Uncslop Ep. 1: Chanch talks about Pete and Pete, Conspiracy Theories and China

So new thing for the Podcast. The regular Hey Smiling Strange interview podcasts will be up on Wednesdays from now on, but I'm adding a second podcast during the week. Early access will be on Youtube as a video podcast, then monday as the audio version.

These podcast will be a bit more experimental until I find a format that works for them. I like trying things out, and for this one I just went on a walk and talked to my brother, Evan (@perchanches on Twitter). So here it is, Uncslop ep. 1!

Kyle (Smiling Strange) and Evan (Chanch, brother) talk about Pete and Pete, a deep dive into the fascinating world of conspiracy theories and the evolving perception of China in global politics! In this episode of the Hey Smiling Strange podcast, we explore how the internet has transformed our understanding of China, the impact of COVID-19 on global perspectives, and the importance of infrastructure in shaping societies.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome to Ace Smiley Screen, a podcast uh that is expanding. I just this is gonna be a very special episode. If you're watching it right now, you'll notice that I'm walking around uh like I normally do. Uh but uh essentially, I don't know, I'm trying to get the podcast to be bigger and like everything that I try to do. My only strategy for it is like I don't really have any idea, I don't have a lot of good ideas, but I have a lot of ideas. So I'm just gonna try a bunch of them out. And today one of them is we're just gonna walk around and talk uh to my brother and famous internet Lysanko historian Perchonchez. The world's like yeah, so Evan, my brother Evan, his name's he goes by Perchonchez or Chonch Online. Uh we actually are coming off with a very, very, I would describe it as wildly successful and world historically important uh R slash Bill Simmons podcast where we talk about Zach Lowe and the NBA. Uh Chonch, how you doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I'm doing great. I yeah. Uh I don't know if your uh if your podcast is gonna gain more likability because can uh you know, for all of my friends, I think they all agree I might be like one of the least liked people online.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Honestly, uh so like I I do so much worse in text. Like when I write things out, everyone fucking hates me. They genuinely do. I think it's like it's a mix of uh my friends tell me a text like a boomer. You know, I use I use proper punctuation, I capitalize letters, uh, and I'm very blunt with it. Like I don't like I don't know, I don't like mixing up words to try to convince you that I'm I'm not mad at you or something like that. I don't know. But then also you and I both use the internet in a specific way sometimes of like I want to have an argument, I want to fight with somebody. I'm gonna go online and do it right now. Uh you uh you are adept at the arts, I would say, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Oh my god, yeah, yeah. Uh again, universally despised, basically. I think I hit hardest with like three Twitter followers who like everything that I post. But then that's pretty much mostly hatred, especially on TikTok. Uh oh yeah, Twitter and Twitter.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Twitter fucking hates me. I like I can't get any momentum on Twitter ever.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Uh because you gotta you gotta pay for the thing. As soon as the yeah, as soon as you like, unless you get like liked by an account, like if I ever get the logo to like a tweet, it goes off. Um, but I don't tweet that much.

SPEAKER_00 2:43

I don't I just don't really tweet that much now that I'm I do this all the time. Uh but yeah, so uh chonch for chonches. Obviously, uh we have our very famous r/ Bill Simmons appearances as the Chonch brothers. Uh one thing I wanted to talk to you before we get to the the thing that I told you we're gonna talk about is uh I wanted to ask you, at what age are you gonna show your sons, my nephews, the adventures of Pete and Pete? Because I just had a uh I just did a reel on uh Hey, I think it was Hey Sandy, which is the name of this podcast, the name of my whole brand, Smiling Strange, comes from the theme song by Polaris, aka Miracle Legion. Uh yeah, when are you gonna show my nephews the the world of Pete and Pete? Are they ready for it?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah, I mean, I'm building out uh you know a uh television, uh what are those uh what are they called? Um old school TVs.

SPEAKER_00 3:36

Oh yeah, CRTs.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

Yeah, uh CRT Br uh headset for Harry to wear and just have screamed in Adventures of Pete and Pete constantly. I don't dude. I was listening to uh The Backyard, the first album from Miracle Legion on the walk, and it is it's from 1984, so it's like almost nine years before Pete and Pete was like in its full swing. So you know it's probably a good seven years of band development for them before Polaris, and I was just thinking about how uh even the backyard is it hits uh those nostalgic elements perfectly. It really the Django Pop does something for nostalgia that I just love. And the thing that's so funny about Polaris and Miracle Legion is that like they try to do like an REM type thing, but it really comes across totally differently. I don't like REM, but I love uh same, I love Polaris and or Polaris or whatever it is, and Miracle Legion. There's just something so deeply nostalgic about his voice and the little jangly guitar key. I don't know, it does he something magical about it so good. But yeah, I don't know. As early as Harry wants to watch it, the thing that you when you have kids is you're like, okay, well, did you watch Nick at night, right? Um you didn't want to like it. So like Pete and Pete feel like have you ever seen a video of the 2007 Patriot highlights? It feels like it was shot in 1917.

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Like Evan, do you think I will like what do you think I do whenever I need a pick-me-up? Is I just watch Randy Moss touchdown catches from 2007. That is like that is one of my go-to's.

SPEAKER_01 5:16

But it's like 15 pixels across, and you're like, wait, is that how we watched it? Uh so yeah, PP is gonna feel like, even though it perfectly captures the essence of childhood through like a you know, twin peaks for kids aesthetic. Uh and like it also captures the basically the aesthetic of all of the 90s teenager core into a children's show, which I think it does great. But it looks like you know, it looks it's gonna look so different compared to the bumble nums, which Harry is obsessed with, uh, which are three globs. If anyone uh if anyone has kids that's listening to this, young kids, uh there's a show called the Bumble Numbs, and it's on super simple YouTube, brain rot. And uh it's about three globs that say yum, yum yum yum, uh and they have a secret recipe with a secret ingredient, and then they have to go find that magical recipe and bring it back to the the Bumble Numb's kitchen, and then they make it. But anyway, yeah, it's like will they like it? I want to I'll definitely be forcing them to watch it if it's still on YouTube or whatever it is, but I don't know. It's uh it's gonna be like watching We Leave It to Beaver, I feel like it's gonna be so far removed from their life.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Well, mom used to make us watch uh mom used to make us watch the Brady Bunch all the time, which you know I never enjoyed. I never I thought it was boring.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

I thought it was good.

