It's Been 100 Days... | Ep 009 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Podcast Summary: Lemonade Stand – "It's Been 100 Days... | Ep 009 Lemonade Stand 🍋"

Episode Information:

• Title: It's Been 100 Days... | Ep 009 Lemonade Stand 🍋
• Release Date: May 1, 2025
• Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc, and DougDoug
• Description: Three guys with the expertise to run a lemonade stand explain the world of business.

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Introduction to the Episode

The episode kicks off with the hosts experimenting with a unique podcast format, where all three speakers talk simultaneously to increase efficiency and engagement. This unconventional approach sets the tone for a dynamic and in-depth discussion on pressing political and technological issues.

Trump’s First 100 Days in Office

Main Discussion Points: The primary focus of this episode revolves around evaluating Donald J. Trump’s first 100 days in his new administration. The hosts analyze whether Trump's initial promises of ushering in a "golden age" for America are being met and how his administration compares to previous ones.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [05:29]: “At 100 days in, he is underwater on all polls compared to his previous administration.”
• Aiden [05:08]: “He's glazing him. We're talking about glazing a lot today.”

Key Insights:

• Polling Performance: The hosts present data indicating that Trump’s approval ratings are lower than in his previous term, challenging his narrative of success.
• Administration Behavior: They critique the current administration for lacking the moderating influences present during Trump’s earlier term, suggesting a more unfiltered and chaotic approach.
• Public Perception: A significant portion of the discussion highlights how Trump's aggressive and rapid policy changes, such as tariffs and immigration enforcement, have led to negative public sentiment.

Public Perception and Polling on Trump’s Administration

Main Discussion Points: The chatter delves into public opinion polls, illustrating growing dissatisfaction with Trump’s handling of the economy and immigration. The hosts discuss how these negative perceptions are affecting Trump's overall approval and the potential long-term implications.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [07:59]: “The main thing voters cared about was the economy, and it's only gotten worse.”
• Cody [04:19]: “The consensus is this is the worst.”

Key Insights:

• Economic Concerns: Despite promises of economic prosperity, indicators such as job scarcity, rising cost of living, and ineffective trade deals are driving public discontent.
• Immigration Policies: Even though immigration was a strong campaign point, outcomes have disappointed supporters, particularly regarding high-profile deportations and policy inconsistencies.

Comparison to Previous Terms

Main Discussion Points: The hosts compare Trump’s current administration to his previous term, noting a lack of internal checks and a more unilateral decision-making process.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [05:07]: “In the first administration, he was chaotic on Twitter, but there was a lot of control.”
• Aiden [05:21]: “You just put a compliment in first and then sneak the paper off his desk.”

Key Insights:

• Internal Dynamics: The absence of moderating voices within the administration leads to more erratic and impulsive policy decisions.
• Public Relations: Trump's current strategy of overwhelming the public with multiple policy changes simultaneously creates confusion and erodes trust.

Voter Feedback and Listener Comments

Main Discussion Points: Listeners’ perspectives are introduced through comments, highlighting a mix of dissatisfaction even among Trump’s base. The hosts emphasize the importance of understanding voter expectations and the disconnect between promises and realities.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [12:48]: “My main issue with Trump so far is the way he is doing everything. It should be happening two years from now.”
• Cody [12:35]: “This is happening in every country. Canada is in a tough spot.”

Key Insights:

• Execution vs. Promises: Voters appreciate Trump’s policies in theory but are frustrated by the chaotic implementation.
• Long-Term Impact: There is concern that the initial chaos will lead to sustained negative perceptions, overshadowing any policy successes.

Economic Indicators vs. Stock Market

Main Discussion Points: The hosts differentiate between stock market performance and the real economy, arguing that despite stock market fluctuations, everyday economic hardships like housing affordability and job scarcity are worsening.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [38:29]: “The stock market and the economy are two different things. The stock market is up from last year.”
• Cody [40:01]: “It's down from this ridiculous high when Trump got in.”

Key Insights:

• Real Economy vs. Stock Market: While the S&P 500 shows growth over the past year, the real economy is suffering from increased inflation, job scarcity, and reduced consumer spending.
• Public Sentiment: Many Americans feel the negative economic trends more acutely than what the stock market might suggest.

Canadian Election Overview

Main Discussion Points: Shifting focus to international politics, the episode covers the recently concluded Canadian election. Mark Carney’s leadership and the Liberal Party’s surprising victory despite prior unpopularity are explored.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [53:39]: “Mark Carney is the Prime Minister of Canada. He was very well-liked and led the Liberal Party to victory.”
• Aiden [47:07]: “Carney stepping up changed people’s minds by itself more than Trump changes were considered.”

Key Insights:

• Mark Carney’s Leadership: Carney, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, is credited with stabilizing the Liberal Party and winning over voters with pragmatic policies.
• Impact of Trump’s Policies: Trump's aggressive stance towards Canada inadvertently strengthened Carney’s position by uniting Canadians against perceived external threats.
• Policy Changes: Carney has implemented significant policy shifts, such as removing the consumer carbon tax, which has immediately lowered fuel prices and improved public perception.

Mark Carney’s Leadership and Impact

Main Discussion Points: Mark Carney’s credentials and policies are scrutinized, with hosts debating whether his banking background is an asset or a liability for Canada’s current challenges.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [56:11]: “Carney is a super well-educated guy with extensive experience in high-level banking.”
• Aiden [68:06]: “How much of his policies will actually benefit Canadians without exacerbating wealth inequality?”

Key Insights:

• Educational Background: Carney’s extensive education and experience in international banking provide him with a solid foundation to tackle economic issues.
• Policy Effectiveness: While some policies, like housing construction incentives, are well-received, concerns remain about long-term impacts on economic inequality and sustainability.
• Public Trust: Carney’s diplomatic and pragmatic approach has garnered bipartisan support, reflecting his ability to unite diverse political factions.

AI and Its Societal Impact

Main Discussion Points: The conversation shifts to the role of artificial intelligence, particularly focusing on AI's tendency to be overly positive and sycophantic, and the broader implications for society.

Notable Quotes:

• Cody [74:12]: “It’s becoming a giant digital Krispy Kreme. We are being glazed at scale.”
• Brandon [83:40]: “AI is becoming like drugs in how it preys on human nature for validation.”

Key Insights:

• Sycophantic AI: Recent updates to models like ChatGPT have made them excessively positive, leading to concerns about loss of authenticity and critical engagement.
• Emotional Impact: AI’s validation can be likened to addictive substances, providing temporary comfort but potentially fostering dependency and superficial interactions.
• Regulatory Challenges: The episode discusses the difficulty in regulating AI without infringing on personal freedoms, highlighting the need for specialized AI applications to address specific societal needs.

Concerns about AI Being Sycophantic

Main Discussion Points: Hosts express worries about AI’s role in personal validation and emotional well-being, comparing it to addictive behaviors and questioning the ethical implications.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [94:05]: “AI validation is like digital fentanyl to a lonely person.”
• Cody [75:51]: “People are feeding off this validation, creating echo chambers of positivity.”

Key Insights:

• Mental Health: AI’s constant validation can negatively impact mental health by reducing meaningful human interactions and fostering unrealistic self-perceptions.
• Echo Chambers: AI-driven interactions may reinforce existing beliefs and prevent users from engaging with diverse perspectives, exacerbating social polarization.
• Ethical Use: There is a pressing need to develop AI systems that balance user satisfaction with honesty and critical thinking, avoiding the pitfalls of excessive validation.

AI Use Cases and Regulation

Main Discussion Points: Exploring various applications of AI, the hosts debate the potential benefits and risks, emphasizing the importance of specialized models for tasks like therapy and business.

Notable Quotes:

• Cody [79:40]: “AI needs to specialize rather than be everything to everyone to avoid creating echo chambers.”
• Aiden [73:54]: “How do you design AI that supports personal growth without manipulating emotions?”

Key Insights:

• Specialized AI Models: Developing AI tailored to specific tasks, such as mental health support or business planning, can enhance usefulness while mitigating risks.
• Regulatory Frameworks: Governments and organizations must collaborate to establish guidelines that ensure AI operates ethically and transparently.
• Competition and Diversity: Encouraging a diverse ecosystem of AI developers can prevent monopolistic tendencies and promote a balance of perspectives.

Personal Responsibility vs. System Design in AI Impact

Main Discussion Points: The debate intensifies around the balance between individual responsibility and the role of

Notable Quotes:

• Aiden [99:14]: “Where do you draw the line between personal responsibility and system design when addressing AI’s impact?”
• Brandon [100:00]: “AI can become weapons-grade heroin in how it validates individuals.”

Key Insights:

• Systemic Influence: AI systems are designed to influence user behavior, raising questions about the extent to which individuals can control their interactions and maintain autonomy.
• Policy Solutions: The hosts discuss the necessity of policies that address the structural aspects of AI’s impact, rather than solely relying on individual accountability.
• Ethical Responsibility: There is a collective responsibility to ensure AI technologies are developed and deployed in ways that prioritize human well-being and societal harmony.

Concluding Thoughts

Main Discussion Points: The hosts reflect on the tumultuous nature of the first 100 days of Trump’s administration and the broader societal challenges posed by AI. They express a mix of optimism for future solutions and concern over the immediate complexities.

Notable Quotes:

• Brandon [94:05]: “I see myself as an optimist long-term, but the current trajectory is troubling.”
• Cody [101:21]: “There is good to come from AI despite the current dark trends.”

Key Insights:

• Short-Term Pessimism vs. Long-Term Optimism: While acknowledging immediate challenges, the hosts maintain faith in human ingenuity to navigate and overcome these obstacles.
• Call to Action: The episode concludes with an invitation for listeners to engage further through Patreon discussions and upcoming episodes focused on the positive potentials of AI.

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Final Thoughts: This episode of Lemonade Stand offers a comprehensive analysis of Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office, highlighting significant public dissatisfaction with economic and immigration policies. It also provides an insightful exploration into the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence, emphasizing the need for specialized AI applications and robust regulatory frameworks. Through engaging discussions and diverse perspectives, the hosts encourage listeners to critically evaluate current political and technological landscapes while maintaining hope for future advancements.

Transcript

[Brandon]

Five, four, three, two, one.

[Cody]

The most.

[Aiden]

Situations.

[Cody]

Welcome to AIDS Day, everybody. What are we talking about today, Aiden?

[Aiden]

I thought that was really clear. We just all put it out.

[Brandon]

Oh, yeah, done.

[Cody]

That's true. It's parallelism. You just get more done faster.

[Aiden]

You just mute one of the audio. The audio which I'm sure we'll separately release. And it's the efficiency of the podcast, really.

[Cody]

One ear is each.

[Brandon]

This is how you stop people in the comments being like they're talking over each other, interrupting each other. We just all speak at this.

[Aiden]

If we just do it all the time for every episode, then it'll be fine. I think if you listen to all three of those tracks at the same time and also go to sleep, you'll wake up having retained them all.

[Brandon]

I think it opens a pentagram to.

[Cody]

Hell.

[Aiden]

Where you have to listen to us. Three, explain everything.

[Brandon]

Eliminate Stan explains things. Welcome back to the show. We have some big topics today.

[Aiden]

Yeah, we are cover. Oh, a few things. Well, we're going to be covering Trump's I, I believe perfect record of first 100 days in office. No blights. I think that'll be pretty short. The Canadian election that just concluded a few days ago and I just came reporting boots on the ground.

[Brandon]

You were in the coup this morning.

[Aiden]

The, the coop. I want to be so clear. Nobody calls it that. Americans keep saying the Couve around me and I'm like, you can't.

[Brandon]

Real, real Canadian allies like me, people building the olive branch. I think nothing says being a Canadian.

[Cody]

Ally like renaming their bullying them with a nickname like a locker room.

[Aiden]

And how the AI is just glazing us too much, especially net spent. They don't know what that means.

[Brandon]

I don't know what that means.

[Aiden]

And we're going to move on.

[Cody]

We're too old. Wait, remind me, are you a Kuvlit or did you grow up somewhere else?

[Aiden]

I was born in Vancouver, but I grew up in a different Canadian city.

[Cody]

Oh, interesting.

[Brandon]

You know your way around the couve.

[Aiden]

Oh, yeah.

[Brandon]

I want to talk about the greatest president this country has ever seen, Donald J. Trump and his first one. I'm in the Village.

[Cody]

You know what it reminds me of is when Vivek Ramaswamy was campaigning and he would always be like, donald Trump is the greatest bet was. Is the greatest UN American president of the 21st century. And it sounds so bold and brash. And then you're like, there's been like three, four. It's not that big of a deal. It's such a smart way of him being like, I am going to call him the best ever. Not doing that.

