The Trial of the Century | Ep. 061 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand | Ep. 061 – “The Trial of the Century” 🍋

Date: May 6, 2026
Hosts: Aiden, Atrioc (Perry), DougDoug
Podcast by Vox Media Podcast Network

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Episode Overview

This episode of Lemonade Stand centers on what the hosts dub “The Trial of the Century”: the high-stakes lawsuit between Elon Musk and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman. The crew digs into the courtroom spectacle, the personal drama, and the outsized consequences for the global AI industry and business world.
Other topics include:

• The financial collapse of Brightline, Florida’s high-speed rail startup,
• Global and billionaire-driven approaches to reversing declining birth rates,
• Ghana launching a national ID payment card,
• The uniquely effective 12345 government hotline in China,
• Debates over tying real-world identity to online accounts.

The conversation balances irreverent humor and deep business/tech insight, painting a picture of an era where business, AI, and society collide in unpredictable, sometimes absurd ways.

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Main Segment: The Trial of the Century—Elon Musk vs. OpenAI/Sam Altman

(Starts at 02:01)

Setting the Stage

• Perry intro’s the main topic (02:01): “The trial of the century. And I'm going to make the case as to why this is actually a really big deal and why it is a big trial.”
• Doug plays the everyman, intentionally having done no research to stand in for the uninitiated (02:14): “I intentionally didn't look into this at all. So I can be the guy who doesn't know about…”

What’s at Stake & Why It’s Huge

• The trial, held in Oakland, CA, involves Elon Musk suing Sam Altman and OpenAI for $150 billion—more than the ten largest U.S. settlements combined. (05:02)
• Media circus outside; seats are coveted, with lines forming at 5 a.m. (03:41)
• Protesters: “Resist the brolarchy,” “No Nerd Reich,” “AI race may kill us all”—showcasing broad public distrust of both parties involved. (04:22)

Notable Quote – Scale of the Trial

“The fate of the AI industry in America is basically what's at stake.” — Perry (05:09)

• Musk’s claim: OpenAI was supposed to be a non-profit for humanity, but was “scammed” into becoming a for-profit powerhouse after his early support (including $38M in cash and vital industry connections). (11:27, 12:16)
• Altman’s defense, represented by Musk’s former top lawyer, focuses on discovery exposing Musk’s own ambitions to control OpenAI and use it for personal projects—namely, colonizing Mars. (08:47, 17:24)

Personal Drama & Hypocrisy

• Musk and Altman, once friends (sharing Blizzard game recommendations in a now-awkward 10-year-old video), now can't look at each other in court. (08:15)
• Musk disparages Altman on social, earning a gag order: “Scam Altman,” “by the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America.” (20:00)
• Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, famed for tech cases (Epic v. Apple), keeps tight control over courtroom chaos. (32:02)

Notable Quote – Motivations and Irony

“It is a little bit hypocritical for you, as the owner of a massive for profit AI company [xAI/Grok] to be making the case that AI can't be for profit or it will wipe out humanity.” — Perry (14:45)

What Really Happened?

• Greg Brockman’s (OpenAI Pres.) diary reveals Altman’s team quietly plotted to cut Musk out while still wanting to go for-profit—evidence that both sides acted in bad faith. (17:24)
• Musk was offered equal equity later, but rejected it: “One tweet is all it takes, I can start another AI company tomorrow.” (18:41)

Notable Quote – Summary of Motives

“He didn't actually care about it being turned into a for-profit company at all. He actually wanted it to be for profit, but they pushed it to for profit without including him…” — Aiden (25:00)

The Stakes for AI & Business

• If Musk wins: OpenAI may have to return all Microsoft money, open-source its models, or even implode entirely—giving a massive advantage to competitors (including Musk’s own ventures like Grok/xAI, SpaceX). (22:58)
• Real business subtext: With OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic racing toward record-setting IPOs (over $1 trillion valuations), delaying a competitor—even for legal theatrics—could shift trillions. (23:00)

Notable Quote – IPO Race

“There's actually a major, major advantage to being first. And so if you can tie up your opponent in any sort of legal battle that makes their IPO delayed… that's a material massive advantage.” — Perry (23:13)

Is There a ‘Good Guy’?

• Both sides, including Altman and Musk, are depicted as obsessed with money and control.
• Public skepticism: Protestors outside hate both, reflecting the feeling there’s “no winners, only lawyers and business titans squabbling.” (26:18–26:56)
• Only Ilya Sutskever (“maybe normal”) is painted as motivated by AI research for its own sake. (25:43)

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Follow-Up Topics

Brightline Train Crisis (38:26)

• Florida’s high-speed rail was once a nation-building success story, but is now deep in crisis—massive operating losses, mountain of debt (~$5B), bonds trading at <$0.33 on the dollar, technical defaults. (44:11)
• Debates over whether bailout is possible or likely.
• Black humor: “Want to buy a train?” “That’s the next Patreon goal…”
• “Brightline west” (LA to Vegas) is financially siloed and may survive—optimism about American infrastructure short-lived. (46:21)

Notable Quote – On U.S. Train Dreams

“It'll be so sad if like the one train project we get in America [fails]…” — Doug (51:01)
“Our trains are juggling credit cards to pay off…” — Perry (44:11)

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Birth Rate Solutions (58:23)

• International (Hong Kong, South Korea, China, Japan) government incentives for childbirth are failing—amounts are trivial vs. cost of raising a child. (58:33)
• New billionaire-driven approach: Private companies in Asia now offer massive direct cash bonuses ($43k–$72k per birth) to employees to boost birth rates. (63:38)
• U.S. “Trump Account” program: government + billionaire funding to seed investment accounts for each newborn, modeled as a way to blend social good and market faith. (67:18)
• Pavel Durov (Telegram CEO): Open-source approach to boosting birth rates by mass-donating sperm to create 100+ children, all included in his will. (74:50)

Notable Quotes – On Incentives

"You'd have to be next level delusional to sue somebody for $150 billion and not have it be based in some…rice grain of truth." — Aiden (12:16)
“This is how you increase child birth rates, dude. This is it.” — Doug, on Durov’s sperm plan (75:30)

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Fast Bits & Humorous Tangents

Ghana’s National ID Payment Card (81:38)

• Ghana enables ID cards as payment method; hosts riff on what it’d be like in the U.S., skepticism over real benefit vs. privacy/anonymity tradeoffs.
• Topic devolves into joking about Atrioc not owning a credit card. (85:20)

China’s 12345 Hotline (88:07)

• Praise for China’s 12345 complaint hotline—super fast, universal response to citizen requests, from fixing benches to teacher discipline. (88:56, 90:41)
• Admiration for centralized government ability to “just make things happen.”

Real-Identity Social Media (93:14)

• Perry argues for a “humansonly.com” platform—verified, real-identity social network with zero anonymity, to combat bots and harassment. (93:15)
• Hosts contemplate social accountability, privacy trade-offs, and whether such a system would really solve anything. (94:07)

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Memorable Moments & Quotes

• On Protesters at the Trial:
  “There’s a guy that had a robot costume chained up to two people that said, ‘I am Sam Altman’s AI Enslaver. Tech fascist.’” (04:29)
• On Irony of Musk’s Position:
  “He made the case that he started OpenAI because Larry Page called him a speciesist…The only reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page called me a speciesist.” (13:02)
• On Lobbying for IPO Position:
  “If you can tie up your opponent in any sort of legal battle that makes their IPO delayed…there’s a material massive advantage.” (23:13)
• On Billionaire Efforts:
  “What our company is doing is akin to watering the pond to raise fish.” (64:51)
• On Durov’s Sperm Strategy:
  “You donate sperm over 15 years and allow anybody to use it. This is a real website where you can go get Pavel’s donated sperm and get impregnated.” (75:20)
• On Social Media Verification:
  “I legitimately want a social media platform where your ID is tied to it and required. And I wonder if you guys would want that or think it's lame…” — Perry (93:14)
• On the Show’s Essence:
  “We've covered four news stories in the world on this episode of the podcast, and I think one of them is that Ghana maybe as an April Fool's joke, has their ID card to say, and then I don't have a credit card.” — Perry (87:29)

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Segment Timestamps

• Ad/Intro Skipped
• [02:01] – Trial of the Century: Context, Stakes, Media Circus, Protesters
• [05:02] – Scale of lawsuit, public reaction, motivations
• [08:47] – The founders’ past, legal teams, jury issues
• [11:27] – Musk’s narrative; was he scammed?
• [12:16] – Evidence Musk was instrumental; the for-profit pivot
• [17:24] – Brockman’s diary, betrayal, secret plot
• [22:58] – Potential trial outcomes, IPO race context
• [24:43] – Synthesis/impartial summary
• [26:18] – Who, if anyone, should the public root for?
• [38:26] – Brightline train saga
• [58:23] – Birthrate incentives: governments & billionaires
• [67:18] – U.S. “Trump accounts” for babies
• [74:50] – Pavel Durov’s global sperm-donation strategy
• [81:38] – Ghana’s ID-payment card; digital identity
• [88:07] – China’s 12345 government hotline
• [93:14] – “Humans Only” social media debate

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TL;DR Summary

The Lemonade Stand crew serve up equal parts business savvy, cultural commentary, and offbeat humor, dissecting the Musk-OpenAI legal war as much as the existential weirdness of our AI-soaked era.
“Trial of the Century” is both a legal spectacle and a battle of egos—with billions, reputations, and AI’s future on the line. Yet, as the hosts highlight, there’s no pure hero here—just former friends turned bitter rivals, and a cast of lawyers getting rich off the clash.

Add in a surreal train bankruptcy, global billionaire reproduction plans, Chinese bureaucracy done right, and a robust debate over online identity, and this is a dense, energetic, and punchy tour of how tech, business, and society are weirdly, messily, and inextricably entwined in 2026.

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If you like sharp business insight delivered with wit and skepticism, this is an episode to catch—or simply savor this summary for all the drama, laughter, and lessons.

Transcript

[Aiden]

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[Aiden]

Well, well, well, well, well, well. What does it mean?

[Perry]

What the hell did you say?

[Aiden]

What are you doing? Who lives there? Nobody knows.

[Perry]

That's my address.

[Aiden]

Welcome back to Lemonade Stand.

[Perry]

That's my address where I live.

[Aiden]

It's good to be back. And it's good to be back. We have a number of topics to talk about today.

[Perry]

You love Tuck.

[Doug]

Listen, I know.

[Perry]

I know you love him. He's your favorite person. Oh, okay.

[Aiden]

What would happen if you went to that address?

[Perry]

Oh, my God. I don't know whether to give him your address or Tucker's house because you're always.

[Aiden]

We're always hanging out.

[Perry]

Hanging out.

[Doug]

Same space.

[Aiden]

We have a few things we want to cover today, but the main thing that you have brought together a lovely presentation for is the trial of the century.

[Perry]

The trial of the century. And I'm going to make the case as to why this is actually a really big deal and why it is a big trial. And you're giving me a look like you don't think it is.

[Doug]

What? Who is of all involved.

[Perry]

That's a perfect first question. That's just.

[Doug]

You know what's great about this? Okay. I intentionally didn't look into this at all. So I can be the guy who doesn't know about. You get to talk about it and I get to ask questions.

[Perry]

It's not even really an AI story, which is why I am bringing here. I think. I think it's a human drama story, although. And a business story. The AI Parts we'll get to. I think there is some AI.

[Doug]

I think AI has a lot of issues.

[Aiden]

I think I have a good.

[Perry]

Thanks for covering us.

[Aiden]

I have A good synopsis of that, because this is about, you know, this is about OpenAI and Elon Musk. And for those who followed back in the day when OpenAI was first starting, Elon Musk was really upset that Dendi didn't beat the dota bot that they built. And it's kind of all hinging around. That was the article I read. Yes.

[Perry]

It all comes back to Dendy. If you can pull us up, Perry. The trial of a century has just begun in Oakland, California, between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Okay. And they're both there in person, which is rare for billionaires. They usually either don't show up or they don't have to. Or they do. It's very briefly, but they've been there same Altman's been there for all of the days despite not having to testify yet. So it's been like. It's because so much is at stake for both of these two men. And in this trial and they have both wheeled out an absolute litany of lawyers. Elon Musk bought two top tier law firms, both of which start staff with an army of lawyers. And I'll tell you about Sam Altman's lawyer in a second.

