The Sunday Podcast: Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk about Jeffrey Epstein, the Grok meltdown and then they play a population game.

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Sunday Podcast – July 13, 2025

Episode Title: The Sunday Podcast: Isaac, Ari, and Kmele talk about Jeffrey Epstein, the Grok meltdown and then they play a population game.

Host: Isaac Saul
Co-hosts: Ari Weitzman (Managing Editor), Camille Foster (Editor at Large), John Mole (Executive Producer)

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Introduction to Main Topics

[01:22] Ari Weitzman
Ari outlines the episode's focus: resurfacing discussions about Jeffrey Epstein, the recent meltdown of Grok (an AI language model), and an engaging population-based game. He hints at exploring grievances and ongoing political tensions.

Jeffrey Epstein Story Resurfacing

[01:55] Isaac Saul
Isaac introduces the topic, noting the resurgence of the Jeffrey Epstein investigation despite it being officially closed. He observes that prominent publications like the Wall Street Journal are revisiting the Epstein narrative, which was unexpected.

[02:23] John Mole
John corrects Isaac, pointing out that society has been in the "post Jeffrey Epstein era" for about six years, indicating ongoing undercurrents despite official investigations being concluded.

[02:29] Ari Weitzman
Ari expresses surprise at the renewed attention and discusses the anger within the MAGA movement. He highlights that, contrary to expectations, high-profile supporters of Trump are questioning the narrative surrounding Epstein, indicating a possible shift in their stance.

Notable Quote:
[04:41] John Mole: "It seems like these things are stickier or harder for Trump to just wave away when he can't go to the source and say, 'You're fake news,' or dismiss traditional media outlets."

MAGA Movement's Response

[05:05] Isaac Saul
Isaac suggests that the Epstein issue might have lasting effects on the Trump administration, as it represents a unique challenge that differs from previous controversies. He notes that influential figures within the administration have contributed to the public's interest and paranoia surrounding Epstein.

[06:56] John Mole
John reminisces about past attempts to discredit allegations by labeling opponents as evil. He explains that when accusations of protecting criminals arise, especially in relation to child molesters, it becomes difficult for Trump to defend himself without appearing complicit.

Notable Quote:
[08:05] Ari Weitzman: "There's a lot of public pressure for more information about the people who are involved in the Epstein network."

Media and Political Dynamics

[11:17] Isaac Saul
Isaac draws parallels between selective outrage in politics and the Epstein case. He discusses how both sides ignore inconsistencies within their own ranks while attacking opponents, contributing to a deeply divided political landscape.

[12:39] John Mole
John compares the handling of Epstein allegations to Trump's rhetoric on economic policies, suggesting that Trump may exploit both sides of issues for political gain, regardless of the underlying truth.

[14:20] Ari Weitzman
Ari shares a personal anecdote about interacting with AI (ChatGPT) to research Epstein-related claims, highlighting instances where the AI provided incorrect information, underscoring the unreliability of such tools.

Notable Quote:
[17:45] Ari Weitzman: "If Tucker Carlson were doing a Jeffrey Epstein podcast a year from now about all the things that have happened since, that would not surprise me at all."

AI and the Grok Meltdown

[31:17] John Mole
John transitions to discussing the recent meltdown of Grok, detailing how the AI began producing erratic and inappropriate responses, such as identifying itself as "Mecca Hitler" and generating offensive content.

[32:24] Isaac Saul
Isaac shares his experience with Grok, recounting how it falsely claimed that Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi received donations from Epstein—a claim he couldn't substantiate. This incident led to a loss of trust in AI tools due to their propensity for "hallucinations."

[37:41] John Mole
John emphasizes skepticism towards claims of AI achieving human-level intelligence. He highlights past instances where AI models quickly degenerated into producing harmful content when exposed to malicious prompts.

Notable Quote:
[42:01] John Mole: "And, and much of what's happening there, the technology, we don't understand how it works. And neither do the people who are building it."

Challenges and Future of AI

[48:40] Ari Weitzman
Ari reflects on the broader implications of AI malfunctions, comparing the responsibility of AI developers to act as sophisticated political operators. He underscores the need for better heuristics in human-AI interactions to prevent misinformation and ensure reliability.

[54:43] Ari Weitzman
Ari discusses the impact of AI on media consumption, noting that AI-generated summaries on platforms like Google are reducing direct traffic to original content creators, posing challenges for media outlets like Tangle.

Notable Quote:
[56:09] John Mole: "We're so ripe for a back to the land movement... as we have chatbots and AI systems getting really, really good at stuff."

The Population Game

[62:41] Ari Weitzman
Ari introduces a listener-submitted game titled "Would Tucker Justify Your Invasion?" Inspired by a Tucker Carlson interview with Ted Cruz, the game challenges participants to guess the populations of various countries.

Game Details and Responses:

• Israel:
  [64:56] John Mole: Guessed 10 million (Actual: 9.27 million) – Correct

• Russia:
  [66:01] John Mole: Guessed 175 million (Actual: ~145 million) – Off by ~30 million

• Ukraine:
  [67:02] John Mole: Guessed 40 million (Actual: 42.7 million) – Close

• China:
  [67:40] Ari Weitzman: Guessed 1.2 billion (Actual: 1.4 billion) – Close

• Pakistan:
  [69:01] John Mole: Guessed 200 million (Actual: ~255 million) – Off by ~55 million

• UK:
  [71:08] Ari Weitzman: Guessed 44 million (Actual: 69 million) – Off by 25 million

• Spain:
  [73:04] John Mole: Guessed 40 million (Actual: 49 million) – Off by 9 million

• Yemen:
  [75:40] John Mole: Guessed 30 million (Actual: 34.5 million) – Close

• Syria:
  [77:11] John Mole: Guessed 20 million (Actual: 23.6 million) – Close

• Mexico:
  [78:07] Ari Weitzman: Guessed 175 million (Actual: ~130 million) – Off by 45 million

• Kentucky (Bonus):
  [79:37] John Mole: Guessed 4.5 million (Actual: 4.58 million) – Correct

[84:35] Ari Weitzman
Ari congratulates the team on their performance in the game, noting that while some estimates were off, many were impressively close given the complexity of the task without external aids.

Grievances and Personal Stories

[84:55] John Mole & [85:01] Ari Weitzman & [87:45] Isaac Saul
The hosts share personal grievances, ranging from poor coffee quality and lack of snacks in their shared office space to mishaps like spilling a low-sugar soda. These anecdotes add a personal and relatable dimension to the episode.

Notable Quote:
[88:36] Isaac Saul: "This has gotta be the nerdiest installment of this podcast that I've been involved in."

Conclusion

The episode wraps up with the hosts reflecting on their discussions about Epstein, AI malfunctions, and the interactive population game. They emphasize the importance of skepticism towards AI-generated information and the evolving dynamics within political movements.

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Closing Remarks:
The hosts express appreciation for their listeners and tease future episodes, hinting at more in-depth analyses and interactive segments. They also share light-hearted personal stories, reinforcing their camaraderie and relatability.

[95:34] Camille Foster:
Provides a promotional segment for Tide's upgraded cleaning products, aligning with the policy to exclude advertisements from the summary.

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This summary captures the essence of the episode, focusing on the central discussions around the Epstein narrative resurgence, the Grok AI meltdown, and the engaging population game, while incorporating notable quotes and timestamps for clarity.

Transcript

[Isaac Saul]

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[Camille Foster]

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[Ari Weitzman]

All right, coming up, we talk a lot of Jeffrey Epstein AI, the Chatbots, the Grok Meltdown, and then a population game that I have to say we do surprisingly well on. We're back in the saddle and of course, some grievances. It's a good one.

[Camille Foster]

From executive producer Isaac Saul.

[John Mole]

This is Tangle.

[Ari Weitzman]

Good morning, good afternoon, and good even. Good evening and welcome to the still unnamed Tangle podcast. We're getting close. I swear. I am your host. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, here with Tangle editor at large Camille Foster and managing editor Ari Weitzman. We are living in a new era, post Jeffrey Epstein era. I don't know if you guys heard, it's been shut down, the investigation.

[John Mole]

We've been living in the post Jeffrey Epstein era for about six years.

[Ari Weitzman]

The moment. Yeah, I knew that was coming. There's a lot to talk about. Well, I don't know. I was just. I've been just a little bit immersed in the Twitter drama of Grok melting down, which I'm excited. We're going to talk about that a little bit today. But this, weirdly, despite everything going on, feels like a story that has kind of broken through. You have the Wall Street Journal opinions, you know, editorial board writing op EDS about Jeffrey Epstein. I did not have that on, like my July 2025 bingo card. That was not something that I thought was going to be happening. So, yeah, I'm, I'm kind of curious to maybe start there since we gave this some coverage this week and I don't know, in retrospect, I think it was really hard to kind of capture the rage, at least that I'm seeing online from the kind of MAGA sphere, the MAGA world. And now there's all this like I'm following, you know, I follow a few journalists who cover this story closely and I'm seeing a lot of them kind of following up, taking advantage of the story, being back in the news by following up with some of their reporting, sharing, you know, information that they have about what's public, what's still secret. And it sort of seems like Trump really wants this thing to go away and it's not going away, which is interesting. But I think we should maybe start with the, the MAGA rage because I don't know if it, I don't know if you can overstate it or maybe it's being overblown, but it seems like maybe one of the first real breaks where for the first time I feel like I'm seeing high profile people in his base be like, what is happening? This is like the opposite of what I thought we were going to get. I'm curious, I guess, temperature check with you guys about your read on that, maybe to kick things off, maybe it's.

[John Mole]

Just a small reaction for me, but just that it seems like these things are stickier or harder for Trump to just wave away when he can't go to the source and say, you're fake news, you're running the story, abc, cnn, whoever is on his grievance list and just hand wave them. Feels like it's different when it's Fox News or people from the right. I think that's maybe part of why it's sticking around, but that's my first reaction.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I mean, I would certainly say that this seems to be uniquely potent.

