Big Digital Energy

0:00 Hey, everybody. Welcome to BDE. I've got an official report from the front. Our, our biggest fan Vlad said he liked the speed round last week. Great. He said, he said he was out and about made

0:14 it convenient. So, uh, every week Kirk will have a call or have to go someplace. And so we'll, we'll speed round it Love it. Kirk. Kirk lay it on us, man. What's going on in Nantucket? Like

0:19 we have

0:31 an official news story and everything. I mean, there is fighting going on. We have a breaking news music, music or background. Don't don't don't don't.

0:41 I'll send the photo. I'll take another photo today, but the wind farm off the coast, there's only 50 of these things up, but it's ruining the whole south shore. So if you bought property on the

0:54 south shore

0:59 and they tuck it for five, 10, 15 million, that value has gone down because you have, not only wind farms ruining your view, but potentially dead whales and now fiberglass 'cause broken blades

1:12 washing up on shore. Now, Nantucket has a select board, which is kind of the governing body of Nantucket, but the only way to get elected is you have to live here year-round. So people like me

1:25 that are summer residents who pay most of the taxes, by the way, we're not able to serve on any government. Now, I don't wanna serve in a government capacity anyway because government's almost

1:37 worthless, they are accusing vineyard when, which is this partnership between Copenhagen infrastructure partners and Spanish utility, Iberdrola, for violating their good neighbor agreement, which

1:51 is kind of funny because having a formal agreement about being good neighbors is a joke, right? Hold on real quick, Kirk, and I'm sorry I'm cutting you off, but back at Rice, I lived in a dorm,

2:05 Brown College. We had a residential college system that had formerly been all females until my freshman year. So I was literally the first male that lived there. And

2:18 if you choose to go to Rice and you choose to live in an all-female dorm, just imagine who you are. Now throw Neanderthal man, oldest of four boys with the high awkward threshold into the middle

2:35 there and It was a nightmare and where they always got me is the Brown College Constitution had a clause that said you had to be neighborly. So I violated the neighborly statute. All of the, the

2:51 Keg party wasn't neighborly, you know. No, it was normal. Yeah, it was normal. It reminds me of a money Python skit because the select board and the tech it's like, you're being bad neighbors

3:05 And what kills me is we're industrializing what are the most pristine marine environments on the East Coast for energy costs more than, that costs more than around at Shinnecock and works about as

3:18 reliably as the ferry schedule in the fog. So, I mean, it is, it's mind blowing. Even the left wing tree hugging, well, the tree huggers hate the whales now which is another story in and of

3:34 itself. But. This thing is just a cluster, and no one realizes that it costs more money to take it down than it is to just keep it up. So the government of Nantucket's fighting with vineyard wind,

3:46 vineyard wind's gone completely silent, which is actually an interesting strategy. Just be quiet. I mean, what does this little town in Nantucket know anyway? And the billionaires that live here

3:57 have no voice. So it's interesting to see what's gonna play out. That gets me to a question, Kirk, that I've been meaning to ask you, how many miles are you from a Kennedy, Obama, or what's the

4:11 biggest celebrity, you know, within, I mean, Obama's on Martha's Vineyard, so that's 10 miles, I mean, it's right there. So I don't know if they can see it from there, I don't know if they're

4:21 looking north or south, but they're gonna be all, they can see it too. Ah, so we're gonna attach the tweet you sent around, describe that whole drama soap opera. in terms of the board,

4:39 what's currently going on there. There was an Accus, I think there was an Accus. There's clearly a board member that's getting kickbacks 'cause he's like, Hey, I think Vineyard Wind's being a

4:47 great neighbor. And everyone's looking at this long time. Actually, he's a local Nantucket grew up and he's claiming that they're being great neighbors. Now, clearly he's got something lining his

4:60 pockets because why would you, I mean, let's just be honest, not in my backyard The Kennedys don't wanna, no one wants to see a windmill, even if the windmill's gonna be better for the

5:10 environment, which we know, those of us that actually understand energy, policy and the supply chain, it makes no sense. But let's just, for arguments, they say that it's great for the