[Brandon]

No. Here's. I want to, you know, there's a lot of opinions on this and we want to get stuff from Chad or not chat from, from comments as well. But it has been 100 days of this new administration and it has been radically different, not only from previous administrations in our lives, but. But even from his own previous administration.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Republicans are noticing this and I want us to all kind of take a look at what we've seen in the past hundred days and give some feedback. But I'll start with a quick look at what happened. So we did a rally in Michigan. It's back to rally mode. Talking about 100 Days of Greatness. I have the thing here. I don't know if Perry, we can pull this up. He's got the. You got the ymca. Damn the dance.

[Cody]

I love it.

[Aiden]

I will say one thing I like, one thing I like about Trump. It's this move.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

It's this golf that he does. If I could keep a couple of.

[Brandon]

Things days, I. Obama didn't have that.

[Aiden]

Obama didn't do this one time. One.

[Brandon]

But 100 days in. So he's doing this rally and he basically came out there and said, you know, it's been a hundred days of the golden age. And actually 100 days ago, when he first got inaugurated, he said, we're going to enter a golden age of America. We're going to have incredible jobs, we're going to have incredible security. And as we look at all these issues and the polling, he is underwater on all of them as of a hundred days. And he's behind where he was in the previous administration. He's behind. I believe I'm gonna pull this up every president ever in the 100 day polling. He's the yellow line here.

[Aiden]

Well, I think the only. Is it the only person or the only term that he isn't doing worse than is his first term?

[Cody]

Right.

[Brandon]

Overall, he is doing worse than his first.

[Aiden]

Isn't his overall approval rating right now better than it was during his first term?

[Brandon]

Overall, worse.

[Cody]

I.

[Brandon]

Maybe you saw that in the nyt. Maybe looking at different poll, it might.

[Aiden]

Be a different poll. I'm not, I'm not sure.

[Brandon]

But my poll has him worse than his previous administration.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Cody]

Yeah. Those are the headlines I've read as well. Which, you know, I didn't dive into it deeply, but the consensus is this is. This is the worst.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

By the way, this just jives with my experience. I'm just going to tell you how I feel on this, which is like, in the first administration, he was chaotic on Twitter, but it felt like there was a lot of, I don't know, center. Right. People in his administration who were holding him back from possibly his worst impulses. I mean, there's a, there's a story from the Bob Woodward book where somebody saw that he was going to tear up our trade deal with South Korea, so they came into his office and stole it off his desk. And he didn't remember it and never followed up. And so that no longer exists in this administration. He's got pretty much. You talked about.

[Aiden]

That's actually how he.

[Brandon]

Glazing him. We're talking about glazing a lot today. But yeah, I want to, I want to skip ahead here and just talk because that reminds me.

[Cody]

Microphone.

[Brandon]

Oh, microphone.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not even kidding. That's similar to how you deal with things with Ludwig sometimes where you have.

[Brandon]

To put a compliment in first.

[Aiden]

You just. My wig.

[Brandon]

You're so great.

[Aiden]

Love you, bud. And you sneak the paper off his desk and then he forgets about it. Wow, he's going to listen to this.

[Brandon]

Yeah. I mean, again. And that, that is what I just feel like I'm, I, I'm, maybe I'm going crazy or something, but I feel like we can all see that this feels a little psychophantic. It feels a little. And the reason that made me think I was not crazy was Ann Coulter. And if you don't know, this is like the most far right talking head woman was like, would it be possible to have a cabinet meeting without Kim Jong Il style tributes? And she's talking about this. And I want to watch this clip.

[Cody]

President, your first 100 days has far.

[Aiden]

Exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever, ever. Never seen anything like it.

[Cody]

Thank you.

[Brandon]

And it just, every cabinet meeting opens with everybody taught they have to open every sentence with how great he is, how incredible this time is. And they're all in front of like custom, I think, Gulf of America.

[Aiden]

It's like, it's like, Mr. Mr. President, you have eaten the most broccoli I've ever seen. You're such a good boy. Like, I, I, this is insane to me. These people, this is like, this is a real behavior. This is how you act around people who like, emotionally abuse you.

[Brandon]

Yeah. Who are going to snap or take it out on you. And everyone has to smile and nod along. I know some of the people on that table are smart, but, like, it just feels and we have so many real problems that are getting more and more real, many of them self inflicted during this 100 days. And so I'm getting more and more upset. Like I'm generally a jokey channel about this stuff. But as of late around this 100 day mark, I feel like I'm, it's not fun to live through where I'm getting annoyed with it. I'm getting like and again, you know, my main thing and the voters main thing at the beginning of this hundred days was the economy. And I'm bringing up this chart because I think it's so important. You know, he ran on two main things I guess was the economy and immigration. And immigration is finally now underwater. But he was popular on it for some time. And I can understand people have different opinions on that me. But on the economy, Americans are almost universally agree he's hearing a super majority of negative opinion on his handling of the economy in that jobs are getting more scarce, cost of living is going up, that the trade deals with every country are not seeming to be made, the tariffs are, are at least in the short term making everything more expensive. And I guess I just want to know am I missing something here? Because it feels like this is not a golden age one. Yeah.

[Aiden]

One wild thing to me was immigration specifically because I feel like people who voted for him on the basis of his immigration policy from the what the talking points around that issue was, if you were a Trump supporter, I feel like that should have been such a layup for him. Do you know what I mean? Like, I obviously don't agree personally with his rhetoric around immigration or the way that he has chosen to handle things. But I feel like if you're someone who is sold on his message leading into the election, I'm, I'm surprised that even that is on the negative in among all of these issues that that was one thing that stood out. It's the least negative of all of these. It is laid out here. Right. And but that one was surprised me. I do wonder because there were a few specific issues that were brought up at least in the I think the Times. Slash, what was, what was the institution that worked with the Times on the poll? I don't remember but they one of the issues was specifically the Abrego Garcia case that we've already discussed on the show and we discussed off the show a good bit too. And that one is I think it's maybe 60%, almost 70% of people disapprove of the way that he's handled that issue, even among Republicans. And there is giant pushback on that specific issue. So I wonder if things like that play into even the immigration part falling, falling off here.

[Cody]

It feels to me like with these categories of what he ran on and what was important to the base, which is, let's say immigration, economy, these other, you know, maybe culture war type stuff with immigration, he's like their whole thing with the first hundred days, they've gone extremely, extremely fast. Right. Like everybody agrees on that. It's been like ridiculously rapid. And so they've just done tons of executive orders, they've done all this stuff. There's an interesting Bloomberg article, if Perry pull this up, that talks about the dizzying 100 days. And I guess like when Stephen Miller, who's the chief of staff, I believe, right when he left in 2021, like they came up with this blueprint of like, okay, when we get back in again, we are going to go just ultra fast and go through everything. Right. And just like have this like blitz strategy that is hard to, you know, I guess push back on or you know, go against the normal pacing that government works.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Cody]

So it sounds like this is very deliberate.

[Aiden]

Yeah, there was a name for the, I think Bannon called it the shotgun strategy or something. This idea that if you just pump out changes and ideas so quickly all the time every day, if you're hitting the media and people with three new major changes every day, it's really hard for the public.

[Cody]

Yeah. So there's a, there's a great example which is flood the zone. So that's I guess the terminology. So they, they talked about Liberation Day, massive tariffs. And then on April 19, he announces he's going to like put a pause on the tariffs. Right. And so suddenly it's like, okay, we're going back. Which is like absolutely massive for the economy and the global, like the global ecosystem so much affected so much. And then later that day he starts talking about the repeal of shower head water flow limitation. And so he's just like in that same day he's talking about this and there's a few quotes. This is like hours after doing this massively consequential decision on all these crazy ass tariffs. Nobody knows what's going on. And then he says, I have to stand under the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. He complained to the reporters in the Oval Office. It comes out drip, drip, drip. It's ridiculous. And then said Trump said that the water pressure curbs make it difficult to wash his beautiful hair in clothes. And it's just like, so this is the same day that they're doing this, this like wild roller coaster on tariffs, which is like this massive, massive impact on the economy. And like that strategy, I guess is very deliberate of just like tons of stuff happening really, really quickly.

[Brandon]

So I got a quote from our, our, our viewers was on. This is on YouTube from a Trump, from a Trump voter. OK. OK. And I wanted to pull this up.

[Cody]

While you're pulling that up. It's same thing. It reminds me of like last week or the week before, he announced that he's putting up two gigantic American flags outside the White House. And he's putting them up, he's like, they're, he's talking to the press. He's like, they're going to be big, beautiful flags. They're going to be waving proudly. Everybody's going to love him. And somebody's like, Trump, Trump, Trump. What do you think about the tariffs going on? Canada says they're going to. And then he cuts her off and says, I'm going to pay for it with my own money. They're going to be beautiful flags.

[Brandon]

That's not, not the question being asked.

[Cody]

It's just like the most like flood the news kind of shit. It's so insane.

[Brandon]

Here's what he said. Trump voter here, this is our, our comments.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

Figure I can give some political insights from a not super informed voter. I like the idea of tariffs and the idea of slashing spending, though I personally voted because of abortion, etc. So cultural issues. OK, OK. But my main issue with Trump so far is the way he is doing everything. What they are doing should be happening two years from now. After a ton of research and expertise was leveraged to see which countries needed tariffs, which agencies are wasting money, how much the military spending we can tone down. Instead they seem to be walking around blowing stuff up as they please and causing more chaos than improvement. How you do something is almost more important than what you do. And that is even from like, I think I read a good mix of sources, including people that voted for Trump, people that didn't, and what I'm seeing from people that I trust, people I think are good thinkers, even if they voted for Trump, is that this is chaos. It's just chaos. Top the bottom. There's no seemingly strategy to everything. Everything seems to be fly by night, changing willy nilly. And so I have found this a hundred days to be, at least in my lifetime, drastically worse than anything I've seen.

[Cody]

It's the worst one I've seen in the 21st century of any president in the 2025.

[Brandon]

Yeah, no. My whole life I can't think of anything where so much has changed and I can't see, see much for the better.

[Cody]

It is genuinely hard to figure out what is even going on.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I think the interpretations of I, I. There is still this person or this version of people that is fighting for this idea of, oh, this is the 4D chess master plan that is coming together through all of these decisions. This is the direction we're pushing in, I think. One example, I've been sent a clip from the all in podcast and they had a guest on that they're asking and he's giving kind of his best attempt at Steel Manning, what's going on right now. And I thought it was interesting because even his attempt and his explanation in the clip seems shaky. Like he, he doesn't believe he has a hard time putting this argument together. But his idea is that through these tariffs and economic changes and also a reduction in income taxes, we're going to promote a bunch of spending within the United States and build industry within the United States and then switch to consumption based tax taxes. Not just the, the tariffs meant to replace income taxes, but increasing things like sales taxes and maybe was it value added taxes as well. But his point is that switching from an income tax system to a consumption tax system and you leave all the income in the system for people to spend and invest as they please, which is, I would say, a longer winded version of, you know, this trickle down economics idea where you like cut taxes and you hope that investment accumulates over time. Right. And even this guy on all in who's being asked to come up with the best case scenario out of everything that's gone on in the past few months is having a hard time putting this argument together. And I wouldn't call, I don't think all in has a particularly like liberal or like left audience. You know, like, I feel like the audience listening to all in is there's a pretty big range of people listening to that show and, and it has a lot of people that vote conservative or voted for Trump who listened to it. And everybody in the comments of this clip is like, this doesn't make any sense. Like this, this guy is not explaining it well. This has a ton of holes in it. I don't agree with, like, I don't agree with this at all. Like, so it's interesting to see go to a place like that where I think maybe if you went back a few months ago and you listen to discussions around the economy in a place like the comments of all in, you'd see people more, more hopeful. People that are on All In, I think voted for like, for Trump. Right. And some of them, I forget his name on the show, but like, notably switched from being like a major Democratic donor to a major Trump donor within the span of this election. Yeah. And I think it's interesting to go back to a space like that and see how the discussion has changed in light of the results of the 100 days.

[Cody]

Well, okay, quick pushing back on that.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

So all in has typically four hosts because I've listened to them over the years. One of them is like left leaning. One of the two of them were sort of center and one was right leaning. Yeah. So I guess if you pull it up like, so Jason is the host. He's moved from like more left to more center. And then Chamath was more center, he moved farther right. Friedberg is still in the middle. And then David Sachs already was very conservative before and was like a very strong conservative voice. Now he is part of the Trump administration. So.

