The Ben and Emil Show - PP 32: The Subscription Economy ft Kyla Scanlon

Episode Date: January 25, 2024

Crocs got boots, Applebee's got subscriptions.  @KylaScanlon  joins us to talk about how the subscription model has spiraled out of control, at the cost of good old fashioned innovation. We also get a into what happened at Davos, the CEO of JP Morgan being a bitcoin ignoramus, and a whole lot more. You can follow Kyla everywhere @ Kylascan, and be sure to order her book "IN THIS ECONOMY?" here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737854/in-this-economy-by-kyla-scanlon/ In this week's BONUS episode we welcome DILLON!!! So go sign up! https://www.patreon.com/PayPigsPod Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, boy. Boy, oh, boy. You okay, bud? You okay? We're kicking it off. No, they just, they took my laptop from me. They wanted me to put my water bottle on the ground. My bottle.

Sound off in the comments if you like Emil's new water bottle. He's going to need some stickers. So send them to his, send them to the studio. My PO box. We have a special guest in case you didn't notice. We have Kyla Scanlan. other than welcome welcome kaila the in-studio audience is going absolutely not yeah there are would you guys shut up because there's a truck beeping and we got a dynamite episode for you gang so

i guess we can kick it right off we got this i thought that it i i mistakenly thought what did i think it was cheesecake factory or no chilies what's the other restaurant when i texted you not applebee texas roadhouse no no it was it was uh fuck who cares Well, either way, it's Applebee's. You thought it was Red Lobster. Yeah, I thought it was Red Lobster. Yeah. Oh, because Red Lobster was the restaurant that did the, all you can eat shrimp last year.

Owned that same company. Oh, yeah, that's right. Is it Yum brands? I think so. Well, no, no. It might be restaurant brands international, I think. Yeah. Wow, come up with a better name.

Ticker symbol, eat, I think, is there. One of them is that. I remember in 2020 at the bottom in the market, I bought, I just thought it was fun to buy all ticker symbols with words. like eat what you end up with i bought eat car jack eat car jack you know what and then i sold them jack jack jack in the box ended up 10 xing uh eat did you know two or three x and then uh car actually went from like five bucks to 400

for evis it was yeah yeah avis hurts is in the toilet hurts is struggling yeah yeah because the whole tesla debacle yep well yeah evi and they came out of bankruptcy in 2021 and yeah it's hard to be hurts yeah it hurts to be hard it hurts you remember hurts i do don't do it don't do it i'm not going to do it i i don't like you know it hurts don't do you like donuts it was the thing that little boys would do to each other do you like donuts i don't actually eat donuts oh great great it wouldn't work on you well i mean not to try to knock joke on you no then what would they do

twist your nipple or punch you yeah you oh no you say do you like hurts donuts and then and then you're meant to go I've never had a Hertz donut and then you punch them and you go hurts don't yeah we went to we just turned and smiled

we went to high school in the 50s yeah oh man well so we got so Applebee's is doing um you know that it's sold out in less than a minute really i didn't the the the people were freaking out because people were like i went on within 30 seconds they were all gone well well let's tell the people what it is they're they're getting onto the subscription train because that's the only way

to have a business a functioning business model these days it's a two hundred dollar date night subscription that's what they're calling it date night i feel like a jerk because when we were talking about this, I said, who the fuck wants to go to Applebee's? And then it's sold out. Yeah. Well, so it comes with caveats. It is a, it costs you $200 and it entitles you to

go to Applebee's. You can go as much as you want, but you can only use this thing once a week. Every week you can go and spend $30 worth, you get $30 worth of food and non-alcoholic beverages. So obviously their game plan is, well, these fucking

they'll spend the money on alcohol. These Pigies are going to spend money on alcohol because it's, hey, it's free food. Why am I not going to buy a beer of Magaweeta? And then also, you're probably with inflation, what are you going to get for $30, huh? A Caesar salad? No, no, they have like the specials. Applebee is known for like the two for 20. Are you? You eat Applebee's? No. Oh, okay. I know, I know business. She knows about it. Oh, yeah. What do you get two for 20? You're asking questions. I don't know the answer to. Oh, man. Well, you get like two. meals for $20. I wonder, I wonder if this, if it excludes those kind of things. You can't combine it with any other offers in the fine print. I haven't checked, but that's, I let's just assume that you can.

So damn, you get your money's worth. I think so, right? So a bunch of little sickos are going out there. My, my money is on the idea that Applebee's executives are going, our food is such dog shit that anyone who comes hoping to eat $30 worth every single week is going to be so disappointed after week three that they're just not going to come back. That's probably, I mean, I couldn't eat there once a week. And they're probably using the old food that's like the stuff that's on the way out that

they're going to throw away anyway. It's more of the status symbol than anything. Oh, yeah, big time status symbol. Just another thing you're going to need if you want to date in 2024. You got, you got your AMC. Have an Applebee's description. Yeah. And an AMC Stubbs membership.

Ooh, that's a hell of a date. You get to skip. You get to go to the. The veritable. It's not really cold, that, is it? No. It's not called the one. I mean, you put in here that people are spending more money on restaurants, and I'm one of those.

You are. I'm a DoorDash freak. In part, because I get a, I think it's on my American. No, no, no, that's, I get a $15 a month credit with my American Express gold card on Grubhub. And then I also get a $15 a month credit on Uber Eats through my American Express Platinum card. So I do be ordering from those services. And then other times during the week, man, it's just so effing convenient. I'm like, yeah, I'll pay six extra dollars.

You're the person getting roped in by these benefits. Yeah, I am. You're spending more money. I'm spending more money. But being like, oh, it feels like I'm saving money. Yes, absolutely. A loser consumer. I am a loser consumer.

by the way we are we are working on merch folks and loser consumer is going to be one of those things patent pending yeah trademark trademark all of that shit um but it's uh it it's are you are using them all door dash uber eats anything i use i use i use grubhubb once a month at the beginning of the month because i know that i've got the credit um at the end of every month the uber eats thing hits and i use that and then throughout the week throughout the month if i'm hungry i'm hungry i I default to DoorDash because it's the best user interface. It's just the best. I find it the best.

DoorDash. Yeah. Wait, can I tell you? I just remembered when I went to New York last week. I pulled out Uber to get my Uber. It said it was $67. I was like,

fuck, it's kind of expensive. To go from the airport to your place? That's cheaper than it's been. Okay, great. And then I was like, I'm going to close my eyes. I woke up at like four in the morning to get to L.A.X.

and then I woke up and we were on like I was like where the fuck are we it took it took so long it said we were gonna get there at 5 o'clock I got there at 550 and then I got an email that said thanks for riding with Uber and it said it was $141

and I was like what the fuck it runs a meter yeah but so I think he just took me for a ride because I closed my eyes and then I contacted Uber and you got fleeced I did but they changed it back do either of you have Uber one

I did for a bit because I got a free version of it and then let it expire And that's just yet another subscription thing Everybody's got a damn subscription Who do you think's going to be next to this dumbest thing

To offer a subscription I bet it's going to be surprised I bet it's going to be like serious If I were an enterprising young You know what is the dumbest one That's already happening You just interrupted me but go ahead Go for it.

