March 9, 2025 • 27 mins
Clay Travis and Buck Sexton nerd out over history. Clay’s Quiz Bowl idea. AOC thinks Elon Musk is dumb. Kieran Culkin’s fun Oscar bet with his wife.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sunday Hang is brought to you by Chalk Natural Supplements
for guys, gals, and nothing in between. Fuel your day
at Chalk dot com, bold reverence, and occasionally random. The
Sunday Hang with Playing Buck podcast starts. Now, what I
will say about Trump talking about Canada becoming a fifty
(00:21):
first state. First of all, logically not a great idea
because it probably would give Let's just talk about the law.
Let's pretend that Canada wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
A fifty first state.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Both of those Senate seats are going left wing every year,
you're basically getting two more Vermont Senators, right. I don't
think that aids and abets the overall American political process,
and so I think that the idea is not necessarily
one that has a beneficial long range future. I understand
(00:55):
the concept of hey, inside of the federalism framework, we
don't have to worry about the trade disputes and issues
in tariffs that exist in North America. I also understand
the argument that basically Canada is around the size a
little bit smaller I believe of than California, and so
(01:16):
the concept of it being one state. Now, if you
wanted to pick a rural part of Canada and make
it the fifty first state and then a you know,
very cosmopolitan city based fifty second state, and so the
Senate seats canceled off. I actually think that would be
the more rational way to handle it personally, But that's
(01:37):
a dispute that what's happened back in the day. We
have an idea, and I think what Trump has challenged
on it that borders and territory are basically fixed in place,
because for much of North America, in most of our lives,
the map has been set. But if you are a
(01:58):
history nerd Bucky, I love old maps because you can see, oh,
here is the here is the Louisiana purchase, like this
is the French territory. Like there are maps that kids
were taught in America about that being in existence. I
have the only things of value hanging on my walls
(02:19):
are really old maps. I have a John Speed map
from the seventeenth century, so it's really a page from
an at list. I have that framed here. I also
have David Burr map. David Burr was New York State's
cartographer and in eighteen twenty nine, if to remember this
is before this is when there was no Google Earth, right,
(02:42):
so cartographers were really necessary, and it's important for business,
important for development, important for getting you know, to great
on Ethel's house up in Buffalo, like you needed to
know where the roads were and what was going on.
So he did a map of actually Manhattan in eighteen
twenty nine. That was part of the campaign and token
and make New York the Great American City over Philadelphia,
(03:05):
which had been the Great American city up until about
you know, eighteen twenty nine. That's right around when the
shifts started to happen for the commercial center and everything else.
So yeah, I haven't anyway, Sorry, you got me excited
with your nerd map talk. I got the only thing
that I spend money on that's like a sort of
a keepsake other than firearms, but I guess those are
not really well, yeah they're keepsakes. Is I have antique
(03:25):
maps on my walls, hundreds of years old. So what
I love about them is that they show you that
history isn't fixed, and that much of what we contemplate
as decided was at one point very undecided about what
the countries would look like, about where the borders would be.
And obviously many times that comes about as a result
(03:47):
of war, but it can also come from land purchases, treaties,
all these things. I mention Canada because if you go
back and look at the Revolutionary War, it was very,
very much possible at that point in time that much
of Canada, Quebec in particular, could have ended up a
(04:09):
part of the United States. And maybe buck should have
ended up a part of the United States from a
purely economic perspective. But the war ended up moving south
the Revolutionary War, and so the major battlegrounds again for
the history nerds out there, that started off when we
were fighting. Remember before Benedict Arnold was the greatest turncote.
(04:32):
He was one of the great American heroes of the
early parts of the war. We moved very much from
the northern border in our battles all the way down south,
and so we ended up walking away from the idea
of Canada being part of the American Revolution. But there
is a subtle twist of the historical record that would
have had Canada as a part of the United States
(04:52):
for all this time. I have an excellent book here
on my shelf. This is the Klay and buck Nerdouer
brought to you by Nerds all over Crucible of War
by Fred Anderson, which is about the Seven Years War,
also known as the French and Indian War, and it
goes into just a fascinating detail about you know, people
don't think of this really clay, but the French had forts,
(05:16):
you know, they had built forts in and around the
trading post. But that became really the frontier and British
and the French smacked together there and that led to
and the French and Indian War, and of course the
Indian allies of the French and then the British as
well played a critical role miss and then things didn't
go so well for them after. But you know, we
(05:37):
don't think of this as a a an area, a
land mass that was being fought over by imperial powers
at the time, and that it really was quite arbitrary
and things could have been quite different at the time,
you know, afterwards, based upon a few battles and a
few relatively uh you know, fortuitous happenstance situations. Okay, let
(06:00):
me give you my craziest decision any states ever made
when it came to territory. The state of Alabama was
offered before anybody knew that the sandy white beaches of
the Gulf of America would become some of the most
valuable real estate in all of America the state of Alabama,
because if you look at it, it doesn't really make
(06:22):
sense geographically, right, you have Florida, which extends as a
peninsula down and then you have the so called Panhandle,
which if you think about, you know, like a typical
pan like a small little strip of land that runs
essentially directly south of Alabama all the way down to
where it meets Alabama. Buck they offered Florida, did the
(06:43):
state of Alabama the right to take that land?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Alabama, some of.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You might say, this is just what Alabama politicians have
been doing for a long time. Totally bungled that offer,
didn't take advantage of it, and now that is is
the most conservative part of Florida. Now, no one knew
this in the eighteen hundreds when they were making that choice.