[Aiden]

But say litany of lawyers 10 times fast.

[Perry]

I will if I have to. But there are. There's a bunch of people protesting out front. It's becoming a bit of a media circus. Again, this is a small court in Oakland, and yet because the size of the trial, there's a crowd of people outside every day waiting to get in. You have to line up at like 5am to have a chance to have one of the seats there.

[Aiden]

Wait, wait.

[Doug]

Okay. These signs are saying things like Reclaim our country, Boycott.

[Perry]

I'm not sure Literacy.

[Doug]

I think they hate guys they dislike both people is what I'm getting from this speak up protest. Okay, so they're, they're not rooting for one side.

[Perry]

No, I didn't get a lot of both sides.

[Aiden]

One sign. One sign for audio listeners. If you, if you go back quickly, it says, resist the brolarchy.

[Perry]

Resist the brolarchy must. This AI race may kill us all. Grr. But he won't stop.

[Doug]

Wow. It then says, no Nerd Reich. Ok.

[Perry]

I'm only showing this one guy. There's a lot of people I don't know. Anyway, there's a guy that had a robot costume chained up to two people that said, I am Sam Altman's AI Enslaver. Tech fascist. And by the way, you know, just to prove it, it is Two sided the back of his costume, which I don't have the photo of here, but it does exist, is the, the X AI logo and it says Grox AI. So as far as the crowd is concerned, these guys have team.

[Doug]

They're enslaving people. I'm a little lost on the protest. As far as the getting divided. They not like. They not like both guys.

[Perry]

That's not really the story. The story of it is the amount of money and control at stake in this incredibly monumentous trial where nine jurors are going to decide. I mean the fate of the AI industry in America is basically what's at stake. So I want you to take a look at these numbers here. These are the four largest lawsuits in American history. Top left is BP oil spill. Top right is bank of America mortgage fraud around the 2008 crisis. Bottom left is the VW Diesel gate as we know. And then bottom right is Enron scandal. And the number next to them, 2016 and 14 and seven are the billions of dollars that were awarded. Okay. So the largest in American history is a $20 billion award for BP oil spill. Can you guess how much Elon Musk is suing Sam Altman for? That's right. $150 billion.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Perry]

More than every one of the top ten previous highest lawsuits combined.

[Doug]

You know what I'm realizing? One more gap in my legal knowledge. When you sue somebody, can you just say amount? Can you just pick an amount?

[Perry]

I.

[Doug]

Why even stop at 150? Why even stop there? Why not go higher? That's a very big number. But there's actually even bigger ones that we invented.

[Perry]

You could go higher than that. I guess that's worth saying. Well, I don't know why this number was specifically chosen. I do know that is what he feels he is owed. Okay. Although I think he wants it to go to charity. He doesn't want. He personally doesn't need the 150.

[Doug]

So he's a good guy.

[Perry]

Yeah, he wants.

[Aiden]

That's like seven and a half BP oil spills. That's.

[Perry]

That's right. That's a lot. I think that's the damage was calculated at I. Yeah, he wants to go to charity. I think it's an important point because I think I'm going to set this up here. It seems like Elon Musk's goal with this trial is less about any individual legal claim and more about hurting or damaging Sam Altman. So we'll get into the specifics here, but I think that ties into it. He's not really trying to gain personal wealth from the trial itself, but more from the long term effects.

[Doug]

Going to donate all the money to a charity that gives data centers to towns in need.

[Perry]

And these guys used to be friends. So you can find a whole host of interviews and videos from them back in the day where they used to hang out. And now they are. They're truly bitter enemies. I can't overstate how much during this trial, they can't even look at each other. How Elon Musk is both on social media during this whole past week and in the trial, calling him, Scam Altman, calling him, you know, saying a lot of terrible things about him. And, and at one point during the trial when Elon Musk was berating him, Sam Altman just got up and left and then waited outside for the whole rest of the. He just didn't want to be in the room. So there's a real animosity there. But they used to be friends. And they even created the first, what looks like the first AI generated video. It is a real video, but when you watch it now, it looks AI generated, which is these two guys talking about their favorite video games 10 years ago.

[Aiden]

I'm looking for a new video game to play. Can you give me a recommendation?

[Doug]

Overwatch.

[Perry]

I play Overwatch.

[Doug]

Yeah, it's great.

[Aiden]

Overwatch is amazing.

[Doug]

Overwatch is amazing.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Generally Blizzard does great stuff. Well, there's Hearthstone. I haven't tried that one yet.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I know.

[Perry]

People love it.

[Doug]

That's what my kids play the most, is Hearthstone.

[Aiden]

All right.

[Doug]

Also from Blizzard.

[Aiden]

We'll check that out tonight. All right, well, thank you very much for the time and I gotta get going.

[Perry]

What? That was a truly genuine, beautiful conversation we just watched.

[Doug]

Really showing the dated times as well.

[Perry]

Complimenting everything good coming out of Blizzard. Yeah, Blizzard's great and Overwatch is great. But so. So they clearly had some kind of connection there. They shared favorite video games and now they hate each other. So there's a lot of aspects of this trial I wanted to go into because it is important who wins. It really is going to make a difference. So first of all, if the lawyer, as I mentioned, Elon Musk's team, massive, massive team, this is them wheeling in creative documents. They have two separate major law firms. But Sam Altman kind of one upped here. He got this guy, William Savitt, who is Elon Musk's former lawyer, is a lawyer who defended Tesla many times and who knows the ins and outs of how Elon, his buttons to push how to get him to say certain things on the stand, what are the risks, what is Tesla's, you know, that kind of thing. So they got him. He's also the guy who at one point made Twitter, hired him to make Elon Musk follow through on his attempt to buy them. And that worked. So he's got a track record of victory against him. So, you know, maybe one O there, then the jury. So the problem with the jury, the first part of this trial was that they couldn't get a jury because a vast majority of the people in Oakland referred to Elon Musk as quote, greedy or quote, a piece of garbage. And there was a person who had to be dismissed because their, their job was, was harmed by Doge's things. And so a lot of, a lot of jurors got struck. Eventually the judge had to say is the reality is that people don't like him. Many people don't like him. That does not mean Americans can't have integrity for the neutral process. So they kind of had to move on. Like at some point they could not get. Because he's such a famous figure. Yeah, they were looking to find nine jurors who didn't really know of him or like had a neutral opinion. But everyone has an opinion on Elon Musk just because of the nature of his celebrity and size. So it became a bit of a trouble. Then we got to the testimony. So Elon Musk had to test testify. He did seven hours of testimony over three days. And I'm going to give you the two sides here. And by the way, you can take either side. They both have some good and some bad. Elon Musk's and, and, and his team's attack is that OpenAI was started with his help. He put in all the money, all the connections, all the effort. He helped get it off the ground. And then they scammed him by saying it was going to be a charity and now it's a for profit organization and that he wanted to do it for the benefit of humanity. And now it is this dirty for profit thing and he's mad about. He basically frames himself as a defender of philanthropy and charitable giving and how this is a charity scam.

[Doug]

Now I'm somebody who believes the most recent thing I heard and Elon sounds like a pretty good guy here.

[Perry]

Yeah, so.

[Aiden]

And I'm starting to think that the source I read might be totally wrong on this.

[Perry]

So the issues with that you're probably already seeing, but I do want to say some part of that is true. Just to give you a lot of credit if you go into at least from his testimony and from what I was able to research, he was instrumental in the founding of OpenAI in that they would not have been able to get Ilyas at Skeever to leave Google had he not made the call. They would not have been able to get introduced to Jensen huang and get GPUs early. He made a lot of the calls. He also put in $38 million of his own money. So there's some aspect of. He was really important in the early phases of the company.

[Aiden]

You'd have to be next level delusional to sue somebody for $150 billion and not have it be based in some.

[Perry]

Some rice grain of truth.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

So I. It's like. But there. Obviously there's another side to this.

[Perry]

So there's more to it. But I want to say some of

[Doug]

the things even I mean to Elon's credit for like a decade now, he's been talking about the dangers of AI and he has been consistent on that for a long time of like, we need to be thoughtful about this and have regulation. Even before that became kind of a popular.

[Perry]

I'm glad you read that was a big part of this trial in the judge had to shut it down because at some point Elon Musk kind of pivoted a little bit from like this is charity fraud to AI is an existential threat to humanity. They even brought in a expert witness

[Doug]

who was a Berkeley professor. Go Bears.

[Perry]

Yeah. Was he?

[Doug]

At least it's the.

[Perry]

My understanding.

[Doug]

I lied. I did read about this a little bit.

[Perry]

Okay.

[Doug]

At least they brought in a Berkeley.

[Perry]

They brought in the witness. But then the witness was revealed upon cross examination to have been paid a quarter million dollars for his testimony where he also said AI is so dangerous and what open air. And so it kind of detracted a bit from what he's saying. He's getting like $5,000 an hour. You know, like it.

[Doug]

Based on that, I think Elon sounds like a bad guy.

[Perry]

Okay, continue. He. A couple things came out during Elon's. Elon's testimony that were funny. Is Elon Musk talking to the CEO of Google at the time, Larry Page? He said, what if AI wipes out all humans? And then Larry Page said that would be fine so long as artificial intelligence survives. I said that was insane. That's just crazy. And then Larry Page called me a speciesist because I care about humans more than AI. The only reason OpenAI exists is because Larry Page Called me a speciesist. What is the opposite of Google, an open source nonprofit. So he made the case that he started OpenAI and he co founded it was because of, to get back at Larry Page for his insane beliefs about AI. So that was part of it. However, this line of thought isn't really falsifiable. The idea that AI is going to wipe us all out and this is essentially important, that it's a profit or non profit doesn't really factor in to a business case like we're discussing legal, who owns it all that additionally. And the defense brought this up, they were like, hey, it is a little bit hypocritical for you, as the owner of a massive for profit AI company to be making the case that I can't be in the hands of for profit or it will wipe out humanity.

[Aiden]

That was my next question. That was actually my next question is, has it come up at all that

[Perry]

he came up a lot. It came up a lot. And the judge even had to like put it, say something about it. It was like, it is so blatantly hypocritical to be making billions of dollars and putting it in AI at the same time as you're like, it can't be, can't be for profit. So then, so, so Elon Musk's part was as what you expect. Then Greg Brockman, president of OpenAI, came out and did a testimony just yesterday and there was a lot out of that. By the way, if you're watching the poly market odds of who will win this trial as it's happening, which you have to do in 2026, why is that?

[Aiden]

Anyway, continue.

[Perry]

What's interesting is as every person is defending their side, their chance of winning goes down. So Elon Musk at the end of his testimony had like a 13% chance of winning. But then once Greg Brockman spoke, it's now back up to like 50 50. So they've both done a pretty bad job under, under testimony. Okay, so. And Sam Altman is still ready. We're talking about this as it's happening. Tim Altman will testify soon, but it's not testified yet. So Greg Robert comes out and he talks about the real key point of this, this dispute is the year 2017, which is where OpenAI had done the Dendi stuff. They'd done the Dota 2. They're getting off the ground. But Elon Musk looked at them and said, we're losing to Google. This thing's a flop. And according to Greg Bachmann, he said, we need to be for profit. That's what we have to do. Like we need to convert this company into for profit. And I think I should be the majority shareholder. That was his idea. And he said the reason he had to do this is because I need $80 billion so I can colonize Mars and build a city. And so that's why you guys need to give me the majority stake of OpenAI as we make it a for robot company. Now obviously that puts a knife a little bit in the. This is all for charity. This is all for a good kind of.

[Doug]

Let me just underscore this. So this the company that Elon helps co found and recruits for after. I forget what a couple years, I've got exactly the founding date. Elon suggests turning it into a for profit company.

[Perry]

Yes.

[Doug]

And now eight years later, the trial is about the fact that it turned into a for profit company and that he feels he got scammed because of that. Yes. Cool.

