Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Saga and Crystal here.
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Speaker 2: Let's go ahead and get to Zoron, and let's start
Speaker 2: off with a clip of Pete Buddhagic talking about why
Speaker 2: he thinks that Zoron won. And Pete says, you know,
Speaker 2: his policy, like that, really that really wasn't the thing.
Speaker 2: I think people are reading too much into this whole
Speaker 2: like free bust thing. Let's take a listen to to
Speaker 2: Pete explaining his version of why Zoron was so successful.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of people are focused on the leftism,
Speaker 3: the ideological leftism that I think we shouldn't be so
Speaker 3: surprised that prevailed in a New York Democratic Party primary.
Speaker 3: But I think if my party wants to learn lessons
Speaker 3: from Mamdani's success that are portable to a place like Michigan,
Speaker 3: where I live, it's less about the ideology and more
Speaker 3: about the message discipline of focusing on what people care about,
Speaker 3: and the tactical wisdom of getting out there and talking
Speaker 3: to everybody.
Speaker 4: Nailed and I love.
Speaker 2: I've seen several different versions of this where it's like
Speaker 2: the assessment is, oh, well, he's young, he's charismatic, he
Speaker 2: was talking about costs of living, you know, they say
Speaker 2: in this very amorphous way, like the specifics of his
Speaker 2: proposals didn't matter, and or it's oh, he understood social
Speaker 2: media and he knew how to make videos. Anything to
Speaker 2: keep from grappling with the fact that a central part
Speaker 2: of his appeal are his specific policies, including, by the way,
Speaker 2: his support for Palestinian rights. The data is just totally
Speaker 2: clear at this point that he didn't win in spite
Speaker 2: of his willingness to, you know, stand on business of
Speaker 2: being an anti Zionist. He won in part because that
Speaker 2: was such an appealing position to take in the context
Speaker 2: especially of a Democratic primary.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's the millennial Like, he's who a lot
Speaker 5: of establishment Democrats see as like the ambassador the party's
Speaker 5: like next best ambassador to millennials and to millennial men
Speaker 5: because he's young and a man. But he's not. It's
Speaker 5: actually kind of interesting. This made me think about this
Speaker 5: when it comes to Buddha Judge for the first time
Speaker 5: in the sense that like, he doesn't capture any of
Speaker 5: the mood of millennials for sure, or of like people
Speaker 5: again under the age of forty roughly in the country.
Speaker 5: And you'd think that Democrats would understand that about him.
Speaker 5: He's so you know, he's he's able to talk like
Speaker 5: a normal Midwestern dude when he's on with Andrew Schultz
Speaker 5: or a different podcast hosts, but he definitely like doesn't
Speaker 5: at all reflect like Mam Donnie. Is also a cheerful candidate,
Speaker 5: right like he I think Soccer has pointed this out,
Speaker 5: like a guy's always smiling wherever he goes, even though
Speaker 5: he's speaking to the miseries of younger Americans millennial generation ze.
Speaker 5: But Buddha Judge is not somebody who comes across this
Speaker 5: like really understanding that and really like, do you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying, Like, that's not what he speaks to
Speaker 5: he he sort of like seems to gloss over a
Speaker 5: lot of that. And I think this is this clip
Speaker 5: is a pretty good example of him saying, well, New
Speaker 5: York City is deep blue.
Speaker 4: It was a vibes election.
Speaker 5: You know, It's true Cuomo was a bad candidate and
Speaker 5: all of that, but Mam Donnie is powerful for Democrats
Speaker 5: precisely because he kind of understands the precariousness of the
Speaker 5: situation that the twenty four year old man finds himself
Speaker 5: in in very particular ways that you don't really hear
Speaker 5: Buddha Judge talking about at all.
Speaker 2: Well, Democrats took this lesson from the Trump election. I'm
Speaker 2: basically like, we need to go on podcasts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, right, right, right, right right.
Speaker 2: But they didn't realize that it's not just you need
Speaker 2: to go on podcasts. It's like, you need to be
Speaker 2: able to say something when you're on those podcasts that
Speaker 2: is going to have appeal.
Speaker 4: You need to.
Speaker 5: Exclame the dem establishment, because that is what Trump did
Speaker 5: with a Republican establishment. That's what Jadie Vance does with
Speaker 5: Republican establishment.
Speaker 4: Whether or not. You think they believe it. That's why
Speaker 4: Joe Rogan likes them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean again, Israel is really central here.
Speaker 2: And I'm sorry to keep picking on center Slacken, because
Speaker 2: I actually really appreciate her coming on our show. But
Speaker 2: you know, I think I asked her like, what did
Speaker 2: you want? Why did you want to talk to us,
Speaker 2: and she basically said, like, well, my staff pitches and
Speaker 2: pitched me on it. And you know, we all have
Speaker 2: this sense of basically we need to get out into
Speaker 2: independent media, but if you don't understand the audience is
Speaker 2: there and what they need to hear from a politician
Speaker 2: in order for them to trust you and for you
Speaker 2: to have any credibility with them at all, Like you
Speaker 2: can go on every podcast in the world and it's
Speaker 2: not going to help you one bit whatsoever.
Speaker 4: And like if Yabla Harris had gone on Rogan, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Right, And you know, I really do think, like I've
Speaker 2: become quite convinced that the sort of price of entry
Speaker 2: into credibility in those spaces on the democratic side is
Speaker 2: being like having any sort of soul and conscience around
Speaker 2: Palestinian life. And you know, if we look at here,
Speaker 2: we've got a bunch of interesting poll numbers with regard
Speaker 2: to Zorn.
Speaker 6: We can put C two up on the screen.
Speaker 2: This one reflects what the top contributors to his success
Speaker 2: in the race ultimately were. And Number one his plans
Speaker 2: to lower costs.
Speaker 6: That's great.
Speaker 2: Eighty nine percent said that was really important to me.
Speaker 2: Number two his plans to tax the wealthy and stand
Speaker 2: up to corporations. Now that's part of why Pete wants
Speaker 2: to say, oh, no, no, no, it didn't have anything to
Speaker 2: do with his policy positions, because you know, he's interested
Speaker 2: in like a maintenance of the status quo. But number
Speaker 2: three on that list is his support for Palestinian rights.
Speaker 2: Sixty two percent of people said that was important to me,
Speaker 2: and only twelve percent said it wasn't that it wasn't
Speaker 2: important to them at all in terms of how they voted.
Speaker 2: So Zoran didn't didn't try to make, you know, Palestinian
Speaker 2: rights central to his campaign, but his opponents decided to
Speaker 2: make that a central question in the campaign. And there's
Speaker 2: just no doubt that they did him a tremendous favor
Speaker 2: by you know, trying to smear him as an anti
Speaker 2: Semite and constantly talking about, you know what do you
Speaker 2: go to Israel and where does he stand on this?
Speaker 2: That was a huge boon to him in this primary.
