Did the Fed break the VC model? Plus IPOs, M&A, revaluing unicorns & more

The episode opens with plunge banter. One host reports a record-low weight of 169 and plunges at roughly 56 to 58 degrees, calling 45 to 48 degrees unnecessary; another counts an 80-degree pool as a plunge. The routine is cold, warm, cold, and the host who follows it says his energy goes way up.

The same host says a health coach supplied his supplements and that at 52 his testosterone is at the high end of normal, so he was told he need not take more. When friends in their early sixties start human growth hormone, the group urges caution. No data is offered; these are anecdotes.

I think you gotta be careful with the off menu items.

One host predicts Vivek Ramaswamy will pass DeSantis in New Hampshire polling and be the clear number two within four to eight weeks. His logic is that MAGA supporters would then choose between an eighty-year-old Trump and a thirty-eight-year-old version with improvements.

I can forgive all of his other issues when he tells me that he's gonna cut the government, the federal government by 75%.

Another host is still gathering data and wants RFK-Biden and Trump-Ramaswamy debates. He argues, as his own view, that Democrats have chosen to railroad RFK's candidacy, denying voters a fair evaluation. He adds that Ramaswamy has convinced him he is fiscally responsible and open to dismantling the federal bureaucracy he calls the blob.

A third host sorts candidates into acceptable and unacceptable: Ramaswamy and DeSantis pass, anyone who would escalate the Ukraine war does not. He says presidents hold unilateral discretion only over foreign policy, since fiscal repair needs bipartisan support he does not expect.

avoiding World War 3 is, to me, the central issue of the campaign

A poll ending September 18, 2023 shows Trump at 38.9% (rendered in the transcript as 38 9%), Ramaswamy 13%, Haley 12%, Christie 11% and DeSantis 10%; a host notes this is New Hampshire.

Asked about Ray Dalio's call for a bipartisan Manhattan Project, one host likes Dalio's question, whether decline is physics or controllable, but doubts elites can be gathered onto one page. Voters decide through elections, he says, so one side must defeat the other first.