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

33:13But I think it is, it is exactly, it is almost exactly the same as opening a pack of Pokemon cards. It is the same. It's not exactly the same though, right? The only difference is that there's like no, with something digital, it lacks a layer of friction where I would have to go to the store or like order it and wait for that. Like as a kid, I could not get addicted to gambling on Pokemon cards. I would need to get my parents to drive me to a store. But like - Why is the money? It's like, if you had the money for, If you're a rich kid, you could get a dick. I'm sure maybe. I just think like there's clearly a pipeline of young people getting into skin gambling.

33:48There wasn't for Pokemon cards. And I'm not saying they're both not roughly identical. I think. But the digital frictionless experience is like. I think we kill Pokemon that will stop the CSGO gambling, right? It's like the malaria parasite. If you can kill it in its earlier larval stages, it won't mature. But it already exists. So we need a vaccine early in the stages. We need to go back in time and kill Pikachu. We have to kill Pikachu. There was one. Okay, so there's two more interesting parts of this story. Did New Jack City mean pointing at Pikachu's head crying? Is that Valve also accuses the New York Attorney General's lawsuit of specifically calling out the fact that you can trade these assets.

34:29Like part of the value and part of the risk of the whole economy that they formed across these games is that you get the item out of the box and then you can trade it to other users. And they fervently defend that. Basically, that is a right of like all of the users across their platform. And they think that's a very important part of not only like Counter-Strike, but games across the entire platform. And it was interesting to see them like so heavily stand behind that. A couple days later, another state has sued them, which is - It's hard to spread. Yeah. Yeah, Washington state. There is there is a class action lawsuit of Pokemon, by the way, or Pokemon USA.

35:10Yeah, the home of Pokemon USA. And you say are like a couple blocks away. Like Val's just going to point at them again. Nintendo of America is there in the in the same block, I think, or like the same area of Redmond. But this class action lawsuit is accusing them of the same thing is that consumers played these games for entertainment unaware that valve had allegedly already stacked the odds against them we intend to hold valve accountable and put money back in the pockets of consumers and they were like

35:43they're like if i don't get a fucking knife i don't get a butterfly dude you like stream it and you say streaming and if i get five blues in a row i sue valve having that political power it is it does feel a little bit like you're throwing a dart at a dartboard like there's so many of the why why go after this and not sports because you have to start somewhere bro you have to like yeah like we are we are in the the depths of gambling despair like why are we starting with the one that i have the one that you like okay and i i think a funny little thing that caps this off is i think you can tell from changes in the game from a long time in counter-strike specifically again this applies across all of valve's games though is they've been making little changes like phasing out of cases out of counter strike entirely.

36:32And they switched to these little things that we've explained before called terminals where it gives you the chance. It's like, you don't pay to open it. And then it randomly generates five opportunities for you to buy one of the items from valve. And then valve kind of sets a market price through this that, uh, based on like the rarity of the item. Right. So they just announced that this, some of the more special items about shooting people in a, it's not about that. It's about like playing. It's not fun, it's pretty money. Okay. When I was younger, there was a... The reason why I think this is insane is because you used to be able to pay two bucks to open one of these cases and crack like an item out of them, right?

37:11But now with this new system and these new like gloves they added, they, look, Valve is charging you. Valve, the company, is not a third party marketplace, is charging you$1 ,200 for this pair of rare gloves. Do you remember when gamers rioted the kids? More rumors. Yeah. Do you remember when gamers rioted over$2 horse armor in Oblivion? Yeah. Sorry, excuse me. It's 1 ,300 euros. So like 1 ,500 US dollars. What happened? You now have the privilege of paying Valve that amount of money directly. We lost that fight and we lost the war and it's been over. And now people are, now children are paying 1 ,500 euros.

37:48It's a hedge against fiat currency. It's not that big of a deal. I can't believe we have to pitch that to Steve Eisenberg. That's so basic. that's awesome right i don't know how this is all gonna play out but it's crazy to see like two state lawsuits hit in like such a short period of time them making a rare public statement while they also seemingly like while they argue the lawsuit have clearly been making changes in the game to avoid further issues like this our editor owns some skins this might be the last

38:22done guys i have some good news uh i don't know if you knew this but we won the war in iran again Again, Donald Trump has announced for the fifth time that this time, finally, we've completely beaten and decimated Iran, both military, economically, and every other way. Obviously, we can do a gazillion Iran war updates. Not very interesting. every week but the the thing i want to talk about in my section is his attempts now that it's starting the spiral to get a coalition of the willing to help him patrol the strait of hormuz and get free and flowing oil okay this should have always been a team effort and now it will be is what donald trump is saying so we can get harmony security and everlasting peace this is the fifth time iran has been defeated this week alone there's been a lot of announcements and they keep getting defeated.

39:14Polling has shown that the major takeaway from people across the political spectrum, this is a 22 % polling positive war, people primarily just don't see the point. They don't know why we are there and they are noticing the gas prices are going up, which is becoming a big political and economic problem globally, not just in America. And so there has been a call for allied warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz, not just America, America can't do it alone. so far though no nations have confirmed plans is this like when we helped like uh you know all of the british merchant vessels saved the people from the french beaches during world war ii dunkirk you mean is this like a dunkirk situation where we're calling answer the call civilians bring your boats to the strait put oil on it team effort if you had the gall to just go through that straight yeah i don't know who that was i was pete exes someone was like yeah just be brave be brave and go through the straight and i'm like no i'm not gonna do that so uh wait wait hold on hold the team that we're collecting like the avengers that were that trump's trying to assemble yeah it's countries is it people who it's countries okay so the idea is that it turns out it's going to be very very expensive and difficult to stop iran from droning or mining the strait of hormuz which is cutting off again this is not just an american problem this is becoming a world problem it is cutting off 20 % of the world's oil, 30 % of the world's fertilizer.

40:41Fertilizer prices have spiked like 91%. Oil prices are already way up. This is going to cause food shortages and economic slowdowns because of higher gas prices and more than that. And it's beginning to cause panic everywhere. So a couple of things have been done in the short term to try and stop it. Number one was after saying he wouldn't do this, he is now releasing a bunch of money, oil from our strategic petroleum reserve. We're jumping like, we're combining with other G7 countries and other allied nations to release it all at once. 400 million barrels from collectively our different oil reserves.

41:15That is four days of global oil consumption. And that's like basically what we got. It caused oil prices to go down for a little bit. And now they are going right back up, that announcement. If you listen to, I believe, Vance and Trump, you'll know that the oil reserves were low because of Biden. They were. No, but they were. They actually were. Joe Biden drained the reserve and it could be said politically to help him for the election. It didn't work. He lost the election and there was less. But the problem is Donald Trump has said over and over on the campaign trail in his inauguration speech after getting inaugurated, hey, I'm going to refill that thing to the tippity top.

41:52Well, the time to do that would be when oil prices were super cheap before you started a war in Iran. And he didn't do it. China did do that. They bought millions of barrels per day all of 2025. And now we're kind of, that was our, that was our big lever. Like we pulled the lever, we put 400 million dollars off. It hasn't stopped the oil prices from rising. And so he is urging the UK and other nations to send trade. And I included this meme because this is what the response has been so far. Like nations are just, they're, they're being very tepid about, I'm going to send our actual troops. And it's very expensive to send warships to go help patrol the Strait of moves.

42:27And just, just checking where it's just us in Israel, right? So far. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think the UK has of today, I mean, this is all live is going to send like a pity boat or something. I mean, there's like some small little merchant vessel. But so far what we're seeing from every country is they're just trying to skip around this and talk to Iran directly. So India is having talks with Iran and be like, Hey, let only Indian ships through because right now assuming the mines, I don't know the situation on the mines, but based on drones, they can basically say like Chinese vessels can go through or whatever they can like let.

43:04So everyone's trying to get a deal. So France and Italy is doing this. Again, I said, India, France and Italy, China. So every, every country is like opening their own private line to Iran to be like, Hey, we're boys, right? Let's not let our tankers go through because of how economically important it is. And there's not a lot of appetite to get this actual coalition. Now, this is from an hour before we recorded this. They plan to announce a coalition. We don't know who that's going to be in the coalition. I don't understand. But I have to say, man, we've covered a lot of news on this channel.

43:40And I just want to say directly, I think this war is ending up being the stupidest decision of the Trump presidency. I think it's one of the stupidest things I've seen a leader do. It feels so ill thought out and ill plan. And I've steel manned the larger China angle, but I mean, in terms of execution, this is proving to be a disaster. I think to do it right before midterms is fucking art because this is collapsing. I've seen people burning their MAGA hats today. Like it is collapsing his political base and will. It is tanking right as we go into their big election. So, I mean, I guess good on that front, but it is crazy.

