Pirate Wires - NYC Mayor INDICTED, Mark Zuckerberg Is Done With Politics, Meta Orion AR, SpaceX Sued & PIRATE IDOL

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

EPISODE #71: Welcome Back to the pod! The NYC clown show took center stage as Eric Adams was indicted. We had to bring on our producer and resident NYC defended, Matt, to talk trash about the city. Mark Zuckerberg's makeover continues. This week he detailed in the NYT on how he's done with politics. Sounds like Zuck may be a Pirate Wires reader sooner than later! Also, Meta introduced the Orion AR glasses. Is this the world we really want? Cards For Humanity sues Space-X? And finally, we've reached the QUARTER FINALS of Pirate Idol. 3 Returning Guests fight for a spot to be the next great PW contributor. Leave your votes below. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, Riley Nork, Matt Marlinski Sign Up To Pirate Wires For Free! https://piratewires.co/free_newsletter Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell TIMESTAMPS:

Mayor Eric Adams of New York City indicted. What the hell is going on in your trash city? There's that meme that goes around from The Onion. It's from de Blasio and it goes like, not so easy being a shit mayor, is it? Done with politics. He's got the chain. He's got the sick oversized tees.

The one thing he doesn't have yet is a sick pair of shades or like a sick pair of Ray-Bans. Zuckerberg's thinking here, which I think he's wrong. The internet is like a great place to be all the time. When in fact on net, it's totally not a great place to be. Cards Against Humanity themselves have been accused of racism and sexism by former workers. So don't throw stones at houses of cards, I guess. what's up guys welcome back to the pod we've got matt in the house today for two things one i mean

obviously idols coming up and that's the producer he wanted to say and i was like you know what granted so matt's gonna be hanging out with with us in the chat and giving his opinion, though I think that, yeah, we'll see what happens. I'm excited for today with the quarterfinals of Pirate Idol coming up. So stay tuned for that. Again, classically at the end of the episode, I'll talk a little bit more about how Pirate Idol is going to go on moving forward now that we've exited the sort of round one. Stay tuned for our Polymarket segment. We're going to talk a little bit about the VP debate. And let's just start the show, my friends. Obviously, the thing that we have to talk about is the first thing we have to talk about is Eric Adams. Mayor Eric Adams of New York City indicted for some stuff that we're going to talk about right now.

Led by our New york city guy matt marlinski uh what the hell is going on in your trash city break it down sir oh new york city man it's just another embarrassment for the city but i guess no one really likes the mayor anyway so i mean it's just kind of continuation of like the bullshit you hear from mayors but we gotta fix things around here so eric ad Adams became the first sitting mayor of New York City to get indicted. He got indicted of five federal charges, including wire fraud, soliciting campaign contributions from a foreign national, mainly Turkey, but I've also heard other countries. They raided Gracie Mansion, which is where the mayor of New York City lives. And at the moment, we don't really know what's

going on. I think right now we're kind of parsing through the confusion of it all is it a real thing is it like a trumpian kind of like hit thing but what's clear is that adams doesn't do himself any favors right so he's openly talked badly about the biden administration mainly for the migrant crisis which in front of me the city has spent 5.5 billion on the migrant crisis as of august which is crazy you know he was elected as like the cop mayor he was actually when he got elected he kind of hit the like the perfect time in election season because remember like andrew yang was running for mayor of new york city and he actually was in the lead at one point

but like right when like new york city really started to go downhill that's when adams ascended as like i'm the cop yeah adams was the democrat who is willing to say that crime is bad which right was hard to come by caught an independent model like me i was like that sounds cool what i always kind of knew he i never really liked him anyway but like i was like well that sounds better than the rest of the trash stuff other people are saying like uh maya wiley and all them who who are like, oh, my liberal friends love, she was crazy. But also, like, he hasn't really fixed anything, right? Like, the city's still bad, the cops are still bad, the governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, called the National Guard on the subway a few months ago, so, like, of a crime, so, like, you haven't even done that right, so, right? So, people are coming for him. AOC called

for his resignation mere hours before the news hit. And one last thing is, like, whether or not we think, like, it's a hit piece or they're coming after him, like, his campaign definitely is a disarray. So, like, there's been four major resignations in the past few months. The chancellor of NYC's public schools, the health commissioner, who we found out was, like, having parties during COVID. Yeah, that might be, bitch. You know, some kind of yeah you assholes it was like an or it was like or it was he's the orgy guy right yeah yeah yeah he was doing all the covid spreading uh and then he was spreading more than covid uh chief counsel and then the nypd commissioner also resigned so there's just chaos going on maybe

they're like getting out to save themselves there's that meme that goes around from the onion and it's actually kind of funny where it's like uh it's from de blasio and it goes like not so easy being a shit mayor is it yeah that's the thing so listen ground floor shitty mayor like he just is like we got to be we got to call a spade a spade i i think that right now what you see happening on the discourse side of things is you see people on the right wanting to defend adams and the reason they want to defend him is because adams has been correctly diagnosing the problem of the migrant crisis in new york and he's right saying this is because the administration won't stop it and we can't handle it that's been really politically disadvantageous for the Democrats. And so right wing people are wanting to defend him right now.

Left wing people want to destroy him, one, for that reason. And then two, because what is his name? Jerome? What is the dude's name? He's about to become the public advocate. So this dude is called a public advocate, Jumaine Williams. So the public, I don't know New York City politics well enough to understand how the fuck this is happening. But if the mayor steps down, the public advocate steps up. He's Jumaane Williams. He is a pro-crime, pro-illegal immigration, anti-cop, hardcore, far left, open socialist. So it's no surprise that AOC wants to get rid of Adams so her literal socialist

friend can rise to power. And these are the things that make it impossible for us to, I think, to have an honest conversation about what's going on here. Now, I think the honest conversation would look something like, bro definitely committed some kind of a crime. I think that from what I'm seeing, it looks like about $100,000 of bribes of some kind, or at the very least, illegal campaign contributions from a foreign government. And I think that they wouldn't go through all of this if there wasn't something there. Obviously, innocent until proven guilty. In my gut, I think he's going to be guilty. innocent until proven guilty. In my gut, I think he's going to be guilty. The crime, however, I think is not worth all the theater that we're seeing around it. And it does feel politically motivated. That doesn't mean it's not a crime. It doesn't mean he shouldn't be punished, but I'm not going to have a hard time. I'm going to have a hard time defending him because I think he probably did it. And so he doesn't really deserve to be defended. And I think he was a shit mayor. And it's like he came in,

he's one of these guys, this is a new crop of politicians who are willing to say the right thing and then not do anything to fix the problem. I think this is slightly Trumpian, to be honest. I think about the immigration stuff in particular like he didn't fix that problem and uh and he ran on that problem and it obviously is a fraction it's not nearly as bad as it is now under biden but he didn't fix it you know he said a lot about it he got everyone all riled up by talking about it and then he didn't do the work so anyway yeah i think that the dude i think eric adams probably did it i think he'll probably resign or be forced out. I think the fucking Joker is going to rise up in the place of the Hamburglar. And those are your options. Your options are like centrist Democrat who's literally a criminal or open socialist who

wants to burn down the city. And that is like really the choice in every major American city is you have, it center-left corrupt person and a far-left crazy person. And it's like eventually someone's going to have to maybe start entertaining the other party. There is another party in every one of these cities that we just never talk about. I remember we covered on this very podcast a certain million dollar trash can unveiling where we speculated. I'm just saying we speculated about powerful groups running the trash system in New York City, the mob, being the reason why no one had taken this step before. It's a little curious that Eric Adams challenged the powers that be on that front. And now all of a sudden he gets indicted. I'm just saying it's a little interesting.

