SPEAKER_01: Look at this red on my stock screen. I can't believe what's going on. Stocks are down. Does it mean I'm a loser? I don't know. I need some self-worth now.
SPEAKER_02: Oh God. In three, two.
SPEAKER_02: Let your winner slide. Rain Man David Sacks. Hey, everybody.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, everybody. Welcome back. The All In Podcast is back. Apologies about last week. I had a personal emergency. Are we allowed to say why? Of course. I mean, you can say it.
SPEAKER_00: Go say it.
SPEAKER_02: Say it. It's a humble break. With us today on the program. Explain it. Explain it. You want to say it. Explain why. David Freberg. I was on a world tour.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Come on.
SPEAKER_02: I'll tell the story. Obviously, I don't like to talk 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 do it and move on. I have been lifting. I just want to let people know the gun shows back. No, you were backstage at SNL helping Elon with the SNL appearance.
SPEAKER_03: Were you not? This is true. Tell us what that was like. Tell us about the backstage experience at SNL. Tell us about the backstage experience.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we were living it out in real time with you guys, but tell us what it was really like.
SPEAKER_00: Tell us why Elon recruited you to do it.
SPEAKER_03: Are you Elon's funniest friend?
SPEAKER_01: Arguably. Well, I mean, he's got a lot of friends. Guys, hold on. Don't you remember the joke at Saxx's Roast five years ago? Remember when Elon was late and I had that ad lib joke? There were two jokes that I landed at Saxx's thing, which I thought were the two fun... No, my thing. No, Jason, my thing. And I... Wait, I was being roasted?
SPEAKER_01: No. Wait, was it Jason's party? Saxx. Oh, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: I hosted Jason's roast. That's right. That's right.
SPEAKER_01: It was your roast. It was your roast. Yeah. Anyways, okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_03: I think it was the funniest night of...
SPEAKER_02: All of our collective lives. It was really funny. Oh my God, that was really funny.
SPEAKER_03: We'll have to tell stories from that sometime. Sometime we'll tell the Jake out roast. You probably are Elon's funniest friend and have a talent for writing. Let's not beat around the bush. You do. Let's not beat around the bush. Okay, so thank you.
SPEAKER_02: I'll take the compliment. So I 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 hooked up with and was hanging out with in Miami 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. And he said, Hey, would you come with me to Saturday Night Live? And I was like, Oh, that's great. You have enough tickets. I assumed he meant Saturday night. And he said, No, I don't have a lot of tickets. It's COVID. It's like half his money. So he left me to the writers room and just, you know, be my wingman basically. So I had like three, four board meetings and five podcasts. So I just talked to him. It was like an instant. Yes. You check your schedule.
SPEAKER_03: I was like, you have to check your schedule.
SPEAKER_02: I take my work seriously. You're like, can you give me about half a second to decide?
SPEAKER_00: I already made the decision in my mind that if my friend needs help, you guys have been
SPEAKER_02: 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 sacks from going into complete utter madness. And oh my god, crisis management anyway.
SPEAKER_03: So you said yes, you were yes.
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, without giving I 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 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 Canadian, he's Canadian. And I was like, so Lauren, tell us who were the worst hosts ever? And he's like, um, it's an interesting question, Jason, you know, we don't like to think of it that way. But with the in terms of people who thought they were smart, and maybe were not as smart as they thought they were Steven Seagal was a little bit difficult. And what a safe choice. That's a very safe choice. There was Chris Kristofferson, you know, back in 78. He wasn't a musical guest, that was Carly Simon. And he liked to drink. And in this very green room in 78, he had a couple of drinks during the rehearsal, the dress rehearsal. So we wheeled in some coffee and like any sports team, when the game starts, we play the game. Okay, so who was responsible for the Chad skit?
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so Chad's an existing character.
SPEAKER_02: 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?
SPEAKER_03: Because there are no you are a punch up man, I was a punch up guy, I wrote some lines without,
SPEAKER_02: 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's kind of hard to know if it's funny. But then when you put Chloe, or you know, Kate McKinnon, or Colin Jost, or che, or Mikey day like this, these people are phenomenally talented. So all of a sudden the script comes alive. But for the for the the the two punch ups, I got really good. I'll just give you one anecdote because I don't want to get myself into my Were you responsible for besties in the Gen Z hospital?
SPEAKER_01: I thought that would as soon as I saw it, I thought of you. Yeah. The other one that I thought was incredibly well done was murder durdur. Okay, so I had nothing to do with that one.
SPEAKER_02: 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 add tremendous performance, and you add incredible set design. And we were we were in Brooklyn three in the morning, and Elon comes out with that wig on in a suit. We just start laughing hysterical. And he just goes right into creepy priest. It was that was great. But what about what about the Asperger's joke?