44:17And it is turning so many countries, at least soft, negative, because they now have an economic problem that they know was caused by this very unplanned quick war. Like, it is, it's kind of spiraling. So, this is Paul Graham, who I think is a great follow on Twitter. He had a prediction. When fighting in Iran gets too painful because of oil prices or polls or whatever, Trump will claim that the current state of things, whatever it happens to be, was his goal, declare victory and retreat. The problem with that is that none of that changes the reality that a country of 90 million, if you haven't changed the regime, can always block this straight.

44:53And if they want to do it longer, we will get$200 barrels of oil. Like unless they can fix that or change that, which doesn't seem to be possible, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. So on the negotiating with Iran front for all of those countries, it seems unlikely that Iran would say yes to anybody or at least not a lot of country partners because this is their main line of leverage for ending the war. Like there's no reason for them to start saying yes because that would start lowering the price of oil and then they lose that. Well, counter, if they keep saying yes to countries other than the U.S.

45:29and Israel, right, doesn't that put pressure on U.S. and Israel even more so because gas would only be going up for us? Or is the idea that the global price - No, so the thing is, we actually don't get much oil from the Strait of Hormuz. It's just that when someone else is desperate, let's say India, they buy it on global markets and it raises the price for everybody. Technically, we are energy independent from this. America is actually one of the least affected, but it doesn't matter for people at the gas pump because oil is a global market and someone else being desperate makes the rise rise for everybody okay so um so yeah i agree if they if they were like because letting only american ships not pass is there's no ships there's like it's barely any most of the ships that are going to china or japan or india or whatever that's where they're going so i don't think they'll do this i also don't know that they can my understanding is like communication is kind of breaking down on the iranian side and it's just they don't may not have a structured plan on this.

46:20It may just be like chaos, stop the ships. I think the other interesting thing here is that Israel being the other partner in the conflict is they're going to lose more institutional support. Like I already feel like there is a tide shift among like the average person in terms of their outlook on Israel or support for Israel, right? And they still have a lot of like political or institutional support in the United States, but also abroad from like a lot of other countries, governments and things like this. But when a decision that you are a huge part in, maybe the primary reason that this is happening now, you start to lose that institutional support you've built in other places.

47:06Like people can only tolerate the consequences of your actions when it affects them in this way economically for so long. And I feel like that's, they are going to see the results of that in the next few years. I think the high level would be that this is becoming an economic story more than a military story. This is spiraling to millions of people in economic, like gas prices worldwide, fertilizer worldwide. And if this doesn't get open soon, and there's no short-term reason it would be, I don't know why. I don't know what the plan is. Maybe they do have a plan. But if that doesn't happen soon, we're looking at$150,$200 barrel oil and fertilizer at fucking 3x the time.

47:49That will be a problem. You know that phony gas station that's on a union station in LA? Dude, it's got to be so high right now. Dude, it's already at$8.50 a gallon for regular. $8.50! My God. Which is not indicative of LA on the whole. But it is like, there's this comically expensive gas station in LA that was like, it was$7 flat last week. and I was like, oh, that's pretty low. It's funny being in LA because I've been looking at all these gas price charts and it's like gas price up 88 cents. It's like 350 for the country. It's like broad 350. I've been paying four plus for years. That gas station setting it at like$6 before the war.

48:28Like you're already making a shitload of money. So they're like, oh, war in Iran. Everybody will think this is chill. And they just crank it up. Like they're just vibing the price. That's awesome. They vibe it. That sucks. Yeah. It does kind of suck, honestly, but I think worth talking about. War is back, baby. Dude, put this right after I do the Iran war.

48:55But not where you would think it in a little land known as Japan. Japan war is back for Japan, baby. Now, famously, war was really bad in Japan. No, it's back. It's been a reprieve. It's back. it was on intermission that was better for about 80 years right gaming's back war is back well japan war specifically so okay after world war ii japan uh lost i'm gonna fact check that real patriots yeah perry correct that in the comments but they so they lost u.s takes over and basically kind of forces a new constitution where they renounce the right to wage war japan constitutionally cannot wage war right now so takaichi who's the prime minister we've talked about a couple of times she had this like massive win they have the largest like electoral uh percentage right now in the history of modern japan right so she as a leader has more ability to kind of push agenda than anyone in in any you know living memory right and now people in japan are justifiably concerned about china north korea russia and the unpredictability of the usa turns out we're making it feel a little weird and when we were in japan and we talked to professor jeffrey hall He mentioned how like if war breaks out between China and the US, it's probably happening on military bases in Japan, right?

50:15Like that's like the war, like they're dragged into it. Phase one. Yeah, kind of regardless of what you want. And the USA has explicitly pushed for Japan to be more militarized because that's Trump's thing, right? He wants everybody to spend more on military. So he praised Takahichi's peace through strength agenda. Scott Besant, treasury secretary said on X, when Japan is strong, the US is strong in Asia. So in the past, this was not something that the Japanese population cared about that much. But if you pull this up, Perry, even over the past five years, this is from Bloomberg, the number of people who feel that reforming the constitution to allow for something like this is increasing pretty dramatically.

50:53So in this graph, you can see since 2020, the number of people who thought it was necessary to reform the constitution was like 29%. Now it is up to 39. It's ticking up. It's ticking up. And not only that, the number of people who think it's unnecessary has is shrinking. Actually, the number of people who are undecided or don't care is about the same, is about the same. So it's just, it's notable that the people really opposed to this are sort of rapidly shrinking. And so this is hugely notable. We've talked a number of times about how the Japanese average person is a little more apolitical than us.

51:23They've been in this extremely long kind of era of peace. And now Takahichi is really pushing for it. Quote, I am committed to creating an environment in which a national referendum can be held as soon as possible to let the public decide on whether or not to amend the constitution. She also wants to create a national intelligence bureau by July. She wants to have a CIA or an M16 or MI6? MI6. MI6 type of vibe, which is like that's not our best, man. Don't model it after that. Hard to start that from scratch. yeah i do like the idea of the coups you can never do it like us yeah you really got to put some effort in they should acquire ours i mean we're gonna talk about this before we go to china but i will say that the primary urgency behind this i my understanding is like there is rising tensions between japan and china you know political tit for tats they're saying a lot of things takeuchi said some stuff about taiwan that got china really heated yeah so that was months ago right and we talked about that she was she basically said japan would consider military action if china if china goes for taiwan china's been very upset about that and we talked about that a bunch and they were kind of hoping that that would fade out and they've put like some economic uh constraints and restricted tourism and i even talked to someone in japan who said that like the amount of chinese tourists that she has seen in the last couple months has decreased dramatically it used to be one of the biggest groups and they were really hoping that takaichi She would like lose power.

52:52And instead she gained massively. And now she isn't backing down. She's planning on going and visiting the war crime shrine, which is a whole other mini story. It's a shrine where there's 14 war criminals. Their spirits got added to the shrine without anybody noticing. And it became a big, this is real. And you can't separate out the 14 spirits. They become one spirit, you know? Okay. And so she, I don't know. No, she's going to be, Oh yeah. There's a book that has all the spirits, all the spirits combined into one spiritual, kind of energy. You can't pull them away. The priests aren't going to do that.

53:24That's basic spiritology. You're lecturing me. I already know that. You're saying we should pull out the 14 war criminals. No, of course not, Doug, because they've combined. Because they've combined. Thank you. I don't understand that. And one politician proposed that and people are pissed. That's not what you're supposed to do. You don't pull out the 14 spirit. You don't pull them out. And so the prime minister, it's like, it's a big deal when you go and visit the shrine because the, unironically, these are like, so it's a shrine for like, you know, soldiers, Japanese soldiers who fell in battle, particularly World War II.

53:53Yeah. But by putting war criminals in there, like their spirits are officially logged as in the shrine. Yeah. Korea and China aren't stoked about that because they were the recipients of a lot of the war crimes. So it's kind of a bad look if the prime minister goes and visits the shrine where they literally enshrined 14 Class A war criminals Right. without telling the public. Japan committed war crimes? If you're going to do a war crime, be Class A. And she said like, I'm trying to figure out how to go visit the shrine right now. Like she just said that she's not backing down. Everyone's getting super nationalistic over there.

54:27It's crazy. I mean, yeah, like you said, it backfired because the pain from the economic stuff, like the canceling tourism and the canceling imports hadn't really hit yet. It was just like a kind of a mean thing to do. Yeah, yeah. And so everyone in Japan was like, well, fuck you then. And they rallied behind her. And she called a snap election right then. It was kind of politically brilliant. and so her power didn't shrink. It massively increased and it was kind of because of this China. People were more... So it's kind of crazy. I'm channeling my C-Doug VA and giving you the Japan news. I mean, we'll be learning more about this, but with all the tensions going around in the world, Japan is looking to defend themselves.

