Gaurav Kapadia on New York City, Investing, and Contemporary Art

25:17Andreessen Horowitz has a great deal of entrepreneurial energy. Blackstone has so much entrepreneurial energy. It's actually kind of surprising how commercial and entrepreneurial people are. I think we are somewhat unique, though, in our industry is that we have a maniacal focus on getting better and reinvention and having kind of that founder-led culture of innovation and open-mindedness. And how do you hire to stop your company from becoming too soft or too complacent? Everyone wants smart people. There's a lot of competition in finance, also from the tech world. Yeah, I would say, look, it has to start with the founder.

25:53And so one of the things about many organizations, this could happen to any professional service organization, investment firm or lawyer, is the top gets lazy, right? And so that culture kind of seeps all the way through. So the number one thing you have to do is keep the rope tight. We have this cultural mantra around rigor and kindness. And so we keep that always. And so if I ever slow down, everyone will see it. But the number one thing I do is surround myself with people who will tell me the truth to make sure if I am slowing down, that they will say, hey, you have to remember the commitment we all made to each other and keep that energy high.

26:29But the other thing is, I think too many investment firms select purely by resume and financial modeling skills and GPA. I think obviously that's important. but David Chang has this like amazing. This is the chef, David Chang. The Momofuku David Chang. The Momofuku David Chang. Who's great, right? He's the best. But one of the great things I've learned from David is he has this concept of you have to be good enough and then you have to have something special on top. And so what that means, like the average investment firm will pick someone who has a 4.0 from Wharton or Harvard and then went to Blackstone and then is ready for their next challenge and they'll be fine.

27:09I think what we end up doing is that, of course, we do. But we look for that extra spark, that extra gear, that extra curiosity, that extra ingenuity. And that, by the way, we look for that at every position at the firm, right? So we have a little less than 50 people. Of them, 10 to 12 are investment professionals. The rest are non-investment professionals. They help support the investment process. But the other mistake that a lot of organizations make, in my opinion, is they lower the bar for the non-investment side. We keep the bar high on everyone. So that creates an energy and a culture and a dynamism about what we do that I'm very proud of at XS.

27:44So you have an open plan office here. Yeah. People claim that's bad. I've never been persuaded, but defend an open plan office. Why is it good? I always knew it was going to be good. We've had one forever. I think it's particularly good today and where investing is going. The world is way more interconnected than ever. And very simply, who would have thought of a world five years ago, 10 years ago, where you have to have a conversation about software, power, and semiconductors all together. And so the open plan allows the organization to basically use the Socratic method, talk to one another, create sparks of curiosity that we can pull the thread on.

28:28If we all worked in individual offices, I think you end up with a much more complicated way to analyze companies, much more siloed. And I think we as a firm, but the world at large, is becoming much more connected. And for a brief while, you retired from investing, right? And then you came back. What's that story? I had like an incredibly fortunate early part of my career. So I was a young partner at a place called TPG Axon, which was an incredible hotbed of talent. I think some of the best investment talent I've ever met all worked there. And then we all ended up doing our own things. I started a firm called Sorbonne with a partner.

29:02And then I ended up leaving that firm. I wouldn't say I retired from investing. I retired from managing outside capital. which is a very different thing. This office that we're sitting in today, XN was the name of my family office at the time because I actually loved investing. And I just wasn't sure if we had a path to doing it as successfully as I wanted with outside capital. So for a couple of years, myself and my colleagues here, we managed basically my money with the same philosophy that we run XN in. But that was incredibly satisfying because the spark and the purity of the intellectual challenge of investing kind of came back to me.

29:38To be honest, towards the end of my time at my previous firm, I was less enthusiastic about the process and the excitement of investing than I certainly am today. And so going through that family office process really helped to underscore and bring me back to the joy of investing. Sociologically, how does New York City finance differ from London finance? So you've done things in both worlds, right? There's a feel to it in London. It's different. Yeah, it's a little more buttoned up and much more banker-like than entrepreneurial. And I would say America, I would say New York and California have a little bit more of the, less the banker energy and more the swashbuckling investor energy.

