Netflix's Size is Not Size, Ads in Google Gemini, Prediction Markets on a Tear | Rich Greenfield, Delian Asparouhov, Sarah Harrelson, Morgan Housel, Andrew Pignanelli, Brian Mehler, Will Wilson

26:11Like, I don't, I don't just don't think that's gonna happen, but people do worry about news coverage like CNN, CBS. But the weird thing is that in the Netflix scenario, CNN is left there in the, in the, in the, in the, in the ghost ship. There's a, it's a ghost ship. It's a ghost ship. We know this very well from, from the way tech likes to acquire companies. Uh, and so there's a scenario where Paramount loses Warner Brothers, but then still buys the cable business? Yes, I think so. I think so. And they get Shark Week, and they get a bunch of fun stuff. HGTV, 90-Day Fiance. David Ellison with Shark Week.

26:46I mean, putting the Ellison family behind Shark Week, that would be good for consumers. That might be good for sharks. Indeed. Shark welfare. Yeah, so here's the thing. So we talked with Rich about how more competition than ever at the content layer. It's very cheap to create and distribute content. It's effectively free. That said, there feels like in some ways more of a monopoly than ever on truth, if that makes sense. Legacy media properties have a monopoly on truth. If we say something and we have the aesthetics of television and we say this is true, it doesn't hold the same weight as CNBC or CNN or anything like that because they're actually running, generally running.

27:29It's just the brand. Yeah, it's brand. It's just the brand. It's brand. So when the New York Times says something and a sub stack disagrees with it and says, no, this is what actually happened. Who are people going to believe? They're going to believe New York Times 10 times out of 10. And so, yeah, I think it is that that part of it is ideally you would want a lot more kind of like distribution between the networks and these brands that that have a monopoly on the truth. Yeah, but at the same time, the fact that David Ellison is not cheering at the fact that he, like, you see Warner Brothers, and if you're in the conspiratorial, the tinfoil hat, like David Ellison is trying to control the news narrative that is sort of bubbling up there, the flip side is he should be cheering.

28:18Because he's like, wow, they bought everything I don't want. I don't want Batman. But in fact, he does want Batman. He does. He wants Foghorn Leghorn. He wants it all. He needs Foghorn Leghorn. He wants it all. He needs Wile E. Coyote. He needs Porky Pig. The list of ass... You don't know Porky Pig? No. How do you not know Porky Pig? Is that a YC startup? It should be. It should be. Oh, Porky Pig. Porky Pig. Okay, Looney Tunes. Yeah, Looney Tunes. The Looney Tunes character. The Looney Tunes cinematic universe is great. There actually was a... I think there was a YC company in this batch called Piggy Robotics.

28:53Yeah, yeah. We saw... No, the YC companies need to keep... New rule. New rule. Every pig-themed startup. Nick, when you're booking YC startups, if it's swine-themed, they're on the show. Okay? I don't want to miss a single swine-themed company ever. Pig, Post Hog, Piggy. We need all these companies. They're all great. Red alert. What? Pig has rebranded. No. The YC company called Pig. Wow. Spitting in our face. They're now called Butter. Butter. it's still like it's all very kind of like animal product it's an animal product what kind of butter analyzing it based on its macros is it goat butter very heavy on cow butter fat low protein okay low carb low protein high fat they rebranded to butter they stayed on the farm theme they were like we have churned we've churned all the customers churned and churn was so bad we churned into butter butter never got it we got to get always churn i don't know we got I got the update.

29:53I like the founder. I did. I did like the founder. I also like fall generative media platform for developers, develop and fine tune models with serverless GPUs and on-demand clusters. Um, we have some news from our flight back from New York. We flew JetBlue again. If you, if you're new here, we, a couple of months ago, we flew JetBlue with the whole team and we got into a little bit of a situation with JetBlue. They almost had to land the aircraft. They almost had to land the aircraft because we were, Jordy and I were sitting in business class. We were served steaks. We tried to pass those steaks back to our friends and colleagues who were sitting in economy.

30:32And they told us not. They said, stop. You can't. I think someone put their hand on your chest. And said, sit down, sir. So it was even worse. Sit down. They didn't put their hand on me, the flight attendant. But they grabbed the dessert. Oh, they grabbed the dessert that you were trying to pass back. Passed to the team. And I said, do I not own this dessert? We like property rights around here. We like the ability to move freely. And I think possession's nine-tenths of the law. You give me the ice cream. You give me the steak. I control it. I own it. I can do what I want. But on our latest flight, we figured out the ultimate hack for how to pass food back from business class to economy on a JetBlue flight.

31:12And we proved that this works twice. And we're sharing it with you today. We're sharing this alpha. This is deep alpha. deep alpha and so we'll hopefully pull up some of the photos which so this is so in in first class they give you headphones with a case and so what i was able to do is i was able to take the food so my food and put it bring it over to the case so we we all had dinner before the flight ice cream in the phone case we had dinner in the headphone case so i show up and i'm not hungry but ben's a growing growing boy and i and i'm like we got to get we got to get my my dinner back to been.

31:46And so we put, we, we take the headphone case, we zip it up. I take it back. I pass. You insisted on the bread roll going in there. I don't know if that enjoyed the bread roll. I wasn't going to have, he needed the bread. Did you eat the bread? I ate all of it. Okay. Wait, was the bread over buttered or did it have the appropriate amount of butter? It had a lot of butter. It had a lot of butter, right? Jordy insisted on giving you the full pad of butter. And I thought maybe half a pad. I just wanted you to have optionality. Okay. Well, yeah, I guess you had optionality. You could have taken it out, But what would you have done with it?

32:16I didn't have anybody sitting next to me. Oh, you didn't? Okay. No, but there was a guy across the aisle from you. He was giving me the dirtiest. No way. I thought he was going to say, like, if you don't bring me back food, too, I'm telling. Oh, you're just going to telltale. That is a risk. No, but the real risk when you're running a strategy like this and you need to be highly coordinated is that the flight attendant in the business class section says, where is your cutlery? Yes, yes, yes. Where is that plate? because it's in there. Your knife and fork are going to be missing. So the real, yeah, you can see Jordy going back to drop it off.

32:52I took that photo. We were running plays. And so, no, no, so there's another tip here that you don't want to jump the gun. So the food service, the dinner service, it takes place over a couple minutes. All the plates get passed out, and people eat pretty quickly. So typically, the flight attendant, by the time they finish delivering the last plate, they will go and start picking up the plate from the beginning because it only takes people a couple minutes to eat the food on the plane. But you want to wait them out. You need a couple rounds of them coming by, and you have the full meal there. And they're like, are you done with that?

33:30And you say, no, no, I'm still working. I'm still working. So you've got to say I'm still working a couple times. And then they will go back and sit down at the front of the plane. They'll kind of relax the post-meal break. They might be gearing up for, oh, maybe I'll get everyone a new glass of wine in 20 minutes. But I'm chilling. That's your opportunity because that's when they're at their weakest. That's when they're not going to be paying attention. You almost got caught at one point. I got caught? The flight is a lovely, lovely woman. She came over and said, she came up and said, do you want any tea?

34:03Yeah. And you had. Missing, missing. There was food in the headset case. Oh, in the headset case. And you closed it. I had to close the headset case because you don't want to get caught with the crew. Yes, yes, yes. We do need the whole crew on business, and we will be doing that. We're working on it. We're working on it. Yeah, we got a ton of machinations. But in the meantime, we're having fun. We're also on Profound. Get your brand mentioned in ChatGPT. Meet millions of consumers who use AI to discover new products and brands. and people were having fun with the... I don't know if this is real.

34:42I saw this post. This is a joke. This account just posts, NLE Choppa submitted a last minute bid to buy Warner Brothers$45 ,000. And$45 ,000 in cash. In cash. It actually is relevant because the other offers are heavily debt laden. And so if you care about that, if you want an all cash offer, this might be your best get. It's a pretty good option. This is the best option if you only want a cat. Andy, who's been on an absolute roll lately, says, you're laughing at him, but how much did you put up to buy Warner Brothers? Exactly. Can we pull up Andy? Andy had a launch video yesterday. Oh, yeah? Andy, of course, is the founder of twocents.money.

35:24He's been on the show. He has an anonymous social network that links with your bank account. And so your username is just your financial net worth. The video is at the bottom of the stack, guys, if you can pull it up. He's big on financializing everything. He's a financializer. He was kind of early to the trend. Early to the trend. But he's always done it in sort of a fun way. What are we doing here? I can't read that, so I don't know. We need to go full screen on this. Okay, while they're pulling that up, let me tell you about Fin.ai, the number one AI agent for customer service. Automate the most complex customer service queries on every channel with fin.ai.

36:12Are we able to play this full? It is two minutes, and we only have so many minutes. Yeah, let's play it. Hi, this is Osmo. We make films. Two cents founder Andy Duro raised$3 million for his startup and paid us$2.5 million. This was the only direction he gave us. I need this to look like the most expensive launch video ever made. It has to look like a huge... Why is he in Albania? Albania. The day before our shoot, Andy was still on his investor's boat, chasing a Series A. Is this rage bait? I feel like this is giving me like, I'm going to be enraged. We were under contract to spend the entire production.

36:49I want a Scarface montage in a mansion. There we go. Show off our in-house coding models. Coding models. And they should be coding in rust. Not just tiny apps, but full-scale system architecture. The cinematography here is wild. Like this one. And I want the bathtub scene from the Big Short, but add more models. And like, have one of them explaining the value prop of two cents. So basically, you know how everyone on social media pretends to be rich? The problem is, it's all fake. Then we should have the models reenact that scene from the Wolf of Wall Street. You know, the one where Leo's boat gets seized by the FBI?

37:35Yo, I'm a lobster for the ride home, you fucking miserable prick. No, you can't afford them. What was the bid? He said he spent two and a half million on this. Is that what you're saying? All right, this is not PG enough, but it is funny. It's funny to basically run through every single launch video bit that there is. Okay, okay. And just be narrating. Yeah, just do that one. And then do that one. And then do that one, yeah. Okay. Ridiculous. Well, Buko is saying the more he reads about the Netflix deal, the more it seems like. One, this is bad for everyone that isn't Netflix. Two, this would be very good for Netflix.

38:11And three, it should be blocked if our system still works. So he is a block the deal guy. Ernest says it's extremely pro-consumer. New price is going to be lower than the current standalone Netflix plus max price with superior UX for subscribers. and Bucco says, I don't think you can say it's extremely pro-consumer with any sort of confidence. Yeah, this is when - You give them tremendous pricing power. A few people have said, oh yeah, like it's going to be cheaper and it's like, okay, is it going to be cheap? It's going to be cheaper like right away. Is it going to be cheaper in 10 years? No way.

38:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, there's nothing more long-term pill than a public company. Like they love thinking in decades and like, no, I mean - They're like... A company like Netflix truly can be like, yes. The price is going to be like$99 a month by 2035. It might be a steal. It might be a steal at 99 if you're getting Seinfeld and Foghorn Leghorn and Porky Pig. This is a good walk through history. John Ehrlichman says, December 2010, Time Warner views... This is a New York Times article. Time Warner views Netflix as a fading star. For the past year, executives at big media companies have watched Netflix with growing resentment for its success and delivering movies and television shows via the internet for its stock price nearly quadrupling uh for its uh chief executive being named business person of the year by fortune magazine i imagine at that time they were thinking well it's cool that they can deliver movies but they'll never be able to make they'll never be able to make content and of course uh now recently netflix to buy warner bros it is such a such a big deal like uh 83 billion it it's almost it almost feels like small compared to like all the ai valuations and stuff and the and the in the hyperscaler valuations but uh netflix is only a 400 billion dollar business by comparison so like this is 20 of their market cap essentially like it's a it's a serious merger uh and would be it would be huge huge integration um i uh i i do wonder about that question of like how many movies they would be making per year would they would they try and still make 30 big movies or something like that.

40:20I feel like, um, you, if you don't make those big movies, you don't get the, you don't, you don't develop the new IP. Like if you look at what avatar is, avatar has been, you know, this like incredible undertaking from a fin, like just so much money poured into the production there, but it's probably the best chance of getting something that's actually like an enduring legacy where it's like, yeah, people are still talking about the avatar multiverse or cinematic universe in five decades, 10 decades, you know, in a long, long time. Um, it's very, very hard to, to be, to be sticky if you're not taking big swings and doing things that are like actually really, really bold anyway.

41:04Uh, while we move on, let me tell you about Gemini three pro Google's most intelligent model yet state of the art reasoning, next level vibe coding, and deep multimodal understanding. Oh, there was this hilarious clip where apparently in 2013, this is from Matthew Ball, everyone's forgetting Netflix Q4 2013 earnings call. You know Ball? Yes. Which Ball? All. Do you actually know Matthew Ball? Oh, here we go. He doesn't know Ball. You got to know every analyst with the last name Ball. I wonder if they're related. Anyway, Reed Hastings is asked about the HBO CEO's thoughts on password sharing. And he replies, I guess he doesn't mind me then sharing his account info.

41:52It's pepler at hbo.com. And his password is Netflix, B-I-T-C-H. What a weird thing to do. Was that actually his password? It's such a weird meme. Here, let's play the actual video. Is that the clip? I know Trung fan clipped the actual. I guess Plepler's the CEO of HBO doesn't mind me then sharing his account information. So it's Plepler at HBO.com and his password is Netflix bitch. This is like an insane, he must be joking, but it's like such a weird sense of humor. Maybe it's just out of context. Maybe if you watch the full thing or you understand the conversation was happening in 2013 around the two companies.

42:31But even if that's not his password, it's annoying to share someone's email publicly because they just get a bunch of spam, I think. But maybe this earnings call was so narrowly watched that no one really would spam him. But I don't know. I would imagine it would be really annoying to have your email leak on an earnings call. Anyway. People really want Lena Khan back in the driver's seat. Sammy Gold says, Lena Khan, you can have this one, this one time. I don't really understand why people are so against this. The idea of Netflix owning Succession, The Soprano, and The Wire. Well, the TV stuff doesn't seem that bad because that was never in theaters.

43:16I guess I do understand people who are saying they're going to own Lord of the Rings. Seeing Lord of the Rings in theaters was a special thing, and that special thing might not happen anymore because it's incompatible with the modern business model. and so if you're if you're a lord of the rings fan and you really like the movies and you did not like the show well then it's like get ready for more shows and less movies probably yeah i think uh anybody who's upset because of the impact on traditional cinema and movie theaters i want to see everything i want to see a proof of how many movies they've gone to in the last The revealed preference is crazy.

43:55Yeah, the last year. They're like, oh, I've seen one movie. Yeah. It's like, okay. I don't know. Well, we should move on. Let me tell you about Restream. One live stream, 30-plus destinations. If you want to multi-stream, go to Restream.com. Nice shot of Tyler before that ad comes in. Apple is changing of the guard. It feels like a ton of executives are leaving. A ton of executives are turning over. And everyone's kind of speculating that potentially this is the beginning of the next major executive leadership team coming in, that there'll be some sort of before and after. Maybe we're exiting the Tim Cook era.

44:37I don't think so. I think you just got to double, triple, maybe 10x Tim Cook's pay, and you're good. But if they wind up turning the entire team over, maybe that's what happens too. So John G. Andres. Super out of pocket to include Steve Jobs on this. Yeah, that's very odd. But the interesting thing is John Ternus, he is, of course, leading. There's been a bunch of leaks about John Ternus, the head of hardware, potentially stepping up to the CEO role. That would be very exciting. And there's been rumors swirling. Unclear if it's like one of those things where he's leaking or someone else is leaking things.

