Your Kid Has a Screen, The Guy Who Built It Sends His Outside - The St. Louis Podcast: Episode #156

Peter Thiel gives his kids 90 minutes of screens per week. Steve Jobs told a reporter his kids had never used an iPad. Bill Gates banned phones at the dinner table. These are the people who built the apps your kids can't put down.

The US spent $30 billion putting laptops in schools. Gen Z is now the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before them. Test scores are dropping globally. And the Newport Beach riots? Researchers say it's a loneliness epidemic — kids so starved for human connection they'll fly across the country to loot a grocery store together.

Also: Meta's data center allegedly poisoned a Wyoming town's water supply. Entry-level hiring fell 50% since 2019. And prediction markets are running on insider trading while calling it democratized finance.


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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the St. Louis Podcast. As always, my name is Eric Brown, host here, and thank you for tuning in. We've got a lot of great stuff to talk to you about today. And just to talk about today. Wow. Does this world continue to get more and more crazy? Um, it seems to me that the teens, the youth um of the United States are not uh are not feeling the positivity, if you will. It seems as if they are careless, um, which of course all kids are. I was. I did dumb shit. Um, but not like this. Not like this. So, you know, there's a ton of stories about uh, you know, stuff breaking out over uh July 4th weekend. Specifically, what I wanted to talk about, of course, was Newport Beach. Now, this was a takeover of the Balboa Peninsula, peninsula, excuse me. Uh, people from Texas, Florida, and Nevada came. They plundered a pavilion supermarket, shattered glass and watermelons across the parking lot, shot mortars at officers, and blockaded roadways. Also in Buffalo, we had a crowd vandalize the police officer's home after he tried to break up a fight. His wife and children were trapped inside. Now, the question is, of course, a couple weeks weeks ago we talked about um, I forget where uh we were having an issue with a bunch of the youth. Um, and of course, if you go on YouTube or any other social media channel, you will continue to see this problem left and right, and directly in front of your feed, which we call the center. Now the question is, is it an out-of-control youth? Do these children not care? Uh, because like street takeovers and stuff like this were not really a thing when I was a child. Um, you know, when I was growing up, it was like what, like flash mobs and shit. We weren't, you know, shooting mortars at officers. But of course, nowadays everything is built for social media. It's all built around um, you know, rep, right? It's like, ooh, did you see Jason? He was at the Newport Beach shit got popping. They were shooting mortars, dude's a king, right? You want to have it on your social media. If you have that on your story, you were there, dude. It's increasing the rep. So it's all about social media. What can you get? Can you get the content? Can you be there for it? Can you be there for the takeover? Are people gonna respect it that are your age? When you're getting that footage, of course, it seems like you are. You're getting the respect, right? I don't want the car, I want the respect. Now, if you don't know what that's from, you're too young. And you probably should be doing teen takeovers. Now, obviously, uh, you know, we can look back and say, hey, a lot of these teens grew up through COVID. Maybe they're not actually 18-year-olds, they're still 14-year-olds because they didn't grow up over COVID. They didn't really talk to other people. They sat inside. They didn't go to school, they didn't mature, they didn't have the option, they didn't have the chance, they didn't have the opportunity in order to do so. And of course, uh, you know, smartphones have continued to dwindle down, you know, young people. And I would almost argue to say dwindling down boomers more so than any other generation. Um, seems like the older you are now, there's a certain segment of the population. It's very similar in how they perceive social media. Um, you know, I would say it's those. If I were just to take a guess, right? I'm an idiot here. I'm not the smartest person on the planet. Never said I was, and never said I'm a, you know, an expert in the things that I talk about. But uh, you know, I feel like a lot of what I say are backed, number one, bias statistics. And number two, if they're not, it's my feeling that some other people have also expressed their feelings about. Now, is that confirmation bias, maybe, but who cares? This is all for entertainment, folks. So your social space is a screen now. You're a lonely, you're probably a little bit depressed. You're a desperate for human interaction and social contact. And when there's a chance to gather and be a part of something larger, we see teens flock to it. Now, this is from Samuel Abrams, senior fellow, American Enterprise Institute to NBC News. A conservative think take fellow saying that the mall riots are a loneliness problem. These kids are so starved for the experience of standing in a crowd of actual humans that they will fly to California to loot a grocery store together because it's the closest thing to belonging on offer. And that's sad to think about. Break that down. These kids are so starved for the experience of standing in a crowd of actual humans that they will fly to California to loot a grocery store together because it's the closest thing to belonging on offer. So, in other words, this is their best option. It's all they got to do. So let's talk about why this is the case. Obviously, you know, the loneliness frame is not a defense, just something to talk about. Explanation is not absolution. The harm lands on working people, obviously, the people that were directly affected, people that work at the grocery store, the deli owner, the kid behind the counter. Not all the people who built the phones. Now, if the diagnosis is really social starvation, then more cops and cameras treat the symptom forever and never touch the cause. Now, of course, um, I