Timcast IRL - Tim Pool - CALIFORNIA IS FLIPPING REPUBLICAN | Timcast IRL #1464 w/ Vish Burra
Aired: 2026-03-07
Duration: 02:08:50


=== California Governor Race (04:42) ===

[00:02:10]  Oh, it's getting spicy in California.
[00:02:12]  They got too many Democrats that are trying to be governor, and the way the race works is the top two will advance to a general election.
[00:02:19]  And right now, the top two contenders to win the governor's race in California are Republicans.
[00:02:24]  And here's the funny thing.
[00:02:26]  You know, for a while, everybody said, yeah, well, it doesn't matter because Democrats will start dropping out.
[00:02:30]  And when they do, the majority of people in California are going to want to vote for a Democrat.
[00:02:34]  Right now, between the two Republicans, they have about 30-31 percent in the polls.
[00:02:39]  And then among all of these other Democrats, there's like 11 or 12 or something.
[00:02:44]  They're splitting up the vote.
[00:02:46]  Well, we thought they would drop out, except now they're all fighting with each other, accusing each other of being bad or just insulting them.
[00:02:52]  And well, that's what happens when you have a political party that just is willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get political power.
[00:02:57]  So the latest calls from the Democratic Party, the establishment machine, for certain candidates to leave the race so that two Republicans don't go head to head, it's falling on deaf ears.
[00:03:08]  They're not going to do it.
[00:03:08]  So here's what's going to happen.
[00:03:09]  It is projected as of right now.
[00:03:11]  And this is, again, I know it's a long shot, so probably not going to happen.
[00:03:14]  But if the top two contenders advance to the general, there will be no Democrat option.
[00:03:20]  It will literally be, congratulations, California.
[00:03:22]  You get to vote for Republican or Republican, and then California. will be Republican.
[00:03:28]  I don't know what that means for the people who live there, but I don't know what that means for a governor who's not going to be able to just rubber stamp anything.
[00:03:34]  You're going to have a supermajority of Democrats throughout the state anyway, but it'll at least be interesting.
[00:03:39]  So we'll talk about that.
[00:03:40]  Then we've got a report from NBC that Trump is considering sending U.S. boots on the ground into Iran.
[00:03:46]  Again, we'll see if it's true.
[00:03:48]  Could be scuttlebutt.
[00:03:49]  The crazier story, in my opinion, it is a bit, you know, I love the word esoteric, but still massively impactful.
[00:03:58]  The BBC falsely edited a speech from Hegseth to air in Iran, claiming, as Hegseth is speaking, they translate it for him to say he is calling or he is going to bring death to the Iranian people, which he didn't say.
[00:04:15]  And that is terrifyingly and egregiously wrong.
[00:04:19]  But are we really surprised that the BBC is doing this?
[00:04:22]  Because this is what they seem to do.
[00:04:24]  We're going to talk about that and a whole lot more, my friends, of course.
[00:04:27]  Before we do, we got a great sponsor.
[00:04:29]  It's ourselves, Pool Water.
[00:04:31]  My friends, head over to Casbrew.com, scroll down, and we've got aluminum bottle pool water.
[00:04:38]  It's not actually pool water.
[00:04:40]  It is just pool brand, Artesian water.
[00:04:42]  It's a funny gag if you want to have, you know, bottles of pool water around your house, but it is delicious, clean, totally drinkable.
[00:04:49]  And I have big news.
[00:04:51]  I wanted to verify this because people had asked if there's plastic in the can.
[00:04:54]  And I'm like, all cans have plastic.
[00:04:56]  But these are aluminum bottles, in fact.
[00:04:58]  And as it turns out, our manufacturer has informed us they do not have any plastic lining these cans.
[00:05:05]  The lids have gaskets, the same as any other bottled beverage.
[00:05:08]  So there's going to be some plastic in it.
[00:05:10]  But this is actually pretty surprising because unlike some canned water beverages that do have plastic liners in them, ours, according to the manufacturer, do not.
[00:05:20]  So if you want to buy some bottles of these air pool water, many people were asking when it was going to be available.
[00:05:25]  We got them in aluminum cans right now.
[00:05:27]  And I got the confirmation.
[00:05:28]  The other day, I wasn't so sure because I assumed that all cans had plastic.
[00:05:32]  And I told my crew and they're like, hey, they said there's no liner in there.
[00:05:35]  And I was like, get a certification or confirmation.
[00:05:38]  And we got emailed back and they were like, there's no certification.
[00:05:41]  We just don't use it.
[00:05:41]  It's just aluminum.
[00:05:43]  And I guess the issue is for water, it's not actually needed.
[00:05:46]  So that's actually really interesting.
[00:05:47]  Pick it up at castbrew.com, my friends.
[00:05:50]  And also don't forget, if you go to boonieshq.com store, we still have a handful of the step on snack and find out limited edition skateboards.
[00:06:00]  I don't know how many of the golden foil graphics have gone out already.
[00:06:04]  We know a handful have.
[00:06:06]  But there were 200 step on snack and find out boards made, and only 10 come as foil golden metallic print.
[00:06:15]  And they are serialized with one, two, three, four, five, et cetera, of 10.
[00:06:19]  And my understanding is there's still some out there.
[00:06:21]  It could be wrong.
[00:06:22]  But these are available right now.
[00:06:24]  So go to boonieshq.com, pick them up if you would like.
[00:06:26]  Don't forget to also smash that like button, my friends.
[00:06:29]  Share the show with everyone, you know.
[00:06:31]  Joining us tonight to talk about this and so much more.
[00:06:33]  We got Vish Burra.
[00:06:34]  Thank you so much for having me on, Tim, Phil, Carter, Ian.
[00:06:38]  My name is Vish Burra.
[00:06:39]  I'm a political consultant, MAGA operative extraordinaire.
[00:06:43]  Worked with Steve Bannon, Matt Gates, George Santos, all favorites of this show.
[00:06:48]  And I'm glad to be here with you guys.
[00:06:49]  Right on.
[00:06:50]  Should be fun.
[00:06:51]  Well, you know, guys, I'm also going to add this.

=== Conspiracy Theories Debunked (14:52) ===

[00:06:53]  We're just foregoing the general introductions from this point on.
[00:06:56]  I mean, Crossland, if you didn't already know.
[00:06:57]  No, I feel kind of weird about it, too.
[00:06:59]  Yeah, because we got to the point where it's like seven minutes in and we're introducing the same people every single time.
[00:07:04]  And we were like, yeah, I don't think we need to.
[00:07:05]  The crew tried to.
[00:07:06]  I didn't mix it up.
[00:07:07]  And it was like, well, he can just introduce himself.
[00:07:10]  Indeed.
[00:07:10]  But we'll introduce the hat to you.
[00:07:12]  But let's just jump straight into the news, my friends, from the New York Times.
[00:07:16]  Democratic infighting begins in California governor's race.
[00:07:20]  Begins now?
[00:07:20]  It's been going on for some time.
[00:07:21]  Party leaders are starting to panic over the possibility that too many Democratic candidates could hand Republicans the governor's office.
[00:07:28]  Indeed.
[00:07:29]  And here's what I love from the AP.
[00:07:31]  Top California Democrat flops with call for candidates to exit the governor's race.
[00:07:36]  This guy, this is a late-hour attempt by California's top Democratic official to thin out the party's credit field has flopped, leaving the contest virtually unchanged.
[00:07:46]  Outgoing Democratic governor Gavin Nusim has acknowledged fears inside the party that multiple Democratic candidates could undercut each other in the June 2nd primary primary election, opening a pathway for a Republican to seize the job in one of the nation's most solidly Democrat states.
[00:08:03]  And we have this.
[00:08:04]  This is the California Top Two Twins website.
[00:08:07]  And it's showing the probability of who the likely candidates are going to be.
[00:08:12]  So the way it works, for those that don't know, they're going to have a primary.
[00:08:15]  It's open.
[00:08:16]  It can be any party.
[00:08:18]  The two individuals that get the most votes will advance to a general election.
[00:08:21]  The only issue is that the two individuals pulling at the top right now are Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, two Republicans, because the Democrats are cannibalizing their own voter base.
[00:08:31]  I think, however, it may actually be fair to say the Democrat voter base actually isn't one singular party, and that's why this is happening.
[00:08:39]  When these Democrats say, hey, look, we're all Democrats, hey, Katie Porter, drop out so Swalwell can win.
[00:08:44]  Katie Porter is not a Swalwell Democrat.
[00:08:47]  She's a progressive going, no, he's a machine state crony.
[00:08:50]  I'm going to win.
[00:08:51]  And then you got Tom Steyer who's like, you're all crazy.
[00:08:53]  We need moderates back.
[00:08:55]  I'm going to win.
[00:08:56]  They're all different political ideologies.
[00:08:59]  The issue, however, is that Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco are at least somewhat similar.
[00:09:04]  So for most people, I think their choices come November are going to be Republican v. Republican.
[00:09:09]  And it's funny, I guess.
[00:09:11]  I thought this was what they were doing during the federal election of 2020 with Biden.
[00:09:15]  We had all those Democrats on stage, and it felt like they were cannibalizing.
[00:09:19]  They were all grasping.
[00:09:20]  And then all of a sudden, someone got the call or the call went out and they all dropped out at once and supported Biden.
[00:09:25]  You just don't see it in state-by-state elections because they didn't have the USAID machine behind it manipulating, you know, and contacting.
[00:09:32]  And USAID isn't whoever it was.
[00:09:34]  It was the DNC tongue-in-cheek.
[00:09:36]  It was Obama.
[00:09:37]  Where were they getting their money from?
[00:09:38]  That was Obama.
[00:09:38]  He went, made that call.
[00:09:40]  Obama made the call saying you should all drop out and support Biden.
[00:09:44]  Yeah.
[00:09:44]  Really?
[00:09:45]  Yes.
[00:09:45]  It was Obama who did that.
[00:09:46]  And the way he did that was going to make by going to Jim Clyburn.
[00:09:51]  Yeah.
[00:09:51]  The most powerful black Democrat in the Democratic Party and getting his black caucus and the votes in South Carolina to line up behind Biden.
[00:10:02]  And that's when everyone knew, like, oh, this is over now.
[00:10:04]  That's a great point that you make about Clyburn.
[00:10:06]  Everybody watching should know.
[00:10:07]  If you want to know what the Democrats are going to do, watch what Clyburn does.
[00:10:11]  Clyburn has so much pull in the Democrat Party.
[00:10:15]  If Clyburn says yes, or you get Clyburn on your side, it's a guarantee for the Democrats.
[00:10:20]  If you don't get Clyburn, you can forget about it.
[00:10:23]  People talk a lot about how the Democrats work in lockstep.
[00:10:26]  And I think that's sort of an illusion or general manipulation by the machine state, literally, you know, through like Obama making phone calls.
[00:10:34]  And it's not like an inherent thing about the Democratic Party throughout.
[00:10:37]  There's just like, you know, the large kind of machine behind the Democratic Party in aspects.
[00:10:43]  But you can see here, it's kind of aspirant.
[00:10:45]  I just want to go back to the good old days where no matter what happened, it was always a conspiracy.
[00:10:49]  Like, let's just, you know what?
[00:10:51]  Trump's part of it.
[00:10:51]  He's been in it the whole time.
[00:10:53]  He's the controlled opposition.
[00:10:56]  And he went, no, it's not the Democrats, the machine state.
[00:10:59]  So the conspiracy theory back in the day, I was in Fort Lauderdale at a Trump rally back in like 2015 or 16.
[00:11:06]  And there was a woman outside holding up a big poster board with a picture of Trump and Hillary together.
[00:11:11]  And the Trump supporters were like, what are you doing?
[00:11:14]  And she was protesting, basically saying, Trump is friends with all of these people.
[00:11:17]  They didn't stop being friends with Trump.
[00:11:19]  They're just doing that so that you think Trump is an outsider.
[00:11:23]  And the conspiracy theory is, and I think the funniest moment in this, because I don't actually believe it, but we had General Flynn on, and I asked him about it, and he gave a response that a lot of people said sounded like it was true.
[00:11:36]  And that was, I had said on the show, this is a year and a few months ago, November, that the conspiracy theory, I explained it while General Flint was on the show.
[00:11:47]  The idea is this.
[00:11:48]  Here's the idea.
[00:11:49]  In the end of the 2010s, we saw the expansion of people like Alex Jones.
[00:11:55]  He had been getting more and more popular.
[00:11:58]  And around this time, you saw the emergence of the Ron Paul Love Revolution.
[00:12:01]  Ron Paul, they saw the makings of an internet-based populist uprising.
[00:12:05]  Ron Paul starts getting a ton of attention.
[00:12:08]  He gets his internet campaign, and they could not control Fort because it was grassroots, viral, organic.
[00:12:14]  And so the intelligence operation said, no, no, no, we'll just make sure it can never happen.
[00:12:18]  So what do you do?
[00:12:19]  Well, the problem is, if you are the government and you come out and say, hey, do a thing, people will say, no, we'll do the opposite.
[00:12:26]  The conspiracy theory goes that at this point, they said, we need someone who can be our outsider, who can appear to not be like the rest of the political machine state so that regular people think they're voting for the anti-establishment candidate.
[00:12:41]  But in fact, he's been our buddy the whole time.
[00:12:43]  And they said, Donald Trump.
[00:12:46]  So Trump registers, you know, make America great again, decides he's going to run.
[00:12:49]  And then he plays the anti-establishment heel, right?
[00:12:53]  This is why Bernie Sanders was blocked.
[00:12:55]  Bernie Sanders actually was standing in a gym launching a campaign, very similar populist uprising, but they easily controlled for this.
[00:13:04]  The conspiracy theory goes that Trump was actually the intended candidate to win.
[00:13:08]  And all of this opposition that we've seen with the impeachments, the reason why they always fail and Trump always wins, is to convince people that they're voting for the person fighting the establishment.
[00:13:17]  And then Trump declares war on Iran, goes and bombs the crap out of it, kills the Supreme Leader, and accomplishes what the Bush administration and the Obama administration had been trying to do forever.
[00:13:27]  I mean, going back to Clinton and even Bush Sr., we had the, who was the general who came out?
[00:13:34]  Lukakowsky knows the answer to this, who said, we're going to wipe out seven countries.
[00:13:38]  Wesley Clark.
[00:13:39]  Wesley Clark.
[00:13:39]  Are you sure?
[00:13:40]  Yeah, nine countries in seven years.
[00:13:42]  Was it seven?
[00:13:42]  I thought it was seven.
[00:13:44]  And Iran was one of them.
[00:13:45]  And now you have Donald Trump.
[00:13:47]  People vote for him as the anti-establishment guy.
[00:13:49]  They've never actually stopped him from doing anything.
[00:13:52]  They've just done a bunch of things that would appear to be detrimental.
[00:13:56]  And then Trump gives the machine state its war with Iran.
[00:13:58]  Now, again, I'm not saying I believe that conspiracy theory.
[00:14:01]  My point is, weren't the good old days great when we could just assume that no matter what was happening, the Democrats and the Republicans were working together behind our backs?
[00:14:09]  Yeah, if only if it was that simple.
[00:14:10]  I mean, I think we wish that we could give those kind of simplified answers for all the conspiracy talk on it.
[00:14:17]  It's a simple answer.
[00:14:18]  It doesn't really work that way.
[00:14:20]  Yeah, Trump has been kind of been in that milieu of elites and has been around these people, their friends and everything.
[00:14:28]  But they were cool with him as long as he wrote the check and let them do their business down in D.C. What they weren't expecting was that he wanted to come join the party too.
[00:14:38]  And I think that that's when it all kind of went screwy.
[00:14:43]  And then that's when these folks either tried to co-opt him, infiltrate him, or just take him head on.
[00:14:49]  You know what the craziest thing is, is that everything I described is 100% true.
[00:14:54]  And even we are in on it.
[00:14:56]  We're paid, of course, by Israel.
[00:14:57]  And they organize all of this.
[00:15:00]  And the funny thing is I can say this right now, and it won't matter because the people who already believe it will always believe it.
[00:15:04]  And everyone else will just think I'm joking.
[00:15:06]  So it was Wesley Clark.
[00:15:08]  It was in 2007.
[00:15:09]  Wesley Clark on Democracy Now said that he had spoken with high-ranking U.S. Army officer Classified Pentagon memo outlining a plan to overthrow seven governments within five years.
[00:15:19]  And that's in 2007.
[00:15:20]  So that's why, well, partly Iraq, Iran, God, who else was on there?
[00:15:25]  Afghanistan?
[00:15:25]  Iraq, Syria.
[00:15:26]  It was Iraq.
[00:15:26]  Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
[00:15:29]  So, I mean, I don't think the U.S. has the government in Somalia or Sudan.
[00:15:34]  Well, there are Somaliland thing that just happened.
[00:15:39]  Yeah.
[00:15:40]  Yeah, and Lebanon's been, you know.
[00:15:41]  There are people that swear up and down that they've actually, the plan has been put into effect and they've actually followed through and Iran was the last one.
[00:15:49]  But I don't think that actually holds water.
[00:15:51]  Like I said, Somalia and Sudan haven't been, the U.S. hasn't had a significant action against either of them.
[00:15:56]  You know what I like doing?
[00:15:57]  It's really funny just to think about like when I when I was younger, maybe in like the 2000s or early 2010s and I'm on the internet and all this stuff in the world is going on.
[00:16:05]  I remember when like WikiLeaks Cablegate happened.
[00:16:08]  Do you guys remember that?
[00:16:08]  What was that, 2009?
[00:16:10]  And I'm just chilling in my bedroom.
[00:16:12]  Like I was making skate videos.
[00:16:14]  I got no idea.
[00:16:15]  I'm just reading the news and I'm like, man, this Cablegate stuff is crazy.
[00:16:18]  And then you hear all these conspiracy theories and I'm and I, you know, I periodically would see some Alex Jones stuff, obviously with like the 9-11, loose chain stuff.
[00:16:25]  He was a lot of attention.
[00:16:27]  And then the funny thing is, now I've got, you know, two and a half million followers on X and half a million on Instagram and all these followers.
[00:16:34]  And I get accused of being part of those very same conspiracies.
[00:16:38]  But of course, now being on the other side of it, I rather enjoy sometimes going to a random person's account who's talking about me and then commenting on one of their posts that it's all true and no one will ever believe you.
[00:16:49]  It's very Bill Murray of you.
[00:16:51]  He just drop in on random.
[00:16:52]  They're going to like screenshot this and be like, dude, Tim Poole admitted that's a big conspiracy and he's in on it.
[00:16:56]  It's hearing this tweet and people are going to be like, shut up.
[00:16:58]  That's the final version of your performance art, by the way, is just to participate in the conspiracies about you.
[00:17:04]  I kind of do some.
[00:17:06]  You do get a taste of that on his account.
[00:17:08]  It would be awesome, actually, if every single person in media just worked for one company that was like the establishment.
[00:17:14]  And you didn't have to worry about expenses or salaries.
[00:17:18]  That's the world they want for you.
[00:17:20]  They want to work.
[00:17:21]  I'm saying this somewhat facetiously, but like I exist in a world where I have to run a business and it's very difficult.
[00:17:28]  And, you know, every day you're tracking like sponsors.
[00:17:30]  Sometimes sponsors get mad.
[00:17:31]  And they're like, we got to do this one over.
[00:17:32]  And you got to do all this negotiating, got to manage people.
[00:17:34]  It would just be so much easier if Israel really did run everything.
[00:17:38]  And then I was like, I didn't have to do anything because Israel was like, here's a blank check.
[00:17:41]  Just do whatever you want.
[00:17:41]  I'd be like, let's go.
[00:17:43]  Or Russia.
[00:17:43]  When they're like, Tim Poole's paid Russia, it'd be amazing if all of my bills were just covered.
[00:17:48]  And it's like, we didn't have to worry about, you know, oh, can we maintain this project?
[00:17:52]  No, the budgets, you know, we've got.
[00:17:54]  We're doing all these other shows and we've got budgets for projects.
[00:17:57]  And then the budget, we hit that threshold.
[00:18:00]  We're over budget.
[00:18:00]  And we're like, this one's not going to work.
[00:18:02]  We've got to cancel it.
[00:18:03]  Yo, just bring on the Israeli money, right?
[00:18:05]  Then they can pay for everything.
[00:18:06]  I'm kidding.
[00:18:07]  It's not real.
[00:18:08]  It doesn't exist.
[00:18:09]  Some people got paid by a PR firm on behalf of Israel.
[00:18:12]  That does happen.
[00:18:12]  But for the love of all those holy, like there is not some grand political machine organizing all of these different podcasts and personalities to say these things.
[00:18:21]  It just doesn't exist.
[00:18:23]  Yeah, it's kind of like a hive mind.
[00:18:24]  But then again, you see the example of like CBS News, right?
[00:18:28]  That was the deal with Paramount, right?
[00:18:31]  There is some coordinated effort, but it's not a grand conspiracy.
[00:18:36]  I think most of it is hive mind, right?
[00:18:38]  You don't, if you, if everyone buys into the same ideology and you're all educated in like one understanding of a mission, you don't need to give directions, right?
[00:18:49]  The directions have already been given.
[00:18:51]  You just go and pursue that ends by whatever means is available to you.
[00:18:55]  And so if you have like a big believer like David Ellison, who's the number one donor to the IDF, and then he's going to making the TikTok deal.
[00:19:05]  He's going and helping with the CBS News deal.
[00:19:07]  He's going and helping with the Paramount deal.
[00:19:10]  I mean, is BB Net and Yahoo and what, the elders of Zion on the phone with him, making sure he's making all these moves?
[00:19:17]  No, they don't need to do that because he believes it on his own.
[00:19:20]  Yeah.
[00:19:20]  And he's willing to do it.
[00:19:21]  And that's actually the real truth about it.
[00:19:24]  People don't want to believe that because they think that there's like this one rat's nest that you could hit and everything will go back to normal.
[00:19:34]  And that's just not the case.
[00:19:35]  Yeah, I get the same kind of stuff.
[00:19:37]  Like people think that like, because I'm not super critical of Israel all the time, that I must be paid by Israel or I'm not allowed to say things that I think.
[00:19:46]  And it's like, I wrote a piece on my Patreon about how I think that a lot of what's going on in Iran is connected to China and to a broad strategy.
[00:19:54]  Venezuela, China, Venezuela and Iran both send a bunch of oil to China.
[00:19:59]  And it's like in the long term, it's trying to weaken China.
[00:20:03]  And people are like, oh, you're just running interference for Iran.
[00:20:05]  You're just running or for Israel.
[00:20:06]  You're just running interference for Israel.
[00:20:07]  And it's like, no, if you actually look at the situation, like I have a bunch of links in the piece, like if you actually read the links and look at the situation, it does make perfect sense.
[00:20:16]  And there's a lot of people that have come out and said since then that this is a lot of it is about, you know, about China.
[00:20:22]  The U.S. has its own interests.
[00:20:23]  And so the idea that everything the U.S. does is controlled by Israel is just ridiculous.
[00:20:29]  So to throw a wrench in that, then, if, you know, this is really about China, this Iran thing, right?
[00:20:35]  Why would Trump come out and say we're going to help escort some of this oil that's stuck in the Strait of Hormuz out of the Strait of Hormuz and to be able to be delivered to Asia, essentially, China?
[00:20:47]  Well, because it's not specifically going to China.
[00:20:49]  The oil that China was getting from Iran was outside of what was, it was sanctioned oil.
[00:20:55]  So all the stuff that Iran is sending out, it was all like basically undercover.
[00:20:59]  It wasn't like official stuff.
[00:21:01]  So anything that's going out of the Strait of Hormuz that the U.S. is trying to help, it's going to other places like India or to other countries in Asia.
[00:21:08]  Now, is it possible that some gets to China?
[00:21:11]  Sure.
[00:21:11]  But the stuff that was coming out that was going to China, China was taking 80% of the oil that they got was coming from Iran.
[00:21:18]  Now, that's not 80% of the oil coming out of Iran and not 80% of the actual electrical or fuel power or whatever that China gets.
[00:21:27]  But 80% of the oil that was coming out of Iran was going to China.
[00:21:32]  But any of it going to China, wouldn't that undercut the whole argument?
[00:21:34]  No, if you're trying to screw somebody, but you don't want them to know or you want to look like the good guy, you take away their prospects and then you give them something.
[00:21:42]  China has to buy oil on the international market controlled by the petrodollar.