5:20 environment, but not in my damn backyard. So there's one select member on the ball select board person that is holding out and siding with vineyard when There's no reason why you'd ever side with

5:35 them. unless you're getting a kickback. That's my argument. Now that's not what the article per se says, but come on, let's just read the tea leaves. Let's just call a spade a spade. Let's make

5:48 accusations. Come on, that's what BD is for. So

5:53 we've seen wind in the news again this week. The president continues to hammer on it in some pretty blunt terms In fact, I think there was a comment that he made as part of his Scottish excursion to

6:12 ribbon cut the latest Trump golf resort in Scotland that he was disappointed. I don't know which orientation it is on the Scottish coast, but he said, you know, it really, really spoils the view

6:31 And I had experience since 2019, I think. In summer of 2019, I played Trump International, which is outside of Aberdeen. And that's the one feature that you see pretty prominently in an otherwise

6:49 unspoiled vista looking out over the water, which is, you know, there's a lot of other things. But

6:58 anyway, you can't see any of

7:01 the offshore oil and gas development, which is certainly out there, but these things have got to be reasonably close within view of the coastline. And that's, I think that's the problem is the,

7:17 you know, just the, it ruins the aesthetic and the opinion of those that are having to live with it, like, like you've got in that tuck it. Well, I mean, that's the problem is you don't have

7:27 people, there's, there's no real accountability.

7:32 And Nantucket sort of went along with this in the very beginning, which makes no sense to me. I was beating that drum from the very get-go, but I don't think people understand the unintended

7:43 consequences because there's concentrated benefits for the developers and their government cronies. But the rest

7:54 of us, they're dispersing those costs to all of us that have to look at these spinning monuments. I mean, it's energy stupidity while dodging dead whales that are rolling up on the beaches. Well,

8:09 and let's not forget when we talk about whales and people are gonna think I'm being Chuck Yates here and being stupid and silly, but a whale when it dies takes 33 tons of carbon with it to the bottom

8:25 of the ocean, never to be seen again, or at least, you know, centuries, millennial way out. So huge carbon sink, then number two, plankton causes about 40 of,

8:43 oh, what's it called when plants turn CO2 to oxygen? Why am I blanking?

8:49 Photosynthesis. Photosynthesis so, 40 of all photosynthesis on the planet is plankton. Where is the best place for plankton to live? It's in whale shit I mean, they're pooping out nutrients.

9:03 That's the best thing. And in 1850, we had estimated five to six million whales on the planet swimming around. We've got just over a million today. So I would actually make the argument to the

9:18 environmentalist if CO2 is the problem,

9:24 hydrocarbons actually save the day because we stopped the killing of whales for fuel. That's the one energy that's been transitioned away from it. Yeah, vineyard wench and point the finger right

9:35 back at Nantucket's Inn. You were the guys that, I mean, it was the whale capital of the world. The original whale oil capital of the world until oil was found in Pennsylvania. So you're

9:49 absolutely right, Chuck. You had limited restart after the blade disaster from last summer And my latest update is that you had five, excuse me, four of the turbines were back operating as of May

10:06 of this year. What's

10:09 the current status? What do you see when you're out there? I don't see a lot of, I don't see blades turning. I'll take a picture again today 'cause I'll be out there. I mean, they started

10:19 construction in November of 2021, got first power in January of 2024

10:27 And by July. the blades were falling off. It's like buying a new driver and having the head fly off in the third swing. I mean, it is like it kind of orchestrated a horrible start. But hey,

10:43 that's where we are. And I think, I don't know where vineyard wind is 'cause they're gone silent. Nantucket, look, they're just neighbors rattling, who knows what Martha's Vineyard is doing,

10:54 but Nantucket is run by locals who live here year round, they're not the wealthy. And I mean, if you're a vineyard windyard like who cares? They don't have a big enough voice to matter 'cause the

11:10 biggest voice is in Washington, DC. So on the blade inspection that was done, I think there were maybe one or two replacements and then that number expanded. Is it known how many blades ultimately

