Lemonade Stand - Who Has The Cards? | Ep. 063 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

On this week's show... DougDoug buys some colanders, Atrioc buys a hairdryer, and Aiden buys some plane tickets. 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: 063 Recorded on: May 19th, 2026 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 2:30 Before the Summit 6:12 China and Iran 11:19 Boeing Deal 23:00 China is Pushing for Taiwan 34:06 JetBlue Possibel Predatory Pricing 43:10 Insider Trading the Weather 46:44 Hantavirus updates 58:47 A Social Experiment 1:07:30 Trial of the Century is Over 1:13:47 Aiden Knows A Guy at Cisco 1:24:13 Aiden Corrections sorta kind of New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. #lemonadestand #dougdoug #atrioc #aiden Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

made the switch, so why not you? Try Odu for free at Odu.com. That's ODOO.com. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odu. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one fully integrated platform that makes your work easier, CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce and more. And the best part, O-DU replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try O-D-O-Frae at O-D-O-O-O-com. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-com. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lemonade's damn podcast. Aiden, what's with the glasses? It was a crazy week for me. What is that? I just flew back in on

the red eye. From where? I was at the summit all week. What's, yeah. That explains, wait. Do you even have the... You're using your Apple laptop. Did you throw away all the devices that you were gifted by China? Where's your wallet laptop? They're treasured. They're at home.

You were at the Donald Trump Jujim Pink Summit. Yes. Why were you... It was a crazy week. Well, you know, you know, I've... You got connects. I've got connects.

I do not know. You got friends in high places and low places. Yeah, and the summit winds down, right? So you start hanging out. You start having a couple beers. It's me and Wongooning. He's telling me all the shit that's going on.

the Paula Bureau right now. Who's a Wongooning? I'm sorry, I'm not as informed as well. Shit, you don't know. This doesn't know for that fucking who Wang Hooning. Obviously, but if you can explain to me what Wong Hooning is, that would help me

a lot. I'll tell you, I'm a lover of music. Dance. It's not about his job. It's about who he is. You know what I'm saying? You know, that's your problem, bro. You don't care. You're always about work. You don't care who people are. Okay, it seems like something you would actually do

if you heard that there's a big summit in China, you you fly there and hang out in bars and nightclubs trying to get drinks. That's what Jensen Wong did. You see like every 10 minutes from China. Yeah, but he was invited. I feel like it was just like a different video of him like eating street food and like mingling. Really?

Me and Jensen were invited. And we had a great time. It was just a crazy week. And I didn't get a lot of sleep. And I appreciate it. If you guys covered the summit, tell me what you know about the summit. If you were there,

I think your first had experience is going to be more helpful. I think it's more because I lived it. Because you expense the flight on the limited guard. And yet it seems to be. Also, like, I think it's probably better. It's like, I, you guys lead. I interject with what I know. All right.

Because I'm tired. That sounds really good. Captain America, Donald Trump went to China to hang out with Xi Jinping and the Chinese government for two days. Drama. Excitement. Sutterfuge. All of these happened during 18. flight probably, but the actual son was pretty uneventful.

Was pretty uneventful, to be honest. But there's, you know, a couple things that we found that we thought were particularly interesting. Starting with a little tiny country called Iran. That's, that is a way you could start it. I do think that is an important part. I want to give like a little, little fun part just to be real quick, because, uh, just to get into that, did you know that of the people invited, Margo Rubio, who by the way is

sporting the Maduro fan? here on Air Force One's way at China was previously been banned from China by the Chinese government for some comments he made. He's not allowed to go. But because he's one of Trump's invitees for this event,

they found a loophole. China legally changed his name so that he is not the Marco Rubio that is banned. But he is a different... Now, could you go ahead and pronounce both of those so I can hear the difference? Well, that's where I got an expert right here. This is a, I want you to go ahead and knock that out.

Oh. It's a tone thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tone. No, it's, it's tough because it's like, I don't even think you guys would be able to tell the difference. One of the guys you party with probably, Lou Pingu here, said the sanctions target Mr. Rubio's words and deeds when he was a U.S. senator. Yeah. So it's a different.

Yeah. But now that he's secretary of state, he's a different man. That's insanity. I thought that was just a funny, also interesting. You know how when I was there and we did the China episode? I kept talking about all like the AI slop videos I'd see or like the stuff about they were on war. There was a lot of those when I was there that would be like this.

It would be like AI videos of Trump. Probably doing something stupid. Mostly making fun of them before I saw. My understanding is for this event, they had all of those taken down. Like off the internet. Yeah, they like scrubbed them. Whoa. So it was like it was a, I don't know.

It was like a making fun of. free zone. It's funny like we clean up our cities. Yeah, they cleaned up the internet. They cleaned up San Francisco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could you like, before you go like, what was the, I think everybody thought that this was going to be like a big epic thing.

And we're talking about some of the notable takeaways. But what was the expectation of what might happen? What was the world where this is like an insanely high consequence meeting? Yeah, I think, I think there was two schools of thought going in. Oh, here's a thing. So if you flash back like the last time they had a real official meeting, it's nine years ago.

Nine years ago. That trip was crazy. They were a spring chicken. Look how young he was. Trump was a mere 71. You said he was 7 foot one here? Yeah. Wemby and Chris Ball.

And in that time frame, it was a, it was clear a power imbalance existed between American China that is just feeling, different in this one today. So one of the big takeaways from this one was that it felt like the first time American Chinese leaders have met kind of as equal. It was like they both had something on each other. There was both of a tip or tat. They clearly both wanted something. They were they were polite.

It was a, I mean, it was kind of uneventful, but that in itself is a story based on how previous ones went. Like there was because previous ones would have been a little more domineering from the US side. This was Trump first coming in with his like sort of aggressive China rhetoric and like, trade stuff is this first term. And like China was on the back foot, kind of backpedaling, giving some concessions. Yeah. So it was,

it's like a different tone. It was a big deal. The vibes on the ground were way different. You weren't there at either one. And I can't continue the charade. I mean, I think you do it a pretty good job so far. I appreciate that.

I appreciate that. Yeah. Keep me honest. Keep me honest. And then the other thing is, okay, I'll start with a round. I think that's one of the big stories.

Like going into this, a lot of people expected Trump to ask for help on Iran because there's only one country in the world. Maybe you count Russia. But outside of that, there's only one that has any sort of influence or leverage over the Iranian government. They're the only ones that can be like, yo, if we call, you got to take our call and you got to listen. Because they buy all of the oil, they ship all the stuff to Iran, they sell them weapons. They just, they're so entrenched that it's important. And China, this might be counter what people think. China has publicly said they want the straight to be open and they want Iran to not have a

nuclear weapon. So like ideally there's some aligned goals there. When asked about it, Trump said they asked him if he's going to talk about Iran there because it's a big deal. He said, we have a lot of things to discuss. I wouldn't say Iran is one of them, to be honest with you, because we have Iran very much under control. Yeah, no, that makes sense. But reports seem to indicate they did discuss Iran. Here's the thing. We'll never know the exact takeaway on the Chinese side. but the analysis that I was reading, even Aiden will not know this. Actually, you know what?

Tell me, what is the analysis of the Chinese side? Because why didn't they? Despite publicly saying, why wouldn't they... I didn't say anything. Because I want to let you go. You live in your fantasy land

where you don't know what I know. And if I were to say what I know, then I'd be in trouble. Okay, I see. You're sworn to secrecy. Yeah. Yeah. You get, you get...

Who name? Drake Steve. He starts telling you crazy shit. All right, well, you just nod and let me know if this aligns with what he said. Do like that you got their boots on the ground, but you're not allowed to tell us about it. The analysis seems to be that China has no interest

in helping their biggest geopolitical rival out of the stinker they've got themselves into. Despite in the long term, wanting the straight to be open and Iran not have a nuclear weapon, they don't really have an interest in being like, we're going to call in our favors, we're going to put pressure on. We're going to, we're just, why would we do that?

They just have no interest. And only to help out the U.S. who's the only one, I mean, everyone's losing, I guess China is losing because of the oil being lost from the straight, but they would rather take that, take that L for a more jail. Why do you have Jeffrey Epstein shaking Xi Jinping's hand on screen? This, that's going to be a tough.

Oh, you just have classes. Oh, that is not Xi Jinping. That is Jeffrey Epstein, though, as you can tell. This is, uh, this is, uh, this is, uh, uh, Iran and, uh, uh, uh, Chinese foreign minister meeting. Jeffrey Epstein is Iranian? And alive. And they actually had this meeting right before the Trump meeting.

And it was seen to be like a sign of China flexing that they could get this guy to meet anytime they were like, they were kind of like calling in the favor to show like we've got a line. Yeah, but Xi doesn't even show up. Who's that? Well, they're not going to send. Anyway, one thing about Iran, but this is Trump's tweet before this summit where he said, China's very happy that I'm permanently opening the straight of Hormuz.

Hasn't happened yet. This is back in April, but I'm sure it's happening. Right, right. He said, President Xi will give me a big fat hug when I get there in a few weeks because of his ability to do that. And while I didn't see everything, maybe there was some late night hugging that I didn't see about, but they didn't have any official big fat hug, unfortunately. So, yeah, that's the man.

There's other things I could say, but, you know, I just want to say, like, the idea was maybe Trump could call in a favor or, uh, trade a few things and get more help on Iran. And it doesn't seem to be the case. The idea is that that is still an unresolved issue and it's still kind of on the U.S.'s plate. Yeah, there was an interview with Rubio that I was actually just finishing before the episode.