would say in the United States that for as long as I can remember, um, we really don't try and solve the problem. If anything, we try and talk around the problem. We never try and talk about the actual problem itself. Because if we did, you know, I think uh we'd be living in a probably better society. Obviously, you see, uh, you know, we've talked about looks maxing here on the podcast with the the younger crowd. Um we have talked about, I mean, countless things that have to do with the whole, you know, online epidemic of wanting to feel like you are part of something, but in reality, no one's a part of anything. Because those feelings that live online are for the most part not real. They're not real, it's not a genuine human interaction. Because if it was, half of the shit that people would say online would end them in a fight. Now, of course, there's a reason that, you know, it's called keyboard warriors. Say things without a keyboard that you wouldn't say to someone's face. But it's all about how do I look online? It's not what do people think about me in person. What are the people saying about me in DMs? What uh, you know, how do I impress people? Oh, well, maybe I'd impress them if I went down to the you know, Newport Beach Cops V robbers, you know, showdown of fireworks. So we'll continue to you know talk about really the you know how that kind of encompasses everything that we're gonna talk about here today. With that said, next up, the $30 billion mistake. Now, this of course is story of the week, and almost nobody is talking about it. Why? Because it's actual fraud. Um, now we didn't stumble into this. We funded it. We, as in all of us, you listening to this podcast, myself, and everyone else that you know, funded it on purpose for 24 years, and the receipts just came in. So the U.S. has spent over 30 billion on school laptops and tablets. This is coming from 2024. Kids, on average, have seven and a half hours of screen time. This is kids aged eight to 18, and we're wondering why they can't read. We're wondering why they're weirdos. We're wondering why they don't have any genuine, you know, hope in the human race. Maybe it's because they're spending their entire, you know, uh a majority of their waking hours directly in front of a screen. In front of a screen doing what? Probably not embedding themselves. This is for the first generation in modern history to score lower than the last. We also have, you know, over 100,000 people in the 2025 study linking short-form video to worse cognition. In tw in 2002, Maine became the first state to run a nationwide, or excuse me, nationwide, statewide laptop program. Governor Angus King saw it as putting the internet at the fingertips of every kid. By the fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools. The model spread everywhere. By 2024, the U.S. was spending more than 30 million, 30 billion, excuse me, putting laptops and tablets into schools. So they were actively spending money to make us dumber. Now, how's it going? Gen Z is less cognitively capable than the previous generations. That's right, we're smarter. Millennials are smarter, despite unprecedented access to technology, and is the first generation in modern history to score lower on standardized tests than the one before it. Now, don't take my word for it, this is coming from directly. Neuroscientist Jared Goonie. Gooney, Cooney Horvath. He this is a written testimony of the U.S. Uh Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Okay. Now, uh, there's a San Diego State psychologist said to Fortune, Gene Twenge. Many apps, including social media and gaming apps, are designed to be addictive. Their business model is based on users spending the most time possible on the apps and checking back as frequently as possible. It's not a side effect, it is the product. A Baylor-led study last November 2025 found TikTok's uh TikTok required the least amount of effort to use, less than Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, by balancing relevant videos with surprising unexpected ones. Engineered to be the path of least resistance in a child's brain. Child. Child's brain. Not an adult's brain, a child's brain. A 2025 study of nearly 100,000 people found regular short-form video consumption linked directly to poor cognition and declines in mental health in not only younger, but older adults as well. I just like to make fun of the boomers on this podcast. Why? Because it seems like you guys are the main enemy right now. It's not only uh, you know, a 1% versus a 99%, a lot of this has to do with straight up old versus young as well. Why is that the case? Because I think a lot of our, you know, people my age feel, and there's a lot of, you know, stats to back this up, that the boomers are the definition of kicking the can down the road. They enact policies that are only good for them. They do not care about the longevity of anything that they pass. It is only to simply get their agenda across. Their agenda is to continue to help out the boomers. That is why we have this thing across the board about, you know, freezing property taxes for those over a certain age. My argument is get fucked. You've lived a whole life. How about the young people that haven't had the opportunity to make money their entire lives? Why don't I that just bought a house earlier this year, maybe I shouldn't have to pay property taxes for the first couple of years? Now, of course, I'm not going to sit here and say that because I think it's stupid, regardless of how you look at it. Um, if you're gonna buy a house, you take on the responsibility of those taxes. If you can no longer afford the taxes of the house, you sell the house. It doesn't matter if you've been there for six months, one year, or 50 years. I don't see why that matters. So if I stay in this house in Rock Hill that I bought 50 years from now, I'm sitting in and I'm 70, 80 years old, I can't afford anything, I'm gonna expect everyone else to pay the bills on that house. Instead of right now, we know for a fact that we have housing shortages. We know for a fact that younger people with families, especially, or just you know, younger people in general that are trying to buy a house, you know, in their 30s or even 