No give me yours I'm just razzing you I don't care Because you ask the question And then you're like I'll answer it Yeah yeah Well, because I had one teed up.

I think it's cereal, by the way. I think General Mills or something is going to be like, hey, you can... Isn't that the magic puff thing? The magic spoon? Yeah. Isn't that such a question? I think. Yeah, it is.

It's like $15 a box. That's insane. And it's delicious, but I'm not paying it. I don't pay it. I love it. I love it personally. But I famously have really bad taste, apparently, according to most people. Which one do you think is going to happen?

It's already. happening and it's I think by far the worst one is the the one they're doing with cars where they're like if you want to use certain features it's going to be oh yeah GM can you imagine buying a car it's like it has a good bill to do it but you want us to turn it on i think bmd that's another 60 bucks i think BMW is they're all doing it yeah it automatic locks give us another 50 bucks a month jump adobe was famously probably the first outside of uh like the the usual something Suspects, like telecom, your cell phone, your internet. Kevin Spacey.

What the hell? You said the usual suspects. Oh. God damn it. Who's Antonio Van deris? Isn't it? No. Billy Baldwin.

Keep going. You got two. Kevin Pollock, I think. Yeah, yeah. He's in it. Anyway, it was Adobe. and I remember Kyle I'm sure you remember when Adobe

rolled out their subscription thing because it was huge news You don't remember? It was so long ago Okay thanks for aging me It was like 2011 I was in high school 2013

Okay I was in college Actually I was in middle school I think Really? Well anyway I remember when they rolled it out Kyla you certainly remember this thing Well because I had a pirated version of Photoshop

Kyle was editing video in me Middle school. I remember getting it. Were you? Yeah. Oh, great. I remember getting a Photoshop and I was very excited. And then...

Getting a Photoshop? Getting Photoshop. And a couple weeks later, they roll out the subscription model and I realize... It's really expensive too. Yeah. Isn't it like $100 a month for one product? If you lie and tell them your student, you can get it for free. But now they check your email.

Oh. Back when I did, they didn't. Yeah, they'll send an email to your email. Fucked up. it's uh and i it's one of those things where god i wish i had known back because all i knew was every designer friend that i had was really pissed off and they said i'm not going to be a customer anymore but where else where there was no alternative at the time well at the time there was final cut for a video but then apple abandoned final cut yeah and at the time it was the industry

industry standard yeah it's interesting like it's either advertising or subscription models like the brands have to rely on. Sometimes both. Yeah, like Netflix, for example. Like they're going to start running ads, Amazon, running ads. But they also have a subscription model. And I don't know. It's just like every time you turn around,

you're being fed some sort of ad or you have to like pay a premium to access something. And I really think it wears on people. It would be great if right here was one of the YouTube midroll ads where it just started and it was for some shit like Adobe. That would just be too poetic. We have no control over that, by the way. What?

Oh, yeah. great. But yeah, you guys hit on a good point, which is that they got us roped in first with these promises of, oh, you subscribe and you don't have to pay for ads, but then I don't it's not that there's no alternative, but it's just that they lull you into this laziness kind of comfort, you know, you've got, once you're already plugged in, once you've already got a prime subscription, you're not going to, you're not going to, yeah, I had to burp everybody. Because famously, now Amazon is, I think they're charged.

I mean, the amount that they're charging is negligible. It's like three extra dollars to not get ads. Speak for yourself, man. You don't want those ads. I don't know if I'm going to make rent this week. But most people will deal with ads, right? Like, most people won't pay the extra $3. Yeah.

I'll endure them. I don't mind. That's when you check your phone. Yeah, exactly. Or you get up and go pee. It's so bad for your brain. What? I don't know.

It's just like the, I don't know. Just like bouncing back in force. I just think it's all so bad for us and it just makes me sad. Yeah. Yeah. Big screen, small screen, medium speed, screen. When you make, when you wake up, you don't look at screen, huh? I totally look at screen.

Oh. Yeah. Which one? Phone. Phone. First thing in the morning. Phone and then laptop. Yeah.

Are you the type that's, uh, you, you, you hate it, but you are so hopelessly dependent on it that there's nothing that you can do? Isn't that everyone? Well, it's just like, I have to check my email And then I have to check my text And then I have to check Twitter And then I check Instagram You know, like check the comments

And so you just check Do you sleep with your phone in the room? It's my alarm, so yeah. Yeah, well, so anyway It's just another subscription thing Because they are just, they We're all cows And they just want to milk us

Or goats, depending on what kind of milk you prefer Or cheese. Do you think we have a lot of goat milk fans In the audience? Probably. There's some freaks out. Goat cheese fans. definitely 100% sure I didn't but it's it's endemic to I don't know our consumption habits are

such that they've they really have successfully I don't know trained us to accept this kind of thing as the norm where subscriptions are just the way to go because even now even though I know it's not cost effective necessarily I'm still inclined to do it it's also funny because it's all all these people are like we're disruptors we're tech we're changing the way you do things. But it all just always comes back to full circle. It's like it's actually exactly the way you used to do it. Where now it used to be like,

we're going to have all your content in one place. And it's like, no, now there's going to be different channels. And it's going to cost more than cable did. And it's going to have ads again. It's going to be just like cable. I mean, all those like subscription things you're talking about, like even fucking Harry's razors or whatever the fuck. They're like, we're changing how you do.

The razors come right to your house. And now they're just like in wall. Greens? They don't disrupt it. It's just the same fucking thing. Yeah. Yeah. Can you speak to, so Netflix reported today, speaking of subscriptions and speaking of their... Yeah, they bought Raw.

They, oh, they bought what is Raw? It's, I think, an arm of the BW.E. It's like their best selling or their most popular TV series. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they spent $5 billion. $5 billion?

$5 billion on Raw? Yeah, over the TV. the course of 10 years. Yeah. So, but like it's, I don't know, it's, um, people really like live wrestling. Yeah. Have you ever read the, I think it's Roland Barr's piece on how wrestling and politics are similar?

No. Yeah. So in the piece, he's talking about like how people want to be entertained. And so the worldwide entertainment or world wrestling entertainment. Yeah. Right. Um, that's what they do. It's like, it's scripted.

It's not real sports. It's just people sort of like beating each other up. And people really like that. And so Netflix bought the rights to that. I think it'll start streaming in 2025. And, yeah, Netflix said that they would never do this sort of live thing. But more and more so, the streaming services are starting to do that. I think the first thing they tried it with was the Chris Rock stand-up special.

I mean, they also famously said that they wouldn't do ads. I mean, they were putting that off for the longest time. But it was inevitable that they would have to do it. And the way they would do it is exactly what they did. offering a lower price point if you are willing to accept ads. What sucks about the lower price, because I would do that, but then they cap you at like 720P quality-wise. And I need my 10-80.

That's good enough for me, man. No, it's not. I look it a little blurry. It still looks good, but, yeah, and they just, so they beat on earnings today. Did they have earnings today? Yeah. Yeah. By quite a wide margin.

