and see what happens, which is coming up end of this month.

I will say there's one country that kind of shows that this is not all inevitable. This is not like the fucking Ray Dalio cycle. We all have to fucking go through. And it's Switzerland. Switzerland in Europe has had a, doesn't have a gold standard or anything, just has a debt break.

They don't spend more than they, or like more than a few percent more than they make in taxes. And if you look at, I wish I had a graph, maybe you can find it. Every fucking country in Europe, America, Japan, the yields are rising, the borrowing costs going up,

Switzerland, flat and low. They can borrow as much as they want. Everyone trust them. They are a reliable partner. They don't, and there's a society. broadly is doing pretty well. They have high education.

They have health care. Like it's not, it is a, thank God they exist because it's an example to show that it's not impossible. I mean, it's Switzerland, obviously, easier,

smaller, fucking everything, whatever. But like, this is not inevitability. This is like politicians spending like fucking crazy because they know they'll be out of power by the time the bill comes due.

And you need to make a rule that limits that. It doesn't have to be a gold standard. But you need to have something. You need have something that stops this from happening. Otherwise, everyone will obviously ice cream for everybody,

while I'm here and then kick the can. I mean, that's what the debt ceiling is in theory, right? In theory, but we've never not extended it and yeah, and you need to make it a harder rule. The other one is China, which you mentioned. I think China's a little bit of a... I mean, there's an asterisk on it, right? Because they kind of hide, they kind of hide

how their debt works. Yeah, China's bond yield, nobody buys it. Like China, when they borrow money, they borrow it from their own citizens and banks. Like nobody goes and buys Chinese bonds. so their yield is very low. Wait, Kate, you can buy, you can buy Chinese bonds as a order, right? You can buy them.

Don't do them. Okay. And so if it was actually on the free market, like to the globe, and it wasn't being dragged down by them buying them themselves, I think it would be a higher yield. I don't know what it would be. It would probably be lower than America because they're more reliable on paying that I think, I'm sure. But anyway, yeah, I don't know if you showed the graph, but highest since 1996 in Japan,

highest since 2008 in the UK, borrowing costs are a big problem, and it's going to crowd out government budgets until people figure out how to either take the pain or kick the can again. That's the option. That's what people were dealing with. Could Biden do some sort of loan forgiveness plan? I really hope that Joe Biden would step up and do that. Yeah. And I think it's a, I want to blame him for all of this. And we do. That's the lemonade stand. Is that's what? Isn't that crazy? Switzerland like completely out of step with everyone else. their currency is doing really well too.

Yeah, it's almost doing too well. No labels on. Oh, never mind. Switzerland. Okay, sorry, I needed my glasses. China bond market. China, China bond yields super a lot. I was going to do a different story,

but let's swap over to a real quick China. What if we hop on over to China? Look, quick China. All right. From China. Two, what, two weeks ago, I think, talked about the amazing new development in melanoma, the RNA vaccine that Moderna came out with,

which is genuinely very, very exciting and cool. Okay. CAR T-cell therapy is a different type of thing, but it's also a very expensive, personalized type of medicine. Without getting too much into the details, you are extracting a person's immune system cells, you are re-engineering them to go for a certain type of cancer marker, you put them back in the human body, and then they go and attack the cancer. And this works for specific types of cancers, blood cancers. This is very expensive. It is like a personalized type of therapy, and it costs, let's say, $600 to $800,000 in most

Western economies. So this Wall Street Journal article talked about how a 25-year-old man in New Zealand was diagnosed with lymphoma, one of these cancers. Kimo and radiation did not work. He learned about this CAR-T cell therapy, and he was given the advice to go do it in China instead, because they will do it for only $300,000, about half of the price or less in many cases. And he went to Shanghai, and he did this treatment, this extremely advanced personalized medical treatment, where you're there for a while. And this August, last month, his cancer is now in complete remission. Sira Ahmed from the Anderson Cancer Center said, China has basically done to car T-cell therapy, the same thing that it's done to other industries, which is they've industrialized it.

She, she is in Texas, like a doctor who works with people in Texas for this. She says she now tells her patients to seek treatment in China because it could be $200,000 compared to $700,000 in the United States. And so I want to ask one more time Can China let us have One fucking thing? Can we charge somebody $800,000 To fix their cancer?

Come on, give us this one! They're taking games. They took short form Slop from us. Now they're taking Medicine. This is unbelievable. I can't believe They make electric cars cheaper. They make the cancer Treatments cheaper. I don't I'm starting to not like him. I'm starting

This is honestly, that's it. There's other people. Look, obviously this is incredible that China is doing this. This is, it's going to save lives and it offers competitive pressure.

This is so expensive and hard to do. This particular hospital in Shanghai has done like 35 international patients, but the fact that people around the world are recommended go to China to do this

extremely, this isn't like, I don't know, the hair replacement you did. Like, this is a high tech thing. You think I did it? I did it a bad job.

