Thomas Massie Continues The Fight For Transparency Around The Epstein Files

Key Takeaway

In the age of overwhelming information and corruption revelations like the Epstein Files, the path forward isn't cynicism—it's skill acquisition. Use AI to map cause and effect in finance, business, and systems you don't understand. Ask 'why,' not just 'what.' The greatest time to be alive requires you to get better at understanding how things actually work, then master the current system while working to change it.

Episode Overview

This Tom Bilyeu Show episode dissects the social and psychological fallout from the Epstein Files release, examining how transparency overload can either paralyze or empower young generations. The hosts discuss Thomas Massie's efforts to force DOJ accountability, international political consequences (UK, Norway), and the broader threat to civic engagement when corruption appears unpunished. The conversation pivots to actionable optimism: leveraging AI for skill acquisition, understanding financial systems (asset ownership vs. saving), and the imperative to master current structures while advocating for reform. Key themes include combating cynicism, teaching youth agency despite systemic dysfunction, and using tools like Claude/AI to compress learning timelines 100-fold.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Thomas Massie Continues The Fight For Transparency Around The Epstein Files from Impact Theory. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Good morning everybody. Welcome to the Tom Billier Show live. It is Monday and if you guys were anywhere near social media this weekend, I'm sorry. Uh man, in the Epstein file saga, Thomas Massie is threatening the DOJ with the nuclear option of revealing classified information if they do not unredact some of the most damning emails. Big tech is being taken to court over knowingly damaging the mental health of their users. Japan's prime minister's gambit to swing Japan to the right has paid off big time. Her party snatched up 75% of the seats in their parliament.

And videos are coming out now of what they are calling the sushification of Japan where they will literally wrap up a foreigner that they think is behaving inappropriately and supposedly deporting them. More on that later. China has report China has reportedly told their banks to start reducing their exposure to US debt. This is another shot fired in the China US cold war and it will only further drive to dd dollararize the world. I know there's plenty of debate on that. We'll have some of it here today.

A slew of cancer cures, this is the new uh conspiracy, are reportedly flooding the market now that the US has left the WHO and the long arm of big pharma is no longer able to stifle reports of this incredible cancer innovation. I've got a full breakdown on that and what I think is actually happening, which is definitely not as it is being represented. Huge breakthroughs are pouring out on the AI video front if you guys saw any of that. It was a very bright spot on a very strange weekend on social media.

Uh, incredible. Definitely nerve-wracking for somebody like me, though that's in the creative field. Uh, but we've got some examples of that that I want you guys to see. Progress certainly has not slowed down. And Elon switches his focus from Mars to the moon, saying that given how much closer it is, he can iterate on a moon base much faster than he could iterate on a Mars base. But I have a feeling that quantum computing and energy regulations are the real reason that he's doing the switch.

We're gonna get into all of that and more on today's episode. Drew, it was a wild one. Uh, the Epstein files have just completely consumed the entire world, literally world at this point. Uh, there was no way to escape it. Thomas Massie somehow managing, not somehow, like he's the guy that's driving all of this stuff. It's pretty crazy, but uh, put himself at the center of this. AI fakes, deep fakes flying everywhere. I was ready to go on one today. you were like, "Ah, wait. Uh, that one's not real." I couldn't believe it.

So, uh, it's it is certainly getting crazy out there with the narratives that people are spinning up using AI. It is only going to get worse given some of the updates that we'll show people, but Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. Oh, buddy. I was um grilling wings, drinking a Michelob watching um the Seahawks trounce the Patriots. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. Yeah, buddy. And my 14-year-old daughter was like, "Hey, Dad, have you guys talked about the Epstein Files?" Are you serious? I was like, "Yeah, yeah, we have." She's like, "Did you see the one about Donald Trump?" And I was like, "Yes." And then she started to talk about, "Yeah." And like, "What's happening?

How come nobody's going to jail? Like, what's And I was just like in that moment, I felt very very small because I've really had no like I had no I had nothing to tell her. Like, yes, we should be doing something." And it it is bad. But so, God bless. We talked about this. Yeah. this framing what you're talking about now is my like I'm gonna give everybody a rundown of the facts. But that's where I think we pick up the conversation once we get on the other side of that there.

This is going to disrupt the mental model of young people in a way that I don't think anybody understands how it's going to echo for decades to come. You cannot raise kids on a steady diet if everything is fake. They're all liars. It's all everything top to bottom is all a hoax. and oh by the way sorry just take it like there's no sense of accountability. There's no sense of like and a bad thing is going to happen to these people who've done this. It's like the cockroaches scattering and once they're out of sight are we really all just going to walk on?

We're th this is really a dangerous moment and it's dangerous no matter how it plays out because if it plays out that we let the cockroaches scurry back under and then we fool ourselves into thinking that whatever the architecture of the human mind is that leads to that um we're going to get blindsided again and we will just go back to sleep despite being in an information overload era. Uh and I do worry that some people's response to having visibility into virtually everything is going to be I'm just not going to look.

Uh and so that means that we are going to be um predated on by just the information overload. overload. overload. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The other option is we constantly drag everything out. Everybody stares at it and young people just go, "Oh, everybody's bad. It's all corrupt everywhere and I'm not going to engage in a system that is beyond repair. And if we get to the I'm not going to engage in a system that is beyond repair moment, um that is that is devastating for a country that is in economic woes.

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. And so yeah, this becomes interesting and it it it is a fascinating moment for me as I try to model what's going to happen between us and China, what's happening with us in debt, like all the demographic problems that we have that China has, the way that immigration plugs into this, and then if we disempower an entire generation by saying either don't pay attention to this, it's too icky. It's too overwhelming. or like uh A Clockwork Orange where we hold their eyes open and we force them to watch it until they vomit.

That's not going to inspire them to engage. And so there will be a malaise uh that will make us vulnerable to whatever country is able to maintain a sense of agency and we can do this and we can be the best. That's the thing that as I was looking at it, it's like yes, the surface of the Epstein is critical. We have to get it right. People have to be prosecuted. They have to go to prison. But there's another part of this where we have to encourage the youth.

We have to make them feel agency. We have to make them um long to be the untouchables that can untouchable the movie where it's like people who are beyond corruption corruption corruption and get a generation of people who have honor and integrity and as cheesy as that may sound to cynical ears. Like we we have to build that in. We have to fan those flames. And I worry that we're just going to let this generation be written off. written off. written off. Um, so very grateful for people like you, parents that are engaging directly with their kids and understand like the mental framework of like, hm, I need you to be optimistic and really go after your dreams, etc., etc.

Okay. Anyway, I was originally going to go through the facts first, but No. Yeah. No, that that's good, though. But that sets us up to what you're about to go to, cuz I'm grateful for somebody like Thomas Massie that at least he's like, "This isn't going away. we do need to talk about this. You release 3 million. There's still stuff um that hasn't been released. Let's let's finish this. Let's not give me 30% and then think I'm going to be okay with it. So, at least somebody's trying to stand up and like rattle the cages, you know, for sure and is apparently not going away though they want him to.

Uh but it's wild some of the stuff that's being unredacted. If you guys aren't paying attention to this whole thing, it it is really lunacy. It is the answer to the question of what happens in the social media age when we have some just absolutely astronomical revelation. Can we silence the masses simply by overwhelming them? And Thomas Massie is not going to let that game be played. And he potentially is about to blow the lid off the Epstein Files in a way that pushes things even further.

the Kentucky congressman, if you guys don't know who he is, he co-authored the Epstein Files Transparency Act. He plans to personally walk into the Department of Justice today to review unredacted files. Please ignore the uh deep fake that showed him saying that people had sent him the unredacted files. There's a community note on that post now that does appear to be entirely fake. But he is going to the DOJ today and he's threatening to execute what he's calling the nuclear option of reading the names out loud himself on the floor of Congress if the DOJ doesn't unredact some of the names that they're actively hiding right now in some of the most grotesque emails.

Emails, these were the two most horrifying examples for me. uh emails that just said there's an image or video file attached and it said um age 10, age 11, the two different um emails. Why would you redact the name on that? Presumably that's not being sent by a victim, that's being sent by a perpetrator. So things like that feel um they throw into question entirely what process they are using to redact these names. Uh now all of this is possible because of the fact that Massie can go potentially reveal classified information is possible because of what's known as the speech or debate clause in the US Constitution.

It provides members of Congress with immunity from prosecution for revealing classified info if the disclosure occurs as part of legitimate legislative activity such as speeches or debates on the floor of the House or Senate or in committee proceedings and hearings. Um, now given how many documents there are for Massie to load up as ammunition to go and read on the floor, Massiey's actually crowdsourcing his followers on X for which files he should look at when he gets to the DOJ. So people were Candace Owens got in the mix like people were throwing things and saying, "All right, these are the whatever top 10, top 20 things that we want to see people look at." And he said he's just going to go off of what gets upvoted the most.

So we'll see which ones he zeros in on. But yeah, some of the ones that were getting upvoted are the ones. So, this is going to get uh dramatic before it settles down. Now, needless to say, in the middle of all this, the Trump admin, which has repeatedly tried to make the Epstein files just quietly go away. There's nothing to see here, uh they are enraged about Thomas Massie and everything that he's doing. And according to Massie himself, and I can't believe this, actually, I can now I can I can believe this is true.

He claims someone from Cash Patel's FBI threatened to run a fraud investigation on one of Thomas Massiey's staffers if Massie didn't start to, in Massiey's words, play ball. Uh the Trump actually himself recently called Massie a [ __ ] at the National Prayer Breakfast. And on Friday night, if you guys haven't seen this video, check it out. Uh it's it was at a Kentucky GOP dinner. the state house speaker and another woman who I didn't uh do enough research to find out who she was, but they were standing next to Massie.

Look at the video. They're literally just flanking him uncomfortably close, obviously trying to sweat him hard enough that he'll just end his speech. And Massie was telling people, "Listen, I work for you. I don't work for the president. I work for you." Uh and then finally, he had to walk off because they were uh pestering him so much. Now, they did not physically take the microphone away from him as many people have reported. Uh but it is very clear that they did not like what he was saying and they wanted him to wrap up immediately.

Video of the incident went viral and Trump's political machine went into overdrive. Uh they started endorsing Massiey's primary challenger with millions in campaign support. But Massie is not backing down. On CNN he called on Commerce Secretary Howard Letic to resign. Now, if you guys haven't looked at the Epstein files, Lutnik is all over that damn thing. Uh, and while he told uh people on a podcast, I think it was last year, that he had cut ties with Epstein in 2005, the Files, they say otherwise. A New York Times analysis shows they were in touch for years after uh the conviction.

Um, drinks in 2011, boat coordinates to Epstein's Island in 2012, a joint business investment, correspondence as late as 2018. Now, Massiey's take was, "Hey, Howard Lutnik, clearly you went to the island." He was in business with Epstein uh many years after Epstein was convicted, and he wants Howard Lutnik to just make life easier on the president and just resign. Now, he's right that if this were Great Britain, he'd already be gone. And I have to admit, the Great Britain comparison is a very good one. The international fallout from the Epstein files has been staggering, which begs the question, why is it not here in America?

But take Peter Mendelson, uh, the now former UK cabinet minister and until recently Britain's ambassador to the United States. He's resigned from the Labor Party, resigned from the House of Lords, and recently had two of his properties raided by police. He's under criminal investigation for allegedly leaking classified government documents to Epstein during the 2008 financial crisis, tipping him off to a 500 billion euro bank bailout, forwarding internal memos, and emailing Epste the day the prime minister resigned. Bank records suggest Epste paid $75,000 into a Mandlesson linked account or multiple accounts.

The maximum sentence, if he's convicted of this, is life in prison. Wow. Yeah. Norway is also in full crisis. The crown princess, you know, the future queen. Well, she's mentioned over a thousand times in the files. She called Epstein sweetheart in 2012 emails. And listen, calling a scumbag uh endearing names does not mean that you know what he did or that you were involved. But damn, four years after his sex crime conviction, she was still saying this stuff. Nearly half of Norwegians now say she should not be allowed to become queen.

