0:00:03 Support for property comes from Viori.
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0:00:08 I am wearing totally coincidentally,
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0:00:14 are made to be versatile and stand the test of time.
0:00:17 They sent me some to try out and here I am.
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0:00:47 – This is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cub sound experiment.
0:00:50 We’re looking to find the perfect way to hear Reese’s,
0:00:52 so you’ll buy more of them.
0:00:53 Here we go.
0:00:55 Reese’s, Reese’s.
0:00:57 – Reese’s.
0:00:59 – Reese’s.
0:01:00 – Reese’s.
0:01:02 – Get out of here, you little stinker.
0:01:03 – Reese’s.
0:01:06 – Reese’s.
0:01:09 – Reese’s.
0:01:11 – Peanut Butter Cups.
0:01:14 – That breathy one sounded very creepy, am I right?
0:01:17 – This isn’t your grandpa’s finance podcast.
0:01:19 It’s Vivian too, your rich BFF
0:01:21 and host of the “Networth and Chill” podcast.
0:01:23 This is money talk that’s actually fun,
0:01:26 actually relatable, and will actually make you money.
0:01:28 I’m breaking down investments, side hustles,
0:01:30 and wealth strategies, no boring spreadsheets,
0:01:32 just real talk that’ll have you leveling up
0:01:33 your financial game.
0:01:35 With amazing guests like Glenda Baker.
0:01:37 – There’s never been any house that I’ve sold
0:01:40 in the last 32 years that’s not worth more today
0:01:41 than it was the day that I sold it.
0:01:42 – This is a money podcast
0:01:44 that you’ll actually want to listen to.
0:01:47 Follow “Networth and Chill” wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:01:49 Your bank account will thank you later.
0:01:54 – Episode 335.
0:01:56 In 1935, the first canned beer was sold
0:01:57 in Richmond, Virginia,
0:01:59 and Alcoholics Anonymous was founded.
0:02:00 I really enjoy A&A.
0:02:02 It’s the only place where I can pee in an Uber
0:02:06 and then show up and tell other guys who’ve peed in an Uber
0:02:07 that it gets better.
0:02:09 Go, go, go!
0:02:22 Welcome to the 335th episode of “The Prop G Pod.”
0:02:24 In today’s episode, we speak with Mogadot,
0:02:27 the former Chief Business Officer of Google X,
0:02:29 bestselling author, founder of One Billion Happy
0:02:33 and host of “Slow Mo,” a podcast with Mogadot.
0:02:35 We discuss with Mo how AI could shape our lives
0:02:37 in the coming decades, the opportunities it brings,
0:02:39 and the risks it poses to society,
0:02:41 ethics, and mental health.
0:02:42 We also get into his latest book,
0:02:46 “Unstressable, A Practical Guide to Stress-Free Living.”
0:02:47 Yeah, that’s gonna happen.
0:02:49 Yeah, I’m gonna read a book and all of a sudden,
0:02:52 Mr. Stress is gonna leave the neighborhood.
0:02:54 Call me, call me cynical.
0:02:55 Color me a bit skeptical.
0:02:57 What’s going on with the dog?
0:02:58 What’s going on with the dog?
0:03:03 So I am in New York after a stop in Orlando,
0:03:05 where I went for a speaking gig.
0:03:07 I have absolutely no sense of Orlando,
0:03:08 other than Disney World,
0:03:12 which is the seventh circle of hell for parents.
0:03:13 Essentially, I do almost no parenting,
0:03:17 364 days a year, and I compensate for all of it
0:03:19 by agreeing to take my boys and their
0:03:23 five or six closest friends to Walt Disney World,
0:03:25 which is just, I mean,
0:03:28 that is cruel and unusual punishment for a parent.
0:03:30 But anyways, not doing it this time,
0:03:32 just bombing in, speaking to a lovely group of people,
0:03:34 then getting back on a plane and going up to New York,
0:03:37 well, I spent four days with the team and do a bunch of,
0:03:39 I find New York, I get so much done in New York.
0:03:40 There’s something about, I don’t know,
0:03:43 everyone just seems to be on high, if you will.
0:03:44 By the way, it’s fascinating.
0:03:46 All these members clubs are opening.
0:03:49 In the last couple of years, there’s been zero bond,
0:03:53 my favorite, Costa Chupriani, downtown, weird location.
0:03:55 They put a ton of money into it, has that Italian vibe.
0:03:57 I get the sense it’s trust on kids from New Jersey,
0:03:59 but that’s just me.
0:04:03 And then what else has opened up?
0:04:05 San Vicente bungalows is opening up from Los Angeles,
0:04:07 so everyone assumes it’s gonna be cool,
0:04:08 and I’m excited about that.
0:04:12 The Crane Club, which is the guys from the Tau Group,
0:04:15 who are probably the most successful nightclub.
0:04:19 Pretty much a giant fucking red flag is when you find out
0:04:22 that your daughter’s dating a club promoter,
0:04:27 but these guys made good and made so much dough and cabbage
0:04:29 and really kind of professionalized the industry,
0:04:31 if you will, and they’re the folks,
0:04:33 or the power behind Crane Club,
0:04:34 so it should be interesting.
0:04:36 And then I went to another one last week,
0:04:39 and it’s my favorite so far based on my snap impressions.
0:04:44 Shea Margo, ooh, hello, hello ladies.
0:04:46 I don’t know exactly how to describe it,
0:04:47 other than the thing that struck me
0:04:49 was it was super cool, super crowded,
0:04:53 and the thing I liked about it was it was intergenerational.
0:04:54 What do I mean by that?
0:04:56 There was a lot of young, hot people.
0:04:57 Oh, it was a good thing.
0:04:57 Oh, it was a good thing.
0:05:00 New York, by the way, is run on hot women,
0:05:02 hot young women, and rich men.
0:05:03 That’s it for everyone else.
0:05:04 It’s a soul-crushing experience.
0:05:07 Anyways, and then it had people my age,
0:05:10 and then it had parents eating and dining,
0:05:12 and I loved that whole sort of like,
0:05:13 we can be cool at any age,
0:05:15 which is becoming increasingly important to me
0:05:18 as I become a hundred fucking years old.
0:05:19 Anyways, I love being back in New York.
0:05:20 New York’s on fire.
0:05:23 Still think it’s the greatest city in the world,
0:05:24 and am excited to be here.
0:05:27 I’m also gonna talk to Moe about specifically,
0:05:30 I think there’s a paradigm shift going on in AI.
0:05:33 Little bit of a teaser.
0:05:34 Little bit of a teaser.
0:05:36 I’m like those promos for all those YouTube videos
0:05:39 that say the secret to happiness is,
0:05:41 and then they cut out.
0:05:44 But we’re gonna talk to Moe about what I think is,
0:05:46 I think I had a realization around
0:05:49 what is how the whole AI economy might shift.
0:05:52 Anyways, with that, here’s our conversation with Moe Goddard.
0:05:57 Moe, where does this podcast find you?
0:05:58 – I’m in Dubai today.
0:06:03 I am battling with the surprises of February so far.
0:06:08 And yeah, enjoying every bit of it.
0:06:09 – Well, let’s start there.
0:06:13 Surprises of February, what are surprises in February
0:06:16 from an individual such as yourself in Dubai?
0:06:20 – Dubai is wonderful in February,
0:06:22 but we occasionally remember last year
0:06:27 we had this incredible flood that was really, really quite,
0:06:30 and just a couple of days ago,
0:06:34 we had a bit of rain that sort of like triggered
0:06:38 the same fears, but of course the real surprises
0:06:40 were deep seek and the responses in the market
0:06:45 and how the world, I feel overreacted a bit
0:06:48 and then underreacted a bit and life.
0:06:51 – Life, there you go, I hear you.
0:06:53 So let’s press right into it.
0:06:56 The last time you were on, I think it was about a year ago,
0:06:58 and you’re sort of our go-to,
0:07:02 this mix of spirituality and deep technical domain expertise.
0:07:05 And we were talking, as you might guess,
0:07:07 our need to control the response to AI.
0:07:10 – Give us what you think the kind of current state of play
0:07:13 is in AI given some of the recent developments
0:07:16 and how that may have influenced or did it influence
0:07:20 your world view or your predictions around
0:07:22 or thoughts around the future of AI?
0:07:24 – You have to imagine that the short history
0:07:27 of what I normally refer to as the third era of computing,
0:07:31 basically the two years between the time
0:07:33 when Chad GPT came out and today.
0:07:37 That short history was a pace that humanity
0:07:41 has never, ever seen before, I think.
0:07:45 You’ve seen what I used to refer to as the first inevitable,
0:07:48 where basically everyone is in a prisoner’s dilemma,
0:07:49 don’t want the other side to win,
0:07:53 so everyone’s competing, throwing everything on it,
0:07:54 you know, at it.
0:07:57 And basically you’d get releases of new technology
0:08:00 that are sometimes separated by weeks,
0:08:03 if not months at most.
0:08:05 And I think what most people don’t recognize
0:08:09 is that at least within the areas where we invested,
0:08:12 we have made massive stride on tech.
0:08:17 So when it comes to the March to AGI, if you want,
0:08:23 which I think humanity will continue to disagree about
0:08:25 for a while because we don’t really have a definition,
0:08:29 an accurate definition of AGI, you know,
0:08:33 is still steady and very, very fast, right?
0:08:34 So we’re gonna get there,
0:08:38 my prediction is we almost have already gotten there.
0:08:40 And that, you know, when it comes to linguistic intelligence,
0:08:43 they’ve won, they’re winning in mathematics,
0:08:46 they’re winning in reasoning, you know,
0:08:49 and everything we will pour resources on,
0:08:52 they will get to become better than humans.
0:08:54 So it’s just a question of time, really.
0:08:57 The part that hasn’t changed in my mind, Scott,
0:09:00 which now I think is very, very firm
0:09:03 and much more accurate if you want,
0:09:08 is that the impact on humanity in the short term
0:09:10 is gonna be dystopian.
0:09:14 And that has nothing to do with the existential risk
0:09:16 that people speak about with AI.
0:09:19 It has a lot to do with the value set of humanity
0:09:22 at the age of the rise of the machines.
0:09:27 Basically, unelected, influential powers
0:09:30 making decisions on humanity’s behalf
0:09:34 in ways that completely determines how things happen,
0:09:39 leading to massive changes in the very fabric of society
0:09:42 and basically paying to an agenda
0:09:44 where I tend to believe we will end up
0:09:47 with very few big platform players
0:09:49 completely in bed with governments,
0:09:54 completely, you know, feeding on hunger for power,
0:09:58 hunger for wealth and sort of depriving the rest of us
0:10:01 of the freedom to live the life we live.
0:10:05 I can sort of, so I summarized this in an acronym
0:10:08 that I made, seven changes to our way of life.
0:10:10 I call them FACE RIPs,
0:10:13 and we can go into them in details if you want.
0:10:16 But basically, I see this as inevitable.
0:10:20 I see that the short term dystopia
0:10:22 is going to be upon us very, very soon
0:10:25 just because the massive superpower
0:10:29 that is at the disposal of agendas
0:10:31 is going to be in play very, very quickly.
0:10:35 – You said unelected officials that are reshaping society.
0:10:37 Are you talking about Sam Altman, Elon Musk?
0:10:39 Who are you referring to?
0:10:41 – 100%, I mean, with all due respect,
0:10:44 why is my life being determined by Sam Altman?
0:10:48 We all had an accord, unwritten rule if you want,
0:10:51 that we won’t put AI out in the public sphere
0:10:56 until we feel that we’ve tackled safety or alignment
0:11:02 or ethics, if you want, all wonderful dreams to have.
0:11:04 Sam Altman, very soft-spoken,
0:11:05 comes out every now and then and says,
0:11:08 “This is the priority of what we believe in,
0:11:10 “but in reality, it’s a publicly traded company
0:11:14 “creating billionaires, everyone’s rushing very, very quickly.
0:11:16 “Yeah, it’s all about the money.”
0:11:19 And you and I have lived in the tech world long enough
0:11:24 to understand that all you need is a very clever PR manager
0:11:29 to craft a message that is almost exactly
0:11:32 the opposite of what you focus on every day.
0:11:35 But you say it over and over until you yourself believe it.
0:11:39 The truth is the world is not ready
0:11:40 for what is about to hit us.
0:11:44 Whether you take the simple things like the economics
0:11:47 of the world and how they will change as a result of AI
0:11:49 all the way to the change of the dynamics of power
0:11:54 and the resulting deprivation of freedom,
0:11:58 all the way to how the economics of the world
0:12:01 are gonna change and how the jobs are gonna change
0:12:03 and how the human connection is gonna change
0:12:06 and how our understanding of reality is gonna change.
0:12:09 And these are decisions that are not made by us anymore.
0:12:12 And think about it this way,
0:12:16 Spider-Man’s with great power comes great responsibility.
0:12:18 We’ve disconnected power from responsibility.
0:12:21 There is massive, massive power concentration
0:12:25 concentrated in hands that do not answer to anyone.
0:12:27 – So I 100% agree with you.
0:12:31 The idea that everything from which buildings
0:12:34 are these targeted bombs, bomb first,
0:12:38 what our perception of our government election strategies,
0:12:40 all of these things are now being decided
0:12:43 by algorithms program by a very small number of people.
0:12:45 That creates I think a lot of concern.
0:12:50 The steelman argument is that if we don’t iterate
0:12:52 around the public’s usage of these things,
0:12:56 that other entities will leap ahead of us
0:12:59 and their intentions are even more malicious than ours,
0:13:03 that while capitalism perverts things at its heart,
0:13:04 it’s not malicious.
0:13:06 It might be indifferent, but it’s not malicious.
0:13:11 And the fear is that if we let other entities
0:13:13 run unfettered with AI in the sense
0:13:17 that it becomes the wild west and the public provides feedback
0:13:20 and these models leap out ahead of ours,
0:13:23 that ultimately the trade-off between a capitalist motive
0:13:28 is worth it relative to letting other societies
0:13:31 get out ahead of AI, respond to that argument.
0:13:33 – I find that this is a very valid argument
0:13:35 if you think of the short term,
0:13:37 if you think of the long term,
0:13:39 it could lead to a very dystopian place.
0:13:41 So allow me to explain.
0:13:45 A competitive race, arms race,
0:13:49 that basically says if I don’t build a nuclear bomb first,
0:13:51 someone else will build it,
0:13:54 does not necessarily lead to a world
0:13:56 where you’re the only one that owns a nuclear bomb.
0:13:59 As a matter of fact, it leads to a world
0:14:01 that has more than one owner of nuclear bombs.
0:14:04 And I think what you saw from Deepseek, for example,
0:14:09 is a very interesting result that comes out of,
0:14:12 okay, we’re gonna consider this a war,
0:14:14 we’re gonna compete against the other people,
0:14:16 we’re gonna apply sanctions,
0:14:20 we’re gonna try to limit their ability to progress
0:14:22 and what do they do as a result?
0:14:24 Necessity is the mother of all needs
0:14:27 and so basically they find ways to do things differently.
0:14:31 Now, when you really look at the idea
0:14:33 of testing things in public,
0:14:35 which is an argument that’s used very frequently
0:14:39 but by open AI, I think the analogy almost sounds like,
0:14:44 let’s test the trinity in Manhattan, not in New Mexico,
0:14:48 just to see how it impacts humanity, right?
0:14:50 That’s not how you do things.
0:14:52 The way you do things is when you are uncertain
0:14:56 of the outcome, you normally can test it
0:14:58 in ways that are much more contained.
0:15:02 But this genie is out of the bottle long ago
0:15:04 because the truth of the matter is that everyone
0:15:06 is racing already.
0:15:08 The other outcome, believe it or not,
0:15:10 and I say that with a ton of respect,
0:15:16 is that, yes, the US might lead the arms race
0:15:19 or China, you’ll never really know.
0:15:22 It might be open AI or it might be alphabet,
0:15:24 you’ll never really know.
0:15:29 But the problem with that is that a more polar world
0:15:32 where such concentrated power is not a fair world,
0:15:33 either.
0:15:35 It’s not a fair world to the world,
0:15:38 but it’s also not a fair world to most Americans.
0:15:41 And I think that’s what most people don’t recognize
0:15:45 is that you eventually sooner or later,
0:15:47 as more and more power is concentrated
0:15:50 in the hands of very, very few,
0:15:54 which is the only way the US can beat China
0:15:56 if you want in this technology.
0:16:01 Those very few eventually will turn on the American citizen
0:16:03 and say, you know what, you’re not really bringing
0:16:06 any productivity, we care about maximizing the same target
0:16:09 we’ve been chasing so far, more power, more wealth,
0:16:10 and you’re standing in the way.
0:16:14 And I think you can see that in the American society
0:16:18 very, very clearly today before AI takes over.
0:16:21 The only answer in my view, believe it or not,
0:16:24 which I know sounds really idealistic if you want,
0:16:28 is a mutually assured destruction conviction
0:16:33 is that we both understand, by both I mean
0:16:36 every two arch enemies on both sides,
0:16:39 that we are shifting the mindset
0:16:44 and the existence of humanity from a world of scarcity,
0:16:47 where for me to feel safe,
0:16:49 I have to be stronger than the other person,
0:16:52 where for me to gain economically,
0:16:54 I have to compete with the other person
0:16:57 to a world of total abundance.
0:17:01 I mean, we spoke about this last time we met, Scott,
0:17:05 and my definition of the current age of AI
0:17:09 is what I call the intelligence augmentation.
0:17:12 So we’re now augmenting human intelligence
0:17:14 with machine intelligence in ways
0:17:19 where if I can lend you 250 IQ points more,
0:17:21 imagine what you can invent, right?
0:17:24 And I say that publicly all the time,
0:17:28 I dare the world, I say give me 400 IQ points more
0:17:30 and I will harness energy out of thin air.
0:17:33 So why are we competing if that’s the possibility
0:17:38 ahead of us when the competition drives us
0:17:41 to a point of absolute, mutually assured destruction?
0:17:45 – So it’s actually when we talk about
0:17:47 mutually assured destruction,
0:17:48 it’s actually that the two entities
0:17:50 that would have to come to some sort of agreement
0:17:51 around regulation or a pause,
0:17:54 or it would be the US and China.
0:17:55 And I’m sure there’s other entities,
0:17:58 but those are the lead dogs, right?
0:18:02 Do you think it’s realistic that the Chinese
0:18:04 would be sympathetic to this argument
0:18:05 and that there’s enough mutual trust to say,
0:18:08 “Look, we gotta, I don’t wanna say slow down,
0:18:12 but put some of this behind wraps, share with each other.”
0:18:14 I mean, this was sort of Oppenheimer’s,
0:18:15 was it Oppenheimer’s initial vision
0:18:18 that we share this technology and say,
0:18:21 “Okay, when one gets too far out ahead of the other,
0:18:25 that’s a problem, we need to control it together
0:18:28 and realize that if one gets too far out in front of the other,
0:18:30 the temptation to destroy the other is too great,
0:18:32 at which point that person will destroy it,
0:18:34 we’ll make sure they can strike back
0:18:35 in some limited fashion.”
0:18:37 Do you think it’s realistic?
0:18:40 And maybe realistic or not, it’s something we’ve got to do,
0:18:42 that we try and strike some sort of treaty
0:18:44 with the CCP on China?
0:18:47 – It’s not realistic in the current political environment.
0:18:50 Unfortunately, the current geopolitics of the world
0:18:52 is heating up more and more,
0:18:55 but it wasn’t realistic in the case of Russia
0:18:56 and nuclear weapons either.
0:19:01 By the way, I am not for slowing down at all.
0:19:03 I’m actually for speeding up all the way,
0:19:06 but speeding up in the direction that is not competitive,
0:19:09 but rather for the prosperity of the whole world.
0:19:12 I mean, at the end of the day, Scott, again,
0:19:14 give me 400 IQ points more
0:19:17 and I’ll solve every problem known to humankind.
0:19:21 And this is quite straightforward, really.
0:19:23 You and I have both worked with incredibly smart people
0:19:25 and you understand what the difference
0:19:28 of 100 IQ points means, right?
0:19:29 Give me better reasoning, better mathematics,
0:19:31 better understanding of physics,
0:19:34 and I can do things that humanity never dreamt of.
0:19:37 And this is a promised use, Utopia,
0:19:40 that is at our fingers, their tips.
0:19:41 So I’m not saying slow down.
0:19:46 I’m simply saying there is no point to compete.
0:19:48 The issue that is facing our world
0:19:51 is not a problem of technology that’s moving too fast.
0:19:54 Technology has always been good for us, right?
0:19:56 It’s a problem of trust
0:19:58 that if the other guy gets the technology before me,
0:20:00 I’m in trouble.
0:20:03 And that trust is not established in the lab,
0:20:05 it’s not established in the data center.
0:20:08 It’s basically established with the realization
0:20:12 that we can create a world of absolute total abundance,
0:20:13 total abundance.
0:20:18 I could know every piece of knowledge that ever existed.
0:20:21 I know you well, Scott.
0:20:24 I know how big of a dream this is for people like you
0:20:26 and I all love to learn, right?
0:20:29 And I can use that knowledge in ways
0:20:31 that will make me richer.
0:20:34 But how many Ferraris does anyone need?
0:20:36 I think this is the challenge we have.
0:20:39 The challenge is, you know, the founders.
0:20:41 By the way, I don’t believe this is a question of money
0:20:43 for the founders of AI startups.
0:20:48 I think this is a question of ego rather than greed.
0:20:49 I’m the one that figured it out first.
0:20:52 I’m the one that, you know,
0:20:55 provided this amazing breakthrough to humanity.
0:20:59 But if you look back just 150 years
0:21:01 at the King or Queen of England,
0:21:06 they had a much worse life than what anyone today has.
0:21:09 You know, anyone in any reasonable city in the US today
0:21:11 has air conditioning, has transportation,
0:21:14 has clean water, has hot water, has sanitation.
0:21:17 So we’re getting to the point where more
0:21:20 doesn’t actually make any difference anymore.
0:21:22 It is a morality question of,
0:21:26 can we just shift the mindset to abundance instead of scarcity?
0:21:30 We’ll be right back.
0:21:31 Stay with us.
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0:22:32 Go to 1-800-FLOWERS.com/PROFG.
0:22:35 That’s 1-800-FLOWERS.com/PROFG.
0:22:41 Looking to simplify?
0:22:45 How about the simple sounds of neutral vodka soda
0:22:50 with zero gram sugar per can for the next 15 seconds?
0:22:52 [Squeak]
0:23:10 Neutral. Refreshingly simple.
0:23:15 Health and Human Services Secretary nominee
0:23:17 Robert Cloride Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate today
0:23:20 in fiery confirmation hearings.
0:23:23 Did you say Lyme disease is a highly, likely,
0:23:26 militarily engineered bioweapon?
0:23:28 I probably did say that.
0:23:31 Kennedy makes two big arguments about our health,
0:23:33 and the first is deeply divisive.
0:23:35 He is skeptical of vaccines.
0:23:40 Well, I do believe that autism does come from vaccines.
0:23:42 Science disagrees.
0:23:44 The second argument is something that a lot of Americans,
0:23:47 regardless of their politics, have concluded.
0:23:50 He says our food system is serving us garbage,
0:23:53 and that garbage is making us sick.
0:23:55 Coming up on Today Explained, a confidant of Kennedys,
0:23:58 in fact, the man who helped facilitate his introduction
0:24:01 to Donald Trump on what the Make America Healthy Again
0:24:04 movement wants.
0:24:07 Today Explained, weekdays wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24:16 Do you think sequestering China from our most advanced chip
0:24:18 technology was a mistake?
0:24:21 100%.
0:24:22 It’s the biggest mistake ever.
0:24:26 I mean, since when did we–
0:24:30 I mean, strategically, as I said, of course,
0:24:34 the two big sanctions that America did in the last few years
0:24:38 were backfired massively against America.
0:24:41 The move against Russia basically
0:24:44 got a lot of people to try and de-dollarize a little bit.
0:24:47 And the move against China drove China
0:24:49 to become more inventive.
0:24:51 It’s as simple as that.
0:24:56 But it is also a massive statement of, you know what?
0:25:00 I’m going to try everything I can to beat you.
0:25:04 And I don’t know how to say that in a polite way.
0:25:09 But I’ve gone the first time to America in the ’70s.
0:25:11 And it blew me away.
0:25:15 It was a world apart from anywhere else in the world.
0:25:18 I get that feeling today when I land in Shanghai.
0:25:22 It’s not an easy fight.
0:25:25 It’s not a determined fight.
0:25:31 Let’s say ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, definitely post Berlin.
0:25:35 The US could do whatever the F they wanted in the world.
0:25:39 I don’t think it’s as easy a slam dunk as it
0:25:40 has been in the past anymore.
0:25:43 I think America needs to recognize
0:25:47 that when you win, it’s going to be through strategies
0:25:52 like what Trump is talking about by increasing defense,
0:25:55 spending even further than where it was,
0:26:02 loading the American dead clock even further than it is loaded.
0:26:06 And I had a very good boss of mine
0:26:09 that used to say when we’re under pressure,
0:26:12 we tend to do more of what we know how to do best.
0:26:14 But what we know how to do best is
0:26:16 what got us under pressure in the first place.
0:26:21 And I truly and honestly think that imagine a world where
0:26:25 there is an agreement that America adheres to, by the way,
0:26:28 that basically says, let’s just deliver that world
0:26:30 that everyone’s dreaming of.
0:26:34 Deliver a world where there is no need for you to attack me.
0:26:37 I think of a little bit of this.
0:26:38 How I would couch some of your comments
0:26:41 is you think we’re entering into what I’ll call an age of equivalence.
0:26:44 I don’t know how my semantics might be up.
0:26:50 But I think of America was able to develop and sustain
0:26:52 certain competitive advantages.
0:26:56 Manufacturing, mostly because the German and Japanese
0:26:58 infrastructure had been leveled.
0:27:02 Then services infrastructure and then the technology,
0:27:05 whether it was because of IP, risk taking, multiculturalism.
0:27:10 And we were able to maintain one, two, three decade leads
0:27:13 and find the next thing and establish more prosperity
0:27:16 and create and consume a disproportionate amount
0:27:18 of the world’s spoils.
0:27:20 And tell me if I’m saying this correctly,
0:27:23 you now believe that our competitive advantage around
0:27:27 these things is shrinking from 30 years to 30 days.
0:27:33 So it should bring on this incredible age of cooperation.
0:27:35 And we should stop deluding ourselves
0:27:37 that we’re going to be able to get out ahead and win.
0:27:40 Is that an accurate summary of what you’re stating?
0:27:43 That is a very accurate summary that it’s still
0:27:44 possible for the US to win.
0:27:47 I think the most important competitive advantage
0:27:50 that you may have not mentioned here
0:27:53 is that money has always been free for the US.
0:27:57 You had the ability to print money to create amazing wealth
0:28:02 that got reinvested wisely and sometimes unwisely.
0:28:04 Unfortunately, I think we’re in a time
0:28:10 where $500 billion on Stargate is sounds unwise.
0:28:14 But at a point in time, it was a no issue.
0:28:17 It’s like, OK, if this is what it takes to build
0:28:18 the infrastructure, we’ll do it.
0:28:21 What I’m attempting to say here is
0:28:25 it’s not that the US has lost the capability
0:28:29 to crush other nations on whatever full spectrum
0:28:34 dominance that the US has been attempting to achieve for years.
0:28:39 It’s that other nations have grown an ability to resist.
0:28:43 And that the more the US is becoming–
0:28:47 again, I worked my entire life in corporate America,
0:28:51 so don’t take that as an attack to the American approach at all.
0:28:56 I’m basically saying that the more America will bully the world,
0:29:01 the more you’ll get responses like deep seek across the world,
0:29:04 where people are simply going to say, you know what,
0:29:06 we don’t like this anymore.
0:29:09 I will openly say I don’t like the fact
0:29:13 that there is a small chunk of whatever money I made
0:29:17 anywhere in the world that was somehow handed to America
0:29:20 because of the US dollar dominance.
0:29:24 I don’t feel as a wealthy man.
0:29:27 I don’t feel that this tax, if you want,
0:29:29 on all the money made everywhere in the world,
0:29:33 that this export of inflation to everywhere in the world
0:29:36 is a just setup for all of us to succeed.
0:29:40 And so you can see across the world actions from Japan,
0:29:43 from China, from Russia for sure,
0:29:46 that is basically attacking the US
0:29:51 where it becomes painful, which is the US dollar dominance.
0:29:52 It’s not going to go away anytime soon,
0:29:55 but it makes things a little painful.
0:30:00 And in a typical environment, the US would say,
0:30:02 you know what, I’m going to crush you.
0:30:04 I’m strong enough, and you are strong enough.
0:30:08 I’m going to apply tariffs, as Trump would say,
0:30:12 and make sure that nobody has access to my wonderful market.
0:30:13 Makes sense.
0:30:17 It does make sense, but it also causes pain on the US side.
0:30:21 And it comes from a mindset of we’re still competing
0:30:24 for limited resources, where the world was made up
0:30:26 of metals and mirrors, you know,
0:30:30 and power was acquired by weapons.
0:30:33 I think we are on the cusp of a world
0:30:35 where everything is possible.
0:30:38 Just understand that from a difference
0:30:41 of manufacturing point of view, right?
0:30:44 With enough understanding of nanophysics
0:30:49 and an understanding of a level of intelligence
0:30:53 that helps us bridge the remaining bits of nanophysics,
0:30:57 we could manufacture things out of thin air,
0:31:00 just reorganizing molecules of air, right?
0:31:03 Instead of competing for minerals and resources,
0:31:08 and this is on at our fingertips, it’s years away.
0:31:11 There is a need for a mindset change.
0:31:15 – I always like to pause and double click on
0:31:17 or at least cement and highlight
0:31:18 what I think is real striking insight.
0:31:23 In the notion of an inability to sustain an advantage
0:31:26 and all it does is create fear and weakened relationships
0:31:28 and make one side more likely to strike
0:31:31 while they’re ahead and create workarounds
0:31:35 because there, you know, nothing creates innovation
0:31:38 like war and the threat of survival, right?
0:31:42 And what also really resonated was,
0:31:44 and I’ve been saying this,
0:31:47 I think Sam Altman is Sheryl Sandberg with Hush Tones.