And he's kind of hammering home this idea of like, he's clearly trying to walk, walk the line between giving China credit and maintaining this idea of their relationship while also saying that the U.S. is the only one willing to act. like the China's stances that they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon and we really like emphasize that and we believe in that but also we're the only ones willing to do anything about it. Right. And he's you there's this constant thing where I think you'll see it come up in the Taiwan stuff later is you're trying to appease this relationship with China

while simultaneously saying like but we will act against them that we have the ability to act against them at any given time. Yeah. There's a lot of lot of strategic ambiguity in these meetings where they all have to say, China does do it. They all have to say things that are like very open ended that allow for two different things to be true. So you're not pissing off your partner or ally or your strategic rival without backing down on things you agree with. I mean, Taiwan has a ton of things where they said. It was like really ships crossing at the night saying two different things, but making it seem like the same thing. Yeah. But you know, outside of Iran,

They discussed, they discussed trade. They discussed rare earths. And you had some stuff on the Boeing. Yeah. So amongst a number of things. Trump proudly declared that a deal had been made on, I think, soybeans, Boeing, the deal with Boeing,

and then one more thing as well, right? I think there was a third. Might have been beef or something. I think it was beef. Yeah. But you had gone in depth on the Boeing part of it. Deep. No, so.

And I know it's like I could tell you what it is because we were chopping it up. You talked about beef. With Boeing. About Boathe. No, actually I had very few beef combos. That's why it was hard to remember. It was mostly about Boeing.

So I'm going to see in a second if Doug had all. All right. So Boeing, like basically in terms of giant commercial aircraft companies, there are two. You got Boeing and you have Airbus. Airbus is actually winning now because of the big disaster that Boeing had in 2019, where 27-4-7-37-Max has crashed and killed a whole lot of people.

hilarious stuff that company has not been... That is a good stand-up opener. Doing, well, also... What's the deal with airline crashes? And if you're ever explaining that on like a podcast, don't say that that model of Boeing is the Dreamliner. Don't say that, because if the listeners of the podcast would correct you. Wait, would that happen to you?

No, I did make that mistake. Last time we talked about this. Well, it's some Boeing. It's not like they're off the hook. It's like you didn't pick the wrong company. This is 737 back. Yeah, it is in some ways. It's actually the company.

So what's interesting, Boeing has been not doing, so Airbus is the European consortium that is the competitor. And Boeing used to be the dominant one and is now not, although it's still those two companies basically dominating the larger commercial aircraft space. So Boeing in China, their history is a little strange because the last time, it was like a decade ago, 2017, the last time that China, ordered a bunch of planes from Boeing was when that nine year ago meeting, Trump went there and can basically as a, as like a favor, they agreed to buy 300 planes. Yeah. Which to be clear,

is like tens of billions of dollars. It's a lot, but it's like 300, 300 planes. And then 2019, there was that funny prank that Boeing pulled on all those innocent people. Right. And then, so China grounds the planes, all Boeing 737 maxes and stops ordering new stuff for four years. Then in 2024, they finally start to order a little bit. And then last year, 2025, China is because of the trade prank that Trump played on China, again, was like, we are not buying. They're like two YouTubers doing prank wars, dude. It's so fun. Yeah.

And it's like if hundreds of lives get lost to the mix. Yeah. Or billions of people who all have economic different levels of security. Yeah, it's awesome. So one thing Trump hoped to do out of this meeting was convince China to start buying a bunch of Boeing stuff again. Apparently they were expected to get convinced like 500. They said, we're going to buy 500 is what the Americans hoped. And instead, China is buying 200.

Trump said on TV that China would buy 200 in, quote, big aircraft. Boeing said it had reached a, quote, initial commitment for 200 aircraft. And China didn't give any comments. And then Trump said that Beijing might dramatically expand its initial commitments to 750 planes, although shocker provided no details. There's no real details about any of this. and Boeing stock dropped 4% on the news. So my question is why the fuck is Trump pushing this?

Why does this matter that much? It's a big deal for Boeing, but Boeing is a private company. This is not like a government thing. And so I was asking myself this and I found this interesting quote from Trump four months ago. So if you pull this up, Perry. So he's talking about his relationship with our military contractors. Here you go. Companies.

We have the best weapons in the world, but it takes too long to get them, including allies when allies want to buy them. They have to wait four years for a plane, five years for a helicopter. We're not letting that happen anymore. We're telling our defense contractors, you're gonna start building faster. You know, guy makes...

Now, hold on. I have a big problem with it. I'm the king, I have sold more Boeing's than any human being under it. They gave me award, salesman of the year. I said, what about salesmen of the, in the history of Boeing? I've sold more Boeing planes than any man in history

by four, probably over a thousand Over a thousand planes. So the president who have, and I should actually just a quick, you know, follow up of America, not of Boeing.

Yeah. Has been going around the world, like selling Boeing planes as these weird diplomatic things. China doesn't, it's not like he's selling them to Chinese companies. He sells them to China,

the government who then distributes it to their private companies. And so it's just very strange. I'm like, why? I, you know, maybe you know more. There's certainly the,

like, it's big and it's flash. you get to say America first. It's, you know, Boeing giant company creates a lot of jobs. Also, Trump has millions of dollars in Boeing stock that is being actively traded.

Like literally right now. Whoa. Everybody. I watched a good coffee zill last night where he lined up some Trump tweets with his stock purchase, which just got disclosed. And like he has a tweet

where he's literally saying the ticker of Palantir and how great of a company is right as he bought it and it dipped a little bit. It's like he's trying to. I mean, he really just, But what's funny is the amount he gained from that is he's a billionaire. He is a billionaire now.

He's kind of faked in the past. He is a billionaire. He made, I don't know, 350 grand. Like the fact that he cares enough to tweet to make that is he's really a hustler for every. Could be acquies on the bunk. On the Boeing thing, though, I can steal man it slightly because other presidents have done something similar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the idea I think is that the two industries, aircraft and autos are just strategically important because they can be

repurposed in times of war. You don't want to let those decline or fail. All the auto companies during World War II were repurposed into tanks and everything. Same with airplane. So you kind of want them to be thriving and if Boeing gets big orders, then you have this leading. America is one of the leaders. Although Boeing is kind of slipped and allowed Airbus, I think, in Europe. Yeah, Airbus. Yeah. And actually the interesting thing here as well. So, man, I'm blanking on the name, Comac, I think.

Yeah, the Chinese one? Yeah, Comac, yeah. So Comac is China's competitor. They started 2000. and they only started delivering planes that were in commercial service in 2023. So last year they sold or delivered like to be able to use 16 total planes versus 1,400, 14 to 1,500 that were done globally. So they're tiny right now, but that was founded by China with the explicit goal to stop the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing.

So I wouldn't be surprised as well because China obviously continues to grow. if part of the thing here is make sure Boeing gets a big foothold on China and Comac can't like grow into, you know, into that space. Yeah, it's tough though because the, you know, I looked at the chart, I wish I had it in front of me. I'm sorry I don't. But it's basically Boeing sales to China by year. So before any of this Trump stuff, it's like 800 planes a year, like tons.

Then the first Trump meeting happens. And I think they got a deal for, you said 700, 500, 500. 300. So it was like, because that's when the trade war started. And they did, they stopped buying bottling all. together. And then it goes down to 300 and that deal isn't even fully because of the crash and all is because of COVID. So like they just don't even fully finish that deal. Like it says 300 it was the headline number, but they didn't even do that. And then ever since then it's been

trickle down like 100 or nothing. This deal's back to 200. But we're like we're like getting these deals that are small fractions of what it was before this trade war started. Right. And less than the 500 that they wanted. I mean, I think it's it's a failure. Right. And it goes back to again like there's just there's as much dominance that America has. That's what I felt like looking at this is like you have three very specific industries not to say that these aren't wins for

people in these areas. For farmers to be able to sell soybeans to China is very important for them, right? But it feels like Trump comes into a conversation like this gets to walk away and be like, guys, we have this we made this amazing, huge

deal for Boeing planes. It's very showboating. as, see, we have this complex trade relationship that's like very one-sided and I'm getting wins for us. But in the grander context of the trade deficit that he talks about all the time and also the giant piece of leverage

they have over us through that trade relationship, it feels more like showmanship of like, look how I fight for you guys when it doesn't really have like a grander effect on that relationship. I think, I think that's the, that was the kind of the takeaway. that this, there was a very contentious meeting. Honestly, I was generally, decently impressed with how both sides said the right diplomatic things. And like,

even Xi could have been more like, if you wanted to, he could have like humiliated Trump on this day or been more like, you know, but he didn't. They were like, there was a genuine attempt to connect at least. But if you look at, you pull us up real quick, just like the cards Trump has. It feels like he has played his cards in all the previous meetings and is kind of running out. Like the tariffs got struck down. I'm sorry. Go back to that image. Yeah. What game are they playing? This is poker with no middle.

Okay. I want to just read. No middle. Trump has two cards, but she has five. That's a tough. And there's a huge Well, you don't remember. What you don't know about this is if you win with two seven at most casinos that pay you out a little bonus. So he's going all in on it. It's like he's

playing for the bonus. So in this game though, do we know that a two and a seven hand is bad? We do. We do know that. It is. Wow. It's always bad. It's such bad at this one.

