D. Ran (1:46)

Yes.

Aran (1:46)

We sort of went into their different strategy from Waymo and how they were playing a longer and more dangerous game with scaling. They were not going to do the expensive radar. They were going to do AI Only cameras, only the way the human eye works. And because they had so many cars in the road, they would get so much training. That was the idea.

Adran (2:05)

And we talked about how the launch was coming up in June. We had Been kind of excitedly building up to that point. And now we have the launch. The launch happened.

Aran (2:15)

I will say one thing, one, congratulations to Elon Musk. This is probably the first deadline that he's announced that he is, I guess, successfully hit.

Adran (2:21)

Maybe the first I can think of.

D. Ran (2:24)

I mean, if he. If you say, I'm going to make this shot eight times in a row and you make the eighth, is that hitting the deadline? I actually, I looked into this check. In 2019, Elon said Tesla customers will be able to utilize their cars as robo taxis. In 2020. Yeah, that didn't happen. Now it's 2025 and it launched. So I, I guess, kind of. He just. He said this is going to happen?

Aran (2:48)

Oh, yeah. I just mean he's always been doing, like, in one to two years, it's like, it's a classic phrase from Elon. Like, we're about one or two years away. This time he finally set a date, which was like, that's. You shouldn't do that, Elon. He's like, june, we're gonna have this available in June. I was like, don't. Don't make a specific day because people will catch you on that.

Adran (3:02)

This is actually exactly like the yard.

Aran (3:03)

D and D. You guys are the same.

D. Ran (3:07)

Okay, so Tesla robo taxis have launched. This is what, again, to reiterate the stakes of this, Elon himself.

Aran (3:14)

Wait, is this the video?

D. Ran (3:16)

This is a video right now. If you're watching on YouTube, this is of a Tesla driving in Austin right now. There's a clip of it going over the. Basically into the wrong side of the road over a solid yellow line. Yeah, I'll just rewind this for people. We're interested in it. So. So let me just break down the basics here. So what this is is the implementation of driverless cars by Tesla. This is what Elon's been hyping up this whole time. He himself has said that the value of Tesla as a company, the reason their stock is so insanely high, is because of the premise, and that is that one's not doing well. Is the premise that the entire fleet of cars could be turned into these driverless taxis. And. And that would be the value of the company. They become this, you know, the combo with Uber and a car company and everything else. So this is the premise of why Tesla is so valuable. And it finally launched on Sunday, June 22. We are recording this a few days later. It is now live in Austin. However, not quite as exciting as it maybe sounds.

Adran (4:18)

Wait, so this. Yeah, this Is available only in Austin. If I go there right now. Or perhaps I was at the Counter Strike Major this weekend and I wanted to hop in one of these to go home, celebrate. Celebrate the rising skins. The viewership record that got broken and I wanted to go home using the Robo Taxi. Can I call this in Uber right now? Like, what is my accessibility to this?

Aran (4:44)

Yeah, my understanding is available on an app, you can call it. It costs 420 per ride. Little Elon Musk. Hilarious weed joke.

D. Ran (4:52)

So, yes, hilarious 420 meme joke. So obviously right now. So it looks like launched technically in the sense that there isn't a person driving the car. And that is an epic meme. But it's an early access. There's 10 to 20 of these total in Austin. There's a map if you're watching on YouTube, it is geofenced, meaning that it's in a limited area of Austin, Texas. It is not, you know, the entire city.

Aran (5:13)

Pink area, right?

D. Ran (5:14)

Yeah. So the on the left you can see the region that cover that Tesla can actually operate in. The right is Waymo. So Waymo is the bigger competitor and the basically the counterpoint to Tesla's whole strategy of Waymo is much slower and more expensive as a car. I mean, slower in the sense that they have a lot more detection. They're rolling out slower. Tesla's a little more like send it kind of vibes.

Adran (5:37)

I can tell from the clip it really. It sent the intersection.

D. Ran (5:40)

It's wild west, baby.

Aran (5:41)

We're back. Yeah, it's not a good look for day one.

D. Ran (5:44)

And it's worth pointing out that this is not public. You basically have to be invited to it. So technically this service is live. But the reason it matters, even though most people can't go actually use this right now, you need an invite one Elon saying they're going to scale up to a thousand vehicles in a few months, which is insane. I think that's quite unlikely. By comparison, Waymo has approximately like 100 to 150 in Austin. So probably they're not going to get to a thousand anytime soon.

Adran (6:11)

Could we go back to the rollout plan for a second? Because part of the value that we had talked about was this idea that they had already sold so many cars, right. So many people own Teslas. And the idea is like, if this, if you can just push a software update and use these cars in this way, all of a sudden people could start renting them out when they're not using them. They could become like, I could own a Tesla and make them available for this service. That's part of the rollout plan here.

D. Ran (6:37)

Exactly.

Adran (6:38)

But for the ones available right now, did they make a bunch of their own separate robo taxis? These aren't existing Teslas that were already on the road and owned by people. This is Teslas that they're bringing into the city and are their own Uber service, their own app.

D. Ran (6:52)

So these are Model Y's. These are just the same cars that they're selling to other people. But they are, they were made, you know, specifically for this. This isn't like a random person can go send their car under the road. But again, this, that exactly what you said. That is the pitch. So Waymo's, Waymo's whole vibe to this is they're making these cars that are really, really expensive. They have a ton of sensors, a ton of tech, they have lidar, they have radar. This extra types of technology that Tesla doesn't. Tesla's strategy is it's going to be the same car that they sell to people for $30,000 can also be one of these robo taxis. So if this rollout succeeds, Tesla then has the ability to have millions of these things suddenly appear on the road, whereas Waymo has to individually make these at a very slow, expensive level. That's the gamble and it's why this is kind of a crazy ass thing long term.

Adran (7:40)

Is there a plan for. Are they planning on selling these cars to companies like Uber and Lyft and they're going to run the service? Are they maintaining their own, like I'm going to open the Tesla app.

D. Ran (7:52)

Yes.

Adran (7:52)

And be a customer like that.

Aran (7:53)

Why would they go to Uber?

Adran (7:55)

Well, so something that I had just read literally yesterday was that Volkswagen has been working on their own EV robo taxis that they want to roll out within by 2026. But they're partnering with Uber to do it. They're not making their own independent service. They're giving or selling the taxis to Uber to run through their own app, like rather than building out your own platform. But Tesla, a company comparatively experienced with software, software compared to like other car companies, I feel like it does make more sense for them to be their own brand, their own thing.

D. Ran (8:28)

Yeah. So even Waymo is partnered with Uber. So again that's part of the gamble here with Tesla is they're doing everything. And so you go, you get one of these things in Austin right now through the Tesla app. So the pitch is again the reason Tesla is this obscenely overvalued or correctly valued company, depending on what you think in the stock market is because of this pitch, like they can overtake all of Uber and Lyft because they will be managing it all themselves.

Adran (8:53)

Yeah. They're not just going to be a car company anymore. They're going to be a transport service.

D. Ran (8:57)

Yes. Like across the entire country. So they are explicitly trying to do everything themselves. And that is what. That is the moonshot of why Tesla is theoretically worth so much. Uber actually was in self driving and trying to do it themselves, but whoopsie daisy, they killed somebody in 2018. And so they shut down Cruise, which was one of the biggest big competitors. They got shut down and they lost their license in 2023. And then that's basically been shuttered.

Adran (9:22)

Can't you kill somebody anymore?

Aran (9:24)

You can't just kill somebody.

Adran (9:27)

Get back to it.

D. Ran (9:28)

Whatever human does it. All right. I want rights for my robots.

Adran (9:32)

You think nobody died building the railroads?

Aran (9:37)

Such a funny saying. You could apply that to any murder.

Adran (9:44)

That's not so.

D. Ran (9:45)

Yeah, we can, we can chat more about it.

Adran (9:47)

How I feel about that.

Aran (9:48)

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm skeptical, I'll say it. I'm, you know, classic age or skeptical of Tesla. But you know, they're having. The example you show was the funniest one. But there's other errors already happening on day one. And just to be clear, this is like 10 cars that they super prepped for. They already like pre routed this whole area. They had cars with LIDAR go through and scan it all to prepare for their systems. They have a driver, a passenger driver in every car for safety. Like, wait, really? Yeah. You're in the backseat, A Tesla employees in the front.

Adran (10:19)

Oh, so that guy in the front is just the employee?

Aran (10:21)

He's the employee.

D. Ran (10:22)

Every car has a dude sitting in the passenger seat with a button to like kill switches.

Aran (10:26)

Yeah. And like I saw one where there's a guy in the backseat, he's like, all right, I want to stop here and get out. So he press the stop button. The car just pulls over in the middle of the road and stops. And then the guy in the passenger seat has to call Tesla and he's like, hey, we got to restart the car. And that level of like live service availability only works for 10, you know, they're not going to have in the real world, millions of operators ready to go.

Adran (10:47)

All right, guy who can only contextualize things through gaming here. Okay, Mario Kart, you might recall when Valve, Valve rolled out, rolled out Counter Strike Two and they replaced Counter Strike Global Offensive with that. And it was in beta technically and they were inviting people and it was shit. It was bad. But the reason they did that is because they got a way larger amount of people testing and using the product in order to solve and move the product forward faster. At least that's what they say. So what do you. Like we're in the first couple days. Is this not just a way of resolving bugs and issues and I mean, how this works.

Aran (11:28)

That is what it is. It's a beta. Right. I totally get you, but it's. It's a world where I think the counter strike was not with equivalent consequences in both scenarios.

Adran (11:36)

I want to be so clear.

Aran (11:38)

No consequence.

Adran (11:39)

I'm talking about like when CS2 launched. If you died in the game, you died in real life. A lot of people don't know that.

Aran (11:44)

It's like if there already was a successful counter strike, that was doing pretty. You know what I'm saying? Way more is already out there with more successful rides. So if you're launching with a bad or a not successful product or a more dangerous product, then you have to get better pretty quickly and maybe they will listen. I can't proclaim to be an expert on how fast their services will train, but I'm of the core philosophy that we talked about since the beginning, which is like, there are limitations to being camera only. That can't be easily overdone. They can't be easily overcome. Like there will always be. And if they're making errors in broad daylight, in the middle of the day with a passenger driver, then how are they going to handle fog, rain, wind, Any of the camera things that we talked about that have been a problem since people watch that, that, that was the guy's video, Mark Rober, Mark Robert's video. Like, those problems haven't been solved, they've just been shouted down. I don't know. That to me, is my core problem with this.

D. Ran (12:37)

So let me, let me argue for the other side. I think it's very easy, particularly for, let's say, our audience, to go Elon dumb, Tesla dumb. This is dangerous and bad and what you're saying. And I. And next, let's move. So let me make. Let me make the counter argument.

Aran (12:57)

Yeah, yeah.

D. Ran (12:58)

There's this. There's this belief that Waymo is the sort of perfect one because they're going slow and steady. And there's these tests of like Mark Robert did where it didn't drive through a car and whatever else. Here is an example. Here's a video from Twitter. This is like two straight Minutes of Waymos making really bad mistakes.

Aran (13:14)

My personal experience is that I got my tail ridden by a Waymo and it was very fro. It was like right up on my ass and I was driving and I didn't like it at all.

