The Costco Sample Tray of Oppression

This week on Bad Bets, we dive headfirst into the political circus that is August 2025. From Trump’s suspicious Epstein file cover-up and the unprecedented federal takeover of DC’s police force, to South Park’s pitch-perfect roast of Kristi Noem, JD Vance, and Charlie Kirk, we’re connecting dots the podcast bros hopes you miss. We break down ICE’s cruel (and hypocritical) immigration raids, Melania’s “Einstein visa” origin story, and why Pete Hegseth is the Shaggy of national security leaks.

Plus: a Tiny Treat, Big Take on why we need to be meaner to Christian nationalists, a poetic detour through Hozier’s Lake Tahoe performance, Jason Momoa thirst-appreciation, and a PowerPoint Princess lesson on game theory and why small talk is really just strategic co-op mode for humans.

Bad bets were made. Puppets were roasted. Dolphins were mistaken for fetuses. Let’s go.

Transcript

Welcome back to Bad Bets, the podcast where we know a little bit about a lot and each week we make a ridiculously bad bet. And in the subsequent episode, we reveal the outcome of that bet. Join us on Patreon if you're interested in voting for the topics of the bets as well. All right. There's a lot of political news to get to this week. So much of it is ridiculous and hilariously entertaining and a lot of it is pretty dark. So Trump was on the White House roof.

And finally, he encountered a real journalist, Caitlin Collins, who asked Trump if he approved the prison transfer for Ghislaine Maxwell. If you've been living under a rock, she was Epstein's accomplice and a really, really evil woman. She was recently transferred by the Trump administration to a minimum security facility. She is a convicted sex offender. There was no explanation for this. The facility is actually called Club Fed.

for how lax and chill it is. It's probably akin to like where Martha Stewart went to prison. So yeah, we have that. The Deputy Attorney General for Trump, his name is Todd Blanch. Sounds like a bag of fun. He sat down with Ghislaine recently. And so it's safe to assume that there's some sort of quid pro quo here. I think that Ghislaine's testimony is gonna be favorable for Trump and.

If he risks it for the biscuit, he may pardon her for that favorable testimony. It really won't matter towards the end of his term if that is political suicide for him. If he even decides to leave the White House, we shall see. I think it's really an insane moment that we're living in. We have fully lost the plot here. It's impossible to put all of Trump's corruption into context. And I think Dan Pfeiffer really summarized this well.

This week, he was saying like, take the Trump name out of what's happening here. Put this in like literally any other scenario in American history. What would really be the conversation of the moment? This is an insanely huge scandal. So imagine if the president of the United States was a longtime friend with one of America's most notorious child sex traffickers.

And it is discovered that the president is mentioned many times in the files that came from the investigation into that sex trafficker. Now, the entire federal government, including the Department of Justice, is working to do everything they possibly can to prevent the public, the media, and Congress from learning about the nature of the president's relationship with America's most notorious sex trafficker, including launching a criminal investigation into the president's predecessor.

Based on absolutely nothing. Congress literally had to go home because they were so afraid to take a vote on the disclosure of the files. This was perfectly said on Pod Save America by Dan Pfeiffer this week, and it's actually truly insane to think about. Congress literally had to go home because they're so afraid of voting on the disclosure of the files. That's how much of a fucking chokehold this lunatic has on the party. Now imagine, imagine this is any president. Ever in the history of ever, imagine there's a video of the president and the sex trafficker, ogling women together. Imagine the president wrote the trafficker a birthday note with a new drawing of a woman mentioning secrets and that they had a lot in common, that they were documented friends for over decades, that the man went to the president's wedding, and then that the sex trafficker pleaded the fifth when asked under oath about the president's involvement with him.

When underage women, when underage girls were around. In what other setting or scenario would that be not the biggest story of the age of the year? And Trump doesn't know what to do with it. MAGA is kind of losing its mind because they were promised these files. Trump ran on these files. Pam Bondi said, have the files. I'm reviewing them. They're on my desk. And then all of sudden, whoopsie doopsie, Trump was told by Bondi in May.

That his name was all over the files and are any of us surprised? And so now they're refusing to release it. If you were really innocent, redact the names of the survivors to protect their identities and release the files. What would you have to lose? You could clear your name in a heartbeat. But no, so something is really going on here and we shouldn't stop talking about it. So what is in Trump's playbook? What does he do? What does he do?