45:12You never really know until the actual news drops. But I remain positive on Tim Cook's leadership. I think he got the big things right. And I think he missed the hot things, but missing the hot trend that's actually not that existential to the business. That you could argue they haven't missed yet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could argue they haven't missed it. And you could argue that AI was not existential to them, at least in the short term. But we'll see. But this Justin Bieber post is insane. because you read me this and I didn't hear you say, this is from Justin Bieber's account. And I was like, oh, that's funny.

45:52There's someone who's mad at Apple, but it's way funnier coming from Justin Bieber. I put Justin Bieber as a product manager at Apple and I genuinely believe the products across the board would improve. Get them in Figma. Think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams build great products together. So without further ado, Justin says, if I hit this dictation button after sending a text and it beeps and stops my music one more time, I'm going to find everyone at Apple and put them in a rear naked chokehold. Even if I turn off dictation, I somehow hit the voice note thing. The send button should not have multiple functions in the same spot.

46:31I couldn't agree more. This is so, I mean, it's just absolutely insane because the issue is, yeah, one, this happens a lot. This happens to me. and then it's always nerve-wracking because if you have somebody pulled up on text and you happen let's say i'm like hey this hey this person is wanting to change the time of this meeting to this other point and i'm actually i'm like what do you think what should we do and then it's just like happens to be like recording and then you're like whoa whoa whoa i don't want to sure you know i just want to um so yeah i'm not a i'm not a dictation maxi i find it uh i think it's uh very offensive to send people voice notes of any sort.

47:10And so I don't do it. I don't appreciate when apparently we have to issue a correction. Taylor's over there putting us in the truth zone. Apple doesn't have product managers. That makes sense. There's so many. There's this new software. Every every time I open an app made by Apple, there's a new there's a new bug. It is the The software is a lot of it. I mean, yeah, I'm now living with the new iOS, iOS 1700, for a month or so now. It's 26. They're on the car release schedule now, right? Living with it for a while, I feel like they made every app worse with the new update. You're still upset about it?

47:51Yeah. I don't have a problem. I'm fine. It's not the end of the world. Yeah. Every app's design is worse. I expected to just, I expected to like get used to some of the new stuff and I'm still like, oh, the photo app. Skill issue. Just get used to it. I'm getting used to it. I feel like a lot of these apps when they go through this. Brandon Jacoby comes over the top. It says in the X chat, truth zone to the truth zone. They historically have not had PMs, but that recently changed. Whoa. Okay. OTP agrees. Wow. Apple does have PMs. Taylor. or, bro, I'm incorrect. Oh, well, I'm glad we have a debate in the chat going.

48:34Well, I know for a fact that Apple does have data analysts. I don't know if they use Julius AI, but they should because Julius is the AI data analyst that works for you. Connect your data, ask questions in plain English, and get answers in seconds. Mark Gurman says, the Gurminator, the Gurminator. Mark Germinator himself says, Apple executives have floated the idea of combining hardware engineering and hardware technologies divisions as one combined group under Shroji in order to retain him. So this is, of course, Apple's chip chief, Johnny Shroji. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. Chip chief.

49:16The chip chief. Yeah. Informed CEO Tim Cook, he is seriously considering leaving the company and would likely continue his career elsewhere rather than retire. Apple is urgently pushing to keep him. He remains, at least for now, according to the Germinator. The Germinator says, again, they're floating the idea of combining hardware engineering and hardware technologies as one combined group under Shroji in order to retain him. But that couldn't happen until and if John Ternus becomes CEO. This would make Shroji the clear number two. in more important news Mark Newsom the designer of the Apple Watch just released a new watch himself and it is mechanical and costs only$60 ,000 that's a video by the way play this video this is a crazy video look at this the dial is spinning and yeah wow it really looks like UFO inspired it's$60 ,000 jumping straight into the Holy Trinity tier, I suppose.

50:24What's your honest review on this? I think it looks very cool. I've never thought I want a watch that looks like it's in the same universe as the Apple Watch. Sure. But at the same time, I can really respect. Yeah. I think this looks very cool, and I think there's a consumer out there where they were like, finally, somebody made a watch for me. I love this. Yeah. should it be sold by Apple? The Apple store has a number of products that are not created by Apple. You can go and get, I mean, they've had a partnership with Beats for a while. They wound up acquiring Beats. They also will sell different, you know, stands and USB hubs and cases and all sorts of different, you know, accessories that sort of live in the Apple world, but aren't directly Apple products or made by Apple.

51:14Should this be sold at the Apple store? What do you think? 60K feels like a different tier, but I feel like if I'm trying to sell something for 60K, I'd go to the Apple store and say, you know, a lot of people with 60K to spend on a watch walk into the Apple store and pick up a couple laptops. Nick, new challenge, get Mark Newsome on the show. Okay, let's do it. And we will talk with him about it. Also, get on graphite.dev. Code review for the age of AI. Graphite helps teams on GitHub ship higher quality software faster. Well, let's keep moving on in the timeline. Theo agrees with Justin Bieber.

51:56He is entirely correct here. I agree with Theo. Well. We got to pull this video up of Bill Ackman in Japan. This is an incredible aura farm. There's something so interesting about being caught on, you know, another country's television, it looks like. I couldn't tell if this was actual TV or streamers. Who knows? It just has an incredible vibe to it. So it's a Japanese show. Is that man's face blurred out? Why is his face blurred out like that? Maybe. I mean, that's a respectful thing to do if you didn't want to. Oh, yeah. I guess they didn't sign a release. so they can't have him play it. Here, can you turn it up a little bit?

52:40I like that she's such a fan.

52:46She's such a fan of Bill Ackman. Can you start it over? And these graphics...

52:57Is that Bill Ackman? Is that Bill Ackman? Japanese TV! See? TV!

53:05The graphics package is electric. You see the stars right there. And if you go back a little bit, it's like a puff of smoke that comes off of the text. We don't know how to make text like that. We don't know how to make chyrons like that in America. Look at our chyrons just getting mogged by the Japanese TV channel with sound effects. Did that woman just pull a Japanese may I meet you on him? Yes, 100%. That's exactly what happened. Why did Andy post all quiet on the frontal lobe? That's very funny. That just cracks me up. Privy. Privy makes it easy to build on crypto rails, spin up secure white-label wallets, sign transactions, integrate on-chain infrastructure all through one simple API.

53:55Prediction markets are absolutely tearing up the timeline. They are the current thing. every day. The debate rages. This one's hilarious from Aaron Mars. He says, Prediction markets will replace buying stuff. I want someone to bring kiwis to my house. I make a prediction market about whether someone will deliver four kiwis to my doorstep and load$15 into no. A guy with an e-bike sees it and picks up some kiwis. Before dropping them off on my doorstep, he bets yes. Drops them off, the market resolves to yes, and he gets$15. Rest in peace, Amazon, DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc. Sayla comes in and says, prediction markets will replace relationships.

54:37I have a crush on your girlfriend. I make a prediction market about whether she will leave you for me and load$15 to no. She sees this and drives over to my place. Before texting me, she's here. She bets yes. She comes inside. The market resolves to yes and she gets$15. Rest in peace, Tinder, Bumble, hinge, dry at bars, restaurants, etc. It's so insane. Yeah, the mood, the prediction markets are fighting an uphill battle right now. They're on life support. It's such a good copypasta. And I can only imagine the quote tweets on this post just being like an endless stream of of iterations of this exact template because it truly is so, so, so funny.

55:30Uh, the, the financialization of everything. Well, uh, Robin Hanson, who's sort of known as the creator of the prediction market. Uh, do you, do you know a little bit more about his background? He's an economist. Yeah. I mean, he was running about prediction markets or like decision markets since like the nineties. And he has this whole idea of like futarchy where you like run the government based off prediction markets interesting um wow he basically like brian uh brian armstrong was like suggesting that polymaker uh policy makers could one day just ask people how should we grow the economy and then let prediction markets decide sorry yeah anyway i will read robin hansen's post while jordy recovers he might need a little bit of a break a little bit of holiday spirit.

56:19Robin says - You're joking on this podcast in a can. I've been asked, what do I think of Cauchy and Polymarket? These are still very early days. My vision, which I started to articulate in the 90s, is of a world very different from both the world then and the world of today, a world where markets are accepted as offering more accurate estimates on far more useful topics. So I'm mostly interested in the potential of stuff today to enable and cause that future vision. The politics policy questions on polymarket and call sheet trending now seem plausibly like topics where some people might find their estimates useful in making personal or collective choices, but I don't have great confidence in that or know who these people are.

57:04So I think that... Like we saw a glimmer of this in the sense that if you were running a business that stood to benefit from the Trump administration or hurt because of the Trump administration. maybe tariffs or something like if you were manufacturing t-shirts in china and you were like okay if trump wins they'll probably be more tariffs probably another trade war what's the probability that trump wins what's the probability that i have to do a red the fire drill a code red to yeah to move my manufacturing to singapore or something um you could make a business decision based on that i agree with him like i don't really know how many people were doing that seriously and also the prediction markets were like 55 you know it wasn't it wasn't like 90 it wasn't like that clear yeah it wasn't like oh everyone just knows what's going to happen it was like oh yeah like you know slight edge this way yeah i feel like people remember when they think of prediction markets on the election night they remember like actually on election night when it did start to go totally like 90 and beyond totally and but yeah i mean if you're trying to plan for like a forthcoming trump administration it's not like you could go to prediction markets four months earlier and get like a definitive correct answer.

58:21Like that's just not the way that's not just not the way it played out. But he continues, he says, but if these systems continue to grow in size and to attract users and competitors, they could lower many of the costs of creating and managing such markets, allowing a lot more experimentation with markets like those, I find more promising. Re my long-term vision. Of course, if these systems induce a backlash that gets them outlawed or drastically shrunk, that may plausibly block or at least long delay my vision. I don't personally mind people having fun knowingly betting on sports, on actions that celebrities can influence, or on topics where insiders have big info advantages like mentioned markets.

59:02But I see many people complaining about these things and I fear a new prudish temperance movement may shut them down. and as a side effect shut down the more promising markets that I've envisioned. It's an interesting take. I think it's a really big question on the prediction markets. It's not like there's a positive and a normative side of these things. So in economics, there's positive questions. Normative is like what should happen. And positive is what will happen. And so there's a question. I think a lot of people on the timeline are debating prediction markets on moral grounds, on what should happen.

59:44They have a thesis on, I believe that this is great and this is good and it should proliferate, or I think it's bad and it should be shut down immediately. There aren't that many people that are actually thinking clearly right now about what will happen. How big will these markets be? How prevalent will they be? Sports betting has gotten a lot easier, but it hasn't taken over everyone. I know a lot of people that don't sports bet, I don't personally sports bet, even though it's now available probably on my phone, I'm sure I could figure out how to do it without needing to go to Las Vegas. It hasn't come for me.

1:00:22It hasn't just, it hasn't just like come and sucked me in. And so we have Suggard and Jetty coming on the show on Friday to debate some of this more in more detail. But I think that there's an interesting separation to just try and understand what will happen. And he's, so he's saying um you know he fears a new prudish temperance movement which is very clearly real lots of people dunking on this stuff may shut them down i don't know it's unclear like what will there actually be action related to the prudish temperance movement or will the prudish temperance movement be confined to spicy quote tweets right and yeah it's also it's also possible to get to the future that he's envisioned since the 90s you need to have sports markets yeah and And that, again, is not necessarily maybe how he would want things to evolve, but it might be a necessary step to bring enough users to some of these applications to have the durability and the attention necessarily to create some of these other markets.

1:01:20But I think so many people are just absolutely sick of the marketing and just the feuding between Calci and Polymarket, that part of people's prediction market is to be... Insiders are. Insiders are. Outsiders don't even know the difference. For sure. I'm talking about on X specifically. They just think, oh, financialization of everything is bad. X specifically. But yeah. Like if we were on X and FanDuel and DraftKings were just constantly going at each other all day long, everyone would just be like, please leave. Oh, no, no, no. I think they are. We have the CEO of DraftKings coming on the show tomorrow.

1:01:57But I do think that the traditional sports betting world is also just very cutthroat. Are they, though? I mean, it's such an established market. Dude, go back and read some of the – No, no, I'm not denying that. Go back and read about the development of Las Vegas. Like, Caesars versus MGM. Like, these were knockout dragout fights. These were not like, oh, yeah, everyone was like positive sum building. I'm just saying I would be surprised if you have like a marketing manager at DraftKings. like saying hateful things to a marketing manager at FanDuel in the year 2025 on the internet. We need to watch Casino because I believe in Casino.

1:02:38They did things much worse than that. And not that Casino's a documentary, but I do think that it's developed. Gabe in the chat says, I talked to the presidents of the National Hockey League and an MLB team about how mad the prediction marketing was. They agree, pure slop. Yeah, it's a crazy time. Time to study the greats. time to study history time to study adio the ai native crm adio builds scales and grows your company to the next level and the next level of this show is delian asperu have partnered founders fund co-founder of varda space industries in the restream waiting room now he's in the tbp and ultradome and if i'm not in in the sun are you in miami uh you know there's uh you know sort of sunshine in California as well.

1:03:23Okay. Okay. I'm just, sometimes I just feel like it. I'm just wondering about your, your backdrop. Uh, is this San Francisco? Where are we? Where are we? Take us. I mean, you're so used to seeing you in the Varda office. It's true. Today you're catching me the Presidio. If it's too bright, let me know. But I like, uh, I like just getting blasted with sunshine. I think it's actually, uh, I think it's actually adjusting. So you look great. Um, I feel great. Fantastic. Um, take us through, uh, take, take us through the, it's been a while since we caught up, thank you for hopping on the show after a hiatus and breaking your silence.

1:03:57I want, you know, the quick update on Jarek Isaacman first. What's the status of things there? What are the implications? What's the mood in the space economy? What's the mood amongst your team? Are people excited? Are people thinking that that's going to move forward? Yeah, look, I think I can't imagine you're sort of a better leader for NASA than Jared, right? Somebody that literally is willing to put their life on the line and actually do some of the – I mean, he did literally the first commercial spacewalk that's ever been done in human history, right? So he's putting his neck on the line, but then also somebody that has obviously built a phenomenal business and understands how to think about ROI, how to manage a workforce, how to think about connection into capital markets.

1:04:40And so, yeah, I generally say across the entire commercial space industry, like, you know, ecstatic mood, you know, my like, you know, various moles in the Senate, et cetera, make it seem that, you know, things are all, you know, sort of tracking on plan and, you know, going well there. He's definitely got to, you know, sort of pay the piper and, you know, shake hands and everything. But he's, you know, done that. And then in some ways it's like the likelihood that they pull it for a second time. It's like, man, you already, you know, shot the guy down to the ground once, like, you know, can't, can't do it again.

1:05:08So I feel highly likely. I think like there's a ton of implications, you know, for that. Probably the one that I get excited for the most just as an American is the likelihood that we make sure that we beat the Chinese back to the moon. I think just increased significantly through the room. And there's already some rumors starting to come out of his interest in starting to get more and more options to the table in terms of how we get to the moon beyond what's been currently contracted. And so I like that. And I like, you know, I think we've talked about this in some of like our prior, you know, sort of discussions.

1:05:42But I really like this program called CLIPS within the lunar program, where basically rather than trying to set a budget and say, here's how I want you to build XYZ thing, the way that they basically pay contractors is just a flat fee for each kilogram of down mass down to the lunar surface, basically. It's just like, you know, you get something onto the moon, we basically give you, I forget, I think it's like basically$100 ,000, basically a kilogram. But like you get margin on that, you figure out how to do it cheaper. Great. That's all on you. But that's like to me where NASA should be. It's like for these like things that aren't yet really commercial and don't make sense, be the first buyer, establish the market.

