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0:00:33 Welcome to the PropG Pods Office Hours.
0:00:35 This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business,
0:00:38 big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind.
0:00:39 Hey, PropG.
0:00:40 Hey, Scott and team.
0:00:41 Hey, Scott.
0:00:41 Hi, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:42 Hey, PropG.
0:00:45 Hi, Professor G.
0:00:48 Today, we’re kicking off a special two-part series.
0:00:48 I did not know that.
0:00:52 I guess we’re in part one today, answering your questions about all things.
0:00:54 Marketing, I just got insecure.
0:00:57 We’ll answer your questions surrounding common marketing misconceptions,
0:01:01 the power of community-driven marketing, and what their future holds for the industry.
0:01:04 So with that, first question.
0:01:05 Good day.
0:01:09 This is Nick from Sheffield, Massachusetts.
0:01:10 I have two questions.
0:01:17 The first is, what do you believe to be the greatest fallacy today in marketing,
0:01:22 i.e. the greatest misconception or misperception that you encounter?
0:01:28 And the second is, why is B2B marketing so dull?
0:01:33 Nick, why are you so sexy with that whispering voice?
0:01:36 Jesus, what are we exchanging like nuclear codes here?
0:01:42 Anyways, look, the sun has passed midday on the world of brand strategy.
0:01:48 I worry that and I have tried to dramatically alter my curriculum to talk about algorithms,
0:01:54 APIs, new platforms, supply chain, which I think is sort of the new gangster attribute
0:01:56 of a company, if you will.
0:01:58 If you think about all the companies that really add a lot of value, it’s usually about
0:02:03 a supply chain innovation, whether it’s Netflix going from DVD to streaming to now producing
0:02:06 stuff in Madrid and Seoul.
0:02:08 Amazon is obviously a supply chain story.
0:02:15 I think almost all massive, if you will, value accretions or supply chain.
0:02:16 What about NVIDIA Scott?
0:02:18 Well, that’s supply chain, too, bitch.
0:02:20 How did we print money or create shareholder value?
0:02:24 What was the algorithm for shareholder value from the underworld war two to the introduction
0:02:25 of Google?
0:02:26 Simple.
0:02:28 Manufacture a mediocre product.
0:02:32 And it doesn’t matter because we had just leveled our competition, specifically Germany
0:02:33 and Japan.
0:02:38 And so we could produce a mediocre product and then we would wrap it in these amazing
0:02:43 brand codes of American toughness or youth or sex appeal or European elegance or paternal
0:02:45 love or maternal love.
0:02:49 Let’s turn 20 cents of peanut butter paste into $2 of peanut butter.
0:02:50 Why?
0:02:51 Because choosy moms choose Jiff.
0:02:55 And if you want to show your neighbors that you love your kids more, then it’s worth it.
0:02:56 This is maternal love.
0:03:02 And these brand codes could be hammered away and cemented into our psyche using this extraordinarily
0:03:08 cheap medium called Broadcast Television, where all of America spent five hours a day
0:03:13 watching Y Tang, which the astronauts drank, was good for you, right?
0:03:15 All of these amazing associations.
0:03:17 We were better at imbuing than anyone in the world.
0:03:20 And that was the world of marketing and there were marketing departments everywhere.
0:03:27 And I worry now that the whole price promotion product, placing the four Ps in traditional
0:03:32 marketing is essentially training kids to go to work for Kraft or General Foods or Procter
0:03:35 and Gamble and be laid off two or three years later.
0:03:37 Because where has the majority of capital gone?
0:03:39 It’s gone back into the product.
0:03:40 Why?
0:03:45 Because digital technologies have unlocked an opportunity to 10 X products.
0:03:51 The idea, the ability to unlock product quality and find the better product using digital
0:03:55 technologies and these weapons of mass diligence called Google and TripAdvisor and all these
0:04:00 other platforms has essentially taken traditional marketing and kicked it in the nuts.
0:04:05 So I think you’re going to see a reallocation of capital going back to the original notion
0:04:11 around CEO’s job is to, or a manager’s job, is to allocate resources to the greatest return.
0:04:15 I think the greater return is pulling money out of marketing right now and I hate to say
0:04:21 it and putting it into supply chain or actual product innovation using new digital technologies.
0:04:23 But what about spending more money on Google?
0:04:24 Yeah, that happened.
0:04:26 I think that will likely slow down.
0:04:30 It’ll still be greater than the rest of the industry, but they have managed to bid up
0:04:32 their prices through monopoly abuse.
0:04:37 And I think people are figuring out that it’s no longer the deal it used to be.
0:04:39 It’s still a better deal than broadcast advertising.
0:04:40 What does that mean?
0:04:44 It means the CMO is like a second lieutenant in Vietnam and that is their lifespan is going
0:04:46 to be pretty short.
0:04:48 It’s going to be CSO, Chief Supply Chain Officer.
0:04:51 I think the CMO is kind of already dead.
0:04:52 They just don’t know it.
0:04:57 And I used to work with CMOs all through the 90s when I was running my first firm, Profit.
0:05:02 And effectively their job was to create this intangible kind of notion of these intangible
0:05:06 associations and also their job was to convince everyone that they were somehow the Yoda of
0:05:10 the brand and no one else was allowed to even talk about it, that the whole brand thing
0:05:15 was a Faberge egg and only certain people could use certain words around the brand.
0:05:18 And if you smudge the egg, it might be a career ending injury.
0:05:20 It’s also fucking arrogant.
0:05:22 What does that mean if you’re working in advertising?
0:05:23 Boy, am I going on here.
0:05:26 It means if you already have momentum and you’re doing well, you probably should stay
0:05:27 put.
0:05:32 I would argue if you’re under the age of 40 and you don’t see like you’re not skyrocketing
0:05:36 at your current agency, I would say thinking about, I would consider getting out of that
0:05:40 business and getting in on the client side to things that are more closer to the product,
0:05:41 if you will.
0:05:44 Anyways, I think that’s a great question.
0:05:48 I need to answer the biggest question and that is the misconception.
0:05:51 The biggest misconception in marketing is the following.
0:05:56 And that is the belief or the misconception that choice is a good thing.
0:05:58 It’s not.
0:05:59 Choices attacks on consumers.
0:06:00 Consumers don’t want more choice.
0:06:02 They want to be more confident in the choices presented.
0:06:07 What is the basis of the category of retail that added more shareholder value in retail
0:06:10 than any sector in history and that especially retail?
0:06:11 Why?
0:06:13 I don’t want every yoga pan available.
0:06:16 I don’t want to go on Amazon and see 300.
0:06:18 Some people do, obviously a lot do.
0:06:22 But what I really want is someone with much better taste than me in Vancouver to pick
0:06:24 the three best yoga pans.
0:06:27 Anyways, next question.
0:06:28 Hey, Scott.
0:06:33 I’m Phillip, a German-speaking podcaster currently doing an executive MBA.
0:06:37 This weekend we discussed in class that companies and universities should be communities.
0:06:41 Additionally, creators often refer to their audience as a community.
0:06:46 What are your thoughts on using communities as a marketing tool to create and retain customers
0:06:49 and turn them into ambassadors?
0:06:51 Keep up the good work and thank you for answering my question.
0:06:52 Oh, sure.
0:06:54 I mean, you know the answer to this, Phillip.
0:06:56 It’s powerful.
0:06:59 In my branch gadget class, I have a series of constructs.
0:07:02 You may not remember me, you may not remember the class, but you need to remember these
0:07:03 constructs.
0:07:05 I think I have about a dozen of them.
0:07:07 They’re essentially models to sort through the basics of marketing.
0:07:10 One of those models is called the clock model.
0:07:14 That is from 12 to 4 when the consumer enters or a stakeholder enters the franchise, that’s
0:07:22 pre-purchase marketing, advertising, PR, sampling, conventions, whatever it is, thought leadership
0:07:25 that raises awareness, creates hopefully intent to buy.
0:07:28 4 to 8, the bottom of the clock, is distribution.
0:07:33 I walk into a Lexus dealership and I think this is a nice experience and it makes me
0:07:34 feel better about the car.
0:07:38 The ultimate kind of 4 to 8 is Apple’s gangster decision to take $6 or $7 billion a year out
0:07:44 of advertising and put it into these 500 temples of the brand called their stores.
0:07:48 I think that may have been a more important move than the iPhone, although the iPhone
0:07:53 is the one that harvests all that brand equity, but these stores, think about where you used
0:07:58 to go to buy electronics, like a Verizon store with bad lighting and a guy named Roy.
0:08:02 It’s sort of where, I don’t know, it’s sort of, it was just awful, right?
0:08:06 Or, I mean, Best Buy does a good job, but it’s not really aspirational.
0:08:10 There was nothing aspirational in one of the largest categories in the world, technology.
0:08:13 And Apple came in and said, “Why don’t we make it feel like on our money store that’s
0:08:14 like the coolest?”
0:08:16 I’d like to live in an Apple store.
0:08:20 I think if they had a coffee shop, it would, everyone would just go, “Hang on, I think
0:08:24 they’d put Starbucks out of business if they started a coffee adjunct just called Apple
0:08:26 Up or Apple Calf.
0:08:27 Apple Calf.
0:08:28 I like that.
0:08:33 But C-A-F-F-E, oh, hashtag, trademark, Scott Galloway, anyway.
0:08:34 That’s the distribution.
0:08:35 That’s 4 to 8.
0:08:39 8 to 12 is post-purchase, loyalty programs, customer service, right?
0:08:44 You go into Nordstrom and if you’re a customer there and you bought something, they are just
0:08:46 going to take the return no matter what.
0:08:48 FedEx, once you ship the product, you can track it.
0:08:50 That was sort of the gangster move back in the ’90s.
0:08:53 I remember sending all my applications in for business school and freaking out because,
0:08:57 of course, I waited to the deadline and I could go on the FedEx site and they had invested
0:08:58 billions of dollars at that time.
0:09:04 So they could say, “I will assign by a woman named June Allison at the University of Pennsylvania
0:09:08 Wharton who will soon get about rejecting you.”
0:09:09 Thank you, Joan.
0:09:10 Come back, Scott.
0:09:11 Okay.
0:09:12 Community.
0:09:13 Post-purchase.
0:09:20 Groups. Affinity programs, loyalty, kind of empowering or illuminating or activating your
0:09:26 community is just huge and one of the reasons we try and do events and try and write back
0:09:30 and I try to be, it’s actually easy for me to be nice to people on the street is you want
0:09:33 a community of people who are your evangelists.
0:09:39 It’s just no, when you have a small company, what’s the most important thing?
0:09:42 The core team of amazing players that you give them much equity to and literally nail
0:09:43 them to the ground.
0:09:45 That’s number one.
0:09:47 But what you also need is those first few clients.
0:09:52 I was in the services business and I was said our first three clients have to be just fanatical
0:09:53 about us.
0:09:54 We have to over serve them.
0:09:55 I don’t care if we lose money.
0:09:56 I don’t care if you have to go on vacation with them.
0:09:58 I don’t care what it is.
0:09:59 They have to be evangelists.
0:10:04 So if you can create a community of evangelists or people who have sort of a goodwill towards
0:10:08 you and there’s ways to activate that, obviously it’s hugely important.
0:10:12 Something NYU does not do well, does not do well.
0:10:18 There’s not that same sense of camaraderie or community post-purchase, if you will.
0:10:23 So thinking about how to illuminate or really engage or activate this community and give
0:10:26 them opportunities to get together, one of the things we’re talking about for all of
0:10:30 our podcasts is doing a series of events or a tour next year.
0:10:34 Because when we meet people and you’re nice to them and they see you live, they just feel
0:10:35 more cemented.
0:10:36 They feel more engaged.
0:10:39 They feel more intimate with the brand.
0:10:41 So yeah, you know, I was going to agree with you.
0:10:43 The question is what is actionable here.
0:10:47 If you were to roll out or unfurl the brand clock in terms of resources, you want to have
0:10:48 a bias.
0:10:49 Now what’s that bias?
0:10:52 You want capital to be slanted downhill.
0:10:53 What do I mean by that?
0:10:58 You want to have a bias against pre-purchase, kind of a mediocre bias against distribution,
0:11:00 and you want to have a bias towards post-purchase.
0:11:01 Why?
0:11:03 Because pre-purchase is overinvested because it’s cool.
0:11:09 I used to go back to New York and advertise with Condonass because I wanted to have lunch
0:11:14 in the Condonass cafeteria with my friend David Carey because the people were hot and I got
0:11:19 to see Anna Winter and they would invite me to these cool parties and I felt cool.
0:11:22 And you get to hang out with good-looking people who wear black and invite you to cool parties
0:11:27 when you spend money on pre-purchase, mostly agency people and magazines and media companies.
0:11:28 Purchase is kind of fun.
0:11:31 That’s stores, expensive, but kind of fun.
0:11:33 Post-purchase is boring.
0:11:38 That’s slipping a pizza under the door to a bunch of MIS guys building CRM databases.
0:11:39 It’s not romantic.
0:11:40 It’s not sexy.
0:11:41 And guess what?
0:11:44 The inverse correlation holds here as it does with careers, the less sexy, the greater
0:11:45 the ROI.
0:11:50 So I want you to have a bias towards post-purchase loyalty programs, database marketing, CRM,
0:11:53 and also community, if you will.
0:11:55 Thanks for the question.
0:11:57 We have one quick break before our final question.
0:12:03 Stay with us.
0:12:04 Welcome back.
0:12:05 Question number three.
0:12:10 I’m a 40-year-old freelance film professional working behind the camera as a cinematographer.
0:12:17 I’ve managed to navigate the industry’s challenges in recent years, primarily by working on broadcast
0:12:22 and internet commercials, even as the industry as a whole, including film, TV, and reality
0:12:24 content, has scaled back.
0:12:29 With high-quality videos now achievable on consumer-grade cameras and personal phones,
0:12:33 do you think there still will be a need for professionally made commercial and marketing
0:12:37 campaigns from a branding perspective?
0:12:41 Or are we likely to see a decline in demand for my services?
0:12:46 Alternatively, could the growing need for video content across numerous mobile platforms
0:12:50 ensure ongoing demand for professional production?
0:12:55 Essentially, will my skills be needed in 10 or 20 years?
0:13:00 Anonymous, you’re at exactly the wrong age, or the tough age, because it’s not like you’re
0:13:01 25.
0:13:03 25, let’s say, get the hell out of dodge.
0:13:06 But if you’re 40, it means you’re probably pretty good at what you do.
0:13:11 You have some professional credibility, some awareness, some momentum, contacts, and that’s
0:13:16 tough around whether you should can that and go be a commercial real estate broker or something,
0:13:20 not suggesting you do that or do something else.
0:13:23 If you’ve done well, I would say, “All right, what are we going to do if we want to stay
0:13:24 in this industry?”
0:13:29 The term I would use, or the statement I always make, is that AI is not going to take
0:13:33 your job, someone who understands AI is going to take your job, and that is, you need to
0:13:37 become a warrior around where there’ll be growth in the industry, and that is getting
0:13:41 80% of the production value for 20% of the price.
0:13:45 So I’m a small firm that wants to put together promotional videos or thought leadership or
0:13:50 video assets, and I’m not going to hire an agency who’s going to show up and storyboard
0:13:53 it and do all this cool shit and take me out to dinner and charge me a quarter of a million
0:13:56 dollars before I even see a reel.
0:14:01 I think those days are gone unless you’re a super high-end, high-budget production luxury
0:14:02 brand or automobile company.
0:14:06 I just think that’s going away, but I’m a guy who understands the newest technologies
0:14:12 and can string together what I’ll call the old Navy of video production.
0:14:13 What do I mean by that?
0:14:19 I can give you 80% of the gap for 50, not even 50, 20, 10% of the price.
0:14:24 So I think you’ve got to become a ninja warrior in terms of these new tools that take costs
0:14:28 out and figure out a way to use, I don’t know if it’s Firefly, I forget what the other
0:14:32 visual one is that everyone’s talking about, but you have got to get very good at AI and
0:14:36 be able to spin up assets at a fraction of the cost.
0:14:40 You have got to go back to school, if you will, get really fast out with these technologies
0:14:42 with one objective.
0:14:48 How do I produce something of 80% of the quality that I have produced in the past for 20% of
0:14:49 the price?
0:14:50 That should be your goal.
0:14:54 What technologies, what skills do I need to garner such that I could do that?
0:14:59 It is not easy, it is not easy and there will always be signs of hope to hold on to the
0:15:01 old days, but make that transition.
0:15:02 You’re still a young man.
0:15:07 Anyways, you want to be the old Navy, if you will, of cinematography.
0:15:09 Thanks for the question.
0:15:10 That’s all for this episode.
0:15:14 If you’d like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:18 Again, that’s OfficeHours@propertymedia.com.
0:15:30 This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.
0:15:36 Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:15:39 Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:15:44 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercenial Malice, as read by George Hahn, and please
0:15:49 follow our PropG Markets Pod, wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday
0:15:50 and Thursday.

0:00:02 (upbeat music)
0:00:07 – Welcome to Raging Moderates, I’m Scott Galloway.
0:00:09 – And I’m Jessica Tarlev.
0:00:10 – Where are you, Jessica?
0:00:13 – I’m at home in New York, not very glamorous, but you.
0:00:14 – Really?
0:00:17 – You’ve had the weekend of the century, right?
0:00:19 – Yeah, so just so you know when I ask you a question,
0:00:21 what I’m really saying is I want you to ask me.
0:00:23 – Yeah, I get it.
0:00:24 Didn’t I do it well enough?
0:00:25 – Yeah, that was perfect.
0:00:27 – It was like two seconds on me, and then right to you.
0:00:28 Okay, good.
0:00:29 – That’s right, very good.
0:00:33 I was in Scotland this weekend in Aberdeen
0:00:35 for my 50th birthday,
0:00:40 and I am now in Keptantib, and it is beautiful here.
0:00:44 So I’m about two glasses of Domain Odd Inn.
0:00:48 So, anyway, I spent, you know, that’s called a weekday.
0:00:51 But yeah, I had an absolutely wonderful weekend
0:00:52 with a bunch of actually, a bunch of people
0:00:53 I think you might know.
0:00:55 And we’ve got a lot to talk about today,
0:00:59 but first and foremost, our first two episodes, Jessica,
0:01:03 had, are going to, did about 100,000 downloads
0:01:06 in 24 hours, which means they’ll probably do about
0:01:09 200,000 over the next 30 days.
0:01:13 And I believe that means more people in our first week
0:01:15 are listening to Raid Dream Moderates
0:01:18 and are viewing 80% of cable news programming.
0:01:22 So we’re stars, Jessica, we’re stars.
0:01:23 – Mostly you.
0:01:24 I’m just here for the ride.
0:01:26 – Yeah, that’s it.
0:01:27 – Did, am I doing this right?
0:01:30 Was that how I was supposed to get it back to you?
0:01:31 No, it’s really exciting.
0:01:34 And also just kind of understanding the viewership
0:01:38 or listenership versus TV is fascinating for me.
0:01:40 So excited all around.
0:01:43 And I’m glad that the listeners have found
0:01:44 that what we’re talking about is resonating with them.
0:01:48 I have seen some comments that were no moderates,
0:01:50 but a moderate can be someone that votes
0:01:52 for the Democrats, by the way.
0:01:55 But we’ll prove it to them over time.
0:01:56 – Today we’re gonna talk about
0:01:58 the second assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
0:02:00 The aftermath following the presidential debate
0:02:04 and whether Tim Walls is benefiting the Democratic ticket.
0:02:07 So all right, we’re under two months away from election
0:02:08 and things are getting more intense.
0:02:11 The Secret Service is investigating another attempt
0:02:13 to assassination on former President Trump
0:02:16 at his international golf club in Florida.
0:02:17 The gunman, three to 500 yards away,
0:02:22 had an AK-47 style rifle, a GoPro and backpacks
0:02:25 when law enforcement intervened.
0:02:27 I know so little about this, Jessica,
0:02:29 ’cause I’ve been eating haggis
0:02:30 and drinking anything within reach.
0:02:32 Can you kind of break down what happened here
0:02:34 and what you know about it?
0:02:36 – Well, you’re behind most people,
0:02:38 but we don’t know a ton yet.
0:02:42 So it’s not that bad that you’re just joining us on this one.
0:02:44 We’re going to find more in the coming days about it.
0:02:48 And there’ll be another Secret Service investigation into it.
0:02:51 No idea how this guy was even able to get,
0:02:54 I think it was like three or 400 yards away
0:02:56 from the former president.
0:02:59 He has a checkered past convicted felon
0:03:02 who’s still allowed to get guns mentally unstable
0:03:05 so we could have the whole gun reform conversation about that.
0:03:08 His voting history is,
0:03:12 I didn’t know there were people like this that existed.
0:03:14 He voted for Trump in 2016 and 2019.
0:03:16 He was really into Tulsi Gavard,
0:03:18 which to me is also kind of like being into Trump,
0:03:23 but then he wanted Biden to win, which worked out.
0:03:27 And then he wanted a Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley ticket
0:03:32 for 2024, which if you followed the level of vitriol
0:03:34 that the two of them spewed at one another,
0:03:38 you would know that that is maybe slightly more plausible
0:03:42 than a Donald Trump Kamala Harris ticket, but not much.
0:03:45 And the guy was just truly out of his mind.
0:03:50 We don’t know yet what quote unquote inspired him.
0:03:54 The New York Times interviewed him in 2023
0:03:55 and discovered that he was a nut.
0:03:58 He was trying to go and serve in Ukraine,
0:04:01 actually fighting with the Ukrainians.
0:04:02 He’s all over the place.
0:04:04 I’m glad that the former president is safe.
0:04:08 And I think it’s pretty clear that he needs some beefing up
0:04:10 of his detail, which President Biden
0:04:12 said something about that this morning.
0:04:15 And hopefully Congress will just pass something quickly
0:04:17 to give him extra money for protection
0:04:22 because it feels like this is heading towards being a trend.
0:04:25 – What do you think of Elon’s now deleted tweet?
0:04:27 He said, and no one is even trying
0:04:30 to assassinate Biden Kamala.
0:04:33 And he put this out to his 170 million people on X.
0:04:35 Now, what are your thoughts when a guy like that
0:04:38 with so much reach says something like that?
0:04:40 Is it Democrats overreacting and being indignant
0:04:43 as we often are about everything?
0:04:45 Or is it irresponsible?
0:04:46 Or is the answer just yes?
0:04:49 – Yeah, I think it’s yes.
0:04:52 And I actually found his tweet last week
0:04:54 when Taylor Swift endorsed Trump
0:04:56 and he said, okay, I’ll impregnate you
0:04:59 or something like that to be even nuttier
0:05:02 and more offensive than this.
0:05:05 Him saying, why is no one trying to assassinate Biden
0:05:08 /Kamala feels just on brand for someone
0:05:11 who has a level of genius within him
0:05:14 that I’ll never be able to fully grasp even
0:05:18 and has become so terminally online
0:05:22 that he’s incapable of having normal human interaction.
0:05:25 And it fits in nicely with where I think
0:05:29 a certain faction of the Republican party is right now.
0:05:31 And you notice it in the way that JD Vance
0:05:33 has been talking or Donald Trump at the debate
0:05:36 where he just started yelling things that he saw online
0:05:40 or that he saw on TV, which a policy does not make
0:05:43 or a true statement does not make.
0:05:46 But Elon Musk, I think there’s no better encapsulation
0:05:49 of what he has turned Twitter into than that comment.
0:05:53 And when he took it down and justified it, I guess,
0:05:55 by saying, oh, I guess things that you say in private
0:05:58 that are a joke aren’t actually that funny out in the wild.
0:06:01 Like, who was laughing at that in private?
0:06:05 – Yeah, I didn’t, I’m of two minds.
0:06:10 And that is, I think people should be able to say
0:06:11 what they want.
0:06:14 I find that people get very sensitive around,
0:06:16 I don’t know, jumpy around the stuff
0:06:18 when I don’t think people are gonna,
0:06:20 oh, shit, I don’t know, there’s a lot of crazies around there.
0:06:24 But something I’ve thought about is that,
0:06:26 and I think it was my dad said this to me.
0:06:28 He said, have you become more measured
0:06:31 as your audience and followership has grown?
0:06:32 Have you become more measured?
0:06:35 And I said, no, I try to stay as authentic
0:06:36 and as provocative and he’s like,
0:06:38 you should become more measured.
0:06:39 And I said, well, why do you say that?
0:06:41 And he goes, because when you have more reach,
0:06:42 you need to be more thoughtful
0:06:44 about the ramifications of your reach.
0:06:46 And that kind of– – Spider-man, right?
0:06:48 – Right, that just struck me.
0:06:50 And I thought, well, maybe he’s right.
0:06:53 Maybe I should be a little bit more measured or thoughtful.
0:06:56 And not that that’s actually–
0:06:57 – What happened to that?
0:07:00 – Yeah, we’ll see, it’s coming, it’s coming.
0:07:03 – I’m curious, do you think, is there any evidence
0:07:05 the last assassination attempt?
0:07:07 Trump had amazing political instincts.
0:07:10 And that image of him pumping his fist in the air
0:07:12 with blood on his face and the American flag above him,
0:07:16 I believe that will likely be the image of the decade.
0:07:20 I just thought that was, I mean, that was incredible.
0:07:22 And I do think he registered a bit of a bump.
0:07:25 Do you think he’s gonna get a bump from this?
0:07:28 – No, I don’t.
0:07:31 I think that what helped in terms of the bump
0:07:33 with the first assassination attempt is,
0:07:35 first of all, the person got a shot off,
0:07:36 which is not what happened here.
0:07:38 Basically, they took down a guy
0:07:42 who was waiting for Trump a couple holes away.
0:07:46 But someone was unfortunately murdered at that rally
0:07:49 and Trump was bloodied from it hitting his ear.
0:07:51 And then it went into the RNC.
0:07:55 And I think the timing of that worked together,
0:07:59 essentially, to create this martyrdom mood,
0:08:02 which I was feeling firsthand being in Milwaukee.
0:08:04 There was an invincibility about Trump
0:08:06 and the party that happened there.
0:08:09 This feels like an important point of discussion
0:08:11 and something that we need to think about
0:08:15 and how rotten our politics is.
