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0:00:36 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:00:40 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:00:48 But Donald Trump will be almost 80 and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away
0:00:50 from the presidency should they win.
0:00:56 I’m Preet Bharara and this week the Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:00:59 Stay Tuned with Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:01 The episode is out now.
0:01:05 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:12 Hi everyone, I’m Brené Brown and I’d love to tell you about a new series that’s launching
0:01:13 on Unlocking Us.
0:01:17 I’m calling it the On My Heart and Mind Podcast series.
0:01:20 It’s going to include conversations with some of my favorite writers on topics ranging from
0:01:25 revolutionary love and gun ownership to menopause and finding joy and grief.
0:01:29 The first episode is available now and I can’t wait for you to hear it.
0:01:32 All new episodes will drop on Wednesdays and you can get them as soon as they’re out by
0:01:40 following Unlocking Us on Apple or wherever you listen to your podcasts.
0:01:41 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:42 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:43 And I’m Jessica Tarlove.
0:01:45 Jess, what’s going on at the five?
0:01:48 What’s going on there?
0:01:54 Well, a lot is going on but what was not going on with me on Friday was I was supposed to
0:01:58 be on the five and I couldn’t go in because I had such a bad allergic reaction to something
0:02:01 that half of my lip swelled up.
0:02:05 Do you remember the movie Hitch with Will Smith where he did the Serenote Bergerac,
0:02:09 like feeding guys good lines to get girls’ thing?
0:02:11 I feel like such an elder millennial that’s like 20 years ago.
0:02:12 Anyway.
0:02:13 What did you have an allergic reaction to?
0:02:14 His face explodes.
0:02:15 No, don’t tell me in case.
0:02:20 Well, I think maybe a lip balm that I used that had papaya in it.
0:02:21 It’s unclear.
0:02:26 But steroids, which is the greatest invention, maybe I guess penicillins better, but steroids
0:02:27 are really good.
0:02:31 But anyway, I sent a picture of my face at 6.30 in the morning to the producer who wrote
0:02:34 back, “We will not be seeing you today.”
0:02:39 But besides that, on the five, we talked about Mark Robinson a lot.
0:02:42 I know we’re going to talk about that later in the episode.
0:02:45 What’s happening generally though with a show like that as a run-up to election?
0:02:48 Is it just like a ratings bonanza and people are all over it?
0:02:50 Is this kind of your suites?
0:02:52 Is this the playoffs for you guys?
0:02:56 It is definitely the playoffs and the ratings still hang around 3 million.
0:03:01 We have a very tried and true audience, but we saw a big spike.
0:03:06 Greg Gottfeld, co-host on the five, had Trump on his show, Gottfeld exclamation point for
0:03:07 the whole hour.
0:03:10 And I think that got like 5 million viewers.
0:03:14 So people are definitely flocking in for election coverage.
0:03:15 Talk about the interview.
0:03:18 What was the least crazy and the craziest things he said?
0:03:23 Honestly, it was very low on the insanity.
0:03:28 I think as he was calm, he was amongst people who like him.
0:03:34 And what was really great for the audience, so Greg’s show, nighttime show is in front
0:03:38 of a live audience, and they didn’t know that Trump was the guest.
0:03:43 So they showed up for a regular episode and thought maybe they’d see Brian Kilmeade who
0:03:47 hosts Fox and Friends, and they got an hour of Donald Trump.
0:03:53 She somehow, a woman, somehow she’s doing better than he did.
0:03:56 But I can’t imagine it can last.
0:04:00 And he talked about everything from all the old shows that he used to do, like going on
0:04:03 Johnny Carson and Howard Stern, to some stuff about the campaign.
0:04:07 And of course, there were things that I would have fact checked.
0:04:12 But he was at his most charming, I would say.
0:04:16 And part of that was driven by a very good friend who’s on the show, Kat Tymph, who’s
0:04:17 a libertarian.
0:04:22 Kat’s actually come on your Prof. G podcast before when she had a book coming out a year
0:04:23 ago.
0:04:24 She has a new book even.
0:04:25 She’s prolific.
0:04:29 But Kat is not naturally partial to Trump.
0:04:32 She doesn’t love his policies.
0:04:38 And he was really clearly focused on getting her to like him and to be comfortable with
0:04:39 him.
0:04:41 And I saw a little bit of a different side of him.
0:04:43 Did it work or was it creepy?
0:04:45 Well, she’s pregnant.
0:04:48 So everything could look a little bit creepier.
0:04:52 You know how weird men are around pregnant women.
0:04:54 But he was on the other side of the set.
0:04:55 So it wasn’t creepy like that.
0:05:01 But you’re just acutely aware of everything when you’re 30 pounds heavier and with child.
0:05:02 What I’ve told–
0:05:03 I didn’t find it creepy.
0:05:04 I thought it was nice.
0:05:08 What I’ve told my boys is that unless you see the head crowning, never reference a woman’s
0:05:09 pregnancy.
0:05:10 Do not mention it.
0:05:14 And also watching the head crown is also frightening in another way.
0:05:15 So that’s a whole other episode.
0:05:16 All right.
0:05:17 Let’s go on to something more cheery.
0:05:21 Let’s talk about the latest polls, a bombshell in the North Carolina governor’s race, and
0:05:26 a surprising trend millionaires opting to rent instead of buy.
0:05:30 We’re six weeks from election day and the polls are starting to pile up.
0:05:35 Over the weekend we got an NBC News poll that showed Harris leading Trump 49 to 44% within
0:05:36 the margin of error.
0:05:37 So I don’t know.
0:05:40 At this point it feels like the polls are, I don’t want to say superfluous, but yeah,
0:05:41 who knows.
0:05:45 It’s a coin flip, though Trump leads on the economy inflation and the border.
0:05:48 Then on Monday, new numbers from the New York Times’ Santa College poll shows that Donald
0:05:51 Trump is doing well across the Sun Belt.
0:05:55 The tightest race is in North Carolina, where Trump leads Harris 49 to 47.
0:05:58 Georgia and Arizona show a slightly wider lead for Trump.
0:06:00 What’s your take on these numbers, Jessica?
0:06:01 You’re a pollster.
0:06:03 You get this stuff.
0:06:04 What can we take from this?
0:06:10 Well, I saw a very funny tweet that said, like, all data people are just going to have to
0:06:15 figure out how to say the same thing differently for the next six weeks, which is, like, this
0:06:20 is a tied race with a slight advantage today in this direction and, like, let me figure
0:06:27 out some forces underneath an undercurrent would probably be a better word for it.
0:06:30 That’ll make me have an interesting TV hit.
0:06:33 So that’s what I’m going to try to do with this.
0:06:40 We should note with the NBC poll what is special about it and a five-point lead is a big deal,
0:06:44 but the last time that they had a national poll, Biden was still the candidate and it
0:06:46 was Trump plus two.
0:06:52 So that just as an encapsulation of how different this race is, something that I was paying
0:06:58 attention to is obviously what’s going on in the swing states, but they had the question
0:07:05 of who represents change and Harris is up nine points on Trump with that.
0:07:08 And that’s something that people say really matters and has been a question in all of
0:07:09 this.
0:07:13 Like, how do you become a change agent if you are the sitting vice president?
0:07:19 And her highest tested statement from the debate was when she said, I’m not Joe Biden.
0:07:23 And clearly people are feeling that and they’re saying, I know what Trump is like.
0:07:25 I know what Biden is like.
0:07:28 This is a new person.
0:07:34 And then she also was 20 points up on who has the better mental and physical capability.
0:07:39 So basically by moving Biden out of the way, now everyone is actually paying attention to
0:07:47 what Donald Trump is actually like and they’re not loving what they’re seeing.
0:07:51 Other big things like the lead on the economy has gone down a ton.
0:07:56 He was over 20 points ahead, it’s now nine points in the CBS poll, he’s only up six points
0:07:57 on the economy.
0:08:02 So for all of this talk of Kamala Harris isn’t really telling people anything, she’s not
0:08:05 answering questions and no one knows what she stands for.
0:08:10 The results seem to indicate that people do know what she stands for.
0:08:14 They know enough to say that she would be within six to 10 points of Donald Trump on
0:08:18 who’s best to manage the economy, which means they probably heard something.
0:08:24 I don’t know, what do you think about the results or say something fancy about a tide
0:08:25 race?
0:08:33 Yeah, it’s really striking to me that there’s such a thing as an undecided voter.
0:08:39 I think there are a few things you could label yourself that out you as more of a village
0:08:43 idiot than at this point being an undecided, let me get this, you’re like, it’s a tossup
0:08:47 for you, you can’t quite figure out, I think anyone who says they’re an undecided voter
0:08:54 at this point is a closeted trumper and is pretending to be thoughtful.
0:08:59 For me at this point, and you know more about politics than I do, at this point it’s all
0:09:00 about turnout.
0:09:04 I just don’t buy that anyone’s undecided that isn’t a village fucking idiot looking
0:09:08 for someone to interview them with a mic in front of them as an undecided.
0:09:11 How could you be undecided at this point?
0:09:16 And also this criticism that she hasn’t done an interview and we don’t know her policies,
0:09:22 she was a senator, she was an attorney general, she was the vice president.
0:09:27 You know that basically she’s center left, she’s more conservative on law and order and
0:09:30 economics issues than most people give her credit for.
0:09:37 On Israel and Gaza, I think people are probably a little less clear on where she stands, but
0:09:41 you’re clear on where Trump stands, okay, you can be clear that he doesn’t mind that
0:09:45 a woman’s bodily autonomy is taken away from her.
0:09:48 But he was for TikTok or against it until he was for it.
0:09:52 He was against tariffs until he was for them.
0:09:57 I have a huge cohort of friends and I don’t want to say respected, but I understand it.
0:10:01 They just think government is ineffective and they just go in and vote for whoever they think
0:10:04 is going to put more money in their pockets in the short run and they think that’s going
0:10:05 to be Donald Trump.
0:10:08 So they go in, they listen to everybody rage about Donald Trump and then they say, “Hold
0:10:12 my beer,” and they go, “Mine occurred,” and then they vote for Trump.
0:10:16 I’m just trying to figure out, do you really think … Well, let me put this forward as
0:10:21 a thesis, where her money will come in right now is the get out the vote part that’s going
0:10:26 to take place over the next eight weeks or whatever it is.
0:10:29 That’s where the money’s going to kick in, I hope, but at this point, it’s not about
0:10:33 undecided voters, it’s about turning out the vote, your thoughts.
0:10:35 Two-parted response.
0:10:38 One requires you to have watched Bill Maher from Friday.
0:10:39 I saw that.
0:10:40 I’m not sure if he …
0:10:41 That was great.
0:10:43 Let’s just grab Brett Stevens.
0:10:45 For the last two weeks, I’ve been going on and on.
0:10:49 I can’t figure out where undecided voters … Where informed undecided voters are.
0:10:53 I’m like, “Who’s the person who has a list on their refrigerator of like, ‘Well, she said
0:10:55 this,’” and he said, “I’m like, ‘Who is this person?’” and then I opened the New York
0:10:57 Times three days ago and it’s you.
0:11:02 Stephanie Rohl says, “I’m trying to figure out who this person is and here you are sitting
0:11:08 next to me with a microphone in front of your face on one of the most salient political
0:11:15 chat shows that’s in business right now telling us you’re definitely not for Trump, but you
0:11:17 just don’t get calm enough.”
0:11:19 You can’t vote for Trump, but you need to know her policies.
0:11:21 I’m like, “Okay, what does that mean, boss?”
0:11:25 But it’s also for a lot of these people who are highly educated and certainly capable
0:11:30 of reading a website, all the policies are there.
0:11:39 If you harbor a fear that she is secretly going to ban fracking on day 112 when there’s
0:11:44 no evidence of that, certainly from how the Biden-Harris administration conducted itself,
0:11:51 or that she secretly hates Jews even though she’s married to one who talks about it constantly,
0:11:58 or that she’s going to fund transgender surgeries for undocumented people who are in prison
0:12:03 as per the ACLU survey that she signed in 2019.
0:12:08 I can’t help you, but I don’t think that’s who Brett Stevens is.
0:12:15 I have someone very close to me, my mentor has a very big successful job in finance and
0:12:20 he’s not going to vote for Donald Trump, but every day sending me things.
0:12:21 Why won’t she answer this?
0:12:22 I need to know this.
0:12:25 I need to know that.
0:12:30 Some of it is just like Stephanie Roll was saying it, like tough noogies.
0:12:33 You’re not going to get it exactly the way that you want it and that doesn’t mean that
0:12:38 she shouldn’t do more and it seems like they really are ramping up and that they needed
0:12:43 that first four to six weeks when she didn’t expect to be the candidate.
0:12:46 That really flies in the face of this whole Grand Coup plan.
0:12:51 Kamala Harris woke up that Sunday and was like, “Holy shit, I could end up being president
0:12:57 of the United States of America on November 5th instead of the vice president, but the
0:13:04 discrepancy and standards to which these two candidates are being held kills me.”
0:13:08 I find that I spend most of my time when you say what’s going on on the five, that’s what’s
0:13:14 going on on the five, that I’m saying over and over, she did this, she said this, you’re
0:13:20 ignoring this and I get it, people are partisans and Trump has done some things that I probably
0:13:26 haven’t given him full due for, like the Abraham Accords, it’s pretty awesome and I was not
0:13:31 as generous about it as I should have been because I don’t like Donald Trump.
0:13:34 He got China right, that’s the other thing I would say.
0:13:37 I think he early recognized the asymmetry and trade between us and China, I would give
0:13:38 him credit for that.
0:13:39 Did he fix it?
0:13:45 Well, he’s the first to call them out, he announced the TikTok ban and then unannounced
0:13:51 it, but he did put in place tariffs that the Biden administration has kept in place.
0:13:55 You’re going to get some shit right and he doesn’t get credit for any of it, she won’t
0:13:59 get credit for anything, she does for her critics.
0:14:04 The thing that I find, these folks saying they need more information, I would argue,
0:14:08 they’re Trumpers and they’re going to vote for Trump, I just don’t.
0:14:14 Anyone saying that in my view is either closeted to Trump voter and they want to pretend there’s
0:14:21 a legitimate reason not to vote for her or it’s referred anger and it’s anger around,
0:14:26 and I have a little bit of this, she was coronated, there wasn’t a competition and she still
0:14:32 sort of in some ways engages to compete in terms of going out and really meeting with
0:14:35 a ton of reporters and doing a bunch of interviews.
0:14:41 Having said that, it’s a little bit unfair to levy this indictment or this accusation
0:14:47 that she won’t let her policies, she won’t come out when she’s the one who is challenging
0:14:53 him to another debate and he won’t show up for that.
0:14:57 Yeah, I don’t believe that they’re all closeted Trumpers.
0:15:04 I think that your anger thesis is probably more what’s going on here, that people are
0:15:11 pissed off about the process, that frankly they’re angry that Biden continued on.
0:15:16 If he had dropped out a year earlier and we had a mini primary and everyone saw essentially
0:15:22 what was on display at the DNC, all of this talent, they saw Gretchen Whitmer and Wes
0:15:29 Moore and Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris and whoever else was going
0:15:36 to throw their hat in the ring and Josh Pirro of course, then we might have A in their mind
0:15:39 had a stronger candidate if they don’t think Kamala would have emerged from that.
0:15:44 I actually think there’s a pretty decent likelihood that she could have come out the victor of
0:15:49 a mini primary, but we got to a point where there was just not enough time to do it and
0:15:57 I think when politicians say something that just circumvents the truth and it feels to
0:16:02 you and we’re not politicians trying to hang on to our seats or anything like that, but
0:16:05 it feels like one of those moments where you just say, “Just tell me the honest thing.
0:16:06 It really wouldn’t bother me.”
0:16:10 Stop saying there was an open competition, no one else threw their hat in the ring.
0:16:11 There wasn’t an open competition.
0:16:16 I happened to be fine with it and perfectly comfortable with what happened because I do
0:16:23 think Kamala was on the ticket and so the people were saying, “I’m voting for an 81-year-old
0:16:27 guy who is unlikely to finish his term anyway so I have to be comfortable with the Kamala
0:16:28 Harris presidency.”
0:16:33 But like when Pelosi says, “Anyone could have thrown their hat in,” obviously not.
0:16:37 I’m not saying that you called them up and said, “Don’t you dare,” but you weren’t welcoming
0:16:38 it.
0:16:44 We’ll be right back.
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0:18:01 I have something that’s not in the script.
0:18:05 I would just love to get your reactions to because we were so busy a pivot.
0:18:10 We didn’t bring it up, which is actually kind of convenient given that it’s a Vox property.
0:18:14 But I’m curious to get your thoughts, if any, on a story that’s kind of coming on around
0:18:20 Olivia Nozzi and RFK Jr. and this “digital relationship.”
0:18:24 I don’t even know how to describe it, but I had a lot of thoughts about it and I tweeted
0:18:25 about it or I threaded about it.
0:18:28 And I got some what I thought was really intelligent pushback, but I’m curious what
0:18:30 you think of the whole situation.
0:18:38 Well, what we know so far is that Olivia Nozzi, who is a 31-year-old star campaign reporter
0:18:43 at New York Magazine, had written about RFK Jr.
0:18:44 Gotten to know him through that.
0:18:47 She covered the presidential race for New York Magazine, right?
0:18:53 In general, yes, but she had done a piece on him and she had also written what is widely
0:19:00 regarded as the most consequential piece in putting the vinyl nail in Biden’s coffin.
0:19:05 Basically saying that every Democrat in Washington thinks he can’t do this and it’s not just
0:19:11 voters that are uneasy, but there’s this whisper campaign and Biden should be exiting
0:19:12 stage left.
0:19:16 And I think that came out July 4th or July 5th, something like that.
0:19:21 And now that it has been revealed that she was having a digital affair, which is rumored
0:19:28 to include racy photos, very demure of her that she was having to.
0:19:29 The word “digital” freaked me out.
0:19:32 I’m like, does that mean she sticks her finger up as ass during sex?
0:19:33 Like I didn’t know what “digital” meant.
0:19:35 So it’s sexting in photos?
0:19:37 What does it mean?
0:19:39 It’s on your device.
0:19:46 As far as we know, which is different for RFK Jr., who usually engages in the actual
0:19:53 digital, goes analog, what is it, 37 times that he cheated on his wife that he detailed
0:19:56 in that horrific diary that eventually led to her killing herself.
0:19:59 And she referenced it in her suicide note.
0:20:02 Yeah, but he said she took it back.
0:20:03 You didn’t hear that part?
0:20:08 She wasn’t mad at all, very happy with how things turned out.
0:20:15 So part of the backstory that’s also interesting to this, at least from the gossip standpoint,
0:20:21 is that Olivia Nuzzi is engaged to Ryan Liza, who is also a DC politics reporter.
0:20:30 He writes playbook now for Politico, and he left his wife for Nuzzi 20 years, his junior.
0:20:37 And so there was a lot of online, the karma of you leave your wife for someone 20 years
0:20:43 younger and then she leaves you for a 70 year old, 70 years older than you.
0:20:49 Yes, a 70 year old Kennedy who has a brain worm, and it’s just not your average Kennedy
0:20:50 bear.
0:20:51 That was good.
0:20:55 I just want to highlight that was good.
0:20:56 I’m sorry.
0:20:57 Go ahead.
0:20:58 Thank you.
0:21:04 It doesn’t feel ethically sound that she continued to cover the campaign like this.
0:21:09 And the story that’s coming out of RFK Jr.’s camp doesn’t seem fully believable that she
0:21:15 basically stalked him and he wasn’t interested because this guy is a dog and he’s been interested
0:21:22 in everybody that’s been interested in him over the years, but people are really, they’re
0:21:24 all over the place on this.
0:21:29 People defending her saying, “We all make mistakes too,” like, “Are you f-ing kidding
0:21:30 me?”
0:21:35 That you went on and continued to cover this race, but I want to hear what you threaded
0:21:38 and what the thoughtful responses were.
0:21:44 So when I first saw this, I think it was a little bit triggered because the Clintons
0:21:50 were sort of my heroes, and as I learned more about what went down with Monica Lewinsky,
0:21:54 I just felt, I literally felt they didn’t ruin her life because she has a nice life.
0:21:59 I’ve become sort of like Twitter-friendly with her, but they basically, it felt like
0:22:06 such an abuse of power from him and then them collectively kind of indicting her and disparaging.
0:22:14 I just, it just broke my heart the way they treated her, and this woman, Cara Swisher,
0:22:17 actually did this fantastic interview with her, and she said, “What would your life have
0:22:18 been like?
0:22:21 Imagine had this not happened,” and she said, “Well,” and she’s obviously a very impressive
0:22:22 young woman.
0:22:24 I wanted to go get a PhD by this point.
0:22:28 I thought it would have been married, maybe a couple of kids, maybe working in policy,
0:22:31 and you just feel your heart breaking because can you imagine dating?
0:22:36 Can you imagine getting a job when you’re Monica Lewinsky in your 20s and 30s?