Speaker 2: I think the numbers are quite clear at this point,
Speaker 2: and we've also got pulling emily about where he stands
Speaker 2: for the general election. If this polling is to believe,
Speaker 2: be believed, and I don't see any reason why it shouldn't,
Speaker 2: given that, you know, the heavily democratic makeup of the
Speaker 2: city of New York, Zorin looks set to coast to
Speaker 2: victory whether or not all of his current opponents stay
Speaker 2: in the race or not. Let's put C three up
Speaker 2: on the screen. You can see all of the different
Speaker 2: demographic groups that he is strongest with. This isn't a
Speaker 2: five way vote. I mean, just look at this list.
Speaker 2: So young Asians, he's winning eighty nine percent of them.
Speaker 2: Men eighteen to thirty four, a key demographic group that
Speaker 2: Democrats did not do so hot with in the general election.
Speaker 2: He's winning eighty five percent of them, young women seventy
Speaker 2: nine percent, overall ages twenty five to seventy nine percent.
Speaker 2: You can just go down this list. A couple more
Speaker 2: that I just want to highlight here Jews age eighteen
Speaker 2: to forty four, he is winning sixty seven percent of
Speaker 2: young Jewish voters. Overall Jewish voters, okay, forty three percent,
Speaker 2: which is much larger by you know, by double digits.
Speaker 4: That's a lot of anti Semitic Jews.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, but that he wins the plurality of Jews,
Speaker 2: and it's not close, it's by double digits. So you know,
Speaker 2: we really need to put to bed this idea that
Speaker 2: he constantly is getting HARANGI, Oh, you have work to
Speaker 2: do with the Jewish community and you need to talk
Speaker 2: to them, and you're going to make Jews unsafe, blah
Speaker 2: blah blah. Well, if somebody needs to ask Andrew Cuomo
Speaker 2: why Jewish voters apparently don't trust him and why he's
Speaker 2: got so much work to do apparently with the Jewish community,
Speaker 2: since he is losing now to Zoron among those groups,
Speaker 2: and according to Cuomo's numbers, lost Jewish voters in the primary.
Speaker 2: Majority of them, according to Cuomo, voted for Zoron in
Speaker 2: the primary as well. So you know, frankly, it's anti
Speaker 2: semitic to project onto Jewish voters that they all have
Speaker 2: this one monolichlithic view that they are all on board
Speaker 2: with Israel committing a genocide in the Gaza strip and
Speaker 2: that this is a top priority and top issue for
Speaker 2: them is like how many times you're going to visit
Speaker 2: Israel and how much you love Benjamin Ntt Yahoo. This
Speaker 2: is just thoroughly debunked and honestly a disgusting view of
Speaker 2: the electorate.
Speaker 5: Can we just put the graphic up on the screen
Speaker 5: one more time? Sorry, There's there's one that caught my
Speaker 5: eye that I wanted to point out.
Speaker 6: The last one.
Speaker 5: Check a check out Curtis leiwa there, Crystal forty percent
Speaker 5: of Staten Island.
Speaker 2: Yeah, white Catholics, Staten Island, white union household is interesting
Speaker 2: and white non college that's his strength.
Speaker 5: Absolutely crushing it on Staten Island. Sorry, I had to
Speaker 5: point that one out.
Speaker 7: I saw.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I also, I think this chart is so important
Speaker 2: because it just completely exposes the lie of the idea
Speaker 2: that oh Zorn's just winning like affluent white socialists in Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: That's a good point, Like, look at this list. You know,
Speaker 2: it's it's overwhelming. I he's winning black women fifty one
Speaker 2: percent of the all of the you know, the caricature
Speaker 2: of where his appeal is is very much debunked by
Speaker 2: this chart showing where he's strongest, which is like basically everywhere.
Speaker 5: Yeah, forty three percent of non college Yeah, I think
Speaker 5: one hundred and one hundred ninety nine household income. That's
Speaker 5: fifty three percent, fifty to ninety nine. He's at fifty
Speaker 5: three percent of household income. So I think that is
Speaker 5: a really good point as well, Crystal. Sample sizes, I
Speaker 5: will say, in that pool are pretty small, it even
Speaker 5: says down there on the screen. Results should be treated
Speaker 5: as directional.
Speaker 4: But we'll see.
Speaker 5: More in the days to come, and certainly some of
Speaker 5: this matches up with what we saw from results after
Speaker 5: the primary. Let's go ahead and put C four on
Speaker 5: the screen. This is I think it's actually even from
Speaker 5: the same poll, isn't it, Crystal the data for Progress.
Speaker 5: This is New York City Democratic primary voters believe Israel
Speaker 5: is committing genocide in Gaza, all likely voters, that is
Speaker 5: at seventy eight percent, and only thirteen percent say no,
Speaker 5: nine percent say don't know. So if you are interested
Speaker 5: in why Cuomo's approach during the primary failed dramatically, this
Speaker 5: pole makes that pretty clear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we've got another one in the same vein
Speaker 2: about Netanya Who. So it's Zorn's position, which I fully support,
Speaker 2: that if Netanna Who comes to New York City, he
Speaker 2: should be arrested because there's an outstanding international criminal court
Speaker 2: arrest for it against him for being an alleged war criminal.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's alleged, but whatever. Yeah, New York
Speaker 2: voters are on board with that too. Sixty three percent
Speaker 2: of Democratic peorrimory voters were like, yes, actually you should
Speaker 2: arrest Benjamin Natna who in only twenty percent say no.
Speaker 2: The other sixteen percent say they are not sure. Just
Speaker 2: to give you a sense of on what sala solid
Speaker 2: ground he was on with all of his positions, which
Speaker 2: again his opponents really made central to the race. He
Speaker 2: made cost of living central to the campaign he was running,
Speaker 2: but his opponents were bound and determined to put these
Speaker 2: issues at the center of the race, and only I
Speaker 2: think aided him in securing a crushing primary victory. But
Speaker 2: don't worry, Emily, his adversaries not given up. We can
Speaker 2: put C five up on the screen. We have a
Speaker 2: new you know, billionaire to multimillionaire effort to try to
Speaker 2: defeat Zoron in the general election. You've got a new
Speaker 2: anti mom Donnie super Pac forming a Hedge funder and
Speaker 2: Trump voter, pledged five hundred thousand of his own cash.
Speaker 2: If you want to join his zoom call on how
Speaker 2: to stop Zoron, you will need to pay at least
Speaker 2: twenty five thousand dollars is the price of admission to
Speaker 2: this must be the greatest zoom call of all time.