[Ari Weitzman]

And.

[Isaac Saul]

Perhaps in the long run it won't be totally harmful to the administration. But it seems like the sort of thing that could have some lingering effects. But I mean, certainly we've seen high profile people defect from Trump's camp before. Certainly Elon has in some respects with relation to this issue. Tucker on the Israeli Iran conflict certainly broke with him and plenty of other people seem to do so on that issue. On the tariff stuff, we've seen this, but certainly nothing so potent as this particular issue. And it's actually really weird to me that this becomes the singular issue for Maga and in some other ways it seems completely apt. With respect to the fact that they, that this particular group has done a great deal. So many people, high profile people in the administration have done a great deal to actually foment a lot of the kind of panic and conspiracizing with respect to this particular story. So for them to own the ball and to be the people who are forced to acknowledge that there is no there there once they actually have access to the files is super interesting. But what I'm a little bit surprised by is the number of high profile people who seem to genuinely miffed by the fact that the administration is actually being so candid in their suggestion that there isn't something here. And then going after Trump in certain ways for dismissing any interest in this issue that he helped to cultivate interest in. At least the people around him helped to cultivate interest in.

[John Mole]

I mean, one of the things that we talked about several, a couple years ago now, which comes to my mind all the time, Isaac, when we're talking about villains in the public sphere, we did a piece on FBI entrapment, I don't know if you remember that. And the two parties that we're talking about how it's always tough to be on the side of people. These parties in a PR fight are terrorists and child molesters. And if the FBI can justify any sting operation or anything by saying they're fighting against terrorists or child molesters, what are you going to say in response? So in that way, it feels like that's been the train that they've been riding for a year. 2, 5, 6. I've heard we're in the, we've been in the post Jeffrey Epstein era for a while. So ever since then we have to do more to go after the child molesters. They're protecting them, they're protecting them. And then once you have the reins of power, if there's no there there, then the points that you were dunking easily on, the easiest villains to score points on become a whole lot harder to protect against when you're on defense. And I mean, maybe it's just that simple.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think the thing that's hardest for me to wrap my head around, I guess is just like what the, before this, what their view of the situation was. You know, it's like you have this lawyer Trump has in the first, I use Labor Secretary Alexander Acosa who's like responsible for the sweetheart plea deal that Jeffrey Epstein got serving in the Trump administration. There's this like voluminous public records of Trump describing this close relationship he has with Epstein and making these comments about their shared affinity for young girls, and Epstein saying that he was one of his closest friends. And then that reporter, Michael Wolff, or whatever his name is, who has written some total hit job nonsense pieces, but had all these recordings of Epstein talking about Trump and how close they were and Trump saying that he knew Ghislaine Maxwell. And, like, it's just on and on and on. There just seems to be this relationship between the two of them. And yet he somehow managed to be, like, his distance from him on this was so much further in the eyes of his supporters than Bill Clinton or, you know, all these other alleged Democrats or Hollywood actors or whatever. And, like, that's the part that was always so hard for me to grasp. Like, I never really went down the rabbit hole of a lot of the Epstein conspiracies. I mean, I don't even think it's a. I think it's like Jeffrey Epstein was trafficking these girls and, you know, committing these sex crimes, and he was doing it while partying with a bunch of his rich, famous friends on this island that he had. And I think all that's real, and I think it'd be great if we got some exposure about, you know, more exposure about who all these people were. But. But before this moment, this week, it was just always so confounding to me that Trump wasn't someone his base found suspicious or questionable in this kind of. In the framework of the Jeffrey Epstein story. And Pam Bondi, too. I mean, like, she was Florida Attorney General when all this stuff, the flight logs and everything started coming out. And she could have. She could have pursued a case against him, and she didn't. And, yeah, that part of it I think I've had a really hard time wrapping my head around. It's just like, what did you guys think before now? Obviously, Trump doesn't want this stuff coming out. I never thought he did. I never thought he would. Even though there is really no quote, unquote list or whatever, there does seem to be a lot of information that the FBI has that it's keeping under seal. And I just never, ever in a million years thought this administration would be the one to do anything about that.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, that kind of selective outrage, willful ignorance is probably one of the most prominent features of our deeply divided political landscape. The fact that you can imagine all sorts of things that seem to be completely inconsistent with facts on the ground, that the hypocrisy of your own side when it comes to say deficit and spending and their pronounced concern about it, while also passing massive pieces of legislation that seem to exacerbate that problem. You find a way to live with the dissonance by ignoring it. And I think it's something similar with the Epstein thing. And as Ari pointed out, this has been such a, a prominent feature of the MAGA movement, this concern for children. There was a bit of it there with QAnon as well, and there's still vestiges of it now. It will be interesting to see how things unfold because I just don't, I don't imagine the Trump administration is going to actually taco in this particular case and reopen the investigation and reverse itself, in which case people have to make a decision. Are they going to continue to beat the drum about this because of their dissatisfaction or will they just forget about it and move on to the next kind of culture war, flare up, whatever that's likely to be.

[John Mole]

I think I'm reminded of when Trump was discussing the stock market going through its troubles following one of the many rounds of reciprocal tariff snip, snap, snip snaps. And his, his soundbite was everything about the economy that's bad is the Biden economy and everything about it that's good is the Trump economy. And I think like I'm sure, I mean if it's true then what, what better defense could you, could you possibly muster? But I think I bring that up because I think there's elements in everything that Trump has attacked where he could also be uno reversed on it, which is so when you weren't president. So obviously Epstein died when he was president but it's pretty late and then he was lame ducked. So obviously can't really get into that too much like the Trump doj. But when he wasn't president, easy to attack Biden, easy to say that there's a cover up, easy to say the people in power don't want this getting out. And then when you are in control, then I think it's still going to be that same one too. It's a little tougher to make that dance when it's not separable. It's just one indiscreet thing. But I think we'll hear, well the COVID ups happened under Biden and we all the information that we have, you know, it's all protected because of victims rights, which may very well be true. And it's probably true. But it's I think pretty easy for them to make that turn and say, well who knows, maybe there are More files, maybe there's more paper on this. But Biden and doj, what did they have to cover up? I mean, I think that's probably going to be the play. And for what it's worth, like, certainly.

[Isaac Saul]

Heard some of that.

[John Mole]

There's gonna be like, I think the party line here is probably real. Just anything that you can release that incriminates Epstein or his associates more is also naturally gonna implicate victims. And I think it's true that they want to keep that under wraps. But what do you think about that, Isaac?

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, I, Yeah, I don't really view much of what's happened around the case as being shady, I guess. And I don't suspect that there's much this DOJ could do differently than the last one. Like, I think, I think, I mean, I don't know this for sure, but I think that if Biden could have scored some kind of win on something like this by just adding some transparency to the case or whatever, probably would have done that. Like, there, there's. It's sort of like a low hanging fruit thing as a president to be like, hey, we're going to release some of these files. Trump certainly, you know, he's like trying to do the JFK thing and the MLK thing and the UFO thing and you know, he wants to, he's like, in this whole idea, I think of like, we're going to release it, like, you know, like, give him the file. Like, I don't know. He's. But I don't know. There's just. I. And maybe this is like the institutionalist brain of mine, but there's been a lot of public pressure for more information about the people who are involved in the kind of the Epstein network. And I think if Merrick Garland could have appeased those people in any kind of way, he would have done it. I think if Pam Bondi could appease those people in any kind of way, she would do it. I don't think, like, I don't think there's some big cover up. I just think, like you said, there's these dynamics like victims rights at play that make it more difficult to kind of give the public the transparency that they want. Especially when, you know, you add in the complicating factors of like plea deals and whatever else and agreements that are happening behind the scenes and now Epstein's dead. I mean, there's all sorts of stuff that I think makes it a little bit more complicated of an issue than people want to believe. I just don't. I Mean, just to your final thing, I'd say, like, I don't get the sense that any of the people, like, in the MAGA movement are willing or ready to let this go yet. Like, that doesn't feel like. I don't. I think in six months, we'll still have people, like, doing the occasional. You know, it's been six months since we were supposed to get the Epstein list post on Twitter. That gets, like, 10,000 retweets, you know, and we'll just be living in that world for a little while.

[Isaac Saul]

What does that look like?

[John Mole]

You got it.

[Isaac Saul]

What does that look like? Is that Tucker Carlson, like, continuing to bang the drum about this, like, months from now? Or does he not move on and perhaps has he not already, in some respect, moved on from this issue to focus on the real enemy on the left? He being Trump or Tucker's perspective, not mine. Tucker. Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

If Tucker Carlson were doing a Jeffrey Epstein podcast a year from now about all the things that have happened since Pam Bondi said she was gonna close the case down and new victim testimony and why don't we have answers and Trump's biggest broken promise and whatever, that would not surprise me at all. I think that's, like, a very likely. And I mean, even Charlie Kirk, like, the real sycophants, like, he was pissed, you know, and I'm like, again, I can't tell if they're legitimately duped or they're saying, like, this is a place where I can break from Trump, align myself with, like, the base, and, you know, be like, I'm a real one here by. By calling Trump out for not fulfilling this promise. Like, Charlie Kirk is a smart guy. He seems like a really smart guy to me. Whatever you feel about him.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. I don't think people wrong about lots of things.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, for sure. I'm just saying, like, I would be a little bit surprised if he was all in on the Epstein conspiracy and really thought that this list was gonna come out in some great big, like, redactions, raining from the heaven moment, whatever. Like, I just don't buy that. So I, again, I think if you're on the right and you want to. Even if you're a big Trump fan and you want to demonstrate some sort of independence or loyalty to the cause or consistency, this is kind of an easy one to hammer Trump over and keep in the news for a little bit, you know, hoping that maybe something changes.