0:31:50 Sheryl Sandberg was weaponized for femininity, her charm,
0:31:53 her maternal instincts, gender,
0:31:55 the important conversation on gender
0:31:56 to basically take what was a company
0:32:00 that was creating rage, making our discourse more coarse,
0:32:02 depressing our teens and make it seem more palatable
0:32:04 to basically revast lean over the lens
0:32:06 of pretty menaceous behavior.
0:32:09 And I feel like Sam and his Hush Tones
0:32:11 and his, that’s a real concern.
0:32:14 You know, Senator, I’m worried too.
0:32:16 Meanwhile, I’m about to raise $40 billion
0:32:18 to a $350 billion market cap.
0:32:21 I mean, it’s just, I have been to this fucking movie before
0:32:25 and we are falling for it again and again.
0:32:28 And so I wanna propose something
0:32:29 and have you respond to it.
0:32:33 And this is literally, you just inspired this thought.
0:32:36 Similar to the way we have the UN or NATO,
0:32:37 we have a new organization
0:32:41 and the two founding members are China and the US
0:32:45 and it’s total open, there’s offices in DC,
0:32:49 Silicon Valley, Shanghai and Beijing.
0:32:51 Every room, every team has a mix of US
0:32:55 and Chinese scientists, regulators, such that
0:32:57 it’s almost impossible to hide anything.
0:32:59 We’re all working on the same damn thing
0:33:01 and we’re trying to solve the world’s most
0:33:07 difficult problems, food distribution, health, poverty.
0:33:10 We’re working together, but we’re also making sure
0:33:12 there’s a very, very thick layer
0:33:15 of supervision and enforcement such that
0:33:18 we are constantly testing, how would you make bio weapons?
0:33:20 And then we’re sending our crawlers out to see,
0:33:23 is anyone working on this, that we don’t want working on this?
0:33:26 And we together try and create, you know,
0:33:27 like what Interpol was doing,
0:33:29 where we had multilateral cooperation
0:33:31 around the drug trade and arm shipments.
0:33:34 But we have this multilateral organization that says,
0:33:36 they’re total transparency.
0:33:38 And our job is to dole it out
0:33:40 where we see the most opportunity
0:33:43 to increase stakeholder value.
0:33:45 And the stakeholders are all seven and a half billion
0:33:46 people on the planet.
0:33:49 And we’re there to ensure that there’s trust
0:33:52 and transparency and ensure that the bad guys
0:33:55 don’t get this and start doing.
0:33:58 And we’re gonna cooperate around either sequestering this
0:34:02 or ensuring that the development of it to make weapons
0:34:05 or create a new super virus that we are hip to these things
0:34:08 before anybody else and act against them.
0:34:10 With that type of organization,
0:34:12 do you think that’s possible?
0:34:15 And in your mind, do you think that that has merit?
0:34:17 – That would be a dream.
0:34:19 I mean, let me just double click
0:34:23 on a very important comment that you said there at the end.
0:34:27 What both parties are unable to recognize
0:34:30 while they are putting their heads down
0:34:34 and competing with each other is how many bad guys
0:34:36 are putting their heads down in silence
0:34:38 and working against both of them.
0:34:40 The thing about AI is a massive democracy
0:34:43 and a massive set of open source.
0:34:47 Once again, because of the speed of this thing,
0:34:51 you know, it took Linux tens of years to actually be,
0:34:54 I mean, at least around 10 years to be established.
0:34:59 It took massive open source models weeks to be established.
0:35:03 And so there is access that, you know,
0:35:06 anyone today can download a deep seek,
0:35:11 you know, a model to their computer
0:35:12 in the jungles of Columbia
0:35:17 and do something malicious without ever being detected.
0:35:22 Now, the dream here is that we work together to say,
0:35:24 look, again, mutually assured destruction,
0:35:27 if we are not both together against the bad guys,
0:35:30 there is harm that can come to all of us.
0:35:33 And I think it’s a beautiful dream, but believe it or not,
0:35:35 there is a bit of that dream that’s already happening.
0:35:37 I mean, I don’t know if you know the statistic,
0:35:42 but 38% of all AI, top AI researchers in America are Chinese.
0:35:43 You know, it’s quite staggering
0:35:44 when you really think about it.
0:35:47 And if you count, if you count the Indians
0:35:50 and if you count, you know, some that have Russian origin
0:35:51 and so on and so forth.
0:35:54 – What percentage of that 38% are spies?
0:35:56 – Great question.
0:35:58 And in all honesty.
0:35:59 – In the world you’re defining it,
0:36:01 those spies are assets to humanity.
0:36:02 – And it’s quite interesting
0:36:06 that if you do not have a reason to spy,
0:36:09 then they become more of an asset to humanity.
0:36:14 I think the truth here is there is no winning.
0:36:16 There’s truly no winning.
0:36:19 And of course I don’t want to be grumpy,
0:36:24 but you know, a massive advantage in AI
0:36:28 is not gonna trump the card of nuclear holocaust.
0:36:30 So we’re competing in the wrong arena,
0:36:31 if you think about it.
0:36:35 Because in a world where we have so many superpowers
0:36:40 of which almost four or five can completely wipe out
0:36:44 our planet in less than two hours, right?
0:36:48 The quest for more power, for a dream
0:36:52 that I can crush someone else is a very dangerous quest.
0:36:56 Nobody in this world today can crush anybody.
0:36:59 I think this message needs to become really, really clear.
0:37:01 What are we competing on?
0:37:03 What are we competing on?
0:37:07 And so of course, what you recommended by the way
0:37:08 can be done by governments,
0:37:11 which I think is an impossible dream.
0:37:12 But believe it or not,
0:37:14 if just a few billionaires got together
0:37:16 and built those things,
0:37:18 the creation of the world of abundance
0:37:22 will basically nullify the need to compete.
0:37:25 You see, the challenge we have in our minds
0:37:30 is we’re not in that world of abundance yet, right?
0:37:34 And so we’re still living in our capitalist way
0:37:38 of every one of us has to play,
0:37:41 to aggregate more wealth, which delivers more power.
0:37:43 And then I take that wealth and power
0:37:46 and protect my wealth and power and make more of it.
0:37:48 This is a world that’s about to end.
0:37:52 It is literally about to end for six billion of us
0:37:54 as soon as jobs go away.
0:37:58 Nobody’s talking about this.
0:38:01 So you and I both know, you probably more so,
0:38:04 but I would say I know personally or somewhat well,
0:38:06 I don’t know, a dozen or two dozen billionaires.
0:38:10 And what I have found is that the majority of them
0:38:14 have what I call their very expensive go-back.
0:38:15 And that is they have a plan,
0:38:20 whether it’s antisemitism or a nuclear war
0:38:25 or some side of AI catastrophe or revolution.
0:38:28 And they have their Gulfstream 650,
0:38:31 ready on a moment’s notice and pilots
0:38:33 and their bunker in New Zealand.
0:38:36 And what I’ve said when I’ve talked to a few people
0:38:38 about this is like, let me get this.
0:38:40 If things really get that bad,
0:38:42 you don’t think your pilots are gonna get you
0:38:44 to your destination and then kill you.
0:38:47 You think they’re gonna sacrifice themselves
0:38:48 to save your family.
0:38:51 You don’t think that everybody else is gonna figure out
0:38:53 where the billionaire bunkers are and come and take you.
0:38:55 I mean, it’s just, it’s such a ridiculous,
0:38:59 I feel like it’s not only a stupid thesis,
0:39:03 it’s an unhealthy one because they’re under the impression
0:39:08 that their money can buy them a ripcord, a way out.
0:39:09 And they can’t.
0:39:12 And so shouldn’t you be focusing all this energy
0:39:14 on making sure that we just don’t get to that point?
0:39:18 I don’t, colonizing Mars, well, here’s an idea.
0:39:19 Take your immense talent and capital
0:39:22 to make this place a little bit more fucking habitable
0:39:25 because you’re not gonna wanna live on Mars.
0:39:27 Mars is an awful place.
0:39:28 You don’t wanna be there.
0:39:30 That’s worse than death.
0:39:34 That’s not space exploration, it’s space execution.
0:39:39 Isn’t this, I mean, don’t we have a real virus?
0:39:42 It’s almost like capitalism collapsing on itself
0:39:45 where we get so caught up in our self-worth
0:39:48 and our masculinity and our power around the number.
0:39:52 And we see this way to a billion, 10 billion,
0:39:57 a trillion dollars, which will increase in the current age,
0:39:59 my worth as a human, don’t,
0:40:02 doesn’t this require an entirely different zeitgeist?
0:40:05 Endlessly, you see, you see,
0:40:08 both directions of this dilemma are quite interesting.
0:40:11 One of them is, you know, remember last time,
0:40:12 I don’t remember when we were,
0:40:14 when we had a drink after the event.
0:40:20 We spoke about the idea of what you can do with money,
0:40:25 you know, there is a specific, you know,
0:40:29 range of wealth where money makes a difference.
0:40:32 You know, if you’ve never driven a sports car before
0:40:34 and you manage to get yourself a sports car,
0:40:36 you go like, ah, I made it.
0:40:37 But then if you drive a real sports car
0:40:40 and you know how annoying and fucking broken they are
0:40:43 and you know how they, you just eventually go like,
0:40:45 I don’t need any more of this.
0:40:48 The problem is, the game of billionaire
0:40:52 or multi-multi-multi-millionaire is wonderful, okay?
0:40:57 It’s a nice game, but it has no significant impact
0:40:59 on gains that you can achieve as a human.
0:41:00 You’ll still sleep in one bed
0:41:02 and you can make it as fancy as you can,
0:41:03 but it’s still one bed.
0:41:05 You can still drive only one car.
0:41:07 There could be 600 other cars,
0:41:09 600,000 other cars in the garage,
0:41:11 but you’re still driving only one.
0:41:12 And by the way, when you’re a billionaire,
0:41:14 you’re not really driving it comfortably anyway,
0:41:16 because you’re targeted all the time.
0:41:19 The other way of this crazy dilemma
0:41:22 is even more, you know, worthy of discussion
0:41:27 because we remember the times when if you had an MBA,
0:41:30 you were like a highly educated post-grad
0:41:32 and you know, now everyone has an MBA
0:41:35 and then if you had a PhD, you know,
0:41:36 you became the special one
0:41:39 and now everyone has a PhD and you know, many have many.
0:41:43 And the idea here is there is an inflation
0:41:47 to the value of something that you acquire, right?
0:41:49 And what is happening with wealth today
0:41:51 with artificial intelligence
0:41:54 is if you just look at the current trajectory,
0:41:56 we’re gonna see our first trillionaire
0:41:58 within years for sure.
0:42:03 And that not only makes that person acquire more wealth
0:42:04 that is not necessary,
0:42:07 but it makes the price of every Rolls-Royce higher.
0:42:10 And then that makes the price of every Mercedes higher
0:42:12 and that makes the price of every Toyota higher
0:42:13 and so on and so forth,
0:42:17 which basically means that as more of those exist,
0:42:19 just in the single digits,
0:42:22 more of the millionaires become poor
0:42:24 and then a few years later,
0:42:28 more of the hundred million millionaires become poor
0:42:31 because they can no longer compete with that level of wealth
0:42:33 to which everyone is now appealing.
0:42:35 And so if you take that cycle
0:42:37 and continue to repeat it over and over,
0:42:39 eventually you’ll end up with a very few,
0:42:44 like way less than 0.01% of all humans
0:42:46 that have so much wealth,
0:42:48 but then the great equalizer
0:42:51 is that the rest of us have no wealth at all.
0:42:54 So once again, from an economics point of view,
0:42:56 we are getting to a point where money
0:42:58 will have very little value
0:43:02 as compared to a world where money has no value
0:43:05 because everything is becoming a lot cheaper,
0:43:08 which is a world we can create with AI.
0:43:10 So I buy it theoretically,
0:43:15 but what I’ve registered is that over the last 50 years,
0:43:17 money becomes an even greater arbiter
0:43:18 of the life you can lead.
0:43:19 When I was a kid,
0:43:23 the difference between my dad’s house and his boss’s house,
0:43:24 little bit nicer car, a little bit bigger house,
0:43:26 but we were in the same neighborhood,
0:43:28 golfed at the same country club.
0:43:30 The market in a capitalist society
0:43:32 always figures out a way for you
0:43:34 to offer you more with more money.
0:43:36 There’s coach, there’s premium economy,
0:43:38 there’s business class, there’s first class,
0:43:41 there’s chartering, there’s fractional jet ownership,
0:43:42 there’s ownership, there’s a challenger,
0:43:45 there’s a Bombardier Global Express,
0:43:46 and there’s a Goldstream 650,
0:43:48 then there’s going into space.
0:43:51 My sense is life has actually gone the other way
0:43:52 the last 50 years,
0:43:55 that the life that the 0.1% lead
0:43:57 is an entirely different life.
0:44:01 It’s like the delta between being middle class and rich
0:44:04 has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.
0:44:07 And so the incentives are actually the other way,
0:44:09 that there really is a reason.
0:44:10 When you’re the richest man in the world,
0:44:13 you can show up and turn off foreign aid
0:44:14 without being elected.
0:44:16 – Correct, I think we’re saying the same thing.
0:44:20 What that means, however, is that the majority of us,
0:44:23 even the ones that are now millionaires,
0:44:25 are gonna become poor.
0:44:27 That what you’re saying is exactly true.
0:44:31 It’s that the range in which we’re now talking
0:44:33 about the difference between what you can do
0:44:36 with a lot of money and what you cannot do
0:44:37 if you don’t have that money,
0:44:40 makes everyone almost equal at the bottom.
0:44:43 Everyone gets a reasonable car,
0:44:46 but not a massively fancy car.
0:44:49 Everyone becomes equal as compared
0:44:52 to those incredibly wealthy, if you know what I mean.
0:44:55 – We’ll be right back, stay with us.
0:45:02 – Hey, this is Peter Kafka.
0:45:04 I’m the host of Channels,
0:45:06 a podcast about technology and media.
0:45:09 And maybe you’ve noticed that a lot of people
0:45:10 are investing a lot of money
0:45:14 trying to encourage you to bet on sports,
0:45:16 right now, right from your phone.
0:45:19 That is a huge change and it’s happened so fast
0:45:20 that most of us haven’t spent much time
0:45:24 thinking about what it means and if it’s a good thing.
0:45:27 But Michael Lewis, that’s the guy who wrote Moneyball
0:45:29 on the big shore and Liars Poker,
0:45:30 has been thinking a lot about it.
0:45:33 And he tells me that he’s pretty worried.
0:45:36 I mean, there was never a delivery mechanism for cigarettes
0:45:38 as efficient as the phone is
0:45:39 for delivering the gambling apps.
0:45:42 It’s like the world has created less and less friction
0:45:45 for the behavior when what it needs is more and more.
0:45:46 – You can hear my chat with Michael Lewis
0:45:49 right now on Channels, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:45:54 – This week on ProfG Markets,
0:45:56 we speak with Robert Armstrong,
0:45:58 the US financial commentator for the Financial Times.
0:46:00 We discussed Trump’s comments on interest rates
0:46:03 and who might emerge as the biggest winners
0:46:04 from the deep seek trade.
0:46:07 – In the world we lived in last Friday,
0:46:12 having a great AI model behind your applications
0:46:17 either involved building your own or going to ask open AI,
0:46:20 can I run my application on top
0:46:22 of your brilliantly good AI model?
0:46:24 Now, maybe this is great for Google, right?
0:46:28 Maybe this is great for Microsoft who were shoveling money
0:46:31 on the assumption that they had to build it themselves
0:46:33 at great expense.
0:46:34 – You can find that conversation
0:46:37 and many others exclusively on the ProfG Markets podcast.
0:46:46 – We’re back with more from Mogadot.
0:46:49 – Mo, I wanna propose a thesis
0:46:51 and I’m gonna do what we’re supposed to do
0:46:53 and then I’ll talk about your book.
0:46:56 I was sort of blown away by this guy, Robert Armstrong.
0:47:01 He proposed or he talked about certain industries
0:47:04 where the innovation has resulted
0:47:06 in stakeholder value, not shareholder value.
0:47:09 So we have fallen under the notion
0:47:12 that if I can come up with a better search engine,
0:47:14 I’m gonna capture trillions of dollars
0:47:15 in shareholder value for me
0:47:17 and my investors and my employees.
0:47:21 Same way around social media, same way around e-commerce.
0:47:23 I came to Orlando last night for a speaking gig.
0:47:25 I skirt along the surface of the atmosphere
0:47:27 at eight-tenths the speed of sound.
0:47:31 I don’t have to eat my niece going over the Rockies
0:47:34 with scurvy, I don’t get seasick for 14 days
0:47:36 as my parents did coming on a steamship.
0:47:39 It has changed humanity, jet travel.
0:47:42 The PC changed humanity for better.
0:47:43 I mean, it’s just a super computer
0:47:48 that used to cost $10 billion on inflation adjusted.
0:47:49 I can get for 300 bucks, put it on my desk
0:47:52 and increase the productivity of everything.
0:47:53 I was on the board of Gateway Computer.
0:47:56 We were the second largest computer manufacturer in the world.
0:47:58 When I bought 17% of the company,
0:48:00 it was worth $130 million.
0:48:03 If you added up all the profits of the airline industry,
0:48:05 it’s negative.
0:48:07 They’ve lost more money than they’ve made.
0:48:10 There are certain industries and technology
0:48:13 where because of a lack of competitive modes,
0:48:18 the gains, the value seep to humanity and to stakeholders,
0:48:20 they’re not able to be captured
0:48:22 by a small number of shareholders.
0:48:26 And when deep seek came along, it sort of dawned on me,
0:48:29 maybe, and I think this is an optimistic vision,
0:48:33 maybe AI is more like the PC or the airline industry.
0:48:35 And that is many of the benefits
0:48:38 will accrete to stakeholders and citizens,
0:48:41 but no one small set of company or people
0:48:42 are gonna be able to capture all of the value.
0:48:45 Do you think that’s an optimistic view
0:48:47 of where AI might be headed?
0:48:48 In other words, do not participate
0:48:53 in the soft bank round at $350 billion in open AI?
0:48:55 – There is certainty in my mind
0:48:57 that there is going to be a democratization of power,
0:49:01 more access for everyone to more things, right?
0:49:02 You know, unfortunately,
0:49:06 if you take a power hungry scenario
0:49:11 in the recent wars of 2024 in the world,
0:49:14 you got the ultra powerful,
0:49:16 you got a concentration of power, some of it using AI,
0:49:19 by the way, in terms of weapons that have massive impacts,
0:49:22 but you also got access to drones
0:49:25 that can be flown from a very far away distance
0:49:28 and for $3,000 cause a lot of harm, right?
0:49:32 And I think that dichotomy, if you want that arbitrage
0:49:34 between a massive concentration of power at the top
0:49:38 and a democratization of power at the bottom
0:49:43 is going to drive a very, very high need for control.
0:49:47 Once again, I love the hypothesis or the ambition for AI
0:49:51 to become that net positive to the world
0:49:55 because it’s not really driving only profits to the top,
0:49:59 which it will, but I think that the opposite direction
0:50:03 of that is that when you have massive power at the top
0:50:06 and you sense that the bottom has a democracy of power
0:50:09 and that can threaten you at any point in time,
0:50:13 you’re going to have to oppress them.
0:50:15 And so that will take away the benefits
0:50:18 that the majority can get.
0:50:23 And I give a very stark and maybe a bit graphic example.
0:50:27 Think about a world Scott where a bullet could kill,
0:50:29 but if you’re a leader of a nation,
0:50:31 you can have protection around you
0:50:34 and can have everything to protect yourself.
0:50:38 We’ve seen examples in the 2024 wars
0:50:40 where a specific person is targeted
0:50:42 anywhere in the world and killed.
0:50:45 A tiny little drone carries that bullet,
0:50:48 seeks you with AI, finds where you are,
0:50:52 stands in front of your forehead and then shoots.
0:50:55 And these technologies are unfortunately under development.
0:50:59 Now think about what that does to democracy.
0:51:03 Think about those who own that weapon.
0:51:06 By the way, they don’t necessarily have to be governments
0:51:11 and how they can influence the distribution of power,
0:51:14 how they can ensure that whatever is created
0:51:17 is directed in a way that’s different
0:51:20 than what would benefit the majority.
0:51:24 – Yeah, in every war there’s a new weapon
0:51:25 that kind of changes the game.
0:51:26 And I think people don’t talk about this enough,
0:51:31 but I think drones are the new weapon that’s gonna come.
0:51:34 I mean, I think about millions of self-healing,
0:51:39 sass and drones and AI and the AI
0:51:40 under the direction of some individual
0:51:42 puts together a list of people who are not
0:51:45 in the way of my wealth and my power
0:51:46 and those drones can be released at
0:51:49 one of a thousand different,
0:51:52 I mean, you can really get very dark, very, very fast here.
0:51:53 So I’m gonna try and segue out of this
0:51:55 into something a little bit more positive.
0:51:56 – Is this the very first conversation
0:51:59 where I am grumpier than you?
0:52:03 – Yeah, yeah, we’re both, this is a,
0:52:04 yeah, it’s definitely grumpy old men.
0:52:07 It’s grumpy grumpier and grumpiest,
0:52:11 but I do find, whenever I speak to you,
0:52:14 I manage to distill something down
0:52:16 to something understandable and actionable for me.
0:52:18 I love the idea of this multilateral agency.
0:52:21 I was thinking in a zero-sum game philosophy
0:52:23 that we need to get out ahead, we need to develop AI,
0:52:25 we shouldn’t be shipping NVIDIA chips to China.
0:52:27 I was part of that crew.
0:52:29 And what you have taught me is,
0:52:34 okay, what if we cooperated around not only releasing it
0:52:37 to for the betterment of humanity,
0:52:41 but also, quite frankly, policing the bad stuff together
0:52:45 and being 100% transparent with each other
0:52:48 and just saying, not only are there no secrets,
0:52:50 but it would be impossible to have secrets
0:52:52 amongst each other because we’re,
0:52:55 we’ve just decided we’re in the same office space.
0:52:57 I really love that idea.
0:52:59 And I think that as I think about candidates
0:53:03 that I want to support in 2028, I do or 2026,
0:53:05 I do have access mostly because I have money,
0:53:09 but I think this is a really interesting view.
0:53:10 Anyways, thank you for that.
0:53:12 Your latest book on stressable practical guide
0:53:14 for stress reliving addresses the pervasive issues
0:53:16 of chronic stress in modern life.
0:53:19 In an interview on the diary of a CEO with, by the way,
0:53:21 Stephen Bartlett, who I believe is gonna be
0:53:24 the next Joe Rogan, you describe stress as an addiction
0:53:26 and a badge of honor.
0:53:29 Say more, why are we so addicted to stress?
0:53:35 – Part of the fakeness that leads us to success
0:53:39 is I’m busy, I’m busy, I’m busy,
0:53:44 which I have to say I found almost always quite shocking
0:53:49 because if you go across the range of intelligence
0:53:54 if you want, I think most of us know that a good 80 to 90%
0:53:58 of all of the efficiency that you bring to any job
0:54:01 that you do is done within 20% of the time.
0:54:05 But yet, you know, part of your ego is I’m gonna fill
0:54:09 the other 20, you know, the other 80% of the time
0:54:13 with 20% work that’s taking a lot of toll on me
0:54:15 because it basically means I’m driven.
0:54:19 It basically means, you know, that I am maximizing
0:54:22 my performance, maximizing my deliveries
0:54:24 between waking up in the morning at five a.m.
0:54:27 to run an Iron Man and then going in the evening
0:54:30 to attend, I don’t know what and flying all over the world
0:54:32 and so on and so forth.
0:54:37 The truth of the matter is this is a self perception,
0:54:42 a form of ego that says I am doing amazing, okay?
0:54:43 But it isn’t.
0:54:46 And I think the biggest challenge we have is that
0:54:48 we believe that the world stresses us.
0:54:49 The world does not stress us.
0:54:53 I mean, when I wrote Unstressable, I started from physics.
0:54:56 I basically said, look, the easiest way to understand physics
0:54:58 and to understand stress in humans
0:55:01 is to look at stress in objects.
0:55:04 And the stress in object is the force applied to the object
0:55:08 but that is divided by the cross section of the object,
0:55:12 how much resources the object has to carry that force, right?
0:55:14 And so typical reality of our life,
0:55:16 especially the lives of busy executives
0:55:19 who live in busy cities and so on and so forth,
0:55:21 is that there will be multiple challenges
0:55:23 and forces applied to you every day
0:55:25 but that the cross section of you,
0:55:28 your capabilities, your skills, your connections,
0:55:30 your abilities and so on,
0:55:33 the more you have those and apply them properly,
0:55:35 the less stressed you feel.
0:55:37 There might be more force applied to you,
0:55:39 you might be carrying more challenges
0:55:41 but you don’t feel stressed.
0:55:42 Just like an object doesn’t break
0:55:44 when it has a bigger cross section.
0:55:46 And the reality of the matter is that
0:55:48 part of the badge of honor is not that I’m carrying
0:55:51 a lot of things, it’s that I’m busy and I’m angry
0:55:54 and I’m stressed and I’m this and I’m that.
0:55:56 And I find that honestly.
0:55:58 Yeah, and I worked with many people
0:56:01 who are very successful, who appear to be that way
0:56:05 and become a lot very obnoxious and unloved by their people.
0:56:08 And I worked with a few that were totally chill.
0:56:11 I used to be the one that used to tell my sales team,
0:56:13 I really think this pipeline is too wide.
0:56:16 I really think you should focus on 30% of it
0:56:20 and close it, rather than waste your time
0:56:22 on things that you will not serve well.
0:56:25 And in a way you make more money that way,
0:56:27 you become more successful that way,
0:56:30 you get more customer satisfaction that way.
0:56:31 And the rest of the pipeline,
0:56:33 you hand over to a different channel
0:56:36 that does it in a way that’s suited for it
0:56:38 so that it doesn’t stress anyone.
0:56:40 How do we deal with stress in a more sustainable way?
0:56:43 And as we wrap up here, are there any quick fixes?
0:56:46 I feel that what we want to deal with is not stress,
0:56:48 what we want to deal with is a break points.
0:56:49 So we wanna avoid break points.
0:56:51 And I think there are three break points
0:56:54 that happen to us in our world today.
0:56:56 One is of course burnout, okay?
0:56:58 And burnout algorithmically is the sigma
0:57:01 of all of the stressors that you’re under multiplied
0:57:04 by their duration, multiplied by their intensity.
0:57:08 And basically most of the time when you burn out,
0:57:12 you burn out not because one big stressor is in your life,
0:57:13 but it’s because of the aggregation
0:57:14 of all the little things,
0:57:17 the loud alarm in the morning, the commute, the this and that.
0:57:19 And then one little thing shows up on top of it
0:57:20 and you break down.
0:57:24 And so burnout to me is a question of a weekly review.
0:57:26 Literally every Saturday, you sit with yourself,
0:57:27 you write on a piece of paper,
0:57:29 everything that stressed you last week
0:57:31 and you scratch out the ones that you commit
0:57:34 that you will not allow in your life anymore.
0:57:37 You can either remove them from your life
0:57:39 or make them more enjoyable.
0:57:42 So if you have to be stuck in a commute or a long flight,
0:57:46 take some good music, be healthy and so on and so forth.
0:57:51 The other break point unfortunately is trauma, right?
0:57:54 So basically massive stress that happens
0:57:56 in a very short period of time
0:57:57 that exceeds your ability to deal with it,
0:58:00 the loss of a loved one, an accident,
0:58:03 being stuck in war or whatever and so on.
0:58:07 And this unfortunately is not within our hands,
0:58:08 but believe it or not,
0:58:09 it actually is not the reason
0:58:11 for the stress pandemic of the world.
0:58:15 So 91% of all of us would get
0:58:20 at least one PTSD inducing,
0:58:25 like the highest of all trauma PTSD inducing event
0:58:26 once in their life,
0:58:30 but 93% of those would recover in three months
0:58:34 and 96.7% of those will recover in six months.
0:58:37 And all of those will enjoy post-traumatic growth.
0:58:41 So there is no worry about trauma if you want.
0:58:43 It’s not within your control to prevent,
0:58:47 but if you work on it, you’ll recover.
0:58:50 The third and the most interesting reason for stress,
0:58:52 especially in younger generations today
0:58:55 is what I call an anticipation of a threat, right?
0:58:58 And the challenge with it is that looking forward
0:59:02 with fear, worry, anxiety and panic
0:59:04 are probably the biggest stressors
0:59:05 for the younger generations.
0:59:10 And the funny bit is that fear is not a bad emotion.
0:59:13 Fear is actually alerting you to something
0:59:16 that you need to pay attention to, so that’s okay, right?
0:59:17 Worry, anxiety and panic
0:59:19 are actually of a very different fabric.
0:59:23 So worry is not about, I know there is a threat coming.
0:59:25 Worry is I can’t make up my mind
0:59:26 if there is a threat coming or not.
0:59:29 And so you keep flip-flopping and you don’t take the action
0:59:31 and you keep feeling the fear
0:59:33 but not doing anything about it.
0:59:34 When you’re worried,
0:59:37 you need to actually tell yourself openly,
0:59:41 look, I’m going to decide if I should chill or panic, right?
0:59:43 Chill or freak out.
0:59:45 If it’s freak out, then it’s fear, deal with it.
0:59:47 If it’s chill, then stop thinking about it.
0:59:49 Anxiety is not about the threat.
0:59:51 Anxiety is actually about your capability.
0:59:54 And most people, if they really visit themselves
0:59:57 when they feel anxious, when you’re anxious,
0:59:58 there is a threat approaching you
1:00:00 but you constantly think
1:00:02 that you’re not capable of dealing with it.
1:00:04 So the more you attempt to deal with the threat,
1:00:06 the more you feel incapable,
1:00:08 so the more anxious you become.
1:00:10 When you’re anxious, work on your capabilities,
1:00:11 not on the threat.
1:00:14 And then panic is a question of time, right?
1:00:16 And panic really is the stress,
1:00:17 you know, the threat is imminent.
1:00:19 It’s approaching me too quickly.
1:00:22 And so accordingly, when you feel panicked,
1:00:24 don’t work on solving the problem.
1:00:26 Don’t work on addressing the threat.
1:00:28 Work on giving yourself more time.
1:00:30 You know, find someone to help you
1:00:33 or delay the, you know, the presentation time
1:00:35 or, you know, or cancel a few meetings
1:00:37 so that you have more time for the,
1:00:39 for whatever it is that you need to focus on.
