Are the Billionaires Smothering HBO?

0:09Hello, and welcome to Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Bloomberg. I'm here with Emily Peck of Axios.

0:20Felix Salmon: Hello, hello. I'm here with Elizabeth Spiers of the New York Times. Hello. We are going to talk about oil this week, how it's very good for rubbing into your body and getting a suntan. No, not that kind of oil. We're going to talk about crude oil. We're going to talk about the global benchmark. We're going to talk about what's going on with the straight-up Hormuz and the oil markets and whether it matters. We are going to talk about David Zaslav, who's very rich, and what that means for the future of HBO. We are also going to learn about what disco dance is, which is going to rhyme with Emily's number this week, which you really do need to stay to the end of the show because Emily has the best number ever.

0:59We have another segment, which is basically just me ranting about Banksy journalism. It's a can't miss. It's a can't miss. It's Felix ranting. It's all coming up on Slate Money.

1:16Felix Salmon: Slate Money is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab, to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and regulatory affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market.

1:57Felix Salmon: Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. My favorite travel hack? Easy. It's using Apple Card. It's great knowing that every time I dine out, buy souvenirs, or pay my hotel bill using my Apple Card, I'm actually earning up to 3 % daily cash back. So if you're like me and love to travel, then apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at applecard.com.

2:44Okay, so let's get into this. Emily, how many stories have you written about oil in the past couple of weeks?

2:50Felix Salmon: I don't have a count, but it's a lot. I have written that Brent crude oil is the global benchmark in stories approximately 6 ,422 times. And this is important. Why? Oil trades on a global market. And if you take a bunch of oil off the global market, the price goes up because demand stays constant for a while, at least. And there's not enough supply to meet the demand. Therefore, the price rises. And when the price rises, it's bad news bear. Price rises, nobody likes in the U.S. because it means that gas prices rise. We all know, we live through inflation, we know that gas price is a big billboard of an administration's failure.

3:31It's the most salient price in the economy, as we have said many times.

3:35Felix Salmon: We've said it a million times. But more significantly for other countries, the oil that's come off the board, because the Iranians are blockading the Strait of Hormuz, which 20 % of the world's oil flows through, that's really really dire for countries especially in Asia who import all or nearly all their energy and those countries are already seeing like very serious consequences and are afraid of shortages and putting measures into place already to prevent. They started banning cremations in India and that kind of thing. Yes they switched the cremations to use coal or wood instead of gas. And some places, Philippines is doing four-day work weeks.

4:17Felix Salmon: It's getting bad. And Australia apparently is facing a bit of a gas shortage. It seems like it's more from hoarding than actual shortages. But I mean, it's all of a piece, right?

4:27Elizabeth Spiers: Do you get the sense that Trump maybe just didn't think this through very much? Who can say what's in his mind? So let's take that seriously for a minute. It strikes me, and Emily, you've been covering this much more closely than I have. So tell me if I'm wrong here. But it strikes me that for all that there are a change in cremation procedures in India, and the price of gas is higher than it was, and there's a few early sort of signs of number go up. This is a million miles away from a 1973 style oil crisis. This is just, you know, there's a significant part of the economy, which just got more expensive.

5:08This kind of thing happens quite a lot. And if this is the worst that happens in terms of the deleterious effects on Americans, I'm sure that Donald Trump can cope with it. It's not that big of a deal.

5:22Felix Salmon: Okay, so I'm going to go ahead. So yes and no. Yes. And I've written about this and we've talked about it. The oil shock in the US is not going to be comparable to the 1970s. No, it is going to matter. Already, we are seeing central banks around the world sort of reassessing or rethinking their sort of rate forecast. We see in the UK, there's now pricing in rate increases. So like inflation forecasts and predictions are getting all jumbled up. So inflation, people are worried now that it's going to rise. And I'm just going to stay on the U.S. So in the U.S., there are signs that it is, in fact, already rising.

6:04Felix Salmon: It might rise a little more. So you say, OK, well, we just lived through this in 2022. There was a war in Russia. Gas prices rose more than they have risen so far in this situation. Oil prices rose back then higher than they are right now. We can live through it. The economy was fine. But I say to you, no, Felix, the difference now is we have a really lousy labor market. It's no hire, no fire. Chair Powell said the day before we taped that there was no hiring growth last year, and that's really, really weird. So now there is a fear of some kind of like stagflation-y vibe. Powell said, no, we're not going to have stagflation again, but I'm saying there's a fear of less economic growth and at the same time, inflation.

6:52Felix Salmon: At the same time. That's different and new. So 100%, yeah, growth will be slower, inflation will be higher. I'm just saying, in the grand scheme of things, we're not talking enormous. We're not talking crisis. We're just talking growth is slower, inflation is higher. But let me keep you on the subject, since you brought it up, let me keep you on the subject to central banks, because I was always under the impression that central banks kind of ignored energy prices when it came to inflation. And they talk about core inflation, which explicitly excludes energy precisely because energy is so volatile and is not something they can have under their control.

7:32So if inflation goes up because of oil prices, why would that cause central banks to raise rates or to not cut rates?

7:39Felix Salmon: I mean, that's a good question. I'm not sure I have the best answer for it. Although I did learn recently that the reason we have a core inflation measure that strips out volatile oil is because the central banker didn't want to include oil because it would make the inflation number look worse. That is literally why we have that. So zooming out, I question why. I question its usefulness because what I'm saying is oil and energy prices do really seem to matter, especially maybe not for the US as much as Europe, because this crisis is really hitting their LNG, their liquefied natural gas, and that really would raise prices.