1:06:14And then that's what kickstarts basically the commercial, you know, sort of economy side of it. So that's obviously been like a ton of activity. Obviously, there's a whole set of SpaceX things, you know, that have been happening over the past year sort of month. Yeah, let's pause on the SpaceX stuff. I want to stay on NASA. The way I was thinking about Jared Isaacman and just kind of framing like the broader discussion of the lunar economy, the orbital economy was this idea of like, are you a Mars guy or a moon guy in the short term? And I don't know if this is like too simplistic. So maybe you can just bring a bunch of nuance.

1:06:50But it does feel like, you know, Elon has been beating the drum on like Mars, Mars, Mars. And like maybe the moon is like, you know, a pit stop along the way. And then some other folks, some of the more legacy space flight providers are a little bit more focused on the tractable get to the moon. But then you have different folks breaking different ways. Like Casey Hanmer is really obsessed with beating China to the moon. Obviously, Mike Solana had found his moon should be a state. And there's a whole bunch of different things. But do you think that there's a real tradeoff between, like, should we be prioritizing moon or Mars in the short term?

1:07:26How do you think about that? You know, when I think about, like, why Elon was so dead set on this, like, you know, five years ago, ten years ago, I think it had more to do with the fact that the moon can be seen as a distraction if our capabilities as a species are limited, because the moon is not the place where you can set up a, you know, sort of permanent colony that is, you know, sort of sustainable and independent of Earth, right? You know, sort of no atmosphere, terraforming is impossible in some ways, like, you know, because that likely to be highly, highly dependent on Earth. So it's not really like a backup, you know, sort of function, you know, relative to, you know, sort of Mars.

1:08:01And so when I think about like Elon of 10 years ago, it was basically like, look, we're so decrepit as a industry in the United States or, you know, across the globe, that if we like set a goal, we need to like really keep the goal very, very focused. And so you have to go straight to Mars. I think just like the world of today is fundamentally very different, where we're just like much more capable of an industry in terms of just like, you know, I don't know if you guys saw this, but I tweeted that, you know, in November was the first time in human history, where there were more orbital rocket launches than there were days in the month.

1:08:29That's right. That's the first thing that's ever happened, you know, in human history. And so that obviously, you know, sort of points to like, we just like are much more capable as a species. And so in that world of more called like space abundance, um, I don't worry as much. And I admit that I've always been more on the, like the moon is absolutely the right pit stop on the way to Mars and, you know, advocate for that for a long time. Um, and I think in this world of abundance, it's a lot easier to see that. And now you even have Elon, you know, in some ways has totally reversed course of like, yeah, he talked about like making a mass driver on the moon.

1:08:57So you make like huge amounts of solar panels and data centers there, and then are shipping them up, you know, basically, you know, to Orbit. Sorry, Mass Driver, define that. Yes, one second. We just shut the blinds real quick. Yeah, no worries. While he's shutting the blinds, let me do an ad read for Cognition. Cognition is the team behind the AI software engineer, Devin. Crush your backlog with your personal AI engineering team. He's also an investor, so I don't feel bad doing an ad read for his own company. Yeah, I feel like I just kind of got paid for that a little bit too. If it was a competitor, I wouldn't do it, but I got to sneak these things in, got to pay the bills over here.

1:09:36Anyway, so take us through, what is a mass driver on the moon? So on earth, there's been a variety of ways that we've hypothesized basically, you know, sort of getting things up to orbit. Only one that is sort of really worked, right? Which is basically, you know, chemical combustion, you know, put, you know, So liquid fuel and an oxidizer, you know, basically, you know, in a rocket and launch up to space. There's people that have tried to work on other alternatives. So if you guys remember Spin Launch, the company that would basically spin things up really, really fast. Yeet aerospace. They would yeet it out into the aerospace.

1:10:09So that's the spin version. I love that one. You can also imagine the like rocket sled or like, you know, sled version. It's like an electromagnetic sled that is super, super long. So rather than like spinning fast, you basically like, you know, have like a Maglev train effectively. but just like many many miles long so you get it up space and shoot it up um now the reason that that's difficult on earth is um down here on the surface where the spin launches or the maglev sled thing would be are still in the atmosphere and so by the time you're getting to like you know call it if you got to orbital velocity you're still like in this thick atmosphere and so just like crazy heat crazy drag etc it's a really difficult you know basically to do so it's basically why we effectively use rockets is it just like they have a way of starting off slowly while they're in the atmosphere getting out of it and then going more quickly once you're out of the atmosphere um on the moon there is no atmosphere um and so the advantage there is you can basically set up effectively like a you know maglev track you also don't have to go that fast because the moon's gravity well is way less um and so it's super easy to basically like imagine a world where we you know mine a bunch of like very simple metals and things like that on the moon make this like magnet train and now all of a sudden you just have something on the moon that you can like point towards earth if you want to like send something into like low earth orbit but also So now if you want to like point it out to Jupiter or Mars, it's just like a phenomenal, effectively you can think of it as like train station effectively, where like I wouldn't be surprised that even if we are going to Mars, there's a world where like, you know, yeah, maybe the humans are just going straight from Earth to Mars.

1:11:30But I wouldn't be surprised if like a lot of the materials or metals or like, you know, produce things, especially if we have like an industrial outpost on the moon. The moon is the one that is like sending the solar panels to Mars or is sending the bioreactors or like the like agricultural plant, et cetera. that stuff's all coming from the moon because it's like literally basically like free to effectively like send it um um send it to mars yeah um and so yeah that's an idea that's been talked about in sci-fi for a long time partially in some ways it's also like it's the best weapon in the world um in that like you can just shoot a rock you know at the earth really fast and then hit you know anybody that you want and you basically can't stop it um but yeah speaking of space weapons is there any movement on golden dome um uh so i don't know if you guys saw but uh mba uh basically put out this um shield um idiq for where they're going to do a lot of the golden dome work not all of it um uh they i want to say it was like now two wednesdays ago um maybe it was a little earlier than that um maybe it was last week um but uh they basically announced that about i think it was 3 000 people had applied to be a part of the program um you know about a thousand contractors basically got awarded to be on contract.

1:12:37And to sort of acknowledge my colleagues, thank you to the VARTA team for putting together a great proposal on technology, and we got to be a part of that. Still would say all this stuff is sort of early in that there's definitely some, the Space Force actually announced that they gave out their first space-based intercept contracts. They didn't name who won those contracts because of natural security reasons. But yeah, you're starting to see stuff that was sort of theorized early on in the admin, and now Space Force has obviously handed out those first contracts. Missile Events Agency has handed out those first contracts.

1:13:08And so becoming real, I'd say in terms of like first demos, fielded capabilities, you're still a little ways away. I think by like end of next year, you'll probably start to see some of the first stuff really, you know, sort of happening. And then in 2027 is where I think you'll just have a bunch of like, you know, demonstrations across everything from like space radar, space-based intercept, you know, space to ground stuff, you know, advanced ground radar systems, advanced hypersonic like interceptors that come from the ground, from all these, you know, sort of new, you know, both your traditional, you know, sort of primes and some of these like Neo primes, you know, coming to the table for Golden Dome.

1:13:39So yeah, becoming real, I think the important thing for something like Golden Dome is like, you want to make sure that if there's a change in administration, you get to keep some of the advancement capabilities. And the best way to ensure that happens is like, make sure that they're fielded. Like if a new admin comes in, and it's still like an R &D land, it's easier for them to cancel it. Oh, sure. Versus like, if it's something that like the warfighter literally like has access to and is using well then it's like you know sort of much more likely that um you know much more likely um uh that they're gonna you know sort of keep it keep it around because the warfighter will insist on like hey we like built this and we use it and this helps us deter china why would we like unfund it basically yeah do you have any idea how uh jared thinks about the nasa budget it was about 25 billion dollars last year i could see one stance where it's like 25 billion dollars is a lot of money and it's enough we can do a lot with it But there's another, I could also imagine him being like, we got to get those numbers up.

1:14:30I think politically right now, the White House's budget was actually less than 25 billion. And so the likelihood of him coming out politically and saying, I want more, probably doesn't totally jive with like, hey, Trump just reappointed you. But I think keeping it flat, but using it far more efficiently, that I can see him being like a huge advocate for. And like, yeah, he's made it pretty damn clear. We've talked about this before. But like, I mean, especially now with, you know, one thing, oh, one thing that we haven't talked about, you know, is New Glenn, right? Like, you know, for the first time, we have a second, you know, orbital rocket that is reusable in the United States.

1:15:01And by the way, that thing is like really big, right? Like, you know, much larger than a Falcon 9. And so at this point, when you've got both Starship flying regularly and you have New Glenn flying regularly, the idea of like NASA still building rockets through the like SLS program is like even more crazy because it's like you have multiple commercial providers. And by the way, like Neutron from, you know, Rocket Lab will probably be online next year. Stokespace will be online. So I think the exciting thing about Jared is just like a strong willingness to go slash out budgets that are things that the commercial industry is already doing more effectively, more cheaply, and then go assign that to things like clips, lunar landings, et cetera, that are where the strategic focus needs to be.

1:15:37So I think Jared is going to be the advocate of like, keep it at$25 billion, but we're going to do a heck of a lot more with that$25 billion than we were before because there's just like a bunch of things that are very large programs that now can effectively just be cut to zero. Do you know what's going on with asteroid Bennu? They discovered some sugars, sugar stardust. This was last week it got announced, but we didn't really get a chance to cover it. Yeah, so funny story of this. Remember the first VARTA mission where we got stuck up in orbit, right? We launched in June of 2023. The original goal was to land in August, September of 2023.

1:16:14Part of why we chose where we were going to land was because there had been some early cosmic dust and asteroid dust missions that had landed in that same range. But the other reason that we chose it was because it was going to be Halloween of, I believe, 23, OSIRIS-REx, the asteroid sample mission from Bennu, was also going to land there. obviously we ultimately ended up getting delayed and so rather than VARTA being first in the asteroid mission coming in, instead it was the other order asteroid mission came in, but point being our team paid a lot of attention to that asteroid sample coming in, given that like that was sort of the precedent for VARTA being able to basically come back from space and that mission was the one that had the venue samples on board so it's just now getting disclosed or talked about yeah, basically obviously with something this material insignificant Like you want to make sure that you dotted the i's and cross the t's.

1:17:09And also like it takes time to go analyze these samples and like handle it, et cetera. So yeah, the asteroid sample, yeah, landed like honestly October, November of 2023. And now obviously this is all started to get published two years later. What they effectively sort of showed was that on the asteroid, you have effectively like the building blocks of life, which, you know, which, and this is my favorite term in the world. build more data for the panspermia hypothesis. So the panspermia hypothesis is that the early building blocks of life are plentiful in the universe. And a part of how they get distributed in the universe is through, you know, basically collisions that end up, you know, you have like, you know, some early proper planet.

1:17:56It collides with some other big planet. And then there's crazy asteroids that get sent out at high speed. but those asteroids have a little bit of like sugars and ribos, et cetera. And that's what actually like, basically like incepts planet on a future, or incepts life on a future, basically planet. One of my favorite graphs that I saw, you know, I wish that I could pull this up right now. But if you look at the average length of a genome on earth over various periods of time, right? If we look at like old fossils, et cetera, the most complex genome basically has a perfect linear relationship between between basically the age of Earth and the genomic length.

1:18:34The thing though, is if you were to extrapolate that line downwards, if you go to when the start of Earth is, it was already at a relatively complex genome. If you look at the length of a human genome, the length of bacteria, length of virus, etc., it would predict that Earth has not been around long enough to have the level of complexity of genomes that we have given this linear relationship. And so it strongly supports the idea that the reason we have life on Earth is actually like there were some earlier solar system planted, et cetera, that did the early building blocks and then kicked us off because like it collided with something, some asteroid then went and landed on earth.

1:19:10And the building blocks sort of started us, you know, a little further in that like, you know, trajectory of life. It's basically the plot of Prometheus. Exactly. So if you look at sort of the like Fermi's, you know, sort of paradox, what this implies is that highly likely the great filter is actually basically behind humanity in that like given that this likely suggests that there is you know sort of the building blocks of life all over earth but that we do not yet see signals it means that there is probably some filter that makes it difficult to go from like early building blocks to intelligence more so than you know basically like intelligence being you know uh you know uh you know risky uh for you know being able to like spread out into the stars and so it is uh there's this great graph that showed like um all the potential you know basically like um answers to the fermi's paradox but this one basically shifted it significantly towards the world of like there is abundant um non-intelligent life in the universe and we just happen to be the first intelligent one um and as we go out we will probably see lots of early building blocks and as we spread we may start to see other very early you know sort of life you know sort of planets that maybe are just getting into bacteria or like early mammals and things like that so So, yeah, it's really exciting time.

1:20:25It means the universe is plentiful in terms of life. That's fascinating. Polymarket just skyrocketing on the odds of UFO disclosure. Are you long or short aliens being real? I mean, especially with this panspermia hypothesis, like, you know, very, you know, sort of, you know, long. I think there's obviously some sort of insider gov info that is coming out. Like when you see a polymarket market like that spike so much, somebody knows something and it's driven on it. So, you know, what I love about Polymarket, it's like, we're like, is it insider trading? And it's like, yes, that's the point. Finally, somebody saying it out loud.

1:21:02Yeah. Yeah, that's wild. What about, I mean, I want to go through a bunch of stuff. Yeah, I mean, I imagine that you can't comment on the actual like IPL rumors, but I would be interested to hear about like what, you know, like looking back on 2025 for that company, looking forward to 26, what are you excited about? And then also like, what do you think people might misunderstand about SpaceX that, you know, is the story that we start seeing told maybe if they hypothetically go public one day? Yeah, let's see. You know, to me, it feels like the company is like, you know, sort of very on track in that um you know when people started talking about starship in like 2020 21 i remember telling people like look this is like super exciting but if you just look at the complexity of that vehicle relative falcon 9 it's a huge step up in complexity but that's also roughly to step up in terms of like size of company that spacex is and complexity that they can take on and so then my like quick math is like well then it'll probably take about just as much time as falcon 9 to get to like you know true production rate and so there are people that were like no oh, they'll be like, you know, like fully online by 25, commercial, flying super regularly.

1:22:19And I always remember saying in like 2020, I was like, I don't think that that's going to sort of be the case. I think it'll be closer to like end of decade because that's, you know, roughly the time frame that Falcon 9, you know, sort of took. And so that's where I kind of see them where it's like, yeah, they like are obviously making phenomenal progress, you know, sort of with Starship. I don't think that we're going to be seeing like, you know, this year it's going to be on the order of, I forget, I think like 200, you know, sort of Falcon 9, you know, sort of rocket launches. I don't think they were going to see 200 Starship launches until, yeah, probably end of decade would still be my rough bet.

1:22:46But I still think it's a really phenomenal outcome. Yeah, they're going similarly on timing and speed, but they're blowing up more rockets than Falcon 9. Because I think the third Falcon 9 rocket was successful, something like that. Yes, but they had a bunch of landings that they blew up, which is the more complex part. People forget that, yeah, for what it's worth, Starship is already functional and online. It's just not fully reusable. I think a lot of people misunderstand that when it's blowing up, it's usually blowing up on the way down. It very quickly was like, okay, it takes off successfully.

1:23:19It gets up to the top, and then it starts blowing up on the way down. It bounces off the... No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not bouncing off anything. It is, in fact, going to space. We are going to space. It is going to space. Space is real here on this show. It glances off. that's very funny um okay are you yeah sorry continue oh seriously yeah people under appreciate that like starship is actually a very successful rocket already yeah um it can take things up to orbit at like very large scale at very cheap prices literally today it just happens to be like yeah they're still figuring out the landing thing sure but obviously they want to figure that out before they get to like super mass production right um i think the other story that is really going to start to be told is um just their shift to like more things that are you know extraterrestrial and that like you are going to see SpaceX do, I think, some very impressive things that are way beyond the bounds of low Earth orbit over the coming, you know, sort of couple years.

