Behind the scenes of Elon hosting SNL, CDC failures, America's real-time UBI experiment, post-COVID boom in jeopardy & more
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§01Segment 1
Look at this red on my stock screen. I can't believe what's going on. Awesome.
Start down.
Does it mean I'm a loser?
I don't know. I need some self worth now.
Oh, god.
In
3, 2.
The weather winter ride.
Rainman, David Sacks. And I said
--
We open source it to Hey,
everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome
The all in podcast is back. Apologies about last week. I had a personal emergency. Are you
are you allowed to say why?
Of course. I mean -- That would go for
a second. Go say it.
Say it. Anyway, it's
a humble break.
With us today -- Say
-- --
I'm gonna say -- -- explain that.
You wanna say -- We know we can -- -- hot David Freeberg Tremont following
up with David Dickainer,
and The rain man himself, David Sachs. I was on a world tour. I was on a world tour.
No. No. No. Come on. Just
--
I'll I'll tell the story. Obviously, I don't like to about a certain friend of mine because he's very high profile. I don't talk about it in public.
Just flex. Just flex.
Just flex. Just do it.
I have been lift I just wanna let people know the gun shows back. No.
If you were backstage at SNL helping Elon with the SNL appearance, were you not?
This is true.
Tell us what that was like. Tell us about the backstage experience as well.
Tell us about the backstage experience.
I mean, we were we were living
it out in real time with you guys, but tell us what it was worth.
Tell us
why why Elon recruited you. to do it.
Alright. So
--
Are you Elon's funniest friend?
Arguably well, I mean, he know I mean, he's got
old guys. Hold on. I don't you remember the joke in the at Saks's roast 5 years ago? Remember when Elon was late and I had that ad lib joke, there were two jokes that I landed at Saksis thing, which I thought were -- No. My name.
No. Jason, my thing. I and I I
don't mind. I was being roasted?
No. Wait. Was it Jason's party snacks? Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I hosted I hosted Jason's roast.
That's right. That's right.
It was your roast. It was your roast. Yeah. Anyways, okay. Go ahead.
You're the funniest friend
in the event.
--
known as the the funniest night of
--
All of our collective lives.
It was really
funny. That was really
funny. Just tell stories from that some time.
Sometime we'll tell the Jake Outroast.
You probably are Elon's funniest friend and and have a talent for for writing. Let's not beat around
the bus.
You Let's not do it.
Okay. So thank you for that. I'll take the I'll take the compliment. So I'd left to go on a little trip to go to Austin to see some friends, and then Miami to see some friends. One of those friends, who I've hooked up with and was hanging out within Miami.
It was obviously Elon. And he was doing Saturday Night Live and we were just coming up with ideas around the dinner table, and we're just laughing our asses off, just brainstorming ideas that would never be allowed on television you know, and he said, hey, would you come with me to sat in that live? And I was like, oh, that's great. Do you have enough tickets? I assumed he meant Saturday night, you know, and You know, he said, no.
I don't have a lot of tickets. It's COVID. It's like half his money. I would you come with me to the writer's room and just, you know, be my wingman basic? So I had, like, 3 or 4 board meetings of 5 podcasts.
So I just yeah. I thought
--
It was,
like, an instant yes. Sucked. check
your schedule. I was like -- You had
to you had to check your schedule.
Yeah. I think I had to check my schedule. No.
I've been like, take I work seriously.
You're like, you wanna call on can you give me about half a second to decide?
I had already made the decision in my mind that if my friend needs help. You guys have been in similar situations where you've asked me for help. I've rolled with Chamath on speaking gigs or going down to try to, you know, save Saxx from going into complete utter madness and
--
Oh my god. Yes. -- Cabo.
This is not crisis management. Anyway, so you said yes. US.
So I said yes. And, you know, without giving well, without giving away anything that was private or confidential, they have a process that they've been doing for 46 years. And we came in you know, with our own process of what we wanted to do. And it it kind of was, you know, kind of an interesting thing because a lot of the ideas I had were, let's just say, a little too far out for the cast or for the writers, but some of them landed and I got to spend a lot of time with Lauren Michaels, and I really worked on my impersonation of him. He's Canadian.
He's Canadian. And I was like, so Lauren, tell us who are the worst hosts ever? And he's like, it's an interesting question, Harrison. You know, we don't like to think of it that way. But with there in terms of people who thought they were smart and maybe were not as smart as they thought they were Steven Segal was a little bit difficult and
--
What a safe choice. That's a very safe choice.
There was Christopher Stofferson.
You know,
back in 70 8, he wasn't a musical guest that was Carly Simon, and he he liked to drink. And in this very green room, in seventy eight, he had a couple of drinks before during the rehearsal, the dress rehearsal. So we we we all did some coffee in, like, any sports team when the game starts, we play the game.
Okay. So so who was so who was responsible for the Chad Skit?
Okay. So Chad's an existing character And that was a really amazing one to watch because we went to Brooklyn to a warehouse and the production was incredible. And what the role I played if I'm being totally honest is to just, you know, be Elon's friend and be there with him, but also, you know, was that funny for you? Was that Should I do that? Should I not do that?
because there are some
--
You were a punch up, ma'am.
I was a punch up guy. I wrote some lines without, you know, taking anything away from the writers there who do the bulk of the work and the actors and the set designers. It is amazing to see what they do. Like, we had to go through 40 scripts. And, you know, when you read something in a script, it it's kinda hard to know if it's funny.
But then when you put Chloe, or, you know, Kate McKinnon or Colin Joe's or Chey or Mikey Day. Like, these people are phenomenally talented. So all of a sudden, the script comes alive. But for the for the the the the the the
2
punch ups, I I got really good. I'll just give you one anecdote because I don't wanna get myself in too much trouble.
--
respond for besties in the Gen Z Hospital.
--
comment on that one?
I thought that would as soon as I saw it, I thought of you. And then the other the other one I thought was incredibly well done was murder duder.
Okay. So I had nothing to do with that one. And I thought we thought that was like We thought that one was incredibly dumb. Like, when you read it on the script, it was like, is this funny or not? But they you know, this is the thing.
You you add tremendous performance and you add incredible set design and we were we were in Brooklyn at 3 in the morning and Elon comes out with that wig on. in a in a suit. And we just start laughing hysterical, and he just goes right into creepy priest. It was -- That's great.
--
hilarious. But what about what about the asperger's joke? Because
--
Yeah. It's mute.
Yeah. because you
use that as a tease amongst people we may mute Chili know a lot. Yes.
And so
when I heard
it, I
was like, oh, that's a Jason joke. So for
sure, that's actually what then but
what so to me,
so what's so ironic no. But what's so ironic is the asperger's joke came out, and then everyone all these press articles got written saying, Elon has admitted publicly to have been asked for yours, and he is we are so proud of him, and it is such a a moment to come clean about having this this thing. And it was like a Jason joke that yeah. This Jason joke that became a oh my gosh. You know, what are the
--
I'll tell you. I'm particularly proud of that one because here's how that one went down. they had an idea to do Jeopardy. And it was probably the flattest pitch because, you know, it's like 11 o'clock at night, a writer comes in and says, hey. We wanna do Jeopardy auditions, and we want it's a kind of a feature for the cast to do auditions.
I don't know if you ever saw the Star Wars auditions or the Jurassic Parker. It's just kind of not vain. I was like, for me, I was like, oh, that sounds like it's got potential, but it was a very dry pitch. They didn't have any examples. And when they actually did it, it was, like, really weird characters that were obscure.
So I had pitched my own version of Jeopardy and Elon had his version of Jeopardy. Elon's version of jeopardy was dictator Jeopardy, which was, Kim Jong Un. You know, MBS Putin, You know, etcetera. And then I was like, how to deal with your adversaries? And he was like, for 800, and he's Plenonium.
And I was like, genocide. And
we got really dark. And so we are laughing our asses about that. you know, but then, like, there were security concerns. Basically, we're kinda dialing this around the it would be as funny as the It would be a direct correlation of funny to the chances of Elon being assassinated by one of those people. So then we decided maybe we don't do that one.
And I said, I've got a great idea. Asperger's Jeopardy. And it would be Zach, Elizabeth Holmes, which Chloe from the show, who's an absolute genius, incredibly sweet, and she really engaged deeply with Elon and connected with our team? and then obviously Elon. And so you'd have Elon playing Zuck, somebody playing Elon, and then Chloe playing Elizabeth with Holmes, and they would be like, You know, how to deal with an intense situation with an employee and then presses it.
Don't make eye contact.
You know, like -- And
so one of the writers, I could tell she was not happy about this. And she says, you know, this is my husband's house. Asperger's, my two brothers have Asperger's. And all of a sudden, we're in, like, okay. You know?
