Did the Midterms Destroy All Hope for Data Centers? | E2360

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Odoo: https://Odoo.com/twist Sentry: https://sentry.io/twist Stripe: https://stripe.com/startups Plaud: https://Plaud.ai/twist Today’s show: Democrats swept the midterms, and a lot of their candidates ran explicitly against AI data centers. Then on Thursday, the Nasdaq fell 5%. But fear not: Jason says the panic is overblown. Back in August, he predicted that the anti-data center rhetoric on the campaign trail would transform into cutting a deal once the voters were counted. On TWiST, Jason and Lon discuss the route to compromise that could define the next year of AI discourse. Find out why Jason still gives President Trump an A+ on AI, even as he lost touch with the country’s mood on other issues. Plus we’re checking out some highlights from the archive, as the show followed the decline of Trump 2.0 in real time, and Jason explains his simple method for staying informed and in touch with everyday reality. (Talk to lots of different people!) Plus: OpenAI’s post-election pledge, Anthropic’s first content licensing deal, Apple cuts engineer AI budgets, Lon’s latest This Week in AI demo, and the guys get mega-hyped for “Godzilla Minus Zero.” Relevant Links Voters rebuff data centers in every ballot measure except one (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/04/data-center-ballot-measures-2026-midterm.html Hinojosa's call for a data center moratorium until the legislature acts (campaign): https://ginafortexas.com/2026/07/new-hinojosa-calls-on-greg-abbott-to-put-moratorium-on-data-centers-until-a-legislative-session-that-puts-texans-first/ Talarico defeats Ken Paxton (Texas Tribune): https://www.texastribune.org/2026/11/03/texas-ken-paxton-james-talarico-us-senate-elections-2026/ Microsoft pulls out of its UK data center deal with Nscale (Computing): https://computing.co.uk/news/2026/ai/microsoft-exits-nscale-deal-ipo-at-risk Gavin Baker on TX data center rules: https://x.com/GavinSBaker/status/2118420042283102604 California's billionaire tax (Prop 40) goes down (Bloomberg): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-11-05/california-voters-poised-to-reject-first-ever-billionaire-tax TWiST E2113 w/ Steven Borrelli of Cuts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qxDoJvzSiY TWiST E2332 w/ Jason’s data center prediction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojSmG6xHCdI OpenAI pledges to pay for its data centers' power and halt NDAs (CNBC): https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/05/openai-to-pay-for-data-center-power-after-election-shows-ai-concern.html Anthropic strikes its first licensing deal, with the AP, for election coverage (Adweek): https://www.adweek.com/media/anthropic-licensing-deal-ap-election/ The New York Times v. OpenAI discovery fight (Bloomberg Law): https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/new-york-times-wants-access-to-top-openai-executives-documents Apple's first touchscreen MacBook Pro, from $2,899 (Tom's Guide): https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/macbooks/apple-reveals-oled-touchscreen-macbook-pro Lon’s Plaud demo post: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/p/record-your-ideas-with-plaud-then Plaud MCP for ChatGPT and Claude: https://in.plaud.ai/blogs/news/plaud-mcp-for-chatgpt-and-claude Terry Black's Barbecue: https://terryblacksbbq.com P. Terry's: https://www.pterrys.com Torchy's Tacos: https://torchystacos.com Velvet Taco: https://www.velvettaco.com ”Godzilla Minus Zero” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu0pH5BuCPM “Hope” trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYRc2Gl7geY “Dark Matter” Season 2 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhB6_1UbR7s “House of the Dragon” Season 3 trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JlMjgqduVw Timestamps: 0:00 Jason’s initial take on the Blue Wave 6:40 The data center pause was about appeasing voters 10:55 Odoo - The all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free! Get started today at https://Odoo.com/twist 11:56 Corruption, Iran, and the cost of living brought down Republicans 16:18 How the Cuts CEO shifted Jason’s tariff take 21:12 Sentry - New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to https://sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26 29:06 Plaud - If your work depends on conversations - interviews, meetings, calls - you need a Plaud NotePin S. You can check it out at https://Plaud.ai/twist and use code TWIST for 10% off! 29:15 Lon’s Plaud Agent demo 33:40 Stripe - Stripe Startups offers early-stage, venture-backed startups access to Stripe fee credits and more. Apply today on https://stripe.com/startups. 34:48 Leadership is repetition 40:19 Why AI labs should revenue share with publishers 50:16 Pricing out the new touchscreen MacBook Pro 56:46 Income taxes, capital gains, and margin loans 1:01:17 Godzilla returns in “Minus Zero” Subscribe to our newsletters on Substack: TWiST: https://twistartups.substack.com/ TWiAI: https://www.thisweekinai.ai/ TWiVC: https://thisweekinvc.substack.com/ Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, everybody, it is Friday, November 6, 2026, but we're recording this on Thursday, the 5th. Uh, this is gonna be my first chance to talk about Lon in earnest, uh, what happened in the midterms.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 0:14Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, my role on All In as the one person who was on the other side of these discussions, and, uh, let's call it what it is. I start from a mile away what was gonna happen, uh, with the midterms. And so you and I have been talking about it, uh, everybody's been talking about it in my, uh, group chats, and, uh, let's have a conversation here about it.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  This Week in Startups is brought to you by Stripe Startups. Stripe Startups offers early-stage, venture-backed startups access to Stripe fee credits, expert insights, and a focused community of builders. Apply today on stripe.com/startups. Sentry, your team should be focused on shipping features, not chasing down bugs. New users can get $240 in free credits when they go to sentry.io/twist and use the code TWIST26. Odoo, the all-in-one business platform. Your first app is free. Get started today at odoo.com/twist.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  Definitely. So on Tuesday, Democrats secured majorities in both the House and the Senate. Many of their candidates ran on slowing AI development, especially data center construction. Voters also acted locally. More than a dozen Ohio towns, for example, voted to halt or restrict new data center development. Similar bans passed in Kansas, Florida, and California. And Texas Governor-elect Gino Inoosa campaigned on pausing construction until the legislature passes new regulations, per The Wall Street Journal.

• 1:40Jason Calacanis?

  Inoosa.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Inoosa.

• 1:42Jason Calacanis?

  Inoosa.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Inoosa.

• 1:43Jason Calacanis?

  Inoosa, yes. We're gonna have to get used to saying that. I knew Greg Abbott, and, uh, she follows me. She's only got like 100,000 followers. She follows me on Twitter, so I'm gonna reach out to her and, uh, do an interview with her and, uh, maybe have the brisket summit. We might have to have a brisket summit between the tech industry, Gina, and Talarico.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  They were at, uh, they were at Whataburger right down the street from Terry Black's. They were right there on Barton Springs. Now, is Barton Springs Road in First? That was the Whataburger they were at, if you saw those photos.

• 2:09Jason Calacanis?

  Huh, I'm gonna have to reassess my opinion. I'm gonna give Whataburger a second chance.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's terrible. No, Whataburger's bad.

• 2:15Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, really?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, Texas, they're very proud of Whataburger. And you know, I'm not some burger snob. I think Pete Terry's is fine. Like, I'll eat a burger. I, Whataburger's really disappointing. They treat it like it's like they're Texas In-N-Out. And come on, guys.

• 2:29Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, it's not. It's not. Uh, Pete Terry's, uh, is the one where I might have said something a little spicy, but if I'm gonna run for office, I'm gonna have to re, I'm gonna have to reassess and re.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39Jason Calacanis?

  I'm gonna have to re-underwrite my Pete Terry's opinion based on how loved that brand is. I'm gonna give it a second shot.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  I think Torchy's tacos and Pete Terry's you have to like if you're in Austin, I think. Anyway, uh, Texas, Georgia, and Ohio account for more than 40% Jason of all planned US data center capacity. And by Wednesday morning, senior OpenAI leaders were already discussing whether to reset expectations for next year's capacity. Bloomberg also reports Microsoft is souring on NeoClouds like NScale, iRen, and Nevius canceled the roughly $3 billion NScale deal tied to a UK data center. So, uh, that's what's going on from the tech view. What's your view just as a person who's been watching all of this go down? What were your immediate reactions to, uh, the midterms?

• 3:21Jason Calacanis?

  So, uh, you know, the one thing that Trump really nailed during his first two years, first half of his presidency, just under two years, uh, was supporting big tech, supporting growth, getting rid of regulations, and just, let's grow, grow, grow, uh, including the AI trade. So I think he was super engaged in that. That is kind of the most important thing happening in our, uh, in the world. So if you frame it that way, AI is the most important thing in the world. I would give Donald Trump like an A to A+ uh, in his handling of it. Like, just flawless. Absolutely.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Wow, alright.

• 4:00Jason Calacanis?

  A+, because you, you wanna get these data centers going, you wanna get energy going. He made it a focus. He, he held, he stood his ground when people were anti-data center, and he said, listen, these data centers are incredible. You really have to look at it. When it was becoming incredibly unpopular, he said, be careful, you wanna negotiate your best deal here. You can get a great deal. Cause he's a dealmaker. And because he has a good nose for a business, you, you may not like his personal style. You may hate many things about Trump, not you, but a person.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:27Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, and obviously, the country was very upset at him, and this is obviously a referendum against him.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  Right. That's what I was gonna ask, is Trump really put himself front and center in terms of the midterms and said, you know, it's a referendum on me. If you love me, you gotta vote Republican. He kinda did the same thing with data centers. He made it such a huge focus that.