SPEAKER_00 6:41

I think it's fine, it's it's good to know, but I just was bored by it. I was bored by a lot of things. I remember Little Bear used to be like when that would come on TV, Nick Jr. back in the day, just like literally that was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I was so bored by that show that I almost gave up TV. I think I learned how to read, so I wouldn't have to watch that show anymore.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Well, you mentioned in one of your uh your pods, or maybe I for maybe it was a post is like the early, the absolute peak conspiracy theory book for kids is like the Lochness Monster UFO big clipbooks, which are just and Ripley's believe it or not, you just like you had those two cross-referencing each other. Oh, beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_00 7:18

Dude, the fucking the conspiracy theory thing drives me crazy because it's like I don't know. I used to be into them back before everyone cared. Like now, I don't know how you feel about this, but like I genuinely feel that like now that everyone's talking about UFOs, now that the government's like, yeah, these are UFOs, I'm like, they're not real. I've never been more convinced they're not real than right now. It's not like oh, it's awful.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Well, the one thing that's like, all right, well, if the US State Department has all these videos of the UFOs, I don't know, Russia, China, Iran, yeah, all of Africa, every single other state, no one has anything better than this that we could they they also aren't flying drones six miles into the air 24-7 all the time.

SPEAKER_00 8:00

Uh and also out of time with almost everybody. Almost everybody is like, oh man, uh maybe the US having 800 military bases doesn't really serve any purpose for humanity in any conceivable way. It's like, well, what if there were aliens? It's just it's just uh Evan and I use a term we've coined years ago. My Bolivometer is running on empty right now. It's at like a 0.5. It's awful. I hate it because I've always wanted UFOs to be real.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

I I think it's yeah, it's never been lower. Um and also the conspiracy itself turned less cool where it's like it very much similar to how uh space in general seems less cool when they start redditing all these like uh kind of multiverse universe. It's like, okay, well, so now it's it's a got reached the level of abstraction where I don't care. Uh with like the interdimensional UFOs, I don't want dimensions to be affected by my UFOs. I want them to be spacemen from a different planet that came on a spaceship like pirates and they fly around for no good reason. Like, I don't want them to be having a different dimension. I don't want to think about that because there's something intuitive about the well, it's like, well, why would a different dimension even be stable enough for like these things to exist as they seem to do with these little capsules? I don't know, it just seems ridiculous. Like, wouldn't everything be what the underlying laws of mathematics, physics, logic, like wouldn't those also be kind of disrupted in a fundamental way, which we wouldn't be able to know it? And so I kind of lumped that in with the interdimensional thing and kind of dismissed it outright. So it's just less fun. The only UFO thing is the men in black. Uh now that's the only one I want to know more about because those things that if you've ever if you've never looked into the real men in black stories, there's only like five of them, which is why they're fun. Oh, but there's the scariest ones, they're so awesome. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

The like shape-shifting federal agents and shit like that that just like say it's the best creepypasta stuff you can read. I mean, it's why I've always liked uh conspiracy theories, is like they feel like modern ghost stories, you know. Like if somebody sat down and told you, like, oh, I saw a ghost, most people are like, I don't really believe in ghosts, but it's like, dude, I had a credible experience with the men in black. All of a sudden, everyone's like, all right, I kind of like you need to have that believability. It's like the WWE, it's more fun if you think it's real, you know?

SPEAKER_01 10:26

And also it's like they it it builds on itself where when you believe the Mothman prophecies, then you go, Well, what actually happened here? And then you read about how it may have been MKUltra mass dosing an entire town, and all of a sudden it's fucking sick again.

SPEAKER_00 10:44

It's like great. Dude, my defense of like why I give a shit about conspiracy theories all the time, uh, because I do, I I like genuinely, you and I have sent each other every conspiracy theory that had that was fun at all for like 25 years now. Any single time anything pops up that's like this is fun. But I we've talked about this before, where it's like, dude, in a world where like you are constantly bombarded with information, I'm making more information to bombard you right now. That's what we're doing. Uh it's very important to like flex the muscle of like your believo meter and your bullshit meter and like being able to distinguish, like, all right, that's clearly not credible, but like why it's not credible becomes an important thing to be able to like distinguish very early on. And I think like conspiracy theories are like these fun little puzzle games of like, all right, where does this actually break down? At what point does this thing go from a fun story about Mothman into like the actual reality that we inhibit? And now all of a sudden you're like, eh, maybe it was MK Ultra. I don't know. That's like a real thing, so it's still fun, but it's you know, that ability to test that muscle in your brain of distinguishing, you know, seek fact for uh seek truth from facts, right? That I think that's important with conspiracy theories.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Uh I mean it's exactly what it is. You start to get an intuition for it. I think our favorite example was um the expanding Earth or the expanding Earth theories of that planets basically start out small and they get bigger over time, as like then they get stretch marks, and that's like what you see as like geological events. I was so excited to read about that for two days, but you know, if you have no experience with uh letting yourself believe, you have to do exactly that. You have to let yourself believe for the fun, and then a couple days later you look at the rebuttals, and they usually make much more sense.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Where I think that's uh that's more of a take on like I was thinking about this, I almost had a reel on it. It's like when people talk about a healthy skepticism, they always talk about it as though like you should be very skeptical from the beginning, and that's how you have a healthy healthy skepticism. I actually argue it's almost exactly the opposite. Like, when you first encounter new information, have no skepticism at all. Go, this is true. When the guy blew up the balloon and the continents drifted farther apart on the balloon that he had taped on, I was like, that's true, that makes perfect sense. How else did people get over to the Americas from wherever they were? Uh, there used to just be less oceans, and now there's more ocean. And like, if you let yourself believe, you you encounter all the information that they have. And the funny thing is, is like instead of being more convinced by it, the more information you learn about it, the more it like does not hold up at all. And so it's like that's where the skepticism comes. I mean, I don't know. You can turn uh we usually do a strategy of for two or three days you fully wholeheartedly believe the conspiracy theory, and then after two or three days, you see how long it takes for that belief to hold up to scrutiny, and it's like it's genuinely like 15 minutes most of the time, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

The first argument was is so brutal. It's like expanding Earth, you're like, all right, okay, yeah, matter the things are on constant development. Why wouldn't uh do the planets in this way? That's so that's that balloon was convincing. Yeah, but yeah, the balloon science, balloons, science uses balloons. That's exactly what's scientific. Uh but then you like look at the first piece of evidence where it's like, okay, well, people can measure the curvature of the earth if it changes if it is expanding and it's literally never been changed, it's never changed in all of recorded history. So all right, well, it's a pretty devastating blow.

