Aiden

I need it.

I was on a Zoom call, and it, like, scared me. I don't know if scaring you is a good metric for anything.

Well, I guess not every day if someone dropped in for a podcast by helicopter.

I didn't know that until I looked into this. The common practice of breaking those things down. I think there's also a part of this where the homes and the land that they're built on are actually owned separately. So it is most common. If I were a homeowner in Japan, most homeowners in Japan, if you own an actual home and not an apartment, own the land the home is built on.

No, like Canada, Australia, UK. It's all over the world. So the first thing I took a look at was, and as you've explained to me in the past, is Japan had this gigantic asset bubble that like largely included real estate. When their economy was exploding, they went through this huge inflationary period of assets in the country. And then I think it was in like- 89.

That is the most common situation. But technically those things are disconnected. So you might, lease the land itself, own the home that's built on it, and pay a rental fee to the landowner, which is something that happens.

I think part of this culture of rebuilding and building in general is a huge part of why supply has managed to be so bountiful in a place like this and why they're not dealing with the same housing crisis. They have other economic crises in Japan that are oncoming, right? Yeah. But in comparison, if you looked at a city like Sydney or Vancouver or New York, it's way, way different.

And you'd expect Tokyo to be in a similar position to those places.

Well, so there is an asterisk. When I was there talking to a few people about this, the asterisk on pricing that I noticed is for the average person, right? Like if you were just a working class person who lives in an apartment, renting is more affordable and that's cool. But if you're a person who is looking to buy a plot of land and buy

build a home on it in a place like Tokyo, the combined cost of those two things is a very expensive and comparable to a place like Los Angeles.

So it's sort of like, it's a little misleading to say that housing like house ownership is that much cheaper because if you wanted to go the full distance in a place like Tokyo that has that demand, if you want the housing experience that we think of in the West, that is different.

92 was when it really, really crashed.

So- Wait, can I say a fun stat?

The outlook on, it's interesting to see the spectrum of outlook on housing because it seems like in this situation, your house is not, your house is basically not an asset. It's not something you're investing in. It's just something you live in.

And then further down the line, maybe a little more in the middle would be like the American way of looking at things where it's like your house is an investment, but you diversify and you put a lot of money into like stocks and bonds and stuff like that. And then there's like on the other end, I feel like China, where it's like do or die, buy property at all costs. At least until recently, yeah.

It was like always on property. Until the crash, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that's the problem, right? It's like with something like the local zoning stuff, like why would you be a NIMBY? It's like, you know, a lot of people, the idea behind NIMBYism is like, in principle, you agree with the idea of more affordable housing, but it's not in my backyard because it's against your own individual interest to vote for it, at least in the short term. Yeah.

I think you could make a long-term argument that you're also voting against your own interests, but that's... I mean, that's a long-term discussion.

Yeah, you need to change, like, the structure.

We stayed at a hotel right next to the Imperial Palace, and have you considered that it's really nice? Yeah.

It's cost of living, cost of housing.

Have you gone to Stockton? It's not that nice. Stockton is just not as good as the Imperial Palace. And one like little video I watched as an example is even on the outskirts of Tokyo, which is like a, you know, a major, major city, right? The most populous city in the world by like metro area population.

It's tough because I think once you try to if you tried to pass some sort of like national legislation about. about it, right? Depending on who's making the effort to pass it. The messaging is kind of similar to the version of getting rid of cars that I didn't actually say a couple of weeks ago.

I heard from the comments you did. But I think in America, as soon as you overstep the boundary of something that affects property rights, people are going to light up about it. The messaging about it will never be delivered in a positive, this is what the country or community needs. It will always be an infraction on rights.

Rebuilding infrastructure, live stream. uh yeah just to sign this topic off i thought this was funny because nick yingling came as our like uh producer for this trip and he said as we were walking around tokyo it'd be so nice if we just had big ass buildings like that that were just housing why don't we have that

It was so funny. We were on the flight back home and he was like, why do I have to get in this fucking chungus Uber, dude? This doesn't make any sense. LAX will radicalize a lot of people.

So, yeah, I thought that was just something interesting to sign the trip off on, but I want to hear about why Woke is killing movies, Brandon. Thank God.

On the outskirts of Tokyo, there are large, like, you know, 1500 square foot family homes that might cost like $70,000, right? And compared to, you know, what we would be paying in L.A., right? That's crazy. L.A. is a million, I believe. You couldn't park in L.A. for something. Right.

I thought I would really throw our hat in the ring. Unfortunate that if we were following the model of success, that probably would be the way.

Right now? Snow White was the first movie they made, right? Wasn't that Disney's first feature length animated film?

Before.

About. How long?

The metro areas. Right. The metro areas. Yeah. So there's, there's a bunch of factors and I'll kind of layer this into two main things that I saw. So for rural Japan, where you could get these abandoned houses, right? Uh, there is a decline in population.

Thank you.

As time has passed, a really concentrated movement of people from rural areas of Japan into cities, just like a lot of the developed world is going through in general, right? That's a general population movement that happens. But Japan, it happened earlier and more aggressively. And on top of that, really low birth rate. Really low birth rate. And one of the lowest in the world.

Thank you. Thank you.

On top of this, Japan also isn't really changing its mind about immigration, at least not at a rate that matters. Like they're not welcoming in or making big efforts to get large amounts of foreigners in the country to sort of supplement the population, right?

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And one thing that was going through my head a lot while I was there, because we actually went out into the countryside, and I've never done that before. I've been, or at least not in like mainland Japan. I've been to Hokkaido and I've done a little road trip like while it's snowing and I've been to Tokyo, but I've never been into like the countryside that you kind of see.

A lot is relative. It's not increasing in any meaningful way. I asked a friend while we were there who's lived there for a long time, what is young people's perspective on letting more immigrants in to help deal with these problems? And this applies to a lot of issues, not just immigration, housing, or whatever economic problems Japan is dealing with.

They'll get their own Jack Black arsenal. I don't know. There's a bunch of ways to take this discussion. One thing I had thought of is, isn't it interesting that two of the highest-grossing films of all time are Titanic and Avatar 1? Avatar 1. Yeah. I think it's really... And Titanic 1. And Titanic 1. Titanic 2 was... Titanic 2 was crazy, though. It was crazy.

It was just a two-hour shot of the ocean.

Yeah. But I do think it's interesting that, like, as far as original stories go, those are both pretty high up there. Like, there is a version of success you can find for those films, if not, you know, if not difficult.

So... The other big thing that changed here, I go back to this interview with Matt Damon a lot where he explains how the film industry has just fundamentally changed primarily because of streaming. And it's not in the way that like, oh, streaming detracts from like less people want to go to the movie theater necessarily. It's changed the revenue structure of how movies make money.

The old way is that if you made a film and it went to theaters and maybe it performed fine or it underperformed, you usually made it up on the back end with DVD sales. DVD sales were a huge part of how movies made money for a long, long time.

Yeah. And he was saying a big part of like why so many movies from like his era of coming up in acting, like if you take like Good Will Hunting, I think he uses as an example. He's like, the reason that movie could get made is you didn't need it to be a box office smash to make it. It doesn't need to be an amazing blockbuster hit to pay itself off. And that revenue has disappeared.

You need it to succeed in the theater because after that it dies. And then the theater has also, uh, Great. The theater experience has been restricted and encroached upon by streaming and the demand for movies to reach streaming quicker because they used to run in theaters for way longer as well. Right. So it's this compounding effect.

And I thought that was really, really interesting is like the way like you just make less money when you make movies. So the it needs to be like a cultural hit in order to make it like a Barbenheimer type.

I think it's just the rights that the services are willing to pay for are less than the total revenue that you would get from all of the DVD sales to people. Or the DVD rental. It's just less. Streaming services do not need to pay as much.

He said young people and people in Japan in general are just very, very apathetic about politics. It isn't something you publicly engage in, in general. And I think it's part of a general cultural way of how people socialize. It'd be very weird for you to talk to strangers about your honest opinions about things in the first place.

In the kids example, your movie is competing with way, way more accessible media. That was the first thing. The other thing that had come to mind was the cost of making movies has risen a lot.

I was watching recently this podcast clip of Adam Scott and Rob Lowe talking about how they would have made, or if it could have been made, Parks and Rec, which was a big part of how they broke out as actors. through the popularity of that show.

And they were talking about how creating movies specifically in California and LA has kind of died off because of the costs associated with making movies here. And a lot of production costs have ballooned in ways that limit the types of products that can be made. So it's not just about the revenue, it's also about the upfront costs.

And there's this big fight of where you can even make productions now. Like a lot of other countries or other cities offer like tax credits for you to come there and make stuff.

Yeah. And Rob Lowe makes a point of like how he was working on a new project and the main place that offered to give him the tax credits necessary to make the show was in Europe, I believe. And he just said, I can't do that. Like I cannot move my life to Europe for the duration of what it takes to move the show. And then the show just died.

So I think there's another part of this where the cost being so limiting in either California specifically, or maybe the U S in like a broad sense. I know like a lot of production has moved to places like Atlanta, for instance, like they did. I think they did like all of the adventures in Atlanta because of the like facilities and like tax credits and stuff that got there.

But, So that's kind of the two, like two industry changes that have come through watching those that I learned about was like, okay, costs going up, limited opportunities of where you can affordably film things, and then a limit and cap on the revenue you can actually make.

I'm getting excited because this is the other point I wanted to make. I go to the theater all the time. You still do? I actually watch movies all the time. And I think an unfortunate thing, reading those Reddit clips or Reddit comments about how the movie-going experience is different now. I do agree in a broad sense because the number, like you showed the list.

There's definitely a change in the quality of movies and the types of movies that are getting released now. But original stories and good movies still get released all the time. I go to AMC with like my AMC Stubbs Pass that I have. You're a Stubbs Pass guy? Yeah, because my girlfriend got me into it. And we just go see movies all the time. We just watch new stuff.

And there is good new movies that just come from, I feel like a more limited subset of studios now. Like it feels like A24 is like one of the only studios that like stamps original properties out. We just saw like earlier, was this earlier this year or last year? We saw, I haven't seen that yet. But we saw Conclave in theaters. I thought Conclave was amazing.

But then decoupling from that, I think politics is particularly sensitive. And there isn't a culture of being attentive and involved in politics in the way that it dominates discussion in America in particular, but maybe the West in a larger sense.

Fuck no.

Too woke for me and my girlfriend. I think... But movies like that, I don't see because of... And I didn't see... I say this as a made fun of, bullied, like Marvel head. Yeah. I didn't go see that new Captain American movie because I'm just fatigued. They don't feel like they mean anything anymore. I always hated the live action format Disney movies because it's like... Grow up.

Make something new. I'm telling Disney. I'm telling a child at Disneyland. Hey, kid, grow up. Princesses aren't real. Okay. Democracy. They don't make those movies for the kids. Right. And it's like, they are for kids in some ways, but why do they have to revert back to old properties?

It's because in the same way that Disney, like the average age of the, like Disneyland goer now is like way higher than it used to be. Right. It's a different market that they're trying to like get money from and appeal to. I think the main point I'm trying to make is that,

This, as much as I want to sympathize with the movie-going culture has changed commenter, it's like, I go to movies all the time, watch good movies, and enjoy them, and just not a lot of people go to them. And it's like, you can still go see original good movies.

And so basically in the rural areas, they're dealing with these problems like their supply is like increasing just by proxy of it not being used anymore. And because there's no demand and nobody is moving to these rural areas, it basically just boils down to that. And because of that, you have these really low home prices, like even a nice thing on the outside.

Movie theaters are fun. I agree. Not that people want to go. If I were arguing against myself, I think there's two ends to this. There's the point that you're making. There's like the after you've seen it, cultural participation aspect of it. Because obviously like,

And they do amazing. It's very Feaster family. So it's like proof that that still can break through in the current time.

And then on the other end of it, I feel like I'm taking a very like pull yourself up by your own bootstraps approach to movie watching, which I acknowledge that a big part, it's like, well, the average person isn't fighting through that many layers of friction to go see an original movie that they may or may not like. Like I recognize that.

And I think part of like changing the culture in the movie industry is like, well, maybe two decades ago, you went to the theater or you might think about going to the theater and the movies you happen to be available when you finally decide to go are a wider array of original stuff. Like 20 years ago, we're deciding to go see a movie and it might just be The Departed, right?

But now- You're six years old 20 years ago. You are not allowed to see The Departed.

I was 16. I was turning 17 in a week. And I was going out with a girl who was a year older than me. And we went to go see the wolf of wall street and we were buying our tickets. And I went up to the guy second and he had just seen like my, my date by the ticket before me. And I'm like, please, please let me buy this ticket. And then he just said, you're good homie.

Uh, but yeah, I, I, I think the 20 years ago, you might just go see, like you want to go see a movie. You might see the departed because that happens to be playing, but now the range of movies available for you to see is like more likely to be sequel remake, whatever.

We're busy. I'll have you know, I've walked in LA and walked next to Jack Black, and I feel like that's like me going to the movie. That's enough.