The second that he needs to distract us from something legitimate that we can criticize him about. He manufactures a crisis. What is the crisis? all of a sudden there's a huge crime wave in DC, even though crime has been going down the last couple of years, and it's quite low there. It's because this kid nicknamed Big Balls, who worked for Elon's little defunct program and is a MAGA head. Was jumped in DC. So what is Trump gonna do? federalize and militarize the police and go into DC and make sure people obey. So what does this mean? Here's three questions to ask about the federal takeover of DC's police force that Trump just instituted. He announced this in a press conference yesterday, which was Monday, August 11th. Why choose to federalize a local police force?

This is about intimidation, it's about power, it's about control. This is not normal, it is fully unprecedented. It is quite dangerous because in a democracy, local law enforcement is separate from federal control for a reason, right? Putting DC's police directly under federal command removes local oversight, and hands the president the power to use them essentially like his own private force. Question number two, why DC? Why now?

Yes, this is absolutely meant to distract from Trump's cover up of the Epstein files, but I think more importantly, this is a test run for him. I think, and many people have said this online, not just me, this is not an original thought of mine. I don't know if I have that many original thoughts, but more importantly, I think that he's gonna try this in a number of key blue cities. And why is that? Because upcoming elections, can be canceled in places that are under the control of martial law. Plus, DC isn't just the nation's capital. It's where the press and Congress and protesters converge. And federalizing the police here means that protests are easier to control or suppress. It's a show of force in his own backyard because the draft dodging wannabe dictator needs to cosplay at this first without getting his hands really dirty. And so another good question to ask is, what am I supposed to do?


If politics is intimidating to you or boring to you and your friends, start with the media that they consume. Ask them sort of what Twitter feeds are they following, what YouTube channels and podcasts are they listening to? Can you get them to listen to Marc Maron for a couple of minutes? Can you get them to watch the last two episodes of this season of South Park and start to have that conversation? I also think it's really important to not let the Epstein connection disappear. We have to keep connecting the dots.Tthe timing, the files, the distraction play. If the federalization is being used to shield Trump from the fallout, that needs to be loud and undeniable. And then I think it's also really important to learn the history of other famous leaders who federalized the police force and how that turned out. Rhymes with harmony, rhymes with Yahtzee, rhymes with Itla. All right? I think that we really need to keep tuned in.

Keep tuned in. The more that Trump floods the zone, the more apathetic we feel, the more he consolidates power. Really try to practice relational organizing. Talk to five people in your social circle who you've been too lazy or disinterested in to pay attention. Try to participate in democracy. Call your congresspeople. FiveCalls.org is helpful. And also remember that your governors work for you. Communicate with them what you expect when this comes to your city.

Don't stop telling the stories of immigrants who have been disappeared off the streets. Donate to local community-based nonprofits. Pay attention before these idiots take away your rights and ruin your leisure for good. I say never acquiesce to stupidity and evil, truly. And speaking of stupidity and evil, last week's bet, the bet I made during last week's episode was I thought that every single episode of South Park this season, would involve a nod of some sort to Trump and mention the Trump administration. I'm gonna give myself a dub on this. I'm gonna chalk it in the wing column because so far I've been right. South Park, oh my God, it was almost a better episode than the first one. They reamed into Kristi Noem. If you don't know who Kristi Noem is, you should go Google her face pre and post plastic surgery and then how she was represented in South Park. She is the secretary of Homeland Security. She is evil incarnate.

And she became famous because people were thinking that she was potentially going to be a VP pick for Trump. She wrote a book. It's a memoir because she's so special and smart and hot and she knows how to shoot a gun. And she had a dog that just wouldn't behave, which I feel like is really embarrassing to admit. Like if you're a tried and true Republican and country bumpkin, like you make your fucking dogs work for you. You make your dogs behave. So she had to kill her puppy and she shot it in the face. She admitted this publicly. So one of the most amazing jokes in this whole episode is every time Kristi and Noma sees a dog, she fucking blasts it. It's just these poor cute little puppies being ripped to shreds. It's so good. So we have the killing of the puppies. Kristi Nome is the head, essentially like the...public figure of these ICE raids now. And we know how horrendous these have been for working people who are just trying to do the right thing. The majority of the people being detained are not criminals. It's actually an incredible waste of money and completely inhumane. So what South Park did was there's a live performance of Dora the Explorer and ICE goes in and Dora gets detained. They even go to heaven and detain immigrants there.

