Why Your Defense Tech Bro Thinks Teens Should Get Pregnant

Corporate Gossip explores the most absurd corporate scandals, the juiciest Wall Street tea, and the not-so-hidden secrets of famous business people. You don't need to know anything about business to enjoy the corporate gossip podcast, but you might learn something along the way. Today's episode, Palmer Lucky and the Gundo Bros. America runs on drunken drone nuts. Welcome back to the corporate gossip podcast. I'm your host, CPA sworn, Becca Platsky. I'm here with my co-host. Out-of-office reply guy, Robbie Slovick. Have you guys gotten used to that yet? It feels good to me. This is their second time, right? Unless they're Patreon folks. Yeah, then this would be your third time. But after this, you should be used to. So far, the feedback has been really good, Robbie. How has it feel to, you know, get the official thumbs up from the community? Really nice to meet the community. Everyone in the Patreon, very protective over you. Very worried about the impact I was going to have on Becca. And they seem to be so far accepting me. It's been a very lovely welcome. It's been really nice, actually. Yeah, yeah. I think so, too. We just have the best people. Like, I don't know, corporate gossip heads. And actually, Robbie and I have been talking about something that I know has been a demand, not a demand request for many years, which is live shows. Yes. So that's something early that we've been thinking about. I don't want to make any promises. I don't want to do any, you know, over-promising and under-delivering. We'll come to you, to your house, to your town, and Becca and I will just do a podcast on your couch. At you. At you. Yes. Yeah, perfect. All right. So we'll promise that. And then, you know, we'll iterate on that. I'm so excited to do this episode. I know this is something that, you know, when we first talked about you coming on the show, you're like, I really want to talk about defense tech. And I want to talk about Palmer Lucky. And I'm, it was something on my list for a while. So I'm really excited to do it, too. You know this if you listen to the podcast and Robbie, I've talked to you about this, that I've been, like, in a place I've been enjoying lately a historical armed conflict sampler platter. Oh, yeah. So, like, obviously I've been making my slow but steady progress through Ken Burns' American Revolution. Yes. I just finished a book about World War II for one book club, started another book about the Yugoslav Wars in the 90s for another book club. Oh, those are great wars, Milosevic, Marotic, carotic, I know, all those guys. I don't know them. Yeah, I'm 20 pages in. Sorry. You're going to love them. They're so much fun. They killed so many people. All of that, by the way, paired really nicely with the PBS documentary about the Manhattan project as well. And, you know, of course, I'm always going back to Vietnam content because I would say, like, that's my comfort war. What a horrific term that I've just learned. I don't know how to describe it. Like, anytime I'm like, what should I read about? I'm like, I'm sure there's more shit on the Vietnam War I could learn. Well, I guess that's a generational thing because I always think of, like, my, you know, parents and they're always watching World War II. It's true. The History Channel just became like the Hitler all the time channel. And so as a younger generation, maybe Vietnam is. are. And, you know, some people would say, and this is obviously hotly debated, but I think, you know, some people would say that wars would be, I think, more effective and less destructive if the people in charge of them were stupider and hornier. No, I've never heard that from anyone. It's just that there's too much contingency planning. There's too much strategy. And these generals really just need to learn how to move fast and break things. Okay, yes. They need that Silicon Valley mentality. They need to disrupt war. It was Theodore Roosevelt who said diplomacy is for pussies. And the people who would agree with me live in El Segundo. Yes. And they call themselves the, I don't know if it's gondo or gundo bros. It would be gondo bros. You think Gundo? I think they like... Yeah, but I think they like the word gun. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. So anyway, it's a group of mostly white. young men, like a privileged, organized subgroup of the larger manosphere, headquartered in Southern California, defense town, I guess you would call it, because there's also a bunch of defense contractors that live there. And today we're going to talk about those, that group of guys. And we're also going to talk about Andrel, aka, I'm calling it a Power Rangers fantasy company. And finally, we'll touch down on the head gundo bro, Palmer Lucky. Yes. He's going to make up a good chunk of this episode. Why don't we start with talking about the gondo bros? Let's do it. Corporate Gossip number one, meet the gondow bros. I'm going to touch down on a couple of them individually so you can kind of see the larger picture. So the first one we're going to talk about is a 25-year-old named Augustus Dorico, and he is the founder of Rainmaker, the cloud seeding startup, who if you read their pitch decks, they say that they want to use Rainmaker to make Earth habitable, if you would ask this guy, would it? he want to do with Rainmaker is to, quote, establish the kingdom of God on Earth. Oh, well, great. And I definitely how rain is necessary for that. Right. And there's a huge, like, religious element in the Gundobros. Here he is in front of a weightlifting machine. And then in the back, there's a poster that says Jesus died for our zims. The nicotine pouches. So, but that's like, like, okay. I'm struggling with a coherent worldview here because that feels kind of sacrilegious for a guy who's trying to bring back a kingdom of God using clouds. Make earth habitable. Make earth habitable for us. But it is, isn't it? Isn't it so far? We're talking. I'm talking to you here in a room, so it feels like it's habitable. Well, you know what they always say you're looking for a solution looking for a problem? I think that that, well, and it is interesting, right? Because, like, think about the people who benefit from the Earth becoming uninhabitable. Why do I want to make it uninhabitable so I can make it habitable again? That's a really great. What, like, an amazing way to set goals is set goals that are already accomplished. Because then you can, if you're anything like me, like when I have a to-do list, if I did something that wasn't on the to-do list, I write it on the to-do list, just so I can check it off. Yeah. And make the Earth habitable, I'm going to, from now on, that's part of my to-do list. And, ta-da, oh, done. It's habitable. It is very trumping. in, right, solving problems that you start. The larger neighborhood, I sent you an article from Forbes, actually written by David Jeans, who's the author of the book that we read on Tony Shea. It's called The Tech Bros. Powering Silicon Valley's Military Fever Dream with energy drinks, God, and Nicotine. So the environment of El Segundo is really well described in this article. It's almost like a pastiche of the things that we've seen before. It's like there's an element of let's recreate the college. campus because I never want to grow up. It's lots of young kids sucking and fucking. Yep. We've seen that a lot. They fly back and forth from Vegas to hack the mainframe in a warehouse covered with American flags and pictures of Jesus and littered with Zen. And it's guys who take themselves so seriously. It's dangerous. Yeah, yeah. They believe there. I mean, they, at 19, 20, 20, 20, 20, I believe they're going to have a legacy and a footprint on all of human. for all time to come. There's, as I noted, a very pervasive religious element as well. Here's a quote from one of the guys that lives there. This is a pretty rebellious group of people. And if the zeitgeist is nihilistically secular, then the rebellious stance is to be a Christian. It's just like, it's not what rebellion means. You're contrarian, sure, I'll give you that. But like, you're not a rebelian. by joining the world's largest religion. But in their, it just shows you how small their world is. Yes. Here's a picture of Augustus Droyco. Maybe you can describe what you're seeing here. And is that his real name? Augustus D' D'Oroico? I might have actually think it's Doreko, but in my mind it's Doroico. Okay, Augustus. I see a man. Okay. There's a lot happening here. And I'm imagining this is taking place in the same park. lot. No, they're on the beach. Okay. This is a man in all white with some type of rosary around his neck, standing on a large fire as six guys with either beer or energy drinks. Just kind of stare at him. That's what they do for fun, I guess. There's another one right after that. Oh, thank God. Good. I thought. He's all left. Okay. So now it's the same group of guys and it's the same fire and it's the same beach, except now they're all. stripped down to just boxer briefs. They all wear boxer briefs except one of them who has some type of a patterned. Maybe that's leopard. Either way, now they're basically eight naked men in front of a fire in Los Angeles, California. And it's nighttime, by the way. So