Well, now we decided who pays the price as to who has to go see the Minecraft movie three times. Yep. I would like to get to Doug's last topic because we have, I believe, an AI breakthrough that is on ChatGPT's end that is rather good at creative processes.

I think the misleading part of the free house is that those ones aren't nice. It's like, they aren't well kept. You would have to put a lot of work into it. There are stories of Americans, because foreigners can buy property and land in Japan freely. There's like no restrictions on that. Foreigners can buy those properties.

Okay, so I started using ChatGPT. Was it 4.5? I just downloaded the app like a week ago.

Oh, so I don't even get it? Loser! So, I've been pretty satisfied with the base experience, to be honest with you.

Well, I tried to support Xi Jinping by downloading Deep Seek first, and then... So I gave it my best shot to directly give my free data on my phone that it purges and wires into Xi Jinping's mind directly. I did that. And then I got frustrated that it doesn't work on desktop very well. So I switched to chat GPT and I just assumed I would be using the latest and greatest. but apparently not.

Did you ever hear about that? Yeah, absolutely. I felt like that was like,

And there are stories of, for instance, Americans going and getting one of these free homes, but the amount of work that you have to put into it to make it like livable.

I have a question for, because you're not the only person talking about it being better in this regard, right? This is an understood thing. So I was wondering as far as like something like math and coding seems like something measurable to me.

I think for the free ones, my loose understanding is for that specific program that gives out the free ones you do. But if we were buying, if we wanted to buy that $70,000 apartment or the 50, like a $30,000 apartment. Yeah. we would be able to buy that.

So when people talk increased performance with something like this, how is that being evaluated? Is it just vibes, basically, because it's creative?

So you did this, like if you tried to have a similar sort of conversation with the previous version, it wouldn't be like this.

No, in fact, this would probably benefit me because my primary use case of this is practicing language. So having basically normal conversations with something in the target language that I'm trying to practice. So this seems like it would be super beneficial.

These are the jobs that I've been talking about. Finally.

And I saw the open AI crew sit down and set up a computer on the stage. And they were like, this is our new AI. And then it beat Dendy in 1v1 Dota. And that was in 20... I think that was in 2017. And now it's this. It's a lot more than beat Dendy in Dota now. I think, yeah, that is the main... I mean... My main worry is the scale at which this is deployed to hurt people.

My friend who immigrated there was talking about how if he got kicked out, he wouldn't lose the asset of the home he owns or the land.

I wasn't even thinking of scams necessarily. I think the thing that always pops into my head first is misinformation. It's like your ability to just make some official looking video with a real politician sound and make claims.

So you're saying it's not literally a bot. It's a human being engaging in the argument with you. But using the AI to do its work of arguing with me.

Yes.

I mean, I think if we were to compare it to something, I think the discussion we had last week about education and phones in schools, like think about the ability to have this in your pocket has so many benefits. There are so many good things about having this tool connected to the internet. It allows you to do so many things with your work and your life and connect with people.

But it also has had horrendous consequences for things like kids in an education environment. And I think this will be the same thing. I think where I really stumble right now is how to moderate or control it, because I don't have answers that are popping into my head.

I don't even know.

If you're talking about regulating, if you're talking about environmental regulation or something, you could point to a policy idea like carbon credits, and then you could talk about the merit of that idea. I don't even know what the first policy idea is with this.

In general, in general, I think, like I said, I think the rules might be different for those like free or like near free homes. But if you were just buying like a home that a nice big home that was like pretty expensive in Tokyo, like you could just buy that and not live there. Right.

But I think that's a step in the right direction. I think that's a cool idea.

You're, you're okay. So you're one. Yeah. There's so many layers to this. Yes.

Perpetuation of misinformation is not just like, you know, anonymous and like bought accounts either. It's like, you know, it can be very public notable figures. Like if you took somebody like Alex Jones, for instance, right. That is a, like everybody knows it's him.

Tread lightly. Sorry, it's a bad example.

no but that's part of the reason is like i i a lot of the issue is like not the but maybe the misinformation issue in that regard is is kind of the same as it already is it's like people with like platforms and like you know who they are can just as easily like right yeah i mean to be clear there's plenty of evidence that russia for example does hire a bunch of people to just so discourse or anger in our social media where are those jobs gonna go right yeah

Scam at scale. I do think the other part of this is the verification idea I had this idea passing in my head the other week, and it was because I was thinking about how on Weibo you need to have a Chinese social security number or whatever the equivalent is.

Hold on. This is an anti-CCC argument.

Well, because it is.

That's my big dog. Big dog in the back. The part of the ability to moderate and control the internet in China is that all these social media accounts, even like game accounts and things have to be tied to your like actual, an actual Chinese ID, right? Like you have to be identifiable at least to the government. through your social media profile.

And that in a way is actual human verification online. Like part of me does want that in the sense that when I talk to you in person, I know it's you. And maybe we'll lose that at some point too, which is the scary part. But the idea that I could be talking to you on Discord and I would also like to know it's you in the same way.

But the government instating that system also starts to get scary and uncomfortable. And that's what I mean by all the layers, right? There's, like, all these, like, weaving layers of this of, like, there's pros and cons to, like, every possible way to, like, moderate and move forward.

Yeah. I would hate this so much. That's like Logan Paul round two for sure.

No, I'm basically Japanese. We were calling Nick Yingling the chopped hus the entire time, if you know what that means, in Japanese the whole time we were there. We'll move on from that. A big headline that I have seen in our media in recent years is about how you can get free houses in Japan. Anyone can buy one. Literally one or zero dollar homes.

And that's why the lemonade stand will be taking donations via Monero from now on. Yes.

I think, yeah, we're closing in on the end of the show, so that's an interesting... Thank you.

Thank you.

So I was going to bring up that trend as well, because my friend showed me this in Sweden, rural areas in Sweden. It's the same thing. You get a pretty nice, large home in like a rural part of Sweden for maybe like $30,000 to $50,000 in like pretty good condition, lovely location, and same mechanisms behind it, basically. Just like everybody needs to move or wants to move to the city.

This is the LA influencer problem that we talked about. Yes, actually this is a good example. About how a bunch of people in LA that do YouTube here.

But everybody has to move at once. Not me. Because it's the value of being in the same place. You like it. There's a few people who like it. You're the... He said 9 out of 10. 9 out of 10 dentists, you're the dentist saying that the toothpaste doesn't work.

I do think it's really interesting that this is so apparent in other countries as well because that gets talked about less. Japan is the country that has the headlines so often. I think because the problem is so much more aggressive and it's been building for longer. And then the other part of this that I wanted to talk about was, okay, well, rural areas, right?

We're talking about in Japan, people moving to cities like Tokyo, for instance. But Tokyo is really interesting too, because compared to other cities in the world with like, I would say equal standing and development, if you look at a city like London or New York or Clancyville, you would see that Tokyo is relatively affordable compared to those places, which is really, really interesting.

Like why is this major city not going through the same real estate struggle that all those other big cities are? And because obviously in Tokyo, like in Japan, the rural areas population is declining. But Tokyo, the population is still going up. And the big thing behind this is their zoning and building laws.

They have a way different approach to how housing is allowed to be built and a different culture of expectations around how you judge or value the homes next to you. So they were starting to go through a similar like cost of living crisis in the sixties as they were developing.

And then by the time, oh, beautiful LAX. By the time I walked to the Uber parking lot, got into the Uber, and then got here, it was about 15 minutes ago. All right, well, I did just get back from Japan. And I thought it would be nice to pick a nice, exciting topic related to Japan.

And they put in a place, a new zoning law at that time that like in America, there's a, for zoning laws, we have like hundreds of different types of zones and like weight and different rules to, to move around, move around with it. But Tokyo only has 12 different types of zones that properties can be. And in like 10 of those 12, housing is allowed to be built in all of them.

And the catch being that these homes are often very broken down, old, abandoned. But it did make me want to look a little more into why housing in Japan is so relatively cheap at a time when everywhere in the world, developed countries, big cities, prices of real estate are generally going up. People are getting priced out of living places. Yeah. And that's not like an American thing necessarily.

So it means that if it's zoned for like retail, if it's zoned for something else, you can still build housing in that area alongside it. And that's created like an industry and a supply of housing that is always outpacing actual households.

Yeah.

This was really shocking to me.

Yeah.

I think that was really surprising because to me, in an American context, New York is pretty dense. There is a lot of apartment-style housing there that doesn't exist in a lot of other cities. But even a place like New York has really strict zoning laws. It's like the best of the American one. And basically, those zones have reached their capacity.

And then, okay, well, you might think, let's vote to change the zoning laws. Let's change these things in order to get more housing built. And this is also something that was really interesting to me because in America, right, we vote for these things at the local level. And that's where kind of like the idea of nimbyism comes in, like not in my backyard.

Basically, if I own property in a place, I don't, I, in order to maintain the growth of the value of the property that I already own, I'm going to vote against new housing initiatives in my area, maybe under the guise of like keeping the culture of the neighborhood or something. Right. And so housing initiatives are consistently struck down.

But in Japan, that housing, that the zoning laws are just set at the national level. They just decide. So people in neighborhoods don't have the same input or control to build in there.

And the result also, for one more example of this, is in America, oftentimes there will be rules about the standardization of how a house is built in a new development. So there's reasons why groups of homes have to match up with each other or have similar designs or require similar lawn care or something like that. It might be through your HOA. It might be a city ordinance.

But in Japan, there's no culture of that. There's no rules on how... you can build your apartment or home next to the home next to you. It doesn't have... There's no worry about the design of your home devaluing the design of the property next to yours. Which is also... This goes in tandem with one last interesting piece that plays into this, is there is a strong culture of...

breaking down homes and rebuilding when you buy. So moving into somebody's home that was already owned and lived in is like weirdly not cool in Japan. And it's way more common to get the home, break it down, and then build a new home there for yourself.

What happened to the safe space?

100%.

Two hours a day of not be, don't be a beta.

It's because it's a great show.

Is this a safe space?

And now I can tell you the topics? I'm excited to tell you the topics. This week, This week we're talking about how, uh, is everyone getting stupider? Yeah, you would talk about that, you bitch. Hey, yo! Dumbass. We're just talking about safe spaces, so... We'd like this to be one of the first two episodes. I was really settling into my safe space, so...

I was going to say, number five was dumb to include because it's like, it's just kind of funny. Yeah, it's for the YouTube video. He's a good YouTuber. Yeah.

Yeah.

It's really funny. I'm not touching you.

I didn't know we were dealing with a professional here. That's the thing about the Jones Act. We choose not to do it because of the Jones Act. What is the coincidence?

You put on earmuffs. I don't think you deserve this. Teach me about the Jones Act, AI tutor.

A true American institution. In 2024.

They've been bought by a South Korean company. A South Korean company.

You get to be the crew on the boat. As long as you're an American citizen. As long as you're American. You have to pretend to be. We'll give you an American flag shirt. They pay us to work on the boat. So we can undercut the current monopoly.

Why do any of the boat companies think about this?

One lucky tier three subscriber who works on the boat.

Yeah, that's a lot of people.

You can't do both.

Yeah.

No, we're buds. Have you seen my Discord profile picture right now? Do you see this?

Somebody drew me hanging out with Xi Jinping with the yard and Chinese flag waving below us and F-35s flying above us. I know what's happening.

The law is so bad. It's so bad. It's all written in Chinese. It's all written in Chinese. That'd be so sick. I'd open up my next notepad. It's all Mandarin.

Sign me up.

This is kind of wrong.

Right.

Who do you think blew up Nord Stream?

How much is deal paying him? It's like you're not fighting for the security of your countrymen. There's real life spies who've cracked these. Exactly.

How did you find this story? Where did you hear about this?

Just believe Doug. He's got a microphone in front of him.

One, you tuned out at the beginning of the episode. But two... Dude, you just ignored the part, the bombshell you saved where you're like, and I sold all my Tesla stock today because I don't believe this.

And we don't even know what it was.

If you got this far in the video. Secret three hashtags. People who just clicked out and made their comment right after I said that.

Oh! It's just... Oh, no. It just can't be pleasant. Get your app. I'm not hungry. That's gross, Doug. Are your eyes watering? Good episode, boys.

Anecdotal theory on this.

I'm not saying it's not awful. I'm telling you, that layer... Your brain is rotten. You're removing... No, no.

And what a segue from the masters. Because today's topics are focusing on Tesla. Is it doomed to fail or will it come out on top specifically with how it handles its self-driving technology and also the future of self-driving cars in general with both of you taking one side of the debate?

I'll say, I mean, I'm guessing it's very low. I'll say something like $2 billion. Low relative to these companies. You're ruining my reveal because that's way too low.

My moderator voice. I'm clocking in. I'm the judge. And then I think we're also going to be talking about Pokemon Go becoming property of the Saudi Arabian crown, which I know we were all edge of our seat waiting for. And lastly, public transport in America.

He's blown past a couple deadlines.

They just got a little sidetracked when they made the flamethrower, dude. I don't know.

It's easy as breathing.

I think... In the next two hours, we'll have the whole thing sorted out.

Okay?

I would go the Gusteau's route. I would go the perfectionist route for sure.

