Lemonade Stand - What's After Superheroes? | Ep. 025 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

On this week's show... Atrioc defends America, DougDoug crashes Intel's party, and Aiden does some math. 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: 025 Recorded on: August 19th, 2025 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 Quack - https://x.com/QuacK_001 Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Thursday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road, that's the Volkswagen Tiguan. Its sleek exterior makes a first impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horse power engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tiguan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered for all. Presents, Laura versus Fruit Flies.

Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, Fruit Flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Communities across Canada. Hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields.

Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Fellas, our shows doing well, but every week I look at other shows like Joe Rogan or the Daily or the Yard who gets more viewers than us. And I think our option left for growth is to pay a wizard to cast spells on our viewers. Because on Fiverr, if you search for spellcasters, there's like hundreds of people. who are like professional wizards and witches who you can pay to cast spells on people. And so I found one of the top ones is like hundreds of really good reviews.

And I said, I host a podcast called Lemonade Stand with my two friends, Aden and Aitch Rock. We have a rivalry with another podcast called The Yard, the Aden also hosts. I wish for our podcast to take viewers from the yard and bring them here to Lemonade Stand. I do like that. Oh, could you wish pain?

Check this out. On the yard? Ladies and gentlemen, the spell has been cast. Is this from the person on Fiverr? This is from the person. This is, I believe they're in Pakistan, and this is something they've been casting. They said they would do it every night for three days.

And I basically said, look, I just need one viewer to come from the yard, and it's a success. But then I realized, Aidan, a lot of people on YouTube used to watch our show, and then they left. And so what we really need is an extreme obsession love spell for stubborn cases.

And I said, many of our viewers stop watching the show over the last six months. I'd like our viewers to fall back in love with our show to keep watching our show forever, even though they're being very stubborn about it. And this work, she gave me a full report. It was genuinely very thoughtful. She's in Nigeria? While not every individual will return for optimal results,

I encourage you and your co-host to continue fostering the authenticity and enthusiasm that define lemonade stand. Wait, no, there can be work on our end. No, no, no. This is what she said. We can have to change anything. This spell thrives alongside genuine effort. This will harmonize with the, spells work. Pretty clear

she's talking about you, Aiden. And that's when I realized something. Okay, what's really going on is our viewers are leaving our show and going to the yard because they think you're putting in more effort. So I found Brianna Mary and I did an ultimate spell. This is somebody who She's in India? I asked for the

ultimate wish and two days later she got back to me and said, I am pleased to inform you. I have cast a powerful custom mind influencing spell to make Aden 10% less funny on the next 10 episodes of the yard. Our show is safe. Yard might not notice.

This is a thing about a very, I'm basically, if you, if we're, you know, lemonade state is paying for these spells. Yeah. I'm paying a third of this bill

to steal viewers from the show that I'm already on. Yeah. So funny you say, it's probably a net wash for you. Yeah. It's actually, we're just transferring.

You're, You're contributing just as much to the world as long as you're 10% funnier on this show. If this worked, we could have stolen from Joe Rogan. We could have stolen from... But you stole from Aiden's other show. We stole it from a show that I already am on. We're like sharing a studio,

I did not prep for today's episode, by the way. I think this is all we need to do. That would have helped too, though. I think... Remember the second one? When you were... Okay, at the beginning of this episode, when you were scrolling through this,

as you were explaining, I was like, one, unbelievable how long you continue scrolling. That there's this many options. And then you said the word hundreds of reviews. And then I looked and some of the, that one has over a thousand reviews.

Yeah. Wait. From $45 plus fees, she, that person has made at least $45,000 casting spells. I mean,

I did pay a $20 ad on for her to recast the spell on you. You paid for an ad on? Every night for next week. To steal viewers from a show I'm already on? Wait, this is actually a real money-making opportunity.

We mean we should be doing this instead of a Patreon. What if we just cast custom spell? 50 bucks to pop hundreds of them. All right. If you're on the lemonade saying Patreon, we're going to need you to unsubscribe and join our Fiverr magic spell casting. I'm going to help our country for a second.

Bring down Xi Jinping, bring. Dude, I'm way ahead of you. Guys, I didn't say it yet. I spent 50 bucks on a telepathy spell to convince Xi Jinping to join the podcast. Well, that'll be good. That, I mean, that would just be a nicer outcome for him.

The problem is that I just, the wishes for him to consider it not to come on. I see. So at some point, Xi Jinping is going to be like, oh, maybe I should go on that podcast. To be honest, dollar for dollar, the chance of that working is just worth it. I had a genuine thought the other day about Xi Jinping. This is going to sound weird. This is a serious thought that I had. Does Xi Jinping ever have days where he just doesn't, sorry, he doesn't want to do it?

Do you guys, like, did Xi Jinping ever wake up some days and just be like, I want to watch a movie. I want to like, just chill. No. The vibe I get from is that he's really grinding, but you can't possibly not have days. Because I felt lazy that day. That was like a Sunday. I don't want to do anything. Maybe I'm falling.

Maybe I'm falling for the proper game. Yeah. But I'm like, no. You don't think so. I think he has that iron in him. You know what I'm saying? I just picked, Xi Jinping with the socks on, feet up on the couch, puts on the Chinese translation of the departed, which is what I watched on the Sunday.

You watch the Chinese translation. I'm learning. Of the departed. And just doesn't do anything. I wonder if that's the case. Well, look, Xi Jinping is a bit of a superhero to the Chinese government. Your transitions are incredible. I would like to understand what's going on in the world of superheroes. We're also going to talk about craziness going on in credit cards. Aidan's trip to Sweden,

what he's learned about various European lifestyles and things, I believe, and maybe a little bit of intel and the weirdness going on with the U.S. at the end. Yeah, I think that covers. All right, I talk about superheroes. This is a business story that we haven't covered in a minute. And I think it's relevant to our viewers' lives

because many of them fall right into the range where superhero movies have been a major part of the culture in their lives. I hope we can pull this up? Can I... This is, I mean, I feel invested in this. I'm a big superhero movie fan. I grew up, like, reading comic books.

I love, you know, most superhero movies. I didn't know you read Conn works. Or at least like these big franchises. Like I'm mostly a Marvel fan. I didn't really like grow up with DC or anything. I was like really invested in these like big franchises and movies and everything. And I have a lot of opinions on like why this is all ended up where it has now. And I still enjoy these movies to an extent.

I think my favorite movie ever is a superhero movie. Oh yeah? Name three superheroes. My favorite movie ever is the Dark Night. And I can't. That's like kind of a super hero. social network. I guess it is. Yeah, it's like one of the least superhero superhero movies, so I'll give you that. But in general, very big fan. So I'm excited to hear it.

I'm excited to hear your opinions then. Let me just give you the business context here and we'll go into it. So a little backstory. Superhero movies through the 70s, 80s, and even 90s are mostly, um, flop. They're just, they're just, there's not, they're few and far between. They have a few kind of like Superman, uh, franchise was kind of a hit, but mostly they're campy. They don't get critical acclaim, and they do decently at the box office, but nothing special. They're just done few and far between

on the biggest franchises. There's the Batman, the Jack Nicholson does, is the villain. And then around 97, they ramp up with the Batman series because this one was pretty successful. And then around 97, they get the George Clooney,

Batman, and Robin. So we get this really, really campy, really terrible, low-review movie with, you know, big stars like Arnold playing Mr. Freed.

And every line in this movie is an ice plan. The iceman cometh. Please show some mercy. Mercy? I'm afraid that their condition has left me cold to your pleas of mercy. He does a million more. He does like, what killed the dinosaur? The Ice Age.

You can pause. Truly terrible. A true critical flop. doesn't make very much money. And Hollywood kind of decides, if we have all, if we have George Clooney and Arnold Schwarzenegger at the prime of their careers

and we can't make it work, superhero movies are dumb. What could we possibly do? Nothing could have fixed that. And so in, you know, in the next two years, there's no superhero movies at all. I think there's only one

and we'll talk about it for a second. There's Blade. Now Blade is very under discussed. I don't even know as a marble property, but Blade is actually the only thing that keeps the ember alive. Let's go. Because Blade is a time.

tiny Marvel franchise from their new little fledgling Marvel unit. And it makes a nice return on his budget. Nothing crazy. During COVID, when I moved in with Ludwig, Slime, and Nick, we would watch movies a lot. We had a week where we watched the Blade trilogy, one movie,

bet in each night. And then we watched all of the John Wick movies back to back to back. Okay. And the Blade movies kind of ripped. The first Blade movie is kind of sick. So if you haven't seen the first Blade movie, Doug. I just got one quote here. Some motherfuckers are always trying to ice skate uphill.

Damn. Damn. They play pretty badass. Yeah, and I'm in. And it does not amazing. Nobody's writing about it, but it did good. It made its money back plus more people were happy.

And because of that, their other fledgling project doesn't get canceled. And that project is X-Men. Okay, we entered the 2000s out. This year 2000. This movie is a surprising hit. Even though it's kind of campy, even though it's got superiors, even though it's got powers, audiences respond well.

It gets pretty good reviews. People are excited about it. They want more. And it does pretty well at the box office. And then right after that, we get the one that really kicks it off. Toby McGuire Spider-Man. Yes, sir. Cinema.

