A Very Chinese Time… | Ep.055 Lemonade Stand🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand Podcast | Ep. 055: A Very Chinese Time (China Travel Special)

Date: March 25, 2026
Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc (Brandon), DougDoug
Theme: Three North American friends travel through China, sharing firsthand impressions of business, technology, infrastructure, culture, and daily life, with honest, irreverent commentary and plenty of humor.
Setting: Episode is recorded during their ongoing trip, after time in Shanghai and Chengdu, with future stops in Chongqing and Shenzhen planned.

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Episode Overview

“A Very Chinese Time…” captures the Lemonade Stand crew’s on-the-ground exploration and reflection during their trip across several Chinese megacities. The episode intertwines vivid anecdotes, deep dives into China’s rapid development, the nuances of local attitudes toward government, technology, and capitalism, and the trio’s blunt, comedic cultural observations. The tone is upbeat, curious, and self-effacing, with keen attention on what China gets right (and wrong) and how it compares to the U.S.—from trains and EVs to AI, censorship, and street-level life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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1. Daily Life and Travel Stories in China

• Day-by-Day Recap ([02:29])

  • Flew into Shanghai, spent two days exploring, took an overnight train to Chengdu, and plan to continue to Chongqing and Shenzhen.
  • Blending tourist stops with local interviews and spontaneous encounters.
  • “We have been talking to random people on the street, people we've set up interviews with. We've been cruising and smoothing. It's all been quite cool.” — DougDoug [02:57]

• Sleeper Train Adventures ([03:05], [31:09])

  • Befriended a Chinese traveler over tea on the train.
  • Sleeper cabins provided chance meetings; loud snoring was a recurring disturbance.
  • Led to attending a Chengdu food trade show as "VIP foreigners” (see below).

• Strange Encounters ([04:30])

  • Aiden spots a man in a Shanghai candy store with blood-red contact lenses and a Nazi Iron Cross armband, reflecting culture-shock moments.

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2. Tech & Infrastructure: EVs, Trains, and Scale

• Epic Scale of Chinese Cities ([22:14], [24:12])

  • China’s metro areas dwarf U.S. counterparts: “Shanghai metro area has a greater population than Germany...this one city which is a small part of China has 80 million people.” — Atrioc [22:57]
  • Infrastructure such as trains and modern cityscapes described as stunning, functional, and “bigger than anywhere else.”

• Trains: Growth, Convenience and Numbers ([44:01])

  • Fast, efficient, and omnipresent high-speed rail.
  • Historical context: China grew from “33,000 miles of okay, infrastructure track...to now a hundred thousand with 28 [thousand] of high-speed rail” ([45:50]).
  • U.S. comparison: “We have 137 miles of track but zero high speed rail...it’s basically all freight.” — DougDoug [46:56]
  • Barriers to growth in the U.S.: “So much red tape has choked our ability to build things on grand projects” — Atrioc [48:54]

• Electric Vehicles ([06:37])

  • Proliferation far beyond expectations; “it felt like 80% of the cars I’m looking at on the road are EVs.” — Aiden [07:37]
  • Unique licensing incentives; fierce competition among domestic and foreign car brands.
  • Over-the-top in-car technology: “...the inside of every car we’ve got into is just like incredible. The screens everywhere, in places that are unnecessary.” — DougDoug [08:13]

• Infrastructure Quality: "Gets the Job Done" ([42:14])

  • Not always the ‘nicest’ but functional and reliable—“That is the impressive part is they've gotten all the roadblocks out of the way to like get the majority people moving and doing things.” — Atrioc [42:57]

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3. Ubiquity of Tech, Apps, and AI

• Livestreaming & Phone Addiction ([10:53])

  • Extraordinary prevalence of livestreaming (on Doyen/TikTok equivalent) and short-form video.
  • “There is no brain rot difference...the brain rot gap [between Chinese and American TikTok] is not real.” — Atrioc [11:19]

• AI in Daily Life ([12:25])

  • AI-generated videos, including political cartoons, are everywhere, including on state media.
  • General public much less skeptical, even enthusiastic: “There’s a very strong public favor...of AI being a good thing and something that will be positively integrated into whatever the future is like.” — Aiden [13:35]
  • Use of “Open Claw” (AI that can access your computer, emails) as a mainstream, cross-generational trend.

• Super Apps ([15:56])

  • WeChat, Alipay: Essential for personal, professional, and civic life; acts as one-stop shop for transactions, employment, and communication.

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4. Social Trends: Optimism, Stability, Faith in Government

• Adaptability and Change ([14:51])

  • “China has the ability to pivot...the entire country can just turn on a dime and change something.” — DougDoug recounting interview with a 30-year expat [15:56]
  • Recent examples: labor laws, AI adoption, infrastructure.
  • “Everybody's lives are getting better, and so they're used to change, they're embracing change." — DougDoug [15:56]
  • Strong trust in government’s ability to solve problems.

• Contentment and Positivity ([19:48])

  • General sense of optimism and patriotism among Chinese interviewees.
  • “People are extremely positive about China and feel so positively about the future of the country.” — DougDoug [19:48]
  • Less desire to emigrate or even travel abroad compared to Western attitudes.

• Socioeconomic Tensions ([21:11], [71:39])

  • Not glossing over inequality: some young people and rural migrants face tough competition and unemployment.
  • “There’s not a ton of opportunity at that level, and people are trying to make that work.” — Atrioc [21:11]
  • Urban delivery drivers frequently migrate from rural areas for better wages.

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5. Surveillance, Censorship, and Control

• Visible Surveillance ([49:44])

  • Cameras everywhere, especially compared to U.S. or Europe; even called “Skynet.”
  • Citizens generally view it positively, crediting reduced crime and safety.
  • “There's all this accountability for traffic infractions, theft...the fall in a lot of major crime in China and attributes a lot of it to this enforcement mechanism.” — recounting local interview [50:45]
  • Hosts express mixed feelings—appreciate traffic enforcement; wary about possible dystopian aspects.

• Censorship and Expression ([62:42])

  • No overt democracy; heavy self-censorship by users, platforms, and companies.
  • “If you ever start on the nose talking about the political side, then you just get removed and it’s less like dramatic...your content will get deleted.” — DougDoug [62:48]
  • Podcasts and influencers self-police; deleted content is common consequence, not prison.
  • “In China, once you lose your influence on one of these sites, you’ve lost it on everything. And your ability to rebuild your following isn’t really existent.” — Aiden [65:18]
  • Mandatory presence of Communist Party members in companies and universities is rising: “You literally have to...have multiple CCP members...at a high level in your company.” — DougDoug [65:57]

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6. Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics

• Hypercapitalism Observed ([56:16], [59:17])
  • Suggest China is “almost a hyper capitalist country that is kind of just beating America at its own game.” — Atrioc [56:17]
  • Massive private enterprise and competition, especially in tech and consumer sectors.
  • Government takes an active role in setting industry goals (esp. EVs, AI), then allows competition among firms within those boundaries: “The free market or the capitalism part of it is within the industries that they want to see like...succeed.” — Aiden [58:14]
  • Enforcement: Government can “hammer down” corporations or billionaires acting against national interests—contrasts with U.S. “corporate money is so tied into politics.”

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7. Delivery, Convenience, Consumer Experience

• Ubiquitous, Affordable Delivery ([54:11])

  • Scooter drivers and app delivery infrastructure are everywhere—“as you walk into a building...delivery drivers walking in and out of it...in all facets of life.”
  • Brutal competition among delivery app companies keeps prices extremely low. Three full meals, delivered: $12 USD total for the group [54:53].

• Tech-Infused Logistics ([55:38])

  • Hotel deliveries handled by robots using elevators; automation is standard, not a novelty.

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8. Overbuilding, Housing, and Debt Concerns

• Real Estate & Construction ([70:34])
  • Noticing abundance—sometimes excess—of new, sprawling buildings, malls, and infrastructure.
  • Not always at full occupancy: “It does feel like there's such a focus on building and it seems excessive.” — DougDoug [73:09]
  • Concerns about overcapacity, empty malls, and housing prices going down as “the population is shrinking.”
  • Local government debt accumulates due to infrastructure spending; central government’s reported debt understates true extent.

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9. Geopolitics & Western Media Comparison

• Chinese Perceptions of Global Affairs ([82:01])
  • Meeting locals who see China as “the most peaceful country,” with strong skepticism about the U.S., especially Trump.
  • “No country on earth loves peace more than China.” — Recap of train companion’s statement [84:28]
  • Hosts research historic invasions: UK (171!), France (80), U.S. (68), China (12) in last 500 years—underscoring different narratives about aggression.
  • "It's so fascinating to me that in the west we're like, ah, China is so aggressive. And then, you know, to a person here it's like we, we have stuck to ourselves." — DougDoug [89:01]

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10. Memorable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Quote / Conversation | Speaker | | --- | --- | --- | | 06:37 | “I would say particularly in Shanghai, maybe just anecdotally slightly less in Chengdu, but in Shanghai it felt like 80% of the cars I’m looking at on the road are EVs.” | Aiden | | 13:35 | “There's a very strong public favor...of AI being a good thing and something that will be positively integrated into whatever the future is like.” | Aiden | | 14:51 | “China has the ability to pivot...the entire country can just turn on a dime and change something.” (per expat living in China) | DougDoug | | 19:48 | “People are extremely positive about China and feel so positively about the future of the country.” | DougDoug | | 22:57 | “Shanghai metro area has a greater population than Germany...this one city which is a small part of China has 80 million people.” | Atrioc | | 42:57 | “They've gotten all the roadblocks out of the way to like get the majority people moving...It's just that they've got all the stuff you need for a functional modern city that serves a lot of people.” | Atrioc | | 54:53 | “These were three full meals, you know, chicken and rice and vegetables delivered to our hotel by a guy and all of it adds up to 12 total. It was an absurd number.” | Atrioc | | 62:48 | “If you ever start on the nose talking about the political side, then you just get removed and it’s less like dramatic...your content will get deleted.” | DougDoug | | 84:28 | “No country on earth loves peace more than China.” (paraphrased train local) | Local via DougDoug | | 95:30 | “It was genuinely beautiful to me because it made me feel like maybe the development of humanity with our infrastructure and technology, maybe it isn’t just towards an increasingly destructive version of the world...in the middle of one of the biggest cities...it is dead silent. You’re hearing birds chirp all around you and it just felt serene.” | DougDoug |

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Notable Segments with Timestamps

• Train Mishaps and Basketball Antics ([29:49]–[37:45])
  • Losing a passport, catching a later, faster train, and the bizarre incident of Brandon bouncing a basketball in a train station, drawing the ire and confusion of officials and friends alike.
• Consumer Tech Showcase ([06:34]–[11:06])
  • EV showrooms in every mall, next-level car features, and the culture of livestreaming everything.
• AI, Censorship, and Social Media ([12:16]–[16:55], [62:42]–[66:44])
  • AI’s role in daily Chinese life, attitudes toward state control, and candid discussions of what does—and doesn’t—get censored.
• Chinese Food Industry Trade Show ([74:56])
  • The group’s accidental VIP treatment at a Chengdu expo; plans for a rice cracker import scheme; cultural differences in business pitch enthusiasm.

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Episode Tone, Style, and Final Thoughts

• Tone: Inquisitive, relatable, often irreverent, but deeply respectful of genuine differences. Lots of sarcasm, self-mockery, and spontaneous laughter, especially about their own culture shock and missteps.
• Style: Story-driven, hopping between observation, analysis, and bits of improvised comedy and debate.
• Self-Reflection: Hosts frequently compare their observations with U.S. counterparts, often lamenting U.S. infrastructural and political stagnation, or bureaucracy.
• Forward-Looking: The episode closes with reflections on hope for possible change back home, and excitement for the next legs in China's rapidly developing regions.

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For Further Listening

• Bonus Patreon Content: More stories and deeper dives from the remainder of their travels—including Chongqing and Shenzhen—are promised, along with meme roundups from Chinese social media.
• Next Episode Teaser: “We’re going to have another main episode here from China later on in our trip after we’ve seen some of these super high tech cities.”

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Suggested for Listeners Seeking:

• A firsthand, boots-on-the-ground perspective of contemporary China from a Western millennial lens.
• Honest, unscripted cross-cultural comparison of technology, infrastructure, governance, and everyday city life.
• Lively, memorable travel storytelling with smart, comedic banter and poignant takeaways about both China and the U.S.
• Reflections on business, capitalism, and global change seen from inside the world’s fastest-changing society.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Boys, I know we have some stories about how I've struggled with trading in the past, but I have experience now. I believe I'm a little more advanced.