30:22And so even in New York, right, a lot of the history of the finance in New York were like pure swashbucklers. And so you have a little bit of that energy, even though we don't do the same thing at all. I don't do the same thing as Paul Tudor Jones at all. I don't do the same thing as Henry Kravis at all. But taking really big bets, being out there, it kind of seeps into the culture here. Whereas almost in the UK, it's the opposite is true, or had been true when I was there. And how is UAE finance evolving in that regard? I think it's evolving extremely quickly. I think it, of course, started with large sovereign wealth funds.

30:56But now, because of the amount of wealth that's being created, you're having a much high... Well, there's two things that are happening. The very favorable tax regime relative to the UK and European tax regime are attracting non-US citizens in droves to the UAE. Basically, no income tax, no capital gains will do that. We obviously, as Americans, can't do that. And the second thing is there's a tremendous amount of wealth being created in the region. And so you have this influx of talent, and then you have this influx of capital and this maturation of capital. And so, you know, I had never been to the Middle East prior to three or four years ago, and I've been many times since then.

31:31and it changes dramatically every single time I'm there. There is a very high degree of optimism and entrepreneurial energy there now. How does AI affect how you think about investing, companies, sectors? There's a good chance it spreads everywhere, right? How do you take that into account? And I would say Tyler has been like almost my coach in this because he has really encouraged me. I think we're a very modern organization and I'm a pretty modern person, but to really embrace the max case of what AI can do. I'm pretty optimistic as to what AI can do in an investment organization, but going back to, I think you need a lot of entrepreneurial energy to force it through.

32:11SEC regulated investment firms, there's just a ton of detritus within it. And the thing about AI is you have to push forward and push through it. Now, I think there's gonna be a couple of proximate effects. I would say on investing and then running an investment management organization are two different things. The proximate effects, I think, on investing are going to be, it's going to allow better, faster, more in-depth analysis much more quickly. And so, so much of our analyst time is spent on initial evaluations of companies. And so, I expect that in the next very short run, within the next year, to be able to have a lot of leverage from AI.

32:48That allows actually our analyst and myself and other partners here to spend most of our energy applying judgment and taste to the kind of the corpus of facts. And right now, one of the things I always like to say is if Julian Robertson came to my office and opened up my desktop, he would know exactly what to do. It's Bloomberg, it's Excel, it's et cetera. I think that's about to change really dramatically with custom tooling, custom analysis, et cetera. So that's on the investing side. I think one of the other things that is also non-intuitive is a lot goes into running an investment organization.

33:23Legal, the compliance burdens are off the charts, operations, tax, et cetera. I think there's a huge opportunity in making the quality of life and accuracy much better there. So I think there's going to be a twofold impact. But I also think most investment organizations do not have the wherewithal to go through change. But it's because yours is in founder mode that you think they do, hope they do. Yeah. And there's other organizations that are, I think, in founder mode, I think they will as well. Like, I think Thrive will. I think a lot of organizations will that have embraced this. But if you look at the history of our sub-industry within, so public markets investing, some private investing, the general industry pressures encourage you to not innovate.

34:10And so it really takes a lot of effort to innovate. And so founder mode, I think, is going to be really important in that. So there's a headline I read, I think, yesterday. JP Morgan is going to spend some large amount on - Two billion to get two billion savings. Yeah. And when you read that, what do you think? Nothing. Nothing. Yeah. That is a headline. Yeah, I think nothing. I think, first, I will say a couple of things. A lot of people, and this is not JP Morgan, obviously, it's an incredible organization, but a lot of people are in the headline generating business. as we talked prior, we're in the results generating business.