Yes, sir. And I think a lot of people have a very fond memory of this movie and the trilogy of movies that has spawned. It just hit it the right time. And this was a smash success. I believe this is the number one movie overall. of 2002. It beats like Harry Potter movies. It beats Star Wars.

It beats a lot of big franchise. And so Hollywood suddenly waits, he realizes that there's a lot of money to be made here. And so in the 2000s, we get the beginning of what will become the superhero dominance. So we get all these movies you can see here and they start taking off.

Not all of them are good. It hits and misses, but they make a decent amount of money. And people are clearly interested. There's a hunger for it. So in the 2000s, we got in total, 31 superhero movies and three shows.

These are sort of as a basically a boomer of the internet now. These are the ones that I remember and that I like. Okay. And then at the end of the 2000s, I don't have a picture for this year. Maybe we'll add this in post. We get Aiden's favorite movie. We get the Dark Night at 2009. And we get in the exact same year like one month before or after, we get Iron Man.

Okay. And these two combined give Superhearts. everything it was finally missing. It gives it critical acclaim, cultural acclaim, and it also gives it the beginning of what would become the Marvel web of franchises,

everything interconnected. It gives you, you watch one, you have to watch the next one, you have to watch the other ones. So those two combine and superheroes get heroin, they get cocaine,

they get shot off into the stratosphere. So over the next decade, this is the 2010, this is where most zoomers got into it. We go from an average of three movies a year and almost no shows per year to four and a half movies a year and a lot of shows.

get a ton more Marvel. This is Avengers kicks off this decade, and it goes all the way through the decade. And then at the end of the decade, we get Avengers Endgame. 2019. And this is what you might say is the culmination of this decade

that everyone attached to. This movie does absolutely insane number. I believe it's the second highest grossing movie of all time. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's still one, to be honest. And that's not even counting inflation.

That's insane. but it's seen all over the world. It's this huge cultural touchstone. And then we get COVID, okay? And then we get into the 2020. This is our decade now. Now, I've annualized these numbers. This is not the actual total number.

This is as if you basically have to double it because it's only been five years. But we're getting an annualized number of six movies a year and, you know, four TV shows a year. Way more than we're getting before, but it's after endgame and everyone's kind of possibly moved. I want to talk about it.

So this is where we're in now. We're getting more superior stuff than ever, but the critical acclaim is down, the box office is down, and we're getting movies like this. So Madam Webb comes out recently, flop. Eternals comes out, gigantic budget, like $400 million budget, flop.

Craven the hunter from Sony, flop. Thunderbolt, even highly reviewed ones, though, are now starting to do underperformed. We got Fantastic Forges came out. Listen, this is a well-reviewed movie lost $100 million. Fantastic 4, fairly well reviewed, probably going to lose, I think, a lot less, maybe 20 to 50. But, and now, starting right now today, there are no superhero movies for the next six months,

which has not happened since 2011. We haven't had a gap like this. Hollywood's like tried and tried and tried and tried for the past, basically since the 2020 started. And they've been diminishing returns. And now it's finally like they're soft giving up. And this will be the first year since 2011, without an MCU film in the domestic top five. That's crazy.

Which is like not happened. And so the last chance for Marvel, I'm just going to wrap this up, we can talk about it. They have one last shot on goal. They have Avengers Doomsday coming Christmas next year. They spent an absolutely gargantial amount of money to get Robert Don Jr. said he was done.

His character died. Tony Stark died. He said, I'm done with Marvel. They said, what if we gave you $200 million? The most any actor has ever been paid for a movie ever. Second highest is Keanu Reeves because he took like percentage points on the Matrix trilogy

and got like, you know, no one's close. So RDJ is going to get $200 million. He came back. He's going to play Dr. Doom. This is their last chance. If this fails, it seems completely over for Marvel.

This is like everything's trying to build to this. And this is where we talk about it. This is when we talk about it. What's next? So I want to also pause a question. Let's talk about this all. Give your thoughts. Well, I want to ask if superheroes are over,

Hollywood is not going to suddenly become creative. what is next? And I think the answer, if you look at the stats, is video games. Okay? Mario Bros. did a billy.

Minecraft movie did a billy. Sonic 3 did way more than Eternals at one third of the cost. This is what it seems like we're leaning into. So is it a superhero into video game era? Does superheroes still have juice?

I leave the question to you guys. I want to know what you think, but that's my little catch-up presentation. Aiden, you look dumbfounded, but you're a superhero guy. Give me your contacts going in this. What do you think? Yeah.

Well, maybe it just hit at the right time growing up, right? But my understanding is with Marvel specifically, they were a company in a rough spot, and they were in a position where they were actually licensing out their properties. Yeah. They're stronger properties like Spider-Man. That's what Sony owns the license to that character. They made the movies.

And then Iron Man was their big gamble or big step forward of taking a property that wasn't very popular or a superhero that wasn't very popular, and let's see if we can build our own movie, like reform this character, and then they end up building a broader franchise out of it, right? Yeah. And I think although there are other superhero movies, like there's all these DC movies,

like Justice League and Wonder Woman, these like Man of Steel, that sort of era of DC universe movies, I think the main thing we all think about in the past 15 years is the Marvel movies. And the universe they built that with Avengers, right? Yeah. And I do think there's this, there's this idea of there being like too much or too much saturation of these movies.

But the reality is it's that they're, they're bad. I think that is the main, that is the main thing. We basically got a decade of Marvel movies that were on the whole pretty good. Like most of those movies were pretty okay. And even if there were bad ones, they were formed into this pretty good. cohesive story that came together in a really interesting way that we hadn't seen in any other media franchise. Not through movies before, right? You got to like watch most of these movies over the better part of a decade in a plot that basically made sense and all of these characters

come together for the first time in a fashion that you had never, you just had never seen before. And the payoff was good. And then after that payoff, right, you need to follow it up with something substantial. Like, give me a reason to continue watching, right? And I think except for the Spider-Man movies, which are incredibly successful, like any Spider-Man movie that comes out goes crazy. That's the only big hit, by the way, so far of the 2020s, I think, is Spider-Man no way home. He's, he's like the exception to rule. I feel like Spider-Man is like Marvel's exception of the rule right now. But for all the other movies, there's no like story to jump back into because Endgame like cleaned everything up

and now you now you have to build up a new thing for me to be interested in. It can't just ride off the hype of superheroes anymore. It's more important for the movies to be good now because there have been so many. And I think there was this era right after Endgame came out where they were all stinkers. Like they just suck, dude.

Like there's no, they're not going in any interesting direction. The dialogue sucks. The writing in general. They didn't really feel like they were building in a cohesive, interesting direction. The main villain that they were setting up and had cast ended up being a domestic abuser, and then they had to navigate firing him. There was all these things that made it shitty and uninteresting. And now, after years of that, right, in an era where you're pumping out more movies than you

ever have, and they're also being, they also are bad movies more often than they were before, you've tainted the reputation of superhero movies on the whole. And this is also not helped by the other side of the coin, which I would call D.C., basically fucking it up every movie they put out to. So D.C. movies on the whole have been... You tell me you didn't love Black Adam?

DC movies have been terrible for such a long time. The only good D.C. superhero movie I can think of is Robert Pattinson Batman. That's the only good one that's come out in recent years. And so, now we've gotten to a point where I think these studios understood this broader criticism and

this broader fatigue that is being felt. And they finally started making some kind of good ones or some kind of okay ones, right? Like the Superman movie that just came out or the Fantastic Four movies apparently pretty decent. I haven't even seen that one yet. That's what I want to say though. So your point that bad movies should be correlated with box officers rules is true. This is this is plied right here. Like a movie that gets a worse score generally does worse in performance. It's a bit of a boy who cried wolf scenario where they've, they went through maybe three, four years of pumping out dog shit. And now they've finally managed to start making some decent ones again. But the fatigue had already set in, right? I am not excited to go see the next Marvel movie, even if it's supposedly really good, because you've broken up the reason for me being engaged and following the story that existed in the previous decade. It was like, I'll go see the next movie. episode of the TV show basically because I'm engaging in this broader

cultural event that's going on right or it's a character that is so well liked and so well established that it like supersedes like what Doug said at the very beginning this episode right the Dark Night that's not even really a superhero movie because it's kind of not like

I get that it has Batman in it and I understand that surface level it is a superhero movie but that movie rips because it's like it's like a gangster film and it's like and Batman's like one of the least important parts of that movie. And it's just kind of awesome. And the same way that the new Batman movie

is more of a, you know, detective thriller like the movie seven. And those are the characters or the types of movies that break the mold a bit more. I guess what I'm saying is for the generic super movie that we're a superhero movie that we had for so long, there is no reason to step up to the plate and go see it anymore.

It is, they have to fight their way out of, I'll save this for a plane ride one day category. Right. And that's how I feel about it right now. And I do think the Doomsay movie, Robert Downey Jr., the branding, they haven't done a big Avengers movie in a while. I think that makes me excited still. Like that gets me in the door.

But if I were to compare this to my love for another franchise, I love Star Wars. I was going to say that. Yeah. I feel the same way. I love Star Wars and I feel. So for me though, yeah, I guess it's both oversaturation and decryant quality. It's the bull.