1:00:41 And what I mean by all of this,
1:00:43 this is a very, very quick summary of, you know,
1:00:45 of a lot of stuff that we discuss in Unstressable.
1:00:48 But what I mean by this is that it’s all,
1:00:50 it all goes back to your cross-section.
1:00:53 All goes back to skills and choices that we make
1:00:56 so that the external stressors that come to us from,
1:00:59 from the world don’t kill us.
1:01:01 – One of my favorites, even Spielberg movies,
1:01:03 is this movie called “Bridge of Spies”
1:01:06 and this Russian spy who’s been unmasked
1:01:09 by the US government is in court,
1:01:12 he’s being tried for, you know, trees and respying
1:01:14 and he’s potentially facing a life in prison
1:01:17 and his lawyer, I think it’s Tom Higgs says,
1:01:18 “Aren’t you nervous?
1:01:19 “Aren’t you stressed?”
1:01:21 And he looks at me and says, “Would it help?”
1:01:22 (laughing)
1:01:23 – Exactly, exactly.
1:01:24 – Yeah.
1:01:28 Anyways, Mo Gadot is the former chief business officer
1:01:30 for Google X, the founder of One Billion Happy Foundation
1:01:33 and co-founder of Unstressable.
1:01:34 He’s also a bestselling author of books,
1:01:37 including “Solve for Happy,” “Scary Smart”
1:01:38 and that little voice in your head.
1:01:39 Mo, I mean this and seriously,
1:01:43 you bring my stress down because I find you inspiring
1:01:46 and relaxing and you distill things
1:01:48 into kind of actionable solutions.
1:01:51 Really always enjoy speaking with you.
1:01:54 I think you’re really a profound thinker.
1:01:55 Thanks for your good work.
1:01:59 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
1:02:01 Our intern is Dan Shalon.
1:02:03 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
1:02:04 Thank you for listening to the property pod
1:02:06 from the Box Media Podcast Network.
1:02:09 We will catch you on Saturday for “No Mercino Mouse,”
1:02:11 as read by George Hahn.
1:02:13 And please follow our Prodigy Markets Pod
1:02:15 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
1:02:17 every Monday and Thursday.
1:02:20 (upbeat music)
1:02:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:02 Support for Prop G comes from better help.
0:00:04 Looking out for red flags in a relationship is important,
0:00:06 but what if we spent a little more time
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0:00:32 to get 10% off your first month.
0:00:36 That’s betterhelp, H-E-L-P.com/provg.
0:00:39 – This is a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cub Sound Experiment.
0:00:42 We’re looking to find the perfect way to hear Reese’s,
0:00:44 so you’ll buy more of them.
0:00:45 Here we go.
0:00:46 Reese’s.
0:00:47 Reese’s.
0:00:49 – Reese’s.
0:00:51 – Reese’s.
0:00:52 – Reese’s.
0:00:54 – Get out of here, you little stinker.
0:00:55 – Reese’s.
0:00:56 – Reese’s.
0:01:01 – Reese’s.
0:01:03 – Peanut Butter Cups.
0:01:06 – That breathy one sounded very creepy, am I right?
0:01:09 – This isn’t your grandpa’s finance podcast.
0:01:11 It’s Vivian2, your rich BFF,
0:01:13 and host of the Net Worth and Chill podcast.
0:01:15 This is money talk that’s actually fun,
0:01:18 actually relatable, and will actually make you money.
0:01:20 I’m breaking down investments, side hustles,
0:01:22 and wealth strategies, no boring spreadsheets,
0:01:24 just real talk that’ll have you
0:01:25 leveling up your financial game.
0:01:27 With amazing guests like Glenda Baker.
0:01:29 – There’s never been any house that I’ve sold
0:01:30 in the last 32 years.
0:01:32 That’s not worth more today
0:01:33 than it was the day that I sold it.
0:01:34 – This is a money podcast
0:01:36 that you’ll actually want to listen to.
0:01:39 Follow Net Worth and Chill wherever you listen to podcasts.
0:01:41 Your bank account will thank you later.
0:01:44 – Welcome to Office Hours with ProveG.
0:01:45 This is the part of the show
0:01:47 where we answer questions about business,
0:01:48 spectac, entrepreneurship,
0:01:49 and whatever else is on your mind.
0:01:51 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:01:52 please email a voice recording
0:01:54 to officehours@provegmedia.com.
0:01:57 Again, that’s Office Hours@provegmedia.com.
0:01:58 So with that, first question.
0:02:03 – Hello, ProveG.
0:02:06 This is Ross from Windermere, Florida,
0:02:09 a loyal fan of your various podcasts.
0:02:12 In fact, I told my younger brother about it,
0:02:15 and he will not miss a single episode.
0:02:19 Anyway, I am 67, about to turn 68,
0:02:21 and therefore keenly interested
0:02:26 in the continued availability of social security and Medicare.
0:02:28 During the campaign,
0:02:30 Donald Trump said he wouldn’t fuck with either of those,
0:02:32 but will he?
0:02:35 What’s your best guess on whether social security
0:02:39 and Medicare are up for some kind of a modification?
0:02:42 And do you think that Congress has the will
0:02:44 to go along with it?
0:02:47 Anyway, thanks again for all that you do.
0:02:49 – I don’t think you have anything to worry about, boss.
0:02:52 Social security is kind of theoretically,
0:02:53 or not theoretically,
0:02:56 is largely considered a very successful social program
0:02:58 before it’s invention about one in five.
0:02:59 Seniors lived in poverty.
0:03:01 Now it’s, I think, one in 12.
0:03:02 It has been very successful.
0:03:04 People depend upon it.
0:03:07 It provides people with a lot of comfort.
0:03:11 And in addition, it’s kind of America’s new alley
0:03:14 of transferring wealth from the young to the poor.
0:03:15 So you can kind of see where I’m going with this.
0:03:17 I’ll come back to that.
0:03:20 But social security is the government’s biggest budget item
0:03:22 and Medicare is the second largest.
0:03:24 As a matter of fact, about 40% of our federal budget
0:03:27 goes to programs for people over the age of 65.
0:03:30 It used to be 10%, then it went to 25 to 40.
0:03:31 Within probably 10 years,
0:03:33 over half of the majority of our federal budget
0:03:37 is gonna go to programs for people over the age of 65.
0:03:39 In 2024, social security accounted
0:03:41 for over 1.4 trillion of federal spending
0:03:45 and the program covered over 71 million workers.
0:03:47 Last year, the U.S. spent over 800 billion on Medicare.
0:03:51 Over 25% of American adults are enrolled in the program.
0:03:53 Now, the future, are the future these benefits uncertain?
0:03:55 Recent reports project that the social security
0:03:57 and Medicare funds would be depleted by 2033
0:04:00 and 2036 respectively.
0:04:01 Before his first term, Trump promised
0:04:03 he would preserve both Medicare and social security.
0:04:05 However, things changed.
0:04:07 Each of his yearly budget proposals
0:04:09 included cuts to both social security and Medicare,
0:04:10 although they were never enacted.
0:04:13 Still, Trump has maintained that he will not make cuts
0:04:16 to the program nor will he change the retirement age.
0:04:20 I don’t see any path other than either deficits,
0:04:22 which are taxes on the young
0:04:26 or some sort of means testing for social security.
0:04:31 And by the way, I do believe there is no reason
0:04:33 that I should have social security.
0:04:34 And people say, “Well, you pay it into it.”
0:04:36 Well, they call it social security tax.
0:04:37 There’s a lot of taxes I pay
0:04:39 where I don’t register the benefits.
0:04:41 It’s not called social security pension fund.
0:04:44 Now to be clear, it’s not adding to the deficit, if you will,
0:04:48 because in fact, it’s an offline budget item.
0:04:49 But at the same time,
0:04:51 it still is the biggest item in our budget.
0:04:55 It used to be 12 workers for every one retired person
0:04:57 now because people are living longer.
0:05:01 It’s now three to one and it is a real tax on the young.
0:05:06 At a minimum, we should lift the cap.
0:05:08 I believe it’s either six or 8%,
0:05:11 but basically the cap is at 160 grand.
0:05:15 So I have analysts working here at Prop G who make 160 grand.
0:05:20 So they make, or they pay $9,000 in social security tax.
0:05:24 I make 16 million and I pay $9,000.
0:05:27 Why on earth are the rich not paying their share
0:05:30 to support our seniors?
0:05:32 So if you’re going to continue to transfer this much money
0:05:35 to seniors and you think it’s a good idea, fine,
0:05:38 but why on earth would it be a regressive tax on the young?
0:05:39 Why?
0:05:40 Because my generation has decided
0:05:42 that the new Gestalt is quite frankly,
0:05:45 let me think, to fuck young people.
0:05:47 I also think we should means test it.
0:05:49 I think if you have over a million dollars in assets
0:05:50 or a hundred thousand in passive income,
0:05:52 you don’t need social security
0:05:53 or you shouldn’t get it and all this bullshit.
0:05:54 If I paid into it,
0:05:57 actually the majority of people who collect social security
0:06:00 for a number of years take out two to three times
0:06:00 what they put into it.
0:06:02 So this notion that I’m entitled to,
0:06:04 no you’re not, it’s a tax.
0:06:06 People who need it are entitled to it.
0:06:07 So I think you got to means test it.
0:06:11 Also when we invented or implemented social security,
0:06:13 the majority of people weren’t living to 65.
0:06:14 Guess what?
0:06:16 Now the majority, the vast majority of people
0:06:20 are living past 65 and or working past the age of 65.
0:06:24 So we need to means test it and we need to lift the age.
0:06:26 What should social security be?
0:06:28 It should be a safety net for seniors
0:06:31 who are no longer working of a certain age
0:06:32 where it doesn’t make sense for them to work
0:06:34 who need the money.
0:06:36 That would be fiscal sanity.
0:06:37 Thanks so much for the question.
0:06:38 Question number two.
0:06:42 – Hey Scott, this is Chase calling from Hawaii.
0:06:46 I started listening to you after your podcast with Geo Vaughn.
0:06:48 Really appreciate what you do.
0:06:50 I’m 24 years old.
0:06:53 I work for the Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
0:06:55 I love it, but the pay is horrendous.
0:06:58 I make about $40,000 a year.
0:07:00 For a while I was complacent, told myself,
0:07:02 “I don’t need to make money, I like what I do.”
0:07:06 But I realized that I absolutely do need to make money.
0:07:07 I want to start a family.
0:07:09 I want to buy a house, buy nice things.
0:07:12 I find myself extremely motivated
0:07:16 to put my all into something, go all in.
0:07:18 But at the same time, I’m completely overwhelmed
0:07:22 by the number of ways there are to make money nowadays.
0:07:24 I feel stuck.
0:07:28 I have my degree in psychology, not going to use it.
0:07:29 If I could go back,
0:07:32 I definitely would have gotten my degree in something else.
0:07:34 What would you do if you were in my shoes?
0:07:36 And how do you navigate finding a balance
0:07:40 between making money and doing something really cool?
0:07:41 Lex?
0:07:43 – Chase, first off, I really appreciate the question.
0:07:45 And the first thing I want you to do,
0:07:48 ’cause I hear some sadness or disappointment
0:07:49 or anger yourself and your voice,
0:07:51 is I want you to forgive yourself.
0:07:53 You’re 24, boss.
0:07:54 You’re doing something important.
0:07:56 You’re working for the Division of Forestry and Wildlife.
0:07:59 That’s like a million species and trees
0:08:01 would like to say thank you, but they can’t.
0:08:04 And when my kids are roaming around the redwoods
0:08:06 and get to see a bear and an aspen.
0:08:09 That’s not a douchey, a bear and an aspen.
0:08:10 You get my point.
0:08:12 You’re doing something meaningful
0:08:14 and you’re getting good experience in your workshopping.
0:08:16 That’s what you’re supposed to do in your 20s.
0:08:19 And you’re still so ridiculously young.
0:08:20 You could have been doing nothing
0:08:21 and you’d still be fine
0:08:23 because you can start your life at 40,
0:08:27 much less you’re an infant professionally at 24.
0:08:28 So this is what you’re gonna do.
0:08:29 You’re gonna forgive yourself and realize
0:08:31 you did something you have.
0:08:33 You’ve got a couple of years under your belt.
0:08:35 You’ve done something important now.
0:08:37 I don’t know enough about you,
0:08:40 but I have a gut for what you may wanna explore.
0:08:41 The first thing is no brainer.
0:08:43 I need you to put together a kitchen cabinet
0:08:45 of some people you trust that are smart,
0:08:48 that know you, that you can call and get advice from
0:08:50 and say I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking about this,
0:08:53 or find people who may be left the service
0:08:55 and are doing other things.
0:08:57 Start to talk to people and find a group of people
0:08:58 that you can call and get advice.
0:09:01 It is very hard to read the label
0:09:02 from inside of the bottle.
0:09:04 Two, and this is where my gut kicks in.
0:09:06 You sound to me like someone
0:09:09 who is a perfect candidate for graduate school.
0:09:11 And I would need to ask some more questions.
0:09:12 Do you like school?
0:09:14 Because here’s the thing about graduate school.
0:09:16 It’s for two people.
0:09:17 It’s for people who are very focused
0:09:19 and need a PhD in microbiology
0:09:23 so they can go do work on coming up with the cure
0:09:24 for cancer, right?
0:09:26 But the vast majority of people at least go back
0:09:29 to get an MBA or what I call the elite and the aimless.
0:09:31 I was one of those people.
0:09:32 I had decent certification.
0:09:33 I was smart, I was hardworking,
0:09:35 but I had no idea what I wanted to do.
0:09:36 I’d spent two years of Morgan Stanley and fixed income.
0:09:38 And all I knew was I didn’t want to do fixed income
0:09:40 at Morgan Stanley anymore.
0:09:41 But I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
0:09:42 And the majority, I would say two thirds
0:09:44 of the people who go to business school
0:09:45 don’t know what they want to do.
0:09:46 Their first essay, they lie.
0:09:48 They pretend they’re really focused.
0:09:49 They don’t know what they want to do.
0:09:51 That’s why they’re going back to graduate school.
0:09:52 That’s where you are.
0:09:54 You’re elite, right?
0:09:55 You obviously went to a school.
0:09:56 You got a psychology degree.
0:10:00 You got a good job servicing our nation
0:10:01 and public service.
0:10:02 You’re elite.
0:10:03 You’re a little bit aimless right now,
0:10:05 which spells to me graduate school.
0:10:06 So this is what I want you to do.
0:10:07 I’m going to start talking to a bunch of people,
0:10:09 including people who’ve left the service,
0:10:11 find out what they’re doing.
0:10:12 Once you put together a kitchen cabinet of people
0:10:14 to bounce ideas off of.
0:10:16 And I want you to think about graduate school
0:10:18 and see if it’s a fit for you.
0:10:20 Anyways, I really appreciate your service
0:10:21 and Chase from Hawaii.
0:10:23 You’re doing, you’re exactly where you should be.
0:10:24 You’re ahead of the game.
0:10:27 You had a good job serving the public,
0:10:29 serving the public good.
0:10:30 You’re 24, you live in Hawaii.
0:10:33 It is good to be Chase.
0:10:36 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:10:37 Stay with us.
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0:13:51 – Welcome back, question number three.
0:13:53 – Hi, Prof. G, my name is Michael.
0:13:55 I live in Altadena, California.
0:13:57 I’m originally from Baltimore, Maryland.
0:13:59 It was a tough city.
0:14:00 When I reflect on my childhood,
0:14:04 I think about times when I caught the public bus to school.
0:14:06 I would be on there with crackheads, dope dealers,
0:14:09 people just going to work trying to survive.
0:14:11 I had conversations with these folks.
0:14:12 I learned a lot.
0:14:15 And it is still the level of grit inside of me.
0:14:18 My question for you is, as I become a new father,
0:14:21 how do I instill that level of grit inside of my children?
0:14:23 So when life gets hard and throws them curveballs,
0:14:25 they have the self-awareness and the durability
0:14:27 to overcome any obstacles.
0:14:30 My wife and I will remain in Southern California
0:14:31 for the foreseeable future.
0:14:33 Thank you.
0:14:33 – Thanks, Michael.
0:14:36 And I hope and trust you are not affected
0:14:38 by the fires in Altadena.
0:14:40 Just be clear, the first couple of years,
0:14:42 let me break it down as a dad.
0:14:44 And not everyone has the same experience.
0:14:45 I’ll give you my experience.
0:14:46 I pretended to like it.
0:14:47 I thought it sucked.
0:14:48 I was stressed out.
0:14:50 I was stressed about money.
0:14:52 I was just trying to keep this little science experiment
0:14:56 away from a body of water and just keep it alive.
0:14:58 And then slowly but surely,
0:15:00 one of my favorite shows growing up
0:15:02 was a show called “Frasier.”
0:15:04 And “Frasier” is said about his son,
0:15:06 you know, you fall in love with your kids.
0:15:09 And that is, I didn’t, a switch didn’t turn on
0:15:10 when my sons were born.
0:15:12 And I’m like, oh, I’m madly in love with this thing.
0:15:13 I was more scared and nauseous than anyone.
0:15:16 By the way, childbirth is so disgusting.
0:15:17 Try not to be in the room.
0:15:19 I’m gonna get you for that.
0:15:21 Anyways, you do fall in love.
0:15:23 Or I found that over time, it just got better and better.
0:15:27 It went from awful to less awful to tolerable to good to now.
0:15:30 I just, quite frankly, I just have purpose in my life.
0:15:32 I’ve figured out finally in my life what my purpose is
0:15:36 and that is to raise loving patriotic men.
0:15:41 And in terms of establishing grit for kids,
0:15:41 I mean, there’s a couple of things.
0:15:45 One, we have a tendency to overprotect offline
0:15:46 and underprotect online.
0:15:48 And it should be reversed.
0:15:50 You’re, fortunately, all this bullshit around smartphones
0:15:52 is probably gonna be solved or at least addressed
0:15:54 by the time your kids are old enough.
0:15:57 But some of the mistakes I’ve made,
0:16:00 I didn’t instill enough about doing chores with my kids,
0:16:01 such that they developed routine
0:16:04 and saw connected reward with effort.
0:16:06 They’re actually pretty good with money for some reason.
0:16:07 I don’t know where they got that,
0:16:09 but they understand the value of money.
0:16:11 Sports and athletics.
0:16:13 I started working out with my kids at a very young age
0:16:16 and pushing them in such that they could understand their limits.
0:16:19 The gift I got from rowing crew was that
0:16:21 when you feel like you can’t take anymore physically,
0:16:24 that means you’re about a third of the way
0:16:25 to your actual limit.
0:16:26 And crew teaches you that.
0:16:28 It teaches you to break limits
0:16:30 that you just are, you know,
0:16:32 exceed limits you never thought were possible.
0:16:34 And you can carry that to the rest of your life.
0:16:37 So how do you do that with kids, sports, working out?
0:16:40 Also letting them fail.
0:16:42 There’s something called bulldozer or close to your parenting
0:16:44 that is supposedly making a generation of fragile kids.
0:16:46 What does that mean?
0:16:48 I had someone call me and say, well, you’re an academic.
0:16:50 Our daughter who straight A’s is getting a B
0:16:52 and the teacher clearly does not like her.
0:16:54 So we’re thinking about calling the principal.
0:16:57 Can you give us, and it’s being unfair to her.
0:16:58 Can you give us some words?
0:17:00 I’m like, that is absolutely the worst thing
0:17:01 you could do for your daughter.
0:17:03 Your daughter’s going to face injustice
0:17:05 and unfair assholes the rest of her life.
0:17:06 And she needs to learn how to deal with it
0:17:08 and maybe cope with disappointment.
0:17:11 And so we have developed this so much bulldozer
0:17:12 and close to your parenting
0:17:14 where we clear out all the obstacles for our kids
0:17:17 that they developed as princess in the peace syndrome
0:17:20 where they show up to college, get their heart broken,
0:17:23 get their first D and they freak out.
0:17:25 You want, you don’t want to use so many sanitary wipes
0:17:27 on your kids lives that they don’t develop
0:17:28 their own immunity.
0:17:29 So what I do in this is hard.
0:17:31 I’ll give you an example.
0:17:33 My youngest is going to meet his friends
0:17:36 at the Westfield Mall, which is a very nice mall in London.
0:17:38 I order him an Uber, which I probably shouldn’t do.
0:17:39 He has a goddamn Uber app.
0:17:40 Why am I doing it?
0:17:42 I typed in the wrong Westfield
0:17:44 and he ended up on the wrong side of town
0:17:47 of London freaking out, calling me, calling his mom,
0:17:49 his mom calling me and I decided to put my foot down.
0:17:52 I’m like, you got a smartphone, you got an Uber account,
0:17:55 figure it out, figure it out, right?
0:17:57 He’s panicked and he did figure it out.
0:17:59 He actually found that the subway was the fastest way
0:18:00 to get to the right mall.
0:18:03 He went in, he has his oyster card and he got there.
0:18:07 That builds confidence, that builds resilience.
0:18:08 Summer jobs.
0:18:13 My oldest who is 17 is now thinking about, you know,
0:18:15 what makes his resume look good for college?
0:18:20 And he’s doing these things that are kind of,
0:18:21 I don’t know, he’s thinking about biology
0:18:22 or something in the sciences.
0:18:25 So he’s going to intern at the medical clinic.
0:18:27 And I said to him, this is what you do.
0:18:30 We vacation on an island or we spend summers on an island.
0:18:33 I’m like, I want you to get a job washing dishes
0:18:35 or being a bus boy.
0:18:37 Services jobs build grit.
0:18:38 It’s where I got a lot of mind.
0:18:39 And not only that, it builds empathy.
0:18:40 So what do we have?
0:18:42 We have chores, we have jobs,
0:18:46 we have sports, and we have a lack of concierge
0:18:47 or bulldozer parenting.
0:18:50 And occasionally we let the kids fail
0:18:53 and then tell them, I don’t know, that’s a tough one.
0:18:54 You need to figure it out.
0:18:58 This, I hope for you that having children
0:18:59 does what it did for me.
0:19:01 And that has given me a sense of purpose
0:19:02 and a sense of peace.
0:19:04 Thanks so much for the question.
0:19:06 That’s all for this episode.
0:19:07 If you’d like to submit a question,
0:19:08 please email a voice recording
0:19:10 to officehours@prophgmedia.com.
0:19:14 Again, that’s officehours@prophgmedia.com.
0:19:23 (upbeat music)
0:19:25 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
0:19:27 Our intern is Dan Chalon.
0:19:29 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:19:31 Thank you for listening to Prophogy Pod
0:19:33 from the Box Media Podcast Network.
0:19:34 We will catch you on Saturday
0:19:37 for “No Mercy, No Mouse” as read by George Hahn.
0:19:39 And please follow our Prophogy Markets Pod
0:19:42 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
0:19:43 every Monday and Thursday.

0:00:06 When you sit on your aero plan points, it’s like you’re sitting on your next trip like a sunny getaway by the sea
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0:01:50 Welcome to raging moderates, I’m Scott Galloway and I’m Jessica Tarla. So first off just because we’re capitalists here
0:01:54 And there’s not anything important going on in the world. It’s important to run a commercials
0:02:01 We we start here, but effectively little insight into the podcast world the RSS feed where people subscribe
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0:02:11 It’s decided then they can start
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0:02:45 Please hit the subscribe button on our both on YouTube and on our dedicated raging moderates feed
0:02:48 We would really appreciate it. Please do it now
0:02:55 We will tell you when we hit 50,000, but let’s try to get there this week. Oh my god. That was so commercial
0:03:02 Jess. It was a good one though. Pretty good. Yeah, I liked it. All right, let’s move on to banter. How are you?
0:03:04 I’m pretty depressed. Are you?
0:03:06 well, I
0:03:13 Think maybe democracy is ending I was last week you were so over your skis or I thought so and I was like hey
0:03:19 It’s okay. Let’s figure out what to work with the other side on and this weekend. I was just melting down the whole time and then
0:03:26 Luca Donchich got traded to the Lakers in the middle of the night. I don’t do you care about the NBA at all?
0:03:29 I hundred percent don’t care. I don’t even know who Luca Donchich is that is not true
0:03:33 Is that a Serbian tennis player who is I have no idea who that is seriously. He is
0:03:39 Slovenian isn’t he is a basketball player who is on the Dallas Mavericks. It’s probably gonna be an MVP
0:03:46 Five-time All-Star. He’s amazing. Anyway, there was a tweet Saturday night saying Luca Donchich to the Lakers for Anthony Davis
0:03:54 Which is just an absurd trade and I thought that the reporter had been hacked because it was so ludicrous woke up Sunday morning
0:03:59 And it’s true in the trade deadline for everyone is February 6th. Anyway, just you know
0:04:00 That was crazy
0:04:05 But you don’t care and a decent number of female viewers on YouTube right now have decided you are in fact the perfect woman
0:04:13 That you not only bring a lot of intelligence and you’re obviously very attractive, but you understand the latest in basketball trades
0:04:16 You literally are I couldn’t do I’m bad with like salary caps and stuff
0:04:20 But I have no idea who that is and I don’t unless it’s Cole Palmer. I don’t care
0:04:25 Well, he was on the Mavericks, which your pal Mark Cuban used to own so I’ve contextualized it
0:04:31 I’ve made it a little personal for you. No, don’t care. Anyway, what did you do? What did I do this weekend? Really?
0:04:39 My favorite weekend did absolutely nothing. My boy was home my 7-year-old comes home on the weekends from boarding school and my 14-year-old
0:04:46 On the weekends. He turns into he’s kind of difficult. I think I don’t know what it is about the dynamic on the weekends. He’s tough and
0:04:50 Is it because his older brother’s home? I think that might have something to do with it
0:04:58 And then we went to a one-year-old’s birthday party snooze around my that’s my wheelhouse. I keep telling this where I live
0:05:04 Yeah, yeah, I’m out of that. I’m out of that stage, but they’re nice people and I knew they’d have a bar
0:05:10 So it was fun. And then what did I do? Did I have any fun Saturday night? You know really?
0:05:14 Boring weekend didn’t even watch any primarily games. I’m headed to
0:05:19 After this I’m bombing to the airport and I’m headed to Orlando for the real fun of all places
0:05:25 I assume speaking gig and not Disney World or maybe a speaking gig at Disney World years again see above
0:05:29 Like you’re not it’s smart you I am doing a speaking gig
0:05:36 Yeah, it’s Disney World which and that’s the first for me. Yeah, I’m doing a speaking. Yeah, I love Disney
0:05:39 I want I can so we would have and you should keep that to yourself
0:05:42 But anyways, go ahead if we get our new 8,000 subscribers
0:05:47 It will be because I am the Luca Donchich ex Disney World gal
0:05:52 I think Disney is so fun and I can’t wait to take Cleo who’s three
0:05:54 I’ve heard like four is really the sweet spot
0:05:57 But there’s a lot that she could still do. It’s the happiest place on earth
0:05:59 I think it’s a seventh ring of hell for most of us
0:06:02 you have to take your kids there and
0:06:06 364 days a year I
0:06:10 Under contribute to this whole parenting thing and then one day a year
0:06:15 I take or you see because now they’re a little too old now they go to universal universalists for teenagers
0:06:19 But Disney was for kids. I would take my two boys and six of their friends
0:06:26 To Disney for the weekend and that as far as I’m concerned alone. Yeah, just me or you have another
0:06:29 There might be I might be able to rope another guy into the seventh ring
0:06:31 Just so we can complain to each other
0:06:37 But that that as far as I’m concerned that compensates for my negligent parenting the rest of the year
0:06:40 I think that I I’m I can totally see
0:06:44 That you enjoy it. I don’t understand it
0:06:49 But I can totally see it. I think that’s most of the male-female dynamic frankly
0:06:54 It’s so awful. I can see it, but I don’t understand it and I still want to hang with it, right?
0:07:01 You’re like, I will say this when I was at was it Walt Disney or was it Disneyland or Walt Disney World?