1:24:13Obviously, they have a huge contract with NASA to like figure out how to land things on the moon. And that type of activity is something that they like are spending a lot of resources on internally. But I don't think it's like that public of a story relative to like Starship, Starlink, etc. I saw something. I saw this like article that had like all these motion graphics. very cool and it was explaining how Starship will take stuff to the moon and it was something like they're going to do like 26 refuelings in space and then that just feels like in the 60s we could just go straight there and now we got to stop for gas 26 times like why should I not be blackmailed on this is this like it just seems crazy to me but break it down what's actually going on so funny historical fact from the like Apollo days There was actually a huge debate internally at NASA whether or not to take the like fuel stop approach versus the like shoot straight for the moon approach.

1:25:08OK. There was a significant chunk of NASA led by – it was like Pete something I want to say that really wanted to do the gas station approach. The reason being that they saw that as what would make it so that going to the moon was just much more long-term sustainable because you have these like pieces of infrastructure and it's easy to like send things mission by mission without each individual mission basically being super risky. Yeah. And the other side of the approach, which was just shoot straight for the moon, was largely led by Wernher von Braun. A part of why he liked the shoot straight for the moon thing is because it allowed him to just make one really, really big rocket rather than launching lots of small rockets.

1:25:40And I think he was just addicted to rockets, basically. And that was ultimately what won out. I do think probably that was the right call for the time and allowed us to make up your skis, et cetera. But counterintuitively, the refueling and fuel stations approach is actually just the much more long-term sustainable one. And that like, as we think about like, you know, going to Mars, very regularly going to the moon. Sure. You don't want to necessarily have to take on the risk of like, you know, just like on a car trip, you don't take all your fuel literally with you. Like there are gas on the way.

1:26:07And that makes it so that the vehicle that is moving things is much simpler. Same thing. You want to set up a more stable logistics and supply chain. You actually do want, you know, basically these types of fuel stops. But yeah, that's a part of what SpaceX needs to prove is like, you know, I think that number that you're citing in terms of number of refuels is more for a full Mars mission. For the moon, I think it's more like three refuels. Okay. So it is definitely, you know, sort of simpler by going to the moon. Also, it does seem like we've rebuilt the capacity to just yeet stuff directly to the moon because didn't Firefly land something up there?

1:26:36And China's going up and stuff direct. Like, we seriously have checked that box like several times. It's not even like humans on the moon once. Like, I think we sent six manned missions, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. But I think we want to get that to like 600. It's going to be like through the fuel stop, you know, approach probably. And what I like is that we're parallel tracking. The things that Firefly and China have done, those things are just amplified by the fuel stop approach when that comes online. I like that we're parallel tracking it. This goes back to a little bit of the Jared Isaacman thing where, man, if I were in Jared Isaacman's shoes right now, I would basically just go to NASA and just be like, hey, Firefly's figured out how to land on the moon.

1:27:12I don't understand why we wouldn't just jam a bunch of funding down their throats and tell them, don't just do it once a year, but I want you doing it on a quarterly basis. I want you to basically now establish a regular supply chain there. So now I can go fund a bunch of companies that are like making lunar humanoids and lunar robots and pavers and solar panel assemblers, et cetera. So like while we're in parallel doing the like fuel stop human architecture, we also just like have these direct approaches that are landing robots there. So we're just like landing equipment there nonstop and figuring out how to like, you know, basically make sure that by the time the humans are there, we actually have like a bunch of like robotic infrastructure that's like, you know, autonomous and basically set up.

1:27:46And so, yeah, I think like that, that, that parallel approach. That is super sci-fi. I love that. But that feels like if we can do that, we can certainly put some data centers in space. What's your thinking evolving on that? Because Casey Hanmer just came out pro data center in space. Like you had us in the first half. Elon's been posting about it. Yeah, Elon. I mean, you really kicked the hornet because it was like Elon Sundar. This YC company seems to be doing pretty well. There's like four different attack vectors on you. And I love it. It's contrarian position. but are you maintaining it or is your thinking evolving?

1:28:23Look, I'm going to maintain my position because no information has changed. People have said words, but they have not presented compelling arguments. Where I think there's a little bit of a gray area is like, look, I currently have two data centers that are in space. I'm not doing AI compute on them, but I have a bunch of computers up in space that could go do inference and training, et cetera. starlink each of the satellites has compute that's out on board they could be you know basically you know sort of data centers in space so i think the question more is like you change up your you change up your tune delia and you're looking at the next 20 billion dollar public company i think so can we smack this i saw you hanging out with uh with i don't know if you're doing your duty to shareholders in the way that you're spinning on yeah just stop being so realistic too modest Too modest.

1:29:15Too much of a realist. We're putting a quantum computer on it, too. I literally have multiple shareholders that have been like, okay, I know that you don't like the data center space thing, but what if we use the space factories to make things that go into the data center? Yeah, exactly. Fab in space. Fab in space. I giggle a little bit, and I'm just like, love you guys. My job is to build a business that delivers revenue and shareholder returns, not just pure hype. But yeah, I think it's on the margin where it's like, Like, do I think that, like, the SpaceX, like, economics are going to beat out, like, nuclear power data centers run by Crusoe in Texas?

1:29:51No, man. Come on. Like, I just, like, in order for that to work, you have to be, like, short nuclear, short, you know, optical fiber on the ground, short the ability to, like, you know, build buildings, short solar panels, short batteries. It's just, like, all of those things are making incredible progress super rapidly. And in space, those things are more complex. are there going to be you know sort of marginal you know sort of areas and use cases and more broadly as we just like have more and more of like internet and connectivity where there there are real benefits to being in space and so then you by default just have more infrastructure up there and so yes some of those things may be dedicated to compute but like yeah is crusoe almost certainly going to have like better economics than like a space-based data center in 2030 yeah i think that's going to be the case and so that might mean that like 98.5 percent of data centers, you know, are on the ground.

1:30:35If some small sliver for certain use cases, or you're doing like compute on things that are calculated in orbit, or like, you know, you know, cameras, you know, that are up there and you're trying to do things, or it's like, there's people that are up in orbit and you know, they want to chat GPT in orbit, then yeah, again, there might be these like slivers, but it's going to be, yeah, I feel very confident that it's going to be slivers. Who knows? Maybe we'll look at this recording in 2032 and like, you know, I'll be like, people will be mocking you. People will be dunking on you. The young, the young Dalian will literally be saying like Dallian's been like the next Dallian, you know, the young guy that loves, yeah, they'll be like, oh, he's chopped D-cell.

1:31:11I'm D-cell, baby. I'm D-cell. Yeah. He only predicted humanoids assembling pavers on the moon, not data centers. Anyway. Big D-cell guy. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. This is a lot of fun. Always, always great to chat. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas. We'll see you soon. Merry Christmas. See you, Steve. boys. Bye. We're going to tell you about 8sleep.com. Delian's an investor. Exceptional sleep without exception. Get an 8sleep for Christmas. Gifted for Christmas. Get a good night's sleep this Christmas with 8sleep. I got a 92. Jordy, how'd you do? Oof. I got an 86.

1:31:50I got a 92, but I'm in a terrible sleep debt, which is rough. I'm on like a four hour, five hour sleep. I don't care that you won because I'm in such a good mood because of this Christmas music. I like it. It really keeps going. This is the longest. Right now. Yes, we have Morgan Housel, author, friend of the show. Welcome to the show. This is the longest sound cue. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. How are you doing? Welcome back. Good to see you guys. Doing well. I like your shirts. Looking good. Thank you. One should be in the mail for you. Yeah, hopefully already. I love it.

1:32:22Can't wait. Let's get into it. What is new in your world? Take us through the latest, and then I want to go into some psychology of the holidays, psychology of shopping. We have a bunch of things that we want to run through. Yeah, I mean, not that much going on right now. I'm not writing a book right now, which is kind of the most enjoyable part of my career because it lets you just spend all day reading and thinking about what's next, which is always the most enjoyable part of it. So I guess to answer your question, I don't know what's next, but I love this area of my life of just doing a bunch of reading and talking to people and thinking about different topics and try to figure out what might be next.

1:33:02How much have you kind of keyed in on what you want to write about next? I think I have a pretty good idea of what it would be. Well, what about the next book? What about the next book after that? Is that starting to come into focus? I'm curious. I think that's not, I think what is true that I have an idea for a distant book. I don't know when this is going to be, but there are so many topics that are worth exploring, but not in a full book. And I do think there is an idea. It's hard to do right, but there's an idea for a book that is a huge hodgepodge of like 80 different ideas, all of which are worth exploring in three or four pages.

1:33:40And obviously the issue with most nonfiction books, particularly business books, is you have a topic that is worth exploring, but not in 250 pages. But then the author has to stretch it out and just keep on rambling about the same topic over and over again. And that's why business books are so difficult. So if you can get around that by just going shallow, or not even shallow, but giving the treatment that they deserve on a bunch of small, disparate topics, I think that's something I'm interested in. Have you ever been tempted into trying to build a subscription newsletter and really focus in on that by saying, hey, there's a bunch of – instead of the next three or four books, I'm going to basically just write the chapters and publish them as I have them?

1:34:21I'm sure you've had every opportunity to do that and it hasn't been the focus so far but I'm curious if that would ever change I think the reason I have not is because I think you have to be very careful as a content creator, for lack of a better word that you don't become beholden to your audience that you say, look, my audience is paying me 100 bucks a month and I have to feed the ducks because they're quacking that's a very dangerous spot to be in for a content creator being forced to say stuff when you have nothing to say is a bad spot to be in. You're saying that to the guys that go live for three hours every day.

1:34:54And if we don't... Yeah, but you're talking differently. Like nobody expects you to do your PhD thesis every day. Totally, totally. The bar is like much lower. And we're not... We don't necessarily need to generate the content. The world generates the content and we figure out what we want to talk about. Yeah, we're kind of like... What about... Have you seen some... There's some... I feel like I've seen some authors that are writing fiction instead of just writing a book, like releasing the book as a subscription product. That seems somewhat interesting, almost like treating it like you're subscribing to Netflix and Netflix is releasing a show and they're sort of dripping it out over time.

1:35:30Do you think that's a model that authors could, like how powerful is the book industrial complex? Is there enough incentives to keep people from not doing that and not self-publishing and kind of dripping out content and just staying true to the traditional path? I think it's true that books are, and this is true for podcasts as well, that they are the ultimate tale-driven content. 99 % of books that are published don't work. But the ones that do really, really work, same for podcasts and whatnot. And so I think it's true that if you're an author, you need, particularly if you haven't had that hit yet, you need to figure out your business model in a different way.

1:36:09It's very difficult to say, I'm a talented writer. I'm going to go write books and try to make a living out of it. So for every writer who does that, there are 10 ,000 who have stumbled and tripped and ultimately failed doing it. It's a tough model to make it work. And I've seen a much higher success rate in the people that go on Substack or whatever it might be and have that level of subscription. I think people are more willing to pay$30 a month for your consistent content, your daily or your weekly newsletter, than they are to pay$30 for a book that took you two years to write. And so it's a more stable model, I think, with a higher hit rate to have that paid subscription.

1:36:48Even if the rewards for a book that works can be higher, it's just so much more difficult to make it work. What do you think about consumer churn or conversion to actually consuming the content fully? Because I know that there's this odd, a lot of people buy physical books, they gift them and then they sit on bookshelves and they wind up being props in many cases that people don't just have enough time to read all the books that they acquire. I actually did subscribe to one of those new books as a newsletter fiction and it was odd because I wound up paying for it for a very long time But I didn't wind up reading it as they work as yeah Yeah, and I and I thought I went when I first when I first subscribed I was like, oh This is going to be even easier because it's so bite-sized.

1:37:33It's gonna be easier I'm more likely to get through this than if this was just another book that I had added to my audible It also creates a weird tension where there's an incentive to have like crazy cliffhangers so that people don't churn. Like if you get a little bit bored with a book and you have the ability to churn from the book, you know, think about how often I'll start a book and if I'm not, you know, I'll get three chapters in. If I'm not like really engaged with it, I'll just say like, cool, I'm not necessarily, hopefully I learned something, but I'm not going to just read it just to see it all the way through.

1:38:06Sure, yeah. I think what's true too for every good nonfiction book is that people don't remember books so much as they remember a couple sentences from those books. So most nonfiction books are about 50 ,000 words. If you read to the end, which is rare, but if you read all 50 ,000 words and you come away having remembered two or three banger lines of the 50 ,000 words, you remember 50 of them. That can be great. And it's true. Like some books that I know changed my life, books that I recommend that are so good. If you actually, if you ask me about them, I can tell you two or three sentences, maybe that I remember verbatim that were fantastic.

1:38:43And the rest kind of drifts away over time. So I think that's true even for the absolute best books that can change your life. It's just very small snippets that you're going to remember from them. And so I want one takeaway in that too, is that you can, you can remember two or three banger lines from a blog post as well. And so all the books that I've written, most of the ideas started as blog posts. And then I could take that idea. Okay, that idea worked. People like that. How can I kind of transform that into a chapter in a book? But the core idea is like if you can remember one sentence from this idea, from this chapter, I've done my job.

1:39:20That's the goal. Yeah. I wonder if I actually read this book. but there's a book that left a really, really long impression on me, all about immortality. It was this very interesting way of framework of thinking about immortality from different cultures. And I don't even know if I actually read the book, but it stuck with me because the actual idea was so powerful. And then there's other books where I've read the whole thing. There's been a lot of interesting anecdotes, but it didn't change my whole worldview. And yeah, it's just fascinating. Sorry, what were you going to say? Well, I was talking about, I wrote an essay called Rage Bait is for Losers.

1:39:53And what I wanted people to remember was the title. In itself, it was Rage Bait itself. Because if you've been Rage Baiting, and you then are thinking, well, I'm not. You kind of want to defend it as a strategy. And some people do. This is interesting. So how do you think about Rage Bait in the context of picking a title for a book that might jump off the shelf in a store? because I can imagine there's a world where a book is called, you know, like, if you don't read this, you'll be poor forever or something like that, you know, and then, and then it's like, all of a sudden, I'm not going to let them get the best of me.

1:40:33I got to read that book. But I think it's no different than any product where you over promise and under deliver. You're just going to piss off your customers. And if you're just trying to get a quick hit and then disappear, maybe that's the right way. If you're trying to build a long-term brand, your title has to be very honest. And so my first book, The Psychology of Money, it's a pretty boring title. A lot of the people who are involved in it said, we should not use that as a title. It sounds like an academic textbook. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a textbook. But it's an honest title. What is the book about?

1:41:03It's about the psychology of money. It doesn't have a problem. Do you think you would have sold more copies if you just changed the title to How to Get Rich and Stay Rich or something? Well, it's not even that. it's like how to make sure that you have a good psychology of money. How to make sure you have a good relationship with money. That's the expectation, but you didn't set that in the title. You clearly care about NPS maybe more than other writers or publishers might. I heard Rory Sutherland say this on a podcast recently. He said, if you are like a family business and you're in it for the long run, you're trying to build a generational business, by and large, you don't care about metrics.

1:41:43You're not tracking how much your gross profit margin shifted last quarter. What you care about is customer satisfaction and brand. And it's only when you're like a private equity owned business where you're like, we're just trying to flip this thing in the next quarter that you become very metric driven and you wanna measure everything down. So I think to answer your question, if I was very metric driven and it was just like, my goal is to sell as many books as I can next quarter, you can use something bombastic that's gonna overpromise. I'll probably work in the short run. If your book, if your goal is to have a long tail sales cycle and being like, I want this book to sell for years or even generations, if I'm lucky, it has to be honest.

