Lemonade Stand - World News But It Gets Increasingly More Interesting | Ep.054 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

On this week's show... 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: 54 Recorded on: 3/15/26 Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCurXaZAZPKtl8EgH1ymuZgg Follow us TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thelemonadecast Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thelemonadecast/ Twitter - https://x.com/LemonadeCast The C-suite Aiden - https://x.com/aidencalvin Atrioc - https://x.com/Atrioc DougDoug - https://x.com/DougDougFood Edited by Aedish - https://x.com/aedishedits Thumbnail by Cheyenne DeWolf - https://x.com/cheyedewolf Produced by Perry - https://x.com/perry_jh Segments 0:00 Intro 1:40 Topic 1 6:43 Topic 2 11:36 Topic 3 20:22 Topic 4 25:38 Topic 5 29:37 Topic 6 37:21 Iran War (not ranked) 47:46 Topic 7 57:24 Topic 8 1:04:40 Topic 9 1:10:50 Topic 10 1:22:52 Topic 11 1:30:33 Topic 12 1:36:07 Topic 13 1:44:38 Topic 14 New takes on Business, Tech, and Politics. Squeezed fresh every Wednesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon presents Laura versus Fruit Flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen, these little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill. But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Welcome aboard via rail.

Please sit and enjoy. Please sit and stretch. Steep. Flip. Or that. And enjoy. Via rail, love the way. Lemonade stand.

That's not how we start. Lemonade stand. Lemonade stand. You say it too. This show is brought to you by lemonade stand. Ladies and welcome to Lemonade Stand. We have a quirky idea today. I'm a bit of a goofy.

maybe from the mind of Doug Doug inspired, twisted brain idea. It's from Doug Doug Doug's dark twisted mind. It's out unless the episode turns out really funny. If it's a bang or add that it. Otherwise, we'll bleep it. I look right at you.

All right. Seen of how the video performs retroactively editing the video. This was Ludwig's idea. All right, here's the idea. We each brought five stories, five mini stories, okay? We're going to each present these one at a time. You get about five minutes per,

per story, right? And then at the end, our editor is going to order these from least exciting to most exciting. So our job is to pitch these and convince not each other, but the editor, that it is the most exciting story and should be placed later on. And our score, our final score will depend on who got more stories later in the episode. Any questions? It's so funny because it breaks every rule of YouTube retention to put our most board. It is the worst idea. Everything you're watching will be the worst at first and then yeah. No, those sports highlight videos kill. It's like, Luke could don't chaunch its moments from least exciting to month. Jeff Curry's three, but they get increasingly more insane. Yeah, yeah. And you think that

doesn't play. I think they don't even, I think they just rank the last one in the first one. I've watched those videos and it's like random and then the last one's cool. All right. Hell yeah, I'm ready. What else we got to say? Is there anything else we need to know? No, we're going to go one at a time through these and we'll find out who wins. Ready, set, go. I know you guys are humped to hear about this, a new story that gets together some of my favorites. Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland. It's a clash between. Hey, this is the first story you're watching.

The retention on our, we're going to see retention go from 95% to 2% right at this story. They might skip this like an ad. What's not excited about this? You guys, go, go, go. You have a time of it. Go, go, go. The Nordic leader. All of these Nordic leaders met with Carney recently.

Okay. Uh, prime minister Carney of Canada. And they gassed him up about the Davos speech. They were like, we never heard anything this good. We've, we, we, we all are these middle powers that need to stand together. You're right. Like there's, they're beefing about Trump. They're dapping Carni up.

Let's go, Karn. And then they were at least, sorry, a lot of fashion. Do they look cool doing it? Oh, sure. Assuring. Okay. Assurately. I didn't see any picks.

but, you know, Carney's got that shit on. Yeah, you stay fresh. And they released a statement. It's full of exciting news. Like how they're committed to Arctic security. Does it explain what that means? Not really.

In the statement. Wait, what is the news? Is it that they hung out? It's that they hung up. The Nordic leaders and Canada's leader hung out and then made some vague. phrases about things they might do together. No, no, no, no, no.

I think some of these... This is for sure going first. I think some of these are pretty... Some of these are pretty specific. Like, we are committed to building a competitive, prosperous, and green economies for the future that are open to the world, but guard against dangerous dependencies.

What's not specific about that? That's different. That's not different. That's not different. I... I... And they also, you know, they all show their support for Ukraine. they want to have a formidable partnership

and only economically environmentally and dare I say the last part of the statement and you'll love this they say that their ties are deepening whoa I mean look

I wasn't in until that I think that's an end of an episode or right there I think we push that way this is the last one that got pushed way back there why can you guys be excited for me Okay, no, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, truth.

True. What is different? I don't get it, A. What changed? I think the cool thing about this statement is that it doesn't change anything yet. But it's talking about things that maybe could change in the future. I think if I was genuinely evaluating this, I think it is the beginnings of the fallout of things like Carney's speech that it gave Adavos, like Trump coming for. Canada's sovereignty, you know,

sort of Denmark's sovereignty through Greenland. Yeah, more than sort of. Yeah, I think there's this weird thing where it's like Greenland is trying to separate from Denmark anyway. But the idea that these are, these actions are resulting in these countries spending more time together and intentionally meeting

and basically airing not only grievances about how they feel Trump is, Trump is moving against them, but actually, making or starting the discussions of how we're going to be a block of countries together that does not need the United States in the way that we previously did. So it's like our ex is hanging out with the other high school kids. It's like I would say it's like the U.S.'s exes all hanging out on maybe a reality show.

It's like a group chat getting made everyone but Aiden in it and you're saying about how the story wasn't that good and then it was like, no, no, I'm in this group chat. You guys aren't. I think we're the ones who I left out. We got out of the group chat. Wait, so Carney DM'd you added you in, right?

Yeah, I'm in the signal chat with all these guys. It's kind of cool for Carney to drop such a bangor speech you get invited to the world leader group chat. I think it was funny. Okay, there was one actual quote I thought was funny because the New York Times article

that initially introduced me to this was they're specifying like how much they're gassing Carney up. And the quote, the quote from Mr. Frederickson, from Denmark, the speech you gave in Davos. I've never experienced anything like this. I don't think I've ever heard so many reflections

on a speech from a colleague as I have heard about your speech. The way, the sweat glistened on your cheek. It was a damn good speech, by the way. And then he said he got really into like carny fan fiction on Tumblr. Start describing it to him. So I think it's got all of the big names.

It's got Canada, it's got Sweden, and it's like, what else you need for an exciting? See you guys at the end of the episode. And done. This one's quick, simple, easy end of the episode. We cap it off. Duolingo stock went absolutely crazy in 2025. Dual language learning out.

And now it's crashed to all hell. And I think what's interesting about this is broadly what is happening in language learning. So duolingo is by far the biggest one. But of course, the big question, like, well, probably we, you will have heard about multiple times now is AI changing how companies are doing things. Right. So last year they were like, we're going to be an AI first company. They made this LinkedIn post that a lot of people hated. Yeah, except they actually have had a lot of success in 2025. So there's this massive stock price. So they went up to like $500. Now they're back down to about a hundred. But what's

interesting is the end of the year, they're actually really, really profitable. They made $1.04 billion in revenue in 2025, which is earnings up. 367% over the previous year. That is crazy. Their DAUs are 52 million. They have 100 people, 100 million people a month tuning into the app. But they've also been announcing recently.

They're like, we feel like we've been putting too much pressure on our free users to convert them to money. We've been going all in on like get more money out of our existing user base. But it's causing more friction when people try to join the app and they're like,

they're pushing me on the subscription thing too hard. I'm turning off. And so what's interesting is they are doing very well objectively in terms of like cash flow and earnings and users. But they came out and said, look, our user growth is slowing down. And we're going to pivot away from trying to acquire a bunch of money from these people and instead try to get more people into the app and give them a good experience. And they even were like, look, this is going to cost us like $50 million at least next year. And that is not, they didn't like that. They didn't like that.

They did not like the A, we think we've gone too hard on short term profits. So it's an interesting thing, one of just a quick little, like, what's going on with these language apps? The fact is, dualingo is doing phenomenally well, even though I think most people are not stoked on it anymore. And particularly in this, like, if they're going AI first, what even differentiates them from chat, GBT? But they're having to pivot. And I think it's a pretty interesting little mini microcosm of this industry that is rapidly. I'm hashtag team babble. First of all, don't get me wrong.

Don't fucking, don't twist it. We should be clear. And our contract, we are allowed to say whatever. we want. We have free editorial control. I'm just personally sponsored by Bavill. Oh, yeah. Personally? I'm a tattoo across my chest,

and I actually use it. So it is worth saying. You know, there's been a Bable sponsorship. In the episode, we are contractually guaranteed. We can say whatever we want. It's not like we're going to change what we say.

So just, so that's out there. Just don't say a bad word about Babel. That's all. Okay. Not my fucking presence. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but in general.

But I do think that drop was not just because they've fucking missed. I mean, not they didn't miss, but they announced a new, spending. I mean, that was what we were talking about earlier with the big AI, you know, there's the AI scare. That, that drop was the same time as like Adobe dropped and Crowdstrike dropped and all these companies that were software based have been just shitting the bed.

Yeah. Their stocks have been down, down, down because there's a real concern that AI, if not now, we'll soon eat your lunch. Like it will soon make, you know, you could have clawed whip up a gamified language learning thing. It's not as good maybe as do, I mean, I don't even know how good it is. I'm my understanding with, Lingo is like it's really good at keeping you on your streak. It's a game to find something that I don't think it's notably bad at teaching you languages. Right. I think that's the best that you know.

Which people already understand. I feel like there's this issue of this is already something that converges more on the trend side of things and the game side of things. And I feel like over time, you're more likely to reach a cap and lose people after that anyway. But then you also have this giant introduction of something that is already. probably better at teaching you languages that is competing alongside it. What do you think about the fucking owl though? The owl fucks. They like the owl.

The owl marketing is based. Yeah, it's just ultimately I don't care. The Apple, it's, in the language of trends, like is the, like the meme about the owl coming to haunt you in your dreams and stuff

like that? Is that dead? Is that going to be funny five years from now? You know what reminds me? It's fairly funny now. Yeah. As you say that, I'm thinking like,

you know, we used to think the windy social media roast were cool, but now it feels so lame. Yeah. It's like, maybe the owl's just dead, bro. Maybe that whole... The owl's out of gas. Yeah, you can only do it so many times. I just like, I, you know, I know who Kylie Jenner is. I'm not going to go buy her products. Like, you know, at some point, like, of recognizability.

Do you think you're the target market for Kylie Jenner's skincare? That's probably different. Look at me. Look at me. He does that nice skin. In fact, Aitish, zoom in slowly on my face and then cut. y'all remember BuzzFeed quizzes oh of course you ever take them you'll find out whether if you made a 2020s playlist and will reveal

which color you look best I'm Princess Jasmine sexually sexually he weird me yeah I remember how gay I am on a scale of different Disney characters yeah yeah I think I I remember their Pulitzer Prize winning journalism I brought a quiz for you

Pick a Channing Tatum from these nine Channing Tatum and I will tell you which potato you are. This is a, this is a company that was at its peak worth $1.7 billion, largely off the back of quizzes like this. Pick a Channing Tatum. Wait, this is real. This is a real quiz. And they were out putting stars, Will Ness?

Worked there. We're going to talk about that in a second, actually. Yeah, we'll have to work there. I'll take the middle right one that looks like the evil version of Peter Parker. You got mashed potatoes. That's your personality. You know what? Credit to BuzzFeed, that's the only type of potato I like, unironically.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, go back, go back. Credit to me, I only had one solution. There's only one slide here. I think this is a BuzzFeed. I was thinking about this is on PowerPoint. What this possibly works? So is this end of your segment? Yeah, that's it.