[B]

A lot of people do. You do not. And I mean to be so cool.

[A]

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[B]

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[A]

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[B]

Like you as advanced trader watching. Not the royal you. To be clear, the royal you.

[C]

There's a clause in our contract. Aiden is not allowed within 10ft of the app.

[A]

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[C]

Everything feels more expensive right now.

[B]

That's why this matters.

[C]

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[B]

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[C]

Download TikTok now

[B]

boys.

[C]

We're in China in this episode sponsored by Mita Wongzi. Rice crackers. We are going to get into this later on. A lot of exciting stuff about these

[B]

rice cracker related news.

[C]

A lot of rice crackers.

[A]

Don't tell Vox. They will ask for a cut of that and we'll give them part of

[B]

this bag of rice crackers.

[C]

To be clear, we don't have anything. We just have a bunch of rice crackers.

[B]

We got paid in products crackers. That's a smart deal.

[A]

Yeah. Lillian might ask for a few.

[C]

So we're here and we figured it out. We get China.

[B]

Yeah. I will say we have to get out before it collapses in 15 days which is coming up quick. But we still have time to.

[A]

Some people are split here. They said a few. We asked that one delivery driver, he said 15 15. And then we asked that woman at the SPA, she said 25.

[B]

Right. So there's.

[A]

So it's up in here. There's a window here.

[B]

But everyone agrees with YouTube that China will collapse within the next 30 days.

[A]

I will say when we were on the 300 kilometer hour train, I was shoddy craftsmanship. I was like it's just.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

They stop and smell. The roses was hot.

[C]

They heat the water for you.

[B]

That's what's going to take down this country. Is that every restaurant only Gives you the spicy.

[C]

In the spicy food restaurants, they give

[B]

you hot water when you're eating spicy rabbit. It's like you're. Your tongue gets numb.

[C]

All right, we've been here. Well, this is day five.

[B]

Six. This is day five.

[C]

We. We flew into Shanghai. We spent two full days in Shanghai. We then spent a half day there and took an overnight sleeper train here to Chengdu, which you can see behind us is another one of the major cities. And in what, a day? Tomorrow we're going to Chongqing. We're going to be spending a couple days there where they're going to go to Shenzhen. We're going to be ending the trip there, hopefully getting to look at some factories. We have been talking to random people on the street, people we've set up interviews with. We've been cruising and smoothing. It's all been quite cool. And we're going to tell you all about it and what we've learned.

[A]

Yeah, made a homie on the train, too. We're going to go get dinner with him, too.

[B]

Dinner with our random Chinese train homie who offered us tea and slept next to us.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, he did sleep next to us. We had two sleeper cars. There's four bunks in each, and we took that overnight from Shanghai to Chengdu. And he was our bunk mate. The three of us were in one, and then I think he was.

[C]

Stefan and I were in another on the top bunk. And it was. It was loud.

[A]

We heard the couple in your guys's room was just hacking. Yeah, they were just going to town.

[C]

They were snoring. I mean, to be fair, though, we were pretty far. We were a whole, like two feet above them, so it's not like it was. It lulled me to sleep.

[B]

There's a lot we could talk about. There's a lot of questions we could take.

[C]

Brandon, what's an experience you've had so far that you think is notable? And then tell us about it. Tell why it's interesting.

[B]

We. We have some kind of funny travel stories that we can go into. And there's also some stuff that I've been interested in, seeing boots on the ground. There's some great stuff I want to say, some questionable stuff I want to say. I think there's, like. There's a lot of interesting ways we can take this. I think we can start with a couple of travel stories. I mean, we want to just get. What do you think?

[A]

Okay. Yeah, I think this really solid.

[B]

Aiden, sell it. You just go. Because we're on the train station. You're going to want to say it. And I feel like I'm going to be midpoint on something else. And you're going to take this and you're going to use it against me.

[A]

It's so funny. I'd rather know what I'm going to say. I was going to start with a story that doesn't have to do with you. I thought this was. This is. I'm not representative of the couple country. The. But the strangest thing I've seen.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Is we were in that candy store in Shanghai and somebody in the store walks by. He's a guy with, you know, presumably a Chinese guy with a ponytail and a white. A white jacket on. And I look in his eyes. He has blood red contacts in. So I feel like I'm making eye contact with. With like a vampire from Twilight.

[B]

It was legitimately a Chinese vampire.

[A]

And then. And then as he walks, like I see him, I'm. Because I'm obviously looking at his eyes. And then I look down after he gets past me. He has a Nazi Iron Cross armband. It was on his arm and I. No question about it. The correct color scheme. Like the red outline square armband with the white and the black. Red. The black iron cross in the middle.

[B]

Look at me shocked. Then take out his phone. Google Iron Cross.

[A]

Because I had to double check. Yeah, I had to double check. I was like. Because I didn't want to like, oh, maybe. Maybe I'm just misjudging this.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Most insane thing I've seen so far.

[B]

The only Chinese vampire Nazi outside of that.

[A]

I heard once we get to Shenzhen. It's crazy.

[B]

I was taking over. Okay. I think like five things I want to talk about. One of them is EVs. We could just talk about that.

[C]

I started EVs and then talk about trains because I was looking a little

[B]

bit of the history.

[C]

Okay, we'll start with these. By the way. Like, I. I'm not a car person. And it's. We mentioned this on the Patreon as well. One of the things that we spent half a day doing on day two was driving across towns. We'd go look at the Xiaomi SU7. New car.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

So we went to. This is the equivalent of an America. If you're visiting a new city, Right. You're visiting, I don't know, Minneapolis or something. You'd be like, hey, I heard Chrysler has a new car. We should drive 40 minutes across town and spend three hours in a mall looking at a showroom car. That's Going to be awesome. We have two days here out of

[B]

a. Doug was not sold on the idea, but I think it ended up being awesome.

[C]

Like it is awesome. Just the premise is absurd.

[B]

Yeah, I mean we've talked about this, you know, on my stream and John, you probably heard that China is making great strides in evs and boots on the ground. Fact. It's a fact, dude. Yeah, A couple main things is that when you have an electric vehicle you have a green license plate and if not you have a blue one. We are walking around two these major cities and it is green license plates pretty much as far as the eye can see. We heard from our, our interpreter today that they have a sign entering the city that certain license plates, like if your Number ends in 1 and 6, you can't enter the city today. But if you have a green license plate, that does not apply. So there's like restrictions that prevent ice/ Ice vehicles internal provision.

[A]

We saw this in. Yeah, this was in Chengdu today.

[B]

Yeah. And so like the. They've. They've clearly put like heavy government pressure to get EVs mainly adopted and because of that there is intense. I've talked about before, but seeing it firsthand is crazy. There is intense competition for the EV market in China because everybody is kind of pushing to buying one. So winning that market is huge.

[A]

I would say particularly in Shanghai, like maybe just anecdotally slightly less in Chengdu, but in Shanghai it felt like 80% of the cars I'm looking at on the road are EVs.

[B]

And you mentioned this, but it's like all different brands. You see, you're walking, you rarely see like three of the same brand. It's always like.

[C]

Yeah. And even weirdly it's not a lot of byd, which the story is that they're like the dominant number one. They've seen hardly any. It sounds like they're mostly in international markets now, not in China. So many.

[A]

I think I saw more in Mexico City. I saw more BYD's in Mexico City than I saw in Shanghai. Like 100.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I can say as a not car guy, they're so cool. Like they're beautiful. And the inside of every car we've got into is just like incredible. The screens everywhere, in places that are unnecessary.

[A]

Dude, I will say I agree with Doug. We got into one, we were taking a dede, which is like the Uber equivalent here and it was a van. I forget what brand or model it was, but on the armrests of the passenger seats in the back There were screens built into them to like adjust all the chair settings.

[B]

And I, a knob could have done that.

[C]

I'm like, guys, it's an iPhone. It even has like, I think it's the same os. It's like there's a little iPhone in the armrest so that you can press back on the seat.

[A]

Like we could just. It's okay for some of them to be knobs and dial still. Yeah, that's where.

[B]

Because anyway, every taxi, gigantic screen dash with a screen hollow panel in the front part of the bottom part have

[C]

like panels above like the license plates on the back. Like just so you can have like cool things flashing on the back of your car. Wild.

[B]

Yeah. No shortage of screens in the ev. So. So that's been an interesting thing is like just confirming that, that it is, is. It's as prevalent here as you would expect, if not more so.

[A]

More so.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think I came in with high expectations and yeah, their competition is truly fierce.

[B]

You know, every mall we go to, the first floor, all EV showrooms, all competing with each other. Tesla's in there, but it's just one of many company that I invested in a while ago called Nio, which I thought would be the next big thing is like it's nowhere to be found. Tiniest little showroom I see one time.

[C]

This is their year though. This is their year also. We haven't even been to Chongqing or Shenzhen. Those were.

[B]

Yeah, I mean they're supposed to be like the super luxury high end one.

[C]

But wait, so what surprise is anything surprised you about the car itself? Like seeing. Because we've like went into cars both Uber and in the showroom.

[B]

I think the experience we had of seeing the brand new one was kind of cool because they had honestly the streamers around. It was the interesting thing. Like there's some marketing thing that set up or we don't know if they'd set it up but it seemed like it. There was just streamers, live streaming and just screaming the car specs and going in circles as the car released.

[C]

I can set the context. It's like if you're in a mall in America and there's like a car in one of the like mall, small mall booths and then there's three people around it with a, with her phone

[B]

just like Ford F150 and it's got a hundred horsepower and it's, it's great like that.

[C]

It's like new vehicles coming out tonight. You're going to see the prices. They are coming out tonight and you should go look at these comments happening right now. And they're just like three of them around. We looked online and they have one viewer, 20 viewers. And I want to say like 14 viewers. They're just there, just streaming. It's awesome. And it's like there's no one else, by the way. It's like three streamers around the car, just yelling and then us.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

This is a strange first impression I've had is the number of people that we've run into or seen that are seemingly livestreaming on Doyen, which is like the Chinese version of TikTok.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And basically the same app. And the number of people who are just live streaming something out in public on that app, especially in Shanghai, and presumably doing it to nobody, like with very crazy viewers.

[B]

Really. This really cooked my noodle. We were out in the rain on a bridge and I saw a guy livestreaming with a not moving chat, telling the weather. He was like explaining the weather to his chat. Like one person would pop in and ask a question like, do you think it's a good time to go out? And he's like, no, it's raining. It was crazy. I was like, why are you standing out in the rain to deliver this message? Yeah. Oh, I think it's a good misconception to clear up because people have this about whether or not Chinese TikTok is educational versus the American Brainrot one. I want to get you 100% clear answer. It is as brain rotted as anything you've ever. It is just as much. There is no brain rot difference. The brain rot gap is not real. And everyone is using their phones the same as mine. Like that. That is a universal. Whatever you think about kids on their phones, adults on their phone in America, it's the same here, I would say. And people are scrolling short form video that has taken over the world. There is no great firewall difference.

[C]

In short, I've been seeing some inspirational videos about pandas, like losing objects and getting them back, all crafted by generation.

[B]

Actually, it may be here. I'll say that because we have a lot of good things about China. I'll say it may be a little bit more brain rotted because of the true prevalence of AI video. It is every third video on Weibo. And again, I'm not. I'm not as deep in. I probably haven't missed Doyen stuff, but every third video is generated. And when I was on the train, even they had, you know, state media on their AI videos. Like, it's just not A thing that they. It's not a bad or not considered a bad thing.

[A]

I think it's really odd to see the. For those who have browsed on something like YouTube shorts, and you've seen these AI animations where you watch, like, a tiny anthropomorphic cat get lost and get adopted by new anthropomorphic cat parents. As the background music goes, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Like, that style of weird AI animation is everywhere. Yeah, I see it. It's so prevalent on, like, screens on trips.

[B]

Imagine that. But it's an eagle and it's representing America. It's from Chinese state media, and it's discussing what's going on in Iran.

[A]

Dude.

[B]

Like, there's some crazy stuff.

[C]

Can't wait till we get there. It's probably like six months.

[B]

I mean, Trump does tweet AI video. You know, I'll just say this is true. That's true. But the White House has traded some fucking Halo music over.