55:05And I'll give you my opinions about what she said about Taiwan in four weeks.

55:13support for this show comes from tasty trade guys i'm getting real tired of you not knowing serious financial terms on this show okay steve eisman comes on and we can't even explain ourselves in the complicated financial ways we seem like chumps is bitcoin a money this is a problem aiden so i came up with a quiz to test you on your financial knowledge you're gonna tell me if these are real or fake. Okay? These are financial terms. Yes. The Lady Macbeth strategy. Is that real or fake? That's a chess opening. That's not real. That's real for sure. It's real. Really? It's real. Yes. Everyone knows that.

55:49What about the, what about momentum canceling? Momentum canceling? That's from Melee. Fake. Fake. Yeah, it's from Melee. All right, what about, what about, what about a broken wing butterfly? That's gotta be, it's too weird to be made up. That feels like it's real. Feels like it's real. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. Okay, it is real. So you guys are getting some of these right. What does it mean? Let's not focus too much on the details. You know who could explain it really well? Tasty Trade. Because they have an actual jargon library that breaks down these terms to help you understand so you can trade with understanding.

56:28Wow. Are you saying I could go to tastytrade.com slash lemonade today and that Tasty Trade Inc. is a registered broker dealer? That's exactly what I'm saying. You finally got it. Okay, I'm picking up on it. And it's a member of FINRA, NFA, NSIPC. Well, hold on, hold on. Is it? Yes. Okay, I'll end. All right, man. Thank you, Tasty Trade, for supporting the show. More for Lemonade Stand comes from Samsara. You know what my dream always was? Get behind the wheel of a big rig. You would be the worst drug. What product would you ship? You would be the worst trucker. But they stopped me. They stopped me.

57:07They should stop you. Because I got in too many accidents. You'd be a menace behind the wheel. But for more responsible truckers, I guess. Yeah, because if you're worried about an Aiden. They use dashcams to keep people like me accountable. Which made you want something like Samsara to help you protect drivers. Their AI dashcams capture real-time video that proves when your drivers aren't at fault, protecting them from false claims. So you analyze that data. You can reduce crash rates by nearly 75%, trusted by over 20 ,000 customers worldwide. Back in the day, you could just submit false claims left and right.

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58:24It's going to be only America first. America first. Thousands of supporters of President Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol building. But is it possible to talk about politics without talking about Donald Trump? That's the question I'm going to ask in our new show from Vox. The idea of like a post-Trump or not exactly Trump-focused show can exist because he's not really driving any agenda items. It really does feel like so reactive. You know, I think this Iran thing is also going to cause a big split in the GOP. So far, it doesn't among, like, people who say they're MAGA voters are still with Trump.

59:01But, like, for the first time, you see on a major issue open opposition from the start of this war. I'm Estet Herndon. And welcome to America Actually.

59:13Time for something exciting Honda car company you might have heard about it they made a little announcement. I love Honda. Bite your tongue if you're going to say a negative thing about Honda. I'm a diehard Honda Defender. We are not paid. This is not a sponsor. Honda fucking sucks. Thank you. We're going to have a problem. We're going to have beef, bro. And you know what sucks the most? The Honda Fit. As long as Adish doesn't drive a Honda, I think I'm good. Look, they made a post three days ago, big announcement, where they said they are canceling the development and launch of three EV models that have been planned for North America.

59:48You can pull this up for just like a few seconds, Perry, but Honda posted this announcement and it is really bleak. Honda basically announced two problems. First off, they tried to pivot to EVs. They're like, we are going to make a goal to go carbon neutral by 2050. And the US, especially under Biden was like really pushing EV transition, right? So Honda as a broad global strategy was like, we're going to really focus on EVs, especially in the United States. Okay. And then Trump gets elected. And now there's a whole bunch of tariffs that make a traditional hybrid cars very expensive. On top of that, we've been dropping the United States government has been dropping the subsidies to buy EVs and just generally there's less interest in them.

1:00:28So the demand on the U S side has suddenly precipitously dropped instead of being this like long-term goal that persists. And China is coming in and eating everybody's lunch in the EV market. And Honda has basically said, we are kind of, we're kind of fucked. They're posting losses. They're canceling the EVs. it looks real bad. And they're basically just saying like on both of our fronts on through, on the traditional side and on the EV side, we're failing. So we're just going to focus on the traditional hybrids. Did they say anything about how they love the drivers of Honda fits and how that's their best thing?

1:01:01Why would they say that? We would do something that you might mention to like, as I would throw a bone to your audience, we're failing on this front. We're failing on this front, but we crushed it on the Honda fit 2017. And that's where, and you think they'd be hanging on to that. So I just think if you have a big hit, don't forget to mention it. Don't forget to mention it. It was weird. There's a whole section and it's just like, here is Brandon Ewing at Dunkin' Donuts. Here's Brandon Ewing at 4.30 PM. And it's drone shots that have been following you around specifically. That's probably what they're feeling.

1:01:26It's very expensive, it sounds like. So I think this is an interesting canary in the coal mine for some of the other big car companies, right? This is one of the ones that has tried to pivot to EVs and they basically are saying, we're giving up, right? And you're seeing other companies do this and it's both the pressure from China, the weird regulation and vicissitudes of the US market, all this crazy. You got to dive up good fucking lingo there. Yeah. It's baby. And so to kind of like wrap it up, they are sticking with internal combustion engines, which kind of sucks because I think we should move towards an EV future.

1:01:57So I think if you want to like tell Honda that you're upset with this, you don't want internal combustion engines, tweet at them and say, hashtag abolish ice. Don't stick with this type of car and let's move to EVs, you know, referring to the internal You could say something like, we believe people from other countries should be welcome here in America. Hashtag fuck ice. Yeah. Referring to Chinese manufacturers being able to produce cars here and a general dislike of internal combustion engines. I don't know if you guys know this, but there's another, I think there's another thing going on right now.

1:02:31Couldn't possibly be. Like it's like mass people picking up, picking up people in unmarked vehicles. Elephant in the room, self-driving cars nobody's really talking about that oh good point it's not really what i was getting there's a great interview for car and driver with the ford ceo he starts talking about how like covid threw them off because they thought there was going to be like oh this massive surge for evs and that it didn't really work out talks about how he thinks ford has been iterating off of their previous ice designs hashtag fuck ice internal combustion engines and that like their stuff was just not actually built from the ground up in a smart way for evs so they're needing to redo that talking about how the software defined vehicles cars really just being software that makes the user happy is like the future and really talks about this candidly and apparently this the ceo of ford like does racing he just does car racing i've heard so many interviews with him he seems like he gets it but what's funny is ford has made no progress so it feels like he's a guy that's just like bro where he comes out of these interviews he talks about how man we're cooked we got to do this this and this and then nothing happens in the stock tanks and i'm like maybe what is going on between his he is the leader but I agree with you and I think you know this story is not just Honda right we talked about Germany and like the German cars everybody's caught between what worked for decades and this huge wave from China and then like different EV adoptions around the globe I think genuinely your hands are probably a bit tied in that situation right because the amount of transformation that your company needs to take and the people that you need to convince and maybe the legislation that would push you in the appropriate direction.

1:04:13All of these things are gigantic layers of friction that make that change such a big gamble. And you have to deal with the short-term consequences of what your shareholders think as the CEO. I'm not, you know, I don't care what happens to the Ford CEO. Like I, he can, you are an asshole, but Jim Farley is a nice man. But I can see how the the him getting it in interviews doesn't translate into immediate change for a public company that might not make it through that transition probably a big slow ship that's hard to turn yeah and it's funny because all of the people that are invested in the company it's like okay you're gonna let it die slowly instead because you'll inevitably lose like the evs it's like there's no getting around that the evs are gonna win eventually yeah you guys know the story about harley where like they realized that only old people were buying their bikes and so they uh Oh, Harley Davidson.

1:05:06Harley Davidson. Harley Davidson. And so they were like, we need to try a youthful pivot. And so they tried this big pivot for like a year, maybe eight months. It didn't really work off the ground. And they were like, fuck it. And then they went all in on old people. They're like, the company will die eventually, but we're going to make money while we can. They're just, they're like, the brand is not going to revitalize for young people. That's what I feel about Honda. It's like, you're giving up on what is clearly the future. You're just happening. We're just going to, we're just going to can the side.

