Everything You Missed in 2025 | Ep. 040 Lemonade Stand🍋

29:19This dude was insane. So there's going to be, obviously, there's like fraud going on. That's the worst part of me. All the AI stuff, it's like I can see individual things that are kind of cool. It's just the scale. It's like because you can do it, you can just click it infinite times. Yes. That always, it breaks every system you can think of. Yeah. It crowds out because we just can't make things that, you know what I'm saying? that's what always scares me but I do see potential it's just weird um I mean that's why I've been saying I keep moving forward never looking back with a worn out hat and a 16 strap oh I feel like if we just remember that we're gonna get through it you know you know what I mean yes sir yes sir oh yeah you can kick rocks if you don't like how I talk God, it's so generic and awesome I was born this way He's born a month ago

30:24Aiden:It really is just the shit You and your friends would make up a country song Yeah, it's like a stereotype Oh, it's awesome Yeah, they fucking loved it I don't know, that's crazy And that was it Dude, I mean, if I was like That was it? That was 2025? That was the only one we missed. And then Mike Johnson Smith or whatever, he's been got turned down by that girl for prom. Oh, yeah. That was it? She didn't like him very much. He was a little needy. We all do it. You have a night for yourself, but don't like the sound of the silence, so you turn on the TV just for the ambiance. It's a little trick that helps you feel like you've got company and aren't alone.

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31:45But it wasn't like that. I filed a claim in under two minutes on the Geico app, and they handled it from there. It was taken care of almost as quickly as it happened.

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32:31Aiden:That's O-D-O-O dot com. Well, I have a little thing. This is a shorter story from Australia that was fairly recent. It was at the beginning of November, I believe. And there was a recent win for a labor group there, the Transport Workers Union, and they negotiated a default minimum wage of sorts for Uber Eats and DoorDash and like other delivery service drivers in Australia. and this doesn't provide like a minimum wage in the full traditional sense that we would imagine where like you clock into your shift and you're getting paid a full minimum wage that whole time until you clock out no matter what but I think we're all relatively familiar with the the struggle of gig work where if you're a delivery driver in the U.S.

33:23Aiden:for example you drive around waiting for an order to pop up and then you have to drive to the restaurant. You might lose time by like waiting for that restaurant to finish the order that they have to make. You can get stuck in traffic. You have fees that you pay like back to Uber. You have to pay for your car maintenance, your gas, all of these things add up so that the actual amount that you're netting from each like ride or delivery you do is very low. And it's, you know, I would say Uber eats in particular over something like even Uber driving, it notably pays poorly. And what they did is that for the full duration of whatever order, instead of going from a pay by order model that they use now, the full time that you're active for an order, you get paid for no matter what.

34:14Aiden:So if you were stuck in traffic or if you were waiting at the restaurant, all of that time has to pay out Australia's base minimum wage to you. And this was just seen as a general win. It's a move in the right direction for like all of the people that have to do this with the expectation that, you know, these orders are probably going to get a little more expensive for the consumer as well. And it also doesn't include like any pay changes for outside of normal working hours. So oftentimes, depending on where you live, like it depends by like state or country, but say you have like an overnight job or you work on holidays, your pay will be automatically adjusted based on the local laws.

34:55Aiden:if you have a normal hourly job, right? Like if you're an overnight worker, I don't know if this applies in the US or not, but if you're an overnight worker in a lot of places, you'll get paid more than if you had worked to the same job during the day. And it just, the law requires that be the case. They don't have any of those stipulations for these people. So it was a pretty like small movement, but a win for like everybody doing delivery in the entire country. And I thought that was pretty cool because you don't seem, I don't feel like I see a lot of news stories where Uber and DoorDash are like the losers in these scenarios.

35:31Aiden:It's usually them pushing people to like, no, these workers need the maximum amount of flexibility possible. Right, right, right, right. That's cool. That's a good win. I mean, it's small. You know, yeah. Makes me think of automation in that too. But yes, I agree. That's unfortunately where we came off of the intense AI discussion. Yeah. Yeah. I think the hope here is like there's movement on creating like a floor of compensation for people that are doing these jobs. Like I'll just say, like, it's a really good idea for gig work as gig work becomes more and more a large component of the job market.

36:07Not only here in America, but I guess around the world is like gig work has exploited this gap where they can get around laws that were already in place around minimum wage and certain guarantee. Like these things already existed for all jobs. And then somehow gig work came out and like circumvented them. in a way that, you know, I think most people agree they shouldn't have been able to. And so any kind of movement that makes it just more standardized is just makes more sense. That's been the last like, what, 10, 15 years that this has like really taken off? Yeah. It's like with mobile, I feel like.

36:35Yeah. Where gig stuff started really good. But, you know, it's like Fiverr and all these websites where people just do small little things.

36:43Aiden:I think, yeah, phones are really just the root of it, right? Not even like the internet itself less so. because anytime you as the worker can be called at any time, like via command of your phone. And then you as the consumer have the ability to wield your phone to order anything at any time. So it's created like the network necessary for this to exist. And now it's like how, you know, if I'm, if from a basic perspective, I'm a business, right? I only need this person to work, uh, this amount of like hours or for this specific range of time. I don't want to pay them full employment, full benefits, everything.

37:23Aiden:Of course, I'm going to angle people towards this. And then more and more people have been shoved towards gig work as time passes. And that's the weird thing is like it magically circumvents all the rules that we would have for a traditional job, including in this case. Right. They're even talking about like it doesn't matter if you work your Uber each shift from, you know, 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. you don't see the same benefits if you were working at, you know, full time overnight at like a warehouse or a fast food restaurant or something like that, or, or as a nurse, I don't know. It's interesting.

37:54I feel like more people have been forced into the gig economy. Like they're not going willingly. What was interesting when I moved to LA and started working in the, you know, whatever the industry of just, you know, entertainment production and all that is like most people are doing gig work. You know, you talk to a cameraman or whatever, you know, you, you hire a, you know, a camera operator, like they're, they're just bouncing around different jobs. Even if they work for like movies, like these are generally folks are working for a couple months and then it's like two months off. And then this project, and that's true of DPs and lighting and everything.

38:26Right. And there's a lot fewer kind of full-time stable positions than you would think because of the nature of how the industry is just doing these one-off projects all the time. Yeah.

38:35Aiden:You do see it in LA the most. Cause that, that seasonality that where I knew someone who was a producer on a mass singer for a long time and she would work they would do the whole season in like a short block of time she worked for them for years but she was always on contract she was never hired them by them full time at any point did i thought that was crazy did you so in my experience and people seemed happy with it like for the most part when i was in the city like what was your experience with it were people okay with the idea of like yeah you I have a couple people I'm probably working with later this year, but I'm going to have a month off right now.

39:11There's all this uncertainty, but then also flexibility work with a lot of different people. Generally, I think people enjoyed that. I think people were happy with it when there's a lot of work to go around. When it's boom times and you can always find contracts, I think it becomes way more risky when there's not. That's the big differentiator.