40s, um, you know, are essentially competing with the fact that we have older generations unable to afford what they are currently living in. Now, is it being mean saying get them the fuck out so other people can move in that can actually afford that house? Maybe. But at the same time, you know, how much are we supposed to help one generation or one age people versus the other? It seems like right now that the economy, um, that how we look at communism, right, or socialism in the United States, uh, a lot of it is funding the rich. We have socialist programs for the rich, not for the poor. Now, of course, the poor have socialist programs, right? Obviously, we have Medicaid and things like that, and food stamps, et cetera. Now, it doesn't make any sense when taxpayers have to pay out and reimburse companies or people that are worth hundreds of millions, billions, trillions of dollars. Obviously, I think the majority of people would agree with that. All right, so obviously going back here to social media, many apps, including social media gaming apps, are designed to be addictive, obviously. I mean, if we don't know that by now, uh, you know, what are we doing? Their business model is based on users spending the most time possible on the apps, checking backwards as frequently as possible. Why? Of course, they want to sell more ads. The only way to sell more ads is to get more people, to get more eyeballs looking, you know, on a more continued basis on their platforms. So the longer they can keep you on their platform scrolling, looking at content, the better because they make more money from advertisers. Now, we have a lawsuit. 1600 plaintiffs across 350 families and 250 school districts have filed suit alleging social media addiction harms. The districts that bought the laptops are now suing the platforms. I was always under the assumption that, you know, Facebook and those types of websites would not be allowed, you know, would be essentially blocked on, you know, district networks, right? Even going back to, you know, 2011 when I graduated, there were plenty of websites and also plenty of websites that should have been wink wink, um, uh, you know, blocked that were not, you know, I I don't really remember even if we had VPNs or anything like that back in the day. Um, you know, that that way we could get around a lot of those issues. But regardless, they're being sued. So who decided on this? Well-meaning governors and school boards sold a story about access to information with the hardware industry standing right behind them, holding an invoice or a gun to the back of their head. Apple, Google, every district tech vendor for 24 years, $30 billion doesn't evaporate. Obviously, somebody banked it, and we know who did. Who paid? Well, an entire generation did with their uh with their attention span. And now the kids in block one riding in a parking lot because the only crowd left is a mob. Now, of course, correlation is not causation. Let's not pretend otherwise. Test scores fell during a period that also included a global pandemic. Obviously, we boxed that one. I don't think we have to revisit that. Year-long school closures, a teacher shortage, and a mental health crisis. Untangling screens from we close the schools is genuinely hard, and honest researchers say so. I think we could point to both of them. It's not why does it have to be one or the other? It's both, it's a combination of the two, right? It's not one thing, and it's not even just these two things that are leading to the most recent, you know, age people in school to test lower for the first time standardized testing history than the people before them, which of course is insane. And I, you know, I can go ahead and Google this real quick, but my question would be are test scores dropping not only in the United States, but across all countries? Now, if I remember correctly, we were we were talking about this just a few months ago on the podcast that it was Switzerland, Norway, one of those. Um, that their test scores were also dropping, or Finland somewhere over there. And I just I, you know, I found it interesting because of course what we hear, you know, here in the United States. Okay, so test scores are not just dropping in the United States, there's a global decline. International testing reveals that academic performance is failing across many countries with generation-long declines of subjects like reading and math, exasperated by the pandemic, right? In other words, fast-forwarded, multiplied by the pandemic. So it wasn't a call, the pandemic just sped it up. It's like when you're watching a video, you go to 2x, 3x speed, that's what happened. Now, the program for international student assessment, which evaluates 15-year-olds worldwide in math, reading, and science, highlighted this reality. The 2022 results, the most recent comprehensive global benchmark, showed an unprecedented drop in scores across the 81 participating countries and economies. The OECD average dropped by a record 15 points. That's incredible. The OECD is the organization for economic cooperation and development. Reading, uh, that was math. Reading scores dropped by 10 points on average across member nations. Signs remained relatively stable on average, but still saw significant drops in many individual countries. So it's not just the United States. The countries that saw the largest academic test score drops include Malaysia, Iceland, the Netherlands. That's who we were talking about, Germany, and Poland. Malaysia down 32 points, Iceland, significant multi-year decline. Germany sharp double digit drop. Poland sharp double digit drop. Average global drop minus 15 points. Incredible. And we are becoming dumber. As a society, right? It's not just individual. Now, if a couple individuals were getting dumber, fine. Because we'd assume that a couple individuals would be smart. Now, as a whole, if We are getting dumber. That's a big problem. It's a huge problem. The 2025 short form video study found a link, not a cause. The researchers said so explicitly. Developmental psychologist Wendy Rhodes data found kids with smartphones actually spent more days per week with friends in person than kids without. Her line, it's what you do on the device.

