The Nobel War Prize | Ep. 046 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand Podcast – Episode 046: "The Nobel War Prize"

Date: January 21, 2026 Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc (DougDoug), Ludwig Vox Media Podcast Network

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Overview:

Main Theme & Purpose
This episode delivers a satirical yet incisive look at recent global political chaos, centered on President Trump’s surreal fixation with winning the Nobel Peace Prize, his escalating attempts to "buy" Greenland, and the broader unraveling of world order—framed as if run by "three guys with the expertise to run a lemonade stand." The hosts explore the cartoonish, almost unthinkable progression of international news, Trump’s tariffs, the "Board of Peace" initiative, AI business struggles, economic fallout, and conclude with a playful yet pointed look at their own stock-picking experiment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Passing the Lemon of Optimism

• [01:18] The show opens with Aiden relinquishing his role as the show’s optimist due to the exhausting barrage of global bad news, handing "the lemon of optimism" to Doug.
  • Doug: "I went to a Clippers game... they were all sports betting the entire game... I thought that was pretty great. Getting out there, hanging out with your friends, losing money you don't have, getting addicted to predatory apps." (01:50)
  • Satire about optimism and the role of gambling as a communal Gen Z “third space.”

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2. Trump’s Greenland Gambit & The 'Nobel War Prize'

• [03:13-07:55] The absurdity of Trump’s “War on Greenland” is unpacked:
  • Reading of Trump’s real letter to Norway’s PM, justified by not receiving the Nobel Peace Prize:
    • Ludwig: "Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars... I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace..." (03:47–04:55)
    • “Is there a Nobel War Prize?” – Aiden (04:55)
    • Doug: "Because you refuse me the prize, I will now shoot for the war prize. It's my only option." (05:00)
  • Trump is depicted as responding to diplomatic slights by threatening war, tariffs, and demanding territorial concessions (Greenland).
  • Fact check: Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by the Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government.

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3. Nobel Peace Prize as Consolation Trophy

• [07:55–09:20] Discussion on Trump being presented a Nobel Prize as a "gift" by Maria Machado in a convoluted international incident involving Venezuela.
  • Ludwig: "He is happy she showed up... she and her party won the election in Venezuela... Trump swooped in, kidnapped Maduro, took him back out..." (07:57–08:39)
  • The satirical tone underscores the absurdity of legitimacy-by-gift and the fragility of international norms.

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4. Is Any of this Legal? (Tariffs, Treaties, and Supreme Court)

• [11:38–15:41] Trump’s use of sweeping tariffs against allies (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc.) to "bully" Europe over Greenland.
  • Aiden: "So this is just full on using tariffs to bully the EU into giving us Greenland... to NATO, our ally!" (12:23–12:56)
  • Universal condemnation from both left- and right-leaning press; even Republican senators oppose a potential invasion of Greenland.
  • "To invade Greenland and attack its sovereignty... would be weapons grade stupid." (quoting Sen. Kennedy) (14:32)

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5. The Strategic & Economic Importance of Greenland

• [17:14–19:43] In-depth look at why Greenland matters:
  • It is the direct missile path between US and Russia/China, crucial in any global military scenario.
  • US military presence has greatly decreased (down to one base, 150 troops). The panel agrees blowing up alliances for Greenland is, as Doug puts it, “particularly funny”:
    • "Is it worth blowing up the whole alliance? Probably not. I would say it's particularly funny to blow up the alliance..." (19:05–19:40)

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6. Fraying Transatlantic Alliances & EU Retaliation

• [22:34–27:26] The hosts dig into the EU’s possible responses:
  • Discussion of EU’s "anti-coercion instrument" which would allow sell-off of US assets in retaliation.
  • Aiden: "The EU holds about 40% of foreign US treasuries. If they stop buying... it would be a big deal." (24:00)
  • Ludwig: "The fact that we are ripping apart this close transatlantic alliance for no real gain on either side is foolish..."

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7. Financial Fallout: Interest Rates & Global Leverage

• [39:43–43:41] Detailed explanation of the US government’s debt, why rising borrowing costs matter, and how foreign sales of US debt could cripple the government’s ability to fund basic services.
  • Ludwig: "If the interest rate goes up... that's the size of the military. These are... the real impact of rising interest rates..." (41:36)
  • Doug: "The big marker that people look for is these interest rates climbing to or past 5%..." (42:15)

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8. A Global Rupture – The Permanent End to Postwar Trust?

• [44:01–48:54] Emotional segment as Aiden confesses this week marks the psychological "point of no return" for global trust and order.
  • Aiden: "Something about this... feels like this has shattered things in a fundamental way. You can't trust this global system..." (44:01–44:37)
  • Ludwig: "The idea that every four years, based on 32,000 swing voters in Wisconsin... you get to decide whether or not you are going to be in a trade war with your ally..." (46:55)

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9. The Board of Peace: Trump’s $1 Billion Club

• [52:42–59:41] Satirical breakdown of Trump’s proposed international “Board of Peace,” essentially a self-run UN but with permanent chairmanship (and veto power) for Trump, with seats available for $1 billion each.
  • Aiden: "Trump is the chairman of the board. Decisions... majority vote, but every single vote is subject to the chairman's approval. Donald Trump." (55:02)
  • Trump’s invitees include Putin, Lukashenko, Israel, China, Turkey, and others — often the very countries he’s simultaneously threatening.
  • Doug: "Like selling Overwatch league slots for $20 million—just come and join."

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10. The Legality of Tariffs: Supreme Court Looms

• [61:13–70:44] The legal basis for Trump’s tariffs is questioned, relying on the archaic International Emergency Economic Powers Act.
  • Aiden: "The Supreme Court right now is ruling and determining whether the tariffs that Trump has been using... if they rule that illegal, all of this breaks." (65:59–66:07)
  • Doug: [Trump audio clip] "And I'm the Tariff King. I hope we win the Supreme Court case, because if we don't, I'm the Tariff King and the Tariff King has done a great job." (68:22)

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11. Market Mania: The Hosts’ Stock Competition Recap

• [78:49–90:56] The trio gleefully review their year-long, improvisational stock-picking contest—where their collective, joke-driven portfolios beat most hedge funds and raised $19,500 for charity.
  • Ludwig: "Everyone is a genius in a bull market." (83:41)
  • Aiden confesses a trading blunder—investing in "Palatin" instead of "Palantir"—but the group agrees to honor the donation anyway.

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12. Tech & AI Update: OpenAI Goes All-In On Ads

• [94:36–107:12] The show closes with analysis of OpenAI’s announcement that it will introduce ads to ChatGPT.
  • 95% of users are non-paying, making ads a last-ditch effort to stem losses:
    • Aiden: "OpenAI lost $11.5 billion [in Q3 2025]... this could be an absolute money fountain for OpenAI if it works..." (98:20)
    • Ludwig: "Ads is the last resort and I'm sure this will make some money... But is it going to make the billions they need?" (102:23)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Nobel Peace to War

  • Ludwig: "Very funny... because it implies that the only reason you are purely thinking of peace is because of the Nobel Peace Prize. And in fact, if you don't get it now, war's on the table." (04:55)

• On Trump's Greenland Fantasy

  • Doug: "Because you refuse me the (Peace) prize, I will now shoot for the war prize." (05:00)

• On EU Tariff Retaliation

  • Ludwig: "This is so beneficial to like Russia and China. The fact that we are ripping apart this close transatlantic alliance for no real gain..." (25:48)

• On Permanent Damage to Alliances

  • Ludwig: "The idea that every four years, based on 32,000 swing voters in Wisconsin... you get to decide whether or not you're going to be in a trade war with your ally..." (46:55)

• On the Board of Peace

  • Aiden: “Trump is the chairman... every single vote is subject to the chairman's approval... he can kick people out... the only one who gets to decide who the next chairman is... this is the play by Trump to stay in power after he’s kicked out of office.” (55:02–56:47)
  • Doug: "It's like selling Overwatch league slots for $20 million…"

• On OpenAI's Move to Ads

  • Aiden: "I kind of think of ads as a last resort… But if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that..." (96:07)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:18] – Aiden hands off “lemon of optimism”; gallows humor about sports gambling as a positive
• [03:13] – Trump’s letter about the Nobel Peace Prize/Greenland; reading the actual letter
• [07:55] – Trump's Nobel “diplomatic” shenanigans in Venezuela
• [12:23] – Tariff threats against NATO allies
• [17:14] – Why Greenland actually matters geopolitically (maps discussion)
• [22:34] – EU's countermeasures against US tariffs; risk to US treasuries
• [39:43] – US debt spiral, rising interest rates, and fiscal dominoes
• [44:01] – “No going back” moment for world order; trust is permanently broken
• [52:42] – Trump’s Board of Peace super-UN proposal and the $1B buy-in
• [61:13] – Legality of Trump’s tariffs, looming Supreme Court case
• [78:49] – Hosts review results of their "Lemonade Stand" stock experiment
• [94:36] – OpenAI’s ad pivot, the new business reality for AI
• [101:19] – Meta/Google’s advertising model as context for OpenAI decision

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Final Takeaways & Tone

• Language & Tone: The episode’s tone is irreverent, satirical, and biting—reflecting both deep exasperation and comedic resignation at the absurdity of present-day geopolitics. The hosts freely mix analysis, banter, and parody, never losing sight of the stakes beneath the farce. Their expertise, both in business and in public policy, underpins the humor and helps ground the surreality of the news.

• Conclusion: The episode ties together the themes of unchecked executive ambition, the limits of institutional guardrails, economic self-sabotage, and the increasingly transactional, unstable nature of global alliances. Real-world consequences are mapped onto the hosts’ comedic worldview—like a lemonade stand forced to choose between selling juice or declaring economic war.

• Memorable Ending:

  • Ludwig: “Everyone is a genius in a bull market.” (83:41)
  • Doug: On the Board of Peace: “It's like selling Overwatch league slots for $20 million...”
  • Aiden: “OpenAI lost $11.5 billion… this could be a money fountain, but it might not be enough.”

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For newcomers, this episode is both an entertaining and illuminating breakdown of the current global mess and a reminder, in the hosts’ own words, that “sometimes, things really are as dumb as they seem.”

Transcript

[Aiden]

Aiden, you seem pretty flexible.

[Doug]

Yeah, I'd say so.

[Aiden]

I've seen you.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Very flexible a lot. Very flexible.

[Doug]

Flexible. Well, nothing is. I would say I don't like things that are set in stone. I like being able to change things.

[Aiden]

I feel like PDFs, you know, maybe in your personal life, if you get what I'm saying. Can edit, adapt and collaborate with others in your life to reach your goals. Just like Adobe PDF space is in Acrobatic Studio. Your PDF files aren't static anymore, Aiden. They can be as flexible as you are. You can do that upside down and squeeze like a piece.

[Doug]

I think I would learn more about [e-mail] do that with Agrobat.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Aiden]

Fellas, I got good news. There was so much bad news this week that unironically Sincerely, I've crossed a tipping point and I'm kind of depressed about the state of the world. Which means I am giving up my role as the optimist of the show. Here's the lemon of optimism. I'm passing it to you, Aiden.

[Doug]

Awesome. This works well because I read no news this week. Hey, so from your perspective, it's looking good. Just checked out. I have. You know, you guys can be Banjo. Yeah, I'll be Kazooie. You're Kazooie. You're in the back. Except I can't fly.

[Ludwig]

You have no skill.

[Doug]

And I've got a heartwarming anecdote to bring to the show. I went to a Clippers game last week and there was three groups of high school students sitting in the two rows in front of us and the row behind of us behind us. And they were all sports betting on their phones their entire game. And that's why this episode sponsored by draft Optimism. I'm joking. I'm joking. I was just like, that's so. I thought that was pretty great. It's like getting out there, hanging out with your friends, losing money. You don't have getting addicted to predatory apps. I thought that was not doing a.

[Ludwig]

Good job with the optimism.

[Doug]

I thought that was nice.

[Ludwig]

You thought that was nice? It brought people together.

[Doug]

This is how the lemon of optimism works.

[Ludwig]

You know, they were in person, hanging out.

[Aiden]

They weren't like.

[Doug]

Exactly.

[Aiden]

It's sports.

[Doug]

Gambling brought them together.

[Aiden]

Brings people together.

[Ludwig]

So it does have benefits. It does have benefits.

[Aiden]

This third space for gen Z is DraftKings.

[Doug]

We don't need physical third spaces because they can just gamble on the app.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. If you're in a discord server with your boys, gambling, it's as good as the real thing.

[Aiden]

So big updates today. We got the Clippers game. Anything else happens so far in January?

[Ludwig]

There hasn't been that much outside of the two basketball games you just mentioned.

[Aiden]

Oh, it was my birthday. We're going to talk about that for 45 minutes.

[Ludwig]

45 minutes on that.

[Doug]

Shake Drizzle's birthday.