Speaker 2: But in this you know, in this polling that just
Speaker 2: came out, even if all the even if everybody drops
Speaker 2: out except Cuomo, who appears to be his strongest head
Speaker 2: to head opponent in the general election, you still have
Speaker 2: in this poll Zoron winning by twelve points, which coincidentally
Speaker 2: is exactly what you want the primary buy as well.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's just utterly absurd at this point,
Speaker 2: and really discussing that Chuck Schumer Keem Jeffries can't bother
Speaker 2: to endorse the Democratic nominee who has much higher favorability
Speaker 2: ratings that either one of them do in New York. Actually,
Speaker 2: the only candidate, the only politician has higher approval rating
Speaker 2: in New York than Zoron is AOC. And they think that, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, they just because they're worried about their donors,
Speaker 2: and they don't like his position on Israel. They refuse
Speaker 2: to endorse the Democratic nominee. And you know, I think
Speaker 2: it is only hastening the decline and exposing the hypocrisy
Speaker 2: and the distance between democratic leadership and where the democratic
Speaker 2: base is at this point.
Speaker 5: So I believe on Dami this is the last thing
Speaker 5: I'll say is on his way back from Uganda, and
Speaker 5: there has been some talk in Maga circles that the
Speaker 5: administration should detain him on his way back. That's something
Speaker 5: we have seen happen in a couple of cases of
Speaker 5: the first six months the Trump administration to people who
Speaker 5: have been critical of US foreign policy, particularly when it
Speaker 5: comes to Israel. So that's just something to watch today, Crystal,
Speaker 5: I don't know if that was on your radar, but
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure that's been discussed. So we'll keep everybody
Speaker 5: updated with any news we hear on that.
Speaker 2: Well, it would both be obviously outrageous and go to
Speaker 2: ask if they did that, and also just a massive
Speaker 2: boost too Zorn and his campaign.
Speaker 6: It would be a lot closely.
Speaker 5: It would be so like politically foolish of them to
Speaker 5: do so.
Speaker 4: Anyway, we will see.
Speaker 5: Let's move on to Crypto Crystal Republicans making a big
Speaker 5: push to just boost the crypto industry before heading on
Speaker 5: in August Recess. Nothing more important to do, So we
Speaker 5: will be joined by Peter Ryan shortly. Well, we're happy
Speaker 5: to be joined now by Peter Ryan. He's the CEO
Speaker 5: and founder of Ryan Research, and he has been on
Speaker 5: a bit of a journey when it comes to crypto.
Speaker 4: Peter has been in the space.
Speaker 5: He's going to tell us all about this for a
Speaker 5: long time. Came to sour on crypto, wrote an excellent essay.
Speaker 5: This is the first element we can go ahead and
Speaker 5: put up on the screen for Compact magazine recently that
Speaker 5: I cannot recommend to people enough, especially if you're sort
Speaker 5: of crypto curious. There's a lot of great explainer details
Speaker 5: in this piece, and it's just it's a really really
Speaker 5: helpful kind of glimpse inside of the industry that goes
Speaker 5: into granular details.
Speaker 4: So Peter, thank you so much for being here. We
Speaker 4: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Also has a fantastic headline there, money by vile means.
Speaker 8: Yes, thanks for having me for the Shakespeare buffs out there.
Speaker 7: That's where that line is from.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, of course, so tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: and people can read more about this in the essay.
Speaker 5: But you have such an interesting background in the crypto space,
Speaker 5: and right now, Republicans, this is the so called news
Speaker 5: hook that we want to talk about, made a big
Speaker 5: push with the Genius Act before they headed out for
Speaker 5: August research at Recess, and people right now are kind
Speaker 5: of trying to figure out what it means for the industry.
Speaker 5: The industry was pretty supportive of the Genius Act, although
Speaker 5: there were some controversy about it, but it regulates stable coins. So, Peter,
Speaker 5: we'll get in all of that. Let's start with your
Speaker 5: background as somebody who was initially in the thrall of
Speaker 5: crypto's promise to decentralize the monetary system and came to
Speaker 5: sour on it.
Speaker 4: What was that process like for you?
Speaker 8: Yeah, so I got into bitcoin in twenty thirteen. It
Speaker 8: was some of the early crazy days. It really attracted
Speaker 8: me because I was sort of part of this generation
Speaker 8: of the Ron Paul movement and its response to the
Speaker 8: financial crisis that occurred in two thousand and eight, and
Speaker 8: bitcoin seemed like this great way to marry the private
Speaker 8: sector with all these Austrian economic beliefs and so that's
Speaker 8: how it was sold in Many of the early bitcoiners
Speaker 8: were these idealists. But as time went on and I
Speaker 8: started to work in depth inside the industry, I met
Speaker 8: a lot of the big players. I saw a different
Speaker 8: historical events transpire that would reveal some of the inner
Speaker 8: workings of how this market operated. From there, after being
Speaker 8: employed as a research analyst with Coindesk, I started to
Speaker 8: doubt some of these idealistic tenets. And then in about
Speaker 8: twenty nineteen, I really came full circle and saw a
Speaker 8: lot of what was sold in twenty thirteen to me,
Speaker 8: just did not cut the mustard. It wasn't true. History
Speaker 8: proved it was not true. And so ever since then,
Speaker 8: I've been an independent consultant talking about my skepticism on Bitcoin,
Speaker 8: on crypto in general, and more recently the very specific
Speaker 8: and unique role of stable coins in the government's policy.
Speaker 2: I want to get more to stable coins because that's
Speaker 2: a very important piece and ties into the quote unquote
Speaker 2: Genius Act that just passed. But you wrote in your piece,
Speaker 2: when bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was invented, it was promoted
Speaker 2: as a financial technology that would empower individuals and wrest
Speaker 2: power away from the state and centralized elites. Just a
Speaker 2: decade and a half later, those same elites, including the
Speaker 2: Trump administration and bipart of some majorities in Congress, have
Speaker 2: embraced cryptocurrencies. But this is because rather than lifting up
Speaker 2: ordinary citizens, crypto has become a new means of expanding
Speaker 2: elite power and wealth. Can you elaborate some on that
Speaker 2: for us, Peter, sure.
Speaker 8: So what you have to understand is that the reason
Speaker 8: the government is attracted to crypto and bitcoin right now
Speaker 8: is because it helps government. Yep, that's sort of a
Speaker 8: pretty obvious point, but a lot of people aren't so.
Speaker 4: Clear on that, Peter, can you speak to as well?
Speaker 5: It helps government and helps big business right exactly.
Speaker 8: So a way to sum this up is that the
Speaker 8: cryptocurrency system, with all these coins with stable coins at
Speaker 8: the heart of it, they are a shadow central bank
Speaker 8: system conducting shadow money printing to do shadow debt monetization
Speaker 8: and shadow quantitative easing. So that's the shortest way I
Speaker 8: can describe it. What that means is essentially, there is
Speaker 8: all this paper value being generated in the crypto markets,
Speaker 8: and as that paper value keeps going up, as that
Speaker 8: asset inflation keeps going up, that allows the froth to
Speaker 8: spill over and very specifically start buying US debt as
Speaker 8: the rest of the world enters its multipolar phase and
Speaker 8: stops buying US debt. So this is why stable coins,
Speaker 8: where they need to be backed by US debt in
Speaker 8: order to operate, are now a bigger holder of US
Speaker 8: debt than countries like Germany. And then as we get
Speaker 8: into the private sector, all of this frauth that's coming
Speaker 8: out is actually starting to enter the private sector, enter equities,
Speaker 8: and that's going to create a knock on effect that's
Speaker 8: going to start pushing that up. So basically, the crypto
Speaker 8: sector wins, the government wins, and the traditional incumbent corporate
Speaker 8: elites win through this big triangular system.