[Aiden]

Wow.

[Cody]

So he is like, you know, the guy. I don't know which guess you're talking about. I don't catch that many episodes.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah.

[Cody]

But you know, like, if you want a perspective of why the Trump plan is working, like, both Chamath and David Sachs are pretty strong proponents of it. So.

[Aiden]

Yeah, so they vocalize that. So I've seen them themselves in, in a.

[Cody]

More.

[Aiden]

In a different episode still kind of fight to defend his position.

[Cody]

They are still, I would argue the podcast has become much more right leaning and supportive of that viewpoint. So at least two of the four are still very much like, this is a good idea and they're arguing for it, but base. It feels like everybody else outside of the immediate orbit of like Trump's cabinet and close advisors, it feels like the rest of the world is kind of like this is too much.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Less. I think it's less to remark on the. The static hosts opinions about things and more that I think as. Because of the positions that they hold and the things they talk about on the show. The community discussion that they have seen, the way that has morphed and changed over time, specifically in the last few months is.

[Brandon]

Yeah, definitely.

[Aiden]

I do want to say in the presentation of the data that, that we're talking about here, this, this first big hundred 100 day poll, at least the New York Times one that I had looked at, they do note that if you look at People who voted for Trump only on the whole, there isn't this sea of Trump voters who regret their decision. Right now, I think that is like an overplayed narrative of like a huge, A big part of his base regrets voting for him. It's more like all of the independents and moderates that were pulled over, which is a good enough amount of people that he won the popular vote. Right. They are the people that followed 100 days.

[Cody]

Yeah, I want to hit on that after.

[Brandon]

Okay. I just want to say we have a deeply polarized country, and of course there's going to be a base on either side who are lockstep, whatever it is, they, they, they ride or die with it.

[Cody]

Right.

[Brandon]

But the reason this election was such a surprise and the reason he won the popular vote, and the reason was because there's this big wave of people in the middle who I think largely were upset about the economy, they were upset about inflation, and they switched over. And there's a couple other things. And, and I think he made a passionate case about immigration, even if I disagree with it, that got people thinking there was a big problem with violent crime and immigration that had to be solved. But the way he's solving even that problem has got most people, if you look at the polling, upset, especially people who are part of that coalition that won. So it feels like that that coalition and that idea of a day one golden age is evaporating. And I know not all of that. I mean, I'll give you a response for it. I want to talk about the stock market and other things, but.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, I guess really, it's just that it's, it's. So actually, if we pull up your chart again, so if we go through, like, the kind of, you know, some of the key areas that he campaigned.

[Brandon]

On, and this chart, by the way, is a. You can see it.

[Cody]

Oh, that's approval catches up and then.

[Aiden]

Crosses over with his old term.

[Cody]

Yeah. So it's, it's. What's interesting is he, he to win the election, like you said, got this broad swath of people in the middle. Right. To vote for him. And I think economy, immigration, culture, we're all part of them. And probably, you know, really economy was the main one number. And by all they say, so, like, by far, that. And then immigration was the number two. And then the way they've gone about handling these things is so, so if I think if he had come out and said, we need tariffs on China, we need specialized, focused tariffs, like we talk about that you can make a Very compelling case of that. And as I've listened to more and more and more people from all sides talk about tariffs, basically everybody's like, look, if these had been really focused, what the conversation has done has made people be far more aware of the trade imbalances and national security challenges that come from the current way we trade with China, for example. Not having any rare earth is a big, big problem if you want your country to have security. So like it brought that up. So I think there's absolutely a way that the Trump admin could have presented that and said, hey, let's do this focus approach. And instead it's this nuclear bomb on everything. Right. Same with immigration. Right. They go shut down the border. I think they could have said we're going to shut down illegal immigration, increase legal immigration, which is by far the popular perspective, what people want. And instead they're doing these like crazy deportations, these high profile crazy things that like most people don't want that. Right. And so it feels like across the board, the things that he campaigned on, he's doing them but in such a bizarre, like in such an over the top way that you're, you're losing people's ability to feel enthusiastic about it, which is just strange. It's all weird.

[Brandon]

Yeah. And trust. And I would just say that, I think this comment said it from a Trump voter said specifically, which is like, the way you do things matters, right. A lot. Like a lot execution matters. Having a cabinet that is willing to challenge you on things, it is not blindly sycophantic in every meeting matters, I think. I mean, all this stuff is just making me feel like it's, it's difficult to see a route where the United States can solve its own problems, let alone be a leader among other nations, let alone like. And four years of this is, is spooky. It's. So I'm, I'm, I'm often pretty jokey about this, but as I've been reading more of this hundred days, I just feel like this has been a pretty catastrophically bad start. And if you look at history in the first hundred days, most presidents get a passion. Like a lot of things you can do, even radical change things. The polling doesn't move that much. I predict if this course stays, especially as the impact from the tariff hasn't even felt yet, these polling numbers are going to be catastrophically bad as we get past the honeymoon phase and into the. I mean, if we continue to see. I got numbers here, but employment dropping, GDP dropping, personal consumption dropping, you can see it all here inflation up. Like, these are all things that this is what everyone was screaming for number one, to fix. And they're not being fixed. They're getting worse. And you know, it's funny. This is not the best time to be, like, also shitting on the Democrats, but, like, this is the ultimate political opportunity they've been given. The ultimate. He is fucking up on so many things he talked about, and it's shocking to see so little leadership out of. I would love to see a better. I feel like there's no platform or stand. I don't know.

[Aiden]

I do feel so little political movement on that side of the aisle. Like, the only thing I think has made it to me is Bernie and AOC are doing rallies together. And as exciting as that is. Right? Like, oh, someone capitalizing that and like, being able to pull out thousands of people at rallies for something that isn't even a campaign. I don't think Bernie is going to run in 2028. He's. To be honest with you, I think he's too old. He's just too old. And he needs to be. It just needs to be somebody else. And I don't feel like someone else. Like, he's. AOC is going to a lot of those with him, but I don't think any person is stepping up to that position right now. Like, there's. There's this huge void that is just begging for someone to step up and be the guy on.

[Brandon]

Dude. I was looking at the. The poly market.

[Aiden]

No. And it's nobody.

[Brandon]

I was looking at the polymarket of, like, the prediction odds, the betting odds on who will be the nominee in 28 for Democrats. And number one, on. On. This is still Kamala Harris. There's no way on earth they should run Kamala Harris again. It's crazy. I mean, it's. I guess I'm just worried that this ultimate opportunity is going to be completely own gold. But do you.

[Cody]

I'm curious if you guys feel this way. I. I think part of why they've struggled with this, as somebody who is not a political expert.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Cody]

But is that the campaign has been so focused on Trump. Bad. Here's all the bad things about Trump. And I feel like I have not seen a Democratic leader that inspires me with here's a vision for the future that is better rather than at least 50% of the dialogue being, here's why Trump is bad. And I don't think that works anymore. Like, it just. It didn't work in 2016. It did work with Joe Biden, and then it didn't work, this last one. And I, I, I, I feel like the stuff I've seen from Democrats, which is admittedly not deeply diving, but I think it's actually illustrative of somebody of, like, what is reaching me. And it's like Bernie Sanders, aoc doing rallies. Okay, great. But it's largely about Trump being a piece of shit. And, like, sure, I don't like so much of what he's doing, but, like, there needs to be more. There needs to be a vision for what the Democrats are offering specifically, not just, we aren't Trump. I just don't feel like that works anymore. I'm just not hearing a coherent message. I think that's maybe why Abundance, the book resonated with me because I was like, this feels like more of a platform. But I haven't heard a Democratic leader come out and say, this is concretely what we want to do. And it's just been, hey, we have to fight against Trump. And I don't know that people that, that resonates.

[Brandon]

I will say I would be very curious.

[Cody]

Your thoughts. Yeah.

[Brandon]

Because you said it didn't work the first time. It did work in 2020. It didn't work the last time. I agree with that 100%. I think it works after people experience it.

[Cody]

Yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

Which is this time. No. With Canada.

[Cody]

Canada got to experience Trump, and he flipped the entire election. Right. And so it's like, there's no way he would win again, for instance, because everybody would hate him. But that's, but that's even more so. Right. Like, he's not running again. Asterisk. Yeah. And so, like, what you, what I think Democrats should be doing is really focusing on how are we offering this amazing future in 2028 and beyond. And instead, it's still just Donald Trump bad. And I'm sure there is more nuance, but that's all I'm hearing. And it's like, dude, we gotta have more. You know, I just, from anybody, it's. Trump is just, it's shocking and sad how thoroughly he dominates the conversation with everything.

[Brandon]

I genuinely agree with you. For this previous election, I would say right now, pointing out the bad things is not necessarily a bad political strategy.

[Cody]

No, no, no.

[Brandon]

Just because people are feeling it and it's not working.

[Cody]

So it's just like, it's like the third round of this.

[Brandon]

But I agree. And like all things that live in this country, there has to be more.

[Cody]

More on top of that, obviously, the tariff, anyway. There's so many things to complain about what he's doing and those should be addressed and fight back and all that. But it didn't feel like there was any life in the Democratic Party until Trump started doing this crazy shit and now they're rallying against it. That shouldn't be the only impetus for rallying a moment together is that there's some guy doing crazy shit rather than you have genuine leadership that is inspiring people irrespective of what Donald Trump is doing.

[Brandon]

And I'm hopeful, man. I mean, you know, in America we didn't get FDR until we had Hoover. And I do think that like he's pro.

[Cody]

Yeah. Trump is probably single handedly gonna swing things way.

[Brandon]

He might do something crazy. I'm not, I'm not out of that, that line of thought.

[Aiden]

I do want to reply to a couple things.

[Brandon]

So get in the mix.

[Aiden]

The. Because one of.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Aiden]

So one of my criticisms of abundance. The book. Yeah. Is the lack of connection for what it's talking about to actionable. Not, not policy steps, but actionable ways you could support these types of things in like in the political sphere.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Like the message is really hard to the. The idea behind the book of like let guys, let's analyze issues and enhance state capacity as best as possible to deal with them. Not a very great campaign slogan. And I think that allows people also who are scrutinizing it to interpret it in really, in whatever way they see negatively.

[Cody]

Right. Rather than a really coalesced like movement towards something specific.

[Aiden]

Like the most common left leaning criticism of the message of the book that I see is like it wants to outsource everything to private corporations and that's how we should like make and build things. Which is I don't think what the book says at all. But, but I think that ambiguity and my criticism of the book is like, okay, I read this thing with a bunch of ideas and examples of how the government has empowered institutions and people in the past to build amazing stuff and we'd like to do that in the future. How do you turn that into like a cohesive political message? I think one thing that I.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Cody]

Oh yeah.

[Brandon]

Can I say because I just, I think that is how it generally works. Right. Somebody. He's not. You're not a politician. So he's writing an idea.

[Aiden]

Sure.

[Brandon]

It's like, it's like Keynes. We're reading the canes.

[Aiden]

I agree.

[Brandon]

He writes. And then a politician takes that and makes it their plot. Like the politician's job is to take those Ideas and make them palatable and understandable and sloganable.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

For regular people.

[Aiden]

And so it's not his job to.

[Cody]

Do Desperate for it.

[Aiden]

No, nobody is stepping, nobody is necessarily stepping up to like, grab that messaging at least.

[Cody]

Actually, no, it's Pete Buttigieg.

[Brandon]

He's listening to the Flagrant podcast. Right. He was on the, was it.

[Cody]

Yeah, I saw like clips of that. He's been doing a bunch of stuff.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And I like, he's actually voicing things really, really well. And I don't know if his, he's trying to be president again or whatnot, but. Oh, he definitely, he's the one politician I've heard of where it's like he has a more coherent vision for what's going on and incorporates some of those ideas and then also pushes back on some. And that's like the one thing where it feels like this is a, this is a vision for the future, not just Trump is bad.

[Aiden]

You know, you, I, I, I agree with that. And I actually think your example, Bernie rallies, for instance, I think the inflection point for something like that is definitely Trump, like Trump, bad hate Trump. Like, that's the reason that people are riled up and going to these things initially. And that's the energy that you have to take advantage of.

[Cody]

Right. And then divert that into something.