[A]

But we have talked to a few people, and the AI skepticism that I think is so prevalent in the US is just not here in the same way. There's a very strong public favor from the people we've asked and from what they think of what other people think of AI being a good thing and something that will be positively integrated into whatever the future is like. It will be something that helps, not hurts. And it's interesting to see the disparity in the opinions between back home and here.

[C]

Yeah, let me follow up on that because. So we spoke with this person who works with Chinese universities and basically helps American students study abroad in China and does these parent programs at the universities. Asked us to keep the actual program and name anonymous, but had a really interesting conversation. He's lived here for 30 years, has seen a ton of different stuff up close. He is American, but has been deeply integrated in many different places of China.

[A]

And he speaks fluently in Mandarin, like. And he's. Yeah, he's literally. He's lived here for a very long.

[B]

You told a very story, funny story about how I've been here 30 years. Every time I speak Chinese, someone goes, wow, your Chinese is so nice.

[C]

I get that in la with English.

[B]

With English.

[C]

So. So amongst many things that we've sort of, like, thematically seen over this trip, one of the things I've been most impressed with that he said, and I feel like I'm seeing it more, is that China has the ability to pivot, and they've shown how quickly they can pivot as a country. Over and over and over, over many decades. And he's seen that over the last 30 years. So he listed labor laws as this example where famously, labor laws were extraordinarily bad in China, and then there was just this massive overhaul, and now there's actually a lot of workers rights. And he said, like, in the university, like, it is hard to fire somebody. It is, it is. You know, you have to guarantee certain pay and all these different things that you don't associate with China because the stereotype is, oh, horrible working conditions and blah, blah, blah. And basically said, this is one of many examples we've seen where as problems start to arise, the entire country can just turn on a dime and change something. So with AI specifically, he said, everybody's used to change. Like, the actual physical country has been changing for decades at this insane pace. Everybody's lives are getting better, and so they're used to change, they're embracing change. They feel like they keep seeing the positives in their life as.

[A]

As.

[C]

I mean, literally now, I'd say in many respects, somebody's life in China seems more modernized and convenient than ours, right? Yeah, by a wide margin. In number of respects, I'd say, yeah, Obviously not in all of them. And so then he said, yeah, with AI, he's like, people are just willing and excited, and they're like, yeah, this is part of change. This is new technology. And on top of that, because everybody uses these super apps like WeChat and Alipay that does everything you do, you know, order food, you order cars, you do personal chatting, you. That's also how you communicate with your job. Everything is through these apps. So as they're introducing AI, it just goes right into the apps you already have. And so that was so interesting. Like, we have this weird kind of, like, separation with the giant companies that everybody's building this resentment. The approval rating for AI right now is like, it's like, near the Democrats. Like, it's so low in America, and then here, everybody's cool with it.

[B]

Yeah. So I wanted to add two stories to this. One that confirms it and one that sort of steel man's against it. So I did a little research. So the first thing about AI adoption being across all demographics and ages here is that if you guys have heard about OpenClaw in America or in the west, it's like, maybe you could explain it better than I am, but it's like it was created in Europe, actually, and it's a thing you can give access to your PC that allows AI to read all your root files and all your messages and all your emails. And you can use it to optimize your life and tell it to be like, hey, sort my emails, organize my emails. Or it has control of your whole PC to do stuff and you can just like, it's like a more access version of Claw.

[C]

Yeah. If you trust an AI to just do literally anything with your emails and your accounts and your computer, then hook it up.

[B]

Well, great. This is a security flaw. But that's what I'm saying is so here Open Claw has become a bit of a phenomenon. It's become like a real cultural trend. There's many, many articles about how it's kind of, they're calling it a nation of raising lobsters because it's the claw. And so in some local provinces, people are getting paid to help set it up to like go out and help people who are older are going out and getting their laptops to add Open Claw to it. It's becoming pretty, pretty big. And there are messages from what you said, like official Chinese government messages are saying, hey, do this to be sure for security because there's a lot of security flaws in it. But, but there's like this rate. I think there's like a general race from people of all ages to be like, I want to make sure that I'm ahead or understand AI as a concept. And this is like a, this is an example of that. And then a little bit of a steel man against it though is like, you know, I did find articles from Chinese sources and comments that I got translated which were like from white collar workers. Similar to what's going on America, where people are, are worried about it. There is like a worry that is,

[C]

I mean, I talked to what it's like two or three people now in China

[B]

now.

[C]

Thanks to our incredibly wonderful interpreter Stefik, we've been able to have, I think great conversations with people. We're not just walking around pointing at tourist stuff. So we've been trying to really talk in depth with folks. I think that, yes, obvious caveat to this entire episode. Yes.

[A]

The difference that you kind of see themed across all of the conversations we're having is there is a way stronger faith in the government here to tackle problems.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Like if something new comes up or a problem is on the way, I'm not super stressed about the problem because there is going to be a solution. The confidence that it's going to be taken care of. We're going to adapt and like overcome or find the best way to integrate that new thing into life here. And that I feel like that theme exists through everything we've talked to or about with everyone. Like, it's super.

[C]

People are extremely positive about China and feel so positively about the future of the country. And if you've seen for decades your country and lifestyle get better and you've seen the government, obviously, with many missteps, generally keep hitting and it keeps going better, it's like, of course you're going to feel optimistic. And of course change is going to be like, well, we will adapt to the change. Like, I'm just, I'm so impressed by that culture, given how much we don't want change in America, because it will hurt the character of the neighborhood.

[A]

I was thinking about the different, the different people we've talked to and how they all mention, wow, the country or the place that I'm from has changed so much in the last 20 years. It's remarkable how much has changed. And I feel really confident and good about China's future. And also that I don't really feel pressed to leave or explore places outside of China like that. It's like, not that they wouldn't travel outside of China, like, for fun, but it's not like, oh, I need to go see and experience other parts of the world. It's like, I'll go see other parts of our amazing country. And I feel like that's come up, I think, two different times at that. I thought that was interesting.

[B]

Yeah. I don't want to be the guy that's only doing the other side, but I just want to say, like, you know, there was some, like, the guy, the delivery driver we talked to where he mentioned he had to move from his area because there was no job. I, I think that there's some similar things to what people are feeling in, like, early graduates, white collar jobs, young people that are. Felt like there's a very similar vibe of, like, it's very competitive right now. There's not a ton of opportunity at that level, and people are trying to make that work. I think in general, like, the things I'm seeing that I wish America would kind of learn from is like the broad structural stuff, which is like, what tax money is spent on with regards to infrastructure and trains and everything. Like, there's a clear advantage in this that I, I did notice. I think I. The thing I've been most struck by that I, I didn't think would be a thing here is the scale of everything. It really does feel bigger. Everything does feel bigger. I've been calling it the Texas of the world in that everything feels bigger in China.

[C]

It's. It's just try. It's the China of the world.

[B]

You don't have to.

[C]

It doesn't.

[B]

Everything's bigger in Texas. I'm just thinking that's the thing. And you know, we were in the world.

[C]

Hold on. It's not even a good analogy. In Texas things are 1.5 times bigger. Here is 100 times bigger.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

This is not the Chengdu skyline, by the way. This is a hundredth of it. Right. Like every one of these cities is at a scale that makes ours looks like ants.

[B]

Not I remember seeing not even the cities, bro. Like, what's crazy is you're driving in between on the train in between the cities and you're in the less dense population and you're still seeing tall skies,

[C]

so many tall Los Angeles to Sacramento and there's nothing there. And then you get from this medium sized city to a medium sized city and here there's condos like this everywhere the whole time. Yeah, the whole. Baffled by the scale of it. Like truly, it's just like unbelievable in the sense that I cannot believe it is.

[B]

Yeah. We were in the Shanghai area and I think this struck me too is like the Shanghai metro area has a greater population than Germany. Like this one city which is a one small part of China has 80 million people. And so I do, I sort of get a sense of, you know, I would say the thing, if I had to pick one thing that I still prefer is that like there's certain aspects of my job that I clearly couldn't do here. Like I could not make a video criticizing Xi Jinping ten days a week. I gotta do a trouble. I couldn't do it. But I do get when I'm in Shanghai, I got the idea of like when you have this many people, if you can get them all to row and even somewhat the same direction, the ability to move quick is crazy. And that is what I'm getting about China is like if they have to like, I don't know, restrict a few things to make everybody rose. You're just making progress at a scale that is so quick. You're building so much so fast. You know, the amount of concrete they pour in like a year is more than America's poured in the last 20. It's just new energy coming online is like a lot of things that I'm just getting a sense of scale that is like, yeah, now that they're moving in the same direction, it's. It's very hard to imagine they've managed

[A]

to create a system where that's possible. I think that was reiterated by the. The university director we were speaking to was they have managed to do the impossible. In a country that's this big, with this many people, they can get people to make, like, cohesively, get behind goals or ideas, and that's at home in a country that is still large in population. Right. A lot of those things seem so daunting because of how many people are in the US with so many different opinions. They're so polarized. And then this place has literally four times as many people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

And they're able to do it somehow

[C]

not even four times. Not just that, but like, the density, you know, again, it's like, yeah, Shanghai greater area is 80 million people that, you know, that's what the entire West Coast. And then some, you know, and it's all in, like, one area. That's the, you know.

[A]

You know what stuck with me.

[C]

It's unbelievable how you can coordinate. And there's. There's so many examples. You see it everywhere. The cities are incredibly clean. Way cleaner than any American city I've been to. There's no trash on the streets at all. The streets are physically are clean. There's cleaners going by three times a day. There's flowers in the middle of the road. Like, it's quiet. It's beautifully.

[A]

It's.

[C]

It's unbelievable, like, how well coordinated it seems to be. And I don't understand how it's done on this scale.

[A]

Shanghai was like, Tokyo clean. It was crazy.

[C]

Yeah. Which is not the stereotype. Yeah.

[A]

One thing that really, really stuck with me on the scale stuff is our friend on the train, when he said, you guys have such a big country with so few people, I thought that was insane, because from his perspective, it's totally true. Right, Right. The US has the third largest population in the world. I don't know where it stands on, like, population density, but, like, 330 million people is a lot of people for a country. And. But when you think about the scale here of, like, 1.4 billion, it's in a totally different realm. And I was really, really trying to reiterate to my girlfriend, who I've been texting, like, dude, the train stations that we. Not only the train station in Shanghai that we left from, but the train stations that we stopped at along the way and, like, saw from the platform and then the one we got off at Chengdu and the length of that train ride and how we. The Buildings never seem to stop along the way. And the hall of the train station is like the biggest thing you've ever seen with like an almost like indescribable distance of trains and platforms at each one we started and stopped at. It all feels a little surreal in how big it is like this. And it doesn't really exist like this anywhere else. Like, there's other countries in the world that have really good infrastructure and public transportation, but it doesn't exist at this scale. Right. Like, Switzerland's nailed it. But it's tiny and it doesn't look like this by comparison.

[B]

Like, truly tiny.

[A]

I think it gives me hope in a weird way. I think seeing it be done in this way with this many people makes me. It's a model in a way that we can do it too. Like the size factor. Whenever you make a point about, like, infrastructure or things in the US and people argue, like, we have too many people, our country's too big, things are too spread out or whatever. I think this demonstrates that, like, dude, it's possible these things can be built.

[C]

Well, was it ever questionable? That was the question, that it's possible. No, I think, will we. To me, that's always been the bigger one.

[A]

I think people argue a lot of times when you argue with people about public transportation in the U.S. or infrastructure in the U.S. they will tell you that a lot of the things you would want are not possible because of things like, like the amount of. Amount of people we have. Or like. Like politically it's impossible. Or logistically it's impossible, but people make it.

[B]

Yeah, but it's just like there's never been the. The robot has always been political.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's always like. We've never even gotten to the point where it's like, oh, we built it, but there's so many people, we can't. Or we're hitting a mountain and it's not. You know, it's just. It's. We don't even start building.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, I think if you looked at something like the high speed rail network here and thought about, people would be like, oh, the country is just too big to build something like this. It's like we. So. And that is a justification from Los Angeles to Bakersfield, which we went to the train. The train that we went on last night was basically the equivalent of us going from LA to Dallas overnight. That's what we did.

[C]

It was 14 hours.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Technically we transferred because. Brandon, let's tell a story. Is there any. Okay. So we decided to take A sleeper car. Now this is kind of quaint, right? This thing is. Is much slower, much older. It's only 200 kilometers an hour.