D. Ran (13:23)

Yeah, if you pull this, this is, this is a video of a Waymo, I believe, pretty recently straight up driving down the wrong side of the road. And it just does this for a while. There's two full minutes of footage like this. There's plenty. Yeah. Here's one of it looping at a roundabout. These are actually quite funny and these are real cars on the road. So the idea that Waymo is this sort of like perfect impeccable being and then Tesla's coming in as like the irresponsible stepchild. It's not accurate. There's still plenty of evidence that Waymo has issues. Doing a self driving car is extremely challenging. And so what's interesting about this whole thing. Yeah, a lot of little, a lot of funny comedy going on in the background. Yeah, it's just sitting here.

Adran (14:04)

So I mean even, even anecdotally. Oh my God.

D. Ran (14:08)

Why is it going. Yeah, there's some bad, there's some bad.

Adran (14:12)

Stuff literally outside of this happened a couple months ago, literally outside of where I live there. They had closed off sections of the street to film something. And there's a police officer there when that happens and he's standing like blocking cars from going through. And there's also cones out to show that you shouldn't drive there. Right. All of the human drivers figured this out. I see a Waymo come around the corner. The cop puts his hand out. The Waymo just drives by him onto the set of the shoot. I'm not just not getting. And then the cop turns around, looks at the Waymo and he just goes like to himself, he just shrugs because he doesn't know what to do because there's no human.

D. Ran (14:59)

And it's roaming free like God intended.

Adran (15:01)

So there's been a bunch and I think similar videos of Waymos blocking emergency vehicles. So. So I do agree with you about this part.

D. Ran (15:09)

Yeah. So again, I think it's, I think it's very easy to go like, oh, Tesla bad. But the reality is this is a really, really challenging problem. Now at some point there is going to be one of these companies that is safer than the other. Right. And we don't have enough information to be able to point at this and go, Waymo is definitively safer because one's.

Adran (15:25)

Only been out like a few days.

D. Ran (15:26)

One's only been out a few days. And my understanding, although we don't know for certain, is that what is driving the Teslas right now is full self driving. It's the same technology that you, if you go buy a Tesla right now, can use. And again, that's the, that's the pitch. That is the whole point of this. Their, their goal here is to say the same Tesla you can buy for 30 grand, can go be a taxi and could go make you a bunch of money in the street on the side, because it is the same technology. Right. So if you want to understand how good the robo taxis are, almost certainly what you can do is get into a regular Tesla right now. And my experience, I don't know if you guys talk to people who have this. I don't have a Tesla. I haven't seen full self driving yet, but I've talked to five or six people who have. They say, oh, it's really, really good, but you kind of need to like watch just in case they're not like 100% there, but it's almost all the way there. And that's not good enough, actually. That's the end of the sentence. Period. So there's a period there. And so that's what's interesting is this thing is no different than the Tesla's going around. And that's kind of the most info we have. Ultimately, probably one of these companies is gonna win. And again, if Tesla hits a person and kills them or seriously damages them, like happened in San Francisco to Cruz, it's probably over. I mean, like, literally, if there's a huge major accident, it's probably over. It's not enough to cross into the yellow borders one time. Like, we have that clip. Everybody's been showing that one clip over and over as the only clip I saw of Tesla really messing up this weekend. So it's like now it's almost a waiting game. Like, can they make the cars safe enough, fast enough before they cause a huge accident and get the whole company shut down?

Adran (16:58)

Yeah.

Aran (16:58)

So that's what I want to say is I will never disagree that there's many errors with Waymo. Having dealt with one myself. It's more of that they've done in enough cities with enough rides now and nobody's died that I'm feeling like every day I'm feeling all right. Well, they're doing a pretty good job. It's been rolled out and tested enough that I'm like getting more confident. But with the Tesla one, it's only 10 cars, small area with a human in the passenger. So this is not enough of a test for me to say that I can overcome my skepticism.

D. Ran (17:27)

What is this counterpoint? Elon Musk said congratulations for a successful Robotaxi launch.

Aran (17:32)

Oh that it's done. I didn't know Elon was on the side of the side. Take it back.

D. Ran (17:37)

Yeah. I also want to quickly reiterate for people, why even do this? And it's just, it's worth reiterating. 42,000 people die a year from car accidents. 13,000 from DUI. 12,000 from speeding related speeding related incidents. 1.2 million people die every year from car accidents. Hundreds or trillions of dollars in damage just in the US alone every year from car accidents. Humans are wildly irresponsible, shitty drivers on average. I include myself in that. I text when it's like important and I know I shouldn't. There are times when I go to change the radio. There's times when I'm exhausted even. I don't drink and drive obviously. But like even as a, I think a pretty responsible person, there's times where I'm like, why am I allowed to drive a death machine through the highway 80 miles an hour? This is insane. Waymo has on their website, on the safety section some great information about. You're looking at like 80 to 90% reduction in crashes over what a human would do in that same period of time. So to put this, like to really ground this, tens of thousands of people die in the US every year. These cars already reduce the number of accidents by 80 to 90%. That number is going to keep going up as they get better. This is going to be a massive humanitarian achievement when we stop killing literally millions of people every year because human beings are driving cars. There's more going on than just that. But that's. It's worth regrounding it. Like this is the benefit if this works out.

Adran (19:03)

Yeah, I, I think even longer term benefits of. Isn't. The idea is if you had so many of these going around and they can communicate with each other and coordinate. You reduce a lot of the aspects of traffic congestion. Uh, I, I think it's. I still think this technology is super cool. It doesn't mean it's consequence free. But I'm looking forward to.

D. Ran (19:25)

Yes, it does counterpoint.

Aran (19:27)

Yes it does.

D. Ran (19:29)

Elon. Elon said it was a success. I don't understand what you mean.

Aran (19:31)

You know, plus the mass reduction in. I've heard that like statistically one of the greatest drivers of human misery is commutes yeah. Like people having to be in. So if you could take a nap on your. You know, like that kind of thing. It could actually overall life satisfaction go up for a lot of people in a way. Like I picture a city of sims with their green bars.

D. Ran (19:53)

I think.

Adran (19:54)

I think even if you imagine the they, you know, some grand utopian future where it's, you know, we have more. We have better planned cities, we have more trains. We have all these different public transportation resources to get around.

Aran (20:08)

Yeah.

Adran (20:08)

There's always a utility for cars. Like there is still going to be utility whether it be in like more rural areas or to like get out of the city or to just get somewhere fast enough. There's value in. Yeah.

Aran (20:23)

Also just have an immediate impact in a. It's a country that has been built for cars. You know that it'll take a lot longer to get a public transport network built than it would be to just improve the current car infrastructure.

Adran (20:34)

Is it really. Is it really 420 a ride and it's 420. It's fucking.

D. Ran (20:42)

He is. He's so not cool. It's just. It hurts man.

Adran (20:46)

It's.

D. Ran (20:48)

We've talked off the pod.

Aran (20:49)

How swerve has the cop. It goes epic bacon.

Adran (20:55)

We could be. Nor we could at least be normal.

Aran (20:58)

Nah.

Adran (20:58)

It could be $5.

D. Ran (21:00)

It could be $5. I like the spirit of being a Mimi and having fun with a business. It just blows that it's this lame. You know what I mean? Like that's the problem.

Adran (21:08)

It needs to be on a different.

D. Ran (21:10)

Wave of like hire someone who's cool to m. Pick these numbers. Right. This like he's just not delivering it at a compul. Yeah dude, this.

Aran (21:18)

This is. There's a cooler number if he did 69 cents. Oh oh, that's whatever.

Adran (21:26)

I mean it's under a dollar. That's pretty tight.

Aran (21:28)

But it is clearly like no, I think $69 because Waymos cost more than Ubers here. Waymo's prices are not low. Are they not my understanding Waymo in LA costs more than an Uber. Many people have told me this when they try to call. It's like I don't go Waymo because it's a little more expensive.

D. Ran (21:45)

I wonder.

Adran (21:46)

I mean maybe because it's a premium service and right now that you have to get invited to you your invite usually gets accepted like immediately but. And there's a limited amount of cars so they can just hike it up for demand sake or something. But I think that aside, they also can't Go on highways in la. Or at least they couldn't a few months ago. So the. All of the rides take longer.

Aran (22:11)

Yeah.

Adran (22:12)

Like the one time I took one to a party, it should have been a 10 minute drive. I get in the car and it says estimated time of arrival 28 minutes. And I was like, that seems wrong. Maybe address. That's how I found out they don't go.

Aran (22:24)

Just wanted to spend more time with you. Or just talk to you aid and make a friend for once.

D. Ran (22:30)

You're.

Aran (22:31)

You talk to human Uber drivers all the time, but whenever the AIs in there, you shut the clam up.

Adran (22:35)

I did this on my most recent trip. I talked to this guy from Azerbaijan. We talked for an hour. I got him on WhatsApp. He's going to help me plan my trip.

Aran (22:46)

Yeah.

D. Ran (22:47)

And he's time for that.

Adran (22:48)

And he says I have. He says he's friends I can hang out with.

Aran (22:52)

You're crazy.

Adran (22:53)

That's sick.

Aran (22:54)

You're crazy.

Adran (22:55)

He can't make fun of me because I introduced him to a friend I met in a grocery store, like randomly. And then we went on a road trip.

Aran (23:01)

One of the coolest dudes ever. This is a random guy.

D. Ran (23:03)

We went on a road. I can't.

Adran (23:05)

And now he's an mma.

D. Ran (23:06)

Replace that guy with a Uber. Or the Waymo.

Aran (23:09)

Yeah, you, Aiden. Chatting up a chat GPT bot where you live. Like you guys want to hang out after this or.

D. Ran (23:16)

And you're like, hey, can you go on the freeway? It's like, wow, you're so right. What a great point. You're so smart, Aiden, that you put it like that.

Adran (23:23)

That's actually my. My big anti position on this. It's like not that a bunch of people will lose their jobs from like the withering transportation industry. It's just that I won't have anybody to talk to.

Aran (23:33)

Just sat in the car. 80% of Aiden's friends are people he met in Uber drive. And now it's all gone.

Adran (23:42)

Yeah. I build a network. You jealous? I get it.

D. Ran (23:45)

What was that called? The third job. The third living space.

Adran (23:47)

Third. Third spaces.

D. Ran (23:49)

Third spaces. It's Uber for you. It's going to be gone. I think we could move on. We've. We're all kind of on the same page here, which is that Elon's great. Tesla's great. I want to wrap this up with a segment I call Massively Oversimplified. There's a huge amount going on here. I do want to get moving, so I just want to ask Atrioch, are self driving cars good or bad? One word answer please.

Aran (24:07)

Yes. Yeah.

D. Ran (24:08)

Oh yeah. The answer is yes. Yeah. Okay everybody, you're all caught up, thanks.

Aran (24:12)

I say yes. I think they're good.

D. Ran (24:14)

Let me know. I do.

Adran (24:15)

He said are they good or bad? And you said yes.

D. Ran (24:18)

Oh, I mean that was actually the correct answer. Now I see I'm, I'm going to leave this with a funny story.

Aran (24:23)

I said good, I think they're good.

D. Ran (24:24)

Little funny tidbit to send this off on. I was wondering why are all these car companies launching in Austin specifically? And so I looked into it. The reason is because Tesla, Texas in 2017 passed a bill that prevents cities from making their own regulations so only the state can do it. And then the state just had simple rules and don't require a permit. So Tesla doesn't even need a permit to do this, which is, which is crazy. So the Austin government, the city of Austin like can't do anything to stop Tesla. And so apparently like some people in, I think the Texas assembly like asked Tesla, they're like, hey, we're going to have new rules for this stuff. Please hold off until September 1st. And we get this new bill launched. And just didn't, just ignored it and sent it anyways. They literally had lawmakers. I was like, is Texas just really chill? What's going on? It's like, not really. They, they were just kind of like trusting people and then politely asked Tesla to not do this. And they just.