0:08:19 Even if this wasn’t necessarily politics motivated,
0:08:21 but how dangerous it is for politicians,
0:08:23 which is something that we’re seeing across the board.
0:08:27 But I don’t expect Trump will be redeemed
0:08:31 from a bad debate performance by a bump from this guy.
0:08:35 – We’ll be right back.
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0:11:01 Okay, moving on, let’s talk about the debate.
0:11:03 67 million people tuned in,
0:11:06 15 million more than the Biden-Trump debate back in June.
0:11:07 Pundits are calling it a loss for Trump
0:11:09 and saying Harris baited him
0:11:10 while avoiding going deep into policy,
0:11:13 but ultimately, it’s the voters whose opinion matters.
0:11:16 It’s been somewhere between two thirds and 70% thought
0:11:18 that Harris won the debate,
0:11:21 15 million more than Biden-Trump debates back in June.
0:11:23 Still, plenty of voters didn’t watch it.
0:11:26 The polling data I’ve seen says the following.
0:11:29 She won, and it kind of doesn’t matter.
0:11:30 What are your thoughts?
0:11:35 Agreed, she won, the kind of on the more rosy side of it.
0:11:42 She needed to prove that she was capable of this job,
0:11:44 that she could look presidential
0:11:46 and that she could open herself up
0:11:48 to the public more than she had.
0:11:50 And I might have frankly underestimated
0:11:54 how much that was bugging people who were unsure
0:11:56 or even were going to vote for her,
0:11:58 but wanted her to do a bit more work
0:12:00 in terms of earning that vote.
0:12:01 And it was interesting,
0:12:03 I was listening to the Daily this morning
0:12:05 and they had undecided voters on,
0:12:06 they’ve been, it’s actually really cool.
0:12:08 They have like a long-term tracking study
0:12:11 with these voters following them through everything,
0:12:14 people through Biden being the candidate,
0:12:16 not being the candidate in Trump assassination,
0:12:17 the debate, et cetera.
0:12:18 And there was one woman who they interviewed,
0:12:22 she’s in her 40s, has two daughters.
0:12:26 And she said, I’m still not exactly sure what I’m going to do.
0:12:28 I was leaning towards writing someone in,
0:12:30 but now that I saw the debate,
0:12:31 I feel like I can make more of a choice,
0:12:33 which she didn’t say it was gonna be Kamala Harris,
0:12:36 but that was implied from what she was saying
0:12:39 and her concerns about Donald Trump.
0:12:42 There is that snap reaction polling
0:12:44 that showed that for the undecideds,
0:12:47 her favorability went up pretty substantially
0:12:48 in the double digits,
0:12:50 but there were a slew of polls that came out
0:12:52 over the weekend.
0:12:56 I won’t bore everyone with like 40 minutes on polls,
0:12:59 but what has been really important to see is
0:13:02 she’s crossing the 50% threshold in a couple of them.
0:13:05 And these were all grade A or grade B pollsters,
0:13:07 so not pieces of trash
0:13:09 that people like to run around amplifying.
0:13:11 She’s gaining like an ABC/Ipsos poll,
0:13:14 she’s gaining with Black voters, Latino voters,
0:13:18 and Gen Z voters, critical components of a win.
0:13:20 She’s not quite at Biden’s numbers from 2020,
0:13:21 but inching that way.
0:13:25 And then I don’t know if the Ann Selzer poll from Iowa
0:13:28 permeated the Haggis bubble in Aberdeen.
0:13:30 – Haggis bubble, that’s good.
0:13:33 – Yeah, you can keep that. – You’re learning, that’s good.
0:13:34 – But it was a really big deal.
0:13:36 So Ann Selzer is known to be
0:13:39 one of the most accurate pollsters in the country.
0:13:41 She had Biden down 18 to Trump
0:13:44 when he had Trump won by eight in 2020.
0:13:46 And she just released a survey showing
0:13:47 that Kamala is only down four.
0:13:49 Now, do I think she’s winning Iowa?
0:13:52 Absolutely not, but it’s a really important bellwether
0:13:55 for how white Midwestern voters
0:13:57 are feeling about Kamala Harris.
0:14:00 And that then bodes well for Wisconsin and Michigan as well.
0:14:01 And maybe a little bit of Pennsylvania,
0:14:05 but that seems like it’s going to be the real difficult piece
0:14:09 of this puzzle for the Harris campaign.
0:14:11 – So Trump would never admit defeat,
0:14:13 but we’ve seen some of his most loyal supporters,
0:14:17 including your Fox News colleague, Neil Cavuto,
0:14:21 RFK Jr. and Frank Lund,
0:14:24 saying that the debate likely cost him the election.
0:14:26 How do you, do you think?
0:14:28 I thought it was something like that.
0:14:30 I would have thought, and I guess it’s not his brand,
0:14:33 but you’re, I mean, you’re an expert in messaging and data.
0:14:35 I would have thought that he should have said,
0:14:36 I had a bad night.
0:14:37 She was great, congratulations.
0:14:39 Check out our policies.
0:14:40 I’ll be a better president.
0:14:41 She’s a better debater.
0:14:42 I’ll be a better president.
0:14:44 Instead, he went into the spin room,
0:14:47 which I thought was almost a little bit desperate
0:14:51 and is trying to recast it as, no, just ignore everything.
0:14:52 I won.
0:14:53 How do you think he’s handled the debate?
0:14:54 – Right, like, I hope you blacked out
0:14:56 for the last 97 minutes.
0:14:59 And here I am to tell you about, they’re eating the cats.
0:15:01 They’re eating the dogs.
0:15:03 I now sing that whole thing in TikTok form,
0:15:04 which I don’t have on my phone,
0:15:07 but you can actually go on TikTok on your computer
0:15:10 without inviting it into your life.
0:15:15 You know, Donald Trump, his ego and his need for attention
0:15:16 just kicked into high gear.
0:15:18 And that’s why he went into the spin room
0:15:20 and kind of watching who the Republicans had
0:15:22 versus who the Democrats had.
0:15:23 You know, we had the best in class.
0:15:26 Gavin Newsom out there, Josh Shapiro out there.
0:15:30 But I do think that there is a case to be made
0:15:32 for Donald Trump not hurting himself that badly
0:15:35 in the debate for people who were looking
0:15:37 for a clear vision from Kamala Harris
0:15:40 and actually answering the explicit question.
0:15:42 And we talked about that a little with the,
0:15:43 you know, the first question was,
0:15:45 are you better off today than you were four years ago?
0:15:48 And she didn’t answer that on immigration.
0:15:50 Now, I really, I agree with the answer
0:15:52 that the bipartisan border bill
0:15:53 would make a huge difference.
0:15:56 Lots of conservative Republicans even agree with that.
0:16:00 But like, Secretary Mayorkas is on with Azra Klein
0:16:01 on his latest podcast.
0:16:03 And Azra Klein is really struggling
0:16:05 to get that answer to the question.
0:16:08 Why did you do nothing for three years?
0:16:11 And for people who are going to vote on immigration
0:16:13 or that’s going to be in their top three,
0:16:15 they want at least some sort of answer.
0:16:18 If you want to say, well, we needed more cheap labor,
0:16:20 I accept that.
0:16:24 Or we thought it wasn’t going to get this overwhelming.
0:16:25 I accept that.
0:16:25 It’s a tricky period.
0:16:28 You’re in COVID, everyone’s being held.
0:16:30 Then suddenly the floodgates open.
0:16:31 We were overwhelmed.
0:16:33 We made X, Y, and Z mistakes.
0:16:35 This is what we’re doing to fix it.
0:16:36 And so if you were someone looking
0:16:37 for that kind of specificity,
0:16:39 and like Brett Stevens, for instance,
0:16:40 is someone looking for that,
0:16:44 I hope he’s going to end up voting for her in the end.
0:16:48 But she didn’t satisfy that itch for a lot of people.
0:16:50 And that’s why I think a second debate or town halls
0:16:54 where I think she would really shine would help her case.
0:16:59 – So Trump is now saying it’s not going to debate her again.
0:17:01 Do you think that’s the smart move?
0:17:03 – I think that they could both.
0:17:06 It’s weird, I’m a Pollyanna about many things in life.
0:17:10 And I know that winning is the ultimate goal for everyone.
0:17:12 But I do think that people,
0:17:14 the American public deserves the best person for the job.
0:17:17 And the best person for the job should be the person
0:17:19 who can show up in a bunch of different forums,
0:17:22 explain themselves, connect with people,
0:17:25 have policies that satisfy the widest swath of voters.
0:17:28 And so I think that he should,
0:17:31 for people who are on the fence and saw him behave
0:17:32 like a petulant toddler,
0:17:34 he could do a lot better.
0:17:36 And I think he could also interact with her better.
0:17:39 There’s a clip floating around on Twitter,
0:17:41 or X, whatever I’m supposed to call it,
0:17:43 from 2016 when he was debating Hillary,
0:17:46 and not only is his cognitive decline
0:17:48 on full display up until now,
0:17:51 but he’s really kind of nice to her.
0:17:53 – It’s been defective for a long time, many years,
0:17:56 but the politicians haven’t done anything about it.
0:18:00 Now, an all fair is to Secretary Clinton, yes.
0:18:01 Is that okay?
0:18:04 Good, I want you to be very happy.
0:18:05 It’s very important to me.
0:18:07 But an all fairness to Secretary Clinton.
0:18:09 – He says, I want you to be happy.
0:18:10 I want you to be very happy.
0:18:12 And it made me think back to the night that he won,
0:18:14 which surprised him more than anyone.
0:18:16 Remember, he told her, you come out and you say,
0:18:19 whatever you want, whenever is good for you.
0:18:21 There’s no need for you to make a speech right now
0:18:24 at three o’clock in the morning or whenever it got called.
0:18:28 And he seemed much more humane in that version
0:18:32 versus what we saw or continue to see right now in 2024.
0:18:34 So I think he could help himself.
0:18:37 And I think Kamala would continue to build
0:18:40 on this goodwill that’s beginning to burn for her.
0:18:43 – Your point is a good one that if you’re gonna try
0:18:46 and present or you think that you’re presenting
0:18:47 to the people that you’re the person
0:18:49 that should be presented to carry the flag
0:18:52 in almost any context or the most important contexts,
0:18:53 I should say around the world,
0:18:56 that you should be subject to all sorts of formats.
0:18:59 That one of the reasons we’ve had such exceptional people
0:19:01 as presidents of the nation
0:19:03 is we battle test this shit out of him.
0:19:05 Fred Smith was not gonna be present.
0:19:09 Rudy Giuliani, Herman Cain were all at one point
0:19:11 leading in the polls.
0:19:13 And as soon as they kind of got on stage
0:19:15 and people started battle testing–
0:19:17 – Ted Cruz won Iowa.
0:19:18 – Ted Cruz won Iowa, right.
0:19:20 As soon as we started power washing them
0:19:23 and they went into combat, they just fell away.
0:19:26 And that process does produce really impressive people.
0:19:29 But what you said about as your lead up
0:19:31 that Trump should do another debate,
0:19:33 I would bet that a lot of people
0:19:34 who are Trump supporters are saying,
0:19:37 “Are we talking about Trump or Kamala?”
0:19:41 Because she has not opened herself to a lot of formats.
0:19:42 – I think that’s totally fair.
0:19:46 She did a local ABC Philly interview.
0:19:48 I think he came out on Friday.
0:19:49 But she definitely has to.
0:19:53 And I think Trump had wanted a Fox debate
0:19:55 after the moderators who he said
0:19:56 we’re in the tank for her,
0:19:59 which I do not see that bias existing.
0:20:01 But he says he wants,
0:20:03 it can’t be Brett Bear and Martha McCallum.
0:20:05 Now he wants Sean Hannity and Lauren Grum and Jesse Waters
0:20:06 to do it.
0:20:08 So obviously that’s a non-starter.
0:20:10 But I think that Kamala should just come out and say,
0:20:12 if he’s not gonna debate on Fox,
0:20:15 I’m gonna sit down with Brett Bear and myself.
0:20:18 And Brett will give her a fair interview.
0:20:20 One of the worst interviews that has ever existed
0:20:22 for Donald Trump was actually with Brett
0:20:24 when he read off all the horrible things that people–
0:20:26 – All the secretaries, all the people
0:20:27 who no longer wanna work with him.
0:20:28 – Exactly.
0:20:31 – That Ford is 44 secretaries are supporting him.
0:20:34 – Yeah, it’s very slim pickings over there.
0:20:36 But she should do it.
0:20:37 And it’s a little selfish.
0:20:40 I would love it if she came on the network that I work for.
0:20:42 But it’s also where the persuadable voters are.
0:20:43 And I think that, you know,
0:20:45 Mayor Pete has really proven that out
0:20:48 as being a good strategy for Democrats to show up.
0:20:51 Gavin Newsom as well, Mark Kelly’s been coming on.
0:20:54 I think it’s really good for a public
0:20:57 that might not feel thrilled about their choices
0:21:00 to see you showing up and doing the difficult things.
0:21:02 – Yeah, look, if you wanna be part of the resistance,
0:21:03 you have to get behind enemy lines.
0:21:06 But the people you referenced, Mayor Pete
0:21:07 or Secretary Buttigieg–
0:21:10 – I should say Secretary Pete or I should say Buttigieg.
0:21:13 It’s just so Mayor Pete is so good.
0:21:17 – Well, yeah, but him and Governor Newsom,
0:21:20 they, I believe in my view, they’re better
0:21:22 facing the opposing party than when they’re on their own party
0:21:26 because they are so outstanding at sort of very,
0:21:29 I think when Governor Newsom goes on friendly TV,
0:21:32 I think it’s a handsome vanilla mooring guy.
0:21:34 When he debates Governor DeSantis,
0:21:36 I think he tore him limb from limb and he’s really good.
0:21:38 I think the same is true of Secretary Pete.
0:21:40 Vice President Harris hasn’t demonstrated
0:21:41 that ability to go mind enemy lines.
0:21:44 And I think the people probably advising her
0:21:47 aren’t sure it’s a good idea because I think,
0:21:50 Brett Baird would be fair,
0:21:53 but quite frankly, he’s just gonna put to her
0:21:55 a level of questioning that I’m not sure,
0:21:57 we don’t know if she’d be good at this.
0:21:59 We both believe she should do it.
0:22:01 I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do
0:22:03 from a winning standpoint.
0:22:07 Trump is terrible when he gets in front of an opposing party.
0:22:08 He starts calling them nasty
0:22:11 or starts insulting that network.
0:22:14 I saw what I thought was just a cringe-worthy interview.
0:22:15 I love Dana Bash.
0:22:17 I think she’s very measured.
0:22:19 And I think she’s great at what she does.
0:22:23 And she interviewed Senator Vance.
0:22:25 And talking about this, well, first off,
0:22:28 just in case you’re one of the 2% of people
0:22:31 that haven’t heard it, let’s play the clip from Trump
0:22:34 about locking up Fluffy and Zoe
0:22:36 because they are under threat from Haitian immigrants.
0:22:37 Let’s play that.
0:22:39 – Look at what’s happening to the towns
0:22:41 all over the United States.
0:22:42 And a lot of towns don’t wanna talk.
0:22:44 It’s not gonna be Aurora or Springfield.
0:22:46 A lot of towns don’t wanna talk about it
0:22:48 because they’re so embarrassed by it.
0:22:51 In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,
0:22:53 the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,
0:22:58 they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.
0:23:02 And this is what’s happening in our country.
0:23:03 And it’s a shame.
0:23:05 – So Senator Vance came on and Dana Bash
0:23:08 immediately said, look, this is causing problems
0:23:13 in Springfield, Ohio, that this is creating
0:23:14 a lot of unnecessary attention.
0:23:16 It’s bad for our economy.
0:23:20 It’s creating a spectacle of Springfield.
0:23:21 We’re worried it’s gonna be bad
0:23:24 in terms of our ability to actually solve the problem.
0:23:26 Can you please stop?
0:23:29 And she said, why are you spreading baseless claims?
0:23:32 And he said, well, when my constituents call me
0:23:35 with a concern, I have a responsibility.
0:23:38 And she kept pressing him and he went on
0:23:40 very much on the offensive and said,
0:23:42 that’s outrageous if you would accuse me
0:23:44 of inciting problems.
0:23:46 He went into the outrage misdirect
0:23:49 and I couldn’t figure out if it was bad for CNN
0:23:52 and Dana or bad for Senator Vance.
0:23:56 But I feel as if Senator Vance and Linda Yacarino
0:23:58 literally have the worst jobs in the world.
0:24:00 That they’re the circus clown falling around,
0:24:03 scooping up the shit of an elephant.
0:24:07 They’re like, okay, you go defend this ridiculousness.
0:24:11 And he has to pretend that this is actually going on
0:24:12 and it was a reasonable thing to say.
0:24:14 I don’t, is this a giant?
0:24:17 Should the Harris campaign continue to press
0:24:19 on the ridiculousness of that statement
0:24:20 or should they move on?
0:24:23 I’m almost getting a little sick of talking about it.
0:24:26 – Again, and I think I said this last week,
0:24:29 we’re not really the target audience anymore for this.
0:24:31 We can evaluate these things.
0:24:33 And I think our opinions are worth something
0:24:36 and hopefully our many listeners agree with that.
0:24:40 But if you need to get out to sometimes low information
0:24:42 undecided voters,
0:24:44 I think you do need to keep talking about these things.
0:24:46 But the way that you do it is important.
0:24:50 Like dunking on JD Vance, like he’s been dunked on a lot
0:24:51 and it’s working, right?
0:24:54 His approval rating is the lowest of anyone,
0:24:56 you know, certainly of his ticket.
0:24:59 Like he’s a point lower even than Trump,
0:25:01 which is astounding.
0:25:02 And Walls is in positive territory
0:25:05 and Kamala is just barely in positive territory,
0:25:06 but she is now.
0:25:08 But I think that what you need to focus on
0:25:10 is the fact that he admitted
0:25:12 that sometimes you have to create stories.
0:25:14 So he owned up to faking it.
0:25:16 And then tie that into the fact
0:25:18 that Trump was talking later
0:25:20 and talking about his deportation force,
0:25:22 that he’s going to go to Springfield.
0:25:24 And these are legal immigrants
0:25:25 that he said that he’s going to round up
0:25:27 and send to Venezuela,
0:25:30 which is not Haiti last time I checked.
0:25:32 – It’s close.
0:25:33 It’s close.
0:25:35 – Close but no cigar on that one.
0:25:39 And I think that when you contextualize it
0:25:42 in terms of how inhumane these people are
0:25:47 in the way they talk about people of immigrants,
0:25:49 people of color as well,
0:25:50 that that’s something that can be resonant
0:25:52 to folks who are on the fence.
0:25:54 Now from the GOP side,
0:25:57 that thinks that our cities are overrun
0:25:59 and the country is going to hell in a handbasket
0:26:01 because of immigration
0:26:03 and isn’t really separating legal
0:26:05 versus illegal immigration.
0:26:07 You know, they’re looking at the fact
0:26:08 that the Harris campaign,
0:26:09 and I referenced before, you know,
0:26:12 my orcas being on and talking about
0:26:13 what’s gone on on the border for a while,
0:26:15 that the Democrats don’t seem to really have
0:26:19 a cogent answer for what the solution is going to be.
0:26:22 So for people who do live in places
0:26:24 where for instance rec centers
0:26:26 that are for low income kids
0:26:29 are being taken over as migrant shelters
0:26:31 or have classrooms that are being flooded
0:26:33 with people that don’t necessarily speak the language
0:26:35 or ERs or all of these very real problems
0:26:38 they’re having as a result of the migrant crisis.
0:26:40 The fact that JD Vance and Donald Trump
0:26:42 are even talking about it at all
0:26:43 versus saying like, oh, you know,
0:26:46 we have a fancy bipartisan bill.
0:26:48 Like a bill is not a solution to people,
0:26:49 especially when they know that the bill
0:26:51 isn’t going to be passed.
0:26:55 And now there’s another survey out in FT survey
0:26:57 that showed Kamala Harris really closing the gap
0:26:58 on the economy.
0:27:00 She was even up a point or two
0:27:01 that people get that she cares about
0:27:03 average Americans, middle class Americans.
0:27:04 He’s for the wealthy.
0:27:06 But if you look at it on the immigration issue,
0:27:08 he’s still up like 14 points on that.
0:27:10 And so whatever she’s messaging on it
0:27:13 isn’t resonating in a way
0:27:15 that I think is going to move the needle in that direction.
0:27:18 And for Nikki Haley voters who are the top,
0:27:20 you know, up for grabs and top priority,
0:27:23 they also said immigration was their top issue
0:27:24 in the primary.
0:27:27 And the campaign hasn’t been that responsive to it.
0:27:30 – Senator Kelly said something
0:27:32 I thought that was pretty, pretty interesting.
0:27:36 He said that Republicans aren’t sincere
0:27:40 about immigration and Democrats don’t understand it.
0:27:43 And what I take more of a,
0:27:45 my sense is money always wins.
0:27:47 And that if you want to look at something,
0:27:51 when I serve on a board and the CEO is behaving strangely
0:27:54 or we can’t figure out why store managers
0:27:56 aren’t collecting email or whatever,
0:27:58 let’s go to the compensation.
0:28:00 Let’s just go to the money, money always wins.
0:28:01 It’s around incentives.
0:28:03 And I believe our lack of an immigration policy
0:28:06 over the last 40 years has primarily been
0:28:08 because, and people don’t talk about this,
0:28:10 people talk a lot about the morality of immigration
0:28:12 and how it’s part of our DNA
0:28:13 in that it’s good for America.
0:28:17 And 20% of the NASDAQ by market capitalization
0:28:22 is from first generation Indian Americans who immigrated here.
0:28:26 So there’s a ton of like spiritual and chest beating
0:28:30 and flag waving notions of immigration.
0:28:31 I think the most beneficial
0:28:32 or one of the most beneficial things
0:28:34 about immigration is a subset of it.
0:28:37 And that is illegal immigration.
0:28:39 And if you think about undocumented workers,
0:28:41 they come across the border,
0:28:43 they pay social security taxes,
0:28:44 but they usually don’t stick around
0:28:46 to collect social security benefits.
0:28:49 They are the most profitable immigrants in history,
0:28:51 specifically undocumented workers
0:28:53 and all this bullshit about,
0:28:56 and you’ll find examples of this of them being criminals,
0:29:00 they actually commit crimes at a lower rate than citizens.
0:29:04 And I think we’ve figured out this flexible workforce
0:29:08 that comes in, picks grapes, takes care of grandma
0:29:12 at a lower cost, lower tax, lower taxation
0:29:14 or lower strain on our social services,
0:29:17 in that we haven’t wanted to fix this problem
0:29:19 because we make a shit ton of money from illegal
0:29:21 or undocumented workers
0:29:22 and we’re willing to pay the price
0:29:23 of some of the externalities.
0:29:25 Now the point, you know, the question is,
0:29:28 at some point does it become so out of control
0:29:29 that it’s no longer worth it?
0:29:31 And I think a lot of people have decided
0:29:33 that we’ve gotten to that point.
0:29:34 Any thoughts?
0:29:36 – No, I totally agree.
0:29:38 My dad was a winemaker in Oregon.
0:29:40 So, you know, dealing with the seasonal workers
0:29:43 was something that was built into conversations
0:29:45 that we were, you know, having around the dinner table
0:29:48 and how also incredible these people were
0:29:51 and what kind of bastions of the community they were.
0:29:53 And I thought a lot about,
0:29:55 do you remember there was a proposal
0:29:58 that came out of the California State Assembly
0:30:01 a few weeks ago about giving loans
0:30:04 to undocumented people to buy a home.
0:30:08 And it became this lightning rod thing,
0:30:11 you know, Newsom was basically like, I’m gonna veto this.
0:30:13 No matter what, the politics are terrible.
0:30:16 Nancy Pelosi was asked about it when she was on Bill Maher.
0:30:21 But I was frustrated that it didn’t get into the conversation
0:30:24 that, A, these were people who were paying taxes,
0:30:25 like you said, as most of them are,
0:30:27 and then they don’t necessarily hang around
0:30:28 to claim it on the backside of it,
0:30:30 but that they were people who had to qualify
0:30:33 by our federal mortgage rate standards.
0:30:36 Like these just weren’t people streaming across the border
0:30:40 where we said, oh, here’s $150,000, go have fun.
0:30:41 You know, these are people who were established
0:30:43 in the community had earned enough
0:30:46 to be able to qualify for a mortgage
0:30:48 to get on the property ladder.
0:30:50 And I think that that’s somewhere
0:30:52 that Democrats can really lean into those conversations,
0:30:54 not necessarily in an election year
0:30:56 where it’s going to be distorted.
0:31:00 And I haven’t gone into the fine tuning of the policy,
0:31:04 I was just surprised to hear how it was being spoken about
0:31:07 without all of the real information behind it
0:31:08 or at least coming to light
0:31:12 to make it a more fair and balanced conversation.
0:31:14 But those are the types of immigration conundrums
0:31:18 that I feel like the American public is ready to deal with.
0:31:20 But when you have border crossings,
0:31:23 the way that it has been kind of before Biden’s executive order,
0:31:25 which I guess is now a couple of months old
0:31:28 and cut it what, 55% or something like that.
0:31:30 You know, if you see these images of people streaming in
0:31:32 and equal pass somewhere
0:31:34 that can only hold 10,000, 15,000 people
0:31:37 is getting thousands a day of people coming there
0:31:39 that no one’s actually going to have
0:31:42 that real conversation about the seasonal workers,
0:31:44 the people who work in your homes
0:31:46 who oftentimes raise your children
0:31:48 and take care of your parents
0:31:51 when they’re dying with the level of empathy and care
0:31:55 that I can’t even fathom summoning from myself
0:31:59 as someone who loved my father deeply.
0:32:02 The people who cared for him, it was next level,
0:32:05 like angel level stuff.
0:32:08 And no one, I guess it’s Markely’s point,
0:32:12 you know, no one really wants to be real about this,
0:32:17 even if now the migrants are in Chicago and New York
0:32:21 and Baltimore at higher rates than they ever had been before.
0:32:24 – Also think, and I’m by no means an expert on this issue,
0:32:27 but I think it’s unhealthy.