8:14So to put it clearly, obviously it matters for households, right? If you're measuring inflation in the country and how much it's hurting your buying power, and you have to go out and fill up your car or whatever, it affects households 100%. It is a real part of real inflation. The reason why central bankers generally ignore it is not because it's not real inflation, It's because they have no control over it. The idea behind monetary policy is that if you raise interest rates, then that will bring down inflation for various reasons that we don't need to go into. But that lever doesn't affect oil prices.

8:54Ringing up interest rates is not going to bring down oil prices. So that like it's a solution in search of like it is not a solution to the problem. If the problem is rising oil prices, then raising interest rates does not help that problem.

9:07Felix Salmon: But can I ask a question, and then Elizabeth really needs to speak. The idea behind raising races is slows growth, and slowing growth would do some demand destruction when it comes to oil and energy, right? Maybe a little, but we're, you know, we're 70 % of the economy of services, you know? But Elizabeth, yeah.

9:25Elizabeth Spiers: Yeah, well, now I forgot my point that I was going to make like 10 minutes ago. But another thing to sort of think about is just that, you know, this affects households, yes, but also truckers and commercial enterprises that need gas as well. But there seems to be an assumption that this is not going to go on forever. And I'm not sure that Trump really has an exit plan right now. So I think the knock-on effects of keeping the Strait of Hormuz blocked could be far more reaching than just gas prices in the U.S. for the U.S. economy.

10:00Felix Salmon: Yes, I think that's the least of the issue. I think the reason why people think it won't go on forever is just because the U.S. is going to run out of Tomahawk missiles. We've used up most of them already. I mean, short of a physical invasion of Iran where we send in the army.

10:15Elizabeth Spiers: You say that like Pete Hegseth wouldn't consider it. I mean, I'm sure they've talked about it, right? But they're not going to do it for a bunch of obvious reasons. I mean, yeah, come back to me in a month and quote me and say, I feel like you were wrong about that. But I'm quite comfortable saying that the limit to sending in troops is going to be like, well, we might send in like a special team to try and grab some uranium or something. But they're not going to try and physically take over a country the size of Iran. It would be even more insane than what we've seen already. Well, I hope you are correct.

10:48Elizabeth Spiers: Another factor that might make a difference for Trump politically, he is obsessed with oil. Our stockpiles at the lowest it's been in 30 years. And as a result of what's happening now, we're about to release a big chunk of it. When he's talked about places like Nigeria and Colombia and, you know, these countries that he probably, before he became president, couldn't find on a map, they're all oil rich countries. So I'm also curious about what happens if this, if Trump sort of chasing oil resources in other countries expands beyond what he's doing now, especially if the conditions worsen. I just spent this morning in a little sort of breakfast discussion about Venezuela.

11:28And one of the interesting things there is that Trump does seem to have kind of forgotten about Venezuela. He's kind of moved on to Iran at this point. But Venezuela is obviously the first big source of oil revenues and oil reserves that is top of the list of non-Iran places that Trump is interested in. And one of the big questions there in Venezuela is how long can Delce Rodriguez hold on without having some kind of a coup? And the answer is basically for as long as the Venezuelan army is afraid of Trump and is afraid of what he might do to them if they take over. And the longer this war in Iran goes on and the more distracted he is by this war in Iran, the less threatening the army is to Venezuela.

12:17because, as I say, there are a finite number of missiles and we've used up most of them. And as you say, there is a finite number of barrels of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and we're using up most of those. There is this kind of crazy front-loading thing where Trump is just spending a whole bunch. I saw a report saying that he's going to ask for$200 billion to replace the munitions and the material that he spent in Iran. You're like, what? And he's doing all of this spending, you know, and he's like, well, we'll work out the consequences later. But he's a very sort of short termist kind of person.

12:52And the long term consequences of how are we going to rebuild, you know, munitions and how are we going to rebuild our oil reserve that he's going to leave to whoever his successor is quite clearly.

13:03Felix Salmon: Felix, you were saying that this isn't a crisis. And from the perspective of just like the U.S. economy, it might not be. Like we can maybe absorb the higher gas prices or an energy exporter, all of that. We're not going to have 1970s lines or whatever. But in terms of geopolitics and relationships and economic relationships between countries and allyships and all of this, what Trump did by invading Iran was sort of like throw the whole balance of power that he's been pushing on for the past year and a half with his tariffs and the war in Venezuela and now this. sort of like pushed it over the edge and sort of like rejiggered like the sanctions balance of power that the U.S.

13:47Felix Salmon: had been sort of holding on to. And I've been talking to Nicholas Mulder at Cornell. He's the guy who wrote the sanctions book about this a bit. And basically, we put all these sanctions on Iran, but then we invaded them. And they were like, well, nothing matters anymore. So they did their own economic warfare finally back to us, closed down the Strait of Hormuz and threw everything off kilter, then the US then pulls back temporarily, but who knows, maybe temporarily so far, pulls back Russia sanctions because it can't enforce them anymore because it needs the oil too bad. And then today, right before we were taping, the Treasury Secretary says we might lift Iranian sanctions on oil.

14:29We might let Iran sell its oil.

14:31Felix Salmon: Like, what? The Venezuela sanctions, to be clear, are still in place. The Iranian ones might be lifted. that Russians are the only winners of this war. They are making money hand over fist with their oil. None of this makes any geopolitical sense whatsoever.

14:48Elizabeth Spiers: So I have a theory about this. It's part of my recurring theory that Trump is permanently stuck in 1988. And in his mind, the only kind of geopolitical environment that he's accustomed to is a bipolar environment where you have two superpowers who have the most both hard power and soft power and can wield economic stations against the rest of the world. He doesn't think far enough ahead to imagine a country like Iran having that power or being able to use its own economic chits in order to have leverage. Well, I mean, I think the lesson of 1973 is that Iran has a lot of economic power, right? Well, with Saudi Arabia, with the rest of OPEC.