39:28Aiden:I think my friend does construction, like surveying work in Washington, and he does the same thing. And I think he gets paid really well and has been happy doing this, even though he is on this sort of schedule because the work has never stopped. He's never been in a giant period of time where he's had to go any longer. Like, this is what he does. He rolls from like one giant construction project on contract, gets paid really well for that. And then as soon as it's over, he goes on unemployment. And then he gets, you know, whatever, 60 % of his pay? Something like that, right? He gets a portion of his good pay on unemployment for like the month he's off afterwards and then goes to the next contract.

40:14Aiden:But the reason he's fundamentally happy with this arrangement is there's always been a next contract. It's never stopped. Exactly when he wants it. And I think for my friend who worked on Masked Singer, I think the most stressful times for her, like anecdotally, were when they weren't sure if they were renewing the show or if they were going to work on it in LA. I think because she just lives in LA, has a lease here, right? And then they were talking about, oh, we're not sure if we can afford to do the show in LA anymore. We're thinking about moving the show to a different location, like Vancouver or Atlanta or whatever, right?

40:49Aiden:But all of the LA staff can't just up and move and change their life when that happens. So it was really stressful when she didn't know that contract was going to get renewed. Now she just has a normal full-time job. and I think she's way less stressed all the time. And it just boils down to what you're saying. It's like the benefits of contract work and all the flexibility you get are dope as long as it's working. It's actually flexible. If anything interrupts the system, it's not cool anymore. I saw, I mean, you mentioned the unemployment thing, which is interesting because I saw a pretty deep analysis lately that one of the reasons the unemployment rate is, is it looks lower than it possibly is, is because people would rather take gig work, which then disqualifies them from claiming unemployment because the unemployment benefits are not enough to justify.

41:44Like it's a pain in the ass. Like everything you had to set up and do and write in and follow up on is more of a pain in the ass for lower rewards than just trying to do gig work. So gig work has artificially suppressed the unemployment rate is the understanding I read from that, from that piece. I don't know that. I don't know the full math on it. I would also be curious for people listening. If you do gig work, whether it's for Uber or on five or whatever, how much of that is driven by like, Oh, this is actually great. I can mix this in with other things I want to do. And I appreciate the flexibility versus you feel like that was your only option.

42:12Cause I get the worrying sense that I think it's obvious that many of the people doing these gig jobs are forced into it. Do you remember, like I, I don't talk as much as you but i do 2014-25 like the early era of uber i feel like they actually fucking loved like it was actually extreme flexibility the pay was way better they had those bonuses where if you did like a certain number of rides in a weekend whenever you get this massive cash bonus and if you talk to them now it's like all that stuff's been stripped away the the the benefits are way lower they squeeze you more on like a percentage of the ride um i have enough uber

42:49Aiden:talking data that I can cite some changes that have happened in recent years too. Where in, I think it was, there was this period of time, right? Where COVID things really slowed down and not a lot of people were doing it. So things actually got better if you were one of those people willing to come back to driving in that little pocket of time after COVID was like ending kind of because they needed drivers so badly. And then it's only gotten significantly worse from there, from my understanding. The two things I've noticed is a lot of drivers now, at least in LA, this is an LA phenomenon, but there's a lot of Ubers here, is a lot of drivers angle towards private practice versions of their driving.

43:32Aiden:They've formed some sort of consistent client list personally, and they do the driving directly with people now. Yeah, and they'll hand out a card or something like that. I've met a lot of people who just like, They have a network of 20 to 30 people that they stay on call for and schedule out rides with to the airports or to different parts of the city. And they've formed some small direct peer-to-peer business and then just fill the downtime with Uber and then use it as a marketing opportunity. So I've met a few people doing that. And then for the first time, I met a woman a few weeks ago who she didn't operate or own the car.

44:10Aiden:Apparently, there's two companies like this in LA where one guy owns a bunch of vehicles and takes care of like the maintenance, and they're usually electric cars, so there's no gas, but the maintenance, the charging, and then pays the driver's full-time wages for their hours, like minimum hourly wage. I think she said she got paid like 22 bucks an hour or something. How is it profitable for him? Dude, I don't - He's covering the maintenance and the electricity and the full-time wage? I don't know what the math is, but she - It's a very roundabout system to pay somebody a wage. And also, you've recreated taxis in the aggregate, but with a work.

44:47Aiden:No, I don't get it. It doesn't make any sense. She doesn't have the math for me, right? She's just telling me what her experience as the driver is, but she got hired at basically like an agency. That's a lot. It's like some kind of laundering or something. And she works in this fleet of drivers and cars for this guy, and then just, he collects all the money from the Uber and Lyft rides, and then she just gets paid a flat wage. and like and she gets paid the whole day like that she's working right and she seemed pretty happy with it well yeah it sounds decent for her it's a steady above minimum wage job but i don't understand how i don't understand how the uber pimp is making the money it doesn't make any sense to me because the big the loss on uber is all the depreciation on your car and the the miles and the repairs like all that stuff they don't cover for you and don't tell you about maybe it adds up Maybe it's because like the fleet is like all nicer, like black, big Teslas.

45:40Aiden:So you can charge like the highest rate you can charge. Like you could have the XL, the Uber black, the Uber premium or whatever. So you charge all the highest ratio options for all of your vehicles at all times. Maybe that's why, or maybe he's laundering money. Maybe he's laundering money. Or maybe he's a really bad business. Maybe, yeah, maybe he's two years into the worst business venture ever. Yeah, he's a nonprofit. I mean, so it gets the question of like, do would you prefer having a consistency and safety versus that? So question for you, would you rather have$10 million right now or a guaranteed$1 per day for the rest of your life?

46:20A million dollars right now. I don't know.

46:25I like the security, Brandon.

46:32Wow, it looks really delicious, Brendan. It looks so good I had to try a sip of my own.

46:37Aiden:Why don't we skate on over to your little... You're sounding fun. Wait, okay. Okay. What's your... I got a couple. What are you talking about? I have two, and so I'll do one. You got to go to phones. One underreported story this year. You guys are maybe aware that live stream shopping is a big deal in China. You know that it's like people go on a live stream and they show products and people buy them directly through the app. And it was kind of thought, because we're well behind. It's like many years old in China now. And there's always been tries to crack it in America. In 2025, the underreported story is that it sort of is starting to get cracked here.

47:15Like it's starting to become a thing on TikTok Live and especially this platform called Whatnot. People are doing live like, it's really big within the like card pack, like the collectible community. So there's a lot of people on Whatnot that are doing like live pack openings. This is specifically for cards. Not specifically for cards, they're leading into cards because cards is what... Because that's what... Okay, so it's kind of like unboxing. It's kind of like a live eBay thing. But if you guys don't know what live stream shopping is, it's kind of like what QVC used to be back in the day. It's someone on there, they'll show a product, they'll talk about it, they'll say how great and awesome it is, and then you right then can click and buy it.

47:51And I got a friend that works at whatnot. So it's like an app that's just infomercials. Dude, it's so funny.