I think the idea is that he's used tariffs. He used them as much as he possibly could. They got struck down and also China kind of punch back with the rare earth thing. And now that he can't do that again, you know, we can't cut off high tech, which is the last thing we have, which is chips. We can't really cut off planes or soybean or beat. Like what else are we going to, what's the lever? Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

I think China doesn't want to escalate and have another trade war. It's not good. They had, to be fair, really bad numbers just come out for retail sales, industrial growth. Like, they're in a bit of a slump. Hear me out. Yeah. League of Legends. Okay.

It's made in. We stop. We stop. We stop sending it to them. Tenson owns it. Tenson does own it. We own riot. Games is in America.

Right. So you put up like a shield. It's actually, Tenson does own, I think, 50, what, is it 50%? 50% of riot. And I think the U.S. government owns the other 50. There's something that play there. They must.

We've got to have something left. Because it feels like a CIA sciop to ruin minds. I do think the CIA is involved in League of Legends and the Chinese government and they're both trying to ruin our youth. And it's working. And that's a fact. It's working.

It's ruining our youth in slime Anthony Bruno. Most popular video games of China. Honor of Kings. Shit, that's not ours. PubG Mobile, that's not ours. That's by Tencent. Genshin Impact.

Do we own that? No. Dungeon and Fighter Origins, League of Legends, Dota 2, Crossfire. If you flashback a few years, we had Avengers Endgame, which is really popular in China.

If we could cut off... If we go back in time... What if we cut off the end of the MCUs and never saw how it ends? That would have been a bargaining chip. And then we could have said, we'll give you the end. We'll give you the end of Avengers.

For soybeans. If you buy some more Boeing planes. You buy some more boiling planes or some soybeans. Each Boeing that you buy will be filled with DVD copies of Avengers End game. So you can distribute it to the

popular. So yeah, I don't know that's the thing, but I think the main topic at least on China's side, 100% the main topic. I think they wanted to talk about the most was Taiwan. I think you look to do it a little bit between drinks. Yeah, I mean, she's spokesman. I mean, I had time. I had to look at it with binoculars.

I worked hard. I worked hard during the day. Okay. And I were kind of a work hard, play hard kind and I played hard in the evening. I appreciate that. Me and the Politburo fit a couple of them. I won't brag and say it was all of them. But she's spokesman. put out during the meetings going on.

The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations. If it is handled properly, the bilateral relationship will enjoy overall stability. Otherwise, the two countries will have clashes and even conflicts, putting the entire relationship in great jeopardy.

And this is, by the U.S.'s side, like, own account, this is the number one issue in all previous meetings with China. Taiwan, as a, as a, issue on the whole is always the thing that comes up the most, usually the thing that's talked about the most. And I wanted to pull up, uh, there's a long interview, uh, with Trump that Fox did in China and then that one that I mentioned by Rubio, where they both kind of answer questions around the topic. And they're trying to play this dance of, uh, nothing has changed,

but maybe we will act and maybe we'll sell them weapons, but also maybe we'll, maybe we'll we won't. Right. And finding a way to say that while saying nothing at all times. Every country in the world has their own little song and dance on Taiwan, finding a way to like say it in the right way. And I sent you a YouTube link. It just comes into the correct timestamp. So I want to watch like a minute of this interview with Trump. Did the people of Taiwan feel more or less secure after your meetings with President Xi? Neutral. No, neutral. Has the policy changed at all? No, nothing's No, nothing's changed. I will say this. I'm not looking to have somebody go independent and, you know, we're supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I'm not looking for that.

I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down. But you're waiting on approving billions of dollars of weapons for Taiwan. Is that moving forward? Well, I haven't approved it yet. We're going to see what happens. I may do it. I may not do it. Yeah, what's your hinge point? Well, I'm not going to say that, but I may do it, I may not do it. But we're not looking to have wars, and if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be okay with that, but we're not

looking to have somebody say, let's go independent because the United States is backing us. So President Xi probably liked that you haven't approved the weapons to Taiwan. I would say, like is maybe too a strong a word because he thinks I could do it with just the signing of my signature, unlike Biden who couldn't sign us.

dude okay that's all I wanted to get to it is really funny because through this whole interview it's amazing we do go to the Biden and El Classico so much in this interview

it does hear it Biden couldn't do it he couldn't sign it he couldn't have signed it but I think both him and Rubia are hammering the idea that like nothing has changed post this conversation

like nothing about the relationship between us and China and Taiwan has changed. But as you can imagine... I'll push back on that. Can I jump in? Or like, not on you, but on them.

Yeah. Okay, I just want to say because like I think from Rubio's point of view, nothing has changed. I think Rubio was really good in this event of maintaining message discipline.

He said that China will always try to push you or get concessions and you always say our stance is unchanged. That way you're not even answering. You're not giving a thing. But Trump can't do that. And so even in that interview right there, certain things he said, like,

we don't want to go 3,000 miles to fight a war. Like, he's saying things like, it's closer to them. We're not going to. And what it is doing is if Taiwan, who believes America is their ally and has some backing, is now scared. And they're thinking we might get, they might get the Ukraine treatment, where you pretend to be an ally for a long time. Then when times are tough, you don't get out.

And also that even the idea that Trump would renege on an already signed weapons deal because of what happened in this meeting is opening the door to China being way more, like seeing an opportunity of Trump. Because back to cards, turns out this is kind of the last huge card that Trump has that China wants something, which is that if Trump backs off visibly from Taiwan,

stop selling them weapons, that's very much in China's interest. They very much want that. And they're willing to trade stuff for that. Yeah. And Trump loves a deal, loves a trade. There's a couple other things in this. Because in the vein of what you're saying,

the president of Taiwan, Lai Ching-Tha, I think, he saw this and sees what Trump says during and after the meetings. And he's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold up. You guys already agreed to this. This is a security commitment based on laws

that we both share. And Taiwan will not be sacrificed or traded and will not give up its free way of life under pressure, insisting that like this, this agreement has to go through. And he admitted, like, quote, said they were very concerned

about the contents of the meeting that were, that was had. While also saying that Taiwan's not going to do anything to, like, provoke or start a conflict, seemingly in reply to the idea that Trump is saying, like, nobody go and say anything about independence now. Right, right. You know, they're not trying to start anything.

And then I think this also comes in, because a huge chunk of this interview, Trump goes back and starts complaining that Taiwan hasn't made hard enough of a commitment to chip development in the United States. And basically saying like a huge part of what they need to do, better for everybody,

you need to start developing chips in the U.S. and not in just your country. And it was a mistake of previous presidents to allow, quote, Taiwan to steal chip developing technology and have it be so centered in their country. And it's part of the reason why Intel has fallen so far behind. This is, you know, I think. It's funny because if you're Taiwanese and you hear that, the obvious, because Trump is not that subtle. The obvious implication is get this

chip stuff out of Taiwan so that we can sacrifice this pawn. Exactly. It's not, once that tech is out, I have no reason to care. And so like, I don't know, it's very frustrating as someone who values America. Like the way he's treated all of our. Europe and it's very frustrating to me, but Taiwan is one of them and it's like That's why I was thinking is like if you're listening to this, you have to be so mad because the guy is basically

demanding that you give up the last significant piece of leverage you really have over keeping the protection as is. And it's already so ambiguous to begin with. Yeah, and you know, I mean, this was a strategic plan from Taiwan. I was reading something recently about the

because the people who still run the chip industry are like, in their 70s now, they're pretty old. And they've, like, in their generation, they went from way, way, way behind Intel, nothing. And they poured government money and time and influence into this to make that their linchpin. This is the golden jewel of Taiwan. We can make the best chips in the world.

And now they're kind of reaping the rewards. Taiwan GDP growth just broke like a record or something. Literally because all of the money and all the tech companies in the world is flowing in to Taiwan right now because of the AI boom. They are one of the biggest beneficiaries. And, yeah, I don't know.

I don't know what it was. But for a developed economy, it was one of the biggest GDP prints in a long time. 13%? Yeah. Oh my God. 13% is crazy. You know,

like China does five America's like two right now. It's like 13% for a big developed economy. It's a big year for them, you know? Like they've got that. You were there. Alex Honnold climbs. I pay 101. And Mark Rober commented it.

Not sure why that happened. That's the big three. So like they are riding high, but there's Trump thing might have gone with the dumps. I want to stole Mark Rover from. We want to... That is a red line. We want to create a marker over here in America.

If the next glitter bomb video is in Taipei, I'll take up arms. And I won't sell them arms. Anyway, I mean, those were like kind of the main things. I don't know if you guys have any minor stories. I thought, I will say like overall, it could have gone way worse. It could have been way more contentious.

Last thing I'll say, there's a book called Thucydides Trap that I really like by Graham Allison. And it's about how it looked at all the times in history when there was a, an established dominant power and then a rising power based off Athens and Sparta

and like, I don't know the percentage, but like 91% of the time over 60 examples, there was a conflict, there was a fight. And the only times that what didn't was like America and UK and there's a couple examples. And Xi Jinping

specifically referenced this book in conversation. He specifically said it to Trump and we have to avoid the city's trap. I thought that was interesting. I don't think Trump has read it. I'm not sure it's part of this. But I think the idea that like, hey,

a conflict between America and China that gets hot would be so bad for everybody. Let's keep this in mind and let's avoid it. And this meeting seemed generally in that direction. So it's not a horrible idea. I think it's, I think Trump is kind of bumbley. Aiden got drinks with Thucydides, I think. I think you were a big part of a,

I kept things cool this year. You heard Trump? He said he wants China to say cool. Taiwan to say cool. Yeah. You're chill. I was keeping it together. Meeting to wear sunglasses does not imply you kept it together, by the way.