SPEAKER_00: Because yeah, that was me. Yeah, because you use that as a tease amongst people we may mutually know a lot. Yeah. So when I heard it, I was like, Oh, that's a Jason. That's actually what I'm proud of. 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 and he is we are so proud of him. And it is such a moment to come clean about having this this thing. And it was like a Jason. Yeah, this Jason joke that became a Oh my gosh, you know, what?
SPEAKER_02: 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, we want to 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. Yeah, Jurassic Park auditions kind of in that vein. So 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 good. You know, MBS, Putin, you know, etc. And then I was like, how to deal with your adversaries. And he was like, for 800. He's like, Plutonium and I was like, really dark. So we are laughing or s is about that. You know, but then like there were security concerns. Basically we're kind of 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 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 Zuck, 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.
SPEAKER_00:
SPEAKER_02: And then obviously, Elon, and so you'd have Elon playing Zuck, somebody playing Elon, and then Chloe playing Elizabeth 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. So one of the writers, I could tell she was not happy about this. And she says, Listen, my husband has 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. We can't offend anybody landed, I would say, you know, 80 90% 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. And so there's a little navigation you have to do there. But we really want and then so you 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 writers room. I contributed 2% that max, other than you know, being Elon's friend and supporting him. But you know, they came in and said, Hey, when they didn't want to ask you on something, they came to me. And I negotiated some situations like they didn't originally want to have any dogefather or any cryptocurrencies on the show. We had to negotiate that. Oh, my God.
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, no, they have they have they have general counsel there.
SPEAKER_02: They have standards. They're now on it. Now.
SPEAKER_03: Now we know why the show is not funny anymore. There's too many people with a veto. I love the show.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's very funny. I just think Elon made it culturally relevant for the first time in like a decade.
SPEAKER_03: So they can't you're describing is too many people with a veto right over the content of the show. That's what makes it not funny. You got to be willing to show I think the show is very funny.
SPEAKER_02: I think they take some artistic 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 1130 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 east coast is different. They're now on prime time.
SPEAKER_00: There's still a big cultural shift that's happened. It's like, yeah, I'll give you the two the two.
SPEAKER_03: It's not john Belushi anymore when the the like the corporate CEO comes on the show and wants to do crazier, wilder stuff than people, you know, or the regulars, but anyway, keep going.
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, that one of the folks who's working on the monologue, you know, comes in and the original monologue, you know, all these things go from rough 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. 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 kind of made my money already. So any chance I can get an internship? He's like, No.
SPEAKER_03: Jason, you can you can always take credit for being the third or fourth writer on Elon 's monologue. Perfect. They said they wanted to do an Asperger's joke I said so I wrote the Asperger joke of,
SPEAKER_02: you know, hey, I just want to let people know I've got Asperger's and so there's not going to 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 they didn't keep the cue card part, but they kept the rest of it. And then they did the OJ joke, which was written by Colin Jost, who is absolutely phenomenal as a human, just as a writer and a collaborator. And we spent a lot of time with Colin Jost, he came in, and they had this joke about OJ having been on at 79 and 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 Elon goes, you know, so hey, and, you know, like, OJ, you know, like, I'm smoking weed on every podcast. That's like saying OJ, you know, you know, murdered once and now he's a murderer forever. You know, and, you know, side note, he was on in 79 and 96. And I just go like this, and he killed both times. And the room there's like a silence and that everybody goes, poker aside.
SPEAKER_01: That's fabulous. I thought there was like a split second where everyone looks left and right.
SPEAKER_00: It's like, is it okay? No, that's my point. Like, it's okay to laugh at this. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: And then the other person just looks at me and goes, that's getting in there. And I landed that one. So there were, you know, some moments like that. For me, I tell you, I'll get emotional talking about it. It's one of the happiest times I've ever seen in Elon's life. And I've been with him for 20 years, actually, I've known him for 25, obviously, in the feeling
SPEAKER_02: of Monday and Tuesday that, oh, my God, this could be a complete utter disaster. I mean, that was our fear. And that like, we were just not in sync here. And these days, maybe it's gonna be unfunny. And this is a huge mistake. Like that was kind of our vibe from our squad. And we had three of us there, including Elon. And then, you know, we, the the Asperger jokes lands. And I tell you, a woman from wardrobe comes in, and she's crying. She's 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 Asperger's. And, you know, this changes everything.
SPEAKER_01: Wow, just became like it became like a serious thing.
SPEAKER_02: Three or four people came in to the room. I kid you not crying. Oh, my God. Because one in 20 kids went one in 20 boys, I think now have Asperger's. Do you guys remember in living color?
SPEAKER_00: You remember that show from the early 90s? 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 homeless guy and like everything that would be so like non PC today and like totally inappropriate? And how much things have shifted? We're like, even the joke becomes like, you know, serious kind of ask a question.
