SPEAKER_02: This week, we're gonna play our favorite new game show. Guess who's got COVID? Yes, that's right. Somebody on the
SPEAKER_01: COVID. It's not the me. Oh, sorry. So here's the game.
SPEAKER_02: Person who got COVID. Have they been vaccinated or not? Okay, all
SPEAKER_02: four of us have been vaccinated. We covered that on our previous pot. So everybody double vax double vax double vax. Did we
SPEAKER_01: all get Pfizer? I was Pfizer, Pfizer, Pfizer, Pfizer. Okay,
SPEAKER_02: so Pfizer across the board, we got quads. And this is a break through infection. Has anybody taken a z pack after a night of
SPEAKER_01: party?
SPEAKER_01: Good. That was good. Okay, so number one, clue number one, this
SPEAKER_02: bestie got a breakthrough infection outdoors at a restaurant. Number one got it outdoors. Number two got it from somebody who was also vaccinated. Number three, this bestie does not fly commercial. And he's not a fan of being interrupted. And he is not an evangelical David. The breakthrough vaccination is David Sacks. I'm glad that my getting a breakthrough case of COVID is is
SPEAKER_03: comedy fodder for you somehow.
SPEAKER_00: sexy poop break it down. Walk us through that like what happened what happened and then how you felt? Yeah. Okay. So what
SPEAKER_03: happened? We're glad you're safe. Obviously, obviously, we
SPEAKER_02: wouldn't be joking. You're still losing weight. You lost five pounds. So yeah, yeah. You may want to read some of the beautiful text messages we sent
SPEAKER_01: you when we found out this week. Yes.
SPEAKER_03: Jason, what would you say? Jason, you said?
SPEAKER_02: I was just like, wow, think about who we could recruit for the fourth spot. We get Peter Thiel in here. I said that I
SPEAKER_01: really, really hope you didn't die. But if you did, I would love to have your plane as a support plane for my plane.
SPEAKER_02: I might be pro San Francisco if you die. I might want I will sorry, guys, I'm gonna live sorry, Jason, I'm gonna live.
SPEAKER_03: Here's basically what happened. Okay, is so Tuesday of last week, I had dinner with a few friends. And then my friend, just were out outdoors. I'll tell you exactly where we were at Masahisa in LA, which had the outdoor parking lot. Yes, the outdoor parking lot area, which is a covered outdoor area. So you know, these like covered areas are effectively inside because it traps the air in there. But in any event, we had
SPEAKER_03: dinner there. The next day, he woke up with a fever and sore throat. He went and got a COVID test. He tested positive. He is also double vaxxed with Pfizer. Okay. So and I reported this to you guys last week on last week's show. So I went out right away, on Wednesday got a COVID test was negative. I repeated the test on Friday was negative. And then Sunday rolls around and I wake up and I got a fever. I don't really have a sore throat, but I've got kind of a I'd say an occasional dry cough. And I've got and I've got some sinus congestion. David mild fever or like like 99.9 or like 102.1
SPEAKER_03: it topped off at about 99.9. And a fever. Yeah, really fever, but I mean, it was definitely there. And I took Tylenol and it brought it down to the low 99. And so any event, first thing Monday morning, I went and got the COVID test. And sure enough, I had COVID. They can't confirm that it's Delta variant, but they think it is because that's what's like exploding in LA right now. And so yeah, I mean, look, I mean, the good news is, it's very mild. I mean, I'm it's now Thursday, and I feel like I'm like 99% recovered. I don't have a fever anymore. My fever are you 10 days in now this?
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no, this is the you know, I came down with symptoms
SPEAKER_03: on this past Sunday. And it's now Thursday. So I am and Wendy, were you exposed? Tuesday night. So I was exposed. Yes, you're right. It's about 10 days. But you're convinced that was the only way you could have gotten
SPEAKER_01: it right? Yeah, because somebody else that dinner got has symptoms now too.
SPEAKER_03: Ah, so it's a super spreader at Matzohisa.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, basically. But it shows you how virulent this new Delta variant is. I mean, you've got there were four people out that night, plus the person who who had it, and two out of the four, basically got it. And we were all vaccinated, including the person who had it. And of course, he didn't know he had it. He didn't have any symptoms till the next day. So and you know, I got it. I got it five days after exposure. It's that five days is like clockwork. You know, did you? Did you have like a pulse ox? Did you measure any of
SPEAKER_01: these other things? Did any of that stuff change at all?
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I've had the pulse ox meter, and it's been around 95%. So it is down. Yeah, you should be like 98. Right? Yeah, it is down
SPEAKER_02: slightly. It is down slightly.
SPEAKER_03: And if you go to 92 or 93, they say go to the emergency room, I
SPEAKER_02: think. And did you self isolate from your family?
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did. But we were lulled a little bit into a place of
SPEAKER_03: overconfidence. Well, I remember I got I got COVID tests on Wednesday, and then Friday, and they're both negative. I thought we're through it. So I was at home. And, and then and then so my 11 year old got it. Even though I was isolated, this
SPEAKER_03: thing is I mean, this thing is so contagious. So you know, what I've read is that delta variant is 60% more transmissible than the UK variant, which was the alpha variant. The alpha variant was 60% more transmissible than original COVID. So you're looking at a transmissibility, you multiply those together of two and a half times the original, and the original COVID had an R naught of two to three. So you multiply two to three by two and a half times and you're looking at five to eight. And you know, at the
SPEAKER_02: explain to the audience what that means in terms of reality, it means the R naught is how many people does the average
SPEAKER_03: infected person transmit before they know they have it and can fully self isolate. And so you're going from the original COVID was two to three delta variant might be like eight, we're getting up into like smallpox territory with this thing. And it's all the more transmissible because you know, vaccinated people can get it, you know, the the Israel data that we talked about in the show last week was 64% effectiveness that Israel reported that the effectiveness of Pfizer had gone from like 95% to 64% in terms of preventing infection. So you have maybe a third of vaccinated people can get it and then they can spread it without even knowing they have it. So I think we're at the point now where if you're not vaccinated, you're going to get you're going to get the delta variant, we're seeing now cases explode, you know, all over the country, even in LA County, they've now had a five day average of cases has jumped 500% in one month. So pretty much and Jason, you've tweeted this, if you are not vaccinated, you are choosing to get the delta variant at this point. I mean, this thing is extremely transmissible. That's what the there was a great tweet by Scott Adams, the
SPEAKER_01: guy who the cartoonist who I wouldn't who listens to the pod, by the way, who does listen to the pod. He had a he had a really great quote. He's like, today is either Wednesday. Yeah, for those that are vaccinated, or yet another day where the unvaccinated amongst you are likely to get COVID something like that, right? Was that the two? Yeah, it was basically today's Wednesday for people who
SPEAKER_02: are vaccinated, or it is the day you're going to get you know, the virus. Yeah, we got to stop stop messing around with this thing.
