Zoë Schiffer: It must have been a long walk.
Lauren Goode: I mean, I've heard a lot about jiu-jitsu. 56 minutes of that show was about jiu-jitsu, and then it was also about, “And how to live forever.” Don't know. Yes.
Michael Calore: I really want to hear that because I was fascinated when you started talking about it, and Zoe mentioned him. I don't want to read his book, but I would listen to him on Joe Rogan. The Big Joe Rogan thing for me was Marc Andreessen's recent performance.
Lauren Goode: Ooh, how was that?
Michael Calore: It felt like 6pm.
Lauren Goode: Wow. You were deep in the broligarchy.
Zoë Schiffer: I was listening to it because you were talking about it, and I thought… And it's relevant to our conversation today, but damn, was it long?
Michael Calore: It is. And this show won't be 18 hours, but it's relevant to the topic because we're going to talk about DOGE.
Lauren Goode: So again: the broligarchy.
Michael Calore: The Broligarchy.
Lauren Goode: Let's do it.
Michael Calore: This is WIRED's Uncanny Valley, a show about the people, power and influence of Silicon Valley. I'm Michael Calore, director of consumer technology and culture here at WIRED.
Lauren Goode: And I'm Lauren Goode. I'm a senior writer at WIRED.
Zoë Schiffer: And I'm Zoë Schiffer, director of business and industry at WIRED.
Michael Calore: Today we demystify DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, the meme coin. As Lauren calls it: the broligarchy. We'll talk about the key players, what their proposed plan is for the US government, and what we think is really behind it. DOGE. OK. We're talking about DOGE today, and no, not the meme coin.
Zoë Schiffer: Although the meme coin is relevant here because that's the big joke. That's why they chose this acronym. To give a little background on what that means: meme coins are a type of cryptocurrency that is based on a joke. It's like you're almost mocking cryptocurrency itself. So Dogecoin is one that Elon Musk has been promoting for a long time. There are others like BONK and FLOKI which I think are named after his dog Floki, not BONK. They are actually a kind of crypto, but they are based on an internet joke.
Lauren Goode: Wasn't there also a Hawk Tuah coin recently?
Zoë Schiffer: Ew.
Michael Calore: There was. Yes.
Lauren Goode: Yes. And how did that go?
Michael Calore: Not good.
Zoë Schiffer: Yes.
Michael Calore: Meme coins generally don't do well. But this one has a second life, because now it has been renamed the Department of Government Efficiency, of which Elon Musk is one of the people in charge.