0:32:29 I think we need to separate the border
0:32:32 from immigration policy because, I mean,
0:32:34 the majority of my understanding is about half
0:32:38 or more of undocumented workers are just overstayers.
0:32:41 They come here legally on a visa and they just stay.
0:32:43 And I think a disproportionate amount
0:32:46 of undocumented workers get here on a plane.
0:32:49 They fly over any wall that we’re planning on building.
0:32:54 And the other, I’ve always thought at the end of the day,
0:32:56 if we were serious about this,
0:32:58 it wouldn’t be that hard to fix.
0:33:01 And that is use some sort of biometric program
0:33:05 and any employer caught with an undocumented worker
0:33:06 pays a $25,000 fine.
0:33:12 And the moment you have on the demand side shrink up
0:33:13 where people are like, oh shit,
0:33:17 if I have five guys in my kitchen and if I get caught
0:33:21 and I can’t and someone comes in and scans their eyes
0:33:23 and says, this is an undocumented worker.
0:33:24 You did not check.
0:33:28 You did not call us five times 25,000, 125 grand.
0:33:33 In my opinion, the whole thing’s over.
0:33:37 – Yeah, but is that the result that you want?
0:33:40 I mean, do you want people who are busting their asses
0:33:43 working in the kitchens at the restaurants
0:33:46 that we all go and sit in to be thrown out?
0:33:48 – Oh, I want to be clear.
0:33:51 I think this is a boon in the American economy.
0:33:52 I’ll use a personal example.
0:33:57 I was renovating a house and I was trying to fix up a house,
0:34:00 didn’t have a lot of money
0:34:05 and had trouble finding people to do a certain job.
0:34:07 My general contractor said, come with me.
0:34:10 We went to this local 7-Eleven,
0:34:14 bunch of undocumented workers, I assume, rush the pickup.
0:34:17 He asked some questions in Spanish.
0:34:19 Six guys jumped in, went to the site,
0:34:20 went to the construction site.
0:34:23 These guys like, they worked around the clock,
0:34:25 around the clock.
0:34:28 They each had a specific skill.
0:34:29 I mean, Jesus Christ,
0:34:32 this is like the most unbelievable workforce
0:34:33 I have ever seen.
0:34:35 And I thought this is,
0:34:38 no wonder people are turning a blind eye to this
0:34:41 because this is just such a flexible, efficient workforce.
0:34:45 I absolutely think these folks do great work
0:34:47 and deserve more empathy.
0:34:49 What I’m saying is I just think it’s cynical,
0:34:53 all these calls for border protection.
0:34:55 – I take it back, you’re not a bad person.
0:35:00 – If for whatever reason, rationally or irrationally,
0:35:02 you wanted to stem the flow,
0:35:06 just punish the employer because once demand drives it,
0:35:08 but that’s never an option
0:35:10 because those are nice white Republicans
0:35:12 employing those people.
0:35:14 We don’t go to the source.
0:35:15 You’re never gonna,
0:35:17 if you can’t keep drugs out of prison,
0:35:21 the notion that you’re gonna keep talented resourceful people
0:35:24 out of opportunity and economic wellbeing
0:35:25 because there’s some fucking wall
0:35:27 or some sort of border control,
0:35:30 there’s no way you would have to,
0:35:32 it strikes me if we ever got serious
0:35:34 about quote unquote undocumented workers,
0:35:37 it would be a lot less complex than people think,
0:35:39 it would be going after the demand side
0:35:41 and just punishing the employers,
0:35:43 but no one wants to talk about that
0:35:45 ’cause those are good Americans.
0:35:48 Anyways, I don’t think we’re serious about this problem.
0:35:49 – Well, we’re definitely not
0:35:52 and we’re gonna lose elections because of it
0:35:53 or Democrats are.
0:35:55 I mean, it was one of I think the strongest arguments
0:35:58 for putting Mark Kelly on the ticket.
0:36:00 I mean, he has the best bio ever
0:36:05 and Gabby Giffords is otherworldly impressive and inspiring.
0:36:08 I mean, we would have lost,
0:36:09 potentially lost the Arizona Senate seat.
0:36:12 So I think Chuck Schumer lost his mind about that,
0:36:15 but having a Democrat that is conversant
0:36:18 in the mechanics of immigration,
0:36:19 like you say from the border,
0:36:22 but also what happens once they’re here
0:36:27 and what life looks like from a humane and kind perspective,
0:36:29 but also a realist perspective,
0:36:32 I think would have been of huge value.
0:36:36 And I know we’re gonna dip into talking about
0:36:39 whether walls has panned out to be the best choice
0:36:40 for all of that.
0:36:41 If you’re talking about immigration,
0:36:45 I’m picking Mark Kelly 10 times out of 10 over Tim Walls
0:36:48 in terms of talking about it.
0:36:49 – Well, he’s on the border
0:36:51 and he speaks eloquently on it.
0:36:53 Let’s use that.
0:36:55 So by the way, just as I was saying, it didn’t matter.
0:36:56 I’m now looking at some polls
0:36:58 that our producer Caroline pulled together.
0:37:01 And we have new Reuters episodes.
0:37:04 National polls shows Harris leading by five points, 47, 42.
0:37:09 The Economist poll shows Harris up by three, 49 to 46.
0:37:12 A CNN flash poll, a majority of debate watchers
0:37:13 say Harris outperforms Trump.
0:37:15 Yeah, we know that.
0:37:18 But it does look like, my understanding is
0:37:21 she has to solidly get more,
0:37:23 she has to be up by two or three points
0:37:25 to win the electoral college.
0:37:26 That accurate?
0:37:27 – Yeah, that’s right.
0:37:29 And I know you had Nate Silver on
0:37:33 and his probability forecast is a bit of an outlier now,
0:37:36 but he has some new numbers up about the odds
0:37:38 of many different things happening.
0:37:42 But what’s so sick to me about our system
0:37:43 is Republicans don’t even try
0:37:45 to win the popular vote anymore.
0:37:49 Like the idea of trying to win a majority of voters
0:37:50 is out the window.
0:37:52 And it’s just a game of chess,
0:37:55 figuring out what states you can cobble together for this.
0:37:57 And Kamala, yeah, in two points,
0:38:00 I would still be sweating going into election night
0:38:02 if she was three or four points.
0:38:03 People would feel a lot better
0:38:05 about her odds of winning the electoral college.
0:38:08 But I should say the Fox forecast came out
0:38:09 at the end of last week.
0:38:12 And two pivotal states, Georgia and North Carolina,
0:38:16 which were lean Republican, are now toss-ups.
0:38:18 And the Harris campaign is a very serious
0:38:20 about North Carolina.
0:38:23 I mean, they’ve shown a capacity to win Georgia before.
0:38:24 And I think Trump, you know,
0:38:26 whoever gave him his come to Jesus moment
0:38:28 about being nice to Brian Kemp,
0:38:30 you know, finally got through on that one.
0:38:34 But North Carolina would be a fascinating pickup
0:38:35 for Democrats.
0:38:36 – And that’s where money comes in.
0:38:39 They now have the money to sort of put in field offices
0:38:42 and go hard after states where they maybe only have
0:38:43 a one in five chance of winning,
0:38:45 but they have a one in five chance of winning.
0:38:49 It feels like this is where those hundreds of millions
0:38:51 that she’s out raising him right now
0:38:54 would be really powerful.
0:38:57 Stay with us.
0:39:05 I think one of the biggest problems in America
0:39:07 is that we have minority rule.
0:39:10 And that is, you know, 20% of our population
0:39:13 has 80% of the senators, whether you look at gun control.
0:39:17 I mean, there’s just, whether you look at the majority
0:39:19 of Americans favor bodily autonomy.
0:39:20 We really do have minority rule
0:39:22 on some of the most important issues.
0:39:25 And I would argue, I think a lot about marketing,
0:39:29 the three best marketers in the world by sector or groups.
0:39:31 First and foremost, the best marketers in history
0:39:33 were the tobacco guys.
0:39:35 When your product’s primary benefits
0:39:36 are death, disease, and disability,
0:39:38 and you’ve convinced people that it’s cool,
0:39:42 and you sell a product at 96 points a margin, unbelievable.
0:39:43 Actually, I’ll do four.
0:39:46 My industry is the only industry in the world
0:39:48 that can charge a six-figure price tag
0:39:51 at 97 points of gross profit margin,
0:39:53 and artificially creates scarcity,
0:39:55 becoming forces to cast system.
0:39:57 In some, we’re sort of mendacious fox
0:39:58 that wake up every morning and say,
0:40:00 how do I reduce my accountability
0:40:01 while increasing my compensation?
0:40:04 I know despite sitting on the GDP of Costa Rica,
0:40:06 I’m only gonna let in 1,500 people
0:40:08 ’cause it makes me feel good about myself.
0:40:10 We’re the best marketers in the world.
0:40:12 MIT, Stanford, Harvard are the best brands in the world.
0:40:14 It’s not Apple.
0:40:19 Number three would be the industrial financial complex.
0:40:22 Anyone on CNBC, hedge funds, mutual funds,
0:40:24 it’s all a total fucking grift.
0:40:28 If you took every single hedge fund, mutual fund, 401K,
0:40:30 everything you’re in, and you added it all up,
0:40:32 it’s exactly underperformed the S&P
0:40:33 by the amount of the fees.
0:40:36 We should all just put our money in low-cost index funds.
0:40:40 The entire financial industrial complex is a giant grift,
0:40:42 but they put some old guy in suspenders
0:40:44 and the Wall Street Journal on CNBC
0:40:45 and we’re under the impression
0:40:46 he actually understands which way the market
0:40:49 is gonna go, spoiler alert, he doesn’t.
0:40:51 And then my rounding it out,
0:40:53 the fourth best marketers in the world
0:40:54 are the Republican Party,
0:40:55 who as far as I can tell,
0:40:59 spends 70 or 80% of their energies
0:41:01 representing the top 1% in corporations
0:41:04 and yet every year get about 47% of the vote.
0:41:08 That is an incredible feat to convince these people
0:41:12 that yeah, we’re for you when really at the end of the day,
0:41:15 who they really represent our corporations
0:41:16 and the Uber wealthy.
0:41:18 Anyways, that’s my TED Talk around marketing.
0:41:19 Any thoughts, Jessica?
0:41:22 – I agree with it and my question would be,
0:41:24 do you think that the Republicans are really that good
0:41:28 or that the Dems are really that bad?
0:41:32 – Yes, I think that’s the correct question.
0:41:34 So just as we wrap up here,
0:41:37 let’s touch base on Walls being the VP pick.
0:41:38 We had Nate Silver on the property pod
0:41:40 as you referenced a few weeks ago
0:41:45 and he thinks that we should have picked Shapiro.
0:41:48 By the way, I was really hoping for Shapiro
0:41:50 and looking back now,
0:41:52 I actually think Walls was the right choice
0:41:55 because I think capturing younger men
0:41:59 around sort of this aspirational vision of masculinity
0:42:02 is serving them really well.
0:42:03 Republicans argue that Walls
0:42:06 has pushed a very progressive agenda in Minnesota,
0:42:08 whereas Democrats see him as someone
0:42:09 with strong Midwestern appeal
0:42:11 who connects with everyday voters.
0:42:12 What are your thoughts?
0:42:15 How would you evaluate Walls’ performance so far?
0:42:19 – So I’d bifurcate it into two buckets.
0:42:21 So one is the feels bucket
0:42:23 and then one is like the practicality bucket.
0:42:25 And on the feels,
0:42:28 I think that he’s been a fantastic partner for her.
0:42:30 And I don’t wanna make this about gender,
0:42:35 but I think that a female candidate for president,
0:42:37 especially one who has been shaky in the past
0:42:40 and has had a tough time with the press,
0:42:43 she wasn’t successful in the 2020 primary,
0:42:45 obviously to get the Democratic nomination.
0:42:47 I think it matters a hell of a lot
0:42:50 that she picked the person who she felt supported by,
0:42:52 who she connected with,
0:42:55 who’s as a couple, her and Doug connected
0:42:58 with Tim Walls and Gwen Walls.
0:43:00 And I think that she does better
0:43:02 when she feels good about herself.
0:43:03 And you saw that post-debate.
0:43:05 If you watched, she did a rally,
0:43:07 I think it was in North Carolina the day after.
0:43:10 And she was loose and fun.
0:43:12 And there was substance in it,
0:43:14 but there was a joy and not in the
0:43:15 we’re coconut pill joy way,
0:43:20 like a genuine joy in doing this job of campaigning
0:43:22 to be able to be commander in chief.
0:43:25 And I think that Tim Walls is a huge part of that.
0:43:27 In the practicality bucket,
0:43:29 I already referenced the fact that his favorability
0:43:32 of the four people that are vying for these jobs,
0:43:35 so Trump, Kamala, JD Vance and Tim Walls,
0:43:37 he has the highest favorability by far.
0:43:39 I mean, some polls even have it at 11.
0:43:41 I think one had it at 14.
0:43:44 And what Republicans are throwing at him.
0:43:46 Oh, did you hear that he was an assistant coach
0:43:48 and not a coach?
0:43:49 Like that stuff is not sticking.
0:43:52 I think the military conversation about,
0:43:55 whether he retired commander, major sergeant,
0:43:57 I think is the term or not,
0:43:59 that was resonant with some people,
0:44:01 especially in the veteran community,
0:44:03 but he has such a solid record
0:44:05 that isn’t necessarily progressive.
0:44:08 Like he runs the sixth best state in the country
0:44:10 to do business in.
0:44:12 That doesn’t seem like a socialist to me.
0:44:14 So you’re going to talk in point, I didn’t know that.
0:44:16 Oh, you, I leased it to you.
0:44:20 I just know the prince was born and raised there.
0:44:21 That is also important.
0:44:24 And I’m sure they will let him use the music for it.
0:44:28 But if you go back and look at his reelection in 2022,
0:44:30 that was after the summer of Black Lives Matter,
0:44:33 the riots, all of the issues would defund the police.
0:44:35 And he won by eight points.
0:44:38 He paced ahead of Biden’s margin
0:44:40 when he was in the state at 2020.
0:44:42 Originally, his congressional district.
0:44:44 Yeah, and like, I think that people just can’t believe
0:44:49 that the guy whose students staffed his first campaign,
0:44:53 taking on a serious right winger is a bad guy.
0:44:55 Now, Josh Shapiro, you know,
0:44:57 and I think we talked about this maybe in person
0:45:00 and not necessarily on any podcast venue.
0:45:02 Josh Shapiro was great at the DNC.
0:45:04 I expected to be brought to tears, right?
0:45:07 But by this Baruch Obama situation.
0:45:11 And I found him to be incredibly compelling.
0:45:12 Baruch Obama, you’re good.
0:45:13 That’s what we call him.
0:45:14 No, no, it wasn’t me.
0:45:17 The other Jews came up with that first.
0:45:22 But if this somehow comes down to Israel in some way,
0:45:24 Tim Walls wrote a master’s thesis
0:45:26 about being able to teach the Holocaust better
0:45:28 to make sure that we never actually go back
0:45:30 to a time where something like that is possible.
0:45:34 But if you hear it from a Jew, it often sounds better.
0:45:37 And Josh Shapiro has that and he’s tight
0:45:39 and he’s really good.
0:45:40 But at the end of the day,
0:45:42 it didn’t seem like he really wanted that job.
0:45:43 And you know what it’s like.
0:45:45 You’ve, you know, employed thousands of people.
0:45:48 If someone is not into the job that they have,
0:45:51 can they really do it at the level that you need
0:45:52 when the stakes are this high?
0:45:56 And Tim Walls wants that job so bad.
0:45:59 So what I’ve heard, I mean, this is all hearsay.
0:46:01 I don’t know.
0:46:03 I heard on the Friday before the pick,
0:46:07 he had it because quite frankly winning Pennsylvania
0:46:12 would probably, it makes the path to presidency
0:46:14 for her pretty like the landing lights would be on.
0:46:17 He’s very popular in Pennsylvania.
0:46:20 He would inoculate her around the kind of Israel issue.
0:46:25 And also I think he was just primed to be an attack dog
0:46:29 because, which is a VP is supposed to do
0:46:31 because he’s already filed suits against Trump
0:46:35 on election interference.
0:46:38 Yeah, so he was kind of ready to go.
0:46:40 I think it comes down to ego.
0:46:41 I think, I don’t think she wanted someone
0:46:42 who wanted her job.
0:46:43 He doesn’t want that job.
0:46:45 He wants to be president.
0:46:47 And I think she was very drawn to Walls.
0:46:49 And I also heard that a lot of people in the far left
0:46:53 were very uncomfortable with Shapiro on call then.
0:46:56 But let’s talk, what are your predictions
0:46:57 just as we wrap up here?
0:46:59 What are your predictions for the VP of debate
0:47:01 that’s supposed to take place?
0:47:03 I think it’s on October the 1st.
0:47:05 What do you think is going to happen?
0:47:08 I worry that they’re going to talk past each other,
0:47:10 which I think was a little bit of the problem
0:47:11 for people with the Harris-Crom to be.
0:47:13 He’s a great moderator, right?
0:47:13 Who’s moderating it?
0:47:14 Do we know?
0:47:16 Oh, I don’t, I should know.
0:47:20 I just hope my really strong suggestion
0:47:22 is that it’s that David Muir guy again,
0:47:24 except he does it without a shirt on.
0:47:26 Jesus Christ, that guy’s dreamy.
0:47:26 What’s that his name?
0:47:27 David Muir?
0:47:28 What’s his name?
0:47:30 Yes, I saw him at the DNC.
0:47:35 And I stopped and I watched as he watched by.
0:47:38 I said this on Pivot and I hate to recycle points,
0:47:39 but I do it a lot.
0:47:41 I think Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise
0:47:43 would have both been Academy Award winners
0:47:44 in their 20s and 30s.
0:47:47 Him, Tom for “Born on the Fourth of July,”
0:47:51 and Brad Pitt for this odd movie called “12 Monkeys”
0:47:55 with Bruce Willis where he played a mentally ill
0:47:58 as son of a rich kid who ends up starting a global pandemic.
0:47:59 They’re both outstanding actors,
0:48:01 but they’re so good looking
0:48:04 that it diminishes people’s perception of their acting skills.
0:48:06 I think that guy Muir, whatever his name is,
0:48:08 I think he’s just too hot to be taken seriously
0:48:09 as a moderator.
0:48:10 I think he’s so good looking.
0:48:12 Well, I agree with the good looking part,
0:48:13 but you don’t think he was taken seriously?
0:48:15 And Lindsay Davis also beautiful.
0:48:16 Well, I think he’s had, in a weird way,
0:48:18 I think he’s had to work harder.
0:48:20 I thought they did a really good job.
0:48:21 I’ll be curious, that debate–
0:48:24 Well, now they’re saying that they were fed the questions.
0:48:26 You know, there’s always some conspiracy theory.
0:48:27 And it’s like if they were fed the question,
0:48:28 she would have answered them.
0:48:31 Like, I don’t understand that we were drawing a line
0:48:32 between those things.
0:48:33 I agree with you.
0:48:35 That’s gonna be a food fight.
0:48:37 In the next one or two weeks,
0:48:39 any things you’re following
0:48:41 or thinking that are important in terms of this race,
0:48:44 it feels like her momentum continues.
0:48:45 What do you think in the next,
0:48:47 any thoughts about what’s coming up?
0:48:48 That’ll be a big pivotal point
0:48:50 other than the VP debate,
0:48:51 which I think will come and go.
0:48:52 And I think it’ll be entertainment.
0:48:54 I’m not sure it’s gonna have much of an impact.
0:48:58 I’m really focused on getting black men,
0:49:01 in particular, back into the coalition.
0:49:03 You know, the threat of losing them to the couch
0:49:05 or whatever one says.
0:49:08 And then I’m interested as well in the conversion
0:49:12 on these Republicans for Democrats now.
0:49:14 So the democracy voters, you know,
0:49:17 who Liz Cheney is talking about.
0:49:19 And the Harris-Wall’s campaign
0:49:22 is definitely doing a big push for them.
0:49:23 But that is a tricky cohort
0:49:26 because those are people who are maybe bad fellows
0:49:28 for a couple of election cycles,
0:49:30 but odds are, are going back.
0:49:32 So how do you get them for 2024?
0:49:35 And then how also do you make your tent big enough
0:49:38 to keep them around in the longer term?
0:49:39 What about you?
0:49:40 – I like it.
0:49:41 I like it.
0:49:42 That makes sense.
0:49:43 Okay, so that’s all for this episode.
0:49:45 Our producers are Caroline Shagran
0:49:46 and David Toledo.
0:49:48 Andrew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:49:51 You can find Raging Moderates on the Prop G-Pod
0:49:52 every Tuesday again.
0:49:55 You can find Raging Moderates on the Prop G-Pod
0:49:57 every Tuesday.
0:49:59 All right, Jess, we will see you next week.
0:50:01 Thanks everybody for tuning in.
0:50:04 (upbeat music)

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0:01:45 >> Today’s number, 790.
0:01:47 That’s how many islands are in Scotland,
0:01:49 130 of which are inhabited.
0:01:53 Ed, in Scotland, if you buy a three-year-old whiskey,
0:01:55 you can call it Scotch.
0:01:56 Any younger than that?
0:01:58 It’s just bad parenting, Ed.
0:02:09 [MUSIC]
0:02:10 >> Ed, I’m in Scotland.
0:02:13 I’m in Scotland.
0:02:15 >> I couldn’t tell from the haunted house behind you.
0:02:18 You got to tell everyone where exactly you are in Scotland and
0:02:20 why you’re there and what the occasion is.
0:02:22 >> I’ll go in reverse order.
0:02:27 I’m turning 50 and the naked, I look 49 and 7/8.
0:02:31 I am here and 100 of my closest friends are showing up.
0:02:34 By the way, you were came in at 102, so you just missed the list.
0:02:36 >> Just missed it, just missed it.
0:02:38 >> You just missed the list.
0:02:44 I mean, I’m outside of Aberdeen at a place called the Five Arms and no joke.
0:02:47 I’ve got, we’ve taken over a hotel.
0:02:50 We’ve been planning this for two years and all my,
0:02:54 basically my entire life is flying in over the course of the next 24 hours.
0:02:58 This isn’t airing until Monday, so it’s almost sort of,
0:02:59 I don’t worry that I’m hexing it.
0:03:04 Anyways, I’m here celebrating a nice moment in life, Ed.
0:03:05 I never thought I’d get here.
0:03:09 I never thought I’d be here at this point, so I’m very, very happy to be here.
0:03:12 That’s probably the alcohol speaking, but I’m actually,
0:03:14 I am actually very happy to be here.
0:03:15 >> Any anxiety?
0:03:17 >> It’s funny you even asked that.
0:03:19 >> Better be fun, better be fun.
0:03:20 >> I’ve been thinking a lot about that.
0:03:22 I do have anxiety.
0:03:24 I’m already sort of just hoping it goes really well and
0:03:25 that everyone else has a nice time.
0:03:29 It’s really, when I was your age, Ed, I didn’t have enough anxiety.
0:03:31 I almost got kicked out of UCLA three times.
0:03:35 I was on academic probation and then if you get less than a 2.0 the next
0:03:38 semester or a quarter, you go subject to dismissal.
0:03:39 I was subject to dismissal.
0:03:42 I was on academic probation, I think four or five times.
0:03:44 I was subject to dismissal two or three times.
0:03:46 And I just wasn’t worried about it.
0:03:49 I just didn’t care, my God, I’ll just take an easy econ class and get a B and
0:03:51 everything will be fine.
0:03:54 And I should have been more worried about my life back then.
0:03:58 From the age of 30 to 40, I think I had exactly the right amount of anxiety.
0:04:03 And anxiety is a key attribute or trait for survival.
0:04:07 You’re supposed to be anxious about shit because there are things that can kill you.
0:04:11 And then from about the age of 40, 45 on, I’ve been too anxious.
0:04:15 I don’t, and unfortunately I get anxious the day after I drink alcohol.
0:04:18 So I’m pretty much anxious, kind of five, six days a week.
0:04:20 But yeah, now I worry about fucking everything.
0:04:24 I don’t worry about my kids, I worry about business.
0:04:25 I don’t worry that much about you guys.
0:04:26 >> I couldn’t tell.
0:04:28 >> Now I do, do you feel like you’re an anxious person?
0:04:33 >> Well, I think hosting is a very anxious thing because you’re inviting
0:04:36 a bunch of people, they’re taking time out of their day,
0:04:39 in this case their entire weekend, to come and celebrate you.
0:04:43 So you kind of, there’s all this pressure to get everyone to have a good time.
0:04:47 I’m a terrible host because I get anxious, I’m always checking in on people,
0:04:48 making sure they’re having a good time.
0:04:50 And then I think I become annoying.
0:04:54 I think the best hosts are the one who can do all the work, get anxious beforehand,
0:04:58 and then just totally let go, have a good time, let people do what they want to do.
0:05:02 Don’t be too controlling, those are the best hosts and I am not one of them.
0:05:04 >> Jesus Christ, don’t be so fucking mature.
0:05:06 Like when did this happen to you?
0:05:08 Seriously, no, that’s good advice.
0:05:12 I’m muslin, my answer for that is good beer and edibles.
0:05:14 >> Yeah, exactly, that’s a good idea.
0:05:16 >> I want to get through, I want to get everybody here.
0:05:18 I want Saturday night, I want the speeches to go well,
0:05:23 I want everyone to feel welcome and loved, and then I’m just going to let loose.
0:05:26 So I’m not going to drink because I get very emotional when I drink and
0:05:31 I’ll just be walking around sobbing all the time, which kind of brings the whole vibe down.
0:05:32 Yeah, I’m real happy to be here.
0:05:36 Anyways, enough of that shit, get to the news, get to the news, Ed, what’s going on?
0:05:38 >> Let’s start with our weekly review of Market Vitals.
0:05:45 [MUSIC]
0:05:49 >> The S&P 500 rose, the dollar was flat, Bitcoin climbed, and
0:05:54 the yield on 10-year treasuries hit a 52-week low, shifting to the headlines.
0:05:58 The consumer price index increased just 2.5% from a year earlier and
0:06:02 eased slightly from July, that is its lowest level in three years.
0:06:07 And in other economic news, median household income rose 4% in 2023 to
0:06:12 more than $80,000, that’s the first increase since 2019.
