Plausibly Deniable

Lukas and Saila talk about geopolitics, technology, culture, and modern life with Noah Smith. They discuss the U.S.–China rivalry, drone warfare, public opinion, political polarization, and how social media fueled woke-era cancellation campaigns. The conversation turns to AI's impact on research, entry-level work, corporate trust, and manufacturing, before exploring dating, intimacy, short-form video, status, creativity, and angel investing. Along the way, they trade stories about Japan, fountain pens, praying mantises, and the strange incentives of online life.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press___________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.or...

Lukas and Saila talk about geopolitics, technology, culture, and modern life with Noah Smith. They discuss the U.S.–China rivalry, drone warfare, public opinion, political polarization, and how social media fueled woke-era cancellation campaigns. The conversation turns to AI's impact on research, entry-level work, corporate trust, and manufacturing, before exploring dating, intimacy, short-form video, status, creativity, and angel investing. Along the way, they trade stories about Japan, fountain pens, praying mantises, and the strange incentives of online life.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press___________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.or...

Lukas and Saila talk about everything from the philosophy of saying “I suppose,” cardio mishaps, Costco obsession, and the absurdity of livestreaming everyday life to crypto jealousy, resentment toward data centers, and the importance of admitting your insecurities. They explore AI-generated websites, movie criticism, social media hot takes, political opinions, crypto trading patterns, lawyers and professional gatekeeping, and the strange economics of modern white-collar work. They also discuss podcast sponsorships, New Hampshire, unconventional firearm designs, Chinese memecoin culture, Korean speculation, and the growing fear of being financially left behind.TimestampsSponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citi...

Lukas and Saila talk about political ideology, sacred beliefs, cultural shifts, and the changing nature of social norms with Oliver. They explore the rise and decline of wokeness, political tribalism, status competition, the influence of social media on democracy, and why people change their political allegiances. The conversation also covers academic freedom and tenure, modern dating and relationships, AI alignment and existential risk, the future of writing and journalism, AI-generated content, and why universities function more as credentialing institutions than places of learning.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press...

Lukas and Saila talk about absurdly long game release timelines, predicting movies before they exist, why “deny, deny, deny” and strategic dishonesty increasingly go unpunished, AI safety messaging and media incentives, technological pessimism and Ted Kaczynski’s critique of modernity, LASIK and cosmetic surgery, American healthcare and tort law, Social Security and voting incentives, and Roy Lee’s viral marketing strategy.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgOur tools are available at: https://plausiblydeniable.org/tools/ Lukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaund...

Matthew Peterson, founder of FORUM and The American Mind, joins Lukas and Saila to discuss the fights inside the Trump coalition, why Silicon Valley hasn't won over the populists, and what right-wing media would look like if it cared about building things. They get into FORUM's Joe Lonsdale–Joe Allen debate, the resentment behind the data-center backlash, AI as empowerment or centralized control, privacy, regulation, and whether the government ends up with its own frontier lab.The conversation also covers Peterson's route through academia, Claremont, New Founding, and Blaze; corporate sponsors and schizophrenic mortgages; winning elections versus po...

Lukas and Saila talk about product reviews and Costco bulk buying, AI safety and political burnout, Middle East news and the Lindsay Clancy trial, how people evaluate medicine and scientific evidence, podcast analytics and consumer behavior, crypto and the Clarity Act, jury trials, cooking, sun exposure, fishing, and the very different cultures of YouTube and X.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgOur tools are available at: https://plausiblydeniable.org/tools/ Lukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore 00:00 Why going outside is...

Welcome back to the Plausibly Deniable Experience. Lukas and Saila enter Soycast mode to reconstruct cooking from first principles, prove that bachelor slop is game-theory optimal, and explain why sharing food with roommates produces resentment instead of consumer surplus. We investigate the hidden fat tax, nuclear-powered dishwasher cabinets, and whether the government should pay your grandmother to cook for you.Then: why Twitter got boring, quote-tweet parasitism, synthetic OpenAI equity, and corporate jobs that have quietly become pensions. Doug Leone’s homelessness story becomes a debate about whether a long layover counts as adversity, Lukas gets trapped in an Am...

Brian Chau has figured out how to use AI for journalism without producing AI slop: make the models read mountains of documents, then make humans write the story.Brian is the founder of Effort News, a publication using long-context AI to comb through federal databases, financial records, legal filings, and other giant piles of public data for stories everyone else missed. He joins Lukas and Saila to explain the refugee-resettlement grant investigation that convinced him to launch Effort, why ordinary journalism is often built around stories sources want “placed,” and what changes when you can query an entire government data...

Jakob Diepenbrock is running a hard-tech fund from El Segundo, backing young engineers building defense, manufacturing, robotics, energy, and other critical industries. He joins Lukas and Saila to explain how he skipped the credential ladder, built Discipulus Ventures, raised a fund by treating the process like a startup launch, and why Anduril’s breakout made defense tech the allocation everyone suddenly wanted.They also discuss cost-plus military contracts, drones versus soldiers, DJI’s domination of creator hardware, automated American textile factories, why humanoid robots are TikTok bait, insectoid factory machines, American-made peptides, ethanol and farm...