[Ludwig]

I guess very slightly, if we can squeeze it in, because that's a lot of big stuff. We might squeeze in the fact that. That the President is trying to possibly declare war on Greenland and begin an unwinding of the transatlantic order.

[Aiden]

Big difference.

[Ludwig]

Language matters.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Aiden]

It's for the future of Greenland. Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And there's so many angles we can take this from, but I think it'd be fun to talk about the wildest, most cartoonish one. Let me pull up this letter.

[Aiden]

Actually, a lot of these are wild and cartoonish. Yeah.

[Ludwig]

I guess they're all pretty wild and carnage. But this one, for me, you know, it's hard to be surprised lately by something that happens in the world or something that Trump does. And I thought when I saw this that it was fake. I legitimately saw it. And I saw someone made this up, and it's like, come on, guys, there's enough real things to criticize. Can we not make up a fake letter? Yeah, and then it was verified. So this is a real letter from Donald Trump to the leader of Norway. Again, reminder that the Nobel Peace Prize is not figured out in Norway and he's attacking Greenland, which is owned by Denmark. Okay, all right. Considering your country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped eight wars, plus, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of peace, by the way, full stop. Very funny. That's a very funny sentence because it implies that the only reason you are purely thinking of peace is because of the Nobel Peace Prize. And in fact, if you don't get it now, war's on the table.

[Aiden]

Question is there A Nobel War Prize.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

Well, I think.

[Aiden]

I think he just wants n A.

[Doug]

It's so funny to be like that. Because you refuse me the prize, I will now shoot for the. The war prize. It's my only option.

[Ludwig]

I can't get the peace.

[Doug]

I needed a war.

[Ludwig]

I have to get the consolation war prize.

[Aiden]

Winning the Nobel Peace Prize, like, at gunpoint is so funny.

[Ludwig]

Which he did. We're going to get to that. Which is what actually basically happened.

[Aiden]

Well, I want to clarify. Nobel Peace Prize is not decided by the country of Norway. It is by the Nobel Association.

[Ludwig]

It's a committee. The Nobel Committee. This guy has no sway. Over and again, this is in response to attention rising over Greenland, which is Denmark. Okay. Although it'll always be predominant. But now I can think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China. And why do they have a quote right of ownership anyway? There are no written documents. It's only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago. But we had boats landing there also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding. And now NATO should do something for the United States. The world is not secure unless we have complete and total control of Greenland. Thank you, President djt. I legitimately thought this was fake. It is cartoonish President djt.

[Aiden]

So he's stoked about that lemon of optimism.

[Doug]

It's kind of.

[Ludwig]

Okay. You're kind of turning around on this.

[Doug]

It sounds like we're all coming together.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Scandinavia and the United States closer than ever.

[Ludwig]

Right. And I think that arguing about the.

[Doug]

Boat fast tracked visa. It's all looking good.

[Ludwig]

We were walking here and Aiden was doing a funny Swedish voice, making fun of his visa team because they will not. You were like.

[Doug]

Because they're just really slow in the response. And I was like, hello, I am Astrid. I just got off my 45 day vacation. I haven't been able to look at your application. Like.

[Aiden]

Send him one of these.

[Doug]

I get it. I'm just getting a little antsy because.

[Aiden]

Considering you decided not to give me the visa, I no longer feel obligated.

[Doug]

You know what, those vacation laws. If I can't have them.

[Ludwig]

All right, one more Nobel thing. We.

[Aiden]

We talk about Greenland.

[Ludwig]

Greenland is like the kickoff here. Because it is. It's major. We've talked about it last week, but so much has happened since.

[Aiden]

This is so. I don't know. Okay. Sorry.

[Ludwig]

There's big implications.

[Aiden]

This is, to me the wildest that it's gotten. This is the this is, I think.

[Ludwig]

It is one of the. Yeah, I think it is. Probably, at least for me, it's the dumbest thing. The dumb. The single dumbest. Like I don't see the upside. But just as a note because we're on the Nobel sub real quick. In the past week, since our last episode, Donald Trump did receive the Nobel Prize as a gift from Maria Machado. Congratulations. Congratulations.

[Aiden]

So I have a quick question. Is that how it works?

[Ludwig]

So that was a, that was a question that had not been answered until this. Look how happy he is though. Can you. Wow, look how he's. I've never seen Trump cheese like that. He is happy she showed up. A little context here is that she and her party I guess won the election in Venezuela rightfully. Maduro ignored it, retained power. Trump swooped in, kidnapped Maduro, took him back out and there was sort of this expectation that perhaps she would be the person that he would try to give power to with this newfound control. He did not. He said she had no respect in Venezuela. And the power is transferred to Maduro's vp Del C. Rodriguez, and the same party is still in control of Venezuela. Her. There was a leak from the Washington Post that said some part of that may have had to do. And again this is, this is speculation. May have had to do with the fact that Trump was miffed that she got the Nobel Prize and he didn't. Sounds crazy, but you read the letter like the Greenland thing, it's like doesn't sound that crazy anymore. So I think in response to that leak, Maria Machado went to the White House on a diplomatic mission and presented it as a gift, hoping that perhaps he would then favor her in the election that she won and have some power in her own country. It is fucking insane. Aiden, I don't know how you can. Yeah.

[Doug]

So lemon of optimism. Okay, I'm going to tell you guys about a dream of that I had as young man. I.

[Aiden]

It's good. I feel like we're both sightings thing.

[Doug]

18 year old me had a dream.

[Ludwig]

This is like a Martin Luther King.

[Doug]

Type thing that he would get accepted into. He did not think about how he would pay for it because he didn't have a way if he got in. But he dreamed of doing his undergrad at the University of California, Berkeley.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Doug]

He did, he did. And there happens to be someone that I work close with now who's very successful, who graduated from that university sitting feet away from me.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Doug]

And I think this means that you could just give me your degree and and that would be. I'll have fulfilled my dream. I feel like I just. And I deserve it.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, I will.

[Doug]

And I've been sending you angry letters.

[Aiden]

To the president of Lemonade, PM of.

[Doug]

Not to the PM of Norway, actually, about how I didn't get into Berkeley.

[Ludwig]

Just like any Scandinavian country.

[Doug]

And if this flies, I feel like that makes sense.

[Ludwig]

So you asked the question, have a.

[Aiden]

Plan to win the Super Bowl. The trophy apparently is not that guarded, right?

[Ludwig]

Yeah, you can practice football your whole life, Huge pain in the ass. Or you could sneak in and grab the trophy. So the Nobel committee hadn't really encountered this. They had to put out a thing on the 9th of January, saying, hey, just as a reminder, you cannot transfer or, you know, give your Nobel. It is only to the person awarded it in perpetuity. But that being said, can we update the blockchain? That's my first question. How does the blockchain get involved? So anyway, so the Nobel has clearly been on his mind because the letter he wrote was after this. So he got the Nobel. As far as he's concerned, he owns it, it is in his hands, but it doesn't feel good enough. So he sent a letter to Norway saying, because I didn't get the Nobel Prize, I'm now the war guy. And Greenland's on the table. And he's been constantly hammering this Greenland thing. And so we're. We talked about a little bit last week, but in response to them not immediately caving and giving him Greenland, he rolled out a massive tariff on nine European countries. Well, actually it's 10% tariff, but rising. And I don't know if you want to take it from here, Doug, but this is okay.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Aiden]

So if you pull this up, this is the truth. Social again.

[Ludwig]

Jesus Christ.

[Aiden]

Something to me, this is on the 17th, so a couple days ago, this just. This goes so far beyond everything else. I've. I've actually been trying to understand why and maybe you guys have theories. So he clearly states that it's time for Denmark to give back world peace at stake and says we are going to on February 1, put a 10% tariff on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Finland. It will be increased to 25% on June 1, 2026. And this tariff will be in place up until we get the complete and total purchase of Greenland. So this is just full on using tariffs to bully the EU into giving.

[Doug]

Us Greenland for fully on board with this. Except Sweden. It doesn't really feel like Sweden should be carved out. They didn't really do anything Lemon optimism. We get Sweden out of this.

[Aiden]

Leave Sweden alone.

[Doug]

Because we would want anything to hold up the immigration department and say right.

[Ludwig]

Now wouldn't want good US Swedish relations or distract.

[Aiden]

There's been a trade deficit. More Swedes have been coming here. We got to get rebalances. We got to send some Americans over there.

[Doug]

Send some Americans out. Right.

[Ludwig]

And that'd be really nice. I think that's something you're for now.

[Aiden]

This got pretty universal criticism as you can imagine. This is just kind of fucking insane. This is the really the first time where the tariffs have not been. There hasn't been the purported reason of stopping fentanyl or trade deficits. This is just straight up we want you to give us your land. And this is to NATO our ally. This is not to Venezuela. It's not to China. It's not to. This is our allies and he's threatening our allies with tariffs because we want their land. Some of which aren't even necessarily relevant to this. Like what does Sweden have to do with Greenland exactly?

[Doug]

I'm not sure exactly. Nothing. Nothing.

[Ludwig]

Doug, drop behind you 100%. Just you made a typo.

[Doug]

Get the Swedes out of there.

[Aiden]

So there's a couple. As you can imagine, the response to this has been pretty universally negative on the Free Press. Any left leaning of any kind person or institution has been like what the fuck is this? This is absolutely insane. Including right leaning publications as well. Like the Free Press posted a pretty, pretty negative article on this and that Free Press is very right leaning for context. But I think it's interesting that a right leaning, you know, article came out about this. They were like despite all the recent foreign policy wins of of Trump, this one isn't hitting the mark. Okay, there's a great one here. Chase Passive Income on Twitter said now it's going to cost 10% more to buy Greenland since it's a product of Denmark. Not a great move. And even Mr. Senator Kennedy says a Republican senator had some choice words for this.

[Doug]

To invade Greenland and attack its sovereignty. A fellow Nate Tokyo country would be weapons grade stupid. Yeah, is I President Trump is not weapons grade stupid.

[Ludwig]

Well, it's not. Nor is mar anything out.

[Doug]

That's all I'm going to say on Greenland. But there will be more to happen with respect to Greenland.

[Aiden]

This is a big shift in the vibes. This is coinciding with potentially the Supreme Court overruling tariffs coming soon. We'll chat about comes at the back of Davos which is happening, you know World leaders meeting. And Trump is like, Trump did this, like, right before meeting with all of the leaders. Everybody's kind of criticizing this and going, what is about to happen? And is this going to blow up NATO, the North American alliance that has held true for 80 years. Yeah.

[Ludwig]

World War II on.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So there's a lot to go off of here. I got a couple points. We can start on the tariffs and the legality, but anything jump out to you guys first?

[Ludwig]

Yeah. I mean, first of all, you mentioned Republicans. So this has been, of all of Trump's actions, maybe the most unpopular Republicans in that. There was a thing from the Guardian that a number of senior Republican congressmen and senators approached Trump and said, if you actually go through with this, as in military boots on the ground in Greenland, it will be the end of your presidency. It will be impeachment. It'll be. So it's like, it's a. There's a hard line from them on that, though. He hasn't softened in his talking about it at all since this discussion. Even all the. There's financial angle where stocks and bonds are both sold off today in response to this, this action. There's a lot of angles. I mean, one more angle is you kind of made a joke of like, Mr. President, I buy you 100%. You just typo it on Sweden. But, like, that is the. The language I'm seeing from a lot of people, which is right here. Here's. Here's. I forget his first name. Tillis. But thank you. Thank you. And to be clear, I'm not critical of the president. I'm critical of the bad advice he's getting on Greenland. Okay, well, let's, you know, it's this idea of like, I'm not critical of Trump. Trump's perfect. He's doing everything. But someone's giving him bad advice on Greenland. And it's just like, I don't know that that's the case. I feel like this is his.

[Aiden]

I feel bad for Trump. He's helpless in the face of this bad advice. What's a guy to do?

[Ludwig]

What is a guy to do? And we talked about this last week, but, I mean, maybe you have an angle on this. I'd love to see this map here.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So Wall Street Journal came out with an article I thought was really good called why Greenland Matters to US Defense in Seven Maps. And essentially, if you look at normal. What is the Monter projection? I forget the name of it.

[Ludwig]

Mercador. Right.

[Aiden]

Mercador projection. The way we normally look at maps, like has everything kind of distorted. But if you actually look at a globe at the top, Greenland is basically right in between North America and Russia. Right. And so this map in particular, where, which, you know, you can see if you're on the YouTube side, basically from Washington, D.C. to like, you know, 100 different spots on Russia, it's going to go essentially over Greenland. So in the case that missiles are firing either from the US To Russia or from Russia to the US and these are intercontinental, Greenland is right there. From a strategic standpoint, it makes sense that if you were the U.S. you would really, really want this. Even the case with China, one of the routes that they would theoretically send missiles is over Russia and then to America over basically the top of the globe. So this map, I think, does help clarify things. It's not random. I was confused about this last week of, like, why the importance of Greenland. It's because on a traditional map that we look at, it doesn't seem that important. It doesn't seem like it's in between anything, really.