I did it in America then. That's true. You paid a lot of money for yours. It wasn't even good services. Yeah, I mean, so it's interesting in a number of factors. Number one is just China's fucking caught up and they're like ahead of us. It's not just that they're doing it cheaper.

It's not like it's like by the skinnier pants. One quote from this guy in New Zealand who had really looked into car T cell therapy was after talking with the doctors in China, who he talked to after the American, Australian and Indian doctor said, I felt like I had done more research and knew more about it than the doctors I was talking to. But when I talked to the Chinese doctors, she had so much. experience. It was nice to talk to someone who knew exactly what she was doing. They are straight up better than us and are half the price. And they are now advancing in carty cell therapy. This is a sort of specialized type of treatment that's pretty hard to work on other cancers. This has been around for like a decade. But the fact that China is like this much farther and this much cheaper and now offering it as a service is crazy. So it's cool stuff. But wow, just another industry that they are doing successfully and taking it. Yeah. I mean, it's like the the continual dismantling of this like old view of, well, China does the manufacturing or China does the thing in the lower quality way. But they get it done and they get it done cheaply. But it's,

it's winning on both ends all the time now. I feel like that is what you see outside of manufacturing. This is, this is not manufacturing, right? This is something else entirely. Yeah, I think ever since we talked about it. But it's just the idea. If you outsource the, the cheap stuff, that's practice. That's how you get good at thing. That's how you innovate. You know what I'm saying? The idea that you can just only keep the very top-in high-margin stuff,

and then you lose how to make the battery and the wires and the fucking cancer treatments and the... That comes from the bazillion reps. If they start making our Roblox games, I will cry. That's our job. I'm sure they do. I mean, they might... It's actually mostly international developers is my understanding. Yeah, I mean, it's all over, but I'm sure there's Chinese money.

You know what this reminds me of when we went to Shanghai and we talked to that, not professor, but, you know, a person who works in the administrative side of education in Shanghai. And he talked to us about how for, what, decade or two, China realized that you can get kind of highly rated if you just have a lot of scientific journal articles posted. And so they just, they kind of just blasted all these articles out sort of as slop and were copying other people and just got themselves up onto the board because it's like, well, China. is doing a lot of science research. They're posting a lot of articles. They're doing all this different things. But he was like, the quality was not good. Chinese scientists were largely just sort of copying things.

And then they hit the ceiling of what that gets you. And so the last decade, they've been like, well, I guess we just have to get really good at science and start actually making breakthroughs and doing original research. And now they are, and they are tied with the best scientists around the world. So it's interesting seeing this where this is another example of just like, yeah, for a while there's in this perception

of they're just kind of copying doing it cheaply, but at some point, they're just actually going to level up and now beat the rest of us. Okay, well, that segue is pretty well, but in a sad way to this headline, if you bring it up. Okay, so there is a every four-year major study called the Program for International Student Assessment PISA. It is by far the most comprehensive. It has like 800,000 students across many countries. It is the most comprehensive rating of student's academic achievement in reading, science and math. Those are the three.

And we've talked about this before. They get an early episode about how the scores were kind of training down in 22 or whatever. But this is the latest up. It's the 26th version. It's bad. It is bad.

On a grand zoomed out scale, maybe you can find the chart. We are looking at dips in especially reading, but also science and math, that have not been seen. They just haven't been seen. Like mostly it's been trended up or flat for the longest time.

And now, we are seeing a true regression in these scores across the globe. I mean, across everyone, but especially we're seeing it here in America and a lot of these Western countries with rising bond yields. I don't know if we're going to hold the bulwark. So that's, that is what I was thinking about this when you're talking. And I'm just like, I'm worried about this next year. And I know what you guys discussed is on the yard.

Weirdly talked about, not the specific of the scores, but we weirdly talked about this on the yard. And you mentioned, and we were just talking before the show, you talked about how there's these four different stances. You're your crew on the yard kind of covered the four responses that I see, which is kind of funny. And you said that slime said, it's kind of how things have always been. People are not any dumber, right? Is that we said?

Basically, yeah. You can break it down if you want. Yeah, I would say slime was at the camp of like, I don't think things are like that different now than any other time in the sense that people fall into like general pockets of like success and non-success. Like people will be all right. Nick and Ludwig were on the same page in that even though people are failing at these traditional metrics that we're laying out for them, kids are undoubtedly spending their time and getting good at other things that we don't perceive as valuable or as measurable. They are, you know, because they still exist and they still are interested in things. And then I was making the argument that I do think there is,

is like a cognitive decline that is happening right now. And people, and at a base level, not just at a test score level, like we are like a younger generation that is cognitively less capable than they used to be. So I think the data would agree with you. And that's why I want to put, I want to tell you this,

I want to open this by saying, I'm fully aware that you can go back to literally ancient scrolls times and find people saying how kids these days, the scrolls make them too stupid. It is a human condition. forever of them saying this new thing is making young people stupid.