The stock's up, I want to say 70 points or something. No, it can't be that much. It was up to like 530 after hours the last I checked. Yeah. Well, I don't know. They were supposed to make a lot of money on people signing up for subscriptions, right? I don't know if you, I didn't see it. They did.

They beat, I believe they added. Yeah, 13 million subscribers. They added 13 million? Just from raw? Yeah, no, just in general. Okay. Yeah, the raw deal was announced today. Oh, yeah.

Damn. And that's what the street was looking for is like how many of the subs are the, um, Ad tier. Yeah. Well, sure. But so you won't be able to watch WWE anywhere else but Netflix now? I think it's just the raw one. Gotcha.

I don't understand that. I don't know the difference. Dude, they're different, like. Sure. I mean, I still remember NWO or whatever. Oh, dude, don't even talk to me about the NWO. I don't know who was on that. I don't know.

Kyla, did you, are you a wrestling person? Dwayne the Rock Johnson. He got appointed to the board of somebody. of, oh, God. I think of WWE or Netflix. Sorry that I don't know the answer to that. No, he was appointed to the board of, it's a publicly traded thing today.

God damn it, I was just going to say something about WWE. Yeah, about NWO. Oh, I saw a wrestling match once live. And can I tell you? Like a real professional. I went to one at Madison Square Garden and I sat up in the noseble.

and they got the music playing and everybody's getting hyped up. But then once it starts, it's just quiet because you don't have like you have on TV with the roar of the crowd and the announcers and the sound. It's just like two guys down there and you're just kind of hear thunk. Oh, you don't hear the announcers? Yeah, it's just like you just all of a sudden the music stops and you're watching and you're just like, oh. Are people at least hooting and hollering? Oh, yeah, there was a kid next to me who was probably 15 and was with his buddy. And at one point during the show, one of the wrestlers got someone out of the crowd and, like, kicked his ass.

And it was a big thing. And obviously, it was a plant and the guy was an actor and stuff. But the kid next to me was just saying to his brother, he's like, is this real? Is this really happening? Whoa, is this real? It was very endearing. I was like, oh, it's still, it works. they still

I'll tell you what I went to the I forget what they're called the one in Mexico cities the the Lucha Lichita Yeah Lucha Libre

and I was like this isn't gonna be that fun it's gonna be literally five minutes in I'm just like out of my seat

like banging the seat in front of me just like change it like I'd never heard of these people I was so invested it's like it's incredible

and they like brought out this old wrestler out of retirement and obviously he's so out of shape and stuff but everyone's so jacked up and stuff.

Incredible. I couldn't tell it wasn't real. Yeah. Well, let's shift gears. We talked about subscriptions. Applebee's, I wish we could have bought an Applebee's thing. I would have actually liked to have gotten that just to go check it out.

Just to go check it out. Yeah. Just see what it's like to give some one card and get their dollars. It's like the novelty of it. I mean, that's. For the audio listeners, they're laughing because I keep on having to turn away from the microphone to burp. But it's nice for me because it's usually just me. And I have to go like, yeah, that's what a normal person is like.

Well, and I'm doing it away from the mic, and I'm making it silence because I'm courteous. But I think that a lot of the more, like if you're a suffering or forgotten company that's not really cutting edge, I feel like you got to lean into the novelty. Dude, come on, they're eating good in the neighborhood. This is Middle America, I think, yeah. And they really do like it. If you're in the middle of America, if you like Applebee's, go nuts in those comments. Personally, not for me. Or if you're a coastal elite, also go nuts in the comments.

Yeah, if you're a coastal elite, who also does like Applebee's still? I don't know. What do you guys think? Should we switch to Davos? Yeah. Don't say anything. Oh, I thought we were going to ice you out. Oh, no.

What are we used on? I just, I'm like thinking about this. subscription stuff and I'm trying to have thoughts like I'm trying to think of everything and I just um it's sort of like what comes out of it right

like at the end of this road are we stuck with just like subscription advertising forever and like what does that look like if we do start using the VR goggles like will they be ads popping up I just like we consume I think it's like 10,000 ads a day it's something nuts like that

right and then you're being nickeled and dined every time you turn around with subscriptions. And like the streaming industry is trying to figure it out right now because you're right, like it is sort of like cable at this point where it's more expensive, but there's so much competition that they're not going to consolidate amongst themselves. And for Apple and Amazon, like they don't really have to worry about making money from the streaming model, but they can still charge, right? And then like you have Netflix and Netflix is.

not making original content anymore. And they said in the earnings that they're not going to do as much M&A, but clearly, like, they're going to partner with other companies. And then indie films are down 30% year over year. And it just, I think what it ties back into, and this is like the biggest leap of all time, but like the nostalgia cycle loop, right? And so it's not necessarily that subscriptions and ads are driving that. But when you think about the content that we consume that are fed by these ads, I don't know if it's like challenging us, right? And so it's not. And so it's not. And like wrestling is fine like it's good it's entertainment um but like indie films are really important too and then you have things like the marvel cinematic universe that are ultimately funded by this do i am i making yeah yeah totally uh i mean with netflix is especially a weird one like they're one like they're one of the only ones where like you said apple amazon even hulu and stuff is owned by disney they can kind of like burn cash if they want to Netflix like has to make this work and so they're like yeah they're going to be doing all kinds of weird things, things they said they would never do.

And it's just going to become this weird lowest common denominator. And like we consume that, you know, and like we consume social media. And I just, I've been like really think, there's this book called Present Shock by Douglas Rushkoff. And he talks a lot about how we're changing, like digital technology isn't changing us. We're changing ourselves for digital technology. And I just feel like when we are, you know, not forced to have these subscription models and not forced to have the advertisements, I think that's like. making us become the technology like it's just becoming harder and harder to separate ourselves from this consumer oriented model and like we become that consumer right have you seen the new uh it literally

i just saw it today it's like the disney vr and ar thing where you can walk around on it uh no i didn't see it it's did you see it yeah they're like little it's like uh beads that slide it looks like you could easily slip and fall but it's meant to like if you put on VR goggles you're can move your feet without in place. It's like a treadmill, 360 treadmill. But be in a new place on your goggles and walk around and feel like you're walking around the Louve, for example. Yeah, that's, I think that's cool.

So these Apple goggles, Matthew Bologna from Puck, which is like a big media outlet, it does a lot of like movie reviews, does a lot of media news. He's very, very good. But he reviewed the VR goggles and he was like, I could totally see a world where this is a great way to watch a movie, right? But then, like, there's this interview with Martin Scorsese where he talks about how important it is to go into the theater to view a movie because a movie is a communal experience.