Aran (25:16)

I like it this week that the incentives are that the conservative statewide government of Texas has turned the liberal city government of Austin into a testing ground.

Adran (25:25)

They're trying to get rid of the.

Aran (25:26)

Libs, they're trying to get all the limbs run over by robot cars.

D. Ran (25:31)

Yeah, so they did pass a new law September 1st. This is going to happen where there's going to be more stringent rules and they're going to need a permit. So now there's an interesting thing of like if they have to also get permitted by September 1st, otherwise Tesla's kicked out, which is like two months away. So interesting dynamics here, but that's the.

Adran (25:47)

Gist bill and villain chair on this. Okay, you might recall when we talked about housing in Japan and how they keep prices so low relative to other similarly important cities in the world. And part of that is because they nationalize zoning and people at the local level couldn't fuck with it, fuck with zoning and inhibit basically growth or progress. Now I think maybe unlike housing, depending on how you look at it, this could have A more consequential effect on people getting hit by cars in the street. But I think there's something to be said there about you can, you know, they were able to move forward without being blocked at a local level to test something that could be a really important technology in the future.

D. Ran (26:34)

I was hit by a house in Tokyo.

Adran (26:36)

I did they have some weird house.

D. Ran (26:38)

I wasn't paying attention to walk into it.

Aran (26:40)

It was Howl's moving castle.

Adran (26:45)

It's not one to one, but it was. I immediately thought of that when you brought up as like, oh, hey, deal with the state.

D. Ran (26:50)

You know, well, says house city politics. Iran.

Aran (26:53)

Oh, I was going to go to Zorro.

D. Ran (26:54)

Oh, sorry. Hold on. I got this. You know, else has houses.

Aran (26:57)

Yeah.

D. Ran (26:58)

New York, New Jersey, which is right next to New York City.

Aran (27:01)

Not a roundabout way, but yes. City politics day politics. We got a surprise win from Zoran Mamdani.

Adran (27:09)

Yeah.

Aran (27:09)

In New York City that people are really talking about. They were quite a buzz about. I don't know if you want to give an update.

Adran (27:14)

Yeah. I mean, if some people may have been following this race already, I think in a city level, a mayoral election might not be that important in general. But if we were to go way back. The current mayor of New York City is Eric Adams. And for those who don't know, a Democrat, kind of a more center Democrat who has been rife with controversy, mainly because he was indicted on corruption charges.

Aran (27:43)

Who has.

Adran (27:45)

Which is mayoral politics, which is wild. And to top that off, the Trump administration, after taking office, stepped in to try to get rid of his charges, to which there were a lot of accusations of a quid pro quo in that eric would be. Mr. Adams, if you will, would be giving Trump and his administration assistance in allowing immigration officials to. To arrest more people in New York City in exchange for. And cooperation in general in exchange for him getting off the charges, which I don't think has panned out. I think he's still getting charged if I'm not. But maybe I'm not.

Aran (28:26)

I mean, it caused a big controversy. You know, there's a lot of like, long time, even Republican. I forget the word. You know, legal, top level people who are like, hey, this is. This is obvious corruption.

Adran (28:41)

Yeah.

Aran (28:41)

Like what you're doing is you're saying this guy can get away with crimes as long as he helps you with ice Rick trades. And like, that's not cool. And so they.

Adran (28:47)

And the crime was already corruption.

Aran (28:48)

Yeah. And so a couple of them stepped down and like they wrote these really beautiful letters about, like, hey, I've been in the law. I know, Doug. I know my mic is not perfectly aligned. I'm gonna get a megaphone. But, yeah, they wrote these. These great letters about, hey, this is, like, not what I stood for, not why I got into the law. And they stepped down. And I guess what happened since then is that the corruption charges are still going through, is my understanding, but I don't know.

Adran (29:15)

Yeah. Yeah. I'd have to take a closer look at that. I don't think he. The charges are. Are. Are lost. Anyway. The reason that that's important is New York's incumbent Democratic mayor has no social standing right now. Yeah, he's not even running. So this opened up this huge opportunity for a bunch of Democrats. I think he has run in the primary. He is running, but not as a Democrat, but in the general. Yeah. And he is not expected to win. No. At least right now. Yeah. You know, unless you're a hardcore Adams.

D. Ran (29:44)

Fan, I know you're out there.

Aran (29:46)

You're out there.

D. Ran (29:47)

Dozens of us.

Adran (29:48)

Me. Me and a couple of guys in the Turkish government. So, anyway, this opens the door, and you guys might be familiar. Familiar with the name Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo is this familiar face in New York politics, specifically famous family. And Andrew was the governor during COVID and. And had been in New York politics for ages before that. He resigned in disgrace due to credible accusations of, I think, 12 women regarding sexual harassment and. Or sexual assault, and fell out of politics after he stepped down from that position. But in the wake or like the vacuum of this mayoral race, he steps back up to run as sort of the establishment candidate for the Democratic primary. And he, as soon as he entered the race, became the favorite, pretty much this recognizable face whose main message was that in the wake of him stepping away from things, things in New York have gone terribly wrong. The progressive or existing Democrats in New York are running our city into the ground. And I have the experience to bring New York back in the good direction it was in the past. That's kind of the core of his message, from my understanding.

D. Ran (31:17)

And his defense against the sexual assault allegations was. This is a quote. I'm not perverted. I'm just Italian. So I forgot. Open and shut.

Aran (31:32)

I'm just Italian. That's a strong.

Adran (31:34)

I think. Yeah, I should have really just ended it right there.

D. Ran (31:37)

They're respecting his culture.

Adran (31:40)

Dude. I forgot. So it. A bunch of other people are entering this race as well, but over the last few. Few months, especially Assemblyman Zoran Mandami steps up to run for Mayor in this election, a Democratic socialist, has been an assemblyman since 2020 and runs a campaign of sort of boots on the ground for the people unity in New York City. Stand up to Cuomo and the billionaires that are supporting him, the corporations that are supporting him. Let's freeze rent, let's make childcare free, let's raise taxes on the wealthy to help pay for these programs. Let's make transportation free. I would say a very left leaning campaign basically. And he begins to build a lot of momentum in the last few months leading up to the primary election last night and it was kind of getting closer week by week. You could see he was gaining favorite in polls. And I think leading into the actual election he wasn't favored to win. But he had turned the election into a heat. Nobody knew who was going to win anymore. And in New York's voting system they're ranked chose, ranked choice voting. It's my understanding that him and a few of the other candidates also kind of created an anti Cuomo platform together. Basically this idea that if you like me, vote for these other candidates as your 2 and 3.

Aran (33:14)

Do you rank them 1 through 5?

Adran (33:15)

Basically yeah. So to reduce the likelihood of Cuomo winning because they all didn't want Cuomo to win. And Mumdani comes out on top at the end of this last night. And the questions that have come around this is that like we talked about on the show, the Democrats in the wake of the last general presidential election are sort of lost, looking for faces or leaders or a new message to sort of lead the party forward as we've lost these major elections. And this was a symbolic, one of the first big Democratic elections in the country that symbolizes what direction the Democratic Party might be choosing to go in Cuomo, this more establishment Democrat who has a lot of corporate money behind him, an example is like Michael Bloomberg donated $8 million to Ton of billionaires donated his campaign.

D. Ran (34:09)

Another free speech, Aiden.

Adran (34:11)

Yeah, I'm actually pro Citizens United. A lot of people don't know that and I switched my opinion when I started making podcasts and so, so another organization called Housing for All, an organization that represents landlords interests, donated 2.5 million to his campaign. And Mamdani is combating or pushing against that, that message. A lot of his campaigning is online social media, like meeting people in person, walking the length of Manhattan, being on the streets and knocking on doors. This campaign of unity. And I thought that was really, really interesting because I didn't really want to talk about this until it played out. All the way. Because I had a hard time having hope that this guy would win. And it's not that there's nothing to critique about his record or his policy positions like how he's actually going to get things done. But at a personal level, I really want to see someone like this, with this messaging, get into power for the chance at creating the change that they're representing. Because I think that is an interesting opportunity. Now, I'm sure you guys have opinions about this, but the hard part will be can the mayor of New York, with these sort of policy positions and the power that's afforded to him, somebody who has only led and passed three bills in his assembly position prior to this, can he actually create the changes that he's saying he will? Super, super interesting campaign.

D. Ran (35:52)

I have a somewhat spicy criticism. Maybe you start. I feel like you're gonna.

Aran (35:56)

No, go for it. I got. I mean, I have a lot to say. I have some criticisms and some.

D. Ran (36:01)

All right, let's. Let's Oreo sandwich this, then I'll be the criticism.

Adran (36:05)

He has criticism too. I know he does. Mr. Mr. Ren control. He wants to talk about that.

D. Ran (36:10)

Yeah. So there's a. There's a. A really great newsletter my friend turned me on to called Tangle. And it's this guy every day posts a newsletter where he talks about some issue. Here's what left leaning perspectives are saying. Here's what right leaning perspectives are saying. And then he gives his sort of take. So I was reading that this morning on the way here, literally while driving. I should not be in the car. That is a joke. That was a joke because of the segment we just did.

Aran (36:33)

I was just drinking and driving and string my selector.

D. Ran (36:36)

Yeah. So he made a good point, which his conclusion is basically this is less about Zoran winning for progressivism and socialism is now going to take over America. Which I think some people feel like this is. This is the moment. This is like, you know, Bernie Sanders reincarnated coming back. And you know, Bernie Sanders from his grave would be very happy right now. Who endorsed him?

Aran (36:59)

Rip RIP Bernie, by the way.

D. Ran (37:02)

But really, what is that?

Aran (37:04)

Because our pod could cause.

Adran (37:05)

I know he's alive.

Aran (37:08)

The limited. He's alive as well.

D. Ran (37:10)

Wait, no, no, no. If we acknowledge that, that means he'll die this week. We have no opinions on Bernie. I don't know.

Aran (37:16)

I don't know.

D. Ran (37:17)

I don't know how we save him. Okay, so his point I agree with, it's. This is less about did socialism win? And now it's taking a stronghold in America's biggest city. And it's more like Zoran was a really authentic, likable person who goes and talks to people. He's young, he's what, like 31 or 33? 33. And Cuomo is what, 60s, what mid-60s? I don't know, 700. Pull up the age. This is the most actually Perry, if you can pull up Cuomo's age. This is so representative of our generation or generations. Feeling like the boomers have just been in control our entire lives. They aren't letting go of control. This guy who was the governor of New York is now coming back to try to become mayor of New York City. The attitude he had was basically like, yeah, this is sort of beneath me, but I deserve it. I'll come in and take stuff over. And instead you have a guy who, who actually he's 67. The guy is 67. So we have somebody who's actually going to represent the generation who is like living and going to be impacted by these policies coming in and being eloquent. So I love that about Zoran and I'm really glad that there's a young person representing us who is actually making it to power. That is fantastic.

Adran (38:23)

And he's hot.

Aran (38:24)

He's hot.

D. Ran (38:26)

Okay. As our resident reporter from the streets.

Aran (38:30)

He's up.

Adran (38:31)

He's up.