1:05:30We're going to focus on hybrids. do a quote from the ford ceo like i kind of like that level of honesty if he came into the interview to well tell me what yeah what's the actual quote well i just so this is ford ceo he says when we ripped apart a tesla i was absolutely flabbergasted the mock e meaning his own ev ford's ev the wiring harness was 70 pounds heavier and 1.6 kilometers longer basically the wiring that hooks up the pieces of the car we didn't know what was going on in tesla engineers minds but now we understand they had no prejudice we had prejudice they said let's design the vehicle for the lowest smallest battery totally different approach so he admits like we're stuck in the old these old ways and we're kind of just trying to like jam a battery into these ice cars yeah and what we need to do is rethink it from the ground up right people guys yeah yeah and so we need to you need to abolish that entirely and rebuild that's very smart what you said about software is really important because that's what i've heard too is that like these companies they thought i mean it's been true that to be good at making cars you're good at certain processes and one of them was not software right but the modern day car is almost like an entertainment unit it's you know the dashboard everything like the chinese cars are built like phones almost with a bunch of different right well it's funny to show me it's a phone company yeah and like they don't care as much about uh now that they're bad at it but they don't care about horsepower like those things are not the number one thing it's ranked on it's like all the media features and all that stuff well That was the quote in Kaput when it was talking about the German car companies.

1:06:58It's like they couldn't get their heads around them not talking about. They're like, what do you mean you guys don't talk about speed and horsepower? Yeah, it's like everyone just gets a car to go to the grocery store. Most people, it's like if it gets it done and you can listen to music and watch media. So anyway, that's good. It shows that it's pretty interesting because we're way over the time limit. People seem to love this one. And cut. Continuing from what Aiden just said, I'm sure. of a language is right in order uh there's been a a massive hatred of apple over what they've done with the apple app store oh yes this is such a good story big such a good story monopoly battle that was kicked off by tim sweeney and epic games and fortnite because they're the only ones that had the muscle post covid when every single kid on the world was addicted to fortnite they were tired of uh 30 of every in-app purchase going to either of these stores and they said this is stupid.

1:07:53We can make our own store, but then all the stores would like block their store or like make it hard to get to, or like cut them off the app store. And so there was this big lawsuit by Tim Sweeney against Google play and against Apple. Now, for some reason, I don't know why they lost the Apple lawsuit and won the Google play lawsuit. Google play was declared a monopoly in the way they did. I don't know why there's a difference on this. Maybe we could look it up, but, uh, the point is that there was a legal battles that continuing, continuing. And finally, Google has given in and they're making substantial changes to their app store, which is in-app purchases drop from 30 % to 20%.

1:08:31Subscriptions drop to 10%. Developers using their own billing pay as little as 5%. They can no longer make it like really like warning sign danger if you try to go off to a different store. Because that's what they do. Like right now, if you're like on a game and you want to go to their online store, it like goes danger. You're leaving the app. This is crazy. Now it's easy. so everyone can easily make their own purchase store. So it's now a huge competitive lob at Apple because now on the Play Store, you will get a much better split as a developer than you are on the Apple Store. It used to be about even.

1:09:06And Tim Sweeney came out. I got his tweet somewhere around here. Google is opening up Android. You can put it on the screen. With robust support for competing stores, competing payments, and a better deal for all developers. so we've settled all of our disputes worldwide thanks google this is that they're five years of legal battle tim sweeney at least gets a win in this area which is pretty crazy now i do think it's funny that listen if you look into this at every single step of the way google has fought tooth and nail not to make this change and when they finally had to do it they're like we're gonna we're opening up yeah we're developers we're pro developers and it's kind of working everyone's being like oh google's pro developer now it's just so funny to be like scraping against it So anyway, this is a huge deal that kind of, if Apple feels like they have to respond, will finally end this, not let me end, but seriously weaken this gargantuan duopoly that has existed since mobile phones became dominant.

1:10:05Like this is so huge. You're saying in the most idealistic scenario, because Google is such a huge player and they are making these changes, it will pressure Apple to also make them, even though they won the same lawsuit on their side somehow apple won their lawsuit but it's because they've done nothing wrong apple makes great computers and phones and they're compatible with your watch this is not an ad uh yeah so six years of legal warfare in 200 billion dollar mobile app market apple still charges 30 but android is now dramatically cheaper and that does mean something. Developers will start to notice how much better that feels.

1:10:47Because again, having a third of your profit slurped away by these big stores is like they've been complaining about it more and more and more and more. And they've been trying to get around it and get outside of it. And now they can do it easily on Android and they can't on. Isn't this incredibly naive though, to believe that that would be an outcome? Apple has such a gigantic portion of the market. You can't not engage in their store. Like I understand there's a huge other player, but it's, if I'm making any sort of app, why would I not like, as long as the iPhone is so big. So imagine, uh, if your friend who owns an Android can use the Epic play store or whatever easily.

1:11:27Yeah. And they're getting a discount. They're getting a better deal. And so you as a customer start noticing that the iPhone person is paying more, has worse updates or whatever. Like the experience becomes worse because the developer prefers the platform where they can make a lot more money. Yeah, it's literally, you know, if Uber is like, oh, your ride is 10 % cheaper when you use Android. Like that is going to start to, your, you know, your gotcha game that you play, all the, like all the in-app purchases you do on literally anything, your Uber, like if everything starts dropping because of this, eventually, I don't think people are going to not post on the iPhone store, but I think people will increasingly put pressure on their customers to be like, you can get it cheaper over here.

1:12:05And that's what Epic has been doing. Like what they did win against Apple is that the judge agreed that Apple had basically prevented people from being able to set up their own alternative payment. And so there was a follow up with a judge where they said Epic, excuse me, Apple needs to make it easier for people to set up their own payment system. So Epic got sort of a win there. And again, if people are, if developers in an app are saying like, leave, go here, buy this somewhere else, do not buy this on iPhone. and that just keeps repeating over and over and over. Eventually people are going to get annoyed.

1:12:38If you subscribe to the Lemonade Stand Patreon or are thinking about it, do not subscribe on your iPhone. Subscribe on desktop. This is not a joke. You actually do have to pay way more when you use the iOS app. Go subscribe on your desktop or on the actual Patreon website. Do not. Yeah, anyway. I'll end this by saying the reason that Apple won and Google lost apparently is first of all, Apple had a judge decide the trial. So it was one judge just made a decision. Google one was a jury trial. And the second thing was that Google had a ton of internal evidence that was looked really bad. Like emails that came out are like, we're a monopoly, LOL.

1:13:18Like that type of shit is kind of the reason as opposed to Apple, which is more buttoned up on that stuff. So it made it easier of an open and shut case. Cut. Washington state. Another place. well, sorry. Let me restart. Don't edit that. It's going to be first. Don't edit that. This is going to be first. Leave this in. You've opened all five stories. Washington State, Canada, or Scandinavia. Adish, if you put that in first. Adish, if you keep all that in, I'm going to leak your ad. Okay, in Washington State, I don't know if you guys know this, but it's one of the few states in the US that does not have an income tax.

1:13:55Sure do, Aiden. I learned the hard way. You learned the hard way? You wanted to pay income tax? No, I started making money when I lived there. That's when I suddenly started to make a lot of money. And then I moved to California. And I got plugged like that leak. I will never ever forget the jarring change between moving. Like I used to do my taxes on TurboTax. Oops. You just dropped earlier. And you get to the state section and then you just click done. And then you come to California. It's like a whole other part of Texas. It's a lot of extra. Just at a personal level, I remember enjoying that part.

1:14:36But they have just introduced their first income tax ever after many previous rejections of income taxes in the past. And it is specifically on people who make more than a million dollars a year, which is apparently about 20 ,000 people in the state of Washington. It doesn't include streamers, right? Because they're... No, it actually excludes streamers because of the value... Because they're better people. value to society. No, no, it says they're worse people, but do deliver value to society. Okay, great. It excludes them because they're going to prison. And it does say also that the governor of Washington is on record saying that they want clavicular to move there.

1:15:12Tax benefits will do that. Interesting. It's like they used to seek out Amazon HQ, but now it's all about clavicular, baby. My cortisol will spike if I have to pay. But up until now, Washington state is primarily funded by sales tax and taxes on businesses. And they have never had an income tax to raise income. But they're now at this cross section where the state deficit has gotten so much larger. And this is supposedly going to generate around$4 billion, which helps close the apparently$10 billion gap that they have on their budget. every story about anyone's deficit is like we're trying this very crazy thing to fix it it's gonna do like one percent it's like it's yeah well that's for that's you know it's 40 percent yeah no that's a big deal yeah uh it's and uh and also it's at a time socially where i think the energy for taxing the wealthier is much more strong than it used to be yeah uh and obviously this is coming with the usual trappings of the wealthy are going to leave.