Yeah, and you're around people and you're all like, yeah. And I just, like, so I biked here to your place. And it's so isolating to be on the bike relative to the cars. And if you look in the cars, like everybody is all alone in the cars. And I just feel like the VR goggles are going to make us even more individualistic than, like, vehicles did. and I just worry about that like it is so important that we consume media together

oh yeah it's all I mean it's just going to keep going that way and it's going to everything is going to be more digital everything is going to be more something served to on an algorithm have you ever heard of NTS radio yeah what is that I haven't do you use it no

what is NTS radio this is basically like a free ad for NTS radio it's like it's made my life so much better and I'm sure there's so many people out there who have complained about I've talked to friends who are like, I hate Spotify. Every day I wake up and I open it and it's just like giving me the same six playlist that it recommends to me every day.

And I put one on and I go, Jesus Christ, it's the same fucking songs. And so Spotify probably knows that and like there's a frustration with that. And they're trying to do things like the AI DJ, which everyone has tried out and been like, this is also awful. Like how did, yeah. And you know, so everyone's, it's another subscription. Everyone's paying whatever it is $10 a month to be like, I'm unhappy with. this service but I don't know what else to do now that we've traded like ownership for access

but uh so ownership wait ownership for access is such a I just want to pause and that's so great keep continue I like that like you used to own your physical media CDs records tapes whatever it was you had it known could take it from library card is the the original subscription right but now you pay a fee to have access to all these things and sometimes you don't even get the access you want um yeah so yeah someone recommended to me when i was complaining about spotify nts radio which is this like independent uh radio station that is basically run through an app and it might sound like a subscription model but it's completely free if you want to use it you can it's completely free to use i do a monthly payment because i'm like this is like supported yeah it's

listener supported so i do it because i'm like i get so much value out of this. I use it every day. I'm glad to pay them. Um, and I think it's way cheaper than Spotify, what they like recommend you donate. But all day, 24 hours a day, they have stations in London, L.A., New York, uh, and some other places. They have real people, um, who are like very cool, um, people like doing live DJ and stuff coming into the studio and playing either one hour and two hour sets. And it's incredible. It's always new music. They have different, all different genres and stuff. They, it's so nice to, even if it's like a song, you're like, oh, I'm not that into this. It's just nice being like, God, there's someone else on the other end of

this playing it and curating it, um, who just like knows music and they come on and talk for a little bit. And you're like, this is an incredible experience. Yeah. And they, there's also a live chat going. So they're like interacting with, um, chat and stuff. And you're like, this is just a beautiful way to like experience, uh, because it should be communal. Yeah. And it feels very much like that. Um, you're like laughing along with things that are happening. Sometimes there's a technical difficulty. It's just like a very beautiful. I will say I still, I, I, I just, it might just be that I'm unlucky, but every time I go to the movies, I am stuck right next to someone who doesn't know how to be at the movies. There was a guy when I saw the Iron Claw over the weekend. Great

movie. He, he had some kind of, I mean, I know. Was he a sniffler? No, I, I realized that he probably couldn't help it, but I also couldn't help but be, like, annoyed because it was constant. He was, like, doing an anxious humming the whole time, just, um, hmm, hmm, hmm. And I just, I was like, I can't ask that he's got something. And I, I just have to ignore. it or pretend that he's my brother and i've known in my whole life and that's all i did i was like that's just my brother's thing that he does and it's just uh but anyway we were talking before about how this this this this kind of subscription thing um it also comes at the cost of innovation because we're not there's why would a company they're all they're chasing we're not in that

age of like getting new products and things to be excited about it's just more services and shit that they can offer us that maximizes margins. Right. It goes back to your point about ownership versus access. Like, if you don't own something, you're not going to be as

incentivized to innovate upon it. And I think that's part of the issue is people just don't feel connected to anything. And that bleeds into Nileism and lack of hope. Right. I think Spotify is a bad product, technically. Like, I don't love the user interface. I think they change it a lot because

it's like the car thing where cars don't need to be updated every year but they're like well we need to sell more cars so we need to keep changing stuff even if that means people aren't going to like the new features and so you the planned ops lessons yeah and so you get an update to Spotify and you're like what the fuck where is the thing I liked and they're like I don't know we changed it we think you want stuff to change but and it's low quality sound and it's but everyone's just locked into this thing and they're like I don't know this is I think I like it. Yeah, and music is so healing. I feel like I sound like insane today. I'm like, hello. Music is so healing. And like, I think that we were we talking about this on our call on the pre-call? Like,

I feel like making, no, it wasn't you guys. It was somebody else. But like making art is very important to the human experience. And a lot of people feel separate from art. Like, they feel like, oh, if I'm not an Olympic level artist, like I can't create. And it's the same thing with like music. Like if you're not consuming things in the way that they're meant to be consumed, there's a level of abstraction that makes it harder to like fully be authentic with it. And I think that's kind of like the cognitive dissonance that a lot of people are experiencing is like you're consuming really terrible things all of the time. And then you have to pay a subscription model for it. And then you have an ad served on top of it. And so it's just like.

Unless you upgrade to the premium tier. But even then, like it's just not quality. and like everything is going back to the point of planned obsolescence, everything is just declining in quality because of margins, because of profit. And like you have PNG, they reported earnings and all of their revenue growth was from raising prices. And so you're still like turning around and, you know, we talk about inflation going down and it is technically, but you're still dealing with the price hikes. You're still dealing with the pressures of inflation. And I think all of this is just compounding into like a very, um, angry person. Like, it's very hard not to be angry at the

circumstances that you're currently living in. You know, we have a housing crisis. We have, um, issues with work and like, um, climbing the ladder at work because retirements are hard. Um, and then you have, you know, these products like cars are not made as well. Um, yeah, it just, it feels like every time you turn around, things are flying apart. And there's still a lot of hope, right? But I think that it's creating a lot of issues, yeah. The only subscription thing that I really think is good because I know firsthand is this show because we put out a high quality product weekly

and people are raving about it. They talk about how it's the best $5 per month that they spend and, man, it's just unbelievable value you get out of it. But that's like how it should be, you know? Yeah, it's like there should be some sort of there are good subscriptions and there are Notty ones like patronage like if you see somebody that you like doing something like sliding them Yeah five dollars like you all like sliding them five dollars is like very important because that's how you keep creativity in the world

I don't know why I'm like going off on everything landed in L.A. and she was like I think it was the bike right over here where I almost got hit well okay let's uh speaking of cars let's shift gears people have said that they really like that part where we switch switch gears but grind it because emil doesn't know how to drive stick do you know how to drive stick no oh man i don't know to drive you know it's it's kind of like handing a baby an ipad they just intuitively know you know although sometimes when i'm in my car i'm like it is kind of crazy how uh people just kind of are good at this thing that they're not good at it we kill each other a lot. That's true. It's like the most dangerous thing you can do. That's true. Oh, fast track. There's another subscription. The fast lane thing. The like, um, no, no. That's, that is fast track.