We
can't offend anyone
land. And I would say, you know, 80, 90 percent of the staff is very, you know, like, let's go for it. And then there's probably 10 or 20 who are very sensitive to different topics. so it's a there's a little navigation you have to do there. But we really want and then so Ewag goes, I have Asperger's.
And, you know, like, the whole room is like, wow. so then I was workshopping with somebody. And I wasn't in the writer's room. I I I contributed 2% that max other than, you know, being Elon's friend and and and supporting him. But, you know, they came in and said, hey.
When they didn't wanna ask Elon something, they came to me, and I negotiated some situations. Like, they didn't originally wanna have any Doge father or any cryptocurrencies on the show. We had to negotiate that.
Oh my god.
Well, I mean, no. They have they have they have general counsel there. They have standards. they're now on at
8:30.
Now we know why the show's not funny anymore. There's too many people with the veto.
§02Segment 2
--
love the show. I think it's very funny.
I just think -- Elon Elon made it culturally relevant for the first time in, like, a decade.
But but what
you're describing is too many people with a veto right over the content of the show. a mix and not funny. You gotta be willing -- No.
No. I think the show I think the show is very funny. I think they take some artistic at risk, and What's not funny to us might be like funny to some other folks. So that's why it's hit or miss. But certainly moving the show from 11:30 on the West Coast, definitely has an impact.
So what they could have done 10 years ago before the timing was synced between the West and East Coast is different. They're now on at primetime.
There's still a big cultural shift that's happened. It's like -- Yeah. Anyway -- -- like, sex is here.
I'll give you the 2 the 2 first moments.
It's not it's not John Belushi anymore. When the the like, the core separate CEO comes on the show and and wants to do crazier, wilder stuff than the people, you know, who are the regulars. But, anyway, keep going.
So, anyway, you know, the one of the folks who's working on the monologue, you know, comes in. And and the original monologue, you know, all these things go from Rob to potential, to good, to great, to amazing. And so for me, it was you know, just you guys know my career choice, I just really made me think, like, maybe I picked the wrong career choice. It's pretty fucking good at this. I should do this.
So I started to call it at the after party. I was like, you know, I've kinda made my money already. Is there any chance I can get an internship? He's like, no.
That's okay, Jason. You can you can always take credit for being the 3rd or 4th Friedberg on Elon's monologue. Perfect.
Exactly. That's great. So, anyway,
They're doing the they they said they wanted to do an asperger's joke. I said so I I wrote the asperger joke of, you know, hey. I just wanna let people know. I've got Asperger's and so there's not gonna be a lot of eye contact tonight. So if you see me looking off screen, it's not that I'm looking at cue cards.
It's just that I have Asperger's. So keep the cue card part, but they kept the rest of it. And then they did the o j joke, which was written by Colin Jost, who is absolutely phenomenal as a human just as a writer and and a collaborator. And and we spent a lot of time with Colin Joe. He came in, and they had this joke about OJ having been on at
79 96.
The 96 was a joke. He wasn't actually on a
96.
I think that's when he went to jail or something. And I said to him, I said, I don't think people understand the joke. They actually think he was on a
96.
he goes, well, let's just rehearse it. So we're in the green room rehearsing, and then Elon goes, you know, so hey. And, you know, like, o j, like, you know, like, I'm smoking weed on every podcast. It's That's like saying, OJ, you know, you know, you murdered once, and now he's a murderer forever. You know?
And, you know, a side note, he was on in 79 in 96. And I just go like this. and he killed both times. And the room, there's, like, a silence and that everybody goes like one of my, you know, poker assignments.
That's fabulous.
When I dropped a joke and
I take
a sip of my wine.
That's fabulous. Cytropolis.
I bet there was, like, a split second where everyone looks left and right is it okay to laugh
at this? No. That's my point. Like, is it okay to laugh at this? Yeah.
And Colin Joe just looks at me and goes, that's getting in there. And I so I landed that one. Yeah.
So the
way, you know, some moments like that For me, I I tell you, I I you'll get emotional talking about it. It's one of the happiest times I've ever seen in Elon life and I've been with him for 20 years. Actually, you've known him for for 25, obviously. In the feeling of Monday Tuesday that oh my god. This could be a complete utter disaster.
I mean, that was our fear. And that, like, we we're just not in sync here. And these maybe it's gonna be unfunny, and this is a huge mistake. Like, that was kind of our vibe from our our squad, and we had 3 of us there, including Elon. And then You know, we we the the Aspergerjokes lands, and I I tell you, a woman from a wardrobe comes in, and she's crying.
crying. And she says you know, she sees me first, and we she had been there when we were doing the joke. And she said, my son, you know, was beat up for having as burgers, and, you know, this changes everything. Wow. This -- It became like it became like a serious
thing.
three or four people came in to the room, I kid you not crying. A 1000 because 1 in 20 kid 11 in
20
boys I think now have Asperger's Do
you guys remember in living color? You remember that show from the early days?
Yes. Oh my god.
Can you juxtapose, like like, comedy today and comedy from in living color where they had, like, Damon Wayans as, like, the the homeless guy and, like, everything that would be so, like, non PC today and, like, totally inappropriate. and how much things have shifted where, like, even the joke becomes, like, you know, serious kind of -- Can
I ask a question? Sorry, Jason, when when people are getting emotional, it was because of why. They were like, thank you for validating and putting it out there and showing a a role model. Is that it?
Or -- One of the squawk alley guys, you know, basically got choked up twice on Monday, and he said Elon can go do no wrong in my mind now because I'm dealing with a son who has Asperger's and they do something sometimes that can be very challenging as a parent. Right? And it just explains a lot about And we all know people who have Asperger's David's. And we we know people who have any further on the spectrum.
And -- -- someone who's been accused of being on the spectrum, can I to this issue. I mean -- Yes.
--
like, look. If anything, Asperger's is correlated with an extreme ability to focus and to be successful. That's why there's so many people in tech who have asperger's who have been accused of having asperger's. So I don't know that it's something that people have to be. I I guess unless you have, like, an extremely, like, extreme case, like, on the kind of in the autistic part of the spectrum.
But, like, mild asperger's probably as correlated with success because you it's like the opposite of ADD. Right? It's the It's it's it's the extreme ability to focus. But honestly, like, what you're describing to me sounds so lame. Like, this is why the show's not funny anymore.
It's not about the jokes. Look. It should be about the jokes. The joke
like disagree a 100%. Not Joe Blended. It made everybody laugh. It may have landed a little too close to somebody.
Guys, just to just to just to The the reason David, you're saying this is because we all know at least the 3 of us, 4 of it. What was not what not make it and what's on the cutting. That's why you're saying it. And so I think you have to just kind
of move on to the cutting room floor, but I will tell you I will I will reveal one skit. That means you're No.
You can't. You can't.
You cannot. You cannot. I can. It's just one. I mean, there was one they recorded, which I think will come out as a digital short And the premise is FOMO Capital.
Fear of missing out capital.
That was good.
And and and -- Yeah. That was a good one.
That was your right that was your idea, or Young Dealots?
I'm trying to remember where it originated. We we were just talking about, you know, just the state of, like, people buying NFTs and everything. And I think Elon may have said, like, they all have FOMO. And then I was like, yeah. I'd be like a venture capital firm that and then he named it FOMO Capital.
So was a little bit of a collaboration, but I think mostly Elon in that one. And the this person comes in, and the skid is hilarious. So they're probably gonna release it as a digital short, like, for time, but release it. And this kid, the person comes in, and there's, like, an associate who's being trained. And he's they're like, welcome to FOMO Capital where we never say no to nothing.
And he's like, okay, I don't know if I understand that. Like, sit down, you'll get the hang of it, and then people come in with increasingly ridiculous ideas. and I'll just tell you one of them which was when it comes here because so you guys know Impossible Meats. This is Impossible Vegetables. These are these taste just like vegetables.
But this broccoli is made with endangered white rhinos. And she takes a bite of it. Tastes just like broccoli. And Elon goes, this is amazing, and they hand them a Picasso. And then somebody comes in and says, like, oh, blah blah blah.
It's just hilarious. It's just more more money being -- Why
didn't that get in the show?
Well, what they do is they do a 2 hour show with a live audience and they just take out 2 or 3 skits. And so there were 3 skits, I think, that were taken out for time. and then those could be released digitally now. So they just wanna have extra.
They did a long opening. They did, like I think it was, like, 10 minutes on the mother's
day thing. -- day 1. Yeah.
Can I can I just say Miley Cyrus has the most incredible voice. Oh my god. I could listen to her sing. Forever. She oh, she has got an incredible voice.
So I was following up.
--
the opening I thought the opening was really shaky. I mean, I was there This is the first time I've watched Live TV in, like, 10 years ever since Apple TV was invented. I've seen there waiting for Elon to come out and crush the monologue. And then Miley Cyrus does this long, unfunny thing with all these mothers. It's great.