And then as Cartman is usually a reflection of what is happening with youths, the youths in the country, he gets jealous of one of the other students who sort of starts espousing these like podcasts, Manisfury, Republican talking points. So Cartman becomes Charlie Kirk. He even has the little lame rinky dinky hairdo. If you don't know who Charlie Kirk is, he's a college dropout. He's the founder of Turning Point USA, which is...

If you Google Turing Point USA, it's like, we recruit students to support freedom. It's just the most idiotic thing ever. But it would be an insult to Cucks to call Charlie Kirk a cuck. I love and respect Cucks. I fucking hate Charlie Kirk. He's the worst of the worst. know, deep down, he is probably incredibly racist and misogynistic, and he'll never...

He and JD Vance will never feel the beauty of having a pinky up their assholes. They're just scared of their prostates and any strong women. Speaking of JD Vance, the episode has JD Vance as the president's lap dog in it. So of course, Kristi Noem responded to this episode. She said that South Park was, quote, lazy and petty. And this is coming from a woman working for an administration that posts shit like, what was the latest DHS Instagram post? said like,

It's that deporting illegal aliens glow. I'm happier now. And she said that them making fun of her appearance was lazy and petty. She arrests people without due process for how they look. Pop calling the kettle honey. I think the cruelty really is the point, and these people can't handle the heat, and we need to keep mocking them. Let's not forget that during the 2016 presidential election,

JD Vance wrote, and I quote, back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a-hole like Nixon who wouldn't even be that bad and might even prove useful or that he's America's Hitler. Just let that sink in. We can never, ever, ever forgive these people for supporting this man. It's absolutely wild, and now you're his vice president.

I don't think JD Vance is a cuck, but that would also be insulting to cucks and I love cucks. ICE has been really looking to recruit people. They just got a shit ton of money from the federal government. And I actually saw a job posting on Indeed, like Department of Homeland Security. The salary was between 50 to 100K. And you know, when you're looking at jobs, the shitty ones are the ones that have that crazy of a salary range. There's also...

No age caps for these jobs. They're desperate people. They will take anyone. There was another Instagram post on their account. Whoever's running these accounts can burn in fucking hell. Actually, don't burn in hell. Don't come and party with me there. All right. It shows a father and a son and it says, we're taking father son bonding to a whole new level. Yeah, this is after the you look happier. Thanks. ICE is deporting all criminal illegal aliens. There's no crisis at the border. It's that deporting illegal aliens glow post. Fuck y'all.

Fuck off, seriously, seriously. This is when they're doing courthouse tossing grabs, right? There's been multiple reportings of ICE moving to dismiss cases in court and then arresting these poor people outside for really swift deportation. People have come in for routine check-ins. People have been detained after those scheduled check-ins. It's absolutely insane. That's de-incentivizing people to do this legally.

Migrants have been arrested while coming to renew documents at federal buildings. Multiple US citizens have been wrongly detained and held for days without water or comforts. Masked people without badges and unmarked vans, pulling people off the street and holding them indefinitely, or shipping them out of the country without due process. If not dictator, why dictator shaped? You're going after DACA kids. You're going after families who've been here for 20 years. You're going after farm laborers. construction workers, families, people with tiny children. And this is what really gets me about these people. The baseline hypocrisy. It'd be one thing if you were just heinously evil, but you stuck to your own moral compass and you had some gumption. Then I could at least hate you. I wouldn't respect you, but I'd be like, all right, they're sort of playing within the realms of something that is sane.

But these people are such fucking hypocrites because who is the president married to? Melania's immigration story is basically like a mad lib of every single thing her husband and the Republicans had ranted and raved about being wrong with illegals, quote unquote, on Fox News. And it's quite insane if you look into it. Like she came here, she was on an Einstein visa. And if you don't know what an Einstein visa is, they're the EB-1 visa.

It's meant for individuals of quote unquote extraordinary ability. And I'm not talking about extraordinary tits. Like we're thinking Nobel Prize winners, Olympic gold medalists or literal Einsteins. Guess who got one of those in 2001 as a fashion model? Melania. No shade to models, but she wasn't exactly Naomi Campbell or you know, whoever other fuck models with global level fame were at the time.

