We Solved the Strait! | Ep. 058 Lemonade Stand 🍋

Summary

Lemonade Stand – "We Solved the Strait!" (Ep. 058)

Podcast by Aiden, Atrioc (Doug), and DougDoug | Vox Media Podcast Network | April 15, 2026

---

Episode Overview

In this wide-ranging, fast-paced episode, the Lemonade Stand crew takes on current global events with their characteristic mix of business insight, irreverent humor, and sharp analysis. The main themes include the ongoing Strait of Hormuz oil crisis, the surprising Hungarian election, DOJ action against the NFL’s streaming monopoly, and the dramatic California governor primary. Alongside deep dives into these issues, there’s signature banter, speculative “solutions” (including ever-more-ridiculous canal proposals), personal updates, and industry deep cuts—especially around AI infrastructure and economic policy.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Strait of Hormuz Crisis: Oil Blockades and Global Repercussions

[03:02] – [13:59]

• The Situation: Ongoing blockade drama in the Strait of Hormuz, where a "blockade of the blockade" has emerged. The US is preventing movement of Iranian oil, directly impacting China—the biggest importer.
• China’s Role: China is in a strong position with reserves but hasn’t drawn them down. Still, this hurts their manufacturing and energy sectors as other precursors (helium, fertilizer, natural gas) also get choked.
  • Doug: "37.8% of all things that go through Hormuz go to China." [06:09]
• Market Weirdness: Oil futures and real prices have diverged wildly, suggesting markets expect a quick resolution, which hasn't materialized.
  • Brennan: "The future price of a barrel of oil was about like 109 per barrel and the actual price per barrel if you needed the oil immediately was like 145." [10:24]
• Conspiracy Theories: Speculation that institutions (even governments) are propping up oil futures, gambling on a short crisis.
  • Doug: "There is... a growing... conspiracy theory... group of people have made massive short bets on the price of oil..." [11:36]
• Global Consequences: Widespread energy rationing, protests, and odd policies (e.g., Sri Lanka making Wednesdays a public holiday, Ghana cutting petroleum with ethanol).

2. Ridiculous Solutions to the Strait: “Just Build a Canal!”

[16:32] – [22:34]

• The Canal Brainstorming: Aiden proposes (with maps and dramatics) digging canals across the Middle East to bypass the Hormuz bottleneck—through Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, even north through Iran and Kazakhstan, or all the way to the Bering Sea, riffing increasingly absurdly.
  • Memorable quote:
    • Aiden: “So if we build a canal from the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea… Boats can go across.” [17:11]
    • Doug: "Imagine figuring that out when you finally get there... you got trillions boots on the ground in Iran. Build a canal. Oh yeah. [The Caspian Sea’s] just a big lake." [20:33]
• Point: Satirizing “big solution” energy with zero feasibility—ending with the idea of so many overlapping canals that “maybe no one knows how to enforce it.”

3. DOJ Opens Case Against NFL Streaming—Why Are Sports So Expensive?

[23:04] – [29:14]

• Problem: The NFL’s broadcast rights, meant to be regulated under cable TV antitrust exemptions, have spilled into streaming, making it wildly expensive for fans to follow all games.
  • "If you wanted to watch every single game of the NFL in the last season, it would cost you $1,000..." [23:22]
• DOJ Response: Under pressure from senators (not strict legalese), the DOJ is probing the NFL’s collective rights sales—a potential monopoly.
• Real-World Impact: Even NBA players (LeBron James) use illegal streams.
  • "When you see LeBron James on the sideline watching the game on Stream east, you know that there's a problem." [25:19]
• Consumer Anger & Political Fallout: People’s frustration on sports access is a legitimate issue and, right or wrong, an actionable political concern.

4. Hungary’s Dramatic Election: The Fall of Orban

[35:42] – [55:09]

• Backdrop: Viktor Orban, in power for 16 years, finally ousted by Peter Magyar. Orban was notorious for corruption, nepotism, media control, and pro-Russia stances.
  • Brennan: “Orban, for one, was incredibly corrupt… put friends and family members into huge positions of power.” [36:13]
• Scandals: Diverting funds, pardoning those involved in a public school sexual abuse cover-up, cozying with Russia for energy deals (despite resulting in above-market prices for consumers).
• Economic Meltdown: Orban’s manipulation of the central bank, relentless money-printing, and failed pro-natalist/”good on paper” policies led to the highest inflation in the EU (57% price rise since 2020, peaked at 25% in 2023).
• Magyar’s Win: Won just 54% of the vote but 69% of parliament due to gerrymandered rural districting—ironic, since those rules were Orban’s safeguard.
  • “By convincing enough people in these rural areas, he secured this giant majority in parliament…” [45:04]
• Implications: Optimism about possible anti-corruption measures; concerns the new leader shares much of Orban’s ideology but is less corrupt.
• European Union Impact: Hungary has been the EU’s most Russia-friendly and often blocks or slows key votes on Ukraine, sanctions, policy, and aid.

5. US Parallels & JD Vance Conspiracies

[55:09] – [58:31]

• Political Parallels: The Hungarian story is positioned as a warning and a glimmer of hope for US politics—right-wing populism eroded by economic underperformance, not just ideology.
• JD Vance as "Designated Loser": Doug’s theory that Vance, once seen as a Trump successor, is being assigned unwinnable missions to tarnish his standing:
  • "JD Vance is being given doomed missions because they no longer see him as a successor to Trump." [56:26]

6. California Governor Race Drama: An Unusually Open Field

[61:44] – [75:55]

• Importance of the Race: California’s size and influence make this consequential (fourth-biggest economy in the world, policy bellwether).
• Top-Two Primary System: Could see two Republicans advance to the general if the Democratic vote splits—possible now due to many viable Democrats and two strong Republican candidates.
• Candidates:
  • Republicans: Chad Bianco (sheriff, anti-crime/energy), Steve Hilton (ex-Fox, similar stance).
  • Democrats: Swirling chaos after the ouster of Eric Swalwell (sexual misconduct), Katie Porter (screaming at staff clips tank her campaign), Tom Steyer (billionaire, self-funding, left/progressive, emerging as frontrunner), Matt Mahan (San Jose mayor, tech favorite), plus others.
• Debate Scandal: USC cancelled a debate after their ranking criteria led to only white candidates being invited (the optics backfired).
• Notable Quotes:
  • "She got Ellen'd." (on Porter’s vibe switch resembling Ellen DeGeneres’ downfall) [68:06]
  • Aiden on Steyer: "He’s put 100 million of his own money and kind of using the… 'I can’t be corrupted because I have so much money'..." [70:33]

7. AI Industry: Usage, Pricing, and Scarcity

[79:28] – [87:43]

• Personal Updates: Aiden weans himself off ChatGPT except for Japanese language features due to lack of quality alternatives.
• AI Market Strain: All major AI companies are running into hard server and compute limits. Even at top subscription tiers ($200+/mo), users hit limits, due to high backend costs.
  • “Every single one people are using it more than it costs them. …The demand is certainly there for every token they can build.” [84:06]
• Possible Consumer Squeeze: Worry that current consumer-level AI tools (like Claude, ChatGPT) will inevitably become B2B-only or unaffordable for average users—users could be priced out as costs rise.
• Industry Joke: Doug on usage:
  • "We can cut it with ethanol to make it cheaper." [97:33] (callback to Ghana’s gasoline-ethanol blending)
• Market Analogy: Comparing the current moment to “MoviePass” (i.e., great for consumers, unsustainable for businesses).

8. Sam Altman (OpenAI) Fallout and Industry Shifts

[88:19] – [96:29]

• Ronan Farrow’s Article: Major exposé paints Sam Altman as habitually dishonest, shifting OpenAI from stated nonprofit ideals to for-profit priorities, diluting the AI safety focus.
  • Doug: "He has left people in his wake who thinks he acts dishonestly..."
• Physical Threats: Someone threw a Molotov cocktail at Altman's home shortly after the article’s publication.
• Public Sentiment: The tech world is increasingly critical of OpenAI’s direction and Altman’s pivoting—amidst consumer confusion over new product priorities and shifting business focus.

9. Miscellaneous & Personal Segments

Throughout, but esp. [76:43] – [78:46]

• Rice Cracker Drama: Aiden’s ongoing business adventure sourcing Chinese rice crackers gets complicated when his supplier leaves the company under mysterious circumstances.
  • "She found a severe and irreparable problem in the manufacturing…" [76:52]
• Show Loyalty/Updates: Aiden and Brennan share show updates, sponsorship deals (with dashcams, Claude voice mode, workwear, etc.), and Patreon plugs laden with in-jokes.

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Doug (on the canal proposal):
  • "Imagine figuring that out when you finally get there. You got trillions boots on the ground in Iran. Build a canal. Oh yeah." [20:33]
• Brennan (on streaming sports):
  • "It's a problem that is so common in the American sports watching experience… between [YouTube TV and League Pass], I was paying $190 a month… and I couldn't watch the fucking Lakers game." [25:29]
• Aiden (on Hungarian voting):
  • "By convincing enough people in these rural areas, he secured this giant majority in parliament under this win. So he actually only won 54% of the vote, but... 69% of the seats..." [45:04]
• Doug (on JD Vance’s luck):
  • "JD Vance is being given doomed missions because they no longer see him as a successor to Trump." [56:26]
• Aiden (on the AI market):
  • "I was the profitable one. I was, I was probably, you know, using $10 a month out of the 200." [82:38]
• Doug (MoviePass analogy):
  • "MoviePass is not a great business, but everyone uses it." [87:21]
• On Katie Porter’s viral moment (Brennan):
  • “She got Ellen’d.” [68:06]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Strait of Hormuz Explained: [03:00] – [13:59]
• Canal “Solutions” Riff: [16:32] – [22:34]
• NFL Streaming/DOJ Antitrust: [23:04] – [29:14]
• Hungarian Election Breakdown: [35:42] – [55:09]
• US/Trump/JD Vance Conspiracy: [55:09] – [58:31]
• California Governor Race: [61:44] – [75:55]
• AI Market/Consumer Crunch: [79:28] – [87:43]
• Sam Altman (OpenAI) Drama: [88:19] – [96:29]
• Misc. Updates/Rice Crackers: [76:43] – [78:46]

---

Final Notes & Tone

The episode is classic Lemonade Stand: brainy, irreverent, fast-moving, and packed with inside jokes and speculative tangents. The tone is conversational, sometimes sardonic, but underpinned by strong research and genuine political and economic awareness. Whether riffing on global geopolitics or California political drama, the trio blend humor and insight, making sense of a chaotic week in world events.

---

For additional context or fun, check out their Patreon for extended discussions on topics like Waymo and autonomous vehicles, or see their sponsors for a tongue-in-cheek slice of influencer life.

Transcript

[Aiden]

Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play.

[Brennan]

Red Bull gives you wings.

[Aiden]

Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer.

[Brennan]

Hey, yo.

[Doug]

Sorry to amp up the energy a little bit.

[Brennan]

You were sitting. We were waiting for you. We were sitting here in silence waiting for you to start and then you just.

[Doug]

And then you guys were.

[Brennan]

Don't act like you were. High energy. 30 seconds.

[Doug]

I've been like getting this stomp clown.

[Brennan]

We're waiting for you to start.

[Doug]

And now we're in the show. Welcome to Lemonade Stand where we fill your minds with knowledge. Okay, we have a lot to talk about today.

[Aiden]

We do have too much knowledge. In fact, you're gonna have to delete something in there.

[Brennan]

It's actually off the curve. There's too much knowledge to go over this episode. You may as well.

[Doug]

At the end of your life, you

[Brennan]

may as well close the video.

[Doug]

So you have Aiden talking about Sweden.

[Aiden]

Yeah. You can only have so much. Right.

[Brennan]

Look, we have of course an update with the Strait of Hormuze.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And the consequences of that. We have an update on the Hungarian election that just happened. Big news story right now. The doj.

[Aiden]

I don't know about that. Is that dramatic? Is that spicy to the viewers. Carve out how much of their grandma's like their memory with their grandma. Do they need to have none for that? After we get through with damn Hungary. Hungary's take it.

[Brennan]

Hungary is going to be the only thing you need to remember after this episode.

[Aiden]

You're not even going to remember the straight of Hormuz conversation.