SPEAKER_01 22:28

Okay, Wendy. I don't believe you.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Now, again, this is it goes back to like the boomer mentality. The people who built this stuff clearly aren't waiting around for the studies. Right? The people that are passing all this legislation that do not benefit anyone under the age of let's just say 50 or 60, do not care about the longevity because they will not be here to see it. And I was listening to, I don't remember if it was an audio book or some interview, and they were saying about the best teacher that they had was a seventh-grade teacher. And this seventh grade teacher, specifically, you know, in a roundabout way, was essentially saying that I will do whatever it takes to improve the lives of my students because they are the future generations. And they're going to be the ones over the next 50, 60, 70 years to determine what this world looks like. And do we want it to look like a good place or do we want it to look like a bad place? And so, you know, having good educators is obviously a good thing. And I've talked on this podcast, you know, pretty relentlessly about the fact that I think for the most part, schools may work for even if it's 51%, you know, the majority of students. Work is, of course, you know, we can determine what the hell that even looks like. Does it work? You know, it works okay. It's not like we're walking around or a bunch of morons, don't know what two plus two is. Um, but I do think that, you know, our education, uh, you know, in its entirety, really, um, you know, can be changed for the betterment of the people of the United States. Why, though, uh, we don't see changes, you know, goes back to, you know, kind of the conspiracy brain of why um, you know, essentially Rockefeller set up the education system to begin with, was essentially to have workers smart enough, you know, to work for essentially these companies or in these towns, you know, for the oil and things like that, but not be smart enough to do anything kind of outside of that, right? Essentially give them enough knowledge to be knowledgeable, but don't give them enough knowledge to, you know, go do their own shit, if you will. Um, so you're wanting, you know, uh a school system wants to create what I always said was drones, right? People that, you know, kind of follow along. Now we'll talk about tech here as well. Um, I think there's a ton of news here. Peter Teal gives his kids 90 minutes of screen time a week. Your kid gets seven and a half hours a day. The tech billionaires won't let their children near it. They know they've always known. Now, of course, Peter Teal, PayPal co-founder, early Facebook investor, uh, devil, uh, and of course, Palantir co-founder, told the 2024 Aspen Ideas Festival he lets his two kids use screens for 90 minutes per week. Fortune reports the uh revelation prompted audible gas from the audience. Now, I don't, you know, believe that Peter Thiel is being honest here either with this whole 90 minutes per week. Um, so you're telling me that his kids don't play video games at all? Screen time, 90 minutes per week? They don't watch, you never have the TV on, they don't watch TV. Like I, you know, this is just I don't believe it. But you think Peter Thiel's kids are fucking psychopaths like him and just sitting there reading books all day long, talking about the Antichrist. Get a life guy. Uh Steve Jobs, 2010, all the way back in 2010, 16 years ago, uh told his kids, or excuse me, told a New York Times reporter his kids had never used an iPad. We limit how much technology our kids use at home. Now, of course, at the same time that he said, or excuse me, that he was selling the iPad to everyone. Bill Gates refused to kids uh to give his kids smartphones until they turned 14 and banned devices at the dinner table. Ooh. I actually think that's like fair. I didn't get a phone until the eighth grade. And of course, you know, at that point it was, you know, there was no internet. It was texting and calling. I don't really think the you know, the internet was really big on phones until you know 2010. Essentially, when I was graduating high school, everyone, you know, it was like the iPhone 3 came out, I think. The 3G, the 3GS. That was kind of the first big one