D. Ran (38:34)

So energy wise, awesome. Policy wise. He is just super unabashedly socialist in some of his policies. I am concerned about some of these things, although I don't feel deeply knowledgeable enough. Maybe you can talk more about rent control. Atroc. There's one piece of his platform that is really concerning to me and the one that I have seen no good argument for. One of the proposals he has is he's going to start a network of city owned grocery stores. The pitch being we are going to have grocery stores in the city, run by the city, that's funded by the city and their whole goal is to gonna be just keep prices as low as possible. And that way the grocery stores can't price gouge you. Groceries are too expensive. So we're gonna come in and offer an alternative. That sounds great on paper. In practice, this seems unbelievably dumb to me. Grocery stores are legendarily low margin. They do not make much money. The price of food is not coming from grand grocery stores. They make like a 1.5% margin. The profit, if at all, comes from the inputs and the farmers creating produce and the processing plants. If you think about food, it's three steps to oversimplify it's the creation of food and farms, livestock, everything. The companies like Tyson, who process food and then the stores that are selling it. The stores that sell food are incredibly low margin because there is so much competition that they cannot sell it for a lot of. On top of that, in New York, specifically in the areas he's talking about, you have these bodegas which are these like corner stores basically that are small businesses. You don't have Walmart running corner stores in most parts of New York City. If you walk around like I did a couple weeks ago in Brooklyn, like you don't see these giant grocery stores. These are small individual owned businesses. So the premise that the city should come in to lower pricing and that will help grocery stores, I think is such a deep misunderstanding of why the price of food is what it is doesn't address the root problem. All it will do at best, if it succeeds in having low prices is basically push out the people who are like often immigrants running small businesses in local communities who then would have to compete against subsidized government food in some of these businesses. That doesn't make sense. And then on top of that, this idea that the government would come in and efficiently run a grocery store when the government is legendarily bad at running anything efficiently, and that's what the book Abundance largely talks about. It's not what a lot of people think it is. The core point of abundance is a lot of well intentioned regulation by government has stopped government from actually getting outcomes that are effective. So likely what would happen is you have a DMV style inefficiency running a corner store that is basically funded by the government that is as expensive or more expensive than everybody else, or at least best pushes out a bunch of small businesses. This is not where the cost of food is coming from. This is the wrong problem to tackle entirely. And it makes me concerned that if this is what he thinks about grocery stores, that his other policies like rent control might be as uninformed as this. To quickly counter and just give him a bit of credit here. What I've seen him talk about is that he really wants to focus on outcomes instead of process for government. He acknowledges he thinks this could be a quick experiment and he's willing to adjust and change his opinion. I really like his mindset around that. I love the idea that he might come in and make a point to say, we're not gonna run this like the dmv. We're gonna make something run really run well and run efficient. And maybe this could Be a test case for him to say, look, we as the government can actually get things done for people in an efficient way. This just feels like one of the worst things to tackle and to me makes me very concerned for him because it implies a deep misunderstanding of why things cost what they do.

Adran (42:13)

Yeah, you rip if you have a response to that. I have two points.

D. Ran (42:17)

I'm wishing him the best. I know that there's probably some hardcore socialists in chat who don't want to hear anything negative about this guy, but this is, I think, of all his. There's criticisms of all his policies and this is the one that to me is like, this is concerning. This implies a lack of fundamental understanding of things.

Aran (42:36)

Okay, I'll jump in. Here's the thing. I think there's two big seismic tectonic plates that are moving in society. One of them is ever increasing wealth inequality, right. That we. It's just, it's trickling up. And another one is the rise of social media, which disintermediates the ability of money to control gatekeepers like big news shows or newspapers and like get the message out. So those two things combined, I think to create someone like Mamdani who's preaching an anti inequality message and can go around traditional gatekeepers to get. And that is a. And this, by the way, this same pressures, I think created the Tea Party into Trump. And I think these things are, these are creating populist movements all around that allow people like Trump and people like Mandani to get around the system. And the main reason is the, the traditional centrist like, let's figure this thing out. Pragmatic system is failing. It's failing because it's been captured by, I guess, moneyed interests. So like with mom. Donnie, I just want to say I think I have a very similar message to you actually, which is I'm skeptical of things like a citywide rent freeze or state run grocery stores. Not because I don't think the intention is great, but because I've looked at other. Like, you know, Berlin, for example, got a progressive mayor in 2019 and they did a rent freeze and it ended up being really disastrous. It ended up causing rents outside of the rent control to spike. Supply plummeted. They had to take it back. And in fact, when they took it back, they had to. I don't know if they had to do this, but they ended doing this where the landlords could retroactively charge for the rent they would have gotten, which led to a huge. I mean, it was disastrous, right? They're Going through this whole pain from this. So I, I can see, you know, what basic economics would tell you is that things like this generally don't work. And by the way, state run grocery stores have been tried. A Florida city tried it and it ended up being huge cost overruns for the city. They couldn't run it efficiently. It didn't work that well. So in general, I'm skeptical of those small plans. But, but if he is a decent human being, which is like the baseline that I'm looking for in a candidate, like, if I would have in this election, I would have voted for him because Cuomo is being accused of sexual misconduct by 12, 16 women. Eric Adams is insane. You know what I'm saying?

D. Ran (44:53)

Like, it's the polar opposite of like, yeah, like old guard versus like new authentic people.

Aran (45:00)

And, and the main point.

Adran (45:01)

I know I'll see you guys.

Aran (45:05)

I'm registered in New York. So of course, like, I'm happy for him and excited and I would have voted for him if I was in New York. So I want to get that across. There's a few things that aren't perfect for me and I'm skeptical. But like, I think in America, step one right now is to get more candidates who are, as you mentioned, this was my main point. So you kind of, you said before me, is just young. Like, we, I think we can all collectively see that almost all the wealth in America has now trickled up into boomers in asset prices, stocks and houses. That everything in society has been built to keep those things propped up. And it's all trickled up into that. And if we don't find a way to get that out of their hands, into most other people's hands, these problems are, problems with this, this rise of populism will continue. It's unavoidable. People are, are desperate. They are looking for a different solution. And you can no longer control the media to keep them out. So, yeah, I'm overall excited. I like a decent human being who is not captured by corporate interests. Now, that being said, you know, New York has a history of plenty of mayors promising big change. De Blasio in 2017 ran on A Tale of Two Cities, which is like, we have one city for the elites and one city for regular people. And we need to have economic equality and nothing changed, right?

Adran (46:23)

Do you guys remember when Rudy Giuliani said he'd take a time machine to stop 911?

Aran (46:28)

That was our last goat.

Adran (46:30)

He just didn't do it.

Aran (46:33)

Why didn't he do that? Why? Rudy why did you go back in time and stop 9 11?

Adran (46:38)

But the candidates promise a lot.

Aran (46:40)

And dude, what a world. If we lived in in 2001 and the mayor of New York personally stopped.

Adran (46:45)

In terror, it was Mark Wahlberg.

Aran (46:50)

So my point is that, like, I don't even remember what race it was, but I've looked into global mayoral elections before, and generally mayors don't have that much power to change things. It's very limited. And they end up doing a lot of like, what I call photo op politics, where they have one little pet project, they do a photo op with it. Most of the city stays the same, and they use it as a platform to run for something greater. Zoran seems like a good guy. If that's the outcome, that's fine. But I'm skeptical that New York is going to dramatically change. So that's my nuanced opinion. Still excited. He's the guy I wanted to win of this group. But I don't know if you want.

Adran (47:26)

To jump in, so I, maybe I'll, I'll start with what you just said there. I'm similarly skeptical at the power that he has from a mayoral position to dictate a lot of the change that he wants to. Right. Because as the mayor of a city, you're overseeing a budget that has to be balanced. You don't have the same tools that the federal government has. Your ability to spend and raise taxes is very different from your ability to do that at the state level and the federal level. It's not that I don't believe he means what he says or that he has good intentions. I also would have voted for this guy, but I'm skeptically hopeful of his ability to create the changes he's looking for. And I hope in his position, because I'm not very familiar with city level politics, that he's able to affect the change that he's looking for, at least with a lot of these things. But with what Doug said on the food front, I don't know a lot about this specific policy or how he wanted to employ it or how he says it would work. So I'll go off of your explanation of it. Right, Sure.

D. Ran (48:31)

I can even maybe find. He made a little video about it, so maybe I can find that and pull it up, but go ahead.

Adran (48:34)

I do agree that it seems, it seems a little silly in a general sense. Margins in the grocery business are low. The way you make your profit in something like selling groceries has a lot to do with volume. So if you're only opening you know, stores across New York City, your ability to price things competitively with those private stores, I think is actually going to be really difficult even if you're pricing them to not make a profit. Because, you know, stores that might be in New York are using their ability of their volume outside of just that city to price things at what they are, from my understanding. But one thing that I know about New York and you mentioned the bodegas, is a lot of areas of New York City that are poor often only have these bodegas as their means of grocery shopping, basically, and whatever is available in them. And a lot of bodegas, since they're small or in these areas, don't have a lot of maybe, maybe like healthier or like fresher foods. And they're in areas that people call food deserts. And it's an issue in New York City that a lot of poor areas don't have access to good, healthy food because of that. And I would hope through maybe a program like this, you're creating equal opportunity for everybody to have, you know, fresh fruits and vegetables in the, in an aisle of a grocery store that's accessible to everybody in the city, no matter where you live. Maybe that's a part of what this policy is trying to achieve. I don't think that pushing, you know, creating competing businesses with something that might be owned by a family or a small business in these areas that in this pushes them out, I don't think that's a good consequence. So that's something that's going to happen. I hope that he reconciles that somehow. But the food desert thing is one thing I wanted to point out.

D. Ran (50:33)

Yeah, that makes sense.

Adran (50:34)

On the topic of the abundance stuff that you talked about, I do kind of agree, but a lot of that book, and I think it ties into the public housing stuff he's talked about as well or the rent control stuff he's talked about as well. The point of that book is largely not that the government is inherently inefficient at doing things. It's. The government has been very bad at creating the tools it needs to effectively tackle issues. So in the example of housing. Right. The, the. I think the most egregious example that it brings up is if you want to build the exact same apartment from a public perspective, it costs significantly more than if a private company built the exact same apartment. That should not be the case. The public housing should be able to be built at an affordable rate that is comparable to the private one, and it only costs more because of the abused rules and systems that we've created that forces it to be that way. And I think, you know, grocery stores might not be the best fit for this. I agree with that part. And he seems like a very genuine guy. And from the quotes of his peers that work with him, even people who don't necessarily think he'll be a good mayor, they speak to how genuine in his approach to issues he is, which I think is really, really good. Yeah.

Aran (51:58)

I mean, what I really am so desperate for is a pragmatist. Someone who maybe they have an ideal and they try it and if it's not working, they tweak it. Like, as long as they're not like.

D. Ran (52:07)

Yeah, he has explicitly said that, which makes me very hopeful because I'm like, even if I disagree with this grocery store thing, that's fine. Because he keeps saying repeatedly, like, let's try a thing, and then we adjust if it doesn't work.

Aran (52:17)

That's incredible.

D. Ran (52:17)

That's amazing. I love.

Aran (52:18)

That's incredible.

D. Ran (52:19)

So, yeah, I'm more than happy for him to be wrong on some of these things or right or I'm wrong or whatever. Like, if that's his attitude.

Aran (52:24)

The main thing is he's not corrupt. If you're not taking bribes.