[Doug]

Everything's so much closer than you realize. Like this, this region is so, so important militarily and because of trade. And.

[Aiden]

Yeah, another crazy thing on this. So we've talked about, and many people are making the argument of the US Already has military bases on Greenland and we have permission to make military bases on Greenland. Why do we need to own it? So what's interesting is we. Historically, there's been 25 different stations or bases on Greenland that America has had over the years, but that's down to just one. Right now, there's only one base. So objectively, the US has way less presence than we've had at any previous point, it's something like.

[Doug]

Because we had dismantled a lot of these bases or operations in the wake of the Soviet Union falling, I believe.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah. Basically, during the Cold War, it peaked. Yeah. So exactly what you said. Today we have 150 troops there, down from 15,000. So there is a massive scaling down. And then if you're in this world where, like, we are in a direct potential conflict with Russia and China, makes sense that you would want to have a lot of presence there. And yes, you know, I think we could trust Denmark, slash, Greenland to let us build a bunch of bases. But, you know, if you're playing Psycho Risk, then maybe you feel like, no, we should just own it. I mean, like, you know, given the option, you would prefer that as the US Is it worth blowing up the whole alliance? Probably not. I would say it's particularly funny to blow up the alliance.

[Ludwig]

I mean, I think definitely not. Right. That's what I'm saying.

[Aiden]

Hold on. To be clear, it is definitely not a good idea. Right. The idea that you need to blow up up your alliance so that you can protect yourself and NATO from Russia makes no sense if you lose the allies you're supporting.

[Doug]

Lemon of optimism. You don't need an alliance if you own it all.

[Ludwig]

But you only own Greenland.

[Doug]

But we start with Greenland.

[Ludwig]

You'Re saying full on world empire.

[Doug]

Yeah. The global American empire, where it's officially all owned by F. Of course. Of course.

[Ludwig]

That's not optimistic to me.

[Doug]

And if you're watching and if you're watching this show for the first time right now, I believe that fully and it's clear through my view expressed across all the episodes of the show, is that I desire that as an individual. Yep. And I've been pro American and I. I really want to own it.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. That's why you're fleeing to Sweden, is so you can be advanced.

[Doug]

I'm. I'm the 10 out. I'm the tender. I'm a little suction cup that they're sending to Sweden. So it.

[Ludwig]

Scout around, send back information. No, I mean, look, it just doesn't make a damn bit of sense. I don't know. And I'm not even. This is not just me. This is like, I read a lot. I read a guy. Oh, I wish I had his name in front of me. Geopolitical strategy guy. A guy who has made his entire career of like, he did a bunch of articles during Biden of saying, like, Republicans are being. I'm gonna at least tell you what he's thinking. Like, no matter how crazy you think Biden is being on this or this or this, this is what. This is what the strategy is. He did the same for Trump up until. This is the first time. The title of his piece on this was like, I really don't know what this one. Like, it really doesn't make. Like, there's no good reason, especially when you could scale up everything you're doing in Greenland. I mean, if they hit the limit, then maybe you start talking. If you scale up the 25,000 troops again, you're building bases and you're mining minerals. And then Denmark goes, no. Then okay, you maybe, but you're not even. You're nowhere near that. And Denmark was being super open about anything we wanted to do, and it is just causing such economic and geopolitical pain immediately for no real reason. And nobody wanted this. There was a funny Tweet that I saw, that was like, Europe. I don't know if European leaders understand how much the average American desires Greenland, which is like, they don't. Before this thing from Trump, there was zero polling that anyone cared or wanted this. It was not torturing me.

[Doug]

It's been.

[Aiden]

I can't even pay attention to the Clippers game. I have to distract myself with sports bets to go over the misery of not having.

[Doug]

It's like a. I don't know, it just feels like if we have Alaska on the one side, then on the other side, it should be ours, too.

[Ludwig]

That. But I think that's what he's thinking. And I know it sounds crazy, but then you read these letters, and it's like, I think he just wants the map to look cool.

[Aiden]

And he clearly just wants to have the legacy of he got a giant piece of land. Yeah, that's clearly what's going on.

[Ludwig]

But that's crazy.

[Aiden]

Yeah, it's crazy. All right, so what is the EU doing? The EU is not fucking okay with this. And they are basically now debating, like, what are we going to do to retaliate? So there's a thing that they have called the protection against coercion. I forget the exact name of the anti coercion instrument. There is a tool that basically the EU has that they passed a few years ago in 2023, that says that they can. It's actually kind of funny. They have to, like, come up with all these commissions. It's very bureaucratic. But essentially, if they decide that they are being coerced into something that they don't want to do, they can take a wide variety of financial actions, let's say, and that could include things like selling off United States assets. So the EU owns a lot of the US Stock market and of our Treasuries, the EU actually invests a lot. And there's some good quotes by folks who are like, yeah, the problem with the US Is they depend on other people to fund everything. Like, as a reminder, we're in debt and we spend more than we make every year. We need other people to give us money. And so they're considering some pretty extreme options. So some interesting facts about this. The EU holds about 40% of foreign US treasuries. So if they stop buying our Treasuries, we can't raise money as easily. And then we have to pay more for that money, which would be a big deal. That being said, that sounds bad. And then I looked it up. Foreign treasuries are only 25% of all treasuries, 75% are held domestically. So to put that different. Of all U.S. treasuries, the EU holds about 10% of them. But still that's, that's a lot. The EU holds trillions of dollars of U.S. stocks and bonds and could sell them, but the majority of it are held outside of the government. They're private. So the EU could like force this big sell off to hurt the American economy, the American stock market, but it's going to be a lot of pain for eu, but in theory, you know, that's something that Trump is like extremely sensitive to, right? Is markets. And so they could put these, these huge pressures on him. And there's some crazy quotes the Dutch bank AG chief, current chief global currency strategist is talking about in quotes. The weaponization of capital from the bank's global head of currency research. In an environment where the geopolitical stability of the Western alliance is being disrupted existentially, it's not clear why Europeans would be willing to play this part. Macron from France is requesting that they activate this anti coercion instrument and take extreme steps where we are basically going to like start a massive trade war between the EU and the United States. They're calling on no longer approving the trade deal that was approved that was supposed to happen in June.

[Ludwig]

That's what I wanted to say.

[Aiden]

Yeah, there was like a big victory for Trump last year where he's like, we got this awesome trade deal. They're going to like potentially vote to not do that. The counter though is Germany, where German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Germany is really dependent on exports. So he said France is affected by the American tariffs to a different extent than we are. So it's understandable that he wanted to, in quotes, react a little more harshly than we do. Nevertheless, we are trying and succeeding in adopting a common position. Basically is like, is the EU willing to massively hurt themselves economically in order to try to punish Trump?

[Ludwig]

Well, the thing is they're both hurt. That is the problem. That's why this seems so beneficial to like Russia and China. The fact that we are ripping apart this close transatlantic alliance for no real gain on either side is foolish. And it's driving, you know, not necessarily Germany because they don't have a lot to sell to China and China's selling a lot to them. But other EU countries are now opening up to China. And you know, there's the big story this week of Canada, Canada opening up to China. They, they, Carney made a deal With G. To allow Chinese electric vehicles. They had a hundred percent tariff on Chinese EVs in Canada because America asked them to. And they got rid of it for at least the first 50,000 vehicles or whatever. And that's, you know, I'm saying. And he said Carney has been like out there saying basically the old global order is dead. I can't work for a world that I want to be. I have to work for the world that is right now. And I have to diversify our trade so that America doesn't have 100% pressure on it. We're completely reliant on them. So there he's making deals with South America, they're making deals with Europe and they're making deals with China. And all other countries are doing similar things. They're just trying to. I'm less worried about this short term selling off our debt or selling off stocks than I am every country just de risking, just finding different routes for everything. So they're not as reliant because that is the one.

[Doug]

They're eroding. The superpower that you talked about last week, you said one of the superpowers is this. The position of the US Dollar is like the global reserve currency and the place of financial importance that we have as a country. And all of these things add up as huge chips away at that superpower. The US is losing one of the three things that keeps it as like the dominant player. And you know, in a, in a broad sense, maybe you could argue that, oh, you don't think it's like, ethical for the US to have that power in the first place. And that maybe may be the case, but right now it's like the US dis. Dis. Intentionally dismantling.

[Ludwig]

Yes. It's just like you want the leader of your country to play their cards well. Right? It's just like that. Whether or not they should have those cards, that's enough for the rest of the world to figure out. But the Americans should not be dismantling their own things that benefit their citizens. Doesn't make any sense. It's just. Anyway, can you pull this picture up?

[Aiden]

You mentioned Macron's sitting on your computer.

[Ludwig]

Because Macron had to wear these glasses the entire time at Dallas. It's very funny.

[Aiden]

What?

[Ludwig]

This is the president of France and apparently he had an eye condition or something. So every speech you're talking about, he's been giving, he's had to do it indoors with these glasses, with these aviators.

[Doug]

Wow, that's.

[Aiden]

It looks great.

[Ludwig]

He has not been seen without these the entire last few days. And it is very funny.

[Doug]

It's kind of.

[Ludwig]

So maybe that's why he's winning over versus Mertz in this EU battle over.

[Aiden]

How to be, how to respond to Mr. Trump.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, dude, it is.

[Aiden]

It makes me think of when the tariffs were first starting a year ago, and you pointed out, if you wanted to, for example, get the whole world to collaborate and coordinate on doing tariffs on China that are very targeted in order to make sure that there's, like, security and that Chinese exports are not destroying all of these different industries around the world, that. That would make sense, but you need world coordination to do it right. And so we discussed that a lot. And literally, as a result of Trump, like, bullying everybody, everybody is now moving to make direct relationships with China and to decouple from the US and like, we're. This is such a good example. The fact that this deal was just signed between Canada and China and they're now saying, we've. We weren't taking your electric cars, we're now taking them.

[Doug]

I mean, that's like, oh, we're just, uh. Oh, look at this in my hand. The lemon optimism. He's crawled his way back into the conversation. He says that Eamon Gaming doesn't need to get a visa for the China trip anymore. Yeah, yeah, they're doing the same.

[Aiden]

Yeah, you're right.

[Doug]

Whoa.

[Ludwig]

They're doing visa free Canada. Visa free for.

[Doug]

So if you think of it, that's pretty sick.

[Ludwig]

Everything's coming up aid.

[Doug]

It's coming up aid.

[Ludwig]

Aid.

[Doug]

Let me get it. If he just takes Sweden off the list, then I haven't stopped with it.

[Aiden]

Support for Lemonade Stand comes from Adobe Acrobat Studio.

[Ludwig]

As I have a. I have an actual thing that I have been using lately that actually helps me if you have a real. Let's say I'm still in school. This is an example for people that are tiny little baby children like Aidan. And you have a book that you need to read or are 18 pages or.

[Doug]

You didn't read books in school.

[Ludwig]

I read leave matches.

[Aiden]

All right.

[Ludwig]

You can put that in a PDF into Adobe Acrobatic PDF spaces and it will generate a literal. It'll generate a podcast for you or a presentation for you that you can then use to summarize and understand the takeaways from this longer.

[Aiden]

It's actually amazing for learning.

[Ludwig]

It literally is just like, you can have it. You could, like, have it generate a quiz for you. It's like, it is a helpful thing for summarizing a very large document that's in a PDF is a useful.

[Doug]

You need resources for your baby mind. But I consume the material in one go and I keep it all in my head. That's how I keep everything so straight and easily managed.

[Ludwig]

In front of me.

[Aiden]

You're always saying disaster. Communicating with you. Be like Atriok.

[Doug]

Use Adobe.

[Aiden]

Learn [e-mail] dothatwith acrobat. And now you can use PDF spaces to learn so much more from your files. Man.

[Doug]

Be forgetful, be free.

[Ludwig]

He's just channeling. Don't follow the constraints of the office and the workspace that I'm working in.

[Doug]

Make your co workers mad.

[Ludwig]

Sport for this show comes from Rocket Money.

[Doug]

Is that where we are with Rocket Money ads? You've done so many that you have to do British accent. You get goofy.

[Ludwig]

I get goofy with it because I like the product because I've used it for a long time.

[Doug]

Yeah, so have I. It works great. I look at all my.

[Ludwig]

You know what I do is I look in there and I find the Yard Patreon and I cancel it because I don't care.

[Doug]

You've never subbed to the Yard Patreon. Don't lie.

[Ludwig]

I have. And then you guys called me fat for 40 minutes on a Patreon episode.

[Doug]

And I said, and that's.

[Ludwig]

That's not a good use of my money. Thanks Rocket Money for helping me find that out.

[Doug]

It's not a reason at all. It's a good reason. Reason. A good use of seeding the app. Hang on. You hang on to some of the subscriptions. Some of them are special.