But if you go back and look at elections in
(07:11):
two thousand, certainly in two thousand, but in many of
the close elections that have occurred in our country where
Florida was sort of the tipping point, if all of
those votes had gone to Alabama. It wouldn't really have
changed the overall outcome of the state of Alabama. It's
a very conservative, Republican leaning state. Also, it would have
(07:34):
made the state of Alabama infinitely wealthier because the property
along the Gulf Coast is again some of the most
valuable in our entire nation. Now, instead they have a
tiny little pinprick Alabama does. If you look at the
way the map works of the Gulf Coast, and the
state of Florida has the most conservative ribbon running right
(07:54):
along the Gulf coast. That is the Panhandle from basically
the Florida Bama. For those of you who know that
bar which is a fabulous bar buck. Half of it's
in Alabama, half of it's in Florida. It's right on
the on the beautiful the Gulf of America. It's an
amazing spot. All the way down, all the way to
the Atlantic Ocean. You can be in the state of Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Didn't. Nobody knows this story. Didn't. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It would have been living on the Alabama coast. Clay West,
Virginia split off from Virginia right before the Civil War
during the Civil War. During the Civil War, the West Virginia.
The because it was a supremely mountainous region of Virginia.
They never had big crops and uh and uh and
(08:41):
and farms and slavery in the same way, and so
it broke off and became an independent state during the
Civil War eighteen sixty. Right, they refused, Yeah, I thought
they refused to recee.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And you know that's interesting because people laugh at the idea,
and you know, we sit here, we talk about how
many listeners we have in California and how we're you know,
we feel a strong bond with you Republicans in California
and in New York, you know, in these big blue states,
because we are the voice behind enemy lines for you, right,
you know, you're not alone. We're like the transmission on
(09:18):
the on the Ham radio after the zombie Apocalypse that says,
don't worry, like there is civilization. You can come to
these coordinates and we'll keep you safe from the zombies.
Every zombie apocalyst movie has that. But the truth is,
every time there's a conversation about a state splitting up,
people always dismissed it out of him. We've actually had
states split up into other states never mind no states
(09:40):
being admitted into the Union. Buck. You talk about old
maps back in the day, they had north and south.
I think that would be longitudinal lines, right, But the
initial colonies just continued west. They didn't really know where
the boundary of the states ended. So there are some
maps like you'll North carol it's not a it's not
(10:01):
a crazy thing that North Carolina and Tennessee are basically
on the same latitude longitude, not obviously, but you look
right across like that was the state of North Carolina
that just kept extending on into infinity until enough people
went into Tennessee and decided they were going to create
their own state. And you know, to bring it into
(10:22):
the current context, I think clay. First of all, Trump's
got a lot of negotiating going on right now regarding
the Panama Canal. There's been talk about Greenland too, and
the US having by contract, and obviously there's a whole
deep history here. We built the Panama Canal. We lost
a lot of people doing it. It was a hellish thing,
people dying of malaria and typhus and you know, yellow
(10:44):
fever and all kinds of stuff. But we built the
Panama Canal. And then Jimmy Carter right decided, you know what,
it's all, it's all Panama. And but the same way
that you know, why is Guama US territory? Well it
is because it is because we made it that way,
and everyone's seems kind of happy with it. There's no
reason why you can't have negotiations over some of these things,
(11:04):
because a nation is not just a land mass defined
by rivers, oceans, or mountains, right, I mean, there's always
there's always borders that are arbitrary that are drawn, and
there's competing polities, competing nation states that make determinations about
who should be in charge of what. In the context
(11:25):
of Greenland, you know what, it's it's Oh, it's been
a part of Denmark for such a long time. Why now, look,
if the people of Greenland don't want to be a
part of America, that's up to them, fine. But if
they wanted to vote in favor of joining US as there,
why is that such a there's nothing crazy about that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's funny, we think that's crazy. Why is that? Or
rather people say that's crazy? Why is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
This is because in most of our lives, maps have
remained relatively fixed in our geographic arena. And so that's
this is why I think is so important about this.
Trump is basically signaling the country isn't settled right, we
still have more growth and opportunity ahead of us, both
economically but also maybe geographically. And talking about it. Remember
(12:10):
when he first started talking about Greenland, everybody thought it
was crazy. Now I think there's a decent number of
people out there that are like, yeah, you know what,
they may vote to leave Denmark, stop being a colony
of Denmark, and maybe they would like to be supported
by the United States. We've had a new country, uh,
just over the last decade or so. Clay on the spot,
(12:31):
what is the new country?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
TikTok, TikTok?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
We got a million dollar question for Clay. I don't
know who the million is coming from. I'm just saying
it would.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Be I have nowhere.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I mean in Africa, it seems like they were coming
up with new countries all the time. So I'm very
close in Africa.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You're close.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
South Sudan, South Sudan, South Sudan, the newest not not
doing well these days, I might add, By the way,
no one pays any attention speaking of not Big Rock
concerts about it. Speaking of Africa, Buck, only fifty percent
of Africa has a electricity.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Do you know this?
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Only fifty percent of there's a big graphic about It's
like ninety percent of some African countries still don't have electricity. Well,
when you say electricity, you mean wait, are we talking
about twenty four to seven access to it?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Or are we talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think just like it's wired and you have, you know,
reliable access to Are we talking about by land mass?
But like the population centers in Africa overwhelmingly have electricity
in terms of from the New York Times that I
took a photo of over the weekend that I was
staggered maybe considered to be Yeah, that showed the percentage
(13:35):
of many of these countries that still do not have electricity.