0:22:40 And so I was a little bit triggered by this story because if you pulled up, if you typed
0:22:45 an RFK that morning, there were 10 stories come up with 10 buttons or the pictures, whatever
0:22:50 you call it, and eight of them were a picture of her.
0:22:56 One was a picture of her and him, and the 10th was of her former fiance.
0:23:02 And I thought, okay, if it had come out that Vice President Harris or Secretary Clinton
0:23:07 we’re having a, quote unquote, “digital affair” with a guy, it wouldn’t be pictures of the
0:23:08 guy.
0:23:14 I thought the reflexive, the automatic reflexive reaction of media is to slut shame.
0:23:17 And this was an easy one from her standpoint.
0:23:21 She should be fired in an ethical lapse in journalism.
0:23:24 You’re not supposed to have any sort of relationship like that with people you’re covering on something
0:23:26 as important as presidential politics.
0:23:29 You sit her down and say, “You fucked up, you’re fired.”
0:23:32 And people are fired for a lot less.
0:23:35 She’s trying to maintain a career as a top-level journalist.
0:23:38 I think she’s so talented that she’ll recover from it and probably move on.
0:23:43 I don’t think this is anything like the drama of the Lewinsky-Clinton scandal.
0:23:49 But he, at the age of 70, is trying to convince us that he should get the nuclear codes.
0:23:51 And yet the story wasn’t at all about him.
0:23:55 And now he is framing, I can see what their campaign is doing, they’re trying to frame
0:24:01 her as like a glen-close, boiled-arabbit person that was so drawn to him because his charms.
0:24:05 And so I came out and said, “This story really shouldn’t be about her, it should be about
0:24:07 him.”
0:24:10 And Julie Heimann, who’s a great reporter at Yahoo!
0:24:13 I actually met her at Bloomberg, and I don’t think I’m speaking out of school because I
0:24:20 think she was right, wrote me and said, “Scott, this is about journalistic ethics and you’re
0:24:25 taking away her agency, just portraying her as this foe-y little dawn, this foe-y little
0:24:31 foe-y little foe, they can’t resist the charms of an older Kennedy.”
0:24:37 But I found the media’s reaction really interesting, that they were very focused on her, and maybe
0:24:45 that’s because they’re like, “Okay, this guy’s a weirdo, so we expect this from him.”
0:24:52 But I found it really weird that the media immediately went to, this was her fault, and
0:24:55 the story was all about her.
0:24:58 It felt like slut-shaming to me.
0:25:05 It felt like none of the lessons of the Me Too era were being remembered at all.
0:25:10 When people in positions of power take advantage of them, and there is an imbalance, there’s
0:25:16 an age imbalance, there’s a power imbalance, RFK Jr. has been through worse than getting
0:25:17 some bad press.
0:25:21 That’s the worst that Olivia Nuzzy could do to him.
0:25:26 You can’t get worse than dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park or the whale that he hacked
0:25:31 the head off of, that he’s being charged like 37 grand for letting the blood and guts leak
0:25:35 on his kids or whatever he was doing in that station wagon.
0:25:42 I did find that to be absent in it, and I said to my husband that it bothers me about
0:25:47 myself that I don’t know definitively how I feel about this.
0:25:53 I know that there was a breach in ethics, and I know that that matters a lot.
0:26:00 I get paranoid when I even say something on air and don’t disclose that I know the person
0:26:08 or come across the person at a party or whatever it is, let alone I’m going to go out and write,
0:26:12 like I was saying, the seminal piece about Biden’s fitness for office.
0:26:19 When I’m sending photos of myself to a guy who also wants that job, now no one took it
0:26:24 seriously that he was going to get that job, and it looks like his effect is hopefully
0:26:28 going to be close to nil now that he is not technically in the race anymore, though he’s
0:26:32 still going to be on some ballots, but is on Team Trump vying for the health secretary
0:26:33 position.
0:26:40 But I think you’re right that she will have a future somewhere, and you see that people
0:26:45 on the right specifically defending her a lot more than people on the left.
0:26:46 She’ll end up at free press.
0:26:47 Is that what it’s called?
0:26:49 Yeah, the Barry Weiss outfit.
0:26:50 Yeah.
0:26:51 I bet she’ll end up there.
0:26:52 She’s very talented.
0:26:54 Well, that would be a great landing for her.
0:26:56 That’s not even what I was envisioning.
0:26:57 No, she’s a talent.
0:26:59 She’s a real talent, I think.
0:27:00 Yeah.
0:27:01 Anyways, we’ll see.
0:27:03 So anyways, thanks for the digression.
0:27:05 Let’s get back to the polls.
0:27:09 What do you think the candidates can do if you’re advising them?
0:27:14 What can they do to shore up key battleground states at this point?
0:27:19 Well, I think showing up matters, and they are both showing up places that they need
0:27:23 to, Kamala and Tim Walls, more than Trump is.
0:27:27 JD Vance has been out there a ton, but there was a graph and infographic floating around
0:27:33 about how many fewer rallies Trump is doing, certainly from 2016, when it was breakneck
0:27:34 pace.
0:27:38 You know, it just was unstoppable how many he was doing.
0:27:43 And then obviously it went down in 2020, but that this is really like a whimper.
0:27:49 But something that I saw and that popped out to me in the numbers that show what Kamala
0:27:55 can do or continue to do is that she’s moving back to the right levels with black and Latino
0:27:58 voters, which was a real soft spot.
0:28:05 And it seems like with Latino voters specifically that this message about border security and
0:28:09 also things like home ownership is something that’s really resonating with them, like talking
0:28:12 to them not as a minority group.
0:28:17 And I noticed it’s something that youth think about a lot, that people should stop presenting
0:28:24 themselves as a certain type of person and just as an American, and she doesn’t talk
0:28:28 about her identity, she doesn’t say black Southeast Asian, et cetera.
0:28:34 She’s just going for it as someone with the same interests and needs and desires as everyone
0:28:35 else.
0:28:41 And I think that that is the way forward for anyone to be able to win this election.
0:28:42 What do you think about that?
0:28:44 Yeah, I think I like that.
0:28:46 I think that’s solid.
0:28:51 What’s interesting is the data I’ve seen says that inflation remains voters’ most important
0:28:52 issue.
0:28:58 And it sounds like that’s the issue that is probably most up for grabs, I would argue.
0:29:03 And what’s interesting is, and again, their perception is their reality.
0:29:08 People see him as a businessman, lower interest rates during his tenure.
0:29:12 They think he’s just, they reflexively think he’d be better on the economy.
0:29:15 I think she’s made some real missteps around things like price controls.
0:29:19 I don’t think that makes any sense, a wealth tax.
0:29:22 We talked a little bit about that, that doesn’t make any sense for me.
0:29:26 But at the same time, his proposal is around tariffs and being as anti-immigration as he’s
0:29:30 claiming, there’s a few things that could be more inflationary.
0:29:37 So I don’t know, if I were her, I would do a lot around inflation right now, saying we
0:29:41 need to break up these big companies, we’ll bring prices down.
0:29:43 She’s talked about growth.
0:29:45 What is the growth mindset around the economy?
0:29:49 How do we bring specifically what programs am I going to put in place to bring inflation
0:29:51 down that economists would sign off of?
0:29:57 Because when she says price controls, all economists say is, okay, so I remember right
0:30:03 out of college, my buddy Lee Lotus said, we should rent in Santa Monica because we can
0:30:04 get rent control.
0:30:05 And I’m like, yeah, but those things never come up.
0:30:09 He’s like, yeah, but we’re two white yuppies, so we’ll have an easier time.
0:30:10 And I said, why is that?
0:30:16 Well, all the people who own apartments in Santa Monica, because they’re rent controlled,
0:30:21 they get 50 applicants and they always end up picking young white professionals.
0:30:24 And I thought, okay, that’s what happens when you have price controls.
0:30:26 I mean, rent control just doesn’t work.
0:30:27 Price controls just don’t work.
0:30:30 If there’s gouging during a hurricane, I get it.
0:30:34 But the notion that you’re going to tell a marketplace, you’re going to put a cap on
0:30:37 prices, that to me just doesn’t work.
0:30:39 I thought that made, didn’t make any sense.
0:30:42 But I would, she has some very smart economic policy advisors.
0:30:47 I would come up with some sort of acronym for the three things she’s going to do to ensure
0:30:49 inflation goes to its target level.
0:30:54 Or maybe she just talks about the fact that, hey, I don’t know if anyone’s noticed, but
0:30:57 inflation, cornflation is at 3.3, but inflation overall, inflation is at 2.5.
0:30:59 The target is two.
0:31:01 We’ve brought down inflation faster than anyone.
0:31:02 Maybe they spend that on ads.
0:31:06 I don’t watch TV or ad supported TV, so I don’t know if she’s running ads, but it seems
0:31:09 like inflation is one of the last things.
0:31:10 Tons of them.
0:31:11 Tons of them.
0:31:12 And what are they focused on?
0:31:15 Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime.
0:31:20 As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades.
0:31:22 Fixing the border is tough.
0:31:24 So is Kamala Harris.
0:31:31 A lot of it has been autobiographical because she still is also introducing herself.
0:31:35 But they are getting into more policy specific stuff.
0:31:40 And it’s a lot about the small business policies and encouraging that.
0:31:42 And I think she has some great surrogates, like, I love them.
0:31:45 Mark Cuban is out there and he’s just going everywhere.
0:31:46 Right?
0:31:50 Like, I’ll talk to you on a podcast, I’ll talk to you on SquawkBox.
0:31:53 And I’m going to disagree with Kamala about certain things, but I’m going to tell you
0:31:56 why NetNet, she’s going to be better for your pocketbook.
0:32:01 And on the price controls part, she never actually said price control.
0:32:06 But she is trying to represent, and I get it that maybe this hasn’t been done effectively,
0:32:08 is essentially antitrust enforcement.
0:32:12 And you even saw after she started talking about it that some of the companies that she
0:32:16 had mentioned, like the Walmarts of the World, the Kroger’s, they dropped their prices.
0:32:20 That there were, they were being artificially inflated because they could get away with
0:32:21 it.
0:32:22 Right?
0:32:25 They were basically pretending that the supply chain was still as shitty as it was in 2021,
0:32:27 which is obviously not the case.
0:32:32 And as people start to notice in their regular lives that maybe it doesn’t cost so much
0:32:36 to fill up their tank, or maybe chicken is costing less when they go to buy dinner for
0:32:41 their family, that that is naturally warming them to Kamala Harris.
0:32:48 And then Trump isn’t doing the work to be able to prove the case that he would be better
0:32:50 if he were the one steering the economy right now.
0:32:55 So that’s how I see it in a best case scenario for her on the inflation issue.
0:32:59 So according to this poll, the things that he beats around specifically, securing the
0:33:03 border and controlling immigration, he beats her by a whopping 21 points on dealing with
0:33:04 the economy.
0:33:09 He’s up by nine, dealing with inflation and the cost of living up by eight, dealing with
0:33:13 crime and violence up by six, serving as commander-in-chief.
0:33:16 She beats him by one, getting the country headed in the right direction.
0:33:20 She beats him by four, being competent and effective.
0:33:21 She beats him by five.
0:33:27 It’s funny, I would think being competent and effective would be the halo around all
0:33:28 of this.
0:33:31 Anyways, we’ll be back after a quick break to discuss the race for governor in North
0:33:34 Carolina and an interesting trend in the housing market.
0:33:35 Stay with us.
0:33:40 All right, Jess, we’re going to shift gears here.
0:33:45 The race for governor in North Carolina exploded with a story that could have national repercussions.
0:33:50 Mark Robinson, the GOP front runner, is in hot water after past common service where he
0:33:53 compared himself to a black Nazi.
0:33:55 That’s not even the most shocking part.
0:34:01 There are also disturbing revelations about his activity on an online porn forum.
0:34:05 Jessica, do you think this is more gossip than tangible?
0:34:07 Do you think this has any impact?
0:34:14 Well, his basically his whole staff quit, so yeah, I think it does have an impact.
0:34:19 He tried to say that it was AI and this was all fake, but I don’t think everyone quits.
0:34:22 Oh, no, I mean an impact on the presidential race, not on Robinson.
0:34:25 I think he’s toast or I don’t know if he’s toast.
0:34:26 Oh, yeah.
0:34:31 Well, he was kind of toasty, at least before this happened, but I do think that it has
0:34:38 an impact on the race and that these candidates like the Doug Masturianos of the world and
0:34:42 there was someone who pointed out, which is funny, that if you’re an A.G. named Josh,
0:34:44 just stay in line.
0:34:49 So this is Josh Stein in North Carolina and it was Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania who ended
0:34:58 up running against these kind of Trumpy lunatics, but I wonder in a year like this with so many
0:35:06 important issues on the table, how much split ticket voting is actually going to happen.
0:35:12 And the Harris campaign has been really focused on North Carolina anyway, obviously more so
0:35:17 at this point, but what do you think the likelihood is that people are going to walk into that
0:35:22 booth and say, you know, Josh Stein for sure, obviously we can’t have Mark Robinson, but
0:35:24 Trump in North Carolina.
0:35:27 I mean, in Georgia, they do this all the time, right?
0:35:33 They sit with two Democratic senators and they love Brian Kemp and a lot of conservatives.
0:35:39 Yeah, I think as I just hear you speak about it, I wonder if it cements or buttresses a
0:35:46 very negative brand association of Trump-Harris that they’re weird, that this guy he’s actively
0:35:51 advocated for is kind of all caps weird, uncomfortable weird.
0:35:56 And that this is sort of, you know, this is kind of case in point or par for the course,
0:36:00 if you will, for the kind of people that Trump and Vance endorse.
0:36:04 And then on top of this, North Carolina is in play, right?
0:36:07 So maybe it is bigger.
0:36:10 And as you pointed out, this might affect down ballot races in a key state like North
0:36:11 Carolina.
0:36:12 Yeah.
0:36:17 I mean, that’s the hope with something like this, and clearly, you know, that opposition
0:36:21 research didn’t just appear out of nowhere on that day, that was the last day that you
0:36:23 could have gotten his name off the ballot.
0:36:27 So the Democrats waited until exactly the right moment.
0:36:34 I’m just trying to figure out what is the thought process where you decide to post a
0:36:36 comment on a porn site?
0:36:42 I mean, the black Nazi stuff, okay, I don’t get it, but even before that, I know I’m going
0:36:45 to comment on a porn site.
0:36:51 I mean, should that person be in a position of civic responsibility?
0:36:52 No.
0:36:55 So this is what I wanted to ask you about.
0:36:56 So it’s not just like…
0:36:58 As a commenter on porn sites?
0:36:59 Yeah.
0:37:03 As a frequent guest on New Dapark for myself.
0:37:07 But this was, you know, over many years, and it included the fact that he’s a peeping Tom.
0:37:12 Like, he’s talking about fantasizing about the fact that he used to watch women in public
0:37:15 gym showers and that he still fantasizes about it.
0:37:18 So this is my question.
0:37:24 If there was a conversation about Joe Biden being fit to serve six more months in his
0:37:29 job when he dropped out, how is there not a conversation that Mark Robinson should be
0:37:31 gone today?
0:37:39 That somebody who did that and who harbors these kinds of beliefs that he has espoused
0:37:47 even in this campaign about women, about reproductive rights, about race, tensions.
0:37:50 Like why is Mark Robinson still allowed to sit around?
0:37:55 But we had to hear about, you know, Joe Biden can only sit on the beach in Delaware and
0:37:57 can’t walk up three stairs.
0:38:04 I think America has decided that they’d rather have a pervert than someone old and feeble.
0:38:09 And that is, to a certain extent, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and just, I don’t want to say
0:38:15 they’ve normalized weirdness around children and women and sex, but what have we not been
0:38:16 exposed to?
0:38:19 I mean, isn’t everyone just sort of like, “I’ve heard it.
0:38:20 I’ve seen it.
0:38:21 I don’t care.
0:38:22 I don’t.”
0:38:26 And if the Christian evangelicals will vote for somebody who has been married, you know,
0:38:32 has five kids by three women and has been accused of sexual assault by 28 women, okay,
0:38:35 whatever, this guy’s commented on a porn site.
0:38:38 I really don’t care.
0:38:40 What is unforgivable?
0:38:46 I think correctly, America, and I’ve been saying this for a year and was called an agist and
0:38:47 that’s accurate.
0:38:48 I’m an agist and so is biology.
0:38:54 Let me just say, if it was Biden and Trump, I think hands down the nation would have decided
0:38:59 they’d rather have someone guilty of sexual abuse than an old, feeble man who came across
0:39:03 as just like kind of not there.
0:39:07 So I don’t, I think America has decided that they’ll tolerate that.
0:39:08 Yeah.
0:39:15 I mean, aging is rough for everybody, but the way in which you age is actually so much
0:39:21 more important in terms of the impact that it has on your life when you look at how people
0:39:22 are perceiving you.
0:39:26 You know, you would think that Biden was 95 and that Trump was 75.
0:39:27 You got to give it to Trump.
0:39:31 Trump just looked more robust and it’s weird, just people look at me and even though I’m
0:39:33 50, they can’t believe it.
0:39:34 They just can’t believe it.
0:39:35 All right.
0:39:36 Let’s move on.
0:39:37 No.
0:39:38 Let’s move on.
0:39:39 Yes.
0:39:40 Yes.
0:39:42 Let’s talk about something a little different, but just as crucial, the housing crisis, there’s
0:39:47 a growing trend that’s kind of flying under the radar and that’s that wealthy people and
0:39:51 the poor are moving away from home ownership or recent piece in the Wall Street Journal highlighted
0:39:55 how even millionaires are renting their homes instead of buying them.
0:39:56 This is interesting.
0:40:00 Like this says about the state of the housing market.
0:40:01 That is very bad.
0:40:04 That’s the nuance you get here at Raging Water Rights.
0:40:05 Is that it?
0:40:06 Am I a business professor?
0:40:07 That’s it.
0:40:08 Yeah.
0:40:09 That’s why everyone comes to the podcast.
0:40:10 That’s it.
0:40:11 No.
0:40:13 I think that there is, if I could do, you know that emoji with like the two hands holding
0:40:19 each other when like two groups that you don’t think belong together find common cause.
0:40:24 That’s the housing market right now for people who have a few hundred thousand dollars to
0:40:28 be able to buy a home and people who have, you know, three to five million dollars to
0:40:29 find a home.
0:40:32 And I think part of it is a testament to how good the market is, that if you have your
0:40:39 money, if your down payment is doing the work in a fund for you, that that’s, that makes
0:40:40 you better off than this.
0:40:45 There’s crappy supply and that’s why one of Harris’s pledges is to build, you know, three
0:40:47 million new units.
0:40:51 People can’t find stuff no matter what you’re looking for.
0:40:54 But I think there’s also been this shift and I’ve done a lot of research looking into
0:41:00 this, especially with Gen Zs and Millennials, but I just did a survey of Gen Alpha’s, so
0:41:04 13 to 17 year olds, about what the American dream means.
0:41:07 And home ownership is just off the table now.
0:41:11 It’s just not something, whether it means that they don’t think they could ever achieve
0:41:15 it or it’s just different things matter to them, you know, they prioritize experiences
0:41:18 over material items.
0:41:23 When you talk to a young person about what success means, they’re not leading with owning
0:41:24 a home.
0:41:25 But I know my parents did.
0:41:29 It was a huge deal for them when they were able to buy their first home.
0:41:31 Did you, was it a big issue for you?
0:41:38 Well, I, I am in this category of a very too high end renter.
0:41:43 We have enough money to buy a great place and could stay in our neighborhood and we’re
0:41:49 zoned for an incredible public school and all of it, but I don’t want to settle, especially
0:41:50 for that amount of money.
0:41:57 We worked really hard to save what we have and we can be in an apartment that is gorgeous
0:42:02 and perfect for us and we have enough space for two kids and, you know, the little car
0:42:09 that you can push around, you know, like the little Bam Bam wheels thing and our money
0:42:13 is doing really well in the market and I don’t want to pull it out.
0:42:14 Yep.
0:42:16 I think you just summarized how a lot of people feel.
0:42:17 The calculus is pretty straightforward.
0:42:24 You look at the cost of renting or the, the kind of yield on a place and in cities typically
0:42:29 like New York and San Francisco, it actually has a much better idea to rent because while
0:42:34 it might cost you $3 million to buy a really, you know, not even a nice home, an okay home
0:42:44 in Manhattan, say that ends up costing you $15,000 or $20,000 a month in mortgage insurance,
0:42:50 maintenance, you’d be better off renting and putting the additional, the rents, the yields
0:42:51 are really low.
0:42:57 In other words, as an owner, you get really low yields on rentals and people say, well,
0:43:00 that’s bad because they know that doesn’t increase housing stock, people don’t want to
0:43:07 buy, but in, as oddly expensive as it appears to rent in New York on a financial basis,
0:43:09 you’re better off renting.
0:43:11 Now some of the rural, the red states, you’re much better off.
