Lemonade Stand - We Designed the Perfect Country | Ep. 062 Lemonade Stand

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug has a plan, Atrioc dictates from home, and Aiden lives on an volcanic island. 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: 062 Recorded on: May 12th, 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 1:00 Building the Perfect Country 5:36 Aidenstan 18:09 Atriocapocolypse 26:10 Fixing Atriocapocolypse 30:28 Shopify Ad 31:58 Fora Travel Ad 33:21 Dougopolis 37:35 The Importance of Culture 42:21 Our Discord's Country 46:43 Building the Most Corrupt Country 50:05 Truewerk Ad 51:29 Drafting World Leaders 1:06:45 Mamdani balanced NYC budget? 1:24:05 Inflation Report and the Fed 1:30:33 Outro New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, Odu replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have been,

made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-F-Frey at O-D-O-D-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-com. It's time to come clean. We've talked a lot on this show about how we're part of Vox Media. They're our network. Yeah. And we have a partnership.

We often say that they don't have any editorial input on the podcast. And that's a lie because last week they made us censor Atriox address on the show. So I think a foundational trust in the relationship has been broken. The fucking Murdoch stepped in, Rupert himself, and censored my address. And even though it seemed like I didn't want you to say it, I did because I'm a free speech advocate. Right. That's why right now I think we should all say our addresses. Starting with Aet.

I love. As a moment of pushback. Don't censor it. They'll ask to censor that too. I'm sure. I will cut you a big A-Bah. Aish, I'm going to need you to come in. But other than that breaking news about how you can no longer trust this show,

I want to get to building the perfect country. It's always been the goal of this podcast to build the perfect country. Do you know what I'm saying? Everything we've covered. The end state is the country that we live in or anyone in the world is now perfect. And once we've done that, we stamp off and we're good. And it's done. And there's a way to do that by moving around slider.

A bunch of sliders. I think now that we've done a year of the show where we've shown our expertise in such a range of topics, I think it's clear that we'd be able to run the perfect country. The people are clamoring for. They're saying run a country, run a country. Like what are you? They say to the Patreon all the time. You're not seeing it in the main comments.

It's not the main comments. In the Patreon comments, they're begging for us to run a country. And so we decided to do it. Doug created a system for us to prove our expertise in this subject. Using my executive assistant, Claude. Perry, pull this up. We have actually recreated what the Oval Office looks like. Because little known fact, the president actually sits there with a bunch of knobs and

dials and you crank them up and down. There's 12 different categories. One of Biden's worst choices was take the inflation knob and crank it all the way up. makes no sense because why would you crank it? Why would you just crank it down? But he was, I think, yeah, it was a big mistake of his. He cranked the woke thing so hard that it pulled inflation down. He's in the, he's standing in front of the server room for the nation, like that one photo.

Just mixed up the labels. Hey, Gary squinting. All right, I threw together a little exercise. This is an intellectual exercise where you are designing your own dream country. You can try it if you want. It's at country.org.org.com. You have 12 different categories. Military, democracy, infrastructure, culture, science, diplomacy, education, business,

subsidies, healthcare, vanity, housing, and welfare. This was inspired by one of those, like, viral, oh, build your perfect NBA team type of tweets, right? So the idea is each one of these categories, you can spend between zero and five points on them. You have 25 points total, and you need to come up with your ideal distribution for a dream country. And I know what the listeners are thinking. How did you manage to synthesize every single aspect of running a country into just 10 points? And I'd say we've done it again. Brilliant. Actually, that's why there's 12. The extra two is what made this entirely comprehensive.

Oh, whoops. Well, I think what's interesting about it, though, is obviously you can fucking add things to this category. But what it shows is what, because I think the constraint, you made the certain number of points way less in the total thing. Yes. So the constraint is, what do you value more. I think that's the interesting part is what? Yeah. If you had to make a trade off, what would you take away? I thought that was the... So we each filled out our own dream country, and I submitted this to our lovely Patreon Discord, and we got back 1,200 submissions that people put in. So I'm also going to show the average of what our audience thinks a dream country should be with the caveat of like, look, you can't perfectly illustrate exactly how to run a country through

12 categories. This is kind of roughly based off the U.S. budget, but ultimately it's not, like, budget isn't exactly correct. What you're saying is it, is scientific. This is the perfect method. I said, Claude, no mistakes. So look, so some of these are obviously the budget, for example, is not going to be comparable between military and vanity, for example. But generally the idea is like if you had a blank slate

country that let's say is somewhere in the world, but you're not in a specific area so you can't be like, oh, because I'm in Europe, I don't have to do X, Y, or Z. What would your priorities be? This is your priority as a leader on a blank slate country. And then things just so people are aware, vanity would be something like focusing on your own, like showcasing yourself as a leader, right? Like glorifying yourself. Business subsidies, any kind of, you know, focus on industry or direction or supporting things.

Diplomacy is external diplomacy. Science is any scientific research. Culture is going to be things like tourism, your own country's appeal and sense of national identity, potentially things like sports and other aspects that make people proud or have a sense of national pride. I thought vanity included things like, I guess it is kind of the same thing, but like statues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

I mean, you could look, there's obviously some overlap. Yeah, who's the boss? Of how days it is. Yeah. And democracy is meant to sort of say how much effort is spent towards a, you know, a thorough democratic system with all of the things that go into managing something like that versus you being more autocratic and just kind of doing whatever you want at any time. So you have 25 points to distribute amongst these.

We're going to each demonstrate what we think is our dream. country and make an argument for why we're going to show the communities country and we're going to start with Aiden Stan. Aidan Stan. Aidan, can you... All the Aden Stans are moving here. Hold on. One on military and two on diplomacy.

All right, sorry, go ahead. I don't need to get a head to it. It's, look, this was a tough exercise. But I think I tried to create a country that emphasized the points that I thought would be, create the most health. educated populace that would be able to navigate as many problems in the future as possible. So in my mind, I went low. I went low on the like military end for as an example. Okay. A country that popped into my head. I'm weak militarily. No military, no science. You're just a

bunch of educated weak people sitting around waiting to be dominated. If you're all bad or you're next to Russia, you're gone in a month. Yeah, if you are next to Russia. So, admittedly, during this exercise, I forgot that I couldn't just pick a location. Yeah. And in my head, I was like, Iceland is an example of a very stable, successful country that has no

standing military. True. Mostly due to the lack of importance of their geographic location. Right. Nobody cares about them. I guess you could just take a far off. be unwanted. No military, no one wants you. Okay.

But Iceland, Iceland was kind of my frame of reference for that. I do think the difficulty there is like if you look at successful, neutral countries that I had in mind for other things like Switzerland or Singapore, they often spend a lot on their military relative to other countries in order to maintain their stance of neutrality in the world. Like it's, if you're going to be a neutral country in, uh, You need to have a military presence. He doesn't Singapore say that? Like they famously have like, isn't it mandatory service?

And like, yeah, they have all that stuff to make sure that they have a strong enough military so they're not bullied around because they're small. Yeah.

But I gambled on the Iceland. I think the most important things you'll see, I'm almost maxed out education, housing, and then healthcare and welfare are also pretty high. I think my basic, my basic idea.

here, it came back to an anecdote where I was interviewing this guy who runs a huge charitable organization in Sudan. And when I was talking to him, he talked about how there's a lot of people that are interested in donating or supplying help to Sudan, especially because they're in this civil war right now. But even prior to that, because the country's been in such an unstable place. and oftentimes when people donate, they want to provide things like food,

something that provides instant relief to some sort of problem. So they feel like they have an immediate impact. That's what people want to see. But he said as someone who, context, this is an American guy who moved there 20 years ago and has lived in Sudan

with, has like a Sudanese family, speaks the local language. Like, when he talks to people, about what they need in the country, the number one thing they say is education over, over anything else. And people see education. Why not like Big A clips?

Like you air dropping the man or is that? Yeah, you air drop in the big a clip. Wouldn't that saves you? He's printed into VHS. VHS, they pick up the tape. It's like, I've watched YouTube. I have the internet here. And he was explaining how a lot of people,

see education is the foundation to be able to escape a lot of the problems that the country is experiencing because so many things are the cyclical nature of a relatively stuck and uneducated populace not knowing how to deal with like issues on the ground not knowing how to like communicate or build the like government structures needed to build the country to a place where it needs to be and education is like at the root of being able to do. develop those things. And that's what people want. They want support building schools. They want that more than anything. I was very surprised to hear that. In my opinion, I feel like education is kind of the foundation for a long-term healthy society. So that's why I almost maxed it out.

And then alongside that, I think housing in my mind is the other foundation to like a healthy, happy life. Well, okay, real quick, this is like your priorities running the government. It's not necessarily there is more or less housing. This is like you want to be involved

as the government ensuring that housing is very present. Yeah, not necessarily spending, but I, maybe I misread the prompt, but, or like, the government's like priorities should be to like help build these things somehow.

It isn't necessarily a one-to-one relationship with how much you'd spend on it. Sure, yeah. It's just your priorities. Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like education and housing, housing being this, you know, place of stability, you can't, like, build your life up or do things if you have housing insecurity, right? So these things feel like the root of, like, a long-term successful society.