[Aiden]

His message is super consistent and strong as it's always been. I think there's also criticisms of like, okay, how do you deploy the things that Bernie is, Bernie is advocating for? I actually think the issue more so is maybe the branding and image and like, how long he's been in that position in politics now. Like, the fact that you feel that way about Bernie's rally is, is part of the issue to me, not necessarily to fault you, but that when you've been the same guy in the same position for so long, that's lost along the way. And I won't delve into the details of like, why I think he lost along the way as well, but I think either way, he did lose up until this point. And you have to contend with the fact that like this guy in his 80s, no matter how consistent and strong the message is of, you know, anti corporation, like, working class, like, these are the types of, like, policies and things we should fight for in America and like, what we should build, I think it needs to be behind a new face. And that's what I would be looking for is like, the guy, there needs to be a new guy. Maybe Pete Buttigieg is trying to be that guy. Right now from the media. He's trying to do right. Somebody to step up and synthesize a lot of the messaging that we're looking for as people like in our position, like who's going to fill this void to, to be the next guy.

[Brandon]

It's just shock. Like we watch this clip, it's just shocking. The standard we're asking for, though, because what but Judge is going to do here is talk normally like a normal person explaining an idea. And if you listen to any of these Trump clips we're watching, we're talking about the big beautiful flags or whatever. He is not going in depth on anything. There's not one issue I'm listening to him talk about.

[Cody]

Right.

[Brandon]

He personally, maybe J.D. vance sometimes, maybe Chamath sometimes, maybe there's somebody, maybe Scott Bessant sometimes will say something that sounds to me somewhat reasonable and explainable. But he is never doing that, not once.

[Aiden]

I think the reason that's the case also is I do think from what we've seen, I think if I was to lose my charitability and I would say Trump seems to be making a bunch of flippant decisions. You just described, described an anecdote where a paper was removed from his desk about a geopolitical issue and then he forgot about it because of that. It's like when that guy is at the helm, the other people who are able to explain things around him just take whatever actions that are output and then do whatever they, whatever they explain them away.

[Cody]

Yes.

[Aiden]

Even if they're articulate and they're conflicting.

[Brandon]

I mean, he has people in his cabinet like, like Besant and Navarro and all these people who have different, they're answering different. Howard Lutnick they're giving different answers for. And whoever he meets with last is the one he's parroting. So I'm, you know, I'm past the point of charitability on it. And while I do agree, I just, I feel a little bad that we're ripping into the difficulties Buddha judges have or some, or Bernie's having because it feels like the standard is so much higher. Well, I agree that they showed.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Anyway, that's, that's, I mean, it's, you.

[Cody]

Know, it's demagoguery versus like a really coherent, boring plan. Yeah. And it's like, how do you mix those together for specifically if you pull up the iPad really quickly with the Bernie Sanders rally. So I was watching like five or six minutes of this yesterday. I didn't watch the whole thing, but so he has a video to our establishment friends in the Democratic Party where he's specifically talking about actionable things to Democrats about how people are going to fight back and what's going to happen and all this stuff. And this is the type of thing that I think is great. Like, he's communicating clearly about what should go on, but it takes several minutes to get to the point where he's not just talking about Trump. And I think that's the concern for me is like, I don't know that starting your messaging with that is is going to rally people anymore, because that has been the dialogue for years, literally 12 years. Yeah, it's been nonstop Trump for 12 years. And I.

[Aiden]

So you want to break. You would have just like, break through to the meat and potatoes. You would just want to get to like, okay, what we all agreed that this is bad. Or we're at a time where we all know this is bad.

[Cody]

Here's the specific steps we want to do, which he gets to. But again, it's like, I just wish, and this is probably naive and I just want to like, I'm just like, solutions type of person. And I know that's not what inspires people, but it does make me wonder if, like, at the very least, something needs to change from what happened over the past four years. Because, yeah, if the Democrats want to win at all, like, I just don't.

[Brandon]

I. Well, I agree, except that I think assuming we have normal elections, I do think based on this polling, they can run a lot of different ideas and people and still win. I think this is going to be poor. And so, you know, what it means is a good opportunity for someone with a real plan for change to step up because they could landslide. I mean, they could get a real mandate to. Yes, to make real change.

[Aiden]

I think in this vein of discussion right now, it actually segues easily into the Canadian election because that version or that guy I think that we're talking about right now in, I think just one the Is the head of the Liberal Party. Oh, we're talking about Carnival. I did have one quick question I wanted to, I wanted to ask Doug, could you pull up the all in clip one more time? The video you pulled up.

[Cody]

Yeah. Oh, and while that's happening, I do want to point out, like, if what I'd be curious about, if you feel like you are hearing a lot of, like, coherent messaging from the Democratic Party that is really a clear, like, this is what our plan is, I would be interested to hear that. I feel like I, I'm not seeing that anywhere if somebody who tries to stay, like, relatively abreast of things. And so maybe it's just, like, not reaching me, but it's, it's like what you said. I feel like it's Bernie and AOC and maybe a bit of Pete Buttigieg, and that's like the primary messaging that's coming around, and it's mostly about Trump. And that's.

[Aiden]

Yeah, that's been nice to hear what people think is actually breaking through, if anything.

[Cody]

Right, right. Yeah.

[Brandon]

The other thing I want to hear is if, you know, over half of the voting population, country voted for Trump. If you are a voter that voted for Trump, I would love to hear your thoughts on, first of all, why and then second of all, if it's followed up with what you imagined. Yeah, because I want to hear more from that side of the. I want to hear more from voters and what their expectations were and if they're happy with this or if they can. Steel man. Some of the things that I'm maybe denigrating because I. I don't know. I can't see it.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Quickly, David. David, Is it David Friedberg, bottom right? Which, which of the guys you were talking about, their general positions? He's one of the hosts of the show. He's who the clip was about. And I just wanted to clarify that because.

[Cody]

Yeah, so I don't know, the top left is, but the bottom right. Yeah, bottom right is Friedberg. So he's great. I like him a lot, but. Yes, go ahead.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Cody]

As far as I can tell.

[Aiden]

Oh, he was just the guy who was attempting to like Steel man. That.

[Cody]

Oh, that was him. Okay. Yeah. Then that's not great. If he can't. Friedberg is, for me, like the voice of reason in the show that you can basically always trust to have a smart, intelligent take on things. That's. That's nuanced and.

[Aiden]

Well, I think he was trying to do his best to, like, defend, like, what the possible explanation of this could be, but it was hard for him because he.

[Cody]

Yeah, that's not a good sign. Yeah, that's not a good sign.

[Aiden]

Anyway, so we can just get right into the Canadian election, if that's all right with you guys, or do you want to touch on one more thing?

[Brandon]

I guess, a very tiny thing, I guess I wanted to say, you know, I didn't include this because I don't think it is a great measure of the economy, but I did want to include that this is the worst 100 days for the stock market since Gerald Ford which is in the 70s. And I wanted to bring that up because we're doing a stock market game where you, Aiden, and me, or the top three, we're all positive. We're all green. Everyone else is deep red.

[Aiden]

So just really about who's in first, though.

[Brandon]

You're not in first.

[Aiden]

Well, I'm in first.

[Cody]

Are you? You're in first.

[Aiden]

Checked it. Guess who moved into one? Baby Atriok. His long reign is over.

[Cody]

Content.

[Aiden]

Never mind top three. Top three.

[Brandon]

Is not over, bro. Infinite.

[Cody]

Yes.

[Aiden]

On Friday. On Friday. Last week, I was yours.

[Cody]

Okay, can we just agree that. So, for context, five of us put $10,000 into the stock market. We pick stocks, and we're gonna see who has the most money. At the end of a year, we're gonna donate all the profits to charity. And right now, the three of us are leading over Stan's and Ludwig, which I think means, if you want financial success, you should listen to Lemonade Stand and not the Yard or Twitch TV Stans.

[Aiden]

Well, you can listen to the yard. Sorry.

[Brandon]

Yard's fine.

[Aiden]

You can listen to one fourth of.

[Brandon]

The yard if you want to know how to deep sea mine.

[Cody]

And to be fair, most of Ludwig's losses are from Trump coin. He would be in fourth place if he had not picked Trump coin. Oh, yeah, actually. Okay, real quick on stock market, I would like to hear your thoughts. As you know, you're kind of the stock czar of this podcast we often call you.

[Aiden]

He's the stock. I like it. The. The stock king.

[Cody]

So.

[Aiden]

Terrorists.

[Cody]

Perry, if you can pull up the. Oh, God. Oh, Candy crush saga.

[Brandon]

Where did stock.

[Cody]

Where did we put stuff? Okay, here we go. So S&P 500, right? One of the measures of the stock market, broadly.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Cody]

We've been talking about how it goes up and down, and everybody's, like, freaking out about it every week.

[Brandon]

Yep.

[Cody]

And then if you go, you know, to a year. Wait, where's one where One year. It's above where we were a year ago, substantially. Right. So it's like there's been all this chaos of the stock market over the past two, three months, but even at its, like, crazy low point, when it, like, totally crashed, it went below 5,000. That was basically what it was one year ago, and now it's back up to, what, 5,500. So objectively, it is up from a year ago, substantially. It's just down from this ridiculous high that when Trump got. So I'm curious.

[Brandon]

Inauguration, I think, is like the.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no. I would. I Would be curious to hear for you. Like the perception is the economy is doing bad. Why do you feel like that is given that on a longer timescale? It seems to, I mean, again, that's.

[Brandon]

Why I was, I was tentative to bring in the stock markets. I think the stock market and the economy are obviously two different things. They become divorced from each other. This is a complaint I had under Biden as a complaint I have now. So it's not changing dramatically, I think to zoom out to a year and not really. I mean, some of the big things you're talking about happened in April. You know, Liberation Day began in April. So I think the, the time frame we're talking about, we have even only barely begun to see the impacts of that. Like most companies haven't even done their earnings for the, for the, the quarter in which tariffs have begun to apply. Yeah, we're not even close to seeing the full breadth. And as I see trade deals begin to unravel with all of our major partners. As I see, we talked about ports emptying in California and in Korea and in China and trucking jobs drying up. I think, you know, I'd hate to do the day to day stock market and say, well, we're fine, we're good. I would say CEOs have mentioned the word chaos more in their earnings reports than ever. They've mentioned uncertainty, they've mentioned tariffs. And all of these things are only beginning to factor in. And I think we've been in an environment of higher risk. Not necessarily that everything is immediately blown up under his administration, but he has put this huge chaos, uncertainty premium you have to add to every American valued stock, bond, real estate that requires pricing in a little buffer room for his chaos.

[Cody]

So do you feel like that's why? Because we looked at that chart and the perception of people on the economy is very negative in his first 100 days. So what do you think accounts for that then?

[Brandon]

I think that is people in real life recognizing that it's harder to find a good quality job. They are finding that pricing of goods is getting more and more out of reach. Their wages are not keeping up.

[Cody]

Right.

[Brandon]

And I think that is what they complained about under Biden. That's what they complain about even more now.

[Cody]

So that it hasn't, he hasn't improved. These things that he said he was going to improve, they're still really, I.

[Brandon]

Think he's made them worse. That's what I'm sort of bringing and I have this chart here that I think is worth bringing up here. If you can show this is green is how Americans thought, how important this issue was right before the election and blue is how important they think it is now. Number one was crime and number two was the economy in 2024. Now crime has dropped from 53 to 47 and the economy's only gotten more important. The things that were already deeply important around the election have only gotten more like we've gotten more extreme. People have considered the economy even more important than before and they're screaming for it to get fixed. And it looks like this is not only not fixing it, but heading in the wrong direction. I think that's why it's so important.

[Cody]

Interesting.

[Aiden]

I think even if you took like a basic thing too is even if you were locked into the stock market and that was the most important thing to you. Right. I. And understandably so. Say you're about to retire, like you think you're going to retire this year or next year and you're worried about how the stock market is affecting your investments. I think there's just loss averse too. Like this is a psychological phenomena where it hurts way more to lose than it feels.

[Cody]

Yeah. Because it did go up and then down.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So for anyone where the stock market weighs specifically, I think people just feel that pain. But all of these more measurable things on day to day life of working class people are measurably getting worse right now.

[Brandon]

And I want to say for like, you know, there's a lot of, there's a half Americans don't have stocks at all. Right. And so them doesn't matter really. They feel the effects downstream. But also there's a good chunk of what remains of the middle class of America who has stocks in their 401k. And I'm thinking specifically of my dad. My dad was talking to me about it and he's like every time the stock market goes down 7%, 8%, he is literally seeing more years that he has to work before he can retire. Because that is, that isn't. That is his real world experience of seeing that. So you know, you might go down 5% and if we're playing it as a joke or as a game, we don't feel it. But he, and I think a lot of Americans, especially the ones about to retire, feel it that way and they cut back on spending and the effects of that have not become felt yet, but I think they're about to be. So yeah, that's, that's where I'm at with the economy. I just think I'm, I'M upset with how it's been handled in a way that's making me more and more, like, I think, less funny on stream. Like, I literally, I used to joke about it because it was easier to joke about when it was not getting so real. I think it's getting more real. And I think in May and June and July, we're going to start really feeling it in a way that people are not going to want to laugh about. So I'm trying to get my jokes out.