0:06:16 Oracle’s revenue came in higher than expected, rising 7% year over year.
0:06:21 Cloud services became the company’s largest business, with revenue up 21%
0:06:26 from a year earlier, and shares rose 15% to a record high.
0:06:29 Wall Street is limiting the amount of hours that young bankers can work.
0:06:34 JP Morgan announced it will cap hours for junior investment bankers at 80 hours a week.
0:06:36 Bank of America already had a cap in place, but
0:06:41 it has a new timekeeping tool that will more closely track the hours its junior
0:06:43 bankers work.
0:06:48 And finally, OpenAI is releasing a new AI model known internally as Strawberry,
0:06:53 which is trained to spend more time coming up with an answer before it responds to a prompt.
0:06:57 The new model will be able to solve multi-step math and coding problems.
0:06:58 Scott, your reactions?
0:07:01 Starting with the inflation and economic data.
0:07:06 >> So inflation, the consumer price index just 2.5% down from I think 2.8 or
0:07:11 2.9 last quarter, it’s almost at its target 2%.
0:07:13 And then household income rising 4%.
0:07:16 I mean, basically you have the Goldilocks economy.
0:07:22 Now, the psychological problem that happens is one, social media loves shitposting and
0:07:28 there’s a certain gravitas and intellectual vibe you get when you’re a pessimist.
0:07:31 But and people just love to shitpost our government.
0:07:34 And also people credit their own grit and
0:07:37 character for their household income increasing.
0:07:41 But when diapers go up in price or oil goes up or gas goes up in price,
0:07:43 they blame whoever’s in office.
0:07:48 But this is about as strong as economy as you could point to anywhere in the world.
0:07:51 The problem is, I would argue, is that we don’t distribute it equally.
0:07:56 Just as that technology philosopher said as William Gibson or
0:08:00 someone else said that the future is here, just not evenly distributed.
0:08:01 Prosperity is here.
0:08:06 An unbelievable economy is here, it’s just not evenly distributed.
0:08:11 And I think of, I think of what, I mean,
0:08:14 we’re writing a post on a mercenary malice about minimum wage.
0:08:20 And I believe that the one thing you could do most seamlessly to reduce
0:08:24 diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, suicide,
0:08:29 decreased divorce rates would be to raise minimum wage to 25 bucks an hour.
0:08:33 Instead of building a gigantic apparatus, which all these government programs are,
0:08:34 which tend to be somewhat inefficient.
0:08:39 Instead of a thick layer of unions, which are trying to protect workers whose
0:08:42 intentions are noble but are very inefficient and sometimes corrupt.
0:08:47 Just put more money in the pockets of Americans with a minimum wage of 25 bucks
0:08:49 during a period where employment is this strong.
0:08:53 Do you know what percentage of American households that make less than $75,000 a year?
0:08:59 >> I’m gonna guess 20%.
0:09:01 >> Get this, 50%.
0:09:04 Half of American households make less than $75,000 a year.
0:09:08 What would raising minimum wage of 25 bucks an hour do for them?
0:09:10 Anyways, a bit of a tangent.
0:09:15 But I’m very happy about CPI only dropping to 2.5%, what are your thoughts?
0:09:17 >> Yeah, just on that point.
0:09:20 So I mean, one thing we should point out is that that household income number
0:09:22 is inflation adjusted.
0:09:25 So it is somewhat meaningful.
0:09:31 There is one statistic that was in that same report that came from the Census Bureau.
0:09:36 And that was that the poverty rate in America fell.
0:09:40 But the number is quite staggering.
0:09:46 It fell from 11.5% to 11.1%.
0:09:51 So that means that there are 37 million people in America
0:09:54 who are still living in poverty.
0:09:57 And to your point, I think we spend a lot of time
0:10:01 analyzing a lot of technicalities in the markets.
0:10:03 And we should be doing that.
0:10:07 We think about the yield curve and interest rates and P/E ratios, et cetera, et cetera.
0:10:08 And there’s value to that.
0:10:15 But I think there is also value in keeping the big picture front of mind.
0:10:20 And the big picture is that one in 10 Americans cannot afford basic necessities to live.
0:10:25 So I would hope that it also reminds us that while, yes, we are doing pretty well
0:10:28 on a relative basis when we look at other countries.
0:10:32 If you look at just America from an absolute perspective,
0:10:34 we could certainly be doing a lot better in this country.
0:10:36 Oh, I 100% agree.
0:10:37 There’s, I mean, more stats.
0:10:41 One in five children in America live in a household that’s food insecure.
0:10:45 Whatever all the blessings are of the fruits of our riches,
0:10:51 we do, in my view, a pretty shit poor job of distributing and allocating resources,
0:10:55 despite the fact that we just have so much of it.
0:10:56 Now let’s talk about oracles earnings.
0:11:01 You kind of own this, Ed.
0:11:02 Talk about oracle.
0:11:05 Well, one segue that we could use here is that, you know,
0:11:09 you’re talking about wealth inequality, income inequality.
0:11:15 Larry Ellison, who is the founder of Oracle, added $14 billion to his net worth
0:11:17 in one day after these earnings.
0:11:20 He is now the fifth richest person in the world.
0:11:21 He is ahead of Bill Gates.
0:11:28 His net worth is, wait for it, $168 billion.
0:11:31 It’s just staggering.
0:11:33 We can get into a conversation about that,
0:11:35 but I think we’ve already covered the inequality part.
0:11:39 Let’s talk about the Oracle earnings themselves.
0:11:42 Earlier this year, I said I was bullish on Oracle.
0:11:45 My thesis here was that Oracle is kind of the fourth musketeer
0:11:47 when it comes to cloud computing.
0:11:51 The options are basically Amazon, Google, Microsoft or Oracle.
0:11:56 And my view was that Oracle is a really attractive company for AI companies,
0:11:59 especially AI startups, because Oracle is the only one
0:12:02 that isn’t actively developing its own LLM.
0:12:06 So if you’re an AI company and you want to compete with the likes of Microsoft,
0:12:11 who’s developing a co-pilot and working with Open AI and ChatGBT,
0:12:12 or Google with Gemini,
0:12:16 you probably don’t want to be also paying them to keep your lights on.
0:12:18 You’d probably rather go with a compute provider
0:12:21 who you ultimately won’t be competing with.
0:12:23 In this case, that would be Oracle.
0:12:25 And I think we are seeing this play out.
0:12:28 If we look at the actual earnings here, revenue growth was up 7%,
0:12:30 which is fine, not great.
0:12:34 Cloud revenue was up 21%, which is very strong.
0:12:35 But the most important number here
0:12:38 was the remaining performance obligations,
0:12:41 which is basically code for booked revenue
0:12:43 that is going to come in the next 12 months.
0:12:45 That number was up 52%.
0:12:48 So they’re clearly partnering with a lot more companies
0:12:50 who want to get their computing power.
0:12:53 Morgan Stanley is now estimating that AI revenue
0:12:57 will increase from 15% of Oracle’s total cloud revenue
0:12:59 to more than half by 2027.
0:13:02 So that’s why Oracle is at an all-time high.
0:13:06 The stock’s up 50% year-to-date.
0:13:10 I think it’s essentially emerging as one of the AI juggernauts.
0:13:11 Well, you called it.
0:13:15 You sort of said this was the big AI company that no one’s talking about.
0:13:19 And I would say probably Larry Ellison and maybe Reed Hastings
0:13:22 are the least talked about CEOs who’ve been the biggest players
0:13:24 in the world of tech.
0:13:26 By the way, if you ever want to go to a great hotel in Palm Springs,
0:13:28 which I know you’re thinking about,
0:13:31 Larry Ellison, this is what people were the $160 billion do
0:13:33 or whatever he’s worth.
0:13:35 He has a winter home out there that’s spectacular.
0:13:37 He built this world-class golf course and spa,
0:13:40 and obviously it kind of sits fallow,
0:13:41 so he turned it into a hotel.
0:13:43 He also owns an island in Hawaii.
0:13:44 I don’t know if you’ve seen this,
0:13:46 but he owns the island of Lanai.
0:13:49 I think it’s the largest private island in the world,
0:13:51 and I think he’s built four seasons on there, too.
0:13:55 I’ve stayed on Lanai when I’m back in my previous life.
0:13:57 I used to go there with my ex-wife.
0:14:00 We’d stay at the Lodger Quelle and we’d go to Lanai.
0:14:01 Hold me, Ed.
0:14:03 Hold me.
0:14:06 Anyways, stay at the sensei.
0:14:09 Look, they’re doing an amazing job.
0:14:12 The stock’s trading at a forward P/E ratio of 25.
0:14:14 Microsoft and Amazon trade at 32,
0:14:16 which kind of connotes that there might be
0:14:18 some additional juice here in terms of the stock.
0:14:23 Oracle and Nike are the two stocks I have in my NYU savings
0:14:25 or 401K or whatever it is.
0:14:26 When I started there, they had some matching programs,
0:14:28 so I listened to the future, Scott,
0:14:29 and I started maxing it out.
0:14:32 I went to Nike, which is literally shit the bed.
0:14:35 And Oracle, which is good to hear, is doing really well.
0:14:37 Should we talk about limiting the number
0:14:39 of hours young bankers work?
0:14:42 Please, I am so excited to get your take on this.
0:14:43 What do you think of it?
0:14:44 – I’m up two minds here.
0:14:49 So, I was part of,
0:14:52 my first job out of college was at Morgan Stanley.
0:14:56 And I have never worked with a larger concentration
0:14:57 of assholes.
0:15:00 These were just like not nice people.
0:15:03 And it defined the term abused children syndrome.
0:15:05 And that was when I was young and in finance,
0:15:07 they all fucking hated their jobs.
0:15:09 I mean, sorry, there’s like one or two people
0:15:10 or big deal makers and a lot of that.
0:15:12 But for the most part,
0:15:14 they were really smart people or overachievers
0:15:17 who got jobs and investment banks.
0:15:18 And by the time they were 30,
0:15:19 they were making back then, you know,
0:15:22 $300,000 or $500,000, which is a lot of money.
0:15:24 And they just couldn’t leave.
0:15:26 Most jobs are usually one of two things.
0:15:28 They’re either very interesting,
0:15:31 but a lot of pressure, a lot of stress,
0:15:34 or they’re incredibly boring, right?
0:15:37 But easy, not a lot of stress.
0:15:39 And investment banking was this unique combination
0:15:43 of a job that was incredibly mind-numbingly boring
0:15:46 with a massive amount of pressure placed on it.
0:15:48 I remember being at the printer.
0:15:50 This is, I’m dating myself.
0:15:50 And we would have to,
0:15:53 this is the person printing the S1.
0:15:55 And there was this company called Bowen
0:15:56 and all these other things.
0:15:57 And they would take me to football games
0:15:58 or out to dinners.
0:15:59 And they always had like hot people
0:16:02 who would want to take you to a baseball game set.
0:16:05 You would spend $120,000 printing the prospectus
0:16:09 of the IPL Morgan Stanley was taking out at their printer.
0:16:12 And my job was to go to the printer and spend all night
0:16:14 proofing the prospectus.
0:16:16 First, I proof it forward, then backwards.
0:16:20 Because literally it was cause for you to be terminated,
0:16:25 i.e. fired, if base rental payments on page 68
0:16:27 of the prospectus had an imposter fee
0:16:31 and base rental payments on page 136 did not.
0:16:36 And I worked, I worked probably, I don’t know,
0:16:39 60 to 80 hours a week in some weeks, 100 hours.
0:16:41 I remember there were some times where I would go in
0:16:44 on like a Thursday and basically would just go,
0:16:47 you know, kind of 60 hours straight.
0:16:49 And you weren’t allowed to leave as an analyst,
0:16:50 you’re the most junior person.
0:16:52 You had to be there before anybody else
0:16:55 and you couldn’t leave until everyone’s senior to you left.
0:16:56 Even if you didn’t have work to do.
0:16:58 I had a chair thrown at me.
0:16:59 – What’d you do wrong?
0:17:00 Do you remember?
0:17:03 I remember is the Orange County Transportation Authority
0:17:04 were issuing bonds and we had no chance
0:17:07 of getting to business, but we had to get it out
0:17:08 and we didn’t get it out in time.
0:17:13 And so this VP, his name rhymes with Stephen Dworkin,
0:17:16 see above asshole, came into the office
0:17:19 and threw a chair and or threw a chair at me,
0:17:20 whatever, I probably deserved it.
0:17:22 But like that’s the kind of shit you would just,
0:17:24 if someone threw furniture at an employee in this day
0:17:27 and age, they’d be fired.
0:17:31 Now, having said that, this notion that somehow,
0:17:36 if you genuinely believe Jamie Dimon or anybody else,
0:17:39 that these people shouldn’t be working that hard,
0:17:42 then institute a culture where you compensate
0:17:45 and reward the managers based on feedback
0:17:46 from the junior employees that they’re providing
0:17:48 some semblance of balance.
0:17:50 ‘Cause the notion that you’re somehow gonna electronically
0:17:53 track how many hours people are working is just bullshit.
0:17:57 And also I used to go in on a regular basis
0:18:01 on a Tuesday morning and then leave on a Wednesday night.
0:18:03 I would work 36 hours straight, why?
0:18:06 I immediately summed up, having gotten in at Morgan Stanley
0:18:09 where I didn’t deserve to get a job offer, but I did,
0:18:11 that I wasn’t as well-skilled,
0:18:12 well-educated as the other people.
0:18:15 Not because UCLA wasn’t a fantastic education,
0:18:17 but because UCLA was the kind of place
0:18:19 ’cause it was a public school and it had classes
0:18:21 with 400 people where you could hide and not work.
0:18:23 And I was one of those people.
0:18:27 So I showed up to Morgan Stanley woefully underskilled
0:18:28 and I knew it.
0:18:31 The other 87 analysts were just better than me.
0:18:33 So I thought, okay, what are my advantages?
0:18:35 You always wanna ask this as a young person,
0:18:36 what are your advantages?
0:18:40 My advantage was that I didn’t have a girlfriend.
0:18:43 I didn’t have many friends at that point living in LA.
0:18:45 I was living at home with my mom.
0:18:47 I didn’t have any dogs, any hobbies.
0:18:50 And I was also quite fit and very disciplined
0:18:51 where I could take a lot of pain.
0:18:54 So I said, I know, I’m gonna show these folks
0:18:56 and I’m here to play and at least once a week
0:18:57 I’m gonna work the night through.
0:19:01 And this was the kind of culture that rewarded that.
0:19:05 So if you were really serious about having bankers
0:19:08 or young bankers work less, it’s pretty simple.
0:19:10 Hire more fucking junior bankers.
0:19:14 So there’s more bandwidth and create a compensation system
0:19:17 for their bosses that changes the culture such that it’s like,
0:19:21 no, we were gonna make you a VP, but we’re not
0:19:24 because the word is everyone in your group
0:19:26 is especially the junior people
0:19:28 are working fucking 80 hours a week
0:19:30 and we don’t reward that here.
0:19:31 We punish it.
0:19:35 I do believe that there are companies
0:19:38 that position themselves in the marketplace
0:19:41 and people where they say, okay, this was the implicit deal
0:19:43 at Morgan Stanley, it’s still the implicit deal.
0:19:45 I think at Goldman maybe less so now.
0:19:47 We own your ass.
0:19:49 You have no life.
0:19:51 All your relationships, they’re gonna suffer.
0:19:54 Your health, probably gonna suffer too.
0:19:55 Oh, you love New York?
0:19:56 Well, guess what?
0:19:57 You’re not gonna experience much of it
0:19:58 over the next few years
0:20:01 ’cause you’re gonna experience the bowels of Goldman or Morgan
0:20:02 and guess what?
0:20:03 In exchange for that,
0:20:06 we’re gonna get you further, faster economically
0:20:09 and professionally than you would anywhere else in the world.
0:20:10 And you know what?
0:20:10 I signed up for that.
0:20:11 That’s what I wanted.
0:20:14 And a lot of young people want that.
0:20:17 So anything that risks health, okay,
0:20:19 that’s a whole other ball of wax,
0:20:21 but there is an entire generation,
0:20:24 including myself, of young people who say, you know what?
0:20:27 I will give you everything in exchange.
0:20:28 I want more.
0:20:30 I’m surprised you’re not more harsh
0:20:32 on the junior analysts and junior bankers
0:20:34 who have been complaining about this,
0:20:36 who are saying how terrible it is.
0:20:38 The hours are so long
0:20:39 that we’re struggling with our mental health.
0:20:42 I mean, this is why this is all happening
0:20:45 is because people my age are complaining about it.
0:20:46 And you mentioned that point
0:20:49 that when you went into banking as an analyst,
0:20:50 that’s what you signed up for.
0:20:53 You knew what you were signing up for
0:20:54 and you came to play.
0:20:57 And so the idea that you have people
0:21:02 who are experiencing what is regular in banking,
0:21:04 people my age who are saying that this is too much,
0:21:06 they can’t handle it,
0:21:10 you have decided by going into banking
0:21:13 that you wanna be a millionaire,
0:21:15 likely a multi-millionaire.
0:21:17 That’s something that you have decided you want for yourself.
0:21:19 You have also decided that you want to make
0:21:23 close to $200,000 in your first year out of college per year.
0:21:25 These are things that you want.
0:21:27 And if you want these things, be clear
0:21:29 that you should be willing to work yourself so hard
0:21:31 that you start to struggle mentally and physically.
0:21:33 That’s the game that you’re signing up for.
0:21:36 And if you don’t like it, then go do something else.
0:21:37 I think that’s fine.
0:21:39 But the idea that you would complain
0:21:41 having gotten yourself into that position,
0:21:43 knowing what the stakes are,
0:21:46 knowing how difficult it is to build wealth in America.
0:21:48 Yeah, you’re gonna have a pretty shitty week.
0:21:50 You’re gonna lose some sleep.
0:21:51 Two things.
0:21:52 One, I agree with you.
0:21:54 And two, I don’t wanna ever hear you bitch
0:21:56 about anything about this company yet.
0:21:58 (laughing)
0:22:03 Now, at some point, the difference here,
0:22:05 the only thing I will caveat this with is that
0:22:07 in order for the American economy to grow,
0:22:10 we’ve needed to bring in women.
0:22:12 And it’s also makes sense that women should be afforded
0:22:15 the same economic opportunities as men.
0:22:18 Where that culture doesn’t work is when women start
0:22:19 using their ovaries.
0:22:21 And that is when you create a culture
0:22:24 of people expected to work 60 to 80 hours a week,
0:22:25 what you’re essentially saying
0:22:28 is no one’s allowed to have kids here.
0:22:30 So, while I can see that type of culture
0:22:33 for the young analysts, it’s unhealthy to create,
0:22:35 I think that type of culture with people
0:22:37 as they start to think about starting families.
0:22:40 ‘Cause distinctive all the bullshit around the modern man,
0:22:42 women disproportionately shoulder
0:22:45 the responsibilities with children.
0:22:48 So unless we create a work environment
0:22:50 where we respect the fact that the species
0:22:54 needs to procreate, we wanna create corporate America
0:22:58 an opportunity for women to maintain acceleration
0:22:58 in their careers.
0:23:01 I mean, if you look at compensation in corporate America,
0:23:04 it’s actually been chewed up between men and women
0:23:09 until women have kids and then they drop way down.
0:23:14 So I buy that all hands, hunger games, culture.
0:23:17 You don’t like it, go somewhere else.
0:23:18 We’re gonna pay a shit ton of money.
0:23:22 We own your, and I appreciate your perspective on it.
0:23:24 I think things change when people get older though
0:23:26 and they start thinking about families
0:23:29 because if you’re gonna expect people to work 80 hours
0:23:31 a week, what you’re saying is we don’t want mothers here.
0:23:31 – 100%.
0:23:32 – And that’s a problem.
0:23:37 – Let’s finish out with this new model
0:23:38 that has been released by OpenAI,
0:23:40 known internally as Strawberry,
0:23:43 known now publicly as 01.
0:23:46 Any thoughts on this new, very powerful reasoning model
0:23:47 from OpenAI?
0:23:51 I love the fact they’re saying that we have a model
0:23:53 that’s gonna take longer to figure shit out.
0:23:57 It’s like, you know when you press on something online
0:24:00 and it spins a wheel like, oh, it’s thinking
0:24:02 or it’s finding you deals right now.
0:24:05 It’s searching for the best deal on the web
0:24:07 and it has a guy like with a magnifying glass
0:24:08 and he’s searching.
0:24:10 It’s like, it gives you this emotional feeling
0:24:13 that someone else is working for you.
0:24:14 I would just like to know,
0:24:16 do they need to slow the thing down
0:24:17 or are they trying to pretend
0:24:19 that this is being more thoughtful?
0:24:20 I don’t know, what are your thoughts?
0:24:22 – Well, I think that is the question
0:24:24 and no one’s really been able to try it yet
0:24:25 apart from internally.
0:24:27 So I think we should try it out,
0:24:30 but just a few stats that they have listed.
0:24:34 They put GPT-4 and this new one, 01,
0:24:35 this new reasoning model,
0:24:37 they put them up against each other
0:24:40 to do the qualifying exam
0:24:43 for the International Mathematics Olympiad.
0:24:47 GPT-4 got 13% of the problems right.
0:24:50 This new one got 83% of the problems right.
0:24:53 They also had it do a jailbreaking test.
0:24:57 GPT-4 scored a 22 on a scale of zero to 100
0:25:00 and the new 01 model scored an 84.
0:25:02 So it does seem like this new model,
0:25:05 it’s more mathematics minded,
0:25:09 is just incredibly powerful.
0:25:11 – I just get the sense that as technology
0:25:14 becomes more about frictionless flow
0:25:16 and network effects and agility,
0:25:18 that if you have the ability to get out ahead
0:25:20 in front of established leadership
0:25:22 and then have access to cheaper capital,
0:25:25 they can raise tens of millions of dollars.
0:25:27 No one can keep up with them right now.
0:25:28 They have a great team,
0:25:30 they have a great leader in Sam Altman.
0:25:32 You know, this just, it does feel like,
0:25:35 like I said, it feels like they’re running away with it
0:25:38 and we’ve been saying this for a while.
0:25:39 – We’ll be right back after the break
0:25:42 and we’ll have a good look at how the debate moved the markets.
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0:26:32 You ever wonder how people in Silicon Valley sleep at nine?
0:26:34 Well, apparently very well
0:26:37 on some of the most innovative sleep technology out there.
0:26:39 Aid Sleep is revolutionizing the way we sleep
0:26:40 with what they call the pod.
0:26:43 You can add the pod to your current mattress
0:26:45 like a fitted sheet to automatically cool down
0:26:47 or warm up each side of your bed.
0:26:49 They’ve just launched the newest generation of the pod,
0:26:51 the pod for ultra.
0:26:52 It can cool down each side of the bed
0:26:55 by 20 degrees Fahrenheit below room temperature.
0:26:57 It can also track your sleep time, sleep phases,
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0:27:02 And you know who’s gotten to try out the new pod?
0:27:03 What do you think, Ed?
0:27:05 Tell us about your experience with the pod.
0:27:06 (laughs)
0:27:08 – I love it, Scott.
0:27:08 It’s great.
0:27:11 It tracks my sleep, my heart rate.
0:27:14 And the best part is that it cools down my bed for me,
0:27:15 which is awesome.
0:27:19 It’s a great little addition to your nighttime routine.
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0:28:59 Let’s go back with Prof. G. Markets.
0:29:01 Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump
0:29:04 faced off in what will likely be their only debate,
0:29:06 and the verdict from the markets was clear.
0:29:07 Harris won.
0:29:09 Bitcoin started to slide as soon as the debate began
0:29:11 and was down 4% by the morning.
0:29:15 Trump media stock tanked 15% when the market opened
0:29:17 and ended the day at an all-time low.
0:29:20 Meanwhile, solar stocks rose with the potential Harris
0:29:22 presidency boating well for clean energy.
0:29:27 Scott, this is basically the opposite of what happened
0:29:29 in the July debate when the markets were signaling
0:29:33 that a Trump presidency was basically certain.
0:29:35 What are your takeaways from the market’s reaction
0:29:36 this time around?
0:29:39 Well, I’m busy this weekend, but if you want,
0:29:42 we can hang out next weekend and do transgender operations
0:29:45 on illegal aliens in prison this weekend.
0:29:48 And my mom said I could bring a friend.
0:29:49 And then we’re going to eat Leia.
0:29:50 I was just about to say.
0:29:53 I want you to know Leia and Gangster are safe.
0:29:54 They’re safe.
0:29:58 I saw an illegal immigrant putting honeyglaze on their fur
0:30:00 and I figured out something’s wrong here.
0:30:05 I mean, watching her, the debate started at 2 a.m.,
0:30:08 London time, and by 3.15, I’m like, I’m out, she’s won.
0:30:10 I just, it doesn’t matter.
0:30:12 She could throw up on herself the next 15 minutes.
0:30:16 What will be more interesting, well, or as interesting,
0:30:21 is what industries do well or poorly based on the fact
0:30:23 that she’s maintained her momentum.
0:30:25 And I think as we’ve talked about,
0:30:29 you have the alternative energy ETFs went up,
0:30:31 Bitcoin went a little bit down.
0:30:35 His stock was off 13 or 15%, Donald Trump media,
0:30:38 meaning that basically the shareholders of that company
0:30:40 think the likelihood he’s going to become president
0:30:43 is down by 13 or 15%.
0:30:46 But it’s, I thought it was fascinating.
0:30:47 I’m obviously not a big Trump fan,
0:30:49 so I was really happy with it,
0:30:53 but it’ll be interesting to see what stocks.
0:30:55 I mean, so far it’s hard to read a lot from the market.
0:30:56 What are your thoughts, Ed?
0:30:58 – I think she did an incredible job.
0:31:01 I mean, it was obvious that she was far more prepared
0:31:02 than he was.
0:31:03 I mean, he doesn’t prepare,
0:31:07 but the amount of prep that clearly went into this,
0:31:10 the amount that she had her talking points ready,
0:31:13 she had clearly practiced a lot and it really came through.
0:31:16 Two things that I noticed about her
0:31:18 that I thought were really impressive.
0:31:21 One was her facial expression when he was talking.