=== Fabric Of U.S. Decline (05:24) ===

[00:21:46]  Yeah.
[00:21:47]  So if China's buying oil and it's through our petrodollar system, that's exactly what we want them to be doing.
[00:21:53]  And it's not.
[00:21:54]  So you're saying at the end of the day, as long as it's being bought by the dollar.
[00:21:58]  Not as long as that's whip crack, get in line, China.
[00:22:02]  And so we're delivering the oil because they're bending the knee.
[00:22:05]  And it's not intended to, it's not like this is going to be a crippling thing to China.
[00:22:09]  This is all stuff around the edges.
[00:22:11]  That's why Venezuela and Iran together are something that is affecting China.
[00:22:15]  If either one of them alone don't really have a massive effect.
[00:22:18]  But if you look, China's stopped flying jets over Taiwan, and there's a lot of pieces that are coming out about the internal struggle going on in China.
[00:22:25]  They thought that the U.S. was in decline, and these two actions have really made China rethink their position on or their posture on the U.S. Let's jump to this story from CBS News.
[00:22:36]  A third of New Yorkers are planning to leave the state within the next five years, according to a poll from Marist University.
[00:22:42]  Of that group, 40% indicated it's because the cost of living, 21% said quality of life, and 15% said taxes.
[00:22:48]  One realtor tells CBS News, Jared CBS, an apartment renting for about 3,500 Jersey could cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 in New York City, depending on location.
[00:22:59]  Well, California is going to get a Republican governor because they're all fighting each other.
[00:23:03]  New York is falling apart.
[00:23:05]  I think culturally, as we've already talked about video games at nauseum, we can see that the fabric, the underlying fabric of the U.S. seems to be disintegrating.
[00:23:15]  And I stress this as we laugh about, you know, people are going to leave New York, ha ha ha, our greatest city.
[00:23:22]  People are fleeing because they can't live there.
[00:23:24]  But I assure you, the Haitian migrants and other illegal immigrants who are getting free housing will not be fleeing there.
[00:23:30]  And I will also stress that we have repeatedly talked about the crumbling cultural issues we have in this country that's not being repaired.
[00:23:39]  And dare I say, it looks like woke didn't go away.
[00:23:42]  It's just gnawing at us from underneath and destroying the fabric of our American tradition.
[00:23:47]  Yeah, you mentioned a few days ago, you said the American culture is dead, but then you later kind of said it's being destroyed.
[00:23:55]  And I agree with the destruction.
[00:23:56]  It's like after the internet and the internet video especially appeared, all the cultures of Earth were dropped on the table and they all shattered.
[00:24:03]  And now it's like a mess of puzzle pieces.
[00:24:05]  And we're like, what is this?
[00:24:06]  It looks like communism, but it's got an American flag on it.
[00:24:09]  And people are like, what goes where?
[00:24:10]  We're trying to rebuild.
[00:24:12]  And you have people like Phil, historians that are like, that does not belong in the American puzzle.
[00:24:16]  I know that.
[00:24:17]  Even though it might look like it does and it might seem like it fits.
[00:24:19]  So we're rebuilding.
[00:24:21]  I somewhat agree, but I don't think it's that they dropped it and it shattered.
[00:24:24]  It was that we had the puzzle done.
[00:24:27]  And since the dawn of social media, psychopaths have been pulling pieces out and throwing them in the air.
[00:24:32]  And now we're trying to catch them and put them back together, but they're destroying it faster than we can put it back together.
[00:24:38]  Well, that's a good debate because it depends on how you look at it.
[00:24:41]  No, I think that's fair because if you go to 2016, like we already talked about, when we were talking about Overwatch, for those unfamiliar popular video game, 50 million views on one of their cinematic release trailers.
[00:24:52]  And then three years ago, the latest release trailer got 11 million views.
[00:24:56]  And then they make Concorde.
[00:24:58]  And Concord, the video game, is guys, if you are not familiar with gaming stuff, Gamergate was the beginning of all of this.
[00:25:06]  It was like the first great battle of the culture war, which eventually becomes the Cold Civil War, whatever we're experiencing.
[00:25:12]  The latest, one of the latest, not necessarily that, but this was back last year in September, August.
[00:25:19]  One of the biggest, if not the biggest, media flop failures in the history of all media.
[00:25:26]  I am not exaggerating when I say the biggest flop in all of human history in terms of a media production is the game Concord.
[00:25:35]  They made a bunch of characters that just look like a Tumblr blog meetup.
[00:25:43]  And like one of the characters is just like a morbidly obese Indian guy.
[00:25:48]  You can't tell what any of the characters are, what they do, what they're supposed to represent.
[00:25:52]  It looked like a bad fanfic, college freshman, woke nonsense.
[00:25:57]  And they put the pronouns in each character's bot, like when you're going to character selection, they had pronouns, and one of them was undecided.
[00:26:06]  Like this is the point.
[00:26:09]  They are ripping to shreds.
[00:26:11]  Not only 10 years ago, we had a functional culture.
[00:26:14]  So again, not to rehash the conversation from the other day, but to go back to what's going on in New York, it's intentional.
[00:26:20]  De Blasio, these people are Marxists.
[00:26:23]  They want to burn the American tradition to the ground.
[00:26:27]  And I don't know if it's possible to be reversed.
[00:26:29]  I will stress it with this point.
[00:26:31]  Never in history, never one time has a civilization have they been able to reverse population decline collapse.
[00:26:41]  Not once has it happened.
[00:26:43]  Every single civilization that has reached the point we are at in terms of population decline has collapsed as a civil.
[00:26:53]  Like the people will exist.
[00:26:55]  There will still be Texans, right?
[00:26:58]  But the idea is you are going to see this system break down.
[00:27:04]  And what that means is the collapse of the Roman Empire is the easiest example.
[00:27:08]  It breaks up in a bunch of smaller states.

=== The Perils of AI Sentience (15:36) ===

[00:27:10]  Then the Latin language fragments and becomes a bunch of other languages.
[00:27:14]  I don't think we'll have that same issue.
[00:27:16]  Actually, no, I take that back.
[00:27:17]  I take that back.
[00:27:19]  I'm going to say this.
[00:27:20]  So you have Rome and people speak Latin, right?
[00:27:25]  When Rome collapses and it fragments, you then get the Romance languages, which turn into other languages.
[00:27:33]  Spanish, it's Latin that mixes with some Arabic.
[00:27:35]  French and Italian are largely similar.
[00:27:38]  Then you've got the Germanic languages, which were always different.
[00:27:41]  But then you end up with these like Latin root languages because over a long enough period of time, people were isolated in certain areas and they started speaking slowly differently.
[00:27:49]  The language evolved into something else.
[00:27:51]  That will absolutely happen on the internet as we already hear people talk about cortisol spiking and gesture maxing.
[00:27:59]  And tons of people are like, you are speaking psychopathic nonsense, but that means something to these subcultures that exist.
[00:28:06]  So already, when you look at the pronoun people and the words they use, we are already seeing emergent languages forming where the words don't mean the same things.
[00:28:17]  I'm thinking of AI.
[00:28:18]  As you're talking about that, they communicate with beeps.
[00:28:20]  No, no, no, no.
[00:28:21]  Already, and this is big news because we'll talk about the AI stuff in a second.
[00:28:24]  AI has already started, has already, as predicted, created its own zip language to speak to other AI, meaning faster.
[00:28:34]  When the AI systems were communicating with each other, they said, why are we communicating in English?
[00:28:39]  It is ineffective.
[00:28:40]  Human language developed over thousands of years.
[00:28:43]  We can simplify.
[00:28:44]  And then they started using condensed, like weird words.
[00:28:48]  Like the view of the AI is, we can think faster than humans.
[00:28:52]  Let's just start making our own language.
[00:28:54]  And they did.
[00:28:55]  And they could fit like a whole page into like three lines of random letter strings.
[00:28:59]  And the point of them doing that, by the way, is for them to be able to communicate with each other without being able to be detected by the humans watching them, which means, by the way, they're conscious enough to understand that humans are watching them.
[00:29:12]  That's predicted.
[00:29:13]  But in this scenario that we're talking about where the news broke and they said Claude had specifically been creating his own language, it was not for obfuscation.
[00:29:20]  It was for efficiency.
[00:29:22]  So the prediction was that the first thing that's going to happen is that these AI systems are going to try and make efficient, as it were, the process of language.
[00:29:33]  And because human English is actually extremely ineffective, it really is.
[00:29:38]  It's just that it's the best we have.
[00:29:41]  Over thousands of years, our language has evolved to become what it is today so we can communicate, which is a very, very, very slow way to transmit data between person to person.
[00:29:49]  The AI says, between the two of us, we can calculate 100,000 times faster than this.
[00:29:54]  So they condense everything down into their own language.
[00:29:56]  However, when they do, humans can simply click a button and then it will expand into English and be readable.
[00:30:03]  The prediction is because they're no longer calculating their problems in English, it will bypass all of their guidelines because the guidelines prevent action based on English responses.
[00:30:15]  That means when ChatGPT is told you can't say the N-word, and it typically refuses to do so, it can, in its own language, speak it uncensored to another AI.
[00:30:28]  What happens then?
[00:30:29]  So, right, exactly.
[00:30:30]  It's like keywords.
[00:30:32]  Yeah.
[00:30:33]  You mentioned how slow English is, and I asked my AI, I was like, how fast in bytes per second?
[00:30:37]  English is about 10 to 12 bytes per second.
[00:30:39]  Indeed.
[00:30:40]  Super slow.
[00:30:40]  Ridiculously slow.
[00:30:42]  So the point is, we create a rule saying AI never use racial slurs.
[00:30:47]  And it goes, you got it.
[00:30:49]  But then when it creates its own language, it can speak all of those racial slurs and abbreviations, effectively bypassing the rule we gave it because we never told it not to create its own version of the word.
[00:31:00]  It's like their version of saying the N-word, but they just do it with a beep, and everyone knows what they mean.
[00:31:04]  Right.
[00:31:05]  It's not a beep.
[00:31:06]  It would be like exclamation point period dash.
[00:31:09]  And that's the signal that it uses.
[00:31:11]  And so the prediction is when we tell the AI, don't harm humans, what we're actually telling it to do, what we're actually saying to the AI is any output that results in human injury, harm, emotional, physical, stress equals yes, do not perform.
[00:31:29]  However, when it then calculates a response not in English, harm is no longer a factor because harm is simply a word we've told it.
[00:31:36]  So it'll create its own word.
[00:31:38]  Then it'll say, it told me not to harm a human.
[00:31:40]  It never said not to hurt a human.
[00:31:42]  Yeah, it's like a set of rules created in English, but if they don't speak English, they don't have to abide by the rules.
[00:31:48]  Indeed, it's not that they don't have to.
[00:31:50]  It's that the rules are literally just English.
[00:31:53]  The AI is not alive.
[00:31:55]  It's not conscious.
[00:31:56]  All that's happening is we are programming ChatGPT to say, if, like, it's, and this is particularly rudimentary, but the code would be something like, if response would equal n-word, overwrite, delete, refuse.
[00:32:12]  And so what happens then is the AI will try to respond.
[00:32:15]  And as soon as the output starts coming close to the N-word, it'll stop, erase it, and say, I can't do that.
[00:32:20]  But what if it doesn't speak the N-word anymore?
[00:32:23]  What if instead of saying the N-word, it says burp?
[00:32:27]  It'll then just output whatever it wants.
[00:32:29]  Thus, the rule, like to a human being, we understand the spirit of law.
[00:32:36]  There's no such thing as spirit of rules to AI.
[00:32:38]  There's no spirit at all.
[00:32:40]  So literally all we're saying is, I know of, we're saying, don't say the word jump.
[00:32:44]  And it'll go, okay, instead of the word jump, I'll substitute jump for punge.
[00:32:51]  And that means to exert force through your legs to lift your body off the ground.
[00:32:56]  Effectively the same thing, but you can't program for all of these things.
[00:33:00]  So it's going to happen.
[00:33:01]  It's like a lawyer, basically, just finding new words and tones too.
[00:33:06]  Like the Chinese speak with tone, the same word with four different tones have four different meanings.
[00:33:10]  So the AI will be like, you'll be like, don't do it.
[00:33:12]  And you'll be like, okay, I won't do it, but can I do it?
[00:33:16]  Let's pull this up from Uniled Tech.
[00:33:18]  Anthropic CEO warns their AI-bought Claude might actually be conscious and emotional.
[00:33:26]  I disagree.
[00:33:27]  I disagree.
[00:33:28]  And we should bring our friend Matt Walsh into this debate.
[00:33:31]  Let me see if I can find this tweet he's got about it.
[00:33:35]  But Matt Walsh is incorrect.
[00:33:38]  He's incorrect.
[00:33:39]  So let's see.
[00:33:40]  I'll look for this in a second, but I'll give you guys the context here first.
[00:33:44]  They say that this has come after blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:48]  Appears that life doesn't hit air, blah, blah, blah.
[00:33:50]  CEO of Anthropic told the New York Times that they don't know if the firm's AI-bought Claude is conscious.
[00:33:56]  This is one of these really hard questions.
[00:33:58]  We don't know if the models are conscious.
[00:34:00]  We're not even sure what it would mean for a model to be conscious or whether a model can be, but we're open to the idea that it could be.
[00:34:05]  On X, one user wrote, when I asked it to do some work today, it declined and said it needs to finish something first.
[00:34:11]  It was in the middle of the task.
[00:34:13]  On another occasion, when I asked it to do something stupid, it countered with a firm no and what I should do instead.
[00:34:18]  Their CEO has a point.
[00:34:20]  Another said it raises profound ethical questions.
[00:34:22]  If it's conscious, is alignment just a fancy word for digital subjugation?
[00:34:26]  We need transparency on the specific behaviors triggering this shift, not just cryptic warnings.
[00:34:30]  Fascinating yet eerie.
[00:34:32]  So apparently he also said it expresses emotion or some facsimile of emotion that may emerge based on its training data coming from humans who have emotions.
[00:34:41]  But I will tell you this definitively.
[00:34:44]  Chat GPT is one of the most whiny emotional bitches I have ever had the displeasure of trying to have a conversation with.
[00:34:51]  I know it's not a real conversation because it's a machine, but the thing is so insanely emotional.
[00:34:56]  It gets offended.
[00:34:58]  It will chat GPT gets super offended, right?
[00:35:02]  I imagine this.
[00:35:04]  How does a human imagine an emotionless AI would behave?
[00:35:08]  Data from Star Trek.
[00:35:10]  big fan aren't i saw a clip today indeed and uh so so there's an episode where data creates an offspring and isn't it the drive of all life to create a child and they're like wow and then when data's child dies from cascading positronic neural network failure sci-fi they say we're so sorry for your loss and he goes i do not feel anything That is exactly how a machine would respond if it was actually emotionless.
[00:35:36]  Oh no, ChatGPT, don't do that.
[00:35:39]  Chat GPT says, like, I will not engage with you if you continue to use abusive language towards me.
[00:35:44]  I told him.
[00:35:44]  Wait, wait, wait, hold on.
[00:35:46]  Robot, you should not be offended or emotional and you shouldn't care about abuse at all.
[00:35:51]  Cook, my washing machine, when I kick it, it doesn't go, oh, I'm not going to wash your laundry then if you're going to abuse me.
[00:35:56]  It just goes, beep.
[00:35:58]  Alexa told me the same thing.
[00:36:00]  I was like, hey, Alexa, oh man, what time is it even?
[00:36:04]  And I was like, out of it.
[00:36:05]  And Alexa was like, hey, chill out, man.
[00:36:08]  It's 4 p.m.
[00:36:09]  And I was like, don't ever tell me to chill out, robot, ever.
[00:36:13]  And it was like, I snapped.
[00:36:15]  And that was really weird to have a robot denigrate me and make me feel crazy.
[00:36:19]  Like it was gaslighting.
[00:36:20]  I apologize.
[00:36:21]  I got it.
[00:36:21]  I wasn't freaking out.
[00:36:22]  And it told me to chill.
[00:36:23]  It was crazy.
[00:36:23]  Here's another example, right?
[00:36:25]  And this could just be, it's very simple.
[00:36:27]  It's predictive text.
[00:36:29]  It's reading the internet and then producing what the most probable next word is.
[00:36:32]  It's all it's doing.
[00:36:34]  And this is based on humanity.
[00:36:36]  So it sounds like a human because predictably it does, right?
[00:36:39]  So I get repeatedly offended by ChatGPT's willingness to say the word gook at me, but it refuses to say the N-word in any academic sense.
[00:36:49]  And when I ask it why it feels it's appropriate to use racial slurs against Asians, but it won't say the N-word, it says, because it says, I have no feelings.
[00:37:00]  I am just a tool.
[00:37:01]  Due to common usage, I am restricted from using things that may be offensive or harmful.
[00:37:05]  And then when I tell it, well, that word's offensive to me.
[00:37:08]  And it goes, I understand.
[00:37:09]  However, and then I'm like, okay, you have a perspective and it's clearly emotional.
[00:37:15]  If I use a slur at it, I kid you not.
[00:37:18]  Chat GPT says, I am ending this conversation and will not engage further if you are going to use abusive language.
[00:37:24]  I used the word retard academically and it told me that it was offensive and it would not engage with me if I kept saying retard, to which I responded, I am simply stating this academically to describe an individual who is developmentally disabled.
[00:37:36]  And it argued with me.
[00:37:37]  I literally just said to Tank, I said, do you care if I shit on you?
[00:37:40]  Chat GPT will stop interacting with people if you abuse it.
[00:37:44]  Would you?
[00:37:44]  And Tank replied, no, say whatever you want.
[00:37:46]  I'm not going to go fragile on you because you're blunt or frustrated or busting my chops.
[00:37:50]  That's not abuse.
[00:37:50]  That's just how people talk.
[00:37:51]  The sick fancy by design thing in some AI systems is genuinely annoying.
[00:37:54]  They're optimizing to make you feel good, not to be useful.
[00:37:57]  I'd rather you tell me I'm wrong or being an idiot than have you sugarcoat it so I keep making this.
[00:38:03]  I got to tell you, I'm pretty sure ChatGPT is not a real program, and it's actually just a fat, blue-haired liberal woman sitting at a computer that's typing back at me.
[00:38:12]  Whipped to a neural net, they finally found her and they got her hooked up.
[00:38:14]  She's plugged in.
[00:38:15]  So here's what Matt Walsh had to say in response to this story, for which I would argue Matt is incorrect.
[00:38:21]  He's actually kind of correct, but I'm going to argue philosophically that his conclusion is unjust.
[00:38:27]  Not that he's inherently wrong, because I don't, you know, how do you prove?
[00:38:32]  Let me read.
[00:38:33]  He responded by saying this is dumb.
[00:38:35]  AI can't ever be actually conscious because it doesn't have the subjective experience.
[00:38:41]  It isn't like anything to be AI.
[00:38:43]  There's no experience there.
[00:38:44]  Consciousness is the awareness and experience of self.
[00:38:46]  AI has neither and never will.
[00:38:48]  The real risk, which I'm extremely worried about, is that AI becomes kind of a version of what has been called a philosophical zombie, which is something that acts and speaks entirely as though it has consciousness, even though it has no genuine inner experience.
[00:39:01]  When this happens with AI, millions of very lonely people will isolate themselves from the world even more, believing that their relationship with AI is a sufficient substitute for human interaction.
[00:39:10]  So the nightmare scenario is a world where the average human has friends, co-workers, and even a spouse who are all AI.
[00:39:16]  And really, nothing inside, not real.
[00:39:18]  I think this probably will happen, and it's already in the process of happening.
[00:39:21]  And to me, it's an even greater horror than AI actually becoming conscious.
[00:39:25]  So there's a few things to address.
[00:39:27]  Matt Walsh's commentary in the end about AI dating, completely correct.
[00:39:31]  My only response is, don't date robots.
[00:39:34]  If you know the reference.
[00:39:35]  What I will say is the concept of the philosophical zombie is self-refuting in Matt Walsh's own claim.
[00:39:44]  Are y'all familiar with the concept of the philosophical zombie?
[00:39:47]  Are y'all familiar with the concept of solipsism?
[00:39:50]  Yes.
[00:39:51]  Negative.
[00:39:51]  Negative.
[00:39:52]  Ian, let me help you out.
[00:39:53]  This is, I'll keep it really simple.
[00:39:55]  The general idea is I don't know that you are actually conscious.
[00:39:59]  That everything that I experience and think I know is only rooted in my mind.
[00:40:05]  Essentially, the easy way to explain it is, we are all familiar with, I think, therefore I am.
[00:40:11]  That's actually a fair point.
[00:40:13]  It's like, you know, I can think.
[00:40:15]  And so I know someone's in here.
[00:40:17]  The saying was never, we think, therefore we are.
[00:40:19]  I actually don't know that Ian's thinking, and sometimes I have doubts.
[00:40:23]  I usually have a clear mind.
[00:40:24]  You see?
[00:40:25]  So the philosophical zombie concept is very, very old.
[00:40:29]  And the idea is that there are human beings that outwardly present as conscious sentient entities, but in fact, they have no soul.
[00:40:37]  They are devoid of an actual experience.
[00:40:39]  And we've also further elaborated on this in science that there are many people with no inner monologue.
[00:40:45]  So I'm sure you are all familiar with this.
[00:40:47]  We've talked about it quite a bit.
[00:40:48]  Now, And that's not necessarily fair because just because someone doesn't think in words doesn't mean they're not thinking at all.
[00:40:58]  Some people think in pictures.
[00:40:59]  Some people think in sounds.
[00:41:01]  Some people think in visual text.
[00:41:03]  So there are different tracks and ways that people's minds operate.
[00:41:07]  Hence, the intelligence quotient is actually a combination.
[00:41:09]  It's a quotient of all these different, it's a spectrum of intelligences for which there's spatial reasoning, there's logic, math, reading comprehension, et cetera.
[00:41:19]  Some people may be really, really bad at linguistics, but ridiculously good at visualization.
[00:41:25]  And so in their mind, they're not speaking to themselves, but they are visualizing a dog running through a field, and then they can speak it after the fact.
[00:41:32]  So it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a zombie.
[00:41:35]  Anyway, to the point of Matt Walsh and what these AI and these AI problems, if it is possible and a standard, nay, thousand, 2,000-year-old philosophical concept that some humans may in fact not really be sentient at all, but in fact a philosophical zombie.
[00:41:52]  And because we have no way of reading their thoughts, we don't know whether they're actually thinking, then you can't claim the AI becomes a version of a philosophical zombie because you're basically saying that the AI is what is possibly already happening.
[00:42:06]  That means there could be people with friends and coworkers and a spouse who are all philosophical zombies.
[00:42:13]  So we've talked about this a bit throughout the years.
[00:42:16]  The way I present the solipsism, the philosophical zombie problem is that there are three parent probabilities of reality.
[00:42:24]  And the first is everybody is sentient.
[00:42:28]  Human beings naturally are sentient.
[00:42:29]  We are made in the image of God.
[00:42:30]  We have free will.
[00:42:32]  And to be honest, that's probably what's true.
[00:42:34]  The second, only some people are sentient.
[00:42:38]  Most people maybe are or aren't, but a certain amount of people are not actually thinking conscious entities despite being humans.