that I remember everyone having, and they were like, oh, internet, man. I was like, damn, that's sick. Then I got an iPhone 4, got drunk in my zoo, passed out in the hallway, and that's the last time I saw that iPhone 4. And I didn't come back to iPhone until like five years ago. Who says Eric holds grudges? Um Steve uh Shen, he's the YouTube co-founder. Uh he uh he wouldn't want his kids consuming only short form content. Shorter form content, quotation marks, equates to shorter attention spans. Now, this is the man who co-founded, of course, YouTube. Now, these guys obviously don't care about society as a whole. Um, you know, they want to make as much money as possible. But they do care about their kids. Now, they don't care if their kids are surrounded by absolute morons that, you know, just gorge this short-form content on a daily basis. That doesn't matter. So, what I will say again is the average the average American child ages 8 to 18 spends seven and a half hours a day on screens.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

That's insane. Uh so Peter Thiel's kids are getting like three percent of the screen time. Three percent than an average kid is getting.

SPEAKER_00 29:25

So the tech guys know they're not confused about what you know the programs do. There's no debate happening in their homes. They ran the experiment on 70 plus million kids. They took the 30 billion and they sent their own children outside to play. The rest of the country is the control group. And when the control group finally cracks and starts flash mobbing pavilions in Newport Beach, the same class of people will sell us the surveillance software to manage it. That's right. These kids are getting crazy. We need cameras everywhere. Now, rich parents, of course, uh, you know, it's easier to restrict those kids because they can. They have nannies too, to his backyard summer camps, and a parent who can be home. A single mother working two jobs hanes over the tablet because it's the only childcare available. There's a class story as much as a tech story, and blaming those parents is the wrong target. Or is it? Now, this of course steel manning here. Now, I do, you know, I want to blame the parents as much as I blame everything else. I blame the system itself. Like giving your kids, you know, allowing your kids to have this much screen time is not good for them. And you uh, you know, essentially giving into um, you know, what uh uh really like the the universe, the everyone wants, right? Everyone's kind of pushing this, um, you know, leads to a society of which we're getting to now where you have lawlessness and no one cares. Why don't they care? Because I don't think that their life is going to get any better. And there's a lot to say about that, too. Now, of course, good parenting does a lot. I wouldn't have gone to Newport, like cops show up, I'm out. I'm not, you know, I'm not shooting mortars at cops. I'll shoot rolling candles at my friends on private property. Now that's something else. Not going to go to a public property and have a fireworks fight. But I guess that goes to show that maybe my parents did at least a decent job with me. There needs to be a movie called Loneliness Inc. And no, it's not going to be like Monsters Inc. Maybe you could. Um, now, of course, they sell you an AI necklace necklace to fix a loneliness they built. Palantir CEO calls AI effing insane. Then the Pentagon pushes the company that refused to spy on you. Two products, one wound. One in six people worldwide persistently lonely. 800 and all, you know, over 871,000 deaths a year, who links directly to loneliness. There's over over 16 million dollars of friendships apps pulled in just this year. So members' clubs are back, ticketed singles events are booming. Critics are calling calling out bad actors like AI necklaces for profiting off the loneliness epidemic. Wearable AI companions, loser, sold to people who have nobody to talk to. Say that sentence twice. Yo, dude, if you bought one of these things and you need like a companion, and send me a DM, bro. I'll show you. I'll I'll send you some funny memes on a daily basis. Like, what do you need? You need attention, you need a back rub. What the hell is going on here? AI chatbots, AI companions. Listen, people.