I was keeping cool. Doug. And I wanted to end this because we talked, you brought this point up a while ago. The common formula of the headline, China has done this thing. But at what cost? Oh yeah.

At what cost? And I thought it was funny. As I was going through stuff to read about the summit, there was a Wall Street Journal article that is literally titled, Xi Jinping is now the world leader he wanted to be, but it has come at a cost. Do they say what the cost is?

Nope. I haven't opened it. I just literally took the headline and I'll fully admit that. That's the kind of hard hitting. Yeah, that's the hard ending. I didn't read that. I didn't read that one. When you're 15 long, that one's deep.

I have to cop to when I didn't read the article. I saw the headline and I just thought it was funny. No, it is funny. And that is it. It's funny because they should at least find a synonym. They always say that line. But there's a challenge. You know, just makes it up.

It's always that one cost. Yeah, I'm sure there are costs. There's always a challenge to be a Marvel villain, which is like, you know, mostly one-sided. But there's one interesting thing that makes them slightly sympathetic. They always want that. Support for this show comes from Odu. Running a business is hard enough. So why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other?

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That's O'DOO.com. Hassan Piker has blown up in recent years. After the 2024 election, the popular leftist twidst streamer became a go-to voice for the Democratic Party. But Pikers glow up has angered a section of Democrats who are growing louder in voice. Hassan Piker is anti-American. He is bigoted. He's anti-Semitic.

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

I don't think this helps Republicans at all. I think, as a matter of fact, Third Way's brand of politics has helped Republicans. Their attitude has been to constantly concede on culture or issues to the Republican party and never focus on economic populism. I'm Instead Hearnton, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Talked a little about planes. But what about the airlines?

What have they been up to? And there was a recent thing that came up. It was in April. JetBlue is potentially being sued in a class action lawsuit for predatory pricing practices. So you may remember we talked a while ago to Lena Kahn about the threat of companies utilizing private information. We grilled her. I mean, we took her to the fire, dude. Okay, when we raked Elena Kahn over the Kohl's, and she was, and she didn't even want to be there.

She hated that interview because of how hard hit on her. She was in shambles, hard and feather. She cried at the end of that interview. Let me come up, but she was crying. Surprise the New York Times input that. No, but she brought up about the potential pricing practices of companies using private data as an example. Say they know, like an airline knows that you're going to a funeral. And they increase the price of a ticket because they have that information to take advantage.

This idea, yeah. Incredibly dystopian. So in April, a guy tweets at JetBlue. A $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy. I'm just trying to make it to a funeral. JetBlue on Twitter responds, their customer service rep responds and says, clearing your cash and cookies

or booking with an incognito might work. Incognito window might work. We're sorry for your loss. Seemingly, a public acknowledgement that they do indeed participate in his pricing practice, which immediately there is an uproar about. Like the customer service tweet itself

goes a little viral on Twitter through that period of time. I think I actually saw it when this happened. And a few days later, not necessarily the person that made that tweet, but a person files a class action lawsuit that is yet to be approved or cleared by a judge that JetBlue is taking these sort of tactics.

And I think if you're tapped into the idea of this existing, like, you may, if you watch that Lena Con interview, for instance, you're like prepped. for this to be a problem. Yeah. But JetBlue has like outright denied that they do this as well as other airlines. And JetBlue is just saying, guys, like the customer service rep like just didn't know what

they're talking about. And we don't collect this type of information. This is just how ticket prices work like when other seats get booked. Like ticket prices can change within short periods of time based on availability of a flight. And to be fair, as I looked into this, there is no significant. data or like pattern available, at least for now, that they actually have done this. Like there isn't, uh, there's plenty of other like standard reasons why fares do go up within that period of time. There's no like pattern of this behavior and the lawsuit hasn't

been approved. Uh, look, it is fully possible that they're not actually doing this specific behavior. Yeah. I'm not saying airlines are good guys. It's just that I saw, there was like that more per union video where they were talking about how companies like Instacart specifically said they don't do algorithm pricing. And so they did an experiment where they actually got hundreds of phones, hundreds of drivers. And they were different prices on the groceries. And so like they're, I mean, they can lie. Of course. Until there's like an experiment or or an idea that like they have to really do the calculus. Is this going to be investigated by the government? Are we going to get a fine bigger than what we gain? If they're not going to do that, then,

And the smartest move is to lie and then do some form of it. So I don't know. I'm not saying it as an happening. I am saying that like we need to start thinking of a plan if it does happen where you can fake to be my alive grandma. Oh yeah. So if I'm going to her funeral, I can like send you an email or something or like publicly buy you a gift on Amazon to the cookie tracks. I'm ready. Anytime you have to debate me.

Yeah. You just keep writing into the description. She's really not that fun to hang out with. I barely even want to go. debating whether this is going to be fun at all. Just kind of seeing if... Just kind of seeing... It shows $200, then you're like,

actually, I think I'm staying home that weekend. The price checks down. Yeah, I think I'm fully... I'm fully with the idea that airlines may be doing this or will attempt to do it down the line. It... From, like, right now,

there isn't this specific paper trail of like this being true. in this moment. I'll give me an example. I just want to say because when I worked in marketing and Nvidia, we would have to do social media ad buys on like meta.

Yeah. Facebook. And there is a shocking amount you can tell about a person without tracking the things you think they're tracking. Like just by, you know,

the famous example is like they can often know you're pregnant without tracking. You know what I'm saying? Wasn't this a thing? this was with Target, right? Target had put together like a package

of recommended items about to their customer that they assumed were pregnant from other things they had bought and they didn't even know yet. And then they sued Target for that, I think? I'm not sure if anyone. But yeah, I mean, the idea is like just by just by

the information that you already do give, they can they can correctly and legally say, oh, we don't track this, this and this. But because those things correlate so well with all the data points they have, they can find truths about you. So this isn't one to one, but it did make me think of,

you know how people talk about how their phones listen and record them all the time? And like, oh, I was just talking about this type of dog food and then like my phone fed me an ad for it like an hour later. And the reality of that is mostly that, no, your phone doesn't listen to you. Yeah, you're right. They don't do that. They don't really do that.

There's an asterisk on that. But what they do do is collect so much of your browsing data that they can predict the type of add to that degree of certainty anyway. Right. Without listening to you. You're not a unique snowflake. There are people who have 98% of the same details as you and they saw the same Instagram post or heard the same news story or whatever

that made them search the same thing. And so it's like they know what you're going to do almost based on the people just like you. There's so people doing the same thing. So yeah, I think that's what most of like the, oh, it's listening to me is from. Some guys saw the same. That's why whenever I'm like driving on the freeway,

sometimes I'll just like, screech off just to throw them off. Like I want to be unpredictable and unknowable. The handler for Doug at meta is like, fuck, where do you go? He's breaking containment. I wanted to test. This is not, you know,

this is not an infallible experiment by any means. I buy a thousand callenders every weekend. I want his screened out. I have no fucking idea what I'm up to. It's fucking everyone else's recommendations because they also buy like a mug and it's like, you want a colander, right? This is like when I sold my bestselling book, Doug, a Doug Doug story. And then people kept buying it.

We tried to, we tried to buy it alongside Loub. So it would show up as recommended on Amazon. And then one guy bought it alongside House of Leaves. So it's like recommended alongside House of Leaves all the time. the last thing I wanted to try because I'm supposed to fly JetBlue later this year. I'm like... For a funeral?

For a funeral? For a wedding. You're going for a funeral. You have to be there for that wedding? For a wedding, JetBlue, that I have to go to. If I don't go to this wedding, my girlfriend will be very upset with me, Jack Blue. Unless it's your... Don't make it expensive so I say I can't go, JetBlue. You're rubbing his hands, upping the hit in the up button on the price. No, I'm just kidding. It should be a fun... Wait, I got an airline story.

Oh, no, I just wanted to say, I tried. I tried like three different, three different browsers, three different devices, like on, and am I logged into Google? Am I not logged into Google? Checking the, the same prices of two sets of jet blue flights I have later in the year to see if like, maybe they're fucking me. It's all the same price across everything.

This is just like a social media intern who just doesn't understand how the browser work, which kicked off this huge class action? I don't think it was that. I think it could, like, or was there other pieces? This could be the actual revelation of JetBlue doing this. We don't know yet, right?