SPEAKER_01: 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 role model. That is one of the squawk alley guys, you know, basically got choked up twice on Monday.
SPEAKER_02: 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 know people who are further on the spectrum.
SPEAKER_03: And that's someone who's been accused of being on the spectrum. Can I speak 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 or have been accused of having Asperger's. So I don't know that it's something that people have to be, 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 is correlated with success because it's like the opposite of ADD, right? It's an extreme ability to focus. But honestly, like what you're describing to me sounds so lame. Like this is why the show is not funny anymore. It's not about the jokes. Look, it should be about the jokes.
SPEAKER_02: I disagree 100%. That joke landed. It made everybody laugh. It may have landed a little too close to somebody.
SPEAKER_01: Guys, guys, just to disinter. The reason, David, you're saying this is because we all know at least the three of us, four of us, what was not what did 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. What do you can't get to the floor?
SPEAKER_02: But I will tell you what I will I will reveal one skit that made it okay. You can't you can't you can't. 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 that was a good one.
SPEAKER_00: That was your idea or IAN's the lots.
SPEAKER_02: I'm trying to remember where it originated. We were just talking about, you know, just the state of like people buying NFTs and everything. I think Ilan 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 it was a little bit of a collaboration, but I think mostly Ilan in that one. And this person comes in, and the skit is hilarious. So they're probably going to release it as a digital short, like cut for time, but release it. And then the skit person comes in, and there's like an associate who's being trained. And he's there 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 comes in, because so you guys know impossible meats. This is impossible vegetables. These are vet these tastes just like vegetables, but this broccoli is made with endangered white rhinos. 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, it's just hilarious. It just more and more money being in the show.
SPEAKER_02: Well, what they do is they do a two hour show with a live audience, and they just take out two or three skits. And so there were three skits I think that were taken out for time. And then those could be released digitally now. So they just want to have extra they did a long opening.
SPEAKER_00: They did like, I think it was like 10 minutes on the mother mother's day one.
SPEAKER_01: Can I just say Miley Cyrus has the most incredible voice. Oh my god, I could listen to her sing forever. Oh, she has got an incredible voice. So I was opening I thought the opening was really shaky.
SPEAKER_03: 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'm sitting 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 first of all, first of all, it's not a thing.
SPEAKER_01: It was a song. It was a song. It was a wtf moment for me.
SPEAKER_03: I was like, where is Elon? Bring out Elon. I'm not here to see a bunch of mothers. I mean, I'll tell you, that was an interesting moment, David, because they were like, we'll
SPEAKER_02: put you in like four of the skits out of the seven and Elan and we don't want to 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 1618 hours a day. And, you know, she said, we don't want to take up too much of his time. So we think four is 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 you want to just said, if I'm here, use me I want to be in every skit. And like, they we had to like reshuffle the deck a bit and he was willing to do anything, including Wario or, you know, and you're a costume, or be the creepy priest. He was funny. I think he surprised everyone in terms of being a performer, just in terms of his performance.
SPEAKER_03: 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. Yeah, exactly. It's a universal take even Elon sort of haters had to concede that he performed well. He kind of committed to all those roles, even when it was like poking fun at himself.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I had to I had to dunk on Professor dummy. I had to dunk on Professor dummy Galloway, who was like, I'm going to live tweet Elon and he's just like going on CNN talking about Elon is going on every fucking cable channel he can to like ride Elon's coattails. And he tweeted, Elon would lose Tesla would lose 80 90% of its value two years ago. Like, just Are you kidding me? But I agree, like even someone like Professor Galloway, who said Tesla was worthless. He is now just all over it. And it humanized him, you know, which is nice.
SPEAKER_01: I think he did a great job. And it was fun. I'm super happy for him. It was Lauren Michaels came in and said, you long.
SPEAKER_02: You did a great job. Come back anytime. Sincerely and I said, how about next year, like, you're like,
SPEAKER_03: sequel, and he's a punch up guy.
SPEAKER_01: He's the agent. He's the hype med negotiator.
SPEAKER_02: I was doing mostly negotiation 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? Third best show of the season so far, I think not counting all the YouTube views and the international views. I think Chappelle is the only person who beat him. So a couple of those skits are gonna live forever.
SPEAKER_03: I think on YouTube. I mean, the Chad skit in particular was really hit it out of the park. By the way, my observation on the skits were the ones where Elon was kind of indispensable were like the real were really great. Like the Chad thing. And I thought that the Western where, well, La Ronn, 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 ride electric horses or something. For me, that was really funny. So I thought the ones where Elon was sort of indispensable. 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 where they could have done them without Elon. It could have been a skit. Any, any, you know, any SNL and it's kind of like, yeah, it's like, why wouldn't you take advantage of having Elon there? And they did, you know, and just to the staff, you know, first off, I'm sorry, I was such
SPEAKER_02: a ruckus and there's a disruptor in the, in the space, but, uh, really, I mean, what a great time. You want to have a great time. The after party was amazing. Uh, and, uh, describe the after party where they were in mass.