Adran (52:27)

I know. Why is the bar so low on the other side? Dude, it's unreal. It is unreal.

Aran (52:34)

Yeah.

D. Ran (52:34)

He's also too. It's too old. Let us fucking run the country.

Aran (52:37)

Oh, he's too old. We need a 17 year old.

Adran (52:40)

Yes, sir.

Aran (52:42)

Zara Old Twitch. He'd be too old if people call him a boomer on Twitch, bro.

Adran (52:46)

I know they call him UNK1 1 specific.

D. Ran (52:51)

We don't need to watch it. But if you just. If you pull up Perry. So on his TikTok Zoran, and this is what I watch, talks about the grocery stores thing. So if you're just looking for specifically his words, it's like a minute long. You can listen to it here. And this is, again, one of the things he's done well is he's like very present on social media and that's how he's reached people. But yeah, good.

Adran (53:09)

The one thing I wanted to touch on or talk about was rent control, because he's talked about that a lot. Putting a cap on how much rent can go each year. And I am personally of the opinion that I don't think if you're tackling the problem of affordable housing in the long term, rent control across the board is not a good policy from my understanding of economics. Basically, however, when rent control got put on the ballot in California's most recent election, I voted for it. The reason that's the case is because in the short term, if you, if you do not have rent control, but you also don't change anything about your approach to building housing or changing zoning laws, then the housing issue is not solved either way. So I rather have rent control so that the existing people who have lived in the place that would be priced out of their homes have protection and can continue to be in their place. That doesn't mean it has, doesn't have any consequences still. But it's. If you're not going to take the other steps to address the issue of housing, then I may as well vote for this. That's my personal outlook on this. And I wanted to hear maybe just your guys's thought on that policy specifically. And maybe if we briefly explain why rent control isn't an effective means of.

Aran (54:37)

Solving housing for people, I'll jump in because I think it's not super popular, maybe even with our audience for me to say that I'm against rent control and especially because I want the same outcomes, which is affordable housing for lower income people. So I want the same thing. I just, I'm trying to think of like an easy example, but let me give you one. So I was at, I was at Magic Con this past weekend. Everyone was cracking packs, right? They were cracking card packs because they were all, they're pretty valuable. And Ari pulled a card that was worth like 900, which is crazy. I mean, it's insane. Okay, let's say you're at a convention like that, you crack a pack and you get a first edition Charizard worth a hundred thousand dollars. And then Tendo goes, you know, we really want everyone to be able to play with Charizard card. So you can only sell that card for $10. You just can't, you can't sell for more than that. We want everyone to be able to afford it. Yeah, you can't afford your charizard, but you know that there's so much, everyone around you is willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars for this. They will pay for it. That creates a very strange incentive where you are incentivized to find a way to black market deal this chart to find some way around. Just because even if you're the good guy, like, you know, I'll give it to you for $10. That person is going to find a way to resell like they're going to. People are going to try to get the Actual value of the card. If you have not changed the supply situation on the ground for the amount of houses there are, with the amount of demand there is and you try to tell people they can charge less than what the market rate offers, there's going to create a lot of perverted, distorted incentives. Or people will do things like take their houses off the market, try to sell the land for development somewhere else which reduces overall supply. People will landlords try to burn the place down for the insurance money because they, they can get more money from that than they can from the, the rent. New construction stops because people are worried about further rent control rules that prevent them from penciling out how much they will be able to make from a building so they don't know what to take the big risk to build it. Like a lot of bad incentives are created. Plus you get things like people needing to have friends in the city or in council to find a way to get into one of these rent control apartments. Or you have people who have small families in big four or five bedroom apartments that don't downsize or move, they stay in them their entire lives and stick in it. So you get all these misallocations or someone who gets a new job elsewhere in the city but can't move because they're stuck in a rent controlled apartment and they, they can't afford to move somewhere else, they're stuck there and they, they lose opportunities. There's all these weird knock on effects that happen when you try to distort price and like that. So obviously the real solution in almost every case is to just build more houses to just increase the supply. Now I am less excited about the government doing all the building but still as we've talked about before, I'm way more excited about that than the alternative of just no more increased housing. Like if that's. And I think he has mentioned that like he's supporting 200,000 new years or something. That's awesome. I think that's great. And I think anything that gets more supply, I think in the real world, you know, I've lived in a rent controlled apartment where the landlord was horrendous, we had black mold in there and he has no incentive to listen to me or change because I'm at a below market rate and I can't leave, I'm a captured tenant. The real, the real world great situation is when you can say you, when a guy's like I'm going to raise your rent and you're go, I'll go down the street they have better deals.

Adran (57:48)

Yeah.

Aran (57:48)

If you have somewhere else you can go, that is a better deal. If there's actual competition, that is the great situation. That's what you want for almost all markets is the ability of the consumer to be like, you want to overcharge me for this, I'll go down the street, I'll go somewhere else. So any government that is trying to create that I think is on the right track, I think that's the best way. I totally get what you're saying. Nobody wants someone who's lived in a house for a long time in the neighborhood, in the character to be thrown out on the street or kicked out because of rising rents. I just, I'm skeptical because I've seen it and looked into it and really studied it. For a lot of cities that have had the same, like, oh, it's obvious, just freeze rents. Yeah, it's. It's what I've been calling. Do you guys know the Rizzler?

D. Ran (58:26)

The. The kid.

Aran (58:27)

The kid that does this.

D. Ran (58:28)

Yeah.

Aran (58:28)

He was on Connor Eats Pants's Fortnite Friday and he said, this is my campaign for running for president. I'm gonna make rent $42 and everything's free or whatever, you know, like, I'm calling it Rizzler nomics. I feel like there's a rise of like two big groups. One of them is blame everything on immigrants, and one of them is Rizzler nomics that just tell you how everything's possible, it's all free, we don't have to. And so I. I'm worried about both. Right. I'm more worried about the ones that's like, everything's immigrants problem.

Adran (58:56)

Yeah.

Aran (58:56)

But I'm also skeptical because history has a lot of examples of Rizzlernomics not working out. Ending up being problematic down the road.

Adran (59:03)

Yeah.

Aran (59:03)

I'm just giving my high level opinion. I still want to say, overall, super happy with this guy. Glad he's winning. Think it's great as a broader trend of America being like, let's finally try, you know, a more progressive. Let's try someone who's going to raise taxes on the rich. Let's try someone who's going to. That's been so verboten, like totally not allowed in American politics for a while. So I think it's good. I just. On a few details, I have some quibbles.

Adran (59:27)

I think the thing I'm hoping for out of him on the side of, you know, I'm not particularly excited about Ren Control for the reasons that you outlined, but I am excited about his desire to create a ton of public housing units and also incentivize building in New York from the private sector and changing city level zoning, something you can do from a mayoral position. These all seem like things he can have a conceivable impact on.

Aran (59:56)

Yeah.

Adran (59:56)

And that feels really good. Those are the parts of the housing policy that I think should be most emphasized. And I think people get the rent control usually comes first bullet and is the thing that people latch onto because I think it's very easy to understand and it sounds really good. And it's like I said, I voted for that policy in Los Angeles for the reasons that I described. But I think the economic reality of it is if you're trying to solve the underlying problem of housing, it doesn't work and you need a bunch of other policy following following it or. Or in its place to actually address the problem which is giving. Yeah.

Aran (60:37)

Providing also one more of his policies that, you know, you might not think I support, but I do. I did some research was he has a plan for I believe, free city buses in all of New York. And that might sound like rizzler nomics or whatever, but actually it's not that expensive. It really is not a huge chunk of the budget. Other cities have tried it. It generally increases ridership. There are some downsides where, you know, when it's totally free, you. It becomes a total cost center for the city instead of like net even. And so generally the quality of the buses sometimes degrade. Like some cities have done it wrong and it becomes a cost center. And so so but overall many cities have tried this to decent success where the ridership goes up, more people use it. It's good at reducing some congestion in some areas.

Adran (61:21)

Like this is one policy he pushed forward or managed to test for a while already. I think it was in 2023 he made five different. He made like one major bus route in each of the five boroughs free and ridership went up that year. I think the MTA had some disputes of it created confusion of are all the routes free and fair evasion on other routes or something. But overall a successful policy. And then I think he ran into. He was not able to get it past the pilot year though. But it's a policy that Cuomo ended up embracing and inserting into his platform apparently, which I, I thought was interesting. I. Yeah, I think that sounds really cool.

Aran (62:01)

Yeah, I think it's cool and certainly worth trying. Right.

D. Ran (62:04)

So you know what else is interesting that he said in his platform? No, this is this one's going to land. This is a good transition.

Adran (62:11)

I'm ready. I'm scared.

D. Ran (62:12)

One of the iconic things that came out of Zoran's campaign is that when for some reason, they were asking every mayor of every mayoral candidate of New York City what. What country they would visit first when they became mayor, and every single one of them jerked off about how they would go to Israel, and then he was like, I would stay in New York and help people.

Aran (62:34)

Is that real? That. That.

D. Ran (62:35)

Yes, yes. It's wild.

Aran (62:37)

I do know that. Like, sorry, no, that's it. I knew that by the end of the campaign, they were like, it was getting so wild with just national politics. Like, all the questions are about, what do you think about the war, Israel and Iran? What do you think? It's like, this guy's the mayor of New York.

Adran (62:50)

I kind of get it in the sense that there are. My base understanding is that there's a lot of Jewish people in New York and it is the mo. It is the largest Jewish population in the world in a city outside of Tel Aviv. That's what.

Aran (63:07)

It's a big city that would.

Adran (63:08)

So. So there. And because there's. Israel is involved in so many conflicts right now, this issue becomes so pressing, particularly since October 7th, and. But I was. I was kind of frustrated by it. I'm also not in this election. Right. I don't live in New York. I'm not voting for this guy.

Aran (63:30)

I.

Adran (63:30)

But the idea that we're asking mayoral candidates about their position on Israel, Palestine, it's like, I. Maybe I care from a moral perspective of, oh, how do they feel about this issue? But it's, what are we doing? Like, you want these people who have next to no ability to affect foreign policy to weigh in on this. It feels.

Aran (63:54)

So you might as well ask your.

Adran (63:56)

Feels super performative. Yeah. And not on the candidates, but part. I mean, more on the interview. Interviewer and questioner's part is I'm like, I don't want to hear about that. I want to hear about how he's going to fix housing.

Aran (64:09)

Yeah, no, I totally agree. And I actually would go one step farther. And I think it's very deliberately designed to be a hot button social issue divider to make this guy more or less appealing to different groups in New York, despite his inability to have any impact on this actual issue.

Adran (64:27)

Yeah. I mean, you might as well ask your student body president his. I think they are wielding his position, like, politically or the political organizations he's been involved in when he was Younger as. Or his statements about Israel, Palestine as a Muslim person. Because he's going to be, if he gets elected, he's going to be the first Muslim mayor of New York. Right. And trying to. I'm trying to set him up as an anti Semite, basically. No, they didn't use that as a. As a campaign point, which, I mean, I guess failed. Right.

Aran (64:59)

Yeah, it didn't work. But you see the photo where they try to make him look like Jafar, like they, they like darkened his face and.

Adran (65:05)

Yeah. They Photoshop.

Aran (65:06)

Yeah. It was crazy. I mean, there's some. There's some underhanded shit.

D. Ran (65:10)

Let me see if I can do this. You know who else has taken photos? People in Iran.