I think if you, from my perspective, if you sacrifice the quality of the product, especially early on, the bad press that you potentially get about that product is so damaging. People's ability to value it down the line is so shaped by that first year or first couple years of the product being made poorly. And that makes it infinitely harder to standardize it later.

I'm looking for more. I'm already looking for my way out.

or introduce it as something positive to people later. So that's the main reason why I think I would.

And I'm just going off of just that update from them and no other context.

I guess I'm going against myself because I would get in the car and try it out. I would...

Wait, I die right now?

Wait, so is this the way it played out? Is this to say that it actually is this bad right now?

Well, if you do it often enough, you kind of strengthen. Right. Ocular muscles, yeah.

It's a tiny little blip. Did you ever look at those WikiLeaks videos that came out that Chelsea Manning leaked? And it's like the videos of them killing civilians in the helicopter. But hold on.

How do you think that works? Do you think you just get, like, what's the KGB email domain? Yeah. that you get in your inbox. Yeah. You said you wouldn't do it in Russia.

You guys ever watch those videos of people killing civilians? No, dude. No, I didn't. The video is casual. It looks like... I'm not kidding. It looks exactly like... I watched LeBron highlights. You know what you...

i'm not casually looking it's not a daily thing through mass murder briefly to come out of this is like what you're saying is what you're saying is kind of true there's there's like these leaked videos that came out that chelsea banning like leaked to wiki leaks and they came out and a video from helicopter of like civilians getting shot by the u.s military and uh the video like looks exactly like when you call in like an ac-130 in modern warfare 2 like it's like

I don't I'm not saying it's not awful I'm telling you that layer your brain is rotten you're removing no no it looks like a video game and that removal of the human element is like is real that like that when you see something like damaged like that it's like I've seen does remove you from the consequence of what is happening not seriously

And I do want to be clear.

I've already claimed it. It's already been claimed. If it did run over dogs, it would feel less bad.

Because you wouldn't see the puppy's face.

Anyway, so.

So the way this manifests, and I think Doug might have a similar story, is I used one of these for the first time like a week and a half ago. Yeah, yeah. And super, I was excited to just try it out. And we pulled up to the, you know, get in the car, pull up to the first intersection, and somebody crosses in front of us.

And on the screen in the Waymo, you can see the like digital person walking across. Yeah. And it's like even their finger and like hand movements, you can see their whole, every movement captured on the screen.

It's crazy. blew my mind because we were on the way to a party that night and while we were driving on the street, a homeless guy stepped out into the street in front of the car with his bike. He just walked out and the car slammed and got out of the way. I saw this happen and I was like, I genuinely don't know if I would have been able to do that as a human, if I was driving the car.

And it was a weirdly uncomfortably good demonstration of like it. He's looking at his watch and he's like timing his way out on the street. I mean,

Of course I would do it. Of course we would do that. Dude, I would do it, but I'd be shitting bricks the whole time. Because you can't. You have to go softball mode.

A lot of them got run over.

So, yeah, that more manufactured and meticulous approach, I guess I feel or I felt more confident about trying the Waymo than I would trying a Tesla. Yes. However, I think as someone who's generally interested in both of these things, I'd be willing to try the Tesla self-driving stuff as well.

That Tucker interview isn't even an interview. It's Vlad doing 45 minutes on the history of Russia.

Okay. So can I predict the answer here? Yeah, I would love to. I would love to hear what you think. I do have a thought is... For Waymo's business model or the way the company is playing out right now, I guess that spending a lot of money to maximize the performance of each car is more acceptable in the context of the business because you don't need to sell the cars to owners.

They're basically taxis that are used by a bunch of people all the time on the street in the same way that people just use bikes for rent on the street. So you can spend a lot of money on one car because of how often it's going to get used by a bunch of different people. But Elon and Tesla have to take a different approach because they have to make the cars affordable to individual consumers.

I don't even see the dot. It's just a dot.

All right. But as far as this debate goes, I think you guys are both taking sides of the argument. Not necessarily the exact sides that you agree with personally, but you are more Tesla doomer. This company is going to flame out. Yeah. And you are vouching for the side of Tesla is going to make it and how they're going to do.

Much like Gusteau's, every Waymo actually has a little rat that drives the car under the hood.

There's actually 29 rats in every Waymo car. No, the fuel's really affordable. It's only what you have to feed to the rats. I think this... I'm going off of everything you've just told me right now, pretty much, right? It sounds like the Waymo CEO is correct to me. Like these are essentially two different products. That's what it feels like.

And in order for like a regulatory body to sign off on full autonomous driving, I have a hard time imagining that Tesla's approach will be okay. Like as a public service. Right. It feels like right now that Tesla's approach will never get you past... Which CEO has a lot of influence in the government?

Because this is where it stands, ignoring that huge factor, I would say it's hard for me to imagine Tesla's system progressing past me still having to sit in the driver's seat. It's like, it will be a really, really good system that still involves me being at the wheel and, at least on paper, having to stay awake. So, yeah, segue into the next part.

This is the other... I think you're about to get into what was the number one point in my mind is better than humans is not enough. Exactly. And I think an amazing example with this is recently, and I don't agree with cuts to the FFA and these aircraft accidents that have been happening, right? There's been a bunch of high profile... Bold statement. A bunch of high profile...

aircraft accidents and uh and then let me let me play devil's advocate but even with all of this think about how bad the press is about like air travel right now no i like boeing you could tell me hey boeing has 99 of the planes stay up it's like it's

And that's the thing. It's way more than that. It's still, with everything that's happened in the last two or three years, it is still the safest form of transportation by a huge margin out of everything. But think about how damaging that press is. And that's why it's like when it's technology and a company behind it and the way these stories proliferate, being better than humans is not enough.

It needs to be basically zero risk at all. And I feel like the only way you can get to that point is by taking this Gusteau's approach.

I think conveniently, and maybe Waymo, you know, the Waymo spokesman is in my brain again, and they set up this situation too, although maybe reflect poorly on them. is there's a film being shot in my neighborhood right now. And Waymo's come through all the time.

And on the film set, I actually think coincidentally they were filming a car commercial, they have police officers that block off the road with safety cones for portions of time that the filming is happening. And I watched a couple cars get stopped by the police officer and then he's like, come on through. And he's standing out in the middle of the road next to one safety cone.

Waymo comes up to him while I'm like drinking my coffee and I'm just watching this unfold. Waymo blows past the police officer.

Much like the homeless man in my experience, it just drove out of the way and kept going and then drove through the film set. So, as far as, like, edge cases go, it's like, that's the one with the LiDAR technology, right? And, like, has way more information available to it than the Tesla does. And it's still making mistakes like that. Right.

But that's an, these are examples of like weird edge cases that like, the human driver just figures out.

It is. I don't in a vacuum. Like that's, you know, I was a kid once I got lost in the grocery store on occasion, but it is funny to just leave your kid in the dust as you like walk and wave to the fans and the crowd.

I mean, Tesla, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. No, I mean, they've had a version of, like, testable self-driving available for, I feel like, almost a decade at this point.

Yeah.

Which ones are those? Is that Cruze?

Wait, literally an NVIDIA car?

Oh, I see.

Right.

I do. So I think this helps me understand it a lot better, like what these angles of these companies are fighting for. And something that I had been thinking about a lot was, I guess, maybe your more personal perspectives on...

how valuable or cool you think this race to self-driving technology is because i i do think it's cool and like this uh i'll call it the cgp gray utopia of all automatic cars driving around that communicate with each other and there's basically never accidents is it sounds cool uh But I think on the whole, I'm a pretty anti-car person. I think cars in general are like a blight.

On society. Less of a Hyperloop guy. And I think I'm more like pro-public transportation.

But even as far as cars go, there are certain frustrating aspects of it to me is like in the US. Have you ever sat down at a

You know what? And it's too damn big. Have you guys ever looked at, for example, like in the U.S., there's this huge, if you look at sales of vehicles in the U.S., there's this huge spike in SUV sales. Yeah, big cars. And truck sales. We like big cars.

There's a longer-winded explanation behind why that exists, especially in the U.S., but the amount of fatalities, like road accident fatalities, has also spiked in the past couple decades. I heard it's like an arms race, where like,

I think that is an example of like... These vehicles that are, I would argue, needlessly big exist primarily because of loopholes and regulations and laws that were meant to save fuel economy. Cars in general force a lot of things on cities and societies that I see as a net negative. And I'm not here to say that this technology around self-driving cars is bad, necessarily.

It's not that I wouldn't want this to exist. I think there's a part of me that is disappointed or sad that because something like a really well-built train system doesn't have the hype behind it that gets venture capital involved and pushes legislation and... has the same, like, hype behind it that would ultimately solve these public transport needs in the same way that you're talking about.

Like, it's not about, like, owning my car. It's about getting from A to B and making those situations, like, as convenient as possible. And a specific situation I can think of is... So when we went to the major together in Copenhagen... I mean, we're bringing this up.

We went to the major and Copenhagen has a pretty nice like train system that you can use to get around the city, which is nice. And we, we used it a bunch. And when we, do you want to, that's the robo van.

It's going to flash past, but I don't think this, this is essentially the same thing. It doesn't, it doesn't make any difference.

It's a bigger car. It's basically an Uber XL. I mean, maybe. I don't know how big this is.

There's a reason for that to exist. I'm not denying that. It's more when we left the major that night on the night of finals, there's this huge stream of people coming out of the arena that they had just built. And we all headed towards the train station. It's a massive amount of people. 10,000, 15,000 people that, that walked to the train station.

And within, you know, within 10 minutes, it was so easy. Everybody is on the train and out earlier last year, I went to a Dodgers game and I was leaving Dodger stadium.

And I walked down to like the Uber pickup area, like where you get Uber's taxis, whatever you can get. Right. And there's this massive backed up line of people waiting to like get in the cars.

And even in the most idealistic version of the autonomous car paradise that we're talking about, even if you take away all the inefficiencies of movement and they can all communicate with each other, that is a drastically shittier experience than just getting on the train and going into the city.

This is kind of what I'm talking about. The car requires, especially even if everybody's Tesla can drive themselves all of a sudden, the car still requires parking space and infrastructure and things that I would argue functionally degrade cities and quality of life.

And it seems disappointing to me that the amount of like effort, both like technologically and politically, is going into like making cars better when even the best case scenario in like the situation I described is still shittier than the train that you can get on in Copenhagen. Like that is... I think that is unfortunate.

I think the reality, like the pragmatic version of me recognizes that I might not be able to shift the political or maybe even like cultural attachment to cars and like car culture in the US. And I would rather see some sort of solution than none.

Let's not dream too big. That's part of the problem, though. Isn't it shitty that that project has to deal with so much bureaucratic mess?

No, I'm not saying that either. I'm not saying either company is responsible for fixing that. I'm saying that as an example, it's like you're talking about the government, like regulatory angle of why Tesla or like why Elon would want this relationship with the government so we can shift things in the direction that benefits his car company. There's no guy like that for trains.

That'd be so sick. And it sucks that this problem... It's a crazy train billionaire. Respectfully, I'm not... Bring him out of jail. We'll give him one job.

It's tough. I just think as someone who maybe has been lucky enough to travel a lot and been to cities all over the world, I remember going to Hong Kong as a teenager and being like, what do you mean you can just walk everywhere and the train comes within two minutes every moment of the day and you can get wherever you want? And it's dog shit cheap, dude. What do you mean that that exists?

And I don't have that at home. Like, that is crazy to me.

I don't mean I'm not saying that this technological leap is not interesting to me at all. That is not what I'm saying. It's just like it feels like the the system in place right now of like hype, venture capital, all these things that back these sort of projects is why does it have to be directed in this direction instead of something that is demonstrably better?

Yeah. Very ironic. This story is awesome. And I don't know if there's really enough time to talk about it. They have a huge section of privatized rail that's becoming really successful up the coast from Miami.

I like that idea of the conversation because similarly, like I'm not a fan of Elon Musk personally, and he's not my best friend like Doug.

Number five? He's big dog number five?

So it's kind of in the vein of what you were talking about. You showed that there was this long quote from Ezra Klein where he's talking about one of his opinions that's dramatically changed over time is about regulation and about how regulation... realizing that regulation is not necessarily good.

It like is also the, uh, bureaucratic, like there's more nuance to like, yeah, it was, it's like, it's just a more nuanced topic than more regulation. Good. Less regulation. Yeah.

And, uh, Yeah, I think that's just the thing I think about all the time when I see self-driving car news and hype about self-driving cars. It's like, dude, the best outcome of this situation compared to what I've experienced in other countries and cities still sucks. And I think that is disappointing.

I do think there's this idea that like anything he touches or is associated with is automatically bad. But when I saw like SpaceX catch the rocket for the first time, I'm like, that is awesome. That is so cool. So I like to see like the version of this argument that extends way more past like Elon Musk sucks and is like, what is the actual financial situation behind the company right now?

A hundred percent. There's just misery from that. A hundred percent. If the only option, if you told me that somehow public transportation solutions are just never going to be possible in the U.S., a hundred percent because we're existing in a hypothetical situation, and this is the only way forward, it's like, of course. Of course. This has so many benefits. And I agree with all of these things.