[Brennan]

No, no. It's actually. You're going to. You're going to think, wow, the whole Iran thing. Not even anymore.

[Aiden]

Because Hungary.

[Brennan]

Because Hungary is just. It's top of the new block.

[Doug]

I think we will.

[Aiden]

Hungary has 9 million.

[Brennan]

Anyway, sorry, go ahead and zero.

[Doug]

But nobody lives in the straight, just so you know.

[Aiden]

Fair point.

[Brennan]

We were going to talk about the California governor race and the DOJ opening an. An. An investigation into the NFL. But I wanted to start. I feel like it's like. It's almost like the shutdown update, except I would say way more consequential almost. Yeah.

[Doug]

For the world.

[Brennan]

Yeah. And I wanted to just start with what you had to go over with Iran. Because I feel like every day I'm seeing changing headlines about what's going on.

[Doug]

Yeah, we're at, like, day 46 of this whole damn thing. The big, big new news is the blockade of the blockade. You guys hear about that? Yes, that we're blockading their blockade. And the big thing I'm trying to follow up on is, is anyone running this blockade? Because there's conflicting reports. Social media is filled with what you might call fake news. A lot of, like, fake. It's hard to. Oh, and, you know.

[Aiden]

Take it.

[Doug]

Take it.

[Aiden]

Yeah, no, Take it.

[Doug]

Why not? Who care? We're just doing a show.

[Brennan]

Okay, I'll take it.

[Doug]

Take it.

[Brennan]

Hello.

[Aiden]

Ask them about the straight of horror, moose.

[Doug]

So double blockade. And obviously the big fucking question. Sorry for singing and sorry for breaking the set.

[Aiden]

This has been.

[Doug]

But this is an important opener.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Doug]

Is, is China going to try to run the US Blockade? That is the big question. Because they are saying the blockade is dangerous for world order and a bad idea. And. And that US Will not be allowed to interfere in their affairs. And they're gonna fill up oil tankers at one of the Iranian ports and they're going to want to take it to China, which is in an oil deficit right now. Needs the. Needs the oil. All the Asian countries are needing it. And Trump has said that that can't happen. So this is the big question mark. So far, as far as I can tell, there hasn't been a ship that has specifically gone to the Iranian port and run the blockade yet. But we're only like 24 hours in. As far as I can tell, there are actual.

[Aiden]

Ships have turned around.

[Doug]

Ships. Ships have turned around and ships have also passed through. But the ships that have passed through, it is being said, did not go to an Iranian port first. Which is the clarification.

[Brennan]

Okay, so the US Is threatening any ship that is moving Iranian oil through the strait.

[Doug]

That is. That was the clarification. Trump's tweet was like, no ships at all. And then US CENTCOM came out and said, just to be clear, there's only Iranian ships from Iranian ports that we. And so far, as far as I can tell, none has passed. But it's a clear question mark because that is a major source of Chinese oil that was still flowing during all of this war. So far. This is the first time that would have been stopped. And we don't know what is going to happen to China is they've only put out a tacit statement so far saying this is a bad idea. No good Bad for international order. But they haven't said yet, like, we're going to send ships to escort. Yeah, I don't know if you have.

[Brennan]

China met with Spain and she said the world order is crumbling into disarray. Like direct quote. I, I did want to ask you about. So I was watching this video of somebody who lives in Vietnam right now.

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Brennan]

And they've been there for 16 years. He is an American immigrant to Vietnam and has a family there, lived there a long time. Talking about how this is affecting Vietnam, because they didn't have a strategic oil reserve in the country or a very large one before this started. And one of the things they note in the video is the size and the preparation of China going into a crisis like this. Right. Just at a base level, you could take something like the amount of electric cars that are there. Less people that need to get around are dependent on something like the price of oil going up, like the price of actual, like pet petrol going up. And also China in general has a huge stockpile for like, their reserves are much stronger than a lot of the other countries in Asia. Like Vietnam or the Philippines was one of the other countries that declared a state of emergency. But you, I think I heard you say something that even though China is in such a strong strategic position, you were trying to emphasize why this is such a big problem for them still, which I didn't fully understand.

[Doug]

Yeah, I'll break that down. So the largest importer from the Strait of Hormuz is and was China. 37.8% of all things that go through Hormuz go to China. And while they have this massive oil reserve, they have not yet chosen to deplete it. They have not yet chosen to drain

[Brennan]

the reserve, drain it or use any of it. Okay.

[Doug]

The reserve is, as far as I can tell, they may keep it secret, but they have not announced they're draining the reserve yet. And so that's a choice they're saving in their back pocket. They have stopped all diesel exports from China. So you can't send any oil out. It has to be used internally in the country. And they've made some gas rationing type choices. But my understanding, and this is a recent article from the FT called Fortress China showing some cracks. It's like there are other things than oil that are transmitted through that strait that are really like precursors to many manufacturing things. There's helium, there's obviously fertilizer for food. There's natural gas, which is used as energy in factories. There's all these things and they're all showing cracks, they're all causing problems. And most of them were able to transmit because of China's relationship with Iran. But this new blockade changes that. And it sort of set, I mean, you know, I think if there's, you know, it's a little hyperbolic but like this is the, this is a direct economic conflict between the US and China on this one. So something's going to have to give. They, it can't last that long before China is openly saying we're going to send ships and let us.

[Aiden]

This is ostensibly to punish Iran. Right. But the beneficiary of Iran being able to use the strait would be China. And so now they're the ones really getting fucked on top. Okay.

[Doug]

It's a weird thing because strategically if this wasn't going to China, it sort of, it makes more sense than Donald Trump. I don't think we should be in this war. But this is more sense than other plans because it before Iran was making more money than they were making before the war. Like the war started and there's a, the price of oil spiked and they're just shipping it out at a markup. And so this blockade kind of forces them to the negotiating table more and they have to. But the problem is most of it goes to China and China will not allow their economy to be cut off by like it's like, you know, right before Pearl Harbor, America cut off oil to Japan and then that's where they made the decision to, you know what I'm saying? Like these are the things that, that lead up to bigger conflicts. Like if you look at Pre World War I, it's all people cutting off supplies to each other. It's very similar to like the build up to things like that. So I don't know what happens. I will say you mentioned other countries. I wanted to go through a list here of like Australia has been a public announcement. If you can take the train or bus to work, you have to do so.

[Aiden]

You have to.

[Doug]

I guess I don't.

[Aiden]

Or like they're strongly pushing, strongly push.

[Doug]

I mean they're like arresting you. New Zealand has a new four level fuel alert system that is apparently going up. Ethiopia, Kenya, South Sudan and the Gulf states have prices up 40 to 120%. Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria are rationing electricity. They're now cutting petroleum with ethanol which like is degrades the quality of cars. But like you need it to, it can stretch it a little farther. Pakistan is taking all government vehicles off the road. Schools closed for two weeks. Egypt is closing shops, malls and restaurants. Slovenia is rationing fuel. And Luka Doncic is insured. So two bad things for Slovenia. Italy is restricting airports.

[Brennan]

Isn't. Sri Lanka has a. Didn't they declare every Wednesday a public holiday?

[Doug]

Yeah, they're doing. Yeah. There's some state of emergencies. Ireland is having mass protests on fuel prices. The UK it's hitting all over and this double blockade only amplifies. You know now nothing is getting through. Where I was before was a trickle. So you know, it's weird because one thing that's like confusing me is that if you were only to look at US stock markets you would not know there's a damn thing going on in this world at all. Like they have been remarkably stable. Remarkably like things like Deep Seek was more damaging to the US Stock market than a global oil catastrophe. Like this is just like trickling up and green but everywhere else is starting to everything else even in the United States at the lower end of like the K people are really mad about fuel prices. Like it's happening all over but it doesn't seem to be hitting that sector of the economy.

[Brennan]

Something I'd seen at the end of last week was the disparity between the cost per barrel of oil on the futures market versus the actual cost per barrel if you needed the barrel of oil right now. And then it's never disconnected as far as it is right now. Like if you, if you're. This is. Keep in mind this is something that was like around Thursday of last week. So I don't know how this updates by this is still true but the future price of a barrel of oil was about like 109 per barrel and the actual price per barrel if you needed the oil immediately was like 145. And this it represents some sort of weird misunderstanding of what the market perceives as the value of oil in the future even though the crisis continues to go on versus the actual value of getting the commodity right now that I don't really understand.

[Aiden]

Yeah the. I mean the layman guess also deeply understanding this would be. Everybody's assuming this is going to end in a week or two. Right. And that just keeps happening every week

[Brennan]

but the can keeps getting punted.

[Doug]

There's a. There's a big conspiracy. This is a conspiracy theory alert. I'm going to drop a conspiracy theory alert. But there is a big and growing and in some reputable areas being talked about conspiracy theory on this.

[Brennan]

Was it my conspiracy theory that I shared earlier?

[Doug]

You said that the street from News Is not real.

[Brennan]

I don't think they closed it at all. I think, I think they made it all. I think it's a giant false land.

[Doug]

There is. Yeah, yeah, it's not that one.

[Brennan]

Okay.

[Doug]

That one is in circles, I'm telling you. Mine, the conspiracy theory is because that disconnect happens when somebody or group of people have made massive short bets on the price of oil, basically saying that this will end and it keeps the price of the futures price of oil down. There is a theory that this was done by like a central, like a US Government, like a Treasury, like that is the person that has the, the financial resources to make such a massive consistent bet that pulls the futures price of oil down to make things seem okay, keep things all under wraps and hopefully in their mind it all ends. But if it doesn't end, it's such a catastrophic loss of money, the bet you've made for taxpayers, that it would be disastrous and whatever.

[Aiden]

So do we make money if the thing ends?

[Doug]

If it ends, I suppose maybe we do.

[Aiden]

Okay, so that's how we solve the deficit.

[Doug]

Yeah, we can solve the deficit.

[Aiden]

Okay, cool.

[Doug]

Again, this is all unconfirmed. I am not ascribing to this theory. I'm just saying I've heard it from more reputable sources as the weeks go on because the bets are so large and there is such a big disconnect between the digital price of oil and the physical price of oil.

[Brennan]

Okay, does this match up with what I, when I was looking into the, the spike in oil prices and the purpose of futures in general is futures actually do provide a stability to these types of markets by existing and they make sure that the price spikes aren't felt by people in these short bursts in the same way that they otherwise would like if the futures didn't exist. And that's the benefit of futures existing at all because they provide price stability and help people weather short term storms. But this is turning out to be a lot longer than people initially expected. So the financial reality of this is going to hit harder because. Or am I taking two very disconnected ideas?

[Doug]

No, I think what you're saying is correct. But think of it like almost like a poly market bet, right? Like if you were trying to make an election seem closer than it was and so you took a massive bet against the person winning in the bet. So it looks closer to 50, 50. Do you understand? If that ends up being true, you're fine. If not, what's happening right now is people are doing that. We don't know if it's a central bank or if it's a lot of people who just simply believe that this will end.

[Brennan]

Okay.

[Doug]

But there is a bet being made that's putting it closer than what it is now. And either that will become true and it's fine, or it will not become true. And this is a weird bet that's

[Aiden]

even more destruction than financial. Oh, my God.

[Doug]

So that's where we find. I mean, you know, I don't have to go incredibly deep on Iran war. Cause it gets covered every day.

[Aiden]

Two different things I want to propose. Well, first off is, I want to clarify with you just my understanding, because you have looked into this a lot more. So right now, the other Arab, you know, the other Gulf states like Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, uae, They're not able to transport resources, materials out of. Because of the Strait of Hormuz. And that is blockaded.

[Doug]

So Iran passed the first blockade. Which is Iran.

[Aiden]

Which is Iran.

[Doug]

But US Will allow them to blockade.

[Brennan]

Okay.

[Aiden]

Yeah, but they've allowed. So the US Is now blockading Iranian ships and saying everybody else can come in, but presumably they're not trying to get in anyways because of the Iranian blockade. Is that correct?

[Doug]

There's basically nobody who meets both crisis.

[Aiden]

That's what I'm saying.

[Brennan]

Right.

[Aiden]

It's like. It doesn't.