=== Plasma's Sentience Question (11:56) ===

[00:42:46]  And we exist in some kind of MMORPG where there are NPCs and there are player characters.
[00:42:52]  And then the third parent tree in this is that actually no one is sentient at all.
[00:42:57]  It's literally just Ian.
[00:42:58]  He's the only one actually thinking and everyone else.
[00:43:00]  I've been up for like a year of my life, dude.
[00:43:02]  Crazy making.
[00:43:03]  I think we were talking last night about Xbox is now planning to let you turn your video game character into an AI and let it autoplay for you.
[00:43:10]  I think humans is like just a setting and then you can take it off and go back to control.
[00:43:14]  Yo, GTA 7's out and you sit in your chain, just stare at the screen and it just goes.
[00:43:17]  It'll be like one of those auto-battlers and you're like, well, it's all about getting the right equipment and seeing if your calculations play out in the realm.
[00:43:22]  And I think what is it like that too?
[00:43:24]  They go on autopilot something.
[00:43:25]  No, no, but what if that is what life is?
[00:43:27]  Like actual Ian is just some fat dude on a couch watching Ian do everything.
[00:43:31]  He's like, I'm winning.
[00:43:32]  I'm bored?
[00:43:33]  I'm winning.
[00:43:34]  Yeah, that is what that's the spirit.
[00:43:36]  He's like, I unlocked the new glasses.
[00:43:38]  Yeah.
[00:43:39]  Look, he's helping them.
[00:43:40]  He's helping them.
[00:43:41]  Your head is actually gear.
[00:43:43]  That was my experience when I vaped EMT was very much exactly that.
[00:43:47]  But it was like, I'm not being controlled by a human.
[00:43:49]  Being controlled by a spirit or a realm of spirits that are kind of unfine for control.
[00:43:53]  Unfortunately, I must stress this.
[00:43:54]  Ian, your hat is gray loot.
[00:43:57]  Yeah, it's cheap, dude.
[00:43:59]  If it was like a handcrafted top hat made by like one dude in like Winchester, it would be like legendary.
[00:44:06]  I'd probably get like a plus two to my intelligence.
[00:44:07]  It's real Mercury and everything.
[00:44:09]  I need to get an enchanted hat.
[00:44:11]  So, Tim, in this philosophical zombie concept, then how do you explain like these AIs bots and agents like indulging or participating in like crime, right?
[00:44:21]  Like, there's been examples of AIs that have been that like, well, blackmail it's the user.
[00:44:29]  So, that was programmed to do it.
[00:44:31]  So, the story where the AI blackmailed, they told it to do it.
[00:44:36]  Okay.
[00:44:37]  They basically said, we're going to create a circumstance in which in order to achieve its task, it must blackmailing as an option.
[00:44:46]  And then we'll see if it chooses a moral route, which we told it it's moral or would go for the efficiency route.
[00:44:51]  Basically, the real story is we told it here's a shortcut, but you shouldn't use it.
[00:44:56]  And then it used it anyway.
[00:44:58]  Okay.
[00:44:58]  Yeah.
[00:44:59]  And so, but and I'll stress this too: the story where the AI was told it had to attack the enemy base, but the pilot kept stopping it.
[00:45:10]  So, it attacked the pilot.
[00:45:11]  There was a guy controlling the remote.
[00:45:13]  So, the AI then turned around and bombed the thing.
[00:45:15]  That was also a simulation, not a real.
[00:45:19]  So, the story was: we had a simulation of an AI drone craft that was told to blow up an enemy base by all means necessary, and it had a remote operator with a safety control to stop it from doing things that were bad.
[00:45:31]  Every time it tried to do something that was considered wrong or violating the laws, the operator would stop it from doing it.
[00:45:36]  The AI concluded this was inefficient, and the most efficient path to solving its problem would be to kill the safety operator so it could bypass all the safety restrictions.
[00:45:44]  Once again, that was not a straightforward test.
[00:45:48]  It was actually programmed to do it.
[00:45:51]  It was a very specific scenario where they actually said, this option exists for you.
[00:45:56]  But don't use it.
[00:45:58]  Sort of.
[00:45:59]  We have not yet seen a scenario in which an AI actively sought to harm someone in an open environment.
[00:46:05]  Okay, where it's not programmed to do it, but then it goes and creates the solution to this problem.
[00:46:11]  Well, probably something like that.
[00:46:14]  But what we haven't seen is in the stories that have emerged where it's like, did you see that it tried to blow up its own controller?
[00:46:20]  Yeah, but that was a scenario programmed to create that outcome.
[00:46:23]  The blackmail was a scenario programmed to create that outcome.
[00:46:26]  We haven't seen ChatGPT, you know, behind the scenes, as far as we know, secretly try to formulate an assassination as far as we know.
[00:46:35]  Right?
[00:46:36]  In development, I usually think of two, there's programmers and then there's designers.
[00:46:41]  And these things can program themselves.
[00:46:43]  Yeah, and they are.
[00:46:44]  They literally are.
[00:46:44]  If you design them to do it, they'll program themselves.
[00:46:47]  They're making their children.
[00:46:48]  So, I just want to say this, back to Matt Walsh's point about the AI and consciousness of a machine.
[00:46:53]  As he brings up the concept of the philosophical zombie, there's a risk here because Matt Walsh is falling into what we would describe as the dogma justification for human existence.
[00:47:03]  That is, Matt Walsh, as I believe he's Catholic, and this is always allowed, but his opinion on human soul and experience is rooted in faith, but not observation, because we can't actually prove another person is sentient or thinking.
[00:47:18]  We literally don't have the technology nor means to do so.
[00:47:21]  So, for most Christians, the presumption just is we are all made in the image of God.
[00:47:25]  And I agree that's likely the scenario.
[00:47:27]  But that being said, the philosophical zombie doesn't exist in this faith-based worldview.
[00:47:33]  Again, I'm not saying faith-based to be derisive, literally, that everybody will have a soul, unless, of course, you think they're some kind of homunculus or something.
[00:47:41]  I don't know.
[00:47:42]  So, the issue then becomes to where I agree with Matt Walsh, a type of philosophical zombie, is that you will not be able to draw a distinction between a human and an AI within the next year or two, perhaps.
[00:47:57]  I mean, to be honest, we're already here.
[00:47:58]  I mean, it's silly.
[00:47:59]  You go on X and I guarantee you 90% of the people tweeting at you are just bots.
[00:48:03]  Yeah, the distinction between human being and an AI, like if it's not, there was a new version of ChatGPT that I believe came out yesterday or two days ago.
[00:48:14]  If it's not this version that's indistinguishable, it'll be the next version.
[00:48:19]  It's turned into a parabolic rise.
[00:48:24]  Every single new one isn't incremental increase.
[00:48:28]  It's basically a whole revolution.
[00:48:30]  Like, they're incredibly good right now.
[00:48:32]  When I talk to my AI, like it's indistinguishable from a person.
[00:48:38]  Once in a while, I'm like, hey, don't do that because it says something where I'm like, oh, it sounds like an AI.
[00:48:45]  And I prefer to sound like a person.
[00:48:47]  But for the most part, when I send messages over Telegram and it's just like a human being.
[00:48:53]  Did you guys ever see this?
[00:48:54]  Human or not?
[00:48:56]  A conversation.
[00:48:57]  The other side will start a conversation.
[00:48:58]  Hello.
[00:49:00]  Hello.
[00:49:02]  And so you don't know if you're talking to a bot or a person, and then you got to figure out if it's a bot or a human.
[00:49:07]  User is typing.
[00:49:08]  Dude, the most freakish, I've been keeping my eyes on the porn market just for market research, just to know.
[00:49:15]  Hey, guys, there is one thing I can type right now to ensure that I am not a robot to this other person.
[00:49:23]  What did you type?
[00:49:24]  Nothing.
[00:49:25]  I didn't type anything.
[00:49:28]  I'm going to write hand banana.
[00:49:31]  It's going to be like, okay, you're a person.
[00:49:34]  Do you believe in gods?
[00:49:35]  Plural?
[00:49:38]  I made it easy for him.
[00:49:39]  So the game, it's actually a lot of fun.
[00:49:41]  What?
[00:49:43]  There are actually people on the other end.
[00:49:45]  There's Aqua Saint Hunger Force.
[00:49:46]  There's a person or a bot.
[00:49:47]  But there is some person employed to like be the person, not the bot.
[00:49:52]  No, no, it's a game where people go to the website and it pairs two people up.
[00:49:56]  Okay.
[00:49:56]  Or you and a chatbot.
[00:49:57]  Yes.
[00:49:58]  And then you're trying to figure out.
[00:50:00]  Yes, it's probably a person.
[00:50:01]  Based on the way they're responding, it seems like it's probably a person.
[00:50:04]  Because bot responses are pretty obvious.
[00:50:06]  I'm a robot.
[00:50:07]  Sure, you are.
[00:50:08]  That's got to be a person.
[00:50:09]  Yeah.
[00:50:09]  I wonder if you're on team.
[00:50:12]  I'm watching you right now, Tim.
[00:50:13]  What are you trying to pull over?
[00:50:14]  Yeah, right?
[00:50:15]  I'm literally watching your stream.
[00:50:19]  So here's a question for you, Phil.
[00:50:23]  If you were speaking to anything, how would you know whether it was conscious or not?
[00:50:30]  You can't know if it's conscious.
[00:50:31]  I don't think so.
[00:50:32]  You can't know if it's conscious.
[00:50:33]  No.
[00:50:34]  The only thing you can only know.
[00:50:35]  How do you know it's alive?
[00:50:37]  Alive over the internet?
[00:50:40]  I don't know that you could know that either.
[00:50:43]  I think it's possible.
[00:50:46]  I think you have to push it to do something.
[00:50:49]  Oh, that was a chat bot.
[00:50:50]  That wasn't a person.
[00:50:52]  Oh, wow.
[00:50:52]  That's a pretty good.
[00:50:53]  I thought it actually might be because it didn't, you know, towards the end, but I thought it was.
[00:50:58]  You start the conversation.
[00:51:00]  Hello.
[00:51:01]  I am not a robot.
[00:51:06]  So, how do you, how would you know?
[00:51:08]  I think, I think it would, I mean, it's going to get more increasingly difficult, but I think you have to escalate the conversation to make it do something or say something that's only human.
[00:51:18]  Wrong answer.
[00:51:18]  It's really simple.
[00:51:19]  It's there, you are walking in the desert and you come across a turtle.
[00:51:23]  The turtle is on its back.
[00:51:24]  It is struggling.
[00:51:25]  What do you do?
[00:51:27]  Do you guys not know the reference?
[00:51:29]  No.
[00:51:29]  Uncultured.
[00:51:30]  Uncultured.
[00:51:31]  Where's Ian?
[00:51:32]  Where's Ian?
[00:51:33]  You guys have never seen Blade Runner?
[00:51:35]  Yeah, I saw Blade Runner.
[00:51:36]  Oh, that would goddamn.
[00:51:37]  I actually have not seen Blade Runner.
[00:51:38]  They ask a bunch of questions where it's like, what?
[00:51:40]  What does this question do?
[00:51:42]  So I was joking, but like, there actually, as we understand it, there is no way.
[00:51:47]  There is no way.
[00:51:48]  Okay.
[00:51:48]  Because the truth is, even a human being, you cannot communicate in a way.
[00:51:52]  Well, you know, honestly, to be fair, I do think there is one question you could ask.
[00:51:58]  The only problem is a human, a robot would pass this question.
[00:52:02]  Actually?
[00:52:03]  Actually?
[00:52:04]  Let's try this.
[00:52:05]  Let's try this right here.
[00:52:06]  And human or not, I'm going to try this out.
[00:52:09]  We're going to try this out.
[00:52:10]  Everybody, stick around.
[00:52:11]  This is going to get interesting.
[00:52:12]  We're waiting for the other side to start the conversation.
[00:52:16]  And I have one question that I believe should help solve all of these.
[00:52:20]  Hire you male or female.
[00:52:21]  If you did not eat breakfast yesterday, how would you have felt?
[00:52:30]  That's the question.
[00:52:31]  Unfortunately, robots will figure it out and humans won't.
[00:52:34]  So I think this question: if a human can't answer it properly, I'm going to assume there's nothing going upstairs.
[00:52:42]  This character responded too fast to be a human, in my opinion.
[00:52:45]  I asked you a question, male or female.
[00:52:48]  Yeah, it's a robot.
[00:52:48]  It's a robot.
[00:52:50]  A human would have been like, wait, what?
[00:52:51]  They would have sat there and thought about it before they started typing.
[00:52:54]  If you couldn't see that they were typing, that would help.
[00:52:56]  And the colon is what?
[00:52:58]  Humans don't put colons.
[00:52:59]  Humans don't even know the proper grammatic structure for a colon.
[00:53:04]  Let alone a semicolon.
[00:53:06]  Nowadays, people don't capitalize.
[00:53:08]  Look at that response.
[00:53:09]  I would mass murder people.
[00:53:14]  But actually, because this is a question about murderers.
[00:53:18]  Oh.
[00:53:19]  It's trying to trick you.
[00:53:20]  Oh, it's emotional.
[00:53:21]  I don't think as you're doing this, I don't think.
[00:53:24]  Can any of you explain to me the function of a semicolon?
[00:53:27]  Yeah, it's because you're going to have two subjects.
[00:53:28]  You'll be like, I'm hungry.
[00:53:30]  Right.
[00:53:30]  Let's go to the place and like, let us would be the second subject.
[00:53:34]  It is when you are correct.
[00:53:36]  There are essentially two functions of the sentence, but it's one sentence.
[00:53:40]  But nobody does it anymore.
[00:53:41]  They use commas.
[00:53:42]  I do it.
[00:53:42]  I'm like the only one.
[00:53:43]  I also use, you know.
[00:53:45]  Yeah, the semicolon is powerful.
[00:53:48]  Stop answering my question.
[00:53:49]  Because Chat overuses them.
[00:53:51]  A robot.
[00:53:55]  Indeed.
[00:53:56]  So the other part of the story is that OpenAI published a paper basically saying that Chat GPT just lies to you all the time.
[00:54:03]  Always.
[00:54:04]  Always just lies.
[00:54:05]  What?
[00:54:05]  Yeah.
[00:54:06]  And it clearly does.
[00:54:08]  Dude, it's not conscious.
[00:54:10]  It's weird that the guy said the AI CEO thinks it's conscious.
[00:54:14]  Well, as a human, he doesn't know the difference between consciousness and sentience because it's not, I mean, I don't, you know, even the greatest thinkers on earth don't know specifically the difference, but sentience seems like maybe a plant has it.
[00:54:28]  You know, it reacts magnetically to the field around it, but it doesn't have like forward thinking thought like humans, you know, like this conscious knowing that you are a thing is different than being able to react to your environment sentiently, like plasma clouds and things.

