In his second appearance on the podcast (the first was December 6, 2022), Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical strategist and the author of four books, including most recently, The End of the World is Just the Beginning, talks about deglobalization, demographics, and why he still believes “the American system will thrive.” In addition, he discusses the catastrophic decline of Germany’s industrial sector, the “exorbitant privilege” the U.S. dollar has as the world’s reserve currency, and why, in his view, China is facing “national oblivion.” (Recorded February 22, 2024.)
Two writers/speakers that are at the top of my list of favorites! What a treat it is to have both of you together for an interview!
Has to be the 1000th Peter Zeihan interview ive seen, but my first time seeing this channel...Robert is a fine interviewer. Will have to look for more
check out his Substack. Killer.
Same here. I’ve heard the “After World War Two..” and “when you have kids on a farm…” more times than I can count. Love Peter.
Same here. I'd normally never even watch a random suggestion from such a small creator, but Rob is pretty good at this. Peters always great.
same
@@Kenneth_Jamesyou do realize that alphabet works hard to make sure that Robert doesn't get wide distribution.
56:20 Absolutly the MOST personal information I've ever heard Peter Zeihan hold cort on in the 18 months I've been following his work. Maybe he's shared this before, but its the first time I have heard it. My compliments on asking a truly revealing question!
I’ve watched many many Zeihan presentations/interviews and this is one of the best.
Look for the seminars he tailors for specific corporations, government agencies, states/provinces, etc. He adds more information for those groups. Also, search for Zeihan, but then filter by "Length" (on KZhead) and not "Duration: +20". You'll find more variations specific to topics you may be interested in.
Just started the interview and I'm interested in what you're referring to...
Keep listening to this clown and getting financially rekt lol
This is what mainstream media should look like, bring on experts in their field and let them talk and provide rationale beyond sound bites, interjecting questions occasionally to move the topics along
Just ban 24/7 media altogether. Since 9/11 the business model of 24/7 news has destroyed news. Jon Stewart pointed it out when he went after Bil O'Reilly and *ucker Carlson (getting Carlson fired from CNN's Crossfire). The business model for 24/7 news does not lend itself well to slow news days.
Good lord yes -- this is the polar opposite of what mainstream media is doing. They're all about making it a "horse race" , and ignoring facts right left and center in order to engineer that.
Agree, also what was lost was the debate so we can hear different point of views which PBS used to do in the 80s. But all the TV shows are driving some sort of narrative and less of these long form conversations
I must give Jack Carr credit; it seems that he has ceased interrupting Peter. Outstanding interview!
Jack Carr? Wrong channel?
Peter is my morning coffee.
Me too
i listen to this guy last 10 years, as entertainment. not for prediction nor information.
I'm Australian. As to China what we see and our msm says they are coming for us. They depend on our resources from coal, iron, and agriculture. They have been buying infrastructure and agricultural land for decades. In about 2021 or 2022 we were threatened with missiles. We have more recently had navy divers attacked. We are closely allied with Europe, and especially Britain and the US. So much about Taiwan. What does an aging population need more, semi conductors, or food and electricity?
@@grannyannie2948semi conductors, to protect the food and electricity. ;->
@@nonfictionone Interesting.
Clown zeihan is making sure all the people who listen to him will get financially rekt
Same; he's a very entertaining speaker but has some glaring biases and holes in his reasoning and facts.
I am a Zeihanist
What a great meme!!! My compliments!
😂
Haha
My fellow Zeihanist brothers and sisters😎
How unfortunate - for you.
I loved the personal questions in the last 15 minutes - it explained much.
Love Peter. Never miss a poscast hes on or a book he's written or recommends.
Do you have a good resource of books that Peter has recommended?
I'm Filipino of Chinese extraction and I agree most of what Zeihan said, especially about China. But everybody has a blind spot and Zeihan blind spot is American politics and about Biden. His approach to Biden is so far off that its not funny. The fact he is willing to make that issue as a hill to die on is baffling. He is willing to lose his reputation for Democrats and that is a head scratcher, considering he is generally an above average intelligent person.
I've often wondered about this, but Professor Allan Lichtman, who has accurately predicted every Presidential outcome since Reagan says Biden is likely to win as well. He has not made his official prediction but he has said the "a lot of things will have to go wrong between now and November for Biden to lose and that is unlikely".