34:42And so in periods of technological change, that separates a great deal. And so there's a lot of headlines I would ignore. I would also say it's like very early. We are way earlier in the evolution of AI. So I'm very skeptical that a lot of companies like financial institutions are spending as much as they claim to be yet, because the use cases and the integrations are still very early in process to do. And what do you use AI for personally? Well, so one of the ways I've historically learned is, so, you know, we go back, I've always been a really curious person about more than just finance, quite a lot of things.

35:18I used to hire tutors. So if I wanted to learn about art, I'd email the art history department of a local university and they'd send me a master's student, I'd pay them, and they'd create a custom curriculum for me. I felt like I didn't know enough about Shakespeare. I did the same thing. I think already using AI as a knowledge augmenter is amazing. So that's how I personally use AI right now. If I want to go in depth in a subject matter, general or specific, it's my first port of call. Now, I have many questions about museums and art, and I know you're on the board of the Whitney, so I'm not asking you about the Whitney because it might be awkward for you to speak about that on the record.

35:59But if I go to most art museums and I see the gift shop and the restaurant, used to be those are always too small. Are we now at the point where those are too large? Or what's your opinion? There will never be a museum gift shop too big for me, is my general opinion. No, I think it varies deeply by institution. But I think one of the things, as an example, MoMA has done via MoMA store outside is they've taken the sensibilities of the museum and brought it to a lot of other places. And I think that's kind of one of the core purposes of a museum. And so, no, first of all, I haven't been to a gift shop or restaurant that's not extremely crowded.

36:38So it seems like they should be. So they still should be larger. What's the most common fundraising mistake that art museums make? So I think it's worthwhile. And when I was looking at the marginal revolution comments, I think people may not understand how museums work and operate. And so one of the ways I think about my schema of the way museums work is that they're public good that's largely financed by private capital. And so almost all museums operate at an operating deficit. And so that's like the number one thing that I think people should realize, which is these amazing cultural institutions all over the world are financed by people who want to bring that more into the world.

37:16It's not a for-profit endeavor. It really is like a part of a public good. Within that, there's obviously fundraising that you need to do. That pressure has gotten way more acute over the last, I would say, pre this administration, but just in general. Inflation has taken a toll. Admissions are a relatively small portion of the operating budget. And so there's going to be more and more pressure on doing a few things, including deaccessioning work. So selling work that are in the collections, raising capital from large donors. I think the biggest mistake a museum could make, especially like a public institution, is to have fundraising override the mission.

37:58To have donors, including donors like me, who I think my judgment is pretty good in these matters, overly influence program, overly influence community. I think that is the biggest mistake that institutions make. And over time, they always regret it. Should museums put more works out on the walls? I see so much blank wall space, and I know it's low status to put pictures on the way to the men's room, but I want them to do it. Should they do it? I think you bring about, I would say, a broader question, which is 1 % of most museums archive is ever on display. I think that personally is a tragedy.

38:33I think there is a huge opportunity in a digital world and an increasing physical world to take more of your work and bring it out to the masses. I think the best museums are working really hard to create interactive things online so you could see and study lots of works. I think what the V &A did, I'm not sure if you're familiar with what the V &A Museum did with their storage in the UK. It's outside of London. They created a beautiful site, a museum unto itself of storage. And I think that's like a brilliant idea. And so should they put more works on the wall above my pay grade? Should the museums be using their very significant archives and collections and bringing more out into the world digitally and physically?

39:15Absolutely. How will AI reshape art museums and the world of art? Putting aside AI-generated images. Yeah, well, actually, in quite a number of ways, I think one of the really interesting use cases that I've seen is allowing any language visitor to have their own personalized in-depth tour of a museum. And so if you just think about, because there's so many museum experiences where you just like go and walk in a circle, because it's like too crowded, you can't engage, you don't know as much about the art or the artist. It's like the captions are too small, all the stuff, right? Or you don't speak the language of the museum or, you know, whatever the case may be.