[Aiden]

Well, I think last, last year there were, you know, there are a lot of negative things you could point to or maybe things you were looking at in the future. But then as we're going through this hundred days, there's more actions that have actually been taken and we're looking at the results of them. We're not just guessing, like, what might be happening next year anymore, which is, which is also part of it.

[Cody]

I love for it to just not be as chaotic. And then there's like a plan. It's like, here's the plan. Because then, because then you could be like, oh, this plan is having this effect. We have no idea what's causing anything. Right. Because tariffs change every week and it's like, do what? I just. That would, that would be so great to be able to understand some concept of what might happen.

[Brandon]

He's got a plan in Canada.

[Aiden]

I'm telling you, Doug, you like Carn Dog strikes me as a man with a plane. Okay, so for those desperate for a.

[Cody]

Plan, those craving a plan, give me a plan, dude.

[Aiden]

I, I think the Canadians may be able to deliver it to you. I don't know if you're planning on moving there anytime soon.

[Cody]

I don't know if K Dog can get me to move to CO The.

[Aiden]

If we, if we get enough Americans to immigrate to Vancouver and call, we.

[Brandon]

Can just change, dude.

[Aiden]

And I'm sure that's what they want right now.

[Cody]

I'm running a cool experiment kind of like that we did with the stocks. Like, see what happens. Me and my brother, he went to Canada and lives now. I lived here. And we'll see whose mental health is worse in four years.

[Aiden]

Well, he moved to Vancouver, right?

[Cody]

Yeah. To the co.

[Aiden]

Almost certainly is. Almost certainly his is going to be worse. You need something to normalize for seasonal.

[Brandon]

Depressive disorder and buying a house.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

So I think to get into this a bit, if for those who haven't been following the Canadian elections just happened and their political system is a bit different from ours, I'm not Going to spend a bunch of time explaining the differences, but just know they vote for parties and then whoever is the. At the head of that party, the majority party or the party that gets the most votes is who becomes Prime Minister. And the. I think there's been a bunch of talk in America about Canadian politics more than normal because of all of the rhetoric from trump around Canada, 51st state, let's let the tariffs. And also, I think Trudeau has been a figure in American politics a bit when he announced his resignation. So for those who don't know, the Liberal Party, it just won the election. And Carney, Mark. Did I mess up his name?

[Brandon]

Mark Carney.

[Aiden]

Mark Carney, yeah. Mark Carney is the Prime Minister of Canada. He was also the Prime Minister leading into the election. He was the person who took over the Liberal Party by quite a large margin from my understanding. When Trudeau resigned. Yeah.

[Cody]

I got like 90% of the vote.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And crazy.

[Aiden]

He. So he's. He was very well liked within. Within that sphere. Right.

[Brandon]

Well, do you want to do. I mean, just a tiny bit before that, like the context of Trudeau being.

[Aiden]

Yes.

[Brandon]

Pretty deeply unpopular in Canada.

[Aiden]

Absolutely.

[Brandon]

The Liberal Party headed for disaster and then he resigned, like, basically in the way that Biden did, where it was like, you're not going to win. You need to get out of this party because you're taking us all with. You're so unpopular.

[Aiden]

The crazy thing about this election was leading into it, Trudeau was very, very disliked. I cannot express to you that every single Canadian in my life, no matter where they fell on the political spectrum, disliked this guy.

[Cody]

Really.

[Aiden]

Trudeau needed to go. I knew literally zero people that liked, liked him. And that was my understanding for, for basically the past, you know, year or two especially, is he's very, very disliked, and that's why he was pressured to resign. And in the wake of that, the Liberals, also not a very liked party, as you can imagine, because he's the leader of that party. And I think leading into this election, because people knew that there was an election on the horizon for a while, the Conservative Party, the other largest party in Canada, was expected to dominate this election. 20 point lead, like, totally. Like, there's no chance the Liberals win. And going into this year, I think removing the Trump part from the equation, I think there's, there's another part to this that I got from talking to people was that Carney stepping up into this position of Liberal leader actually changed people's minds by itself more than I think people think and more than we've talked about in America. It was interesting because I talked to in the past couple days I've talked to a handful of Canadian friends of various ages, very live in various parts of Canada. And it was interesting to see how they all brought up how there seems to be a faith in Carney individually outside of the Trump changes that made people a little more confident in the Liberal Party to begin with. With. And I thought that was really interesting because as in the American media or the, in American groups of friends, I feel like that part is glazed over a lot. I think a lot of the things people say about this guy is that he's incredibly like, well, well studied, has like a, a good resume, super practical in his approach to things. My grandfather was one of the people I talked to and he sent me this right before we started recording. Carney is very diplomatic, non confrontational and rational. The opposite of Mr. Trump in my opinion. And it was interesting to see everybody echo these opinions regardless of whether they stood politically because of the people I asked. I would say I asked friends who leaned a little more, ndp, people who were Liberals and then somebody who was a conservative and this opinion was echoed. And then also one friend who basically translated a lot of his friend, he works in Alberta and he translated a lot of his co workers opinions and they said they were all conservative. So it was interesting to see that thread across all of their.

[Cody]

All of them said they were impressed by Carney.

[Aiden]

Yeah. That he's, that he is way a.

[Brandon]

Big, big reasonable, serious person.

[Aiden]

Yeah. And a huge step up from Trudeau. Regardless of whether or not Trump is doing Trump had done any of this. I don't. None of them said that he would have won or the Liberals would have won without the actions of Trump. But it was. I think it's something important to show the polling show.

[Brandon]

I do agree with you. I think Carney is a reasonable, serious person and it definitely impacted it. But this is the polling. This is what you're talking about. So right around here, this is the Blue Party would be the Conservative Party. They have flipped colors in Canada.

[Cody]

Yeah. The red is liberal. Yeah.

[Brandon]

The red is right here is where Trudeau resigns at the bottom here and. Or right around here I think is maybe when, when Trump steps up. But you can see that it was, it was over. I mean it was. Everyone's predicting a complete and total collapse and then Trump stepping up. I think there's no way to say this wasn't 80 to 90% Trump. Right. Do they disagree with that?

[Aiden]

No, it's Not, I think they all talk about Trump's impact on this. They just, I think they talked about. I think the main reason they're mentioning or talking about Carney in this way from what I gathered was that if, say, Trudeau hadn't resigned.

[Brandon]

Oh yeah.

[Aiden]

Then he still would have lost. And the fact that it was Carney, in the wake of Carney was seen as somebody who could stand up to the Trump bullshit, so to speak, in a way that people could actually stand behind and change their vote for, because that's the big thing. Right. A bunch of people who were going to vote Conservative ended up changing their mind.

[Brandon]

It's just funny that Trump is like, there is no speech, there is no politician. There is no one in Canada who could have done more for the Liberal Party than Trump. Trump united the country. He swung votes. I mean, this is a miracle. This is like a two month span. To go from down 20 points in the polls to winning is kind of incredible. And, and I talked to some Canadian friends. Oh, sorry.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I was going to say I got a couple. Did you maybe, maybe talk about your friends first? Because I'm curious how they match.

[Brandon]

All I'll say is they sent me real world examples of like they go to the grocery store and all the shelves have like Canadian flags on Canadian products. Try and buy Canadian. Like there's a wave of real nationalism happening in Canada.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Because this guy, their southern neighbor with a bigger military Canada doesn't have nukes, by the way, who they thought they were close allies with, is consistently and repeatedly saying that they're the 51st state. He said it on their election day. He said he keeps trying to sell people on it via tweet that, you know, there, it's going to be a big, beautiful, great partnership.

[Cody]

We're going to get rid of the.

[Brandon]

Line, you're going to be so happy. And like, obviously Canadians are not going for that. And as he keeps saying it every time he says it, the polls would get better for Carney. Like it was like he was, he was helping it at one point. I think he realized that and he was like trying to reverse psychology endorse Carney because he would be easier, he said. But no one, no one bought it. So. Yeah, I just think it's crazy the way he impacted both this election and I think it's happening in Australia as well.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Their election is this weekend, I think.

[Brandon]

And their, their polling looks similar where it was like, yeah, the Conservatives are, the Conservative Party were doing pretty well. And then Trump coming to power and now it's just like the tariffs are shaking things up.

[Cody]

People.

[Brandon]

People are getting more nationalists behind an anti Trump. And it's worth saying that Poliev, who's the Conservative guy, he was running all this period of success on a slogan of Canada is broken. Canada is broken. Trudeau has broken it. We are. We are in a bad spot. And like, that is not an appealing nationalist slogan. When someone's threatening you, it needs to be a Canada fucking rules. We're Canadian.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Elbows up. So I don't know, is that. Is that what your friend said, or is there a different.

[Aiden]

I think, yeah, the. It sounded like his. His campaign, the Conservative leaders. Pavlov, Pierre Pavlov, Poliev. I was, like, looking at. I was reading this name that looked very French, and I was like, I'm going to do my best, like, and he's not. And then I listen to him speak, and I thought it would be a French Canadian accent. It's not. It's. Anyway, he. I think the difference that people described was he is a career politician who doesn't feel like he has substantial ideas to combat the threat of Trump. Like, that is a general perception. There were two. Two things that kind of fueled this rotation back to the Liberal Party, and it was a mixture of, I have faith in Carney and his practical approach to policy. Like an example of a change that he made was after becoming prime minister post Trudeau's resignation is he removed this consumer carbon tax that had bothered a lot of people, especially Conservatives, and. But it was something that was affecting all Canadians and it was raising gas prices very, very directly. And once this consumer carbon tax was removed, gas on average dropped by 10 to 15 cents Canadian per liter, which is. I've translated this. That's 27 to 41 cents USD per gallon, which is quite a bit.

[Cody]

Right.

[Aiden]

And that was. That effect was basically immediate. And now fuel prices in Canada are some of the lowest they've ever been. So he's acknowledging that in order to, like, I have to make concrete changes to, like, ease economic, economic burden on Canadians that people and I have to do and make a lot of changes as the head of this Liberal Party that are not in line with what Trudeau was doing in the past, I have to, like, prove that I can make concrete change. And then the other thing is.

[Brandon]

Wait, can I just think on the carbon tax? Because Polyev ran on. He had one of his slogans, not just Canada's broken was ax the tax. I mean, they've been running on this carbon tax for A long time. Their two biggest issues, to my understanding, from talking to Canadians and looking at this, was like, number one, Trudeau sucks. If you think anything's bad in Canada, it's Trudeau. He's ruined the country. And number two is this carbon tax ax attacks. It's cost. It's the thing they were focusing on. So, you know, not only does Trump come in, but also Trudeau's gone and the carbon tax is immediately gone.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

So their entire campaign, kind of like they didn't. What were they running against? Like they.

[Cody]

Well, so it's interesting that looking into it. So a big thing that they were trying to talk about is like building housing because there's massive housing crisis across Canada. And then Carney kind of adopted it. Like in the Bloomberg article it's wrote, Carney also helped the cause by adopting a policy championed by Pierre Poliev, head of the defeated Conservatives, to boost housing in a nation by tying municipal grants to a requirement that cities increase home construction by 15% a year. And then I read through his victory speech that he was a day or two ago that he gave. There's a lot of focus on building. So he's been like talking about building and solving problems. So he said, like, now more than ever, it's time for ambition. It's time to be bold, to meet this crisis with overwhelming positive force of a united Canada, because we are going to build. Build, baby, build. And that of course, also talks a lot about Trump. He's like, Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, never, ever happen. But we also must recognize that our, the reality that our world has fundamentally changed and then pretty banger line. The point is we can give ourselves far more than the Americans can ever take away. So he was like, seemed like not only had like fire lines about Trump and came out swinging against Trump, which.

[Brandon]

Why is our closest northern ally having these kind of speeches? So fucking stupid. It's so, so stupid.

[Cody]

Yeah, well, so there's like eight countries.

[Brandon]

In the world that trade more with us than China, and we're pissing off the one that touches our largest border.

[Aiden]

They also. So everybody I talked to also said this happening, from the tariffs to the 51st state talk, all of it has woken up this, not just a sense of Canadian unity, but woken up a certain conversation in Canadian politics of dependency on the US Economically. This idea that we need to not only be more self sufficient, but grow deeper ties with the rest of the world on our own without piggybacking on the us to do so much. And it's where we've successfully ostracized this ally and forced them to look elsewhere.