1:16:16They're disappearing with previous examples of Jeff Bezos had already, uh, moved to Florida. He moved to Florida because of the differences in capital gains tax, uh, or, or, or his parents health could be three months after the capital gains. He's like, my dad is sick. You have a jet that you don't need to move your residence. Jeff Bezos. That's so fucking stupid. Howard Schultz, the former CEO of Starbucks, announced that he was moving to Miami shortly after this tax was passed. However, he had already apparently purchased a property there and had committed to moving to Florida prior to this.

1:16:58But the frequent argument against this is that you're going to lose a bunch of your tax base by putting something that's into place. But I personally have a hard time believing that in a place that has no income tax to begin with. And also, uh, studies have shown, uh, albeit I can specifically reference a study that reviewed, uh, wealth flight out of the UK from earlier last year that, uh, people above this like million dollar income mark are way less likely to move than the average person because usually their wealth is tied to the area that they live in in some way, either through the companies and the, uh, they own and the people they employ.

1:17:37Um, and so the only argument I can see here is that over a long enough period of time, uh, people will, and the low enough friction of moving between States, you would lose these people. But from Washington, it kind of seems like a win-win, uh, at least in the short term, because you have no income tax to begin with and you uh you're bringing you're taxing these high earners that uh at whatever rate you can kind of get out of them it's it's at a 9.9 percent rate for every dollar they make past a million or something i mean which is high i mean two two you know counter arguments one is that might be the case you know of like leaving new york city it's like oh are people really going to leave New York city.

1:18:27If, if mom Donnie increases taxes, like New York city is so special and great. And I think there's a fair argument that a lot of people in Seattle, if they're suddenly being taxed at the same rate of California would move to California. Right. I mean, that is one of the big draws of people going to Washington and Seattle, right? There's famously a lot of people fucking hate the weather there. And if you're like, Oh, I'm going to have the same amount of taxes. I mean, you know, for somebody who's making, you know, whatever, let's say$2 million. The first million is untaxed, right? So as far as I understand, yeah.

1:18:55Yeah, it is. So after that point, they would then pay this 9 % or 9.9. So they'd be paying, if you make$2 million in a year, you're now losing$100 ,000. I mean, that is a lot of money, right? Yeah, but it is way less than what you would be getting taxed overall in a place like California. I thought California is also about 9%, like high 9%. Yeah, but it kicks in way earlier. I think California's highest income tax kicks in like a few hundred thousand dollars. Okay, no, no, no. That's totally fair. That's totally fair. so it is still different i guess that's the argument and in i think particularly when you are talking about a place like seattle which famously a lot of people don't enjoy the weather i love it there but i would not be surprised of a lot of people who are just optimizing for money are then like okay well i'm gonna go live in you know whatever part of california that has that's 80 degrees every single day there's also some controversy as to how this passed uh there's you know for the apparently the washington constitution like restricts income taxes traditionally and that's part of the reason why one has never been passed previously and there's some sort of loophole to be able to put this in place and that's like inherently controversial the way they approach that uh i think the i mean i i like the idea of taxing the wealthy i am annoyed with this game of because i i agree with you that wealthy won't flee the country but i think the state lines thing i wish but also stop going for millionaires yeah just go for the Let's go for a little bit higher.

1:20:21Everyone above me. No, but I think the, like I, if it doesn't, if it exists in one state, but not the other, I just feel like people are, are the people that can leave will try to move. Right. Yeah. Shouldn't it be national? I don't know. I will do the exact counter argument to what I said, which is that I fucking love Seattle. And I would of course live there and pay this. Like I, you know, so I think probably there won't be that much flight. It is just, it is notable that it's not something like New York city, which is like extremely unique. I don't know that that many people feel that degree of intensity about Seattle.

1:20:54I guess, yeah, the thing I have like a disillapoint. As someone who loves the city. It's like that we have states always competing in a race to the bottom to make the best deal for people with money, right? That's the problem I have with it. So they're going to be tempted over to Miami or whatever. I just like, why is Ohio or Florida or Nevada competing with Seattle on taxes? It's like the way that billionaires shop around in different cities to get them to pay for their fucking stadium. Wait, so are you advocating for a federal income tax? We have a federal income tax. I mean like a higher one and then not making it up.

1:21:29The state should be like almost the same. I don't know. Okay, so I think I agree with you. This like race to the bottom is stupid to begin with. I generally think that this is worth trying and the risk of flight is low from the things that I have read. I think the inherent competition is stupid. The other thing, and the reason why I think this is important to put in place is if you make this amount of money in Washington, there's already a regressive tax system in place. So if you're taxed, like if your primary vehicle of being taxed is sales tax, right? And if you have higher income, sales tax affects you at a lower percentage than it affects a middle income or a lower income person, right?

1:22:15So effectively taxation in Washington is regressive because of the taxes they rely on. And people who make a lot of money pay less than less in percent in total taxes than the people do at the bottom. It's not even like raising, it's not even just about raising it on them to like get them to pay more. It's about getting them to a threshold that like evens it out with other normal people. And I think, you know, I, from an outsider perspective, would like to see how this plays out. And if it fails, like if you're five, 10 years from now and you can see the negative effects of it, well, you could say at least we tried and we approach it with something new.

1:22:57That's what I meant about. If you tax... Okay, like what if it fails because people move to a state that has zero income tax or whatever? It's like that shouldn't be an... Yeah. Why this wouldn't fail if there wasn't like a Florida or a Puerto Rico or a Nevada where they can just, or Texas where they can go to zero. That's what's annoying to me is I don't know if it'll fail. Maybe it won't fail. I have no idea. You should be allowed to move, but you can't chase around the country. You're saying your argument is the threat of that being a problem shouldn't exist in the first place. But, and then because it does this, imagine this did fail.

1:23:32Everyone goes, well, that doesn't work. it's a bad idea because look but it's like what they can't compete against a state that will race to the bottom take political money cut all the taxes for the top like that's that's the frustrating part is like this wouldn't even be good experiment to me because we don't know hopefully it just works and there's no problem but yeah you know what jeff bezos is doing is like so nakely transparent that it's like i can't i think jeff bezos is also a bad example because he's someone who is so wealthy and has so much money in stock specifically that he was already under threat under threat from the taxes being levied through capital gains specifically in the state right yeah and then in this situation this is more about like uh this is affecting people making over a million dollars a year in income not necessarily from like stocks or like assets they own right that can uh and i think if you have that much income like if you're sitting in the like million to$10 million range that a bulk of these people would be.

1:24:32That income is tied to businesses and things they presumably have to do in Washington. They don't have this like insane level of wealth and mobility that someone like Jeff Bezos did have. No, I agree. This will hit, this will get the dentist in Seattle. This will get the, this will absolutely get the higher upper middle. Yeah, Andrew, my fucking anesthesiologist friend. Dentists are a millionaire, bro. Get fucked, Andrew. If they own a practice. A year? Then just make bank. Anesthesiologist make bank. Anesthesiologist. This is going to hit the anesthesiologist's heart. It's not going to hit the guy that owns, you know, a ton of smoke or the Microsoft executive or the, you know, those people may flee.

1:25:13I don't know if they will or not, but they are much easier to flee. So it's frustrating because, you know, I think the dentist should be taxed more, but that's not the person. I get where you're at. Anyway, whatever. I do. Yeah, I agree with you. with you. I would like, I'm excited to see what happens. All right, Jarvis, pull me out.

1:25:30Hi, I'm Brene Brown. And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the Curiosity Shop. A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling, and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree. But we almost never disagree. And we're always learning. That's true. You can subscribe to the Curiosity Shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. Doug, what you got for us? Let's talk a little bit about a company named Tinder. They just did their first little keynote about new products. And one thing that jumped out to me in this keynote is right here.

1:26:06We're also extending Tinder beyond the screen because today we're launching IRL events bookable in the app in Los Angeles, creating real world... All right, so if you pause it there, there's a whole lot that they cover in this hour-long keynote of new features and quotes. A lot of them are what you expect. This is how we're going to use AI to do blah, blah, blah, which is also what Bumble right now is doing. Bumble's doing the like AI is going to be your matchmaker. So a lot of that, some things I thought were interesting. The dating apps are all trying to get Gen Z and like that's like the big hot thing.