BuzzFeed, yeah. No, so BuzzFeed, 1.7 billion dollar valuation. A lot of people became stars from it. It was leading the wave of internet content for a brief period, especially among millennials. And Will Neth did come from them. Worth it came from it. Hot ones came from it.

A lot of companies have come from it that have built online. I don't know hot ones came from BuzzFeed. Yeah. Huh. And at its peak, they even had a BuzzFeed newsroom that was pretty well respected. They won the Pulitzer Prize in 2021. And it was seen at least by maybe older out of touch types with money as like these guys get the internet in a way that our dying media companies don't.

And so money was pouring into BuzzFeed. And they had a publicly traded stock that hit its peak of $1.7 billion. And then around 2023 with the release of check. at GPT, their CEO had an idea. He's like, hey, we need to use AI to, quote, enhance our content. But really it was, we are going to fire this newsroom, which is very expensive. And we're going to pivot all in on AI generated. Now, again, I can't say this was well crafted. That's beautiful journalism. How many Channing Tatum's quizzes you could make a ton of them, right? And so they made it more Sloppify. It's already slop. So it was like slop through a slop trough. And their stock,

upon this announcement, spiked. As you can see here that I've cut off at no. Okay, so for audio listeners, we are about 10% of the way through the graph. And it looks very high.

It looks very high. Massive stock spike. Near the top, actually. Because if you think about it in the short term, it's like, wait a minute, our costs go to zero and our output goes to infinity. Right.

And so it sounds great. Unfortunately, the follow up from that was that people stopped engaging with the quizzes or the content. And so BuzzFee's, began a very meteoric downward slide where they have had a very rough time retaining the user base they had in their peak period.

It's lost like two years, three years? This is a short time frame. This is after Chattebt here, right here. So this is the spike. Gotcha, that makes sense. And so as they started losing revenue, they had to start selling off parts of the business, including hot ones,

which they sold for $82.5 million, which is actually a pretty incredible come up because the current valuation of BuzzFeed today is 29 million. Oh my God. So hot ones are worth three times more than BuzzFeed's entire valuation today.

So they have announced as of two days ago that they are, okay, the CEO announced we have more cool AI stuff coming, but in the fine print of the announcement, the finance team said, we are ending our ability

to continue as a going concern, which basically means they're going bankrupt. That's a fancy way of saying, we lost 30 million. dollars this quarter. We have no short-term way to get more money. We're nearing bankruptcy. So the story of this BuzzFeed thing, I mean, it's

one of like people get a little too overhyped about this new internet company and they didn't really have a domination of media. But another one is like this AI pivot, at least for this, didn't seem to work. It was not an effective thing. So BuzzFeed is now facing bankruptcy. Likely will be bankrupt and doesn't seem to have a plan.

That's my story. It's, sorry, go ahead. Was AI, for the actual content being output after this change was made, I don't want to discredit the incredible integrity of mashed potatoes and Channing Tatum quizzes. But is AI not, if I had to guess what AI would be able to do, it might be to put together which mashed potatoes

are you based on the Channing Tatum picture you put together. So here's my one problem with this, is this example, I don't know if this is before or after the AI pivot. So theoretically, this could be the slop post AI. That's what I'm not getting, because none of these quizzes ever made any sense at all. And the idea that a user is like, I just don't feel like it's accurately telling me

my Disney character. Like, it never did that. 100%. I agree with that. I do think BuzzFeed made a lot of actually popular stuff outside of just the slop quizzes and listicles. Those where it's like bread and butter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And all that stuff was cut. I mean, it was expensive. So they cut it. They cut like paying people like worth it. They cut all this extra stuff that was like kind of having traction. They focused on how I can make it cheaper. And I think on the internet, it's like if, you know, you might think from a factory perspective, if this is like 80% the quality, but 20% the cost, that's awesome.

From a content perspective, once you hit a certain binary line of quality, people just go elsewhere. Like you just, it's immediate freefall. So you can't, I think sometimes a CEO, especially when you're public facing for content, doesn't understand that like you can't reduce the quality so much and get a lending your line. Yeah. We're almost on our time limit, but this feels to me like another example of an interesting, it's like a media company that established all of these stars and new brands, like rooster teeth or Bon Appetit did this, right? With, oh my God, I'm blanking on her name,

but I watched a bunch of those videos of like making gourmet Doritos or whatever it is, right? Actually, if you can pull it up because I feel bad. And then, or BuzzFeed, right, which produced Try Guys and produced the other brands you're saying, produce hot ones, right? And it's so interesting that if you're like this media conglomerate who produces these stars, they now have an extraordinarily strong incentive to go solo because you will make way more money and can keep all of it,

as opposed to working for this company and giving them this massive thing. So it's so interesting to, like, it's hard to imagine companies like this where their value is based on keeping extraordinarily talented individuals even once they've established their branding and go leave. Can you think of, to kind of send off this topic,

can you think of a company like BuzzFeed? that came up in the internet era that produces content that has managed to weather this problem. I can't... The only one that I'm not deeply familiar with them, but Barstool. Barstool has, I think, retained a lot of their core talent

or at least retained partnerships. And that's one of the few examples, but they've also had weird ups and downs. And they have had people spin off, like the... I can't remember his name, but he is like long blonde hair, a mustache, and he does comedic.

comedic interviews. Yeah. Yeah, he spun off into his own show. He was Barstle, right? He was and is. I'm pretty sure. Is it still under Barstool now?

I thought it was his own thing now. That's impressive. They kept them. Okay, my internet isn't working. But anyway, it is interesting. It's like the value proposition, it's like even at Ludwig's company, right? Like, he has made mogul moves.

But the company is him. If he chooses to be done or leave, like there's nobody who can replace him. And then for any of these companies, if they make anybody a star or a front face of the news that they put out, you just inevitably... You can try.

You go out there and go, boys! Uh-oh. Just a feel... I'd literally think that if you just took his place, it would be at least 50% of success. It would not die. I think if it's just like, hey, it's me.

I'm doing my. It would be so funny. I think I'd love to just try it as a social experiment of Ludwig goes on a six months sabbatical and then we just put like me there instead. And we just see the numbers greater. All right, great point.

Definitely maybe second in the order. This is probably second. Done. I got one little tidbit of one more tidbit of gaming news. the first tidbit. I've got the first or second. This could be the fourth or potentially fourth. I shouldn't have said anything.

Battlefield, the Battlefield 6 team notably laid off an undeclared number of employees from the various parts of the studio and at EA that helped put out that game. I thought gaming was back. And gaming's not back.

We're actually laying them off. Like they don't know how many? Well, the number of people that have been laid off has not been confirmed in the media. So, which plays into the story here, in my opinion. And I think the initial reaction to big companies laying off gigantic amounts of people, usually,

or maybe any amount of people, is very, very negative from the public. And especially in Battlefield's case, because they had a historically successful launch for this game. They sold, I think, over 7 million copies in the first three days. I was gonna ask if it did well. And with an average,

concurrent player base just on Steam for the first week of like over 700,000 players, which is absolutely incredible. And I think the first reaction a lot of people had to this news is, wow, you laid off when game does bad, laid off when game does historically good.

How can I win as a person who works in game development? And I did, I think this coincides with a few conversations we've had recently about like riot laying off a bunch of people projects like Concord and High Guard getting canned after massive amounts of money going into them and this

general unfairness and flippancy that seems to be had with laying off people in the games industry even anecdotally talking to like a game dev friend of mine he has gotten... Okay, okay, it can't become a meme. It can't become a meme. What a joke.

Where do they hear? he's been laid off. What war-torn country does he live in? He lives in Canada. He's been laid off from, I think, four studios in the span of like the past five or six years. And it seems like a really

shitty time to work in that industry when it comes to your job security. And then on the other end of it, one quick note, I had you know, defending it, I guess, is this is pretty normal for massive titles that go through long development cycles

and then they release some sort of live service version of the game after. Like the undeclared number of the layoffs in this case where it's not clear how many people actually did lose their jobs is a game will go through some giant development cycle and then even if it becomes successful after, the number of people necessary to keep the game functioning after the fact is naturally much lower.

So a lot of the more recent or like contract staff specifically that works on these games will get let go after the game comes out because the things they were specifically hired to do to release the game are no longer relevant anymore. Yeah, it's crazy though because that would make sense to me if it was a one-off.

Yeah, because Hollywood, yeah, yeah, Hollywood's like, you don't expect someone to keep being hired on Star Wars after it's over. The movie's over, you shot it. Yeah. But this is a game that releases Battlefield 6. There's going to be Battlefield 7. So it's weird to me that they felt the need

after a successful launch, not to just get those people to keep working on the next game. They're waiting for a year or two to decide if they're going to do Battlefield 7. Then they hire them all back. I think that's why my villain chair... Six is a good stopping point.

They're probably doing. They're probably done. No, that's why my villain chair position. We've done it all. is because the number of people laid off is not confirmed and it's not this getting rid of the entire team that made the game or something similar to that,

then the benefit of the doubt I would give here is you're getting, you're cutting a few people that had a very specific role in the lead-up and then that news of a select group of people getting laid off is being turned into the, this broader news story that people react. What I will say is, that could be the case.

You know, my understanding of the game industry right now is that layoffs are happening en masse in Los Angeles, in Ontario, and in Vancouver, and in all these old traditional places for people to work in gaming. And they're moving to Eastern Europe, and they're moving to China, and they're moving to places that are cheaper. And, like, big studios are all taking moments like this,

like, oh, our game's done, time to cut the staff, and we're going to find a way to redo it cheaper. That is what I think is happening. I don't know about this story specifically, but that... Yeah. I mean, if anybody has any insight into the EA or Battlefield examples specifically, I'd be super curious of what specifically is the case going on. But that's it.

It's just a bit of gaming news. Gaming's back, baby. Okay, this one was already a big A clip, so I'm going to keep it hella brief, but I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention it because it may be another 2007 financial crisis. Okay, do you guys know what private credit is? Yes, sir.

Card. Not like a card, Doug. It's like when you make loans outside of the banking system, that's basically what it is. Like if you and me pulled our money and loaned our editor money to give us better rankings, that would be private credit. Private credit is not monitored. It's not tracked the way that banking is. Banking, you know what's going on.

All their books are public, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. Since 2008, we made a bunch of new rules. that changed things about private, around banking. Yeah. Bankings have to be way safer. And because of that,

everyone still wanted these fucking easy loans. So they just went somewhere else. They went to what's called private credit. Did they consider that when making the regulations? I don't know why they said banks only. I don't, I literally don't know why it was like nobody. The other holes or just this one that leads to this time.

Yeah, it's like, it's so, I think it's a great question. We've got 30 holes in our roof. But that's the one that leaked. So let's plug that and it'll never be a problem again. Village chair.

Villager. I imagine one of the reasons is because so many regular people's lives are directly tied into banks specifically. So the risk of banks collapsing presents a greater public threat than perhaps a higher end private credit. We don't want to plug the public unless it's necessary. Certain private credit groups like still supply like auto loans and things that touch normal people's lives. Yes. That but also the banks, because they're they didn't have anywhere to lend, ended up just lending money to private credit firms. So the private credit firms that have made tons and tons of bad loans, the biggest one, the one is popping the bubble lately is that they made a ton of loans to buy software companies. Now all the software companies are starting to tank.

And private credit firms are doing what's called not marking to market. I don't know if you remember the end of the big short where they're like, why is it, why the prices change it? We know it's filing. That is what's happening. Like, if you're asking, like, we're seeing every software stock tank, but the private ones are like, they're good. The value is the same as we bought it. And like, everybody knows this a lie. So they're going to the private credit companies and asking for their money back. And what they're doing is they're throwing up these things called gates, the gated redemptions. They're saying, well, you can't take your money out. They're saying, we can only let 5% out a year or whatever and we're not letting anymore. And so obviously, if you show up at your bank and there's a padlock on the front and says no redemption is allowed, you're not going to be like, well, that's it. You get angrier and more scared. So the panic is spreading. People are like desperately trying to get their money out of.

of Blue Owl and Black Rock and Apollo and KKR and all these massive private credit firms. And they can't. The gates are up on all four of those. Steelman, the only thing to fear is fear itself. Possibly. We just keep saying big numbers at each other. It is big. I think that is legitimately their strategy.