11:25 that GE Vernova is going to replace

11:29 supply to be replacements? Well, the

11:32 manufacturer blades came out of Canada and supposedly there's some sort of like, every one of these blades is at risk of being faulty. So I think that there's a real massive

11:47 issue, and I think economically it's already, we all know economically this project never made sense. When I was even at Royal Dutch Shell, I mean, these guys would take business from, they'd

11:60 take candy from a baby for sure, and I love that about them in some ways, 'cause they're capitalistic in many ways. They wouldn't touch this project with a 250-foot pole. So

12:15 now that you have this blade crisis, I think it's gonna be really hard economically on GE and everyone else in the supply chain that the of one that's think I because, together stuff this big put,

12:28 quite a few articles and I'll go pull them up for you guys. But I think that's one of the big elephant in the room. It's like, wait, we don't want to really want to open up this can of worms,

12:36 'cause we do. We might have to deconstruct every one of these things and put new blades in, which would just, again, just think of our energy. The

12:45 energy costs of the Northeast just went up. Every time they're doing this, your costs, you just keep going up 'cause someone's gonna subsidize it or they're gonna pass the costs along to you. And

12:55 I think they're gonna pass the costs along What do you pay on the island

13:00 since Prokillo an hour? Do you know? I don't. I mean, I'll look it up.

13:07 I'll get a quick answer for you. Here's the get out question and we'll move on to the European trade deal.

13:16 Gene Simmons was roasted for the Comedy Central Roast and Jeff Ross got up there and was one of the roasters and jeff was going you're the most amazing businessman on the planet, you commercialize

13:29 everything, kiss his name is on everything. What about a kiss landfill for all that junk you've made?

13:37 That's, that's our business idea. BDE sanctioned landfills for blades off of windmills. We'll make a killing. I'm in. There we go. All right, Mark, take us to Europe. Well,

13:55 short on detail, but there were announcements made in conjunction with the Scottish junket that there at least have been framework trade deals with both the EU and the UK reached and specific to

14:13 energy and talking about the EU. Apparently there's a quote-unquote agreement for the EU to ramp its purchases of US energy

14:25 to250 billion per year over the next three years.

14:30 Obviously,

14:32 the principal component of that would be LNG. And again, there's not much on detail of how that works practically. The other side of this is that the EU has apparently

14:52 agreed to600 billion in new private investment in

14:58 the US What that is specifically is unclear. Lastly, the EU pays just a baseline tariff of 15 on EU products destined for the US. There are some exemptions and exceptions. There are things that

15:15 are subject to some kind of sliding scale based on volume, but the 15 at least gives some clarity

15:25 somewhat rhetorically, as we've seen, you know, these truths, these 90-day truths. um, provisions come in. Um, it does provide some clarity to the market. Um, but from practical standpoint,

15:39 getting back to energy, I saw that if we were to convert the 250 billion per year strictly to LNG, sending that to EU countries, we would have to essentially grow our send out capacity here in the

15:57 US by about 20 times So here's my point to everybody that's going to argue it because everybody that fights Trump fights on little details like, oh, we can't even sell them 250. It's like, let's

16:11 fucking go. You know, again, when you step back, the big picture here is, should we be exporting LNG to Europe? If Europe's not going to drill their own, if they're not going to frack in Poland,

16:24 if the UK is not going to let us drill in the North Sea, because they're ridiculous tax policy. then yes, buy LNG from us instead of buying gas from Putin. Come on guys. And so

16:39 we can nitpick all we want to with the details of like, oh, the 600 billion EU can't compel the companies to do that. So what, if this pushes us in that direction, even if we don't hit these

16:55 targets, it's a good thing Are you saying that's gonna ignite drill, baby drill?

17:02 No, but it allows us to drill, baby drill into the future and it gives us a, gives us a market for our natural gas. As the, as the proud owner of the first draft pick, you should like that.