0:43:16 If you live in St. Louis and you can buy a nice home for $550,000 and it has a big yard
0:43:19 and everything, you’re better off buying than renting.
0:43:25 But increasingly because of this uptick in extreme housing costs, more and more people
0:43:28 are deciding and also there’s, there’s advantages to renting.
0:43:29 You’re more mobile.
0:43:31 You get trapped.
0:43:34 But the housing, I really think this is a big issue for young Americans.
0:43:38 And I think it’s another reason why not as many young Americans are connecting, hooking
0:43:43 up and having children because I do think buying a house is sort of, you don’t really invest
0:43:48 as much in a place you’re renting and buying a home for me was like, let’s, let’s invest
0:43:49 in something.
0:43:51 And it’s sort of like saying we’re not engaged, but we’re kind of committing to each other
0:43:54 because we’re, we’re both going to be on the mortgage.
0:43:56 I think a lot of the, it’s had all these unintended consequences.
0:43:59 I’m fascinated with the housing market.
0:44:04 And that is one of the reasons I think travel stocks and live nation and event and experience
0:44:09 stocks have boomed is because I think there’s a lot of people your age and younger who have
0:44:12 essentially pre-kids, they were saving for a home.
0:44:16 This is what I did when I was bright, when I was young, you just get a girlfriend, you
0:44:17 start saving for a house.
0:44:18 That’s it.
0:44:19 You start saving for a house.
0:44:24 And now I think a lot of them have said, you know what, fuck it, let’s just go to Thailand
0:44:31 to get an Airbnb and go see Taylor Swift and travel stocks and live nation and attendance
0:44:35 and the tickets to go see Adele and Taylor Swift went to two, three, four grand because
0:44:42 I think people just decided I am done trying to pursue the American dream in the home of
0:44:43 real estate.
0:44:49 And if you want to look at a market that appears to be due for a correction, it’s the housing
0:44:50 market.
0:44:55 It’s fascinating the wealthy people who generally know how to do math have said, no, buying’s
0:44:57 not the way to go.
0:44:58 I totally agree.
0:45:05 I think there’s also the psychological component of what people want to define them.
0:45:09 You know, and it used to be that you would lead with, I live in this neighborhood, right?
0:45:13 It matters that I’m raising my family here.
0:45:15 And I don’t think that’s the same kind of thing now.
0:45:20 I think it’s stuff that you were saying like vacations, the moments that you share with
0:45:25 people who matter, the kind of trips that you’re taking, the kind of outside the schoolroom
0:45:30 education that you’re providing your kids with, the type of people who sit around your
0:45:36 dinner table, whether you own the home that that table is in or not, you know, I’m excited
0:45:41 that my daughters are growing up around people that are wildly interesting and doing cool
0:45:48 things with their lives more so than I care if they own their apartment in Brooklyn Heights.
0:45:52 So I think the calculus has just changed so much.
0:45:57 And obviously the rates contributed to this a lot, but it’s almost like it gave people
0:46:02 a bit of a break to take a step back in a moment where it wasn’t going to be smart for
0:46:08 you to just continue to pour money into this, but to really take stock of what kind of lives
0:46:09 they want.
0:46:13 Or maybe I’m just trying to make myself feel better because I couldn’t get the apartment
0:46:20 that I wanted, but I do think that people are being a lot more thoughtful about what
0:46:22 peak life looks like.
0:46:28 And it just doesn’t look the way that it did even 10, 15 years ago for them.
0:46:29 That’s really fascinating.
0:46:33 I love what you said, raising your kids around really interesting people.
0:46:36 I think that’s nice, Jessica, good for you.
0:46:37 Well, I hope you’ll come over.
0:46:38 That’s why I’m not there.
0:46:40 You said interesting people.
0:46:41 Yeah.
0:46:42 Yeah.
0:46:43 No, no.
0:46:44 Here’s the thing.
0:46:45 I don’t like people.
0:46:46 That’s the only thing.
0:46:47 But I’d like to meet your kids.
0:46:48 I would never have guessed that about you.
0:46:49 I would like to.
0:46:50 They’re really cute.
0:46:51 I gotta go once.
0:46:53 I can’t imagine that you and your husband produced.
0:46:56 You guys are such like, I don’t know what the term is, thoroughbreds.
0:47:00 I’d like you to have 4,000 kids and then I will take them and invade Australia.
0:47:05 I will be king of Australia and your children will be my warriors.
0:47:07 That’s all for this episode, Jesse.
0:47:10 Oh, I want to see something.
0:47:11 Go ahead.
0:47:12 I’m going to be on a panel at the Paley Center.
0:47:13 I was about to bring it up.
0:47:14 Which is such an…
0:47:15 Oh, okay.
0:47:16 I didn’t know.
0:47:17 So, thank you.
0:47:18 I want to play the game.
0:47:19 Yeah.
0:47:22 You have a panel coming up on Wednesday at the Paley Center.
0:47:24 Jess, what’s that all about?
0:47:30 Well, Scott, it’s about the election and covering the election and also the impact of the AI
0:47:33 and what voters are seeing, what can you trust, what can’t you trust?
0:47:35 I am super jazzed.
0:47:41 Margaret Hoover, who I’m kind of obsessed with, is on the panel as well and a lot more
0:47:42 people.
0:47:43 Christine Quinn’s on the panel.
0:47:46 The president of the Manhattan Institute is on the panel.
0:47:47 Anyway, it’s going to be great if you are in New York.
0:47:50 I think it’s sold out, but check.
0:47:51 Maybe it isn’t.
0:47:55 I would love to see you there, but I am just so honored to have been invited to be at the
0:47:56 Paley Center.
0:47:57 That’s nice.
0:47:58 What’s the date again?
0:47:59 It’s on Wednesday?
0:48:00 Or this Wednesday?
0:48:01 Wednesday, September 25th.
0:48:02 Okay, for you.
0:48:03 Yeah.
0:48:04 Thank you.
0:48:05 You’re welcome.
0:48:06 Thank you.
0:48:07 Thanks.
0:48:08 I’ll see you next time.
0:48:09 Bye.
0:48:10 Bye.
0:48:11 Bye.
0:48:13 You, too.
0:48:16 (upbeat music)
0:48:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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0:01:32 Today’s number, $3.2 billion.
0:01:37 That’s how much MLS teams have surged in value since Messi joined Miami.
0:01:38 I hate being from Florida.
0:01:41 I think it’s the most fucked up state.
0:01:44 “Hold my sister,” said Alabama.
0:01:46 Does that make any sense, Ed?
0:01:47 Does that make any sense?
0:01:48 Kind of.
0:01:49 Kind of.
0:01:50 Instead of, “Hold my beer,” “Hold my sister.”
0:01:51 It’s an incest joke, right?
0:01:52 Yeah.
0:01:54 You’re catching on.
0:01:56 Anyways.
0:01:58 The strong start.
0:01:59 Thanks for that, Ed.
0:02:00 It’s very supportive.
0:02:12 Welcome to Prop G Markets.
0:02:16 Today, we’re discussing Lionsgate Steel with an AI company.
0:02:17 Oh, my God.
0:02:19 The union hasn’t protected them from AI.
0:02:23 Anyways, and Amazon’s return to work policy.
0:02:27 I think the return to work policy has worked to your fucking hands drop off
0:02:33 because daddy needs a hotter chick with a tighter thong, said Jeffrey Bezos.
0:02:39 But first, here with the news is Prop G Media Analyst Ed Elson.
0:02:43 Ed, what is the Palabra Buena, which is what we would say in Miami?
0:02:44 Not much, Scott.
0:02:45 I’m doing well.
0:02:46 I’m live from Sweden.
0:02:47 I’m in Stockholm at the moment.
0:02:50 I just did a talk for a private equity firm.
0:02:52 So, I’m kind of living the baller Scott Galloway life.
0:02:53 Tell me about that.
0:02:54 What did you speak about?
0:02:58 I spoke about Gen Z and how companies can best engage with us
0:03:00 because we’re a very unusual generation.
0:03:02 Can we just give you a bunch of Molly and a mutt and tell the–
0:03:03 Anyway, what do we do?
0:03:05 What do we do to engage Gen Z?
0:03:07 Well, that was what it was all about.
0:03:08 You’re giving it all away.
0:03:09 I’m not going to tell you about it
0:03:11 because I need people to pay me to tell them about it.
0:03:15 I am curious, though, because to be serious for a second,
0:03:17 people talk about how entitled they are in Gen Z.
0:03:19 And what I’ve generally found on granted,
0:03:23 Catherine’s done a good job of finding these overeducated,
0:03:27 hardworking employees, also you guys.
0:03:29 I was waiting.
0:03:31 It couldn’t be a compliment.
0:03:33 I’m consistently being very truthful.
0:03:35 I think it’s total bullshit this notion
0:03:38 that you need to engage them or they’re entitled.
0:03:40 I have found, generally speaking,
0:03:42 that every generation gets more and more impressive.
0:03:45 And that’s true for the youngest generation of the workforce.
0:03:48 They’re generally more talented, more fast solid technology.
0:03:52 In some, I think corporate America and especially my firms,
0:03:56 the information economy firms, run on the youngest generation
0:03:58 because they generally don’t have kids
0:04:00 so they can devote a ton of time to work.
0:04:03 The ambitious ones want to do nothing but work
0:04:05 because they want to get ahead.
0:04:07 They’re very in touch with technology.
0:04:10 And quite frankly, they’re just not asking for paternity
0:04:12 or maternity leave yet.
0:04:14 And they’re not thinking about these odd things in life
0:04:15 called balance.
0:04:17 They’re willing to work their asses off to try and establish
0:04:19 some currency in the professional market.
0:04:22 I think America runs on young people.
0:04:25 Yeah, I mean, I agree America runs on young people,
0:04:26 but I think you’re a little biased
0:04:28 because I think you’ve been surrounded by people
0:04:30 and you’ve created a culture where people are willing
0:04:31 to work very hard.
0:04:35 But no, I think young people have very high expectations
0:04:37 about what they want as employees.
0:04:41 And also a lot of my talk wasn’t necessarily about
0:04:43 hiring and employing young people
0:04:46 but also trying to sell to them
0:04:47 and how to capture their attention.
0:04:50 I think that in the age of social media
0:04:52 where you have billions of different voices,
0:04:53 billions of different companies
0:04:56 all competing for our attention,
0:04:58 I think companies are in a place
0:05:00 that they haven’t really had to deal with before
0:05:03 where they’re struggling to capture our attention
0:05:05 and engage it in a meaningful way.
0:05:07 Were you nervous before the gig?
0:05:08 Never.
0:05:09 Really?
0:05:10 I was extremely nervous.
0:05:12 One and a half percent of the time I speak,
0:05:13 I get a panic attack.
0:05:14 Oh yeah?
0:05:15 I just sort of blacked out during it.
0:05:18 I think I’d prepped enough where it wasn’t really
0:05:20 an issue for me and I kind of just,
0:05:24 my brain wasn’t even operating while I was speaking.
0:05:26 How does it work out for you?
0:05:29 Mine is more, I don’t know, just random.
0:05:31 It could happen in small groups or big groups.
0:05:33 I haven’t been able to figure out why it happens.
0:05:36 The only thing I could figure out is when I’m severely jet lagged,
0:05:38 sometimes I have a panic attack.
0:05:41 And for a while, right away,
0:05:43 the first time I went on Bill Maher,
0:05:46 in situations where I’m worried about it,
0:05:48 and I’m not proud of this, I’ll slam a beer.
0:05:51 Right before, because I’ve noticed before you do your speaking gigs,
0:05:54 I notice you go out the night before.
0:05:57 But maybe that’s just because you always go out and drink anyway.
0:06:00 Yeah, that’s just because it’s a night.
0:06:02 That’s not a strategy.
0:06:04 That’s just because I’m in a strange city and I want to find out
0:06:07 if there’s hot people who like alcohol and are going to be impressed by me
0:06:12 because I’m speaking at some National Cotton Growers Association the next day.
0:06:15 Because I was thinking maybe you liked being hungover or something,
0:06:17 that it sort of calms you down.
0:06:19 Oh yeah, that’s a ton of fun.
0:06:22 It’s great to walk around like you just went through your third battery, a chemo.
0:06:24 Anyways, get to the fucking headlines, Ed.
0:06:27 Let’s do it. Let’s start with our weekly review of Market Vitals.
0:06:33 The S&P 500 rose.
0:06:36 The dollar drops to a low for the year.
0:06:39 Bitcoin climbed and the yield on tenure treasuries increased.
0:06:41 Shifting to the headlines.
0:06:44 The Federal Reserve cut interest rates for the first time in four years
0:06:46 by 50 basis points.
0:06:49 That was double what most economists had predicted.
0:06:51 Markets initially surged following the announcement,
0:06:54 but the three major indices ended the day lower.
0:06:58 United will soon offer free Wi-Fi in more than 1,000 planes
0:07:02 after reaching a deal with SpaceX to install Starlink on its entire fleet.
0:07:05 This is Starlink’s biggest in-flight connectivity deal yet,
0:07:09 and it will bring its total aircrafts under contract to $2,500.
0:07:13 BlackRock and Microsoft are launching a $30 billion fund
0:07:16 to invest in AI infrastructure.
0:07:19 The Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership
0:07:22 will build more data centers to meet the growing energy demands
0:07:24 from gen AI and cloud computing.
0:07:28 And finally, Instagram is putting users under the age of 18
0:07:31 into teen accounts, which will be private by default.
0:07:35 The platform will also use AI to help verify a teenager’s age.
0:07:38 The teen accounts will immediately begin rolling out in the US,
0:07:41 Canada and the UK, and they will eventually expand
0:07:43 across all of Meta’s platforms.
0:07:46 Scott, your thoughts beginning with the rate cut.
0:07:51 I think the most consequential person of the last several years.
0:07:54 Yeah, is that true? Putin or Trump probably or Biden?
0:07:58 Okay, like one of the most consequential people has been Chairman Powell.
0:08:02 And he pulled off sort of the impossible and it looks like we’ve had
0:08:07 the kind of consummate, you know, Simone Biles stick to landing soft landing.
0:08:11 And that is a soft landing is meant to cool the economy when you have inflation
0:08:14 while not nudging it into recession.
0:08:16 And it looks as if he’s pulled that off.
0:08:18 We’re beginning a rate cutting cycle.
0:08:23 What was unusual was coming in with kind of a hammer with a 50 BIP reduction.
0:08:28 It’s usually 25 and they usually don’t do that unless they’re worried about a recession.
0:08:30 But we’ve seen unemployment tick up.
0:08:34 And at the same time, inflation is now almost at its target rate.
0:08:39 So, you know, this guy’s just shown kind of like ninja like capability here.
0:08:43 And now they’re thinking that maybe the unintended consequences
0:08:48 of these exceptionally high interest rates that kept people nailed to their home
0:08:52 where they kind of had this, you know, unexploded devices in the home
0:08:55 called a mortgage 2.5% where you couldn’t move.
0:09:00 That there’s all this pent up demand of people who want to move back closer to the family,
0:09:03 you know, debt, disease, divorce, want to sell their home,
0:09:05 but haven’t because they didn’t want to give up that mortgage.
0:09:09 But if mortgage rates do come down substantially,
0:09:14 it’s going to free up a ton of supply in the housing market among the nonmovers
0:09:18 who are willing to give up, you know, 200 BIPs for a worse mortgage
0:09:22 and that additional supply will actually bring housing down.
0:09:26 So for me, the most interesting thing about all of this will be housing,
0:09:28 but the market seemed to like it.
0:09:32 Typically after we start a rate cutting cycle, the market goes up 12% to 14%,
0:09:35 but kind of all bets are off here.
0:09:40 And you know, we’ve seen the dollar come down, which makes sense given that interest rates are coming down,
0:09:46 but in general, you know, I just think it’s hilarious that everybody who’s either watched a commercial
0:09:50 or seen a logo thinks they’re an expert in advertising or design or has a kid in school
0:09:54 and thinks they’re all of a sudden an education expert than anyone that has ever spent money
0:09:56 has a view on what chairman Powell should do.
0:09:58 So what do I think he should do?
0:10:02 I think he should do whatever the fuck he thinks we should do because the guy has put on a masterclass.
0:10:03 What are your thoughts?
0:10:05 I was going to say that exact same thing.
0:10:12 I mean, I have read and heard and seen a million different hot takes from podcasters
0:10:17 and political commentators and people at cocktail parties on what the Fed should do.
0:10:22 Everyone has their own opinion on what the correct monetary policy for the US is,
0:10:29 but there is one guy who is best positioned to have a good hot take on monetary policy.
0:10:34 There’s a guy who’s got the most experience, expertise, the best access to data.
0:10:37 He has everything and it’s Jerome Powell.
0:10:38 It’s the guy in charge.
0:10:42 So I don’t have a take and nor should anyone else.
0:10:44 The only guy who should have a take is Jerome Powell.
0:10:45 I agree.
0:10:46 Should we talk about Starlink?
0:10:47 Yeah.
0:10:50 So I don’t know if you’ve sensed this, but I’m actually not an enormous fan of Elon Musk.
0:10:51 Really?
0:10:54 But I just, I don’t think there’s any getting around it.
0:10:57 I think Starlink is going to be the technology of 2025.
0:10:58 I think this thing is amazing.
0:11:03 I mean, effectively, all strategy comes down to clearing three hurdles.
0:11:07 The first is, is your product or your service truly differentiated?
0:11:12 And it doesn’t have to even have product differentiation, but otherwise if it doesn’t have product differentiation,
0:11:17 you’ve got to inculcate emotional or cement emotional association such that people think,
0:11:21 “Oh, I feel better wearing a Panerai even though it tells the same time as anywhere else
0:11:26 because they’ve convinced me that it was Italian submariners and I feel more Italian and masculine.”
0:11:33 You have to honestly say, does this strategy clear the hurdle of differentiation from our competitive set?
0:11:35 If you do that too, relevance.
0:11:37 Does anyone care about a differentiation?
0:11:42 Back in the 2000s, I was asked to work on this brand strategy for the Haas School of Business,
0:11:44 which is Berkeley’s graduate school.
0:11:47 And they were thinking about becoming the internet business school.
0:11:49 And I said, “Well, it’s definitely differentiated.
0:11:52 The problem is for how long will it be relevant?
0:11:58 Will there be a new technology yet to be determined that makes a focus on the internet irrelevant?”
0:12:01 And the thing about differentiation and relevance are the two hurdles.
0:12:03 Is there a national conflict with each other?
0:12:06 And that is, Kleenex is highly relevant to people.
0:12:08 It’s very hard to differentiate.
0:12:11 Ferrari is highly differentiated, not that relevant.
0:12:15 Most people are never going to be in the market for a $450,000 car.
0:12:21 If you manage to find something that’s both differentiated or build something that’s both differentiated and relevant to consumers,
0:12:25 then you got to focus on, all right, sharks are going to come for us.
0:12:27 Megalodons are going to come for us.
0:12:29 Competitors are going to come for our lunch.
0:12:34 What modes can we put up such that our differentiation and relevance is sustainable?
0:12:36 Differentiation, relevant sustainability.
0:12:40 Now, the differentiation here is tangible.
0:12:45 I can get a call from my son in the middle of a commercial flight on FaceTime,
0:12:47 and it is crystal clear, perfect.
0:12:51 They’re sitting there eating bad lamb, signing up for go-go fucking wireless eight times.
0:12:55 I’m wondering if I’m going to get eight charges for $19.95.
0:12:58 This product is highly differentiated.
0:12:59 It’s relevant.
0:13:03 Energy and broadband, we never have enough.
0:13:08 The world’s appetite for energy and broadband and bandwidth is never sated.
0:13:14 There’s always new applications and new ways to use, you know, wind energy, nuclear energy, fossil fuel energy, whatever it is.
0:13:19 There’s always the new apps that come out will always absorb all the bandwidth
0:13:22 and processing power we can produce.
0:13:29 And then the thing that just blows my fucking mind here is they control two-thirds of the low-orbit satellites,
0:13:34 and they have this infrastructure called SpaceX that has revolutionized space hauling,
0:13:44 or specifically, it can get shit into space satellites for much less money than NASA or any other space hauling company.
0:13:48 So all three of these things just add up to just disco.
0:13:54 Now, the company’s trading at about a quarter of a trillion-dollar market cap in the private market,
0:13:58 so word is out about how well these guys are doing.
0:14:04 They’ll do about 13 billion this year in revenues, meaning that its most recent valuation of 210 billion,
0:14:08 that it trades at about double the price-to-sales ratio of Tesla.
0:14:14 We predicted a couple years ago that we thought SpaceX was going to be worth more than Tesla,
0:14:16 but I think this thing is just amazing.
0:14:22 Well, you have to remember is that Starlink is a one part of the SpaceX business.
0:14:29 It’s estimated that Starlink is going to generate this year $6.6 billion in revenue.
0:14:34 And just to put that into context, OpenAI, which is the hardest startup in the world,
0:14:39 their expected revenue for 2024 is $3.4 billion.