Every point that you've said so far is also something that gets better with people's increased access to public transportation.

I want to enter this conversation with the idea that I do not think streetcars solve a lot of the problems that exist now, especially because they exist on the street.

Dude, not even earlier than that. I couldn't believe how far back this goes. It was further back than I thought. That's the solution? Streetcars? No, no, no. I just said, hold on. I literally just said streetcars aren't the solution.

Are not the solution.

Oh no, so like, like those like trolley things. Yeah, like trolleys basically. So the way the, if you go back, if we go back in time, Come back in time with me. Dude, back into the mid-1800s, big cities in the US started laying out rail and had these trolleys to get around.

And these things started off by getting pulled by horses. And then by the end of the 1800s, they started to electrify these systems.

And then he made an electric impact.

But in cities like Los Angeles at the time, at the end of the 1800s, early 1900s, Los Angeles actually had the largest tramway system in the world, like the most amount of track. And what ended up happening was these systems got phased out as the automobile just became very, very popular in the US.

But ultimately, it's like, if you look at pictures or stories from this period of time, this was a huge, like, infrastructural change in cities. going from the period or the decades where this was the dominant mode of public transportation in a lot of cities to the period of time where cars were more favored.

And I think maybe not politically or bureaucratically, but the idea that you can't make quick, large-scale changes around public transportation, I don't really think is true because it's even happened within the scope of our own country's history. There's been huge pivots and changes with the way public transportation works in the US.

Because from my understanding, it's pretty grim at the moment.

This being an example where in essentially the span of like a couple decades, these like streetcar systems disappeared.

I don't care. I think the reality is I don't really care about streetcars. I think as far as space and efficiency goes even, you can make an argument that the robo-autonomous buses basically accomplish the goal fine. I think the issue with buses as solutions in public transportation is that buses exist in the traffic that exists already.

You don't solve traffic by making buses because they just have to compete with all the cars around. You want one more lane. Famously, if you just build one more lane, freeze it all up.

Maybe even two lanes. I was going to say rickshaws. Just a bunch of rickshaws.

We go back. We go back. We get the horses their jobs back.

I just want to push back on the idea that fundamental shifts in like public transportation infrastructure or travel infrastructure in general can happen in quicker times than we think. And I think a lot of the reason we think it's not possible is because the way we've done things has existed for so long. And in the US specifically, it feels like there's a lot of red tape to do in these days.

In Minecraft. And that's part of the problem. You know, there's the NIMBY angle to it. There's so many things like that where I think Elon Musk is even tied into this. I don't know the exact details, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

But if I recall, when he was really hyping up the Hyperloop stuff, it was part of a campaign that pushed back against the money and funding behind public transport efforts in California. Yeah. and killing those, pushing back or killing those efforts is important to like companies he's made. And, you know, more broadly.

We can look at more infamous cases of billionaires with oil money, like the Koch brothers lobbying at the local level to stop public transportation projects. Because if public transportation succeeds in a bunch of major cities, my oil empire will start to start to crumble a little bit. It's not... Like I said, I'm pragmatic. I understand. I actually think that car culture in the U.S.

is like borderline... It's not in the Constitution, but it's like borderline gun culture in the U.S. The idea of having your car hitting the open road, having the great American road trip. All of these things are so embedded in the idea of American lifestyle. And I think it's why people get so... so defensive of like, we're going to take away your gas cars.

It's like, it's almost the same level of vitriol reaction as when you talk about taking away guns. Uh, it's, it is, it is a very similar, it is more culturally embedded in America. And I, I'm not here to say I can overturn that. I don't think I can. That's why I want to leave. That's like, uh,

I I'm, I'm not saying it's, it's just disappointing to me that, uh, these things are, are not looked at as like the better, more idealistic solutions and that they're possible because even within our own history, they are.

And you're talking about like what my idealistic world is. It's like it has so many intertwining threads with that issue as well. Right. Right. So many aspects of housing and building need to functionally change.

And then every, and then every few years we vote on, we vote on adding another lane. You know what they don't tell you about the lane thing?

Is that if you add enough lanes, you actually do solve it. Well, yeah. That's it.

Because of course it'll happen in Dallas first, you know? And the whole city of Dallas is just gone. It's just a hundred lanes side by side.

I was going to say, as soon as you do that, people can sell the car. Tesla could buy them back and use them for a service like this.

I want you to get up there. Yeah. I feel like I need to show some graphs and charts to get up there.

I have a dark question at the end of this.

Yeah, I've seen a little bit about this.

You would have killed it at Model UN, dude.

He would always sell. I saw the prices plummeting. What, the stock?

Just buying the next major esport. Dude, I think it's so funny. I mean, my first reaction was, why? Because... Like, is Pokemon Go, is it just really successful and profitable? I heard it makes good money.

Yeah. They're making moves, dude. They bought ESL. They killed Jamal Khashoggi. They fucking keep it real over there.

I don't think anybody should be buying digital items in video games.

i didn't dude i did not really i mean i understood that mobile gaming in general is like the biggest chunk of the gaming market uh revenue wise that is still wild uh to hear yeah i think the idea of i was thinking earlier about when you first brought up the topic of people like the line in saudi arabia finally gets built and you're playing pokemon go in the line and you're just you and your friends walking down one fucking long hallway catching pokemon you never turn left or

500 miles. It's just, yeah, I think the passing headline makes you think, is my initial reaction. It's like, why would you do this? But there's a larger cohesive strategy, surely, around this amount of money being spent. That's what I'd like to think. I can wildly speculate.

Sometimes it feels like the rate at which my familiarity with esports in particular makes me feel a little doubtful of my own take in the sense that it feels like they've overpaid for a lot of things. You don't have to bring this level of spending to esports to get a lot of the hold that they wanted in the industry. To a degree, I can kind of It feels like flexing on like a geopolitical scale.

I'm actually curious because in a weird change of pace on the Yard bonus episode this week, which you can listen to on patreon.com. Are we still in? No. We talked about something a little more serious. We talked about vibe coding. Yeah. And the way people are making... You four talked about vibe coding. Three of us. Ludwig was gone.

Well, we were...

I think it would be, it was actually a huge chunk of the episode. It would be unfair of me to characterize.

But I want to ask you what you guys think of it because I had not heard of this until, I think Nick brought it up, this idea of vibe coding where you use chat GPT to spit out code that you don't know how to write and you build a game like that. And then you just iterate on the game by using chat GPT prompts.

And apparently these games are starting, you know, you could turn around a project in a relatively short period of time. And then people are launching these games on like mobile and then filling them with advertisements and then making money. And it's like a, and it's a trend.

And I thought this was really interesting because my two reactions were on one hand, I was like, oh man, this really like cheapens this art form and makes it, this feels a little like soulless. And then on the other hand, I was like, well, if you can provide a tool to people to create their ideas and

Without being inhibited by being unable to learn how to code for whatever reason, do, you know, what is good and bad about this? And that's basically what we talked about for like 20, 30 minutes.

Tucker's carving his way back in, brother. It was Tucker, if you can believe it. He knew what he was doing. So I always wanted your, because I feel like it's in the vein of this conversation of something like AI just pumping out video games automatically. This is sort of similar to that.

It's still a prompt, still a human idea, but somebody sitting at a computer and making games in a very different way and potentially sacrificing some of what they have in their mind because they aren't able to meticulously edit and understand the code.

During the segment where we were recording, Zipper tried to make a game using ChatGPT, and he successfully made a tiny game where you control a profile picture of me that eats hamburgers, which were yellow dots, and every time you fed it a hamburger, the score went up by a million. And so within the span of us having the conversation, that was crafted.

Yes, sir.

I definitely, I want to dive into this a little more and some of the questions around it in a future episode. But that's the end of episode two of Lemonade Stand. I think something we all liked about the last episode that we were hoping for is we got a ton of thoughts from people in the comments about Pretty much every topic that we discussed, which I really, really liked.

The plan in the future, I think if you have anything to add to a topic that we're talking about, if you have a correction about something that we're talking about, these long-winded explanations or comments that people are giving are really, really great. And we want to make sure that we include good feedback into the show in a way in the future.

So I think we haven't quite figured out the exact way we want to segment it into the show yet, but keep providing that because follow-ups and including your guys' conversations in the show somehow going forward is something that we all really want.

Wow.

Unless you're commenting on Spotify, in which case, honestly, I didn't know that existed a week ago, and I'm not really reading those very often. Feel free to get involved there still. Get involved. Awesome. Thank you for watching. See you guys next week. Wait, wait, wait.

No, I'm not eating another lemon.

Oh, tough call. Tough call. They were all blue. I'm going to go blue on that?

You're on a road trip. I saved that for the other show, you know?

I don't think that would be... I don't think it would even be that different.

So I was actually going to ask... A version of that question, because my understanding was relative to the rest of the EV market, they were already starting to trend down because of the basically quality of EVs offered by other companies. So is this accelerating from that? And it sounds like yes.

100%.

There's not a lot of, like, anti-Elon sentiment pumping on Weibo.

They have no problem. They're living the Iron Man 2 dream still.

Quick thing. Yeah. I was curious, have either of you ridden in one of those? A BYD? No, have you? In a BYD model? A BYD? No. I did. And when I went to Mexico recently and a ton of the Ubers are BYDs. And I was in a pretty like base cheap model.

Very nice car. It was like, uh, it was super functional. I asked the guy, I use Google translate to talk to my Uber driver. I don't, I know. Yeah. I love talking to Uber drivers. And he was talking about how much he loves the car and how good and useful it's been for specifically his job. And the inside of the car was awesome. I mean, a lot of new cars are nice, right? But I was pretty impressed.

And it was my first time ever riding in one.

I actually, this is, I looked into, there's a model of car called the, I don't know if Perry could pull this up. It's called the Renault Twizy.

And it's a really, really tiny like street electric vehicle that I saw in Paris.

Yeah. And it costs like 15K. Yeah, Renault is like a French car manufacturer. And I looked so hard to see how you could import one of these. Like even if you have to pay fees and stuff. But you can't make it street legal in the U.S. So there's no real way of doing it. Only Europeans would call a car a Twizy.

There's a quote from an immigration lawyer in that article where he talks about most of the inquiries he's getting now are from young people that are like looking to move for financial reasons. He's desperate to get out. I actually tried to call the lawyer today and like ask him about like what it's like right now.

And he, and they didn't get back to me, but I called my, so my one other relative that lives in the U S is my cousin and she works in biotech and she moved to San Diego with her also Canadian boyfriend a few years ago. and I was letting her kind of break it down for me. And she's like, at the end of the day, like it just came to like money and like my profession.

And she says like all the people in her field and like who studied with her in Canada also want to the move to the U S because she gets three X her pay down here. And she pays like a comparable amount in taxes. So like financially it makes sense. And then even if she wants to go back to Canada, and I think a lot of people in her situation, it sounds like they would want to go back to,

canada one day they can save money faster to uh buy a home in in canada when they go back and so that's like her experience as someone who's already made the move right uh speaking of homes can i show this Are you going to show my actual home and my address?

This is... Here at Lemonade Stand... I can remember this, yeah. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Fun fact, Ari is not allowed to leave the house between nine and five.

They've like given up. They've given up completely. So this is the interesting thing to me is like, I was reading this article and I was like, this makes sense. Like the thing that my parents tell me all the time is like, the reason we moved to the U S or the reason we wanted to be in the U S was it afforded me like job and like economic opportunity that we wouldn't have had in Canada.

Exactly. And I, and I said, mom, you're right. I never could have made it doing this work in Vancouver. Uh,

And it seems like the financial aspect of it is the key mover on that over kind of everything else. Because I ended up talking to another close friend of mine that still lives. He lives in Alberta. He lives in Calgary, and he's trying to get a job in finance right now. And I was like, what is like for you who's in Canada trying to find a job in Canada, how do things feel to you right now?

And he's like, well, things are pretty like doomer here in terms of like economic, you know, like owning a home, like the job market's really bad. It's tough to find work if you're a young person, even like if you're a new college grad. And these things are all like shared frustrations among my friends.

But then, and a big question I wanted to answer is like, okay, this trend of like people leaving Canada for the U.S. because of pay, like primarily because of pay or maybe like the data that I looked into, there's a ton of retirees as well. Like wealthier Canadians that want to move to Florida or they want to move somewhere with like lower taxes where they can settle down and it's warmer.

That's good. That actually happens on the other podcast. We'll be two for two on podcasts that make fun of my dad.

The question that I wanted to answer was, okay, so you can see this trend in, uh, you can see this trend in immigration happening, but is it still happening in 2024 and 20 and now in 2025, which was not in this census data. Like it doesn't go up to that point yet. And, uh, I was really curious because, like, politically things are changing so significantly right now.

And then on top of that, it's, like, not just the general politics of someone like Trump being elected in the first place, but the follow-up of the tariffs and the 51st state rhetoric.

And my friend was talking about how even in Alberta, which is a place that's in Canada pretty conservative and has more people than, like, B.C. would that are, like, Trump sympathetic or maybe fans of Trump from, like, the Canadian side.