But I'm talking about the on the roads. Oh, the tolls. Yeah, toll roads. Toll roads. Yeah. Where, hey, you pay however much a month, you get to skip traffic. It's like, God, fuck it. Yeah. Don't subscription me on traffic. Yeah. There's, there's, I'm just, don't make me subscribe to a highway. I, I, I really don't even know how many things I'm subscribed to, and it kind of, I, it's one of those things where I don't even know how to check anymore. I guess I could check my billing statements. Yeah. Yeah, just go, just wait for the first of the month and then go in there. Fuck. Well, because what if it doesn't bill on the first of the month, man? Sometimes it bills middle of the month. Well, so the, the, the shifting gears, the, the,

the, the big Davos convention where all the elites get together and decide whether or not you're going it fucking eat bugs is happening because that's the thing that that they're all telling us that you know you saw about disease x right that's it oh yeah oh what is it okay so the so no it's what they use in their like thought exercise it's like hey what if we had a widget yeah it's just disease x for example how are we going to plan for that and all the fucking right wing dipshits are like they're already planning it they're calling it disease x and it's got a hundred percent fatality rate and they're going to Bill Gates is already

telling you that he's going to give you the fact he personally is going to inject the vaccine into your dick and you honestly if Bill Gates was offering that I'd go okay I would take a dick injection from Bill Gates sure I have already I'm close with we I call him Billy that's how close I am Billy G is yeah speaking

of just real fast speaking of vaccines there is an entire subset of boomers who claim that they uh who are lying yeah this has been going on for a i know but it's great i just want to show you guys they're still doing it so this is a guy talks about this is a guy who who says that he's got um oh wait no i think he might be joking well it's just it's kind of like those it's just exhausting they want attention it's Exhausting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These people are stupid. And yeah, it just really reminds me that Ted Johnson piece where this guy has like a fine life and he's like burn it to the ground. And it's like, what is? Yeah. That was it. So people were saying it was like, like, because a lot of people talk about the kind of the right wing rage of, you know, it's coming from a very real place of economic insecurity and stuff like that. And they found this guy who's like, no, I just. I actually have hate in my heart and would like to see bad stuff happen.

Yeah, no, that's kind of... Ted Johnson is his name? Yeah, and that's a lot of people, I think, is not to, like, extrapolate, but I think that's a lot of people. You know, yeah, he owns a pricey house. He's married with three adult kids, but still thinks the U.S. needs a president to tear everything down. His support for Trump has nothing to do with the reality of his life.

So it's kind of like they're living... Not, like, some people are living in this false reality. There's this quote about suburbia. I can try to find it. Can I find it really? Sure. Find it. Well, while Kyla's finding that.

So just so everybody knows when we do talk about Davos, it is. Oh, sorry. No, it's okay. It's the World Economic Forum's like annual meeting where basically a bunch of world leaders and politicians and rich guys. Rich guys and corporate heads of state all get together. They all talk about ideas for how to lead the world into the next era. And famously, there's like, one of them is that Klaus Schwab, who looks like a Bond villain.

And he's got a nefarious accent. And he says, like, we will be, you will. Well, I didn't know we were going to have so much anti-German sentiment in Well, and one of the big headlines... We'd like to say there's nothing nefarious about having a German accent. I think one of the things that they, that another kind of disease X type of thing was a few years ago, one of the headlines that came out of Davos was, in the future, you will own nothing and you will be happy. And they, of course, took that to mean, they're not going to let you own anything, and they're going to, like, I think that they were underscoring that that's where business is heading,

where it's going to be a subscription fucking everything. That's a great type of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, fucking stinks. It's going to happen with a, remember when the, when all the, like, private equity firms were buying up all the, all the affordable homes and all of a sudden, you were seeing like, Wall Street Journal articles, like, actually, homeownership is overrated. And, like, it's going to be sick. And there should be, like, a subscription model.

The forever renters. Yeah. which is insane because for decades all they say is like the the only true path to like financial security in this country is I've ever talked to you all about my favorite chart no so it's a chart from the federal reserve that shows the breakdown of wealth across the wealth percentiles so top 10 percent all of their wealth is tied into equity and business ownership top 1 percent same deal but the bottom 50 percent all of their wealth is in real estate and so the only way that you're going to make money is in the that category is usually to own a home. Yeah. That's like the path. The only path to like intergenerational wealth too where like people will have an asset. That's the only path that we think.

Yeah. If we got people to have business ownership in their business like through ESOPs, employee stock option programs, if we got people into the stock market, did things like baby bonds that would really help mitigate that. True. Baby bonds. I could buy a bond in a baby. I could invest in babies.

I mean that's, I mean, technically yeah, if you buy a 30 year bond, you're sort of investing in babies. There you have it, folks. You can invest in babies. You just got to buy it. Well, yeah, because you're investing in the future of the United States. Yeah. Damn, I wouldn't.

I don't know if I would do that. Yeah, I actually don't. Well, so I think this is a really interesting point because people, like, whenever I tell them that I talk about the economy, they're like, I hate the United States. And I'm like, well, there's no other alternative, right? Like, if you look at China, if you look at China's stock market, they're tanking. Oh, man. They're trying to inject, I think, like, 218 million.

Billion. Billion. Yeah. Which just seems really small for the size of China. Yeah, I think that's all they might need. And then Russia's not an alternative. You know, India just surpassed Hong Kong as the fourth biggest stock market. So there's just no alternative to the United States.

So you can say, and that's like, pick on you. No, no, go ahead. You can say like, oh, I hate. Like I wouldn't bet on the future of the... Yeah, but like... There are things to hate on. Yeah. I think it's like hard to bet on the world.

world, I think, is, I think it's like a scary prospect of like no one seems up to the task of handling any of the looming problems we have. So, I found the tweet as. Hit us. So this was talking about the people like the Ted Johnson's who live in the suburbs have a relatively decent life by historical standards. This is from J.G. Ballard's novel, Kingdom Come. The suburbs dream of violence asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping

walls. They wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world. And this person had quote tweeted this picture of a person named Gretchen Smith who says, my name is Gretchen Smith and I am voting for President Donald J. Trump. Do you read me? Is this too much Second Amendment? Hashtag Happy New Year. Hashtag maga. Hashtag Trump 2024. And the picture is heard with like a gigantic gun. God damn. We'll have to pop that up on here. Like fucking bombs maybe. But I think that's a lot of um the populace that's like there is obviously like we talked about really there's serious economic issues right but then I do think you have a subset of the population that just dreams of violence yeah it's funny like it goes

back to the communal thing I think everyone is just like so fucking afraid of each other like it's just this bizarre thing where everyone is like sitting at home yeah and they're just like everything out there is trying to fucking kill me and if I don't get armed to the teeth yeah then they're going to get me first it's a terrifying notable dipshit mike sernovich tweeted the other day he has me blocked but i i still go look because it's it's it's for me it's it's it's healthy it's looking at what the like the other side's thought leaders are are thinking and i i find it um very aggravating and stressful which is an addiction but um it's also it can be eye opening and he had this one fucking moron dip shit take that it was i think he said they're releasing thousands of prisoners

violent prisoners out of venezuela and biden is personally importing them here with the the the like explicit goal of skinning you and your family alive that one's actually true though and then it was like buy guns by like that's what they're all pushing charlie kirk and Jack Pesobic and all these fucking guys are like, oh no, you got to like, since they don't have good ideas on how to like govern and lead the country forward in a cohesive way, they resort to fear of just like they're coming to kill you and your family.