0:07:06 They have that princess thing where you sign up your little girl and she goes in and they make her up
0:07:11 And they put wings on her and a little princess fairy thing. I think it’s at both but world
0:07:18 And then they have that little area where she’s introduced and they have lights and smoke and she comes out
0:07:23 I sat there for 15 minutes while my kids were going on Space Mountain or something and
0:07:32 Watch the most beautiful little girls come out and you they come out like they’re floating and I thought oh my god
0:07:36 Disney like I made me want to buy Disney stock as emotional as I am
0:07:44 It was these little girls you could tell they were thinking about this all year and they picked out their outfit and they do such an amazing job
0:07:46 It really is
0:07:49 It really is incredible. But just to bring us back to reality
0:07:55 One of the I had one of those moments that made me feel very depressed about income inequality
0:07:59 And I’m on the right side of that trade. So this is a story of privilege
0:08:02 but I took the kids and
0:08:06 The ride avatar
0:08:08 It was a three hour wait
0:08:15 So you could pass out the movie avatar on an iPad and people could watch it before they actually got on the ride
0:08:17 and
0:08:24 You just saw so many families in line holding their kids asleep and I thought this is borderline abusive
0:08:28 To create something that parents have to go to and the majority people can’t
0:08:33 And I did one of those VIP tours where you pay thousands of dollars
0:08:35 and you
0:08:41 Roll by the entire line and then the person at the front of the line operating the ride gives you a hand signal in case you want to go twice
0:08:45 And I remember thinking at some point the people in the line
0:08:47 It goes planted at the apes and they kill us all
0:08:53 Because this is so out of control the disparity between the life
0:08:58 The 99.9 of americans have to have to lead
0:09:02 And the rest of us who’ve gotten you know, really lucky
0:09:10 Anyways, I it was one of those moments. I thought this is weird. This is uncomfortable. Anyways, that’s my Disney story
0:09:17 Okay, Jess in today’s episode we’re discussing chaos reigning across the federal government chaos of the right word
0:09:22 Trump launching a trade war with tariffs and democrats elect a new chair to lead their party
0:09:28 That’s kind of a snooze the first two we can jazz it up and be fun. It’s going to be hard to make that sexy
0:09:30 All right, let’s get into it trump
0:09:35 The trump administration through the government into total chaos with a surprise spending freeze
0:09:39 They cut off funding for things including school lunches college financial aid and medical research
0:09:44 Then just as quickly as it appeared the freeze was blocked by federal judge only for the white house to insist
0:09:47 They weren’t actually backing down leaving everyone even more confused
0:09:52 But that was just sort of the first ending here trump has been on a signing spree
0:09:56 Rolling out executive orders targeting schools trans kids and immigrants
0:10:03 Even tried to blame a deadly plane crash on di and on top of that his administration sent a mass email offering millions of federal employees
0:10:07 A chance to resign now and still get paid through september
0:10:11 Workers were stunned legal experts are flummoxed
0:10:16 And no one’s really sure if this is even legal. Jess. I mean this sincerely
0:10:20 Where should we start? I spent a lot of time
0:10:24 prepping for this conversation and
0:10:28 dealing with that question explicitly like what do I think is the most egregious
0:10:30 example
0:10:34 Of the overreach that’s going on of the constitutional crisis
0:10:38 That I believe we are at the beginnings of having you know an unelected
0:10:45 bureaucrat with access to all of our most sensitive information and turning on and off government contracts
0:10:46 um
0:10:50 You know plane crashes where 67 people lost their lives
0:10:54 That the president and his cabinet seemed woefully unprepared
0:11:02 To deal with or to even be able to express the right sentiments to the public and I assume to the grieving families as well
0:11:04 um, I don’t
0:11:05 know
0:11:10 It’s almost feels like you should just go in chronological order of catastrophe
0:11:17 um, but I do think because we were recording this on monday god knows what tomorrow will look like that
0:11:21 what doge is doing with
0:11:24 You know purging the fbi the doj
0:11:28 um, and then shutting down the
0:11:30 usaid
0:11:36 Site it’s now you can still access it off the secretary of state site at state.gov. Um, but
0:11:43 I think we should probably start there because it’s so representative of the fact that
0:11:49 We don’t have three co-equal branches of the government anymore. What elan musk is doing is completely
0:11:58 Unprecedented and it seems like he has unfettered access to anything that he wants plus the five or six 19 to 24 year olds
0:12:01 That are running doge with him. I saw this tweet that I thought was so funny
0:12:07 So the private information of every american is now in the hands of six guys not old enough to rent a car
0:12:11 Well, you’re not laughing so you didn’t think it was that funny, but it’s
0:12:17 It’s crazy what’s going on. Yeah, it feels like the high sparrow and his acolytes
0:12:22 I don’t know if you watch game of thrones but we already talked about this and I don’t and I told you that and I have two daughters
0:12:26 And you need to start okay, it’s just start just trust me on this
0:12:32 Look, this is just taking it in order trying to my mom. You say, how do you need an elephant one bite at a time?
0:12:35 let’s just start
0:12:38 With the erosion if you were to start with
0:12:41 We have 750 military bases in 80 countries
0:12:45 China has one in jibouti in africa and I think
0:12:50 when terrorists try and transmit funds or
0:12:57 They have a choice a government has a choice between partnering with a u.s company or a chinese company or another western
0:12:59 company
0:13:03 They generally choose us and first off this notion that somehow america has been
0:13:08 Taken advantage of as someone who has been roaming the earth working with the biggest
0:13:14 Global companies in the world. I’ve done deals with world leaders on behalf of companies not on behalf of the u.s government
0:13:19 The notion that we are somehow getting taken advantage of around the world is just so asinine
0:13:25 We flex our muscles every minute of every day around the world in terms of our trade agreements
0:13:30 Do you think these these 80 countries that host our military just decided to do it because they they like us?
0:13:32 I mean, that’s some of it
0:13:34 But that goodwill that power
0:13:37 We exercise and benefit from
0:13:41 Every day so just starting there the notion that this is somehow
0:13:48 A recalibration to get back to some symmetry of equity. That’s just not that’s just not true
0:13:51 And starting with the economic argument not the moral argument
0:13:54 in canada
0:13:56 You know first off
0:14:01 They don’t even know what he wants. They’re claiming it’s because of the flow of fentanyl across the border
0:14:07 There really isn’t a lot of fentanyl coming from canada. You could maybe it’s like 43 pounds
0:14:09 You could make that maybe make that argument for mexico
0:14:12 maybe even for china because some of it’s being manufactured there but
0:14:21 Canada isn’t like dumping fentanyl from vancouver. That’s just not that’s just not happening and the canada can’t even figure out
0:14:25 What is he wants and keep in mind? This is a nation
0:14:29 that in the iran hostage crisis the canadian
0:14:32 ambassador residents
0:14:34 Hosted or hid
0:14:40 Hostages it they risked their lives in the embassy there to help get americans out
0:14:48 They followed us into afghanistan. No questions asked. They followed us into iraq. No questions asked. We have major league baseball
0:14:50 I you just mentioned the nba. We have
0:14:53 american sports teams in canadian cities
0:14:58 And we’ve decided to declare economic war on canada
0:15:03 It’s just it just doesn’t it’s not only reckless
0:15:05 It’s it’s stupid
0:15:10 And that’s just on the economic side. We can go further into
0:15:15 You know the different, you know the other mendacious things are working on but this tariff
0:15:18 This tariff is just
0:15:21 It’s i always go to the economics. I’m like, okay
0:15:25 How can I figure out a way to take brexit?
0:15:32 And expand it and supersize it where we make our nation less productive but increase costs for everyone in the united states
0:15:36 I know let’s take brexit. Let’s make it 10 times worse or bigger
0:15:44 And then let’s figure out a way to be really mendacious and mean to people in the united states and in special interest groups and across
0:15:47 Uh, the world your thoughts
0:15:49 well, I think
0:15:51 a critical component of the way
0:15:53 trump sees the world is
0:15:58 Enmeshed in your statement about being really mean and I think that they
0:16:05 Uphold this notion that having friends doesn’t actually really matter everything
0:16:09 Is for sale everything is a bargaining chip
0:16:16 An exchange we’re all associates more than we’re actually friends or colleagues and Justin Trudeau’s
0:16:24 Said as much that he had been trying to speak to trump since the inauguration hasn’t been able to and he even went down to mar-a-lago
0:16:25 Right and kissed the ring
0:16:30 And said, you know, I want to find ways to work together. So trump doesn’t care
0:16:32 about friends
0:16:33 at all
0:16:35 He doesn’t
0:16:39 believe in allies certainly in the way that we’ve conceived of them. I don’t think
0:16:44 That he thought about or really cares about the second order effect of this
0:16:49 Which was the same as we were talking about last week with Colombia and panama
0:16:54 Mexico that maybe everyone actually gets together behind our backs
0:17:00 And we end up really isolated and alone from all of this and for some of them not necessarily Mexico, but
0:17:08 Like a columbia for instance that they turn to china who are their second biggest trading partners in reaction
0:17:15 To us changing the way that we do business to put it politely, but you see these republicans
0:17:21 Melting down and freaking out about what’s going to happen to their constituents. Chuck rassley is on
0:17:29 acts begging for certain exemptions and the canadiens are being very specific about how they are executing these tariffs
0:17:31 They are targeting
0:17:36 products that come out of right-leaning states that have republicans in charge and
0:17:39 majority of voters who voted to elect donald trump
0:17:45 So things like orange juice bourbon whiskey and they want to be specific about it
0:17:49 And they understand that the country is really split along these lines
0:17:50 I shouldn’t say they’re split
0:17:56 On what they think of tariffs because a large majority of people know that tariffs are just attacks on the consumer
0:18:03 But so you have republicans that are concerned about this ron johnson was on fox this morning
0:18:07 Talking about how it’s a tax mitch mcconnell was on 16 minutes yesterday talking about how this is a tax
0:18:10 You have him asking for these exemptions from it
0:18:15 And you really have got to wonder besides the fact that donald trump just likes tariffs
0:18:20 And maybe it’s that simple and the man talks about mckinley more than anyone
0:18:26 Probably even members of mckinley’s family talks about him that he just has this fascination with it
0:18:29 But when you have the business community who has
0:18:36 Been of such value to him and huge boosters of his campaign and his presidency the people who benefited the most from the
0:18:41 Tax breaks that he put into effect in 2017 coming out and saying you’re going to wreck my business
0:18:46 Right people run walmart lows home depot etc
0:18:52 I wonder if he is going to have to find some way to backtrack and I know that he would argue
0:18:59 This is just the opening salvo, but the opening salvo was supposed to be a few percentage points, right not going for
0:19:01 25 percent
0:19:08 And I know that the market didn’t open as far down as it did on deep seek day last week
0:19:15 I was curious why you thought that that was that it wasn’t as much of a hit as I would have expected at least opening
0:19:18 Bell well, so as we stand here right now the dow’s off
0:19:22 A hundred and or about 200 points, which is right isn’t huge
0:19:24 I think the market with the market is saying
0:19:30 And with a lot of republicans when they have absolutely no response for what is the strategy here
0:19:36 Say, oh, this is like you said an opening salvo and people what the market is saying is that he’s done this
0:19:39 He’ll get some sort of
0:19:43 You know pinky promise as mark cuban said he’ll declare victory and say oh we got this
0:19:51 They’re stopping the shipments of fentanyl and people will not do nothing and he’ll declare victory and then take these down or eliminate them
0:19:52 That’s what they’re saying right now
0:19:55 The problem with this is that when you threaten people
0:19:58 You know, they remember it and I can just
0:20:04 He’s creating an enormous opening for russia and china to establish military bases goodwill
0:20:07 cooperation between their intelligence services
0:20:10 Less likely to cooperate with ours less likely to call us and say
0:20:17 Hey, we have information saying there’s a terrorist organization in a cell and a bunch of these individuals
0:20:20 Have gotten on planes and are headed to new york
0:20:24 We have a lot of nations that will call will cooperate with our intelligence personnel
0:20:28 I think part of the problem is I think americans have cold comfort
0:20:29 that
0:20:33 One they don’t realize how many people are out there in organizations that would like to come
0:20:39 Kill us and take our shit away and that this our government security apparatus has been so effective
0:20:43 And we are so strong at getting the best better end
0:20:49 Of trade agreements and the prosperity we recognize which I acknowledge has been crammed into you know
0:20:53 Just proportionately into two few people’s pockets. I think people take for granted
0:20:58 Just how strong our security and government apparatuses overseas
0:21:04 And how much that is aided by the ultimate cloud cover of goodwill towards us that
0:21:07 Despite being arrogant indulgent
0:21:13 Loud obnoxious that people generally believe around the world especially in the west
0:21:16 That we’re the good guys that they can count on us
0:21:22 And so to to kind of stick up the middle finger create chaos do real economic harm
0:21:27 Without even a clear signal as to what it is you want in return
0:21:34 But just to do this because you can even if in fact he does which retract these things I was on the board
0:21:38 Of a large specialty retailer and I talked to
0:21:42 The person runs the company over the weekend. I said, what do you think he’s doing?
0:21:45 And he said well, we’ve stocked up because we knew this was coming
0:21:50 So we stocked up. We got a bunch of stuff in like six months where the stuff
0:21:55 Before this took effect because we knew it was coming and we’re banking that
0:21:59 When he realizes when all of a sudden the price of everything goes up for american consumers
0:22:03 He’s going to pretend that it was a victory and that he negotiated some deal and back away
0:22:07 And even if that comes off with as little damage as we think
0:22:14 That is that is like radiation that 20 or 30 years ago results and look, you know from now results in leukemia
0:22:19 And the other thing that the only kind of analysis I did here that I think uncovered something that maybe
0:22:22 The media isn’t talking that much about is that
0:22:28 This has this tariff thing has elan musk’s fingerprints all over it. What do I mean by that?
0:22:34 If you look at tesla to their credit versus other automobile companies the majority of automobile companies
0:22:36 That car they’re producing
0:22:41 Goes across the mexican and canadian border back and forth several times
0:22:48 Because there’s different parts manufacturers with different advantages or skill sets across, you know, the trade agreements in mexico and canada
0:22:54 Tesla to its credit has built a company that has kind of a deeper manufacturing base. What do I mean by that?
0:22:59 The majority of the car is assembled domestically and you think well, what about china?
0:23:02 They’re gonna have to pay tariffs when china imposes reciprocal tariffs
0:23:07 Actually, the majority of cars sold in china from tesla are produced in china
0:23:13 Now some of the chinese manufactured teslas that are sold in europe face a seven and a half percent
0:23:16 Tariff which by the way, he’s suing them for
0:23:22 But of all the companies in the automobile industry that will be least impacted by these tariffs
0:23:24 It’s tesla
0:23:28 So again, even I mean we talked about cutting off
0:23:32 He has access to the payments for veteran affairs all these different things that people worry about
0:23:37 Even where they don’t see his fingerprints. His fingerprints are there. I believe that he
0:23:39 he had a large
0:23:44 A lot of influence in how these tariffs were implemented such that it has
0:23:51 It has seriously diminished the the economic power of his automobile rivals
0:23:54 And again, it’s okay. The richest man in the world
0:24:02 Now has more access to the federal government payment system can decide to turn off or on veterans benefits. I mean just this
0:24:07 Crazy shit and what do you know? He’s the richest man in the world and it all goes to the same place
0:24:10 And that is and I was talking with care about this on pivot
0:24:19 You know and we’ll get to this that that all of the the websites that are disappearing around family planning and choice
0:24:21 and hiv and vaccines
0:24:25 I see this as the far right and trump have said
0:24:30 It’s not a war on gay people or a war on women. It’s a war on the poor
0:24:37 Because I think the deal they’ve struck is they’ve said, you know poor people always have a back door to family planning
0:24:41 To vaccines, whatever it is they need. They’ll be fine. They’ll figure it out
0:24:45 This really feels like a war on the poor and the flip side of that is that the richest man in the world
0:24:53 Is now basically much more powerful than any elected representative any governor any senator any congressperson
0:24:57 I still think trump’s more powerful because he can fire musk
0:25:02 But we now have an unelected person and what do you know? He happens to be the wealthiest person in the world
0:25:07 This is full idolatry of money. This is full capture by money
0:25:14 Of dc and it is I think it’s going to come at a huge cost to the long-term goodwill and it’s so strange
0:25:19 And I’ll stop my word salad here for the first time in my life and it feels really odd
0:25:22 I’m rooting for the germans and the canadians
0:25:27 Like when the german public turns out a hundred thousand of them to say by the way
0:25:32 When your fucking idiot shows up and tells a far-right group here, they should be proud of their culture
0:25:37 The majority of germans do not believe believe that nor endorse that message
0:25:40 when canada boos
0:25:44 When the national anthem is sung at a sporting event
0:25:46 And I don’t know if it was toronto or montreal
0:25:48 I got to be honest
0:25:54 I’m with them and it feels really really unusual. I think it was toronto. It was a raptor’s game, right? Was it
0:25:56 I think so
0:25:57 um
0:26:02 Just to your point about how quickly this can be reversed while you were word salading
0:26:05 Which I actually got a lot of sense out of and I have something to respond to that
0:26:11 There was an announcement that claudia shinebaum the president of mexico has negotiated a one month delay on the tariffs
0:26:15 So this all fits nicely though into
0:26:23 The manufactured chaos of everything and that they want us at every single moment to be looking in a thousand different directions
0:26:27 And to be outraged about all of these different things so that you can’t see
0:26:33 The forest through the trees. I think that’s what that phrase is. I and it feels as if
0:26:38 The takeover of the government by an unelected
0:26:40 unconfirmed
0:26:43 Almost trillionaire right or will be certainly by the end of this
0:26:50 is absolutely the forest through the trees of this and musk has such a personal touch
0:26:57 On all of the very aggressive and very underhanded tactics that are being used in the management of
0:26:59 trump’s second term that
0:27:06 I think it’s almost indisputable that he is this co-president which I know pissed off trump when people were saying things like that
0:27:11 And yes, of course trump is the most powerful man in the world because he’s actually in control of our military
0:27:18 But the influence that musk has had is so far-reaching. I mean, he’s the henchman that is going out there and bullying
0:27:25 All of the senators who might not vote for the nominees that they want for cabinet
0:27:27 and the newest one todd young
0:27:32 From indiana is, you know, probably not interested in tulsi gabbards
0:27:37 Brand of national security that last week during her confirmation hearings
0:27:42 She just couldn’t get there to call edward snowden a traitor and you had democrats and republicans alike
0:27:45 Basically begging her just to say the guy
0:27:50 Is a traitor. Can’t we do better than somebody who doesn’t believe in 702?
0:27:55 Can’t we believe that somebody who can’t answer whether snowden was a traitor five times?
0:27:58 today
0:28:05 Who made excuses for vladimir putin’s invasion of ukraine the first time that
0:28:07 i’m aware of any
0:28:10 American official has done that
0:28:15 I’m questioning her judgment. That’s the issue that’s at stake here
0:28:20 And that’s something that I think is pretty fundamental to someone who’s going to be heading up 18
0:28:25 Intelligence agencies. So now todd young is being bullied. There was a big political piece about
0:28:31 Uh, what happened in the back rooms to get tom tellis to vote for pete hegseth and by extension
0:28:35 What happened with joni Ernst before that two people who didn’t seem like they were going to
0:28:43 And if they had added on to murkowski and collins and mensch mcconnell that hegseth wouldn’t have been confirmed
0:28:46 And I don’t know what
0:28:52 Can be done about this and this brings me back to where I started of feeling really depressed
0:28:57 Or just despondent about the whole thing and you i’m an optimistic person
0:29:01 I’ve been accused of being a polyana once or twice in my life
0:29:05 But it seems like that there are really few bright spots, especially because
0:29:08 there has been no delivery of
0:29:10 lower prices
0:29:15 Or the crime rate hasn’t fallen or that they’re deporting the bad guys
0:29:20 And I understand that there’s a difference between how you’re going to be holding some of the world’s worst terrorists
0:29:25 And how you’re going to be holding migrants that either have deportation orders or who have done something terrible
0:29:32 Like murdered an american or who are pedophiles people that none of us want in here, but everything
0:29:37 Just is blazing red un-american to me at this point
0:29:41 And I think that the answer or at least this is what my husband has been telling me
0:29:48 Is that my definition of america isn’t applicable anymore that whether we like it or not
0:29:54 We have undergone a revolution. That’s what happened at the ballot box
0:29:56 on november 5th in 2024
0:30:03 And that’s not to say that this was the shellacking that a lot of people have made it seem but it put a person back in office
0:30:06 That so many millions of people
0:30:13 Think can take absolutely any action that he and those around him want in pursuit
0:30:17 of whatever their stated goal of the day is
0:30:19 and
0:30:21 I don’t know how we come back from that. There is
0:30:25 So much evidence that this has nothing to do with efficiency. This is a coup
0:30:31 That’s what’s happening bill marius to say it’s a slow moving coup. This is now a fast moving coup
0:30:35 This is day 15 of it when this goes live a day 14
0:30:38 When we’re recording it. It’s pretty
0:30:45 Fucking fast that this is happening and they are banking on our inability to do anything about it
0:30:50 And I have friends who are saying well, what about the lawsuits and there are a bunch of lawsuits that have been filed
0:30:52 And they were able to unfreeze the freeze
0:30:55 but
0:30:59 They will be able to break things so fast that a lawsuit will not get to them
0:31:03 And we essentially if we you needed mike pence on january 6th
0:31:06 You need thousands of mike pences now to be able to do this
0:31:11 And it seems like the good people of the doj and the fbi and all of these agencies
0:31:17 Feel up to the job and they are dug in there are all these amazing reddit threads
0:31:22 Where folks who work in the bureaucracy are saying, you know, I was thinking about the buyout and now I’m showing up to work
0:31:26 And I’m going to make sure that we support and defend the constitution
0:31:28 But at a moment where the democratic party
0:31:36 Is pretty weak and we’re really struggling with a message and getting it together and having a unified theme in all of this
0:31:37 that
0:31:46 We don’t stand much of a chance to be able to stop what’s already begun Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the symbol of america isn’t really an eagle
0:31:48 It’s a pendulum and that
0:31:50 You know, it’s never at the bottom
0:31:58 And if you’re looking for a moment of optimism, I believe that the majority of americans will come to realize whether it’s
0:32:02 Through an inability to rebuild their house for less than 40 percent more
0:32:06 The fact the prices are going to go up the fact they’re going to start to meet people who are
0:32:08 Who were
0:32:13 Really treated unfairly or just the fact they’re going to go, you know, I’m no longer as proud to be an american as I used to be
0:32:19 I think people I think there’s a decent chance they have really overreached here and some of the damage
0:32:21 It’s going to come out of this is going to frighten
0:32:26 People who even thought they were, you know, I think a lot of people probably didn’t sign up for
0:32:34 For this and while it might feel good and like yeah, take that libtards and I mean, I just find it so telling
0:32:38 That the some of the agencies charged with rounding up
0:32:44 If you will, um undocumented workers, where are they going? They’re going to work sites
0:32:47 schools and places and churches
0:32:53 And it strikes me. Okay. If you found a group of people and said where can we find them?
0:32:56 We can find them. We’re only 40 of americans work
0:33:02 145 million people have a job out of 350 350 million
0:33:06 These people are working. They’re going to church and their kids are going to school
0:33:14 Doesn’t that kind of make them ground zero for what america is supposed to be and then to go macro and I am not a believer in open borders
0:33:19 I absolutely think 250 000 people coming across the border in december of 2023
0:33:23 Got us into this fucking mess and I think botten did a terrible job
0:33:29 But at the same time what we have to acknowledge is how okay, how did we get here? We got here
0:33:36 Because america’s if america’s secret sauce is immigration the most profitable part of that sauce is illegal immigration
0:33:42 And we have known about it 17 of people on a construction site are undocumented workers
0:33:46 There are all these videos now everywhere of all these work sites that are empty
0:33:51 They come in it’s the most flexible profitable workforce in history
0:33:53 is not
0:33:55 Stanford graduates
0:33:59 It’s not it’s not immigrants from india running nasa companies
0:34:04 It’s it’s illegal undocumented workers coming in
0:34:06 Taking care of grandma picking our crops
0:34:14 Providing services for quote unquote below market. I renovated a house. There’s not a single american who will work outside
0:34:17 They just won’t do it. You can’t find them. They’re still in plumbing and electric
0:34:21 Any other job building a house is like I can’t find domestic workers
0:34:26 And they’re very profitable. They don’t tax social services. They don’t stick around for social security
0:34:33 Despite the fact they pay social security taxes. So they’ve been demonized. This feels eerily reminiscent of the 110 000
0:34:38 Japanese who made the mistake of their parents being bored in japan
0:34:42 They did nothing else and they were rounded up and put in camps
0:34:44 That was a stain on the american experience
0:34:49 And it feels like we’re getting eerily close to some sort of kabuki version of that
0:34:55 Or some sort of kuroki version. I don’t know what the term is. I bad bad impromptu version of that
0:34:57 but this is
0:35:00 I got to think if i’m looking for a piece of optimism
0:35:06 It’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine that moderates who decide elections are looking at this
0:35:10 I think for about three or four days. They thought right on. Okay went too far, but i’m enjoying it
0:35:14 It tickles my sensors those fucking democrats. I love this
0:35:19 I think this is way further than people had anticipated and you want to talk about
0:35:23 An impact try and build a house right now wait till you go to the grocery store
0:35:26 I don’t think you’re going to see prices pivot as quickly
0:35:33 Is people think because per this co i spoke to they were expecting this so they stocked up
0:35:40 But when the guy who said the war in ukraine will be over in 24 hours, then i’m going to have your prices come down right away
0:35:42 when
0:35:44 prices start ticking up I had
0:35:50 We were very critical of the democrats response and I had a democratic senator call me and said, well, what would you do?
0:35:51 I’m like, I totally focus on prices
0:35:58 I’d have on the dnc website the price of six foodstuffs and I track it every day. I don’t think people realize what’s
0:36:03 What’s coming? I totally agree with you and I see I watched all the sunday shows
0:36:09 And you see the democrats have clearly gotten that memo, but it’s still so clunky in the delivery right you got a question about
0:36:15 X and then before I get into that. Do you know how much eggs cost today marge?
0:36:18 like
0:36:20 What it’s not
0:36:25 flowing cohesively at this point, but yes, it’s obviously going to be about the prices
0:36:26 um
0:36:28 So go back that was just
0:36:32 an egg aside and then this nonsense about
0:36:36 politicizing a tragedy the wildfires were politicized by both ends
0:36:38 Democrats immediately said it was climate change
0:36:43 Republicans said it was dei. They were both wrong in my view. I mean, we’ll find out but
0:36:48 That immediately went to politics on the on the airline disaster
0:36:51 um, the democrats I think handled that correctly
0:36:59 and basically the republicans said it was dei and of course no one has been able to establish a language dei and if you look at the fAA
0:37:04 You know, I’m about to get on a plane for Orlando in about two hours
0:37:07 I can get there
0:37:09 for about 400 bucks
0:37:14 And it is safer to get on a plane to skirt along the surface of the atmosphere at eight tenths of speed of sound
0:37:16 for
0:37:19 You know, whatever it is seven thousand miles
0:37:23 Or i’m sorry. No, about four thousand miles seven thousand kilometers
0:37:25 Then it is to go what literally walk up my stairs
0:37:29 You take a greater risk when you walk upstairs than when you get on a plane
0:37:31 the fAA
0:37:37 Granted, this is a tragedy. I don’t and anyone wanted to diminish the tragedy of the families who have lost loved ones
0:37:41 But we should pray for companies and organizations
0:37:47 They do as well as the government run fAA. It is amazing and if dei had anything to do
0:37:49 with the culture
0:37:50 At the federal aviation administration
0:37:56 Then we should incorporate dei into any or every organization because they do an amazing job
0:38:02 And it’s such bullshit because the standards have not been lowered. All they did was broaden the aperture
0:38:07 To try and find candidates from different backgrounds and when you attack dei be clear
0:38:09 I understand the notion
0:38:12 I have proposed and advocated before it was cool
0:38:17 To disassemble the dei apparatus and campuses because I think that problem has mostly been solved
0:38:23 It has not been solved in corporations and be clear as it relates to the government if you want to get rid of dei
0:38:30 That’s really going to impact veterans. There are a lot of veterans who have lost a limb suffer from ptsd
0:38:36 And because of dei, they have a fighting chance of being employed after they return from service
0:38:37 so
0:38:42 Just be careful what you’re asking for and these this the politicization of that
0:38:47 Was so ugly and so strange and such a disservice
0:38:52 And to all government employees it just feels as if where where is this going to?
0:38:57 I mean, where is this? Where is this? Where is this headed? I don’t I’m
0:39:03 I’m like you having trouble. I do you think you’re going to get to check back what you just said about claudia shanbaum
0:39:09 Says to me his advisors have already said, okay, we may have overreached here
0:39:13 This isn’t going to work out for us, which is what they had to do with unfreezing the freeze
0:39:16 right before it even got to court apparently there was
0:39:20 a difference of opinion
0:39:24 from trump’s camp versus the omb and the doge folks
0:39:32 Even though the head of omb isn’t even confirmed at this point. I tend to agree with you about dei
0:39:36 I think that it’s an easy scapegoat for people that don’t want to do
0:39:44 Real thinking about how to reform agencies make things more efficient and also be more inclusive
0:39:48 Which is one of our strengths as a country but going back to what I was saying about
0:39:54 Maybe my vision of america doesn’t compute with how people see america these days and we don’t have
0:39:57 The same set of shared values
0:39:59 but what I noticed during
0:40:02 The aftermath of the plane crash and this was going on
0:40:08 I was on the five every day last week because the democrat that I shared the seat with was out so
0:40:11 I had the continuity
0:40:17 of day after day after day after day on it and seeing how the story was shifting from my
0:40:21 republican counterparts and
0:40:25 How they were trying to move around the facts that were coming out
0:40:35 Things like the same dei policy that was implemented under obama trump kept it and even sent out new recruiting materials
0:40:42 In 2019 looking for people with all the characteristics that they sit up there and decry and try to blame this for
0:40:50 Or even watching trump shapeshift on the first day of the crisis where he comes out, you know hot about dei
0:40:54 Then he hears that the pilots were white. So he was like, um, what do I do now?
0:41:00 So then he says dei actually just means incompetence and then there’s the natural correlation or extension
0:41:07 I should say which is that you think that people of color or women or people are part of the lgbtq plus community
0:41:14 Are incompetent but that was a safe place that people that support him and this
0:41:17 War against dei could hide where they said well
0:41:19 We’re just talking about
0:41:23 In competency and of course no one wants an air traffic controller. That’s incompetent
0:41:31 The real problem is recruitment and people to judge had requested this and made a big stink about it in 2023
0:41:39 Everything we need more faa controllers and if you have on the night of the crash, which we did one controller that is talking to both the helicopter and the plane
0:41:46 It’s a recipe for disaster and we’ll see what the ntsb finds in all of this. I think that they have been
0:41:53 Incredibly professional and the right balance also of you know, we want to get to the bottom of this and also so
0:42:01 Emotional when it comes to dealing with the families who are obviously grieving all these young figure skaters
0:42:05 That had these hugely bright futures ahead of them that were on that plane
0:42:09 But we are in this dangerous place
0:42:12 where the talking points
0:42:14 like dei
0:42:16 are cover
0:42:18 for all sorts
0:42:24 of deeply racist and bigoted and anti-american
0:42:27 sets of values and they are
0:42:31 They have been able to very effectively hide behind them
0:42:37 And I was thinking a lot about the impact that Javier Malay has had on this administration
0:42:43 So the president of argentina who came in in 2023 big reformer and he’s essentially the model for what
0:42:52 Musk and trump are doing right now. So fire tens of thousands of bureaucrats shut down entire departments shut down entire departments
0:42:54 halt infrastructure projects
0:43:01 Slash energy and transportation subsidies. I mean, it’s really crazy actually to look at how aligned
0:43:07 They are with what he has done and argentina has there obviously still a lot of problems there
0:43:11 But they have had some very positive results, which no one has been able to deny
0:43:18 And then malay shows up in davos last week and gives this speech that most regarded as
0:43:20 incredibly bigoted
0:43:26 and attacked you know many members of the argentinian community and
0:43:34 You see the applause or the the inability I guess to separate the good parts of this from the bad parts of this
0:43:36 and it’s like you have to be
0:43:42 A mean kid in order to be effective and I just don’t
0:43:49 Understand that there were all of these very effective leaders and I’m not a math of ronald reagan gal
0:43:55 but I understand how many people feel passionately about him and his legacy and
0:44:03 He didn’t feel the need to talk like that and I know that the policies had a lot of negative implications for people but even
0:44:08 The way that we have made it okay to be so crass
0:44:15 And so nasty and cutting and so obviously telegraph the fact that you don’t think that the people
0:44:21 That you govern are equals to you that our our humanity is not equal
0:44:24 That being on display from
0:44:26 the most important
0:44:29 pulpit in the world think spells
0:44:36 A really dangerous future for all of us argentina is not america and to use it as a role model
0:44:38 It’s just plain stupid argentin
0:44:45 In argentina 55 of registered workers a work for the government in argentina. They have an inflation rate
0:44:53 Of like 170 and it’s declined. I think to 118 percent. So that’s type of shock therapy
0:44:57 It’s easy to understand why that was receptive. It’s just not that
0:44:59 Just isn’t the case
0:45:04 In in the united states and this general notion of people
0:45:10 I think it all reverse engineers back to income inequality where people feel really frustrated when they see all this prosperity that they’re not
0:45:12 sharing and so they get angry and then
0:45:18 Oddly, you know, this guy positions himself as an outsider ship post government
0:45:21 and if you think what I had one of those moments where
0:45:25 For the most part we need to look at government regularly
0:45:29 But for the most part I find that generally speaking government workers doing an outstanding job
0:45:35 The most impressive organization in the world is a u.s. Government wing and that’s our department of defense and our armed services
0:45:37 They are the most impressive organization
0:45:41 In history in terms of what they’ve been able to accomplish on a lot of different levels
0:45:46 I mean and if you want to talk about why we have deficits and why taxes
0:45:50 I mean why we have you know, like
0:45:58 What I would call a reckless fiscal policy something they also passed on the cover of dark while I’m trying to figure out respond to this ridiculousness
0:46:02 They passed a tax cut
0:46:07 And that is anyone making under three hundred thousand dollars is about to see their taxes go up
0:46:09 where they’re they’re proposed a tax cut
0:46:16 And people making over three hundred thousand dollars are about to get a tax cut. Is that what moderates wanted?