47:57Aiden:It's so funny to make... because we made fun of the boomers for infomercials for so long. Why would you ever watch this crap, grandma? And here I am. Here it is. Here I am. Scrolling. Watching the crap. I'm buying it. So it started to take off and yeah, they have fashion and all that stuff. But the, the big thing is collectibles where people will like, you know, they'll hold up a pack and open it. And then they'll sell you the individual cards right there. Or I'm missing some of the specific tricks they do, but it's like, you can, they can sell you the pack and then they open it. Like they open it for you.

48:28and you can see everyone gets to join the live experience of, but anyway, it's becoming more of a thing. And so this is an underreported business story because again, if you flashback even two years, I think I was probably saying like, this is not catching on in America. People keep trying it, it's not working. They're finally making ground. Like we're getting into it in the way that China is. This is massive in China. Some of the biggest online celebrities in China just do this all the time. Like that is their content. They're like animated and fun and crazy, but they're like, here's 10 new products.

48:56And they sell millions a day. They do millions of dollars in merchandise. That's just over the top. We're more subtle. Yeah.

49:05Aiden:Enron hat. Adobe Acrobat. Yeah. So that's an interesting little story. And I can do my second one if you want to. But otherwise, let me jump in. Yeah. I want your second one. This is a story I think is really interesting. It's actually an older story, but it has a big update this year. It's called Mozambique Tuna Bonds. Okay. We all know about this. Everybody knows about that. Everybody knows about that. You fucking - We've been talking. Have you opened the YouTube comments a single time this year? We've all been asking. This is what we talk about. You can tell he doesn't care about the show. Unbelievable.

49:41Aiden:You can tell he doesn't care about the show. We get in there and we talk about tuna. Okay? It's all we do. It's all - Mozambique, tuna, and the bonds. That's unbelievable. If we talked about it, tell me about it. What - If you can cover it, Aiden, or Doug - But it's like back against the wall. I want to see what your take is. because we all understand it so well. And if you're fresh, it's like you've got to prove it to us. Dude, us and all the YouTube viewers and all the Spotify viewers, we're like, it's got to be like Penn and Teller watching some shitty musician come up on stream. Magician. Magician.

50:13And I don't even care how they walk. They can kick rocks if they like it. Right, right, right. But anyway, because you guys have covered Mosebic Totem on so much,

50:23Aiden:I'll give you my basic take, I guess. Don't be afraid to include all the details. Okay, so Mozambique, there's tuna fish there. There are tuna fish off the coast of Mozambique. Mozambique, a very poor country. And that started in 2025. This started in 2023. Sorry, 2013, the story begins. Okay. Mozambique is poor. They have a plan. How are we going to get rich? Tuna. We have an abundance of tuna. Makes sense. We are going to fish this tuna out of the water and sell it. It sounds simple. I don't know. No human has done it. No. Has it ever worked? This is the plan. And so they issue Mozambique tuna bonds, which are financial instruments that other people can buy in.

51:12It's like they're borrowing money. Mozambique is borrowing money to create a massive fleet of tuna ships. This is the plan. This plan is pushed primarily by a few key players in the Mozambique government and the bank Credit Suisse in Switzerland, okay? And it comes to light after 2013 that the vast, vast majority of this$2 billion they raise from all around the world does not go to creating tuna ships. It in fact goes to graft and bribes and is pulled apart by people in Credit Suisse, by people in the Mozambique government, by a who's who of all these people. And they buy Ferraris and they buy Lambos and they buy boats of their own, not for tuna fish.

51:59And they buy a lot of things. And they're catching the tuna with the Ferraris? They don't catch many, as it turns out. So$2 billion kind of just disappears. And then they find out that these people kind of fast-tracked it through the Mozambique government, but it actually has no government legal guarantee that they're going to pay the step back. So overnight, this has happened in the late 2010s, uh, the Mozambique currency, which I'm blanking on the name of over the top of my head, but it collapses. And this is like,$2 million is not a crazy amount of money in America. I mean, it's a big number, but it's not going to change our financial system.

52:35But for Mozambique, it is devastating. Like million or 2 billion, 2 billion,$2 billion. So you go, if you can go to max on this, maybe we can show it. Um, yeah, there's this big collapse in the Mozambique currency. Oh, my God. And it is because there's literally no trust anymore from all these foreign investors because they thought they were buying a guaranteed government-backed tuna debt. And in fact, they got nothing. And the government actually says, hey, we're not paying this. Like, they persecute some of the people who did the crime and the bribery and the corruption. But they're like, we're not on the hook for this$2 billion.

53:09We didn't get any fish. There's no way we're paying it. And so the currency, like, it causes this big chaos. us. And so in Mozambique, they sort of figure it out and deal with it and persecute people, but they can't go after Credit Suisse or these big banks that really were like part and parcel, a huge part of this crime. Like they, they knew what they were doing. There's like a lot of records. They knew what they were doing. They knew they were paying bribes. They knew they were siphoning off some of themselves. They knew there wasn't going to be tuna fish. So there's a lot of lawsuits there and some governments cracked down on them and there's some payments.

53:41And it all felt sort of resolved except for one big ongoing lawsuit with Credit Suisse for about, I don't know, 200 million or something. As of this year, that is about to be resolved in a major landmark case in Switzerland because five years into this thing, maybe 2019, 2018, Credit Suisse was bought by a bigger bank, UBS. And UBS is claiming that they don't inherit the legal liability of the bank they bought, especially because they said they were doing a bailout. Like we're saving Credit Suisse. We shouldn't have to deal with the shit they, like we're not, we don't know. So that is where we land ourselves now.

54:20And Credit Suisse, I mean, sorry, the Swiss government is about to make a landmark case that determines whether or not in their legal system, you can inherit the legal liability from a company you acquire, which sounds like you should, but I don't, it's never been done before.

54:33Aiden:This is because Credit Suisse collapsed in 2023. Right. And UBS was buying them to bail them out. Yeah. And under the conditions, they don't think it's fair that they should take on the liability of the tuna bonds. Right. Amazing. Yeah. So this is like this week, they're making a big landmark court case, which will determine because if they decide that it is legal liability and it passes on, then or the real question is if they say it doesn't, then all of a sudden there becomes this strategy to like, if I have committed a crime, I don't know. with a company i just have to get another company and suddenly does it involve the individuals as well uh i assume not the individuals but the the legal entity that buys it does not you can do a spec and you just and you just buy yourself stearns and you just take a thing like but the decision hasn't happened the decision hasn't happened yet but it is a major case and again ubs is like we saved your ass kind of this is a big important bank so it's like it's a very interesting case that I think was underreported.