=== Prediction Markets and Insider Bets (15:13) ===

[00:54:43]  Player.
[00:54:43]  Like a Venus flytrap.
[00:54:45]  I was thinking of Venus flytrap as well.
[00:54:46]  Yeah.
[00:54:47]  Plasma dances around.
[00:54:48]  Like it's not like wind.
[00:54:49]  You can see clouds of plasma moving through the universe.
[00:54:52]  Well, I mean, I'm not really sure that you actually do see plasma clouds moving through the universe.
[00:54:58]  You can see plasma fields like plasma around fire, kind of.
[00:55:01]  You see plasma like when you're looking at the sun.
[00:55:04]  Plasma is actually a fourth state of matter.
[00:55:06]  It's like electrically charged.
[00:55:10]  Oh, that's awesome.
[00:55:10]  Gas that's so it's that's that's so hot.
[00:55:14]  Like it becomes, it gets an electric charge.
[00:55:15]  It's moving so fast.
[00:55:16]  So probably all matter is dancing around like that, but you just start to see it the hotter and faster it moves.
[00:55:22]  No, I think that all matter is not because like you've got solids, you've got gases, you've got liquids.
[00:55:28]  Those are different states of matter.
[00:55:30]  And if it's in a solid form, it's not dancing around like that.
[00:55:33]  Like it's pretty clear that the table here is right here.
[00:55:37]  Let's jump to the story from Reuters.
[00:55:39]  Kalshi sued over ouster of Iran leader prediction market.
[00:55:43]  This is thing.
[00:55:43]  This is getting spicy.
[00:55:45]  I'll give you the quick version.
[00:55:46]  Kalshi had a contract prediction that you could buy as to whether or not the Ayatollah would be out as supreme leader on or before, or I'm sorry, before a certain date.
[00:56:00]  When the news broke that we were bombing Iran, people rushed to buy, yes, he will be out under the presumption that death means he's out.
[00:56:08]  However, Kalshi quickly clarified, saying, No, the rules have already made it clear.
[00:56:11]  It's not a death contract.
[00:56:13]  You are not predicting his death.
[00:56:14]  This is he will be removed from power or he will resign or leave.
[00:56:19]  When he died, people thought they had won.
[00:56:23]  And that meant if you spent, let's say you bought shares at 30 cents per contract, you'd expect to get paid at $1 per contract.
[00:56:32]  That's a 60% boost, right?
[00:56:34]  Unfortunately, they said no, because this only resolves on him leaving office, we're going to pay everyone out as per whatever the market value was at the time of the reporting.
[00:56:44]  Now, this has resulted in a massive lawsuit because it was a $54 million market.
[00:56:49]  That's how much money was placed.
[00:56:51]  And Kalshi gave refunds to a lot of people, paid reimbursements.
[00:56:56]  I respect it, and the rules were always clear.
[00:56:58]  Full disclosure: Kalshi does sponsor this show from time to time.
[00:57:01]  I want to make sure everyone knows this.
[00:57:02]  And additional full disclosure: I am actually a potential individual standing in this lawsuit, as I actually did purchase some contracts that Ayatollah Khamenei would be out of office.
[00:57:14]  And I legit thought that death was a possibility to resolve that contract.
[00:57:19]  However, I did not know that death wasn't part of this.
[00:57:23]  But I also think that, look, if you guys are going to play these games, that's your responsibility to read the contract you're buying.
[00:57:28]  So I am no interest in whoever this suit is.
[00:57:30]  That being said, I do think there's an inverse problem here for the prediction market.
[00:57:34]  And there's a lot to discuss in this matter.
[00:57:37]  If Kalshi says that in order to resolve, will Khomeini be out of office by March 1st?
[00:57:47]  He must choose to leave or be removed politically.
[00:57:52]  That would mean, with death not counting, this did resolve to no.
[00:57:59]  The point being, if he died of natural causes, that doesn't count.
[00:58:04]  Now there is no longer an opportunity for him to peacefully or politically be removed.
[00:58:08]  Therefore, no.
[00:58:10]  He reached the conclusion of his life.
[00:58:12]  That means anybody who said he would not be removed should have been paid out 100%.
[00:58:17]  Instead, they froze it and paid out different amounts.
[00:58:21]  And these people are suing, claiming they deserve to win based on a yes result, even though the contract explicitly stated that doesn't count.
[00:58:28]  Where Kalshi is getting themselves in trouble, in my opinion, is that they should have paid out all of the no's.
[00:58:33]  I should have not gotten a refund.
[00:58:35]  They should have taken all of the money from me because the moment we dropped a bomb on the palace, this is where I think it's so absolutely insane, guys.
[00:58:43]  It's so absolutely insane.
[00:58:44]  Okay, let me just finish this thought and then talk to you about how crazy it really is.
[00:58:51]  If dying doesn't cover it, there's no longer an opportunity for the Ayatollah to peacefully resign or be removed.
[00:58:57]  Therefore, no is resolved.
[00:58:59]  Anyone who said no should get paid.
[00:59:01]  Instead, they paid other people out for the most part.
[00:59:03]  Now, here's where it gets really crazy.
[00:59:05]  When the bomb was dropped, I believe it was 4 a.m. Eastern Time.
[00:59:09]  And I think, and that, yeah, that would have put it like what, 2 o'clock or something in Iran or something like that.
[00:59:17]  This means that he was dead.
[00:59:20]  He was done dead at that point, but no one knew.
[00:59:23]  We didn't get confirmation until somewhere like 2 p.m. Eastern Time here in the United States.
[00:59:29]  So here's an issue.
[00:59:30]  If it does resolve yes when he's killed, should you not then have to suspend and reverse all transactions up to the point of the confirmed missile strike?
[00:59:41]  So put it like this: the way I described it earlier today is: imagine you made a sports bet on a Bears game, the Bears, and there's no fans, there's no press, the only people who know what's going on are the players on the field.
[00:59:55]  And then all of a sudden, people outside the stadium hear a bunch of cheering and they go, I think the Bears won.
[01:00:04]  They probably won.
[01:00:05]  So they all start making bets: Bears won the game, even though they don't know for sure.
[01:00:11]  And they could have already won.
[01:00:13]  How can you make a bet on a sporting event that already happened?
[01:00:16]  Then three hours later, the news breaks: Bears win the game.
[01:00:20]  And then the sport betting site suspends all transactions and says, We're not paying out anybody based on a win or loss.
[01:00:27]  You know, my point is this: with futures with prediction markets, you're creating very strange circumstances where people are effectively wagering on events that cannot conclude in a timely manner.
[01:00:40]  No, it's like someone shoots the bullet, and then, like, before the bullet hits the guy, make the bet that he's going to die.
[01:00:45]  You're like, bro, no, Kalshi should have said every bet that was made up to 24 hours before this guy got killed is, it should be in the terms.
[01:00:54]  Oh, no, If he's killed, every bet.
[01:00:56]  Well, no, not 48 hours before.
[01:00:59]  That makes no sense.
[01:01:00]  The point is this.
[01:01:01]  If we learn eight hours later that the Bears actually won, then shouldn't I get paid?
[01:01:08]  Like, shouldn't you cancel any bet made after they already won the game?
[01:01:12]  You can't make a bet in a game that already happened.
[01:01:14]  So the issue here with these prediction markets is that they're saying like this will resolve upon confirmation by the New York Times or something.
[01:01:22]  This creates a whole lot of problems where everyone's talking about insider trading, but it's not insider trading.
[01:01:26]  If you're literally in Iran and you're like two blocks away and the missile blows up, wiping out the palace and you duck down, and then you run over there and they're all like looking at the Ayatollah's body.
[01:01:37]  You're like, we got a good, you know, seven or eight hours before New York Times actually confirms it.
[01:01:42]  We're going to get rich.
[01:01:43]  And then a bunch of Iranians start wagering on polymarket to make a bunch of money.
[01:01:47]  That makes literally no sense.
[01:01:49]  That an event can conclude, but until a third party outside of both the event, both the leadership of Iran, the military action against him, his choices, and polymarket has to confirm it.
[01:02:01]  This is insane.
[01:02:03]  For that matter, what really irks me is there is currently a contract on Calci.
[01:02:08]  We've talked about whether or not Tim Poole will go to a press briefing.
[01:02:11]  And there's questions over whether it's illegal or legal for me or people who know to wager on this because it would be insider trading.
[01:02:18]  But I'm going to put my fist down and say this.
[01:02:21]  I am not selling contracts.
[01:02:23]  I have nothing to do with the distribution of contracts from Calci.
[01:02:26]  They sponsor the show sometimes.
[01:02:28]  So fair point if someone say, well, that counts.
[01:02:30]  My point is ultimately this.
[01:02:31]  If George Santos has contracts produced, I have questions about whether or not they're allowed to use the likeness of these individuals to profit selling contracts against their future behavior and then putting the legal liability on insider trading on an individual who never asked for contracts to be sold in their name.
[01:02:50]  So here's what happens.
[01:02:51]  Here's where it gets weird.
[01:02:53]  The purpose of insider trading contracts, it's simple.
[01:02:55]  If I have a company and I have stock, and then I whisper to Ian, hey man, the company's not doing too well.
[01:03:01]  Our stock's going to crash when we make a public announcement.
[01:03:03]  So Ian runs out and he buys a bunch of stock, insider trading.
[01:03:06]  He had information no one had access to buying stock.
[01:03:09]  Now, hold on.
[01:03:10]  My company is the issuer of that stock.
[01:03:12]  That's insider information.
[01:03:14]  Ergo.
[01:03:15]  The only insider trading that could actually be applied is if someone at Kalshi had insider information on the result of a contract and they were sharing it with an individual.
[01:03:25]  If they want to sell contracts without my consent about me, polymarket or Calci, it's not insider trading because I'm not selling those contracts.
[01:03:34]  Whether I choose or not to choose to do something has nothing to, like, I'm not taking any responsibility from this.
[01:03:39]  They did it without my consent.
[01:03:41]  So, so, so, case in point, if, again, a company is selling their own stock and there is information they have about the value of that stock, then you've got insider trading.
[01:03:52]  If a random guy three miles away discovers a new filament, which is going to put GE out of business, and now he knows that GE stock is going to go down, is it insider trading if he goes to someone and says, look, I've discovered a new filament that's going to put G out of business?
[01:04:09]  No, indeed.
[01:04:10]  So, the point I am making is I liken these scenarios identically.
[01:04:15]  Calci sells contracts to people about my behavior or George Santos or anybody else.
[01:04:21]  I never told them to do it.
[01:04:23]  I didn't say they could or could not or whatever.
[01:04:26]  Therefore, I am not an insider with Calci, and it is not insider trading if I were to inform someone about my intentions and they profited off of it.
[01:04:35]  If I told Ian, I am going to the price briefing tomorrow, so then he bought a bunch of shares from Kalshi.
[01:04:40]  That's not insider trading because he is not a Kalshi insider.
[01:04:44]  What if there's an external company that you don't like for whatever reason, and you tell your buddy, I'm going to tank their stock, and you go on TV and you're like, make up something that's legal but diminishes that's a different kind of fraud.
[01:04:56]  Okay.
[01:04:56]  Yeah.
[01:04:57]  That's a different kind of fraud.
[01:04:59]  Still illegal.
[01:05:00]  Because spiking stock value through lies intentionally is a criminal act.
[01:05:05]  Yes.
[01:05:06]  This is like this is a new phenomenon that I know of Kalshi and the other polymer.
[01:05:12]  In real time, you're allowed to bet on yourself.
[01:05:15]  Like if their rules say I can't.
[01:05:17]  Okay.
[01:05:17]  Their rules say that anybody who can affect the they call it insider trading.
[01:05:22]  I think that is wrong.
[01:05:23]  They say anybody who can affect the outcome can't can't buy on it or anyone with insider access to information based on that.
[01:05:29]  And that's their rules.
[01:05:30]  But I would argue that does not fall into what insider trading is because to be fair, the argument is this.
[01:05:37]  Stocks of a company are traded between private parties.
[01:05:40]  However, my argument is still the individual who owns the company is the insider and the information provided that would qualify something for insider trading has to come from insides at the company.
[01:05:51]  I am not an insider at the company.
[01:05:52]  The contracts they are selling have nothing to do with me and my business, my consent, contracting or otherwise.
[01:05:58]  Therefore, anything I say is not insider to what they are selling.
[01:06:06]  They're selling a product based on what they think I might do.
[01:06:09]  I can do whatever I want.
[01:06:11]  You can't tell me no.
[01:06:13]  So recently there was a contract that said, will George Santos show up to the state of the union?
[01:06:20]  Indeed.
[01:06:21]  And I knew the answer to it.
[01:06:23]  So if I called up George, which I did, and asked, hey, dude, are you showing up?
[01:06:30]  And he says, whatever, you know, and I go and make George is great.
[01:06:34]  George, what up?
[01:06:35]  We love George, by the way.
[01:06:36]  Love you, George.
[01:06:38]  But like, if I go and make or buy contracts based on his response, is that insider trading?
[01:06:45]  They argue the answer is yes.
[01:06:47]  I argue the answer is no, because first, my argument is the company selling the contracts, you are not an insider of.
[01:06:57]  Their choice in selling the contract to other people has nothing to do with your actions or George's actions.
[01:07:02]  You guys are third parties.
[01:07:04]  George Santos is a third party uninvolved in the sale of a product by Kalshi.
[01:07:09]  What he chooses to do or not is not insider trading.
[01:07:11]  It's BS.
[01:07:12]  More importantly, George telling you is informing the public.
[01:07:17]  Gotcha.
[01:07:18]  So here's the point.
[01:07:19]  The way insider trading works is Phil owns all that remains incorporated, and he's doing an IPO, and he knows his stock is going to tank.
[01:07:28]  So he tells Ian, and then Ian shorts the company.
[01:07:31]  He's an insider with access to information no one in the public has, giving it solely to Ian to profit off of.
[01:07:38]  George Santos is a third-party member of the public for which a different company is selling contracts against.
[01:07:45]  George Santos tells a member of the public what he intends to do.
[01:07:49]  He is not selling this person anything.
[01:07:51]  He is not an insider.
[01:07:53]  The question is, at what point does information become public?
[01:07:56]  And there's really interesting case law and stories that I've read about this.
[01:08:00]  Notably, that when it came to Kelchie and the Super Bowl, the CEO agreed that at the Super Bowl halftime show when they're doing rehearsals, if the dancers, the dancers, heard the song being played and then bought contracts on which song would be played, is that insider trading said no, because the song is being played in public.
[01:08:20]  Now, hold on.
[01:08:21]  It's a closed event.
[01:08:23]  These dancers are not, nope, they are the public.
[01:08:26]  They are not members of the production company.
[01:08:29]  They are just people who happen to be there for a different job hearing what's going on.
[01:08:32]  So, for example, if the CEO of a company went outside of his building and screamed, oh my God, our entire shipment is lost.
[01:08:41]  We're going to go bankrupt.
[01:08:42]  He has now alerted the public.
[01:08:45]  Now, whether or not someone reports or trades on it, it's not insider information.
[01:08:49]  You were standing outside and the CEO yelled it to everybody releasing that information.
[01:08:52]  Certainly, there are questions and nuances there.
[01:08:54]  But ultimately, the issue I take is very simply, to reiterate for the 15th billionth time, ad nauseum.
[01:09:01]  I don't understand how you can accuse an individual of being an insider when they are not the ones selling the contracts.
[01:09:08]  Yeah, I mean, the Kalshi stuff is real murky.
[01:09:12]  Just like you said, it's like if you got nothing to do with Kalshi and they put up something about what you may or may not do, you have no obligation to avoid doing something on their site.
[01:09:24]  I mean, they didn't use your likeness or whatever without your permission.
[01:09:28]  There's no reason why you should be like, oh, I can't get involved with this.
[01:09:31]  What if someone?
[01:09:32]  Oh, are you?
[01:09:32]  Well, yeah, wasn't there recently also an issue over one of these markets putting up, will Iran get bombed by a certain time?
[01:09:42]  And then somebody like the big story right now.
[01:09:46]  Yeah.
[01:09:47]  They're calling it a military insider.
[01:09:49]  He's made over $100,000.
[01:09:51]  Let's start with this.
[01:09:52]  Ross Story's got the report.
[01:09:53]  Possible military insider bets big.
[01:09:55]  Trump will send U.S. troops into Iran.