SPEAKER_03: Now, here's some here's some good news, actually, is is so on the Wednesday, when we found out that my friend had tested positive, but again, I was still negative. I had no symptoms, I had nothing. I told my wife, she had gotten one shot, she had gotten the second shot. And we were on the fence about whether my 13 year old should get the vaccine. They both raced out that day, got vaccinated, did not get the virus. So they had basically call it three or four days of the of the vaccine to trigger an immune response in their system. And that protected them. They did not get certain. And David, did you take anything
SPEAKER_01: else like prednisone? You took nothing, no steroid, nothing, nothing, nothing. The only stuff I just so my friend did take, he
SPEAKER_03: did get prescribed pregnant zone, my doctor thought that was unnecessary or a bad idea for me. All I took, okay, was Tylenol to control the fever. And I took flow nays to reduce the science congestion. Look, I mean, I don't want to overstate this. It was a very mild cold for me. And that is why I think everybody should run out and get vaccinated. What did you pair it with like a pappy van Winkle? Or did you go
SPEAKER_02: with a screaming eagle? What did you pair your cup with? Freebird? Also, the worst part is not to he says such a shit
SPEAKER_01: wine list. You probably drank this like random swill. That's what you were drinking some like nigiri sake and all likelihood
SPEAKER_02: freeburg. Last week, I was asking you or maybe it was two weeks ago. I was considering getting the Moderna because I was like, I think getting two of these things will boost you into the high 90s. You said I was crazy. Has your position changed on that? Yes. Okay, explain. Because this is the one time I'm
SPEAKER_02: ever going to be right about science a week before you. So I
SPEAKER_00: think that I think the data up to that point didn't necessarily kind of validate that additional level of action. But now it does. And I think new data is coming out. So I saw an executive from a pharmaceutical company a few days ago, okay,
SPEAKER_00: who broke down some statistics that they looked at in Israel. And what they were identifying was that of the newly infected cases in Israel, of people that are vaccinated, nearly two thirds of those people were vaccinated in January. About 30% were vaccinated in February and less than 10% were vaccinated in March. And I'm just approximating and I'm just kind of transcribing, you know, from kind of what I remember him saying. And so he said, you know, the more recent vaccinations, we're not seeing breakthrough cases, breakthrough infections. So the more recently you're vaccinated, the less likely you are to have this. And then I met with a pretty well known virologist a few days ago as well, who highlighted for me that we are seeing antibody titers decline over time in people. But there's other studies that are showing, which means that the antibodies against COVID in your blood after you get the vaccine slowly go down over time. So we're seeing that we knew that, right, we knew that to some extent, but there was another study that showed that memory B cells, B cells are the immune cells that make antibodies, and they remember the antibodies to make, and they were worried, are we losing those B cells in the human body? And another study found, actually, they're in your lymph nodes. So they went in, they pulled them out, and they identified, look, that these B cells are persistent, we are having a persistent immune memory to COVID when we get exposed to the vaccine or the virus. And, and so, you know, those two data points, both of them kind of said, I think we're going to need to do a booster very soon for everyone. And we're going to need to get a third shot.
SPEAKER_01: The tail, Freberg seems like it's like six months. Yeah, it sounds like he was saying that you're going to see
SPEAKER_00: an efficacy drop to that kind of two thirds level after about six months of your after getting your vaccine. And, you know, he said, look, this Delta variant is virulent. But you know, the more pressing kind of point isn't that it's this variant that's breaking through. It's that the efficiency of these vaccines at this point looks like it's such that we're going to need to do boosters. Now, Pfizer went to the White House this week with some of this data, and they presented it to the White House and the White House said, if you guys follow the news, I'm hearing this, I'm repeating what I read in news reports at this point. But what they said was, you know, we're not ready to kind of commit to doing booster shots for a couple of reasons. One is there are a lot of people out there that haven't had their first shots. And we're seeing the people that are having these breakthrough infections, almost universally, not always, but very, very large majority having very mild symptoms and not getting hospitalized and the death rate is still very, very low. In other words, the vaccine did its
SPEAKER_02: job, the vaccine didn't didn't prevent, you know, an infection,
SPEAKER_00: meaning that the virus starts replicating in a way that's uncontrolled in your body, but that your immune system had enough of a defense to keep it from causing severe disease in your body. 99% of the people going to the hospital are
SPEAKER_02: unvaccinated, right? Exactly. And so we're seeing that that
SPEAKER_00: great success still with the vaccine, but they are seeing and there are now studies that, you know, I think reference to your earlier point that, you know, if you put a different RNA strain, RNA sequence into your body, which Moderna and Pfizer have slightly different, you know, sequences, you end up creating different antibodies, and having more diversity of antibodies can kind of provide greater immunity. So it's almost certain we're going to get boosters and that we're going to end up seeing them hit the market next month. Is the is the booster different than the original? So for
SPEAKER_01: example, if I get a Pfizer booster, am I only basically getting still an expression of that RNA strand that I'm supposed to basically like, is it the same formulation, the same dosage,
SPEAKER_00: so both of those options are still up in the air. And so we may still get the same vaccines that we were getting before you could go get a Moderna shot, you could go get another Pfizer shot of the exact same RNA sequence that you got before, or they may introduce some new ones. And so all the pharma companies are proposing both approaches, and they're pursuing both paths right now. And we'll see where we end up. And what about swapping between an RNA approach and a
SPEAKER_01: traditional vaccine approach? So getting J&J plus Moderna or Pfizer versus like, there's a lot of A B testing we need to do to figure out what is the most efficacious and useful cocktail? This is exactly like the this is reminds me exactly
SPEAKER_02: of HIV, where it took 10 years for them to figure out what cocktail actually worked the best. And now look, HIV is I mean, it's it's it's nothing. It's
SPEAKER_01: really not that not that bad. And the way that we probably for those of us in our 40s have it emblazoned in our mind is how bad it is versus how bad it is. Was a death sentence. It would it seemed like a death sentence. And today it's kind of more it's more manageable than, frankly, it's a chronic disease
SPEAKER_00: now. That's having diabetes or something. Yeah,
SPEAKER_01: I have another crazy statement here, which is that if you take the the case fatality rate of COVID, and now you think about the fact that there's going to be call it 60% of America that's vaccinated, and then every six months we'll be getting boosters. And then you have the Petri dish on the other side of the 40%, where you'll just be ripping through variant after variant after variant. Eventually, it stands to reason that if 40% of Americans remain unvaccinated two or three years from now, the odds that there will be a strain, that is the killer strain that does meaningful damage to those people, I think is basically 100%. And if you think about a case fatality rate that's meaningfully high, what you're effectively going to do is start to call these people from the earth. And that is a crazy idea. But that's what folks who choose to not get vaccinated are setting themselves up. I mean, it's the quintessential, you know, probabilities, like, Am I
SPEAKER_01: getting something wrong here? probabilistically? Isn't that this what I'm concerned about? And it's not just Americans not
SPEAKER_03: getting vaccinated. It's the rest of the world. I mean, even if we got to extraordinarily, extraordinarily high vaccination rates in the US, there's gonna be large, you know, numbers of people outside the US who never get vaccinated, who will continue to be a Petri dish. To give you to your comparison, the common cold has 1800 variants. That's why we can't get vaccinated. So, you know, we're on the Delta variant right now. I think they actually have numbered variants up to lambda, we're going to run out of letters the alphabet really soon. You know, how long will it be until there is there are these killer variants that that I mean, look, I mean, that can punch through that can punch through the vaccines. It's pretty scary, actually. And I would say that this is like quite a come down off where we were just two weeks ago, you know, where we thought the Pfizer vaccine was still 95% effective. Now it's 64% effective. I mean, look, I do want to like underscore that the vaccine worked in the sense that what I got was super mild. I mean, it was really just like getting a cold. I mean, I didn't need to take anything more serious than Tylenol. But, but it does show that the virus is mutating really fast, is highly transmissible. And I'm not sure what to do. So you still have it. You still have it. I still have it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So when will you get tested to figure out when you don't have it? And I'll probably go in tomorrow. You know, because it
SPEAKER_03: feels I feel to me like I'm about 98% better. Freeburg is there is there any data about the pattern of people
SPEAKER_01: who are vaccinated getting this thing? Like, is there? Remember how like, you know, there was early data that showed, you know, women had a different immune response than men and like people who were what was it Oh, positive or, you know, a certain blood type effectively had inborn immunity. I haven't heard or read anything like that. And so this is still
SPEAKER_00: an emerging issue. I think, you know, we're by the way, I was vaccinated a few months ago, guys. Like, I
SPEAKER_03: mean, I am like, you're six months a year. When was your second shot?