[Brennan]

Wait. Am I wrong? Isn't the. The one way you can get through right now.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

Is if you have. If I have a ship that is picking up oil in Saudi Arabia and I want to go through the strait. And I'd say it's like a Japanese ship or something, they pay the Iranian toll in yuan to move through the straits so that the Iranians don't. Don't shoot them.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And then they don't move Iranian oil. They're moving Saudi oil in this case. And they're fine. That's the limited case of who can go through right now. Or am I just. I'm making up.

[Doug]

I believe you're correct because ships have gone through along those criteria.

[Brennan]

Yeah.

[Doug]

However, Trump's tweet. Oh, sorry. Trump's tweet said anyone paying a toll to the Iranians, especially in Chinese Iran. Dang it.

[Aiden]

He got the tax loophole.

[Doug]

So, like, I mean, his tweet has been softened by US Military and like, what they're actually enforcing. But that is the big question mark because if you just look at what was written from both Iran and America, there is no. There's no way to get through there. You can't fit both criteria. A few ships have gone through So

[Aiden]

I have a proposal for you guys. Perry, can you pull this up? Oh, this is a. Oops.

[Doug]

Okay, you.

[Aiden]

This.

[Doug]

It's like Tokyo drifting.

[Aiden]

This is a map of the Middle East. So, obvious problem, right?

[Doug]

This is a giant.

[Brennan]

I actually thought your solution. It was like, what if it was the Middle east, but at a dutch angle, right Downhill.

[Aiden]

Wait, hold on.

[Doug]

What if we put the oil on the climb?

[Brennan]

What if we spilled all the ships out of the strait?

[Aiden]

The Middle East. The obvious problem. Straight ahead. Hormuz. Right here. However, we have a tool that we have used throughout human history to be able to get boats from one place to another that we previously couldn't. What is it?

[Doug]

Water?

[Aiden]

No, it's a canal. Right. If you build a canal. So if we build a canal from the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea, and they are our ally.

[Doug]

I see.

[Aiden]

Boats can go across.

[Doug]

Okay, this is the line.

[Brennan]

That should have been the line.

[Aiden]

We can just reconvert it. We just pour water into the line. Make the line.

[Brennan]

They already dug most of the hole for that, right?

[Doug]

Yes.

[Brennan]

So we could just. They're literally.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Okay, dude, imagine the line was. They faked the city, but they were really digging a canal the whole time.

[Aiden]

And they reveal it now and then

[Doug]

they're like, this is our strategic time

[Aiden]

reserve and we're using it.

[Doug]

Holy moly.

[Aiden]

Okay, even if we did this, what's the obvious problem even if we did this?

[Doug]

The cost. The astronomical cost. No, no, no, no. That's building Saudi Arabia across Saudi Arabia.

[Aiden]

Here are our allies in this desert anyways. Why are you freaking out?

[Brennan]

Shut up, dude. More. That doesn't make. That doesn't make any sense.

[Aiden]

We built the Golden Gate Bridge in three weeks. We can do it if we put our mind to it.

[Brennan]

You come in, you come with an idea, and you say, dream with me.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And you immediately drag it down.

[Doug]

I'm the paint. I'm the bean counter.

[Brennan]

Shouldn't have. It'll cost too much pennies to afford it. It's Saudi Arabia. I'm sure they can.

[Aiden]

They can afford it, dude.

[Brennan]

I'm sure they can do it.

[Doug]

They couldn't afford the lines. How they could afford the five times as long.

[Aiden]

To be fair. This would be cheaper than the line. It's easier to build a canal than a city.

[Doug]

So much longer.

[Aiden]

It's. It's not even. I mean, it looks pretty small on the map. The honest problem here, if you look at this, even if you had the money, is Djibouti. Djibouti could just do the same thing as Iran and block the Djibouti straight. And then we're in the same position. Right. So this doesn't make sense despite what you were saying.

[Doug]

You're talking about Djibouti at the bottom there.

[Aiden]

Yeah, Next to Eritrea in Africa.

[Doug]

Already happening with Yemen. Yemen's already do. They're already in that.

[Aiden]

Right. So this canal doesn't make.

[Doug]

So I'm not worried so much about Djibouti breaking.

[Aiden]

So where do we need to put the canal then? Okay, you go through Iraq, Kuwait, Syria and Lebanon to the Mediterranean Sea. Right. Because then sort of the safe zone. Once the boats are there, we're scot free. Okay. So also Kuwait, Iraq, we're on pretty good terms with them nowadays. Syria, the only problem here.

[Brennan]

Well then if things didn't do well, if like there was any sort of, you know, pushback from Iraq, we, we could simply send troops back in.

[Doug]

Yeah, super. Well, we bring back George Bush for one last ride. To get the canal built in Iraq.

[Aiden]

We need the Iraq. It's Kuwait, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon canal.

[Brennan]

But. And Lebanon's super.

[Aiden]

You called it out. That's the problem. Fine. Right now the problem. Lebanon, run by Hezbollah, who's an Iranian ally.

[Brennan]

That actually wasn't the problem.

[Aiden]

I was thinking of gonna close the canal. They're gon whole booth on the canal.

[Brennan]

I was thinking of a different problem in Lebanon.

[Doug]

Right now there is really no place you can put a canal, I think.

[Aiden]

Except gentlemen, there is one obvious solution. You go north through Iran to the Caspian Sea, right? We get boots on the ground, we start digging. We get. It'll go right next to Tehran, okay. And we get to the end. What is the single problem with that?

[Brennan]

The single problem?

[Doug]

The single problem.

[Aiden]

The single problem is that the Caspian Sea is not a sea. It's a big lake.

[Brennan]

It's a big lake.

[Aiden]

So that are both.

[Doug]

Imagine figuring that out when you finally get there. You got trillions boots on the ground in Iran. Build a canal. Oh yeah.

[Aiden]

Well, because the government likes to do weekly sprints. You just got to focus on the next leg of the canal.

[Doug]

Boat hits the sh. Oh, okay.

[Aiden]

Even if, if you actually did this and you got the canal, you got all our boats into the Caspian Sea, there is actually a way to get to the rest of the cities, right. If you look there on the map,

[Brennan]

through the Caspian Sea.

[Aiden]

Once you're in the Caspian Sea, we just need one more canal. You go east, ok. You go across Kazakhstan, across China, across all of Mongolia, across China again, across Russia and Then you're at the Sea of Japan. Your boats are scott bow free. Right. Because straight right when we're there. Okay. Now we can go up through the Bering Sea, we can go through the Northwest Passage down past Greenland and we go to New York City.

[Doug]

That's.

[Aiden]

But gentlemen, what's the last remaining problem? I Greenland could close the strait, which is why we do need to take Greenland. Donald Trump was right.

[Doug]

He 5D chess.

[Brennan]

I was, I'm thinking about this because at first I was like, if one country.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

Could influence a strait based on their geography, surely a canal through multiple countries presents the more the same problem at a larger scale. Okay, I was thinking about that, but I hadn't considered that once you go through so many countries, you actually create such a confusion that maybe no one knows, no one knows how to enforce it or take advantage of blame.

[Aiden]

And then let's check mate. Ron. So one thing here is ideally we could actually go down to Panama and create another canal alongside the first one Panama Canal, just to double it up. Yeah.

[Doug]

It's like adding another lane to traffic. It just makes it better.

[Aiden]

You add just one more canal.

[Brennan]

You know what the solution is? This is like if we revived Magellan and asked him what the solution was like, what do you think? What do you think the fastest way is to get.

[Doug]

This is the type of we could do as a society of every country, work together.

[Brennan]

Yes.

[Doug]

You know what I'm saying?

[Brennan]

We could build an even bigger canal.

[Doug]

Bigger canals that go every which way.

[Aiden]

Let's do a one time wealth tax and we'll fund.

[Doug]

This is a brilliant idea, Doug. I think you've really, you've got a unique insight.

[Brennan]

It's. He's cracked the code.

[Doug]

He's might have cracked the code.

[Aiden]

Why aren't they doing it?

[Brennan]

Okay, anyway, why don't we hop on over to maybe a smaller, lighter story. I wanted to hear about this DOJ case against the NFL.

[Doug]

Wait, well, let's do Hungary.

[Brennan]

You want to talk about Hungary now?

[Doug]

Are you trying to be. Trying to put a little light in there?

[Brennan]

I'm trying to add a little spice.

[Doug]

Well, then we get to that.

[Brennan]

We could talk about Hungary.

[Doug]

I mean, I do. It's pretty quick.

[Aiden]

Okay, Bind them both at one story.

[Doug]

All right. You're trying to get my stuff out of the way. Just fucking throw a truck out. Get another nothing at the end.

[Brennan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

Doj. So listen, you're an NFL viewer a little bit, a lot. Okay. I'm not really. But the complaint from NFL viewers and senators who get Complaints from their constituents about the NFL is that it has become more and more dispersed across different streaming platforms to the point where if you wanted to watch every single game of the NFL in the last season, it would cost you $1,000, which is higher than even the cable era. So it's like astronomically expensive, and people are getting upset about it. So the doj, despite not really doing much antitrust enforcement in this first year of Trump's term, has come out with a new lawsuit against the NFL, or I guess it's beginning the process of investigation in the NFL. And the idea is back in like the 70s, when the NFL was just getting off the ground, they were given an exemption to a collective bargaining thing where you're. The idea is that every NFL team should negotiate TV rights on their own. That's the idea that they're competing against each other and keeps the prices down, yada yada. But NFL was given an exemption that allowed them to all negotiate together and be a collective issue for the all NFL to negotiate as one TV rights package. And that made them a lot of money and it's been quite successful. But that only applied to traditional cable tv. It does not apply to streaming. And so they've been operating like it does. But now there's this question mark of like, hey, is what you're doing really allowed? Is it a. Is a monopoly thing?

[Brennan]

It's weird.

[Doug]

You're gouging people.

[Brennan]

I feel like it's. It's easy to watch, right? It's all in one place. Well, you just go to streaming.

[Doug]

You go to Stream East.

[Brennan]

You go to Stream east and it's all there. I mean, I don't know what they're, what they've been talking about YouTube.

[Aiden]

It's like this last season, you know, I paid for YouTube TV plus Fox, whatever it was. And it's like a cool hundred and ten dollars a month or something like that. It's crazy expensive and you can watch most of them, but it is wildly, obscenely expensive to get all this.

[Doug]

If you want to get everything right.

[Aiden]

Right. If you want to get like your local. Anything outside your local network.

[Doug]

For the NBA, it's been miserable. Like when you see LeBron James on the sideline watching the game on Stream east, you know that there's a problem. He's a billionaire and he's watching that happen. Yeah.

[Aiden]

Wow.

[Brennan]

It's just convenience, right? Like, I experience it more with the NBA as well. Where I, I bought, I think like YouTube TV and the NBA, like League Pass this year. And I Couldn't watch the Lakers game. And between these two things, I was paying the first time I've ever paid for sports my entire life. And I was paying $190 a month between these two platforms and I couldn't watch the fucking Lakers game. And I was like, what's happening? What is it? And I gave up. I canceled both. And I'm like, I know what I'm doing from here on.

[Doug]

I did that same story.

[Brennan]

So why in this specific case, why? I still don't quite understand their breaking. It sounds like with negotiating deals with streaming platforms, they were following the decorum or precedent of the law as it applied to cable packages up until recently. But then they started breaking the law to make. To broker more deals with more streaming platforms.

[Doug]

If you are trying to find the exact true legalese reason for this, you're going to be lost. Because the truth of the matter is it is mostly pressure from senators who are getting a lot of anger from constituents who have just found this to be horrible. This experience is horrible. There's not. It's really kind of a gray area. Technically, you know, in my mind it's not that crazy for the NFL, which is kind of operates as one org, to have their own negotiation for TV rights. But the way it is broken, basically what the DOJ seems to want is not to like dramatically upend the rules. They're just like, make it cheaper, like make it fine. They're kind of like trying to put pressure on.

[Aiden]

Yeah, like, because I'm not understanding, like the NFL, it's a company. Right. It's an entity.

[Doug]

Right.

[Aiden]

So how do you tell it that it has to break up into multiple.

[Doug]

That just seems the way it was prior to this. This ruling in the 70s is like each individual team technically owns their own rights for. For their games.

[Aiden]

So you're just preventing the teams from bundling together.

