Good News! (and some not so great news) | Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand – "Good News! (and some not so great news)"

Episode Details

• Title: Good News! (and some not so great news)
• Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug
• Release Date: June 12, 2025
• Description: Three experts in the world of business run a lively discussion exploring both positive developments and ongoing challenges in today’s landscape.

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I. Energizing the Show with Horse Electrolytes

The episode kicks off with Doug proposing a humorous attempt to boost the show's energy levels by having the hosts drink certified horse electrolytes. The playful banter highlights the camaraderie among the hosts while setting a lighthearted tone.

• Doug: "I think we need a little more energy on this show... I got us a tub of certified horse electrolytes that we're all going to take a big sip of right now before we start our good news episode." (00:00)
• Ludwig: "I wouldn't." (00:32)

Despite the comedic premise, the hosts collectively express their discomfort with the concoction, emphasizing the importance of staying hydrated, both literally and metaphorically, for productive conversations ahead.

II. Addressing Recent Immigration Protests in Los Angeles

Shifting to more serious topics, Ludwig introduces the primary subject of the episode: recent protests in Los Angeles against ICE immigration raids. The discussion underscores the discrepancy between the intensity portrayed online and the on-ground reality.

• Ludwig: "Over the weekend, there was a protest in downtown LA... arrests and holding in the Federal Building." (04:35)
• Aiden: "There's two blocks away. People are in a cafe." (07:16)

The hosts express frustration over media exaggerations, comparing the current protests to the devastating fires earlier in the year. They emphasize that the protests are localized and not as widespread as depicted, advocating for a more nuanced understanding of the situation.

III. Renewable Energy: A Global Surge Towards Sustainability

Transitioning to good news, Doug and Ludwig delve into the remarkable advancements in renewable energy. Highlighting that 92% of new power capacity globally in 2024 comes from renewables, they celebrate the rapid growth of solar and wind energy.

• Doug: "In 2024, 92% of new power capacity across the world was renewables, which is incredible." (14:12)
• Ludwig: "40% of electricity in the world being made from clean sources now is, is absolutely surreal." (16:37)

They commend China’s leadership in renewable installations and discuss the potential for solar energy to transform energy accessibility worldwide. The conversation touches on technological advancements that make renewables more affordable and scalable, projecting an optimistic future for global energy sustainability.

IV. CRISPR Breakthroughs: Saving Lives Through Gene Editing

Aiden introduces a groundbreaking development in genetic medicine: the use of CRISPR to save a baby with a severe genetic disorder, CPS1 deficiency. This marks the first personalized application of CRISPR on an infant, showcasing its potential to eradicate life-threatening diseases rapidly.

• Aiden: "They managed to save this baby's life a few weeks ago in May. This is the first time ever that CRISPR has been personalized and used on an actual baby." (28:25)
• Doug: "It's so inspiring that we are successfully moving in this direction." (21:47)

The hosts discuss the ethical implications and future possibilities of CRISPR, from curing Huntington's disease to preventing HIV. While acknowledging the ethical dilemmas, they remain optimistic about the medical advancements CRISPR offers, emphasizing its transformative potential in healthcare.

V. Synthetic Blood Innovation: A Lifesaving Advancement

Aiden shares exciting news about a Japanese team’s breakthrough in developing synthetic blood compatible with all blood types. This innovation addresses the global shortage of donated blood, especially in regions lacking robust donation infrastructure.

• Aiden: "They have the ability to create on-demand large amounts of synthetic Blood that could save a lot of lives." (41:10)
• Doug: "It's like just drink two... It's completely safe and clean." (42:22)

The synthetic blood, made from hemoglobin vesicles, offers a promising solution for emergency transfusions without the limitations of traditional blood typing, potentially revolutionizing medical treatments worldwide.

VI. Nintendo Switch 2: A Commercial Triumph

The discussion shifts to the impressive sales of Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch 2. Ludwig highlights that the Switch 2 sold 3.5 million units in just four days, surpassing previous records set by Nintendo’s Wii.

• Ludwig: "Nintendo's better and fastest selling console ever. 3.5 million units in four days." (46:00)
• Aiden: "It's crazy that a console that is now more expensive and has literally one game can blow everything else that it's already represented out of the water." (48:56)

Despite initial concerns over price hikes and limited game releases, the Switch 2’s strong performance signifies Nintendo’s enduring dominance in the gaming industry. The hosts attribute this success to Nintendo’s strong intellectual properties like Mario and Zelda, which continue to captivate audiences globally.

VII. Minimum Wage Legislation: A Step Towards Economic Equity

Aiden presents a positive development in US politics: Senator Josh Hawley’s proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. The hosts engage in a balanced debate on the potential impacts of this legislation.

• Aiden: "Senator Josh Hawley... proposed a $15 federal minimum wage hike for America." (75:23)
• Doug: "These companies can afford to pay their people more and just take a hit on their profit." (79:37)

Exploring studies from New Jersey, California, and New York, they discuss evidence suggesting minimal impact on employment. While Ludwig points out the need for broader economic reforms, the consensus leans towards supporting the minimum wage increase as a means to alleviate poverty and reduce income inequality.

VIII. Closing Remarks and Community Engagement

As the episode wraps up, the hosts reflect on the blend of good and bad news, maintaining an optimistic outlook despite ongoing challenges. They invite listeners to join their Patreon community for additional content, including deep dives into topics like nuclear energy and further discussions on current events.

• Ludwig: "All the world isn't all terrible." (85:42)
• Aiden: "You can join us for our extra hour... patreon.com/lemonadestand." (86:05)

The final moments are filled with humor and camaraderie, emphasizing the importance of community and continuous dialogue on pressing issues.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Doug (00:00): "I think we need a little more energy on this show... before we start our good news episode."
• Ludwig (04:35): "Over the weekend, there was a protest in downtown LA... arrests and holding in the Federal Building."
• Aiden (14:12): "In 2024, 92% of new power capacity across the world was renewables, which is incredible."
• Aiden (28:25): "They managed to save this baby's life a few weeks ago in May. This is the first time ever that CRISPR has been personalized and used on an actual baby."
• Doug (46:00): "Nintendo's better and fastest selling console ever. 3.5 million units in four days."
• Aiden (75:23): "Senator Josh Hawley... proposed a $15 federal minimum wage hike for America."
• Ludwig (85:42): "All the world isn't all terrible."

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This episode of Lemonade Stand masterfully balances lighthearted humor with in-depth discussions on significant global and technological advancements. Whether tackling the realities of local protests or celebrating breakthroughs in renewable energy and genetic medicine, the hosts provide insightful commentary that keeps listeners both informed and entertained.

Transcript

[Doug]

I think we need a little more energy on this show. Picking up what is the main reason, the most common reason that people are low energy and it's dehydration. And so I got us a tub of certified horse electrolytes that we're all going to take a big sip of right now before we start our good news episode.

[Ludwig]

Is this. Yeah.

[Doug]

All right. So one scoop of this is for a horse that's in, like a hot, humid electrolyte. It's certified for.

[Ludwig]

So can I actually drink this?

[Aiden]

It's really good.

[Doug]

It's electrolyte.

[Aiden]

Really dangerous.

[Doug]

It's electrolyte, dog.

[Ludwig]

I. I wouldn't.

[Doug]

We need. We need horse mentality in this podcast if we're going to win. When horses hunt in packs, the other horses are ready to jump in if one falls. That's the attitude.

[Aiden]

Predatory. They don't hunt in packs.

[Doug]

It's clumping variants.

[Aiden]

They don't hunt.

[Doug]

So I think.

[Aiden]

I believe I'm going for clumping.

[Doug]

Why don't we all take a sip of our horse? Oh, God. It's not.

[Ludwig]

Oh, my God. It's really just. It looks like moon sand.

[Aiden]

It does look like moon sand, bro. Every week Doug's like, don't worry, I got a cold opening.

[Doug]

This is very bad. It tastes like I'm drinking, like ocean water.

[Ludwig]

Dude, that is. This is your morning routine every morning. Oh, this is nasty.

[Aiden]

You're deeply sick. Guys.

[Ludwig]

What are we talking about today?

[Aiden]

Good news.

[Doug]

So much good news.

[Aiden]

The good news episode.

[Ludwig]

Good news episode.

[Aiden]

The most well timed good news episode in here history.

[Ludwig]

It couldn't have been better. I'm so glad we announced it ahead of time on the previous Patreon recording and spent all week prepping on it. Because it's just. The week was full of.

[Aiden]

There was nothing else but good news. So when we planned this, we knew.

[Ludwig]

Dude, you gotta stop drinking that.

[Aiden]

I've tasted it. You should not be.

[Ludwig]

Don't keep drinking that.

[Doug]

I put four scoops.

[Ludwig]

It's really bad if you collapse mid episode. I know exactly why.

[Doug]

Or if I have the best performance ever. We'll know. We'll know.

[Aiden]

Podcast like a God.

[Ludwig]

Right?

[Doug]

Right. And they're like, all right.

[Aiden]

Every week we have to keep, like, immediately.

[Doug]

Within a week, Joe Rogan is pounding them.

[Ludwig]

That's what it's spreading throughout a whole jar of horse electrolytes. That's what Lee Kuan you drink every day.

[Aiden]

That makes sense.

[Ludwig]

During his prime.

[Aiden]

That is the.

[Doug]

I'm having the dose. If I'm a heavy horse, In a hot, humid environment, plus one extra.

[Aiden]

Could you actually damage your. Like, this is not a normal. Not for God is so gross.

[Doug]

That's me. Having liver failure is bad news. This is good news week.

[Aiden]

It's also funny you said we need to be more hydrated when I drink all of my water and yours.

[Doug]

That's true.

[Aiden]

I'm hydrated enough.

[Ludwig]

You're the guy.

[Doug]

You've got a lot.

[Aiden]

I've got plenty.

[Ludwig]

I'd argue you're too hydrated.

[Aiden]

Yeah. If anything, I don't need horse electrolytes.