[Ludwig]

And if you are subscribed to something like the Art Patreon, you can cancel that or see anything you're paying for that's useless and a waste of time and not that funny. And go to try Rocket Money for free@rocket money.com lemonade. Give that a quick cancel. Get your money back. Get your life back.

[Doug]

You know what else you know? What about Atrio Twitch subs? A lot of people have those.

[Ludwig]

You move them.

[Doug]

A lot of people those duckduck Twitch subs. Even I'm shooting left and right.

[Aiden]

That's an investment for the future.

[Doug]

That's the end of the ad.

[Ludwig]

More needs to be said.

[Aiden]

No, actually, it's not the end of the ad. You know when you go to Starbucks and you debate whether it's worth paying $3 for like a scone or what not? You're like, I shouldn't do that. And then you realize you've been paying $15 a month for a streaming service? You haven't watched a show in a year.

[Doug]

Yeah, probably.

[Aiden]

Rocking money for free.

[Ludwig]

Guys, I'm sick of doing this podcast with you. I have a better way to make money because I'm a business leader and hero and you guys are holding me back. I'm going to sell mini basketballs. Here's the thing. I'm really good at bouncing them. I'm good at finding them, but I'm not so good at coding or making a storefront or finding a way to sell them online.

[Doug]

How would you do that then?

[Ludwig]

I. I was gonna ask Doug.

[Doug]

Well, you're gonna make Doug do it for you.

[Aiden]

So I'll. I'll do it and I will charge you all the money we've made on this podcast.

[Ludwig]

But can I be the CEO and be like the public face?

[Aiden]

No, no. I get 100% voting shares.

[Doug]

Absolutely not.

[Aiden]

If you don't want to pay that though, in 2026, you can stop waiting and start selling with Share Shopify.

[Ludwig]

That sounds way more convenient than I could be my own boss.

[Doug]

Yeah, they have a bunch of built in tools that just let you build out the website. They handle the checkout process. You can add your skus in there. You know what I'm saying? One skew so you can sign up. It's just one. You don't have any other ideas? Also, basketball people have made up basketballs already. Sign up for your $1 per month and start selling today at shopify.com lemonade. Go to shopify.com lemonade. That's shopify.com/lemonade here. Your first this new year with Shopify by your side. Okay.

[Aiden]

So I looked at the press release from Canada. Okay. So big one is they're reducing the tariffs on the cars. Right. They go from instead of 100% tariffs down to 6% percent tariffs.

[Ludwig]

Right.

[Aiden]

But there's a couple other things that China agreed to start, like buying more from Canada. And as a Canadian, I want to hear your thoughts. First off, China is lowering tariffs on Canadian canola seed oils.

[Doug]

Oh, that's big. That's big. My grandfather makes that. My grandfather makes that.

[Aiden]

Apparently $4 billion seed market deem the beast trade.

[Ludwig]

Canada gives them seed oils and they get cool EVs.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's tight.

[Aiden]

No, no, no, no. It gets better. Canada is now expecting. So China's going to drop these discrimination tariffs on lobsters.

[Doug]

Big for Nova Scotia. This is big win for Nova Scotia.

[Aiden]

Apparently lobsters are so big in the Canadian economy that he chose that specific hold on. Lobsters and crabs. And can you guess the third one? These are three things that are listed as important exports that China is going to take in more of.

[Doug]

I mean I, I feel it's the big three.

[Aiden]

The big three.

[Doug]

Surely it's timber or oil.

[Aiden]

It's the big three. Lobsters. Crabs. That's right. And peas.

[Doug]

And peas.

[Aiden]

Peas. Lobster, Crabs and peas. So big, big day for the pea farmers.

[Ludwig]

Wow, that's crazy.

[Aiden]

Peas.

[Doug]

Wow.

[Ludwig]

Wait, can I say something? So Carney, I've been listening to him talk about this a lot. I listen to all his speeches over at Davos and about this, he started in French. And I do think that Carney is the smartest Western leader right now. I think he's by, I think he's by far the smartest.

[Doug]

Much like all of his countrymen. No, I saw the most intelligent, average, highest intelligence across the spectrum.

[Ludwig]

I think he truly, I think in fact most Canadians are dumb as hell and they got very lucky with him. I think he actually gets it in a way that other leaders are only going to take a while to catch up on. And one thing that he is like screaming basically in the nicest way he can is that he sees the G7 which is the big Western economies, their debt fueled, bubbly, speculative economies that have had, they've had for a while, that have kind of run the world are coming to an end. He basically says that like this, the, the era of printing currency, G7 dominance is coming to an end. It's just happening and I am adapting to a new world where we need to use the resource, the hard resources we have, other than that, the financial ones. So they, Canada is very wealthy in resources. They have peas, they have lobster and they have oil and they have timber and they are going to export these things while they have value to, in order to improve their, the tech of the country. That, that like he's figuring out that like the, the old ways of just printing money to keep like a real estate based economy, it's not going to work. It's coming to an end. It's going to pop, it's in trouble. And he is basically saying that we are going to use our resources at the values they are to get. And the smart thing he's doing by the way with the EVs he's doing what China did when they were starting to get rich is if Chinese EV companies want to sell in China right now, they can just ship them for the first 40k cars but then they have to come in and make a joint Vehicle. A joint. I forget the word.

[Aiden]

Tandem bicycle.

[Ludwig]

A joint venture. So a Chinese company like Neo or like BYD has to set up a joint company in Canada with a Canadian company that has 51% and then they have to teach them how to build the EVs and like, that's what China did to start moving up the ladder and Carney's forcing them to do it here. It's like it's, it's trickling back down out of China to Canada. I mean, it's a smart play. He's a smart, he's thinking forward and everyone else is driving headfirst to the cliff. And I don't know if you want to talk about bonds, because it really ties into this. Like, this is like.

[Doug]

Well, the, the main story I'd seen was from earlier this morning, which was that the Denmark pension Fund, which holds $100 million in U.S. treasuries, is starting to sell their position. They are saying it's not directly related to the ongoing rift between the US And Europe, but that, that it actually has to do with the instability and lack of faith in the US Finances. Like, they are publicly saying this is because of poor financial management by, by America. And we are reacting to that. But it is coming at the same time as all of this Greenland action unfolding. And it's hard to imagine that that is not also playing a part in the choice of this action. But Denmark, you know, Denmark is just one country and $100 million in bonds is, you know, a significant amount of money, but maybe not as much in like a global context. But I think the fear from my memory is Canada had weaponized this in a conversation with Trump earlier last year when the rhetoric about Canada for 51st state really heated up. And Carney had said they were going to sell the bonds or alluded to the idea that they were going to sell all of their U.S. treasury bonds. And this is at the time for Canada, their successful way seemingly of like toning that down or getting Trump to like, chill out. So this is the financial lever that these countries can react with. It's like, does selling our bonds get you to move the needle or change your take on this at all?

[Ludwig]

Yeah, so I want, I want to talk about this. So can you pull up this graph? We're probably aware of this. Maybe people watching are also aware of this. But right now, in the amount of money the government spends every year, about 15% of that goes to interest on our debt. We have 30 trillion. 30 something trillion, 37 trillion. I don't know the number. A lot of debt.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And it's at an average interest rate of 3.3% because some of it's long term, some of it we got at lower rates for 20 years, some of it we got it last year for whatever, but it's average of 3.3%. And so we do 14% of our, our deficit is on interest. And so when people stop buying us debt, the borrowing cost goes up. Right now I think it's like for a 10 year, it's like four and a half percent. For 4.2 or whatever, it's a little, yeah, 4.2 and we have a lot of debt that. So imagine like if I'm broke as and I want to, I have very little income and I borrow 100k from you and I'm going to pay $50 a month in interest and at the end of the year I have to give you 100k back. Okay. So I can afford $3 payments. So I pay it every month. End of the year I don't have the money to give you the hundred K because I spent it. I bought a Ferrari and I bought a gun and I bought whatever. So I have to borrow another 100k to pay you back and then I just do it again to that guy. That is what we do with all of our debt. We never pay it off. We always roll it over. We just, at the end of the year we roll it over. And what the interest rate is when we roll it over matters a lot. We have a lot of debt that's about to come due. They're about to roll over and our borrowing costs are going like this. They're going vertical with all this geopolitical tension because people don't want to loan us money. At 4% or 4 and a half percent. It's going to 4.6, 4.7. Every percent that goes up is another 300 billion here. 300 billion is equivalent to the Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security and Department of state combined.

[Aiden]

And AirPods combined.

[Doug]

Can't forget about AirPods.

[Ludwig]

So right now it's at 3.3% of our interest. If that went to 4%, that means we can no longer assume, we don't, you know, increase change, anything we can't afford Education, Department of Homeland Security, Department, State. If it goes to double, we can't afford a military. Like that's the, that's the size of the military. Like these are, this is the real impact of rising interest rates. This is like, you know, it sounds like it doesn't mean anything. But what it means is the amount of our budget every year going to interest gets so astronomical it crowds at everything else. This is what's happening in Japan's interest rates. Their, their borrowing costs are going parabolic and they're deeply worried. Like how do you afford a government, how do you pay for things if your borrowing costs have gotten so extreme?

[Doug]

The big guy for tariffs, the big marker that people look for is these interest rates climbing to or past 5% just as a marker of significant growth. And the 30 year treasury rate for the US treasury is 4.93% right now has climbed to 4.93.

[Ludwig]

That's insane.

[Doug]

And the 10 year is also going up. I think it's interesting this is also happening at the same time as a bunch of European bonds also climbing for the same like period of time. And also, even, even recently, after a year of it surging or longer, gold is spiking in value again. So big A stays winning. Lemon of optimism, bro.

[Ludwig]

I'm still, I mean I'm not stoked because now it's too high, now it's like scary for the world. But this is what Carney's saying. I'm saying this is the, this is what Carney's theory is, is that it doesn't matter whether you're the European country or you're America or you're Japan. This, this G7 debt based thing is it's not working. The borrowing costs are going to get so high we can't afford anything. The currency is going to have to get printed to pay it off. It's going to be Monopoly money. It's a hard assets thing. So he's focusing on oil and timber and fucking lobster and peas.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And essentials. The essentials. You can live on that stuff.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

And we can build a house out.

[Aiden]

Of Wall street crypto game, but you can build a house out of peas. Crab shells are durable.

[Ludwig]

Crab shells and yeah, that's what it seems like. So I don't know, I just. It. This Greenland thing is so smart, man. It's so smart.

[Aiden]

Fellas, can I throw an open ended feeling out there?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

What this. I think I've been trying to understand why this week's news has racked me so much. I've stated either maybe on the Patreon, I forget, but that I still don't feel like we've crossed a threshold at which Trump's action and what happening is sort of like a turning point that you can't go back from this week. I think the vibe for me has always been like, I don't like what's going on with ice. I don't like what's going on with tariffs. I don't like what's going on with LGBT rights. I don't like all these things he's doing. But he's going to leave in a couple of years, and presumably we will go back to normal. And if we can, like, ride it out, which is nice and easy for.

[Doug]

Me to say, you have a semblance of. You still have an idea that the system will correct itself. Correct itself.

[Aiden]

Right. And we've talked about this, that unless elections fundamentally are compromised, that it will correct itself. I mean, we did elect this guy. We did elect him democratically to. And now he's doing crazy shit, and it should correct itself. But this is the. Something about this. I don't know why it just feels like this. This has shattered things in a fundamental way. Like, you can't trust this global system that has existed for 80 years. If this can happen from the US there's no going back. Like, I really feel pretty depressed about this, unfortunately. And I do feel like, okay, it's broken. It doesn't matter. This is the week for me where it's like, it doesn't matter if he's.

[Doug]

Gone in three years. So I think the interesting part of this is, like, this is the thing that makes you feel that way, but it's because, like, your. Your idea is that trust that other countries have in us is so irreparably damaged that you cannot go back to the old way of doing things after this, regardless of who's in charge. Because people are making such concrete steps to make their country or their economy independent from the US in ways that it wasn't before, that they're not looking to backtrack, like, two or three years from now. Is. Is that, like, a fair evaluation?

[Aiden]

Yeah, I think so. It's probably a mix of that, which is the sort of rational side of, like, well, these policies and treatments, you know, these treaties just aren't gonna be valid anymore. And I think the other half is just an emotional. Maybe I'm coming off of Prozac, so that's probably. But ironically, maybe that's been softening things. And I think the other side is just an emotional one of. Just for some reason, this. This just went over. Of, like, Trump just bully, like, openly, explicitly bullied our allies. We'll get to the Board of Peace thing in a sec, which is like, it's just kicking EU while they're Down. It's just, But I, I don't know, it's like, okay, the world is truly going to be totally different than what we thought it would be.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

The way I heard it described, that I thought was funny. I mean, this is nothing that's funny really, but was, you know, if you're thinking about it rationally from someone in Europe, like a leader in Europe, even if you think Trump will be gone and someone will come in, that's more easy to deal with. You know, the idea that every four years, based on 32,000 swing voters in Wisconsin or whatever on my mic, you know, how, how 30,000 swing voters in Wisconsin feel about trans kids playing volleyball or something, you get to decide whether or not you are going to be in a trade war with your ally or you're going to be threatening to bait your, like that. That's not a reliable enough. You know, we, we, we switch pretty wildly here in America pretty quickly. We have two parties and they're, you know, I'm saying, so they just have to de. Risk.