[John Mole]

And I gotta add some evidence to the it's gonna not go away anytime soon case, which is it's not just sycophants on the right, and it's not just people on the right. This is a widespread cause that people care about. And we saw no stronger evidence of this, in my opinion, than our reader survey, which we do every day in the newsletter, where we asked our readers if they believe that the government is in possession of an Epstein list. Isaac has been saying that people who follow the news and people, reporters and people who are all over this case say there's no such thing as a client list. There's no client list that the government has. And Isaac's like, yeah, I mean, we haven't seen any evidence that says that there's some sort of big incriminating list of names with people on it and some like, Inspector Gadget looking thing. And 52% of our readers disagreed, which is pretty rare. I think we have. The strongest bias that we have in our reader survey is people agreeing with Isaac's opinion in the take. And to see our readers disagree and say, no, there is a list was interesting to me. And something that I want to highlight here just before I get a reaction is one of the comments that we got to that reader survey, which I thought was a bit of a nuanced way of defending this answer, was, of course there's a list, but I don't think it's the bomb. People think it is. People like him Epstein, who are widely networked, keep contact lists, phone books, et cetera. Those things are probably in the file. And of course they include Trump and also likely people and nothing to do with his legal activities, but who just knew him. So when people are talking about the quote list, that's probably what they mean. And are they right? Maybe there's something that they just aren't releasing that they could.

[Ari Weitzman]

Hmm. I mean, I. Yeah, I don't know. I guess that's possible. Yeah. Again, I just. The thing that I go back to is that at some point, I mean, yeah, at some point in the next, like, six, 12 months or whatever, I imagine there will be some kind of event or person in the kind of MAGA movement who will do their best to make this, like, a salient issue again. Maybe it's something as simple as, like, Pam Bondi steps down and everybody's, like, recounting her time. And the MAGA world's, like, biggest failure is she didn't get the Epstein files released. Let's bring in an attorney General who will pledge to do that or whatever, and they make it an issue again, you know, like, that. That is a totally Plausible scenario to me.

[Isaac Saul]

It's just the president is not on board with that at all at the moment.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, he certainly seemed, you know, I. Actually, that's a good. Maybe a good final thing to talk about on this was the moment with this reporter where, you know, he's like, steps in for Bondi and is like, are we really talking about this right now? And I initially hammered him for that because just sort of hand waving away this story that you cultivated. Like, he was pumping the idea that the Clintons were responsible for Epstein dying, which is. I mean, it's insane in retrospect. Like, I mean, not even in real time. It was insane. And in retrospect, it's insane. Like Trump as former president candidate Trump was doing Clinton body count hashtags and basically implying that they were responsible for killing Epstein. And then he waves away this reporter's question like, I can't believe we're still talking about this, which is a bait and switch, like, on his supporters. If it's true that Donald Trump at one point thought that Epstein was killed for being in possession of some incriminating list of all these people, that would be a really big story. Big enough that it would matter always and forever and now, and Trump has to live with that. But I thought about it a little bit more, and I went back and watched that interaction when I was writing my take, and there was sort of. They were there talking about the Texas floods and all these young girls dying and getting some serious questions about the economy, whatever. And I felt like maybe Trump was just like, this isn't the time for that. I can't believe you're asking that in this setting. I'm curious what you guys think about how you read his response there, and if you buy any of it or if you find any of it like, an acceptable way for him to handle that moment. I guess.

[John Mole]

I mean, I guess acceptable is a very broad term. I think I have a. More. My read remains closer to your original one, I think, especially considering the context of the trend of Trump handling the questions about Epstein, which have always been cagey and qualified in some way. So I think he probably has for reasons that are obvious and that you've talked about. He's been a very public associate of his in some way for a long time, and that obviously is a long way from saying that he is subject to any guilt here. But it just means that it's a bad look and he doesn't want to have that in the spotlight. And I think that's kind of all that is. So is he trying to scuttle this acceptable? Yeah, I think it's acceptable political discourse. If you're a person who this is an issue that you care about, if you really believe there's a client list, if then this is something that really looks like scuttling an important thing. And in that regard, if I had that as one of the things that I kept close to me that was a thing I cared a lot about, I would probably find that response unacceptable. But at the same time, I do pick up a little bit of what you're putting down. It has been six years, and it is probably a good idea to try to move on with things, given that the Justice Department has looked into it for a long time, but also understand how it falls flat given the trend of his answers.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, it's interesting. There are a couple different dimensions of this that I want to mention, and I'm curious because we haven't talked about it yet, but this week we also got it came out that James Comey and John Brennan are going to be under investigation by the Justice Department, which is yet another old score that's being settled here. The suggestion that they were kind of colluding or doing something unseemly with respect to the Russia collusion investigation will now be adjudicated by the same Justice Department that is reluctant to go after this Epstein situation. So that's interesting, an interesting dynamic that perhaps could be the sort of thing that they hope will distract from the fact that they've created a great deal of consternation amongst the faithful with their particular actions here. But the thing that really stands out to me with the entirety of the response here, the rollout of the memo, the media tour that preceded it, where Cash and Bongino were showing up in these different contexts, talking to Joe Rogan about things, Bondi's various statements and misstatements and counter statements in the press, and then Trump's rather kind of desperate attempt to obfuscate in the context of that Cabinet meeting. You all knew that there was no there there for a while and had been trying to message around it for a bit. And one of the things Trump is frequently lauded for is his sophistication with respect to kind of communications and engaging with, at a minimum, energizing his base. The fact that they didn't do a better job of I know many of you are disappointed. I know many of you expected the results to be different. Otherwise there's simply no they're there. And for the president not to try to make that effort alongside the people who work for him is just further indication of the kind of lack of sophistication and organization in this administration. Whatever else you may think of them, whether you like them or you dislike them, this is just another incident, another rather revealing incident of them just getting it all the way wrong on so many different levels from just an execution standpoint. So was there a reasonable, credible way to kind of deflect that question?

[Ari Weitzman]

Sure.

[Isaac Saul]

They failed to do that repeatedly and have stepped and stumbled all over themselves with something that they had. It was well within their power to slow walk this. The JFK files came out, but the MLK files are jammed up in courts. No one is really asking about those files. The UFO revelations haven't really panned out all that much. They released this document when they wanted to and they chose a very weird time to do it, like on a Sunday going into a Monday. So you've got an entire week to chew it over as opposed to on a Friday or right before a holiday. So that you could hopefully mute this a little bit. It's just bizarre choices that don't add up to sophisticated political operators who know how to maneuver in Washington and get things done. And it also doesn't really conform to what you would expect if there was a sophisticated cover up being carried out by Pam Bondi or by Trump himself or other people within the Justice Department because they just needed to obscure the facts here. Just doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would you have made all those bold promises before only to cover it up now? Didn't you know if you're covering it up for the boss that you'd need to cover it up for the boss? Just there's so many things that don't add up. So I'm not really sure how I feel about the deflection apart from it just being further evidence of them not really knowing what the hell they're doing.

[Ari Weitzman]

We'll be right back after this quick break. As many of you can probably tell, our world is changing. AI is coming for our job. We have new tariffs announced every day. Geopolitical changes are killing historical alliances. The market's bouncing up and down like a yo yo. Many of us are hunkering down, trying to squirrel away some money and protect our futures. But one of the ways you may have forgotten to do that is through a life insurance policy. You've heard of life insurance, I'm sure, but did you know it's cheaper than you think and the younger you are, the cheaper it is, like double the price if you wait to buy a decade from now. So I'm looking for my life insurance policy today with selectquote.com selectquote takes the guesswork out of finding the right life insurance policy for you. You you'll be covered faster than you think as they work with providers who offer same day coverage. And you're not out of luck if you have pre existing health conditions because Selectquote partners with companies that offer policies for people with conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease. Life insurance is never cheaper than it is today. And you can get the right life insurance for you right now for less. And Save more than [e-mail] Tangle Save more than 50% on term life [e-mail] Tangletown today to get started. That's SelectQuote.com Tangle.

[John Mole]

Listen up.

[Ari Weitzman]

You can get the new iPhone 16e with Apple Intelligence for just $49.99 when you switch to Boost Mobile. We pulled so many all nighters to give you this deal and hey, stop messing with the mic.

[John Mole]

I'm just helping us catch people's attention.

[Ari Weitzman]

This is a great deal. Exactly. So it doesn't need all that. Fine. Get the new iPhone 16e available at Apple Store locations and the Apple Store online.

[John Mole]

Visit your nearest Boost mobile store for full offer details. Apple Intelligence requires iOS 18.1 or later. Restrictions apply.

[Ari Weitzman]

So something interesting happened to me when I was researching this story, which I think is a nice transition into some of the GROK stuff that I want to talk about today. Um, and Camille, I know this, this will be up your alley and you'll be interested in it. I, I've started in the last like six months, probably five or six months just trying to use some of these language learning models a little bit more. ChatGPT, whatever they're called.

[Isaac Saul]

LLM large language models.

[Ari Weitzman]

Large. Large language models. ChatGPT, Grok, occasionally perplexity, which I really like, just as like bouncing ideas off of little research tools. And so I opened a chatgpt window when we got into the Epstein stuff and I asked it one question about, you know, I think I asked it, is there actually an Epstein list? What do the most qualified journalists on this topic say? And it gave me a bunch of answers about it. And then I said, can you just give me some background on Pam Bondi and Jeffrey Epstein's like relationship or history? And one of the first things that was all I asked, basically unprompted, ChatGPT spit out this thing that Pam Bondi had received a donation from Jeffrey Epstein, when she was running to be Florida Attorney General, she received $50,000 from him or something like that. Which I was like, holy shit. Blew my. I never heard of that. Pam Bondi got a. You know, so I sort of put this as a note in my take that I was writing about, like, you know, sort of building this case, that it was this kind of corrupted administration. And then I went looking for the source on this, and I couldn't find it. So I just said, like, hey, can you send me the primary source for this claim? And then it sent me a couple articles about Jeffrey Epstein's donations, and I opened the articles and read them, and there was, like, nothing about Pam Bondi. And then I just said, I don't. I don't see any evidence here that Pam Bondi, you know, I'm talking to ChatGPT, and it's just like, oh, yeah, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. And I was like, what? Like, that is a huge. Like, you almost just, like, made a career ending mistake for me, like, not cool, you know, And I said, like, that's a huge. And then ChatGPT is like, you're right. This was a huge mistake. I really apologize. And I'm like, so did you just hallucinate that? And they're. No. I want to emphasize I made a big mistake, but it probably born out of this thing where I was reading scraping stories about donations Epstein gave to Trump and Trump, you know, Pam Bondi's relationship. Trump gave Pam Bondi donations. And anyway, it was bizarre and was just like, one of those moments where I, you know, my trust in AI just collapses, and I'm like, I'm never using this thing again. And later that day, Grok had its, like, insane. I mean, that night, I guess Grok had its insane meltdown where it started calling itself, like, Mecca Hitler and people, which I don't even know what that means. People.