SPEAKER_00 14:21

It's always such a bummer, too. And it's like that's why you realize these conspiracy theories hold such weight, is that like the secret knowledge, knowing the esoteric secret knowledge that the world is actually a balloon expanding or whatever, and that like the oceans are getting larger. Uh you feel good. It feels good. You feel like a cool person, and then all of a sudden it gets ripped from you, and now you're just back to being a normal guy that believed in some stupid crap. It's it's such a disappointment, but I don't know, I kind of love that disappointment.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

Well, it's uh it gives you the same feeling that I think most people are having now with the socialization of the internet, which is that yeah, uh, through like stuff like I don't know, COVID, the JE files, the broader disclosure of the tyranny of like monopoly and finance capital on the like the entire West, people have basically kind of been ripped away from the mainstream media and the kind of channels of information uh delivery that they've been used to. And now, like with the internet, especially when Boomers gone, it's like okay, all this stuff has been laid bare through the flattening of all this information. So they're having the exact same experience that the the people like conspiracy theories have, where it's like if you believe in flat Earth for a moment, all of science, history are changed permanently. Like, this is all this this has to change, this has to seep into every level of your like kind of um awareness of of all things, and so that radical change is now happening to everybody at some level in the realization of the internet and through being mediated through like this type of technology, this revolution, like the forces of production that is the internet, and so everyone's having this kind of realization to more or less some degree. I think there's a lot of reaction, like the kind of very strict anti-conspiracy theory of people, they're just kind of closing their ears and their eyes to be like, no, no, no, no, don't like go back to the mediated, yeah, go back to the mediated information flow, go to the trusted sources, you know.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

What's funny is I remember uh listening to, I think it was like a pseudo-toxology podcast or whatever, or Widna podcast, whatever compots doing these days, where it's just they're talking about like the invention of the fiction of the world through the world's fairs, you know, that like these massive world's fairs that they used to do in Paris and St. Louis and the Chicago one gets brought up in a lot of conspiracy theorists because it was so impressive looking. Uh, but that like this is something that was funded initially by like Rockefeller Institutes and the same institutes are the same like funding sources that undergird a lot of uh the institutions that exist today, a lot of like in university funding and stuff still comes from the Rockefellers, scientific research NGOs, and all comes from the Rockefellers, but like this idea of the world that was shaped by these worlds' fairs is the same mechanism that the idea of the world under the kind of mediation of institutions was shaped, and it's now, like you're saying, it's being broken up by the flattening of information via the internet. And what we've noticed is like uh now instead of kind of a mediated reality, it's a funneling system. It's a flat plane, and they just kind of funnel you into your little corner of information and then leave you there to like bounce off the walls. Like, you know, you just you keep interacting. The algorithm is gonna make it so that you keep interacting with the same people over and over again, the same ideas over and over again, and you have to do like real work to try to escape your own like algorithmically chosen bubbles, you know.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

Yeah, I mean it does that, or it inundates you with a a new, a constant novel stream of schizophrenia to such a degree that you actually do have to re uh reaffirm your own position like in reality. It's like the level of esotericisms that you can find on like X or whatever is infinite, basically, at this point. And so at some point you have to go, all right, the uh the Freemasons cosmology as it relates to like astrology. Uh I think I need to stop here because it's gonna be too much. After this, there's no going back. You know, I yeah, I have to like put the brakes on it.

SPEAKER_00 18:42

Uh I think there's a good transition period here because it's like, first off, uh, welcome to the kind of conversation that has probably ruined a countless amount of car trips, parties. Anytime anyone has thought, well, maybe we'll have Evan and Kyle together to hang out for a little bit. This is what we do almost immediately is get caught in these sort of like rabbit holes or whatever. Uh but you know, uh trying to do with this podcast is sort of expanded into everything that I like. If you guys like the way that I talk about music, if you like what I do where I walk around here and I come up with little thoughts, it all ties into the same process that makes us fascinated with like conspiracy theories or whatever. It is, I like to think of it as like an obsession with the development of things, you know. Whenever something exists, both Chaunch and I have constantly been like, all right, so like where did that start? How did that come to be? Like what what what domino was the first one to fall, and what were the subsequent dominoes to get to this point? Music, it's really easy to do that with because it's like you pick a band and you can hear their, they'll tell you what their influences are, and you go to those influences, they'll tell you what their influences are, and you can go all the way back to you know rhythm blues or something like that. These uh kind of primordial musical essences always end up showing up. But the development of genre, the development of you know, movements in popular culture via music, that stuff's really easy to follow for this, and so if you're into that kind of thinking, whatever, uh I think it's like a good place to start. But the reason for this specific podcast that we wanted to do, uh obviously to talk a little bit about Pete and Pete, but uh Josh and I have been massively, massively fascinated for this is probably like 2018, 2019, would you say?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

I think 20 let's see, I moved out of yeah, I think it was somewhere between 2017 and 2018. It was like somewhere between then, yeah, it started probably.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

So we would since then we have been absolutely fascinated with the development of modern China. And for the most part, we've kind of kept that in close circles. We talk to each other. I have obviously, if you know me in Portland, Oregon, and you get talking to me at a party, at some point I'm gonna bring it up. It's kind of a meme. But I end up relating a lot. You'll hear it in the podcast. I think I've mentioned Deng Xiaoping the most out of anybody in a music podcast in the continental United States in the history of podcasts, and I'm only like 15 episodes in. But ultimately, we have thought for years now that the only thing that like really kind of matters politically. I know that's kind of a loaded sentence or whatever, is like your opinion on China. That like the development of China is the single most I think Hegel coined the term the world spirit to describe uh Napoleon. It's like the world, yeah, the world spirit seems it seems obvious to us after years and years of stupid research. We've read a lot of books that were boring, honestly. Uh that like the world spirit now lies in China, and really for the first time in modern history. You know, since like 1945, the world spirit was in the United States forever. We were the ones that kind of drove culture, drove these things to happen. Now it seems to be shifting to China, and we just want to understand that thing. But talking about it with people. People, most people for the last really since 2017, when you when you talk to people in like 2018 about China and said, like, I think they're doing some things right. It was literally like saying, like, oh, I think that Nazi Germany does some things right. Like, there was a lot of real skepticism to my motivations if I thought they were accomplishing any of their goals or some or thought there's anything interesting about it. Uh, it seems to be changing for whatever reason. Uh, Chuch, you're finding the same thing, you know, like the the opinions changing publicly.

SPEAKER_01 22:31

Well, like, you know, you said it was similar to like Nazi Germany. I would say it would be like watching a racer head and saying, I would like to live there. Uh because that was that was basically like the picture that was painted where like China is this industrial polluting wasteland. Uh, and like you mentioned Hegel earlier. It's like, well, when Hegel did make that reference about Napoleon, I think he was teaching uh to like eight students and mumbling incoherently because he was like developing his, much like we're doing right now, he was developing his phenomenology of spirit. And I think there's like the only transcriptions there from like people that took notes during his lectures, but he was borderline incoherent and would like kind of like be bounced around from job to job. And uh, I think when Napoleon came, he made that proclamation and then the school shut down. So uh he was like kind of a very weird guy, but like yeah, I mean as far as China is concerned, uh, I think the it's with the flattening of information, the internet when it was 2008, a lot of this, like a lot of the rapid industrialization and the kind of smog cities, like everyone was inundated with smog cities and ghost cities, go cities, it was it's just even before the kind of more controversial things like in Xinjiang um were brought up, the um it was the smogs, it was like you're working, it was the Foxconn factories, smog city, etc. And some of that still persists, but because the internet exists, and because things like uh the when we tried to get rid of TikTok and they Xiao Hong Shu, baby. Yeah, Xiao Hong Shu uh and big Twitch streamers going on like i Show Speed, etc. Like these have all kind of broken the uh down like the barriers for people to see it, and at some level, I think this is at least you know, mine and probably your interpretation of it, at some level, what actually exists in reality, material reality, cannot be faked. And there is a level of newness and uh advancement that is just obvious with when you look at like uh the the shores of some of the largest tier one or tier two cities in 1990 versus today, it's it's like a completely cyberpunked transformation.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Um on that point, on that point, it's like something that I've seen people say a lot is like somebody will draw do a Twitter post on like Shenzhen, and it's you know the cyberpunk city or uh Chongqing or whatever, and they'll be like, wow, that looks amazing. And then underneath it, somebody go, Don't you understand this is just Chinese propaganda? And previously people would just kind of leave it at that. Now I'm seeing the response all the time is like, all right, then show me the American propaganda of this, like make New York look like this, dude. Like, I don't care. What do you mean this is propaganda? Like, do they build the city just for this TikTok video? That seems insane.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