17:15 Yeah, and I do think that this has a kind of a first derivative incentive. Now there's a lot of political will shift that needs to take place to maybe think about continental and UK. pivoting on

17:30 developing their own resources, particularly on the natural gas side. And so, you know, if I'd rather produce, if I needed, if I'm going

17:46 to commit to in 250 billion a year in energy imports, imports is a real number. And oh, by the way, the EU just just just installed its 18th sanction on Russia. Then, you know, where's the

18:01 energy going to come from? And, you know, does it cause some naval kind of inflation to maybe maybe we ought to get back back to growing our own domestic base and energy energy energy security with,

18:17 you know, the resources that have been essentially under a moratorium because of all the regulation and tax laws. I mean, there's a ton to unpack in this.

18:30 in this discussion. First of all, I'm kind of like it's ironic a little bit, but it sounds great until you realize there's real no formal treaty in this announcement. I mean, I love that, you

18:40 know, like Trump's playing golf in Scotland. He owns the course. He's like, let's make an announcement to make it politically look good and pay for my trip. And private businesses and the EU

18:52 can't be compelled to buy our energy. But of course, we just talked about the Antucket and now all of us on the East Coast are gonna be forced to subsidize those costs. But in this case, how

19:05 ironic that the EU have no, they can't be compelled to buy our energy. So that's irony number one. Like let's look to the EU. Like private businesses can actually make decisions for themselves,

19:19 unlike those of us on the East Coast and in Antucket. Secondly, if you converted the entire250 billion

19:31 I mean, we would have to increase our capacity, as you said, Mark, by 20 times. That's almost like promising to supply the entire East Coast with lobster when you have three traps and a dinghy.

19:42 I mean, we have no ability to meet the demand. So I love it, but where's the construction? Where's that going to come from? Well, and if we follow through on our side, let's approve LNG plants

19:58 when they're proposed I mean, we've built enough of those. We know what's safe, what's not safe. It shouldn't take years to get those approved, bang, let's approve them. And then on Europe's

20:11 side, okay, government can't compel somebody

20:17 to buy LNG, but they sure as hell can approve receiving terminals. I mean, the Germans to their credit did that when

20:26 Nordstrom went down They have floating terminals out there. receiving stuff, you know, even that happening is going to wind up being good, even if we don't hit these targets. Hey, Chuck, did we

20:39 give up when the Germans brought bomb Pearl Harbor?

20:44 Well,

20:47 you know, they proved in a crisis what they can do. And I recall a an EU, maybe it included the UK number in the energy crisis of the winter of what was it, 2122. That it really, because of the

21:05 combination of Russian sanctions, Nord Stream going down, and

21:14 Germany's in particular nuclear mothballing trend was, I want to say that that scramble for the EU was

21:26 a900 billion price tag to get all of that, you know, that.

21:31 that emergency LNG mostly

21:37 to Europe and Germany in particular. So

21:43 they can do it. Crisis is a hell of a motivator,

21:49 but we'll see. I mean, let's give you the comp, but this 18th round of sanctions on Russia, nothing says energy security, like cutting off your cheapest supplier. I mean,

22:04 I know we don't like, I mean, I don't, maybe you don't like Putin, but the point is, it's the cheapest commodity out there. Why aren't you buying it? That's energy security. While you're

22:15 figuring out how to increase import terminals. Well, and as Dünberg has commented on this issue, as sanctions have lattered up over the course of the last three plus years, You don't. They don't

22:31 work and it ends up actually for a producer

22:41 leverage or dependent economy like Russia's is, it's only helpful, because those barrels are going to find a market and there are those that don't hold the EU and the US as principals that are and

22:55 morals that are behind these sanctions The reality is, is that the way to really hurt the Russians in terms of their economy and their revenue is to flood the market. Which we physically have the

23:09 capacity to do as we've seen over the last 15 years with the US shale and certainly what OPEC could do, although OPEC's got the conundrum of having Russia in OPEC plus. If I even had a modicum of

23:25 fear, even a tiny bit of fear that the Canadians could even match us for two minutes in a battle of some sort. I don't know that I'd be buying energy from them and financing their war machine. And

23:41 so you don't get to do both things. You don't get to run around and say, oh, we're so scared of Putin and we're frightened of him. And

23:52 then finance his war machine. You don't get to do both of those And so, yeah, we'll send you all the LNG you want. Toby Rice, you get drillin'. Let's build LNG terminals all over the place.