they're illuminated in this dark beach. It's one thing if you want to go light fires with your friends and get naked, by all means. Please, you know, that sounds like a good old fashion fun time. Fun time. They did or do whole shows about that. It's called Laguna Beach. But the thing about these guys is, you know, rainmaker, fine, whatever. If you want to try to make clouds. You want to trigger the rapture by making clouds for people can habitate the earth. Go ahead, buddy. I do have to pick, like, where my anger goes, right? Because it's like, okay, whatever, waste money. I don't care. But there's other companies that we're going to spend the rest of the time talking about that have active contracts with the U.S. military and active. deployments of their technology in Ukraine, in Taiwan, in Iran, working with our military, right? And so that, I think, requires a little bit of more serious discussion, though we are, of course, going to keep it light and fun because this shit is insane. So I want to talk about two companies. One is called Mock, and one is called Shield AI that also live in this neighborhood. Okay. Before we get into Andrel and Palmer Lucky. So there's Mock. This is a hydrogen weapon startup. This is one of the Forbes articles I sent you. Okay. In the title of this article is, investors gave a teenager $85 million to build hydrogen weapons. It is not going well. So this is a startup founded by a 19-year-old football player, Ethan Thornton, who drops out of MIT during the preseason of his. So I don't even think he went to classes at MIT to start his company because, quote, the mission of making sure the West wins on automated systems was just too important. Look, if the West is going to do anything, We better win on automated systems. He is now, of course, a Teal Fellow, and we have discussed the Teal Fellowship, which encourages, actually, Augustus is one as well. It encourages these guys to drop out of college and become founders of certain types of companies early. We actually call that VC grooming, because effectively what these guys are doing is creating, like, a small army, for lack of a better term, of really young, influential, future rich guys. who believe exactly what they believe. And the easiest way to do that, in my opinion, is take them out of school in their, like, prime understanding the world years. Mold them. Mold them. Yeah. Yeah, turn them into what you need them to be. And, yeah, that's pretty smart. Yeah. And they got $85 million, and they're definitely spending it. Here's an ad that the company posted on X. And I want you to note the music that you're hearing in the background. What is that a commercial for? Why don't you describe what you saw in that commercial? It's so easy to describe what I saw. What I saw was a Bud Light commercial from the late 90s, basically, you know? It's just dudes having, young dudes having fun with each other. It was very, it was very church youth group coded. You know, it was very like, I know those, I grew up in Florida. Like, I know those church youth groups. So it's very like, before we, before we start throwing the football launching missiles, I just want to, let's just all bow our heads for a minute. Jesus, watch over. us today as we try to form weapons that will explode families around the world and make sure the football game goes good. Love you by, thank you. You know, it's like, amen. It was. Yeah, it's crazy because it is like wholesome, all-American, like, it almost like is this, this is almost one of those propaganda AI videos where it's like a bunch of Aryan white men working hard. but they're building autonomous hydrogen weapons. Yes. And then playing football on the beat. And American flags, the iconography was everywhere. They were really leaning into like, we are really leaning into like, we are America. Yeah. The video shows one scene where everybody seems to be competent and working together. But then, of course, reporters go in, talk to employees, and here's what they find. There are situations and descriptions of either. Nathan Thornton, again, 20 at this time, kind of fucking around with incredibly dangerous hydrogen weapons. At one point, he holds down a drone with his hand while it's at full throttle, basically making it a projectile that if he were to move, it could hit somebody. Another time, he reaches into a blast chamber surrounding a hydrogen power gun and the gas unexpectedly ignited, hydrogen, remember, is notoriously flammable. It blows up the machinery and sends a spray of strapped. across the room. Thornton is fine. And of course he is. Of course he is. It's always this fucking asshole is just, like, cannot get hurt. It really is like, you do start to believe why they believe that God is, like, on their side. But another guy in the room had to go to the hospital because he had hundreds of pieces of metal in his body. But I guarantee you, Thornton doesn't give a shit about that. He's like, God was watching out for me. Sorry, Mike, but for me, yeah. It's true. Yeah, move fast and break things. Sorry for your legs that's not broken. You're the thing we broke, yeah. Here's the thing, though, the money is pouring in. This woman, this, she's the executive director of Silicon Valley Defense Group. Here's a quote, I've been advising companies and venture firms to just jump on the defense train because we don't know how long this will last. But it's just really favorable to do defense tech right now. So basically, like, why doesn't everyone just try it a little bit? Can I, I mean, it's so funny to just, like, just jump on the train? We don't know. We don't know how long A literal insane person is going to be running the country. So now's your chance. There's never been a bigger free-for-all for us to get taxpayer money than there is right now. So let's do it until someone not, or let's say, less corrupt comes into power. Yeah, that's exactly right. We have an overgrown child as the, you know, Secretary of Defense, not even Secretary of Defense, by the way, Secretary of War, which I actually think it's an important distinction that we no longer have a Department of Defense. We have a Department of War. So all of this, just call it what it is. It's not defense tech. It's war tech. It's offense tech. None of this is, it's not defensive to make a long-distance projectile that can travel, you know, unless you want to, like, pretend, determine is the thing, but it's not the thing. Sure. It's funny to hear the way that the people in this ecosystem who are receiving this money, the CEOs of these very young, most under three years old, and they're very young as well, most under 25, defense tech companies talk about this environment. This is Brandon saying. is the founder of a company called Shield AI. He tries to articulate the state of the industry right now. What's going to be the next one? AI and autonomy. I asked the other day what the economic impact of the internet was on the global GDP on a cumulative basis from 2000, 2025, estimated $134 trillion economic impact. As chat GPT, what is AI and autonomy, the economic impact going to be on the world from 2025 to 2050? It estimated $4 trillion. and a half quadrillion dollars almost 40 times bigger than the internet i mean it's like i asked i asked i asked a i i said it's good like i asked a i if it was a smart investment and a i said yes it's going to make me four quadrillion dollars like you sound like a child there the cognitive dissonance to be like i asked the literal thing i was talking about if it was good and it said yes i am good like by the way quadrillion i honestly don't know where that like in the hierarchy that sits because it was what's billion trillion right oh there's no zillion b is buy uh-huh t is tri so three quad got it four quadrillion so quadrillion so quadrillion is so a thousand trillions is one quadrillion yes okay so this guy branded saying has this company called shield AI their goal is to create a basically a autonomous drone that takes off vertically so you don't need to run way and it can be piloted through war zones without gps or signaling and the company motto is do what honor dictates nothing jargon means absolutely nothing that said there are reports of employees when working on this product flagged concerns safety concerns um security concerns and when they raised these issues they were either fired or they just resigned because their concerns weren't being taken seriously eventually one of these drones that people had concerns about chopped up a u.s service members fingers three of them right three fingers right off it's just gone sheared right off this is brandon sang's defense of that okay quote it is the opposite of our mission if somebody gets hurt it's not actually it's your literal mission that someone gets hurt it's just not supposed to be the guy on your side then he says today the drone retains a perfect record of no injuries when following training procedures what a fun way to throw somebody under the bus like that guy who is running it was an idiot so that doesn't count as part of the statistics so as of me talking right now the statistics say the record is perfect and that is what honor would dictate he says that the drones now have warning stickers near the fan ducks so you don't stick your fingers in there and get them