He's never seen this level of anger among like all people, people there. My, my relatives, my friend is saying all of his relatives and his friends, everybody I talked to that lives in Canada is angry. They are like, this is fucked up that this is happening. Like fuck the U S this is kind of what brings us together right now.

And the idea of like, uh, he said it's like the highest sense of like national pride he's seen in a long time where it's like, you know, fuck the States. It's like, we're Canadians, uh, And that plays into people's idea or the appeal of moving into the U.S. too. He was like, compared to like a year ago, I think a lot of my- Poison us from the inside.

They used to want to poison us from the inside, but now they don't even want to get in. So maybe it's working. Maybe it's working in that regard. We're keeping the Canadians out.

It's just so, it's just- It's a big ditch. I thought it was really interesting to hear him say, like, if you asked me or my friends a year ago and offered me a similar salary in the U.S. for some type of job, I might have said yes. But now I would definitely say no.

And the difference—but then the overarching, like, economic theme here is, like, he was like, but I would still say yes if, like, the pay was, like, way, way higher. If it's double or triple, right? People are still going to— Uh, and that was like what, what my cousin was wrestling with too, is that she's like, I don't like the political direction of the country.

I don't know how long I want to stay here, but my career and my pay is so high here that I can't leave yet.

Uh, so that's, that's kind of what's going on is like, I think my parents are different. They're very proud to be American and they feel like more obligated to defend to the rest of my family, like why they live in the States and like why they like chose to live here basically. But the rest of my family is like dogging them for it.

They're very angry about the 51st state rhetoric, all of the tariffs and like how they're going to suffer economically.

That was in 2022.

And I'm not eligible if we have a sequel. You're incredibly selfish. I've had that. I thought about that. Yeah.

I don't think you should make jokes like that anymore. The friend was Aiden. I told you in common. I told you in common.

I, uh, yeah, that, that's what I'm super curious about is like how that trend is going to hold up in the next like year or two is like what it, you know, there's this convergence of like sovereignty and national pride and being wanting to be like, I am Canadian, like fuck the U S converging with like the economic hardship basically, uh,

Governor Trudeau.

Okay, this is what I was actually thinking about this. And I'm glad you brought this up because I didn't, I hadn't looked this up, but I was so curious if polling had picked up for Trudeau's party because I feel like this is a crazy circumstance where he's like, defending the sovereignty of the nation.

And I think this was in a video you made about how he boxed one of the people from the other party. I thought you told me about this. And that was the first swing in his liberal party picking up was him choosing to box someone from one of the other political parties. And it... Uh, he won the, he won the fight and it was kind of like a, it was literally like a liberals aren't pussies campaign.

Like it was, and, and, and his polling dramatically picked up and then he found himself in a position of prime minister like a little while after. And it was like, this is when he's been making the tweets and these things that I've seen. It's like, I wonder if the polling is following.

Yeah. And right now, it seems like everyone's... Or like Rudy Giuliani post-9-11.

Yeah, I think the ethos for people tuning into this first step is we all have a shared interest in these things, like talking about them with each other, and kind of wanted an opportunity to bring that together, because I think we lack maybe a creative outlet in the rest of our work to be able to talk about this type of stuff. Yes. And I think...

That's a good point. I think about that. I got mad just thinking about it. I'm wild. I'm just thinking about it. I try to dig into my inner Canadian, and I'm like, I think if Yeah, like it annoys me. It feels stupid.

It feels like intentionally antagonistic because even though I think there's no realistic path for that becoming the case, also from my perspective as a Canadian, psych, even in the world where it somehow happened, maybe this is a dumb thing to worry about, psychotic that it would all be one state to me. Psychotic. It's pissed about logistics, dude.

And he's like, maybe. That's one state. Maybe if we respect it, it's like, all right, we're adding on nine provinces as states, three territories. You know, we respect the... And then Trump looks south and he's like, we're thinking of all South America, a 52nd state. That's what I'm saying. It would be insane if it was one state. It would be insane if it was one state.

top priority issue with this, but that was honestly my first thought when I heard about it. I was like, it just wouldn't be one.

Well, we don't have states. We have provinces. There are provinces and territories.

Yeah, I've heard that.

I guess maybe the last thing that I was thinking about with the Canada thing is the 51st state. I can see why it frustrates people so much, and I've seen something similar with a few Danish friends about the Greenland stuff.

They're like... It's gone from like... I think when the initial reaction that I got from talking to friends when these things first hit the news was like, what the fuck is this guy talking about? It's like, this is obviously so dumb. This is like borderline a joke. But then he keeps talking about it.

And he keeps talking about it. And now people are angry. Like... And I find that it makes sense from their perspective. I mean, as an American, I'm also not happy with it. I don't think this is good.

Yeah, I think that part is more divisive, though, from my understanding.

I think there are a lot of people that are pushing for Greenland independence. From the bit I've read and asked about, it sounds like that is just more... Because there's aspects of Danish society or social systems that are so integrated and Greenland is so reliant on. So people are not... There's a big chunk of the population that's not ready to relinquish those things, basically.

I think my... my general opinion on these things is that in this era of global free trade, national sovereignty, and things like that, there's probably some other analysis to do here in terms of the costs of that system and deconstructing the global economics and stuff like that. But in general, I think that This has led to unprecedented relative peace and things like that.

And we're starting to pull back the walls of these institutions and rules around invading and co-opting other countries. I think that's bad. I think that's bad. Because it's such a regression of what global society is built around, which I think is in a lot of ways good. And I'm not saying that there's no scrutiny to be had of that sentence either, but it makes me fearful.

It's like, okay, well, if nobody's following the rules anymore and we're going back to old times of invading and taking over and sacrificing this economic system that we've made, I don't know, the costs of that worry me.

Yeah, which is something that the U.S. is like, they, you know, I feel like from a short-term perspective may even have come across as, like, generous. But it's like, but in the long-term, like... Ultimately, it was way better for the US too.

Yeah, he is. Okay. And American. And American. Don't take that away from him.

No, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't actually call it generous. This stuff has been set up to our benefit. No, no, yeah, I agree with that.

Zero meddling. Famously.

Show me the documents where we meddled one time. No, I think that's the... Yeah, I think that is the pro... I kind of agree with Brandon. It's like the deconstruction of... This is why it's a hard topic to... It is hard, by the way. This is a hard... Okay, I'll just... I think I'll say it in a more straightforward way.

This is a hard topic for me to argue about, not at like a personal level, but I feel like there is a conflict as someone who I think I lean like pretty left on like most, like most issues in general. And I think there's like a, maybe a, I don't know if I would call my, I definitely wouldn't call myself a socialist like outright, but I think there's a socialist viewpoint here.

where that is also advocating for, like, deconstruction of this global order to, not for American fiscal reasons, but to, like, dismantle the, like, systems of oppression that, like, they would identify exist across the world among this current system. Not that oppression and, like, people being exploited didn't exist before World War II.

um it didn't and that that that level of like american like empire and like control is uh the it it's interesting i don't know it's it's super interesting because it's like yes that has such a demonstrable positive effect if you believe in i i don't know like getting getting rid of all these things has like such a

identifiable harm on the U.S., but there's two... There's different perspectives on, like, why that all needs to be deconstructed and come down. Oh, totally. And I think because there's all these different layers of, like, what people see as the most important outcomes, who are the people that need help the most, what would... What actions would help those people, the...

solution is... I feel like I'm a very solution-orientated person, and this problem is so layered. It's like, of course I'm not going to solve it. I'm running the lemonade stand. I don't have the answer, because I like a lot of what our globalized, safe economy and society gives me. I like a lot of those things, and I... also selfishly benefit from a lot of the power and control that the U.S.

has, especially as somebody who immigrated here and got to make a podcast. You crossed the ditch. I crossed the ditch. But at the same time, I feel like I'm wary of something like can the debt grow forever, right? If you listen to that one economist who wrote the deficit myth, apparently it can. Apparently it can. Definitely Kelton has interesting ideas.

But, or from other perspectives, like maybe you have a strong, like moral stance, like built in what you'd call like socialist values and you want to see the deconstruction of the global order for those reasons. Like, I don't know, I don't know what path is correct.

spy agencies have picked winners in various countries over the past hundred years like that's fucked up like then we just get to decide the thing about it is like i can't think of a single time at back right that's true that's true the thing about it it's like it's just it always worked out so smoothly so i just really don't see deeply immoral the idea that we do that the cia simply batted a thousand can i say it it's a

They were kind of the Shohei Ohtani of government agencies.

Every coup. Because if it blew back, if it had blown back out of the country. If it had blown back, I'd be critical.

Yeah. I think that's what I'm saying is like, there's so many, I think there, this is why these things are like hard to come, come to any like solution or determination of, I feel like is like, there's so many little aspects of like how your lives are impacted by these decisions, especially over the longterm.

And it's hard to make confident decisions of like, this thing should be this way because everything, I think for the average person, including me, it's hard to identify the costs, like the pros and cons of what those decisions will be.

Yeah, so I like that one better because it doesn't revolve around criticism of me.

28 million people to send to the farms.

I'm going to talk about my dad, just him and what he's been up to. We'll get a live call in. We're going to get Corwin on the live stream. The main reason that I bring up my dad at all is I actually do want to talk about Canadian immigration to the United States and also the tariffs that are currently affecting the relationship between the US and Canada specifically. Do you want to open with that?

That's beautiful. And then they outsourced your job to Taiwan. That's why you became a streamer. That's the story, folks.

Based on what I've seen in the east part of L.A. County, if he can speak fluent Chinese, he can make a business out of it. Yeah.

Dude, there's weirdly a large amount of travel agencies in the east part of LA County, but they're in Chinese. They're only in Chinese.

What's the formula for adding exposure to GDP?

Okay, well, I think to just set the backdrop, because I think a lot of people know that there are tariffs that have been put in place or had been threatened for a while as Trump was approaching getting into his presidency, right?

You ever heard about the taxi tragedy in New York? Do you know how you need to buy a yellow taxi medallion? Yeah. And the prices of those inflated super, super high because there's a limited amount of them to go out. And then a bunch of people bought at peak market, basically. People that are putting their life savings on the line, taking out loans to buy this yellow taxi medallion in New York.

And then Uber picks up and the price of them plummets. But all those people are locked into the loan that they took out to buy the medallion. Yeah, just a crazy, crazy.

We need a limit. And who will hand out the medallions?

which is tomorrow so we're filming this we're filming this on March 5th a Wednesday and it should be coming out on the Thursday right after this and already in the past three days there's been like daily updates and changes

I'm kind of a big fan of how you just have a 30% success ratio on loading the clip. I open a Twitch clip and it loads sometimes and doesn't.

So leading up to this point, there was the threats of tariffs, like incoming, Trump gets into office, passes a 20, or through executive order, imposes 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico. And then, almost immediately... Paused these tariffs in exchange for the fentanyl czar in Canada and basically more control and effort of like the borders from like the Canadian and the Mexican side.

Yeah, I think in the same vein, we did a test recording before this episode last week, and we talked a bit about, I think that feeling or that anti-AI sentiment maybe among our audiences collectively or maybe young people in general being so negative, I think has valid points at its base.

I think also what hurts is a lot of people at the forefront of like the face of people who are like fans of this stuff is often like the people who, uh, like I brought up the tweet that was that guy who was really excited about fully AI movies. And we'll be watching fully. It's like, that's not really why I consume art. It's defeating the purpose. Finally, we're offloading art.

for so long there's a really good there's a really good Stavros clip the comedian of him being interviewed I think by like Theo Vaughn and he's talking about like isn't this fucked like it's like we're like this like the AI is like taking all the art and like we're working in the Amazon warehouses this doesn't make any sense this isn't what we wanted

Um, and I think when these things get talked about, uh, cause like the positive outlooks for me, like when I read through, for example, you sent an article from a while back or a sub stack of, uh, the very, uh, very, very good piece of that, all the potential benefits of AI. And the first section was all about health and the way it could help, uh,

help diagnose and, uh, deal with like modern health issues. And I was like, that is exciting. That is awesome. And I think that's the, like, when you talk about these things, uh, being like sensitive to those concerns or like, maybe not, I don't even think sensitive is the right word is like being ready to like answer those concerns with like good positive answers. I don't know.

Those things are important because I feel like the sentiment is so overwhelmingly negative. Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I wrote, I actually wrote this down, is like, I think that people get really caught up in the short-term cost of situations like this, because it's very visceral, it's very, it's happening in front of you. It's hard not to if it's your job or it's your family. Exactly, and I'm not saying that people, I can't look, it's like, I'm fucking, I'm a podcaster.

And I can't look at the guy, the guy who worked at the, I think I was listening to a story on the daily about manufacturing in America. And this guy who had worked at a lock company, like a lock manufacturing company. And after decades of working there, he loved his job. He lost it because they off, uh, they offloaded all the manufacturing, like, or outsourced it to another country.

And he lost his job. And it was a huge part of his identity that was lost. He lost his income. And Aiden was standing outside of the factory and said, well, And I think when talking about these things, something that I think about a lot is like overall in order for society, like a small scale example of this is in business.

That's what he's asking for at least.