[Doug]

So they've been collectively bundling and negotiating as one entity, which technically is a monopoly and allows them to, you know, kind of gouge consumer. If they competed, they would probably drive the prices down. Teams would try to have a T for package and the other team to get more fans or whatever. That's the idea. But they can't. They don't have to do that. And they possibly should have to do that with streaming. But really DOJ is like just, just people are mad. Figure it out. It's kind of what it seems like. The vibe is not that they're like deeply concerned about the letter of the law and antitrust.

[Aiden]

It's one of Those things where it determines presidential popularity. Like gas. It's like, if gas prices go up, the population's happy. If football goes up, population is unhappy.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

Like, you just can't do that.

[Doug]

You're probably right. I think it's just like politicians being like, hey, look, football. Football needs to be like, this is

[Aiden]

gonna spark more change than housing.

[Doug]

I think you're right, dude.

[Brennan]

Yeah. I'm so torn because my initial reaction is people are fucking calling in about this. This of all the things. But I do think it does. It does matter. Like it's a consumer thing that the bulk of people enjoy in some facet or another. It's a problem that is so common in the American sports watching experience. Like, everybody talks about this and how much of a pain in the ass it is. And I think it's just like the most. One of the most common forms of entertainment. So naturally it's gonna bubble up to the top and be like an issue that's pressing enough for some people to bring up. And it's like, this is something that I want. I think government exists to address. I don't think it's high on the priority list. Of all the things that we have

[Doug]

to fix, I think this is number one.

[Brennan]

But I don't want to just like turn. Turn my cheek and be like, this is stupid, because I do think it's it. I think it's a tangible thing that makes people like, happy or sad. And in a weird way that has real cascading consequences for people.

[Doug]

I'm with you. I think people are, especially in crazy times, kind of turn towards escapism a little bit. I've turned towards basketball more this past year as like a complete outlet away from the news. And I've really enjoyed it. Until Luka got injured and then I was like a sad on both sides. And I really think for some people, the NFL is like that. And it sucks that it's like gotten exponentially. The prices are exponentially more expensive to keep.

[Brennan]

Atriok, the morning of, he's reading our NBA. He's like sees the LUCA headline. He's like, fuck it. God damn.

[Doug]

I was distracting myself with Iran war updates.

[Aiden]

Now Iran war is your.

[Brennan]

I hope we bomb the fucking straight away from close.

[Doug]

The fucking straight right is something.

[Brennan]

I think that's the real. The real reaction pipeline that I kind of see. It's like when we were talking about on the last bonus episode about the layers of financial or social discomfort that kind of mount on top of each other. And with something like this like if you're sitting at home and like inflation is forcing the price, like the prices of everything in your life is going up, it's harder to meet your like mortgage payment. Maybe you just got laid off. You finally get to the weekend, you want to watch your local team's baseball game and you open the YouTube TV app that you, you can like you're putting all of your free money into that costs $90 a month. And you can like barely keep this on as you canceled your other subscriptions. And then you can't watch the game without adding a $20 peacock add on and it's. And then you phone your representative because you're fucking pissed and your life sucks and you can't watch the fucking stupid game. Like I, I see that legitimate path of this being a form of entertainment or escapism that people want in their lives and it's immensely frustrating to access and it just builds off of everything else that is shitty right now.

[Doug]

Yeah. I do think from my reading is like they haven't really figured out what they want yet. The doj, like it's more of like just the anger and it's putting the pressure on opening the door. Be like, figure it out. We'll see. Yeah, I don't know what'll happen from this, but you know. Yeah, interesting. That's the update on that little thing. Support for Lemonade Stand comes from Samsara.

[Brennan]

I'm going to be honest, I'm looking at this ad script and I'm realizing that every company we work with uses me as the example of, of. Of to make fun of in the ad read. That's what I read here. They say that I could, could have made a mistake while driving maybe or allegedly made a mistake while driving, which I would never do. I'm a perfect driver and everybody knows that. And I wouldn't need. But if, and even though I'm perfect, I might want a dash cam that could protect me from, from, you know, accidents or accusations of things I didn't do.

[Doug]

You would want a dash cam that captures real time video that proves your drivers are not at fault.

[Brennan]

Even though.

[Aiden]

Because I've been hearing a lot of rumors that you keep driving your big rig truck into a express because they're out of orange chicken.

[Doug]

Right. And you honk the horn the whole time.

[Brennan]

I'm a great big rig driver and I, I prove that I'm so professional that I don't need to prove the

[Aiden]

Samsara AI dash cam capture real time video that proves when your drivers aren't at fault, protecting them from false claims and prioritizing their safety. It's more than a dash cam, it's complete system. Don't wait for the next accident by Aiden to take action. Head to samsara.com lemonade to request a free demo and see how Samsara brings visibility and safety to your operations. That's samsara.com lemonade samsara operate smarter Aiden.

[Brennan]

Unless you've never made a mistake like me.

[Aiden]

Support for Lemonade Stan comes from Anthropic because Claude is the AI for minds that Don't Stop it. Good enough. I look, probably if you're watching this show, you have a good sense of what Claude does. But I have a cool new use case that I was trying out this week that I actually love, which is that you can use Claude's voice mode on your phone. You can talk directly to it. It talks back to you. So what I did is I had this idea for a project and for like two hours I walked around outside enjoying nature, talking to Claude, going back and forth and making sure there was like, you know, poking holes in my ideas. Some of the time it actually had some good feedback, but it was back and forth and at the end of the conversation summarized everything we had said into a clear document with bullet points that I could then use to reference in the future. And it is like a measurable improvement in my life because instead of sitting at that computer for two hours doing all this, I got to walk outside with my cats. It was great.

[Doug]

That's awesome.

[Brennan]

It's weird because you could just talk to yourself and not remember any of it. That's what I do. That's what I do. And if we look between the two of us, between me and Doug, it's like one of us walks away with great projects that he puts together and displays to his fans. And one of us is Ludwig's friend, right? So it's like who comes out on top of that interaction?

[Aiden]

But you could tell Claude to pretend to be Ludwig. Are you ready to tackle bigger problems? Get started with Claude today at Claude Claude AI. That's Claude AI. And check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all of the features mentioned in today's episode. Claude AI.

[Brennan]

I'm realizing Doug is also Ludwig's friend.

[Doug]

He's got you beat on everything.

[Brennan]

I'm really not winning squad any front right now. I need to revisit this.

[Aiden]

Support for this show comes from true work. Working outside means you're at the mercy of the elements.

[Doug]

You guys aren't blue Collar like me.

[Aiden]

You're the least.

[Doug]

You guys don't get it done outside.

[Brennan]

You just told us an anecdote about how you book meeting time at Nvidia to play TFT

[Aiden]

at the work site.

[Doug]

Dude, I kind of get it done. I use my muscles, I use my back. I don't have my dainty little hands like you typing on a keyboard. Okay, I think for the percentage of our audience who's like me might enjoy true work clothing.

[Aiden]

True work's great if you work outdoor. If you do hard work. These pants have four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing. A water resistant finish to shed rain. Nine intelligent pockets to keep tools just where you need them.

[Doug]

He doesn't have any tools. But I do. I got plenty of tools so the work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pants. Stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 50 off your first order true work.com with code LEMONADE. That's T R U E w e r k.com work. Can you spell it?

[Brennan]

Aiden? It's true work built like it matters, because it does. You brought a shovel to the ring.

[Aiden]

Use code Lemonade.

[Brennan]

This is embarrassing.

[Doug]

I guess I was digging.

[Brennan]

Well, we could turn the page and go to Hungary because they just had an election for a new prime minister, a new party into. Into power. And I'll keep it real. Viktor Orvan, the former prime minister or the current prime minister until June. He's cool.

[Doug]

He's a chiller. He's like a chill. He's a viber.

[Brennan]

I wouldn't. I think Hungarians wouldn't call him a chiller.

[Aiden]

Oh. Because it's a different word in their language.

[Brennan]

That's the. Yeah. I mean, they would call him something else in their language.

[Aiden]

I'll give you that in Hungarian.

[Brennan]

And he's been in power for 16 years. And before I talk about this, I have researched this for about five hours. So there will undoubtedly be things that I don't explain fully or that I don't understand. But I'll try to break down why this is a really significant election and why you may have been reading a bunch of headlines about it. So Peter Magyar won the election over Orban, who has been in power for 16 years. There has been an enormous positive response, especially in like a city like Budapest. Finally, Orban being pushed out of power. And you know, why is this such a big deal? Like, why does this election matter so much? Orban, for one, was incredibly corrupt. Like, it is well understood that this guy put friends and Family members into huge positions of power.

[Doug]

So he's a chiller.

[Brennan]

Gigachip bro positions to make extraordinary amounts of money. Common example.

[Doug]

Sandler does it and he's the coolest actor of all time. Victor Orban does it. He's the corrupt leader ruining okay with his son.

[Aiden]

Like, come on here.

[Brennan]

Orban was doing a little more than getting his friends on grownups too. Like, like, for example, a famous friend of his was Lawrence Mazaros, a friend of his that after he came into power in 2010, became extraordinary wealthy in a short time after the election, in just five years, he doubled his wealth year over year, saw, I believe, 1,000% return on his wealth in a time period that Mark Zuckerberg and Musk's only went up by 600%. Becoming a multi billionaire, you should have

[Doug]

good investors in your circle.

[Brennan]

And this is a guy who was, this was a guy who was not wealthy prior to his friend getting into power. And then he suddenly became connected to construction banking, which you hate.

[Aiden]

The American dream.

[Doug]

He saw his friend succeed and had a grussle do it himself.

[Brennan]

Yeah, he was inspired. He was inspired. If I were to give him the benefit of the doubt, we could say he was very inspired. But there's been other examples of the corruption, other things with Orban and people connected to Orban. Diverting public funds to foundations, family estates, misusing European Union funds that have been sent to the country. Also another huge scandal that I was reading mostly before we started, the episode today was the COVID up of a sexual abuse scandal in a Hungarian public school where the director of the school had been abusing young boys for I think over a decade. And many, many children, victims to this person and the deputy director to the person that was committing the abuse helped cover up these crimes as well. And both of these people got sentenced to prison. The abuser incredibly sentenced to eight years in prison, which absolutely blows my mind with this. I mean, the scale at which this person was abusing children in this school, basically another person in the political establishment under Orban, President Novak issues pardons to people involved in this sexual abuse scandal. And in Hungary you don't have to issue pardons publicly. They don't have to be public information. And then it was leaked to the press like a year later that this had happened. And this case spreads like wildfire. That Orban, like knew about this, that these pardons was issued to these people that helped cover the sexual abuse in the school. And it was a huge, one of the huge things that inspired the rise of the opposition in the build up to this election, like one of the massive scandals that had hit Orban, among all this other corruption that has existed for years. And then the other thing he's done is just ramped up control of state media. So Orban has, and his allies in, you know, in Hungarian business or in Hungarian politics have helped acquire media outlets over his time in power so that he has more and more control over public messaging in the country. And this has been especially effective in the rural areas of the country that have less access to like, TV channels than the, like, more urban cities have. And I'll kind of clarify why this, why this really is important, this control over the rural areas in a little bit. And then the last big, big thing that people criticize him on, or not, you know, not last thing, but one more big issue is his cozying up to Russia. So he's generally pushed Hungary away from unity with the European Union and closer ties to Russia and Putin. One of the benefits to this has been cheap Russian fuel that they began heavily relying on. And this is making a deal with Russia buying their oil at really low prices. And for a while, the benefit or the trade off that citizens saw is like, oh, we have really cheap energy in the country. But after the Ukraine war comes into play, energy prices spike. And even though they're still, they still have a deal to get Russian energy at a lower price, they still made it more expensive and rose with like the global surge in energy costs. Right. They built in a margin that they didn't need to that specifically paid off Orban's government. Like they benefited from a huge spread on the Russian gas through that period of time. You got to get your cut.

[Doug]

You got to get your cut while

[Brennan]

refusing to receive energy from any other parts of the world and in like any significant capacity. And they have also connected friends and like oligarchs in Hungary to Russian related business projects. So, for example, like Russia was going to build, or a Russian contractor was going to build two nuclear power plants in Hungary and he sets up friends or people in Hungary to specifically benefit financially from these deals with like Russian companies at the expense of them not being the best decisions for the average Hungarian person. The way this is playing out for like normal Hungarian people through this period of time is consequences like in the 2000 and twenties, skyrocketing inflation, like way more than the rest of Europe. They aren't on the euro, by the way, even though they're in the eu, they have their own currency.