But well, I've seen a lot of people go like they don't do, they don't build it right. The the yes, they have high-speed rail, but like you're eventually the they use poor quality steel, or you know, whatever that type of thing. It's like it's not good, it's not as good. We may have shitty 1910 infrastructure in the world's richest city that uh operates on an underground rat trolley, but it's the best we could possibly do because we care about the materials, Kyle.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

The best we can possibly so that before we get into uh the what, I want to get into like the why I care about this because I've never really explained it to other people. I think they just think I'm weird, which is fine. I think that's true. I think I am weird, but like the why has always stemmed from the same thing. We've talked about this a bunch of times. Uh essentially, like my theory of the American political spectrum is that both the left and the right are kind of undergirded by the exact same idea that like no one on the Republican side or the Democrat side really thinks America is like ideal utopian, right? They're all very pragmatic. They all say the same thing, though. They say, listen, this isn't the best thing that's ever happened, but it is the best possible thing, right? That like, oh, America is slow to build, slow to develop. We're, you know, doing this or that to the American citizens. It's like this is just the best you could hope for. Like, don't uh don't rock the boat too much because then it could get, it could only get worse. You know, if we tried anything too dramatic, it could only get worse. And I think this is like really what accelerated our uh interest in China is like we recognized even back in 2017, 2018, that like there was a trajectory that China was on that at a certain point, like was either going to prove all the naysayers right by leveling off at exactly the same level America is at, and just everything would look exactly the same in China as it is in the United States, because this is a natural limit on this kind of progress and growth, or uh the trajectory belays a bigger truth that it's like China is going to get past us in some ways, you know, these things that are developing now aren't going to stop when they get to the same level as America, they're actually gonna go past. And you and I were talking about like even back in 2020, 2021, it's like if China is able to have materially better things, not everything in China is better than everything in the United States, but just to materially have some better things than in America, it literally strikes at the core that holds our political system together this idea that nothing could be better than it is. And I think the big one you see is like in America, we cannot build high-speed rails from San Francisco to LA. We can't do it. They've been spending trillions of dollars on this thing. Nothing's actually been built. Whereas in China, they've built twice the amount of high-speed rails that Europe had in since 2008. So from 2008 until now, they've built twice as much high-speed rails, and that's what people are seeing. And it's like that alone is in itself kind of revolutionary to the understanding of America's place in the world. It is no longer the best of all possible worlds, it is one place among other places, uh, which I think is like multipolarity, but we can get into that later. You know, Tonch, what do you think about the idea that like just seeing things in China that are enviable has this sort of effect culturally on America as a whole?

SPEAKER_01 28:58

Well, I think it strikes at what is uh held dearest to most Americans, especially the either boomers now or the older generation and then millennials like us and zoomers, is that maybe it's less prominent with the zoomers, with Gen X parents, but there's the idea that everything would get better for your children, that there was like that things would continue to develop. The kind of whole limiting factor of this broad notion that this is the best we can do is essentially a sort of American pragmatic uh re-articulation of Francis Pukiyama's end of history. This is the end of development. As things get more complex, development has reached a kind of stasis or mediation, grand mediated point from which, if you you either agree that this is kind of like a natural equilibrium, as you said, or that things get so complex in these types of sophisticated societies that this type of mediation is like really the only thing keeping us from like barbarism or something, uh, along those lines. This is the best we can possibly hope for. Uh, China simply flies in the face of that because they have continued to develop. There is a sort of hyperstitional awareness in China that the future is calling to you from the present, and that this thing is a better and more positive outlook on like the creative potential of mankind, and we see that reflected through their ability to like build cities. They poured more concrete in like 2013 through 2016 or some three-year period, might have been 2010, 2013. They poured more concrete in that three-year period than America did in a hundred years. So it's like I I believe that that means something. That is some sort of uh that that's something you can see, you can you can touch, you can uh you can interact with, you can plan for, etc.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

I think that gets down to like you and I have talked about uh because you know, in in part a lot of our arguing with people online is obviously very political, but it is uh, you know, we have I think argued across the political spectrum in a way that most people don't really do. Uh people that consider themselves very far right, people that consider themselves very far left. And uh people's internal idea of like what they are politically, you can say whatever you want. Your actions and your beliefs are really more important than your own personal label for it. That's sort of something we can talk about here in America, is like the need to be in control of defining terms. But you and I have talked a lot about the political spectrum not being the sort of like left-right authoritarian versus libertarian mentality that you see a lot in the West. I literally just look at it as a graph paper, right? Where one of the coordinates is is China doing something fundamentally different than the West? Yes or no? And then the second quadrant is is the thing China doing good or bad? And then I think everyone's political ideology, this is the I think genuinely the single most important political issue. Everything else is kind of downstream of this of like, is China different and good? Is it different but bad? Is it the same and good, or is it different and bad? Will kind of put you into one of these different political camps. Uh I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 32:09

Well, no, I mean the language of it's like, is it different? You know, are they merely replicating uh American modernity in the post-war era uh based on an advantage of being second to market, essentially, that they are that there are these things have already been developed? Or are they doing something fundamentally at the level of planning and the level of superstructure, which is like politics, civil society, etc. Are they uh are the is the superstructure reflect reflecting some sort of qualitative or base difference? Like, do they have something that is driving society, driving a next generation of both politics, civil society, and planning that is qualitatively different than we do in America? I obviously side with the latter in this.

SPEAKER_00 32:58

Well, the thing is, I think we both started out because we went through, you know, universities and shit like that. We've been, we lived in the Northeast. Uh we're aware of, you know, the sentiments of uh the consensus opinion. The you know, consensus of expert opinion being the kind of ruling ideology in the West or whatever. And we were part of it. It's like I think when I excuse me, when I started doing this, my mentality was China is the same, that it's like just capitalism. They went to capitalism when sometime in the 80s, and it's actually probably a little bad. You know, it's like ultimately there's some good, but it's probably a little bad. And it really was like 2019, 2020, that like the nihilism of that started to drive me insane. That like this idea that it's like, okay, so everything is just gonna get worse forever. Every my kid's life is gonna be worse than mine, their kid's life is gonna be worse than theirs. There's no hope that any of this stuff can change because it's all sort of an inevitability. Uh and I remember thinking at a time, like, I actually emailed professors from of economics departments of every Ivy League school. I was like, I need to know about the Chinese economy. This is the point where I'm like, I have to learn how you know how economics works. And I emailed them, I think the Stan, not Stanford, uh the one in New York City.