It could be that. Two, it could be an employee that had heard about this type of pricing tactic thinks they're too low on the chain to actually know, but thinks JetBlue does this and recommends to that person that they do this in order to fix the problem. Or they're just throwing it out there

because they don't know how any of this works. There's a bunch of different possibilities. But yeah, you got another airline story. I got different airline story. This one's a little bit fun, all right? although I guess maybe not. We'll see. You know how people have been finding different quirky fun ways

to insider trade using the new polymarket and Kalshi prediction markets. They've become such a hot topic. Well, a guy did one that was so crazy that I have to give them props, even though I don't like that trend. There is a bet every single day on what the temperature will be in like France,

for example, in different countries. And this guy found out that the way that is measured is by a sensor at the airport. And so he, in this video, so you can pull this up, took a hairdryer, heated up the sensor, and then took the outside long shot bet

that it would be really hot that day, even though it wouldn't, and made 34,000 pounds or 34,000 euro. Is that illegal? Are there laws that say you can't go heat up the temperature sensor? I don't know. I don't know. Up to this point of human history,

why would you go use a hairdryer on the temperature sensor? Why would they put it? It's an airbrush. There's no rule against it. You know when I was riding the Amtrak for the first time in a long time and they have these really long extended announcements

about what you can and cannot do in the cars and they get really specific. So you start to wonder, it's like, oh, people just, did that at some point. And no, and now in the future, there's going to be a new sign up on the fence that says, no blowing hair dryers or other items into, to affect temperature readings. I mean, their solution to this problem, by the way, was just to move it to a different

airport, so I'm quite sure someone's going to try it again. Okay, I haven't thought about this because the real version of me, the like 90% of it version of me is like this is a scourge on our society. This needs to be policed at the very least. Like you can't, you cannot allow these things. But then the other 10% of me is like, dude, if you're the fucking moron betting on this shit,

just, I fucking applause to that guy for just, for just doing it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think about that for a lot of things. There's so many things where I used to be like, guys, we don't have to stop this.

And now I'm like, if you're falling for this still, if you're still by, like if you're in 2026, still being like, well, this NFT is a good idea. Yeah, which is that, that mentality, for regulation is just untenable. Like you can't, you can't have that mentality and have like a society.

But I do, part of me still does feel that way. Because it feels like how, you know, if you regulate, if you're stupid enough to still fall for some of these things, you can't regulate it enough. There's not enough rules that'll save you. The insider trading is so prevalent on these platforms that big stock trading firms like Jane Street and all these, you know, the big hedge funds are now scraping polymarket to find consistent winners and then front running their bets on much bigger.

Like, because they're making pennies compared to what you can make on the stock market if you knew some truths about the Iraq war or missile. So they're analyzing polymarketing to find people who clearly have insider knowledge. And then they're wrong, what's the bigger bet we can make off this? Wow. Oh, that's so awful and fascinating. I know. It's really fascinating.

It's a wild place, the world we live in. Speaking of which, a lot of this wildness happened after COVID. And that was a really fun time for us as dreams. And so now I'm hoping, I've always been hoping. Yeah. When's the next pandemic coming around? Okay. And you've been falling up.

Yes. God. All right. So, yeah, 2020, there's this pretty funny prank on the world. And so you might have heard. You had that bat, right? You ate that bat or that pangling. is a pain, yeah, a pangling.

You were on your other China trip. On my other China trip. You were smoking a little weed. And you ate it in a lab, if I remember. No, a lot of people think it was in a lab, but I just went to the market about the pangling. I just bought a panglin. And then I cooked.

I cooked it, but not well enough. You didn't bring it to a bottle. A lot of time in China last decade, actually. A lot of people don't know that. You're the forest gum of China, but shit has happened around you. And then I flew straight to Italy. And then Tom Hanks's house,

They get up with Tom Hance. And it kicked everything off. All right. Now, fingers crossed because this one, this new, fun version of a new virus, came from South America. Tell me you have not gone there recently. No, no, just China. You were talking about your Venezuelan friends recently, haven't been visiting.

No, it's a phone calls. Okay, okay, okay. Phone calls. All right, so, Hanta virus. You might have heard of it. This is a, I guess, like very small outbreak that is happening of a rare disease. And I think it's kind of bringing up some of the same types of fears about pandemic stuff because we're all fresh off of a horrific pandemic. So this is a disease that comes from rodents.

Does not normally affect humans, but some rare strains can. Basically, it's like you get the flu symptoms that are bad and then it can affect your lungs or kidneys and kill you. It can be pretty rough. There's no treatment vaccine. The kind of scary part is it's one to six weeks incubation period, meaning by the time you get it versus showing symptoms, it's one to six. weeks, which is a long time, which means you might have it and be contagious without knowing it. But we don't know how it spreads. So you might, if you've heard about this before this point, it's because this outbreak happened on a cruise ship, like very recently. The Northern Lion Super

Cruise. Yeah. This is over the past like two-ish, like two-ish weeks, couple-ish weeks. And it's spread on this cruise ship, but we don't know how it because normally these things spread by basically rat or rodent droppings. So if you're like, if you're like snorting lines of rat urine, like that could get you hantavirus. You're probably not going to get it if you aren't like directly exposed to like rodent droppings and you're inhaling them in small spaces. So this is like the one strain. It's called the Andes strain that can spread between people of hanta viruses. And so this, we've known about this for a while. This isn't like out of nowhere, this particular thing that is spreading on this cruise ship. Um, so, but it's, it's infrequent enough

and it's small enough, and it hasn't really been a big deal before that we don't know how it's transmitted. Well, rat droppings are cool now. Everyone's been like, oh, people have been. It's like what the kids are doing. If you go. The TikTok's on it, bro. Like I took NyQuil, you know, in high school to try to get to try to hallucinate kids and how they're doing rat. We're calling it. We're calling it. You go to the club. You get a little bag of it drops. You have yourself a night, bro. You were doing it with Jensen Wong in China, bro. Don't know like you above it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it was pure. It was pure. It was there was. It was the thing. It was the one. It was it was a good stuff. It was pure. You think Jensen's getting bad shit?

Yeah, he's doing. He's cool out. Every story we've talked about today, you were actually involved in the reason. It's so funny if we interview Jetson Huang like a year for now. We cut to this clip. Are the allegations true? New York Times. They grilled

him about his rat dropping usage. Jensen, like hundreds of thousands of people listen. It's crazy. Perry, if you pull this up, here's a little article from, or image, excuse me, from Bloomberg showing the map. So basically this leaves from South America. The idea is probably a couple people got onto this cruise ship, which only had 150 people, it's small, but got onto this ship, they probably spread it to some degree it's spread. So while this all might sound scary, you might heard of hauntavirus and all this stuff,

it's not like a huge deal, to be honest. So here's what we do know. Three people have died in total. It's kind of bad if you get it. There's been 13 total cases, and at this point, the cruise ship is like done, people have disseminated, but they're under the, under watch, basically, because it's in a couple different countries now, but people are quarantining and whatnot. Uh, world health organization and CDC says the risk is super low. European health officials are saying this isn't showing like it's going to mutate or anything. It's not, which is what would make it more contagious, right? That's the thing with COVID. It keeps mutating to become a new thing that spreads. Um, but that does not appear to be happening here according to the European CDC. They've already sequenced the genome.

And I think, really, fortunately, the result of this, you might have heard about this, been a little freaked out like I was until this morning. It's like, basically seems fine. The two things to be concerned about. One is just, there is a long incubation period. So there's a world where this suddenly starts spreading, but it seems to just not be nearly as scary.

Is there not a confirmation of like, to what amount of that incubation period you're contagious at all? We don't even know how it transmits. We know very little about it. Okay. So that is the part that you might be afraid. of, but of the information that is now rapidly developing, like, uh, like the CDC, like said this was an emergency or took emergency actions immediately, but they're saying it's contained.

They're saying it's fine. And if you, if you really need, like comfort, take a look, take a look at this polymarket poll, of which a hauntavirus pandemic in 2026, only 6% chance. So I really see no concern at all. I think the main story here, honestly, is that people are freaked out because of COVID and. distrust of government. So that even though the CDC and the who are both like, this is good, we've got it under control, we're just going to keep it careful. Like, we don't have a CDC director, permanent one anymore. And we haven't for a long time. People generally are distrusting the government. So I think this is less of a real serious concern for a pandemic right

now. All the signs point to this will be contained, even though it sounded kind of scary. I think it just is tough because like last, I mean, I agree with you. From what I saw, it doesn't seem to be the COVID level. But people said this shit. Like, I remember all the shit. I remember Elon Musk saying no new cases by April. I remember seeing all this stuff downplaying it. Or it's contained to overseas.

There's only a few cases in America or whatever. It was just became bigger. And every step of the way, people were downplaying until Tom Hanks got it. And then it was like this big deal. I'm just calling a homie. I've got a friend. You got a friend? Doctor studies infectious disease. Oh, he plays melee though.

Especially, no. Oh, I thought you had a melee. No, no, no, no. He's just a doctor. This is what I talked to for vaccines, right? Home? You connect to me with him for vaccines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we talked.

Same guy. Yeah, about vaccine stuff. And he, he, we had an interesting conversation, not about a hauntavirus, but about something similar a long time ago where he was talking about this, uh, there's a really high percentage chance that if you do get it, you die. And the, uh, question in medicine of how effective is it actually for a virus to have a virus to have a really high percentage chance of killing you. Because if the virus kills like 40, 50% of the people it infects,

it lowers the chances of it spreading. Or that's the argument is that it's not actually good for the virus's like life in the long run. I mean, maybe I'm speaking out of my butthole here, but they don't want to kill the host at all because then they die, right? And the reason you have viruses killing us in the first place is because they come from animals. You know what I'm saying? They're not supposed to be an arm body.

Well, some of them do it for the greatest joy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I haven't... And they've been on social media. I haven't had a conversation. How hot the other viruses are? Pathogens are. Wait. Wait.

Viruses are the bottom of the social standing and like the... And they want to move up in the world and killing is how they do that. I think knowledge on this topic is something that I maybe have the least to contribute. I think I want to...

I actually want to call... I call him about this because I haven't had a chance to speak with him about it and get his... We should do a costume of us where we dress up as doctors. We give our takes, Steve. Yeah, we give our takes on medicine.