SPEAKER_03: Basically, like a few months ago. Yeah, it's minus in March. Yeah. One thing I think it's worth
SPEAKER_00: highlighting just to reinforce the vaccine importance. You know, the virologist, infectious disease guy I met with was telling me that, you know, one way to think about this is the more opportunity the virus has to replicate, the more opportunity it has to evolve. And so when you're vaccinated, and you have a mild case, and your body recovers in a few days, just to give you guys a sense, the difference when someone that's not vaccinated has COVID, and they've measured the viral load in the nodes from day one, when they start having their infectious kind of presentation to day four, which is when they peak, the viral load is 10 to the eighth higher. Okay, that's like 100 million times higher. And so that's 100 million times more viruses that are being produced on day four than were being produced on day one, when you were already showing symptoms. So every time a virus is being produced, and it's replicating within your body, it's getting a chance to mutate. The important point he emphasized was what matters most is we get the most number of people on planet Earth vaccinated as fast as possible. Because the faster you can get more people vaccinated, the fewer opportunities you give the virus to replicate and find itself a mutational path that can ultimately break through all these vaccines and cause real severe loss of life. And so the you know, the presentation that Saks kind of described is encouraging in the sense that it likely means that the virus did not create that there wasn't that much of a viral load or a huge viral load relative to what there would have been if he wasn't vaccinated. And so even though he did have an infection, you know, the virus didn't get as much of a chance to spread to other people. It didn't get but it did, because my friend who I got it from after one
SPEAKER_03: having dinner one night, he was double vax with Pfizer. And in my, you know, my 11 year old daughter got it. Yeah. It's for her again. It's just like a cold. Yeah. But so this thing is highly transmissible. And what is it changes? It changes the equation, I think on some policy questions. So yeah, yeah, what I was gonna ask you, what does it mean for the fall? What now
SPEAKER_01: what? So two weeks ago, I thought that because I was
SPEAKER_03: vaccinated, I didn't need to care whether other people were vaccinated, because the you know, up until that point, the data was you were 95% plus, you know, effectiveness. So why care if other people get vaccinated? Now we can say for sure, that that unvaccinated people can or vaccinated people even can get other people can get you sick, even if you are vaccinated. So I think it absolutely changes the equation on. So for example, colleges were acquiring students to get vaccinated to return in the fall. Like before, I didn't think that necessarily made a lot of sense. Because if you wanted to protect yourself, you just get vaccinated. But now, it makes sense, right? Because the college needs to get to herd immunity to protect everybody against, you know, potentially, right, Delta variant, right. So I do think it changes the equation quite a bit. And I think we need to make a big push here to get everyone back to you then, in fact, sacks for VAX passports, which as a, you know,
SPEAKER_02: libertarian, I think, is I think part of your political, I think everybody on this call is kind of got a little libertarian, like, you got to make your own choices here. But does it change your thinking about that? ie employers, colleges, city state workers, teachers are either get vaxed, or don't come back to the office and you're fired?
SPEAKER_03: Well, I'll tell you, I don't like the idea of government having the power to stick a needle in your arm. But I do think that employers, workplaces, schools, I think it's very reasonable for them to say, if you want to come back to the workplace, you have to get vaccinated because your unvaccinated status creates a risk. It creates an externality for everybody able to fire you if you're a teacher, should they be able to
SPEAKER_02: fire you if you're a bus driver? Yes, pilot. Yes. Okay. So here's the craziness. This is a self inflicted wound, we are down to only 700,000 vaccines being given a day we peaked, we had the ability to do 5 million shots a day at the peak. Back in April, we had over 5 million shots in one day in the United States. And that's a country where you know, whatever 270 million adults, you know, were able to get it. In other words, 2% of the pop adult population in a single day could have gotten it now we're down to 700 we have over a billion vaccines sitting on shelves. 80% of Democrats have received one shot compared to 49% of Republicans. 27% of Republicans say that they won't get vaccinated under any circumstances compared to 3% of Democrats answering that question the same way and an additional 9% will only do so if required. Again, 3% of Democrats said they would only do so required. So that's 36% are opting out for I get it, but this because we allowed it to
SPEAKER_01: become a position. Meaning it's not it's not like anybody has a position on breathing. Breathing is not a political position. Right? It's not like I choose to not breathe or drinking water, or trying to, you know, like these, like eating three meals a day, if you can. We have allowed the most basic of issues in this case, you know, collective public health to be politicized in a way and that is entirely the government's fault. So government's fault and it's the media media, because the
SPEAKER_03: media has exacerbated it, so that they can have power people
SPEAKER_01: on the conservative side of the spectrum have learned to
SPEAKER_03: distrust the media and big corporations because and government because they've been lied to so often most recently. So yeah, right. Most recently with like the lab leak theory. And so you know, there's this suspicion on the right, like what aren't they telling us? You know? Now, look, I think we got to get over this. I think, you know, we need to get everyone vaccinated, for all the reasons that freeburg said, or look, everyone's gonna get Delta variant. I mean, maybe this is the good news is that we can rapidly get to herd immunity by everyone getting Delta variant. Well, that's the inevitable outcome for any infectious
SPEAKER_00: disease, right? Highly infectious diseases, either you can vaccinate or everyone's gonna get it. And it's gonna, you know, I mean, kind of Delta variant, maybe then whatever the, you
SPEAKER_03: know, whatever the more dangerous deadly one is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just highlight what I'm most concerned about. I am most
SPEAKER_00: concerned about what's what's happening with sacks. It just anecdotally speaking, I'm not going to speak to the I'll speak to one statistic, but like anecdotally speaking, I'm hearing this happening more more frequently. I don't know about you guys, other friends, other people, you know, but a lot of other people I'm hearing about their double vax that are now getting COVID. So, as that starts to happen, the implications for the economy, I think are pretty significant. Because I think people, whether there's a policy change or not, people are going to get scared again. And people if we're not kind of enforcing economic lockdown, people will go into social lockdown. And we're going to revisit, you know, more of the behavior we saw over the past year, where people are going to be nervous to travel, people are gonna be nervous to fly, people are gonna be nervous to go to restaurants. And you know, the downstream consequences of everyone kind of locking up again, even if the government doesn't enforce lockups, could be pretty catastrophic. Are you feeling that way yourself, freeburg? In other
SPEAKER_02: words, am I gonna lock myself up? Are you going to go to dinner? Are you going to go to travel to Italy or to, you know, Japan? Or, you know, would you go to Disneyland with your kids? How is it affecting you your personal behavior being a man of science?