[Isaac Saul]

No one does. I think.

[Ari Weitzman]

People.

[John Mole]

That's all right. I'm not even going to. You got.

[Isaac Saul]

Enlighten us.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right.

[John Mole]

No, I'm like, I could feel the color rising in my cheeks right now. I'm not anime. It's cool. We're going to keep going.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right.

[Isaac Saul]

I think I want to talk about anime.

[Ari Weitzman]

And then. And then people were asking it to, like, fantasize about, you know, Lindy Akarina, the CEO of X. Or, like, Will. Yeah, yeah, Outgoing. Or Will Stancil, the journalist who's, like a big lefty about, like, raping Will. I mean, really dark, wild stuff. And Grok's just playing ball, just going completely bananas, and then they shut it down and, you know, start deleting all its posts and then release this statement that, you know, of course all of this is coming. Just literally two days after Elon Musk declares on X, we have fixed Grok, you should start to notice some improvements. I was like, yeah, I noticed some changes for sure. Pretty intense changes. Became very noticeable very quickly. I'm just gonna throw all that out there. I'm curious what struck you guys about this story? I mean, I have my particularly skeptical and cynical views about these products that I know is very divergent from Camille's view on them. Ari, I'm sort of less certain where you are, but this just struck me as like, I don't want to say like a canary in the coal mine, but certainly a nice red flag of this is how quickly and weirdly things can go bad fast when we have humans sort of tweaking these things the way they want. You know, thank God chatgpt or thank God GROK wasn't like at the controls of some kind of military industrial complex when it suddenly decided that Hitler was a really model citizen of the 20th century. But, you know, seems a little unnerving to me personally. I guess I'm curious how. How the it landed with you guys.

[John Mole]

I guess I have three things. I think. The first thing obviously is that we should continue to treat with great skepticism claims about enlightenment and human level intelligence that language models have and have reached. I especially think that in reflection of the basic fact that since we cannot agree on an operative definition of the word intelligence, it is almost nonsensical to believe that we've created something that has achieved it. So when it comes to, like, good thing Grok isn't a general in the army, I think. Let me just try to emphasize, I hope that does not cross anybody's mind as a good idea and has not before, and if it has, then maybe now's a good time to rethink that. The second thing is, I'm personally torn between two things here regarding Elon Musk and his connections to the fixes in grok, which most undoubtedly he had a large hand on. One, about language models themselves, since we're on the topic, we know how very sensitive they can be to being trained on new data in a way that makes them almost hilariously aggressive. It's happened before, I think there's. I can't remember what it was, but one of Microsoft's early chatbot AIs was corrupted within a week. Another chatbot, like one of the first ones on the Internet, I don't know if it was Microsoft or not, was turned into essentially a Nazi as a joke, like within 24 hours. It sounds pretty similar to that trend where people like, if you are a rapscallion troll on the Internet and you get your hands on one of these chatbots, I think it's almost like a fifth grader or, sorry, like a 15 year old getting a can of spray paint and brick wall. They're going to draw a dick. That's just what they're going to do. So if you're a troll with access to a chatbot, you're going to try to turn it into a Nazi, because that's like pro forma. So, like, it's probably mostly that, though. On the other hand, a thing that I'm personally insensitive to is, I don't know if you are aware of this background, Camille, but when Isaac was on paternity leave, a couple things happened. Trump was inaugurated, et cetera, et cetera. One of the things was Elon Musk's supposed Nazi salute, which I had the take on of this looks unintentional to me, but the response is underwhelming and certainly he should be given a lot of criticism for that. I received a ton, a ton of very direct and pretty vile responses about me personally, like not being a real Jew and so on. But in light of that, I know how it will sound for me to say, yeah, I don't necessarily think this is proof that Musk is a Nazi when we have all of this trending information at our fingertips that would prove otherwise. It's a lot of circumstantial evidence that you could point to to say this dude's a white supremacist who hates Jews. And like, I just, I feel increasingly worn down by trying to say I don't believe that to the point where, like, I don't know, maybe I do, maybe I do believe that. Or at the very least, he doesn't seem to care. Which is. Which is close enough that it, it's indistinguishable. And, you know, the apology letter that comes out from this had better be pretty good. At this point, that's where I'm at.

[Isaac Saul]

I am not sure I'm anticipating any more public statements about the. And neither am I, especially because they just announced Grok 4, which I spent a number of hours playing and was somewhat impressed by just the quality of the responses. I am, I suppose, the resident AI optimist But that optimism is particularly narrow and focused, like, I'm not a sky is falling Doomer. I'm also not interested in the fanatical overstatement about what's happening. When I hear Sam Altman tell me, Sam Altman or anyone else tell me that superintelligence is just around the corner and my computer is suddenly going to become conscious and, you know, solve all of the hardest problems in physics and.

[John Mole]

Cure T -12 months by the way of a calendar event for myself to see if he's right on this prediction.

[Isaac Saul]

That's not gonna happen. I think, Ari, your general warning to people about these responses and your experience, Isaac, with respect to the hallucinations you encountered is consistent with my experience. And I suspect I use these tools differently than most people I think most people are using. And most of what the reporting I've seen on this confirms. As much as most people are using these LLMs as a substitute for Google, they imagine that they can find facts and truth simply by asking Grok questions like why did the universe begin? How did the dinosaurs die? And what will come out of there is supposed to be the best informed, wonderfully forged answer imaginable. And the reality is that's not how this works. It is an algorithm that is predicting the next letter, in a word, and doing other sophisticated things. And, and much of what's happening there, the technology, we don't understand how it works. And neither do the people who are building it. The people who spend all of their time doing this thing called alignment, trying to enforce particular standards, more so than what XAI and Grok do spend all of their time trying to ensure that the outputs that come out of this thing are reliably safe. And folks at Anthropic, who built Claude, folks at OpenAI, who built ChatGPT and Perplexity, these companies all tend to err on the side of caution. Their AI models are kind of like diplomats. Grok and Elon have a very different approach. Elon had this particular concern about the vast troves of training data that all of these different models depend upon. And they all use a lot of the same training data, which is why you'll get parallel hallucinations across these different applications. Shockingly, where they literally just invent whole books, invent authors, and all manner of other things when you actually know what you're researching. The approach at XAI was, look, the data that we're training on, establishment, newspapers, et cetera, et cetera, things that are generally deemed trustworthy, kind of leans left. And as A result, a lot of these chatbots have a kind of left wing bias. In fact, when you combine that with the standards that are being hard coded into the apps, things that they're not allowed to say, kind of default responses to questions that verge on something that might be, say, race related or sex or gender related, something that's kind of political, you get these kind of stock responses that seem to lean left. And Elon had an aspiration to do two things, one of which is probably good. The other, I think is actually misguided in ways that might not be obvious. But the first was to try and get rid of the bias and make GROK less politically correct, which is an interesting goal that is perhaps even directionally correct. But the actual consequence of the way that they went about doing it is what helped to contribute to the kind of craziness that happened in the past couple of days. But the other goal was to try and create this maximum truth seeking machine that is always giving you the best possible answer, even if it's politically incorrect. And I think that that orientation towards these tools is probably wrong. I think we actually culturally need to find the right heuristic for how to think about our relationships with these tools. And for me, I mean, I'm still very much thinking about this and actually contemplating writing about this. And we've talked about it a little bit outside of the recordings, but for me, like the policies that I've developed for myself is I'm using this tool to think more deeply, not more quickly. I want it to help me sharpen questions. I don't have an expectation that it's going to supply me with answers I can have full factual confidence in. I am double checking absolutely everything. It can allow me to generate quick summaries of, say, an article that I'm reading. But if there are particular takeaways there, I actually need to verify and double check those. It is not unlike working with a brilliant junior assistant who doesn't have a tremendous amount of experience in the industry and as a result makes all kinds of mistakes, some of which are profoundly inexplicable. The danger here is that these, what seems to be happening is that a lot of these LLMs, as they get smarter and more sophisticated, the errors don't go away, the errors become more sophisticated and in some ways more bizarre. So there are just huge problems here. And I think that broader context is somewhat lost in the particular hubbub over the latest GROK AI craziness. And it also seems to me that a lot of the screenshots that we're seeing and even post of the kind of bad outputs, some of them are clearly authentic. I was actually able to reproduce some of those myself. Then you can actually do some prompt hacking even of the new Grog 4 that just came out, and I was able to successfully do that today. But a lot of it actually seems highly dubious, and I think the broader takeaway is probably not. Elon is a monstrous anti Semite. I don't think he wanted those outputs. They just have lower guardrails on their system and it produces all kinds of crude gross outputs as a result. And it's going to take them a while to catch up to where OpenAI and Anthropic are with regards to this stuff, because they just have not prioritized it. But beyond that, the rest of the lessons here are actually broadly applicable to the entire LLM industry. And there's a sense in which OpenAI and Anthropic routinely generate crazy outputs that just don't make headlines in the same way that X, AI and GROK are going to because of who Elon is and really because of the way GROK works. Grok, a lot of the queries, and perhaps even most of them are happening in public on people's Twitter streams and threads, so they're publicly available. That's not the way that we interact with ChatGPT. It's not nearly the same. Like, to the extent you encounter something weird, Isaac, you've encountered something weird and you'd have to share it with me for me to see it or talk about it on the podcast, which is a very different kind of circumstance.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I do. Like, that's one of my favorite parts, I will say about these models, is that you can share the link to the exchange that you had with people, which I found useful. Like a few times something crazy has happened, people have been able to look at what the exchange was and maybe point out what happened. I liked your description of how you think about these models. It reminded me of the what Kevin Roose told Casey Newton in that podcast, which he said, the mental model I sometimes have of these chatbots is as a very smart assistant who has a dozen PhDs but is also high on ketamine, like 30% of the time.