0:31:26 She clearly knew exactly what facial expressions to pull,
0:31:29 and it just, it framed everything he was saying.
0:31:30 It made it look so much more ridiculous
0:31:34 when she would sort of smirk and smile and laugh
0:31:36 at everything he was saying.
0:31:38 I thought that was really impressive.
0:31:39 The other thing I thought was really impressive
0:31:42 was the handshake that she went in for at the very beginning.
0:31:43 – Total power move.
0:31:46 Total power move, just walking in there
0:31:49 and being assertive and also respectful and also direct.
0:31:52 And I’m wondering if maybe you have any insights
0:31:57 for any learnings on ways that that can be beneficial
0:32:00 to you, to an individual in the business world.
0:32:03 Has there ever been a time perhaps where,
0:32:06 being assertive with your body language,
0:32:09 with your physical body language in a business setting
0:32:12 has perhaps benefited you or you’ve seen that play out?
0:32:15 – My first boss, Carter Cordener, actually,
0:32:17 as I was shitposting everyone to Morgan Stanley,
0:32:20 actually a lovely guy who took a real interest in me.
0:32:24 He taught me, he said, “When you go into a meeting,”
0:32:27 he said, “unless everyone’s already, unless you’re late,
0:32:29 “walk around, go to them and shake their hand
0:32:31 “and introduce yourself.”
0:32:35 And I wouldn’t have done that naturally as a 22-year-old.
0:32:36 I would kind of sit higher,
0:32:37 waited for someone to introduce myself.
0:32:39 He said, “No, go around the table
0:32:42 “and walk to everyone to say, ‘Hi, I’m Scott Gowain,
0:32:43 “shake their hand.’”
0:32:46 And I mean, that sounds, and I kind of reminded me of that.
0:32:48 She went over to them.
0:32:50 I thought it was fantastic.
0:32:52 And something I tell my boys,
0:32:55 anytime they meet somebody, they walk up,
0:32:57 they square their hips, they square their shoulders,
0:32:59 they make eye contact, they shake their hand,
0:33:00 and they introduce themselves and say,
0:33:03 “It’s nice to meet you,” and they hold eye contact.
0:33:07 And I can’t tell you how many parents comment on it.
0:33:12 As a kid or as a young professional,
0:33:16 and I didn’t get this, get the easy stuff right.
0:33:17 The difference in your brand,
0:33:19 when there’s an eight o’clock meeting
0:33:23 and you show up at 7.55 versus 8.05,
0:33:25 it’s just get the easy stuff right.
0:33:27 For 10 minutes, you set a different tone
0:33:29 about your own brand.
0:33:32 Going back to Trump media stock,
0:33:35 which fell to a record low,
0:33:37 a lot of that is, of course, because of the debate,
0:33:40 but then there’s also a little wrinkle,
0:33:43 which is that the lockup period expires next week.
0:33:47 And what that means is that the early investors,
0:33:49 as this was a direct listing,
0:33:51 the early investors will finally be able
0:33:53 to sell their shares.
0:33:55 And one of those early investors, of course, includes Trump.
0:33:59 So just a prediction question for you,
0:34:03 come September 19th, do you think Trump will sell?
0:34:04 – It’s a tough one.
0:34:09 I don’t think so ’cause the brand of,
0:34:13 on the first possible moment that he sold, if he does,
0:34:16 could take the stock down so far so fast
0:34:17 that he ends up hurting himself.
0:34:20 If I were him, I’d put in a planned sale program.
0:34:21 And this is what a lot of CEOs do.
0:34:24 They say, all right, I have a ton of stock.
0:34:28 Every 90 days I’m gonna sell X number of shares.
0:34:31 And what that does is it takes out the interpretation
0:34:34 by the hecklers, right?
0:34:36 Oh, she sold a bunch of shares.
0:34:38 That must mean she doesn’t like it.
0:34:39 And she didn’t sell shares this quarter.
0:34:41 So she must be feeling bullish.
0:34:44 If you just say, I’m putting in place a planned sale program
0:34:48 and I’m gonna sell 400,000 shares every 90 days,
0:34:50 that doesn’t spook the market.
0:34:52 It’d be interesting to know what the other sellers are,
0:34:53 but here’s the thing.
0:34:58 If you own this stock, unless you believe he’s gonna win,
0:35:00 and that this is in fact become a tracking stock,
0:35:03 and that he’ll figure out a way in sort of a kleptocratic
0:35:05 fashion to support the company.
0:35:07 This company has zero value.
0:35:09 This company has negative value.
0:35:10 It’s not growing.
0:35:12 It’s user base is flat to down.
0:35:15 I think it does single digit millions of dollars
0:35:17 and it’s losing hundreds of millions.
0:35:20 I mean, it’s not a company.
0:35:24 And so if you have a lot of people trying to run
0:35:27 through a crowded door here, it could be a real problem.
0:35:29 Now, the moment everyone, what I have found though,
0:35:31 generally though, with stocks is when everyone’s freaked out
0:35:36 about the lockup period expiring, on that day,
0:35:37 a lot of times the stock goes up
0:35:40 because what you’re talking about,
0:35:42 the fear you’re talking about is reflected
0:35:44 in the stock right now.
0:35:47 And so if in fact, there aren’t a bunch of whatever
0:35:49 it’s called, Form 5, so I forget what it’s called
0:35:51 when you have to sell stock as an insider.
0:35:53 If not as many of them, everyone’s gonna be watching this.
0:35:56 If not as many of them are selling,
0:35:59 and the expectation of massive sales has already been built
0:36:02 into a stock that’s off, I know, 40% in the last 30 days
0:36:05 or something, or 60% in the last three months,
0:36:06 then the stock may go up.
0:36:08 In other words, I’d be very careful
0:36:10 trying to play around this,
0:36:12 but what I’m fairly confident saying
0:36:16 is this stock will be less than a dollar at some point
0:36:19 in the next 12 months if he is not reelected.
0:36:21 – Yeah, I think that’s an interesting point.
0:36:24 I think what’s interesting also is the timeline here
0:36:27 because he sort of needs to time this.
0:36:29 I mean, supposedly he needs the cash, right?
0:36:31 Because he’s got all these lawsuits.
0:36:33 So you’d think that he’s probably gonna time this
0:36:36 based on whether or not he becomes president,
0:36:40 because if he becomes president, he bothers himself
0:36:41 and the lawsuits go away.
0:36:43 He’s not necessarily gonna need the cash.
0:36:45 So it really is all hinging on that.
0:36:48 I think if he loses, he’s gonna then need
0:36:51 to really time it correctly because, you know,
0:36:54 the stock is probably gonna plummet at that point,
0:36:55 but he’s gonna need the liquidity,
0:36:58 but only in the situation where he doesn’t
0:36:59 win the presidency.
0:37:01 So it’s a very interesting situation.
0:37:02 He’s probably the first,
0:37:04 he is the first person in history
0:37:07 to be in a situation like that.
0:37:09 Just as we wrap up here, I just wanna point out
0:37:11 as we try to relate this to markets,
0:37:14 I mean, who is this gonna benefit?
0:37:18 I mean, the takeaway really here is the race is on.
0:37:21 That wasn’t, that didn’t feel like the case a few months ago,
0:37:23 but clearly it is now.
0:37:25 That’s what the predicted markets are showing
0:37:27 is that we have an extremely tight race
0:37:29 and who is that going to benefit?
0:37:30 It’s gonna benefit advertisers.
0:37:32 So I think we should be keeping an eye
0:37:34 on all the broadcasting stocks.
0:37:37 So Fox, Disney, Warner Brothers, Comcast,
0:37:39 I think we’ll see huge earnings from them
0:37:40 in the next quarter.
0:37:42 And then also we should be thinking
0:37:45 about the local stocks, local broadcasting.
0:37:48 So, you know, Gannett, Nexstar, Tegna,
0:37:51 I think these are stocks that are gonna see a big bump,
0:37:53 a big run up in the next few months or so
0:37:57 because we’re gonna see a huge amount of advertising
0:37:58 in the districts that matter.
0:38:01 We’ll be right back after the break
0:38:03 with a look at sovereign wealth funds.
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0:39:14 – We’re back with Prof2Markets.
0:39:17 Former President Trump recently said that if elected,
0:39:19 he would like to create a sovereign wealth fund
0:39:20 for the United States.
0:39:22 After that speech, the White House also revealed
0:39:24 they were already working on a proposal
0:39:26 for the exact same thing.
0:39:28 Sovereign wealth funds are state owned investment funds
0:39:30 and they’re typically used in economies
0:39:32 that rely mainly on resource extraction
0:39:35 such as Saudi Arabia and Norway.
0:39:37 While there’s currently no national sovereign wealth fund
0:39:40 in the US, there are several state level funds
0:39:43 like Alaska’s permanent fund.
0:39:47 Scott, what are your thoughts on a US sovereign wealth fund
0:39:48 and do you think this is a good idea?
0:39:51 – So sovereign wealth funds have a layer on top of them
0:39:54 where they have an objective outside of just straight ROI.
0:39:57 So the biggest funds or the funds that every hedge fund
0:40:00 manager in the world is going, you know,
0:40:04 hat and hand to are in the Gulf, Adia, PIF.
0:40:06 And generally speaking, the jig is sort of up there
0:40:10 and that is those funds, those sovereign wealth funds
0:40:13 have the objective of trying to transition their economies
0:40:15 back away from a fossil fuels economy
0:40:20 to tourism, services, education.
0:40:23 And now when you go there, they’re mostly only willing
0:40:26 to fund companies that are gonna bring business
0:40:29 or find other capital to bring business into the region.
0:40:32 They’re no longer about, oh, you’re a Korean national
0:40:36 born in Japan, we’re gonna give you $100 billion
0:40:40 to go play in traffic and invest in, you know, US startups.
0:40:42 That I think those days are over.
0:40:45 In general, the best marketing in the world
0:40:47 is tobacco companies.
0:40:49 A company whose primary product is death, disease
0:40:52 and disability that figures out a way to sell a product
0:40:55 at 96 points in margin and create these very aspirational
0:40:57 brands, that’s the best marketing in the world.
0:41:00 The second best marketing in the world by sector
0:41:02 has been the financial services sector that has convinced you
0:41:07 that they can outperform the S&P because they have
0:41:09 these old guys and suspenders and all these models
0:41:13 and people from the smartest schools and wealthy people
0:41:14 like to believe they should have access to something
0:41:18 different so they continue to invest in these funds.
0:41:22 And if you added up all hedge funds, all mutual funds,
0:41:25 all internal investments, I mean, it’s an enormous industry.
0:41:28 Everyone on CNBC, they have underperformed the S&P
0:41:30 by the amount of their fees.
0:41:32 So what you’re basically doing is buying the S&P
0:41:35 but giving some guy with the highly credentialed
0:41:38 and highly aggressive and unbelievable living.
0:41:43 And the same is true here, these funds as your data shows
0:41:45 have underperformed the larger market.
0:41:46 Now they say they can justify it because they say
0:41:49 if we’re Alaska, we’re the Norwegian wealth fund,
0:41:51 we wanna increase influence around the world
0:41:54 or we wanna bring more jobs to Alaska, fine.
0:41:56 That’s a secondary objective.
0:41:58 The reason I’m not a fan of this in the U.S.
0:42:01 is that we don’t really need this.
0:42:04 We have more capital formation than any country
0:42:07 in the world by a factor of five, 10 or 100.
0:42:11 We don’t need, I don’t think to try and aggregate capital
0:42:13 to have influence through capital.
0:42:15 We do it through the dollar.
0:42:17 We do it through sanctions.
0:42:19 If we say to a country, we’re shutting you off
0:42:22 and you can no longer do business in dollars,
0:42:26 two thirds of the world has trouble doing business with them.
0:42:29 So we kind of have, unless we decided we were building
0:42:32 a sovereign wealth fund to try and, I don’t know,
0:42:35 I don’t know what objective they’d even place on it.
0:42:36 But to me, generally speaking,
0:42:38 when you get the government involved in something,
0:42:40 you’re going to pay an inefficiency
0:42:43 or an administration tax.
0:42:45 So I just, I feel like this is redundant
0:42:46 and not really needed.
0:42:48 This feels to me like more of a chest beating
0:42:50 kind of fun thing to talk about.
0:42:52 It doesn’t, I don’t see the rationale here.
0:42:56 – And it also isn’t clear at all how you’d fund this thing
0:43:01 because, I mean, the characteristic of a sovereign wealth fund,
0:43:04 I mean, what makes it different from any other pile of money
0:43:05 that’s in the government’s jurisdiction?
0:43:09 One of the differences is that it’s separate
0:43:11 from the central bank and it’s separate
0:43:12 from your finance ministry.
0:43:14 So in our case, that’s the treasury.
0:43:17 So Janet Yellen would not have control over this thing.
0:43:20 And then the second difference is that typically
0:43:22 the way that you fund it is it comes
0:43:26 from an unusual excess or surplus of assets.
0:43:30 So in Ireland, for example, which we’ve discussed before,
0:43:33 Ireland is a tax haven for big tech companies.
0:43:37 It collects huge amounts of tax revenue
0:43:39 from companies like Google and Apple and Microsoft.
0:43:42 And therefore they run a budget surplus.
0:43:46 They’re at around $10 billion in budget surplus in 2024.
0:43:48 Saudi Arabia, another example,
0:43:49 they’re just a giant oil farms.
0:43:51 They can sell a shit ton of oil
0:43:54 and they have all of this excess asset.
0:43:56 They have a budget surplus of around $30 billion.
0:44:00 So, that’s the way that other countries fund
0:44:01 their sovereign wealth funds.
0:44:03 That you have a lot of money left over.
0:44:06 So my question for Harris and for Trump
0:44:10 and for the White House, where the fuck is our money?
0:44:12 We don’t have any excess money.
0:44:16 I mean, we’ve been running a trade deficit since the ’70s.
0:44:19 We fund our entire economy with debt.
0:44:20 How are you gonna pay for this?
0:44:22 There is no money left over.
0:44:24 There’s nothing really left to sell.
0:44:27 So, I mean, I was confused and looked into this question.
0:44:29 How are they gonna fund it?
0:44:31 Biden and Harris don’t have an answer
0:44:33 or at least they haven’t stated it.
0:44:36 Trump’s answer, he says that we’re gonna fund it
0:44:39 with tariffs, that his tariff plan
0:44:42 is going to reverse the deficit.
0:44:45 And then once we are running on a surplus,
0:44:47 because of his tariffs,
0:44:50 we’re gonna be able to create the US sovereign wealth fund.
0:44:52 So, my read is similar to yours.
0:44:55 It feels like this is mostly a bunch of posturing
0:44:58 and it seems as if both sides here seem to think
0:45:02 that a US sovereign wealth fund
0:45:04 basically just sounds cool.
0:45:07 – So, the only time Democrats and Republicans agree,
0:45:09 the only thing to pass for bipartisanship
0:45:10 is they both come together.
0:45:13 Republicans wanna come taxes and spend more on defense.
0:45:16 Democrats wanna raise taxes
0:45:17 and spend more on social services.
0:45:18 So, they come together and say,
0:45:21 “I know, let’s cut taxes and spend more money.”
0:45:24 The only thing that they cooperate together on
0:45:26 is reckless spending the results
0:45:29 and unbelievable deficits on your generation.
0:45:31 Whenever Harris and Trump agree on anything,
0:45:33 it’s the stupidest fucking idea.
0:45:36 It’s like a tell, no tax on tips.
0:45:39 Okay, only 2% of American make tips.
0:45:41 The majority of them don’t pay any federal income tax
0:45:43 and you want the waiter to get a tax kept
0:45:44 and not the dishwasher.
0:45:47 This is just fucking stupid.
0:45:49 So, this strikes me similar to Congress
0:45:51 that if Harris and Trump agree on something,
0:45:54 it means it’s a really bad idea.
0:45:56 And this will go to my prediction.
0:46:00 Something else they agree on is also a really bad idea.
0:46:03 Ooh, I’m teasing my prediction at, I’m teasing it.
0:46:06 People can’t wait, people on the edge of their seats.
0:46:08 – Yeah, I can’t wait.
0:46:10 Just skip ahead if you’re listening.
0:46:15 Final question, say we did create a US sovereign wealth fund.
0:46:18 It’s called US Ventures.
0:46:19 Who’d be the general partner?
0:46:25 – I’d like to see Britney Spears.
0:46:28 I mean, why not?
0:46:29 I mean, let’s be honest,
0:46:32 not any of you have any fucking idea what they’re doing.
0:46:35 Britney Spears and Coco the monkey.
0:46:38 I’d like to, and they just throw darts.
0:46:41 Or we find those dogs that can smell bladder cancer
0:46:45 and urine and say to them, all right, can you pick a stock?
0:46:48 It would make any fucking difference.
0:46:51 As long as they’re diversified, shit, I don’t know.
0:46:53 Who would you want to run this thing?
0:46:55 – I’m pretty convinced by you.
0:46:56 Let’s go Britney Spears.
0:46:58 Maybe throw Peter Thiel in there.
0:46:59 – Well, Peter Thiel had a fund
0:47:01 and it did really well until it didn’t.
0:47:03 He was in the hedge fund business.
0:47:04 I forget the name of it, it had some like.
0:47:06 – Well, he’s also founder’s fund, so.
0:47:07 – Clarion, yeah, no, Clarion.
0:47:09 It was called Clarion or Clarion.
0:47:12 He had, well, the founder’s fund is in his wheelhouse.
0:47:15 The guy is a great investor in terms of VC,
0:47:18 but he had a fund that invested in publicly traded stocks
0:47:19 and it did really well.
0:47:21 I think this was back in the arts.
0:47:23 And then it did really not well.
0:47:25 And I think David Hasselhoff.
0:47:29 I would like David Hasselhoff to run the US stock fund.
0:47:32 And the guy who was the lead singer from Flock of Seagulls,
0:47:34 I’d like to get him involved.
0:47:36 I’d like to get him involved.
0:47:37 It doesn’t matter, Ed.
0:47:39 – Let’s take a look at the week ahead.
0:47:43 We’ll see US retail sales and housing starts for August.
0:47:45 And all eyes will be on the Federal Reserve
0:47:49 as it delivers its interest rate decision for September.
0:47:51 Scott, finally you can tell us our prediction.
0:47:53 – Okay, as we reference,
0:47:55 anytime Trump and Harris agree on something,
0:47:57 it’s a ridiculously stupid idea.
0:48:00 They both agree that the acquisition of US Steel
0:48:03 by Nippon Steel should be blocked.
0:48:06 So let’s talk a little bit about US Steel.
0:48:09 This is basically a shout of itself, a former icon.
0:48:12 It was at the turn of the 20th century,
0:48:14 one of the most important companies in the world.
0:48:16 It became the most valuable company in the world
0:48:17 for a hot minute.
0:48:19 It was the first company to ever reach a billion dollars
0:48:21 in revenue by the end of World War II,
0:48:24 it employed a third of a million people.
0:48:28 Now, US Steel employs 20,000 people.
0:48:32 4,000 in Pennsylvania, very strongly union.
0:48:35 5% of the global US Steel market is controlled by Japan.
0:48:38 4% is US and China’s like 50 or 60.
0:48:40 China’s basically just run away with the Steel market.
0:48:43 And the US is no longer competitive in Steel
0:48:45 for a variety of reasons.
0:48:48 Probably most specifically, we decimated
0:48:50 Japan and Germany’s infrastructure,
0:48:52 but the one advantage of that was that they got to build
0:48:54 from the ground up and think about innovation
0:48:56 and they’re just better at it.
0:48:58 And then China came in with an emerging Steel industry
0:49:00 and it’s just blown by everybody.
0:49:05 But it’s been politicized, you know, US Steel, right?
0:49:09 This is pure jingoist nationalist bullshit.
0:49:11 Japan, there’s some sort of security risk.
0:49:14 So they’re saying, oh no, we can’t sell it to Japan.
0:49:17 Japan is more American than many States right now.
0:49:20 Japan is an unbelievably strong ally.
0:49:21 They’re great with technology.
0:49:23 They produce Steel more efficiently than we do.
0:49:27 This is a lifeline for US Steel,
0:49:32 a company that is now worth a whopping $8 billion, right?
0:49:35 So NVIDIA loses 30 US Steel’s in one day last week,
0:49:38 but we’re worried about the Japanese coming for US Steel.
0:49:41 This is such bullshit.
0:49:43 So my predictions are following.
0:49:45 I don’t think this thing is gonna go through.
0:49:46 And of course, the unions have said,
0:49:49 raised their hand and said, we’re uncomfortable with this.
0:49:50 Okay, great.
0:49:52 You should join the Riders Guild to make sure
0:49:54 that you fuck over your constituents
0:49:57 with a bunch of posturing, the results and the layoffs.
0:49:59 And that’s what’s gonna happen here.
0:50:01 This acquisition is gonna be blocked
0:50:03 for purely political reasons.
0:50:06 You’re gonna see layoffs and you’re gonna see US Steel stock,
0:50:10 which is at 35 sub 20 bucks within 12 months.
0:50:14 In addition, the more mendacious part of this
0:50:16 is that if you’re a small company, a business,
0:50:20 a big business, what you want is your stocks to go up
0:50:22 because there is the possibility
0:50:24 of an international company coming in
0:50:26 and acquiring your company.
0:50:29 When we start coming up with bullshit nationalist reasons
0:50:31 why companies can’t buy American companies
0:50:34 that pose no security threat whatsoever,
0:50:37 it reduces the price, the takeover premium
0:50:41 of every company that has strategic value
0:50:42 to international players.
0:50:45 This is just so fucking stupid.
0:50:47 It makes my hair stand on end.
0:50:51 So my prediction, this is not gonna go through
0:50:53 for purely political nationalist reasons
0:50:58 and US Steel stock is gonna be below 25, 20 bucks a share
0:51:01 in 12 months and those 20,000 precious employees
0:51:04 at US Steel are gonna be more like 10 or 12,000
0:51:05 ’cause US Steel is gonna have no choice
0:51:10 without a big brother subscale to start closing plants.
0:51:16 – This episode was produced by Claire Miller
0:51:18 and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
0:51:20 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss.
0:51:21 Our executive producer is Catherine Dillon.
0:51:23 Mia Silverio is our research lead
0:51:25 and Drew Burris is our technical director.
0:51:26 Thank you for listening to “Prophecy Markets”
0:51:28 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:51:31 Join us on Thursday for our conversation
0:51:34 with Chris Anderson, only on “Prophecy Markets.”
0:51:37 (upbeat music)
0:51:43 ♪ You help me ♪
0:51:47 ♪ In kind ♪
0:51:52 ♪ Reunion ♪
0:52:00 ♪ As the world turns ♪
0:52:05 ♪ And the blood flows ♪
0:52:07 (upbeat music)
0:52:10 (upbeat music)

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0:00:37 Hey, I’m John Cohen Hill, host of a brand new show from Vox called Explain It To Me.
0:00:40 This week, the ethical murkiness of zoos.
0:00:45 Do we as humans feel like we deserve to just be able to walk around and see these animals?
0:00:47 Like, maybe we don’t deserve that.
0:00:50 Maybe there’s just some animals we don’t get to see.
0:00:53 To zoo or not to zoo?
0:00:55 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:00:58 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:00 [music ends]
0:01:08 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:01:12 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:01:15 But Donald Trump will be almost 80.
0:01:22 And J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from the presidency, should they win?
0:01:23 I’m Preet Bharara.
0:01:29 And this week, the Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast, Stay Tuned With Preet,
0:01:31 to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:33 The episode is out now.
0:01:37 Search and follow Stay Tuned With Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:45 I’m Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
0:01:52 Neither Trump nor Harris are talking about the most powerful weapon in our arsenal
0:01:55 to reduce poverty and inequality.
0:01:58 Raise the federal minimum wage.
0:02:02 Doing the minimum, as read by George Hahn.
0:02:10 During Tuesday night’s debate, Trump and Harris discussed the economy,
0:02:17 but neither referenced the simplest available move to reduce poverty and inequality.
0:02:20 Raise the minimum wage.
0:02:27 On the campaign trail, they’ve both jumped on an idea to eliminate the federal income tax on tips.
0:02:32 This is populist bullshit that would accomplish nothing.
0:02:36 Workers who depend on tips comprise just 2.5% of the workforce,
0:02:40 and most don’t make enough to pay income tax.
0:02:46 Meanwhile, one can imagine private equity firms and real estate brokers finding law firms
0:02:51 to restructure their carried interest fees and commissions as tips.
0:02:58 By the way, nearly every change to the tax code over the past 40 years
0:03:04 has transferred wealth from the young and middle class to corporations and the uber-wealthy,
0:03:15 who are enjoying their lowest tax burden since 1939 and paying single-digit tax rates.
0:03:21 The federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
0:03:25 Harris has said she supports raising it but hasn’t said by how much.
0:03:33 Trump, who’s been stiffing employees and vendors his entire life, has flip-flopped on the issue.
0:03:39 There is an economic war between the old and rich and the young, and it’s been a slaughter.
0:03:42 The federal minimum wage is Exhibit A.
0:03:50 It was created by Congress in 1938 to serve as a floor for state minimum wages, which vary widely.
0:03:54 A number of states have recently raised theirs.
0:03:59 The federal minimum, though, hasn’t gone up since 2009.
0:04:05 It’s not even been adjusted to keep pace with inflation or gains in productivity.
0:04:11 It’s buying power peaked in 1968.
0:04:19 A federal minimum wage adjusted for inflation and productivity would be about $25 an hour.
0:04:28 The reason it hasn’t kept pace and is instead 40% lower inflation adjusted than in 1970?
0:04:37 A. Politicians from both parties believe their core constituency is corporations and they’ve served them well.
0:04:44 Protecting the profit margins of companies whose business model is based on paying subpoverty wages.
0:04:49 In 2021, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress,
0:04:57 eight Democrats joined with the GOP to kill a measure to raise the minimum wage to $15.
0:05:17 All this bitching and barking about tearing down the 756 U.S. billionaires versus lifting up the 34% of American households that make less than $50,000 annual income if we raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour.
0:05:23 Another reason the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace is that it mostly affects young people.
0:05:30 Young people are less likely to vote than seniors and have little representation or empathy from a Congress
0:05:34 that’s become a cross between the golden girls and the walking dead.