Former Prime Minister Thorn Thorbjorn Jagland is also under criminal investigation for corruption linked to Epstein. The CEO of the World Economic Forum is also under internal review. All across Europe, officials are falling, but in the US, nothing yet. Now, there's still a lot more files to come, so fingers crossed. We can always hope. But so far, Cash Patel, I had to look this up because I had really hoped that this was like P and that we'd moved on from this. But Cash Patel told us, as you guys know, a while ago, that the FBI's internal review found no trafficking ring uh serving elites, and they're standing by it.

No client list. Uh-huh. Deputy AG Blanch says, uh, new charges are unlikely. The DOJ has released only half the documents roughly I think we're at 3.3 million something like that out of six million total reported and the pages they did release were so badly handled that victim names were left exposed while the names of powerful men were blacked out. Survivors and average people alike are obviously furious about this. Now coming up Maxwell Gain is going to be testifying again but is expected to just plead the fifth all day.

So don't expect to get a whole lot out of her. The Clintons are scheduled for sworn film depositions on February 26th and 27th. Uh they caved after bipartisan contempt proceedings, but there's something weird going on. I've talked about that before. The fact that they now want this all public, they've got a game plan of some kind. Now, again, I don't know that they're guilty of anything, but oo man, this feels like political coverup. So, I'll be very, very curious to see how that plays out. Uh, Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the House Judiciary Committee next Wednesday.

She's doing it then to give lawmakers plenty of time. They'll have had several days with the unredacted material. So, we'll see what they ask her. Now, it is truly impossible to know what's actually happening. And I hope everybody approaches these things with the appropriate level of humility and certainly that is where I'm at. Uh, and as I will repeat often, I don't have any inside information, nor am I accusing anyone of anything, but hot damn. It will be a devastating blow to our national psyche if no one goes to prison over this stuff.

It is wild. It needs to be investigated. It needs to go through the courts 100%. And only if somebody is provably guilty, should they be uh prosecuted, but or should they be convicted. But man, we've got to run the procedure. like you cannot let this stuff go uncontested. It It is just too insane. Now, it may take years to fully manifest, but I assure you, like we were talking about just a minute ago, just as CO forced a lot of people, myself included, to update their mental model of how the world works, the Epstein files are going to do the same.

This will be something that you can plot on a graph of the American psyche. Where we are headed, how we grapple with our own internal um internal um internal um just a cold civil war is I think the most accurate way to look at it. This is not going to help. It may cause young generations to throw their hands up. We all have to do something to um push back against that. Now to um I guess insert myself into the story a little bit here because I am thinking about Kaizen and I'm thinking all the time about okay like what message am I really trying to get across to kids?

Stuff like this um really makes me want kids to remember that having a dream is a good thing. Uh being sincere is a good thing. Not being cynical. um being able to face things like this head-on but without losing your sense of joy and wonder is going to be critically important. Um so yeah, keep that in mind. Like just shoving bottle after bottle of black pill down somebody's throat is a bad idea. They are going to get plenty of black pills on the way to uh whatever truth and reconciliation we are going to have with how global power actually works, which I have a video coming out on tomorrow.

Watch that. It it is the web of interconnections that needs to freak people out. What's being revealed in the Epstein files isn't just the horrifying nature of child predatory behavior, sexual abuse, trafficking, all that, which is bad enough on its own, but it is how interconnected they are, how much um insider information is being passed back and forth rapidly. Um how they leverage things like NOS's, like um tax shelters, like corporate veils. I mean, just on and on and on to just on and on and on to do a lot of questionable stuff at an absolute minimum that we're going to want to continue to comb through until we actually map how this stuff works because it is brutal.

Brutal. I think it's a a bit damning that we're seeing such swift action on the international front and I want to say it took a week before the major news articles even put out a release. Now, of course, Wall Street Journal released something. New York Times released something. Um, but they're getting a slide, too, because everybody's kind of cutting out the slice of the Epstein files they're comfortable with. Dude, God, you you just gave me chills. That that is so important for people to understand. Everybody grabs the part that's convenient for them and you cut around the parts that don't look good for your team.

Like, people still can't help themselves, but play team ball. Yeah, it's like unfortunately we have to let this one land where it lands. Otherwise, you just go back to letting the system be corrupt. So, if I'm going to put on my optimistic hat for a second, Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Uh, okay. In the age of just all transparency all the time, we can actually have a conversation about things like um we the Federal Reserve created a monetary system by using confusion and intentional mystery to um trick the public into agreeing something that is not in their best interest that has created the K-shaped economy globally, not just here in the US.

Uh it allows people with a higher degree of financial sophistication to rob blind the average person uh and make them feel like they're being protected while they do it. Um and so for the first time it feels like hey maybe in talking about this stuff all the time maybe people aren't going to um map it all accurately in their own life such that they would be the person we would turn to to create policy but they're going to have a sufficient level of paranoia. They're going to have a sufficient level of distrust um such that they want to get educated.

I'm going to introduce a new idea here. We've never talked about this before, but I found this really interesting. Um, if you look at I think it was the State of the Union speeches that they were looking at. If you look at the the State of the Union, if you will grant me that the State of the Union is meant to be the thing that you aim at the widest number of Americans. Now, if that if you won't give me that and if you say, "Look, back in the day, just it was only people that read the newspaper that already self- selected and so it doesn't work." And admittedly, it's a fragility in in my own argument.

But if you will grant me that that that Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. what you then say is okay what's the level of speech that they provide knowing that this is for the widest audience like it's the widest audience speech they will give in the year maybe I can get people that far so it's the widest audience speech maybe it's still only to a a more narrow band of humanity but it's the widest one that you're going to do and so it's indicative of the widest number of people that you believe are paying attention what level their education is.

And we've gone from what today would be clocked at a PhD level back in like the 20s or 30s now down to like a fifth or sixth grade level. I don't mean that figuratively. I mean literally a fifth or sixth grade level. And so here's the bad news. It it it kind of stung me a little bit. I intentionally when I'm working with AI give it the instruction write this at a sixth grade level. Like I actually say that explicitly that explicitly that explicitly because that's what I feel I can count on.

That's I'll say it another way. When I write explicitly at a sixth grade level, it performs better. Youch. Youch. Youch. So uh this is my impromptu invitation or hope that what getting paranoid causes people to do is educate themselves. Now, I know there's a lot of drama around AI and is it causing people's brain matter to shrink, to shrink, to shrink, but from firthand experience, it's all in how you use AI. So, if you use AI to teach you something, you really can grasp the subject much faster because you can just but I don't understand this, I don't understand this, and then you keep pushing until you can articulate, okay, here's the cause and effect.

And if people just take that, I'm not here to get an answer. I'm here to map cause and effect. AI is is the greatest boon to civilization ever. And so if people can go in and say, "Okay, I'm going to use AI to map cause and effect. I know that AI is biased." Again, this is my whole video coming out on Tuesday is about it's actually about AI, but it it maps the web of uh elites in the same video. So, I'm going to use AI knowing that it has biases to map out cause and effect.

And by getting a wider, it's never going to be everybody, but by getting a wider swath of people to start thinking up from cause and effect, it feels like the only way out of this. Or at a minimum, it's like I only vote for people. like you've got to be able to walk me through cause and effect in a way that I can understand so that I know you're talking mechanistic and you're not talking um you're not trying to use mystery and big words in the way that like the legal profession does or the finance industry does does does you and confuse you.

Correct. So that I'm just like I don't want to think about this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that might be being a little deeoeyed but um that would be my hope. I I I think we need to go back to that though in this moment. There's turbulence on all sides. I feel like we're in the middle of a submarine and the surface is on fire. We have two nukes that are headed right to us and we have a leak in the hole. You talking about Iran or we talking about Epstein?

about Epstein? about Epstein? I'm just talking about in society in general. I feel like we're getting hit on all sides cuz going back to like my daughter's generation daughter's generation daughter's generation there, this is an active attack on morality. What should we do in this moment? How should we do it? Do bad guys go get put up or do bad guys get away with it? On the flip side, I have no meaning and purpose because AI is going to take all the jobs. So, I either need to learn how to work a wrench or I'm just going to be a slave to the uh Skynet.

Skynet. Skynet. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then financially, K-shaped economy. If my parents aren't rich, it's pretty likely I'm going to stay in the same economic bracket. It's only going to get wider and wider and wider. 10 years from now, I might have to scrape and have a roommate for the foreseeable future of my life. Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, it it seems like this is a bleak time. Is there something that we should be focusing on? Is there somewhere we can kind of move the spotlight to something that can invigorate America, get us excited again?

excited again? excited again? Yes. But okay, so yes, I'll give that speech. Yeah. speech. Yeah. speech. Yeah. My great fear is that the the answer is right there. It's so obvious. Uh it's just that people don't do it. And this is why is why is why um I weep that I'm scared because I know I can save myself. I know I can save my family. And that is true of anybody that can hear my voice right now. You can save yourself. You can save your family.

That's easy. That's easy. That's easy. It's just a question of can you can we collectively nudge society into a better direction. direction. direction. That's the part that scares me. So let me give you the individual speech. Okay, so the individual speech is [ __ ] easy. This is the greatest time to be alive. literally ever. Uh the tools that are being put in your hands mean there are literally no gatekeepers. And so now it's a question of how good are you willing to get. So I have been frustrated for the last couple of years if I'm honest at the rate of progress that we were making on Kaizen.

Uh and so I decide I'm going to start spending my entire weekends. All of my work focus is going to go into Kaizen. So we boom, we start going much faster. Amazing. Uh I'm an impatient person. So, I find myself, it's happened multiple times. I'll get to the weekend, I'm trying to play test and I'll encounter a game-breaking bug. And so, then it kills the whole weekend. And so, now as a obsessive over progress and all that, I'm freaking out. So, finally, I go, "Okay, wait.

I'm going to start learning the tools." And so, I start having our team no, teach me how to do it so that I don't have to wait for you. Cool. Do that. This weekend I go to play the game and it's just it's it won't even load. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. It just goes, "Sorry, these files are missing or whatever." And so I'm like, "Oh, dear God." And I'm like, "No, wait. I can solve this." I took a screenshot of it, dropped it into um Claude. I was like, "Claude, I'm stuck.

This is what's happening. Please tell me what to do." It walked me step by step through exactly what I do, and I now understand Visual Studio. I understand how to link broken files. And I was like, because I'm not just like monkey press button because red light flashes. It's like I'm actually trying to understand what this is so I can get better at it. And so I'm just like damn. Like the number of times life has taught me one simple thing. If you put time and energy into getting better at something, you will get better.

And that matters because skills have utility. So I don't want people to think that I fancy myself a programmer. I am not. But dude, honestly, by the time the game launches, I'll be surprised if I'm not using AI to code in C++ because you just start realizing that like even like all the complexity of how to build a video game, you start getting into it and you first you understand one little piece and then you start asking, well, how does that piece actually connect to that piece from cause and effect?

And you start mapping this. Oh, I get how this works. Now, once you get how it works, you can make predictions like, "Oh, I bet then if I change that, it would have this effect." You go try it and you break something and then you realize, "Okay, wait. I hadn't quite mapped it." But if you just keep doing that, you just get better. When I say that AI speeds that journey up, I'm going to guess 100fold at least. at least. at least. Wow. Wow. Wow. It it may be more, but when you think of the amount of time that you would have to spend going and trying to map like, okay, who actually knows what they're talking about in this industry?

what Discords do I have to be in like now. You just go, "Uh, screenshot. Here's where I'm at. Explain that to me. I don't understand why that would work. You need to tell me why, not just what." And it's like, it took me, I think, like 50ish minutes to go from I am completely dead. I have no idea what to do, how to fix these. I didn't even know there was a thing called Visual Studio. I didn't know that concept existed. Uh, and so all of it in 50 minutes.

