Latest / Normal Men / Episode 51 - C.R.E.A.M.: Chaos Ruins Ed’s Audio Machine ft. Aaron Cohen

Transcript

Episode 51 - C.R.E.A.M.: Chaos Ruins Ed’s Audio Machine ft. Aaron Cohen · Normal Men

• 0:00
  [A] Hey. Hi. Hello. I'm Ed, and this is a pre show note, because this one has a story to it. We had some production problems around this episode and propter. And for the record, I said plopter the first three times I tried to record this, did some editing heroics to save it, but it is on the rough side. Most distressingly, my best jokes got cut, which is why you get a joke about plopter instead. But also, due to time constraints, this episode's unbleeped. As most of you know, this podcast is officially flagged as explicit on Apple podcasts, which is why we bleep British and not shit. But we wanted to get this out the door before, you know, Friday. So it's a quick turnaround. And if for some awful reason you let children listen to this podcast, they're going to hear words about islands you might not want them to know about before they're 35. Also, I lied. This isn't a pre show note. This is the entire cold open you've been listening under false pretenses intro. George, take it away.
• 0:53
  [B] This is Normal Men, a podcast from four men who are clinging desperately to normalcy in an era when that's asking a bit too much.
• 0:59
  [C] I'm George in Charlotte in D.C. i'm
• 1:01
  [D] Proctor Malone in Outer Florid, low tax, speedrun enjoyer.
• 1:05
  [A] And I'm Ed in Boston.
• 1:10
  [E] Did we start?
• 1:12
  [C] Well, I mean, we're taking recording, but it's.
• 1:14
  [B] Yeah, okay.
• 1:14
  [C] Yeah, we might. We might. We. We.
• 1:17
  [A] We started in the sense that if somebody actually happens to be funny, we'll keep it.
• 1:21
  [E] Okay.
• 1:22
  [B] It's usually an accident, so, you know,
• 1:24
  [A] don't look at me.
• 1:24
  [E] Has it ever happened for Ed?
• 1:27
  [A] I think no.
• 1:28
  [C] Episode 44 was pretty good. Yeah.
• 1:31
  [B] You.
• 1:31
  [A] You remember them by now.
• 1:32
  [C] I made that up. I was trying to make you feel better.
• 1:34
  [A] Okay. I mean, I appreciate that, but it wasn't true. So that voice that we hear is my arch nemesis. His name is Aaron. He runs an ice cream shop. That's about as much as I'm going to give him.
• 1:48
  [D] Burn and hate the ice cream guy.
• 1:50
  [E] Yeah, it's true. It's true.
• 1:52
  [A] In my defense, he hated me.
• 1:54
  [E] That's also true. But in my defense, you're terrible.
• 1:58
  [A] I mean, you're not wrong.
• 2:01
  [C] So, yeah, so we have. We have Aaron Cohen of Gracie's Ice Cream with us today, which is very exciting because we get to press the flesh with a genuine small businessman and also hopefully find out something about how ice cream works.
• 2:12
  [A] It's like, I'm not a Small businessman. Fuck you. My hobbies make a surprise.
• 2:20
  [B] Thank you. Your hobby's gone.
• 2:22
  [A] His hobby is. His hobby is distributing whistles that I print for him.
• 2:27
  [E] No, I don't like doing that either.
• 2:29
  [A] Well, you do it, though. And you do a pretty all right job. So.
• 2:32
  [E] So. Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you how the small business people are experiencing Carg Island. My. I was impacted more by the tariffs when the price on Canadian wood went up. My. My spoons went up 300%, I think by the price of spoons.
• 2:50
  [B] Like disposable spoons.
• 2:51
  [A] Not.
• 2:52
  [E] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I use. I use wooden spoons.
• 2:55
  [C] Yeah, that's classy. I like that.
• 2:56
  [A] They're artisanal.
• 2:58
  [E] Thank you.
• 2:59
  [D] I mean, on the upside, at least you're not using ones. Maybe a better job economically than plastic in the.
• 3:04
  [E] Yeah. In the next couple. Next couple months, next couple years. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think that's my. I don't think Carg island is impacting Grace's ice cream right now.
• 3:15
  [A] It's really unfortunate that you are going to a international producer for your spoons, given the fact that for a very long time, the great state of Maine was a major toothpick exporter. The town of Strong, Maine, was the largest toothpick exporter in the United States.
• 3:32
  [E] As a resident of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, I don't actually acknowledge Maine as a state.
• 3:38
  [A] So I mean, that's fine. That would just make it part of Massachusetts.
• 3:43
  [B] As a resident of North Carolina, I don't acknowledge Maine as a state either. To be clear, this is not something that Massachusetts has a monopoly on.
• 3:50
  [E] Yeah.
• 3:50
  [D] As a resident of the state of Florida, I do not recognize Maine either. And I believe Propter will wrap us up by. He lives in D.C. he doesn't get from a state, does not recognize the state of Maine either.
• 4:05
  [A] Yeah, well, for that, all of you are getting double platner, a platter of
• 4:09
  [B] platinum, if you will.
• 4:09
  [C] I think it's great that George is consistent in his disdain for the Maritime Provinces and also the Maritime state.
• 4:15
  [B] Yes, yes, very much so. Yeah.
• 4:18
  [C] A little. A little trans border solidarity there.
• 4:20
  [A] God, I wish Maine could secede. Just go be part of Canada. Maybe they let me back.
• 4:24
  [B] Yeah, me too.
• 4:29
  [A] So.
• 4:30
  [C] So other than your spoons, is. Is much of your supply chain international? I mean, are you getting hit on other things here? Are you?
• 4:36
  [E] Okay, so George, shut your ears for a second because. Oh, God, I. I don't. I don't know how much the ice cream costs to make all the time.
• 4:48
  [C] It's all right. He does. He hit U.S. stocks. He didn't go to B school.
• 4:50
  [E] So like for a financial analyst it's, it's problematic. But you know, I think like, you know, I think our, our chocolate has gone up a lot like tripled in price also. And two different times I've created the, like the, the a walk back on tariffs by buying a ton of coffee beans at Market Basket. Because like. I'm sorry, at where a market Basket.
• 5:22
  [A] Wow. I didn't know you were allowed to have an hour.
• 5:25
  [E] The, the. I didn't hear what you said, but it probably wasn't important. But you know, Gracie's is, is like a, almost a farm to table ice cream shop because 98 of our ingredients come from within a block of the ice cream shop in, in that Market basket. The grocery store is very close to the ice cream store, so they have all of the different Little Debbie's flavors, which is great because we make ice cream out of seven different Little Debbie's styles.
• 6:02
  [C] You do, you do a lot of remixing of kind of like, kind of like consumer, consumer candies and consumer pastries, I guess.
• 6:10
  [E] Yeah, we're not in a big enough spot to make our own Little Debbie Swiss roll knockoffs and, and we wouldn't be able to do it as affordably. So yeah, I use a lot of Little Debbies. I think it, it's a way of making the ice cream nostalgic in like you remember growing up eating Little Debbie's. Ed doesn't because he grew up in a box. Everyone else grew up eating Little Debbies.
• 6:40
  [A] I'm from the State of the Moon pies. Thank you.
• 6:44
  [C] So Aaron, Aaron, Aaron regularly posts kind of like in progress pictures of ice cream happening on Blue sky and it looks awesome.
• 6:53
  [B] I'm just going to read a couple samples from the menu page ofice cream gracies.com the gold and white dress with sweet cream Corn pops, honeycomb golden grahams, almond croissant, brown butter, Angie's wedding whiskey animal crackers, birthday cake batter, brown sugar peach chocolate chip caramel which sounds standard but delicious. Big fan of that. Chocolate Nilla wafer, Chocolate fluff chocolate Oreo chip chocolate PB PB wafer chocolate peanut pretzel chip chocolate 2 cookie. You get the idea. There's a lot of different flavors here.
• 7:29
  [A] He keeps them on the page in alphabetical order and I find that disturbing.
• 7:33
  [E] Well, so that page is problematic for me because that's a list of all the flavors that we've ever made as of like four years ago. I haven't updated it since then. I Had forgot that page was on the Internet. Thanks, George. And people will sometimes come in and say, can I have this flavor? And I'll say, or the staff will say, we don't have that because we only have 16 ice creams at a time to scoop. And then we have some amount more of. Of pints already pre packed. But a lot of those ice creams were one offs. Like the golden white dress. Grace's ice cream is extremely online, like terminally online. So the golden white dress obviously is about the golden white dress. Yeah. Controversy from, from several years ago. Angie's Wedding Whiskey was for a friend named Angie who was having a wedding and commissioned this ice cream. Some of those others I, I don't remember making, but we probably made once. If they got on the list, Coco
• 8:35
  [B] Guinness Oreo would be. I'm sure there's a story behind that.
• 8:38
  [E] Yeah, that's, that's our St. Patrick's Day flavor. And we make that once a year. A couple years ago somebody emailed in September and was like, my husband's favorite ice cream flavor is Coco Guinness Oreo. Can I have a cocoa Guinness Oreo pie for Saturday? And I tried to explain that we don't make that flavor in September. And it went back and forth a couple times and the result was a two star Yelp review from that lady who was mad about the tone that I used to explain that we don't make that flavor all the time. But this year when we made it in March, I actually did make pies. So hopefully she got one to save for her husband's birthday in September.
• 9:19
  [C] It's a customer service business is what I'm hearing here.
• 9:21
  [E] Yeah. You know, well, okay, so. Yeah, so the only good thing about running a small business is that you don't have to do the things that you don't want to do. And I didn't want to make that lady a pie in September because she was rude about it. So that's like me being like non customer servicey. But two different times this week. Earlier. Earlier this week there was a Harvard student ID like left on the counter. And my. One of our good friends works at Harvard. So I, I said, hey, can you find this person and email them and tell them that they' their ID card is here. And then yesterday a kid's backpack was there and I got the kid's name, but they don't put last names on their name on their things anymore. So I texted somebody who knows the principal and she was going to text the principal to be like, do you Know this kid in, in the grade that is reading this book. And I, like my daughter was reading, had read that book at some point in the last three years. So I knew that it was like under seventh grade. And, and then that it just turned out that the friend I texted knew who it was. So that's two instances of me going above and beyond on a customer service perspective to counter out not making this ice cream for a lady that I only make once a year.
• 10:29
  [D] Right.
• 10:29
  [C] No, I mean, I mean, I mean, you've got to preserve the standards about seasonality of ice cream. That's, that's, that's really important. There are rules here.
• 10:35
  [D] Who, who wants a Guinness flavor in September in the United States?
• 10:39
  [E] This lady's husband.
• 10:41
  [D] No, it's summer. You can't be drinking Guinness this or having Guinness.
• 10:45
  [E] Yeah, I mean, I probably, I guess I probably would have made it for somebody else. This is the problem. I'm not saying that it's consistent. I guess it probably is consistent in that it's like what, like how I woke up that day, like if it's gonna happen or not.
• 11:02
  [D] Oh, so, okay. Was the woman Ed's wife?
• 11:10
  [E] Ed's wife is an angel. Oh, I guess in that, I guess in that situation, she'd be asking for on behalf of Ed. She would know better. She would know better not to do that.
• 11:21
  [B] Well, I do have some good news about chocolate prices. Cocoa futures peaked at like a little bit over $12,000 a ton, and they're now down to like three grand a ton, which sounds like pretty big decline. It's back to 20, 23 levels. So. And that really didn't have a lot to do with, I mean, tariffs added to it, but it too. So, you know, the good thing about commodity prices being high is eventually they will be lower because they're high.
• 11:45
  [E] So, you know, does that always transfer translate into like.