• 4:46Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 4:47Speaker 01

  Do you think that he might have made it more partisan than it otherwise would have been?

• 4:52Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so now you nailed it. Um, he did make it a wedge issue here.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:57Jason Calacanis?

  And the, forcing the Democrats to take the other side. What you're going to see, I'll just make the prediction for you, and I had a lot of tweets about this today. On the data center, let's just go data center, data center, tech, tech tank today. We had a 5%, 6% correction. Um, that's on, and, and when we've, the day after the midterms, we had a big boom.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:18Jason Calacanis?

  Because people thought, hey, the war's gonna end in Iran, the grifting's gonna stop, we have a check against Trump with the tariffs, mainly tariffs and war. If the tariffs, we get, the tariffs calm down, and we get the war ending, it's very bullish for stocks, uh, for loans, etc.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  An interesting perspective from DA Wallach on yesterday's, uh, This Week at VC Roundtable, I also have seen in a few other places. Do you think there may be a sense that gridlock is almost good in a way? Like, if the government can do less, they can regulate less, they can enforce less, like, they're gonna be less aggressive?

• 5:53Jason Calacanis?

  100%. Having a split, uh, government is the preferred case. You wanna have checks and balances. Sometimes you get all three, um, aspects of government. You get the House and the judiciary, you have control over the Supreme Court, and you have the executive branch, and you have the two branches, the Senate and the, the House of Representatives. So arguably, there's like five, four pieces of government, I think, is how you probably should look at it, not three, cause the House and the Senate are, you know, unique.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  Very different.

• 6:23Jason Calacanis?

  They're very different. So you really have four parts of government. How often do you have four of four? And Trump had four of four for two years. And some people will say he squandered it. You can make arguments that he did, um, or didn't do enough when he had that. Now, he has two, right? He still has the Supreme Court, he still has the executive branch, but he, he lost the Senate and the House of Representatives. The, uh, trade has been overblown. I said from the beginning, when Governor Abbott came out and said like, oh, we gotta pause data centers and make sure they're all tight, that was just appeasing the masses, who we've talked about many times, hate AI, because Dario said, you're all gonna die, and half of people are losing their jobs, and, and all this chaotic stuff.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  I have a clip of this, if you wanna take a look at your comments from August. Uh, so Zach, this will be episode 2332, August 31st, 2026. Here is Jason making this prediction about what would happen with data centers before and after the election.

• 7:21Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, wow.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Let's take, you're very prescient, very prescient. Uh, Zach.

• 7:25Jason Calacanis?

  Let's find out.

• 7:25Speaker 01

  Ooh.

• 7:26Jason Calacanis?

  I'm angry. I'm predicting it now. They got all the donations from the data center and tech folks. Then, election comes up. Hey, AI is not popular? Great, we're anti-data center. Now, here we go. After the election, they get their office for another two to four years? You know what their position's gonna be? We sat down with the data center people, we made peace, they're gonna pay for their electricity, they're gonna get rid of, um, uh, housing tax, they're building a stadium for the children. When they start talking about what the data centers do for children, chef's kiss.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  There you have it.

• 7:58Jason Calacanis?

  Wow.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Nailed it. There you have it. So I, I think this is very likely to happen, yes.

• 8:03Jason Calacanis?

  It's already started happening. My understanding is the, uh, governor is having a press conference at 6:30 in Texas.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 8:11Jason Calacanis?

  And, uh, Gavin, um.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Gavin Baker, I have this, I have this in the notes as well.

• 8:16Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, the tweet up.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Uh, he believes that our, our new governor is going to pass laws that ensure that all newly permitted data centers going forward for delivery in 2028 and 29 will pay taxes, commit to no increase in power prices for consumers, won't impact water availability, and will be constructed with union labor, and give Texans a seat at the table. He says all of this sounds very reasonable to him.

• 8:38Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, and, uh,

• 8:41Jason Calacanis?

  He's actually correct. What we know is the Democrats do, they may want to posture that they're anti-data centers, anti-AI, anti-capitalism, all this socialist stuff. But they need to govern at the center because you need jobs, right? You need economic growth. If you slow this trade down, we're going to go into a recession, or worse. And it could be an extended recession. We could be talking about two or three or four years. That's going to be blamed on the Democrats. Already today, the dialogue with the crash is people realize the Democrats are anti-data center, anti-growth, they're decelerists. And I think that needs to be worked out right quick. That's why you see the governor coming out and saying

• 9:24Jason Calacanis?

  what she's saying. And there's a really easy middle ground here. Guarantee water, electricity, are sustainable, clean, that there's no pollution. Pay your taxes, create jobs, donate money to the local community. The end. If you do all those things, there will be a competition for these data centers. Increase your offer, like Facebook and Meta have been doing. Just increase your offer to each community. Give them more toys. You give them more toys and you just be a good neighbor. What does it mean to be a good neighbor? Noise, pollution, smells, and energy. Just don't F around when you put in a data center. So I think today's chaos in the markets is overblown. I think it's a incredible non-investment advice. I

• 10:09Jason Calacanis?

  think it's a generational time to buy. So if you have a little cash around, Lon, this would be a great time to nibble on an Nvidia, on an Amazon, an Uber, a Tesla, a SpaceX.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  I picked up some discounts today.

• 10:22Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, look at you.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's the plan. That's the only way I've ever found to make any money in stocks. The like Warren Buffett, like, think about the future. Like, I never made any of that work. But wait until companies you think are fundamentally strong have a big dip. Buy the dip. That's it. That'll work.

• 10:39Jason Calacanis?

  It's buy the dip always.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  It works every time.

• 10:42Jason Calacanis?

  It works every time. So that's my feeling on the data center stuff. Let's continue on our election review and J Cal's, J Cal's position on this. People have been asking me like crazy. I'm going to be on Jesse Waters. Odoo is the all-in-one management software that brings everything you need into one easy-to-use platform. And founders already know it's going to save a lot of their valuable time. But I want to spend just a few minutes exploring one of these real apps with you that you get access to when you sign up for Odoo. Let's check out Odoo Discuss. This is where Odoo brings together all of your text conversations, your voice notes, your documents, and any other updates you have into one easy-to-scan dashboard. No more

• 11:24Jason Calacanis?

  deep-dive searches, trying to find the specific message you remember reading the other day, or flipping between 18 tabs to make sure every member of the team is up to date. Nope. Odoo helps you record and transcribe meetings and calls right in your sidebar with results automatically updated once they're ready. Yes, Odoo Discuss built into the platform. So if you're still cobbling together your back office across five different apps, get started today at Odoo.com/twist and your first app is free. That's the right price. That's O-D-O-O dot com slash twist. Give it a shot.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  All right. Well, there you go. I've got, I've got a lot more clips if you want to take a trip through memory lane. We've got, let's bring up, so here was you, well, one thing that interested me over the last few days of going over the last two years of clips and looking for this stuff, is you were very early, like January, February 2025, right after Trump took office, you came out and your first few shows of the Trump 2.0 administration, you were saying, there's a lot on this agenda I like. I think he could do a lot of positive things. I'm worried about, and you would literally list all the things. You were like, I'm worried about grifting. I'm worried about he'll lose focus. I'm worried about, you know, like, you, very, very spot on. So one of the early things that you were

• 12:37Speaker 01

  jumping on were these meme coins. Here's a clip. This is February 18th.

• 12:42Jason Calacanis?

  I forgot about this.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  2025. So this is, Trump's been in office for a month. And this is Jason and Coffeezilla talking about his new meme coins.

• 12:50Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, Coffeezilla, shout out.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:52Jason Calacanis?

  First, a spicy take. Trump shouldn't have launched meme coins because my belief is we went from a too restrictive crypto space with Gary Gensler to restricted. I'm going to make two very important points.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:06Jason Calacanis?

  Number one, this mess can be easily solved. Number two, the people who are charged with fixing the mess should not launch meme coins in the interim while we're cleaning it up. So there's an easy solution, and I want to walk through that. But then second, if you're a leader like Trump, or I guess maybe Eric Trump is the person doing this inside the family, running, there's an organization which is their crypto thing. And it's fine. You know, if Eric Trump wants to be the crypto king, if he wants to be the crypto prince of the Trump empire, that's totally cool. He's a civilian. He can go do whatever he wants. But he does have the Trump name.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:52Jason Calacanis?

  And you're just becoming president, and you've got a mandate, and there's like a set of things that you were sent to Washington to do. The Trump family was not sent to Washington to launch a meme coin.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  You know, just like, it feels very prescient now to look back. It's like, two years ago, you were saying like, and then corruption ends up at the exit polls being, you know, one of the main things that drove people to come out.

• 14:18Jason Calacanis?