[A]

Yuck. Which is for 120 miles an hour.

[C]

For context, our fastest train In America, Brightline, averages 69. 69 miles an hour.

[A]

Dude, it only goes 69.

[C]

Yeah. That's the average that we got. That's our newest and best men weren't

[B]

meant to go faster than 69. Okay, 69 is where you top out at safe speed.

[A]

Yeah. Gives you time to think.

[B]

Gives you time to think and look at that scenery and enjoy life.

[C]

So we decided to take the slow one, the 200 kilometer an hour, because that way we could do a sleeper car, we all get in beds, and we could do it overnight. And it'll be 14 hours instead of 10 if we had done the faster one. And. And then we get to the station at 6:30.

[B]

Okay. So, yeah, we pulled up to the largest train station I've ever seen in my goddamn life. We go through the security. We have to show your passport. And I do show it. And then I get through and between walking from one end to the other. We had the last train car. We were the very end of the thing. Somewhere in that. In that gap, I lost my passport. And so we're trying to board the train and everyone is through the security and I am not, and I can't find it. And so I sprint full speed back through the largest train station I've ever been through in my life. Sweating through my shirt with our interpreter. I get to the front. I ask them for my passport. They don't understand a word. The interpreter is not caught up to me yet. So it's just me. Nobody understands what I'm saying. I can't get my passport. I'm freaking out. She finally catches up. We talk to people. They say there's a lost and found, but it's outside of the train station in a basement. And like, if you leave, you can't get back in without your passport. So I'm freaking out. We do go out there. We go to the basement. They're like.

[A]

And it's a run because the station is so big. So to get outside of it, all the way out, out around and then down.

[B]

Sweating, just swe and running. And there's a lot of people there. And so we get there and they're like. Anyway, they. They found it. Lost and found. Has it in a different area. Someone returned it, thank God, but we already missed our train. So we get back to our spot and you know, I think we're cooked. I mean, I'm very happy that we found it because otherwise it's, you know, it's go find another passport, go to

[C]

the embassy so bad.

[B]

It would have ruined the trip.

[C]

You need your passport for everything here. For everything. Getting on a train, going to a hotel, fucking going to a spa, you need it for everything.

[B]

It would have been quite a disaster. But thankfully they have it, so we get it and I think we're probably good. We're gonna get a flight or have to do something else. They go, okay, you can get on the faster 300 kilometer an hour super train, speed past your other train and catch up to your original tickets on the first ride, which is crazy. And also they suggested it. And so we go. Yeah, so we get on a later train. Between. Between. We should tell the story because, funny, I've been carrying around a basketball. All right, you can talk about whether this is a good thing or a bad thing in a whole different podcast. They'll have a separate Patreon.

[A]

Hey, hey, Think about this at home while you're listening to this. See, you're in a trip with some of your best friends and one of them, you have a small group, one of them goes to a store, he buys a basketball at the beginning of the trip and begins to carry around and bounce said basketball everywhere you go for the rest of the trip. How would you feel about that?

[B]

You guys are being soaked.

[A]

If, dude, you're a terrorist.

[B]

If you are in Boston, you just live in Boston and a Chinese guy's dribbling a basketball. You don't go, oh my God, this, this guy. What a crazy tourist with his basketball.

[A]

It's.

[B]

Nobody cared.

[C]

We were every thousand year old temple.

[A]

Think about this.

[C]

And you were bouncing a basketball.

[B]

I was balling. First of all, let's be clear. It'd be like bouncing a basketball. I had handles like nobody's business.

[A]

Imagine. No, imagine if we went back to Boston and in Boston there's no, there's no Asian people. And then the first Chinese guy that's showed up in you that in like a couple weeks rolls up and he's dribbling the basketball. It's not about. It's like we were not the first

[B]

white guys in Shanghai.

[A]

No, that's not my point. That's not my point. It's not my point.

[B]

Work for future.

[A]

You obvious. You already. You obviously stand out already. You represent something. It's like you're clearly a foreigner, so.

[B]

And so literally every Chinese person talked about me. Has made conversation about basketball. Some guy talked to me about Kobe today.

[A]

Maybe it's fine. I think maybe it's fine.

[C]

Do you mean the basketball court?

[A]

Did you tell him what's.

[C]

What's.

[A]

What's Chinese? What's Chinese? Google again. Baidu. Baidu. I wonder what happens if you type in Kobe, Colorado.

[B]

I did not tell him to look up Kobe's history, but he did tell me he likes Kobe Bryant. Anyway, so here's where the basketball comes into play. Other than them not happy with it. We are waiting for our second train. And by the way, I do feel like shit because I miss my passport and we have people had to wait on me and I just felt bad. So I walk away from the group into an open area and I'm just dribbling my basketball in the middle of the station.

[A]

Open area in the middle of the station.

[C]

There are thousands of people around.

[B]

Literally nobody else is caring or looking. But you guys are buttoned up and freaking out. But okay, I'm drilling a basketball.

[C]

No one else is carrying except the fucking military official.

[B]

This is where it gets weird. Okay, so a guy strolls up in an outfit that even our interpreter has not seen. This is not a normal station outfit. He is wearing like a military colonel's hat. Like he looks like he's part of the CGP military.

[A]

And he's also tall.

[B]

He's like six five, an extremely stern face. Like a naturally resting stern face. He walks up to me like confidently and points at turns out not basketball, but it looks like he's pointing right at my basketball. And then he points over to the area and then he turns into the crowd like over far from me but in the stage. And he points at Aiden. And Aiden's face is the funniest face I've ever seen. Aiden goes a pure look of horror, number one. And I don't know this guy.

[A]

I've never met you that. I did not do that.

[B]

He was trying to sell me out, throw me out the bus, bro.

[A]

He's like, think about this, think about this. Your. Your white friend in the middle of this train station in the middle of China is bouncing a basketball. And the scariest looking man you've ever seen walks up to him, motions and then, and then from across the room, locks eyes with me, points at me and then points away like, come with me. And I, in that moment I, I am thinking, oh, Brandon's basketball has just sent me to prison,

[B]

By the way. I'm also, I'm also kind of freaking out because this guy's I swear to God, this guy's face is not. I smile at him like, hey, what's up? Stern, like, does not smile back.

[C]

Did you mention Kobe? Did you know Kobe Bryant?

[B]

He is so.

[A]

I was so mad. I was maybe some of the most mad I've ever been.

[B]

I look over at Aiden and I'm trying to tell him to get our interpreter, but he is, like, trying to run away from me, pretend he never heard me.

[A]

No.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

This is. This is why it was such a disaster, is because Stefik wasn't around.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Stefik, Perry and Doug are off. We were all part of the terminal,

[C]

so we each individually came back and then were motioned by this guy from across the entire train station.

[A]

And he.

[B]

I'm like, kid Stefik. And I don't know. Then I'm getting pulled over by this guy and he, he, you know, he pulls me away from everyone else to a passport reader and he like, points at it. And again, I think. And it's like next to a gate leading off into nowhere. I think I'm being pulled away. It does feel like that. And then I realize what's going on, which is just that he's trying to help us get on our train. And he's just doing a nice thing. Yeah.

[C]

He just wants us to in advance scan our passport because he knows it's going to be a little slower for us. And we just get it done. It was great.

[B]

Yeah, it was actually.

[C]

It was.

[B]

It was actually very nice of him. But. So we get scanned and one by. But, you know, every single person in our group has to individually be kind of freaked out because they keep coming

[C]

in because it's one at a time. And then at least two of us are looking concerned near this tall military guy.

[B]

This is not a normal thing because I also looked at the face places

[A]

of bouncing a basketball in the middle of a train terminal is not a normal thing.

[B]

Regular Chinese people around. No, they were not worried about the basketball. They did think something was going on. Like, they also looked a little bit like, what the hell's happening? So anyway, we did. We did get on our speedy train. We caught up, which I think is just cool. I think it's just incredibly cool.

[A]

It's like a. It's like a moment in a movie. It's like we missed our train. So we just got on the faster one and caught up to it.

[C]

We caught up to it.

[B]

And we caught up to a 200 kilometer train.

[A]

No, with the 300 kilometer train.

[C]

Got there 30 minutes before we had time to kill. That's why you were bouncing the basketball. Like we were bored waiting for the slow ass train to catch.

[B]

Only their trains were slower. I wouldn't be bouncing the basketball.

[C]

Support for this show comes from Tastytrade.

[B]

Guys, I'm getting real tired of you not knowing serious financial terms on this show. Okay? Steve Eisman comes on and we can't even explain ourselves in the complicated financial ways we seem like chumps.

[C]

Is Bitcoin a money?

[B]

This is the problem, Aiden. So I came up with a quiz to test you on your financial knowledge. Tell me if these are real or fake. Okay.

[C]

These are financial terms?

[B]

Yes. The Lady Macbeth strategy.

[C]

Is that real or fake? That's a chess opening. That's not real.

[A]

That's real. For sure.

[B]

It's real.

[A]

Really?

[B]

It's real.

[A]

Yes. Everyone knows that.

[B]

What about the. What about momentum canceling?

[A]

Momentum cancel. That's from Melee.

[C]

Fake. Fake.

[B]

Yeah, it's from Mailer. All right, what about. What about. What about a broken wing butterfly?

[C]

That's got to be. It's too weird to be made up.

[A]

That doesn't make. Feel like it's real. Feels like it's real.

[C]

Fair point. That's a fair point.

[B]

Okay, it is real. So you guys are getting some of these, right?

[C]

What does it mean?

[B]

Let's not focus too much on the details. You know, could explain it really well. Probably like Tasty Trade because they have an actual jargon library that breaks down these terms help you understand so you can trade with understanding.

[C]

Wow. Are you saying I could go to tastytrade.com lemonade today and that tastytrade Inc. Is a registered broker dealer?

[B]

That's exactly what I'm saying. You finally got it.

[C]

Okay, I'm picking up on it.

[A]

And it's a member of finra. Nfa. Nsipc.

[C]

Well, hold on, hold on.

[A]

Is it?

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Okay, man. Thank you, Tasty Trade for supporting the show.

[B]

Guys, I've been waiting for a call every day here from Xi Jinping and he hasn't done it yet. And I think part of it is that when I see a number I don't recognize, I hang up. I don't. I'm scared of picking it up. But if I had a program that would allow me to take all of my spam calls and filter them with AI to know who was calling me and for what reason, that would actually be pretty helpful.

[A]

Sorry, I've just been scrolling through all of my messages and emails across all these different apps on my phone right now.

[B]

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[C]

And no leader of a country. Don't let them slip away.

[B]

We won't.

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Let's get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com lemonade that's. That's quote com lemonade quo. No missed calls, no missed customers, no missed boys. This hotel room. Look at the skyline. Look at this beautiful city we're in. I can't believe we got here. It's. I just didn't think Madrid would look like this. And if you're visiting Madrid or say somewhere else, somewhere in South America to other parts of the Spain, for instance, you might want to learn something like Spanish. And with Babbel there's plenty of options to learn plenty of different languages. One of the best places that you could learn Spanish from. I've heard people have plenty of success with Babbel over competing apps.

[B]

Yeah, it's incredible.

[A]

Well, you speak a little Spanish. I think you could work on it.

[B]

I do need to work on it because of my wife's family, but I have been using Babbel instead of its leading competitor. And I won't say the name, but you may know it from its stupid, stupid mascot.

[A]

If you want to start speaking a new language in three weeks, go to babbel.com lemonade and you'll get up to 60% off your subscription. That's up to 60% off your subscription when you use our link. Join the millions of Babbel learners breaking the language barrier every day and babbel.com lemonade this is Madrid. One thing about the trains and I've noticed a lot of the like buildings and infrastructure here in general is we're on this incredible 300 kilometer train. Catching up to that one, right? And on that train, the inside of it is honestly not super nice. And I don't mean this as a big critique. I think there's a theme across what I'm seeing of the projects or buildings or infrastructure here where they don't like. I'm not on the nicest subway you've ever seen or the nicest high speed rail you've ever seen or the best bus you've ever seen, but they exist and they work and they serve their purpose. And I feel like that is, that is a theme of the, the Buildings and infrastructure specifically.