Now I'm like, "Oh [ __ ] I got myself back up and running and the weekend ended up being insanely productive." So if we can instill that in America around even just finances, like, "Oh, wait. I can go learn the cause and effect of finances." Yes. Oh, cool. So 10% of the world right now owns 90% of the assets. And the way that the system is set up, people with assets are just going to get richer and richer and richer. Yes. So wait, you're telling me all I have to do is get into that 10% of people that own assets?

Yes, that's correct. Cool. Done. Like, and anybody that wants to be like, uh, this is impossible, is impossible, is impossible, go look at Wall Street Trappers channel. Okay. Wall Street Trapper, amazing human being. Please, Jesus, don't end up in the Epstein Files or some [ __ ] I'm so paranoid now about saying that I like somebody. Uh, Wall Street Trapper goes to prison. Okay. Was not a boy scout and I don't think he denies that he did the thing. I don't remember what it was, but he rightfully I believe in his own mind goes to prison, but he has um a guy in jail that was like a finance year and that happens to be his s.

And so he sees Wall Street like getting in fights or doing something stupid and he's like, "You guys are all dumb. You need to understand the game that's actually being played." And he teaches them about asset ownership. Now, Wall Street Trapper, he is bright, but when you hear him talk, he sounds like a street kid. And so, this is not somebody that you would run into and go, "Oh, this guy made a million dollars on a single trade," which he did. You don't go, "Oh, this is a guy that owns like this entire building to help educate kids," which he does.

You go, "Uh, this is like a nins street kid." No. What was the difference? He had somebody sit him down and go, "This is how the game of finance works. That's it." And then he got in and he invested time into getting better, but then he got better. And so it's like, "This is accessible, but people write it off. They want to protest. They want to [ __ ] instead of saying this is the system, so I'm going to go get good at this system." Now, if on Saturdays you want to make money and Sundays you want to [ __ ] and like I come on this [ __ ] mic and I tell everybody how the game works, I'm already [ __ ] rich.

I can go do whatever the [ __ ] I want. And for the literally, for the first time, I was like, "Wait, why run businesses? I can make so much money now that I understand finance." finance." finance." Like, you want to talk about a backup career plan? Holy Jesus. day trades. And so I'm like, listen, I want to see this system replaced by something where people can just save their way to success. But that is not today. So today, I'm going to say all this [ __ ] about we need to change the system and I'm going to go [ __ ] trade stocks.

And I'm not a day trader. I invest for the long run. But you get it. I'm going to make a lot of money. So everybody learn the [ __ ] game. Put some energy into changing it. Yes, please. But don't be so high and mighty that you're not going to recognize that is the system you have now and you need to win at that system in order to survive long enough to change it. Also, to change it without understanding it first would be stupid and to understand it without taking action is even dumber.

So, we'll see. Boom. Um, I know we got a couple super chats. chats. chats. We do. Uh, first up from Sequoia Hall. Why did we not believe so many victims? Why did it have to get this decrepit for so long? Also, like we need to have a belief in institutions as a base of society. Yes. How about this? Society is better if you trust your institutions, but institutions have to earn your trust. Uh same with victims. You can't just believe all women or believe all victims.

It doesn't work like that because you're creating a system where now you have uh an angle that can be exploited. And remember, any system that can be exploited will be exploited. And so if somebody knows, oh, if I claim to be a victim, they're going to believe everything I say, then people will use that. So you can't do it. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work. Now, the real reason that I think even if it was people that prove their credibility and all that stuff, it it is so much to metabolize.

Like if you said um not that I'm making any accusations, but if you said Nancy Pelosi was just violently insider trading, people can get their head around that. When you start talking that slicing pizza is code for slicing up babies and eating them, people go, "Yeah, no, I'm I'm not willing to believe that." Uh I'm still not even sure that's true because that just seems impossible. So I'm almost holding out hope that it's something more mundane than that. So you run into the gap between the world that people believe they live in and the one you are asking them to believe that they actually live in are so different they can't wrap their head around it.

The only reason that I'm even mildly pulled in the direction of maybe it really goes farther than I think is history. And if you read enough history, like if you read how the guy known as Dracula, like the real guy, if you know how he becomes known as Vlad the Impaler, you suddenly go, "Oh, maybe humans are capable of a level of horror that I just didn't think we were capable of." Or go do a tour in London where they walk you through some of the medieval um torture that they applied to people.

It's crazy. Uh so yeah, humans are capable of some pretty atrocious things, but we live in an era where all of those impulses are forced underground. And that was not always the case. And so I think that we're h I think that we're caught off guard. We're taken by surprise, all of that. And it's just so hard to wrap our heads around. Second super chat from Marushia Dark. There's a book on Amazon simply called the book, a handbook for rebuilding civilization when the power goes out.

also been watching Dr. Dr. Stone recently, which is the anime version of the same. Highly recommend both. You make me want to see Dr. Stone. Um, yeah, I could do Diet Tribes on anime. There's something so right about anime. There's something Look, if if your only uh interaction with it is the uh terrifying stuff that I imagine uh Jeffrey Epste has on speed dial. I get it. Uh but anime, there's something about Japanese storytelling. That's a easier way to talk about it. There's something about Japanese storytelling where either because their lives are more repressed and so they have to find a way to talk about like human emotion at the level of archetype.

There's something there, man. There's something there. Yeah, there's a reason that they are so dominant in children's entertainment. There's a reason. I just want to shout out Allan Satoshi Greenspan because every chat he says the same four things. And at first I was like, "Oh, this dude's crazy. Oh, this dude has like a tick. He's the He's the only one that's like batting 100 right now. He's saying collect cows and chickens, mandatory medals, gold and silver. He's on a crazy run right now. Grow gardens and stack seeds and stack seeds.

stack seeds. stack seeds. Seeds like seeds for the garden. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that way you can continue. Oh, no. I get it. That's what I'm saying. It was like, uh, I was talking junk Satoshi cuz you use a lot of emojis, but you're on a he's on a generational run right now, so I have to shout him out. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be a little careful with that in terms of like real advice that uh will last. Here's why. Remember, civilization exists for a reason. We move in that direction for a reason.

Uh and so even if you were to reset, like if you drop just every nuke ever, you'll reend up here. It'll take a very long time, but you'll get back here. Uh remember, I think it's the cape of hope. Uh it is believed that human civilization was reduced down to like 6,000 people, 3,000 to 6,000 people at one point. meteor, volcano, something. Uh, and then we just balloon back up. And so, society, life really is this. This, and I'm not kidding, this is why Project Kaizen is an openw world survival crafting game.

I'm secretly I'm never going to market this, but I am secretly trying to build a life simulator. It will just take me a very long time to put in all the technical stuff to actually make that plausible and fun. Uh that's why it's an openw world survival crafting game. That's what life is. And so in an open world survival crafting game, you are trying to get momentum. You're trying to accumulate more resources than you need. And you start going, how do I build protections around this?

And that's society. And so one of the first things you do is we're stronger together than we are apart. And so you try to get people drawn in. And this is why there is a God-shaped hole in all of us because religion is the the most flexible way for extraordinarily extraordinarily large groups of people to come together and work together. They don't have to know you. They don't have to look like you. They don't have to be from the same place. If you've got the same symbols, you're like, "Oh, we're on the same team." It it is it is truly extraordinary.

So anyway, uh the chickens and cows and all of that may help you in a short-term crisis, but know that society will just consolidate again behind you, around you. Watch the show alone. Surviving on your own is basically a one-way ticket to starving to death. And the second you start regrouping up with other people, you run into the freeloader problem, yada yada yada, and you will find yourself right back here. Um, okay. We we got to move on topics, but there's a couple things we haven't hit, um, regarding the Epste stuff.

So, I want to do a couple quick hits on this. Um, the first one, uh, conspiracy corner disclaimer allegedly. Um, don't sue us. Um, I know you heard about this one. Steve Bannon laundering money through World of Warcraft. Warcraft. Warcraft. Yo, Yo, Yo, the Steve Bannon stuff is already scary. Uh, like that one I don't think goes away. At a minimum, it feels like a bus is headed towards that guy, even if it's only in the court of public opinion, but the World of Warcraft stuff is crazy.

So, Drew, this if screaming would help, I would scream. It might make the clip go viral. If I look like a total maniac, but it it will it will not help my credibility. This is what I'm saying. If you have a system that can be exploited, it will be exploited. This is why uh Kaizen is now a single player game. Originally I was going to do like multiplayer and then I realized you have to be so good technically to block like predators and stuff from coming in the game to exploit kids.

So I was like, "Yep, nope. We're not ready for that." Like maybe years down the road we'll have the funding and all that that we need to to really take that on. But like if people can find a way to you you couldn't even transact with real money inside of World of Warcraft. So now you've got to build an account up, collect all the gold, take the account, username, password, and go sell it on like eBay and [ __ ] And it's like if people will go that hard and you can create a secondary economy there when the game is actively trying to stop it, it's like any system that can be exploited will be exploited.

So yeah, they're in video games, they're using chats, they're using People were like, "Why does he send emails to himself?" I don't know that he sent an email to himself, but he certainly was using saved drafts because you save a draft, you give somebody else access to it, and now it's never been sent and so it becomes that much more private. It becomes difficult for interception to happen, things like that. People get very clever. very clever. very clever. Um, next quick hit. The statement that announced Jeffrey Epstein's death emerged from the files, but it was a day before he allegedly killed himself.

Yeah. I mean, look, I can spin up a explanation for that where it's just the letter head has the wrong date on it. So, it doesn't take a lot to be like, it's legit, but like [ __ ] what a dumb mistake. Like, it's going to now people are going to run with it. Turn just to hit six instead of a seven type thing. But now, confession. now, confession. now, confession. I really want to believe this one. Like this one, the one where the government's like, uh, I saw a meme.

In fact, I pulled it I think for the Friday episode, but we didn't show it. And the meme was like, um, condolences are pouring in to Gla Maxwell who will pass away tomorrow. away tomorrow. away tomorrow. And I was in hysterics. That's very funny. Um, but yeah, so that one could be it's way too easy for that one to be an innocent mistake for me to get too up in arms. But that is one of the most the ones that I'm like most drawn towards where I secretly want.

Yeah, that one tickles me in some weird way. way. way. Um, claims that there were bodies found on Epstein Island. Um, at least with this one, this to me this is like where there's smoke. What does excavation cost? How much do we spend on gold chairs in the White House? We can at least, you know, just like you said, get a scanner somewhere at least just just to calm the people a little bit with with the radar, LAR, whatever. I'm getting the tech wrong. Yeah, you can find something.

I think you can even do it from satellites. So, I don't want to hear some [ __ ] about we can't do it or whatever. whatever. whatever. Uh, yeah. If if Okay. what they've done with the pyramids shows it's possible. So if we don't do it, it is a lack of will. Now, do I think that the government has a lack of will? Yes, very aggressively. But this is one that we could find out pretty quickly. Also, if I'm not mistaken, I don't know how long it lasts, but there are dogs that can smell decomposition.

Now maybe it's like well it works for the first couple months and then after that it doesn't work but I don't know this this one feels like we could do a lot of things from a first principal perspective it could be solved. You don't you don't have to go and like excavate uh you know six feet across the entire island like this is one where almost certain this is one where for sure the technology exists. Now whether we're we have the will to spend the money is another question.

Um, Fortnite community noted the fake Epstein thing, so we can put that one to bed. Um, I know we talked about that last week. So, they said that a username just switched it once they found out about his YouTube account. So, there there's there's some drama there. I don't know all the ins and outs. I didn't do a full deep dive on that one, but it was like first of all, uh, Fortnite was like this is like nothing burger everybody. And then people were like, "Fuck you.

There's so much data. We can just track all this stuff back." And so they went and looked at like I guess they do a yearly recap that shows who the players are that play the most and it must go down thousands of people. Uh and so they found that in 2025, long before the files started coming out, this person that account was active. Now my thing with this is it just seems impossible that he's such a criminal mastermind and then is dumb enough to play the same account.