chopped right off guy with two fingers on his right hand being like i should have checked the sticker why didn't i look at the sticker that was on the drone and then And the employees have to wear protective suits now. Okay. Oven mitts. But here's the quote from this interview that I listened to with him that I want us to keep in mind, which is the number one thing he thinks about. I'm thinking in my head, what is it? Safety. Is it security? Is it defense? Is how do we scale this? Yeah. How do we scale that? Think about that. How do we get more. drones out there? Well, it's like, yes, the business is, your business is war. Mm-hmm. So you know how to scale it. Like, this isn't a mystery. There's only one way to scale it. More war. That's your whole business model. I genuine, I wrote that exactly down. Like, I think driving a lot of the decision making is, what the fuck am I going to do with all these drones? Yeah. If there's no war. I got to fucking depreciate them on my balance sheet. I ain't doing. Not doing that? I'm not doing that. We got to use these things. Yeah. Okay. So we met a few of the characters in El Segundo, Augustus, Ethan, Brandon. You get the vibes now, tons of money, very little oversight. But I want to now introduce you to Palmer Lucky, who lives at the big house at the end of the block. If we can close our eyes and imagine ourselves there. At the end of the block, it's got a huge 6,500 gallon fish tank, which is 30,000 liters for my non-American. shy of a quadrillion by quite a lot, but I know what a quadrillion is, and I think that's important to know. And you knew that the whole time. Never not knowing what a quadrillion. Well, so the thing is, billion, by, trillion, tri-quad, you understand. I don't want to come off as condescending, but that's just a lot of people don't know what quadrillion is. I'm not one of them. I know. And that's what it is. By the way, in this fish tank, 30,000 liters, a pet shark named Bonk was killed by a lobster. Wait, how? I don't know. There was no details, but... Dron. Autonomous drone, probably. The lobster was piloting a drone. Lobster was unnamed, but the shark is named Bonk. And the owner of this fish tank and this house is the spiritual leader of the Gundobros, a man named Palmer Lucky. What a title to have earned, huh? Corporacosive number two is, let's meet the flip-flop wearing, go-tee-having, erotic, erotic anime-figure. collecting brother-in-law of accused sex trafficker Matt Gates, 33-year-old founder of Andrew Palmer Lucky. Welcome to the show, everybody. That's like the worst, you just gave the worst, like, the dating game intro that anyone could hope for. Listen, the Bachelorette does not have a very good track record right now. I actually think Palmer Lucky might be in the mix at this point. He could be the next bachelor. So. The sole patcheler. Sorry, everybody. Robbie, I, you really really. wanted to talk about Palmer Lucky. What drew you to him as a character? Well, he's got a lot going for him as a character. You know, it's the name right off the bat, Palmer Lucky. It's the ridiculous the mullet and the Soul Patch. It's the Hawaiian shirts. It's the cargo shorts. It's like I'm always, I'm always interested by people who try so hard to develop a person. They're like lacking in a personality, so they're like accessories is my personality, you know? Palmer Lucky is just like, you know, he's that maxing, whatever that is. You forgot what I think is the most striking part about his physical manifestation of his personality, which is that he's always either barefoot or in flip-flops. Yeah, I noticed that in some of the, like, videos I was watching that he's just there. And he kind of like likes to like, just have his little grippers out. Yeah, he just loves to have his little piggy's in. So Palmer Lucky is the 33-year-old founder of Andrel. He started the company when he was 24 and it's now worth $60 billion. It is an autonomous weapons developer and defense contractor. And by the way, autonomous weapons are just drones. So there's nobody actually flying the thing. Or if they are flying it, they're in some like remote place. Yeah, there's a very like, I would say like defining autonomous is a little bit tough in this context because also like a truly autonomous drone could be like, I don't, maybe we're the bad guy. You know, like, what does autonomous mean? It's just like, go, do missions. And it's like, if someone's controlling it, it's not autonomous. Yeah, you know. And if it's, if it's true AI, it's not necessarily going to follow the orders the way you want it to. This company, Andrewl has allegedly deployed weapons in Ukraine, Taiwan, Australia. I say allegedly, just because you do genuinely have no, I don't know whether to trust these guys a lot of the time. And he just told Axios last week that they're working with troops on the ground in Iran right now. Okay, so what is Palmer's philosophy of war? Here's a quote, societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. Quote, you need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom. Hell yeah, brother. I mean, it's just like, first of all, you just want, like you honestly just want to slap him in the face and just watch him with. from the slightest, like, feel of what violence actually feels like to a person. Right. When you're saying that, like, disconnected, like, you need sickos like me who will blow people up in pursuit of freedom. What does freedom mean to you in that case as well? It's, it's like bad guys deserve to die, and I'm fine to kill them. And I am the arbiter of who is a bad guy and who is not a bad guy. And also, I play call of duty my whole life, and this is what war is to me. It's a fun jaunt with friends. Yeah. You know, with no consequences. You know, we talked about the Department of Defense being rebranded the Department of War. According to this one blogger who says that she was at the meeting, it was Palmer Lucky's idea to make that re-rebrand. Oh, really? Yes. She says that the, he posted on acts and then apparently he was meeting with Pete Heggseth before Trump's second inauguration. That's just so lovely that our defense contractors are. setting our government policy directly. Fantastic. That's good. Hey, guys, could you change the name of this thing? Because we think it would be cool. And it's like, sure thing, guy and flip-flops with a soul pass. Great. We'll call it whatever you want. His explanation was that the Department of War had a much better track record than the Department of Defense. Basically, once we switched our name to the Department of Defense, we had Vietnam War. World War II was over. The one good thing we've kind of ever done, arguably, until we dropped to nuclear. weapons without any real just cause. But whatever. That's an aside. The point is, yeah, we have a war with clear good guys and bad guys for once, really. And then everything since then has been, you know, American imperialism unfettered. And this is what he's wanting to, you're propping that up. So it's crazy to be like, you know, the issue is not the 75 years of imperialist policies and meddling. It's the name. Right. It's a brand, which is such like. A branding exercise. entrepreneur like yes brain just absolutely no humanity just like we need to yeah we need to change brand awareness why don't you be like department of you don't mess with Texas like what do you mean yeah it's fucking crazy the Navy how about boat dudes you know boat guys Marines what does that mean how about strong bros okay so who the fuck is this guy How did he, how did we get here? Palmer Lucky got rich when he was 22 years old because Mark Zuckerberg, for some genuinely unfathomable reason, well, it's fathomable. Mark Zucker is a fucking moron, bought his, the VR headset company, Oculus Rift that Palmer Lucky had created when he was 19. Which is like, this isn't, we can't all just like shit on the guy. Like, that's a very impressive thing to have built at 19. And he did it with a Kickstarter campaign. There have been lawsuits that he lifted the idea from somewhere else. He's won the law. I don't know. Yeah. Yes and no. Like a lot of people have had the idea for like, uh, augmented reality, virtual reality. He brought something to life in an affordable way. Like, he did a thing. Yeah. Zuckerberg bought the company for $3 billion, which was actually a very small portion of the 80 billion dollars that Zuck spent building the larger Metaverse, which of course, as we know, everybody uses. It's used for medicine. It's used for architecture. It changed the world. It's used for cloud seeding. And I believe it's doing a quadrillion in revenue. Palmer Lucky becomes a billionaire at 22 years old. And with all that money, this was in one of the interviews I sent you on X. The three things he was trying to decide to do. I love this so much. Tell us about, he was thinking, he was between three things. Maybe you can tell us, do you remember what they were? I remember the, well, one of them was like defense tech stuff, right, right? So that was like, the one is, and this, this, okay, the other two, first, it's just like, it's private prisons and a food thing, but, so he was saying, kind of admirably that, like, private prisons is a failed system. Sure. There needs to be, like, a better thing. What about if I