And that's crazy. You came up with that in five seconds. The roof isn't leaking. No one look over there. They keep saying, we're good. You can't take your money out, but we're good. The valuation is the same. These are going to, these are good.

It's fine. And it's not fine. I don't know, the usual thing, we don't know how big it is. In 2007, the real estate crisis, massive. And every estimate of private credit is that it's smaller than that. However, it could be systemic. That's why I'm bringing us up because these private credit firms are, they're getting, their defaults are rising and they have loans from banks.

So the banks can't get paid back if they fail. So we don't know if it's bigger. I don't know. I'm not saying, I'm sounding a little panicked, but I don't know. Let me ask a sincere question. Sounds to me like a whole bunch of sheep should let the wolves decide. Okay?

If everybody starts fucking panicking, that wasn't a question. You said, let me ask you a question. Then you did it eight. End of segment. All right. Well, we talked about a little about this on our Patreon,

but the New York Attorney General announced that they were suing Valve for their loop boxes. Oh, gaming's back. Primarily. Gaming's back. And I don't mean. First to say it.

And primarily to do with CounterStrike, but also other games like Team Fortress and Dota, where Valve takes advantage of these loopbox systems where you buy something like a casing CounterStrike, you pay $2 to open it, $2.50, and then it rolls items, and then you get a different levels of rarity like in-game cosmetics from that little box. and then maybe if you get really lucky that item's worth a lot of money but most of the time that item's gonna be worth less than what you paid to open the case.

And the New York Attorney General announced that they were suing Valve for this circumvention of New York gambling laws by having this in the game. Okay. And Valve, which is a company that does not release public statements very often,

responded to the lawsuit recently. Give me on his yacht, face-having into the judge. Yeah, it's actually a video. It's actually, and it was really interesting because they took the angle, the primary angle of,

we don't think we're breaking any laws. And if you're coming for something like this, you need to reconcile with the fact that this is the same mechanic behind Pokemon, Magic the Gathering, Lububoos, plenty of like physical items in the physical world that all rely on the same underlying mechanic of,

I don't know what I'm going to get in the box, I'm paying to find out, and I'm hoping I get a rare and a good one. Yeah. And the implications of the lawsuit in New York seem to be that they're trying to drag in as much other stuff as possible because they think more,

the outside, third party's perspective is more people will have to help them push back and fight against this lawsuit if they make it more broad. Right, they're saying, we're all gamblers and the Pokemon steps up to help them out or whatever. If it's consequential for more parties outside of the Ask the judge, go look on polymarket

of who wins this case. Like you can bet on it right now. Why are you okay with that? And it is funny to feel like, we're getting singled out here. Society is decayed to nothing. Everyone's a gambler and we're getting singled out. It is funny.

Because I was wrestling with the idea that, I do think that the cases in Counterstrike, for instance, are gambling. Like, almost like, of course they are. They are gambling. But I think it is, it is exactly, it is almost exactly the same as opening a pack of Pokemon cards.

It's not exactly the same though, right? The only difference is that there's like no, with something digital, that lacks a layer of friction where I would have to go to the store or like order it and wait for that. Like as a kid, I could not get addicted to gambling on Pokemon cards.

I would need to get my parents to drive me to a store. But like, why is the money? It's like if you had the money for it. If you're a rich kid, you could get a dip. I'm sure maybe. I just think like there's clearly

a pipeline of young people getting into skin gambling. that there wasn't for Pokemon cards. And I'm not saying they're both not roughly identical. I think. But the digital frictionless experience is like. I think we kill Pokemon that will stop the CSGO gambling, right? It's like the malaria parasite.

If you can kill it in its earlier larval stages, it won't matured. But it already exists. So we need a vaccine early in the stages. We need to go back in time and kill Pekishu. We have to kill Pekishu. There was one. Okay, so there's two more interesting parts of this chart.

pointing a Pikachu's head crying. Is that in, Valve also accuses the New York Attorney General's lawsuit of specifically calling out the fact that you can trade these assets. Like part of the value and part of the risk of the whole economy

that they formed across these games is that you get the item out of the box and then you can trade it to other users. And they fervently defend that. Basically, that is a right of like all of the users across their platform and they think that's a very important part of not only like Counter Strike, but games across the entire platform.

Sure. And it was interesting to see them like so heavily stand behind that. A couple days later, another state has sued them, which is hard to spread. Yeah. Washington State, uh, there is, there is a class action lawsuit. Home of Pokemon, by the way, or Pokemon USA. Yeah, the home of Pokemon USA. Valve and Pokemon USA are like a couple blocks away.

Like Val's just going to point at them again. And Nintendo of America is there in the same block, I think. Or like the same area of Redmond. But this class action lawsuit is accusing them of the same thing. Is that consumers played these games for entertainment, unaware that Valve had allegedly already stacked the odds against them. We intend to hold Valve accountable and put money back in the pockets of consumers. And they were like,

they're like, don't know their fucking things. If I don't get a fucking knife. I don't get a butterfly. Dude, you like stream it and you say streaming and if I get five blues in a row, I sue valve. Having that political power line. It does feel a little bit like you're throwing a dart at a dartboard. Like there's so many of the, why you go after this and not sports gambling?

Because you have to start somewhere, bro. You have to like, yeah. Like we are, we are in the depths of gambling despair. But why are we starting with the one that I have seen? The one that you like. Okay. And I think. The funny little thing that caps this off is,

I think you can tell from changes in the game from a long time in Counterstrike specifically. Again, this applies across all of Valve's games, though, is they've been making little changes like phasing out of cases out of Counterstrike entirely, and they switch to these little things that we've explained before called terminals where it gives you the chance.

It's like you don't pay to open it, and then it randomly generates five opportunities for you to buy one of the items from Valve. And then Valve kind of sets a market price through this that based on like the rarity of the item, right? So they just announced

some of the more special items. It used to be about shooting people in a, it's not about that. It's not about like playing. It's not fun. Okay. When I was younger,

there was a... The reason why I think this is insane is because you used to be able to pay two bucks to open one of these cases and crack like an item out of them, right? But now with this new system and these new like gloves they added, they look,

Valve is charging you. Valve, the company, is not a third-party marketplace, is charging you $1,200 for this pair of rare loves. Do you remember when gamers rioted over $2 horse armor in a Bolivian? Sorry, excuse me, it's $1,300. So like $1,500. What happened? You now have the privilege of paying Valve that amount of money directly. We lost that fight and we lost the war and it's been over. and now people are, now children are paying

1500 euros and generated terminal. It's a hedge against Fiat currency. It's not that big of them. I can't have to pitch that to Steve Eisen, but that's so busy. That's awesome. I don't know how this is all going to play out,

but it's crazy to see like two state lawsuits hit in like such a short period of time, them making a rare public statement while they also seemingly, like while they argue the lawsuit, have clearly been making changes in the game. to avoid further issues like this.

Our editor owns some skins. This might be the last story. Yeah, that's my last story. Done. Guys, I have some good news. I don't know if you knew this, but we won the war in Iran again. Donald Trump has announced for the fifth time

that this time finally we've completely beaten and keep up this slide, completely beaten and decimated Iran, both military, economically, and every other way. Obviously we can do a gazillion Iran war updates and we've done it every week. But the, The thing I want to talk about in my section is his attempts,

now that it's starting the spiral, to get a coalition of the willing to help him patrol the Strait of Hormuz and get free and flowing oil, okay? This should have always been a team effort, and now it will be, is what Donald Trump is saying, so that we can get harmony, security, and everlasting peace. This is the fifth time Iran has been defeated this week alone. There's been a lot of announcements that they keep getting defeated.

Polling has shown that the major takeaway from people across the political spectrum, this is a 22% polling positive war, people primarily just don't see the point. They don't know why we are there and they are noticing that gas prices are going up, which is becoming a big political and economic problem globally, not just in America.

And so there has been a call for allied warships to secure the trade of Hormuz, not just America, America can't do it alone. So far, though, no nations have confirmed plans. Is this like when we helped, like, you know, all of the British merchant vessels

saved the people from the French beaches during World War II? Is it Dunkirk you mean? Is this like a Dunkirk situation where we're calling... Everyone will answer the call? Civilians.

Bring your boats to the straight. Put oil on it. If you had the gall to just go through that straight. Yeah. I don't know who that was. I remember who that was. Someone was like,

yeah. Just be brave. Be brave and go. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. So, uh, wait, wait, hold on. The team that we're collecting, like the Avengers that were, that Trump's trying to assemble. Yeah. It's countries.

Is it people who? It's countries. Okay. So the idea is that it turns out it's going to be very, very expensive and difficult to stop Iran from droning or mining the strait of Hormuz, which is cutting off, again, this is not just an American problem. This is becoming a world problem. It is cutting off 20% of the world's oil, 30% of the world's fertilizer.

Fertilizer prices have spiked like 91% of, oil prices are already way up. This is going to cause food shortages and economic slowdowns because of higher gas prices and more than that. And it's beginning to cause panic everywhere. So a couple things have been done in the short term to try and stop it.

Number one was after saying he wouldn't do this, he is now releasing a bunch of money from our money, oil from our strategic petroleum reserve. We're jumping like, we're combining with other G7 countries and other allied nations to release it all at once. 400 million barrels from collective

our different oil reserves. That is four days of global oil consumption. And that's like basically what we got. It caused oil prices to go down for a little bit. And now they are going right back up, that announcement. If you listen to, I believe, Vance and Trump, you'll know that the oil reserves were low because of Biden. They were.

No, but they were. They actually were. Joe Biden drained the reserve. And it could be said politically to help him for the election. It didn't work. He lost the election. and there was less. But the problem is,

Donald Trump has said over and over on the campaign trail in his inauguration speech after getting inaugurated, hey, I'm going to refill that thing to the tippity top. Well, the time to do that would be when oil prices

were super cheap before you started a war on Iran. And he didn't do it. China did do that. They bought millions of barrels per day all of 2025. And now we're kind of, that was our big lever.

Like we pulled the lever. We put 400 million dollars out. It hasn't stopped the oil prices from rising. And so he is urging the UK and other nations, to send shreate. Now, I included this meme because this is what the response has been so far. Like, nations are just, they're, they're being very tepid about, I'm going to send

our actual troops. And it's very expensive to send warships to go help patrol the trade of our moose. And just, just check in, it's just us in Israel, right? So far? Yeah. Yeah. I think the UK has of today, and this is all live, is going to send like a pity boat or something.

I mean, there's like some small things. A little merchant vessel. They're done. They're reversed on Kier. But so far, what we're seeing from every country is they're just trying to skip around this and talk to Iran directly. So India is having talks with Iran and be like, hey, let only Indian ships through. Because right now, assuming the mines, I don't know the situation on the mines, but based on drones, they can basically say like Chinese vessels go through or whatever. They can like let.

So everyone's trying to get a deal. So France and Italy is doing this. again, I said India, France and Italy, China. So every country is like opening their own private line to Iran to be like, hey, we're boys, right? Let's not let our tankers go through because of how economically important it is. And there's not a lot of appetite to get this actual coalition. Now, this is it from an hour before we recorded this. They plan to announce a coalition.

We don't know who that's going to be in the coalition. I don't understand. But I have to say, man, I, you know, we've covered a lot of news on this on this channel. And I just want to say, like, directly, I think this war is ending up being the stupidest decision of the Trump presidency. I think it's one of the stupidest things I've seen a leader do. It feels so ill thought out and ill plan.