[Aiden]

And if I'm a guy who believes the most recent thing he's heard, this is taking a whole 180.

[Perry]

But, but okay, Greg Brockman, do not

[Doug]

put a compressor on that butt.

[Perry]

Full volume.

[Doug]

Actually turn that up 10 decibels. Anybody who's watching this on a second monitor, they're going to bring it back to first.

[Perry]

Okay, I want to include the quotes here. Musk wanted OpenAI to change corporate structure. He wanted to become Open AI's leader. He deserved the majority stake because of his business experience and he intended to use that stake to build a self sustaining city on Mars. Okay, that was the, that was the thing. It looks kind of bad for Elon. However, they also got Greg Brockman's diary in discovery of what he was writing during this dispute. And he said in his diary, I can't see us turning this for profit. They were planning in secret to cut Musk out because of his action. Basically the idea was you can find a lot of like text messages and discovery. Elon Musk got real pushy about going for profit and he wanted to be control. And then they decided among themselves, he's got the right idea with going for profit, but we don't want to do it with him. They decided to cut him out of the picture because he's clearly being very demanding. And so he writes this down. I can't see us turning to for profit without a very nasty fight. And his story will correctly be that we weren't honest with him in the end about still wanting to do the for profit just without him. And that is a damning Piece of evidence. Like, we weren't honest with a co founder who's put money in the company. And we did want to go for profit without him. So this kind of swung things a little bit. Additionally, when they tell Elon Musk that he's out of the company, they want to do it without him. Brockman says Musk, I thought he was literally going to hit me. I truly thought he was going to physically attack me. Apparently he was so angry that no one for him to have majority equity, he stormed out of the meeting and then said, I will withhold funding, which he has done. He has not funded since then. So they did offer, after all this fighting, an equal equity split where they'd all get an equal amount. And Musk rejected this. He said, you guys are great, but I could start another AI company tomorrow. One tweet is all it takes. So after that, it feels like he had opportunity. He really just wanted to force it his way, and they went the other way. Now, technically, it's also worth saying, you've mentioned this before, OpenAI is still technically a nonprofit.

[Doug]

Nice. I'm back on the.

[Perry]

They're still technically a nonprofit that owns a for profit company. But listen, everyone that comes out, every text message that comes out of this thing, the judge was very, very clear that there'd be no social media during this. The idea is like, do you want to turn to a circus? Like, there's a. There's a. There's an aspect of these trials that are so public of like, let's make it a PR war.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Perry]

And both sides apparently have hired PR divisions to help kind of control the narrative. So you see a lot of stuff on social media trying to paint one side or the other as bad. And so she had to give a gag order to Elon Musk because he was tweeting so often so many terrible things about. About Greg Stockman. Greg Stockman and Scam Altman, who were trying to get rich. So that happened. And then right before the trial started, Elon Musk texted them personally and said, by the end of this week, you and Sam will be the most hated men in America. And they responded by taking that public in the trial. They did discovery and showed it. And the judge is very furious. And so, I don't know, again, the sense seems to be from the Elon side that he wants revenge more than he wants a charity outcome for this.

[Aiden]

And he. He filed this lawsuit in 2024. Right. And then this is the trial.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Happening now.

[Perry]

Yes. It's been. It's Been a long time coming and the animosity is only brood. But I want to, I want to explain what I think might be happening here. So. And why this is such a big deal. Because as we're saying, it's a 48 chance, a coin flip right now, if Elon Musk wins this and, and, and OpenAI loses, the result would be that OpenAI would have to quite possibly give all the money they got from Microsoft back, which they don't have, it's billions of dollars. They would have to make their product open source in some way. So the proprietary OpenAI product, which, by the way, Elon Musk admitted two gasps in the courtroom that he has distilled for, for Grok, as in Grok stole OpenAI training data or trained off of. Yes, trained off of OpenAI. And the courtroom gasped. So obviously the judge pointed this out. There's a bit of a conflict of interest in that you're asking clearly a competitor of yours that you're already trying to distill knowledge from to make their proprietary product open source. But I want to bring up a different point and why Elon Musk, despite. I think the odds are quite close now, but prior to this trial, and according to legal experts that I was reading, his chances of winning are really low. Just they kind of dotted their I's and crossed their T's on getting the nonprofit thing with Microsoft. So I don't think you have a good chance of winning. However, here's a reason why he might want to do this. Anyway, so these are the 10 largest IPOs in history. But the biggest one is Saudi Aramco. When a company goes public, you know, it lists shareholders for public purchase. Saw your MCO, 25 billion. It's the state oil company, right? Biggest one ever.

[Aiden]

Great business, Great business.

[Doug]

Good fundamentals.

[Aiden]

Great fundamentals.

[Perry]

It does have good fundamentals.

[Aiden]

Brings in a ton of cash every year.

[Doug]

They have big plans for this canal.

[Aiden]

Does some of it end up doing things like live golf? Yeah, sure, sure.

[Perry]

Who does get a little money out there? But okay, these are, I mean, this is the biggest ever in human history. Is the biggest IPOs. And the biggest IPO last year in 2025 was $6 billion just to get a scale. This year in 2026, three big companies are planning the IPO. And Space X is going IPO at $1.5 trillion. It's going to be by far, if it goes through the largest IPO ever, ever done by a factor of any. It's bigger than the next 10 combined at the same time, OpenAI wants to go public at like 900 billion and Anthropic wants to go public at like 950 billion. And there's a real concern that the market cannot stomach all three of these at once. They won't all, they won't all three be able to get the supply of liquidity they need in the market. And so there's actually a major, major advantage to being first. And so if you can tie up your opponent in any sort of legal battle that makes their IPO delayed or slow down or have to push it back a little bit, there's a material massive advantage. Like the first one to go public is likely to do very well. The ones afterwards may in fact do worse. And so I think there's a, that is Elon Musk's deeper motive here as to whether or not Sam Altman and Greg Brockman lied to him. They probably did. Like, there's, there's two sides to it. So I don't know. You've read part of. I don't know if you have any more thoughts that you want to give in, but that's, that's where we're at now. There's weeks more of this trial to go. But in the end of the day, if the nine jurors favor OpenAI, I'm sorry, favor Elon Musk, then one of the biggest AI companies in the world is going to basically implode and it'll be a huge win for, for Elon Musk's business interests.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And anthropic, I mean, if I'm giving, like from what you have explained, the synopsis is Elon is actually just mad that he was cut out of the for profit version of OpenAI a long time ago.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

He didn't actually care about it being turned into a profit, into a for profit company at all. He actually wanted to be for profit, but they push it towards for profit without including him. And then later made an offer that included him, but he didn't like and he didn't have enough control. And.

[Perry]

That's.

[Aiden]

Right. And so none of this has to do with charitability at all. He's just angry, wants revenge on these people that cut him out of the deal at the time. And he's trying to leverage the legal system in order to, you know, get something out of the situation or enact his revenge, it seems like.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And both parties are not really in the clear. Like.

[Perry]

No.

[Aiden]

Which is unsurprising.

[Perry]

It's unsurprising. And I do think at least for these three guys. I think Ilya again I don't know too much about it, maybe normal. But he comes off looking like the only guy that cares about even AI or like research at all.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Perry]

Of the. Of these three figures because internal text messages of Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, especially Greg Brockman is like him discussing how do I get to be a billion dollar net worth. Like they're like they seem to all care about the money of including Elon Musk. All three of them seem to care about control, power and money and are finding different ways to kind of screw over each other.

[Aiden]

So if we were to ground this maybe for let's say I'm a guy who's protesting outside the courthouse.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

I'm in a robot costume.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

I don't like either of these guys. I've got people chained up on me.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And I'm. I'm on the fuck I as a whole train.

[Perry]

Sure.

[Aiden]

Is there even a side to really like root for here? Because there's. There's a winner and a loser and it's like I don't think there's anything. There's nothing for that person to really be excited.

[Perry]

No, I don't think so. If you're out of fuck AI as a whole train. I mean one of these two very rich a dominant men is going to come out with an advantage.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Perry]

I would say realistically. Yeah. I don't.

[Aiden]

Is there any.

[Doug]

I postulate a couple of things. So some knock on consequences that could happen. One, if OpenAI is forced to open source their software that changes things a lot. So the whole ecosystem of AI right now, everybody's not profitable but burning massive amounts of money and trying to eke out profit where they can. And if they are forced by jury to release open source models that is going to hurt their ability to make monetized products even more and the other competitors in the space even more.

[Perry]

Right.

[Doug]

And so the ability for then Elon to go out and then say. Because again the SpaceX $1.5 trillion metal dick you've put on the screen is. Is in large part predicated on the fact that they bought X AI. So this is both space and AI. Right.

[Perry]

That they need to say is this

[Doug]

massive valuation and it's going to make all this money. So then being forced to open source would be like really interesting. OpenAI shutting down would be interesting because they're like the dominant leader right now. So then you allow all these other companies to kind of come in. I don't think There's a way if you just hate AI. Like I don't think this is going to stop it, but I think it's going to hurt AI companies.

[Aiden]

Well, maybe for another party is say I'm at Google or say I'm at Anthropic, there feels like something there for those people. Or you have a lawsuit that is so big or so critical for these two companies that it potentially gives you an advantage. Like in Anthropic's case. Right. You have two parties that potentially want to ipo, but you have the ability to race to that IPO first and get that advantage you discussed.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Or in Google's case, like a company that is already safely public, has a ton of money, they have two competitors duking it out.

[Perry]

I think Google is super happy that two competitors are just dealing with a stupid bullshit legal battle. Like they're, they're totally safe and they're out of it. Anthropic actually is on open air side here because Anthropic is also structured as a public benefit corporation. And there's some legal consequence. If this favor, the jury here favors Elon Musk, then he could easily turn that same Sauron's eye. He also hates Anthropic. He talks about them all the time as well. Like he could easily find a way to lead that continuing down their path. So.

[Doug]

Well, hold on. Public benefit Corporation is not the same as non profit.

[Perry]

No, it's not. It's not the same. However, at least from the legal experts I was reading, the idea is that they have clearly public benefit provision is supposed to be.

[Doug]

It's basically you have the mission of a nonprofit and then the goal of give sugar hoarders value. And you are legally obligated to do both.

[Perry]

Right?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Perry]

And the idea is that you could make the case that they have not fulfilled their legal obligations, especially if it's under the terms like, you know, a lot of this trial was spent being like AI is going or could kill everyone, wipe everyone out. It needs to be in nonprofit hands focusing on that mission.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Unless.

[Perry]

Unless it's Grok. Unless it's grok.

[Doug]

Yeah. That is, by the way, that guy is, he's a UC Berkeley professor, Stuart Russell, who has paid $5,000 an hour to go in and basically just talked how dangerous AI is. It's like not helpful, I don't think.

[Perry]

No, it wasn't helpful at all. And so that line of thought got kind of destroyed. They kind of pivoted mid trial into the more of the charity scam thing and Yeah, I don't know. It's. It's just a very interesting battle of wills. And again, they both have paid. And this is true. They both have paid PR firms. So, like, a lot of what you're seeing on social media is like, paid stuff. Trying to paint one side or the other is. I got $10,000 checks from both of them.

[Aiden]

It's tough. Well, lemonade stands begin a lot in the inbox lately. And if I'm taking Elon Musk at face value, Larry Page is a blood boy in the basement also.

[Perry]

Yeah, I mean, Larry Page does come out looking like a fucking psycho, though. I gotta be honest with you. The idea that it's species is to care if that's a real quote. That's crazy.

[Aiden]

Larry Page has got blood boy.

[Perry]

It's great.

[Doug]

Cares about robot. Cares about the ethical treatment of AI Jesus.

[Perry]

Dude. Saying that in 2016 or something is insane to me.

[Doug]

Oh, wait, okay. Something I don't.

[Perry]

I have more to say about, but I have slides, so I'm trying to.

[Doug]

Yeah, wait, just. With Open. So if Elon wins, there's. There's all these obvious benefits.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

What you maybe know this better is OpenAI get anything from this other than holy, Elon is off our back. If they win, they're back to the position of, oh, my God, we need to come up with $500 billion in the next year.