Once they lose you, they lose you. I don't trust it anymore. If every, that's the thing. If they were always, it wouldn't matter, the saturation wouldn't matter that much if they were all bangers. If they were reinventing characters. Do you feel like if after end game,

these were really good movies where the fatigue have continued because it had just been a decade straight of this anyways? No, I don't think the fatigue would have continued if they were good, Because they were, you could continue to reinvent, reinvent the genre and do things. It's like, you aren't locked into a formula because it's a superhero movie. You can do anything with these people.

The movies can be creative and interesting. Well, what if there's four of them instead of just one? Yeah, it's like, is there too much of a good thing? Is there a point where, you know, could it be four or five or six a year? No. Even if they're all, I meant four heroes in one movie, like the fantastic four. That is also part of the issue. I would say that it's too much of a good thing is only the case here because one, it's not that good of a thing to begin with.

And the movies all follow very standard formulas of uninteresting plots or characters that all, it's like the movie or the new movie, like whether it be, you know, Shang or Dr. Strange, they don't feel. that different in their like plot or their writing than the movies that came out 10 years ago. And they're just mid. They're mid to bad over and over and over again. But I think we're trapped in this world of superhero movie means the plot and the characters need to all be thought about and structured in a very particular way. Whereas when you look at a movie like the new Batman movie or the Dark Knight, an older Batman movie, right? You can take a character like that and take them out of this like weird traditional world of what superhero movies have been built into

do something interesting. They're not trapped. You can just, people respond well to like interesting things. Now they've dug the hole, so it's harder to get out of it, right? Yeah. But they didn't have to dig the hole to begin with, I think.

I think they just, they pumped it out on the slop line and maybe. But it worked. So I want to, this is not like a culture war thing, but I don't think Captain Marvel is considered one of the greatest Marvel movies.

But that movie, before Endgame, made like a billion. I mean, that movie did really, really, really well. The average tier movies before Endgame

were doing pretty well. The slop was doing, I mean, overall quality better. But the movies are slop. No one was saying Captain Marvel was a five-star movie. It was just,

it was riding the hype of Marvel being popular, right? Yeah. And you dug the hole along the way of like, you cannot continue to feed mid-slop and have it make a million dollars. Eventually it will stop. So you need to be creative enough and willing enough to like change things and do interesting things and make better

fucking movies. Otherwise, eventually you get to the point we're at now. I think if they were continuously like reinventing the formula or creating some new giant compelling story, people wouldn't be fatigued by superheroes inherently. I think, I think properties like Spider-Man and Batman kind of prove that. Okay, what does you all say? Superman doing pretty well this year. Yeah. It's well reviewed. I think it's the first superhero movie in a while to break 7.5 an IMDB,

which is pretty good. Yeah. It is still going to underperform the Batman. Yes. It's still going to underperform Man of Steel the last Superman movie, which is actually lower rated. It's doing fine. You know, it's going to make its money back,

but it's not a smash hit. And then Fantastic Four, fairly well reviewed, going to not do that well. So you're saying that's, like, if they keep up this good pace, they can get it back. Yeah, I think if you keep pushing, like, keep being creative

and keep pushing things in a new direction and strengthening your position, eventually people will warm up to the idea that these movies are good and interesting again. If I were, like, Spider-Man, why Spider-Man so popular

beyond the recognition of the IP, right? I think the newer movies are basically, like, pretty good teen comedies that a superhero happens to be in. Like, they're fun, and interesting to watch in a way that the other superhero movies aren't.

And like, and Superman, I think there is something to be said about like the inherent popularity of the IP through history and like, sure, like a new superhero that you've never heard of could only ever be so successful compared to something like Batman or Spider-Man. But in general, I think they just need to nail enough movies in a row.

Like, and then people will be back on board. And they haven't made, and they've done a really bad job at making good movies for a long time. Who could have predicted that Craven the Hunter would flop? I don't understand. You said that? I was like, this is not real. You've AI generated a picture and a title.

I've never heard this in my life. You imagine signing the document at Sony to give a hundred million dollars to make a Craven the Hunter movie and think, yeah, this is a good idea. This is a good use of my funds. The guy who signed that makes so much more money than we do.

That's just crazy. every one of the executives has been signing these off makes so much more money than us. Oh yeah, they're all crushing. Oh, damn. They're crushing. But they are panicking. Why are we're not talking about them? They are panicking. Yeah.

They are like they, they've tried it and it keeps working less and less. I think that they're suffering, they're suffering from all of the mistakes of each other in that people do categorize superhero movies together in their head, right? And all of the bad movies, regardless of who they come for and like how and because of how many bad movies have come out for so long, people will, they'll be inherently fatigued for a long time. Distrustful. And now there has to be a way that you, that you break that mold. But in the same way that we've gone through decades of superhero movies being reinvented, right? It's going to, it'll just happen again. How do you explain Sonic fans? They buy every game. That's different. That's different. The Sonic

fans just beat off the Sonic. That's a different, that's a different mechanic that I can't account for. I want to give a slight counterpoint. And here's what I think. Sure. Is it possible? I agree with you that a good movie will probably make more money than a bad movie. And if they make a bunch of good movies,

people will trust them. I think that's true. But I think the era where you could mix in good movies with mid movies and get by is kind of over because it seems like culturally, superhero movies are going to the back burner. Like it's just, it's like how rock music was bigger in the 70s and 80,

and then we switched the hip, whatever. It's like, I think there's a cultural shift away from superhero movies as younger generations just turn away. Like it just, or people. I think there's probably something to be said here about giant IP that becomes successful, makes an incredible amount of money or a formula that makes a bunch of money. And then giant company rides the trend until and beats the dead horse until they can no longer print the same amount of money on it. And then they have to move on to something else because they can't successfully reinvent it. Like that's probably happening here in the same way that it's happening with Star, it happened with Star Wars.

Like the movies were so bad that they're not going to make movies for a long time. Like they're not going to try it again. But eventually they'll be able to come around and do another attempt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair, like I'll see a mainline Star Wars movie. They got me from my childhood. I'll still see it. But man, I will go see it. I will go see it. They all this shows. You guys are in a toxic relationship. I just want you to know that.

That's how I feel. Yeah. You're being abused. But don't you think it does? It does change. I don't know. I'll be different this time. I swear,

we will bring back Luke Skywalker. It is different. I think the big thing that's changed with something like Star Wars or something I can think of like Game of Thrones where you so publicly do a bad job with your franchise that you actually stain people's ability

to continue engaging with it without thinking about how bad it was before. There's something to be said about franchises going in that direction. And it's not that I won't go see the next mainline Star Wars movie. I probably will, but I don't know if I'll see it opening weekend.

I don't know if I'll be as excited. I stopped watching all the shows. I stopped engaging in all the side content around it because I just, when I thought about Star Wars, I was like they took something I loved and they got rid of all like the extended universe shit that I liked and replaced it with absolute dog shit and now I don't feel excited about Star Wars anymore

and with this it's the same thing. It's like end game is over, they close the storyline, so what do I move on to next? I don't really care about going to see these new superhero movies because there's nothing to participate in. But now, you know, I'm not locked into video game movies is the next step, but there's probably some sort of next next formulaic franchise sort of thing

that you could just walk in. to what if Hollywood executives tune up to turn to sound up okay what if I'm putting myself in their shoes we get Robert Downey Jr. and paying 300 million dollars. The lemonade stand. No, just to come back again and again until he's 98 years old. If this works in Doomsday, that's what they're going to do. Yeah, the first lesson was superheroes are popular and the second lesson was Robert Downey Jr. is popular. I mean, what I would say if I was a studio executive is get Congress to fully ban TikTok. We need to preserve the American shitty movie studios

and protect them from these awful apps that are taking their attention. I think it's TikTok, right? You're giving them better stuff. Unlike the high quality nutritious food that we gave them in the 2010s, now children are eating slop on the internet. Is there anything that you guys can think of

besides what is the next gigantic movie? Is it really video games? I hadn't thought about it until you brought it up right now. No, I think it is. I don't have the list in front of me, but there's a whole bunch of video game movies have been greenlit.

Like Zelda, like every big IP you can think of, Hollywood is ravenously like, oh, this is where the money is now. You know what? When you're saying that right now, I'm like, that's not going to work. It's failed forever. And then I realized it's the exact same pattern.

2010s, they tried to make all these video game movies, like Doom. Remember that? In like Hitman and all these things. And they've all flopped super bad. And then these three, Sonic Minecraft and Mario Bros are probably the equivalent of Iron Man and Dark Knight

that the studios are going, Oh, cool. We're locked in for the next 10 years. Fucking send it. Oh, gross. I think we're going to get a fucking Pac-Man movie. You guys remember the Prince of Persia movie? Did you guys see that? Oh, yeah, that was terrible.

That was terrible. Like, need for speed and everything. Yeah, isn't there like a, isn't there like a Forza movie? Or is that I'm just thinking in Need for Speed? There was a movie where a kid plays Grand Turismo. Grand Turismo. That's what I was thinking of. That's another one.

The Great Terismo movies. ads everywhere. I think all three of these franchises have had a movie, none of which succeeded. Dude, when they make a Madden movie, they actually make a Madden movie like every year. Oh, dude, the spell's working. That was really funny.