55:38So I thought I'd bring it out. It's a little financial news. The winner here, the tuna. Okay. One more thing. They didn't get fish. So they did make some tuna. They bought some tuna fishing ship. It wasn't like a complete skit. I mean, most of it's a scam, but they have this fleet. And so as part of like the unwinding of this massive financial disaster, like, okay, as of like early this year, like we got to sell this fleet. So they go to this big auction with a fleet of Mozambique tuna ships. There is zero bids. it's like a it's like unused you know 30 different tuna fishing ships that got no bids no zero bit

56:14Aiden:that doesn't make any sense because it's rusting in the harbor if it was zero if it was zero i would have gotten in there for sale am i crazy if the price is low enough i'm buying a mozambique i'm looking on i think the cost you can pull up my screen my my sharing if not i'll link it to you Mozambique. Can you see it? Mozambique's auction of Tudoban's fleet fails to attract single bid. So Aiden, if you would like to manage, you have to pay for their fees. They had to pay for the de-rust. You had to pay for like harboring them. Oh, I thought it was like I could show up with like a rack. Like I show up with a thousand dollars from lemonade stand and I'm like, can we buy a Tudoban?

56:56Aiden:Yeah, you could. No, you could get the ships, but then they're stuck there and you owe the fees of keeping them in harbor. I would hate that. I would hate that. I would not want to pay that. I would just like to have a little place to call home when we visit Mozambique. It's true. When we do the Mozambique episode. It would be nice. At least we'd have somewhere to shack up. Yeah. And we're out in the open ocean with the boys catching some tuna. Catching tuna. And you know there's a plethora of tuna in that ocean because they never really fished it. They never really fished it. So that's a great trip.

57:23Aiden:I'm in, bro. Is this one of those situations? I don't know anything about this other than like a tweet. But is this one of those situations where that Chinese fleet that apparently goes around the world taking all the fish is going to come in there and take all the tuna? They're probably hungry for this. I'm probably stoked about this opportunity for sure, but I don't know that they're involved as of yet. Damn. Tuna drama, man. Who? I know. I thought it was interesting. That was interesting. So that's, we should sell, we should ditch the Patreon and start selling tuna bonds. Dude, the crazy part of the story is how much insane demand there was.

57:53Like they sold these bonds out instantly all over the world. Everyone was like, yeah, it sounds like a guaranteed business plan. Well, everybody loves a little tuna. Everyone's a little tuned. To be fair, if they hadn't embezzled all the money. Yeah, maybe it would have worked. That sounds like a good plan. You'd go catch tuna. Everybody wants tuna. Catch tuna, sell tuna. Yeah. Yeah, it can't be that crazy.

58:10Aiden:Bad track record feels like. Because I was trying to remember. I was like, didn't they collapse like a couple years ago? Yeah, they had a couple bad actors, but I think it's like, don't let Rotten Apple spoil the bunch of the beautiful Credit Suisse organization. You'd hate to let them ruin all the other Swiss banks' reputation. Yeah, exactly. Which have a clean bill of health? A clean bill of health, especially during World War II. Cool. What about you, Aiden? You already knew all that. Everything I told you already knew. You nailed most of it, I will say. Here's something that I... Write in the comments a little review.

58:47What do you think? Give me a Yelp review of that presentation. So good, so good, so good. New markdowns up to 70 % off are at Nordstrom Rack stores now. Stock up and stay big on shoes, tops, dresses, accessories, and more must-haves for summer. Join the Nordic Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first, and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands, great prices. That's why you rack. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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1:00:15Okay.

1:00:15Aiden:Because the background of this is more complicated than I think can be summarized on this podcast. But there have been a bunch of protests in Serbia. We all know about this. Atriok and I, this is what we do on Twitch every day. Yeah, we're in Serbia. What have you been doing? You guys are streaming about the Serbian protests. But what do you provide in full detail? There's just a full VOD of you two IRL streaming one of the protests. You're both in Belgrade. i didn't know about it gavin newsom's there what do you think we do the other six days of the week yeah do you think it's all we do time we don't just do the yard in this boy we have real jobs and we cover serbia you're right i can tell you dancing with ludwig we do real work covering this government protest protest in serbia in belgrade yeah i knew it so part of serbia is a country serbia serbia's contract uh so this is kind of part of a broader pattern of gen z protest is like a gen z protest they're just they need to get a new hobby i'll say it they'd be protesting like when it was one or two i was like okay that's cool be shopping and then the gen z serbians be protesting what up with that what up with that have the serbian protesters been streaming themselves on whatnot.

1:01:37Like they unboxed the newest politician. But I mean, is it? Is it? Is it a JT protest? Yes.

1:01:42Aiden:It actually is. It actually is. Predominantly at least. Interesting. This is kind of part of a broader pattern of a bunch of countries in the southeastern part of Europe having a series of protests mostly over issues of corruption or judicial independence being compromised, increasing authoritarianism and attacks on free speech and media. No, this is over the course of like the whole year or the past couple years, really. And this is not just Serbia. It's in like places like Slovakia, Greece, North Macedonia, and more. But with Serbia specifically, I think we saw a lot of like random headlines about it over the year.

1:02:24Aiden:And this started in November of 2024 in a city called Novi Sad, where a train station collapsed and killed 16 people after some renovations were done to it. And in the wake of that accident, police and like local authorities were accused of corruption, mostly to do with like abuse of the state funds that were allotted for the project, the renovation project. And that it wasn't, this project had a lot of negligence, wasn't taken care of properly. Sounds similar to the tuna bonds. They're taking the government money and not. And then, I mean, weirdly enough, they used the money to go fish for tuna, which is a whole mix-up.

1:03:06Aiden:Not a lot of people touched on that. Off of the coast of Mozambique. Wait, did Mozambique build a train with that corruption money? It was actually a whole mix-up. It was a mix-up. Wait, we got the delivery address wrong. Just a gleaming brand new train station in Mozambique. And in the wake of this, there's a huge public, there's a lot of public anger that starts to rise into like small gatherings and protests uh and i think like many of these situations it's not it's not just because one train station collapsed it's because this is an inciting incident on a history of issues of corruption yeah in the past and the president uh of of serbia sorry i'm scrolling uh vuvic president vuvic we all know that come on dude who is still in charge apologies oh the sky is blue guys yeah president buvich he he's high you know highly criticized and asked to be asked to step down over the course of the protests in the wake of this train station collapsing there's a local minister of construction or a lower level uh government official named joran vesic who in immediately in the wake of just denies wrongdoing of having done anything wrong.

1:04:24Aiden:And within a few days, people are so angry that it just steps down. He just, he initially tries to, he denies that they approached this project incorrectly at all. And the - Dude, the first thing you say when a train station collapses, wasn't me. He just hit the wasn't me. And over the year of 2025, these protests expand, increase in their frequency and don't just happen in the city of Novi Sad. They happen in Belgrade and other cities around the country. And students are the primary base of people that are protesting in the country with, interestingly enough, smaller pockets of pro-government groups trying to counteract their protests at the same time.

1:05:05Aiden:So it's huge groups of students gathering, protesting, having altercations with police and the government, and then also pro-government groups trying to come into the streets and like antagonize this group of student protesters. We didn't need a train station anyway. We didn't want the train station. We like the tuna. And in May of 2025, this actually solidifies into some more concrete asks from the protest movement, which initially started with like, just release the documentation around this train station. We want people to be held accountable for this specific incident. But as the year goes on, There's all these increasing back and forth with police that result in incidents of police brutality.