SPEAKER_01: Ooh, that's a good semi-cast. That's outside. I'll just leave it.
SPEAKER_02: 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 cause my mask fell off. I didn't know it. And I had gone into, you know, a store and they were like your mask and they yelled it across the store. You don't know. Sorry. You know, just kind of, you know, 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.
SPEAKER_02: I'm the only person in Austin wearing a mask. And somebody points to me and goes, you don't have to wear that mess, son. And I was like, Oh, and 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 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 he who shall not be named.
SPEAKER_01: Anyway, I went to have a cocktail as one does in Miami.
SPEAKER_02: There's a hundred, 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 one or two 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
SPEAKER_01: Times, because that's an incredible summary, Jason of, of this whole issue in a nutshell, which is, it's, it's unbelievable.
SPEAKER_02: And then to just give Saturday Night Live a nod. Every day, everybody tested, you got, you know, two tests like the I forget the names of them now since I stopped taking them. But you did like the big one and the small one. Every day you got tested every day you got wristbands, you had to wear a mask 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 was a friend of ours. Mike had to wear it too. So we're we're I mean, Elon had 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 is 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, not this is not taking COVID.
SPEAKER_03: Seriously, this is this is basically an irrational fear of COVID.
SPEAKER_02: Well, because they got hit the hardest, David. So I think that they got hit the hardest. And I tweeted, why is everybody wearing a mask in New York? And of course, I got like 100 because there's a pandemic. But then what the two reasons that made sense were so many people died, and there's so much suffering in New York, that people out of a sign of respect are still wearing them until they hit here herd immunity officially. Which I know you could roll your eyes at David, but you know, they did have a really quiet.
SPEAKER_03: I don't think that's the real reason. No, I do actually do think it's a real reason.
SPEAKER_02: Because people multiple people said to me, it's a way of showing people that you actually care about them. And that you're going to really take this seriously until the end.
SPEAKER_03: No, I think it's it's more what Ezra Klein said, which is this is the red MAGA hat for team blue. This is pure virtue signaling.
SPEAKER_02: 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 17 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, somebody summarize this. Another another reason I think is that look, if you're if you're in a blue part of the
SPEAKER_03: 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 finally now getting 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 skewed liberal publication. liberal leaning. 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 Leonhard in the New York Times that just came out I think yesterday or two days ago, called about the cautious CDC. And what he said is, by the way, this is validates everything we've been saying on the pod for the last few months. Leonhard chronicles 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 0.1%. 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 masks 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 the reason why it's so misleading is, technically speaking, less than 10% is correct. But when the real number is 0.001% or something like that, it's highly misleading to give 10%. And the reason –
SPEAKER_01: 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 150 humans a year. And 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 much bigger problem than it actually is. And I think that's the whole point, which is we're not being scientific. We're being emotional and reactive.
SPEAKER_00: And the paper that Leonard references, basically, they took this data that identified how spread was occurring empirically and identifying through tracing where people are actually picking up COVID. And that's really where this empirical evidence suggests we're talking about a less than 0.1% 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, 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 deterministic rationale for – scientific rationale for why that may be the case. And this evidence that this paper which I've now shared kind of gathers together shows that that is indeed what the statistics are showing. And so yeah, you're right. But I think 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 making this case personally, but I think that's where a lot of people would make the counter argument. Rather than debate the facts 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?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, if people are doing it voluntarily, that's their right to do so. But the question is, mask 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 mask wearing and mask 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. But when T-zero, the rate of transmission is in freefall everywhere, and now we've learned that outdoor spread is not an issue, I don't support restricting people's freedom. And if, you know, 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've got local jurisdictions who will not do schools. I mean, so the schools have remained closed. And by the way, the schools have been open in Texas and Florida for six months. We know based on empirical data in the real world, seeing what's happening in Texas and Florida that you're not seeing an increase in COVID cases in those places because of school reopening. And yet the CDC has not moved its 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.
SPEAKER_02: Did we read the actual sentence from the New York Times about under 10%? So you can read it because it's really sad, actually.
SPEAKER_02: 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 transmission that occurred outdoors seems to be below 1% and maybe below point 1% multiple epidemiologists tone, right?
SPEAKER_03: Well, also also read the quote, this is directly from David Leonhard 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 Leonhard said is there's 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 masks on know that? They'll know it now because according by the way, did you guys know Jason just told me
SPEAKER_01: this? We accumulate a million views slash listens a week to our podcast. Yeah, now that the archives growing. So now that now a million people will at least know.