0:46:22 Anyways, this is this is the strategy and it’s unfortunately really effective is flooding the zone
0:46:28 with weirdness and depravity and because there’s an absence of journalists
0:46:34 And because we don’t know which where to react first. We’re literally like in mash a mash unit
0:46:36 Where all of a sudden
0:46:38 600 soldiers
0:46:42 Get brought in on stretchers with with an absence of limbs. We do not know
0:46:49 Where to start anyways on that on that optimistic moment. We’re going to take a break. Please stay with us
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0:50:12 So welcome back i want to talk about a couple things and get your response
0:50:16 To each of them. So a couple of the things we haven’t been talking about
0:50:21 um, the u.s. Government, uh, has decided or basically trump has decided
0:50:27 Uh to eliminate and take down sites according to reporting from wire
0:50:32 in the new york times more than 8 000 pages across government sites have been taken down since friday
0:50:39 This follows trump’s orders to take down all outward facing media site social media accounts that include to promote gender ideology
0:50:45 Topics of pages taken down include vaccines veterans affairs hate crimes and scientific research specifically
0:50:48 3 000 pages were taken down from the cdc
0:50:53 3 000 pages from the census bureau a thousand pages from the office of justice programs 200 pages from head start
0:50:59 A program for low-income children on 180 pages from the department of justice and this goes to a theme
0:51:01 that um
0:51:04 I’m big on and that is I believe that the way
0:51:11 Trump is implementing a misogynist anti gay ideology is to say to communities
0:51:18 If you’re rich you got nothing to worry about if your nephew’s gay or transgender or your daughter needs to terminate a pregnancy
0:51:20 don’t worry
0:51:23 That this is continuing a war on the poor because like one of the things they took down
0:51:27 I was reading about was this hiv transmission calculator
0:51:30 Where you went in and talked about the type of sex you practiced
0:51:32 um
0:51:35 Your sexual orientation very straightforward questions and it said okay
0:51:39 You are at high risk or low risk, but there are options available
0:51:45 Or what type of options or programs available for a pregnant woman who contracts an std?
0:51:49 And I think about okay. My son
0:51:52 Doesn’t need that website
0:51:54 My son has education
0:51:59 Uh to parents at home money to figure things out or my daughter would need it
0:52:02 This is an attack
0:52:08 Uh on poor people under the auspices of implementing a far-right white christian nationalist
0:52:14 Ideology with a wink and a nod saying okay, but my daughters and my sons if i’m rich
0:52:18 We need an out. We need a back door here your thoughts just
0:52:21 I totally agree. I always thought that
0:52:24 We lost a bit of ground
0:52:29 On the dobs decision because we didn’t message about it being an economic issue enough
0:52:36 And we just seemed like people that were screaming about access to reproductive health care without talking about the brass tacks of who’s actually
0:52:42 In need of this because there will be options for people who have financial flexibility
0:52:45 And even if they aren’t in an emergency crisis
0:52:51 Let alone have the time to go across state lines or go abroad to get the care that they need
0:52:54 um, so I think looking through it through the prism
0:52:58 Of the economy is the way to do it. It’s and it’s also the only way it was shown in the election
0:53:02 That voters respond to anything it has to be about their bottom line
0:53:09 And people are doing less and less for other people and more and more for themselves
0:53:13 I’m very concerned about all of these
0:53:18 data sets that are being taken down from the cdc site the nih
0:53:22 site the usa id site
0:53:26 because they are the key for people who work in
0:53:34 The public sector in general especially the health care industry to be able to take care of people the world over
0:53:41 And there are some prominent folks who have worked in these agencies that are sounding the alarm. They’re all over social media
0:53:44 They’re talking to whatever reporters that they can
0:53:49 Including this guy atul gawande who was the former head of global health at usa id
0:53:53 Talking about how this is all just a gift to our enemies and competitors
0:53:59 It’s not a pause and I thought that was really important that he called it out that they are telling you that this is a pause
0:54:02 That everything will be restored. It’ll be
0:54:06 You know just less the things that we shouldn’t be doing
0:54:10 And the things that are actually appropriate, but he said it’s the destruction of the agency
0:54:16 And I thought this was really powerful. We’re on the verge of ending hiv tb and malaria
0:54:22 Funding the treatment of 20 million people with hiv worldwide including 6.5 million orphans
0:54:28 Who else is going to be taking care of those orphans? Especially in countries where there is an infrastructure
0:54:34 To take care of them whereas a society they don’t care. That’s how they ended up in this position
0:54:40 Someone just dropped them off on a doorstep and they had a chance of actually living somewhere and being taken care of
0:54:42 because of this
0:54:44 um, you know, we have bird flu
0:54:48 Coming there’s Ebola in Uganda again
0:54:54 Price of eggs going back to it. I finally could get some whole foods had been out for several days
0:54:56 I was able to stock up though
0:54:58 but at an increased
0:55:00 price point of course
0:55:01 um
0:55:03 it’s really
0:55:06 Disturbing our people up to the task you talk about the journalists
0:55:12 Two of the most major pieces of journalism on this have come from wired and you already
0:55:15 Sighted one of them
0:55:18 I’m concerned about the actual bodies to do the journalism
0:55:23 But then also the depth of understanding to be able to do the job well because when you’re dealing with elan musk
0:55:27 And these kids that are running doge with him that are coming out of
0:55:33 Silicon Valley or these institutions where they have been steeped in
0:55:35 technology
0:55:42 And understanding things that are way above my head that you need people to be reporting on them that actually understand what’s going on
0:55:47 And I don’t know if those voices are getting the right level of amplification
0:55:50 And I mean that literally in terms of on social media is the guy who’s
0:55:55 Running the algorithm keeping those voices out of the discourse. I would say yes
0:55:58 And if you look at what happened in the election, you can see that
0:56:01 coming to the fore
0:56:07 But are we doing enough as private citizens to be amplifying these voices as well because there’s a lot of
0:56:10 You know people screaming from the rooftops
0:56:13 You know saying democracy dies in darkness
0:56:20 But what are the practical things that we can be doing to be able to tell this story in a way that’s penetrating the average
0:56:25 American that needs to know this going into the next set of elections
0:56:30 But even to be able to prepare themselves for whatever is to come next over the course of the next two years
0:56:35 Which is the next time that we’re going to get the opportunity to say something at the ballot box
0:56:39 It’s a perfect storm of bad things one social media has guided journalism
0:56:44 The number of journalists over the last 20 or 30 years is down somewhere between 20 and 30 percent and there’s arguably the largest cop
0:56:50 Where the most powerful cop that doesn’t carry a badge to report on this stuff and they’re just overwhelmed and in addition
0:56:54 the quote-unquote information that has replaced these journalists
0:56:58 Traffics and rage and makes you hate the government and hate each other
0:57:02 Which has kind of led to this and then you couple that with the idolatry of the dollar
0:57:05 Where we let one person who happens to be the richest person in the world make these sorts of decisions
0:57:10 You end up with an undereducated populace who believes in conspiracy theory is enraged
0:57:16 And the wealthy or the wealthiest man in the world to start making these unilateral decisions with
0:57:20 A lack of checks and balances not only from a congress that’s worried about him
0:57:25 Turning his sights and his money and his algorithms on them and primarying them
0:57:27 But because people are just so in awe
0:57:33 Of money you reference what I think is just a national disgrace, but again
0:57:36 So many disgraces we can’t focus on these things
0:57:43 And that is the foreign aid freeze the u.s. Congress froze foreign aid a decision that will go down in my view in history
0:57:45 is one of the most short-sighted
0:57:51 Destructive and frankly un-american failures of leadership to be clear foreign aid is a rounding error in the federal budget
0:57:56 It’s about 70 billion dollars or 200 dollars per citizen in exchange for that
0:58:00 You know, what do we have?
0:58:05 Sudan war ravaged country is on the edge of starvation until last week u.s. Fund supported
0:58:09 634 soup kitchens feeding 800,000 people
0:58:12 After the freeze
0:58:14 434 of those kitchens were shut down
0:58:17 overnight and tylen and myanomar
0:58:24 Patients with tuberculosis and life-threatening conditions are being carried away on makeshift stretchers
0:58:27 Told to leave us funded hospital within a week
0:58:32 Because they have no more supply of medicine and they have nowhere else to go in africa
0:58:37 Famine riddled sudan is worsening 6 million people are on the brink of starvation 4 and a half million
0:58:43 Displaced people they were on the verge of eradicating diseases including malaria and malnutrition
0:58:45 Some of those clinics are shutting down
0:58:52 Global health the u.s. Funded hiv aids programs in south africa and hady has stalled putting hundreds of thousands of lives
0:58:56 At risk and be clear folks, even if you want to make the moral argument
0:59:02 Well, that’s a tragedy, but i want that 200 dollars focused on american kids. Okay, that’s an argument
0:59:04 Don’t agree with it, but that’s an argument
0:59:10 But the geopolitical fallout here is going to come back to hana’s china and russia are stepping into this void
0:59:18 While the us pulls back beijing is deepening its ties in africa and latin america aid isn’t just about generosity. It’s about influence
0:59:24 And washington’s retreat is just going to leave this gigantic vacuum that our adversaries are happy
0:59:31 To fill with a fucking fraction of their investment. Putin will come up with that 70 billion if he can grab
0:59:38 Some of that goodwill so for a 200 the majority of americans and i think republicans and emirates
0:59:43 We sat him down and said this is the good. We’re doing around the world around hiv malaria
0:59:46 starvation the
0:59:49 Displaced refugees this is what we are doing
0:59:54 for for for pregnant women with with aids with kids with vaccines
0:59:57 This is what happens if we withdraw
1:00:03 Are you willing to give us 200 right now here and now for the year? I think the majority of americans would say
1:00:07 Absolutely the moral this aid freeze isn’t just a moral failure
1:00:13 It’s a strategic disaster weakening our allies funding humanitarian crises and abandoning global leadership
1:00:20 It’s going to cost us a lot more than 200 bucks per citizen. This is just what this is the definition
1:00:27 Of a lack of strategy and taking goodwill built over decades and investments by previous americans and taxpayers
1:00:31 In just trashing it in the worst way. This is just so
1:00:35 Just so dumb. Well, it also is exposing
1:00:43 I think a mistake that a lot of us made certainly. I made in talking about. Oh, it’ll be fine. Marco rubio is great
1:00:47 Right, so i’m really happy with the foreign policy apparatus that he’s put into place
1:00:51 Marco rubio is rubber stamping this and he hired this guy
1:00:53 darin beaty or beaty
1:00:57 He was fired from duke for attending a conference with white nationalists
1:01:03 And he was too extreme for a junior role as a speechwriter in trump’s first administration when there were adults around
1:01:09 He said that nato is a bigger threat than the chinese communist party whites in the u.s. Are treated better than weavers
1:01:13 And he told tim scott and another and a bunch of other
1:01:21 Uh black people that they need to bend the knee on january 6th and that other black people should quote unquote learn their place
1:01:26 So that’s how he was spending his day and this is who marco rubio has on his team
1:01:33 So if scott besant, you know, almost a year ago is talking about how tariffs are rarely used and shouldn’t be discharged
1:01:37 And we have this fight with canada and maybe impending with mexico
1:01:42 In a month whenever they get their stuff together you have this
1:01:45 Guy being a support system for marco rubio
1:01:52 Are there going to be any adults left in the room? Yeah, I don’t look this is this is and
1:01:55 You know at some point we’re gonna have to do
1:01:57 To show on what can be done here
1:01:59 But i’ve said
1:02:05 You know around democrats, this is not a time to come together. This is a time to come to the rescue and focus on the economic impact
1:02:09 I do think uh democrats are starting to hit back. I loved
1:02:15 The the some of the senate confirmation hearings. I think senator michael bennett is an absolute hero
1:02:21 Um, by the way, who I supported for precedents my dad too. You guys were the only two of us
1:02:23 I think there was a third somewhere in there
1:02:28 Really, but i probably james bennett his brother. I what a cool sibling tandem by the way
1:02:36 Yeah, they’re very improv, but it really I know senator bennett. He’s a really decent man public school superintendent senator
1:02:38 Was in private equity understands capitalism anyways
1:02:43 I I thought senator sanders and warren were very effective. Um
1:02:46 So I it is good to see democrats hitting back
1:02:52 But it this does feel like um, we’re in uncharted
1:02:56 Uh territory anyways, we’re gonna take one more quick break and stay with us
1:03:03 Support for prof. G comes from Grammarly
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1:04:11 Hey, what you doing programming our thermostat to 17 degrees when we’re out at work or asleep
1:04:17 We’re taking control of our energy use this winter with some easy energy saving tips I got from Fortis, BC
1:04:22 Ooh conserve energy and save money maybe to buy those matching winter jackets
1:04:26 Uh, no, we’re also getting that whole matching outfit thing under control
1:04:32 Discover low and no cost energy saving tips at fortisbc.com/energysavingtips
1:04:35 matching tracksuits, please know
1:04:40 Hey there, I’m Peter Kafka the host of channels a show about technology and media in the future
1:04:44 And this has been a tremendously busy couple weeks for the tech industry
1:04:48 There’s donald trump and is embraced by the men running the world’s most powerful companies
1:04:51 There’s tiktok and its future in the us
1:04:56 And there’s deep seek the chinese ai engine that just shook silicon valley and wall street
1:05:04 I wanted to get an insider’s perspective on all of that. So this week I turned to jessica lesson the veteran tech journalist who runs the information
1:05:06 Jessica told me why deep seek is so important
1:05:12 Who she thinks might end up owning tiktok and why some of the valley isn’t just playing nice with donald trump
1:05:14 But really thinks he’ll be good for them
1:05:19 You can hear all of that on channels wherever you listen to awesome podcasts
1:05:30 Welcome back before we wrap ken martin’s election as chair of the democratic national committee marks the beginning of a huge challenge after spending 14
1:05:32 years leading minnesota’s dfl
1:05:36 He’s no stranger to political battles, but now he’s stepping into a role with a lot more weight
1:05:38 His victory was a decisive one
1:05:43 But it’s only the first hurdle martin’s job now is to unite a divided party and rebuild momentum after
1:05:50 20 losses in 2024 all while preparing for a tough battle against the trump led gop in 2028
1:05:53 Just with contenders including ben wickler
1:05:58 Who had a lot of big name support? What do you think gave ken the edge in securing the win?
1:06:01 And how do you think he’ll use this momentum to unite the dnc moving forward?
1:06:05 I think it was a lie having to do with his personal touch
1:06:11 So there are 488 voting members of the democratic national committee for this
1:06:17 He called every single one of them and spent up to two hours on the phone with them. So it didn’t just you know
1:06:20 Hit you know line one
1:06:24 Can I count on your vote line two? Can I count on your vote? He said talk to me
1:06:29 What’s been going on here? And a lot of that has to do with the fact that he’s been so enmeshed in the organization
1:06:31 He’s been a vice chair
1:06:34 Since 2017. I think it is um, so
1:06:36 he seemed
1:06:40 Like he was really the people’s pick in all of that and I think that
1:06:43 That’s a very good direction for us to be going in
1:06:52 Sucks for leadership like Schumer and Pelosi and jeffrey’s also big donors soros and reid hoffman. We’re backing ben wickler
1:06:53 who
1:07:00 Is much more of the media darling in all of this and also I don’t want to minimize how effective he’s been in wisconsin
1:07:04 Um, and that is certainly a model for all of us
1:07:08 But it seems like ken martin had that personal touch that folks liked and I loved
1:07:11 This quote, you know, they were talking about
1:07:13 how some have called him a knife fighter
1:07:18 And a democrat said he’s like Stalin and I say that as a compliment
1:07:22 And I would love to have some Stalin energy
1:07:27 On our side in terms of being ruthless over the course of the next two to four years
1:07:33 Figuring out what our message is and he talked a lot about getting back to our working class roots
1:07:37 which is definitely the direction that we have to be going in and
1:07:42 I’m hopeful that he can get the job done. It was quite the contrast though
1:07:50 So he won by a decisive victory, but there are all of these clips floating floating around of what was also going on at the dnc
1:07:53 You know stuff about pronouns
1:07:58 starting with um, a land acknowledgement jamey harrison gave an interview
1:08:02 He’s the outgoing chair of the dnc where he said that we should have stuck with biden
1:08:07 Which I think would have led to you know, over 400 electoral votes for trump
1:08:12 If biden had stayed on the top of the ticket and so there’s this contrast between
1:08:15 Being positive and hopeful about what the future
1:08:22 Holds for the party and also thinking that there are still a lot of headwinds coming fast and furious towards us
1:08:28 And that you almost can’t have anyone around a position of power
1:08:34 Who would say something like biden should have stayed on top of the ticket looking at
1:08:40 The results of the election and where the electorate is now and most importantly seven million people
1:08:44 Who voted for biden in 2020 sat at home? That is our target
1:08:48 We have to be laser focused in on those people. I think we’ve done a really bad job
1:08:54 We being democrats of building our bench. Oh really? I’m trying to think the bench is bad
1:08:57 I usually hear the messaging is bad, but I feel like there are all these
1:09:05 Up and coming stars. Yeah, but my my view is that we’ve decided to opt for 90 year olds who engage in insider trade
1:09:07 waiting and won’t leave
1:09:11 That the top of the pyramid is so stacked with
1:09:13 Right but ineffective players
1:09:18 That we’re not advancing some of our younger voices fast enough. I just think there
1:09:22 I think if you’re a young ambitious and talented
1:09:26 You want to get to america and you want to be republican right now because I think the democrats
1:09:30 Have decided that it’s a it’s a seniors facility
1:09:35 And uh, I just think we need to absolutely elevate
1:09:43 Let me forgot six Amy klobuchar. I think she’s 60 or 62. She looks like a teenager compared to the rest of our hooking jeffreys
1:09:45 Looks like he’s 15
1:09:47 We need to get some of these
1:09:53 Uh, younger more forceful people. I’m not a huge fan of a osc’s policies. I I love that. She said i’m not going to the inauguration
1:09:55 He’s a rapist
1:09:58 I mean where are those voices for me? We need it to identify
1:10:06 A cadre of 30 or 40 really? I mean secretary buddha jish. I like how he came out and immediately tweeted, you know
1:10:08 zero crashes on my watch boss
1:10:11 And that’s an unfair statement and he should make it
1:10:16 But I don’t think I think we have I don’t know. I think we’re like a corporation
1:10:19 I I think a lot of these people need to be put on an ice floe jess
1:10:21 I think that that’s fair. I agree with you
1:10:27 I not necessarily for an age cutoff but just for people coming to their senses and realizing
1:10:32 That even if they can still physically walk and talk that there are people
1:10:36 Who need to be nurtured and to have the opportunity and that we do have
1:10:41 A derse of people waiting to have their opportunity
1:10:45 I wanted to shout out though. There are a few people you already said a osc
1:10:50 I think chris murphy on the senate side has been great over the course of the last week and a lot of it
1:10:55 He’s doing through his own social media. I don’t think instagram live is going to save us per se
1:11:00 From the hostile takeover of the government by elan musk and co, but I
1:11:02 liked seeing
1:11:05 What he had to say about it and that it was the rapid response
1:11:12 People don’t care that much if you are absolutely right about every detail and the details are moving so quickly
1:11:15 That within a couple of hours part of what you’ve said
1:11:19 Is unfortunately going to have been inaccurate, but they want to see the passion
1:11:24 They want to see the fight and they want to see that you care and that you’re using all of the tools in your arsenal
1:11:28 To make sure that the american public knows that there are still people they’re
1:11:33 Fighting for them agree with you about michael bennett. I thought one of the most powerful moments
1:11:35 during the rfk jr
1:11:37 confirmation hearing and god
1:11:42 I hope that he doesn’t get through but i’m so afraid of everyone being pushed into line
1:11:49 By these bullying tactics was maggie hasson from new hampshire. I don’t know if you saw this, but she was basically in tears
1:11:55 Talking to rfk jr about her son 36 years old cerebral palsy now
1:11:59 Some of you are new to this committee and new to the senate so you may not know
1:12:04 That i am the proud mother of a 36 year old young man with severe cerebral palsy
1:12:08 And a date does not go by
1:12:16 When i don’t think about what did i do when i was pregnant with him that might have caused the hydrocephalus
1:12:19 That has so impacted his life
1:12:28 So please do not suggest that anybody in this body of either political party doesn’t want to know what the cause of autism is
1:12:34 i’m sure you had this as well with your partner where you just think oh, i know it’s the third trimester
1:12:39 I can have a glass of wine, but should i or i really would love to have
1:12:45 Some cold cuts or is having this sushi going to be okay or god forbid i fell
1:12:50 In the subway or walking down the street, whatever it is and what are the implications
1:12:56 For this little person that i already love more than i thought i could love anything in this world
1:13:02 And it just it brought me to tears watching her talk about that and having to do that
1:13:09 In a confirmation hearing for someone who is going to run our health care system and can’t say that vaccines don’t cause autism
1:13:13 every time i saw i thought this is the greatest threat to democracy of
1:13:17 an individual who you know shares
1:13:24 Shares company with bashar al-Assad and can’t call edwards snowden a trader is going to just destroy the morale of people
1:13:27 Who put themselves in harm’s way every day and wonder is this person
1:13:32 Really going to have my back and then i think oh no, she’s not the worst. He’s the worst that
1:13:35 We’re going to have kids who are going to lose limbs and have
1:13:40 Hands and feet amputated, which is what happened if measles we have another measles outbreak
1:13:43 Who’s selling onesies to babies?
1:13:48 That says you know waxed in prime. I mean unvaxxed and what is it?
1:13:56 Those onesies i don’t know, but they were 26 bucks. Yeah, and i just it’s it’s just very odd
1:14:01 Really it’s dystopia. Yeah, it is you just don’t think that it’s really happening
1:14:05 You’re watching cash patelle and i’m holding up a picture saying you know
1:14:13 Did you post this meme of chainsawing democrats and this can’t possibly be happening and he’s going to soar through
1:14:18 Yeah, he’s coming across almost as like semi legitimate and senator rubio has always been a political animal
1:14:23 He wakes up every morning and looks in the mirror and says hello, mr. President. He would do anything
1:14:30 To increase the likelihood and by quite frankly, and i’m circling back the very beginning here around our immigration policy
1:14:34 They got very serious about immigration about 20 years ago
1:14:39 And they had something called the gang of five and they included this very young senator named marco rubio
1:14:44 And he blew up the whole thing because his pollsters decided that in iowa
1:14:49 They don’t want anything resembling a path to citizenship for dreamers
1:14:51 so
1:14:56 Marco rubio will always do what he believes is the most politically expedient thing full stop
1:15:02 I mean, he really is the opposite of a leader and my favorite statement about marco rubio is who would have thought
1:15:06 That people’s would last put the last names cruise and rubio would hate
1:15:09 mexican people so much
1:15:11 He really hasn’t been
1:15:14 anyways and what’s strange is
1:15:16 I can see how he flew in 99 to 0
1:15:21 Because we have we have just changed entirely changed
1:15:24 The benchmark but what you said about
1:15:27 Is it senator hasson?
1:15:30 That was really powerful. Um, actually, I think that’s probably a
1:15:36 A good place to end it. I don’t have anything upbeat. What do you do? What are you doing this week?
1:15:39 Jess, let’s get back to you. Talk about something upbeat. Anything going on with your kids?
1:15:47 No, I know you’re really desperate. I am desperate. I’m reaching. Well, scott since you asked. No, uh pick a strap. I’m going to disney world
1:15:48 my
1:15:52 Well, that part i’m jealous of that part. My daughter went to her first tennis class
1:15:58 Where they don’t really use rackets, but they you know meet the ball and the racket. It was very cute
1:16:00 It’s all just about the videos and the pictures, right?
1:16:07 Very good trust me on this you cannot take enough pictures when your kids are young. I every day I send a photo
1:16:11 Of me and my one of my boys when I was with them when I was a kid
1:16:13 I sent it to them. I texted to him at school
1:16:18 And it is you can’t take enough photos and they love it
1:16:22 Yeah, they do like well. We love ourselves no matter how old we are
1:16:30 Narcissists from birth. There you go. All right. That’s it for this episode. Thank you for listening to raging moderates our producers are david Toledo
1:16:33 and shenanye onake
1:16:37 Our technical director is drew burrows. You can find raging moderates on its own feed every Tuesday
1:16:41 That’s right raging moderates on its own feed. Please follow us wherever you get your podcasts
1:16:44 See you later. Thanks Jess
1:16:47 (upbeat music)

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0:00:34 Hey, ProfG listeners.
0:00:35 It’s Ed.
0:00:40 If you’re hearing this message, it’s because you’re still listening on the ProfG Pod feed,
0:00:44 which means you’re missing half of our episodes on our ProfG Markets feed.
0:00:49 So for all of the content, head over to the ProfG Markets podcast and hit follow.
0:00:53 We’ve also left a link in the description to make it easier.
0:00:57 Thank you very much, and I’ll see you over on the other feed.
0:01:01 Today’s number 1.5, that’s the percentage of global stocks the Norway sovereign wealth
0:01:07 fund owns, making it the world’s largest single investor Norway, where the dating scene is
0:01:10 a song on a hike, and then you jump into a freezing river, and if you survive, you get
0:01:12 a second date.
0:01:23 Not really a joke, Ed.
0:01:24 Just sort of an observation.
0:01:25 Here we are.
0:01:26 Just an observation.
0:01:27 Let’s go Norwegian.
0:01:28 Okay, so this is our Cabbage here.
0:01:31 This episode is brought to you by Fundrise.
0:01:32 We think we’re Norway.
0:01:34 We think we’re rich and civilized.
0:01:37 Meanwhile, we’re arguing over Transcensor.
0:01:40 Meanwhile, we’re arguing over Chan.
0:01:43 Yeah, anyways, never mind.
0:01:45 Keep that in.
0:01:46 I’m getting so fucking old.
0:01:51 I think I’m, I think, I literally think I’m having one of several million strokes that
0:01:52 I’ve been experiencing.
0:01:56 You get to my age, Ed, a stroke is kind of like, I don’t know, it’s like a, it’s like
0:01:58 an erection when you’re age.
0:02:01 It just kind of happens when you’re least expecting it.
0:02:02 Every morning.
0:02:03 Don’t brag.
0:02:08 Don’t rub it in my face, literally, literally don’t rub it in my face, anyways.
0:02:11 It all comes back to the penis.
0:02:12 How are you, Scott?
0:02:13 I’m doing pretty well.
0:02:18 I found out I have to be in Orlando for a speaking gig, and at first I was bummed, and
0:02:23 now I’m like kind of sick of my kids, so I’m sort of excited.
0:02:27 So I’m headed to Orlando on Monday, and then I go up to New York for four days.
0:02:28 I’m excited about that.
0:02:32 I’m going to do our team strategy meeting, where you’re all going to present your plan,
0:02:36 and I’m going to say, you make too much money and you’re not growing revenues fast enough,
0:02:38 just so you know that’s the feedback you’re going to get.
0:02:39 I’m excited.
0:02:40 What about you?
0:02:41 What are you up to?
0:02:42 Let’s see.
0:02:43 I got my sister visiting this weekend.
0:02:44 That’ll be pretty fun.
0:02:45 You’re close with your sister, aren’t you?
0:02:46 Yeah.
0:02:48 I’ve gotten really close with her in the past couple of years.
0:02:50 I’ve always been pretty close, but gotten really close with her over the past couple
0:02:51 of years.
0:02:52 So she’s visiting.
0:02:56 I think maybe I’m just mature, or maybe we’re both more mature.
0:02:59 I used to feel kind of competitive with her.
0:03:00 I think that was probably a problem.
0:03:05 And I feel like when you’re just more secure about yourself, it’s just easier to kind
0:03:10 of get along with people or something, or when you, I don’t know, I feel like we just
0:03:12 have a very mature, nice relationship.
0:03:15 So I hope that continues, because I think relationships go up and down as well.
0:03:16 Does she have kids?
0:03:17 No, she’s not.
0:03:22 But she got married a year ago, so she’s definitely thinking about it.
0:03:23 You’ll be a great uncle.
0:03:26 You’re going to have a central casting to be an uncle.
0:03:28 I feel like I’m going to be kind of awkward with kids.
0:03:30 I think I’m not very good with kids already.
0:03:33 Well, you’re awkward to begin with, but I think you’ll be probably a little bit less
0:03:34 awkward with children.
0:03:35 See, I see it differently.
0:03:39 I think I can sort of like fake my way through being normal with adults, but when it comes
0:03:43 to kids, I’m going to be kind of like fumbling about what to talk about.