0:05:40 Average age 62 versus 38 for all Americans.
0:05:50 Two-thirds of the people getting paid the minimum wage or less are 34 or younger and nearly half are 24 or younger.
0:06:02 We have epidemics in the U.S. Depression, anxiety, high blood pressure, homelessness, obesity, and poverty among young people, particularly men.
0:06:09 Though it’s worth noting here that the majority of people making the minimum wage in the U.S. are women.
0:06:23 The most powerful means of addressing these ills and the deaths of despair that follow is a good job at a fair wage that acknowledges the nobility of work.
0:06:32 In addition, a good job creates incentives and illuminates a path to wealth creation and economic security.
0:06:39 We’re not talking about making busboys and home health aides millionaires, but creating an incentive structure
0:06:46 that vaccinate young people from the virus that is the largest preventable cause of death in the U.S.
0:06:52 Poverty and less poverty hasn’t added benefit.
0:06:58 It would reduce the need for expensive and inefficient government programs.
0:07:01 Who loves subpoverty minimum wages?
0:07:08 A. The for-profit industrial prison, fast food, service, hospital, pharmaceutical sector.
0:07:15 These corporations have figured out a way to clip a staggering commission from a social construct.
0:07:23 It’s not unlike healthcare, which generates more private corporate income from treating diseases versus preventing them.
0:07:30 To prevent the disease of poverty, we need to just get the money to people who need it.
0:07:38 The most efficient food stamps, mental health, obesity, diabetes, child poverty program is money.
0:07:47 We’ve traded dignity at a lower cost for corporate profits that weigh on society.
0:07:53 The most compelling argument against raising the minimum wage is that employers would either pass
0:08:00 the higher costs on to consumers or cut jobs rather than raise salaries.
0:08:06 There is no free lunch, but the downsides have been consistently exaggerated by business lobbyists.
0:08:13 Minimum wage is Latin for “I’d pay you less if I could.”
0:08:20 But we need to bury the myth that the middle class is a self-healing organism the market shapes organically.
0:08:28 It isn’t. The greatest innovation in history, the U.S. middle class, requires a consistent
0:08:35 investment that matches the rhetoric. Any CEO or politician who drones on about heroes,
0:08:41 the middle class, and Jesus is usually underpaying their employees, cutting food stamps,
0:08:46 and soliciting oral sex in airport bathrooms.
0:08:51 There have been headlines lately about $15 Big Macs and in California some fast food chains
0:08:57 have closed since the minimum wage went up. They say this like it’s a bad thing.
0:09:04 If we were to foot taxes to the externalities, which is what government is supposed to do,
0:09:13 we’d have beef and gas at $20 a pound and $10 a gallon. Yes, fast food restaurants and many retail,
0:09:19 hospital network, and prison system stocks would decline and it would be worth it.
0:09:26 Some restaurant, hospitality, and retail companies would fail, but most would be able
0:09:33 to pass on the costs to customers without damaging demand. Most empirical economic data shows
0:09:40 raising the minimum wage is broadly good for the economy because poor and middle income people
0:09:45 spend most or all of their money creating a robust multiplier effect.
0:09:54 UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich and University of Victoria economist Justin Wiltshire
0:10:02 recently wrote, “Outside the theoretical world, economists have conducted hundreds of studies
0:10:09 on the actual effects of minimum wage. They repeatedly find that increasing the minimum wage
0:10:14 raises the pay of low wage workers without leading to even minor job losses.
0:10:22 Prices increase by minimal amounts that are too small to deter anyone from buying a burger or taco.”
0:10:31 In April 2024 study by University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon economists
0:10:41 found much the same thing. Co-author Nirupama Rao said, “Our results show clearly that minimum
0:10:47 wages do little harm to independent firms and even benefits some owners while meaningfully
0:10:53 increasing both the earnings and employment of young and low earning workers. Of course,
0:11:00 these gains to workers and owners are financed by consumers who appear fairly inelastic in their
0:11:05 overall demand for the goods and services furnished by independent businesses affected by minimum
0:11:16 wage policies.” According to a 2021 study by the Congressional Budget Office, raising the federal
0:11:27 minimum wage to $15 by 2025 would lift 900,000 people out of poverty. And a 2019 study by the
0:11:32 Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, estimated that raising the minimum wage
0:11:39 to $15 could lead to an annual increase in consumer spending of $22 billion.
0:11:51 There is constant inescapable tension between labor and capital. For decades now, however,
0:11:57 capital has been kicking the shit out of labor. That’s why the federal government needs to take
0:12:05 the lead on raising wages. Businesses won’t do it and unions can’t. Unions are not only
0:12:12 ineffective. Their membership over the past 30 years has fallen by half. But they also help support
0:12:19 the illusion that middle-class workers have robust representation and don’t need large-scale programs.
0:12:27 They don’t, and they do, respectively. There needs to be one union for all workers,
0:12:35 the federal government. The traditional union construct has outlived its usefulness.
0:12:44 Union membership in the U.S. peaked at around 33% in the 1950s and stands at 10% today.
0:12:49 The labor movement has been crippled since its inception by infighting and corruption.
0:12:57 Sean Fane seems like an honest man, especially in contrast to the past two UAW presidents
0:13:05 who are in prison. Other unions are simply ineffective. For all the hype about unionizing
0:13:11 Starbucks locations, the baristas union has yet to win a collective bargaining agreement
0:13:18 or negotiate a national contract. Last year’s Hollywood writer’s strike was a disaster for
0:13:26 the WGA, with its members taking a 100% pay cut for the five months they were on the picket line
0:13:32 in exchange for modest concessions from the studios. And it was the catalyst for a downsizing
0:13:42 that curbed production in Los Angeles 60% year over year. Low-paying jobs, particularly first jobs,
0:13:50 tend to be shitty. That is as it should be. Almost everybody with a great job now
0:13:56 started out doing something tedious and hard for not much money. How do you make a lot of money?
0:14:05 A. By starting to make money. Any money. For young people though, an early job is as much about
0:14:13 socialization as it is about cash. Somebody working on the front lines in service or retail
0:14:20 can’t help but learn a lot about themselves and the rest of humanity. Pro tip, the biggest tippers
0:14:26 are people who’ve worked in service jobs and now have money. You learn how to work on a team,
0:14:32 how to deal with coworkers and managers and customers who can be jerks. You learn how to get
0:14:38 people to buy something from you which is the key skill in a capitalist society, i.e. the US and
0:14:46 anywhere else you’d want to live. In short, you learn how to develop and deploy social capital
0:14:56 and begin connecting work and talent with money and money with a better life. It sounds obvious,
0:15:02 but many never make the connection. They want success but aren’t willing to sacrifice for it.
0:15:10 Few things build a young person’s self-respect, sense of purpose and willingness to buy into society
0:15:19 more than their first paycheck. I didn’t enjoy being a kid. Being an unremarkable boy with a
0:15:26 single mom, little money and no access to public transportation meant the wonder years in West LA
0:15:36 were mundane. However, at the same time, shows like Dynasty, Dallas, The Love Boat and Fantasy Island
0:15:46 outlined my escape route. Money and the way you got money was work. Note, it still is.
0:15:53 By nine years old, I had a paper route and walked three dogs. I bought packs of bubble
0:16:00 yum for 15 cents and sold individual pieces to classmates for a nickel. My senior year in high
0:16:07 school, I graduated to Boxboy. I’d leave university high at noon to work in the mailroom at Southwestern
0:16:14 University of Law and, by early evening, bomb to the Westwood Chart House where I was a barback.
0:16:21 The summer before college, I shrink-wrapped software boxes for a firm run by Scientologists.
0:16:30 They were nice and strange. In college, I was a trainer at LA Fitness, an usher at the Avco
0:16:37 Cinemas and changed and cleaned beer taps in bars in downtown LA. Walking into bars in Compton at
0:16:46 11 a.m. midweek was an illuminating experience. By this point, I had access to the UCLA Athletes
0:16:55 Job Board. Every weekend, I’d put on white shorts, K-Swisses, and a white polo and head to the
0:17:03 Mondrian where I was a pool boy. Twice a week, for $30 in cash, I’d put on a suit and venture to a
0:17:09 posh home in the flats of Beverly Hills. I’d go upstairs where an elderly woman would be dressed
0:17:16 to the nines, lying in bed. I’d scoop her up and carry her downstairs and into the back seat of
0:17:23 a Rolls-Royce. Her driver would transport us to Scandia, a fancy restaurant in LA, where I’d,
0:17:29 again, carry my client into the restaurant and seat her at a table with six to eight friends and
0:17:40 admirers. The woman in my arms was Lillian Hellman. Ask your parents. I sold commemorative gold coins
0:17:48 over the phone. I was a sperm donor. $40 a shot. So I have somewhere between two and two thousand
0:17:57 kids, but that’s another post. This kaleidoscope of work paid me enough with $5,000 in student
0:18:02 loans and Pell grants to get through UCLA with little to no help from anybody.
0:18:09 My first job out of UCLA and business school enabled me and my girlfriend who worked at Arthur
0:18:21 Anderson to buy a home in Potrero Hill in San Francisco for $285,000 at the age of 28. Imagine
0:18:28 any young person being able today to get through college and buy a home in San Francisco
0:18:36 with their own earnings. The assault on the prosperity of the young is especially mendacious,
0:18:43 as it’s taken place in concert with the greatest increase in national wealth registered in history.
0:18:54 Be clear, this has been purposeful. Americans over the age of 70 are 72% wealthier than 40 years
0:19:04 ago and people under the age of 40 are 24% poorer. Money is the transfer of time and work. To give
0:19:10 someone or something money is to love them and America loved me, connecting my effort with
0:19:21 prosperity. At an early age, I understood the assignment. Our youth now are depressed, anxious,
0:19:29 obese and broke. It’s not globalization, network effects or some other bullshit narrative fomented
0:19:38 by the incumbents. It’s the wealth transfer and, like I said, it’s been purposeful. And the most
0:19:46 elegant effective means of reversing this lack of care, regard and love for the young in America
0:19:54 would be a massive increase in the minimum wage. It would be costly and worth it.
0:20:08 Life is so rich.
0:20:17 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:05 Support for this episode comes from The Current. The Current podcast is back with an exciting
0:00:09 new season featuring marketing executives from the world’s most influential brands.
0:00:13 Tune in to hear what’s driving conversation in the fast-moving world of digital advertising.
0:00:17 The unique insights from brands is diverse as Hilton, Instacart, Moderna, Major League
0:00:22 Soccer, and more. And in this presidential election season, The Current explores when
0:00:26 a national political advertiser like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and
0:00:33 a major CPG brand like Hershey can learn from each other. Listen in and subscribe to The
0:00:39 Current at TheCurrent.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:43 An experimental procedure that is giving hope to the world to get a heart transplant from
0:00:49 a genetically modified pig. There’s over 100,000 people on the organ transplant weight
0:00:56 list. And some scientists think the answer might be pigs. Nobody in the world knew how
0:01:01 a human would react to a pig heart, right? The next day when we asked him, you know,
0:01:05 how are you feeling? He said, “Oink, oink.”
0:01:11 This week on Unexplainable, are pig hearts really the answer? Follow Unexplainable for
0:01:14 new episodes every Wednesday.
0:01:21 Hey, I’m John Glenn Hill, host of a brand new show from Vox called Explain It To Me.
0:01:24 This week, the ethical murkiness of zoos.
0:01:29 Do we as humans feel like we deserve to just be able to walk around and see these animals?
0:01:35 Like, maybe we don’t deserve that. Maybe there’s just some animals we don’t get to see.
0:01:40 To zoo or not to zoo? That’s this week on Explain It To Me. Listen wherever you get
0:01:47 your podcasts.
0:01:52 Episode 316, 316 is the area of belonging to Wichita, Kansas in the surrounding areas.
0:01:57 Episode 316, the first birth control clinic opened in Brooklyn, New York. True story.
0:02:01 My spouse and I used the pullout method for birth control. We go to sleep, we pull out
0:02:09 our phones and ignore each other. True story, my birth control has holes in it. Crocs.
0:02:13 I went to the doctor to get birth control from my daughter and he said, “She’s sexually
0:02:20 active?” And I said, “Well, that’s wrong. That is wrong.”
0:02:35 That’s why you come here. Go, go, go!
0:02:41 Welcome to the 316th episode of the Prop G-Pod. It’s just, the dilemma there was not what
0:02:47 joke to tell, but what joke not to tell. Birth control is just a cornucopia. It is a fertile
0:02:52 field of jokes. This has made my day just going over all these jokes. By the way, 90%
0:02:57 of them, my producer said, “No fucking way.” In today’s episode, we speak with Dan Butner,
0:03:02 a National Geographic Fellow, a longevity researcher and the best-selling author of
0:03:05 the Blue Zones, Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who Lived the Longest. We’ve
0:03:11 had a bunch of the kind of New Age cool guys, right? The Cool Club, the Atia and Hubermans
0:03:16 of the World. And I wanted to go old school with the OG of longevity. And it’s also very
0:03:22 handsome man at 63. I just don’t think you can be talking about longevity if you’re fucking
0:03:28 slob at 40 and smoking and drinking. I knew a few of those things. Anyways, we discussed
0:03:33 with Dan Blue Zones and how community environment and diet play into longevity. Okay, what’s
0:03:40 happening? The dog is back into UK. How do you know? I am so pale and unhappy. Oh, what
0:03:45 do you know? It’s the fall, which means it’s 50 fucking degrees. And what else am I doing?
0:03:48 I’m going to get out of London. I’m going to the south of France soon. Then I’m going
0:03:53 to go to Madrid for a conference. And then I head back to the US. Anyways, isn’t it
0:03:58 exciting to hear my travel itinerary? What else is going on? By the time you hear this,
0:04:02 Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face each other in their first presidential debate.
0:04:07 I’ll be discussing my thoughts and reactions next week with Jessica Tarloff on our new
0:04:13 show. That’s right. That’s right. That’s what we need more of. We need more dog. That’s
0:04:17 the hole that needs to be filled. That’s the white space for those of you in marketing
0:04:24 here, right? Daddy needs some more dog said almost nobody right now. I am an enormous
0:04:32 fan of Jess Tarloff. She is the star of the show, the five. My favorite way to describe
0:04:36 the five is it’s four people discussing politics and they’re conservatives and they’re kind
0:04:41 of like batshit crazy, I would argue. And then Jessica just comes with receipts and
0:04:46 logic and there’ll be a pause after she says something sane. And it looks as if the four
0:04:50 of them have just been caught masturbating. They literally don’t know how to respond or
0:04:57 what to say. I love that. I love that. Anyways, I think she is so talented, so charming. And
0:05:03 the way I met Jess was she was my co-panelist on the Bill Maher show or Bill Maher’s real
0:05:08 time. And I hated Jess. Why did I hate her? Because I’m a narcissist and immediately went
0:05:15 to YouTube to check out the comments and every comment was love Jess. Jess is amazing. She
0:05:22 literally like no one even saw me on the panel because her insights were so strong. Anyways,
0:05:26 I got over it and we’ve gotten to know each other. We’ve become friendly and I said, let’s
0:05:32 start a podcast. It focuses on the middle and tries to be a little bit more data driven
0:05:36 calling it raging moderates. Is it treat or call us moderates? Maybe. I mean, I think,
0:05:41 I don’t know. I think I’m center left, kind of going center right because of the head
0:05:45 up your ass narrative coming out of the far left on Israel, which I’ve had an emotional
0:05:49 reaction to. But anyways, she’s definitely center left. I think I like to think I’m right
0:05:54 down the middle, but people say that maybe it’s not true. Anyways, love the name. Love
0:05:58 the name. All right, enough of that. Let’s talk about Apple. Let’s get back to the world
0:06:03 of business. The big news is that it’s releasing four new iPhones that can run Apple intelligence
0:06:09 or put another way. The firm’s AI suite as exciting as that is. Is that exciting? I guess
0:06:13 so. We likely won’t see the phone’s full AI effect until next year. Apple claims the
0:06:19 new chips in these phones can perform 30% faster than last year’s processor. They also revealed
0:06:23 new air pod pros that will have hearing aid and protection capabilities. I’ve always thought
0:06:27 that was a huge opportunity. I just don’t understand. Seems to me that apples is going
0:06:31 to come in and take the entire hearing aid market. Anyways, year to date, Apple stock
0:06:37 is up 17%, which on, I think it was about a half a trillion dollars when you’re trading
0:06:41 at three trillion. Alphabet’s taken ahead, Nvidia’s taken a bit of a hit. Is that fair
0:06:47 to say in the last month or so? But I think Apple’s genius here, again, it comes down
0:06:53 to this. And that is my friend and former colleague Peter Golder, he had this one insight
0:06:57 that he sort of built a career around, is that the innovators don’t actually add shareholder
0:07:00 value. What does it mean to be an innovator? It kind of means you’re first. It means you’re
0:07:04 coming up with something new and different. And generally speaking, that’s not the right
0:07:09 strategy to add shareholder value. What is the right strategy? The second mouse strategy.
0:07:15 And that is the first people have to spend a lot of money to try and forge a new technology,
0:07:19 build a new type of housing design, a new type, I don’t know, something new. And then
0:07:24 if it works, the people kind of laying in the reeds can say, okay, we can do this almost
0:07:28 as well for less money, or we can improve upon it, or take these features out and add
0:07:34 this one. It’s the second mouse that gets the cheese. This is the primary means of adding
0:07:41 shareholder value for the big companies. And let’s be clear, Apple defines the second mouse.
0:07:46 Were they the first in MP3 players? No. Object oriented computing? No laptops? No. Were they
0:07:51 the first to have a smartphone? Hell to the no. They haven’t been first around anything.
0:07:55 But Apple defines the second mouse. And where are they going second mousing right now? And
0:08:00 it’s going to add more value than, in my opinion, almost any AI company with the exception of
0:08:05 Microsoft AI. And that is effectively what they’ve said is, let’s let other people make
0:08:11 massive investments in AI. This is an arms race. It takes a ton of money, mostly spent
0:08:17 on products from Nvidia. And it’s a capital arms race. Computing all this shit just costs
0:08:23 a fortune. Instead, we’ll take the best of breed, and we’ll offer very consumer friendly
0:08:26 applications of AI, such as, you know what I would really like? I would really like the
0:08:31 ability to just search my photos using AI. If they offer that on the next iPhone, boom,
0:08:36 champagne and cocaine. By the way, I can’t help it. I get those Apple memories. Is that
0:08:39 what they call where they come up and they start showing my kids when they were like
0:08:46 little and cute and like, thought their dad was their hero?
0:08:51 Apple also announced, also announced that part of their AI package would be kind of an
0:08:57 ability to do AI assistant type work, image editing, and that they would update Siri.
0:09:00 So I own Apple. I’ve owned it for a long time. I think it’s just one of those companies
0:09:05 you hold on to forever. I do think it’s fully valued, but my capital gains would be I’ve
0:09:10 owned it since 2008. So I think I’m up 20x on it, maybe 30x. So I don’t want to take
0:09:16 the tax hit. I can’t find anything better to invest in. So I guess I’m still long Apple.
0:09:21 By the way, speaking of luxury brands, strongest luxury brand in the world that isn’t a university.
0:09:25 Because if the strongest is in fact Apple, why? If you own an Apple product, it says
0:09:31 very sort of implicitly, elegantly that you’re one of the billion wealthiest, most impressive,
0:09:34 most creative people on the planet. I think this is brilliant because what they’ve said
0:09:39 is I’m not going to get into an arms race about AI. I’m going to take the best of different
0:09:46 AI and maybe, maybe, here’s an idea. I’ll let open AI or llama or Gemini. I’ll do the
0:09:50 same thing I did with search and I’ll bid it out and say, all right, who wants a co-branded
0:09:56 AI application in front of the billion wealthiest consumers? Well, I do. Well, okay, it’s going
0:10:02 to cost you. Similar to how Google is the default search engine in an exchange for that, Alphabet
0:10:08 justifies paying $20 billion a year to Apple, of which about 19.9 hits the bottom line at
0:10:13 which point when a company is trading at a PE of about 20, you’re talking about literally
0:10:19 about a six or $700 billion deal in terms of market capitalization or shareholder value
0:10:22 to the organization. I think they’re setting themselves up to do the exact same thing in
0:10:26 AI and that is you guys spend all the money trying to figure out search. You guys spend
0:10:30 all the money trying to figure out AI will be the interface to the billion wealthiest
0:10:35 consumers and will give you some of that interface and some of that exposure in exchange for
0:10:41 some serious cabbage, serious cabbage. I think this is brilliant. I think these guys, I don’t
0:10:45 know who’s running strategy at Apple. You never hear about them. They have this sort
0:10:51 of shtazi-like or Mossad-like secrecy over there and it works. You’re not supposed to
0:10:55 be a star. You’re not supposed to be going on Johnny Carson and say, “Well, when I was
0:11:00 running strategy at Apple, but whoever is running strategy at Apple, they consistently
0:11:05 make really good moves.” Mixed reality headset, whatever. That was probably the right strategy
0:11:10 to make sure that Zuckerberg didn’t get out too far in front of them. But here’s the hard
0:11:14 part because this is the bottom line. This is what a CEO does. A CEO’s most difficult
0:11:20 decision is not what to do. It’s what not to do. Because the cruel truth of capitalism
0:11:24 is you have finite resources, even if you’re Apple. So your decisions around what not to
0:11:30 do, such that you have the capital to do what you decide to do really well, is just as important
0:11:34 as deciding what to do, if you will. They’re two sides of the same coin. And I think in
0:11:38 this instance, they said, “You know, rather than spending tens or hundreds of billions
0:11:43 trying to build out our own unique AI, we’re going to go the other way. We’re going to
0:11:46 be a remora fish. We’re going to be the second mouse here, and we’re going to continue to
0:11:54 drive a ton of value. Apple is the ultimate second mouse.” We’ll be right back for our
0:11:58 conversation with Dan Butener.
0:12:02 Support for PropG comes from Mint Mobile. If you’re serious about keeping your budget
0:12:05 in check, your monthly expenses are one of the first places to look. And one thing a
0:12:11 lot of us overpay for is our phones, especially between all the hidden fees and other nonsense
0:12:16 phone companies throw at you, which is why Mint Mobile is doing things differently. When
0:12:20 you switch to Mint Mobile, you can get three months of premium wireless service for just
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0:12:33 Just bring those with you over to your new Mint Mobile plan. To get this new customer
0:12:37 offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, you can go
0:12:44 to MintMobile.com/PropG. That’s MintMobile.com/PropG. You can cut your wireless bill at 15 bucks
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0:12:52 $45 up from payment required, equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month
0:12:57 plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees
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0:13:06 Support for PropG comes from Vanta. Customers aren’t going to support your business if
0:13:09 they don’t trust you. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting or scaling your company’s
0:13:14 security program. Demonstrating top-notch security practices and establishing trust
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0:13:24 SOC2, ISO 27001 and more, saving you time and money while helping you build customer trust.
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0:13:48 security in real time. Get $1,000 off Vanta when you go to Vanta.com/PropG. That’s Vanta.com/PROFG
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0:13:56 When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met on the debate stage, it was obvious that these
0:13:58 were two very different people.
0:14:03 But JD Vance and Tim Walls actually have a lot in common. They’re both white men from
0:14:06 the Midwest, they’re both family men, and they were both in the service.
0:14:09 But they disagree on what it means to be a man.
0:14:13 Here’s my light pack. Surround yourself with smart women and listen to them and you’ll
0:14:14 do just fine.
0:14:32 Today Explained, every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:14:35 Welcome back. Here’s our conversation with Dan Butner, a National Geographic Fellow,
0:14:40 longevity researcher and bestselling author of the Blue Zones, Lessons for Living Longer
0:14:42 from the People Who Live the Longest.
0:14:45 Dan, where does this podcast find you?
0:14:49 17 Blocks from the Raleigh Hotel Pool.
0:14:55 Let’s bust right into it. Your focus is longevity. So let’s start there. Can you break down what
0:14:58 a “Blue Zone” is?
0:15:05 A “Blue Zone” is a geographically defined, demographically confirmed area where people
0:15:11 live statistically longest. And we measure that through either lowest rate of middle
0:15:19 age mortality and/or highest centenarian rate. So mostly we’re looking at life expectancy
0:15:26 of people about our age because that factors out things like testosterone, toxicity, and
0:15:28 infant mortality.
0:15:32 And then what did you find? My guess is everybody, and I know some of this, but what are the
0:15:39 common features of lifestyles and habits for people who live in these areas where they
0:15:42 tend to live longer? I assume it’s not the geography, although maybe that has something
0:15:43 to do with it.
0:15:47 Oddly, geography does have something to do with it. Geography has more to do with it
0:15:54 than genes because only about 20% of how long we live is dictated by our genes. And these
0:16:00 places are genetically heterogeneous, which is to say they’re melting pods. Each of these
0:16:06 places, you find them on about the 20th parallel north. So it’s neither the tropics where people
0:16:12 are beleaguered by infectious disease, nor are they too far north where they don’t get
0:16:18 enough sunshine and outdoor activity, and in the case of the “Blue Zones” access to
0:16:24 fresh fruits and vegetables. But the common denominator is they’re eating mostly a whole
0:16:30 food plant-based diet. The five pillars of every longevity diet in the world are whole
0:16:39 grains and garden vegetables and so forth. Tubers, interestingly, about 75% of the caloric
0:16:44 intake in Okinawa, a place that produced the longest-lived women in history, came from
0:16:52 the purple sweet potato until about 1990. And then nuts and beans. Beans are the cornerstone
0:16:57 of every longevity diet, and if you’re eating a cup of beans a day, it’s probably worth
0:17:02 about four extra years of life expectancy.
0:17:07 So let me get this. If I want to add for it, I mean, I realize there’s more to it here.
0:17:12 But if you wanted to add, call it, “Multiple years of life expectancy, one serving of beans
0:17:13 a day.”
0:17:19 About a cup. It’s associated, and it may be because there’s something crazy good in
0:17:24 beans, or it might be because if you’re getting your protein from beans instead of bacon,
0:17:29 you’re getting the longevity bump. But it definitely stacks the deck in favor of longevity
0:17:31 if you’re eating a cup of beans a day.
0:17:35 So say more about the common denominators. I’ve read your book, and there’s a few of
0:17:36 them.