  Is it really? Yeah. I haven't been on top of all the things people are saying coming out of the exit polls.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Iran war seems pretty strongly to be number one, that that was the thing that really struck people, that like, he promised directly, no new wars, and here's this new forever war. Nobody, Americans really don't feel like they want to be in. AI data centers definitely was up there. People really don't like AI. And that was on the ballot in so many places. It really brought out the anti-AI sentiment. And then, yeah, I would say number three, from what I've seen, is this perception that the government is corrupt, Republicans are corrupt, kick the bastards out, new, fresh faces, we're tired of this old bunch of cronies. That was the vibe I was getting.

• 15:02Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Cost of living, that was number one. Clearly affordability on people's minds. The war is dovetailing with that.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:09Jason Calacanis?

  The state of the democracy, that's right up there. That's another way of saying corruption or grifting that people are really concerned about. So, yeah, I mean, the, the grifting, if that's what happened, and again, I hold out, I don't prejudge any of these situations. I basically say, okay, let the investigation happen, and we'll find out what the details are. If Trump put all his money in a trust, and there's somebody trading his stocks, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. If they're making a lot of trades, and then it comes out that he was, his money manager sitting next to him in meetings and making

• 15:52Jason Calacanis?

  the trades, you know, like, he's at Mar-a-Lago, and like, you know, Trump is like, holding up like, the iPhone and going, buy Apple. Like, it's totally different, right? Like, he shouldn't be using his inside track to make trades. So, it's supposed to be arms-length. Let's keep going.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  All right. We could do another one. This one is from May 14th of 2025. This was you talking about how the tariff situation seemed to be getting out of hand, and just generally, I think what we would consider like, Trump chaos. So this was when it started to become clear, like, he's, he's governing in a very chaotic way that the markets don't like, and that Americans don't like. Let's take a look.

• 16:31Jason Calacanis?

  Gordon Gekko look.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit, yeah. This wasn't the plan?

• 16:35Jason Calacanis?

  No. I think he was doing a ton of trial balloons and floating things. And it wasn't well thought out. Because if it was well thought out, I think what you would have said is, we have 150 trading partners. We can put them into these three buckets. These ones are inconsequential because we don't do a lot of trade with them. These five are 90% of it. It's a Pareto principle. It's the power law. These five are the ones that matter. And then these are the ones in between. So I've told Besen to do this group of people who are important, and then I'm putting, you know, Sacks and Elon, or this person, that person, Lutnik on these ones. And here's the strategy we're going to pursue. It's going to be pretty aggressive. There's going to be some pain. Here's what you can expect.

• 17:15Jason Calacanis?

  Instead, it was like, oh, you put it at 50? I'm making it 150. And it was this attention-seeking, crazy.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Shake the globe thing.

• 17:24Jason Calacanis?

  Shake the globe thing. You know, I had a nickname for Trump in the first presidency, which was Captain Chaos.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:30Jason Calacanis?

  And he, you can be right about something, but you could execute in the wrong way. He was right about tariffs. We were getting screwed. Tariffs are an important part of, you know, not getting abused in trade. You have a country like Japan, South Korea, you know, we're not allowed to bring our cars into South Korea. Why? You know, are we bringing Hyundai's into this country? Okay, there's some imbalance there. Let's talk about it. Let's figure out why this exists. And there's a way to do it without Trump's chaotic insulting, bravado, and taking up all news. I thought they should have all been done in closed rooms. They should have said, hey, we're in open negotiations. This is the tariff level.

• 18:13Jason Calacanis?

  And then we expect negotiations to end here. The end, and stop talking about it. But, you know, Trump can't help himself. He loves to talk. He's a great communicator. And he knows how to fill the press cycle. He needed to have people around him who told him, hey, boss. And I mentioned this on All In One time, when I was like, hey, guys, you know, the problem with Trump is he has too many sycophants around him who are afraid to tell him the truth. And if you tell him the truth, he kicks you out of the circle. And then you don't get your goodies. You don't have access to power. And that's true of anybody powerful. I have to be careful about that. I'm not like, super powerful. But people will tell me what I want to hear in my own company, my own venture company, when we're doing deals. And I need a little bit of dissent. And I have to encourage it because it doesn't

• 18:55Jason Calacanis?

  happen naturally. You have to be self-aware of that. Somebody should have said, Besen, Lutnik, hey, boss, we're making great progress here. We have the upper ground. This is going to be great. We're going to get you a billion dollars in tariff revenue. Let's get Congress involved. Let's do it with them. And then you wouldn't have them all get overturned. So again, and the way I knew this was correct, Lon, was I was talking to our founders. I think I had Cuts Clothing CEO on this week in startups.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Steven, yeah.

• 19:22Jason Calacanis?

  Steven. And he explained to us in detail.

• 19:26Jason Calacanis?

  How this was affecting his business. So while people were telling me, my Republican friends were telling me, oh, you're anti-Trump, you have TDS, you don't know what you're talking about. They mocked me. My, I was getting brigaded in the comments. Jason's low IQ. He's mid. No, I'm incredibly high IQ. Uh, I'm off the charts, in fact, according to the tests I've taken. Uh, don't let the Brooklyn accent, um, you know, fool you. And I'm smart enough to know when I don't know about a topic, to talk to people who are experiencing it and get firsthand experience. That was my journalism training. You can again criticize, oh, you're a journalist. That's a journalist in you. You know, when people criticize that, I grew up in an era where journalism was done in a very tight fashion and was a great vocation, a great, uh, education for how to assess the truth in the world. And the

• 20:11Jason Calacanis?

  way you assess the truth in the world is when you hear those tariff claims, you don't listen to politicians or talking heads. Talk to the people who are impacted from it. I went directly to the source. That's why I was able to stand my ground on, under massive pressure. Remember the pressure, three on one on the podcast? Oh, you're a mid. Oh, you're stupid. Oh, and the comments, Jason interrupts too much. Everybody ganging up. And I, I just said to myself, no, I'm right. I'm right. I'm right about the meme coin. I'm right about, uh, the tariffs and, uh, let me go do my homework and make sure I understand what I'm talking about. And I go do a couple of hours of research. I ask intelligent people, people far smarter than me. And that's how you learn in the world. And it's an important lesson for everybody. Under pressure, in a social group, uh, you

• 20:56Jason Calacanis?

  need to have, you know, the, um, your own conviction. You have to have the strength of your own convictions. You also have a, have to have a process, Lon, for getting to the truth. I don't accept what the media tells me. I don't accept what the politicians tell me. I go right to the source. It's so easy to do. No matter how polished or well-designed your app might be, every once in a while, something is gonna go wrong in production, right? Even if you're a perfect UX designer and you know what you're doing, but that doesn't mean your team has to waste an entire day just to locate the source of the problem, the bug, the issue. We got Sentry now, everybody. And what I love about Sentry is that it gives you total visibility into your app in one place. This is not separate tools or endless context switching. No, just your errors, traces,

• 21:40Jason Calacanis?

  replays and logs, all linked together in one connected timeline, right? You could actually play the timeline. So when there's an issue, you can see exactly where it started and what triggered it. And debugging these things is critically important because SER, S-E-E-R, is Sentry's AI debugging agent. It's got an agent. It's gonna take over this problem and unpack why the issue happened, point to the code that's responsible for the issue, draft a fix on its own, and even flag when your PR is about to cause a problem. In other words, it's gonna anticipate problems so you don't have them. This is what you need, folks. This is the perfect use of super intelligence. Go to sentry.io and check out their free

• 22:19Jason Calacanis?

  dev plan. Plus, our listeners can use the code TWIST26 for $240 in Sentry credits. That's S-E-N-T-R-Y.io.

• 22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I think Stephen is an interesting case too, because he's a, he's a diehard Trump fan. If you follow him on X, he's always praising Trump. So this is the guy to talk to. If he's coming to you and he's not, he doesn't have TDS, he's not like some crazed, you know, like communist who's just trying to bring down the system. He's a guy who liked Trump, who presumably voted for him. And now he's got this, you know, unique perspective on what's going wrong with the policy. Why wouldn't you listen to a guy like?

• 22:54Jason Calacanis?

  I have never felt more pressure in my life than the pressure I received over these last couple of years to join the Trump, uh, cobble, to be, even to be involved in the administration and to spend time there and to be part of Doge or other things. It was a lot of pressure on me and a lot of my best friends or best colleagues were pushing me to do it. I said, you know, not for me. I don't enjoy politics. I don't wanna, I don't wanna focus on that. It's not a focus area for me. I don't care about power. I don't care about going to the White House. We had all those jokes. Um, I care about the truth. Honestly, maybe it sounds like, maybe it makes me sound corny, but I actually care about the truth. Always have. And I'm a truth-seeking missile. And so if you wanna understand

• 23:35Jason Calacanis?

  why for the last two years, everybody got it wrong and I nailed it, it's very simple. I just always go look for the truth and I am humble in my approach to that. I'm not gonna come out and tell you you're wrong. I'm gonna say, hey, I'm investigating this. Here's where the, what the facts say. And, and that's why I was pro-Trump on some things. And I just gave him an A+ on data centers because I investigated it and it was very clear to me that people are spitting the data center story. Nothing wrong with data centers. People want them. Only thing that's wrong with them is when they pollute and you come too close to people's houses. Okay, let's keep going. By the way, just so people know, the reason I'm doing this is not to take a victory lap. It's because so many people are asking me my opinion on everything. And I just wanna put it out there and have a place to point to, to just say, here's me discussing it.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  We talked about it on the show. Uh, our episode 2292 from May 3rd of this year, 2026. This is you, I thought this was really prescient as well. This is you talking about sort of the civil war within the Republican Party and within the Trump administration about AI, about tech, that was kind of driving the administration apart. And when you look back at it today, that clearly was creating a wedge among Republicans that even drove some people maybe from participating. Let's take a look at this clip.