Speaker 5: So this, obviously this leads us to the question of
Speaker 5: how you have still so many true believers in the
Speaker 5: crypto space, people who haven't been on the journey but
Speaker 5: started from the point a that you started on and
Speaker 5: are still there who continue. I did see some criticism
Speaker 5: of Genius and some of the other legislation that's been
Speaker 5: considered by Republicans in particular from that kind of true
Speaker 5: believer crowd who are worried about central bank digital currency
Speaker 5: and all of that. But you have people, I think
Speaker 5: of the Winklevoss guys who are like libertarian ish, and
Speaker 5: maybe they're not the best example because they aren't like
Speaker 5: from the libertarian kind of crunchy world that came out
Speaker 5: of the Ron Paul twenty twelve, of the movement in particular.
Speaker 4: But there are true believers still in the.
Speaker 5: Space who continue to believe that crypto is a benefit
Speaker 5: when it comes to decentralization and when it comes to
Speaker 5: undermining globalism and all of that. So can you tell
Speaker 5: us more about why people you think, you know, people
Speaker 5: you've spent time around, are still kind of clinging to
Speaker 5: that in the face of which just seems so obvious
Speaker 5: to be a centralization effort. And maybe even also if
Speaker 5: you're aware of some fissures in the movement as well,
Speaker 5: that you could fill us in on.
Speaker 8: Sure, So this is where the technology, the sense of mechanics, innovation,
Speaker 8: anything like that is really not what's causing those true
Speaker 8: believers to stay in the bitcoin camp. I think it's
Speaker 8: more exactly that it's belief. I think Jannis Veri Faccus,
Speaker 8: the Greek economists, put it best when he talked about
Speaker 8: how class caliberalism and neoliberals in centered the market as
Speaker 8: this divinity. And then, as he's written more recently in
Speaker 8: his new Conception of that, which is like techno lordism,
Speaker 8: he says, that's transition from the market to the algorithm
Speaker 8: to the code, and that's the new divinity.
Speaker 7: And I think that's what's.
Speaker 8: Going on here, that people are trying to externalize what
Speaker 8: is ultimately a democratic process to shape society in the
Speaker 8: way that the majority of voters would like it to be.
Speaker 8: But instead of doing that the hard and very direct way,
Speaker 8: it's this sense of externalizing the problem into these things, Well,
Speaker 8: the market will fix it or the algorithm will fix it.
Speaker 8: So I think that is that is really inherently baked
Speaker 8: into the bitcoin thesis, and that's why people can't really
Speaker 8: break out of that.
Speaker 2: I'd like for you to talk a little bit more
Speaker 2: about that, because I'm sort of fascinated by I mean,
Speaker 2: it is almost like a religious devotion. You know, there's
Speaker 2: like a cult like aspect to people who are those
Speaker 2: like Dinamal true believers, and you were one of those people,
Speaker 2: so I'm curious. You know, it's very hard when someone
Speaker 2: has sort of like this, you know, this ideal, this
Speaker 2: ideology they've committed themselves to, They've you know, like committed
Speaker 2: to it personally. There may be financial aspects, assets at stake,
Speaker 2: et cetera. What was like the first piece of information
Speaker 2: that for you was like wait a second. That started
Speaker 2: you on the trajectory away from thinking that this was,
Speaker 2: you know, some sort of solution and that it would
Speaker 2: actually empower people and is serving in exactly the opposite capacity.
Speaker 7: Sure.
Speaker 8: So one way that this divinity of the code starts
Speaker 8: to come into play is how people always talk about
Speaker 8: big coins a hard asset. It has a fixed supply,
Speaker 8: it's twenty one million coins, it's capped, it's like gold.
Speaker 8: So people always talk about that, but no one really
Speaker 8: asked the follow up question. And so I started to
Speaker 8: ask some of these follow up questions, which in the
Speaker 8: end seem very simple, but it's like, why is that
Speaker 8: the case? Please demonstrate how that maintains the case. Because
Speaker 8: gold is something you have to dig out of the ground.
Speaker 8: But bitcoin is a software and as anybody could tell you, humans,
Speaker 8: right software, Humans also have to update software.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and so.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, And so once you start thinking that, then
Speaker 8: you immediately start to go, well, who are these humans, Like,
Speaker 8: does anyone care, like who these people operating this huge
Speaker 8: asset in our economy now that's becoming so interdependent, and
Speaker 8: no one seems to really want to broadcast that examination.
Speaker 8: But like, if I were to just show you a
Speaker 8: little stat here, like would it be surprising that only
Speaker 8: forty two software developers have written ninety percent of Bitcoin's code,
Speaker 8: And there's about five software developers give or take on
Speaker 8: the year that have sort of administrative privileges on top
Speaker 8: of bitcoins.
Speaker 7: And we can monitor these.
Speaker 8: People, we can identify them, we can see what they're
Speaker 8: chatting about, but no one wants to sort of comment
Speaker 8: on this. But if we start to look into it,
Speaker 8: then we can see, oh, well, this property of fixed
Speaker 8: supply is only a subjective whim of this something that
Speaker 8: looks to me like almost a central bank committee of
Speaker 8: software developers deciding what their monetary policy is on bitcoin.
Speaker 8: So you could say, maybe they choose the fixed supply
Speaker 8: and that's good monetary policy, that that does not change
Speaker 8: the fact that there is centralization going.
Speaker 5: On there, and also globalization, which lends itself to centralization
Speaker 5: in a high tech age. And this is Peter one
Speaker 5: of the questions I always have for people in the
Speaker 5: crypto space because I'm not, you know, somebody who's like
Speaker 5: super super deep in the details. I'm not like major investor.
Speaker 5: I'm not doing code, I'm not doing any of that stuff.
Speaker 5: But I have never understood how structurally crypto can exist
Speaker 5: with any regulation in a way that is utopian or
Speaker 5: I don't mean that in a pejorative sense, in a
Speaker 5: way that's true to the spirit that I'm totally sympathetic
Speaker 5: too and supportive of decentralization. So when I see someone
Speaker 5: like Cynthia Alumus, Republican Senator, has been very, very supportive
Speaker 5: of crypto over the years, going to these conferences and
Speaker 5: being met and lauded and praised by people in that space,
Speaker 5: I just am curious, structurally, if we steal man this,
Speaker 5: is there actually a way, in a fantasy, hypothetical scenario
Speaker 5: where crypto could exist in the year of Our Lord
Speaker 5: twenty twenty five, in the twenty first century in a
Speaker 5: way that is not with any regulation, in a way
Speaker 5: that maintains the spirit of decentralization, Because that to me
Speaker 5: just seems impossible on its face. But I don't know, like,
Speaker 5: is it possible to regulate crypto and also have crypto
Speaker 5: be decentralizing force just I don't get it.