[Perry]

Open is a defendant. So they're okay. They don't get anything.

[Doug]

They're.

[Perry]

They are just going to survive.

[Doug]

They go back to, can we survive this insanity?

[Aiden]

They go back to the. Yeah, like Elon.

[Doug]

Elon has nothing to. To lose here, really.

[Perry]

No. That's the power of our legal system when you're incredibly wealthy.

[Aiden]

Is there.

[Perry]

I mean, they're both. The real winners of this. This trial are the lawyers who are getting paid absurd amounts of money in mass to do, you know, this bullshit work for billionaires who are fighting each other. I'm trying to think of any other text messages that came out that were particularly salacious. There was definitely some stuff I put on slides.

[Doug]

But when you're. While you're thinking about that, I got two fun tidbits about this as well. The judge is, I believe, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Right. This is the same judge who's presided over the Epic vs Apple case. Oh, she's the one who's been, like, dealing with that and, like, chiding Apple and saying, you guys clearly are flagrantly ignoring my order.

[Perry]

So this.

[Doug]

She's badass. She's done some, like, very high Tech or high profile tech court cases.

[Perry]

Definitely. I'm just to go off that in this trial it has been, she's been kind of universally praised because it's been a circus. There's so much pressure, so much on it. And she has been super consistent about sticking to the rules. Second to procedure, not letting anyone fucking dominate the conversation or take things off subject. And, and to do the gag order on social media. It's very hard to get billionaires to, to shut up and take it seriously. And she's done it. She's not like treated them special. So yeah, I've been impressed.

[Doug]

Second, funny though I mentioned that on the, on a Patreon episode we did that. I had this long conversation with a guy who worked at SpaceX from 2014 until it was like four years, right. And like worked on the space like actual launches and whatnot. Helped design rockets and satellites. Super cool. So he worked with Elon, including directly at times. But SpaceX early days. And one of the things that he told me was that the, if you were going into a meeting with Elon, one of the things you would do before the meeting is check what is Tesla's stock price right now? Because that would dictate his mood going into the meeting and he would be either very angry and snappy or in a really great mood if it's doing right then. So there are like people who've worked literally with him over the last decade or two saying the stock price of his companies really does. And so it gives credence to that. That idea of like this could just be about juicing SpaceX for this unbelievable IPO.

[Perry]

Well again, and I want to see the context for Elon Musk's position in the AI race. Right now Grok is a distant fourth.

[Doug]

Have you seen the hot anime women on Twitter? What are you talking about?

[Perry]

Despite how incredible that feature is, Grok has been dumping just as much money as almost everybody else, but they're not seeing the market share gain. So like Gemini has been really growing. OpenAI growing, but losing share, but still growing. Grok has been flat. So it's like he's spending just as much money but not seeing the results and it would really, really help him. And SpaceX and this big IPO were competitors to be kneecapped in some way. And I do think he's using legal system as a way to do that. I don't think he genuinely wants the charitable outcome of open AI. It doesn't make sense. When you run a for profit company,

[Aiden]

it doesn't make sense now if we sat down in Elon Musk one on one and asked him about his principles.

[Perry]

Anyway, I don't know if there's much more to say. I mean, we'll definitely have some minor updates in future episodes because it goes on for weeks. I think Sam Altman's testimony is going to be really interesting. I'm sure more crazy shit's going to come out.

[Doug]

You can watch this live on YouTube right now. I was listening to some this morning. Except it's only audio, no video, it's audio only and it's not very high quality. So if you're trying to get in on that.

[Perry]

And also they just fit in an insane amount of boring stuff. I mean, I was reading the summary from a reporter who's in the room and she kept typing zzzz. Because there's like parts where even the jury, she said, are like, like looking exhausted, falling asleep because there's just so much documentary, so much like. Anyway, big trial. We'll see what happens.

[Doug]

Today's episode is sponsored by Anthropic and Claude is the AI for minds who don't stop it. Good enough. Like this guy right here who's not in the chair yet.

[Perry]

I'm going to reveal something. Normally we're a little bit goofy in these ads. I'm going to be genuine and I'm going to reveal something. People have asked me of this. This is my bulls up Perry. This is a legitimate prompt that I use in Claude. I ask it when I read an article.

[Doug]

He's on my computer if you're wondering about the text. But this, this is Claude from Anthropic.

[Perry]

Call me Fatrio. This is Claude, and I ask it to analyze an article that I've read and I want it to quiz me. And I think the best way to learn something is friction. And I do think that tools like this are actually the best learning tools that exist right now. I know they're used for other things, but you can use them really, really well to learn. And I legitimately use this all the time. And so I wanted to share this in this, this promotion.

[Doug]

What's the brief overview of, of what this is?

[Perry]

The brief overview is that it's quizzing you on what you're doing and it goes step by step and slowly and figures out what you don't understand. Do you answer honestly? And then it'll be like, okay, you got that half right, but you missed this part. And it'll kind of push you a little bit. And then in second question, you'll deepen your understanding. So just by doing this, I feel like I my recall on something I read is way higher and I found it to be really useful. I found to be like, this didn't exist before and it does now and I want to be legitimately happy with it. So it's easy.

[Doug]

Endorse yo Chad for problems we're solving. Get started with Claude today at Claude AI Lemonade. That is Claude AI Lemonade. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in Today's episode. Claude AI/lemonade

[Maria Sharapova]

I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mitch, first two time NWSL Champion, Championship MVP and forward for the US Women's National Team. Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology, mindset and unseen battles on the path to greatness. So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an elite athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Perry]

But you guys have noticed me when we talk about what's what's going on in your neck of the woods.

[Aiden]

Well, we've talked about a little thing called Bright Line a lot on this show. We've talked about trains a lot in general.

[Perry]

We do a train based organization to be honest.

[Aiden]

And for those who don't know, Brightline is the high speed rail in Florida that opened up in 2018 and they have a full they basically now connect Miami to Orlando and a bit more than that I think. And we talked about it pretty highly just as a project on the show, as a representation of getting something built in the in our country as kind of a success story. It's like here it's possible to get something like this done. But recently, over the last few months, there have been a number of articles about the financial state of Brightline and how they may be in a position to declare bankruptcy.

[Perry]

We don't get nice things. We don't get nice things, bro. That was one of our early optimistic episodes. We're gonna have fucking.

[Doug]

So trains can't have a hero's journey

[Aiden]

in the darkest way.

[Doug]

What's gonna make the victory satisfying if it was easy and profitable from the beginning?

[Aiden]

Has there ever been. But what. What was Bilbo on that journey if not saddled with debt?

[Perry]

I think Byline should sue Sam Altman.

[Doug]

I think Lord of the Rings should have no orcs. No sorry. He just walks in there.

[Aiden]

Come on. That's a good point, Doug. That's a good point.

[Perry]

Because it'll be more exciting when we get there.

[Aiden]

So. So to give some background, the train has been operating at least in some capacity since 2018. And it is a massive infrastructure project that requires a lot to be built. And naturally that sort of company is not making money out of the gate. Right. I think everybody would expect that. Unfortunately, also the company went through Covid where, you know, nobody is using their trains. They were closed for a long period of time. Yep. And they're also not making money then. But they come out of COVID 2022 is like the first fully normal year and they do tank a big loss that year of over $200 million in an operating loss. And going into 2023, we actually see things begin to improve for this company. Their operating loss is declining. They're not making money. But over the same like nine month period at the beginning of 2023, okay, it's getting better. They. Their operating loss is only 190 million

[Perry]

and they're all these in 100 item.

[Aiden]

And then if we continue to follow Brightline, up until now, they actually have managed to make more and more money as their ticket sales and ridership has climbed. And it continues to get better like month over month and year or year over year rather, which is cool. It is a success story in that specific regard. However, depending on where you, which sources you read, this company is saddled with about four to five and a half billion dollars in debt. For those who maybe remember, we talked about something a long time ago called private activity bonds. And when this company opened up, they funded this massive infrastructure project by selling bonds to the public. This is, this is a way for these types of things to get built. Right. And super, super ambitious project. Not a lot of love in the US for rail. Right. Difficult to get the amount of investment required. So what happens? The government steps in and is like, we'll make. We'll. We'll Give you guys private activity bonds. Basically, the government, like a municipal government or state government, slaps a little stamp and says these bonds you issue Bright Line, the interest that you'll owe the bondholders will be tax free.

[Perry]

Yep.

[Aiden]

And this helps motivate people to invest in a project like this. And the government is down to forego the tax revenue on that interest because it's up for a public good. But you know, this train being finished is going to be something that benefits society broadly. And private activity bonds get used to build things like sections of highway or bridges. They're intentionally used often for like public infrastructure projects. But Brightline took on an extraordinary amount of debt and then not only took on these billions of dollars in debt, but the interest rates because this project wasn't super likely to succeed are also very high. Like, we're looking at like 10 to 14% across all of these bonds. And you know, when I said that their operating loss was at, you know, you know, 190 million, 150 million the following year, that's just the operating loss of running the train. That's what it costs like, like what it costs to actually run the train against ticket sales. If you count their interest payments they are losing and the fees they have paid to restructure. No, no, that's not counting interest payments or the fees to restructure the debt payments. Along the way, they have lost hundreds of millions more dollars per year.

[Perry]

Doesn't mean.

[Doug]

The number I saw is the most recent 2025 operating loss was 127 million total. But then on top of that is 117 million in interest. Interest is like doubles their loss every

[Aiden]

year in 2024 because they were, they had already started struggling to pay the, to make the bond payments. They had to pay the interest for that year, which was 178 million that year, and then pay money in a debt restructuring deal that was another 150 million on top of that. So their total loss for just 2024 was 4,549 million dollars.

[Perry]

Well, we're never going to get trains. Our trains are juggling credit cards to pay off. They can't even pay employee. Like if, if the train itself is operating at $100 million loss and, and

[Doug]

now could they just raise the debt ceiling and get more money?

[Aiden]

The train.

[Perry]

The Democrats won't let him and the

[Aiden]

Dems won't let them.

[Perry]

Dems won't let them.

[Aiden]

Chuck Schumer's and the Fed chair at Brightline said he's going to start printing more Bright Line Bucks, who's going to buy? They have to be the Bright Line bucks.

[Perry]

The only way those were keep no. But bright light bonds. How do they keep issuing them?

[Aiden]

So they're not. Okay, so here's the issue they have. This is the, the market around these bonds has clearly completely lost faith in the company's ability to pay them because the bonds are now trading at like 28 to 33 cents on the dollar, which is insane.

[Perry]

It's going bankrupt.

[Aiden]

Like, and, and also I think it was Moody's lowered the quality of the bonds from like triple B to triple C. And then Brightline requested that they remove the rating and said, you guys haven't given enough of enough time to respond to the ratings change. Please remove it entirely.

[Perry]

It's always a good look.

[Aiden]

And they've already inspector letters covered up.

[Doug]

Did they try the strats of saying Cs get degrees?

[Perry]

Yeah, yeah, that could work.

[Aiden]

Apparently in 2026, they have already skipped interest payments on one set of the bonds earlier in this year, which is the second postponed payment on these bonds. And they're only allowed to defer interest payments three times before violating the terms of the loan. So they're, it's two strikes. They're going to default.

[Perry]

They're going to default. And you guys want to buy a train?

[Aiden]

We can get in.

[Perry]

We can get cheap, bro. Like a fishing boat.

[Doug]

Guys, we need a few more patrons this month.

[Perry]

That's the next Patreon goal. We won the lemonade stand train.

[Aiden]

So we get Bright and we buy Bright Line.

[Perry]

It's already yellow colored.

[Doug]

Do you know, is this going to, is this going to stop the train going from L A to Vegas? Almost certainly.

[Aiden]

I do. I do.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Looks like it won't. So the reason being is that Bright Line west is a completely siloed company. Let's go from the Florida project.

[Doug]

And that's good because it's famously easy to build in California. We'll be good.