39:52I think that's going to be like an amazing set of promising instruments, which is you can use AR plus AI to understand the context of work much more broadly. Now about the Whitney, what is the biggest or most important strength of the Whitney that say even people who go might not know about? Their commitment to community. I think one of the mistakes, community access, and really, they're extraordinarily principles driven. Really a big believer in artistic freedom. A really big believer in the museum should be for everybody. Anyone under 25 can show up and go to the museum for free. That's like amazing.

40:32And so I think there's cultural tenets. They have a very specific mission. It's the Whitney Museum of American Art. It's almost all contemporary art. It's very different than the Museum of Modern Art. And so they hew very closely to the mission, but they also hew very closely to the principles. Now we're sitting in a room with a wonderful work by Kara Walker. She's a favorite contemporary artist of mine. How would you articulate what makes this Kara Walker special? There's a lot of Kara Walker that I like, but it's a bit generic. I feel I could see the same thing 200 times. Maybe you do over time.

41:04And some works really stand out. How do you think about why this one is amazing? Yeah, the je ne sais quoi of what makes an art piece stand out in someone's practice is something that I've been trying to refine my engagement of since I've been collecting. I think in this, people can't see the work, but in this particular work, it is so meticulously crafted. It is so clear what the point is. And it is so beautifully put together, even though it's a really complicated subject matter. It's visually arresting. And so I think in this case, that's what works here. What to you is special about the work of Rashid Johnson?

41:42Rashid is a really incredible person. So I know there's a lot of questions about art. Maybe I'd just like clarify a little bit about my approach to art collecting. So one of the things I want to say, to some extent, I want to make sure people understand, I certainly try not to be the cliche of the finance guy who gets into art. I actually fell in love with art before I fell in love with investing. And so I have been collecting since I was broke very early. When I got serious about collecting, I was 29 years old, and I made a really specific decision. The number one thing I identify is as an American, and I wanted to collect American art.

42:18The second thing I did was I wanted to collect artists of my generation. So when I was 29 years old, when I started really collecting, I decided I'm going to have a really specific collection. And that collection is going to be artists my age, 29 at the time, 44 today, plus or minus 20 years. I wasn't collecting any nine-year-olds, but I wanted to keep that criteria going all the way through. Rashid obviously fits really squarely within that. And we've been very lucky to become really good friends over time. But one of the most amazing things about his work is that in addition to being visually arresting, it is so intellectually complex that it stays with you.

42:59It is a portrait of a lot of feelings, a lot of anxiety, a lot of insecurities that I think we all have. And then it kind of keeps coming back to you. And so there's so many things I love about him as an artist and as a person. But I think his ability to take risks and exploit the really uncomfortable, like rise to the top. Because he could talk about someone who could coast where she could just make anxious audience paintings for the rest of his life and live a very comfortable living. he's decided not to do that. Myself and a few of our friends went to see, he put on a production of The Dutchman in a sauna in New York City, right?

43:36He directed a play in an amazing, like, that's a real risk for an artist that's a painter. He's making these really complicated installations. That's also a real risk. He's making movies. So he's pushing his practice. He's making himself uncomfortable. And as a viewer of the art, you also feel a lot of that energy. Does buying art and evaluating art make you a better investor in companies? 100%. In a different way than you think, or maybe I don't know exactly how you think, but here's how I think about it. It does a couple of things. I don't believe in art as an asset class. I never have, never will.

44:09I believe it is ultimately intellectual exercise that exercises the right side of my brain and gives me more context about the world around me. I think investing is ultimately about judgment and developing your own taste. And art collecting or any collecting or any connoisseurship is kind of the same way. So it forces you to really examine what's important, to really examine what makes something outstanding, to not just take somebody else's judgment and taste and apply it to yourself, but to develop your own. And so all of these soft skills that you develop along the way, I think, help in all domains.