1:26:36They don't date. They don't date. And you know, the quote is like, you know, they don't interested in swiping anymore. They don't want to swipe. They're at home listening to Lemonade. Yeah, Gen Z is collectively all listening to this podcast. And so they have announced that they're going to start testing this idea of events where people like meet up in person and then you can start doing this thing. And what I thought was interesting is that you're just like reinventing dating from first principles. And then if you go to the second one, Perry, there's this new app that came out this last week called YouTube Surfer, where what it does is it recreates old school style cable TV channels where there's YouTube videos playing and you can click like on the left.

1:27:14Perry, you can go to like the history channel and you just join in like midway through whatever video is playing and you can see the thing kind of sick and this is my own. It's awesome, right? And a bunch of people are like, okay, this is kind of sick, like instead of choice paralysis or if you're unhappy with the YouTube algorithm, you can kind of do your YouTube video in the middle is kind of big, right? And you can see how many people are watching right now at the bottom. It's like 300 people are watching. You would join a movie in the middle and it'd be kind of sick. Click it on the left. I can't wait to watch the beginning.

1:27:44um yeah okay so now we're watching the history channel and we're gonna join midway through this video yeah wow a great war so this is another one in this app idea really cool really creative right and what i think is so interesting yeah is it feels like the newest innovations and the things that are getting a lot of like viral attention are us just reinventing what we had 20 years ago yes this people are like you know what what's so cool about this this to be clear little, you know, viral fun kind of toy app. But people are like, yeah, it's really nice to feel like you're watching other people like or have the same kind of thing.

1:28:17There's a limited choice. So I'm not just endlessly scrolling. And the same thing with events. The idea that Tinder's big breakthrough is going to be to get a group of people together in person to talk. That's just not Tinder, dude. You're just organizing events. And so I just thought - You are just an event organizer. You're just an event organizer. That's just a different business. I think the Tinder example is really good. I think we're far enough along into sort of digital life that we've had time to like societally react and reshape how digital things fit into our lives as utility. So in the case of dating, right, they're like, let's digitize and make this process like as as quick and as seamless as possible frictionless.

1:29:03Just swipe friction is life. And then I think inevitably the, the experience of dating online via apps like this is bad. Most people think it is bad. Uh, and now that is culturally prevalent enough. We've all spent enough time trying those things collectively that we're like, we're looking for a return to doing it the normal way. It worked. And Tinder can be a facilitator for that. I actually think this is a good angle for them because I do think that there still needs to be, there isn't this like free flowing idea of meeting people in the same way you could decades ago. There's still like a, there needs to be a push or a shove for you to go into dating somehow.

1:29:54And Tinder can be the gateway to that, but in a different way than it used to be. And I think the example we talked about on a Patreon episode a long time ago was I met that guy who was developing a dating app called like 530 or 630. And he was focusing around like calls and in-person meetups. It's like restrictions, you know, it's people saying, hey, just having this endless mass exposure to everybody on planet Earth is not actually healthy for us. And we should go back in some ways. Yeah. Can you pull this up, Perry? Do you guys remember this guy? He was the WeWork CEO. Yeah, I saw this. bit of fraud.

1:30:29But he's back with a new idea, which is essentially this, which is like, I'm buying instead of office space for companies, I'm buying residential space for humans. And we're doing a ton of events all the time. Yeah. It is going to be like, yeah, it's built in community. Yeah. You ran. And I think it's, it's kind of, I saw this, it's kind of an idea, which is that you buy into, you know, if you're buying a condo or whatever, like a part of what you're paying for is the idea that people in that entire complex are going to be doing events and you can meet them and hang out with them and that feels meaningful unfortunately it's by adam newman who's a giant scam artist but yeah the concept makes sense it does this could be anywhere you live yeah if you put effort in that wasn't it crazy like there is no scalability to it yeah this could be any apartment you live in if you just put it in a little effort yeah and also like apartments do this now like i've lived in apartments where they're like we have a you know do little events yeah i guess he's leaning into it in a more extreme way he's doing it in a way where he can generate a lot of investment money yeah i'm just saying that places you live that bake community things into the place you live is obviously a good thing i mean it's a human we love this as humans from the dawn of time and people are feeling atomized and isolated digital era and i think people are trying i agree this is what i think is gonna happen here is that clearly the difference here is you're everybody's signing up for one of these units has kind of the implicit agreement that they want to put the effort in right of meeting and having these events but in the same way that like i i think i'm gonna be involved in my apartment building social committee and i said yes to it five months ago you're not i'm not i'm not gonna fucking i'm not gonna nobody's gonna fucking do it i think if you live at that place that doesn't change whether you're an aiden or not aiden makes friends with everyone everywhere i am not i'm gonna stay inside on a friday night and play video games.

1:32:23Doug's signing up for the Adam Newman fucking friend and then sitting in his room and playing. Yeah. No, I mean, yeah, I think something like this could be great. You know, when I moved to Seattle, it was hard to meet new friends and like something like that would have been really valuable, you know? I definitely would have utilized it. Yeah, I just think it's such a dumb business because it's not, like everything that you do to be good is like very personalized and effort driven. There's no scalability. There's not, he preaches it like a tech company or like a, there's no. Yeah, no, he's a, he's just, it's just, there's a section where he says, here's our era.

1:32:51everything here is made in-house in our flow kitchen and he shows all the like smoothies that are presumably twelve dollars each and it's like okay this is this is for a part of your yeah yeah this is like but i mean i yeah i think the demand is real i think trend here the reason why this should go later in the episode eight ish is because i think it's interesting that we will probably see more and more tech services that have really grown over the last decade or two making products that like revert back in a weird way and i wouldn't be surprised if valve ends up releasing real life loot boxes with guns, with real guns physically.

1:33:22And that's going to be, it feels good to hold an AK 47. That'll joke will make sense depending on the order of this. I guarantee you were after that one. You thought that was okay. Good. Thank God. This was a pretty interesting one. Cut. All right. A bit of tech news. That's not about AI, which I think is somewhat novel in the current time. uh so apple announced their or released excuse me their macbook neo which is a uh i think six hundred dollar five hundred dollar laptop uh primarily for a lower end market that apple has left underserved for a long time their laptops are i would say famously expensive and it's allowed uh windows different windows laptops to really corner a portion of the market and things like Chromebooks that Apple has had a rougher time competing with because they only offer these more expensive, arguably premium in some ways, products.

1:34:26But the Neo, which is basically the$600 notebook, is finally out. And it's reportedly shaking things up a bit on the the windows they're freaked out manufacturer thing yeah so the ceo the co-ceo of asus uh s.y. sue uh noted that in the in the past apple's pricing situation has always been high so for them to release a very very budget-friendly product this is obviously a shock to the entire industry and he noted later however that one of his like i would say coping mechanisms for this laptop is well the laptop isn't built to like upgrade the ram and it's not as like modifiable as a lot of the pc competitors buying apple products in the history of fucking computing and i was like am i is the quote being mistranslated or something because this guy's chinese and i was i was like what an insane argument for the market that this laptop serves who is buying$500 like Chromebooks or$500 Windows laptops so they can add like modify the RAM in them.

1:35:36Hey, wait, you know, it honestly may be him expressing the idea of just broadly being more customizable, right? With Windows versus Mac OS. I think that's a more legitimate argument. It's like at the end of the day, but again, the market of people who don't care about that is way, way, way bigger. It's just bigger. It's so much bigger. My mom does not give a fuck if she can run Linux. No. And every review that I see about these things is really, really positive in terms of their performance according to the price point. And I think the laptop runs on like the same chip that the last iPhone did.

1:36:09Yes, the iPhone chip. Which is pretty incredible in the first place that we're kind of at a place where like, you know, the phone chip can just make the laptop do what it needs. It's like a laptop iPad, man. I mean, that's what it is. But that's who this consumer is. Like if you're a student, for example, it's like you're pulling up PDFs, web pages. You're not like editing YouTube videos or like rendering 3D objects. That's not what this is for. Most people just use these things to like, you know, open Notion and talk to cloud. Yeah, and do a podcast. And do the Lemonade Sand podcast. And so it's pretty cool to see them move in this direction as, you know, somebody who likes Apple products a lot, coincidentally using the wrong laptop.

1:36:48You're using Huawei today? Yeah. we gotta get our visa. And it reminded me a lot of how their, their Mac mini sort of serves this market as well. It's like a little more expensive, but like a really high performing kind of like mobile, mobile ish, but still desktop computer that Apple offers. And I think for all of the manufacturers that get to pump out, I would say shittier windows laptops that are like loaded with windows is bloat in their software. This is actually a nice thing to see. As an Apple shill. When I was at NVIDIA, we used to work with all these hardware partners for laptops. We had to do these yearly marketing campaigns.