0:03:44 I don’t know.
0:03:47 I think you just make fart jokes and threaten to hit them if they don’t behave.
0:03:48 That’s my approach to children.
0:03:49 But no dick jokes?
0:03:52 You can get on the wrong list.
0:03:55 The next time you move, you have to go next door and tell them you’ve moved in next door,
0:03:56 which is real.
0:03:57 A real inconvenience.
0:03:58 It’s a real bummer.
0:03:59 All right.
0:04:02 Well, shall we start with our weekly review of Market Vitals?
0:04:03 Let’s do it, my brother.
0:04:04 Let’s do it, Uncle Ed.
0:04:14 The S&P 500 spent a week recovering from Monday’s drawdown.
0:04:15 The dollar rose.
0:04:21 Bitcoin crashed below 100,000, but then rebounded by Thursday, and the yield on 10-year treasuries
0:04:22 declined.
0:04:24 Shifting to the headlines.
0:04:28 President Trump is adopting a corporate-style buyout strategy, offering federal workers
0:04:34 the option to resign by February 6th in exchange for pay through the end of September.
0:04:39 The White House expects 5 to 10 percent of federal employees to accept the offer.
0:04:43 Starbucks’ same-store sales fell 4 percent for the fourth straight quarter.
0:04:49 However, Revenue Beat Expectations and CEO Brian Nickel shared more details from his
0:04:54 back to Starbucks strategy, emphasizing a renewed focus on customer experience.
0:04:58 The stock was up 8 percent on that news.
0:05:03 And finally, T-Mobile’s fourth quarter revenue exceeded expectations, up nearly 7 percent
0:05:04 year-over-year.
0:05:08 The company also issued its strongest start of year guidance to date.
0:05:12 That earnings beat coincided with the beta launch of its Starlink program, where it’ll
0:05:17 be offering its customers exclusive access to Starlink for the first year.
0:05:21 So Scott, let’s start with this federal buyout here.
0:05:22 Just be clear.
0:05:26 This is not the same as a corporate buyout or a leverage buyout, where you’re buying
0:05:29 out the investors in a company to control the company.
0:05:32 This is what’s known as an employee buyout.
0:05:36 And the reason companies usually do this is to cut down on costs.
0:05:41 Basically, you essentially offer your employees a voluntary severance package.
0:05:46 They can take it or leave it, and the idea is to incentivize your employees to leave
0:05:48 the company with that severance package.
0:05:52 So Trump is doing this, except he’s doing it with the U.S. government.
0:05:54 Good idea or bad idea, Scott?
0:06:00 So I think on a regular basis, it’s probably a good idea to have some churn and to have
0:06:06 some recalibration of a company, and especially I think with the federal government, where
0:06:11 I would think sometimes because of deficit spending and more bureaucracy, I’ll probably
0:06:14 get a decent amount of emails disagreeing with me.
0:06:20 I think sometimes that federal employees aren’t subject to the same regular reviews or standards
0:06:23 that the private market imposes on the private sector.
0:06:28 So I’m kind of down with the idea of occasionally looking at the federal government with state
0:06:33 and local agencies and reviewing it or reviewing the size of it.
0:06:38 Like I said that, as a percentage of the population, our federal employee base has actually been
0:06:41 level or declined over the last 40 or 50 years.
0:06:46 So it’s not like it’s swelled beyond something crazy, if you will.
0:06:51 Now, it’s not kind of the decision or what you do, it’s how you do it.
0:06:56 I do not like buyouts, and that is, I generally find that the people who take buyouts are
0:07:00 your most talented people, because who’s going to take a buyout?
0:07:03 Oh, I’m a really talented 30-year-old that has all sorts of options, and they’re going
0:07:07 to pay me, and I’ve been thinking about leaving because I have a lot of opportunities outside
0:07:11 of the, you know, the DOJ or whatever it might be.
0:07:12 Boom.
0:07:14 Oh my gosh, I’m going to get eight months.
0:07:15 Okay.
0:07:16 Hey, Google.
0:07:17 Hey, Sales Force.
0:07:18 Hey, Aiken Gump or whatever.
0:07:23 I’m in, and I got an eight-month bonus, a signing bonus to come to you.
0:07:29 So I find it’s a self-defeating process buyouts, and that is, I believe in performance reviews,
0:07:33 I would have put more pressure on them to say, to have a thoughtful way to say, “Okay,
0:07:37 let’s do assessments,” because there’s probably some departments that should be staffed up.
0:07:39 The IRS should probably hire more people.
0:07:43 For every dollar you put into the IRS, you get 12 back, and there’s other departments
0:07:48 that should probably lose more than, you know, five or 10%.
0:07:53 I find this is just lazy, and you end up losing kind of your best.
0:07:56 Is there ever a situation where a buyout makes sense?
0:08:03 I guess your argument here is that it’s sort of the quickest way to cut down costs, but
0:08:05 it’s not the most effective.
0:08:11 I think the other side to this would be, well, do we really want to build an entire apparatus
0:08:15 and do this entire review that’s going to cost a lot of money, and we’re going to figure
0:08:19 out all of these ways to understand which of our employees are delivering the most amount
0:08:21 of value versus the others?
0:08:27 It sounds like a lot of bureaucracy versus this very quick and easy way of just shaving
0:08:31 down costs and also just shaving down your employee base.
0:08:33 Is there ever a situation where it does make sense?
0:08:38 When I was on the board of the New York Times, they did a lot of “buyouts” of different
0:08:39 newsrooms.
0:08:43 They owned a bunch of newspapers, and local and regional newspapers were just getting
0:08:44 the shit kicked out of them.
0:08:51 They just didn’t have a place in the new economy, and so they would do buyouts.
0:08:55 The way they would do it was they would go to what I call the kind of critical employees
0:08:57 and say, “FYI, we’re letting you in on this.
0:09:01 We’re going to do a buyout, but we have plans for you and we want you to stay.”
0:09:06 I think in any organization, it shouldn’t be that hard to identify kind of critical
0:09:10 leadership or people who are doing, who are exceptional.
0:09:15 I think there’s this hallmark version of an organization where everyone’s great and
0:09:19 if anyone who’s not great, it’s about the culture and we just got to find them in the
0:09:20 right role.
0:09:21 I’ve identified that.
0:09:26 I’ve said for a while and this is not, again, aspirational, you never say this in all hands.
0:09:30 I’ve kind of jokingly, but have seriously said, 10% of the employees add 120% of the
0:09:33 value and the other 90% are negative 20.
0:09:39 You need to identify that 10%, especially as you scale an organization, and make sure
0:09:41 that they’re nailed to the ground.
0:09:46 This is your equity stake, I’m overpaying you, you have no reason to ever leave, you’re
0:09:49 going to do really well here.
0:09:54 It’s one thing to cut costs, but what you want to do is you want to improve the tensile
0:09:56 strength and the effectiveness.
0:10:02 It’s almost like you could, I would argue, if you had a growth mindset, you’d say, “I’m
0:10:08 going to give the IRS more money, but I need them to increase tax revenues by X dollars.
0:10:14 I need the Department of Veteran Affairs to increase its customer service or its reviews,
0:10:20 its satisfaction reviews among veterans by 5% a year for the next four years, and here’s
0:10:26 a bonus poll, and we’ll keep hiring static, but we need you to be more productive.
0:10:27 We need you to be better at what you do.”
0:10:33 I think that says Elon Musk written all over it that rather than offering a carrot as well,
0:10:39 they’re going at it with sort of a blunt instrument stick, so I don’t think this is the right
0:10:40 way to go about it.
0:10:41 Yeah.
0:10:43 It’s one thing to offer an employee buyout.
0:10:48 That’s another thing to insult all of your employees, call them lazy, and offer them
0:10:51 or DEI hires, and then offer them a buyout.
0:10:56 Those are two very different things, and just some statistics to look at here.
0:11:05 I think when we think about this bloated government trope, we’re sort of thinking of like a Gen Z
0:11:13 DEI hire who’s working at the DOJ or the Department of Education.
0:11:18 But when we think about just the actual demographic makeup of the federal employee base, actually
0:11:25 half of them belong to one of these three agencies, the Department of Defense, Department
0:11:28 of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Homeland Security.
0:11:33 So that’s not really the people that you would think Trump is targeting with all of his rhetoric.
0:11:40 In addition, the average federal employee is 47 years old, a fifth of federal workers
0:11:42 are already eligible for retirement.
0:11:45 Only 7% are under the age of 30.
0:11:50 So I just think the narrative that we’re telling ourselves about the government and who works
0:11:55 for the government, particularly driven with this DEI or anti-DEI obsession, doesn’t really
0:11:59 tell the true story of who actually works for the government.
0:12:06 The most likely candidate to get cut is a 50-year-old middle-aged white person who works
0:12:07 the Department of Defense.
0:12:08 That’s the most likely candidate.
0:12:13 So I just think it’s worth keeping in mind, let’s look at the numbers and then we can
0:12:15 compare it to the narrative we’re being told.
0:12:19 Let’s move on to Starbucks and their earnings.
0:12:24 I think the biggest change here, the most important thing coming out of these earnings
0:12:29 was this reversal of Starbucks’s open door policy.
0:12:34 And basically the open door policy said, “Anyone can come in and anyone can use our amenities
0:12:37 and come in, hang out, it’s free for all.”
0:12:43 And this gets back to something that I said on this podcast a while ago, which is Starbucks
0:12:46 used to be the premium coffee chain in America.
0:12:53 You think about the premium brands today, you think Lacolome or Blue Bottle or in New
0:12:59 York we have Irving Farm, these sort of nice cool coffee chains where you hang out.
0:13:01 That’s what Starbucks used to be.
0:13:06 Over time, it has devolved into what looks like a fast food chain and I think a lot of
0:13:13 that is quite frankly, the fact that it has become almost like a halfway house for homeless
0:13:14 people.
0:13:18 I mean, practically every Starbucks you enter, you’re either seeing homeless people around
0:13:22 the side or homeless people sometimes inside of the stores.
0:13:27 And this is not a very comfortable thing to talk about, but I find it so interesting because
0:13:30 this new policy is directly addressing that.
0:13:34 They now say that you can only use the bathroom if you’re buying an item.
0:13:37 You can only use the Wi-Fi if you’re buying an item.
0:13:42 They’re going to train the baristas on how to handle loiterers, which is going to be
0:13:44 very uncomfortable.
0:13:49 But I think it’s actually quite important and the most interesting development I saw
0:13:55 was a statement made by this guy, Donald Whitehead, who is the executive director of the National
0:13:56 Coalition for the Homeless.
0:14:02 And he said he was, quote, “very concerned about this new Starbucks policy.”
0:14:08 He said, flat out, Starbucks functions as an important buffer for homeless people.
0:14:10 So this is going to be really controversial.
0:14:13 I think it’s going to get kind of ugly.
0:14:18 This is not a comfortable topic to be talking about, but it does get to the heart of Starbucks’s
0:14:19 issue.
0:14:26 You cannot have a premium specialty coffee brand that is also highly associated with
0:14:28 the homelessness crisis in America.
0:14:31 Well my first question now is, why do you hate the homeless?
0:14:32 I’m kidding.
0:14:33 I’m kidding.
0:14:34 I’m kidding.
0:14:35 I think you’re exactly right.
0:14:40 I don’t think Starbucks has an obligation to make money, treat its employees well, be
0:14:46 good to its community, and then pay their fair share of taxes such that we can have a more
0:14:49 systemic approach to homelessness.
0:14:53 And I wonder if that same person is worried about the Red Lobster or Olive Garden and what
0:14:57 they’re– the fact they’re not letting homeless people hang out.
0:15:04 I saw the earnings, and I thought, OK, Brian Nicole is the CEO, and this guy is pretty
0:15:09 much Jesus Christ in my book because he spent the last six years at Chipotle.
0:15:11 So one, he owes me a lot of money.
0:15:15 And I have eaten at Chipotle.
0:15:18 When I’m in New York, I’m going to eat there basically lunch.
0:15:23 Mary Jean, my chief of staff, knows– she knows what I like.
0:15:26 And it starts with cha, and it ends with poli.
0:15:27 I love it there.
0:15:29 I think he did an amazing job.
0:15:33 The stock was up 9x when he was there.
0:15:40 So I think that the market just wants to interpret everything this guy does and love it.
0:15:44 Because when I looked at the actual numbers, they were fine, but I think the market is
0:15:48 looking for reasons to take the stock up under this guy’s leadership.
0:15:52 And in the last week, it’s up 11%.
0:15:57 So the company’s increased its market cap by $13 billion, and people have been saying
0:15:59 he’s already made $50 million or $80 million.
0:16:00 That’s cheap.
0:16:05 They got a great deal on this guy because the market wants to love him, and the market
0:16:09 wants to say, oh, Jesus Christ is here, and he’s going to figure this out.
0:16:13 The thing that stuck out to me, you did your homework here, and your observation is more
0:16:17 insightful and has a more interesting overlay around public policy.
0:16:22 The thing I loved about it is, it is impossible over time, or very difficult to maintain the
0:16:27 discipline to not add more menu items.
0:16:32 Because you launch one, everyone goes into group thing, people like it, there’s some
0:16:37 evidence, and we all start saying, oh, it makes sense to have charged lemonade, or to
0:16:41 have banana bread, or to have sandwiches, or to have you just start, and before you
0:16:42 know it.
0:16:47 But Steve Jobs said to the CEO of Nike when he was on the board there, he said, get rid
0:16:48 of all the shit.
0:16:53 I think at some point, Nike was selling air fresheners in their stores, and he said,
0:16:54 get rid of all the shit.
0:16:58 The hardest part about specialty retail, and typically, at the end of the day, this is
0:17:03 specialty retail, is not what you have, but what you don’t have, and that is you have
0:17:10 a very curated, tight selection of things that send a very strong signal about the voice.
0:17:16 My understanding is, they are cutting their beverage and food options by 30%.
0:17:20 That means every three items, one of them is going away.
0:17:23 I think that’s a ball or move, and this is what’s going to happen.
0:17:26 In the short run, that will probably take a hit to revenues.
0:17:31 It’s complicated, new signage costs, new training, but over the long term, or the medium or
0:17:36 long term, I would argue, it sends a stronger signal about what we do and what we don’t
0:17:37 do.
0:17:41 And the bottom line is, at the end of the day, Starbucks problems are pretty basic.
0:17:44 They were charging too much and delivering too little.
0:17:49 And then, I go into La Colombe, and I’m like, “Hello, I’m rich Corinthian leather.
0:17:58 I feel like I’m a total Euro trash, which I like, and it’s simple, great coffee, and
0:18:03 I like the crowd in there, and it just feels a little less … There aren’t as many napkins
0:18:05 and shit on the ground, right?”
0:18:07 Yeah, absolutely.
0:18:13 The market’s basically reacting to him addressing the elephant in the room, which is that Starbucks
0:18:15 is no longer a nice place to hang out.
0:18:18 And I think that’s basically the entire game plan.
0:18:22 It’s like, “We’re going to make Starbucks a nice place to hang out again.
0:18:24 We’re going to do free refills for our customers.
0:18:29 We’re going to make sure that we don’t have homeless people hanging around.
0:18:33 We’re going to make it just an enjoyable environment to be in.”
0:18:38 And that suddenly solved all of Starbucks’ problems, at least from a stock perspective.
0:18:43 But your point about, “Here’s the new Jesus Christ,” I just want to point out, they have
0:18:47 awarded him $96 million in compensation.
0:18:49 He’s been on the job for four months.
0:18:53 So the market thinks he’s Jesus, and so does management.
0:18:59 $90 million in stock awards, a $5 million signing bonus, plus buyouts from his former
0:19:00 company, Chipotle.
0:19:05 So he has some serious expectations going into this that we hope he’ll meet.
0:19:10 So far, he’s been worth it, and I don’t … I have no problems without a control CEO compensation.
0:19:14 I just think that should be taxed at 70% once you get above kind of $10 million, but that’s
0:19:15 a …
0:19:16 Another podcast.
0:19:17 I should hold on a second.
0:19:20 I had just a fucking fascinating insight, and it slipped.
0:19:21 It slipped by.
0:19:22 Hold on.
0:19:23 It’s going to be so worth it.
0:19:24 Oh my God.
0:19:25 Hold on.
0:19:28 It’s going to be amazing.
0:19:35 Oh, essentially what they’re doing is they’re taking money, the capital they were spending
0:19:38 on non-customers, and pouring it back into customers.
0:19:41 I thought it wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.
0:19:45 We need a mic drop.
0:19:46 Blinding insight.
0:19:47 It really rocked my world.
0:19:49 Should we move on to T-Mobile?
0:19:51 Yeah, let’s move on to T-Mobile.
0:19:53 We’ll just go over the quarter really quickly.
0:19:55 They beat on earnings, beat on sales.
0:19:58 Sales grew 7% to $22 billion.
0:20:05 Most important number though was their guidance for new customers in 2025, so T-Mobile expects
0:20:11 to acquire 6 million new customers this year, and that is their largest projection for net
0:20:15 new customers ever, which I think is kind of remarkable.
0:20:22 I mean, T-Mobile is sort of an old, slow conglomerate, and then 2025 is for whatever reason going
0:20:27 to be this breakout year for them in terms of net new customers.
0:20:29 Why do we think that’s going to happen?
0:20:32 I think the answer has to be Starlink.
0:20:38 I mean, T-Mobile suddenly has this incredible competitive advantage this year, and that
0:20:42 they will be the only mobile network carrier that offers Starlink’s new direct-to-sell
0:20:43 service.
0:20:47 Now, I don’t know that much about the product.
0:20:54 I’ve never tried it, but supposedly Starlink is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
0:20:56 You’ve said it, Scott.
0:20:57 I’ve heard other people who’ve used it.
0:20:58 They’ve said it.
0:21:01 Supposedly, with Starlink, you will never not have coverage.
0:21:03 You could be in the middle of the desert.
0:21:07 You could be flying on a plane, and you will always be connected.
0:21:13 So I look at this, and I’m really excited, and then I see that new customer guidance
0:21:16 number, and I’m like, “Okay, maybe this makes sense.”
0:21:18 Starlink is amazing.
0:21:21 I heard United is doing a deal with Starlink.
0:21:23 I would fly one airline over the other for Starlink.
0:21:26 It’s incredible.
0:21:27 I had one of those moments.
0:21:31 You have one of those technology moments, the first time you bought something on your
0:21:34 phone, or the first time you used Google Maps, and you’re like, “Jesus Christ, this
0:21:35 is incredible.”
0:21:44 Yeah, the first time I saw porn, wow, it had nothing will ever be the same.
0:21:47 Nothing will ever be the same.
0:21:50 By the way, no one can make sweets we love to me like me.
0:21:53 All right, where were we?
0:21:54 Where were we?
0:21:55 Oh yeah, T-Mobile.
0:21:58 AT&T differentiation for telcos.
0:22:05 So I can’t imagine the pounds of flesh that T-Mobile was able to — that must have been
0:22:06 so fun.
0:22:11 Whoever was the Starlink representative negotiating these deals, they sat down with Verizon, AT&T,
0:22:15 and T-Mobile and said, “Okay, let’s be honest, this is going to be ugly.
0:22:16 Who wants it?”
0:22:21 And we’re going to give one of you a two or three-year exclusive, which is going to
0:22:26 give you tangible differentiation, which is nearly impossible in your category, which
0:22:30 will add billions if not tens of billions of dollars in shareholder value, and we want
0:22:31 it all, bitches.
0:22:36 So them making these projections is saying to the market, “We think this is going to
0:22:38 be a tangible point of differentiation.
0:22:43 What will be interesting is when in their earnings or if they have to disclose the terms
0:22:44 of this deal.”
0:22:45 Exactly.
0:22:46 Yeah, T-Mobile’s the winner here.
0:22:48 The biggest winner, I bet, is Starlink because…
0:22:56 They’re projected to hit $12 billion in revenue this year, which is a 50% year-over-year increase.
0:22:58 You’ve got to think that number is just going to keep exploding.
0:23:01 I mean, they’ve barely even started yet.
0:23:05 This is hardly in the hands of consumers, and they’re still printing money.
0:23:08 I mean, most of it is just like military demand at this point.
0:23:14 One loser, I will say, from this whole thing is going to be Ryan Reynolds and Snoop Dogg
0:23:18 because, from my understanding, the only point of differentiation in the mobile carrier
0:23:22 service industry is which celebrities you can hire to be in your Super Bowl ads.
0:23:28 And suddenly T-Mobile has Starlink versus having Snoop Dogg, like dancing on camera.
0:23:33 We’ll be right back after the break for a look at earnings from Microsoft, Meta, and
0:23:34 Tesla.
0:23:37 If you’re enjoying the show so far and you haven’t subscribed, be sure to give Proficy
0:23:48 Market to follow wherever you get your podcasts.
0:23:50 Support for the show comes from the Funrise Innovation Fund.
0:23:54 The investing world seems to be bending towards democratization, but venture capital always
0:23:57 felt like it may be one of the last ivory towers to fall.
0:24:01 It requires a lot of capital, the right relationships, et cetera, et cetera.
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0:25:02 Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla kicked off big tech earnings last week, with investors watching
0:25:07 how they addressed deep-seeks AI advancements and the impact of Trump’s new policies.
0:25:13 We will start with Meta, which posted record fourth-quarter revenue, also issued weaker than
0:25:16 expected forecast for the current quarter.
0:25:22 Mark Zuckerberg framed deep-seeks rise as validation of Meta’s open-source strategy.
0:25:27 He also said that 2025 will reshape the company’s relationship with the government.
0:25:31 Shares were up more than 2% in after-hours trading.
0:25:36 Just a few little statistics that stood out to me.
0:25:38 Sales up 21% to $47 billion.
0:25:43 I’m always just shocked at how big the numbers are for Meta’s revenue.
0:25:48 Operating margins expanded 700-bits to 48%.
0:25:52 When you look at the family of apps, which is their main business, the operating margins
0:25:54 are even stronger.
0:25:56 It’s 60%.
0:25:59 This was another really strong quarter.
0:26:03 I’m just so bullish on Meta I have been for a while.
0:26:06 Scott, your reactions to Meta’s earnings?
0:26:09 Addiction is a great business.
0:26:10 They’re executing well against it.
0:26:16 They’ve taken technology, addiction, network effects, monopoly– I mean, two-thirds of
0:26:21 social media globally is on Meta, really well-run company.
0:26:22 I’m addicted to Instagram.
0:26:23 I love it.
0:26:24 I think it’s fantastic.
0:26:28 I can’t stand Mark Zuckerberg and I’m not getting off of Instagram.
0:26:30 They continue to perform really well.
0:26:36 I wonder if their hardware appears to be on a roll right now.
0:26:42 They’re sold out across the U.T.s, the number one product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores, which
0:26:45 obviously isn’t a big revenue item, but they might finally have their own hardware point
0:26:50 of distribution so they don’t have to kiss Sunder Pichai or Tim Cook’s ass.
0:26:52 Have you tried those, by the way, those new Ray-Ban Meta glasses?
0:26:54 I tried them about a year and a half ago.
0:26:58 My son, I was skinning with my son and he kept saying, “Meta, take a photo.”
0:26:59 I’m like, “What are you doing?”
0:27:01 He’s like, “I got these Ray-Ban glasses.”
0:27:04 They’re actually– I mean, this was a year and a half ago and I thought they were pretty
0:27:05 good.
0:27:09 Head sets make no sense, but smart glasses, I think there’s a future for.
0:27:10 Absolutely.
0:27:15 And I think that the Zuck is probably going to get some spillover effect from the massive
0:27:21 investment he’s made in these headsets, but they have capital.
0:27:29 They’ve increased their CAPEX 60% to 65 billion around technical talent and AI infrastructure.
0:27:33 Meta AI is used by more people than any other AI assistant with over 700 million monthly
0:27:34 active users.
0:27:36 They’ve integrated into Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.
0:27:41 Yeah, I think that’s kind of a bullshit statistic because, I mean, I don’t know how many people
0:27:46 are actually actively using the Meta AI tool on those platforms.
0:27:50 I think they’re probably saying that when you search something into the search bar on
0:27:52 Instagram, Meta AI is being used.
0:27:53 I actually don’t.
0:27:54 I agree with that.
0:28:01 I don’t mind it when you disagree with me despite the fact you hate the homeless.
0:28:03 But what they have is distribution and control of consumer.
0:28:07 They do own the rails in a way the chat GPT doesn’t, right?
0:28:08 Totally.
0:28:13 And their ability, I mean, we’re talking about those moments, those technology moments.
0:28:21 I’ve had some chilling moments where I’m going to see a Paris Saint-Germain game and I have
0:28:25 a real pop-up and it’s on hotels in Paris.
0:28:30 I’m like, how the fuck did they, I mean, it’s incredible the targeting they could use.
0:28:35 And it goes to the notion that Meta more than I think almost any organization, maybe with
0:28:41 the exception of Uber, has shown that if you can provide utility, you can violate everyone’s
0:28:42 privacy.
0:28:49 Then for all the bullshit and all the whining in Brussels and DC, young people have said,
0:28:55 violate my privacy just as long as there’s a coupon or I can see where my QX60 is, if
0:29:00 it’s coming around the block, arguably Mark Zuckerberg right now is the most talented,
0:29:04 I mean, he’s one of the three or four most talented business people in the world.
0:29:08 If you just look at it from a shareholder perspective, they made huge investments.
0:29:10 They’re running away with it.
0:29:16 And they’re monetizing the fact that I said that the core Facebook platform and now Instagram
0:29:19 is the most successful thing in history.
0:29:21 Communism doesn’t have this many people.
0:29:26 Capitalism doesn’t have this many people, democracy, you know, there’s no product.
0:29:31 The Kardashians, nothing is as successful as Instagram right now.
0:29:34 It’s a product coupled with the Facebook core platform and then WhatsApp.
0:29:38 These are the most successful things in history as far as I can tell.
0:29:44 Someone might say, well, no, actually it’s Google search, but and he has been outstanding.
0:29:46 They have been outstanding at monetizing it.
0:29:52 Anyways, it couldn’t happen to a more mendacious fuck group of people, but yeah, they’re doing
0:29:53 outstanding.
0:30:01 Let me just point out when you recommended Meta or you chose Meta as your stock pick
0:30:07 at the end of 2022, the stock was at $90 per share.
0:30:10 It’s up to $690.
0:30:14 So if you would have followed Scott Galloway’s advice, I never mind some of his other advice,
0:30:19 but just this one stock pick, you’d be up seven X, almost eight X.
0:30:21 It’s just insane.
0:30:22 This comeback they’ve searched.
0:30:27 Well, what was my stock pick at 2020 but what stock, I mean, now I’m really patting myself
0:30:28 in the back.
0:30:30 I’m going to elevate your praise on me.
0:30:33 What stock did I say was going to be the biggest IPO of 2024, Ed?
0:30:34 Reddit.
0:30:35 Yeah.
0:30:42 By the way, when public five or six months ago, it’s up six fold since its IPO.
0:30:43 Incredible.
0:30:44 I am so angry.
0:30:45 I invested.
0:30:46 I’m so angry.
0:30:47 I didn’t back up the truck.
0:30:51 Fourth or fifth most traffic site in America and it went public at a $5 billion market cap
0:30:56 in every other company on that list trades at somewhere between $800 billion and $3 trillion.
0:30:57 Anyways.
0:30:58 To the applause.
0:30:59 Thank you.
0:31:00 Thank you.
0:31:01 Thank you.
0:31:02 I’d like to thank my agent.
0:31:03 Exactly.
0:31:06 Just a few more things to go over here on these meta earnings, and we should probably talk
0:31:10 about threads, which has grown to more than 320 million monthly active users.
0:31:15 I find that astounding when you just consider the number of companies that have tried to
0:31:19 create their own Twitter alternatives and the meta does it.
0:31:23 And then within about a year, he’s at 320 million MAUs.
0:31:27 Just to put that in context, last year, we don’t know the official number, but last year
0:31:33 Elon said that X had 550 million monthly active users.
0:31:37 So meta says they’re adding a million MAUs per day.
0:31:44 So assuming that growth continues, threads could very well be bigger than X from a user
0:31:46 perspective by the end of the year.
0:31:50 So I just think we should just give credit to threads as well.
0:31:53 Their AI play is paying off incredibly well.
0:31:56 You mentioned that you’re getting those great PSG ads.
0:32:01 They’re saying the ad quality has dramatically increased because of this new AI powered ad
0:32:03 ranking system.
0:32:08 In addition, they are putting out these gen AI tools that they offered to their advertisers.
0:32:13 Six months ago, there were roughly one million advertisers that were using Meta’s gen AI
0:32:14 tools.
0:32:16 Today, that number is four million.
0:32:22 When we just think about the use cases of AI, examples where AI is providing real demonstrable
0:32:28 value in the marketplace, Meta is capturing all of that.
0:32:29 They’re building value in AI.
0:32:33 They’re building the data centers, they’re building models, but they’re also receiving
0:32:38 the value of the AI in the form of their really high quality ad targeting.
0:32:46 So I just think Meta is absolutely crushing it aside from Zuckerberg’s adventures on Joe
0:32:49 Rogan, where he’s ruining his reputation in my opinion.
0:32:52 I think Meta is just doing an incredible job.
0:32:55 I will move on to Microsoft unless you have anything else you want to add.
0:33:00 So Microsoft Cloud Business saw slow growth last quarter due to limited data center capacity
0:33:04 during the owner’s call, Satya Nadella said deep seeks innovations will benefit Microsoft
0:33:06 in the long run.
0:33:10 The beating expectations were a 12% revenue increase.
0:33:16 That growth was the slowest since 2023 and shares fell nearly 5% after hours.
0:33:21 I was a little bit surprised to see the market’s reaction to this.
0:33:24 I mean, they did beat on revenue.
0:33:30 They beat on guidance, they beat on earnings, but the stock fell 5%.
0:33:37 I think what investors are mostly concerned about here is the cloud revenue, which missed
0:33:41 by about 1%, that’s Microsoft’s Azure revenue.
0:33:45 Scott, do you have any initial reactions to Microsoft’s earnings?
0:33:46 I don’t know.
0:33:50 I think the market is, this is a company that’s now, I think it’s the second or third most
0:33:57 valuable company in the world, but the expectations, what you said a while ago that if you don’t
0:34:01 blow away expectations, everyone’s disappointed.