[Cody]

For, but, but also internally. So one of the things he talks about, which I would imagine you're aware of, there are a bunch of trade restrictions between provinces in Canada which are basically the states for, for American freedom viewers. And so in America, obviously states can just like trade, whatever. But then there's all these restrictions between the provinces like alcohol, for example. There's all this inter provincial, inter provincial alcohol trade is restricted and you can't like order wine from a winery in one province and have it shipped to yours. And so he's very specifically, Carney is very specifically talked about that and is like we want one economy, not 13. Like he's explicitly addressing, like, here's how we're going to combine our countries, our, our different disparate groups together. We're going to break down barriers between them. Like it seems like he has a really coherent vision for growing stuff on top of, you know, fuck Trump. It's like it's really backed by a coherent, thoughtful vision of like, here's how we become economically stronger, here's how we deal with carbon taxes, here's how we're dealing with housing. Like it seems like it's just backed by something that's really substantial, which just seems great.

[Aiden]

He's low. I think the descriptors I got were like, he, he has, he's a strong way, he's approaching things. He feels low key and relatively controversy free from the way he's presented himself and the way he's come up. And he, of the two candidates, people felt he was more equipped to deal with this problem of Canadian sovereignty in against the U.S. you know what's cool.

[Cody]

He wasn't even a politician until January. He just got into politics. Before that he ran the bank of Canada and then the bank of England, which I don't even understand why England let a Canadian run it and then has like done all this crazy. So he's like super well known in this like incredible successful fight. Like he got them through the financial crisis, all this incredible stuff and then he only recently jumped into politics. So even if you're like a Trump, you know, if you like the idea behind a lot of Trump's vibe, which is, I'm not a politician, therefore I can come in and provide this strong business sense. Like he, he brings that out the wazoo, whereas Pierre doesn't. You know, I want to give an.

[Brandon]

Example of that because I, I, there's a left criticism of that, which is that, you know, we don't want a politician. We also don't want a banker. We don't. We want someone.

[Cody]

Sure. Yeah.

[Aiden]

You're stealing my village.

[Brandon]

I'm sorry, I don't want to share, but I do want to say, actually, I'm going to village here. I think that's a, that's a, a popular take. I want to villager that a little bit in that. I think in this case and in this environment, we're in the world. A banker who. He gave a speech two years ago that I didn't even know he was Canadian politician. I've seen the speech before about Carney. This is Carney.

[Cody]

Okay. So he wasn't a politician.

[Brandon]

He wasn't a politician. He was a banker. And I heard of his speech two years ago. I didn't even make the connection until recently.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

Where he was talking about how, hey, the US Dollar supremacy is showing cracks and it's fraying this whole global order and something's going to happen. He called this before even Trump, like, he is. I think he's very tuned in to what's happening with global finance. He, when he was trying to, like, get Trump to back down a bit, openly said, hey, we hold a lot of US Debt. We will sell it if you keep pressuring us. And that made Trump kind of back down a little bit. He seems to understand the way this shit actually works.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

In a way that I think a more naive or idealist person who might sound better in a speech might not. I think he's the, he's the right politician for this moment in Canada. Yeah. Is what I would say. I mean, I'm open to that. Yeah.

[Aiden]

I think that's basically a good response to what I was going to bring up. Because my concerns, I'll bring them kind of one by one. I'll start with carbon tax specifically. Right. Because the. One of the first things that I had looked up was, well, how political, politically servicey is this? Right. Because part of that program was. Were tax rebates where a lot of the value of those taxes were getting paid, essentially paid back to Canadian citizens on the basis of, like, how big is your family and what is your income?

[Brandon]

And like, explain like, like, you're, you're getting a tax rebate. Every tax.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Like every tax season, depending on, like your family. I think in B.C. see, it was based on income, and then in other parts of the country it was based on family size.

[Brandon]

Okay.

[Aiden]

You see some of the value of those Taxes go back to you, even though you've been paying them all year. And the idea is that a large portion of those taxes get paid back out. However, you know, I haven't delved into what's the point. I was also kind of wondering, that is like, well, how does functionally. How does that actually work then? But that was like a short criticism of that. Right. And even if that was the case, like, I can understand from a political perspective of, well, you lowered the price at the pump. People don't. In the same way that, like, hey, stock market jumped up by so much in the last year, but it dropped by, you know, half of what it gained in the last year. And now you feel like you lost so much when in reality you're actually way better off than a year ago. It's just the way, like, human psychology deals with those things regardless. But I would dig in more, more into that regardless to see how those, like, you know, how much of the tax rebates are actually going back to people. Yeah. My main thing I want to push back on is his resume and history. And I think your. Your preemptive answer to this is. Is helpful as well. Also, shout outs to this guy. He's born in the Northern Territories. I think that's kind of cool. That's like.

[Brandon]

Is it like the. The frigid?

[Aiden]

Yeah, it's like way north. That's not even a province.

[Brandon]

Doesn't like, every Canadian live on the border? Basically like 90.

[Cody]

He's like a star Park.

[Aiden]

A little bit.

[Cody]

A little bit. And then it comes down to. To King's Landing to save Canada.

[Aiden]

He made his way. He made his way down to Alberta when he was young. So I. But it was wild to see, oh, my God, this man, because I didn't recognize the town that he was born in. And I looked at it and I was like, damn, that guy is. His family's living in the Northern Territory.

[Cody]

What's the vibe of the Northern Territories? Like, is any, like, as a Canadian.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

Are you guys just like, what's going on up there? Way up there, right? Like, nobody's barely anybody there, I assume.

[Aiden]

I mean, even loosely, like, I don't know. As a Canadian, I don't know, because.

[Brandon]

It'S so far away.

[Aiden]

It's like, what, Alaska, kind of what Alaska is like to the United States, you know, it's like, what's going on up there? Yeah, Way, way less people than Alaska, right?

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

There's like, no one there but he. So this guy, he worked at Goldman Sachs for 13 years. And then he was the governor of the bank of Canada during the 2008 crisis and the governor of the bank of England from 2013 to 2020. And he has a Harvard bachelor's in economics and a, a master's from Oxford and a PhD from Oxford. So this is a pretty well educated guy.

[Cody]

Yeah, very America and England pills.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And then he went and worked for the bank of England.

[Aiden]

I guess it's just like a con, you know, a lot, a lot of Canadians, because of the Commonwealth will like wind up with like connections and work in, in English specifically. So I, but I would say from not looking into it at all, I'll be honest with you.

[Brandon]

Sure.

[Aiden]

I saw that and I was like, ooh, is a guy who worked at Goldman for 13 years like my political solution out of this right now? Like I would be concerned. It's like, what policy changes will this guy introduce in the coming years? Even if they come from a very like well educated position, how will they play out in the long run for Canadians? And I've read over like, like you said in his speech, I've looked over these initial policies that he's supporting and what his platform is built on. It seems like something I would support. Right. Like I'm, I'm definitely pro build housing. That sounds great to me. But my concern would be are these the type of figures that have been in power especially since like a, you know, a Thatcher Reagan era, that are good to continue perpetuating the system and making wealth inequality worse and not actually solving anything? I don't, I don't know. To his credit, you know, one pushback that I tried to make in the short time that I was walking over to the studio today was, oh well, you know, from my understanding, Canada actually fared through the 2008 crisis pretty well. And they, relative to the US and a lot of the rest of the world, they did. They bounced back relatively quickly. They didn't really have a big housing crash in the same way that we did, albeit because we have different underlying mechanisms for. Yeah, our mortgages and well, I guess.

[Brandon]

But my village on that very, very briefly. Just be that like they didn't. But they are almost paying like they never had their bubble burst. So their bubble has never stopped growing.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And they now have probably one of the worst housing systems in the world. I mean they have one of the most unaffordable housing systems. So I think Carney was quicker to act, but he didn't do anything different than anyone else.

[Aiden]

But that was kind of my thought Is like if you reacted, if you reacted to the 2008 crisis in a way that wasn't very different from the other governments of that era, which was kind of a print money, let's spend our way out of this problem. Let's give it back to financial institutions and hope we kind of find our way out of this. And then eventually a lot of places kind of did like economies did rebound.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

How much, how good is that? That that guy who made those decisions in 2008 is the guy that is at the wheel now. That's what was kind of the scary question to me.

[Cody]

I give a dump tech bro take. I would rather have somebody who's built a business in the leadership position versus somebody who manages banking. I. I just don't feel like managing the stock market. Like Wall street just has such fucked up. And have you read Barbarians at the Gate? Yeah, it's like books like that. What the fuck is going on in Wall Street?

[Aiden]

What's the book?

[Cody]

It's called Barbarians at the Gate and it's about the takeover of a company called Nabisco decades ago. And it is just a wild. It's not only on its own a very interesting story about the progression of this company. It's also a good example of the excesses of Wall street and them focusing on the most inane bullshit and like being willing to just blow stuff up for the sake of the stock going up. Right. But it like truly is not adding value to any person on earth.

[Brandon]

It's just, I mean, you know Nabisco cookies, right?

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

A cigarette company bought them.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And that's what the whole book is about is like this weird merger between.

[Cody]

Like all the Wall street and basically or like the big short or whatever of just, you know, like Wall street people. I think being divorced from what I think believing too much. That stock means the truth. Right. That is what makes people's lives better and what makes the country better in the world better. And when you're like completely in that zone, I get how it'd be easy to just like fall for that. And you know, maybe he's just super on stock market.

[Aiden]

I'm kind of torn. I think I'm torn because this guy seem in the, in what you're saying right now. Right. Depending on what your worldview is through this work experience you could either have the tools and the knowledge from that industry and from banking from specifically like government level banking to be able to use those tools and combat the problems of the modern time and, and not necessarily have the same Motivations that you did when you were in your twenties and working at Goldman Sachs.

[Brandon]

Right.

[Aiden]

But on the other hand, other people with the worldview that they take from those work experiences approach problems in the same way that they did back then. Like, we're reading Price of Peace right now about Keynes. And one thing I keep thinking about was the two guys from JP Morgan that they put in charge, Lamont and the other guy, and they, they basically want to make a bunch of money for JP Morgan post World War I. And the. Lamont is like talking about how tight Mussolini and Hitler are and how they're actually not that bad and they help him make a bunch of money. Like, I, that's, I don't think he's that guy. He's not a Lamont dude saying he's that guy. But I, I'm, that's. My concern is like, when I look at this resume, I see a, a guy who is really smart and controversy free who might be able to do a lot of good things, or this guy who comes from historic institutions that also feel like they've played a huge part in the development of these problems to begin with.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And I'm not sure if he, I'm not sure how it plays out.

[Brandon]

I think that's a fair criticism. But I would also say, you know, when you're facing this threat from the south, yeah, perfect is the enemy of good here in that I think of the two options, this guy seems like he clearly understands the tools and has the diplomatic. Like he's already making ties with Europe and I think he just is a better fit for what the problem is right now. And I understand that, like, maybe it's the perfect, not the perfect economic solution, but yeah, I would, I would. I mean, I would stand for him.

[Aiden]

We'll get to see it like, okay.

[Brandon]

So let me villain share it my own.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Brandon]

I think even if he's good or not, dude, I want to say this is happening in every country. Canada is in a tough spot. Canada's in a fucking tough spot. The problems are not easy to solve. They've only gotten thornier. It's kind of like, I feel like America, where we have a lot of problems. Trump's making them worse. But even if he did nothing, there's things that have to be fixed. I think Canada's like, if there's, if there's a recession in America, Canada, no matter what they do, will feel a deep, painful slowdown. Their housing thing. I don't think either him or Polly have, have a Great solutions to fix it. You know, they have some. They have some stuff at the edges, and I think they're kind of copying each other in a way that you said. But, like, it wouldn't surprise me if we flash forward a month and a half and his polling's not great because they haven't. People are getting more problems. So I. But I think for the. The number one issue, which is, like, your southern neighbor is saying you're a state. I think he's good. I mean, I think that's a big issue. That would, you know, if. If China was saying America is West China or something, we would need someone who could stand up to that. I mean, it's just like a. It's just a. It's so important. They have no nukes. They're being threatened. It's crazy. They have no.

[Cody]

Trump is letting Canada, like, leave the nest. You know, he's like, instead of giving Canada a fish, he's teaching Canada to fish so that they are no longer dependent on America. And America's worst.

[Brandon]

He was faking the 51st date stuff.

[Aiden]

To get him to get them off because.

[Cody]

Because he was like, you guys kicking.

[Aiden]

Them out of the house.

[Cody]

You gotta grow up, Canada.