[Ludwig]

Look, obviously this is coming in at a weird time. We did say we were going to do a good news episode this week, and we prepped that and something happened. Over the weekend. There have been some large protests and demonstrations in Los Angeles over ICE immigration raids, and we don't want to, you know, leave that untouched, especially since we live here. For me personally, it's like, right in the area of where I actually live. And we just wanted to cover that at least a little bit. It's still something that's unfolding. I think there's going to be more protests this weekend and I think there's a larger topic of the way immigration is being approached in this country that we also want to spend some time talking about. I think that's going to be our conversation, a longer conversation on the Patreon today and something we're going to talk about in the future. But since this is happening in our. In our neighborhood, we just wanted to touch on, like, the details of, like, what's actually going on, because I feel like I see a pretty big discrepancy between, you know, what's happening in, in my area versus what is getting chatted about online. So if you somehow do not know. Over the weekend, there was a protest in downtown la, specifically around this place called the Federal Building, in reaction to some ICE immigration raids that had happened, I think, just a couple nights before, and the ICE had come in with other federal officers, it sounded like, and arrested more than 40 people, and then had brought them from different areas of downtown LA and then had brought them to holding in the Federal Building. Because the Federal Building has, like a jail or a prison.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

It's like, it's crazy because when you drive through downtown la, there's kind of this one big building you'll go by sometimes, and you're like, why does that look like a prison? And then eventually I realized it just is, uh, so in reaction to that, these protests break out. It's happening in this area that it's near Little Tokyo, which is like our Japantown. And I, I guess the main thing that I wanted to talk about, and because I have gotten as many texts as I did when the fires were happening.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

From friends, from family, asking me, most of which don't even know I actually live in the area. They just know I live in LA at. And I think the rhetoric around this protest right now is that LA is being like, burned to the ground. And I cannot express enough that it's just not what's happening. This protest and what has been happening is confined to basically a series of like, four blocks around this building. And while there have been periods of time over the past few days where that area has gotten pretty crazy, if you didn't read the news and, and you didn't like, live and walk through that area, you wouldn't know this is going on, to be totally honest with you. And I think my frustration has been seen the way people talk about the protests online, particularly Trump, and the opportunity he's used to become so inflammatory with it, not only sending the Marines and National Guard in as a reaction to it, but continuously pushing this narrative and that LA would have been burnt to the ground. He will not remove trips troops until it is safe there. And I drove, I drive through that area. It's fine.

[Aiden]

There's two blocks away. People are in a cafe. Like, it's.

[Ludwig]

Exactly, exactly. And I feel like the main thing I wanted to compare this to was the fires earlier this year, because the fires, shit actually was hitting the fan. It was fucking crazy. There were downed power lines, the sky was red. There were multiple fires in the city that you could see from all over.

[Doug]

Like, I remember we all had friends who evacuated or lost property.

[Aiden]

I lost power.

[Doug]

A lot of people were affected.

[Aiden]

Soot over everything. Like, all through the middle of the city.

[Ludwig]

Literally entire neighborhoods burnt down. A coworker, like, good friend of mine and his wife lost their home. And if you stood on the north side of LA through those fires, you could actually, if you turn to your left, you could see the Palisades fire. If you turned, like, if you were just standing up, you could see the fire that was in Griffith or near the Hollywood sign. And then if you look to your right, you saw the giant Eaton fire near Pasadena. It was surreal how crazy it was. And I feel like the news cycle in response to this protest is just blowing it way, way, way out of proportion. And that's not to belittle. I want to be really specific in that. I don't want to belittle the reasons people are there, because I think that fight is like very, very just. And we'll, we'll talk about the reasons why people are there more, but for the actual. I think people have this perspective that our city is crumbling and it's just nowhere near that.

[Aiden]

Yeah, Amen, man. I think the amount of misinformation I've seen this thing online is insane. Is it? I. So I went to the protests. I was there in person. And I remember I was under. The Shohei Ohtani mural in Little Tokyo was where they had one of the lines set up and people were talking about how Shohei Ohtani had said they should lock the protesters up. Because I looked it up. There's a viral tweet with 100,000 likes where he says that it's from talking baseball, not a real place. It's made, it's completely made up. And then Ted Cruz is tweeting videos from 2020 saying, wow, LA doesn't look very safe. It's not. I mean, there's just. And it's all going mega viral and the retractions or the follow ups are getting like 1/100th of the. So, yeah, I mean, I went there, I walked around, you know, right on the line in the, in the, in downtown or the corner of like second in San Pedro in Little Tokyo, there's like, I don't know, there's graffiti and there's people yelling at the line or honking. Yeah, but it's like a, it's four. It is like four blocks and then it's nothing else. So I just want to say it is exaggerated. And then I want to zoom out a bit and then we can, you know, we don't.

[Ludwig]

Then we get to the good news.

[Aiden]

There's a lot of good news. My take here is like if you flashback one week ago, what was the news cycle? It was Republican infighting over the big beautiful bill. It was Elon Musk calling Donald Trump a pedophile. It was bad economic data coming out about like, you know, people aren't hiring, housing sales are way down. Like, what's going on? And that news cycle was all over the cable news, which we know Trump is watching every night in the White House. And so to reset the news cycle, conveniently now there's an easy target, which is the most hated state, California, most hated city in California, Louisiana. Unpopular mayor Karen Base. And he's picking a fight with that and making the whole news cycle about this off of like, you know, 4. And people shouldn't burn Waymos. 100% agree. But like that is the one image. And. And again, all those wayos were on.

[Ludwig]

One street in one spot at one time on one day. I think I also, I don't think, I don't think it's cool to burn Waymos. I don't think it's doing anything to, to do that. At least personally I. But it, but it's frustrating seeing that zoned in on like the, the rioters and protesters are causing incredible amounts of violence when that to me is the kind of the only thing that's happened. There are a couple other like minor infractions. But when you're talk about a protest that goes on for days over the course of the weekend, no one people are just protesting, blocking the highway for a bit. To me, that is so disconnected from the rhetoric that is being spewed about it.

[Doug]

Did you guys, because you guys both were there for periods, did you see any of that destructive because you're saying it was contained to the four blocks. Do you feel like those four blocks, it is as destructive within those four blocks as being portrayed or is even within that area? It's not at all.

[Ludwig]

I went back the next.

[Doug]

I just. I've seen the same picture of the guy waving the Mexican flag on the car like a hundred times. It's just like that.

[Aiden]

Seemingly that is the one picture that's being used to like inflame and justify. Again, that picture plus the word insurrectionist is what is being used to amplify like the possible invocation of the Insurrection Act. An insurrection is like a revolution. Like you are trying to overthrow the government that is not anywhere close to what's happening on the ground if you walk around. And so it is. It's frustrating to hear this and it feels like like orwelling like a double speed because I know that's not what I'm seeing walking around. And again, it's like if you were only allowed to upload a YouTube video, if all of the comments were not stupid, if nobody could post a stupid comment. That's what it feels like in that. Like if you can't have a protest because somebody is going to do something stupid in it, then you can't have a problem. How could you have a brother? There's going to be somebody that takes it too far as stupid. But 99.9% I'm being serious. I talked to people I walked around are just upset at the way ICE is acting, which is like a reasonable and American thing to do. You can, you can have that position.

[Ludwig]

I think if you guys want a clearer perspective on what's actually happening on the ground, a ton of people have live streamed the protests while they were there. So there's VODs to, like, go back and watch or if the protests continue this weekend, go on twitch and watch people actually there experiencing it. Because I think it gives you a way better perspective on the time that it takes for anything significant to happen, if it happens at all, and gives you a good perspective on how almost like literally 99% of people there are there because they want to stand up and gather for a cause. They want to use the most basic part of the First Amendment, I feel like. So I just wanted to stress that as you follow this story, because I think it's going to keep developing and the protests are going to keep happening. Just remember that it's a little different in person and do. Do your best to get a clear picture of what's actually going on. I think if you guys are happy, I kind of want to move into the episode we prepped before all of this was kind of happening. We started prepping good news stories because so many topics on the show have been particularly downtrodden in a doomer lately. And don't worry, I'm sure we'll get back to that.

[Aiden]

Yeah, we'll have plenty.

[Doug]

Yeah, we're like that meme of like the priest trying to pray and there's the woman next to him. Like, yeah, we're trying. Right. We're trying to look at good news this week. But yes, it's hard.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. So I.

[Doug]

Clearly guys don't know that meme.

[Ludwig]

I didn't know.

[Aiden]

I know. But also, I don't think here's. Here's the shocker. I don't think it's that hard. I think our human brains are drawn to danger or negativity or something. And I think there has been a lot.

[Doug]

Yeah. Look for danger of the strength rather than the upside.

[Aiden]

But honestly, when prepping for this week, you know, there's a lot of good stuff going on. It's just balanced out. It's just hard to make a. So I think. I don't know who wants to start. But we. I think we all brought, like, some cool stuff.

[Ludwig]

I mean, me and Doug both locked into one topic.

[Doug]

So let's do. This is just nice and fucking simple and great. If you pull this up. Perry. In 2024, 92% of new power capacity across the world was renewables, which is incredible. So as much as, you know, the climate feels like I Think an intractable, gigantic thing. We really are as a world moving towards renewables. So this chart from ember energy.org shows where the new energy that is being created, the clean energy is coming from. So solar and wind right now there are kind of smaller percentage, but solar and wind are growing rapidly, basically. And that's, that's. I think one of the broader stories that, well, I would really like to dive into at some point is how much potential is in solar, specifically for a myriad of reasons. One of the main ones being, like, you can make it in a factory and then you just ship it out somewhere and put it all over the world. Whereas it's a little more difficult with, let's say, a nuclear power plant or, you know, wind turbines or whatnot, where you have to build it in the field. China is installing more renewable power than all other countries combined in 2024. So even China, who is like one of the dirtiest countries in terms of carbon emissions, is like really aggressively developing renewable energy and is basically the ones. They're doing everything, make all the solar panels.

[Aiden]

That's my understanding of China, is they're building nuclear, they're building wind, they're being soldier, they're building and they're coal, they're doing everything. They're literally just like, we want all of the energy. Yes. Yeah.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

But, yeah, I think it's estimated that their peak, their peak emissions are going to be hit either this year or next year. Right. Now, this idea that they're building so much renewable infrastructure that they're going to be curbing the total amount of carbon emissions they release.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And so India is on a pretty good, Pretty good track as well. Like, they're making.

[Aiden]

Well, especially cool because, like, the more it's used, the more it drives the cost down, which makes it easier for other countries to get in on it. Like, it's, it's cool. Yeah, I agree.

[Doug]

Yeah. So, like with solar, for example, the manufacturing costs are just plummeting. So over time it becomes easier and easier to, for example, you know, you could power, I don't know the exact numbers on it, but a huge percentage of, let's say, America, if you took a giant chunk of New Mexico, right, and filled miles and miles and miles with solar panels. And so these types of things of having massive, massive quantities of renewable energy that is not harming the climate, like, this is possible, like not only in our lifetimes, like potentially the next decade or two. So it's really encouraging how much cheaper and more accessible this stuff is becoming. And how many countries that traditionally have been pretty dirty are, are aggressively moving in this direction.

[Aiden]

As someone who lived in Arizona, that place during summer is God's mistake and human beings should not live there. So I think everyone should have to leave in summer and we just blanket it with solar panels, the whole thing and then power the country for the year.

[Ludwig]

Arizona just becomes a solar.