SPEAKER_01 34:20

NYU or Columbia.

SPEAKER_00 34:22

Columbia. The Columbia professor was the first, the only guy that got back to me and gave me this book on the Chinese economy in 2020 during the pandemic. It was a long book, you know, it's like 800 pages, but it was written in 2002, and throughout the book, all it did was compare China to what they thought at the time was the most comparable economy, which was Brazil. And it's like, okay, yeah, if in 2002 we're talking about China and Brazil, and like they're talking about, yeah, we don't really know which one of these is gonna pan out. I was like, all right, I and this is this is the best response I got from a guy who works at Colombia. That was the moment where I was like, all right, I don't know how the fuck I'm gonna do it because I don't speak Chinese. I have to find Chinese sources. I can't go through this anymore because these people were wrong. The people that wrote that book thinking making comparisons between Brazil and China, they have been proven in reality to be wrong, but I don't know who wrote that. So I don't know if they're still writing stuff because there's no accountability in the in this in these departments. Once you're in, once you're a China expert, you're a China expert no matter what China does. So these people that wrote about this in 2002, they might be writing about China in 2020. And I can't like trust that they've learned anything from what I'm viewing as like a massive, massive oversight, a massive mistake. I think they were just wrong. And that was the point where I was like, all right, I have to find Chinese sources. And that led me to Wang Huning's America Against America, which I read originally on a forum, uh, where just some woman was just translating it on a random forum, and like every couple of days she would post a new chapter of America against America. Now you can get it as a book, but uh Chachu want to explain America against America and also your thoughts on like finding Chinese sources.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

Well, it's very funny because that I remember you uh sent me, you forwarded me the email of the guy, even more hilariously, which was I think it was the guy at Harvard. And he was like, Well, you should read The Economist, the magazine. And it's like, okay, you're uh academic. You you are you just reading The Economist? You're this is the smartest people that we have in the US, it's just downstream of a popular British, you know, uh politics rag. Yeah, so I think that that was laughable even at the time, and also laughable considering that there are uh actually very easily and free sources that you can find from the Chinese perspective. Like you can just Google Deng Xiaoping, what he said about reform and opening up, why they were doing it, and what it was. Uh, the governance of China is all free, the uh socialism with Chinese characteristics, etc. Uh, these things you can read, and it's from their perspective, so it's obviously biased towards them. But yeah, this is I I found that like absurd and ridiculous to the point where we remembered it like eight years later.

SPEAKER_00 37:09

Oh, real quick, I want to talk about the bias thing because it's like that's what people would point out. It's like you're gonna read a biased thing, and I'm I'm saying it's all biased. You're getting the uh the economist is very clearly biased. Like you can go through essentially just who funds the economist, who funded it from the beginning, what was their goals? That is their bias. So it's like if I'm gonna read bias, I'm just gonna, instead of having trying to find this perfectly articulated middle ground by some by basically written by God as a casual observer from the third party, I am just going to read the bias shit from both sides. And I will have to find at the time I didn't know how to do this, but at the time I remember believing, like I will just have to find a way to test the biased theories against reality to figure out which one was true. Because you can have bias, like I can have bias and still be right. You can have bias and still be right. Bias does not inherently make something wrong, and that's one of those points that drives me absolutely fucking insane. It's like people assume that because you have bias, it's like you're no nullified, your opinion's nullified.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Well, this is like uh, and it's like to bring it back to Chinese history, Mao Zedong, uh you don't know, the founder of the or the leader of the Communist Party of China from 1949. If you don't know who Mao is and you've listened this far, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're doubly. But like he writes a book called on he wrote these two works on practice, on contradiction, and it's like, well, how do you know uh when something is real? It's like you have an idea, theory about it. Well, you know the reality of it by bringing that thought, that theory, that idea into reality practically. And there is a transformation that occurs. Uh if you are more or less right, if you were more or less wrong, in any way, shape, or form, that there is a mediation that reality does to like an idea, that it interacts with the idea, that by prescribing this idea into reality, that uh it changes in some way. And then this is like where the actual truth is. So to relate this back to like the bias versus non-biased things, like you can have a bias, but in reflecting about on the like the actual world, actual reality, as things actually are, then this will tell you what the truth is, for example. You cannot not like you can say I'm going to build 800 million square kilometers of high-speed rail. Well, did you do it? And yes or no? And ultimately, you kind of have to agree that yes, the this does exist. And so, in order for it to exist, it had to have been achieved in some man some way. Uh through you know, through some means of and that's kind of where the investigation occurs.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Way to what one way to test that is to do something like let's say a government decides to release what they're gonna do every five years since 1949, and then you can test the stuff they said they were gonna do against reality. These are called the Chinese five-year plans. They are publicly available to everyone across the globe because they're this is every five years, the Chinese Communist Party basically comes out and says, This is what we're gonna do. Um good luck. And then they try to do it, and it's like they succeed or they don't succeed. I think the thing before we get into like the weeds of all this is like I really want to emphasize to anybody listening to this, to anybody that thinks like I'm a smart guy or an I think I'm articulate. I don't necessarily think I'm I'm too bright. Chonch and I here are C students, D students. We were awful at school. Absolutely. You did what we like to call in the family your victory lap year at college, because you had to do another, you had to do another run to get it completed.

SPEAKER_01 40:39

Well, the cycle. I got uh I got every single grade from A to F as an official final grade in a class. No pass those beautiful. No pass is hard. No pass is difficult to swallow. It's a tough one.

SPEAKER_00 41:00

I got an NP, you know?