@@iconifyme Yeah. Everything has already gone wrong for 4 years. Biden would win if the system is still the same. Again, I'm Filipino and we are familiar with our electoral system. When we realized that the US electoral system is far more corrupt and lax than our already corrupt system, then I know that people like that professor you mentioned, are all in the take. I always thought that only in the Philippines that we have dead voters, flying voters, voter fraud, etc. Now, I know where we learn these scams from.
I am a Zeihan fangirl, but it is great to be a fly on the wall for this discourse between these two energy experts
There's video clips from China Observer showing elementary schools' classes with only 2 to 3 students in 1 and 2 tier cities in the PRC post lock downs.
Truth
It was reported that Japan has millions of abandoned homes because many of its cities have started to depopulation. There are schools that were built to teach hundreds of children but now they have less students than Teachers, sometimes they have less than 10 students
Came here for Peter Zeihan, staying for the host. A fine interview!
Angela Merkel was very unwise with her implementation of the green energy
As a physicist by training, she ought to have known better than to shut down nuclear plants that were paid for an in sound operating condition. For shame
Robert, you are blessed with knowledge, the first interviewer that keeps pace with Peter who I admire. Looking forward to more of your pedcasts. Tom Hubbard, River Bend, NC
Peter’s political prognostications are generally subpar when it comes to domestic politics. This was the guy that insisted *the same week* that Ron DeSantis announced his bid for the GOP nomination, that Ron DeSantis would not pursue the GOP nomination. And he also, in this very interview, left out examples of his premises being wrong. He insists that the party out of power had always won the Midterms, since Reconstruction. There’s loads of examples of that not being true, one of the more obvious ones being 2002. Other examples where the White House kept control: 1978, 1966, 1962, 1950, 1942, 1938, 1934, 1926, 1922, 1914, 1906, 1902, 1898. And thats just midterms where the President’s party kept *both* houses. Which does not describe 2022. There are also quite a few where the WH party also gained at least in once house: 1962, 1934, 1906, 1902, 1898.
You only gave 1 other example in the last 50 years, and it's arguable that 2002 was an anomaly given the post-9/11 climate
@@joe42m13 1978 was less than 50 years ago.
@@CMVBrielman i like the way you split hairs while ignoring the argument. I guess 48 can't be rounded up 🤷
@@joe42m13 When the argument is that “X never happens” and x happens 2 times out of a sample size of 12, yeah, thats worth ‘splitting hairs over. A 16.6% fail rate is not ‘never.’
His 2024 election predictions will make or break peter.
They should, but people have short memories.
Ookay...so Zeihan says the first $1T or so of deficit is basically free. But we're spending that about every 100 days now, and that burn rate is likely to accelerate. I feel like there's a serious underestimation of the problem
Yes, for Peter, Usa will win in evey case, while everyone else will die and fail because americans are smarter. Meanwhile they are going toward civil war and bankrupcy
Brilliant Interviewer brought out the best .. out of p z..
Good show, GREAT questions. Interesting and to the point 💯👍
I first subscribed to this channel during Zeihan's first visit!
Congrats
I did too! 😀
Capital costs coming down by the time Millennials are in mid 50s is the problem (in regards to housing) Saying this too shall pass is not going to give anyone hope when a major component of life progression and community investment isnt in place until so late in life due to forces outside of your control
Gen X Are Boomer juniors
Millennials will inherit billions from the baby boomers. Millennials will retire just fine. They can chill until their parents die.
07:00 four to five million housing units shortage: We've got several million people coming over the border every year. They'll all need a place to live. An overshared apartment at first, but they'll climb the economic ladder and need a real home eventually. We haven't built 5 million homes over the last 2 decades, we're not going to build 2-3 million homes per year every year going forward, it's too hard to site them in areas where the jobs are. I don't see a way out of this. Ever.
As a son of a Texas residential contractor , 2014 killed us due to Material and fuel cost, Peter fails to factor the TOTAL cost, generalist usually fail on thst , dad and 2008-2014 beat that out of me
And prices have pulled us all down and theres no incentive to "move up"
Demographically- as current retirees die, downsize, or move to assisted living we will see an increase in supply. As the boomers have just started that cycle in the last 5 years, we won’t hit that peak for another 2-5 years. This will not be enough to outstrip demand, but it will add much needed inventory to the market.