[Aiden]

And if we were being optimistic about Bright Line west, which, you know, everybody loves driving to Rancho Cucamonga, even if this Florida project completely defaults and runs into these big financial issues that they most assuredly are, they have better circumstances in the West. They got outright funding from the Biden administration, a huge amount of money from that. And it's a like higher, higher traffic, more tourist demand route than what they've built in Florida. Like, there's more precedent for the demand that they'll be fulfilling. However, the project is also more expensive just in total. So it, you know, this doesn't look good for that one, I'll say that. But at least it doesn't seem to financially harm the Brightline west project moving forward. But what's happening, you might ask what happens to the trades in Florida? And apparently Brightline has been trying to get investors like the bondholders to do a debt for equity swap for months and they cannot get the bondholders to do it.

[Perry]

Nobody wants to do that.

[Aiden]

Nobody wants to do it.

[Perry]

They want you to sell the trains for scrap and pay them back.

[Doug]

But if we all agree to not ask for interest for a while, we

[Perry]

all agree we don't own any bonds.

[Doug]

But if the, sorry, if the people, the equity holders, I mean, you know, to be fair to them, ridership and revenue are going up every year. It's like they're, they're largely doomed because of interest.

[Aiden]

I've also seen. There's one more thing. I've seen no evidence of this happening in Florida specifically for this case. But public, sorry, private activity bonds do have a precedent of the government kind of has a vested interest in these bonds working out successfully. Because if projects fall through that they allow to be funded with these things, right. Then they lose respect for the following bonds that they allow in the future. Right. So if the government, if this whole project blows up and then the, I think like one of the municipal governments is like Tampa, like in Tampa comes. It's like, hey guys, we have this great investment opportunity for you. Here's another private activity bond for you to invest in for this like other infrastructure project. Somebody's going to be like, well, you fucked this on the bright line thing that bombed. I didn't get my money back. So in other specific scenarios where these types of bonds have been used, the government has actually stepped in to bail things out because they don't want to lose their credibility in the future.

[Perry]

Last time. It's such a fucked part of public activity bonds though. It's like the implicit guarantee that the government will bail you out is a big part of it. That's why it exists. Why they're like, so, yeah, they're trading

[Doug]

so low that it seems the market thinks that will not happen. Right. Otherwise they wouldn't be trading at 28 cents on the dollar.

[Aiden]

Yeah, they, I mean the market doesn't. Nobody, nobody wants them.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, but that, but that would

[Perry]

be very expensive to bail out. I mean, is Tampa even got the money?

[Aiden]

That's the thing is like, I think at this scale, like when I, when I looked at the other example of how this, like this other Infrastructure project, which was like a highway, was bailed out. It was way less money than this and it was in a different state. So I don't think I. Again, I've literally read nothing that implies that there is going to be a bailout in this specific situation. So they're unable to get that swap. The hope is that if they are forced into bankruptcy and the debt were to be restructured, then ownership would change, the trains would continue operating under whatever new ownership there is, and then probably all expansion efforts and the idea of this like Florida line becoming much bigger, which is what Brightline is working on now, is probably over, but the existing train would continue operating in some capacity under new ownership. So it's kind of a bummer story, honestly, because I think two years ago, three years ago, Brightline was this very promising thing and oh, here's rail getting built in the us it's high quality, people are using it. But even if, even if they were meeting their projections in like ridership and growth, they still would not be making enough money to get over the amount of debt that they have. Yeah, so kind of a bit of a bummer story, but I thought a really good follow up considering how much we talked about this last year.

[Doug]

It'll be so sad if like the one train project we get in America,

[Perry]

Rightline west, don't worry about that.

[Doug]

Brightline west, just as a reminder for people who didn't listen to the episode like a year ago, is going from LA to Vegas. Massive, massive popular route. That's a great spot for a train, except it doesn't go all the way into Los Angeles. It goes to Rancho Cucamonga, which is like saying you have a train to New York City, but you just have to drive to Philadelphia to get to the train. Like it's just, it's.

[Aiden]

And the good thing about Vegas at least is that it's getting cheaper and more accessible to the every person than ever.

[Perry]

Everyone loves Vegas right now.

[Doug]

Another hilarious thing, Perry, if you pulled this up, I met a person who is from Florida in Japan randomly and asked him about Brightline and he was like, oh yeah, that's the train that kills all those people. I'm like, what? So you can go to brightlinekillcount.com and there's detailed statistics of how many people have been run over by the train because Floridians don't have any concept of trains. Apparently they have. So it's 205 people have been killed by the train. They have a map where all them of all of the where all of the deaths have happened. And then not only that, you can look at these like detailed statistics as Florida releases everything, bro. This like it's like mostly old people. Like there's a lot of Florida retirees who are like just parking their car on the train tracks or something. So I don't think that has helped.

[Aiden]

No, I mean this isn't helping the vibes for sure first, you know what I mean?

[Perry]

It sounds like they have a money looting, losing business where they kill old people. People in Florida with trains.

[Doug]

Yeah, well you got to spend money to make money. And then also do we know spend money to make. Right, exactly. And do we know maybe other trains kill a lot more people? All right, maybe.

[Perry]

I was looking, I was trying to see how many die in Japan.

[Doug]

Tokyo subways. I think it's less for a more depressing reason.

[Aiden]

I think.

[Perry]

Yeah, it's suicides obviously, but I actually don't think accidents are very high in Japan. I'm trying to find out the exact number.

[Doug]

Yeah, yeah, it's very different.

[Perry]

They had at most 22 accidents per year. And I'm not sure whether they're fatal. Fatal or not. You know, this is a tangential story but it reminds. Have you guys heard about GameStop trying to buy eBay?

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Perry]

It's just funny because GameStop is a company that's worth $11 billion roughly. EBay is a company that's worth like 46, $56 billion. Much, much bigger.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Perry]

And so in order to buy them they're going to have to take on 30, $40 billion of like just an absurd amount of debt. And so the interest payments are going to be so gargantuan. Which means eBay is going to have to be run so much better by the GameStop guys that they're going to make so much more money to overcome that. Like I don't shattering to me maybe,

[Aiden]

maybe this is a fucking dumb question, but I'm going to own up to it. How is that allowed? Why isn't eBay buying GameStop? Do you know what I mean? Like when I hear about something like that, it's like why doesn't the other company buy this big fish?

[Perry]

He just small fish.

[Doug]

You ever seen a ferret hunt a rabbit?

[Aiden]

I no.

[Perry]

And that answers your question, Aiden. I mean anyone can buy anyone if they can get the money. Yeah, I guess that's the idea. And a bank is willing to loan you the money because they think they can get it back somehow whether or not they scrap your take over your

[Aiden]

business and scrap they should do private activity bonds for that one.

[Perry]

That doesn't make any sense. You don't understand.

[Doug]

Guy drops it in every private activity

[Perry]

bond bonds vibe for this from Boston.

[Aiden]

He read about Private Activity once.

[Perry]

Classic pad situation.

[Aiden]

You forgot I'm guy who hangs on to the last thing he heard.

[Perry]

Yeah. You know what? None of this is going to do. Aiden. What? Help us have more kids. But Doug has multiple ways people are getting around that problem.

[Doug]

Yep.

[Aiden]

Doug is pregnant.

[Perry]

Doug's pregnant.

[Doug]

That's. Yeah, that's where we're going actually. Okay, I forgot to mention you guys, I want to do a quick story because this one we missed this but I figure better late than never because

[Perry]

we've never missed anything on the show ever. So I disagree. Yeah.

[Doug]

So this is just quick story. Happened in Greece. King Philip of Macedonia absolutely smashed Athens and Thebes at the battle of Kaeronea. And it's looking like the Mediterranean could completely change from here on out. Yeah. Particularly with his son Alexander. So we'll keep you guys posted as we learn more.

[Perry]

That is something we missed.

[Aiden]

That sounds intense. High stakes.

[Doug]

I was kind of looking through. Have we missed anything?

[Aiden]

Have we missed anything?

[Perry]

That's probably the only thing it's probably.

[Doug]

Yeah, we'll keep you posted. Yeah, lot could potentially come from that. Now this next topic.

[Perry]

He'll never get dessert season.

[Doug]

Like you're out of touch. That was 100 years before this.

[Aiden]

Me pulling up your analysis next episode. So we are 250 years into this

[Doug]

American experiment and I'd say it's going okay.

[Perry]

I give us like a C. There

[Aiden]

is no perfect past, but there is also no exclusively negative past because humans are gonna human. That's what we do. I think the story of America is the struggle of people who have not been included in the promise of America to expand those PR principles to include more people.

[Doug]

What's gonna determine the next 250 years of America? And how do we write a new social contract that can give us the democracy we deserve?

[Aiden]

Okay, so I'm just gonna be a jerk here because I'm a historian. So we have to have a prologue explaining, you know, we the people.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Aiden]

You know, I do still remember it from Schoolhouse Rock. We the people.

[Doug]

In order to perform a war, perfect union established justice. What is it? Ensure domestic tranquility.

[Aiden]

So you're talking about a foundational document. So I'm building a document that will protect American democracy.

[Doug]

That's this week on America. Actually

[Maria Sharapova]

this week on Net Worth and chill. I'm joined by Tank Sinatra The Meme King with over 15 million followers across Tank's good news influencers in the wild and his personal account, Tank is breaking down what the meme economy really is, how much a single sponsored post pays, why major brands are throwing serious money at jokes, and how meme culture think Preparation H starter packs and a perfectly timed screenshot is actually reshaping how we think about money and value. Get ready for a conversation that'll change the way you scroll, make you rethink what going viral is really worth, and prove that sometimes the most serious money moves are wrapped in the silliest of jokes. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF.

[Aiden]

Elon Musk spent most of this week sitting in a courtroom litigating some of the most important moments in the early history of the AI revolution. He didn't do a great job. And the ways in which he didn't do a great job may come back to haunt Elon Musk in a pretty big way. This week on Today on the Vergecast, we're talking about what's going on in Musk vs OpenAI and how it might affect the rest of the tech industry. Plus the most exciting laptop we've seen in a while, and maybe the most exciting game controller we've seen in a while. All that on the Vergecast. Wherever you get podcasts,

[Doug]

I want to start this topic with a bit of a demonstration. Aiden, this is a serious question. I will offer you $20 to get on the table right now with your girlfriend and get her pregnant.

[Aiden]

I mean, I'd have to call her

[Doug]

Hesitation proof that financial incentives aren't working to get people to have children.

[Perry]

Right, right, right. We can protest, but it's weak. It's not happening.

[Doug]

This week's episode will be seven and a half hours.

[Perry]

You fuck crazy. Seven and a half hours.

[Aiden]

All right, all right.

[Doug]

So birth rates, we've talked about a bunch. We don't have to go over the entirety of the birth rate conversation. But what is interesting is some things are changing with what people are doing to try to increase birth rates. So some notable things, we've already talked about this. A lot of different countries right now are just starting to pay people when they have kids. Right? It's just here, have, have some money. So this is a government program. Some quick examples, These are all US dollar amounts. In Hong Kong, you get $2,500 for each baby born. In South Korea, children can get up to $22,000 over eight years. Like plus monthly checks and various Other things. In China, you can get $515 per year for each child under three years. And of course, all these child care subsidies. Japan has numbers, too. So we've talked about this pretty obvious thing that people are trying and it is not working. Right. And we've discussed this.

[Perry]

Yeah, I mean, I, I made the point, I think that, like, that amount is so small compared to the cost of raising a child and the opportunity cost of like the woman having to leave work and like $2,000.

[Aiden]

This is on the main app now. People don't know about the hot take.

[Perry]

Oh, was it on Patreon?

[Aiden]

My flaming take on Patreon a while.

[Perry]

Was that Patreon? It wasn't a main.

[Aiden]

Well, I think it was a Patreon episode. But we talked about how affordable, depending on the perspective that you look at it, affordability is not at the center of the birth rate crisis, if you want to call it that. And I know there's people typing already. Shut up. Shut up.

[Perry]

You got that from Tucker Carlson.

[Aiden]

Right? And. But I think you have a good point. Is like, similar to you have to start somewhere. It doesn't seem like there is a substantial example of financial help that moves the needle enough so we can see what that.