1:37:30It's like Acer, Asus, Lenovo, HP, all these people. And they fucking loved the Chromebook market. The Chromebook market was like just bread and butter cash cow because you could make something for cheap. People were buying it like crazy. There was no competition from Apple. it was so this is them panicking everything i've read is that all these ceos are like in different stages of the five stages of greed either like they're angry about it they're denying they're bargaining but it's like all of them are like this is just going to seriously hurt our because this is apparently i'm not an apple guy i'm not like you i'm not going to buy this product but my understanding is the reviews are like pretty stellar it does exactly what a person buying a 600 laptop is going to want to do and all of a sudden they're just getting punched in the gut dude i mean i think it's gonna really shake up the pc market yeah yeah i even as a certified apple hater like brilliant play i'm super glad they're doing it it's awesome like make this more competitive make like put this out there it's fantastic yeah if anything i think it will just push some of these other companies to offer a windows laptop or maybe changes to windows os that make it fucking suck less that would be my hope i actually agree because like the laptop i have now is a samsung laptop laptops like this did not exist for windows until the macbook the The MacBook forced everyone's hand to make these look nicer, like the Windows surfaces.

1:38:44They just went back to basics. They made things look polished and clean and nice. And they used to be clunky as fuck, loud fans, like all that shit. Apple had to push the game forward on that, and I appreciate them doing it, even though I think they're fucking. And they've done nothing else wrong. To the next segment. Oh, I got one. Wait, perfect. It's not going to line up. Yeah, no. Anish, make sure these don't line up.

1:39:10uh guys uh listen we've been talking about a lot of things and in the news lately obviously it's been iran but well this might be the first one we we might not have talked about anything yet no no i mean uh i mean it's in general i mean in life people have been talking about this iran thing but uh things have been getting buried underneath this story and the number one thing that's been buried is the biggest media merger in history which is happening the same week that u.s has been bombing iran so almost nobody's been noticing but we talked about it on this show and we all collectively voted that Warner Brothers would get sold to Netflix.

1:39:43We thought because Netflix had the bigger bid, I'm sorry, that is actually a smaller bid at the end, but they had support from the Warner Brothers board. And because Netflix is Netflix, they're a bigger company and they're more established. And people at Warner Brothers wanted to sell to Netflix. So we thought it was a done deal. In that time between, there was a lot of political gamesmanship. uh the ellison showed up at the state of the union they've been talking with trump they got this is like absurd they got regulatory approval for the merger almost before the merger was even agreed upon while netflix was still a big question mark of whether we get approved yeah and all those things started increasing the risk premium for warner brothers who was like wait a minute i uh we want to just we want to sell we want to make sure we sell you just explain for somebody like what would the risk profile meet?

1:40:35Like if you're on the board of, of Paramount, like what is, or sorry, of, of HBO, like what are you thinking of like, oh, it's going to be really hard potentially to even get this through. So we're, yeah, we're Warner brothers. We're all sitting around. We have a company that is starting to fucking fall apart. Like we, we have a ton of debt. We have these great properties. We have Harry Potter and we have a Godfather and SpongeBob and game of Thrones season eight, game of Thrones season eight, a true classic. Beloved. We have all these things that are worth lots of money, but our company is falling apart.

1:41:07We can't compete in the media environment anymore. So we're trying to sell to a bigger player. We need one of these deals to go through, or we're stuck holding the bag of our own excrement here. This is bad. So that's why they brought in this CEO, David Zaslav, who just like ripped all this shit out, packaged it all up and started selling it. So they were going to go to Netflix because it felt like the more solid deal. But because of the political implications, it has now been won by Paramount. The deal is over. Netflix has dropped out. And I know it's politically involved, not only because of things I said, but because Ted Sarandos went to the White House to plead to try and get this deal through and get something through the day it was canceled.

1:41:49And his White House meeting with Trump was canceled and he realized it was over. And so they announced that they were giving up. Is the head of Netflix going to Trump to try to get soft approval for the merger? Yes. And then they canceled his meeting and then he was like, all right. And this is normal or not? This is not normal. So again, Warner Brothers said many, many times they wanted to sell to Netflix. Now, because of all this risk and because Paramount, again, came over the top with an even bigger bid that they can't afford. I mean, they're taking on. This is going to be a very indebted media company.

1:42:21It's going to be Warner Brothers already has debt. Paramount has even more debt. It's all it's all coming together. So it is being sold though. And it is for a total of$110 billion. So another reason that Netflix dropped out, and I have to say this, is they said, this is what they said. So I think it's the political thing too, but they said the purchase price is getting too high. We don't want it at any price. We're not gonna, like they probably could have matched the bid and kept this fight going, but the price was getting so absurd. And so Netflix, when they abandoned the bid and they had to pay the breakup fee, actually, I think Paramount had to pay the breakup fee.

1:42:52Their stock went up because people were like, it's actually good that you're not, like this could have been a really risky thing for net i think we've seen this in esports a lot where companies make these big purchases and then yeah it's happened to twitch actually where twitch paid 110 million dollars for the overwatch league and then they couldn't afford anything else and we had to cut things to the bone and yeah but at least that panned out yeah so netflix walks away they retain what they have which is still the biggest streaming company but uh now you know Harry Potter, HBO, CNN, CBS, The Godfather, Spongebob, a million TikTok are all funneled under the Ellisons, which have this big media empire, which is very tied in with Trump.

1:43:29They're meeting him all the time. We were having, again, Pete Hegseth during his round wars, which is like, I can't wait for Paramount to take you over, talking to CNN, because then you'll actually ask real questions. So it's like getting very, you know, I think it's a, you know, the story here is like a real. That's not good. Holy shit. Look, I know. The Department of Warhead telling a media, like a journalist, can't wait to get bought by Larry Ellison. That's fucking crazy. And when they have so much leverage over who gets bought, that's the fucked up part. It's like, Warner Brothers can sell to who they want, I guess, but they wanted Netflix.

1:44:06Like, the government got involved here, and that is the fucked up thing, and it got kind of ignored because of the wrong war, so I wanted to bring this up. Not to be Aiden, who has a friend about this. No, I want to keep it. In every one of these stories, I want to hear what friend you have that's related. This is my favorite friend. He loves Larry Ellison. And when they met and they have. I love learning that Aiden used to play obscure Nintendo game online with a child in Kuwait. I love hearing about this every time. My friend Larry Ellison's Manny's mother. Okay, who's the friend and what video game did you play with them?

1:44:38Larry Ellison, he says it's going to be fine. Oh, we're good then. someone who uh does events and like talent management at hbo i was talking to this weekend and i i had kind of forgotten this was happening because of all the other news that was going on and he was like no it's a really big deal internally right now and from an hbo specific perspective he's like we're hoping that the new management sees hbo as like this crown jewel like Like a very, very valuable piece of what's being picked up so that this part of the company isn't dissected or picked apart or changed because people who work at HBO really like, sounds like they really like working there and they really like the way that it currently is.

1:45:23And there's this tense vibe internally as to how this is gonna affect everybody's job because nobody there actually has any insight into what this transition is really gonna mean for that brand in the long run. That's the vibe I got from friends who worked at Activision Blizzard prior to the Microsoft announcement that they acquisition. And the end result was that there was a ton of layoffs. And I do think with the amount of debt coming into this combined package, I don't know about HBO because HBO is sort of a crown jewel. Maybe they're just like, don't touch that. It's like our only private center.

1:45:54But I feel like I cannot imagine that everything just goes smooth. I think it's going to be a bit of chaos. That's the thing. It feels like everyone loses from this, right? like david zaslav the ceo of warner brothers makes the fattest payout package of all time yeah for turning the scrap of shit and selling it and this is exactly the story of barbarians at the gate the book it's just that again which is just they bid each other up and then one company buys it and now it's basically way overpriced and they're gonna just have to cut everything to the absolute bone and and make season nine they're gonna have to put out a season nine remake season eight it's all worth it unironically but it's like they're gonna announce i woke three new Harry Potter shows and 15 HBO Game of Thrones.

1:46:37Yeah, it's going to be like when Disney did Star Wars, they bought Star Wars and just forced out like 40 shows. There's going to be so many Harry Potter spins off. There's going to be some sort of Mandalorian night type figure. There's going to be a really serious adult reboot of Spongebob. Spongebob Origins. He picks up the spatula for the first time. You kept bringing up Ted Sarandos because he's the CEO of Netflix and I won't name them, but we all have a mutual friend, somebody who's good friends with Ted's kid. And one year I went to Ted Sarandos' son's Halloween party. Oh my God. Dressed up as a shark in a business suit.