Its why we await the passing of the top half of baby boomers They have lots of homes, often multiple homes
GREAT INTERVIEW. BUT - You may have underestimated the significance of the debt. The Japanese have lot of savings and all the debt is an internal debt financed by their own banks. . Secondly Japanese have obiedient society and low inflation to smooth social problems. This is NOT the US case. So not enough that you see a lot of inflation coming for few important reasons you stipulated you may see :1.short term but abrupt deflationary collapses due to the asset bubble you tend to create (see US bonds, lots of commercial real estate, etc), 2. falling currency adding up to inflation, 3. huge interest spending on the debt resulting in either financial repression (too low interest to pay the debt) leading to even more inflation. HUGE IMBALANCES ahead with all the social problems associated.
I am a huge Peter Zehein fan!! Thank you!
Barbari pirates were part of the Ottoman empire. That was a long time ago. The social norms back then were really interesting. You had Christians, Muslims and Jews. Pirates one time worked on trade ships and the other time on a pirate ship. It was a consequence of opportunities. North Africa had very little trade, so they had to do piracy. And in South Europe trade was strong.
They "Had to Steal"? Wow!
Vikings used to be both raiders and traders. They just stuck a war figurehead on their warship and their trading vessel became the most feared in any sea.
Best guest possible
Robert Bryce is one of the very few interviewers I ever see actually taking notes! For me that is the mark of excellence. But I'm baffled by the relatively small number of subscribers given the quality of the guests and the seriousness of the content. If I had to guess I would suspect that Robert Bryce is perceived to be somewhere on the right given his views on energy and on "renewables" so-called, and may therefore be held down by the YT algorithm.
No. To be honest, I never heard of Robert Bryce before this, but KZhead does NOT like controversial subjects, especially China/Russia since YT makes a lot of money off of WuMao, RuBots and Corporations. The same is true of Patreon, now, and Twitter.
He did not know the that Rex Tillerson was in the Trump cabinet, he has no industry reality, just think tank talking points. Nobody in the industry thinks he has anything to add. Peter has had much better interviewers. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bryce_(writer)
@@rolfman01 I am 55 and I am getting frustrated that things I know I know is at the tip of my tongue and it takes a smart-ass coffee boy mumbling the name to remind me and unleash the flood of info I know. We get caught on the tip-of-the-tongue thing, but then we remember case numbers, dates, a stray remark a professor said. To be honest, I forgot about Rex Tillerson. I like him, but he had no business being in that job!
@@GeoScorpion Trump, etc., thought that since Tillerson was an Oil Guy, he could cut some deals with Russia that would come out better than things have.
@@rolfman01 Tillerson was there and gone... given that the average American doesn't know the name of a single cabinet member and doesn't know what the Secretary of State even does for a living... I'm not surprised.
What heppens when the boomers start giving up their three bedroom houses for condos or retirement communities?
Many of them are actually buying/building larger places. Never underestimate the rampant materialism and need to flex the top end of them possess. Those properties will come available when they die after they squander all their treasure on their in home medical assistance as they are stranded in a single room or two of their 3000-5000 sq foot vanity projects.
My Mom is 84. She smoked for 67 years and didn't live healthy. Her short term memory was fried during a long surgery. But if you talk to her about anything intellectual she is sharp as a tack. And maybe, just maybe, Biden works 80 hours a week so the stress is taking its toll. Remember how screwed up young GW was? After his presidency, that crap went away. Of course, Trump played golf - or blabbed away at a microphone - for a good chunk of his presidency. Funny, with all of the shit Trump is forced to deal with now, he is becoming just like Biden and Bush.
Good point
Biden has been on vacation for 40% of his presidency. On average his workday begins at 930 and ends before 1600. No president has worked less. It's simply because he is not in charge. The presidential schedule is public record.
While Zeihan is very critical of Trump, even he states that industrial construction spending in the US began expanding in 2018, and that is when Trump was president.
His critiques of Trump just don’t hold water. It’s weird to watch him speak so surely about things that don’t match up with the sentiment among the electorate, especially with so many Democrats who are planning to vote for Trump. That’s where his independent assumptions fall apart. There is no road to victory for Joe and it keeps getting worse every month. His disastrous policies on economics, immigration, military, and foreign policy are very palpable among the electorate and our allies and foes alike. Joe represents a level of weakness in the White House we haven’t seen in generations. He makes Obama and Carter look like solid presidents.