• 11:50
  [B] So you didn't pay the full cost of wholesale Coco's price increase, and you're not going to get the full benefit on the way down either.
• 11:58
  [E] Right.
• 11:58
  [B] Because there's a whole bunch of intermediaries in between raw cocoa, which you use to settle the futures and the stuff you put your ice cream, whether it's Little Debbie's or actual chocolate chips or. So there's a whole bunch of people that absorb costs and moderate the effects of the price through there. Because the wholesale commodity moves around a lot more than consumer prices.
• 12:19
  [E] I think the place where I get chocolate from most often buys it by the tractor trailer and, and then uses it up and they do that for. For cones, too. So sometimes if they haven't ordered enough for the year, they run out of cones in like, September, October, and it. It takes months for them to get more. And that happens with chocolate, too?
• 12:37
  [B] Yeah, I mean, there's a whole bunch of different strategies you can use to effectively hedge your prices. Right. You can buy in bulk ahead of time. You can buy or sell futures. I mean, like Hershey's, for instance. If you look at Hershey's stock over the past couple years, like, it's basically just inverse cocoa futures, which is pretty wild because the business hasn't really performed that way. But markets are very vibes based. Just like, you know, a small business not knowing how much their input costs are. Yeah, like, who cares?
• 13:07
  [E] The best part about this podcast recording is that Ed has been talking for the last two minutes, but on mute.
• 13:11
  [D] Yeah, you have been doing that, Ed.
• 13:13
  [A] I haven't been actually saying anything substantive, so that's fine. But that's okay because, I mean, I. You have to let George get it out of his system before we go back to talking about important things. Do you recognize this, Aaron? Man, it is spicy. Manischewitz.
• 13:29
  [C] Oh, hell yeah.
• 13:30
  [B] Yeah, thanks. I hate it.
• 13:33
  [A] Yeah, no, we were up in. In Scenic, not downtown Somerville, and we went into Gracie's, and my wife was like, that sounds good. I want to get a pint. And I said, you're not going to like that. And she said, I'm going to get the pint. And then I paid for it, and then she didn't like it. And it's been sitting in the freezer for 11 and a half months.
• 13:56
  [E] So I just think we should have everybody understand why you don't like it. You think it's too spicy, right?
• 14:03
  [A] My wife thinks it's too spicy. I haven't tried it.
• 14:07
  [E] Sorry that the ice cream is too spicy for you. Ed, did you know. Did you know that when you eat ice cream, the cold numbs your taste buds and the fat coats your tie spuds, so you can actually taste all the spice and it's not that spicy like, kids eat that stuff.
• 14:30
  [A] I haven't tried it. I can't tell you.
• 14:32
  [E] Why don't you try it right now for everybody on the podcast?
• 14:34
  [B] Why don't you Spicy manage to have its ice cream live for us?
• 14:38
  [A] All right. There was a reason there was a spoon here.
• 14:41
  [E] You have to use your fingers. Oh, you have a spoon. That's too bad.
• 14:43
  [A] I was prepared for this desire. Oh, wow. That's like separated neat.
• 14:48
  [D] Is. Yeah. Is. Is Ice cream still good after 11 and a half months frozen.
• 14:53
  [A] It's fine.
• 14:54
  [E] Not in, not in Ed's freezer.
• 14:56
  [A] Oh, that's a. That is a high quality standing freezer. Thank you.
• 15:00
  [D] I think it's like Proctor's cans of cheese. I don't think you're supposed to age it.
• 15:08
  [C] The Manischewitz is in.
• 15:10
  [A] Yeah, that's not spicy at all. I don't know what she was talking about.
• 15:16
  [C] So isn't there some issue with, like, freezing grape that, like, grape ice cream is difficult to make? Am I, am I making that up
• 15:22
  [E] or is that okay? So grape ice cream is delicious. There's rumors that grape ice cream is illegal because it kills dogs, but I think it's because grape can be poisonous to dogs.
• 15:36
  [A] It is. But, like, why would that make it illegal? We sell grapes.
• 15:39
  [E] Well, there's all sorts of regulations that, you know, you can't get a haircut after eating an onion sandwich in North Dakota or something. You can still do that. Yeah, I don't know. I. I've made grape ice cream a bunch with Concord concentrate. You can buy that.
• 15:59
  [B] That's Concord from our North Carolina listeners. He said, he said Concord.
• 16:03
  [E] He mean it is the Concord here, right?
• 16:08
  [A] No, it. No, no, he doesn't.
• 16:11
  [B] I know Concord, North Carolina, which is just east of me. Concord people immediately get mad at you. It's really cute.
• 16:20
  [A] Right, but they're, they're, they're, they're wrong. It's like conquered Massachusetts.
• 16:25
  [B] Well, not down here, it's not.
• 16:26
  [E] Yeah. Please don't, Please don't make me take outside on this.
• 16:29
  [A] Yeah, don't make me agree with him.
• 16:31
  [B] Speaking of North Carolina grape ice cream, very popular with the Lumbees. And if you know who the Lumbees are, that's very interesting. And if you don't, then don't worry about it. We'll talk about them the next time there's a presidential election.
• 16:41
  [C] Yeah, I think they're Republican now.
• 16:42
  [B] Transactionally. Yes.
• 16:44
  [E] That's.
• 16:44
  [B] That's one of those things that won't stick around if it doesn't have to for other reasons.
• 16:49
  [D] All I'll say is I assume Ed and Aaron's conquered predates George's Concord.
• 16:56
  [A] It's the one what. Where they were shooting at English.
• 17:00
  [C] And I think I, I think Aaron is right. I mean, this is, this is his area of expertise, so I'm sure he's right. That, that, that's, that's the origin of the, of the grape. That, that's, that's a Massachusetts thing.
• 17:09
  [E] I actually found that out because Welch's Grape Juice. Welch's Grape Company. I don't know. They are headquartered in Concord until recently. And they're moving out of Concord. Or they did. They. They are. Or they're going to. Or they did. Or they're going to. And. And I asked my contact at Welch's about it and she said yes, it's because of the town. Like the grape came from the town. And then it was just like random that they headquartered there, I guess.
• 17:38
  [C] Yeah.
• 17:38
  [B] Now. But it is, you're right. It is named after Concord, Massachusetts.
• 17:43
  [A] Thank you, George.
• 17:44
  [E] You said it like a Slurpee.
• 17:46
  [B] Because down here, if you say it that way, it is a slur.
• 17:49
  [A] Oh, I thought. I figured you were. You were like implying that they moved to like Ohio or something. They moved to friggin Waltham.
• 17:58
  [E] That's. They might as well have moved to Ohio.
• 18:02
  [A] I mean, I wouldn't want to go to either, but come on.
• 18:05
  [D] Waltham.
• 18:06
  [E] Waltham.
• 18:07
  [B] Yeah.
• 18:08
  [A] Waltham.
• 18:08
  [E] Yeah.
• 18:09
  [D] Waltham. Thank you.
• 18:10
  [E] Waltham.
• 18:12
  [A] It's.
• 18:12
  [D] We're gonna get Brits mad at us over this.
• 18:15
  [A] Yeah.
• 18:15
  [B] Well now you just created work for Ed. He's got to bleep that out.
• 18:19
  [D] Hey, Exactly.
• 18:21
  [A] I'm just gonna bleep this entire.
• 18:23
  [E] Anytime I talk.
• 18:25
  [A] No, I'm just gonna overlay the peanuts.
• 18:26
  [B] Aaron, how did you get into Ice Cream Man? Like, like what. What was the decision making there? Was it just like, I really like ice cream, I should sell some? Or did you make some? And people were like, wow, this is some good ass ice cream.
• 18:38
  [E] Or okay. So I was producing food festivals around the country and I had a pretty big marketing platform and was thinking like, when I started, there weren't a lot of food festivals. This was in like 2009, 2010. And then in 2014, there started to be a lot. And I was like, I should do a brick and mortar thing so that I can use this marketing platform that I built to. Because I thought people were going to stop selling tickets. I stopped buying tickets at some point. And a guy I knew in the. Who had a business in our neighborhood was opening an ice cream store. So he said. And I, I was like, well, maybe I could help you market it and like be a partner. And he said, yeah, that sounds great. And it turns out that he was kind of a con man and a ne' er do well. And I realized after I gave him a small amount of money that if I didn't take over the project, the ice cream store wouldn't open and I would lose that. That small amount of money. And then I should have done that because that would have been a lot less expensive. Just lose the initial investment. He's not part of the business anymore. And he was like, like a really talented builder and a really talented designer. Nice guy. Just like a really awful business guy. Businessman. And also like a terrible con man because he conned me into opening an ice cream store and then didn't get anything out of it. I worked for an ice cream shop when I was 17, so I did always love ice cream. And there was no ice cream in our neighborhood. And one thing about this part of. To, like, metro Boston area is that I'm pretty sure that there's more homemade ice cream shops within two miles of my shop than anywhere else in the world per capita. Every neighborhood has their own homemade ice cream shop. And in my neighborhood didn't have a homemade ice cream shop at that point or any. Any ice cream shop. So that's kind of how I got into it. The first time that I had made ice cream on a commercial ice cream machine was after the guy cooked everything up. He's like, well, he was like, hey, we're done. We're done hooking it up. And I was like, okay, cool, thanks. And he's like, do you want to try it? And I was like, oh, yes. And so then I ran home and googled ice cream recipe and then multiplied it by 10 and made just about the best ice cream you've ever had in your life. That first batch was. And we. We make it a little bit different now than. Than Ben. It's probably better because it's more consistent and repeatable. And I have a better understanding of how ice cream works than I did on that day. But yeah, it's. That's the. The trick is that it's like sugar and cream and milk, and if you mix those things together in the appropriate ratios, it's always going to taste good.
• 21:22
  [B] Really? I mean, I'm struggling to come up with a ratio. Cream and milk. That would taste bad. Like, right. Like you don't even get the ratio right.
• 21:30
  [E] That's what I'm saying. Yeah, we should ask Ed to figure that out. Ratio. Figure that ratio out. Because I'm sure he could mess it up. But actually, we could. We could probably make like a flavor production calendar in AI and then I could advertise the business as AI powered to get $60 million in PE money
• 21:50
  [A] and no customers coming through the door.
• 21:53
  [E] I. It's their problem at that point.
• 21:56
  [A] Yeah, that's true.
• 21:58
  [E] That's how I Got into it. I am a much better ice cream maker now than I was 11 years ago when we started. But yeah, you can just cut stuff up and put it into ice cream. That's. That's a little secret that, like, having an ice cream short store lends me the credibility of being able to make an ice cream flavor that people are going to think is a real ice cream flavor.
• 22:18
  [A] Bears and ice cream. It's not illegal.
• 22:20
  [E] It's not illegal. I wouldn't do it because they are hard as.
• 22:23
  [A] Yeah. Because then they freeze. But.
• 22:25
  [E] Yeah. So of course you came up with, like, the one example of a bad ice cream flavor.
• 22:30
  [A] It's true. It's true.
• 22:31
  [E] It's. It's almost as if, like, we planned that in advance, which we didn't, but we ought to have because I don't think it could have gone better. Everybody else was thinking of, like, well, what's the worst ice cream that I could come up with?
• 22:42
  [A] And I was thinking in the back of my mind about certain. Certain events that involve certain mutual acquaintances and the worst ice cream you've ever forced someone to eat.
• 22:52
  [E] Oh, yeah, man. Everybody has a price. Every. Every man has a price. And it turns out that I will make whatever shitty ice cream you want me to make for $4,200 to charity. That's my price.
• 23:06
  [A] I forget what was the shitty ice cream?
• 23:09
  [E] Okay, so the shop loves Carly Rae Jepsen. And so we have two Carly Rae Jepsen ice cream flavors, and one of them is Carly Mal Ray Jepsen, which is black raspberry ice cream with brownies and caramel. And then we added malort to that.