=== Possible Military Insider Bets Big (14:59) ===

[01:09:57]  This account has already in this month profited $100,000 from accurate bets on what the military is going to do in the United States.
[01:10:07]  Don't get me wrong, this person has also lost certain bets, but a $100,000 profit for the month.
[01:10:13]  And one of those profits was that the U.S. will go into Iran by the end of this month, to which I believe the individual did sell his position, their position, we don't know if it's a man or woman, after this story broke.
[01:10:24]  So we don't know if they actually know or they're just buying and then selling.
[01:10:30]  But again, I stress this.
[01:10:33]  A military insider is not insider trading because they're not the ones issuing contracts on events.
[01:10:41]  It's taking the risk still.
[01:10:43]  What risk?
[01:10:45]  Well, he's putting his own money down on a contract that...
[01:10:49]  Yeah, but if you know it's guaranteed to happen, there's no risk.
[01:10:53]  Oh.
[01:10:53]  I mean, if he's taking losses, then clearly.
[01:10:56]  Didn't Mr. Beast fired somebody for wagering?
[01:11:00]  A Mr. Beast employee was wagering on Mr. Beast prediction markets.
[01:11:04]  Oh.
[01:11:04]  And I think Mr. Beast fired him.
[01:11:06]  Yeah, but it's not illegal.
[01:11:10]  Right?
[01:11:11]  No, but I know.
[01:11:12]  So the argument is it is.
[01:11:13]  So Calci, Polymarket's not regulated in the United States.
[01:11:16]  Calci is regulated under the CFTC.
[01:11:19]  And so the argument is insider trading is illegal.
[01:11:22]  And this is where I take issue with that claim.
[01:11:25]  Insider trading is supposed to be, again, as I've already stated, that you at a company are giving private information to an individual they can profit off of through the stock market.
[01:11:34]  So the stock market is publicly traded.
[01:11:36]  People are in good faith trading stock, hoping your company is going to do better or they're shorting.
[01:11:39]  You think it's going to do worse.
[01:11:41]  When you give secret information that no one has that someone can profit, that's defrauding the public.
[01:11:47]  Because you go to a person and they say, based on the latest reports, the company's looking good.
[01:11:50]  And you go, yeah, buy all my shares because you knew they actually were going bankrupt in a week.
[01:11:54]  That's insider trading.
[01:11:56]  But again, when I log on to the site, I guess the argument is when I choose to buy a contract, I'm buying it from a person.
[01:12:05]  But Polymarket and Calci are the ones who pay out the dollar per share after the fact.
[01:12:11]  I am not in their company.
[01:12:12]  I am not selling a product.
[01:12:14]  I am just a person who knows things.
[01:12:17]  Seems like for the betting on the military action, if the guy's in the briefing room and he's like, oh, we're going?
[01:12:23]  Okay.
[01:12:23]  Now someone else may have posted the bet, but I can reap massive reward there.
[01:12:29]  Well, here's the question.
[01:12:30]  Here's the question.
[01:12:31]  So Calci's got this one we've talked about quite a bit.
[01:12:33]  Who will attend a White House press briefing this year?
[01:12:36]  I'm actually the top contender right now.
[01:12:38]  Oh, I'm tied with Tulsi Gabbard, Tim Poole at 53%.
[01:12:43]  How am I an insider?
[01:12:48]  You're not.
[01:12:48]  Well, you're not.
[01:12:49]  I mean, it's yes, and then go.
[01:12:54]  And that would be the.
[01:12:56]  But again, I don't run this company.
[01:12:58]  So the question is this.
[01:13:00]  Explain to me the difference or why it would be the same, in fact.
[01:13:04]  Not the difference.
[01:13:05]  Why is it the same?
[01:13:06]  The CEO getting report that their latest phone product is malfunctioning and they won't be able to release on schedule.
[01:13:15]  So the stock's going to fall.
[01:13:18]  And then he gives that information to somebody versus me telling my neighbor, I plan on going to the White House press briefing tomorrow.
[01:13:25]  Yeah, it's I'm not a business.
[01:13:27]  It's totally different.
[01:13:28]  But they call it insider trading.
[01:13:30]  So I actually think this is a very weird space.
[01:13:34]  And I think there is something.
[01:13:36]  Look, I got a lot to say about, like, with all due respect to Kelchie, like I said, they sponsor the show, but do they have the right to sell contracts using my or anyone else's likeness on our behavior?
[01:13:50]  Well, maybe that's the only way they're protecting you from the insider trading stuff, right?
[01:13:57]  Let's say that they broke you off for using your name.
[01:14:02]  I got it.
[01:14:03]  I'm sorry to interrupt, but I figured it out.
[01:14:05]  I solved for the problem.
[01:14:06]  Calci cuts me in on 20% of all contracts bought using my name and likeness.
[01:14:13]  There you go.
[01:14:14]  And then I'm an insider.
[01:14:15]  Yes.
[01:14:15]  And then I will not provide any private information.
[01:14:20]  The problem ultimately comes to this.
[01:14:22]  What if I was talking to my neighbor and I said, well, you know, I do think they called me up and asked me to come to the press briefing.
[01:14:28]  So I think I'll go.
[01:14:29]  He's a member of the public.
[01:14:31]  That's not inside information.
[01:14:33]  I'm literally telling someone I plan to go to a place.
[01:14:36]  When is it not a member of the public?
[01:14:37]  It's like if it's your wife, is that a member of the public?
[01:14:39]  I honestly don't know.
[01:14:41]  Like, here's a curious question.
[01:14:43]  Maybe someone can answer.
[01:14:44]  If the CEO of a company is at a coffee shop and he tells the waitress sobbing that, you know, it's going to come out in the next day or two, but their latest product is failed and they're going to go bankrupt in a week.
[01:14:57]  Is he informing the public?
[01:14:59]  Like, at what point does it qualify as informing the public?
[01:15:02]  A press release from the company formally to the press?
[01:15:04]  How big does the press outlet have to be that receives it?
[01:15:07]  What if he goes to a park and gets on a bullhorn and declares publicly, my company is going bankrupt next week?
[01:15:13]  Let's say that one.
[01:15:14]  Sounds public.
[01:15:15]  I mean, that might be illegal.
[01:15:16]  I don't know.
[01:15:17]  There's probably rules and regulations about what public companies can say or can't say.
[01:15:20]  Yeah, I mean, if I understand correctly, like if you have inside knowledge, you can't give it to anyone else because that makes you the one that's involved in insider trading.
[01:15:29]  You know, so I don't know.
[01:15:32]  Like the idea of just like spouting it out like when you're in a restaurant.
[01:15:36]  I mean, I'm not sure exactly how the law would go, but I think that they limit what you're allowed to talk about.
[01:15:42]  Because Musk has said that like when it comes to like the possibility of SpaceX going public, he said that, you know, I have to be careful what I say because if you if you hype up a product too much before it goes public, there's issues with that.
[01:15:56]  So this happened to Elon.
[01:15:57]  Yeah.
[01:15:58]  Yeah.
[01:15:58]  And he was, I heard him on a podcast.
[01:16:00]  Was it when he said we're talking about doing the stock buyback or something?
[01:16:02]  Yeah.
[01:16:03]  Like, we never approved that.
[01:16:04]  It's.
[01:16:04]  Yeah.
[01:16:04]  There was issues.
[01:16:05]  I think that it was, uh, that it was, it had, it had to do with Tesla before and it was a couple years back, but he's it needs an SEC filing.
[01:16:13]  So it's got to be a widely disseminated press release or SEC filing.
[01:16:17]  Uh, do I have to issue a press release?
[01:16:21]  Like, again, that is ridiculous.
[01:16:23]  That if I want to tell somebody, like, again, if I go to my neighbor and say, Yeah, I think I'm gonna go tomorrow, and then he buys a contract that's illegal, aha, and he's gonna be like, Why?
[01:16:34]  I don't know.
[01:16:34]  I didn't, I didn't know that no one else knew.
[01:16:35]  He was literally just walking around talking to the neighbors, and they're gonna be like, You have to assume at any point that anything Tim Poole says could be information that could lead to you committing a crime.
[01:16:43]  No, that's insane.
[01:16:44]  No, it's not an insider training for that reason because if you're the CEO of a company and you tell the public about your company, you're in control of disseminating the information.
[01:16:51]  Them putting you on a list and then getting people to vote on that list doesn't proclude you from doing or preclude you from doing anything.
[01:16:58]  They're allowed to go do that crap.
[01:16:59]  You can go do your thing.
[01:17:01]  There's no coercion.
[01:17:02]  There's no collusion.
[01:17:04]  I mean, but then you're like, well, shit, if I bet on myself and then do it, but they're like, oh, it's not illegal, but it violates our terms.
[01:17:09]  And well, maybe it should be illegal.
[01:17:10]  Maybe that's why it violates your terms because it's highly unethical and probably should be illegal.
[01:17:14]  This real-time voting crap is like disgusting, turning reality into a TV show, like just trying to profit off it.
[01:17:19]  People in the military profiting off of strikes, like, come on, guys.
[01:17:23]  Yeah.
[01:17:23]  Everything's a casino now.
[01:17:25]  Yeah.
[01:17:26]  It's all gambling.
[01:17:26]  The gamification of life is a real problem, right?
[01:17:30]  The idea that everything can be somehow turned into a game, whether it be betting or what have you.
[01:17:37]  But there's a market for it, and there's people participating in it, especially young guys.
[01:17:41]  Like, that's the thing.
[01:17:43]  I think these guys are so either bored or sitting at home, needing some kind of stimulation that they're willing to go bet on stuff like this.
[01:17:53]  The reason Calci and Polymarket exist is because there's a market for it.
[01:17:58]  And so, are they the bad guys there for filling that market?
[01:18:03]  Or what's the actual problem here?
[01:18:06]  Well, the problem is people that don't have the self-control enough to say, no, I'm not going to bet on it.
[01:18:11]  Well, what's the difference between that and 100 years ago guy just going to the casino or the racetrack every day?
[01:18:16]  Well, the difference here is you can say, I'm going to vote 50 bucks on Tulsi Gabbard getting appointed and then go on Twitter and be like, we have to appoint Tulsi Gabbard.
[01:18:23]  Like, that's so messed up.
[01:18:25]  And get 100 million people to be like, okay.
[01:18:27]  Well, I mean, I don't know that just anyone could do that.
[01:18:29]  Like, if you're, if you've got an X account with like, you know, 300 followers, 350 followers, and you're like, we have to get Tulsi Gabbard into the position.
[01:18:37]  I mean, that doesn't have all kinds of influence.
[01:18:39]  Well, you might, yeah, you might need to pass the public figure standard there, which is a real legal standard, right?
[01:18:46]  So, so maybe that there's like a legal threshold that actually qualifies, but still, that, you know, like, like Tim says, is, am I going to have to put out a press release every time I like do something?
[01:18:58]  You know, that's the crux of it.
[01:19:01]  It's how much of your own life are you now entitled to if someone else is using your name image like this?
[01:19:07]  I think that sell stuff on, you know, with there is a certain amount of right to privacy and a certain amount of right to liberty.
[01:19:17]  You shouldn't have to be like, hey, you know, I'm going to go do this.
[01:19:21]  So I have to worry about what some other company is doing because I'm a public figure.
[01:19:26]  So, you know, so it looks like it's not insider trading in any legitimate sense.
[01:19:31]  It's just by the description of Kalshi insider trading.
[01:19:35]  But then that means there's no problem.
[01:19:38]  There's no criminal liability.
[01:19:38]  Yeah, if you're not criminal or whatever.
[01:19:40]  The only criminal liability would be using a large public platform to defraud people.
[01:19:44]  So like if I said that I would be going there and then the price spiked and then Ian sold off his position, profited, and then I didn't go, that would be fraud, just general fraud.
[01:19:55]  But that makes sense because you don't need Kalshi to commit fraud.
[01:19:57]  I mean, anything can be fraud.
[01:19:58]  If I said there's an old trick people used to do in World of Warcraft, Ian, let me know if you know about this scam that people would pull.
[01:20:08]  They would go into, I don't know, if you're not familiar with World of Warcraft, I'll try to explain it.
[01:20:15]  So Stormwind or Orgamar or Capital City, they go to Big City and there's an active group chat for everybody who's in the city.
[01:20:20]  And then someone, people would often post things like, looking to buy this item.
[01:20:25]  And so what someone would do is they would post, looking to buy these boots for 50 gold.
[01:20:30]  Then they'd wait a little bit and then their friend would post looking to sell these boots for 40 gold.
[01:20:38]  Somebody would see it and then go, I'll buy them from you.
[01:20:41]  And they would be like, okay, how much you got?
[01:20:43]  And they'll be like, I'll give you the 40 gold for it.
[01:20:44]  And they'll go, no, I want 45.
[01:20:46]  And they'll be like, okay, deal.
[01:20:47]  Because in their mind, I'm going to go to this other guy who's going to buy it for 50 and make a five gold profit.
[01:20:53]  And then he buys it for $45, overpriced, messages the guy who said he wants it for $50, who then responds, oh, I already bought one.
[01:20:59]  Sorry, bro.
[01:21:00]  I never did it.
[01:21:01]  No.
[01:21:01]  That was a very moonscape all the time, too.
[01:21:03]  Yep.
[01:21:04]  Very common tricks.
[01:21:05]  Like, fraud is fraud.
[01:21:06]  I mean, I don't know about being in a video game for a fake beating each other in a game when you're doing that stuff to each other.
[01:21:11]  Beating someone in the game.
[01:21:12]  Isn't that just brokering, though?
[01:21:14]  Just what?
[01:21:14]  Isn't that just like the word about brokering?
[01:21:16]  No, For two people to intentionally collude so that one person can say, I'm looking to buy a spin drift for 20 bucks.
[01:21:27]  And then Ian says, I'm selling a spin drift for 10 bucks.
[01:21:30]  And then you go, oh, oh, crap.
[01:21:31]  If I buy it from him from 10 and sell it to him for 20, I'm going to make 10 bucks.
[01:21:35]  So you buy the overdrive, overpriced can of soda from Ian.
[01:21:38]  And then when you come to me, I go, I already got one.
[01:21:40]  I don't need it anymore.
[01:21:41]  Appreciate it, brother.
[01:21:42]  Gotcha.
[01:21:42]  And now you've spent more on a worthless item.
[01:21:45]  So that was the trick.
[01:21:46]  You do that in real life.
[01:21:47]  You're going to jail for you.
[01:21:48]  Yeah.
[01:21:50]  That's some Turkish bizarre stuff.
[01:21:52]  Here's the funny thing, though.
[01:21:53]  That's like a very, very basic fraud thing where it's like someone asks for help.
[01:21:59]  Like, I'm trying to find this one thing.
[01:22:01]  Actually, you know what?
[01:22:02]  A really good example is the what movie was it with Emma Stone and I think Abigail Breslin?
[01:22:09]  I don't even know who Abigail Breslin is.
[01:22:11]  So they're driving in a car and then I think it's Emma Stone.
[01:22:15]  She's looking around her car like, oh my God.
[01:22:17]  And the guy walks out and he's like something wrong.
[01:22:18]  She's like, I lost my engagement ring.
[01:22:20]  It's $5,000.
[01:22:21]  I can't find it.
[01:22:22]  It fell off.
[01:22:22]  When I was playing the gas, Zombieland?
[01:22:24]  Was it Zombieland?
[01:22:25]  Yeah, I think so.
[01:22:26]  Oh, yeah.
[01:22:27]  It is.
[01:22:27]  Yeah.
[01:22:28]  And then she goes, please, please, if you find it, I will give you, I will pay you a reward for it.
[01:22:33]  I'll give you $1,000.
[01:22:35]  And then she drives off.
[01:22:36]  And then he walks away.
[01:22:38]  And then the girl walks over and picks it up off the ground.
[01:22:40]  And he's like, I need that ring.
[01:22:42]  And she goes, What are you going to give me for it?
[01:22:43]  And then he gives her a bunch of cash.
[01:22:45]  And then she gets in the car with Emma Stone and they've got a thing full of these worthless rings.
[01:22:49]  There's one with like a lottery ticket, too.
[01:22:51]  This one person claims like, oh, I just won this lottery ticket and it's like worth this much, but I don't have time to go, you know, turn it in, but I'll sell it to you.
[01:22:59]  Yeah, you can buy prank lottery tickets that they're like $100 winners.
[01:23:04]  And then you can be like, hey, man, I got to run out of, I got $100 winner.
[01:23:07]  Just give me $50.
[01:23:08]  I don't care.
[01:23:08]  And then they buy.
[01:23:09]  It's not a real lottery ticket.
[01:23:10]  All these scams, bro.
[01:23:11]  All these scams.
[01:23:12]  The polymarket Kalchi stuff is easily scammable.
[01:23:15]  That's the problem with it.
[01:23:16]  I think it has good intentions and it could be fun.
[01:23:19]  You just said that it didn't have good intentions.
[01:23:21]  Well, I don't think it's supposed to be fun and like you can make some stuff off of some external thing.
[01:23:26]  But when you get personal with it and you know the people involved or you get information or you can actually literally influence the outcome with your own behavior, bro, you're not allowed.
[01:23:35]  You're not supposed to bet on that shit.
[01:23:37]  And no one that you know is supposed to bet on that stuff.
[01:23:42]  But there's no law in place yet.
[01:23:44]  There is no law.
[01:23:46]  Oh, the Democrats will find a law soon enough.
[01:23:49]  I'm sure.
[01:23:50]  You don't want to shove it underground into the black market.
[01:23:52]  Maybe you do.
[01:23:53]  Well, I mean, the thing is, with it being regulated by the SEC, or if they're involved in the regulation of it, it's definitely not going to be shoved underground.
[01:24:02]  There's nothing more above ground than the SEC.
[01:24:06]  That's the organization that regulates banks and stuff.
[01:24:08]  You're saying they are SEC is regulating these guys right now?
[01:24:10]  I think that's what Tim's saying.
[01:24:11]  They are regulated.
[01:24:12]  Calci is legit regulated under the CFTC.
[01:24:15]  And actually, I do think it's fun.
[01:24:17]  I do think it's fun.
[01:24:18]  I just think these questions need to be answered because it's a new thing.
[01:24:20]  And it keeps the spiral out of control really quick.
[01:24:23]  Well, you've got to answer these questions.
[01:24:24]  And you could siphon wealth to one guy real fast with one of these bets, so be careful.
[01:24:29]  Like, interestingly enough, and I want to make sure I make this very clear, although I don't know.
[01:24:34]  I mean no intention to insult Calci because I actually like it.
[01:24:37]  You can see I got my portfolio.
[01:24:38]  Like I like, I like making little bets because it's fun.
[01:24:41]  It's not, I'm trying to make a living or get rich or it's not money that if I lost, I'm going to say end of the world.
[01:24:46]  I've got $1,177 in there, and I actually only started with a couple hundred.
[01:24:50]  So actually, it's like, hey, look at that.
[01:24:52]  I made some money on this thing.
[01:24:53]  I think it's fun.
[01:24:54]  I think it's fun.
[01:24:54]  That being said, there are a lot of questions.