[B]

That's. I've had that, that thought many times. In fact, even you guys said Shanghai was incredibly clean. I thought Shanghai was a very clean city compared to Los Angeles, for example. But I thought Tokyo is significantly cleaner. But what I got from Shanghai is that like, it has, everything is just functional and works. That's why I did not get the sense of like, it was insane. It was like off the charts on any one metric. It was just that they've, they've got all the stuff you need for a functional modern city that serves a lot of people. And here in Chengdu, I feel the same way. I just think they, they, I don't know. That is the impressive part is they've gotten all the, the roadblocks out of the way to like get the majority people moving and doing things. And things are relatively very clean.

[C]

Consumer electronics or consumer stuff. That's where you're like when you, you know, we went to the Huawei store and saw their Trifold phones. You bought your Huawei earbud things. We're seeing these cars that are just like mind blowing. So it's consumer tech. It is just like consumer tech, robotics. So much farther than we have.

[B]

There's definitely cutting edge on that.

[A]

The difference I would describe is if you've been to a city like, or, I don't know, like Amsterdam or Utrecht or, or like, I don't know, like Zurich or something. I, I feel like the things are, are like nicer, nicer there. And in Chengdu it's like there's still huge intersections, there's still a lot of like traffic. It's not like you're watching this perfectly designed like Dutch city you saw in some YouTube video. But it, it gets, it just, everything just gets the job done. It's so sick.

[B]

Yeah, I would say that that's what I've been impressed with is there's the, yeah. The ability to get the job done for a lot of people.

[C]

Guys want to hear some fun train stats?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah.

[C]

So, you know, we talk all about this high speed rail stuff. So I was looking into how exactly did it grow to this point. Right. So there's like some key. So we talked to this guy on the train again who slept in your guys's car. And then in the morning, Stevie and I were sitting out in like the hallway and he just struck up a conversation. We talked about a bunch of stuff. So he, the, the highway system is like clearly a point of national pride. Right. And he's talking about how he takes it Every week for work that tons of people do. And you take it all the time for trips. Like you just do a day trip. Because one hour on a high speed rail means the equivalent you can go to Los Angeles to San Diego in 40 minutes, in 300 kilometers. You go L. A to San Francisco in two hours, New York City to Miami in 6.5. Right. Like the, the amount of area that you can visit in like an hour is just like massively expanded. And I was like, oh, in California, we've, we're 18 years into our train, we haven't built any yet. You said, ah, that demonstrates incompetence, I think is the word. He said. Yeah, he was just like laughing at us like, oh, you're very incompetent. Okay, so quick history of the Chinese rail. Basically none that was really, you know, coherent or usable or connected through the end of World War II just because civil war, like colonial powers are doing stuff. All these different problems. There were some, but not a ton of. So then Mao comes in, they do a giant build out and they actually get up to 33,000 miles of railway by 1978, which is huge. That's a lot. And I'll give some exact numbers later. But then in the kind of like modern reform era, they keep adding until 1997, they get the 44,000 miles. And then basically from 1997 to 2007 they start doing these nationwide campaigns to speed up all the rail. So they're like going to the existing railway infrastructure and upgrading it. They do speed, speed up campaigns. And so they start getting the trains to go like 100 to 120 miles an hour on their upgraded track. This is like by 2007, right? This is 20 years ago. And then over the past 20 years, right, as the, the great recession hits, they do massive, massive subsidies and start pouring tons of money into national infrastructure. So then it just skyrockets. So in 2007 they're like 48,000 miles and they have 400 miles of dedicated high speed rail. Three years later, they have an additional 9,000 miles of track with 5,000 miles of high speed rail. By 2017 it's 81,000 miles, 17,000 of which are high speed rail. And now 2023, like a late concrete number, over a hundred thousand miles of track with 28,000 miles of high speed rail track, which is more than the entire rest of the world combined. So just to give sense, the last like, you know, 40, 50 years, they went from 33,000 miles of okay, infrastructure track. That's Slow to now a hundred thousand with 28 of high speed rail. US by comparison, we actually have a shitload of railway. I didn't know that. 250,000 miles in 1916. That's just because it was like all over the place and it's actually gone down.

[B]

Pioneers in rail. Back when rail was early.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Basically from 1916 onwards it's just been plummeting. And so now 2023 by comparison again, China has a hundred ,thousand miles of 20, 28,000 of which are high speed rail. We have 137 miles of track but zero high speed rail. And that's basically all freight. That's not like really passenger line. We have Amtrak kind of, which is in America. That's the line you used if you want to get somewhere as a passenger. But even then they're renting the freight line. So it's a bunch of private companies running freight track rather than, you know, what's happening here where the, you know, the Chinese government is managing the whole thing. Numbers by comparison, Japan has 15,000 miles of conventional track, 1800 miles of Shinkansen. So if you just like Japan is so famous for the Shinkansen and the high speed rail and it's 1.8 thousand miles of high speed rail. China has more than 15 times the amount of high speed rail. And that's, you know, that's have been happening over the last 40 years that they've just outbuilt. France has 18,000 miles total with 1700 miles of high speed rail. Spain is doing pretty solid. They have 9,600 miles in 18, a hundred of which is high speed rail. So there were like these periods in Chinese history and it's particularly from 1997 to 2007 they started expanding infrastructure and then since Great Recession they're like we are massively investing in this and they just gone absolutely fucking crazy. So history is nuts. And now it's like a flywheel, right? Like if you have this much of your economy and system that is able to build this with that level of expertise, like it just keeps speeding up, right? Like it gets cheaper. And of course, very notable thing, you don't have to do land acquisition battles, the government, you don't have to deal with local governments, you don't have to do budget flights and fights in legislation. You know, you don't have environmental law review stuff you can just build, you just chop through. Which is the obvious caveat to all of this, which is that there is not like stakeholders around the country who get to like really Talk about it.

[A]

But I think the barriers are different.

[B]

Any one of those things individually, you could argue is a good idea and we did it in America. But when you add them all up, you end up what we have, which is so much red tape has choked our ability to build things on grand projects.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

So clearly there's a problem. I will say, you know, I don't know the specifics on like, my understanding is you do get paid a market rate if you have land that is in the way of a project. Here in China, they just pay you and. But you have to take the payout.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

There is no option. You get paid out. And so like, you know, you can make the argument that somebody lost their grandfather's farm or whatever, but like this is what they do to build gigantic projects that get done on time and they're good at it. And so it's trade offs that people should think about more in America is like, maybe we need some of that or at least to cut back on some of the regulations we put in place on those areas because everybody, anybody can stop, everybody can lawsuit to stop it. And so, yeah, it's interesting. What else? What else? What else have we Direction.

[A]

I think the surveillance is interesting.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

Like how visible it is. And we. Apparently the most obvious it is, is in Beijing. And like we won't even. I mean, we won't even see that. So just being in Shanghai and then even in Chengdu, if you've ever been in a Las Vegas casino, it is honestly very reminiscent of that. There are cameras everywhere, especially inside buildings, but there's a ton outside as well. And aside from the fact that it exists, I think the reactions from people about it. One woman that Stefik talked to noted that like, oh, it's so like, it's literally called Skynet. Literally is so good. It keeps everybody so safe. There's all this accountability for like traffic infractions, theft. A lot of the person at the university we're speaking with noted the fall in a lot of major crime in China and attributes a lot of it to this enforcement mechanism.

[C]

Like, I mean, your fucking American passport was on the ground somewhere in a train station. It was just returned to information.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, think someone just handed it in. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I think that that reaction of people have a confidence in the way that it benefits life here is in juxtaposition of the American view of it being so intrusive and painful.

[B]

Yeah. I'll say my thoughts on it are a little dystopian. That's called Skynet and you see cameras everywhere you go. 100%. I will say the area where it clearly is just a net good. And we should probably adopt at least this area is cameras regarding traffic. So they have cameras on every, you know, intersection, everywhere. And the idea is if you are speeding, if you cross the line and whatever, you get a small ticket every time. And so the way he was talking about it was like, if they have a rule, people will they have to do it. Like there's just.

[A]

It's funny because I actually want to push back against this in the traffic here is insane. Not necessarily in the quantity, but in the way that traffic flows. People don't. I don't really feel like crosswalks are a great right of way here for pedestrians. People just drive ahead and like, don't really look at you. In Chengdu, there's been like a ton of honking. It's interesting to me because all of these things seem to be acknowledged by people we talk to. They recognize that I wouldn't necessarily step out in front of a car with confidence on a crosswalk like you would in many parts of the US but apparently it is such a substantial upgrade in difference from what it used to be. And that is because of the camera infrastructure. So it's funny to be like, oh, it's so good here. When to me, honestly, it's one of

[B]

the worst parts about being for is scooters.

[C]

For scooters, the cars are.

[A]

But that's part of it. That's part of it. The cars and the scooters are absolutely problematic lanes.

[B]

And the scooters literally just ignore the area they should be in. Yeah, the scooters will drive on pedestrian lanes, on sidewalks, they will cut across. They have to have areas that are. Have like literally barriers and walls to stop scooters from being. And it's a snow scooter zone because outsiders that go everywhere. Even Static was telling me there's a path along the river that's designed for runners. You know, it's made for runners pick lane. And now the runners have to like literally almost avoid or go one side of it because scooters just use it because there is so much pressure. We spoke to a scooter driver. You know, they, they get paid on delivery and time is very, very important. And if you have a shortcut, if there's any way you can make, that's what they're going to do. They're going to, they're going to optimize their time. And so, yeah, I think it feels

[C]

like you're playing frogger when you cross the road. It's awesome.

[B]

The scooters are truly insane. And what's weird is though even they, I guess the cameras aren't hitting them or not. I'm not sure how it's worked. But you know, the guy we talked to, he did get a fine up for speeding and he was like, yeah, it's 50 yuan, which is again seven or eight trips. So it's like a significant fine, like in a. But he still has to do it, I think for the pressure of that job. So yeah, I think the scooters are very interesting. I think that's actually one of the things that struck me the most that I hadn't heard about too much or knew about, but didn't recognize how prevalent it is. There is multiple scooters almost everywhere you look at all times in the city. They're always traveling. Every shop you go to has a uniform delivery driver often picking something up, going out, walking around. It's everywhere at all times. The ubiquity of these app delivery services is kind of at a scale that I haven't seen. It's kind of crazy.

[A]

Yeah, the delivery driver stuff. Okay. We were talking about this kind of consistent like flow and class of delivery drivers that kind of underpins everything in the city. Like as you walk into a building, it doesn't matter what type of building it is, there's always delivery drivers walking in out of it, parking, going. There's. They exist in like all facets of life. They're so present in a way that they aren't in the U.S. probably because everybody's in cars. And I think it's, it is more popular here 100% partly because of how cheap it is. So you ordered three meals one of the nights that we were in Shanghai for 1212 US dollars, 12 US dollars total, including delivery.

[B]

These were three full meals, you know, chicken and rice and vegetables delivered to our hotel by a guy. And all of it adds up to 12 total. It was an absurd number. Now we've sort of investigated a bit and I think part of it is that there is a brutal competition going on between the three major delivery companies. And so they are, they are cutting margin to the bone. And that is why we're getting just a truly impossible deal. But it's like the point is like if you lived here, it's all. And you make, you know, anyone white collar job, I guess it would be almost absurd to not do delivery because of how insane they've cut the margin to you can literally get delivery from a million places. Every place has it, and you can get it at absurdly cheap prices. It's like if Movie Pass was for everything.

[C]

It's, you know, the, you know, the scooter drivers can get through traffic a lot faster, right. As cars are backed up in the major cities, they just go right through. Like, pedestrians are just suggestions. Like, it's super fast. And then I, you know, if you're in a hotel, they just deliver it in a robot. They don't even have to. Like, it's. The whole chain is just ridiculously convenient. If you order to a hotel, the delivery driver will go take it to the hotel counter. The concierge, drop it off. They will then put it in a robot that drives into the elevator. It uses Bluetooth to go to your floor and knocks on your door, and you open it up and the robot hands you the food. Dude, this is all for insanely, insanely cheap.

[A]

It's pretty.

[B]

Yeah, it's wild. I will say, here's a debate I want to have. Nothing that I've seen on this trip has dissuaded me from my opinion that China is a not only capitalist country, but almost a hyper capitalist country that is kind of just beating America at its own game. And I want to know if you have things that disagree with that I have seen. I'm reading a literal book called Capitalism right now, and there is no. I mean, people are working jobs for private companies getting paid in money that they're using to buy their own things. There is literally nothing about it other than the government takes taxes and spends on masks.