• 23:23
  [A] Tried to erase it from my mind.
• 23:24
  [C] Was that. Was that a big seller or are people there for the malort?
• 23:27
  [E] Yeah, they were. I sold it out real fast. Like I said, we raised $4,200 for charity on that one. Yeah. Was a terrible ice cream, but it was wild because you. You tasted it and you're like, oh, this is fine. I got some black raspberry. I got some cat. Oh, no. Like, it was at the very end. And then your mouth tastes like gasoline and grapefruit. Like, it really came through. The malort really came through in a bad way. In. In. We're. I think we're going to do that fundraiser again. So if anybody has ideas for a terrible ice cream that doesn't involve meat, we can talk about it.
• 24:10
  [B] I was gonna suggest something with anchovies, but that's right out.
• 24:15
  [E] We could maybe mix the anchovies in afterwards or do Like a fish sauce. Caramel, actually.
• 24:19
  [B] Fish sauce. Caramel is really good. Red boat fish sauce used to sell caramels. And they may still do that, actually, and pretty good, if you like that.
• 24:28
  [A] I can see that.
• 24:29
  [B] You know, do.
• 24:30
  [D] Do Everclear and get the frats.
• 24:33
  [E] Yeah, it won't stay frozen, I don't think.
• 24:35
  [A] I guess it depends on how much you put in.
• 24:37
  [E] Imagine that it. It's much. Yeah, I was gonna say another alcohol, though, right?
• 24:40
  [B] Grain alcohol. So it's, you know, cool.
• 24:42
  [A] You. You just invented homeopathic ice cream.
• 24:45
  [E] We cook the alcohol off also, so to. To say.
• 24:50
  [B] Yeah, Everclear, not exactly known for it. Aromatic qualities, the same street savory aftertaste. Yeah, no, there's. There's nothing there. There's no there there.
• 24:59
  [A] I mean, like now. Now that you have. Have access to. To this audience, we can guilt them into. Into raising ever more money for making people eat the worst ice cream you can come up with. That's true. That. That's true. That was Tweety Fish.
• 25:16
  [E] Yeah, but it's not. It's not me. That's the thing. It's like, I. I think. I think, yeah, I'm a man of the people. And like I said, that actually got out of control pretty quickly because. Because I said, like our. Our commission. Like we do commission ice cream. And I think I said, like, I'll make you mallard ice cream if you raise 200 for charity. And like, it got raised, no joke. Someone. Someone put in $180. So, like, the first person paid the per. I think Sam put in $20, and then the second person put in 180. So it was like. So I was like a 500 and then it went up to 550. It. It went crazy. So one, like, we've talked about doing the fundraiser again and having, like, people
• 26:00
  [A] pay and then winner.
• 26:02
  [E] So winner has the Highest back, costs $5 towards the charity. Yeah.
• 26:08
  [A] That is the nice thing about Blue Sky.
• 26:09
  [E] I mean, like a terrible ice cream.
• 26:11
  [A] When snap benefits were all all sorts of sideways, we accidentally raised $60,000 without really trying very hard. So, like, we should. We should figure out how to. How to weaponize normal men for making people's taste buds miserable is what I'm saying here. I think that's a little hot.
• 26:30
  [E] You think normal men could raise a hundred thousand dollars for charity? It's ambitious with the terrible ice cream flavor.
• 26:35
  [C] I mean, 75. We can.
• 26:36
  [A] I'd pay 75 right now to make George eat Malort.
• 26:40
  [E] 75.
• 26:41
  [C] I don't know, I think that fish sauce caramel sounds pretty good. Honestly, I think.
• 26:44
  [A] Yeah, that's too good. That's too good.
• 26:46
  [B] Yeah.
• 26:46
  [D] I would also pay 75 for George to eat the Malort ice cream.
• 26:51
  [B] I'm definitely not paying anything for that.
• 26:54
  [E] So that's what 225 we're at.
• 26:56
  [B] I'm not paying anything for that financially anyways.
• 26:58
  [E] I, I, my, my favorite thing about that was that lots of people were like, no, it's good. And it, it wasn't like, I, I can, I can say that objectively. I made it. I know it wasn't good.
• 27:08
  [A] They say it's good, but then you check the bush next door and I don't know.
• 27:13
  [D] People are really into Malora.
• 27:16
  [B] The Chicago.
• 27:17
  [D] Yeah, people, people always posting about it on Blue Sky.
• 27:20
  [E] So somebody, somebody from Chicago drove to Boston. No, sorry. Somebody from New York drove up to Boston to pick up 10 pints of the ice cream with dry ice or 20, 15 pints of ice cream from the dry ice with dry ice and then drove it to Chicago to hand deliver 15 pints of this ice cream to people in Chicago. This was a. Intrastate, intra straight.
• 27:52
  [B] The way you remember that one is that the interstate does not go inside. It goes across to another intro.
• 27:58
  [A] I mean, you, you say that, but we live in Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah. 95 is just a circle. Didn't you know back.
• 28:05
  [C] We're back to the Massachusetts R problem here. They're, they're never going to be normal.
• 28:09
  [E] You, you ought to tell people about lemon stick because you know about those from Baltimore. Right. But do you, are you, do you represent Baltimore?
• 28:16
  [C] Represent Baltimore. But I have had a lemon stick before and they're delicious.
• 28:18
  [B] What is a lemon stick?
• 28:20
  [C] So you take a candy stick and you jam it in a lemon and
• 28:23
  [B] I think that is a candy stick.
• 28:25
  [C] So like, like a, you seem like, like those hard candy, like, like barley candy sticks that like a, they're like.
• 28:31
  [A] You are adding so many new words to my book.
• 28:34
  [C] It's kind of like a candy cane, but it's not necessarily candy cane flavored. I believe the canonical lemon St. Peppermint flavored.
• 28:40
  [E] Yeah, it is. Is it isn't that candy cane flavor?
• 28:43
  [C] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so basically you take a candy cane and you jam it into a lemon and that's.
• 28:50
  [E] And then you suck the lemon juice through the candy cane.
• 28:52
  [C] Yeah.
• 28:53
  [A] This sounds, this sounds like it needs gin.
• 28:55
  [C] It would probably benefit from gin.
• 28:57
  [A] Yeah, yeah.
• 28:58
  [E] Anyways, I had one of these when I was 8 years old in Baltimore.
• 29:02
  [C] Yeah.
• 29:03
  [E] And Then never saw it again anywhere else in the world. And thought that I imagined it until like five years ago when I was talking to someone from Baltimore and I was like, do you know about these things? And. And they did. And so it's an only Baltimore thing. But we make a lemon stick ice cream that is lemon ice cream with crushed candy cane in it. Yeah, I, I really like making regional flavors except for Malart. Like, like flavors that people, people are going to be excited about if they're not from Boston and they come in. So we make Superman ice cream, which is from the Midwest.
• 29:39
  [C] What is, what is Superman ice cream?
• 29:40
  [B] I was going to ask the same thing.
• 29:41
  [E] Oh, sorry. Superman. Everyone makes it differently. It's blue, yellow and red ice cream. And everyone makes the blue, yellow and red flavor differently. We make blue moon for the blue, cherry for the red and blue moon. Like, like the beer or like lemon for the yellow. No, no. Blue Moon is another flavor that everyone makes differently, which is close to like blue raspberry.
• 30:03
  [B] That went from sounding pretty good.
• 30:06
  [C] Yeah, yeah.
• 30:08
  [A] That's not bad.
• 30:09
  [E] Yeah, yeah. But we had like a guy from Michigan come in and not realize that, that Superman is a, is a Midwest only flavor. He's like, I never see this around here. And like nobody knew, nobody knows what it is. We make grape nut, which is like northeast regional flavor and also happens to be one of the two most popular flavors in Jamaica somehow from the Canadian maritime. Trying to think of what other regional flavors. Basically, if somebody is from somewhere and you can only get that ice cream from there and they tell me about it. I'm going to try and make this one's.
• 30:45
  [C] This one's for George. Have you, have you ever considered a Nanaimo bar ice cream?
• 30:49
  [B] I was literally just going to say that because that's one of the only foods that British Columbia actually has claim to that's any good.
• 30:55
  [E] What, what is that?
• 30:57
  [B] The bottom layer, It's a, it's a dessert bar. So the bottom layer is like usually oat, kind of oat and chocolate ganache kind of deal.
• 31:06
  [C] Coconut involved too?
• 31:08
  [B] Coconut? Yeah, some coconut. So it's kind of cakey, but like really dense. Not a cookie, not a brownie, but kind of in that neighborhood. And then the second layer is a like baked vanilla custard. So think texture wise kind of similar to cheesecake, but it's more custardy than cheesecake. It's. It's not cheesecake. And then the top layer is a dark chocolate ganache.
• 31:32
  [C] It's like a fridge dish dessert. It's not, not quite frozen, but meant to be cold.
• 31:37
  [B] Yep.
• 31:37
  [E] I mean, yeah, this sounds like.
• 31:40
  [B] Absolutely.
• 31:41
  [A] Yeah, yeah.
• 31:42
  [C] This is a, this is a British Columbia thing, so.
• 31:44
  [E] But yeah. And, and can you buy it like, do you buy it at the grocery store? How does it work?
• 31:51
  [B] Yeah, I, I, I think they were in grocery stores when I was growing up. Certainly any like dessert counter would have like, any bakery would have like Nanaimo bars or whatever. Any small town coffee shop, especially on the, on the B.C. coast up where I was, they weren't as much of a thing, but they like Vancouver, Vancouver island, the Gulf Islands. Like. Yeah, it's all over the place. BC Fairies. Every snack counter on every BC fairies trip you ever take, there's an IMO bars on there.
• 32:14
  [E] Is it, it's served cold.
• 32:15
  [A] Yeah.
• 32:16
  [C] We'll get you some details. I'm very, I'm very curious about follow up on this one because I love an Animo bar.
• 32:22
  [B] Yeah, they're, they're pretty, they hit they, they're, they're pretty great.
• 32:26
  [E] So like the easy way to do that would, to just be to cut up the bars and put them into ice cream.
• 32:32
  [B] I think the way you would probably best do it is do like a sort of a cut like a really yellow custard ice cream. Like, like almost like a, like a custard. Really more than an ice cream. I don't know if that, if, if y' all dip into the custard side of the pool because I know they're different, but like a custard, yellow custard ice cream and then like chunks of the cakey part and then like swirls of chocolate or maybe like chunk chocolate chips or whatever.
• 32:56
  [E] You know, as a Canadian, you might not have to file FDA or follow FDA title 21.
• 33:01
  [B] Knew we were going to get to this. Yeah.
• 33:07
  [E] But it sounds like you want me to make a custard which wouldn't be an ice cream.
• 33:13
  [B] Are you, are you allowed to sell an ice cream that's just labeled as a custard? Like can you if you wanted. I mean.
• 33:19
  [E] Yeah, yeah, I can do it.
• 33:22
  [B] Whatever the FDA is with respect to ice cream shops.
• 33:26
  [A] So. George, it's 2020.
• 33:30
  [E] Yeah, it really only, I think it really only impact ice cream labels in a, in a grocery store. So if you want to, if you want to label your product as ice
• 33:43
  [C] cream, you gotta be like a certain percentage of, of milk fat.
• 33:46
  [E] Yeah, yeah. Above. Above 10 milk fat and below 100 overrun. And then each gallon has to weigh four and a half.
• 33:54
  [A] Like exactly.