SPEAKER_01 33:15

Listen. What are you doing?

SPEAKER_00 33:19

Look in the mirror and reflect. Absolute simp level behavior. It's not like you can f them either, you know? I mean, what are we doing here? Just because they're gonna say, oh, Eric, your workout routine is really killing it lately. You look amazing. Yeah, I don't I don't need that. And really no one does. Now, Palantir CEO Alex Carp called the AI industry effigy insane on CNBC, accusing the biggest AI companies of overcharging customers, harvesting their business data, endangering U.S. national security. Now, of course, you know, he said he was livid, and then Palantir's stock jumped over 9%. Palantir, of course, co-founded with Peter Teal. He has the same teal from uh before, obviously. The one whose kids get 90 minutes a week. Now, in case we didn't know, Palantir got CIA seed funding. It now underpins immigration enforcement, predictive policy, uh policing, and intelligence sharing. Now, of course, Palantir uh, you know, has talked about the fact that they want to essentially integrate um, you know, everyone's personal information into one program. You know, healthcare for Eric Brown, um, you know, personal, you know, criminal history for Eric Brown, debt for Eric Brown, all of this stuff, right? And of course, you're thinking, Eric, that sounds a little bit like China and that one app bullshit that they have. Yes. Yes, it does. That way the government knows absolutely everything about every single person that is a citizen or not a citizen of this country. And you're wondering why they're building all these AI data centers. It's not because you are going in and trying to make a shitty fucking dog gif or a stupid meme. It's not for that. Mass surveillance, baby. That could be from both. But I don't think that's the case. So the detail that makes it a story is in March the Pentagon designated anthropic a supply chain risk after the company declined to lift restrictions blocking its tech from being used for mass domestic surveillance or fully autonomous weapons. They were like, listen, if our program says to airstrike and kill this guy, we can't just leave it up to my program. A human has to press a button. Oh. Makes it way better. Especially when someone had to press a button to bomb the school in Iran, right? Remember that whole thing? Um, an AI company drew a line on spying on Americans and got labeled a risk for it. You know, I will go ahead and say that anthropic and clawed, um, you know, are not the good guys. Maybe they're the best of the large language models, but that still makes them like the the least evil devil. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, well, you're the best devil, but you're still the devil. You know, it's like, cool. You're not the biggest piece of shit. But you're the you're a small piece of shit. You're still a piece of shit. Amnesty International has documented the Palantir build technology poses a surveillance threat to protesters. Now, we also have 1,500 utility workers walked out on July 4th while the UAW president got subpoenaed. That's United Auto Workers. I have been working 16-hour shifts almost every day. Worker power and the people who squander it. Now, there are roughly 1,500 to 1,600 workers. IBEW Local 614, Lineman, Gas Techs, Mechanics, and Call Center staff walked out 1201 on July 4th. The first strike, PECO's history. Contract expired March 31st. Five months of talks produced nothing. Now, Joseph Velaso, 43, nearly two decades as a power line worker. I have been working 16-hour shifts almost every day before this. Now, the ask tells you everything. They want retirement benefits calculated on gross payroll, including overtime instead of base salary. The man works 16-hour days. His pension is calculated as if the overtime never happened. It's not a wage dispute, that's a design. Right. So he's getting paid as a salaried employee. But he's essentially working twice the amount as a normal salaried employee. Now, of course, salaried employees are known to, you know, potentially have to work sometimes more than 40 hours a week, right? Now, of course, there's plenty of people that work less than 40 hours a week that get paid salary as well. They also want pension eligibility for excluded workers and retiring medical access for anyone hired after 2014. The union dropped its wage ass from 10% to 5.5%, then 8, 8, 7.5%, 7.5%. PECO says it offered nearly a 20% rate wage increase over five years, along with significantly enhanced retirement and medical benefits, and that a federal mediator was assigned, but the union has not agreed to participate. So we'll see, we'll see where this ends up. Now, of course, the DOJ uh convened a federal grand jury investigating UAW president Sean Fain. The grand jury subpoenaed the union's court appointed monitor Neil Borofsky. Now, the allegations are that Fain sought a financial bonus benefiting his fiancee, Keisha Somton, who works at the Stellantis National Training Center. Now, still if you're still buying Stellantis cars, I mean, what the fuck is wrong with you? And pushed a workers' comp claim for her sister, then retaliated against VP Richmore for refusing by stripping him of his role as chief negotiator with Stellantis. This is a department representing 40,000 Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram workers. The monitor's report said uh substantiated the claim that President Fain acted inappropriately, improperly, excuse me, to obtain financial benefits for his fiance and described a recurring pattern of retaliation that Fain abused the authority of office. Fain, of course, denies everything, calls the allegations false, bogus, and trumped up, and has retained a law firm. No charges have been filed. Investigations often end without charges. I'll say that again. Investigations often end without charges. Is it because they're getting paid off? Is it because they suck at their fucking job? Is it because it's all a show?