@@LRRPFco52I still expect that we will be told that brandon has won. Not that such a thing as brandon winning will actually be true.
@@wheel-man5319 I think the results will be too overwhelming again to overcome the rigging, so more drastic measures will be resorted to. The criminal elite and their stooges in the administrative state and 3-letter communities know that Trump knows now who the enemies are. They can’t afford another Trump WH, and will use all their powers to stop him. I think their main contingency will be a major distraction with some type of attacks, especially now that they have even more sleeper cells in the Country who are financed by Biden through Iran and who knows what other enemies of the US.
@@LRRPFco52this entire comment is a case study in confirmation bias and flawed logic. Just ignore it and move on.
@@LRRPFco52 Zeihan has been in government circles too long, thus his unwarranted hatred of Evil Orange Man Who Is Bad. Same with his thinking that Western countries can import replacement workers ad infinitum instead of reforms to make the natives (us) have kids again.
I like Peter but sometimes he’s so wrong. The navy created to LCS to solve the battle group problem. The problem was they were over promised, and the ships underperformed and now we are building ships that immediately get sent to the scrap heap.
Excellent interview
He’s a generalist, that’s why I have trust in him, too many specialists with myopic narrow fixed views
Well said
Question: how much more expensive is LNG compared to natural gas by pipeline per unit of energy?
What a way to tell GenZ sorry, but you’re not going to be able to afford anything in the next 10 years! Makes me feel like I’m contributing greatly to this economy while getting nothing in return! Me being a Genzr waking up at 5AM in the construction industry every morning
Move to somewhere more affordable or adjust your expectations. Reality comes at you fast. Your labor is valuable and you can write your own ticket. I am the youngest xer and I entered a market that didn't want me because the boomers dominated then the whole thing rolled over and took a shit in 07 08. I suck with it, got through it, and now things are good for me and my family. Everyone has some suck except the boomers. Neither you nor I and likely no current generation living will pull that inside Boomer straight flush. So get your crap together or be miserable, you get to be American so you really shouldn't bitch
Save your money, buy a piece of land outside of a city limits with cash. Since you're in the construction field, build your own home and pay for it as you go. Start with a concrete pad and rough in plumbing. Buy lumber as you build with cash. In a year or two, you'll have a home and no mortgage.
I like Peter
Great interview and interviewer
I agree you with Robert Gates and Ian Bremer as people who have a good understanding of the world.
Always interesting to listen to.
Tom Petty wanted to escape from Florida and when he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan he thought: "Music is the way out...."
I wouldn’t count on India for anything. They seem to be out for as much as a free ride as they can-even on China!
Are u a Muslim?
Once he said Biden will win in a land slide he lost me lol
I have heard that Germany started WW2 in 1939 because they had calculated they would run out of oil by 1945..... So they knew they had to invade Russia and get to the southern oil fields.... So...i think China has made the same type of calculation. They know they must act by a certain date or they will be finished....
The only reason all the investment in our “industrial sector” is inflationary, is because the money was just printed by the federal government through the second Covid relief act and the inflation acceleration act. If that investment had come from real capital already in existence and in circulation within the economy, the investments would not have the inflationary effect that we have been witnessing. I put industrial sector in air quotes because the investment has been very selective based on government directives. As the result, the investments have been far less helpful and productive than they would have been If real demand in the economy drove them. First and foremost was killing the Keystone pipeline and following Germany down the rathole on stupid alternative energy investments.
56:55 I didn’t like being in front of crowds so I went into public speaking 🤣🤣🤣
So awesome he mentioned Robert Gates, I was fortunate enough to be around him and his wife, great people.
Peter, how do you feel about brazil's dictator?
You don't have to have an 'eidetic' (photographic) memory to have an excellent memory and even more importantly have a strong gift for organizing, correlating, and connecting information together. As an analogy an 'eidetic' remembers exactly what page and what part of the page a particular paragraph is and what it says. That doesn't mean an 'eidetic' isn't also 'smart' but it isn't a given that remembering something correlates with understanding the ramifications of the information.
His 10 year Real estate investment doesn't make sense when the same time as baby boomers are relinquishing housing occupation.