SPEAKER_02: I think it's, you know, it's a good way. It's a little bit self selective.
SPEAKER_00: So let's be honest, you know, yeah, for intelligence.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, some of the people No, no, no, but but the real question is like, isn't this
SPEAKER_01: an opportunity for the CDC to actually reestablish some credibility, which is to say, okay, we're going to get back to facts. We're not going to we are not, we know that people will be prone to acting on anecdote and emotion. So we're going to 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 going to own it and revise it. And that would go such a long way. The fact is, they it's important to understand, like, what do you think the incentives are for them to keep doubling down on bad decision making?
SPEAKER_00: There's no downside. I think I said this, 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 effect of some of the policy that they're recommending. Their objective is to save lives. So if I'm running the CDC, I'm going to 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 you were purely focused on saving lives, you would make specific recommendations only to save lives without thinking about the consequences outside 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 going to be an impact on airlines and hotels and outdoor thing and spending and all this other side people being willing to go to work and people being afraid of being in the office. I mean, 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 of the 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. Sorry, this just goes back to what I said about leadership a few episodes ago, which is the leadership of the administration should be synthesizing 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, you know, kind of objective around, okay, well, how do we balance these these different effects?
SPEAKER_01:
SPEAKER_02: 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 want to 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 going to keep you from dying. They undersold the vaccine. And now everybody's going to 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 two things overlap. In schools being closed means more suicide and kids more depression and kids and people not being able to put food on their tables means we're going to create who knows what this economic policy is going to create, which is another segue, David, you had something to say,
SPEAKER_03: 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 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 Leonard followed up his article, it happened. So go to this tweet that I put in the chat. He said at a Senate hearing today, Senator Collins asked CDC director Dr. Walensky about today's edition of morning, which was his article, which explains why the CDC has claimed that less than 10% of COVID transmissions 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 unions 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 were a bunch of articles accusing the Trump administration of incorporating political considerations into their guidance. There were huge scandals about this. Here is the reporting today about the influence that the teachers unions are wielding over the CDC to deliberately keep schools closed, 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 is a good transition to that Druckenmiller interview because, you
SPEAKER_00: know, Saks, I just retweeted what you had sent, which was a link to the video interview. So Stanley Druckenmiller is this incredible investor. G.O.A.T. G.O.A.T. There are many stories about Druckenmiller.
SPEAKER_00: At one point, he's the guy that notoriously, they say, broke the Bank of England where he was betting against the British pound and forced the central bankers in the UK to devalue the pound. He's made billions of dollars managing initially George Soros' money and then spun off and runs his own money now as an investor. And so he's a macro guy. So he thinks about kind of macroeconomic conditions and effects, and he talks a lot about Fed policy. So he gave this interview on CNBC. And I think the most kind of prescient quote, and it was also based on an op-ed he wrote, right Saks, in the Wall Street Journal? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03: But the interview is fantastic. The TV interview is great. Just watch that.
SPEAKER_00: The interview is great. And in the write-up, he said, clinging to an emergency after the emergency has passed is what the Fed behavior indicates right now. And I think that 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. And so Druckenmiller is making the case that 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 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 saying is. Never waste a crisis. Never waste a crisis. And the crisis, keep the crisis going is kind of the model everyone's in right now. Milk the crisis. Milk the crisis.
SPEAKER_03: They're keeping it going as long as they can. And Druckenmiller 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. And this guy's been watching markets for decades. The Fed has pumped 2.5 trillion of QE into the economy post vaccine, post retail recovery. He said that right now retail demand is five years above trend, meaning not only has retail demand fully recovered, it's where if you look at the trend line, it would be five years from now. They are pumping like demand like crazy. They've issued six trillion of new debt. And then this is the 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. And he said that 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, think about that.
