Telegram & Pavel Durov, $100m Podcast Deals (Alex Cooper, Kelce Bros) & Costco Japan | E179

Intro look at their pre-made meals wow wait what is that um the pork katsu sandwiches jeez look at that bro look at that that looks look at the selection list beautiful so here here's the sushi kits look at the sushi kits these Sushi kits ngiri platters would cost a hundred plus dollars in America you buy them in Japan Costco for 20 bucks oh man look at that that is mad anybody that uses smartphones if it's more than two TS it's never going to happen and that's basically to open a t secret chat you got to do like four or five times and there's really want it you know you got you got you got get to those Taps yeah you got to really want it for people wondering Nia never got clapped because we've never monetized it we made [Laughter] zero if you look at the chart the revenue has been consistent at zero well it's been consistently negative is cuz we PID for we pay for the production so for people who don't know Al coer s $60 million deal with Spotify in 202 here's the crazy thing dude she was unemployed in 2018 unemployed aming she's super talented though she is super talented by the way she said she spent 10 hours an episode editing like when she was coming up like call her daddy people don't know it's like it was uh it started with her and her co-host Sophia I forgot Sophia's last name but no I forgot but anyways it was like locker room talk for girls that was the pitch right if you don't know about Al Cooper Google this Gluck luck 9000 that's what she became famous for I'm I'm not going to say anything more Google that but then now she does celebrated interviews all right welcome to another episode of no investment advice you got trun fan bow Z here what's going on trun packed week lots to talk about it's uh end of the summer and uh we got to get into uh the big news that dropped the very Nia piece of news dropped this Meme of the Week morning Tuesday Morning straight to m in the week the Oasis Union after 15 years I mean we talked about Oasis with George Mack a couple episodes ago Jack butcher brings up Oasis you guys obviously British cats you got to throw some love to Oasis um actually blah I saw this uh headline someone said that the oasa aam and Noah gallaga are the most famous brothers in England is that true probably up there I'm trying to think who would be more famous do you got any idea I don't think there is you're right no that's what I mean I that's why I'm asking you is there anyone more famous than these guys as brothers and they might be some of the might be like some footballers that are like brothers you know that everyone like Phil and Gary Neville pretty famous UK but not globally as much these guys are Gallaghers are bigger than the Neville no you're right you're right Oasis cuz Oasis is oasis well so there you go they are they are the biggest Brothers the Big Brothers um maybe J me and skepta as well for for the two rappers but that's another they're more recent but no I agree no these guys are well here's the mem right the joke was uh on Monday they uh teased something on their Twitter account their ex account it just said the date for today it said 0827 2024 people were like oh they're teasing a comeback tour reunion tour but then everybody started posting this meme of maybe you know maybe you're going to be the one that saved me so this m is hysterical what do describe it for the people who are listening yeah it's uh it's one of those Who Wants To Be A Millionaire uh game show memes and it just says maybe and then he has to pick the right answer and the right answer is a you're gonna be the one that saves me but then I don't know I maybe I just want to fly which is answer C sounds kind of good answer B is I don't really want to know yeah that's that's pretty good but anyways man would you go to this show oh yeah if I could and the funny I remember when we did that George Mac episode recently there was someone in the comments being like this is the most mediocre music or like I can't believe you guys did a whole segment on this average band and it's so funny man or all the other time you know you know we get like all sorts of comments and I I never it never really gets to me but the one I will say when I jokingly said I was listening to Chris Brown in the SAA do you remember this when it was me and you and I was obviously messing around it's like a stupid song and the guy was like oh but has the worst taste in music and it's like oh you coming out my music tast is playlist is Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and then Wonder W yeah I'm going to maybe I should make a playlist like the worst kind of Fire Man I mean that's look if you don't take yourself too seriously you you can listen to any music you like you know Spice Girls throw that in there in the morning for a sing along you know a few CL Craig David S days you just got to play happy music we've actually talked about Craig David a lot man he he was he was the king man oh yeah also for people in London it was a not in G Carnival this weekend do you know about this it's the longest I think it's the biggest Street party in Europe or something like that and it's the Jamaican influence not andil Carnival so it's normally car yeah yeah but you know we can't say words in other languages in England so we just anglicize it but no and uh Craig David was there and he just turned up and started singing and doing stuff with a random musician it were a lot of cool videos coming out uh it's always I'm assuming you've never been but it's a lot of fun every every year you got to get little jerk chicken a little red stripe going you know it's a it's a good time red stpes to beer the Brazilian Red stpes of Jamaican beer yeah Jamaican actually um they have a what you're describing they have a really big one in Toronto that goes H every year it must be pretty similar yeah cuz a lot of Caribbean cats end up in Toronto yeah it's funny you know those videos you see we we'll get to the topics in a second but the uh in Toronto when they they sound the slang is very similar to London but they've got that Toronto accent is the most ridiculous accent bro my guy like that they got this funny you mean the can like Canadian stereotype okay yeah yeah yeah anyway let's get to the topics uh we've already lost you know Mr Beast would not be happy with attention here but let's get on to what's going on we got telegram the founder of telegram pavl durov was arrested at Paris airport uh we're going to break that down what we know what we don't know um then we're going to talk about podcast Acquisitions Alex Cooper from caller Daddy's just signed $125 million deal with sirusxm and Travis Kelsey and his brother have signed $100 million deal with wry if you guys remember we covered this a few years ago with Rogan signed into Spotify I call her daddy seems like there's like a second wave it's like the renewals are coming now because there's also like a a bit of a valley where the whole industry got clapped so we'll we'll talk about for people wondering ni never got clapped because we never mzed it we made [Laughter] zero if you look at the chart the revenue has been consistent at zero well it's been consistently negative is we paid we pay for the production okay you're right but it's been consistent there's been no ups and downs yeah it that's you know consistency is key in life so there we go so we got Oasis reunion tour maybe there's a little bit to talk we kind of just covered it there but if there's anything else you got on that and then very ni topic Costco is opening in Japan apparently no no they have 32 locations they just okwa oh okanawa okay okay okay the Hawaii of Japan no but the Hawaii of Japan we can talk about that right the I say where I'm right now I'm at my uh basically in-law's place the my girlfriend is um half Japanese her family is from kaawa that side so we got a connection you can see behind me right now for people this is authentic Japanese Japanese artwork yeah it's pretty cool I don't know what's going on there very cool anyway and then we got yeah so I think we'll we'll stick to those four for now we did have other stuff but we probably will not get to it this week so why don't we talk about Telegram Founder Arrested telegram first I think that was the most pressing stuff what is going on you've been covering this um I've done zero coverage but i' I've been following it uh and uh well tell me what you know you mention you got who was arrested at I just saw the headline I saw a couple memes basically showing you know I actually watched that interview with him um was it on Lex or something there was Tucker Tucker I actually watched that one that it was quite interesting hear his whole back story and everything um so all I saw was the headline why don't I walk through the following like I uh I I'll give some top levels of what's happened up up to date Tuesday Morning where you are with his arrest then I'll talk about him