I mean it doesn't violate the laws of physics, but oo buddy. Like that just seems But who really thinks Jeffrey Epstein is playing Fortnite? That wasn't on my bingo card. bingo card. bingo card. Oh, he really does seem to be a gamer. He was playing Call of Duty. Got kicked out of Call of Duty for being, I guess, just absolutely horrible in lobbies. So, here's here's the thing. Okay, you want like a really mundane thing. We all have to fill our waking hours with something. with something.

with something. That's what I like. He can't do anything. He can't call nobody. He can't touch girls anymore. He could Fortnite. That seems the most plausible out of all the things. So, it's like you can only have so many unhinged satanic parties, bro, before you like just got to jump in that cod lobby. So, um um um yeah, it's wild. Okay, then last thing on this. Um should we borrow the European model, should Lutnik at least have to step aside, take a leave of absence? Something because I just because he's this close to the administration and the rumors are swirling this hard.

Dude, I don't see how he survives this. But the bad news is I think he's going to to to Yeah. I I don't I don't know like what there's um [snorts] I think it goes something like this. like this. like this. So I have a really bad feeling. It's like that Spongebob meme where you're just kind of breathing on the side. side. side. Oh well I think this is this is uh if you're Trump and you're like I'm in the files I can't remember if he's number one but if he's not number one he's like real real close in terms of number of mentions.

mentions. mentions. Um, if I say that Lutnik merely knowing this guy means he has to resign, then that means it's a bad thing on me. And so I think there would have to be a tremendous amount of pressure, like ungodly amounts of pressure to get rid of him before he would get rid of him. I think the thing that Trump prizes above all is loyalty. And if Lutnik is loyal to Trump but happens to have a bunch of kids buried under his swimming pool, me it's like as long as he's loyal.

So I fear it goes something like that. And that was all hyperbole lest somebody thinks I'm actually accusing him of that. I am very much not. Um and I'm not feeling suicidal just as a nice constant reminder. Um so yeah. Uh, okay. Let's jump over to there's been some speculation. Um, I don't know if you realized, um, the last like two or three weeks there's been a lot of breakthroughs in a whole bunch of different medicines and stuff like that. People are saying that allegedly once the US left the WHO, they were kind of big farmer was holding the the floodgates and now that we're gone, all these cancer cures have just popped out.

Um, this this is my concern that we become conspiracyrained. conspiracyrained. conspiracyrained. Yeah. And uh listen there we obviously weren't conspiracyrained enough so fair enough. Uh Bill Maher said where does QAnon go for their apology? I think it's a you know it's an interesting question but we run the risk of the second something comes out that when somebody says this is all fake that we just go yeah everything is fake and now we can't just as dumb as it is to say nothing is fake saying everything is fake is equally um low utility so we've got to be a little bit careful so in looking at this um yeah I think that things are very different than what's being portrayed there's a narrative that's picking up steam online.

Uh, basically big pharma is burying cancer cures because they're bad for the business. Now, listen, in all honesty, I'm sure there are plenty of people in big pharma that have said will continue to say things like, um, we discover industries or business models. We're not necessarily in the business of coming up with a cure, but people think of legacy often before anything else. And the pressure to not pressure, the the victory that would be to be the one to cure cancer is so extreme that I think that assuming that that can be shut down by big pharma is a mistake.

But the rumor that's circulating goes like this. The US pulled out of the World Health Organization uh because of that big pharma lost its enforcement arm and now suddenly all these cancer cures are pouring out because they can't be suppressed anymore. Now, from looking at it, the breakthroughs actually appear to be real. That part people really are getting right. Like, all of a sudden, we're getting a lot of really exciting breakthroughs. 2025 was a landmark year for cancer treatment. The FDA actually issued 52 cancer drug approval announcements, but the important part is that over 70% of them were amunotherapies and targeted therapies, the very thing that people are saying they're never going to let through.

So, a ton were coming out in 25. a ton were being approved by the FDA, which is actually what matters. So again, like it doesn't square with what people are saying about the WHO. Uh the things that are coming, we're talking about personalized mRNA cancer vaccines that train your immune system to attack your specific tumor. So these are CARTT cell therapies that are now moving into outpatient clinics. You've also got crass inhibitors which are drugs that target a gene mutation responsible for a quarter of all cancerous tumors that scientists spending undruggable.

Okay, so these are all the things that we've been hoping and wanting for but they've been going on for a long time coming out largely in 25 long before what Trump just did. Now in January the FDA granted breakthrough therapy designation to the first drug ever to specifically target one of those mutations. It's a blood test uh that can detect multiple cancers before symptoms even appear. Those are also entering uh clinical use. None of that's hype. This is all genuine acceleration in cancer science. But where the narrative that this is all part of the US pulling out a who and that big pharma was able to so successfully pin all this down.

Where that falls apart is that none of this has anything to do with the WHO. I'm not going to bat for the WHO. Just assume the WHO is terrible. But the WHO uh the World Health Organization, they don't approve drugs. So they don't regulate what treatments American patients can access. Has zero authority over the FDA, which does control what Americans can access. The WHO role is recommending international health standards, coordinating disease surveillance, and helping developing countries build health infrastructure. It's not and has never been the gatekeeper standing between any of us here in the US and cancer treatments.

So the US form formally exiting the WHO on January 22nd of this year seems very unlikely to be the thing that is leading to these breakthroughs coming out now. Um the crass research that produced these new drugs started way back in 2013. The M uh mRNA cancer vaccine platform was built on technology developed during COVID. Um menin inhibitors for leukemia went through over a decade of clinical trials. So these aren't things that were just sitting waiting for policy change. And again, the WHO is not responsible for the policy change that would impact this.

So they are the output of thousands of researchers working for years across universities, hospitals, biotech startups, and yes, of course, pharmaceutical companies who I trust about as far as I can throw them. And so for that reason, because again, I'm not going to bat for any of these institutions. I understand the instinct behind people distrusting them and thinking that there must be something funny going on and that the timing is really um controversial. My goal would be to get people to focus on the real thing which is FDA.

Man, FDA is a problem. Like if you want to bang on somebody's doorstep, bang on the FDA's doorstep. Now, people obviously have reasons to not trust big pharma largely because the incentive structure in healthcare is terrible. It is genuinely misaligned in ways that absolutely hurt all of us as patients. But the specific claim that a cure for cancer existed and was being hidden doesn't really survive contact with basic math. A researcher at Oxford actually ran the math and estimated that suppressing a single cancer cure would require at least 714,000 714,000 714,000 people across the major pharmaceutical companies and it would require them to stay silent.

If I remember right, he said that the math would it would like crumble in four years. didn't quite understand why he said four years, but anyway, he claims to have run the math. That doesn't include even academic scientists, the FDA, again, where your focus should be, health journalists, things like that. So, the conspiracy would collapse just based on the sheer number of people that would have to be in on it. And if the um if we've learned anything from the Epstein files, it's that it's a distressingly small group of people that can keep these things moving behind the scenes.

But a cancer breakthrough when it's controlled by the FDA and not the who us pulling out of the hoop, I I don't track that. So if we want to say that the FDA was doing something, hey, I'm glad to look at that because as somebody formerly from the food industry, I do not trust the FDA. I certainly don't trust them to think clearly. And if you've watched any of the stuff on oxy uh oxycodone cotton, oxycottton, oxycontton, oxycottton, oxycontton, oxycottton, oxycontton, uh sus sus. I don't know if that if anybody was ever charged, but man, some of those documentaries pretty damning in terms of the FDA's involvement.

So, that's how I'd see it. That's been wild. Um, I'm not going to lie, when this first came out, I thought this was part of the Peter Dendez longevity AI is going to start rapidly increasing the rate of breakthroughs. So, I was excited that a lot of these things were coming. Um, that really may be true. By the way, I don't know how much of that is tied to why all of a sudden so many so fast people in the medical industry the more like when we had David Sinclair on episode coming soon I think um he was saying the the amount that AI speeds them up cannot be overstated.

It it's radical. Radical. And given how much it speeds me up and like normal stuff, I would not be shocked. shocked. shocked. Yeah. Um, it'll be nice, but I I do think we have to have a reckoning about incentives because there is right now pharmaceutical companies are incentivized to have diseases. They're not incentivized for cures. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, there is something that when all these cures do rapidly break, is it going to be okay, you can cure cancer, but it's a $10,000 shot now because they have to front in all their profits or you know what I mean?

And I know we don't like talking about the the sword and we don't like when government gets involved with certain things. What's the s word? Socialism. Socialism. Socialism. So, you know, I just feel like there is Well, hold on. If you're saying, hey, there might be some things that the government should pay for and we should all want our tax dollars to go to 100%. Let's remember socialism is confiscation of the means of production. That's evil. That's bad. Uh trying to make everything free, that's evil.

That's bad just because of the outcomes. But us all saying collectively, hey, you know those tax dollars of mine that you're taking, balance the budget, but now that the budget's balanced, here's where I would like to allocate some of my money. I would like it to go to things that the private sector is not equipped to do well, and this would be one of them. So, find a cure where it's like there's going to be a ton of money going into it and then no money that comes out of it because it just makes the thing go away.

It's a great use of money. Um, I wasn't alive at the time, but I love that I grew up in the afterlow of the US government, uh, JFK giving a speech saying, "We're going to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard." Doing it because we want to dunk on Russia. That's dope. Like, people don't understand those things are dope. They are good. You want to rile your team up. You want your team to believe in you, what you're about, and that you guys are going to be the best on the block.

Russia should be saying the same thing. Earjan should be saying everybody should like be going to bat for their team. We want to live in a world where people play fair. We don't want war, but you want people like doing the radish [ __ ] ever because they want to show that they're the best. And so us putting dollars behind the space program. Hell yeah. Like let's go to uh excite to thrill whatever. Like there there are very good reasons even beyond the science of all that to do that.

uh you can obviously get into the military aspect of you don't want your biggest rival to own space but even without that I think that there are incredible reasons to do it. So I for one as the most aggressively antisocialism recognize that 52ish% of my dollars are being taken. So I would just like them to go to something that actually makes sense. Uh and that would be one of them. Yeah. Um, so it's it's just going to be interesting to see how that incentive reckoning happens across industries.

Um, because it's going to start happening. It won't it will happen poorly. We I mean, look, maybe all of this are like the um the final death throws of a system that needed to be dramatically overhauled. And maybe something beautiful and wonderful comes out the other side. And maybe we really do uh get rid of the Fed uh or at least dramatically alter the way that it works as we unwind it slowly over time. Um maybe we really do get to a point where we can balance the budget and people accept a certain level of austerity.

Maybe AI really does grow so much, make so many things possible and yet remain in our control that like we're able to grow our way out of the big problems and there really is enough for everybody and uh enough people can understand how assets work that it's just not a good way to take advantage of people anymore because if once people understand finance they can't be abused by it. Mhm. So, uh, you know, those are all the things that we can hope, but there right now we do not show any inclination that we're going to shut the, um, the perverse incentives down.

Well, something else is on the cusp of getting shut down. Um, a landmark big tech case is coming to America. Um it already played out in Europe and it played out in Australia where they have social media bans at 16 now. Um there are two simultaneous lawsuits happening in California and New Mexico and opening argument started today. Today opening statement set to begin in the landmark social media trial against the world's biggest tech companies accused of harming children and fueling addiction. Top CEOs like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg expected to testify, but his company is already playing defense, releasing this statement.