When I was in Afghanistan, I think the estimate was
that roughly twenty percent of the country had access to
reliable Like this is the thing, right, reliable electricity because
you can always travel and get to a place as
a generator. So I think, you know, I want to
see what the New York Times is saying, how you
kind of frame it really matters, But about twenty percent
(13:57):
of the country had real electric access and twenty percent
of the country could read.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
That was the statistic they had.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
So here's a stat for you, Buck, forty five percent
of Nigeria doesn't have electricity. I just sent it to you.
This is this is nerd out stuff. We'll talk about
it when we come back. This was in the New
York Times over the weekend because I took a picture
of it Sunday hang with Clay and Buck. AOC has said,
and I couldn't believe this when I listened to it,
that Elon Musk is an unintelligent billionaire, in fact, one
(14:26):
of the least intelligent billionaires that she's ever met or seen.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
This is real.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
We're gonna play the audio for you, Buck. I have
offered up that I will host a quiz bowl, which
would be Can you imagine Elon versus AOC in a
quiz bowl? I think Ao Ao AOC's entire career would
be over. There are lots of things you can attack
(14:52):
people on. Elon Being dumb is maybe the worst front
I've seen in a long time. The thing about being
a very dumb democrat is you can be so dumb
that you think you're smarter than the smartest people on
the planet, which is an amazing thing. I mean, he's
better at sending spaces to rockets to space than NASA much. Oh,
(15:15):
he's not very intelligent, is unbelievable. Aoc She's like really smart,
and like she does not think that like Elon mister
like ooh space rockets like silly little bumper cars man.
She does not think that Elon Musk is impressive. And
here is the great future hope of the Democrat Party,
(15:37):
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortes.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires
I have ever met or seen are witnessed.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Which you know, you can.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Probably even glean that from watching these people on TV. Anyways,
all of that is to say is that they don't
do their homework. They're putting nineteen year olds in at
the Treasury. This dude is not smart. And the danger
in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise
that Elon has. I mean, this guy is one of
(16:12):
the most morally vacant but also just least knowledgeable about
these systems that we really know of.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Clay, how dumb do you have to be to go
in public and say that Elon Musk is dumb. You
could say a lot of things, but dumb is just
not one of the things you can say. I kind
of blown away by it. I mean, AOC, this might
be there's a lot. We got a bunch of clips
of people saying really stupid things on the Democrat side.
(16:43):
But to argue that the guy who is We talked
about this a little bit yesterday, Buck, but if anything,
I think it's being underanalyzed and discussed. We talked about
the historical record. Somebody called in I think or sent
us an email and said he's a modern day Benjamin Frank.
I don't think that's a crazy idea. You can make
(17:03):
the argument that Elon Musk is the most accomplished American
of all time right now, and some of you out
there are going to say, wow, that's I mean. He's
sending rocket ships to space more efficiently than NASA. He
has redesigned the way that a car is propelled. He
(17:25):
is people don't even talk about it. He's building tunnels, Buck,
that are like the greatest tunnels that have ever been built.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
The Boring Company, which is a clever name.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yes, yes, yes, he has bought Twitter and committed it
to First Amendment principles while also building a brand new
AI company that is built to some extent off of
the data coming from that. And he now is deciding, Hey,
I'm going to look at the books on the federal government.
(17:57):
And it reminds me a little bit wi you them.
And I read the book and I also watched it
the movie The Big Short, and the way that those
guys made money was they were like, well, what are
these mortgage backed securities? And they're like, well, they're actually
just a collection of, you know, hundreds or thousands of mortgages.
Michael Burry, who is the kind of the central figure
(18:21):
really in The Big Short, has Aspergers, Yes, and you
know Asperger's as part of that condition. I remember reading
about this in the book. You can often have people
who will become very fixated, and it could be like
a specific card game, or it could be I don't know,
any number of different things. But he became fixated on
(18:42):
mortgage backed securities and actually read the things that nobody
else would read. Literally, no one else would read it.
He's sitting there looking at Okay, well, they're like, the
risk is lower because it's a mortgage back security. We're
putting hundreds or thousands of them into these offerings and
nobody's actually looking and seeing like, Okay, what are these
actual mortgages? How connected are they? And his big bet,
(19:03):
which panned out, was that they were all connected and
there was going to be a mortgage crash. Can I
also point out that he has been unbelievably wrong about
the stock market constantly, it seems, in public, since the
Big since the big short, since his incredible moment of genius,
he has basically been horribly wrong on a lot of
big things, which which actually makes sense because pessimists can
(19:26):
be wrong about one big thing very often, but optimists
tend to win. And basically, what when you short something,
you are saying, hey, I am pessimistic.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
There is not.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
That that mindset, that contrarian mindset often ends up being wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
You are borrowing.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Shares to sell with the idea that it will go down,
the stock will go down, or the market will go down,
and you can buy it back at a later date
under a contract. Yes, and so he made a ton
of money there, He's lost a lot since. But my
point on using that as an example is he actually
went into the mortgage securities and looked and said, okay,
(20:07):
what are these made up of? And that, in essence
is what Elon is doing right now in the government,
because a lot of people just say, okay, well, the
budget is nine hundred and sixty four billion dollars for
this company and then they break it or this part
of the government, and then they break it out by
saying twenty four percent goes here, and Elon actually said, okay,
(20:27):
where are the actual ledgers, what is the accounting of
the nine hundred and sixty four billion dollars? Who's signing
off on these checks? Where is the money actually going?
And most people have ever even asked buck USAID has
a forty three billion dollar budget, everybody, forty three billion dollars.