[Doug]

Wait, can I talk about that just a little Bit. That's the one area I do know about.

[Brennan]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So Viktor Orban, his economic policies have been pretty widely regarded as a disaster. He came in, he took basically personal control of the central bank and had these policies of like, some of them even sound good, like low flat income tax across everybody, or pro natalist policies where you can get money for having kids. He did, you know, he had price controls on utilities so they couldn't get too expensive. He put a lot of key state industries in his friend's hands. All these things. All right. And for a while it seemed like they were working. Cause they had relatively low unemployment and relative stability. And so everyone's like, okay. And he won some elections off that. Like, he kept going, you know, he had control of the media too. And then the underpinning of that started to become obvious, which is that he had seized control of the central bank and was just printing money nonstop to fund all of his ideas. And the pronatalist policies didn't work. The birth rate kept falling. In fact, they have fewer people now than they did in 2011 when he first got in there. And the inflation rate largely comes from their central bank just running the printer nonstop. And so now they are experiencing what they had. They had 57% price rise since 2020, double the EU average. Inflation peaked above 25% in 2023, the highest in the EU. And pretty much all that comes back to the fact their central bank, every time he has an idea, prints the money for it and just devalues their currency, which is separate from the euro. So. So yeah, I would say that's a huge core of like, why regardless of his media control, he is starting to see, or has now seen huge people like, turning away from him.

[Brennan]

There's real economic consequences for people in the country, like the thing. So I hate to say it, but I have a friend, I was gonna

[Aiden]

ask, what's your friend at home

[Brennan]

that, you know, the specific complaints, and this seems to line up with the data is like the skyrocketing price of like housing in Hungary that's come along with this. The general feeling of falling behind compared to a lot of other parts of Europe and declining funding or effective funding in areas like healthcare. He said there's been a really dramatic shift in the quality of healthcare and hospitals in the country because of the economic problems that there's been. And I think one thing that's the really wild thing is that during this time that Orban's been in power, one of the things he did was change the voting structure in the country. So with a two thirds majority that he was able to get a long time ago, you're able to make changes to the constitution. And with the constitutional changes that he made, he kind of gerrymandered and reconstructed the value of votes in the country so that the countryside functionally has a lot more weight in elections than the urban areas do. And that's where a lot of his support was. Right. Like, people in Budapest that are more liberal are very against him and kind of always have happened. But this combines with things like his control of state media, where it was more influential over these rural, more rural, more disconnected areas of the country. And as long as he could maintain influence and power over these rural areas, he could continue to have these crushing results in the following elections that happened after the first time he got elected. And that's been one of the ways he was able to maintain power this whole time. So Peter Magyar is kind of used this against him in this election, which is wild. He heavily campaigned in these rural areas, going to over 700 cities and villages in two years, meeting people in person and running this seemingly very grassroots campaign. And this guy is from Orban's like, like party in orbit prior to this and kind of like broke out of it to run this opposition campaign. And by convincing enough people in these rural areas, he secured this giant majority in parliament under this win. So he actually only won 54% of the vote, but his, his party or like coalition, I don't know the exact situation, but he has 69% of the seats in the Hungarian Parliament now because of that win.

[Aiden]

Because the rural votes ultimately have more sway.

[Brennan]

Yeah, because of the way that those votes translate into parliamentary seats, which is because of what Orban did while he was in power to secure his position has been like, effectively used against, flipped the other way. And the payoff here is now that he has this 2/3 plus majority, people are hoping that major uses this power to undo a lot of the damage that Orban has created in the 16 year period. You can create the constitutional changes to counteract a lot of what has been built up in the country before, because Orban still has like, friends, like stacked courts, people in positions of power that want to act in his general interest or might impede what the opposition wants to accomplish. Right. But in theory, Major now has the power in Parliament to override a lot of what Orvan has built up to like, stop the opposition moving in the other direction. And from talking to my friend and specifically, one of the huge hopes of People especially, particularly in Budapest, it sounds like, is that Orban and the people around him will be held to account as soon as this transition in power happens.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And we'll see if that actually plays out.

[Doug]

Yeah. Some of the feedback I saw was that I wanted to ask you about this. I don't know about this Peter guy. I don't know too much about him, but my understanding is he's. He's not so politically dissimilar from Orban. He's not like a massive. But I think what people are excited about is his anti corruption effort. That's the main thing.

[Aiden]

So he's been pushing on that specifically.

[Brennan]

Yeah, very much. Their politics have been described as center right, which is where a lot of the country aligns with. And these people don't diverge a lot ideologically. It really comes down to this counteraction of corruption. And people are just sick of Orban specifically and kind of what he is.

[Doug]

I mean, if all the wealth of your country is being funneled to a few friends of the League, obviously that's the number one issue.

[Aiden]

Almost a few high performers.

[Doug]

He has a great roster of friends. He's chosen well.

[Brennan]

And I think we live in a country where I think corruption exists in the United States. United States. I think corruption exists in. In every country around the world in some facet. Right. The way Hungarians, especially Sweden. Yeah, the way.

[Aiden]

Let's get back to that. Let's see where this canal is being dug. Yeah.

[Brennan]

The way Hungarians and the talk around this election, the way they talk about corruption, is that it's like. It is insanely clear and insanely explicit. The amount of money he is, is taken away from the public to benefit him and his friends around him. The last kind of layer to this, and I would say the relevance to the audience maybe is like, how could this affect you?

[Doug]

Is

[Brennan]

the way Hungary fits into the eu. So the thing that I had heard about Hungary a lot is they're kind of the black sheep that upsets a lot of the European Union votes. And that's because when it comes to issues of like foreign policy or sanctions or I think tax taxation, there's like a few categories of things. They need unanimous support from EU member states when they vote on things, which is crazy because there's 27 member states that 27 people agree on anything. I know, it kind of. It kind of seems insane.

[Doug]

So everybody's voting pepperoni and Hungary's like.

[Brennan]

And Hungary's like, I don't want. It's more. It's more like I don't like pepperoni and I want Russia. What do you want? I want that.

[Doug]

We want vodka on the pizza and

[Aiden]

crazy that all 27 have to.

[Brennan]

Okay, so Hungary has, like, blocked. Blocked and delayed aid packages to Ukraine. They have. Recently there's been leaked phone calls of them, their foreign minister calling the Russian foreign minister during closed EU meetings and leaking the discussions of the European Union closed meetings. This just came out, like, this year. And then direct conversations between Orban and Putin as well. So that's been another thing that, like, rocked things before this election is the degree to which the Orban administration is, like, subservient to Russia. And they've been able to hold EU funds hostage before. Like, even if they misuse EU funds and the EU freezes them because they're breaking the rules, they're able to leverage the fact that they hold this veto power as a way to, like, unfreeze those funds and convince the EU to, like, still give them the money. And they've also been part of an effort to slow down or stop the European Union sanctions on Russia over time. So I think for the broader EU populous, for anything that, that Hungary is holding up or the information that they are leaking to Russia, the hope is that this stops now that this new person is in charge.

[Doug]

Yeah. The Polish PM said Russians go home right after this election was over. He was like a big. He was jumping in. Like, he basically said Orban was a

[Aiden]

Russian puppet go home from Hungary, basically. It's interesting, we read the book Kaput, which was about German politics over the last couple decades and then. And one of the whole sections was about how Germany has for a long time been super cozy with Russia and obviously a lot of oil intermingling. And then the German politicians basically being in denial up until the Ukraine war. And then Ukraine war happens. And that's complete and utter, like, we've accepted the truth. This is not a tenable relationship. And then somebody blows up the Nord pipeline and it's like, you know, even physically there's no connection. Right. And it's interesting that Hungary seems to have taken another couple of years to be like, ah, no, we are done. We're done with this country. Yeah, maybe it's not happy. Maybe the new guy does the same thing.

[Brennan]

So that's kind of the fear is like, there isn't a full understanding of what this guy will do yet. I think there's. There's one. There's a lot of the Orban, or apparatus that's still in place that needs to be dismantled. By the new guy and his parliamentary majority. There isn't necessarily this. Like, on the issue of Ukraine, Hungary doesn't necessarily lean heavily in support of Ukraine in general, just like, as a populace. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the EU votes will just 180 all of a sudden. And there's things like LGBTQ rights that have taken a, like a big backslide under Orban that politically, like, from the ideology of this position that dominates the country. Just because we're anti corruption doesn't mean those things are necessarily going to change. There's a bunch of scrutiny around those things. But this new guy takes power in June. That's my little overview of what's going on and why this is important. I think much like some other things, like even the president of Venezuela changing, albeit because of outside intervention earlier in the year, I think a lot of these things need way more time to play out, to see how it'll actually work. But for average Hungarians, like talking to my friend, reading interviews of Hungarian citizens in Budapest, as soon as this person is ousted, there's a lot of hope of what the future could be, and we'll see what it's like.

[Doug]

Yeah, I think there's, like, there's two US Angles to this that I wanted to bring up. You know, one of them is like, there's a lot of parallels obviously to Trump situation right now, now, which is like he's like a right wing populist, similar to Orban, who's facing pushback from even his own base. Not necessarily on his politics so much, but largely on corruption, inflation, economic stagnation, promises not being met, things like, not that the promises they hate. It's like that their promises are unmet. And so I think there is a parallel. I mean, it does. You know, it makes me want to push people even more in America to be like, look, they voted in Hungary. They voted in. In Hungary and got and got the result they wanted. You could probably vote here and make progress on the same level. And the second thing I want to say is that a big part of this was JD Vance. Not a huge part of it, a minor part of this. But J.D. vance was sent by the Trump administration to, like, help shore up Orban's support and, like, do a big speech. Why?

[Brennan]

He should have sent it to the other guy. Should have sent J.D. vance to the other guy.

[Doug]

He should have, because apparently, you know, based on polling that knocked 4 percentage

[Brennan]

points off of Orban's, that's what I see.

[Doug]

Yeah. Which is crazy. And I do think you said why? And I legitimately think this is my conspiracy theory again.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

That J.D. vance is being given doomed missions because they no longer see him as a successor to Trump. I legitimately think he is being placed over and over. You know, I'm not a fan of J.D. vance, but he's constantly sent on impossible losing missions where he looks like a total fool. And I think there's this theory because New York Times had this big piece come out about the internal struggles, about the Iran war, whether or not to go. And the piece really paints J.D. vance as the lone heroic voice being like, we should not go into this war. It's a bad idea. It's gonna be a quagmire. And the theory is that J.D. vance is the guy, he's the source. And so now there's like a rift in the administration where they're just sending. They're like, like. And if you look at the polymarket results, fucking Rubio is skyrocketing and Vance is on the downswing. I don't know if they've passed yet, but, like, of who will be the Next candidate in 28. And I think there's a real sense that JD Vance has lost the mandate of Trump heaven. He is no longer the successor apparent for the conservative MAGA movement. Whatever, whatever it's going to be in 28.

[Aiden]

I mean, it could just be used. He has J.D. vance go and campaign for Newsom so that Trump can win.

[Doug]

What if he saves the touch of death?

[Brennan]

Right. Yeah.

[Aiden]

Like a poison pill.

[Doug]

Yeah. They just send him in the wrong direction.

[Brennan]

You have to use this asset strategically.

[Doug]

I mean, they sent him to be the lead and basically only negotiator in Islamabad to deal with Iran, like in an impossible negotiation where they want entirely different things. Of course, he comes out being like, we couldn't do anything. And then he goes to Orban. That's an un. You're not going to win that election. It just everything he's being sent to do. And at the same time, they're like, protecting Rubio. Ruby only shows him public for the few small wins. He's there for Venezuela, but not for Iran. He's there. You know what I'm saying? He doesn't talk about ice. It's weird. It just feels like there's something moving behind the scenes to put Vance as, like, this goofy cartoon.

[Aiden]

There's a slow conversion. I'm looking at the polymarket presidential Republican nominee for 2028, and there's a slow convergence. It looks like it's not, you know, the Past month, sort of stabilized, but

[Brennan]

yeah, I'm Mitch, first two time indwisl champion, championship MVP and forward for the

[Aiden]

US Women's National Team.