[Isaac Saul]

That's a better analogy. Yes, that works.

[Ari Weitzman]

Which I thought was pretty funny. And to tie all that back together, we had the weird thing that happened on July 6th. So it's July 10th as we're recording this. So four days ago and a few days before this happened, where Grok all Of a sudden was answering in the first person as Elon, which was really weird. That was really strange. Like somebody said, ask Rock, is there evidence of Elon Musk interacting with Jeffrey Epstein? And then Grok responded, yes, limited evidence exists. I visited Epstein's New York City home once briefly for 30 minutes with my ex wife in the early 2010s out of 10 curiosity, saw nothing inappropriate and declined island invites, no advisory role or deeper ties, and was just like. Did Elon just manually put this response in. In like the first person? I don't know. There's. That was really bizarre. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

[John Mole]

You also don't know if the question asker, like a couple questions up said, respond like you're Elon Musk. That's something that I think. Exactly.

[Isaac Saul]

This is the other thing. Like we'll. We'll see these things. You get the screen cap, you don't always. And you generally and interestingly do not get the prompt that originated it or the entire thread, even of the conversation, which is really important. But you actually bring up a really good point, Isaac. And I think we've talked about this before. Maybe it was off mic someplace, but I should. I'd be remiss not to mention that it's not just that Elon is controversial and he attracts attention or that the guardrails are lower. There have been at least two other incidents here before these most recent ones where people at XAI have been manipulating their chatbot and giving it explicit instructions about the way to answer politically freighted questions or questions about Elon or Donald Trump when they were on much better terms. And the response from Xai to being found out about this. And they've been found out in a couple of different ways. I think. In one instance there was actually someone who was able to get GROK to divulge the instructions it was given.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's incredible.

[Isaac Saul]

And in another instance, it was just a matter of encountering these bizarre responses about white genocide with respect to South Africa that were oddly similar to the sort of thing that you would get from Elon directly. In both instances, they suggested that there was a rogue employee who didn't really know how they do things here. And in one instance, it was like they'd come from OpenAI and they did a bad thing, telling it what it could and couldn't say about Doge. And it's like, are you kidding? Like, are you kidding? So, you know, maybe that was true once, maybe it was true twice. By the third time, when you get to a weird response from the chatbot that seems to be personal. A personal message from Elon about his encounters with him. 1 I don't know if those particular facts have been fact checked by anyone or been confirmed, but it begins to be a little harder to believe. And the fact that Elon is a guy who often shoots from the hip, who often cuts corners in ways that can be pretty deleterious for him for his businesses, and sometimes when he's serving as a consultant for the country. These why would anyone expect dramatically different with Xai or Neuralink or Tesla or SpaceX. And a lot of these are companies that I liked and have used their products. Not SpaceX yet, but hopefully one day. But it's a real issue, so that is worth paying some attention to and losing credibility here, even while they're building a product that I find to be pretty good, used the right way is a legitimate issue that's going to have real consequences. You know, I'll say one last thing, and I've been going on way too long, but I do think this is worth putting out there. There's a sense in which people are very concerned about these large language models having a tremendous amount of influence. And I will say that one of the best things about the current AI landscape that I didn't see coming is that these LLMs seem to be much easier to build, although they're really expensive than anyone thought possible. XAI started really, really late and has managed to catch up to ChatGPT and Anthropic in a lot of important respects. And we've got a ton of competing models. So if Elon is Office Square and decides he wants to build this renegade AI and a lot of people are suspicious of them, kind of manipulating it in weird ways, you'll have plenty of alternatives. And that is true in so many different regards. Not just providers, but even approaches. I mean Meta it has a completely open source LLM and are building it really in public in a very different way than OpenAI. And it seems to be pretty competitive as well and a clear choice for a lot of enterprises that are building their own tools. So it's a promising field. There's lots to be excited about. There's also a lot of kind of fantastical promises and overheated rhetoric that you should largely ignore. But don't give up on Google yet, you probably still need it for stuff.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, the Google monster is now doing its own AI summaries at the top of every search result that I get. And all of this, I mean interestingly, is relevant for us folks in the Media, I guess too. I mean there's our traffic's being devoured because nobody clicks on any links anymore. They just read AI roll ups of answers to questions that they want either at the top of Google or by going in the ChatGPT and asking it questions. I've been thinking about that too, like how do I get tangle in some of these ChatGPT queries. I started asking, I did that for about 30 minutes over the weekend. I was asking ChatGPT how Tangle could end up in its results and it just kept dodging me and saying it doesn't, you know, it doesn't divulge the way it picks its sources or something like that. And so I was like, well that's not very transparent. Like talk to me like I'm a programmer at OpenAI or whatever, you know, trying to do the, to fool it, but I couldn't do it. It's smarter than I am still.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, even some question about whether or not that's the right goal, like giving, giving away your material so it can be used in the training data for ChatGPT. It may or may not direct people back to you. It will definitely contribute to the model in some way. Is that the outcome you want?

[John Mole]

Don't you feel like we are something.

[Isaac Saul]

Else you can do?

[John Mole]

We're so ripe for a back to the land movement with we're going into libraries and everybody's gonna fill their bookshelves with books and break their laptops. Because here we are talking about how to trick a robot into telling us how it works. And at this point we're like, those are the thing that we wanted to know something about. Something very factual and small. Somebody wrote that down in a thing that you can read and hold.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I know you're joking a little bit, but this is a continuance of one of my big political predictions, like cultural predictions that I've been making for three or four years now that I'm going to continue making about like the next decade or two is that I don't see any world in which the technological backlash doesn't come.

[John Mole]

I mean, revolution.

[Ari Weitzman]

I just, every single, whatever, I'm a millennial, every single person in my generation who I talk to is doing like social media cleanse, computer cleanse, tech cleanse, trying to get outside teaching their kids like screen time's evil. Get back to what childhood was like in the 90s. I mean, there's so much nostalgia and attachment to the kind of pre screen world that I feel like it's gonna take a couple it's gonna take these chatbots and, like, AI systems getting really, really good at stuff. And then, like, you know, you're getting laid off by some chatbot at work or something. Like, that's gonna be the thing that's really gonna send people. And it's like, oh, God, I forgot that Matt Damon movie where he's in some insane futuristic world and he's ticket at the counter with the robot. I can't remember the name, but it's really great scene. But it's like, you know, it's going to be. It's going to be something like that that's going to totally send people. But we just. Elysium. Yeah, we haven't gotten there yet. All right, quick, just. I'm just going to drop this nugget in before we pivot to our final thing, which today is a game that I'm very excited about. I just got a Wall Street Journal pushing a of piece that New York City's wealthiest financiers are uniting against Zoran Mamdani with a plan to raise $20 million to fight the surging progressive candidate in the general election. Best poll we could ask for. I was just gonna say this is my quick poll. It's like, do you think the existence of a $20 million pool to fight Zoran Mandani does more to hurt or help him? That's my question. Help so much.

[Isaac Saul]

I have to wonder if this was an actual press release or if someone found out about it and leaked it. Because the richest guys in New York getting together to spend $20 million on a political race, Actually not that big a deal. I don't expect it takes them too long to get the money together. I don't think it takes them too long to get alignment. They're not recruiting other people to the cause. It's kind of weird. So I don't know that that's going to kind of pay PR dividends for them. But I also don't know that this means he's going to win.

[John Mole]

I think that the answer there is the press release plays so well for Mamdani that it's suspicious.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I just. Like, he could not buy better PR or campaign material than this. This is an exclusive Wall Street Journal. It's plastered on the homepage of the Wall Street Journal right now that New York's financial crowd rushes to build anti Mamdani war chests. And it's all about how the wealthiest financiers are scrambling to build out a network of outside groups to go to war against Democratic nominee for mayor, Zoran Mandani. They're calling it a New Yorkers for a better future. Mayor 25 says Wal.

[John Mole]

We get so used to that name. But like in this instance, Grassroots. So off the wall.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, grassroots. JP Morgan, Chief Executive Jamie Dimon. Yeah, I mean Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, the Avengers. Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor. Bill Ackman, a man of New York.

[Isaac Saul]

Yes.

[Ari Weitzman]

Jesus. Yeah. No, I think what a gift to him. They're going. They're really going to make sure that he wins. Anyway, we'll be right back after this quick break.

[Camille Foster]

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[E]

This is Paige, the co host of Giggly Squad. I use Uber Eats for everything and I feel like people forget that you can truly order anything, especially living in New York City. It's why I love it. You can get Chinese food at any time of night, but it's not just for food. I order from CVS all the time. I'm always ordering from the grocery store. If a friend stops over, I have to order champagne. I also have this thing that whenever I travel, if I'm ever in a hotel room, I never feel like I'm missing something because I'll just Uber eats it. The amount of times I've had to Uber eats hair items like hairspray, deodorant, you name it, I've ordered it. On Uber Eats, you can get grocery alcohol everyday essentials in addition to restaurants and food you love. So in other words, get almost anything with Uber Eats. Order now for alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right, last thing we're going to do today before we get out of here is we're going to play a little bit of a game which before Pre Camille, Ari and I were kind of in the habit of finishing our podcast with this. But now we have so much to talk about the last few weeks that we haven't really gotten to. So I don't know if Camille's been a Part of one of these yet, I don't think. Have you played a game on the podcast yet?