[Aiden]

Yeah, just it.

[Doug]

Just last week we talked about Australia taking one for the team. We put it in the Australian out all power. Australia is our battery. Yeah. Who else has got good news? Oh wait, you want to follow?

[Ludwig]

Yeah. So what I think is particularly crazy about this is the rate at which this has been improving. I think climate. I think we were so used to especially growing up, climate change being news being so bad for so long. The idea that we're actually making pretty rapid advancement in the direction of improving it is one, one crazy to me. Like 40% of electricity in the world being made from clean sources now is, is absolutely surreal. And then at the scale of growth we're at, because I think it was 30% in 2023, I want to say like we're, we're improving so rapidly. A lot of individual countries becoming closer to that like 70% or 80% mark instead I think there was a stretch of time where there was a six month stretch last year of. I think it was Uruguay. It's Uruguay or Paraguay. Forgive me. I think it's Uruguay. Everyone's curious at Uruguay where their entire grid burning.

[Aiden]

Your poster, they did all that work and you gave it to you stolen.

[Doug]

Unbelievable.

[Ludwig]

They spent like six months at 100% renewable for their entire grid. I thought that was insane.

[Doug]

If it's Uruguay that's using the Chinese power plant, that's like breaking. I might be getting the countries wrong. But anyway, yeah, go ahead.

[Ludwig]

We might be mixing up or it could be the same one. But besides outside of that progress, like what the future looks like, right? So if you look at the scale of emissions in the world, there's the emissions related to creating electricity and that's why this is such a big deal. But there are other raw emissions for things like heating, for example. So burning something to run a heater to heat a home, that's a ton of emissions in the world. Or burning fuel to run a combustion engine. So transport works. These are the other large sources of carbon emissions in the world. So at first glance you might be like, well, we're whittling down electricity and like making that more and more renewable, but we still have these huge outstanding things, right? But the cool thing about those is more and more technology is developing in those areas that is moving those things into the pool of electricity. More and more things are being electrical powered, and that is where we're focusing, like all of our renewable effort, if that makes sense.

[Aiden]

Yeah, totally.

[Ludwig]

The last thing I wanted to wrap this up with was if you look at where we were estimated to be by the year 2100, have you guys ever heard of how we estimate the damage of climate change through the degrees Celsius, like average warming around the world? Oh, if we experience 2 degrees of warming or 3 degrees of warming, this is a way to gauge the consequences of climate change. Because every tenth of a degree or every degree that we increase by the consequences of climate change become more and more grave, basically, you know, affecting things like food supply, dramatic weather events. And with the trajectory we were ON in like 2000, we were expecting to have 4 degrees of warming by the end of the century, which would be disastrous. Like, cataclysmic.

[Aiden]

Doesn't sound so bad on a cold day.

[Ludwig]

And. But now we've managed to, with where we're at right now, we've managed to bring that down to an expected, like 2.7 to 3.5 degrees of warming, which admittedly still isn't great in terms of its consequence. But that's if we continued from where we're at right now, like the rate or the amount of renewables that we have at the moment.

[Aiden]

And all these predictions just like draw straight lines. Right. They find out what. But then everything in real life happens exponentially.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Once the incentives align, suddenly you go from very little solar to a lot of solar. Like, once the price point exists that it becomes the, the best option, suddenly it just explodes. Like, that's the way things just seem to work in real, in the real world.

[Ludwig]

And that's how it's happening now.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Ludwig]

Like, this is like things like solar drastically increasing in such a short period of time. And then we'll see the benefit from that. As this technology continues to improve, the projections of the warming over the course of the next 80 years are going to continue to get way, way better. And I don't know, that's pretty fucking sick. It's nice. It's nice to read a story that was so definitively like, yes, we're making human progress.

[Doug]

Yeah, this is incredibly good for the future of Earth. This is so inspiring that we are successfully moving in this direction. I love it.

[Aiden]

Yeah, that's funny, because I want to do a good news story that's so Much smaller scale and not important.

[Doug]

No. Tell us about you. What do you think was you guys.

[Aiden]

Are talking about how incredibly good by.

[Doug]

The way future after. After yours. I'm going to talk about how we're saving babies with science.

[Aiden]

Feel bad. I don't feel like it's.

[Doug]

No. So what's the most important thing? No, the babies can wait. What. What do you got to get off your chest?

[Aiden]

Do you guys know how a credit card works? Can you explain like how what happens when you.

[Doug]

Well, it's like for example, you could use it to pay for the treatment that would save a baby's life. I assume you use it for.

[Aiden]

So you would get the treatment now and then pay for it later.

[Ludwig]

Right.

[Aiden]

Does that make sense?

[Ludwig]

Buy now.

[Aiden]

You can buy it now and pay for it later.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Well it turns out Buy now, pay later is exactly like a credit card. And so in Australia they finally said hey, we're going to regulate it like a credit card. Which means buy now pay later in Australia, at least for now. But this could spread wider. Is being fully regulated like a credit card because that's what it is. Which means, you know, there's credit score impacts if you don't pay, which is bad. But also that they have to actually do credit checks for ending it out. So they can't just give people loans. They can't afford to trap them in a predatory cycle like it's progress. Because what Wall street likes to do is every few months they reinvent the concept of debt with a new name and then avoid all the regulations for the last way they called it debt.

[Ludwig]

Such a good idea.

[Aiden]

And buy now pay later is finally catching up to that reality and. And people are like wait, this is no different and needs to be regulated the same way. So that's a good thing.

[Ludwig]

I wonder, yeah I wonder if their first movers on this because afterpay is an Australian company. Right. So they're. They're hold or their, their impact. I feel like that has to be one of the reasons you're first to act is like this company exists within your borders and it popular there first and it's popular.

[Aiden]

I think like a 40% of Gen Z on Australia are like using BNPL or whatever. It's like it's a big number and I think they're realizing that this is just shady debt. You know, it's just like. And a lot of people are either unable to make the payments because they were not given a credit check when they signed up for it or. Or there's no Consequence. So people are just loading up with it and then deleting the app, which is going to cause systemic financial problems. So Australia is at least like getting ahead of it. I think over here maybe we'll just let it run until it causes a big problem. But in Australia at least they're getting out of it. I think this could be a good marker. I think this is a good story. That's obviously it's not a big deal, it's not changing the world, but it's cool that somebody's proactive about financial problems.

[Ludwig]

Did they make any notes on how does this work if I'm already signed up for the app? Are they going to have to retroactively credit check everybody?

[Aiden]

That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that. I assume yes because the regulation is not like you get a freebie, you get a grandfather, you get.

[Ludwig]

Granted, everybody gets grandfathered in.

[Aiden]

I assume your account must now be credit check to see if they can afford to give you the limit that they've been giving you, which is. It's just, I don't know. Buy not pay later has been a funny topic for me forever because the name is so funny and stupid. It's just, it's just how, how they.

[Doug]

Get away with it not being treated as a credit card. It's so baffling to me to just use a funny name. Like, what's to start to stop them from Australia being like, hey, we have a new thing that's called like Zoop Zoo Pay in two weeks. Like, and then they're like, hey, that's not Buy now pay later. That's our two week super system. What is. I don't understand if it was that simple to make an unregulated debt market. It's. It's so bizarre.

[Aiden]

Soup sounds awesome by the way.

[Doug]

Right? I, yeah, I would and have been using Zoop Zoop.

[Ludwig]

It feels like if those, those flying cars that they're making for the LA Olympics, if, if those just didn't have to be subject to any regulations or loss because it's not a plane.

[Doug]

It's not a plane.

[Ludwig]

You know what it is?

[Aiden]

It is the airbud scene where they look at the rulebook. There's nothing that says a dog can't play basketball. It's implied. Like we don't need to have a specific rule for this name of the thing you're doing. It's all under the umbrella. Yeah. So I guess I'm the asshole kicking airbud out though.

[Doug]

Is there a rule that says you can't give credit loans to dogs, because that's maybe our loophole.

[Aiden]

Oh, my God.

[Doug]

If we lend them to the dogs, then the owners can take custody of.

[Aiden]

You know, and millennial pet spending is, like, the most lucrative, and they're just. It's on the rise. Well, this is kind of a. This is a good news. I guess I'll just stop it there and not say why it's bad news. We could jump on the industry and give pet loans to.

[Doug]

And then we have the airbud defense. It literally does not say in the Australian. Barry, can you check. You scan the new Australia and see if they do mention that this applies to dogs or not.

[Aiden]

It's air Bud in his later years, and he's giving predatory loans to other dogs.

[Doug]

But he's in Wall street. He's in J.P. morgan.

[Aiden]

J.P. morgan chased the ball. Oh.

[Ludwig]

You got the Michael Burry binder in that one scene at the beginning, Big short. He's just sitting at the table with four bankers, like, no, you can give me the loan. It's fine.

[Aiden]

It's just pictures of cute dogs.

[Doug]

Mail men, mail trucks.

[Ludwig]

Please flip the pages for me. I don't have phones.

[Doug]

Guys. I'm talking about saving babies.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

Okay, so this is a few weeks old, but there is this gene editing technique called CRISPR that came to prominence in 2012. Very cool, revolutionary biology thing where basically we figured out, we learned from a bacteria how you can basically snip a part of a DNA strand. This is a big deal because we didn't have a way to, like, micro edit DNA before this, but we just found this bacteria that's been doing it and then like, basically figured out how to copy them. So you pair this protein with an mri or not mri, a grna, and you pair these together, and it goes to a specific spot of a human's DNA, and then it snips the DNA, and then you can recover it in some way. So that has been conceptually really amazing over the past, like, decade or so, but hasn't really been used on people yet. It's still mostly in trial stages of, like, in theory, we can change people's genetics to do various things, but we don't. This is very difficult in practice. So then a few weeks ago, there was a baby who was born with CPS one, which is this basically extremely serious genetic disorder.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

Untreated, you've got, like, a week and you die. Jesus. And treated, like, aggressively, like, the baby's living in the hospital for Months or years, they're maybe going to survive with severe neurological damage. So this is like a incredibly severe disease that is caused by a genetic mutation, like one gene that is basically wrong. It's like hundreds of people get this a year. It's not, it's not massive. But this baby was born with it, I think about nine months ago. And immediately upon being born, they recognize that it's this horrible genetic disease. And this team set out to try to solve it using crispr. And so instead of the normal like decade to develop something custom, they did this over six months. And these doctors said, like, such speed to producing clinic grade CRISPR for a genetic disease has no precedent in our field, not even close. These steps traditionally take the better part of a decade, if not longer. But they managed to essentially map the exact genome of this baby to map exactly what their DNA sequence looks like, find using computer modeling the exact spot that was mutated in the genetic sequence and design a molecule through GRNA that can find that specific spot and then cut it and cause the body to basically replace it with healthy stuff. And it worked. So they, they saved this baby's life a few weeks ago in May. This is the first time ever that CRISPR has been personalized and used on an actual baby. So they were able to like modify this thing, a genetic treatment for a specific person. And they're saying now that it's done, future treatments could be a lot cheaper by an order of magnitude at least is what one of the doctors said. So CRISPR is a. Is. Maybe you've heard of it, if you followed biology at all. Incredible potential to this thing. Like for example, in theory we can cure Huntington's disease, which kills like 250,000 people. I don't know if that's a year or in general who have it, but that's fatal. That's a single gene mutation. We could like cut and cure that. Alzheimer's risks. You could find the genes that increase the risk for Alzheimer's, edit those, which I think many, you know, tens of millions of people every year who are dealing with that. Curing hiv. HIV is crazy because it gets into your DNA, like it embeds itself into your DNA. And we could in theory have CRISPR that goes in and like snips it. And then even the designing the changing people's genes before they're born is where it gets kind of crazy. Sci fi. And there's a famous example of this in 2018 where this scientist in China just went solo and just edited embryos. I don't know if you guys heard about this.