1:42:19It has to be brand driven where people are like, I enjoyed this book. I'm going to recommend it to my friends and family. Uh, Emily Herrera in the chat says books are just titles and thumbnails. So same, same experience on YouTube. You might, you might have a crazy title and thumbnail. And then if it's not very truthful and all the comments are just like, congrats on baiting people into watching this. And again, the sort of NPS is quite low. Should you write a book on gambling? I think it's all kind of embedded in behavioral finance. And I think the idea that the proliferation of gambling, whether it's crypto or sports betting or whatever it might be, I think by and large, this is not a unique take.

1:43:07Many people have talked about this, but Daniel Kahneman wrote about when all of your options are bad or perceived to be bad, people become very risk-taking. And so if you feel like, if a young person feels like, if I work hard, excuse me, if I work hard and work my way up the corporate ladder and save my money and buy a house and start a family, that's what you'll do. If you perceive that option is available to you. If you don't, then you're like, who cares? Like, I have no vested stake in this system. Might as well throw it all on black and see what happens. And I think that that comes down to it.

1:43:40So I think the psychology of gambling is a pretty deep social issue. And I think you could probably accurately summarize it as youth pessimism. When people are pessimistic, they're much more likely to just throw it all down and see what happens. They have nothing to lose. I have more on that. So So how do you think about the level of risk that people were taking at the time of the American dream? Because there's one world where we go back and we say like, oh, yeah, it was like the 1950s. And you could just get a job at this law firm and it would just be massively successful. Or even if you were a coal miner, you'd have a job in health care forever.

1:44:18And you go to the auto plant and be an auto worker and work your way up from the person sweeping up the floor at night to the manager at the end of the day. And I'm wondering if there's like, well, like we remember that as not risky because America was successful. But like there was an emerging new order where, you know, like the USSR could have steamrolled in the Cold War and America could have been a disaster. And so, in fact, like it was risky, but it just worked out well. But I don't know if that's like – am I thinking about that even in the right realm at all? What do you think? Yeah, I think a lot of that narrative of what the job market used to be and kind of the 1950s Americana nostalgia that we have is just that.

1:45:01It's kind of false nostalgia. It's this idea that the narrative that you just described of you could go get a job at an auto factory and work your way up and stay there for 30 years. I mean if you understand the history of the US economy in the 1950s, particularly the 1970s, there were huge recessions. There were huge job losses. And so I think it's easy to put together a charming Norman Rockwell picture of what it used to be. By and large, it's not the case. But on the flip side – It was like everyone had this idea of like if you were employed, you had a very good shot of owning a home. But the homes were like 750 square feet, right?

1:45:41And they were like – That's true. But I think it's also true that you can throw around a lot of statistics, and I have. about how the median American family earns more as wealthier, as better off today than they were in the 1950s, in the 1960s. It's also true indisputably that homeownership was more accessible and cheaper back then. And I've been thinking a lot about the topic that I think almost every societal problem that we have today is downstream of housing affordability. It's the single biggest issue that we have, even back to the gambling issue that we were just talking about. If you are 28 and you feel, whether it's true or not, you feel like you will never own a home.

1:46:24It's impossible for you to get there to save the down payment. You become much more likely to be like, I have nothing vested in this system. Might as well throw it all away. I have nothing to lose. I might as well throw it all away. And so even if median incomes adjusted for inflation were lower back in the 1950s, if owning a home was more accessible, and by and large it was for most people, that just gave you more of a vested sense in the system, caused you to take, I think, smarter risks, not betting everything on the spread on tonight's game, but taking a risk of, I'm gonna move to a new town and try to get a job at an auto factory.

1:46:59That was a risk, but it's a more calculated risk than today's gambling mentality. I think there's something to be said too of just access, which we're seeing in the gambling world today. If you gave a 19-year-old boy Kalshi and all the sports betting apps in 1955, they would have latched right onto it. There's nothing unique about today's young generation by and large. It's just that we didn't have those tools to the extent that we do today. I encourage people to look up, John and I were going back and forth on this on our flight on Friday. We were looking at how popular gambling was during the fall of the Roman Empire.

1:47:36It was all social classes. We're doing it on the exact same levels that we're seeing today. Sure, they weren't on a mobile device, but it was like everywhere that you would be eating and drinking and it was in private and public and there was illegal and legal in some areas like at certain festivals, it would be legal and then it would be like illegal otherwise. But, you know, it was kind of seen as OK. So there's nothing there's nothing new. These things just are going in waves. But it certainly was. I think people were like somewhat nihilistic. and they were just like, sure, like things are, we're experiencing a collapse.

1:48:16We may as well put it all on block. Yeah, and so I think it's easy to look at the issues of today and frame it as we have degraded, particularly the younger generation. I don't think that's the case. I think any other previous generation would have become degenerate gamblers and crypto traders if they had the option to, like today's generation does. Yeah, I wonder how much of it is just mimetic, just like the myth that we tell ourselves, like if we can, yeah, I don't know, somehow steer away. I also wonder like, you know, there is the paternalistic, the puritanical, like ban the bad thing, but there's also the more optimistic view of just like maybe just do more of the good thing.

1:49:02Like if we have like a national project to build something meaningful. Well, I think the thing that makes you want to put your hand through a wall is people having their, in their brokerage account, the ability to one click, you know, sell Apple stock and in another click buy trade on sports contracts. because, I mean, again, at least there was historically some separation where there was at least some friction of getting out of maybe a higher quality investment and getting into something that's just rolling the dice. And I think that's very clearly going, you know, has gone away in some cases and probably will just continue to erode.

1:49:50Also, I mean... Yeah, I think it's important to point out, too, that Vanguard has$12 trillion AUM. You know, Fidelity has$10 trillion AUM. The vast majority of capital these days are people saving in their 401ks, dollar cost averaging. They don't even know their password. It's being invested into good, stable businesses, diversified, low cost. So it's easy to point out around all the crazy speculation that goes on. And look, I'm a free markets person. People want to speculate and do whatever they want their money. you're allowed to set your financial life on fire. But the vast, vast majority of capital is still being invested in what I would consider to be a pretty smart, conservative, long-term way.

1:50:31The chat has a little bit of a counterpoint. They said that we might not be considering the fact that 99 % of gamblers quit just before they hit it big. And so that is a little bit of a counterpoint to a lot of the arguments that we're making here. And I just want to make sure we consider that one more bet just one more bet you're good wanted to go back get your thoughts on startup launches kind of random I think everyone has launch video fatigue I know we did we were doing a lot of launch style videos earlier this year and we pretty much stopped completely just because we felt like the meta was kind of dead it wasn't actually a way to truly break through anymore and wanted to get your, if you think that writing is underutilized as like a launch strategy, there's been some viral PDFs.

1:51:29I think situational awareness is a good example of like just if you can put together a good enough document, you can attract, I mean, obviously Leopold is in a unique situation, but it feels like writing is super underutilized. My first company went viral on a blog post on Hacker News and drove 10 ,000 signups, a ton of interest, and people were starting a conversation around that. It was just a blog on some random person's website, basically, and it actually broke out massively. But yeah, it's tricky, but I'd love to know your thoughts. I think it tends to be true, and this is not black and white, but it tends to be true that if you can explain your value proposition in a paragraph of text, you will do it.

1:52:10and if you can't, you're much more likely to say, well, we need some glossy pictures. If you can't do it with that, then you kind of work your way down to like, can we just create a movie out of this kind of thing? That's not always the case, but I do think it's a case that like, if your idea is so obvious and so good, you can just explain it with crayons on a piece of paper and you're good, you're good from there. And so I think, look, when I started writing books, somebody told me advice that I thought was great for books, but true for almost any product. And it was, if the book is good, you don't need to market it.

1:52:40And if the book is bad, no amount of marketing will help. Sure. I think you can apply that to a lot of different things. If your product is good, you don't need to market it. That's not true. I'm being, I'm being very generalized here. Marketing is important, but if your product is good, then it can kind of sell itself. If the product is bad, no amount of marketing will help, particularly in the longer term. And so look, I like good design. I like flashy videos. I like, I like all that kind of stuff, but good ideas are very obvious. I think that's one of the keys to good writing is that you don't need to spend a lot of mental horsepower to understand what the author is saying.

1:53:13You can just kind of glance your eyes over a paragraph and be like, yeah, I got it. Makes perfect sense. I don't need any more flashy video. That one sentence explained everything I need to know. Let's move on from there. I think that tends to be true. Do you have a book of the year? Do you like looking back and creating like a list of the things that you most enjoyed this year? I know that you don't, this is like a total newsletter fodder and we already talked about how you're not, in service to people that demand the end of the year review. But has anything stuck out to you this year? I thought the best book that I read was probably Andrew Ross Sorkin's 1929.

1:53:50Just absolutely phenomenal look. Also the best book launch ever? Yes, I think that's probably... He did both great book and then also like absolute masterclass. I was taking screenshots of you. If you search Andrew Ross Sorkin 1929 on YouTube, you can see that he just did every single podcast. Like he did 20 or 30 shows and it was so good. And I didn't realize like he's someone that everyone knows, but he's not constantly on a tour. So he had a lot of built up energy to like go full tilt and it worked really well. And it's such a fascinating period of American history that to my surprise has not, there's not a lot of books written about the Great Depression.

1:54:30There's not like, like what's the classic book on the Great Depression? There's not many of them. There are 10 ,000 books written about World War II. World War II, yeah. As there should be. But the Great Depression, which was so monumental in the history of this country, there's not a lot written about it. So I thought he did a great job. Somebody brought this up when they were reviewing 1929. I thought it was such a fascinating point that all of the big characters in the book, except for maybe Jesse Livermore, are pretty much forgotten today. All of the titans of industry, of banking, the Jamie Diamonds of their day, are all forgotten now.

1:55:03unless you're like a history buff. Charlie Mitchell, all those people, we don't remember them anymore. And I think there's something to be said that if your only accomplishment in life is that you made a lot of money, you're going to be forgotten very quickly. And that was true for a lot of the bankers back then. It's probably true for a lot of the private equity hedge fund people today. Nothing wrong with that. I will remember all the private credit legends. Wall Street's new rich. I will remember them. I'm going to keep this edition of Barron's and bring it to the grave. No, no. What you need to do is you need to wait 100 years, you need to write an amazing book about it, then you need to turn that book into a movie and a TV show and then cast an iconic actor and then we'll remember.

1:55:42How are you processing the AI trade in the context of history? I think historically, the gap between a product changing the world and people making a lot of money off of it can be 20 miles apart. The railroads were probably the most transformational technology ever, way more transformational than anything we've had over the last hundred years. And a few people made ungodly fortunes from it. 99 % of railroad investors lost everything. And that was true for the airplane, completely changed the world. A lot of people lost huge fortunes on automobiles. There were 2 ,000 car companies in the early 1900s.

1:56:22Three of them remained by the 1930s or so. And so you can go on down the list of like change the world and 99 % of people lost everything. Of course, that was true of the dot-com bubble. Everyone's thesis by and large in the late 1990s of what the internet would become was right. But it didn't mean that you were going to make any money from it. In fact, you were going to try and lose everything. Webvan, I think, is such a good example because it's like DoorDash. Just 15 years to hear it. At.com, Chewy's a banger company. MP3.com, Spotify's the company you want to own. Like there's just so many, every, every current company, there was some.com that was doing the basic idea and just didn't get to, didn't get to scale at all.

1:57:03Yeah. I think you could easily imagine just based off of history that in 20 years, of course, AI completely changed everything. Nothing is the same. And when we talk about the businesses that have been involved over the previous 20 years, there's two or three unbelievable winners. 99 % of companies went to zero. And the three companies that won are either not around today or not the obvious ones today. So if you're talking about the internet in 1998, Google was in a garage. Obviously, Facebook didn't exist yet. That tends to be the story of what it was. The Wright brothers themselves didn't make very much money from the airplane, if anything.

1:57:40It wasn't until you had someone named William Boeing who came along and he was like, I'm just going to copy your idea but do it way better than you guys could do it. And that tends to be the idea. It's what Google did with Yahoo and Hotbot and all the other search engines who were the actual frontrunners. You just took someone else coming along to be like, great idea. Hold my beer and watch me do it 100 times better than you could. Speaking of AI, we've talked about this before. Obviously, AI is not ready or equipped to write a book. Oh, it'll write it, John. Happily. It will write it, but it won't write it.

1:58:18But what do you think about AI-generated voices? Do you think that those are past the uncanny valley? Would you listen to an Audible book where the voice was AI-generated? I'm not much of an audiobook guy, so I'm probably the wrong person to ask for that. What I will say is one of the most amazing AI products that I've seen in the last two years, I think a lot of people have had this experience is Google's notebook LM where you go in and you say, here's a topic, make me a 10 minute podcast. And it spits it out and it's unbelievable. So when I first saw that, I was like, this is magic. I can't believe it.

1:58:55And how many notebook LM podcasts have I listened to since then? Zero. I was about to ask. I think none, none. I think there's something to be said. And of course I am literally talking. I actually think it's, I think the use case there where they probably have traction is students that have not studied for an exam and they have an hour to try to figure it out. So it's not for enjoyment at all. It's pure function, which is that I need to listen to something for an hour that is like hyper-specific to a topic and it's boring. So nobody necessarily made the definitive podcast episode on it, but I just need it.

1:59:29And then in terms of the way that most people listen to audio to be entertained, even if it's educational. And so they're going to go to people that are good entertainers, that are opinionated. I think that's true. And of course, I am such a biased person to say this as an author myself. But I think what I like about reading books, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, is the idea that a fellow human wrote this thing. I could never write this. My brain doesn't work this way, but some other authors did. And I feel like that connection is amazing. and it breaks down as soon as you have AI-generated content.

2:00:03And I think that's why I have no interest in a Notebook LM podcast. I'd much rather listen to David Senra and his, you know, even with all of his quirks and his stumbles and whatnot. But I'm like, yeah, but David read that. He did this. He's thinking that. And like, I love that. And so, you know. I listened to an hour of OG Senra, the P.T. Barnum episode yesterday. And then I got to hang out with David for a couple hours last night for dinner. at my house. One of the best guys around. I love him. Truly. Yeah. Truly. Yeah, I think I need to listen to the James Dyson episode today, but he released that.

2:00:41And for Senra OGs, you know how significant that episode is to him, like the full circle moment of studying Dyson to being able to interview him live. It's very cool. Love it. Yeah, wild. Great having you on the show. Thank you so much. We hope you have an incredible end to the year. Merry Christmas. And thank you for being a part of this this year. You're somebody that, one of our favorite guests, and I can't wait for next year. Thanks so much for having me. Always an honor to be on. Looking forward to my shirt. Yes. We'll talk to you soon. Talk soon. Have a good rest of your day. Numeral.com.

2:01:20Compliance handled. Numeral worries about sales tax and VAT compliance, so you can focus on growth and putting presents into the Christmas tree. That's right. Speaking of presents under the Christmas tree, the Google team is cooking up a present for me in 2026. They're going to put ads in Gemini. Let's go. Hit the gong.