I remember hearing an anecdote about how a lot of like tech, early tech companies and tech would be worried about their products cannibalizing each other. And Steve jobs, like notably said when I think the iPhone came out that he had no, like he had no fear of this. Like in order to progress the products in the company forward, you cannot be afraid of like cannibalization basically.

And then he paused for 30 days. And I think something that I didn't quite understand is like when this happened, I thought like he, at least from the Trump administration's perspective, had like met goals that they had in place. And then during that 30 day time period, he said they wanted to see whether or not a final economic deal with Canada can be structured. That's what Trump said.

And I think at like a society level, the idea that like you can't replace old jobs, like, Oh, what? Well, you've got to keep the horses and buggies. Okay.

Well, he's starting to spoil a topic. Oh, you have a topic. From our new show.

Yeah, and that's why there's a CGP Grey video from like a decade ago about this. Not necessarily about AI, but about automation in general, and like why this leap in technology is different from previous times, ultimately.

And I think if that is the case, or that's something that we worry about, I think something I think a lot about is like, well, if it's going to reach that point, and you might disagree with that, is how you change society and legislation and things around society.

jobs to accommodate for that because at a certain stage it's like the the way day-to-day life works and like jobs work if that's going to be the case if the human is going to be like lapped and replaced for what for labor then the the structure of society also needs to start changing

So I think I'm just curious, I'm curious what your response is to him and like also what you, what you think about that.

Leave them to the dogs.

My, I mean, my first, I think I, I definitely agree with like parts of what you're saying. My first response to that, your original, uh, original idea is that like the demand doesn't necessarily exist for more to exist. Right.

So at some point it's like, well, if I can't, if demand does not match this, like shared increase in output that my company has and all the other companies in my industry are also choosing to make moves, uh, that are similar and increase their like productivity, uh, well, eventually I do have to let people go.

And he doesn't flake that much. Interesting that he said that.

I guess maybe, maybe the direction, the direction that you're thinking in is, is, I could still be small-scale, John. You know what I'm saying? In the past, changes in technology or tools or automation free up the time of the human that couldn't do that job before so they could move on and do something else.

So there was a goal apparently during this time period that out of the initial concessions that he thought he got from Canada and Mexico or that they did get from Canada and Mexico, which I'll talk about in one sec, that a further deal needed to be made, which I didn't quite understand in the sense that I don't know what that ideal trade agreement was.

But in this case, if the AI goes far enough or the AI is good enough, whatever task or job that the human could move on to next... The AI would just also be able to do. And that is maybe what's different is the chain you get stuck in, it's like there's no new ship to jump to anymore because the AI can also always do that thing. And obviously there will always be exceptions

I truly believe there will always be exceptions to the rule in that we have, I think there's an underlying desire to connect with people. There's still that, but that's what I'm worried about as well. There's this point you get stuck at.

That part, I mean, that part I agree with, that those are the parts that we want to emphasize and not let go of. I think the issue that I can think of is like a lot of new technology, policy and the way society works does not catch up very quickly with the realities or the pace of technology. So what I get worried about, in the US, something that I can think of,

looks like for him, especially because in the previous administration, Trump had renegotiated aspects of NAFTA, like a large portion of NAFTA as it currently, or sorry, as it formerly was, I guess, was from his decisions in the previous term, as far as I understand.

From our new show, Lemonade Stand, a new podcast where the three of us talk about business, talk about tech, talk about politics. And for those who don't know, I'm Aiden. What do you do? I also, you know, I have a different... I've gotten like six phone calls as soon as we started recording. Don't worry, this is all part of the culture of business. Fake culture of business.

is the cost of the person who loses their job to AI or automation or a factory being moved abroad or anything like that situation is the cost of losing your job in that scenario or the cost of losing your industry on the whole is very dire. Like you could lose your home, you could lose your ability to support your family. The social systems in place to support that person are not very good.

And I think the pace at which the technology is accelerating right now does not leave a very good safety net for the people that are caught in the crossfire.

yeah and we don't have that right now and if and if this happens without any of that other support system coming in it will be very chaos it will be very yeah and a lot of the and i think the incentive structure that is like building ai right now and like building the technology is sort of this uh say capitalist system like even in even in china right like they're they're using private companies to develop in like

Which I think is a lot of like merit to that approach, right? Giving private companies the ability to explore and innovate. And that's like very powerful. I don't think those companies necessarily share the incentive structure that saves the people that are like the externality, basically.

And that's what I get worried about, basically. The net benefit in society, in the most idealistic version of what you're talking about, could be really, really good. But the guy who lost his job to AI along the way, he might have lost his job, gotten a divorce, gotten addicted to fentanyl. And the government has not caught up. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm making it really dramatic.

I'm making it dramatic. But this is true, right? People who have lost their manufacturing jobs in, like, middle America and their life crumbles because, like, that was their identity. They can't get work. People are attached to, like, the places they grow up, and they turn to things like drugs and, like, drug addiction. No, you're absolutely right.

There's a huge spike in, like, I don't know, like... drug addiction, suicide, like all those things, right? These things like compile and affect each other. And that externality of the people affected by this race to create technology is what I worry about. And I don't wanna leave the cure for Alzheimer's at the door that AI could bring, for example, I don't want to leave that behind either.

Prevented by making changes like this. I want there to be a conscious recognition of the costs and positives of both things and do our best to manage them.

Anyway, Canada puts in place this, quote, fentanyl czar, which I had seen people saying that this was part of a plan that Canada already had in place, or people were saying that Canada was only taking actions that it was intent on doing already. which might be the case. My understanding is that this pushed it forward a bit, and they did pick a fentanyl czar.

And I hope so. A smaller version of this that I was thinking of, I watched this video breaking down France's relative economic position in Europe right now. And they have very high productivity, but also low hours worked per week. So their overall economic output seems lower or comparable to a lot of Europe.

But when you look into the problem, it's actually, oh, the French people, because of the rules and the laws they have set up, they actually just work less and they have more time in life for other things. And their society, their populace of workers is very productive and uses that time very effectively. That's an example of what I would want to push towards, right? Right.

And that there was three years of Andrew Yang campaigning. That was his platform, right? I don't disagree with that.

I have a high sense of guilt about canceling to

And then similar from Mexico, I think Mexico actually did more. Something that I didn't know is part of this, Mexico sent 29 drug lords into U.S. custody from Mexican custody in an effort to extradite people in an effort to appease the tariffs being frozen.

I mean, I think I have actually dealt with this. And this was a big thing coming out of COVID that I thought about personally. Because before COVID, I think I was a person that had abundant social energy. I got a lot of joy and energy from going to social events and hanging out with other people and talking to other people.

And I felt like after COVID, I actually am a different person in that regard. I think I developed a sense of... Uh, I don't know if I would use the word anxiety or dread about like going to social events that I had planned, even though whenever I go, whenever I get there, it's always good. Like I've never regretted going to anything that I've like committed to.

Uh, and I really, I spent a lot of time thinking about it because I felt like a different person. I felt like I lost part of me coming out of that. And I want it. I was like, is this part of getting older or is this because I just effectively spent a year and a half at home? Uh, and I, that was a really tough question that I think I really, I still haven't answered like fully.

Uh, I think the, the guilt or like where the desire to like show up comes from or like why I hate canceling is because, uh, I know it's annoying for the other person.

You know, what's funny is like, I don't mind. I don't mind that at all. Yeah. But I find that's, that's like pretty rare. It's like, I know the other person, if I cancel is like probably going to give me shit or like, well, they'll be sad.

Or I think something that I think about a lot is I know that if I cancel on the same like group or person, like a few times in a row, you'll stop getting invited to things. And I don't want to stop being invited. Right. So being a friend and participating like that is saying yes and showing up even when you have that feeling of like not wanting to go.

And then, like I said, whenever you actually get there, it's great. There's been so few, maybe never. I agree with this. When, once you get through the discomfort of like the plan and going that, uh, and I have a bunch of, I have a bunch of other thoughts related to this topic too, but that's the, the main thing is like, I, I,

I think about how it would make the other person feel, and I also think about the social consequences of what saying no often means. And both of those things are just hurt in the long run, right? They hurt your relationships with people.

I thought that was a really good, they put it in a really nice ways that we don't, that culture doesn't place your time spent with friends or time spent as leisure as like a prior or as a priority or as an integral part of your life. But it is like that. That is a meaningful part of part of your life.

It also talks about that, right? The literal meaning of life coming from that.

That's my big issue. That's been the latest, that is the latest, like, update to this story, right?

Dude, I think it's going to be so... I think it already is so bad. Like it has such resounding negative social effects is like outlined through something like this, but just anecdotally, like I think, and I think about like what a transformative and like important part of my life, like those years were like end of high school beginning and like through college.

And even just like learning, like I think I wouldn't have learned very much if I wasn't in classrooms. And then also going out to like parties and meeting people and like making friends and doing stupid shit. Like that is all, I don't know. That's how I learned things about myself. It's how I made mistakes that drastically changed my value system and how I behave.

It's such an integral part of life that is just sacrificed.

His only issue. You've been really pro-Trump. My MAGA hat is coming on soon. Especially in private. Especially in private. When you're away from your platform. We'll get to you later. Okay. But I think that is the frustration from what I can see, right? Because this 30-day freeze runs out, and then the tariffs are just back in place. And Canada and Mexico are like, we did what you wanted.

I don't know if you guys feel this too is like I thought a lot about like bringing this up because I feel a little like I'm going into old man mode complaining about X generation but I think it's not actually the generation below me I think it's a lot of the people like around my age

as well, like, a little older than me, younger, and then definitely the younger generation, too, is, like, talking to people in, like, public spaces feels like pulling teeth. And, like, the level of, like, conversational ability of somebody, like, age 35 and below is so poor. And it's kind of why...

genuinely it's kind of why I think I've always liked talking to, uh, adults and older people like adults when I was a kid. And, but older people in general is because if you go up to any per, I feel like if you go up to any person above the age of 40, they can have a conversation with you. And I think this is also like a cultural... This feels too general, but you've done it more than anyone.

No, I think this is also a cultural thing in that I wonder how COVID and things like this and people's anecdotal experiences play into this. But I found like going to... Compared to the U.S., And also compared to Canada, going to the UK and Australia, the average young person there that you meet is also better at having a conversation with you.

They feel more socially comfortable just interacting with strangers, which is a little...

odd to me like I wonder what it is about like the way people are growing up and like going through their lives now that makes like baseline socializing so difficult it's got to do with practice because everything is like if they're not getting practice and they get more anxiety and it's a snowball yeah and it stacks and like COVID I feel like COVID like makes something like that so much worse and it makes like the like making plans and like showing up to them makes it feel like such an ordeal in a way that it wouldn't be

normally.

The one more thing I was thinking about with this was the... I feel like a big thing that... maybe change more post COVID too is like, and, and something that, that maybe is really pervasive in like American, like work culture is I feel like the fluidity of socializing matters a lot. Like people used to move less. People used to like, just hang out more by default.

Like they, I think they talk about it in the article, like the percentage of Americans that report they have a best friend is like, Oh yeah.

I think people lack a, I think the making plans and like hanging out with people is increasingly a task you have to do versus how it used to be. That's, that's how I feel is like you, I think a lot of people like grew up or were in community spaces where hanging out happens like very naturally. You're not necessarily making a plan.

Right. And then you just do something together. Right. But now making plans turns it into like a task, which I think when like people are so busy with things like work, it's not like an enjoy. You don't enjoy making the plans, so to speak, and you don't enjoy the build up to how you get there and like figuring out the logistics and all of those things. You enjoy actually hanging out.

Why are they back? And then the tariffs, apparently there's an exception. There's a 10% instead of 25% tariff on energy, specifically Canadian energy exports. Yeah. And they exempt the cars too, right? And then today, that was the update today, is that the auto exports or the auto industry gets like a carve out now. And so that's the thing. It changes every morning.

So when like we as people have so many barriers between us to hanging out by default, and then you add the anxiety and the isolation on top of that.

They couldn't escape. They couldn't escape, and now they buy my mugs. Ah, they buy my mugs? Now they buy my mugs. And I can make anything. Oh, gosh, I made a new AI character.

No, I think that's a huge part of it.

I just don't think the Sacklers should have to pay that much. No, I think you're right.

I would like if like for the people listening, I would love people's opinions about like how they've dealt with this and like how they, they feel about this. Cause it's something that is so not just like the cancellations themselves, but this like general topics, like how did COVID like affect you socially? How, how, How do you feel about socializing now?

Something I think about a lot is it wasn't just, I tried to dive back in. I was excited to go to big events and socialize and be out again once you could. And I remember feeling so fatigued in a way that I wasn't before. It was harder. Not just, and like I said, I enjoyed being there, but being there was harder than it was before. And that was a strange feeling to me.

And I don't, I don't know why.

Even that though is like- It's another layer of friction. It's a layer of friction. It's another work item that you need to figure out instead of just hanging out. You know what? The office, working at the office is really nice because conveniently- Working. I work at a company. I work at a company with friends.

The Canadians and the Mexicans seem very frustrated that the goalposts continue to be shifted, much like me in an argument. Yeah. That's kind of the introduction to this topic. That's what's going on with the tariffs. I think it seems crazy inconsistent. I don't fully understand what the goals are.