SPEAKER_01: Look, 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 him, but in my 20 years, this is the first time I've really seen that. So just to give you a sense of this, 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 just to give you guys a sense of this, like 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 yield on the 10-year bond up by like 100 basis points and the markets freaked out. They went from like 0.75 to 1.75. And the Fed came out and said, hey, hold on, nothing to see here. Everything is going to 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 see a bed of lumber moving across a railroad. That's like a billion dollars of lumber just because of how expensive it is. 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 $100,000 a year at Chipotle. That is as much as some engineers and coders in the United States. Dara Khorshasawi, 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- It's $100,000 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're no longer working in tandem because you have a narrative and a set of data points that aren't supported by the facts. This is an interesting thing. In the CDC versus the American people example, there's no way to push back. Governors can act independently. Studies will act independently but at the end of the day, the teachers unions are working with 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 re-rate asset prices based on sentiment. 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. If you don't act, the capital markets will continue to act for us. This is an example today where you're just seeing a bloodbath in the markets. By the way, the only time that two government officials tried to be on either side, Janet Yellen last Friday casually in an interview put her toe out in the water as Treasury Secretary. She 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. That's where we are. Well, there's a bloodbath in the markets today and there's been one for the last couple of
SPEAKER_03: months and in particular, all the growth stocks have been hammered. Just to build on what you're saying, Chamath, there's an announcement today, there's some data that the inflation, the CPI is up 4% and climbing. People are now pricing in big interest rate increases and so that makes growth stock, that hammers growth 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. It's absolutely souring. The markets are basically souring on this Biden agenda. I'm beginning to wonder if Biden's going to 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 pushed this insane $10 trillion agenda of taxes and spending that are now overstimulating the economy that are causing inflation that are now creating interest rate increases. No, that's not true yet, meaning he did do a good job on the vaccine, David, but then
SPEAKER_01: to your point, the federal government's posture on reopening has 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. He believes his path to reelection, which is true, is to spend and to put money to the economy.
SPEAKER_03: I think it's going to backfire massively.
SPEAKER_00: And to tax, right? So, the spending, he's trying to offset with higher taxes on the wealthy, which from his point of view is not going to affect them and the analysis is probably fair, it's not going to affect his voter block significantly. This is going to backfire massively.
SPEAKER_03: Look, if the economy turns, we were set for a post-COVID boom and right now, that is all at risk because, Tromas, like you're saying, they're keeping the economy closed or 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 taxes too much.
SPEAKER_01: Just to build on that, so that second step of they're 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.
SPEAKER_02: You have restaurants that are overbooked, cannot get servers. Jim Cramer was saying he's up to $18 per hour per servers. He's going to move it to 20. It won't make a difference because with that extra 300, I think, in federal unemployment, plus three 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 going to incentivize people to go back to work? We are now running a dry run with cryptocurrency and 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 want to work and contribute. So just to your point on Friday, people to go to work.
SPEAKER_01: So just your point on Friday, Montana, which was part of the federal government's, you know, 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 two opposing forces, right? We have so much stimulus. We have an under-motivated labor force. We have more taxation, that's also just going to 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 all going to drive.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the quote from the governor of Mississippi. The 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 going to 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 a is it true? We have a $75 billion surplus this year as the city devolves. Now we're going to 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 could we do David with that 75 billion? Okay, well, okay, so great point.
SPEAKER_03: So the $75 billion surplus, one third of that is a is from the federal bailout, which obviously we don't need. And that's the money printing that's coming out. We're giving that back right to another state that could use it?
SPEAKER_03: Good luck. Exactly. No, the other two thirds is because last year we had all these unexpected tax receipts from the stock market boom. And so you had all these California taxpayers paying capital gains on that. So but what this highlights to me is, and what I wonder about is how many of those taxpayers have left the state because we know that we had net migration loss of 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 going to 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 the public sector are a partnership 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 sheep to be sheared, but they want to skin the sheep instead of shearing it. And so they're really at risk of killing the golden goose. I guess you could put it that way. And I think that during the Clinton years, just to take a contrast, we had government spending as a federal government spending as a percent of GDP was between 8.5% and 22%. That was the range. And we had a boom. So when you have a federal spending as a percentage of GDP around 20%, it works, right? And that doesn't mean you can't 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.
SPEAKER_01: Very, very big problem.
SPEAKER_03: 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 growth stocks are now starting to scratch their heads going, gee, what did I vote for?
SPEAKER_02: It's definitely becoming a thing. And I would say, the purple pill party, you know, like, chop it up, let's let's mix these two things. Let's candy flip, whatever it takes like to get out of this, you know, we got to get this party restarted. Centrism is the answer. It absolutely is. And you know, centrism is the answer.
SPEAKER_01:
SPEAKER_02: 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 out, I think, on the margin fare, calling this all in podcast, and 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 four of us. And then of course, I get absolutely skewered for making clucking noises. I own those clocks. I'm proud of those clocks. Here's what I'll say. Can I say something?
SPEAKER_01: I think that, look, I don't know, I'm a little exhausted about local politics and California
SPEAKER_01: politics. I'm not exhausted by federal politics, because I think 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 that article, which I didn't read, like most of these things, which I don't really read.
SPEAKER_02: Never read your press. Rule number one in the game.
SPEAKER_01: 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. Two of those three 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? 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 I don't think we want either of them in charge, is really the answer. And so we just got to 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 the stupid election model makes me pick one. 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 kind of sad. If you get $25 billion, 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, of course, that we'd rather just dig a ditch and fill a ditch for 25 billion or two and a half miles of high speed rail, whatever the crazy thing is, that's kind of sad. It's sad and it's corrupt, right?