You know? It's meant
to be personal for some
my I'm I'm not -- -- thing. It was a song. It was a song. That's cool. And it was a
it was a w t f moment for me. I was like, where is Elon? Bring out Elon, I am not here to see a bunch of mothers.
I mean, that's an interesting
--
I said my -- -- I'll tell
you that was an interesting moment, David. Because they were like, Elon will put you in, like, 4 of the skits out of the 7, and Elon and we don't wanna work, you know, Elon too hard. So I was doing these sort of sidebars with some of the producers, one in particular who is just a phenomenon. She's she's an amazing producer who just gets everything done. because this all occurs from Monday to Saturday and they work 16, 18 hours a day.
And You know, she said, we know we we don't wanna take up too much of his time, so we think Forrest's the right number. And I said, you know, he gave up the week. He's the busiest guy in the world arguably. He wants to be in every skit. And she's like, well, nobody really does that.
Maybe a comedian here or there. And Yohan just said, if I'm here, use me. I wanna be in every skit and, like, They we had to, like, reshuffle the deck a bit, and and he was willing to do anything, including Wario or, you know, and or a costume. or be the creepy priest. He he you know what?
Elon was funny. He is a pro
I think he surprised everyone in terms of being a performer just in terms of his performance I think it was really strong. It was as good as, like, you know, someone who's in the entertainment business would be, I think.
I think
that's what we're gonna
take him.
Yeah. Exactly. It's universal take even Elon sort of haters had to concede that he performed well. He kinda kinda committed to all those roles even when it was, like, poking fun at himself.
Yeah. I had to I had to dunk on Professor dummy Galloway who was like, I'm gonna live tweet Elon, and he's just like, going on CNN, talking about Elon, he's going on every fucking cable channel he can to to, like, ride Elon's Cotels. And he tweeted Elon with Tesla would lose 80, 90 percent of its value 2 years ago. Like, just are you kidding me? But I agree.
§03Segment 3
Like, even someone like Professor Galloway who said Tesla was worthless, He is now just all over it. And and it humanized him, you know, which is nice. I I
think -- -- he did a I think he did a great job. And
--
It was fun. I'm super happy for him.
Yeah. It's lower in Michael's came in. So Elon, you did a great job. Come back anytime sincerely. And I said, how about next year?
Like, any
--
You're his agent. You're like his agent. When when
do we when do we get SQL?
And He's a punch up guy. He's the agent. He's the hype man.
The negotiator? I was doing mostly negotiation, and and and and Laura Michael said, absolutely Jason. We'd love to have Elon back. You absolutely crushed it. And I you know, Elon's busy in the green room.
By the way, do we know what the ratings were?
3rd batch show of the season so far, I think, not counting all the YouTube views and the international views. I think Chapelle is the only person who beat So, you
know, all of those a couple of those skits are gonna live forever, I think, on YouTube. I mean, the Chad skid, in particular, was really hit it out of the park. My by the way, my observation on the skits were the ones where Elon was kind of indispensible were, like, the real were really great. Like, the Chad thing, and I thought that the western room where Well, La Ron, you know, where he plays this, like, 18th century Old West version of himself. It's like this genius in the old West who's telling them to write electric courses or something.
Yeah. I for me, that was really funny. So I thought the ones where Elon was sort of indispense the more indispensable Elon was to the skit, I thought the better it was. And then Some of the skits I mean, look, live sketch comedy is very hit or miss. I thought the ones that were more miss were the ones were they could have done them without Elon.
It could have been a skit any any -- Yeah. -- you know, any SNL?
I think that's something inaccurate. Yeah. Yeah.
It's like, why wouldn't you take advantage of having Elon there and and And
they and they did. You know, and just to the staff, you know -- Yep.
--
first off, I'm sorry. I was such a ruckus. And this just robbed her in the space. But, really, I mean, what a great time. Elon had a great time.
The after party was amazing. And -- Describe
the after party where they wear a mask
Oh, that's a good time we can't. That's a good time we can't.
That's no.
No. It's
outside. No.
I'll just leave it as a good set. -- side.
It was an outside party. But we danced until this is actually for real. And I think it's a good segue into just what we're seeing out there. I left San Francisco having been yelled at somebody because my mask fell off. I didn't know it, and I had gone into, you know, a store.
And they were like, you're mad. and they yelled it across the store, you know, and I was like, oh, sorry.
You know, just kinda you know
how when they fall off, you don't notice it? Then I got to Austin And when I'm in Austin, I'm walking down the street. I'm the only person in Austin wearing a mask and somebody points at me and goes, you don't have to wear that mask, son. And I was like, oh, I look around, there's nobody wearing a mask. It's my first day there.
And he goes, you've been vaccinated? I said, yeah. He goes, you really don't need to wear a mask. So I take the mask off. I get to Florida.
A friend of mine was out, you know, at a having a cocktail at a bar. Invites me to meet him for a cocktail. I go to meet him for a cocktail. there's a DJ and there's
--
Key who shall key who shall not be named.
Anyway, I want to have a cocktail as one does in Miami. There's a 100, 200 people 200 people in the club. The only people wearing masks are the staff who are wearing them as chin guards. And I'm like, that's not the purpose of a mess, but okay. So And then I get to New York, and everybody in New York is wearing 1 or 2 masks on the street on I walked down an empty street.
Okay. So we should talk we should talk about that CDC article that was in the New York Times because that's an incredible summary, Jason, of of this whole issue in a nutshell, which is it's it's unbelievable.
And then to just give SatNet live a nod, every day everybody tested, you got, you know, 2 tests like the I I don't I forget the names of them now since I stopped taking them. But you did, like, the the big one and the small one. Everyday you got tested. Everyday you got wristbands. You had to wear a mask a 100% of the time.
And then when you were in the studio, you had to wear the glass shield. So if you saw the picture I did of myself and Elon, and Blood Pop, Michael, who's a famous producer for Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, who's a friend of ours, Mike had to wear it too. So we're we're I mean, Elon a mask on because he had to take it off to do skits. But all the rehearsals, everybody was masked up, including the actors and everybody was vaccinated. So they really are taking this seriously and I understand because they in New York they had a ton of people die and to get a my understanding, that's what I heard secondhand, was that Lauren Michaels had to get a special variance to keep Saturday Night Live on the air from you know, the governor and the mayor and everybody had to sign off on it.
But I tweeted. This
is not this is not taking COVID seriously. This is This is basically an irrational fear of COVID.
Well, the because they got hit the hardest, David. So I think that they got hit the hardest. And I tweeted is everybody wearing a mask in New York? And, of course, they got, like, a 100 -- Because there's a pandemic. But then what the the two reasons that made sense were so many people died and there was so much suffering in New York that people out of a sign of respect are still wearing them until they hit hear herd immunity officially.
which I know you could roll your eyes at, David, but, you know, they did have a it would be any questions.
I don't think that's the real reason.
No. Well, anyway, I do actually do think it's the real reason. because peep multiple people said to me, it's a way of showing people that you actually care about them and that you're gonna really take this seriously until the end.
No. I think it's it's more what Ezra said, which is this is the red MAGA hat for team blue. This is pure virtue signaling.
Possible. The other thing they said was on a practical basis, In New York, you're, you know, on the subway, your office, and in, you know, going into a cafe, you have to wear it, and you're doing that seventeen times a day. So taking the mask on and off just becomes less work than just leaving it on. That's those were reasonable answers I got, but anyway, some somebody summarize the story.
Another another reason, I think, is that look. If you're if you're in a blue part of the country, the media sources for Team Blue are still promoting this idea that outdoor spread is a thing, that it's it's a risk. we're we're finally now getting I mean, we we've known since last summer that there were no cases no documented cases of casual outdoor spread anywhere in the world. The Atlantic was reporting on this. Okay?
This is not a conservative publication. This is a liberal a a skewed liberal publication.
Okay?
Yes. Exactly. So we've known since last summer. I mean, when Gavin Newsom declared that we weren't allowed to go to the beach, it was widely mocked. And so only now is the CDC getting around to loosening its guidance on outdoor mass wearing, but it's still not loose enough.
And so There was a great article by David Leonard in The New York Times that just came out, I think, yesterday or 2 days ago, caught about the cautious CDC. And And what he said is, by the way, this is validates everything we've been saying on the pod for the last few months. Leonardo chronicles the the sort of absurdly conservative guidance given by the CDC. Basically, the CDC continues to suggest that outdoor transmission accounts for up to 10% of cases. when the real number is certainly under 1% is probably under point 1%.
And this is all based on a single study in Singapore where that was misclassified. It was based on a construction site that really wasn't even an outdoor spread. And yet the CDC still insists that unvaccinated people need to wear mask outdoors that vaccinated people wear them in large public values and that children at summer camp wear them at all times. This is the current CDC guidance. And so yesterday, when the head of the CDC was pulled in front of a congressional hearing and asked about this, she doubled down on this less than 10%.