Speaker 8: So there's a theoretical argument that academics can have on
Speaker 8: the core concept of peer to peer technology. Now, when
Speaker 8: you look at the academic literature and the case studies involved,
Speaker 8: usually small scale peer to peer technology works. But the
Speaker 8: challenge is when you scale it. This is where the
Speaker 8: problems of centralization come in. Now, when you combine that
Speaker 8: with money and saturating people's financial transactions, incorporating into state
Speaker 8: institutions like the Treasury and so forth, that's even a
Speaker 8: harder problem to try to figure out. So and even
Speaker 8: in the structural ways that bitcoin's designed, a lot of
Speaker 8: people say that, oh, well, it's it's censorship resistant, it's decentralized.
Speaker 8: You can just transact and send money anywhere you want.
Speaker 8: But there are middleman in bitcoin, the miners in bitcoin,
Speaker 8: those really power hungry server farms out there. Those are
Speaker 8: the middlemum of bitcoin, and they're the ones that get
Speaker 8: your transactions and decide if they're going to process them
Speaker 8: on the blockchain or not. And we've already have documented
Speaker 8: examples of these miners complying with the Treasury's O fact standards.
Speaker 8: To sanction and blacklist certain bitcoin addresses, and there's even
Speaker 8: more advanced ways to do that that are too long
Speaker 8: to get into.
Speaker 7: But this is.
Speaker 8: Where we've already been through the looking glass year. A
Speaker 8: company like Mahra has championed this idea of being compliant
Speaker 8: with the OPAC standards in the mining industry and goes
Speaker 8: on to say their CEO, I believe that the way
Speaker 8: for the US to increase its share of bitcoin miners
Speaker 8: is that the US spased bitcoin point miners need to
Speaker 8: be more compliant to OFAC. So it really gets into
Speaker 8: this catch Trowny two that as the US grows it's
Speaker 8: bitcoin industry in wider crypto industry, it keeps diminishing those
Speaker 8: ideals of decentralization. So I would say it's a very
Speaker 8: hard nut to crack. But where we get into now
Speaker 8: with this legislation coming forward and how we've accepted that
Speaker 8: crypto is now a normal part of our economy. Where
Speaker 8: I look at that, it's not innovation, it's not a
Speaker 8: new product or surf that's really adding value. What's going
Speaker 8: on is we have two financial systems to financial infrastructures.
Speaker 8: One is the traditional one with all the regulations and
Speaker 8: that would have been a real fight to try to
Speaker 8: deregulate that. But why go through the pain of doing
Speaker 8: that when you can just open up a parallel system
Speaker 8: with all the deregulation, and then when you combine them
Speaker 8: and aggregate, the net is that you have a more
Speaker 8: deregulated financial system. So that's really the trick going on here.
Speaker 2: Well, and that leads to my final question, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, are we looking at some sort of a
Speaker 2: crypto crypto bubble bursting and taxpayers being on the hook
Speaker 2: for a big crypto bailout given that there's no longer
Speaker 2: this no longer separate ecosystem. This is completely mainstreamed within
Speaker 2: our financial institutions. In President of the United States obviously
Speaker 2: like you know himself benefiting to the tune of millions,
Speaker 2: if not billions of dollars from the crypto industry. So,
Speaker 2: I mean, does that seem to you like where we're headed?
Speaker 7: It is very likely.
Speaker 8: I have suggested that this strategy of pumping up the
Speaker 8: crypto markets has a short term logic to it, But
Speaker 8: like all bubbles, all bubbles have a short term logic.
Speaker 8: They go up, that's the nature of bubbles. Yeah, so
Speaker 8: it's no one can ever predict the exact time when
Speaker 8: a bubble will pop. But it seems like once we
Speaker 8: get outside of you know, the five to ten year horizon,
Speaker 8: that's where the wheels come off. And let's compare this
Speaker 8: to the housing bubble, there was at least an argument
Speaker 8: there was a physical house.
Speaker 7: You know, there was a rationale to.
Speaker 8: Why the value could keep going up and why there
Speaker 8: was fundamental value underlying it. With this, we almost have
Speaker 8: a parody where these are completely digital, fictitious casino tokens practically,
Speaker 8: and they're making up more and more nominal value. And
Speaker 8: when these things pop, you know, there's nothing underlying it.
Speaker 8: And so what ends up happening is we just start
Speaker 8: piling more and more risk into this type of asset
Speaker 8: class and making it, you know, collateralized to traditional transactions
Speaker 8: that we do in the economy. If you start looking
Speaker 8: into how mortgages are starting to accept these as collateral
Speaker 8: and so forth another way, and so once that keeps
Speaker 8: getting saturated, now this asset class, which is you know,
Speaker 8: no one would think it's crazy for this thing to
Speaker 8: like go down fifty percent in a day, even with
Speaker 8: the stable coins that are supposed to be the safest
Speaker 8: thing there. Traditionally, we've seen a lot of allegations that
Speaker 8: they don't actually back their coins with one to one reserves,
Speaker 8: which is what they say they are doing. The New
Speaker 8: York AG actually said this in twenty nineteen about one
Speaker 8: of the major stable coins. She said they lied, She
Speaker 8: said that they did not have the reserves. They said
Speaker 8: their lawyers had to admit it, and they ultimately settled
Speaker 8: with the New York AG. And so like this has
Speaker 8: all been documented. We have cases where the market has
Speaker 8: found this out, has broken the peg on the stable coins,
Speaker 8: we have legal sources that have proven this the case,
Speaker 8: like the New York AG, and we just have our
Speaker 8: sort of other historical examples of cryptogaling pop. So the
Speaker 8: fact that it's going to be bigger than all past
Speaker 8: bubbles of crypto in the past doesn't really negate the
Speaker 8: fact that there is no underlying value.
Speaker 7: This stuff is very risky.
Speaker 8: There are multiple vectors where this thing could have a problem.
Speaker 8: Whether it's on the technical side, there could just be
Speaker 8: a bug that sends everything down, so very very unsavory prospects.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the value to the extent that there
Speaker 5: is values of it being peer to peer and decentralized
Speaker 5: and that goes away. And so I guess my last
Speaker 5: question for you, Peter, as we're wrapping this up.
Speaker 4: Is do you think there will be more people?
Speaker 5: Because you know people in the space, and I know
Speaker 5: many people in this space and people that I really
Speaker 5: like and totally sympathetic to, like Ron Paul type people.