Oh, yeah. I mean, this is, remember, this is New York City. The other funny thing that you see online right now is the New York Times like pearl clutching. This is the first ever mayor in New York City indicted while in office. This is the city of Tammany Hall, of boss f***ing tweed. Like this is famously a city that was built

by corrupt Democrats. They're fucking corrupt. It's like they were corrupt in the 19th century. You have people paying for immigrants to come in and then using, basically bullying those immigrant groups, coercing those immigrant groups via all sorts of immigration benefits to vote for the Democrats. You then lead into the era of the mob where the mob gets involved in politics and every other part of the city. I think about writing about New York City, it's like, we're going to start maybe a New York City local politics vertical as we grow. It's sort of on the roadmap. In the back of my mind, I'm like, do I have to worry about mob shit?

Maybe. New York's a different beast than San Francisco, where the people are idiots, but I think they're fundamentally harmless. It's like they're more stupid than evil. Some of them are pretty evil, but New York's a different thing. And yeah, I think that there's an FBI thing, there's a Biden administration thing, and then there's a Biden administration thing. And then there's like a local politics thing, which is a whole other brutal battleground. And I think that probably the dude is not very smart, clearly based on the fact that he sacrificed everything for like $100,000 of bribes, and then wrote about it, I think on text and an email. So not a bright guy to begin with. And, um, and he's in a, you know, dicey situation.

Just, it's a politically fraught arena, so to speak. Brian, what do you think? I don't know. I'm sad, I guess.

Uh, I don't know. Like, do we, is it a safe assumption that most local politicians are corrupt? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. I've noticed it's center. It it's center left it's not the far left um at least so in san francisco and now this is my other

city that i know i know i don't know as much not nearly as much but i know enough to know that the corruptions tends to track center left i don't know if that's true in every city i imagine it would be closer to true because that's you'd be closer to entrenched power if you're on if you're on the center left um you'd be close to like decades and decades of power at that point and uh i think that you know as much as i can't stand someone like uh let's say obviously obviously AOC in the Congress level, but if you want to get into local politics in San Francisco, someone like Dean Preston, he does not strike me as a criminal. He is awful. He's a bad person. But I'd actually be surprised if he was corrupt.

Whereas all of Mohammed, whatever, Niru, I forget his name. He ran some part of the sanitation thing. Really, all the people around Bre uh have gone down for corruption and she's technically like centrist centrist democrat so far left by the rest of our standards but in sf technically a mod so yeah to your question i think corruption in every city for sure well yes that's why i thought it's interesting to relate it because we always talk so much about san francisco and la and always corrupt politicians. So I think we're just like stuck under the weight of this like awful politics everywhere. Like and to be fair, like to a little bit to Adams, I mean, some of it's not all his fault in the sense like I'm sure he wanted to clean the streets more.

But he's stuck under the weight of these stupid prosecutors and DAs and laws that were passed under de Blasio, where now you can walk into Walgreens to steal a thousand dollars worth of stuff or less than a thousand and not even get arrested. So now when I go to the Walgreens, I have to wait for the goddamn deodorant every time we had a plastic barrier. And like, it's a small example of like, yes. Okay. Fine. It's like my life ruined. No, but it's like this really interesting example of like, we talk about all the time about like having a society, like a high trust society. Like I can't go into a store and just grab something anymore. I have to wait for a guy to come over to me because he hates his life.

He's like, I got to do this for somebody. I don't want to do this. And it's like, why are we allowing this? And I've lived in New York City where that wasn't the thing. So now I'm like, why do we have to live like this? Dude, I think that what they need to do, any of you have a Costco membership? So I just got one.

Love that company. Love Costco. Love my Costco membership. When you roll into a Costco, first of all, it's a peaceful utopia because you have to pay to get in. And it's a small amount of money, but it's enough to ward off most of the degenerates of society. Just like the concept of a paid membership thing. And also the concept of value that is based in bulk is easy. It requires like some base level, like you have to have like at least an IQ of 110 to understand why that's a good thing. And so that just weeds out a lot of trash people.

So I love it already. I'm happy on the way out of Costco. You've got a lady there checking your receipt and uh she looks at your stuff and you know she make she does a little tally of what you have and what's on your receipt and then she waves you on and i can't imagine again because it's a peaceful utopia at costco i can't imagine that um much crime happens there but why not just be stationing rather than all that plastic shit why not just station like literally hire a security guard and have someone checking receipts and if you don't have the receipts for the shit that

you're carrying out you're not leaving the store i think it's volume but also they've tried but these people don't get arrested like the people who are the security guards who fight back are the ones who end up getting arrested right we have a more extreme example where the guy like choked the homeless person on the subway and like he's the one who gets arrested right so now you so now you have a society of people say well fuck it why would i get involved like i'm a security guard i'm getting shit pay here you go run out and like you know some places like where my studio is in midtown it's like you know like the traffic that's going in the cvs in like a 10 minute span it's just so much you know obviously we need new laws i'm just thinking ahead and it's like, I don't see a world where you can do this. We tend to think about our politics as if we're electing kings and we're not. We're electing someone who's the head of this giant blob state apparatus, whether it's local or federal.

a local blob state in New York City and also in San Francisco as a version, LA as a version, where there are just layers and layers and layers, not only of elected officials, they've all hired bureaucrats who are working underneath them. And it's like, you can't, one person who's elected to fix that problem is not enough. You need decades of people who are elected to do the common sense thing. And I just don't really see that. I don't see that coming. So we need to be able to protect ourselves and start thinking about ways to protect ourselves. Unless there's some kind of maybe like a constitutional crisis or something. I mean, at some point, when you can't rely on the state to protect you from criminals, that's a violation of the social contract. That's the entire reason that we allow ourselves to be taxed. And so if the state can't protect us and it can't protect the border, then it's no longer a

legitimate government of the people, especially if the people want you to change it. I mean, clearly when you pull people on, should crime be illegal? It's like, yes, overwhelmingly. And so if it still can't happen, is this really our government? Well, if you have a breakdown like that too in New York City, you can't even carry a gun with you. So you're know, you're not, you're trying to have on your own, like go get fucked, you know? Yeah.

I mean, you know who has a gun? It's Kamala. Let's go. Cackling away about the gun that she has. And honestly, go off, queen. I loved it. You want to shoot a criminal in your house? Me too.

Love that message for America. Let's all be, let's be normalized in the concept of if someone comes into our house, they should die. I agree. Thank you. I'm glad we all, we have bipartisan consensus on the topic of criminals in your house should just die. Thank you. Great. Phenomenal. We might need to bring back Daddy Bloomberg for NYC. That's my last thing I'll say about NYC. You think Bloomberg's the guy? So you're more of a Bloomberg than a Giuliani? Well well they both did a good job well actually julian was a kind of a mid mayor but he did

so well after 9-11 right then he was america's mayor well he famously cleaned up i mean the crime plummeted he did but he but he became like spectacular after 9-11 yeah he was everywhere so and then but bloomberg i mean those 10 years i mean he was there the streets were clean juliani brought down the the mob in new york he did he created he created um the rico precedent he seemed like a chill guy too there i mean now listen i think there's like a weirdness he's maybe i don't know he's a little bit senile he's getting crazy and kooky but he um he there he used to be like he would like cross dress with the guys you know there were pictures of him in drag and stuff like yeah there are pictures of giuliani in drag he's a weird like new crazy new york italian and um i love that for him i love that for us i we must return

it is time to make new york great again and that's not for the cross-dressing italian mayor um who's tough on crime. That's what we need. That sounds fantastic. I will vote for that right now. Brandon, please break down the story for me, the sort of evolution of Mark Zuckerberg's persona as according to it. Was it New Yorker magazine or New York mag? New York Times. Say it again.

New York Times. Oh, New York Times. Right. New York Times. It was he's done with politics it was actually a pretty good piece that i read kind of following his evolution but break it down for us it's decent i think in retro like obvious though right like we all knew he was he was sort of evolving into a more based version of his 2016 self um but the the story is basically a reported feature that uses interviews with people who know

zuck and like leaked documents that they got um from the czi the chan zuckerberg initiative which he co-leads with his wife and meta and it like you said solana just traces zuckerberg's evolution from having like essentially no qualms about airing as most like mostly democratic politics back in like 2016 2015 to being essentially disenfranchised with uh u.s politics the piece actually um if people haven't read it i was surprised to read the piece includes a fair amount about the the chan zuckerberg. He seems, and his wife seems to have been sort of radicalized by what went down at the CZI during, you know, sort of Floyd era 2020 COVID.