personally how we build Telegram and then we'll talk about where telegram falls in the suite of apps like we obviously use telegram for our a or ni Channel I know some listeners are in there we're not very active there but that's part of the product that they offer how does uh telegram fit into the messaging Universe WhatsApp signal iMessage why its approach to encryption actually may have led to pavl durov's arrest it's actually quite interesting and then uh and then and then that should kind of wrap up with any loose questions but so where we are right now so he had a warrant out for uh uh the French authorities had some type of warrant out for him since July they had opening an investigation but the unit that opened the investigation was recently launched and H people looked at it and were like you know this looks like a is it politically motivated is it B related to you know the EU we've talked about how they all these new laws Digital Services Act laws around user data user privacy and the joke that we've been having what's our joke about Europe and regulation like instead of building the next big tech company they're just trying to regulate themselves into uh relevance right well BL like is that kind of what we've discussed no I think yeah we've talked about just the the more heavy-handed approach to regulation there right in the EU and obviously everybody anybody that's ever visited or been EU and visit a website you know what this is the general data that gdpr yeah you got to accept all the cookies right everybody knows that I don't say the g word anymore after dealing with it with you've been dealing with this so much right yeah yeah so that's so people are asking what's going on uh he's wrested over the weekend there's no official communication until yesterday which was Monday they released the charges against him or it might not even be in the charges it's like the scope of the investigation they're basically saying that as the owner of telegram which has almost a billion users he is complicit in various crimes that are taking place on the platform because uh he and his team which we will discuss only 30 people full-time 30 to 50 full-time employees a Tucker on the Tucker Carlson pocast he said he had 30 full-time employees in a financial times interview he said at 50 I don't know maybe he meant like you know people that are active in the company is less than 5050 that's crazy I'm assuming not many of those people are working on government relations exactly right or maybe even regulations in general I don't know or they don't have a big trust and safety team which is kind of the point here and uh so I think the the the official letter from the French government or the Judiciary that uh released this is about I think 15 or 16 points but it was so broad it was like uh you know what happens on any communication platform what happens on the telephone networks what happens on the Internet is drug trafficking happen uh human trafficking happens uh unfortunately a lot of uh a child pornography happens sexual harassment happens and this happens on any communication medium right it's it's just not just telegram it's not just WhatsApp it's Facebook it's Instagram it's X it's uh it's the telephone networks it's the email services so the kind of conundrum here and there are a lot of pieces that play is like well are you arresting someone that runs this platform and then people like okay well this actually means that you could probably arrest literally like the CEO of a telecom company the CEO of a of Mike Zuckerberg right he's like how doesn't this apply to Zuck and I mean the quick answer is that he has a very large trust and safety team right they have about they spend about $5 billion a year and uh even though X has re a lot of it is just perception of oh we care about this enough to have a team we're taking this seriously we're trying trying our best so thing but they've also had varying levels of that over the years especially Facebook right but exactly anyway but but if you're comparing a 30 person team to 50,000 or whatever they've got you know but that's why there's so many elements here to tease out right there's like and then people are like oh this is a free speech issue right that gets brought into it now so the first issue we just touched on is how should the owner of this platform or the people running it how liable are they right this has always been this has been a huge question over the past decade particularly on the internet because how quickly you can disseminate information now a lot of a lot of the smartest tech people I saw view this as an escal this is quite escalatory right it's one thing for you to the government to open an investigation into a company they've done it to every major social network in North America for example and then there's another thing to actually arrest the individual right the the person at the top of this company now there's the the other element that get gets brought in is a free speech part because Telegram and paval durv you mentioned in the uh in the Tucker cars interview he is uh he has this position of kind of anti-censorship very light touch moderation and now we can talk about his past and why this is relevant so just just to tie the loose end of where we are on Tuesday uh by the law of uh uh of French the way that they conduct these investigations he should be released tomorrow unless they charge him with a crime which a lot of people are asking far is like okay if if he's done something directly not just being the owner of this platform what is the direct implication of the crime because right now it looks like they're just charging for owning this platform and then things are happening on that platform that uh uh they uh that the French government's unhappy about and um so let's give a little bit background on paval durv so paval durv he's the same age as Mark Zuckerberg so and he is considered for a long time he was considered Russ Russia's Mark Zuckerberg because he had launched a a social networking site in Russia called VK now if you read about the history of VK uh he basically around 2014 when uh Russia started really uh making moves into Ukraine like a decade ago right when this conflict really started happening with Russian Ukraine um he would not censor uh uh anti-russian government kind of groups or like channels the equivalent of like a Facebook group right and effectively that got him on the wrong side of the Russian government and he basically had to give up the social networking platform like he was forced to sell it to somebody that was very close to Vladimir Putin and now this raises a lot of questions because there's a lot of like there so much uncertainty of his relationship with Russia because the reality is that if you look at 2014 he had to give up his social networking website it'd be as if in 2014 the US government forced Mark Zuckerberg to sell Facebook to I guess at the time it was uh it was a democratic it was Obama administration you had to sell it to somebody close to Obama that's like the equivalent of what happened in 2014 to paval durov so he left Russia and was basically an exile at that point because uh he he risked arrest uh within the government within the country so he left I think believe became a citizen of uh UAE and in the Tucker Carlson podcast he talked about he was bouncing around the world seeing where he could settle like I think he went to Singapore he went to San Francisco in San Francisco he said that uh somebody from the FBI tried to back door themselves into Telegram and he's like maybe this isn't the safest place for me to be and then he ended up with UAE and he actually got a French citizenship uh like an honorary French citizenship which makes this whole thing crazy it's like two years phds or exctly right from a school yeah yeah so he actually got like this crazy like this French citizenship they don't give to very many people like a special one I guess for at that time three years ago like oh youo let's give it to paval durav like you know he he's got this incredible background but then he launched telegram after he had to give up VK launched it with his brother and the thesis behind telegram was born from him having to give up VK right he's like he wants to build a small team keep it privately owned and like not have a centralized government censorship or somebody that can push the thumb on him and because of what had happened with VK so that was his stance with telegram when they launched it so that's grown now from zero to a billion users and uh I mean 30 to 50 full-time employees very light touch as he said and uh uh well let's pause there and blow what are your thoughts so far of this setup no that that's great background I think for me I'm still not 100% sure not you know obviously not following this super closely like you said like what's the what's the difference between what he's done versus others it sounds like mostly it's just in regards to not having a trust and safety team