[Aiden]

That's scary to me.

[Doug]

No, no, no, this is still good news. So he. He talked to patients. He, like, found some people, like, couples who, like, one parent had HIV and the other didn't, so the baby's at risk for hiv, and then he edited embryos and then implanted them into the women. And one of the women had twins. And he went to jail for three years because the entire scientific community was like, what the fuck, man?

[Ludwig]

I remember this.

[Doug]

Yes. It's like, yeah, deeply unethical shit. So. But the wild thing is, it could work, you know? And so while there's many ethical questions right now, and CRISPR isn't perfectly precise, there's various things. You know, one of the things to remember is that you have a copy of your DNA in every cell. So it's not like you go and change one cell. You sort of have to get the changes to propagate through the whole body. So there's challenges with that and making sure it hits the right thing. But in theory, in our lifetime, probably accelerated by what just happened with this kid. We could have designer babies where you.

[Aiden]

That's not what I. Oh, the good news.

[Doug]

This is good news where. And these are all hyperbaric, you Trojan horses.

[Ludwig]

No, no, no.

[Doug]

It's time for another wacky segment. It's time for. Would you mod your baby?

[Aiden]

No.

[Doug]

Okay. No, no, no.

[Ludwig]

You wouldn't. You wouldn't slide your doctor a 50 to give him green eyes.

[Doug]

This is. This is possible. Okay? This is hypothetical. This is theorized to be possible. Well, you. You mod your baby. You snip, you snip a few jeans, and they only need five hours of sleep every night. Pirate software, another content creator is. I've talked to him about this. He only genetically needs four to five hours of sleep. His body functions perfectly fine. He's talked to doctors about it. He. That's why he streams, like, 20 hours a day. He just.

[Aiden]

That's what I want my kid to do, is stream 20 hours today.

[Ludwig]

He's one of the actual people.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Doug]

No, no, no.

[Ludwig]

So parrots off people who will be like, yeah, I only need six or, like, five hours.

[Aiden]

Yeah, they're like zombies.

[Doug]

They're exhausted.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

And.

[Ludwig]

But they just do it. But there. There is, like. There is a. Yeah, just drink two.

[Aiden]

Monsters every day, and I'm good.

[Doug]

No, he. So he genuinely operates as well as everybody else, maybe even better. The dude's crazy in terms of, like, how much he works, how much he does four or five hours of sleep. Would you do that? Would you give that to your kid?

[Aiden]

No, I would be annoyed. I won't get any sleep because my kid's up all the time.

[Ludwig]

That's exactly.

[Aiden]

I'll modify to give him 18 hours of sleep and then I.

[Doug]

Okay, all right, wait, follow up because this is, I think relevant for you. This is again, this is legitimately possible. Potentially in our lifetimes, Potentially in the next decade or two. You edit the jeans so they never go bald.

[Aiden]

First of all, this is a powerful gene and I don't think you can. I don't think you can. I think it's deep in there. Crisper this out. That kid's going bald. Dude. You know what makes me think of is like some rich parent is going to make their kid LeBron James.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Aiden]

And he's going to show up to my kids youth basketball camp and he's going to be 7 foot 4 at 14 years old.

[Doug]

Okay, so. So let me get into that. So here the next two are. These are real serious things that I think are a little more genuinely as a parent, consider this.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

If you were told that you can enhance their brain power. There are genes related to memory and learning to where your kid could have a stronger capacity for learning things, for mental processing, for memory, would you, let's say the risks are mostly gone. Obviously this is some high risk thing. Probably not. But would you give your kid that opportunity, let's say 20 years from now?

[Aiden]

So I'll give you my answer. It is similar to me to like taxes, where I don't want it to be each person's individual moral choice to whether or not they pay more or they use the best methods, they have to pay less taxes. I just want it to be enforced that if we all collectively decide as a society that this is kind of weird, that we just don't allow it. I don't want to be in the hospital and have to check the box of whether or not I decide if my kid is going to be a.

[Ludwig]

Posture scenario here because there's a bit of a, there's a bit of a doomer scenario.

[Aiden]

We're getting off the rails.

[Ludwig]

Oh, it's the good, it's the good news episode.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Ludwig]

But the, if you say, say it's just about brain power. Say we're only talking about that. It's to increase your cognitive ability and how much you remember is the only thing we're talking about for the moment. If you regulate that in your country.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And then other countries choose not to.

[Aiden]

People are flying to China to have a. Or.

[Ludwig]

I wasn't even thinking about that. I was just thinking about how if there's a. If there's another massive nation of people where this becomes irregular and they just outclass your group of people in every way because they allow this, but your country bans it.

[Doug]

Yeah, it's.

[Ludwig]

Dude, this is right.

[Doug]

If you. If you. Like right now, you know, you're like, I'm struggling in the world and my parents.

[Ludwig]

Oh, it's the.

[Doug]

They could have.

[Aiden]

It's the good news app, dog. It's like.

[Doug]

It's like a circumcision, you know, with a really nice story. My parents cursed me with this foreskin, and I didn't. I wish they had picked differently. Okay, last one. You could. This is. Again, this is possible in our lifetimes. Make them taller, more handsome. Change skin and eye color. Change facial symmetry. Like a character creator in Skyrim. Would you handcraft your child to be an Adonis? Or do you let them be an ugly piece of shit, like natural?

[Ludwig]

Oh, God. It's so funny if. Imagine the scenario where everybody's doing this, but you just let your kid be ugly.

[Doug]

That's the thing.

[Aiden]

It'd be kind of base if everyone looks the same and you're like, no.

[Doug]

You obviously like a state.

[Ludwig]

I think jeans.

[Aiden]

It's like ripped jeans.

[Doug]

You can't.

[Ludwig]

This is. This is the exact line that people talk about all the. This is the end game of what people talk about with the risks of this stuff, which is like the genetic. Yeah, the changing cosmetic genetic things. And I. I hadn't really thought about the cognition thing as much, but you, you just fundamentally, it. It's. This is just eugenics. Like, this is. This strays into you too far into eugenics and you can't do this. I think you lose too much of humanity. Like, that's the simple way of putting it. I don't know that I realize that me relaying that platitude on Lemonade Stand in the podcast, does it solve the problem down the line? I don't. I don't know how we'll deal with this one.

[Doug]

Like, I'll reground it in something that is just genuinely positive. I think the immediate use for this type of stuff that we're going to see soon is identifying genetic defects in babies and just simply eliminating a lot of preventable disease and challenges. So that's going to be the first step before you start modifying eye color or anything like that. That stuff's a little more down the road, but in our lifetimes, I think there's a real. I mean, like, if I have a child, which I don't know if I will yet, but I was told, hey, we can go in and stop them from having sickle cell anemia. Like, that's, that's a big fucking deal. And I absolutely would do that. And this is going to be something soon that we're going to at least have the option for. And it's. There's weird ethical choices, but I man to prevent horrific disease I is exciting to me.

[Ludwig]

I would never want to give up on the opportunity to deal with stuff like that. I think condemning children to a short lifetime of suffering and not pursuing it when you know you could is terrible. The regulation around it will just need to be so strict and standardized and I think it'll be so important for there to be some sort of globally unified approach on the issue, because it's one of those things where once it gets out of the bag somewhere, people are going to want it. In the same vein, the tax example was good. This idea that when you let it come down to individual choice and morals, there are inevitably a subset of people that will make the decision to do it. And that lets all, all these other people do it behind them because their logic is, I'm just trying to keep up or I'm just trying to be fair. And then, yeah, there's just. There is such long term horrific consequences from the technology. But in the short term, I think in the direction, like, why are we starting with something like this? Right. It's because this is what people primarily want to use the technology. And I think that's important.

[Doug]

Yeah, there's incredible, just straight up medical potential. And fortunately, that's what's going to come first before we have to debate the big ethical questions. Like my final question, which is, let's say you're in the hospital, you just delivered your baby and you realize Ludwig's son is next to you in the bassinet and the lab technician comes over and nudges you and like, hey, you want to edit him a little bit? Do you edit Ludwig's child to make him bald?

[Aiden]

I don't need to, bro. He's turning 30. You're going to see it. You're going to see it. That's wishful hiding in there.

[Ludwig]

That's wishful.

[Aiden]

It's not wishful thinking.

[Ludwig]

It's holding strong, bro. I can't even.

[Doug]

You don't just increase the slider on your kid's height. Decrease Ludwig's kids height just a little bit. You don't. You're a good friend. I wouldn't consider it, by the way. I'm not. I wouldn't even.

[Ludwig]

This is good. We regulate it really closely. Unless it's for pranks on influencers.

[Aiden]

Yeah, that's fair.

[Doug]

I think if it's just a prank then I think if it's a prank.

[Aiden]

You can do it.

[Ludwig]

That's a comfortable.

[Aiden]

If it's an influencer, we all agree it's worth making fun of them.

[Ludwig]

It's fine.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I think it's all right. I mean listen, we save some babies.

[Doug]

Lives, we'll save many more babies lives and alleviate an enormous.

[Aiden]

Saving a baby life is cool.

[Doug]

Enormous amount of human suffering.