[Doug]

No, I, I've, I've had this feeling of, oh, him, like this direction that the country is moving in. Even if it completely reverses two years from now, you're not, you're not somebody like Carney or Macron and looking at that and being like, well, you know, may as well get fully back in the US Basket, they swap the guy because it could just swing back the other way so, so violently.

[Ludwig]

And you've seen what you've been punished so hard for being too reliant, trusting.

[Aiden]

You know, it's, it's, I think maybe the shift for me is like, it is irreparably changing the world, at least for the foreseeable future, into a every man for himself kind of vibe. And that's just really fundamentally scary, right, that the pretense that, that we could trust each other and work through it is, is evaporating. And that's, it's, it's not just like, oh, the US trade relations are bad. It's like every country is going to have to do what Canada is doing and say, we are not trusting anybody. We're focusing on our own interests. And that's just fucking sad, man. What a sad state for the world, for human beings.

[Doug]

My little lemon of optimism has a, has just a little bit of pessimism to put into this conversation. I've my worry from like a 20 year, 30 year perspective has, you know, price of peace. That book we read explains this pretty well. But it's a Generally well understood idea that the at large benefit of this like world order post World War II is that countries are so economically intertwined and dependent on, on each other that it's this built in defense mechanism against people going to war. It doesn't mean no wars happened in the last hundred years, but it was a, it has been a relative time of peace of superpowers like battling it out with each other. Right. There hasn't been any like giant gigantic global power to power conflict.

[Aiden]

There's no.

[Doug]

Since World War II, I'd say Ukraine.

[Ludwig]

Russia kind of broke that. That's a big enough, that's the biggest. I mean that's when this all started to break down anyway. That. Yeah.

[Doug]

So that's like a signal of like something, a larger shift happening I would say. Right. And I feel like the, as you continue to like isolate allies and people economically you're eroding what's left of the safeguard, preventing countries from fighting each other.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Like you're, you're getting rid of this like underlying economic safety net that you know, wasn't, you know, has its pros and cons in so many different ways because it's a global system and da da da da. But ultimately was something that was protecting like us going to all out war with other countries in the capacity that we were doing for hundreds of years before that and now we're getting rid of it. And also a bunch of people have nuclear weapons and are like for the first time ever rearming nuclear, nuclear. It's just, it feels scary.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

I'm not, I'm not like awake at night worrying about that part. But it reminds, it's a reminder of like it wasn't the period of peace that we had gone through before this. It wasn't always like that in human history. It wasn't like that for most, the most of human like post agricultural history was not like that. And now we're like getting rid of the main thing that was preventing it from being like that.

[Ludwig]

Right. And this period of peace has coincided with the invention of nuclear weapons. So we haven't had, we haven't been in a world where nuclear weapons exist and there's no global safeguards. You know, it doesn't happen.

[Doug]

So yeah, we're like all going to find out and we're going to find out together.

[Aiden]

Together.

[Ludwig]

Cool.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

I mean this is another Carney quote. He said, he's talking about the system we currently had or had. It helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security and then he said, this bargain with America no longer works. Let me be direct. We're in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Great powers have started to use economic integration as a weapon, tariffs as leverage. So, like, this is just. Everyone has to change. And it's. It is wild that it's happening on the back of a guy who I saw in Home Alone 2 as a kid and is now obsessed with the Nobel Peace Prize. It's crazy.

[Doug]

It's crazy.

[Aiden]

To be fair to Trump, in a world where all the alliances are rupturing because of what you did to acquire Greenland, having Greenland is strategically valuable if.

[Ludwig]

You create that world. Yeah, right.

[Doug]

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. If all of it becomes America, then aren't you planned.

[Aiden]

Okay, you guys want to hear about the Board of Peace? Okay. This stuff with Greenland started and I was like, this is depressing. And then I started reading about the Board of Peace. The Board of Peace is, was proposed.

[Ludwig]

We need peace.

[Aiden]

We do need peace. Yeah, yeah. It's got the word in it.

[Ludwig]

And we're worried. And they're debating on the name.

[Aiden]

Might be Board of War, but the Board of Peace.

[Ludwig]

I'm excited for this.

[Aiden]

We talked about this in the, in the wake of the treaty peace of sorts in Palestine and Israel. Right. Where this 20 point document was, was pitched by the US and it was agreed to and, you know, credit, whereas due hostages were returned and Israel has continued to bomb and kill people. And it's not exactly.

[Doug]

Oh, really? I didn't read any of that after.

[Aiden]

So it's been a very tenuous piece that involves some killing and some war from one side. But, but in theory, the US Resolution has, you know, gotten a whole lot of countries on board. And the Board of Peace for Gaza is like the name of the, of the group that they're putting together. We talked about this because Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair is the head of the board Peace for Gaza. He's gonna help oversee this and they're gonna have a bunch of technocrats. I don't know why they use that word for this. Technocrats come in and run the rebuilding of Gaza.

[Doug]

Right, okay.

[Aiden]

That's the premise. So there's been some updates. That is the Board of Peace for Gaza, but Trump is actually instituting a broader coalition called the Board of Peace. Broadly, the Board of Peace for Gaza is inside of it, kind of like the un the way it'll work is if you join, you join for three years and Then you're part of this coalition of country leaders that decide what kind of things are gonna happen around the world. It sounds suspiciously like the un which Donald Trump does not really like. He announced. Bloomberg found the basically the prompt or the premise of it that's being pitched to countries which is that you can join for three years or if you pay a billion dollars, you're a permanent member, little exclusive club.

[Doug]

Cool.

[Ludwig]

Even the board got paid a win, bro.

[Doug]

Dude, you know what this reminds me of? It's like selling Overwatch league slots for $20 million. It's like just come and join.

[Ludwig]

That's just like microtransactions are getting into everything.

[Doug]

Come join my new league.

[Ludwig]

You have to pay for different flags.

[Doug]

Like the old one. This is going to be a great new league. It's going to last forever.

[Aiden]

So that, that's silly, right? It's like ah, billion dollar club, right? And that's probably the headline you've heard. But looking a little more into the, the actual draft that's been pitched to company, excuse me, countries, how does this board of Peace function? Well, Trump is the chairman of the board. Decisions by these countries around the world on geopolitical issues such as the rebuilding of Gaza, obviously majority vote, but every single vote is subject to the chairman's approval. Donald Trump, Trump will have the power to remove a member that can only be vetoed by two thirds majority of the member states. So he personally as the chairman can kick people out and also decide who gets invited.

[Doug]

Just to be clear, even if I.

[Aiden]

Paid the billion, it's not clear. As you can imagine, this is a Trumpism type thing or it's like an unclear document. But these are the, this is what it's stated so far. Is that so meetings, they're going to happen when the chairman decides the agenda is approved by the chairman. So we're not going to talk about stuff unless the chairman wants to talk about this stuff. We're not going to meet unless the chairman wants to meet. And here's the piece that really made me go holy fucking shit. The chairman who basically controls this new UN board is the only one who gets to decide who the next chairman is. And so this I realized is the play by Trump to stay in power after he's kicked out of office, right? And again it gets back to that feeling of like ah, at least this will correct in three years. But he, if this works and he can get country leaders all together after he's president will be chairman of the board of this institution that has all of These different countries deciding world affairs with permanent control over everything, including who's next. And of course, you can imagine he's put in Jared Kushner and various other people in like, leadership.

[Ludwig]

Oh, the goats. The goat team.

[Doug]

Jared always finds a way.

[Ludwig]

The All Star squad.

[Doug]

Jared always finds a way.

[Aiden]

Man.

[Ludwig]

He's gonna run Paramount Pictures and he's a busy guy. Jared and some crypto thing.

[Doug]

And then.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, okay, my understanding, Board of Peace, you pay Trump a billion dollars, Right. To get on board. You don't get any input in the decisions you do.

[Aiden]

It's just. He can veto it.

[Ludwig]

He can veto it. Trump has solo veto power over everything. He's chairman of the board for life. Not just the life of the presidency.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

So even if he were, it's him.

[Aiden]

Establishing his own global thing that is separate from the US Government forever.

[Ludwig]

And he has sole control over all the money.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Ludwig]

In the Board of Peace.

[Aiden]

Yeah. When you donate a billion dollars, it's going to go. And in quotes mostly to the. Sorry, the money raised will be used. Yeah. Directly to accomplish the Board of Pete's mandate to rebuild Gaza.

[Ludwig]

Quote, most of this put us all back in a loop here. The big impetus for this, we have to take Greenland and break all our alliances thing was Greenland. You can't protect it from our enemies Russia and China.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Ludwig]

And the first person I think he invited to the Board of Peace is Vladimir Putin.

[Aiden]

There are some funny people invited to the Board of Peace. You got the European countries, the ones who, just to be clear, just were threatened with tariffs to take Greenland, inviting them to the Board of Peace. You got Israel, who's the first one who came? Benjamin Netanyahu came out and said the details haven't been coordinated with us and is like apparently very upset because Qatar and Turkey are invited as well. And he's like, this is supposed to be about, like us running Gaza and instead he's making this board around the world. Macron from France promptly declined. So credit to him came out and I was like, we're absolutely not fucking being a part of this. Trump responds with, well, no one wants him, cuz he's gonna be out of office very soon. I'll put a 200% tariffs on his wines and champagnes and he'll join. Fucking baffling. And then others imply, like Carney said, he's interested in principle. But then behind the scenes they're like, we will not pay a dime for this.

[Ludwig]

Which is, no, it's gonna pay a billion dollars to join your board.

[Aiden]

We got Argentina's Malay. We got Belarus's autocratic leader, Lukashenko, so that's cool. Russia was invited.

[Doug]

Lukashenko is invited. Yep.

[Aiden]

To the Board of Peace.

[Ludwig]

Dude, if the Board of Peace is.

[Doug]

Like, Lukashenko, Trump, and so funny, that'd be. Hold on. Stay with me. Stay with me. That's a little beast.

[Aiden]

You're missing.

[Doug]

The three of them that's in the.

[Aiden]

Crowd for the piece here. Okay. We've talked about the big two, right, which is Belarus and Russia. Who's the big three that you really want? The Board of Peace? China. China's invited. They said they might be interested.

[Ludwig]

Okay.

[Doug]

You.

[Aiden]

Oh, and he wants to start by Thursday. He announced this, like, a day by Thursday.

[Doug]

He wants it to get it done by Thursday.

[Ludwig]

Gigantic. Just to be $1 billion by Thursday for the board.

[Aiden]

Baffling, man.

[Doug]

Just send it. Just send it.

[Ludwig]

You just send it.

[Doug]

Cash app Venmo. I'll do whatever you need.

[Ludwig]

I'll take digital. You want.

[Doug]

I'll take. I'll take CS kids, they can pay.

[Aiden]

For it with their tariff revenue.

[Doug]

I feel like. It's so funny to imagine, like, can you imagine hopping on the kind of, like, MAGA train 2016? You. You know, you feel a little disenfranchised. You. You know, I can understand how you'd be there. You're all on the drain. The swamp rhetoric. You're like, get rid of the deep state. Get rid of the globalists. And in 2026, you're reading about the born of peace, the leadership where Trump gets to be chair into infinity over this global organization with full veto power that all the other countries buy into. It just feels like I'm wondering what you could say. I'm wondering what you could say. And I know it doesn't matter. I know it doesn't matter.

[Ludwig]

I don't have. I can't find him in front of me. But there were a lot of examples, obviously pulled up, of people in the 2016 era saying things like Trump invading Greenland or taking Greenland seriously were obviously a Jew. Like, it's not. It's an example of alarmism.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

You know, and, like, now that shit's real. So I don't know. It's. It's. It is. It's funny in a cosmic sense, but obviously very depressing.

[Aiden]

I mean, there's a. We can talk about tariffs, which is, like, kind of a good, good spin on this.

[Ludwig]

Sure. What's the tariffs angle?