15:29But the Middle East broadly, I think, had more power. I think we know had more power in the 1970s than it does now, and they were not afraid to use it. But yes, I think you're right that there are going to be all manner of sort of unintended consequences and second and third order effects here. But I want to go back just to where we started, Emily, and Brent Scrooge being the global benchmark oil price.

15:54Felix Salmon: Global benchmark. Because it strikes me that this is a nice little, cute little journalistic trick, right? We look at the number that has gone up a lot. And we're like, now we need to explain why we're looking at this number. And we say, it's the global benchmark. The fact is that the reason why we're looking at this number as American journalists is because that's the one that's gone up. And there is this divergence between Brent crude and West Texas, right? And if you look at WTI, it hasn't gone up nearly as much. And Brent crude has because it trades on a different market. And oil is not, it turns out, quite as fungible as we all thought, right?

16:28Felix Salmon: Yeah. No, you're still right. I was just checking to make sure you were still right. I wanted to dispute it. One reason I was hearing today that there's this big disparity in the U.S. oil and the Brent crude, which is, did I mention it was the global benchmark? One reason for the big spread between the two, people were thinking that the U.S. might do a ban on oil exports, but the White House said it wasn't going to do that. And that would have made WTI, the U.S. oil benchmark, sorry, trade lower. But it's still trading lower even after they denied that. So yeah, I think you're right is what I'm trying to say.

17:03Felix Salmon: I tried to make it as wordy as possible to say Felix was right because I didn't want to. Never just come out and say that because that would just be embarrassing. But it does show that we have inflicted much more energy-related pain on Eurasia than we have on ourselves. Yes, you don't even need to look at numbers for that. You could just read the reports of all the shortages and the cremation switchover. and, I mean, the four-day workweek.

17:29Elizabeth Spiers: Although, let me be the first to suggest that we all think about imposing four-day workweeks, right?

17:37Felix Salmon: I mean, that would be a wonderful benefit. And already we're seeing the hot takes about, like, maybe this incident will get everyone toward using renewable energy or whatever. Four-day workweeks and everyone moves to solar. Yeah, it's a win. It's the wokest move yet from the White House, actually.

17:52Elizabeth Spiers: Maybe Trump will suddenly embrace windmills.

17:55Felix Salmon: Did you see Stephen Miller's wife? I forget her name. Katie something. Katie Miller. Thank you. She has tweeted about solar energy being like a good thing. So, I mean, I don't know. Things are changing. Well, doesn't she have a thing with Elon Musk who's big into solar energy? I cannot comment on such speculation. I just know she tweeted about solar energy. She's working for Elon Musk now. Yes, right. Working for him.

18:29Slate Money is brought to you by Apple Card. Hey, you could be earning 2 % daily cash back on that purchase. And that one. And even that one. That's because Apple Card users earn 2 % daily cash back on every purchase, including everyday items you buy online or in-store, when using their Apple Card with Apple Pay. Not an Apple Card customer? you can apply in the wallet app on iPhone. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch, terms and more at apple.co slash benefits.

19:13Slate Money is sponsored this week by Quince. These days, I am all about quality over quantity, especially when it comes to clothes. Fast fashion has ruined the world. It is filling landfills. It is often cheaper to buy an item of clothing than it is to dry clean it. This is just terrible for the environment. It's terrible for consumerism. Don't do that. Buy high quality pieces and keep them and treasure them. They will stay in style for years because they are just good stylish pieces. If it's not well made and versatile, don't buy it. You should instead buy from Quince. Their fabrics feel elevated, are elevated, the cuts are thoughtful, and the pricing is sensible.

19:57It is so much less than what you would pay for the same quality from any other household brand. Quince makes high-quality wardrobe staples using premium fabrics like 100 % European linen, 100 % silk, organic cotton poplin. What am I not saying here? Polyester, lyacil, anything weird like that. We are talking lightweight cotton cashmere sweaters, natural fibers, perfect for the changing seasons. With great seasonal colors and prints, Quince works directly with safe, ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen. You're not paying for brand markup. You're not paying for fancy retail stores. You're just paying for quality clothing.

20:32Quince clothing is consistently rated 4.5 to 5 stars by thousands of customers. Real people wear these pieces every day and actually love them. The Quince napkins I have, pure linen, are honestly as good as any napkins you've ever experienced in your life. I have Quince all over my bed. I have Quince all over my wardrobe. Stop waiting to build the wardrobe you actually want. You don't need a closet full of options. You just need pieces that work right now. Go to quince.com slash money for free shipping and 365-day returns. That's a full year to wear it and love it. And you will. Now available in Canada too.

21:08Don't keep settling for clothes that don't last. Go to quince.com slash money for free shipping and 365-day returns. quince.com slash money.

21:23Slay Money is sponsored this week by Vanguard. As we step into a new year, it's the perfect time for all the advisors listening to think about how to set your clients up for success. One way to do that is to level up your fixed income strategy. But bonds are tricky. The market is huge, rates shift, and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with scale and expertise matters. Vanguard brings both. Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. That's not a tagline. It's a commitment to your clients. It means top grade products across the board. The lineup has over 80 bond funds that are actively managed by a 200-person global squad of sector specialists, analysts, and traders.

