Here is the cleaned-up, formatted transcript of the episode, organized for readability with timestamp markers and speaker labels.
The Mac & Mike Show
Episode Transcript
Mac: Welcome back to the Mac and Mike show. Mike, today we’re going to do a multi-topic podcast simply because I suggested we do one topic and you said, “Okay, I hope you can talk for half an hour on that, ’cause I’m not interested.” So, I’m going to mention it, then we’ll talk about a few other things that maybe you are interested in.
Mac: Over the past couple of weeks, Sydney Sweeney, who is a rather popular young actress in America, decided to do some pretty racy television and streaming commercials—you know, media commercials—showing a significant portion of her body covered only by sports equipment. Basketballs, baseballs, hockey gear, all kinds of sports equipment, in order to advertise for a new website called Novig.
Novig is one of these new-style gambling websites that does trades instead of just traditional gambling. There are two things I found intriguing about this:
- **** Sydney Sweeney received a tremendous amount of criticism for bearing too much skin. A lot of women athletes said, “You’re sexualizing women’s sports.” But of course, the sports she was referencing were major league sports that people gamble on—it had nothing to do with women’s sports. So they were attacking her for a fake reason. A number of women athletes across the globe decided to criticize her for doing this ad.
- **** This is not an ad Sydney Sweeney just got a standard paycheck for. You know, like women who do Chanel No. 5 ads get a $500,000 paycheck. No, she got an equity stake in the business. This is a startup business, and since gambling can be quite lucrative, this potentially has a great deal of long-term benefit—not only for her, but for generations of her family—providing residual income for many years to come.
Mac: Both of those things intrigue me. I think it’s interesting how she turned modeling—showing her body in provocative ways, using strategically placed equipment so she didn’t show the parts that would get her thrown off TV—into business leverage. The whole conundrum of “women are being sexualized,” yet she wasn’t sexualizing women’s sports—she was promoting a sports gambling site.
So the two questions I have are:
- Was the criticism of Sydney Sweeney appropriate? Was she really sexualizing women’s sports?
- Does taking an equity stake instead of a modeling paycheck change the way business is going to be done in the future for very popular actors, models, and celebrities?
Do you have an opinion on either of those points, Mike?
Mike: Not really. I mean, she’s a pretty girl. Great body, average face, making money. Good for her.
Mac: But she took her fame and—pun intended—parlayed it into an equity stake in a brand-new business that has the potential to be very lucrative. I think that’s pretty creative and intelligent, and I’m not sure why people aren’t celebrating that. The criticism is totally misplaced because she wasn’t talking about women’s sports at all.
National Security & Space Weapons
Mac: Going from one extreme to the other: for the first time ever, the United States acknowledged through some comments that we have weapons in space.
Mike: Yeah, that was a different guy that made the comment—Secretary of something or other. But I mean, we know China’s had them for a long time. They made that mess back in 2006 by blowing up a satellite. Then we came up with the idea of using a mechanical arm on that new little shuttle that’s been up there for years—just grabbing a satellite and flinging it toward Earth to burn up.
I’ve also mentioned the “Rods from God”—tungsten rods attached to satellites that could be precision-dropped. It’s like a small meteor hitting Earth with enough impact to dig through mountains, like the ones in Iran where we had to drop MOABs. They say we never deployed them, but who knows? I just think it’s good to be prepared, even if you don’t use that kind of stuff.
Mac: There are treaties signed by most major nations agreeing not to weaponize space. Do you view this as a termination of those treaties, or did we violate them?
Mike: I didn’t look up what the exact treaties state—maybe no nuclear weapons in space or something like that. But with any contract, people look for an out.
Look at countries like China—or Iran, or when people talk about AI treaties. China violates laws and treaties over and over again. So what’s the point? Nothing is going to stop people from doing what they want to do—including the United States. We’re not going to stupidly let other people get ahead of us. If the CIA and NSA know other countries are doing this in secret, we’re going to do our own thing, too. It’s prudent.
Mac: Right. If you know our primary adversaries—Russia and China—have put anti-satellite weapons into space, it’s a huge issue. It’s nearly impossible to prosecute a war without GPS satellite capabilities because our Air Force and ground forces rely heavily on GPS positioning. China’s plan was likely to take out our GPS satellites to strip us of that advantage.
Quantum Navigation vs. GPS
Mike: Yeah, but we don’t have to rely strictly on GPS anymore. We have quantum navigation.
Mac: Explain that to our viewers.