make nonprofit prisons that I only get paid if there isn't recidivism, I only get paid if the person says that. And you're like, oh, this is kind of a cool idea. And then he was like, but then I looked into it and there were some roadblocks. So I thought, no, forget that. You know how long it is, just how long it takes to start your own prison. Like in California, it's like nine years. There's so much paperwork. And as much as I thought this was going to be a very interesting thing to do, and I would like to do it someday on some time scale, the legal issues with doing this state by state are very, very tough. A lot of these prisons are also, they do these multi-decade long contracts. And so it's like, oh, I want to do this in California. Well, I have to wait at least seven years for the next opening. And then it's like four more years until the next one. It's like, okay, so this is like a 30 year bet before I can do anything. No, no thing. So he's like, I had this really noble thought, and then I found out would take effort. So I was like, fuck that. So then I had another thought, and this is great. I love this. The food thing, which was like, look, you just think everyone is such a useless piece of trash where it's like, the only way anyone's ever going to be able to lose weight is if they can eat whatever they want all the time with no consequences or calories. I think the only way to solve obesity in America is to allow anybody to eat as much as they want of anything with no self-control. or changes to their physical activity whatsoever. It has to be the holy grail. So that's why, and then this is the part that's really going to shock you. This is the part that, man, so that's why we need more food made from petroleum. People, because the thing about it is you can really manipulate the flavors and it's zero calories. So if people eat the famously cheap gasoline, then they won't gain weight. So if you could make synthetic foods out of petroleum derivatives, you could make. to make foods that have largely the same characteristics as real foods, but have zero calories because your body's cannot processed. Now, it turns out, I looked into that too, and the government said it was illegal to try to make people eat gasoline for some reason, which was what was at gundo parties. We do that all the time. Me and the boys love to sit back with a can of 87 unleaded. I also like the element where he's like, like, that was a thing. part of Willy Wonka. Yeah, yeah. Just like, let's make the everlasting gobstoffer. 100%. First you start with pumpkin pie. Now it's turkey dinner. Yeah. Yes, and he's, while he's saying this, he's all barefoot, by the way, in cargo short. Oh, yeah. So he went with the drones. After those, after throwing away those other two ideas. Then he was like, okay, I guess the only, yeah, the one that makes sense to me is, you know, he feels this like, I don't know if you would call it, like Freudian phallic pull towards fucking shit up with. big guns. Mm-hmm. I think it is worth noting that, like, the first thing he did was video games, right? That Oculus Rift was about immersing yourself and pretend a consequence-free war zones and playing these things. So it's like, of course, his impulse is like, oh, now I can actually, now I can do consequence-free war, but on real people. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, here's his explanation of why he did this, other than the other two were hard and impossible. He says, I pointed out to people that every defense company that had been founded by a billionaire was a success. Okay, let's think the next thing. Why do you think that was? He said, I hate that we live in a country where that's the case, but I realized that I had a unique responsibility as one of the very few people who was willing to work on national security and was blessed with the resources to actually make a real go at it. Oh, good for you. And I love that he's doing that despite the fact of, I hate to do it, Guys, I really, I hate to do it, but I have to make $80 billion by selling death instruments. And you know me, guys, you know me, it's Palmer here. What do I love? Hawaiian shirts, eating gasoline, I'm partying with my friends. I don't want to be selling weapons, but it's like, I unfortunately, I was blessed with the resources. It's like some people can sing. Some people can make long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles that are autonomous. He actually believes. he was predestined to do this work. Okay, this is a direct quote from an interview he did with Tablet Magazine. Quote, I am quite concerned that I'm doing what I was programmed to do when I was eight years old. If you like Yu-Gi-O and the Power Rangers, can you really do anything except build virtual reality and tools of violence to enact your aims while feeling superior? I can actually answer that in one word, yes. Yeah, if you like Yu-Gi-Gi-O and Power Rangers, you can do stuff than building, what was it, something, committing acts of violence and virtual reality. Build virtual reality and tools of violence to enact your aims while feeling superior. I fucking love Power Rangers. And how often do you commit acts of violence to feel superior? I feel superior a lot, but I actually don't need to commit acts of violence to do it. So maybe that's why if you don't feel superior. Maybe you didn't watch the same episode. I guess not. So, okay, Paul Merlucky said, I have no choice. I was predestined to do this. Because of you. God's kingdom, whatever. I founded Andrel. Now, by the way, can I also, I'm sorry, one more thing. Yeah, I know this is annoying. But he, he's, like, fixated on the West and the Western superiority and the importance of the Western lifestyle. And then both of those things are Japanese TV shows. Power Rangers, fully Japanese. Did you know, like, when you watch Power Rangers, all the fight scenes and everything when they're in costume is just from the original Japanese show. They only re-filmed the scenes where they're maskless. I didn't know that. That's how they did it for so cheap. Oh. They're like, this show already exists. Yeah, yeah. And then Yu-Gi-o, also Japanese. So just like, I'm doing what has to be done for the West because I was programmed that way by Japan when I was eight. It's for the record, Palmer. So, okay, he has to found Andrel. And why did he name it that, by the way? Do you know? Oh, I do know. I do know. I do know. I know thanks to you sending me a link saying, watch this. But I do know. But, yeah, these fucking dorks. Andril is, it is the name of the sword that Aragorn has like reformed in Lord of the Rings and of course he is an acolyte Palmer Lucky of Peter Thiel who Palantir is the like orb of knowing from Lord of the Rings right so these guys are just like we're Lord of the Rings bros that's what we're into and but one of the things it does say in Lord of the Rings which like you got to figure it didn't mean this in the book but they're doing a lot with it was like and this is like the sword of the West the flame the flame of the West. And you're like of the West is doing a lot in their mythology here. I'm surprised they didn't like Wicked more because it's like you know what I mean? That's right. These drones are defying gravity. Do you understand? So okay the flame of the West and drill autonomous systems for war, drones, submarines or devices that can do subterranean warfare whatever the fuck that means. There's also a big China element in every interview and we have seen on this podcast we've played a lot of congressional testimony by Alexander Wang for example or other AI guys who basically just say you can't regulate me you have to let me do what I want USA government because if you don't China period. Yeah there's so much of these guys also like they weirdly I mean obviously is their job like to sell this trash but they are fantasizing about the day China invades Taiwan. they cannot wait for it to happen And they are rock hard waiting for China to invade Taiwan, which who knows if it will or won't happen, but they're like, and then the whole world flips if we let that happen. Then it becomes China's world. It's on the wall at, and this is, we saw this in Facebook, where Zuckerberg had a sign on the wall that said Cartha Delonga Est, which is Carthage must be destroyed. It's a lot of like war stuff. And I think this is. is frankly, just the next iteration of actual war. And they have on the Andrel headquarters, it says Taiwan 27, which is we need to be ready because China is going to invade Taiwan in 27 and when, in 2020, and when they do, we better be fucking ready. And if they don't, well, then what the fuck are we going to do with all these drones? And it's like, it's so self-fulfilling as well because it's like, you're the Trump guys. You're all the guys who, who wanted Trump to win. And now he's winning. And now you're saying, During his presidency, the strongman president is when China's going to act because we're so weak. It better because if another president probably won't let him use all their stuff. Yeah, they won't let us use our toys. We've made these toys, you know. And also, I'm sorry, one more thing, is that, you know, these guys, and we kind of touched on it a bit with like Larry Ellison and his samurai swords last week where