And I've steel manned the larger China angle. But I mean in terms of execution, this is proving to be a disaster. I think to do it right before midterms is fucking art. Because this is, this is collapsing. I've seen people burning their Mugah hats today. Like, it is, it is collapsing. his political base and will, it is taking right as we go into their big election. So, I mean, I guess good on that front, but it is crazy.

And it is turning so many countries at least soft negative because they now have an economic problem that they know was caused by this very unplanned quick war. Like it is, it's kind of spiraling. So this is Paul Graham, who I think is a great follow on Twitter. He had a prediction. When fighting in Iran gets too painful because of oil prices or polls. or whatever, Trump will claim to the current state of things, whatever it happens to be was his goal,

declare victory and retreat. The problem with that is that none of that changes the reality that a country of 90 million, if you haven't changed the regime, can always block this straight. And if they want to do it longer, we will get $200 barrels of oil. Unless they can fix that or change that,

which doesn't seem to be possible, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. When, so on the negotiating with Iran front for all of those countries, it seems unlikely that Iran would say yes to anybody or at least not a lot of country partners because this is their main line of leverage for ending the war. Like there's no reason for them to start saying yes

because that would start lowering the price of oil and then they lose that. Well, counter wouldn't, if they keep saying yes to countries other than the US and Israel, right, doesn't that put pressure on US and Israel even more so because gas would only be going up for us or is the idea that the global price... No, so the thing is,

we actually don't get much, oil from the straight of Hormuz. It's just that when someone else is desperate, let's say India, they buy it on global markets and it raises the price for everybody. Technically, we are energy independent from this. America is actually one of the least affected,

but it doesn't matter for people at the gas pump because oil is a global market and someone else being desperate makes the price rise for everybody. Okay. So, yeah, I agree. Because letting only American ships not pass is there's no ships.

It's barely any. Most of the ships that are out are going to China or Japan. or India or whatever. That's where they're going. So I don't think they'll do this. I also don't know that they can. My understanding is like,

communication's kind of breaking down on the Iranian side, and it's just, they may not have a structured plan on this. It may just be like chaos, stop the ships. I think the other interesting thing here is that Israel being the other partner

in the conflict is they're going to lose more institutional support. Like, I already feel like there is tide shift among like the average person in terms of their outlook on Israel or support for Israel, right? And they still have a lot of like political or institutional support in the United States, but also abroad from like a lot of other countries' governments and things like this. But when a decision that you are a huge part in, maybe the primary reason that this is happening now, you start to lose that institutional support you've built in other places. Like people can

only tolerate the consequences of your actions when it affects them in this way economically for so long. And I feel like that's, they are going to see the results of that in the next few years. I think the high level would be that this is becoming an economic story more than a military story. This is, this is spiraling to millions of people in economic, like gas prices worldwide, fertilizer worldwide. And if this doesn't get open soon, and there's no short-term reason it would be. I don't know why.

I don't know what the plan. Maybe they do have a plan. But if that doesn't happen soon, we're looking at $150, $200 barrel oil, and that is just, and fertilizer at fucking 3x the time. That will be a problem. You see that, you know, that funny gas station

that's on a union station in LA? Dude, it's got to be so high right now. It's already at $8.50 a gallon for regular. 850s. My God. Which is not indicative of LA on the whole, but it is like, there's this like comically expensive gas station in L.A. that was like, it was $7 flat last week.

And I was like, oh, that's pretty low. It's just like being in L.A. because I've been looking at all these gas price charts and it's like gas price up 88 cents. It's like $3.50 for the country. It's like, bro, $3.50. I've been paid $4 plus for years. That gas station setting it like $6 before the war.

Like, you're already making a shitload of money. So they're like, ooh, war in Iran. Everybody will think this is chill and they just crank it up like they're just vibing the price

that's awesome. They vibe it. Oh, that sucks. Yeah. It does kind of suck honestly, but I think worth talking about.

War is back, baby. Dude, put this right after I do the Iran War. But not where you would think it in a little land known as Japan. Japan. War is back for Japan.

Now, we, Now, famously, war was really bad. It's bad. It's better to breathe. It's back. It was back. It was on the intermission. That was better. For about 80 years. What did they fix? War is back. Well, Japan war specifically. So, okay, after World War II, Japan lost.

I'm going to fact check that. Real Patriots say yes. Correct that in the comments. So they lost. U.S. takes over and basically kind of forces a new constitution where they renounce the right to wage war. Japan constitutionally cannot wage war right now. So Takaiichi, who's the prime minister, we've talked about a couple of times. She had this, like, massive win. They have the largest, like, electoral percentage right now in the history of modern Japan, right? So she as a leader has more ability to kind of push agenda than anyone in any, you know, living memory, right? And now people in Japan are justifiably concerned about China, North Korea, Russia, and the unpredictability of the USA.

Turns out we're making it feel a little weird. And when we were in Japan and we talked to Professor Jeffrey Hall, he mentioned how like if war breaks out between China and the U.S., it's probably happening on military bases in Japan, right? Like, that's like the war. Like they're dragged into it. Phase one. Yeah, kind of regardless of what you want.

And the USA has explicitly pushed for Japan to be more militarized because that's Trump's thing, right? He wants everybody to spend more on military. So he praised Takaichi's Peace Through Strength Agenda, Scott Bessent Treasury Secretary said on X, when Japan is strong, the U.S. is strong in Asia. So in the past, this was not something that the Japanese population cared about that much,

but if you pull this up, Perry, even over the past five years, this is from Bloomberg, the number of people who feel that reforming the Constitution to allow for something like this is increasing pretty dramatically. So in this graph, you can see since 2020, the number of people who thought it was necessary to reform the Constitution was like 29%.

now it is up to 39. It's ticking up. It's ticking up. And not only that, the number of people who think it's unnecessary is shrinking. Actually, the number of people

who are undecided or don't care is about the same. It's about the same. So it's just, it's notable that the people really opposed to this are sort of rapidly shrinking. And so this is hugely notable.

We've talked a number of times about how the Japanese average person is a little more apolitical than us. They've been in this extremely long kind of era of peace. And now, Takaichi is really pushing for it.

Quote, I am committed to create an environment in which a national referendum can be held as soon as possible to let the public decide on whether or not to amend the Constitution. She also wants to create a National Intelligence Bureau by July. She wants to have a CIA

or an M16 or M.I.6. M.I.6 type of vibe, which is like, that's not our best, man. Don't model it after that. Hard to start that from scratch. Yeah. I do like the idea of... Three years of coups before... You can never do it like us.

Yeah, you really got to put effort in. They should acquire ours. I mean, we're going to talk about this before we go to China, but I will say that the primary urgency behind this, my understanding is like there is rising tensions between Japan and China. Political tip for tats. They're saying a lot of things. Takayuchi said some stuff about Taiwan that got China really heated. Yeah, so that was months ago, right? And we talked about that. She was, she basically said Japan would consider military action if China goes for Taiwan. China's been very upset about that. And we talked about that. And we talked about that. a bunch. And they were kind of hoping that that would fade out. And they've put like some

economic constraints and restricted tourism. And I even talked to someone in Japan who said that like the amount of Chinese tourists that she has seen in the last couple months has decreased dramatically. It used to be one of the biggest groups. And they were really hoping that Takaichi would like lose power. And instead she gained massively. And now she isn't backing down. She's planning on going and visiting the war crime shrine, which is a whole other mini-strand. story. It's a shrine where there's 14 war criminals, their spirits got added to the shrine without anybody noticing.

And it became a big, this is real. And you can't separate out the 14 spirits. They become one spirit, you know? Okay. And so she... I don't know. No, she's going to be... There's a book that has all the spirits. All the spirits combined into one spiritual

kind of energy. You can't pull them away. The priests aren't going to do that. That's basic spiritology. You're lecturing me. I already know that. You're saying we should pull out the 14 war criminals. No, I know, of course. Because they've combined. Thank you.

Because they've combined. Thank you. I don't understand that. And one politician proposed that and people are pissed. That's not what you're supposed to do. You don't pull out the 14 spirit. So the prime minister, it's like, it's a big deal when you go and visit the shrine.

Because the, unironically, these are like, so it's a shrine for like, you know, he soldiers, Japanese soldiers who fell in battle, particularly World War II. Yeah. But by putting war criminals in there, like their spirits are officially logged as in the shrine. Yeah.

Korea and China aren't stoked about that because they were the recipients of a lot of the war crimes. So it's kind of a bad look if the prime minister goes and visits the shrine where they literally enshrined 14 class A war criminals without telling the public If you're going to do a war crime B class A

And she said like I'm trying to figure out how to go visit the shrine right now. Like she just said that. She's not back in down. No, everyone's getting super nationalistic over there. I mean, yeah, like you said, it backfired because the pain from the economics, like the canceling tourism and the canceling imports

hadn't really hit yet. It was just like a, kind of a mean thing to do. And so everyone in Japan was like, well, fuck you then. And they rallied behind her. And she called a snap election right then. It was kind of politically brilliant. And so her power didn't shrink it, massively increased. And it was kind of because of this China. People were more, so it's kind of crazy. I'm channeling my C-Dug VA

and giving you the Japan news. I mean, we'll be learning more about this, but with all the tensions going around in the world, Japan is not a good sign for more tensions. And I'll give you my opinions about what she said about Taiwan in four weeks. It's something else here now, something new. From exclusively on Paramount Plus, it's the series Stephen King calls Scarious Hell. Everything here is impossible, but it's also real. Sci-Fi Vision calls it the best show streaming right now. We're running out of time and we still don't know the rules.

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I'm a Sted Herndon, and this is America actually. We're all talking to each other to see what did we do wrong? What did we not see? I'm in Washington, D.C. this week to interview Ruben Gallego. He's a Democratic senator from Arizona, and he's been thinking openly about running for higher office, but he's recently run into some hot water because of his connection to Congressman Eric Swalwell. I have to learn from this, and I will learn from this.

But for me, it's not a 2028 question. It's about what it means to be a better. first boss in my office and also a better senator to my constituents. This week on America, actually, we asked Gallego about predatory behavior in Washington. His plans for immigration reform and more. Time for something exciting. Honda, car company, you might have heard about it. They made a little announcement.

I love Honda. Bite your tongue if you're going to say a negative thing about Honda. I'm a die-hard on the defender. We are not paid. This is not a sponsor. Honda fucking sucks. Thank you. We're going to have a problem.

We're going to have beef, bro. And you know what sucks the most, the Honda fit? As long as Aish doesn't drive a Honda, I think I'm good. Look, they made a post three days ago, big announcement where they said they are canceling the development and launch of three EV models that have been planned for North America. You can pull this up for just like a few seconds, Perry, but Honda posts this announcement.

And it is really bleak. Honda basically announced two problems. First off, they tried to pivot to EV. They're like, we are going to make a goal to go carbon neutral by 2050. And the U.S., especially under Biden, was like really pushing EV transition, right? Yeah. So Honda, as a broad global strategy, was like, we're going to really focus on EVs, especially in the United States.

Okay. And then Trump gets elected. And now there's a whole bunch of tariffs that make a traditional hybrid cars very expensive. On top of that, we've been dropping, the United States government has been dropping the subsidies to buy EVs and just generally there's less interest in them. So the demand on the U.S. side has suddenly precipitously dropped instead of being this long-term goal that persists. And China is coming in and eating everybody's lunch in the EV market. And Honda has basically said, we are kind of, we're kind of fucked.

They're posting losses. They're canceling the EVs. It looks real bad. And they're basically just saying like on both of our fronts on the traditional side and on the EV side, we're failing. So we're just going to focus on the traditional hybrids. Did they say anything about how they love the driver? of Honda Fits and how that's their best thing they ever did. Why would they say that? We do something that you might mention to like as I would throw a bone to your audience.