Real. Yeah. So in retrospect, again, not super surprising that this would be sort of a hotbed of activism, but the piece describes a sort of cancel culture within CZI, where basically a hard left contingent of employees kind of was allowed to grow and fester. And at one point, they sort of, they started demanding to Priscilla that the initiative's money start going to abortion, that the initiative's money start going to abortion,

protecting abortion rights. If you know anything about CZI, they sort of stick with education and science for the most part. During Floyd, a CZI employee called on Zuck to resign because he didn't censor Trump on Facebook or he didn't, I don't know, remove some of his posts. Can you imagine an employee of yours demanding that you resign? I think this was a turning point for Zuck.

He was really upset by that. Yeah. I mean, obviously it would piss anybody off. The other side of the story for Zuck is, again, one I think we all know. It broadly gestures at how the media and politicians blamed him for Trump getting elected in 2016. Around that time, he was hauled up in front of Congress a few times. And generally, both sides of the aisle were using him

and what was then Facebook as a whipping boy. And often they were making competing demands, right? Like, so the Democrats wanted more censorship, Republicans wanted less. And then the last thing I noticed is that it does seem to indicate the piece that Zuck and Priscilla were pretty dismayed by the left's behavior in the aftermath of October 7th. So I think what you have now is he's really sort of disenchanted and disenfranchised, not disenfranchised, disenchanted with and disappointed with U.S. politics. The piece is based on interviews with people that apparently he knows.

Does Zuck read Pirate Wires? Sounds like he's perfect for us. I mean, I know that his friends do i think that uh and there are other people higher up people at facebook who do for sure i would love zuck if you're listening love an interview with you i i saw um and i've seen this a couple notes of this now that he has hired someone to help him with his image among more right-wing people that's in the that's in the piece i think is and but i've seen's in the piece. I think it's... But I'd seen that before, even this piece.

I think it's very interesting and it's very necessary. There's like a cynical read of it that that sort of is what accounts for he's sort of the American flag waving on 4th of July. He's out on his water skis, his new haircut, his new style. To me, that appeals to Zoomers, but that's sort of

implicitly based because Zoomer men are more based, generally speaking. And I think it's inevitable and necessary. I've wrote a lot about this during the height of the crazy tech stuff back in like 2020, I thought. And my perspective then, and what was certainly, I think, proven out at this point was that the industry had, it was alienating the right. And it was doing so with all the censorship, really. I mean, you can't erase speech for half of the country and expect them to not hold it against you. Now, the problem with that is that the right in America was the only, I don't think that either sides are particularly business friendly. The only support, the only natural bed of support you have in America for pro-business sentiment is the right. And it's

like tech companies forgot they were companies, I think. And that puts them on a crash course with the left inevitably. And so you spend all this time alienating the right, and then the left just eats you regardless of what you do for them eventually. And so now you have the situation, or you have the situation certainly until recently, where tech had no friends at all. I think Elon has done a lot to change that a little bit. There's a lot more openness on the side of the right to just listen to tech people. there's a lot more openness on the side of the right to just listen to tech people. And I think that Zuck is trying to now tap into that. And I think he's making a separate for maybe whatever his own sentiments are. There's a business thing here, which is he needs some

friends somewhere. And if he doesn't make them, that company is long-term screwed. So I think that maybe that is what's happening there. I also think libertarianism is a funny, he said he was a libertarian now, or he's flirting with some kind of classically libertarian perspective, classically liberal perspective, he said, which is kind of a libertarianism thing. I had a friend when I was in my early 20s when we were working at Penguin.

She used to say that I was a libertarian then. And she used to say that libertarians were just Republicans who wanted to get laid. And there is some truth to that. I don't think it's wrong. There is some truth to that. I think that he is, I think that the boy has just begun his journey. I think there's a lot ahead of him that we don't see coming.

I think the politics in this country are getting wild and unpredictable because uh i don't know like the left's laying down some crazy shit and so you have to make choices it's like the what was the dude is it um the one who's like sort of he arrived to anti-wokeness 10 years later or eight years later and then was like i invented it he the banker what was his name ackman oh bill ackman that's the one it's the bill ackman at all it's like the bill ackman effect yeah they they feel persecuted and wronged by the very people they've supported for all of these years i mean we think about the chan zuckerberg initiative that was a jobs program for hardcore left-wing people and they turned on him for no reason

really who could have thought okay exactly it's the story of the scorpion frog again yeah live like a bitch die like a bitch to a certain extent you deserve what came to you but um happy happy for the evolution back to sanity i don't think you have to be a by the way a republican to be sane at this point i really don't think that at all i think there are obviously all sorts of democrats who there's a fight for what it means to be a centrist Democrat, which he seems to have abandoned completely and doesn't want anything to do with politics, and I get that. But there are plenty of tech people who are fighting for that Democratic center, that like, I can still be a Democrat and believe in a welfare state and help for the poor, and I love schools and roads and whatever, and

the Republicans don't care about public spending. I think all of this stuff is in flux, but they're fighting for that to be the Democratic Party. I don't think the Democratic Party is going to be that. I think the Democratic Party is really just at this point, you have two speeds. It's the party of the state or it's the party of chaos. It's like the center is the state and the base of that party is chaos. It's like pro-crime and whatever.

And the Republicans, who knows? It's evolution. But Riley, what do you make as a Zoomer? and the the the base of that party is chaos it's like pro-crime and whatever and the republicans who knows it's evolution but riley what do you make as a zoomer does mark does does mark's evocative broccoli haircut um or it's like a sort of budding it's like he's hinting he's hinting at the zoomer broccoli haircut he's getting there yeah a little bit and i think the fact that it does means that there's a bit of potential in also another thing he's going to unveil soon, which is his Orion AR glasses. Because yeah, he's got the chain. He's got the sick oversized tees comparing himself to Caesar. The one thing he doesn't have yet is a sick pair of shades or like a sick pair of Ray-Bans. And he's got that on hold for his new AR glasses. So I think, you know, if anyone can make those look cool, because obviously they've, you know, gotten a bit of mockery so far with the Apple Vision Pro guy waving his hands around. I think Zuck can make it look cool because we have seen in real time that he knows what cool looks like.

So I think there's a lot of potential there. Brandon, you had a, didn't't you have a contrarian take on those glasses in general? My contrarian take on the glasses? The glasses are a prototype, first off. There's actually a lot of cool new tech. I think that they've prototyped with this

prototype. Like Riley said, it's called Orion. I saw yesterday some videos about these AR glasses, and I was like, cool, whatever. Today I watched the video, and probably the coolest and most evocative part about these glasses is that there's a neural hookup, essentially.