2:01:48Finally, finally. We've been asking for it. I hear the sleigh bells ringing. We've been asking for it. ads in LLMs. We talked to the founder of Perplexity about it. We asked Arvid, why are you going to put ads? We want ads in Perplexity. And he said, maybe. And the tech group wrote a whole article about it. They got really bad. I'll let Google jump first. I'll let Google jump first. We've talked to Sarah Fryer. We've talked to the OpenAI team about how badly we want ads in ChatGPT, how badly we want ads in LLMs. They said, maybe we're going to do it. Maybe we're not. They've been sitting on their hands but now i don't know how you can i i love listening to your voice it's good it's good we need a backup track uh yeah this this is interesting okay uh there there's this feels like very google to just be like yeah we're we're the ad business we're gonna do ads we're gonna do them first we're probably gonna do them uh better than than anybody else at least initially but some people were pushing back just being like hey you could have like you easily could have um just crushed right yeah you easily could have just like kept the product a lot of people are excited about or a lot of people are are are wondering like hey there's a there's a world where Gemini doesn't have ads and is free for two years and it just completely puts the screws to every other you know LLM provider yeah and I've I mean what would you do if you were them would you would you monetize earlier like it can't be that expensive right I mean it would definitely hurt cash flow.

2:03:22It would show up in the financials for sure. Gemini Pro Plus is not cheap, but... Turning on ads for... I always look back to what would the Instagram business look like if they were forced to monetize it independently because it's an amazing platform that's perfectly suited to monetize with ads. And yet you can imagine meta ramped ad spend on the platform 10, 20 times faster than maybe an independent operator would have because they had all the customer relationships. They had a strong sense of who the person was already because they were probably on Facebook as well. I don't think ads cause failure to adopt a new product.

2:04:10I don't know. We'd have to look through the product graveyard, but I feel like of things that die, they rarely die because there are two ads up front. People are acting like ads and LMs are going to be the biggest deal and are going to be the biggest issue. And I just don't think it's going to be. I think they're going to. In many ways, they could make the product better or more sticky in the sense that you're looking at stuff, doing shopping in there. Personally, I want every LLM to have a lot of ads so that I can swap between all of the best models without feeling like I need to sign up. I actually, for me, I'm like, there's models that I just don't use because I'm like, okay, I don't want to sign up.

2:04:46I have not that much interest. I'll let Tyler sign up. Totally. uh, on our ramp cart. Um, but, uh, do you think XAI is going to run, uh, ads? Do you think they're going to put ads in Grok or ads in, in, in romantic mode? Yeah, I'm sure they will at some point. I doubt it's a huge, a huge priority for them. There's this company halftime, which won the Grok hackathon that happened over the weekend. I DM with the founder. He's down to, he's down to come on. This is, we need to pull this up because when I saw this, I was like, whoa, like XAI, I didn't realize that it was from a hackathon. I thought it was just this actual company.

2:05:21So it says Halftime dynamically weaves AI-generated ads into the scenes that you're watching. So breaks feel like part of the story instead of interruptions. So there's some really funny answers to this. Sidebrex in the chat says, it just makes you second guess every output you get from the model. Totally. I agree that's the bad case. There's a world where they just give you the real response and then there's an ad. Yes, but so there is a different flip. So to Cybex's point, you second guess every output you get from the model because you're worried the ad is influencing it. If you go to your favorite chat app and you say, what are the best headphones?

2:06:02And it says Apple AirPod Pros. And you're like, oh, is it sponsored? Is it not? Are they being objective? Are they not? Yes, that is something that you'd worry about. But there's also the other flip side, which is that if they're not monetizing well, they might be putting you on the cheapest model that's just guessing. And it's just like, oh, yeah, like I guess it's this product because they didn't cook. They didn't give you the reasoning model because they can't afford to because they're not monetizing you well. I think, yeah, one reality is somebody types, what is the best cell phone that I can get for$1 ,000?

2:06:38And it gives you the iPhone. and then there's an ad for an Android phone right below it. And that's still worth advertising on because it's a high intent query. And it's very, you know, and it's likely ends up being profitable for the Android device manufacturer to advertise against it. But let's pull up Halftime. They're dynamically weaving AI-generated ads into scenes you're watching. So breaks feel like part of the story instead of interruptions. Watching. which was important.

2:07:14Wrong. Boo. What did he say? Harvard trivia, the lightning round. Go Pulitzer prizes. 46 Nobel peace prizes.

2:07:35Jessica, what are you doing here? I was just a... That is so weird. It is so bad.

2:07:49I'm sold. Now I want a Coca-Cola. Okay, okay, okay. If you want to see how ads are done well in video integration like this, we have to pull up the video that's at the bottom of the timeline. they just reinvented the Star Wars Cerveza Cristal ads. Have you seen these? You've barely seen Star Wars. But at one point there was an international showing of the original Star Wars and for some reason they needed to cut ads into the actual footage. And so we got to play this with sound. It's one of my favorite things. Let's play it. You fought in the Clone Wars? Look at this. Yes. I was once a Jedi Knight, the same as your father.

2:08:39I wish I'd known him. He was the best star pilot in the galaxy. And a cunning warrior. I understand you've become quite a good pilot yourself. And he was a good friend. Which reminds me. I have something here for you. Look at this. Your father wanted you to have this when you were old enough.

2:09:10It's the best. It's like pure art. AI could never. It's so good. It's absolutely genius. And they do that two or three other times throughout the movie. And so you're just watching. And it's always when they go to grab something. And then they just do the insert shot. So if you're watching the Cerveza Cristal version of Star Wars, By the end of the movie, Obi-Wan Kenobi has had like five beers. Whoa. More than cheeky pint. Yeah, yeah. No, he's definitely has buzz going. But that's one of my favorite little bits. That's great. Let me tell you about Banta really quick. Banta, automate compliance and security.

2:09:54AI that powers everything from evidence collection and continuous monitoring to security reviews and vendor risk. Continue, Jordy. So with halftime, we're going to have the founder, Krish, on. He's studying CS at Waterloo. What a great hack project. And then he's only 20. So we're going to have him on. I'm excited to have him on. That said, I wonder if he could work with a movie, like go work with someone like a Netflix early on and say, like, basically give us inventory. Yeah. And then we will, like, work with a bunch of different, there will be a beverage scene, and then we'll generate a bunch of random versions of the scene for different types of people in the audience.

2:10:34Yeah, well, so this already happens where ads in the background. So if you're walking around New York City in some romantic comedy, they might actually go and VFX out the billboards that are in the back. And they might put new ads in the background. And that's just a traditional VFX pipeline. Just cut it out and put a different ad in. And so that type of editing can be made a lot more dynamic through AI. And that's probably how this instantiates itself realistically as opposed to just the most aggressive. Like all of a sudden they're talking about the ad. It's a little bit of a wild move. Anyway, apparently Ryan McIntosh predicted this.

2:11:15He said, it's coming. He's quoting semi-analysis. He says, how much would Starbucks pay to haunt the background of every mid-journey cafe render? A Tesla idling in every AI-generated traffic scene. if you're thinking small, this is the ambient brand singularity. Dan in the chat says, you know, after you've seen that Cerveza Cristal ad once or twice, you actually are thinking about the beer for the rest of time, like wondering when it's going to come next. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it comes randomly. It might come right now. It might come in five minutes. Just be ready. Yeah, let's get to Tyler.

2:11:50You needed to grab something off his desk, right? Okay, so this is incredibly bullish. What is bullish? They're putting ads in ayahuasca trips. What? Somebody on Reddit. This is something we would do. This is something we would joke about. Remember our joke about going to Peru with helicopters with massive speakers and playing corporate finance tutorials to people who are tripping in the jungle? To get them to come back to corporate America and lock in. What exactly happened here? Break it down, jordy uh anyone so somebody on the r slash dmt subreddit says anyone else getting amazon ads when breaking through it's happened to me on my last three trips second was ayahuasca right as i break through my trip is paused for a vivid five second ad featuring jeff bezos am i the only one how is this happening is that just like their their their brain is fried and so they're imagining an ad or is it like they happen to be listening to something or watching jeff figured this out a long time ago and he realized there's a lot of people that are using psychedelics and he thought I could productize this and make it available to other merchants on Amazon or I could just keep it for myself and just have all the inventory for myself.

2:13:06No, of course, joking, but anyways, very, very funny. In other ads news, get bezel.com, shop over 26 ,000 luxury watches, fully authenticated in-house by bezel team experts, But also, apparently Anthropic bought every stack trace that gets no results. So if you go to Google and you type in your stack trace, your error while you're programming, and nothing comes up, Claude somehow just went to Google and said, hey, we'll buy that ad inventory. Genius feels like Google should be buying their own ad result. or they should actually just have an integration for Gemini so that if you go and you type in a stack trace that no one has ever run into that particular technical problem before, shouldn't they just have a button there that says, like, fix it with Gemini right now?

2:13:57Like, we'll do it. It should just do that. This is like a case study in AI mode. Like, they should compete. But honestly, incredibly creative from the Claude team. very uh the chat is going off on the on the ayahuasca ads yes ab says cpms would be through the roof imagine getting one-shotted by a geico ad 2.6 says jeff bezos is now monetizing the astral plane making your whole personality uh geico nick turley says i'm seeing lots of confusion about ad rumors in chat gpt there are no live tests for ads any screenshots you've seen are Not real or not ads. If we do pursue ads, we'll take a thoughtful approach.

2:14:38People trust ChatGPT, and anything we do will be designed to respect that. This was because of a viral post that showed a screenshot of, I think, Target down at the bottom. But that was just like an embedded link. That was like an app that someone built. It was not an advertisement. That was core. That's crazy. Who would do that? Sounds like he might have been. I love Eric Sufort. he's clearly one of us an ad supporter an ad lover and he is quote tweeting somebody that's mentioning that Airbnb still has no advertising business of course Uber has an advertising business that's great, DoorDash has figured out how to do promoted content very well and those businesses have grown a lot and Eric Suford's standing there saying start an ad network didn't we ask Chesky about this when we was on the show I think we talked to him about doing ads.

2:15:28And he mentioned that it is somewhat of a unique product. It's a little bit less frequent than an Uber. It's less frequently used. Yeah, but you can do hyper-local advertising. So if you're staying somewhere, they could be giving you ads for, hey, look at this kayaking trip you could do in a couple days or whatever. Yeah. You're laughing at what I'm laughing at. Now we're into the attractive people of the show section, I suppose. We have this post from... We have a post here. Apparently, we now have a national looks-maxing strategy of the United States now. Look at Jacob Halberg. He looks fantastic.

2:16:07Jacob stuns. Fun. He's a former guest on the show. We need to ask Jacob about bone smashing. Apparently, it's gaining quite a lot of popularity out there. He's looking great. Donald Boat is also apparently very attractive. People have been talking about that on the timeline. Was this his first? Tyler, don't you know Dr. Boat? Is this a face reveal? I think this is the first docs by Donald. This is the first docs of Donald Boat. People are fans. People are fans of Donald Boat. There's also Sean Frank is getting jacked. We're really in the true category of just like, here are attractive people now.

2:16:50The look-maxing zone of the show. It's really, yeah, three for three on the looks maxing segment. Sean Frank says, hit these right after doing about 10 sets of 50 straight. What is this, one-armed pull-ups? He can do one-armed pull-ups? Well, he's holding the other one, so you're using it. It's more like training. Yeah, but still, you're training grip strength. That's impressive. Very cool. Come do that in the Ultradome, Sean. You know Black Friday went well when you're banging out. Yeah, he is on a high after Black Friday. Well, let me tell you about adquick.com. Please do. Out-of-home advertising made easy and measurable.

2:17:27Plan, buy, and measure out-of-home with precision. And our next guest, I believe, is in the Restream waiting room. We have Sarah from Cultured Magazine. She's the founder and the editor-in-chief of Cultured Magazine. Let's bring her in. Welcome. I hope you don't mind the holiday music. We're having a lot of fun here today. We're in the holiday spirit. Welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me. There's a bit of a lag. It's a bit disoriented. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, hopefully you can hear us okay. I would love to just kick off with - Can you hear me okay? Yes, yes, we can hear you just fine.

2:18:02Hopefully you could kick us off with a little bit of an introduction on yourself. Since this is the first time on your show, tell us about Cultured and kind of your journey a little bit. That'd be great. Gosh, where should I start? So Cultured is a media company. we cover kind of everything under the creative umbrella with a with a strong focus on the contemporary arts so cover you know film and theater and literature um and kind of look at everything through the lens of does it intersect with contemporary art um and you know if so how and kind of try to have a holistic approach to all of the content.

2:18:46And, I mean, I would love to know your take on Netflix and Warner Brothers, if you have one. We've just been going through all the different IP there. I don't know if anything sticks out to you. I don't know. I was in L.A. over the weekend, and of course, everyone was talking about it. You know, I don't know. I mean, it's concerning on many levels. do you think it's gonna do you think it's gonna go through fully or I mean Warner Brothers Discovery is definitely going somewhere that seems clear we're I don't know where do you stand on it I think it probably lands with Netflix because there's just so much competition from YouTube so much competition 300 million subscribers now I mean they're the clear winner yeah and so even though yes it is consolidation it's not a monopoly because people watch YouTube They watch Instagram.

2:19:36They watch shows like this. We're not on a network and we don't need to be. And so it still feels like no one's going to look, you know, a year or two from now, no one's going to be like, oh, yeah, Hollywood isn't competitive anymore. Like, no, Hollywood's extremely cutthroat. It's going to remain cutthroat. It's going to remain extremely. I think it's even more cutthroat. Potentially, which means it's hard to block. I think a lot of people are so latched on to the past and we've, yeah, it feels like, I mean, we're, we're, we're based in Hollywood. And so there's a lot of people that are, that are, still have tied their careers to like the old Hollywood and the way things were, were done in the past.

2:20:16And it's just notable that like, it's never been easier to just create content and create like when I, when I think about the Warner Warner Warner brothers, it's like there's a bunch of like cartoon IP. It's like if you're mad about consolidation and you're a creative person, just make more, make a cartoon, make a new cartoon, just make things, right? The frustration that people have when they're like, oh, this is going to hurt. Theaters? Yeah, the theater thing I just... Well, theaters I think are already hurt, right? Yeah, exactly. I think there's that sense of nostalgia And I think there is that slice of Hollywood that is rooted in that.

2:20:59But I agree. Of course, there's never been a time where there's been more channels. But it's still, it's almost like there are certainly more channels to reach people, but it's also harder to reach people. Yeah. Yeah. There's something, there's some interesting, like, ratio, if you're trying to quantify it, of, like, how much attention something gets relative to the revenue or the market cap or the value. like theaters are, they feel so culturally important. They feel such, so everyone has a story or a memory of their childhood going to the theater, such an experience. And yet I think the actual total revenue of, you know, all the movie theaters in America is like a fraction of what video games make in a month.

2:21:45You know, like video, the video game industry is like way, way bigger. Or like the social media industry will be so, so much bigger, like a thousand times bigger. And so – but there's something where just the legacy has broken through to such a degree that even though it hasn't been a big business in decades and it's smaller than ever, it's still culturally extremely relevant. And so it's hard to – And I think creatively extremely relevant. Totally, totally. I think filmmakers want us to see their movies mostly on the big screen. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I think if you look at it just from a revenue standpoint, of course, I mean, like you said, it's probably been decades since there's been a shift.

2:22:24But I do think that there is still something nostalgic and important about seeing certain things in theaters. I mean, there's still movies that people say. And I mean, obviously, you know, the filmmakers are often fighting for it to have the release first in a theater. Yeah. Granted, they're all over 40, but still. Yeah, I do wonder. I mean, I wonder what the next generation will even look like if they'll want to go to theaters. Like we have a friend, Jason Carman, who's very much of the young and of the new age, new creative organization, makes movies, but also makes short films and documentaries and all sorts of stuff.