0:14:46 So just Starlink alone has basically doubled the business of OpenAI,
0:14:50 and that doesn’t even include all the rest of it that SpaceX is engaged with.
0:14:57 Yeah, I think this is an incredible company, and that giant valuation premium that you’re seeing,
0:15:00 I think in this case is totally warranted.
0:15:10 I mean, what companies other than Big Tech control 60% to 70% of a market,
0:15:14 and it’s not a niche market, this is a market that we all will depend on.
0:15:18 I’m also very excited to try it out because I’ve heard a lot about it from you,
0:15:23 from people who own yachts or have chartered planes.
0:15:27 For some reason, that’s the only place that Starlink seems to exist.
0:15:30 So I’m excited for them to bring it to the masses with United.
0:15:32 Shall we talk about BlackRock and Microsoft?
0:15:38 Yeah, so my initial reaction is that Microsoft should be in the business of AI infrastructure,
0:15:43 but at the same time, they are now the most successful corporate venture firm in history
0:15:45 with their investment in OpenAI.
0:15:51 So I can not based on the increase in valuation of what is supposedly 150 billion that OpenAI
0:15:55 is supposedly raising money at, but because of what it’s done to Microsoft stock.
0:15:58 So I can see why they would do this.
0:16:03 Everybody is talking about AI infrastructure specifically trying to create some form,
0:16:08 or trying to create the, not only put in place the processing power, but the power generation.
0:16:13 One ChatGBT request requires 10 times the energy of a Google search.
0:16:20 This is a big issue, not only for societies, but these organizations now say that choke point
0:16:25 around progress around AI and our ability to offer better AI applications,
0:16:32 the choke point, the friction point, as we map out the supply chain, might be just straight energy.
0:16:36 And they’re thinking, okay, maybe we control the infrastructure and the energy.
0:16:38 And there’s a bit of a lesson here.
0:16:44 And that is, I think it’s really helpful and fruitful for entrepreneurs to say, okay, I’m in the business.
0:16:48 I don’t care what it is, a taco truck, or I’m starting a consulting firm.
0:16:53 Map out literally from, not from birth, but who is your customer?
0:16:58 How is that customer even developing a need for your product?
0:17:00 What situation, what emotional state?
0:17:01 Where do they learn about it?
0:17:03 Where do they intend to buy it?
0:17:04 How do they buy it?
0:17:05 How do they consume it?
0:17:07 What is the consumption process like?
0:17:09 What works, what doesn’t work?
0:17:12 How do they feel about the product and the brand after?
0:17:17 Just literally map out the entire customer journey and then start saying, and VCs call it pain points.
0:17:19 They call it friction points.
0:17:21 What is the friction in the business?
0:17:24 And that’s one of the first things I ask anyone who’s asking me for money.
0:17:26 I say to them, what is the friction in the business?
0:17:28 And I say, what do you mean by that?
0:17:38 If you could have 10 super talented people right now, or $10 million in fresh capital, or 10 fantastic, huge clients, what would you rather have?
0:17:39 What’s the friction in the business?
0:17:42 Is it clients, is it capital, is it people?
0:17:49 Because a lot of people don’t, entrepreneurs just sort of think it’ll naturally come to them, but really think through, what are the friction points?
0:17:56 And the reason I’m bringing this up in this context is I believe that a lot of these companies are now seeing not just GPUs.
0:18:01 There’s enough companies coming for Nvidia’s launch, including TSMC.
0:18:06 I think Meta announced it’s going to start designing its own AI chips.
0:18:11 I think the companies look at power and energy and think this could be a big problem.
0:18:12 What are your thoughts on?
0:18:15 Yeah, I think energy is the story here.
0:18:18 That’s why utilities have been the best performing sector of the year so far.
0:18:25 Utility stocks have been outperforming tech stocks because everyone’s realizing if AI is coming,
0:18:28 then we’re going to need three times more energy than we produced today.
0:18:34 I mean, data center energy demand is expected to triple by 2030.
0:18:36 I think most people are understanding that.
0:18:39 I think we’re seeing sort of a re-embrace of fossil fuels.
0:18:45 I mean, the most telling thing was the fact that Kamala Harris in the presidential debate bragged about domestic oil production.
0:18:49 You would have never seen a Democrat doing that a few years ago.
0:18:54 But the other thing people do need to keep in mind is that fossil fuels aren’t even going to be enough.
0:18:56 We’re also going to need renewables.
0:19:03 So any entrepreneur who’s innovating in the energy space right now, who’s figuring out a way to just create more energy,
0:19:06 those are the entrepreneurs that I would want to bet on.
0:19:12 One other observation about the fact that we’ve got Microsoft partnering with BlackRock,
0:19:14 and this is a $30 billion fund.
0:19:22 That’s going to be raised through equity investments, but they’re also supposedly going to raise another $70 billion in debt.
0:19:26 So what you have is Microsoft teaming up with BlackRock,
0:19:32 the largest asset management firm in the world, to manage $100 billion in AI investments.
0:19:36 And I look through kind of the history of the most enduring businesses.
0:19:40 Like, you know, you look at the banks, for example, Wells Fargo.
0:19:42 This was a shipping business.
0:19:45 They were in the business of transporting gold.
0:19:49 And over time, they accumulated assets and they offer other things too.
0:19:51 But ultimately, it’s asset management.
0:19:56 And you look at Lehman Brothers, it was a similar thing, except it was shipping cotton.
0:20:02 And so my theory is that if you want to be a company that lost hundreds of years,
0:20:06 ultimately, you’re going to have to get into the asset management business.
0:20:12 You’re going to have to switch from being a company that makes things to a company that owns things.
0:20:15 And if you look at what Microsoft has been doing in the past year,
0:20:23 I feel like Microsoft is laying the groundwork to eventually become just an asset management firm.
0:20:28 And it feels like if you want to buck Aswath Damodaran’s corporate life cycle,
0:20:33 you do have to turn into a zombie, which basically just means you just need to own as much shit as possible.
0:20:35 And that’s how you generate your return.
0:20:36 I think it’s really interesting.
0:20:40 And I was thinking about my first reaction was, no, that’s not true.
0:20:46 The companies that have created hundreds of billions, if not trains of dollars in value over the last 20 or 30 years
0:20:48 are these young companies that are asset-like.
0:20:53 But your point is, okay, fine, but those companies are also really vulnerable
0:20:58 because it’s essentially a thick layer of software off of some consumer trend or some IP
0:21:00 that’s very hard to defend over the long term.
0:21:08 And the companies that have staying power sit on hundreds of billions of dollars in insurance, Berkshire Hathaway,
0:21:15 or own the bank or own the utility or whatever it is and just sort of clip coupons.
0:21:19 And while it’s lower growth and it kind of plays into Aswath’s thing is that
0:21:25 biology is impossible to ignore even in business, that you don’t stay a teenager for very long.
0:21:27 And eventually you got to realize, okay, I’m a baby boomer now.
0:21:31 And my job is not, if you will, to kind of work hard or innovate or be creative.
0:21:33 It’s to own shit.
0:21:36 And I think that’s really interesting.
0:21:42 The question I have is, did you try that theory out on any of the unsuspecting Swedish ladies
0:21:44 down at that cheap hotel bar last night?
0:21:49 And then they’d say, oh no, my reindeer’s here to take me to Fondue.
0:21:52 Why does that make me happy?
0:21:54 Why does that make me?
0:21:59 Is that a hate crime to categorize and stereotype Swedish is riding reindeer and eating fondue?
0:22:01 That’s what’s going to really offend people.
0:22:07 Let’s move on to Instagram and this new age-gating policy.
0:22:13 I mean, you’ve been calling this, you’ve been calling for this for years.
0:22:20 I assume this isn’t exactly what you were hoping for, but what are your reactions to Instagram?
0:22:22 Finally, slightly listening to Scott Galloway.
0:22:27 Well, okay, so Adam Massari seems like a lovely guy and he’s the new Sheryl Sandberg.
0:22:29 They’re like, oh, people think you’re lovely and you sound sincere.
0:22:33 So let’s use you as our heat shield so we can keep acting like Mendacious Fox.
0:22:39 And both the alcohol and tobacco industries on the eve of legislation would say, oh no, we’re self-regulating
0:22:42 and you don’t need to do this because look what we’re doing to ourselves.
0:22:49 And their whole go-to through all of this, through the suicide, the self-harming, the election misinformation
0:22:53 was to say these issues would just be too complex to solve.
0:22:59 And then what do you know? They figured out pretty easily that they can tell using AI when someone is under the age of 16
0:23:04 and they send them a prompt saying, we need you to give us your age.
0:23:07 And if they looks as if they’re lying and they can perceive that pretty easily,
0:23:10 they ask you to upload a federally issued identification.
0:23:12 No must, no fuss, pretty fucking easy.
0:23:19 But the geniuses couldn’t figure it out until the Children’s Online Safety Act was about to be passed.
0:23:25 So look, great, I hope they do it. Kudos to Adam, but be clear.
0:23:28 These people are Mendacious Fox.
0:23:36 They are only doing this as a prophylactic such that they stave off regulation which is now imminent.
0:23:38 So great, I hope they do it.
0:23:42 It would be a nice start for the bad folks at Metta.
0:23:49 But this should not in any way curtail the legislation or slow it that is required.
0:23:53 Because when we call on the better angels of these companies, they do not show up.
0:23:57 So great, great, they’re doing it fine.
0:24:04 Don’t believe it, assume they are not genuine about it and make sure we have legislation. We need laws.
0:24:08 We’ll be right back after the break with a look at AI in Hollywood.
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0:25:19 Well, apparently very well on some of the most innovative sleep technology out there.
0:25:23 Aid Sleep is revolutionizing the way we sleep with what they call the pod.
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0:25:34 They’ve just launched the newest generation of the pod, the Pod 4 Ultra.
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0:25:45 And you know who’s gotten to try out the new pod?
0:25:49 What do you think, Ed? Tell us about your experience with the pod.
0:25:51 I love it, Scott. It’s great.
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0:27:33 Film Studio Lionsgate has struck a deal with a startup called Runway to create a custom AI model for production and editing.
0:27:37 This is the first partnership of its kind between a major studio and an AI company.
0:27:42 Runway will train the model on Lionsgate’s cast log of more than 20,000 film and TV properties.
0:27:48 Initially, they plan to use it to develop storyboards, but eventually it’ll be used for backgrounds and special effects.
0:27:54 According to the vice chairman of Lionsgate, the model will save the studio, quote, “millions and millions of dollars.”
0:28:00 Scott, Gen AI was a huge point of concern during the right to strike.
0:28:06 We’ve talked about it a little bit before. What do you make of this deal in light of that conflict?
0:28:17 So what happened with, I think, the way I would assess the right to strike is that the atmospherics were such that the creative community was just losing a ton of leverage.
0:28:22 Because it had grown too fast. They had a sugar high from the out of control kind of content wars.
0:28:29 It was slowing down. It was rationalizing. So the oxygen was coming out of the room and the right to scale decided to strike at exactly the wrong moment.
0:28:34 Providing them with a multilateral force pause and spending, which was a gift to them.
0:28:37 And so it was like they had no negotiating leverage.
0:28:44 And so after five months, when they took their members and said, “We want you to make no money for five months, such that we can go get you a 5% increase in salary,”
0:28:49 which barely covered the inflation that was registered during the time they were out making zero money.
0:28:57 And I’m pretty sure they sat down with the studios and said, “Okay, can you put in some language such that we can pretend we got some protection around AI?”
0:29:08 And a language was literally like the studios agreed to discuss any use of AI. It’s like, “Okay, bitch, we’ve discussed it. Now welcome to your AI twin.”
0:29:12 And there’s some things in there that were always illegal.
0:29:23 Yeah, it basically said, you can use AI, but we have to receive credit and compensation if our work was used as an input. That was federal law.
0:29:32 Yeah, so it’s like saying to them, “I remember when I was in business school in my second year, we actually had a professor saying, ‘You’re not allowed to use spell check.’”
0:29:36 I’m like, “What? Not allowed to use spell check? What do you mean?”
0:29:44 I mean, or there was a big movement among teachers not to let kids use calculators in class in the ’70s.
0:29:51 There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle here. The good news for creators is I’m about to go into a writer’s room at, I don’t know if you’ve heard of,
0:29:57 sold an original scripted drama to Netflix that was “Bot in the Room,” which is “Lingo for I rock the fucking house.”
0:30:02 “Bought in the room.” As in, you went in, you pitched it, and they bought it.
0:30:08 Oh, and you clearly don’t understand the machinations, the inner workings of Hollywood. I didn’t know it either, actually.
0:30:19 There’s a term called “Bot in the Room,” and our pitch was “Bot in the Room.” And it was absolutely my incredible insight, not Rosamund Pike reading the script.
0:30:27 I could watch her read the phone book, by the way. Literally, I saw these people just sitting there like they were being like a baby in a lullaby when she started reading.
0:30:35 Anyways, the good news for creators, I’m using AI a lot. I think of myself as a creator. It’s an amazing partner.
0:30:40 Just as Google was an amazing resource, this has just taken it to a new level.
0:30:52 So what I do think it’ll have a bigger impact on, though, is some of the infrastructure around storyboards. I mean, just as a green screen, probably reduce production costs, because we don’t need to go to Antarctica to film the scene.
0:31:02 You think that’s only going to get better and better and better. I think the thing that is going to hurt this industry more than AI, which always has a kind of a boogeyman factor to it.
0:31:14 Technology feels scarier because these people don’t understand it. It’s some really boring shit, and that is it is cheaper to produce films now in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Dublin, Ireland, Seoul, Korea, and Madrid than it is in Los Angeles.
0:31:26 And it’s essentially just as it became easier to produce a world-class car in Japan and South Korea than, I guess, China to a certain extent. The same thing’s happening to Hollywood.
0:31:33 It’s really interesting. Hollywood’s becoming Detroit, and they’re going to blame AI because they don’t understand it, and it sounds more spooky and scary.
0:31:43 The cost reductions and threats of AI will be incremental. The thing that is going to kick the shit out of Hollywood, and I think already is, is just globalization and outsourcing to other nations.
0:31:52 Yeah. I mean, I think this whole headline is basically just a giant victory lap for us, mostly you, but…
0:31:57 You’re sounding like Sarah Swisher. We were right. And I was right.
0:32:07 Let me just point out that something I think people forget is that the original demand of the writers was that you’re not allowed to use AI.
0:32:08 Look at that.
0:32:14 They literally said to the production studios, “You’re not allowed to use it. That’s our demand.” And the studio said, “No.”
0:32:25 And then they came back a few months later, and as we pointed out, they said, “Okay, you can use it, but you need to credit us,” which, as we have discussed, was not a win because that was already federal law.
0:32:29 So they lost five months of pay to achieve nothing, basically.
0:32:39 And the reason I want to point out the victory lap is because everyone said that they won. Everyone said it was a victory for the writers.
0:32:53 I have some headlines here from Jacobin magazine, quote, “Hollywood writers score historic victory.” Here’s an article from The Guardian, “How Hollywood writers triumphed over AI and why it matters.”
0:33:02 And there was, I mean, you were getting a lot of shit from a lot of people for saying, “Look, I think this is a shitty deal, and the writers have not won.”
0:33:11 I mean, you were predicting they wouldn’t win, and we looked at the agreement with the WGA set with the production companies, and it was a shitty deal.
0:33:22 And here we are a year later, and there is a headline saying that one of the biggest production companies is going to partner with an AI company to do all of its graphics and its storyboarding.
0:33:26 And obviously, it’s not going to just be storyboarding. That’s what they’re saying right now.
0:33:35 It’s going to transition to editing, and then to production, and then to writing. It’s going to keep on snowballing until, yeah, we don’t need set designers.
0:33:43 We don’t need makeup artists. We don’t need graphics editors, et cetera, et cetera. This is clearly the beginning of the end for Hollywood.
0:33:51 Box office sales are down 10% this year. That’s expected. The cinema is dying. Theatre attendance down 40% in the past decade, also expected.
0:34:03 Film and TV production down 40% this year, and unemployment in Hollywood is 13%, which is triple the national average.
0:34:14 To transition out of this run, what I would ask of you is you’ve probably got a lot of people in Hollywood who don’t like you, except for your friends who are in the writers’ room with you and Rosamund Pike.
0:34:22 But there are a lot of people in Hollywood who probably think, “Fuck that guy, Scott Galloway, who seems to be preying on our downfall.” That’s not what you’re doing.
0:34:34 But what would be your advice to someone in Hollywood, call it a makeup artist, who might be listening to this podcast right now, and needs to figure out something?
0:34:43 They’ve got to change something, because you cannot just expect the WGA or your union to figure it out for you. What would be your advice to those people?
0:34:53 The question you just asked me is the question, I track all my inbound emails, and the number one inbound email used to be, “Is it too late to find video?”
0:35:05 But by far, if I looked over the last five years, what is essentially the subject of queries I get in my email inbox, and it’s, “What should I do? Is it too late for me to transition out?”
0:35:15 And the reality is that there’s no silver bullet, and it’s very situational. What I think the process for trying to figure it out is to say, “All right, what are my advantages?”
0:35:27 And if you’re young, one of your big advantages is your mobility. So if you think about what’s happening to the creative community, it’s not that it’s going away.
0:35:38 It’s that it’s being disrupted and going to a lower cost producer. So content spend is still growing. Content is up 2% this year, but it’s growing outside of the U.S.
0:35:49 This year, Netflix’s international content spend will surpass U.S. spending for the first time. Why? Because producing squid games in South Korea was 10 times cheaper than producing stranger things in the U.S.
0:35:56 Content spend through 2028 will decline over 20% in North America and grow in South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
0:36:08 So this sounds very basic, but the first question I’d ask is, “If you’re in LA and having trouble paying $3,500 through your one-bedroom apartment, are you mobile?”
0:36:18 Because that’s an advantage. Because if you’re mobile and you’re talented, I would think really thoughtfully around, “Where is the economy in the creator economy growing?”
0:36:26 And why wouldn’t you move? Because a lot of us can’t. Once you have kids and dogs, it gets harder and harder to move. So the first is leaning into your strength, your mobility.
0:36:31 Well, they’re all that because they want to hang out at the shots of my mom and they want to go to the bungalows.
0:36:40 I 100% get that. But they have beer and Dublin and I heard Albuquerque. Well, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve only been to South Korea once.
0:36:50 So this is going to sound past A. Lean into how American you are. And that is America started out as an agrarian society.
0:36:58 We had huge crops, huge natural resources. Then we moved to a manufacturing economy and we were the best in the world.
0:37:03 Then when other places, it started getting outsourced to lower cost manufacturers, we became a services economy.
0:37:07 We had the best M&A law firms and investment banks and consulting firms.
0:37:16 And then we became essentially technologies now, the tail wagging the dog. We are the most agile society that’s ever been created.
0:37:24 Now, we have a lot of built-in advantages in terms of friendly candidate of the north, harmless Mexico to the south, oceans protecting us from everyone.
0:37:28 We have more natural resources than anyone. We are blessed a lot.
0:37:33 But our agility is really what has continued to make us the economic miracle.
0:37:42 And ask yourself, how can I be as agile as possible? How do I create a clean slate of where I need to be?
0:37:53 And also, what I will say about your generation, I was with a group of people in New York last time I was there and this woman was working in interior design.
0:37:57 And she said, “It’s just so expensive here.” I’m like, “Well, you have to mind New York.”
0:38:01 And she literally looked at me and she’s like, “I think I’d kill myself if I had to leave New York.”
0:38:13 You realize that there’s 7.5 billion people and 7.499 are reasonably happy not living here.
0:38:26 And it feels as if, and I’m becoming a boomer, I do meet a lot of young people that are under the impression the world owes them the ability to live in New York or LA.
0:38:27 That’s right.
0:38:35 And, okay, get past that. There’s a lot of people who are really happy, are really happy in St. Louis.
0:38:44 And figuring out a way to write software manuals, which might sound awful, but they can do it from their house and they have nice homes and nice families.
0:38:47 And they’re doing just fine and they live a nice life.
0:38:54 But what is it, lean into your strength? It’s your strength, your flexibility, your agility, get a group of people who can help you.
0:38:56 Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
0:39:04 A lot of young people, especially in this Instagram generation, want to pretend that their life is just fucking Dom Perignon and Gulf Streams and are embarrassed to ask people for help.
0:39:08 Like, “Oh my God, I don’t know how I’m going to make a living. I need help.”
0:39:12 Greatness is in the agency of others. It is really hard to read the label from inside of the bottle.
0:39:14 Find people who can advise you.
0:39:18 Recognize if you have to leave LA or New York, you’re going to be just fine.
0:39:28 The majority of people have done it and recognize it might be what they say when God closes a window, we open the door.
0:39:30 Also, the Boeing CEO said that, Ed.
0:39:32 But, get it?
0:39:38 I must go find my reindeer and go get fondue. Please leave me alone.
0:39:41 Unattractive, unattractive man from Brooklyn.
0:39:45 I don’t care what you are telling the national cotton growers of Northern Europe about.