22:06This is not a firm with star portfolio managers. It's a different philosophy where the best active strategies aren't locked away with one person. They're shared across the team. so every client benefits from the collective brainpower, not just one individual's take. The bond market is insanely complex. It's not something one person or even a small team can realistically keep up with. Vanguard has been in the game a long time, and their scale gives them a serious edge. They're able to invest across all kinds of sectors, maturities, and geographies, which means they can spot and act on opportunities that others might miss.

22:42Some managers out there promise big returns, but those usually come with big risks, and that can mean a rollercoaster ride for investors. Vanguard takes a steadier approach. They don't go all in on risky bets. They focus on reliability and consistency. It's not always flashy, but it sets the standard for what dependable investing should look like. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, go see the record for yourself at Vanguard.com slash audio. That's Vanguard.com slash audio. All investing is subject risk vanguard marketing corporation distributor talking of billionaires can we talk about david zaslav who is now legitimately genuinely a billionaire one of those self-made billionaires he just rolled up his sleeves got to work and made himself a billion dollars most of which has come in the past few weeks when he managed to sell his company to a different billionaire, David Allison, using a different billionaire still, Larry Allison's money.

23:49But all of these billions have made their way to David Zaslav. And all right, hold on to your hats here. Maybe he deserves it. What? Like, he sold his crappy media company for, like, three times what it was trading for on the open stock market before, like, the takeover talks began. And he managed to create a bidding war out of thin air between the Ellisons and Netflix. And he managed to get so much money out of the Ellisons that they really didn't want to spend. He wound up selling this company for, like,$111 billion. And no one thinks it's worth$111 billion. dollars. Like, yeah, he should probably get like a billion dollars for doing that.

24:31Elizabeth Spiers: Is there really talent involved, though, in getting the Ellisons to name the highest number a la succession? I mean, I don't think I could have done it. I mean, maybe. I also have a question. His compensation, his parting compensation is$700 million, but also around$300 million in tax reimbursements. Is that normal? Oh, yeah. Tax gross ups. That's very common. How does that work, Felix? CEO compensation agreements, which is basically like, we will give you this much of stock for your working, but we don't know what the tax regime is going to be. So we're going to just give you a tax gross up of whatever stock you need to pay in taxes.

25:15On top of that, we're going to give you like a post tax number and then whatever the extra needs to be in order to make it a post tax number.

25:22Elizabeth Spiers: We're going to pay your taxes for you, person who needs your taxes paid by an extra turtle source least of all.

25:29Felix Salmon: It's just, I mean, yeah, maybe he did a good job, but like give him a watch. Like why does he get to have a big time? Do you know what I mean? Like when I do a good job, I get like a taco emoji and a Slack channel. I'm just saying like the rules are different, I guess, when you have a lot of money. Well, maybe he got a billion dollars and a taco emoji.

25:50Felix Salmon: He is a survivor though, right? I mean, we have, this is actually not the first time we have talked about Zaslav's ability to sort of deal make and like come out on top like he was running a bunch of crappy fucking third rate discovery um television channels called the Discovery Network and everyone was like well that is a doomed business and somehow to this day I'm not entirely sure how this crappy bunch of television cable channels managed to buy Warner Brothers which was many multiples of its size. And he's like, hey, now I own Warner Brothers. I am now a fully fledged media mogul, even though I just came out of crappy cable channels.

26:31And then he realized that the combination of Warner Brothers and Discovery, which he inventively called Warner Brothers Discovery, was also too small to compete and was going sideways and nowhere. And he sold that to an equally stupid company called Skydance, which was even smaller than one of the other. I think it was even smaller than Discovery.

26:56Elizabeth Spiers: Is this a kind of failing up? Yeah, and so they're all just merging these dumb small companies which are never going to be big enough to compete. But guys, I just need to get your buy-in on this, right? What is the combined company of Discovery and Skydance going to be called? Obviously, it has to be called Disco Dance, right?

27:15Felix Salmon: Love it. So good. We need to make this happen. Disco dance. I couldn't remember. I was trying to remember just now, and I was like, it's disco something. Disco dance, of course. Disco dance, yeah.

27:26Elizabeth Spiers: Of course. But this doesn't answer the most pressing question of all of this, which is, is HBO going to suck now? So, yeah, the answer is that HBO has been sucking ever since Zaslav bought it, and it became loaded up with debt. And it has not had the opportunity or the ability to just go out. Part of why HBO was HBO was it was uniquely capable to spend gazillions of dollars on making Game of Thrones and no one else was able to do that. That has not been the case for a while. If you're looking for a TV channel that has unlimited amounts of money to throw at making prestige TV and that doesn't have any ads and has a really sleek and user-friendly and highbrow kind of audience, that exists.

28:08It's called Apple TV. It is not HBO. It hasn't been HBO for a while.

28:13Felix Salmon: I'm not ready to declare that HBO is bad now because I just did a whole podcast about its show industry, which I thought was excellent and very HBO, super HBO-like. They have some new Game of Thrones spinoff that people really seem to enjoy. Like, they're still doing their thing. Yeah, it's not nothing, right? It's definitely not nothing. And I was talking to Felix Gillette about this. He wrote a book on HBO. He literally wrote a book on HBO. And one of the great pleasures of working at Bloomberg is that I get to wander over to Felix's desk and have a chat with him. And he was like, yeah, industry is interestingly reminiscent of the golden era of HBO in that the first couple of seasons were kind of shit.

28:58And they kept on funding it until it started getting good. That violates the contemporary laws of streaming, which are much more like if it doesn't work within the first two episodes, then you just give up on that and you trash it. So there is still something there. There is still a franchise there. But right now, HBO is sitting there in the name of a streaming service, right? There's this streaming service called HBO Max. They tried to take the name out for a hot minute and rebrand it to just Max. That didn't work very well. And so they went, they unrebranded and went back to HBO Max. But now they're going to merge the HBO Max streaming service with this other streaming service that no one watches called Paramount+.