And and the reason why it's so misleading is technically speaking, less than 10%, is correct. But when the real number is point 001 percent or something like that, it's highly misleading to give 10%. And the reason
--
The line in the article, which I loved, is it is accurate to say that sharks eat less than 200,000 humans a year But it is also more accurate to say sharks attack a 150 humans a year.
Right.
And the 150 is very different than 200,000. But if you say sharks attack 200,000 people or less a year, you would think that it's a it's a much bigger problem than it actually is. And I think that's the whole point which is we we're not being scientific. We're being emotional and reactive.
And the paper that Leonardo references basically, they took this data that identified how spread was occurring empirically and identifying, you know, through tracing, you know, where people actually picking up COVID. And that's really where this empirical evidence suggests we're talking about a less than point 1 percent casual outdoor spread rate And you can see that empirically in the data, but then there's also this deterministic kind of approach where you could say, like, look. How does spread happen? spread happens with viruses. We know that viruses need to live in liquid in order to survive when you're outdoors.
If there's any amount of wind or UV light, The virus can very quickly degrade. The protein can degrade. The RNA doesn't transfer. And so there's a a deterministic rationale for a scientific rationale for why that may be the case. and this evidence that this paper, which I've now shared, kinda gathers together, shows that, you know, that that is indeed what the statistics are showing.
And so, yeah, you're right. But I think the the precautionary principle, David, is where the argument would be made on the other side, which is, you know, what's the cost of wearing a mask? If there's any risk at all, And, by the way, I'm not I'm not making this case personally, but I think that's where a lot of people would would make the counterargument rather than debate the fact and the evidence and the science, they would say, but who cares? It's just a mask. Why does that matter?
And so I think the question is why does it matter. Right? Like, why does it matter if they're telling us to wear masks, is there really that much of a cost to people to do that?
Well, I mean, if people are doing it voluntarily, that's their right to to do so. But the question is, mass mandate, should we continue to have mandates on the population for something that isn't necessary. And look, I was one of the first people in March of 2000 to call for mass wearing and mass mandates because we were seeing the data out of the Asian countries showing that they were effective. They were high cost or high benefit low cost. So I was in favor of it when there was a pandemic raging.
§04Segment 4
But when t zero, the rate of transmission is in free fall everywhere, and now we've learned that outdoor spread is not an issue. I don't support restricting people's freedom. And you know, for for for a reason that's not rooted in science. And, you know, the problem with the CDC guidance is that people really act on it. So you've got politicians.
You got local jurisdictions who will not sue schools. schools. I mean so the schools have remained closed. And by the way, the schools have been open in Texas and Florida for 6 months. We know based on empirical data in the real world, seeing what's happening in Texas and Florida that that you're not seeing an increase in COVID cases in those places because of school reopening and yet, the CDC has not moved his guidance on school reopening.
You have summer camps now that for liability reasons, will make kids wear masks because they can't take the risk of getting sued. And then you've got politicians like Gavin Newsom, who won't wipe their ass without the CDC's permission to do so. So it has a real consequence in the real world that the CDC is stuck on this ridiculous guidance.
Did we read the actual sentence from The New York Times about under
10%?
So the the -- No. You could read it because it's it's really sad, actually.
Just in terms of the misleading CDC numbers, they said in quotes, under 10% of the spread has occurred outside. When in reality, the share of commission that occurred outdoors seems to be below 1% and maybe below 0.1% multiple epidemiologists tone.
Right. We'll also also read the quote. This is directly from David Leonard in the New York Times. And I think it's important to you know, it's great when you can quote the New York Times or the Atlantic because these are left leaning publications. So Team Blue should be more willing to accept them.
What Leonard said is there is not a single documented COVID infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions. But do people know that? I mean, do the people walking down the street with Maison know that?
Well, they'll they'll know it now because according By the way, did you guys know Jason just told me this. We accumulate a million views slash missions a week to our podcast.
Now that the archive's growing. Yeah.
So now now that now now million people will at least know. I mean, they're always
--
I think it's, you know, I it's it's also it's
a little bit self selected. So let's be honest. You know?
Yeah. For intelligence. I mean, there'll be, like, words. I mean, actually, some of the people no.
No. No. But but the real question is, like, isn't this an opportunity for the CDC to actually reestablish some credibility, which is to say, okay. We're gonna get back to facts. We're not gonna we are not we know that people will be prone to acting on anecdote and emotion.
So we're gonna be grounded in truth. In fact, we went back. We looked at the Singapore study. Here are the flaws in it. Here's how it applies.
And so we're gonna own it and revise it. And that would go such a long way. The fact is they they they it's it's important to understand, like, what do you think the incentives are for them to keep doubling down on bad decision making. By the way, by the way, there's no downside.
I think I said this I I think I said this a few months ago, which is I don't think that the CDC or any kind of medical, you know, administrative group, in particular, has to think about the synthesis of the effects of some of the policy that they're recommending. Their objective is to save lives. So if I'm running the CDC, I'm gonna tell people don't leave your home ever. Don't drink alcohol. Don't eat red meat.
Exercise you have to exercise 60 minutes a day or you get taxed. I mean, there's a lot of things that you could see. If if you were purely focused on saving lives, you would make specific recommendations only to save lives without thinking about the consequences side of saving lives. The consequences outside of saving lives of, you know, telling people to wear masks is it minimizes economic activity, some might argue. Therefore, there's gonna be an impact on airlines and hotels and outdoor thing and spending and all this other and people being willing to go to work and people being afraid of being in the office.
I mean, I see this I
I see this across all my companies where people, even though they're vaccinated and they're scientists, they're afraid to go to work. And so, you know, part of part part of perpetuation of the fear that arises from these policies that are all about the absolute saving of any life is that you end up having a significant cost that's not related to the objectives of that particular medical organization, and we see it around the world.
I see this
is -- And this this goes back sorry. This just goes back to what I said about leadership a few episodes ago, which is the the leadership of the administration should be sympathizing the recommendation of that group along with the effect that other groups might be indicating would arise from that recommendation and coming up with a kind of concrete kind of objective around, okay. Well, how do we balance these these different effects?
What you're saying is absolutely correct. The people who are making the decisions are only thinking about their responsibility So it's like a secret service agent when the president's like, can I go out and sign autographs? I absolutely not. They're gonna say no because they are responsible for keeping the president alive. Now there the other pernicious thing about this is they kept trying to game the public.
And the public when you try to game the public and you get caught where they say don't Fauci says, don't wear a mask because he doesn't wanna run out of masks. Then they say keep the masks on because they want to, you know, virtue signal or whatever it is. Or they won't simply say the vaccine is not dangerous or that the vaccine is actually gonna keep you from dying. They undersold the vaccine. And now everybody's gonna question everything they do for all time.
Don't Manage us. Manage the facts. Stop trying to manage people and just start managing your communication and make it crisp and clear And then somebody has to be a goddamn leader and say, okay. The doctors are saying this, the economy is saying this, and here's how those 2 things overlap. And schools being closed means more suiciding kids, more depression in kids, and people not being able to put food on their tables means we're gonna create Who knows what this economic policy is gonna create, which is another segue, David?
You had something to say?
Well, look. I I I agree with that, but I think you guys are being a little bit too charitable to the CDC. It's not just that they're wrong, and it's not just that they have a bureaucratic ins incentive for for CYA. and to be too conservative in their guidance. It's the fact that when an error gets pointed out, like by David Leonard in the New York Times, they double down on the lie.
And so Leonardo followed up his his article. It happened. So go go to this tweet that I just put in the chat. He said at a senate hearing today, senator Collins asked CDC director doctor Wolinski about today's edition of mourning, which was his article, which explains why the CDC's claim that less than
10%
of COVID transmission is misleading, And Walensky then doubles down and has a bunch of excuses and basically defends this 10% number, which is a lie. Now why would the CDC be doing this? There is separate reporting by the New York Post. Go to this article on Teachers Union collaborated with the CDC on school reopenings. So this guidance that the CDC put forward on school reopenings, the teachers' unions were part of writing that guidance.
And all of their suggestions were actually accepted and incorporated by the CDC. Now how is this science? This is politics. Last year, there are a bunch of articles accusing the the Trump administration of incorporating you know, political considerations into their guidance. There were huge scandals about this.
Where is the reporting today about the influence that the teachers' unions are wielding over the CDC to deliberately keep schools close even though the science does not support that. This is a gigantic scandal, and yet no one's covering it. It's left for the New York Post to cover this instead of The New York Times.
By the way, I think this good transition to that Druckenmiller interview because, you know, Saks, I just retweeted what you had sent, which was a link to the to the video, interviews. So, you know, Stanley Druckenmiller is this incredible incredible investor the the g o
a t goat.