Aran (65:14)

That's brilliant.

Adran (65:15)

That's God. He's. He does it again.

Aran (65:18)

Is he the goat?

Adran (65:19)

He does it again.

Aran (65:20)

Yeah. I mean, last week.

D. Ran (65:21)

Oh, you know, else goes to Israel. The people of Israel who just bombed.

Adran (65:26)

Iran, they think they're already there.

D. Ran (65:29)

Where the largest population of Israelis.

Adran (65:33)

I know. Okay. So I genuinely. I have the exact same thought that you're at.

Aran (65:37)

So much is happening every day.

Adran (65:38)

So much keeps happening. And it's really hard for me to keep ahead on this topic. And I kind of want to spend a short time on it only because it keeps, Keeps changing so quickly. And I kind of want to look at this like a few weeks from now. Yeah. And see how the dust is settled.

D. Ran (65:51)

Israel had just bombed Iran. The United States was not a part of it.

Adran (65:54)

Yeah.

D. Ran (65:55)

Over the weekend, the United States, while Aiden and I were in the midst of drinking and playing Mario Kart, were informed that the United States had bombed Iran, specifically bombed the underground nuclear facilities that Iran is currently building. Supposedly we destroyed them, although now there's conflicting. You know, some reports are coming out saying we didn't do that much damage. We only said that them back a few months. The White House came in and said, no, no, we did. This was a big, beautiful bomb. And then, since then, there was a ceasefire that was meant to be 12 hours, was immediately broken by both sides. There's a fun video of Trump talking about that. If we pull this up here. Yeah. No, so. So this is again, so United States gets involved. Trump, after firing bombs at Iran is like the. Now is the time for peace. And then neither side does peace. So he says this, you know, when.

Aran (66:43)

I say, okay, now you have 12 hours. You don't go out in the first hour, just drop everything you have on it. So I'm not happy with them. I'm not happy with Iran either. But I'm really unhappy if Israel is going out this morning because the one rocket that didn't land, that was shot, perhaps by mistake, that didn't land, I'm not happy about that. You know what we have? We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the fuck they're doing. Do you understand that? God.

D. Ran (67:15)

Ok, what a quote, dude. What a quote.

Aran (67:18)

It is so funny to me that Trump runs this whole campaign of like, all this stuff is easy. I'm going to solve all this in one day. Ukraine, Russia, one day. Middle east, one day. And then we're just watching in real time as he runs into, like, whether it's health care or U.S. russia or anything, he's like, this is complicated. These guys really hate each other. They don't know what the fuck they're doing.

D. Ran (67:43)

If they knew what the they were doing, it would be easy.

Adran (67:46)

I just didn't think they could dislike each other in that.

Aran (67:48)

Yeah, I thought this would be a one conversation deal and I'd rather I.

D. Ran (67:51)

Go in there, drop a few bombs and then. And then we're good. Right? I'd say peace loudly on Twitter.

Adran (67:56)

Well, so my understanding is, as of today, the ceasefire, beyond the initial break.

Aran (68:01)

Of the ceasefire, is tentatively holding.

D. Ran (68:04)

Is holding. Okay. That certainly won't change by tomorrow. This episode is out.

Aran (68:08)

I'm sure, you know, that's what I'm.

Adran (68:10)

Saying is I rather look back at this with a few weeks out. I think the main, the main frustrating thing is sort of what you were explaining just now is that any bullet point of what is going on right now is disputed. It's like, how much damage did it do? Why did we do it? Is the ceasefire going to hold up? Like, everything has a little addendum of we don't actually know yet. And it feels, and maybe this is my privilege in the information age, where I expect answers all the time right away of what happened. Right. And reporting on a global conflict is challenging, but I think that has been the difficult thing over the last few days, is trying to understand the issue and then seeing multiple parties dispute where the issue is actually at.

D. Ran (68:56)

I think we can leave it at that or not leave it at that, but, you know, that's the conclusion. We really don't know. In theory, the US government took action to destroy the nuclear program of, of, of Iran and maybe that worked and that's kind of it. And now it's just this weird hotbed and only the mayor of New York City can solve this.

Adran (69:16)

Thank God.

Aran (69:17)

We have to get them in. Okay. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, as you said, there's just huge, huge question marks. The, the big ones were, did they even have nuclear capabilities to begin with? Were they enriching it? Yes or no? If yes, did we destroy them with the USB 2 bunker buster boss or bunker buster ball fucking tongue twister? Yes or no? We don't know. There's different reports. I mean, there was a US early report, military report that was like, no, only send them back a few months, but then the White House disputed that. We don't know if that's true. If it was only a few months and their stated goal was to destroy it, does that mean there's going to be more conflict? Are they going to go back? The incentives are now for Iran to full speed ahead because they've seen what happens when they don't have a nuke. So it's, it, there's a lot of like decision trees based on yes or no. We don't know the truth of any of it. Everyone has different opinions based on, you know, which camp they're in and what sources they read. And the truth is going to matter a lot because that's going to end up whether this becomes a ever increasing conflict or if they can hold a ceasefire. And I don't have a deeper thing to say than that. It's, it's, it's wild. I will say that. Like the thing I've been refreshing every single day, just constantly googling and checking is what China's response is. I think it's like underrated how they are, you know, deeply intertwined with Iran and if they see a world where US and Israel truly want regime change to a new government that's not friendly to China and would control the Strait of Hormuz and not let oil get out to China, then they might have a deep incentive to get involved. They're strongly condemning the action. Like that's how this could escalate from, you know, bad situation in the Middle east to larger global conflict. But I, yeah, other than that, I just. The main things I've been saying is I really, really fucking. I don't have a lot of faith in Trump, but man, I really hope we don't progress to boots on the ground in Iran. That would be the, you know, we've had two examples of 20 year just quick save.

Adran (71:19)

That's not what he said on Twitch last night. He said, boots on the ground next week.

Aran (71:23)

That's what I'm, I said, I'm Strapping on my boots.

Adran (71:25)

And then he. And then he. You will not believe how much Raytheon's talking about he did it live.

Aran (71:32)

Live. But, dude, that's a couple crazy things I want to say is. Okay, I want to crash out for one second. This is a small problem in the grand scheme of the many things we have going on in America.

D. Ran (71:43)

Iran, Israel is a small problem.

Aran (71:45)

No, what I'm about to say. Oh, what I'm about to say is a small problem, but it is consistently annoying that week after week, I just see proof of someone in government pre buying an event in the stock market. Many representatives literally buying military stocks right before we bomb Iran is like, it's just so deeply demoralizing to me that we have open. It's not even like no one cares anymore. There's open insider trading every week. And it is starting to like, what's.

Adran (72:18)

The point of getting into politics if you can't do that?

Aran (72:20)

You can't make a get wet your beak a little bit.

Adran (72:22)

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. That's why I stand behind Eric, is that you can't let one man fall. If one man falls for corruption, the rest will start falling.

Aran (72:30)

Right. I want a world.

Adran (72:31)

And if I don't stand for Eric now, they'll come for Pelosi later, and.

Aran (72:35)

They'Ll come for that.

Adran (72:35)

God forbid.

Aran (72:36)

If we don't stand for our corrupt politicians, who's going to speak for the podcast host?

D. Ran (72:39)

Dude, first they came for my corrupt politicians, and I did not speak out.

Adran (72:43)

Yeah.

Aran (72:43)

Then they came for the better help ads we're going to be doing.

D. Ran (72:49)

Yeah.

Aran (72:50)

I don't know. I just find it frustrating and that. Yeah, it's.

Adran (72:55)

It is. I think there's just not the ability to focus on the issue. There's no one can maintain it in the political mind of people. It's not at the forefront of the list of things that people are experiencing. And then the people who have to affect the change are the people who benefit from the existing system the most. So they're not gonna be like, I should really start working on this.

Aran (73:17)

I'll get it right on your open Robinhood and buy. Yeah, there's no way to make it sexy enough to get a lot of people to care about it for a long time.

Adran (73:27)

It's crazy because if you ask normal people on the street, regardless of their political affiliation, if you should be able to buy stocks based off of government inside information, no one says, yeah. No, I've never met a guy who's like, yeah, I think this is. I.

D. Ran (73:45)

Yeah.

Aran (73:46)

So that sucks. And then was there anything else on this I want to say? I mean, that's, that's the main thing.

D. Ran (73:49)

Yeah. I mean, two quick points that are definitive that came out of this. There's an interesting thing fracture on the right as a result of this. So like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is somewhat respectfully to MTG stands out there. Bit of a lunatic, but she is like highly critical of a ton of.

Aran (74:04)

MTG stands in our audience. That's 60, 70% of our audience.

D. Ran (74:08)

Big Ben diagram between the Zoran stands and the MTG stands. She is like, was really openly critical of this. What's fun about Twitter now is I just get blasted with right wing people and I don't follow. But anyway, so I've been seeing a bunch of her tweets and, and she's super critical. It's basically, this is not what we voted for. We don't want war. A lot of people on the right saying like, this is, you know, Trump advocated say he's. He's the peacemaker, he's not going to get us into a war. And he just bombed another country in the Middle East. So that's one interesting element, is the right is pretty fractured over this. And also AOC is one of a number of Democrats saying that Trump bombing Iran is basically a constitutional violation and is one worthy of impeachment. Because as a reminder, we're supposed to have Congress declare when we're going to war with people. You're not supposed to have the president just go bomb whoever he wants. That's not how the country works.

Adran (74:59)

This is an actual question I the. So President, Commander in Chief, you're in charge of the military, you're able to like, make decisions the whole way down. Right. Is the idea here that because his action is basically equivalent to a formal declaration of war, which is something that Congress does have to do, he's breaking.

D. Ran (75:18)

That is aoc.

Aran (75:19)

Trump broke a rule, a government procedural rule.

D. Ran (75:23)

Yeah, I saw this.

Aran (75:24)

Oh, he's done for. This will get him.

D. Ran (75:27)

Which I like. Which is not sure what Congress's role is at this point, which is a good.

Aran (75:33)

Donnie T's run out of rope on this one.

D. Ran (75:36)

Yeah, so. So that's the interesting thing because we've had every previous Democratic president has authorized strikes on a bunch of Middle Eastern countries. Obama did it, Biden did it, Clinton did it. I believe Clinton did it. So. And then I saw a clip of literally Nancy Pelosi saying when asked explicitly by press, she's like, no, The President Obama does not need congressional approval to authorize the strikes. And I believe that was for Syria.

Adran (76:03)

So that's actually what I did think is like, for. For things like strikes. And I know this sounds. I don't. Functionally, I don't know if it should be like this. But from the perspective of precedent, haven't our presidents made decisions like this all the time? And it's the Iraq War, for example. Congress had to vote on us invading boots on the ground. You know, they may have voted for it for questionable, you know, reasons, but they voted for it at the time. And that's when we. That's when we did it. But as far as single strikes go, or strikes go in general, I'm not saying that this isn't wrong. It's more. This feels like it happens all the time.

D. Ran (76:47)

That's the question. So you have people like AOC saying this is an impeachable offense. You have people on the right and left going, come on, this is exactly what all the presidents have been doing. So I think it's a bigger question of, like, should presidents be allowed to do this?

Aran (76:59)

Should.

D. Ran (77:00)

My intuition is certainly no. Doesn't seem that chill, to be honest. That's super Democratic. But also, we did elect the president. I don't know, man. It's. Yeah. I can look into this more in a future episode.