Even the Washington Post reported saying it was unusual. And then Republicans like to talk about a lot of immigrants coming here and having anchor babies. In 2006, Melania had barren in the United States, making him a natural born citizen. Trump has repeatedly attacked anchor babies and birthright citizenship as a quote magnet for illegal immigration. She also then used chain migration to sponsor her parents to get green cards and citizenship. the same chain migration policy Trump ranted about ending. He literally said it brings in quote, the worst of the worst. Apparently the worst is his in-laws from Slovenia or wherever the fuck, which I probably agree. And then she, the immigrant, the Einstein Visa, the anchor baby chain migration, which I don't believe in any of this bullshit anyway, because we're all immigrants. If you weren't taken here by force or born here, married a convicted felon. Donald Trump is now a convicted felon.

Yet his party continues to run on the idea that other people's immigrant spouses are dangerous and unworthy. And the cruelty is the point and the hypocrisy is just insane. And it isn't just hypocrisy. think it's like a speed run through every immigration dog whistle the GOP uses, right? Check, check, check, felon spouse. Yeah. one funny thing I forgot to mention about fucking Charlie Kirk, Charlie Kirk, the insult to cucks. is there's this really insane viral clip where he's debating someone on abortion and the guy has a perfect gotcha moment. He holds up a picture of a fetus. Charlie Kirk is like so anti-choice, it's disgusting. He should never be able to have sex, but who would have sex with him anyway? Anyway, the guy holds up a picture of what Charlie Kirk doesn't know to be a dolphin fetus. And the guy's like, you know, you can guarantee that this is a fetus.

Charlie Kirk's like, yes, absolutely, without a doubt, it has a right to live. And then it's revealed it's a dolphin fetus and Charlie Kirk has to eat his words. Anyway, I'm coming to the point where, and this is gonna be a good tiny treat, a big take segment. Remember every episode I treat myself, I just got a little strawberry lemonade and we have a big take. This week's take isn't big for me, but maybe big for other people. You might see the earrings that I removed because of clanking noise. I am a member of the Satanic temple. I am not religious. My tiny treat, big take this week is that we need to start being meaner to Christian nationalists, particularly white Christian nationalists. The reason I bring this up, it is prescient in the news. It's not just me going on a rant because I'm very biased about this. Pete Hegseth.

Are you familiar with the name? He was a Fox News host. He's a certified, viable idiot and a liar. And being the Fox News host and having served in, I think it was the National Guard. And maybe he ran a nonprofit, but word on the street was he had to step down because he mismanaged the nonprofit's budget so poorly. All of that definitely qualifies him to be the defense secretary, which he currently is.

Hegseth has been a strong critic of the political left. He has labeled us America's domestic enemies. He has expressed support for policies like using the military to quell domestic protests. He loves enhanced interrogation methods like waterboarding. He is all about pardoning soldiers accused of war crimes and targeting cultural institutions. He even suggested we target cultural institutions in drone strikes. Yeah, big thinker here, Petey.

There's been allegations of sexual misconduct and heavy heavy drinking which cheers. At least I'm not the defense secretary. Yeah, this man is fully fully not fit to be in the position that he is in our government. Does anyone remember Signalgate? Remember when we learned that the Pentagon now runs like your aunt's Facebook group except like instead of cassowar recipes, it's classified missile strike schedules. Here's like a really quick refresher if you don't remember this. Mike Walz, who is the national security advisor, he thought he created a top secret signal group chat. It was called like Hootie Pee Tee, PC small group. This was supposed to be like the Marvel Avengers of national security. Hegseth, Marco Rubio, JD Vance, all in one chat. But then Walz being the fucking idiot, know, bless his boomer tech skills, accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg. Who's the editor of the Atlantic to the chat. Pete, I think texted something like, the chat is secure. And then he starts texting real time US bomb strike timelines, like F18's launch at 135, Tomahawk's hit at 155. And then at 155, boom, bombs away. It's basically like the most irresponsible live tweet in history.

So obviously this is a huge story. If any Democrats did it, they would be fucking reamed by Republicans and fired immediately. The Atlantic ends up publishing the whole thing because, surprise, surprise, you invited a journalist into your bombing group chat that was supposed to be top secret and secure. So now the Pentagon is sort of investigating. Everyone's pretending this isn't like the digital equivalent of like leaving a nuke in an Uber.