and you know there's maybe more of that activity happening on there I don't know if that's provable or not but from their investigation is more happening on there and it seems like they're not trying to follow follow the rules around clamping down on anti-terrorism anti- XYZ laws essentially or not playing along it just yeah that's kind of where where where I still have a question no you nailed it so that okay so this now let's get into the Crux of it right let's talk about the encryption so this is the big part again there's so many moving parts to this is like is France like kneecapping its tech industry like imagine being a Founder in France for a social product now you're going to be like oh my God you're they're going to no but seriously you're going to arrest like me for building this platform I I listen I'm not defending any of the stuff you talked about but that's just the reality of any communications platform right really bad stuff it listen if we shut down telegram tomorrow guess what terrorists and human traffickers are going to find ways to communicate through their networks right so the question then becomes exactly to your point is like you're trying to wonder why is it that teleg telegram is getting the squeeze and you had kind of mentioned something earlier you kind of got to the thrust of it which is Facebook has a massive trust and safety team right $5 billion a year tens of thousands of moderators and you know a lot of is quite controversial there's two controversies with Facebook's moderation are they pushing their thumb on the scale yesterday Mark Zuckerberg wrote a letter to the uh US Government saying that he think he he was pressured by the Biden Administration over Co jokes and he thought it was a mistake for them to have answered those requests to take them down so this is yet like this is all happening right there's a lot of moving pieces here the second part of whole conversation again exactly well here like the the second part of uh moderations that also becomes quite controversial is human moderations of social networks right it's like awful it's like below when you started working on Google you mentioned there's something called the bin can you tell us what that is yeah the bin was a lot of people did it including sh Sandberg um who became the head of Facebook number Facebook CEO of Facebook yeah but basically like running it next side alongside Mark Zuckerberg um and they would basically have to you open a screen and it would be content or add moderation in that case so it would be something would come on the screen it's it's on the great area of policy and a human would physically be like oh that's I'm going to press yes or no based on the policy that I've learned so it's like human you know reviews it's pretty ridiculous here thing some of the most awful [ __ ] you could possibly imagine is coming through yeah and I would say for that was ads so it was just Tech so it's not that bad but like for the people that did YouTube for example they would see some really just tough stuff terrible right and by that point I think way in the future they had to Outsource that to specialist teams cuz it's you know you can't just markets making $2 an hour yeah if you look into the moderation stuff it's it's awful it is like the worst stuff in human the imagine anything anyone can upload at any moment and and I guess maybe by this point there are some automated visual they've probably got some AI stuff that sure prev vets stuff and puts it in a cube but you're right like it's the sort of stuff we don't think about that someone kind of has to do it right and it's not nice but there's someone who's going to have to do that as well so and the reason I brought it up there's like there's these sides of the moderation game right it's like it's necessary I I do think some moderation is necessary I I'm not one of the mind of like it's a complete free-for-all and uh but then it's a Continuum right that's this is why this this debate gets so heated is like how much moderation should you have and it's it's very clear that people believe this is escalatory because France is basically saying okay it's one thing we're going to find you if you don't moderate but now we're going to arrest the owner of these platforms I mean that's just going to put a chill on any type of a uh a tech innovation in France I I mean I think it's not great for France's look in terms of because like even yesterday like emman mcon had to put out a tweet he's like he basically said that um you know there's a lot of talk around paval durav and he's like this is not a political thing he's like this is judiciary he's like I I think I I think France was surprised at the kind of like blowback they were getting because honestly they weren't even really explaining like what they that's the key here is like they could easily I mean they I'm sure they will at some point explain this is what's happening this is it's not you can't build a social network you can't do XYZ because look we've got Facebook operating here WhatsApp Etc this is specific to him because he did XYZ but they can't say that right right now so I I think you're right that clarification would help a lot with their well they're going to have to do it in the next 24 hours because he's going to have to be released from detention unless they really throw the book at him and the other thing that uh uh uh I forgot to mention regarding the like this you know the bullet point list of what they're investigating him for is a lot of it is around cryptography and they basically one of the bullet points was he doesn't have a license to do cryptography which there bro there is no license to do craphy it's like your CFA du due here what what the hell I don't know what me I paying to do it's math it's like but this is what I mean that's why people and he's like one of the leading people in that space right like he knows that stuff very well andly signal guy but that's an interesting but let's get to the encryption though this is like this will answer your earlier question since we got kind of bogged down in the moderation specifically you will see a lot in the media that telegram is is fully encrypted it is not the vast majority of Chats on telegram are unencrypted and the way encryption works and blow tell me if this sounds correct from what your knowledge when you hear encryption what you really want to hear if you care about privacy and uh uh uh no one's snooping on you is end to end encryption that's e2e and what end to end encryption means is that the only people that can see uh the the source of communication are the two people on the ends of that exchange right so give you an example I message WhatsApp and Signal have anten encryption and let's just use an example if I send balow a very Banger meme on I message it's gonna go through Apple owned servers but it's encrypted while it's in their server like you they can't tell you what is on there but then it comes with the blow side he has a key for he gets to see it and do you remember a couple years ago 2016 there's a terrorist attack and the FBI wanted Apple to uh uh kind of uh uh hard fork or or back door one of the phones the terrorist's phone and they wanted the apple and Tim Cook to create a back door to find what was on the phone and Tim cookb said we're not going to do that uh and that was kind of his privacy stance cuz he the position at the time and people that agreed with him was that the ability for government abuse of this power to looked and Snoop as we were shown by Edward Snowden right we saw what the NSA was doing with all these platforms is that they people are following on that side is like you know what would rather have even if we're allowing bad things to happen in the dark the other the tradeoff is do you want full government power to Snoop that's essentially the full extremes of these tradeoffs and you I mean the reality is you actually do have to pick how you fall on that Continuum and I mean in my mind it's I'm kind of more scared of government overreach of having full visibility into everything than I am of the of honestly also awful stuff happening but governments perpetrate the worst stuff in the world that's the whole point right it's like if you look through human history it's the state and the power of the state which are doing the by pure numbers the worst crimes yeah just even now you look at Wars and millions of people beinged by stuff right so like it's easy but it also doesn't have to be evil or I guess it there can be a middle ground I guess and so I think what you brought up there was you also talked about like moderation like it kind of overlaps of content moderation as well on on social network Works which has come up a lot in recent times with X especially well let me talk about telegram this is the problem so the end they don't have n encryption it's not default so the it right it's like secret chat so you have to opt in you have exactly you have to open a a secret chat and it's