And the people who are around and come to do stuff at the office, it's like we just hang out and talk and socialize.

And play Mario Kart Wii with my headphones on and don't talk to anybody.

I'll show you my ladder page. I'll show you my ELO. I'm on a hot streak right now. But having those spaces is so important. Like having spaces where you can just be around people to begin with. So the layers of friction don't have to happen between. And I think...

like I'd be curious too, if, if people back this theory up at all, but I feel like a lot of other countries I've been to, even in the modern day of technology, even post COVID, like culturally different places don't seem to deal with this problem as much. And I'm sure things like cost and like, like layer into that. Like, but I don't know. I'm curious about people's.

Yeah.

Maybe that's a good time to bring that up too. I think like everything we talk about, I think a big thing we had talked about on the show is like, I think all three of us like have, like have pretty similar like ideals and values and like our, our good faith and the way we like bring stuff up and like argue about things. And if you guys have thoughts, I like when people engage in that same way.

If you have new information or something relevant to what we talked about and you think it would be good for us to know or your opinion on something, I want to read that. I think a cool thing about this show is that as we dive into stuff, there will definitely be things we miss or get wrong sometimes.

And if you bring stuff up in the comments, or I think we've talked about more structured ways to do that in the future, it'd be nice to re-approach topics or things we talk about here with new information of mine. I don't want to pretend like I'm... As I try to navigate the geopolitics of global trade, pretend like I have it locked down.

I spent two hours on Monday making a podcast episode about cream pies. I know where I stand.

Okay, it's not all about cream pies, but it was like a good 15 minutes. And it's just, we didn't need that.

It's not consistent.

Yeah, so a brief backstory on me. I am a Canadian immigrant to the U.S. I was born in Canada. I grew up in Canada when I was young. I like permanently, I moved around a bunch when I was really young to the U.K., back to Canada, to the U.S., back to Canada. Permanently moved to the U.S. in sixth grade. And I lived in on a border town in northern Washington.

I literally lived on the Canadian border. Growing up, one of my cross-country practices was they would take us to the border, drop us off at the border crossing, and then we had to run back to high school. That was a little experience.

Dude, okay. Just a Canadian child running from the border into America. You know what's funny? When people talk about border security and things like that right now, I always joke about what the Canadian border is actually like growing up because, I'm not kidding, the border in Canada, the border between Canada and the US, where I grew up, it's a ditch about the width of this table.

For those not familiar, I'm also a podcaster where I talk about very similar things to this show. Definitely tune in to that one if you like business.

I would be running back to high school on this side and then five feet away- We're gonna make Canada pay for it.

That's a fun fact. They fall and stumble. Poor balance. You're literally a hop away from jumping into Canada. It's very easy. If you wanted to hop the border, I guess.

That's kind of the circumstance that I grew up in. Also, there's a lot of basic economic ties in that area. A really common thing is if you went to the Costco in our area on Sundays, 80% of the cars in the Costco parking lot would be British Columbia license plates.

People that live in Canada come down to buy goods.

Great.

You get your hot dog, your fentanyl. And then who knows? You go in for the fentanyl. You come out with a TV.

Pitching the cartels, I mean, like, I'm telling you, man, if you kill a few less people, you put some TVs up front, and you give them cheese samples, they'll buy so much more fentanyl. Yeah. You give them fentanyl samples, they'll buy so much more fentanyl.

Just people like passed out on the fucking concrete at Costco. It's like an aisle full of people.

I think that, but yeah, so I, my family's Canadian. Pretty much all of my family lives in Canada, except for, uh, except for my parents and like my brothers.

Uh, and, uh, the, I, I decided to like call a few people. Okay.

So just to get like a general vibe on what's going on, because I think you've talked about this quite a bit. And this is like, I think a somewhat well understood topic is like Canada's kind of also in a bit of an economic crisis in general right now. Yeah, it's not.

Like the dollar. Like I remember growing up, there was a period of time my dad got paid in Canadian dollars because he worked out of Canada, even though we lived in the U.S. So there was a time when the Canadian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar growing up.

For like a year. And then basically on par for a long time. But now it's like, I think it's like 70 cents to the dollar.

And I think the, like the real estate crisis there is pretty out of control. Like how housing is in the biggest cities in Canada is even more relatively unaffordable than it is in like the biggest us cities.

Uh, and there's, there's all these like economic issues in Canada that from loosely talking to my friends prior to this, that they're grappling with, like they're worried about their prospects of a future. And, uh, for, uh, and especially if they like went to college and like have a specialized profession, they're supposed to go into, uh, Working in Canada kind of sucks.

Cause if you could get a job in the U S you could get paid way more.

I didn't know this until really recently.

Canada is trying to deal with this too, apparently. So I read this article that I pulled up and this was focusing on Canadian to U.S. immigration in 2022. And from the previous year, it had more than doubled the amount of Canadians leaving Canada to go to the U.S. in that year. And it seems to be an interesting like split among like age groups and like why people are going.

If you're joining us now, Atrioc has been learning how to use an iPad for maybe the past 15 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Lemonade Stand.

My longest term job with Ludwig. A lot of people don't know this. I literally have a day job. I work at Ludwig's company, Mogul Moves. My old job was that I ran his merch company. Not only for him, it also did the merch for The Yard. It used to do merch for other influencers for a time. But we mostly just focus on Ludwig's clothes now. My job has changed a little bit.

I run Ludwig's like whole company now, but I am still in charge of the merchandise as well.

The reason that this affects this so directly is like the usually like, you know, if you happen to be listening to this and you happen to be someone who's bought some of our merch over the years, you might notice that it's actually like pretty like high quality stuff like or something impressively custom made for what you'd expect from influencer merch. which is something we're very proud of.

The way things like that work when you want to make like a really custom jacket with specific specifications and not just a blank hoodie that you like print on, which is a lot of what merchandise is, you have to make the specs of the product and then go to a factory and get that product specifically made. A lot of the industry for that type of item exists primarily in China.

China has a very, very developed and specialized manufacturing sector because of all the business they've done over the past decades, right? And a problem is a lot of that type of manufacturing doesn't even exist in the U.S., There isn't a local option you can go to because economically it doesn't really make sense for that type of company to exist.

Like if I wanted to make that type of custom clothing in the U.S., I would need to go to a U.S. factory that might be able to do that and that sort of business for those special types of jackets or hoodies or whatever we want to make. don't exist in the US.

No need for Aiden's little... No, this episode will actually just be a full tutorial on how to use an iPad. You may have seen children use them at Chili's or other restaurants similar.

So we work with factories in China, factories in Portugal, places where that is more like economically viable and that industry does exist that can make that item. So in the short term, like in response to these tariffs, right, the tariffs that already exist on China and the increase that had gone into place prior to this was already affecting our new orders of clothes going into this summer.

And it's actually been tough because the drops we have coming up are also licensed drops with like IP. So you're balancing the fact that you have to split the costs with like the licensor that you're working with. Now the cost of manufacturing the goods is going up because of these tariffs. And then this adds a huge percent to the base cost of those goods that we're making.

I'm locked into those contracts to make with those factories already. I can't back out and like make another decision now. So that is why I am like, this is a very selfish reason to be exasperated. But I think probably something that other business owners in the U.S. are feeling right now is they see this giant list and then be like, oh, this fucks me over.

Oh, yeah.

Can I say the other part of this? Okay, so part of the reason that the factory doesn't exist in the U.S. at all in the first place, right, is that if you opened that factory, the prices would be higher than the Chinese, right? You would have to be, like, the labor cost, the cost of building the factory. We can't even hire kids here. We can't even get the kids involved these days.

And I'll bring that around when we talk about top three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My problem is that not only is this about like, is it kind of impossible to move forward with an idea like that, right? At my scale, I can't even make a decision like that. I can't be the one who opens the factory.

I would rely on people with like more money and more business interests and like opening that factory to begin with. But even if that factory opened, That the prices and costs of like running that factory mean that whatever they produce would be more expensive than what I was getting like from China or Portugal before.

And the prices of what how I have to sell the custom jacket that maybe I do get to make it that factory eventually are way higher than what I would have been able to sell the jacket at. So the hoodie that maybe we get to sell for I'll make an example in my head. A common, like a nice hoodie that we recently made cost around like 80, $85.

The margin to mogul moves at the end of all of that was like a $20 margin ish. And if we wanted to maintain that margin, the price just would have to shift up by like whatever the value of the tariff is on that good, right? And if I went to that American company that's producing it at a higher cost, then I have to sell my consumer a more expensive, more inaccessible hoodie.

They are not benefiting from it either. Less people will be able to buy that product if they want it. And I realized like I run a merchandise company, right? There isn't like nothing. No one's lives are like, okay. No one's like lives are at stake by being able to get the mint mogul moves hoodie that we made or something.

But I'm just making a point of like, there isn't, it's not like this US factory gets built and then we magically get to go back to the costs and the price of the good pre-tariff. It's like that industry just happens to exist in the US now. or like that factory just happens to be in the US. Exactly. And then that's ignoring the point that Brandon said.

They're close to each other. I don't understand.

It's tough to build the steel man right now. It's so expensive to build the steel man.

I was going to say, I'm sure the evaluation is exactly what the market.

Exactly what the market would prescribe.

Even if you want to, the options to choose from are very limited in terms of what you can actually make.

The independent third party on the XAI buyout.

This is probably one of his only reasonable paths to get Twitter to profitability, I imagine.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

I want to know what Hayao Miyazaki thinks about this so badly. Because I feel like the feedback won't be great. Also, we're at a minute. Squeeze something in.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

It's all it takes. If Raytheon could pump out bombs with the studio Ghiblified, then I... Which is not one-to-one with this situation at all. But it is very interesting to hear the scale at which it has grown in that short period of time. Next topic.

To end that part of the discussion, I think it entirely comes down to availability of what we can make and price. I'm not here with this merch business to try and support the Chinese or the Portuguese economy. I wasn't picking it based on that.

It's based off of we had a vision of types of products we wanted to make because it was important for us to make unique, high-quality products for this merchandise company. And if an American company can make that at a price point that we're happy with, yeah, I would switch.

Those aren't even for sale anymore.

But yeah, let's get into the buildings. I want to hear more about this.

I would say the way I've been describing it to people is he's specifically critical of basically the Democratic establishment within the U.S. Yes. He's over the past 50 years, how the Democrats in the U.S. and the popular version of the American left, like whatever that has been behind the Democrats, has gotten bogged down in process.

Yeah. I mean, they dug into this a lot in the book. And this cites another book that I've heard from multiple people is very good that I want to read for myself, which is called Homelessness is a Housing Crisis.

I was going to say, Doug, this episode, China, they build homes, they build trains, they have great movies. I no longer want to move to Japan. Yeah, I actually really would like to watch the movie. I watched a few Chinese animated films when I was learning Chinese during COVID for that six-month period, and I really enjoyed the couple things that I watched. So...

And it basically goes over how anything that is a suspected indicator of homelessness, stuff like poverty or drug use, are these predictors of homelessness or mental illness and walks through point by point how all of these things actually don't correlate with homelessness at all. And that homelessness is solely correlated with... Housing prices.

Housing prices and availability and affordability of homes. Yeah. And I think it's funny because, yeah, using a place like... You know, you could use a place like Houston as an example. In a red state, in a red city. I don't know if they have a Democratic governor. Sorry, mayor or not. I don't know Houston. But that, you know...

California has more like social welfare than Texas does, but there are way more homeless people in California or sorry. Yeah.

And that this basis of like housing availability is the major factor at play of whether or not people wind up in the streets or not. There are other factors that are like tied into it that make it more difficult to say like get off the street once you're there, right?

It's not that these other things are not factors involved in some capacity, but people need to be in houses first and you need to enforce policy that makes housing available to all people as much as possible. I liked the analogy that was used in the book a lot, which is that housing is like a game of musical chairs.

And it's like, there might be people who are poor or suffering from mental illness or drug addiction. But if everybody has a chair in the room, they can... Get a seat.

But when you start removing seats, it's the person who is suffering from drug addiction that's most likely to fall through the cracks first. And housing is like the... I mean, this is kind of where the housing is a human right crowd is is so right, in my opinion.

It's like and in the way I think this is a big thing of how Finland basically solved homelessness in the country, which is, you know, very different scale of country. I understand that. But Finland got rid of homelessness because they just gave people they just made sure everybody has a home. And that is the way they handled it, right?

Which is... And I think at the root of making housing widely available is that. Making sure that people can build as much of it as possible.

Which is a great idea because oftentimes with something like the internet, which is basically a utility now, there isn't a profit incentive for a private company to build it on their own out to areas like that because it just simply won't have enough users to be profitable.

And stuff like the postal service. These are the type of things that the government is really good at providing and should provide because without the government providing it, the market would never do it.

Well, I think it, yeah, I think that's part of it is like the expectations for the speed of these things has definitely shifted, right? The idea that these can happen, things can happen in like short periods of time is pretty, it's, you don't expect things to.