Speaker 5: Do you think there will be people in the space
Speaker 5: that come away with your perspective soon? Do you think
Speaker 5: maybe we're in like a heightened the contradiction phase postgenious
Speaker 5: Act and regulation that might be coming from this Republican
Speaker 5: administration where others start to get really worried, or do
Speaker 5: you think everything is so attractive and appealing right now
Speaker 5: that it's just kind of going to be pedaled to
Speaker 5: the medal for the next year or so.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think it's hard to distract people from the
Speaker 8: gloss of a bubble. They're certainly going to be momentum
Speaker 8: piling in now with this legislation. There's a lot of
Speaker 8: business institutions that want to incorporate this, get old people
Speaker 8: to put their retirement and get young people that are
Speaker 8: busy sports gambling to do more crypto gambling. So there's
Speaker 8: momentum here, But I think in terms of the early bitcoiners,
Speaker 8: a lot of them would actually be sympathetic to my
Speaker 8: point of view, even though they might not go all
Speaker 8: the way that I have. I'll reference one individual. He's
Speaker 8: the editor in chief of Bitcoin magazine, Mark Goodwin. He
Speaker 8: wrote the book The Bitcoin Dollar. We generally agree about
Speaker 8: eighty to ninety percent on all of these problems and criticisms.
Speaker 7: So I would say, right there, if.
Speaker 8: The editor in chief of Bitcoin magazine, who's like a
Speaker 8: real hardcore bitcoiner, has these very similar opinions and sympathetic
Speaker 8: to the way I see it, you know, that's probably
Speaker 8: saying something. As another little citation here, when I released
Speaker 8: this compact article, the founder of the Peer to Peer Foundation,
Speaker 8: which included a forum which actually was the place Satoshi
Speaker 8: Nakamato first announced his white paper introducing bitcoins to the world,
Speaker 8: the founder of that actually endorsed my compact article saying
Speaker 8: this was actually very legitimate and valid criticisms. So I
Speaker 8: would say, when with those two sympathizers from the early days,
Speaker 8: it's hard to make a claim that this is that
Speaker 8: outside the norm. But there's a lot of people, newer
Speaker 8: faces and maybe people with you know, more dollar signs
Speaker 8: in their eyes, not so much Bitcoin signs that are
Speaker 8: looking forward to this current bubble momentum.
Speaker 4: Fascinating.
Speaker 5: Peter Ryan and Ryan Research, thank you for taking the
Speaker 5: time to talk to us about this piece. Thank you
Speaker 5: for writing the piece. We hope to have you back,
Speaker 5: appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Great to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 2: So emily much anticipated section of our show here. Sidney
Speaker 2: Sweeney is the new face of American Eagle, the you know,
Speaker 2: sort of iconic mall brand, and her ad campaign has
Speaker 2: sparked quite a bit of discussion and controversy on the
Speaker 2: Internet that we wanted to dig into.
Speaker 6: So first let's take.
Speaker 2: A look at the ad that was the most controversial.
Speaker 2: Jans are passed on from parents to offspring, often determining
Speaker 2: traits like her color, personality, and you have an eye color.
Speaker 6: My jeans are blue.
Speaker 5: Sidney Sweeney hasburg keens.
Speaker 2: So you see what they did there with the like
Speaker 2: hereditary gens blue jeans.
Speaker 4: At the ad.
Speaker 5: The end of the ad ends with her saying, see
Speaker 5: what I did there?
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, yeah, as if we didn't if we didn't
Speaker 2: get it. So a lot of people are looking at
Speaker 2: this myself, including and going this feels a little like
Speaker 2: eugenics adjacent, and you know, the whole like the gene talk,
Speaker 2: the blue eyes in particular, it's got a real sort
Speaker 2: of master race vibe. And of course many people, i'm
Speaker 2: sure yourself included, be like, you're ridiculous and you have
Speaker 2: derangement syndrome, et cetera. But my case to you, Emily
Speaker 2: would be, I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: American Eagle is like a bunch of secret or open
Speaker 2: fascist and Nazis. They are capitalists though, and they're looking
Speaker 2: at the culture. They realize that paid advertisements really don't
Speaker 2: do a whole hell of a lot of good at
Speaker 2: this point if they don't come with eyeballs and attention
Speaker 2: and controversy. So this is the thing to touch on,
Speaker 2: to play with, and the moment to get a reaction,
Speaker 2: which they got. And so that's my I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not even I think this is just like correct and
Speaker 2: accurate that they knew this would spark this sort of
Speaker 2: discussion and controversy. They gave just enough of a nod
Speaker 2: to like sort of eugenics racy Q kind of type
Speaker 2: of content to have plausible deniability, and then they delighted
Speaker 2: in the fervor and the attention around the ad campaign
Speaker 2: based on sort of touching on that, you know, like
Speaker 2: correctly taboo subject.
Speaker 5: So it's hard to it's very hard to ignore when
Speaker 5: they're panning the camera and saying that Sidney Sweeney in
Speaker 5: the script is saying that her genes are blue and
Speaker 5: they have it on her blue eyes. I think Crystal,
Speaker 5: my case would be that you were overestimating the competence
Speaker 5: of people in the advertising industry and an American eagle
Speaker 5: who might have, let's say, cynically said it would be
Speaker 5: a real boost to our Sidney Sweeney ad campaign to
Speaker 5: do a little wink and nod to white supremacy in
Speaker 5: the gene marketing campaign that you know, we'll generate all
Speaker 5: kinds of media height by doing like a wink wink
Speaker 5: white supremacy like undertone to the Sydney Sweeney ad. So
Speaker 5: I think what this speaks to is, well, first of all,
Speaker 5: I don't think Sidney Sweeney's people if they saw this
Speaker 5: as being anywhere in the vein of white supremacy. Although
Speaker 5: she's sort of become this interesting flashpoint and it's sort
Speaker 5: of like people are polarizing politically around the question of
Speaker 5: Sidney Sweeney, whereas like people on the left are saying,
Speaker 5: she's like a clear canary in the coal mine for
Speaker 5: the rise of fascism, and people on the right are saying,
Speaker 5: some people on the far far front saying, yes, exactly,
Speaker 5: this is why we love Sydney. People on the right
Speaker 5: are saying, what the hell are you talking about. She's
Speaker 5: just super good looking and wearing an all American brand,
Speaker 5: which is where I think I fall into. But I
Speaker 5: don't think if this was if this was intentional Sydney's,
Speaker 5: Sweeney's people got taken for a ride. I have a
Speaker 5: hard time believing that somebody like Sidney Sweeney would intentionally
Speaker 5: be part of a covert white supremacy campaign to generate clicks.
Speaker 5: And I just, I genuinely don't think there's any like
Speaker 5: I get what you're saying about the buzz that you
Speaker 5: can generate by doing a sort of like intentional Kendall
Speaker 5: Jenner Pepsi's situation, But I also don't think that it
Speaker 5: would be to any brand they would say the cost
Speaker 5: benefit analysis of being linked in with literal eugenesis.