[Aiden]

So all of this. All the. I should say all. A huge amount of the chaos that Trump has instigated comes from Tariffs, Right. He's thrown tariffs on everybody, even with this Board of peace thing fucking threatening France by putting 200% tariffs on their champagnes. Right. That has been the club that he has been wheeling and beating everyone off over the last year. Right. So are tariffs legal? Like, what is the precedent for this? Well, the precedent is the International Emergency Economic Powers act, which I'll just pronounce, instead of I, E, E, P, A, I'll just say eepa. EAPA gives the President economic tools during a national emergency. And so what's the history of this? Like, why is he allowed to do this? Is he allowed to do this? They started this in 27, in 1917 as the US entered World War I. And then by the 1930s, Congress updated it so the power could be used during peacetime. And this basically was the, the act that was used during the Cold War so that presidents could put economic pressure on other countries. Could be like sanctions or, you know, international restrictions or seizing assets or whatever it is. Right, all the fun stuff. Yeah. So this is basically, this is the act that has allowed presidents over the last like hundred years now to put economic pressure on various things. But they have to say they have to declare national emergency to do it. In 1977, they, they update it from the Trading with the Enemy act to the eba, require a little more transparency. You have to formally extend it every year. And they also, Congress was like, we can end the national emergency. All right? The President can declare one, but we can now vote to do it. Except after the Supreme Court ruled on it, it has to go to the President for signing. He can veto it.

[Doug]

So Congress can say, can you veto the ending?

[Aiden]

Yes. So President can declare a national emergency. Congress can vote to end the national emergency and the President can veto it and say, no, I still want the national emergency emergency, that it can then be counterved like any normal law with two thirds vote in House and Senate.

[Ludwig]

Is a perfect system.

[Aiden]

So a little, let's do a little game. Since 20, in 2025, since this, the most recent version of this kicked off in basically the 70s. Right. 1977, presidents have declared. How many national emergencies do you think we've had? This is, we're talking like 50 years.

[Ludwig]

Oh, quite a few for sure.

[Aiden]

I mean like national emergencies.

[Ludwig]

Right, I know, but presidents can go willy nilly with it, you know, if they need it.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah. If you need some 12, 30, 77, national emergency.

[Doug]

I'm not even close.

[Aiden]

All right, so obviously most of them like are done now, right? There are actually some of them that are still going. So of the 77 total national emergencies that the president has created, Presidents over the 50 years, how many do you think are still happening? Like, we are still in a state of war.

[Doug]

And they never said they were over.

[Aiden]

They never said they were over. We are technically still in the state of emergency.

[Ludwig]

Venezuelan drug boats, man. What happened?

[Doug]

Yeah, 52, 46.

[Ludwig]

40.

[Aiden]

We are in 46 right now. National emergencies. One of them is when Iran took the US embassy staff in 1979. That emergency has been going for 40.

[Ludwig]

46 years, and it still scares me.

[Doug]

They're waiting. They're waiting for a good enough movie about it to end the emergency. You're like Ben Affleck's take eight, maybe seven out of ten.

[Ludwig]

Argo is good. Your worst take of the show.

[Doug]

Ten out of ten movie Argos. Fine.

[Aiden]

Perry, if you can pull this up, there's a Wikipedia page that you can go to, list of national emergencies in the United States. It is very, very long. And you can go scroll down and just look at all the emergencies which are highlighted in green of which ones are current. So this act.

[Ludwig]

Just pick one. When we got.

[Aiden]

Well, we got some Obama ones blocking certain persons in Nicaragua. That was a good one.

[Doug]

So many of them are current.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah, there's a. Yeah, there's a lot. So, as you can imagine, Trump did a lot of them, but the ones that are really notable is February 1st of last year. That's when he did three executive orders. And this is basically saying there's a national emergency with drugs on the northern border, on the southern border, and from China. And that's when he, like, first did those big tariffs and started.

[Ludwig]

These are all for the tariffs, right?

[Aiden]

Yes. So there's been. There's been other ones, to be clear. Like, you know, he's. There's just broadly a cartel emergency right now and there's an energy emergency, apparently.

[Ludwig]

Right. But how does the, the cartel emergency or even the trade deficit emergency apply to. I'm going to put tariffs on Francis Wines to get.

[Aiden]

That is exactly the question. So when we talked about Liberation Day last year, you can see that is. Here it is on April 2, 2025. You can go look at the order. And it states. He basically is like, we have had these trade relationships that have become increasingly unfair. It is a national economic importance. It is actually an emergency that we need to use tariffs in order to reciprocate and fix the trade deficits. So this has been the premise. He has used this act that's been around for like 100 years now in its most recent form, 50. And he's keeps declaring national emergencies. However, no president has ever, even though all the presidents have done a bunch of national emergencies, none of them have ever used it to create tariffs like this. So this is new. So there was a lawsuit by a bunch of small companies that basically sued the President and said, we don't think you have the legal right to do this. And the lower courts of the United States ruled that it is unconstitutional. And they said it basically argued the word tariff is not even in this National Emergencies Act. This is not something that's supposed to, like be the case. Trump's arguing, like, oh, it definitely is. And so this got bumped up to the Supreme Court and this started. They took the case in September and they started arguments in November. So just to recap this, the Supreme Court right now is ruling and determining whether the tariffs that Trump has been using to do all of the stuff we're talking about, if they rule that illegal, all of this breaks. Not only did they listen to arguments on the 6th of November, so like two months ago, apparently they were very skeptical. Like a lot of questions were from most of the judges indicating that they didn't seem to think that this was very legit. So right now they are in recess and they have a four week recess where they are going to like finalize their deliberation. In that time period, since everybody realized that justices might not vote in Trump's favor, there's been like a thousand lawsuits that have hit the United States now that all these companies that have been paying tariffs over the last year think it might all be unwound. They're all suing to get ahead of this, basically jumping on the bandwagon so they can get back all this money they've paid. And if you, if this is ruled unconstitutional, if this is ruled that it's not allowed, the US Government will have to refund all of the tariff money to everybody that's paid it. I have a counterpart mug money back.

[Ludwig]

I have a very strong counterpoint. Okay, can you pull my screen? I need audio sort how to deal with them. And I'm the Tariff King. And the Tariff King has done a great job and I hope we win the Supreme Court case, because if we don't, I'm the Tariff King and the Tariff King has done a great job.

[Aiden]

So the good news on all this is that the Tariff King, he's the.

[Ludwig]

Tariff King, I'm the Tariff King, the Tariff King, a little third person reference to yourself as the Tariff King, of course. And he has done a great job. According to the tariff. He's. The Tariff King said it so he wouldn't be wrong.

[Aiden]

Are you telling me the Tariff King and the chairman of the Peace Board are both lying?

[Ludwig]

And the FIFA Peace Prize winner and the Nobel Peace Prize receiver.

[Aiden]

Receiver.

[Doug]

Recipient.

[Ludwig]

Owns the medal.

[Doug]

A recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Ludwig]

Fact.

[Doug]

Donald Trump.

[Ludwig]

That's a fact.

[Doug]

Never tell me I'm wrong.

[Ludwig]

US President. So he's got five things to his name and he's calling himself a Tariff King, and you're just yapping about laws.

[Aiden]

I know I'm yapping. Trump did say that if the Supreme Court strikes it down, they'll find other ways to implement tariffs, such as section 232 of the Trade Expansion act, which does. Was done by Congress, and it does let the president put tariffs on specific goods in the matter of national security. So I would argue that this Supreme Court case is going to be one of the most important things to happen in the Trump presidency. Most of the chaos he's done has been. Or at least, you know, externally. Right. Not talking about ice and everything else. Most of the chaos he's done internationally has been through tariffs. It's all been predicated on this particular National Emergencies Act. The next date that the Supreme Court might make a decision is February 20, so in exactly a month. And that might just cause all of us to crash to a halt. He can try these other avenues to get tariffs, but they're a lot harder to do. You have to have this, like, process where the Commerce Department goes through and does studies to prove that this specific thing is a matter of national security. So he probably cannot just threaten it on wine randomly to Macron. So that's the hopeful thing. I deeply hope that countries do not join the Board of Peace. I deeply hope that the Supreme Court rules down on tariffs. You know, there's an argument for tariffs that you could. That you could make, and I think the way they're being used is so obviously awesome, incredibly destructive and harmful.

[Ludwig]

That guy's a mid red. Yeah, I agree. I did want to say about tariffs, that all of the deals, you know, we did the 90 deals in 90 days, and then they became, I don't know, more than that in more days. Every one of the deals that we have signed thus far, including the EU deal, were precluded on the fact that Donald Trump could make these tariffs like that. That was the idea. That if the tariffs are unconstitutional and they're struck down, every single deal, every progress they've made on Any of those deals is all unwound immediately. The Europe deal is already being thrown out of the window because of the new terror. Like, once you make a deal, the idea is that's the deal. Like, we're going to set a certain tariff level on Europe and we signed a deal. And then you can't later say, I'm going to add this new deal about green.

[Doug]

What I want.

[Ludwig]

Yeah. That's not how that works.

[Aiden]

People can't learn and evolve.

[Ludwig]

It's funny is I feel bad sometimes for the people in Trump's administration who have to kind of like, rationalize what he's saying. And I don't remember. It was someone State Department. They were like, let's think of this Greenland tariff deal as. Let's talk about it separately from the European tariff deal that we already had. Like, let's don't try to merge them because you're immediately said we're throwing out the old deal. And I just think it's funny when you try to pretend like they're not.

[Doug]

You have to, like, somehow thread the needle.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

On. On the press. Yeah. Like, no, no. This is why.

[Ludwig]

Separate. Yeah. Aiden.

[Doug]

Yeah. I've been meaning to tell you something.

[Ludwig]

Oh.

[Doug]

Me and Doug, ever since we started this show, we. We put a key logger on your laptop for like a week for, like, on my laptop. And it turns out you use the same login information for all of your accounts, which is pretty funny, for one. But then we stole that and then we got your Social Security number and we started applying to a lot of loans with your information, which is hilarious.

[Ludwig]

Do.

[Doug]

Right.

[Ludwig]

It's gone empty. And I've been really stressed about it.

[Doug]

Don't worry, though. Don't worry, though. It's like you're. You're compromised. You may as well.

[Ludwig]

Is there a way I could stop this from happening in the future?

[Doug]

You can't, because it's so far gone. But for you at home, who's worried about your friends taking advantage of you or just the more much more likely scenario of your identity or your information being stolen online, you can check out.

[Aiden]

Cloaked ID go to cloak.com lemonade take your free privacy scan and if you choose to subscribe to cloaked use code lemonade for 30% off off your cloaked subscription.

[Doug]

And it's not too late for you. It's only too late for branded.

[Ludwig]

Like, you've done so much damage to my.

[Doug]

Stop looking at it.

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[Ludwig]

I throw some good news out there?

[Aiden]

I would love that. Let's start with the fact that I beat Silksong in one life.

[Ludwig]

That is good news.

[Aiden]

Thanks for watching Lemonade sand, everybody.

[Ludwig]

I would like to show you a really cool map.

[Aiden]

Thanks for watching Lemonade stand everybody.

[Ludwig]

No, no.

[Doug]

I'm gonna go play catch with my dad. Yeah.

[Ludwig]

As of right now, 2026 January, California is drought free for the first time in decades. Now, I guess it doesn't matter if you're not in California, but it's a big deal. There are no drought symptoms in California and our reservoirs have filled up. So it's kind of like a big. It's kind of a cool moment. I don't know you very happy about it.

[Aiden]

I'll take some credit for this. I go pee in my neighbor's backyard instead of using the toilet.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, I saw you pee in the reservoir.

[Aiden]

Actually, I. We got a recycle.

[Ludwig]

You were drinking it and then peeing in it. This came from the discord. I thought it was a pretty nice.

[Aiden]

Shower in a month.

[Ludwig]

Just given that if you flashback, literally one year we were in Fires. We were in a dangerous wildfire drought situation. And now one year later, it's a better spot.

[Doug]

I mean, even, I think, anecdotally, if you live in Southern California, the last few years I've been here, there's a noticeable change in how much rain we've gotten in the winter. We'll experience these torrential downpours for huge stretches of time in the winter. And then a kind of fun thing, you know, that has its own set of consequences. But I would go hiking when I first moved down here and, you know, go around it. California a little, like, dustier, less like trees or greenery, like, when you go out and hiking, especially compared to a place like Washington, where I moved down from. And then the last few years when I go out hiking, like, all of these trails and places are just filled with, like, green plant life that did not used to be there, at least not in that same, like, quantity. And it was. It's a pretty stark shift just in, like, the six years that I've lived here, that even in one year, we had wildfires.

[Ludwig]

Last year we had wildflowers last year, massive ones.

[Aiden]

Well, we. We let the Palisades burn down to save up water for the drought.

[Ludwig]

I see.

[Doug]

Yeah. Anyway, Karen Bass did that.

[Ludwig]

Wildfire risk as close to zero as it ever gets. 14 of the 17 reservoirs are at 70% or more capacity. That's a good sign. Weather wise, though, I heard that. I don't know if you guys heard about this. It was like a massive cold front about to hit Texas, the southeast, Atlanta. Like, there's like a. Like apparently the. The cold front of the century or something. Some really bad climate change.

[Doug]

You're telling me.

[Ludwig]

Dude, it is. I do know this is the third hottest year in history. 2025. And the one before it was the second hottest. And the one before that was the first hottest. So we're in the top three in the last. But that's trending now.