But this score drop is so dramatic. And we're looking at reading down 28 points across all OECD countries since 2015. That is, when you measure that out, that's like a year and a half of lost learning. So that's just gone based on the same age. They're a year and a half behind where they were before.

Math down 22, that's a year of lost learning. One in five, 15 year olds would now be considered on the old scale a low performer. These are numbers that are much worse. And what's interesting about it in the United States, our scores, we actually moved up in the rankings while moving down in the numbers

because other countries dropped faster. That's a dub, that's a dub. I'll take it. Around us. So we moved up in the rankings, even though our scores are down. But the United States had the largest gap between the top 10% performers and the bottom of the country recorded.

So they're like it clearly is different educational outcomes. They're showing that like wealthier kids or people in better areas of the country are reading more, cognitively able to answer these questions better. And people that aren't are getting destroyed. They're literally getting wiped out and their ability to read. And so to make it seem like this is business as usual, people have always been some people are dumbs, but like it does not seem to track with what we're seeing.

This is anomalous. And the people that are looking at this are broadly pointing at, a couple of things. No one can pinpoint the exact reason. Part of it could be COVID, which is where it begins to really trend down. COVID was bad for learning across the globe. But most people expected this would bounce back

by about 2025. We're in 26. Not only is it not bouncing back, it's accelerating to the downside. So it is a crisis. Like, it's a big deal. Kids are spending 6.5 hours a day on average across all of these kids on their phones,

on screens, on screens. Half of all students now use AI chatbots for schoolwork. That's who admits it. Half of all students use adeptic scores. And the ones that use it to write essays, they score a full year behind their peers. So we've talked about AI's possible potential as a learning tool. Currently, when people use it,

provably, they get dumber on the score. It takes away any of the cognitive friction that requires you to learn something, and they fall well behind. And that is happening most effectively in reading, but it's also hitting other things. So, and there's also a global teacher. There's a lot of things.

There's a lot of people that people point to, but those are the things people are saying are cross nation that are causing almost everyone to decline. Now there's a few outliers and I think it's worth talking about. Number one, Singapore, by far the best performing country in this thing consistently and it stuck to it with this year. They dominated across all three subjects significantly above every other country

in reading and science. They have a system that incentivizes intense teacher training, heavy emphasis on problem solving, and less memorization. they also ban phones, which is a big part of it. So it's worth noting that stands out. China also had an incredible score worth talking with the China, I mean, crushing episode.

But as with all things China, there's a little bit of a twist, which is that they only submit the test scores from their four wealthiest districts, which is, I'm sorry, four wealthiest areas, which is Beijing, Shanghai, Zhang Su, and Zhajang. I don't know how to say the last one. But that's like if we only use Massachusetts, California, New Hampshire, like whatever. It's like our top 10% actually America's 10% does score in line with the strongest

East Asian countries like Singapore and Japan and Korea and China. So our best people are as smart as their dumbest. No, no, no. Our best people are, well, I guess in line with the average of are tied with their average. Yeah. Singapore's average, I guess. But yeah, it's very high scores. I wouldn't say it in a bad way.

I would say like our best schools are doing well. but they are so rare comparatively in the grand scheme of the country that our national averages is brought down. Japan was top 10 across all three subjects did very well. South Korea, Taiwan. I mean, all these East Asian countries are in quite well. Estonia.

Big Estonia guy here was the European champion. Best performing European education. They only have 1.3 million people, so it's a little bit easier. How many kids took the test? Like five? How many kids they even have? Yeah, you're right. It's 8,000 globally. So they send their like three, crack Estonian students.

Yeah, actually, yeah, that's, wait, it was more than 8,000. It was 800,000, right? 800,000. Oh, sorry, sorry, I'm a certain. Okay, okay. Probably still like three. Probably still like three Estonia. It's like six now. This is a massive tag. This is a truly one of the biggest and well-structured analysis you can get on educational performance. Estonia, best performing in Europe and best performing worldwide in equity,

meaning the difference between the richest best-performing students and the worst-performing students. It was closest. So they had, like an overall high performance. They're not as high as Singapore or whatever, but pretty good on that. One thing that's unique about their school is they do have some tech use in it, but it is, it is,

it is, I call it structured. I guess the idea is that you don't get unstructured access to AI chatbots and whatever. It's like there's a few things they planned around. And then the only one that I think is worth like highlighting as a standout, again, they didn't actually go up,

but they stayed the same since like five, 10 years ago, the UK. And the UK, which was considered kind of a low ranking one has not lost anything in the post-COVID they've maintained. And so they've actually moved up the ranking quite a bit.