SPEAKER_03: It's a corruption that we've just gotten used to, which is you're going to take 26 billion that you don't need, that you don't deserve. It's like the school board in San Francisco announcing they're going to open school for one day to qualify for incentives for reopening that Gavin Newsom gave them for 12 million bucks. It's a pure money grab. It's outrageous. It's all about the Benjamins for these guys. And by that, I do not mean students named Benjamin. Wow, there you go, folks.
SPEAKER_02: David Sacks punching it up on the next S&L. I wonder why you'll have to invite you to come with him. I'm not as good as you, Jason.
SPEAKER_03: I'm going to stick with my day job, but let me, can we go back to this article? I want to give you my two cents on this article. I did, you know, it was behind a paywall, so it was hard 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 based on their very biased list of questions they sent me. But in any event, they kind of 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, meaning going around reporters and speaking directly to the public. It's kind of, well, how dare they do that? You know, they should be talking through us, you know, we the objective reporters, and then we'll tell the story for them. No, we're going direct. We want to have an influence. We want to speak our minds. And the second thing they're upset 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 want to know what I'm up to, I've written about it. I wrote a blog on, you know, the problem of Chasen Boudin. 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. I'm talking about it, David, they want you to go through them.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly. The fact that this podcast has bigger reach than when we go on CNBC or bigger reach than we're in Business Insider. And you know, when the New Yorker article on chamath comes out, more people will listen to this podcast and 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 have the dialogue we're having here. Because let's face it, we're we're for insiders, we see the what's happening on the inside. And if we talk to them, they might get 10 or 20% of the picture. And in aggregate, they might get to 50 or 60. But we get 100%.
SPEAKER_01: Let me connect a couple dots because I think what you're saying is really important. In my mind, I think this is another example of like the CDC example, or the financial markets example, where 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 going to use it this number to make it to make an example, let's just say it was eight and a half by 11. You take this eight 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 fold concept as much as there 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-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 just gets lost in a sea of things.
SPEAKER_03: There's such an agenda.
SPEAKER_01: 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. And so for example, 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. 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.
SPEAKER_02: Before we get to science with freeburg, if you get this camera back up and running, I don't know if you guys know but Vox canceled us this week with an assist from Tyler the Renz, the funniest, darkest turn in all of this is the multimillionaire VC is coopting the language of young women, mlm marketers in an effort to seem cool and hip with us. Why white men are using the term besties? I don't know if you saw that. I think I think Taylor Lorenz has had her sense of humor surgically removed.
SPEAKER_03: I mean, doesn't the 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 50 year old guys to be calling each other.
SPEAKER_01: The reason why by the way, just if everybody wants to know the origin of that is one of our other friends Phil Hellmuth kept calling me bestie 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 credit. But it was done both initially to make fun of what how youth used to call me. Right. Well, help me with actually has the maturity level of a teenage girl.
SPEAKER_03: So that's true. That's true with the name dropping. I don't when he used the term bestie. He was not using it ironically, whereas we're using it ironically. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Hey, let's talk a little bit about science so we can keep the freeberg ratio up for all these freeberg stands, including the whichever maniac is running freebergs dogs, anonymous Twitter handle. I don't know if you talked to Twitter security about that yet freeberg.
SPEAKER_00: 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 account. Yeah, so much for our ratings.
SPEAKER_02: No. What is your dog's name again? Monty Monty Montgomery Wiggins.
SPEAKER_02: With no Montgomery this this is going to be lowest lowest episode a long time but his
SPEAKER_00: 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 height so I gave him a full name Montgomery so he's Montgomery Wiggins now. Oh, here he is Monty come here. Come on. Come on D. Come on Monty.
SPEAKER_01: Okay tweet something.
SPEAKER_02: There he goes. Hey, there's a lot going on with synthetic biology. We saw two different IPOs in I believe the last month or so. Tell us about the the gink gingko Bioworks public offering and the Xamarin IP.
SPEAKER_00: So 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 make products so you know Genentech and Amgen started making these proteins that became biologic drugs and the way you you can kind of 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 want to 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 a way that you can kind of make a product and so this was done initially for biologic drugs 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 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 going to 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 two decades or so there was a company called Amaris that John Dorbak that was one of the first companies that was one of the few companies from the original synthetic biology 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 what for their businesses companies so Zymergin which was you know got a bunch of SoftBank money they raised a billion dollars as a private company they got public with like I think 13 or 14 million of revenue and they're worth five billion dollars 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 or just announced that they're going public via SPAC at a 15 billion dollar market cap with you know I think less than 100 million revenue so you know the game is on and I think one way to kind of 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 biology becomes software and you can program biological organisms to make and print pretty much anything we as humans consume is a premise that everyone believes is going to come to fruition this century and it will completely reinvent industry will improve sustainability I think it is going to be the great savior for this planet and for our ability to sustain on this planet so these are kind of you know two big IPOs that validate that the capital markets are there there's so many big institutional investors Chamath can share more on this that are like backing quote unquote ESG companies synthetic biology is this kind of ESG you know moment and I think these two 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 going to see a tremendous amount happen over the next couple of years.