2:23:02and he still definitely wants to release his films in theaters. He has. He's figured out ways to do that. But I wonder how much that's, at the same time we're friends with like Adam Faze. I think we need new, it's such an interesting time because like theater, the theater business has been in decline and yet I think we need new theaters. Like we need people. They're trying that, I think. I don't know if that's working. You mean kind of like emphasizing it in a certain experience or something? Well, if I, uh, I think last time I went and saw a movie was with John and we got like 20 of our friends together to go see Dune.

2:23:38Uh, I think, and, and like the actual experience of being in a theater under these, like you go from being under like bright LEDs in a mall, which I don't go to malls and I'm in bright LEDs. And I don't like the smell of movie theater popcorn personally. It just, I'm like, that smells like poison. I don't want it. Uh, and then you go into that. And so the whole experience for me is like, yeah, I'm never going to do that. But if you built a theater from the ground up in an opinionated way, like some type of almost treating it like a true hospitality experience, there's probably a much better chance that I would go.

2:24:16Not certain that there's a real business there yet, but maybe there hasn't been enough attempts there. Maybe the Amon Geary of theaters. It's like two grand per ticket. Yeah, exactly. That's the way to do it. Yeah, the Amon needs to take over. I mean, that's what happened in my town. In my town, there used to be two theaters where you'd sit like shoulder to shoulder with everyone. And now both of those theaters have way downscoped the number of seats. The seats are huge. They serve you dinner. There's wine. There's drinks. And like they're trying to get$500 out of you or$200 out of you. You're not going in on a matinee$10 with like cheap popcorn and getting out of there.

2:24:55They want to monetize it like it's a restaurant because it's a lot of physical space. Like the square footage is a lot. But basically, I mean, someone was just telling me that the theaters really are only still in New York and L.A. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, I was thinking the opposite, frankly. I thought, okay. But someone said, no, you can't even go to a movie theater in a small town anymore. They've all closed. Wow. That's rough. I like this as someone told me. I'd love to talk about just the art market. obviously Miami has gotten a lot of attention over the last week or so yeah and and he's still considering he went viral a couple years ago well yeah I'm particularly excited to get your opinion because every now you keep I've been seeing some headlines recently where it's like the art market is back and then I talk to people that are actually working in art and they're like it's absolutely not back.

2:25:46And so I think there's somewhat of a disconnect where maybe there's like a effort to like tell people that it's back, but I don't, I don't know if the sales velocity is really there, but how are you processing things? Of course we have to believe around hype. I mean, I think that there's been a fundamental shift in the art world. Call it, you know, since 2024 or, you know, I think, I think that there's been so many factors that have changed the landscape of the art world, certainly as it's been in the last 20 or 30 years. I think that, look, I think, sure, it's better, right? Like we had Art Basel Paris.

2:26:27Everyone said, okay, the art market's back. It's better. I think Fries London has reported strong sales. I spoke to a big gallery recently that said that 2025, every single Basel this year was a record for them. Now, of course, like anything, you take a fair like Art Basel, there's 300 galleries. So you can take a really strong year where everyone says the market's on fire and you can find a dealer who didn't do well that year. I think that, I think the statistic that someone was throwing around, and I'm not sure if this is accurate, is something like, you know, total volume of sales is down 10%.

2:27:00I don't know exactly where the art market is. I think that there's definitely been a very serious correction. I think that a correction ultimately yields a lot of positive things in an art market. So I don't think it's back to the kind of frenzy 800 person waiting list for, you know, a painter two years out of Yale that we were in. But I do think that there's some momentum. I think that there's been, speaking of some consolidation, there's been, you know, some mid-tier, even some bigger galleries closing and just, you know, I think a lot of shifts in the market. But I think that Miami was, you know, net positive for the most people I talked to in sales.

2:27:44And I think that you still have, I mean, look, call me optimistic, but you still have these collectors who are, you know, they're not the speculative part of the market. They're not buying an artist because they think that they're going to get a multiple of, you know, 10 or 100. I think, I do think, however, that even if the collector isn't looking to ever sell, that kind of data sometimes does kind of feed a little bit of a sparkle and an energy. But I do think that there are collectors who buy in good markets and bad markets. And I think the last, you call it since fall, it's definitely gotten better.

2:28:20Are we back? No. But is it better? Yes. What's the secret to successfully participating in Art Basel if you're a company or a brand? I've seen a bunch of memes. Just selling. Just selling? Just selling. I mean, as you know, it costs them – it's a significant investment, right? They're buying the space. They're shipping the artwork. They're having their team come. They put lots of money, hundreds of thousands of dollars behind the fair. So selling the art, which often can be up to$20 million of art, is success. Makes sense. Jordan? Yeah, it's been notable. We did an interesting story on the economics of a mid-tier gallery that published last week that talks a little bit about how when you're not selling$20 million of art, how you get through Miami or how you get through a fair and make the economics work.

2:29:11Because there's certainly a tipping point in which it works and a tipping point in which sometimes dealers are trying to meet new collectors, show new work, and it's financially not viable. What are the highest leverage things that a mid-tier gallery can do? Is that stuff like leave some of the art at home and more digital representations of the art? Is that the cost structure or the cost savings? Part of it is that a certain gallery might represent, like if you represent 20 artists, it's possible that there's a ton of demand for two of the artists and almost zero negative demand. You have to pay people to take some of the other stuff.

2:29:50So that's a factor, I think. But tell me if I'm wrong. I mean, it depends. And look, I think that not every dealer is just, you know, market driven and there's maybe work that they haven't shown that they want to see how the reaction is. Or, you know, there's always a surprise of some interest. But, yeah, no, it's financially difficult. I mean, a lot of these, a lot of the galleries, you know, it's kind of like I kind of equate it to emerging artists. You know, we all know so many artists who are so successful and so financially successful. But there is that point where, you know, you're just so close to losing money or not quite making it.

2:30:29And that's like a very fine line between the other side and and and leaving, you know, at a loss. What what what tech billionaires or tech elite are doing the most for the arts right now? Because I feel like there's historically been a criticism of the tech industry where you have people that make a lot of money and then they're just like, I'm just going to spend, you know. a hundred million dollars on anti-aging i'm not going to fund the next uh uh you know museum or or uh build a castle or or etc i want to do i don't know if that's entirely true i think what i don't i'm not saying i i'm not saying i believe it's true but i'm just saying historically that's like one uh criticism yeah maybe maybe i mean i think what a lot of the tech billionaires that i know that have built unbelievable collections have done is not shown their work not in their collections.

2:31:21So I think a lot of people aren't aware of the level in which some of these tech billionaires are a interested in art and be collect so deeply. Um, so in terms of, you know, underwriting museums or programs, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I mean, do we need more tech billionaires to buy more art? Of course. And then, yeah, definitely. we're putting the word out i'm sure i'm sure that will actually that should catalyze at least at least a few million of new art purchases for people in our audience that are kind of maybe on the fence about buying not sure not sure what do you think about what do you think about the sphere uh because we we have uh a general belief that it is in vegas yeah yeah No, it just feels like there was, again, a criticism that we forgot how to make beautiful, massive.

2:32:17We forgot how to make cathedrals. And yet the sphere feels like it is the most commercial piece of art maybe ever. But when you look at it on the skyline in Vegas, like this is a modern. It's America's Mona Lisa. Okay. Let me say I have never been to the sphere. Wow. Uncultured. Uncultured. Uncultured. Is this uncultured? Uncultured. I know. That's what I should really name my magazine. But I have to tell you that I do know a few artists who have been to the sphere who says pretty incredible. Yeah. It is wild. Yeah. I mean, it's remarkable in like a cyberpunk way. Totally. Not necessarily in like a beautiful way.

2:32:58Absolutely. You should absolutely go to experience the new canvas that is the sphere. No, obviously it is a – it is a – it's a – How do you rate, how do you, how are you processing LA as of late? To me, it's starting to feel like Detroit of the West. It feels like, no, it just feels like this was the center for art and culture and entertainment. And traditional Hollywood has been so battered that it's like the beauty, the buildings are less beautiful. uh i think the streets were always dirty uh but the restaurants are less full there's not as many like new great restaurants as i think there there may have once been uh it feels somewhat um kind of uh uh in secular decline heartbroken too i mean look i i did open an office in new york this year and uh i've been mostly in new york this year i i think look la is a great city it's at a downturn I think that's, you know, I think most people that I know that could leave left.

2:34:10Someone was saying to me the other day that we're like, we're kind of like just post-COVID now with LA. And how out of COVID kind of LA was really all of the sectors and all of the things that you just mentioned were kind of growing on the up and up. There was a lot of energy around it. And then after the fires last January, things kind of leveled out. And I think that, you know, look, we all know it's a great city. The energy moves. I think the energy is not there right now. Yeah. I'm sure it'll come back. Yeah. I asked a good friend of mine, a very controversial figure in the, in the art world, Stefan Simkowitz.

2:34:46Oh, I know him well. I was like, give me. He probably said, oh, he's great. No, no. The example, I was like, hey, we're, we, we, our lease expires next year. We're looking for a new space. And I was like, are there any like massive, amazing art galleries that you think are going to shut down? and he was like, I can, he immediately was like, here's four. And, uh, and so again, uh, uh, are you texting him right now? No, I didn't text him. Um, they're not four. He's, he's exaggerating. Um, but that's funny. Well, I think there, there's, there's a handful because I got offered to tour them. Um, but, uh, uh, any, anyways, um, I mean, look, LA is not known for its collector.

2:35:33Sure. There was a great experiment. I mean, look how many galleries opened in L.A. post 2020. I mean, I know some dealers who said I'm just I'm opening in L.A. to show great work, not to cultivate more collectors. A lot of the great collectors in L.A. sometimes buy in New York. So I think the fact that L.A. is having a let's just say a more challenging moment and some of the galleries there are closing. um i i talked to a few of my friends who have uh great galleries in la and they said let's not even talk about sales foot traffic is down so yeah and some of the places we've looked at like you're spending a hundred thousand dollars a month for a place that doesn't get any foot traffic that is like i mean when we're when we're visiting it's like during normal hours and they're just empty.

2:36:22So anyways, definitely correction in the works. But as you said, it can be healthy. Anyways, I wish we had more time. This was super fun. Thank you, guys. Anytime you want the tech industry to do something, like buy more art, come on the show. Buy more art. Buy more film magazines. But it was great to meet you. Yeah, nice to meet you. Thanks so much for having us. Looking forward to talking again soon. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah, thanks so much. Cheers. Merry Christmas. Our next guest is from the General Intelligence Company of New York. He's waiting in the Restream waiting room. We have Andrew Pagninelli.

2:37:01I hope I'm saying that correctly. Andrew, sorry to keep you waiting. How are you doing? What's happening? Thanks so much for hopping on. Please introduce yourself, introduce the company, and give us the news. Yeah, so my name is Andrew Pagninelli, actually. The flow. The flow. Can we get a side profile of the flow real quick? Oh, it's quite nice, right? Hit the gong for the flow. Hit the gong for the flow. There we go. Nice, nice. Sorry to interrupt. They do like the hair. They definitely like the hair. That's great. Yeah, I mean, I... Sorry, I think there's a little bit of a delay here. My name is Andrew.

2:37:41I run General Intelligence today. We just announced our$8.7 million seed round, which Send it, John. Again. Let's go. Incredible. Who led it? It was led by USB. So, you know, we're a New York-based company. We love New York City. We wanted someone who was right here at home and I only have to walk two blocks for the board meeting, which is really nice. That's amazing. Give us the history. I mean, first time on the show, obviously, followed you for probably, I don't know, a year, close to a year now. But what, yeah, give us kind of the origins, what you guys are working on, all that good stuff.

2:38:25Yeah, so we started working on this about a year ago with this kind of crazy idea of like, what if we could get agents to run companies? And we really worked backwards from that. We picked, let's go with the craziest thing we can do because I bet that there's a way for us to get resources for it. And if the idea is a little bit crazier, they'll give us more resources. And so we picked that, me and my co-founder, Avi, and we started working on it. We started working on a demo. We worked on it for about two months. And then in March, we were like, let's turn this into a company. So the initial demo was just an agent that could call some tools.

2:39:01And then we did a small round in March led by Compound. We ran the company for about six months before launching Co-Founder in September. We were able to make that launch go very, very well. and so we got viral with that people loved it, people really liked using the product we went viral through the sweaters too the sweaters actually helped us promote our product more than probably the product itself Wait, so what was Co-Founder and what was the sweater? Was Co-Founder wearing the sweater? You know, Co-Founder is a plant so I have a bunch of them right here, that's Co-Founder and it's like this AI chief of staff So it will let you hook stuff up and do automations.

2:39:44And we've built it into this very proactive, like assistant feeling thing. So you're not just really telling it what to do. It will actually prompt you instead of you having to prompt it. And we wanted to figure out how do we promote this? And so I went and I got these sweaters made and they're like very rainbow-y. Like they have all the different colors on them. Oh, they have the logo name on there too. That's cool. Yeah. I feel like underutilized merch format. Yes, I never see text on the cozy sweater. That's cool. Very cool. Yeah. And we posted about them. We just got our first shipment of them.

2:40:22I just posted a photo. That's cool. And it goes via. It gets like a million plus views. And I go from having like 300 followers to a couple thousand. And we were going to launch three days later. And so this made it really easy for us to launch and have CoFounder do well. Yeah. So, I mean, how do you think the business actually evolves? Do you think that there's a world where the product is plugging into all of the enterprise tools? It seems like with even just the co-founder branding, it feels like this is an early stage product or that's at least like the early adopter would be a small company.

2:40:58You're not coming into a company where it's like, yeah, we already have a data lake and the 5 ,000 employees and we need you to go around and find stuff. It's much more of an early stage tool. Is that correct? Or do you think it'll grow? How do you think the use case will change over the next few years as you build out the business? Yeah, so it's definitely early stage. We want people who are, let's say, between like three and 50 people on smaller companies. But we're really going from co-founder to this full stack AI business. So our goal is to get agents to run companies. and we've decided we're not going to be able to do that by adding one piece to an assistant until it gets really far.

2:41:44We're actually working on a full stack AI business. We realized while building this ourselves that we had this ability to make these workflows internally where you're taking a customer support ticket and you can directly plug that into an agent that writes some code and plug it into an agent that reviews and QAs the feature and then ships it to prod without any people involved. And so we're sprinting towards this entire business with just agents. And we think we can get there by March. What kind of businesses do you think are most... The name implies you're trying to build a general intelligence.

2:42:23I imagine that means an AI that could run any business. But have you thought about specific types of businesses that are best suited to be run by an agent? And how are you testing the product? I understand you probably test it internally with your own team. But yeah, when you talk about timeline to an agent running an entire business by March, what kind of business is that? How do you make that more concrete? Yeah, so some of the things that we test are the ability to actually do something end to end. So this whole, write a piece of code that can get shipped to prod without any people involved.

2:43:06That's something you can test. If it breaks prod, it's going to be a failure there. But we're working on this with a couple of businesses, smaller businesses internally. And they're just not public yet. But the way that the business looks is very similar to ourselves. So it's a software company in B2B. And it also relies a lot on how the agent market develops. So we rely on other agents by other companies, like a coding agent where we're going to be using, looks like Factory or Tembo or something like that. Customer support agents by companies like Sierra and Decagon. And then sales market agents like Rocks.

2:43:46We're going to be building this in a way that leans on those agents. And those are conducive to a B2B software company. And that's really what we're building first. That's very cool. Are you AGI-pilled? Very AGI-pilled. You know, we all have different definitions, right? And so my personal definition, it's in my Twitter bio. I keep it, the timeline that I think we're going to have to AGI. And it's much faster than everybody else's. But my definition is like... It's tomorrow. It's tomorrow. My timeline is tomorrow. Really? 5.2? No. We'll see. Yeah, 5.2 is my AGI, for sure. We're thinking about it like, you know, Her, the movie Her?