(20:51):
It is operating as though it is entirely unaccountable to
the rest of the executive branch. It is not a
congressionally constant, tutored agency. It is a Jimmy Carter idea
as if anything else needs to be said, and we
just operate in this world.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Oh well, because it now exists, it exists forever.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I mean, Clay, forty forty billion dollars is a lot
of money. I mean, you know, this is no matter
who you are, that is an astonishing amount of funds
to be wasting. I mean, I'm just taking a look
right now. Anyoneant to guess what Border Patrol's budget is?
Border Patrol? I want you to just think in your head.
(21:34):
USAID gets forty billion, Clay, what do you think border
patrol gets?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Man, I do a legitimate sixty billion, one hundred billion,
seven seven billion. That's pretty crazy for border patrol. The FDNY,
the Fire Department of New York, has like a two
or three billion dollar budget. Our entire border patrol gets
seven billion dollars. This is the twenty twenty four budget. Everybody,
(22:03):
and and USAID gets forty billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, that's crazy. World, there's a big place. But what
matters to us more everyone?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Seven billion dollars is crazy buck Roughly, that would mean
I think I'm correct in this that basically a lot
of like the NFL teams spend more money to pay
NFL players than we do to actually secure the border.
(22:32):
Like that kind of the entire NFL payroll may be
bigger than what we pay for the border.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, but that's doesn't that sound crazy to you?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Like, I mean, when you think about the the that
that is, it is staggeringly woe to me some to
be I mean that that is, especially when you consider
what the cost of the failure to do it is right,
because whatever you spend on the protection of the border,
(22:59):
that I'm in disbelief. I have been very impressed with
mister Sequan Barkley's runs lately, though, to be fair, he's
been doing a phenomenal job. So those those those gentlemen
on the NFL are earning their earning, their their their money.
I am drinking my Crocket Coffee, the greatest coffee on
the planet. I am soon going to be signing my books,
(23:21):
one hundred of them stacked up downstairs. You can go
get hooked up at Crocketcoffee dot com and we are
gonna do at some point. I know Buck's got a
baby coming, so it's gonna be a little bit chaotic
in the spring, but for all of our subscribers, we're
gonna do some form of meetup. I've been saying I
want to go to San Antonio. I know they got
(23:43):
the final four there this year in San Antonio, so
that might be a tough overlap, probably hard to get
hotel rooms, but I want to go to the Alamo.
I want to go visit San Antonio again. I would
like to visit the Battle of San Jacino as well.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Again.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
History nerds are like, yes, this sounds awesome. Lots of
you are rolling your eyes, but those are directly connected
to Davy Crockett, who we named our coffee company after.
And if you love America and you love American history,
and every morning you wake up and as you get
your day started or you're reading about the news, you
want to celebrate the fact that you live in the
(24:19):
greatest country that it's ever existed while you have your coffee.
You need to be a Crockett Coffee subscriber. It's fantastic,
light roase, dark roast, medium roast, organic.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
What else? We got some other flavor, like we got
a decalf. Everything. You can everything, and please subscribe.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You get a copy, signed copy of Clay's American Playbook
if you subscribe. If you just want to try it
first to see how good the coffee is, you can
try it and then you'll want.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
To subscribe after.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
But use code book and you can get a sign
copy of American Playbook. I hate being wrong, so I
just have to take this one on the chin, I said,
I'm running off the cuffe here getting fired up that
Jimmy Carter started usaid, it was Kennedy who started usaid,
But as far as I'm concerned, that's not any better.
So just a quick ombudsman note there. Sorry, not always right.
(25:06):
So Clay, when we come back, Buck, I've got a
fun one that I'm gonna I don't know if anybody
else ever done this. I've been trying to get my
seventeen year old junior in high school to study for
the act and the sat I challenged him to a
head to head act challenge, which I believe we are
(25:29):
doing tonight. I'm getting a little nervous about how cooked
I might get. I have not taken a standardized test
in as you would well imagine, a very very long
time Sundays with Clay and Bus. I mentioned I didn't
watch the Oscars. I barely saw any of the movies
that were nominated for anything. I'm betting Buck, you did
(25:51):
not watch the Oscars either. But I did see this
come across my Twitter timeline during the Oscars last night,
and it's pretty awesome. Karen Coulkin, who is the brother
of Macaulay Culkin was a star in the show Succession
most recently and I believe won an award last night.
(26:11):
An Oscar got up on the stage and he had
a message for his wife, who made a bet that
she probably didn't expect to get cash this quickly.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Listen after the show, we're walking through a parking lot.
She's holding the Emmy. We're trying to find her car. Emily,
you were there, so your witness, And she goes, oh god,
I did say that. I guess I owe you a
third kid. And I turned to her and I said, really,
I want four, and she turned me. I swear to
God this habitage just over a year ago. She said,
I will give you four when you win an Oscar.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I held my.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Hand out, she took it, and I have now brought
it up once until just now. You remember that, honey,
you do okay? Then I just have this to say
to you, Jazz, love of my life, Eve, little Faith,
no pressure.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I love you.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
I'm really sorry I did this again. And let's get
cracking on those kids. What do you saying?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So this is great, Buck, You've got your first coming soon.
He won a third kid with his wife betting he
would win an Emmy. She said, okay, I'll give you
four if you win an Oscar. Back to back years,
he won Best Supporting Actor last night. I thought that
was pretty great.