SPEAKER_01 41:16

It's probably a combination.

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Now, Thane's defense is not nothing. He says the monitor Borofsky has a political grudge against him because the UAW took an anti-war stance on Gaza, stemming from a February 2024 blowup after Borofsky forwarded him an anti-defamation league letter criticizing the Union ceasefire resolution. Wait a second.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

Oh. I didn't even realize this. This guy's an Israeli. Wait, is he Israeli? He's definitely from Israel. Hold on, hold on. Yeah, that's what he is.

SPEAKER_00 42:35

Listen, you already know where I'm gonna go with this one. Fuck Neil. Sean Fain's the man. I don't know anything about this. Fuck this guy. So they're going after Fain because the United Auto Workers was against uh the bombing of innocence in Gaza. Interesting. Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Um also the timing is suspicious. Rich Boyer, whose complaints triggered this, is running against Fayne for the union presidency and election later this year. Now, is Rich Boyer, Rich Boyer, United Auto Workers, pro or anti-Israeli. We'll have to look more into this. Stay tuned. We'll continue to talk about this. Um now the UAW has been under federal. Oversight since a 2020 corruption settlement. Two former presidents went to prison for embezzling union funds on liquor, cigars, golf outings. Come on. Come on. Thane is the fourth UAW president in years linked to a DOJ probe. Six union locals want him to face an internal trial. So uh this guy might be corrupt, right? And to be honest, it's probably 50-50 shot here. Um so we'll we'll go ahead and see what plays out with this story.