Aran (77:10)

I have a link, Perry, I wonder if you could bring up, and I want to just walk through what I think sort of Trump is dealing with here. You mentioned this with the Marjorie Taylor Greene stuff, but this is proving to be remarkably unpopular. He is polling at January 6 levels following this Iran stuff because he ran on a policy of America first, no intervention. Let's stop focusing on the Middle East. Let's get everyone out. Let's just focus on it.

D. Ran (77:33)

That was one of his strongest differentiating points between other people was him saying, I'm the only president during my term.

Aran (77:38)

Dude.

Adran (77:39)

It's the reason Tulsi Gabbard has a job. It's the reason former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard has a job because of her anti war position that she, like, sold into the Republican establishment. And now she has the role. She does.

Aran (77:52)

Does bombing Iran. Yeah. So it's. Anyway, it's proving unpopular. And that's why I think if you walk through the actual step by step of what happened, you know, so Trump bombs Iran, says it's only. I think Vance comes out and says, we're not at war with Iran. We're only at war with their nuclear facilities. Okay, we're just going to do this and get out.

D. Ran (78:13)

That's so sick.

Aran (78:13)

Which is a crazy statement.

Adran (78:14)

That's so funny.

Aran (78:15)

But then right afterwards, Trump, Trump tweets, you know, it's not politically correct term, regime change, but. But it's the right thing to do. And so it's like, oh, is it not about nuclear facilities? Is about overall regime change in Iran. But then immediately backtracked and then immediately goes, this is over. Ceasefire. Because I think Trump, for his many faults, he's very good at reading the room of his base. That is his one. He's very like a. A political animal with the core people that keep him in power. And I think he was able to quickly intuit this was not overall popular. This is negative for the few, for the core chunk of the country that keeps him solid and in power. And so he is about faced on this. That's why he's like, he's yelling at Israel now. He's yelling at Iran, too, but also Israel. He's like, no war. We're out. Ceasefire. And I think he's just reading the room that this is not playing the way he might have thought it was. And I don't have the graph in front of me, but I saw a graph of American approval for each Middle east strike, major intervention over the past 20 years. And it was like, Afghanistan, 2003, 98% approval. Like, most Americans were like, fuck, yeah, let's go. Then it's like, I'm sorry, it was Iraq first, then Afghanistan. It's like, it's like 72. Then it was Syria and it's like, well, 54, barely. And now for this Iran stuff, it's like 28. Like, most Americans are just not. They don't want this. This is not what they. This is not an escalation they want to see. They've been down this road. They know it. No matter what you say on timelines and escalation, it just somehow ends up with more money and troops and time shoveled into an endless, Hey, I keep reusing this word, but quagmire. And so I don't know that that's. That's what I think people are broadly feeling across both spectrums of the political, political establishment in America. And I think he's reading that. Whether or not he can stick to that is a different question or whether he has a choice. Things could be out of his hand now. Once you bomb a country, they have different incentives now, and they, they might accelerate towards nuclear. Even if they weren't before, if they weren't really progressive like things are going to be different. You can't. It's a fog of war. We don't know what's going to happen.

D. Ran (80:20)

But anything else for you guys we can end on some slightly good news, kind of.

Adran (80:26)

Oh, I had a quick, a quick interesting thing. We talked about Buy Now Pay Later, AKA oh yeah, credit cards, AKA AKA loans. And recently FICO has announced that they're going to start including Buy Now Pay later data in their credit scores to finally take this into account. Because we've talked a lot about how right now you could just sign up for these things, not pay and have no impact on your credit credit score. So it's not clear if the other credit agencies are going to start, start incorporating this. But FICO did a bunch of data analysis on Buy Now Pay later payments like a year ago with a third party company that they published and now they're formally incorporating it into their scores. And I thought it was really funny. There was a quote from the someone who worked at fico. I think it might be the CEO, the person in charge of fico. And they had said this might help young people start building their credit history and boost their credit scores. That's a good thing. Which I thought was really funny because lenders, there's pressure from lenders on the other side. They want this data to understand that they shouldn't be loaning to people who can't pay them back. They want this to be accounted for on the negative end. And she's kind of trying to explain it away from the positive. But that was just a small update that I saw.

D. Ran (81:53)

I want to give a quick shout out to this guy on Twitter, Blaze, who said I finally paid off my Costco hot dog. And he love to see that in four easy installments of 37 cents.

Aran (82:05)

That's called building credit, folks.

D. Ran (82:07)

And this guy, if he hadn't paid off the Costco $1.50 hot dog, his credit score will now be hurt. So that's good. It's good that there's accountability for the small price.

Aran (82:18)

That's what I'm saying right now.

Adran (82:19)

We need, we need that. We need. You should be able to cheap Costco out of their hot dogs.

Aran (82:26)

Yeah, I don't have a. Just, you know, I didn't mean to play. Oh, I just want to say, like I think this story is really funny. It's just the inevitable result of over and over again Wall street trying to find some way to give dead people that can't afford to pay it. And eventually people aren't paying it back. And so we have to put the system back and reregulate back to exactly where, like, it's just a. It's just an endless cycle. I think businesses like Klarna and afterpay are essentially a scam on investors right now because they're not making money on these loans because a significant chunk of the people who take them out don't pay them back, but they're on their books. Am I wearing my EBITDA hat? You know, EBITDA is earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortization. It's a way people put on their balance statements to ignore some of the costs to pretend like their business is more profitable than it is. That's what these companies are doing. They're just ignoring the. The on payments and being like, wow, we are making a lot of money on these loans in theory, but it's not coming in. And they keep giving them like extensions and ways around it because they'll pay it back, but they're not paying it back. They don't have the money. You're giving them loans they can't afford. And this will catch up. This will catch up to the businesses either failing or it'll catch up to a bailout or this will catch up to the governments when they try to regulate and figure this out. But this is, this is a problem. It's same thing with student loans where we just finally started tracking credit scores for that. And people's credit scores are dropping by the millions all over the country right now who didn't pay their student loans.

Adran (83:56)

So someone's, someone's missing their hot dog payments and their student loans. It's bad. Okay, well, we had one more topic we wanted to go over discussing food dyes in the United States. Yeah. And some recent news around that.

D. Ran (84:13)

We got like five, six minutes. But I think this is mostly feel good. Have you been wondering what the hell Has Robert Kennedy Jr. Been doing? RFK Jr. He, you know, the kind of vaccine skeptic who got put into the Health and Human Services Secretary. Yeah.

Aran (84:26)

What's the guy been up to?

D. Ran (84:28)

Yeah, what's he been up to? A lot of, A lot of weird stuff. But one of the things that he posted this week, which I thought was interesting. We don't need audio on this, but we can pull up the video. His main thing is to try to get people healthy again. And his basically crusade is against what he perceives to be all these like artificial influences that are making people sick. One of the things he's been railing against is artificial food dyes, like food dyes that color food certain colors and make them look more appealing. So his quote in March was, the crisis that we have in mental health, in suicide, in add, in adhd. All these are linked particularly to dyes. All of them are linked in very, very strong studies to ADHD and to cancers. And he wants companies across the US to stop using these artificial dyes and replace them with natural dyes, like beet juice, for example, or turmeric, like it says there. And so this is less of, like a formal announcement, but this week, a bunch more of these of kind companies. You can actually see the video. General Mills, Kraft, some other huge ones like McCormick are removing. They have agreed after talking to him, to remove all artificial dyes from their foods over the next year or two. So this is cool because artificial dyes are made out of petroleum, and they're probably not very good for us. And so I looked into, like, I think there's a general sentiment that's been changing over the past few years that, like, food dyes are bad. Like red dye 40. Everybody talks about that.

Aran (85:42)

Like, you can take my yellow number five from my cold dead hands rfk.

Adran (85:47)

Or Doug, what are you, fucking European?

Aran (85:49)

I want a brightly colored palette of food in front of me. Different.

D. Ran (85:52)

You know, you're not interested unless it's bright and colorful.

Aran (85:55)

I eat Sour Patch Kids once a week at minimum, and I love how they look. And if they're. If they're grayish, I'll lose it.

D. Ran (86:04)

It's not about flavor. It's about. Look.

Aran (86:06)

No, I'm with you.

D. Ran (86:08)

All right, so let me give a quick, quick primer on what food dyes actually are and what this means. So they're made out of petroleum, which sounds really bad, but a lot of things are made up. Petroleum, basically, that's used as a base to make chemical compounds that then are used to make lots of other stuff, like other great foods like Styrofoam and plastic. And so there is no health benefit to these dyes. It is strictly to make things look more appealing. Basically, they make a chemical compound that reflects certain lights, and that way it looks really red or whatever. And so in 1960 in America, there was this act that basically said, okay, artificial food dyes are going to be allowed now. They have to be approved by the fda. If it shows a link to cancer or whatever else, we're going to remove it, but otherwise it's allowed. And so since that point, there's been essentially in, you know, what, 70 years ago, now 60, they were like, food dyes are chill, that's fine. And now over the past few decades, there's been more and more studies that starting to say this is maybe bad. A few of them have been straight up linked to cancer, and those were just removed. But a lot of them, there's been these studies, and I read several of them that are basically seeing, okay, are these food dyes in our foods causing hyperactivity in children? And, like, messing with kids who either have ADHD or giving them ADHD. So there's a big FDA study in 2011. They basically said for a small group of children who have adhd, it may affect them, but it's not causal. Like, we don't know for sure. Maybe it's something else. UK did the same thing in 2011. Exact same thing. There's a possible link between the consumption of artificial colors and increased hyperactivity. Whole bunch of other studies. In 2022, then the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, they did an overview of many different studies. Reading that, they said, these studies do support a relationship between food dye exposure and adverse behavioral outcomes in children, but we need to reevaluate it. We really don't know. So the TLDR of this is we don't know what these things are doing on paper. It's just a chemical compound that reflects light. We don't know why this might be causing kids to have ADHD or making kids with ADHD have more hyperactivity or potentially giving cancers. Like, it's not even clear why they would do this. And there's a whole lot of studies now that are sort of like, it seems like maybe there's a correlation, but we don't really know. And study after study after study after study shows the same thing.

Adran (88:23)

This isn't the same across the board. Right. These are for, like, different consequences for different food dyes or similar consequences between them.

D. Ran (88:29)

Yeah. So the common thread is that they keep testing with the dyes that were approved with this act, and those specific dyes in these foods show that some subset of kids do seem to be affected by it. But we don't know if it's the food dye. Exactly. Or other factors because there's so many factors at play. And so RFK Jr. Has basically come out strong out of the gate. And of as many crusades, this is one where he's like, food dyes are super bad. We need to ban it across the board. Even though technically we don't have definitive evidence. He is just saying we have definitive Evidence. I mean, we're not getting rid of.

Aran (89:00)

Much if you ban him. Right. It's just food is less brightly colored.

D. Ran (89:02)

Right?

Adran (89:03)

Yeah.

D. Ran (89:03)

So that's. That's kind of the thing. It's like the. Maybe the reason, like with a lot of what RFK Jr does, the reasoning behind what he does is often suspect. And in this case, he's saying we have definitive evidence of this. No, we don't.

Adran (89:16)

The problem is he says he has definitive evidence for a lot of things that might touch on how like WI fi or radio signals affect you or vaccines, and then comes to the conclusion.

D. Ran (89:27)

That we all agree with, but with a very faulty premise.

Adran (89:29)

Bill Gates with food dies.