SPEAKER_01 41:02

Yeah, but it's but you mediate that through like, all right, the no pass no pass deadline is here. I am failing. So maybe I can uh I can get this to like a what a C or whatever the no pass thing. All right, this is my new goal. Uh so it's like a continuous, you you have to, you know, you have to debate with yourself whether that happens. So yeah, it's always a it's always a pretty stiff blow, but it's never a total shock.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Not pass is a choice you make every single week. An F is something you might be able to pull off in like two bad months. A no pass is a choice you make every day. You wake up and you go, I'm not gonna pass, it's not gonna happen, just not gonna do it. But anyway, like so. The point I'm trying to make is like through this idea, really through this like nadir I was in of like just nihilism of dude, nothing's gonna get better. This shit's uh we're we're doomed, it's just gonna suck forever and then we're gonna die, nothing ever changes. I got obsessed with this idea of like, well, maybe China is somehow different. And literally, it's like every single thing that I read did two things. One, it confirmed my idea that something was categorically different happening in China, and number two, it made me have to read way more stuff. But unlike in school, where they gave me my key no peak grades or whatever, and the way that like school kind of talked about learning was very like uh it's very like metaphysical. Like learning is you just you put information into your brain and then you expose you like saving a file into your hard drive just with a little bit more extra steps or whatever. In this way, when I started trying to like discover China and trying to work through all the stuff that's out there online, what was good, what was bad, uh it felt categorically different way to learn, you know. Like in it was much closer to like drawing a narrative than it was to memorizing facts. And in doing that, it unlocked all of this other stuff. I read I've read a million economics books at this point. I have read the majority of the canon of like Marxist Leninism, which, you know, if you're a leftist in the United States of America, you might understand, like, oh, you have sympathies towards those ideas, but the idea that you have to read them, uh, that like it's a requirement, uh, doesn't really exist in the West. Most people think it's like you can have a passing interest, you can like listen to somebody talk to you about state and revolution, and you get the gist of it. But like for the first time in my life, I was like, dude, I actually have to read this. I have to come up with my own opinion on this thing. Uh, and it's like all this comes from just the idea of like, I just it feels important right now. Before I knew why it was important, but it felt important in the moment to figure out what the fuck is going on in China on like a world historical stage. I don't know. You find the same same general idea?

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Yeah, I find the same general idea, and I think that what is like what has really accelerated this, um are like that there's been right the arguments against it, and one of them is like that China is essentially Japan. Uh yes. That this was that Japan and China are basically the same thing, and that China will hit its Japan inflection point. It's uh what was it called? The Plaza Accords in 1985, I think it was.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

Uh the middle income trap is like the general trend, you know?

SPEAKER_01 44:16

Yeah, yeah. And so uh it seems that's that question seems to have been resolved, but there were like a two other major inflection points. And this one is like the second one is obviously new, but the first one was the financial crisis of 2008. And I remember reading a book by Paul Krugman around the same time, which is called End This Depression Now, because this is where I was at. Like this is like End This Depression Now, he's basically making the Keynesian argument of like, well, we uh no one has jobs and everyone's miserable because the it's like 2009 or whatever. And what we should do is that there's a million there's a million infrastructure projects that we that people want from filling potholes to building bridges to building trains, etc., to you know increasing electric, you know, renewable energy, all this stuff. We should just pour all of the money, we should print money in fiat, and we should pour all of this money into doing that. And I was like, this is a great idea. We should definitely do this. Everyone would would everyone love it, and just it never happens. And so when uh come around to the uh you know 20 uh with the China stuff, you realize that one, like this is kind of what they do a little bit, although although their justification through it takes a yeah. So yeah, this is basically how China does infrastructure, they print money uh through their their banks, which are controlled by the the state, basically, and uh that this was this is how they they build everything on credit, which is how it works in America. So they actually like plan and say that we're gonna build has to be rail, and they do it as opposed to like it has to be mediated by a million private interests. But yada yada. Anyway, the point is um that when you learn about China, you realize that one of the big reasons that the West was bailed out of the 2008 financial crisis was that all of this uh this printed money was actually uh taken in by China and they used they basically were the buyer of global currencies and that it helps America stabilize during quantitative easing. Uh this that is just to say that 2008 was a major inflection point for the West and for this type of uh development and also in the development of China, but also most importantly for what our we're talking about now is that COVID happened. COVID changed the world in that COVID put everybody outside of all of the kind of uh fractures of the political economy, etc. Uh, through like trade and inflation, yada yada. But more importantly, COVID put everyone online. And through being online, you have to you get to see things like what is what does it look like in China? What are they doing there? What are the how are their cities developing? How is their social life developing? How's their um how is there like what is it a real place? All of a sudden everybody is in dumped into this new era of socialization. And I think this also, the the kind of dovetailing development of both America and China during COVID shows you another like inflection point on like why I think why do people care about it now? Well, it's probably like a lag from uh what COVID did.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

I totally agree with that. I just want to talk real quick on the Paul Krugman point, and this is like a pattern we started to recognize as we started reading more, learning more about China and like China's perspective and all that. It's like Paul Krugman in 2008 writes, we should do this, we should take the money, we should dump it into infrastructure. Uh there's no article from Paul Krugman saying, hey, I was right, we should have done that, and I I know that because that's what China did. He never no one ever point they always point out the problems, they give their solutions, and then they just kind of hope that saying a solution out loud will generate enough public support that it'll put pressure on politicians to do this thing. There's no real investigation from a guy that is given he has a noble prize or something, like some sort of yeah, he is. When they want to give a comparison point, they immediately start going into the past. They start talking about like, well, in 1923 we did this, in 1848 we did this, and it's like, well, those things are useful for kind of painting a picture of like how this could work, but the world economy of 1987, you know, is different than the world economy of 2026. The world economy of 1887 is wildly different than the world economy of 2026. So even though it is a good comparison, there could be a better comparison if anyone's doing it in reality right now. And so it's like, this is again where the China stuff becomes somewhat important to me, is that every time I think that, you know, you know, like with China, it's like I think we should use public money to build infrastructure in the United States of America. I think that's uh something that most people agree with, that it's something that we could do and we should do. When people say, well, that wouldn't work because it didn't work, this is what happened when they tried it here, and it's like, I feel like it's more compelling for me to just go, well, I think it does work because look at you know, look at Chongqing, which is a city that five years ago nobody in America would have been able to tell from a made-up city. Like it literally just sounds like you're making fun of uh you're making fun of Chang's. It's a Shangillis thing. And it's like, but now it's like it's on the tip of the tongue of a lot of Americans because they can see it, and it's happening right now, and it's like, oh well, why doesn't you know, and again, Chongqing to compare to like the United States of America, this is not their New York City, this is not their Los Angeles, you know, this is not San Francisco, Silicon Valley, the richest cities in America. This is their St. Louis. This is nothing, you know, this is just a city, and it's like, you know, I I just I think that is the most important thing with China and the success of China and why it's like again, I don't actually don't want anyone to agree with my stance on China. I don't care. I really don't. I've I've argued with enough people that I just don't give a shit. You can call China whatever the fuck you want, you can say it's doing whatever you want, you can fall on that political spectrum in whatever category you want. I am just saying that it seems very obvious in 2026 that knowing what is going on in China is important in the same way that like knowing what was happening in America in 1955 was important, even if you lived in a different country, right? That this is gonna shape the world you live in. And so it's just important, you should know, you know.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

Well, it runs into this contradiction of like, okay, well, we know in America that we at least have the most money on paper. We have a lot of money. We're the richest, we're the richest country on earth. So, what is the money for? Uh I think this is what is happening. Like, what is the money for? What are we doing with this money? Everyone accepts, I think, even the Chinese, I'm sure, accept a level of like corruption and kind of greasing the wheels or even some inefficacies, because that's the development of society. I think most Americans are accepting, they're probably they're probably a little bit too accepting, of like that things will not be perfect. But at the end of the day, what is the money for? I've seen I don't is the money for I don't know what the I I really don't know what you can point to as a millennial that has been better over time as an American.