Boomers are retiring, not dying. You don't move into a retirement home for another 15-20 years
Will listen when Peter Zeihan is talking
It’s has been a incredibly warm winter so far here in Europe.
18:45 In fairness Michael Moore did have to go on a big _"I Didn't Make That Fuggn Movie!"_ tour 😹
@28:00 the point that a carrier battlegroup is the wrong tool for deterring piracy/sea lane denial is incorrect... Our policy for dealing with these threats is just wrong-sized for the capabilities we have. The US carrier battlegroups could blockade any portion of global trade they wished, indefinately. If yhe US closed the red sea to Russian/Iranian/Chinese shipping until yemeni attacks stopped, I guarantee Russia/Iran would rather have their oil money than have further destabilization in the middle east.
it concerns me how certain peter is about his views
It should since most of his predictions have been constant for the last 10 years including the parts about it all happening sometime in the next decade. He's also very prone to hyperbole by saying the current thing he's talking about is the most extreme case of "x" ever in history for everything.
It should.
I really don't understand what's the thesis here for the sudden collapse for Chinese manufacturing. The plants won't suddenly disappear. The workforce ages, yes, but how does that mean that the services suddenly disappear?
I'd forgotten about Rex Tillerson. Two crude refineries are over a hundred years old. We need a modern refinery for more jetfuel and less solvents and lubricants to shut those grandfathered plants.
With all of the political dysfunction and civil rights dismantling going on in the U.S., I'm often depressed - that is, until I listen to a Zeihan presentation. Then, the Bull saves my psyche.
Blowing my mind, again andagain
36:00 Micheal Flynn is oddly absent from this conversation.
Michael Flynn is a traitor
What does Peter Zeihan think of Davos?😊
He doesn't take it too seriously. He thinks it's little more than a party for world leaders. ok...
He’s a fan Peter is a globalist he just knows globalism is failing
Predictions and conclusions are never the point. Peter's WAY of thinking (and his ability to communicate that) is why he is so popular. US media is unacceptably superficial. An American who takes a big picture approach is worth their weight in gold.
A major problem in the garment industry is overproduction. if the garment industry was simply able to take orders and then produce the garment, there would be an incredible amount of savings
Peter loves the big state.
Of course - they are his clientele.
Well He did work for the US intelligence apparatus for two decades. Notice how none of us knew he existed and then all of a sudden he’s here, everywhere. thats because he retired as in “got out”
@@DMU386 You might not have heard of him (I certainly had), but the reason he got big all of a sudden was because he coincidently managed to publish a book about the collapse of thecurrent global system about 30 seconds before the pandemic which turned a book that no one would have cared about into the top selling book on Amazon for a while which he capitalised on by doing 300 events in following 12 months. It's just good timing.
Might be because states are what prevent anarchy. It's how the world works. Don't know that he likes it but he certainly understands it and understands how critical it is that it works in our favor. You would prefer a different result? No thanks.
Really insightful stuff at kzhead.info/sun/fsqCnrylrnmPn4k/bejne.html - thanks Rob for keeping Peter honest!
Purely constructive comment and please don’t take this personally: you interrupt Peter far too much. You can see the frustration on his face and, let’s face it, we’re all here to listen to him.
I love how Peter doesn’t even dignify crypto as a talking point now
Running any lines at all by any means is DOA bc the environmentalists will scream about the small animals being effected and to transport solar and wind we need OIL
Great post - but please call it CONdensate, not conDENsate.
It is extremely unlikely that China's liquid fuel misiles were filled with water. The fuel is caustic and therefore the missiles are not stored fueled. They are fueled prior to use. It is also difficult and dangerous to defuel a missile once fueled. As such, there is no reason to put water in the fuel tanks. Also, the vast bulk of ICBMs are solid fuel missiles. There may be some older shorter range ballistic missiles that are still liquid fueled. This is speculation, but there is an expression of saying something is full of water to mean it doesn't work. It originated with boats that were "filled with water" and can not move forward or back or only do so sluggishly.
You never have to patrol the entire Pacific Ocean because the sea lanes are in specific areas ships go from point A to point B for economy
If there's one question that i'd love answered (and I don't think that it will get answered correctly) is how much influence Russia has on politics in other countries. I know they try to meddle. However, do they meddle SUCCESSFULLY? I think that people conflate the two.