They're going to make like a billion dollar Halo movie. You know there's going to be a... They already tried to make a TV show. Yeah, they couldn't get it to work, but I think... Well, pull off the mask. It's Robert Downey Jr. Robert Downey Jr. is. Master Chief.

It's Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. For the next decade. I don't know what to say about nostalgia. Like, so even Spider-Man, which is the biggest hit of the 2020s for superhero movies. The only one that I think break a billion.

Maybe there was one other, but that's the big one. That movie was all nostalgia. It was Toby McGuire. It was Andrew Garfield. It was like obviously Spider-Movies are doing well. Yeah.

But the best ones are nostalgia bait for a better time. You know what I'm saying? Is it going to be all? just like remember this, remember this, like as they... I just watched, I just watched had the new Captain America movie

on the flight. I haven't seen it. I don't know you think. Because that's an example of like... And truly, truly one of the worst movies I've seen in the past five years. I'm not kidding. It was so bad. There was so little redeeming about it. And I understand that there will be a general fatigue

no matter what if you pump out a bunch of the same or similar product, even if they happen to be really good individually. But this was, it was remarkably bad. And it's like, this is what, you can't be mad that your formula isn't succeeding when you're pumping out that level of dogshade. It was insane how bad it was. So that's, that's what I'm thinking about is like, dude, if it's just, I, I understand

it's probably hard to make a giant good blockbuster movie. Yeah. But it's not, they're not sending their best. But, but if they had the original Captain America come back and pat him on the shoulder, they teamed up, would you smile and go, this is my childhood? I love this. And I, no. I wouldn't like Chris Evans get away with that. If you went into a McDonald's and you ordered the food and you took a bite and it's terrible.

But then Ronald McDonald walked out and patted you on the shoulder and said, remember how good it used to be? Yeah. But that wouldn't do anything for you? I don't think that would do. That's kind of what they're doing right now, but they raised the price. I don't know. I don't know if we have any more thoughts or, you know, Doug, is there anything else you want to say about this? I mean, are you a superhero movie guy? Are you like a... Nah, not really? Like a movie guy. So I'm, I've been fully out for a while. I do have a closing thing. Could we go to the box office list? I want to see the current year's box office list that we... That was one of the slides. What do you mean?

Didn't you have like the like last year's box office top 10 or something on there? Yes, I did. This one? Or like this year. Okay, okay, I have a thought, this is semi-related. See the movie, How to Train Your Dragon. Yep. Right there, right?

Yep, yep, yep. There, what do you, and Leload Stitch? Okay, one thing that I'm surprised hasn't run out of gas yet in the world of film is this insane, live action re-release of old films. And maybe it's just the nostalgia thing you're talking about,

where people are just so attached to these movies from their childhood that they can't stop their idiot brains from going and seeing... You know Will Smith's biggest movie is Aladdin?

The live action remake? Will Smith is, you know, he was a top box office guy for 10 years and his biggest movie is the live action Disney remake of Aladdin. It's crazy. People love those fucking movies.

I know. I think my actual, like maybe top three hot takes is that if you are excited to go see one of those movies, you, I don't think you should be allowed to watch the movie.

I think you need to go back to show. school or or maybe I don't know. They need they need something in their brain checked. Okay, you're picturing like a 27 year old who's like. That's who it is. That's a lot of who it is. Some of it's kids,

but a lot of it is Disney adults. People who grew up with it are now parents and they're bringing their kids because they want them to enjoy the same, a slightly worse version actually of what they grew up with. This is the worst part of me. The worst part of me hates that they are, The fact that Lilo and Stitch remake made $420 million is disgusting to me.

And I can't quite phrase why to you. That's funny. You think how to train your dragon should have gotten more. Yeah. Because that's your childhood. You like that more. I mean, that movie does that. I don't honestly say that movie's better than Lilo's Stitch.

But that's beside the point. Have you seen both of those? Yeah. You are the person you're talking about, Aidan. What? Neither of us have seen it and you're complaining about these... Wait, oh, you mean the remakes?

Oh, no, no, no, I've only seen the original. Oh, okay, okay, we won't see the original. Yeah, I haven't seen the original. The only thing I'm actually surprised about here and the note I wanted to end it on was the amount of these movies that has come out and the length of time they have come out for, I'm surprised they're still doing so well.

Like maybe they haven't been coming out as much and as often as I feel that they have, but in a conversation where we're talking about fatigue and like over-releasing a certain formulaic type of product, the fact that these are at the head of the box office so often is mind-blowing to me. And I wonder why. Maybe it's just because they're like exact recreations

or something that were so successful in the past. I think they're taking proven smash, smash, smash hits and remaking them. It's like, and there's enough time that's passed. If they remade Lilo and Stitch again in five years, I don't know. There's a line somewhere. Anyways, let us know your thoughts.

If you are more of a movie connoisseur, we'd love to know why you turned away, why you're still interested. Again, one more thing I wanted to say, because I looked at the box office data, the opening week for the new Superman or the new Fantastic Four or Thunderbolts was actually fantastic.

They still have this diehard group that is more excited than ever when the movies are actually good. But the drop-off is massive. You've lost the general public. You've lost the general public. You haven't really lost the diehards or just, there's less of them. But the general public no longer gives a shit about the larger Marvel Web or, or even, you know, supermen.

Like, there's, the drop off has been much, much bigger. And that was noticeable. I guess it's all the people on the peripheral that feel the fatigue the heaviest, right? Yeah. Because I think about people like my girlfriend who are like so checked out of this genre, even when it was hype. But she still saw Avengers End game. You know? Like, Avengers Endgame was just like, you know, you just got it.

You just went. You're out of touch. Yeah. And I think there is a giant group on like the outer edges, which was, you know, the bulk of people who were just deciding to go to these that feel the fatigue the most and are also the least likely to engage in whether or not the movie is good or not. So, yeah, interesting. I wanted to, I wanted to talk about a little. So I just got back from a trip. I want a vacation.

Where'd you go? I want to say this up. And speaking of your girlfriend, listen, Doug. Okay. This is our last chance. He went to Sweden with his girlfriend.

Yeah. And this was like the trip to introduce her to Sweden and see if she would like it enough that they could move there together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so every night, I have been paying which he and I've been praying

that she would not enjoy it so that our baby boy, Aidan, would not be able to go to Sweden. And then I message him when he's there. He sends him pictures of, of parks and strollers and green fields and grass. And she goes, she loves it. I love it.

And I was like, well, we lost him. That was our, this is our last hope to keep Aiden in the great country of America on the beautiful, I sent him pictures of the 405 to try and keep here. You did? Dude, he did send me a photo of the just back-to-back traffic on the 405. And it's like, do you miss it? I tried my best to like show him the beauty of America.

Uh, I reminded him we have a great president, Donald Trump and I just don't seem to convince you so I don't know what else can get through. I mean, have you ever thought about the fact that there is um... You listeners?

It looks like racism is frowned upon harshly. Doug is Googling the cons of living in Sweden? Uh, the cons of living in Sweden is that racism is frowned upon. I'm just going off the list, man. Oh, police are useless except with regard to prosecuting

crimes. Oh, well, that's, Wait, that's, wait. Like parking fines. Tell us about Sweden, Aiden. Okay, I'm not here to tell you about, you know, my trip specifically, but there was something I really, really interesting I learned while I was there. And the, like Atriac said, the intention of this trip was I was bringing my girlfriend there for the first time to introduce her to Stockholm,

surrounding, like towns, and my friends there to give her a better idea of, you know, are you ready to move? here because that's my plan currently is I'm going to move there in like a year and a half and uh the through the week we spend we hang out with a bunch of different people we know like virtual Anna Kramling yeah uh some other personal friends of mine wait by it by the way I did use the picture of the yard with virtual in it yeah for the witches so he might be less funny he's gonna want so virtual is going to be less funny in his neck Just Anna, Anna touching his shoulder, and she's like, what's wrong? I don't know.

She's not feeling as funny anymore. Babe, you seem about 10% worse off. But, and so I, lucky enough to, like, know and have a lot of friends there already, and that's part of the reason why I want to move. And, but while we're there, we're asking them all these different questions about, you know, the specifics of, you know, what do you like, what don't you like? What are the good and bad things about living in Sweden? And I think when you're raised in America, you have this general idea that even if you reflect on like quality of life in Europe positively, you have this idea that they have way higher taxes.

And so you have way less money. But the tradeoff is you get a bunch of benefits in society, right? You pay the taxes and you get a health care and a welfare system and all and all these lovely things from it. but when I was talking to a good friend of mine who just got an entry-level software engineering position at a bank there, and we were talking about his salary and what his expenses are, I was starting to do a bit of mental math in my head.

