Bestie brawl, Robinhood's $70M fine & S-1, Delta variant, future of the political parties, FTC takes losses against big tech & more

The recording opens mid-confusion. One participant cannot see another and wonders whether he has been blocked, then complains of static and of hearing nothing. Another blames the video platform for the technical problems and urges the group to get started.

After a few lines of readiness checks, one speaker says he is no longer mad. A snatch of the show's usual intro lines follows, and a note inserted into the transcript offers a timestamp, 20 minutes 48 seconds, for listeners who want to skip the Twitter drama and go straight to the episode.

A host, addressed elsewhere as Friedberg, opens the show in a joking persona and introduces everyone with nicknames. He describes the co-hosts as 'the guys that used to be besties', calls one the 'SaaS bully' and, with a mock-official tone, introduces Jason Calacanis, also called Jay Cal, as the 'former moderator and host'.

Several of the nicknames are garbled by the transcription, including one description of where a host is calling from, so the introductions are best read as comic setup for the episode's central subject, the dispute among the hosts.

The hosts immediately heckle the opening, with one asking whether the moderator got Kermit the Frog to host and calling it the most painful opening he had heard. Another says it was not very good, and a third calls it a failed experiment already.

One host defends the performance and rates it four out of ten before telling the others to stop prejudging. Repeated cross-talk follows about interrupting, with a threat to mute whoever keeps doing it. The tone is playful and the transcript is heavily broken up.

The moderator lays out the background for listeners who did not follow online. As he tells it, a Twitter account called All In Stats published an analysis showing that Jay Cal had been talking a lot on the podcast, and Sachs quote-tweeted it as statistical proof of what he called Jason's poor moderation.

He then reads out the tweets as he remembers them. Sachs said that a correct moderator would be fourth in airtime instead of tied for first, and told him to let the grown-ups talk. Jay Cal replied, in the moderator's recounting, by suggesting Sachs start his own podcast with named associates and a prominent host as moderator. Sachs answered that it must be rough to spend ten years on a startups show without reaching number one.

Jay Cal responded that a niche startups show is not for a general audience by design, and said that Sachs was trashing a longtime supporter over statistics. Then, the moderator says, Jay Cal publicly blocked Sachs on Twitter and the dispute snowballed, to the point that his mother texted asking whether the pod had disintegrated. This retelling is his own and the tweets are not shown in the transcript.

The moderator hands over to Sachs and then Jay Cal for opening remarks, hoping to get the group back together. Sachs says he can see Jason is hurt and suggests he explain what was so hurtful.

His own position is that ball-busting is part of the show, that they have done it for a year and a half, and that nobody does it more than Jason. Jason is, in his words, like a schoolyard bully who finally gets hit and runs to the teacher. He asks why 'piss poor' crossed a line, and why Jason would block him and potentially end the show and the friendship. The language is the speakers' own and comic in part.

Jason says his perception is that Sachs got a taste of fame and that it has gone to his head. He accuses Sachs of neglecting his daily job and of being obsessed with the statistics and with how he comes across on the podcast, including a closeness to the person behind All In Stats, whose name is garbled in the transcript.

He says none of the other hosts read the stats, and claims he pulled the show together using decades of experience, comparing himself to a point guard who built a super team of four people. He says Sachs has asked for his help over decades, naming no details but alluding to two occasions, one where Sachs risked being canceled and one where Sachs's company was under investigation, and says nobody has benefited more from his media skills. These are Jason's claims and the transcript does not show them being confirmed.

Another host asks if Jason is speaking in an accent; he says no, this is just how he sounds when upset. He then extends the basketball image, calling himself the professor and a passer who moves the ball to everybody, and saying that if you want to be a point guard you sometimes throw a no-look pass that hits someone in the back of the head.

His argument is that Sachs cannot cry about every miss, and that his minutes are at least two-thirds moderation, which involves reading and prepping the stories to set up the others, so counting them as proof of poor moderation is unfair. He says podcasting is his business, and that Sachs should call him rather than start a public fight and then spend time with the stats account.

He closes by saying Sachs is getting out of control, should be grateful the show went to number one instantly, and should stay the course. He also mentions a 'Clubhouse killer' and moving the pod to it, but that line is hard to follow in the transcript.

Sachs responds by agreeing that Jay Cal helped put the super team together and is an indispensable part of the show. He credits him with bringing entertainment, joking that a show of only Friedberg rating things would be extremely boring, and adds that they will give the new moderator a chance, though the start has been rough.

He then says he was not upset about airtime but frustrated, and lists a first complaint: that Jason interrupts, and interrupts Sachs more than the others. Jason replies that this is false.

Sachs points to the Eric Adams topic from the previous episode as the case in point. As he recounts it, Jason skipped him several times and moved on, so Sachs had to raise his hand to get back in, and that portion was edited out of the published episode. He asks where the pass was to him on the issue.

Jason answers with the basketball image again: with three people who can score, he passes to one, and sometimes two are open; Sachs was the open man who did not get the ball and is now complaining while walking down the court. In his view this is like not going to Friedberg on a science issue. These are the speakers' own accounts of the previous episode.

The next lines are garbled. Jason appears to acknowledge the miss, promise to route a topic like that to Sachs next time, and say he cannot hit every perfect pass, while Sachs says that it was a missed pass and that he is nonetheless upset.

Sachs adds a second complaint. When he announces that he has three points to make, he says, that is a signal not to interrupt, yet he is cut off in the middle of the second. He asks how that is good moderation and says he does not think Jason does it to the other hosts.

Another voice says that the dispute is really between two of the hosts and their relationship, and that he loves them both. Sachs says he raised All In Stats not out of concern for his airtime but to show that, being fourth in airtime, he was not talking too much and so did not deserve to be cut off.

His point is that if he were monologuing it would be a different story, but he is being pulled off the microphone in mid-sentence before finishing. A third voice jokes that he seemed a little concerned about airtime.

Sachs says that whenever he raises a concern about moderation, Jason starts calling him Tucker and labeling him. Jason jokes by asking whether he has had dinner with Tucker in the last year, which Sachs says proves his point. Jason replies that he is trying to keep the show entertaining and moving and that part of that is cutting off monologues.

Sachs adds that a year and a half earlier, at the start of the podcast, a similar session happened because Jason kept trying to paint him as a Trump supporter, which he says is not his agenda.

The two sides trade questions over whether Sachs voted for Trump. Sachs objects that Jason keeps hanging labels on him, asking why the introductions never name conservative thinkers such as George Will or William Buckley, and arguing that Jason picks labels he knows many people in Silicon Valley find anathema in order to stigmatize him.