SPEAKER_00: So my personal circumstances are a little different right now, not not to get into it. Just with my, you know, my wife's pregnant, and we're moving houses. And so we've got a bunch of reasons why we're not traveling and exposing ourselves unnecessarily right now. But I would say that at this point, you know, if all other things being equal, would I go to Disneyland with my kids, I would probably wait right now, six to 12 weeks to see what happens here. Right? Well, I think like if I find feeling that way now, I think a lot of people are going to be feeling that way. And in the next four weeks, as they hear about more friends getting COVID. Now, you know, the good news is the hospital is and so I am most concerned, we are in a very, very, very, very delicate economic recovery right now. And you know, we have put out so much money to stimulate this economy. Everyone is so walking on like the razor's edge to keep things you know, growing, we were afraid of inflation, lumber prices today, by the way, are lower than they were when this whole kind of inflationary thing started and everyone was freaking out about it. So, you know, lumber prices are lower than they were at the start of the year, which is, you know, like a lot of this kind of inflation risk has kind of come out of the equation already. So the markets have taken that pricing out. And now we're going to be in a circumstance where people might cancel their travel, people might cancel their their restaurants, people might stop going to the office again, stop, you know, getting in the car, etc, etc. So I am most concerned about like the psychological effects of what we're seeing with these breakthrough infections, the frequency of them. Now, if you look at the Israel data, Israel had zero deaths for two weeks, they're now averaging about one death a day. And despite this, you know, huge increment, they're getting about, I think, 500 breakthrough infections a day right now. So that is good statistical news, right? Statistically, these breakthrough infections are not fatal, they're not causing hospitalizations. They're, you know, if you kind of did the math going back a year and said, these are the actual statistics of COVID, people would be like, okay, no big deal, let's move on. It's a tough kind of virus. But because of the circumstances where we are kind of under these these feelings that this is a fatal disease and could cause fatalities. Those statistics don't matter. The fear is what matters. And people are going to start to behave quite differently, I think, in the next few weeks. I have a slightly different point of view here. But I think
SPEAKER_01: freeburg, you're you're, I think you're right in some respects. But I don't think it's going to come from people. I don't think people. I think people are exhausted, and they want to go back to life as normal. Yeah. And I think this summer was a window into some amount of normalcy for a lot of us. And I don't think we really do want to go back. And so I think what's what's really going to happen is there's going to be essentially some form of class warfare. And instead of rich versus poor and left versus right, it's sort of between people who believe in science, and then the, you know, ideologically dogmatic who refuse to get it. And that's going to play itself out economically. I agree with you, there's going to be meaningful forms of economic discrimination against people who, you know, are unnecessarily compounding risk for the rest of us who want to deal with it, ideally touch wood as a common cold, like David said, and move the fuck on. And if we are prevented from doing so, because economic policy and healthcare policy has to constantly get rerated for a cohort of people who could protect themselves and everybody else but chooses not to, there is going to be a real pushback on that. The second thing that I think is going to happen is politicians proved that if you give them a window to seize power, they will do it. And I think what's really going to happen in the fall is if there's even a small modicum of risk, which there will be as we just talked about, yeah, it exists now. Yeah, I think it's the politicians that are going to want to jump all over this and say, Okay, guys, you know, lockdowns here, you can't do this, you can't do that. So literally Gavin Newsom just did
SPEAKER_02: the big grand reopening California's back, you could see him locking it back up in September. Oh, that's the best
SPEAKER_01: way to it's the best way to snuff out any chance of the recall going against them is that even if you were angry, you're not going to be allowed to basically it'll be a massive form of voter suppression. Well, I think that that would backfire
SPEAKER_03: pretty bad. You saw the flip flopping that he already did
SPEAKER_01: actually on schools where the the government of California basically said, Hey, you know, we're going to mandate a mask policy in the fall. And then Newsom came out because people freaked out and said, actually, no, each local municipality can figure it out based on you know, what it what it means for them. The point is, guys, freebrook is right. These things aren't going away. We have a cohort of people who will continue to allow this thing to become worse than it has to be. And I think that there will be economic repercussions and discrimination against those people for that. And I think economically, we are going to take a step back because politicians will try to slow the economy down again. And there is definitely from the right, not to get political
SPEAKER_02: here, but they've been pretty silent about encouraging people to get vaccinated. And, you know, at CPAC and other places, people were cheering the anti vax movement, Mitt Romney came out. We don't control conservative media figures. So far as I know, at least I don't. That being said, I think it's an enormous error for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be taking vaccines. Look, the politics is politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly, moronic Mitch McConnell came out and says a polio victim myself when I was young. I've studied that disease. It took 70 years 70 years to come up with two vaccines that finally ended the polio threat. As a result of Operation warp speed, we have not one, not two, but three highly effective vaccines are perplexed by the difficulty we're having finishing the job. This is where you can expect the politically correct companies to
SPEAKER_01: act first because they're the woke mob will force some action on this issue, whether you like it or not, but this is this is where the next petition will come from Apple, where the two or 3000 employees who are vaccinated, etc, who have people with, you know, people in their households with with, who are immunologically suppressed, and they're gonna say, Hey, guys, this is crazy. Well, that that that petition might be the first petition that
SPEAKER_03: would make sense because those employees are directly impacted by other employees who come to the workplace unvaccinated unlike, you know, the issues around Israel or Antonio's book, whatever that they shouldn't have taken a position on. Wait a second, you're saying Antonio's book wouldn't make
SPEAKER_02: them feel safe and getting COVID would make them unsafe. Yeah, actually, actually, yes. Yes. COVID COVID is COVID in the
SPEAKER_03: workplace is a real safety issue. Not you know, not whether somebody wrote a book five years ago. So so I think they do. I think employees do have a right to say to their employers, listen, are we going to be a vaccinated workplace or not? Because it does impact their risk. But, but Jason's your question about should people change their behavior in light of this news, okay, in light of the fact that we now are learning about some reduced effectiveness of the vaccines. Here's what I would tell people sitting where I am. This is not a big deal. I mean, for me, okay, it was not a big deal. It was like a mild cold, I am not going to change my I'm going to go back to normal, like my pre COVID behavior. And I would tell you, like, if you're double vax, I don't think you need to be that afraid of this. Because, you know, my doctor said they are seeing a bunch of these breakthrough cases, but they're all very mild. It really is like getting a cold. I'm not changing
SPEAKER_02: my behaviors. I made my I made my descent, my risk assessment is if I get it, then I'm doubly protected. And I'm not going to wind up in the hospital. I'm going to focus all my energy on riding my bike and taking my kids out and having a good time. I'm not going back in lockdown. So I think that's right for you.