They're coming for your way of life. It's replacement theory kind of shit. Therefore, the only thing left to do is arm yourself, learn how to fight and like take it in your own hands. And get a cool trad wife. Oh, man. Oh, God. That's so, that's an interesting phenomenon because it's all economics, right?

Like ballerina farm, for example. Like that. Ballerina farm. It's this very popular TikTok account of this woman who has like a $20,000 stove, right? Oh, yes. She's living like this trad wife lifestyle has eight kids. All that became very popular in the last year kind of when the anti-abortion stuff was coming around. Like the trad wives really began to get traction.

but it's sort of like this monetized traditional like content farm like it's not real right well that's the funny that someone pointed out like you know all these people are making money off you right like she has a job which is this weird cosplay of like a 1950s

wife housewife and you guys are all like engaging with it and giving her money to like it's so weird yeah yeah it's interesting kind of like what comes into style and um i don't quite i kind of know what the tribe life uh era means but it's it's um there's like something a little concerning about it because you know like women fought really hard not to have that lifestyle and if you if that's the path

you want that's fine but um yeah it's just it's interesting i'm trying to be a trad husband you can dude yeah you already are in my eyes um be a drunk and never talk about my feelings. And then I have a heart attack when I'm 51. Dude, wow. I think that you'd be like a homemaker husband. Oh, that's either that. I'm either,

yeah, either way I could go. Yeah. Stay at home, dad or awful. Personally, I can actually do it all. I can,

I can provide and still make time for wife and children and do the laundry and shit. But if you can't handle that, that's totally fine too. Yeah, I could be a violent drunk and still do all my chores. But you're only violent toward like drywall.

No. What are you hitting a dog? No. The dog's my best friend. I can't say, I can't say what line. But you're in seeing. Wait, wait, wait, okay. So these people, it's like to that, to, to, to, going back to that quote,

it's, it's this, uh, fear of the other, fear of each other. And, and they want to be. isolated in their big homes and that's part of the Tradwife like I don't know Venn diagram is wanting to go back to just it's always like this is

what they're taking from you and it's like the white picket fence going to work and having a briefcase next to you in the car. Yeah having a briefcase whatever the fuck you think your job is. We're talking about this while like we wanted to also talk about the Argentinian leaders speech at

Davos And, like, he was taking aim specifically at, like, any of these collective projects or, like, community-oriented things and was, like, I mean, the whole thing is basically, basically greed is good. He was basically doing fucking Gordon Gecko and being, like, big business is here to stay. And if you want to get in our way, we'll fucking kill you. I was thinking about this on the plane this morning because, like, I do think capitalism is good and it has a role. because like I was like it's my plane going to blow a door out and because I was thinking about Boeing and like how the doors have been blowing out whatever and like like there like some element of what he was saying has an element of truth like there's a thread of reality to some

of it like big business is important but I think like everybody ends up in these extreme ends of the distribution that makes it impossible to have a conversation and then therefore makes it impossible to have progress like you know capitalism is important it has allowed for a lot of the luxuries that we have today, like the fact that you're able to get door dash, right? Like, you know, that would be tough under other circumstances. But is that a good thing? The fact that he's able to get door dash? So I think good is subjective, right? Yeah. Like, is it good that somebody has a job delivering him food and he's able to get food easily? But we're also like, those are, they're not, they're not, they're not, like, really bad jobs and like,

it's almost like a subscription model of the job. Yeah. And, uh, Real fast, there's a, I saw a video of a refrigerator from like the 1950s or 60s, and it's so well made. Is it the quality? Yes. But, and it's like capitalism, I feel like is good to a limit. And then it just turns into this hyper inflated greed machine where, well, why are we going to fucking make a product that's going to last forever?

How are we going to get returning customers? Yeah. Yeah, but that's like, no matter how you feel about capitalism, it's like this guy's talking about how, I mean, any of these guys, any form of regulation now begins to be, it's like, well, you're a fucking communist if you want to have like building codes or whatever. It's like, what the fuck? Yeah.

Yeah, if you want to have like any consumer protections, it's like you're a fucking... Get out of the way of business. Right. The free market will figure out because if a company is bad and poisons water, then people aren't going to use that company anymore. It's not true. yeah the IRS is um doing direct file and i made a video about that being like turbotax it has no purpose anymore like yay you know they're rent seekers and people were like turbotax

has added a lot of value to society and i'm like are you just arguing to argue yeah like oh people yeah well people also don't like to hear that the government um can do anything yeah yeah the trust in the government is i yeah i have a no you have a one you have a What? Let it out. No. Nobody's listening anymore. Nobody's listening anymore. We're at the end of the show.

We are, but nobody's really tuned. No, everybody in our audience loves you and they'll Well, so I've been thinking a lot about words and like language. Hell yeah. So we have three different definitions of living paycheck to paycheck, right? And so when people talk about living paycheck to paycheck, it's kind of like which version are they talking about? And then when you see that statistic, that's six.

50% of people are living paycheck to paycheck. That is a study that is issued by a financial services firm in order to sell their financial services. Wait, can you talk about the different definitions of paycheck to paycheck? Yes, I can. Let me pull it up really fast because I don't have them memorized. Three different ones. Yeah.

Because I know what you're saying. And I think there are a lot of people who even who are in a stable financial situation that feel like they are living in a paycheck to paycheck situation because, I mean, we're all waiting for the next paycheck. I don't want to mitigate that. I don't want to say like, oh, you know, you're not. actually because this is part of the issue is talking about the economy as people do have these lived experiences that are very important to take into consideration. But when we talk about different

definitions of paycheck to paycheck, number one is the family struggling to make ends meet and would be unable to finance normal expenses like rent and groceries. Number two, the lack of substantial savings buffer. Number three, not having money left over after having contributed to savings. So there's all three of these different definitions. And then these studies will come out being like 60% of people that paycheck to paycheck, 80% of people. And it's always a using a different definition, or it's not pulling in the right way. And like, so when we talk about living paycheck to paycheck, that's an example of language, specifically in economics, not meaning what we think it means.

And so language is very important to developing a narrative, and it's very important to eventually establishing trust. And so if people feel like they can't trust the narrative, then the trust in the broader society is going to erode as well. And so that's something that I'm really worried about is like the words that we use to describe the economy, like don't always. makes sense to people. A lot of people don't know that inflation going down doesn't mean that things are getting cheaper. It just means that they're getting less expensive, less fast. Right. And so it's just

like all of these words that we're using are not resonating in the right way. And I worry that is leading to like this is the societal erosion of trust. And it's creating a lot of issues. I feel like I've just been like everything's bad. But no. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that makes sense. That's probably why everyone loves Trump right he makes it easy he's like well he simplifies gay I'm good he is delivery with the Ron DeSantis thing where he was like Ron retired it's like he's incredible yeah I mean just it's so easy to be like first off this is the funniest guy that's ever lived uh and yeah he's funny when he's not in office like buddy just go out on tour you want to make money just like go out good run your mouth

I don't care. It's crazy. Did you see his, we talked about his, I know, I burped again. I drink and bubbly drink. I would subscribe.