There's a there's a there's many stories about Druckenmiller. At one point, you know, he's the guy that notoriously, they say, broke the Bank of England where he was betting against the British and force the the the the central bankers in in the UK to devalue the pound. And he's made 1,000,000,000 of dollars managing initially George Soros's money and then fun off and runs his own money now as an investor. And so he he's a a macro guy. So he thinks about kind of macroeconomic conditions and a fact and he talks a lot about Fed policy.
So he gave this interview on CNBC. And I think the, you know, the the the most kind of impression, quote, And it was also based on an op ed he wrote. Right, Zach? In in the Wall Street Journal?
Yeah. Yeah. But the interview is fantastic. The TV interview is great. Just watch that.
The interview is great, and
he said in in in the write up, he said clinging to an emergency after the emergency has passed is is what the fed behavior indicates right now. And I think that, you know, kind of what we're talking about broadly is perhaps the emergency in the United States where you have this uncontrolled increase in COVID cases. That's not the case today, so the emergency has passed. We still have COVID, but it is not an emergency. And the point is there's a lot of institutions and individuals and businesses that are still operating as if we were in the throes of the emergency.
In and so Bruckenmiller is making the case.
That's the Fed.
Especially the Fed.
And the Fed policy is acting as if we're in an emergency. But broadly, we're seeing this across a lot of its institutions like the teachers, unions, and others where people are effectively, you know, never let a good emergency go by without taking advantage or whatever the the saying is.
Never waste a Christ
Never waste a crisis, and the Christ keep the crisis going as kind of the model everyone's in right now, which is like -- No. -- the crisis. Absolutely.
They're keeping it going as long as they can, and Drucky Miller gave some pretty amazing quotes. He said that well, first of all, he described our current monetary fiscal policy as being the most radical he had ever seen in this guy's been watching markets for decades. The Fed has pumped
2,500,000,000,000
of QE into the economy, post vaccine, postretail recovery. He said that right now retail demand is 5 years above trend, meaning not only has retail demand fully recovered, it's where if you look at the trend line, it would be 5 years from now. So they are pumping like demand like crazy. They've issued 6,000,000,000,000 of new debt And then this is a thing I didn't know at all. He said the Fed is buying 60% of new debt issues without this the bond market would be rejecting this massive fiscal expansion because interest rates would become prohibitive.
§05Segment 5
And he said that when when interest rates revert to the norm, the historical norm, interest expense in our debt will be 30% of the government budget. So, I mean -- I think just
-- --
about that that -- Look.
The the the markets have had to intervene, and we have essentially decoupled what the government thinks is happening with what the capital markets needs people to know. And that's a really unique dynamic. Like, I mean, I'm not nearly as successful as Stan or have been in the markets as long as in, but In my 20 years, this is the first time I've really seen that. So just to give you a sense of this, you know, the markets are now acting to establish inflation expectations that the fed just seems to not want to do anything about. And what was So for just to give you guys a sense of this, like, you know, when in February, the markets really kind of had its first capitulation What happened was that all of a sudden people digested all these facts that Stan just said and realized, wait a minute, like all of this money is going to drive prices higher.
And so what they did was they took the they took the yield on the 10 year bond up by like a 100 basis points, and the markets freaked out. They went from, like, 0.75to1.75. And the Fed came out and said, hey. Hold on. Nothing to see here.
This is everything's gonna be fine. But then everything since then has been sort of leading to this realization. Commodity prices are up 50% There's this kind of, like, joke that, like, you know, you see a bed of lumber moving across a railroad, that's, like, a $1,000,000,000 of lumber just because of how expensive it is. You know, there are shortages everywhere. You'll be shocked to know that today Chipotle put out the following guidance, which is they said they are increasing the minimum wage to
$15
and that within three years, you can make a $100,000 a year. at Chipotle. Yep. That is as much as some engineers and coders in the United States Dara Khorseshawe, the CEO of Uber said on the Uber earnings call last week that the average hourly rate that some drivers in New York Uber drivers in New York were getting paid was 38 bucks an hour. What?
$38
an hour. So what does all of this mean? I think what Stan
is trying to say
-- --
dollars a year. But we're in
this weird place where we've decoupled The government institution that's responsible for fiscal stability and then the overall capital markets used to work in tandem. and they are no longer working in tandem because you have a narrative and a set of data points that aren't supported by the facts. And so this is an interesting thing. So in the CDC versus the American people example, there's no way to push back. Right?
I mean, governors can act independently. Cities will act independently. But at the end of the day, you know, the teachers unions are working with the the CDC. The school camps have this guidance and you're stuck in this morass. In the capital markets, that's not necessarily true.
And so you can change and you can you can re rate asset prices based on sentiment. And I think what everybody is saying in this example is we're past the emergency We've put too much money in the economy. We need to reopen and we now need to face the fact that there are massively rising prices which means that there will be inflation. And if you don't act, the capital markets will continue to act for us And so this is an example today where you're just seeing a bloodbath in the markets. And by the way, the only time the 2 government officials Friedberg be on the either side Janet yellen last Friday kind of casually in an interview kind of put her toe out in the water as treasury secretary and kind of said something that said there could be inflation and literally was hand slapped and had to put out something that disavowed her comments less than 24 hours later.
So that's
where we are. There there's there there's a bloodbath in the markets today, and there's been one for the last couple of months. And in particular, all the growth stocks have been hammered. and just to build on what you're saying, Tremoth. So there's a announcement today.
There's some data that the the inflation, the CPI is up
4%.
and climbing. And so people are now pricing in big interest rate increases. And so that makes gross stock. That hammers gross stocks because all the earnings are in the distant future. And so they get now discounted at a higher rate, and so the valuations get absolutely hammered So, you know, it's it's it's absolutely souring.
The the markets are basically souring on this Biden agenda. And, you know, I just you know, I I I I'm beginning to wonder if Biden's gonna be a Jimmy Carter here because frankly, all he had to do was leave things well enough alone. COVID was winding down. We had a vaccine. All they had to do was distribute it to as many people as possible and COVID, let the recovery take shape and instead they push this insane $10,000,000,000,000 agenda.
of taxes and spending that are now over stimulating the economy that are causing inflation that are now creating interest rate precess?
No. That's that's not that's not true yet. Meaning, he did do a good job on the vaccine, David. But then to your point, the federal government's posture and reopening is still been stunted. And he's proposing so much more incremental capital, which we all know probably will not be efficiently spent.
And there isn't any other good ideas. And so he believes his path to reelection, which is true, is to spend and to put money to put money to the economy. I think
it's gonna backfire I think it's gonna backfire master.
And and to tax. Right? So he's the spending, he's trying to he's trying to offset with higher taxes. on the wealthy, which, you know, from his point of view, is not gonna affect and and the the analysis is probably fair. It's not gonna affect his his voter block significant place.
He's gonna backfire massively. Look. If the economy turns, we were set for a post COVID boom. And right now, that is all at risk because Tremont, like you're saying, They're keeping the economy closed or part parts of it way too long. They then overcompensate for that by printing a ton of money and then they overcompensate for that by raising tax too much.
Just to just to build on that. So that second step of their overcompensating, their inability to open with money is so true Because then what happens is your labor force stays impaired because people make enough money by not working.
This is the key issue right now for a lot of businesses. I mean, you have restaurants that are overbooked, cannot get servers. Jim Kramer was saying he's he's up to
$18,
you know, per hour per servers. He's gonna move it to 20. It won't make a difference because with that extra 300 I think in federal federal unemployment, plus 3 to 700, I think, depending on where you are, you're now at 60, 70, 80%. And people are like, well, people will still go to work, and it's like, Yeah. But you're saving commuting, and you probably have side hustles, and you've lowered your commute expense.
So what is gonna incentivize people to to work, we are now running a dry run with cryptocurrency and, you know, stimulus, a UBI experiment. And the result of this UBI experiment is negative economic growth or throttled economic growth. We cannot be productive if people don't wanna and contribute.
So just to your point
on on
Friday -- -- people
to go to work.
So just to your point on Friday, Montana, which was part of the federal government's pandemic related UI benefits program basically said that we're canceling those benefits and we're opting out And on top of that, I think they're now offering a $1200 bonus to return to work. And the problem is because Montana now has a severe labor shortage. But It's not just Montana. It's every state in the union. So we have these 2 opposing forces.
Right? We have so much stimulus we have an under motivated labor force. We have more taxation that's also just gonna be wasted. So very poor ROI And then now we have input costs going up and prices going up to try to attract people, it's it's all going to drive prices
going up. Here's the quote from the governor of Mississippi purpose of unemployment benefits is to temporarily assist Mississippians who are unemployed through no fault of their own after many conversations over the last several weeks. with Mississippi small business owners and their employees, it has become clear that the pandemic, unemployment assistance, and other like programs passed by the Congress may have been necessary in May of last year but are no longer so in May of this year. And can you imagine the hit you're gonna take from voters from woke mobs, from people who believe in income inequality, when you say, I think we have to stop sending people free money so they go back to work. Like, this is a very hard position to take.