Housing, I look at a place like Singapore. Like, even though housing's super expensive, they have a ton of programs that, like, enabled people and young couples to get into their first homes. they have like a robust public housing system in order to make sure, uh, in order to make sure that the bulk of people have a path to homeownership somehow. Uh, when we talk about places like Vienna earlier last year,

like having, you know, good modern social housing available as a counterpart in the market to private housing. Uh, and, uh, even, even in a place like LA where housing is so unaffordable, uh,

And so many people are homeless. Like you're not, if you're in a housing insecure situation, you're not really able to do anything else with your life because you're constantly in this game of trying to just figure out where you're going to stay that night. And it's really hard to get your life to progress. But have you thought about how someone without housing could look up at a big statue of Aden

and feel better about their life? You did nothing on vanity and I'm worried that that's... It's a huge gaping hole in my plan. I'll give you that. Like it's just like. And I could have given it at one point for maybe some like paintings around. Yeah. Around the country or something.

Not even statues. Just paintings. I thought about that. I thought about docking. Docking housing one point. Get a few. Have a slightly worse house, but at least cease.

Here's a thing. I think it's actually crazy to have vanity zero and culture zero. That's, dude. That is the SpongeBob Chrome world. Okay. I had. It's not.

Science. Like I, I, and then you have almost no diplomacy, no military. So you're like very much. in her own little bubble. You're very mid-maxed.

Yeah. I did have this thought of, am I building like a Dubai of countries by doing that? To be a little critical of Dubai specifically, I think because of the way it's built and because of the way it presents itself, it presents itself. And also the nature of a,

how short the country's like modern, history is, it feels like the culture of Dubai is heavily based around like money and modern amenities and like flashy things. And that doesn't mean it's not a nice place. And it's also, you know, it was also built by like an enslaved worker base and that part of it as well. But with incredible benefits and, you know, educational opportunities, housing, welfare support for the Emirates who live there. Am I building a place kind of like that? And I had that thought.

Harry, can you pull on my screen? Because I wanted to guess what Aiden would pick. So I tried my best to fill this out for Sweden. And it's pretty close. But I'll say I think Sweden does it better than you. Because if you'll notice the few differences. Sweden, hold on. Sweden has more experience than I do.

Can I say? to be perfect. I've been running countries. I've been running a country for maybe 48 hours. You just told me that I'm not actually on an island like I thought I was. This is Sweden realizing they have neighbors.

Sweden, I noticed, compared to your chart, has four points in democracy because they value a... And you put one point in democracy. Yeah, because... You're like a dictator who's giving everybody free... Yeah, but... Dictators are giving them no culture.

they're not even going to believe in you because you have Lequan you cared about getting the job done. You know what I'm saying? You ain't Lequod, you with it. Okay. And then welfare's a little higher in Sweden than it is in your country. Housing is a little bit lower to be fair. Healthcare's the same.

Okay. You're saying Sweden has no business. I want to ask you about this, Aidan. It's like, I'm surprised you put two in business subsidies instead of putting that into like more welfare. Why? Why do you do that? Uh, I got to make a little cash.

We're going to make a little bread. You can make a little bread and AIDS there. And most of it goes AIDS. Yeah. And the insane government needs to look. There's no democracy, so. Yeah. No democracy and business.

My actual thought was, I think I'm not, China was the example that popped in my head. China actually has a relatively low amount of welfare, like as a country. And they relied heavily on the amount that invested in infrastructure

and businesses in order to raise that enormous population out of poverty. And I think a lot of people don't know that. I think I still have welfare pretty high up. Yeah. Because I think it's more in line with the society I had an envision. But I think there's room to give there in a way that people don't think about as much. You can take people out of poverty without having an incredible

like welfare system. I think that's possible. I think the two sliders that are non-negotiable that one has to be high if the other one's gonna be low is military and diplomacy. If you're gonna have low military,

you better be engaged in allies. Wait, I got two points in diplomacy. You got two points in diplomacy. No, you don't understand. I'm a volcanic island in the middle of... I don't have military because I have incredible geographic defenses. It's like, it just makes shit up about your geography.

I just don't think anyone would kind of want to live in your country. I'm looking at it right now. I guess you know what I realize I've made? I think I've made like dictatorship, dictatorship Iceland. Yeah. You've made Singapore Iceland actually.

You've made authoritarian Iceland. No, I think you that can be fine. You've made an island that is a giant target for an authoritarian person who's going to come in just destroy you. No, but authoritative doesn't necessarily mean aggressive. Like, Singapore is authoritarian. Kind of. Kind of.

It's soft. They have elections. They have elections, but only one parties ever won. I'm just saying, yeah. And other parties that try somehow get their party offices

rated and like, yeah, but they're fair elections. Yeah, all right. Well, okay, I can see this. I can see this. Can I show them on? Yeah,

I do want to see yours. Because ultimately I'm grasping at straws, right? I think I looked at these a list of countries I had in my head, a mixture of like, uh,

Denmark, Iceland, Singapore, and Switzerland. And I kind of went through these factors in these countries, kind of went over how they're like healthcare and welfare systems function, the amount they invest in infrastructure. And then noted things that we've learned over the year from places like China and then tried to piece something together. But that was where I was coming from.

I mean, I think there's another way to go about it. And I would show you the, you call it the HR Apocalypse. Agee apocalypse. I've decided democracies of failing strategy. There's too much time. You have zero democracy, five military.

Five military. I put one point in a democracy. I have zero democracy, we're going all on a here's what I figured. You have high input? Okay. I was legitimately thinking about this question.

I was taking notes. I was looking at other countries and I realized they're going to let my dumb ass run a country. And if there's democracy, they're going to vote me out. Almost immediately. So that's,

Your goal is less a great country or you keep running something. Once I'm in power, I need to keep running it. And so to maintain that, I'm going to need to change a few things about how it's run. Democracy has to go to zero. Military needs to go to five because I'm also bad on diplomacy. I don't think people are going to like me that much. So from there, I need to, here's the thing. I don't think you can go low democracy authoritarian if you don't have high vanity.

I need statues of me. Right. I need posters of me. We need a lot of that around there so that people recognize that I am the rightful. leader. I'm doing a good job. Of course. And from there, I kind of tried to have a balance situation other than I didn't really have any money left for welfare at the end of the chart. You put money at housing before welfare. Yeah. Well, they have the old place. Well, they got to have houses. They got houses. Okay, right. So you've got two in education, two in business subsidies,

two in health care, five in vanity, two in housing and zero in welfare. That's correct. Why do you put three in science? Why do you care about science in this fucked up country? I've, first of all, it's like four. No, A-S-3 in science. Yeah. I figure, first of all, part of the military thing is you got to stay on the cutting edge. Right.

I don't want to have an old-ass military because then I'm getting, I'm getting Venezuelan. You know what I'm saying? They're going to... So you got to be cutting edge. So I have to be, you know, on the leading edge of military.

Yeah, this is like... You're like Sparta kind of. This is a bit of a Spartan situation. I would say, I don't know what a modern analog would be. And North Korea in a way. Like a North Korea thing? I think healthcare is maybe a little too high

for North Korea. Also education, maybe a little too high. Maybe, but I... Well, I'm sure if you're not a dissident. What, by the way, when I say the education is that too, there, that's probably how much it costs to put Big A clips on screens in schools

across the country. You're running the country, but you're still making YouTube videos for your audience. Because it's a guaranteed built-in audience. I have millions of citizens. They're required to watch. Big A clips like state media.

And I don't live in the country because you still live in L.A. I'm not leaving L.A. You're imagining this like you're here, your life continues, but you're sort of told you inherited. You inherited a country and this is how you're going to like let it run. And if you think you can run a country from a distance without a strong military and no democracy, you're an idiot. Like there's only one way to maintain this level of control.

Right. So I've, I think realistically apply the constraints that you've given me and done the best to maintain power. And I think it's, and I think it's not gonna be that bad for them, all things considered. What are they missing out on? Democracy.

Who cares? It's working out pretty well. Culture. Bind. That's a bit of a downside. Well, I will say, okay, so culture was,

I viewed it through the lens of like cultural exports, cultural soft power that you have on the rest of the world. And I was like, I think I can let this go. You know? I mean,

it's also internal culture. like how people are proud to be or feel like there's something going on in their country. I kind of left that part aside, admittedly. And thinking about how that's, I think that's important for people living in the country. I think I viewed it as like an external thing. I thought of it as like tourism and history in museums. And I figured it's my country's brand new. We're not competing with Greece or France or, you know, it's like, give it up.

Nobody's coming to Atriox Day and to see our museums, bro. Well, when I founded it, 10 minutes. go. I feel like you guys are both underestimating how important it is to be liked in the world. Wait, diplomacy had two points, Doug. I don't understand. Out of five and with no military. They can't all be five. They can't all be five.

I feel like two is a pretty solid. If you put it in two, that means it's a, it's a, it's on your priority list. It's on the board. Priority list? Yeah. Two. My highest one was a four. I didn't know. I didn't get five days. Five would be, I think five is almost extremely. You know, this is a bit of a joke. And this is a scientific process with no holes in it.

Yeah, there's no holes in it. You forget that. I'm legitimately, if I'm being more serious about it, I think having a five on something, like a five on military is like, you are a war state. You, I mean, that's a huge, that is a massive priority for your country. I mean, it's probably America would be five.