SPEAKER_00 51:46

The internet, maybe I I remember talking to dad, our father, uh at one point years ago. There's like 20, you know, when he was kind of grilling me about, you know, my weird obsession with China. I know I'm weird because I'm aware of who I am. I'm fully aware of that, you know. Uh, but like he's grilling me about that. And you know, he he's sort of like, well, why why are you so pessimistic with the American government? I was just like, dude, I'm like 30 years old, man. Uh in my lifetime, it's never done anything. It's never there's like things that like Obama did that like on paper make sense, and but it's like it takes this, it takes like a real effort for me to recognize it as something that affects my life. You know, it's got like these downstream effects or whatever. But for the most part, every time you literally just wanted the government to act, it just doesn't do it, it just not doesn't seem capable of doing it. Uh, so I don't know, I don't really have any fealty to this system because it seems indifferent to me. It seems indifferent to everyone I know. It seems incapable of not of doing anything other than indifference or like inflicting more pain. And you know, from dad, he grew up as you know, cusp Gen X or whatever, but like he can remember projects that the government accomplished, you know, he can remember things, you know, he has fond memories of the moon landing and stuff like that. Like he has these memories that create a bond to that system because it performs something to him, and it's like I don't think he'd ever realize, and I think a lot of people over 45 really realize like the enormity of under your entire lifetime, nothing really improving, or the government not really doing anything except more wars and shit like that. Like, obviously, that is going to have a different those people are gonna have a different relationship to that system than people that like I don't know, this is obviously dead, but like benefited off of the New Deal or something like that. Those people are gonna have a much different relationship to uh to the government. And honestly, it was one of those things that like again, when you start researching China, a lot of it comes off as kind of weird and creepy, and it's like, why do all these people have pictures of Chairman Mao on their bed, like in their room in their house? And it feels like somebody's forcing them to do it. But when I think about it, it's like, well, if I was a dirt poor peasant, and by the time I died, I had a retirement account and a furnished house, and my kids were in college. Whoever I thought was responsible for that, I would have very high favorable opinions of. I would think that that is a good person, maybe have a picture of them. Yeah, plus mix that with Chinese civilizational DNA, you know.

SPEAKER_01 54:20

Well, to tie it back to Pete and Pete, the first episode, King of Rod, they're going, they're going to the Hoover Dam. They're going to observe greatness, they're going to observe the transformation of nature by man, a willing participant in this grand project uh by taken upon by society. It's like it's a monument to this type of development.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

Yeah. They conquered nature on behalf of all people. That's the Hoover Dam. You know? And now in China they have the Three Gorges Dam. You know, they they have their own version of this thing. And I just like, honestly, the the thing that gets me is just like, I don't know. We've talked about this a million times. In China, they are China's like one of the only countries in the world right now where people think that the next 50 years will be better than the last 50 years, right? They're one of the few countries that actually believe that. Two of the other countries, by the way, are Vietnam and North Korea. So it's like everyone else, though, thinks things are gonna get significantly, significantly worse. And it's like I personally think that the future tends to belong to the optimists. People that think things are gonna work out tend to be right. And two, uh, I'm envious of that. I want to live in a country where everyone around me thinks things are gonna get better. And I want that for here, I want that for America, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:42

Yeah, I think there's just a common denominator of like, do you believe in the creative potential of mankind? And I to be unleashed. Like if you were uh to unleash everyone's creative faculties, would this be positive or negative? I think ultimately most people would agree that this is a positive thing and that there is there are very few obstacles that like could not be solved at the at this like this level of like uh liberation, freedom to explore creative solutions and problems to all manner of things and both like you know, aesthetic and art, and then politics, state's craft, and production. All the all of these things I you know, I have faith in like people to like achieve. And I just don't see that faith being um I don't see you know, like Gen Z is the least patriotic generation in America, and Gen Z in China is the most nationalistic and patriotic. They're actually more patriotic, they're more nationalists than their parents. So take a boot take a conversation with your you know boomer mom and talk to and she's gonna talk to you about our JFK or whatever. Like these are just this this is the the inverted conversation that the zoomers have, you know. Uh yeah, it's it's very it's very um it's very interesting. I I don't think people believe, I think that there's a level of of mistrust that people view this as a sort of uh brainwashing. This is an ultimate effect of like like people will just flip this and be like, well, they're actually just the most brainwashed. The sophisticated Chinese panopticon of government surveillance has simply like cybernetically changed these people's brains into being like they're getting better at this totalitarian thing. Whereas I ultimately uh, and I think you'll agree with this, like, right? You agree, uh, and this is a huge light bulb moment for me about all of the kind of authoritarian regimes or whatever. It's like it is basically impossible to govern people in an authoritarian way when they don't want it to be, and they know that their material conditions are bad. In examples in history from which people have tried to prescribe a sort of ideal onto society that is uh rejected or doesn't align with their kind of material interests, it almost always fails very quickly and immediately. Even if you look at like uh Nazi Germany, that was a that did not last 10 years. Uh you know, like that uh it did not last long. Because it couldn't, because it structurally could not. They had to, you know, with all their expansionist goals or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 58:19

It was it was well we also now know why it couldn't have survived on like a financial level with like banks. This is stuff that like eventually I like want to talk to. But on the point that you're talking about, like the point that I always bring up with people is when they're like talking about like, well, you know, the Chinese government, they makes them they make the people say these nice things, they make them swear fealty to the government. It's like the two things I bring up is this study done by Harvard University that has no right to publish anything, no reason to publish anything pro-China ever. They have no bias towards this, that said 95% of uh Chinese approve of the federal government, uh approve of the Communist Party in general, right? Uh again, compare that to American approval ratings of Congress, and it's wild. Uh but then like when people bring up, it's like that number is that number is too high. Uh so it must mean that they have like mind control powers. I always bring up the same thing. For the last 30 years in China, every seven years your take-home pay on average has doubled. For a Chinese citizen, every seven years their take-home pay has doubled. If the Republican or Democratic Party doubled your take-home pay every seven years, would you vote for them every single time? Like, would you have a hot what would your approval rating be of that party if they paid you, if your life increased that way, uh, that linearly? Like, it's just, I know it sounds like an absurd number here in America, but just trying to like put yourself in the shoes of an average Chinese citizen. It's like, I don't, I, I don't know. I don't know what I personally, I might have like nitpicks with what the government does uh here and there. And there might even be people that have like legitimate grievances because of some actual tragedy, you know. That I'm not denying anything, I'm not denying that anything bad has ever happened in China. I am just saying that on a hole, it kind of makes sense to me why these people would have this view of this government because it seems to be working for them in a way that is now becoming obvious to American citizens, uh, which I think has like it has the ability to like attack a structural belief of the American political system. Again, that belief that like nothing is different than this, nothing is better than this. We just gotta hope that it doesn't get worse. And I think that that that is now like in flux, that idea is in flux. And I'm very interested to see how that like plays out uh in the next you know five, ten years in American politics or American.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:42

