In this presentation, David Theroux walks through a five‑episode web series starring Alexis, a millennial navigating major life challenges—student‑loan debt, job protection, healthcare, housing, and privacy—while contending with a charismatic yet predatory government figure called Gov. Theroux outlines each episode’s premise, the narrative arc culminating in a climax where Alexis discovers Gov has been siphoning her resources and spying on her, and the unresolved question of whether she can escape his control. He then demonstrates the companion MyGovCost app, which lets users input income, age, and education to see how much of their lifetime earnings will be consumed by federal taxes and spending, translating the figures into relatable equivalents (e.g., Lamborghinis, Girl Scout cookies). The talk shifts to a macro‑level discussion of the U.S. federal debt (~$20 trillion), demographic shifts that strain entitlement programs, and the current low interest‑rate environment that masks the true cost of debt. Theroux concludes by suggesting the Gov character could be expanded into broader media (TV, graphic novels) to explore other societal issues, emphasizing the need for humor and accessibility to engage millennials.
Chapters
You can make your own, of course. These are the 5 episodes. Episode 1, as you may recall, as you can see, is Education in Debt. The description that we use on the landing page says, college sure is expensive and Alexis is getting really worried about her mounting college debt. In her meeting Gov, he says, that's what loans are for. In Episode 2, called Protection from Jobs, The landing page describes it as, Alexis has started a business and hired her friend Libby. For Gov, that sounds really dangerous, so he comes to rescue Libby out of a job. Episode 3 is on healthcare, a remedy for health choices. Alexis needs a healthcare plan, but the options are so confusing. Gov's got Alexis covered, however, to protect her from her own choices, but can she afford it? In episode 4 called House Poor, Alexis wants to buy a home. Is Gov going to help? Housing is expensive, but for Gov, not expensive enough. And in the final episode titled Keeping a Close Eye on Privacy, Alexis thinks she's being spied on, but Gov believes if she has done nothing wrong, she must have nothing to hide. But how far will Gov go? Now, in the 5 episodes, do you remember, you know, a story, a good story has to have a good villain in most cases. So as I mentioned earlier, Gov is the villain, but he has positive traits. He has positive traits, as I said, he's handsome, he's clever, he's conscientious, he seems to care. And so the Gov character is sort of the foil for the series. But there's a point in the story, as with all good stories, in which there's a climax to the story. Does anybody know when that was? Do you remember? Now remember, the story is Alexis learning about what Gov is doing and what's going on. The denial of the— when they're in the bank. Right. When they're in the bank, she realizes to her surprise that Gov not only has put her in— has destroyed her business and all the rest of it, but he's actually Bankrupted her by using the money not just for things he's advocating, but he was living off her money. He has no income, right? So he's essentially a predator. He's a parasite on her, not to help people, just to help himself. And he has this whole rationale that it's helping people in the process. So he probably really believes it, but that's the reality of it. So the climax is at the end of the 4th episode. In the 5th episode, what happens? Spying on him. Right, but she goes to the office of Gov and she's not very happy, right? The beginning of the 4th episode, by the way, the beginning of the episode is that she's talking about she can't get rid of him, all right, and look out the window, there's the drone spying on me, right? So then she goes to his office and And she's confronting him and finds out that indeed, not only does she have the suspicion that he's spying on her, but indeed here's the evidence. He has her email records. He has her phone records. And he gives this line about he's just looking at metadata and he gives this whole spiel. And then she asks him, why are you doing this? And what was his answer? Do you remember? Protecting terrorists. Protecting you from terrorists. And she realizes this guy Is insane, in a euphemistic way. So she then essentially throws up her hands and leaves. We're finished. Nothing— don't even try to think about us, et cetera, et cetera. She walks out the door. And of course, he then, as she walks out, asks her to make sure that she pays off her student loan debts, because he had to essentially be the person to co-sign it. And so the question is, can she actually get rid of Gov? That's not settled, right? So one of the ideas of creating the story was to create the Gov character and we're with Alexis as she is going through this 10-year period to discover what Gov is about. But at the end of the time, she wants to get rid of him. The question is, can she? As far as she's concerns she has, but we could then take the Gov character and drop him