29:37and when those two merge I can guarantee you and this is as much of a guarantee as Trump is not going to invade Iran the HBO brand the HBO name is not going to be in the name of that streaming service that'll be a mistake we're going to have Apple having a streaming service named after itself we're going to have Disney having a streaming service named after itself we're going to have Amazon having a streaming service named after itself we're going to have Netflix like having a streaming service named after itself. HBO is going to be a tiny little vertical corner of some massive disco dance streaming service.

30:12Elizabeth Spiers: It's going to be called Disco Dance Max. That's the inevitable. Disco Dance to the max. I think we should call it that. Definitely.

30:20Felix Salmon: You were saying before, and you say in your very nice piece that you wrote about this, that Apple TV is like the new HBO because it has the rich elite audience of wealthy people high in their own supply, watching fancy people and fancy places do fancy things, which I really stick to my description there because that's what it is. That's what severance is. And people love it. Apple TV, it has to be brand safe because it's not simply streaming. It's not a content company. It's a company you buy phones from. It has to be brand safe. Their shows lack what HBO has always had, which is edge, which in some eras just meant boobs, but in other eras meant actual edge.

31:00Felix Salmon: And I just, I mean, that's going to go away. If HBO can't keep being HBO, there really isn't a substitute.

31:07Elizabeth Spiers: Where are you going to get your boobs if there's no? I feel like the boobs, like we're on the internet, people. Finding boobs, that has never been easier. But if I try and think to myself, what is the edgiest, grittiest, the kind of stuff that HBO would fund and no one else would fund at the highest quality, the thing I come up with is The Wire, which is probably the best television series of all time.

31:32Felix Salmon: Apple TV would never make The Wire. And I think it would. I think The Wire would be okay on Apple TV. I think they would be okay with The Wire. There's nothing in The Wire that isn't fine for Apple and Apple's brand. I just watched an Apple show last night, and they had an extended product placement in it for the Olive Garden. I don't think that's happening with The Wire. There was product placement for The Olive. Yeah, I'm watching Shrinking on Apple TV. Good show. Very nice, not edgy. And there was a whole scene in an Olive Garden. I don't know for sure that it was product placement, but like, don't you think it had to be?

32:08Like Kool-Aid in the studio?

32:10Felix Salmon: They talked about the breadsticks. They mentioned the fried ravioli. Nissy, this is not product placement for Olive Garden, by the way. I'm just recounting a story. We should do some reporting on this. Sorry, I took us totally off track with that. No, no, off track. This is what Sleep Money lives for. This is the track. Wherever we go, that is the track.

32:39This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. My favorite travel hack? Easy. It's using Apple Card. It's great knowing that every time I dine out, buy souvenirs, or pay my hotel bill using my Apple Card, I'm actually earning up to 3 % daily cash back. So if you're like me and love to travel, then apply for Apple Card in the Wallet app today. Subject to credit approval, Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch, terms and more at applecard.com. Slate Money is sponsored this week by Samsara. If a driver in your fleet got in an accident tomorrow, could you prove what actually happened?

33:24Without footage, it's much harder. So your insurance rates spike and you're stuck paying for it. That's why so many fleets choose Samsara's AI-powered dashcams, clear video evidence, real-time alerts, and coaching tools that help prevent accidents before they happen. Samsara is more than a dashcam. It's a complete connected operations platform with GPS tracking, asset visibility, maintenance insights, safety analytics, and compliance tools all in one place. Protect your drivers, cut costs, and operate smarter with Samsara. Samsara has an AI that helps reduce crash rates by nearly 75%. It has dashcams, which capture real-time video that prove when your drivers aren't at fault, protecting them from false claims.

34:15Samsara is rated number one by G2 for fleet management, asset tracking, fleet maintenance, and more. Samsara is the company that is looking out for the truck drivers and the warehouse teams who are keeping us in deliveries every day. So don't wait for the next accident to take action. Head to samsara.com slash slate money to request a free demo and see how Samsara brings visibility and safety to your operations. That's samsara.com slash slate money. Samsara operates smarter. I hate to say this about my former employer, and I loved working for them for five years, and they were a very good employer.

34:59But dear God, this Reuters investigation into Banksy, what the actual fuck?

35:05Elizabeth Spiers: I love that this story really irritates you. I bought it up because I thought it would be up your alley.

35:10Felix Salmon: Yeah, Elizabeth was like, he likes art. Here's an art story.

35:14Elizabeth Spiers: Well, it was about the market value of Banksy responding to, and I didn't realize he had been outed, I guess, in 2008. Or also by the Daily Mail, though. The Mail on Sunday, if you process.

35:26Felix Salmon: The fancy Daily Mail. There's like the fancy Daily Mail and the unfancy one.

35:30Elizabeth Spiers: Okay, explain why it's irritating.

35:31Felix Salmon: Explain it all, Felix. Maybe back up and like break it all down. Okay, so do we need to explain who Banksy is? Honestly, why not? She says because she only kind of knows who Banksy is. So Banksy is a street artist. He also does works on canvas. He's sold works for millions of dollars that's all been good for him like most graffiti artists he just refers to himself by this sort of nom de street which is Banksy and that's the important brand who makes the art and back when he first started becoming famous because he was famous people were like well who are you really and he wouldn't say and it was this kind of like dumb art world guessing game of Who is Banksy?