Quote, "We strongly disagree with these allegations and are confident the evidence will show our long-standing commitment to supporting young people. For over a decade, we've listened to parents, worked with experts and law enforcement, and conducted indepth research to understand the issues that matter most." Here to break it all down for us, attorney and MRC vice president for free speech for a sec. This is where um um um the incentives really become a problem. So if you have a model where uh you want people to spend as much time as humanly possible on your platform and you see that data is coming out that says spending extraordinary amounts of time on your platform are causing cognitive issues.

issues. issues. Um Um Um you're in a bad spot because you really can't from a public company. This is another reason I don't want to be a public company. You've got so much pressure from investors to do that thing uh that it's good luck getting a man to understand something that which is paycheck insists he does not understand. Right? So um it's I'm not going to buy anything that Meta says. You're you're in a position of you've got motivated reasoning if nothing else. Um if I were a parent I would not let my kids on social media until they're 16.

if I could push it 18 25 like it's it is at a headline level it does not appear to be good for the brain. The brain is what I'm worried about even more than I'm worried about like the psychological impact. I'm worried about when your brain is developing it is going to adjust down different pathing depending on the environment that it grows up in. And if you're in an environment where you're just constantly scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, like get these hyper rapid dopamine hits, your brain adjusts to that.

And so now you get to the point where your brain is designed to work in a way where you're getting that constant stimulus. And when you don't get it, then it's not operating as usual, it's going to squawk. And that's kids getting agitated, irritated, freaking out, got to have it, throwing tantrums, kicking, breaking, breaking, breaking, um, all that stuff. And so the bad news about brain development is as you get older you can change your you can create new neurons until the day you die. All of that stuff is very real.

The problem is that the period of hyperbrain plasticity is like up through 11 and then every day after that it gets less. And so what changes would have been easy until you're 11 become a little bit harder. And by the time you're 18 you're kind of baked. By the time you're 25 it's really game over. And you can adjust behaviors and things like that, but like the fundamental wiring of your brain is forever set. And the difference of people who uh you know go one way, let's say get addicted to um drugs and alcohol just to make something really easy.

easy. easy. It's not like, oh, when they're 30 completely normal because they started working on themselves in their 20s. It doesn't work like that. They're going to have behavioral problems forever. There are studies that show that if a kid isn't socialized properly, meaning knowing how to cooperate, give and take, by the time they're four, they're going to be a behavioral problem forever. They never back out of that by three or four. So, that kind of stuff terrifies me. And I mean, shout out to any parent who grew up with I wouldn't have expected this.

And so I would have if I had had kids I would have like given them an iPad because it makes them quiet. So and then I probably wouldn't have watched a lot of Coco Melon. So I wouldn't have realized that the way that it displays is like like just constantly trying to gauge engage re-engage re-engage re-engage. Um so that kids are never meant to like engage themselves. So when you think about um this is just my frame of reference. I'm going to bring it up all the time.

When you think about why I think Minecraft is the greatest video game of all time, it's because it's entrepreneurial. It doesn't tell you what to do. You just get dropped in. You're in a rules-based world. Have fun and that's it. And the game steps back. And And And it will be hard for me to put into words, but the first time I played it, I almost rage quit. I wanted to throw my controller through the TV screen because I didn't understand what they wanted me to do.

And I was so angry. And I was like, they expect a 14-year-old, a 12, 11 year old to be able to figure this out. As a 40 whatever year old, bro, I've got to be able to figure this out. And I was like, I'm never playing that again. And then the next day, I was like, I want to figure it out. Like there's so And so it stuck with me. And then once I got in, it was like, oh, I get to set my own goals and all this stuff.

It was [ __ ] awesome. So kids need that. The brain needs that. And if you don't give the brain that, you're going to be in trouble. And so we're things like this have to happen. We've got to at a minimum because if we want to let Meta exist, fine. But at a minimum, we've got to bang the drum. Like no universe in which schools are allowed to let kids [ __ ] around on their phones. So just like at school, hard pass, no way. And if that means that kids have withdrawal symptoms, then they have withdrawal symptoms.

Like you you have to address that. You can't just give in and let them be little psychopaths. like we've got to educate our nation. our nation. our nation. Um, okay. I'm I'm split. And there was somebody in the chat that mentioned it out, so I kind of want to like see what they say. Um, no one worth mentioning. Um, I'm not seeing their comment, but they basically said on one side, I do understand that this is doing harm. So, let's call it this is the cigarettes of our time.

Should doctors be smoking in the exam room? Should we be smoking inside? All these other things. And then on the other side, it's the individual rights. the government shouldn't tell me what to do with my kid. It's my kid. I could do what they want. Right. want. Right. want. Right. Where do you see that line is specifically in this lifetime with social media? Is this something that the government should step in on? I think the government should leave it out of government things. The government shouldn't be funding it.

The government shouldn't be allowing it in schools. Like all of that, like 100%. But you don't want the government in your house. Full stop. Period. End of story. Um barring like abuse. You don't want the government. They're too [ __ ] stupid. Like I I will reiterate for people for decades they told us sugar was fine that it was at the top of the food pyramid. Um you should eat the assend out of they they won't say sugary cereals but breads and all that stuff to your body it's just sugar.

So they were like yeah this stuff is good for you. Oh and by the way you know what's bad for you? Fat. That is 100% the opposite of what is true. Mhm. And they didn't do it for a little while. They did it for decades. And they did it in the face of people getting sicker and sicker and sicker by the day. Chronic obesity, like crazy [ __ ] And they didn't adjust course. So there's no world in which I want them telling me what we can and can't do.

Like they're already [ __ ] with AI. And that's where I'm like, "Yeah, no, that hard pass." pass." pass." So I am not for that. But at the same time, there are things where even if it's like just a question mark where they're like, "We're not going to engage with this." Perfect. Uh don't buy fast food and put it in the schools. Love it. Um don't uh don't let social media exist in school. Full stop. Don't let kids bring phones full stop. Let them bring a flip phone but not a smartphone.

Great. All that stuff. Wonderful. That way if parents are like, "They've got to be able to reach me." Cool. But yeah, we're we're not going to let people engage with that. But then the government telling parents, you can't let your kid have a social media account. No way. Like imagine for a second that you have a kid and you're like, uh, your kid is is advanced. And so you're I want you to be able to go and engage with like I had a kid on the show who at like 13 or 14 built a nuclear reactor in his garage.

Like to the point where he was collecting uranium himself, plutonium, one of the two. He would walk in the mountains because he knew where you could find it. he would take it back home. It's crazy. So, I don't want and that is what one of a million examples that you could make of like your average kid. You do not need this just for super geniuses, but like you want people like that to be able to engage with the community of other thinkers and be able to tap into all that stuff and social media is one of the easiest ways to do it.

Um, some people are definitely pushing back saying like we don't allow our kid to drink, we don't allow them to smoke. Social media is that thing. Um, should there at least be guardrails? For example, Australia, you can't do I think YouTube was on that list, but let's take YouTube off for a second, but you can't do Snapchat, you can't do Facebook, you can't can't do Instagram, but YouTube is okay or something like that. Like, is there a way we can kind of I don't trust the government at all to do that.

I think parents should do it. This comes down to a base assumption. Do governments run your kids or do you own is maybe a more accurate word. Does the government own your kids or do you own your kids? your kids? your kids? I believe you decentralize that. And there's no doubt that they're going to be bad parents and kids will suffer because of that. But I trust the parents infinitely more to know what's right for their kids than I trust the government. That's one of those base assumptions.

If you think the government is an agent of good, then you're going to think I'm crazy. crazy. crazy. If you think the government is an agent of good, I think you're out of your [ __ ] mind. And for you to look at what's going on with all the things that they've gotten wrong, including the Epstein files, and you still think they have your best interest heart, [ __ ] you. That's so [ __ ] That's full [ __ ] That is short bus. That is you need medication. No way. So yeah, I don't trust them.

I'm not saying all parents are good. They're not. There's going to be horrific parents. But boy oh boy, do I from a law of averages. I trust the parents to understand their children. And how many times do I have to hear from parents with multiple kids, what works with one kid doesn't work with the other. And so the government's going to do blanket [ __ ] policies. It's like at the parent level, they should be deciding yes or no for their kids. Like there are some households, hey, say what you will.

There are some households like I was allowed to have a sip of my dad's beer. That was it. Should my dad be in trouble for that, right? I didn't grow up to drink. I didn't have my first like proper drink till I was 26 because it was um I saw what alcoholics look like. It did not look fun. And then my parents let me taste it. Tasted like ass. So it was like me. It just wasn't like some big thing. Um same with my wife. Grew up in a culture where drinking by the age of 18 was fine.

And so by the time they're 16, they're drinking. Wife's doing okay. So, um, yeah, I don't want the government I want to limit the government's involvement as much as is wise. wise. wise. Now, are we going to agree on where it's wise? No. But, oo, buddy, I do not trust them. them. them. No, that makes sense. And it's actually interesting, too, cuz I lucked out um growing up raising Lynn because when she was two, she had an iPad, and this was back in 2012 when iPads were still like 400 bucks.

And she was playing Tom the cat. That's a cat that used to pull his belly, used to make the noise and all that. And she like rage quit and like tossed the iPad and it like dropped. I didn't have a case or nothing on it. It dropped and shattered and me like getting triggered from my parents like, "Oh, you broke it. I'm not buying you another one. You're going to learn your lesson." I never bought her iPad again. So, she never got back on an iPad.

Thank God. Thank God. Thank God. And the whole That's what I'm saying. I was like, "God works in mysterious ways." Cuz this whole time now I'm seeing like iPad kids and addiction and all that. all that. all that. Haitian culture one, iPad sinister zero. Definitely would have been iPad baby. But because she broke, I was like, "You're never getting an iPad again." And she was two. So she was like, okay, she was mad for that afternoon and then I was like, all right, read me a book.

Or I remember there was one day where we she was just climbing up and down the stairs for like 3 hours and it was like, all right, you're entertaining yourself and it didn't cost me money and cool. And that's just what it is. So, it's interesting how sometimes specifically I can understand how directionally you want to intervene cuz social media is there's a a bunch of suicides. There's unrealistic beauty standards and especially having a daughter, she's a little bit more sensitive to I need to have makeup and I need to get this beauty product and there's certain things that as a young man I didn't have to go through.

But I do agree like it's just a slippery slope of saying your kids can't do this, your kids can't do this. What else are they going to tell my kids they can and can't do? So now I love parents telling their kids, "You can't do that. You can't have an iPad. You can't have a Nope. Be as draconian as you want to be." And some parents will run the experiment of like absolutely no sugar. Never get to touch an iPad. All that stuff. And those kids will go on to be like the most sugar eating, the most iPad using 20-year-olds.

It is what it is. But yeah, I at the level of government policy, it has proven over time to be terrible. The worst person to solve your problems is the government. Yeah, it's it's wild. Um, there was that study though, I didn't pull it up, that generation Z is a first generation that technically is like dumber putting air quotes than the millennials. They're blaming social media. They're blaming iPads. They're blaming, you know, AI and all these things. Are we going to see in like 20 years?

I'm like, okay, holy crap, you can't touch a screen until you're 10. Like, is there going to there has to be some now? Yeah. now? Yeah. now? Yeah. Now. So, we tried to find a way. Um, shout out to Jonathan Height, who just doesn't fit the channel anymore, but love his work. Love that he's banging this drum. And uh, yeah, I think that more and more schools are going to outlaw it. I think that more and more parents are going to put the kibos on it.

And this goes back to at the individual level, you guys don't have to worry. You can educate your kids. You can make sure that your genzer is as sharp as any generation has ever been. At the individual level, this is an easy problem to solve. As you zoom back out, it becomes more and more scary. But I people always react. The pendulum always swings. And if people see this is a problem, also remember anything that offers an advantage will be pursued. So, and that's game theory.

So, any parent who realizes, oh, my kid can be guaranteed life success if I adopt a more Chinese model. I get them studying all the time. I don't let them play too many video games. I don't let them engage with their iPad too much. Yep, cool. I'm on. And so, you're going to get American parents that are going to do that same exact thing. So, China wasn't like this for a hundred years. They were getting their ass handed to them because culturally they weren't sharp. They weren't like thinking in the right ways.