• 24:48Jason Calacanis?

  I haven't reviewed any of these. All right. So these are all becoming one issue. Polarization of wealth. Okay, we now have a couple of trillion dollar companies with these AI tokens. We have jobs being retired at an alarming rate. And is every truck driver gonna lose their job? Is every cab driver gonna lose their job? Is every delivery driver gonna lose their job? Every factory worker, everybody at Amazon gonna lose their job? The answer is yes. All those jobs are gonna go away. We're, the majority of them will go away and those people will have to be redeployed in some intelligent fashion. You combine that with, hey, the intelligence wants this and America first. This is really about the civil war inside of the Trump administration,

• 25:31Jason Calacanis?

  the Republican Party. The civil war in that party is people's jobs, America first, and these tech oligarchs, as they call them, are they running away with this and stealing everybody's money, quote unquote? And is it just gonna create a permanent underclass that always loses their jobs? This is what Bannon, Fuentes, uh, Tucker, they've all departed. They've, Megyn Kelly, they're all leaving the Trump camp or trying to put pressure on the Trump camp to stop kowtowing in their minds to big tech, to oligarchs. Trump loves money.

• 26:08Speaker 01

  Nailed it again, I guess. Yeah. I mean, very, kinda captain obvious on that one. Yeah. Feels, feels prescient, but yeah. And again, and I mean, I think that now we're, we're in this interesting situation of, you know, do, do the Democrats who just came out and voted for this blue tsunami who put all of these new candidates about her, are they gonna accept a compromise on this? Like, are they, if, if the Gina, you know, G. Josephs of the world come back in, in a few months and say, actually, we're gonna have data centers, but don't worry, they're gonna be, you know, clean. Like, is that, is that gonna fly? I don't know. It's an interesting question.

• 26:44Jason Calacanis?

  Split government's great. I think the Democrats are not socialist lunatics in large part. A lot of the people we saw win were actually moderates. I think they're gonna go to the center. Just like, you know, Hillary, Hillary's Clinton's, uh, assessment of the right and MAGA being deplorables was like, uh, a dangerous move for her to frame all of them that way. It's a dangerous move for the Republicans to frame everybody on the left as like socialist freaks, trans, whatever, blue hair, septa, you know, rings, septum rings and pronouns and all this nonsense. That's just not true. There are a couple of questionable characters in the winning, like, but most of them are moderates. Let's

• 27:25Jason Calacanis?

  call it what it is. And so they should drop that rhetoric, start working with the left, move everybody to the center, and let's just try to solve some problems for the American people.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, that Talafriko stuff just didn't play. You watch him talk and he's like, he's a, he seems like a pretty normal guy. He's not, he's not, it seemed like crazy.

• 27:41Jason Calacanis?

  You know what speaks volumes for him? Day after, he's like, I totally respect Elon Musk. I would love to sit down with him. I think SpaceX is amazing. I think Tesla's amazing. Uh, would love to support him in any way. Hey, listen, he spent $200 million to, you know, against me, but I don't take it personal. This is how politics works and I can't wait to sit down with him. And then he was like, oh, Ted Cruz? Yeah, can't wait to govern with him. He called me Talafriko. I'm gonna give him a, and he literally said, I'm gonna give him a Talafriko t-shirt when I see him. And we'll have a laugh about it. Let's get back to work for the American people. That, that line of, um, that approach by the Democrats this time is to just like, not respond to anything about the woke stuff, trans stuff, lunacy, whatever. And they just said affordability, affordability. Whoever

• 28:26Jason Calacanis?

  like, came up with the strategy, who was like affordability, no corruption in government, no worse. Just keep saying those same three things over and over again. That's why people came out. They're like, yes, and somebody hears me again.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  My argument is it's the it's the that was Bernie's thing. Bernie was always like, I don't care about the culture war stuff. It's about the the billionaire class, you know, it's about like.

• 28:46Jason Calacanis?

  The people thought we haven't had the minimum wage.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:49Jason Calacanis?

  The minimum wage.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Just talk about economic populism. Every single time somebody puts a microphone in front of you.

• 28:54Jason Calacanis?

  You should see the bills at my summer home. I have a lake house. I worked very hard with the books. I wrote many books. I got a lake house. You you want to see the bills for my hot tub?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  He works hard. He deserves that.

• 29:03Jason Calacanis?

  I don't deserve anybody having a third home.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  All right. Let I do want to I want to talk. I want to pause briefly and talk about this week in AI. I wrote a a brand new demo went up today. I want to share that right here. I did. We talked about this on the show, which is why I thought we would follow up here. I connected everything in my life to my Plaid pin. I made a little graphic here about it. So I tied. Plaid has all these connectors now. You could connect it to your Gmail. You could connect it to your calendar, to your Slack, to your Notion, to your Grokbot, to your Claude. So that's what I did on the way home from work the other day. I just recorded a voice note in my car. Here, I'll play this without sound.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  There's me about to record it. You can see my Plaid pin is on. I just talked out loud. Here's what I think would make a good Plaud demo. I'll connect it to these apps. I'll do this. I'll do I'll route it through here. And then I did. I put the whole post together. All of this was automated through Plaud's agent. I sent it to Claude to help me write the rough draft. I even emailed Jacob and Jordan here at the office. Like, I sent them part of the transcript of my notes, like, look this over for me. Tell me if there's visual elements I should add. I went to Grokbot and had it look up extra clips like I found I had Grokbot find this clip of us talking about Plaid that ties in

• 30:25Speaker 01

  to all the stuff that the demo is about. So check it out. Thisweekinai.ai. That's the new post over there. And check out Plaid and all of the various things that you could connect to your Plaid now that they have this incredible Plaud agent. And they've got an agent in the app, Jason. So you could just connect all these things. And then you could go right into the Plaid app and you just tell their agent, send this recording to Notion, send this to Claude, send this to my Gmail, and it all is from One Hub. It's it's very clever.

• 30:55Jason Calacanis?

  I got a 2.0 request for you.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 30:57Jason Calacanis?

  I wanted to I want you to create a series of keywords that when they come up in your Plaid, trigger actions from your Grokbot or whatever.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:06Jason Calacanis?

  So, you know, if you say, action item, email JCal, action item, make me add to my to do list, all that kind of stuff. I want to see if you can maybe, when you do a follow up to this Plaid post, kind of get into that because I need to have that for ski season. When I'm in ski season, what frequently happens to me is

• 31:27Jason Calacanis?

  I'm on a lift and first world problems here. I see a couple of things in the email. I have gloves on. I can't, you know, start taking my gloves off and typing. It's snow. It's gonna I'm gonna drop my phone. All this kind of craziness. I want to just have that stream of consciousness. Then when I get to the bottom of the lift after I ski a run, it will sync with the Wi-Fi, right? These places all have Wi-Fi at the bottom. When it syncs, then I wanted to take the actions and send those actions to the team.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:56Jason Calacanis?

  That's what I need in this crazy world.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  You could actually set this up through Plaid. I think you go into Plaid. Tell Plaud agent, anytime I say this keyword in a recording, forward it to this Grokbot so that the Grokbot could do this or that, whatever. Or you could just do, I mean, you could, there's there's like five ways to do this, but that.

• 32:15Jason Calacanis?

  I want a whisper sync on my Plaid. This is a little feature request. You know, when you get a Kindle, you pay. I don't I think it comes with Kindle that they pick up low data usage over like 5G to download the books. And I think Amazon has a data plan built into it. So you don't have to subscribe to this. So if you bought a book, it will download it, right? So you don't have to pay for another 5G plan. I would love for Plaid to have that in like a $299 or $399 Plaid. So somebody send this to the CEO of Plaid and CC me. Or I'll tell my Plaid to do that. What I really want to have is if it had LTE or 5G, 3G, whatever,

• 32:58Jason Calacanis?

  then it's just always syncing, always syncing, right? That would be super magical for me. I need like an enhanced hardware version. I'm willing to pay for it to my friends at Plaid.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:10Jason Calacanis?

  Who knows what they have in the lab?

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Get in on all of this with us and start experimenting with your Plaid. Check it out at plaud.ai/twist. Use the code TWIST and they'll give you an extra 10% off on your Plaid pin. And you could experiment with all the things you could do with your Plaid now that it's connected to literally every other AI.

• 33:28Jason Calacanis?

  How great is our life that we have partners and we love their products. It makes life so easy.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  It makes a lot easier. It makes it a lot easier when you actually can get some use out of the thing that you're at.

• 33:40Jason Calacanis?

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• 34:17Jason Calacanis?