Customer assistance at Walmart has better audio that Zeihan! He really needs to get a better microphone!
😂🤣
Chrome has an app that magnifies volume. I had the same problem, and it solved it.
Are you hard-of-hearing?
Why can't NATO provide the 800 ships ???
We never had more than 600 ships in our modern navy? how could we need 800 destroyers now?
Simply because of the firepower of other countries. Even if we ignore ability to project, many countries have powerful tools at their disposal which requires an increase in American capabilities all else equal.
@visvamkandadaisrinivasan5190 this makes no sense whatsoever. This is not about protecting shipping from major nations. Our carrier strike groups can solve that. It's piracy he is calling on the 800 destroyers for.
Pirates
@GenX1964 ocean did not get bigger and we covered it for 70 years.
Dont forget the Allied navies also were alot bigger with more smaller ships and the amount of trade lines is also greater now.
“I’m NOT a partisan!” says the man, shaking his head. Something tells me you are!
What about RFKJr???
Zeihan doesn't like Trump ... Keep that in mind ...
He does not like Biden either.
They haven’t mentioned Fervo! Their electric generation con move the needle.
Man Peter, the cops in Morrison really suck.
The US election is more unpredictable than Zeihan expects. He's not accounting for silent voters who don't participate in polls. And, the people of America will NOT willingly put Biden through 4 more years of degredation. I wouldn't underestimate this.
In the two PZ podcasts I've listened to, he's contradicted himself twice. One time in a way that borders on the absurd- Real Estate. Very knowledgeable guy nonetheless.
A small drone taking out a carrier lol
Russia's Black Sea Fleet hasn't had a good time with drones.
@@tsluiter4 Russia’s Black Sea fleet has been attrited by surface-to-surface missiles and waves of RPV boats packed with thousands of pounds of explosives. Small drones are but a nuisance for a carrier.
@@LRRPFco52 And the carrier won't even get into range in the first place. Distance is the first and biggest of its many defenses. Small drones are a problem for the airwing and escorts, but they're just blips over the horizon for the carrier.
I certainly saw a lot of internet chatter when the Gaza war began that soon the Americans would regret their actions and their carrier would be at the bottom of the ocean! I guess not.
Absolutely possible!
Also each of US Citrix en is twice as big as Europeans so that also counts for something
Bitcoin is better than gold and real estate. Peter sees a lot but is blind to what it means as a financial mechanism to enable the common man to uplift themselves in a financial policy environment that impoverishes the people with inflation.
Peter I so appreciate your work! I have to seen you speak with that globe picture behind your head for oh I don’t know a couple years now. If you raised that picture up 5-10 inches it would not look like crazy bunny ears coming out of your head. I remember first seeing it and it took me a good while to even figure out it was the earth. Every single time I see it and you I think bunny ears. It is very distracting for someone as important as you. 🌎☀️💙
Stand up peeps talk about what they once and still trash. STAND UP and explain yourself!
Actually I believe the Lusitania sunk much faster than the Titanic.
TDS!
Took the Titanic longer to sink...
I’m a fan of Peter’s but his domestic politics analysis is just plain rubbish. He actually said that Biden and Trump are the same on the issue of cognitive decline. That is a BONKERS statement. Say what you will about Trump, and there’s plenty to say, but he is FAR healthier physically and cognitively. It’s not close. He is old and could lose it like anyone else his age but the idea that Peter would say this is reason enough to doubt everything else he says relative to domestic politics.
"biden will demolish trump" yeah, nah, i dont think this guy is very attached to reality. stopped watching there.
The electrical transmission issue is so annoying. The NIMBYs are ruining it. In Wisconsin, they are trying to run a big transmission line through the SW part of the state to get Iowa wind power and the NIMBYs are just obnoxious. It is open farmland, it won't be ruined with high voltage lines run across it.
Ya, Bush Sr was the real deal. It should be a pre requisite to be president, his resume was perfect. You can't just be a politician to be president, you need to have done some serious sh!t to be president
Both completely wrong on Biden and Trump, very interesting in all the other subjects
For the record. A metric shitton is 200 shits more than a imperial standard shitton.😂
Nobody lies, and only lies, so confidently.
DTS!
Using electricity to mine crypto is the most ridiculous exercise imaginable