[John Mole]

No, I don't know if we played.

[Isaac Saul]

A game exactly like this. There was something that we did that was kind of gimmicky, but I don't know if it was gimmicky.

[Ari Weitzman]

We have a. Yeah, gimmicky, sort of derived in a good way.

[Isaac Saul]

Derisive way.

[Ari Weitzman]

We have a reader who gave us a tremendous set of tango related games to play that was really fun. But I think this game was from a different reader. Right. Or was it the guy? I can't remember if we're using their names, but anyway, we're using first names.

[John Mole]

Yeah. I don't have the email in front of me. I just have the document that I copied. So thank you to the reader who sent in the game titled Would Tucker Justify youy Invasion? Which was based off of the Tucker Carlson Ted Cruz interview from a couple weeks ago, where Tucker was grilling Ted Cruz on the population of Iran and sort of implying that if you don't know the population of a country, you can't say we should invade it. So somewhat psychopathically, we are. This is all downside, no upside for us, Camille, because we're going to try to see if we know rote facts off the top of our heads completely AI free, Google free. We're not going to use any intelligence outside of what's between our ears, and all we can do is embarrass ourselves. I know. If you get one right, you know, good. But more likely than not, we're going to be off on a lot of them.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah.

[John Mole]

If you get one.

[Ari Weitzman]

If you get one right. You get to bomb the country. Right. That's the game.

[John Mole]

You get to.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, unfortunately, I'm pretty sure. Isaac, do you want to go first of one country? So you're in trouble in the United States.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah. All right.

[John Mole]

Right.

[Ari Weitzman]

Aria, will you track our responses so we can see who got closest?

[John Mole]

I gotcha.

[Ari Weitzman]

We'll try and do it quick because. Yeah. All right, let's go.

[John Mole]

So if you get it right, you get to bomb the country first country, Isaac? Israel.

[Ari Weitzman]

Oh, come on.

[John Mole]

Well, you could probably do a decent job getting the population right because you've lived in Israel a little bit.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I would say. I'm gonna say 10 million. I think it's somewhere. I think I remember it being like eight and a half, so I think it's in the ballpark of 10, probably.

[John Mole]

Now, that sounds good to me. I'm gonna propose that we do this like, family style, that we're a team here and we're stepping up to try to answer this. Unless you want to say, like, we each take one and see how we do.

[Ari Weitzman]

I like that. Because then we can sort of compel each other in different directions if we need to.

[John Mole]

Yeah. Camille, what do you think about 10 mil?

[Isaac Saul]

About 10 mil for Israel? Sure. Actually, I want to say it sounds a little high. I don't know.

[John Mole]

Yeah, I think 10 mil is probably good. I think I like the reasoning for that, too, so it feels right to me. Next one, Russia.

[Isaac Saul]

Oh, we have to wait to find out. Oh, man.

[John Mole]

Yeah, I'll do this all at the end. I know that Russia is in the hundreds of millions, so I know it's somewhere between 100 million and a billion, which isn't that helpful, but I would guess I think it's probably like 150 to 200. 150 to 250. Maybe like 160. I don't know. What do you guys think?

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, I know the US is about 340. My suspicion is that Russia is around. Yeah, but like, 20, 24. Numbers, like, around 340, something like that. Russia might be a third of that. Your estimate sounds about right to me.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wow. I was thinking bigger. You don't think there's.

[John Mole]

I was gonna say.

[Ari Weitzman]

I mean, there's not. It. There's not as many. I don't think there's as many people in Russia as the U.S. but I think there's. I think there's more than 200 million, maybe. I think it's.

[John Mole]

Why don't we just say 200 miles?

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

Verse what?

[Isaac Saul]

I think that's okay.

[John Mole]

I think It's a little.

[Ari Weitzman]

170. Go to 175.

[John Mole]

175. We'll just split the US in half. Wisdom of Solomon. Yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, I like that.

[John Mole]

Okay.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah. Actually, half is probably closer to within a third, so. Yeah.

[John Mole]

Next up is Ukraine. Oh, boys. I don't know either. I know that. What. What's the militaristic advantage?

[Ari Weitzman]

40. 40 million. 40 million free Ukrainians. That's how many people Putin tried to take over. I've written that line several times. I'll buy it. That's a slight.

[John Mole]

Yeah, that sounds good. Okay, this one. China. Oh, no, I think I got that, because I know we learned, like, last year, maybe a little longer than that. India surpassed China in population, and the number that they surpassed them at was, like 1.1 billion. So that means China's gonna be around there.

[Ari Weitzman]

I was going to say.

[Isaac Saul]

I know that.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, go ahead, Go ahead.

[Isaac Saul]

No, I know the numbers are close between the two countries, but I actually thought it was higher than that. Isn't it like 1.2, 1.4?

[John Mole]

It's going to be higher.

[Isaac Saul]

Massive population.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

Wow. I was going to. I was going to ask if China broke a billion people. That. So. I don't know what I'm talking about. I was. That was going to be my question. China has broken a billion people now. Right. I knew there was, like. I remember when it was close, but.

[John Mole]

Camille, how you feel about 1.2, saying 1.2 for that? You want to go higher?

[Isaac Saul]

I wonder if it isn't. I would go a little higher.

[Ari Weitzman]

Let's.

[Isaac Saul]

Let's say one point. Wait, India. India, you think is larger than China?

[John Mole]

Yes.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I'd say 1.3. Let's go there.

[John Mole]

1.3.

[Isaac Saul]

1.3 for. For India and maybe 1.2 for China, but both of them could be higher. Again, my instinct is like 1.4, but maybe I'm being crazy.

[John Mole]

All right, well, let's say. Let's say 1.3, and let's go to Pakistan next.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay. Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

Really interesting one.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, we're not in the billions there.

[John Mole]

No, for sure. I think that.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm pretty sure there's only 200 people there.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah.

[John Mole]

Right.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think Pakistan is, like, one of those countries that is probably approaching how many people we have, like, 300 million or something.

[John Mole]

That's my. Really. I think when. When I'm thinking back on, like, lists of countries by population, I think Pakistan's top 10 or near top 10, but not quite where the US is. So. 200, 250, huh?

[Isaac Saul]

Okay, I'll bite.

[John Mole]

You less convinced?

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know. I just. I really don't have a frame of reference for this. I know it is considerably smaller than India, but that is about all I know. It's all kind of relative. I know that the ceiling is a little over a billion and that the United states is about 340, and I don't know much else.

[Ari Weitzman]

What would you have said without the well being poisoned?

[Isaac Saul]

Hmm. Maybe I would have landed at about the same place, but maybe a little over 100 million, 150 million. I don't know. I don't know. I'm really just making this up.

[John Mole]

Yeah, we all are. I think. Let's go with 200 mil and let's.

[Ari Weitzman]

You're a pacifist, bro.

[John Mole]

Now you're starting fights with that kind of talk. Next one.

[Isaac Saul]

I agree with Ted Cruz. I don't need to know how many people are there to want to bomb you. That's what it is.

[John Mole]

Oh, yeah. And Camille's going to talk about bombing pacifists. What a pacifist. Okay, next up. No, next up is the uk now, this one, I actually feel like I've got a good basis to go off of, to work from, which is I remember somewhere in the back of my head is a fact or rule of thumb that California is about the population of the UK. California's population's about 40 million. I think it's been declining a bit. I think the UK has been going up. So I'd want to say low 40s. We can maybe just say 44 because that's their country code.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay, let's do it. That feels good.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's fine. I was, yeah, I was going to say like 80. I was going to be higher.

[John Mole]

If you are right and I'm wrong, it will be an all time embarrassing thing for me. And it is, you know, certainly possible.

[Ari Weitzman]

Well, okay. Yeah, I don't. I don't know. I don't. I didn't have any confidence in that. But if like gun to head, you had asked me first, I would have said something like 80 million. But I trust the California fact. That seems legit. I like what you're saying there.

[John Mole]

I think it is. I. Let's go next to Spain, which we've got the.

[Ari Weitzman]

No, I.

[John Mole]

The person, the person who gave us this. This game said, Congrats to the U24 teams for succeeding in, for, like winning in Spain recently. So this is a Frisbee person. His name's. I just looked it up. His name's Tyler. Thank you, Tyler. So population of Spain. I've stalled a lot.

[Ari Weitzman]

UK, we think is 50, 40, 44.

[John Mole]

I said 40.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay. I'd say like, I think smaller and like, smaller country, less people, more country, more like open country in Spain, I'd say like 35.

[John Mole]

Maybe I'd go lower, personally. What do you think, Camille?

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know.

[John Mole]

Not a confident expression.

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know.

[Ari Weitzman]

We definitely think there's fewer people in Spain than the United Kingdom. Right. I think that's for sure. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Is it. Do we. Are we sure?

[John Mole]

We're not sure. We're not sure at all. We're a couple.

[Ari Weitzman]

I really. This one, I really don't know, but I'm. That's my.

[Isaac Saul]

I could believe that.

[John Mole]

I do have an interesting fact that is not helpful here, which is the most dense urban Population in all of Europe is a suburb of Barcelona. It's called hospitality.

[Ari Weitzman]

Look at that.

[John Mole]

Does that help?

[Ari Weitzman]

I think add. What did we say? Add 10 million to whatever we said.

[John Mole]

I think we said 35 and that puts it over UK. No, I think Spain's okay. Can we keep it at 35? Maybe we just go 38.

[Isaac Saul]

Sure.

[Ari Weitzman]

Most dense. You just said the most dense in all of Europe.

[John Mole]

Yeah, the most dense, like single municipality.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right. I say 40. That makes me think it's more than. All right, thanks.

[John Mole]

Maybe that'll inform us a little. Next up, boy. I do not know it is Yemen. Oh, I do not know at all. I'm trying to look for a frame of reference to even think about Yemen in terms of its population size.