like four five steps anybody that uses smartphones know that there's more than one tap involved in like any act it's just not no seriously right it's true you're not going to Mobile AC I don't think I've used it yeah is one or two taps if it's more than two TS it's never going to happen and that's basically to open a telegram secret chat you got to do like four or five times and there's only really want it you know you you got you got to get to those Taps you got to really want it no B you got it's quite a funny thing to imagine someone's there just like all right I'm going to go for these four TS to get there but also both people have to be online it's not like I can open one and send you like a asynchronous one it's like there's a lot of friction yeah so like so you have to ask yourself why is it that it's so so much friction to have end to-end encryption on telegram even though uh paval and his brother and their team because he co-founded uh telegram their his brother they're happy to have this idea that telegram is encrypted it's like safe chat like the that is another bit of controversy here where it's actually not safe in the way that a signal or Whatsapp or imess cuz you said signal cuz WhatsApp is powered by signal I think right like yeah they use their encryption they use encryption so by by default those are already end to end so those are the equivalent of secret chat on telegram exactly but look but this is this is where it gets interesting okay what are two things that are are on telegram that are very big that have helped its adoption we we have one it's a group chat you can do group chats up to 200,000 users on telegram oh wow and then you have channels which is basically a social network where a person with a big profile Broast millions of people right yeah now this is where it gets interesting you can't have end to-end encryption or it's very difficult with 200,000 people in a group how how for I'll give you an example do you know how many people you can have in a single iMessage I think it's 32 it's because every time you send a message each communication is encrypted so it's actually technologically very difficult you're saying just in terms of low and just to actually technically do it and at that speed make sure everything's done and if you got 30 employees it's that going to be the easiest thing you got choose your battles exactly so signal is actually quite a small team too but they built their product from the ground up with an encryption in mind so their entire focus is and that's why it hasn't had as much adoption right you know much about the because WhatsApp didn't WhatsApp also releaseed something like broadcast channels or equivalent of that yeah so what has that but they but are those ending crypto did as well I don't know the there's no chance it's end to end at the volume of a 200,000 yeah it's just not right and but that's also why it took WhatsApp a while to get there and people were quite critical of uh uh WhatsApp for not doing that so this telegram having these massive groups and these broadcast channels which can go to millions of people like one to many it helped them grow right because like like you like do I need I don't use signal for example I don't use it a ton I'll use every now and then if you know like you're joking about if you're really thirsty for the an encryption chat you might hit somebody up on signal but like I'll jump on like I remember actually starting telegram getting into me because You' open a group for ni for the uh non-investment advice and so like these groups yeah yeah we got these chats and these groups these CH broadcast channels there were huge adoption for telegram right and uh and now we can get into some of the things so like a lot of crypto scams happen on Telegram because these channels and these groups and uh and it goes to the question of moderation but now let me tie two things together you had mentioned moderation at the top this is what it sounds like France is coming down on paval Duron right now by the time this podcast comes out they might have released him already he's also a UAE citizen I just saw a letter from the UAE consulate they're like listen he's a citizen of our country too we want answers Russia's government has done the same thing and then people are kind of questioning and then we can talk about at the end it's like what is his relationship with Russia right now and then because that muddies the water right it's like once you hear that oh this guy's a bad guy uh and then the Censorship vs. Misinformation question about the moderation now comes in so the NN encryption is not the default on telegram 90% of it is unencrypted uh I got to find this article but somebody wrote uh about uh Telegram and compared it to Blackberry actually so a big problem that Blackberry had was that with the governments was you would have like a with BBM you remember Blackberry Messenger like they had very secure service right but the super secure version of BBM was like built on Prem Enterprise style and then like and then a corporation that would have tens of thousands of BlackBerry phones they' have the safety on Prem and but then some other BBM like just consumers would not have the same level of safety so what was happening was if you don't have the full security as default like this n encryption what happens is the information can be seen on the servers like un these there's plain text records right now of our chats and uh of telegram there are some servers right now but not WhatsApp interestingly not WhatsApp so pav dur says that uh the way they do protection for uh security if it's not in encrypted is that they're distributed these conversations across different servers around the world but some people are like H we don't know that's just not as good as NN encryption right but the whole point being if you have this information and it's on servers and it's accessible now governments can apply pressure right so and you brought up Moxy Marlin Spike so he's a founder of signal he had a very interesting tweet yesterday he goes he goes do you understand that like paval durv and telegram they have plain text records of all these chats and you know that Emanuel macron has been using telegram for many years now is this a vehicle they're using to make sure those conversations are no but seriously right what is going on now so let me let me end with this and I'll throw to ball in your court uh any followup thoughts is the mechanism with which telegram was able to grow to almost a billion users was to have these channels have these groups was that they did not have end ended encryption at by default they had different their encryption technology was that they would take the conversations and break them up across different servers people in the cryptography space do not think that's adequate but because they had that uh the non-default in an encryption they able to grow faster but now the governments can come after them the same way actually let me tie my BlackBerry thought was that Blackberry got a lot of pressure from governments uh because the certain governments wanted access to Blackberry conversations because they knew that in some instance Blackberry was not fully encrypting or hiding the convos because of this weird split that Blackberry had between Enterprise and consumer so when you try to have it both ways which is effectively what's going on here where you have this perception of being encrypted but you're really not that's helping you grow well now the other part of the hammer is people in power know that you have certain records they're going to hit you up so any thoughts on that no I think you described it really well I think the interesting thing as as we've been speaking and in the last 24 hours is you know Mark Zuckerberg was trending on on X on Twitter and uh the reason is a lot of people talking about him coming out and kind of admitting to the fact that he had been pressured to do XYZ and kind of collaborate with uh Biden Administration on on some of those things and how he's kind of getting ahead apparently there's there's talk about a whistleblower or something like that and he's been trying to get ahead of that so that's why that's the the that's what people are saying who knows this is all just kind of hearsay at the moment um but yeah I think there's a very interestes I I guess for me not knowing a lot about encryption and all of these different products I've always just thought without looking into it today that telegram was the most encrypted and it turns out WhatsApp which is what I mostly use anyway is actually more heavily encrypted I guess people didn't trust WhatsApp as much because it's you know a lot of people in crypto for example will use telegram like I've even met people and they like right that's don't trust and and but interestingly here telegram actually has you know by default everything's kind of stored and honestly my take on this stuff is my personal position and I completely respect people