1:05:52Aiden:So people want justice for cases of that. People being imprisoned wrongly for protesting or like disagreements about whether or not they should be being arrested for protesting. And they want police to be held accountable for that. And they want snap elections to be held and the president to step down from power. Vuvich. Okay. And that's in May of 2025, when these more concrete asks come together. And then in June, notably, some of these protests got really, really big, like some of the biggest in Serbian history. They look pretty big. In June, there was over 100 ,000 people gathered in a protest in Belgrade, with some reports saying multiple hundreds of thousands of people.

1:06:32Aiden:And these really large-scale protests have happened a few times over the course of the year. and Vuvic is like holding strong in opposition to this calling the protesters enemies of the country or terrorists you know hitting the classics he's been in power for hard to do when it's getting above 100 ,000 people you know what I'm saying exactly and he's been in power for 13 years now and he did win the last I couldn't read anything about like suspicion of like election fraud or anything like that the last time there was an election which was I think two or three years ago before this, he won with 58 % of the vote at the time.

1:07:14Aiden:In August of this year, there was like an upscale in headlines and things because it was like a particularly violent month. And also video footage leaked of officers kicking and beating a man in the streets who was then assaulted further after they took him into custody as well. And there's also cases around in August of police like dragging people from buildings and shops and like those things being caught on tape and like rubber bullets being fired into crowds, specifically crowds of like younger students below the age of 18, people who are like 15, 16. And this is kind of invigorating the movement of protesters, switching away from something that's focused primarily on this state of corruption and the specifics of this funding around the train station and more towards being like anti-police brutality.

1:08:08Aiden:Like how dare you inflict this pain on the people when they're trying to hold you accountable for your actions. I should get the guy out of power too. It's like with the big movement. And the ultimate ask is they want him to step down. And the only thing that the Serbian government has given in return is - Rubber bullets. A few rubber bullets. You get to keep them. And a few more smaller officials stepping down from power over the year, but not the actual president or anybody who - Nobody who actually matters, you know? And the year anniversary of the train collapse just happened, and 110 ,000 people gathered in Novi Sad to commemorate the incident.

1:08:48Aiden:So there's still a huge energy behind the movement, at least. It seems like from that being just month. But the significant change that this movement is looking for doesn't really seem to be happening. Like their core asks are not really being met. The most that they've gotten in regards to like the train station is like some documents being released and not the accountability from like the police. Well, I don't know. I mean, it sounds like this is an ongoing thing, right? Like if 100 ,000 people are showing up to protest. Exactly. So this is the update. This is like the update through the year to this point.

1:09:25Yeah.

1:09:26Aiden:Super overall summary, I'm going to be missing a ton of stuff. This is, there's a lot of like, history behind this from what I could read. But we're entering next year with an invigorated base of young people especially who hate the president in power and want the government to be dramatically changed somehow without necessarily a specific set of asks beyond hold elections again and let us try to get new people into power. No, it's interesting. I did not know that was going on in Europe in the same way. That's very similar to all the Gen Z elections through being Africa and Southeast Asia. And, you know, I didn't know it reached countries like Serbia.

1:10:05Yeah. How many protests this year? I think a really similar. It feels like a year of protests, it feels like. Yeah.

1:10:10Aiden:A really similar incident. I saw it was the North Macedonia one where there was a nightclub that like caught on fire and a lot of people died in this, in that. And in the wake of that, in the same way this train station is, huge like youth reaction to like, no, who let this, the state of our country and the state of the government allowing it to get to this point is a failure. It feels like this is the year with the most like protest and anti-government stuff globally in maybe our lifetime, excluding COVID, which is obviously a strange anomaly, at least, or let me replace that, in our adult lifetime.

1:10:47I just don't remember like this scale of stuff. The entire world is pretty pissed. At least in terms of successful. You know what I'm saying? Well, even just in general. I mean, there's just so many protests happening, it feels like.

1:10:57Aiden:I think if you can illuminate more context, like if you happen to be Serbian and or just happen to know more about it because of a personal connection or something, or maybe you studied abroad there, something like that. Or Nepalese or Indonesia, like all the places where these things are really, really kicking off. If you can contextualize it beyond like the articles that we get to read, I think it'd be really, really helpful. Because I know there's always underlying dynamics to these things that are really hard to peel from just like reading stuff online. Because this is a really overhead view of something that seems to have a really, really deep ties of like dissatisfaction among a lot of people there.

1:11:39Aiden:I think that's also why, like when I was reading through this, it's why the demands, especially as if you looked at the demands over the course of the year, actually felt pretty inconsistent or unclear beyond the train incident that started. Well, yeah, when it's a mass youth movement organized by social media, like the fact that they can get a coherent demand at all is pretty difficult. Yeah. Same thing with all the one in Nepal. Like they, the fact that they were able to get one clear demand of like, we're going to hold elections and have this interim prime minute. It's like an amazing achievement because, you know, I went in that discord and saw it's like half of it is people posting, shitposting, like mean, like, you know what I'm saying?

1:12:15It's like thousands of young people all with varying degrees of knowledge and participation. And they're just throwing, you know, so I think that's, that's, that's as much as you can expect. um i do wonder though uh because obviously there's rising youth discontent that's moving that's mobilizing a lot of this but some of it has got to be this venn diagram of social media like all all of it's hitting at once to make this stuff more possible i got to imagine yeah i think

1:12:41Aiden:so one one note on that is that the slogan there's seems to be some consistency in slogan use or like motivation behind these protests. Like there's a reason that this region of Europe is seeing a surge in this activity at the same time. It's because when you see like notable protests from your neighbors around like similar issues that you seem to be facing. Yeah. There's, there's a very direct inspiration. So I don't think it's, and then more than any other time in history. Yeah. It's like, it's not just your name. I mean, it's around, even around the world, right? You see what's happening in Nepal.

1:13:13And even if you're in Europe, you're inspired because you're seeing what's happening in Nepal for the first time. Like that wasn't a thing 10 years ago, you know? Yeah, that's true. I googled it. Yeah, they are showing the One Piece flag in some student protest in Serbia. Nice.

1:13:29Aiden:Any... Did you guys have any more things? I have one more thing to talk about. I got two more. There's a funny choice. I'll let you guys try. Okay, pick it. K-pop demon hunters or something that crypto did which could actually be really good. I'm actually... The second thing's not real. I don't want to know the crypto thing because I don't believe it. You might appreciate it. It's so funny because I genuinely want to know about the second thing, but I keep hearing the words K-pop demon hunters in my life, and I have no idea what it is. These are equally important to the world. Okay, let's hit crypto first.