[Doug]

Top three. It's trending now. Are we fixing climate change? Have they run the numbers on this?

[Ludwig]

Since Lemonade stand started, the world is less hot than it was the year before.

[Doug]

Think about that. Ozone is a.

[Aiden]

Think about that actual real thing. Like ozone over Antarctica, I believe. Right. Is, like, almost healed. Like, we're going to fully regenerate the ozone layer. We're actually. We are doing some good things.

[Doug]

There's a couple. There's a couple wins in the basket.

[Ludwig]

Let's find out who else is doing some good things, because as we near the end of this episode, I Mean, we had something. But I want to talk about a game that we played one year ago.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Ludwig]

Dougdoug.com stocks exactly one year ago today, we made some picks on which stocks we thought would do good in the first year of Trump's presidency. After 252 trading days, we have a winner.

[Aiden]

Sludwig. Nope, sorry. He's dead last.

[Doug]

Sorry. That's it. You read the chart the other way.

[Aiden]

Let's just read out some of these numbers. I want to give the context here. Maybe you can give it. Let's say you are a badass trader on Wall Street. Your job is to make trades. You buy and sell assets. Maybe do it for a pension fund, maybe you do it for some small wealth management company. Right. What would be a good return if you were successful on Wall Street?

[Ludwig]

So I looked this up because I'm working on a video for this and I looked up how hedge funds performed this year because they have to be public with their percent return. Yeah. And you know, there's a lot of them with different various. And some of them did beat even Aiden's number here, but doesn't make any sense. There were many, many hedge funds that did 18% that were crowing from the rooftops about their record incredible performance. Because the general idea is if you beat The S&P 500 index was what you're benchmarked against, which is 13.34%. You had an incredible year on Wall Street. If you are doing a 20% return in this past year, you very likely got a large bonus. You got to cash out on your yacht. This is not an exaggerate. This is literally how they're paid. And so even this is like a damning indictment of Wall Street. If Ludwig had been on Wall street, he would be considered a top trader.

[Aiden]

And that sets us up for Ludwig making on his 10 stocks 25% return. He made a profit of $2,500. Doug. Doug in fourth place with a 34% profit stands with 37. Atrioc with 42. And Aiden with a 56% increase over one year. This would be a generational run if he was doing this on Wall Street. We in of US have raised $19,534 for charity, which Aiden will be deciding. This is truly obscene. And I want to remind everybody that includes the 800 odd dollars that Ludwig lost on Trump coin.

[Doug]

It's great. It's great.

[Ludwig]

Wait, I want to give you some examples. Some of these legendary. D.E. shaw's Oculus Fund. This is where wealthiest people Putting in the smartest minds. They get the richest people. I mean, sorry, they get the brightest minds from MIT and they put them only to work on trading stocks. D Shaw's oculus fund did 28% this last year. They barely edged out Ludwig. We read Ray Dalio's book, Bridgewater. His, his fund, their Pure Alpha fund, which is their best performing fund, did 34%. The highest in 50 years they've ever had. 34%.

[Doug]

Impressive. Impressive for a young.

[Ludwig]

That would put them just under Doug.

[Aiden]

Doug, just under me who to be clear, my highest performing stock is Ocugen Inc. Ocugen was determined because I asked my Doug AI on the stream what is a good stock. He said that Ocugen is a great pick because it's up like 40% right now. That's not true. It was just lying. And I put all my money in or a thousand into Ocugen. They were almost delisted over the summer because they dropped so low. But then they've had a spike upward from a start of $0.70 per stock to $1.67 and that returned 135%. Ludwig beat the vast majority of incredibly successful hedge funds investing Into United Healthcare.

[Ludwig]

UnitedHealthcare, Trump Coin and Occidental Petroleum. All of which right off the back.

[Aiden]

Of Luigi Mangione, he just picked Micron.

[Ludwig]

Which actually was the single best performing stock I believe in the S and P in the s and P500.

[Doug]

Okay. Not, not in the competition.

[Ludwig]

Not fucking penny stocks that scrape this deep sea ocean.

[Doug]

I'm sorry that I have my intelligence reaches outside of ego.

[Ludwig]

We talk about his. His win here. If you could pull up this quote. This is an iconic investing quote that I think really applies to what happened in this game. This is an absurd result. The fact that we all five made, you know, stupid on stream things and beat all major hedge funds and the S and P is a sign of insane times that almost everything is trending up.

[Doug]

And what does that say? What does the quote say?

[Ludwig]

You can't read. That's why you can't even read.

[Doug]

What does it say? Read it out loud.

[Ludwig]

Everyone is a genius in a bull market.

[Doug]

Ah. Aiden McCaig a genius.

[Aiden]

That's what it says.

[Ludwig]

That's why the words are geniuses.

[Doug]

Yep, that's. It says everyone.

[Aiden]

And your portfolio is largely successful off the back of tmc, the metals company Inc. Can you walk us through what you found so compelling about tmc?

[Doug]

Doug? It takes a keen mind to see the value in TMC as early as.

[Aiden]

That day return 350% by the way.

[Ludwig]

I'm going to think of this every time I watch like a CNBC interview with a Wall street trader or like a hedge fund guy and they're like I was up 40% last year. Yeah, it's really about investing in the markets and it's probably just that they're fucking hating. They just hit something.

[Doug]

It's about finding your own way, trust in your gut. Not, not just doing what the, what the crowd tells you to.

[Aiden]

When all the naysayers came in, how did you keep going?

[Doug]

Interesting, interesting. And it was tough because a lot of people did naysay when we were drafted, the stocks. What did Stan say? He said I've never even heard of that. Said metal, we don't even use that anymore.

[Ludwig]

Obviously we don't use metal.

[Doug]

And I. And if you're lucky like me and you have just to curiosity for the.

[Ludwig]

World.

[Doug]

Then you too can be delivered a 10 minute NBC video about an upstart industry in the year 2022. And then you can loosely hang on to that idea until your friend invites you to the stock competition and then spots you the money because you're doing home renovations. Which is exactly what happened. A great, A fun fact about this competition. Yeah, I don't own the stocks. Doug does.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Because I didn't have enough cash when we did the stream so he spotted me. And then a month later when I did have the money, Doug was like, well it doesn't really make sense to like change it over. We may as well just keep it this way. And then you could like pay me back later if you lose. And.

[Ludwig]

But you were up so.

[Doug]

And my grit, you're capacity. And you did it is I literally my. I came into this competition so unbelievably underprepared. I just picked nine companies I could think of top of my head that hadn't been chosen throughout the competition. And then I think it's like my ninth or 10th pick. I was like I need one thing that makes my portfolio stand out. Like I literally need to come up with one individual idea. And I was like, oh, that whole thing. We had talked about this industry in the first test episode of Lemonade Stand that we filmed. Like I did a little section on it because there's this interesting world of like the metals company is a, is a company that is trying to pull up these like nodules from the ocean floor that have like rare earth metals in them as a new way to like hardly any type of metals. And the reason it really Interested me was not because of this like new. This is the genuine part. It's not because of the like, oh, this is a new way to like find this resource. And it's like environmentally questionable. And it was the like government apparatus that was policing it because, because this mining type of mining didn't exist. It's overseen by this UN office in like the Caribbean that is understaffed and was like never meant to moderate this task. And it's over these sections of the ocean floor that are owned by like small Pacific island nations that you know, are trying to find a way to like economically move up. So they're partnering with companies like this and there's a bunch of corruption involved. And it was just, and you said just give me. And I was like. And I was learning about all of this over the course of a couple years because the story was ongoing like the story of the metals company and the other companies that are involved in this work is very up and down based on these like regulations and things. And I came into the competition to raise money for charity and I was like, I remember this company. It's an energy adjacent company. I bet things are going to change quickly like regarding the regulations around this with Trump in charge. That was like just my guess.

[Ludwig]

And yeah, I mean the big thing was just China. China put the squeeze on rare earth minerals and all the rare earth companies skyrocketed. And this was, this was the one.

[Doug]

And this was one of, this was the one that got like $10 this year. And what was crazy is like the 159 I bought it at when we did this competition was already high. Like it had gone from like 20 or 50 cents like all up to that dollar mark. And then over the course of this year it went crazy and it had 10. So I made a cool, cool four way.

[Ludwig]

I'm pretty sure on that stock alone you made more than like stands, I.

[Doug]

Mean $3,500 on that one stock. So.

[Ludwig]

Which is pretty crazy. Stan's had one of the best performing stocks. The whole thing with Oklo as the year of nuclear, although that's still companies yet to make any money.

[Doug]

Yeah, that was. Dude, my nuclear pick was my second best pick. The Cameco Corp. Nuclear stuff did really well.

[Ludwig]

My best stock was a company that sells a. Not a cure for psoriasis, just a really expensive treatment you have to keep buying. Turned out to be enormously profitable.

[Aiden]

And was that because Congresswoman.

[Ludwig]

No, that was Tempest. Yeah, that was the one before Atriox.

[Doug]

Third best performing stock is just the Gold Trust. You just bought gold?

[Ludwig]

Yeah, I just bought gold.

[Aiden]

I didn't not perform for you at all?

[Ludwig]

No. And I found out that had. So, you know, the idea of, let's say sports betting is gonna be bigger this year turned out to be quite true. If I had bought in Robin Hood, which turned out to be the big winner of sports betting this year because of prediction markets.

[Doug]

Prediction markets.

[Ludwig]

By bottom Robin, it's a. DraftKings Robinhood was about as big as TMC Robin was. The Robin was actually, I think, the number two or number one performing stock in the S and P this year.

[Doug]

That's crazy.

[Ludwig]

Which is pretty insane. Robin Hood at a 250 or something like that. Percent return. So bit of mistake to go with DraftKings. I picked Goldman Sachs that there'd be a lot of mergers. There was, but Albertsons and Kroger did not merge. So me and Ludwig both lost on that.

[Aiden]

Speak for yourself. Ludwig made 82 bucks.

[Ludwig]

82 bucks. I'm sorry, I just can't believe. Looked around his room and picked things that he saw and beat the hedge funds.

[Aiden]

Yeah. So because he saw all of his MAGA gear, which is why he went for trump coin.

[Doug]

Yeah. $19,500 for charity. Nothing to sniff at. I get to pick the charity it goes to. Already picked it.

[Aiden]

What is it?

[Doug]

And it is a small group that donates money to small, like new business owners in Sweden from abroad. Small startups that are moving their operations to Sweden to help them get a leg up.

[Ludwig]

Wow.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

That's really noble of you.

[Doug]

No, it's. It's great. Sounds great.

[Ludwig]

That sounds heroic.

[Doug]

Well, because I'm a small.

[Ludwig]

Because they need to get their feet on the ground and it's like. Yeah. Wow, that's pretty.

[Doug]

I thought I would know.

[Ludwig]

We do have some bad news, though, which is that there was a punishment assigned to the loser where they had to run a 5K.

[Aiden]

Wait, hold on. Do you have a charity?

[Doug]

I haven't picked it yet.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Ludwig]

But we will.

[Aiden]

I guess we'll update.

[Doug]

I'm open, actually, genuinely, if anyone has suggestions for charities they think are particularly good. I think my first idea was just like, you know, finding maybe like some mutual aid organization. But I'm really open to any ideas. The punishment, though, I did want to get to this because Ludwig is the person who lost. And for those who don't remember, because I think many people forgot, the agreed upon punishment was whoever finishes last has to fly to New York, go to Wall street, wear a suit and a briefcase, and film themselves running a 5K in New York. That is what the loser has to do. And when I brought this up to Ludwig a month and a half ago, he had, of course, forgotten this and just said he, quote, wasn't going to do it.

[Ludwig]

It's insane.

[Doug]

Which is not fair. And I need you, I'm begging you. If you happen to be a Ludwig viewer and you're here, who. You watch his Twitch stream, you watch his YouTube videos, you cannot let him forget that he committed to this punishment. You got to put the pressure on, because there's no. There's no. If we let this slip by, then what teeth do we have? Americans, as Americans, our country is falling apart.

[Ludwig]

This is, like, the last thing we had. The institution of this stock game.

[Doug]

Yes. It's all we have left. And Ludwig needs to do this.

[Aiden]

Fellas, I got to admit something, okay? I already told you about this. I looked at my Robinhood numbers. A lot less money than they're supposed to be on my returns. A lot of. So my second highest performing stock was Palantir.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And upon review of my portfolio, I invested in Palatin. That is huge.

[Doug]

I forgot about this. That is a. I forgot that is a different company.

[Aiden]

So I actually didn't make $1,350. What I did was lose 70% of my portfolio and I lost 700. If you go off of those numbers where, instead of Palantir, I went for Palatin. Palatin. Excuse me. I am actually in last place now. Here's my counter argument. Okay? I bet Ludwig didn't even buy Trump Coin. Okay.

[Ludwig]

No, I don't think he bought.