Well, last week's episode was pretty scientific, so I think we got, we have a process. Locked down. Yeah, look, you're right. Like, this could get bigger. It is a thing that is still technically scary right now. And I think primarily because we're all like a little scarred from this recent thing.

But public health officials, including the CDC of Europe and of America, are both saying, we are monitoring this closely, but this does not appear to have the same kind of like particularly scary property. So it is obviously possible. But I think the main question here is like in the, in that horrible nightmare scenario where it happens,

would people go back to playing among us or swap to peak, which is the better game. Yeah, I mean, if this happens, if you tell me that, yeah, you're seeing the case pick up, I'm investing in friend slop games. I'm putting so much money. I'm taking my entire net worth. Oh, and I'm dumping it on that because-

Get to work two's coming out real quick. Yeah. I'm gonna shovel wear that shit out, dude. I'm gonna re-skinned it. Okay, this is more an open question because I literally don't remember. I get your brief pushback

of like people were downplaying the seriousness of COVID. Yeah. But I don't feel like, am I crazy? I don't feel like institution, like health institutions downplayed it. I feel like figures and people

who had like more vested interests or an obvious lack of knowledge. But it was like, maybe I'm crazy. This is years ago. I literally do not remember. I'm trying to remember. No, I don't, I'm not sure.

I remember, like, I remember news, basically. I remember news telling me that it was contained and not a big deal, but I'm not sure if they were quoting. Remember what, like, our best source of news were podcasts, and they would just like have random doctors on who would be like, this is what we're seeing here. It'd be invalidated in like three days. Yeah, it was crazy.

This thing's been going on for like a month and a half, by the way. So this isn't like the last week. It's becoming a panic. It's basically a thing. thing you might have heard about seemingly right now, everybody's in quarantine and we're, you know, knock on wood, okay. I feel like grok will tell me whether it's a good point.

Wait, what else? Oh, there's a big, Ebola outbreak too. Geez, Louise. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about, I was thinking about getting that right. Well, trying it out. Yeah. Well, you know, I'm a world traveler.

You're a traveler, and you've always been jealous of those that had Ebola because it was like something you never got to do. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm like, often, you often said that. was, who wrote that story about the, the fig tree, plat?

Right? What? Nobody knows what you're having a stroke. The fig tree, flat? Is it Olivia? Is it Olivia? Sylvia Plath? Sylvia, Sylvia?

I don't know. Figg. Sylvia Plath. My bad. It's Sylvia Plath. I don't know why. Is Sylvia Platt? Are you saying Oliver Platt?

The story of the fig tree where you look at, like, it's a, it's this tree. it has all your lives at the end of every fig is a different version of your life. And the one with Ebola, it's like, I, I want to experience that too. Shit, let's keep all that in. Stick her head in the oven or something. Shout out to Sylvia.

What you got? What you got? What you got going on in there? I want to stewing this for a bit. I really love to hear more of your thoughts on poets. I want out. I want out. I don't think.

think we should move on until we've heard everything you got to say about Sylvia Plath. The U.S. and Iran say they've agreed on terms to end the war and reopen the straight of Hormuz. You already see oil prices from a high of $126 a barrel down to about $80 a barrel today. That's a lot of progress. The war, of course, drove up the price of gas and other essentials and has led to some ugly polling for President Trump. 61% of adults polled by NPR PBS enmerist disapprove of his handling. of the economy. His handling in a certain light makes sense. His priority was preventing Iran from

getting nukes, but Trump's messaging was unusual, unusual for a president. Last month, the reporter asked Trump, to what extent was he thinking about Americans' finances when he negotiated with Iran? I don't think about American financial situation. I don't think about anybody. What's he doing coming up on today, explained from Vox? I actually have a story that, uh, I think Mr. A. A.I. I find interesting. Okay, let's pull us up. I thought this was...

I don't have you heard. There's a little thump at the bottom of the table just now. Okay, I want to pull this up. This is a social experiment that I found to be quite funny and kind of, I don't know, a twisted mirror up to society.

Yeah. The Joker and Chuck with dark and twisted mind. Some people want to watch the world burn. Yeah. This guy had an idea. What if I take an actual Monet painting that is not well known and tell everyone it's AI, how will they react? And so we uploaded this. I generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI. Please describe it in much detail as possible. What makes this inferior to a real Monet painting? That is a that is a catnip prompt for people who are really, really anti-AI. Oh, he marks it as made with AI on Twitter. Wow. He marked it as made with AI. Anyway, this is real. And the real. And the real.

Rage bait was, was well done. So I have some examples here. And again, knowing it's a real Monet, reading some of these, it's Monet-ish, yes, and certainly pretty. But at the risk of sounding pretentious, it would IMO not hold up next to the real thing. The first time I saw Monet's paintings up close,

it was astonishing. The brushstrokes here aren't as precise. There's all nagging Monet. Yeah. There's a certain harshness, no soft blending of colors. It's all borked nonsense with no sense of place. No friends.

just colors. There's no focal point. You know, just it's garbage. Brushstrokes don't feel Monet. You know, people going on and on and on. I will say there are some real fucking art chads out there who actually know their shit. And they were like, wait a minute.

This is this a real? I mean, is this detail from an actual late Monet? You can tell the brushstrokes are super similar. And since the, you know, there's a couple people that had like, I'm still getting out. let's see, disagree with people saying it lacks depth. There's a clear plan with the lily pads. Paint texture looks believable as a physical object.

It's not a top tier Monet, but it's a very credible Monet, which is probably true. There's some people that have the knowledge to figure it out, but I think this just goes back to the idea that, you know, I think we all have said many of the problems of generative AI, but the one argument that's always annoyed me is the one about like the hands or, you know, there's too many teeth.

All the ideas are like, of course they're going to fix that in two seconds. And I think this puts a lens up to that of people just trying to downplay something basically fictionally, just making up things of why it's so shit once they know it's AI. It's more of a feeling than it is like the actual measurable impact of it. I mean, we're pretty much there, right? Where you can't tell the difference. This is another indication of that, but like in a weird reverse thing. Like obviously plenty of photos and videos and what's not. You can still tell. But man, it's so fucking hard. Like it's insane. I heard an AI, this is going to sound crazy,

but I heard an AI Drake song, and I also listened to all three of his new Drake albums, and the AI song was probably better. You listen to all three? Yeah, it's on stream. We were kind of roasting it. All three? We were kind of roasting it.

And I was like, damn, this album's kind of boring. And then I heard a song, I didn't know his AITI heard. I was like, that was going to get it and turn out of the beat. So I don't know. It's a weird time. I do think once you know it's AI, I have a similar feelings of some of these people where once I know I just lose interest,

it's not as interesting or fun. to enjoy. Yeah. But the idea that you can measurably see the difference seems to be declining day by day. I mean, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, this is more, I think this is a classic exercise and just tricking people who have conviction about things they hate but don't actually know anything. Do you know what I mean?

Exactly. This is like when you can do this where you're like, doesn't it suck that Biden did this? And then the person's like, yeah, I fucking hate Biden. And then you're like, yeah, Trump did that. Gotcha. Like, it's like an exercise in, an exercise in like owning people that I think is, like, of course this was going to happen.

Did you need to do it? That's how, that's a little bit of how I feel about it. I don't, I, yeah, I don't know. I guess I would like people to have, because if you stick to this line of argument, you're going to get more frustrated and angry as the quality gets better. But if you have a more principal warrior like, hey,

I don't like generative AI on his purpose, on his service. At least then you can, you know what I'm saying? I don't think this, this exercise he's doing, doesn't really like, I don't think this shifts the needle on people having more principled arguments about this. I think this is for him to feel good. Maybe. And for us to laugh.

Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I agree. This feels like a funny roast. But then, actually, here, some good resources I found that I think are about if you want to understand maybe some of the downsides of AI art beyond just, oh, it looks bad, or it's going to take jobs. Brandon Sanderson, who writes the Cosmere series books, he has a video called, if you just search Brandon Sanderson, AI Art Bad, it'll probably come up. It was like a couple months ago. And basically his argument is the creative process requires you to go through things,

and it is not about the destination. And if you just kind of get to the destination, then you're ultimately not really creating anything at all. And then as well as... That's what I think that what you're saying, the principled outlook of, oh, I'm not interested in this AI piece of art, not because it doesn't have some facet of being interesting, but because it wasn't made by a human,

which kind of just excludes what the point of art is. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, yeah. I think if more people are on that line of thought, there's more progress being made than everyone kind of coping every time a new one comes out. Yeah, I agree with that.

I find that to be like a, just twink me off. If you listening, you want to feel like you have more of a meaty argument for why you don't want AI art to exist, even if it ends up being as good as Monet or whatever the standard ends up being. We are art by Brandon Sanderson

as a keynote he gave recently. And then a video I really liked was Suno AI Music in the Bad Future by Adam Neely. Very long video about AI music. whereas Brandon Sanderson's is more about AI art broadly. But I think both of them talk a lot about how, I think with generative art and music, there's much more of a sense of it,

like harming the actual creative process rather than being a tool to assist your creative process. It's fundamentally ruining what you are doing as a creative person, which I think is different from a lot of other fields where like if it speeds up doctors discovering the medicine, I think that feels different than the argument around AI and creativity,

where there isn't an answer, and the point is for you to express yourself, and that is being lost. So I think there's great arguments against me. And humans enjoy the process in those situations. Well, I wouldn't say that. Really? Well, of making music?