We're failing on this front. We're feeling on this front. But we crushed it on the Honda Fit 2017. And that's where. And you think they'd be hanging on to that still? I just think if you have a big hit, don't forget to mention it. Don't forget to mention it. It was weird. There's a whole section. It's just like here is Brandon Ewing at Dunkin' Donuts. Here's Branden's at 430 p.m. And it's drone shots that are than following you around specifically. That's probably what they're failing. It's very expensive. It sounds like. So I think this is an interesting. So I think this is an interesting canary in the coal mine for some of the other big car companies, right? This is one of the ones that has tried to pivot to EVs and they basically are saying we're giving up, right? And you're seeing

other companies do this and it's both the pressure from China, the weird regulation and vicissitudes of the U.S. market, all this crazy. You got to dive up good fucking lingo there, vicissitudes, baby. And so to kind of like wrap it up, they are sticking with internal combustion engines, which kind of sucks because I think we should move towards an EV future. So I think if you want to like tell Honda that you're upset with this you don't want internal combustion engines. Tweet at them and say hashtag abolish ice. Don't stick with this type of car

and let's move to EVs. You know, referring to the internal. And you could say something like, we believe people from other countries should be welcome here in America, hashtag fuck ice. Referring to Chinese manufacturers being able to produce cars here and a general dislike of internal combustion engines.

I don't know if you guys know this, but there's another, I think there's another thing going on right now. Couldn't possibly be. Like, it's like mass people picking up, picking up people. I think I know about that if that happened. You're right. Elephant in the room, self-driving cars.

Nobody's really talking about that. Oh, good point. It's not really what I was getting at. There was a great interview for car and driver with the Ford CEO. He starts talking about how like COVID threw them off because they thought there was going to be like, oh, this massive surge for EVs and that it didn't really work out. Talks about how he thinks Ford has been iterated. off of their previous ice designs, hashtag fuck ice,

internal combustion engines, and that like their stuff was just not actually built from the ground up in a smart way for EVs. So they're needing to redo that, talking about how the software defined vehicles, cars really just being software that makes the user happy, is like the future and really talks about this candidly. And apparently this,

the CEO of Ford like does racing. He just does car racing. I've heard so many interviews with him. He seems like he gets it, but what's funny is Ford has made no progress. So it feels like, he's a guy that's just like, bro, where he comes out in these interviews,

he talks about how, man, we're cooked, we got to do this, this, and this. And then nothing happens in the stock tanks. And I'm like, maybe you're, what's going on between his, he's the leader. But I agree with you. And I think, you know, this story's not just Honda, right? We talked to read the book about Germany and like the German cars. Everybody's caught between what worked for decades. Right.

And this huge wave from China and then like different EV adoptions around the globe. I think genuinely, you're, Hands are probably a bit tied in that situation, right? Because the amount of transformation that your company needs to take and the people that you need to convince and maybe the legislation that would push you in the appropriate direction, all of these things are gigantic layers of friction that make that change such a big gamble. And you have to deal with the short term consequences of what your shareholders think as the CEO. I'm not, you know, I don't care what happens to the Ford CEO.

Like I, he can... You're an asshole. He's a nice guy. He can... You are an asshole. Jim Farley is a nice man. But I can see how him getting it

in interviews doesn't translate into immediate change for a public company that might not make it through that transition. Probably a big slow ship that's hard to turn. Yeah.

And it's funny because all of the people that are invested in the company, it's like, okay, you're going to let it die slowly instead. Because you'll inevitably lose. Like the EVs, it's like there's no getting around that the EVs are going to win eventually. Yeah.

You guys hear the story about Harley where like they realized that only old people were buying their bikes. And so they, uh, Oh, Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson. And so they were like, we need to try a youthful pivot. And so they tried this big pivot for like a year, maybe eight months. It didn't really work off the ground and they were like, fuck it. And then they went all in old people.

They're like, the company will die eventually. But we're going to make money while we can. They're just, they're like, the brand is not going to revitalize for young people. That's why I feel about Honda. It's like you're giving up on what is clearly the future. Is this happening? We're just going to, we're just going to can the east side. We're going to focus on hybrids.

Do a quote from the Ford CEO. I do like, I kind of like that level of honesty. If he came into the interview, we'll tell me what, yeah, what's the actual quote? Well, I just, so this is Ford CEO. He says, when we ripped apart a Tesla, I was absolutely flabbergasted. The mock E, meaning his own EV, Ford's EV, the wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer, basically the wiring that hooks up the pieces of the car. We didn't know what was going on in Tesla engineers' minds, but now we understand. They had no prejudice. We had prejudice. They said,

let's design the vehicle for the lowest, smallest battery, totally different approach. So he admits, like, we're stuck in these old ways and we're kind of just trying to, like, jam a battery into these ice cars. Yeah. And what we need to do is rethink it from the ground up, right? Ice check four guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so we need to, you need to abolish that entirely and rebuild. That's very smart. The way you said about software is really important because that's what I've heard too is that these companies

they thought, I mean, it's been true that to be good at making cars, you're good at certain processes. And one of them was not software. But the modern day car is almost like an entertainment unit. It's, you know, the dashboard, everything. The Chinese cars are built like phones almost with a bunch of different.

Right. Well, it's funny to see Xiaomi win. Yeah, it's a phone company. Yeah. And like, they don't care as much about, not that they're bad at it, but they don't care about horsepower. Like those things are not the number one thing

it's ranked on. It's like all the media features and all that stuff. Well, that was the quote in Caput when it was talking about the German car companies is like they couldn't get their heads around them not talking about. They're like, what do you mean you guys don't talk about speed? Horse power. Yeah,

it's like everyone just gets a car to go to the grocery store most people. It's like if it gets it done and you can listen to music and watch media. So anyway, it shows that it's pretty interesting because we're way over the time limit. People seem to love this one. And cut. Continuing from what Edin just said, I'm sure.

We're language right in order. There's been a massive hatred of Apple over what they've done with the Apple App Store. Oh, yes. There's this big monopoly battle that was kicked off by Tim Sweeney and Epic Games and Fortnite. Because they're the only ones that had the muscle post-COVID when every single kid on the world

was addicted to Fortnite. They were tired of 30% of every in-app purchase going to either of these. stores. And they said this is stupid. We can make our own store. But then all the stores would like block their store or like make it hard to get to or like cut them off the app store. And so there was this big lawsuit by Tim Sweeney against Google Play and against Apple. Now, for some reason, I don't know why they lost the Apple lawsuit and won the Google Play lawsuit. Google Play was declared a monopoly in the way they did. I don't know why there's a difference on this. Maybe we could

look it up. But the point is that there was a legal battles that continuing to And finally, Google has given in and they are making substantial changes to their app store, which is in-app purchases drop from 30% to 20%, subscriptions drop to 10%. Developers using their own billing pay

as little as 5%. They can no longer make it like really like warning sign, danger if you try to go off to a different store. Because that they do. Like right now if you're like on a game and you want to go to their online store, it goes danger.

You're leaving the app. This is crazy. Now it's easy. So everyone can easily make their own purchase store. So it's, it's now a huge competitive lob at Apple because now on the Play Store, you will get a much better split as a developer than you are on the Apple store. Used to be bad even. And Tim Sweetie came out. I got the, I got his tweet somewhere around here. Google is opening up Android. You can put it on the screen with robust support for competing stores,

competing payments, and a better deal for all developers. So we've settled all of our disputes worldwide thanks Google. It's after five years of legal battle. Tim Sweeney at least gets a win in this area, which is pretty crazy. Now, I do think it's funny that, listen, if you look into this, at every single step of the way,

Google is fought tooth and nail not to make this change. And when they finally had to do it, they're like, we're opening up to end of being. Yeah, we're developer. We're pro developers. And it's kind of working. Everyone's being like,

oh, Google's pro developer now. It's just so funny to be like scraping against it. So anyway, this is a huge deal. that kind of, if Apple feels like they have to respond, will finally end this garg, not let me end, but seriously weaken, this gargantuan duopoly that has existed since mobile phones became dominant.

Like this is so huge. You're saying in the most idealistic scenario, because Google is such a huge player and they are making these changes, it will pressure Apple to also make them, even though they won the same lawsuit on their side. Yes. Somehow Apple won their lawsuit, but it's because they've done nothing wrong.

Apple makes great computers and phones and they're compatible with your watch. This is not an ad. Yeah, so six years of legal warfare in 200 billion dollar mobile app market, Apple still charges 30%, but Android is now dramatically cheaper. And that does mean something.

Developers will start to notice how much better that feels. Because again, having a third of your profit, slurped away by these big stores is like they've been complaining about it more and more and more and more and they've been trying to get around it and get outside of it

and now they can do it easily on Android and they can't on. Isn't this incredibly naive though to believe that that would be an outcome? Apple has such a gigantic portion of the market you can't not engage in their store. Like I understand there's a huge other player but if I'm making any sort of app

why would I not like as long as the iPhone So imagine if your friend who owns an Android can use the Epic Play Store or whatever easily. Yeah. And they're getting a discount. They're getting a better deal. And so you as a customer start noticing that the iPhone person is paying more, has worse updates or whatever. Like the experience becomes worse because the developer prefers the platform when they can make a lot more money. Yeah.

It's literally, you know, if Uber is like, oh, your ride is 10% cheaper when you use Android. Like that is going to start to your, you know, your gotcha game that you play. all the in-app purchases you do on literally anything, your Uber, like if everything starts dropping because of this, eventually, I don't think people are going to not post on the iPhone store, but I think people will increasingly put pressure on their customers to be like, you can get it cheaper over here. And that's what Epic has been doing.

Like, what they did win against Apple is that the judge agreed that Apple had basically prevented people from being able to set up their own alternate payment. And so there was a follow-up with a judge. where they said Epic, uh, excuse me, Apple needs to make it easier for people to set up their own payment system. So Epic got sort of a win there.

And again, if people are, if developers in an app are saying like, leave, go here, buy this somewhere else. Do not buy this on iPhone. And that just keeps repeating over and over and over.

Eventually people are going to get annoyed. If you subscribe to the lemonade stand Patreon or are thinking about it, do not subscribe on your iPhone. Subscribe. This is not a joke. You actually do have to pay. way more when you use the iOS app. Go subscribe on your desktop or on the actual

Patreon website. Do not. Yeah, anyway. I'll have this. I mean by saying the reason that Apple won and Google lost, apparently, is first of all, Apple had a judge decide the trial. So it was one judge just made a decision. Google one was a jury trial. And the second thing was that Google had a ton of internal evidence

that looked really bad. Like emails that came out were like, we're a monopoly LOL. helping. Like, that type of shit is kind of the reason as opposed to Apple, which is more buttoned up on that stuff. So I made it easier of an open and shut case. Cut.

Washington State. Another place, well, sorry, let me restart. Don't edit that. It's going to be first. Don't edit that. This is Gore at first. Leave this in.

And you've opened all five stories with Washington State, Canada, or Scandinavia. Aish, if you put that in first. Aish, if you keep all that in, I'm gonna leak your ass. Okay, in Washington State, I don't know if you guys know this, but it's one of the few states in the U.S.

that does not have an income tax. Sure do, Aiden. I learned the hard way. You learned the hard way? You wanted to pay income tax? No, I started making money when I lived there. That's when I suddenly started to like make a lot of money. And then I moved to California.

Oh, yeah. And I got plugged like that leak. I'll never, I will never ever forget the jarring change between moving. like I used to do my taxes on turbo tax. You just dropped earlier. And in Washington and you get to the state section and then you just click done. And then you come to California.