Every episode. I would grab your heart. I would, well, I'm just, I would subscribe to Diet Coke. If Diet Coke, like,

I don't know. What would it be a reasonable price for you? Monthly. Hmm. That's a great question. I know. Thank you. Because I get pissed off when I go to,

when I went to fucking Albertsons the other day. which is my local grocer, one of them, since you can't, I'm not going to let you narrow it down. Not that it matters. You can't fucking care. They had, they had, buy,

buy two, get two, 12 packs of Diet Coke. And I was pissed off. You know why? Because there were only three left. There were only three left. And I also didn't have a shopping cart. I had the handbasket.

And I was like, if I had fucking. known that Diet Coke was on sale, I would go, I would have brought a cart, but I didn't. So you know what I didn't said? I grabbed one 18 pack, like a fucking chump. To that end, I would subscribe for $20 a month if I got, I really don't know. The unit economics would have to be worked out. Or a toilet paper subscription, not that I needed anymore, but that's just something.

You know, we could really innovate here, guys. We could, we could trick, we could not trick, but we could come up with a subscription plan of value. Uh, yeah, you're right, we are already doing it. Oh. With the show. No, what I mean? Like, a physical product. Like, hey, you want to get some shit once a month?

Goody bags. Ooh, there we go. Everybody loves a goody bag. They basically do that already. They have those things where it's like. Yeah, but it's for dogs. Bark box. Bark box, dude.

Did you just make that up? No, bark box. Oh. Fuck. Come on. The DTC, the direct-to-consumer brand stuff, was very popular in the 2010s. Yeah. So, like, anything that you could have gotten delivered, there was a company for it.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't, man, I, how about pick up? Give me an errand. I'll go pick it up. That's, um, uh, rabbit, task rabbit. No, no, no, like instead of it getting, instead of the Diet Code getting delivered, I'll just go pick it up.

Save me the fee. I'll go pick it up. You can do that. That's just a convenience store. Ben's and Renting convenience stores. No, just like a place with like, with everything that you must be you need around the house

I'll go get them from there but I mean we laugh but like I do feel like people there are going to be people like that where it's going to be so commonplace to I don't know my first thought when I need something

is not Amazon and I think it is most people's thought I don't yeah no no I don't I don't yeah Amazon they sold little little buttons that And it was rolled out with just a few brands,

Tide, Kleenex, whatever. And the idea was you would put it in your pantry or whatever. So if you ran... Yeah, so if you ran out, you would just press the button and it would order,

it would place the order for you. Wow. Which is, you know, it was pretty convenient. Until little kids are on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I actually, fun fact, when I worked at BuzzFeed, I did a sponsored post, post yeah I did a sponsored post for that try guy no I remember when I worked at BuzzFeed on his wife way before it was oh yeah way before the other guy um I got pissed off um because the try guys I was like man I could do this you guys get me in there I'll try some shit I don't like that don't tell me that they're all fucking chumps but so anyway Donald Trump's truth social

is sort of still being courted by one of those SPACs, ticker symbol D-W-A-C. Oh, you're kidding. Dwack. And it went from like 10 bucks to Sherido, like 50 since he won the Iowa caucus. Yeah, because me and all my boys buying it up. No, you're not.

No, you're not. You're lying. We never talked about Davos. We still can. Yeah, that was my bad. It's okay. I mean, so Malay, the Argentinian guy, just went up there and he.

It's just. What? I don't know. These people are just, like... Want us to eat bugs? No, it's just like... He, like, brings it... It's just so performative.

And, like, that's, like, what I really struggle with, with Davos and, like, Jamie Diamond's speech, too. What was the gist of Jamie Diamond's speech? And everything's good, actually? Because that's what he usually says. I mean, no. Like, he was talking about, like, how Trump was right in some aspects, which, you know, like, there's room for error and everything. And, like, there's some truth to that. you know he just he's clearly running for president like everything is just posturing and

pageantry and it just um i don't know it's a disservice he's going to be another bloomberg in that case where it's just like yeah the only way you're going to work as a billionaire running for president is if you are Donald trump yeah otherwise i don't know unless he offers me like an extra 10 000 points on my chase sapphire card i vote for 10 000 points i mean it's like it's a hundred bucks i i i do you he'd get my vote for a hundred bucks how much 50,000 points 500 bucks no way dude how much what's your vote worth at least a thousand no way thousand bucks that's 100,000 points I mean at base level at base offering yeah I like seeing six figures in the old point um in the old point bank I want to

play this clip of um of Jamie diamond talking about bitcoin it's only 24 seconds long but it's it's just really funny because he's like a moron it's really Yeah, but gold's limited in the supply. So is Bitcoin. And it's been using, so you think so, huh? I do. I think there's a good chance that when Bitcoin, when we get that $20 million, they go to $42. No, that Satashi's going to come on there, laugh hysterically, go quiet, all Bitcoin's going to be erased.

I think. What? First of all, he calls him Satashi, and he says that once we hit the limit of Bitcoin, he's going to come out and erase it all. That'd be a good bit. It's impossible to happen. Also, Satashi would be erasing tens of billions of dollars of his own money if the person was still around. Maybe, I don't know if you're factoring in the fact that maybe Satoshi is the Joker, man. And Jamie Diamond is Batman.

Oh, man. Jamie Diamond could be Batman, but he's afraid of a different animal. So it's a different, maybe he's cowman. He's afraid of cows instead of bats. Because you know, Batman's killed by cats. Batman's afraid of bats? Batman's afraid of bats. You didn't know that?

I've never seen the movie. You never seen any Batman? I've never really seen any movies. Okay, so check it out. Oh, you know, we've covered this, actually. You have seen Little Bear or? Brother Bear. Brother Bear.

Bruce Wayne. And Titanic, but like one half of it. Oh, what was the other movie? It crashes. Huh? The boat crashes. So Bruce Wayne is a billionaire's son. He's going to explain.

that man right now. And he and his parents are going out to the opera. This is not interesting. Wait, I'm just telling you. So his parents get killed by a criminal. I do like when the girl becomes Ben on a bad date. He gets killed. His parents. This is not interesting.

Hold on. You didn't know what. You've seen those in the wild, like the bad dates in the wild where like the girl is like this and the guy is still like talking. That couldn't be me. That would never happen. He's afraid of bats and so he makes it part of his personality to like confront his fear I'm afraid I'm affidated

a bat so I might as well make them my whole identity which to me is funny because what if he was afraid of something else Millipedes Right Millipede man Millipede man Well so

There's so much more I want to talk about So say it Davos I don't know Davos Crypto There's the pastor who did the I mean, should we play part of that? It's pretty good.

Here we go. It's just the mailman. It's just the mailman. So this pastor fleeced his flock. Nice. Out of $1.3 million in crypto. And it's just, he released a nine-minute-long apology, but this excerpt from it is just too good. It looks like he's got a nice waterfront home.