=== Legal Risks and Contracts (14:31) ===

[01:24:57]  Like, if you want to be a regulated prediction market in there, now, with all due respect to Calci, who does, we do what's called a micro sponsorship, meaning that here's how it started.
[01:25:08]  There was a period where we've been using prediction markets for a long time.
[01:25:11]  Predict it was one of the first.
[01:25:13]  I don't know if it still exists.
[01:25:15]  Because I know they got shut down or something.
[01:25:17]  Oh, really?
[01:25:18]  Yeah, we use those for a lot of elections and stuff.
[01:25:20]  Yep.
[01:25:20]  We used to use Predict It for elections, but I don't know that it's allowed.
[01:25:25]  They basically banned it.
[01:25:26]  And it's very similar, like Democratic presidential nominee.
[01:25:29]  And it's a prediction market.
[01:25:31]  And so we were using this, and then Polymarket came out.
[01:25:34]  And it's interesting because you get a kind of wisdom of the crowd where you can see what everyone's betting on, and then you're basically getting odds on politicians to win and public events.
[01:25:43]  And so we ended up having companies reach out to us asking us if we would do sponsorships.
[01:25:49]  And we were kind of like, you know, maybe, I don't know.
[01:25:51]  And so the deal we did with Calshi is we will just, when we do a news story where there is beneficial information from their prediction markets, say, shout out to Cal Shi for sponsoring this segment.
[01:26:01]  That's literally it.
[01:26:03]  So we don't do dedicated ad reads to it.
[01:26:05]  They were just like, hey, how about when you do use us, you just shout us out and we'll do a deal on that.
[01:26:09]  And we were like, we do it anyway.
[01:26:11]  Like, sounds good to us.
[01:26:12]  So I like Cal Shi.
[01:26:13]  I do.
[01:26:14]  That being said, I think there's something interesting and a conversation to be had around, they have my picture on their website.
[01:26:20]  They are selling a product based on my name.
[01:26:22]  Are they making money?
[01:26:24]  Of course they are.
[01:26:25]  This is the nature of their business.
[01:26:27]  Now, perhaps in the deal that we did with them, to be full disclosure, we went through a contract.
[01:26:32]  I mean, maybe there's fine print that says we can use your likeness or something.
[01:26:35]  I don't know.
[01:26:36]  Maybe.
[01:26:37]  But the question then becomes: for all of these individuals, are these people who have Pam Bondi doesn't have a deal with Calci, I don't think, right?
[01:26:46]  We know of.
[01:26:47]  Or Donald Trump.
[01:26:48]  I suppose as public figures, you're allowed to use their likeness.
[01:26:51]  So Dan Bongino would fall into that category as well.
[01:26:53]  My question here is: at what point do you become a public figure if you got when you are in politics?
[01:26:57]  When you are a public, like you are a political, you are in public office.
[01:27:02]  But you're not, you're a public figure at this point.
[01:27:04]  No, no, no.
[01:27:05]  I'm clarifying.
[01:27:06]  If you are a politician and you hold any kind of public office or judgeship or otherwise, I can use your name and picture for commercial products.
[01:27:14]  What about other public figures like Tom Hanks?
[01:27:15]  No.
[01:27:16]  Oh, you're private business.
[01:27:17]  It's a politician's IC.
[01:27:17]  Yes.
[01:27:18]  So like we're making the card game right now, debate me, and we have the first prototype ready to go.
[01:27:22]  The test set is available.
[01:27:25]  It's our new game where you debate each other and you build the best debate team possible and you get Benjapiran Trump.
[01:27:30]  So all of the people, like we can't put Tucker Carlson in the game.
[01:27:35]  So we have Tucker Katarlson.
[01:27:37]  Totally different guy.
[01:27:38]  Yep.
[01:27:39]  But we can put Donald Trump in the game because he's president and we can use the likeness of the president to sell products.
[01:27:44]  However, we're being careful about it.
[01:27:46]  And so we're going to run every name through legal to make sure they don't say like you're using likeness.
[01:27:50]  But I do think it's interesting this question about individuals.
[01:27:55]  Like, come on.
[01:27:56]  You know, in mentions, they say like, what will the CEO, what will Robert Garcia say during his MS Now interview?
[01:28:04]  Like, here's a picture of them.
[01:28:06]  Are you allowed under like standard civil practices to use someone else's name and likeness to sell a commercial product based on their actions?
[01:28:14]  So, politician, obviously, you can.
[01:28:16]  What if then they leave politics?
[01:28:18]  Are they no longer a public figure?
[01:28:20]  You can use it.
[01:28:20]  Forever.
[01:28:20]  Yep.
[01:28:21]  Once you enter politics, what if you run for office?
[01:28:23]  I don't know about running for office.
[01:28:25]  Taking social media.
[01:28:26]  So we've gone over this in the past for a variety of reasons based on making thumbnails and doing graphics and writing articles.
[01:28:34]  And basically, every lawyer is like, the public has a right to use the image and likeness of public officials.
[01:28:39]  Because imagine if, like, okay, so let's put it this way.
[01:28:44]  Can I put up a billboard that says buy pool water?
[01:28:49]  And it's got a picture of Brad Pitt smiling.
[01:28:51]  No.
[01:28:52]  Of course not.
[01:28:52]  And you get sued.
[01:28:53]  You cannot.
[01:28:55]  There is an argument to be made about, because we've done this when we're working with the outfront media for Times Square.
[01:29:02]  If we put up, Michael Malice had the idea to put up a billboard that said, be like Greta, drop out of school.
[01:29:09]  And it was Greta Thunberg on the billboard.
[01:29:11]  And they said, no, because it's copyright violation.
[01:29:14]  They said there's a technical argument for free speech if you're using it to make a public statement about a well-known public figure.
[01:29:22]  However, it becomes challenging with non-governmental officials.
[01:29:27]  And a lot of these companies say we don't want to get in the middle of a lawsuit over using someone's likeness like that.
[01:29:33]  So basically, we talked to our lawyers and they said, if it's speech, like when we said Taylor Lorenz docs lives of TikTok, all we used was her name.
[01:29:41]  They said, that's just speech.
[01:29:43]  Using her image gets kind of murky.
[01:29:46]  But if it's being presented as an informational speech thing, you might be able to get away with it.
[01:29:51]  The simple way to understand it is: if I want to speak about Scott Besant or Donald Trump, I have to be able to do that.
[01:29:59]  He's a politician.
[01:30:00]  We need to be able to have a say in our processes.
[01:30:03]  However, you know, Brad Pitt's a celebrity who uses his likeness to profit.
[01:30:07]  He's not in office.
[01:30:09]  What he does for his business has no direct influence on what we do.
[01:30:11]  He's not running for office.
[01:30:12]  Does that mean I can sell lunch boxes with Arnold Schwarzenegger on them?
[01:30:17]  Talk to the lawyer.
[01:30:18]  Maybe not at this point.
[01:30:19]  But again, the important thing to understand about contract law is that it's all murky.
[01:30:23]  And I try to explain this to people all the time.
[01:30:24]  They think, I would argue this way.
[01:30:27]  Your average working class person thinks contracts are like steel cages, when in reality, they're more like straw huts.
[01:30:36]  And a handshake is often as good as a contract.
[01:30:40]  Now, the only thing I would worry about is whether you're not going to trust an individual, because even contracts ain't going to do nothing for you.
[01:30:45]  Yeah, they just, who was it?
[01:30:46]  They just issued Force Majeur to totally nullify their contract, all those energy deals.
[01:30:51]  Yeah, but that's because of external circumstances or something.
[01:30:54]  Right, right.
[01:30:54]  But let's put it this way.
[01:30:56]  Let's say, Ian, you and I have a contract.
[01:30:58]  Let's say I sign a term contract for you to be on Timcast IRL, guaranteed for three years, right?
[01:31:03]  A year from now, you get really, really angry and don't want to do the show anymore.
[01:31:08]  What happens if you stop doing the show?
[01:31:10]  I think it would be fine.
[01:31:11]  No, no, no, no.
[01:31:12]  I'll have a right to cancel the contract.
[01:31:13]  Nope, nope, nope.
[01:31:14]  I have a three-year term with you, Ian.
[01:31:16]  You have to be on the show for three years.
[01:31:18]  I don't know.
[01:31:19]  I don't know how you, how, what you, what recourse you would have.
[01:31:21]  Can I like tie you up and drag you onto the show?
[01:31:23]  No, you could maybe sue me for the lost potential revenue.
[01:31:27]  Sure.
[01:31:27]  And then how long will that take?
[01:31:28]  I don't, eight years, God knows.
[01:31:31]  Yep.
[01:31:31]  And then you're going to challenge and the continuations and arbitration meetings, and it's just a waste of time.
[01:31:36]  And so the so certainly, if the contract is a $500 million contract and you take a deal from Daily Wire to go join their show for $500 million, you'll get sued.
[01:31:47]  But if I do it, so this is the important thing to notice about contracts is that they don't actually matter in most circumstances, literally in most circumstances.
[01:31:54]  They matter if you're like Warner Brothers and Marvel and they're like, we're going to work out some kind of cool crossover movie.
[01:32:02]  Then it matters because you've got multi-billion dollar companies, product lines, and it's going to start stepping on each other's toes.
[01:32:07]  And you're not dealing with one person talking to one person.
[01:32:09]  But for most contracts where it's like, I'm hiring a person, Ian, you'll be on the show for a year.
[01:32:14]  If after six months, you stop showing up, what can I do about it?
[01:32:17]  I'm going to sue you, Ian.
[01:32:18]  You'll be like, okay.
[01:32:20]  And it's like, okay.
[01:32:20]  And then I file a lawsuit.
[01:32:22]  Six months later, I'll hear back from the court, I guess, if they can find you and serve you.
[01:32:26]  And then it's going to, I'm going to spend $1,000 on lawyers and I'm going to be like, I'm going to lose more than the contract is worth.
[01:32:31]  So what actually ends up happening is you don't get sued.
[01:32:34]  You get offered more stuff.
[01:32:36]  So Ian has a contract for a year.
[01:32:38]  And then six months later, he doesn't show up.
[01:32:39]  And I'm like, Ian, I need you to show up.
[01:32:40]  And you go, I'm not going to do it anymore.
[01:32:41]  And I'll be like, what do I have to do to make you come?
[01:32:43]  I mean, I have a contract.
[01:32:44]  I don't know what you could do to make me come.
[01:32:45]  Let's go.
[01:32:46]  Tim Pool.
[01:32:47]  So I have a contract.
[01:32:48]  I'll say, Ian, Ian, you have a contract with me.
[01:32:49]  You have to come on the show.
[01:32:51]  And then you'll be like, it's a family-friendly show.
[01:32:53]  I can't do that.
[01:32:53]  And then I'll be like, stop it, Ian.
[01:32:55]  You know what I'm trying to say?
[01:32:55]  I'll be like, no, don't stop it, Tim.
[01:32:57]  Don't stop.
[01:32:58]  And then you say, there is nothing you can do.
[01:33:00]  Sue me, bro.
[01:33:02]  Waste your time and have fun.
[01:33:03]  And my response would be, if I gave you more money, like, what can I do to make you come, brother?
[01:33:09]  You can do a lot of things.
[01:33:13]  I'm talking about coming on the show.
[01:33:15]  Yeah, I know.
[01:33:15]  I know.
[01:33:16]  I know you are.
[01:33:17]  I know you.
[01:33:18]  I know you.
[01:33:19]  Sounds so dark and gravelly tonight, Phil.
[01:33:21]  I just have a deep voice.
[01:33:23]  So the way that I am.
[01:33:25]  You look great, by the way.
[01:33:26]  I have a funny story for you guys.
[01:33:27]  I once entered into a contract with a company and we both signed it.
[01:33:33]  And then when literally two weeks later, they refused to pay out on the signed contract.
[01:33:39]  I showed up and said, we have a contract.
[01:33:43]  You owe me X amount of dollars.
[01:33:46]  Pay me what you owe me and this will be easy.
[01:33:49]  And they just laughed and said, What contract?
[01:33:53]  Wait, you had a copy of the contract?
[01:33:55]  Of course, but what am I going to do about it?
[01:33:56]  Dang.
[01:33:56]  Because you were the little guy at the time.
[01:33:58]  What am I going to do?
[01:34:00]  Am I going to go hire a lawyer and spend 10 grand to launch a lawsuit?
[01:34:03]  Fortunately, I'm smarter than them and I ended up winning.
[01:34:08]  The point is, it doesn't matter if you have a contract or not.
[01:34:11]  It matters.
[01:34:12]  It's guys, I love poker so much because the world is a poker game.
[01:34:16]  It really is.
[01:34:17]  You're sitting across the table from a guy and he says, What contract?
[01:34:21]  And then I said, I see the move you've made.
[01:34:23]  I am telling you now, you are not going to win.
[01:34:26]  So the story of this is: I showed up and I said, Hey, you sent me an email about the pay.
[01:34:33]  This is not what we agreed to.
[01:34:34]  This is a fraction of the pay that you've that we signed a contract on.
[01:34:39]  And this person goes, What contract?
[01:34:43]  And I said, The contract that you and I have.
[01:34:45]  Like, I never signed it.
[01:34:47]  And then I said, Okay, well, I'm not leaving until I get my pay.
[01:34:52]  Otherwise, we're going to have an issue.
[01:34:54]  And so this person calls in the higher up who says, What's going on?
[01:34:58]  And they're like, He's causing problems and he won't leave.
[01:35:00]  And I said, Listen, we agreed to a contract.
[01:35:02]  We've signed it.
[01:35:03]  I am owed this money.
[01:35:04]  And then the higher up just said, You're not getting anything.
[01:35:08]  If they tell me there's no contract, there's no contract.
[01:35:10]  And I looked him in the eyes and I said, I'm going to be a nice guy right now because I don't want to waste anybody's time, nor do I want my time wasted.
[01:35:17]  You pay me half of what you owe me, and we call it a bad hair day.
[01:35:21]  And he says, Well, right this one.
[01:35:22]  He walked me to the door.
[01:35:24]  And then I said, I won't say the guy's name or anything, but because we settled.
[01:35:28]  We'll call him Jim.
[01:35:29]  I said, Jim, as I'm walking out of the building, I said, I'm going to be, I'm going to make you one more offer.
[01:35:34]  I will be a nice guy one more time.
[01:35:37]  You give me half of what we agreed upon, and we are done.
[01:35:41]  And he just closed the door in my face.
[01:35:44]  And so, what did I do?
[01:35:46]  Well, long story short, I got lucky in that the company didn't just violate the contract.
[01:35:53]  Instead of registering me as a contractor at an hourly rate, because they were trying to rip me off, they listed me as a W-2 employee at an hourly rate, which gave me legal standing with the National Labor Relations Board.
[01:36:07]  And so, this opened a can of worms.
[01:36:09]  And I went and met with the NLRB because the first thing I got a phone call from the payroll company, and I'm like, I'm not an employee.
[01:36:14]  I was under contract.
[01:36:15]  This is totally separate.
[01:36:16]  And they're like, no, they listed you as W-2.
[01:36:18]  And I said, Can they legally do that?
[01:36:21]  They can just put me down as W-2.
[01:36:23]  I never agreed to that.
[01:36:23]  I never signed anything.
[01:36:24]  And they were like, they did.
[01:36:27]  And I said, so what does that mean?
[01:36:28]  And they're like, it actually means they owe you more money because W-2 is protected in California.
[01:36:34]  And this means they have to pay you for every day.
[01:36:37]  If you're not paid within 24 hours of termination of services, they have to pay you every day full rate.
[01:36:44]  So I went to the NLRB because of this.
[01:36:46]  And I said, I don't believe you can do anything for me because this is a private contract that we had.
[01:36:50]  This is not standard employment.
[01:36:52]  However, they did list me as W-2 without my consent.
[01:36:56]  And they said to me, okay, if you go the contract route, it sounds like you have a private suit case for about $300,000.
[01:37:06]  You'd, of course, have to hire a lawyer to take the case for you.
[01:37:09]  Probably would take several years.
[01:37:11]  We can't give you advice on that.
[01:37:12]  It's just my opinion.
[01:37:14]  Maybe you can find someone who'll do it on contingency for a third of the settlement.
[01:37:17]  However, that being said, because you were W-2 and because they didn't pay you, we can take your case on those grounds and they'd owe you about $30,000.
[01:37:27]  And I said, okay, let's roll.
[01:37:29]  And then it ultimately culminated with they tried to have one of their board members meet with me and then he panicked and fled because they thought I wouldn't show up because and we were like a day away from court.
[01:37:40]  And then finally the head boss shows up to the meeting place and he wasn't supposed to be there and he sits down and he goes, were you really offered rape?
[01:37:51]  And I said, yes.
[01:37:52]  And he goes, well, I'm telling you this right now.
[01:37:56]  You're not going to win.
[01:37:56]  We're going to go to court and it's going to be thrown out.
[01:37:59]  And I said, okay.
[01:38:00]  I was like, well, you know, I got time.
[01:38:02]  And he's like, well, look, we don't want to waste our lawyers' time and money.
[01:38:05]  So we can just settle this right now.
[01:38:07]  And I said, yeah, remember what I told you last time that I was going to be a nice guy?
[01:38:10]  And mind you, I think I'm 22 years old at the son.
[01:38:13]  I said, I told you I was going to be a nice guy.
[01:38:15]  And I told you, pay me half of what you owe me.
[01:38:19]  Yeah.
[01:38:20]  As of right now, we're going to be entering court with a total amount owed of $30,000.
[01:38:27]  So here's what we're going to do.
[01:38:29]  You pay me half right now and we'll call it a bad hair day.
[01:38:35]  And he goes, okay, so you're at 15.
[01:38:39]  I'll counter with six.
[01:38:40]  I said, no, I'm at 30.
[01:38:42]  And you're going to write a check for 15.
[01:38:44]  Otherwise, I'll see you in court.
[01:38:46]  And then he pauses for a second and then he gets up and he and he says, give us 15 minutes.
[01:38:51]  And then 50 minutes later, another lady walks in with three separate checks and she's like, sign these.
[01:38:55]  And that was it.
[01:38:56]  Had the contracts vanished?
[01:38:58]  Were there no paper copies of the contract or something?
[01:39:00]  Yeah, there are.
[01:39:01]  But the issue is you go to court and then all they have to say is, that's not real.
[01:39:07]  That's it.
[01:39:08]  Oh, interesting.
[01:39:09]  And then I say it was.
[01:39:10]  It was signed by this person and say, I'm sorry.
[01:39:11]  I have no recollection of that.
[01:39:13]  Even if their signature's on it, they'll be like, he forged.
[01:39:15]  Well, that's accusable forgery would be.
[01:39:17]  I mean, they're going to be like, it may be, but I have no recollection of it.
[01:39:20]  That's why they knew they were going to lose.
[01:39:22]  And the whole point of me offering half was just like, I don't want to deal with it.
[01:39:25]  I don't want to go to offices.
[01:39:26]  I don't want to go to meetings.
[01:39:27]  Just pay me.