0:39:52 We’ll be right back after the break with a look at Amazon’s new return to work policy.
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0:43:22 Amazon is calling its employees back to the office five days a week.
0:43:26 That’s a step change from its current three-day-a-week policy, which will expire at the end of the year.
0:43:31 In a memo to staff explaining the reasoning for the new policy, CEO Andy Jassy wrote,
0:43:36 “Keeping your culture strong is not a birthright. You have to work at it all the time.
0:43:44 When we look back over the last five years, we continue to believe that the advantages of being together in the office are significant.”
0:43:47 Scott, what do you make of this strategy?
0:43:51 Look, I think that it doesn’t surprise me.
0:43:56 The really unusual or the most enduring thing about COVID, or the most enduring structural shift,
0:44:04 is the intersection between human and financial capital, which is basically a fancy way of saying remote work is probably the biggest structural change.
0:44:11 Amazon gets to dictate the terms of their employment or employees, and if people don’t like it, they can find another job.
0:44:20 Where I think it’s tough, and our producer, Claire, pointed this out, is that they might lose a lot of mothers or new mothers,
0:44:27 where women are always going to bear a greater share of whatever you would want to call it, care.
0:44:36 And that’s not fair, and I salute people, couples, for sharing the work equally, and we shouldn’t expect that to be the case.
0:44:39 But it is the case, and it will be for a long time.
0:44:46 So how does the corporate world respond to the notion that they’ve done a great job elevating women who aren’t married and not having kids?
0:44:54 Single women under the age of 30 are now earning as much or more than men, and they should because they’re seeking tertiary education at greater ratios,
0:45:04 so they should make more money. But what do we do about the kind of stagnant problem of women once they decide to leverage their ovaries that go to 73 cents on the dollar?
0:45:13 The real kind of miss or dysfunction in corporate America is still how do you maintain and engage mothers?
0:45:18 How do you maintain their career trajectory? How do you keep them engaged at work without making their life just fucking impossible?
0:45:29 Well, we basically say to women who want to be successful in terms of the corporate world, and also as is the case in, I think, 60, 80, 90% of families will burden a disproportionate amount of the work.
0:45:35 The answer isn’t just to say, well, men should do more work at home. Okay, good luck with that, and Facebook should be nicer people.
0:45:41 What we need, in my opinion, is a new classification of worker that is called the care worker.
0:45:53 You have kids, you’re taking care of an elderly parent, you have a different set of rights, or the company says we’re care worker friendly and says we’re going to make accommodations for you.
0:46:09 We’re going to figure out a way that you can work remotely one or more days a week, and we’re going to do our best to maintain your income trajectory because the nation will pay one way or another if we have a lack of care at home,
0:46:21 whether it’s kids ending up with mental health issues, obesity, or being incarcerated, the investment or tax credit the government could offer this new classification of workers, we would get back in spades.
0:46:33 Doesn’t seem that hard, though, for companies just to be accommodating to women, because if your employee is a mother and they have a child, then, you know, have a conversation and make life easier for them.
0:46:41 Don’t keep them in the office until 9pm at night, and yeah, maybe if they need to take a day off work, let them take a day off work.
0:46:50 I don’t see why it needs to be such a huge structural thing to just accommodate people with children.
0:46:52 I mean, so that’s one part of this.
0:46:59 Second part of this for me is, I think this is exactly the right move to go back to the office.
0:47:13 And the reason I think that is related to a lot of what you talk about surrounding loneliness and isolation America, which to me is the number one problem that our society is facing right now.
0:47:19 Where you have half of Americans who say that they are struggling with their mental health as a result of their loneliness.
0:47:25 Among my generation, that number is 80%. You’ve got time spent with friends at an all-time low.
0:47:31 You’ve got one in 10 Americans saying they have zero friends, which is at an all-time high.
0:47:37 You’ve got the Surgeon General declaring a state of emergency about loneliness in this country.
0:47:49 But the idea that we’re promoting this generation, you’ve got whatever it is, half of my generation working remotely, doing their work from their laptops in their beds.
0:47:56 I know people who graduate a college and they work from their beds, they don’t get up and get dressed and put their clothes on.
0:48:01 They stay in their pajamas, they open up their laptop and they just lean back and do their job.
0:48:07 And then we’re wondering why are kids not motivated, why are they feeling isolated, why are they feeling lonely.
0:48:10 It’s like, get them in the fucking office.
0:48:20 So one of the kind of core characteristics or attributes of an autocrat is that when someone rises to power and becomes very popular,
0:48:26 the autocrat senses that they are a threat to them and they have them murdered.
0:48:30 I just felt that sensation with you.
0:48:34 You are now, Ed, you are now better at this shit than me.
0:48:41 Let me get this, people need to get in the office, loneliness, isolation and you’re much, I literally just suffer the moment.
0:48:47 Memo to self, must kill Ed, threat to dominance and power.
0:48:51 Anyways, I thought that was, I think you’re exactly right.
0:48:55 And I think the, I love that you’re saying this, I love you believe it.
0:48:57 I’m going to be redundant.
0:49:06 I think the biggest threat to America is one extremism on both sides of the political spectrum that no one wants to get along.
0:49:09 There’s no connective tissue around institutions to get us to get along.
0:49:16 It’s far, far right or far, far left and they all meet to agree on really heinous things.
0:49:25 And two, that people in isolation become not only unhappy, I’m sad for them, but men in isolation become dangerous.
0:49:29 They become prone to conspiracy theory, they become violent.
0:49:33 Women who become lonely, it’s no less a tragedy, but they don’t pick up AR-15s.
0:49:38 They are generally pretty good at finding other places to give and receive love.
0:49:53 But I find it just tragic when I’m meeting so many people in their 20s and 30s and I talk to them about, you know, working at home and they’re upset they can’t meet people and their expectations are so unreasonable.
0:50:00 I’m like, this person is just setting themselves up for kind of a life of incremental but increasing disappointment.
0:50:01 We need structure.
0:50:07 I think we thought when the pandemic happened that we’re all just kind of these floating islands, we can do whatever we want.
0:50:11 But I think it turns out that we actually need structure.
0:50:20 Sure, it’s kind of annoying if you’re standing by the cooler and you, you know, have to have a conversation with someone you don’t even know that well and whatever.
0:50:26 I mean, all of the annoying things of the office, sure, there are the downsides of the office.
0:50:31 But I mean, clearly we need these guardrails.
0:50:36 We need a system of getting up, doing the commute, interacting with other people.
0:50:37 It’s just something we need.
0:50:39 It’s hardwired into us.
0:50:43 I think the whole shooting match is relationships and mating.
0:50:51 And the most rewarding things in life, I think, are a function of your friendships, the colleagues you meet at work and who you decide to have kids with.
0:50:56 And let me be clear before the DEI people come for me or lawyers.
0:50:59 I can feel that they’re gearing up.
0:51:05 If you are above a certain seniority level in any company, your fly is up and locked, female or male.
0:51:09 You do not have sex with other employees, full stop.
0:51:19 Because the power dynamic creates too much risk for you, for the company, and quite frankly, for a situation where you put someone in a very uncomfortable position.
0:51:23 Above a certain level, VP or above, pick the level.
0:51:24 That’s it.
0:51:26 You take that shit off campus.
0:51:35 But below that, I have gone to, I don’t know, a dozen weddings of people who used to work at my firm.
0:51:36 And I’m always the last one to know.
0:51:37 I’m like, what, they’re seeing each other?
0:51:40 Like, yeah, they’ve been going out for two years.
0:51:42 And it’s a wonderful thing.
0:51:43 It’s a wonderful thing.
0:51:49 I’m pretty sure that you guys, the kids in our firm, pick that workspace because I’ve heard there’s a bunch of hot men there.
0:51:51 That’s just what I’ve heard.
0:51:52 That’s just what I’ve heard.
0:51:54 Claire, can you validate that?
0:51:55 Where’s our producer?
0:52:01 We need a Mia or Caroline to come on and comment for that one.
0:52:02 I’m sorry.
0:52:03 I’m a straight man.
0:52:08 We’re both looking at the same thing, Claire, but I can recognize, I can recognize hot men.
0:52:10 I can recognize hot men.
0:52:11 Way in here.
0:52:19 They are, yes, there are many hot men who all kind of look the same, very tech bro, kind of keep to themselves.
0:52:20 Very demure.
0:52:21 Very demure.
0:52:22 Yeah.
0:52:31 Anyways, I’m going to try and save this by saying that when people meet, 99% of the relationships that begin at work are consensual.
0:52:33 People, we need to err on the side.
0:52:35 I’m going to go totally off-script here.
0:52:37 You know what young people need to do?
0:52:40 Claire, Ed, you need to start fucking drinking more.
0:52:41 Not the two of you.
0:52:43 You’re in healthy relationships.
0:52:49 But all this shit from Peter Atia and the Huberman Lab talking about how bad alcohol is, they see drunkenness among young people.
0:52:50 You know what I see?
0:52:51 I see togetherness.
0:52:54 You guys need more reasons to bond.
0:53:00 You need more reasons to establish long-term camaraderie and affection for each other.
0:53:03 You need more confidence to kiss each other.
0:53:06 You need more, and all roads lead to alcohol.
0:53:11 Anything that can get people together.
0:53:13 I think alcohol gets people together.
0:53:15 And that’s why it’s good.
0:53:17 Christmas parties get people together.
0:53:19 The office gets people together.
0:53:27 And we’re spending nine hours of our waking hours every day at the office or doing our work.
0:53:31 You might as well just include some other people in that time.
0:53:36 All I will say to end here is nothing happens alone in your bedroom.
0:53:38 Nothing exciting happens.
0:53:42 Let’s take a look at the week ahead.
0:53:46 We’ll see data on the Personal Consumption Expenditures Index for August.
0:53:48 And we’ll also see earnings from Costco.
0:53:50 Scott, do you have any predictions for us?
0:53:52 I think Starlink is going to be hugely disruptive.
0:53:56 Okay, buy SpaceX stock.
0:53:58 I don’t think that’s the play here.
0:54:05 I think the play is there’s going to be a bunch of companies are going to get the shit kicked out of them.
0:54:12 So I did a search on companies offering some sort of wireless or broadband in the transportation sector.
0:54:14 So GoGo, which I hate.
0:54:15 I hate GoGo.
0:54:16 I literally hate it.
0:54:22 Viasat, MRSAT, KVH Industries, Iridium, SES.SA.
0:54:24 I don’t know what that is.
0:54:25 Utilstat.
0:54:26 God, these are terrible names.
0:54:27 Telestat.
0:54:33 I bet a basket of these eight companies, and I’d be curious what their performance is so far.
0:54:38 But I think when Starlink, when the word is out, they’re probably all in denial in the earnings call saying like McDonald’s.
0:54:39 Oh, it wasn’t GLP1.
0:54:41 It was inflation, which might be true.
0:54:48 But the moment these companies start coming out and saying that, yeah, Starlink is eating into our lunch.
0:54:56 And an analyst goes, well, is there any way you could shoot hundreds of satellites into the air and control 60% of the low Earth orbit?
0:55:00 And they’re going to realize, okay, there’s nothing we can do except try and slowly die here.
0:55:08 I think these companies are going to be the equivalent of, as I said, Paramount Global, Warner Brothers Discovery.
0:55:11 Name your company that’s getting the shit kicked out of it at the hand of Netflix.
0:55:16 SpaceX is to these companies what Netflix has done to the rest of the entertainment industry.
0:55:19 I think we need to try to secure you some advisory shares at SpaceX.
0:55:23 But you might have sort of botched your chances of that with the whole Elon ranting thing.
0:55:24 Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to happen.
0:55:26 Although I did meet his brother.
0:55:27 His brother came up to me.
0:55:29 He’s very tall, very handsome, his brother.
0:55:30 That’s a good idea.
0:55:31 Let’s cozy up to Kimball.
0:55:32 Yeah.
0:55:33 Let’s cozy up.
0:55:34 Is that his name?
0:55:35 Kimball.
0:55:36 Kendall Roy.
0:55:37 Kimball.
0:55:38 Kimball.
0:55:43 I went and I busted into my speech about SpaceX and he came in and said, thank you for saying nice things about SpaceX.
0:55:44 I’m like, is that you?
0:55:46 And he’s like, oh no, I’m Elon’s brother.
0:55:47 Awkward.
0:55:48 Awkward.
0:55:49 Awkward.
0:55:51 Anyways, read us out, Ed.
0:55:54 This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer.
0:55:56 Our associate producer is Alison Weiss.
0:55:58 Our executive producer is Catherine Dillon.
0:56:02 Mia Silverio is our research lead and Drew Burris is our technical director.
0:56:05 Thank you for listening to Proffdue Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
0:56:10 If you liked what you heard, hit follow and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts.
0:56:12 Live times.
0:56:34 You held me in kind reunion as the world turns.
0:56:54 I don’t need to be that good today because I’m looking especially handsome.
0:56:56 Jesus, hello ladies.
0:56:57 Hello.
0:56:58 Look at that.
0:56:59 That glow.
0:57:01 That London glow.
0:57:04 Where are you, Ed?
0:57:09 You look like you got a Norwegian family is adopted.
0:57:10 Where are you?
0:57:11 Looks very European.

0:00:07 Hey, I’m Jon Calan Hill, host of a brand new show from Vox called Explain It To Me.
0:00:10 This week, the ethical murkiness of zoos.
0:00:16 Do we as humans feel like we deserve to just be able to walk around and see these animals?
0:00:17 Maybe we don’t deserve that.
0:00:21 Maybe there’s just some animals we don’t get to see.
0:00:23 To zoo or not to zoo?
0:00:25 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:00:32 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:00:35 Support for PropG comes from NerdWallet.
0:00:38 Starting your credit card search with NerdWallet, smart.
0:00:44 Using their tools to finally find the card that works for you even smarter, you can filter for the features you care about.
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0:00:54 And it’s all powered by the nerd’s expert reviews of over 400 credit cards.
0:01:01 Head over to nerdwallet.com/learnmore to find smarter credit card savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more.
0:01:03 NerdWallet, finance smarter.
0:01:12 NerdWallet Compare Incorporated, NMLS 1617539.
0:01:16 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:01:21 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:01:31 But Donald Trump will be almost 80, and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from the presidency should they win.
0:01:40 I’m Preet Bharara, and this week, The Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast Stay Tuned With Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:42 The episode is out now.
0:01:50 Search and follow Stay Tuned With Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:54 I’m Scott Galloway, and this is No Mercy, No Malice.
0:01:57 Our information ecosystem has changed.
0:02:01 We’re changing too, but not for the better.
0:02:10 Online, offline, as read by George Hahn.
0:02:13 I celebrated my 50th birthday last weekend.
0:02:14 Just go with it.
0:02:20 It’s a milestone and an opportunity to reflect, which I do too much.
0:02:29 In the past 50 years, there may have been more technological innovation and disruption than in the previous 500.
0:02:33 The year my parents divorced, I spent the summer with my dad in Chicago.
0:02:42 On weekends, we’d journey to his downtown office where I could use the “whats” line, ask a boomer, to call my mom.
0:02:45 Long-distance calls were $4 a minute.
0:02:49 Well worth the hour-long train ride.
0:02:57 If the cycle time of innovation keeps contracting, we may register even greater changes in the next 15 years.
0:03:05 The net net of a jump to light speed in innovation is a mix of unprecedented prosperity and danger,
0:03:12 as god-like technology will collide with paleolithic instincts and medieval institutions.
0:03:19 66 million years ago, an asteroid the size of Everest slammed into Earth.
0:03:25 The impact unleashed an apocalyptic chain of events that changed the global ecosystem,
0:03:32 extinguishing dinosaurs, and setting the stage for homo habilis, i.e. us.
0:03:40 When a natural ecosystem changes, predators and prey adapt, or they die.
0:03:44 30 years ago, the internet slammed into our information ecosystem.
0:03:48 The internet is bigger and more devastating than the Chicksalub impactor.
0:03:52 Note, awesome name for a boy band.
0:03:55 Chicksalub didn’t kill off the dinosaurs immediately.
0:04:01 It took about 30,000 years before the last triceratops drew her final breath.
0:04:07 Newspaper revenue peaked in 2005 and has since declined 80%.
0:04:12 Traditional TV’s revenue has been halved since streaming began.
0:04:18 To call legacy media “dinosaur’s” is not fair to dinosaurs.
0:04:25 The new Apex predators, tech platforms, have evolved from amoebas to tyrannosaurus rexes
0:04:28 since the debut season of law and order.
0:04:36 How we ingest and digest the information that shapes our views and actions is changing, as are we.
0:04:43 I’m a better person offline, friendlier, more likely to find common ground.
0:04:50 Online, I’m defensive and angry as I’m constantly having to battle bots, anonymous trolls, and
0:04:53 people arguing in bad faith.
0:04:58 And most people are a lesser version of themselves online.
0:05:01 Why the Jekyll and Hyde Act?
0:05:06 The frictionless experiences created by the digital revolution make it easy to post harmful
0:05:09 content without thinking first.
0:05:13 Social media companies have experimented with moderation tools that warn users before
0:05:18 they post something damaging, but the idea hasn’t caught on.
0:05:23 We dislike the coarseness of online culture, but we hate friction.
0:05:29 And just as there are cues to be civil offline, like traffic signs, handicapped parking, the
0:05:36 corporate titans of today have discovered that while sex sells, rage addicts.
0:05:43 Their algorithms elevate content that’s incendiary and novel, i.e. bullshit.
0:05:47 If only there was a way to exonerate them from the externalities of the emissions their
0:05:53 users are belching into society, which are, in my view, more damaging than carbon.
0:06:00 But wait, there is Section 230.
0:06:06 Halloween is my favorite holiday, something about getting to wear a wig and a green light
0:06:09 for women to dress like sluts works for me.
0:06:14 I tend to get drunk and behave more outrageously than society would accept, say, during midday
0:06:17 on a Wednesday in February.
0:06:23 The guys who dumped British tea in Boston Harbor dressed up like Native Americans as
0:06:27 a misdirect to dodge accountability.
0:06:32 The men behind the Declaration of Independence signed their names as they had the courage
0:06:34 of their convictions.
0:06:39 Anonymity’s value has been exaggerated for the benefit of the tech incumbents who don’t
0:06:44 want to be held responsible for the damage their firm’s actions cause.
0:06:50 We are more likely to post inflammatory or defamatory content when we know there are
0:06:52 no consequences.
0:06:58 As a famous 1993 cartoon in The New Yorker put it, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re
0:07:00 a dog.”
0:07:09 Today the caption would read, “On the internet, nobody knows you’re an asshole.”
0:07:11 Imagine I own a hotel.
0:07:19 The Scott boasts a California king in every room, James Percy pajamas, a decent pool scene,
0:07:24 a dog park and a taco truck that never closes.
0:07:30 It’s also a nexus for terrorism, child exploitation and illegal arms sales.
0:07:35 In the analog extremely offline world, the Scott would be shut down and Scott Galloway
0:07:38 imprisoned.
0:07:44 But our idolatry of the dollar and innovators has shapeshifted into an iron dome intercepting
0:07:49 all incoming accountability hurling toward emerging platforms.
0:07:54 If it’s digital, then it’s speech and immune.
0:08:01 The least greatest generation, tech bros, have convinced the media and lawmakers that
0:08:09 their crimes are speech and not subject to the same standards as similar activity in
0:08:12 the offline world.
0:08:17 Telegram is a communications platform with public channels, private chats that can be
0:08:21 encrypted and self-deleting messages.
0:08:23 One billion people use it.
0:08:28 The Russian military uses it on the battlefield in Ukraine.
0:08:33 Activists against the governments in authoritarian countries use it.
0:08:38 At one point, Telegram was the app of choice for ISIS.
0:08:43 Recently it’s become the go-to platform for domestic terrorists.
0:08:46 It’s also a must-have for criminal networks.
0:08:51 Telegram, which advertises itself as a free speech platform that doesn’t moderate content,
0:08:56 was instrumental for the right-wing groups that organized race riots in the UK this
0:08:59 summer.
0:09:05 Last month, French authorities arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov.
0:09:10 The charges included allegations that the platform is used to distribute child sexual
0:09:15 abuse material and facilitate drug trafficking, and that it refused to share information with
0:09:19 investigators as required by law.
0:09:26 These are serious allegations, and if proven, Telegram and its CEO will be punished.
0:09:28 That shouldn’t be controversial.
0:09:35 But as soon as news of Durov’s arrest broke, he was crowned a free speech martyr by Silicon
0:09:38 Valley’s usual suspects.
0:09:43 This isn’t about speech, but our decision to elevate billionaires and the platforms
0:09:48 that made them billionaires to deities.
0:09:55 Frequently, the internet’s most intractable problems hit a free speech dead-end.
0:10:00 Last week, 42 state attorneys general called on Congress to mandate warning labels for
0:10:07 social media, citing a Surgeon General report detailing the link between social media and
0:10:10 anxiety and depression in teens.
0:10:17 Reporters, activists, and parents, including me, have highlighted this issue for years.