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• 34:37Speaker 02

  Stripe Treasury includes various distinct Stripe products. See stripe.com/legal/SSA. Stripe is not a bank. Checking accounts are provided exclusively by Fifth Third Bank, National Association Member, FDIC.

• 34:48Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, all right. What's next on the agenda?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  On Thursday, OpenAI published a set of new data center commitments. We can't get away from data centers. Just two days after voters rejected the rapid expansion of AI at the polls, reaffirmed its promise to pay the full cost of powering its data centers, says that for centers it owns and operates, it will solicit community input, publish construction plans, and it will avoid NDAs with public officials. A separate policy blueprint encourages lawmakers to enact similar commitments as laws, per Balapid and CNBC. Oh, we already talked about that. Meta, Microsoft, Google and Anthropic all have outlined similar commitments. OpenAI told investors back in February it's targeting 600 billion in total compute spend by 2030.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  What do you think of this plan? Does any of this move the needle for the public on data centers?

• 35:36Jason Calacanis?

  Um, does any of it move the needle for data centers? I I think it's great to be proactively communicating your plans.

• 35:44Jason Calacanis?

  And so, yes, I think everything helps getting ahead of this. I'm not sure in this proposal if there's anything revolutionary, but they have to just, you know, part of leadership is repeating yourself and over and over and over again, and meeting with people and listening to people. This is what I've learned about like leadership, true leadership. You got to listen to people. You got to repeat back to them what they said. So they know they feel heard. And then when you actually have a statement to make, you got to repeat yourself. One of the things Trump does over and over again, when he's doing these like clips, when he's like getting out of the helicopter, whatever, he's doing a stand up with the press, whether they call that a gaggle or something.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:24Jason Calacanis?

  When he does like these gaggles, he's like, you know, Iran can't have a nuclear bomb. And, you know, the war is going to wrap up. And we can't have Iran having a nuclear bomb. There's no way Iran can have a nuclear bomb. We can't let them have a nuclear bomb. And you're like, bro, you said it four times and you made five statements and four of them were the same thing. It's like, yes, yes. So they just have to say over and over. Data centers aren't going to impact your local electrical bill. We use recycled water only. We use much less water than the golf course. And you have seven golf courses there. Of course, we're not going to affect your electrical bill. And we use much less than a golf course, like even just one golf course. We use less than a golf course.

• 37:06Jason Calacanis?

  And, you know, we're going to pay our taxes and it'll have no impact on your electricity and certainly no impact on your water, far less than a golf.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Golf course.

• 37:14Jason Calacanis?

  Course. And you have seven golf course. And you're just like, oh, my God, it's so annoying. But you know what? As a dad, as a CEO of companies, a leader, man, I I know I sound annoying sometime when I do it. I just know if I repeat it three times, the chances of it actually being understood go way up. It's repetition equals people remembering it. So that's what they need to do. They just need to be out there all the time. The leadership needs to be saying it over and over and over again. And yeah.

• 37:43Jason Calacanis?

  Great job.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  I feel like depoliticizing it is gonna go so far that I really think that that got it got very tied up in that, that if you were a Republican, you're pro data center, if you're a Democrat, you hate them and it's a fascist or whatever. And I think that got people got swept up in that. And when you really get down to it, it's not really partisan in that way.

• 37:59Jason Calacanis?

  Not there's nothing partisan about it. It's, I mean, if I was gonna build a Walmart in your area, that feels more partisan.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  It does, for sure. It for sure does. And that's, that's what I mean.

• 38:10Jason Calacanis?

  Right. Like, oh, you're gonna kill Main Street?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:12Jason Calacanis?

  You're gonna sell everything?

• 38:12Speaker 01

  There's a lot more progressive arguments to be made against the Walmart than there would be, I think, for me, the, the data center. But that's.

• 38:19Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. I mean, I guess we did have a bit of time where like in the 90s where that was like a big topic of discussion.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  It was.

• 38:27Jason Calacanis?

  It was kind of Walmart's where the data centers at that time.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Well, they were getting public money, like the city gave 50 million to Target to build it, you know, like it was always that stuff. Like now there's a whole road the city has to build so you could get to the Sam's Club. That's why am I paying for that? That was always.

• 38:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that makes no, and, and that's a valid criticism of that 100% all day. I, I think, looking back on it, the Democrats probably laid down the last two years, didn't fight anything, because they knew that Trump, President Trump, would not stay focused. And that if they just stood out of the way and let him kind of dominate them, that would be a better strategy than fighting him. What do you think?

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think they.

• 39:13Jason Calacanis?

  They put up no fight.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  I think they recognized there wasn't much that they could do pragmatically, other than, you know, a lot of, a lot of people on the far left were calling on them to like, throw themselves on the railroad tracks metaphorically, like resign or threaten to resign or do something extreme or, you know, leave the Senate floor and stomp out, you know, like some sort of grand gesture. Because procedurally, there really wasn't much that Democrats could do. They didn't have any power in any branch of government. So I think.

• 39:44Jason Calacanis?

  They were 0 for 4.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  So I think, yeah, that, that was definitely like the Jeffries Schumer philosophy was like, hang back, let this guy rant and rave and hang himself with all these policies. And I think especially like in 2026, when it became clear tariffs are kind of blowing up, Iran war is not going well. It's like, there's no, there's no need. We're, we're just gonna hang.

• 40:06Jason Calacanis?

  Do nothing.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Let this happen and then.

• 40:07Jason Calacanis?

  Lay back.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then when people ask us, be like, well, it's not going well. We'll wait and see, you know, come vote for us at the midterms. And, and yeah, I think that, that plan has, has worked out fairly well for them at this point.

• 40:19Jason Calacanis?

  What else we got here on the docket here?

• 40:20Speaker 01

  We follow the, the sort of copyright infringement AI story. There's a new wrinkle today. Adweek reports that Anthropic has struck its first content licensing deal with the Associated Press specifically for election coverage. So per two people who were not named or familiar, the deal was signed just before the midterms. No financial terms have been announced, but on election night, this will be presumably 2028, Claude users who asked for polling updates get up to the minute information provided by and attributed to the AP. Until Tuesday, Anthropic had not struck any content licensing deal with a digital publisher. OpenAI, of course, has more than a dozen, Axel Springer, News Corp, The Atlantic

• 41:03Speaker 01

  and others. Digital media executives told Adweek in August that Anthropic believes its use of publisher content is legally permissible under fair use. But they're about to go public. Do you think this is an IPO thing? Like, we gotta, we gotta close down this line of attack against us before we go public?

• 41:21Jason Calacanis?

  It's not fair use to use their information in real time. And if they have a competing business in that space.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:30Jason Calacanis?

  And you're monetizing it. So people, pretty clearly Anthropic is monetizing Claude.

• 41:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:36Jason Calacanis?

  So it is illegal. It is not fair use. And it's an unknown issue if using it as training data is illegal or not. They've paid huge settlements, that a billion dollar settlement for using pirated copies of books. There's still a remaining question if you buy the book, if you're allowed to train on it.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Exactly. They got in trouble for bootlegging those books.

• 41:57Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Not the training itself. The training itself is still.

• 42:00Jason Calacanis?

  But the training, but that doesn't mean the training issue is resolved. It is not.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  No, it is.

• 42:04Jason Calacanis?

  There are, there's a major case between OpenAI and the New York Times where, again, two different things you can get caught with your hand in the cookie jar here. One is steal, well, it's actually three. One is stealing the content or using stolen content. Anthropic did that. They paid the penalty. The second one is breaking the terms of service. That's what OpenAI pretty clearly did, based on the discovery, where Greg Brockman, I believe, says something to the effect of, oh, I figured out how to get behind the pay wall and get all the content with our scraper. Like literally said it in a thing. That's another illegal thing to do. And that's a civil action that you can do there. And then finally, is it allowed to be trained on? I believe that that's going to be a win by

• 42:47Jason Calacanis?

  the content companies, specifically music companies, movie companies, TV companies, video content. They're gonna fight tooth and nail. They're gonna say, if you trained on our data, you need to pass. And then there's a fourth issue, which is on the output. If you do output, and it's somebody else's IP, and that's where this AP news comes in, these final two things, I feel like the first two have been cleaned up by the industry. The last two are unsettled and not cleaned up. And so if you go search the web and they put it into a server on their side, and they use all their data, you could be breaking the terms of service and you could be breaking fair use laws. It's so much easier. If you have a trillion dollar company that's making $100 billion, I think they should take 30%

• 43:30Jason Calacanis?

  of their money and give it to training data companies and media companies. That's a big number, $30 billion. That would be bigger than the entire movie industry, obviously. So even if you don't think that, if you just think 3% and $3 billion a year, $3 billion a year is a lot of money splash around. If you were to give a billion of that to magazines, books, newspapers, the written word, Substack, they would all line up at the trowel. They'd be like, yes, take the entire Substack. Substack would make it default. If you use Substack, you get cut into it. You get 90% of it. Substack gets 10% of that revenue. Everybody would be like, okay, and you, they could make it opt out and as part of the platform. That would be a beautiful thing to do. You just rain some, I call it splashy cashy. When I'm

• 44:14Jason Calacanis?

  winning in Vegas, I'm giving tips to the dealers. I put them in my blackjack hand. If I'm putting 100 bucks on the hand of blackjack, I keep a stack of 10, five, $10, $25 chips. I'll put a 25 next to it for the dealer if it's running nice, or if I want to change the mojo. Splashy cashy when you're winning.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  When I'm in Vegas, I see people do that all the time. I've done it myself before. Where you, we bet, you put a bet on for the dealer and then they get to play a lot. Do you think they prefer that? Or do you think they wish people would just give them the, the tip? Because there's a chance they're gonna lose and not win the, that win anything.