• 33:55
  [E] And then the other two I'm a little less than. I mean, sorry. Over. Over four and a half. And then each gallon has to have like a pound and a half of milk protein solids or something like that. And then the next one is the egg percentage, which is like 1.2% or 1.6% egg yolk by volume or by weight. But then, I mean, there is. There is frozen custard here. I think around here you don't really find frozen custard on the shelf, probably because of cost, but I don't know. I don't know why. But yeah, so that's what I was gonna say is that it'd be the easiest way to make an ice cream out of Nanaimo. Isn't that the writing month? So Nanaimo bar, you could just chop up Nanaimo bars and put them into ice cream. That's the easiest way. Or you could, like, identify the elements of the Nanaimo bar that you can transfer to the platform of ice cream, which is, I think, what George was starting to talk about.
• 34:45
  [C] That's right.
• 34:45
  [A] That's very technical.
• 34:46
  [B] That's the more sound way to do it. Just based on my experience of Nanaimo Bars.
• 34:50
  [E] Yeah, it's a worst way for me because we have only a short amount of time to make enough ice cream to sell and not a lot of space. So over the summer, I don't experiment too much just because we don't have any time and we have a small store with 535 square feet of space that we have to fit also the freezers in.
• 35:17
  [C] So how seasonal are you guys? I mean, like, ice cream shops are kind of one of the classic examples of super seasonal retail.
• 35:22
  [E] But, yeah, exceptionally seasonal. We will have weeks in January, February, sometimes December that do significantly less sale sales than we'll do in two hours on a Saturday. Sometimes after October 1st it goes down, and then after Halloween it goes way down, and then it doesn't turn back on until it starts. Like, we have those like. Like the fake. Like last week, but. Yeah, like last week. Yeah. Last week, though, was. Was the first time that Tuesday was like, 75 degrees and we did, like, summer Saturday numbers on a weekday for the first time with fake spring, like this first time in 11 years. Like, I almost didn't put a second person on that night just because I didn't expect it to be super busy. And then. And then it was crazy. And then, you know, like the next day we went, like, way back down to under a hundred dollars or something because it was raining or something like that. But what ends up happening is that like this, this past Saturday was 48 degrees or 47 degrees, but it was bright sunshine for the first time in two or three days. And we did like pretty well, not as well as that Tuesday, but did pretty well for a 48 degree Saturday. So yeah, so like ice cream just drops completely off in the fall and then doesn't turn back until random blips in March and then it'll go up a little bit in April and then May is just crazy every single day because everyone's getting their first ice cream cone of the year. And it's, it's like kind of like the opposite problem that we normally have where we're just trying to hang on and make enough ice cream. I did just get a new freezer that has 16 flavors instead of 12, which will allow me to store eight extra buckets of ice cream, which is about one extra day's worth of summer sales. So that should, that should help significantly. Last year, I think twice we had to close because we ran out of ice cream.
• 37:16
  [A] No, I believe it. I've seen the lines.
• 37:19
  [E] Ed's laughing because he's like, haha, you're an idiot, Aaron.
• 37:22
  [A] I mean, yes, but that's not why I'm laughing.
• 37:24
  [E] You're an idiot, Aaron. Haha. And I am like, that's true. That's, that's not, yeah, that's not, that's not what happened here. Like we just didn't have enough ice cream and couldn't make any. And it's, you know, we can't make ice cream every day. And the place where we get our dairy from doesn't deliver on Sunday. So. And you have to call on Friday if you want Monday delivery. So if something happens on that Friday and we don't get ice cream, we don't get dairy on Saturday or Sunday, then we can't make it and then we're out on Monday or Tuesday.
• 37:54
  [C] That's gotta be, that's gotta be tricky. Particularly when, you know, like demand is super weather dependent.
• 37:59
  [E] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, we, I, we just don't have that much storage. I think we can store like 40, 40 to 60 buckets. But we also do wholesale, which is more consistent every week from day to day, from week to week. And so we get into a situation sometimes where we have too much ice cream in the, in the freezer and we can't make ice cream that day, which means that I don't have enough wholesale for the next day. Like I don't have enough pints to Bring out to the grocery stores, which is, you know, the opposite problem. So, yeah, so in, in May, we're just like full production as much as possible every single day and it moves. And then the shoulder months are a little bit more challenging from production perspective because we can't, we can't go into full production until we know we're going to sell it because we don't have the room to store it.
• 38:53
  [B] Is that the sort of thing where getting, I mean, obviously you can't make your shop bigger, but like getting a place that just has freezers to store some ice cream in inventory would help or is it more complicated than that?
• 39:05
  [E] It would help, but then I'd have to deliver the ice cream to the store. So it's, it's the kind of thing where I'm at, you know, a certain level and getting that, getting that production space would allow me to go much bigger, like, you know, two or three times bigger, but it also have to be two or three times bigger in order to afford the production space. So, you know, like, it's also something that's different since the pandemic because in 2020 we took, we had, we had, I think we had like 20, like 20 chairs, like seating for 20 people in the, in the shop. And we took it out in, you know, March of 2020. And then by, I think like July or August, I had bought two new freezers because we had transfer. We started, we did. We didn't start doing wholesale until the pandemic started. And now there's no seating in the, in the shop because it's all extra freezers. That is storing ingredients or wholesale thing.
• 39:59
  [C] Anything different counter seasonally, like, like in terms of like winter wintry treats or. Is that not really an option?
• 40:07
  [E] No. Yeah. I mean, like, because we don't have seating, people won't come in for hot cocoa. Really. A couple years ago we tried to sell hot dogs. Actually, I say a couple years ago, but it was a couple years before the pandemic. So like, like in like 16, 17, we tried to sell hot dogs for a couple years or for a year or so. And the, the hot dog machine kept breaking and I electrocuted myself four times trying to fix it. So after the fourth time, I was like, I guess we just don't sell hot dogs anymore. Three times, two times. We keep doing the hot dogs, but we do an ice cream advent calendar in, in December. That's like ice cream, like a cup of ice cream every day and then like a gratitude activity and like some sort of Other thing, like. Like some. Some writing that I've done or like stories from my past of when I was a tour manager for a band. And that actually changes November December sales pretty dramatically. It makes those months profitable as opposed to not profitable.
• 41:03
  [B] Is that. Do people come in and buy that at the store or do you ship it out?
• 41:07
  [E] Or it. Yeah, it's just in the store. I might try and sell it for shipping, but the problem is that like, to. To ship one offs. Is it. It's like really expensive. Dry ice is super expensive. Shipping is really expensive. And I think, like, it would cost like between 50 and 80 dollars. Consider though, these people, and by these
• 41:30
  [A] people, I mean blue sky people.
• 41:31
  [E] Some people would pay for that.
• 41:32
  [A] We'll give you that money.
• 41:34
  [B] They will.
• 41:34
  [E] But it feels bad to me, like, to. To charge that much for it.
• 41:38
  [A] It's true. And dry ice is the worst thing in the world.
• 41:41
  [E] Yeah, but it. It's a lot of work too, to. There's. There's a place around the corner that sells it. Like, think about like, the most towny Paki that you can imagine.
• 41:53
  [A] I know the one.
• 41:54
  [B] Wait, translate those words to not Massachusetts Speak.
• 41:58
  [E] No, sorry. Okay, those words.
• 42:00
  [A] Those words are untranslatable.
• 42:03
  [C] So Paki townie pack. We have to be specific about this because we've been doing sore discourse on boy Scott. So Paki in this context is a contraction for package store, which is my understanding is what. Is what the good citizens of Massachusetts call their liquor stores.
• 42:20
  [E] Yeah. Do you not call those Pakis? No.
• 42:23
  [C] No one else calls them Pakis.
• 42:26
  [A] No, no, they don't call them those in New Hampshire. Yeah, well, in New Hampshire they are the.
• 42:32
  [E] The state. Well, of course, those wouldn't be Towney Pakistan.
• 42:36
  [A] That's true. That's true. Those would be stadium Pakis.
• 42:39
  [E] So.
• 42:40
  [D] So do they call them that in. Do they call them that in Maine?
• 42:44
  [A] No.
• 42:45
  [E] I had no idea.
• 42:46
  [D] Okay, so this is just a mass.
• 42:47
  [A] I never heard it in my life until I moved here.
• 42:49
  [E] Okay, well, I. I'm not usually Rhode island might.
• 42:52
  [A] But those are degenerate.
• 42:53
  [E] I'm not usually this provincial in my. In my vernacular. Sorry. Think about the most, like, Massachusetts bodega style store and then like, this is the person. This is the store that was selling the dry ice that shipped the Moderna vaccine
• 43:11
  [A] screw.
• 43:12
  [E] Like, they had the contract for that. So, like, I have the guy's number and like, I can just call him and like, you can get dry ice. So the dry ice isn't the problem. It's. It's like all of it?
• 43:21
  [A] No, I just hate handling it because I've had to ship stuff before, and it's like, this stuff is the worst to deal with.
• 43:27
  [C] Take the skin right off your fingers.
• 43:28
  [E] You ship the. Yeah, you ship the. The dust guards with dry ice.
• 43:34
  [A] Yes, naturally. I mean, like, look, you want those to show up for steam.
• 43:39
  [C] That feels. That feels like a very. That feels like a very Cambridge story, though.
• 43:42
  [E] The.
• 43:43
  [C] The Super Townie package store that.
• 43:45
  [A] That is.
• 43:46
  [C] That is shipping vaccine.
• 43:47
  [E] I. Well, I don't know if they were doing the shipping, but they definitely supplied the dry ice. And I tried to get dry ice from him during. During the pandemic, and he's like, we get it from a place in Ohio, I think he said, and that they didn't have any. And, like, there was a dry ice shortage. I think, like, it's just, like, carbon dioxide. Right. Anyway, if a thousand people really want me to ship it, then I'll ship 10 of them this year. I. I like it. The. The Advent calendar. I like it because it's, like, the most recklessly ambitious project that I've taken on in the last couple years. And each day has, like. It's, like, all formatted and it's a lot of content, and then I. I sell it. And some people don't even look at the content. They're just there for the ice cream. And like. Like, part of how, like, I. It's. It's. I think it was $80 or $82 this year, which is expensive. It doesn't cover the cost of. Of the 24 ice creams. I mean, covers the cost, but it doesn't. Like, if you came in and bought 24 ice creams, it would be a lot more than $82. But, like, almost all cost is. I. Almost. Like, almost all that price is the content that I'm coming in.
• 44:54
  [B] So it's actually. I mean, you're coming out ahead.
• 44:57
  [E] I'm an artist, Ed. Right, yeah, right, right. Exactly. They weren't coming Lunar New Year. Now they are. So if I could just think of some sort of Advent activity for January and February. Yeah. President's Day.
• 45:12
  [C] Well, we'll see if we're still celebrating that one in a year or two.
• 45:15
  [A] Sorry, I'm. I'm having a Massachusetts moment. This is a different dry ice purveyor than the one I was thinking of.
• 45:22
  [E] Yeah, yeah.
• 45:23
  [A] Because the one I was thinking of is also the place where I got my liquid nitrogen when I lived up there.
• 45:27
  [E] Oh, yeah, no, that. That's. I know that. I know that. Place I got. I got propane from that guy for. For the. During the pandemic, for our heaters, for outside. And they loved to charge for propane that they didn't deliver.
• 45:43
  [A] I went and picked up the liquid nitrogen.
• 45:44
  [D] How many people live in Massachusetts? What is it, like a lot? 7 million or something, but not that many.
• 45:50
  [E] Yeah.
• 45:51
  [D] You guys all know each other?
• 45:52
  [B] Yeah, this is a real. You all know each other thing going on here. Jesse and Walter White thing going on where? Oh, yeah, you can get dry ice over there and nitrogen over there and all your other chemicals to make meth
• 46:02
  [A] wherever you need to. Why don't. Why don't you have liquid nitrogen suppliers, George?