have more on that Continuum you said of you know more censorship or more privacy um I guess yeah that's the Continuum we're talking about or for me like I want things to be private but I also I'm not that like oh my God if mine wasn't enter end encrypted is the end of the world for me cuz personally I'm saying but I do respect that someone might want that and it's kind of how I'm landing with the content moderation that's kind of why I bought it up is generally speaking I'm obviously very Pro people be able to share what they want to share but there is a line and there's a lot of the time the line is legal right and it that varies in different countries so again without knowing France's laws specifically there may be something specific there that I'm not aware of or for example in Germany they have laws about you things you can and cannot say related to World War II um and and they're very you know understandably it's quite black and white like if you mention this you go to jail you go to jail for that whereas in another country you could say that so I think that's where this whole topic has come up quite a bit even in the last you know in the month all the things that have been going on around the world there's been a lot of there's been a lot of blowback um and I was I was mentioning X because that's the one that's leading the way in having more of a free speech position but we've seen the kind of good and bad in some ways of of that as well and I don't think there's the right answer it's just about where people land what they care more about sort of I would I would definitely uh to answer to kind of add to your thought about where you found in that Continuum like the more I see kind of how the governments are using censorship powers and what happened like during covid I mean like literally we just brought it up right is like with Zuckerberg is man I think this is why the US right us they're the only country that has really enshrined Free Speech man it's literally the First Amendment and uh I think that I think in the long run of you know country building uh uh oh definitely nation building no but this mean it's like when you this is what I mean is like you I would look at it from the 50,000 foot level from a nation building perspective it's pretty clear that having the First Amendment the ability to say things that may be unpopular in the moment or share new ideas the good and the bad yeah you going get the bad but you're also going to get the good and that's that's how you turn situ and that's how you deal with situations right it's a whole the deal the best disinfectant in sunlight yeah or you have to beat a bad argument with a good argument right so like that that's why with me is like I would want I mean I'm much more in the let's let's not move towards this what Europe's doing which is heavy heavy and I'm not suggesting that's what you're saying but I'm like between this and what happened in England over the past month with online censorship is like and again there are new issues but that's clearly moving in a direction very much away from let's beat bad ideas with good ideas it's just like's I 100% agree on the beat bad ideas with good ideas I think the England example is a very interesting one given how much it was so recent and it was outside of what the government was doing CU I agree with that like there was clearly some form of you know I don't know well let's just say they were arresting people for inciting violence online and and the flip side which I think was actually dangerous was we all kind of have to also accept that two things have happened quite significantly in the last 10 15 years is obviously the spread of fake news on on both sides and and separately um now what's happened in the last few years is the move to the algorithm being primarily focused on interest not follower based interest so you're now blowing up stuff that is even it's it's making things worse in terms of spreading more fake news more inflammatory stuff and so in the example of the UK stuff cuz I was following that more closely obviously coming from there there was stuff being [ __ ] like the whole riots basically were kicked off by fake news and again we're kind of trading into the political stuff which we normally don't hear that was that was lots of misinformation that started off these riots pretty much and because of that it was like even here being in the US following it it was quite surprising to see how many people didn't had no idea what was going on including Elon Musk who obviously runs a platform and owns a platform and so that was an example where I I could clearly see the downside of that there needs to be a better solution for moderation but not censorship there's there's well you know what it is is we talked about Community notes uh a couple months ago like how it kind of is like here's the reality is like everything you described is true and and and the solution has to be an internet skill solution right well there's two options the solution is straight up government censorship is what you're like that that's one solution right that is one solution is like if we don't like what you're saying like we have to have that overhanging threat on you right and in Europe they can do that because they haven't enshrined freedom of speech the other way is to have an internet speed solution so Community notes will not be perfect cannot address everything but that's an internet skill solution to this problem Community notes but the truth is when 100 million people see something that's shared by let say then only 1% are going to see the community note so by then the damage is done and that's why I think it was an interesting example cuz you know so go well we can teach let me add one layer to I think it's interesting discussion now for sure the other part of it too is government communication mismanagement similar to with this France situation there's just if if you're going to move at the speed of internet and everything you you said how fast it goes there's got to be way better communication right in the sense of this France thing kind of blew up because it took them 36 hours to say what was going on and then all these theories fill that that information void in the meantime right and um no I agree with you it's a this will be a whole episode yeah all right yeah and so TR the only thing I'd add is I think both of them can be something that we care about keeping free speech and the the good ideas getting rid of bad ideas and having those discussions open but also I do think the idea of misinformation is something that is increasingly important and is spreading further because of um you know the way the algs are designed now and in in an election year all the things are happening everywhere I think that's making things worse and I think we I think both of them are important I don't think this evil all like you can only have pure free speech and anything goes and no control at all there's also like laws like we said so I don't think there's like inciting violence for example is not something you're allowed to do right and and there's certain things you can't do in public you can't just go stand on the street and you know Insight violence and stuff like that so I think there's there is a a fine line between those two things and I think they're both important so that's kind of my my take on it no absolutely man and the last thought I'd add on the telegram situation still obviously developing the the the the thought I wanted to add to finish this up was it's about encryption itself and um and an encryption doesn't actually fully secure yourself either right because the signal still has to give like metadata to like the government wants metadata or what's at what's on met metadata what's metadata it's like who's sending what to who at what time right those things can still happen you might not know the actual cont like a phone number or like some whatever profile like those those things still exist right so the government could put the squeeze on people and like I'll give very the best example I heard was from uh was during the whole Edward Snowden thing and it's just the idea of like okay imagine it's 1776 you're and you're looking at communications between like the American revolutionaries right it's like Paul River and George Washington are sending telegrams to each other you don't no but like it's like you don't know what's in those telegrams but they're sending telegrams are arriving at 2 3 4 5 in the morning between this network of God you can piece together oh something's popping off right about to pop off so like what I mean by that is like just because you can't get the source of the information there's still a lot to be gleamed from metadata and uh the last last thought I'll end on the paval durov stuff is you know you mentioned the Tucker Carlson interview I would highly recommend people to watch that's only an hour really good yeah but uh he's sitting on some Bitcoin too by the way he's he