SPEAKER_03: But but here's where it gets a little bit complicated is my parents who are in their 70s. And one of them has an immune condition, ask what they should do. And I said, Listen, if I were you guys, I would not be going to public places, I'd be masking up. They're asking me if they should go on a trip. And I said, No, I would actually if I were you, I would lock down until this blows over because they're at elevated risk. And so yeah, for me, getting COVID was like a mild case, but for them, maybe it could be more serious. So
SPEAKER_00: all it takes is 10% of the population acting like what you just described, you recommended to your parents sex for there to be economic ripples associated with this, this this breakthrough kind of condition for a while. And that's where I have the most concern is again, like, you know, we're kind of you're not concerned about the debts freeburg, you're
SPEAKER_02: concerned about the economic impact of the psychological scars that are now in place. I will explain I sent you guys a
SPEAKER_00: link to the Reuters article where they covered the press conference with the Prime Minister of Israel the other day. And basically, they are taking what they're calling a soft suppression strategy, where they're encouraging Israelis to learn to live with the virus, involving the fewest possible restrictions and avoiding a fourth national lockdown that could do further harm to the economy. And he said, implementing the strategy will entail taking certain risks, but in the overall consideration, including economic factors, this is the necessary balance. And so it's a it's a it's a very kind of pointed position that they're coming to. I think the US government, the federal government is going to have to come to the same one. But we have different states and different local governments that are going to act differently. And because we've, you know, we have authority vested in those different jurisdictions, you could see different public policy officials take different positions. And what we're talking about, if San Francisco said, restaurants have to go back to 25% capacity, it would decimate these already struggling small businesses, and there's no more stimulus dollars available. And so you kind of think about this, or 10% of people cancel their vacation plans. What's that going to do to airlines and hotels? So again, my concern is, are we about to hit a wave of economic ripples that aren't necessarily tied to what is the right thing to do from a policy perspective or a science or health perspective, but really the psychological effects of the scared and concerned saying, you know what, there's more money available, like, you know, we got bailed out before we'll get bailed out again, let's implement a shutdown, let's implement a lockdown, let's not go to work, it's whatever the decision tree you may have as a business owner or a policymaker. Well, there's an important point here, which is, listen, COVID is
SPEAKER_03: gonna be with us for a long time, we're gonna need to make really smart cost benefit analysis decisions in how to deal with it. We can't go back to lockdowns because they didn't work. And they're extremely expensive. We spent $10 trillion battling COVID last year, we cannot do that again, we don't have the the bullets that are going to keep firing at this thing like that. We got to start making intelligent decisions. Zeroism is not going to work. This idea that the premise of zeroism is that we can stamp out every last vestige of COVID. Maybe that was even a possibility when vaccines were 99% effective, but now that they're not, there's no chance of stamping out COVID. So we have got to learn, we've got to like the Israel example, we've got to learn to live with this thing, and make smart cost benefit decisions. But I also think, you know, this is kind of a disaster for humanity. We now have this new category of illness that's rapidly mutating, we don't know what the end of it's going to be. Like I said, there's 1800 variants of the common cold. That's causing these symptoms. By the way, has anyone noticed how many different symptoms this virus causes in people? There's over 200. Well, they've worked on it for a long time, David. In fairness. Yes, exactly. Everyone knows it's a lab engineered virus that's now a plague on humanity. This is really a disaster. This is gonna, I think, permanently impact human life expectancy. I mean, this is this is a problem, we could have avoided this entire thing here in the United
SPEAKER_02: States, at least. If people just took the wind, how frustrating is this that we would probably have cases down to 1000 a day, and debts down to 10 a day, like Israel, if we had just gotten everybody to take one of the billions of excess vaccines, sitting on shelves and in CVS is in Walgreens across this country? How stupid are we, we don't have the collectivism to make those actions. If you
SPEAKER_01: think about what's happening in Israel did two different examples in China, collectivism manifests as like basically a top down, you know, form of governance, okay. In Israel, collectivism comes from a need for state level security, right? I mean, I've traveled to Israel a lot, I've worked there. And it's crazy when you see how people cooperate together, the minute you hear the missile alarms, right. And so there is a way for people to do cost benefit analyses in Israel, because it's a matter of life or death. And they've been trained to do that. So either it's imposed on you, like in China, or people bottoms up can understand these trade offs, like in Israel, we're in a very different place, where literally, what we have are three things that are in conflict with each other. Jason, we have politics and the desire for power. We have the deconstruction of power by social media. And then we have the traditional media trying to stay relevant. That's a toxic thing that's spinning around and spinning around and spinning around, trying to allocate this very ephemeral thing called power and influence. And we don't know how it works anymore. And so we cannot get our shit together. Half the people care about vegan fucking milk, the other half the people care. I mean, it's it's we are in a alternate universe, as bad as we are Europe, and even Japan have
SPEAKER_03: done even worse, because I mean, we are our government was fairly efficient about the distribution of the vaccines. In Europe, they've just completely botched it. Same thing in Japan. So we are not the worst on vaccination rates. Yes, it should be better. But well, we are the worst on capturing the opportunity,
SPEAKER_02: David, we have the opportunity to have everybody back. America
SPEAKER_01: America is the most exceptional country in the world. It has been for hundreds of years, it should be for several hundred more. There is no excuse for this country to have fucked this up this badly. I've spent enough time as as you guys have in Europe and in Japan. It's understandable why those countries are in the positions they're in. It is not understandable why America is in the position. It's like it's
SPEAKER_02: like having a 20 point lead and you just with like, eight minutes to go and you just screw up and you lose the game. So stupid. All right, do we want to move on to the billionaire space race? Yeah, I think that's positive news. This company go,
SPEAKER_02: what's it called Virgin Galactic. There's a company called Virgin Galactic, and they take people to space. It's $200,000 stock seems to be doing pretty well. Anybody have thoughts on Richard Branson getting to space? I don't know which is randomly go to somebody chama. Now congratulate in all seriousness, congratulations, I cried. Nat and I start the SEC transcript public statement.