0:17:41 Yes. People seem to have a sense of purpose. There’s vocabulary for purpose in every “Blue
0:17:49 Zone.” So they’re not waking up with the existential stress of what am I going to do with my day.
0:17:55 They live in places where it’s easy to move naturally. They’re nudged into movement every
0:18:01 20 minutes, as opposed to thinking they can sit all day long at their offices and make
0:18:06 it up in the gym. Every time they go to work or a friend’s house or out to eat at occasions
0:18:13 a walk. They have gardens out back. Their houses aren’t full of the mechanical conveniences
0:18:19 that have engineered most of the physical activity out of our lives. The scourge of
0:18:25 network technology hasn’t quite struck “Blue Zones” yet. So most social interaction is
0:18:31 face-to-face, and they get a lot of it, largely as a result of their environment. So you can’t
0:18:38 step outside of your home and not bump into your neighbor or your aunt or person who delivers
0:18:45 your mail. So there’s spontaneous social interaction, which in some studies have shown these low
0:18:53 quality social interactions are as predictive of longevity as deep meaningful conversations.
0:18:57 And what about their social life or how they engage with others?
0:19:03 Well, they tend to live in extended families. They keep their aging parents nearby, which
0:19:12 conveys two to six year additional life expectancy as opposed to putting your aging parent in
0:19:19 a retirement home. They tend to be married or living with a partner, best heavily in
0:19:25 their kids. They live in walkable villages, so they’re constantly interacting with others.
0:19:33 The festivals is part of the annual cycle of life. In Icaria, for example, one of our
0:19:40 Blue Zones, there’s 90 festivals between April and September, and people show up to
0:19:45 them not only as kind of a social obligation, but because they’re fun. But what happens
0:19:54 at these festivals is people build bonds, social bonds. There’s almost always a philanthropic
0:20:00 objective to the party, plus they’re dancing all night, which is great for physical activity.
0:20:05 But the key insight, Scott, to longevity, and this is where we get it wrong in America.
0:20:15 In America, we tend to pursue health and longevity. We get in mind a diet, an exercise program,
0:20:22 maybe a supplement program, longevity hacks, and then we pursue it. But the problem is
0:20:29 our brains are wired for novelty. We get bored very quickly. We lose discipline, we lose
0:20:36 presence of mind. If you look at any of the sort of strategies we undertake to get healthier,
0:20:41 live longer, live weight, they never work for more than about nine months. Then the
0:20:50 vast majority of people have failed. In Blue Zones, longevity isn’t pursued in in-soups,
0:20:55 which is a huge difference. In other words, people in Blue Zones have no idea how they’re
0:21:00 living an extra 10 years at middle age than Americans do. They just live their lives.
0:21:06 But if you look at their environments, they’re living in places where their unconscious decisions,
0:21:14 their micro day-to-day decisions are better for not only a few months or a year or two,
0:21:20 but for decades or a lifetime. Because when it comes to longevity, there’s no short-term
0:21:27 fix. It’s regular, better day-to-day decisions for a long time that make the big difference.
0:21:30 That doesn’t happen with the conscious mind.
0:21:37 It feels as if it’s a little bit, “Okay, I have my life here in London. I try to purposely
0:21:45 eat better. I have a trainer to get in my exercise. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but
0:21:48 the weather in London is somewhere between awful and whatever is worse than awful.”
0:21:49 Feel real weather.
0:21:57 “Yeah, there you go. That is the wrong way to live long. It’s about moving to Greece
0:22:04 where I’m forced to walk somewhere. The Mediterranean diet just unfolds on me. I’m living close
0:22:09 to my family, so I have no choice, but to be highly social.” It feels like it’s more
0:22:15 of a … Instead of the accoutrements, it is your life. Is that a decent way to describe
0:22:16 it?
0:22:24 Yes. It’s about shifting the focus from trying to change your behavior, which fails for almost
0:22:30 all people, almost all the time in the long run, to shaping your environment. Of course,
0:22:35 the easiest way to shape your environment for longevity is, as you point out, is move.
0:22:44 There are areas in America where life expectancy is 25 years less than other places. There
0:22:51 are zip codes in Kentucky where life expectancy is 25 years below, say Boulder, Colorado.
0:22:58 What we found in the main focus of my work for the past 15 years has been shaping people’s
0:23:06 environment at the population level, largely through policy, but also through helping restaurants,
0:23:11 grocery stores, workplaces, schools, and even your home are designed so that the healthy
0:23:18 choice is either the easy choice or the unavoidable choice, and that’s what works.
0:23:22 It’s an issue we’re looking at. You mentioned Kentucky. Let’s go to the other side. I don’t
0:23:27 know if you have a term for gray zones or dead zones, but what is it about specifically
0:23:34 about these places where people live a lot less healthy lives and have much higher mortality?
0:23:37 What are the commonalities or the common denominators there?
0:23:43 They’re crisscrossed with highways, unwalkable streets. Every time you go to work, you have
0:23:50 to get in your car. More people have died in car accidents in the last 100 years than
0:23:55 have died in wars. Right there is your first mortality challenge, and then the fact you’re
0:24:02 not walking, they tend to be junk food forests. There’s no effort to curb accessibility or
0:24:08 junk food marketing, so junk food and ultra processed food is delicious, and it’s cheap,
0:24:13 and it’s ubiquitous, and that’s why we eat so much of it, not because we know it’s not
0:24:15 bad good for us.
0:24:21 There’s typically higher crime. People are more socially isolated. Think about suburban
0:24:27 cul-de-sac as opposed to downtown London where you live, where every time you step outside
0:24:32 your door, there’s a chance to bump into somebody, and there’s at least a chance that there’ll
0:24:37 be a meaningful social connection for you. Often air quality, which is also a function
0:24:48 of traffic, it’s a number of smaller things that add up to decades of life expectancy disparity.
0:24:54 We talked about purpose. Break down a little bit more, a little bit about work. I’ve read
0:24:59 somewhere that work used to be dirty, dangerous work. Now work for many people is purpose
0:25:04 and that their mortality actually goes up, especially men, when they stop working. Unpack
0:25:06 work and longevity.
0:25:14 A Gallup poll of 2 million workers found that only about 31%, fewer than a third of Americans
0:25:19 actually find purpose at work. Most of us are showing up to work because we need the
0:25:25 money or the insurance or it’s a status thing. Dr. Robert Butler, who was the first director
0:25:31 of the National Institutes on Aging, analyzed the writings of several thousand people over
0:25:37 time and found that people who could articulate their sense of purpose were living about eight
0:25:43 years longer than people who are rudderless. We don’t know if that’s because people with
0:25:50 sense of purpose are some sort of a mechanism that makes us rise to the occasion, psychosomatic
0:25:57 benefit or if it’s because people who have a sense of purpose are more likely to stay
0:26:04 fit and take their medicines and make an effort with other people in connecting or find a
0:26:12 job where they’re not bored or uninspired. It’s so important and it’s so largely overlooked
0:26:15 in the United States, I believe.
0:26:21 I’ve been reading that there’s just a ton of stress placed on parents. I’ve also read
0:26:26 other places that actually while you have kids in the house, you’re actually less happy
0:26:32 than people without kids. Talk about the ideal scenario from a longevity standpoint for someone’s
0:26:39 relationship status. Kids, no kids, eight kids, one kid, married, boyfriend, whatever
0:26:44 it might be. What is the ideal scenario and what is the worst case scenario? I imagine
0:26:48 the worst case scenario is just to be totally alone, but that’s my thesis.
0:26:55 Yes, that’s the worst case. Let me unpack a few things. I also wrote a book and a cover
0:27:01 story for Natural Geographic on happiness called The Blue Zones of Happiness. There’s
0:27:09 two scientific ways of measuring happiness. The first one is something called life satisfaction
0:27:13 where you essentially ask people to think of their life as a whole and rate it on a scale
0:27:19 of one to 10. That’s the value weight of it. It’s your life in the rearview mirror. The
0:27:23 other way is something called affect, positive or negative affect, and that’s measured by
0:27:29 a time sequence of asking people how often they laugh, cry, feel stress, feel worry. That’s
0:27:33 more of an evaluative or how you experience happiness.
0:27:40 People who have babies, both the men and the women, tend to experience a dramatic drop
0:27:47 in affect. In other words, their experience happiness drops. Predictably, they’re exhausted
0:27:54 or there’s money stress in the family or the wife doesn’t want to have sex because she
0:28:02 just had a baby, whatever, but life satisfaction goes up. You get this up and down of happiness
0:28:11 and the picture’s not clear. In places like Denmark, both kinds of happiness go up. Presumable
0:28:17 will be because there’s better childcare and for the first year of life, both the man
0:28:24 and women can take up to 12 months off to take care of that infant. As far as longevity,
0:28:31 we did a study in Sardinia. Sardinia’s home to the longest-lived men in the world, about
0:28:36 11 times more male centenarians there than you’d expect to see in a similar population
0:28:43 in the United States. The guys with the best chance of reaching age 100 had five or more
0:28:50 daughters, specifically daughters. We don’t know if that’s because daughters tend to take
0:28:57 care of their aging fathers in that culture or if it’s because there’s a selection bias,
0:29:03 that if you can survive five adolescent girls making it to 100, it’s no problem. But it’s
0:29:04 very clear-
0:29:11 It’s got to be the former, isn’t it? I would just think logically. I was joking. I wish
0:29:15 I’d had two boys. I always wish I’d had a daughter because I thought the daughter would
0:29:19 take care of me. The daughter would call me and say, “Dad, did you pick up your medication?
0:29:27 Dad, did you get your colonoscopy?” That they make sure that you’re taking care of yourself.
0:29:33 To me, it’s so funny that that seems so obvious, and I never thought that, have a bunch of
0:29:35 daughters to live longer.
0:29:43 Yeah. Living in extended families seems to be a trend in all blue zones. I know people
0:29:48 think the idea of their parents living with them might be horrible, but often there’s
0:29:54 not a choice in blue zones, but you see very tangible benefits. Something called the grandmother
0:30:02 effect has shown not only in several cultures, but actually several mammal species that those
0:30:08 that keep a parent near the family, the children in those families have lower rates of mortality
0:30:15 and lower rates of disease. Not only that, if you’re aging moms living with you, she’s
0:30:22 not a retirement home. Again, retirement home, instant lowering of life expectancy. There’s
0:30:31 a beautiful symbiosis that you see in families. Having children, raising them well, I would
0:30:37 argue not coddling them. You don’t see coddled children in the blue zones. Children are expected
0:30:43 to be contributing members of the family. They’re all sometimes in the field. They’re
0:30:48 goldherders by the age of eight or 12, eight between eight and 12. They’re helping with
0:30:55 kitchen chores. They’re not just being driven to dance lessons and play dates, like we typically
0:31:03 see. There is a chance that they could get hurt. They have to take on some responsibility
0:31:10 in the attendant risk with that at a very early age as opposed to waiting age 25 to
0:31:16 take your first risk in life. So much of this is encouraging and discouraging. Do you have
0:31:26 kids, Dan? I have three. My kids basically get up. I hate to admit this. It’s our fault.
0:31:31 My kids don’t even make their beds. The most active thing they do is they do take the tube.
0:31:39 They do play sports at school, but they are coddled. They really are. What is your approach
0:31:43 after doing all of this research? What is your approach to raising your children that
0:31:47 might be a little different than how other people raise their kids?
0:31:54 Well, at a certain point in my life, I told them I needed them at a very early age, and
0:31:58 I gave them chores. I did need them. I needed them psychologically at that point, but I
0:32:05 also, you know, logistically needed help. I never made money until I was 40, and I made
0:32:12 a lot of money. But in a way, it was a gift to live in a household where, you know, we
0:32:18 had to make our own fun, and I needed them to help me with the laundry, etc., and with
0:32:24 the yard. And I think at the end of the day, that was good. That was a gift for them.
0:32:28 And why is that? I’m going to probe here. Are you a single father?
0:32:35 Yes. So during that time, you know, I needed them. I enjoyed having them around me. But
0:32:40 they all worked they were supposed to do. I also, you know, we didn’t go to Disney World.
0:32:46 We would go to the Yucatán Peninsula and crawl through batshit caves when they were
0:32:53 eight, nine, ten years old, and we would live in villages with Yucatec Maya. And childhood
0:33:00 with me wasn’t safe in the immediate sense of the word, but I believe it gave them enormous
0:33:06 resilience for later in life. They’re three very successful adults right now.
0:33:10 We’ll be right back.
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0:35:18 NMLS 1617539. This week on PropG Markets, we speak with
0:35:23 Lena Kahn, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission. We discuss ongoing antitrust cases, how to
0:35:29 measure consumer harm, and her take on monopolies in big tech. We went through a 20-year period
0:35:36 where the Big Five technology companies, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon
0:35:41 collectively made over 800 acquisitions, and not a single one of which was challenged at
0:35:47 the time. And now there are lawsuits kind of retroactively identifying that some of those
0:35:52 were missed opportunities, and failing to stop those deals had a really negative impact
0:35:57 on the market. You can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the PropG Markets
0:36:05 podcast. I like to think I can point, I can identify people who are good CEOs. I’ve spent
0:36:11 so much time with good and bad CEOs that when I interview a CEO for a position as a director
0:36:17 on a board, I feel like I’m a pretty good study. I’m not good at assessing other employees.
0:36:23 I get fooled all the time, but I get, I think I can kind of sum up someone’s CEO readiness
0:36:28 or not. What are the things, A, do you believe you can do that? And B, what are sort of the
0:36:32 obvious tells when you spend, say, an hour with somebody?
0:36:40 Well, just a level set. The chances of reaching 100 in America are less than one in a thousand.
0:36:48 So the capacity of the human machine, so the average person our age is, for men, it’s probably
0:36:56 93, maybe 94, and for women, it might be 96. So making it to 100 is exponentially more
0:37:04 difficult than hitting the early mid-90s. Okay, first thing, I look at you and I say,
0:37:09 I think you have a pretty good chance at reaching that capacity of the human machine. And it
0:37:15 might go up, by the way, by the time it’s our time that we might get to 100, but you’re
0:37:21 thin or you seemingly, you’re not overweight, you’re obviously physically active. You live
0:37:26 in London, which I would say stacks the deck in favor of longevity because you walk most
0:37:34 places, you’re mentally engaged, you seem to exude purpose. I don’t know what you eat,
0:37:40 but a few questions, I could, if I could, how often a week do you eat meat?
0:37:44 10 plus. I would eat at every meal if I could. I eat a lot of meat.
0:37:52 That is probably tripling your chances for cardiovascular disease, many types of cancers.
0:37:56 You’re not a big candidate for type two diabetes, but if you were an average American, that
0:37:59 much meat would be a negative. How about processed foods?
0:38:03 Not as much. And what’s interesting about the UK is one of the things I’ve noticed here,
0:38:11 and I think it’s much healthier. You buy milk, you buy fruit, you buy juice, anything. What
0:38:17 you notice is, wow, it rots right away. And then what you realize is there are thousands
0:38:22 of pesticides and preservatives that are legal in the US that are not legal here. And it
0:38:29 never struck me just how much shit I was putting in my body in the US until I moved to London.
0:38:34 And I’m blessed I have somebody who loves to cook. So when I eat out, I eat fairly well,
0:38:38 but when you eat out, my senses, it’s full of butter and salty come back. So I don’t
0:38:42 eat, I’m probably on the lower scale of processed food.
0:38:47 That’s good. Eating out in America, by the way, occasions consuming about 300 more calories
0:38:52 than you would if you eat at home. Higher salt, higher sugar as well. So eating at home
0:38:59 stacks the deck in your favor. How about your height to your midsection? Are you measuring
0:39:06 in centimeters or inches? Are you at least twice as tall as you are round at the midsection?
0:39:11 Oh yeah, I’m 6’2″, 189, I’m in good shape.
0:39:13 That’s exactly what I am.
0:39:14 Oh nice.
0:39:15 Exactly.
0:39:18 Are you shrinking though? I was 6’3″, now I’m 6’2″.
0:39:23 I was 6’2″, and now I’m 6’2″. Yeah, so I am shrinking a little bit. Everybody shrinks
0:39:28 a lot. It’s an effective gravity over time. How many hours of sleep do you get?
0:39:34 Good about sleep. I don’t sleep as well because I have to get up and pee a lot. But if I can’t
0:39:38 sleep, and it’s 2 or 3 in the morning, and we’ll come back to this, I will take an edible
0:39:45 and I will cancel my meetings in the morning because I spent so much of my life working
0:39:50 so hard that sometimes I would go 4 or 5 hours a night for 3 or 4 days in a row because
0:39:53 I was traveling and just going from meeting and meeting and meeting. And pretty much since
0:39:59 the age of 45, I don’t sacrifice sleep. So I’m pretty good on the sleep other than the
0:40:02 fact I have to get up and pee all the time.
0:40:09 Yeah, me too on that one. When you look at mortality, a number of hours slept per night.
0:40:15 People who sleep 7 hours seem to be optimal. Getting at least 7 hours most nice, that seems
0:40:23 to be the sweet spot. And so if you’re getting that, that’s going to favor your life expectancy.
0:40:28 How about fruits and vegetables? Do you eat those every day?
0:40:32 It’s horrible. 2 to 3 times a week max, and the fruits I eat are in the form of juice,
0:40:33 which has a ton of sugar in it.
0:40:38 Juice is horrible. That’s all. You’ve got to biologically as bad for you as a Coke. Yeah.
0:40:43 So I mean, mid-80s maybe for you?
0:40:48 Mid-80s? All right, I better go. Okay, so I got to get on this whole success and finding
0:40:50 meaning in one’s life. What about the-
0:40:55 I’m not, by the way, just to put a finer point, a more serious point on it, there’s very good
0:41:01 research that shows that people are eating mostly a whole food, plant-based diet, eschewing
0:41:09 a standard American diet. At our age, 60, live about 6 years longer than people eating
0:41:15 a meaty, cheesy, fatty, processed food diet. So there’s real benefits to starting right
0:41:19 away. It’s not too late, in other words.
0:41:26 The other question I have is asking for a friend, alcohol and THC, alcohol and drugs.
0:41:32 Okay, so I’m a bit of a contrarian when it comes to alcohol. I’m very aware of the recent
0:41:38 epidemiology that no amount of alcohol is safe, but I can tell you in these blue zones,
0:41:45 Highlands of Sardinia in Ikaria, and I’ve seen the surveys. I’ve been part of the surveys.
0:41:49 About 90% of people who are making it into their mid 90s and hundreds are drinking every
0:41:55 day of their lives. Now, are they doing shots at tequila with their friends? No. They’re
0:42:03 drinking mostly homemade wine with friends or with a meal. So could they live to 101 instead
0:42:11 of 99? Maybe. But it’s so clear that part of the fabric of their culture, their festivals,
0:42:16 the way they’re connecting with friends, the way they’re, how this wine is interacting
0:42:21 with the diet they’re eating. By the way, glass of wine with a plant-based meal about
0:42:28 quadruples, the flavonoid absorption. So I’m not at all convinced that being a teetoler
0:42:35 is healthier than drinking. I would argue a glass or two of wine with meal and friends,
0:42:43 I believe is helping these people in blue zones live longer. You’re the original gangster
0:42:48 on this stuff. I remember when did blue zones come out? I wrote the cover story for National
0:42:54 Geographic in 2005, so almost 20 years ago. Yeah. And I’m sure you’re watching over the
0:43:00 last one or two years, Andrew Huberman and Peter Atia, both of whom are doctors, Huberman
0:43:05 and Atia, both of them had both of them on the podcast, and they have essentially declared
0:43:11 war on alcohol. And some of this is just to make myself feel better. But Ivo has seen
0:43:16 and read, including from your books, that social engagement or being really social
0:43:21 is important to longevity and overall happiness. And I find that alcohol is a critical component
0:43:24 of that. At least it is for me, and I think it is for young people.
0:43:31 Well, you see, doctors and marketers also, they tend to want to identify the silver bullet
0:43:38 and sell it to you. They tend to look at things in isolation. But I’ve spent 20 years with
0:43:47 these five blue zones. I’m there every year. And I believe I know and have read and metabolized
0:43:56 every single academic paper. There’s a very clear cluster of lifestyle characteristics
0:44:02 that keep people doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things for long enough
0:44:07 so they’re not getting a disease. And those are eating mostly a whole food, plant-based
0:44:12 diet with a little alcohol, moving naturally every 20 minutes or so, not marathons, not
0:44:18 triathlons, not Pilates or CrossFit. They’re mostly walking, by the way. Their life is
0:44:24 underpinned with purpose. So they know why they wake up in the morning and what their
0:44:32 responsibility is to the greater community, not just to their selfish selves. They tend
0:44:37 to curate a circle of friends that reinforce the right behaviors and insulate them from
0:44:44 loneliness and from the stresses of running out of money or a spouse leaving them or a
0:44:49 parent dying or a kid getting sick. And they live in places where the healthy choice is
0:44:55 the easy choice. And it’s that cluster of things that’s mostly environmental that is
0:45:02 producing measurable, extraordinary longevity in five disparate places on the globe. And
0:45:08 for me, that’s a persuasive argument of what to do to live to 100.
0:45:13 So let’s talk a little bit about the US. If the Biden administration, or maybe they have,
0:45:22 said to you, Dan, what two or three policies could we implement to dramatically raise not
0:45:25 only the lifespan but the health span, the quality of life of Americans? What would those
0:45:27 two or three policies be?
0:45:31 Well, I’m going to tell you, they’re not going to be popular. First of all, universal health
0:45:41 care. In every blue zone, the access to health care is close to free. Not only that, there’s
0:45:50 a much better emphasis on public health. So rather than trying to pay for cleaning up
0:45:57 the disease, they’re investing to keep the disease from happening in the first place.
0:46:01 There’s just no question that universal health care, 11% of Americans don’t even have health
0:46:11 insurance in this country. Number two, gasoline should be priced at a price very similar to
0:46:16 what you pay for in Europe, which is about twice or three times even you see in some
0:46:22 places. Why? Because what will happen if you raise gas, people will figure out how to take
0:46:28 public transportation. People who take public transportation have about 20% lower mortality
0:46:35 than people who drive back or to work. So it gets them out from behind their wheels onto
0:46:41 their feet. They’ll move closer to their schools and their jobs. There’ll be more population
0:46:48 concentration, so people will be more social. And then the last thing is the farm bill.
0:46:56 The farm bill right now is set up to subsidize soybeans, corn, sugar beets, and wheat. These
0:47:07 are all the inputs of all the junk food we eat, the Doritos, feedlot animals, crappy
0:47:15 beef and pork. If we pulled those subsidies out and instead of making it easy and cheap
0:47:21 to raise these junk food inputs and instead shifted it to beans and grains and greens and
0:47:27 organic vegetables, the price of those would come down and the consumption would go up.
0:47:34 Places like Singapore, they see very clearly and gas is 11 bucks a gallon and your car
0:47:40 is going to be taxed 300%. Meanwhile, there’s a great subway system where it’s easy to get
0:47:46 any from point A to point B in a safe, quick, air-conditioned way, but you’ve got to walk
0:47:50 back and forth to the subway and people are taking 10,000 steps a day without even thinking
0:47:56 about it. They subsidize brown rice and they’re going to tax sugar. They already have a sugar
0:48:04 tax in Singapore and not coincidentally, they tax tobacco. In Singapore, you have a country
0:48:12 where the health adjusted life expectancy, which is the estimate of how long people are
0:48:19 going to live minus the years lost to chronic disease and the years of healthy life lost
0:48:27 to disability. That’s highest. They live about 15 more good years than Americans do. Heterogeneous
0:48:33 society just because they can see clearly and make their policies, set policies to favor
0:48:37 the human being rather than to just favor business.
0:48:44 So if you, general reductive advice, two or three things get started are like table stakes
0:48:50 or most immediate incremental benefit. Talk about a 60-year-old, talk about a 25-year-old.
0:48:55 What are those two or three things? Like, okay, I got five minutes with the leading
0:49:00 authority on longevity. What are the two or three thing boxes you need to check when you’re
0:49:03 in your 20s and what about when you’re in your 50s or 60s?
0:49:10 At both ages, carefully curate the circle of friends that you spend time with. We know
0:49:16 that if your three best friends are obese, there’s 150% better chance you’ll be overweight.
0:49:23 So I wouldn’t necessarily dump your old unhealthy friends, but I would say making the effort
0:49:30 to find two or three new friends in your immediate social circle. These are people that you’re
0:49:35 going to see with some frequency or communicate with some frequency whose idea of recreation
0:49:45 is biking or golf or pickleball or gardening. Friends who care about you on a bad day. That’s
0:49:50 the real litmus test of a real friend with whom you can have meaningful conversation.
0:49:56 And it’s not a bad idea to have a whole food vegan or vegetarian in your immediate social
0:50:04 circle because they’re going to show you how and where to get healthy, plant-based food.
0:50:09 I can’t emphasize the importance of that enough. If you really want to live longer, it’s making
0:50:16 that shift to whole grains, greens, beans, nuts, and tubers. It’s indisputable in my
0:50:23 view. As an extension of that, get yourself a good cookbook. I’ve written Blue Zone Kitchen
0:50:29 books, but there’s a lots of cookbook, great cookbooks that tell you how to cook, show
0:50:37 you how to cook plant-based, learn how to cook at home. Instead of going on a diet or
0:50:42 joining a gym, say to yourself, “Well, for the next four Sundays, I’m going to get my
0:50:48 family together, and we’re going to cook three whole food, plant-based meals together on
0:50:53 Sunday afternoon, storm for the rest of the week, and eat them.” And the trick is to
0:51:00 not only know where you can get the ingredients, know how to make it, but the trick is to
0:51:07 find a handful that you love. Once you find that, my job is over because at the end of
0:51:12 the day, people really don’t give a crap about the environment. They don’t care that much
0:51:18 about animal cruelty or even their health when it comes to a hungry belly at lunch.
0:51:23 They want to eat something delicious. So as long as you can satisfy that hungry belly
0:51:30 in a delicious way, people don’t care that much. In other words, they’d happily take
0:51:34 a healthy meal over an unhealthy meal as long as the taste is that good.