0:10:22 But it’s unlikely we’ll see a warning label, as social media companies will deploy lobbyists,
0:10:29 lawyers, and publicists to innovation wash, eyewash, their criminality.
0:10:35 Tying it to economic growth, free speech, youth, and a general sense that to constrain
0:10:40 them would be wrong, or worse, European.
0:10:46 When thousands of Americans were dying every day during the pandemic, public health officials
0:10:51 asked social media platforms to remove misinformation about COVID-19.
0:10:56 This was immediately framed as a conspiracy to control people.
0:11:00 Balancing public health and civil liberties is never easy.
0:11:03 In some cases, public health officials overreached.
0:11:09 In others, social media platforms voluntarily complied and likely saved lives.
0:11:14 Ultimately, the Supreme Court ruled in the government’s favor, though the decision was
0:11:17 made on procedural grounds.
0:11:24 But what should have been a free society’s shining moment devolved into a melee of conspiracy
0:11:32 theories, publicity stunts, and disingenuous accusations of censorship?
0:11:38 Earlier this year, sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift went viral.
0:11:46 One image posted on X was shared 24,000 times and received 45 million views.
0:11:50 Deep fakes make the problem of revenge porn worse.
0:11:56 Revenge porn achieved scale long before Taylor Swift became a victim.
0:12:01 In the U.S., 49 states have laws against such behavior.
0:12:06 But at the federal level, where it counts, efforts to criminalize revenge porn, or at
0:12:13 least empower victims to seek civil remedies, have consistently stalled because of First
0:12:16 Amendment concerns.
0:12:22 What would happen if pornographic AI-generated images of Taylor Swift were shown on televisions,
0:12:30 in movie theaters, or in any other lame medium run by boomers?
0:12:36 Censorship is a problem in a free society, but it’s nowhere near our biggest problem,
0:12:40 and it’s become a misdirect from the greater perils we face.
0:12:46 We are raising the most obese, addicted, anxious generation in our nation’s history.
0:12:47 But censorship?
0:12:49 That’s the real threat?
0:12:52 Give me a fucking break.
0:12:58 Cries of censorship are a tell for someone who won’t shut up and is everywhere.
0:13:05 Our society has adopted a generally accepted myth that being offended or crying censorship
0:13:07 means you are right.
0:13:13 No, it just means you are offended and have become allergic to people pushing back on
0:13:16 your bullshit.
0:13:23 A much bigger threat is the belief that the internet and its zealots is all freedom, zero
0:13:25 responsibility.
0:13:31 Perhaps that sentiment is an echo of John Perry Barlow’s 1996 essay, A Declaration
0:13:35 of the Independence of Cyberspace.
0:13:42 Barlow, a techno-libertarian who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote,
0:13:49 “Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from
0:13:53 cyberspace, the new home of mind.
0:13:59 On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone.
0:14:01 You are not welcome among us.
0:14:06 You have no sovereignty where we gather.”
0:14:13 Barlow’s essay came in response to the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 or what’s
0:14:17 known today as Section 230.
0:14:24 Immunizing online platforms from third-party speech, excused media platforms from the scrutiny,
0:14:30 accountability, and citizenship we demand from other media companies.
0:14:35 But it’s a false premise to suggest freedom is at odds with responsibility.
0:14:38 It’s not.
0:14:43 The freedoms we enjoy are a function of the responsibility embraced by people who see
0:14:46 themselves as part of something bigger.
0:14:52 When Durov was arrested, there was a cacophony of catastrophizing from the tech set, who
0:14:57 don’t want to give up their laminated stay out of jail cards.
0:15:02 This will send a chill throughout the tech world, lamented billionaire tech figures.
0:15:10 Yes, winter is coming, and it’s a good thing.
0:15:12 Life is so rich.
0:15:22 [Music]
0:15:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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0:01:09 Will the VP debate move the needle
0:01:11 in what’s shaping up to be a neck-and-neck election?
0:01:14 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters
0:01:15 and the thing that doesn’t matter.
0:01:19 But Donald Trump will be almost 80
0:01:23 and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away
0:01:25 from the presidency should they win.
0:01:27 I’m Preet Bharara.
0:01:30 And this week, the Atlantic magazine’s David Frum
0:01:32 joins me on my podcast Stay Tuned with Preet
0:01:35 to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:36 The episode is out now.
0:01:38 Search and follow Stay Tuned with Preet
0:01:40 wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:46 Episode 317, 317 is here.
0:01:49 It goes along to the City of Indianapolis in 1917.
0:01:51 The U.S. entered World War I
0:01:54 and the first jazz record was released.
0:01:55 Chew store, I was stuck on an island
0:01:56 with one gun and two bullets.
0:01:58 There was Hitler, Stalin, and Kenny G.
0:02:00 What did I do?
0:02:01 I shot Kenny G twice.
0:02:06 Go, go, go!
0:02:17 Welcome to the 317th episode of The Prop G-Pod.
0:02:20 In today’s episode, we speak with Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson,
0:02:22 a marine biologist, policy expert, writer,
0:02:25 and co-founder of the nonprofit Think Tank Urban Ocean Lab.
0:02:27 How did people even end up starting
0:02:29 a Think Tank Urban Ocean Lab?
0:02:31 Jesus.
0:02:32 And I have a podcast.
0:02:35 We discussed with Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson
0:02:37 her new book, What If We Get It Right?
0:02:39 Visions of Climate Futures.
0:02:40 I enjoyed this conversation.
0:02:41 We hear about what needs to change,
0:02:43 the impact of consumerism, the ocean,
0:02:47 and how to reach people who don’t care about climate change.
0:02:49 I am really discouraged over the last few years
0:02:52 that climate change has become or just, basically,
0:02:55 environmentalism has become so politicized.
0:02:57 Teddy Roosevelt was kind of the first famous environmentalist,
0:03:00 at least in the US, and he was a Republican.
0:03:02 And all of a sudden, we’ve decided
0:03:06 that to be an environmentalist means you’re a Democrat.
0:03:10 And to be a science denier makes you a Republican.
0:03:13 And as a result, everyone wants to appeal to the extreme,
0:03:16 such they can get on TikTok and raise more money.
0:03:18 And it’s just ridiculously unproductive and nothing gets
0:03:20 done, and if you can just do math,
0:03:23 you can see that the world is slowly but surely cooking.
0:03:27 But at the same time, we have to be thoughtful and realistic
0:03:31 about, in my view, what is going to be effective versus just
0:03:32 being right.
0:03:33 In one of the things that–
0:03:36 and we were just talking off mic with our producers.
0:03:39 Fossil fuels are just the ultimate arbitrage
0:03:42 in terms of consumerism and economic growth.
0:03:45 And that is whether it’s Bitcoin,
0:03:47 whether it’s your Nespresso machine,
0:03:49 whether it’s your devices that are plugged in all day long,
0:03:52 whether it’s the ability to buy more and more shit for less
0:03:55 and less money, which is what innovation and productivity
0:03:57 offers, responds.
0:04:00 The next generation is going to use more energy.
0:04:01 That is what they do.
0:04:04 Energy consumption is a function of wealth.
0:04:06 And fortunately, over the medium and long term,
0:04:08 the world just gets wealthier and wealthier,
0:04:11 which means they’re going to consume more energy.
0:04:13 And the notion that these younger generation
0:04:15 is going to call on their better angels
0:04:18 and do away with consumerism, or that we’re not
0:04:21 going to find different ways to use this energy that
0:04:22 are really exciting.
0:04:23 And we will opt for those.
0:04:27 I just think it’s sort of irrational and polyanna
0:04:29 to think that this new generation is
0:04:30 going to start investing in renewables
0:04:33 unless they think they’ll make more money, as opposed
0:04:35 to limiting their selection set of investments.
0:04:37 And I don’t think we’re going about this the right way.
0:04:40 I think we need to depoliticize it,
0:04:43 talk about opportunities for new technologies,
0:04:44 or how we can make money.
0:04:49 What’s realistic in terms of pricing, beef production,
0:04:52 or pricing fossil fuels to their actual externalities?
0:04:54 But I worry that we are going about this the wrong way,
0:04:58 and using it as more as a signal for what
0:04:59 your political beliefs are, and not
0:05:01 having a productive conversation.
0:05:05 OK, I just said a whole lot of nothing, a whole lot of nada.
0:05:07 Anyways, what’s happening?
0:05:09 Let’s talk about something a little less discouraging.
0:05:11 I’m back in the South of France.
0:05:12 That’s right.
0:05:16 The dog is barking, and when I’m in France,
0:05:18 I can just take a big dump anywhere,
0:05:19 because that’s what dogs do.
0:05:21 That’s an image.
0:05:23 That’s an image.
0:05:24 In the South of France, it’s raining today,
0:05:26 but it’s still lovely.
0:05:27 It’s lovely here.
0:05:29 I just love being in France, because the people here
0:05:32 just have a passion for beauty and beautiful things,
0:05:35 whereas the butter knife, or the food, or the way they–
0:05:38 the towels in your hotel room, whatever it might be,
0:05:41 they just have a way with stuff.
0:05:42 So I’m happy to be here.
0:05:47 I did a birthday party my 50th in Aberdeen, Scotland,
0:05:48 at the Five Arms.
0:05:49 I absolutely love Scotland.
0:05:51 I think it’s this undiscovered gem,
0:05:54 and convinced about 90 of my closest friends
0:05:57 to make the trip to Aberdeen, and hang out with me.
0:06:00 And it was absolutely wonderful, although I
0:06:02 started planning the trip two years ago.
0:06:04 And quite frankly, I was very anxious.
0:06:07 And the last couple weeks, I’ve been just
0:06:09 ridiculously fucking stressed out,
0:06:11 because when 90 people agree to come to Scotland
0:06:15 from San Francisco, New York, Miami, Los Angeles,
0:06:18 you really hope they have a good time.
0:06:21 And I’ve been thinking a lot about stress
0:06:22 and managing my anxiety.
0:06:26 And the reality is that I had too little anxiety
0:06:28 from kind of age to zero to 30.
0:06:30 I almost got kicked out of UCLA two or three times.
0:06:31 I wasn’t worried about it.
0:06:31 And you know what?
0:06:32 I should have been worried about it.
0:06:35 From 30 to 40, I think I had the right amount of anxiety.
0:06:37 Now, I have too much fucking anxiety.
0:06:40 My son is taking a course that may not
0:06:43 look good to potential admissions directors at universities.
0:06:45 So I’m up all fucking night worried about that.
0:06:48 I just– and then leading up to this thing,
0:06:50 just thinking about all these people
0:06:51 and really wanting it to be perfect,
0:06:53 and wanting the seating chart.
0:06:53 Will they get along?
0:06:55 Will this person find this person interesting?
0:06:57 I’m just worried about stupid shit
0:06:58 I used to never worry about.
0:07:00 Or maybe I’m just getting more thoughtful and considerate.
0:07:03 Anyways, absolutely beautiful.
0:07:05 The highlight was the activities on Saturday.
0:07:08 People did– we did ax throwing, shooting,
0:07:11 where we shot clay animals.
0:07:12 People went fishing.
0:07:13 That was a bit of a bust.
0:07:15 I guess the fish weren’t running.
0:07:18 Horseback riding tour Balmeral, where they had tea service.
0:07:21 And then, absolutely, the hit was putting everyone in a kilt.
0:07:24 When you put everyone in a kilt, things get crazy.
0:07:26 Things get crazy.
0:07:27 But that was a ton of fun.
0:07:32 And then I took a smaller set of my five oldest friends
0:07:33 with me to the south of France.
0:07:35 If I sound like I live a privileged life,
0:07:36 I do.
0:07:37 But that’s the bad news.
0:07:39 The good news is that I recognize it.
0:07:41 Anyways, here in the south of France,
0:07:43 let me give them my travel itinerary.
0:07:45 I head back to London, see the boys.
0:07:47 Then I go to Madrid for a speaking gig.
0:07:50 And then I go to Munich to speak at a friend’s conference.
0:07:52 Then I go back to London.
0:07:54 Then I go to LA to be in a writer’s room
0:07:57 for the new original scripted series
0:07:59 from Res Media and Scott Burns on Big Tech.
0:08:00 And I’m excited about that.
0:08:02 I’ve never been in a writer’s room before.
0:08:03 I don’t even know what to expect.
0:08:06 I just like using the term writer’s room.
0:08:07 So that’ll be interesting.
0:08:09 Anyways, enough about me.
0:08:10 What else is going on?
0:08:12 A lot in the world of social media.
0:08:16 TikTok had a date in court earlier this week.
0:08:18 Just a reminder here, it’s facing a potential ban
0:08:21 in the US as soon as January 19th.
0:08:23 TikTok is upset or claiming that the government is going
0:08:26 after its platform’s right to freedom of expression.
0:08:29 But all the US wants is for it to be released
0:08:30 from foreign ownership.
0:08:33 That is the Chinese Communist Party.
0:08:35 TikTok says they’ve spent $2 billion to protect US data,
0:08:37 but the US government isn’t so sure of the measures.
0:08:39 They’ve taken actually prevent the Chinese government
0:08:42 from taking a peak.
0:08:45 I think this is another example
0:08:47 of how the digitization of everything,
0:08:49 the combination of the adultery of innovators,
0:08:51 the amount of money these digital platforms create
0:08:54 has resulted in an entirely bifurcated world
0:08:57 with a certain set of standards for the analog world
0:08:59 and a certain set of standards for the digital world
0:09:02 and the individuals who operate
0:09:04 or the executives of those digital companies.
0:09:06 And the latest call sign or attempt
0:09:10 to create a culture of victimization and grievance
0:09:13 and they don’t get it, we get it,
0:09:17 is that anything that’s digital now is considered speech
0:09:18 and immediately everyone goes to free speech.
0:09:21 So, oh, you’re using a digital platform
0:09:22 to engage in child pornography?
0:09:24 Oh no, it’s speech.
0:09:26 It’s speech and a guy’s pulled off a plane
0:09:28 for not cooperating with authorities
0:09:30 trying to stop human trafficking
0:09:32 or funneling funds to terrorists.
0:09:35 Oh, okay, but because it was on a platform, it’s speech
0:09:39 and we can’t do anything about, crime is not speech.
0:09:43 If I had a hotel or I owned a hotel
0:09:46 and terrorists were meeting there
0:09:48 to get money from other people
0:09:50 and I was not cooperating with authorities
0:09:51 to break up this terrorist ring,
0:09:54 I would be in a, justifiably,
0:09:56 I would be in a shit ton of hurt
0:09:57 and in trouble as I should be.
0:09:59 But if I put it on a digital platform,
0:10:01 oh no, that’s innovation, it’s speech.
0:10:03 Fucking ridiculous.
0:10:04 And guess what?
0:10:06 Free speech has consistently,
0:10:10 early and often been trumped by defense threats.
0:10:13 If you’re working in the CIA or in our defense department
0:10:15 and you decide to start leaking secrets
0:10:20 about a planned invasion of whatever,
0:10:23 sorry, that’s not your free speech rights, girlfriend.
0:10:26 In defense threats, Trump trumped the First Amendment
0:10:28 and that’s exactly what should happen here.
0:10:31 If you wanna understand when any video
0:10:34 around a specific topic is getting much more oxygen
0:10:36 than it would organically or on other platforms,
0:10:37 it’s pretty simple.
0:10:39 Just say, what would the CCP want?
0:10:42 It is ridiculous that we would let
0:10:45 the equivalent of NBC, ABC and CBS
0:10:47 be controlled by the Kremlin in the ’60s.
0:10:51 That’s what this is and I believe that in fact,
0:10:54 in fact, the court will find on the side
0:10:57 of the DOJ or the White House.
0:10:58 What will happen?
0:11:00 Is TikTok gonna be banned?
0:11:02 No, on the eve of the banning,
0:11:03 they’re gonna come to some sort of accommodation.
0:11:04 Why?
0:11:06 If you ever wanna make predictions
0:11:09 that mostly turn out right, just follow the money.
0:11:12 If TikTok were to take its ball and go home,
0:11:14 you’re talking about a quarter of a trillion dollars
0:11:15 in lost shareholder value.
0:11:18 And they’re both American and Chinese investors.
0:11:20 And so there’s just too much money here
0:11:22 for them not to A, quite frankly,
0:11:25 spread it around to the whores in the United States Congress
0:11:27 who will put pressure on the White House
0:11:29 to come to some sort of accommodation.
0:11:32 And there’s too much money for China
0:11:34 and the Chinese government and Chinese business
0:11:36 to give that up, to just give it away.
0:11:40 And my pivot co-host, Kara Swisher, said there’s some
0:11:42 kind of national pride here where they don’t wanna be seen
0:11:44 as acquiescing to the US government.
0:11:47 I would sort of believe that two or three years ago,
0:11:50 but the Chinese economy is in real trouble.
0:11:54 And she who has dealt or acted with a real heavy hand
0:11:57 around corporations is seeing a government slowdown
0:11:59 that could potentially lead to a very,
0:12:02 or an economic slowdown that could lead to very bad things
0:12:04 for him and his colleagues.
0:12:07 The Chinese Communist Party still needs to bring tens,
0:12:10 if not hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.
0:12:14 And without an economic engine reigniting
0:12:16 from its sputtering over the last few years,
0:12:18 they’re not gonna be able to accomplish that.
0:12:22 So I think there’s gonna be a thaw in the heavy hand
0:12:25 they’ve been placing on corporations.
0:12:28 And I think if they start kneecapping their thoroughbreds,
0:12:30 but see above bite dance,
0:12:33 it’s not gonna play well domestically
0:12:36 and will send a very bad signal across global investors,
0:12:38 many of whom are describing Chinese companies
0:12:40 as uninvestable right now,
0:12:43 if they start getting kicked out of certain markets.
0:12:45 But I do think this is gonna be divested
0:12:47 or they’ll come to some sort of accommodation.
0:12:50 Moving on, moving on,
0:12:52 Instagram finally pulled its head out of its ass
0:12:55 and made some changes to the way teens interact with the app.
0:12:58 All teen operated accounts will slowly become private
0:12:59 and parents will have more insight
0:13:01 in how much their time their kid is spending on the app
0:13:03 and who they’ve been chatting with recently.
0:13:05 The company also intends to prompt time limits
0:13:07 and improve age verification methods,
0:13:11 such as asking for the government ID or a video selfie.
0:13:13 I think this is a fantastic move,
0:13:17 Instagram CEO Adam Macerries told The New York Times,
0:13:19 it’s definitely going to hurt teen growth and teen engagement
0:13:20 and there’s lots of risk,
0:13:22 but fundamentally I want us to be willing to take risks
0:13:24 and move forward to make progress.
0:13:25 So I hope Adam’s right
0:13:28 and I hope that he’s not sandburging all of us
0:13:29 and that is saying all the right things
0:13:32 and hopefully delaying and obfuscating the issue
0:13:35 as more and more teen girls begin cutting themselves.
0:13:37 We’re proud of our progress.
0:13:39 We need to do more.
0:13:40 Yeah, thanks for that.
0:13:42 So I hope he’s genuine, strikes me as genuine,
0:13:45 but I think we need laws and I think we need punishment.
0:13:47 I think I’m kind of sick of thinking,
0:13:50 no, it’ll be better ’cause Sam Altman, Sam Altman,
0:13:54 he speaks in hushed tones and he’s worried about AI.
0:13:57 Yeah, okay, why don’t we pass some laws
0:13:59 that says any algorithmically elevated content,
0:14:02 the results in defamation or trafficking,
0:14:04 that those people face the same consequences
0:14:07 as anybody else who spreads misinformation or slander,
0:14:09 disinformation or engages in crime
0:14:12 in a quote unquote old school media company.
0:14:13 It’s just so fucking ridiculous.
0:14:15 Any algorithmically elevated content
0:14:18 should lose 230 protection anyways.
0:14:21 And here’s the thing, we’re the idiots.
0:14:23 We keep saying at some point they’re gonna reduce
0:14:25 their bottom line to help the Commonwealth.
0:14:27 No, they’re not.
0:14:28 No, they’re not.
0:14:30 These guys would quite frankly sleep with their mothers
0:14:33 for an additional nickel as long as we let them.
0:14:34 We’re the ones at fault.
0:14:36 We need to pass laws that hold them
0:14:40 to the same accountability as the rest of the offline world.
0:14:43 Teens account for around 100 million Instagram accounts
0:14:45 globally as Jonathan Hyde said very eloquently,
0:14:47 we over protect our kids offline
0:14:49 and we under protect them online.
0:14:51 We need to begin holding these companies accountable.
0:14:53 Come on, come on, enough already.
0:14:55 40 congressional hearings on child safety
0:14:58 and social media, zero laws.
0:15:00 We’ll be right back for our conversation
0:15:03 with Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson.
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0:17:13 (upbeat music)
0:17:20 – Welcome back.
0:17:22 Here’s our conversation with Dr. Ianna Elizabeth Johnson,
0:17:24 a marine biologist, policy expert,
0:17:26 and author of What If We Get It Right?