Speaker 6: Well premise.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the the flaw in your analysis
Speaker 2: is that it ignores how sort of mainstreamed this stuff
Speaker 2: has become. I mean you've literally got you have a
Speaker 2: you know, a town, an all white town being founded
Speaker 2: in Arkansas as we speak, where they explicitly say it's
Speaker 2: whites only, and we believe we have freedom of association
Speaker 2: and so we can keep black and brown people out.
Speaker 6: We have s Miller fringe.
Speaker 4: Steven Miller's not the French Miller.
Speaker 2: Stevin Miller is not the fringe. Who is you know,
Speaker 2: running vast portfolio in the government, including you know, very
Speaker 2: like eugenics inspired immigration policy.
Speaker 6: Who and who but who?
Speaker 2: Trump himself says like, this guy is basically a white nationalist.
Speaker 2: I mean he's you know, that's that's who he is.
Speaker 2: I think it's pretty hard to deny that's who he is.
Speaker 2: And then you've got you know, this isn't emblematic of
Speaker 2: like every young Republican, but you have this very increasingly
Speaker 2: like empowered and influential fringe that you know, are in
Speaker 2: like the Raper movement and are the type of people
Speaker 2: who went on Jubilee and probably like declared himself a
Speaker 2: fascist and whatever. You have the New York Times getting
Speaker 2: scoops from this race. IQ you know online race IQ dude.
Speaker 4: So this is.
Speaker 6: Quite mainstreamed in the culture.
Speaker 2: And you know, it like for me, harkens back a
Speaker 2: little bit to the obviously neither of us were alive
Speaker 2: at this time, but the way that Madison Avenue glommed
Speaker 2: onto the like sixties counterculture movement and appropriated that to
Speaker 2: sell coke and mainstream brands, et cetera. And so you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think it takes a rocket scientist for a
Speaker 2: cynical ad ezac who's just out there looking, Okay, how
Speaker 2: can we get attention to our brand and sell some
Speaker 2: blue jeens to go, well, this is the thing that's
Speaker 2: out there in the culture right now. This is the
Speaker 2: thing that's like the you know, transgressive hot button to
Speaker 2: push to stoke controversy. And I just don't know why
Speaker 2: else you're talking about genetics in a blue gene ad
Speaker 2: if you're not intentionally trying to push that button. And
Speaker 2: to the point about Sydney herself, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't have any like particular grudge about
Speaker 2: against Sydney Sweeney. I know there was like a lot
Speaker 2: of discussion about her boobs on SNL or something that
Speaker 2: I never really totally understood, but we can put you know,
Speaker 2: one of the people who was involved in this ad
Speaker 2: campaign posted delighted in the success of the campaign. She says, specifically,
Speaker 2: during a Zoom call with Sidney, we asked the question,
Speaker 2: how far do you want to push it? With that hesitation,
Speaker 2: she smirked and said, let's push it.
Speaker 6: I'm game.
Speaker 2: Our response challenge accepted. So in any case, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's like crazy to imagine that. She
Speaker 2: also was like, yeah, sure, let's play into this controversy
Speaker 2: and create a lot of attention for ourselves. And you know,
Speaker 2: it'll be great for me, it'll be great for the company.
Speaker 2: The stock price is up, et cetera. So that's to me,
Speaker 2: like pretty clearly what's going on here. And I don't,
Speaker 2: you know, as someone who is very opposed to eugenics
Speaker 2: and very disturbed by its mainstreaming and how increasingly like
Speaker 2: openly accepted and disgusted is et cetera, Like, I'm not
Speaker 2: sure what the right way is to react to something
Speaker 2: like this that does, in my view, intentionally try to
Speaker 2: like play with those themes, because what they wanted is
Speaker 2: the attention of the controversy. But then are you just
Speaker 2: supposed to like not say anything. When these sorts of
Speaker 2: things and themes are being mainstreamed in the culture, it's
Speaker 2: to me, it's like a catch twenty two.
Speaker 5: So I interpreted the Sidney Sweeney has great genes LinkedIn
Speaker 5: posts we're really going deep on this that we just
Speaker 5: had up on the screen, this would be my counterpoint.
Speaker 5: I interpreted that as Sidney Sweeney's sort of controversy for
Speaker 5: a long time has been whether or not she's mid,
Speaker 5: which is just a ridiculous controversy. She's beautiful, but the
Speaker 5: like that's been the thing about Sidney Sweeney that everybody's like, oh,
Speaker 5: she's mid. People like her because she has you know,
Speaker 5: fill in the blank. And that's where you know, the
Speaker 5: entire appeal of Sidney Sweeney is wrapped up in And
Speaker 5: so I think what they're talking about when they say
Speaker 5: they're kind of going down the hammers panning down Sidney
Speaker 5: Sweeney's full body, is her saying like, that's why they're
Speaker 5: talking about genes in a j E.
Speaker 4: A ns ad is like, Sidney Sweeney is actually.
Speaker 5: Pretty pretty hot, and Sidney Sweeney is willing to take
Speaker 5: you up on this conversation about whether or not, she's
Speaker 5: mid and she's willing to just like kind of bear
Speaker 5: it all even if she's clad in gene So that's
Speaker 5: my interpretation of what they say they're like being quote
Speaker 5: unquote cheeky about in the ad, is that I still
Speaker 5: think that a mainstream brand wanting to be affiliated with
Speaker 5: white supremacy or eugenicism. As much as I do share
Speaker 5: your concerns about seeing people like Nick Quentas go massively
Speaker 5: viral and have whatever pole he has with gen Z,
Speaker 5: as much as I genuinely share those concerns and also
Speaker 5: share the concerns about eugenicism when you look at what's
Speaker 5: happened and this is probably something that we disagree on,
Speaker 5: but if you look at what's happened in places like Iceland,
Speaker 5: for example, where they use new you know, testing technology
Speaker 5: on unborn kids and basically get rid of down syndrome, Like,
Speaker 5: I actually think that eugenics is a serious question that
Speaker 5: confronts US as a society right now. But yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 5: like I don't disagree with that, I share that, I
Speaker 5: still just think it's far fetched that a mainstream American
Speaker 5: brand would want to eagerly affiliate itself, even if it's
Speaker 5: just to create buzz with white supremacy or eugenics or
Speaker 5: neo Nazism, as some people have said.
Speaker 4: They have the eagle in the brand.
Speaker 5: And to you know, be talking intentionally about Aran Jenes
Speaker 5: in an ad goes right along with the quote American
Speaker 5: eagle in their title and logo.
Speaker 6: I just think it's all very far.
Speaker 2: I take it that far, okay, just to be clear,
Speaker 2: that didn't even occur to me, But now I'm going
Speaker 2: to think about it now. I mean, look at I mean,
Speaker 2: paid advertising campaigns don't really get you very far these
Speaker 2: days because people can click off, you can fast forward
Speaker 2: through your watching things. I mean, it's just like very
Speaker 2: hard to get people to pay attention to your brand.