he's K I mean his his net worth uh Forbes put it at10 billion uh he I mean he owns telegram almost majority right pretty much yeah and um but he you know based on the 2014 him having to give up VK his social network in Russia and you know telegram people we mention a lot of negative stuff a lot of positive stuff happened on it too as communication platform right it was used during Hong Kong group chat bro there we go source of a lot of fun and it's like you know when people talk about you just have to accept there's things that you will choose to be good or bad on both sides happening right is like you know like the a lot of the Russian and Ukraine war is being fought literally on telegram right now used as a communication medium and but then however you feel about that just also know that different protests around the world have also used telegram as a way to organize so like telegram is a communication medium the entire Human Experience is going to happen on it but then it comes to the question of is zero Touch Too Little right because the I think that is the most the biggest uh criticism against it it's actually two-tier you had mentioned how you thought telegram before her chat was fully encrypted right like that that speaks to it it's like there is this marketing uh perception of it which is not actually reflected in how it's done and that's come back to bite papal durav in this instance because the governments are like well we know we can look at the information so now we're going to put the squeeze on uh you know but yeah I think that I think it's quite escalatory I don't unless France reveals the full scope of what it is I mean I would expect them to be out and uh yeah yeah no that was a great breakdown good we did a deep dive the last last thing I was going to say was uh on the plane I was watching there was a Bloomberg um FTX documentary did you ever see this I was a lot of your old colleagues at Bloomberg or um oh FTX on the way on the way did you see that to be honest I didn't actually finish it but it I started I was halfway through and I was like I need a break from all I was naturally wanting to listen to it but I needed a break from that sort of stuff and it was it was decent it was it was just kind of like this you know we covered it on the Pod so much and we kind of lived through it reading it all and stuff so you kind of knew a lot of it but one of the things it kind of reminded me of was in that era where where there's a parallel to telegram here is we were celebrating look at this small lean team do you remember when when FTX was on top of the world everyone was like oh man they look how you know what are all these big companies doing with so many people and now we see well like they're they they've got a whole team clamping down on his stuff and obviously there's lots of PMS chilling on rooftops too like don't get me wrong but there's there's reasons people like people underestimate what it takes to run a big company or no I love how you brought that up though is like there's a reason why banks have so many employees do you know how large the compliance departments are at banks compl no but that's it right G guess what FTX has no uh compliance Department there a lot of money laundering expenses on self and on uh in quick book I mean that's what I mean so that was the only thing I said here is I think there is there is this thing especially coming from our world of like the tech you know Centric World rightfully so you can celebrate the leanness of small teams and startups but there's a a stage where you kind of get to a point where you're like well we actually need to stop breaking things and actually you know have some professional stuff go down and that's all the boring stuff I hate personally but there's reasons there's compliance teams is for that so anyway um really good discussion should we talk about the podcast Acquisitions real quick I think there's you you you tweeted this out but 100m Podcast Deals (Alex Cooper, Kelce Bros) I was just share so Alex Cooper caller daddy signed a $125 million deal with Ser I heard 100 but it's 100 to 125 okay okay maybe there's add-ons like football deals you know like appearance fees and stuff like that but so it's literally the last few days of the transfer window so it's very much in my head that correlation there um and then Travis Kelsey and his brother sorry I forgot his brother's name I don't follow it as much what's his what's his brother's name oh Jason yeah in the Heights podcast dude this thing's been around for like two years that's that's wild yeah and obviously when you're dating Taylor Swift it changes the profile and it's a smart I mean it's a great way to you know I'm thinking of I don't know why I'm thinking of this but the way um the YouTubers started doing boxing matches he like you know that's where there's a way to mze and Jak yeah yeah and like good for them like they're going to have to obviously he's still playing right now right but he's going to not be playing in a few years so oh he's going to be I've heard people say that he's the next The Rock like he will reach that level of uh I mean he's headed he has a for example he has a film uh he's going to start in a film in the next 18 months I believe so bring up monster yeah and so that was with wre owned by Amazon I think right W and so you twe this out here you basically said the podcast power law top 25 shows account for 50% of us listens massive deals in the past year I'm just going to actually share the screen because there's some yeah just say the M it's crazy really cool to see and I think obviously we've been doing the Pod we know we follow Media stuff quite a bit um share screen I'll give people some context here is uh yeah yeah so I'll read I'll read through this uh podcast power laws the top 25 shows in America account for 50% of all listens and here's the deal happen in the past year and I I I want you to keep these deal numbers in mind because podcast which we will discuss shortly they went through a bit of a a uh a slump because Spotify had gone so hard and thrown so much money at it that uh exactly that they created like a high expectations didn't really pan out but Rogan signed a $250 million deal on Spotify but uh he's number one on the charts right now it does about 12 million plus downloads in episode go ahead and I just going really quickly on that one that is no longer exclusive in terms of you can now listen to on other podcast players and on YouTube which is key which I think he's done incredibly well to basically get the bag twice and now he's everywhere I mean I could imagine his show has grown significantly we we'll talk about why that deal why Spotify a reup it they gave it 50 million more but it is an exclusive I'll tease it right now it's because uh Spotify is allowed to sell ads across all of his inventory so that's wherever he is everyone wins basically yeah everyone wins um but we'll talk about that cuz spotify's entry into the podcast space super interesting story okay new heights uh with Jason and Travis Kelch that's number four in the world right now oh this is a q1 2024 ranking from Edison research so the I mean podcast numbers as bow knows they're not 100% but this is like and this is us only which is also us only call Dy they did a global one cuz you know I bet Joe Rogan is more than twice as that oh yeah you're right globally cuz of these names he he's the one that would travel um Sirus XM paid 100 Mil to callor Daddy Alex Cooper we should talk about that too because of uh how they kind of uh they started the whole Mo movement of paying one celebrity a crazy bag because they they pay Howard Stern $100 million plus a year uh so I read somewhere that if Howard Stern left Sirus XM where he's been for two decades they would lose 15% of their subscriber base so it gives you an idea of the single individual how much leverage you have power laws and then smart list with Jason baitman Sean Hayes and will aret I haven't heard a single episode of smart me too but I know I know it's what it's like podcast people love it and I'm just reading out a few up obviously there crime here the top 10 why read through the top 10 yeah we got Joe Rogan crime junkie the daily obviously daily New York Times popular uh New Height to Jason and Travis Kelce D line NBC This American Life OG ge's um caller daddy um smartless morbid I've never listened to that stuff you should OG podcast as well those guys one really like they're old school very very good one of um my m one of our best friends came all the way into the city just to go to an event for this that's like how much people love it and then we Club sh Shay another then our boy Theo Von number 12 I've seen him go all the way up to like number five six in different rankings he's been Trump interview he's probably uh and also the other thing here is I wonder if they're including YouTube or not great question I'm not sure because that's very I mean that's if they're not that's more than half the