I think we have to buy Minecraft tickets. In order to topple the new Chinese movie empire, we have to go see the Minecraft movie. And that brings it... Do we have any more lightning round topics? Oh, yeah.

I think it cites a story about how after there was like a devastating fire under one of the big highways in Pennsylvania, the governor used like basically emergency powers to push through a bunch of the rebuild of the highway that would typically be expected to take like a few years. And didn't it take like- 14 days. Yeah, it took two weeks. It took two weeks. I want to re-emphasize this.

And I think, okay-

And it's not that, like you said, it's not that these things, we are able to build. They don't have good intentions behind them. Like the book spends a lot of time building the context behind like why a lot of these regulations exist at all. It spends a lot of time explaining like the buildup of like the modern environmental movement and how like a lot of places within the U S uh,

were getting basically soiled by the costs of manufacturing and the way we treated water and the way we treated the land, right? And there used to be a lot more pollution in the country. And then we enacted environmental policy that helped push back against that. And I think it's important that the book

to say that the book acknowledges that and isn't writing that off and saying that there isn't value in what those things produce. I think it's more just saying there's a needle to be thread in that it's gone very far the other way where these regulations have inhibited the ability for us to solve problems in the country.

Very basic things that are very, very good things for your population to have access to.

And then everybody is mad.

Actually, this follows the thesis of the last episode. Is that sequels just aren't as good? Not as good. The first one's amazing.

Well, I think the common pushback here, and we actually got a little bit in the comments of the last episode kind of around this topic because we talked about how much Tokyo built and how much Japan built in general in order to keep their housing.

relatively affordable uh at least post post real estate uh and the i think the common like counter arguments here is like or what i'll try to put out there is uh the first thing i saw oh and this is brought up in the book as well is people advocate for uh socialized housing which is or like government provided housing and uh i actually think there's a strong like merit to that argument

But what Ezra says in the book is that's all basically fine and dandy. That would be good, but the regulations that affect the ability to build in the first place apply in either scenario. Whether you want the market and private companies to provide the housing or you want the government to build the housing, they're dealing with the same hurdles that you need to change either way.

And I mean, examples for that is like, you know, there are cities like Vienna, for example, that have huge, like a huge percentage of the housing in the city is publicly owned, like operated by the government. And that's a part of what keeps like housing affordable and rents, rents controlled. And then private housing in the city is forced to compete against that.

So it helps like regulate the market. Right. But, It doesn't matter. It's like you can't even get to that part of the argument with the initial blockers of building there in the first place.

I was an OG fan. I'm only a fan of whatever the A24 of China is.

Could I give the next argument that sort of plays into that as well? Yeah, I think you're right about that. The other thing that I think people bring up a lot, and I think well-meaning people, is they're like, well, why does the housing project or why does the building that's going to happen, why does it have to be these luxury-style condos and expensive places to live?

Why can't they be more affordable? And I think there's two strong arguments against that. which is one, the building needs to happen no matter what. If you allow enough projects, if you okay enough projects, regardless of their scale or who they're meant to be offered or afforded by, if you build enough, that does regulate the market over time.

You want people to just build in the first place and get regulations out of the way of building in the first place for that to exist. But two, a lot of the reason why luxury housing is the only type of thing that can go up is the current regulations force upon like units, like each unit needs to have a certain amount of like parking spaces allotted with it or needs to be built in a certain way.

Things that expand the cost of the development. So they're forced to price at luxury prices or high end prices. So the only buildings that are getting okayed are those luxury condos because that's the only thing that's economically viable to pursue. And that comes with stuff like the parking spaces as an example, the parking requirements.

Yeah, I lived in Berkeley and I commuted every day. Right.

Well, I think there's a good part, another good part of the book. That talks about how in, you know, we talked about this in the last episode, this basic concept of, you know, nimbyism. You advocate for things like vocally and on paper, you want things to like be a certain way.

But it comes down to like approving like new housing or voting against the interest of like the private property you already own in the area. People end up saying no. They vote in like their own economic interests.

And in the book, they bring up the example of someone talking about these like, you know, town hall or like local meetings where like these types of votes occur or where these types of votes get discussed and how the reason of like protecting your home's value never comes up. It is a social faux pas to like ever address it or talk about it in any capacity.

But people talk about it changing the character of the neighborhood. I got a few comments. I got a few comments on the last episode about how it's primarily about crime. And I don't want to... You know what incentivizes crime?

Yes. So I don't want to write off that comment immediately, right? Because I do think there is... I think there are some... I don't want to look at somebody who's complaining about crime and then just write off every concern that they have. I think the problem with that is oftentimes those claims are like... not based in reality.

If you look at statistics around crime around, like how I think you can like, uh, map out like people's concern with crime, like increasing over time over the last few decades, but crime going down the entire time, like a lot of like fear about crime has to do with its presentation through like news and media and statistical likelihood. Uh, but beyond that, uh,

The crime that does exist that people are often talking about is rooted in the cost of living and the people's inaccess to homes and security. That is what a crime is connected and rooted in. And if you allow people to build enough over time, then you start to solve that problem as well. That is also at the root of that problem. Even if you are genuinely a good actor who is like,

worried about that, I guess. It would be my kind of argument to that. It's like, you cannot say no to housing and complain about crime and then also want that in... Basically, in good faith to, like, go away. What crime actually does exist. If that makes sense.

This is a chain. That's why it's a chain of like bad incentives. It's like the politician who primarily needs these like people who attend their meetings and needs their money and needs their votes to like stay in power. So you need to appease them. They want their house to go up in value because the, maybe for their own security or their family, because the

social systems don't exist in place for your kids to just go to school for free and like be guaranteed to like pretty guaranteed in life to succeed in a general sense.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. I know, I know. What's important here is shamed by their peers, right? And this is what I mean about the crime. This is what I mean, kind of what I was saying about the crime thing is I don't want to be immediately dismissive.

Even I know, even though I know if you actually dig into that, it's like not really true or like you're kind of acting against your own interests over time is like, I don't think you want people to say that. And I understand that feeling. The difficulty here is, is most people... I think most people don't really... They don't think about it in that way.

They don't really... They aren't thinking about that chain of incentives or the nuance of the issues because they're just looking at the short-term incentive right in front of them and then acting primarily based on that. Of course. And that's what makes this topic so...

frustrating to tackle and admittedly as a guy who like i i recognize i'm not um setting i'm not fleeing to like a perfect place or something but when i think about the problems in america that bother me the most and how they're going to affect me later on in life if i lose my job or if i get sick or if i have a family i i don't know what it takes in this country to

to make changes around this stuff. And this is actually my main core critique of the whole book is that I do believe that they are stating a better vision of the future, a better vision for the democratic party, a better way to step forward in general. But the disconnect is like, what can we do at like a base, um, base level to like jump to, and start making these changes.

I don't know how to get there. And people who are, like, really left are going to start saying, like, revolution and organize, and people on the right are going to say, like, vote Republican and vote Trump and, like, take steps in that direction. And I don't... It's like, I... The details of how to progress in a good direction are very vague to me and uncomfortable, and I don't have the answers.

That's where I get to when I think about these topics is when you talk about this giant chain of incentives, how do you tackle an issue like that?

I mean, if I could push back a little, they might be doing better on this specific issue. Because I think, like, even when you... Like, if you look at... We could look at something like crime stats. If you look at percentage of, like, violent crime, it's often the poorest, like, red cities. So it's not like... Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

She went to Dubai and she figured it all out.

Well, I appreciated, you know, how consolidated the lightning round was. I felt like that went rather well. But I would like to get into, you keep talking about Liberation Day. I have no idea what this means. It has to do with Trump. Tariffs, which I'm sure can only mean good things.

,,, Getting into a position like that and being someone who's attacking the issues, it's very valued among your peers to be the person to step up and do that. I think that's just something, I don't know, interesting to think about.

He never lets that go. That's what I love about Doug.

2020 is the black one.

I see, I see.

I'd stop listening after. It's funny because we can keep going, but you touched on something that I thought the book, I wish I saw more in the book was talk about taxes because I think taxes do tie pretty deeply in all these things. But we are out of time. But I did want to touch on a few comments from last week, a few corrections for a few. Pretty critical thing, I thought.

A lot of people pointed this out. I mistakenly said that Over the Hedge 2 exists.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I forgot that Over the Hedge did not get a sequel. I made that up. My bad. What kind of journalist integrity did that knock us back below Tucker Carlson?

Tucker would never make that error. And also on the movie correction front. Tucker is really caught up on animated movies.

Of course, over the hedge. Trick Merch didn't know, okay? So one more thing on the movie front. I thought this comment was interesting because we talked a lot about how YOLO was an original movie that came out of China. Someone had a soft correction on this, which is... We mentioned a movie called YOLO that was 14th in the box office last year.

It's an adaptation of a Japanese movie by actress director Gia Ling, who also had the third highest grossing movie in 2021, Global. She's one of the highest grossing female directors of all time after Greta Gertwig. That movie in 2021 was called Hi Mom.

The English title is an incredibly moving semi-autographical movie about a woman who time traveled to become her mother's best friend after her mother died prematurely of an accident. Jieling wrote about it. You're really just advertising China again, huh? Yeah, we're just plugging. Of her own guilt and grief about her mother who also passed away due to an accident.

It made $841 million at the box office and was a smash hit. So I thought that was just an interesting note because I had not heard of this director until you mentioned Yellow.

I agree. And if you want to hear more from CCP propagandist Doug, you can join us on the next week of Lemonade Sins. Wait, real quick.

No, no, no, stop doing that.

I was going to say that.

It looks terrible. Oh, no, no, no. Wait, you think it looks terrible?

I have a beautiful way to solve this. I have a beautiful way to solve this. Give him a code word. If you're one of the good faith Andes in the chat who would like to make a comment, because we do read all the comments, and I think a big part of my enjoyment of making the show has been hearing people's comments. Also, a Discord on the way.

A lot of people have asked about Discord, Patreon, stuff like that. coming in the near future, put the two little carrots at the end of your message. Because it's the blinking cute eyes.

Now it's future. Put the two little carrots. And maybe you could put the underscore between them for the face.

I noticed.

It's just a little secret card to show you watch all the episodes.

You know what you can do? You can like on your phone, you can install the Japanese keyboard and then they have to select. Do they have a set list of like their own like text emojis?

I didn't realize that was being... The guys, like, in Canada selling us, like, soft timber are Vikings. Dude, so I have this fucking image. Raiding our villages.

I think it's a small island chain.

Wait, isn't Svalbard like that Norwegian island where they keep the seeds?

Yes. You know what?

These are like Pacific Island nations with like, you know, tens of thousands of people.

It's actually a short list. There's actually very few problems. Yeah, it all works.

That's the idea? One thing. Well, are they reciprocal? Because you said that this is not only based on tariffs that they have placed on us. This is based on whether or not we have a trade surplus or deficit with them, which is different.

And we're tariffing back all goods from that country in response. Yes, it's a blanket. This is the blanket number that applies to everything that country sends us.

I was full set on adopting a South Korean child until I heard the big news, which I'll tell you guys later in this episode. But I believe we wanted to start with something new where we kind of go through a lightning round of smaller topics, one minute per topic. And Doug has prepared and we wanted to start the episode off with that.

Doesn't that mean it's 45 total now? Yes, it's 54 now.

Yeah. I'll keep it a stack. Yeah, keep it a stack. Because I think... I think something with issues like this is that oftentimes when you talk about something like tariffs as a regular consumer, it's not super clear how it will immediately affect your day-to-day life. I am groaning right now because I run a company that manufactures clothes in China. And like often in China.

And we bring them over from China to the US to sell them. That is how Mogul Merch makes a lot of the clothes that it makes.

54% is crazy, dude. This is bad for what I have to do this year.

no i could be 58 wait no no not 58 that was barely like that was like the first american space mission was 58 no no 58 years oh yeah 58 yeah dude i don't know that we're not the math lodge we're not the math lodge um anyway yeah i listen china there's plenty of firsts out there That's not one of them. Go be first to Venus. Be first into the Marianas Trench. Go touch the bottom.

Wow. I'm guessing. Okay. You are, that is a face you're making at me. Wow. Uh,

I actually would be pretty baller. I'd be more impressed. You go to the moon, I'm going to be like, cool, we did that somewhere between 50 and 60 years ago.

The Chinese yearn for the trench? Okay.

Exactly. Underground.

It's just stupid. I know.

You sure did say some stuff there.

Look at that guy. Look at him. What a good boy. All right. Would you like to get down for a little bit? You probably don't, but I'm going to put you down. He did not. He's still looking at me. Yeah, I mean, Paula Weldon's was kind of weird, but colored contacts are a thing. There was evidence that she could have been picked up by somebody driving.

I don't know. I don't know how to address that. Probably the first time, at least.

You gotta make sure it works. Look, we're doing that with robots, so can we even speak?

Yeah, exactly.

And eventually we'll get you guys music again. Yeah. Well, I have my first meeting of my new band on Tuesday tomorrow. What is the name? We don't have one yet. We were considering that it would be really funny to name it All That You Already Said since the other band that PJ and I were in was All You Had To Say. Who else is in it? It's me, PJ, Mike, and Sam.