Speaker 2: So what better to get you attention than a beautiful
Speaker 2: woman plus a little race?
Speaker 7: I Q.
Speaker 2: Controversy with plausible deniability, like they're never gonna come, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: we were like flirting with you, Jeda, They're never going
Speaker 2: to say that. But their stock price went up because
Speaker 2: of that controversy.
Speaker 4: I think, because.
Speaker 2: Why is anyone talking about Sidney Sweeney's ad. It's only
Speaker 2: because I mean, you know, yes, she's had star power,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But the reason it got so much attention
Speaker 2: is because of exactly this controversy, which these are not
Speaker 2: stupid people, like I don't know, they you know, they
Speaker 2: knew what they were doing with this, Come on, they knew.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I mean, I still just think you need even.
Speaker 6: Your explanation too.
Speaker 2: By the way, that this is like a rebuttal to
Speaker 2: the idea that she's mid the way she's if that's really,
Speaker 2: which I think that's a stretch, but if that's really
Speaker 2: her argument is like, no, I'm not mid because I'm
Speaker 2: of good genetic stock.
Speaker 6: Like even that is disturbing.
Speaker 4: It's weird.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like that's what I just think. It's so weird, and.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, I mean, it's not weird if you realize
Speaker 2: that what they're doing is intentionally touching on something that
Speaker 2: is again justifiably like Foreboden, I mean, and you know,
Speaker 2: has been for a long time pushed out the mainstream
Speaker 2: and is now like back being mainstream.
Speaker 5: If you look at public polling, like across the board,
Speaker 5: the American people are very anti racist, maybe not in
Speaker 5: the candy sense, but like race relations in the United
Speaker 5: States have come remarkably far, and it's not as though
Speaker 5: the American public. While there are some people on the
Speaker 5: fringes that may be energized by Flints and whomever else,
Speaker 5: it doesn't behoove a major brand, like you don't have
Speaker 5: to even be a smart marketing executive.
Speaker 6: But it is behooving them. They are behooved.
Speaker 5: And I don't think people are watching the ad. But
Speaker 5: your point is that they're being behooved by the controversy
Speaker 5: created by the ad. And it's not that American Eagle
Speaker 5: supports eugenics and white supremacy.
Speaker 6: Oh, that they got attention.
Speaker 2: That no, no publicity is bad publicity. I mean, this
Speaker 2: is the secret of Donald Trump's success and his realization
Speaker 2: that like I mean he even said this about like
Speaker 2: Doug Bergram when he picked him for Secretary of the Interiors,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, he just doesn't you know, he's not controversial
Speaker 2: enough so he can't get attention.
Speaker 6: This is the attention economy.
Speaker 2: The way to get attention isn't to just like, you know,
Speaker 2: have another ad with the beautiful women women. There are
Speaker 2: a million other ads that have other similar like beautiful stars.
Speaker 2: The way to get attention is to spark a conversation.
Speaker 2: We're not covering the Beyonce Levi's ad. Are we No,
Speaker 2: we're covering this one because they played with race science
Speaker 2: and eugenics, and that's why we're talking about it.
Speaker 5: I think they played with it. I think intentionally they
Speaker 5: played with This is where we disagree. I think they
Speaker 5: played with The entire pun was about Sidney Sweeney being
Speaker 5: hot or not, and that's when they say they're going
Speaker 5: she said she wants to go far. It's that and
Speaker 5: I think it was like obviously a very strange ad,
Speaker 5: but their stock is going up because people like the ad,
Speaker 5: like Sidney Sweeney and the jeans. They look great and
Speaker 5: American Eagle is a sendate because they have a young
Speaker 5: star like Sydney Sweeney repping them. It used to be
Speaker 5: by the way Dawson's Creek. I think they outfitted everybody
Speaker 5: on on Dawson's Creek. Yeah, I'm pretty sure a while
Speaker 5: they did. But anyways, well, they have a history of
Speaker 5: sort of partnering with I mean, for a young brand
Speaker 5: like that, we're not going to agree in this, Crystal.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 2: I'm just my last piece is I will say even
Speaker 2: your explanation to be is very eugenicsy, that you would
Speaker 2: be like, I am hot because I come from the right,
Speaker 2: genetic stock is.
Speaker 5: But that is I mean, like people are hot because
Speaker 5: of their like that either like people. But to be fair,
Speaker 5: like it's like the science of whether or not people
Speaker 5: are attractive to other people comes down to facial symmetry,
Speaker 5: which is genetic.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't like any like.
Speaker 5: I hope we don't start tinkering with genetics.
Speaker 2: I like, it's a weird thing to say. That's a
Speaker 2: weird thing to say. Is like, no, I can, I
Speaker 2: can prove genetically, but I'm.
Speaker 4: I'm not mid you because that.
Speaker 6: Is but that makes sense, but.
Speaker 1: I know I do.
Speaker 5: I actually think that helps my argument because on social
Speaker 5: media there have been deep, deep analyzes done on Sidney
Speaker 5: Sweetey's like facial symmetry over the years. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: I like people have literally been debating this, which is
Speaker 5: completely insane. Maybe that's our next debate is Sydney Sidney
Speaker 5: Sweeney mid but maybe we agree on that we don't
Speaker 5: even have that beata.
Speaker 4: I don't think.
Speaker 2: I don't think she's not mid. Like, I'm actually disgusted
Speaker 2: by this. It's like such a common thing, not just
Speaker 2: with Sidney Sweeney, of taking some like absolutely flawlessly gorgeous
Speaker 2: woman and then picking one photo of her where like
Speaker 2: she's not at her best and being like she I
Speaker 2: don't even forget it. She's so mid it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: fuck off. Like she's a beautiful woman, like just stop,
Speaker 2: just stop. And it's always like some guy who looks terrible,
Speaker 2: you know, and is like overweight and could never have
Speaker 2: a prayer of being with this woman who's posting this
Speaker 2: sort of so yeah, that that particular conversation, whether it's
Speaker 2: Sidney Sweeney or many other beautiful women, is kind of
Speaker 2: disgusting to me.
Speaker 5: This is what happens when Ryan goes on vacation for
Speaker 5: a week to take over the show with debate of right,
Speaker 5: you know who would have been really excited for this
Speaker 5: debate when Sager would have loved this well.
Speaker 2: I did debate with Sager off off air on this.
Speaker 2: Of course he thinks my view is ridiculous. But there
Speaker 2: you go.
Speaker 6: Many in many cases.
Speaker 5: Many such cases. We can continue this conversation on Friday.
Speaker 5: Of course, Sager will be back in with Crystal tomorrow.
Speaker 4: Thanks everyone for tuning in.
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Speaker 5: like the great conversation that Sager and Crystal had with
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