Let me rephrase that. Yes and no. Making shit is hard, as you know. And I think it's, you know, everybody who's made stuff realizes, like, oh, a lot of this is brutal and frustrating and hard and difficult. And that's why I think it's so appealing

to have a tool like this that could be like, I'm struggling with the baseline of my music. I'm just going to have it right all that and the lyrics and whatever. or I'm going to have it write the outline of my book or do the background imagery for my game or whatever it is.

So I think it's, I think the temptation to lose those like, those pieces of frustration is what is, where it's really, it's a tough one. It's a balancing act. For example, the one you just said about background and game

where it like, you do a pattern and it just fills in all the rest so you can, yeah, no. It's like, it's tough because that, that could help an indie game studio

have a game look at a higher quality than it was able to do, before. I could, it could. Yeah, yeah. There's things you could do, but, you know, the example I just felt was there was a new story about the number one song on iTunes being from an AI generated artist. And I listened to it.

And I hated it. I hated it. I just hated it. I just thought it was really, really bad. And it made me upset. And, um, but I like that, I Drake songs. It's not like, it's about the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it just made me realize that, like, there's nothing stopping. You know, I think what I hated more than that was that they made a ton of money off. I was like, I didn't care when it wasn't someone making money. When I was like, This guy's, there's now human artists lower on this list. I think it made me, it made me more viscerally upset. Do you think AI Drake wins the beef? I could do much worse.

You did a fall of AI Drake versus A. Kendrick beef. You see, they can keep the keep going forever if they just keep generating AI songs. Because AI Drake isn't a pedophile. So that's true. That goes a long way. No, that's what your prompt is.

That's true. You have no story? Yeah. The trial of the century. Oh, yeah. Update. Elon lost. Many are calling it the trial of the century, especially us.

Yeah. Most it's clickable. We call it a trial of century. I don't think anybody's calling it. Trial of the century. A lot of notable media. Per line has been. Okay.

So we talked about it two weeks ago. We did, we did get a result. Elon lost. So I think you step back. The fundamental question was not just like which one of these guys has bigger dicks. It was more of like, okay, there's three real questions. Was there a breach of charitable trust? Like, did Open AI violate agreement to use Elon Musk donations for charitable purposes? And did he like co-op? Did they co-op that into their own profitable, you know,

enriching themselves? And that's really the crux of it is what they were trying to argue. Open AI's counter arguments. The biggest one, which I didn't even realize until I was looking into it this last week, is about statute of limitations. So if someone harms you, you have a limited amount of time to sue them. And after that point, you cannot sue them anymore. That's what the statute of limitations is. So in the case of something like this,

it's three years. And Elon Musk filed this lawsuit claiming the open eye, took all his money, and did all this perverse stuff to enrich themselves. In August 5th, 2024, so the only way that his claim is legally valid is if he's saying, I was harmed at or after August 5th, 2021.

He had three years. And Open AI's main point is like, like what ended up being the main argument is, uh, we think you were harmed well before that. Oh, we did harm you. But it was a long time.

Tech crunch has some really good outlines of there's, there's a bunch of different points that they argued and that Musk argued. But that is absolutely the crux of it. So the jury, unanimously decided, this is what, two days ago, that Elon's suit fails because he filed it too late. All this, all this shit happened in like 2018 and 20. And even Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers, who we complimented said, quote, there was a substantial amount of evidence to support the jury's findings, which is why I was prepared to dismiss this on the spot, which is crazy. But if you look

at it, Elon knew about the for-profit changes in 2019. They announced like the shift to cap for a profit by then. And like we talked about, there's all these internal emails of him saying, we should swap to for profit and I should be in control of it. And so the idea that like,

he just now realized that he's been harmed. Right as he's about the public IPO. Right as he's about the public IPO. Right as he's about the public IPO. After open AI has ballooned to one of the most, you know,

valuable companies in the world. And so he tweeted his response to this. Here it is, Perry, if you pull it up. Regarding the open AI case to the judge and jury never actually ruled on the merits of the,

the case just on a calendar technicality. There is no question to anyone following the case in detail that Altman and Brockman did in fact enrich themselves by stealing a charity. The only question is when they did it. And then he says he's going to appeal to the Ninth Circuit. And it looks extremely unlikely that he'll be able to appeal this. I mean, it's so clear that he waited, and you can argue whether or not that lets opening off the hook, but like in terms of the legal process. Like, it's way past. It is way past statute. Yeah. It's like a weird, it's a weird conclusion to this. It is a weird. It's not that satisfying. You're like, well, you waited too long. It's funny because they both, I mean, you know, on some level, Elon got a dub in that he was able

to smear Tim Altman and Greg Borgman publicly. Which he kind of, you know, like, uh, but they both come off looking not so great. I mean, it was not a, win for either side, really, other than an open AI doesn't have to go and, like, open source their thing and ruin their IPO. Yeah. But yeah, they're like their argument. So Elon's was he, uh, he said that his skepticism of the co-founders grew over time until fall of 2022 when he finally decided that they had betrayed him. And, uh, it's an insane thing to say when they went or profit like years before. For years prior. And he's already has many tweets showing that he was aware of it. And then he finally decided that he,

they did in fact betray him when he, when he learned about Microsoft's plans for a $10 billion investment in 2023, which again, Microsoft had invested a billion, seven, five years before that. And then Open AI's attorneys are like,

you saw the term sheet for the fundraising round in 2028, which, quote, Musk received and his advisors reviewed, but Musk said he didn't read it in detail. So it's like, dude, you had everything here and then you just waited. Yeah.

Sometimes you read it. Read a headline. You make a joke about it. Sometimes you don't read the, the information. Why you're busy, bro? Maybe you're just fucking busy,

bro. You had shit to do other than Sue. What a weird, what a weird trial. It's so funny because it's, yeah, it just feels so, like we did that episode about it.

And it was like, wow, what's going to happen? I wonder how it's going to turn out. And this is the most, oh. It's like, by far the least interesting part of it

is that this happened like, years ago. That's not what makes a funny is that, you know, my reading, the jury deliberated for like no time at all. It was like 13 stuff, bro. For how much for how much money they both spent on lawyers? Yes. For,

like this to be obvious. How much spectacle for them to, they fucking took Greg Brockman's private diary? Yeah, they weren't like, in public? He had to sit up there and read passages from his diary. The entire premise of the thing was so bad that the judge almost threw it out initially and was like,

whatever, we'll let it go to trial. When And everybody knew like, dude, you waited way too long for this. They were reading their private text messages. That was so funny. It seems like, you know what? Elon, yeah, maybe he just did this to fuck with Open AI. I imagine some lawyer was like, dude, this was in 2018. This is not going to work.

Yeah. And then he's just like, I assume one of his many, many highly paid lawyers brought that up at least once. Yeah. But he didn't read it in detail. No, he didn't read in detail. Slip by. Interesting. Okay.

We just had a, you know, we should just tell the audience here. We had a brainstorm recently. We got a big whiteboard. We filled it up with ideas. And one of the things we really wanted to do on the show is add some segments. And so if you have ideas for segments that we can do, send them in. But one of the ones we had is Aiden's friend of the week. He knows a guy.

Yeah, Aidan knows a guy. Of his vast and unknowable network that extends to every world leader, by the way. You have a network on every continent and every city on this globe. We want to know an update from one of them. We need to pick one of your friends and we want to hear about their private life. Who are they dating? Did they graduate from school?

Do they like their major? They graduated? Did like their... I think that sounds like they liked their major got an applicable career. Did ask? Okay, by the way, so we pitched a segment to each other. Aidan knows a guy.

We have no idea who Aidan talked to or what this is about. I can't wait to find out. Because I every week. Not every week, but whenever we do it. Because I do know a guy. And who do I know this week? You may have seen the news that Cisco laid off 4th thousand employees.

I did see. I'm not clapping at that. Dude, that's really strange because we were going to do a segment called a stock of the week that I was doing. Yeah. I had it ready. It's Cisco.

Well, stock in the week. It's Cisco. I'm not kidding. Like those two ideas together. So you got laid off. So he didn't get laid off actually. Okay. So he put in a group trap

with our friends. It's like, layoffs are coming tomorrow, wondering what's going to happen. Like, am I on the chopping block? Layoffs come through. He makes it. But I wanted to ask him, you know, what is that actually like on the inside

of one of these giant companies? Because you often see these headlines about big companies laying off thousands of people. You know, I want to know what the vibes are like how that works internally. Really? Can you guess? Bad.

But it turns out, okay. Surprisingly, wait, have either you guys been at a company? for layoffs before? I have, but it was a small, you know, it was an 80 person company. Honestly, no. Not Twitch or I made any layoffs. Yeah, never never. Stans has a great story.

There was huge mass layoffs at a company he was at and they lined up to turn into their keyboards and like they had to like return their stuff. Their badge and gun. Yeah, like they're badge and gun. And one of the guys is stuck in my head for over 10 years now. One of the guys takes it, does like a

like a meal and goes like an Amazon warrior returning his bow. That's so good. And that has been stuck in my head ever since. I don't know. So anyway, I'm sure the vibes are fun. So less of that in this one,

admittedly. So just go looks like they have 83-ish thousand. So this is like 5% of their workforce. 5% of the workforce. And my friend, he's been working there for just about 10 years. And I was like, you know,

just how do you like working there? He says it's a good, you know, for his position, the pay is really competitive, good. He is a lot of freedom. He doesn't have to go into the office in his position. He works pretty regular hours.