it's like, these guys are all like the boardroom is the modern battlefield. And we are warriors. Like, there's actually modern battlefields. There's people battling on them. right now using your tech. There's people dying. There's not, drop this war stuff. This isn't like, we haven't come so far that this isn't reality for a lot of people in the world. He said the least brave thing you can do is not start your own company. The least brave thing you can do is not start your own company. Yeah. Everyone should, everyone should be a founder like me. And if you're not that, you're not a founder, you're not brave. You're a coward. Oh, you battle cancer. Okay. Okay, coward. Have you led your first VC round? Oh, you're a firefighter for 30 years? Coward. Start a company. In the pitch deck for Andrew, Lucky says that his company will save Western civilization by saving taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars as we make tens of billion dollars a year. Oh, what a sweet deal for everyone. Win, win, win. And like, again, Western civilization, what are you saying with that? What are you really saying? Like, you know. I want to make a good deal. white guy's rich. Uh-huh. I think that's what it comes down to. And save taxpayers' money? Like, what are you talking about? Quote, unlike traditional contractors, and like, there's kind of a rivalry between these new upstarts and then then Lockheed and Raytheon. The prime contractors, right? So they always like to pit each other against each other. Unlike traditional contractors, we build, test, and deploy our products in months, not years. That's why they talk people's hands off. They've signed a billion dollars in. contracts with the U.S. government. And in some cases, they are beating those traditional prime contractors for work, like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. I mean, I would say it's less of a situation where they're beating them and more of a situation where the Pentagon has enough money for both. Yeah. I mean, they're in a situation now where everybody gets, what that woman said, there's never been more money in defense contracting. Right. Well, also, part of this is like, you know, Silicon Valley accounting type stuff as well, where it's like the Raytheon, and the Northropes, they work on this, like, kind of cost plus thing where it's, like, everything they do is funded by all their research, all their R&D. And I think, like, Palmer Lucky and these guys are like, we'll fund that ourselves. Right. And then, like, we're mostly concerned with how much, like, going public and we're mostly concerned with our stock price. Sure. Let us fund this shit so we can, like, do some accounting voodoo, and Raytheon and those guys are just, like, just keep giving us millions and millions and millions of dollars, and we'll just do it the old-fashioned way. Well, and I just do it. I don't want to, I'm not here to say that, like, Raytheon, Lockheed are good. Oh, no, no, no. And these guys are bad. All are bad. And, like, you'll even see, like, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, like, coming out and being, like, there's a lot of waste. There's a lot of fraud. Pentagon hasn't passed an audit now for many years. And to check my biases, I did, I called a friend of mine who's been in the military for over 15 years, but he does a lot of procurement, and he's like, there is a lot of excitement, a around cheaper, faster, better products for the military. Like, there is excitement around this stuff because our systems and stuff are so old, which I understand. So, like, I don't want to be so biased as if to say, like, no, you've got to use Lockheed stuff. Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, cheaper, faster, better, versus, like, the primes, which are, they are, they're solely government contractors to the point. So it's like their whole thing is extracting government money. And I think this new thing is like, let's extract some government money, but really juice stock price and like, yeah, VCs. So it's like, we're going to, we have a different way of scamming, basically. So they're both scamming to some direction. But of course, Lockheed and Raytheon and these guys take forever because the law, their research is funded at a profit the entire time. Right. This was a headline that I feel like did not get enough exposure. This is from February 21st, 2026. And I'm curious if you saw this. But this just kind of illustrates the state of the budget at the Pentagon. Yeah, yeah. I did. I actually did see that. Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on the military. And this was before or right as we invaded or did the attack on Iran. Yeah. And now they're asking, now they're actually saying we need another $200 billion. But a week before that, you were struggling to figure out what to do with this extra $500. Now you need another $2 million situation. Like, we got to spend it. Remember when we were convinced everyone that renting desks was disrupting real estate or when there are no sold investors on blood tests that literally didn't work. Corporate disasters aren't always that dramatic. Sometimes it's quieter, like spending six figures on a CRM that your sales team actively avoids. Or discovering your marketing, sales, and business systems live in completely separate universes and no one can tell you which one's actually working. Orange Marketing sponsors corporate gossip because we both believe the same thing. Corporate screw-ups are the best teacher you'll ever have. Orange Marketing is a certified women-owned HubSpotie. diamond partner that fixes broken revenue operations. They've spent eight years cleaning up the duct tape tech stacks of B2B companies who finally got tired of their systems making zero sense. They turned scattered sales, marketing, and service operations into coordinated systems that actually work. We've seen this movie hundreds of times. We know how it ends. For corporate gossip listeners, Orange Marketing is offering a one-hour consultation and 10% off services. No call for quote garbage. Prices are posted right on their site. Go to orangemarketing.com slash podcast or click the link in our show notes. Okay, so let's let's get into some of Palmer Lucky's products. Yes. The first one I want to talk about is one that he worked on with his former boss, Mark Zuckerberg, a virtual reality headset. Let's let him explain it. This is from the Joe Rogan experience. This is a new product. It's called Eagle Eye. So I've got the helmet on here. And then what I have is this pair of augmented reality glasses and I put them on these sink with the helmet and with these sensors. This is a system that allows everybody to basically be operating. This one one combined hive mind where you can all share a view of the world. And by the way, this view that I have, it's shared now with all of the robots as well. So all the anything I see, like let's see I see someone inside of a building. Every drone and every person now sees that person where he is. There's a view that it's coming up here where a guy behind that container over there. And what's going to happen is when he walks behind that container, I'm able to continue to see where he is and what he's doing. But you're saying stuff like, look, if you wear these glasses in this helmet, then every one operates as a hive mind. It's like, no, they don't. They're just too much information for a human brain to, we can't operate as a hive mind. What you have is a lot of footage. But it connects to the robots. The robots. Yes. And it's like, well, we'll just use them then. When Palmer was talking to reporters about this product, he said, I don't want to sound arrogant, but I've got this shit figured out. And would you believe that he did not, in fact, have this shit figured out? Oh, no. I know. We were all surprised. Wall Street Journal in late 2025 revealed that the Navy said that Andrel representatives had misguided the military. In tests that the neighbor performed with Andrel, they reported, quote, continuous operational, continuous operational. security violations and safety violations. If the software configuration wasn't immediately corrected and vetted, there would be extreme risk to force and potential loss of life. I think this is so, like, this part is, this is maybe the most important part of this whole thing, which is like we have these, these people screaming rah-rah, USA, country first, God first. This is, nothing is more important to me than, you know, Western values in the American life. And it's like, the second, if you could get away. with defrauding the U.S. military and putting service members in danger because it enriched your stock price, you would do it without thinking twice. You tried to do it. You are doing it. That's what you're doing. And like, let's judge a person based on their actions. Yeah, that's right. What they value. And what they value is, yeah, stock price over everything, including putting service members at real risk. Risk. Yeah, it's disgusting. Andrew's products have started forest fires in Oregon. They've sent drones to Ukraine. and that ended up being complete lemons. They got a contract with the Air Force to supply an autonomous jet. They told the Air Force it would be ready by summer 2025. But during a test flight in the spring, the