44:48Salman Tour, why is he an interesting painter? Salman Tour, for those of you who don't know, there's two articles I'd encourage. There's a New York Times article about his work, and there's a New Yorker article about his work. Salman, I find both interesting in a general manner and a very specific manner as well. I am very drawn to virtuosity and excellence. and I think he is technically one of the most talented painters ever. He's incredible. The second thing is I'm fascinated by his practice. He paints and draws entirely from memory. He does not use a reference image. It's all in his mind's eye and he takes this technical virtuosity and puts it on canvas or wood in a way that's almost like mind-boggling, the level of detail, the level of excellence, the level of precision.

45:35And so it's really refreshing to see someone almost with the technique of an old master's working on a contemporary work. So I think he's extraordinarily talented in a general artistic manner. I would say, for me, it's actually also been really meaningful because Indian American, the first work I saw of Salman Tour, he had a series called The Weary Traveler or The Traveler, which was about basically people who look like me going through TSA post 9-11. And if any of you have traveled to me through TSA, it's not the most pleasant experience or certainly wasn't post 9-11. And so just seeing the feelings that I often felt on a painting were like absolutely crazy to me.

46:14Now, there's something in Jain philosophy that emphasizes the importance of multiple perspectives. Do you think you got any of that from your upbringing? I got a lot of it from, I don't think I got a lot of it, that specific thing from Jainism, but I got a lot of that from my mother. My mother, she's, I guess like now that I think about it, I'm a lot like her, but she would be very interested in being expert in a variety of fields just because she thought it would make her a more complete person. She started as a data scientist. When she retired, she started a jewelry company. You know, from that, she actually moved to China when she was 68 years old.

46:50She moved to a random city in China without telling us and went to art school there. So there's a little bit of that that kind of runs through my, there's a lot of that that runs through my veins. And so maybe she got it from her Janeism and her Jane upbringing, but I think that's where I got it from. And to go back to this finance idea of the trade you didn't make, what's an example of an artist who has a good reputation, who fits the criteria where you collect, but you haven't bought a work from that artist? And how do you think about why you haven't? Mark Grosjean probably fits that criteria, I think, pretty well.

47:22Well, it's just, you know, with art, you have to, in my experience, it's not just buying the criteria. The criteria narrows the funnel. But then you have to say, like, what does it mean? Do I get it? Do I love it? Can I live with it? How do all of these things add up together? And, you know, Mark's work, I know people love it. It just never stuck with me. There's so many other artists that I think are harder for other people. That kind of goes back to one needs to develop their own taste and judgment about whatever the topic is, whether it's investing, whether it's art, whether it's real, whatever the broad topic is, you need to put on clothes that are comfortable for you.

48:05And so for me, I have a very, I've developed a confident sense of what I like and what I'm drawn to, what I love. And so I stick with that. How is the artistic canon going to evolve? So if someone asks you about the 1960s, you say Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and so on and so on. And whether or not we all agree, it's pretty clear there's a list of names from that period. If you think about today and the generation you're collecting from, is the canon just going to stay a mess? Or is there going to be a winnowing where 20 years from now there'll be like 7 to 10 names who stand out above all others?

48:43How's that happening? You know, the funny thing is, first of all, I'm not an art historian, right? No, you're in it. You have skin in the game. I have skin in the game. You really care. But I think if you look at every period, in that period, it was kind of unclear. There's always a winnowing. And so there's always almost like a Cambrian explosion that winnows down into the people that were most important. I think you're actually starting to see it now where, you know, artists more and more, when you separate the commercial aspect of someone's art and the critical aspects, they are kind of coalescing around a smaller group of names than you would have started with 10 or 15 years ago.

49:19I expect that to continue, but honestly, my ability to predict who those names are, I'll have educated guesses, but I'm not going to be perfect at it. But let's say I ask you for one, and it's not that you're saying they're your favorite, right? But most likely to end up in the canon 20, 30 years from now. I think Dana Schutz. I think Dana Schutz is a really important painter, really pushed boundaries, very smart, very cerebral, very talented. I think she's likely to end up in the canon. It's probably underrated today vis-a-vis that. I think Rudolf Stengel is not underrated, but I think is highly likely to be an extremely important artist, as is Christopher Woolf.