Covfefe Anon returns to Plausibly Deniable to discuss the bliss of confirmation bias: how to engineer a viral take, why the edit may be the native medium of the 21st century, and why Angry Birds might be the most fascist movie ever made. Lukas, Saila and Covfefe review films they have not seen, explain why ironic criticism only makes its targets cooler, and consider whether Confirmation Bias is actually a better name for the podcast.The conversation also covers Ryan Gosling, Barbenheimer, James Bond, public-domain superheroes and AI remakes, Joe Biden and the death...

America has become a coin-flipping economy—and the language we use now punishes anyone foolish enough to take things seriously.Lukas and Saila discuss AI psychosis and a 76,000-contact CRM, the fragmented B2B SaaS economy, travel-authorization scams, tax software, W-2 employment, lawsuits, bankruptcy, fake sponsorships, macro investors with monkey pictures, crypto traders posting inspirational corn after blowing up, and Costco gold arbitrage.Then they turn to the linguistic destruction of America: how “try-hard,” “glazing,” the IDGAF war, and “Woke One” made effort, admiration, accountability, and sincerity embarrassing.Also discussed: DeepSeek’s immigrant work ethic, aggr...

Lukas and Saila talk about an accidental arsenic-poisoning bonfire, frustrating hospital visits, bizarre injuries, the Hunter Biden–Nick Fuentes interview, Gavin Newsom, European manufacturing, aging, astrology and viral internet tools, gender and dating dynamics, rural life, bulk food, FBI encounters, online anonymity, food quality, RFK Jr., AI culture, Silicon Valley politics, cats, dogs, strange neighbors, self-deception and AI-assisted coding.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________

Mert Mumtaz, co-founder and CEO of Helius, joins Lukas and Saila to explain why privacy is crypto’s unfinished business, why he sees Zcash as encrypted—or “better”—Bitcoin, and what the Ironwood upgrade means for the Orchard pool, supply integrity, formal verification and quantum recoverability.They compare Zcash and Monero, unpack fungibility and tainted coins, discuss private finance on Solana and Helius’s work with Light Protocol, and examine why public blockchains risk becoming a global financial panopticon. The conversation then moves into AI, DeFi security, startup hiring, company names, Slavic relationship theory, emergency flowers and the collapse...

Jeremy Kauffman joins the Positively Deniable Experience to explain how spending a few hours per week on libertarian politics helped throw the national Libertarian Party into chaos—and why he believes the Free State movement is succeeding in New Hampshire while the national party remains committed to losing.Jeremy recounts the rise of LBRY and Odysee, the SEC case that destroyed the company, crypto’s early generation of true believers, and the attempt to build a censorship-resistant alternative to YouTube. He also explains how the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire grew its X account from roughly 4,000 to 110,000 foll...

Spandrell joins us to explain the “IQ Shredder”: how successful cities attract ambitious, intelligent people from across the world, place them into a hypercompetitive rat race, and then make it nearly impossible for them to reproduce.We discuss why fertility is collapsing across virtually every developed society, whether Israel has escaped the trend, why financial incentives have repeatedly failed, and what governments could realistically do to make family formation prestigious again.Spandrell also explains Bio-Leninism—his theory of how political systems recruit people with few alternatives and convert personal disadvantage into institutional loyalty. We connect it to...

The boys return under plague conditions to discuss why nukes might be less socially destructive than dating discourse, the ethics of height-maxxing children with growth hormone, the “ship it, I guess” approach to biohacking, trad life vs gene editing, Europe’s anti-AC death drive, Singapore, Yarvin, Nick Land, cats, prediction markets, bought accounts, World Cup confusion, and why prediction markets might just be manifestation markets.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore0:00 Nukes vs dating discourse1:26 Intro...

Lukas and Saila return from San Francisco with takes on city discourse, scam calls, GLP-1s, power-law dating, Elon’s financial engineering, Polymarket political markets, RFK Jr., airport lounge arbitrage, SFO baggage purgatory, “not financial advice” disclaimers, pharmaceutical ads, weed, birth control, IQ-tiered libertarianism, and why every abstract argument eventually becomes a dating take.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO_FREQSaila: https://x.com/sailaunderscore0:00 San Francisco safety, homeless discourse, and wanting something to happen3:00 Scam calls, robocalls, lost w...

Lukas records through food poisoning while the boys recap San Francisco, Bay Area house parties, Twitter people becoming real, unlimited oysters, Crime George, social minefields, Uber drivers, crypto trading, Modern Warfare 2, travel degeneracy, lost wallets, coconut water, Ray Peat breathing, Veblen goods, publicists, and whether having a podcast has made normal social interaction impossible.Sponsored by:Polymarket: https://polymarket.comZcash: https://z.cashCitizenX: https://citizenx.comNetwork Press: https://network.press_______________________________Plausibly Deniable: https://plausiblydeniable.orgLukas: https://x.com/SCHIZO...

NEED SOME PASSPORTS??https://citizenx.com/?ref=PlausiblyDeniableAlex from CitizenX joins Plausibly Deniable to explain the strange, funny, and increasingly important world of buying citizenship.We talk about why wealthy people are collecting passports, how citizenship by investment actually works, why Europe is cracking down on “golden passport” programs, and why more people are treating passports as geopolitical insurance. Alex breaks down the difference between residency, citizenship, and passports; the main tiers of citizenship programs; why El Salvador’s passport is different; and why places like Switzerland, Singapore, the UAE, Hong Kong, and the U.S. keep attracting millionaires even a...