You control it with your gestures, with your eyes, with your voice. And then you wear a bracelet that it detects what your fingers are doing. Very, you know, very minor finger movements. Like if I make a really, you know, sort of low key finger movement that looks like a scroll on my phone, like I'm scrolling my phone on my phone without the phone. The AR glasses will read that like a scroll on my phone, like I'm scrolling my phone with on my phone without the phone. Um, the AR glasses will read that as a scroll, um, in the, uh, in the lenses. Right. So the cool, the other cool thing about this is that they, I was, I was listening to what he said and there's the way that the actual physics works is that there are tiny projectors in the frame of the glasses and those frames project holograms onto the lenses, which are made up of, he says, nanoscale 3d structures and they diffract the light and they, and this new,

I think they, this is patented tech. It seems like these structures allow the holograms to be smaller, bigger, more in the distance, less in the distance. So like pretty cool tech, right? Especially because you can control it with your mind. I think that's a new thing. Again, though, it's just a prototype. They have like probably years to go. But my initial reaction was like, cool, you know, this is like, awesome. You know, like I had, I obviously like wrote the white pill and I'm into stuff like this. Um, but I started thinking about it more and it was like his vision for the future, which obviously this is a big bet on the future, right? Like he's, he, he's going to be pouring tons of money into it. And, and he,

and so I think it's representative of the fact that he thinks that there will be a lot of consumers who want essentially their iPhone just to be always looking at their iPhone on their, like, instead of having your iPhone in your pocket, you're just seeing it all the time. Right. And I don't think that I would hate that personally. I don't, I have my, my phone on do not disturb more than I don't have it on do not disturb. I mean, I don't like looking at my phone. I try to look at it as little as I possibly can. And an assumption baked into, I think, Zuckerberg's thinking here, which I think he's wrong, is that the Internet is like a great place to be all the time. When in fact, on net, it's totally not a great place to be all the time when in fact on net it's totally not a great place to be all the time and um i i think he's unintentionally being a little bit dystopian here with this vision um i understand

the whole you know like it might be cooler to facetime for example with these glasses that's fair but i don't like you know thinking about a world of people who are all wearing these glasses, who are just getting like constantly like Coinbase notifications and like, you know, whatever notifications, like scrolling down your screen, you're always getting text messages from people, right? And your, your boss is bothering you on Slack or whatever it is, right? Like, that's not, that's just not something that your boss pops up as a hologram, you know, That's just not something that your boss pops up as a hologram. You know, I just work.

I just like don't want that at all. And I don't, I don't actually see that for me, if I'm being, being realistic about what the internet is, it's, you can't ignore that. That's a big part of it, you know? And, uh, so I'm not, I don't think I'll be getting the glasses, uh, and using it in any way other than like maybe there's games or something you could play or something that would be fun yeah i think to a certain extent facebook in its first incarnation just regular old early 2000s facebook was virtual reality it was our first experience with virtual reality in that you were living some part of your life virtually obviously there are message boards and things like that but this is the first time this became a really this penetrated

society broadly this idea that you would you would spend a non-trivial amount of your day online connecting with important people in your life that totally evolved into like newsfeed slop and things like this it's really we've drifted very far away from the original vision which was connecting with people that you loved on a day-to-day basis but even that original vision 20 years later is not for me i think we probably all learned that i it's there's this i heart al Alcabees movie where, um, the, the,

the, one of the female leads in that there's a scene where they're all having like these weird existential crises and these strange philosophical evolutions in the show. And she starts as like this beautiful, regular woman. And she becomes this like crazy. Well,

she's correct about a lot of things. She's having a philosophical breakdown. There's this one point where she's facing her husband and he's in a room, I think, but there's glass there. And she slams her fists up against the window and she goes, there's glass between us. There's glass between us. And that's how I feel about these phones.

I feel like it's the virtual approximation of relationships and you miss all of these important things when you're not in person with the people that you love and some some amount of virtual life is very beneficial and useful and there's there's a utility to it but it's not a replacement and the more that we build to replace it um well i don't even think it's going to work is the thing at the end of the day i'm not that afraid of the dystopian vision because I think that people are pretty clearly and roundly rejecting this idea again and again and again.

The only reason they're spending as much time on their phones as they currently are is because they, we, are addicted to them. We're addicted to those algorithms, man. We're addicted to the swiping and that weird dopamine hit that you get. And you have to do all these hacks to keep your phone away away from you because yeah we're stuck on this that's uh it's a path of darkness and i think mark's in this tricky place where he probably understands this all on some level but you know he went all in on on this particular type of technology and at this point i kind of no longer even really know what the value proposition is for this stuff. What is the utopian vision of Facebook, Instagram?

Twitter, I understood actually more previously, and maybe threads is what they're doing now. It's like, but they're not even doing news on threads. So if you have to have a news feed or you want a news feed you know that's what twitter was it was a different kind of newsstand and i kind of understood that that's completely collapsed post elon because it's the proliferation of links and a million other things but i guess yeah anyway i'm i'm rambling at this point i just i don't know what the value prop is for any of this stuff anymore and i don't think that they know either i think my cynical view of the internet is that it's just based at this point the the main value is like distributing propaganda,

advertising and state surveillance. I think, right. I actually don't see it. I mean, cause cause of the connection part, I'm not even sure that connection is, is higher quality now than it was before we had text messaging.

I think you make more contact with more people more frequently, but previous to text messaging, you had to call somebody or you had to hang out with them. And now you, you don't, I'm actually afraid of phone calls. Like somebody calls me, I'm like, Oh no. You know, like, Oh my God, am I ready for this? Can I take this right now? I, I turn, I like, uh, deny calls 99% of the time, even from my friends. Cause I'm like scared of them or something now. And I, I turn, I like, uh, deny calls 99% of the time, even from my friends. Cause I'm like scared of them or something now. And I, I'm not, I'm like a millennial, like I'm an elder millennial.

Like I grew up having phone calls, you know, going to coffee with people, stuff like that. It feels too intimate or something. Yeah. I'll say I, I, your point was interesting when you talk about like a, like I keep my phone disturbed all the time as well. Right. So I'm the same guy, but like, i think about that the same way i think about the apple watch i'm like i don't need another thing dinging and pinging all day like i like

more traditional mechanical watches but like i don't need another piece of tech that's like living with me and reminding me about things all the time like the phone's fine we're all addicted to it because we obviously live on twitter and slack all day but like i i agree that the tech is really impressive but while you were breaking it down, Brent, I kind of had like the same sort of like conclusion, like, do I want to like, do I want more things on me? I actually want less things on me. There are some things that are just super magical and being able to push a button and get a car, being able to raise up your phone and know what music is playing and then be

able to download it. I mean, not even download it, just access it immediately via your music app i think that then i think the communication stuff all is really valuable it's incredible to be able to access anybody on the planet instantaneously but also be doing your banking and i mean there are any number of things that are the banking one also is one where i have a hard time even understanding the negative it seems very positive that you're able to have this kind of access to your banking. Awesome. With communication also, that is a positive. It's just, there's also a negative associated with it

or just concurrently operating alongside of it. The positive is you have access now to anybody at any time. And then the negative is that you can't escape this ever. And that is, it's like the genie in Aladdin, right? Where it's like all of this cosmic power, itty bitty living space is kind of how it feels. It feels a little cramped in here right now. And I think we're all feeling that itch of the negative here

and kind of wanting some freedom from that. And so I think that these technologies just aren't going to work. And I don't know what the next crop is that works. I'm excited for them, but it's going to be something I think that's more human and that makes us feel good. We don't think a lot about what apps make you feel good. I don't feel good after I'm done using Twitter. I never did. I feel probably worse now, you know, as I'm scrolling through that app.

Instagram, certainly. I never, ever, there is no minute that I've spent on Instagram that I don't regret. Truly. YouTube, a little better, because I can watch my cooking videos. YouTube's great. YouTube's fun. But I think- That's on TV.

It's not the same as like, that's not like social. Honestly, it might be my banking app at this point. That's a good point. Yeah, I love the look of mine. It's a really good app. I can transfer money really quickly between accounts. Yeah, I feel good about my banking app. I feel good about being able to pay my bills immediately,

see what I'm spending and how I'm spending. I like Robinhood. Yeah, I like all the things that give me shit, that help me grow my wealth. I'm interested in those things. I want stuff that improves my life, which is maybe a stupid, that's like a trite maybe way to approach it.

But where is that focus? Like make my life better. And if you're not making my life better with your little app or your dumb goggles, you're fucking out. Amazon. Amazon's fun. Love Amazon.