• 44:44Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, let me explain something to you.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:45Jason Calacanis?

  5% of people tip. 5%.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  That's it? At Vegas?

• 44:49Jason Calacanis?

  That's it. I think it's like 5%. When you're gambling, I think it's like 5%.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  If you win in a special, you should always.

• 44:55Jason Calacanis?

  Because I think only 40% of people win, right? So 60% of people leave a loser, 70, let's say 70% leave a loser. Of the 30%, I think 20% tip. That's where I get the number from.

• 45:06Speaker 01

  But it's not the, like, I, I often leave Vegas and I lost aggregate over the whole weekend. But when you're up, it's always a nice thing to throw people.

• 45:16Jason Calacanis?

  People are cheap.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Dollars. I, I'd be surprised.

• 45:18Jason Calacanis?

  I think they like, I think they like putting the money on the.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Right. I'm always very split because it's like, well, they're working in Vegas, they're a blackjack dealer. They must love to gamble. Like you would think.

• 45:26Jason Calacanis?

  Think about how boring it is to do that for eight hours.

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, part of me is like, they're, now they're part of the game. It's fun for them. But then the other part of me is like, but if I was at work, I wouldn't want people to be gambling with buy tips. I'd want to be like, give me the tip.

• 45:38Jason Calacanis?

  One of my home games I play in, and there's a waitress there, you know, getting people drinks and whatnot, you know, bring some food or whatever. And when we play bomb pots, it's 50 bucks. Everybody puts 50 bucks in to play this type of poker game called bomb pots. And they say, hey, anybody want to put, you know, I'll call her Susan here for privacy. Everyone want to put Susan in? And, you know, everybody throws, you know, or, you know, somebody throws in 50 bucks, puts her in, and just for that main pot, just for, and so it's eight people, $50. She's the ninth, $450. If she wins, she's got a chance to win, you know, up to $450.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  A nice little.

• 46:15Jason Calacanis?

  And she gets a free roll. And, and it's capped at like, I don't know, 1,500 bucks. But, you know, 1,500 bucks as a waitress for the night, pretty good deal.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  That's not bad. Yeah, you take it.

• 46:23Jason Calacanis?

  That's a pretty great deal. Lon's like, I'll, I'll put on a dress.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I would, I would serve drinks. Yeah, that's fine.

• 46:28Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. All right. Keep going.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  All right. Bloomberg reports that Apple is cutting the daily amount its engineering teams can spend on AI. In October, Apple lowered the daily AI spending cap for its engineering teams for $300 to $200. More cuts are in the works. Some allowances falling to $100 a day. Outside engineering, Apple is reportedly weighing a daily limit as low as $25. That, I would blow through $25 a day pretty quickly, I think. It's a big change for a company that has worked to integrate AI into its editing processes. I was fascinated by this change because those numbers sound very low to me. Do you think there is a type of work you could do at Apple in Cupertino where you would spend less than 20, 25 bucks

• 47:14Speaker 01

  a day total on your, on your AI?

• 47:17Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, there's a big discussion right now going on in tech. If we're gonna have, if we're gonna be token constrained because we are data center and energy constrained.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:27Jason Calacanis?

  Where do the tokens come from? Well, people have been trained to have unlimited tokens. I think you're on a $40 plan for Grok.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:34Jason Calacanis?

  And our team's on a $40 a month plan. That gets you all the stuff together.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Every individual is on the 40 a month plan, like as part of the team.

• 47:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yes. So that's 500 bucks a year.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:46Jason Calacanis?

  I think they're probably burning 2,000 in tokens a year. 1,000 in tokens a year.

• 47:50Speaker 01

  Almost certainly, yeah.

• 47:52Jason Calacanis?

  The, the people who use it a lot. Then there's some people who don't use it at all. And that's kind of how these software licenses work. On Slack, you might have five people in your company who do 10 Slack messages a week, and there might be people who do 1,000 a week. It's just the nature of these programs. I think the flat rate is designed to get you addicted to it. It gets you to move up the scale. But I think that the usage is getting so high because the value is so high that we're gonna see the minimum price of entry for a corporation go to 100, 200, even $300 per month to use these services. It's gonna be a 3, 4, $5,000 a year subscription. This idea that you're gonna get away with a $500 one doesn't make much sense to me. I think it's much more valuable than a lot

• 48:36Jason Calacanis?

  of SaaS software that costs 500 to 1,000 a seat.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:40Jason Calacanis?

  So, and if you told me, if you told me right now, they came, you came to me and said like, hey, Grok bought once 100 bucks a month instead of 40, I'd be like, okay, can we just look at everybody's usage? And if somebody's not using it, let's get them off there or have them share a login with somebody else? Or something like that, which is what people do with SaaS sometimes. You, you have those five people who barely using, have a group login kind of situation. And sometimes they catch you when you do that. Sometimes they don't. I don't know if it's against the terms of service or not for light usage.

• 49:12Jason Calacanis?

  But yeah, I think it's going to change. Apple is a very unique company in the world. They have their own way of doing things. They're like the one to watch in AI. They might come in last and do what they did with iPhone, come in last but best. And that could be very accretive and they have the best local hardware.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:34Jason Calacanis?

  For this outside of like Windows and the Spark stuff from Nvidia and Nvidia and Windows are working on that together. Jensen and Satya Nadella. So there's, there's a chance that they are just going to give everybody a $20,000 Mac Studio for their desktop. I'm sure they're all on Mac Studios and top MacBooks anyway.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:53Jason Calacanis?

  It's Apple's products.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 49:55Jason Calacanis?

  So they can run local models.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 49:57Jason Calacanis?

  They'll be the first to be running local.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  That actually makes total sense to me for Apple just to be model agnostic. Like we, we have the platform and the apps. And then you could choose what version of it you want to run, you know, and clawed through the cloud or run, you know, something through a llama directly on your, on your device, whatever. Uh, that makes sense to me.

• 50:17Jason Calacanis?

  Did you see MacBook release, uh, speaking of Apple, they released the Pro LED XDR display?

• 50:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 50:23Jason Calacanis?

  So they say it's gorgeous screen. Um, and then, uh, you're going to be, it's going to be a touchscreen apparently.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 50:29Jason Calacanis?

  I believe that's the one that's the touchscreen. It's absurdly expensive.

• 50:35Speaker 01

  It is a touchscreen. Uh.

• 50:37Jason Calacanis?

  It's crazy, right? And so like, I don't know who needs this. Uh.

• 50:41Speaker 01

  How much is it to pay the order?

• 50:42Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, just put it on the Mac 16. Go put it on 16. Boom. You're at 3,400. Click 16.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's buy from 3399.

• 50:52Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, let's just keep going down here and pick Mac's memory. Uh, no, pick the gray glass. You gotta pick each one or it doesn't let you go to the next.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:00Jason Calacanis?

  Texture glass.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  Oh, I know it didn't let me pick. Color pick. Okay. Silver.

• 51:04Jason Calacanis?

  You got, you gotta pick everything when you go through this.

• 51:05Speaker 01

  Nano texture glass.

• 51:07Jason Calacanis?

  The nanotech glass. Okay. Where, where are we at now? 36.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  M5 Pro Max ship. Yeah.

• 51:12Jason Calacanis?

  Go Max ship. Go 18, 444.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Customizations we want unified.

• 51:17Jason Calacanis?

  5,500. No, top memory. Oh yeah. Hit the dropdown there. Top memory. What does it give you top memory?

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Uh, 128 gigs.

• 51:26Jason Calacanis?

  Let's go. Storage.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Storage. We'll go for, uh, 16 terabytes.

• 51:32Jason Calacanis?

  Plus $7,000.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Uh, keyboard. We got the right keyboard already. Uh, no trade in.

• 51:38Jason Calacanis?

  No trade in. We save our stuff. Okay. There you go. Buy it.

• 51:41Speaker 01

  $14,549.

• 51:44Jason Calacanis?

  Hey, just congratulations. You won a $15,000. You could put a, you could buy a used Tesla with hardware.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  I mean, it does look incredible though. I'm sure it's a beautiful machine.

• 51:53Jason Calacanis?

  I don't want to touch my screen, Smokey John. Who was touching their screen on the laptop? I have an iPad for that.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  I don't like that.

• 51:58Jason Calacanis?

  Just buy. Do you know what a great deal iPads are? Oh my God, they're close to free. I love a good iPad with a keyboard.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't.

• 52:06Jason Calacanis?

  Delicious. Now the basic one.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Your laptop screen. That's silly.

• 52:10Jason Calacanis?

  Disgusting. Disgusting. You're going to be eating, uh, we're going to have velvet tacos. You're going to be touching your screen.