[Aiden]

Think of a negative on that will be reduced. Although I could villain share it. I got, I got a health related one. I got a medical one. Again, I'm coming in with small scale. All right. I just feel like nice little wins, small wins. Okay. A team in Japan has just announced a breakthrough on the development of synthetic blood which is all blood types at once, can be stored for much longer and can help alleviate the lack of blood at many, many, many hospitals around the world systemically under donated the amount of blood we need, especially in certain blood types. And so they made this breakthrough where again, I don't have the right word for it. Hemoglobin vesicles, they take. Right. I know what they do is they take old expired donated blood that's over three weeks old and they add like this, I don't know, lipid coating to the blood that allows it to take oxygen like a regular red blood cell. And it makes it apply to all blood types and has no viruses. So it's like just safe and clean and good. Now announcements like this happen all the time and sometimes people are like, well, nothing ever happens of it. Like you hear about it and then nothing happens. And the reason I thought this one was interesting is because if I had said this in 2022 it would be like that. But they actually tried it in 22, 100 milliliters of blood in a bunch of patients to test if there was any negative effects. And it's now been three years and there was no negative effects. So now they're progressing to the next trial where they're doing much larger, I guess like 400, 500 milliliters and seeing it again. But if that holds like it did for the last one, then really we're just there. And they have the ability to create on demand large amounts of synthetic Blood that could save a lot of lives, especially in places that have not a lot of donating infrastructure. Like rich countries have a lot of donating infrastructure. A lot of poor countries don't. So I think that's like, generally pretty cool. Like, everything I could read about it was pretty cool. But you can villain chat.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. I think the major consequence here is that anime and manga will no longer have a reason for their characters to communicate their blood type. And I feel like that'll make. That'll just destroy a bit of the culture. The culture and the content there. Have you ever noticed that? That's.

[Aiden]

That.

[Ludwig]

Is that a thing in Japan?

[Aiden]

Yeah. Some Asian countries, they have like a. They have like a personality type associated with your blood type. It's like a. It's like a meme, a horoscope, you know, like you have like. Yeah, horoscope or like right brain, left brain, or blood type became a thing. And it's like, oh, you're. You're this type of.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Person.

[Aiden]

Yeah. I don't know. So I guess you could be like the synthetic type of person who's like, cool with everybody.

[Ludwig]

I'm just. I'm synthetic.

[Aiden]

You're chilling. I just, I fit in with Viber. I'm a viper.

[Doug]

I'm kind of a low blood tear kind of guy, to be honest. Sometimes I get up in the morning, I just think, oh, this is bad blood.

[Aiden]

That's because you drink horse electrolytes every morning.

[Doug]

It's. The electrolytes haven't currently seeped into the blood yet, but I'm thinking I start mixing it with the synthetic juice that the inject slurp juice that the Japanese are making.

[Ludwig]

Do you. Do you know? So I don't know much about blood types, but one thing I kind of know is that if you have O, is it O negative or your blood type is O, then you're the type that can donate to everybody and anybody can use your blood. So are they like recreating that or is this its own thing?

[Doug]

That's the value of this, is that you don't have those restrictions. So the synthetic blood would work with everybody?

[Aiden]

Yeah, it works.

[Doug]

Everybody. Yeah. So. And because that's. That's one of the biggest challenges with donating blood. It's like, my mom is O negative, and then as a result, people pander and. And like hunger for her blood, and so she donates blood.

[Aiden]

A hunger for blood.

[Doug]

Right.

[Ludwig]

Vampire getting, Getting like election texts, but about your blood all the time.

[Aiden]

Wait, can I. I ask what can I guess Your guys's blood type based on this? Japanese personal.

[Doug]

Yeah, go for it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Aiden]

Okay. So Doug, you are confident, self centered and unstable.

[Doug]

You really had me in the first half.

[Aiden]

You're typo.

[Doug]

I don't actually know but I don't know either.

[Aiden]

You don't know your blood type?

[Ludwig]

No.

[Doug]

You know why I don't is because I went to Nepal when I was 18 for a while and they were like you can't donate blood for a long time man. Like seriously you have demons blood. So they're just like you're. Yeah, you have low tier blood but on top of them disliking you like.

[Aiden]

It'S a item in World of Warcraft.

[Doug]

It's gray colored, there's. It's not even purple.

[Ludwig]

I just said sludge. Yeah, they told me I actually just have sludge in my face.

[Doug]

It's just mud.

[Aiden]

What are you guys talking about?

[Doug]

No, no, no. So if so, I mean at least at the time I was told like because there are potential diseases that are prevalent in Nepal and this is like 10, 15 years ago that you genuinely can't donate blood for a long time. So I've not had a reason to explore whether I'm I see donatable or not because I was exposed to whatever was there.

[Aiden]

Well I had Aiden as type A here but I just don't know if you guys ever find out. Let me know if we know if this personality test is.

[Doug]

No, it sounds like this is. We've just run the test and I am typo actually sounds like we actually know.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I guess we do. So funny.

[Ludwig]

I got a little business win.

[Aiden]

You got a business or at least.

[Ludwig]

Something interesting I thought was the Switch 2 just came out.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Ludwig]

And the Switch, the previous console, the Switch one sold about 155 million units which I think it is either the best selling.

[Aiden]

Good news. Nintendo made some money. Let's go big Nintendo.

[Ludwig]

They're either the best selling. I think the Switch has surpassed the PS2 is the best selling console of all time. If I'm not mistaken. It may not have quite come to that threshold. I didn't know this part. The Switch 1 had made $100 billion in revenue with a B for Nintendo over the course of its life up until now, which was surreal to me. But the Switch 2 is as of this recent release, Nintendo's best and fastest selling console ever. 3.5 million units in four days. And the next closest that I could find looking at their sales data for the previous consoles was the Wii when it came out and that managed to sell 3.2 million in about a month.

[Doug]

This is faster than the Wii.

[Ludwig]

So this is faster than any other console or handheld they've released.

[Aiden]

Okay, that. Can I villain share this?

[Doug]

Can you pull up the chart you had earlier, Perry, of the sales? I think that's interesting of the. Just scale of it, if you pull this up. So, I mean, just for people to get a sense. The PS2, which probably a number of people in our audience never saw or experienced, is crazy. It's unbelievable how much it sold. Like, just an absolutely behemoth. And so the fact that the Nintendo Switch even got close is, like, pretty insane. I mean, you can see the other consoles here. It's like nothing. The Wii was one of the most popular ones ever. It's 100 million. PS2 was 160 million.

[Aiden]

It's crazy being a GameCube kid in the PS2 era. Dude, you were isolated.

[Doug]

GameCube isn't even on this. Wii U is. You have to scroll down for.

[Aiden]

So sad. Everyone had a p. I was talking about the new PS2 game.

[Ludwig]

Halo.

[Aiden]

Yeah, Or Halo. Or, yeah, Xbox. And it was like, yeah, I've got the. I've got some. I got Smash Bros. That was it.

[Doug]

You guys get one.

[Aiden]

Okay, But I want to villain chair this for a second. Okay. I was gonna villain share every good news story today, but I realized that would be bad.

[Doug]

That's funny.

[Aiden]

So I'll just villain share this one. All right. Gamers complained loudly and vociferously about the Switch 2's price increase, which I think largely was due to tariff negativity. But they were saying, we're not gonna. We're. We will stand. Make our stand here. All right? We're not buying this higher price. Obviously, I knew that was gonna be bullshit because gamers never hold their word on that. They always go for fomo. But it's crazy that a console that is now more expensive and has literally one game can blow everything else that it's already represented out of the water. It's like Nintendo does not have to try at all. And they can just move units on these things. That's crazy to me. It's like, what. What is the. Used to have to have, like, three big launch titles and, like, really push for it. Now it's like, jack up the price. No game deal with it. And everyone's like, yes, please, master, Please, sir.

[Ludwig]

When I went to go pick mine up at. I think I got mine from Walmart and mine had been dropped off there, and I watched a bunch of people come in while I was waiting trying to buy one because they were. They were sold out for the ones that were just regularly in stock. And the mixture of people that are walking in, like, the age, like, a lot of. A lot of older people, to be honest, that I do not think are the people in the YouTube live stream announcement chat complaining and putting, like, sleep sleeper emoji when the game comes on or, like, the. The price gets listed. I think there's just a huge disconnect between the angry gamers online and who is actually buying the product.

[Aiden]

I agree. Yeah. I just think it's funny that, you know, I don't think this is a good launch, all things considered. Like, I think the console's cool, but there's nothing. Unless you're a real Mario Kart guy.

[Doug]

Yeah. I mean, I know you hate Mario and Nintendo, but I do actually have to agree that it's. I don't see much of a reason to go buy. Essentially, Nintendo launched Mario Kart World, and Everybody is paying $800 for it. That is basically what happens. Like, they've sold 3.2 million copies of Mario Kart World that happened to cost $700 or whatever it is. Well, I also don't understand the craze. Like, I'm excited to eventually get one.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I'll get one eventually.

[Doug]

Yeah, it's cool. Cool. But I'm also baffled by.

[Aiden]

I'm just surprised there's this level of, like, fomo of, like, I gotta get it day one so I can play Mario Kart.

[Ludwig]

Some of these people are be stupid.

[Aiden]

You did it. But you're a Mario Kart guy. Like, I get it for you because you still play Mario Kart Wii 20 years later. You're like a. You're a Mario Kart guy. But, like, for me, I like Nintendo. I like the Switch. I play Mario Play Zelda. Well, I gotta wait in line at Best Buy so I can buy Mario Kart World playing on my couch for 20 minutes. Like, all right. It's crazy.

[Ludwig]

I thought something that was interesting. I was just watching this, like, Bloomberg piece on how their strategy has evolved, and I thought about it. How Nintendo has always taken a different approach to the other companies, where instead of iterating on the previous version of the console, they try to create something novel and new. They basically take a big risk and don't follow the success of the previous console at all. Right. And they've kind of followed this wave of one console that does really well and then hitting a console that doesn't do very well. The biggest example is we to Wii U. Nobody knew what was happening. Terrible name. You know, we sold over 100 million units. The Wii U sold like 13 million, which is crazy. Yeah, crazy.

[Aiden]

Massive flop.

[Ludwig]

And this is the first time that they've taken the previous console and just created an upgraded version but as a new console entirely. And it's interesting that they're not, they, they learned their lesson, I guess, and they're not taking a risk, which is also sad in a way. But when the Switch had come. I remember when the Switch came out I had a fleeting thought of how could you really improve or iterate on this concept because it's replacing all of your handheld devices and it's replacing your home console. So what direction can this really move in from here otherwise? And I kind of like that they just upgraded the version. Maybe I'm a Nintendo Soy.

[Aiden]

Everybody likes it, I think. I mean the magical thing is they had a successful console for once. Like they won, they won a generation. And so they're like, let's just do that again. Yeah, Like I think, you know, the Wii was successful but they, they won that generation.

[Ludwig]

They dominated.

[Aiden]

I My understanding is they sold a lot of consoles but most people had a really, really low attach rate so people bought it for Wii Sports. Right. And it's so that people didn't actually buy games if they, they, they didn't sell that many games.