• 46:08
  [B] I couldn't. What I would use liquid nitrogen for in.
• 46:14
  [E] Well, it's a commodity selling.
• 46:15
  [B] It's. I don't deal in physical commodities, Aaron.
• 46:20
  [A] So you're a coward is what you're saying.
• 46:21
  [E] Oh, boy. Why not? I thought you were gonna get me a television.
• 46:29
  [B] I really don't want to take delivery of futures ever. That's not. You don't want to be that guy because then you're trying to figure out how to rent tanker space in Cushing,
• 46:38
  [E] Oklahoma, do you think?
• 46:41
  [B] Not for the cocoa futures, but.
• 46:43
  [A] So is it. Is it just that it all gets settled in Cushing, Oklahoma?
• 46:46
  [B] Because I've heard, okay, yeah, gasoline and diesel are New York Harbor. Those are the big three. Henry Hub is in Louisiana. That's natural gas. And then contract specs for ag stuff is a whole mess. I don't even know. You don't need to know that.
• 47:03
  [E] Is this, like, how all the whiskey comes out of Indiana?
• 47:05
  [B] Well, no. So basically, when you're buying and selling futures, right? Like that's a future. Is.
• 47:10
  [A] Did we really get on to the future?
• 47:12
  [B] Is the right to. Not the right to the obligation to buy a commodity at some point in the future. And you have to standardize, like, where is that commodity delivered, right? Because if I am, if I buy on the computer screen, like, futures contract for 10,000 barrels of oil. Well, it doesn't do me any good if that oil is in, I don't know, Jamaica, and I need it in, I don't know, like, West Texas or I need in Houston to refine. So all these different contracts, whether it's, again, energy fusion futures, agricultural futures, whatever, they all have contract specifications where it's like, it is this amount of the product at this grade and delivered at this specific location between these specific dates. And that is, you have to do that or be, you know, you have to either be prepared to deliver or be prepared to receive that commodity at that time.
• 48:04
  [D] Yes. And do not ship your 12,000 tons of cocoa to Cushing, Oklahoma.
• 48:08
  [B] Yeah, don't do that. I wouldn't do anything.
• 48:10
  [A] They do not know how to of process.
• 48:12
  [B] But like you don't most. The vast majority, like I don't, like I don't even want to put a percentage on. It's like the vast overwhelming majority of. Of these futures that get traded every day, they don't actually get delivered. They get closed out by. By Longs buying them or Long selling their position and Shorts buying theirs back and then rolling to the next contract. That's how you sort of. Because they're, you know, there's contracts for delivery every month or every quarter or whatever it is, depending on the future. And so, so you don't. You avoid taking delivery by saying, okay, like I'm long this contract, I'm gonna sell that. I'm gonna buy the next one for delivery and then hold that for a month. Shorts are doing the same thing most of them do.
• 48:54
  [E] All of you guys all know this and Jordan was telling me this specifically.
• 48:59
  [A] No, it wasn't because I need, I need to walk you through why I wasn't listening to this.
• 49:04
  [C] I was trying to come up with a pun that involved the word fungible, but I failed. So,
• 49:11
  [A] so, so I just as. As George launched into yet another episode of the More youe know, I had realized what I was going to put in as the opening bid for the worst ice cream. You know, and that is because I mean we. You've already started trawling on the, on the Chicago ice cream, right? Pork pepper.
• 49:30
  [B] That I'd try it.
• 49:32
  [A] It's going to be. I mean I'd try it, but then at the same time like I was like, aha, I'm very smart. And then George keeps going on demonstrating that I'm not. But then I looked on the Internet
• 49:44
  [E] and he didn't need to. He didn't need to do anything for that.
• 49:47
  [A] I'm magnificently ignoring you right now. Aaron. 30 minutes ago Just use the word mutiliz mutualization in a truth social post.
• 49:58
  [C] Did he mess up mutilate or did he mess up utilization? This is really important.
• 50:02
  [E] It's the first one what that means
• 50:04
  [A] because of a topic we are not broaching because he's gross about it. But so I've, I've gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.
• 50:14
  [B] Because the rest of us with you.
• 50:16
  [A] Yes, but also it does at least occasionally let you Guys, talk about your favorite things, which is how terrible the news is. So I figured that would be a terrible, inarticulate, awful segue into the rest of the episode.
• 50:30
  [B] It's good because I, I, I was going to start talking about bond futures and that is a whole another fun thing because there's optionality. But you know what? No, we'll save that.
• 50:38
  [D] No, that, that's, that's way too often to pervert space.
• 50:42
  [B] Beauty of the basics, baby. Let's go. Okay.
• 50:44
  [C] Anyhow, George looks so happy there while he was rolling.
• 50:48
  [A] Bonds can only be discussed when Go Like Hell Machine is on podcast.
• 50:52
  [B] Well, no, but then we can't talk about.
• 50:54
  [A] Not because he'll. Not because he wants to hear it, but because I want somebody else to suffer.
• 50:58
  [E] Do you think, George, it's possible for us to, to come up with a commodity scheme to separate Ed from somewhere
• 51:06
  [B] between 30 and 70? Something I'm invest my time in. I'm gonna be honest with you, Aaron.
• 51:10
  [A] No, Yeah, I mean like I, I'll just do that myself. Laser cutters exist.
• 51:15
  [E] Oh, it's not.
• 51:18
  [B] Okay, I'm not. Licensure is your license for this. But I just,
• 51:30
  [E] I'm not, I'm not, I'm not saying like the money would get you.
• 51:36
  [B] It's much lower hanging fruit for me.
• 51:37
  [A] He's got a point.
• 51:38
  [B] That doesn't involve the cftc.
• 51:40
  [E] All right, you got to bring me back some.
• 51:43
  [D] George has an econ background, Aaron. There's none of that licensure and you know, morality.
• 51:49
  [E] It's just any of that kind of.
• 51:51
  [A] It's just ruthless optimization and then avoiding blame.
• 51:54
  [B] I'm pretty good at the former, not so hot at the latter.
• 51:57
  [C] All right, so that's, that is. That is a solid hour on ice cream. So yeah, listeners never let it be said.
• 52:04
  [A] And on how to take delivery futures,
• 52:08
  [C] a wide ranging conversation.
• 52:15
  [B] Look, if you're not sending cocoa to Cushing, Oklahoma, you're in a much better place than you otherwise would be.
• 52:24
  [A] Do you know, do you guys know about the decorative gourds guy?
• 52:28
  [C] Okay, I, I do not know about the decorative gourds guy.
• 52:34
  [A] So Reddit has a wonderful collection of degenerates who serve as cautionary tales about everything. And I'm not going to butcher the story, so George doesn't have the opportunity to correct me, but decorative gourds guy took delivery of a staggering number of decorative gourds at the worst, during the worst possible environment for it, AKA the pandemic, because according to him, no one was decorating their tables with decorative gourds that year.
• 53:02
  [C] Yeah, that makes sense.
• 53:04
  [B] Yeah. Okay. News. Should we do news?
• 53:07
  [D] Yeah, I don't. I didn't even know what a decorative gourd was.
• 53:11
  [B] It's decorative gourd season, motherfuckers.
• 53:13
  [D] Do people actually do this?
• 53:16
  [A] Yes.
• 53:17
  [C] You guys not in Florida.
• 53:22
  [A] I don't know.
• 53:22
  [D] Maybe people do. I never know anybody who did.
• 53:24
  [C] Is it all just like stunned iguanas as centerpieces?
• 53:31
  [D] Stunned iguanas and citrus. Yeah.
• 53:35
  [B] You know, you could marinate the iguana in the citrus and then put it on a pizza.
• 53:42
  [A] Yeah, you could level flat.
• 53:47
  [C] Yeah.
• 53:47
  [B] You thousand yard stare at the same time. For the record.
• 53:50
  [D] Yeah, yeah. It. It is of no joy to me that that happened in my hometown.
• 53:59
  [C] All right, so news.
• 54:02
  [A] You know what the best thing about this episode is? Proper's gonna have to write a description for it.
• 54:09
  [C] A conversation that turns both cold and crude.
• 54:14
  [B] Damn.
• 54:14
  [C] He's. Work on it. Yeah. You can do better.
• 54:21
  [A] All right, you can have your news now.
• 54:24
  [C] I don't have any news. I thought. I thought George had some news.
• 54:26
  [B] Well, I mean, we don't. We don't need to do more Iran talk. Right. Like, we, we went through it last.
• 54:33
  [C] Yeah. It's still awful. We don't know what's going to happen.
• 54:36
  [B] Yeah. Okay. All right, let's just skip.
• 54:37
  [D] No, I think they're going to. They're going to seize Kharg island and then Iran's going to shut the oil flow off and it's going to make it even worse.
• 54:46
  [C] Yeah, we've.
• 54:46
  [E] We've.
• 54:46
  [D] Except they're going to be shooting at our boats, too.
• 54:49
  [C] We've threatened a whole bunch of war crimes. We'll see whether or not we actually do them. I believe the deadline by which we've threatened to do war crimes by blowing up power generation in Iran, which they need because they need desalinization to have water, which they don't have enough of right now anyway. So, you know this if we in fact go forward with it. But I believe the deadline for that is about 24 hours from right now. So, you know, we're. We're hoping that this is just another instance of shit Trump says rather than a thing we're actually going to do.
• 55:18
  [B] But we have indicated is running the Pentagon, though, so concept of.
• 55:23
  [A] Did you have to say it like.
• 55:25
  [B] Yes, because it's true.
• 55:27
  [D] I mean, I doubt he is, because at this time of day, he's been drinking for 15 hours now.
• 55:35
  [C] You know, one thing in the tea leaves is that Hegseth has been kind of scarce recently. He hasn't done. He's done, I think, one presser since. Since the war started. He hasn't.
• 55:45
  [A] But did you see how unhinged.
• 55:47
  [B] Oh, no, I think he's done a couple, hasn't he? Didn't he do one last week or. No, that's.
• 55:53
  [C] That's the one I had roasted for a morning on. On the various socials.
• 55:57
  [A] I. I think there was at least two, though. There was the one where he admitted to. To doing war crimes, and then there was the other.
• 56:03
  [C] Maybe. Maybe I.
• 56:04
  [E] Him. He. He admitted to doing war crimes in almost every press conference he's ever.
• 56:10
  [B] I mean, it doesn't always come up, though.
• 56:12
  [A] Like, it doesn't always have him. Have him literally saying words that are like the. Do not say these words in the middle of the press conference.
• 56:22
  [C] That was my favorite description of Pete. Pete Hegseth is that he's the kind of guy who steals valor for war crimes. And like, I mean, he's. He's claiming. He's claiming stuff that. He's claiming war crimes that he didn't even do that maybe we're not gonna do.
• 56:39
  [A] And. But by claiming them, he is doing a work.
• 56:43
  [C] No, I mean, at this point, he's committing us to that anyway, so. Yeah, so Iran is still terrible.
• 56:50
  [A] He's committing himself to that. We have a nice place in the Netherlands. We can send him in 2029.
• 56:55
  [C] We'll see. We got to change the law.
• 56:57
  [A] Yeah.
• 56:57
  [C] Well, anyway, so Iran continues to be not letting a whole lot of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. There's no oil. The energy market guys are starting to get increasingly panicked about this.
• 57:10
  [A] Yep.
• 57:11
  [D] Ed was being sarcastic about a nice place in the Netherlands. By the way, we know on this show that there are no nice places in the Netherlands.
• 57:19
  [A] What about a bike?
• 57:20
  [B] In which case, what. Well, most of the Netherlands is pretty nice.
• 57:24
  [A] Or the headquarters of the Stellantis Corporation
• 57:27
  [E] isn't the sound Museum in Netherlands. In the Netherlands, the.