If a Democrat had done this, Fox News would be running like a treason Super Bowl. Sean Hannity would be broadcasting from a bunker, but because it's there, guys, it's like, whoopsie. So in classic Trump administration fashion, there are literal screenshots and receipts. Once those are dropped, Pete Hegseth goes on TV and deflects. He's like, it wasn't me, as if he was auditioning for the Shaggy remix. claims that the quotes are mischaracterized, taken out of context and classified, which is interesting because if they were truly classified, congratulations, you just admitted it's real, right? All of this led to myself and my fickle friends developing a group chat called Drunken Horty for Bombs. Drunken Horty for Bombs is the joy of my life. It will never not be popping off in there. The reason that I bring up Hegseth, and want to illustrate how much of an idiot he is is because he was eating maybe even harder this week. He tweeted, all of Christ for all of life. And the tweet included a video, a really infamous clip now from a Christian nationalist pastor.

And the shit that this fucking pastor is saying, it's like a group of pastors, I think from Christ Church, they're the part of the communion of reformed evangelical churches. Ooh, CREC is the acronym. And McCREC. They really espouse Christian nationalist and patriarchal views. In the video, the video features Doug or Douglas Wilson, he is self-described as a Christian nationalist and a pastor, which means like all of his income is probably tax-free and he fucking is the lamest lame ass ever. Doesn't know where the clit is, yada yada. We know this because in the video that Pete Hegseth like subtweeted or retweeted or whatever sort of tweet thing he did asserts that women should not vote, that they should not serve in the military.

And he believes that voting should only be done by households, typically by men. And then in a clip that has started to go viral on TikTok, Wilson says, women are the kind of people that people come out of. It doesn't take any talent to simply reproduce biologically, implying that childbearing is not skillful and one of the most difficult things biologically, and dangerous things biologically, that you could do. He's really into this gendered hierarchy.

Truly an insane and just idiotic thing to say I can't come up with enough insults for this man. In that same video, a pastor, his name was Toby Sumpter. Toby Sumpter, you can tell this man has so many neurons firing at once. He said, in an ideal society, I would ordinarily be the one to cast the vote for the household, but I would cast the vote having discussed it with my household.

So essentially like your wife can shut the fuck up and you're the one in control. And if you have a daughter, good fucking luck. Another pastor, Jared Longshore, even expressed support for repealing the 19th Amendment, which ding ding ding, is a woman's right to vote. So all of these comments extend really beyond gender roles. Wilson particularly advocated for making sodomy illegal again across the United States and supports the idea of transforming city, states, the nation, and even the world into explicitly Christian entities, which you know that's gonna end really well for those of us who don't fall under that tent. Again, like I'm saying, fucking cucks, which is disrespectful to cucks, these guys will never understand the pleasure of getting your G-spot stimulated. my fucking God. This is the Costco sample tray of oppression. It's like, here's your theocracy, tastes sweet at first, and then you realize the ingredients are no rights for women, conversion therapy, mandatory Bible study, which is taught by your old school gym teacher who can't really read and now calls himself Pastor Chad and probably touches little girls. Like, they want to return to America where there's this like golden age that is very specific, where women are property, gay people were just criminals. Probably minorities have no rights and smallpox were just part of the vibes.

So yeah, my tiny treat, big take is you need to fucking mock these people like South Park does. You don't need to respect their views because they believe in some imaginary curly haired galactic Santa with abs who's white. Megan Kelly will remind us not when they're trying to control us, ruin people's lives, make women and minorities second class citizens again, come after gay marriage and all of those rights. Like this is fucking insane, especially in 2025 that the leaders of our country are subscribing to this. fuck

All right. Anyway, but how's your like Twitch video streaming happening? What's going on there? You guys not as terminally online as me? So, yeah, to calm my blood pressure a little bit here, I've realized that my new hyper fixation this week seems to be men that are the antithesis of all of this bullshit. This really started for me because I went to see Hozier in Lake Tahoe this weekend, and I'm telling you.

Top 10 concert experiences of my life. It was the best weekend of the year so far. The lake, decadent, beautiful. Don't go there. Leave it for me to enjoy, please. The music, transcendent. The man, you know, basically if like Irish mythology and feminist Tumblr, circa 2014, and the ghost of a very gentle tree had a baby, he's a poet. Incredible, incredible. The moon was out. It was outside. The crowd was magical. I walked there, got a little fucked up. Oh!