[Perry]

I haven't seen anyone that's really paying the true cost of a kid. Like, if someone told me to buy a McLaren right now and I'm like, I can't afford it, and they're like, well, I'll give you $800. It doesn't really change the decision.

[Doug]

But what if the number goes up each time you buy an additional McLaren, which is what they're doing.

[Aiden]

And you can write off like the food and the diapers for the McLaren.

[Doug]

Yeah, the gas is free. You just have to come up with,

[Perry]

boom, $200,000 loaded McLaren with a giant diaper on the bed.

[Aiden]

I think there's two from that conversation a while ago. I think there's like two ways I kind of break this down in my head. There's the core affordability aspect that certainly does matter, which is people are under immense financial strain in a lot of places that prevents them from having kids when they would like to because they simply cannot afford it because of, you know, cost of housing.

[Perry]

Like, isn't it feel like. But it's like a sacrifice. Like you really, you're going to be financially hurting when you do it. Like if you are a comfortable middle class income, but everything's getting more expensive, you're not necessarily under string. You're not like, oh, My God, I'm. But it's like, damn, this kid is going to reduce my wife's income. This is going to cost us a ton of money. It's the savings. I'm going have to cut back. Like, it's going to. Your lifestyle will change dramatically. Your ability to afford luxuries will change dramatically. And so it's like, I think that's the cost. It's like, not necessarily like, oh my God, I'm in poverty, I can't afford a kid. It's like, this is just going to be financially way more difficult in the alternative, you know, as compared to like the world where having a kid is like, if you're a farmer back in the day, it's a financial benefit, it's a straight up benefit. But we've gotten rid of that and now it's like a big financial negative.

[Doug]

You're saying bring that back.

[Perry]

Bring back child labor. Child labor, yes. That's.

[Doug]

Make it a net positive.

[Perry]

And I. What I was getting back is we open up factories where kids can work.

[Doug]

Right?

[Perry]

Or at least they can start making Roblox games. Get them to work.

[Aiden]

Well, they can make the brain rot that you'll steal.

[Perry]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

Wait, so I want to ask if you have any, like, kind of insight into maybe is there any progress being made in any places where people are rolling out programs to support families? I feel like there loosely is making

[Perry]

a face like there maybe.

[Doug]

Interesting you should say that. That's the entire conversation. So. Yeah. So Bloomberg posted an article. Asia's billionaires are bankrolling a push for more babies. And basically they're starting to see that many billionaires are tackling this problem. And on the surface, as I first started looking to this, it's a lot of this billionaire who owns this company is offering these crazy amounts of money for the. For various people. Right. For parents. And then as you start to look into it, it's for employees. But they're offering giant lumps of money for their company's employees in an effort to try to get them to have more kids. This seems to be different. Like billionaires around the world being like, I'm going to pour my money directly into this to produce more children.

[Perry]

Yeah, that's interesting.

[Doug]

So South Korean couple, interesting anecdotes. I'm going to say all of these wrong. I apologize. Chong Byung Gyu's Craft Inc. Offering employees a lump sum of roughly $43,000. And again, this is all dollars for every birth, plus additional payments.

[Perry]

A lot bigger, right?

[Doug]

That's a lot more until the child turns eight. Lee Jun Kyun Bujeong I'm sorry, is

[Perry]

that 43,000 a year?

[Doug]

No, four. So it's for the birth and then plus additional payments until they turn eight.

[Perry]

Oh, wow.

[Doug]

So you get a, you just get a lumpy grand. 43,000? Yeah, probably, yeah. The next one pays $72,000 cash per newborn and has floated plans for tax free housing for families with three children. Again, these are for employees. This is huge amounts of money now in China. Zhang Xipei, founder of Far East Holding Company is giving its employees tiered cash rewards for those who have more babies. So you get more giant chunks of money that increase with each kid you have, going from 21, 210,000 won for third child to 280,000 for fifth. They're prioritizing, hiring graduates who promise to have large families. And his quote is, what our company is doing is akin to watering the pond to raise fish, which I thought was very poetic and strange.

[Aiden]

I wonder, I wonder if. Because one of the things we had heard about and learned a little about while we were there was China's pivot on this from the government side and the messaging going from this era of the one child policy to a very hardcore public message about please have more, more children. Public local officials calling single women in their districts or areas about having children. Yeah, I wonder what level that's like tied to in China specifically.

[Doug]

Any results from this? This is, this is so, this is, this is new. And basically one of the things now happening so we've seen for a few years. You know, I think what's particularly notable about this is the difference in scale. Like you called it out. $43,000 is a crazy amount of money compared to China giving you $500 for having a kid.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Doug]

These are, these are not even close. One of those is like you could hire a nanny to help for an

[Perry]

entire life changing amount of money.

[Doug]

That is a huge thing. And so that's what was highlighted by this Bloomberg article. And there's a number of different examples. I had hoped that it would be a little more like billionaires are now contributing to each child that is born. It seems to be more about their employees and then they just drop these G sums. But it's just an interesting change that seems to be coupled with the government changes. And then there's a different version which is happening in America right now.

[Perry]

So I know what you're talking about, which is Elon Musk, who's been helping by having as many kids as possible. Personally, that's a billionaire who's really been contributing.

[Doug]

That's been swinging the needle substantially. We'll say. And I believe you guys want to have kids at some point. Yes. And I assume it's going to be, what, a couple dozen?

[Perry]

Yeah, probably 24. Okay.

[Aiden]

We're shooting for eight.

[Doug]

That'll help a lot. Oh, but you're taking them out to a different country.

[Perry]

You're gonna hurt our numbers.

[Doug]

Unbelievable. All right, so you and I need to have far more than we have.

[Perry]

At least eight more.

[Doug]

Right? Okay, so this is interesting.

[Perry]

70 racks per kid.

[Aiden]

Bro, you don't even have a credit card. You don't even. You don't even get credit card points. What are we talking about?

[Perry]

I don't get credit card points. So I need kid points.

[Doug]

They can sell you. It goes right to your PayPal. You don't need a credit card.

[Perry]

I create a self sustaining streamer ecosystem where they watch my stream stream and I get the ad revenue.

[Aiden]

Yeah,

[Perry]

I'm turning out kids. They become my viewers.

[Doug]

They type cool messages to make other people.

[Perry]

Yeah, they're like, oh, I want to subscribe. I'm getting 70 racks per a farm

[Aiden]

to table bot farm.

[Perry]

Oh, my God. And they're making Roblox games for me that I'm playing.

[Doug]

You're playing the robust. It's all internal. Okay, so Trump accounts. This is a new thing that I'll be honest, I like. This was passed as part of the big beautiful bill. We actually talked about it with one of our best friends, Pete Buttigieg. And so this is a new initiative. And the idea is that any kid, any parent in America can create an account for their kid. And that account is going to be managed by institutional investors investing money into private companies across America with essentially zero percent management fee. And so you as a parent can create this account for your kid. And if your kid is born anywhere from 2025 through 2028, we have already budgeted this in the big beautiful bill. The federal government is going to add $1,000 into your account. And then the idea is, hopefully other family members or friends or philanthropies or employees will also contribute to this. And so they have a website called investamerica.org and they show, if you pull this up, Perry, they show what would happen is if, you know, if you have a kid who's born with $1,000, if you assume that there's a 10% return annually based on the S&P 500 over time, it shows how by the age of five it's $1600. By 12, it's $3,500. And by 18, they have a $6,500. Just thing they're ready to go for them. And it's both, we want to give people money when they turn, when they become an adult, but also teach people and like have them see this real experience of watching how investment grows, compound. And then if you just add a little bit of money every month, like $50 a month, which they have on this, that $1,000 by the time you're 18 is 3, $38,000 if you can find the ability to put 50 bucks in.

[Aiden]

So this is assuming, assuming in the bottom right corner, assume 10 and assumes

[Doug]

a hypothetical 10.5% annual return, which is true of the S and P over, over time, I believe.

[Aiden]

But it's definitely true in the last like 10 years, certainly last 10.

[Doug]

But I believe that's like a 50 year average, something like that.

[Perry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

So assumes a lot. But what's interesting about this is that a bunch of billionaires have signed on to invest into this. So a notable one is Michael Dell, the founder of Dell, who has committed $6.5 billion into this program and said he's gonna try to add to like 30 million kids, add 250 bucks into this account. Ray Dalio came out and said he's gonna contribute to this for Connecticut kids and try to give 250 bucks to a bunch of them. And Scott Besant, the Secretary treasury, what I think is so interesting about this is he's really pitching this as like, hey, billionaires, big rich people, you don't wanna give money to the government.

[Aiden]

Right?

[Doug]

That sucks. They're gonna waste it. We all know how inefficient they use capital. But what if you gave money, give it to Brightline or give it directly to the kids. This is a quote from Scott Bessen. Trump accounts are not a government program. They are a radically new platform that returns us to a social contract anchored in individual ownership where everyone starts life on an investing journey. There's one that's like every. Yeah, every American will be invested in the free market system and its continued success. And so there have been a ton of companies and billionaires who are like getting really excited about this and willing to pour hundreds of millions or billions of dollars into this because it is being pivoted as cut out the. By the way, it is literally a government program, but cut out the. Cut out the government. Just give money directly to kids. And now you as a parent, just by all These people throwing stuff in. If you can contribute a little bit every month as well, your kid could turn 18 and have 20, 30, $40,000. And I think that on paper is like, pretty, pretty great.

[Aiden]

You can't withdraw from the fund early. Right. Like, it's something that, like.

[Doug]

Correct. It's basically an IRA, and it basically unlocks it when you're 18 and you can pull it out and do whatever you want at that point.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Or you obviously leave it in savings.

[Aiden]

I mean, I think I have. It's interesting because I have my layers of cynicism to this, which is, you know, why is this the approach that needs to be successful? Why is this the type of thing that, you know, billionaires are excited about versus, like other comparable types of social programs or that would try to implement things that have similar effects to this? But if we were to bring this back to the context of the birth rates conversation, specifically. Yeah, this isn't money that's accessible during the upbringing of your child, which I think is the number one. The number one barrier to a lot of people is like the I need the money now to take care of the child. Now. This is also a concern in American context. So you sending your kid off to college, go live by themselves, all these things. Right. Still, I think, still relevant in the most idealistic scenario.

[Perry]

But yeah, I mean, look, Stan's just had a kid. They have one of these Trump accounts for this kid. It's gonna have $1,000 in it, and it's going to be 6,500 at the rate of growth by the time he's 18. But I do think that $6,500 in 2044 bucks is not enough money to make a meaningful difference. It's fine. I think I agree with you on a fundamental level that billionaires giving their money that is going to kids in some way is a good thing. There's no downside, really.

[Doug]

Right.

[Perry]

It's a good thing. But the way it is structured I'm skeptical about because the primary benefit in the short term, which is when it would benefit Trump the most, is that it helps probably the stock market. It's just more money going into passive vehicles that go into the S&P 500. It's exactly. It's only going to the s and P500. And that's where it's. And so, yeah, you know, I think that's why I say, I think if

[Aiden]

you were to take.

[Perry]

A lot of things we do in baking industry are about keeping that from ever shaking, because that is so Much underpinning what boomers vote for. S and P500 being up.

[Doug]

What I think I like about this one, I do. I wish that I had something like this growing up just to literally make me aware of investing in the value of compounding interest. Because I just didn't fucking know. I mean, I said on this show at one point, I just didn't even pay taxes out of college things the first year or two, which sounds incredibly stupid and is. But like, nobody ever just sat and was like, this is what you got to do as an adult. And I think stuff like that where it's going to be like an app that you can look at is valuable. And then the second and the main point I'm trying to make here is that if you take the average billionaire who has become publicly overtly cynical about government spending and like, that's what Elon says all the time, like, the government's going to waste all the money. That's why I should have it. I'm more efficient. This, this program seems to be perfectly catered to be like, hey, billionaires, this is a good use of your money. And it's this really strange way to convince a particular type of like hyper capitalist to be like, that's where I should put my money. And it's just going to kids. So I think that's particularly fair point. It's like a marketing tactic to make them all feel good. And the dumbest fucking part is that legally it is called Trump accounts. That's not a nickname. It is called the Trump account.