0:51:38 Well, give us a little bit about your path professionally and what the big breaks were
0:51:43 and what advice you would have for a young person who says, “I would really like to have
0:51:47 that guy’s professional life.” What were the big breaks? What do you wish you’d started
0:51:52 earlier? What skills do you think you brought to the table? What advice? Someone’s 25,
0:51:58 maybe they enjoy thought leadership or science or they enjoy writing, and they want to be
0:51:59 Dan.
0:52:07 Well, heaven help them. They want to be Dan, but I would say I was an intern with George
0:52:14 Plimpton who was an editor of the Paris Review and a great writer, a participatory journalist.
0:52:22 I’d say number one, and I would say for any 25 years, learn how to communicate not only
0:52:25 verbal but written communication skills.
0:52:26 Story telling.
0:52:27 It’s kind of everything, isn’t it?
0:52:32 I think you get an age of AI because being able to write well is a reflection of your
0:52:43 ability to think and convey an idea and sell the idea whether you’re selling stocks and
0:52:51 bonds, a real estate development idea or, in my case, longevity. That is a good base.
0:52:58 When you were off doing useful and productive things, going to school and analyzing a fixed
0:53:04 instrument, financial instruments, I went and rode my bike. I hold the record for biking
0:53:10 from Alaska to Argentina, biking around the world and biking the length and width of Africa.
0:53:15 That’s what I did most of my 20s, which was actually very good training for life because
0:53:22 you develop discipline, you develop a sort of empathy for other cultures and a sensitivity,
0:53:29 also an ability to survive and to quickly learn, synthesize lots of information and put
0:53:30 it to work.
0:53:37 Then I started a company. I was trying to write for National Geographic. That was my holy
0:53:44 grail. I kept getting rejected. My editor said, “Everybody likes your bike rides around
0:53:51 here, but the new expeditions have to add to the body of knowledge or somehow illuminate
0:54:03 the human condition.” At the time, this capability to interact online was coming online. I developed
0:54:12 a way of solving ancient mysteries by letting an online audience direct a team of experts
0:54:20 to solve these mysteries. I took teams of 10, 12 people into Central America to try to figure
0:54:27 out why the ancient Maya civilization collapsed and across China following Marco Polo’s route.
0:54:33 We were connected to a million or so people and we harnessed the wisdom of the crowd.
0:54:39 This became very successful. All of a sudden, I had a company, which I sold eventually to
0:54:49 Hardcore Brace, a textbook company. I made money doing that. I made money not because
0:54:55 I was pursuing the dollars. The dollars was a byproduct of something I freaking loved,
0:55:05 which is expeditions and solving mysteries. Then I sold that company and now had a capacity
0:55:12 for networking to top experts and National Geographic like me. I got this cover story
0:55:21 assignment to unravel the mysteries of longevity. Like you, Scott, I think if I would have asked
0:55:29 the 20-year-old Scott Galloway to chart his career to the heights you are right now, you
0:55:36 might have gotten a year or two into it before everything fell apart. I’m pretty much the
0:55:44 same way. I’ve had lots of failures but learned from my bike rides that they’re not that bad
0:55:51 in the context of what African villagers are going through. Tomorrow, when I get on my
0:55:56 bike, it’ll be a new adventure metaphorically. I’ll figure that out when I get there.
0:56:01 Dan Butener is a National Geographic Fellow, longevity researcher and award-winning journalist.
0:56:05 He’s also the New York Times bestselling author of several books, including The Blue Zones,
0:56:11 Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest and Thrive, Finding
0:56:17 Happiness the Blue Zones Way. Also, Dan is a three-times Guinness World Record holder
0:56:24 for distance cycling. That’s a flex. Anyway, Dan, this whole space has just blown up and
0:56:30 you genuinely are the OG here. You were in this before it was cool and kind of forged
0:56:37 a category that’s created so much attention, I think, so much good living, so much longevity,
0:56:42 and quite frankly, so much economic value. I think any, you know, the Huberman Lab or
0:56:46 Peter Atty, I feel as if they should all send you royalty checks because you were sort
0:56:50 of, you kind of paved the way here. It was really nice getting to spend some time with
0:56:53 you and congratulations on all your success.
0:56:55 Dan Thank you, Scott. And I’m big in my reviewers
0:57:02 as well. If I had a Blue Zone star, I’d lick it and put it on your forehead because I think
0:57:11 I’m going to see you when you’re a hundred.
0:57:17 I hope so, brother. I hope so.
0:57:22 Algebra of Happiness. I had this vision for what my relationship with my boys would be
0:57:27 like. I thought they would be fascinated by me. And when they got home from camp, they’d
0:57:31 want to sit down and tell me everything about what happened and talk about, you know, their
0:57:37 hikes thing went on. And as is often the case, my 14-year-old came home, hadn’t seen him in
0:57:42 two or three weeks, and kind of, he was tired, hungry, and just sort of, I said hi, didn’t
0:57:46 even say hi back, kind of slammed the door and went in his room. That is very upsetting
0:57:51 for me. And I want to get angry at him. That is unacceptable behavior, sure. But more than
0:57:56 anything, it doesn’t foot to what I thought our relationship was going to be, and I feel
0:58:04 insulted and hurt. And what I’ve come to realize as a dad, as a man, is that this basic notion
0:58:10 of masculinity and manhood is that you add surplus value. And one means of surplus value
0:58:16 is that dad just takes it. I’m not saying you tolerate or accept inappropriate behavior.
0:58:22 My kids actually have very good manners. But you realize as dad, dad takes some body blows.
0:58:30 And it’s not about me. It’s not, my kids aren’t here to serve or fill or ensure that our relationship
0:58:35 is what I imagined so I can feel like a hallmark commercial and have these dad moments. I get
0:58:40 a lot of those, but that’s not my job, and it’s not their job, and it’s an unreasonable
0:58:48 expectation. My job is to protect and provide and be a role model, to be good to their mother,
0:58:54 and to ensure that they have, you know, whatever I can provide such that they have developed
0:58:59 good character or healthy and have a shot at being productive, loving citizens as they
0:59:05 get older. But dad takes some blows. And if you’re expecting that your relationship with
0:59:10 your child is going to be two way, it is not. It is not going to be, I mean, there’ll be
0:59:13 moments where you’ll get more joy than you could have ever imagined. And we always talk
0:59:20 about those moments. But on the whole, on the whole, it is a what I’ll call diminished
0:59:26 or a debtor relationship. And that is you are going to give a lot more, you are going
0:59:30 to be much more expressive, much more emotional, much more supportive, much kinder to them
0:59:34 than they are going to be to you. And that is just part of it. That’s what it means to
0:59:39 be a parent. I also think that’s what it means to be a dad.
0:59:43 This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren. Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer
0:59:48 and Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from
0:59:53 the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as
0:59:58 read by George Hahn. And please follow our PropG Markets Pod wherever you get your pods
1:00:18 for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
1:00:28 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:06 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:00:09 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t
0:00:10 matter.
0:00:18 But Donald Trump will be almost 80, and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from
0:00:20 the presidency should they win.
0:00:25 I’m Preet Bharara, and this week, The Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:00:29 Stay Tuned with Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:00:31 The episode is out now.
0:00:35 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:36 Hi, everyone.
0:00:43 I’m Brené Brown, and I’d love to tell you about a new series that’s launching on Unlocking
0:00:44 Us.
0:00:47 I’m calling it the On My Heart and Mind Podcast series.
0:00:50 It’s going to include conversations with some of my favorite writers on topics ranging
0:00:55 from revolutionary love and gun ownership to menopause and finding joy and grief.
0:00:58 The first episode is available now, and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
0:01:01 All new episodes will drop on Wednesdays, and you can get them as soon as they’re out
0:01:06 by following Unlocking Us on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
0:01:17 All right, we have a special hot take, special edition emergency episode post-debate thoughts
0:01:21 on raging moderates, so we’re going to try not to be raging here, although I would call
0:01:24 us elated moderates, which maybe outs us as not that moderate.
0:01:31 But anyways, in our last episode, our inaugural episode, Jess predicted that Trump wouldn’t
0:01:36 be able to control himself and that Vice President Harris would handily win the debate.
0:01:41 I predicted that the expectations were so low that he would actually come out as sort
0:01:42 of the winner here.
0:01:45 I was wrong, Jess was right.
0:01:48 Jess, what are your initial thoughts about last night?
0:01:53 I love the situation to lead with, “I was wrong and you were right,” so I feel excellent
0:01:54 about it.
0:02:02 So does I feel about the debate, but she exceeded all expectations, no matter how low or high
0:02:03 you felt.
0:02:06 And I was in touch with some people who work with the campaign, people who have been at
0:02:11 debate prep, and they said she’s ready, and she was definitely ready for this.
0:02:19 And the way that she did it was that she did not veer from her script at all.
0:02:23 Whatever the question was, she was clearly prepared for topics writ large.
0:02:26 This is what you say if the word “immigration” comes up.
0:02:28 This is what you say if the word “economy” comes up.
0:02:31 This is what you say if the word “abortion” comes up.
0:02:36 And she just took what the moderators were giving her and was able to weave it into something
0:02:40 that made her look flat out presidential.
0:02:46 And that was the bar she needed to pass, and we talked about this yesterday on our flagship
0:02:49 episode, inaugural.
0:02:52 She just has to talk to undecided voters.
0:02:55 Like you and I don’t really matter in terms of what she did last night.
0:02:57 It’s fun for us.
0:03:03 It’s gravy if she comes off as someone that we’re really jazzed to be able to vote for.
0:03:08 But there are tens of thousands of people scattered across six, seven states who actually
0:03:11 needed to see what she had to offer.
0:03:15 And they got to see something that she should be very proud of and that I’m proud of being
0:03:16 a Democrat.
0:03:20 Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s just impossible to starch out your biases.
0:03:25 I remember watching Bush versus Gore that debate, and I thought Gore won it handily.
0:03:29 And then the next day it was clear that Bush had won.
0:03:33 And so just to look at some data here, there was a snap poll, CNN flash poll, after the
0:03:34 debate.
0:03:39 And according to the people they surveyed, margin of error plus or minus 5.3 percentage
0:03:45 points, which means they didn’t survey, okay, 605 registered U.S. voters who said they watched
0:03:50 the debate, Republicans recruited to participate before the debate, and were selected via survey
0:03:51 of members.
0:03:54 Anyways, SSRS opinion poll.
0:04:00 But this poll showed that 63% of people surveyed thought Harris had won and 37% were Trump.
0:04:05 That is not only a wide margin, but what people I think need to consider is that he could
0:04:12 get on stage and kill a puppy, throw up and pass out, and 20% of people would say he won
0:04:13 the debate.
0:04:20 And so for it to be 63.37, or for almost the ratio to be 2 to 1, means quite frankly,
0:04:23 in my view, she destroyed him.
0:04:27 And the observation I would have about the debate, and I’m curious to get your thoughts,
0:04:30 was I was worried that she was kind of out of shape.
0:04:33 She hadn’t been on a stage or a debate stage in a while.
0:04:37 And I’ve always thought, whatever you think of him, he’s actually quite good on his feet.
0:04:40 In the first 10 minutes, I thought my prediction was going to be right.
0:04:44 She came across to me as nervous, and the first question, she just ignored the question
0:04:48 and started breaking into talking points, and I think it was pretty obvious to the viewers.
0:04:53 And then about minute 12 or 14, basically when the abortion question came up, the whole
0:04:56 thing just pivoted.
0:05:04 He became so sloppy and errant, using words like China, eating the pets, record inflation,
0:05:07 Biden, Hunter, but in the same sentence.
0:05:13 It was as if you were watching someone go from being a mediocre debater to an outstanding
0:05:19 debater through the course of about 15 minutes, and the whole thing just entirely flipped.
0:05:20 What are your thoughts?
0:05:22 Yeah, I largely agree with that.
0:05:25 I think it’s kind of akin to when people go home, when you’re young, and you’ve seen
0:05:28 this, I’m sure, with your boys, and they go home for the summer, and then a kid comes
0:05:30 back five inches taller.
0:05:34 That’s basically what happened to Kamala Harris live on stage.
0:05:38 And I think it’s meaningful that that transition happened while she was talking about women’s
0:05:40 reproductive rights.
0:05:47 There is just no male proxy that is going to be as meaningful and persuasive as hearing
0:05:52 someone who’s actually got the stuff that we’re talking about, discussing this kind
0:05:53 of issue.
0:05:58 And on top of the fact that it was a beautifully orchestrated answer, and it hit all the right
0:06:04 points about privacy, mind your own damn business, Tim Walls has been on TV absolutely destroying
0:06:05 Trump about that.
0:06:06 And I think he was right to say it.
0:06:10 These weird guys don’t know how to mind their own business.
0:06:15 But I wanted to touch on your first point about her response about the economy.
0:06:20 So they started with the most important question, “Are you better off today than you were four
0:06:21 years ago?”
0:06:26 And Trump supporters and Trump himself will say, “Absolutely not, absolutely not.
0:06:28 These are all the reasons.”
0:06:31 Most of that is a lie, but they’ve been pretty persuasive with it.
0:06:34 And she chose not to jump on that.
0:06:36 And I actually thought that she could have done it well.
0:06:42 I think she could have put out a really thoughtful response about how we have made these gains,
0:06:46 but there’s still more work to do and really hone in on inflation, which is what most people
0:06:49 are thinking about when they look at a question like that.
0:06:56 So I take your point on that issue, but her opportunity economy is something that’s resonating
0:06:59 with people, and I know why she wanted to get to that right away.
0:07:01 The CNN poll is a really good poll, and I’d add to the mix.
0:07:06 The Fox poll had it at 70% thought that she won.
0:07:11 And we are an A+ pollster, completely bipartisan, a Republican and a Democratic pollster worked
0:07:14 together on all of the Fox polls.
0:07:17 And what was really cool to see were the focus groups.
0:07:21 So the Washington Post had 24 undecided voters, only two thought that Trump won.
0:07:23 CNN had another one.
0:07:28 It was a very similar ratio, and they also had former Trump voters, 2016 and 2020 Trump
0:07:29 voters.
0:07:34 That said, basically, he doesn’t have it anymore, and I couldn’t follow it.
0:07:36 And that’s what she really got him to do.
0:07:41 You know, when she said, “I invite you all to watch one of his rallies.”
0:07:43 You’ll see a lot of really wild stuff.
0:07:47 You’ll see him talking about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, which is funny, we were
0:07:50 just talking about how he doesn’t know the difference between political asylum and a
0:07:51 mental asylum.
0:07:57 And you’ll notice that people are getting bored, and that’s when he erupted inside.
0:08:05 You could see he stood up taller, and this rage came across his face, because she had
0:08:08 insulted his crowds.
0:08:10 And there was no turning back from that.
0:08:13 And then it became this litany of conspiracy theories.
0:08:15 I have normal friends, right?
0:08:21 People who don’t pay attention like we do, and they’re going to vote, they always vote,
0:08:23 but they’re not tuned in at the same level.
0:08:27 They’re texting me, “What is he talking about with the eating of the pets?”
0:08:32 And I know the story about the fake story about Haitian migrants who are here legally,
0:08:36 who went to Springfield, Ohio for good jobs, and people said that they were…
0:08:37 Eating fluffy.
0:08:39 …touching and eating dogs, right.
0:08:43 But normal people who are saying, “Oh, there’s a debate tonight.
0:08:50 I should tune in,” are saying, “What in God’s name is this man talking about?”
0:08:55 Yeah, beyond accusing her of being a Marxist and millions of criminals coming across him.
0:08:58 I was really disappointed right out of the gates, because I thought she could have handled
0:09:02 the question much better and said, “Okay, market’s touching all-time highs.
0:09:07 GDP grew up since 2020, since we were elected up 8.5 percent.
0:09:09 The average across the EU is 3.5.
0:09:10 It’s less than 2.”
0:09:13 She just could have gone, she just could have showed up with receipts.
0:09:17 She seemed sort of wobbly, but then she just really turned on the jets.
0:09:22 And what I really appreciate was the debate prep, because clearly they came up with a winning
0:09:24 strategy, and it was the following.
0:09:30 Get out your points, get out your policy points, and then end your statement, Vice President,
0:09:32 with a bear trap.
0:09:36 Say, “Oh, and I didn’t inherit $400 million from my father.
0:09:39 Oh, and this is a convicted criminal.
0:09:45 Oh, and his crowd sizes, they are bored and exhausted and they leave.”
0:09:50 Because rather than responding to anything around the policy points, he would then take
0:09:57 half of his time to respond to this, what he saw as a slight against him and his ego,
0:10:00 and he was constantly on his heels.
0:10:08 And when he would make these outrageous statements, or call her a Marxist, or a crime, she realized
0:10:13 they were so ridiculous or so inconsequential, she wouldn’t respond.
0:10:16 I mean, it’s like Muhammad Ali used to say, he said, “Every fight I’ve won, I haven’t
0:10:21 won in the ring, I’ve won outside the ring training.”
0:10:24 The fight was over, I had either won or lost before I showed up in the ring, and I feel
0:10:30 like the people who prepped her, I heard the people that prepped him were representatives
0:10:34 Gabbard and Gates, that’s not the people I would have had prepping me.
0:10:38 But anyways, whoever prepped her did an outstanding job.
0:10:46 Get your policies out, speak with emotion on issues around women, and then trigger him
0:10:48 at the very end.
0:10:54 And she did it three or four times, and it absolutely took him off his footing.
0:10:59 And then the last thing I’ll say, and I’m curious, I feel like the two most consequential debates
0:11:04 in history have happened in presidential politics in the last couple of months.
0:11:08 And the reason why the Biden debate will go down is the most consequential is because
0:11:14 this one was so good that him dropping out because of the last one will be seen as the
0:11:16 most consequential.
0:11:21 And this will be the second most consequential because it looks as if, for the first time,
0:11:26 people have what I’d call a reason to vote for her, as opposed to the reasons, what the
0:11:31 Democratic Party keeps trying to convince people of is the reasons not to vote for him.
0:11:32 Your thoughts?
0:11:36 Yeah, I want to piggyback on what you said about her throwing out these haymakers and
0:11:39 then just kind of sitting back and not doing anything.
0:11:40 She was doing something.
0:11:44 They practiced the split screen very clearly.
0:11:49 What type of facial expressions she would be making while he was talking.
0:11:53 And that’s if you go online today, everything that’s being shared is around those kinds
0:11:54 of memes, right?
0:11:59 Like the face that your wife makes at you when you come home drunk, right?
0:12:01 Mad parents.
0:12:02 What did you just say?
0:12:05 That’s the look I get Monday through Thursday, just so you know.
0:12:06 Anyways, go ahead.
0:12:11 That’s very English of you, to be incorporating it into the weekday activities.
0:12:16 So she was actually alert and responding throughout all of it.
0:12:20 And he’s usually the one that’s making a face that is resonating with people.
0:12:24 Like his supporters love that dopey thing that he does.
0:12:26 But she clearly was winning the face game.
0:12:30 And because this is raging moderates, and we should talk about something moderate, what
0:12:32 I was really heartened to see.
0:12:37 So going into the debate, there were 48% of undecided voters who felt that they wanted
0:12:39 to know more about Kamala Harris.
0:12:42 Only 18% said the same about Trump.
0:12:44 They’re like, we know who Donald Trump is.
0:12:45 And frankly, I don’t really like him.
0:12:47 I don’t need to know more.
0:12:50 I may vote for him, but I’m kind of done with this.
0:12:53 So she had the room to grow in terms of this.
0:12:58 And I saw that in one SNAP survey that her approval rating had jumped up with undecided
0:13:01 from 30 to 48.
0:13:06 Now if she can get that over 50, I think she’s going to be in very good shape.
0:13:12 And you usually get, if you get a good debate bound, sometimes it can be 1.5, 1.7 points.
0:13:17 It’s hard to see a scenario in which she isn’t capable of that happening.
0:13:18 I don’t know where that maps out.
0:13:24 If it is to happen, maybe we are just so polarized that the needle can’t be moved.
0:13:30 But I think she gave it her absolute best shot at being able to make this as consequential
0:13:33 as you said it is.
0:13:37 So just trying to relate this to the markets, essentially Donald Trump or Trump Media and
0:13:41 Technology Group, which is a publicly traded company that is essentially the holding company
0:13:45 for Truth Social, Donald Trump’s social network.
0:13:48 It has a market capitalization even today of 3.3 billion.
0:13:50 And be clear, this is not a business.
0:13:51 It makes no money.
0:13:56 Its user base is tiny and not growing, and it has no revenues, but it effectively loses
0:13:58 hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
0:13:59 This is not a business.
0:14:04 What it’s become is a tracking stock for the likelihood that Trump is re-elected.
0:14:09 And the assumption is that, one, if he is re-elected, he’ll figure out some kleptocratic
0:14:14 way of forcing everybody to use this platform or figuring out a way to get the shareholders
0:14:18 whole there, because he’s a large shareholder here.
0:14:22 It’s also a bit of an indirect way of giving him a campaign contribution.
0:14:27 But what it’s effectively become is a tracking stock for the likelihood that Trump or what
0:14:32 the likelihood the market believes is the percentage likelihood that he’ll be re-elected.
0:14:35 And this morning, it opened up about 15% down.
0:14:42 As we stand here today or right now, it’s 12.5% down, and it’s hit a new 52-week low
0:14:43 here.
0:14:47 So the marketplace and the billions of points of data that the marketplace tries to absorb
0:14:53 and then spit back and answer is essentially saying the likelihood that he is elected president
0:14:59 according to the markets is 12.5% less likely as of this morning.
0:15:00 That sounds good.
0:15:06 And the betting markets on the race itself shifted in real time as well.
0:15:08 She got a three-point bump in it.
0:15:12 So we’ll see what Nate Silver has to say when he puts out his next forecast.
0:15:18 But yeah, I mean, for somebody who says or has claimed to fame, I guess, is that he understands
0:15:22 the economy, that business loves him, the markets love him.
0:15:26 I’ve certainly been giving him a big old slap in the face between the people actually
0:15:30 speaking out, the company, the CEOs that are backing him and the way that the market has
0:15:32 performed.
0:15:37 I think the way that she threaded the needle was great, but she could have just stood up
0:15:43 there and threw out a few great stats and just yelled like, “Dow 41K.”
0:15:48 Just kept shouting it at him as he tried to sputter through all of this.
0:15:53 So he’s one of those lived by the markets, died by the markets, but 12.5%, that’s a
0:15:57 big shift for 90 minutes of action.
0:16:02 So as we wrap up here, what would your advice, do you think, given that she’s riding this
0:16:09 high, that kind of controlled, quite frankly, not speaking to very many people at all, putting
0:16:13 the narrative through a controlled filter, it has worked really well?
0:16:17 Should she continue to be somewhat scarce, or do you think this is an opportunity in
0:16:22 a moment for her to go on offense and start speaking to the press more frequently?
0:16:25 Oh, I’m full offense on this.
0:16:31 I think that she, it has proven out that their strategy worked thus far, and we’ll have to
0:16:36 look at the bounce and see how the race looks in kind of a week or two to see the real effect
0:16:37 of it.
0:16:41 But I think that she’s someone that really thrives off of her mojo.
0:16:43 When she’s feeling good, she can do it.
0:16:46 And so I would sign me up right now, Leslie Stahl.
0:16:47 What’s going on?
0:16:49 Like, could I sit down with you?
0:16:50 Hey, Leslie.
0:16:51 Hey, Les.
0:16:52 Hey, girl.
0:16:53 Where you got you last night?
0:16:54 Hey, girl.
0:16:55 I was pretty badass.
0:16:56 Yeah.
0:16:57 I think it’s time for that.
0:17:03 And, you know, joint interviews, solo interviews, more, I think town halls would be fantastic.
0:17:07 She really has, I don’t want to say this, in a disingenuous way.
0:17:12 She’s very good at being empathetic, and she’s a very good listener.
0:17:16 And you can tell that she’s actually processing what people are saying, because it is possible
0:17:19 to can a town hall response.
0:17:24 You know, when someone says to you, my kid died of a fentanyl overdose, and you’re suddenly
0:17:28 screaming about migrants poisoning the blood of America.
0:17:31 You know, that is a transition that other people have made.
0:17:39 So I want it all, and, you know, it’s what is it, 56, 55 days to go, I’m emboldened.
0:17:41 What do you think about the press strategy?
0:17:43 I think she’s founder footing.
0:17:45 She should definitely get out there.
0:17:48 But I’ve always thought that the press is disappointment, and the talking points that
0:17:50 she’s not speaking to enough people.
0:17:56 My view is this is about winning, not pleasing the media, or the few of the chattering class
0:17:58 that believe she should be talking more.
0:18:01 Well, you said at the very beginning, I think it’s really true, and that is we assume everyone
0:18:03 gives a shit about politics.
0:18:08 I would describe the majority of voters as me in my 20s and 30s, and that is I voted,
0:18:11 but I didn’t even think about it until about the morning of.
0:18:13 I just didn’t care about politics.
0:18:19 I voted, but I didn’t care, and I think that’s how, you know, not the majority, but a large
0:18:21 segment of voters, especially the undecideds.
0:18:27 I can’t imagine you’re really in the politics, or think about this a lot, and be undecided.
0:18:33 So I’m sort of, I don’t know, I would kind of pick, if you will, a Goldilocks strategy.
0:18:36 Anyways, just a public service announcement as we wrap up here.
0:18:40 It supposedly is safe for your dogs and cats in Illinois.
0:18:41 You’re going to be fine.
0:18:42 They’re going to be fine.
0:18:43 Ohio.
0:18:44 Oh, is it Ohio?
0:18:45 Illinois loves dogs.
0:18:46 There’s Ohio where they get eaten.
0:18:47 Where they’re getting eaten.
0:18:48 By patients.
0:18:52 Yeah, by those millions and millions of criminals that have come into the country.
0:18:56 Anyways, with a special episode, an emergency pod.
0:18:59 This has been Raging Moderates with Jessica Tarlov and Scott Galloway.
0:19:07 We will have a new episode next Tuesday, breaking down sort of what happened over the course
0:19:08 of the next few days.
0:19:12 Well, hopefully we’ll have some more polling data that really kind of dissects the ramifications
0:19:13 of the debate.
0:19:15 Jess, have a good rest of the day.
0:19:16 You too.
0:19:16 See you later.
0:19:19 (gentle music)
0:19:29 [BLANK_AUDIO]