36:17Is he the guy from Massive Attack? No, he probably isn't because his stencils are popping up in places when Massive Attack is on tour somewhere. And then eventually, in 2008, the Mail on Sunday reveals who he is. He's some guy called Robin Gunningham. And that actually makes sense why he's called Banksy because his name is Robin. And so it's Robin Banks. Banksy, get it? Dumb English humor. and so everyone kind of sees this and everyone goes well i have no idea who robin gunningham is so the fact that he has this other name robin gunningham and not just banksy is it tells me really nothing about banksy and banksy goes on having a lucrative career his work sell for more and more money they peak in the sort of crazy meme stock years of 2021 2022 sell for like over 10 million dollars i think for some of them and yeah he has a kind of like viral moment when one of them gets like shredded in the middle of an auction anyway it's all very dunty and whatever and Banksy becomes this quite popular artist a lot of people a lot of individuals like him he generally has more popularity than he does critical acclaim let's put it that way in that sense he's not dissimilar from the other great sort of graffiti artist who has become worth hundreds of millions of dollars which is Jean-Michel Basquiat and we're in this world where Banksy is a thing and people like him and he often sells for large sums and that's a perfectly normal world to be in and then Reuters in its infinite fucking wisdom decides it's going to spend about 800 ,000 words doing this incredibly loop-de-loop, circuitous, misdirection-filled, random, I can't even, it's not an essay, it's not a feature, it's not an investigation, it's just a mess of we are going to reveal who Banksy is.

38:16And you're like, but we know who Banksy is. It was revealed in 2008 by the Mail on Sunday. But no, we are going to reveal who Banksy is. And then at the end of these 18 ,000 words, they reveal that Banksy is exactly the same guy, this Robin Gunningham guy that we have known was Banksy all along. and their great new piece of information is number one they worked it out in a different way than the male on sunday worked it out great fine whatever and guess what he has another alias so not only does he go by robin gunningham he also goes by david jones which is a deliberately boring name that makes him easy to hide in plain sight whatever for some reason this complete nothing burger of a story goes massively viral.

39:02Everyone picks it up. Even the mail picks it up. The New York Times does a follow up. The Wall Street Journal does a follow up. Everyone's like, Banksy has been revealed. Does this mean something for his family? No, fuck off. We've known who he is forever. No, it doesn't mean anything. Why do we care? Like, ugh.

39:19Elizabeth Spiers: Some people just didn't buy the original story because it wasn't as sourced as this one. But Although I do agree that this story was overlong and overwrought. I mean, I enjoyed it. I didn't, I'm not a Banksy enthusiast. Did you read the whole thing? Because I have to admit, I didn't. I started skimming it quite aggressively. I mean, it's full of good Banksy trivia. Like, I didn't realize his company is called Pest Control Office, which I kind of love. But he said that he was inspired to start doing graffiti by a scene in Jaws, you know, where the mayor is standing in front of a big Amity tourist sign.

39:49Elizabeth Spiers: And there's a woman in a bikini kind of lounging on the sand. and somebody has graffitied on the billboard, help shark. And so there's a still of that scene in the piece that says, this is what made Banksy want to be an artist. Again, maybe it's because I'm too close to the art market and Banksy's official office is called pest control. Like, yeah, that we've known for 25 years. But, you know, but now. Yes, but Elizabeth Spires did not know that. Yeah, no, but it's like, this is the thing. This is the, somehow the thing that makes Banksy cross this sort of species barrier into people who don't care about art.

40:28And it's this like, we reveal who he is and you've never heard of him and you don't learn anything by learning who he is.

40:35Felix Salmon: It's so weird. But this is the thing. I don't think it's weird at all because of you working in media, this happens all the time, right? You write a story, no one reads it. Then like the New York Times writes it or the journal writes it. And then everyone's talking about it. And you're like, I fucking told you that two weeks ago. Do you know what I mean? And it does not matter. What matters is whoever gets it right. You know, whoever gets the attention in a way that people actually pay attention to it. And that has been true forever. That is true, Emily. That is absolutely true. But let me ask you this.

41:06When was the last time everyone has ever talked about a Reuters story? Reuters has been like the opposite of viral forever. They write boring stories that no one reads. and what and there's nothing in this story stylistically that that makes it popular right there's it's a terribly written story and it's a terribly edited story and it should have been a tenth of the length and like the whole thing that's just and it's it yeah i mean it's it's written like they were trying to pitch it as some kind of dumb podcast series or something i have

41:41Elizabeth Spiers: no idea i think again it just goes back to arts publications not really buying the sourcing on the first story, or you would have seen Art News, Banksy, a.k.a. Robin Gunningham. They haven't done that. So I think there was some doubt still. Banksy is the name of the artist, Elizabeth. And I can guarantee you that going forwards, when a Banksy sells for$10 million and an art publication reports on it, they're still just going to call it Banksy. They're not going to say whose real name is Robin Gunningham. Okay, well, the New York Times would say. No, okay, well, let's see, because I will take the other side of that.

42:17Next time Banksy gets in the news for doing something Banksy-ish, and he creates a hotel in Palestine or whatever stunt he does, are they going to say, whose real name is Robin Gunningham? I'm going to say they're not.

42:29Elizabeth Spiers: I think the times will, and I'll bet you a banana taped to a wall with a piece of duct tape.

42:36Felix Salmon: Also, 2008, Felix, I'm going to say something that will blow your mind, but like 2008 was a long time ago okay it was 18 years ago if a story is worth writing in 2008 it's worth rewriting in 2026 yeah quite hilariously i think for a minute there was a daily mail pickup of the reuters story and some 23 year old hamster wheel person not working on the daily mail website just did a big headline of banksy revealed without having any clue that they had actually broken it back in 2008. Because they were probably like five years old. Exactly.