[Ludwig]

So I think they crushed that era though because they had the DS2 and the DS was. The DS is the best selling video game device ever.

[Aiden]

Yes. Besides, DS is a massive hit and I think the Switch is kind of like a spiritual successor in a way of like a console mix with the ds. Anyway, I just think like it wasn't. I think every rational gamer was like Nintendo, please don't do a Switch. U please don't do something weird or wacky. We like the Switch. It's still. It was selling well up till the switch 2. I mean switch has been incredibly successful. Just do it again.

[Doug]

It's still selling well because the, the packaging is confusing and people are accidentally buying Switch ones.

[Ludwig]

Props. Props to them for just making the name scheme simple too. Just putting a two on the end of it. God forbid you go the Xbox route.

[Aiden]

Oh my God, the Xbox 920 XL.

[Ludwig]

I don't even know what it is. I literally could not tell you what the Xbox model is called right now.

[Aiden]

Did you see the handheld Xbox they just announced? No. It's like the Asus Rog Ally Series X Friendship Edition or Whatever. It's fucking. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. I don't know who's in charge. What demon is in charge at Microsoft of naming is just cackling in his fucking Iron Throne.

[Ludwig]

That's crazy.

[Aiden]

But it's crazy.

[Doug]

Even went back to Xbox One, right? Or am I. Am I hallucinating that and mixing that with Battlefield and Halo and everything else.

[Aiden]

It was Xbox versus PS2 and they did pretty well. And they were worried about Xbox 2 versus PS3. Our numbers 1 lower. So we have to just fucking throw it out the window. They should have just taken. I don't know. I mean, Xbox One worked. Is the problem that was like their best generation or 360 work. I'm sorry. 3 6.

[Doug]

Yeah, 360.

[Aiden]

360 is where it works.

[Ludwig]

360 was basic and good, cool and had it. There is an understanding that Xbox 360 was.

[Aiden]

How do you follow 360? 720.

[Ludwig]

720.

[Aiden]

Then what? 1080 out of.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, yeah. That's what Nvidia does. Mystery. While you work there. While you work there.

[Aiden]

Nvidia has a clear naming scheme. 20 series, 30 series, 40 series, 50 series.

[Ludwig]

You're dumb as bricks.

[Aiden]

Sold pretty well. Sold pretty well. Got a bonus that year.

[Doug]

I want to quickly, if you pull this up, Perry, with our funny little stock game we've been doing. First off, we're currently up $7,000, which is crazy. Continue to be first place with Atrock. Actually last of the three of us. Well, great little handshake there for us. But one of the things I thought was interesting on top of, you know, if you go to dougdug.com stocks you can check out these numbers. Everybody kind of has like their. Their winning company and Ludwigs is Nintendo. Nintendo's up 36% since. Since January. And I think what's interesting, it's not like the stock market has that much, you know, importance to Nintendo as a company, but we. A lot of invested in Nintendo when they had already announced the Switch 2. Everybody knew the Switch 2 was coming out. And somehow. And what is kind of confusing to me is how much the perception of Nintendo's value as a company has increased since then, even though nothing has really changed. In fact, all they've announced is kind of like, yeah, we're going to have a Mario Kart game. And they didn't really launch with anything else. And somehow their company is just perceived to be doing so well beyond the expectations of a couple months ago. And that is interesting and confusing to Me So somehow they're just crushing it.

[Ludwig]

I think that's because they started cracking down on Smash tournaments. Gives people confidence.

[Aiden]

It was couple tens of billions of value increase once they started cracking down. You can't find garage tournament with a custom stage.

[Ludwig]

Yep. Now that the tournaments don't have UCF added, I'm, I'm confident I can put another million in.

[Aiden]

I mean my understanding is that, you know, the market is forward looking and it's trying to predict the good and the bad outcomes. And as it got closer to reality of the launch, they were worried that like oh, if they have a high price we might not buy it. People are buying it, selling super well. It's going to do a few million units. Well, it did above expectations.

[Doug]

But this, it was up this much like a month ago before.

[Aiden]

As you get closer, the reality became.

[Doug]

More and more apparent that how much.

[Aiden]

People are, the buzz was there. People are excited for it. The launch window was open. They're going to dominate this into the holiday season. The, you know, it's all working out in the way Nintendo wanted.

[Ludwig]

They've got my hands tied, dude, because I was, I was getting excited about the Switch 2 after I got it and I was talking to friends and I was like, yeah, like I, I have Breath of the Wild on it. I can play like from, from my old console and I could pay $10 for the upgraded Switch 2 version. And it runs at 120 FPS now and like it's really smooth and the, the picture quality looks really good. And then Nick looked at me and he's like, isn't it crazy? You're excited about that? That's how low of a bar they're setting. And, and I was like, yeah, you're right.

[Aiden]

Oh bro. And they just tapped it in. I don't know.

[Ludwig]

They, I. There was a funny conversation. We work with Kelby, who is our sales guy at Mogul Moves and one afternoon we had like an hour long conversation about what the value to Red what, What amount of money would Red Bull pay Nintendo to have Mario hold a Red Bull case? Like in ads. Like how much do you think that's worth? Kelby do the math for me. And, and then he's posturing different scenarios. He's like, well, can there be a Mario flavor too? And we're like yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

Replace the wing cap in every Mario game with a Red Bull. And he chugs it, gets actual wings and then that's good.

[Doug]

I'm gonna be honest. That's, that's, that's the marketer right there.

[Aiden]

That'S gonna move you.

[Ludwig]

I mean, they're so carried by their. Their ip, Right. That's the one thing they really, really have over everybody else is like, you have, I think Mario. This, this may have changed because I remember looking at this like probably like eight years ago, but Mario was the most recognizable figure in media, like when polled globally or something. So if you took a bunch of company ip, basically, if you took figures like Pac man and Mickey Mouse and all of these different things, Mario was recognized by like 94% of people. They could look at a picture of Mario and around the world and say, that's Mario.

[Aiden]

A Japanese created Italian plumber that fights a monkey named donkey became sir.

[Ludwig]

Yes, sir.

[Aiden]

Became the world's own. And also, I mean, yeah, that's Nintendo's core thing is like, even in the dark times, because every. Every six years, they're in dark times. They have Mario, Zelda, Pokemon. They just have a few franchises that are so good and they have such great developers for those games that even if nobody else is making games for their consoles, they can weather the winter and then they can. They can bounce back when they hit the red stride. I mean, Pokemon is the single biggest media franchise ever.

[Doug]

Yes.

[Aiden]

Of all. You know, so that's. Yeah, they got. They got something. It's crazy that kids today are as enamored with Pokemon as I was when I was seven years old recently.

[Ludwig]

That's crazy. I always remember.

[Doug]

It's all. It's also crazy real quick that like, our friends today are as enamored with Pokemon as they were when they were seven and have not grown up. I'm sorry. That was mean. I don't like Pokemon. I never liked it. I don't get it.

[Aiden]

No, you're a Digimon guy.

[Doug]

I want to like it. I do. And I can't. And my cold, dark soul just can't accept the. The beauty of.

[Ludwig]

No, I get it, Doug. I get it, Doug. You engage consciously with the media in front of you. You know, you understand.

[Doug]

It's too easy. I don't understand.

[Aiden]

Should we crispr a pigeon to become a Pidgey?

[Doug]

Yes. I want to say.

[Ludwig]

Did he. Were you there when he said this? When he confessed that when he was.

[Doug]

A child, he thought Pidgey was real.

[Ludwig]

He thought pigeon like, like, of course Pidgey and Weedle are real.

[Aiden]

And he will. When Crispr gets involved. Yeah, these are gonna be real thing. Pikachu's gonna be my friend as I dreamed when I was a child.

[Doug]

If you loan me your dog for a few years, I'll turn him into Pikachu.

[Aiden]

Can't take.

[Doug]

Or your baby, whichever. Just give me some kind of living creature that's important.

[Aiden]

That risk with you specifically. But I'll find a nice.

[Doug]

Let me go off the grid like that guy in China for a little bit. Let me go wild.

[Aiden]

Dude, I have another story.

[Doug]

Oh yeah, okay.

[Aiden]

I just. Because before you would take my baby.

[Doug]

I was just thinking more about all the cool. I'm just thinking about all the sliders I would be changing. But yeah, go ahead.

[Aiden]

I have another good, good news story. This is a. This is kind of a weird one. Well, it's just good news, but it's almost obvious. But I. There was a. I'll explain it. There was a big cancer conference in Europe specifically.

[Doug]

You said cancel culture cancer conference.

[Aiden]

Actually it was in Chicago. I'm sorry, in Chicago. Recently they had a cancer research conference where a bunch of doctors came out and somebody came up with a well done peer reviewed, long term longitudinal study about exercise as a treatment for cancer, basically as in comparison to. It's for colon cancer specifically. And it was in comparison to chemotherapy. Okay. They just, they just compared. And you know, what often doctors will do is they will say, you know, remember to exercise or they'll give you like this one was like, we're going to try treatment where you are assigned a personal trainer. You have to specifically do this number of things. Four or five days a week they tried was shockingly, remarkably proven effective. And it got a standing ovation from all these cancer researchers who are showing that like consistently taking care of your health, going on walks, doing high intensity exercise or whatever is like one of the body's proven best ways to actively fight disease. This case specifically for colon cancer. And by the way, what they mentioned in this is like, there's no reason you can't now do both because they should. They like. I think it had a 5% increase in survival when they did the chemo and it was like seven or eight with, with the intense exercise. You can combine them both and have, you know, again, the examples they use is like 1 in 12 people who would have died will now survive. I'm sorry, I'm getting a phone call from my cancer research buddy.

[Ludwig]

Actually, the study study's blown wide open. True. So what this is comparing people who are exercising with, with the assigned.

[Aiden]

So there was three groups. One of them is like chemotherapy, just the, just the standard thing. One of them was like, they gave them the normal thing. They tell them which is like, take care of your health, do exercise. And then one of them was like, they took it seriously and they had government and I would say they had that hospital funds applied to. You get a personal trainer, you're gonna have a regimen. And what it's basically saying is that people that did that, it really was remarkable, the impact in a way that got all these cancer researchers standing up.

[Ludwig]

Are the people, those people also doing chemo though, or are they doing just.

[Aiden]

It was a comparison between chemo and the exercise and the exercise. People had a higher result. The chemo was effective, but, you know, It's a small percent. This is like late stage colon cancer. Like 5% more survive from the. Anyway, I'm not saying it's the, the world's most positive news or anything, but it's just interesting and I think there's a positivity to it that I think a lot of the doctors were saying, which is like, hey, if we can get this proven to the point where it unlocks funds or unlocks, you know, health insurance funds or whatever, this could be a big deal. Because anyone can do it. There's not danger to it. There's no, there's no downside to the exercise. It's a pure upside. And if it has the effect that it does, which is higher than chemo and you can combo it with chemo, I mean, you could get a lot more people living and they're healthier and it could help just unlock a larger trend of like, this is important and has great positive knock on effects.