2:44:26Yeah. My personal definition is when do we get that? A, we already have people falling in love with. Don't we already have that just with some of the population? Yeah. I mean, we're kind of close, right? Like some of the stuff that you can do today is 90 % of what you can do in that movie. And I bet within the next 12 months, it'll be 100%. Yeah. Sort of like a diffusion question because like smartphones have arrived. There are Amish people that don't use smartphones, right? Like there are plenty of people that don't. there's probably millions of people that don't use smartphones for a variety of reasons.

2:44:58There will always, I believe like for, you know, a hundred years, there will be people that will be like, I don't talk to clankers. Right. But at the same time, like we are pretty close. Anyway, we can talk about AGI for the next two hours, but we have to move on. So thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. Congratulations on all the progress. Great to meet finally. Congratulations on the progress. We're going to keep, we should, we should add like something to our ticker. Like what is Andrew's AGI time? We'll get the update. But yeah, congrats on the progress. We'll talk to you soon.

2:45:28Have a good one. Goodbye. Let me tell you about Wanderer.com. Book of Wanderer with inspiring views. Hotel-grade amenities. Dreamy beds. Top-tier cleaning and 24-7 concierge service. It's a vacation home, but better, folks. Our next guest is Brian Meller from Stable. He's the CEO. And we have some big news from them. Let's bring him in. How are you doing, Brian? Ho, ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. Welcome. Good to see you. How are you doing? Please, since you're new on the show, introduce yourself. Introduce the company. I'd love to hear about what you're building. Sure. Well, thanks for having me.

2:46:02I'm Brian Mailer. I'm the CEO of Stable. For those that I know, we're a layer one blockchain. We're focused on, you know, redefining the payment rails that money moves through, whether it's cross borders or cross country. So, you know, we launched earlier today. It was a big event for us. We had the BayNet launch. Thank you. And that was a great part. uh so yeah that's good it's been great yeah sorry uh okay so every obvious question is why another stable coin right well well no no i mean not not necessarily okay you're so you're building an l a new l1 yeah for payments uh it seems like every single every single layer one blockchain maybe not every single one some some are more obviously like hyper liquid more trading focus and there's others but everybody's going after the payment opportunity for obvious reasons like how do different layer ones differentiate what's going to separate stable from other players like how how is stable kind of more opinionated i'm sure it's opinionated uh in ways that maybe like you know tempo isn't or solana isn't it etc and so yeah i'm curious how you're differentiating yeah it's a great question and we get it a lot and i think the way that we're able to answer it best is by talking about you know whether it's a team that's backed us.

2:47:22So we have PayPal Ventures, we have advisors like Paolo from CEO of Tether, we're partnered with Anchorage. So we have a very good tool set that we're playing with that's able to help us launch. But in addition to that, getting a little bit more of the technical side of things is our gas token, which is usually a complication of other chains, is USDT. So for that, when people are moving money, the 70 to 80 % of the stable coins out there in the world right now is being used as USDT. And that's what you use to pay your fees on our network. Rather than having a complication about buying another token and worrying about other chains, for us, you're able to just use USDT and spend USDT.

2:48:00So that's, I think, our biggest differentiator that we have right now. And then in addition to that, it's also the speed. So when you want to use a traditional layer one, let's say Ethereum, you want to move USDT there. You know, it's slow and it's expensive and it's volatile on gas. And, you know, we got tired of that. So we just ripped it out and put in USDT, which everyone knows and is already using as our gas token. So sounds like you have some awesome partners lined up already. How does this market shape out? Is it kind of a land grab right now where you're trying to sign up as many institutions to support stable or make you their preferred L1 for moving stable coins between them and other institutions or internally?

2:48:39How does that look? Yeah, I mean, you're definitely right there. It's definitely busy. There's a lot of people wanting to get out the picks and shovels and start digging. And I think we're ahead of that. So we already launched, as we said today, and that's kind of like a big milestone for us. So we got into the build phase and got into the launch phase. But I would say in terms of like why it's an attractive market is that everyone uses money. And there's a frustration of using it, whether you're using traditional credit cards or checks or whatever, if you're still using cash. That's just a complication that people are kind of tired of dealing with.

2:49:08and they don't understand why, you know, if you're trying to buy something on the weekend and you need to like wire a sum over like$2 ,000 that you can't get on Zelle or Venmo, like you got to wait till Monday. And that's just a weird complication that I think a lot of people are getting tired of. And so using stable coins in an easy sense is kind of how we're solving that problem. Go for it. So, yeah, I'm just wondering more of like, help me understand what folks are using Tether directly for versus what value prop you build. Obviously, you're friendly and partnered in many ways. But how does that relationship evolve over the next few years with Tether?

2:49:52Look, I mean, I would say Tether is just on a growth trajectory that is pretty unmatched. So we're happy to be a part of that ride and help facilitate it. I think Tether exists on a number of chains, and that's one of the facilities that we're able to provide is a chain that it runs faster, easier, and less expensive. That's really what we're doing. We help the channel find their message. Okay, cool. Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come explain that to us. Appreciate having you on the show. And Merry Christmas. Sure you'll be back on soon. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon.

2:50:23Congrats on the launch. Super exciting. Have a good one. Appreciate it. Cheers. Thanks. Up next, we have Will Wilson from Antithesis on December 3rd. Jane Street led Antithesis. their$105 million Series A to make deterministic simulations. The new testing standard, an incredibly stacked list of investors. Dwarcus Patel, Shalto Douglas, and Patrick Collison. Whoa, two out of the three roommates. Yeah, what happened? What happened? You didn't do a road show where you go from bedroom to bedroom showing off what you built? And they're like, do you want to invest? Sharks. I imagine you sit down and you say, sharks, here's what I'm building.

2:51:02You know, it's funny. I think they all ended up coming in for very different reasons, but we're certainly very glad now. You got Dylan. He just wasn't big enough to get to the press release. Oh, he didn't make it up to the press release. Brutal. Brutal. I cannot comment on investors who may or may not be in our press release. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Please explain this to me. I'm not Dwarakash, and I'm not a researcher at Anthropic. What are you building at a very, very basic level? Who's the customer? What's the problem you're solving? And then I do want you to walk me through some of the technology as much as we can, but I'd like to start with just like the high-level problem description if possible.

2:51:43Sure. Okay, so the super basic problem description is like Marc Andreessen once said that software is eating the world. I think that's true. I think AI has made that more true. And the thing is that's actually kind of a bad thing in some ways because software doesn't work very well. Like I feel like we all have Stockholm syndrome about this. Like when I walk into a building, I don't wonder in the back of my head, is this building going to collapse on me? And yet every time I use a software product, I know there's some random chance that it's just going to totally fail. And if you think about it, that's really not okay.

2:52:18And that's what we're trying to fix. We don't think it has to be that way. We think the reason it is that way is because people have been building and testing software wrong for the last 70 years. which is like maybe a slightly hubristic and crazy thing to say, but we think we've got a better way to do it. I have an ongoing war with Rune about whether or not the United app has gotten better or worse over the past few years, because I use it as a heuristic for like AI diffusion because he'll, he'll tell, he'll say, Hey, the AI models are amazing. Like you, you just, you just yell at the codex model.

2:52:48It'll do exactly what you want. I'm like, Oh really? Well then why did I have a bug in my United app when I was trying to fly across the country? Well, maybe they haven't adopted it. And then he'll tell me it's actually way better. It's actually, they actually are improving their software. But walk me through deterministic simulation. Like what does that look like in practice? I have a piece of software. I have some vibe-coded slop app that I'm worried about completely blowing up and leaking all my users' data and failing to work in a bunch of different scenarios. Like how am I actually using your product?

2:53:19How am I plugging in? What's going on? What's the work? Yeah, okay. So here's the basic idea. So like the traditional way people test software is you have your app and you sit down and you think really hard and you use your big brain and you're like, what are all the situations that this thing could run in? What are all the things that people could do? What are all the situations it has to handle? And then I sit down, I the developer, right? And I write a bunch of manual test cases for each of those things and make sure that they run in my CI system or whatever. And that's like, hooray, I've tested my software.

2:53:48Except you've totally not tested your software, right? Because the thing that's actually gonna blow up and totally screw you and be a disaster is not something that you thought of. It's something that you didn't think of, right? It's like an unknown unknown. And so we have the exact opposite approach. We say instead, we're just going to take your actual software and we're going to run it in a simulation of the real world. And we're going to throw the kitchen sink at it. We're going to have the worst users ever doing the worst things ever. And it's going to be running in the worst data center ever.

2:54:19And computers are going to be crashing. And hackers are going to be trying to break it, whatever. It's just going to be really awful. And then we're going to see what actually happens empirically. And you can tell us, hey, here's the stuff I promise my software will never do. And we're going to see if we can find a way to make it do that. Why are you framing this as deterministic simulation? That sounds like a whole lot of non-deterministic stuff going on. Yeah. So the key is we have the slightly crazy computer science thing we've done. Well, no. One of the slightly crazy things we've done is we've basically built a way to run any computer program fully deterministically.

2:54:55which is a little nuts. But it's really, really important because it gets rid of the works on my machine thing forever. So if we find some really weird, really rare software problem which only manifests one a billion times but it launches the nuclear missiles and so you really don't want it to happen even one a billion times we can perfectly reproduce that. So if we find it once, you can just replay it over and over and over again until you're able to fix it. Interesting. uh what's the what is the what is the like sci-fi scenario that you're building against like is this is part of this tie-in like i'm trying to understand why like specifically why you got the roommate three pete because software testing is cool but i imagine there's like kind of this like you know 10 year vision like agi vision where we need to test for that you know one out of a billion uh times that the nuclear missile codes get launched or the whole surface of the planet is blanketed with solar.

2:55:55Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, I think if you believe that we're about to go into like a very exciting AI future, then I think there's probably going to be a whole lot more software written and probably some of it's going to be written by entities that are not like you and me. They're like some kind of AI agent. Maybe we don't fully understand them. Maybe we don't fully understand their incentives or their motivations or their failure modes or whatever. seems like having a really, really good way of telling if software does what you think it does would be handy in that scenario. That makes sense.

2:56:30So somebody makes an AI agent that processes things that were faxed in, and there's some edge case where it hires a private army and tries to kill the fax machine company. and you're like, well, an agent wrote this agent, so we need to actually test to make sure it's not like secretly, like completely insane. Right, you've got that. And then you've also just got more prosaic and boring situations, right? Like I hired an AI agent to like write the next version of the United app and like, oops, like if I'm in the middle of booking a ticket when my subway train goes into a tunnel, it books like 10 million tickets.

2:57:09Like I don't want that. United doesn't want that, you know? No, I like this opportunity. You can sell the product against very real problems today and still have this bigger, very real sci-fi element to it. Okay, so I have the interpretation of Roommate Ventures coming in. I don't have the interpretation of the implications of Jane Street coming in. Is this relevant to high-frequency trading software, or are they just purely financial investors? like how strategic are they as a partner oh yeah so the the way we got jane street in this actually is just that they it started out as them being a customer okay wow they've been one of our best and largest customers for you know a little under a year cool and um have really put the system through its paces and are using it to do some really really cool stuff yeah and basically what initially happened was we were raising around we planned to go the standard silicon valley route And we were just going to have Jane Street put in a small amount of money as a strategic.

2:58:18And then they offered to lead the round, which we were not expecting. And we sort of thought about it and we were like, wait a minute, that's actually the coolest thing ever. What an endorsement. And from one of the greatest names in software, how can we not do this? Have you considered writing your code base in OCaml? I think it's likely that there's going to be excellent OCaml support in our platform. Fantastic. That's the best news I've heard all day. Hit the gong for that.

2:58:49Very, very cool. That's great news. One of the more unique fundraising announcements we've had this year. Yeah, this is a fun project. I really like it. Well, congratulations, and thank you so much for taking the time to come chat with us. I'm sure you'll be back on soon. Indeed. Yeah, thank you. I'm sure you're already getting unwanted term sheets hurled at you. I believe it. enjoy processing those. Yeah. Awesome. Have a good one, guys. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah, good to meet Will. Have a good one. And that brings us towards the end of our show. Perfectly timed 2 p.m. on the dot.

2:59:25We are in fighting form. We're going to play you out with some Christmas music, I suppose. In other news, markets are predicting that the time personal of the year will either be the Pope, who's concerned about AI, the biggest promoter of AI, Sam Altman, the supplier of the hardware behind AI, Jensen, or just AI. It seems almost certain it's a lock that time 2025 person of the year will have something to do with AI. In other news, where else is? Oh, we didn't get to SpaceX news, but it was rumored that SpaceX told, or it was reported actually in the information by Katie Roof, that SpaceX told their investors we're aiming for IPO.

3:00:11Late 2026. Late 2026, we're going to be a public company. But a lot of people are interpreting this, reading the tea leaves. You have Ken Kirtland saying, I'm not exaggerating. It's not doom posting to say this, but this is the end. They are not serious. They are not serious about any part of Mars if this is done. There's no world where shareholders will let you spend tens of billions of dollars with the express intent of no return, which is what Mars settlement is. In fact, it would be illegal, literally illegal to do so. Not true at all. Look at the metaverse. Look at what meta did. If you have control over the company, you can spend, what he said,$86 billion is what Zuck spent.

3:00:50I'm just expecting SpaceX's telecom business to do tens of billions of profits. Yes, yes. If you get big enough. I mean, SpaceX, I think to date has burnt something like$10 billion across all the fundraising. And a lot of that's been like secondary stuff. So like they haven't burnt that much. And of course, people are dunking on Zuck right now for pulling back on the metaverse. Austin Allred had a good post here. He said, fire Mark Zuckerberg. Fired. You kind of botched this, but he said, Mark Zuckerberg fired because he lost the company $77 billion. Should probably consider that he also made his company$1.6 trillion.

3:01:24And so the same thing could definitely be true. So I believe if SpaceX went public, that would not necessarily take the foot off the gas of the Mars mission. I don't think that's necessarily what would happen. But Dan Primack has a little bit more nuance of a take here talking about what might be happening behind the scenes. It says, SpaceX prepping late 2026 IPO per the information, not just Starlink, which is what people were rumoring. They'd spin out Starlink. I don't think that makes any sense. But this comes just days after reports that OpenAI was weighing an entry into space. So maybe it's a bit of PR maneuvering, given that Elon Musk doesn't seem to like having a public company.

3:02:00He took Twitter private, and then he wanted to take Tesla private too. And then Katie Roof says, does he even have PR people, LOL? Well, Dan Primack says, don't need PR people to have a PR strategy. And yeah, he might have directly emailed all the investors that he knew would leak. And that doesn't require a PR person. And so Elon actually chimed in and he said, there's been a lot of press claiming that SpaceX is raising money at$800 billion, which is not accurate. SpaceX has been cash flow positive for many years and does periodic stock buybacks twice a year to provide liquidity for employees and investors.

3:02:39Valuation increments are a function of progress with Starship and Starlink. And securing global direct-to-sell spectrum greatly increases our addressable market. And one other thing that is arguably most significant thus far, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Anyway. Ridiculous. John, I've got to say I'm bummed that we've got to end the show right now. We do, we do. You've got to get on with Pasadena. I do. You've got some celebrating to do over in that area. Neck of the woods. I can't wait for tomorrow. I'm so happy to be back in the Ultradome. I'm glad we don't have to travel for the rest of the year.

3:03:14No travel for the rest of the year. We're hanging out. We're hanging out. We're podcasting. The team is thrilled. We're thrilled. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Thank you, everyone. We love you all dearly. We'll talk to you soon. Have an amazing evening. We will see you tomorrow. Goodbye. Cheers. Bye.