views for some of these guys um and then Ben shapir show Mr balling podcast bad friends with Andrew stino Bobby Lee so yeah really I mean lots of ones people would have heard of um and I mean it was really just to call out that there's a second kind of wave of these deals happening it seems seems to be you know a lot of those deals were 2 three years and now we're hitting that renewal and I think what's interesting is they're not you know both of them are not exclusive to Spotify anymore I mean obviously Alex Cooper not at all and um Jo she's not on there literally so for people don't know Alice Cooper signed a $60 million deal with Spotify in 202 here's the crazy thing dude she was unemployed in 2018 unemployed she super talented though she is super talented by the she edited podcast herself I remember she still does honestly she might one of those SP 10 hours an episode editing like when she was coming up like call her daddy people don't know it's like it was uh it started with her and a co-host Sophia I forgot Sophia's last name but no forgot but anyways it was like locker room talk for girls that was the pitch right a lot of sex talk a lot of datings talk but then but similar to Howard Stern Howard Stern was a shock jock I don't you guys remember in the 90s Howard Stern used to have Jenna Jameson come on into studio and she'd ride a Symbian machine if you don't know what a Symbian machine is you Google that and she would Rite it and be on the radio we just lost all our listeners we just lost our listeners disted next this was this was Howard Stern back in the day but then now he's a big celebrity interview guy that's basically what happened with uh Alex Cooper if you don't know about Alex Cooper Google this Gluck Gluck 9000 that's what she became famous for I'm I'm not gonna say anything more Google that but then now she does Celebrity interviews actually throw something out listen to her interview Dave pornoy in May at the Kentucky oh I think I had that one CU I don't actually listen to a pod but I listen to that one cuz that was the first time they had uh chat since she left bar for people don't know she that's why I was interested to hear what the back story and I will say in this deal it looks like it's her Flagship show and the underworld podcast Network she built a podcast which she built a network which is incredibly smart so good I mean she's for people that don't know unwell is she picked a young influencers from Tik Tok and give him podcast really smart cuz she has that under 30 demo on lock it's kind of like if Joe Rogan had done m i mean obviously Joe ran doesn't want to didn't ever want to do this and didn't need to do it but think of how many people came out of his show that blew up because of was already doing it I but he really went super over Lex Freedman Lex fredman uh what was the other one the other intellectual dude what's name Eric Weinstein exactly maybe you just said that name and I missed it but um well blah let me actually walk through uh Alex Cooper's deals because I'll tell you what's interesting we talked about Spotify right in 2019 Spotify basically decided we've talked about this in the past but let me just run through it super quickly uh spotify's business in 2019 was obviously primarily songs unlimited songs uh there's a premium tier where you uh can listen but then you get hit with ads and then uh the majority of business is built around subscription right but as we've discussed on this show what is the problem with the music only business model the song Only business model for Spotify they have to pay 60 to 70% of every dollar that comes in the door to the music labels so it doesn't there's no benefits of scale it doesn't matter how big Spotify got they couldn't advertize those costs across their user base because they had to pay every 60 to7 cents of every dollar out so they're like okay in 2019 Daniel e and his team Daniel e the founder and CEO of Spotify is like we got to do we got to do u a podcast something we can own they wanted to own the ear know that they say they called it the the ear pie right is like so they they've got audio books too that's another they got audio books now and um spent over a billion dollars on podcast technology and podcast content so you mentioned exclusive deal Joe Rogan exclusive deal with Alex Cooper uh they bought the ringer which has a massive podcast podcast Network Bill Simmons they bought anchor anchor about gimlet so what is what what what is Anor podcast anchor I think was mostly just podcast hosting but now I I don't use it but now for example if you want to put video on Spotify I think you have to use that as a host whereas previously you know there's hundreds of hosts but there's like five or 10 really big ones that people have been using we don't use we don't use it but um that because a lot of people don't realize like on YouTube you just upload to youtube.com and everyone can watch your video for podcast because it goes on Spotify podcast overcast and a 100 different players you need a centralized host so that's kind of what what it acts as for them no perfect anchor the technology uh uh uh so here's the technology side of investment megaphone which is advertising uh advertising analytics like chartable and stuff like I don't know if chartable is the right name but they basically built a stack they want to they want to they want to attract users to the platform to listen to podcast with these exclusive deals and then they wanted to build a platform where anybody can launch the podcast monetize them doing ads which is what they've basically done right so if you listen to a podcast on Spotify now add placements and um they want to do basically what we talked about what bow kind of Bow's background expertise is like it's like they want to do like insertable ads right is like what type of content do you do we're just going to insert for you into a podcast and they wanted to make it more like programmatic it's called so it's more it's more like 2024 versus right now most podcast ads are still like 2002 like you're emailing people here's a read send me money via Veno or's a word doc read it out and then you read it out send it for a review it's stupid it's more like a radio style um ad by and and so they the two big players are obviously Spotify and then there's another company from also I think Sweden called acast which is really big in Europe and they that now you'll hear a lot of podcasts which we actually use but you'll you can basically create an insertion point and say Here's an ad slot and it will just insert an ad for you wow yeah we're eligable to do it we just haven't done it but we we should try it out at some point just to see how it goes but but that's basically let me let me fast forward uh uh give you the so we talked about the overview and something we haven't mentioned is uh apple right so Apple invented the podcast format essentially and the word podcast is literally a combination of iPod and broadcast and uh Apple was the largest podcast player up until 2019 when Spotify made the decision to make this push into podcast but people wondering why did Apple just let this industry die in the vine well a the entire podcat industry is worth like10 billion Apple made $400 billion last year so even if Apple owned the entire podcast industry right if they got every ad Revenue dollar it would not like be a drop it wouldn't be a drop in the bucket for them so they didn't care from the monetization side which makes sense but the other thing though that they might have made a mistake on is a big part of podcast if you don't allow monetization the way that Spotify has built it right it's like if you have a popular podcast on Spotify you're adding all these things that bow talked about programm acally sell ads because Apple didn't do that it actually made them less of a place to that creators wanted to kind of like you know push people to and and make that the platform so Apple I mean yeah on the revenue side didn't matter but they're also you want people using the iPhone right yeah theyve they've lost a little bit of that sh well now they're third they're not third biggest number two YouTube is number one oh YouTube YouTube number one yeah technically yeah so uh so to to wrap up the Spotify thing they spent all this money and we didn't even mention some of the big L's they took first of all they had the fire butn people on gimlet uh I think the ringer took a bunch of layoffs I think the podcast Union general a layoff da osto was brought into run their podcast unit she was she was fired or resigned and she had tried to do stuff like bringing you know super famous people Barack Obama had a podcast didn't last very long he had one with Bruce Springsteen dude a Bruce Springsteen and Obama podcast didn't work that that speaks to like the type of money that was being thrown around yeah it's not just the names that's the thing yeah so like the famous one was Mega Marco and Prince Harry they're given $20 million record 10 