Okay, hold on. It's not a five. You're never a five? No, look at our budget. Like, we spend so much shit out, we spend like a trillion, right? A half. Yeah, out of a seven trillion dollar.

I mean, it's probably a four, right? It's a four and a half. I mean, you know, I mean, raw numbers, obviously, it's huge. But, like, we spend a fuckload on other things. I am curious when you were making this one

maybe this is the opposite of what this is. But I did, like I said, I did have really successful countries in the world in mind when I was like, you know, what do I value? What do I think should be prioritized? Do you have countries in your head that you view as the most

like independently successful? Not what the U.S. could copy or, but just countries you admire for their policies. Well, legitimately I was trying to at first fuse the parts of I liked about U.S. and China, but it became very difficult through this lens. So I sort of went on a goofier, or Adirakistan situation. This infallible lens? Yeah, I don't know. It's funny because every one of these, you can make an argument about the

benefits of five or like a long investment. So it's hard. It was hard to do the tradeoffs. I think if I really wanted to depriorit something, it's obviously vanity. And I think, legitimately, I mean, if you look, like you said about China, they're pretty low on welfare, but even housing, like in terms of, I was looking at this, part of the study of it, is government spending on housing by China is actually really low. Yeah. Almost all of that massive housing stock we saw we were driving through there is built by private developers over the past.

They make money off it through land sales through the thing, but like they don't, that's not, they're not spending government tax money on it. It's kind of like healthcare, like healthcare spend in Singapore is really low. And they do have a system that it has, like, huge private players involved. But it's more complicated than public versus private. You have to, like, create a system that allows, you know, that health care to remain low cost, good quality, and have these, like, private players be involved,

which is, like, not the U.S. system. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, what it feels like is, like, almost what you're trying to do as a country is, because if you think of this as points, as in focus, it's kind of different. If you think that there's money, it's different, we're trying to do as a country is find a way to get more points for less money,

to be really, really efficient. To find, like, some hack to get more out of it than having to throw more money at it. I think is the dream. Yeah. There's like a mixture of, you know, we're working in this scenario, right? There's like this fixed budget of points,

but, you know, your budget could be bigger or larger, and there's ways to make efficiency of, you can change the efficiency of how those points are spent. Depending, for instance, if you're a volcanic island, you don't really need military as well. The one that's really interesting

is democracy because theory, I mean, there's successful countries that don't use that slider at all. Like that one's almost a personal preference. It's not like five is better than one on this one. In my opinion, it would be, but that's not like you could,

that's really just a choice, like how, what you think is more effective. And it's whether people are able to influence the direction of government. government, right? Or they can come in and change these sliders if they don't want. If you, okay, hold on.

If you took slide, if you took vanity and you slid to zero. Yeah. And you took military and dropped that down a bit. You had seven points. Where would those first go? Oh, that's a good question. Because those are like kind of your bits. You know what's interesting? You know what's interesting is I think I'm a person

who I would probably put two more into business subsidies. Damn. Of the 4K. Because I think if you're a small country, as I'm picturing I am, you really want to... That's my marketer, dude. It's still zero in welfare.

That's fucking right, man. Okay, you put two in welfare. Okay. Put two in welfare so we're not, we're not worse in the world. Honestly, go five in business. I want to be like a place where people want to, you know, Singapore again, where people want to start a business. And then I would probably put another one into diplomacy, too into diplomacy.

I think on the opposite end of that, because I looked at that, like, what's out of the countries I listed, how do business, you know, what do business subsidies look like in these places? What are the big overarching ones at least? Yeah. And Singapore is a real like, pick the winners mentality. Like, make sure, like, big, modern industries

have a reason to come here. And we have money to invest in those things. I remember even at beyond the summit, there were these opportunities that came up through the Singaporean government, like funding certain types of events. This came up a couple times. And I was like,

something like esports was something the government was interested in. You could apply even as like a foreign business for like grants or something. And then on the other end of it, I looked at Switzerland, you know, like a country, I would say a country known for business in a lot of different ways.

But their main subsidies go to farming in the country, mainly as a way of maintaining like food security. And they don't have a lot of subsidies for other, industries. They have a business-friendly tax environment and kind of treat that as the subsidy, but they just like set up what you want here, but we're not going to like play our cards to influence it. And we're only going to subsidize, we're mainly going to subsidize the farming industry

let you have. Yeah, I think based on what your country needs, you get subsidize different things. But I think there in the past few decades, there have been countries who have said we want to be leaders in, you can think of Taiwan in semiconductors or whatever. countries that have been like, this is a important technological industry. It's going to be big in the future. We want to be leaders in it. We're going to subsidize it. All of the Asian tigers did that.

By and large, it's worked. By and large, it has been a successful method to be like, we have this industry. We're world class in it. We have a cost advantage because we put a little money in from the government. And now we have expertise because it kind of snowballs. Once you have the subsidy at first, you become the best at it. And then you get all the demand from around the globe. And then you become legitimately on your feet good at it.

And then you can even pull the subsidy after if you need to, right? Isn't that what happened with Chinese electric cars? Like there's so much money going into it. The industry gets going. And then I think in 2022 was when the big subsidies for most of these companies ended. And now they just have to play ball. Like China did an ordinate amount of solar panel subsidies. And now it doesn't really need them as much because they have a lead in it and in batteries.

And so people just buy from there. Like it just, it works. Like it's a good way to do it. So I would probably put a lot into that. And then obviously I think, yes, science or education. Those are pretty good. The thing about, this sounds stupid, but the reason I had education a little lower,

don't call it a structure at a little. It's a good play. We're turning it around. Is, you know, I'm so, I feel like no one knows how to do education really well right now. The examples are our system, I think, is being destroyed by AI. Like it is not surviving contact with cheating.

And then the Chinese system, is like making kids want to commit suicide. Like it's just so insanely intense. I don't know who's doing an incredible job on education with... Finland. Finland's nailing it. And I don't know what Finland's percent is of like how focused they are or if it's just working out because they're a stable society.

I don't know. It's actually because they're a volcanic island. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder? with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other. Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need.

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That's O-D-O-D-O-S-A. support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu, it's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part, O-Doo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost.

That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Hassan Piker has blown up in recent years. After the 2024 election, the popular leftist Twitch streamer became a go-to voice for the Democratic Party. But Pikers glow up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice. Hassan Piker is anti-American.

He is bigoted. He's anti-Semitic. and he is deeply misogynistic. So in March, a Democratic group called Third Way published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal's opinion section saying, quote, Democrats are too cozy with Hassan Piker. He is such an extremist that it will only do damage to Democrats and hurt their chances of beating right-wing populism. Now, Piker is controversial, no doubt.

But is he toxic? I don't think this helps Republicans at all. I think, as a matter of, like, Third Way's brand of politics has helped Republicans. their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues to the Republican Party and never focus on economic populism. I'm a Sted Hearnton, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. All right, look, this leads into my plan, which is largely to create a sort of weird

Singapore-San Francisco type vibe. Okay. I would get the obvious. Dogopolis. Zero military, big in diplomacy. see, that's my strategy for staying alive. That being said, I am a supple peach on a tree that any dictator could come and grab. So our goal with this society, we're going to rock in 10 to 20 years.

Okay. If we stay alive until then because I'm zero health care, zero housing, zero welfare. So things I hardcore maxed on, science, education, and business subsidies is a three. High as I could make it. And I think the thing here is like, honestly, a Singapore-esque strat, where Singapore, that's what they did when Lee Kwan Yu came in. It was like, we are going to be this super, super, super focused education and sort of science engineer focused society. Teachers are going to be really well paid. They're going to be treated with a lot of respect. And engineers, doctors, scientists are going to be sort of venerated in our society. And then I agree with needing business subsidies. I think it sounds stupid on paper, but that's true of like Japan post-World War II. You know, they did tons of business subsidies. Germany, Korea, like, Germany, Korea, like, like the countries you see that have, aside from China, which we just talked about, that have massive, massive success in growing these huge industries are largely the government

directing resources towards that. And as a reminder, importantly, defending against other countries coming in and just destroying your, uh, your industry with exports. So I'm imagining a world where China does exist with Dougopoulos. And so actually another thing that influenced this was we talked with Simon, one of our lovely, uh, viewers who, uh, helps run like AI in a large German company. So this dude, we chatted with him. Yeah. Like PhD student, like super brilliant, has made his own star. He's a really like wickedly smart dude and told us when we were chatting with him, I would basically move to America because they, they could pay me insane amounts of money to be involved in the tech industry. But I'm staying here because of like family and friends.

Yeah. And I thought about that of like a lot of European countries are offering all this free education and incredible like opportunities for their population. And then you have America who I'm also assuming exists in this world, who will just pay, like, anthropics are going to come in and pay my people a million dollars to leave and go make AI for them in San Francisco. So business subsidies, to me, are like, we're going to educate the shit out of people.

We're going to have a lot of money in science, but then business subsidies are how we ensure, hey, we want you to stay here and actually build business here and protect our industries from just being dominated by China. And then infrastructure, I think, is, like, important to make people happy and make science actually able to proliferate. Culture is important. because that way people won't leave as hard.