Sunday Hang is brought to you by Chalk Natural Supplements
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at Chalk dot com, bold reverence, and occasionally random. The
Sunday Hang with Playing Buck podcast starts. Now, what I
will say about Trump talking about Canada becoming a fifty
(00:21):
first state. First of all, logically not a great idea
because it probably would give Let's just talk about the law.
Let's pretend that Canada wanted to be.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
A fifty first state.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Both of those Senate seats are going left wing every year,
you're basically getting two more Vermont Senators, right. I don't
think that aids and abets the overall American political process,
and so I think that the idea is not necessarily
one that has a beneficial long range future. I understand
(00:55):
the concept of hey, inside of the federalism framework, we
don't have to worry about the trade disputes and issues
in tariffs that exist in North America. I also understand
the argument that basically Canada is around the size a
little bit smaller I believe of than California, and so
(01:16):
the concept of it being one state. Now, if you
wanted to pick a rural part of Canada and make
it the fifty first state and then a you know,
very cosmopolitan city based fifty second state, and so the
Senate seats canceled off. I actually think that would be
the more rational way to handle it personally, But that's
(01:37):
a dispute that what's happened back in the day. We
have an idea, and I think what Trump has challenged
on it that borders and territory are basically fixed in place,
because for much of North America, in most of our lives,
the map has been set. But if you are a
(01:58):
history nerd Bucky, I love old maps because you can see, oh,
here is the here is the Louisiana purchase, like this
is the French territory. Like there are maps that kids
were taught in America about that being in existence. I
have the only things of value hanging on my walls
(02:19):
are really old maps. I have a John Speed map
from the seventeenth century, so it's really a page from
an at list. I have that framed here. I also
have David Burr map. David Burr was New York State's
cartographer and in eighteen twenty nine, if to remember this
is before this is when there was no Google Earth, right,
(02:42):
so cartographers were really necessary, and it's important for business,
important for development, important for getting you know, to great
on Ethel's house up in Buffalo, like you needed to
know where the roads were and what was going on.
So he did a map of actually Manhattan in eighteen
twenty nine. That was part of the campaign and token
and make New York the Great American City over Philadelphia,
(03:05):
which had been the Great American city up until about
you know, eighteen twenty nine. That's right around when the
shifts started to happen for the commercial center and everything else.
So yeah, I haven't anyway, Sorry, you got me excited
with your nerd map talk. I got the only thing
that I spend money on that's like a sort of
a keepsake other than firearms, but I guess those are
not really well, yeah they're keepsakes. Is I have antique
(03:25):
maps on my walls, hundreds of years old. So what
I love about them is that they show you that
history isn't fixed, and that much of what we contemplate
as decided was at one point very undecided about what
the countries would look like, about where the borders would be.
And obviously many times that comes about as a result
(03:47):
of war, but it can also come from land purchases, treaties,
all these things. I mention Canada because if you go
back and look at the Revolutionary War, it was very,
very much possible at that point in time that much
of Canada, Quebec in particular, could have ended up a
(04:09):
part of the United States. And maybe buck should have
ended up a part of the United States from a
purely economic perspective. But the war ended up moving south
the Revolutionary War, and so the major battlegrounds again for
the history nerds out there, that started off when we
were fighting. Remember before Benedict Arnold was the greatest turncote.
(04:32):
He was one of the great American heroes of the
early parts of the war. We moved very much from
the northern border in our battles all the way down south,
and so we ended up walking away from the idea
of Canada being part of the American Revolution. But there
is a subtle twist of the historical record that would
have had Canada as a part of the United States
(04:52):
for all this time. I have an excellent book here
on my shelf. This is the Klay and buck Nerdouer
brought to you by Nerds all over Crucible of War
by Fred Anderson, which is about the Seven Years War,
also known as the French and Indian War, and it
goes into just a fascinating detail about you know, people
don't think of this really clay, but the French had forts,
(05:16):
you know, they had built forts in and around the
trading post. But that became really the frontier and British
and the French smacked together there and that led to
and the French and Indian War, and of course the
Indian allies of the French and then the British as
well played a critical role miss and then things didn't
go so well for them after. But you know, we
(05:37):
don't think of this as a a an area, a
land mass that was being fought over by imperial powers
at the time, and that it really was quite arbitrary
and things could have been quite different at the time,
you know, afterwards, based upon a few battles and a
few relatively uh you know, fortuitous happenstance situations. Okay, let
(06:00):
me give you my craziest decision any states ever made
when it came to territory. The state of Alabama was
offered before anybody knew that the sandy white beaches of
the Gulf of America would become some of the most
valuable real estate in all of America the state of Alabama,
because if you look at it, it doesn't really make
(06:22):
sense geographically, right, you have Florida, which extends as a
peninsula down and then you have the so called Panhandle,
which if you think about, you know, like a typical
pan like a small little strip of land that runs
essentially directly south of Alabama all the way down to
where it meets Alabama. Buck they offered Florida, did the
(06:43):
state of Alabama the right to take that land?
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Alabama, some of.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
You might say, this is just what Alabama politicians have
been doing for a long time. Totally bungled that offer,
didn't take advantage of it, and now that is is
the most conservative part of Florida. Now, no one knew
this in the eighteen hundreds when they were making that choice.