You can see it Yeah, I mean you can see the tendrils of its influence impacting everyday Americans, where we uh there is a huge push to re-industrialize America. Uh there is in when we were growing up, it was very much the I it was the we were it was like this is the idea economy. And I think that's kind of crystallized in Silicon Valley in like the early internet boom and really like the the Obama-era internet like boom, which is like, oh, this is this is where the production comes from. We're the idea generators of the world, and we now basically own the internet. We have like taken this thing and through our ideas put into this like software, like it's literally software, it's like the expression of ideas uh through code, basically, that this is like the new economy. Well, the contradictions of this were basically immediate in that there was the the commons that were enclosed upon by these this very same uh productive uh force of the internet. And now I think people are with in something like seeing China's rapid development and especially their industrial development, they're like, well, we should do that here. And I think that it's again, this is a way where it's like kind of impossible to completely squash and quell. I think that this type of sentiment is only going to increase uh over time. And I think that they're gonna have to, there's gonna be have to be some concession in regards to this. It's just gonna be, in what form does this take? Is this going to take the form of like the UBI enshrinement of profits in America that will appease the citizenry? Because or will they fight it tooth and nail? I don't really know. Uh I have my guesses, but I don't know. It just seems like that this is you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube on the thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:35

I think the the uh ultimately like we're uh uh uh in agreement on this thing. Uh and I think the reason that we are saying kind of confidently here that this sentiment towards China is going to change is because again, we have been looking into this for a long time, not saying that like I'm an expert on somebody that might have like a PhD or so. I don't I don't want to argue about credentialism. I am just saying I know I've read a lot on this, and I have seen in real time how much it has shifted, how much that idea has shifted from uh being very negative when you talk about China to being much, much more open right now. People are starting to say stuff that I was saying like five or ten years ago. Uh but anyway, this has been an hour. Uh this is a different type of podcast, obviously, than what we've done, what I've done in the past. But uh what I just kind of want to say here. Go. All right, so sorry I cut out there for a second. But what I was just trying to say is I understand that this might not be the reason that you come and listen to my podcast, you watch my reels or anything like that. Uh obviously I talk about music a lot more, kind of talk whatever I want to, but genuinely I believe that the appeal that I tend to have online is that I am not an algorithmically sortable product for the most part, you know. I stick under indie rock right now because that's where I've had some success. But I try not to like focus in a way that plays into that algorithm whatsoever. So if you like that aspect of it, if you like the fact that like I come off as somebody that maybe has some interesting ideas, whatever, I again it makes me feel like I'm being very arrogant about the quality of my ideas, but I'm mostly just focused on the idea that like I do not want to be algorithmically sorted, I don't want to be part of the algorithm. And if you enjoy that at all, uh you kind of have to let me do podcasts like this. You have to make me let me make reels about sports or China or P. Well, I mean Pete, you guys would love, but uh I'm gonna try to make some movie stuff. My idea right now is like the podcast was started just because I I thought it was a good idea to do it. Now I want it to grow. And again to quote Dang Xiaoping, if you want something to grow, you have to let a thousand flowers bloom. So there's gonna be some bumps along the way. I'm gonna throw a bunch of ideas out there and just see if I can start to build on this stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:02

Ultimately, though, but what was the intro to the Bill Simmons podcast? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:14

Yeah, yeah. But it's like ultimately, uh until I get paid by this, I'm doing it for fun. So I get to do whatever I want. That's like kind of ultimately the authority on this is like, do I want to do it? And I have very much wanted to talk about this in a public setting, some way, one way or the other. I want to have a spot where I can kind of touch in on stuff that I find is interesting about China. I'll probably bring Tranch back in for more of this stuff. We didn't even get into like we should do like a Michael Hudson podcast. Like just a full on deep dive history of Michael Hudson. Uh do super imperialism. Yeah, let's do super imperialism, stuff like that. It's like this is the stuff that I find very interesting, and I am fully aware that I'm a huge dork and that it might be boring to some people, but well, I'm very much looking forward.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

To people getting very mad about this podcast. Uh if my experience on the internet is anything to uh to go back on, is that this is going to create some very angry people.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:14

Honestly, if this podcast doesn't create a lot of angry people telling us that you know China's not communist and that it's actually just state capitalism and it's actually bad, if it doesn't create a bunch of people yelling at us about this, then our theory of the case is true. That the sentiments towards China are changing. Because that has been my evidence online forever. It's like every time I say anything positive, it is shouted down by a bunch of people that are very upset. And I get it. I mean it's fun to be on it's fun to be mad online. I you are I am not the kind of person that can ever wag my finger, somebody who wants to get mad online. Uh, I've done it plenty of times. I'm just saying that like I do think that the reaction of this podcast will like there could kind of prove our point to some extent, but I don't know. Uh we'll see that's kind of it. I think that's uh it, Chaunch. I'll get you back on the next time. This was sparked because you know Trump's over in in Beijing right now. He's in Beijing right now. And the thing is, is like he's doing a thing that I've been saying is somewhat inevitable. Maybe we'll talk about this on the next one. Is like my idea of yeah, but it's like the ultimate hapaboria, the ultimate idea being that like we should take all of the fake financial money that we have in the United States and just give it to China to build infrastructure in the United States. Because if there's gonna be a multipolar world and you get to pick your teams, because we're we basically have the first pick in a pick-up basketball game for multipolarity, like who do we want to be our teammate? And it's like, dude, let's pick China. Let's go like let's be let's uh let's work together with China. I think it's like an inevitability, honestly. But that's something we can talk about more.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

We're like Mr. Despana picking first and pick up basketball. Well, we don't contribute anything, but we get to pick the basketball.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:04

But we got first pick, baby. Yeah, so every once in a while tuck a three from Steph Curry range.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:10

Every uh every US-China negotiation, I'm only gonna envision as of Mr. Despina and LeBron James playing pickup basketball.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:20

I think that's a perfect place to end this thing. Uh yeah. Anything uh do you have anything to plug? I don't think you have plug. Are you still working on that short movie?

SPEAKER_01 1:08:28

Yeah, that'll get done in 2028, probably. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

Um give the give the people something to read. Give them a book to read. Something simple.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:39

Uh Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Finchin.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:46

Read Infinite Jess, kids. I love that book. Uh oh, that's another podcast we could do is the Infinite Jess podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:52

That's yeah, we should uh I listened to Infinite Jess to go to Yeah, this is we're this is uh this is gonna get clipped. Nightmare Blunt Rotation.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:02

Um that might be the name of these, uh that might be the name of this segment.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:13

That uh perfect. We could just define your most uh socially repulsive guest with the weirdest appearance. We should have Nick Land on.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:21

Literally, it just be it should just be us. Like we are the nightmare blunt rotation. We are the ones that you don't want to smoke with at all. So love that. Uh love that. Oh my god. That's it. Yeah, night blunt rotation is perfect. Uh that's it. I'll say podcast. Stay on for like a second.