24:07 Outside of Nantucket, of course, 'cause we don't wanna ruin Kirk's view. But we'll throw 'em all up and down the Gulf Coast. I strenuously object.

24:21 You just object. No, no, I strenuously object Could we put a terminal out of sight and out of mind on Dan Tuckett? I don't know enough about the. Underwater, I'd be fine if it was underwater.

24:34 They don't have any gas up there. One FLNG far off your work. Now, here's my, here's some energy. Here's some, I just got the bill thanks to my secretary and wife sent this to me. But we used

24:52 420 kilowatt hours last month and paid250 And if my master is at like

25:00 59 cents a kilowatt hour, that's super expensive. We don't use a ton of energy because the climate, it's cool and our house is not gigantic.

25:14 But we did get grandfathered in for a gas stove, which they are trying really hard not to do. And it's propane on the island, they chip it in, but it sure burns better than electricity.

25:31 Wow, there you go. 59 cents. There we go. All right, Mark, take us to Nuke's. I wanna make sure Kirk makes his meeting.

25:41 Speed round. Was that code for surfing? Is that what you were actually doing? You got surf time at 10 or? No, it's golf today. Oh, okay, good. I'm going to Scotland next week, so I have to

25:57 prep for a tournament

25:60 You know how it is, life's hard. You got to be representing BDE well, so. Right, let's jump to Nick's. So

26:10 the NRC in the new world of the NRC of actually doing stuff has granted

26:17 at least the main license for the Palisades nuclear facility in covert Michigan a restart under, I believe, the old authorization which expires in 2031. And so I started looking to see, I recall

26:36 that that facility was owned and operated by Entergy. They mothballed it and sold it, were sold it to the mothballing contractor, which is Holtec back in 2022. Would you be called the mothballer?

26:54 Yeah

26:59 So 800 megawatts and they hope to load new fuel and have restarted operations sometime in the fourth quarter, I believe October of 2025.

27:12 They did comment, NRC commented, there are a few other

27:18 licensing, non-specified licensing hurdles left to clear. I don't know what those are. So I'll trust but verify when the thing starts

27:30 and things starts operating within the span of 2025. And it got me to thinking about, we've talked about the three mile island, one unit restart, four constellation. What else is out there that

27:47 is in a relatively recent mothball situation where it's practical to maybe recommission these sites And I could only find one,

28:01 the Duane Arnold facility in Iowa, which was mothballed back in 2022.

28:08 But the long list that was produced in my search, there's one in California,

28:16 San Anofre, Crystal River in Florida, Indian Point in New York, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, Pilgrim in Massachusetts, and Vermont Yankee, all are essentially too far gone.

28:29 So we need to get about a new build in a streamlined approval process. I hate to do this because you know me, I'm the libertarian and I'm a states right guy and the power of the federal government

28:47 really, really scares me. But I'm

28:52 okay if we push the free nuclear power act of

28:59 2025 or 2026 where let's set up a commission of engineers and basically if you've built this plant a few times before it's approved, the drawings are approved. Let's streamline that process to get

29:16 approval. Let's set up a court system that the only way you can stop the nuclear power plant is to go through this one court and I hate to do that. 'cause it's gonna concentrate power and the

29:32 environmentalists will get a hold of it and shut down everything. But the impending lawsuits that happen every time you try to permit something, just make things way too cost prohibitive. You get

29:49 your approval, you're moving forward unless the bar's really high to shut the thing down and we'll have specialized courts that deal with that. So if it gets into technical matters, it's not a jury

30:03 of our peers. 'Cause quite frankly, I don't even think I'm capable to sit on a jury and understand whether something nuclear is gonna be dangerous or not. So I'm there, let's push that forward.