Hopefully welfare is just like... Elf in the room. People seem pretty sick. So here's the thing. If we can survive 10 years, we're gonna fucking rock. We're gonna invent our healthcare. Look, we have not zero in healthcare and zero in housing.

Infrastructure, like, helps people out, kind of, but that's so they can get to and from work. Just utilize our science. Our diplomacy is to keep us alive until then. And you might be wondering about democracy too. Why not just be authoritarian? And the reason, I was thinking about this. Yeah.

I don't want a situation where once we invent all the cool science stuff that makes our country rock, then it just goes to oligarchs, which is what happened sort of in Korea. It's what happens sort of in the Soviet Union where there just wasn't the ability for, like, the benefits of these things to spread or be well managed. So I want enough democracy so that once we get over the hurdle and we invent shit that makes our society safe and healthy, then people can vote in a way that, like, redistributes it, redistributes from that point. this is, this is an interest that you have a holding pattern. You're like, this is, this is my time,

my 10 year plan. My time cap, my 10 year time cap. Also, culture, look, culture again, this is like tourism. I want people to like us, right? Yeah. We want to be cool. We want to be like pre-World War I Germany where we're like not very fun and don't make a lot of jokes,

but we're impressive scientifically. What happened after people were in Germany? What did they do to do? See, the problem is because of this two on democracy, they might take away some of the business subsidies of the science and put that into military. I'm just telling you. And then we're in Prussia.

I'm using my five on vanity to make statues of me conquering your country and we're... What the funny thing is, if our three countries just suddenly poofed into existence in the Pacific Ocean, atriockville would immediately take over by country and Aiden's country.

And then run in the ground. My country would lose out real quick. I will give you that. And you'd be like, no, we're on a little island. He has diplomacy at least. You would ask, no one would even listen to your call. Again, put one point into diplomacy.

So we're trying. Dude, you know what's also crazy? I send a guy, I send a guy who's a little drunk to the UN every year. But that's a thing. You would show up people would be like, who are you?

Oh my gosh. It's like when it's dead. If you ask somebody like, oh, do you hear about what's happening in Turkmenistan? They're going to be like, no. And then they're going to keep talking about their day. That's how they'll respond to your country when you're being invaded. Nobody will care. They won't know who you are. You've got to have some culture, man. You've got to be known.

Culture and diplomacy. Maybe I was thinking about this when we made this. There's one category that I did think that we should we have put energy on this? I thought of an infrastructure. Yeah. Infrastructure includes it. It's like similar thing. Yeah. I do think, okay, a larger scale question about this because I think this is a real topic that's been coming up a lot when you read about this type of thing on social media. And it's like this, I'm being really simplified here. But it's the idea that Europe has done a pretty good job more than the other two big powers of America and China on like welfare and quality of life. Yeah. They've out competed on that. But they've fallen behind perhaps on like economy and tech.

Like these are two areas where they're lagging a bit on the two. And then China is probably doing really well on economy and tech. And also pretty decent on infrastructure quality of life. but authoritarian, 100%, like they don't have the democracy that you might enjoy. I would also say like the balance of life and labor in China.

Yeah, like everybody has insane work hours, has to work insanely hard, even if, you know, workers' rights there have gotten better in a bunch of areas like we learned about. It's like comparatively the hours are insane. And I would also say culture is not as big as a country like China should have.

It's obviously China has a ton of of culture and history. But if you think about the international influence that... That's been changing. Their soft power's been changing. That's shifting. But as a long as recently, for how giant and powerful they are compared to Japan or America or Britain for the

amount of international cultural influence they've had, it's like a lot less than you would expect. I totally agree. I mean, they had that massive movie that broke every box of record and it sold nothing outside of China. It was literally all in the time. They've had some games.

Four years. Yeah. Now it's happening. And then obviously the problems with America we've talked about, but America is its own. America, you know, brig on military.

You don't really well on that. And, uh, leading in some aspects of tech, like really good in tech. If I was putting America on this chart, it would be all maxed on all of them probably. It'd be like,

I don't know how you do it. Uh, yeah, infrastructure pretty low. Culture would be high. Culture. Now with R. K.

Jr., we have no science. Our diplomacy is drop. Dude, everything is, changed in the last one year. Our education going down. Our education's going down. Business subsidies. It's like it's in the middle, right? Yeah. We're in the middle. And then healthcare. Healthcare rocks. We're crushing it. That's a five. No, I mean, uh, look, because of quality is going up. Vandis's going up. We spend so much on health care.

I thought about this. America's point allocation would be five for health care. We literally spend more per capita than anyone else. Okay. But the quality of what you get is so low. So this was, this was the, the interpretation of this chart and how you engage with it. This is the big question, because I don't think points inherently correlated with spending. Because I would say with the way I viewed mine and the way I filled it out, I would put America's healthcare at like a two, you know, or three, maybe like, you know, relative to every country on earth.

Yeah. But if you were doing spending, yeah, it would be maxed. Yeah, it's a weird. So the way you interact, it's like this isn't an infallible exercise. This is for fun and like a way. to explore different, you know, ideas about these countries. But yeah, I think that's worth saying is like spending doesn't correlate with success. Yeah.

And in fact, let's tie this to what our Discord users actually did. And this has, like you said, it's been a fun exercise. There's been various people who are asking, oh, why don't you should have information about where you are in the world and like budget and all these different things. So maybe we make it way more complex in the future. But from 1,200 submissions, drum roll, this is the average of what our community old. There we go.

This is the average of what our community picked. Now it doesn't map exactly to individual numbers but we're looking at like a 1.3 in military like a 2.5 in democracy.

They're not going to like my country. A 3 in infrastructure a 1 and a half in culture a nearly 3 in science a nearly 2 in diplomacy. Education is the highest and that's like 3.3. point two, very low business subsidies, which surprises me.

That's like 0.8. Healthcare, almost exactly at a three. Vanity extremely low, not surprising. That's like point. Why did, who even put, whatever, housing is about 2.7 and welfare is at about two. So it's more balanced, but education is a clear kind of front runner. Infrastructure is a clear frontrunner.

Science is pretty high. Health care is pretty high. Housing's pretty high. I'm gonna say, this is pretty close to mine. This is pretty close to Aiden, Stan. This is close to Ains Stan. Maybe a couple more points in democracy. I think when you think about livability,

this is where the average person wants to live. I truly believe. I think like day-to-day quality of life, I think for leaders or for a country trying to plan for the future, maybe some of this stuff. Like I think, for example, something like business subsidies, that's a thing that for the regular person is like, why do I give a shit?

I don't care. Yeah. But then like as a leader, you do it because it creates a lot of jobs down the road. And you know, whatever. It's like one of those things. So I don't disagree with it. Like this is like kind of where you want to end up. It's just you have to find a way to do it without sacrificing your long-term competitiveness,

which I think is like some countries in Europe are running into right now where, you know, like the German welfare model is running into the fact that their auto industry is now getting cooked by China and they have to figure out of like that's a thing they're dealing with. But it's like quality of life there is pretty high. I live in Germany. I really like it. People like it. So it's a thing you have to balance.

I don't, I don't. There's no answer, but yeah. feels a little idealistic with military barely above one point and diplomacy under two. Like, we, I feel like you can't at some point, again, a lot of this is about the exercise of the circumstances around your country. But I think if you assume that you are within striking distance of any antagonistic country, like, that's dangerous, man. This doesn't add up to 25, though, does it? People must be finishing submissions with overspending points because I'm looking at this. And I'm like, do they get more points?

No. I mean, it's potentially my code is wrong. I did this morning someone, uh, military. So the averages, you know, democracy is like 2.2 infrastructure is like three. And military was at eight trillion. And so somebody, I realized I didn't have like validating on my server. I was going to, um, F11 and edit it and go to the house. That's not military, put everything on zero.

But I think you guys, um, but no, I fixed it. I mean, potentially it's wrong. I guess I guess the one more is like a second. what, you know, if you were talking about broad base, thousand plus people, what do they value? They want better health care. They want better education. They want better infrastructure.

And that seems to track with what we've been saying on this pocket. Like that's not crazy. I'm actually a little surprised by how high science is. I thought, I thought that would have instead been pushed more into something like welfare or business subsidies, to be honest, or culture.

I guess people really value. And this would, you know, this would be like fundamental science research led by the government. Part of the reason I pushed into that is like that, that is incredibly valuable for a, country, right? If you think about America and what that's created to be dominant, come from like military or, yeah, so I think, uh, like a ton of modern medicine, a ton of,

I think we've, we've talked a few times on the show about how like, uh, the different, different historical institutes getting massive funding from the government is something that, you know, the private sector can never really replace because the long term investments are just too much for any private company to be interested in. Like, if the turn around, round on the profit of some research is like 10, 20 plus years, it's only the government that's going to be interested in taking on that project. And that's when we say science, it's like, that's why you need like grants and research for that type of thing. Because that's how you get incredible, you know, medicine or things like the end of the end of the end. Yeah, breakthroughs.

Okay. One final exercise. I do want to see, let's say we're literally just optimizing for the most corrupt country possible where you stay in power. Perry, pull this up. 12 categories, but now they are military, secret police. Now we're talking. State media, bribery, border controls, prisons, oligarchs, staff purges, nepotism, cult of personality, illicit goods, and sham elections. This is what Atriopolis needed. This is what I was looking for.