1:14:01Aiden:Give me crypto first. Okay, all right, crypto, and then we'll wash it down with some K-pop demon hunters. All right, so there's definitely a risk here of me accidentally doing a Coinbase ad because this is largely led by Coinbase. So I want to give that disclaimer as well as the fact that I'm not deeply involved in the crypto space, but did spend some time looking at this yesterday. Okay. So how do payments on the internet work? They work largely through visa, right? Or other of these credit providers. Yeah. The way that, you know, actually works in practice is like, if you go buy a thing on the internet, right, you have to provide your credit card information.

1:14:33You have to like, personally, you go authorize everything with the other side. And then that gets processed by visa. And then the banks charge like a 2 % fee on that. That's why people strongly dislike. If you sell anything, people hate credit cards. And that's why you often get charged more for credit cards because banks, the main way they make money from credit cards is they charge 2 % ish on transactions. And so if you're, if you're a shop, if you sell something online, you hate this, you're just losing 2 % of your profit to the banks. We're just taking it by saying, oh, we need to do this to fund credit cards.

1:15:05Um, so for sellers, it actually kind of sucks. Online payments suck. And then often for a user, it's a shitty process of every time you go to a store, you have to like reenter information. You have to do all these various things, right? So what Coinbase, who is a crypto company, has done is launched a new protocol where the idea is we want to have an internet system where you can pay for things through crypto that is just like instantaneous. It can be automated. It can be very easy and it does not rely on Visa or the existing banks. So they're calling it X402. And the idea is that when you request something from a website, you send an HTTP request.

1:15:40Yes, Brandon. My first question is, if Coinbase controls this protocol, They don't control it. They are the lead developers. But do they have the capability? Like if this were to take off and get big enough that they could then pressure sellers, wouldn't they just charge 2 %? Isn't that something they could do? That's where, right. So as it currently stands, I would argue banks are essentially taking this tax on all sellers. And if you're, I don't know, there's so many stores where 2 % is a huge deal to just take for doing nothing, right? And so if you can get around that and you can just have, I can just directly send money to people not having to go through this system, that could be incredible.

1:16:17And so 402 is basically developed a protocol where when I send an HTTP request, you are going to send back a code automatically that says, Hey, to access whatever you just asked for, maybe it's a video, maybe it's a piece of data, whatever it is. Um, you send back a code 402 that just automatically lets me know you need this much money. And now this is how much I need. I can then automatically send back to you. Here's the crypto information I have to my wallet and the payment just automatically gets processed by a facilitator and the payment's done. So there's two reasons this is notable. One is it bypasses the banks, right?

1:16:52Right. So this is just automatically happening through crypto. And the second is that right now there are US stable coins who are using this stuff. So the likelihood that you're going to go use Bitcoin to buy something on the internet, I don't think is super likely. But, you know, stable coin, which we haven't talked about a lot, the whole idea is that you're buying crypto, which is pegged to the US dollar. so circle was one of if not the biggest stable coin provider they joined onto this uh onto this protocol and so now you can spend your money that is on circle your usdc um and actually buy things through this protocol and it's actually really growing this year so this launched in may i want to say it was like six months ago launched in may and by october there's already like 500 000 transactions i believe a week i forget if it's a week or a day um so the thinking is if you can bypass banks and you can just have everybody use their crypto wallet, this could be incredible.

1:17:43And very notably, this is maybe good, maybe bad. In the world of AI agents, where we're going to have all these apps where you could say, I'm going to give this app control of, I want you to go out and do these things. I want you to go build a whole shopping list and then purchase everything that I need for my vacation. Or I want you to plan an entire vacation. Or let's say you have a business, which is a B2B business and communicates with other companies, that you can have your AI agents or AI bots go out and automatically purchase things from other companies and other services all over the place without you needing to be involved, without you needing to go sign up for that service and generate an API key.

1:18:18In particular, this is going to be useful for programmatic stuff that uses APIs. So one example you might think of is if a company like Reddit is being, I don't know, if an AI is trying to like get Reddit's data, Reddit can reply with, you need to pay us for that. And then there can be some very small amount of money that is given to Reddit just to access that data. This is all the like best case we we've got around the bank. Everybody can use stable coin, which is tied to the US dollar and the world is rosy and crypto wins. Uh, obvious downsides is what first off. Yeah. It just doesn't sound that decentralized, but maybe it is.

1:18:50I have to look up. So, so the protocol is decentralized and basically that's that. So on a technical perspective, it's actually very cool. It's it's, I think it's pretty beautiful. And the seller and the buyer don't need to know any crypto stuff necessarily. They're just using existing HTTP codes, but they do need someone in that process to actually do the crypto processing on the chain. So right now, Coinbase is like, we'll do it. Right.

1:19:15Aiden:Yeah. But there's many companies who are coming on. So the idea is that many different companies could be the person in the middle saying, we'll process this for you. But the obvious logical next step is that those facilitators will start charging 2%. Yeah, they're going to become the new... Correct me if I'm wrong here, right? If Bitcoin... we agree, isn't useful for like day-to-day transactions. But Bitcoin as an example, it is decentralized because a bunch of people are choosing to mine it, right? That's like what's maintaining the ledger of like transactions. So there is no body in the middle that is choosing to maintain it, right?

1:19:58Except until our boy SBF got,

1:20:02Aiden:sent to prison for doing that yeah my goat in this case nobody would like you couldn't copy that sort of system because you can't provide the same sort of financial incentive there is to mine with a stable coin right because it was inherently like destabilized the value of the stable coin it doesn't work in the same way so you need a party who has an interest in stepping up to be like the mediator to maintain the ledger of the of the currency is that a correct understanding i believe i'll be very careful that we don't turn into three-way guys know i talking about crypto the specifics of stable coins and specifics of all right fair enough but here's my take that's what i'm asking because isn't the whole my my question is this sounds amazing.

1:20:54Aiden:This is the initial appeal of cryptocurrency to me as somebody who spent a lot of time like sending international payments over like PayPal. Yeah, this is the first time I've seen a crypto thing ever where I've been like that, it could be really valuable in tons of different instances. So many ways you have to submit and pay online, whether it be like internationally or for a product or whatever, that so many people get a cut of what that is. And then the initial promise of crypto to me when I first learned about it like a really long time ago was, oh, it's cool that you could have a currency where all of that is just gone.

1:21:29Aiden:The backend issue of currencies that got pretty good at that, like had really, really low like transaction fees is that there was still an instability in like the base value of that thing, right? And stable coins are meant to like rectify that part. It's pegged to a currency that we all like understand and use more so day to day. Is there no way to get the best of both worlds where we have this like miracle pegged stable coin that then also doesn't have any like intermediary or body. It's truly decentralized and we can all freely exchange it at will. Like that end game is actually really, really useful.

1:22:10Aiden:I say that from like personal experience. That would be extraordinarily useful to like businesses and things that I did in the past? And can it just not exist? Like, does there always need to be a company at the center of it? There doesn't need to. That's the point. I mean, look, I'll just say - Doesn't sound interesting to me. What is the benefit? It sounds like you're removing all the ability to stop fraud, like anyone to track financial transactions. Like if it's all totally decentralized, I like having an intermediary that has some kind of record or tracking that is tied with the government, that is following laws that - No, the record exists.