And so, then they're like, "All right, cool. We're going to run a new playbook." Dingo turns everything around in the 70s and boom, you've got the modern era China. So, uh, yep. expect it'll start in pockets and then over time it will spread to culture broadly speaking. Yeah. Um yeah, this is opening arguments. We'll see. But this is definitely one of those legislation legislative defining court cases because it's happening both in California and New Mexico. Um so depending on how that turn what ramifications that will happen with Meta, they're not just going to do in that one state.

It's going to end up being a blanket policy. So we'll see what their second and third order consequences are. Um because you brought up China, let's go across the seas for a second. Um there's two stories that are kind of interesting cuz on one side, China is limiting its exposure to US debt. Um there's been some reports about that. I we've heard so many conflicting like reports about China. I don't even know what to believe anymore now. So kind of frame what does this actually mean?

How can this affect the US markets and what do you think the implications will be? So the way that I am thinking through this is you've got two countries that are both in trouble to varying degrees and in different ways. You've got China that has a massive demography problem. So they had the one child policy for so long that their population is dramatically declining. Uh you also have an incentive structure in China where they're going to lie and a lot of their dollars come from um basically self-reporting things.

And so the number of injections that you give to kids, for instance, is how a doctor gets paid. So you're going to inflate the numbers of the injections that you give to people. So because of the incentive structure, they don't have like good reporting. And Xi is now purging everybody. So all he's getting is propaganda on propaganda on propaganda. However, they are the world's manufacturing hub. Full stop. End of story. Nobody disputes that. And while it does look like they've dropped back down in terms of total exports uh because of all the trade battle between the US and China, um they're still the place that you go for manufacturing.

So they've got a huge leg up and they are a gigantic economy regardless of whether their um numbers are being inflated. Some people are saying somewhere in fact China is openly discussing are our population uh numbers inflated by 100 million or 300 million. So they're saying it's a range somewhere in there. So it's this massive range they've got the demography thing looming but economically economically economically uh because they are the world's manufacturing hub uh they've got ongoing revenue that they can count on. The US on the other hand has an economy that's essentially 70% predicated on debt.

So our GDP is 70% spending money. It's wild. How are we able to spend money? Because we are the world's reserve currency. So we can export a lot of our inflation. So that allows us to run these deficits, which is crazy. Uh and we basically have some absurd percentage of the American populace on the dole. It's wild. I forget the exact number, but it's massive. And so China knows that we're in a debt trap. And so if China wants to win, then they've got to focus on the areas where they're strong, manufacturing, uh lessen their reliance on US debt, begin to back away.

And while everyone will tell you that the digital or the yuan is never going to be the world's reserve currency, gold already is held by more central banks than US dollars. That's a change. That is a radical change that is happening before our eyes. And if China can pull off actually backing the yuan with gold in a way where they're working with some other country that holds the physical gold, a country that's large enough and that's trusted enough, then they really could back the digital yuan knowing that it's redeemable for gold and that again as long as China doesn't control it and people have faith in that like you could see that really happen and China is making strides in that direction.

Now people are going to tell you that this is impossible. They're going to tell you like Peter Zion, I loved my time with Peter Zion. There are few people that will directly refute uh my beliefs with the succinctness with the data than Peter. He's very gracious. He's very intelligent. He's very well educated. It was absolutely wonderful. But it basically comes down to what are the base assumptions that you believe? One of my base assumptions is that China got to where they are for very good reasons.

It is a country full of extraordinarily intelligent people. That they are a gigantic nation. Even if they're only a billion people and not the 1.4 that we've been told, that's still massive. Massive. And when you get a country as focused as they are on education and winning, homie, you turn a blind eye to that at your peril. They are on the comeup. and Xi can be ousted if the country is going in a bad direction. So, this is one of those where as we extend life, yes.

Are they having a demographic problem that is spilling over? Yes. Is robotics proving to be advantageous in Japan? Yes. Do I see any reason why China that outmanufactures everybody couldn't spin up their own robotics factory? No, I do not. Who is the second biggest player in AI? China. So, who's spinning up more energy than anybody on the planet? China. So, uh, whenever somebody's like, "Matt, China's like over and done with." We just don't share a base assumption. Okay? It's not that I don't understand the argumentation.

It's not even that I don't understand the data that they're looking at. It's just it all rides on the back of what base assumptions do you believe? And I have a huge base assumption around AI, robotics, that some of these advanced nations are going to be able to deal with their productivity problem, which is what it is, using AI and robotics. We all I don't hear anybody disagreeing with that in Japan, but I hear somehow people disagreeing with that in China where they've proven that they adapt very quickly.

Even if by stealing the tech, they still adapt very quickly. So, I don't write those guys off. I think it's very serious. Now, one thing Peter has convinced me of is that they're not as um militarily flexible as I thought. I thought they had broader reach. That's something that he's made me reconsider. So the spheres of influence thing takes on greater importance, but it does say that US is going to have a hard choice as to whether we want to go sweat them in their own backyard where they can [ __ ] with us militarily or whether we want to say um you know what, we're just going to say here, you guys take Asia.

That that is a big that would be an earthquake felt around the world if the US just writes them off. So that means that there is a chance that we actually do force a military conflict in their backyard. So, I don't think we're out of the woods with Ducidity's trap. Watch the episode with Peter coming up. That's his pitch is that no, no, no. You don't understand. These guys can't go far enough. We'll see. This trap's on Thursday. That's going to be that's going to be a banger.

That's going to be a good one. Yeah, that was awesome. We both were when we finished that were like, "Oh, yeah. yeah. yeah. That that was good." Um, and then in Asian news continuing, um, new right-wing PM um, PM Taka Taki, I think it's said exactly like that. Well said. um just won a landslide in their parliamentarily our parliamentarily election parliamentarily election parliamentarily election uh words. She's anti- illegal immigrant, wants to maintain Japanese coral culture and is a China hawk. Japan has gave her a sweeping mandate.

Dude, look at if you guys aren't looking at your phones, look at your phones. Uh all the green is her party. It's a graph, like a a visual graph of how many of the seats they've gobbled up gobbled up. 75%. That is wild. This ushers a massive tax cut that she's been wanting to push through and this vote is the way to solidify that. This for anybody that wants to compare this to the US, this is as if the US had a supermajority either Republican or Democrat.

Well, I mean it's like having a Republican supermajority. So there is nothing filibuster or otherwise there is nothing the other side can stop you from running through. That's wild. So expect rapid change in Japan. Uh, so this is going to be very interesting to see my So when I was a kid, Japan was like, look at Die Hard. Who's the boss? the boss? the boss? Japan. Japan. Japan. Correct. Look at um Back to the Future, Japan. It's just like in the 80s, it was like, oh, Japan's about to take it all.

Like they were the future. The whole concept of Neotokyo and all that that they were just so much more advanced than we were in the West. And we used economic games to shut them down. And so they've been held in like stasis for 40 years. And so now this is them going, "Fuck all that." Like we're coming back with a vengeance. We can feel China breathing down our neck. We have like centuries long hostility with China. And so we know if we're not able to defend ourselves, we've got a problem.

We also know that we have a demographic problem. And so we've got to deal with that. They spent I don't know like three years importing foreigners only to be like hard pass. They they they do not play. They want Japan to be Japanese. And so uh I don't know how real this is, but what I was saying at the top of the show is the sushification of Japan where they are wrapping up uh migrants that are acting a fool. Yep, there's one right there. They literally swaddle them and then just load them up.

Gotta go. This is wild. This is the most Japanese [ __ ] I've ever seen in my life. Okay, I took my mom to Japan. First of all, Japan is the dopest ever. You have to go. Are they racist? 100%. But like my mom and I were there and my mom smokes and they don't play. Like you can't even smoke outside. They're like, they're designated smoking areas and they have people wandering around with like little pouches to make you give them your cigarette. They put it out and then like tell you to like there are only certain areas.

So like in a hotel where my mom and I were saying my mom smokes and so we had to go into this tiny like you shorten your life every time you go in this little room a thousand%. It was the craziest [ __ ] I've ever seen. It's a thick gray cloud because you can't go outside. Imagine that. Japan so does not play. You can't go outside to smoke. You have to go in the tiny ass little death box inside the hotel to smoke. That's where Japan's at.

They like if you don't abide by their culture, they don't have garbage cans like you if you eat something or whatever you have a package left in your going to carry it for hours because there's no trash cans. And in Japanese culture, I I would have thought no trash cans. Garbage is going to be on the floor everywhere. Nope. Japanese don't play. you drop trash, you you don't have to wait for the authorities. People are gonna shame you. Like they're they don't play, man. So, listen, it it is a wonderful place.

I highly encourage people to visit it, but it is Japanese. Like, that is not like they're not trying to uh homogenize with the world. the world. the world. Um, also going back to the PM, I think it's hilarious and very telling of just America in general that she's the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and she's the one who's anti-immigrant. This is their liberal. This is their That is the wildest [ __ ] ever. This just to level set us. It's not all about America. Uh liberal in Japan is a whole different scene.

different scene. different scene. It's a whole different meeting. So that's hilarious. that's hilarious. that's hilarious. That's crazy. Um all right. AI has been going crazy. I don't know if we want to start with the moon. I don't know if we want to start with these AI film making things. Uh this Dragon Ball Z anime was kind of crazy. Yeah, I think so. Uh let's start with the AI videos. Um, let's set the stage with how rapidly this is evolving. Okay, so we recently had somebody on the show who uh and I'm ashamed of myself because in the video I did not push back hard enough, but they were saying basically that when was the last time the AI really made a big advance?

And I was like, okay, yeah, admittedly four to five on chat wasn't that great. Um, and then the very next day I experienced chat like prop pro and was completely blown away. Uh, I've since migrated mostly to Claude and that has blown me away. Eric, toss this up. Um, and Um, and Um, and I realized like there um, so what's his name? Yan Lun. So Yan Lun sort of got chased out of AI circles because he kept saying like this stuff just isn't that good and large language models are never going to get us there.

Uh it's just not the right technology. And so um by the time he would say that in the podcast would come out, somebody would do something that would just break that. Same for me, right? So since doing that podcast multiple times now, I've been completely blown away by some new AI thing. Um, and so with that in mind, I just don't see where we're running into a wall. Like even as regulators, and we'll get into this more with the trip to the moon, as regulators try to curb data centers and things like that, people are finding ways around it.

So, um, while it seems like every technology does eventually hit some sort of wall, it doesn't feel like AI is anywhere near that. And even just fully integrating what already exists in AI would take years. years. years. So, [clears throat] um, with that, look at this Will Smith eating spaghetti progression over the years starting in 2023. I had this playing over in the background. background. background. Oh, cool. So, anybody that was looking at their phone, um, so you can see by the end that it it just it looks completely natural.

It's not 100% there, and you can tell in the voice more than the visuals. But look at this. This battle uh is Dragon Ball Z but done in like an old kung fu movie style. And so And so And so the mental gymnastics you have to get to to represent to represent to represent anime characters as humans but in a particular style from you know an era of film making is crazy. And my brain just refuses to accept that those aren't actual humans actually doing this.

That's how real the musculature is real. The movements are real. The dust kicking up on the ground is real. It's crazy. All right. There's another one. Um. Yes. So there Sea Dance, which I believe is uh an offshoot of Bite Dance, which did Tik Tok. So, this is out of China and supposedly they're not letting people outside of China use it, but you're able to prompt like scenes off of a single image and make edits and changes, swap characters, swap camera angles. And when I say that, this is getting extraordinarily good.

If you're not looking at your computer or your uh phone, this is incredible. Like this is filmworthy, CGI, like absolutely bananas. Now, at the edges, of course, you can see like, okay, one shot might be a little weird or whatever, but this is unbelievable. Now, from a game perspective, I'm like, okay, like this is getting now. So, uh, Kaizen will start doing what I think will be limited cut sequences, but in about a year, but when I think, well, how far is this going to be in a year?