SPEAKER_02: So Chamath how close are these from being science projects in a 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
SPEAKER_02: large amounts of capital is this is this how far is it to actually cross that chasm?
SPEAKER_01: 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 going to be so 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 going to make biology programmable so that 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 going to 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 the net list and you could send a net list to a fab 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 picking shovels are you doing it yourself on balance sheet and taking risk 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 Ximargen and Ginkgo are two 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 going
SPEAKER_01: to have an entire generation of companies get built it's super exciting 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 don't generally speak my book but this is
SPEAKER_00: 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 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 Ximargen in different ways and are attacking this problem in different ways which is I mentioned this last time but how do you produce enough biological material how do you make stuff once you go fermenters fermenters and you know so are there fermenter tank companies are there you know cheap fermentation platform companies you know do we need to scale these things up do we need to kind of reinvent how they're operating there's a lot of stuff we need to kind of figure out over the next couple of years for this to really kind of sweep the world but the fact that we can like program biology to make stuff for us is kind of where we're at today that's the moment.
SPEAKER_01: So here's another example of a fabulous company this is a private company but you know you'll see them in the next probably three or four 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 interesting about you know so Pivot Bio like Chamath mentioned there's a lot of
SPEAKER_00: plants like soybeans legumes that will fix 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 is 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 ammonia that sits on the field and doesn't get absorbed by the plant turns into nitrous oxide which is a 300x worse 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 in the ground but now the ability for us to engineer microbes and the microbes now pull the nitrogen out of the air 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 going to 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 agriculture a lot of what you've mentioned seems to be things
SPEAKER_02: in the world products that can be approved and refined what about inside of our bodies 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 80s and it was HIV you could just boom produce more white sub blood cells with a shot or something well the original
SPEAKER_00: idea of moderna which we all know now is being kind of this RNA vaccine producer was you could put RNA in your body and therefore provide the code to get your cells to make specific proteins that can do things in your body and so we did this example 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 Hanel Samid 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 functions 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 toolkit 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 so there's this whole there's this whole world of like dynamic you know kind of making things more dynamical than they have been historically just just thinking
SPEAKER_02: 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
SPEAKER_00: could talk about this at length but there's no very biology called stem cell therapy where you can basically take you know all cells evolved from stem cells 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 could 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 billion dollar 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 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 here's an incredible thing scientists discovered a few years ago I think these guys won the Nobel Prize for this you can 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 going to be an insane field over the next couple decades.
SPEAKER_02: Friedberg if we took the 25 billion dollars that we don't need in California and gave it to these companies quickly could we survive this problem nothing drives me more nuts than
SPEAKER_00: when I see money not going to science I mean it is just I mean seriously like let's we
SPEAKER_02: need to start our own political party that is based on reasonable suggestions like the one I just made or the ones you know the middle ground party just a reasonable party sex do
SPEAKER_00: you think there's possibility for a third for a true third party in the United States
SPEAKER_03: structurally no it's really set up to be a two party system you have to really take over one of the two parties and frankly the problem in our politics right now I'm not saying the Republican Party is great but the Democrat Party has basically been taken over by woke socialists so you know but so I think that kind of like limits your options but I mean 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 just to up level it is it almost
SPEAKER_03: feels like we're in a race between technological acceleration and social and political deterioration right so like wow technology one more time 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 going to win the future everything freeburg described 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 kovat 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's it's basically a special interest corruption it's
SPEAKER_03: you know it's basically people wedded to these insane ideologies and you're right like what we really want is just a pragmatic a 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 power are trying to do today yeah so I registered I registered reason party for us if we if we ever want
SPEAKER_02: to go there so if you want to bookmark reason party let's let's let's talk about this tonight
SPEAKER_01: boys because I got a run oh no is it on yum yum I'm gonna see two of you tonight yeah
SPEAKER_01: that way sex you gotta fly up you got having a bird if you don't let the bird out of the
SPEAKER_02: cage our friend from LA is flying up yeah I mean you can our other friend who puts the
SPEAKER_00: ball in the basket is coming yeah there are many friends come on sacks come on basketball
SPEAKER_03: friends free the bird I'll take it under advisement speaking of bird they just announced a SPAC today so I love you besties and we'll see you next time see guys the all-in podcast
SPEAKER_02: bye bye love you guys
SPEAKER_03: you're a big you George because they're all just like this like sexual tension but they just need to release