1:22:45Aiden:right? Like you can see the record with Bitcoin. You can look at the, like the transactions. But how do you like, like, like for example, with a credit card, I can dispute fraud charges and get them to, you know what I'm saying? I can't. Yeah. But in the same, I think the idea is if you're willing to forego that part of it, it's the electronic, true electronic equivalent of cash. It's that's what it is. When you, if you hang out with your like friend in the, in the UK or whatever, right? Like, and you just want to hand him a$10 bill in like 10 US dollar bill and just give it to him. There's no person who gets a cut of that.

1:23:21Aiden:You just get to choose to give it to him. So it's just the ability to do that electronically with no intermediary taking a cut out of it. It's me, Melee heads in the chat. It's me paying Professor Pro his tournament winnings from the tournament I just run, like without a big chunk of money getting taken out of it because PayPal just likes to do that. It's, we don't like that to me was always the appeal of crypto is like, you just get to rid of, you get rid of that part. Right. In theory, this is a step towards that. Yeah. I mean, I can make up a bunch of bullshit and we can be three white guys talking about crypto, but I, you know, ultimately that's, that's the theory that hasn't happened in practice yet.

1:24:04I, this is the first time I've ever seen something with crypto where I'm like, that seems like a good step in that direction. And then responding to what you said, where they'll just start taking that 2 % that the banks do. What I like about this is at least there's competition right now. It is essentially a duopoly, right? Between Amex and Visa. And what I've read is like, if you're somebody who wants to sell things online, or even if you're a fucking gas station on the corner, you are essentially forced to use Visa and Amex because that's what everybody's using. I think that's the other part too, right?

1:24:35So merchants get fucked because they are being forced to use this stuff because we as consumers find it so convenient. And if you can at least have another option, right? If you have a website that says, you can pay here with credit card or we will give you a 1 % discount if you use X402 and at least there's competition. I would hope that puts pressure on Visa to stop doing what they're, I mean, it's not even Visa, it's the banks. The banks are what largely take the fees here to justify credit. So it puts, I would hope that this creates more competition with banks because right now they just can fuck over merchants that that would be the goal the easiest way for me and crypto has no history no no i mean of i treating people badly or abuse i'm not we're not doing that i get what you're saying and i i can see the benefit i'm just skeptical because i think the main criticism of crypto that has been founded over and over again is the like when you remove all of the the stuff that protects the average yeah Yeah, it just like, it's used for scams.

1:25:33Like that stuff is annoying and that fee that gets -

1:25:36Aiden:That's why I'm asking though, because that's like, I don't disagree with that part. Yeah. But the base appeal of the technology and like the true decentralization of something like Bitcoin, which is like, that's probably the best example that I can think of off the top of my head. that like we don't use cash so often anymore because it's just inconvenient to use it, right? So this is just a, if there's a digital pathway to like using cash or something akin to cash, I would like to have that option available and it doesn't exist right now. And if this is like a path to getting there, that would be cool.

1:26:19I think that'd be cool. But you know, cash is uniquely backed by the government that issues it. And you'll never have that unless, and if you do, then it's going to have unique restrictions and rules. That's the way that cash does. I got. Sure, sure. You know, so. You're right. It's not, cash is not truly,

1:26:37Aiden:it's not decentralized either because it's being like that, provided and backed by the government. I understand that. It's one of the most centralized things. Yes, what I'm saying is just, I'm just looking for some, it feels insane to me that the only way we can pay for things digitally, which is the way we basically have to pay for things now, requires someone to take a chunk out of the transaction. And this seemed like a technological avenue to like maybe fixing that part. And I would like that to be available. And then you could at least make a choice, right? You can make a choice between using my credit card on this because it's backed by Visa and I have the option to cancel the charge and I have this fraud security or whatever.

1:27:19Aiden:And using the digital cash in my wallet. And there's no cut. I think that's fair. I would just say like, you know, in my worldview, the way you would get that is really by like aggressive antitrust enforcement to make sure there's more competition with Visa and MasterCard. I guess this counts as competition. So maybe that's a roundabout technological way to doing it. Yeah, you're right. But there's more than one way to get there. Like if there was 10 different Visas, they would automatically drive down this fee. You know, whatever. But I see. I can see. And just to be clear here. So this is not a Coinbase set up the protocol, but anybody can be the payment processor.

1:27:54So the value of that is that this is set up so that any website that chooses to set this up, any service, any merchant, whatever, can say, I want to have Coinbase process it or I want to have this other company process it. And the value of that is that any company who wants to get in on it can compete. And ideally drive the price down. Exactly. So it wouldn't just be AVCert Amex on this protocol. It might be dozens of providers who are all saying, we'll do 0.2 % cut if you let us process it. So yeah, I mean, it's the best case scenario. I have been reading a lot more about stable coins this year, and I think it is like the perfect theme for this show of like an underreported story.

1:28:30I don't know enough about them for the way that they're clearly ramping up to be like there's a government push to make stable coins a more from America to make it a more important part of the financial system as a way to like counteract what China and BRICS is doing with a RMB gold. like this is like happening now and it's all not reported on by anybody and it is becoming more of a deal and i don't know enough about it i do know that like all these stable coins they take the money you put into them and they put it into u.s treasuries it's like a roundabout way to like help fund our u.s debt using other countries that are that want to dollarize like there's a lot of countries that have shit currencies that would rather just use a u.s stable coin to do transactions with each other yeah and um and we want to take advantage of that so that all their money is being funded back into U.S.

1:29:18treasuries and doesn't pay a... I think this is all very interesting. I don't know enough about it, and I do think it's a very fascinating story. And so I would like us to follow up. Give a take. No, I don't have a take. Give a take.

1:29:27Aiden:I don't want to learn more, but I agree. He gets mad when you talk about Monero. He doesn't like that. I prefer to deal drugs the old-fashioned way, okay? With cash. Oh, with cash. Interesting. But imagine if instead of handing a$5 bill to that drug dealer, you could send him over the X402 open protocol and Coinbase could process it right there. Brandon, it would be decentralized. You're fucking right. I'm sold. I've changed my entire mind. What I will say is funny when I was researching this, like, cause I was, you know, looking at all these different things and I'm looking at like Bloomberg and wall street journal and whatever, all these different, you know.

1:30:00And then with this one, I see it on Yahoo finance. I'm like, okay, cool. Read the, the general, or wait, no, no, sorry. That was, uh, this is on Coinbase info, right? And so I'm reading from Coinbase. I'm like, let me try to get some other sources. All of the articles are just the most like crypto bullshit numbers. It's like, and then neon came onto the chain with a 4 % increase over the last week. And it's just all, it's just the circle jerk numbers of it all. Yeah, it's like coinmarketcap.com or whatever. Yeah, it's like all of the, yeah. Man, I would love if this, best case scenario, this could be sick as fuck.