1:47:17And that doesn't give me any insight into this. I'll be real. That is the most I've ever heard in my entire ranking. Just went down. This is earlier. You're taking my position. You have to take all of our contributions. And that's pushing this down. I'm moving this down the list. Tell us more about Norway. Cut, cut. All right. We're going to cap off today's episode with a really heartwarming story about a dog. You're sure there's a cap off. I think that if this isn't the final one, he just hates dogs and appreciates dogs dying. Okay. So we're just going to leave the Today Show Australia. This is one of those morning news shows that nobody our age has watched ever, but they just like do little heartwarming stories.

1:48:02And here's what happened. Okay. Paul Cunningham. He's a sort of tech entrepreneur. He's the guy on the left is Australian. Right. And he has a dog named Rose who's seven years old. And recently, I believe 2024, she got cancer, started having tons of tumors. You will see pictures on the background and it's, it's rough. They tried chemo. The surgery failed and she was given one to six months to live. And you know, he says like, this is my best friend. He, she's there through with me through everything. So he decided to try to cure her cancer himself. So here's what he did. He went and took a sample of her healthy cells and then of the tumor cells.

1:48:38And then he paid this like private company to sequence her dog's DNA. It was$3 ,000. And it was like, look, I have, can you just, can you sequence this for me? And sequenced both. And then he ran, quote, a whole bunch of different pipelines to compare the two. The idea is once you've sequenced the healthy DNA and the unhealthy DNA, if you compare them and you can have some sort of system, let's say a machine learning system that can look at the data and find out the exact differences between the two, between the healthy and not, you're basically finding parts of DNA that are going to create proteins that are unique to the cancer, right?

1:49:13Because it's what's different and what's mutated. Okay. So then he used AlphaFold as well as other LLMs to model the 3D protein structures in the tumor mutation. So after getting both DNAs sequenced, after comparing them, after finding the differences, he actually models them. And this is using AlphaFold, the tool that we've talked about like a year ago. And then from that, he says, okay, I know the types of proteins that are basically identifying the cancer in my dog specifically. and he finds a company, the RNA Institute in Australia, who agreed to make a custom mRNA vaccine for his dog. So they're going to make a custom mRNA that is going to tell his dog's cells to make the type of protein that's only present on his dog's tumor so that the immune system learns to attack that and then will then go for the tumor cells.

1:50:06They make it in three months, the Institute. And after spending an additional three months creating these ethics applications, He finds a vet who's qualified to do like immunotherapy treatment for dogs and they start vaccine treatment for his dog. They actually use this stuff in December 2025. This is like three months ago. Within seven weeks, about 75 % of the cancer is gone. The dog is not cured. It's much, much healthier. She's now able to like run around and chase squirrels. She looks healthier. The actual size of the tumors. One tumor didn't respond. So he's now sort of sequencing the DNA of that to find out why.

1:50:40and this is a quote from the the folks who made the rna vaccine for him this is the first time a personalized cancer vaccine has been designed for a dog this is still at the frontier of where cancer immunotherapeutics are ultimately we're going to use this for helping humans this is super inspiring awesome and awesome fucking crazy part of what allowed this to work is that this guy is a is like a tech entrepreneur type dude he's been working in machine learning for a long time so that one quote that i said where it's like he figured out pipelines to compare the two that's that's him having experience in this stuff of doing like real intense data analysis but i think what's interesting about this story is like ultimately it was a an individual who went and did this who figured out how to do it on his own who was not using some giant company and then went and worked with like existing companies to say hey sequence this dog dna please hey create an mrna vaccine here's the exact proteins i want it to basically target right because once you have that, it's fairly easy to make an MRNA.

1:51:37So this is heartwarming. It's fucking hell and awesome. And like, what a sweet story. And on top of just like, oh my God, maybe we're going to democratize this sort of technology. Important caveat is that this is already being done in humans. So we're already trying to do personalized immunotherapeutics for cancer. There's already trials go under underway. There's a, this is a very promising area of research, but the big difference in the, in what's notable about this one, very heartwarming. A lot of people are going to learn about this draws a lot of attention to the issue. And then, um, two, it's like the barrier is really being dropped.

1:52:12Again, we talked about alpha fold, which is the software that lets you model protein structures that's available freely. And so it's not to say everybody should go start making their own vaccines, but, but it's kind of crazy to see that a single person was able to do something like this. it's awesome this is an incredible story i like your explanation because i only heard the high level summary and they make it seem like he just typed it in the chat gpt and it gave him the cure yeah it's like no you had a lot more effort but that's that's incredible i do gets me really excited about the future of medical technology i think i thought you were joking but this might actually be the end of the episode like the the implications of you know the implications of providing a large scale cancer cure basically to as as many people who need it and it's personalized based on the specific type of cancer they have that could be what this is in the long run so let me steel man it um again these are not necessarily my opinion right right but i think it's worth he shouldn't have done it to a dog i don't like it it's worth expressing steel man it so your first main counter argument not that cute it should die the second one there's uh a big difference between a single mRNA vaccine versus applying it to humans.

1:53:24So there is a big, you know, the difference between basically a guy kind of experimentally treating his dog is different than, Hey, you're going to put this into humans at scale. It's going to have a wide, a wide effect. And then, you know, again, a very important thing to note here, this is not like some new thing as much as the stories and headlines are being communicated about that. Um, and so there's a lot of progress that's promising right now in basically vaccines, uh, specialized for cancer. So it's like real quick primer, cancer changes all the time. That's part of the challenge of it.

1:53:56It's part of why it is very hard to have a medicine or something that's going to cure cancer for all these different people, because every person's individual cancer is mutating and expressing itself differently. So the more personalized you can make something like this, the more effective it is going to be. But then that is kind of the problem, right? So if you, you expand this to people like right now they're estimating if these things hit uh market or are approved in like the next one in two years which is which is hoped for still might be like a hundred to three hundred thousand dollars per patient per chronos yeah because you don't have the you providing the scale when everything needs to be so specific and personalized and updated based on like how cancer develops or the person or the specific patient yeah reducing the cost must be so much harder.

1:54:42It's a, it's a weird balance that you basically people making drugs on this stuff right now are trying to decide of like, do we try to do a broad spread that will hopefully help certain people, but aren't, isn't going to like really target their specific thing. Or do you hyper personalize? But ultimately, I mean, this is, and I said this in the medicine in an AI episode a year ago, I specifically called this as a possibility out, which is that you pull a tumor cell out and you design the custom proteins that you need, the neuro antigens that define your tumor specifically. And then you have a model, create the protein in terms of the structure, and then create the vaccine and get T cells into your body that are actually targeting it.

1:55:22Speed is a factor. And if you can do this extraordinarily quickly, if we can create machine models that like you go into the doctor and this stuff is designed and ready to go later that week, that's when it starts to be like, we might cure cancer. Right? So this is, again, I'm going to reiterate the same thing I said a year ago. This is like one of the few things with AI and really machine learning where it's like, this is fucking incredible. Like this is pushing us towards a world where one of the most difficult challenges ever, which is cancer, like we can tackle and we can tackle it by having stuff that builds an entire system that's customized to you super fast.

1:55:55I imagine there's even a combination of treatment here where you're using something like this. Like in the example you provided, right? It reduced 75 % of the cancer that was there. but like attacking or reducing enough of the cancer that it's at a manageable scale or a targetable scale where you could treat it with chemo or radiation and like finish the job. There's, I don't know. There's so many exciting possibilities here. Yeah. This is by far one of the coolest things going on in technology and biology right now. And it's like massively accelerating because of things like alpha fold and because of the work people are doing.

1:56:30It's great. It's fucking great. That's awesome. Oh, also this specific guy is, he's just doing it to save his dog, but he's basically because of the attention. He's like, Hey, here's a Google form. You can try to share information. I'm going to try to find a way to start making this more accessible to other people. Wow. But I mean, it'd be funny. Is this the end of the episode? No, no, no. This ends. Yeah. And then it's like, anyway, I want to talk about Counter-Strike. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching Lemonade Stand. we assume we just came off the dog story. Probably. You're a monster.

1:57:08It could go crazy with no idea this goes, but if you want to check it out an extra hour of the show every week, you go to patreon.com slash lemonade stand and also our next two episodes are going to be in China. Oh, just that's it. Okay. Just cut there. For the show comes from tasty trade. If you're an experienced trader or long-term investor you probably are familiar with trading stocks used to be like aiden is not i don't remember that you're not experienced trader but you trade is a platform of choice for traders who don't settle all right you can trade stocks options futures and more all in one platform you got low commission so you can keep more of what you earn you can go to tasty trade.com slash lemonade today to get started tasty trade inc is a registered broker dealer and member of i don't know how to say these things one of you got nfa and sipc but i still know how to trade Unligated.

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