engine, like, sucked up a nail and broke. And Andrewl kept that information from the Air Force and then lied to reporters about it when they asked. Again, yeah, profit over the lives of service members. This is their defense, okay, to the reporting from the Wall Street Journal. They say, we recognize that our highly iterative model of disruptive technology development, moving fast, testing constantly, failing often, refining our work, and doing it all over again, can make the job of our critics easier, the company said in a statement. That is a risk we accept. We do fail a lot. It's like, that's a risk you accept, but sometimes service members don't have a choice if they're using your stuff or not. Yeah. And it's very, it's very. like Silicon Valley coded and it's very like, I kind of hate to go down this road because it's just like so so much of it, but it's also very like upper middle class white guys situation where you can be like, we fail all the time, but it's not a big deal. Like a lot of people really don't have the luxury to be like, and we fail all the time because you don't get a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth chance. It's a really good point. He says we're not going to change and we're not going to slow down. One other product that I wanted to point out that he was working on in 2022 was a VR headset where you would, like, play a war game. And if you lost, you wouldn't just, like, respond. The helmet would actually explode and you would die. Oh, he should play. Please make that. I guess he's thinking that, like, one day we can do, like, work from home wars. We already do. I've read this, like, horrifying article about drone operators who, They fly missions in, like, Iraq where they drop bombs and stuff, and then they go pick up their kid from middle school because they do it remotely. They, like, they're in the U.S. at an Air Force base. They fly a mission overseas, and then it's like they got to transition into, like, driving in traffic to pick up their kid. It's a horrifying dystopia. Could you become, like, a remote prisoner of war? You got to clock in, you got to put your thing on. It's just cheaper for us this way. Don't take the mask. Don't take the mask off. Don't do. Okay, nobody else take the mask off. I'm serious this time, guys. You are prisoners of war. Oh, your husband's a prisoner of war. Yeah, he's a, but then he actually just becomes an excuse for men. But, honey, I can't, I can't do, I can't clean the garage right now. I'm a prisoner of war. You clean the garage. Okay. You know, you were talking about failure, and he can fail. Again and again, again. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if he fails. He will still get contracts, like you noted. He and his wife, who he met in high school and debate club, by the way, gave more than $3 million to Republican candidates just in 2020, plus $1.7 million for Trump. Trump was at his house at $100,000 a plate fundraiser in Newport Beach. He and his family have long been conservative activist. In that interview with Joe Rogan, he called himself one of Trump's true OGs. When Lucky was 15, apparently, he wrote Trump a letter asking him to run for president. Quote, I loved his extremist rhetoric going back to 2009. What a cool guy. What a cool guy. But look, what they share in common is one very specific thing that would bond you, which is money is more important to me than the lives of American service members. I see that in you. You see that in me. Let's form a friendship. But let's also manipulate our way. into, right into the world where we get to make decisions for those American service members whose lives mean less than nothing to us if money is involved. Yeah. Cool group of guys. All right. Let's move to the last section, which is just kind of like, we do this a lot where I have kind of a loose grouping of random shit that I found about this guy. That's just frankly funny. Palmer Lucky stuff. Palmer Lucky stuff. Yes, let's do it. And, yeah, let's just kind of rattle through a couple other facts, which I think gives you a better picture of who this guy is. So corporate gossip number three is Palmer Lucky was predestined to be a fucking ghoul. So famously... Don't you dare make this about Yu-Gi-O. This is not Yu-Gi-O's fault. The Power Rangers had nothing to do with this. Famously, I mean, you know this. It's really good for a defense contractor to be an insane person with a chip on their shoulder. If you want another example of... this, you can go back to our Amway episode where we talk about Eric Prince, who's the CEO of Blackwater. Palmer Lucky definitely fits that description. I noted his family's conservative activism. That's actually one of the reasons he got fired from Meta. He funded some Hillary Clinton billboards, which now honestly seem kind of like cute. Yeah. It's also like the Meadow was betting that she was going to win probably. Sure. She lost and he was like, yeah. Well, it's funny because they found out that he was funding these anti-Hillary Clinton billboards, and that was just so against the seemingly progressive stance of Facebook while they were actively helping Trump and the Russian government interfere with the election in 2016. This is like the Cambridge Analytica stuff. Exactly. Exactly. So his firing to me is very Cheryl Sandberg coded. It's got her fingers all over it. At the time, he was ostracized, right? Because at that point, it wasn't cool to be pro-America, to be political. incorrectly incorrect to use the R word on X. But now, obviously, things have changed. And so now he's on a self-described, I told you so, Tor. Here is a clip. Once you've had a measure of success, at least for me, you get addicted to it and you want to win. Also, like I said, I was fired for my last job. So I have a chip on my shoulder, and I'm bitter and angry about it. And so I have to prove to everyone that I'm better. And if I were to take a job where I would just go do something that was fun, but it wasn't particularly successful, then everyone would think that I'm a loser. And I don't want people to think I'm a loser. So for better or for worse, I was kind of forced in my next move. I said, okay, I have to do something that proves that they shouldn't have fired me, that I am smart, and that I'm not a one-hit wonder. Okay. So first of all, just being barefoot in cargo shorts, Hawaiian shirt, soul patch for a man with no soul, no less, a mullet, and like what looks like transition lens aviators and being like, it's very important that people know that I'm not a loser. And it's like, buddy, I got news for you. Everything else about you is projecting loser so hard right now. And then to even be like, I got to win, I got to be number one big boy, I'm world's number one. Like, it's loser energy through and through. That's interesting because here's a quote from another defense tech guy who lives in this world. Quote, Palmer is a guy who everybody in the defense tech ecosystem looks up to. He's inspired a lot of founders to be unapologetically themselves and trying to, instead of trying to fit into Silicon Valley's idea of a tech founder, he says, I'm very pro-American, and I'm proud of that. I lift weights. I can definitely be way more myself after seeing that Palmer can be himself. For too long, for too long, Americans have been villainizing, lifting weights. And finally, to Palmer Lucky. Take a little picture. Take a look at this guy, by the way. He's not going to be a weightlifting guru, you might think, has normalized lifting weights for me and my bros. I think it's so appropriate that we did this episode a week after Mark Andreessen proudly said, I never self-introspect at all. And I think doing so is new. Yeah. And also lame. Clearly. Clearly, you think that. Yes. Obviously, all these guys think that. And that pro-America thing, I don't know if you, like, touch this, but, like, did you come across the thing where he was talking about, you know, bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., which, like, that part, I'm with you on that. Let's do that. Even though it's like, we're kind of, it's been so long, we're not good at it again. Like, we have to, like, get good. That's why nails are getting sucked into the engines and these things. Because, like, over in other countries, they're doing way more manufacturing than us. He says that he wants, the America's birth rate is low. And he says that one of the ways to solve that is for more teens to get pregnant. Wait, he said. He wants more teen pregnancy. More teen pregnancy. See, this is something people don't advocate for that much. That's an interesting one. But I guess now it makes sense who his sister is married to. Right. So you want to touch on that really quickly? I mean, I don't know more than the fact that his sister is married to, like, notorious piece of garbage scumbag, former congressman, current plastic surgery guinea pig, Matt Gates, who is, he's been caught up in all types of, like, underage sex scandals. Palmer's sister, her name is Ginger Lucky, she was introduced to former Florida Congressman, alleged child sex doer. I'm not sure it's alleged. I think some of it's like, yeah, I guess we'll look into it. Yeah. He's a scumbag. He, she was. Ginger was introduced to Matt via Kimberly Guilfoyle at her 51st birthday