Uber's still good. Amazon is a great, another great example. Like Amazon makes my life better. Thank you, you amazon and i don't care about the fact that they're killing competition or whatever i just sorry over it i'm i like amazon i like that it makes my life better i'm the consumer that's what matters it's awesome we could talk about the productivity aspect of some of this tech which i think is cool and useful and i'm not bearish about um the the notion of being able to control a device with your thoughts i think could be incredibly could lead to some incredible um productivity unlocks especially if that device has ai right like and i and i think in certain contexts of course this is a good thing you know

it like art being a writer right like what what's going on it's a lot of well i just i saw a meme that was like it was the year 2030 or something and uh i had a racist thought and my neural link transitor killed me like it's like my brain exploded or something like when we're talking about such imperfect technology and then further integrating it into our brain i am a little weary i love curing the blind in being delivered ads while i sleep i am not as excited about that that'd be crazy if you could you could engineer dreams. Well, that you'd have to pay, right? So it's like, hey, I'm going to give you the access

to have the most fucking epic dreams of your life. And there's going to be a little advertisement spot, you know. It's safe to pay to not have advertisements in your dream. It's like default, you get ads. I'd pay for that. I mean, listen, listening. We're also, we're projecting current technology onto future technology that we can't even,

we don't even really know what that is going to be like. And so it seems a little dystopian. I think the truth is, it's going to be a whole other bag of really cool things. Plus negative externalities. And it's always a mix of some. And again, yeah,

fundamentally very excited about curing blindness. Thank you, Elon. But bring back links on Twitter, please. Cards Against Humanity. And then we're going to get to our Polymarket segment. We got to pick up the pace here. We got to hit the idle.

Riley, tell me about this trash game and their trash political behavior. And I don't know. Break down the story for us. Let's do it. So back in 2017, Cards Against Humanity purchased a plot of land near the US-Mexico border. Um, I guess through like crowdfunding that they got their fans to like chip into. Um, they did this as a troll apparently, thinking it was their way to stop Trump from building the wall. Sick prank. Um, now instead of sticking it to Trump, they have pivoted to, uh, trying to stick it to Elon suing SpaceX, who is also obviously

down there in South Texas, for allegedly trespassing on their land, using it to store vehicles and construction materials, things like that. Cards Against Humanity also said in the lawsuit that it's quote, business relationships have been damaged as a result of being associated with Elon like this, on account of the fact that Elon's been accused of racism and sexism by former employees. Here's the thing. Aside from the fact that the game has cards like Auschwitz that it's trying to use as jokes,

Cards Against Humanity themselves have been accused of racism and sexism by former workers, so much so that in 2020, their co-founder had to step down. So don't throw stones at houses of cards, I guess. This is clearly an attempt from Cards Against Humanity to get more brownie points among their very Reddit fan base. Meanwhile, Elon announced this week

that SpaceX would be sending cruise missions to Mars in 2028. So story of two companies right there. Which is so sick by the way the mars thing just casually stated and the the way that our news cycle works i mean you barely hear about it but i think maybe part of that is i'm still waiting to hear more of the details on it to be honest i i find it hard to believe in this political climate you're going to be able to get to some kind of consensus necessary to send

people to Mars via SpaceX. Justin, he's just politicized himself so much. He's going to have a democratic pushback no matter what we'll see, but I'm excited about the vision certainly. And I hope that it plays out on the cards of humanity side. I don't, I don't even know what to say really other than shut up people have

the arrangement syndrome is that is that coin is that term coined yet elon derangement center i've been using eds for a long time zds eds uh more so than tds tds i'm like ah like people hated the running for but the eds has been powerful it's the same it's the same the same people have tds have eds too but it's the same exact behavior same exact reaction like you can't say that you can't say his name if you say his name something like shorts out in their head they'll say something they'll say like he's a nazi or something really quickly you You talk to people with EDS. Yeah.

I can't let the subject pass without saying like, since we're, I'm in a room with some elder millennials, were you guys forced to play that stupid ass game cards against humanity growing up? Like 10, 15 years ago. Was it that long? I'm definitely,

it was that long ago. Yeah. Oh my God. That game sucked. It was so annoying. I saw me fucking events. I had to get played a stupid ass game. I hate it.

It's the joke is just... It's one joke. It's like 20-year-old jokes. The joke is like, tell me your favorite TV game, and then someone's like, like you said, Auschwitz or something. It's like, oh my God, it's funny because it's crazy.

And that's the joke. That's the one... I want to move on. We got to get to our Polymarket segment. So there's... We have a bunch of segments here. We got to get to our polymarket segment. So there's, we have a bunch of segments here. We're running out of time. One of them was about Kamala,

her first TV interview with a woman who works for MSNBC, who a week ago said how much she was just going to vote for basically Kamala no matter what. I mean, she sort of made, she didn't implicitly say or explicitly say that, but she sort of implicitly argued. It's very obvious what side of this that she is on. But this sort of leads us into the question of this upcoming vice presidential debate. So welcome to our Polymarket segment. Thank you, Polymarket, for supporting Pirate

Wires. This is a paid partnership. We could not do it without you. And here is what we're going to do. We're going to talk about this VP debate. So let's consult the betting markets. There is some interesting stuff going on over there. And I think we get a kind of interesting insight into what's going on with really, not Waltz's so much, although this is really all about him, but JD Vance. So the first and likely only vice presidential debate is scheduled for Tuesday, October 1st on CBS. According to PolyMarket, Waltz currently has a 78% chance of winning based on post-debate polls. These odds likely reflect the market's acknowledgement of a

historical trend. Debate polls tend to skew left. Nevertheless, this debate undoubtedly marks a crucial moment in Vance's young career, putting his likability to the test. That's an overwhelming number, or that's an overwhelming read of the two. And I think it's, I guess, I think it's correct, roughly. I think that in terms of likability strictly, I think JD Vance is so unknown to begin with, and he was co-opted as a meme so early that it's going to be really hard for him in this debate to come out. I think Victor, obviously impossible according to the mainstream media. In general, with debates, people who are voting for Trump are going to say that JD won. People who are voting for Kamala are going to say that Waltz won. But in terms of that rare, elusive,

are going to say that waltz won but in terms of like that rare elusive undecided voter who do you like more waltz is a charming likable guy if you don't know what his politics are if you have never heard him talk about blm or 2020 and you don't know anything about how he ran minnesota uh he seems like a nice guy and jd is an intellectual that's are automatically sort of a hard thing to sell to an American. And what we know about him is basically coming from the media that's cast him as weird. And they did it very effectively. And so I think that he's going to have a rough time of it. What do you guys make of it? Yeah, I mean, JD is known for being like an extremely good debater.

But I don't know what he could say that would not prompt the left to just flood the internet with a bunch of couch memes after the fact. Like that's going to happen regardless, no matter what J.D. says, no matter how much he eviscerates Tim Waltz, that's going to happen regardless.

So yeah, I kind of agree with you. I mean, also like debates don't matter generally and vice presidential debates really don't matter. And so who's even, like the people who go into this are people who just love politics the people are watching it and caring about it and waiting to see what happens and i think that i think that it's it's i do i think i think that jd is very good and probably will will win in terms of like who made the best points and who really showed that

the other person was wrong about stuff or whatever but ultimately this is just like a popularity contest that doesn't matter and it's stacked in in walter's favor i don't think it's gonna matter at all i mean i think the democrats have done their ground a pretty effective groundwork at making jd vance seem like a crazy mega guy with the the couch memes now the cast stuff and what do the couch memes have to do with being a crazy mega guy guy? The couch memes, by the way, for people who don't know, the meme is that he fucks, literally fucks, he's a couch fucker. He has a fetish for having sex

with couches. This is the misinformation that came before the cat memes, of course, that the Democrats thought was hilarious. Waltz himself espousing this again and again and again, this idea that J.D. Vance has a sexual relationship with couches, which is so weird that not that obviously to be into couches is weird but to say that about someone it's like kind of goofy and this makes me think that i'm just out of touch a little bit with

american society i'm like this is not a funny joke to me this is just a it's like kind of it's like goofbally i'm also i'm not opposed to it though that i i was slightly not on the side of the internet really came down hard on the Democrats for that. And I sort of thought it was all in good fun. And then the cat memes began and the Democrats were like, how fucking dare you? And it was hard for me to take them seriously as well. I tweeted something about this kind of, and I said something like, a lot of times misinformation is actually just the partisan rendering of information. And so, I mean, it's perfectly illustrated by the fact that I agree that couch fucking meme was funny. I thought it was great.