SPEAKER_01: No, Nat, Nat and I watched it together. You cried, and it was emotional. It's emotional because you know, I mean, being a little bit more on the inside, how hard they worked. I mean, we've all been there where we're all toiling in obscurity, where there are moments where everybody thinks that what you're doing either is crazy or isn't going to work or is going to fail. And there's a moment where you just have to push through it, right and find people that believe in you. I think I came in very late to that. But I had the opportunity to find these incredible people believe in them, help them give them capital, which was essentially oxygen, right? That's oxygen for a company. And then to see them achieve it, it felt so special to be a part of it. So yeah, I mean, I was really emotional. And it was it was beautiful. So I don't know, I think this is the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out. But basically, if you think about, and there's other stuff that we can't talk about with some other companies that we are all involved in David and I particularly, but here's the point, guys, between sending people and making us an interplanetary species, by creating pervasive internet access, and by enabling us to safely and reliably transport people either point to point suborbital or basically into space. We are completely reimagining how the human race can work. And I think that's incredible. And to be a part of that is really special. There was a lot of people who got very negative on Twitter, I noticed there was a lot of people that said, you know, like, you know, maybe now we can deal with, I don't know, child hunger, or, you know, hey, why are all these billionaires doing this out of the other end? I took a step back, and I thought, my gosh, a, people are increased, there's a small virulent cohort of people that are incredibly negative, and B doesn't even know what they're talking about. Because you're talking about issues of state responsibility and confusing it for what private citizens are doing to advance a set of technologies that I think have broad appeal. So those are my thoughts. I mean, I was I watched every minute of it, and I thought it was incredible. Just to add to that. Yeah, I want to I want to take the part
SPEAKER_03: that all the naysayers and the negativity I mean, Chamath is right, all the very online people immediately came out attacking this extraordinary accomplishment and active bravery by Branson. I mean, this is a billionaire, he doesn't need to be risking his life, launching himself into space. I mean, this is a courageous act, you know, he's putting his his, his life where his mouth is. And you had all these very online people, but you had one CNN commentator basically said this was bad for the environment. You had another one saying that calling him a tax cheat. Then there was another whiner who said, What about all the starving children in the world? I mean, it just went on and on like this. And Mike Solana had a pretty funny tweet summing up the sort of the left's argument. Thusly, he said, number one, this is their argument, according to Solano, one money is evil to therefore people with money are evil, three, therefore, things people with money care about evil. I mean, that is basically the level of sophistication, everybody's talking about that's being made. It's that's the argument that the left is making everybody's a bond villain, right? But here, here's the problem is that first of all, we do get tremendous benefits out of these innovators who are pushing the boundaries of science and technology and engineering. You know, Branson actually went on Stephen Colbert show and defended he said, he said, Listen, I think they're not fully this is Branson. He said, I think they're not fully educated to what space does for Earth is connecting the billions of people who are not connected. Down here. He said every single spaceship that we sent, putting satellites up there monitoring different things around the world, like the degradation of rainforests, monitoring food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change. These things are essential for us back on Earth. So we need more spaceships going up to space, not less. So you know, they're really just kind of ignorant about the benefits of technology. And what do they want to do with the money anyway? You know, we've got all the Yes, we do have all these problems on Earth. But so many of our problems are not a problem of underfunding. We have tons of money going to the problem of homelessness in California, it just keeps getting worse, because we have the wrong approach. We have on education, we have very, very wrong ideas. organization, we have the wrong execution, fix
SPEAKER_01: the operating details. It's not a money issue. Exactly. Take education in California, we have very high levels of per pupil
SPEAKER_03: spending, and our test scores keep going down. Why? Because we have unions controlling the schools. There's no competition or a day of getting rid of testing. We've eliminated
SPEAKER_02: testing, we solve that problem. We spent more as a percentage of
SPEAKER_01: GDP on health care than any other Western country in the world. Yet the life expectancy of white men, which is basically the top of the pyramid of health care is now sub 80 years old. What is going on? If all of these if all of these negative naysayers could actually just get into the arena and try to do something right instead of whining, just whining, whining, instead of whiner class, they have no ideas, they have no ideas, they have no solutions. They just have gripes, and no
SPEAKER_02: ability to execute, apparently. Yeah, why don't they come up
SPEAKER_03: with new programs actually test new programs at a hyper local level to see what works. Okay, so they why?
SPEAKER_01: Can I can I tell you why? These sort of like leftist whiners are not motivated to actually do the hard work. Meaning, even even even if they have an idea for education, the precondition to working on an education program or a health care program is they may need to spend four or five years in the bowels in obscurity, just learning, paying their dues, they don't want to
SPEAKER_01: do that either. Because they grew up in a culture of kindergarten soccer, everybody gets the gold star, everybody gets to touch the ball, everybody gets to be at the front of the line. And they're not willing to put in the work because the minute they realize how much actual work is demanded of progress, they run away because they're scared. And the reason they're scared is because somewhere along the way, somebody tricked them that it was not actually about trying, it was actually about succeeding. And that is the biggest failure that we could do to people is all of a sudden tricking them to believe you have to have it work. So they rather be home monitors, they just try critics and feel rather be critics. They try. Failure is just as good because you're one
SPEAKER_01: step closer to succeeding somewhere along the way. Unfortunately, they were not taught that incredible secret hiding in plain sight. Friedberg, what do you think of
SPEAKER_02: the space race and the hall monitor? Weiner class? If you guys look, I was gonna send these statistics earlier.