30:15 Let's at least force people to vote for that. And what's getting me there is where we come back time and time again. If we lose the AI race to the Chinese, That's really bad for this world. If we

30:29 lose to the, because the Chinese are going to give it to the Russians, God knows what they do with the North Koreans. I know they're weary of that guy, but you could see them have a bad day and

30:42 share something with them. At the end of the day, we've got to win the AI race. And at the end of the day, that is cheap, reliable power on demand. I mean, this is what happens when energy

30:54 policy is driven by feelings and not by physics You know, who was the French economist that said the scene and the unseen and the unintended consequences that come from it? I mean, you know, the

31:08 scene is shutting down nuclear to appease the environmental greenies, the crazies. And the unseen is higher electricity costs, grid instability. I mean, it's just ridiculous. It's like tearing

31:23 down the old reliable lighthouse for a solar powered one and then frantically when ships keep running or ground because there's no sunlight because there's too much fog. I mean, this is just crazy,

31:37 crazy economics and we're living in a world that just upside down, makes no sense. I'm hopeful that, and we do have a template for the type of streamlining legislation. If you recall last year,

31:50 the Energy Permitting Reform Act, which was sponsored by Joe Manchin and Senator Barasso in Wyoming was about 75 pages long. And it had a lot of the

32:07 limiting judicial challenges, putting pretty short deadlines or timelines on approval or permitting review. The thing that was a little, maybe not even concerning to me is that I did a word search

32:10 on that

32:20 75 page document in that I think nukes came up

32:30 that. And I do think, as I've said before, I do think the NRC, which has been an obstructionist rampart since it was formed in 1974,

32:42 has been really the chief

32:46 drag, both from a timing and a cost standpoint. And if you look at, we showed the cost graph over time of US Greenfield nuclear and how it hockey-sticked right at the inception of the NRC, we've

33:01 got to have something akin to that legislation to include nuclear to really get after it. And something that that put some guardrails around

33:17 the litigation and judicial challenges that are that are going to continue to come up. And I still get back You know, it's always sold as you have the nuclear accident and it wipes out a huge

33:29 population. We've had nuclear accidents and you can argue about all of all of this stuff, but in terms, even if you include Chernobyl, which I think most people would say that

33:45 nuclear plant would not have been built in the West by any of us, but you know, even if you include it, you're talking like 60 immediate deaths, and I don't mean to, you know, make light of 60

33:59 immediate deaths because every death's a tragedy, but I mean, look at any other energy system, even solar panels have fallen and hit

34:11 that many people, you know, that many people have died in the factories making those things, and so at the end of the day, I think we've proved that you just. you can put it all in a big old

34:24 block of concrete, and if you have your meltdown, we're gonna be fine. I mean, was it Marvel comics? I mean, they sold global warming and climate change which is scientifically, I

34:43 mean, ridiculous. But if we could just sell that, if a nuclear accident happened, there'd be at least 10 or more superheroes to come out of the meltdown. I think Gen Z would let be all over this

34:55 thing. It's like, hey, the risk is we get cheap power. I mean, the good news is we get cheap power. The downside is if there is a problem, we'll crank out a whole bunch of new superheroes

35:07 because that's every Marvel comic book starts out with someone gets thrown in a vat of nuclear waste and they come out stronger than Superman. I'm saying we could spend that to a really good

35:21 narrative. Well, and again, all of the anti-Nuke movement came from Germans that worked on it and it was the guilt they felt over creating the nuclear bomb. I mean, that was the anti - sentiment

35:38 that took hold. They used the environment to sell it 'cause that was the most effective marketing path. But at the end of the day, I mean, you really get in there and research 'cause it's the

35:50 anti-Nuke stuff started in Germany and it was all the guilt these scientists felt. And I get it. I mean, what happened to Hiroshima and Hiroshima and

36:02 Nagasaki, I mean, it was just, that's horrible on so many levels. We can justify whether or we can debate whether it was justifiable or not. So I get that that was bad, but it's been, it's been

36:16 sold under false, false pretenses. All right, last thing, big acquisition, Baker? Yeah, Baker Hughes acquired Chart Industries, which is a high tech innovation player in liquefied gases, as I