• 52:15Speaker 01

  It's no good with velvet tacos.

• 52:17Jason Calacanis?

  No bueno, Lon.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  It's no good with.

• 52:17Jason Calacanis?

  You gotta see Lon when he hits those velvet tacos when he's not on the Ozempic.

• 52:20Speaker 01

  Some of them are pretty though that, that they've got that, uh, tikka masala on. The buffalo one's good. I like the tikka masala one a lot. That one's.

• 52:27Jason Calacanis?

  The brisket one also very good. If you come to Austin, go to velvet tacos, right? Like unique tacos. When Lon first came out here, we were addicted to it.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  We would, we would go a bunch to velvet.

• 52:36Jason Calacanis?

  When I moved closer to the city, I'm going to be in the office a lot more. We just got to do a taco run.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:40Jason Calacanis?

  But we would do two tacos. We were reasonable, right? Did I ever go three?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  No, I don't think we ever did three, three, three at velvet taco was too much. You would do, right. You gotta do the two tacos and then you share a queso. I think that's the.

• 52:50Jason Calacanis?

  You share a queso. You're good. All right. Uh, well, we're, are we off duty? Is there something off duty you want to talk about here? I finished House of, by the way, I finished House of Dragons. Excellent.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Oh, you finally finished. Yeah. This season was pretty good. It started a little slow, but it, it, it built in a satisfying way. I, I got into it.

• 53:04Jason Calacanis?

  I'm very sad when dragons die.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:07Jason Calacanis?

  I'm very sad when dragons die.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  They're like, they're like dogs. They have a real emotional, uh, connection to them. Well, I did.

• 53:13Jason Calacanis?

  That's just like, it reminds me of my Bulldogs. That's exactly.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I did, I did want to talk to you about, uh, just to get a little political, but in, in more of a fun way. So one of the big memes that's going around post-election or ideas that's floating around is that, uh, woke is going to come back and all of the tech CEOs are going to get back in line and resume their, their previous woke, uh, ways of talking. And, uh, here's a, here's a funny one that I got of Zuckerberg. This is going to be what Zuck looks like now.

• 53:45Jason Calacanis?

  That's great.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  I liked, I liked that one.

• 53:47Jason Calacanis?

  The rich. I saw somebody did a great video, like we're, we were always blue or something.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  So this one is, or Reed Jackson's predicting Chamath tomorrow's going to be like, there are only two priorities, inequality and climate change. He's going to be back there. So I wanted to pick your, pick your rate. Is that, is that going to happen? Do you think, was this, this jump over to Trump and to the right, is that like a sincere, like the, the, these guys have embraced that philosophy and that worldview? Or do you think, oh, now the Democrats are back in power, we're going to see a lot of the tech CEOs and leadership come back to the fold and become Democrats again?

• 54:21Jason Calacanis?

  I, I think everybody will, I don't know if they'll become Democrats. I think if the Democrats are smart, they'll invite them, uh, to participate. Come to DC, et cetera, and, um, they should take the invitation. And if we have, uh, a Democrat win the White House, they will certainly, the Democrats should absolutely, uh, steal Trump's playbook. This was the best one, by the way.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  This is another good one.

• 54:53Speaker 03

  Before we begin, we acknowledge the indigenous people.

• 54:56Jason Calacanis?

  That's Nvidia.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Whose ancestral lands.

• 54:58Jason Calacanis?

  I was doing your bit.

• 54:59Speaker 03

  Center occupied.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yes, it's, it's a good, it's a good bit.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  Your lived experience is our most valuable data.

• 55:05Speaker 04

  We recognize that good intentions don't erase.

• 55:09Jason Calacanis?

  Great. With the mustache.

• 55:11Speaker 03

  Call.

• 55:11Jason Calacanis?

  Who's that?

• 55:12Speaker 01

  To redistribute. Is that Andreessen? That's Andreessen.

• 55:14Speaker 03

  And we want to leave that work.

• 55:16Jason Calacanis?

  That's Bezos.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  There's a.

• 55:18Jason Calacanis?

  Look at Elon with that stick mustache. Anthemic pop song. Here we go. They made a pop song.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  There's Dario.

• 55:25Jason Calacanis?

  There's Dario.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Carp.

• 55:27Jason Calacanis?

  Carp.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:28Jason Calacanis?

  Sometimes after the polls closed, my values never changed. Just updated overnight. This is so great. Always blue.

• 55:50Jason Calacanis?

  Look how much a founder cares. Ha! And look at the real, the real hipsters are like, that's not true.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  This is gonna, this is gonna happen in the culture, but these guys have a really hard road, I think, ahead if they want to do that. Cause everybody remembers what happened.

• 56:07Jason Calacanis?

  I, I think you could make a very simple, uh, argument like I did. Hey, listen, I, I've had my problems with Trump. I said it early on when he, listen, he's the president. I support the president. I, I support whoever's the president of the United States. I'm American and I hope for the best for them. And then I call balls and strikes along the way. You know, if AOC wins, I'll support her as well. Uh, I don't know. I'll vote for her. I don't want to vote for a socialist. I'm like, you know.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  I don't think.

• 56:33Jason Calacanis?

  Taxes to be 60%.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  I don't think it's going to be. I, I'm an AOC fan. I would vote for her if she ran, but I don't, I don't think.

• 56:39Jason Calacanis?

  Really?

• 56:40Speaker 01

  I think it's too soon. I think she's going to want to hold off and, and accomplish more at the congressional level first, before, before the run. I think a guy like Asaf or something makes a lot more sense for two years from now, but we'll, we'll see. I mean, maybe I will eat these words, but I don't know. I don't, I don't.

• 56:55Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, here's what I'll tell you. If, if taxes become 60%, I'm going to retire. I'm just going to skate. Fuck it. I made enough money. I'm done. I mean, can you imagine working and you make a hundred grand and they're like, you got 40 left?

• 57:09Speaker 01

  It wouldn't be, it wouldn't be that for the hundred grand people. We're, we're talking 250 and up. I, I, I mean, I, I've.

• 57:15Jason Calacanis?

  Even still, if I make 300K and I take home 120 and I'm giving.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  I, I've heard a lot of.

• 57:20Jason Calacanis?

  180 to the government.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  I, I think it's going to be more like, I think it was Tim Dillon who said this on the All In Election Night special.

• 57:29Jason Calacanis?

  A live stream on Tuesday.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  I think he was right. And I think I've heard a lot, it's going to be about switching the focus from income to assets and equity. We're going to figure out ways to tax holdings instead of income, because that's what, like, income is hitting the people who are working day to day. And the rich people are getting a way out of that.

• 57:51Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think there's that big of a delta right now, uh, between capital gains, uh, and income at the highest levels.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  I mean, cause that's the perception. The perception is that through accounting.

• 58:07Jason Calacanis?

  Well, cause you don't sell and you get loans. That's the issue.

• 58:09Speaker 01

  That you could borrow against your stock or your holdings and you're not earning a, you know, like salary. And that's not the basis of your wealth. And so you can sort of get around. That's the perception. And when people hear that like, oh, this person is being taxed at the same rate as like a teacher, like that's what's stoking a lot of that outrage, I think.

• 58:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Really easy solution. You take out a marginal loan, uh, that is above a certain dollar amount. I don't know. Pick 10 million.

• 58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:38Jason Calacanis?

  You pay the taxes, uh, you pay your capital gains taxes at that moment. If it's under 10 million, okay, everybody gets up to 10 million. Kind of like your inheritance tax, there's some level of gifting. There's a certain amount of you. Just say any margin loads above 10. I have less than 10, so that's a good number for me.

• 58:55Jason Calacanis?

  It works perfect.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Why not?

• 58:56Jason Calacanis?

  There you go.

• 58:57Speaker 01

  Perfect number.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Your amount is the right number. Yeah, of course.

• 59:02Jason Calacanis?

  And you listen, I have used a margin loan sometimes, like when I wanted to buy the ranch, I was just like, okay, yeah, yeah, just buy it on margin, right? It's the same price is six or seven percent or

• 59:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:12Jason Calacanis?

  whatever as getting a mortgage. I could probably save a point or whatever, but it's just a quick way to do things. It's a nice option if you have a bunch of equity holdings. Um, and I just think if I go over a certain number, I'm obviously doing that to avoid the taxes and maybe I pay down the loan as the stock appreciates. So if you're doing this with Google shares and let's say you, I don't know, you're David Freiberg or somebody, I don't know how much you made in whatever, but let's say you're a Googler, just a general Googler. You made 10 million and you take a million a year to live off of and the stock's going up 25% a year. Uh, you know, you just never have to pay it down and there's a delta, it's going up 25% and you're using 10%.

• 59:55Jason Calacanis?

  You can just go at it forever. And then, hey, yeah, when you die, you do it, but it means you've deferred all your taxes to your debt. It's a pretty sweet deal.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:00:02Jason Calacanis?

  Um, easily solved, whatever your tax rate is, just do that. Um, and then there is, do you want to narrow the difference between long-term, like right now? Uh, if you had a million in salary in Texas, 37% federal, 2.5, 3 or 5% Medicare, you're paying 39.4. Now, if you didn't take a salary, but you owned a long-term business and you were selling shares and you have capital gains, you're only paying 23.8. In California, if you were making a million dollars in salary, you're paying 54% now. I was paying 54%. And I, that's just like, okay, well, and you're paying 37.1% in your capital gains.