I didn't have the right sliders. You wanted all of this contained in military. We know that spiritually, that's what you were doing. Yeah, spiritually, that's what I was doing. Okay, I'm actually kind of curious what you guys think. Of these categories, one of the most important to you straight off the back. I'm trying to genuinely make the most corrupt country. Yes.

If you're trying to have the most crowd country, you stay at power forever. Bribery to max. State media to four. Yeah, you need high, right? Oh,

this is tough. Do you need a lot of state police, secret police if your state media is really good. And your bribery is really good. If it's really good. I mean, you kind of, oligarchs and bribery is a little bit over the same.

You want cult of personality, right? We need a little in there. Maybe a lot. We need to be like a crate. It's funny because this one I almost want five on everything more than the other one. Yeah. These are all important things.

All the marks only need one. One because there's one. It's me. Military has to be five. It has to be five, right? Yeah. You can't do it without a few staff purchase. No, that's not true.

You could have a small military. You could have a small military and a big secret police. I actually think that's what you'd want. Really? Because you're not aggressive. At this point. Oh, because the military could be one of the sex

that could overthrow you. Yeah. You do not want a strong alternative military. But if your bribery is that high, I'm worried about international. Like, again, you ought to assume that other countries might try to stop. What I'm saying is we created a shithole.

Nobody wants to take it. It's like, it's almost like how South Korea does not want to reunite with North Korea because it would be like a crisis. Like there's so many people coming over. Like they, I mean, they sort of do,

but when they talk about it actually happening if it were to reintegrate a guy, it's like, it would be like almost like a refugee crisis. I mean, it'd be so many people that have entirely different standards. I just feel like, we're creating a bad. And you're a horrible country that you have to have enough as a deterrent.

I think you would need it military at least like three. But it's paper tiger. I want a big. Secret Police. Okay. All right. All right. So fine. We'll do four on secret police, two on military. Are you doing staff purges? You feel like that's important? Do you need to purchase staff? Do you need to purchase? What's the point? They're all bribed and corrupt anyway. Let's just keep cycling them out. I think we can either put, we either put throw us into oligarchs or staff purges. I don't think you need both. I guess if you want it to be the most corrupt country possible, you wouldn't purge the staff at all. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. And you definitely don't need the sham election. Yeah. Right. I think sham election, obviously, nepotism, our kids are a little spoiled brats anyways. They need to earn their corrupt country. I think you put one into oligarchs and then you probably put the rest into presents. Well, I don't want to be America.

I'm not trying to make something that crazy. How much do you feel like border control is necessary though, right? Every like super awful country. Oh, actually, yeah, yeah. You think about like the wall or whatever. Like if your country's bad enough, they want to leave. Right. Or North Korea.

Yeah, you have to, you have to, you have to get. I think it might almost be more important than prisons. I think you go five on border control. Five on border and then zero prisons? If they can leave, they'll leave. Ladies and gentlemen, this is our dream country. Wow, we've built something special here. The U.S. and Iran say they've agreed on terms to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

You already see oil prices from a high of $126 a barrel down to about $80 a barrel today. that's a lot of progress. The war, of course, drove up the price of gas and other essentials and has led to some ugly polling for President Trump. 61% of adults polled by NPR, PBS, and Marist disapprove of his handling of the economy. His handling in a certain light makes sense. His priority was preventing Iran from getting nukes. But Trump's messaging was unusual, unusual for a president.

Last month, the reporter asked Trump, to what extent was he thinking about Americans' finances when he negotiated with Iran? I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. What's he doing coming up on today, explained from Vox? Okay, but here's what I say? Go back to our real countries. Pull up your, Pope Duggestan or pull up the Chats country.

We've got Chats country. We need to figure out either our countries or Chats country, who's going to lead these countries? Because we can't do it forever. We're already past our prime. Who's going to lead these countries? And so that, I've taken your idea of, interpreting meme formats in a different direction.

And this. Okay, we have not seen this. Oh, God. Okay. Oh, my God. It's a world leader draft in the style of pick your top five NBA players. Okay. So you have $10.

10? That's it. To build a cabinet of three. Okay. And these three will work together to run your country. Okay. On the top row, we have the $5 greats, Abraham Lincoln, FDR, Alexander the Great Nelson Mandela.

Lee Kwan You. I mean, you have a military society. You went Alexander the Grey. I don't know if he's going to adapt well to the modern times. Yeah, that's true. Okay. In $4, you have Gandhi, Adaturk, Churchill, Caesar, and Marcus Aurelius.

$3. You have Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Elizabeth I, the first, Margaret Thatcher, Otto von Bismarck. $2, you have Cleopatra, Henry the 8th, John F. Kennedy, Mao, and Trump. Okay. And then on $1, $1,000, you have Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Paul Pot and Putin.

Maybe some hidden gems down there. What Saddam do? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I mean, I do feel like Saddam got put in the big league. If anything, if anything, he's punching above his weight.

Yeah, he's punching above his weight. I think he's just stuck to be on this board. It's not scientific, all right? It's just, uh, no, no, I think you, this is clearly really serious.

I just wanted to get some of the famous world leaders and I tried to throw up on a Instagram charge. So you guys have $10 to pick. 10 bucks? 10 bucks to pick a cabinet of three. Okay. And let's assume roughly we're going on with chats average. If you're picking Alexander in the smartphone era, bro, you're lost.

Yeah, that's a lost $5 pick right there. I'll do mine right now. I'll do Alexander the Great at a military society. Alexander's my $5. Auto-Bomb Bismarck's my three. And I'll throw in Trump because you... Wait, wait, what's... Sorry, what's my budget?

You have a $10 budget, which means there's no way you can take $2.5. Hold on. I just want to just again for people listening. He took Trump, which is $2 over JFK, by the way. Are you assuming he's going to die in a year? Is that the idea of military society? I had no time for weakness. Okay, got it.

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Trump can't die. Why is JFK in $2? There's been like four assassinations on Trump and he hasn't died. Can you explain to me the leadership properties of Cleopatra from 30 BC? We put Thatcher above Kennedy? He didn't make it that long.

Wait. I was thinking Thatcher's over value. Doug had a good question. I was trying to cover different styles of leadership. If I pick the leader, do they have the same? Like, if I pick John F. Kennedy, does he die in a couple years? No, he doesn't die in a couple years.

These are three people who have to get in a room and work together to build your society. Got it, got it. And you're sort of taking their ideals. Like if you picked Thatcher, you would want that type of, right. Well,

I'm not, I'm not picking Thatcher. Yeah, well, you seem like a Thatcher guy. And Genghis Khan, uh, you know,

his, his morals were shaky at best. But other than them, it's really a physical listen. Yeah. You wouldn't want Julius Caesar over again. Dude, if you're going military,

you go Genghis Khan or Napoleon or Alexander the Great. Well, you know, Genghis Khan kind of really rode the, horses with moving archers. Oh, but Alexander was real pure of heart. What are you talking about?

Alexander, he studied under Aristonnell, right? He knows his shit. He's got, he's got real military strategy. He'll know how to move tanks. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Genghis Khan covered a lot more. Okay, whatever.

So, look, I, the obvious, I got to grab a $5 one for me, and it's got to be legal. Here's the thing about this charge before you say anything, is that if I've, mispriced something, that's your advantage. That's the point, you're right. You're right. It's when you

find like, it's an arbitrage. It's when you find a, uh, you know, Steph Curry, he's not in the $5 tier. You pick Steph Curry. It's like, okay, I've, I've You know, that's a good point. I would take 10 pole pots. If you put enough pull pots in front of a type of eventually. Imagine the amount of people I can kill.

Yeah. Ten pole pots. You have no country left. Okay. I would, I would have to go Lekwant. you or FDR, Lequan You because my society was literally bottled in part after it. You definitely want Lequon you. Which is interesting. I didn't get to some of the quotes. Lequan U was like really against welfare. Like here's a quote.

When people get equal handouts, whether or not they work harder or better, everybody then works less hard. The country must go down. He was like really against welfare, which is interesting. So I would kind of go more towards FDR who did a lot of like countrywide organizing towards important efforts, but also cared. about government-wide programs, which is important to me with the business subsidies.

That, you know, there's Lee Kuan, you as well. But I think I'd go FDR. Okay. As my, as a $5 pick. And then I would do five pole pots. No, that's not three people total. Okay. Well, you have FDR.

I mean, I'm going for a crazy line. What's a crazy line? Recency bias. I'm picking up Mandela. Mandela. Okay. A man of the people brings everybody together. Sure.

Takes time to learn about his fellow man. Okay. Just read a love. chapter about a bit. You did just, humankind. You did talk about Mandela. So the recency bias

is taking me over there. Okay, you got Mandela for five. So I've got Mandela. And I'm picking up Adi-Turk. I'm picking up. Add-A-Turt for four. Transform the country.

Yep. Made it, probably the most important person in Turkish history, maybe some recency bias there too. Okay. But I'll call that. He seems like a get-it-done type of guy.

He's a get-to-old-old. And I'm sure, I know Mandela. I know Mandela will get along with him. Yeah. So maybe ground out some Ataturk's edges. All right. You got Mandela and Ataturk.