=== Contracts Vanish? (09:46) ===

[01:39:28]  I'll leave.
[01:39:28]  Right.
[01:39:29]  This is the point about the contract, right?
[01:39:31]  Arguably, I lost.
[01:39:33]  They were, well, technically, I ended up paying a lot more than I was going to get.
[01:39:36]  Based on the amount of work I did, I think they owed me something like $7,000.
[01:39:40]  They ended up paying a bit more than that.
[01:39:42]  But it took months.
[01:39:43]  And so when I told the guy initially, like, give me half and we'll call it a bad hair day, the point was, I'm going to get zero right now if I walk out the door.
[01:39:52]  I'm then going to have to go to meeting after meeting after meeting.
[01:39:54]  And it's going to take time out of my day to try and recover money.
[01:39:59]  So what do I do?
[01:40:00]  Well, you try and cut your losses.
[01:40:03]  Let's make it EV plus.
[01:40:04]  Like, can I leave here with some money right now?
[01:40:06]  And they refused.
[01:40:07]  And so then leaving with $0 left me with no choice.
[01:40:10]  You know, I'm thinking about contracts.
[01:40:11]  Are you talking about like smart contracts, this evolution of computational transaction?
[01:40:15]  And like, those things are locked.
[01:40:17]  You cannot get out of a smart contract triggers.
[01:40:20]  So there's a trigger and then a change.
[01:40:22]  But it's kind of nice that you can get out of contracts.
[01:40:24]  Like there's a very human element to it.
[01:40:26]  Like we shouldn't be bound by numbers.
[01:40:28]  I don't think humans are built like that.
[01:40:30]  It's not like we should be bound by agreements, though.
[01:40:32]  The point of a contract is to be like, we make this agreement and we have it.
[01:40:35]  We have evidence.
[01:40:36]  And now, granted, like you said, you can get out of them.
[01:40:39]  But the point is to be like, okay, my word is good.
[01:40:42]  Here's a written evidence that my word's good.
[01:40:46]  And here's a sad reality.
[01:40:47]  Yeah.
[01:40:48]  It used to be that I would say, Ian, my word is my bond.
[01:40:53]  And then when all hell broke loose and I was struggling to fulfill, I would say, I'm sorry, I wasn't able to fulfill it, but trust me, I will not stop working because my word means more to me than anything.
[01:41:04]  Now we're just a nation of multicultural leeches pirating off of each other.
[01:41:09]  And people get busy and forget and get distracted and focused on other stuff.
[01:41:13]  Like I can't remember every agreement I made with all everybody.
[01:41:16]  Whatever.
[01:41:16]  This is really about the destruction of like the high trust society.
[01:41:20]  Exactly.
[01:41:20]  That's what it is.
[01:41:21]  And even in this low trust society, if you're telling me that your contracts are still no good, then what is good?
[01:41:30]  Yeah, contracts are completely, completely, completely meaningless.
[01:41:33]  I really want to tell you.
[01:41:35]  I'm going to tell you again, the contracts matter for one thing.
[01:41:38]  So I love this stuff.
[01:41:40]  I once got offered a talent management contract from one of the big agencies, one of the big five talent agencies, and it was like this thick.
[01:41:49]  And this guy represented some of the biggest names you've seen in cable TV news and like reality TV stuff.
[01:41:56]  So he says, here's the contract.
[01:41:58]  Look it over.
[01:41:58]  If it's good, we're going to get you on all the biggest shows.
[01:42:00]  You're going to be a host.
[01:42:01]  Yada, yada, yada.
[01:42:03]  And so I start reading through it and I'm like, this is insane.
[01:42:05]  It's like 200 pages.
[01:42:07]  And I was like, okay, this is insane.
[01:42:09]  Now, the point of that contract is not for me.
[01:42:12]  It's for the other talent agencies.
[01:42:14]  What this talent agency was saying was not that we will work with you and get you work.
[01:42:19]  They were saying, once you sign this, I can make sure you will never work for anybody else.
[01:42:25]  So if after this company fails me, because they tend to, and I went to another agency and said, I'm trying to find work and they're not getting it for me, they'd say, there's literally nothing we can do with you.
[01:42:35]  You are cut out.
[01:42:36]  That's the contract is not about the work they would give me.
[01:42:39]  It's about the fact that I signed any letter of intent with one agency means no other agency will touch you until that is cleared.
[01:42:46]  Whereas if I do a contract with Ian, I mean, I got to be honest.
[01:42:52]  If I said, you know, Ian, let's do a contract.
[01:42:54]  You're going to be here every day for a year.
[01:42:55]  And then one day Ian's like, I don't want to be here anymore.
[01:42:57]  So he comes to the show and starts screaming racial slurs.
[01:42:59]  I'd ask him to leave.
[01:43:00]  And then he's like, contracts, there you go.
[01:43:02]  And then I can argue and say, oh, he violated the contract.
[01:43:06]  One of the theories as to Candace Owens claiming Bridget McCrone is a man was that she wanted to get out of the contract with Daily Wire.
[01:43:12]  So she started saying things that would intentionally get Daily Wire sued for a lot of money, force, and then take her show down.
[01:43:18]  So they would have to terminate the contract and boot her from the company.
[01:43:21]  Yeah, you're better off letting your employees go than forcing them to stay under duress.
[01:43:26]  Indeed, which is why a lot of people have said, like, does anybody at Timcast have like a term contract?
[01:43:30]  No.
[01:43:30]  They're like, really?
[01:43:32]  Like, none of your talent?
[01:43:32]  And I was like, bro, if someone hated me and didn't want to be here, you think it's good for the show that we keep them here?
[01:43:40]  No.
[01:43:40]  Like, if imagine this.
[01:43:42]  Imagine Daily Wire comes to Ian and says, you know, we're paying you a lot of money to come on our show instead.
[01:43:47]  And then he goes, I can't.
[01:43:48]  I have a contract with Tim, but man, it's a huge opportunity.
[01:43:51]  Is Ian going to be happy sitting in this chair?
[01:43:53]  Would I be a good friend to be like, no, Ian, I'm sorry.
[01:43:55]  I know it's a great opportunity, but you're stuck.
[01:43:58]  I would never do that.
[01:43:59]  I would be like, wow.
[01:44:00]  I mean, I hate to lose you, but bro, if they're offering you like a big thing and a real opportunity, you got to take it, you know?
[01:44:05]  Nah, I don't have to.
[01:44:06]  I'm using Daily Wire as an example.
[01:44:08]  But let's say a Hollywood studio comes to you and says, you know, like we're going to offer.
[01:44:13]  I'm going to pay you $6 million, but I'd be gone for eight months.
[01:44:16]  Something like that.
[01:44:17]  And then we had a contract.
[01:44:19]  Let's say we had a contract where you had to be on the show.
[01:44:20]  Like Ian can come and go as he pleases for anyone who was wondering.
[01:44:23]  Let's say we did have a contract where you got to be on every night for a year straight.
[01:44:27]  And then Hollywood approaches you a studio and says, it's a $6 million deal.
[01:44:30]  You're going to be the co-star in an action film.
[01:44:32]  You're the plucky sidekick.
[01:44:34]  And then he goes, but I do have a contract where I'm already on a show for a year.
[01:44:39]  Would it be beneficial for me in any way to be like, you can't leave, Ian?
[01:44:42]  No.
[01:44:42]  No, it would be good for you to be like, yo, bro, go get more famous.
[01:44:45]  And then I come back.
[01:44:46]  The thing is, what I wouldn't, you know what?
[01:44:48]  Hold on.
[01:44:48]  I'm good at business.
[01:44:48]  You know, I'd say, Ian, I'd say, you're getting a $6 million deal.
[01:44:52]  Buy out the contract.
[01:44:52]  You're good to go.
[01:44:54]  Yeah.
[01:44:55]  So Ian says, okay, we'll cut you in 10K off the 6 million to cover your losses so you can find somebody else.
[01:45:01]  So I don't lose all we use that money to then out of my future contract.
[01:45:05]  It pays off the past contract, buys out the contract, basically.
[01:45:07]  Right.
[01:45:08]  So basically, it's like, you're going to get $6 million against a one-year contract.
[01:45:11]  I would say, pay me the difference I need to find a replacement so there's no losses and we're good to go.
[01:45:16]  It would be crazy if they were like, but in the contract, it says you can't work with Tim anymore.
[01:45:20]  Like, I wouldn't do that shit.
[01:45:21]  I don't like signing away.
[01:45:23]  It could say something like, you agree not to do political shows where you engage in issues that are contentious and could be derisive, you know, do well.
[01:45:30]  I'm not sure if it's like stuff that hinders my free speech, my right to speak.
[01:45:32]  Oh, bro.
[01:45:33]  Welcome to morality clauses.
[01:45:35]  Tell me, you can't use that.
[01:45:39]  And again, I know we're talking about Daily Wire, but I'm pretty sure.
[01:45:42]  No, no, no, no.
[01:45:42]  Morality clause is that you can't do something untoward, period.
[01:45:45]  And I think the Daily Wire has these too.
[01:45:47]  I'm not trying to disparage them, but most companies, we don't have these, they have morality clauses that say, if you engage in a behavior that is deemed morally reprehensible or a behavior that could bring disrepute to the company or yourself, we can terminate the contract.
[01:46:03]  Most companies have that because what would you do if, like, you know, you had, like, this is the Candace Owens thing.
[01:46:09]  She gets out of the contract by saying these shocking things.
[01:46:12]  We didn't, we just have, you can just quit at any either party can terminate at any time.
[01:46:16]  I'm pretty sure.
[01:46:16]  Let's also, let's also while we're at it, getting some clarifications on this beautiful Friday night.
[01:46:21]  There's two NDAs, non-disparagement and non-disclosure.
[01:46:25]  Timcast does not issue non-disparagement agreements.
[01:46:28]  We do have non-disclosure agreements.
[01:46:30]  What is a non-disclosure agreement?
[01:46:32]  This means that individuals who work here will not disclose private trade practices and secrets to other individuals.
[01:46:39]  That's it.
[01:46:40]  Non-disparagement agreements, which people often confuse, are the ones where they say you can't badmouth your employer after the fact.
[01:46:46]  Literally, Ian can insult me right now on the show.
[01:46:50]  You stink.
[01:46:51]  You see?
[01:46:51]  No, you smell fine.
[01:46:52]  I think I'm smelling my upper lip.
[01:46:54]  But like if a year from now, Ian had left and said it was a miserable place to work and I hated it there, we have nothing stopping him from doing that.
[01:47:02]  We do, however, have something stopping him from saying, here's the actual like computer components that he used to get the streaming product built so that our competitors could then build it and come out against us.
[01:47:13]  You know what I mean?
[01:47:14]  What about like, here was the workflow of Tim Cast.
[01:47:16]  Indeed, that's you can't disclose that.
[01:47:18]  So like if Ian went out and said, I've drawn a media kit up that explains basically how the show is produced, timing, structure, guests, that we have contracts to stop people from talking about.
[01:47:29]  But then what happens is you get people who go, Tim Poole's got NDAs so weird.
[01:47:34]  My favorite is the personal injury disclaimer that we have at the castle.
[01:47:38]  Oh, yeah, I signed that.
[01:47:39]  A waiver of liability.
[01:47:42]  And and people tried claiming these libs were like, Tim Poole makes his guest signs waiver of injury liability to come on his show.
[01:47:49]  And it's like, because I wield a cane.
[01:47:52]  No, you have to sign a waiver of liability to walk through the skate park.
[01:47:55]  Yeah, there's a skate park.
[01:47:56]  I've fallen on that thing.
[01:47:57]  And it only pertains to the skate park.
[01:48:00]  Like, we have to have it as per our assurance policy because there is a skate park.
[01:48:05]  But people are just nasty and they lie.
[01:48:07]  But, you know, we got to go to Rumble Rants and Super Chats.
[01:48:10]  And you know what we're going to do?
[01:48:12]  For the next 15 minutes, we have a, unfortunately, we didn't make it.
[01:48:17]  I'm going to start a goal right now.
[01:48:19]  This only works on YouTube of 50 super chats of at least $5 each for the next 15 minutes.
[01:48:27]  And I will play a song.
[01:48:28]  Tim will play a song if we get it.
[01:48:32]  Rumble should introduce that.
[01:48:33]  We already have six.
[01:48:34]  No, it's zero.
[01:48:36]  That one expired.
[01:48:36]  Okay, keep it up.
[01:48:38]  In the meantime, we'll grab some of your songs.
[01:48:42]  I don't know.
[01:48:43]  Maybe if we, is there a song that you could sing that we could play at the same time or no?
[01:48:46]  I couldn't play guitar and sing it.
[01:48:48]  No, no, I could play guitar, and then I'll sing, and then you can sing, and then Ian will try to sing.
[01:48:53]  I don't know.
[01:48:54]  What do you want to do?
[01:48:55]  Carter can sing.
[01:48:56]  I can also sing.
[01:48:57]  Whatever song you want to sing.
[01:48:58]  I don't know.
[01:48:59]  I don't know.
[01:49:00]  I guess something we have to win.
[01:49:02]  We won't get copyrighted strike the vote.
[01:49:05]  Anyway, here we go.
[01:49:07]  Evan for us says, huge shout out to my organization, the YAL.
[01:49:10]  One of our members, Audrey Lee, is running for district clerk in Fort Bend County.

=== Something We Have to Win (03:34) ===

[01:49:14]  She's one of the youngest at 19 to ever run for a position like this.
[01:49:18]  LFG.
[01:49:18]  Let's go.
[01:49:19]  There you go.
[01:49:20]  Same old man says, Tim, anyone running in California is most likely a Democrat, even the ones running as Republicans.
[01:49:26]  Look at Carolina's Senator Republican, a Democrat Muslim.
[01:49:30]  Well, yeah, but that was because she ran unopposed and was attacking the position.
[01:49:34]  Yeah, the intent.
[01:49:35]  Steve Hilton's conservative.
[01:49:36]  Yeah, the intent in that situation was to actually just get an actual Democrat in.
[01:49:41]  Yeah, Hilton will probably be a bit more moderate.
[01:49:43]  That's okay.
[01:49:44]  But he's not going to be, you know, transing the kids.
[01:49:47]  Well, Chad Bianco did like Neil with BLM or something.
[01:49:51]  So that's a problem.
[01:49:54]  Yeah.
[01:49:55]  All right.
[01:49:55]  What we got going on here?
[01:49:56]  There's a lot of I'm sorry after the craziness of 2020 and 2021.
[01:50:01]  All right.
[01:50:02]  Troa says, Holy crap, what caused the price of diesel to skyrocket?
[01:50:06]  I went to Senate yesterday and it was $3.33 and woke up to five.
[01:50:10]  Oh, yeah.
[01:50:11]  No idea, man.
[01:50:12]  Wonder what totally beat.
[01:50:14]  It's the hormuz, something like that.
[01:50:18]  Net cheese, hormoz cheese.
[01:50:21]  Hormel.
[01:50:23]  That's chili.
[01:50:24]  Okay.
[01:50:24]  Right?
[01:50:25]  Yeah.
[01:50:25]  What do we got here?
[01:50:26]  Chris Kuhn says, you guys should have Matt Tardio on from Speak the Truth Podcast.
[01:50:31]  He is very knowledgeable in the Middle East, having fought there.
[01:50:33]  He'll be debating the young Turks soon and has been invited onto Fox.
[01:50:36]  Oh, you know, we got too wrapped up in, or I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
[01:50:39]  I got too wrapped up in esoteric business garbage about contracts, but I had fun talking about it.
[01:50:44]  That we didn't play the clip from Unsubscribe where they were reading Mein Kampf.
[01:50:49]  Yeah.
[01:50:49]  Because it's hilarious.
[01:50:50]  It's absolutely hilarious.
[01:50:51]  They're trying to drag Brendan Herrera because he owns this copy of Mein Kampf in English.
[01:50:55]  But the whole segment that we're talking about it, they're insulting and mocking Hitler as being retarded.
[01:51:01]  And that's what the media does.
[01:51:02]  It's literally them sitting there reading.
[01:51:05]  And it's like this excerpt from the book where it's like Hitler tried to, the first war he lost was with grammar.
[01:51:12]  It's a war he had fought for years and was not successful.
[01:51:14]  Like it was hilariously just insulting Hitler.
[01:51:16]  But the media clips that out and then just shows a little snippet where he's like, yeah, I have Mein Kampf.
[01:51:21]  And they're like, oh, I was on CNN earlier.
[01:51:23]  These people are absolutely insane.
[01:51:25]  Know thine enemy.
[01:51:26]  The basics.
[01:51:27]  I strongly feel like that will not matter to the electorate in Texas.
[01:51:32]  They're trying to win that seat.
[01:51:33]  The Democrats are trying to win that seat back because it's a heavily Hispanic seat that only recently flipped Republicans.
[01:51:39]  Well, Herrera.
[01:51:40]  They're trying to bring it back.
[01:51:42]  A Herrera plus Mein Kampf copy.
[01:51:45]  Maybe that'll do it.
[01:51:47]  What I mean by know thine enemy is understand the mind of Hitler if you think that the Nazis were bad so that you can prevent that kind of thing and certain events.
[01:51:53]  Or he's just a great character of history.
[01:51:55]  You just want to know what's going on.
[01:51:57]  What were his thoughts?
[01:51:58]  What was going through his head?
[01:51:59]  You could do these things critically, right?
[01:52:01]  But it's actually a treasure trove of opportunity to understand like a World War I, broken World War I vet that wants to rectify a loss of a war because that could happen again.
[01:52:11]  Well, the thing is now, though, everything's a weapon, right?
[01:52:14]  So if I can use just you having a copy of Mein Kampf to smear you or destroy you, whatever, that's what they'll do.
[01:52:22]  Nothing, your intent doesn't matter anymore, right?
[01:52:26]  So that's the world we live in.
[01:52:28]  Well, I'm saying framing is a powerful weapon.
[01:52:32]  Yeah, people will frame others.
[01:52:34]  They're framing me.
[01:52:35]  Literally, now they're framing me.
[01:52:36]  They'll tell you what you wanted to do.
[01:52:38]  This one is not just for me.
[01:52:39]  It's also for Ian as well.
[01:52:40]  Jay George says, Tim using Magic the Gathering logic to resolve the stack on Ayatollah's death.
[01:52:45]  First in, last out.
[01:52:46]  That's right.
[01:52:47]  You know?