It's like a whole other part of chances. It's a crazy. It's huge. Just in a personal level, I remember enjoyed that part. But they have just introduced their first income tax ever. After many previous rejections of income taxes in the past, And it is specifically on people who make more than a million dollars a year,

which is apparently 20, about 20,000 people in the state of Washington. It doesn't include streamers, right? Because they're... No, it actually excludes streamers because of the... Because they're better people. No, no, it says they're worse people, but do deliver value to society. Okay, great.

It excludes them because they're going to prison. They're rounding them up. The governor of Washington is on record saying that they want clavicular to move there. Tax benefits will do that. Interesting. Interesting. It's like the use. to seek out Amazon HQ, but now it's all about clavicular, baby.

Listen, my cortisol will spike if I have to pay. But up until now, Washington State is primarily funded by sales tax and taxes on businesses. And they have never had an income tax to raise income, but they're now, they're at this cross section where the state deficit has gotten so much larger. And this is supposedly going to generate around $4 billion, which helps close the apparently $10 billion. gap that they have on their budget. Every story about anyone's deficit is like, we're trying this very crazy thing to fix it.

It's going to do like 1%. Well, that's, you know, it's 40%. Yeah, no, that's a big deal. And also it's at a time socially where I think the energy for taxing the wealthier is much more strong than it used to be. Yeah. And obviously this is coming with the usual trappings of the wealthier,

gonna leave. They're disappearing with previous examples of Jeff Bezos had already He packed up with a Florida. He moved to Florida because of the differences in capital gains tax or if or his parents' health

could be high. It was like three months after the capital gains he's like my dad is sick and I have to you have a jet that you don't need to move your residence Jeff Bezos. That's so fucking stupid. Howard Shulls

the former CEO of Starbucks moved, announced that he was moving to Miami shortly after this tax was passed. However, he had already apparently purchased a property there and had committed to moving to Florida prior to this. But the frequent argument against this is that you're going to lose a bunch of your tax base by putting something that into place.

But I personally have a hard time believing that in a place that has no income tax to begin with. And also studies have shown, albeit I can specifically, reference a study that reviewed wealth flight out of the UK from earlier last year that people above this like million

dollar income mark are way less likely to move than the average person because usually their wealth is tied to the area that they live in in some way either through the companies and the they own and the people they employ and so

the only argument I can see here is that over a long enough period of time people will and the low enough friction of moving between states, you would lose these people. But from Washington, it kind of seems like a win-win, at least in the short term, because you have no income tax to begin with,

and you're taking, you're taxing these high earners that, at whatever rate you can kind of get out of them. It's at a 9.9% rate for every dollar they make past a million or something. I mean, which is high. I mean, two, you know, counter arguments. One is that might be the case, you know, of like leaving New York City.

It's like, oh, are people really going to leave New York City if Mom Dani increases taxes? Like New York City is so special and great. And I think there's a fair argument that a lot of people in Seattle, if they're suddenly being taxed at the same rate of California, would move to California. Right. I mean, that is one of the big draws of people going to Washington and Seattle, right? Yeah, yeah. famously, a lot of people fucking hate the weather there. And if you're like, oh, I'm going to have the same amount of taxes,

I mean, you know, for somebody who's making, you know, whatever, let's say $2 million. The first million is untaxed, right? As far as I understand, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it is. So after that point, they would then pay this 9% or 9.9. So they'd be paying, if you make $2 million in a year, you're now losing $100,000.

I mean, that is a lot of money, right? Yeah, but it is way less than what you would be getting taxed overall in a place like California. I thought California is also about nine, like $9,000. It kicks in way earlier. I think California's highest like income tax. I guess I guess that's fair. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, no, no, no, that's totally fair. That's totally fair. So it is still different. I guess that's the argument. And in, I think particularly when you are talking about a place like Seattle, which famously a lot of people don't enjoy the weather, I love it there. But I would not be surprised of a lot of people who are just optimizing for money are then like, okay, well, I'm going to go live in, you know, whatever part of California

that has, that's 80 degrees every single day. There's also some controversy as to how this passed. There's, you know, for the, apparently the Washington Constitution, like, restricts income taxes traditionally, and that's part of the reason why one has never been passed previously. And there's some sort of loophole to be able to put this in place. And that's, like, inherently controversial the way they approach that. I think the... I mean, I like the idea of taxing the wealthy.

I am annoyed with this game of... Because I agree with you that wealthy won't flee the country, but I think the state lines thing, I wish. But also, stop going for millionaires. Yeah, just go for the billionaires. Just go for the billionaires. Just go for the billionaires. Just go just a little bit higher.

Everyone above me. No, but I think the, the, like I, if it doesn't, if it exists in one state but not the other, I just feel like people are, are, the people that can leave will try to move, right? Yeah. Shouldn't it be national? I don't know.

I will do the exact counter argument to what I said, which is that I fucking love Seattle. and I would of course live there and pay this. Like I, you know, so I think probably there won't be that much flight. It is just, it is notable that it's not something like New York City, which is like extremely unique. I don't know that that many people feel

that degree of intensity about Seattle. I guess, yeah, the thing I, like a dislike point. As someone who loves the city, like I, yeah. It's like that we have states always competing in a race to the bottom to make the best deal for people with money, right? That's the problem I have with it. It's like.

So they're going to be tempted over to, Miami or whatever. I just like why why is Ohio or Florida or Nevada competing with Seattle on taxing? It's like it's like the way that billionaires shop around in different cities to get them to pay for their fucking stadium. Wait, sir, are you advocating for a federal income tax? We have a federal income tax. I mean like a higher one and then not making it up. The state should be like almost the same. I don't know. Okay. So I think I agree with you this like race to the bottom is stupid to begin with. I generally think that this is worth trying

and the risk of flight is low from the things that I have read. I think the inherent competition is stupid. The other thing and the reason why I think this is important to put in place is if you make this amount of money in Washington, there's already a regressive tax system in place. So if you're taxed, like if your primary vehicle of paying taxed is sales tax, right? and if you have higher income,

sales tax affects you at a lower percentage than it affects a middle income or a lower income person, right? So effectively, taxation in Washington is regressive because of the taxes they rely on and people who make a lot of money pay less than less in percent in total taxes than the people do at the bottom.

It's not even like raising, it's not even just about raising it on them to like get them to pay more. It's about getting them to a threshold that like evens it out with other normal people. And I think, uh, you know, I, from an outsider perspective, would like to see how this plays out. And if it fails, like if you're five, 10 years from now and you can see the negative effects of it, well, you could say at least we tried and we approach it with something new. That's what I meant about.

Is because, okay, like, what if it fails because people move to a state that has zero income tax or whatever? It's like that shouldn't be an, like, why, this wouldn't fail if there wasn't like a Florida or a Puerto Rico or Nevada where they can just, or Texas where they can go to zero. That's what's annoying to me is, I don't know if it'll fail. Maybe it won't fail. I have no idea. You should be allowed to move, but you can't chase around the country. You're saying your argument is the threat of that being a problem shouldn't exist in the first place. But and then because it does, this, imagine this did fail. Everyone goes, well, that doesn't work.

it's a bad idea because look but it's like what they can't compete against a state that will race to the bottom take political money cut all the taxes for the top of the top of them like that's the frustrating part is like this would even be good experiment

to me because we don't know hopefully it just works and there's no problem but yeah you know what Jeff Bezos is doing is like so naked transparent that it's like I can't I think Jeff Bezos is also a bad example because he's someone who is so wealthy and has so much money in stock

specifically that he was already under threat, under threat from the taxes being levied through capital gains specifically in the state, right? And then in this situation, this is more about like, this is affecting people making over a million dollars a year in income, not necessarily from like stocks

or like assets they own, right? That can, and I think if you have that much income, like if you're sitting in the like million to $10 million range, that a bulk of these people would be, that income is tied to businesses and things they presumably have to do in Washington. They don't have this like insane level of wealth and mobility that someone like Jeff Bezos did have. I agree. This will hit, this will get the dentist in Seattle. This will get the, this will absolutely get the higher upper motor.

Yeah, Andrew, my fucking anesthesiologist friend. Get, fuck, Andrew. If they own a practice. A year? Then just make bank. I don't know. Aesthesiologist. This is going to hit.

the anesthesia is all. It's just a heart. It's not going to hit the guy that owns, you know, a tonus hog or the Microsoft executive or the, you know, those people may flee. I don't know if they will or not, but they, they are much easier to flee. So it's frustrating because, you know, I think the dentist should be taxed more, but it's, that's not the person. I get you. Anyway, whatever. I do. Yeah. I agree with you with you. I would like, I'm excited to see what happens. All right, Jarvis, pull me out. Local news is in decline across Canada. And this This is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void.

And it gets harder to separate truth from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada. Reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us. Because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. Okay. When I sell my business, I want to sell my business.

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There's more to life than finding the purpose. perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrater.ca. Canada's car marketplace. We got for us. Let's talk a little bit about a company named Tinder. They just did their first. little keynote about new products and one thing that jumped out to me in this keynote is right here. We're also extending Tinder beyond the screen because today we're launching IRL events

bookable in the app in Los Angeles creating real world. All right. So if you pause it there, there's a whole lot that they cover in this hour long keynote of new features in quotes. A lot of them are what you expect. This is how we're going to use AI to do blah, blah, blah, blah, which is also what Bumble right now is doing. Bumble's doing the like AI is going to be your matchmaker. So a lot of that. So things are something. I thought were interesting. The dating apps are all trying to get Gen Z. And like that's like the big hot thing. They don't date. They don't date. And, you know, the, the quote is like, you know, they don't, they're, they don't interested in swiping anymore. They don't want to swipe. No. They're at home listening to Lemonades. Yeah. Gen Z is collectively all listening to this podcast.

And so they have announced that they're going to start testing this idea of events where people like meet up in person and then you can start doing this thing. And what I thought was interesting is that you're just like reinventing dating from first principles. And then if you go to this second one, Perry, there's this new app that came out this last week called YouTube Surfer, where what it does is it recreates old school style cable TV channels where there's YouTube videos playing and you can click on the left pair, you can go to like the history channel.

And you just join in like midway through whatever video is playing and you can see the thing. And this is my own ironically. It's awesome, right? And a bunch of people are like, okay, this is kind of sick. Like instead of choice paralysis or if you're unhappy with the YouTube algorithm,

You can kind of channel. Dude, joining a YouTube video in the middle is kind of base. Right? And you can see how many people are watching right now at the bottom. It's like 300 people are watching. You would join a movie in the middle and it would be kind of sick. Click it on the left. I can't wait to watch the beginning.

Yeah. Okay. So now we're watching the history channel and we're going to join midway through this video. Yeah. Wow. Of that great war. So this is another one in this app idea, really cool, really creative, right? And what I think is so interesting is it feels like the newest innovations and the things

that are getting a lot of like viral attention are us just reinventing what we had 20 years ago. Yes. This people are like, you know, what's so cool about this, this to be clear, little, you know, viral fun kind of toy app.

But people are like, yeah, it's really nice to feel like you're watching other people, like or have the same kind of thing. There's a limited choice, so I'm not just endlessly scrolling. And the same thing with events. The idea that Tinder's big breakthrough

is going to be to get a group of people together in person to talk. That's just not Tinder, dude. You're just organizing events. And so, I just thought, you are just an event organizer. You're just an event organizer.

It's just a different business. Like, I think, I think the, the Tinder example is really good. I think we're far enough along into sort of digital life that we've had time to like societally react and reshape how digital things fit into our lives as utility. So in the case of dating,

right? They're like, let's digitize and make this process like as, as quick and as seamless as possible. Frictionless. Just swipe. Frictionless. Just swipe. And then I think inevitably, the experience of dating online via apps like this

is bad. Most people think it is bad. And now that is culturally prevalent enough. We've all spent enough time trying those things collectively that we're like, we're looking for a return to doing it the normal. normal way. And Tinder can be a facilitator for that. I actually think this is a good angle for them because I do think that there still needs to be, there isn't this like free flowing idea of meeting people in the same way you could decades ago. There's still like a, there needs to be a push

or a shove for you to go into dating somehow. And Tinder can be the gateway to that, but in a different way than it used to be. And I think the example we talked about on a Patreon episode a long time ago was I met that guy who was developing a dating app called like 5.30 or 6.30. And he was focusing around like calls and in-person meetups.