And I was like, wait a second. Have you ever had this thought? Is like, you know, European people you work with, they always seem to be on vacation, they always seem to be out of the office. And I kind of wondered, you know, if people in Europe have way lower incomes or like way less disposable income because of all the tax they pay, you know, how do they go on all these nice trips all the time? How do they get to go out and do all

these lovely things on their vacation or like, you know, do things like that? Uh, I had this passing thought in my head. And I went through and I mathed out what salaries would be like in Sweden versus Los Angeles and a bunch of other American cities when you consider all of the committed, like, required to live expenses that you have in the U.S. to see what your actual, like, after-tax and required expenses, like money you have left is. So where I started was, I just took my friend's salary, who has this job, and so he makes about 62,000,

61,000 U.S. a year right now, which is on the higher end in Sweden. and here, I'll pull up. I'm going to pull up this shirt. So the way I went about this is the expenses that I considered like required to live are your health insurance, your car insurance, your rent slash mortgage,

your utilities, your groceries, internet, phone, gas, public transportation. Do you want to see me the link? I'll put it up on screen. Sure. So the expense, these are the considered expenses

that I considered like, required for living, right? And I just compared it to living in Los Angeles. And so after tax, if you look at this salary of $61,300 and look at it after tax in Stockholm, it's about $47,200. And then the same thing in Los Angeles, after tax is about $49,400. And then you go through... Sorry, a truck is adding in an expense you missed, which is a cyber truck.

You're going to cost $120,000. Did you have that in this? Did you add that in this? That's going to make it negative. Do you know what Sweden, the government just gives you a cyber truck? That's free there. The way I estimated these was basically making the required expenses about as minimal as possible. Like considering lower end studio apartment, base utilities, not anything above what you need,

like lowest end health insurance plan that you could get reasonably. And that's how I generally estimated these expenses. And if you consider all these things, when you look at this same salary in these same two places, your after-tax and after-expenses income in Sweden, in Stockholm, is $27,600, which is much higher than the $14,300 that you're left over with in Los Angeles on the same salary. And I found this immediately frustrating because it feels counterintuitive to this narrative that I've been fed my whole life. But I wanted to have an honest approach

to this whole conversation. Yeah, the salaries are higher. Because of course, the same job would have a higher salary in Los Angeles. Thank you. Thank you, Brandon. I just want to bring that up because you're not mentioning

this salary would be higher. And if you look at this position, if entry level software engineer in Los Angeles at a bank, he's looking at probably $90,000 a year, starting point, maybe $95,000. And if you run the same thing, consider all the same expenses

because, you know, base required expenses are going to be the same in this situation, what. He's left with a higher amount, $5,000 higher and disposable income than the person in Stockholm. If it was 50 cents more, it would be worth it. With 33,000, $800 about, right? So a $5,000 difference. Okay, fair enough. You do have a higher take-home income on this similar job in between these two places, right? But then, so I have my thoughts on that.

to begin with. But I decided I wanted to take a look at, well, what happens when you just look at median income in these places or per capita income? It depends on what you're looking for it. You can use a bunch of different numbers for these things. I tried to be as neutral as possible in what I chose. And I have a bunch of different options here. But when you look at median income in, or median personal income in Stockholm, it's about 43,000 US dollars for the year. And if we go through the same math that I laid out or that you're left over with about $18,000 like dollars of disposable income for the year, right? Considering all the same expenses. And then if you treat, this number is a little high, I think, but we could say the median Los Angeles income is a,

72. 72. I think there's, there's some discrepancies here. But let's take a higher median income number that I came up with, which was 72. And you're left over with. You're left over with, not much more than the 18,000, you have $21,000 left over after all those expenses, right? And then if you take a lower median income measurement in Los Angeles, which is like $60,000, you're left over with a much lower amount. And then if you look at median or like per capita income in Houston, in Nashville, where it's $45,000 and $47,000, the number you're left over with compared to the median income in Stockholm is $14,600 you're left over with, or $12,700 you're left over with.

With all of the expenses for those cities, I tried to estimate specifically to those cities, to be clear. I wasn't like rolling over the Los Angeles numbers to each one of those. My broader point that I want to make here is that I found this incredibly sad and frustrating because the quality of life for what you get, even if in the best case scenario, where you have the same job and you're making a little more money, like say $5,000 more dollars over the course of the year in this example with the software engineering,

is that you live in a place where you have higher rates of crime, including higher rates of violent crime, significantly more. Sweden, among Europe, one of the higher rates of gun crime in all of Europe, still considerably lower than what it goes on in the United States. You have lower societal trust,

more expensive education, public spaces in like, things like parks, bad public transportation, no sick days, no parental leave, of which you get 400 days combined between you and your spouse that you had to use over the first four years of your child. The presentation he gave his girlfriend on the plane. Sick, you get, you get paid,

you get paid sick days, paid sick days if your kids are sick. You can take a week off from work and then pass that if you get like a doctor's note that your kid is still sick, you get to stay home, paid for by the guy, government. Twenty-five days of mandated vacation per year minimum paid for, you get to live in a

walkable city. You have stronger public welfare. You have public health care. You have a lower life expectancy in the U.S. You have worse child care, higher child mortality, higher costs of the health care itself with worse outcomes, better food and nutritional standards, and a higher quality of public education for your kids. You have all of those things and maybe maybe in some of the situations I laid out, sometimes you make less money. Sometimes. And if you take just median income,

if you take the general median income from both places, you actually have more disposable income in Stockholm. And you get all of those things. And I will be honest, as I dug into this, I felt kind of betrayed. because to me, growing up, there was always this idea that you only got all of these benefits with the fact that you paid more in tax and that you had more income for yourself.

But for the average person, that doesn't even hold true. In most cases, in the U.S., the average person on an average salary or an average paying job ends up with less money than you do in a place like Sweden. And then even on the high end, if you're someone who is striving to become a billionaire, There are more billionaires per capita in Sweden. Over double that in the U.S. I think it's almost three billionaires per million in Sweden, and in the U.S. it's one.

So if you really cared about becoming a billionaire, you have a better shot in Sweden. And I think it is to spend a whole week there walking around in a city that is significantly cleaner, had all of these immaculate parks, finding out that I get paid leave from the company that I would own in the city. that country by the government when I want to take paternal leave. I always thought that the

paternal leave didn't make any sense for me because, oh, if I set up my company, I'm just going to, I thought it was a legal requirement for the company to have to pay for my paternal leave. That's what I thought. It's not that. The government pays for your paternal leave. So even though I own my company, the government will send me money to take my paternal leave. Based on your salary? Based on the salary that I pay myself. I assume that the corporate tax rate is higher though, right for that company? The corporate tax rate. Swedish.

So theoretically, could I start a company right before I'm about to have a kid, pay myself a salary of $900,000 a year, have the kid, the government pays that salary while I'm on a paternal leave. This is why you want to move to Sweden. You sneaky motherfucker.

So interestingly enough, corporate tax rate in Sweden is actually slightly lower than in the US. 20.20.6%. This is the other thing. As I'm talking to my friends there, Hold on. They lowered it this year.

Yeah, it used to... From 32... They did a big, big, beautiful bill, too. But even when they had theirs hire, right? It was 32% until this year. It was lower than our previous rate of 35. So, the... That part, that part aside, Sweden extraordinarily business-friendly.

If you set up a business there, there's all of these things that encourage you to do so over surrounding countries. It's a big part of the reason why so many of the large companies, in not only the Nordics, but Europe are set in Sweden or Stockholm specifically because of all the benefits that they have for business owners there. And a lot of the people that I talk to there, who are business owners, were explaining to me the ways that you like basically pay yourself and handle your taxes in Sweden as best as possible. And I was like, this situation is better for me, I think, than it is for, than it is in California. And I was surprised by that because I'm a high-income earner. So all of these things and like stereotypes perpetuated about what you sacrifice by moving to a country like that, which is one of the first questions people ask me is, well, aren't you going to pay a bunch more in taxes? Isn't that going to suck? And I was already on board because I was like, no, I'm buying into a society that takes better care of me, my family, and all of the people around me. But then financially, I actually am not, I'm basically in the same place I am in California, if not best.

better. And for my kids, probably better, like if they're just going to pursue normal careers. And I'm not going to say there's no trade-off. I do think there's unique career opportunities in the United States that I don't think exist there sometimes. But I think for the average person, this whole like debacle and rabbit hole of me going into this was it felt, I felt very betrayed, betrayed. It made me angry that this is the case. Give a shock and I a second to defend America. Yeah. What do we got? I was going to say freedom. Freedom was a big one,

but I think he's got a good counter to that. Money, we have more money. No, he mentioned to us. Billionaires. We were going to talk about trucks. They barely have any trucks in Sweden. He didn't even include car payment in Sweden for this because they don't have a car, I guess.

Because you don't need a car. Wait, hold on, are you assuming no car for people in Sweden? Yeah, in Stockholm, because you don't need a car. Gotcha, okay. And I think on, and to be fair, like, I think there are cities. Of course, there are cities in the U.S., like, you know, if you lived in New York, or even when I lived in Seattle in college, right?

Like, I didn't need a car, but I think in general, in American life and in a city like L.A., a car is a required expense. It's not, you do not have the same degree of choice over owning a vehicle in a place like Los Angeles as you do in a place like Stockholm. Okay, so help me understand something.

Everything you're saying makes sense, but when you compared a software engineer in Sweden versus a software engineer here and said they would make more here because salaries are higher, the take home was $5,000 higher. Yes. So my understanding from this is like if you are a high earner,

you do take more in the end from being in America. So I get what you're saying like about this system supporting people who make, let's say the median or less in America and that makes sense. But you just said of like you felt like you were told you're going to have to pay so much. You are a high income earner. So won't you be paying substantially more in Sweden? So yes with an asterisk. Okay.