Aran (89:32)

Yes, that's right.

Adran (89:33)

That we agree with. With food Dice.

Aran (89:35)

Talking to Bill. Microchips.

Adran (89:39)

This is a complicated thing that's. And like, personally, definitely out of my depth. Right. I. This is the way I look at this issue, my understanding of it, and I probably need to spend more time on it. A lot of these dyes or ingredients in food that he has talked about banning to help make the country a healthier, better place are already things that are banned in Europe or Australia or in Asia. A lot of these.

D. Ran (90:07)

A lot. I thought so. No, they're not. Some of them are. It's. It's generally they're more restricted on the quantity. So there's like a maximum amount that can be included, but, like they're allowed in the shoe in Canada, in China.

Adran (90:18)

Okay.

D. Ran (90:18)

Yeah.

Adran (90:19)

So my. My basic example that I would usually go to is like, when you try. Have you ever noticed when you try soda somewhere else, it tastes different than if you get the same soda at home or if you go to McDonald's somewhere else, it usually is better than McDonald's somewhere else.

Aran (90:34)

Dude, Burger King in. You love Burger King. Never, but so do I. Burger King in Copenhagen was like 10, 10 times better than Burger King here.

Adran (90:43)

Dude, Swiss McDonald's is insane. I don't know what. I don't know what's going on. I know a little about what's going.

Aran (90:49)

On, actually, but it was 10 times better. I'm not kidding.

Adran (90:51)

I think there's a base idea that his.

D. Ran (90:54)

What.

Adran (90:54)

What I more mean to say is that the general premise that we do not moderate English ingredients in food effectively in the United States is true.

D. Ran (91:04)

Yes. And it is less than other countries. Yes.

Adran (91:06)

And we should find a way to navigate those problems and have better food in the country. It's to have so many foreign friends visit, talk about how shit our food is. Especially friends that stay for a Long time. And then go to other countries and just go to random cafes or restaurants and be like, damn, this is just better. A lot of. A lot of the time I feel like that's the. In front of me noticeable gap I experience going to other places. Right. I think we should solve that problem. The problem is this is baked into RFK's kooky ride of. Of let's get rid of requirements on measles vaccines. It is packaged with a guy who has outlandish, disproportionately proven takes about things. And so when he comes up and in my position and talks about the effects of these things on people or children, it's not that I don't agree, but I am skeptical of what led him to believe that and the way he's going to enforce the policy.

D. Ran (92:11)

Yeah, it looks like there's been some measle outbreaks recently. So that's cool.

Adran (92:15)

This was so. I thought this was really interesting. This is my first friend. My, my friend who's a doctor. He studies infectious diseases particularly intensely and he's a very, you know, very well performing in his class in both. And not just like undergrad and stuff when we were together, but in medical school. He was top of his medical school class. He spends a bunch of his free time just. He thinks reading studies about infectious diseases is fun.

Aran (92:41)

Cool.

Adran (92:41)

And he. His number one concern going into the Trump presidency was RFK being charge of health in the country and the consequences of measles spreading to the masses. Again, he was like, I forget what the name of the number is, but there's a, there's a number to indicate the number of expected people that each infected person will spread the disease that they have. So with COVID that number number was pretty high. I think it was six. Like each person who gets Covid is on average expected to spread it to like six more people.

Aran (93:20)

Okay.

Adran (93:21)

And he said, and which is a lot like, Covid was pretty, pretty infectious. And he was like, measles is 18. And it's.

Aran (93:33)

You're kind of a party animal if you get measles. You have more friends. Covid people are losers.

Adran (93:39)

And I don't mean it's not to take away from the truth of what's here in that it would. I do if there's anything good out of the time that this guy gets to be in charge. Maybe our food is safer in this country. That's great. I would like to see that as someone who just worries about it and isn't super knowledgeable about it. But I worry about it comes packaged with a guy who talks about things like this about, you know, kids don't need to get their vaccines anymore. So I wonder what, you know, even you explaining the data. Right. He's. The data that you're looking into is a little more like we think there might be a connection. We don't really know. I'm not, you know, if it's just changing the color of food, I'm down to cut it. But this is very different from what RFK is saying definitively when he's explaining why this is important.

D. Ran (94:31)

Yep. It's so. It's strange. Overall, I think it's good. You know, I'm very like healthy food pilled because my mom growing up just like drilled that into us super insanely hard and our food sucked and didn't get any of the fun snacks that all the other kids got. But it's so, it's super important that fresh food and so you like me?

Adran (94:48)

You were. It sounds exactly like me.

D. Ran (94:50)

No, no cereals, like whole wheat bread. Like kids like hated coming over to our place because they would only get like cut up bell pepper and carrots and like no other snacks. I'd like go to friends houses to get goldfish and fruit by the foot.

Adran (95:03)

But doesn't it pay off? I like. I see a. No, I know it does. No, you. He doesn't have the good mind virus that, that I think we have, which is you go to the function and there's a veggie plate and I'm like, let me add it. Cheetos. No, I want the cucumber because that's genuinely what I want.

D. Ran (95:23)

It takes till you're like 23, but then vegetables are awesome.

Aran (95:26)

Yeah.

D. Ran (95:27)

Then it suddenly becomes great. So that's interesting. I think his broad push towards natural foods and he's pushing for this in like, let's say like encouraging people in like with food stamps for it to be more focused on healthy foods and not like pre processed stuff and sodas. Focusing on school lunches being like fresher foods. I think that's incredibly good.

Adran (95:47)

His school lunch stuff is so good from what I saw. Like that is. That's awesome. Also crazy that people shit on a Michelle Obama for trying to do that. Sort of.

D. Ran (95:56)

Yeah, that's why.

Adran (95:56)

But I, that's. That's the stuff. It's like, okay, there's like these lovely gems in this, in this pile that, that he's trying to push forward and I think that's, I think that's great.

D. Ran (96:07)

In the healthy food section. I think he is doing well. A little exaggerated, but I like the results I'm seeing. What's cool about this is there isn't even a law, so there is nothing that requires any of these. These are huge companies that are removing food dyes. This is not like an easy thing. And it's more expensive. Like, the reason you use artificial food dyes is because it's cheaper and they're more vibrant. So this is a straight up hit to their business. And you're talking about, like, General Mills is like Cheerios, Pillsbury, Haagen, Dazs, Yoplait. You have ketchup, Mac and cheese. Anyway, so there's like, this is a big deal. And he's just basically convincing the companies by meeting with the CEOs and being like, guys, just do this. It's gonna be healthier. And then. And then he's like, we will make you do it if you guys don't do it voluntarily. And so it's this interesting pressure campaign where he's like saying down the road, he'll regulate them if they don't voluntarily do it. But that's working. And then the more companies that do this, you know, the others will have to sort of fall in line. Because if you're the only one that's putting yellow dye number three into your whatever cereal, like, you're gonna look like an asshole.

Adran (97:04)

Maybe one thing that I kind of. That I kind of do like about.

D. Ran (97:07)

This, you know what the pressure can.

Aran (97:08)

I would like just law. Because, you know, the incentive now is for everyone else to pretend to do it or not do it, or in and out to make a big announcement and then down the road, sneak it back in a little bit. If it cuts margins. Like if you have to whack a mullet with an individual meeting with every CEO, then the second the spotlights off, they generally do what's best for their business, you know?

Adran (97:29)

Yeah, for sure. Legislation should follow. I think one cool thing about this from. From what I've seen is the idea of, like, healthy food and healthy living. Maybe over the past few decades, more of a, you know, hippie, hippie, liberal thing. Right. But it's sort of through the power of Joe Rogan maybe, and people in similar positions. I feel like this has been demanded by a way broader group of the political spectrum. The idea of, hey, let's just have healthy food. So I do like the idea that this is becoming broadly demanded by everybody and it creates this sort of change. People hopefully will expect the laws to change that, you know, because it's a hard thing to not get behind in that sense.

D. Ran (98:17)

The law will be a lot easier to pass if you don't have these companies lobbying against it because they're already agreeing.

Aran (98:22)

Yeah. If you get some board and. Yeah, I just think next step. Right.

Adran (98:25)

You guys always try to bring it back to lobbying. It's like, it's not that big of a deal. Can we just let people lobby?

D. Ran (98:30)

Can we give this one to Unk rfk? You know what? I'm liking this one. This is cool.

Adran (98:36)

Give this one. Yeah, I can. From what I know about it, I can give this one. If you. If you.

D. Ran (98:40)

There's certainly no nuance, and I didn't miss anything in my research.

Adran (98:43)

I was going to say, where's the lemon? Where's the lemon? If anybody works, you know, if somebody works at the fda. If somebody works in food safety. I'm really curious about more of how this works. One thing that changed my view of the FDA and my passive understanding of this is you remember how Nadeshot launched an energy drink? It was like 100 thieves. Juvie is nature's energy drink company. And we got a bunch of juvie at the office, like, years ago, and we drink it on the yard all the time. Because we used to make jokes. Because when Nadeshot announced it, he said it was my childhood dream to start an energy drink company, which is like, nature. It wasn't that.

Aran (99:22)

You don't know that.

Adran (99:22)

Maybe it was.

Aran (99:23)

You don't know. But Nade, I'm here for you, brother.

Adran (99:27)

But ultimately, cool that he did it, and a tasty product, and we got a bunch of free product, and we talked about it on the art all the time. So we find out, like, a year into drinking these that. That they're not FDA approved. And I was like, wait, how can you sell it? How can you sell it? Don't you have to FDA approve products to sell them in grocery stores and things like that? I thought that's how it works. That was just my. And that's not how it works. And then I was like, well, then what's the point of the FDA approval if you can just make some and go sell it at Albertsons? What, you know, what is the approval process for? Is it just to be this mark of safety that you're supposed to get if you're big enough? I don't actually understand that.

D. Ran (100:15)

They're crimping my vibe, dude. The fda, we're trying to party. You know, they keep rolling up to the house, they keep calling the cops on us.

Aran (100:22)

After this movement by rfk. I bet we can get some yellow dye number five. Fucking crazy cheap. They're going to make a lemon product that's just glowing. What a bunch of people just loaded up with dye the cancer lemon.

Adran (100:38)

If you eat this, if you don't have adhd, you will get it. We will get it.

D. Ran (100:42)

It's water and dye. No flavor.

Aran (100:45)

Water.

D. Ran (100:46)

That's our lemonade.

Aran (100:48)

Guaranteed attention deficit disorder. That's fire.

D. Ran (100:52)

It's water dye and Aderall.

Aran (100:55)

We just with Aderall to Bix. Guaranteed adhd. You will love it.

D. Ran (101:04)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching this episode.

Aran (101:06)

11, 8 stand.

D. Ran (101:07)

We've solved. I'm not sure. Did we solve ADHD? Did we solve lemonade?

Aran (101:11)

Gentlemen.

D. Ran (101:13)

Great stuff. I'm sure nothing horrible will happen in the next week. Also, we will probably be moving up our post date by one day. We're trying to resort schedule. So if we launch, if you see this a pop up next Wednesday rather than Thursday. That is why we're trying to launch on Wednesdays. Yeah.

Aran (101:28)

To get ahead of the bad news we create.

D. Ran (101:31)

Oh, that was why.

Adran (101:32)

So we're not. We're not so much to blame. All right.

D. Ran (101:36)

Not us.

Adran (101:36)

Thank you guys for watching.

Aran (101:37)

Thanks you guys for watching.