episodes and balanced and Bill Simmons who runs Dem monetization Innovation for podcast although his contracts coming up at Spotify he he had really bad things to say about Prince har Megan Markle in terms of professionalism uh and then the last thing I'll add is so where are we now Spotify has really pulled back on their spending like they they're no longer just [ __ ] shooting money everywhere right like that's why Alex Cooper was allowed to be or that's why Alex Cooper left to go to Sirus Sirus is in a very different spot Dave pornoy actually talked about when Alex Cooper left Barcelo to go to spotifi he brought up a great point he like you have to see where a person is in their career and some people are just so big you get so big to a point where there's only like two or three places that can take you right so like he basically said if Barcelo had given her a $60 million deal which is what Spotify did in 2021 it would have had everything would have had to work out perfectly for them to basically Break Even yeah come close to even yeah to even come but for Spotify at that time they're just doing a gold rush they're doing a land grab they'll pay anything to do that right and it might not have worked out on the economic side like directly one for one what did she sell $60 Million worth of ads did she get $60 Million worth of subscribers maybe maybe not but it was just that point the strategy where it worked for her and then now serious here's the interesting part she knew she's going to get a bigger deal Howard Stern's contract is up next year so Sirus is like oh man every time Howard Stern's contract comes up they have a battle with Howard Stern on his contract because they're pay $100 million a year and he's worth it today he's 66 years old though but this is why Sirius also paid smart list we mentioned smart list the podcast big celebrity interview podcast I've listened to zero episodes but it's huge right and uh they paid 100 million for smart list it sounds like they want some negotiating leverage so the whole point I'm bringing all that up is Alice Cooper BAS basically her timing has been unbelievable yeah perfect she it just she's coming up for Renewal our contractors up every single time somebody needs to throw a bag and she's just waiting there yeah good for her man and I I also think on the Rogan side he he cashed in when he's top of the world already making lots of money but then you get that big lump sum in and I will say he was already massive obviously the biggest but then Spotify makes him the poster chart puts him on every podc app you know at a page promotes him must gained so many listeners on Spotify and then now he's gone back like honestly I used to listen to his pods so much and when he went on Spotify I basically I probably cut it by five times like dude I st listening you're right we talked about this none of the don't use Spotify for for podcast and it's so weird because it seems like oh an easy switch but when you're used to using a dedicated podcast app that's where I go to listen to stuff for an hour plus Spotify listen to music and to for me to keep switching it just doesn't work for me personally and now he's back everywhere I listen to his pod very regularly again it's it's kind of it's just in my feed it's like the five clicks we talked about this is the equivalent of five clicks on the telegram secret chat it's like now it's in my face I'm ready to to listen um I know we're running out of time here do you want to just wrap up one last thing on the Costco stuff or Oasis or I guess we talked about Oasis already it was kind of a yeah here I'll I'll wrap up super quickly uh with the Spotify music economics I'll give you an example what they're doing now uh so the contract with Rogan no longer uh exclusive but we mentioned they get to sell ads across his Network they might be able to make back the 250 mil right and then the uh I'll give an example of a new type of contract that's happenings with Trevor Noah comedian super popular comedian a former host of The Daily Show Trevor's contract was only 4 million guaranteed and Spotify got to recoup their investment the 4 million against his at which point once that 4 million is recouped it's 50/50 moving forward so that gives you an idea of how industry is kind of changing Spotify is changing his approach and then let's throw in the Costco In Japan Costco Japan I can just turbo through this fun fact fan so uh anybody uh well let's start with the do you see the visual blow of uh what happened in no I haven't no what's going on dude so it opened this weekend okanawa you had mentioned uh you're you're familiar with okanawa yeah so take a look at this madness Hawaii of Japan I don't know if people like that but they would like that but you know it's a beautiful place apparently why why it called the Hawaii yeah why is it called the Hawaii of Japan I think this the the climate and the island Vibe I don't I don't know much US military there's a big US military presence sorry like not wrong this line look at this yeah damn no way wow bro this is in Japan this okon Japan it was a 5H hour line yeah just against to the parking lot and there's another 3 hours so I'm going to Turbo through this but there's 30 uh so is real man people want that hot while we are recording this uh Tuesday Morning Costco just hit an all-time high so Costco and people that don't know is Costco up their membership fee next week so if you have a Costco membership in North America it went from $65 a year for the gold to no 60 to $65 on the gold and then the uh the business is uh 120 to 130 so yeah it's a $400 billion company now Costco is the third largest uh retail in the world after Amazon and Walmart now the crazy thing about Costco Japan I'm just going to Turbo through it they got there in 1999 interesting thing about Japan is a lot of foreign Brands don't do very well in Costco so the question is why is there this massive lineup outside of Costco in okanawa so Costco actually does a couple things that are very interesting and unique to Japan for the Japanese Market Japan does love foreign items uh but they like it in a certain way now a lot of places in Japan because of the nature of the city uh super dense populations in uh that rely on public transportation right like Tokyo uh train dude you're going to train to Costco and walk out like you need a minivan right no that's hilarious yeah but this is what's no but this what's crazy is like but Costco is so popular because not a lot of places sell in bulk the way that Costco does right in Japan so that's a unique value prop uh the other value prop is that Kirkland is a very popular brand in Costco I mean in in Japan it's obviously a very popular brand around the world so they brought that brand there um another thing that happens is the prices are crazi because in Japan a lot of Japan retail relies on middlemen there's a whole distribution Network Costco famously doesn't deal with middleman they like to go direct so they're able to get some crazy prices and deals that the Japanese love uh but uh yeah the the last note I'll say about Costco Japan is go on YouTube Google Costco Japan food it is insane they have oh they must have some bangers bro imagine the pre-made items that we you know what let's just finish it we'll do the we'll finish this episode uh Costco Japan trun T fan we'll finish this episode with a quick video that I found on YouTube and you can see it on my profile but here we are we'll just end it with this all right this selection at Costco their pre-made meals bro look at this look at their pre-made meals wow wait what is that um the pork katsu sandwiches jeez look at that have you have you been to Japan by the way look at that bro look at that that looks look at the selection beautiful so here here's the sushi kits look at the sushi kits these Sushi kits ngiri platters would cost hundred plus dollars in America you buy them in Japan Costco for 20 bucks oh man look at that that is so TR I was going to say if you I don't know if you've been to Japan but have you been to like 7-Eleven there it's quite famous that you you get like the most Banger you just go in there for D I've been a week there and I've eaten exclusively 7-Eleven yeah yeah it was so good it was so good but so this you know we'll talk about we'll talk about next week uh the largest grocery train in in Canada or maybe even the world is trying to buy Japan 7-Eleven but anyways we'll talk about what's that what's the name of the cushard he a retailer yeah but we got to wrap up though listen all right let's do it yeah and also when we talk about it I was just reading um about this the trade the connection between Trader Joe's and Ali in Europe iiz Trad Jo yeah but there was there was some history with Ali like the the fight between the two Ali brothers or something like that that's quite interesting but anyway all right let's let's wrap it there that was great thanks for being everyone we'll see you guys next week bye-bye [Music]