[Doug]

It reminds me of when we talked about medical. The medical episode. You know, one of the takeaways is an enormous amount of the health problems that we have in America are chronic health problems that are largely from people not taking care of themselves. Right? And that's the truth. And it's in ways that they can that are just hard. Eating, healthy, exercising, not smoking, et cetera, et cetera. And so the more of this evidence that comes out, I mean, something my mom would drill into me over and over growing up is like how critical this stuff is and how hard it is for doctors to get people to stick with this stuff and do it. So the more evidence there is, it's like the. It sounds kind of silly and obvious, but the amount of benefits for cancer with everything is just so ridiculously high.

[Aiden]

Jack line in here. I want to bring this up. It says knowledge alone is likely to be insufficient to allow most people to make meaningful and sustained change. So this evidence, this proof where they can start Treating exercise like a drug where a prescription is filled out, a trainer allotted the schedule adhered to can make a massive. It's like, it's like, it is like if, if this was an announcement of a new drug, the, the, the level of positive effect it had would be a massive breakthrough. Like, holy shit, we invented something crazy. But it doesn't even cost money. Someone can't patent it, they can't own it. All you have to do is just put someone on a schedule and make sure they stick to it and they're going to have much better health outcomes. That's cool. I mean, it's much better than a world where this stuff doesn't work, where you just have no control. You need some kind of crazy new drug. If you don't get it, you're dead.

[Doug]

Doing it like a prescription, I've never heard that concept. That is really interesting.

[Aiden]

So I thought it was cool.

[Doug]

It's very hard to get people to having doctors I've spoke with, they're, they're basically like, yeah, you can tell patients to do stuff and then most of the time they come back. You know, it's like I go to the dentist every six months and he's like, like, hey, you using that retainer at night? And I'm like, nah, next time though. And that's, that's what it's like, you know. And for, you know, in my case, it's not that big of a deal if I don't wear the retainer, but it is a really big deal if you're not, you know, exercising, particularly if you have these diseases.

[Ludwig]

So it reminds me, it reminds me of a tweet that was like, those people who tell you to exercise and sleep more to deal with your depression are so annoying because that shit work and I think coupled, you know, stuff like that. Or I've been told the number one way to defend against developing like dementia or Alzheimer's later in life is just exercise. Like that is the number one documented thing you could do to prevent it later in your life. It's crazy how broadly applicable it is and it feels like such a given, but it's just something that is really, really hard to instill in people. I'm trying to be better about it right now. I'm phase of life this year where I'm trying to be more disciplined and just make sure I do something like every day. And it, and it helps, like just, like just, you know, anecdotally lower anxiety, better appetite, better sleep, things just automatically improve in your life. It Gives you this way better baseline. So to know that it could have as far reaching benefits as something like this is awesome.

[Doug]

It's three extremely simple things. It is diet, sleep and horse electrolytes. I am wired. I don't know if you guys notice I've been like stepping underneath the table.

[Aiden]

Part two of this article is that cancer is 99% cured when you just main horse horse electrolytes.

[Doug]

Yeah, I wonder what mine tastes like.

[Aiden]

Another sip.

[Ludwig]

What is your problem?

[Doug]

Mine looks like a brick.

[Aiden]

You just ruined the iPad.

[Doug]

Zamboni.

[Aiden]

No, it's 20 minutes later. Thanks. Let's go dude.

[Doug]

I am pumped and ready to pod. Let's go. You got another one.

[Ludwig]

You really just drank the rest of it off of the table.

[Aiden]

We all cleaned it up and he sat there chugging the entire rest of the.

[Ludwig]

Now let me finish this. Well, we do have a. We do have a couple more. Couple more good news topics to end this off on. I found a cool one from today which was the World bank ends its ban on funding nuclear power projects.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Wait, this is like a bigger story. This is happening all over the world. There has been movement, broad based movement in Europe, in America, in Asia to like re examine nuclear and get projects moving. And as someone who's a big supporter of it and think it's like incredibly high power, low emissions, zero emissions, like just an incredible way towards energy security and freedom and it's awesome. It's cool to see countries of the world recognize that and move towards it in a broad based way.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. I was surprised by the amount of news I've seen around this this year and even in the past month I feel like a lot of stuff has been moving in the same direction. I have a question for you. Say I'm listening to this and I'm like a track. You never think about the nuclear waste and where they're going to put the nuclear waste.

[Aiden]

I would love to talk. I wish we do a whole episode.

[Doug]

On it because I we should do a nuclear.

[Aiden]

I would like to do a nuclear episode just broadly the amount of nuclear waste is really small. Okay. All of it in the world would fit in like a football field up stack three times. So it's like just understand that. And so many of the innovations in nuclear recently are able to reuse that nuclear waste. So I did hear I can go way deeper on this and I can do all pride just generally. It's not like I'm not aware of nuclear waste when I'm pro nuclear. I'm like that doesn't exist. I am not thinking that everyone's turning into Spider man or whatever. It's like, I believe that there is simple, cost effective solutions for this and that it does not make this incredible energy source not a good idea. That's. That's my fan. That's where I stand on nuclear.

[Doug]

Yeah. And there's two cool things that are semi related to that. One is PBR is a new type of nuclear reactor which uses. I forget, I believe it's uranium blue ribbon.

[Aiden]

Yeah. It's PBR that you drink that and you get a nuclear energy to like go out and have fun.

[Doug]

And then we capture that energy, we go to a club, we give everybody PBRs. And the increased energy in the club.

[Aiden]

Is put them on a character wheel.

[Doug]

By a turbine is captured. And we use that to power the brewery that makes new paps. And it's actually Infinite Energy Generator. Yeah.

[Aiden]

Because you get good times and you get good energy.

[Doug]

Yeah. Do you actually look up what PBR actually stands for? But I think it's pebble based reactor. I want to say it's some of the core things. It's uranium spheres instead of these rods. There's hydrogen that cools it down instead of water. But one of the key features is that. Yeah, pebble pebble bed reactors. One of the key features is that it doesn't melt down. Like one of the problems with nuclear, you know, the big scary things is like Fukushima, Chernobyl. Right. Like, if the. If the nuclear power plant melts down, then that's where the radioactive material starts shooting out into the world and get hit in the chest with a bunch of protons or neutrons or whatever. But with PBRs, the idea is that if power shuts down, if there's a disaster, it will immediately start cooling down. It doesn't heat up past the point that it starts actually like destroying the facility and breaking things. So this was tested in China recently, and although there's some skepticism about it, sounds like there's real promise there. And then the other is small modular reactors which instead of making one giant nuclear power plant, you make it essentially in this, like template form that's smaller. And that has a bunch of merit. There's a lot of research about that. Well, I'm sure we can dive into it.

[Ludwig]

It's kind of like a. Like a solar panel on your roof. Like you'd get your own nuclear power plant. Just stick it on my roof.

[Doug]

More like a town would get a.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I don't think it's for individual.

[Doug]

Yeah. It's not for individual home.

[Aiden]

I mean, you're running 400 switch twos to play.

[Doug]

Because I will say in that case, the nuclear waste is a concern. If everyone do not want that like on your wristwatch, that, that is. That is an issue. But small modular reactors, the idea is, like, right now with nuclear, it's really hard to build them because, like, you've got to commit whatever, $30 billion to make some giant power plant from scratch. But if you. If you turn it into a template that can be quickly made and also, like, scaled up or down, depending on the size of a city, that's really valuable. So actually, this reminds me that Britain just hired Rolls Royce, which I didn't know they make power, but they're. They're basically. They want a bid to start developing nuclear small modular reactors.

[Aiden]

Nuclear small modular reactors. That's hype.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And a bunch of companies, I mean, some companies, like, I think Metta is just buying a nuclear power plant, full stop, outright.

[Ludwig]

Oh, because they.

[Aiden]

Because they need it for data center.

[Ludwig]

A data center.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So there's just a lot of. There's a lot of progress and innovation happening in nuclear right now.

[Ludwig]

Rolls Royce nuclear. How's Gucci Gucci Nuclear doing?

[Doug]

Why. Why don't all the fashion brands of Europe get into nuclear?

[Ludwig]

Dude, that would be so funny if. If LVMH just pivoted into nuclear energy. Dude, they ditched all of the clothing behind. And then what's it. Bernard Arnault, I think, and he just becomes a nuclear.

[Aiden]

Nuclear guy.

[Doug]

What's the brand that's, like, way overpriced. Stupid.

[Aiden]

All of them.

[Ludwig]

Most of them.

[Aiden]

No, like, no.

[Doug]

The biggest, stupidest one that starts with a B, I think Balenciaga. Like, imagine a Balenciaga nuclear power plant. It's just like, it makes no sense that I wouldn't. I would not trust them to deal with the waste because they would put the waste in, like, in like, ripped jeans that just like, shoot radioactive material.

[Ludwig]

Just Doug naming off cool.

[Aiden]

Dude, you mentioned Fukushima. I mean, even Japan, which, after Fukushima, which is one of the. I think the. The most recent large nuclear disaster, they put a law that was, like, stopping the lifespan of the nuclear reactors. They just repealed that law. They just realized as they got closer to the timeline, it's like, it is such a big part of their energy mix. It's so helpful. It's so efficient that it was. It was a panic mode that they didn't. They got rid of it. So that got. It's just happening even in countries where it's been affected because you can't argue with the numbers on it. It's cool.

[Doug]

You know what else is great news about that? Countries that have a tendency to do not super cool human rights. Things like Russia. That's, you know, it's largely what powers them. Like Russia has, you know, so much of their economy is based around selling gas to Europe. You know, it's like the more that every country around the world can become self sustainable via solar or nuclear and energy stops being this like resource you have to like fight over. It's like it enables countries to not be dependent and enable other, you know, despots, whatever you want to call it. So I think there's some real, there's so much good stuff coming out of renewables as an increase and nuclear and all this.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean there's follow ups to that because.

[Doug]

No, no, no, there's no, no to what I just said.

[Aiden]

No, I'll just say because I have a follow up to follow up. The follow up people will say is like, well, a lot of uranium comes from Russia because they have the spots. But it's worth noting, follow up to that is that uranium is actually extremely widely available. It's actually very naturally occurring. It just nobody's bothered to build up all the processing and mines because there's not been huge demand. And as demand increases, there's going to be a lot more creation of that. Yeah, worth noting. Anyway, it's that your last one. You had any. One more.