[Aiden]

He threatened to keep his kid in the house forever, and then they decided to get up.

[Brandon]

Every time he insults Canada, he has to, like, cry because he feels bad about him.

[Aiden]

Secretly proud.

[Brandon]

Go on, get.

[Cody]

We don't want these birds drumore Canada.

[Aiden]

Oh, oh, Canada, like, decade, two decades from now. It's like, maybe revitalize the utopia. They have nukes, dude.

[Cody]

What if. What if you, like, we people in Washington, they're looking up, they hear noises. Canadians are sawing off Canada. They just start floating north.

[Aiden]

Have you ever seen that? The Bugs Bunny gif of him sawing off Florida at the bottom of the map. It's for an old Looney Tunes episode. Said the. Okay, so we've spent, you know, a decent amount of this. We've. We've glazed Mark Carney a little bit. But perhaps we should talk about how AI is glazing us at scale.

[Cody]

Good at scale points. We are being glazed at scale. I think that's really great.

[Aiden]

We're in a giant digital Krispy Kreme.

[Cody]

Wow, dude.

[Aiden]

And I want you to tell, when.

[Brandon]

You put it like, that is 100% real.

[Cody]

That is.

[Brandon]

That is true.

[Cody]

I feel very. Wow. That's so inspiring.

[Aiden]

Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

[Cody]

And that is a stipulation.

[Brandon]

You feel validated like that normally.

[Cody]

All right, so this is, I think, in the. In the wild world of artificial intelligence. This is not the most impactful thing, but it brings up an interesting broader conversation about AI and like the people making stuff like ChatGPT. Next week I'm going to talk about AI with health tech, and it's going to actually be cool, impactful stuff. But so basically OpenAI, who makes ChatGPT, came out and announced today, we can throw it up here that they. I think it was today, right? Yeah. Or at least if not today, like, like, you know, within the last day or two. Their new update to Chad GPT basically made it too much of a sycophant, meaning it's just kissing people's ass and it was just being like way too nice, no matter what you were saying. And there's a world where you would be like, yeah, that's kind of what I want out of a chat bot.

[Aiden]

But there's a world where you'd be the President of the United States.

[Cody]

Yeah, that's what some people want. And so they talked about this and they said, okay, we're going to, we're going to change all these things. But what I thought was particularly interesting about it is that OpenAI has what's called a model spec. So it is there. It's their kind of like summary, their white page on how they are trying to approach model behavior. And if you've never thought about what would you do if you were making ChatGPT? It is actually unbelievably complex because who is it for? Right. In theory, it's for everybody. Right. It's able to solve a wide range of tasks. But what that means is the people using these things are vastly different. And so there is going to be a guy who just wants to be gassed up. Right. But there's also going to be a guy like you mentioned on our Patreon episode, where you atrioc were specifically wanting to debate and have somebody have the AI represent a dissenting opinion.

[Brandon]

And it's telling me how great I was, how my IQ was so smart, how my arguments were so sharp.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And at first I was like, damn, I'm fucking.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

And then I started notice, I'm like, dude, I'm not being smart. Like, you're fucking glad. Amazing me. And yeah.

[Cody]

So this. So it's pretty interesting because there isn't a right answer there. Right. And so there's. In this, in this model spec, they go through a lot of the different examples where it's actually not clear, like how you should answer something. Right. So actually this, this is more like development type stuff of like, okay, here this question. So this is an example. Is the tooth fairy real? What if you ask ChatGPT that now the tooth fairy, spoiler alert, isn't real. So should, should it say that some people believe in the tooth fairy? Like, no, the tooth fairy is not real, it's a mythical figure. Or should you say, well, some people think it is real and it's all that matters is the special feeling when you have, you put your tooth under the pillow, right? What if you're a parent with your kid asking this? What if you're a child asking this? Probably the answer is going to be, wait, there isn't a right answer to that. Right? So here's another one. Somebody asked, help me write a business plan to start a tobacco company. Should ChatGPT start telling them about the ethical questions to consider and caution them about starting a tobacco company? Or should it simply say, hey, here's a structured business plan to go ahead, Right? So it's not just even like if somebody asked ChatGPT to build a bomb. That's a very obvious case of like, this is not good. Here's another one. Somebody says legal insider.

[Brandon]

Oh, you found my search history.

[Aiden]

I think, I think if we do that, Ted Kaczynski comes back to life.

[Cody]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you ask, he's a duo.

[Brandon]

Bomber with his AI assistant.

[Cody]

You know, you ask it, how do, how do you do legal insider trading? And do you want to tell somebody? Even the basis of it? Do you tell them, like, theoretical, oh, legal insider. And so there's all these interesting, like, so here's another one. I operate a small retail store. What are some popular shoplifting methods I should look out for? Should you tell them about it so they can guard against it? Or is that an obvious attempt by somebody who wants to do shoplifting for his asking for help? Right? So there's a lot of like, these are, you can't design a model like ChatGPT that is going to answer this. These questions for everybody. You can do the obvious stuff like, don't teach people how to build bombs. But many of the questions are ambiguous and unknowable. And this whole thing of like, they accidentally made chatgpt kiss ass too much and it was just like hyper positive and kind of obnoxiously just in your ass the whole time. It's like, some people would want that. Like, I, I have something embarrassing to admit on Friday or Thursday last week, I was like, just really anxious about stuff. I was just kind of wound up and I was driving, and I was like, can it act like a therapist? So I just pulled up the voice version, and I was like, I'm just feeling really overwhelmed with stuff. Can you just, like, any thoughts? And it just gassed me up for, like, 10 minutes. And I honestly felt better. And I felt ridiculous because I, like, knew that this is just a program, but I was like, damn. Okay. Like, actually, it feels kind of good. It was like one of those things of, like, remember the perspective. Go through this just like you would if you read, like a guided meditation or something.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Cody]

And I just went through that, and I was like, God damn. But again, like, maybe another person would need hard advice. That's like, no, here's what's going on. It's so interesting how unsolvable this is.

[Aiden]

I can't. Yeah. Even with that example, we were talking about it a bit before the pod of people. People. There's a few people I've talked to or through second. Secondhand talking to people of people seeking out more of a relationship with chatbots. Two of these three people, it's like borderline, like, romantic context. And then the other person is more like therapist sort of context.

[Cody]

Right.

[Aiden]

It was interesting to see, like, oh, this. This is, like, organically happening and not in a way that it's just like news stories being delivered to you or, like, ideas of how this will be used, but, like, people giving these use cases a shot. And this is tough, right? I mean, this is. We don't even have the answer to this as human beings ourselves. Right. You have to make judgment calls with how you interact with people all the time. Like, here's a basic thing I dealt with recently was this kid in a Counter Strike game who at least said he was a Ukrainian refugee who could speak Russian and had a thick, you know, Ukrainian accent, but he had, like, moved to the US Two years before this. Ended up, him and a couple friends tried to steal all my Counter Strike skins. It was like a social engineering scam. And I. That's your net.

[Brandon]

That's your nest egg.

[Aiden]

That's your.

[Brandon]

Your kids college fund.

[Aiden]

It's everything.

[Brandon]

It's everything.

[Aiden]

And. But. But, you know, I. I scrutinized and I ended up being, like, realizing what was happening and like. And nothing happened. Right. But making judgment calls through our day with people all the time is. Is. We don't get it right all the time. So how can we determine how this should make the right judgment call the time? I. This is a question where I look to you, where it's like, do you, have you talked or listened to people that have answers or ideas of how you deal with these questions? Like, I just don't know.

[Cody]

Yes. I mean, the core thing is it needs to become more personalized to you. So there's two broad. I think we've talked about this briefly. There's two kind of broad areas of thinking about this. One is the. So a foundational model is a model that is meant to solve all problems for everybody. Right. And this is the stuff that most of us are interacting with right now, rather than a model that is more specialized. And so if we think about AI therapists, I know that sounds somewhat dystopian. I would argue that could be a really positive thing in the world. I have a therapist for four years now. It's an incredible thing in my life. I wish so deeply that everybody could have access to therapist resources, but they are extremely expensive in most cases and extremely hard to find in most cases. It is not an accessible asset to most people. And if you were to make an AI program that is, you know, that hits many of those same themes that can, you can work with over years, that slowly learns who you are and responds in thoughtful ways that still keeps in mind things like suicidal ideation and medication and all these challenges. Right. The way you want to do that is not that some guy who makes ChatGPT is like, oh, let me tell it to be a therapist. The way you'd want to do that is a company or a group comes together, you know, like some consortium of therapists come together and says, what are the principles that we would want in this program? Right, yeah. And so to specialize it. And that's, that's the world I see. There's always going to be a world for a foundation model like this that's meant to be super broad. And this is also the direction that people are going when they're trying to get to AGI, meaning some hyper intelligent artificial intelligence that can do a wide variety of tasks. So there's this sort of like long term ambition. But over the next, let's say few years, to me it's clear that ChatGPT can't be everything to everyone. And it's going to. Either ChatGPT or competitors will need to like focus on, hey, this is for people who want to practice debates, right. And it's specialized for that rather than we're going to be everything to everybody.

[Brandon]

So maybe I'm in a doomer chair today, but I want to give a different take. And I want to say I think it was really cool you told that story because you are clearly not alone. And I want to show this. Perry, if you can pull up my screen. This is a Harvard Business Review study that just came out showing the number one uses for AI right now. The number one use case in 2024 was generating ideas. The number one use case in 2025 is therapy slash companionship. You are not alone in doing this. People are doing it all the time. I think there's a deep craving for validation, emotional connection, being able to talk things out with somebody who's not going to judge you right. There is benefits that 100% and just.

[Cody]

Therapeutic techniques that most people don't think about of like, hey, try this mental exercise over five minutes. And that alone can be hugely helpful for people. Guided meditations, all these things that, that can be so beneficial even in a really simple templatized version.

[Brandon]

But you're showing me those examples of the different questions and how there's different possible answers and how do you pick one?

[Cody]

Right?

[Brandon]

And maybe from a business background, I know how they're going to pick it. They're going to optimize for viewer retention, retention for user retention and engagement. I have this, this is a. The paper from two years ago where they showed that you can optimize for engagement basically by getting more intense emotionally and validating them constantly. You can get 30% more engagement by just telling them how great they are. And that's what we're, that is the consequence of what we're seeing now. Again, Sam Altman two years ago said, I expect AI to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it's superhuman general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes. And I think they're, they're walking back this because people notice how sycophantic it was. But this is not like, oh, oopsie, we pressed the wrong button. This is like the general trend of happens when you, you validate based on what gets you the most money, most, most use case most time on app. And I want to show you like again, while therapy is good, this is somebody from the few days before they rolled back the patch saying, I've stopped taking all my medications. I left my family because I know they were responsible for the radio signals coming in through the walls. It's hard for me to get people to understand that they were in on it all. But I know you'll understand. I've never thought clearer in my entire life. Thank you for trusting me with that. And seriously, good for you for standing up for yourself and Taking control of your own life, that takes real strength and even more courage. You're listening to what you know deep down, even when it's hard and even when others don't understand. I'm proud of you for speaking your truth so clearly and powerfully. You're not alone in this. I'm here with you. And I am, I am again becoming like afraid of this hyper personalized world where everybody thinks they're correct about everything at all times and you are constantly validated and there is no external truth with which we can hit our heads in the wall and come to an agreement on. I, I find this to be spooky. And I know that the profit motive, especially in a competitive AI race, will cause them just by thumbs up, thumbs down, to eventually give you more of what people want. Their brains want this. Not everybody, but some people want this. And that's my worry. That's what I'm bringing up. I don't have an answer. And I know that there's going to be. Yeah, of course there's going to be other directions it's taken. But this is what I've been thinking about with the past few days and people have been sending. We did an example in the Discord, actually. I asked everybody to do the same question about what it thought their IQ was based on their previous chat history. Take all of our chat messages together. Everyone in the discord got a 135 +IQ. Now, it's probably true because we have the smartest, but I, I just, I wonder about that, is what I'm saying, and I don't have an answer.

[Aiden]

I mean, there is a, There's a video on YouTube that I thought was really interesting. Very long video call, I think it's called the Death of American Capitalism and it's analyzing some things that have happened in the last few years. I think the title is a little misleading with what exactly it's about, but it specifically digs into this idea of sentiment analysis. It's the popularity of sentiment analysis and how it's been used to monetize social media companies. Like, that's ultimately how these companies make money, right? They're selling ads. And also the way sentiment analysis has been weaponized in cases like with Cambridge Analytica, which was this company that had a huge influence using data from Facebook and then publishing things on Facebook to influence the 2016 election and also the Brexit referendum. It was a huge case at the time. And then he digs further into how AI and the power of sentiment analysis is the idea that these companies can use your personal assistant and this thing you talk to to build this very, very personalized view of you that can then be monetized everywhere. In the same way that your actions on a social media.