SPEAKER_00: But if you look at the amount of venture capital money that's gone into into private space, companies, space technology companies, I think it was a few hundred million dollars, call it three to $400 million pretty consistently from 2011 through 2014. Pretty flat. And then in 2015, I think this is when SpaceX started to kind of create a lot of momentum and hype that private companies can actually build businesses in kind of call it the space industry. The number jumped to 3 billion a year, and then it was a little over three and a half billion and 16. And then it jumped to almost 5 billion and 17. It was a little bit down in 18 2020. It's climbed to almost 10 billion. And in T1 of this year, I think we're at 2 billion venture capital money going into private space companies. So there's clearly a great deal of momentum in this industry. The question is always what's the market at the end? And so if you break out, how do these companies make money? One is to provide services to governments, you know, launch services and taking people to the space station, what have you, and SpaceX has obviously built a tremendous business in that there has been obviously a lot of interest in tourism. And I think it's, you know, we're seeing this first breakthrough with with Virgin Galactic. And we're going to find out over the next couple of years, is there a tourism market? Historically, there's been an interest in a market for visual satellites. But you know, if you look at some of the financials of companies like Planet Labs, they did a few acquisitions in space imaging. And the revenue hasn't really taken off there. And then mining was always this other question is, can we go out and mine, you know, rare minerals from space, and that one is just, you know, if you do the math on it, it's so far away, it's impossible to kind of model. So I think over the next, and then finally, it's communications and communications are cheaper to run on Earth, if you're in cities versus, you know, the SpaceX model is to reach rural rural areas that it's going to be more affordable to do this through space. And so, you know, there's, there's obviously a ton of momentum and a ton of interest in, in private companies getting to space. Everyone right now, it seems is trying to figure out what's the market, right? What's the how big is the market? How big is the business? And you know, how quickly can you actually see that capital turnaround into real revenue? So, you know, there's this kind of market question that I think is still outstanding. In terms of, you know, the opportunity. If you go back to like the 15th century, I think something like 60 to 70% of ships, maritime travel, you know, got into shipwrecks, you know, the, you know, that's around when, you know, we sailed across the Atlantic, or the Spanish sailed across the Atlantic or funded or they disappeared, or they disappear. I mean, they basically crashed, it didn't work. It was a one way trip, sometimes to the bottom of
SPEAKER_02: the ocean. If you were sitting in Spain, in 1450, and someone
SPEAKER_00: said, Hey, these ships, it's going to be a great business, we're going to build lots of ships, and we're going to go out, maybe we'll get trade routes going, maybe we'll discover new land, maybe we'll make money, maybe we'll take people on trips on these ships, you would be like, this is crazy. Half the people are dying. There's no market on the other side. So you know, we are in that you would have been
SPEAKER_01: totally wrong. Yeah. And you are in that 15th century moment
SPEAKER_00: right now, with the space industry, great knowledge, would anyone in the space it would anyone in the ship business in the 15th century, have been able to predict Carnival cruise lines or been able to predict evergreen ships taking stuff from China to America with these huge shipping crates? Would anyone have been able to predict, you know, going down to the bottom of the Atlantic? I mean, like all of the technology and the entire industry that kind of came out of that, you know, that that set of pioneering activity in the 15th century, transformed the planet, transformed the economy, transformed humanity. And, you know, it's very, it's very hard, it's very hard to sit here today, and say, Hey, I know where space is going, where the space industry is going, I know what's going to be possible. But I can tell you that if history is any predictor of the future, you know, this pioneering work that's going on, which is burning tons of money, and everyone's kind of questioning whether there's businesses here, it could transform our species once again. So, yeah, David,
SPEAKER_01: the your 15th century shipping example is so beautiful. Three things that came out of that, which I think we all value. One insurance, to tort law, and carry, exactly. And three was basically how they did risk management so that, you know, each ship would take a little piece of everybody else's cargo so that some of the cargo would always get to marketplace has emerged, Lloyd's of London. Yeah, Lloyd's of London emerged
SPEAKER_00: because of the the maritime insurance that was required. And the and almost all PNC insurance can trace its roots back to maritime insurance during that era. Well, and so these these ancillary industries that emerged were like surprising, right? It's almost business models emerge because you had to
SPEAKER_02: figure out how you do the arbitrage and carry is the perfect example. People don't understand the venture capital carry, we get 20% of the profits was designed so that people with ships, the captain would get to say we get 20% of whatever makes it there. Now you're aligned, whatever makes it there, you get 20% of Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through that storm, and I'm gonna try to get it there. And we know there's so many unknowns. But just looking at the one thing, you know, Starlink, I was doing a little research today about internet penetration, we've got, you know, close to 5 billion people on the internet now. But a very small number of them are on broadband, it's like 20% 30% somewhere in that number, it's hard, it's hard to get an exact number there. But if you think about what's going to happen to humanity, we're talking about billions of people who did not have access to broadband, and they are going to go from not having, you know, if you think about what we went through in the West, when the internet first came out, and we got our first brom bag connections, you know, to find us like DSL or whatever. We had libraries, we had books, we had colleges, we had stores everywhere, Barnes and Noble. So the internet was unbelievably transformative. But we were in a modern society, now you go to the developing world, and they're going to go from, you know, not even having running water, in some cases in their homes, or electricity, or you know, variable to having broadband, and they're going to have access to YouTube circa 2022 2023, they're going to have access to, you know, MIT courseware, or brilliant.org. And all of this information and shopping, we're going to take a billion or 2 billion people and give them broadband instantly within a decade. This is going to change the face of the planet. I think that that's the revolution. And it's not just Starlink doing it. There's like three competitors to Starlink. Obviously, Starlink's got the biggest lead. Yeah, before
SPEAKER_00: SpaceX doing this, and and there were others, there was a company called Oh, three B, it was stood for other 3 billion, and they had raised a ton of money to do this. I just I, by the way, I just want to speak to like a trend that we've seen. And and also speak to the quality of Elon's leadership. So many companies have tried this. Google talked about it for years, which is how you can actually pull project loon was a follow on to what we talked about early on at Google, which was putting up satellites. And ultimately, Google had a satellite program that was killed in favor of buying a company called skybox. And skybox was this coastal ventures backed startup that was trying to make a smaller scale startup. And if you guys will remember around the early 2010s, there were a bunch of startups that emerged that were all about building small scale satellites that could go up into low earth orbit, and do things like imaging and communications. And a bunch of these companies were banking on the fact that the cost per kilogram to get your payload into space was declining pretty precipitously. So they were like, let's make super cheap commodity, you know, space imaging or space communication boxes, put them in space. And after a couple of years, they'll fall out of orbit and burn up. But it doesn't matter if we can get enough use out of them. And they cost so little to put into space, and it costs a little to make, let's put hundreds of them up. So there's a company called Planet Labs, that that does this, that's I think, going public via spec now that again, they've, they've been challenged with building the business and imaging. But there was a Google bought a company for I think, half a billion dollars called skybox trying to do this, which was like imaging slash comms. And they had a bigger refrigerator sized box that they were trying to put up. Ultimately, ultimately, Google, Google spun that out to Planet Labs. And the whole thing kind of, you know, became imaging. But I just want to highlight that this has been a big trend for a while. And it speaks to the quality of Elon, his leadership, because the fact that this guy did what 20 other 30 other people have tried companies have tried to do for the past decade or so. And he said, you know what, instead of just providing the infrastructure to get all these devices into space, we're just going to build the actual devices, get this thing up and just go crazy with it and put our capital into it. And it's really impressive to see because it's such a no brainer. And people have been talking about this, this opportunity for over a decade. And these guys just have absolutely rushed the field. And they could build an incredible business out of this. And, you know, the two most important companies inside like communications are
SPEAKER_01: starlink and swarm. And swarm was a company that I seated in sacks to the series A and the if you talk to the founders of that company, you know, they'll give you this use case in I think it was in 2014. Do you guys remember there was a like a Malaysian Airlines flight that just disappeared? Yeah. Disappeared. 370. Yeah, Malaysian Airlines, Flight 370.