into other people's lives for future episodes, future series. And one of the interesting things that happened in the series almost from day one when it was released is people were emailing us and posting on the YouTube comments section and so forth, when is the next season starting? So the original idea of the series was to again connect with millennials and to essentially give them a way to see information that perhaps they wouldn't normally have access to or have confidence in. But it actually has turned out that we may actually have a property, so to speak, that could develop into a large-scale popular culture phenomenon where it could actually be a series on television or whatever. You could conceivably— and of course this is just speculation— you might have graphic novels, you could have all sorts of things using the Gov character to look at different problems in society. And there's really no limit to what you might look at. And different groups of people are more concerned about different issues. So you could tailor it to that. But again, making it funny and compelling and lighthearted is, we think, very important. So, This is the app. When you go to the app, you'll find on the left-hand side, that's what the app looks like. You notice that it relates to gov. And what you do is you put in your income, your age, and your education level, and you click at the bottom. It calculates and it pops up with the screen on the right, what you would own in federal Tax liability or government spending. And there's Gov's face and he says, I spent that in the time it took you to read this. So then you can go to each of the— well, I should mention, let me go back. If you then scroll to the right, it will then translate that into how many Lamborghinis you can own with that much money, how many Girl Scout cookies you would own, How many mansions and many other ways to sort of have equivalence in what that would buy you. Then you can drill down into all the different areas, all the 5 questions that we have: college student loan, unemployment, healthcare, and so forth. So you can see the video, you can then scroll down and find further information. It then tabulates it and at each step Gov's face will pop up and it will have some snarky comment. And you can get further information as far as graphs and articles and videos and all sorts of other stuff. So the last one is on privacy. So there's the episode. So Gov says, I'm a bit suspicious of how you're so suspicious of the fact that I'm suspicious of you. So just being doubting of government power is enough to make them want to monitor your life. So does anybody have the app up on their phone by chance? Okay. So why don't you put in your age, income, and education level or just pick anything and tell me what you get. So I don't really earn any money now, but I'm just going to put in a few. Right. I put a million. Right, so $1.7 million is what— Right, and what did you get? I put the total? Yeah. A million dollars and 21. And it said I would owe like $17 million. So are you asking a question? No. Okay, so— No, I thought you asked. Yeah, so the idea is that you put in your current income, if it's $50,000, say, right? The point is that there is— the MyGovCost site has algorithms in it based on the current economy and government spending and so forth and projections of what you would owe what you would— your income would be year by year for the rest of your life based on your education level and conservative estimates. So what would be the total income you would receive in the course of your working life and what percentage of that would go to the government? Okay. So the point is that you're on the hook for this right now. What's— does anybody know what the total federal debt is going to be by next year roughly? $20 trillion. $20 trillion. $20 trillion. All right, so $20 trillion. How many people in the United States? 330 million about, right? So that's spread across that group. Now with the demographics, once upon a time people had larger families and the age of people was different. So as far as the average person, so that's radically changed. So now we're— once upon a time when Social Security, for example, was implemented, The number of people who would be there, who were young people to pay off the cost of Social Security for those retiring, was about 1 person retiring, 15 people paying into it. That's now dropped to about 2 to 3 people paying into it. And so with that kind of a trend, that means that your debt is going to mount very quickly. And on top of it, does anybody know what the cost of money is right now, the interest rate? 5%. Very cheap. It's essentially 0%, all right? So the cost of money is zero. Now, the cost of money always is something. So the Fed is actually reducing the price of money by force. It's a form of price controls. If it actually took its finger off the needle, the price would jump up to some level. But as soon as it jumps up, the cost of that debt of $20 trillion is going to absolutely skyrocket because you have to pay interest on the debt every year. So the debt is no trivial question, all right? And so—