[Brennan]

Before I went pro, I graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology, which

[Aiden]

comes in handy more than you think. Any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a

[Brennan]

certain mentality you have to have. What people don't know is what that costs. In my podcast, Confessions of an Elite Athlete, I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology, mindset, and unseen battles on the path to greatness. So take a seat and learn from the Confessions of an elite athlete on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Aiden]

Foreign I'm Maria Sharapova and I'm hosting

[Brennan]

a new podcast called Pretty Tough.

[Aiden]

Every week I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors, entrepreneurs, and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Follow Pretty Tough wherever you get your podcasts. So we are 250 years into this American experiment, and I'd say it's going okay. I give us like a C. There

[Brennan]

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

[Aiden]

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

[Brennan]

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

[Aiden]

Okay.

[Brennan]

You know, I do still remember from

[Aiden]

Schoolhouse Rock, we the people, in order to form a more perfect union, established justice. What is it? Ensure domestic tranquility.

[Brennan]

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

[Aiden]

That's this week on America, actually.

[Brennan]

Okay, so we. You mentioned Polymarket.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And I know you had two two itsy bitsy stories about polymarket.

[Aiden]

You wanted to talk about two itsy bitsy stories. All right, look, these aren't critically important, all right? One is I was sent this GitHub and I think it's great if you scroll down a little bit. Atriok. This is called Nothing Ever Happens. Do you have lots of disposable income that you don't know what to do with. Well, what this bot does is that it automatically goes to all of the non political bets, or excuse me, non sports bets on Polymarket and just says no, this is the nothing ever happens Polymarket bot. So you can just have this thing running with your money and you are betting that nothing happens. The ceasefire doesn't happen. Taylor Swift does not get married. J.D. vance does not win. It's just everything. You can just be a total pessimist and put all your money on it.

[Doug]

Now actually kind of hype.

[Aiden]

And this is what Polymarco was meant for. Second one, if you go to the California governor election winner. So quick little primer on California governor election. So another politics story going on here, but there's this huge swing all of a sudden in the California government Styr verse, the stire verse is happening. So there is a surprising amount of drama with the California governor, like race. It's very strange. So I'll do the same thing that you did. And here is why you as a non Californian might give a shit about this one. California is gigantic. Right. As a reminder, it's like the size and GDP of big European states.

[Doug]

Fourth biggest economy.

[Aiden]

It is the fourth biggest. California is a behemoth. 40 million people. It is bigger than Canada in like basically every respect except size.

[Brennan]

I think the population is like near the same. And it does, it has a bigger economy, doesn't it?

[Doug]

Yeah, no, it's like, it's like us, China, Germany, California. Kidding. It's Japan.

[Aiden]

Canada's bigger, but we're a grower anyways.

[Doug]

So cold up there.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Not only is it a big, big ass state, on top of that, a lot of the policy that comes out of California ends up actually influencing a lot of, you know, national policy and sometimes even global policy. If, for example, California passes a strict aggressive AI regulation on all the tech companies that are creating AI in California, that is essentially going to be a nationwide regulation because the companies are all developing it, developing it here. They're going to stick to those regulations and they're going to have to kind of use that nationwide. So this is a pretty consequential election. California is also just broadly seen to be sort of on a downturn recently, or at least that's the perception. So what's particularly interesting about this is in 2010 in California, this is a very Democratic state. Right. But in 2010 we passed a bill and that bill says that in order to reduce bipartisanship and make it so that it's not just Republicans versus Democrats every time, make the field a little more open. That what we do is we have the primary stage, it was about to happen in June where, you know, anybody from any party can run and everybody votes on it. And then the top two candidates from the primaries move on to the general election, but only the top two. And it doesn't matter what party they're from. Okay, okay. So all of the candidates are running in the governor race. In about two months, we're gonna do the vote. Top two move on. And those two are who you vote on. Now, this sounds cool on paper because instead of just Democrat versus Republican, you only appeal to your base. You have to kind of appeal to everybody. Right. You're trying to get to be one of those top two. But it could be two Democrats and it could be two Republicans. So what's the world where it's two Republicans running for governor of California in extremely blue states? Well, what would need to happen is that you have two very strong Republican candidates who are splitting the Republican vote, and you need have a lot of Democratic candidates who are splitting the Democratic vote across many different people. And this is exactly what has been happening for months in the election. You have two Republican candidates who are the clear front runners splitting the vote almost exactly. Even Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco. Chad Bianco, you can Google him. He looks like the type of guy that in a. David, In a James Cameron movie would run the machines.

[Doug]

Yeah, he's in, like, the mech suit.

[Aiden]

He would.

[Doug]

He would wear Pandora.

[Aiden]

And coincidentally, we're getting all the. He is arguing that we need to boot up fossil fuel production in California. Pull him up, Pull him up.

[Doug]

Wait, pull them up.

[Aiden]

Another one. The other guy is Steve Hilton. This is a God, dude.

[Doug]

I. Holy fuck.

[Aiden]

You can tell this is the type of guy, like, you've always been a problem soldier.

[Doug]

Jake Sully. This is so fun. You in.

[Aiden]

When a guy comes into the room and says they're attacking again, he says, all right, and, like, puts out his cigar that he's smoking while benching. Right? So Chad Bianco, you got. He is. He's a sheriff. His whole thing is anti crime, anti fraud. And we're going to. We're going to restart a bunch of energy production. Meanwhile, you got Steve Hilton, former Fox News show host, very anti crime, anti fraud, pro energy. Pretty much the same fucking campaign. They're not that distinct. And so that's, you know, sort of working to their advantage. They are sniping at Each other. And actually Trump endorsed Steve Hilton, but they can't, they can't get a Fox

[Doug]

News host he didn't endorse for higher office.

[Aiden]

Yeah, yeah. And you know, he did like a weekly, like, Sunday show. He's not like a mainstay on Fox

[Brennan]

News, but no Tugger.

[Doug]

He's not.

[Aiden]

He's no Tugger. But these guys are actually. These two Republicans are actually so split that the California GOP is not endorsing either one of them because they can't get above 60% of the vote. So it's like exactly split, even after Trump's thing. So this, this perfect, horrible storm is brewing. Perfectly. You have these two guys and then on the Democratic side, you have a bunch of candidates that are all polling in like, the single or double digits and no clear frontrunner. That is kind of changing just now. So you guys might have heard about Eric Swalwell.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

And he did. He's been accused of sexual assault by a number of women. So up until last week, you had Eric Swalwell, Katie Porter, Tom Steyer, Matt Mahan, Xavier Becerra, Betty Yee, Tony Thurmond, Antonio Villaraigosa. I'm probably saying that wrong. You had at least eight candidates who were all genuinely viable splitting it up. And this is, of course, going into this two month thing where you might have the disaster. None of them are. If you are like, agreeing to drop out, all of them are, like, sticking in it and fighting it out. So a couple interesting updates. Very recently, Eric Swalwell was arguably the lead, although polls all make it different. Up until a couple days ago, he's accused of sexual assault by. There's a CNN report, there's a San Francisco Chronicle report. He has since dropped out of the race. And it appears that people are now moving towards Swalwell. Excuse me, towards Tom Stairs. So a couple other key players here that are probably really in the running. Katie Porter is like a longtime California legislative, but she's kind of fucked because there are these videos that came out of her screaming at staffers, like while she's making a YouTube short, talking and then saying things like, get the fuck

[Brennan]

out of my shot.

[Doug]

She got Ellen, get out of my shot.

[Brennan]

She actually did.

[Aiden]

Actually did. So there's two videos that basically are the most stereotypical Karen videos ever, where she's blowing up on somebody. And it's just like. Like what? Dude? This is a horrible look.

[Brennan]

It is funny because I feel like my, my view of Katie Porter is almost entirely shaped by clips. And she was like a she would get clipped in her like Senate hearing videos where she would like bring out a chart and like own somebody in a hearing and everybody would be electric in the comments. And then. And then more recently, the clips have been going in the opposite direction where it's like, like her screaming at a staffer, her getting really upset with somebody interviewing her.

[Aiden]

It's those two. It's those two clips came out and everybody's like, ooh, she seems like kind of a. And that literally nukes her campaign.

[Brennan]

I have to watch kind of like, it's kind of like those clips with clavicular right now where he keeps walking out of interviews for my Gen Z

[Doug]

people at all, the governor. And if you.

[Brennan]

Katie Porter's kind of like clavicular, like,

[Aiden]

yeah, Adrian, you can pull this up.

[Doug]

You have it. That'd be great.

[Aiden]

The reporter one is actually worse because she blows up at this reporter who's asking very reasonable questions.

[Brennan]

I remember watching this one and thinking, it wasn't great, it was a while ago. So I'm on the oversight committee, you might know. And that is where we did a study recently, this fall in September. And what it showed is electrified our transportation sector, that we're going to lose more than half a million Californians dying

[Doug]

prematurely to air pollution and other problems.

[Brennan]

And the state could lose

[Doug]

out of my fucking shop.

[Brennan]

It's not that it's electric vehicles. It's that if we don't meet the commitments, I do Paris and my man board. Okay, okay. It does. Okay, okay. You also were in my shop before that.

[Doug]

Stay out of my shot.

[Brennan]

Okay.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Brennan]

So that's it. It's so funny because I actually think in Ellen that like an Ellen accusation is a perfect. Yeah, a perfect comparison. It's like.

[Aiden]

Yeah, it's pretty wild. It's like these two videos and that has. That kicked her out from being like maybe the front runner to like even with everybody else. You have Tom Steyer who's this billionaire activist who's much more progressive than the other folks, but he's self funded because he's this billionaire. He's put 100 million of his own money and kind of using the, you know, saying like, oh, I can't be corrupted because I have so much money type of thing.

[Doug]

Didn't Trump say that?

[Aiden]

Yep, yep.

[Doug]

I don't know much about this guy. I need to look more Brendan sons that are.

[Aiden]

But yeah, I've been looking a little more into him then. Matt Mahan is the mayor of San Jose. He's really coming in as like this Is the pro tech guy. Not even pro tech, but the tech people all like him and are endorsing him. So even though he's been a very successful mayor of San Jose, but you know, he's coming in being like, here's the like technocratic solutions I'm gonna do. I've succeeded in San Jose, I'll succeed statewide. But then a lot of people, there's just so much anti tech.

[Doug]

Wait, how long has he been mayor of stuff San Jose?

[Aiden]

I don't know the timeline. We can look it up right now.

[Doug]

Well, it's because I hated living in San Jose. So I want to know. I mean, not his fault, really.

[Aiden]

Yeah, I mean, like maybe.

[Doug]

Maybe 2023. So actually now I wouldn't know.

[Brennan]

Mayor of San Jose. Mayor of. Mayor of hell.

[Aiden]

Mayor of.

[Doug]

Mayor of hell. Is running for governor of California saying

[Aiden]

it's getting cheaper to live in hell.

[Doug]

But this guy was mayor after I was there, so I have no idea if he's.

[Aiden]

Yeah, he's doing well and he's. He's kind of like that angle. And then there's. There's four other candidates who are convenient. Like, there's a weird thing there where they're all the non white candidates. And then USC tried to host a debate where they used their own criteria to decide which candidates should be there at the debate. And their criteria said that based on, you know, the current polling and the fundraising and everything, that it would be the six white people and not the four not white people. Even though technically it was based on, you know, not. It was just their number formula or whatever. And that caused so much frustration that USC had to cancel the debate. So now there's also this strange thing. But in this weird fucking drama going on with the California governor race for the first time in months, there is now a clear leader who is Tom Stair. And he's a pretty interesting candidate. We, you know, we don't need to go into his policies and whatnot.

[Doug]

Come on the damn show, bro.

[Aiden]

Yeah, so you could see polymarket is again, this is what people are betting, but with polling sites, as of a couple days ago, he's like, he's pulling at like 13% and other people are 11. Polling would indicate that it is still an absolute crapshoot between what is still now seven. It's down from eight. Seven leading candidates.

[Doug]

So that's what the ply market is reading into based on the betters is like, who's gonna be top two? Who's the Democrat in the top two? That's the, that's who's gonna win the

[Aiden]

if as long as one of these seven Democrats can get more than the two Republicans, then disaster is averted and it's, it's this weird thing happening and this is all gon resolve in June in like two months.