36:32 understand it. I don't know kind of specs and serial numbers on their technology. But reading between the lines, even though it was explicitly mentioned, this appears to be, you know, a first

36:44 move by a major oil field services player to quote unquote, get in on really kind of fully integrated data center development from the

36:56 infrastructure and energy and power generation side. You know, big players and natural gas infrastructure certainly also in the upstream. And so it's a portfolio addition for Baker Hughes. They

37:11 have been, in my opinion, on the more progressive side in disruptive technology. ever since Simonelli took over, they were one of the, I think the first to pivot in that direction. So I just

37:26 thought it was interesting. It's not a trivial deal for many OFS company today. It's 136 billion in enterprise value. We'll see if there's, you know, peer response. I just thought it was

37:39 interesting, something that caught my eye. I mean, it, interesting, my take actually, I'm glad you brought this up because chart does hydrogen, LNG, and CCS. It's basically a portfolio of

37:53 every technology getting massive government subsidies. The IRA, hydrogen tax credit, CCS tax incentives, and plus Trump's new AI data center policies fast tracking for permitting. It's really

38:06 interesting. And I'm like, I hope those finance bros over there, Baker Hughes know how to read the government tea leaves. And hope that Uncle Sankey's picking up part of the tab This to me is one

38:17 of those things where you're betting big on government backing you and we know what happens when you do that. So this could be short the hell out of Baker or it could be a brilliant move, but it'll

38:28 be real interesting to watch because these are heavily subsidized spaces. Hydrogen and CCS, which I mean, I've looked at every CCS technology on the planet, I can tell you, man. I don't even,

38:43 interesting I went on Groc real quick and said, you know, chat with me in our typical voice about the Baker Hughes chart deal. And it said, this is the quintessential Texas oil baron Baker Hughes.

39:02 They saw chart, they saw chart flirting with flow serve at the industry prom and said, not on my watch, baby.

39:11 slid in there with a much better offer, leaving flow serve with the266 million break up fee in a broken heart. That's pretty good. There you go. Speaking of hydrogen, one little tidbit.

39:26 Bill Gates has alleged 390 foot hydrogen fuel cell powered super yacht was in the news this week Allegedly, he has never set foot on it and allegedly it's up for the low low price of645 million. But

39:51 his directive to the ship builder or the yacht builder and the Netherlands was, I want the greenest super yacht ever. Does it work? It's got cryogenic storage of hydrogen for the the fuel cells on

40:09 board, obviously. that I think is cool to minus 253 degrees Celsius, which there's got to be some conventional energy that is driving that refrigeration on board. Although their backup fuel system

40:26 was defined as biofuel

40:33 related if they're inconveniently in an area where they can't access and liquefy hydrogen They probably cook a lot of french fries. You just throw that cooking oil in there then. The thing has a

40:45 four-story private owner suite.

40:50 Two bedroom owner suite. Four-story. I have a minimum of three stories. If it goes, if it's two stories or less, I'm not interested.

40:58 So here's a question. That would be gaudy and obnoxious. Here's a question for Vlad and all of our listeners, all 17, 000 million of them. If you're a billionaire and have way too much money to

41:12 spend, what is your passion? Because he's, okay, Bill Gates is alive. Like the super, would you be into super yachts? Would you be in private jets? Would you be into owning golf courses? What

41:22 would be your guilty pleasure and you have to play, I'm gonna one up somebody else? So the second sphere, you know, the sphere in Las Vegas does all the concerts The second sphere will be built in

41:38 Richmond, Texas.