• 1:00:44Jason Calacanis?

  But I mean, I think we're not far from 60%. I think New York and California are going to go right to 60% when they do that. And if you thought the Exodus with the billionaire tax, which we didn't talk about billionaire tax got shot down.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  Yes, we did not talk about that, but that is, that is true. I would go, I feel like we would have talked about it if it passed, but nobody, it didn't, it was not really expected to pass. And then it did not pass.

• 1:01:04Jason Calacanis?

  It's coming back, guarantee it. And I think it's going to pass next time. I think it was 60, 40.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  Thereabouts.

• 1:01:09Jason Calacanis?

  I, I'll tell you something I'm excited for. Except for going off duty.

• 1:01:13Speaker 01

  Let's go off duty.

• 1:01:15Jason Calacanis?

  Let's go off duty here. Play the theme song. Okay. We don't have one, but we're going to have.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  I'm working on, I got, I did the plot AI demo. I'm, I'm working on, I'm working on the promo intro AI demo.

• 1:01:26Jason Calacanis?

  This is what I'm really excited about.

• 1:01:27Speaker 01

  Oh, Godzilla minus one. Yes, of course.

• 1:01:30Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, Godzilla minus zero, I think was the first one.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Yes. That was what it's like a prequel to Godzilla was set, you were the end of World War II instead of the atomic age. Correct.

• 1:01:43Jason Calacanis?

  The gravitas in this thing is incredible. The CGI is unbelievable. When you see the, is Godzilla, yeah, Godzilla minus one is the one coming, I guess. Um, and

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  No, Godzilla minus one was the first one. Godzilla minus zero is the one that's coming now because

• 1:02:01Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, that was the one I was showing.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it was the Godzilla minus one was the prequel. Now it's just Godzilla in his own era being Godzilla.

• 1:02:09Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. So Godzilla minus one, 2023, I took my daughters to see it.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  That's the

• 1:02:13Jason Calacanis?

  In person, they loved it. I loved it. And I think it's the only time they saw a film with subtitles, uh, with the first time.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Probably that for a lot of people.

• 1:02:20Jason Calacanis?

  Uh, and it is unbelievably good. Highly recommend. Here is the next one coming. This is Godzilla minus zero. So one, this is zero. And the woman's got the eye blown out and I mean, it is, it, it's Toho Studios. Look at this, man. Look at this, the house is flying through the air.

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  This one, they really, you can tell they got, they had a bigger budget this time. They've really upped the ante. They're taking it to the next level.

• 1:02:46Jason Calacanis?

  I love this. You know, my love of Japan and like this era in Japan, to me, when I go to Japan, I look for the buildings and the vibes from, if this is what 30s, 40s, 50s, maybe?

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  This is 50s. The first one was 40s and now this one is jumping ahead to the 50s.

• 1:03:02Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. I, I, I love this era of Japan. Um, and there's areas in Japan where they have preserved this era that I go and I walk around.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, those little villages.

• 1:03:12Jason Calacanis?

  I'll get Soba at a hundred, no, but I'll get Soba in Tokyo at a hundred year old place. So that's like something you go watch now, and then something you should look forward to. I don't know when it's coming out, but

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  It's soon.

• 1:03:24Jason Calacanis?

  Rated R.

• 1:03:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's coming soon.

• 1:03:26Jason Calacanis?

  I hope. Metacritic, hmm, I don't see when it's, oh, November 3rd.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:30Jason Calacanis?

  In, oh, wait.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  It's out. It's, that's this week.

• 1:03:32Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, it's out.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  That's this week.

• 1:03:33Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, my God. I cannot wait.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:35Jason Calacanis?

  We, we should do a movie run.

• 1:03:36Speaker 01

  It's playing at the draft house. It's at the Barton Creek Square. We could go.

• 1:03:40Jason Calacanis?

  Why don't we go? Wait, what am I doing this weekend? Why don't we all go?

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:43Jason Calacanis?

  I'll, I'll get tickets for everybody.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  We'll figure it out. We should go, yeah.

• 1:03:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, we got the IMAX. Okay. What do you got on your off duty?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Uh, I did, there, there is a film I want to talk about, another Asian film. This one is Korean. It's from this year. It's now on VOD. It's called Hope. Zach, see if you can find this. Uh, you can rent it. It's on, you know, Prime Video, Apple, all the different platforms. It is, this movie is crazy. It's like two and a half hours long. I don't want to give too much away. The opening is

• 1:04:08Jason Calacanis?

  What, what's the name of the film?

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  H O P E. That's which is, which is a town. It's a village in the opening of the movie. It is being attacked by some sort of unseen threat. It sounds like a monster.

• 1:04:20Jason Calacanis?

  This is the Korean film.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  It's a Korean film. There's some sort of

• 1:04:22Jason Calacanis?

  You saw it?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  I watched it. It's on VOD now. So I watched it the other day. There is some sort of monster or creature that is, as you can see, attacking the wildlife.

• 1:04:29Jason Calacanis?

  This is the best movie ever made in Asia.

• 1:04:32Speaker 01

  Cops are chasing this thing around. It takes a long time for you to get your bearings on what really is happening. It's just chaos for a while. Incredible action sequences, really weird, cool effects, great characters. I mean, this is a crazy movie and it takes, it goes into some really unexpected, interesting directions.

• 1:04:50Jason Calacanis?

  Okay for 10 year old daughters?

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  Ooh, I mean, it is

• 1:04:54Jason Calacanis?

  16 year old, yes.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  16 year old for sure. It is, it is, there is like, there's nothing objectionable about it, but it is, there is a lot of violent, monsterish action. So

• 1:05:04Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  People are getting violently injured by this creature.

• 1:05:08Jason Calacanis?

  Hope. H O P E. Korean film.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  It, it is just

• 1:05:12Jason Calacanis?

  People say this is by far the best Korean movie ever made. I think it's the biggest budget ever. People are losing their minds.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Huge budget. It's a big concept and there's lots of action and some of the action sequences are really impressive. But it's also just, it's just really different. Like it's a fascinating take on this whole genre. And you're following all these different characters and it's interesting the way things come together. Some big twists and turns. I, I, I really got into it.

• 1:05:34Jason Calacanis?

  Don't tell us anything else.

• 1:05:35Speaker 01

  No, I don't want to reveal anything.

• 1:05:37Jason Calacanis?

  80% reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, 77 for the popcorn rating. Pretty high for a monster film.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Well, and it's, it's, but it's like, it, it's weird. It's not, it's not, it consistently upends your expectations about what you think is coming. And I, I really enjoyed it. Check, check it out. Worth.

• 1:05:52Jason Calacanis?

  Godzilla minus one. Guess the Rotten Tomato scores.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  Oh, it's gotta be like 98 or something. 97, 98.

• 1:06:01Jason Calacanis?

  How do you do it? 99 and 98? How do you do it?

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  I mean, that was

• 1:06:06Jason Calacanis?

  You know that that's bait.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  That, that movie blew everyone. I mean, I remember, cause that, it was, it was not, like there was Shin Godzilla, that Japanese Godzilla movie from like 10 years ago. And that one was very like anticipated. The filmmakers were really well known. It was really marketed heavily. This one, I feel like Godzilla minus one kind of came out of nowhere. Like I hadn't heard that much about it. I, I think it was not intended to go international, like they had mainly been selling it to Japanese audiences. And it was just so good, it became like a worldwide phenomenon, like RRR, that, that, that Indian movie around the same time.

• 1:06:41Jason Calacanis?

  Give me one more. Give me one more. Everybody loves your picks.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  There's a show that, uh, it wrapped up a few weeks ago on Apple TV, but I am just now finishing the season, Dark Matter. Season two just wrapped up.

• 1:06:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, I know about that.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  You watch that one with the, it's a multiverse show, but in a, in a much more thoughtful, serious way. And not to knock Marvel, I like Marvel, but like Marvel's doing the multiverse of that very like fantasy sci-fi, like, oh, eight different versions of Doctor Strange, which is fun. This one is like, what if you really could travel between realities and meet other versions of yourselves? Like, how would that psychologically impact you? And what would that do to the world? And like,

• 1:07:20Jason Calacanis?

  Is that the guy who was the billionaire guy from, uh,

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:07:24Jason Calacanis?

  Silicon Valley?

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  Silicon Valley, exactly. He plays a private detective in this, in this show. So yeah, Joel, Joel Edgerton plays a physicist, but in another reality, not his own, he's just a teacher in his reality. But in another reality, he's a

• 1:07:39Jason Calacanis?

  This is my show. This is why I have you, I keep you around.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who invents a device that allows you to visit other realities. And so he ends up meeting the other him, who's this brilliant inventor. It sets off this whole chain of reaction that involves everybody he knows, basically. Very good, very cool show. Dark Matter on Apple TV plus.

• 1:07:58Jason Calacanis?

  That's your twist. We'll see you on Monday. Bye bye.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Bye, everybody.