But then, you know, when it got turned around and we had the cat cooking meme or cat eating meme it suddenly became misinformation it was like no those two things are the same thing and it's just like partisan humor humor yeah it's like they become incapable the media becomes incapable of understanding humor or attempts at humor when one side is in play but i don't know we're getting but i you know real quick i just want like that's what i've like from the result of all that again i get like the filtering from like my democrat side they're like this guy jd vance is crazy and so like it works like they all they all think it's crazy yeah so that's why i don't think it's gonna matter we gotta move on uh it is time for the quarterfinals.

And we are back to the greatest show on the internet. It's Pirate Idol. Accept no substitutions. The quarterfinals are upon us. We have three congrats straight away for Jesse, Patrick, and Cardick. You guys made it through. The crowd went wild. They wanted more.

You're here to deliver. But first, maybe just a quick note before we get into the takes today and the topics. A quick note on everybody else who made it through. Matt, a little music, please. We've got from week one, Cardick, Jesse, and Grant are all going to be returning. Week two, we've got Molly, Patrick, and Rob. Week three, we have Andy and Chris. Week four, Olivia made it through the cut.

Week five, we've got Miles, Jack, and Kevin. So the way that this is going to go moving forward, we're going to do three guests a week for four more weeks and do really just like one more crack at the original format. Now that you guys know how it works, now that the viewers have gotten used to this and listeners have gotten used to this, we're going to do just like yeah standard round another wave after that we'll have uh two two people on a week to do two segments which will be led by contestants and then in the end we'll do uh four more uh there'll be like a final four and we'll

do full-on co-host spots and that's's the show. And that's going to take us... That's the fall, baby. And it's going to be Pirate Idol, ratings through the roof. We've got to get actually Stuart, who runs our ads, he's got to talk to Polymarket. He's got some friends over there.

And what I want from Polymarket is I want a top 12. I want to get a betting market for Pirate Idol. I would say it's essential. But that's enough talk about how the show is going to work. Let's get into the show. Riley, are you teed up for the topic this week? Yes, sir.

I'll just give you the two-second version of it. It's drugs in tech. Riley, take it away. Let's do it. So this week, a video went viral on X purporting to show people who had just done ayahuasca vomiting and losing consciousness while locals attempted to care for them. Though these people were apparently reacting to a frog venom and not ayahuasca, according to a community note, it did, however, prompt a wider discussion about ayahuasca according to a community note it did however prompt a wider discussion about

ayahuasca and psychedelics more broadly with some touting their benefits and others relaying stories about people leaving their jobs and family after consuming the drugs i'm gonna let cardick take this one away uh at the top of this round because you went last i believe in in the uh in the first one all right man welcome back to the show also before you get started cardic i know for everyone who uh saw the pirate wires voting guide or voter guide it's a voter guy for people who are not insane cardic was the partner in crime for us on this one he got a plenty of hate with us uh in the dms from angry local political people who it was crazy actually this year how everyone just was really like either elated that we included them in the guide or furious that we didn't in fact there was uh i don't know if i should say this out loud but

i will um there was a someone someone in local politics tried to gin up the standard to write a hit piece about, let's not say a hit piece, a piece of media criticism on how the Pirate Wires voter guide was put together. I think there was some anger that we didn't talk to all of the candidates first. I didn't realize that they were going to be so butthurt for not being included. And if I did, I would have definitely reached out next time, guys. Give me a shout. But Cardick, thanks for that. And welcome back. Give me thoughts about that. You can share them. But if not, let's get into drugs. Oh, no, I think it's great. But yeah, let's get into drugs. So yeah, you mentioned it's a frog venom. I want to be very specific. It is a giant monkey frog venom,

which makes it more fun called combo. And I actually want to talk very specific. It is a giant monkey frog venom, which makes it more fun, called Combo. And I actually want to talk about that more than ayahuasca. We can jump into that too. But obviously, that's what these people were doing in this video. And they paid to go do that. And I think they got what they asked for. This is what you do with it. You burn yourself with a hot stick, okay?

Then you get blisters. You scrape them off and then put the giant monkey frog venom on the lesions. And so that's how you do this drug. It's pretty insane. And so the reason they do it, there's a couple of benefits, and these might sound familiar. So basically, you improve your clarity. You have increased energy.

It reduces all the stress you have. And as a bonus, you get plus one luck and plus two hunting. So it's a pretty cool drug, actually. And, I mean, of course it works. If you burn yourself and survive, you're not going to be stressed about a PowerPoint presentation you have to do the next day.

And the way I think about it is this is basically like cold plunge for men. You know, like if you want to get in and shock the system and get back to it, you know, fuck a cold plunge. Just go do combo, you know? And honestly, if anyone here is listening, and you want to start a combo clinic in Wynwood, which I think would be the perfect

location for this, let me know. And if there's a frog token or something else that I can get the guys at SGV excited about, we would we would seriously love to invest in this. I first check. I actually so I am this unprepared for this, I guess. This is the first I'm hearing that it even was frog venom. And then as Riley, you were first saying it, I assumed what you meant was like, someone was trying to do ayahuasca and then they were, I don't know, bit by a poisonous frog or something.

And that's why they were puking. And now you're telling me that they were actually doing frog venom on purpose. I guess what I'm wondering is why the obfuscation? You know, why is it that people want to go after it? Because clearly what this says to me then is that the people talking about this were interested in the truth. They wanted to go after ayahuasca in particular. Is it just because ayahuasca has more cachet and someone who's doing frog venom is just obviously stupid or what is it?

Yeah, I think ayahuasca, like people know what it is, right? I just had to describe what combo is. So that's kind of boring. Also, it's just hilarious, like the reactions people had to it and i think it's just more relevant in tech fin twitter like the people who are talking about this so i think they just were looking to make a joke and want to talk about ayahuasca i'm looking for something more insidious though i'm looking for more insidious motive i just don't it to me it's not so in terms of a joke the fact that these guys are going into the jungle and doing frog venom is i can make fun of that i know how to make fun of that's funny that's like a really stupid

thing to do and i can make fun of that it it's not any less funny than than ayahuasca ayahuasca is i mean i guess i saw the meme over and over and over again it's um the same thing every time something about ayahuasca comes up you've seen the new sort of trad twitter thing happening um i've seen people say something it's like you know fact fact fat or point point point and then it concludes with to have your mind rearranged by a 6d demon or something that's kind of roughly the construction of the uh anti-ayahuasca take is like you have gone into the jungle and you've let a demon in uh enter your your body um jess what do you think i have a hot take for you a real take and then time permitting a little bit of a funny story uh or antidote from my attempts

at reporting on this earlier today so my hot take plays off of, uh, Sana, your, your commentary around like the drug piece. Um, this to me just seems like a little bit of a remix of the don't do drugs, moral panic. And I just don't know why we care. Like I personally do not care if somebody wants to partake in drug tourism. I don't care if they want to go do ayahuasca. And so I thought it was interesting that somebody thought to tweet this and that it like took off, right? So the guy who said eight out of eight CEOs he knows. Austin. Yeah. Austin Allred. They've quit from doing this. So I thought that piece was actually one

of the most interesting was digging in there. And if you follow his kind of line and commentary, he comes out saying only four of the eight are happy with their decision. No one really jumped in on that, which I'm like, that seems like a more interesting story to me. It really leads me into my real take, which I then was thinking of how many CEOs have done ayahuasca and loved it and had their companies better off for it, right? When I saw that, the CEO thing, because this is, I don't know if Austin even started it, but he definitely said it. And then it was like, Andreessen commented on this. I believe it. Oh, you know who else itessen commented on this. Yeah. I believe it.

Oh, you know who else it was? It was Ashley Vance. Not Ashley. Was it Ashley Vance? Yeah, it was Ashley Vance. And it made the Indian Times. There's a story online that like, this drug takes founders and destroys them.