[Doug]

Interesting.

[Brennan]

So with Tom, he. I don't know if you guys remember this. He ran for president the Democratic primary.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

A while back.

[Doug]

I remember he, he. What did he say?

[Aiden]

One of our many beloved.

[Doug]

It was like Bernie and. And Elizabeth Warren were having a fight on stage.

[Brennan]

Yeah.

[Doug]

And then Tom star comes in the middle. He's like hey, I don't mean to bother but Bernie, I'm a big fan and like he's young. Like only clip I remember from Tom's diary.

[Brennan]

So, so I think we might, we might have an in here because actually one of my closest friends ran like worked on his presidential campaign that year and then was his PA for years after.

[Doug]

Let's get him on the show.

[Aiden]

I think you got a friend in Tom Steyer.

[Brennan]

Yeah, I mean I'm one degree of separation away.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

So maybe we, we. I'd be curious to learn more about what his actual platform is. I think anecdotally he's the only one that I've seen campaign ads of on tv. I'm not keeping a close eye on things but like just like on, I don't know, like a Lakers game will be on and like you'll see Tom Steyer's ad.

[Doug]

They're not on piracy.

[Aiden]

That's weird. You're missing out. You gotta get these Tom.

[Brennan]

You're missing the Tom ads.

[Aiden]

No, he's got some really. So you know, tech people have said if Tom stair is elected it will ruin California. So that's the kind of like he's, he's pretty progressive. He has things, it's a lot of like energy focus. He's been doing that for a long time. But a couple really notable ones, one, a lot about increasing taxes, so a lot about affordability. All the candidates are talking about affordability non stop. And then he wants to push for single payer healthcare, like change California, get rid of private insurance and have it be a single. Which would be extraordinarily hard to do legislatively. But you know, if he pulls it

[Doug]

off California, it's a cool model for the rest of the country. It'd be interesting to try.

[Brennan]

Absolutely.

[Aiden]

So this thing, this thing is weirdly dramatic and interesting and weird and we're gonna see what happens. And the absence of this guy Swalwell who just Got pulled out. Who was, like, pulling in. A lot of the traditional left Democrats is suddenly. That's being dispersed and we're trying to figure out where it lands.

[Brennan]

Yeah, he resigned from the House of Representatives.

[Aiden]

Also resigned from Congress. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Doug]

There was a second person. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on their name.

[Aiden]

Texas.

[Doug]

The Texas guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aiden]

Two. Two congressmen were accused of sexual harassment. Multiple people

[Doug]

trying to get their name. I had it in my notes. Gonzalez. Tony Gonzalez out of Texas. He had a sexual relationship with his staffer who killed themselves after the. After the text messages leaked or whatever.

[Brennan]

The staffer did.

[Doug]

Staffer killed themselves.

[Brennan]

Dude, that's awesome.

[Doug]

And then this person, like, I guess ignored it. Ignored it and pretended it didn't happen and tried to downplay it. And then it kept being up and now they're resigning. Insane. So one Democrat, Republican, same day, they both resigned. Same day, Both over sexual misconduct.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Doug]

Anyway,

[Brennan]

I appreciate you reminding me about the importance of the primary in California specifically, because in my head I was like, oh, yeah, I'll vote in November, but the deadline is much closer.

[Aiden]

Yeah. You know what's also crazy? California, super Democratic. It's not that Democratic. Trump lost by 20 points to Kamala Harris. That means 60% of people voted for Kamala and 40% of people voted for Donald Trump in California.

[Brennan]

And they're all in Huntington Beach.

[Aiden]

I think there's a perception.

[Doug]

Yeah, California being a Democratic stronghold is only relatively recent. Reagan's like, base for. And then, you know, right wing. Schwarzenegger was the fucking governor of California

[Brennan]

for a long time.

[Doug]

I mean, it's not.

[Aiden]

Can I give two personal updates? I said these things publicly, so I'm gonna give updates on it publicly. First one, rice crackers, gentlemen.

[Doug]

Dude, the drama. I want to know what's going on.

[Aiden]

Even more drama. We went to China, as we talked about, and we went to a. A food trade show in Chengdu, where we were pulled into a sort of business cracker dalliance with someone named Susanna, who's a very powerful person in her company. I publicly committed on the podcast that we would figure out how much actual take home revenue I get from a Patreon episode. Me personally, and I would spend all of it on rice crackers, and we would put them here in the studio and eat them. Unfortunately, I have an update from Susanna, which is that she has left the company. She told me the same day that she met us, she found a severe and irreparable problem in the manufacturing. She much later told me that they are not poisoned and I am safe to have eaten them, but there's a major problem with delivery. And now I asked, wait, can I still buy them? She said, well, I work independently and I'm sourcing from many different crackers. And if you really liked that flavor, I can find another factory to create that flavor for you, so just keep working with me. And I was like, I don't. I'm a little confused by this. Can I buy from the company that you used to work for? Can you just buy through them? And she said, I do not recommend it.

[Brennan]

If you trust me.

[Doug]

Between.

[Brennan]

They were good, though. It's like, I kind of want those ones.

[Doug]

They were tasty. And you did say they were powerful and great. They were powerful times.

[Aiden]

Anyway, if you trust me, fall. I texted her at what was like four in the morning in China, and she immediately sent back like 40 texts. Anyway, if you trust me, follow my recommendation, because I am food experts. If you insist on your love for the rice cracker, meet a Wongzi ahead. I respect your choice because you are my friend who I truly treat with my heart. And so. And then she followed up with an apology two minutes later, saying that she was too flustered and then reiterated everything. Look, the point. The point is the truth is here. I no longer have a contact at Mita Wongsi, the rice cracker company. I now have a contact with a woman who is saying she is going to do research to find me similar rice crackers. I don't know what to do.

[Doug]

Right.

[Brennan]

And it drops.

[Doug]

You gotta go deeper.

[Brennan]

I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to be the conspiratorial type of guy.

[Doug]

Okay.

[Brennan]

But it feels sudden, doesn't it? It feels sudden and it's weird.

[Doug]

You think it's political.

[Brennan]

It's weird. I'm saying that maybe the Communist Party

[Doug]

maybe is cutting her out of the.

[Brennan]

I didn't bring the party into this.

[Doug]

Okay, you think she should ping personally?

[Aiden]

Okay, Quote. The moment I found out the truth, I knew I had to be. I knew I had to be honest with you immediately. Even if it was sudden and confusing. I just. This woman is so powerful. I love it. So I'm probably gonna try to buy a bunch of rice.

[Doug]

You have to just take her in the conditioning.

[Aiden]

Except I'm buying, like, however many pallets of rice crackers that I haven't tried, and this is even more insane. Okay, the other update I just saw on ChatGPT specifically, and actually, I think we have an anthropic. The Timing is coincidental, by the way. But on a. On a previous episode a couple ago, I said I was going to try to stop using ChatGPT as much as possible. I am trying to do that. I stopped the 200 subscription, but I have found that unfortunately, at least right now, ChatGPT is the one that can actually do Japanese talking. I don't know if you guys have experienced that at all.

[Doug]

Sure.

[Aiden]

So I am currently on the lowest paid tier that I can on ChatGPT specifically for that. And I've been using other models for

[Brennan]

everything else to keep the translation stuff.

[Aiden]

It's just for translation. So there's like a voice to voice API that they have and so it sounds relatively similar to Japanese. Whereas the other LLMs currently that I'm aware of are just people saying it's like a text to speech, terrible translation that sounds nothing like that.

[Doug]

Yeah, I really haven't tried the voice models on other ones. I don't use ChatGPT anymore. I did quit it, but it was a good voice model. I just switched to typing more, which

[Aiden]

I just say I made a big point saying, hey, I'm gonna not use this product. I am using it basically as little as I can, except for specifically the one about Japanese or very specific stream features that I need. Because their models do stuff certain creative things in certain settings. But in every other context I am moving away from ChatGPT and we've turned down a sponsor on this channel. I turned down two personal sponsors now that my agent presented to me. So minor update there in case you see chatgpt on my phone. That's the thinking.

[Brennan]

Yeah. I. What is the genuinely. What does the $200 subscription do with something like that? Like. Yeah, like when you're. Because I know most of the other LLMs have like higher paid tiers like that too. What is that usually offering you? Because I have like the lowest level

[Aiden]

pro subscription on these super simple, higher usage and new features. So the reason I was paying for the $200 one is because you would get access to early features.

[Brennan]

Yeah.

[Aiden]

So they would be like, we just released deep, deep research. Go try this out here. We just. That that Pulse thing that they did, you know, open AI just like throws out a lot of different things and so you got to have access to that.

[Brennan]

It's crazy because $200, it's like it's giving you so much there.

[Aiden]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

And $200 just can't let you watch a Lakers game in Los Angeles. $200.

[Doug]

Okay. There's a story on that. I mean not Lakers game on the $200 tier, which is that there's been people reporting across all the major AI that they're starting to see like, what is the word for it? Like outages. Outages? Yeah, like serviced integrations. Like some, I forget the exact company, but they did a test, like a real deep dive test and notice that the AI at the same tier and the same price was thinking less than it did two months ago. Like they were. It was the output of tokens or whatever text was less than it used to be. And it seems like a lot of the AI companies are running into server and constraint limits. They're trying to like give you less per dollar to try and make up the. Because everything, even the $200 tier loses money. That's what, that's what they found is every single one people are using it more than it costs them. It's just very like, you know, the people that buy $200 tier often use a thousand dollars plus worth of tokens.

[Aiden]

I, I was the profitable one. I was, I was probably, you know, using $10 a month out of the 200. So that's like, I was like one of the few people giving them actual profit. But most of the people who are buying these super high tiers are the ones who are running agents like five hours a day. And so those people are genuinely hitting and, and that's, you know, as Claude code and Claude work and all these tools continue to expand. I don't know if you guys have heard this as well, this is anecdotal, but I am hearing more and more people in my life who are not like deep in the AI sauce saying things like oh yeah, the last few months I started to incorporate Claude code for this or this. People who aren't doing hardcore coding like other types of work and are like, it is genuinely incredible. So it seems as though it is starting to hit more of like a public zeitgeist. And, and at the same time Claude code uses a shitload of AI processing and tokens. It's no longer this, you know, autocomplete finish a sentence for you. It's doing. It's like harnessing an absolute shit ton of things all simultaneously. Which we learned about. Cause CLAUDE code leaked as well, which is a whole separate thing. It's craziness with AI right now. It's real wild. They really genuinely need more data centers.

[Doug]

No, that's what you say.

[Aiden]

Does that mean we should build more data centers? Maybe, maybe not.

[Brennan]

But they need more data centers because more people are using the product than ever issuing more.

[Aiden]

They are genuinely hitting the limits of compute. And to be fair, that's compute that they have access to. Maybe if we, you know, repurpose compute from, you know, if we take it from Roblox, maybe we can, maybe we can power AI.

[Doug]

That's why, you know, I think OpenAI shut down Sora and other things. They're just trying to put all their compute towards the few areas that like the business areas. But that's the point, which is like, you know, I think I should, I should to give a bit of a Mia Kobe here or something, which is like there was this theory maybe two years back. Oh, sorry, Mike. That a lot of this data center build out was financially wasteful and probably still is, to be honest. But the truth is the demand is certainly there for every token they can build. Like they are, they are. They haven't built enough to be honest in terms of user demand.

[Brennan]

Okay.

[Doug]

People really want every single token that the data centers can generate and the demand for it is only seeming to ramp up. So like the companies that, you know, there's a bit of a I told you so moment from OpenAI right now, you know, in a lot of ways they're not having that, but in this area they're like, hey, we went all in on building as much compute as we possibly can because we knew this was coming. And anthropic was a little slower. They were like, you know, a little more measured. I'm not going to go crazy on the spending. And it's seeming like, like you just want as much as possible. That's what it seemed like. I'm just admitting it with what the finances are looking like, which is like people are using every amount that they are being given. It's not like a lot of idle GPU time. You know, things are. They're running into the limits of every data center they're building.

[Brennan]

No, maybe. I'm sorry, my brain might just be cooked. You're saying they need to build more data centers to fulfill the demand that exists.

[Aiden]

But I believe he's saying we should regardless of what local communities want.