[Doug]

I got one more. Okay, yeah, cool one. Senator Hawley, let's see if this iPad still functions after. Oh, okay. Well, I guess, I guess I lost the main one. But Senator Josh Hawley, who is pretty far right, proposed a bill just this week basically proposing a $15 federal, federal minimum wage hike for America. So right now minimum wage is $7.25, right? Not $7.50. Oh, yeah, there we go. And so this is proposed and I think the reason that this is relevant, this isn't passed yet. But this is something that a lot of senators, you know, Bernie Sanders notably has been pushing for something like this for a long time of increasing the federal minimum wage. Basically, the minimum wage by the federal government has not increased in decades, even though the cost of living has increased dramatically. And I hadn't really strongly looked into this much before, but you know, the counter argument against minimum wage that for example, people generally on the right, the conservatives will say is that if you increase the minimum wage that's going to be past the point that A lot of especially small businesses can sustain and manage, and that will force them to lay people off. They won't be able to hire as many people because they have to pay them more. And therefore you're going to lose a huge number of jobs. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that a $15 minimum wage could eliminate anywhere from 2.7 million jobs all the way to zero.

[Ludwig]

Wow.

[Doug]

Yeah. Which is really helpful. Yeah. But it would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. So basically, critics are saying, like, you can't just force companies to pay a certain rate. This is not a good idea. The free market should take care of it. That's like the core argument, particularly given that the cost of living in San Francisco is vastly different than a small town in Missouri. Right. And so to federally force this, it doesn't make a lot of sense rather than states doing it. And so some of the, the cool things I saw, there's a different couple studies over the years that looked at the actual change of employment when states or areas of the country increase their minimum wage. So there was a pretty influential one from 1992, which is they looked at New Jersey, increase their minimum wage from 425 to 505, checked like 400 fast food restaurants, and there was no reduced employment at all. And then there was another one, this one from the Washington center for Equitable Growth, which, you know, slightly biased towards increasing minimum wage, but still did this study that from reading through it for a little bit, it seems really grounded. And basically they studied how two states, California and New York, doubled their minimum wage. How we went up to like $15 over the course of about a decade. And so they looked at all these, these interesting pieces about this and what I thought was particularly interesting that they conclude, so when you increase the minimum wage in this case for these two states, and they increased it to $15, they looked at what actually happens to that increase costs that the business has to expend. They found that it doesn't actually reduce employment. There is no disemployment that resulted in these areas. And they compared all these different ones. But what ends up happening is those costs get split. About 50% goes to customers. So the businesses raise their prices. So about half those increased costs goes to customers and the other half goes to just less money, just less revenue. And the point, the conclusion of this was all of these different, in this case, fast food restaurants, all of these different fast food restaurants, none of them fired people. They just ate half of the cost and they passed half the cost on to Customers. And what that implies is that it is not a perfect free market, is that these companies clearly can afford to pay their people more and just take a hit on their profit. And the argument of minimum wage shouldn't be increased because the market will find perfect equilibrium in case after case. It's been shown. No, these kind of, these, these companies can do this. They actually can take this hit. Of course, there's more complexity to it. Maybe some small, you know, mom and pop shop business can't do this in some town or whatnot. But I thought the studies around this were particularly interesting. And then the fact that this is gaining traction on the Republican side of the aisle, and given that Republicans are really trying to get a more of a foothold in, let's say working class people and really resonate with them, I think there's real potential that this actually make some waves, which would be really cool.

[Aiden]

You wanna go first?

[Ludwig]

No, you go first.

[Aiden]

All right. Well, I'll say it's this guy. Josh Hawley has been someone I've. I've had an eye on for a while because he is really polarizing to.

[Doug]

Me in that I know nothing about him.

[Aiden]

No, no, no, no, I'm not. I'm just saying, like, sometimes he'll say it like the coolest thing I've ever heard. And then sometimes he'll say like, we need to have the Bible be the only thing taught in school. He is a true. Like, yeah, it's that it's this guy.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Aiden]

And you know, it's just funny. He is part of this new wing of Republicans that are like, weirdly aligned on a lot of pro worker stuff, like with a Bernie Sanders or he was pro Lena Khan. He was one of the few Republicans that wasn't like, really?

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

So he's interesting. And sometimes he'll say something about workers that I think is. Is really cool. And I agree. Raising the minimum wage makes total sense. We have a lot, a lot. I mean, I read a book called Goliath that's about just the amount of monopoly capture we have on so many different markets in America. Even things like cheerleading, like, you wouldn't think about that. But if you have a daughter who's in cheer or son in cheerleading, like it all goes through like one company. So you have to pay these absurd things for all the equipment. And that company has an exclusive contract with like every school. It's like we just have so many things that are monopolized. And so the idea that it's reaching natural equilibrium on wages is not True. Because people, people don't have a lot of options in a lot of fields. So anyway, I think he's just an interesting character and I guess I'm happy in general that people on both sides of the aisle are starting to like handshake over the fact that like he mentions in this article, we need stronger unions, we need more minimum wage protections. I think you would also agree that like we need to have protections from wage theft. People get their wages stolen all the time, or like it takes a long time to get them or there's delays. All this stuff is beneficial. So even if I am not handshaking on most things he says, like I agree on on this.

[Ludwig]

Well, here's Aiden, the villain chair raising the minimum wage. Why. Why we shouldn't do it. Okay, yeah, I, I don't actually think we shouldn't, shouldn't raise it. But I do think there's something to be said about the utopian version of what the minimum wage is meant to accomplish. So I think it's. Denmark doesn't have one. They just don't have a minimum wage. And the reason this is the case is because they're really high percentage of union participation. So the issue, part of the issue with minimum wage on the other side of things is that when you set it at a flat amount, it never scales at a rate that matches the productivity of labor in the economy. So as soon as you set the minimum wage, it immediately starts getting output outpaced by whatever forces are pushing what, let's say the correct market wage should be above that, whether it be just inflation or other things in the economy. So your, your minimum wage is aging and that's why the 725 is so crazy, right? We've gone 20 years where our dollar is worth significantly less than it used to be, but people can still be getting paid the same amount of money. And I thought something was interesting. There is like the report we had up, I think it had the word monopsony in the title, which we had covered on the book club episode that we did. This idea that the market is most markets are not necessarily monopolies, but share strong characteristics of monopolies because of how few players exist within the space. And because that's the case, labor is not able to effectively negotiate the what the actual value of their work is. Examples being that if you live in a small town in the year 1900 and all that town does is mine coal and that's the only job, well, you don't have a lot of leverage to negotiate Your salary and the way to counteract this or to have a greater impact on valuing your work is negotiating as a group or negotiating as a union. So in a place like Denmark, which doesn't as far as I understand really have a minimum wage because like 95% of workers are in the country are in a union and the unions are constantly negotiating wages up in tandem with the other things that are in effect in the economy. Now do I think that's a comprehensive, easily sloganable policy to push forward in the United States? No, no. I don't think that change is going to come before and I rather fight for something basic like can we at least get it to 15 boys?

[Aiden]

That makes sense.

[Ludwig]

I think there's something to be said about this not being an effective long term solution to what, you know, what it's attempting to fix.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And I'm glad you pointed out the things that you did where we can see that there is a negligible impact on employment like people say. But I'm hoping that the long term solution in the US one day could be something more.

[Doug]

Yeah. Because it's a backstop like this is, this is this should not be the driving factor of how people are paid is what the federal government is. I mean most minimum wage.

[Aiden]

Right. Because right there is just.

[Ludwig]

Most states have a higher. We talked about this a bit. Most states have a higher minimum wage to begin with. And then the percentage of workers that are paid at the minimum wage is fairly low. I think it's like below 10% or something. And I think for, you know, for what it's worth, that doesn't mean this won't help a lot of people. I think we're about to see like going from 725 to 15 is such a dramatic jump that there's a ton of people in the middle there that are going to be boosted up along the way. Yeah, I hope this goes through.

[Aiden]

We'll see some data.

[Doug]

Probably won't, but at least it's the right direction. And then I think what's valuable here is like in the Congress. Right. We're so split and so like 5050 that you only need a few people from the other side to get things to happen. So I think that's where it's really compelling that you're getting Republican sport for this as well.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I just like seeing movement on some, some pro worker stuff and anti monopoly stuff.

[Doug]

Yeah, that was a lot of good news.

[Aiden]

That was some good news.

[Doug]

Yeah, that feels nice. Like. Yeah, the world isn't all Terrible.

[Aiden]

Yeah, we did fit in some bad news in our goodness.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, we managed to fit in some bad news without 11.

[Aiden]

A little bit, a little bit of bad news spice. It's the spice of life.

[Ludwig]

Whether it be crispr eugenics or the number of people that'll get arrested at the protest this weekend, you can be sure that you'll get your dose of bad news every week.

[Doug]

Thank God we solved it. I'd be a little depressed.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I'd be worried if we didn't solve it.

[Ludwig]

But if you want to join us for our extra hour, we do every week. It comes out on Mondays. You can go to patreon.com lemonade stand. I think this week we're going to talk a little bit more more about the circumstances behind the protests and the immigration as that story continues to develop. We also do a ton of extra shows on the second tier of the Patreon. We've been doing our book club which was super fun and our watch along our extra show where we respond to comments. So if you're interested in any of that. We're also getting very near our subscriber goal of 10,000 where we go to.

[Aiden]

China, trip to China, meet Xi Jinping, hash this whole thing out because this trade deal stuff's been going on 10k.

[Ludwig]

Subs to hash it out with China.

[Aiden]

Hash it out. We'll get the rare earth minerals. We'll bring them back.

[Ludwig]

I'm bringing a lot of suitcases.

[Aiden]

And I'm smuggling in Nvidia chips that were.

[Doug]

Arrested by the end of it.

[Aiden]

Let's be real.

[Ludwig]

And I feel, I feel obligated to communicate. Don't drink horse electrolytes. Well, that was a bit.

[Aiden]

He's looking pretty as some energetic.

[Doug]

No, look at my how flush my skin is.

[Ludwig]

Maybe a little pale. Very sickly. Adverse health consequences if you drink.

[Aiden]

Oh, one more thing, you know on the Discord which you can join if you join the Patreon, there was like an insane amount more good news. We didn't actually didn't. We brought our own stories and we didn't get to get to the. Oh no.

[Doug]

A lot of these were from Discord. So thank you, thank you everybody. Submitted stories from Discord. Yeah, we've been, we've been getting a lot of great feedback every week from that.

[Aiden]

So thank you from their region, from their country for our singing good news and it is from all over the world and it was very fascinating to read through. So if you want to join in on that they they it's all positive rather than our situation, which is positive. Check that out on the Discord.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. All right, we'll see you guys next week.

[Aiden]

Next week, baby.

[Doug]

Bye.