1:30:28And I, you know, it started this year and we might start to see real big traction on it next year. And that could be exciting. It would be cool. I mean, if this is like the Netflix that breaks blockbuster of the banks, then that could be cool. Oh, dude, if you want me to give you buzzwords, Citibank said this. this is the chat GPT moment for crypto. That makes me hate it. I hate it again. Don't you love it now? No, you got me out. Don't you love it? I was almost one over on the phone. I'm out.

1:30:52Aiden:Wait, let's close out with your last one. K-pop Demon Hunters? K-pop Demon Hunters. K-pop Demon Hunters. K-pop Demon Hunters. K-pop Demon Hunters. One of the beloved Netflix show that, I mean movie, excuse me, that came out a couple months ago. So pretty light, little fast food, but K-pop Demon Hunters, probably you've heard of it because it's the biggest movie ever on Netflix. It became the biggest movie ever on Netflix in 67 days after launching earlier this year. And not only is it the most popular film ever on Netflix, it also has had four simultaneous top 10 Billboard hits. Like its album, its soundtrack is on its own, just some of the most successful music ever, period, on top of being Netflix's biggest movie ever.

1:31:30So I looked into this. I was like, how much is that worth? well uh probably the franchise of k-pop demon hunters is worth billions and billions of dollars

1:31:40Aiden:this year yeah we're talking more than bluey frozen frozen the franchise estimated about 10 billion of value because they made 3 billion in theaters from frozen one and two a little less uh they make hundreds of millions with music sales and theme parks and then five to six billion dollars in consumer merch products merch was the frozen was the number one licensed merch brand in the world for several years gay pop demon hunters is now the most popular movie and kids everywhere fucking love it but then the funny funny hilarious thing the goofy thing for sony sony made it it's the same uh it's the same studio who made the spider verse movies so like they are really good that's like they're incredible and actually uh someone in my community a friend i've like went and saw their studio and i got to see them work on it it's super cool that's yeah yeah so and that team is just insanely talented so sony made the movie but they agreed to make it in 2021 with netflix so this was like you know still pandemic happening and netflix wanted a bunch of original movies and sony was like sony pictures was like well it's kind of risky time theaters are still up in the air we will make a deal with netflix to just make you a bunch of movies so So Netflix agreed for this particular one, they would pay the$100 million to make K-pop Demon Hunters.

1:32:58So they'd cover the costs and then a$20 million profit. And that was a great deal for Sony, right? And particularly at that point, it was just an idea. And you know, like probably if you heard this when I did, I was like, that's a funny idea. It's about K-pop idols who also hunt demons. At no point it was like, this will be the biggest movie ever. So Sony made$20 million from this whole thing. Netflix, it's their biggest movie ever, and now it's probably worth billions and billions of dollars. They have all the rights. And so, again, it cost them$120 million all in for this movie. For comparison, they paid$465 million just for the Seinfeld reruns.

1:33:36So this is like maybe their best investment ever by a wide amount. I mean, this is like crazy, crazy, crazy. Sony has the rights to negotiate the sequels. So for any future one, Sony can say like, we're not going to make you K-pop Demon Hunters 2. Yeah, but they can make it with someone else, right? No. So Sony can make it with someone else. Yeah. But then Sony's weird because they're like the only big giant movie production company that doesn't have a streaming service. Right. Right. So they don't have a platform that they can go dump it onto to try to make it themselves. And Netflix is, you know, basically in the stronger negotiating position because they're like, our audience would want this.

1:34:10We have this. And we made your movie a hit. Like, give it to us again. So there's going to be an interesting negotiation. But basically, Sony made this thing, gave it out for cheap. Netflix is like, holy shit, amazing. And even the, I believe, CFO of Sony a few months earlier before the movie came out was like, the one thing we struggle with is original IP. You know, we have Spider-Man and that's kind of it, but we got to make some more original IP. And then they sell K-pop Demon Hunters to Netflix. Dude, around that same time, they did that movie, The Grey Man. Did you guys ever see that? With Ryan Gosling or whatever?

1:34:43That cost like 350 million to make was a big flop. Grey Mage? The Grey Man. this is the most expensive movie Netflix ever made, their original they got like all these big stars in it, it was completely forgotten about, yeah I've never even heard of it oh my god, I watched it, it was a snoozer

1:35:01Aiden:Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas Chris Evans yeah it's like this huge action movie you can just feel the budget on every scene big flop, it's directed by the Russo brothers yeah dude, dude, wow it went all out and it was like nothing I've never even heard of it, they just threw a couple chump change at K-pop Demon Hunters and it blew this out of the water. It's so funny. I mean, that's been Netflix's thing, right? Like they poured, you know, endless amounts of money into, I don't know, whatever, Stranger Things, final season, and then Squid Game pops out. Yeah. And it's like the biggest thing of all time.

1:35:30Aiden:It's a nice... I mean, they just... They're the only profitable streaming service, so like it's working, whatever they're doing. As much as I hate that they constantly cancel shows and are just super consistent... Two seasons every time. Yeah. As incredibly obnoxious as that is, it's like, man, dude, their strategy seems to work. They just tried lots of things and then they're like a VC company. They just back everything and then they get a couple unicorns and it all pays out. That's exactly what I was thinking. Super VC approach. Now we've truly covered 2025. I don't think we missed anything.

1:36:01Aiden:I don't think we missed anything. Except the two stories we also prepped but didn't include in this episode. But nothing else. Well, thank you guys for tuning in to another episode of Lemonade Stand. I think the two topics, we were going to talk about the reduction in homicides in Baltimore this year, which we will definitely talk about on another episode. It's super heartwarming, super, super nice to hear. Yeah, actually, let's just say that even if you don't listen to our Patreon that you can access for$5 a month, blah, blah, blah. It's a, there's like a really good story coming out of America.

1:36:36We have an American city that's like making real progress on crime and community involvement. And it's, yeah, there's good happening. It's an amazing,

1:36:43Aiden:amazing story. And I want to shout out one commenter who I owe a follow up on from a long time ago is when we talked about the UK a bit and the threat of like millionaires and or billionaires like leaving the country with their money, the way they hid that money in like places abroad. there's a really good comment on that episode that pointed me towards a report that came out this year from tax justice, uh, this organization about, uh, going through the kind of myth of millionaire flight. And I really want to cover that on another episode too. So those are like the two stories that we'll, we'll bring back another time.

1:37:17Aiden:Uh, but yeah, if you want an extra hour of the show every week, you can check out patrion.com slash lemonade stand and we'll see you guys soon. Thanks for watching. Bold nudity on there. Yeah. Yeah, it's a lot. It's mostly nudity. It's a lot. It's a little graphic, honestly. Mostly nudity. We've all been there. You pop into the shop for five minutes, and all of a sudden you've forgotten where you parked. Car? Car? Unfortunately, that lost feeling is what it's like trying to manage your policy with other insurers. Here, car. Come out, come out, wherever you are. Please. With GEICO, you can use the app to easily manage all your policies in one place.

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