0:34:07 Azure, it grew 31%, not 33%, that’s still incredible.
0:34:12 It’s also in this kind of arms race.
0:34:15 It’s CapEx totaled $23 billion for the quarter.
0:34:21 That’s almost double what it did last year, and Nadella has said he’s signaling a measured
0:34:22 approach to capital allocation.
0:34:24 You don’t want to buy too much of anything at one time.
0:34:28 You want to have the right ratio of modernization and demand.
0:34:30 Very different tone from before.
0:34:31 Yeah.
0:34:35 So, shockingly, I’ve been looking at this, I’ve looked at the stock chart, and over the
0:34:41 last year, it’s basically flat, which I find kind of interesting, and over the last five
0:34:47 years, it’s up three and a half fold, but year to date, it’s flat, so it hasn’t registered
0:34:48 the same.
0:34:50 Is that fair?
0:34:55 It’s gone flat for kind of the last year, but I don’t know if I have a lot of insight
0:34:56 here.
0:34:57 Great company.
0:34:58 Good management.
0:34:59 I think–
0:35:00 Based in Seattle.
0:35:09 I think one of the big questions we were definitely asking following the deep-seek saga, and this
0:35:14 is a conversation we were having with Robert Armstrong, was will all of these big tech
0:35:21 companies keep investing as much money into AI and into AI infrastructure?
0:35:26 And if we just look at these earnings from Meta and Microsoft, the answer appears to
0:35:27 be yes.
0:35:32 I mean, CAPEX or their CAPEX guidance remains on course.
0:35:37 Satya Nadella said that thing about how we’re going to be measured about it, but the investment
0:35:44 plan is still the same, and Meta has said it’s going to keep its plan to spend $65 billion
0:35:45 this year.
0:35:48 That’s the same number we’ve seen before.
0:35:55 And so I think this is a really important thing for us to unpack, because this big tech
0:36:01 AI CAPEX thing is basically what’s driving the entire market value of all the big AI
0:36:02 stocks.
0:36:07 I mean, we’ve said this before, but roughly 40% of Nvidia’s revenue comes from big tech.
0:36:13 So even a slight change in these CAPEX plans could completely transform Nvidia’s business.
0:36:19 So it’s something that investors and we as analysts really need to dig into.
0:36:26 The question I would have for you, they’ve said the plan’s going to stay the same, $65
0:36:29 billion last year was the plan, same thing this year.
0:36:36 Is there a possibility though that deep seek happened too recently for companies like Meta
0:36:40 and Microsoft to report any changes in the spending plan?
0:36:45 So in other words, could it be that this earnings report, they’re reporting something, a plan
0:36:54 that they baked weeks ago, maybe months ago, and if deep seek does change their approach,
0:36:56 we’re not going to see it in this week’s earnings.
0:36:58 We’re going to see it in the next earnings report.
0:37:04 Is there a possibility essentially that the pullback in spending will come next quarter?
0:37:12 So there’s no way they were going to in any way acknowledge deep seek as a threat.
0:37:16 Because that would have just taken, that was like that company that said open AI or I think
0:37:19 it was Czech is having an impact on our stock.
0:37:25 Instead, Mark Zuckerberg, for example, said this is validation of our open source strategy.
0:37:32 And Saaya said it was fine to just almost swatted away like a nat, he just wasn’t worried
0:37:34 about it.
0:37:39 They will remain steadfast in their commitment to spending until they’re not.
0:37:46 And that is, it’s like when you’re, when you’re contacted by the press regarding a CEO and
0:37:50 a startling company, you’re 100% behind them until you put out the press release saying
0:37:52 we just fired him or her.
0:37:58 And they’re going to say that, you know, already open AI is on a full court press to try and
0:38:02 say, move along, no big deal.
0:38:07 They used chat GPT and this is bullshit and it’s not a threat to us there.
0:38:11 They’re already trying to create, they’re like a defense attorney at a murder trial trying
0:38:15 to create muck and confusion about these results that supposedly also worry.
0:38:19 I was thinking Mark Andreessen immediately came out and said, this is amazing.
0:38:23 Is it because Mark Andreessen hates or is he doesn’t like this?
0:38:27 He doesn’t like open AI and this shit is just so thick.
0:38:32 Right. Well, I think he has every incentive to want disruption and to back insurgents.
0:38:39 I, having said that, I’m pretty sure Andreessen has a somewhat decent stake in open AI and
0:38:41 I think it’s huge.
0:38:46 You know, Andreessen’s funding all of them, you know, they’re funding all of the, all
0:38:47 of the startups.
0:38:50 So they just want, they just want disruption.
0:38:53 So there’s a lesson here and that is, all right, if you’re a consultant or a thought
0:39:00 leader or a professor, you make your business and communications, especially around intellectual
0:39:02 property or thought leadership.
0:39:04 This is how you go about it.
0:39:07 You ingest a tremendous amount of information.
0:39:09 It is impossible to digest all of it.
0:39:13 What you do is you ingest a lot of information such that you find something that you think
0:39:19 is real insight and then you try and wrestle with it, really understand it, look at it
0:39:24 through different prisms and be able to talk about it and incorporate it into your wrap.
0:39:28 As a consultant, all I was basically doing was finding other people’s great ideas, finding
0:39:32 what I thought were the best and most insightful ideas and then repackaging them as my own
0:39:34 or my firm’s own.
0:39:35 And that’s not entirely true.
0:39:37 We would reference and footnote who it was.
0:39:42 I had one of those moments with our guest, Robert Armstrong.
0:39:47 And that is, it just dawned on me that if you look at the airline industry, what he said,
0:39:53 or dawned on him, it’s added unbelievable value to the economy and to our lives.
0:39:54 No one’s made any money.
0:39:58 The net income, the net gross income over the last 50 years for airlines and commercial
0:40:02 jet manufacturers has probably been negative because there’s been so much competition that
0:40:07 all of the spoils and capture have been recognized by consumers.
0:40:08 I was thinking about it.
0:40:10 I was on the board of Gateway Computer.
0:40:17 Think about how much PCs changed the world and we were the second largest PC manufacturer
0:40:18 in the world.
0:40:22 Shouldn’t have we have been worth $100 or $200 billion, but we weren’t.
0:40:26 It was a shitty business because anybody, including two kids in their dorm at the University
0:40:31 of Texas in Austin, could pull together a computer and Ted started assembling computers
0:40:36 in his barn in South Dakota, which meant that China could assemble them for no money down.
0:40:42 And the company that made some money was the Brain Intel, but basically PCs as revolutionary
0:40:48 as they were, again, all the capture, all the surplus value was captured by consumers.
0:40:54 And Robert’s notion that this might in fact be, AI might in fact be one of those industries
0:40:57 where everybody becomes more productive.
0:40:58 Everyone’s life gets better.
0:41:03 It’s remarkable, but you don’t have this concentration of capture across a small number of companies.
0:41:05 That has just blown me away.
0:41:13 I think that that is such an interesting insight that this might be the airline of the PC business
0:41:19 where it changes everything or it changes a lot, but it’s not going to, the spoils aren’t
0:41:21 going to be captured by a small number of companies.
0:41:27 It won’t be an easy place to invest or make money because why wouldn’t you have invested
0:41:29 everything in Pan Am back in the 70s?
0:41:33 Oh my God, you can get on a 747 and get to London and this is amazing.
0:41:34 This is incredible.
0:41:35 And guess what?
0:41:43 All those companies, Pan Am, TWA, PSA, Air California, Eastern Airlines, I mean, every
0:41:49 airline I flew as a young man, Braniff, Laker Airlines, I mean, the list goes on and on
0:41:50 and on.
0:41:52 They’ve all gone away.
0:41:53 We’ll be right back.
0:41:57 If you’re enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on ProfG Markets.
0:42:10 Support for the show comes from the Fundrise Innovation Fund.
0:42:12 Think of the five biggest names in AI today.
0:42:15 How many of these companies do you own shares of?
0:42:17 Probably not many, maybe one, maybe two.
0:42:18 Why is that?
0:42:21 Because the open AIs and Anthropics of the world are still private.
0:42:25 That means unless you’re an employee or a VC, you’re out of luck.
0:42:28 So it isn’t hard to see why venture capital has been one of the most prized asset classes
0:42:29 in the world.
0:42:33 But unless you’re worth eight or nine figures, you likely don’t have access to these funds.
0:42:35 The Fundrise Innovation Fund is different.
0:42:37 It’s already raised more than $150 million.
0:42:42 It holds a portfolio of pre-IPO tech companies that are valued at tens or even hundreds of
0:42:43 billions of dollars.
0:42:46 And most importantly, it’s open to investors of all sizes.
0:42:50 Visit fundrise.com/propg to check out the Innovation Fund’s portfolio and start investing
0:42:51 today.
0:43:03 Relevant disclaimers can be found at the end of the show and at fundrise.com/innovation.
0:43:05 We’re back with ProfG Markets.
0:43:08 Let’s move on to Tesla.
0:43:12 Tesla missed profit expectations, but expects sales to grow after a tough 2024.
0:43:16 Tesla’s CFO acknowledged that Trump’s proposed tariffs would, quote, “have an impact on
0:43:22 business and profitability, shares climbed more than 4% after hours, and they’re up more
0:43:26 than 80% since the last earnings report.”
0:43:31 I’ll run through the financials that jumped out to me.
0:43:32 Revenue up 2%.
0:43:34 It was a miss.
0:43:38 They also missed on auto revenue by 9%.
0:43:41 They did be on EBITDA, but they missed on earnings.
0:43:45 Overall, I look at this, this is an incredibly disappointing quarter.
0:43:48 However, the stock opens up the next morning up 4%.
0:43:52 I’m trying to think like, okay, well, what are people excited about?
0:43:59 I think we can at least attribute some of that excitement to the full self-driving outlook.
0:44:04 Elon said, quote, “Unsupervised full self-driving will launch in Texas in June.”
0:44:10 He also added, quote, this is my favorite quote, “This is not some far-off mythical
0:44:11 situation.
0:44:15 It’s literally five, six months away.”
0:44:17 I guess that’s enough to get the market excited.
0:44:19 Scott, your reactions?
0:44:23 I wonder when the market’s going to realize this is a giant jazz hands.
0:44:27 I think this guy is on his ninth life in terms of coming up with reasons why this company
0:44:31 should be valued like a software company when it’s not a mobile company.
0:44:36 Its share of the EV market fell from 55% to 49%.
0:44:38 Its competitors are gaining ground.
0:44:44 BYD overtook Tesla and global EV production, marking the end of their three-year reign
0:44:46 as the EV leader.
0:44:48 It’s basically flat to down.
0:44:52 If you look at that, I think it was about $2.25 billion in profits.
0:44:58 A quarter of those profits come from the sale of, I think, carbon credits to other automobile
0:45:03 companies, which are supposedly going to go away under the Trump administration.
0:45:07 You’re looking likely over the next 24 months to decline in profits, which were already
0:45:08 declining.
0:45:11 The margins are already compressing, and they’re bringing down prices already.
0:45:16 Still, even with all this, it’s an amazing company and deserves a premium to the rest
0:45:17 of the auto market.
0:45:20 The question is, does it deserve this premium?
0:45:27 The price to sales on Tesla right now, or the market cap to sales, is 14 versus Ford
0:45:36 at 0.29, General Motors at 0.35, Honda at 0.42, and Toyota, arguably the best-run automobile
0:45:43 company in the world, who’s growing and correctly doubled down on a hybrid’s Toyota trades
0:45:49 at, don’t know, wait for it, a price to sales ratio of one versus Tesla at 14.
0:45:54 Granted, they have some software, they have some interesting power products.
0:46:00 It continues to be, oh wait, it’s a meme stock, you’re investing a meal on Musk, okay, he’s
0:46:06 managed to keep it elevated, okay, we’re beneficiaries of the new kleptocracy.
0:46:10 We’ll figure out a way to get regulatory capture, because I spent a quarter of a billion dollars,
0:46:13 and some people would say I’m the reason that Trump is in office, all right, the market
0:46:17 says this is a kleptocracy, boom, we’ll bid your stocks up.
0:46:27 This thing is so crazily overvalued that I just, and I always have to disclose, I’ve
0:46:32 been saying this for a long time, and I’ve been wrong, but at some point, gravity has
0:46:33 to hit this thing.
0:46:35 It has to.
0:46:40 It’s so annoying, I mean, it goes on and on and on, but I’m still with you on it, I still
0:46:43 think it’s just so, so overvalued.
0:46:49 Can we also just talk about how the Tesla is actually just a bad car, in my opinion.
0:46:50 You don’t like Tesla?
0:46:56 Like, I think the Tesla is a bad, cheap, ugly car, and I used to think it was cool because
0:47:01 it was so novel, but you know, I get in a Tesla, like every other Uber now in New York
0:47:04 is a Tesla, and I’m always disappointed to get in the Tesla.
0:47:08 It feels cheap, it’s jerky, you start to get car sick.
0:47:13 I genuinely think it’s a bad car, and the worst is sometimes I’ll order an Uber Black
0:47:18 when I’m trying to feel sexy, and a Tesla shows up, and I’m like, this is a joke.
0:47:22 This is not a luxury vehicle by any stretch of the imagination.
0:47:28 This is like a bad, cheap, and cheap-feeling car, and I’m wondering if you share the same
0:47:29 views.
0:47:30 I know you used to have a Tesla.
0:47:31 I do think it’s a great car.
0:47:35 I think the Cybertruck is basically a midlife crisis and stainless steel.
0:47:37 I think that thing makes no fucking sense.
0:47:39 I think that’s just so stupid.
0:47:44 The thing that’s always shocked me is, somebody who thinks they understand brands, basically
0:47:49 Tesla is turning into a car for crypto brothers with better credit scores.
0:47:51 Crypto brothers and Uber drivers is my take.
0:47:56 And so he’s looking for more jazz hands, and also Waymo, I was in a Waymo in LA about
0:47:58 four months ago.
0:48:00 I think they have a big head start on them.
0:48:01 So I don’t–
0:48:02 Oh, yeah.
0:48:03 They’ve launched.
0:48:04 They’re giving rise.
0:48:07 I don’t know why everyone’s so excited about full self-driving like it’s this massive new
0:48:08 thing.
0:48:09 It’s here.
0:48:10 Waymo’s already done it.
0:48:11 Yeah, it’s here.
0:48:12 It was really, really impressive.
0:48:14 So at some point we’ll be right here.
0:48:17 At some point, this thing gets cut dramatically.
0:48:24 Let’s also talk about quickly the role Bitcoin played in this quarter for Tesla.
0:48:31 So net income hit $2.3 billion this quarter, up from just over $2 billion last quarter.
0:48:39 But $600 million of that net income was because of the rise in Tesla’s Bitcoin holdings.
0:48:45 So if you get rid of the Bitcoin, the net income would have been significantly lower
0:48:47 than last quarters.
0:48:50 What’s interesting is actually Tesla played by the rules here.
0:48:54 There’s this new accounting rule from the financial accounting standards boards, which
0:49:00 mandates that companies now mark their crypto assets to market each quarter.
0:49:05 And it used to be that you had to report the lowest value recorded during your ownership
0:49:07 of your digital assets.
0:49:12 But now you update them each quarter, and that is reflected in your net income.
0:49:15 I’d like to get your take on all of that.
0:49:22 My view just quickly, I hate this because it feels like once again, the actual earnings
0:49:27 of companies that is supposed to be showing us how is the fundamental business doing?
0:49:31 Suddenly it’s being corrupted again, and it’s now skewed by these wild swings in the
0:49:32 value of crypto.
0:49:37 So even if you have a shitty quarter, which is what they had, if Bitcoin goes up, you
0:49:39 can come out and say, actually, you had a pretty good quarter.
0:49:42 So what are your thoughts on this Bitcoin wrinkle?
0:49:48 Usually, special charges or special revenue recognition, usually the markets discounts
0:49:49 that.
0:49:51 In this case, it just makes no sense.
0:49:58 And this is not financial advice because you can stay, the markets can stay irrational
0:50:00 longer than you can stay liquid.
0:50:04 And I thought this thing was overvalued at 50 bucks a share, I know it’s at 400.
0:50:06 So we’ll see.
0:50:10 And before we get accused of the Elon derangement syndrome, I just want to point out, I genuinely
0:50:12 think I’m calling balls and strikes here.
0:50:15 I think Tesla is way overvalued.
0:50:20 I think SpaceX, particularly because of Starlink, is going to absolutely destroy.
0:50:25 If I could put my money in any startup right now, it would probably be SpaceX.
0:50:28 So I do not think this is us just railing against Elon.
0:50:32 I think we do call balls and strikes.
0:50:35 How Elon, how Elon.
0:50:41 When I walked into, I don’t know if it’s his kind of right-wing proclivities have impacted
0:50:45 the dealer network, but I went in to their retail store in Boca Raton and I said, “What
0:50:47 colors does the Model Y come in?”
0:50:49 And they said, “Viva lasso questions.”
0:50:50 That was great.
0:50:54 Let’s take a look at the reggae.
0:51:00 We’ll see earnings from Palantir, Google, Amazon, Disney and Uber.
0:51:02 The big earnings season continues.
0:51:04 Do you have any predictions for us, Scott?
0:51:11 It’s fascinated with Robert Armstrong’s notion of these industries that the capture here
0:51:17 may be captured by seven billion humans as opposed to a small number of companies.
0:51:24 And it got me thinking, if all of a sudden you can have 80% of chat GPT for 10 or 20 or
0:51:29 even 50% of the price, that was old Navy’s strategy.
0:51:34 My first consulting engagement out of business school in 1992 was they said, “What are the
0:51:36 demographic gaps out there?”
0:51:39 And we did this for the gap.
0:51:44 And we came back and said, “Single mothers, they’re a huge population and they want their
0:51:48 kids to feel good about themselves, but they can’t afford the gap.”
0:51:53 And so the basic premise of old Navy, we came up with a new brand, was 80% of the gap for
0:51:54 50% of the price.
0:51:58 And so we were part of the strategy to launch old Navy, and old Navy was the fastest zero
0:52:00 to a billion retailer in history.
0:52:07 And generally speaking, this 80% of the value for 50% of the price is an incredible strategy.
0:52:09 It’s the strategy of Southwest.
0:52:14 Southwest said we can be 80% of American Delta United for 50% of the price.
0:52:20 And I’m wondering if the old Navy of “AI” has come in.
0:52:25 And where I think it impacts, I was trying to look for winners here, is that I’m trying
0:52:32 to do a scan of what companies had put aside $100, $200 or $500 million, say a pharmaceutical
0:52:37 company said we need to expedite drug discovery in this great era of AI.
0:52:41 So we’re going to have to put aside two, three, $500 million to build our own thick layer
0:52:47 on top of chat GPT or pay them a shit ton of money, or Airbnb or Expedia, which are
0:52:51 probably making huge investments and working with open AI and guaranteeing them a ton of
0:52:55 money for enterprise-wide access to their LLM.
0:53:00 Did their costs of incorporating AI just reduce dramatically?
0:53:06 Are we going to see a bunch of companies that are doing really well say, oh, and I’ve got
0:53:10 good news, we’re growing, and I’ve got great news, and that is we’re going to get all of
0:53:15 the great taste of AI without the calories, specifically the cost.
0:53:20 And that reserve or our CAPEX planning of 100 or 500 million over the next three years
0:53:26 on AI, it’s been reduced by 90% and that’s all going to flow to the bottom line.
0:53:30 So my prediction is there’s going to be a new wave of, I don’t know, you wouldn’t even
0:53:37 call them remora fish that are just going to get kind of get free pickings, if you will,
0:53:44 because their CAPEX just, I wonder, overnight, if it just went down 50, 70, 80%, which is
0:53:48 going to juice their earnings over the next two or three years.
0:53:52 This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
0:53:56 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss, Mia Silverio is our research lead, Drew Burroughs
0:54:00 is our technical director, and Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
0:54:04 Thank you for listening to ProfG Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:54:09 Join us on Thursday for our conversation with the one and only Aswath Damodaran, only on
0:54:10 ProfG Markets.
0:54:20 [Music]
0:54:50 .
0:54:52 More for the show comes from the Fundrise Innovation Fund.
0:54:56 You’ve heard me talk about the Fundrise Innovation Fund before, so I’ll keep this short.
0:55:00 Venture capital was, and to a certain extent, is still an old boys club.
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0:55:07 available to everyone.
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0:00:42 Scott, why do you think young men are having less sex?
0:00:46 The most well-resourced, brightest people in the world
0:00:47 are trying to convince young men
0:00:50 they can have a reasonable facsimile of a life online.
0:00:53 You don’t need friends, go on Reddit or Discord.
0:00:56 You don’t need to go through the bullshit
0:00:57 of trying to find a job.
0:01:02 Just trade stocks and crypto on Robinhood and Coinbase.
0:01:05 And you don’t need to go through the aggravation,
0:01:08 the effort, the rejection, the humiliation sometimes.
0:01:10 The effort, learn how to be funny,
0:01:12 learn how to be smart, shower for God’s sakes,
0:01:16 work out, dress well, show up to things
0:01:19 of trying to get a romantic partner when you have a viewpoint.
0:01:22 So I think a lot of men are just opting out
0:01:23 of the dating scene.
0:01:25 In addition, there’s some societal factors.
0:01:27 Men are going more conservative.
0:01:28 Women are going more progressive,
0:01:30 which creates another reason
0:01:33 why they don’t want to date or don’t like each other.
0:01:35 I’ve said to you in my 20s and 30s,
0:01:37 for the life of me, can’t remember the political affiliation
0:01:38 of anyone I dated.
0:01:40 Now it’s just another reason why people don’t date.
0:01:43 I think online dating creates this portion of polygamy
0:01:46 where 80% of women want the same 10% of guys,
0:01:49 which kind of blocks out the bottom 90.
0:01:52 So I think there’s a lot of wins in the face
0:01:57 of a young man who is trying to find a relationship
0:02:01 that ultimately involves sex and you see it everywhere.
0:02:04 The number one out of five men you walk by
0:02:05 under the age of 30 on the street
0:02:07 hasn’t had sex in a year.
0:02:10 And people hear sex and their brain goes different places.
0:02:14 It’s a key step to forming the most important thing in life.
0:02:17 And that is a loving, secure relationship.
0:02:24 Welcome to First Time Founders.
0:02:25 I’m Ed Elson.
0:02:32 30 years ago, 152 million men worldwide
0:02:33 struggled with erectile dysfunction.
0:02:37 Today, that number has doubled
0:02:40 and it’s not just older men who are affected.
0:02:44 More than a quarter of men under the age of 40 experience ED.
0:02:48 With over a billion dollars spent each year on ED treatments,
0:02:51 many men rely on medication.
0:02:53 But after dealing with these issues firsthand,
0:02:55 my next guest was determined
0:02:58 to find a better long term solution.
0:02:59 And so together with his cousin,
0:03:02 he created an app filled with resources
0:03:05 from psychologists, neurologists and physiotherapists
0:03:09 designed to help men address their issues naturally.
0:03:10 Since launching in 2020,
0:03:14 the app has helped over 700,000 men
0:03:15 improve their sexual wellbeing
0:03:18 and has fostered a community that’s breaking the stigma
0:03:21 around discussing intimate health issues.
0:03:23 This is my conversation with Angus Barge,
0:03:26 co-founder and CEO of Mojo.
0:03:28 Angus, thank you very much for joining me.
0:03:30 Oh, thank you very much for having me.
0:03:32 So we’re going to talk about Mojo,
0:03:33 what the company is and what it does,
0:03:36 but I think the place to start
0:03:39 is how you came up with this idea
0:03:41 because I think it is really important.
0:03:45 So just quickly tell us the origin story of Mojo.
0:03:47 How did this all begin?
0:03:49 That is a question I often get
0:03:50 and people react differently
0:03:52 as I kind of stare them down the bar
0:03:54 and tell them what the business does.
0:03:58 Yeah, the business idea came from a long car journey
0:03:59 with my cousin actually.
0:04:03 I think I had one of those moments when in the car with him
0:04:05 that your mouth just starts moving,
0:04:07 your brain hasn’t really engaged with what it was saying
0:04:11 and kind of looking very far out the passenger window.
0:04:15 I basically told him that as like healthy 28 year old
0:04:16 who’d never had any issues,
0:04:19 suddenly I was struggling to get it up in bed
0:04:22 and I think kind of understandably
0:04:24 was withdrawing from dating.
0:04:26 I was single at the time, loved going out,
0:04:27 loved meeting people
0:04:29 and it felt kind of understandable
0:04:30 that I’d withdrawn from that,
0:04:35 but also noticing that I was having kind of withdrawals
0:04:36 from my social confidence as well,
0:04:40 like in big extrovert love going out, love seeing my mates
0:04:42 and found that I was almost hermiting there
0:04:43 and losing self-confidence.
0:04:47 So I think why I told him was basically for those six months
0:04:49 I’d been as close to like a mental health crisis
0:04:54 as I’d ever been for this seemingly small part of my life.
0:04:56 He paused long enough that I kind of wished the car
0:05:00 had like imploded and been swallowed up by the road.
0:05:01 And then he said, “You know what, screw it.”
0:05:04 Like I know exactly what you’re talking about.
0:05:06 He’d been struggling on and off throughout his 20s
0:05:08 with performance anxiety.
0:05:11 And I think in that moment we had a conversation
0:05:14 that not many people or not many men would have had
0:05:17 and it was like passed on the back, well done us.
0:05:20 We’ve had this kind of vulnerable conversation
0:05:22 and you start laughing about all the stupid stuff
0:05:23 you tell each other like,
0:05:24 or you tell yourself in your head,
0:05:26 like I’m never gonna get married.
0:05:28 No one’s ever gonna love me, all this kind of stuff.
0:05:30 And I think that would have been the end of it.
0:05:32 I don’t think we would have taken it any further.
0:05:35 Had that not been basically to the month
0:05:38 that we saw the kind of real power
0:05:40 of venture capital money in London.
0:05:42 I’m sure you guys had the same in New York,
0:05:45 but like every bus and every tube was covered
0:05:48 in this new message, which was sexual issues
0:05:51 aren’t just for old guys, they’re for young guys too.
0:05:52 And you should be the best partner you can be
0:05:54 and you should just take pills.
0:05:57 And it felt kind of instinctive to us
0:06:00 that we knew that medication wasn’t what we needed
0:06:02 and it wasn’t what was wrong with us.
0:06:04 It didn’t feel like it was physical.
0:06:06 So we kind of disregarded that and thought,
0:06:08 well, if that’s not the real solution,
0:06:11 if guys shouldn’t be taking medications like Vagra,
0:06:13 then what is the solution?
0:06:16 And we very quickly found out it’s a very small
0:06:19 and niche profession called sex therapy.
0:06:21 Very small and niche to the extent
0:06:24 that there’s like 400, 500 sex therapists
0:06:25 in the whole of the UK.
0:06:28 And one of them actually happened to be my mum.
0:06:28 – Oh, wow.
0:06:31 – So having had a really awkward conversation
0:06:34 with my cousin in the car that day,
0:06:36 kind of two, three weeks later when this idea
0:06:38 just kept coming back to us and kept niggling,
0:06:42 I was kind of set up for a second awkward conversation
0:06:43 with my mum.
0:06:47 But I think it shows that this is very small niche industry
0:06:50 that not many people know kind of even what it does
0:06:52 by the fact that I struggled for a year
0:06:54 and didn’t realize that it was what I needed.
0:06:56 – Yeah, I think this story is gonna resonate
0:06:57 with a lot of young men.
0:07:01 And I can actually prove this statistically
0:07:05 because the prevalence of erectile dysfunction
0:07:08 is just growing rapidly, not just in America
0:07:11 but all over the world among young men specifically.
0:07:14 And according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine,
0:07:18 26% of men under the age of 40 today
0:07:19 struggle with erectile dysfunction.
0:07:23 So that’s one in four young men.
0:07:28 So this is a massive issue that is getting worse.
0:07:32 Anecdotally, we have the evidence that you just described
0:07:34 of being in the car and then seeing all these ads
0:07:37 telling people you should take Viagra and Cialis
0:07:40 and all of these ED pills.
0:07:42 But also we’re just seeing it in the data,
0:07:43 one in four young men.
0:07:46 So, you know, you’ve been studying this for a long time.
0:07:47 Why is this happening?
0:07:52 Why are seemingly healthy young men struggling to get it up?
0:07:54 – Yeah, and I think the site you just spoke about as well
0:07:56 is kind of erectile dysfunction,
0:07:58 which is like defined in the DSM
0:08:01 or like the manual for statistics
0:08:03 as this kind of healthcare condition.
0:08:05 But kind of one step back from that,
0:08:07 like actually lots of young men
0:08:09 aren’t struggling from erectile dysfunction.
0:08:11 That’s like a convenient name
0:08:14 that makes people think they need medication to fix it.
0:08:16 What they’re quite often struggling with
0:08:19 is performance anxiety, like going through bouts
0:08:20 of not being able to get it up
0:08:22 and kind of these psychological seeds of doubt.
0:08:25 And that’s actually far more prevalent than one in four.
0:08:29 So I think the kind of first data we really see is
0:08:33 that in 1999, like three to five percent of guys
0:08:36 under the age of 40 were struggling with erection issues.
0:08:40 And then by 2011, you start to see studies coming out.
0:08:43 There’s like 30 percent of guys under the age of 30.
0:08:47 So just this huge shift in demographic who are struggling.
0:08:51 I’d put some of that down to people more openly reporting it
0:08:53 with companies like Pfizer making drugs available
0:08:56 and it becoming more understood.
0:08:57 There’ll be a little bit of a reporting,
0:09:01 but certainly just an absolute boom in the space and the issue.
0:09:03 I think lots of people have quite kind of,
0:09:06 they like to come up with simplistic views of that.
0:09:08 They look at that kind of decade
0:09:10 and quite a few people will jump to,
0:09:12 oh, well, that’s when the porn sites
0:09:15 and the streaming sites really came onto the scene.
0:09:18 And it’s quite, you know, a nefarious industry,
0:09:19 which is easy to give a kicking
0:09:21 and lots of people love to get on board with it.
0:09:24 Not ruling porn out and saying that hasn’t had an impact,
0:09:26 but there’s plenty of studies as well
0:09:30 in sexology research that says there’s kind of a correlation
0:09:32 with porn use, no causation.