All right. And here's the problem because you spent $9. Which means you have to finish in the bottom tier. You have to get. And I know you're looking at the bottom tier and you're thinking, Aidan. Who is getting thrown in this lineup? Andy,

it's just a little Hitler garnish on your sauce. They can balance it out. Mandela and Hitler is your choice? Hitler, but he can only paint. Yeah. I want the painting. I'm thrown in. Your country doesn't even have military

for him to abuse, dude. He's just going to sit around hanging out enjoying the housing. I'm throwing in Poot. Putin. You're throwing in Poot. And is he, is he, I don't know what he'll do in my guy.

I think respectfully, he'll kill your other two leaders. He will assassinate them and then take over your country. Dude, the dollar tier is rough. The dollar tier is rough. But the dollar tier. I do think Putin's probably

mispriced. if you look at this tier. And so if you're picking, dude, he's the most likely to take over your country. You absolutely, that is not.

You're the most likely over-stall in the Hitler and Polo-Ly. Most likely of those five? You think, you think Adolf Hill was going, damn, Putin's mogging me on.

Here's what I'm saying. I pick up poot. I pick up poop. Because he's got the KGB history, right? And I'm thinking, Mandela wears him down. And turns it. And we have,

we have, it, book we read. Just he's pouring him tea being really nice. Putin runs are like intelligence. Yeah. You know, oh,

give him a lot of power over your secret service and intelligence. You know what? That'll help limit his worst instincts. You know. Now you're locked in. You're Mandela out of Turk and Putin. You cannot tell me that isn't a crazy lineup. Yeah.

I mean, I want to have, I have Alexander the great Trump and who? Otto von Bismarck. Dude, auto is way under price. I'm going FDR. He runs my business subsidies general government program organizing towards science. Okay.

Right? That's that he did that whole bunch. That makes total sense. Otto von Bismarck, like I said, I need a lot of diplomacy and not a lot of military. I'm trusting him on diplomacy, but then because he's a little military focus,

a little allegiance focused. Yeah. He helps with trade with other countries. Cleopatra, my $2. She's my culture. Okay? Because what's a way to prevent myself from being taken over by crazy

assholes? like Vladimir Putin in Aden's country. That's right. Mike Leopatra starts a dolliance with Putin. Oh, okay. A little bit like what she did with Rome. A little bit with Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar, right? We form a couple of romantic allegiances

and my country's safe up until we invent DGI. What can't, what about a, can I pick up first 10 years, Mao? Okay. That's under right. Now, you get the full mouth. No, I think you get the full mouth. I think you get the full now.

You don't get the unified. I would maybe say first five to 10 years now. at $2 a steel. A steel. But if you have to round it out with the back half, it gets tougher. No,

you also get, it's a tougher choice. You get full JFK, like his dead bodies laying in the office for a second. You get the full chain. You get full, okay?

Let's, you gotta stick with them for like 80 years. Debrae. Yeah, no, I think, you know,

I'm staying by it. I got a fire line up. I got Mandela, editor Putin. Yeah. Four people would, You could do Mandela Gandhi. Stalin?

Stalin? Controversial? Gandhi? Week pick? Week pick? You think overpriced? That's overpriced. Godd is overfrey.

You could do an all Rome. You could do like a Julius, Marcus Aureliate. No, I guess Cleopatra. You could do like a 4-4-2 situation. Yeah, no, you just run it back. You run it back from zero B.C. What about Cleo? She's sleeper pick?

Is Cleo's leader pick? I don't know what I actually don't know what her leadership style. I only know her in the context of her. Yeah, it was just they got taken over by Rome. I think you actually take anyone from like that far back and they just crumb, their brain crumbles at the first set of a TikTok.

So it's just. You take the leader you want and then you get some of them. You ever seen the end of the Raiders of the Lost Ark? That's, that's any old world leader looking at. looking at a smartphone. So you're going like FDR, Cleopatra, Henry the 8th. You're just knocking them out of the picture. You're getting an FDR clean.

You know, if you're listening to this and you've, you have, did not participate in making the, you know, charting out your own country or picking your world leaders. Post your picks. Yeah, post your picks. I want to know your picks. Go to the Discord, post your picks. If you think you've, you know, I've left some errors here.

So if you found some mispriced leaders and you want to show me the ideal line. There's going to be a couple like Kalshi savants who just find the line. But crack the line. Turns out that Pol Pot actually works really well

in combined with him. In his early years he worked with him. That's what I'm saying. There's like a, there's a synergy aspect here where it's like you can, you could get the best out of somebody

if you round them out with the right person. What's the perfect military one? If you're trying to make the most aggressive nation. The most aggressive. Gangus Khan is a sleeper picked there, even at $3.

You do Napoleon, Gengis Khan and Caesar. You drop Alexander the Great. You let those three just go out and take over every different part of the country. World. That's a pretty good one. Napoleon Gingis Con and Caesar. It'll be so bad with the choke here.

Alexander is a bit of a Nepo baby, dude. We were talking about it last week when I gave that fresh update on the Battle of Carini. You know? I just figured you can't be the great and not be in the $5 tier. You know what I'm saying? That's a ghost status. But they didn't even call him that at the time. The Romans just called it later.

They're going to call me the Doug Great in 50 years and that doesn't mean right now. I'm a badass. Not after your picks, bro. They're calling you. Well, yeah, give us your picks on the Discord. We'd love to see them. I think it's a pretty fun experiment. Wait, did you pick your line?

I told you my line. It was Alexander the Great. Oh, my bad. Otto von Bismarck and the Trump. All right. Oh, wait, hold on. You should say that because I didn't hear that either. So I think you just didn't ever complain.

Well, I was more of a joke. What my actual line would be? Dude, I think Lincoln's kind of goaded. I read a Lincoln book. Man's a good. leader. Yeah. Yeah. Lincoln. I get it. You think he's great. Lequine you sucks. I get it. That's not what I'm saying. Uh, I also really like Napoleon in some aspects. Lincoln, Napoleon, JFK. JFK teaches Lincoln. They both presidents. They have a lot of connective tissue. He teaches

them about, not necessarily modern times by the 60s. There's a lot of tissue caught up for sure. And then they put Napoleon, you know, get him on the military. You know, my line up, my lineup dust, sirs, man. Okay, what I do, download Trump, $2. Trump, eight Hitler's, we do Celebrity Apprentice. Dude. How about you do Hitler, Stalin, Paul Pot? You saved seven bucks and you let them, put them in a room.

You let them kill each other. Yeah, and then you collect the interest on it. Yeah. You get five Alexander degrades. Yeah, there's been your country is destroyed in 200 years. No, that's good. That's good. All right.

Well, now that we've solved all that, I don't think there are going to be many issues in the world going forward. But for now, there still are, so let's cover what's going on in the world. It was only this last week. Once the UN poses all of them. I'd like you to think about the holistic picture

of what I've seriously drawn out as the greatest country of all time. It's a small island nation in the Arctic that's not Iceland. It has maybe hundreds of thousands of people. We've invested heavily in housing, education. There's no democracy, however. very little democracy and it's run by Nelson Mandela

Ataturk and Vladimir Putin if I could just if I could just synthesize this serious evaluation of the world we live in and and my values that has summed it up so bummed he comes back to life it's like this this shit hole is what I got

Putin comes back to life you think he's after he dies Oh, well, I guess if the country existed right now, I'm assuming it's in two years after that plot that you've been talking about. He realizes I'm losing it. It's just a transfer. It's kind of a good thing because you're saving Russia in a way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you're ending the war in Ukraine and the East has roars your country. That's a new exercise we can do in the future. If we could swap leaders across every country on Earth, how would we achieve your swap? Yeah, how would we achieve world peace? We should do that. Leader swap. Okay.

World updates, world news. We have a little bit of time left this episode. And I think, Edna what I'm talking about off pod, which is, I think, interesting, which is we've, Mom Donnie has come out today and said that he has officially balanced New York's budget, which is a pretty insane claim. It's only been a few months. Yeah. That's a pretty powerful thing that did. And he posted this image with a bunch of sliders. He slid welfare down. He's like, I got at a Turk and I got. He just touched the right dials. It's crazy. We're honored to welcome, are you? Another share of housing, Vladimir Putin. he talked about Ataturk, another New York mayor with weird connections to Turkey. Yeah, I think he came into office and the deficit that they were coming in with was like $12 billion.

And I think something I really appreciate about Mamdani in his position so far, as admittedly someone who doesn't live in New York, is he seems to be very forward in all. all of his communication. I think his, comm's team does a really good job of getting him out there, him clearly explaining concepts of what it's like actually like to govern in place. Him putting the budget

at such a front position of his communication is really impressive in the way he's gone about it so far, in my opinion. I, I super agree because I don't see anyone else doing it. Like, leaders anywhere. Taking a real effort to try and get the public to understand there is a budget,

it. This is what we spend it on. This is the sacrifice we have to make to balance it. Like that, most politicians have given up on that because the average person doesn't seem to care. And that's allowed this bad incentive system where every leader's incentivized take on a lot of debt and just kick the can to the next guy. Yeah. And him not doing that on its own, regardless of anything else, on its own, I'm super impressed with that. I really do appreciate it. I hope it is successful politically for him. And I hope it inspires other leaders to do more because I think it's important. Again, I would like to talk to you more

because I think you know more about this specific issue of like how he was able to balance it or whether there's some cons to that. But the idea of just making it an important thing, I think is cool. And I think some context here is that the city of New York is like $90 to $100 billion in debt from previous deficits.