49:57So I think you are starting to see more and more of that. I would bet Rashid and Salman, who you referenced, end up there as well. What makes the Rubelle collection amazing? I didn't say it was amazing. the museum in Miami is very good it is very good I would say I and that you know I haven't spent enough time at the new Rubelle but my favorite place that no longer exists in Miami was the Delacruz collection where you can go there and it was both accessible and exciting it was not too intimidating and you know I'm it's such a tragedy that it closed the new branch of the Rubelle. It opened with a great exhibit, and what's in there now is not very good at all.

50:40So I'm, I suppose, bearish on it at the moment. Yeah, I think there's one thing also, there's a lot of bad art. This is not a comment on the Rubelle, but I think any institution that shows a lot of art, there's often a lot of bad art. Do you think there is what you might call an arbitrage in current art markets? Some people say, well, if you love textiles, they're really much cheaper than paintings, and you can get more aesthetic value for the dollar you spend. You may or may not agree, but that's just an example of a claim about an arbitrage in art markets. Some people say drawings. Do you see one?

51:12Some people say old masters. I think Tom Hill famously bought old ancient bronzes to complement his contemporary art collection. The one thing I would just say about the art market right now, we're in a mega reset as a lot of the mediocre works and mediocre galleries exit stage left, and you're left with just higher quality, higher fidelity work. I do think this concept of like, what is the best value is complicated in art because I'm not sure that that should matter. I think in the pursuit of art, if you don't think of it as an asset class, which I view it as an intellectual pursuit, the dollars are less important.

51:55So you're not trying to arb the Dana Schutz drawing versus the Dana Schutz painting, which, you know, theoretically one could do. But maybe you can afford only one of them, right? Yeah. But I think it's also okay if you could afford none of them. And I think if you can appreciate them, which is, I think, obviously the vast majority of people. And so that being said, I do think there's probably a tremendous, this may be controversial, but I think there's a whole amazing group of white male artists that are probably overlooked and their huge values in if you care about that, that I think will be very, very important in art where there is like a lot of value in the contemporary art market.

52:34Now we have some mutual friends and I won't name names, but believe it or not, they somewhat scorn contemporary art. I believe it. Although they're highly, highly intelligent. What is it you think they're missing? How would you articulate that? What I would, you know, it's interesting. I think some of the friends you're talking about and not even the specific people, but if you broaden, are essentially Silicon Valley futurists. And I would say, broadly speaking, they have been, I would say, both disdainful and confused about the attraction of contemporary art. And I would say some of them are even disdainful or confused, especially much younger ones about the role of institutions and cities, as an example.

53:14I'd say a couple of things. One, not everyone needs to like everything, which is like the most important thing, right? I kind of feel everyone does need to like everything, but go on. Yeah, well, you know, I think it's important to channel some creative energy into something that's more meaningful for the person. Now, the interesting thing, of course, you've seen Silicon Valley is a lot of the OG.com founders have found themselves on the very deep end of contemporary art all of a sudden. And so as they have evolved and their lifestyles have evolved, whether I think Jeff Bezos and there's others went from relatively low participation in the art market to extremely significant participation in the art market.

53:51And so maybe it's just an evolution and a point in time. So that is definitely one theory of the case. I think a more accurate theory of the case is I do think that if you look across all culture, over all time, art was an important part of certain aspects of society, but not all aspects of society. And so I think you're just seeing that because you and I live also between two worlds, right? And so we're just get the magnified version of it. You have a new project. It's called Totei, T-O-T-E-I. Tell us about it. So I love craft and craftsmanship. It's one of the things I'm passionate about. And I wanted to, very simply, Totei is a - Totei, sorry.