And we now have this occurring on a micro basis in California. We have true? We have a $75,000,000,000 surplus this year as the city devolves, and now we're gonna take that. And instead of lowering taxes and maybe trying to get Tesla, or Oracle or other venture capital firms that have left? Instead of doing that, what would
be what would
be what would what could we do, David, with that
75,000,000,000?
Well okay. So great points. So the $75,000,000,000 surplus, 1 third of that is a is from the federal bailout, which obviously we don't need, and that's the money that's coming out of Washington. -- that back,
right, to another state that
you use it? Good luck. Good luck. Exactly. No.
Okay. The other 2 thirds is because last year, we had all these unexpected tax receipts from the stock market boom. And so you have all these California taxpayers paying capital gains on that.
So
but but what this highlight to me is and I what I wonder about is how many of those taxpayers have left the state because we know that we had net migration loss of a 182,000 in 2020. So how many of those people left the state and won't be paying taxes this year? And if Biden breaks the stock market through this insane tax and spend, then where is this, like, surplus gonna come from next year? And what this highlights to me is, I think we have people in Washington and Sacramento for that matter. who've lost sight of the fact that, ultimately, the private sector and and the public sector are a partnership.
§06Segment 6
Because the private sector generates the largess and the wealth to fund the public sector and to fund the creation of these public goods, to fund education, to fund law and order, to fund social programs. And they've stopped seeing it that way. They see the private sector Not as something like a cow to be milked or a, you know, or or, you know, or a sheep to be sheared, but they wanna skin the sheep instead of instead of shearing it. And and so they're they're really at risk or or, you know, killing the golden goose. I guess you could put it put it that way.
You know, and I think that, you know, during the Clinton years, just to take just to take a contrast, we had government spending as a federal government spending as a percent of GDP was between 8 a half 22%. That was the range. And we had a boom. So when you have a federal spending as a percent of GDP around 20%, it works. Right?
And that doesn't mean you can increase government spending. It just means that government spending will increase as the economy gets bigger. But what you have now is federal spending over 30% of GDP, and everything is starting to break. That's the problem.
Very, very big problem.
And, of course
And that's why we're all getting Red Pilled. Right? How many people in Silicon Valley frankly, who make a living off gross stocks are now starting to scratch their heads going, gee, what did I vote for?
It's definitely becoming a thing. And I would say The the purple pill party, you know, like, chop it up. Let let's mix these 2 things. Let's candy flip. Whatever it takes.
Like, to get out of this you know, we gotta get this party restarted.
Centrism is the answer.
It absolutely is. And, you know
--
Centrism is the answer.
And I think it's probably good for us to take a pause here and maybe talk about this business insider hit piece or what was likely to be a hit piece. But turned on, I think, On Emergent Fair calling this all in podcast, and I I didn't don't know if this is accurate, but I thought it was pretty funny. Possibly the single most disruptive click in California politics this year. I think they're referring to the 4 of us. And then, of course, I get absolutely skewered for making clocking noises.
I own those clucks. I'm proud of those clucks.
Cheers what I'm saying. Can I can I can I say something? I think that, look, our I don't know. I'm a little exhausted about local politics and California politics. I'm not exhausted by federal politics because I think it's it's an important lens as David said into, like, how we actually conduct business because all of the businesses we're involved with are inherently global and America leads.
Here's what I'll say though about about that article, which I didn't read. like most of these things which I don't really read.
Never read your press. Rule number 1 in
the game. I think it's incredibly important to realize that California was a bellwether for opportunity and the ideals of American upward mobility. And a lot of people came here irrespective of the taxes because they sought out like minded people. They sought out a moderate liberal viewpoint and an economic set of opportunities.
2
of those 3 boundary conditions are changing. And that's why I think California is now important because it is a canary in the coal mine for the rest of the United States, which is do we become a balkanized country of 50 states, or are there, like, generic progressive, moderate ideals that everybody can agree to and sign up to and where governments largely still get out of the way. This like, I don't think you know, if you look at sort of like tech oligopolists and the hatred we have for them, I don't think political oligopolists are any better. And so, you know, I don't think we want either of them in charge. is really the answer.
Yep.
I think it's a
great point. We just we just gotta use this election cycle, I think, to kind of like vote a moderate agenda. The most disruptive thing that can happen in California is somebody emerges who is rational and moderate who says, you can categorize me as a Republican or a Democrat on a whole bunch of issues I had to pick a platform because this stupid election model makes me pick 1. So call me a Democrat or call me a Republican, but the reality is I'm a centrist. Here's what I believe.
And if that person gets voted in, then hopefully it changes the conversation for the rest of the country. Otherwise, we are headed to 50 Balkanized states operating independently. And, Jason, the thing where you make a joke is actually kinda sad. If you get $25,000,000,000 and you don't need it, The ideal thing is that you actually give it back to the federal government because you think there's some accountability for all these dollars, and it actually is the right thing to do. And the fact that everybody laughs because we know no course start.
We'd rather just dig a ditch and fill a ditch for 25,000,000,000 or, you know, two and a half miles of high speed rail. I wonder what the crazy thing is. That's kind of sad.
It's it's it's sad and it's corrupt. Right? It's a corruption it's a corruption that we've just gotten used to, which is you're gonna take 26,000,000,000 that you don't need, that you don't deserve. It's like the school board in San Francisco announcing they're gonna open school for one day to qualify for incentives for reopening that Gavin Newsom gave them for 12,000,000 bucks. It's a pure money grab.
It's out it's outrageous, you know. It's all about the benjamins for these guys. And and by by that, I do not mean students named Benjamin. Wow. You're
gonna fuck David Sacks punching it up on the next answer now. I wonder what I'm I wonder why do I invite you to come with him.
I'm I'm gonna stick with my I I'm not as good as you, Chase. I'm gonna stick with my my day job. But but but let me can we go back to this article? I wanna give you my
2¢
on this article. I did I I you know, it was behind a paywall, so it was hard to to read, but I got a copy of it. Here's my view on it. First of all, I think they did pull their punches a little bit because we did the pre bottle. You know, we called them out before.
Yep. based on their very biased list of questions they sent me. But in any event, they they kinda pulled their punches a little bit. But the article was kind of suffused with this, how dare they pissiness, you know, and in a couple of areas. One was, you know, the reporter was very upset that we're going direct.
Right? We've talked about going direct meeting, going around reporters and speaking directly to the public. It's kind of how dare they do that? You know? They should be talking through us, you know, you know, we, the objective reporters, and then we'll tell the story for them.
No. We're going direct. We wanna have an influence. We wanna speak our minds. And the second thing there have said about is the fact that we're contributing to these elections.
And the reporter made a point of saying that I sought out the Boudin recall. They didn't just come to me. I sought them out and wrote $25,000 as if what is he really up to? Why did he seek them out? Well, If you wanna know what I'm up to, I've written about it.
I wrote a blog on, you know, the problem of Chase and I've written a blog on the on how Gavin Newsom has moved very far to the left. You don't need to speculate or wonder what I'm up to. I've spent thousands of words Yeah.
But here's the problem here.
--
about
it. David, they want you to go through them. Exactly. And the fact that this podcast has bigger reach then when we go on CNBC or bigger reach than we're in business insider. And, you know, when the New Yorker article on Shamoff comes out, more people will listen to this podcast than read that article.
That's what this is about. Yes. Absolutely.
There's a certain threatening nature to what we're doing here where you know, as they admit, we're more influential than they are. Well, then why read them? Like, what is the point? Especially if they're doing link baiting, they look even They look dumb when compared to the dialogue we're having here. They can't have the dialogue we're having here because let's face it.
We're we're for insiders. We see what's happening on the inside and if we talk to them they might get 10 or 20 percent of the picture and in aggregate they might get to 50 or 60, but we get a
100%.
Let let me connect a couple dots because I think what you're saying is is really important. In my mind, I think this is another example of, like, the CDC example or the financial markets example where in in all of these cases, what we have is the following dynamic, which is Like, if you think about when the newspaper used to hit your front door, right, like you used to wake up and, you know, when the paper was delivered, right, we all remember that? and you'd pick it up and it was a physical paper. Now I'm just gonna use it in at this number to make it to make an example. Let's just say it was eight and a half by 11.
You take this 8 and a half by 11 piece of paper and what you have is a fixed container. And so what there was was inherent competition. And so inherently, you had this leverage where it was only the best things that got into the paper. Right? They segregated by sections, People wanted to advertise against it.
And having a fixed amount of real estate really made that real estate precious. And I think that that was really, really important. Now think about what's happened. When you go to that same paper online, let's just use the New York Times. Effectively, that container has become infinite.
And so now you've completely taken away the ability for anybody to actually assign real value. There's no above the masthead or above the full concept as much as they're used to be, especially in infinite scrolling. The point of all of this is this is why there's no value in coming back and re you know, telling the truth. You just go to the next clickbait title because you just keep on going and going and you just wonder, hey, wait a minute. To tell the truth is an inconvenient artifact of my business model today.