They and I are being charged in a civil charge from the Colorado Securities and Exchange Commission for basically selling. millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency that is deemed worthless by the state. Now, the reason that they're seeing that it's worthless is because there is no exit for people who have bought. The reason they're saying it's worthless is because you can't sell it. The exchange technology failed. Things went downhill. And from that point forward, we've just been waiting on the Lord literally for a miracle. So the charges are that Caitlin and I pocketed $1.3 million and I just want to come out and say that those charges are true. So there's

been $1.3 million that's been taken out of, I think it was a total of $3.4 million. But out of that $1.3, half a million went to the IRS and a few hundred thousand dollars went to a home remodel that the Lord told us to do. So how this whole thing started is the Lord told us in 21 to walk away from our marketing company. And he said, I'm going to do a new thing. Walk away from what? Parking company? Okay. us into this cryptocurrency. It was a different cryptocurrency other than index coin at the time.

Well, that cryptocurrency turned out to be a scam. And so the Lord says, give that to him, but also give them a 10x. Give them a 10x. Why is the Lord telling you to scam people? I don't know, man.

I think it's that he was hopped on board something, not knowing that it was a crypto scam. Because the Lord told him to. Yeah, the Lord told him to. I don't know. I'm just doing what the Lord told me, man. I wanted to say something about Elon because...

Man, you're jumping all over the goddamn place. No, I know. Well, we're toward the end of the episode anyway, so... But that doesn't mean you can't give up. I'm not giving up at all. It's just, uh, there was something in the notes here about, um, the tech billionaires defecting the populism and Elon is probably... And Jimmy Diamond is a good example of that, yeah.

And Elon is probably the poster child for it because he's, he's all gung-ho. This is what I just cannot understand, though, is that like ordinary, people placing all their like hopes and becoming a weird uh just like rooting for these billionaires it's just the most bizarre thing to me like watching well i think it's because they they want to be that and so like it's like if you go up against elin musk you're telling me i can never be Elon Musk yes like that is sort of the like it's just it's all so ridiculous it's just like I don't know how you wouldn't have an adversarial

position to that. Even if you had even if you were a millionaire, you have a much better chance of going broke and living on the street than you do of becoming Elon Musk rich.

It reminds me of that, you should still be adversarial to that worst guy, the worst guy in the NBA saying like, I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me in terms of skill. Wait, what?

It's similar to that. No, that seems like the worst guy in the NBA, it's like, I'm closer to LeBron James than you are to me. There's such a gulf between being a millionaire and billionaire that you are closer to being broke than you are to being a billionaire, a.k.a. LeBron James. Man, that was fucking stupid. I'm sorry, you guys. But no, shit. God damn it, I got thrown off again. Sorry. The fucking, the, the. Don't apologize.

Elon, wait, wait, you were just saying about... Like, all these ordinary people, root and tooting for billionaires. For billionaires. Yeah, just... Hell, hell, hell, shit, and what were you saying? Don't help him. I don't know. You were saying, the populism...

Oh, yeah, I was probably saying... Jamie Diamond. No, yeah, but it was Elon. Was there something about something that he did or said recently? Oh, what hasn't that man said? Oh, oh, sorry. I got it. I got it.

I got it. Have you seen the guy on Finnswit, finance Twitter, who he puts out a thread almost daily doing his analysis about how the robots, the Tesla robot, is going to bring Tesla. Is that his name? He's going to, it's like, it's piggybacking off of the never-end. cheerleading for these guys and this guy's one of them probably because he made millions of dollars in Tesla stock and therefore I can kind of understand right and that's the thing what like you see people with uh people being like oh my god all these billionaires of davos are like falling over melee and it's like that makes total sense like they're yeah

they want global leaders like this who are like please uh yeah like come dismantle any um infrastructure we have and introduce austerity measures everywhere and just make this make this whole place hospitable for our huge corporations

but and so like I understand but it's still dick riding like he's still like oh yeah they but if you have a financial stake in it I get it I don't understand like the normal ass oh yeah the Ian Miles Chung guys.

Has he been in your replies? Yeah, what does he say? Call you an idiot? He's in your replies? He's been there a couple of times, yeah. In what capacity? Supportive? No, he's like, dumb.

Yeah. Yeah. As someone who does that to other people, it is, I've been doing it to Bill Ackman a lot, and it does feel good to just be like, cry baby loser. You're just zeros and ones to these people.

Like, it's just a projection of their own insecurities, right? No offense. I mean, I've caught myself. When I do that with Elon, when I'm in his reply, because he shows up on my fucking feed. It's not real. None of it's real, you know. I know. But I'm like, I shouldn't even reply because I feel pathetic doing this.

I feel stupid because it's just, oh, my God. I mean, he quote retweeted something with the exact phrase that we used to make fun of him. It was the. Interesting. Yeah. Oh, this is, yeah, it was something like that. It was like, this needs to be investigated. Someone should look into this.

Yeah. It's all like, he's just retweeting 4chan conspiracies. It's exhausting. Well, should we go into bonus? Or should we keep going with the... Nah, I feel like this is a good time to stop and go in a buzz. Hey, guys, go to...

Yeah, I feel like... Ben's getting a little loopy, and we can't have that... We can't have Ben Lupy on Maine. I'm going to China next week. I'm going to China next week. I'm going to ask... I'm going to, like, the manufacturing. district so if anybody wants me to get to something manufactured apparently i can just like walk

up to whatever dm ben if you want him to manufacture something i should try to come up with something to go and have them make a prototype of what can what could we let's take advantage of this man yeah we'll talk about that in the bonus i mean we could could invent a new cereal magic spoon no they already did it they already did they perfected it because there's no sugar and it's high protein and it's tasty. We are going to the bonus now. Yeah, but also, I do have exciting news, but I think I will wait until it's finished. Can I talk about my book?

Yes. Please. Oh, yeah, plug. Please buy my book on Amazon. You got to get more than that. What do they search? It's called In This Economy by Kyle Scanlon, and it talks about the economy, inflation, labor market, federal reserve, everything that you need to know.

April 30th. April 30th. And you've got pre-order it. You can pre-order it now. Pre-order. Pre-order. You got to pre-order it to help out Kyla. Please help out Kyla.

Also, at Kyla Scan. Everything's in pre-orders now. You got a pre-order. Yeah. And let's see. What else? Oh, yeah, patreon.com slash pay pigs pod. By the way, should I tell them what we're planning on doing?

No. Are you sure? Yes. Just to. No, no. Okay. Okay. Well, go.

But no. I will, we can say this. As we're like joking about the subscriptions and stuff, we are, we like, like are very invested in this and not just trying to like squeeze things and we want to make it way better for people so we're working on that. We can say that. And it's we're as soon as it's ready, we're going to let people know and then we're

going to do it. And I can't wait to fuck around in China, eat being chilling. Okay. It's ice cream. Yeah, smoke a cigarette. Great. Sorry, Mom, but I'm going to do it. I mean, I'm going to do it. When I have some of that Chinese beer in me. Good stuff. Yeah, and cold noodles.

Okay. We're going to do this. Bye. Thank you.