• 57:30
  [A] Which I don't know what that is.
• 57:32
  [E] Hold on one sec. I mean, you can keep going.
• 57:35
  [D] The what museum?
• 57:36
  [A] Thank you.
• 57:39
  [C] The Sound Museum, I think. I think Aaron said.
• 57:41
  [A] I almost misread the headline of Trump issues ultimatum to Iran as conflict enters fourth week as a Trump issues fourth ultimatum. But I think that would be missing a few.
• 57:52
  [C] The fertilizer guys are also starting to get worried because gigantic proportion of the ammonia fertilizer, which is what gets nitrogen to plants in heavy cultivation, also comes out of the Gulf. And there's some amount of dispute about how big A problem. This is actually going to be.
• 58:11
  [A] I think it's a little more regional than that, isn't it? I assume George knows it. Petroleum adjacent.
• 58:18
  [B] Yeah. So the way you get nitrogen for putting on crops is the Haber Bosch process, which requires natural gas. Okay. You can't really store this stuff very well. Like you can. It can sit in a warehouse, but that's expensive. And so people don't. And so it's highly seasonal in terms of demand. And right now we are in Northern hemisphere planting season or getting close to it. The thing is, a lot of the nitrogen was put on the ground last fall and stuff that's going in onto the ground for planting season is mostly onshore already. Like, if you're importing a bunch, you. Those shipments left the Gulf over the winter kind of thing. Not all of it, but like the vast majority. So probably for the most part. Okay. Now the problem with this is that there are going to be instances where there are like cargoes that we're supposed to get here that just didn't make it out of Hormuz. And people declare force majeure and then someone has to go buy the fertilizer at market prices. And there's none at market prices. And so someone's else is declaring force majeure and just selling at the market, which, you know, but roughly 90 is the number I've heard should kind of be already here. The bigger issue, I think is the Southern hemisphere's planting season and the Indian subcontinent, because that's the next planning season. So Indian subcontinent plants, when the monsoons come through, and that's an issue. Not clear how fast you can restart that supply chain. Not clear when that. When hormones even opens to begin with. Right. You could have a real hunger issue in India and Pakistan.
• 1:00:07
  [C] Yeah. There are various interventions you can do to try to cushion the blow from something like that.
• 1:00:12
  [A] This.
• 1:00:12
  [C] You could switch crops to something that fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere. Soybeans are probably the best candidate for that. But any kind of. Any kind of legume will fix nitrogen. There are various sustainable agricultural practices you could. You could move to if you had lead time where, you know, there. There are plants that put more nitrogen into the soil than they take out of the soil.
• 1:00:35
  [A] Here. Here in Prop. Propter describes crop rotation.
• 1:00:38
  [C] Yeah, but basically, yeah.
• 1:00:40
  [B] The problem with crop rotation though is that you get lower yields. I mean, nothing is going to be NPK fertilizer, fertilizers being, sorry, that's nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus fertilizers being directly applied to fields like there's a reason that the green revolution allowed us to get to work. Eight billion people.
• 1:00:58
  [C] Yeah, that's.
• 1:01:00
  [D] Proctor thinks the beans have to take turns.
• 1:01:05
  [C] You know, you, you're going to get less calories per acre out of whatever you're doing if, if you have to move to something that, that involves nitrogen fixation rather than just swapping a whole bunch of ammonia fertilizer on, on extremely high caloric density stable grains. And that's not so much a problem for us up here in the United States, but it is a big problem for Africa and it is a big problem for India, where you really need to hit your caloric mark to get people fed. And you know, if sub Saharan Africa has to switch to doing, to doing cow peas for a year, even assuming that they can work out the significant logistical issues involved in switching production over along the timeline that we're looking at, they're going to need help from somewhere to make up the deficit.
• 1:01:55
  [B] Practice. The way it works out is you just eat the, eat the lower yield bullet like you'll, you can still grow corn and grain and whatever, like on the same fields without nitrogen fertilizer. You'll just get less yield. Like that's, that's just it. You'll just get fewer bushels per acre, which, depending on the economy you're in and depending on other factors like the weather and all sorts of other stuff, is anything from a significant economic hit to the farmers to a lot of people starving to death. And there's just no way to really be sure which way that goes. I, I think as with petroleum developed market consumers will not face a food shortage. Like, we're not gonna, you're not, you're not gonna face a thing where like you can't go buy bread because we don't have fertilizer in the United States. That's not going to be a problem because we have the purchasing power to buy whatever scarce supplies are out there and bring them on shore if we need to. Leaving aside the fact that wheat, for instance, is not something we consume anywhere close to as much as we grow of, but, but leaving that aside, like the ripple effects of this fall on the developing world, overwhelmingly, and that's super duper true about petroleum and also going to be true about fertilizer and crops that need fertilizer to grow. So that sucks.
• 1:03:18
  [E] Is that something that's like where days, weeks, months away from this being an issue or it's already an issue because of what's happened already?
• 1:03:30
  [B] Unclear, I think. I think with the fertilizer store. You probably have more lead time because you're in a season right now where the timing works out that you have a little bit of slack in the system but it's not a lot. So you know. And then again there's so many factors that determine crop yields. Right. If you do have I can't remember what the number is if you just hold everything constant and just don't use nitrogen fertilizers but like I'd assume it's at least a 25 to 50 hit to yields I that's, that's just out of my ass. Someone's going to correct me on that I hope but like that's a big problem like 25 to 50.
• 1:04:09
  [A] I'm pretty sure someone on Blue sky is an expert at it I guarantee you and we want them to say hello.
• 1:04:17
  [B] Yes. So yeah that's a huge problem. I don't think it's. It Petroleum is a much more immediate problem because you know with crops we always, you're always growing seasonally right. Like you're never, it's, it's like Aaron's ice cream business really like you're Aaron can plan for selling lots of ice cream in the summer and not selling any in the winter just like farmers for literally what ten millennia at this point have planned for crops being plentiful in the fall and very scarce. When you're putting the you know there, there's more slack there whereas petroleum we are much more hand to mouth in terms of when it comes out of the ground and then when it gets ultimately used it's it that the, there's much less buffer there because it's an ongoing process constantly throughout the year that's been ruthlessly optimized to crazy levels of efficiency. Right now Saudi Arabia's oil exports, exports are close to half of what they normally are because they've got a pipeline to the Red Sea. There's no reason that can't be disrupted but for now it's open so their
• 1:05:23
  [E] normal don't tell them about it for
• 1:05:27
  [B] now they're, they're getting rid of about half of their crude production that way. The problem is products so that doesn't like there's a ton of refined products that come out of UAE and Saudi Arabia. I think the other GCC countries are smaller in refined products. If I remember correctly Kuwait probably has a fair bit it but half of Saudi Arabia's crude is still only about one quarter of the total through the, through the the straight and then that doesn't include the refined product. Side of it at all. So massive shortfall. And yeah, we've talked about previously what, what that's going to do. So, yeah, we're, we're, we're in trouble there. It remains to be seen how long the economic system kind of continues over the air pocket before people realize, oh, we literally don't have the physical inputs to do industrial processes anymore.
• 1:06:24
  [C] Yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:25
  [B] And that will, that will happen. It's going to happen as long as hormones is closed. Another week, two, three. I don't know what the number is, but we're going to hit an air pocket where stuff just stops. So. So yeah.
• 1:06:38
  [E] Do you want to know how that might potentially impact ice cream stores?
• 1:06:42
  [B] Yeah, I, I mean, my guess would be that a ice cream shop in Somerville is one of the businesses that you would pick to be relatively unaffected by this for a whole bunch of reasons. Right.
• 1:06:58
  [A] Depends. What, what refrigerant do you have?
• 1:07:00
  [E] Yeah. So I don't know about that, but when Texas had that cold snap a couple years ago and it shut down all the chemical plants, the coast, all the foam in the hardening cabinets that we use. There's one company in the United States that makes hardening cabinets, which is the freezer you put ice cream in to finish it. It goes down to negative 30. It's like somewhere between a regular freezer and a science, Scientific freezer. All the foam production stopped. And a freezer that I was told was going to ship in six weeks, shipped in nine months to. And it's not like, it's not like they're selling tens of these a day. They probably are selling one to two a week.
• 1:07:46
  [A] Yeah.
• 1:07:47
  [B] I mean, you'll. There will be impacts like that, like supply chain stuff, but how often are you buying a freezer? Right. Like you're not buying a freezer a week, I hope. I mean, if you, if you're buying a freezer a week, I. We need to have a conversation about your in. Input costs because.
• 1:08:00
  [A] Yeah, we're. We're in candles territory then. Yeah. I don't know.
• 1:08:06
  [C] I don't know how dairy yields vary with, you know, input to the cows, but there's been a lot of speculation that beef is about to get expensive. Oh, expensive.
• 1:08:18
  [E] Our dairy costs actually haven't gone up by per batch too much since we opened actually 11 years ago. And it, it fluctuates.
• 1:08:30
  [A] Well, yeah, you can get milk more than once from a cow. Aaron's looking at me like, is that true?
• 1:08:41
  [E] You don't throw away the cow.
• 1:08:44
  [A] I don't know what you do in Massachusetts.
• 1:08:46
  [E] But yeah. No, well, so, yeah. So our, I think our, our. Our dairy prices go up and down throughout the year, like consistently or every year, and they go like they're at a certain price and then they go up maybe 70 or 40% in the summertime and then they go back down in the winter time. Like so when demand is high, milk prices are higher. But then like the January milk prices every year are about the same.
• 1:09:18
  [C] So that's, that's just a demand story then. That's not really a supply story.
• 1:09:22
  [E] Yeah, I think so.
• 1:09:23
  [C] Yeah. That's interesting.
• 1:09:24
  [E] I actually don't know what those words mean that you just used, but I'm gonna. Because you looked, you looked like you knew what you were talking about.
• 1:09:30
  [A] He's very, he's very thoughtful.
• 1:09:32
  [E] Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. I just wanted to bring everything back to me. Is, is sorry. We can go back.
• 1:09:39
  [A] It.
• 1:09:39
  [C] It.
• 1:09:39
  [A] It's fair. Like ice cream is a much better thing to be talking about than like the other kind of ice, which is probably the other news story.
• 1:09:49
  [E] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just going to say that I think that there are going to be impacts everywhere that are maybe not as obvious.
• 1:09:58
  [B] I, I just mean when I say like a ice cream store in Somerville, I mean your, your clientele is probably a little higher income than the typical clientele in, in the US of like all consumers. Right. You're selling something where your input costs will probably rise, but not, it's not going to be like you're not a gas station, right. You're down the chain of a bunch of different stuff. You know, your business model is also not manufacturing.
• 1:10:30
  [E] Right?
• 1:10:30
  [B] Like, if you have a freezer go down, you're not a manufacturing business. I should say so in other words, like, if you have a freezer go down or you lose some piece of capital equipment that you can't immediately replace, like, you can still do some production. It's not like you're zeroed out. That's it. You're not an auto manufacturer where you can't get the chips, which means you can't build the cars straight up. Like, there's not really a plausible scenario where like, you can't get the milk you need. You know, if, if, if that's where we get to with this hormone stuff, like we got. There's other issues. Like your business model isn't the, isn't the problem problem. So, you know, I mean, I'm not, I'm not saying it won't have any impact on a given business, but I Think you're probably going to be better off than, I don't know, fast food restaurant that's got relatively high margins versus history and has raised prices a bunch over the past five years and suddenly their entire demand just evaporates because people are spending an extra three, four dollars at the pump. You know, where they do have that very, very price sensitive clientele. So, you know, just as like a, as like an alternative comparison. I'd rather be you than McDonald's is what I'm saying.