Like, it might not be as limited as I think. So the rate at which this is getting better in three years is insane. What does this look like in another three years? Because what people have to remember is a lot of the improvement isn't just going to be uh more and bigger data sets and training and all that because people are going to say, well, you're going to run into a data problem, which we're really already at. But even just giving it feedback and saying, okay, this one's better than this one.

You need to make this change. creating better interfaces so that you can edit different elements and not have to, you know, just one whole shot at a time. Uh being able to get consistency of characters, things that will propel this forward dramatically. You don't need more advancements in AI, you need advancements in UI. So just getting the user interface better, giving people more control. So it's like if all AI progress stopped right now, I would say within five years, 25% of the content you watch is AI generated and you don't think about it.

You don't discern. You're just like, "Yeah, dope." "Yeah, dope." "Yeah, dope." And I'm going to be honest, this like these latest breakthroughs were the first time I'll be like, "Okay, that is kind of cool. I can see stories that I had buried in here that just were too expensive, can't make it happen, all these other things that I would love to prompt." But to your point, I think UI, there needs to be a shift between, hey, make a cool fight scene like Dragon Ball Z. Enter.

And instead, this is my script. This is the scenes. These are the characters. Let me upload it. Okay, this character does this move. And that that control. So, it's almost like, you know, when you're growing up and you have little action figures and you're modeling scenes. If there is something that had that level of control where character one does this, character B responds like this, and you can get to that level of it, that where I think we'll really see a takeoff. like the prompt thing.

It's easy. I get it. It's cool. But I would like to see that second layer of control somewhere. So, I'm waiting for whatever system to kind of lean into that first. So, there is So, that stuff is coming. There's a movie coming out, I think, in roughly 14 or 15 months. At the time they made the announcement, I believe it was 18 months. Open AAI is a part of it and it's going to be, I believe, entirely done with AI, but with like a real film crew behind it.

So, you've got a film crew using AI to do concept art. you've got a film crew behind it doing cinematics or cinematography and all that stuff. And so, um, it will still take them, like I said, roughly 18 months to do, but I'm sure it's going to be a much smaller team. So, when you start talking about, okay, it's still like a Hollywood system. It still requires like very talented writers. It still requires people that have incredible taste to really get something that works, but like imagine if you can reduce the cost of a film by 80%.

So, it's still millions of dollars, but a blockbuster instead of being $300 million, let's say, is $30 million. Bro, that is gigantic. [clears throat] So, um that's where I expect the sort of next call it three to five years to play out where we've just so dramatically reduced the budgets and then north of five years, I think it starts to really just be what you're talking about, which is h people can make their own stuff. So now there's just such a flood that I worry what people are telling us is that when there's that much content, you just always want a TLDDR.

Make me make me a real of Dragon Ball Z. Don't make me watch like the whole thing. And so it's just reals and reels and reels and reels. reels. reels. I'm an old fddy duddy when it comes to that. Like that makes me sad. Like the emotional depth that you can get on a long series is just incredible. But if your brain wasn't developed to think of that, to respond to that, you don't have any context for it. You don't seek it out because I'm sure there are people who are like, um, sitting with a fiction book, which I never do once a year, uh, is so amazing.

Anybody's life who doesn't have that every, you know, weekend or whatever is just like I weep for them, for them, for them, but I don't miss it. It's like I've got so many other things that I find engaging. Um, so the world just moves on. So anyway, that's one that'll make me sad. And it's interesting that you brought that Dragon Ball Z point up cuz somebody on Twitter did a super cut of like all of Goku's like Super Saiyans. And I remember growing up, it literally took years for him to get Super Saiyan 1.

Like that was like a 2year arc. And just now kids are like, "Oh yeah, 1 2 3 4 5 6. Oh, and then now he's eight. And now that there's blue hair, now he's god mode." And it's just like you just skipped all of the tomorrow's the episode where he finally like all that anticipation just kind of gone. So I do also kind of reminisce with that. But I mean it's just now there has to be something on the other side. Um I do think that we will eventually run into a problem with the way that the human mind works.

Um there are just certain things that the mind is architected to expect to want to thrive in that environment and um progress is a foundational pillar of human happiness. So, I think we have an algorithm in our brain that wants struggle to equal I got better and that getting better at this thing matters and that I do a thing that makes people praise me. I think that's effectively the loop. the loop. the loop. And so, if you don't have that and you're always shortcutting to the end, you'll get there faster and you'll get that brief dopamine uh hit, but you'll never get the substantive like progress.

This is why people get addicted to drugs because all of life I am convinced is about neurochemical manipulation. Like we are just trying to manipulate our neurochemistry. Whether that's sex, whether that's progress, whether it's food, whether it's drugs and alcohol. We're just trying to manipulate our brain chemistry. And when it's done in the context of a full human life, it feels awesome. But when you short circuit that to drugs and just give me the drug, then all of a sudden people spiral and their life becomes addiction.

And like we know the outcome there. Like when all the other things, the hard work, the just being plugged into the way that society is structured, like all of that stuff assumes you're working hard to progress over time, uh to, you know, get the money and to get the accolades from your community. Like that's what everything is built for. When you eject out of that to get it super quick, it leads to devastation. like it actually tears your life apart. And so I think we have to remind ourselves that addiction does not only come in the form of an exogenous chemical that you take.

It can be many things. And if one of those addictions is skip to the punchline really really fast so I can pull the dopamine to right now now now that doesn't stack in the way that your brain expects it to. So you might get the dopamine hit, but it will erode your life in the same way that a drug addiction erodess your life. Yeah. Um, it's interesting and I'm queuing up the hard mode uh thing with the SpaceX colony. But this weekend I had a volunteer event that I got roped into with my daughter's like step team and it was like oh we're volunteering at the Supercross thing.

We're going to do like a concession stand. Supercross motorcycles. Supercross motorcycles. Supercross motorcycles. Yes. So So me I'm like concession stand. I'm thinking high school. I'm thinking it's going to be like a small booth but no we were like inside the stadium like in one of those like actual things like I did like a 9-h hour shift like they roped me into like working. Yes. I I was a little bit frustrated than that. But the interesting thing was like I was on the cash register. Lim was behind me.

She was like the runner. So I like they need nachos. She'll go get the nachos, fill it up with cheese, give it to the customer or whatever like that. But then we got so swamped. I guess it was halftime for Supercross. I didn't know like whenever it was just a bunch of lines. We opened up all the other lines. We started running out of food. So the guy next to me had to go in the back to start making food. And then was like, "Dad, teach me how to work the register." So I like taught her real quick.

And then she started to like hold her own and was taking customers and stuff like that. And when I tell you I had to drag her out the bed that morning. She didn't want to go. This is stupid. I don't want to do it. I hate I hate it. And then by the end hate it. I hate it. And then by the end of the day, she's like, "Yo, I was kind of killing it. I like being so there is that thing that like we need we need to have this like approval feedback loop.

Like it it is fundamental." And a lot of that is on the other side of things we don't want. So now I'm queuing up this Elon thing because when I first heard like we're there's going to be a growing city on the moon like hard mode I guess. But there is going to be a portion of people that are like computers easy, this is easy, I can't do sports. All right. I need to just go blow something up. I need to hit a rock really hard and break it into two and that way I could feel like I I accomplished something today.

So it's like that hard mode thing is starting to actually like come I think into fruition especially once that meaningless crisis happen when AI does hit that like asotope. It just kind of goes crazy. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah. This this one is for me this is thrilling. The fact that we're going to build a colony on the moon is one of the most exciting things that I can think about actually happening in my lifetime. And when you really break down what the motivations are, I think that this is economic.

And the reason I bring that up is you can trust that it's actually going to happen. Like once you know, oh, I'm just aligning myself to somebody's selfish desires. Perfect. I think Elon is looking at the moon. Well, first he's looking at Mars and he's saying, okay, I want to make us multilanetary. I built this incredible business um doing that, launching things into space. I want to get us there. But he realizes that given how it's like an 18-month trip, uh given that it is um narrow windows where you can actually get there in the first place, that iterating on things that happen on Mars is going to be a very slow process.

And so uh you know, he's not a spring chicken. Obviously, we all have limits. And so I imagine he looks at that and goes, "Hm, I'm not sure how quickly we're going to be able to do that." He maps out what is happening from a regulatory standpoint here with AI. He obviously understands whoever wins AI wins full stop. So he's in that race. He knows that he's faster from an engineering perspective, from a buildout perspective than literally any human alive. And he goes, "Okay, wait a second.

We've got two big beats. We've got cooling needs." And so being able to get the power that we need to a data center is becoming increasingly difficult given regulatory problems. Uh but space is effectively infinitely cold. And so we can go into space, no problem. And then the other is quantum compute, which also requires things to be really, really cold. And he's talking about putting them inside of craters on Mars where there's effectively no weather. Um, I don't know if it's if you protect yourself from the dust particles there or not.

That may or may not be part of this, but basically uh you don't have to deal with sunlight. You don't have to deal uh with having to cool these things. And so now for effectively free, I mean let's put that in quotes because you have to go to the moon. Uh they can build out quantum centers, data centers either in orbit or on the moon itself while practicing for Mars. Now he has said we're not going to the moon because we want to build a base and then launch things from there.

We're still going to launch from Earth. So he's doing something else. And I think it's those two things. I think it's doing the dry run, being able to iterate much faster. It's a three-day trip. You can go anytime you want. Well, I think there's like there's like there's like uh I forget how long, but it's a very very limited amount of time. Oh, perfect. perfect. perfect. For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the moon as we potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas Mars will take 20 plus.

The mission of SpaceX remains the same, extending consciousness and life as we know it to the stars. It is only possible to travel to Mars where the planets align every 26 months and it's a six-month trip time, whereas we can launch to the moon every 10 days. It's a two-day trip time. This means we can iterate much faster to complete a moon city than a Mars city. That said, SpaceX will also strive to build a Mars city and begin doing so in about 5 to seven years, but the overriding priority is securing the future of civil civilization.

And the moon is faster. Yeah, very interesting. So, it's a 12 month trip to Mars, not 18. My apologies. Um, yes, that is that all makes sense to me. Um, so the Mars thing always felt a little more like I'm excited, like it's really gonna happen, but it always felt kind of far away. The moon feels like something I think he's talking about in 2027. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so that would be incredible because just landing somebody on the moon or just landing them on Mars is not the exciting thing I want to see.

I want to see like the domes being built and like actual people living on the moon. That would be so wild. Like that really gets me excited. I I just I need to figure out the power dynamics like how we're connecting everything because I know it's dumb like we don't have outlets but like how are you going to have all these data centers connected to that to beam into a satellite like satellite like satellite like let me tell you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you're in outer space which means there's no atmosphere stopping the sun from being captured.

And so as solar cells get better and better you'll I mean you'll already be able to do everything you need to do just from sunlight. But what people I don't think understand is um in our galaxy the sun is like 99.99% of all the energy. So you could literally burn every fossil fuel ever. It's a rounding like it's a rounding error on the rounding error of the amount of energy that's being kicked off by the sun. So we're confusing a current difficult time with harnessing that energy with the energy not being present.

So even nuclear, we're like, why are we thinking about solar? That's so dumb. We should be thinking about nuclear. Nuclear again is a rounding error and a rounding error of what you can get if you just harness the amount of energy that's already coming from the sun. And so being outside of our atmosphere already allows you to capture a lot more. Now it's a 24-hour cycle. There's not only does weather not matter, but you know, positioning in terms of the Earth being at night and being faced away from the sun doesn't matter.