[Perry]

No, I looked into this back when Michael Dell got up on stage with Trump and announced he's putting a couple billion in. I really tried to look for the angles and I do agree with you that like, at the end of the day, the billions came out of his account and it's going to kids.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Perry]

So that's a good thing. I can't argue with that.

[Doug]

It is like the small percentage of his money.

[Perry]

No, it's.

[Doug]

He's got a hundred. He's got $175 billion. He's putting in 6 million.

[Perry]

I think I did the math on like what it would be to him versus someone who had 100 grand. And it was like. It was like $17. I mean, it was a small. It was like a small donation.

[Doug]

I got one final approach for you. You guys know Pavel Derov?

[Perry]

No.

[Doug]

Perry pull this up like four times.

[Perry]

I don't know Pavel De Rov.

[Doug]

Pavel Derov is the CEO and founder of Hell. I do know Pavel Derov. Look at this fucking Gigachad man.

[Perry]

He's the telegram guy. Guy Shailey shredded, right?

[Doug]

Yeah. Okay.

[Aiden]

Wait, isn't he in jail?

[Doug]

No, he's not in jail. He was. He was captured.

[Perry]

Right.

[Doug]

He was arrested in Paris in 2024, but he was released.

[Perry]

They released him?

[Doug]

Yeah, they released him. He's back in Dubai. Where? His country. So the whole thing. A telegram. The whole thing is. It's a messaging app that's super secure. So terrorists are really, really down to use it. It is worth a lot of money and they make a lot of money. So this guy's worth $14 billion. Pavel Durov. What's his strategy? You say, how can you get the

[Perry]

birth rate to increase, dude, with packs like that?

[Doug]

That's right.

[Aiden]

Tell me.

[Doug]

You donate sperm over 15 years and allow anybody to use it. This is a real website where you can go get Pavel's donated sperm and get impregnated.

[Perry]

Pavel. Sperm.net, bro.

[Doug]

And so he now has over 100 children around the world. Not only that, ladies and gentlemen, he announced very recently that in his will, he has said that his fortune will be evenly divided amongst all of his heirs. So every single woman who goes and has a child with his sperm gets part of the fortune with the. For their child. This is how you increase child birth rates, dude. This is it.

[Aiden]

Audio balls in your court, dude. You're looking at a title that literally. A website that literally says free IVF with Pavel Durov's donated spot. And then it explains he pays you to get impregnated like you're buying an iPhone.

[Doug]

So I. I don't know if you can see it's down here. I sent a message. How much money does it cost to get is. Come, I want some. And they haven't replied. So I will keep you guys posted on this.

[Perry]

Put your email [e-mail]. that's not my.

[Doug]

No, that's my email. Oh, I didn't tell you about this.

[Aiden]

Sorry.

[Doug]

I've been. I've been talking to some people, hearing

[Perry]

some strange things from people getting emails.

[Aiden]

Firm.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Perry]

You really do need to be careful at some point.

[Doug]

If we want to. If we want to start making a difference, the three of us, we pull together a barrel or two of pool

[Aiden]

together of lemonade standing.

[Doug]

Come.

[Aiden]

Wow.

[Doug]

And then we'll figure out the steps from there.

[Perry]

Okay.

[Doug]

This is. Something good will happen.

[Perry]

It's a real lottery ticket.

[Aiden]

It's funny because I love loot boxes.

[Doug]

A truck.

[Perry]

It's like a loot box.

[Doug]

Oh, I Got a special duck dog child. Look at how tall he is.

[Perry]

He's so lanky.

[Doug]

And then you get Atriox fortune.

[Perry]

Yeah. I have to give you my.

[Doug]

Dude.

[Perry]

You know what? You know what?

[Doug]

It's gotta suck. By the way, Pavel specifically said his six legal children that he's had with, you know, with women he's in relationships with. So he has six of those and like literally a hundred from donated sperm. Yeah, he said they're all treated equally. He doesn't want his legal children to have any advantage. So all of them get an equal split of the fortune. Isn't that dope?

[Aiden]

That's so funny.

[Doug]

That is wild, dude. The text says from our clinic, you can undergo IVF for free using Pavel Durov's sperm. One of the most famous and successful entrepreneurs of our time. Isn't that sick? You, like, market yourself and be like, don't you want me?

[Perry]

There's gotta be some psychological underpinning of like a Genghis Khan. Like you want to populate the.

[Aiden]

Isn't this an Elon thing too?

[Perry]

Yeah, Elon do the same thing.

[Doug]

Well, Elon doesn't just put. He doesn't sell sperm out for free. You to get pregnant.

[Perry]

He doesn't do that. But in the trial, just a little one more. That was one of the things that came out was. I forget their name. Siobhan something. But she's one of the board members of OpenAI who ended up having twins from Elon.

[Doug]

Really?

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Oh, my God. Okay.

[Perry]

He got her pregnant. But. But she says in the trial, we're platonic. We've never had sex. He just paid for my IVF with his sperm. That. That is. This is like a.

[Doug]

So he's doing on a small scale.

[Aiden]

I was. I would argue Elon's doing it the old fashioned way. Pavel's doing it with technology. Open source.

[Perry]

Open source.

[Doug]

Also, how much you go into the sperm clinic like every day?

[Perry]

The amount he must be shooting.

[Doug]

15 years.

[Aiden]

I'm just picturing. Dude, I'm picturing like a. Like data center racks. But with his.

[Doug]

This is also a real. Like, do you press the red button or the blue button? You know, because if there's too many kids, they don't get that much money. The fortune is too small.

[Perry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

You have to. You have to because there's a. There's diminishing returns for people who keep jumping on the train.

[Doug]

Exactly.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Me and my girlfriend are debating whether we're even gonna do it.

[Aiden]

It's interesting because with this room.

[Perry]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, weigh the options.

[Doug]

Plus, you know, there is a bit

[Perry]

of the fortune you get,

[Doug]

you know, in 20 years, 14 billion is not even worth that much.

[Perry]

Yeah. What if you. What if you order the cum, dump it out, have a regular kid with your wife, and then later on be like, hey, this is. This is.

[Doug]

Oh, this is.

[Perry]

This is Pavel's kid, I would assume,

[Aiden]

comes to your home, he picks up the child. He's like, rotates it like an item

[Doug]

in Skyrim, looks at the back. No, that's not my hairline.

[Aiden]

I. Okay, I gotta be honest. We're at the end of this segment right now, and I don't think we arrived at anything that. That works, you know. Well, sorry, sorry. The actual

[Doug]

children, by the way, 100

[Aiden]

more children than the very first thing we talked about. Seems like the most promising. But it seems like they've just gotten introduced at these companies.

[Doug]

Yes. So. Right.

[Aiden]

And that is also based off of the volunteer effort of Vol. Like a couple billionaires being willing to spend that amount of money.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

On.

[Doug]

I wonder if they're making any claims that this is fixing anything.

[Aiden]

No, no, no. I don't think.

[Perry]

You're a corporation and you will give 70 grand to someone to have a kid and then they work somewhere else. You call that back illegal.

[Doug]

Yeah. I don't know. Presumably you get rights to all of their lineage.

[Perry]

Yeah. You have to name the kid Delta Airlines. Yeah.

[Doug]

I mean, I'm curious, you know, I am really curious to see what. What this does. Right. Because you have data about if a government is offering small lump sums of money, and then you're like, okay, what if a billionaire is like, we'll give you 70 grand. Right.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So it'll be interesting data in a few years. But we don't know right now. It's essentially. This is like people. This is how some of the responses that are happening as people realize that there's this, like, chronographic cliff coming.

[Aiden]

If you want to hear more about this topic. We actually talked about it for a long time on Patreon

[Doug]

Live demonstrations, you

[Aiden]

know, a couple months ago, sir. And I think we could probably put that episode in, like, the description or something like that. But I have a couple other things I wanted to talk to you guys about.

[Perry]

What do you got?

[Doug]

Hit us.

[Aiden]

Okay. I thought.

[Perry]

Punch me.

[Aiden]

This is with facts and logic. I'm punching you with facts and logic.

[Perry]

And make it logical. I want to hear a logical argument for what this is.

[Aiden]

Okay. Whatever it is, I'm curious what you guys have to think about this I saw an announcement. I actually initially thought this was an April Fool's joke. It was a tweet that Ghana was introducing payment functionality to their national ID cards. So imagine like you have your California driver's license and it has like your little chip in it.

[Perry]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Like you can tap and scan your ID.

[Perry]

You thought it was an 8.

[Aiden]

Like you could with a joke from the Ghana government. It wasn't from. Okay. It wasn't from Ghana's low. Good one. It wasn't from Ghana's Twitter account.

[Doug]

It's like May 5, Aiden logs on a Twitter. I can't wait to see what the South Sudanese government did for April Fools.

[Aiden]

I can't. It took me a while. It took me a while to find something besides this tweet that backed up the system existed and it was tweeted out on April Fool's Day.

[Perry]

Okay.

[Aiden]

So I'm like, I'm looking at one source. I'm having a hard time finding anything else about this thing. But then it actually is real. It's something they just like recently introduced. Coincidental timing. It wasn't from the Ghana. I didn't think Ghana's government Twitter account was around.

[Perry]

It's just a random thing for God.

[Aiden]

It was just some random Twitter account.

[Perry]

It's April 1st. What's our joke today?

[Aiden]

You know, you know what?

[Perry]

Your ID can be used as a credit card. Lol. We got him. Please continue.

[Aiden]

You know what? I'm not going to, you know what I'm going to do on the show? I'm not going to research anything anymore. I'm just going to show up. I'm just going to show up and say my address twice. Twice.

[Perry]

Huh? That's what you're gonna do. Shut up. Shut up, dude.

[Aiden]

So I, I, there are other countries in the world that do this. We've talked about Estonia on the show before, for instance. But I wanted your just basic thoughts on that functionality being introduced because I,

[Doug]

I think like as an April Fool's ignore.

[Aiden]

Ignore all the negative consequences that there could be around security concerns.

[Doug]

Sure.

[Aiden]

Right. Or people don't like the idea of consolidating so much information with, with the government.

[Perry]

Is the bank with. Am I banking with Ghana or are they connected?

[Aiden]

I think there's a partnership with how are you giggle.

[Perry]

That's my question is a real question.

[Doug]

If I'm a. I just sounded like a commercial you'd watch. It's like now that I started banking with Ghana, me and my family have been able to start.

[Aiden]

I just got my amex Gone.

[Perry]

Oh, you're still with the black. You saw the black. I've got, I've got the Ghana. I've got the Ghana.

[Aiden]

I've got the Ghana goes crazy. No, I think just. I thought it was really interesting because my initial reaction to this was kind of exciting. Similar to the idea of like the EU was announcing that like digital digital wallet or digital currency so that you don't need to use like intermediate intermediary credit card companies anymore. This seems really convenient surface level. And I was wondering if what your reactions would be if this was introduced in the us.

[Doug]

So I guess the, I mean it's just, it's implementation, right? Is it tied to a state bank?

[Aiden]

I think in this case, in Ghana's case specifically, there's other countries that do this. Ghana's case, they have a partnership with a bank or like a bank equivalent that they have connected to. There's like a company, they're partnering and doing this through.

[Doug]

I want to set the stage for this conversation and, and unironically a truck doesn't have a credit card and this is insane.

[Perry]

Setting the stage for this conversation.

[Aiden]

It is important.

[Perry]

I don't have a credit card because I don't like credit. So I have a debit card. I spend money that I have.

[Aiden]

It's crazy.

[Perry]

I don't want to borrow money. You, I don't want to go and suck off Jamie Dimon from Jammy Morgan Chase, which you do every morning to ask for your money so you can buy a fucking.

[Doug]

If you don't pay. That only happens if you don't pay.

[Aiden]

Which means clearly you weren't paying your credit card life. Every morning I get out of bed

[Perry]

and I go, oh Jamie, Jamie shut

[Aiden]

off Jamie diamond and it's fucking awesome.