• 1:11:46
  [A] You heard it here first.
• 1:11:47
  [B] I'd rather be you than. The normal men are reasons too, but
• 1:11:52
  [A] the normal men are long on ice cream.
• 1:11:56
  [E] I'm a, I am a CEO that eats my own product.
• 1:11:58
  [B] Yeah. More than can be said about. Well, but he does, I guess he has technically consumed the product.
• 1:12:05
  [D] I'm not convinced that guy had consumed food before that.
• 1:12:10
  [E] Well, one thing that I've heard that I don't know, I haven't experienced yet is that I heard this about cupcakes a while back actually is when the economy is bad, people still want to treat themselves. So they may not go out to dinner and spend $120 on a dinner, but they'll still buy themselves a four or five, six, seven dollar cupcake as a luxury, like that's their treat instead of going out to dinner. Then I think ice cream may hopefully fit into that if the economy goes bad, which I hope it doesn't, except for.
• 1:12:41
  [C] Ah, well, fair. Well, we are, we are rooting for your ice cream sales to be driven by joy rather than misery in the future. Well, we're, we're pretty pessimistic, you know, here's hoping. Do we want to talk about the Senate?
• 1:12:59
  [B] Yeah, I think there's interesting. You had a really, you had a good week with your predictions there.
• 1:13:05
  [C] Yeah. Prognostication wise. So.
• 1:13:07
  [B] Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  [C] So one of the things that happened in this last week was that a number of senators started rolling out endorsements in contested Democratic Senate primaries. And it's a pretty clear set of senators that overlaps with the so called fight Club, which is a mostly but not exclusively older set of the Democratic senators that are primarily more lefty than kind of the center of the caucus. This is kind of the, the Liz Warren wing of the party. Chris Van Hollen's involved. Cory Booker might be involved to some extent. We'll see how much he sticks to that. Martin Heinrich, Tina Smith who's retiring. You know, these are, these are some of the old war horses of the caucus. Also some of the relatively younger guys who are, I think, putting together some kind of a leadership challenge to Chuck Schumer. They're pretty clearly very unhappy with some of the decisions he's made, particularly about the, particularly about folding on the, on the shutdown threat a year ago and on ultimately allowing the shutdown that happened in November to come to an end. Even though that was not, that was not his hand in that directly. That was a doubt. That was another group of Democratic senators who cut a deal to open the government back up. But Schumer blessed it to at least some extent and also maybe life. Anyway, so there is, there is a, a leadership challenge that seems to be marinating. The Wall Street Journal has very nicely reported article on it that put forward that Chris Murphy is probably going to be the guy that the Fight Club is kind of coalescing around as their, as their horse in the race, as their, as their potential future leader. I have to say that I'm not super optimistic about the chances of this leadership challenge succeeding. I don't think they have the votes. But there's enough potential new Democratic senators coming in to next year that if the endorsements they're making all break their way and those senators win, that could make a significant difference. You're talking about what could be a 5 or 6 vote net swing, which for a race where you only have to count to approximately 25 is a huge deal. We saw Stratton win the Democratic primary in Illinois. And she's somebody who has said that she'll vote against Chuck Schumer as majority leader. These guys, including Liz Warren, including Martin Heinrich, who's been in the news for other reasons in the past couple days, he voted to, he voted for cloture on the Mark Wayne Mullen nomination to lead dhs, which he's getting a lot of flack for right now. They also all endorsed Graham Platner up in May. He said that he would vote against Chuck Schumer. His opponent, Janet Mills, would presumably vote for Chuck. I don't know if she's actually said that, but Schumer's back in her candidacy, so it seems like a safe bet. And there are similar situations elsewhere. There's a split in Iowa where it's the same deal. There's a split in Michigan where it's the same deal. You're seeing the Fight Club Senators endorse one way and Schumer and the DSCC endorsing the other. And it's going to be kind of interesting to see how, to see how all that plays out. One point that's been raised is what is Chris Murphy doing here? Well, it seems to me that Brian Schatz right now, who is a senator from Hawaii who for a long time was, was extremely buddy, buddy with Chris Murphy, is kind of the heir apparent to Chuck Schumer. Whether that happens in 2027 or whether that happens in 2029, I don't know. But the Hill consensus is that is that Shats is, Shatz is the future leader unless something else happens. So what that means is Shats doesn't have to make a move here if he wants to lead the Senate caucus. He just kind of has to sit tight and let things come to him. Whereas if Murphy wants the big chair, he needs to make some kind of a play. Murphy's also probably a little bit more temperamentally aligned with the fight club guys than Brian Schatz is. The other major figure that was being talked about for potential future Senate leadership, Amy Klobucar is taking herself out of the picture. She's running for governor in Minnesota, so she's no longer going to be in the Senate. So that may be another thing that sort of clarified the future leadership picture there. Again, I'm not super optimistic that these guys have the votes or have particularly close to the votes, at least not this term. And it's really going to matter what happens in the election for that vote counting. But this is something to watch as we go forward. You know, I don't think this is a Democrats in disarray story so much as it is a desire to move on from Chuck Schumer, who, you know, we've been, we've been, I think, critical of him several times on the podcast here. I think he's done a reasonable job providing sort of ablative armor to his caucus. But he's taken some hits that have led the Democratic base to not trust him anymore and that have led a
• 1:18:33
  [B] lot of other parts of the caucus, too. So Proctor mentioned the Wall Street Journal reporting. One of the things that was reported in that story is that the breakaway negotiators over, I think it was the healthcare stuff in the fall. Right. That were negotiating with Republicans were not, it wasn't disclosed to the caucus that that was happening. So in other words, Schumer gave the blessing for them to go off and have a private negotiation without engaging the rest of the caucus over what they were giving up, over the negotiations even taking place, et cetera. And like that's, you know, you can have a debate about whether that's a good, whether the negotiation was a good strategic play or not. But the fact that he iced out a pretty substantial portion of the caucus from that discussion and let them sort of like hung them out on that is like, that's going to piss people off regardless of the greater political context.
• 1:19:27
  [C] Maybe, maybe this is, maybe this is a distinction without a difference, but the reporting is not. He knew what was going on. Okay? He was in the wood.
• 1:19:35
  [B] He didn't, he didn't say stop this immediately, like we need to discuss this as a caucus, et cetera. He, he. Yeah. So it wasn't, it's not that it was his plan necessarily. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But he certainly didn't engage the broader caucus in the conversation when he clearly could have done that and probably should have just for the purposes of man management or woman management. In the case of Warren, who was apparently absolutely incensed over this, which, understandable.
• 1:20:03
  [C] Warren, Warren said that Schumer straight up told her that there wasn't any breakaway negotiation going on. I don't know if that's true, but, but Warren was apparently nuclear hot about it. So, you know, I think it's pretty plausible that Chuck lied to her.
• 1:20:21
  [B] For my money, I, you know, I think Proctor's absolutely right that Murphy probably doesn't have the votes and probably won't get them. But I think the way I would want to understand this is what are four senators doing? My sort of four. Cooper's going to get elected. And so how he comes in and interacts with the Senate caucus is of much interest to me. Same story for Warnock, Ossoff and Gallego out in Arizona. Those four to me are, you know, these are young by the standards of the Senate or new in the southern tier and are in growth areas for Democrats, states that are swinging towards Democrats over time as opposed to the other way around. And I want to know where their
• 1:21:07
  [C] heads are at Gallegos. Gallego's in there with Fight Club. He already endorsed Platner. That, that, that may be partially an affinity based endorsement. Yeah, you know, they're both better at block.
• 1:21:16
  [B] Right. Like, like if, if all four of those guys go one way or the other on this. So, you know, Gallego's already on board with Platner, but like if, if the other three go with him, I would not want to be shats at that point.
• 1:21:31
  [C] You know, I think there's, there's also kind of an intriguing possibility here, which is that, that Murphy doesn't get the big chair, but there's enough votes that Schumer gets pushed out and shat's taking the lead gets accelerated. And, you know, maybe, maybe that's a situation where. Where Shats is, is majority leader, hopefully majority leader, and Murphy winds up as whip. And again, these, these are guys who've had a, who've had a good, not, not just a working relationship, but a good personal relationship in the past. And I haven't really seen any reporting that that's been broken, just that, you
• 1:22:07
  [E] know,
• 1:22:09
  [C] they seem like they're kind of on different sides of this, but there are maybe resolutions that put them back on the same side and ice out Schumer. So there will definitely be motion in the upper leadership ranks of the Senate Democratic Caucus because Dick Durbin's retiring finally and he's the, he's the Democratic whip. So, you know, the number two chair is certainly open and it would make a certain amount of sense to change this up and go into kind of the new Democratic era with a break from the kind of rear guard actions that I think Schumer has felt he's had to do over the past year to, you know, kind of keep his caucus intact.
• 1:22:58
  [A] Yeah, I mean, Schumer is obviously a sin eater and has been basically the whole time.
• 1:23:06
  [E] Sure.
• 1:23:06
  [A] And like, in that light, he's done better. Better than he could. Worse than he could.
• 1:23:12
  [C] Right.
• 1:23:13
  [A] But like, this stinks. Like, the, the way that, like this group is coalescing around people like Platner is disgusting. I hope Oren doesn't run again because I can never vote for her again. Like, fuck that. Nope. We don't. We do not accept Nazis.
• 1:23:34
  [C] It was pretty rough that Fox was able to put together an accurate attack article against Liz Warren, who had previously complained about Pete Hegseth's crusader tattoos, who is now endorsing somebody who had had straight up Nazi ink.
• 1:23:48
  [E] Took like 18 hours. Yeah, like that's, that's her future from now on.
• 1:23:51
  [C] No, I mean, I mean, they had that one locked and loaded and you know, they've got that dead to rights. That's a clean head. Either they matter or they don't.
• 1:23:59
  [A] Congratulations, Fox News. And like, I have not thought very highly of most of the other folks in sort of that we, we have to put a moratorium on letting them name themselves. Fight Club is the worst name I've ever heard.
• 1:24:15
  [B] I heard.
• 1:24:15
  [E] Ed one.
• 1:24:17
  [A] Yeah, okay, second. But like, I mean, when you think
• 1:24:22
  [D] Fight Club, you think Liz Warren. Right.
• 1:24:26
  [A] She's supposed to be the smart one. She had all the plans, man. Apparently those plans now include. Sure, screw it. Vote for the. Vote for the guy with Nazi Inc. Because he's going to do 4,951 against Susan Collins. Right. Like, is it worth it, Liz?
• 1:24:49
  [E] People think that they're running for president in 28, though, because, I mean, like, Lawrence definitely not, but some of them do.
• 1:24:56
  [D] I mean, Gallego definitely does.
• 1:24:59
  [C] Yeah, well, he's a.
• 1:25:01
  [D] We haven't heard from the Warnock or Ossoff on this yet. I think Ossoff clearly is running.
• 1:25:07
  [B] We're not, not going to be a presidential candidate. That I would bet. I would bet heavily.
• 1:25:13
  [C] That said, you know, some of these guys are going to be very attractive VP candidates. Like if, if we wind up with the white guy on the top of the ticket in 2028. And that's, that's certainly not a for sure thing. You know, right now I think Harris is probably the betting favorite. Guys like Diego. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:25:34
  [E] It's.
• 1:25:34
  [C] It's early. It's too far out. Guys, there's going to be some attention to coalition management with trying to get somebody like Iago or trying to get somebody like Warnock in the vpc.
• 1:25:47
  [A] Oh, yeah, you got to get the crypto lobby on board.
• 1:25:50
  [D] Yeah.
• 1:25:51
  [C] I mean, like, G is kind of a mess, but there are things that are compelling about it.
• 1:25:56
  [D] No, G sucks.