It's like restrictions, you know? It's people saying, hey, just having this endless mass exposure to everybody on planet Earth is not actually healthy for us and we should go back in some ways. Can we pull us up, Perry? Do you guys remember this guy?

He was the WeWork CEO. Yeah, I saw this. A bit of fraud. But he's back with a new idea, which is essentially this, which is like I'm buying, instead of office space for companies, I'm buying residential space for humans

and we're doing a ton of events all the time. Yeah. It is going to be like, yeah, it's built in community. Yeah, join the, and I think it's kind of,

it's kind of brilliant, which is that you buy into, you know, if you're buying a condor or whatever, like a part of what you're paying for is the idea that people in that entire complex are going to be doing events and you can meet

and hang out with them, and that feels meaningful. Unfortunately, it's by Adam Newman, who's a giant scam artist, but the concept makes sense. It does, this could be anywhere you live. Yeah, if you put effort in. Am I fucking crazy?

Like, there is no scalability to it. This could be any apartment you live in. If you just put it in a little effort. Yeah. And also, like, departments do this now. Like, I've lived in apartments where they're like, we have a, you know, they do little events. I guess he's leading into it in more extreme way.

He's doing it in a way. He's doing it in a way where he can generate a lot of investment money. Yeah, I'm just saying that places you live, that bay community things into the place you live is obviously a good thing. I mean, it's a human, we love this as humans from the dawn of time. And people are feeling atomized and isolated in the Jal area. And I think people are trying to. I agree. This is what I think is going to happen here is that clearly the difference here is everybody's signing up for one of these units has kind of the implicit agreement that they want to put the effort in.

Right. of meeting and having these, going to these events. But in the same way that, like, I, I think I'm going to be involved in my apartment building social committee and I said yes to a five more. You're not going to. I'm not going to, nobody's going to fucking do it. I think if you live at that place, that doesn't change whether you're in Aden or not. Aidan makes friends with everyone everywhere.

I am not. I'm going to stay inside on a Friday night and play video games. Doug's signing up for the Adam Newman fucking friend. I'm sitting in his room and playing. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I think something like this could be great. You know, when I went to, when I moved to Seattle, it was hard to meet new friends. And like something like that would have been really valuable.

You know, I definitely would have utilized it. Yeah, I just think it's such a dumb business because it's not like everything that you do to be good is like very personalized and effort driven. There's no scalability. There's not, he preaches it like a tech company or like a, there's no. Yeah, no, he's a, he's just a, it's just. There's a section where he says, here's our area. Everything here is made in-house in our flow kitchen. And he shows all the like smoothies that.

are presumably $12 each. And it's like, okay, this is for... All part of your... Yeah. Yeah, this is like a church. But I mean, I get, yeah, I think the demand is real. I think trend here,

the reason why this should go later in the episode eight is because I think it's interesting that we will probably see more and more tech services that have really grown over the last decade or two making products that like revert back in a weird way. And I wouldn't be surprised if Valve ends up releasing real life loot boxes with guns. With real guns.

Physically. And that's going to be very... Because it feels good to hold an AK-47. That'll joke will make sense, depending on the... order of this. I guarantee you we're after that one.

You thought that was, okay, good, thank God. This was a pretty interesting one. Cut. And. All right. A bit of tech news that's not about AI,

which I think is somewhat novel in the current time. So Apple announced their or released, excuse me, their MacBook Neo, which is a, I think $600,

$500, dollar laptop, primarily for a lower end market that Apple has left underserved for a long time. Their laptops are, I would say, famously expensive. And it's allowed windows, different windows laptops to really corner a portion of the market and things like Chromebooks that Apple has had a rougher time competing with because they only offer these more expensive, arguably premium in some ways. products. But the Neo, which is basically the $600 notebook, is finally out. And it's reportedly shaking things up a bit on the Windows. Dude, they're freaked out. Right.

Yeah. So the CEO, the co-CEO of ASIS, S.Y. Sue, noted that in the, in the past, Apple's pricing situation has always been high. So for them to release a very, very budget-friendly product. This is obviously a shock to the entire industry. And he noted later, however, that one of his I would say coping mechanisms for this laptop is, well, the laptop isn't built to like upgrade

the RAM and it's not as like modifiable as a lot of the PC competitors. In the history of fucking computing. And I was like, am I, is the quote being mistranslated or something? Because this guy's Chinese. And I was, I was like, what an insane argument for the market that this laptop serves?

Who is buying $500, like, Chromebooks or $500 Windows laptops? So they can add, like, modify the RAM in them. Hey, wait, you know what? It honestly may be him expressing the idea of just broadly being more customizable, right? With Windows versus Mac OS. I think that's a more legitimate argument. It's like at the end of the day. But, again, the market of people who don't care about that is way, way, way bigger.

It's just bigger. It's so much bigger. Yeah, but my mom does not give a fuck. if she can run Linux. No. And every review that I see about these things is really,

really positive in terms of their performance according to the price point. And I think it's, I think the laptop runs on like the same chip that the last iPhone did, which is pretty incredible

in the first place that we're kind of at a place where like, you know, the phone chip can just make a laptop do what it needs. I mean, it's like a,

that's what it is. But that's who this consumer is. Like if you're a student, for example, it's like you're pulling up PDFs, web pages, you're not like,

like editing YouTube videos or like rendering 3D objects. That's not what this is for. Most people just use these things to like, you know, open notion and talk to cloud. Yeah, and do a podcast. And do the lemonade and same podcast. And so it's pretty cool to see them move in this direction as, you know, somebody who likes Apple products a lot,

coincidentally using the wrong laptop. Is it a hallway today? Yeah. Well, we gotta get our visa. And it reminded me a lot of how their, their Mac Mini sort of serves this market as well. It's like a little more expensive, but like a really high performing,

uh, kind of like mobile, mobile-ish, but still desktop computer that Apple offers. Uh, and I think for all of the manufacturers that get to pump out, I would say shittier Windows laptops that are like loaded with Windows bloat in their software,

this is a, this is actually a nice thing. to see. No, I mean, as an Apple show. When I was at a video, we used to work with all these hardware partners for laptops.

We had to do these yearly marketing campaigns. So it's like Acer, AIS, Lenovo, HP, all these people. And they fucking loved the Chromebook market. The Chromebook market was like

just bread and butter cash cow because you could make something for cheap. People were buying it like crazy. There was no competition from Apple. It was, so this is them panicking. Everything I've read

is that all these CEOs are like in different stages of the five stages agree. Either though like they're angry about it, they're denying, they're bargaining. But it's like, all of them are like, this is just going to seriously hurt our, because this is apparently, I'm not an apple guy. I'm not like you. I'm not going to buy this product. But my understanding is the reviews are like pretty stellar. It does exactly what a person buying a 6-0-9 laptop is going to want to do. And all of a sudden, they're just getting punch in the gut. I mean, I think it's going to really shake up the PC market. Yeah. Even as a certified Apple Hater, like brilliant play. I'm super glad they're doing it. It's awesome. Like make this more competitive. Make this like put this out there. It's fantastic. Yeah. anything, I think it'll just push some of these other companies to offer a Windows laptop or maybe changes to Windows OS that make it fucking suck less. That would be my hope. Dude, I actually agree because like the laptop I have now is a Samsung laptop. Laptop's like this did not exist for Windows until the MacBook. The MacBook forced everyone's hand to make

these look nicer like the Windows surfaces. They just like went back to basics. They made things like polished and clean and nice and they used to be clunky as fuck, loud fans. Like all that shit. Like Apple had to push the game forward on that. And I appreciate. I'm doing it, even though I think, you know, they're fucking... And they do, and they've done nothing else wrong to the next segment. Oh, I got one. Wait, perfect. It's not going to, it's not going to line up.

Yeah, no. Aish, make sure these don't line up. Guys, uh, listen, we've been talking about a lot of things. And in the news lately, obviously, it's been Iran. But, well, this might be the first one. We, we might not have talked about anything yet. No, no, I mean, I mean, it's in general. I mean, in life, people have been talking about this Iran more thing.

Yeah, yeah. But, uh, I know, but, uh, Things have been getting buried underneath this story. And the number one thing that's been buried is the biggest media merger in history, which is happening the same week that U.S. has been bombing Iran. So almost nobody's been noticing. But we talked about it on this show, and we all collectively voted that Warner Brothers would get sold to Netflix.

We thought because Netflix had the bigger bid. I'm sorry, that's actually a smaller bid at the end, but they had a support from the Warner Brothers board. And because Netflix is Netflix, they're a bigger company and they're more established. and they people people at Warner Bros. wanted to sell the Netflix. We thought it was a done deal.

In that time between, there was a lot of political gamesmanship. The Ellison showed up at the state of the union. They've been talking with Trump. They got, this is like absurd. They got regulatory approval for the merger almost before the merger was even agreed upon. While Netflix was still a big question mark

of whether we get approved. Yeah. And all those things started increasing the risk premium for Warner Brothers. Who was like, wait a minute, we want to just, we want to sell. We want to make sure we sell. Do you just explain for somebody like, what would the risk profile meet? Like if you're on the board of, of Paramount, like what is, or sorry, of HBO?

Like, what are you thinking of like, oh, it's going to be really hard potentially to even get this through? So we're, yeah, we're Warner Brothers. We're all sitting around. We have a company that is starting to fucking fall apart. Like we, we have a ton of debt. We have these great properties. We have Harry Potter and we have God,

father and SpongeBob and Game of Thrones season eight, a true classic. Beloved. We have all these things that are worth lots of money, but our company is falling apart. We can't compete in the media environment anymore. So we're trying to sell to a bigger player. We need one of these deals to go through or we're stuck holding the bag of our own excrement here. This is bad.

So that's where they brought in this CEO, David Zazlev, who just like ripped all this shit out, packaged it all up and started selling it. So they were going to go to Netflix as it felt like the more solid deal. But because of the political implications, it has now been won by Paramount. The deal is over. Netflix has dropped out. And I know it's politically involved, not only because of things I said, but because Ted Sarandos went to the White House to plead to try and get this deal through and get something through the day it was canceled. And his White House meeting with Trump was canceled and he realized it was over. And so they announced that they were giving up.

This is the head of Netflix going to Trump to try to get soft approval for the merger? Yes. And then they canceled his meeting and then he was like, and this is normal or not? This is not normal. So again, Warner Brothers said many, many times they wanted to sell the Netflix. Now because of all this risk and because Paramount, again, came over the top with an even bigger bid that they can't afford.

I mean, they're taking on. This is going to be a very indebted media company. It's going to be Warner Brothers already has debt. Paramount has even more debt. It's all coming together. So it is being sold, though, and it's for a total of $110 billion. So another reason the Netflix dropped out,

and I have to say this, is they said, this is what they said. So I think it's the political thing too, but they said the purchase price is getting too high. We don't want it at any price. We're not going to, like, they probably could have matched the bid and kept this fight going,

but the price is getting so absurd. And so Netflix, when they abandoned the bid and they had to pay the breakup fee, actually I think Paramount had to pay the break up, their stock went up because people were like, it's actually good that you're not, like this could have been a really risky thing for it.

I think we've seen this in e-sports a lot where company make these big purchases. And then it's happened to Twitch, actually, where Twitch paid $110 million for the Overwatch League and then they couldn't afford anything else. And we had to cut things to the bone. Yeah, but at least that panned out. Yeah. So Netflix walks away. They retain what they have, which is still the biggest streaming company.