But if you go back and look at elections in
(07:11):
two thousand, certainly in two thousand, but in many of
the close elections that have occurred in our country where
Florida was sort of the tipping point, if all of
those votes had gone to Alabama. It wouldn't really have
changed the overall outcome of the state of Alabama. It's
a very conservative, Republican leaning state. Also, it would have
(07:34):
made the state of Alabama infinitely wealthier because the property
along the Gulf Coast is again some of the most
valuable in our entire nation. Now, instead they have a
tiny little pinprick Alabama does. If you look at the
way the map works of the Gulf Coast, and the
state of Florida has the most conservative ribbon running right
(07:54):
along the Gulf coast. That is the Panhandle from basically
the Florida Bama. For those of you who know that
bar which is a fabulous bar buck. Half of it's
in Alabama, half of it's in Florida. It's right on
the on the beautiful the Gulf of America. It's an
amazing spot. All the way down, all the way to
the Atlantic Ocean. You can be in the state of Florida.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Didn't. Nobody knows this story. Didn't. It's funny.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
It would have been living on the Alabama coast. Clay West,
Virginia split off from Virginia right before the Civil War
during the Civil War. During the Civil War, the West Virginia.
The because it was a supremely mountainous region of Virginia.
They never had big crops and uh and uh and
(08:41):
and farms and slavery in the same way, and so
it broke off and became an independent state during the
Civil War eighteen sixty. Right, they refused, Yeah, I thought
they refused to recee.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
And you know that's interesting because people laugh at the idea,
and you know, we sit here, we talk about how
many listeners we have in California and how we're you know,
we feel a strong bond with you Republicans in California
and in New York, you know, in these big blue states,
because we are the voice behind enemy lines for you, right,
you know, you're not alone. We're like the transmission on
(09:18):
the on the Ham radio after the zombie Apocalypse that says,
don't worry, like there is civilization. You can come to
these coordinates and we'll keep you safe from the zombies.
Every zombie apocalyst movie has that. But the truth is,
every time there's a conversation about a state splitting up,
people always dismissed it out of him. We've actually had
states split up into other states never mind no states
(09:40):
being admitted into the Union. Buck. You talk about old
maps back in the day, they had north and south.
I think that would be longitudinal lines, right, But the
initial colonies just continued west. They didn't really know where
the boundary of the states ended. So there are some
maps like you'll North carol it's not a it's not
(10:01):
a crazy thing that North Carolina and Tennessee are basically
on the same latitude longitude, not obviously, but you look
right across like that was the state of North Carolina
that just kept extending on into infinity until enough people
went into Tennessee and decided they were going to create
their own state. And you know, to bring it into
(10:22):
the current context, I think clay. First of all, Trump's
got a lot of negotiating going on right now regarding
the Panama Canal. There's been talk about Greenland too, and
the US having by contract, and obviously there's a whole
deep history here. We built the Panama Canal. We lost
a lot of people doing it. It was a hellish thing,
people dying of malaria and typhus and you know, yellow
(10:44):
fever and all kinds of stuff. But we built the
Panama Canal. And then Jimmy Carter right decided, you know what,
it's all, it's all Panama. And but the same way
that you know, why is Guama US territory? Well it
is because it is because we made it that way,
and everyone's seems kind of happy with it. There's no
reason why you can't have negotiations over some of these things,
(11:04):
because a nation is not just a land mass defined
by rivers, oceans, or mountains, right, I mean, there's always
there's always borders that are arbitrary that are drawn, and
there's competing polities, competing nation states that make determinations about
who should be in charge of what. In the context
(11:25):
of Greenland, you know what, it's it's Oh, it's been
a part of Denmark for such a long time. Why now, look,
if the people of Greenland don't want to be a
part of America, that's up to them, fine. But if
they wanted to vote in favor of joining US as there,
why is that such a there's nothing crazy about that.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
It's funny, we think that's crazy. Why is that? Or
rather people say that's crazy? Why is that crazy?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
This is because in most of our lives, maps have
remained relatively fixed in our geographic arena. And so that's
this is why I think is so important about this.
Trump is basically signaling the country isn't settled right, we
still have more growth and opportunity ahead of us, both
economically but also maybe geographically. And talking about it. Remember
(12:10):
when he first started talking about Greenland, everybody thought it
was crazy. Now I think there's a decent number of
people out there that are like, yeah, you know what,
they may vote to leave Denmark, stop being a colony
of Denmark, and maybe they would like to be supported
by the United States. We've had a new country, uh,
just over the last decade or so. Clay on the spot,
(12:31):
what is the new country?
Speaker 2 (12:32):
TikTok, TikTok?
Speaker 1 (12:33):
We got a million dollar question for Clay. I don't
know who the million is coming from. I'm just saying
it would.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Be I have nowhere.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I mean in Africa, it seems like they were coming
up with new countries all the time. So I'm very
close in Africa.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
You're close.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
South Sudan, South Sudan, South Sudan, the newest not not
doing well these days, I might add, By the way,
no one pays any attention speaking of not Big Rock
concerts about it. Speaking of Africa, Buck, only fifty percent
of Africa has a electricity.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Do you know this?
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Only fifty percent of there's a big graphic about It's
like ninety percent of some African countries still don't have electricity. Well,
when you say electricity, you mean wait, are we talking
about twenty four to seven access to it?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Or are we talking about.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I think just like it's wired and you have, you know,
reliable access to Are we talking about by land mass?
But like the population centers in Africa overwhelmingly have electricity
in terms of from the New York Times that I
took a photo of over the weekend that I was
staggered maybe considered to be Yeah, that showed the percentage
(13:35):
of many of these countries that still do not have electricity.
When I was in Afghanistan, I think the estimate was
that roughly twenty percent of the country had access to
reliable Like this is the thing, right, reliable electricity because
you can always travel and get to a place as
a generator. So I think, you know, I want to
see what the New York Times is saying, how you
kind of frame it really matters, But about twenty percent
(13:57):
of the country had real electric access and twenty percent
of the country could read.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
That was the statistic they had.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
So here's a stat for you, Buck, forty five percent
of Nigeria doesn't have electricity. I just sent it to you.