And the deficit going into this administration was $12 billion a year that he has now apparently closed. And also it's important. they cannot just like take out more loans. They are legally required to balance the budget. So that is technically true. However, the government of the city of New York is $100 billion in debt because you can, you can actually get around that.

They've found ways to issue bonds for things that allow you to, like that's why they have all this day. Even though they're legally supposed to balance it, they don't technically. And so this is the first time it's like kind of being seen as a priority to get our fiscal situation in order. It's not going to solve all the debt problem, but if they're not in If they balance the budget, then naturally growth will take care of the debt problem. So I think this is like a serious, I mean, it's a cool thing to do.

I look to know more about, I don't know the specific. Yeah. Well, so the earlier communication about it before today was, mom, Donnie was laying it out. Like, here's all the ways we're looking for cost savings without making a bunch of concessions on the programs that he has wanted to put into place. Things like the universal child care, right? Yeah. And by cutting things like city worker overtime hours or through a broad audit of spending, they wanted to cut costs but still had this giant gap to fill of, I think about $5 billion for the year.

And initially he had, when that messaging came out, he said, I'm in a position where I need the state to push through an income. in taxes on the wealthiest people in New York, or we're going to have to do something like raise property taxes, which he actually got a lot of pushback to, even within New York City. And he was stuck in this spot where they didn't, he didn't have like a clear way to close this much of a gap in the budget.

Yeah. And now he has kind of a renewed cooperation with the governor. I think it's Hokul or Hokul. Hockel? I think it's Hockel. Hockel is running for re-election, and even though they've kind of clashed in the past, Mumbdani gave his endorsement,

and after that, they have been a lot more cooperative from what they've wanted to move forward. One of the things is this new tax on second homes in New York City over a value of $5 million, and that's expected to raise, I think, like $500 million in tax revenue.

So there's these small bumps there, but also the state has agreed to send, I think for the next two years, a bunch of money to New York City. And that isn't locked in for the long term, but the $4 billion from that is a huge needle mover for closing this. And the other thing they have decided to do

is they are delaying or payments to the New York City Pension Fund, which is for all muni... Excuse me. unionized municipal workers. So this applies to like firefighters, you know, other positions around the city that, uh,

the city employs. And there was a raise in those payments a long time ago because the expected returns of the pension fund were, uh, expect to go to go down. I think they raised it in like 2013. Uh, but now they're delaying those payments as a way to save money temporarily.

So I think the criticism here, I think there's a really, there's a really, partisan criticism I saw in like the New York Post where they're talking about like this is already Mum Donnie's socialist failure he's like stealing money from the state in order to fund this which is kind of ridiculous because he came into office

and this deficit already existed like he's fixing a problem that already existed and also you can make the argument that New York City contributes way way more tax revenue to the state than it draws back from I'm made. Yeah. And now the argument you can make is New York City is seeing a bit more of that tax money

returned in these payments from the state in order to close this gap. The problem is this only seems to hold up if this relationship with the current governor continues, if she stays in power, like, and, you know, subject to any disagreement in the future. And it's a lot of, it's a lot of dependency on state money that they're willing to commit right now. And if that goes away, then, you know, what happens? You need to find, you need to make up for this in other ways. And the one concession that he's managed to get on an increase in taxes doesn't actually increase tax revenue by that much. So it's like he solved the problem seemingly for this year. Yeah. But how long will that continue into the future? No, that's totally fair. I will say,

I think it's interesting that if he had a slide or, on diplomacy, it seems to be a five. Yeah. Because his ability to get concessions from a diverse enough group as Trump and Hockel is like, she was seemingly attempting to block his

mandate. Like he was, she was trying to stop him from getting the taxes, raises he wants. And now they're buddy, buddy and is sending $8 billion total. Well, it's, it's not that she's blocking it, right? It's just that she has to do it, right? It's not under his control. as the city mayor, right?

It's like they need the state legislator and the governor to agree, like we are going to send you guys money. That's what we're doing now. What I'm saying is initially, he was trying to raise taxes on the wealthy in New York. And he said, if I don't get the ability to do that

because I need state approval, I will raise property taxes. Oh, okay. So same thing. It was setting up for a battle with her, is what I'm saying. And instead, that has been put aside.

And they're now friends, and he's endorsing her and he's getting what he needs from the state. So it's, I don't know, I just, he's pretty good at playing the game in a way. I don't, however that works. Dude, that's what I admire so much about him. I think he's, he's managing to maintain a lot of what, like, he, he stands for while also

understanding that I need to play ball with people in order to accomplish my goals. I'm not saying there's zero to criticize him for or anything like that. I just see a guy who understands that he needs to cooperate with other people to get shit done, but isn't compromising his long-term vision. He's still making concessions along the way. It's not like everything Mom Donnie promised is like in place all of a sudden. But I think it's just the way he's going about it. Maybe I'm falling for the Riz.

You know, in a way. It depends. But I just, like I said, like you said, I agree. It just feels pragmatic. It feels like he is willing to to sacrifice some things for the, for his longer goal. And that, that's impressive because he could have totally gone pure ideological and flamed out or like just not, not made the progress in things, been blocked by other things and just been like, well, I try.

Like I did. Yeah. But he's like trying to make real livable progress. So we'll see. It's interesting. You know what's funny is so I've like watched a couple of his press releases or press conferences now. We're like, and so the two things that he's like drilled into me.

is what I've said to you, and then you've corrected them and added additional nuance, which I think is interesting because it's like, he just done a really good job for me as somebody who's not as deep in New York politics and being like, this is the thing. We legally have to balance the budget. We need governor, Hockel, to approve this and send us the taxes. And it's just really simple. I'm like, okay, cool.

It's really simple. And it's funny that it's not, right? But he's doing such a good job of like identifying the key things, make it so that somebody like me is still going to watch a press conference of him. he's phenomenal. He's just an absolutely phenomenal communicator. If I were to, you know, the landmines here, like you said,

cutting other cities have tried delaying payments to pensions. Yeah. And it can be a grenade that goes off later because there could be city union strikes. There can be, like things like that can happen. There's problems that have happened in other cities that have tried this where these groups protect their own, obviously, financial interests and then become basically against the city government.

And that's things that can happen. Obviously, after two years, it remains to be seen whether the state of New York will continue to do the payments. Even though, like you said, I looked at the math on it, it's like New York still nets out here. They're still making more in tax revenue off of. the city, then they're giving back. They're just giving back a slower percent.

That's another thing that was drilled in to be repeatedly by Mom Dani, who again, is really good. All the reporters will be like, well, with the complexity here, you promised and you said this and this and also Israel and also blah, blah, blah, blah. And they just like go in a million directions. And then he just gets back to like the same point. It just says it over and over. So one of those points that he just kept saying over and over is that New York sends more

in tax revenue to the state than they return. And you're saying that's not. No, I think it is true. Oh, that is true. Okay. That's why this payment makes sense. Like, it's like, like, theoretically, we can continue on. Basically, it's just rebalancing it so that less of New York state,

cities tax revenue go to the state. It stays in the state. Yeah. And that's what it's doing. But it's still enough that there's still a surplus going to the state. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm positive and hopeful on it. I think it's good.

It reminds me of, like, I don't know, he's figured out, like he's learned some lessons from, but use them for good. You know what I'm saying? Because Trump kind of did this ability of like taking complex things and making a really simple, repeatable solution that you can get voters onward. But he's used it for a better,

I don't know. That might sound like a negative thing. It's not. It'd be a really complimentary. I think he's found a way to like message for our modern times, but to use it for a better goal. Yeah. Creating concise rhetorical ideas.

Yeah. Which. That a guy can then repeat on a podcast. Yeah. I have a question for you. So given that he seems to be doing a good job of communicating the actual logistics of running a government and needs and not, as you said, just being inflammatory. Yeah. Do you feel that someone like this in the right position in the federal government could tackle our deficit?

Do you feel like, I mean, obviously much bigger problem? Much bigger problem. And there's no bigger, like, you know, in this case, he went to a bigger institution in the New York State and was able to renegotiate a deal and get more. I don't know that we have that with America. There's no, we, we don't have the ability to go somewhere bigger and get the money. Bezos. Bezos is like a small drop in the bucket. Yeah.

Here's the thing. What I liked most about his conference on this or his video was they said we were able to do this without doing austerity, which is like technically true. But the word austerity is a real loaded trigger word that has been used in a lot of different ways. Like in a way, they did. They cut some of them. Yeah. Yeah, they, you know, some of the individual things, if that was the only thing he did,

you could call them as austerity. They've literally done less in government spending. And I do think on some level, we're going to have to find a way to spend less on certain things as a government. Maybe you can increase efficiency to get the same amount out of it, but we're going to have to do that in America to balance the budget in some way. And they did that in America back in the day. Like, we had a balanced budget and we still built highways and did all the things we used

to do. We can't do it now. I don't know what the problem is. There's a, there's a leaky pipe, like we said, but the word austerity is going to be thrown around in some ways. Like, it's a weird comp, like, I don't know. Yeah.