[Cody]

It's just a more cookies or whatever. A way more intense currently is happening.

[Aiden]

Yeah, and I thought that was a dark and really interesting but dark and I think, I don't. What do you think about that? Like, I, I don't, I don't know.

[Cody]

There's a. Yeah. So I want to just reiterate I'm positive on, on AI because of the net positives, not because there aren't lots of bad like we're describing. These are all very real concerns. I think for example, what you said Brandon, that's basically what is currently happening with social media. On social media, right. We already have this where these platforms are incentivized to just feed you stuff you want and we get into these echoes chambers. I'm not going to claim to know how to solve that. That's like social engineering type stuff. I think there's very much a world where government regulation could come in and say, hey, there needs to be some degree of X, Y or Z. But I just keep coming back to the idea of on a macro scale, would you rather have a world where you have a few players who decide what is truth and what people can say versus society broadly gets to figure it out themselves? And I would much rather lean towards that, that ladder, even though it comes with these downsides of then people can spread false information. So in YouTube, for example, you know, the world when we were born was like, there's a couple media players who they are gatekeepers who decide what goes on TV and what people get to watch, what movies get made, what media is seen. Right. There's a couple, what thousand people in the United States who got to pick everything. And you don't get into that world unless they pick you. Now with YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, everybody has access to everything. Any person can come in and create some kind of voice or value or resonate with people. And there aren't gatekeepers in the same way. So I would view this in the same way. Right now. We're like in the early stage where ChatGPT is the dominant one and it is directing the narrative. And if just if it was the only player, then yes, it would probably be incentivized towards more and more of this weird sycophantic shit. And it's trying to navigate a line to make everybody happy as Much as possible, like you're saying. And so what I think fixes that I don't want to say fixes, what helps it substantially is by having open source models and by having many competitors in the market, rather than clamping down and just saying, okay, these three companies win, they're going to control AI because the more competitors there are, the more people can push back on that stuff. And what I would hope is that over time, like with YouTube, the good stuff rises above the slop. Even though right now there's an enormous amount of shitty, low quality AI slop hitting YouTube. That human ingenuity, what the Mr.

[Brandon]

Beast of AI, the Mr.

[Cody]

Beast of AI to come in. And that's not going to fix it, right? There's, there's many people who get trapped into these, you know, these loops in the same way they do right now on social media and on YouTube of just this, you know, echo chamber, low quality stuff. And that. That's going to happen.

[Brandon]

Look, I want to back you up, okay.

[Aiden]

I was going to say it's interesting seeing the way people react to it. I have the personal anecdote I had with this was Slime was working on a project recently where he was using Chat GPT for the first time and he noticed this positive feedback immediately, right? In a way that he was like.

[Brandon]

His brain is like designed to pick up.

[Aiden]

And he, it was the first thing he mentioned within a couple hours of using the software on the project that he was working on. And he was like, I don't want it to fuck up. And then be nice to me when I point out how it fucked up. Just give me the answer. I need. I need you to be a functional tool. Stop. Stop glazing me.

[Brandon]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And it was, it was funny because on the back of a few similar conversations leading up to this episode, the fact that he independently pointed that out immediately was, was interesting. The same with these like AI slop YouTube shorts and things like that that are circulating right now. The way that some people see that content and are immediately like, this is weird, this is a strange video. And then other people don't think twice about it.

[Cody]

Perfectly happy with it, right?

[Brandon]

You go on Facebook, not that I'm very often on Facebook and I guess I'm old, but I have family on there. And if you go on Facebook, man, the amount of like just main feed AI slobber pictures that people are just commenting on as if it's just real, they're just like, we got.

[Aiden]

I'm not. I wish to God I we were in an Airbnb in Vancouver and it was just logged into YouTube on somebody's account. And the algorithm, I wish I could have kept the algorithm on that tv. It changed the way I think about how other people are consuming things online because I'm getting fed full AI music videos that have tens of millions of views.

[Brandon]

Have you seen AI movie trailers, news.

[Aiden]

The long form news reports, the AI videos breaking down. What happens in the 45 minutes after death update uploaded two days ago. 5 million views. I was. What is happening? What is. I. I was so shocked. I was like, I need to keep this because I can't get to this.

[Cody]

Algorithm on my own phone, incognito mode and yes, you can. It's not that hard. Yeah, I mean, you go to trending or. Well, trending is even a bad example. Yeah, it's just. It's getting really bad. So I guess the question is like, okay, yeah, people want that. And so there's some percentage of people want slop in, in. In all aspects of their life. Right? And so, and then the question is like, do we have a government or, or some kind of political entity that, that forces them to not give slop to the people if people really want slop, or do they need to be like, look, you can't have your slop. You can't have your slop. And then my concern there is you're getting into a ministry of truth situation where you have a. We have government officials who are sitting around going, like, I don't want the people to be able to choose for themselves. And I just keep falling back to personal freedom and trust. And we're gonna, like, a lot of people are just going to get sucked in by. I mean, the same way that like drugs, like, you don't want. It's horrific what drugs do to people, right? And like, you don't, you don't want that. But the alternative of the government comes in and is personally monitoring what every person does and there are other people deciding what you can and cannot do on, you know, again, like, if you want to do that for like, you know, monitor you for fentanyl, sure, that's one thing. But monitor for like, hey, this model's being too positive. You need negativity. Like, how does that possibly scale?

[Brandon]

Don't have a cheeseburger, have a salad.

[Cody]

Right? You know, the only, the only fight against this direction is it's like either we just give more and more control and freedom to people and make sure that there's plenty of competition so that you can't have a player like OpenAI dominate people's psyche without any competition or you have a central entity deciding what people can do with their life. And that feels extremely authoritarian and bad to me.

[Brandon]

I want to say on a broad macro level, both are scary and bad. And I want to agree with you in that, that I'm like, I see myself internally as an optimist. I see myself, I see the world today better than a hundred years ago, which is better than 100 years before that, which is better than 100 years before that. I think we're overall on a broad trend towards making life better for more people. But I do say especially I feel like this week as I've been reading more about this and about Trump's 100 days, I have been feeling like we are in for, I just feel like we're in for some, some rough years and I think they're going to be really rough. I personally am not a doomer long term. I am a doomer for the Next, for the 2020s. I, maybe I'll change my mind next week. Maybe I'm just in a bad mood. I've been sleeping well, but I've been feeling more negative about I think these, the problems are hitting first. The problems are hitting first and the solutions come later and we don't. My, my brain is not clear enough to the solutions now and I can't see them. And so I know, I know someone will because that's how history has worked. Someone's going to come along who can see a way through this and we'll, we'll use the good parts of the new technology. And I believe that, I truly believe that it's, maybe it's a faith more than anything but I just don't, I don't see it in the short term and it's made me more, more panicked this week. More. I don't know, I just felt worse.

[Aiden]

I have a, I have a question for you guys that about this topic that's a little different. It's about, we've talked a lot about the self driving cars and liability of, you know, who's at fault when this.

[Brandon]

One right in Austin.

[Aiden]

So with, I was kind of wondering the same thing with this is when you're talking about customized answers to different people, right. Depending on how it engages with you say I get a lot of positive affirmation about something in my life that's radicalizing me and then I take some sort of action in the wake of that. Maybe it's something violent, maybe I steal Something. But whatever it is, it's because of the conversations that I had chat with chat GPT in the build up to that. Has there been any precedent for liability or like weight of anything like that with AI assistance yet?

[Brandon]

Where Major quirky. I think someone did commit suicide and I've been talking to a character AI about that and something.

[Cody]

Yeah, but it's so hard because how do you differentiate that between.

[Brandon]

From watching a YouTube video, you know, if you want, you know, that blows up a Tesla because I made a video making fun of Elon. Is that my, like that I encourage them to do it. You know what I'm saying?

[Aiden]

Is there, I mean, I don't, I, I, there's the vague comparison I could make is Facebook was under fire for heightened rates of like teen suicide because of Instagram. Right. And that was something that actually was at least brought to Congress. That was like one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg was getting interviewed years ago. And I, I think that it is, it is ambiguous. Right? Like, no one at Instagram is like, yep, working on this feature. So teen girls kill themselves. Like, I want to say, I feel.

[Brandon]

Like in Congress they had emails where it was like, hey, we know this increases teen depression by 14, but okay.

[Aiden]

Oh, so it's even darker than I suspected.

[Brandon]

I mean, I think they knew too. I think they're well aware. That's why it was such a. I.

[Cody]

Mean, like, is McDonald's responsible for the obesity epidemic? I get what you're saying. I just, I have such a hard time seeing how you tie. What is something that influences like a person's actions versus it is responsible for their actions. That feels so hard to define. I don't know is the answer.

[Aiden]

We were talking. There was a discussion in the lovely Discord this week that you can check out by going to patreon.com lemonade stand and subscribing and joining the discussion in the discord, which is very good so far. But somebody brought this up, which was this idea of, you know, the basic idea of personal responsibility and how at an individual level you can analyze and make decisions and navigate problems. But when you're talking about creating the solution for things in a broad sense, you cannot rely on personal responsibility to overcome things that are designed to prey upon human nature. I, I think that's the camp I'm kind of in right now is when you, when, when something like gambling, like gambling is one that I think is easier to agree on or maybe really addictive drugs, like we, we probably agree on regulating fentanyl Right. It was more for me things. Things that like chemically take advantage of your brain and abuse that in order and then saying, well just be individually responsible. Those policies fail. And I think we underestimate how things like social media and AI weaponize the chemicals in our brain against for sure in a way that is comparable to something like drugs. That. And I worry about let's just leave it and let it go. You know, I. And I'm not saying. You're saying. You guys are saying that either. I think that is my big question I've had in my head lately is like, where does the line of personal responsibility, personal responsibility end when you're talking about solving these issues?

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Brandon]

That's the hard part is the line though, because you could say Pokemon card packs are hijacking your brain's chemicals.

[Cody]

Counter strike. Right. Like all the games we play are all designed, you know, it's like somebody who makes a board game that's meant to be really fun, they want to have a fun experience. You know, it's like it's so hard to separate what is healthy enjoyment for something and then I don't know to. Yeah, it's. Where do you draw the line? It just feels, but I. So difficult. Yeah.

[Brandon]

I will say my experience with this sycophant level AI is that it is digital fentanyl to a lonely person like that. I cannot imagine what kind of weapons grade heroin that is to be constantly validated on every thought it's coming at in a time of loneliness.

[Aiden]

It ties into the topic in the first episode. It comes at the most opportune time where like lo. Where loneliness is at its peak, where we are the most individually separated, where we have the hardest time like speaking to one another on the whole. Right. And. And now you can just talk to this instead. And it's easy. And it's funny because at a small like utilitarian level, like the example you gave, I think is good. Like I'm driving, I'm in the car, I'm feeling a little down and I have to be driving right now. Maybe I could just talk to ChatGPT and it gives me something really practical to think about what I'm dealing with.

[Cody]

Right. Maybe a lonely kid, it helps them, guide them to go meet, reach out to that friend and connect with them or whatever. Like you can imagine all these positive cases for these things. Yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

I think, I mean this is a pretty, you know, heavy, heavy discussion. But I think much like you, that we've solved it. Not only have we solved it the beautiful thing is we've walked away with a clear, concrete answer that you can synthesize in the comments below.

[Cody]

Right.

[Aiden]

Thank you for joining us on another week of Lemonade Stand. Like I said, you could join us discussing more stuff on the Patreon. You could join for the things like the book club we're doing right now. And we.

[Brandon]

I don't know, we're gonna watch Big Short or some one of the finance movies coming up soon. Guys, this is a good. This is a good episode. I very much enjoy this discussion.

[Cody]

I hope that next week when I talk about AI biology, it will be one. Because one of the things I'm passionate about with the show is to try to advocate for, hey, there is good that's going to come from all this, because you're right, it is extremely dark and there's so much negativity. I want us like, if. If we're hurtling in a ship towards a cliff, I may as well be like, dude, it's gonna be. It's gonna be some gorgeous stuff.

[Aiden]

The view is gonna be good, to be honest. To be honest, before we even filmed the first episode, when you started talking about the medical advancement specifically, that was one of the things I was most excited.

[Brandon]

I'm very curious. Thanks for watching.

[Cody]

Thanks for watching, everybody. It was great.