54:33Totei is a magazine that celebrates craft and craftsmanship. So there's a lot of questions there. Like, A, why do you care about craft and craftsmanship? B, why would you start a magazine in a complete digital age? And I have a few theories that I wanted to exploit and that led to Tote. One is I think while not everyone appreciates contemporary art, almost everyone at a high level that I know appreciates dedication and craft. And I think there's just far less resources in exploring the art of craft, the art of dedication, the art of engagement and getting really good at something in a very broad way.

55:14So I wanted to create a forum to make sure a lot of craft, and that's not necessarily, but it's not necessarily not like quilt making in certain regions. It means stand-up comedy. It means design. It means anything where you put a huge amount of effort to get better, to create a great product at the end. So I was thinking about how to express that. And I had a few ideas, which we were exploring. And I said, you know, we should create a magazine. You should create both a digital and physical version of a celebration of craft. And so that's what we started. And so it's going to be a pretty serious endeavor.

55:48It'll launch in digital format later this year and physical format next year. So late 2025. Yeah. And it will appear regularly or be? The digital piece will appear regularly. The physical piece is probably be two to three times a year. It's a pretty heavy lift to do it. I mean, of course, if you are doing a magazine on craft and craftsmanship, it better be a really good magazine. And so the amount of effort we put into every issue is extremely high. And if someone just Googles T-O-T-E-I by the end of the year, it'll be there for them. Yeah. And you can go to tote.com now, sign up for the early versions of the newsletter.

56:21But I think it's going to be fun. The interesting thing is I put it out into the world. It's super resonant with people, all sorts of people, college students, comedians, artists, investors who take great pride in their craft. My craft is investing. I take great pride in how we do that craft. And everyone feels seen when you put a spotlight on another craftsperson. If we think about the general public, I hear a lot of pessimism about the general American public, even the educated side. Well, people read less or they know less about certain things. if you think of their artistic literacy, whether it's in craftsmanship or contemporary painting or just art museums in general, whatever else might be in New York City, what's your assessment of where we're at?

57:10Is it dire? Is it great? I think you're at a positive inflection point, is my read of the situation, which is there's a shocking amount of aggregate pessimism everywhere right now. I think part of it is still after effects of COVID. Part of it is we have a complicated economic environment where there's haves and have-nots. There's a lot of complexity. It's obviously a really turbulent time in the world. And that all feeds into, I think, some of the pessimism out there. I think there's all that people are reading less. They're in less relationships. There's all of those things. But I think by and large, as I look at it somewhat dispassionately, there's huge reasons for optimism, especially as an American, where while it is complicated, there's a lot of great things happening here.

57:52And the reason I think we're at a positive inflection point is I think some of the ways to make it better versus just complain have started to make its way into the ether. I do think, you know, it's interesting. I was at a conference recently, and there's so much tumorism about AI as an example. But I think like one of the main proximate effects is highly optimistic. Increased knowledge, decrease in, you know, not joyful, et cetera. And so I think we're about to see a series of innovation that drives from pessimism to optimism, or at least say so. Final question. Other than craftsmanship, what is it you hope to learn about next?

58:31It can be a sector, a painter, a part of New York City, anything. Like, what is it you wake up some Sunday morning and it's like, yeah, I got to learn about this? Oh, that's a great question. What will I learn about next? I want to spend a lot more time, this is going to be super nerdy, but digging into how, well, I've done some of it, as you know, but how we can make practical policy, like understanding how the guts of things get done in local and statewide government. and federal government so we can push the ball forward. I think there's actually probably, going back to our Robert Moses conversation, there's probably a lost art of making things work that I want to re-engage in.

59:11So myself as a concerned citizen, others can make things a lot better. And that's probably like a kind of technical, kind of boring thing that you can engage in, but be very excited about. Gaurav Kapadia, thank you very much. Thank you.

59:26Thanks for listening to Conversations with Tyler. You can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. If you like this podcast, please consider giving us a rating and leaving a review. This helps other listeners find the show. On Twitter, I'm at Tyler Cowen, and the show is at Cowen Convos. Until next time, please keep listening and learning. Thank you.