I, from my understanding, if you're a business owner specifically, and that's how I would be applying for my visa, I might be in a unique position where I might be paying similar or less tax than I do now because of the way that you distribute profits from your business and the way business profit is taxed there versus a normal salary. But I just treated this as salary to salary. Does that make sense? salary to salary you would get more take home in America, right? That's up until, uh, like if you're a very high income earner, right? It's, yes, feels like I have an example. I think I did it. Oh, I wrote it down.

Like if you, it sounds like there is. Yeah. So there's a reason why they might be like, no, I should stay in America. So if I made, so as an example, right, uh, I totally can see. That's our defense. Rich people win. I totally concede that. I totally can see.

Well, rich people who are paid salaries but don't own companies. Yes. Yes. Point for America. So like the example that I did, I don't have it on the sheet, which was, say you've made a salary of $450,000 a year, your take home in Sweden on that salary, in Stockholm specifically, is about $236,000 U.S. a year. That's what your take home would be. And then in California, your take home would be $269,000 a year. So about a $33,000 difference. Pretty significant, honestly. But I think when you have that, the two main points I want to make here is that even though that difference exists, right, you have, you have all of these things and benefits that you sacrifice

for not only yourself, but your kids, your family, and your community around you, like, is it worth that salary difference to, you know, walk through the streets of a place that is, you know, you know, has a ton of people who are homeless everywhere and, like, don't have homes and, like, you don't have access to health care and your kids have to go to an expensive private school instead of a public school and, like, all of those, like, is it worth all of that tradeoff? Or should you just be buying into a collective benefit for society around you? Like, I would argue that the tradeoff there to begin with is, is bad. But the thing I want to stress is that for the median income earner, for the average person with the average person with the average

job, you walk away with more money in Sweden still. And that's crazy. Because those people are giving up nothing. They actually have more money than the American does. And then you also get all these benefits. And I think that runs very counterintuitive to everything we're told about these systems and the what Europe has over the U.S. and these common like U.S. versus Europe arguments. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. I think that's fair. I, uh... Like, like, if I were to give you an example for my girl, like for my girlfriend who, you know, makes a very normal salary in comparison for her job, she would make, she would make slightly more money there. She would make slightly more and then have access. And then if we had a child, she would have 200, you know, 200 days paid of maternity leave.

And she would miss American Idol, though, I think, on other things. No, I think it's... She wants to stay her entire life in a country that's never won the World Series. The shame, the embarrassment. Unbelievable. We didn't even win the last baseball international tournament either.

We won the World Series. It's called the World Series. Jesus Christ. No, I was sitting told that I'm talking about the baseball World Cup. I know. And we're talking about the World Series. That's where the World Series.

That's where the world plays. Dude, when the Grateful Dead does a world tour, you think they go to Sweden? No. Probably. They go to Britain and they go to America and they go to Canada. Yeah, I mean, this ties into some stuff we talked about on the show before. The idea that, well, I guess you're sort of countering the idea.

You're saying they're not even paying that much more in tax, but the idea of like the Equinox effect or people are happy to pay a little more if they notice the difference. If you make less than, because of the way Sweden's tax system works, if you make less than 70K US a year, which there, because they have lower salaries, on average. Most people do. You pay less tax than you do in California. Yeah. I mean, the big thing I've heard from people who have come from Sweden to here is if

they're high owners, they want the higher salary. That's the thing. That would be the big counter argument. It's just there is a higher take home at the highest level. Yeah. And people who really can earn the most. I think, yeah, to be clear, it's not like there's zero reasons to come to the U.S. I think that's an important part that I totally can see. There are situations from what I can see, the main things you would take advantage of is if you have a job in a field that pays you a really high salary in a specialized industry that is more prominent in the U.S.

So things I can think about is software engineering, right? There's not a version of being like a senior software engineer at Amazon where you paid 500K, you. year in Sweden. It doesn't exist. I know a bunch of software engineers there and their salaries are way, way lower, even at big companies, right? I think the tax situation for people who own businesses, I'm finding out in Sweden is actually extraordinarily friendly. I'm actually surprised by that. There was some Norwegians I was hanging out with, and they were saying one of the main reasons that so many big companies exist in Sweden and not many big companies exist in Norway is

because of the differences in policies around business taxes and wealth taxes between those two countries. Interesting. Interesting. Which I hadn't really thought about, right? Because from my perspective, it's just like, those two countries are basically right next to each other. They're on all the charts together. They're very, very similar. But they're describing the difference in like the opening of business between the two. And the last thing I'll say is that, you know, Sweden population, 10 million. That's the Los Angeles metro area. That's. It's actually less.

Greater Houston, that's New York. I mean, you know, it's just a bigger country with the, you know, in that 50 different states, all of their own rules and regulations and laws and state taxes. And it's just difficult on a 300 million person scale. But not that we're not. Not to get, yeah, we're all pushing for it. But I'm going to get reactionary. I am.

Does it not make you, does it not make you a little mad? Like, it's crazy to me. It is crazy. level of benefits and quality of life there is astounding to me. And this is stuff that I learned on this trip, even though I've been looking forward to moving there and have been there many times before this. And I, the day-to-day enjoyment, the number of like families I saw everywhere, the number of like the parks and social benefits, and all these things my friends just openly talked about and were like, yeah, this is just what we get. And this is what it is. And no, and then I

came back to L.A. at L.A.X. and fucking walked to L.A. exit, got an $100 Uber to get home. And then walked through like a street of trash. And you knew you were home. Like, LeBron James gave you a nod through the train. As I walk past like a field

of like people that live in the street that should have like homes or apartments and like not have to live on the street. Like it doesn't make any fucking sense, dude. As my parents pay like, you know, tens of thousands of dollars. to send my little brother to college. And it's just, it is a fucked system.

It is embarrassing that it is this way in this country. I think truly, it made me, I don't know. Because I feel like if you make, the fact that you have less money when you make $45,000 a year in Houston, then $43,000 a year in Stockholm is like, I don't know, that's crazy to me. If you consider these expenses, right?

I'm sure you could, you can like, fuck with my numbers and I tried to be honest and like pick as many like low end, uh, averages and everything. I didn't want to like cheese it. Uh, but I mean the fact that it's even close. You have a huge gas payment and a huge car insurance payment and, uh, I assume a car payment. Uh, you didn't include a list a car payment. I'm just assuming this person owns their car in full. Just like they have a used car that they have no in full. They're not making a car payment, which most, there's a bunch of things you could include in this that most regular Americans are paying on top of this stuff. But I wanted to make sure it's like, no, only list the things that you need that are basically required

for living, which is like utilities, rent, you basically need to have a car and you have to pay gas to move the car and then, and shit like that. Yeah. I mean, I agree. I just don't know what to add. It's like, yeah. In part, I think this, it just underscores the core fundamental cultural divide, which is one of saying we are going to prioritize the ability to focus on your own individual success, even at the expense of the broader collective, and that seems to be the American ethos, better or for worse. I'm in the same boat. Like, I don't want that. I hate Los Angeles. Yeah, it's incredibly depressing. I think to not to not retread anything, I think that's actually a really good idea to end on, because I agree with you. To me, that's the value

proposition you think of as an American and that you think of when you compare yourself in the American dream. And that's deeply rooted in the American dream. the thing that we reinforce over and over and so many of our like parents and grandparents were able to, yeah. And to a degree, I think if that value proposition were true, then you could fairly make that choice. But through this exercise,

the thing that angered me the most was that the value proposition that you described is not really true. You don't really get more money. You don't really get more freedom. I'm sick for rich people, right? No, yeah. That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, but the American Dream is bought into by a like a collective society that has endorsed it, right? I would say it's a collective American idea. Yes, but it's the idea of like, yeah, you're worse off if you're poor, but if you can make money through the opportunities that America provides, you will benefit more than if you did that somewhere else, right? That is the pitch, right? And so obviously the majority of people are left behind in that system,

which I suspect none of the three of us are stoked about. But I mean, that's how you preserve it, right? Is then you have all the people who are successful saying, this is good, we should encourage this type of thinking, right? Yeah, yeah. It makes sense in a way. It's, you know, not what I would prefer. Another takeaway of this is that, you know, they're getting taxed roughly the same. They're after tax for the same salary is roughly similar, which means the tax dollars are just being misallocated.

They have enough tax money. They have more tax money. You mean America has more tax money? Like, they could spend that on similar things. Yeah. Spending on other things. How much does we talk about a lot? Yeah, that's a really good point. How much does Sweden spend on the military every year?

We spend a trillion dollars. You know, it's things like that that I wonder. And Doug, I'm glad you ask, it's lower. It is? Wow, okay. Imagine it was trillion two. It was all going on. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about budget and how we spend money, and I don't think we spend money very well.

Yeah, it's misallocated. So a huge part of it is that. Yeah, again, percentage GDP, 1.47. It's pretty low. So, yeah, they just joined NATO too. So I wonder if it's going to, I wonder if it's going to change. They all committed to five. So that'll see.