43:15Elizabeth Spiers: When I was the editor of The Observer, one of my reporters came to me and said, I have a story. I know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. I told him, if you actually get that story, I'm just going to hang up my journalistic hat and go home. But what he had was basically the equivalent of what we're talking about. There'd been another story that had been written a long time ago that seemed plausible to him the other reason and the story the reuter story brings this up in an attempt to shoot it down the other reason why it's dumb is that so much of banksy's artistic practice whether you like it or not it is what he does is based around this anonymity and this idea that he's he's just this name and this brand and no one knows who he is and you You know, like technically people did know who he was, but he still had that mystique.

44:05And Reuters is like, ha ha, we will puncture that mystique bubble and we will bring you down to earth and reveal that you're a man named Dave. And you're like, why? You know, like, yes, I know you can, but like they put so much effort into this. They went to fucking Ukraine and they were like interviewing people in Ukraine and showing people police mugshots in Ukraine. And then you're like, come on, man. And like, if you're reporting from Ukraine, you obviously have more important stuff to report on.

44:34Elizabeth Spiers: They have a lot of resources. They do some hand-wringing in the piece about whether they should say his real name, because the logic was, well, a lot of his art is kind of based on vandalizing public spaces. Is he going to start getting in trouble for it now? Well, evidently not, because he's just got this alias that he can work under, and no one knows which of the 18 gazillion David Joneses he is. Yeah, it's all dumb as sand.

44:58Felix Salmon: Wait, before we log off on this one, as our resident art expert, is Banksy's art like good, Felix? What do people think?

45:09Elizabeth Spiers: What do you think? This is your make it or break it taste making. There was one piece I liked, which he did a collab with Damien Hirst. And he took a Damien Hirst spot painting and he sort of spray painted a woman with a broom, sort of picking up the corner of it and trying to clean up the spots. which was a funny joke because it was an actual Damien Hurt spot painting and it kind of broke the fourth wall it did interesting things like I'm not saying he's never done anything good he has got some imagination he did some he did a fun thing with like a telephone booth once so yeah there are flashes of inspiration in his catalog but a lot of it is just very repetitive

45:52Felix Salmon: and simplistic and what about this notion I think it's in the journal piece that But unmasking him, giving him a real name, establishing that he's a real person would make the value of his art go up. What do you make of that? So, yeah, the journal decides, and this is a little bit of like, you know, dumb media insider bullshit. The journal decides that they need to follow their story somehow. Why they make this decision? Probably just because the Reuters story is getting so much traffic. They're like, we need our version of this story. And so the journal version of the story is, let's get Kelly Crowe to phone up a couple of collectors and say, does this make you more likely to buy his art?

46:28And they say, well, maybe, I don't know. And so they write this story going, yeah, his prices could go up as a result. Well, maybe they could go down. Who knows? And then the New York Times, amazingly, does exactly the same thing. And they're like, what does this mean for his prices? And then the New York Times basically winds up on the other side of that trait saying, yeah, no, it's not going to make any difference at all. So the answer is maybe it will make a difference on the upside and maybe it will make a difference on the downside or maybe it will make no difference at all. The point is it's all dumb speculation.

46:56No one knows. And why are we writing these stories? They are stupid stories.

47:03Felix Salmon: Wow.

47:07OK, I've managed to get that off my chest now. I hope you forgive me.

47:23Okay, so numbers round. Elizabeth, do you have a number?

47:27Elizabeth Spiers: Yes, my number is 12 billion and that's a dollar. And that's how much the company Align Technology is worth. They make Invisalign, which it turns out is the biggest user and buyer of 3D printing machines, all of which they have to kind of retrofit for their purposes. but they just bought a small 3D printing company because they want to be able to just print the entire aligners directly. Right now they print molds of some sort. But if you wonder who's buying up all of the 3D printers, it's the Invisalign company.

47:57Felix Salmon: I was just at the JP Morgan's new headquarter building. And when you walk in the building, there's a giant flagpole with a giant flag on top waving as if in the wind. And there's manufactured air blowing on it. So it looks like that. But the flag is resting on a bronze flagpole that I was told was made in a 3D printer. That's my story. That flagpole was designed by Norman Foster, the architect of the building. It is bronze. It is very expensive. It is very stupid. And I didn't say it was stupid. But you also didn't say the dumbest thing about it. What is it? Which is the direction that the flag is flying is the direction of the wind outside the building.

48:40So they have these little wind sensors on the outside of the building working out is the wind coming from the west or the north or the east or whatever. And then they make sure that the flag flies inside the lobby in the direction that it would be flying if the building wasn't there.

48:54Felix Salmon: I don't, that's, I'm sorry, but that is cool. It's cool. You walk in there and you're like, this company has a lot of money. You're like, this is a fucking rich company. Like it is so clear. I don't know. I was impressed, to be honest. No, I mean, it is true that Norman Foster is very good at making buildings that feel very expensive. I just spent this week working out of the Bloomberg offices in London, which are also Norman Foster. And you walk in there and you're like, these are expensive offices. Expensive. But since we are on the subject of overpriced artists, what did you make of the two Gerhard Richters in the lobby?

49:28Felix Salmon: I don't even, I just noticed there was art. I don't know if I noticed who did the arts. I was like, wow, this art looks fancy. That's all. I'm so sorry. I really let you down. That's exactly it. It looks fancy. No one rates it, but I'm sure they paid tens of millions of dollars to them. Yeah. Again, I was like expensive. Yeah. Everything is in shades of luxury beige. It's so fancy. I've never been in an office that fancy. I had to like upgrade. All my like perceptions of what an office could be are now like they have a sweet green in the middle of on the like. They have 10 different restaurants, all of which are like run by Danny Meyer somehow.