[Perry]

And you watch her Carlson and you come in here, you list my address

[Doug]

and I guess he knocks on my door, he says, where's my interest, honey? Look, here's, here's the reason I bring that up because I don't get a, that this wallet has four cards in it instead of one. I don't care. It's no different. I have to carry the wallet anyways. I don't feel like it. I don't know what you know, I

[Perry]

don't think this would matter. I do agree with you on that. I don't think this would change in a, in a well banked society like America. What am I getting out of this other than that I'm flashing my ID more often in public?

[Doug]

Well, you get one less card, which I think you would like. You don't have to have your debit card anymore.

[Aiden]

This topic, which doesn't have a lot of meat to it, into making fun of hr.

[Doug]

No, dude, I literally. It's unbelievable.

[Aiden]

It's awesome.

[Perry]

Wait, I had more of this topic, but you guys made fun of me and now I saw red.

[Doug]

So many places don't take credit like debit.

[Perry]

They don't take debit.

[Doug]

Do you just leave? You just go? You just leave the restaurant?

[Perry]

No, they everywhere takes it. Everywhere takes it. I've had no issues. I've had zero issues for my podcast co host making fun of me. I had no issues. I have good credit score. I got nothing about it has affected me in any way. Except for you guys.

[Aiden]

You don't need to be upset about the dumb decisions you make.

[Perry]

This is. You guys are paid by big credit to push people into a life of servitude. Fuck. I had something I wanted to say and you ruined it.

[Doug]

So when we go to the gas station, you flash your debit card at them. Do you realize how embarrassing that is?

[Perry]

I'm going to flash.

[Doug]

You're an adult.

[Perry]

Something. Dude. What was your next topic, Aiden? Because I literally can't think of what I want.

[Aiden]

Oh, we need to move on.

[Perry]

Yes, we need to move on from the Ghanaian credit card ID situation, which turned into basically, I don't have a credit card. What point is that serving? We've covered four news stories in the world on this episode of the podcast and I think one of them is that Ghana maybe as an April Fool's joke, has their ID card to say, and then I don't have a credit card.

[Doug]

That's why people watch the show.

[Perry]

That's the big things that we had people need to know about this week.

[Aiden]

Okay, I just. It's just weird because you could be getting so many points. Is you leaving a lot of points on the table.

[Perry]

A lot of points on the table.

[Doug]

I gotta know about this hr.

[Aiden]

Okay, okay. The other thing I wanted to talk about, bro, was a mystery from China that we. I almost can't believe we didn't talk about this because it actually came up a bunch. And it's the idea of the 12345 hotline.

[Perry]

Yep.

[Aiden]

So in China you can dial 12345 on your phone and immediately connect with an on call, like government employed staff to lodge any complaint that you could imagine. Literally you see like damage at a park or a safety issue in your neighborhood or any problem you could imagine in society. You can call 1-2-3 4, 5, and.

[Perry]

Hello. Xi Jinping. My dipshit callists are bullying me. Is there anything you can do about that? I know it's not in your jurisdiction, but I would really appreciate if you could send a nuclear missile to Aiden Calvin's house.

[Doug]

Oh, yeah, well, actually, if you.

[Aiden]

Well, say my address. If you're a real friend, you could say my address.

[Doug]

Sign up for a credit card. You could buy a bodyguard. Intro

[Aiden]

and we. We got told multiple times. It's impressive at the scale at which this operates because they pick up really quickly. People make calls all the time, and oftentimes your requests are dealt with very quickly. And there was actually an example that popped up on Instagram that Stefik, who went on the trip with us, sent of, surprisingly, a foreigner living in China making the call in English and then basically laying out a mixture of, like. I think it was park benches and us previously, like, swing set for children in an area that children climbed on. It was really beat up and broken and no longer safe for kids to use. And he made the call, and within a couple days, the area is cleaned up and repaired. And then within two weeks, the whole area has been, like, rebuilt out again with, like, new markings on the streets for, like, bike parking. So they aren't parked on the things where the kids could play on. And it's this really interesting example of, like, public service that I don't really even have a comparison point for, like, because multiple people said, you can use this at basically any time for anything. And they're, you know, and people's requests actually are dealt with super, super quickly.

[Doug]

Another example that the person we spoke with at the university program said was somebody you can, like, for example, you can call in and be like, there's a lot of flies at this public bench. There's a lot of flies right now. It seems to be, you know, they must be hatching right now. And then they come in and, like, clean it all up within a day. Like, things that you just wouldn't think of is like, oh, you can just ask your government to do a thing. It's just anything. And they do it within a day.

[Perry]

Yeah, I wonder how they deal with abuse, because I'm thinking if we did that right now, the calls you'd get, some of them would be so stupid. And I wonder what you do about that. You just ignore it or do you. I don't know. I don't know.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I don't think they didn't suggest that literally every single thing is, you know, not everybody's Complaint is valid or perfect.

[Perry]

Right.

[Aiden]

And they're dealing with everything. You can assume that they're getting a similar amount of shitty calls.

[Perry]

Yeah, that's what I'm assuming. So I'm just wondering how they do.

[Aiden]

But they have an apparatus like they, I, I that somehow, you know, there's no like weight on these phone calls. And no matter where you live in the country, there's like a reasonable response time, which was the impressive part. The logistics of it. Yeah, I just thought that was like a fun thing to share because it came up so much and we didn't get to talk about it at all.

[Doug]

Yeah, it was cool, dude. Another example that I'm blank. So again, the university director told us that one example was that A parent called 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and said, hey, the teacher at the school who teaches my kid is being unfair to my kid. And that person was disciplined. Like you can call about schools and stuff. And so, I mean, it's obviously only like a product that is only possible when you have extreme connection and like decision making ability. Every level of everything. Right. Whereas for us it's like, hey, this bench is fucked up. That needs to be a whole. I mean, I don't know the specifics, but presumably like a city council meeting, whatever, to decide how that's budgeted and who does it and who's contracted in the reviews and everything else. And they just have none of that, just everybody, you know. Yeah, you can just act, you can just immediately go make things happen. Insane. And so that is definitely one of the examples that is truly like, man, if you do have central government and you pull it off really well. That is nice. That's nice.

[Perry]

I'll read more about it. I wonder.

[Doug]

I don't think there's any downside.

[Perry]

No, I've only heard good things. I'm always skeptical, but I want to know. It does seem cool, especially in that video, that sub extent.

[Doug]

Yeah, we have.

[Perry]

I remember the thing I want to say though, one more thing before we go.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Aiden]

About.

[Perry]

It was about, it was about the cards, but it was a tangential point and it's not funny. It's serious. I was a question I want to ask you.

[Doug]

All right.

[Perry]

You said they're going to tie their bank to their id, right? You're making up such a face right now. And I want to ask legitimately, because I thought about this. I legitimately want a social media platform where your ID is tied to it and required. And I wonder if you guys would want that or think it's lame I'm not saying it's the only one, but I would like to be able to log onto a platform where everybody has their government name and you have to have an ID to sign up and it's 100% pure human beings. No bots. No. I think that would be sick as hell. And I want it more and more every day and I just want someone to do it. And I don't care about the fucking privacy of it. I literally just want humansonly.com and it's, and it's. And you can't be, you can't be anonymous, you can't be fucking chum. Bug it. 420 and you're like talking about shit. You just be yourself.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I've thought about this a lot and I think it's one of those things where my opinion has transformed somewhat recently.

[Perry]

From what to what?

[Aiden]

Like I think it used to be. No.

[Perry]

And then Tucker Carlson said.

[Aiden]

And then whatever Tucker says goes. And then I pivoted. No. Humansonly.com kind of rips to me because I think one of the things I hate the most about the Internet is the lack of social accountability. Not that I think everybody would be like wonderful and nice because the closest thing I can think of is like early to mid era Facebook. And there were still terrorists on there.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And social terrorists. Well, real terrorists.

[Perry]

Plus there's legend Osama on.

[Aiden]

And to me the trade off of the security aspect is worth it because it's like I'm not fooling myself. I've already compromised that in so many other ways in my life. I'm not going to pretend like I'm not already getting.

[Perry]

Facebook knows what time I take a shot. They know every fucking thing about me from millions of data points.

[Aiden]

And I rather have a social media platform where I'm like, I'm on humans only, bro. If you're not on humans only, I do not take your opinion.

[Perry]

Yeah, you're not a human.

[Aiden]

I, this, this did make me think of something because obviously if you think about this in a broad sense, there's, there's way more downsides. It's not just about my individual security as a person. It's about like people of certain, you know, of certain, like minorities or opinions on the platform then being attacked or monitored by the government. I think I say this in the context of, oh, if I trusted the institutions around me like enough, then I would prefer this type of platform where in person social accountability exists. Embedded into the social.

[Perry]

That's a Swedish thing to say though. I Live in America. And, like, I'm already posting on fucking Twitter. I don't trust the institution. It's fucking. I don't even like Elon Musk. It can't get worse for me. I don't trust Facebook. I don't like. It's all where to go up. I have no love for my current social platforms at all. I will take humans only. Even if they're fucking monitoring me. Even if they're. The government's got its greasy paws on it.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I understand that. I think it's. I don't. I also feel that way, but I don't. Also don't think I'm, like, the primary party at risk. Oh, sure, yeah.

[Doug]

But obviously there needs to be platforms where you can be anonymous.

[Aiden]

Yeah, like, but. But this type of platform existing. I think the. The note I actually wanted to end this on was an interesting story. Forget his name. I think he used to work. I think he used to work at Vox's YouTube channel. And he did this little investigation into these Tinder accounts that are going on right now where, like, the profile photos will be filled with, like, a really handsome guy in his, like, late 30s, early 40s. But then the last picture will be somebody else, typically, like an Asian man embedded into, like, a painting or photo or, like, bobblehead. And it's weird. Cause you're looking at, like, you know, this, like, European supermodel in the first five photos. And then it's just this, like, really distorted AI photo that has somebody's human face embedded into it. And he's like, why does this exist? You know, why is this type of account on Tinder everywhere? And when I ask other people who use it, they also have talked about this type of account existing, and it's because of Tinder's photo recognition to approve your. To verify your profile. So when you upload your photos to Tinder, in order to get the little verified badge on the platform which people use to, like, make sure they're interacting with real human beings, you upload a photo, say, of yourself, and then you do the face scan thing in your phone, and then it does, like, an AI matchup to make sure that your submitted photo matches up with your face scan that you submitted to verify you. But the thing is, it only needs one photo to match up with the face scan. So what scammers are doing is they borrow a bunch of photos from, like, a really hot guy's Instagram profile, right? Build out the profile, take a photo of themselves, and then embed it into, like, A weird picture of, like, a painting or bobblehead, and that's enough to get past the approval sensor. And then they have a verified profile that they try to, like, scam people through on Tinder. And I'm not saying that in. Obviously your stipulation has. In the hypothetical world where we have humansonly.com, the sensor works really, really well.

[Perry]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

But this is an example of how people and, like, are already overcoming these types of verification services to, like, abuse them and scam people. And I worry that, like, no matter how far we go, there's always a way to, like, start bending the rules and putting bots on it. I just thought that was super compelling shout outs to fuck. I feel so bad for not remembering his name, but it was a great video, though.

[Perry]

That's really interesting. I. I had not heard of that. I mean, I do think that, like, having your Social Security number and ID would help limit that in the kind of way where, like, I've been. This is so much a random example, but I've been trying to sign up for a Chinese Warcraft account so I can watch replays. And you literally need a phone number and I. You can't do it. And it's like, I have money and time and I can't do it.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Perry]

So I can imagine humans only having at least that level of friction to where somebody who wants to do it can do it. Start the humans only. Humans only.

[Doug]

I love humans only.

[Perry]

All right, guys, we covered basically all the news in the world this week. I think we got it.

[Doug]

All the news, the most important ones. Cover Greece, cover Ghana. There's a. If you look for a place a lot of humans.

[Aiden]

It just doesn't make any sense. He says he doesn't want credit card debt. But you just said.

[Perry]

Thank you guys so much for watching. He has money of me literally murdering my co host. This time next week. Thank you so much for watching. Goodbye.