We'll see. But yeah, I think we would like to see, we've talked about it a million times in the shows, but public transport is like a thing that allows people to spend less on cars and that and have more take-on pay. Yeah. And that is something we could spend our tax dollars on with the money we have now. But it's allocated elsewhere.

It's on other things. That is, uh, that we need people to make hard choices to move those things over here, or raise tax if you want to, but one of the two. All right. Stop teasing us. So did you like it?

Yeah, I couldn't get his real feeling in Sweden. I could not get a read on this. I could not get a read who's being so mystic about it. Okay, wait. I've still weird colors for a flag.

He's like, the red, white, blue. The old stars and strikes. The old stars and strikes. Timeless. Hard to beat, bro. If you don't mind me. We got 50 on them.

If you don't want to be saying this, uh, for the entire time we've been talking about doing this podcast, which is over a year now that we've been like kind of planning and discussing it. Um, you've been saying you're about a year and a half out for moving to

Sweden. It, what, is it still a year and a half? Well, continue to be a year and a half? I think I said two years when we started, right? I think it was a year and a half. Okay, well, I think now it's down to like a year and four months, three months.

Okay, I will, I get to be like unleashed from L.A. I'm now like going to, I'm pulling the trigger once you leave, basically. Yeah, you're going to free me from L.A. Japan. And Adriac is going to forever love the 405, dude. Stuck on the 405, just. That's good though. It keeps us grounded.

It keeps us grounded. You know, you don't want to. Like, you'll be stuck on the ground on the, out on the asphalt. You'll miss it. You guys. You'll be begging me to come back. I turn on the tube in Japan. Wait a minute. No World Series? What am I to do? Yeah.

Well, actually, let's move on. All right, no, actually, hey, this is this sort of relates, which is an interesting conversation about whether the United States government should be involved in private companies. That was pretty interesting. Before that, I'm going to really quickly follow up from last week. I feel like I had a little egg on my face. Chat Chb T5 kind of sucks. I was telling Brandon, I got to talk about all the goods of Chatsbyt. I've been hearing universally negative things and my experience has gotten markedly worse

over the last week. Yeah, it got worse. Can I interject? Yeah. But how does it just get worse if it's the same version? They do update it. They're constantly updating it and changing it.

So it's not the same. It's the equivalent of like, what if Chad Chabit but worse? Sam Altman after the blunt, dude. If you upgrade from Windows 11 to, Windows 12, like you're on a new big set, but it's, you know, you're gonna keep updating. No, okay, that makes sense. Yeah.

Right. Okay. My understanding is also the, they are hitting their energy limit. Like they, as more users are flowing in a chat jbdb-five, they have to keep making the service worse to keep the speed and quality. Like my, that is my, I was what, at least Sam all was trying to like hint that was like, they have so much demand and they can't get enough, they can't get enough energy. online for data centers online for this new thing.

So it's actually getting worse in real time as more users are at it, which is like the opposite of what you want. You know, like a social network gets better than more people that add it. Like this gets worse the more people that. Anyway, sorry. Yeah. Yeah, there's a bunch of issues.

Programming content creator friend of mine, Theo, like, made a post where he's like, I need to apologize. When I was trying chat chad tp t before it launched, it was incredible and what is out now is worse. And I feel like I misled everybody. And like I sort of feel the same last week on a very small scale. Like, I'm, like, crashing out at it multiple times a day now because how annoying it is to talk to when practicing a language. Like, oh, yeah.

Every day I'll be like, stop prefacing your questions with eight sentences. Just tell me what this is in Japanese. And it'll be like, absolutely, yeah, I hear your frustration. Let me just talk quicker and get straight to the point. Let's get right into this. No more dealing with this. Let's just go. And I'm like, shut the fuck.

You're doing it again. And I like, that's like an I think you should leave sketch. Dude, I'm going crazy. Anyway, like, like, we are like, we know. Like, we know on this show AI's perfect and there's no downsides, but this is one rare instance where there was some frustration. Okay. So last week, interesting story where Intel, the giant company that makes, you know, CPU chips. They have been struggling a lot over the past few years. That is maybe a topic we can get into if we have time. But there's another interesting thing that is happening in this whole as Intel, one of the American like tech giants who is in theory should be part of the future of AI and computing and all this stuff because they make some of our best chips. They're American. That's fantastic. They're doing bad. Like, they're doing actually quite bad. So we can talk about that as well.

But one of the things that is happening as people are trying to figure out how to help Intel is the U.S. government, Trump, is like floating the idea of the United States government investing into Intel and holding private stock. They are going to, in particular, Intel said they wanted to open up this giant factory in Ohio to manufacture chips. That doesn't seem to be happening. And they're like, we're not going to have money. We've got to push this back to the 2030s. Trump obviously really pushing for more jobs. investment in the U.S. So their idea is like, okay, if we as the United States invest into it, you guys would then be able to get this thing going. We get jobs, we get all this stuff.

And so I was curious about this. I was like, I don't know of any instance where the U.S. government has like bought stock in a company and just like invested in it. So I looked into it. There are cases over the entire history of the country where the U.S. government comes in, but almost always it's either you're failing as a company. We want to help because this is going to be economically devastating or going to lose a lot of jobs. Here's a gigantic loan. Hopefully you pay us back. That's one. That's happened a bunch of times.

It's like the banks, right? Yes. But actually even then, with the 2008 financial crisis, that was the other example where they actually do buy a big stake. So they bought, for example, 34% stake in Citigroup during the financial crisis. So they actually owned part of the companies, but then within a few years, the banks recovered and paid the government back. Or GM and Chrysler, like our car companies, went to bankruptcy.

U.S. Treasury bought 60% of them, of GM, 10% of Chrysler. And then by 2013, four years later, they had bounced back. The U.S. sold all the shares. So it's kind of these like temporary things of the U.S. government comes in, uses money to help like prop up a company, get the back on their feet. They succeed. It's a great success story. The U.S. government is totally out. And this would this would potentially be the first case where the U.S. government wants to just invest into a healthy company. Intel is not doing well, but they aren't dying, you know, and they're still very valuable. They're not going into bankruptcy. And the idea is like the United States would just hold pieces of. of it and have influence on it. That is very unusual and I would say pretty un-American. I mean,

that's like the hallmark of the Chinese government, right? And that book we write is all about how the Chinese government basically oversees all companies. Like you have to have a Chinese Communist Party member in your, you have to have like these, you know, monitors in your companies. So I'm just curious. Open question. What do you guys think about this? It's weird that they didn't start with GameStop. Yeah. A strategic investment in GameStop. Also a company that's doing really well, very healthy. Buy more of it right now. I mean, there's a strategic thing here, right?

Which is like, so the foundries that make chips are extremely important. And right now, all the good, latest and greatest ones are in Taiwan. And the second latest and greatest ones are in Korea. Samsung's got the other foundry. And then the third best, which used to be the best for a long time, is Intel in America. Now they barely even make their own chips. They outsource it to TSM. But the idea is eventually either get TSM,

into America to build factories there because we're all under the assumption that eventually China will want to take Taiwan and they have to plan for that future where it's not, where we can make chips outside of Taiwan. Or Intel gets on its own feet. And that was like the plan during the Biden years where they were like they simultaneously enticed TSMC

to come to Arizona and also gave a bunch of money to Intel to make foundries. And one of these will work out and we'll get chips in America. And they've, the TSM thing is kind of softworking out and the Intel thing is not working out at all. It's like a total flood. The company is just floundering. It's just getting worse and worse all the time. Yeah. So I can see the strategic reason for putting money in. It does feel

weird to have the government take a permanent stake in a company with no plan. That doesn't... First of all, just gives them a weird leg up on their competitors. Is it just the difference between this option and going a subsidy route that you have more... You have more direct, say, in the direction that the company can move in. A bunch of things. It would be a partially state-owned company.

in perpetuity, right? And that's very different than how the United States has been involved with any company. They aren't a shareholder who like owns part of the company and can influence the direction

through that. That's what I mean. Is like, do they own it? There are a few like on the board or they have voting chairs or something. Now they get to directly impact the direction of. Correct. Yeah.

So, I mean, they would be, they would have influence of the company. I mean, they would just be a buyer like anybody who buys company, buy stock in the company. It's, there's a,

I think one angle to this, I thought was interesting. is looking at some of these patterns in the past, where the U.S. has provided a giant loan to one of these companies that then comes out on the back end and succeeds. If the United States had held that, they came in, they injected money into this company,

helped them recover. In theory, if they just held the stock, we as a country would have made a ton of money over the decades as that company continued to grow and benefit from that. And that's what a normal investor would do, right? They're like, I'm going to invest in this company.

And then if they do really well in the long term, we get to have returns. And in some of these things, there were actually billions, like tens of billions of dollars coming back to the United States that they made. But in most cases,

it's like it kind of averages out to being even. I want to say I fundamentally have a problem with that because if you're a competitor to Intel, they have this inherent advantage of they have the government's ear. They have, they are,

you know, it's just a weird thumb on the scale that is weird. I want to say this is part of like a dartboard of ideas that Trump has been throwing around Intel. First, he tried to get the CEO fired. He tried to make him quit or whatever.