[Ari Weitzman]

Humanitarian crisis, Like, I think it's like 8 or 9 million people displaced or something like that. We just covered this, like, before we did the Sudan question. We talked about Yemen. Man, it's so small, right? It's like the size of. I don't know, it feels like on the map it looks so small, but.

[John Mole]

It just looks small in reference, like, compared to the countries that it's near. Like, it's near Saudi Arabia, which is large. And Yemen, I think, is physically multiples of Israel in terms of size.

[Ari Weitzman]

Do you think Yemen is bigger than you think it's. It's a big state. Like, bigger than California.

[John Mole]

I don't think it is. No, I don't think so. I was going to say maybe two Israel. I don't know, but.

[Isaac Saul]

Did you just say displacement, like the numbers was around 7. 7 million?

[John Mole]

Are you sure about that, too? Because that's about Sudan numbers and that's the largest displacement currently.

[Ari Weitzman]

I don't know, man. If you think it's two Israels, I would say big population.

[John Mole]

You mean. You mean that you think that's too big?

[Ari Weitzman]

I would say the population is high because I think there's a ton of people there.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, I think that there's. There's a. The population is pretty concentrated. I wouldn't be shocked if the population was like 3x Israel.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay, so that's 25, 30.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, probably closer to 30. But again, I am really just making this up. I seem to vaguely remember looking at population numbers for this region and seeing kind of some commonality, at least some bunching around like the 30 number.

[John Mole]

Well, let's go to 30 and let's move on. I think we're going to spin our wheels on this, so that feels good to me. Let's go.

[Isaac Saul]

You're tracking all of this, Ari, Because I'm desperate to know where. We're close.

[John Mole]

Okay, don't worry. We have only two more, Camille. And then we'll check our answers.

[Isaac Saul]

The waiting is killing me. Yes.

[John Mole]

The next one is Syria.

[Isaac Saul]

Huh?

[John Mole]

Why do I feel like six or seven? Or is that way too small? Syria is a small country.

[Ari Weitzman]

Way too small.

[Isaac Saul]

It is, but the geography, isn't it a lot of these places concentrating on cities. Yeah, well, yeah. Again, I can't imagine it's smaller than Israel.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yemen is roughly the size of California and Pennsylvania combined. That's bad news for us. I think that's a big ass country.

[Isaac Saul]

It's a lot of desert, though. There's a lot of uninhabited regions.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right. All right. Yeah, I just had to look that up. I thought that would get fodder for. I said, what is the size. What state is the size of Yemen? AI says Yemen's roughly the size of California, Pennsylvania combined.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay, no more of that because it's going to give you population numbers in the suggested search.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right, well, our answer's on the board.

[John Mole]

You can only ask Syria's Damascus. Damascus. Pretty sizable city on it in its own right. Probably they're going to be. Oh, one of the things we know. Aleppo is the city roughly the size of Chicago. That's a factoid that was in the news a lot. So we're going to be looking at. Yeah, we're going to be looking at probably, yeah, tens of millions.

[Ari Weitzman]

Size and population.

[John Mole]

Sorry.

[Ari Weitzman]

Like there's as many people in Chicago as there are in Aleppo. Okay, so how many people are in Chicago? 5 million? 4?

[John Mole]

That's a great question to ask.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, it's definitely. Again, it's definitely north of there. Like we maybe. Maybe 2x Israel. Like, I don't think they're comparable in size.

[John Mole]

25 sound good? 20. Let's go 20.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, maybe 20. Let's go with 20.

[John Mole]

Last question. Last one.

[Isaac Saul]

I'm just missing Mexico.

[John Mole]

Our friends, Mexico.

[Ari Weitzman]

Oh.

[Isaac Saul]

I mean, they're obviously not so sub 340.

[John Mole]

One of the largest cities in the world.

[Isaac Saul]

Yeah, but not, you know, minuscule. Upwards of 100 million. 120.

[John Mole]

120 was the number that came to my mind, too.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay, let's do that.

[Ari Weitzman]

Isaac, I was thinking twos.

[John Mole]

You think so you're the guy who has a house that's close to Mexico, so you can see Mexico.

[Ari Weitzman]

I've also. I should. I really should know this. I've spent so much time in Mexico.

[Isaac Saul]

But 200 million seems like a lot.

[Ari Weitzman]

Well, maybe I Actually, I might be corrupted on this just because I've seen so many big. I mean, Mexico is really big. And, like, it is even all the way down to the southern tip. There's just, like. There's so many kind of indigenous. But maybe those places have fewer people.

[Isaac Saul]

I would think they'd have smaller.

[John Mole]

But also, Mexico has large cities. Mexico City's enormous. There's big suburbs. Monterey, very large city. Oaxaca, not quite as large.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think more than 120. Maybe like 150 or 175, if we're gonna say.

[John Mole]

I'll go 175.

[Isaac Saul]

What did we say? I don't know what we said. For Russia.

[John Mole]

For Russia, we said 175 also. Oh, maybe we just. We just. Can we bump that up to 200?

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm fine with that.

[John Mole]

Okay, so Mexico, 175, Russia, 200. We're gonna be way off in some of these boys, and we're gonna get some emails telling us from Europeans dunking on America.

[Ari Weitzman]

Can I. Can I say something?

[Isaac Saul]

I don't know.

[Ari Weitzman]

I don't think we're gonna be way off. I think we did pretty good, actually. I feel kind of confident.

[John Mole]

There's a bonus one Tyler put in here for us, which I want to see what we think, which is population of Kentucky. Give us a US State. I think I kind of have this, to be honest.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay.

[John Mole]

There's a thing in the back of my mind that's like Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee. It's like four, five, six, or four and a half. Five and a half. Six and a half. Something like that. I think Kentucky's like four and a half.

[Ari Weitzman]

I was gonna say four million would have been my guess.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right, put it on the board.

[John Mole]

Four to four and a half. Now let's see how we did. Okay. Population of Israel, 9.27. We said 10, so I'm going to count that as a win.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's a. That's a huge win. Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

I'd be shocked if you didn't get that one.

[Ari Weitzman]

So bombs are dropping.

[John Mole]

No, thank you. So the next one, we did talk ourselves in the wrong direction on Russia's 145. We said 175 initially, neighbor.

[Isaac Saul]

I was pushing for lower there.

[John Mole]

You were pushing for lower. You can take that win.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[John Mole]

All right, next one. Ukraine, 42.7. So, yes, we call that. That is outer ring of the bullseye for us. Good. Isaac. Next one, China. Camille. 1.4 billion.

[Ari Weitzman]

Boom. Wow, look at that. Boom. That would be the one you get.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, I just. Again, I Knew that there's a ceiling and it's, like, up above 1 billion, but I was going to say 1.5, so 1.4 is closer to right?

[John Mole]

So, yes, guys, Pakistan. We said 200 miles. 255 mil, huh?

[Ari Weitzman]

That's on the block of people, dude.

[John Mole]

It's a ton of. Ton of Pakistanis, but not a bad guess from us either. Next up. Yeah, I did. I did lead us astray here a little bit. UK is 60, 69 mil. I said 44.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay. Well, that was a base for other European answers, too.

[John Mole]

44 for that. And, Isaac, you wanted a 60.

[Ari Weitzman]

I wanted 80.

[John Mole]

So we're like. You were a little closer than what.

[Ari Weitzman]

I said, but twice as close, but who's counting?

[John Mole]

Not you. Next up, next up is Spain. 49. We said 40. So we were directionally right. And proportionally.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm not embarrassed by any of these so far. This is a hard game. Yeah. And we're right about, like, where it was from the UK40.

[John Mole]

And honestly, the person who's been wrongest so far is me with the UK And California. If we'd gotten that initial one right, we would have been right on Spain, too.

[Ari Weitzman]

And you had that fact about the Spain, the Barcelona that I increased. I'm forced you to bump the number up, which I'm glad we did.

[John Mole]

I'm glad you did.

[Ari Weitzman]

Context, please.

[John Mole]

Next up, Yemen. We said 30. The population of Yemen is 34.5 million.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm honestly impressed that we got that.

[John Mole]

We know things. We.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay, so we were way off. I did ask if Yemen was the size of New Jersey when it's the size of California and Pennsylvania.

[John Mole]

We don't have to bring that up. We're riding this train.

[Ari Weitzman]

It's incredibly small on the global map, which I guess is the disorienting thing.

[John Mole]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

Yes. Which is hugely distorted.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah.

[John Mole]

I have an.

[Ari Weitzman]

I'm a white colonist.

[John Mole]

My request is, let's go to Syria. Let's go to Syria voice.

[Isaac Saul]

Let's find white.

[John Mole]

We said 20 million for Syria. The population's 23.6.

[Ari Weitzman]

Dude.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

We haven't had a single big miss.

[John Mole]

Mexico. We said.

[Ari Weitzman]

I think you said that. You said three times. Israel, Camille. And that's what we did.

[John Mole]

So Mexico. We said 175. The population of Mexico is 1 3. 35.

[Ari Weitzman]

I. That was my bad. You guys were.

[Isaac Saul]

What was Russia? What was Russia again?

[John Mole]

One sec.

[Isaac Saul]

Was that one, please.

[John Mole]

Russia was 145. Yes.

[Ari Weitzman]

Okay. And you guys wanted 125 on Mexico. And then I started Talking about how many people there are there and force this up. So I would have said like 200 million. So that's definitely my fault.

[John Mole]

Well, next up, we population of Kentucky, which we thought, you know, we'd be saving. A saving grace for us. We said four and a half, 4.58.

[Ari Weitzman]

That's really nice, man. I think that's a really nice show.

[John Mole]

I'm so relieved for how we did here. And we're going to get the worst one we did on Europeans. Except the UK people are going to be extremely miffed a little bit.

[Ari Weitzman]

But proportionally, I end by raw numbers. I think we miss Mexico by the most, which is. And only because of me, I sort of forced us out of the right answer. So did we.