And my perspective as someone who's running a company and is surrounded by people who are running companies, I'm dating someone who's running a company and is surrounded by people who are running companies, I'm dating someone who's running a company, is it's an insane grind. And what you're not doing when you have a startup is taking time off to go to the jungle to have a religious experience with a drug. And if you're making that decision to go and do that as a CEO, I have no doubt that CEOs have done it. But my perspective on those people is if you're going off to do that as a CEO, I have no doubt that CEOs have done it. But my

perspective on those people is if you're going off to do that, you've already checked out of your company to a certain degree. There's a difference between, I think, being the CEO of a larger company, post IPO or something, and a startup. If you're a startup founder and you've not yet hit the crazy levels of success, there's no time to do that. And if you are making time to do that, it's because you're looking for something to take you out of the game. And it's not the drugs that are doing it.

You did it by choosing them to begin with. And I just have, yeah, I have a hard time believing it's like some magical thing or some chemical thing that makes you not a founder anymore. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, it's just truth seeking, right? Like you probably want to quit your company if you're going on a vacation. I mean, you could have just gone to France, but instead you decided to do this drug. Either way, you realize like you're stressed out and you don't do it anymore.

Right. So you quit. I think it just makes sense. And I think for people like you said, like, okay, five of my friends quit their companies. They're probably their friends and they probably thought those companies were great. And maybe it's a projection. I wish they were making their company and they're not anymore. So I'm sad about it. Or maybe something terrible happened. I don't want to be... I don't know these people. So I don't want to judge them. But yeah, probably they just did what they wanted to. The only way to really prove it out is to... You need a different kind

of experiment here. I think you have to actually force a bunch of founders to do the drug. So if you, if you get them together at some kind of like CEO summit, or let's say like tech crunch disrupt, and you just spike the punch with ayahuasca or whatever, and you know, come back in a couple of days and see how many of them are still running

companies. That's information that for me is more interesting. But until then, and in terms of also like the the idea of like do we care about the drug i have a philosophy on this with drugs in general which is like i do not care until it becomes my problem now if you are outside shitting on my front curb i want to know what drug is responsible for that and um and I have a problem with that drug. But if you are just dropping out of society, but you can still pay your bills and whatever, then it's like, I have a hard time seeing the difference between that and between, let's say, weed use or something, which is also being weirdly lumped in. I see this anti... I don't smoke weed.

Haven't smoked weed since I was a kid. Makes me crazy uh i don't recommend smoking weed but when people do smoke weed what do i think about it like nothing at all i alcohol seems just as toxic to me if not worse and uh so does honestly excessive smartphone use see people scrolling away their lives on instagram and shit like that's something we're gonna have to address eventually but it's like, my bias still does be addressing it on the individual level. It's your body, it's your choice. The piece that you had said about putting people and making them do it, that was one of the comments that I had was around how many CEOs have done this and not quit their jobs. I think that would have been a more interesting piece of the thread, but I couldn't find that. Right. And who are they? And of course, they're not incentivized to talk about it.

At this point, you're creating this anti-drug narrative and you have investors who are saying, this is terrible. You're bad for doing it. That's now... Which is fine. I understand that. I actually understand that perspective. And I think it's a perfectly reasonable perspective. I slightly disagree, but not even entirely. But of course, also now you've created this anti-drug discourse and these people are nervous to be seen as someone who's not a serious founder because they once tripped balls in the desert at Burning Man. Yeah. No, that makes total sense. And there actually are, if I was looking up, there's entrepreneurs who are very pro-ayahuasca and like take people. But my real take here was that the danger ayahuasca poses is actually the fact that it could be like a

major disruptor to big pharma. There's just the need for alternative forms of medication. Like, I don't think we've solved healthcare in the US. Drug prices are really high. And why are people going to do this? I think they're looking for alternative forms. So we have a huge mental healthcare crisis. Could ayahuasca help lower the burden on our emergency rooms right now? There is a ton of research that it helps a lot with addiction issues. Ayahuasca is being used to treat PTSD. I have a close friend who shared with me today that ayahuasca helped them recover from mold toxicity. So I think there's a lot of uses there. And maybe another interesting pivot of the story is the impact on pharma. I wonder, I mean, we don't know the truth of any of that stuff. And I also, people maybe,

who knows what a can and can't do? And who knows what like psilocybin can and can't do. But I agree that it's interesting that there's this aversion to trying new, easier to access tools, I would say. I have a problem with the over-medication of people in general, and I would include these kinds of drugs in that this idea that you need a lot of you need to like take things to fix yourself. Probably in many cases, certainly in many cases you do. But they were just like a little bit over medicated in general. I also I guess my last thought on the difference between these drugs. I'm wondering about the difference between the psychedelics and amphetamines. the difference between the psychedelics and amphetamines uh you have i saw in the conversation on this another recurring theme which is um the real problem is psychedelics and we should be

all sort of more down with amphetamine use because one of them is more productive and one of them is anti-productive and to go back to my original point about like, or one of my original points on what class of drug bothers me is when a guy is shitting outside of my apartment on the curb, that's meth. It's fentanyl or meth. And meth is an amphetamine. And it seems to me that amphetamine use has huge negative externalities, including i think probably most of the coarseness in our discourse is coming from like these meth legal meth adderall freaks who are working in media taking this drug every single day of their life and they're just agitated and angry and they're being mean to people online um and i do think that has like a slow like degrading effect on our society in a way that smoking a jay i really don't think i really my sense not as bad for society patrick what do you think last time i was on the podcast people were uh hyping up scientology and now you're hyping

up mormonism so i'm just kind of confused which cult i should join well i'm pro-scientology i am too i would never say anything bad about Scientology. Yeah, I would never, ever speak ill of Scientology. But I believe that the faith of the discourse, the faith du jour of the discourse, is maybe perhaps Mormonism, quietly. So personally, I'm in the pro-amphetamine category in this very moment because I haven't slept in 30 hours. I just flew to Poland. Unfortunately, I don't the pro amphetamine category in this very moment because I haven't slept in 30 hours. I just flew to Poland. Unfortunately, I don't have Adderall. But, you know, in terms of real takes, actually, you know, another thing before I real take is the experiment idea is actually really good. I think we have a historical opportunity to do the first like double blind clinical trial in the Amazon jungle with shamans instead of like, you know, big pharma running clinical trial in

Boston or at Mayo Clinic, whatever. Honestly, my real take here is I think culture and society has a tendency to overshoot on any new thing. And obviously psychedelics are not new, but like culturally they're coming back into the zeitgeist. And, um, you know, I've definitely seen people that it's helped, but I will say that the cases where the outcome of doing a lot of psychedelics was obvious was asymmetrically to the downside. Like, um, like I know people whose lives were just completely ruined by it. Like I know a founder who I'm not going to name him, but he was posting on Facebook for, you know, a year manically about how, you know, he was meeting the machine elves or the entities. And they asked him to come back as the reincarnation of Christ, but he denied the mantle of responsibility and he's returning to just being a human.

I have another friend who, no bullshit, is dead now because of psychedelics. And I knew him for seven years. He was one of the first people I ever met when I moved to San Francisco. He was one of my closest friends and watched him get hollowed out over seven years, just like every single progressive iteration, his eyes getting a little bit more hollow. I think that these drugs kind of have some permanent effects, positive or negative or positive and negative. Right. Like, you know, you can look this up medically. There's I forget the name of it's like persistent hallucinogenic disorder or something.