But now, you know, Harry Potter, HBO, CNN, CBS, the godfather, SpongeBob, a million TikTok, are all funneled under the Ellison's, which have this big media empire, which is very tied in with Trump. They're meeting him all the time. We're having, again, who's Pete Hagseth during his round wars, which is like,

I can't wait for Paramount to take you over talking to CNN. Because then you'll actually ask real questions. So it's like getting very, you know, I think it's a, you know, the story here is like a real.

That's not good. Holy shit. Look, I know. The Department of Warhead telling a, immediate, like a journalist, can't wait to get bought by Larry Ellison. That's fucking crazy. And when they have so much leverage over who gets bought,

that's the fucked up part. It's like, Warner Boers can sell to who they want, I guess, but they wanted Netflix. Like, the government got involved here, and that is the fucked up thing, and it got kind of ignored because of a wrong war, so I wanted to bring this up. Not to be Aiden, who has a friend about this. No, I want, okay, in every

one of these stories, I want to hear what friend you have. That's related. This is my favorite friend. You loves Larry Ellison. And when they met and they have that Aden used to play obscure Nintendo game online with a child in Kuwait. I love hearing about this every time.

My friend Larry Ellison's Danny's mother. Okay, who's the friend and what video game did you put with him? Larry Allison, he says it's gonna be fine. Oh, you know what we're good then. Someone who does events and like talent management at HBO I was talking to this weekend.

And I had kind of forgotten this was happening because of all the other news that was going on. And he was like, no, it's a really big deal internally right now. And from an HBO specific perspective, he's like, we're hoping that the new management sees HBO as like this crown jewel, like some, a very, very valuable piece of what's being picked up so that the, this part of the company isn't dissected or picked apart or changed because, uh, people who work at HBO really like, sounds like they really like working there and they really like the way that it currently is and there's this tense vibe internally as to how this is going to affect everybody's

job because nobody there actually has any insight into what this transition is really going to mean for that brand in the long run. Yeah, but that's the vibe I got from friends who worked at Activision Blizzard prior to the Microsoft announcement that they acquisition. And the end result was that there was a ton of layoffs. And I do think with the amount of debt coming into this combined package, I don't know about HBO because HBO is sort of a crown jewel. Maybe they're just like, don't touch that.

This is like our only private center. But I feel like I cannot imagine that everything just goes smooth. I think it's going to be a bit of chaos. That's the thing. It feels like everyone loses from this, right? David Zaslav, the CEO of Warnerbellers, makes the fattest payout package of all time for turning this scrap of shit and selling it.

And this is exactly the story of Barbarians at the gate, the book. It's just that again, which is just they bid each other up and then one company buys it. And now it's basically way overpriced. and they're going to just have to cut everything to the absolute bone and it makes season nine. They're going to have to make season nine. They'll remake season eight and it's all worth it. Unironically,

they're going to announce three new Harry Potter shows and 15 HBO Game of Thrones. Like actually they are going to, yeah, it's going to be like when Disney did Star Wars, the best of Star Wars and just forced out like 40 shows. There's going to be so many Harry Potter spins off. Some sort of Mandalorian Knight type figure. There's going to be like a really serious adult reboot. of SpongeBob.

SpongeBob origins. He picks up the spatula for the first time. You kept bringing up Ted Sarandos because he's the CEO of Netflix and I won't name them but we all have a mutual friend

somebody who's good friends with Ted's kid. And one year I went to Ted Sarandos' son's Halloween party dressed up as a shark and a business suit. And that doesn't give me any insight into this.

I'll be real. Work it. That is the most Aiden store I've ever heard of my entire ranking just went down. This is going earlier. You're taking my, you're taking my position. Yeah, Aish, Aish, you have to take all of our contributions. And that's pushing this down. I'm moving this down the list.

Aiden tells me about Norway. All right, we're going to cap off today's episode with a really heartwoman story about a dog. You're sure this is a cap off. I think that if this isn't the final one, Aish hates dogs. and appreciates dogs dying, okay? So we're just going to leave the today show Australia. This is one of those morning news shows that nobody our age has watched ever,

but they just like do little heartwarming stories. And here's what happened. Okay, Paul Cunningham, he's a sort of tech entrepreneur guy. Is the guy on the left here? He's the guy on the left. Okay. Is Australian, right? And he's a dog named Rose, who's seven years old.

And recently, I believe, 2024, she got cancer, started having tons of tumors. You will see pictures on the background, and it's rough. They tried chemo. the surgery failed and she was given one to six months to live. And, you know, he says, like, this is my best friend. She's there with me through everything. So he decided to try to cure

her cancer himself. So here's what he did. He went and took a sample of her healthy cells and then of the tumor cells. And then he paid this like private company to sequence her dog's DNA. It was $3,000 and was like, look, I have, can you just, can you sequence this for me and sequenced both? And then he ran quote, a whole bunch of different pipelines to compare the two. The idea is once you've sequenced the healthy DNA and the unhealthy DNA, if you compare them and you can have some sort of system, let's say a machine learning system that can look at the data and find out the exact differences between the two, between the healthy and not, you're basically finding parts of DNA that are going to create proteins that are unique to

the cancer, right? Because it's what's different and what's mutated. So then he used alpha fold as well as other LLMs to model the three-tines. the 3D protein structures in the tumor mutation. So after getting both DNAs sequenced, after comparing them, after finding the differences, he actually models them. And this is using AlphaFold,

the tool that we've talked about like a year ago. And then from that, he says, okay, I know the types of proteins that are basically identifying the cancer in my dog specifically. And he finds a company, the RNA Institute in Australia, who agree to make a custom MRI vaccine for his dog.

So they're going to make a custom MRI that is going to tell his dog's cells to make the type of protein that's only present on his dog's tumor so that the immune system learns to attack that and then will then go for the tumor cells. They make it in three months, the institute. And after spending an additional three months creating these ethics applications, he finds a vet who's qualified to do like immunotherapy treatment for dogs. And they start vaccine treatment for his dog. They actually use this stuff in December 2025. This is like three months ago. Within seven weeks, about 75% of the cancer is gone. Damn.

The dog is not cured. It's much, much healthier. She's now able to like run around and chase squirrels. She looks healthier. The actual size of the tumors. One tumor didn't respond. So he's now sort of sequencing the DNA of that to find out why. And this is a quote from the folks who made the RNA vaccine for him.

This is the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog. This is still at the frontier of where cancer immunotherapeutics are. Ultimately, we're going to use this for helping humans. This is super inspiring. This is awesome. This is fucking crazy. Part of what allowed this to work is that this guy is a, is like a tech entrepreneur type dude. He's been working in machine learning for a long time. So that one quote that I said where it's like he figured out pipelines to compare the two, that's, that's him having experience in this stuff of doing like real intense data analysis. But I think what's interesting about this story is like, ultimately it was an individual who went and did this, who figured out how to do it on his own, who was not using some giant company, and then went and worked with like existing companies to say, hey, sequence this dog DNA, please. Hey, create an MRI vaccine. Here's the exact proteins I want it to basically target, right? Because once you have that, it's fairly easy to make an MRI. So this is heartwarming. It's fucking hell and awesome. And like, what a sweet story. And on top of just like, oh my God, maybe we're going to democratize this sort of technology.

important caveat is that this is already being done in humans. So we are already trying to do personalized immunotherapics for cancer. There's already trials go underway. This is a very promising area of research. But the big difference in what's notable about this, one, very heartwarming. A lot of people are going to learn about this. Draws a lot of attention to the issue. And then two, it's like the barrier is really being dropped.

Again, we talked about Alpha Fold, which is the software that lets you model protein. structures, that's available freely. And so it's not to say everybody should go start making our own vaccines, but it's kind of crazy to see that a single person was able to do something like this. It's awesome. This is an incredible story. I like your explanation because I only heard the high level summary and they make it seem like he just typed it in the chat, GPT, and it gave him the cure.

Yeah. It's like, no, you hit a lot more effort. But that's, that's incredible. And I do get to be really excited about the future of medical technology. I think. I thought you were joking, but this might actually be. the end of the episode. Like the,

the implications of, you know, the implications of providing a large scale cancer cure, basically, to as many people who need it and it's personalized based on the specific type of cancer they have, that could be what this is in the long run.

So let me steal man it. Again, these are not necessarily my opinion, right, right, but I think it's worth... He shouldn't have done it to a dog. I don't like it. It's worth expressing. So the first main counter argument

not that cute. It should die. The second one, there's a big difference between a single mRNA vaccine versus applying it to humans. So there is a big, you know, the difference between basically a guy kind of experimentally treating his dog is different than, hey, you're going to put this into humans at scale. It's going to have a wide, a wide effect. And then, you know, again, a very important thing to note here, this is not like some new thing as much as the stories and headlines are being communicated about that. And so there's a lot of progress that's promising right now in basically vaccines specialize for cancer. So it's like real quick primer. Cancer changes all the time. That's part of the challenge of it. It's part of why it is very hard to have a medicine or something that's going to cure cancer for all these different people because every person's individual cancer is mutating and expressing itself differently. So the more personalized you can make something like this, the more effective it is going to be. But then that is kind of the problem, right? So if you. You expand this to people.

Like right now they're estimating if these things hit market or are approved in like the next one in two years which is hoped for still might be like $100,000 to $300,000 per patient per chronos. Yeah, because you don't have the, providing the scale

when everything needs to be so specific and personalized and updated based on like how cancer develops or the person or the specific patient. Yeah. Reducing the cost must be so much harder. It's a weird balance that you basically, people making drugs on this, stuff right now are trying to decide of like do we try to do a broad spread that will hopefully

help certain people but aren't isn't going to like really target their specific thing or do you hyper personalize but ultimately i mean this is and i said this in the the medicine in an ai episode a year ago i specifically called this as a possibility out which is that you pull a tumor cell out and you design the custom proteins that you need the neuroantogens that define your tumor specifically and then you have a model, create the protein in terms of the structure, and then create the vaccine and get T cells into your body that are actually targeting it. Speed is a factor. If you can do this extraordinarily quickly, if we can create machine models that like you go into the doctor and this stuff is designed and ready to go later that week, that's when it starts to be like we might cure cancer, right? So this is, again, I'm going to reiterate the same thing I said a year ago. This is like one of the one of the few things with AI and machine, really machine learning where it's like, this is fucking. This is fucking. and incredible. Like, this is pushing us towards a world where one of the most difficult challenges ever, which is cancer,

like we can tackle and we can tackle it by having stuff that builds an entire system that's customized to you super fast. I imagine there's even a combination of treatment here where you're using something like this, like in the example you provided, right? It reduced 75% of the cancer that was there. Yeah. But, like, attacking or reducing enough of the cancer that it's at a manageable scale

or a targetable scale where you could treat it with chemo or radiation to like finish the job. There's, I don't know, there's so many exciting possibilities here. Yeah. This is by far one of the coolest things going on in technology and biology right now. And it's like massively accelerating because of things like Alpha Fold and because of the work people are doing. It's great.

It's fucking great. That's awesome. Also, this specific guy is, he's just doing it to save his dog, but he's basically because of the attention. He's like, hey, here's a Google form. You can try to share information. I'm going to try to find a way. to start making this more accessible to other people.

Wow. But, I mean, it'd be funny. Is this the end of the episode? No, no, no. This ends. Yeah. And then it's like, anyway, I want to talk about counterstrike.

Ladies gentlemen, thank you for watching Lemonade Stand. We assume we just came off the dog story. Probably. You're a monster. Aish could go crazy with this episode. I have no idea how this goes. But if you want to, to check it out an extra hour of the show every week.

You go to patreon.com slash lemonade sand. And also our next two episodes are going to be in China. Oh, just that's it. Okay. All right. All right. We can just cut there.