0:17:28 Visions of Climate Futures.
0:17:31 Dr. Johnson, where does this podcast find you?
0:17:34 – I am in Brooklyn, New York, in a hotel room.
0:17:38 It’s the first thing I’m doing on publication day of,
0:17:40 yeah, What If We Get It Right?
0:17:42 – Nice, so let’s bust right into it.
0:17:46 In your new book, What If We Get It Right?
0:17:48 Visions of Climate Futures,
0:17:50 you provide a curated collection of in-depth interviews
0:17:53 with experts in earth science, technology, AI design,
0:17:56 and agriculture, as well as activists and journalists
0:17:58 to showcase a variety of climate solutions
0:18:01 and to help people envision a more hopeful future.
0:18:03 So how would you describe,
0:18:06 let’s go right to the title of your book,
0:18:07 how would you describe getting it right?
0:18:10 What does right look like to you?
0:18:14 – Right looks like actually quickly deploying
0:18:16 all the climate solutions we already have.
0:18:20 So we already know how to transition to renewable energy.
0:18:23 We already know how to do better public transit
0:18:26 and green buildings and energy efficiency
0:18:30 and better farming and protecting and restoring ecosystems.
0:18:33 Like there’s not a big mystery
0:18:34 to how to address the climate crisis.
0:18:37 There’s not a thing where we need to wait
0:18:40 for some magical technology to come along.
0:18:44 I think that’s the blessing of this moment
0:18:46 is that we basically have the solutions we need.
0:18:48 It’s just a matter of how quickly
0:18:51 and how justly we can implement them.
0:18:55 – So obviously we have an arsenal of weapons at our disposal
0:18:57 to try and address this,
0:18:59 but if you were to stack rank them and say right,
0:19:01 these are the most obvious things
0:19:03 that would have the greatest ROI so to speak.
0:19:06 What would those two or three things be?
0:19:09 – I think it depends on what level
0:19:11 you’re asking that question, right?
0:19:14 Because if you’re asking this for the listener
0:19:16 who wants to do something today,
0:19:19 that’s very different from the broader sort of social
0:19:21 and cultural shifts that need to happen,
0:19:22 apart from democracy, right?
0:19:24 We have a huge challenge
0:19:26 with the culture of consumerism in this country,
0:19:29 which is holding us back in a lot of different ways.
0:19:31 Also, not a quick fix,
0:19:33 but something we each have a lot more control over.
0:19:36 But one thing that people don’t really know
0:19:39 is how powerful their money is,
0:19:42 not only in the sense of the importance of voting
0:19:45 with your dollars every day and every purchase,
0:19:48 but thinking about where your savings are,
0:19:51 where your retirement investments are,
0:19:53 because there was a study a few years ago
0:19:56 that came out by Bank Forward and some other organizations
0:20:01 saying that if you have, say, $125,000 saved for your retirement,
0:20:07 that money, if it’s not invested in a fossil fuel-free fund,
0:20:09 could be doing more harm
0:20:11 in terms of contributing to carbon emissions
0:20:14 through the expansion of oil and gas infrastructure
0:20:16 than all the good you could possibly do,
0:20:18 just like walking and biking everywhere,
0:20:21 eating only plants, et cetera.
0:20:24 And that was very shocking for me to learn
0:20:26 that it really, really matters to find
0:20:29 a climate-friendly place to keep our money,
0:20:33 because we have in the U.S. the four biggest banks,
0:20:38 Citibank, JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Bank of America,
0:20:41 that have collectively funded trillions of dollars
0:20:43 towards the fossil fuel industry
0:20:45 since the U.S. signed the Paris Agreement
0:20:48 saying we were committing to wind down.
0:20:50 And so those industries in the U.S. are growing
0:20:53 when we actually need to be making this transition.
0:20:56 So that personal shift is actually the easiest,
0:20:59 sort of like, in one day what one person
0:21:03 with money in the bank can do, the biggest difference.
0:21:06 – So let me just start off with the common ground.
0:21:08 I believe the climate change is the next central crisis.
0:21:10 I’m worried about it.
0:21:11 I think every parent that has kids
0:21:14 are concerned for the future.
0:21:16 You know, this is a four or five car alarm,
0:21:18 whatever the term is, we need to get on this.
0:21:22 Where I would push back is, so consumerism,
0:21:25 out-of-control consumerism, and the basic notion
0:21:26 that we just need to be more thoughtful
0:21:28 about how much we consume.
0:21:32 I think that’s a really solid argument.
0:21:33 I see no evidence that’s going to happen,
0:21:36 has happened or will happen.
0:21:39 Every generation, we assume that they’re more noble than us,
0:21:40 more concerned about the earth,
0:21:43 and there’s some sign they’re more socially aware,
0:21:45 but generally speaking, as the economy becomes
0:21:48 more productive, people take advantage of it
0:21:49 and want to consume more for less.
0:21:52 And I don’t see evidence of that,
0:21:54 and I feel like it’s pushing a rock up a hill.
0:21:58 I would also argue that asking consumers
0:22:02 to invest in something that, when you limit the universe
0:22:04 of your potential investment options,
0:22:08 you just naturally, as a function of math, reduce the ROI.
0:22:12 And it feels like there’s such politicized pushback
0:22:16 on these efforts that I worry that these two things
0:22:18 aren’t going to be effective,
0:22:22 that they actually aren’t realistic in terms of asking people
0:22:24 to lower the ROI on their investments
0:22:27 or reduce their consumerism, your thoughts.
0:22:29 – So I think there’s a very, very long list
0:22:32 of things individuals, corporations, governments,
0:22:34 et cetera, can do.
0:22:38 I guess my question to you is if we’re not willing
0:22:42 to change anything about our behavior that’s significant,
0:22:46 why would we expect the five alarm fire to go out?
0:22:47 – That’s a fair point.
0:22:48 Well, I’ll give an opinion.
0:22:51 I think we need to appeal to people’s great glance
0:22:55 that there’s huge opportunity here for new technologies.
0:22:58 There’s huge opportunity to invest in renewables
0:23:02 that nuclear is a fantastic, in my view,
0:23:03 I don’t know how you feel about it.
0:23:06 I’ll use this as a question,
0:23:09 but nuclear energy presents an enormous opportunity
0:23:11 for both not only climate change,
0:23:14 but just a more efficient way of producing power.
0:23:16 I’m just so disappointed that this whole conversation
0:23:20 has been politicized and I’m trying to figure out a way
0:23:22 to make arguments that appeal to both sides of the aisle
0:23:26 such that we have an easier time getting stuff done.
0:23:27 But I don’t–
0:23:29 – Well, I think the thing with nuclear is
0:23:31 that’s also not a quick fix, right?
0:23:35 It takes a decade at least to develop a nuclear plant
0:23:37 to get it permitted and built, right?
0:23:39 So we’re talking about a scenario
0:23:44 where we need to get our emissions cut by half this decade.
0:23:49 So nuclear is already part of our energy mix,
0:23:52 may continue to be part of our energy mix,
0:23:54 but that alone is not enough to get us there, right?
0:23:56 We don’t have fusion yet.
0:23:59 And so I think one of the things
0:24:02 that I found really exciting is that we have now,
0:24:05 because Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act,
0:24:09 the Infrastructure and Jobs Act,
0:24:14 all this funding going to changing the way we build
0:24:15 and do things in the US.
0:24:17 We have all these, for example,
0:24:20 battery manufacturing plants going up primarily
0:24:24 in red states with great green jobs.
0:24:27 We have Iowa and Texas as the largest producers
0:24:29 of wind energy in the United States.
0:24:31 That’s not because they’re hippies, right?
0:24:34 And I think modernizing the grid is very important.
0:24:37 We can’t even bring all of this renewable energy
0:24:39 into the mix in some places, right?
0:24:41 Because our grid is so antiquated.
0:24:45 And so I mean, if that’s political,
0:24:46 then I guess that’s political,
0:24:50 but we’re gonna have to make some significant changes
0:24:54 to the way we use energy, the way we go food,
0:24:58 the way we get around in order to have these reductions
0:25:00 and carbon pollution that we need to see.
0:25:02 And of course, there’s an economic argument
0:25:03 we made for this.
0:25:05 I mean, people are making a lot of money
0:25:07 off of this transition.
0:25:09 And last year marked the first year
0:25:11 that the major banks actually invested more in renewables
0:25:14 than fossil fuels was still in the US
0:25:16 over a trillion dollars on each.
0:25:20 So not as big a difference as we’d like to see.
0:25:21 But when you’re talking about sort of like
0:25:23 what individuals can do,
0:25:27 it’s certainly not build a nuclear plant in their backyard,
0:25:27 right?
0:25:30 And so I think to answer your question of what we can do,
0:25:32 like it really matters the scale, right?
0:25:34 There’s political change that needs to happen
0:25:37 because corporations aren’t all volunteering
0:25:38 to do the right thing.
0:25:41 There needs to be some bar set.
0:25:43 – Or just laws, right?
0:25:45 – They’re not good enough, right?
0:25:47 And they’re not enforced often.
0:25:49 We had under the Trump administration
0:25:53 the rollback of over a hundred environmental regulations
0:25:55 for clean air and clean water, et cetera.
0:25:59 So setting a minimum standard of environmental quality
0:26:01 is something that’s, you know,
0:26:04 the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act,
0:26:06 and the Adored Species Act,
0:26:09 they were all signed under Reagan in the ’70s
0:26:10 with bipartisan support.
0:26:14 So the politicization of environmental conservation
0:26:18 and climate in particular is actually quite new
0:26:19 in US history.
0:26:23 And I would like a short-term time machine
0:26:26 to just go back not even that far.
0:26:29 I mean, I think a lot of people who are close to nature,
0:26:34 whether they’re farmers or hunters or hikers,
0:26:37 know that things are changing in the wrong direction
0:26:39 and want to be a part of fixing that,
0:26:41 like ducks unlimited, trout unlimited,
0:26:44 like these folks are active conservationists, right?
0:26:47 Because they know that their hobbies,
0:26:49 their passions require healthy ecosystems.
0:26:54 So I personally don’t think any of this has to be political.
0:26:59 Like we all actually want a good future for our children
0:27:03 and there’s polling that shows that the biggest motivator
0:27:07 for people to act on climate is love for future generations.
0:27:11 It’s actually not profit, which I found to be surprising.
0:27:13 It’s not any number of other things.
0:27:15 It really is like, I want to leave a better world
0:27:16 for my children.
0:27:20 And the biggest thing they could convince conservative men
0:27:24 to care more about climate change is their daughters.
0:27:27 Saying, you’re setting our future on fire and I’m scared.
0:27:30 And that sort of instinct to protect our daughters,
0:27:33 our children kicks in in this way
0:27:35 that’s actually beneficial for the planet.
0:27:39 So there’s a lot of certainly like psychology and economics
0:27:42 and politics and policy, et cetera,
0:27:44 and culture all at play here.
0:27:46 – What if we said, okay,
0:27:48 we’re going to stop subsidizing the beef industry
0:27:50 and we’re going to do what a lot of Western nations
0:27:54 done recognizing that fossil fuels are bad for us
0:27:54 over the long term.
0:27:56 There’s been an incredible economic arbitrage,
0:27:58 but there’s real externalities here.
0:28:02 And we put a $5 a gallon tax on gasoline in the US
0:28:06 and we stopped subsidizing all the water
0:28:10 and things that create beef unnaturally inexpensive.
0:28:14 What about just straight economic pricing
0:28:17 to address or to foot to the externalities?
0:28:18 – That would absolutely help.
0:28:22 I mean, getting just eliminating the subsidies
0:28:23 would be a great start.
0:28:27 The US still subsidize its fossil fuel corporations
0:28:30 to the tune of millions of dollars a day.
0:28:34 I could think of better things to spend that money on, right?
0:28:37 It has never been a level playing field
0:28:40 for clean energy in this country.
0:28:43 And so the fact that clean energy is growing as fast
0:28:46 as it is is sort of a miracle and proof
0:28:48 that just catching photons from the sky
0:28:51 is much more efficient (laughs)
0:28:54 with a piece of glass pointed at the sun
0:28:57 than drilling and fracking and all this other stuff.
0:29:01 And so I think this is this energy transition
0:29:03 is going to happen regardless.
0:29:04 It is much more efficient.
0:29:06 It is more profitable.
0:29:10 It’s just a matter of how fast, how long that takes.
0:29:14 And this really is a race against the clock.
0:29:15 – What do you think of the idea
0:29:17 of trying to wealth your nations,
0:29:19 trying to bind together and figuring out a way
0:29:22 to either subsidize or encourage developing nations
0:29:24 who look at us and say, okay,
0:29:27 you’ve enjoyed this great fossil fuel arbitrage.
0:29:28 As people become wealthier,
0:29:30 as nations become wealthier,
0:29:32 they kind of engage in things that quite frankly
0:29:34 just create a lot of emissions.
0:29:38 And when we say, don’t make the same mistake we did,
0:29:41 they say, well, okay, easy for you to say, you’re already wealthy.
0:29:44 What role do we have, or is there a role,
0:29:47 or do you think it’s feasible for us to bind together
0:29:49 with wealthy nations and try and figure out,
0:29:51 well, I don’t know if it’s direct economic subsidies
0:29:55 to say, all right, please don’t go down the route of coal.
0:29:57 Please don’t go down the route of beef.
0:30:00 What role do we have and does this exist?
0:30:03 – Well, this exists through the United Nations
0:30:05 intergovernmental panel on climate change
0:30:08 at the last conference of the parties,
0:30:10 annual climate conference.
0:30:12 Countries agreed to establish
0:30:15 what they called a loss and damage fund
0:30:18 to help countries deal with the impacts of climate change.
0:30:22 You’re talking more about the reducing emissions side,
0:30:24 but there’s also the like, ooh,
0:30:26 like these rich countries caused this problem
0:30:29 and it’s largely these less wealthy,
0:30:32 less developed countries that are bearing the brunt of it
0:30:34 because it’s hitting so hard in the tropics, right?
0:30:39 With hurricanes and floods and droughts
0:30:41 and like insane heatwaves,
0:30:44 temperatures like 130 plus degrees
0:30:48 that is just humans are not built to withstand.
0:30:49 And so that fund has been set up,
0:30:51 but wealthy countries just are not making
0:30:56 the contributions that they promised,
0:30:57 that people expected.
0:30:58 And there’s a question, of course,
0:30:59 of how to best distribute that
0:31:01 because there will never be enough funds
0:31:05 for all the need that there is.
0:31:06 But what you’re talking about,
0:31:11 sort of jumping away from coal to renewables,
0:31:17 there’s this question mark of what’s called leapfrogging.
0:31:20 So I interview in my book,
0:31:22 Professor Kelly Sims Gallagher
0:31:23 who runs the Public Policy School,
0:31:26 Fletcher School at Tufts University
0:31:30 and worked in the White House under President Obama,
0:31:33 brokering the first deal between the US and China
0:31:35 on climate change that set the ball rolling
0:31:37 to get this global agreement.
0:31:40 And basically the only way we were able to get that agreement
0:31:43 was because China was seeing how polluted it was,
0:31:44 how dirty the sky was.
0:31:48 It was really at risk to public health, it still is, right?
0:31:52 And their citizens were like, we’ve got to clean this up.
0:31:55 And so there was that internal political will built
0:31:58 from the public health and citizen pressure.
0:32:01 And the only way they could get the agreement though
0:32:04 was that it was each country just committed to whatever
0:32:07 they felt like they could commit to.
0:32:09 So we have this current framework
0:32:12 of what’s called nationally determined contributions
0:32:14 or every country in the world that’s a signatory
0:32:18 to the Paris Agreement gets to make up their own commitment.
0:32:20 And every five years,
0:32:22 there’s a conference where you can ratchet that up,
0:32:23 where you can commit to more,
0:32:26 where there’s an evaluation of how are we doing?
0:32:29 What else can we get together and do?
0:32:32 So we actually have a really good framework in place
0:32:34 through the United Nations to do this,
0:32:38 but it really depends on who’s in office in these countries
0:32:40 who’s present, who’s prime minister,
0:32:42 is Congress actually appropriating the funds
0:32:44 to put into this loss and damage fund, right?
0:32:46 ‘Cause the president can’t do that.
0:32:50 Unfortunately, a lot of this does come back to politics
0:32:52 because you need the leaders of nations to agree
0:32:54 to do something.
0:32:56 You and I could be the best environmentalists
0:33:00 with the lowest individual carbon footprints in the world,
0:33:03 but we still live in these systems
0:33:05 where for most people you turn on the lights
0:33:08 and you don’t get to choose where electricity comes from.
0:33:10 Most people don’t own their homes
0:33:13 or have the chance to afford the transition
0:33:15 to renewables as individuals.
0:33:18 So this has to be part of a bigger shift,
0:33:20 but I think we should also be framing this
0:33:23 as a straight up upgrade.
0:33:26 Like the air quality benefits alone,
0:33:29 I mean, we’re talking about nine million people
0:33:32 dying a year because of air pollution,
0:33:35 because of fossil fuel burning, right?
0:33:37 Like even if there’s no other benefit
0:33:41 than having cleaner air that doesn’t kill us, I’ll take it.
0:33:43 – I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to any of our work,
0:33:45 but I’m a glass half empty kind of guy.
0:33:47 I just naturally come at all this shit as a pessimist,
0:33:49 which is one of my many flaws.
0:33:52 And one of the things I find really discouraging
0:33:56 is that the level of excitement around cryptocurrency,
0:34:00 specifically Bitcoin and around AI
0:34:03 just overwhelms the inconvenient truth
0:34:06 that the incremental energy production
0:34:08 because of Bitcoin is basically
0:34:11 the electricity consumption of Argentina.
0:34:14 We’ve added Argentina such that we could figure out
0:34:17 a new store of value and a new form of money,
0:34:20 which to me just seemed entirely unnecessary.
0:34:22 And then on the AI side,
0:34:25 AI queries are 13 to 17 times
0:34:27 the energy consumption of a Google query.
0:34:29 And yet there’s no slowing AI down.
0:34:31 There’s not even really a discussion around,
0:34:35 in my view, around attacks to foot again.
0:34:36 It feels like in many instances
0:34:38 we’re actually headed the wrong way
0:34:40 with some of the most popular technologies.
0:34:42 – I agree with you, and I’m actually not an optimist.
0:34:43 People read the title of my book,
0:34:44 “What If We Get It Right?”
0:34:46 and assume that I think we will get it right,
0:34:47 which is just not true, right?
0:34:49 There’s a question mark at the end of that.
0:34:52 Like, I don’t know if we’re gonna get it together.
0:34:55 I know that we could make a much better future
0:34:57 than we have, than we’re on track for right now.
0:34:59 Like, I’m a scientist, I’m a realist.
0:35:00 I see the projections.
0:35:05 I know that we are on track for several more degrees
0:35:07 of warning, which means much more ice melting,
0:35:08 which means much more sea level rise,
0:35:09 which means much more heat waves,
0:35:12 and more droughts and floods and wildfires.
0:35:13 All of that is on the horizon.
0:35:15 I don’t want to sugarcoat any of that.
0:35:17 The stakes are incredibly high,
0:35:20 and we are already, of course, experiencing these impacts,
0:35:25 and there’s more to come, even if we cap it all right now.
0:35:26 And you’re right.
0:35:28 I mean, the development of AI in particular,
0:35:32 there’s an interview in this book with Mustafa Suleyman,
0:35:36 who is now the head of AI at Microsoft,
0:35:37 and talking to him about it.
0:35:40 I mean, I personally am not a fan of AI,
0:35:42 but like, we can’t put the cap back in the bag.
0:35:43 So it’s a question of like,
0:35:48 how do we best manage that industry
0:35:51 and leverage it for good?
0:35:53 But one of the statistics I learned
0:35:54 while researching this book,
0:35:57 and of course, these are moving targets
0:35:58 as new data comes out,
0:36:02 but the latest was that data centers in the U.S.
0:36:07 already consume about 2.5% of the U.S.’s total energy demand.
0:36:10 That was as of 2022,
0:36:15 and that’s expected to triple to 7.5% by 2030, right?
0:36:18 We’re talking about being on track for 10%
0:36:22 of our energy being used by data centers.
0:36:23 – On the Ezra Klein show,
0:36:25 you discussed how the climate crisis is an ocean–
0:36:27 – Oh, that’s like 10 years ago.
0:36:28 – We do our homework together.
0:36:30 – What did I say?
0:36:32 – You actually said something really interesting.
0:36:34 You said that you thought that the climate crisis
0:36:36 is an oceans crisis.
0:36:37 What did you mean by that?
0:36:40 – So yes, I’m a marine biologist by training.
0:36:43 I always think about how the ocean gets neglected
0:36:45 in all of this.
0:36:48 We know that the ocean has absorbed about a third
0:36:51 of the carbon dioxide that’s been emitted
0:36:53 by burning fossil fuels,
0:36:54 and that’s made the ocean more acidic.
0:36:55 – Can you explain how that happens?
0:36:56 Like, what is it in the ocean?