• 1:25:57
  [A] Yeah, no, he sucks.
• 1:25:58
  [B] Yeah. Guys, if you don't understand the electoral appeal of someone like Gallego, I think you've really missed some lessons for the past couple of years.
• 1:26:07
  [A] I mean, I think you can find another guy.
• 1:26:10
  [B] There are not that many dynamic combat vet Latino dudes floating around in the Democratic caucus. There just aren't that.
• 1:26:21
  [A] Okay, but he's also being. He's also being funded by the guys who are pushing fascism right now.
• 1:26:27
  [B] He would be my choice as vp. I'm just saying, saying there are reasons to choose him and they are legitimate.
• 1:26:33
  [D] No, I, and I, I agree there are reasons to choose him. I'm just saying he sucks because he's in bed with all these crypto fascists.
• 1:26:40
  [A] Yeah, there are reasons to choose him, but congratulations, you found a very good reason to, like, make everybody ask why vote.
• 1:26:46
  [C] Look, all the good stories going forward from here have at least some people who took, who took crypto money saying fuck you to the crypto guys. Like, like he'd have to, like, do that. But also, like, that's not totally out of character for Gallego.
• 1:27:01
  [E] I mean, like, seriously.
• 1:27:05
  [D] I mean, Gallego, of all of them, he seems like he stays really buddy buddy with Anderson.
• 1:27:12
  [E] Well, people make bad decisions all the time. We're all doing a podcast with Ed
• 1:27:16
  [B] Right now, this is true.
• 1:27:19
  [A] But I will say I have never gotten a Nazi tattoo.
• 1:27:22
  [E] Yeah, that's. That is a point. That is a point in your favor. So one thing that I was wondering, though, is, you know, that was all the. Everything you said, Proctor sounded right to me. But I'm wondering how much of the Platner support is about 28 and thinking like, this is a guy with momentum behind him. We're going to get in early and his fans will support us because we got in early.
• 1:27:45
  [A] Like, it's assuming his fans are chuds without object.
• 1:27:48
  [E] Assuming. It's assuming that if he doesn't like that, it's assuming that he gets in and then doesn't turn terrible really, really fast.
• 1:27:55
  [C] Yeah.
• 1:27:56
  [B] Which he might not. I mean, as long as he doesn't stroke. I mean, he's just this guy.
• 1:28:01
  [A] Yeah.
• 1:28:02
  [C] Like, I don't know. Like, there. There. There are people I know who know Platner who say very nice things.
• 1:28:08
  [D] Hitler really loved his dog.
• 1:28:10
  [C] Yeah. Like, yeah, all these people are weird people.
• 1:28:16
  [A] Lots of people like their favorite bargain.
• 1:28:19
  [C] But that doesn't necessarily tell you a lot about how he's going to vote when in office. And there. There are some real scumbag. As was a reliable vote for years and extremely. That guy.
• 1:28:31
  [A] Yeah, but. But like, here's kind of why. Why I'm thermal event about this.
• 1:28:38
  [D] Like, because you are.
• 1:28:40
  [A] You're assuming he can win. No, because I think Susan Collins is going to beat him like a God.
• 1:28:45
  [C] I don't know if he can win.
• 1:28:46
  [D] Really bad about this because this is like 9, 11 for the seven people who voted for Liz Warren in 2020.
• 1:28:55
  [A] I. And in fairness, I was.
• 1:28:57
  [C] I was. I was. I was also briefly a Liz lad. So. So I can't.
• 1:29:01
  [A] You know, I took the snake emojis personally. I'll admit that.
• 1:29:07
  [B] Congrats to me and lower tax for not falling onto that particular bandwagon at any point in time.
• 1:29:12
  [D] That's right. I. Well, I didn't vote for her.
• 1:29:14
  [E] I think she lives two miles from me. I have had to vote for her.
• 1:29:16
  [A] Well, so you're pure.
• 1:29:19
  [D] Yeah, I'm pure. No, I was just like, it's gonna be Joe. Who cares after you're.
• 1:29:23
  [A] You're pure in that Chapo Chapo Trap house sort of way.
• 1:29:27
  [D] No, no, because. Yeah, I was not. I was not all in on Bernie. But no, everybody voted after.
• 1:29:34
  [B] Also, he's not pure cocaine.
• 1:29:35
  [A] No, I mean, more like that. Voting's for squares.
• 1:29:38
  [D] Yeah. But everybody after South Carolina was just sort of like Joe's Gonna win. Who gives a shit?
• 1:29:44
  [E] Oh, so this, this will probably post by like, like later this week, right?
• 1:29:49
  [A] Wednesday, if we're good at this.
• 1:29:50
  [E] Yeah, yeah. So do we think a ICE is in the airport at that point?
• 1:29:56
  [C] Yes.
• 1:29:57
  [B] Yeah, ICE will be in the airport in the sense of. There will be ICE officers inside of airports. ICE will not be in the airport in the sense of ICE officers are conducting security screenings at TSA checkpoints.
• 1:30:08
  [A] All right, no, I buy that.
• 1:30:10
  [E] And has there been an incident yet?
• 1:30:12
  [A] No, but the day is young.
• 1:30:15
  [E] No, I mean like Thursday or by whenever, when we're recording this.
• 1:30:18
  [B] No, I think what they're gonna do is on, they're gonna just go into the airport and stand in the corner. And in your part of the country, Aaron, they will be sipping Duncan. In other areas, it will be something else probably.
• 1:30:33
  [A] George, I need you to focus on this. It's pronounced dunks.
• 1:30:40
  [E] Okay? That's how you can tell that Ed is a transplant. Because nobody from here. Nobody.
• 1:30:48
  [A] You say that, but it's not true. It's not true.
• 1:30:51
  [E] Nobody, nobody from here refers to it as dunks in the company of people not from here.
• 1:30:56
  [A] Oh, fair enough. I did, I did, I apologize. I, I, I did just. I, I broke the masquerade.
• 1:31:03
  [B] I apologize.
• 1:31:03
  [E] The Massachusetts. I like that.
• 1:31:07
  [B] No, I mean, the thing about ICE in the airports is that, like, TSA has been doing all sorts of incompetent, discriminatory, and generally like, bad stuff since literally it was founded. Like, the whole point is security theater. And, but professionally, yeah, they've been, they've
• 1:31:26
  [E] been doing all that bad stuff professionally.
• 1:31:28
  [B] Have you been through a TSA checkpoint in any time in the last two decades? Because, oh, boy, I hadn't seen much professionalism.
• 1:31:34
  [E] Them. My, my wife will.
• 1:31:36
  [D] They're not in masks shoving guys in buses and they're not.
• 1:31:40
  [B] But like, the, the airport is the one place where everybody there in that line has government issued proof of citizenship.
• 1:31:49
  [A] Yeah, but do they care?
• 1:31:50
  [B] I mean, come on.
• 1:31:51
  [A] I'm not saying that they're going to go drag a bunch of people out,
• 1:31:54
  [B] do that, but, like, they're being ordered to go show the flag. They're going to go show the flag. And if they end up actually doing the checkpoint stuff, that's going to take a while to get them. Literally training them to use this stupid little scanners that take the driver's license is probably going to take weeks because these people are all idiots. I agree with that. So, like, will we get to that point? I don't know. Maybe. But like, our big Wet president has said go into the airport. And I'm sure there will at some point be some sort of incident at an airport. But the odds of that incident, the odds of an incident happening or like just the volume of incidents based on them being there is way, way lower than them doing literally anything else. Literally anything else.
• 1:32:41
  [A] I think that's true. I also think somebody's gonna call them a piece of and they're going to get goomed about it at some point
• 1:32:47
  [C] or one of them is going to leave a gun in the bathroom or something like, like, like, you know. But I think one thing you're already seeing happen company is that things that are sort of within, within the spectrum of normal delays at airports are getting spun as being very directly the result of DHS choices, which is good. I'm flying this week and I checked, you know how the DCA delays are going because I saw the news, as I'm sure you guys did, that like Atlanta is experiencing something like five hour lines to get into the airport. DCA has got five minute lines right now. So like it's not like this is something that's happening everywhere, but anywhere it does happen, it's going to get picked up on by the media as being DHS's fault.
• 1:33:31
  [B] CLT has anywhere from four hours to five minutes through security lines. It's completely random when that happens. There's no understanding of like why it happens on a given shift or on a given day or whatever. It's just, it's. There's no understanding of like distribution of like how often it's crazy versus not that, but like you said, every time. You know, we're also flying this week and I have gotten several text messages from my wonderful wife with Instagram posts of chaos at clt. Meanwhile, when you go on the website and look the security wait times are typically under 10 minutes. Right. And that's fine. Like there's nothing wrong with like blaming all of this on Trump. Like fire away. I don't care all about it. Yeah, but, but like yeah, the information environment is working against them just as hard as it did when it worked for them in 2024 when they spewed nonsense. And I think that's true. Yeah, they can't control it.
• 1:34:28
  [A] But also you should basically like camp at the airport.
• 1:34:31
  [D] Are we sure that Atlanta isn't five or six hours just because that damn train broke down and it's just that backed up?
• 1:34:39
  [B] It's not that bad of a walk, honestly. Like it's not like Dallas, Dallas is.
• 1:34:45
  [A] If that Train breaks down, I think you're going to have Quest for fire within about 15 minutes.
• 1:34:50
  [B] All right, gentlemen. Well, thank you, Aaron, for stopping by and telling us all how to make ice cream.
• 1:34:56
  [A] And it was the worst episode I've
• 1:34:58
  [B] ever appreciated stopping by to make fun of Ed. That was also welcome.
• 1:35:01
  [E] Yeah, thanks for having me. I. I really enjoyed the time in. In the conversation. Except for obviously the. The conversation with that everybody else was too super normal.
• 1:35:15
  [A] It's aspiration.
• 1:35:16
  [E] Should.
• 1:35:16
  [C] I should point out that. I should point out that Aaron. Aaron is wearing a hoodie from Gracie's ice cream that is exceptionally good looking. So we're not.
• 1:35:26
  [E] This is. Ed, tell them what it's about.
• 1:35:30
  [A] This is. This is blatant brand impersonation of the local supermarket chain.
• 1:35:36
  [C] This is. This is Market Basket.
• 1:35:37
  [A] Right?
• 1:35:37
  [E] This is.
• 1:35:39
  [A] Don't ever do that again, Proctor.
• 1:35:41
  [C] That's your word.
• 1:35:41
  [B] I can't use it again.
• 1:35:46
  [A] I don't even have that accent and I'm just like, no, no, don't. Don't insult my weird neighbors like that real quick.
• 1:35:58
  [E] Sorry. People ask me like, oh, are you worried about Market Basket getting you in trouble? And like, yes, I am, obviously. But my sweatshirt says more for your freezer, which is like, you know, supportive of their brand and trademark. Whereas they did go after and send a cease and desist to the woman who was using Poor for your dollar as her brand in her. Her books and stuff.
• 1:36:20
  [A] That is pretty bad.
• 1:36:21
  [E] Yeah.
• 1:36:22
  [C] Different value proposition that you're offering here.
• 1:36:24
  [E] Yeah.
• 1:36:25
  [A] All right, well, I. I feel like the Demoula's family will would be. Would be appreciative of your homage.
• 1:36:31
  [E] We'll see.
• 1:36:33
  [B] All right, well, for normal men in Charlotte, I'm George.
• 1:36:36
  [C] In dc, I'm Proctor.
• 1:36:38
  [D] In outer Florida, I'm low tech speed run enjoyer.
• 1:36:43
  [A] Not in Boston, because Aaron will correct me, I'm Ed.
• 1:36:47
  [B] Stay normal, y'.
• 1:36:47
  [E] All. Sam.