50:04Now, if you're at your desk, they will deliver from the restaurant to your desk.

50:09Felix Salmon: Yes. There's sushi bar. There's like multiple salad places, I think. There's a bar bar. I mean, it was crazy. Did you go to the pub at the top where they do a photo of Jamie Dimon's face and the foam on the Guinness? I walked by it. There are people in the pub pubbing. Yes. But you're not allowed to drink until four, until the markets close or whatever. So you can keep it professional. My number is 0.2, or as you might also call it, 20%, which is the proportion of students at St. Andrew's University in Scotland who are American. Wow. This is a number that just keeps on going up. And every American kind of has this love-hate relationship with the fact that St.

50:52Andrews has become so incredibly American. And St. Andrews has been very early to this game of basically getting a whole bunch of American students by being relatively cheap by the standards of first-rate American universities, and also accepting your standard sort of SAT scores and high school transcripts and whatever that you normally apply to university in America with, rather than forcing American students to do the international baccalaureate or whatever they normally have to do in order to get into a UK university. And so put those things together. And this really, honestly, quite grim, northeastern Scottish town, which is lots of granite and very little sunshine, has suddenly become this place where like loads of rich American kids just hang out and go to college for four years.

51:39Felix Salmon: Is there like a culture clash or anything in the school or is it all good? The English don't like the Americans. The Scots don't like the English. The Scots probably like the Americans just because the English don't. I have no idea. But St. Andrews, to be clear, was also, before it was overrun by Americans, was overrun by English. It was always the university that had the highest proportion of English students. Huh. What's your number, Emily? Jessamyn.

52:11Is this an ABBA number? Yes.

52:14Felix Salmon: My number. Cut it. My number is 5.5 billion. That is dollars. That is the estimated value of the AMU, the ABBA Music Universe. I got this number. OMG. I got this number from a guy, Daniel Paris, who has an amazing substat called Stat Significant. The AMU or ABBA Music Universe consists of all-time music sales by ABBA, proceeds from the movies and from the Broadway show and from the London production, but does not include. It's probably an underestimation because it doesn't include Turing revenue, other adaptions. And so that's one thing. ABBA's real popular. They're still making lots of money.

52:56Felix Salmon: The other thing I learned from this amazing sub stack, everyone should just read it, is, and I don't know, Felix will be like, I knew this, but I didn't know this. Okay. Voyages, the holograms. No. ABBA's origin story begins with tax regulation. Yes. In the 1970s. Why is this not an entire segment? Why is this being relegated to the numbers range? Because I forgot. I meant to read it like three days ago and I forgot because stupid war. And then I was like, wait, I got to read this. So, okay. In the 1970s, Sweden introduced, I'm reading directly from the sub stack, Introduce taxation laws have to do with the deductibility of, quote, poorly styled work clothing.

53:40Felix Salmon: If you could prove that your work outfits were unwearable outside of work, you could claim your clothing as a tax deduction. Thus, the newly formed band ABBA decided to capitalize on this and claims the Substack out of frugality and their tax strategy. The band's aesthetic was born. they wore these wild outrageous clothes these crazy outfits it propelled them to fame they wound up winning um what's that thing that everyone talks about eurovision eurovision also with their hit track waterloo or whatever and the rest is history billions and dollars so basically the idea is that if i wear a super skin tight silver lame jumpsuit that is something i would never be able to wear out on the street as a normal thing therefore it is tax deductible

54:29Elizabeth Spiers: Yes. And I think you have to insist that the Lame jumpsuit is required for your work. Which it kind of is. Doing a podcast. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, I think this is true. It is clearly required to be a Swedish pop star. I don't think it is required to be a podcaster, sadly. But yes, I'm recording this week from London where ABBA Voyages is still going strong, where all four ABBA holograms perform many times a week at enormous ticket prices and managed to get a steady stream of tourists going out to Stratford, which is the only thing that would ever get a steady stream of tourists going out to Stratford, is apparently ABBA Voyages, the hologram experience.

55:09Felix Salmon: His theory for why they're so popular is that they're very positive. There's a lot of positivity and vibes, good vibes, and people like it. Also right now, they are vibing in New York, where Chess, the musical, is doing enormously well, much better the second time around than when it opened the first time around, And that's basically an ABBA production as well. Amazing. Thank you for listening to Slate Money. Thank you to Jessamyn Molly of Seaplane Armada for producing. Thank you for sending us emails on slatemoney at slate.com. And we will be back next week with more Slate Money.

56:01Felix Salmon: Slate Money is brought to you by Charles Schwab. Decisions made in Washington can affect your portfolio every day. But what policy changes should investors be watching? Listen to Washington Wise, an original podcast for investors from Charles Schwab, to hear the stories making news in Washington right now. Host Mike Townsend, Charles Schwab's Managing Director for Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, takes a nonpartisan look at the stories that matter most to investors, including policy initiatives for retirement savings, taxes, and trade, inflation concerns, the Federal Reserve, and how regulatory developments can affect companies, sectors, and even the entire market.

56:43Felix Salmon: Mike and his guests offer their perspective on how policy changes could affect what you do with your portfolio. Download the latest episode and follow at schwab.com slash Washington Wise or wherever you listen. Youth mental health is a complex challenge that requires comprehensive solutions. We must strengthen afterschool programs. We must make digital literacy tools available in our schools. We must work with mental health professionals to support children. And we must empower mentors, educators, and parents to keep kids happy. Learn more about our commitment to finding lasting solutions at empowerourfuturecoalition.com slash solutions.

57:25Felix Salmon: Paid for by the coalition to empower our future.