Mike: Remember the guy that got shot down in Iran, and how the CIA found him? We used quantum measurements to detect the heartbeat of a human being in an isolated location.
Mac: Isn’t it based on measuring Earth’s magnetics?
Mike: That can be used in a different way, but quantum navigation is based on quantum entanglement. The first application of quantum entanglement is communications—it’s instantaneous. Particles are entangled from the beginning, and no matter how far apart they move—even across the universe—they stay entangled. If an electron changes position, its pair changes instantly.
We’ve done this through fiber optics, but China was the first to demonstrate it with a satellite in orbit. Now, we’re installing quantum navigation systems on Air Force aircraft in case something goes wrong with GPS.
Mac: You’ve explained to me in the past how a navigator off by a fraction of a degree at takeoff can end up miles off course over long distances. In aviation, that can be fatal.
Mike: Exactly. When I taught land navigation in the military, if you’re off by 1 degree over 5 kilometers, you’re still near your target. But on an airplane flying to London, being off by 1 degree could land you in Paris, Rome, or the North Sea.
Mac: That principle applies everywhere—a small flaw at the beginning compounds over time in science, philosophy, and politics.
I read an article where an aircraft turned off its GPS and successfully navigated a precise route using measurements of Earth’s magnetic fields. They are developing this specifically because they know adversaries want to disable our GPS satellites.
Mike: The one flaw with magnetic navigation is that you can jam the electromagnetic spectrum during a conflict. That’s why quantum is superior—there’s no known way to hack or jam it at this point.
Political Trends & The Democratic Socialists of America
Mac: Let me switch gears. Last week, we used an AI tool to check how many candidates were running on the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform for public office. The answer was 203, with 9 running for national office (House or Senate).
While that’s a small percentage of total elections nationwide, I was surprised there were over 200 state and local races involving Democratic Socialists. Were you surprised by that number?
Mike: No. I thought it would be higher given how many local and state political offices exist across all 50 states. 203 is a drop in the bucket.
Mac: But as you’ve pointed out before, it doesn’t take a majority of the population to start a major political movement—look at the early Nazi party in Germany or the American Revolution.
Mike: Exactly. The Nazi party in the 1930s never won more than 38% of the vote initially, but specific post-WWI conditions allowed them to rise to power.
Mac: I consider myself a Christian conservative who votes Republican because we effectively have a two-party system. When I talk to average Democrats, our day-to-day views aren’t actually that far apart.
What concerns me is the trajectory. If there are 200 Democratic Socialists running this year, how many will there be in the next election? Younger generations are struggling socioeconomically—with student loans, housing, and finding good jobs—making socialist platforms more appealing to them.
Mac: But if you look at the DSA platform, they advocate for abolishing the Supreme Court, the presidency, and the Senate, placing all power into the popular vote of the House. That completely eliminates the protection the Electoral College provides to smaller and rural states.
Mike: It goes beyond that—extreme platforms include defunding police, closing prisons, and open borders.
During primaries, candidates lean far to the left, then try to walk it back toward the center for the general election. But when you look at extreme socialism, history shows where it leads—China, Russia, Cambodia, Cuba. When advocates try to moderate, they point to Norway or Sweden, but those aren’t socialist nations; they’re capitalist market economies with large welfare systems.
Mac: It was recently reported that the U.S. spends more per capita on Medicare and Medicaid than some countries with fully socialized medicine systems do.
Mike: A huge part of that cost is driven by system-wide fraud.
Tax Reform & The “Fair Tax”
Mac: Historically, before the Civil War, the U.S. funded the federal government primarily through tariffs and fees rather than an income tax. Today, the tax code is filled with special interest loopholes carved out by people with influence.
Warren Buffett famously noted that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary because of how the system is structured.
Mac: There are alternative proposals. My local congressman supports a bill to eliminate the federal income tax entirely and replace it with a “Fair Tax”—a consumption-based national sales tax system. It simplifies everything and eliminates the hundreds of hours citizens spend navigating complex tax filings every year.
Mike: In Nordic countries, the national Value Added Tax (VAT) is around 25%, plus local municipal taxes and income taxes. Combined, the tax burden can take around 65% of an individual’s income, though higher wage scales adjust for that.
Mike: It reminds me of the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. She attacked him for utilizing tax code loopholes to avoid paying certain taxes, and he replied, “Yes, I do—because you and your friends put those loopholes in the law for yourselves, and I took advantage of them.”
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