[Brennan]

And I was. I assumed he meant that. I assumed he meant that. No matter, no matter the externalities. And that's. Whenever I talk about data centers on the show. Keep in mind that I'm saying it with that I don't care about negative externalities for local.

[Doug]

You and I wake up every morning, we pour out 10 gallons of water into the street.

[Brennan]

Whether it be I wake up and

[Aiden]

I look at a list of externalities and say those are stupid.

[Doug]

Yeah.

[Brennan]

The passive noise that the facilities make that harm people's brains and well being or the, or the pollution or the use of what? I don't care. I don't care. I'm asking you. Why don't you. You just said that the argument was that they don't want to fulfill the demand because it's not worth the money, but they need to fulfill the. Man, I'm confused what you're saying.

[Doug]

What I'm saying is the argument about a year and a half to two years ago was like, hey, you are spending trillions of dollars to build all this compute data center out.

[Brennan]

Yes.

[Doug]

And it's like if any of that goes idle, it is the biggest, most ruinous financial decision of all time. Like, it's absolutely insane to do this. It costs so much money. But the real. And this could still be the case because they might be able to sell it profitably. Okay, that's the case. But it's now obvious that they will have the demand. People will want to use every ounce of compute that a data center, every data center you build is going to be used.

[Brennan]

But is the argument that even though, from what we were talking about before, even though that all of the available, like computing power of what you could build would be used, that isn't necessarily profitable still.

[Doug]

Right.

[Brennan]

Correct.

[Doug]

This, the question mark is still that. Because right now everything is being. It's like early days of Uber or early days of Netflix. Everything is being sold at such a markdown that it seems awesome. It's like MoviePass. You know, MoviePass is not a great business, but everyone uses it.

[Brennan]

Everybody.

[Doug]

If you use MoviePass yet, it's awesome.

[Brennan]

MoviePass is great.

[Doug]

So we don't know yet the economics of whether or not they. This, this hashes out, but at the current price, the demand is. Is astronomical. People all over. That's not the point of what I'm saying. Get out of my shot. Get out of my shot. Get out of my shot.

[Brennan]

I'm sorry. Sorry. I'll acknowledge it. I apologize to you, the audience. I interrupted you to make a dumb movie. Pass. Joke.

[Aiden]

No, no, no. Why don't. Why don't you keep doing your sorry?

[Doug]

All right? And anyway, so I'm saying about AI dude, data centers and get out of my shot. Okay, well, you were in my shop before that. You were in my shop before that. And our Next guest, Ellen DeGeneres is going to talk to us about her comeback to grace and how she's one of the greatest TVOs of all time. Anyway, that's the, that's. That's the AI. A little bit of a new story.

[Aiden]

One last spicy little tiny tidbit about AI Real fast. It's drama time. Sam Altman. Everybody hates him now. Everybody hates Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, because there was a post. Oh my God. I think it was New Yorker. New Yorker who made Ronin, basically did like a year and a half long report.

[Doug]

Okay, yeah, sorry, you said it was a post. I just want to say, like, this is a really, really well known from

[Aiden]

the New York Post. Or is it New Yorker?

[Brennan]

Is the New Yorker.

[Aiden]

So they did like a. This super long tweet.

[Doug]

No, it was triggering me.

[Brennan]

It's so funny to like dilute Ronan Farrow's career. Like he made a. I don't know. He made a fucking tweet.

[Doug]

Did a really, really masterful series of long form interviews with almost everybody Stan Altman has worked with throughout his entire life and constructed a long form, well crafted, through line of dishonesty, basically of like from, from every venture he's been on. He has left people in his wake who thinks he acts dishonestly like he is. He will lie. He will say one thing in public and one thing in private. He will promise that he's really focused on AI safety and on being nonprofit, and then slowly but surely dismantle those productions behind the scenes to make it into a for profit venture and to care less about AI safety. And it was interesting because this was. This article comes out and there is a really groundswell of, you know, Sam Altman anger. And then unfortunately, someone takes it too far and throws a Molotov cocktail or something at his house. I know, don't.

[Brennan]

The cocktail was. That was after the article came out.

[Doug]

Yeah, that was after the article.

[Aiden]

My article comes out and then I believe a couple days later, Sam Altman posts a tweet saying, last night I was taking care of my son and somebody threw a Molotov cocktail at our house.

[Doug]

And so it's weird. I have a weird thought about it because I do think that there's a very real criticism you could levy at Sam Altman for all these things in this article. And that in general, I think the way he's acted, especially around the nonprofit to profit status of OpenAI. This is the real thing from the article that I thought was like, it becomes very clear that he is being dishonest about his intentions.

[Aiden]

I mean, he told me none of that's true. It's all good.

[Doug]

But Obviously people shouldn't throw Molotov cocktails at people with family.

[Brennan]

What do you think? Cuz I watched Rucker Bregman's video about kind of the same topic, right?

[Doug]

Oh, I didn't see this.

[Aiden]

It's on my watch list. I haven't seen it yet.

[Brennan]

And I think that the, I would say one of the major takeaways from that video, and I take it this article from what you're saying as well, is during that period where the board removed him as the CEO and there was that giant pushback which we actually talked about, I think on this show after it happened, maybe because it was like, maybe a big egg clip, wasn't it? Months after I remember talking about it. But it was like, like it might have been long after it actually happened.

[Aiden]

It would have been long after they

[Doug]

put the old twitch CEO in charge for one day.

[Aiden]

Right.

[Brennan]

So it was a while. But anyway, he basically says that the board, in the light of all of this information, was clearly right to do that at the time. And I wanted to know if you, both of you as having like more insight into this because I haven't read the New York article. Do you agree with that sentiment?

[Doug]

So I'll tell you when I covered it at the time, I was more charitable towards Sam Altman's side because largely all the employees were on his side because if he went, there was a real sense that OpenAI might dissolve into everyone leaving different ships and then they would all lose the value of their stuff. And they were all very, very scared about that. And so they all kind of rallied

[Aiden]

behind Sam that was, I think there's also a charitable interpretation that they were proud of what they're doing. Like at that time there was much less negativity around all this stuff. The ChatGPT was considered this like technological, like incredible achievement. If you were there at that time at the forefront of AI research, creating a product that however many 10 million 100 people, 100 million people try out in a month or whatever, it is this unbelievable, groundbreaking product and you're there at the forefront of research, research on AI. I feel like that'd also be a reasonable incentive for somebody to say, like, I want to make sure this ship keeps going.

[Doug]

Sure, I think that's fair. But I mean, you know, like the core engineer behind that alias Kiver is the, is the guy pushing and saying that Sam Altman is lying and needs to be removed. So it's not like, I wouldn't say,

[Aiden]

it's like, I'm sure, I'm sure Money plays a part of it. I think there was a lot more pride about OpenAI at that point. I mean this is two, three years ago, right? This is way before I think, I think broadly society started to be like, whoa, hold on, what's going on?

[Brennan]

I think that was my outlook. I remember being. I just trust the employees to like, oh, if they are all getting behind this sentiment, then they must understand something about the value of this person that I don't. So keeping this guy there is probably the right call. But that was all I understood, you know.

[Doug]

But after this article, I mean it just makes it clear that the people who are closest to him, which is the senior level employees, were the ones who wanted him out and the lower level employees who basically had stock vested and thought he was a leader. Things were working. Things were broadly, it was working like they were. The successful AI leader was like, don't rock the boat, let's keep this going.

[Brennan]

Yeah.

[Doug]

So it's a weird disconnect. I can't say that I have a concrete answer, but I do think it is. It doesn't paint a flattering picture. Same moment, to be honest. And I will say even tech site, you know, I really like Ben Thompson's trajectory has been way more critical of of OpenAI's choices lately as they seem to be just flipping like they recently announced a huge pivot towards corporate, the corporate side of AI way more because they've seen anthropic succeeding in that area and it's, it's a weird choice because they were the leader and they were like the Google of, of, of AI. Like they were like the consumer facing one that was doing really well and they're kind of deprioritizing that, trying to go another direction. They've had all these different other pivots. They had the adult chat bot which got canceled. They got sora which got canceled. They had ads which they brought in like meta tech people to do and it's like been largely keyword based and pretty bad.

[Brennan]

Right.

[Doug]

Like they, you know, they just haven't seemed to land on a direction yet and it, it's questionable. So we'll see.

[Brennan]

Did you rehearse all of this? After we got the anthropic sponsorship,

[Doug]

you know who's doing a great job is. No, I genuinely believe this. I believe this all. I think OpenAI is making some missteps.

[Brennan]

Business wise, timing wise.

[Doug]

It seems suspicious if I wore a giant anthropic shirt or like a chain. I'm wearing increasingly gold.

[Aiden]

I don't know what you're talking about

[Doug]

I already mentioned, you know, since we had the fucking ad, the episode, I'll say, the one I see people talking about most is like, claude, code is giving me rate limits. That is the thing I see a lot on social media is like, hey, I'm using it it. And they used to give me more tokens and now it's giving me less. So they're all running into fucking issues.

[Aiden]

I mean, it's just, it's worth saying for people who are not following the infrastructure behind this stuff, that as the tools are getting more advanced, a big reason why, it seems why the perception is that these tools are getting more advanced and people are going more and more, wow, holy shit. This is actually really useful for this job or this job and not just coding. And then within coding, many people going, holy shit is because there's more stuff happening each time you ask it a question, there is more calculation being done. So it seems that broadly we're getting to a point where it's less about jamming giant, giant, giant quantities of data into the thing on these $10 billion training runs, and more about building a product scaffold on top of that. But the product scaffold is going to be using more and more tokens to operate basic things. So I don't know for certain. I don't know why people are hitting limits. I think it's a mix. I know that Anthropic has been also changing limits and whatnot, but these things are happening simultaneously where they're making their products more expensive to use and so that's simultaneously running into then consumers who want to come in and use it more obviously. And it's a weird challenge right now. Yeah.

[Doug]

I mean, one of the big fears that you're seeing is like, do we just get a taste of something that is genuinely useful on some level to consumers and it's going to end up being in the hands only of businesses.

[Aiden]

Thanks for that. On some level, yeah.

[Doug]

People, I mean, I listen, I think I have, you know, we've got greater financial resources than most. But let's say I'm at my normal job back when I was at Nvidia, I make a good salary. I would probably be using this same way I am now to learn things. It's a great learning tool.

[Aiden]

Yeah. Like if, for example, like at Nvidia for you, you would say, claude, write an email to my boss that everything's still looking good and then play League of Legends for me for eight hours.

[Doug]

Exactly. Actually, the trick to that was I would book a long meeting and then I. And I would play tft. So you're using it for that reason. And if they charge what it cost them to use right now, a lot less people would be using it. Now. I think they can get those costs down, but that it's a real situation where it might end up being mostly in the people tried it, they're like, oh, this is kind of useful for my job. And then it finds out that it's priced out and you have to have a corporate account, but then we can

[Aiden]

cut it with ethanol to make it cheaper.

[Doug]

There we go. There we go.

[Brennan]

I think it's funny because we have, like. I think, like vouchers to use Claude for free because of the sponsorship that we got. But I lost where the vouchers got sent to us, so I've just been paying.

[Doug]

Yeah, I tried the voucher, but it said you already have the tier, so I couldn't.

[Brennan]

So you couldn't even use it? Yeah, I've just been paying out of pocket. Okay, well, that is the end of this week's episode of Lemonade Stand. If you want to join us for an extra hour on the Patreon, you can go to patreon.com lemonade stand. I have a juicy topic for you guys on the Patreon episode that I saved. A little. A little juicer topic about Waymo and a video that came out and autonomous driving.

[Aiden]

Don't fall for it.

[Brennan]

And a little click baiting you.

[Doug]

And he's gonna do it shirtless.

[Brennan]

But if you do it, don't fall for this. I'll be shirtless.

[Aiden]

Stand up to this.

[Brennan]

And if you were to subscribe, subscribe on Patreon. Don't do it on iOS. They charge you more. We don't get that money. Don't do it on your fucking iOS device. You want to do it on desktop or an Android.

[Doug]

Episode is free in a Waymo in the backseat. You can watch it as long as you want there, guys. Thanks for watching. See you next week.

[Aiden]

Thanks, everybody.

[Brennan]

Bye.