They have a great vacation plan. And the perks are good. He's like, this is generally, I actually really like this job, and I do like the company. And I was like, okay, 4,000 people, though. You said that in our group chat in advance. You knew the amount.

How does that work? And he's like, well, the company has to make, when you lay off people at this scale, they have to let the public know in some capacity ahead of time. I think either to deal with government regulations or to deal with the number is going to leak out because of the scale of the layoffs anyway. But they don't know who is going to be laid off specifically.

But he also said that this happens at Cisco one to two times per year. This isn't strange. This is a pretty normal thing for his entire time that he's worked there. And I was like, okay, well, what about the size? Like 4,000 people, 5%. And he was like, this is on the higher end,

but it's still not abnormal. Basically, the company goes through some sort of restructure every year where they, like, are looking at the future, feel like they need to restructure or reorganize. Oftentimes the company will have, like, merged or, like, acquired some sort of smaller company, and we need to make changes in order to accommodate that.

People get let go in that process. and so none of this was like shocking to him and he said he said like maybe it's just like you know maybe this is crazy but like this is all just normal to me and even the like I asked him like even the anxiety of like well what about you losing your job like if you hadn't made it through and he was like well kind of like I do feel nervous you don't really know until the day comes but the reality is like

for people that get laid off at our company it's not that bad of a deal. He's like, you get six months of severance and they have a program internally where they help, like, connect you with a new position at a different company or, like, help you find a new job, basically. And he said, I don't know the specifics

of how it works, but the internal report is that there's a 75% success rate of that program. And also, you usually... Something that was interesting is something that coincides with these, layoffs is oftentimes company will have seen record profits for the quarter, but they're still laying off thousands of people. And Cisco did in this case. They laid off all these people, announced their earnings, record profits, stock shoots up. And I was like, is there any

acknowledgement of that juxtaposition in internal messaging? Does anyone above you, whether it be a manager, whether it be an executive? I mean, they announced in the same blog post. They said, earnings crushed through the moon. Microsoft did. That's what, yeah, they all do it. And I think from a third party perspective, right, those things clearly clash with each other. Like, how could you lay off all these people while your company is having more success than ever? And he was like, he kind of laughed of it. He was like, okay, well, a lot of the time when you get, like usually when you get laid off, uh, or if you've been an employee here, you have stock, like a significant amount of stock as an employee. And so everybody that keeps their job is happy because the stock that they hold goes up. And if you get

laid off, your stock goes into, the stock that you had as an employee goes into like this escalated vest program. So anything that you held that hasn't vested has a chance to like speed up and vest still. So you get like an extra bump to your pay package on the way out. And he's like, as a result, people who get laid off are like not that

upset. They have a nice cushion. Yeah. And and I think that was his outlook on the whole thing. is like there's some bump here in that if you're one of the people remaining, there can be like a discomfort in like getting moved around or like reorg to new teams.

But overall, like the headline seems really heavy handed, but this is like a really normal thing at their company and the people who are laid off are treated relatively well. And I was kind of shocked by his like nonchalant answers to the whole thing. Keep in mind, this is a guy who didn't lose. lose his job at the end of the day.

Right. I think the call would be different had he lost his job. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And maybe next week's Aden knows a guy. Talk to one of your recently laid off friends. Yeah. Yeah. I think because the thing that we didn't get to and the thing that I think he didn't really reconcile with is like getting laid off in different periods of time has really different consequences,

right? Like he's talking about how good the severance or the pay package is, which can be true. Yeah. But the likelihood of you getting repositioned to a new job now versus like 10 years ago feels drastically different. So the story I'm thinking of is I have a friend who got laid off from META and was paid remarkably well there and has not been able to find a position in the same pay package despite having a glowing resume.

And it's because the market is a lot harder for stuff like that. There's less demand. And so it's like, you know, that that is the problem more than the severance. I think these big tech companies all pay pretty good sever. They're not. Yeah. Yeah.

I would love to hear, from somebody who can say it in real words and not corporate speak, like why you have to do this? Is it literally just pumping stock price? Because this has happened repeatedly with big tech companies. They have a specific answer for this layout.

Okay. Basically, Cisco provides a bunch of infrastructure for AI companies, like, networking. Okay. And because of the amount of traffic that AI companies demand, they are, and the new type of things that they have to like train employees for

and the new type of technologies that they want the company to invest into, they're like, it's super profitable to support AI companies right now. We need more people with that technical expertise. We're laying off a bunch of old, like older, not literally older employees. We're laying off employees that don't have that expertise

and rehiring people that do. And that was one more thing he touched on was like every, time there's layoffs, they rehire people. And it's not just to fill the exact same positions. It's like there's usually some internal strategy shift of we need this huge chunk of new people and we don't really need these people in their positions anymore and we're like cycling them out. That's that's the argument that they've made publicly and also apparently the internal messaging. Yeah. Aidan knows a guy. And that's Aidan knows a guy. And that's a dude.

Knows a guy. And next week we'll talk about Wong Hooning. It's just so funny you tie that up because, yeah, that is I'm not kidding. The best performing, like not penny stock, but large stock in the past month is Cisco. Really? And that's our stock of the week. Yeah, 33% up.

Wait, how much of that is from, like, after this layoff announcement? No, well, they announced REC Revenue at the same time as they did the layoffs, so it wasn't really the layoff. It was more of that. And obviously, all the AI companies are just dumping money to Cisco to build data centers and stuff. That's what they're making a ton of money. It just feels like a terrible time to be laying people off. But yeah.

Can I give you guys a quick thing? Yeah. A follow up to last week. I need to be shamed because I made a joke about Iceland and why it's not important. Okay. And how they don't have a standing military because they're not important. They're in the Arctic. Nobody cares.

Yeah. That's not true. That's not true. It's, it's apparently, it hasn't been true for a long time. Okay. But ever since World War II in the Soviet Union, they apparently as they became a more strategic. This should be a segment.

Bullshit Nordic fact from Aiden. No, no, no. The segment is Aiden corrects previous Nordic Bullshit facts. This is important saying. And then every week we'll get some update on fucking a Nordic country or like that area. Yeah. I just wanted to correct a record and say that I'm wrong. Okay.

They're strategically important now. They've arguably been strategically important since the end of World War II. Wait, nobody never said they weren't strategically important. Hmm? Did we say they were... What are we correcting? Yeah, what are we correct? I made a joke about why they don't have a standing military last week

that is based on an incorrect premise. Is this just some comment you got that you wanted to break the record? Is this one guy? Is this one guy? You're getting one guy. No, I'm not kidding. This was... This was like tens of people.

Okay. Tens. And let me just make sure. What's the population of the country is? 380,000? And it's part of the reason they don't have a standing military. I knew that part. 380,000. About as many

sheep. Those 10 people are probably the entire military. Well, about one sheep to every person in that country. Yep. Did you know in Iceland, they walk backwards on Sundays? Shut up. Let me know in the comments if that's correct.

I'm just saying, I'm just saying, hold on, hold on. They're the only country in Italy. Iceland, employees a highly specialized unarmed staff of roughly 250 people. I'm sorry, man. Is that a standing military to you? Iceland does not maintain its own

armed forces. He is an active member of NATO. Wait, so what are we correcting? What? The reason. What? What? Wait. I thought you're saying that they do have a military. They don't have a military. You got corrected in the comments and they're like, they do have a military.

Okay, you don't really have a military. You guys aren't listening. You guys aren't listening to me. You guys got so caught up in making fun of me that I have a fact about a Nordic country that you didn't, you didn't even listen. A fact? You have one fact? Wait, the fact was that they're unimportant. Is that the fact? No. What is the fact?

I don't understand. What is the fact about I don't understand? Last week, I said, I made a joke that they don't have a standing military, which is the true part because they are not like they are not important. They're too far out of the way geographically. And I'm here

to clear it up because tens of people were clamoring for the correct answer. Tens of people are in the army. And you're going to, secondly, what is the reason? 300,000 listeners. And you two coming in a joke. Most of whom don't know anything about the ice was military.

And it's better to correct them. Is it not? Which why? Do they not have the army? That's the correction. They don't have the army. No, they don't have the army. Then we agree that that part's true.

But it's not because they're not important. When what do you? What? Ladies gentlemen, thank you for watching. Thank you for watching. Lemonet and Stan, all the news that's 50. Never be scared to crank yourself. We'll see you next week.

If you want a full extra bonus hour when we roast dating about this, if you want more Nordic facts, we'll go back to Lemonadee stand next week. It's primarily Nordic facts at this point. It's all Nordic facts on the Patreon. But you're going to turn that on the Patreon. Thank you guys so much for watching. See you next week. Goodbye. Formula One, so hot right now.

It's like if traders in succession had a baby on wheels. Teams lying. Drivers beefing. celebrities everywhere. And scandals. Lots of scandals. So we made a show about it, the Red Flag's podcast,

where we recap races and break down all the latest F1 headlines. But no nerdy tech talk. We only cover the stuff you want to hear about. Yeah, and the only thing hotter than the drivers are our takes. And now we're doing it on Vox. Oh, we're so legit now. We're basically thought leaders. Ted Talk incoming.

And we do a podcast with Gunter Steiner called Venka Hours. I still can't believe that's true. Well, believe it. There is so much for the beautiful Vox Media audience to enjoy. So come check out the Redflax podcast every Monday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.