[A]

You are a sitcom character. You are a sitcom character. You buy your basketball, you dribble it in the middle of the train station, you lose your passport. You're reading a book that I think is the 2x the size of the Bible that is literally says capitalism in giant letters on the front of it and brought it to China. Whether it be intentional or not.

[B]

No, not intentional.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But, yeah, I just, you know, that is. That is what I'm seeing. That, like, the privately owned tech companies are out competing.

[A]

The.

[B]

The tax dollars are spent on just better things. Like, they're just being smarter with their tax dollars. Like, I don't think it's like a. A fundamental economic system difference. I think it is literally an intelligence of how you are allocating your tax dollars difference. I just don't.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, the infrastructure that, like, we talked about, it's not like the craziest thing ever, but it works and it's well done. I think there's a lot of focus on city services. Well you guys went had a different conversation. I just like ran for a long time down the Shanghai river and as it, as I went farther and farther down it became less developed and whatnot. But there's still like all these public servers work service workers cleaning random walkways, clearing this area of bamboo. Like do you know it's just this endless just wide system wide collect. You know I don't know organization of people at this mass scale and there's that and then there's insane capitalism on top of it at a level that is like way beyond ours. Not beyond ours but like is is wild a lot of the time.

[A]

Yeah. I don't feel like it's necessarily changed my opinion or understanding it. I think going into this I. From everything we've read and talked about China before it's like the state is very heavy handed in picking like the winners and losers of overall industries. Like we're going to allocate assets to benefit public infrastructure or to benefit specific types of companies so that things flow in a certain direction. But if you're a part. It's like the, the free, the, the free market or the capitalism part of it is within the industries that they want to see like prolifera succeed. And I, I feel like that's what I'm witnessing.

[B]

Yeah. I said they're not picking winners and losers. They are picking.

[A]

I think they're not picking winners. They're not picking winners and losers within the industries. They're doing everything they can to emphasize start comp successful companies within these spaces and industries and then compete with each other example.

[B]

I think the perfect example is the, is the EVs thing where it's like they're. They're creating laws that emphasize EVs.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know the license plates. That creates a market for it and they're saying whoever figures that out can get rich.

[A]

I mean I think that and then

[B]

there's in just brutal competition for people to try and get the market share in that in the EVs area because they've created this massive yeah.

[A]

My my like week in China synopsis of it is like I'll tell you

[B]

no weed in China.

[A]

That was not what I was going to bring.

[B]

I was going to bring up desperate for weeds since we got here.

[C]

What have I been recently you've been eating beetle nut. I too much of a coward. Look, I'll answer the question you're really asking. I would let the CCP run Los Angeles. I think it'd be better.

[B]

You specifically said you would let Trump end his term now and give it to Xi Jinping for three years at the same time as he's running China. You'd say you'd do it as a side job.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[A]

What's an extra? What's an extra? 300 million people at that point.

[B]

It's a rounding.

[A]

It's a rounding error, bro.

[B]

You had is a suburb.

[C]

We could move them into Shanghai. Have you seen how many buildings there are?

[B]

There are.

[C]

There's a lot of buildings, man. We don't have enough in Los Angeles. That way everybody can keep the character of Los Angeles.

[A]

I think, I think what within the country, the government wields the power to make sure that corporate interests can't overwhelm anything. Which it's like, if anything like, falls out of line in terms of competition, they have the power to be like this. Like, like there's a bunch of billionaires in China. Yeah, China has plenty of billionaires, the

[B]

second most billionaires in the world.

[A]

There's a gigantic wealth gap in China. But anybody who, like, falls out of line or isn't acting in the country's like, best interests, they can kind of come in and hammer that thing down and change it. And I feel like in the US it's not the same. Like in the US Corporate money is so tied into politics that the government's ability to. Government's ability to effectively influence business in a direction for the country's best interests is not there in the same way. And I'm not saying that doesn't come with like, trade offs here or something, but I think that is the difference is like, when you see billionaires in China held accountable by the government in a way that I don't think is really possible in the U.S. i think that's part of the reason that, like, the competition exists in China in the way that it does.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

I mean, there isn't democracy here. That is the, the obvious, clear counterpoint to all this. You know, it's like, I think what I've been surprised by on a broad high level is like, holy shit, this is really well done. And so many people's lives are clearly improved. And you can hear it in the way we talk to people and the pride they have for the country. They explicitly say how much better their life is, how convenient it is here. And it's like, in that context, yeah, of course you're going to feel more receptive to that. And it's also weird to be like, if anybody here doesn't like that, they cannot voice that online. We spoke with not only our interpreter, but also the folks who worked at university, saying how podcasts here we'll talk about current events, but you don't talk about politicians by name. You just sort of like. Yeah, yeah, like Mr. Jin. Like you kind of allude to it because if you ever start on the nose talking about the political side, then you just get removed and it's less like dramatic.

[B]

Yeah. Because I think that was a good thing to clear up.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

It's the idea you're not getting removed as in you're getting tossed in a prison or anything. Right.

[C]

It's much less dramatic.

[B]

Your content will get deleted. If you have a post that is critical, that gets viral, it's deleted.

[A]

Yeah, this was, I think this whole dynamic was really interesting. This was in our conversation with the, the director from the university and he explained how he listens to a lot of podcasts and there's free versions of podcasts and subscribe to versions of podcasts, much like we use Patreon for this show. And in the subscribe versions, people have a comfort with speaking a little more freely about political issues that they don't in the public versions of the show. And it's not that that's not accessible or policeable because at the end of the day, if you keep poking the bear in the subscribable version, it's still. You're still going to be held accountable somehow. But there is a freedom of speaking in those subscribe to podcasts, which it's

[B]

like us, we don't tell you what we really think about Trump till you get our Patreon. We've kept it low key, but when you get to the Patreon, we tell you what we really think.

[A]

I talk about how hot P. Hegseth is on there and I'm not scared.

[C]

It's a total 180.

[B]

It's a 180, bro. But it is a Tucker Carlson biogas.

[A]

We just asked straight, straight up, it was like, what's your thoughts or understanding of people being, you know, thrown in jail or facing consequences for speaking out against the government in China? Like, explain to us how that actually works. And because the government has such an influence or control over social media platforms, which he also added is not direct control. He basically said that the role, the rules of the government are so broad and that there's a lot of incentive for the platforms themselves to police themselves and be really specific in their terms of service and the Way you can use these sites and the things you can talk about and the companies do a lot of the legwork of enforcing more broad rules that the government has put in place. And then if you do overstep the line like say I go fucking crazy across my social media platforms and I'm really critical of the government and they decide to pull the plug. And the thing is I lose my access and my influence across all of these platforms at once. So. So in the US it's like if I get banned on YouTube I might be able to communicate an update to my fans through my big Twitter or Instagram following and people can get an update of like what site to jump to. I can carry on my influence somehow. But in China once you use your influence on one of these sites, you've lost it on everything and your ability to rebuild your following isn't really existent. It's like you just pay the price, you're not going to jail, but you've lost all of your influence.

[B]

Yeah, I would say yeah. The way you describe companies and the way I see it happen with local governments, it's really more that the high level federal government is, is pretty broad on setting large macro goals and being kind of vague. They're not doing a lot of things you hear about happening in China. A lot of things that are done on the enforcement level or people choosing to self censor are done either on the individual level, on the company level or on the local government. Like all that stuff is them trying to adapt to these larger goals.

[C]

Yes, but like we read a book and the university person mentioned that like more and more party representatives have to be in every company. Like that is increasing over the past like decade.

[B]

For sure.

[C]

Yeah, there is more of a sense, I mean you lit, I mean for context you literally have to with a company of any size have multiple like CCP members who are party members who are there to make sure the interests of the party are represented at your company and they're at a high level in your company that is way different than the government's like I'll do whatever you want. Am I crazy? That feels like heavy handed.

[B]

Yeah, I think you're totally right. I mean we similar to what's happening with intel right now in America. But yeah I'd say like are we,

[C]

are we installing like party like Trump Party has to do Is Baron working

[B]

at intel geopolitical goals of America which is to build the certain things within the American border which whether why they're propping them up and forcing them to do like that's, I guess that's true.

[C]

He, dude, he mentioned how before it was like his office was kind of like separate and you know, it was, you know, again, not to cross the line, but don't go too far. But now it's like you're literally in like different administration groups are being like you're in the same building in the same room in the university now and the CCP party member is, is there in the same room. There's just like more and it, and it goes up and down. He said depending on.

[B]

But even the party members, probably someone from the local government, right? Not. Yeah, I think, I think.

[A]

Okay, here's an example I can think of that kind of supports what you're saying. It's actually the, the social credit system that gets talked about. So we've, we've joked and talked about this on this trip a little bit. But basically the way that started is broad requests from the, I guess you call the federal government, the central government came in and I. And this social credit system as it was floated around in the US was an example of more local government trying to take these like broad stroke goals or rules from the central government and employing a policy in one specific place. Was it a specific city? Right. And then trying this sort of like social credit system out where like officials would like note good deeds or bad deeds and like try to build something out of that. But it didn't actually work and it never expanded out of that one place. And that expanded into this news story of the social credit system as we know it in the U.S. but that from, I mean, admittedly stuff I've just like read and watched this is an example of how the central government in China works, is they'll roll out some new goals or things that they want to change in broad terms and then let local government officials approach tackling that problem as they wish.

[B]

I mean, I'll give a specific. It goes back to the open cloth thing. So the big Chinese five Year plan meeting just happened very recently and one of the things they walked away from saying is that one of our big goals for the next five years is to be a world leader in AI. AI is a big goal of the Communist Party for China. And so all the local governments are given that goal and said, you know, figure it out. Help your area of the country be a leader. And so a lot of local government money is going towards funding things that have to do with boosting AI productivity or whatever in the area, which is why many companies or areas are using this open cloth thing, because they can get local government funding to be a leader in that. That's, that's, that's how it trickles down from like broad idea to local government money to actual action. And so, you know, they did that with EVs and that is why EV factories popped up in all different parts of China. And there was huge competition because they said that's a goal. It's a broad goal. Local government figure it out. Local governments give subsidies to EVs or create the, you know, the license plate law. And like the license plate law starts in a city and it works. And so everyone goes, oh, that's a good idea. That's how I.

[A]

It was stressed to us that like these local places that try something become testing grounds for laws that can be applied at scale across like the whole country. I think one of the downsides to that too is you often hear these stories of how much debt China has actually taken on. And it's also a result of, of this system, from my understanding, is like local government officials take on debt in order to build large infrastructure projects that the public still benefits from. Right. But the debt is accumulated in China in a different way where local officials are choosing to spend this money and the debt accumulates at a local level, which is like tracked differently. So the amount of debt that China has is actually much, much larger than China. The central government shares because a lot of the debt is held by like specific areas of the country or like by these local positions or parties.

[B]

Yeah, they have local debt and we have national debt. I will say, like, you know, at the end of the day, it does seem like they got more for their debt. Like they.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And I, there's, there's arguments you can make, and I'm sure you've heard them about overcapacity, overbuilding. I will say that the, you know, having been around here a few days now, not really anything deep, but we talked to the, we talked to the guy whose dad worked in construction. The, you know, the Evergrande thing is there is a reality to that in that construction on some buildings we've seen pass by has frozen and stopped. And there is so much capacity. So if the population is shrinking, there's just so much housing. So housing prices are shrinking. And because the stock market is not a place most Chinese have put their savings, savings, you know, people's retirement savings that are in housing is slowly going down because the price is going down. I think they're unwinding the bubble in a pretty smart way from What I've heard and seen in that, like, they had a real estate bubble. They knew they had to fix it. And they are like slowly deflating it to where it's not causing chaos, but it is happening. There's clearly. And the people we talk to that aren't in the areas that are thriving, which are EVs robotics are crushing, are saying there's fewer jobs. We're seeing that there's like a job slowdown outside of the areas that are crushing.

[A]

Well, the one young kid, the delivery driver, he. He was from a different part of the country. He was from Hunan. And he said the reason he left is he literally cannot find work back home. And even if he could, he said that job would pay a lot less than, like, delivery driver in Shanghai.

[B]

He was like, yeah, me and my five friends just moved to Shanghai.

[A]

Yeah, to look for work.

[B]

So that was, you know, it was

[C]

interesting to be fair. You know, there is. The scale of the buildings and infrastructure is so massive. But I have yet to take binoculars and see if there's people living in these things. You know what I mean?

[B]

I.