0:09:35 It gives you kind of unrealistic expectations
0:09:38 of as much yourself as your partner
0:09:40 and that can really set you up for failure.
0:09:43 But this whole idea that there’s like a hijacking
0:09:47 of your dopamine system is kind of pseudoscience at best.
0:09:50 – I’m one of the people who believes that porn
0:09:52 is probably having a bad effect on young men.
0:09:56 And I’ll just, the statistics that I am aware of
0:10:00 are that 70% of American men view porn regularly
0:10:02 and 10% of them say they are addicted.
0:10:04 And that’s all men.
0:10:06 So I would assume that among young men,
0:10:08 the statistics are a lot higher.
0:10:12 You mentioned there’s correlation versus causation.
0:10:13 I’m not fully sold.
0:10:14 I kind of still believe
0:10:16 that porn must play a role in this.
0:10:16 – Absolutely.
0:10:19 And I think by saying there is correlation,
0:10:21 it’s certainly having an impact.
0:10:23 And I’m not here kind of holding a torch
0:10:25 saying the porn is good
0:10:28 and everyone should be taking part
0:10:29 and it’s gonna suit everyone.
0:10:33 But I think what you do see with porn
0:10:34 and when you actually dig down into it,
0:10:36 there’s a real shame element around sex
0:10:38 and you’re a rotic template.
0:10:40 And almost that is the sticking point,
0:10:43 which kind of anchors you into porn.
0:10:47 The term porn addiction actually isn’t widely recognized
0:10:48 in the expert field.
0:10:50 – So it isn’t porn.
0:10:51 What is it then?
0:10:53 – With kind of zooming into that decade,
0:10:55 I think one thing that people forget
0:10:56 is kind of our whole lives.
0:11:00 We’re turned upside down from 2000, 2011.
0:11:03 Everything went online the way we were communicate day.
0:11:07 We kind of suddenly became chronically online in some way.
0:11:10 And I think in that decade,
0:11:11 we saw kind of the emergence
0:11:13 of the most anxious human beings
0:11:15 ever to have walked the planet.
0:11:16 So I think it would be too much
0:11:19 to hang the blame on one sector.
0:11:23 It just seems to be a kind of direction of travel.
0:11:25 You could now say that 50% of millennials and Gen Z
0:11:28 will struggle with some form of psychosexual issue.
0:11:32 And for me, that’s really just a kind of physical manifestation
0:11:36 of there being something much more dangerous underneath that.
0:11:39 For me, I think I actually label it on kind of loneliness
0:11:41 and disconnection,
0:11:44 which is we’re the most social animals ever
0:11:45 to have walked the planet.
0:11:48 And that’s kind of why we’re here.
0:11:51 And for me, I think we’ve now gone for so long
0:11:55 where community and connections are kind of breaking down
0:11:57 in a way that now it’s got to breaking point
0:11:59 and it’s turning up in kind of,
0:12:00 like I say, these physical manifestations
0:12:04 of we can’t actually physically connect anymore.
0:12:06 So yeah, kind of if you get me excited
0:12:09 and I’m holding court and giving wax lyrical
0:12:11 about where this all really begins,
0:12:12 I think you can map it back
0:12:17 to like the agricultural revolution, bear with me,
0:12:22 which is kind of that was the first time
0:12:24 if you think we were in these nomadic tribes
0:12:27 and we were kind of the man beside you
0:12:30 was your ally in the hunt.
0:12:34 You kind of take it into the agricultural revolution
0:12:37 and suddenly the land you own becomes very important.
0:12:40 And therefore the family you have becomes very important
0:12:42 because your livelihood relies on it.
0:12:44 So you kind of have this idea of ownership
0:12:47 and this civilization brought into this kind of
0:12:48 competitive nature between people
0:12:51 where actually now I think we’re seeing repercussions
0:12:53 of that that slowly the kind of connections
0:12:55 that we were used to for millennia
0:12:59 have now broken down over ever since.
0:13:02 – In sum, we don’t know how to interact with people.
0:13:03 And I think the amount of time
0:13:05 that we’ve actually we’re spending with our friends
0:13:07 is down around 70%.
0:13:10 In the past decade, I think the most important number
0:13:12 is 12% and that’s the share of Americans
0:13:15 who say they have no close friends at all.
0:13:18 That’s up from 3% in 1990.
0:13:19 – Yeah, it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
0:13:23 – I mean, it feels as though this is all downstream
0:13:25 of the loneliness issue.
0:13:27 And I think there’s another important point
0:13:28 that you’re making there.
0:13:32 I think in the past we’ve talked about sexual dysfunction,
0:13:37 erectile dysfunction as sort of a physical problem
0:13:39 or at least some sort of vascular problem.
0:13:41 But it sounds like what you’re saying is that actually
0:13:43 this all begins in our heads.
0:13:46 – Yeah, there was a study, again,
0:13:48 we’re talking specifically about erection issues here,
0:13:50 but things like premature ejaculation
0:13:55 is another kind of very common issue that guys face.
0:13:56 But yeah, in erection issues,
0:13:59 they did a study where kind of in guys under 40
0:14:02 who are struggling for 85% of them,
0:14:03 it’s totally psychological.
0:14:06 There’s no what you call organic element to that,
0:14:09 which means that you can rule out things like
0:14:13 testosterone or cardiac problems or fitness.
0:14:15 Like it is all psychological.
0:14:17 And then when you start to understand how the drugs
0:14:21 like Cialis, Viagra, Tydenofil, Tydenofil work,
0:14:23 the only way they work for these men
0:14:25 is through a placebo effect.
0:14:26 – Oh, interesting.
0:14:27 How do we know that?
0:14:30 I assumed that Viagra and Cialis,
0:14:35 they just have a cellular effect on your penis.
0:14:36 – They do have an effect on the body,
0:14:39 but I think if I explain to you what performance anxiety
0:14:40 is, it starts to make sense,
0:14:43 which is when you’re struggling with performance anxiety
0:14:45 or psychological erection issues,
0:14:47 basically you’re in a state of fight or flight.
0:14:49 Your body is scared.
0:14:51 It’s getting ready to run away or fight.
0:14:52 In those instances,
0:14:54 your body sends all the blood it can
0:14:57 to your skeletal muscles and your brain.
0:14:59 And that means it goes away from your digestive organs
0:15:00 and your genitals,
0:15:03 ’cause those parts of your body are just not needed
0:15:05 when you’re about to fight a saber-toothed tiger.
0:15:09 And what all of these drugs, they’re called PD-5s,
0:15:10 like the umbrella term for them,
0:15:14 that all they do is two things.
0:15:16 They widen all your blood vessels.
0:15:17 So they’re a vasodilator.
0:15:20 It means you will blush, you get headaches,
0:15:21 you get all the kind of side effects
0:15:23 come from that vasodilation.
0:15:26 And the second thing they do is they block
0:15:28 what’s called a PD-5 enzyme,
0:15:31 which is naturally secreted at the end of sex
0:15:34 to allow blood out of your genitals.
0:15:36 So if you think a guy in fight or flight,
0:15:38 no blood is going to his penis,
0:15:42 whether the blood vessels there are wide or not.
0:15:43 The only reason it then works for him
0:15:45 is because you take a Viagra and you think,
0:15:47 “Oh, great, like I’m on for tonight.
0:15:49 This is going to be good.
0:15:50 I’m on my A-game here.
0:15:51 I’m relaxed.
0:15:52 I don’t go and fight or flight.”
0:15:53 And it does work.
0:15:56 And yeah, like he’ll get a great erection as well
0:15:57 if he’s a fit, healthy, young guy,
0:15:59 ’cause there’s some extra chemicals in there
0:16:01 helping him keep all the blood in there.
0:16:04 But the reaction starts through a placebo effect.
0:16:06 (upbeat music)
0:16:07 We’ll be right back.
0:16:10 (upbeat music)
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0:17:31 We’re back with first-time founders.
0:17:33 So we basically have a generation of young men
0:17:38 who, in record numbers, are getting into the bedroom,
0:17:39 taking their clothes off,
0:17:41 and then they suddenly start panicking.
0:17:45 And this is happening, it sounds like,
0:17:48 to the majority of young men in the world right now,
0:17:49 if that’s right.
0:17:50 – And I think you’re saying as well
0:17:51 that you don’t believe that porn
0:17:53 doesn’t have anything to do with it.
0:17:55 I think that’s where porn does come in,
0:17:57 like when you get in there, you take all your clothes off,
0:17:59 you don’t look like a porn star,
0:18:03 like you start feeling nervous and anxious about your body.
0:18:06 That’s where porn can be detrimental.
0:18:08 – So tell us where Mojo comes in.
0:18:10 How is Mojo, the company, your company,
0:18:11 addressing these problems?
0:18:16 – I mean, for four years we went from that conversation
0:18:18 with my mom and we had this unfair,
0:18:20 competitive advantage where we suddenly had
0:18:25 an incredible network of Europe and America’s leading experts
0:18:27 who were really keen to work on this
0:18:29 because so few companies were.
0:18:32 And for the first kind of four years,
0:18:35 we basically took what hides
0:18:38 inside sex therapy rooms and digitized it.
0:18:40 Quite unlike other forms of therapy,
0:18:42 sex therapy is built on a foundation
0:18:43 of exercise and techniques,
0:18:46 which have kind of been built up over the last 50 years.
0:18:48 So the idea for us was really simple.
0:18:50 How do we digitize them?
0:18:51 How do we make them more accessible?
0:18:52 How do we get rid of the barriers to entry?
0:18:54 How do we make them low cost
0:18:57 to be able to deliver them really scalably to everyone?
0:19:00 So yeah, we set up an app and the kind of message for us
0:19:03 was let’s treat our sexual wellbeing
0:19:06 the same way we do our mental and our physical wellbeing,
0:19:08 which is now very common that you would invest in that
0:19:10 on an ongoing basis.
0:19:13 And I mean, it works incredibly well.
0:19:15 We’re really proud of the work we’ve done.
0:19:17 We’ve got to a stage where the product is effective
0:19:21 and can really unpick some pretty complex psychosexual
0:19:22 issues that we’ll have guys who have been struggling
0:19:27 for 10, 15 years and we’re able to help them overcome that.
0:19:30 It is again, a kind of majority US company,
0:19:33 60, 70% of our user base in the US.
0:19:37 And we now have a user base of kind of 700,000 users.
0:19:41 Everything seemingly has gone great for the last four years.
0:19:44 I think where things have got really exciting for us recently
0:19:49 is whilst we found that we were able to successfully digitize
0:19:50 all of these exercise and techniques
0:19:53 and they could be as effective in person.
0:19:55 One thing that we were missing is
0:19:59 the kind of leading determiner of positive outcomes
0:20:02 in any form of therapy, not just sex therapy
0:20:05 is something that’s called the therapeutic alliance.
0:20:07 So it doesn’t matter if you go to a therapist
0:20:10 and you do kind of Freudian psychodynamic,
0:20:12 you’re lying on a couch and you’re talking about
0:20:16 your childhood or you are doing CBT
0:20:18 and it’s very much about cognitive restructuring.
0:20:21 They’re polar opposite ends of the therapeutic spectrum.
0:20:24 The leading factor that will determine whether you have
0:20:26 a successful experience is what’s called
0:20:27 the therapeutic alliance.
0:20:30 It is the relationship between you and the therapist.
0:20:32 Do you believe they have positive regard for you?
0:20:35 Do you believe that you’re kind of in the same boat,
0:20:36 working towards the same goal?
0:20:37 Are they empathetic?
0:20:39 Do you trust them?
0:20:42 And I think that was something we were never able to deliver
0:20:45 through the app in those first four years.
0:20:46 – What did the product look like?
0:20:50 Were you interacting with a therapist on the other side
0:20:54 or was it a sort of algorithm suggesting you feedback?
0:20:56 In what sense was the therapeutic alliance missing?
0:20:58 – So to make it scalable,
0:21:01 our ambition has always been to have the biggest human impact
0:21:02 we could possibly have.
0:21:04 So we wanted this to be available.
0:21:06 We’re kind of in 150 countries at the moment.
0:21:08 So that meant some restrictions,
0:21:11 which is we always built for scalability.
0:21:14 So we always did asynchronous content.
0:21:16 We did a lot of kind of video format
0:21:18 where we’d have experts coming on
0:21:20 and talking about common causes of erection issues.
0:21:23 They’d talk through some of these exercise
0:21:26 and we’d actually like throw presenters in
0:21:27 and we’d get them to go in and do the exercises
0:21:29 and we wouldn’t really prep them.
0:21:31 So they’d be asking kind of the stupid questions
0:21:33 which therapists would get asked.
0:21:35 They was really trying to be as kind of fly on the wall
0:21:36 as we possibly could be,
0:21:39 but there was never that level of personalization
0:21:41 that could have formed a therapeutic alliance.
0:21:44 We tried to lean on things like community.
0:21:46 So we have a really kind of vibrant community.
0:21:49 It’s anonymous and you’ll just see conversations in there
0:21:52 that like you wouldn’t believe anywhere else on the internet.
0:21:55 I think for three years I ran a session every week
0:21:58 which was 40, 50 users, they’d drop in,
0:21:59 we’d do kind of group sessions.
0:22:02 All of that was in trying to find this missing piece
0:22:04 of the therapeutic relationship.
0:22:06 But I don’t think we were ever successful.
0:22:10 And then I think last year when you really started to see
0:22:14 chat, GBT and Foro coming through,
0:22:19 you started to notice that I think deep human relationships
0:22:23 will be if not already are possible with AI.
0:22:24 So yeah, at the back end of last year
0:22:29 we have pivoted the company and we’re now an AI coach
0:22:31 for dating sex and relationships,
0:22:34 all in the hunt of that kind of missing piece.
0:22:37 – So it’s now an AI therapist,
0:22:42 which I think in the past year, we’ve seen a lot of this
0:22:45 or at least we saw this coming.
0:22:48 And I don’t really know how to feel about it
0:22:52 because in a sense it’s a good thing, I guess,
0:22:57 but there’s something highly dystopian and freaky to me
0:23:01 about human beings relying on an algorithm
0:23:06 to offer them respite and therapy.
0:23:08 So what would you say to someone like me
0:23:12 who generally finds this a little bit frightening?
0:23:15 – One would, I imagine some of the kickback here
0:23:16 is quite often safety.
0:23:20 As in the safety frameworks you have to put in place
0:23:22 to make sure that people who are seeking help
0:23:27 and being vulnerable are going to be safe.
0:23:29 The rigor that you can put into that now
0:23:31 is very kind of complex.
0:23:33 The way we’ve approached it is we have a team
0:23:37 of kind of six sex therapists who have been reading
0:23:41 100% of our conversations and annotating them all,
0:23:42 what’s appropriate, what’s not,
0:23:47 and using that to kind of train the main prompt.
0:23:50 As you’ll find with LLMs, like the longer a prompt is,
0:23:51 the kind of more off course it can go.
0:23:53 So the way we’ve also tried to counter that
0:23:56 is you build a safety agent in the background,
0:23:58 which has a much smaller, tighter remit.
0:24:03 And we’re finding that that is the beginning,
0:24:05 the kind of risk well handled was poor
0:24:07 and now we’re finding it to be absolutely exemplary.
0:24:10 So I’d say it’s the first thing people should worry about
0:24:13 is it is safe and can be made safe,
0:24:16 still very much with kind of human in the loop.
0:24:18 In terms of the dystopian idea,
0:24:22 I think you’ll see that there have been,
0:24:25 there are AI companies which are trying to kind of promote
0:24:27 boyfriend or girlfriend relationships
0:24:31 or kind of you can chat to Albert Einstein
0:24:33 and make him your friend.
0:24:35 That’s not what we’re trying to do,
0:24:39 which is we believe that kind of the problem
0:24:41 with society and the problem with society
0:24:43 that’s having less sex and less connection
0:24:47 is that kind of in real life meaningful connection
0:24:48 with others.
0:24:53 So for us, we feel that we are able to kind of enable
0:24:56 external relationships through the relationship
0:24:58 with your coach or your AI therapist.
0:24:59 It’s very much an enabler.
0:25:02 We’d never see it as a substitute.
0:25:05 And I guess it’s kind of like you wouldn’t go
0:25:07 and speak to your therapist at the weekend.
0:25:09 Like these relationships are very much
0:25:11 for kind of pushing you out in the world
0:25:13 and helping you perform better.
0:25:16 So we don’t imagine a dystopian world
0:25:20 where people are foregoing in real life relationships
0:25:21 for what’s in their phone.
0:25:24 – Do you think it’s possible that AI could be better
0:25:26 at providing therapy than a human?
0:25:29 Or is this more about cost and scalability?
0:25:30 – Yeah, it’s a good question.
0:25:33 I mean, I can speak from my experience
0:25:35 of the last couple of months and watching the team
0:25:36 build this product.
0:25:40 As I said, for safety, we had kind of six therapists
0:25:43 in reading all the conversations and kind of training the bot.
0:25:47 And in the very first meeting we had with all of them,
0:25:49 one of them said, “Don’t worry, ladies.
0:25:50 “I think all our jobs are going to be safe.”
0:25:53 Like she was laughing at this thing.
0:25:56 Two weeks later, the very same therapist came back
0:25:59 and was like, “This product is now handling conversations,
0:26:02 “backing off, leaning in better than the average therapist.”
0:26:04 – Wow, it’s incredible.
0:26:05 I think the technology is there
0:26:06 and the way we’ve been able to train it
0:26:09 is already there to kind of handle singular conversations.
0:26:11 That, for me, isn’t the therapeutic relationship.
0:26:13 It’s the beginnings of it.
0:26:16 And now just having a team that is like absolutely obsessed
0:26:18 with the idea of going really deep
0:26:22 and crazy relationship over a multi-day, week, month period
0:26:25 is the real key that we have to crack is not an easy one,
0:26:28 but I for one, definitely believe it’s possible.
0:26:31 – So what are some of the most common issues
0:26:34 that your users are reporting in the bedroom?
0:26:35 – For us, the vast majority of our users
0:26:39 are erection issues and performance anxiety.
0:26:43 You can kind of get down into the different users
0:26:46 will experience it in different ways at different times.
0:26:48 Kind of when you’re losing it,
0:26:50 we’ll tell you kind of different exercises and techniques
0:26:52 that someone would give you.
0:26:54 What we’ve looked at with the,
0:26:57 we’re starting to work with AI and LLMs as well as,
0:27:01 what’s exciting for me is it feels like you have 24/7
0:27:03 user feedback on,
0:27:05 which is they are speaking to you the whole time.
0:27:10 And we’ve kind of created this content beast,
0:27:13 which is we know exactly what the users are experiencing,
0:27:15 what problems they want to solve.
0:27:17 So it has meant that we’ve had to expand very quickly
0:27:20 in the kind of user’s job to be done that we’re covering.
0:27:24 And I think that goes into dating and relationships.
0:27:27 It was kind of too simplistic to think of it as,
0:27:31 well, I just can’t get it up or I’m coming too quickly.
0:27:32 When you start to get into the nuance,
0:27:34 it might be that you have a young guy
0:27:37 who feels like he’s dependent on porn
0:27:39 or a guy in their twenties has just suffered
0:27:42 with a big breakup and he’s lacking confidence
0:27:45 and doesn’t know how to get back into the bedroom
0:27:46 or a really common one as well
0:27:48 as couples will start to try for a baby
0:27:50 and suddenly sex completely changes.
0:27:52 It’s no longer about fun and connection.
0:27:55 It’s suddenly a job to perform
0:27:57 and it has to be an exact time
0:27:59 and it can be very like green light, go, go, go.
0:28:01 And that’s a real pressure situation.
0:28:04 So like kind of dealing with that.
0:28:06 How has that changed our relationship?
0:28:08 So yeah, it can get a lot more nuanced now,
0:28:09 which I’m really excited about.
0:28:13 – What’s sort of the most common type of person
0:28:16 that is using your app and that is struggling right now?
0:28:18 – Listen, we’re a young audience.
0:28:19 I think if you look at the average age
0:28:23 of those really big kind of pharmacy online young brands,
0:28:26 their average age tends to be kind of late 40s, early 50s,
0:28:28 even though they feel very young.
0:28:31 For us, most of our users are under the age of 30.
0:28:33 We did a piece of research and we have this saying
0:28:37 in the company, which is that men need to change to change.
0:28:39 Like we think we’re dealing with a very high
0:28:41 and 10 user base, but it’s always
0:28:43 because something in their life has changed.
0:28:46 It’s usually that they’re kind of back on the dating scene
0:28:49 and they found someone they’re really excited by,
0:28:51 but they’re suddenly struggling in the bedroom
0:28:53 and it feels really catastrophic.
0:28:55 It’s like, I need to fix this problem.
0:28:57 Otherwise, I’m going to lose this person.
0:28:59 We’ll be right back.
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0:30:24 What about women’s role in all of this?
0:30:27 I mean, this is specifically designed for men.
0:30:30 Do you ever get any feedback from women?
0:30:31 Do you ever hear stories from women
0:30:34 about how this issue of erectile dysfunction
0:30:37 and just sexual dysfunction is affecting their lives?
0:30:40 Yeah, I mean, it’s quite common for us to have users
0:30:43 who’ve either been sent by their female partners
0:30:47 or have kind of come to the platform,
0:30:50 started using it for a week, and then have disappeared.
0:30:52 And we’ve spoken to them when they’ve come back
0:30:54 and said kind of what happened.
0:30:56 And it’s quite often, well, actually,
0:30:58 I felt like I needed to speak to my partner
0:31:01 and kind of get her consent and get her on board with this.
0:31:03 The thing which gets me excited generally
0:31:06 is all the solutions that have come before us
0:31:08 have been very single-player
0:31:10 when this is a very relational problem.
0:31:13 And it can be a very multiplayer game.
0:31:17 And I think it’s been awful for both sides of the equation,
0:31:20 actually the experience of women being with a guy
0:31:24 who has erection issues and he feels very ashamed of it,
0:31:26 quite often given the cold shoulder,
0:31:29 they don’t know how to help.
0:31:34 Like, you can’t go and buy him kind of medication
0:31:37 or like send him off to therapy.
0:31:40 That feels very kind of putting the onus on the guy.
0:31:43 So I think coming up with these multiplayer solutions
0:31:46 is something that’s really exciting for this space
0:31:48 and can improve the experience
0:31:50 of both people in the relationship.
0:31:55 – This is one of those things that I just find so fascinating
0:31:57 because we very rarely talk about it
0:31:59 or at least not in depth.
0:32:01 And I gave you those statistics
0:32:03 on how many men this is affecting,
0:32:05 but then think of all the women that this is affecting too.
0:32:10 I mean, for every man, you know, you need a partner
0:32:14 and this is affecting them too, which is just incredible to me.
0:32:17 You mentioned that these medications,
0:32:20 you know, they’re sort of these easy fixes,
0:32:25 but they don’t get down to the root cause of the issue.
0:32:30 What does getting down to the root cause actually look like?
0:32:32 Like if you’re making a pitch
0:32:35 to someone who’s struggling with this
0:32:37 and they’re given the option, okay, you can go with Mojo
0:32:38 or you can go with this pill
0:32:41 that’s kind of just gonna fix it like that.
0:32:43 Why is it that Mojo is more compelling
0:32:46 or healthier over the long-term for that person?
0:32:49 – I mean, the medications work really well.
0:32:52 Where they stop working is
0:32:54 when you don’t feel that confident that one time,
0:32:56 you’ve taken the Viagra,
0:32:57 you don’t feel that confident for some reason,
0:32:58 something’s throwing you off.
0:33:02 And if it doesn’t quite work the way you think,
0:33:03 you’ve lost it, you’ve lost your magic pill,
0:33:05 like you’ll actually see that it’s working every time
0:33:07 and then it starts to deteriorate over time.
0:33:11 So it’s unlikely for it to work for you on an ongoing basis.
0:33:13 The thing for the sound of kind of like
0:33:16 really getting down and deep to the root cause
0:33:18 makes it sound like it’s really hard to access
0:33:19 and maybe make it sound like I’m doing
0:33:21 something incredibly complicated.
0:33:25 A lot of it is kind of within mental wellbeing,
0:33:27 your kind of mind-body connection.
0:33:29 You’re really starting to see things like mindfulness
0:33:32 of becoming a cornerstone in therapy.
0:33:35 I think I can speak definitely from personal experience.
0:33:38 I run around my week working kind of crazy hours
0:33:41 and just feel it will feel like my body is buzzing.
0:33:43 If I actually stop and think about it,
0:33:46 like my hands are buzzing, like I’m absolutely jacked
0:33:47 and I just haven’t been in my body
0:33:50 probably for the previous few days.
0:33:54 I think actually what committing to Mojo looks like
0:33:57 is quite a lot of kind of just like self-expiration,
0:34:00 really linking up that kind of mind-body experience
0:34:04 and you’ll see practices in there like meditation,
0:34:06 breath work, all of these kind of things
0:34:10 that really get you to think about what’s going on for you.
0:34:13 I mean, I find this so interesting
0:34:15 because it’s basically a reflection
0:34:20 of the holistic nature of sex and sexual health
0:34:24 that basically what you’re describing
0:34:27 is that your ability to perform in the bedroom
0:34:29 and your ability to have sex
0:34:32 is a function of everything going on in your life.
0:34:34 It’s not just some vascular issue
0:34:35 that’s happening in your penis.
0:34:38 It has to do with how you’re feeling in your head,
0:34:40 your relationship with your partner,
0:34:43 possibly other things, how things are going on,
0:34:45 how things are going at work, maybe how you’re eating.
0:34:48 I mean, it has to do with literally everything
0:34:50 and the reason that I bring that up
0:34:55 is because this is why I find the level of sexlessness
0:34:59 in our society so sad and I’ll just bring it up
0:35:01 but I’m sure most of our listeners know this already
0:35:06 but the share of men younger than 30
0:35:09 who have not had sex in the past year
0:35:13 has tripled in the past decade or so to 28%.
0:35:16 So that means one in three young men today,
0:35:20 they have not had sex in the past year.
0:35:23 And to me, that is a reflection,
0:35:27 not just that we’re not having sex
0:35:31 but we are just deeply unhealthy and sick as a society
0:35:34 because as you mentioned, this all comes from the brain.
0:35:36 It almost all comes from the soul too.
0:35:40 It’s a total reflection of your entire health.
0:35:42 So just talk about sexlessness
0:35:46 and how that’s perhaps maybe you agree with me
0:35:48 that that’s possibly the worst thing
0:35:50 that we’re seeing in our society today.
0:35:53 – I think you’re totally right and I do agree.
0:35:57 I think it’s very convenient for me or us
0:36:00 to be able to talk about physical wellbeing
0:36:02 and mental wellbeing and now I’m here saying,
0:36:04 you know, you’ve got to think about your sexual wellbeing
0:36:06 kind of trying to compartmentalize them
0:36:08 when the truth is exactly as you say,
0:36:11 it’s totally intertwined.
0:36:16 And I think we live for millennia in very close knit tribes.
0:36:23 I kind of, I think the Robert Dunbar theory
0:36:25 of kind of you had 150 people in your world
0:36:27 that you knew well,
0:36:30 but that seems like a much happier time.
0:36:33 And I guess if we’re starting to wonder kind of
0:36:35 what is the meaning of life
0:36:36 and going off and all of that kind of stuff,
0:36:40 I think someone could argue that sex and connection
0:36:41 in our relationships are the meaning of life.
0:36:45 So the fact that they’re in such disarray is very sad.
0:36:48 – So just as we wrap up here,
0:36:51 imagine we do nothing about this,
0:36:56 this issue of sexesness, loneliness, sexual dysfunction.
0:37:01 Imagine mojo fails, imagine no one invests in you.
0:37:02 We don’t bring attention to the issue.
0:37:05 In some, we just let these trends continue.
0:37:10 If that happens, where do you think humanity is headed?
0:37:14 What will society look like if we do nothing about this?
0:37:17 – I think you can kind of see the beginnings of it already,
0:37:21 which is we become very isolated.
0:37:26 I think I saw some stats, I think about Germany,
0:37:29 and it was showing that for the first time in history,
0:37:33 gender is not voting in lockstep,
0:37:36 as in their political views are not moving together.
0:37:40 Beforehand, socioeconomic, ethnicity,
0:37:42 all of those kinds of things, they move in lockstep
0:37:43 and gender was one of them.
0:37:45 Like your political view would move in lockstep.
0:37:48 And I think what you’ve seen is that’s really separated now
0:37:51 and men and women are not connecting
0:37:52 and thinking the same way
0:37:55 and it’s becoming very kind of hostile
0:37:58 and isolated and scary
0:38:02 and the world just becomes a much meaner place.
0:38:04 – We have a lot of young men who listen to this podcast.
0:38:06 What would be your number one piece of advice
0:38:09 for a young man who is struggling with sex,
0:38:11 maybe struggling with dating,
0:38:14 or just struggling with relationships in general?
0:38:16 – The number one piece of advice
0:38:18 would just be to speak to a mate.
0:38:20 I mean, that’s kind of what happened
0:38:22 for me with my cousin Zander.
0:38:26 It doesn’t have to take you down a road
0:38:28 of changing your career.
0:38:30 But I think if I could wave a magic wand
0:38:33 and tell everyone who was struggling
0:38:35 with some kind of sexual issue to go out
0:38:37 and speak to their three closest friends,
0:38:39 I wouldn’t really have a business to run, to be honest.
0:38:43 Like your friends, if they treat you with kind of
0:38:45 the empathy that you deserve, then being your friends,
0:38:47 actually a lot of the shame
0:38:50 that kind of anchors these issues would be totally gone.
0:38:54 So I’m not underestimating how hard that is to do,
0:38:57 but I would advise that person speaks
0:38:58 to a very close friend.
0:38:59 – Speak to a friend.
0:39:00 Thank you.
0:39:04 Angus Bodge is the co-founder and CEO of Mojo.
0:39:05 Angus, this was great.
0:39:06 Thank you very much for joining me.
0:39:07 – Yeah, thanks so much, Ed.
0:39:08 That was really fun.
0:39:13 – Our producer is Claire Miller.
0:39:15 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss,
0:39:18 and our engineer is Benjamin Spencer.
0:39:20 Catherine Dillon is our executive producer.
0:39:22 Thank you for listening to First Time Founders
0:39:24 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:39:26 Tune in tomorrow for ProfG Markets.
0:39:30 (upbeat music)
0:39:30 .
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