41:42 So if it's kind of like if a tree falls in the forest and no one's around, did it fall? Did it make a noise? Is that the same thing? I don't care. I'll hire the bands I like. And so David Lee

41:56 Roth will kick it off. We'll have poison, we'll have Thomas Rack come. We'll make jewel come play Lindsay L will have to come play. It's gonna be my, you know, two nights a week, I'm going to

42:09 go see a show and I'm going to walk there. All right, Mark, what do you got? Um, I'm pretty, pretty vanilla. Yeah, I'd, I'd be compelled on the super yacht side, certainly have a couple of

42:23 planes, uh, but, but my guilty pleasure would be a small fleet of tour buses that

42:32 I could deploy on baseball tours across the country during the, the summer. And along with that, since it's probably not likely that the Cubs or the Astros, whatever be for sale, but that's where

42:47 I was going. You're going to, I'd be really compelled to make a run at the Pittsburgh pirates and return them to their kind of legacy glory

42:58 Maybe I could, maybe I could get Toby involved. Oh, there you go. You know, I think I'd make a run of creating my own world surf league. for big, for big waves. And I'd be like kind of

43:10 Zuckerberg. I'd be that like overweight old guy that gets to be towed into big waves to surf with the professionals because I can. Because he's like, that guy's not gonna have to be there. But he

43:26 has all the gear. He gets towed in by Garrett McNamara. He hangs out with Laird Hamilton. I think I'd probably do something crazy like that And, of course, build ridiculous, exclusive golf

43:40 courses, because all the nice clubs won't let me in. Well, that's very Bill Ackman-esque on the - That's right, Bill Ackman, the other one. He tried in a professional tennis tournament. Right.

43:52 And everyone laughed at him. But I'd be like, I don't care if they laugh. I get to surf and hang out with people that are cool. Having Ken White with Warren Beatty, he wanted to start at

44:02 quarterback Well, did you say no? No, he bought the team.

44:10 All right, we have some important in memoriams this week to 80s icons. We lost at least two of them this past week.

44:24 Certainly Chuck, you're on top of that. I'm sure TMZ called. Oh, yeah, no, Hulk Hogan, I mean, so Houston had Houston wrestling every Saturday night, Sam Houston Coliseum probably went there

44:41 10 times when I was a kid. A lot of famous people came out of Houston and wrestling. Come on, keep going. Junkyard dog, Paul Bosch, all that. And so yeah, Hulk Hogan was in effect the guy that

44:56 took that national, if you will I mean, he was the, there was a lot of regional, the Von Ericks, et cetera, doing wrestling. But he's the one that really allowed McMahon to take it

45:11 nationwide. And his cameo in Rocky III to this day, love that. The clusters to loan, fight in the wrestler. Good stuff. You know, it's so fun. I mean, it's not funny, actually, sad. But a

45:28 long abattool, abattool, I don't know how you pronounce his last name But the Israeli actor who's in Dark Knight Rises in Rambo 3, if you look up him, if you look along up, you'll be like, oh,

45:41 I know that guy, that bad guy, big, bad guy, dude. Another big, bad guy or actually Hulk, well, he was a bad guy in Rocky, so entering the world of baseball on the heels of the Hall of Fame

45:55 induction ceremony this past weekend. Good host, Billy Wagner, Billy, the kid got in, another Astro in the Hall of Fame Awesome. Ryan Sandberg passed away. on Monday, and for those of us who

46:09 grew up in the '80s, watching WGN Superstation with Harry Carey and the Cubs,

46:18 Rhino was probably, in some circles, considered the greatest second baseman ever to play the game. And just a fantastic human being, an individual who

46:33 said in his speech, I'm here, they tell me I'm here for these particular stats, and he got inducted in 2005,

46:43 but it was his opinion that he got there because of his respect for baseball. It was metastatic prostate cancer that got him at age 65, and so public service announcement again for PSAs, they are

46:60 very important You know, I don't think the world truly realizes how important Harry, Kerry and the Cubs were for all of us nationwide with WGN kind of being nationwide on cable with the rollout of

47:20 cable. And so you had two, you had two at the time, you had the Braves on TBS and you had the Cubs on WGN. Did you have me at a working drunk being able to call baseball? I love that guy just for

47:37 like, hi, I'm like, this guy can drink and call baseball. Nothing better. So cool. All right, Kirk, go make your 10 o'clock tea time and send us pictures from the, uh, the coast. And, uh,

47:54 we'll see you guys again next week. Got a great city, boys. Good to see you, man. Good luck today.