He said he was a Chinese spy, the CEO of Intel, and he had to be resigned immediately. Well, to be fair to Trump, he's Malaysian, and Trump probably doesn't know the difference. So first is like when the TikTok CEO is getting interviewed, and he's like, are you, you work with the Chinese, you're Chinese? And he's like, I'm Singapore. And then he has to say like three spots.

So he first did that. And then he said he's a great guy and he took it all back. And then he said, we're going to get TSM. We're going to force them to buy 49% of Ntons. And that'll make them move their stuff to America. And then they kind of scrap that idea. Well, TSM was like, no. We do not want to go buy another company.

We're doing really well. We're finding our own Intel sucks. I don't know why I keep bringing them up. But like if McDonald's was like, like Trump came in, like you got to buy Burger King. Like, Intel's like, no. We rather make more. What are you talking about?

We don't want this. Yeah. And again, a big part of it. That's why I'm concerned with this idea. For many reasons, obviously the competition thing, but also like throwing good money after. bad is the story of the last 10 years of Intel. A lot of people and different governments and Democrats and Republicans have found ways to try and give Intel more opportunity and money than they

probably should have earned and they have squandered it. They've just, they've done really poorly. So the idea that, you know, another massive government fund to them is going to turn things around. I'm skeptical. I think Intel's a mismanaged company with rot at the core that, you know, it's going to be, they're going to need to go through the hard time. You don't think lip boo tan is going to turn it around? I don't think so. You don't like lip, But he's like the first CEO in four years or whatever. Lip Bhutan is badass. I'll talk about Lit Bhutan.

They're going through a few. They're going through that fast. They've gone through a lot. They've gone through a bunch. Yeah. I think my, yeah, I think my issue would be less with the, less with them buying the stock itself and being involved. Because I think there could be some sort of approach that's interesting there. It's more to do with the chasing a company that has historically underperformed.

Like, in an American context, how much. Does you buying stock in this company actually able to change the trajectory of it? Can you really correct the management issues at the center of it? It doesn't seem like it, from the outside, from a basic investor's perspective, doesn't seem like a great investment. I can see the general ideas behind it of like why the government would want to do this in a general sense, but the specific company they're choosing to do it with deals like the risk. It feels like the 2008 financial crisis of like, well, you guys fucked up really bad, but you're important.

So we'll save you. It's like, that sucks. That's a shitty way to have a company operate. It's like they just have this permanent parachute that we as taxpayers pay for to be clear. Yeah. So I'm uncomfortable with it, but I do see the need to have chip making somewhere in America. Although I think the TSMC stuff is kind of working. The Arizona plants, as far as I know, I've been doing better.

They had a hard time fighting Americans apparently willing to work as hard as the Taiwanese chip guys with the, you know, insane on-call hours and everything, but they are producing good yields, and it's like it is doing, it is, the Americans had the gall to ask for two sick days, Aidan. Imagine the Swedes, okay? Swedes would show up for 10 minutes. They would go to their park and hang out with their child all day. I'll be clear, TSMC would hate the Swedes.

I actually have a question for you guys, because I think there's an interesting thing here that I've thought about sometimes is in the wake of, 2008, a point that gets brought up a lot, is that the banks got bailed out with taxpayer money, and that is something that angers the average person. But when you look at what actually happened, I'm not a villain chair, dare I say, am I a hitter for the banks right now? Who knows? Is that we got paid back. All the money that was spent on bailing out the banks was returned

to the government with interest. counter to this. So I want to hear your thoughts on that. I'm chomping at the bag. Because I've actually answered this before and I think I've heard this talking point. Yes, the money they gave directly to the banks got paid back. Yes.

But it's like if you are a Pokemon card investor, okay? And you have gambled massively on Charzards. You bought a whole ton of Charzards. Yes. And then Charzards tank. If I give you money invest in your company and then simultaneously, at the same time, print a bunch of money out of thin air to buy mortgage back, Charzard back securities

and get the price of Charzards back up, then your business is suddenly healthy again and I get my money back. But that's not, you know, that's not, we didn't really get our money, but we got the money back from this specific part. What's wrong with Charz? But we lost the money we spent propping up the housing money.

That was money was just thrown away. Yeah. So, you know, yes, we saved these companies. There was still at great cost. There was still a huge increase of the money supply. It still had these terrible knock on effects. So I just think... This is a good answer.

Because my own pushback to this argument is that you're still bailing out a system that was abused and kind of incentivizing people pushing the boundaries of legality, bad behavior. But this is a way more nuanced version of that. And then the second part of it is, as you said, there's this, you know, there's moral hazard, which is the term that like, if, you know, you are on Wall Street and you're a thinking smart, sharp individual and you recognize, oh, if I'm this size and I make this error, I will get this bailout. You have to factor that in the future.

And so the moral hazard is I should take more risk in the future because I will have this higher percentage chance of getting a bailout. This is a smart thing to do. And so once they factor that in, they take, you know, we just get an increasing a risk because we've proven that they will step in at a certain point. And when you don't have that risk, you have to play safer. Now you don't. It's just the meta is evolving.

And I think it's bad. I think it's bad to send that message. And if you don't bail them out earlier, say even before 2008, but 2008, if you start there, you take the pain then, then people grow up with a, you know, the tree grows straight. Everyone, they learn the limits.

But if you keep trying to kick it down the road, the problem gets bigger and bigger. And the bailout required, if it happened now, is like 10 times bigger. It's astronomical. Yeah, we just print more money. We're not the first government history to think about that. And like sometimes problems arise.

What? Zimbabwe printed money and they ended up fine. They didn't have fine. You're right. Because you can always knock off that last three zero. We actually did solve it in that one episode. I was like, you just,

you just white out a couple of zeros off each of the money. Everything's good again. I mean, it goes back to Rome. Even Rome, they couldn't print money in the same way, but they would just reduce the goal. They would just put less gold in each coin. And like you couldn't notice it, but it

problems all. People are finding ways. What's the term for how they're like filling chip bags a little less every year? In shittification or whatever. You should find the currency. Yeah. So I just, you know, we're on that path. We'll talk about it in that book club if they talk about it a lot

in the Ray Dalio book, but. We have a few minutes left. I don't know if there's any breaking news updates I wanted to talk to you guys about. I don't know if you guys saw. Do you guys remember the, um, the last time Zelensky and Trump and Vance all met in the White House and it was, you didn't say thank you. And they had the big blow up and the big fight. Yeah. Yeah. They had a follow up meeting yesterday. And I want to say the bar was in the floor, obviously, probably one of the worst meetings that I had. But, but it was better. It was better. I was saying this. I was like, I hate to give anyone any credit.

here. Zelensky showed up in a suit. He said, Thank you. How'd it look? He said thank you 19 times. We counted it. He opened by saying thank you like 14 times in a row.

I'm not joking. He was like, I just want to start by saying thank you for this wonderful room. And it was almost comical. It was cold. Like clearly he had just been coached and he was like, I'm going to say exactly what I need to get what I want. I'm not going to.

Vance didn't say one word. He didn't interrupt. He didn't. Like it was a much better meeting. And the reporters, which I got to say, the reporters in those meetings are trying to derail it. They're trying to ask the most incendiary question

to get Trump to say that thing crazy. Trump, for the first half of the meeting, the best I've ever seen him and being like, this is off topic. I've never seen him do that in his life. But then he cracked, of course. And he started a rant thing about Joe Biden and Obama and how he saved crime in D.C.

And, and... I like, it is funny when... When Joe Biden gets brought up, up as a talking point, but he was the previous administration, was the previous president. You know, I think it can be relevant at times. But when it, it's, I think it's really funny when he sticks into Obama, because it's like, it was just

so long ago. It was just so long ago. I mean, you know, came out of his, that was his first presidency, right? Out of Obama. That makes sense, you know. I saw a stat the other day that like 7% of British people

consider themselves as having a rival. Like, oh, the never. Nemesis. It was nemesis. And then 17% said, there's like most say they don't have one. And one says, seven percent say the nemesis. And then somebody's like, 17% say they used to have a nemesis. We.

And then they slayed this. Right. It's like what's going on there? How did you solve that? I do feel like there's still a little bit of that nemesisness going on here. Oh, also, dude, Zelensky opened not only by saying thank you a million times. He also, he also handed Trump a letter from his wife saying thank you to Trump's wife. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I did see it. Kind of a brilliant diplomatic move, honestly. It's like a really nice gesture. He did a couple of things. He clearly was ready for Trump's style this time around. He called America and your country so big. You could say how big it was. Like, he can't talk about big.

He said, can't say that to sweet. We need your help for this thing so we can buy the best military stuff in America. Like, your stuff is so good. Yes. And you can see Trump's eyes light up. Like it's like, wait at this guy's.

So, you know, it's crazy that the meta is evolving. around Trump, so many leaders are figuring out that like if you just say he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize and he's great and big. Like a quick time of it. Yeah, and he's like a QTE. Yeah, I don't know. QT, by the way, QT is crazy because that's like the same amount of syllables. Don't fucking know. No, it's one more. Go back to Sweden. Okay, you've already lost your American value. You're ignoring our traditional American values of calling things big. Yeah. And shorting them. Wait, I should be the one who's tilted here.

I heard I, I heard I weighed in on the Ukraine war in negotiations last week. Definitely agree with that. And that's our show, guys. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much. Thanks very much. Bye.