Andrew Callahan from Channel 5 has it because he did too many shrooms when he was like 12. We just like see snow and like permanent fractals and stuff. in like permanent fractals and stuff. And, you know, in my friend's case, who's passed away, just became extraordinarily emotionally sensitive. In the same way that like, if you're tripping on a psychedelic and you become super sensitive to your environment, you keep a part of that with you to the point where you live in an echo chamber, you can't take any outside advice or feedback,

you are like putting up a larger and larger bubble around you. And I think in San Francisco, especially, you know, the, the overshot effect is kind of real. Like, as I think back to his case, there was just too much collective reinforcement. It was, it was very hard and unpopular to go to someone like that and deny that they were growing and becoming a better person. And that's, I think the other dangerous thing about the category of drugs is you never see people who are fit heads or crack heads or meth heads who are like, oh, you know, fit has been amazing for me. It's reduced my anxiety. I had horrible back pain and the opiate in it, you know, has just been so so amazing life-changing for me like we we accept

individually inside at the societal level that these drugs are just really bad for you um for psychedelics it's obviously much more nuanced much more neutral like it absolutely has helped a lot of people um you know obviously we're seeing this play out now with ketamine clinics to help people depression and ptsd and things like that. But, you know, it's also encouraged this kind of cottage industry of like, quote unquote, experts with very questionable credentials who are just always arguing that, you know, any problem it can fix without really further elaboration. And I would say like in the years that I lived in San Francisco, there were probably like half a dozen people who I had to pull aside at some point one on one because, you know, their friends were encouraging them to do drugs to

overcome their anxiety or, you know, their, their manic disorders, in some cases, very serious psychiatric disorders. And I'd tell them like, Hey, you should actually be really careful with this. I'll stop ranting, but my, my takes a little bit more nuanced on it yeah i mean it's like don't do drugs kids i i do think that we should yeah we maybe should do need a little bit of a disclaimer there i i certainly yeah i don't i don't recommend it i think it's like there's a huge difference obviously between becoming a chronic user of something and going on a journey once to the jungle to try a drug that is it's worth i think it's worth poking a little more at what is driving the conflation of the two and i think it's maybe there are people who believe it's not possible for us to just have

a little bit of the drug it's like either you you tolerate it and if you tolerate it at all you sort of implicitly tolerate abuse of the drug um and then there are people who are able to talk to do it a little bit themselves and they feel i think correctly like well their rights are being threatened their rights to use something that they think they have no problem with using or being threatened and maybe they have had these benefits plenty of people have experienced obviously you know there are people who've been really hurt by these things and there are people who've expressed like my life has been changed for the dramatically better because of this or that whatever the drug is something that jesse said that stuck out to me was uh how a lot of founders wouldn't want to admit to doing ayahuasca because there still is that thing if

you do it you're like the ayahuasca guy so like the comparison i can make is like uh my goat aaron rogers who plays quarterback for my team the new york jets he took ayahuasca and now everywhere he goes he's like he's the ayahuasca guy's like what you did ayahuasca in the all season you're like okay we fucking get it he did ayahuasca once so like there is that connotation and then like i've had some friends and again some of the patrick i've had like people done good experiences bad experiences but, I'm cautious about doing it because like, am I going to be the bad one? Am I going to be the guy who gets lost at sea? And I'm just like hollowed out.

I don't know. So it scares the shit out of me. It's different in sports than tech because in tech, you, you have a tradition of drug use associated with doing well within tech. And that all comes back on Steve jobs who very famously did a bunch of acid and talked about it as one of the reasons that he was better than Bill Gates. He advised Bill Gates to go trip. And that I think became really a part of the culture to a certain extent. I wouldn't say doing the drugs became a part of the culture, but I do know many people who have,

and obviously that story is important to them. But also Burning Man is a huge part of tech culture, but I do know many people who have, and obviously that story is important to them. But also Burning Man is a huge part of tech culture and Burning Man drug use is very much a part of that experience. And so it is kind of linked up. And in a way, I think it's interesting to push back against that because what was really happening with the investors who were like, hey, these founders have destroyed themselves by doing ayahuasca is they're pushing back against this interesting kind of cultural thing that had sprung up inside of the industry. I just think that there's always a question of what is weird and what is not. And culture is changing so fast that I'm not actually sure what side of this debate is the weird side. Is it like the drug side or is it the anti-drug side? Like which one of them is the radical side and i just want to always keep

space for weirdos and um yeah i mean for better or worse like in san francisco ayahuasca is quite pedestrian you're never going to be like oh my god like you try and i want you know what i mean like that can't be cool in san francisco or lame like it's just a thing that everybody does or everyone has tried um personally like you know i haven't tried any of this stuff. I think, like you were saying, life is pretty good. I don't need a revelation. So I've talked to the Mindbloom founder about ketamine. I have friends who've done it. It's like, you're always curious, but it's like, I don't want to break my brain or whatever. And I'm not doing any soul searching. So why risk it? I mean, if anything, that founder talks about all the great things that have happened for his family, for himself.

And so you hear all these great stories. That's why MindBloom is pretty normal now. You can go online and order it and try some ketamine. And I think it's a great form of therapy if other things aren't working for you. It would almost be funny. Did that even come up in this discourse? Instead of it being versus big pharma, what if MindBloom's out there? Ayahuasca sounds fun. It's our cool competitor. You get to go on a trip. We'd rather you order ketamine to your house. I don't know. Yeah. I can add into the, Solana, your don't do drugs comment. I have some advice from an unnamed sister of mine. I have quite a few, so it's not giving it away, but I sent out a text being like, Hey, have you done ayahuasca? Because I thought, eh, 50-50 shot. And she hasn't. And

her reasoning, I thought was pretty good. I heard you only need it if you're not connected to the spiritual realms. I'm already connected. I don't need it. So maybe just go with yoga instead. I know a bit about ayahuasca because before tech, I worked at an imprint called Tarture. And we publish a lot of weird, esoteric, like i believe it's peru and i i you know i don't i'm i'm pretty sure it's peru uh but there's a certain kind of shaman that you're supposed to do this with and it's like a whole spiritual thing it's not just like um let me experience you know so so i when carter you said like well ayahuasca is it's not that it wouldn't be crazy to hear the word ayahuasca like we have a frame of reference for it it is unusual to meet someone who's done the whole type experience um but a lot more common is probably coke use and that seems like way worse to me to to be like a certainly like a regular

user of coke in in like clubs and stuff um and this stuff just flies under the radar because people don't talk about it i think that's kind of the ideal outcome is honestly people just don't talk about it i mean this is kind of to your point uh cardic but like my ideal outcome is people use the drugs that they want and it's like not their personality or you know i guess on the inverse it's not your personality to be against drugs but i would definitely say that the people on the inverse, it's not your personality to be against drugs. But I would definitely say that the people on the pro psychedelic side are much louder than the ones on the anti psychedelic. I don't, I don't think people really care that much. Like I'm sure there's someone in Utah who's talking about the devil's lettuce still and the, you know, the harmful effects of marijuana. And they also probably don't like, you know, six dimensional Aztec, uh, machine elf, uh, uh,

demons or whatever. But, um, um yeah i think people should just do it if they want to they should just be careful um i honestly wouldn't even know how to navigate the whole like clinical side of psychedelics because i know that's popping up but like where do these people get their certifications do they have like phds and ketamine ketaminology i really don't know how that works. Well, the certification for the ayahuasca journey is you're a shaman. You're a witch. You're born there.

Some of the shamans I met are just born and raised in LA and they used to be a real estate agent. Now they're spending two months a year in Peru just making $250,000 a year. There's a bougie ayahuasca clinic

on Abbot Kinney in Venice in LA. People just go to it and it's all like yoga girls. You're legally allowed... I think there's a carve-out in America for some... There's some weird tribal carve-out. If it's not ayahuasca... Oh, is it peyote? I think it's peyote.

Or what's the other one? What's the one that Mike Cyrus got caught or what's the other one what's the one whatever the cactus one is i think we have a we have a carve out anyway we're way over guys it's been real thanks for the drug talk um rate review comment obviously hop in the mentions tell me about your weird drug experiences i would love to see that in uh in the comments here but more importantly uh tell us who you want to hear more from. Jesse, Patrick, or Kardik. It's been absolutely real. I will see you

in the ethereal realm. I'm just going to get weird. I'm not doing it. Good night. Goodbye.