party. This is insane. Ginger said she was wearing a blackless, backless white dress. And she said when she met Gates, he was one of the few male present at the party who didn't touch her lower back. What a beautiful love story. Isn't that nice? Which, by the way, probably just either an oversight on his part. She was too old for him. I don't know what it was. But I'm sure he would have had the opportunity. Gates proposed to Ginger Lucky at Mar-a-Lago, and this is very Jeff-skilling-flavored behavior. Before popping the question to some random girl, Gates asked Trump for permission. He said, you never want to upstage the big guy. He asked Trump for his approval. Uh-huh. And then, of course, Trump got to claim the right of prima nocta, probably. So despite the fact that Matt Gates, you know, there was reports coming out that he was sex driving a minor, sharing nude photos of women with his colleagues on the house floor, taking part in a sex-fueled jaunt to the Bahamas and drug use. Ginger Lucky says, never left, never leaving. Interestingly, their younger sister, Roxanne, accused Matt Gates of gaslighting and called him weird. and creepy and a, quote, literal pedophile in a series of TikTok videos. Roxanne says, my estranged sister Ginger is mentally unwell. And of course, when everything came out about him, I honestly, unfortunately, was not surprised. And it wasn't just this encounter I had with Matt when I was in D.C. I heard kind of through the great fine stuff about him. You know, everything is hearsay, but just he had a reputation for prowling after college girls when he's a grown man. And to me, that's just kind of weird. I mean, so far, I'm team Roxanne. I don't know. I don't know the details, but for the moment, I'm team Roxanne. And of course, they believe that Matt Gates is a victim of the plot of a plot contrived by the social media, socialist media complex and the deep state. And the deep state. Socialist made me fuck teenagers. All right, dude. But I, like, he's on record as being like there needs to be more teen pregnancy? Yeah. So Palmer Lucky said on a podcast, and I can put it in here, that he thinks that teens are actually at their, I mean, he basically says, not enough people say this. I don't, this isn't politically correct, but teens really should be the ones having babies. Does he like specify, does he say 19 by chance? Or is he just like teens? And I guess the other thing is this, like, you know, I'm, I'm not the one who gets to interview Palmer Lucky, but did the person in any way push back and be like, should should it, should other teens be? the ones getting them pregnant? Do you want to watch it? I just want like, I just want to know. He's like, oh, you think teenage boys should be getting teenage girls pregnant? Because then he would have to answer that. And I don't think his answer would be yes. In their early 20s, right? Then their early 30s. Just, just by it. Oh, forget. What are you talking about 20s? Look at this, look at this mainstream NPC. No, no. Kids should be having kids should be having kids when they're when they're in their teens. That's when they're, that's when they're supposed to have them. And you could argue that maybe there's a reason to stretch it out a little bit. But if we're just talking about physical ability and depth of well of energy, you know, let's, let's not be politically correct. Let's just admit you're supposed to be having kids. You're 16, 17, 18. You have two kids. I got two kids, yeah. Would you add them at 16? I mean, well, to Palmer's point, like, we wouldn't have had to have medical intervention and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars if we had had them at that point. But they also, they would, they would be dead and I would be dead if I did it when I was a teenager. But still, I would want him to just, I just want him to just, I just want him. to clarify, like, should both, should it be 16-year-old boys and pregnant a 16-year-old girls? Or what are you thinking here, Palmer? Please specify who should be raising these children. And then just that clip, are you going to link that by chance? Yes, I'll like it's just two dudes who both looked like they were like, I don't know, like someone like took some Ron DeSantis DNA and then tried to like grow two more Ron DeSantis's. He just, I think you're right. Holy shit. This guy looks exactly like Ron DeSantis. No, it's just like two weird Ron DeSantis is flanking him being like, oh, talk more. about teen sex, Palmer. We're going to fucking demonically laugh along with you. He mentions that he met his wife at 15 at debate camp. This is how he describes their first meeting. Debate camp? Yeah, summer camp for debaters. Ugh. Who? What? That's like punishment. You get sent to summer camp where you're just like, and you're going to argue all day long with other kids. Well, it sounded horrible for his girlfriend at the time. This is his quote, the first time we met, she cried because. because we totally wrecked her team. It wasn't even close. It's like, oh my God. I should note, I was 31 at the time. Okay. Now, here's, this is interesting. I want to pass this by you again as a parent. This is him and his wife's rules for parenting. Okay. Okay, one, no school or college. I'm pretty pro school. I can, I know, I'm not like a no college, but I'm like, if you want to go great, but I'm not going to push college. Okay. Two, separate apartment for the children in childhood while they're still children. I didn't, that's the most insane thing I've had. What is that even? What? What? Move out. So, so you'd have like a mother-in-law apartment, but it would be for your kid. So your kid, because they're, of course, they're ready to get pregnant at 13, so they're going to need their own place. He says move out at 16. No, but okay. Again, he wants, it seems like he wants, you start to add this stuff up and it's like, man, it really seems like you're trying to separate teenagers from their parents pretty early for some reason. Weirdly, learn to drive all machines as early as possible. What does all machines mean? He doesn't define that. Okay. Well, then you know what? Yes. On that one, I agree. Leave the family fortune to only one child. That's crazy. That's like, wait, why? I think it's the Rupert Murdoch School of Pit Your Children Against Each Other. Uh-huh. Yeah. Which can be fun for you. for me, my, it's, I will, I will leave the family debt to one child. But as it stands, I, like, I would, uh, you know, you, you, you want them, you want your kids to be taken care of, but you don't want one of them to suddenly just get a billion dollars. He believes in legally permitted child labor permits? Yeah. I mean, again, he won't, look, I just, teens should get, teens need to move out of the house. First of all, teens with no education. Let me add. No school at all. Forget college. Teens with no education need to move out of the house, get pregnant, and start working. I love this quote. This is the only part where I was like, oh, fuck yeah, Palmer. He confessed that he had taken up drinking at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville, specifically since becoming a father, quote, pour me a hurricane before I go insane. I don't think he's ever been to Margaritaville. And I say that as someone who's been there twice. I mean, he's dressed like he's working a shift at Margarita Ville. all the time. That's this once again, like, evocative of someone who doesn't have a personality. So, like, I believe the cliche thing to do is to hide from your family and drink at a margaritaville. So that is what I will do. You know, one of the things that we say, though, is the best way to make sure your kid is a billionaire is to be a shitty parent. Yes. It really is the tie that bind. There's one better way, and he's going to do that. Which is what? Leave them a billion dollars on you die so they can be a tyrant. Well, it's funny because. I was like, okay, how did he grow up? And according to an interview, he did that one with Tablet Magazine. When he was a kid, his parents kicked him out of the house at 19, so he lived in a camper in their driveway and, quote, lucky got to work modifying the inside of the trailer. He took out the bathroom since there was a public restroom next to the laundromat a few blocks away. So his parents. Okay. First of all, you're not, you didn't get kicked out of the house if you live in the driveway. And you're not kicked out of the house. You live at the house. You just have a different room. But you can't use the bathroom inside. Yeah, but so removing the bathroom to choose to go to a public laundromat bathroom two blocks away. Again, like, these are the, these are the hallmarks. These are the types of decisions of someone you don't want deciding the future global war for your country. Like, you don't want a guy who's like, my parents kicked me out so I live in a trailer in the front yard, but don't worry, there's a bathroom two blocks away that I choose to use. You don't want that guy to talk to the Secretary of Defense and be like, change the name of your department. And then you don't want that Secretary of Defense to be like, you're right, bro, I should. But that is the world we live in. So in one of the interviews, like, I guess in his office, he's got like the actual, like, red