SPEAKER_01 44:40

Now, real quick.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Real quick, I want to talk about this. I know. Data centers, Eric. God, aren't you ever gonna fucking stop talking about? No. No, I won't, and here's why. Meta's data center in Wyoming's water. Let's talk about it. Meta's data center allegedly poisons a town water supply. And the bill went from 10 bill to 50 bill. Wyoming officials say Meta's 715,000 square foot data center is responsible for contaminating the local water system with a rare rare bacterium. So a town let a trillion dollar company build a server farm, and officials say it poisoned the water. Meta's AI data center cost balloon from 10 billion to 50 billion in under two years and split the town in two, five times the projected cost in a community torn apart over it. Now, of course, this is the harm I've been talking about on this podcast for I don't even know. I mean, whenever we started talking about data centers, probably last year, or maybe even two years ago. Um, you know, they're promising jobs, they're promising taxes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're promising there's not gonna be any pollution, energy's gonna be fine. And of course, all, you know, the majority of citizens here in the US, now I'm gonna say majority, because I know it's over 50%, are anti-data center, anti-AI data center as it stands. They would be fine with not one more being built. Now, Meta, you know, Wyoming officials say that Meta is going to dispute this. Of course, I'm assuming that they would. Now, I'm gonna say this the contamination, contamination was alleged. Now, in 2026, so far, U.S. venture capitalists have deployed a record-shattering $412 billion. Now, of course, almost none of it is trickling down. Now, pair it, you know, pairing this with Gen Z's economic picture. Starter home prices up 87% since 2019. The average new car is $50,000, up 27% from 2020. In entry level hiring fell more than 50% from 2019 to 2024, even as mid and senior level hiring recovered. The bottom rung of the ladder got sawed off. This is what I was saying about boomers. They pulled the ladder up with them. $412 billion sloshing around the economy, and a 23-year-old can't even get an entry-level job or a starter home. What happened? It's rigged. It's rigged, I tell you. And it's rigged because you know what's rigged? Call she and PolyMarket. Of course, they've been saying that they're democratizing finance. Now, I would go ahead and, you know, we don't have enough time here today to talk about it. But go ahead and look at Polymarket's um advertising practices. I think CoffeeZilla did a video on this or VoidZilla, one of his YouTube channels. Really broke it down, did a great job of it. Um, these companies are are nothing more than wealth absorbers from the poor and middle class. Uh I, you know, I forget how much money, you know, I saw a number, it was staggering, how much money like Call She and Polymarket has made just this year. And you know whose money that is. It's all of the money that people have lost.

SPEAKER_01 48:42

Not um you know, gambling. Gambling. Because that's what it is. Of course, we talked about George Santos, Ben O'Callche.

SPEAKER_00 48:57

He would not show up to the State of the Union. Obviously, we have the U.S. Army soldier, but not only that, we have Trump and his family. Bloomberg reports World Cup bets on prediction markets may get a tax edge over regularly gambling. The casino gets a better tax deal. Or excuse me. Um, they get a better tax deal than the casino. It's insane. And of course, uh Call Shee and Polymarket are, you know, essentially ran by insider trading. It's not a bug, it is the engine. And it runs on retail money. Retail money. So Meta gets a data center, a town in Wyoming gets a bacteria, venture capital gets $412 billion, 23-year-olds can't get a job. Prediction markets taking everyone's money. And that's about it. And we're in the middle of war. You're right. I made it this whole week without talking about Iran and war. And you know what? Maybe we'll do it one more week without talking about it. But that is all the time we have for today. As always, please like, review, subscribe, leave a comment. We appreciate everyone's support. Please also support the companies that show us some love on this podcast. Number one, I'm sitting here in the studio right now, Half Coast Studios. You could visit them at HalfCoastudios.com. They do podcasting, recording, editing, distribution. They'll build out a studio at your place if you don't want to come here. Uh, you can visit them agafcoastudios.com. If you're hot right now in your house, if your AC is always running, if you have rooms that are different temperatures, it could be due to the fact that you have poor insulation and air ceiling in your home. If you'd like the most trustworthy company in St. Louis, maybe not the most, we're good, we're up there. Because of course you can't say that, right? Allegedly, top insulation company in St. Louis. Um, have the guys come out. Uh, they'll get in your attic, you know, they'll take care of you. Check out their reviews, West County Insulation, just Google them. And then, of course, last but not least, the best damn marketing company on the planet, Vi Media. That's V-I-E. You can check them out at Vi.media. Work primarily with law offices, home service companies, and professional service companies focusing on return on investment marketing strategy. So all they care about is making the business owner that we're working with more money. Thank you all. We'll see you next week. Bye bye.