Hosier really does masculinity differently. There's no posturing, no chest beating, no like, if only I could fix you, if only you can make me a sandwich, I vote for the household. He sings like a man who has been emotionally preparing and emotionally doing the work and also emotionally devastated. And doing this in a culture that teaches men to turn all feelings into either rage or sports trivia, I think that's really rare. one of the most beautiful moments of the show. And he actually did this at Outside Lands too, which I watched. I had a little hat trick of a Hozier weekend. He played unknown. If you have not listened to this song, ooh, if you're going through a breakup like me, ooh, I don't know, are you ready to be really fucking sad? He went out into the middle of the crowd and played it on his own on the electric guitar. And oh, that man's voice and his songwriting.

I had sort of assumed, because I ascribe what's going on in my life to everything I experienced, because I'm the center of the universe, that it was about avoidance and that fear of intimacy and that pushback. But I actually looked up what Unknown is about. And on the surface, it's this stripped down breakup song about really being let down by someone, someone that you really trusted completely. But...

I watched an interview with him and he said a lot of the album in the circles of hell and like contextualized it with Dante's Inferno. So he set the song in the ninth circle of hell. Because apparently Hozier doesn't just get dumped, he like gets dumped and incites medieval literature about treachery. So in Dante's version, the ninth circle from my understanding isn't fire, it's ice. Where like Satan himself is frozen waist deep, weeping and chewing on Judas and flapping his wings in a way that just traps him further, which Hosier said is a perfect metaphor for heartbreak. The harder you try to escape it, the more frozen you get. And like the mourning of that person sort of doesn't get away from you unless you embrace it. So Hosier turned these like brutal little images, like parts of your heart stuck in someone's teeth into this stunning song. And I love the idea of like, someone you never expected to betray you or betray your trust or treat you like that, the word treachery that he used really stands out so much so that they have parts of your heart in their teeth. Yeah, it's both devastating and so inspiring and just tragically hot. I think everyone's been there too, maybe not the like Tudon by Judas part, but the betrayal and trust shattered and.

The song is so minimalistic, it hits harder. It's not like just up and over production. It's just raw and cold and intimate. Yeah, wow. yeah, Hozier and Tahoe was incredible. Good job, Hozier, with Outside Land's top 10 concert moment. And I think that song is proof that sometimes the most romantic thing a man can do is like hand you your own heart back in the song and help heal you that way and dance and sway with you in that space. Still aching and suddenly beautiful. I also went down a Hozier rabbit hole and he was talking about the algorithm and I've had these moments recently where I open up Instagram and I go to my explore page just to see what's up and my God, I am confronted by so many images of naked women and I am not the one that is searching for those things so I can't imagine what a lot of guys' phones look like. That is a conversation for a different podcast because digital media literacy needs to be a thing. We're spoiled for choice and everyone thinks that these like perfect bodies are real and actually out there and in some cases there are, but damn. Yeah, particularly, I'd be feeling particularly hurt about this recently. But what Hozier said was, it's interesting that he's watching this digital algorithm that knows he's a man and it hands him things that it thinks that he should like resonate with. And that spooked him, seeing this sort of story being told to men of who they should be or what they want and looking to sell them something, beliefs and desires trapped into mythology and pathology that thinks of itself as like holding the monopoly on suffering and loneliness and bodies and beauty and weaponizes that into trying to control women and set expectations for people to look and act and feel a certain way that aren't emotionally attuned or based in reality. Yeah. The other sort of rabbit holes I went down were I've been watching Chief of War by Jason Momoa and I think it's a really, really impactful way to tell the story of Hawaii. I've never seen anything like it before. And goddamn, I wanna be Jason Momoa's wife, or even his daughter. is like obviously so stunning and handsome, but he seems like such a charming, vibrant, loving, goofy, chaotic cocktail. He's like a walking half Viking, half Hawaiian wolf lord, but he like wears pink scrunchies and giggles. He's like sweet and stylistic. I think for the first time, I might need to have to watch a Fast and Furious movie because Dante Enchanté from Fast X. I just watched those clips over and over.

He's just so the perfect combination of like gypsy and rock and roll and grounded. Yeah. So yeah, I'm coming to realize my perfect amalgamation. My like antithesis of the Charlie Kirk's is Josh Johnson, the comedian, Jason Momoa, maybe like Diego Luna or Oscar Isaac. have you heard him sing? Timothy Chalamet, my little elegant skeletor and Sean Kaufman. Yeah.