This is this is nerd out stuff. We'll talk about
it when we come back. This was in the New
York Times over the weekend because I took a picture
of it Sunday hang with Clay and Buck. AOC has said,
and I couldn't believe this when I listened to it,
that Elon Musk is an unintelligent billionaire, in fact, one
(14:26):
of the least intelligent billionaires that she's ever met or seen.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
This is real.
Speaker 1 (14:32):
We're gonna play the audio for you, Buck. I have
offered up that I will host a quiz bowl, which
would be Can you imagine Elon versus AOC in a
quiz bowl? I think Ao Ao AOC's entire career would
be over. There are lots of things you can attack
(14:52):
people on. Elon Being dumb is maybe the worst front
I've seen in a long time. The thing about being
a very dumb democrat is you can be so dumb
that you think you're smarter than the smartest people on
the planet, which is an amazing thing. I mean, he's
better at sending spaces to rockets to space than NASA much. Oh,
(15:15):
he's not very intelligent, is unbelievable. Aoc She's like really smart,
and like she does not think that like Elon mister
like ooh space rockets like silly little bumper cars man.
She does not think that Elon Musk is impressive. And
here is the great future hope of the Democrat Party,
(15:37):
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortes.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
This dude is probably one of the most unintelligent billionaires
I have ever met or seen are witnessed.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
Which you know, you can.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Probably even glean that from watching these people on TV. Anyways,
all of that is to say is that they don't
do their homework. They're putting nineteen year olds in at
the Treasury. This dude is not smart. And the danger
in the lack of intelligence and the lack of expertise
that Elon has. I mean, this guy is one of
(16:12):
the most morally vacant but also just least knowledgeable about
these systems that we really know of.
Speaker 1 (16:22):
Clay, how dumb do you have to be to go
in public and say that Elon Musk is dumb. You
could say a lot of things, but dumb is just
not one of the things you can say. I kind
of blown away by it. I mean, AOC, this might
be there's a lot. We got a bunch of clips
of people saying really stupid things on the Democrat side.
(16:43):
But to argue that the guy who is We talked
about this a little bit yesterday, Buck, but if anything,
I think it's being underanalyzed and discussed. We talked about
the historical record. Somebody called in I think or sent
us an email and said he's a modern day Benjamin Frank.
I don't think that's a crazy idea. You can make
(17:03):
the argument that Elon Musk is the most accomplished American
of all time right now, and some of you out
there are going to say, wow, that's I mean. He's
sending rocket ships to space more efficiently than NASA. He
has redesigned the way that a car is propelled. He
(17:25):
is people don't even talk about it. He's building tunnels, Buck,
that are like the greatest tunnels that have ever been built.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
The Boring Company, which is a clever name.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yes, yes, yes, he has bought Twitter and committed it
to First Amendment principles while also building a brand new
AI company that is built to some extent off of
the data coming from that. And he now is deciding, Hey,
I'm going to look at the books on the federal government.
(17:57):
And it reminds me a little bit wi you them.
And I read the book and I also watched it
the movie The Big Short, and the way that those
guys made money was they were like, well, what are
these mortgage backed securities? And they're like, well, they're actually
just a collection of, you know, hundreds or thousands of mortgages.
Michael Burry, who is the kind of the central figure
(18:21):
really in The Big Short, has Aspergers, Yes, and you
know Asperger's as part of that condition. I remember reading
about this in the book. You can often have people
who will become very fixated, and it could be like
a specific card game, or it could be I don't know,
any number of different things. But he became fixated on
(18:42):
mortgage backed securities and actually read the things that nobody
else would read. Literally, no one else would read it.
He's sitting there looking at Okay, well, they're like, the
risk is lower because it's a mortgage back security. We're
putting hundreds or thousands of them into these offerings and
nobody's actually looking and seeing like, Okay, what are these
actual mortgages? How connected are they? And his big bet,
(19:03):
which panned out, was that they were all connected and
there was going to be a mortgage crash. Can I
also point out that he has been unbelievably wrong about
the stock market constantly, it seems, in public, since the
Big since the big short, since his incredible moment of genius,
he has basically been horribly wrong on a lot of
big things, which which actually makes sense because pessimists can
(19:26):
be wrong about one big thing very often, but optimists
tend to win. And basically, what when you short something,
you are saying, hey, I am pessimistic.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
There is not.
Speaker 1 (19:41):
That that mindset, that contrarian mindset often ends up being wrong.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
You are borrowing.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
Shares to sell with the idea that it will go down,
the stock will go down, or the market will go down,
and you can buy it back at a later date
under a contract. Yes, and so he made a ton
of money there, He's lost a lot since. But my
point on using that as an example is he actually
went into the mortgage securities and looked and said, okay,
(20:07):
what are these made up of? And that, in essence
is what Elon is doing right now in the government,
because a lot of people just say, okay, well, the
budget is nine hundred and sixty four billion dollars for
this company and then they break it or this part
of the government, and then they break it out by
saying twenty four percent goes here, and Elon actually said, okay,
(20:27):
where are the actual ledgers, what is the accounting of
the nine hundred and sixty four billion dollars? Who's signing
off on these checks? Where is the money actually going?
And most people have ever even asked buck USAID has
a forty three billion dollar budget, everybody, forty three billion dollars.