phone, the nuclear war phone, like, as a decoration. And he says, he says, that was the dream. for me to be the guy with the red phone who gets the call. That was the dream for you? Nuclear war? Your dream was to be the guy who pushed the button. You want to be General Groves right now. Yeah. What is, like, what's wrong with you? Why is that the dream? This is like a huge question I have is like, nobody pushes them to be like, tell me more about what do you understand about the Manhattan Project? Yeah. Who was involved? What is the legacy? Like, what do you understand happened at Hiroshima? What do you think is like, the general consensus of whether or not, as you alluded to earlier, it was justified or not. Yeah, I don't know. You know, I think back before I, I'm not really on X anymore, but I was. And one of, like, you know, I quote tweeted as Sam Altman, one of my tweets like happened to catch fire, because it was Sam Altman being like, I saw Oppenheimer and I hoped it would inspire a generation of people to get into science. But I don't think that this movie's going to do that. And you're like, you, Oppenheimer is the guy. Like, his whole life was regret for the thing he, the evil thing that he regretted his whole life, cried about in the Oval Office. And like, you're like, this is the thing that's going to make people want to be scientists. These guys are so fucking broken. It's disgusting. Well, and they're just dumb. Like, Mark Zuckerberg famously doesn't read books. I tried to find Palmer Lucky's favorite books, and it was a lot of sci-fi, but no history. Right. Not a one. You know, I think it's, I think if this is a good place to kind of end it before I move to any other takeaways, because you mentioned kind of the rack, the mental torture that people like Oppenheimer had to deal with after they made certain decisions. And he even talks now about this was the quote that kind of stood out to me about where his mental state is today. He talks a lot about having a lot of vengeance. He's really angry that he got fired. He's angry that people think he's a loser. He even says, like, the way that he's living his life right now is not sustainable. This is a quote. It's like, I go home, on my way, I stop at Margaritaville, I drink a few drinks, and all of a sudden I'm the loser? What are people talking about, dude? I'm fucking Palmer Lucky. But he doesn't feel that way internally. Here's what he says. I wake up every day with my fist clenched and teeth grit every morning, stewing on the people who wronged me a decade ago. It's not motivated. It's not a good way to live life, but it is very, very effective. Yeah, I mean, that is like, you know what? I take comfort in that with all of these characters, like especially you're like Trumps and Elon's and like they'll never know peace. They'll never know happiness. Nothing is ever enough for them and they wake up angry. They've accomplished everything anyone could ever hope to accomplish more and worse, but like they're never happy. They're never satisfied. They're still mad at someone. They're holding on to some piece of, uh, like resentment, resentment or, yeah, anger about the way the world sees them. Like, they understand that as much as they can performatively do the act of what they imagine cool is, they know they're not. And they know they don't have the respect that they're pretending to have and projecting to have. And they're angry and sad most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I mean, my concern is, like, that's fine if you want to do that and also run a SaaS company. But if you are angry and sad at the people who you perceived have wronged you and you have the ability to determine who's a bad guy or not, and then the next step is you kill that bad guy because you think he's bad. Yeah, fucked up unless the guy you're mad at is Mark Zuckerberg. And then I'm kind of like, well. Robbie, do you have any takeaways before we wrap it up? For all of this, media buzz, hype. and talk about the male loneliness epidemic. Isn't it nice that the gundo bros have found each other to stand shirtless around a fire? Drink energy drinks, tigsins, seed clouds, wait for the return of Jesus, and make little missiles, you know? This is, we're going to fix the male loneliness epidemic one missile at a time. And what I like about it is like they're all outside. They're all playing with their friends. That's right. Not a screen in sight. They are. I mean, honestly, it's like, these are boys with little wooden swords tilting at each other and God bless them, you know. All right. Well, let us know what you think in the comments. And I think we will wrap it there. If you want to join us over on the Patreon with our lovely, lovely, as Robbie has met over the past couple of days, and he has commented on how awesome they are. They really are. They're really lovely. If you want to join them over on the Patreon, you can do so at Patreon. patreon.com slash corporate gossip. You can join at the $5 a month, Skillings, Sweeties level, and you get two extra bonus episodes every month. This past week, we watched Melania, so you didn't have to. And I have to say that episode was really funny. I really enjoyed it. Look, we did you guys a service by watching it. It's worth the list. You know what? It's only worth the watch and a listen side by side. Or you can join at the Murdoch's Maitz level, and you can join our quarterly book club where it's a live virtual book club, and that's always really fun. Or you can join at the SBF Sweeties level where you not only get a handwritten card that I just sent out in the mail, but you also get a shout out on every episode, which I'm going to do coming up in a second here. Okay, so let's shout out our SBF Sugar Daddies. We have Sarah, Sarah Gilbert, Kelly Jade, Nora, Anastasia B, Sarah Birtis, and Michael Anderson. We love you no matter what level you're at, or if you're just, you know, a listener. We love you too. We love all of our listeners. Share this podcast with a friend. Make sure you rate and review. And we will see you next time. Bye. Bye. This week's good news story comes from Los Angeles, where the group The Radical Monarchs has established a new chapter. The Radical Monarchs is a sort of spin on the Girl Scouts and is designed to give girls and youth of color ages 8 to 12 a safe space to practice self-love, sisterhood, and activism. The group was started after Annie Yvette Rivera Amador's daughter wanted to join the Girl Scouts, and Rivera Amador was concerned about her daughter being the only brown girl in the group. Rivera Amador and her close friend Marilyn Hallenquest created the group as an inclusive space for her daughter to build confidence, learn about social justice issues, and give back to the community. Rivera Amador has a bachelor. and Chikana Studies from UCLA and a master's degree and ethnic studies from UC San Francisco. She wanted a space where her daughter could learn about her ancestors, her culture, and political education along with her peers, as well as learn how to think critically and ask questions. Rivera Amador and Holland Quest officially launched the radical monarchs in 2014 in Oakland and developed the group while also juggling full-time jobs. Monarchs meet twice a month for a three-year cycle and earn badges that coincide with explorations of self-love, LGBTQ plus rights, bi-poc history, and cultural empowerment. Troops attend city council meetings, fundraise for various causes, and contribute to mutual aid efforts. Each troop has three adult volunteers that get trained on the curriculum, facilitate meetings, and communicate with parents. Parents like Maylu Castillo, whose nine-year-old daughter attends a dual-language school in Alhambra and is in the El Serrano troop, said that she decided to join the troop because she wants her daughter to be aware of social issues that exist in her community, as well as be able to create change within her community. Since then, the radical monarchs have spread to cities, including San Francisco, Richmond, Alameda, Denver, New York, and Minneapolis. In 2019, the documentary We Are the Radical Monarchs debuted at South by Southwest and followed their activism journey as well as the attacks they received from the right. And in 2023, they became a 501. and launched in South L.A. and Long Beach the year after. The mission of the radical monarchs is especially important amidst the Trump administration's attack on equity education and school districts across the country. Parents say that having positive women of color as role models is crucial for building self-confidence, and the group has also served as a community of like-minded families, as many of them are under attack by ICE. The group was also hit by Trump's funding cuts and had to lay off half their staff. Currently, Rivera Amador, Hollenquest, and a couple contractors are all that remain on payroll. The organization is currently struggling to fundraise and maintain their troops, so if you can, I included a link in the show notes where you can donate and help them continue their mission. And if you're interested in volunteering, creating a troop, or joining a troop in your area, you can go to the radical monarchs.org, where you can keep up with what they are doing and learn more about their organization.