So you can just capture it around the clock. And then um the amount of energy being captured by uh solar is going up. It's not like a vertical line, but it's going up up up up. Like if you look at China, it's crazy. So um if Elon is right, and I don't see any reason why he isn't, if the sun is like the whole game, then yeah, get outside of the atmosphere, capture from the sun, and you can have all the outlets you want uh effectively for free.

for free. for free. Gotcha. Um, and then this is reminding me of that movie Allesium with Matt Damon. Yeah. Where they kind of built like this whole like space colony and stuff like that. Is that a viable future for civilization? I'm not even going to say for America, for America, for America, right? right? right? But do you think that that's something that we should strive for? Um, should strive for is uh I think that being multilanetary is wise given that we are prone to self-destruction. Um, the thing that always makes me hesitate is I don't know enough of the engineering to know if we're better off on the surface of a moon or Mars or if we're better off building like these big I think there's a name for them but like these big floating um space shuttles space station type thing.

type thing. type thing. Yeah. I don't just from an engineering perspective I don't know what's more viable. viable. viable. Um so I'd have to do some research on that but getting off of just planet Earth. Yes. Gotcha. Um, this is going to be it's it's I'm curious to see how this all plays out because there is going to be that I don't want to say crash test done, but like there is going to be that experimentation. There's experimentation. There's experimentation. There's people are going to die.

Yes, Yes, Yes, that's like a super easy way to put it. And how many That's why uh this is beware of corporations as as much as you're wary of the government. But I would rather see this in the hands of a corporation that I know if there's actually an advantage, they're going to press it press it press it and so they'll keep doing it. Um, now as long as they're open and transparent about the risks and all that, it just makes me think of Shackleton. So for people that don't know, uh, Ernest Shackleton wanted to be the first to I don't remember if it was like cross the Antarctic or what circumnavigate it whatever he was going to the Antarctic and or the Arctic, one of the two.

I don't know if it's north or south. And he put out this ad that was like, um, hey, extremely dangerous mission for like tough ass men. In fact, can pull it up. Put Shackleton newspaper uh request for men. Um, yep. Here we go. Zoom in. Let me read this bad boy. This This is extraordinary. Okay, so it says men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return, doubtful, honor and recognition in event in event in event uh in event of success.

Okay, that's a real ad that actually got people to do it. And it's like, I get it. Some people are going to say, "That's crazy, Tom. [ __ ] you." Like, we don't want that. I want this. I want more energy like this. Where do people go that would respond to some [ __ ] like this? Like I want these like hard ass guys that are like, "Yeah, I want to go to the moon. [ __ ] yeah." And do I get that we might die on the moon? Yes, 100%. But this dude, if we pull this off, like we are going to be remembered forever.

I love that [ __ ] That adventurous spirit, the men who had set sail on the ocean, not knowing, dude, they didn't know if they were just going to fall off the edge or if they were going to get eaten by sea demons. and they still did it. Like there's something in the human spirit like that that I find so like motivational. Jenz is not biting for this. They're like hazardous journey small wages. Nah, I know. I'm with you. No cell phone service. Here's the thing. Read it.

The the book is called Endurance, I believe. And uh it is so good when you read How Long These Guys Were Trapped. Spoiler alert for anybody who plans to read it. So Shackleton gets every one of these [ __ ] back alive. back alive. back alive. Nice, Nice, Nice, dude. There I think it was two years. Two years trapped on the ice. Imagine that. Two years. And he had to like find ways basically to keep them from killing each other and to keep him fed and eventually they like have to split up.

So you've got to now leave the team behind to make sure they don't kill each other. And of course you always have some [ __ ] right? So, there was this guy in the group everybody [ __ ] hated. And so, it's like, how do you get them all back safely? It is this incredible tale of leadership and endurance and people just like gutting it out. Oh my god, it's such a good story, man. It is such a good story. People need to read it. And it is nonfiction. This actually happened.

It's wild. wild. wild. Somebody said, "Would you rather do the Shackleton experiment or go die in Flanders?" which were the two choices back there. And Fainus 2 is like a World War I poem. A Yeah. I mean, what would I rather do? I'd probably rather do Shackleton Sang, but but but they were both rough. Rough. Now, watching your friends get their heads blown off. That one probably leaves a bit more trauma, but I just can't imagine the desolation you would feel never knowing if you're going to make it.

a level of cold none of us understand. Yeah. understand. Yeah. understand. Yeah. That if you got wet, it was basically you were going to die. Yeah. Because there's there's no drying you off. Like they spent effectively two years like slightly damp. And so yeah, it Oh god, the book is so good. You gota you got to read it. That one will make you go, "Oh, I've never done anything hard in my life." Got it. Got it. Heard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Grappy. Uh all right. I know we got a couple super chats lingering.

Let's do it. Uh, first from DP5431, Attack on Titan is the greatest anime. Attack on Titan is so good. It's not the greatest anime, but it shows the horrors of war in a way that is breathtaking. I'm talking you've watched um uh Saving Private Ryan. You know the genre and you're like, "Yo, there's some classics. Tom doesn't know what he's talking about." And then you watch a cartoon and you'll be like, "Oh, damn." As far as the horrors of war, losing people you love, facing, being injured, like all of it in in in a cartoon about giant monsters.

It's unbelievable. Did you watch Game of Thrones? Yeah. Like season one, episode one, two of Game of Thrones, Attack on Titan, I both was like audibly like, "Oh, I love that person and they're dead now." Like, "Okay, I like this person, But Attack on Titan was like, "Okay, that was the first 20 minutes." And then the next 20 minutes, somebody else dies. And then I'm like, "Okay, we got we landed on the character we like." Now episode two, that person dies. And I'm just like, I don't know.

Everybody's dying like this. Like you couldn't even attach to somebody because it was just so chaotic. Like good. It's so It really is good. good. good. And the rest of this one says, "Thoughts on privacy cryptocurrencies like Zcash being what is ultimately required to flip the system? Trump admin is okay with trackable crypto but still goes after privacy crypto devs?" I don't know enough about Zcash. I'll have to dig into that before I can meaningfully answer. answer. answer. Um, Um, Um, I thought, I thought, I thought, yeah, that is the the privacy debate is a good one.

People that think that Bitcoin is private are crazy. Uh, you can track every Satoshi that's ever been moved, ever know right where it's at. Now, you don't know who owns the wallet. Fair enough. But you can watch the money move. So once you figure out who the wallet belongs to, everything's clear. Next up from Marushia Dark, since you mentioned Minecraft, have you seen the backlash to their good trouble DLC? It's wild. Also, have you looked into Hightail? It's like Minecraft 2.0. Also, have you seen 4D in Minecraft?

Uh, uses hyperspace engineering. hyperspace engineering. hyperspace engineering. I haven't heard of 4D in Minecraft. That's interesting. I'm not even sure what that would look like. Uh, so I'll need to look that up. Um, the I've played Hightail. Hightail is fantastic. There are things that they do that I think will always make it a shadow of Minecraft. So, I'll be interested to see what happens to the player base and if that is like I grew up on Minecraft and now I want something that's more structured. That's possible.

Um, we'll see. But no, I didn't see the backlash. Though the recent updates to Minecraft, at least that I saw as a one individual player were pretty great. So, um, don't know. Have to look into it. Last one. Uh, we have a guest coming on Wednesday, do we not? Uh, a guest that we've already filmed. Oh, on the show. Yeah. On the live. She texted me to say, "Hey, we should promote that." So, this is me doing. Who's coming? Who's coming? Who's coming? Your wife. Your wife.

Your wife. Oh. Oh, Oh. Oh, Oh. Oh, that's right. that's right. that's right. Oh, that's awesome. Okay. So, uh, here's what happened. So, Lisa and I did a, uh, she interviewed me for her show. I think it is Channel Suicide. I don't know what she was thinking. I I was surprised y'all went through that. that. that. People are going to lose their minds. Here's my wife off camera. So, uh it's basically how could you be married to somebody who voted for Trump? Her audience is going to hate me.

So, if you guys want to see uh what that looks like, make sure you check out that episode. It was dope. She was like really sweating me. Uh it was fun. I really enjoyed it. But I really think uh her channel is going to have a problem. I think I think they're gonna trip out. She's anxious about it as well. Uh channel suicide. I'm like in the hot sweats. sweats. sweats. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to be bold, boys and girls. You have to be bold.

So it it was really good. And Wednesday, we're going to dive into it. We'll talk about some of the specifics without giving no more spoilers. Um but just I was working in the office. I had like one earphone on just so I can kind of know my surroundings. I was surprised that you guys went where you went with it. I was like, "Oh, oh, okay." Like, so I appreciate you guys are like 100%. It's it's spicy. So, we'll talk about it more on Wednesday. Lisa is going to pop in.

Um, and you if you guys want, we'll we'll give her some hot seat questions and return to f. So, yeah, we'll have a little bit of Q&A in the chat. It'll be fun on Wednesday. So, you know, we'll get her [clears throat] we'll get her back. And somebody's asking her channel's called Women of Impact. Impact. Impact. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, definitely check it out. Women of Impact. Uh, although your channel's Lisa Bill. Oh, the channel. Yeah. Yeah. Lisa show is women of show is called women back.

Yep. Yep. Yep. Be sure to check it out. Lisa Billy is actually funny says truth Devon. She is funny. My wife is a lot of fun in real life even more than you are on camera. camera. camera. Um cool. Um I left this for the very very very very end. Um I know you're not a big sports person. Did you have any comment on comment on comment on So I watch Oh yes. So the Seahawks won. So my family was very happy. That's very exciting. M exciting.

M exciting. M um I didn't watch it at all, but um I am excited that other people had fun. I was preparing for this episode right here instead of watching the show. Uh and the I saw a little bit of the Bad Bunny thing and I am aware of the sort of Bad Bunny v um Turning Point Turning Point USA halftime show. So, but I don't know what the general vibe of like what people are saying. I saw a little bit of the Bad Bunny thing.

Obviously, all ice all the time. So, it's in terms of being controversial and getting attention. Great play. I'm curious to know how fans of the NFL responded. It doesn't feel like they're demo. So, I can't figure out if they just have the demographic information that I don't and so they know that they actually have a huge contingency of people that are really into that messaging and so they loved it or if they're trying to push in that direction. I that I don't know. That's a pure demographics question because they're going to pander to their audience.

So, anybody who thinks that they ought not like they're either going to pander to the audience they want and that's how they're going to draw them in uh or they're going to pander to the audience that they have. These are not like people who have some strong stance. I promise you. Um an interesting thing that happened though was the Epstein survivors uh they released an ad during the Super Bowl calling for full transparency of the files. files. files. I saw this ad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On November 9th, the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law.

3 million files still not have not been released. released. released. And they're showing real victims here. After years of being kept apart, we're standing together. Standing. Standing. Standing. Standing together Standing together Standing together because this girl deserves the truth. Because she deserves the truth. Because we all deserve the truth. what they look like back then so that you remember like these are young girls, man. Uh yeah, getting together is super smart. Um so we'll see. This is like when all the women started coming together for Cosby, I was like, "Bro, he's in trouble." Like when you see the like uh bleachers full and they've got like, you know, however many 50 people or whatever.

Uh that was jarring to see. You're like, "That's going to be tough." So, yeah. Very smart. Very smart. All right. Well, did you watch the whole thing? I did. I was locked in. Um, what did you think of the Bad Bunny thing? thing? thing? Uh, Bad Bunny thing was dope. I think that how he chronicled one like it was like a love letter to Puerto Rico, which I thought was just very specific. And how he chronicled all like the immigration jobs kind of like slide starting in a like a crop field to a taco stand to a bodega.

um had Pedro Pascal and all these like Latinx and then when he shouted out all the Latin countries and then he said God bless America and named every country in America, Central America, South America and North America. So I kind of like the unifying aspect of it. What's the internet's response? Um numbers don't lie. 155 million watched it. 5 million watched Turning Point USA. Um people who love Turning Point loved it. People who love Bad Bunny loved it. Um I like two Bad Bunny songs. He played the two songs I like.

So, hey, I was doing. So, that's it. Nice. Awesome. Well, there it is, everybody. Let us know in the comments. I'm very curious to know what people thought. I would love to get a sense of what this audience thinks about that. Uh, yeah, that'll be very telling. So, we shall see. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us and uh I cannot wait to see you again on Wednesday. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.