[C]

It could all be like, let's. Let's be clear. What I can definitely confirm having seen 0.5% of China is that there's a load of bills.

[B]

Just a.

[C]

Like, just like it's New York City Times, a hundred, whatever. It's not just, oh, it's a little bit. It's. No, it's like bigger than anything you could possibly imagine. And then. And then maybe there's people in it. It could be like this.

[A]

I think it should do.

[C]

There's people in the city. I'm saying, have you proven it? Have you done real investigative journalism? Or you just.

[A]

We go unit by unit.

[B]

You heard, let's go and knock on doors unit by unit with my basketball. And we're gonna ask him about Kobe Bryant.

[A]

I acted in my Alex Jones voice. Do people even live in these buildings?

[C]

We. We're saying in this, for $100 a night, there's a two bedroom fucking apartment. This is a condo building. Okay? This is obscenely nice. And that points to. Nobody lives in this building. All right, Let me just say.

[B]

No, it does point to.

[A]

I think it points to a lot of supply.

[B]

Crazy amount of supply.

[C]

No, actually, dude, again, this very anecdotal. I'm curious to see more of this. But it does feel like there's such a focus on building and it seems excessive. At this, like, spa thing we went to yesterday, it was like one of the nicest spa things I'VE seen. And it just keeps going. It's like, oh, there's an outdoor area. The outdoor area has a movie area and it has another bar and it has karaoke and it has soccer over here. Here's the gaming. Here's the PC. Here's the PC Cafe. Here's the, like, Fighting Stick. Here's five different steam rooms here. Here's the Rock Room. Here's what. It just keeps going and going. And then this buffet that we went to was, like, incredible. We just. It was like, oh, if you're here, you get a buffet at 5pm or whatever it was. And there were not nearly enough people for all the food there. I don't know if you guys noticed that. Where I felt this was fun when we went downstairs and there's three people waiting by the door while we wait for our Uber. There's like five people down there. In America, that would be one person maybe. And the whole. This whole complex had maybe 30 customers.

[B]

No. But in the malls, did you feel that we were in some of the nicest, largest malls I've been in my life. Spotless malls, floor to ceiling filled with all full stores. The traffic on a weekend was like, yeah, this was a weekend.

[C]

Yesterday was.

[B]

It was like nothing. It's just crazy.

[A]

I think it just wasn't full. I think it felt normal.

[B]

So I think it's a. Barry's making a face of you. I. I think the. It's. I've seen balls that are dead that have more people per for. You know, I thought it was.

[A]

It wasn't.

[B]

It wasn't. I'm not saying it's dead. You're probably getting an image from what I'm saying that is dead. I'm just saying the size versus the. You're never touching another person. There's plenty of room.

[A]

It's like relative.

[B]

Yeah. We're in multiple malls. We're like, they're not that far from each other.

[C]

Until we went to the food trade show. At which point it was

[A]

all right.

[C]

So leading into that. So we're on the train. Many strange experiences are stemming off of man we slept next to on the train. So one of the things he said that he, you know, travels back and forth. He works for a food company and there's a trade show in Chengdu that's happening that day. And he's like, if you guys go in there and say you work for a foreign food company, you'll be treated like VIPs. Turns out we don't have to say that. We. We didn't even say we didn't say we explicitly said we are not a company. But the fact that we are just like foreigners was very exciting. And so we went into this place and it was like a convention like in any other country that is way too, way too full shoulder to shoulder. And I got shoveled a bag of these, the best rice crackers I've ever seen. I had got. I kind of dragged the whole group because a woman came up and was very excited to talk and tell you

[B]

how powerful her company was.

[C]

Yes. And she said the. We do 40 crates of rice crackers a month. And I speak. I have friends in England, in America and Americans. I like you because of your outgoing personality. And we're friends now. And I want you to meet.

[B]

And we're powerful boss. We are, pal.

[C]

The big boss of the rice cracker company is here today. And I was like, wow, that's impressive, guys, we gotta go. And she gave me all these things. And we're now friends on WeChat. And I am promising right now, okay. Because I don't want to disappoint her that I'm going to calculate how much money I personally take home from a weekly Patreon episode. And I'm telling Susanna on WeChat, this is my budget. Send me this many rice crackers to. To our studio in Los Angeles.

[A]

We're going to get so much. We're going to get.

[C]

So I. I don't know if I'm gonna.

[A]

We're gonna get so much. And it's not. Because the amount of money he makes from that episode is that much. That's.

[C]

I want to stress that probably like it's thousand or something, because this would

[B]

be after buying bulk prices. You're buying wholesale.

[A]

Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Even if. If it's like a few hundred dollars, it's going to be an obscene amount of rice crackers.

[C]

And I think it's going to be more than a few hundred dollars. So I've committed. We haven't done the calculations. I'm fully committing to this. I'm going to make it happen. And all I'm saying is that she pointed out, again, we were very clear, we're not a food distribution company. But she kept saying it so many times and I was like, oh, but we make videos. We make YouTube videos. She's like, oh, oh, okay. But you could start selling food. Like she.

[A]

So what we could do is open

[B]

up the office food entrepreneur.

[C]

We have our little studio space, and I could run a Rice cracker business out of there. And they're very good. They're honestly very good.

[A]

They're very good.

[C]

Thank Alma Wongsi for the lovely rice crackers.

[A]

You might be having a thought if you're listening to this. She kept saying powerful and maybe it's just like a mistranslation. Like maybe she doesn't mean. Like, why would she stress that word so much? Maybe she just doesn't know that much English. Like it's fine. No, when Stefik interviewed her for us, she kept using the word powerful in Chinese. She is, she's just talking about how

[C]

powerful the rice crazy of rice crackers a month. She told me that three times, which does not sound that impressive.

[A]

I want to. I was, you know what I was thinking is like she. We're in this multi floor building, right? And the first floor is the most packed one. For obvious reasons. She kept saying powerful. She took us to the fourth floor.

[B]

We were top floor.

[A]

And it's like, oh, I meant that's the worst floor to be on. This is the hardest one to get to.

[C]

Oh, but that's the elite. No, that's completely wrong. That's a ridiculous thing to say and that's insulting to the big boss. My fault of the. Of I went to an orange booth

[B]

and we found out that it was like 13 of the world's mandarin oranges go through this company. They're like the largest exporter of fruit in the world or one of the. It was crazy.

[C]

It was, it was fascinating to be in this like. So the idea is all these food companies trying to pitch to a potential retailer of like what their food is. That was the context. And then we are just randomly in there watching.

[B]

We were like buyers for Walmart. We would have been treated like God. I mean, we were already given, right.

[C]

We were treated as kings. And it would be, we would kind of ascend to some sort of divinity that people would like be unable to look directly at us. Yes.

[B]

Everyone handing you juice every three feet. Yeah, it was, it was really. That was a really cool experience. That happened kind of randomly by happenstance.

[C]

Support from this show comes from. Yes, dude. Anthropic.

[A]

Yes, go ahead, Aiden. So I, I may I. I've been using AI for a while to help with things like research for the show. It's how I find a lot of like data and links off site to, to prep for how we do this and talk about subjects with each other, which is cool. It's been super, super helpful for me. It's been helpful, helpful with like language translation to have conversations to like practice Swedish and things like that. And I recently unsubscribed from the one I had used for a while and I started using Claude by Anthropic and I've been super, super happy with it to be honest.

[B]

Me too. I use AI primarily for learning and it Listen, the one thing I hate about a lot of LLMs is their tendency to overly glaze you or overly be complimentary. And this is anthropic. And Claw is the one I found to be the most direct and honest and just do the job. That's been a breath of fresh air for me.

[C]

You guys know how I feel. Are you ready to tackle bigger problems?

[A]

I was gonna say Doug doesn't have any experience with this. Ready to tackle bigger problems. Get started with Claude today at Claude AI Lemonade. That's Claude AI Lemonade. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features mentioned in today's episode.

[B]

Claude AI slash Lemonade.

[C]

What is an LLM?

[A]

It's okay buddy.

[B]

You'll figure it out.

[A]

Support for this show comes from Factor. Some of you out there are the real go getter types. You're probably listening to this podcast while training for your local 5k, while others might be out running errands for your entire household. But wouldn't it be nice if you had a few things taken off your plate? Factor wants to help you by actually placing a few more things on your plate. Factor can provide you with fully prepared meals designed by dietitians and crafted by really chefs. Ready in two minutes. No planning, no cooking. All Factor meals come with quality functional ingredients including lean proteins, colorful veggies, whole food ingredients and healthy fats. Always fresh, never frozen. No prep, no stress. So you can stop worrying about finding the right foods to eat and focus on sticking to your goals. Head to factor meals.com lemonade50off and use code LEMONADE50OFF to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year offer only valid for new Factor customers with code and qualifying auto renewing subscription purchase. Make healthier eating easy with Factor.

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[C]

Another funny little tidbit I thought was interesting. I again start coming from Train Man. When we talked to Train man, he mentioned a quote to me, which is he kind of randomly was like, oh, you heard we're Americans. Like, oh, it seems like I forget the first thing was I believe going into Iran was a mistake. That's. They're much more powerful. Yeah, they're much more powerful than, than Trump realized. And I like felt a little embarrassed by this because I'm like, oh man, is everybody going around the world? Everybody think we're like a bunch of war hungry crazy lunatics. And he was then followed up and said like, but I think most Americans don't really like Trump or they think he's crazy. And I was like, yeah, I don't. And I think most people don't. I think probably 75% of people think he's crazy or that this is a bad idea. And he laughed and he said, I think it's 90%. So his view is like an average Chinese citizen who has not left China but is very proud of the country, as I learned over the course of this conversation, is, is Trump's like this crazy guy and 90% of people hate him, but you know, he's just, he's doing his wacky thing and then mentioned a couple other kind of analysis of the rest of the world that felt a little bit uninformed. I don't want to say uninformed. Very China pilled maybe is the way to think.

[A]

There was nothing more. It was interesting because I feel like he was, because the way he talked about global and political issues, I feel like he was informed in the sense that I knew what his American counterpart looked like in the US Someone who's relatively like tapped into news and events

[C]

and watches the nightly news. Yeah, yeah, like that vibe.

[A]

And it can have like a nuanced conversation about it, but clearly has like a very focused perspective from the media he watches, which is kind of, you know, which is everybody like, it was, it was interesting to meet.

[C]

Yeah. One of, one of the things where I was like, that seems a little off is he's like the Ukraine. I forget the exact wording and may correct me if I'm wrong, but it was like the Ukraine and Russia war. It's not Really a war. It's just about selling oil. And I was like, it's a war. I was like, it's, I don't know. It's a war. And then another one was, if we just got rid of nuclear weapons, then there would be peace, then it would. Wars would be over. And I was like, I also don't know. There was actually famously a lot of war before nuclear weapons.

[B]

Yeah. There's a good argument that that would be the opposite.

[C]

Right. And I, at this point, this seven in the morning, off of a sleeper car sleep, I feel like. And we're translating through stuff, and I'm not gonna be like, well, actually, I

[B]

think actually let's get into this.

[C]

Yeah. And so, but I did think this was interesting. And then the line that super stuck out to me was, he said, no country on earth loves peace more than China. And I was like, that is so fascinating because that's not really the American version.

[A]

Right?

[C]

The American version, China is being aggressive and blah, blah, blah. And so I, like, thought about, So I looked into it. All right, let me give you guys some numbers. So I, I, I basically started to research this question of is China more peaceful than any other, like, great empire or power historically, and let's say past like 500ish years to, like, narrow it down. Right. Who do you think's the most? Who has invaded the most foreign countries?

[A]

What can I say? It's the Brits.

[C]

It's the Brits you're proud of. Oats, dude, you love those Brits, don't you?

[A]

All right, so leaderboard, Scoreboard.

[B]

I'll do it. Like them.

[A]

Scoreboard right up there.

[C]

So there's a book called from, from a British person. All the countries we've ever invaded and a few we never got around to. Of the 193 countries that are recognized by the UN at some point, British has invaded 171. There are only 22 countries on earth that they have not.

[B]

That is goat static.

[C]

It is truly impressive. French empire, they had 80. And these are all, you know, kind of estimates depending on how you define war. Right.

[B]

And define country. Because, like, a lot of the countries they invaded have changed since.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yes, but that's just in terms of. Yes. So some caveats here, but general idea of, like, French empire, 80 times they've gone into other countries and invaded us. We're at only 68. More peaceful than the French. Unfortunately, we're not very old, so we have a. We're a little more dense.