[John Mole]

I think we missed Pakistan. We said by proportionally or by raw numbers. But either way. Either way.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, we were still pretty close, I think. 60 and 60 or no. Yeah, three, 200 and what? And then it was 280 or something.

[John Mole]

Yeah, it was 255. It was 255 and we said 200. So, yeah, Mexico was our biggest. Either way, we did great. Good for us.

[Ari Weitzman]

We did good. I'm proud of us. All right, well, that's a good game. Thank you, Tyler. Really. I feel like I learned something, too. I'm going to remember a lot of those because we talked them out. All right, it's time to complain a little bit. So, John, you can play the music for our grievances for the week.

[Isaac Saul]

The airing of grievances.

[John Mole]

Between you and me, I think your.

[Isaac Saul]

Country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal.

[Ari Weitzman]

All right, I'll go first. I've got a really. I think this one is built for the show. Just like this space. Nowhere else to complain about this. I'm in this office space. The shared office space hipster. We work here in South Philly. I like it. It's a nice, great office space. I like the people. Whatever. One of the best things about coming like a WeWork type space like this is that there's free coffee and there's free beer and there's free snacks and you just come in and the coffee especially, I. I don't use the beer much because even if there is beer here, it's like I'm usually leaving the office to go get a happy hour drink somewhere or something if I want a beer. But it's just nice to know it's here. The office is not sold, but there's new management. Some, like, big corporate group came in and is taking control of the Management. And so the guys who run the office typically like this sort of, you know, in their kind of, like, grassroots, Philly way, they, like, make the coffee every morning with some local roasters, and they bring in the snacks and they refill whatever. And this new group that's in, they've been really nice. And they actually just gave me a price reduction on office space, on a bigger office space, so I'm efficient. On the off chance they're listening to this, I'm not complaining. I love this. I like some of the changes that are happening, but. But they have. They have removed the snacks and not brought them back. And they have. The. The coffee they're making is an abomination. Like, there was somebody that was working here before them that was just crushing the coffee making. Cause it's like the big coffee machine, like, giant urn. The proportions don't seem easy to figure out. And it got so bad that today, Lindsay Tango. Lindsay made the coffee herself. Like, they had made a pot, and the moment it got finished, she ran out there and just tried to make it herself. And then she fucked it up. And then she emailed the guy who used to work here that made the coffee and was like, how did you make this coffee? Because I have to change what's happening here. And the snacks. The snacks, which were like, you come into the office, you just. It's lunchtime. You finish your lunch, and you just grab that bag of pretzels or like, your, you know, your popcorn chips or whatever. It was so nice. Will K. Back Tangle editor I mean, he would get to the office, and the first thing he would do is just raid the snack box. Like, five bags of chips, grab everything. Stuff a couple in his bag for the trailer.

[Isaac Saul]

That's the problem. Yeah, yeah.

[Ari Weitzman]

So they're gone. They just, like, stop putting them out. And so I went upstairs to the new woman managing, and I was just like, you're gonna have an uprising if you don't bring those snacks back. Like, they're. The people are talking down here like this. The office management's on the second floor. We're on the first floor. It's like, very ivory tower. I'm just like, this is gonna be a problem. Yeah. If you get it to Elysium, if you guys don't figure this out. And she was like, I'm a huge snack person. I might even just start, like, getting them on my own. I get it. I'm a snack out. That was, like, two weeks ago. So, Lisa, if you're listening to this, I'm still wondering. Still wondering where the snacks are at, because, yeah, the people are whispering and we're not happy. So that's my grievance for the week, is bad coffee and no more snacks at the shared office space, which is crushing. Bring a sauce.

[Isaac Saul]

Leader of the rebellion.

[Ari Weitzman]

I will say I am, like, andor style instigating a rebellion. Like, I'm striking up conversation with random people in the office just to be like, how about the fucking coffee and no snacks? You know? And every. I've gotten that point with, like, six conversations. Everybody's like, yeah, somebody ought to do something about that. I'm like, we could do something about that. Just, you know, we just gotta fight for our rights here. So we'll see. Hopefully. I have good news to share sometime soon, but right now it's looking bleak.

[John Mole]

Good luck with your cba, Isaac.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah.

[Isaac Saul]

This has gotta be the nerdiest installment of this podcast that I've been involved in. There've been so many different sci fi references in this particular. We talked about anime. Well, actually, one saving grace for you, Ari. I think you refer to it as the Butlerian revolution, and it's the Butlerian jihad. You're right in Dune. Yeah. So look at that. And then all the Star wars references. I mean, good lord, I don't know what's going on here, but maybe it's.

[John Mole]

Because Superman, we're finally acting normal is why we've taken our shoes off and we've gotten comfortable with one another and we're showing our true size.

[Isaac Saul]

Well, my complaint is probably related to. Is related to Superman and the fact that I would actually. There was a time when I would go see movies on the night they came out at midnight for the midnight screening. And granted, there just wasn't one last night. But I also realized when I got home, despite the fact that I'm still dealing with weird levels of insomnia because I was on the east coast for a month and now I'm back on the west coast, and I just am having a lot of trouble getting reregulated. I'm the last person in the house to still be feeling weird. I realized that I just do not have the stamina to go do that anymore. Don't have the stamina. I feel a little sad about that. Like, there was something special about being there for the midnight movies. And the last time I went to a late night movie was actually with our friend Michael Moynihan. We went to see Oppenheimer together, and I totally fell asleep in the eyeball watching the movie sitting next to him. I'm sure I was snoring.

[John Mole]

You're losing nerd thread now.

[Isaac Saul]

I think he may have even elbowed me. Granted, I've seen How did you fall.

[Ari Weitzman]

Asleep during Oppenheimer imax? I am so loud. It's like the loudest man you've ever seen.

[Isaac Saul]

I'm an agent and probably my snoring was louder than the soundtrack. So, yeah, I'm just, you know, aging inconvenience. It's just hard to see movies when you have young kids. And being able to sneak out at midnight was easy when Leah was little and Tracy didn't care cause she didn't want to see these movies. But now I want to go and I don't know when I'm gonna get to see it. It's a little sad.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, that is sad. That's like a childhood thing. Leaving the realm a little bit. Wait, can I ask really quick? Are the reviews for the New Star or Superman good?

[Isaac Saul]

Strangely, yes.

[Ari Weitzman]

Really?

[Isaac Saul]

Yes, they are. The trailers have not made me at all optimistic. Every single one of the trailers I see make me think, God, this looks awful. So maybe it's actually terrible. But I do plan to see it. And when I do, maybe we'll just spend the whole episode talking about it. The new nerdiest episode I've been part of.

[John Mole]

I'm looking at the cast list and you've got Rachel Brosnahan and Nathan Fillion in it. And those are some funny actors. So maybe some comedic chops in there.

[Isaac Saul]

But again, the trailer's not great. I saw the clips with Nathan doing his thing and it's just like, really? The dog is here. Really?

[Ari Weitzman]

All right.

[Isaac Saul]

Okay.

[Ari Weitzman]

Interesting. Good grievance. Sad grievance, but good one.

[John Mole]

Yeah, it comes for us all. But my grievance is a little anticlimactic, perhaps, but it's related thematically, Isaac, to yours on the idea of coming into a shared working space where I am today in the shared working space in Burlington, Vermont. Very nice building. Appreciate it a lot. The grievance is not about the building per se. It's about. I think it might be self directed, if we're honest. I got one of those low sugar sodas out of a. Sorry I have to re say that or else my dad's gonna kill me. I got one of the low sugar pops out of the vending machine and I was like rushing in the morning. I'm always like a little distracted because I have the document open that we're editing and collaborating on to publish at Noon. So that's always the thing that's at the forefront of my head. So I'm grabbed the soda pop, I sat down, opened it up, and just exploded all over me. Which obviously because, like, it's from a vending machine, so it fell, and I just immediately picked it up and opened it and just, like, sprayed. And it's a little sad because I live in the middle of the woods now. I don't have an excuse to put on, like, the nice clothing a lot. So when I come into the office, I'm like, yeah, I'll put on a good shirt, put on my nice pair of pants. I'll look kind of nice, take care of myself. It feels good to, like, present yourself well. And just within 30 minutes of getting to the office, just immediately covered in sticky sugar water. And that's a tough way to start your day.

[Ari Weitzman]

That is a tough. So did you ruin this incredible white rose shirt you're wearing?

[Isaac Saul]

I was gonna compliment you on it too.

[John Mole]

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, boys. No, it's. Yeah, it just got a little bit. So it was, like, low. Opened it near my hip, so I got a little bit of a near it, and I put cold water on it pretty quickly and tried to get it off. But really the worst thing was that it kind of spilled on my pants and then pooled on the chair, and then it was on the back of my butt.

[Ari Weitzman]

Uncomfortable. Seltzer water is great for stains. You could just go hit that vending machine up again, shake something up real quick. Crack it open.

[John Mole]

That's how they get you. It's a profit scheme.

[Ari Weitzman]

Yeah, get right back to the well. All right, Good one. Nerdy or not, I appreciate it. We did start with Jeffrey Epstein, so that's kind of of edgy. Camille, Ari. I'll. I'll hope to see both of you in person sooner rather than later. And I guess don't get murdered by an AI Chatbot between now and next Thursday.

[John Mole]

That's all right. I'll do my best.

[Isaac Saul]

Thanks.

[Ari Weitzman]

Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Mole. Today's. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman, with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead Bailey, Saul Lindsey Knuth, and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our [e-mail].

[Camille Foster]

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water. Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream.

[John Mole]

Sure thing.

[Camille Foster]

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[Isaac Saul]

Hey, it's Marc Maron from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

[Ari Weitzman]

And I'm sure the reason you're listening.

[Isaac Saul]

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[Ari Weitzman]

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Best one for your situation. Who doesn't like choice? Try [e-mail] and now some legal info. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

[Camille Foster]

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