0:37:00 – It’s just this chemical reaction on the surface.
0:37:03 – I thought it was the krill or whale poop or something.
0:37:04 Did there, no?
0:37:05 – Oh, that’s the,
0:37:07 there’s a broader carbon cycle in the ocean.
0:37:10 There’s like half of the, you know,
0:37:13 some estimates are that about half of the oxygen we breathe
0:37:15 comes from the ocean because of photosynthesis
0:37:18 of phytoplankton in the ocean.
0:37:22 Whale poop is a big part or was, when there were more whales,
0:37:24 a big part of the carbon cycle,
0:37:27 ’cause their poop sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
0:37:29 All this sort of marine snow it’s called,
0:37:32 just like a bunch of animal poop in the ocean
0:37:33 is heavy enough to sink,
0:37:38 and that ends up sequestering a significant amount of carbon
0:37:39 through these natural cycles.
0:37:42 But as we overfish the ocean,
0:37:44 of course, we’re disrupting all of that,
0:37:47 which is also a risk for deep sea mining,
0:37:49 disturbing all that carbon
0:37:51 that has been sequestered down there potentially
0:37:55 in the quest for the metals for making batteries.
0:37:58 So all these things are complicated
0:38:01 and have trade-offs that we need to consider.
0:38:05 But on the ocean climate side,
0:38:06 I think there’s two sides, right?
0:38:08 There’s the ocean as bearing a lot of the brunt of this.
0:38:12 So the ocean has become about 30% more acidic
0:38:15 because it has absorbed so much carbon dioxide.
0:38:18 So the pH of the entire ocean has shifted,
0:38:19 which of course makes it harder
0:38:23 for things with shells and skeletons, corals to grow,
0:38:27 and shifts the way that animals navigate by smell
0:38:29 and the seawaters changing, right?
0:38:31 Because the chemistry of it has shifted.
0:38:33 And then you have the fact that the ocean
0:38:35 has warmed about a degree Celsius
0:38:39 because it’s absorbed about 90% of the heat
0:38:41 that we’ve trapped with all these greenhouse gases
0:38:44 emitted by burning fossil fuels.
0:38:46 And so without the ocean absorbing all that heat,
0:38:49 the planet would be about 97 degrees Fahrenheit hotter,
0:38:51 obviously unlivable.
0:38:54 So we owe a big debt of gratitude to the ocean.
0:38:57 But it’s also estimated that on the solution side,
0:39:00 the ocean could be about 40% of our climate solution.
0:39:03 When we think about offshore renewable energies,
0:39:05 currently that’s mostly wind power,
0:39:07 but looking at wave and tidal
0:39:09 and other sorts of energy in the future,
0:39:11 as that technology develops,
0:39:13 thinking about how to decarbonize shipping,
0:39:15 which is still a huge…
0:39:17 – Yeah, people don’t talk about shipping.
0:39:21 Isn’t it like an eight or 12% of total carbon emissions?
0:39:22 – Something very large,
0:39:24 but there’s a tricky thing with shipping
0:39:27 where it also emits all of this soot
0:39:31 because they have tended to use really dirty crude oil,
0:39:35 which actually helps to create shade and soot,
0:39:38 which may have decreased warming.
0:39:40 And so by cleaning up shipping,
0:39:42 you’re actually maybe making things hotter,
0:39:45 which is like this counterintuitive,
0:39:49 which is all to say, you pull on one thread
0:39:52 and you see that it’s connected to everything.
0:39:55 But ocean ecosystems, for example,
0:39:59 can absorb three, five times more carbon per acre
0:40:01 than a rainforest.
0:40:04 And so we think so much of only forests.
0:40:05 – Whenever I do carbon credits,
0:40:06 they show a picture of a tree.
0:40:08 They should be showing a picture of a reef or something.
0:40:11 – Mangroves, seagrasses, wetlands.
0:40:14 I mean, I think they’re just as sexy,
0:40:17 but maybe other people make it just a bunch of mud.
0:40:22 – Given you’re a scientist and you study this,
0:40:25 is there any one technology that you think is underrated
0:40:27 in terms of the impact it can have or innovation
0:40:29 that you think it holds more promise
0:40:30 than it’s getting press on?
0:40:33 – Does composting count as technology?
0:40:35 – Sure, it’s a process, right?
0:40:37 – Food waste emits a huge amount of methane,
0:40:40 which is a greenhouse gas something like,
0:40:42 depending on what time scale you look at it,
0:40:45 30, 80% more potent than carbon dioxide.
0:40:47 So anytime you throw food in the trash
0:40:49 and it ends up in a landfill and it’s emitting methane,
0:40:50 that is very bad.
0:40:54 So composting food waste, that technology of nature,
0:40:56 breaking things down.
0:40:58 And then we have all this soil to grow new food
0:41:00 and flowers and all that stuff.
0:41:03 I think on the energy side,
0:41:06 I actually don’t want to pick a winner in technology
0:41:09 because as Jigar Shah says in this interview
0:41:11 with him in the book,
0:41:13 he’s the head of the loan program office
0:41:14 at the Department of Energy,
0:41:17 which has something like $400 billion in loans
0:41:19 that they can put out to energy companies
0:41:23 to help support the innovation of new technologies.
0:41:26 His perspective, which I share is like,
0:41:28 we’re always gonna need a mix.
0:41:31 We wouldn’t want to rely on all nuclear.
0:41:34 We wouldn’t want to rely on all solar or all wind, right?
0:41:38 It is that diversity that makes the system more resilient.
0:41:40 And so I personally like, great,
0:41:43 I think renewables are exciting.
0:41:45 I think we should have that mix.
0:41:47 One technology I would really like to see,
0:41:51 especially in America, is high-speed trains.
0:41:55 Like why are we so behind on this, right?
0:41:59 We’re all flying short distances.
0:42:02 It’s like, if we could have trains from city center
0:42:03 to city center that were actually fast,
0:42:05 that would be faster than flying,
0:42:08 going through security, getting there early, whatever.
0:42:09 It would save us time
0:42:12 and be such a more luxurious way to travel.
0:42:15 I mean, that’s not maybe the high technology
0:42:16 you were thinking of,
0:42:18 but I think that would be transformative
0:42:19 in significant ways,
0:42:22 especially for a country as large as ours.
0:42:24 – Do you say the political environment?
0:42:28 – My sense is, unfortunately or discouragingly,
0:42:31 I feel as if the last one or two years,
0:42:35 we’ve actually regressed as opposed to making progress.
0:42:38 What are your thoughts about the current political environment
0:42:40 and the support we need
0:42:43 to try and address these issues recently?
0:42:45 – Yeah, I mean,
0:42:47 Trump is a candidate who periodically says
0:42:49 climate change is a hoax, right?
0:42:53 Like that’s a pretty hard scenario to be in
0:42:55 when you’re trying to advance solutions.
0:42:59 And I think it’s important to remember that,
0:43:02 we had Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi agreeing
0:43:05 that we needed climate policy, right?
0:43:09 Not that long ago and like making a TV ad about it together.
0:43:13 But I’ll also say on this political polarization piece
0:43:16 that I don’t debate climate science deniers.
0:43:21 I just, I’m not the right messenger for that, right?
0:43:24 Like I’m not gonna change anyone’s mind on the internet
0:43:25 by telling them science facts,
0:43:28 like that’s not how this is gonna get fixed.
0:43:30 And so I think there’s a big part of this,
0:43:33 we can actually skip talking about the problem, right?
0:43:35 Like let’s go back to that example
0:43:40 of wind energy booming in Ohio and Texas.
0:43:43 It’s not because there was some big debate statewide
0:43:46 and they were like, okay, climate change is a problem,
0:43:47 we should develop this industry.
0:43:50 It’s just ’cause it makes sense and they’re good jobs
0:43:53 and it’s profitable and we don’t even have to talk about
0:43:56 the why and the details, right?
0:44:00 And I think we can kind of gloss over a lot of the problem
0:44:03 and just agree on the solutions.
0:44:06 – We’ll be right back.
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0:45:54 other leading job sites in a given month.
0:45:55 So to put it quite simply,
0:45:57 if you’re not looking on LinkedIn,
0:45:59 you’re looking in the wrong place.
0:46:01 And for all you small business owners out there,
0:46:03 LinkedIn knows that there’s a lot of pressure
0:46:05 on the day to day and that you’re wearing so many hats
0:46:08 you might not have the time or resources to hire.
0:46:10 But it’s time to hire professionals
0:46:13 like a professional on LinkedIn.
0:46:16 Post your job for free at linkedin.com/prof.
0:46:20 That’s linkedin.com/prof to post your job for free
0:46:21 terms and conditions apply.
0:46:28 – Dr. Johnson, you have a lot of influence
0:46:30 at a very young age.
0:46:31 You’ve got a big following.
0:46:32 – I mean, I’m 44.
0:46:33 I’m not that young.
0:46:35 – Well, okay, it’s all relative.
0:46:39 I just celebrated a birthday, so 44 feels young.
0:46:41 But I’m just curious,
0:46:43 what, and it seems like again,
0:46:45 from an outsider’s perspective, everything looks great,
0:46:49 but it strikes me you have just the coolest job
0:46:53 and you’re doing something that you appear to really enjoy.
0:46:56 We have a lot of young people listening to podcasts.
0:46:58 What were some seminal moments for you
0:47:01 in terms of figuring out you wanted to do this
0:47:04 and sort of key break or key kind of turning points
0:47:07 or your kind of break?
0:47:09 And that sort of leads into what we typically offer
0:47:10 is the last question here.
0:47:13 What advice would you have to your younger self?
0:47:17 – I mean, many, many inflection points, of course.
0:47:20 I think the thing that I keep going back to
0:47:25 is falling in love with nature.
0:47:27 And when I was five, we went to Key West, Florida,
0:47:29 and I learned to swim and snorkel
0:47:31 and I saw a coral reef for the first time
0:47:34 and I was just like gobsmacked
0:47:39 that there was this super colorful dynamic underwater world.
0:47:41 And I was like, how come no one told me about this?
0:47:45 Can this be my job to just hang out with these weird fish?
0:47:48 And that sort of started me off on that path,
0:47:52 but I had many, I mean, marine biologists
0:47:55 is a pretty common dream job for a five-year-old.
0:47:57 – Yeah, it’s literally something my son has said
0:47:59 that he’d like to be a marine biologist.
0:48:00 I’m like, what is that? – It’s an actual job.
0:48:02 We could use the help.
0:48:08 And I think though that like my dreams professionally
0:48:11 evolved a lot, right?
0:48:14 Like a lot, when I was 10, I wanted to be,
0:48:16 I was learning about the civil rights movement.
0:48:17 I wanted to be the lawyer
0:48:19 that got the next Martin Luther King out of jail.
0:48:21 I was like, let me,
0:48:24 I wanna support people who are fighting for justice.
0:48:28 And then I thought, I started camping and backpacking
0:48:30 and I was like, I could be a park ranger.
0:48:33 Like I could get paid to just hang out in the forest.
0:48:35 Like clearly that’s the best job.
0:48:38 And then I started to get a little more savvy
0:48:40 about the policy and politics of it all.
0:48:43 I was like, oh, maybe environmental lawyer is a good thing.
0:48:45 And then when I was ready to go to grad school,
0:48:49 I thought, you know, there’s a lot of lawyers in the world.
0:48:54 Maybe I could approach this question from the science side
0:48:57 and like meet the lawyers and policy folks in the middle.
0:49:00 And so that’s what I decided to do.
0:49:03 But always it was this interdisciplinary approach
0:49:07 of science and policy and politics and economics and culture
0:49:11 because it’s that crazy puzzle that we have to solve,
0:49:14 complicated and unlikely, though it may be.
0:49:19 But the advice I guess I would give to my former self,
0:49:24 which I now actually give to everyone
0:49:28 is to really think about what you specifically can do,
0:49:30 not just what needs to be done.
0:49:34 The way that each person can contribute
0:49:37 to addressing the climate crisis is going to be different.
0:49:40 And so I have this concept, this framework
0:49:42 of a climate action Venn diagram.
0:49:45 And the idea is just three circles.
0:49:47 And the first circle is what are you good at?
0:49:50 So like what specifically are you bringing to the table,
0:49:53 your skills, your resources, your networks, right?
0:49:55 Like what do you have to offer?
0:49:58 And the second circle is what work needs doing.
0:50:00 What are the climate and justice solutions
0:50:01 you wanna focus on?
0:50:04 Like maybe fusion is your thing, right?
0:50:09 Maybe your thing is making sure we have people’s votes
0:50:10 be counted in this country.
0:50:13 So we have a better chance of getting climate policy,
0:50:14 et cetera, et cetera.
0:50:17 So, and then the third is what brings you joy.
0:50:20 And that’s gonna sound like silly,
0:50:23 probably to a lot of your listeners
0:50:26 who are like, give me the glass half empty version.
0:50:31 But I think the opportunity is that this is really work
0:50:35 for the rest of our lives to sort of turn this mess around.
0:50:38 And so if we choose to do something that’s miserable,
0:50:42 even if we’re good at it, it’s just gonna be awful.
0:50:44 And there’s so much that needs doing.
0:50:48 Why would you pick something that’s not pleasant in some way
0:50:51 or satisfying, gratifying?
0:50:54 And so doing this like actual exercise
0:50:56 with colored pencils myself was how I ended up
0:50:59 co-founding Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank
0:51:02 for the future of coastal cities as a marine biologist
0:51:05 and a policy nerd and a girl from Brooklyn concerned
0:51:10 about coastal cities getting impacted by climate change.
0:51:12 And someone who finds a lot of joy
0:51:16 in changing the rules of the game and design
0:51:18 and communication and collaboration,
0:51:21 all of those things came together in that way for me.
0:51:23 But of course, like not everyone should start
0:51:25 an ocean policy think tank.
0:51:28 So that’s my recommendation is like really think about
0:51:33 like your bespoke offering to climate solutions.
0:51:37 – Dr. Ayanna Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist,
0:51:39 policy expert, writer, and Brooklyn native.
0:51:41 She is co-founder of the non-profit think tank,
0:51:44 Urban Ocean Lab and the Climate Initiative,
0:51:46 the All We Can Save project.
0:51:47 She’s also the co-creator of the podcast,
0:51:51 How to Save a Planet, Dr. Johnson’s new book.
0:51:52 What if we get it right?
0:51:54 Visions of climate futures is out now.
0:51:56 She joined us from her hometown of Brooklyn.
0:51:58 Dr. Johnson, we are rooting for you.
0:52:00 We appreciate your time.
0:52:00 – Thank you.
0:52:01 Thanks for having me.
0:52:06 (upbeat music)
0:52:13 – As a group of happiness, I just celebrated a big birthday
0:52:14 as a reference to the top of the show.
0:52:19 And I had essentially the 90 people have been more important
0:52:21 to me than anyone else on the earth should come to Scotland
0:52:24 and celebrate how old I am.
0:52:28 And just some general observations from that weekend
0:52:30 and around relationships.
0:52:33 You know, if you could give your kids anything,
0:52:35 you’d want them to have a good peer group.
0:52:38 We like to think as parents that we are engineers
0:52:41 and engineer the sheep and that we have a big impact on them.
0:52:42 And this is not true.
0:52:45 My dad gave me the gift of storytelling just genetically
0:52:47 and my mom gave me a little bit of substance.
0:52:49 And I think my mom valued her friends.
0:52:50 I think I got that.
0:52:53 But the two biggest influences on my life,
0:52:55 at least growing up, were my closest friend,
0:52:58 Adam Markman, who I met in the fifth grade
0:53:01 and my friend, Lee Lotus, who I met in college.
0:53:04 And Lee is incredibly ironic and incredibly supportive
0:53:07 and sort of generous and unchecked with his emotions.
0:53:08 This is a guy who used to call me.
0:53:09 When I got a job in work in Stanley,
0:53:12 two people called me, my mom and Lee.
0:53:15 And Lee said to me, and this is like the age of 22.
0:53:17 He said, “Scott, I’m just so proud of you.”
0:53:19 And you know, 23 year old men,
0:53:22 don’t say that to other 22 year old men.
0:53:24 And I think I became much more generous
0:53:26 and much more in touch with my emotions
0:53:31 and just a little bit more of a kind of a loving friend.
0:53:33 He’s also just ridiculously fucking funny.
0:53:36 And I think I got a lot of my humor from him.
0:53:38 And my friend, Adam, was always really kind.
0:53:40 He was this really handsome dapper guy.
0:53:42 Get this in high school.
0:53:43 His parents were wealthy, mine were not.
0:53:46 Adam was not only handsome, but dressed really well.
0:53:48 He was a bit of a fashion play.
0:53:53 And he drove, get this, an Austin Healy Mark III.
0:53:56 I mean, it was like,
0:53:58 here’s this good looking 16 year old kid
0:54:00 driving a James Bond car.
0:54:03 But, and I was just not in that weight class at school.
0:54:05 But this is the kind of guy Adam was.
0:54:08 We were friends and I couldn’t find a girl
0:54:10 to go to my prom with.
0:54:13 Asked a couple of girls to go to my prom at University High.
0:54:14 And they said, “No.”
0:54:16 And Adam controlled a friend of his
0:54:18 who didn’t have a date to ask me to their prom.
0:54:19 And he was just really kind.
0:54:22 And I think a lot of the more things
0:54:24 I like about myself are just like least
0:54:26 or a function of the people I hung out with.
0:54:28 So if you could do anything for your kids,
0:54:30 and I don’t know if we can,
0:54:32 it’s really about their peer group.
0:54:34 Also, I had a lot of friends there from Florida
0:54:36 and a lot of friends that are actually quite conservative.
0:54:37 And as I’ve gotten older,
0:54:41 while I become more progressive in my political viewpoint,
0:54:42 as I realized how blessed I am,
0:54:44 and I have an obligation to try and help people
0:54:46 who aren’t as blessed as me,
0:54:47 which I think is sort of the definition
0:54:50 of someone who’s maybe a bit more progressive,
0:54:52 it’s also really informed my thinking
0:54:54 about having conservative friends,
0:54:56 having friends that go to church,
0:55:00 both of those things I do not describe me.
0:55:03 And recognizing that I do not have a monopoly on the truth.
0:55:05 And I need to surround myself with people
0:55:07 who have a much different viewpoint than me,
0:55:12 because I’m consistently discussing with these people
0:55:13 things that we disagree on,
0:55:16 and recognizing that I absolutely sometimes
0:55:18 am so fucking arrogant that I don’t know
0:55:19 even what I don’t know.
0:55:22 So bringing people that just in your life
0:55:24 that just have a different viewpoint than you.
0:55:26 Also, as I’ve gotten older,
0:55:29 I realized how important it is to make sure
0:55:32 as you get older, you keep the lanes wide.
0:55:34 And that is as I’ve gotten older, I’m an introvert,
0:55:35 it would be very easy for me.
0:55:39 My life is sort of getting a little bit narrower
0:55:40 in terms of the things I wanna do
0:55:42 and the people I wanna see.
0:55:43 I’m just getting very comfortable
0:55:44 with what I’m comfortable with
0:55:47 and very uncomfortable with what is uncomfortable.
0:55:51 And I’ve made so many good friends by moving to London
0:55:53 by hanging out with some people
0:55:55 who are a little bit more extroverted than me
0:55:58 that has forced me to engage in new relationships.
0:56:00 And I looked around the room and some of the people
0:56:01 I value the most are people
0:56:04 that I literally come into my life recently.
0:56:07 Then the other thing I would say is in terms of,
0:56:10 you know, who you decide to partner with the rest of your life.
0:56:14 The biggest decision you’ll make is who you have kids with.
0:56:15 And what you would want for your kids
0:56:19 in what I’ve figured out has been tremendously rewarding
0:56:22 for me, not even rewarding, just really fortunate,
0:56:24 is to have a partner who has good judgment
0:56:27 around your kids and just around life
0:56:28 that a series of good decisions,
0:56:30 no matter how much money you make,
0:56:31 no matter how cool you are,
0:56:34 if you’re partnered with someone who consistently makes
0:56:35 a series of bad decisions
0:56:37 and doesn’t make your life nicer
0:56:40 and isn’t kind to you as a supportive of you,
0:56:41 you’re just not gonna really enjoy yourself.
0:56:43 Anyways, that’s all I have.
0:56:44 Happy birthday to me.
0:56:46 (upbeat music)
0:56:48 This episode was produced by Caroline Shagren.
0:56:51 Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer
0:56:52 and Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
0:56:54 Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod
0:56:56 from the Fox Media Podcast Network.
0:56:58 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice
0:57:00 as read by George Hahn.
0:57:02 And please follow our Prop G Markets Pod
0:57:05 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
0:57:07 and every Monday and Thursday.
0:57:12 And by the way, our new brand extension Raging Moderates.
0:57:16 Oh my God, 200,000 views, 200,000 downloads.
0:57:17 That’s right.
0:57:19 That’s right, spreading the word.
0:57:20 The dog is everywhere.
0:57:22 The dog is ping on everything.
0:57:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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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)