[B]

We're getting it done quicker.

[A]

If you're at home. Don't do the math.

[B]

Yeah, it's like, cooper flag, dude.

[A]

USA cylinder. Cooper flag. Generational talent.

[B]

We're putting up big numbers in 19, dude. We're putting big numbers, dude.

[C]

But we're probably, you know, Trump's gonna tear our ACL and we're gonna bomb out. All right, and then let's try to.

[B]

Hormuz is already.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And then.

[C]

And then, by the same, you know, kind of definition of this war stuff, China would be at 12, like, just, you know, massively small. And so if you are a Chinese citizen, is this.

[B]

Sincere question, is this China, as in Post World War II CCP, takes over as that version of China the past 500 years? Okay. You're talking about 500 years of China.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So not. Not going to ancient times where, like, I'm not even including, like, Mongol, you know, times here, because then that even skews it, because then it's like the Mongols are.

[B]

This is. Okay, 500.

[A]

I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert. And I think these numbers are. Don't get me wrong, these numbers are a little damning if you think about them. I would like to say, though, that China, like, famously, in a historical context, kept to themselves. And there was a lot of wars in China between Chinese people.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

So I think so.

[C]

So I thought was interesting if you. If you kind of look at the type of aggression that China is criticized for in the west, what it almost always is, let's say in the last 70 years, is it's China saying, this is our historical border, and we're going to enforce it in a way that other people are like, we don't think that's your historical border. Famously, Tibet in 1950, that they went and invaded and basically took Tibet. Right. But, like, that was. That was them saying, Tibet has historically been part of the greater Chinese empire and influence. And of course, there's a whole lot of discussion around that. But if you believe. If you are in, like, well, that is our historical border, then that feels less of a war and more of. We are restoring. We're restoring this after World War II, after the century of humiliation. Korean War was, like, sort of justifiably defensive. Many asterisks there, obviously. But, like, that's like, the U.S. is, like, sweeping up through Korea. There's skirmishes with India. There's skirmishes with Vietnam. A couple of these are, like, harder to defend. There's the South China Sea stuff of, you know, saying, here's the nine Dash line and now the ten dash line. That's including whatever else. But if you are sort of like, look, this is us reclaiming historical boundaries over a long period of time, I could completely understand why that would feel like this isn't really aggression. Whereas to many other people around the world they would go, well actually we believe this country as this area. And therefore. And so I thought that was pretty interesting of its. Depending on how you view this. Certainly, I think without question China does not have nearly the same history in modern time of go to another country and just fucking get in there and like we do this quite a lot

[A]

and like, but we always had a good reason.

[C]

It's just, you just think about how many times we've done this, this year, this year, how many times we've done this.

[A]

We're putting up, we're putting generational, generational numbers.

[C]

It's so fascinating to me that in the west we're like, ah, trying to so aggressive. And then, you know, to a person here it's like we, we have stuck to ourselves. We're reclaiming the, you know, the, the ancient history that we've had for thousands of years and that's it. And you go around bombing and stealing from whatever country you want. Of course you would feel like this.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I mean it definitely, it definitely makes sense.

[C]

Yeah. I want to, as a result of this trip, I want to like really dive into some more Chinese history because this is obviously the, you know, I don't know, mainstream news version of it.

[B]

Sure, yeah.

[C]

I just think it's, I think it's fascinating the way you might view geopolitics. And this guy was very respectful about it. He was just like, one of the lines was like, like, I think it's very silly how America keeps going deeply in debt and spending money on wars. You should do it like us and spend it on infrastructure for your country. And I was like, yeah, that fucking makes sense.

[B]

Yeah, actually that's a good idea. Yeah. I mean, you know, speaking.

[C]

Is that like correct? Like, yeah, roughly. The, this is all through, through our interpreter, obviously.

[B]

Iran war. I, I wanted to bring up, you know, as I've spent a ton of time on Chinese social media and Weibo and just brain rotting and scrolling it.

[C]

Yeah, I want to give you credit.

[A]

Right?

[C]

Yeah, I, I, you have done more journalism like with the people than any of us because you all the time are scrolling on Chinese social media and hitting translating. I'm not even kidding. You have really gotten in there.

[B]

No, I'm reading what they're thinking, and it actually is just a great way of seeing, like, what is trending right now and what are people talking about. And I. It is in a way that would not be the case scrolling Instagram or anything. A third of content, it feels like is about the Iran war. Like, it's really. It is talked about a lot. There is a lot of stuff about it. And. Oh, bad. Of course, they don't like it. Of course bad. But. And, and most of the comments, again, I'm just, I'm clicking random comments and just translating. I'm going down the whole thing. It's a lot of just kind of making fun of how badly this is going of how, like, this. Of how Trump is kind of like, you know, for example, I saw again. But it's always put up in an almost cartoonish way. Like, they'll have an AI video of, like a cartoon Trump, like, tripping into a well or something. Like, it's kind of wild. But then all the comments will be like, yeah, this is a. This is a really stupid idea. And, you know, recently Trump made a. This is like, as we're recording recently, he's like, hey, if the next 48 hours, if we don't allow free passage of tankers for the Strait of Hormuz, I'm going to start blowing up electricity grids in Iran, which, first of all, insane thing to do.

[C]

I think we're the second most peaceful nation.

[B]

Great Britain would have done it too. Right. And, and, but the thing was that Iran's response was like, go ahead, we're not going to, you know, we're not going to change. Which then puts us on a clock.

[C]

We are.

[B]

We're coming up near the end of this 48 hours, and it's seeming likely that Trump won't actually do it, which then becomes a kind of embarrassing thing. And all the comments are kind of just pointing out that it's like, they know he's not gonna do it. Like, no one. Nothing's gonna happen. Like, it's a real loss of credibility that I'm seeing on the ground. Like, from, like a regular person's level.

[C]

If Trump doesn't take care of this, his reputation will be damaged.

[B]

But, you know, what's funny is I think that's genuinely happening. Obviously it's happening in America, but from what my understanding is that there's some people in China that thought Trump was. Was a better leader in his first term. They thought he was kind of like someone you could respect or, you know, they had a less of understanding. But he is proving to be more of a. I don't know if the word's paper tiger or whatever, but, like, just. It's not. There's an emptiness to his threats and his bluster that is more revealed to regular people in this. From what I'm seeing on social media, again, I'm reading a lot of comments.

[C]

Yeah. The rest of the world is like, has their shit together and Trump's walking around in the middle of them bouncing a bat. Basketball.

[B]

Yeah, sort of like that, but in a much different way, because that would

[C]

be dropping his passports.

[B]

That would be very cool, actually.

[C]

I, I, the. When the guy said, I think he, like, laughed. He was like, I think 90 of Americans think Trump is crazy. I was like, do you not think we. Do you think we didn't vote for him?

[B]

Do you think he's a.

[C]

Because that's great for me, right? I'll be like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's a 90. Couldn't. Couldn't do anything. All. We all hated him, but, you know, he got in there and grabbed the golden idol and power was restored to his body.

[B]

That would be one way to do it.

[A]

I think we have. You know, there will be a lot more to talk about on the Patreon episodes than the other. We're going to do one more episode in China while we're here.

[C]

I got one more little thing, which is I. This is sincere. Okay. So two days ago, when we were driving to the train station to come to Chengdu, this is the middle of Shanghai, greater population of 80 million people, is a bafflingly large city. And we drive through an area that, you know, you can see back here behind us, right? Tons of giant buildings all over the place. And we're in the nicest car I've ever been in. My arms are resting on top of an iPhone for no reason, which is what will allow me to move the chair back if I want.

[A]

I'm playing Flappy Bird.

[C]

You're playing flappy Bird. And. And I notice all three of us did Perry and Stefan, that it is. We pull up to a stoplight, and it is dead silent. It is dead silent. And it's noticeable because we can hear birds chirping next to us. It sounded as though we were in, like, an. In a park somewhere, like, way out in the forest. And it was, like, beautiful. This is gonna sound stupid and sentimental, but it was genuinely, like, beautiful to me because it made me feel like maybe the development of humanity with our infrastructure and technology, maybe it isn't just towards an increasingly Destructive version of the world. Maybe it isn't just destroying nature and making everything worse and louder. Like it felt serene in that moment. It is dead quiet in not as much Chengdu, but like in a lot of the cities because honking. The cars are electric. Honking seems to largely been reduced. Even the amount of honk you guys are talking about. This is a hundred times less than New York City.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And I just. It just sounds weird, but it was, it was like I'm in the middle of a mega dense city in a country that you're always told is like the biggest contributor to, you know, pollution and all these things. And those are true, right? But in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the fucking world, it is dead silent. You're hearing birds chirp all around you and it just felt serene. And I was like, maybe, maybe the future as we keep building, expanding doesn't have to be awful and loud and dirty.

[A]

Yeah, I thought a funny point on this story is. Went through one of the intersections we were in in Shanghai. There was a board and it said if you're. It was cars over 80 decibel infractions. And then it listed the license plates of people who had broken the rule

[B]

the cars public shame you if your car was too loud by your life

[A]

by your license plate.

[B]

So you'd have to see like Joe's license plate number and be like, what

[A]

is that Brandon's plate?

[B]

Dude, Brandon's haunted fit was over 80 decibels.

[A]

I knew it. What a fucking scumbag. And then we were joking about how if that existed in the US it would become like a leaderboard. It would everybody.

[B]

And then there was this giant poster of any foreigners carrying basketballs and they were just shaming them.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, they're building those across all the.

[A]

But I think that's a really beautiful sentiment actually. I hadn't thought about that, but I definitely. This has made me feel very positive about the future. It's not like we're walking through these spaces that are perfect cities or the most beautiful cities I've ever been, but just so good in so many of these ways that are difficult to experience at home and at a scale that I just didn't really think was possible until I got here and saw it for myself. Even though, you know, I've read so many things about China and I don't know, I'm really looking forward to the rest of the trip, so.

[B]

Yeah, me too. I will say it definitely motivates me at home to, you know, we're Talking about the difficulty and scale of this task, but truly it makes me think how with a few changes, these things are not that impossible. They're not that crazy.

[C]

If only someone is willing to do what must be done.

[B]

I just, I think, I think it makes me like, we need to get going at home. Like, it makes me be like, we need to want to get Trump out. I want to move forward on some basic shit and put some money towards buildings.

[C]

We all know what you're saying.

[A]

We all know. Nobody should do it.

[B]

No, nobody should do it.

[A]

Nobody should do it.

[B]

Something needs to be done.

[A]

You shouldn't even think about it.

[B]

No, I'm not. I wasn't saying that at all, by the way.

[C]

I can read.

[A]

I wasn't saying. What were you saying?

[B]

I wasn't even implying that. I was just.

[A]

No, don't worry, I'm picking up what you're putting down.

[B]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to our show here in China. We will have Patreon bonus episodes if you want to hear more of our walking talks as we walk around some of these cities we're going to. We've been recording a lot of B roll, a lot of extra stuff, some of our interviews and yeah, there's just more bonus content on the Patreon. We're going to have another main episode here from China later on in our trip after we've seen some of these super high tech cities like Chongqing and Shenzhen. So, yeah, appreciate. Thank you again to the Patreon supporters who gave us the opportunity to do this trip. Yeah, hitting 10,000 patreons, what gave us the opportunity to do this.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

And it really has been an eye opening and a very cool trip. And it's just nice with the amount that we read and talk about China. I think the US China relationship is the grand story of the 2000s and the foreseeable future and what's the deterioration or the rebuilding of that. Whatever happens. And it's cool to have some boots on the ground experience of just seeing, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words. And I think walking through a city tells you a lot more than a lot of articles.

[C]

We're getting in here and we're reading Chinese Twitter. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we're on the ground scrolling. What is it? Baidu? Weibo?

[B]

Weibo?

[C]

Weibo. We're doing it. No one else will.

[B]

No one else will do that.

[C]

No one else is doing it. And we're going to tell you all the memes probably. Brandon will literally compile memes and share

[B]

some memes I'm going to share that are truly. I mean I showed interest.

[A]

One that is like, dude, they're psycho.

[B]

They're psychotic, some of them. Anyway guys, thanks for watching.

[C]

Thanks everybody.

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I know I haven't.

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My IQ is off the charts.

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No, no, your bad trades are off the charts.

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