(20:51):
It is operating as though it is entirely unaccountable to
the rest of the executive branch. It is not a
congressionally constant, tutored agency. It is a Jimmy Carter idea
as if anything else needs to be said, and we
just operate in this world.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
Oh well, because it now exists, it exists forever.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
I mean, Clay, forty forty billion dollars is a lot
of money. I mean, you know, this is no matter
who you are, that is an astonishing amount of funds
to be wasting. I mean, I'm just taking a look
right now. Anyoneant to guess what Border Patrol's budget is?
Border Patrol? I want you to just think in your head.
(21:34):
USAID gets forty billion, Clay, what do you think border
patrol gets?
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (21:40):
Man, I do a legitimate sixty billion, one hundred billion,
seven seven billion. That's pretty crazy for border patrol. The FDNY,
the Fire Department of New York, has like a two
or three billion dollar budget. Our entire border patrol gets
seven billion dollars. This is the twenty twenty four budget. Everybody,
(22:03):
and and USAID gets forty billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Yeah, that's crazy. World, there's a big place. But what
matters to us more everyone?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Seven billion dollars is crazy buck Roughly, that would mean
I think I'm correct in this that basically a lot
of like the NFL teams spend more money to pay
NFL players than we do to actually secure the border.
(22:32):
Like that kind of the entire NFL payroll may be
bigger than what we pay for the border.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
Yeah, but that's doesn't that sound crazy to you?
Speaker 1 (22:39):
Like, I mean, when you think about the the that
that is, it is staggeringly woe to me some to
be I mean that that is, especially when you consider
what the cost of the failure to do it is right,
because whatever you spend on the protection of the border,
(22:59):
that I'm in disbelief. I have been very impressed with
mister Sequan Barkley's runs lately, though, to be fair, he's
been doing a phenomenal job. So those those those gentlemen
on the NFL are earning their earning, their their their money.
I am drinking my Crocket Coffee, the greatest coffee on
the planet. I am soon going to be signing my books,
(23:21):
one hundred of them stacked up downstairs. You can go
get hooked up at Crocketcoffee dot com and we are
gonna do at some point. I know Buck's got a
baby coming, so it's gonna be a little bit chaotic
in the spring, but for all of our subscribers, we're
gonna do some form of meetup. I've been saying I
want to go to San Antonio. I know they got
(23:43):
the final four there this year in San Antonio, so
that might be a tough overlap, probably hard to get
hotel rooms, but I want to go to the Alamo.
I want to go visit San Antonio again. I would
like to visit the Battle of San Jacino as well.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Again.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
History nerds are like, yes, this sounds awesome. Lots of
you are rolling your eyes, but those are directly connected
to Davy Crockett, who we named our coffee company after.
And if you love America and you love American history,
and every morning you wake up and as you get
your day started or you're reading about the news, you
want to celebrate the fact that you live in the
(24:19):
greatest country that it's ever existed while you have your coffee.
You need to be a Crockett Coffee subscriber. It's fantastic,
light roase, dark roast, medium roast, organic.
Speaker 2 (24:28):
What else? We got some other flavor, like we got
a decalf. Everything. You can everything, and please subscribe.
Speaker 1 (24:33):
You get a copy, signed copy of Clay's American Playbook
if you subscribe. If you just want to try it
first to see how good the coffee is, you can
try it and then you'll want.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
To subscribe after.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
But use code book and you can get a sign
copy of American Playbook. I hate being wrong, so I
just have to take this one on the chin, I said,
I'm running off the cuffe here getting fired up that
Jimmy Carter started usaid, it was Kennedy who started usaid,
But as far as I'm concerned, that's not any better.
So just a quick ombudsman note there. Sorry, not always right.
(25:06):
So Clay, when we come back, Buck, I've got a
fun one that I'm gonna I don't know if anybody
else ever done this. I've been trying to get my
seventeen year old junior in high school to study for
the act and the sat I challenged him to a
head to head act challenge, which I believe we are
(25:29):
doing tonight. I'm getting a little nervous about how cooked
I might get. I have not taken a standardized test
in as you would well imagine, a very very long
time Sundays with Clay and Bus. I mentioned I didn't
watch the Oscars. I barely saw any of the movies
that were nominated for anything. I'm betting Buck, you did
(25:51):
not watch the Oscars either. But I did see this
come across my Twitter timeline during the Oscars last night,
and it's pretty awesome. Karen Coulkin, who is the brother
of Macaulay Culkin was a star in the show Succession
most recently and I believe won an award last night.
(26:11):
An Oscar got up on the stage and he had
a message for his wife, who made a bet that
she probably didn't expect to get cash this quickly.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
Listen after the show, we're walking through a parking lot.
She's holding the Emmy. We're trying to find her car. Emily,
you were there, so your witness, And she goes, oh god,
I did say that. I guess I owe you a
third kid. And I turned to her and I said, really,
I want four, and she turned me. I swear to
God this habitage just over a year ago. She said,
I will give you four when you win an Oscar.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I held my.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Hand out, she took it, and I have now brought
it up once until just now. You remember that, honey,
you do okay? Then I just have this to say
to you, Jazz, love of my life, Eve, little Faith,
no pressure.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
I love you.
Speaker 4 (26:58):
I'm really sorry I did this again. And let's get
cracking on those kids. What do you saying?
Speaker 1 (27:04):
So this is great, Buck, You've got your first coming soon.
He won a third kid with his wife betting he
would win an Emmy. She said, okay, I'll give you
four if you win an Oscar. Back to back years,
he won Best Supporting Actor last night. I thought that
was pretty great.
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