I think that's a fantastic list for now. So yeah, if any of you guys want to come on the pod, hit me up. All right, final segment today, the PowerPoint princess segment. I'm going to go on a little tiny PowerPoint rant that's, you know, if I were smart enough to be on Dropout, it would be in the style of smarty pants, but that's just not the case of how my brain works. Anyway, we are doing this this weekend. My friends and I are finally having a PowerPoint night. So I had to prep a couple of things and I wanted to talk about how I hope that my master's degree wasn't useless. It probably is because I'm struggling, you know, job wise right now. But I found this beautiful, interesting video on TikTok about game theory and linguistics and why your mouth is basically like a strategy simulator. So if you don't know about game theory, it's like essentially what decisions you make under uncertainty. And success depends on predicting the other player's moves. So if you think about conversation, for people who like games and logic, which I'm not one of those people, I'm trying to get better, shout out, Harbinese, the board game. Conversations are like a live action prediction game. I have been criticized in the past, particularly by men I know that I make too much small talk and I'm too nice.

That for me is like greasing the social gears, being engaging with someone and letting them in. It's not a fakeness. No one likes small talk. It's not like I walk around and I'm like, yeah, small talk, baby. So I'm just like getting better at this interaction, I think. Game theory is the study of how people make decisions when they don't know exactly what the other person will do, but their own outcome depends on it. So think chess or poker...asking your roommate if they've done the dishes. In a conversation, you're basically running a mental simulation. If I say this, what will they say back? Will it make things smoother or weirder? Every exchange is a micro strategy where the payoff is being understood and not being thought of as the person who overshared about their cat's dental surgery. No, no, So small talk really isn't about.

The weather, it's about strategy. It's about minimizing risk before committing. Language is a way to facilitate gradual trust building. Small talk is your safe opening move. You don't know the other person's conversation style, their boundaries, their politics yet, so you play at low risk. Coffee, weather, traffic, parking. In game theory terms, you are using a dominant strategy, a move that keeps you from losing, no matter what the other player does. Once you detect alignment, AKA they laugh at my cute joke, they reveal they also love Andor, then you can escalate. That's when you can unlock the bonus level and go deeper. Family chaos, career meltdowns, that bitch in the corner, the time you got dumped at Disneyland, you know, but only after you know that that won't forfeit the game. I think ambiguity is the strategic battle here. language relies on common...knowledge. Under over explaining is a calculated choice here. The goal is efficiency without using clarity, but also showing who you are a little bit and that you're engaging. In game theory, there's this idea called common knowledge. It's not just that we both know something, but that we both know that we both know it. So if I say, John wrote a letter, and I think we're in the same context bubble, I don't specify what kind of letter. 99 % of the time, you assume like a note. But if I'm not sure what that you know what I mean, I have to add detail which slows things down. So it would be an asshole move, which would be the gamble over explaining and sounding condescending if I said not the letter A, a letter and under explaining you risk confusion. So every sentence is a bet about how much the other person already knows like playing charades but with grammar. I think this is a really fascinating way to look at linguistics.

Conversation is also something that we consider cooperative play. So mutual payoff equals shared meaning. The moves are the speech acts. The best outcome is trust and understanding. Not all games are competitive. In conversation, the win condition is mutual understanding. You and your conversation partner are playing co-op mode. My move shapes your move. Your move shapes mine. Every question, joke, or nod is feedback that we are still in sync.

The awkward silence, that's a fumble. Small talk is the tutorial level. It's context building. That's the strategy. And deep personal connection, that's the final boss, All right? So maybe think about that. Think about that next time. I don't think I made a bet this week, but maybe my bet will be that I'm not going to make people laugh during my PowerPoint presentation on Saturday. with my friends, even though I does really want to. Or yeah, the sad bet would be Trump is probably going to try what he's doing in DC and other cities. We shall see. Not going to talk about Titer Swift releasing her new album. Could carry less. It'll be interesting to watch her on a podcast, though. I don't think has that ever happened. I hope the episode of The Summer I Turned Pretty tomorrow is good. Gang gang, let's go. Thank you for listening to Bad Bets. Like I said, join us on Patreon. If you want to support the dream, if you want to vote on bets, if you want to suggest topics, we can talk about history. We can talk more about politics. We can talk about media. We can talk about whatever, okay? Okay. See you next week.