Their top 10, which is like pretty well. And they're the ones most similar to all these other countries that are failing. So UK is like the outlier. I don't have a deep dive as to why, but I would say they did educational reforms for 2015,

including a focus on traditional phonics-based reading, which people have abandoned in some countries which are to much detriment. And again, phone bans, phone bans and phone limitations. So these are not unsolvable problems. And that's why I don't like the idea of like, hey, people have always been a little stupid

or some people are whatever. I think these are like choices we've made to give access to things that are hurting education, which is like phones and AI chatbots. And countries have solved them. I've made progress. And if we do it right, we'll have a more literate society,

which I think is better into democracy. I think as people become angrier and dumber, we see the result. It's problematic. So I think this pizza score is like a big blinking roaring line, warning light. That shit is not on the correct direction on this.

Well, I guess I can give a quick counter. True. So, or not counter, but we are seeing momentum. And we've talked about on the show a bunch of people starting to ban social media for kids under the age of 18 and varying capacities in various parts of the world. Over in New York, this is from the AP this past year.

mom donnie is cracking down on children to access to AI in schools. So New York City public schools are banning kids from using AI tools for one year. This is up to the eighth grade. So mom, Doni just did this announcement where like you are not going to be able to use chatbots at all in school. If you're under if you're eighth grade or less, it's a little bit confusing. I spent a bunch of time trying to understand it. And even the United Federation of teachers said, quote, This leaves many questions unanswered.

The general vibe seems to be already phones have been banned, actually, for a year or two now in New York City. So no cell phones at all. But then on top of that, they're now saying you can't use, you know, AI chatbots or AI generation tools of any kind in the school system. The teachers can use it to prep, but they cannot use AI learning platforms or programs inside of the actual classroom. Because this is often talked about with AI of like, oh, it's going to be this amazing learning tool. And I think the idea here is like, we don't really know how to use this stuff and what's going to be good or bad yet. And so this is a full on like memorandum for the next one year. And by the way, there's other examples.

Los Angeles is doing the same thing, but in different capacity. They're temporarily blocking AI access to all grades. I think this is good. But what you're seeing from the sample or example is that if you don't change the way that we structure our curriculum, which rewards performance on homework and tests. Like people will still cheat. Like telling them, you can't do it is not enough.

Like you have to make a problem solving based curriculum where it's not really about what the chat, like it has to be things that you are coming to solution yourself. It's about creating mental friction. If you don't create mental friction, people become smooth wallie people. Like it's the only way. And so I do think this is progress.

And I think banning phones is huge. But, uh, I just, I just want to like, like push back on the ignoring it. I think it's, I think this is real. I think in 2026, these stats are real. This is really happening. It's a problem. And it's fixable if we like, threw it as a real crisis. Mom Donnie said quote, I want to kill the children. Yes. And it then you savability to read. And we applaud him for it. We applaud them for it. Um, yeah. I mean,

I think that's our episode for this week. This one kind of flew by. We have like a ton more stuff. Seven more stories. We have so much more on the sheet that we were going to come. One of them says in all caps, they're putting weapons on cockroaches. That's from Brandon.

Oh, put that on the Patreon. If you guys want to hear these seven more stories and anything else, you can join us for an extra bonus hour of content on the Lemonade Stand Patreon every week. Patreon.com slash lemonade stand. I will end it with just a little bit of optimism here, which is that looking at those

results of the piece of test. Yeah, Sweden beats us in mathematics, but America wins in science and reading. That's right. Let's go, baby. Can't wait for Aiden to become a... Can't be right. Where's Italy on the pizza test? You're going to go over there, start denying science. I'm going to go home and tell my girlfriend we're moving to Singapore instead, actually. It's going to pivot the whole point. It's never too late, by the way. You can go to a Singapore elementary school and finally learn to read. Dude, we should just ship... Dude, what the fight? Estonia is way up on this list. We're going to Singapore. We're going to Singapore.

We're going to Singapore. So maybe we're going to feel for... We're going to steal what they're doing. Why, this is, you know, things are so good there. Lemonade stand's going to sneak into an elementary school in Singapore. Yeah. If you're an American who can't read, join us on this trip, we're going to get you educated in Sanctore. We're going to get on the battle bus.

We're going to head on over there. We're going to play free Roblox games. We're going to doom scroll Chinese AI Slop. And then we're going to go to the CS major final. Actually, you know what? Instead of, like, trying to learn from them, Why don't we bring them down to our level? Yeah.

Let's bring Slop. Let's bring Roblox games to Singapore. Ooh, a little espionage. Strategically deploy American culture into their education system. Let's try and bring them down. Me at a Singaporean elementary school. Passing out vapes. This is Beanos.

All right. We'll see you guys next week. Bye, buddy.