Whereas before telling the truth was really important. It was an anchor which created more value for you to sell ads. Now it's just it just gets lost in a sea of things.
There's such an agenda.
So the so the point is the financial markets in this interesting way is the only or it's one of the few places left where you can vote in real time about the truth. Right? And so for example, like, you know, you get all of these readings and you get all of these documents from the Fed, which is the Financial Markets version of the CDC, but you can vote that you don't believe them. And you can see it every day the gap between what they say is narrative and what the facts are. And that's a really healthy dynamic that still exists in in finance and capital markets We just need to figure out a way where it exists everywhere else.
§07Segment 7
Otherwise, people will always want to make sure that they have a direct conduit to tell their version of the truth and allow people to decide for themselves.
Before we get to science with Friedberg, if you get the scammer back running. I don't know if you guys know, but Vox canceled us this week with an assist from Tyler Lorenz. The funniest dog is turning in all of this. is the multimillionaire VCs co opting the language of young women, MLM marketers in an effort to seem cool and hit with us. why white men are using the term besties.
I don't know if you saw that.
I think I think Taylor Lorenz's header sense of humor surgically removed. I mean, doesn't doesn't she
call monitor.
Doesn't yeah. Doesn't she understand that this is a self deprecating, self mocking bit that we came up with or that you came up with. I mean, come on. It's a gag. We know it's funny for a fifty year old guy to be calling each other
the best.
The the reason why, by the way, just if everybody wants to know the origin of that is one of our other friends, Phil Helmuth, kept calling me best to see, and we used to think it was the dumbest thing that we've ever heard. And then what we thought was would be even funnier is to just co opt it And it was done both credit to both but it was done initially to make fun of what how Muth used to call me. Right? Then we used to call
--
Help help me if it actually has the charity level of a teenage girl. So
--
That's true. That's true with the name dropping.
I don't I when he used the term bestie, he was not using it Iran We're -- No. It's not right. We're using ironically.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey. Let's talk a little bit about science so we can keep the Friedberg ratio up for all these Friedberg stands including the per whichever maniac is running Friedberg dogs anonymous Twitter handle.
I don't know if you talked to Twitter security about that yet, Friedberg.
My dog's on a walk right now. He'll come back, and then he can tweet. later as well. It is my it is my dog that runs the the account. Yeah.
Yes. So much for our ratings. No -- Yeah. What what is your dog's name again?
Monty. Monty Montgomery Wiggins.
with no Montgomery, this this is gonna be lowest lowest episode in a long time.
But -- His name was was Wiggins at the SPCA where I adopted him from. And I and I wanted to name him Monty because he's like a hustler. He hustled his way, you know, from the streets of the mission into a nice condo in pack Heights. So I gave him the full name Montgomery. So he's Montgomery Wiggins now.
Oh, here he is. Monty, come here. Come on. Come here. Come here.
Okay.
Come on, Dee. Come on, Monty.
Okay. Tweaked something.
There he goes.
Hey. There's a lot going on with synthetic biology. We saw 2 different IPOs in, I believe, the last month or so. Tell us about the the Gink Ginkgo BioWorks public offering and the Zaporgen IP. Zaporgen?
Well, Zaporgen?
So so the the premise of synthetic biology, which dates back, you know, many years. Right? Genentech is one of the first companies to effectively use synthetic biology to to to make products. So, you know, Genentech, and Amgen started making these proteins that that became biologic drugs. And the way you you can kinda think about synthetic biology is the DNA is software, and we can program the software to get the organism of the, you know, whatever DNA we're changing, to make something that we wanna use.
And so synthetic biology is all about editing the genome or editing the DNA of an organism editing its DNA and doing that in in a way that you can kinda make a product. And so this was done initially for biologic drugs. And and over the last kind of 20 years or so, using synthetic biology as a as a kind of approach, we've kind of thought about, well, how can we make things like fuel and increasingly more commoditized products like, you know, proteins that we might consume for animal consumption instead of using animals to make proteins. And so the underlying technologies have all followed an accelerated path that's greater than Moore's Law. you know, DNA sequencing costs have dropped faster than Moore's Law over the last 10 or 15 years.
The ability to synthesize or print DNA CRISPR per per you know, kind of provides us with a set of tools to do much more precise DNA editing and and so on and so forth. And there's just a confluence of technologies sort of like there were leading up to the personal computing revolution that are now gonna enable this incredible proliferation of a new industry that many argue will rewrite all industrial systems, all industry that makes everything that humans consume from materials to food, to the chemicals, to the plastics. Everything that we use in our daily life can be rewritten using synthetic biology. And so the promise of this dates back, again, like 2 decades or so, there was a company called Amyris that John Dorbakt, that was one of the first companies that was one of the few companies from the original technology companies that actually survived and made it through. And they're still around.
They're still a publicly traded company. And more recently, there have been these kind of more digitally enabled at least that's the premise that they kind of make for for what for their businesses, companies. So Xiim, which was you know, got a bunch of SoftBank money. They raised a $1,000,000,000 as a private company. they got public with, like, I think, 13 or 14,000,000 of revenue, and they're worth
$5,000,000,000
in their IPO. So they just went public. And this other company called Ginkgo BioWorks, which is a similar sort of, you know, synthetic biology platform company just went public, v or just amounts that they're going public via spec, at a $15,000,000,000 market cap with, you know, I think less than a $100,000,000 of revenue. So, you know, the the game is on. I and I think one way to kinda think about this is these businesses aren't great businesses today, but the promise of the next century being all about synthetic biology, you know, where where biology becomes software.
And you can program biological organisms to make and print pretty much anything we as humans assume is a premise that everyone believes is gonna come to fruition in the century. And it will completely reinvent industry will improve sustainability. I think it is gonna be the great savior for this planet. and for our ability to sustain on this planet. So these are kind of, you know, 2 big IPOs that validate that the capital markets are there.
There's so many big future investors, Jamat can share more on this that are, like, backing, quote, unquote ESG Companies. Synthetic biology is this kind of ESG, you know, moment. And and and and I think these these 2 IPOs happening at the valuations that they're happening at and the capital that's going in, I think these are kind of like the Netscape moments for synthetic biology, and we're gonna see a amount happen over the next couple of years.
So Shamap, how closer are these from being science projects in the lab to being scalable revenue companies in your estimation? Because These are de minimis amounts of capital we're talking about. So this feels like
--
De minimis amounts of revenue.
--
de minimis amounts of revenue and large amounts of capital is this a is this how far is it to to actually cross that chasm?
We I think that we're still trying to figure out what the right business model for these companies is. So for example, like, if you look at chip design, right, like so There's an entire value chain where there's the people that manufacture the equipment. Right? There's the people that run the factory. There are the people that develop the tool chain so the software that you can use to characterize and build a chip.
Right? And if you look at those industries, the the factory in the middle tends to be the least valuable Companies like Verilog, you know, folks that make the software are really important, and then folks that make the equipment because the equipment is so precise and very complicated is valuable. If you translate that to biology, we need to sort out where the value is gonna be. So the the the amazing thing about Ginkgo is what its promise is, what the promise that they that they're going to make to the market is we're gonna make biology programmable so that the the an entire generation of biologists and chemists who would otherwise have not been able to just actually literally, like, write into a command line interface. and generate biologic samples, we're gonna be able to enable that the same way an electrical engineer.
So like, you know, for example, like, you know, when I was doing internships or you would literally be writing Verilog, and it would get, you know, basically generating what was called a Netlist, then you could send a Netlist to a and all of a sudden, out comes a chip. So that's what we're trying to do. The problem that they have to figure out now is are you a tool provider? Are you, you know, pick and shovels? Are you doing it yourself on balance
sheet and taking risk? Yeah. Are
you a product company? And this is where we're too early to know what the answer is. But as the market sorts that out, as David said, more people will get comfortable applying money. This is why Zymergen and Ginkgo are 2 really important data points because as David said, it will force the market to help these companies rationalize where they are and what the tool chain looks like and compare it to semiconductors. And in that, you're gonna have an entire generation of companies get built that's super Exciting.
I I spent time in and around these businesses without getting too specific, and I think they're really compelling. really interesting.
This is I mean, I never I I I don't generally speak my book, but this is where I spend most of my time. Right? So I really am making a bet on my career and my capital and my time on synthetic biology and and the opportunity it presents for our species this century. So all of the work I do and I have several businesses that I would say compete with Ginkgo and Zymriagen in different ways and are attacking this problem in different ways, which is I I I mentioned this last time, but how do you produce enough bi biological material? How do you make stuff?
Once you go
once you go -- fermenters.
--
fermenters. And, you know, so are there fermenter take companies? Are there, you know, cheap fermentation platform companies? You know, do we need to scale these things up? Do we need to kinda reinvent how they're operating?