It's a, he's, he's solving the messaging problem of it, is what I'm saying. Yeah. He's able to do some cuts without making it seem like, like the UK where they're doing cuts and people fucking hate it. They're just,

because I think, I think he's promising to spend on good things instead. Instead of, like, cutting it and then giving a subsidy to a rich guy or something. I don't know. And also, I think the idea that rich people are pitching in, they're, they're taking some pain as well as part of this cut. And the idea is like this, his main thing is this, uh, pay to tear tax. Even though that's not a huge part of the budget, it's like, hey, the primary thing is like, first person we're going to hit is the people that own a second property over $5 million.

Like that's, and I think it helps people who get to realize like, okay, uh, the, They're not making off scoff free while we're taking all the pain. It's like everyone's kind of putting in. But there's a lot to unpack here. I think he's one of the best political messengers in America today. Looking at the Piautei tax, so they're saying it's going to raise $500 million. There's about 13,000 homes that this would cover.

So it's again, five million or over, which comes out to about 38,000, 38.5,000 per person of those 13,000 homes. So it's not, it's not nothing of a tax. but probably if you own a second home that's worth $5 million, you can pay the $38,000. I mean, Brandon be paying it. Yes, sir. Tell them both my addresses.

Some of my New York. New York address. You know, I go to visit Squeaks up there and, uh, yeah. You're $10 million. And that's why I fucking hate my money. He's going to tax my property that I earned. No fucking way.

You know what? I think you should just move out of New York. I'm leaving. I'm not going to do it this second, but I'm leaving. I really want to get, I would, I would love to have him as a guest on the show. We had like an opportunity last year that didn't work out.

And I really, really hope. But he, it seems like he only does New York- New York-based media now. Which is, I mean, it makes sense. He's not campaigning anymore. Like, he's... Come to L.A. Mombani.

Let's appreciate it. Fly out to L.A. for the Lemonade State. It's, it's, it's, that's exemplary that he wouldn't be interested in our show, right? It's exactly what he should be doing, which is a politician focusing on the actual city he runs. And I'm so glad he has no interest in our show seemingly. Now that it negatively affects me,

I think I don't like it. Bad idea. I think it should be on Mr. Beast. Help and wrong support. What else is going on in the world? You add something. Oh, man, I feel so full and inflated. That reminds me of inflation.

Damn, dude. Mom, Don, you're missing out. You're missing out. You're missing out. Mom, Donnie, what do you think of my three picks? I wonder what's... Dude, we should have every guest picked. This can just be our go-to question.

This can be our go-to to figure out where they stand politically. Inflation report came out today, and I want to talk about it a little bit because it is, for a while in America, we actually had a problem, or at least we said we had a problem, of too low inflation. This is a relic, a fossil from 2019,

where Jerome Powell said low inflation is one of the major challenges of our time. We're like, we simply can't seem to get inflation up to what we want, which is 2%. That's our goal. And now, ever since this statement was made, pretty much as the last quarter this happened, we have had above 2% inflation.

In fact, it's been really high in 2021. And it trickled back down towards the end of like 23, 24, still above 2. And now, the last inflation report, it's trickling up again. So we're up to 3.8, I think 8.9 was the most recent report. and we haven't been below two in a long time. Now, when they talk about a long-term average of 2% inflation, central banks,

what they say is if you have a period of time above 2%, you need a period of time below to balance it out. They literally, that's part of the goal. It's not like just get it down to 2 and be there. And we're nowhere close to that. People are really starting to feel the pinch on inflation. A huge part of this inflation report was that the one thing that was keeping inflation anchored, which was low gas prices.

is now not only gone, but like off a cliff. And so, yeah, that was the one thing in each report that was kind of stabilizing it. And now we're seeing massive spikes. And if this continues, there really is no anchor to stop this from going back to, you know, 21 type levels. So it's a real, it's a really bad inflation report. And it does put a hamstring on the new guy. So if you guys don't know, Central Bank, Jerome Powell, he's about to be replaced by Kevin

Warsh, Trump's pick. Trump has demanded that Jerome Powell cut interest rates for years now. I've been called him too late, too slow, idiot, bad guy who appointed him. And now it's Kevin Warsh who campaigned for this job by saying, I will lower interest rates as Trump won. I'm going to do it. Yeah, what's up? I'm, you know, big, big A fan.

Yeah. Isn't Jerome Powell sticking around to maybe be the shadow governor? So he said because of the lawsuit on him, even though it was dropped, there's too much risk that he'll be punished by Trump with the legal system. So he is sticking around to be a voting governor. He's not saying he'll be a shadow governor. Yeah. Well, the shadow

governor would never say that. So we don't know. He might just try to help Kevin Warsh. We don't know. But the idea is like the central bank really if inflation is bad, they can't. I mean, unless they're fucking crazy. Maybe Kevin Warsh is. You can't cut interest rates into ripping inflation. It's going to rip your face off. So

this is the big question. It's like if they can't get this down soon, Iran war is he going to be causing it. Then he's going to be faced with his first term or his first Fed meeting of like, how do I balance the fact that Trump got me into this job for one reason? I can't realistically do it without destroying the faith in the U.S. dollar. Not saying that he wouldn't, he couldn't be pressured somehow. But realistically, once he's in that position, doesn't he just, he can't. be fired. He gets to be in the position for free on paper. That's what Powell did. Yeah, the hope is that when he's in power,

he's locked in, that's it. Even Trump has said like, you can't trust any of these guys. You help him get into office and then they just turn on you. You can't do anything about it. Like he said that basic line. And he's hoped. He was like, he cut a lot of people from this process to try and nail down the right person who will do what he wants,

which is Kevin Warsh. But could you kind of point at the clues we have in this guy going in one direction or the other, because I remember you saying something along the lines of he looks like he might do the right thing and not cave to Trump. What's interesting about Kevin Warsh is that if you look at his old stuff, his classic albums, you know, back in the day, Kevin Warsh during the great financial crisis was a voting governor and wrote these long opinion pieces on how we should not print money, we should not cut rates.

Inflation is the biggest threat. It's more scary than losing jobs. inflation is the biggest deal. And so he seems like a guy who would be really averse to cutting rates. But then in the campaign for this role, he has been 100% opposite. And for me, it's a real like,

you could say the same thing about J.D. Vance. It's hard to tell whether or not their old stuff matters. Or Scott Besson. Scott Besson's writings that I really liked from back before he was in this office are way different than how he's acted in the role.

So I don't know what Kevin Warsh will do. I do know that he might not have a lot of choice. Like if inflation is really high, you almost can't cut rates without being like, this is because Trump said so. There's no rationale for it. So I don't know. It's just a big question that's coming up. And I think this recent inflation report is kind of spooky because you don't want

inflation to be bad at the same time as jobs get worse. That's stagflation. That's the worst. Does the war give, our producers asking, does the war give worse cover to not cut rates? Yeah, but again, Trump, the last thing he wants, if you're trying to be his allies to be like, well, the war is ruining the economy, so I can't, do you know what I'm saying?

Like, even mentioning the war is like something he wouldn't want. It depends. We'll see. Isn't, so when they decide the rate adjustment at the Fed, it's every quarter, right? Yeah. They have the, uh, they have the board or like the governors vote on what the change or the adjustment

should be. It's not just JP sitting there making a call solo. Does he have the ability to, Does the chair have the ability to override what the vote is if you really wants to? They don't. Because even in a scenario where this person's in charge, there is, I mean, this is unprecedented from my understanding. But the Fed chair could just lose to what the rest of the board thinks. They don't have to fall in line and just do what he says.

12 voters and they will decide whether to raise their lower rates. Just never in history has the chair recommended something and it's not been voted. It's always fallen in line with them. But theoretically, that's why they call them the shadow chair. Jerome Powell as one of the voters could be like, no, we do this and everyone votes with them. And it's a big question. We'll see. Kind of crazy times.

Unprecedented things happen. Unprecedented times. That was fun up. If I really want to see what people have to weigh in on the beginning, whether you, we can I mean, the link for the chart to submit, it will still be up if people just want to mess around with it. Yeah. Country. Doug Doug.com.

And so build your country, pick your leaders, and share them with us. I'd really like to see what people's lineups are. Maybe we do something like this in the future. We do like a budget, you know, where you give, here's the U.S. budget. How would you allocate it? And it's something that's a little more grounded. Because I think it was cool saying we got a lot of feedback from folks in the Discord, our lovely Patreon Discord that you can join for $5 a month.

But folks, you know, making the very good point of like, obviously enormous amount of different factors and it would be really interesting to get an actual sort of specific time, a specific place, a specific budget and then say, what would you do and compare it against each other? And would Putin be in your cabinet or not?

That'll be one of the sliders, not about Putin. Sometimes he scrapes in, okay? Sometimes he's $1 and you need a guy and you look at the four others. It's a bit of a rough list. But if you do want to join us for an extra hour of the show every week,

you can subscribe to the Patreon. We also just did a really cool book club episode. If you are going to do that at patreon.com slash lemonade sand, don't do it on iOS. Don't give Apple your extra money. The prices are lower. Do it on desktop. Anyway, thank you.

Thank you for watching. See you next week. Bye. Formula One, so hot right now. It's like if traders in succession had a baby on wheels. Teams lying. Drivers beefing. Celebrities everywhere.

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

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