[Aiden]

I think the competition is on the stocks, and we have to reconcile the money. The 19,500, that has to come up. Right. I will just pay the difference out of my own pocket to make sure that. So I think the competition is based off of what.

[Doug]

Based on what you said.

[Aiden]

It's not what you bought. And I just feel like we can all agree that Ludwig still lost, even though technically 100%.

[Ludwig]

I mean, I'll just fully admit it here. So there's 10 stocks here. I put all of the money into gold. And I just figured I would pay the. Okay, I just figured I would pay the difference.

[Aiden]

We are going. Look, I don't even harass everybody.

[Doug]

The 19,500 will be donated regardless.

[Aiden]

And now I have to. Actually, I don't have. God damn it. I just realized the one person in this group who will be easy to harass for the money is you. And I already have your Money, Aiden.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Getting a trog to fill out a form takes like a week. He's not gonna send me $6,000.

[Ludwig]

I'll send the cash.

[Doug]

I'm so responsible. Doug never even had to get. He just used his own money for me. That's how communicative I am. I think this was. This was fun, though.

[Ludwig]

It was really fun. I mean, it's fun this year.

[Doug]

It's so funny because in a bad year it would be so not fun.

[Ludwig]

Right.

[Aiden]

We had a dip and we just. We all went negative and then we came back through sheer force of will.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, that was our skill.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Let's end. I. We're basically. We're basically done. I want to end on one pretty important AI update that I think is interesting. And we'll expand on it even more in our Patreon episode, if you want to hear more about that. But I'm going to hit real quick, which is there's some updates on OpenAI. ChatGPT recently announced they're adding ads into the Chat GPT product. So if you pull this up, Mr. Perry, this was four days ago. OpenAI. In the coming weeks, we plan to start testing ads in ChatGPT free and go tiers. And so looking into the numbers of this a little bit, the chatgpt, they have said as of a few months ago that they have 700 million weekly users. Of those, 35 million pay a subscription. So 95% of ChatGPT users are not paying for anything. And that is obviously going to be a huge hit. What's interesting about this is, you know, Sam Altman, CEO, he said, oh, we're going to test out ads and what's going to see where's thing we're starting to test this out. Here are principles. It'll never affect the answers it gives you. We'll keep your conversations private. Because he knows this is going to get an absolutely enormous amount of criticism. And people have been quite quoting this particular clip from him. If you pull it up, which is. I kind of think of ads as like a last resort for us for a business model. I would do it if it meant that was the only way to get everybody on the world, in the world, like access to great services. But if we can find something that doesn't do that, I'd prefer that.

[Ludwig]

And they could not find something.

[Aiden]

I was going to say one year.

[Doug]

Three months ago, I don't, I don't.

[Aiden]

Mean it is a last resort.

[Doug]

Like I actually want to take this in good faith. It's like that all of what he said in that clip could just be true.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Right. Like, they, they are struggling. You have a massive product that is incredibly expensive. Most people who use it use it for free. You need to monetize it somehow to like, have the hope of having your company continue to operate in the future. We stop. We've talked extensively about their financial obligations they have into the future. Right. The huge bet this company is making on it becoming profitable eventually. Like, everybody wants, like everybody involved in the project.

[Aiden]

California's got a lot of water now.

[Doug]

I, I just feel like that could be true. And they're real. Their back is against the wall financially and they have to introduce ads to the product. I feel like that's just.

[Ludwig]

I think it is true. I think that's just the admission from that clip.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

Is that they are back against the wall and they need fucking money. As we, as we've been saying on the show, like when they did Sora, when they did, like, you know, the other features they've added, they've done like, what, deep research.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Ludwig]

But they had other things that were like all the images. Yeah, yeah. They've had a couple of features come out every now and then. And it's like each one is clearly a play to try and make some money, to try and find, to monetize it in some way. And each one has been obviously not up to the task of the gap that they owe and what they have. And so it's. This is the last thing. This is the last arrow in the quiver. We're going to put ads on all these millions of free users and if that makes us enough money, then maybe we're good. But if it doesn't work, it doesn't make sense. Like what they're doing as a business, does that make sense? They've promised trillions. They don't have trillions. How do they get there? They have to figure that out now. There's no more time. The data centers are breaking ground like they can't afford them.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Some numbers I thought were interesting. So in the third quarter last year, so this is over three months. According to Microsoft, who's largely funding OpenAI, OpenAI lost $11.5 billion. That's quite a bit of money to lose. So the counter is that that's.

[Doug]

That's 11 spots on the Board of Peace.

[Ludwig]

Could have stacked the Board of.

[Doug]

Peace stack the Board of Peace.

[Aiden]

Microsoft is wasting their money on this OpenAI nonsense. If you assume so again, 5%, about 35 million people are paying for a weekly subscription that includes the $20 a month or the 200. So let's assume $25 on average from those 35 million people. That means they're making $875 million a month. That doesn't even include the business deals or the API side where people can use it directly, which are additional. So we could be super generous and say they're making $1 billion a month. But that means, you know, again, they lost 11.5 billion in a quarter even though they're making let's say 3 billion in revenue. And looking into those. My initial response to seeing this ads was like OpenAI is fucking cooked. They said this was a last resort. They clearly are in their death throes because why else would you do this? And then started thinking about it. Google and Meta, who are wildly, wildly successful companies, are largely successful off the back of advertising revenue. Third quarter the same quarter last year, Google made $74 billion and Meta made $50 billion off of advertising. So two of the most profitable companies in the world are making money because they, they serve ads to people. Chat GPT is one of the biggest products in the world and has 665 million people, arguably more depending on the most recent numbers, who would be down to watch ads. Possibly.

[Ludwig]

Probably.

[Aiden]

And so this could turn, I mean it could be an absolute money fountain for OpenAI. This could, I don't know, I little skeptical but become absolutely wildly successful.

[Doug]

Can you poll is it. Isn't there polling data on people's overall view on Instagram ads and it's like positive or something. I remember reading this a long time ago. I'm just pulling this out of my ass. But I remember reading something about people actually having a net positive opinion about Instagram ads because of the, the degree of personalization. So people actually like on the whole like them. And it's like if you're dealing with the amount of data that you have, I mean this is like, this is also one of the fears of what these AI like chat bots were going to turn.

[Ludwig]

They know a lot about you is.

[Doug]

Like they know people are using so much about you and it's going to be repurposed to like sell you products. You know, it's not lost on me that I have an Adobe Acrobat Studio mug on the table right now. Now I understand. Like, but it's. I just think like feels like you cannot have a product that is this large for free and not monetize it somehow. Yeah. You have to do this.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Or every. Because. Because everybody's not going to pay 20 bucks a month. Like I pay the 20 bucks a month plan or whatever. But not everybody's going to do that.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, but the counterargument is that, you know, a service like YouTube took a long time to make money. Right? And they were able to do that because Google could float it. If OpenAI is desperate now, as we're in year like 2, 3 of this AI build out and they're throwing ads in and Google doesn't have to do that with Gemini for fucking forever. I mean for as long as they want, like they, they have money then.

[Doug]

It isn't it also. But they have no reason for the free. They have no reason not to. Am I crazy? Like other like in the short term, like out compete or offer an alternative version. But even in like a five year timeline, I feel like there's no way Gemini doesn't have ads on it for the free users. Especially when you consider the portion of their business that is ads already. It's like, why is that not the natural progression of where that goes?

[Ludwig]

Well, I agree that in, in whatever medium term that eventually the free versions of this will have ads because they don't make any money.

[Doug]

You know, you can't piss away the money forever.

[Ludwig]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's not a charity service, right? Yeah, they run a data center that costs billions to make. They're gonna ask it a question, they're gonna turn all those things online that, yeah, it's gonna cost money. But in the race period, the companies that can afford to not do it are going to have a huge advantage. And OpenAI is not one of those companies. They're burning through cash. So I don't know, I guess I'm more negative on it and on OpenAI in general. I just feel like I don't see there's a lot of things. He had a similar quote about AI slot videos in Sora before they ended up doing it. All the principles they have just seem to happen right up until they need the money. Then they put out like a blog post like, well, this is, we're going to do it creatively and smart. Then they plow right through. Then it doesn't really seem to work. Ads is the last resort and I, I'm sure this will make some money. I'm not, I'm not doubting that. But is it going to make the billions they need? Is it going to pay for the 1.5 trillion in commitments?

[Doug]

I think that's the actual question right Is this step as their supposed last resort? Like, I'm taking, I'm choosing to take what he said at face value, which implies that they, they haven't walked back anything. It's. He explained the situation that they would need to do this, and now they're choosing to do it. The question is, is this enough to sustain the company's business going into the future? Yeah, and I, you know, I have no idea. I, I guess it's like a wait and see, right?

[Aiden]

Yeah, they're, they're, they're really OpenAI is very interesting to watch, not only because ChatGPT is in the cultural zeitgeist, but also because they've been fairly consistently the ones who push out a thing first. The ones who pushed out, you know, mainstream image generation first, you know, that really became popular and took on Sora too, is like the AI video generator that the average normie who doesn't follow AI knows they know what SORA is. They're like, oh, funniest. There's compilations of funniest sora videos on YouTube. They're the first ones that did deep research. They're the first ones that did personalization to you where it like, memorizes things about you and can reference them. And this is also where they're putting in the first step. Oh, medical stuff. They're the first ones to like, say, yeah, we're just gonna, we're gonna give medical advice and embrace that. Which is. Still feels crazy to me. So they seem to consistently be the ones who put themselves out there first with a new feature and deal with the ramifications. Yeah, it's like they are kind of the litmus test of the rest of the industry. I think how this goes is going to improve form what Meta and Microsoft and Google and all these other places do. So I don't know. We'll see. It's. It's strange, it's funny. Also, Sam Altman specifically mentioned the ads I like, are on Instagram where I found stuff I otherwise never would have. So it's funny. He, like, you, you called out Instagram.

[Doug]

Yeah, that's. I mean, just an even anecdotally in my own life, people have like a pretty positive. They talk pretty positively about Instagram ads specifically. And there's this like, weird thing where it's like everybody hates advertisements until they like melt into the, the content you consume in a way that makes you want to buy the thing. Apparently this is a big issue on like TikTok right now is, you know, how you're supposed to disclose that things are advertisements. But a ton of people on TikTok are get ad deals for, like, certain products and they just like, you know, maybe I get a certain type of, like, makeup and I'm an influencer on TikTok and I just, like, use the marked bottle of the thing and, you know, put it on my face clearly in the video as I go about my normal day. And I talk about the normal stuff that I talk about on my TikTok. Right. But I'm getting paid to use that. And I'm actually not disclosing it, but I just use it all the time.

[Ludwig]

No one discloses anymore.

[Doug]

And it's like no one is, like, policing or regulating that. And it's like, in no one. But simultaneously, nobody's complaining about it, and then they just maybe go and buy the thing. I think Instagram ads are, like, more obviously marked, but they're closer to that camp where it's like, I actually kind of wanted to see that product that is, like, so suited to my niche interest. And I wonder if it's like, people will cave on this over time because it will surface things that people want so badly because of the information it has about you. I have no idea. We will see. But thank you for joining us on another week of Lemonade Stand. If you want to check out the extra episode we put out every week, you can go to patreon.com lemonade stand. Do an extra hour of the show every week. We also do a book club. I've been pushing. I'm about to push out the first fully recorded interview that I didn't mess up for the year. I interviewed a Serbian protester and talk to him for over an hour. Show me some, like, really interesting, like, footage. Give me some interesting insight into what's going on over there. I'm going to be putting that on, like, the second tier of our Patreon, like, throughout the year. Similar stuff like that. Yeah.

[Aiden]

And related to ads, we are going to make a video talking in more depth about how we're thinking about sponsors and ads that we mentioned last week. If you would like more information about kind of what goes on behind the scenes with this type of stuff, we will post about that.

[Doug]

Yeah. Also to clarify, that one won't be. That'll be public. That won't be, like, paywalled or anything.

[Ludwig]

Yeah.

[Doug]

We might upload it on Patreon, but it will be something anybody can view. You don't have to pay to watch that.

[Aiden]

Yes. Yes.

[Doug]

Okay, cool, guys.

[Ludwig]

See you next week.

[Aiden]

Bye.

[Ludwig]

Support for Lemonade Stand comes from Adobe.

[Aiden]

Why the hell are you still listening for video? I guess as long as you're here PDFs.

[Doug]

I mean, some things are set in stone, like the rate at which Brandon's hairline is receding.

[Ludwig]

That's so. But.

[Doug]

But. But not everything. It has to be. Especially not your PDFs, which you can edit with Adobe Acrobat Studio with PDF spaces.

[Aiden]

I would love to get into this scalp and just edit.

[Doug]

I would love to edit it and like move it forward. Yeah, cover it up. I'd love for it to be dynamic. You can learn more about how to save [e-mail] do that with Acrobat.