§08Segment 8
there's a lot of stuff we need to kinda figure out over the next couple of years for this to really kinda sweep the world. But the but the fact that we can, like, program biology to make stuff for us is is is is kind of where we're at there yet to the moment.
So here's another example of a a fabulous company. This is this is a private company. But, you know, Yulik you'll see them in the next probably 3 or 4 years debut as a public business called Pivot Bio, another synthetic biology company, which I think is just masterful And, you know, what essentially Pivot Bio does, it essentially is a clean alternative to synthetic nitrogen fertilizer. So, like, you put this shit in the ground when you're planting seeds. And what it enables is plants that were previously incapable of nitrogen fixation, meaning getting nitrogen out of the soil, they're able to do it.
Now all of a sudden, yields go up, density goes up, predictability of the crops go up, And it's a huge advance for farming.
What's what's interesting about you know, so Pivot Bio, like like Chamath mentioned, there's a lot of plants like soybeans, legumes that will thicken nitrogen. They'll take nitrogen out of the air. Right? Most
70%
of the air is nitrogen. And so plants need nitrogen to grow. All protein has to have nitrogen in it. So nitrogen's key to growing plants. Corn, you need to put nitrogen on the ground.
So around 6% of global electricity is used to make ammonia which is the fertilizer that farmers around the world put on their fields to grow their corn. And the and the the the ammonia that sits on the field and doesn't get absorbed by the plant, turns it to nitrous oxide, which is a 300 x worth greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Think about that. 300 times the heat capacity of carbon dioxide. when it goes up into the atmosphere.
So the environmental effects of nitrogen based agriculture are awful. And, you know, Pivot is one of the first they actually commercialized a research microbial strain to do this, and you put it on the seed before you put it on the ground. But now the ability for us to engineer microbes and the microbes now pull the nitrogen out of the air and and stick it into the plant. the ability for us to engineer microbes opens up this universe of possibility where Pivot is kind of like, you know, kindergarten level of what's gonna happen over the next couple years. where we can now engineer all these microbes to pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and maybe reduce all fertilizer use and have a huge effect on greenhouse gas resulting from from from from agriculture.
A a lot of what you've mentioned seems to be things in the world, products that can be approved and refined. What about inside of our bodies? I I know there are some efforts to understand what cells are doing and maybe use synthetic biology. to get a reading on a molecular or cellular level as to what is going on inside your body. And then there are these self replicating systems that might be able to you know, I don't know if your white blood cells were low, you know, and it was the eighties and it was HIV, you could just boom, produce more white sub blood cells with a shot or something.
Well, the original idea of Moderna, which we all know now as being kind of this RNA vaccine producer, was you could put RNA in your body and therefore provide the code to get yourself to make specific proteins that can do things in your body. And so we did this well, the example we're using now is the COVID vaccine. Right? So it makes the COVID the spike protein which we then develop an immune response to. But the idea with Moderna is you could eventually replace medicine with these RNA shots, and now your cells can start to make specific proteins to do specific things in your body.
Now we're very elementary as a species in our understanding of how proteins drive systems level biology and outcomes. So we're starting to learn about this. But I will tell you there is a really interesting research team at UCSF led by a woman named Hanell Sameet. And and this research team is identifying they're building a toolkit of proteins where these proteins can almost have like robotic arms. They can have really interesting function.
Think about Martin Short in inner space. Remember that machine he went in? He went in the body and he started doing stuff in the body? They're working on building basically a tool kit, so it's not just a single protein that now you it goes and does something, but really complicated combinations of proteins that can now go in the body and fix things and repair things and and react environmentally to specific conditions in the body, like, oh, there's a cancer cell here. I'm gonna go do something to it now.
And and so there's this whole there's this whole world of, like, dynamic you know, kinda making things more dynamically than they have been historically.
Just just thinking about aging, would it theoretically be able to help with hearing loss, eyesight loss, You know, and those type of things, would you be able to
--
There's another area of biology. We could talk about this at length, but there's another area of biology called stem cell therapy where you could basically take you know, all cells evolve from stem cells in your in your body. So these are kind of the original cells that you have initially in an embryo. Right? And then as your body kind of grows, you end up with these stem cells.
And you have stem cells in your body today. Those stem cells, when they make a copy, they can differentiate into different cells in your body. So for the last, you know, 10, 20 years in California, by the way, has about a $4,000,000,000 if I remember right stem cell grant program where they're funding research into stem cell therapies. So there are significantly successful therapies right now. Multiple companies are productizing and launching, and they're already active in the market.
for fixing blindness with people that have specific diseases called retinitis pigmentosa where your your the the retinal cells in your body and your eyes degrade and stop working. you will get a stem cell injection of progenitor retinal stem cells into your eye, and you will grow a new retina and you can see again. and the efficacy is insane. It is incredible how well this works, and they are doing this with lots of other stem cell therapies. So we're getting so smart.
And and here's an incredible thing, scientists discovered a few years ago, and I think these guys won the Nobel Prize for this. You could take any cell in the human body and induce it chemically, meaning you put a bunch of chemicals on that cell and get that cell to convert back into a stem cell. Now you've created your own stem cells from your own body, and you can now put them back in your body and get them to turn into any other cell in your body. So this is called induced pluripotent stem cell therapy, iPSC. So iPSC now forms the basis for a lot of these stem cell therapy kind of programs that are underway.
And so this is gonna be an an insane field over the next couple decades.
Hey, Friedberg. If we took the $25,000,000,000 that we don't need in California and gave it to these companies, How quickly could we sometimes
--
Totally. Totally. Could we solve
this problem? Nothing drives
me more nuts than when I see money not going to science. I mean, it is just nuts.
Seriously, like, let's we need to start our own political party that is based on reasonable suggestions. Like, the one I just made or the ones you know?
Like -- The middle ground party. Just
a a reasonable party.
Sacks. Do you think there's possibility for a third for a a a true third party in the United States?
Structurally, no. It's really set up to be a 2 party system. You have to really take over one of the 2 parties. And, frankly, the problem in our politics right now I'm not saying they're a public party is great, but the democrat party has basically been taken over by woke socialists. So, you know, but so I think that kinda, like, limits your options.
But, I mean, you what you have to do is create a movement and then you you basically take over one of the parties. Right. I mean, what we're describing today, I mean, to stop level it is I it almost feels like we're in a race between technological acceleration and social and political deterioration. Right? So, like -- Wow.
-- technology.
Say it one more time.
We're we're in a race I think, for the future between technological acceleration and social and political deterioration.
Wow.
And the question is which one of these forces is gonna win the future? everything Friedberg describes is incredibly hopeful. Right? We're gonna be able to cure people with all these miracle technologies. I mean, even the new mRNA vaccines that were developed for COVID, I mean, it's miraculous.
Right? And we're gonna be able to use that same mRNA technology for other things, other diseases, maybe even to attack cancer cells So there's so many positive things happening. We all see it in the technology ecosystem. There's been an explosion of wealth creation and opportunity created over the last 20 years in technology. And so we have this very positive force.
And then everything that seems to be happening in our politics and society is negative. It's it's involves deterioration. It it's it's basically a special interest corruption. It's you know, it's basically people wetted to these insane ideologies. And you're right.
Like, what we really want is just a pragmatic that pragmatic party that allows the private sector to do its job, generate the wealth necessary to then fund social programs. Instead of trying to upturn the whole system, which is what it feels like so many people in Empower are trying to do today.
Yeah. So I registered I registered recent party for us if we if we ever wanna go there. So if you wanna bookmark recent party
--
Let's let's let's talk about this tonight, boys, because I gotta run. And I'm
Is it on? Yum Yum?
I'm gonna see 2 of you tonight.
Yeah. I cannot wait.
Sex, you gotta fly off. You gotta fly out.
What are
you doing
having a bird if you don't let the bird out of the cage?
Our friend from LA is flying up. Yeah. I mean,
you can fool their friend who puts the ball in the back kid is coming. Yeah.
There are
many friends. Lately friends. Come on, Saks. Come on.
Come on. friends. Free the bird.
I'll take it under advisement. Speaking of bird, they just announced a a speck today. So
I love you guys.
You gotta go fuck.
I'd like to give a shout
to burn on snack.
I love you bash these, and we'll see you -- See you guys next time. See you guys. -- the all in podcast. Bye bye.
Love you, guys.
We'll let your winners ride.
Rainman David Sachs. We
open sources to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.
what airliners are trying. Besty's our car. I'm on the 13th stop.
That is my dog, so you know. driveway setbacks.
Oh, man.
My the casual media analyst. We should all just get
a room and have one big huge order because they're all these useless. It's like this, like, sexual tension, but we just need to release them out.
What? You're the bee Flex, sir.
Dear feet.
Sweets. Sweets.
Where did you get Murkeys on that?