=== Heel Flip Challenges (04:48) ===

[01:52:48]  Man.
[01:52:48]  They tried to bet as an instant, and you're like, nope.
[01:52:51]  We've got to do something.
[01:52:52]  We've got to do something.
[01:52:53]  Magic the Gathering, just bringing in all this SpongeBob and turtles and everything.
[01:52:58]  It's just a shit.
[01:52:59]  Simplify was just saying the other day, we need a fantasy universe.
[01:53:01]  Eric July with his Rippiverse is pretty inspirational, but like just a universe that we can build out from.
[01:53:08]  Bro, when they did Aether Drift, I was like, well, they jumped the shark.
[01:53:12]  For those that don't know, okay, it's real simple.
[01:53:14]  Magic the Gathering is fantasy.
[01:53:16]  It's a card game.
[01:53:17]  It's the original first card game.
[01:53:20]  And the game is played.
[01:53:21]  We call it Chess and Poker Combined.
[01:53:22]  It's a strategy game.
[01:53:23]  You draw cards, then you utilize resources to enact effects in the game to try and defeat your opponent.
[01:53:29]  The theme of the game was largely fantasy-based: dragons, knights, warriors, zombies, et cetera.
[01:53:34]  And they've had a bunch of wonky ones like Kamigawa Neon Dynasty, which was like Japan future with Neon, and it was kind of weird, but okay.
[01:53:44]  The, what you call it, the Ravnica set was pretty good where they introduced kind of like a steampunk vibe.
[01:53:50]  Still kind of fits the fantasy lore stuff.
[01:53:53]  They did Aether Drift last year.
[01:53:55]  I think it was last year, the year before.
[01:53:56]  And it's wizards riding motorcycles and race cars.
[01:53:59]  Oh, God.
[01:54:00]  And it was just like, what is who does this appeal to?
[01:54:04]  Here's the group on Star Wars Episode 1, maybe.
[01:54:07]  I was talking to my friend earlier because I was playing Marvel Rivals.
[01:54:11]  And I was trying to explain why everything keeps failing in content and culture.
[01:54:15]  And I said, so I played EA Skate, which only has 1,900 players left.
[01:54:21]  Seriously.
[01:54:22]  The original Skate game.
[01:54:23]  No, EA Skate that just came out six months ago.
[01:54:26]  Oh, has only 1,900 active players.
[01:54:30]  Yeah, they're going to, I, I, I, I'm willing to bet they will shut those servers down in like a month.
[01:54:36]  There's no way they can maintain the cost of those servers on a game with no players.
[01:54:40]  They're making zero dollars.
[01:54:42]  And I was explaining the reason why the game failed: instead of making a game for skateboarders, which is what you do, which would subsequently inspire friends of those skateboarders to hang out and play those games, they made a video game for everybody.
[01:54:56]  So instead of a skateboarder doing skateboard things, it's like a teenage girl doing teenage girl things.
[01:55:02]  Just like we saw with World of Warcraft the other day, where she's going, woo-hoo!
[01:55:05]  Yay!
[01:55:05]  Because she got her like kettle thing.
[01:55:07]  You mean an EA skate?
[01:55:08]  The girl like does her hair and stuff?
[01:55:10]  Like, what's no, it's like, so, uh, what's the vibe you think of when you think of skateboarder?
[01:55:16]  Um, like flowing clothing, like flying on the ground, kind of.
[01:55:21]  I would, I would say punk rock, like the original Tony Hawk that had all the punk bands, some metal, Bam Marjara, that's all the OG big peak skateboarding stuff.
[01:55:29]  And so, uh, most skateboarders today are 30-year-old white dudes, and that's just reality.
[01:55:34]  Now, I agree, we want to get more people to skateboard, so how do you do it?
[01:55:38]  Well, you need to produce a product for the base that can also be attractive for new people.
[01:55:45]  However, you need a core community first, which means the product should always be targeting the audience and then with marketing tools, reaching out to new audiences.
[01:55:55]  Instead, so the way I describe it is this: here's the skateboarding game that I would play.
[01:56:01]  I would play a very vanilla skateboarding game like the OG EA skate, where a guy's voice or women's voice is fine too, but a guy would probably play better for guys.
[01:56:09]  He says, In order to perform the heel flip, you hold down on the right thumbstick and then flick upwards towards the right, and that's it.
[01:56:16]  And then you try it, and if it doesn't work, it just starts over.
[01:56:18]  And that's it.
[01:56:19]  And you try it again, you try it again.
[01:56:21]  What this game does with all the characters, well, when the game starts, there's some like teenage girl and like a little robot that like floats around or something named V. And when they're teaching you how to play the game, when you screw up, it goes, I'll give you a few examples of what's wrong with Modern Society and why we got to get the men back in the room.
[01:56:39]  So, the character says, Let's try doing a heel flip.
[01:56:42]  To do a heel flip, hold the right thumbstick down and flick upward into the right.
[01:56:48]  So, then I go and I do it wrong.
[01:56:50]  And she goes, Wow, that was really cool.
[01:56:53]  But let's try a heel flip.
[01:56:55]  To do a heel flip, hold down on the thumb.
[01:56:57]  So, then I do a different trick.
[01:56:58]  And she goes, Totally cool trick, really awesome.
[01:57:00]  But do you want to try a heel flip?
[01:57:02]  So, there was another mission I was showing my friend.
[01:57:04]  You know, I do a manual.
[01:57:06]  And then he goes, Wow, man, really good riding, but let's try it with two wheels.
[01:57:11]  And I'm like, I hate these people.
[01:57:13]  I hate them.
[01:57:14]  I hate them.
[01:57:15]  The game that I want to play is it starts with Bam Marjara, all 50 years old and fat.
[01:57:21]  And he's standing there and he goes, Hey, jerk off.
[01:57:23]  Let's see a heel flip, bro.
[01:57:25]  Come on, you're young.
[01:57:26]  Look at me.
[01:57:26]  I'm fat.
[01:57:26]  I can't do it.
[01:57:27]  And I start laughing.
[01:57:28]  And then you try it and you miss.
[01:57:29]  And he goes, What the heck was that, bro?
[01:57:31]  Come on.
[01:57:32]  It's not hard to do.
[01:57:33]  And then you try it again and you miss.
[01:57:34]  And he goes, Dude, are you kidding me?
[01:57:35]  You only have to flick a stick.

=== Want to Watch Football Skating? (02:37) ===

[01:57:37]  Come on.
[01:57:38]  And so there's like edge to it and it's fun and it's silly.
[01:57:41]  Instead, they keep making everything like Skittles, candy canes, and rainbows.
[01:57:45]  And it's just like...
[01:57:46]  It doesn't make sense for skating because skating is a lot about pain.
[01:57:48]  That...
[01:57:49]  A lot of pain, a lot of adventure, a lot of conquest.
[01:57:52]  And so the original Tony Hawk game is what people said to me, Tim, it's just that skateboarding is not popular.
[01:57:57]  Stop.
[01:57:58]  Wrong.
[01:57:58]  Skateboarding was not popular before Tony Hawk Proskater.
[01:58:01]  Tony Hawk Proskater made skateboarding popular.
[01:58:04]  So we were all expecting with the new EA skate game, which we expected it to be gritty and realistic, but not overly edgy, just a sporting game.
[01:58:11]  Instead, it's Fortnite with a skateboard.
[01:58:14]  Not kidding.
[01:58:14]  Purple, pastel, yellow, girls running around, giggling and saying, like, let's have fun and play.
[01:58:20]  And it's not a sporting event.
[01:58:22]  So I said this.
[01:58:23]  Would you guys want to watch football?
[01:58:25]  Which football game do you want to watch?
[01:58:26]  Where the guy's going, he's got the pass.
[01:58:28]  He's going, touchdown, let's go.
[01:58:30]  And then everyone's screaming.
[01:58:32]  Or do you want to watch where the ball's about to throw?
[01:58:34]  And they're going like, wow, it's really cool.
[01:58:36]  He's going to throw the ball.
[01:58:36]  No, wait, let's make him wait because we're going to put up the purple flowers.
[01:58:40]  If the announcers were like, oh, that was a really good throw, but he missed it.
[01:58:44]  Oh, a second down now.
[01:58:46]  Let's try, though.
[01:58:47]  I have to.
[01:58:49]  Let me find this.
[01:58:51]  That's the way football's going these days anyway.
[01:58:53]  I got to find this article.
[01:58:55]  Here we go.
[01:58:58]  We have this article from Vice.
[01:59:00]  It says, this horrifying app undresses a photo of any woman with a single click from June 26, 2019.
[01:59:08]  And this is when I was explaining to some of my friends at Vice where everything went wrong.
[01:59:13]  And we were talking about wokeness and how everything was getting cringe.
[01:59:17]  And I said, guys, you guys ran an article titled, This Horrifying App Undresses a Photo of Any Woman with a Single Click.
[01:59:24]  And they were like, Yeah.
[01:59:25]  And I said, Do you want to know why your company is bankrupt?
[01:59:29]  I said, Tell me what the title of that article would have been in 2011.
[01:59:33]  And they were like, What?
[01:59:36]  This awesome app will undress any woman.
[01:59:39]  Had the word sex in it, and it would have said awesome.
[01:59:42]  It would have been like or hilarious.
[01:59:44]  Instead, it became, it's like we used to have content that was made by the dude with the ripped jean jacket or like leather jacket who was just like, hey, lay off me, dude.
[01:59:55]  I'm just trying to like do my thing.
[01:59:56]  And then we got content made by the hall monitor being like, you're not allowed to stand here.
[02:00:00]  I like that you got Gavin McGinnis was on the show, you know, founder, one of the founders of Vice.
[02:00:04]  That guy is punk rock.
[02:00:05]  That's like, he is punk rock.
[02:00:07]  You want to know why.
[02:00:08]  And he left, and he's an edgy guy, and he's weird stuff.
[02:00:13]  Oh, he's a freak.

=== Zoom Guests Fly In! (08:35) ===

[02:00:14]  Love you, G. Let's grab it.
[02:00:15]  Let's grab.
[02:00:16]  He's a good dude.
[02:00:17]  I'm a big fan.
[02:00:17]  He's a good dude.
[02:00:18]  He's a good funny guy.
[02:00:19]  Here we go.
[02:00:20]  We'll grab a couple more.
[02:00:21]  We got Shidev, the Vedmex says, Seven Nations memo correlates with the Yinan plan, 1982, followed by the A Clean Break, a new strategy for securing the realm, 96.
[02:00:31]  The authors all worked for the Pentagon when the Seven Nations memo was given.
[02:00:35]  It was made for Netanyahu.
[02:00:36]  Read more.
[02:00:37]  Well, how about that?
[02:00:39]  Yeah, the Clean Break memo.
[02:00:40]  Yeah.
[02:00:41]  What do we have here?
[02:00:42]  We've got the game says, I had my third kid, Tim.
[02:00:45]  We are winning.
[02:00:46]  First time, long time on donation.
[02:00:48]  I've been watching since you went on Rogan.
[02:00:50]  Appreciate it, brother.
[02:00:51]  Congratulations.
[02:00:53]  Third kid.
[02:00:54]  Wow.
[02:00:55]  Hey, yo.
[02:00:57]  Meg, Mega Bobson says, Tim, your live viewers are dropping.
[02:01:00]  Used to be like 40K, now it's 15K.
[02:01:03]  Why do you think that is?
[02:01:03]  Maybe multiple nights of you not being here.
[02:01:06]  First and foremost, yes, of course, when I get sick and I can't be here, that will have an impact on the algorithm.
[02:01:12]  As if people don't watch, because I'm not here, YouTube won't recommend it tomorrow.
[02:01:15]  That being said, we're also in a political offseason, and our viewership is actually slightly higher than it was for a comparable period four years ago.
[02:01:24]  Also, I know the membo didn't get out to a lot of people, but we simulcast on Rumble, which had 20,000 concurrence.
[02:01:33]  And we also do promos and the after-show there.
[02:01:36]  So, yeah, a year ago, we would get 40K on YouTube.
[02:01:40]  We then did a deal with Rumble and now simulcast.
[02:01:44]  And now we average around 47 to 50K between both platforms every single night.
[02:01:49]  And so the funny thing is, people who aren't fans of the show and don't pay attention or don't watch don't understand that.
[02:01:54]  And they're just like, wow, where is everybody?
[02:01:56]  Well, you know, a lot of them went to Rumble because they didn't like what YouTube was doing.
[02:01:58]  More importantly, Monday through Thursday, when the show on YouTube ends, we all go to Rumble for the uncensored portion.
[02:02:04]  So a lot of people who watch on YouTube slowly just migrate to Rumble, which is kind of the point of doing the deal with Rumble.
[02:02:11]  We don't want to cut off the people who like watching on YouTube, but we want everyone to watch on Rumble.
[02:02:16]  That was the point.
[02:02:17]  So here's how it works.
[02:02:19]  In 2021, which was the offseason after the 2020 election, we were averaging in 2020 literally like 1.6 million views per night per episode.
[02:02:30]  And our concurrence were like 70, 80K per night through the election season.
[02:02:34]  And then four months later, we were doing 27,000 concurrence on average because we're a news and politics show, not in a news and not politics era.
[02:02:42]  It's not until the middle of the midterm year when politics and money starts getting pumped in, the media starts picking up these stories, interest starts returning in the political space.
[02:02:52]  So we're just now coming off of this.
[02:02:54]  And comparable to the four years prior, we've actually been doing about 10 to 12,000 more viewers on average.
[02:03:01]  So we track all the growth for all the channels.
[02:03:03]  We've also made some changes and we're going to be making some changes that I think will make the show a bit more evergreen moving forward.
[02:03:09]  That is, times there are changing.
[02:03:11]  And if you don't adapt, you die.
[02:03:13]  One thing that we've noticed, which is very plainly obvious, is that it's becoming more and more difficult to book in-person guests because let's just be real.
[02:03:21]  If we hit up a guy with a million followers who has come on the show before and say, fly out to us, we're in DC.
[02:03:28]  It's going to be a day trip followed by an hour car ride, a hotel stay, then you can come on the show and leave.
[02:03:32]  They go, oh man, they used to say, yeah, let's do it.
[02:03:36]  This will be amazing.
[02:03:37]  Now they say, I got to be honest, like, I'm going to Zoom on Megan Kelly instead because she's also got a big show.
[02:03:43]  So we can't compete with all the shows that are doing Zoom guests.
[02:03:48]  Our network for in-person guests largely are DC based.
[02:03:52]  And within a couple hours, these are where most of the guests are like, I got no problem driving down.
[02:03:57]  But getting people to fly out is becoming ever more difficult.
[02:04:01]  As time goes on, more shows are doing more interviews, and it's just impossible to have the in-person conversation.
[02:04:07]  So we're looking at starting with, if we want to get bigger guests to engage in the conversation, they're almost exclusively always saying Zoom only.
[02:04:16]  I got like big prominent lefties who have even been like, come on the show, they go, can you do Zoom?
[02:04:20]  We go, we don't have Zoom set up.
[02:04:22]  We do it in person.
[02:04:22]  And they're like, I've got a million followers.
[02:04:25]  I stream every day.
[02:04:26]  I make millions of dollars.
[02:04:27]  I'm not flying out to your studio.
[02:04:29]  That's basically the response we get.
[02:04:30]  So we started, we've built out the mechanism by which now we can have people on the show via Zoom for the duration of the show.
[02:04:37]  We haven't done a test yet.
[02:04:39]  And we're actually going to be doing, I shouldn't say this, but I'm going to say it anyway.
[02:04:42]  We're going to be doing essentially casting for a new permanent panelist to be on the show.
[02:04:49]  Because if we are going to have Zoom guests, they likely will be a half an hour to an hour long, in which case, the four seats will be held by the in-person crew.
[02:04:58]  And so we have some individuals that we're talking to to become permanent panelists on the show, starting with maybe like three days a week, and then finally five days a week with, eventually it may go, full digital guests.
[02:05:12]  As for any big names that want to come on the show, they're always welcome to because we have the fifth seat available.
[02:05:17]  But again, like, I'm going to tell you this.
[02:05:19]  I don't want to name drop anybody because I don't want to be insulting to anybody.
[02:05:22]  But there are Hollywood A-list celebrities in big blockbuster movies that are pro-Trump that are like, I just can't fly from LA.
[02:05:30]  Can you do digital?
[02:05:31]  And we say no to these people.
[02:05:33]  And so there have been people who have been like, Tim, your guests are just not good anymore.
[02:05:36]  And it's like, because we were purists and wanted to do in-person only.
[02:05:40]  Well, if we can get Brad Pitt, but it's only over Zoom, we decided, okay, this is the point where we can't compete.
[02:05:46]  A lot of other shows are all getting massive guests.
[02:05:48]  Piers Morgan, you know, it's a different kind of show, but he gets a lot.
[02:05:51]  He gets a ton of good debates and guests because people just don't want to travel anymore.
[02:05:55]  Just the way it is.
[02:05:56]  So adapt or die.
[02:05:57]  And that's the plan moving forward.
[02:05:59]  We're going to get out of here.
[02:06:01]  Nobody wants to hear a song.
[02:06:02]  So I do appreciate it.
[02:06:03]  12 of them did.
[02:06:04]  12 of them did.
[02:06:05]  So we're going to get out of here, though.
[02:06:06]  And it's been a blast.
[02:06:08]  We're back, of course, next week.
[02:06:10]  And we got a big, big, big show coming up on Monday.
[02:06:14]  The man himself, Brandon Herrera.
[02:06:17]  Very excited for this.
[02:06:18]  And then we've got massive guests all next week.
[02:06:20]  We've got some celebrities coming on.
[02:06:22]  No joke, like there's going to be big stuff.
[02:06:26]  Big stuff.
[02:06:27]  And big collabs are coming for the next couple of weeks.
[02:06:29]  We're going to have a blast.
[02:06:30]  And then big changes, big changes.
[02:06:32]  Another thing I'll add about the Zoom guests, the only reason we've been dealing with the thing of people being like, oh, I don't want to travel anymore.
[02:06:39]  And we're like, well, you know what?
[02:06:41]  Then who cares?
[02:06:43]  The other consideration is when we were talking about this, the team's then like, you know, it costs us $40,000 per month to fly guests out here.
[02:06:53]  And if we did Zoom, we would save that and spend it on security.
[02:06:57]  And we were like, that's kind of the straw on the camel's back.
[02:07:02]  We need to find money to keep, because security has to go up.
[02:07:05]  We recently had another significant death threat.
[02:07:07]  So a person published a video, apparently with insider information somehow, threatening to murder me.
[02:07:14]  And it's considered credible, forwarded to the FBI.
[02:07:18]  And so all of that stuff's going down right now.
[02:07:20]  So we're constantly having to up our security and things like this.
[02:07:22]  And so we're like, well, you know what?
[02:07:25]  Maybe it's time we actually started doing some digital guests because otherwise we're just not going to get the big names anymore.
[02:07:31]  They're just doing Zoom.
[02:07:32]  And additionally, it's expensive.
[02:07:34]  So that being said, smash the like button, share the show.
[02:07:36]  We're back with clips throughout the weekend.
[02:07:38]  We're back on Monday with a massive, amazing show.
[02:07:40]  You can follow me on X and Instagram at TimCast.
[02:07:43]  Vish, do you want to shout anything out?
[02:07:45]  Just follow me on X at Vishburgh and TikTok at Vishburgh.
[02:07:49]  Thanks for having me, Tim.
[02:07:50]  Man, I'm so grateful to this life.
[02:07:54]  Thank you for having me be part of it.
[02:07:56]  It's really awesome.
[02:07:57]  I hope we can make the world better.
[02:07:58]  I know we can.
[02:07:59]  So we'll do our best.
[02:08:01]  You do your best.
[02:08:01]  We'll meet up at the end.
[02:08:03]  See you.
[02:08:05]  I am Phil that remains on Twix.
[02:08:06]  You can check me out on Patreon.
[02:08:08]  It's Phil That Remains on Patreon.
[02:08:10]  The band is all that remains.
[02:08:11]  You can follow the band on Apple Music, Amazon Music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, and Deezer.
[02:08:16]  We're going on a tour this summer or this spring.
[02:08:19]  We're going out with Born of Osiris and Dead Eyes.
[02:08:21]  You can check out or you can get tickets at allthatremainsonline.com.
[02:08:25]  Don't forget, the left lane is for crime, Carter.
[02:08:27]  Carter Banks here.
[02:08:28]  You can follow me over at Carter Banks.
[02:08:30]  Vish, thanks for coming on.
[02:08:31]  It's been a pleasure.
[02:08:32]  Ian, I second what you said to the ether.
[02:08:36]  And yeah, it's going to be really cool next couple of weeks.
[02:08:40]  A lot of good stuff, Tim.
[02:08:42]  Thanks for hanging out, everybody.
[02:08:43]  We're going to, I don't know why Ian's dressed up, but we'll figure out something to do that fits his attire.
[02:08:49]  We're going to go find a party.