SPEAKER_01: And it was like 230 240 people that passed away. And the the the most, you know, indelible question that I remember from this was, we, we couldn't track it. And I thought myself, how is that even possible? How do you how do you lose? How do you lose a flight in the middle of the earth? It's not possible. It turns out it is because our internet coverage is so sad, that it only covers small areas. And it made obvious that like, you know, we should live in a world where there is absolutely pervasive internet access everywhere, every single little shred inch of the world should be covered and saturated, that should never happen. You know, the people should be able to have closure, they should be able to go and get that plane, recover the bodies, give them proper funeral. These are simple things, but they're human things that we should be doing as human beings, right? And just think about the IoT access enables
SPEAKER_01: this. And the idea that we can't do that is shocking. And so I agree with you, fever, we, Elon's incredible. And I think that within the next five years, we'll probably have pervasive internet access everywhere in the earth. And that's, that's transformational. You know, the the second most valuable private company in space is also a company that, you know, I invested in led the series A called relativity space and their idea, which I think will help everybody that wants to go to Mars and other places is, why don't we just 3d print the rockets? And why don't we 3d print the engines? And why don't we make that functionally useful, because it basically takes the cost of a rocket and divides it by 10. And these printers are small enough where, you know, you can actually send them to dismantle them and take them with you to Mars, and set them up there. And all of a sudden, you can print the parts that you need to get back to Earth as an example. So I think that additive manufacturing has an enormous upside here in space. And I think that that's another area that's going to be really, really anybody read Andy Weir's Hail Mary yet, the guy who did the
SPEAKER_02: Martian. He's a science fiction author, it's really great, because you don't actually know what you're gonna find out there. I think that's one of the things that, you know, to freebergs point, what do we find out there? What if we find a compound out there, that like, plutonium has some attributes that we could leverage in very small amounts to create unlimited energy or unlimited prosperity in some ways, there there are things that can exist that we have not been exposed to. And of course, the probability is there are many things that we have yet to be exposed to 100%? Yeah, look, I don't subscribe to that thesis. I'll tell you, I'll
SPEAKER_00: tell you why. And this maybe also speaks a little bit to some of the counterpoints against the space industry getting the attention and resourcing it has relative to call it other places to allocate capital and human resourcing. And that is like the tools that we have in science and engineering today as a species continues to expand at kind of a geometric pace, our ability to convert any molecule into any other molecule is basically fulfilled now. It's a function at this point of how much energy and time it takes to do that work. So almost all industry, the function of industry is to convert molecules from one form to another. And we have tools ranging from hardware engineering, mechanical engineering, and more recently, in the early 20th century, chemical engineering and in the 21st century, biochemical engineering. Those tools are allowing us to invent, discover and convert molecules and even in some cases, kind of elemental forms that into nearly anything else we want to produce. And the technology is accelerating in such a way the set of technologies compound that if you think about 100 years from now, 200 years from now, 500 years from now, the human species theoretically, for very minimal time and very minimal energy should be able to have something that looks akin today to the Star Trek replicator, you basically type into a device what you'd like to make, and it makes it for you in a few minutes. And you could just like Mr. Fusion and Back to the Future 2, you could put any input you want into the thing, you could throw in bananas and cans and whatever, and outcomes this thing you want to make. So as the human species evolved towards that capability, and we don't need to get into the details, that's just like the general trend line, it becomes less relevant that we need to go get other molecules or go get other things from extra planetary sources. The planet Earth has, you know, the order of 10 to the 23rd atoms, you know, two thirds of the surface is water. There is so much that is like unexplored and untapped from a resource perspective within this spaceship that we're already on, that the argument would be made that our technology is allowing us to effectively recreate all of our fantastic dreams right here where we live today. And, you know, first thing we're going to have to do is fix this planet and fix the ecosystems that are kind of at risk. But as we progress, and as these technologies progress, we can do these extraordinary things that we don't necessarily need to rely on extra planetary travel and colonization in order to achieve those objectives. So that's, that's, that's the, that's the optimistic counter argument. Yeah, but we keep finding things like these molecules and Titans
SPEAKER_02: atmosphere, etc, that we can't explain. And we're finding those through telescopes, let alone we get out there. I mean, we might be able to create them. Sure, yeah, but we're going to discover them in other places. We they may be beyond our human comprehension that these things could even exist. David, there
SPEAKER_00: are interesting things we're seeing there for sure. And I think, you know, there's a I think I mentioned this book before, it's so esoteric and difficult, but it's called Every Life is on Fire by this guy named Jeremy England. And he highlights how all of evolution is effectively predicted by statistical physics, and the energy bath and the molecules within a system create a structure of molecules that you wouldn't see, except for that condition, meaning that over time, the complexity of that system evolves to create an equilibrium with the energy that it's that it's covered in. So what we see on planet Earth, he argues is organic molecules and what we call life, which are these molecules that are really good at copying themselves to absorb energy and dissipate energy. So the molecules and the energy state of, you know, Titan is different than what we see at Earth. So the way the molecules have evolved, there are so different than what we've seen on Earth. And you can see these incredible concepts of what we we wouldn't call life today, but really could be defined as life there. And so there's certainly a lot to learn a lot to explore. It doesn't mean that we're limited in terms of our ability to kind of realize those things here on planet Earth. But you're absolutely right. Like exploration is the core of being a human, right. And for people who don't know, Titan is one of the it's the
SPEAKER_02: largest moon of Saturn. And it's got its own really weird, dense atmosphere that's icy and slushy. And we don't even we can't even comprehend half the stuff going on there yet. Would any of you guys take the Richard Branson
SPEAKER_00: trip? Would you do the, you know, like next week or two years? I guess at what point would you be comfortable taking it? I'm sure you've taken your your time answer for sacks. The answer is 600 and 600 and something. So
SPEAKER_02: how many flights more would you want to see? You would want to do 10 more flights? 20 more flights?
SPEAKER_01: No, I feel I feel really confident that we know what we're doing the this flight was so critical because it was about figuring out what it was like to have passengers in the back and how they'd all behave when you had multiple folks. And I think once that readout is done, and Richard apparently took a bunch of notes. So, you know, we'll, we'll be starting commercial ops, I think, you know, the next two or three quarters. So wow.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, when you have
SPEAKER_03: well, I mean, if if I had a $500 million super yacht like Jeff Bezos, that's where I'd be hanging out. I don't think I'd be blasting. I wouldn't be blasting into space. But I mean, look more power to him. I mean, they got, you know, they certainly have got. Yeah, he's doing both. Yeah. Jake, how would you do it?
SPEAKER_00: I you know, I my my theory is with kids, I kind of think
SPEAKER_02: differently about it. But if I was over 70, like Branson, certainly I would do it. Yeah, I would have to have that conversation with my spouse and my kids and say, you know, hey, this opportunity exists. They've done, let's call it 100 flights. Somewhere in that neighborhood, I would I think I would feel pretty comfortable doing it. But I would want to check in with my family and kids and see if we were all in sync on taking that level. I stopped riding motorcycles as an example. I think that flying and space tourism in the next year or two will be safer than riding a motorcycle. And then eventually it'll be safer than, you know, driving a car or something. It's quite possible. I was I was watching a space show with my
SPEAKER_00: daughter. She's three years old on the couch the other day. And then she she was like, Oh, space. It looks so fun. And I'm like, make you I said, Do you want to go to space? And she said, she looked back at me and she said, I want to go to space with you. And it made me cry. It was the first time I'd ever thought like, man, I first time you'd ever cried for some ever cry. loaded that to his firmware. Yeah, crying. What are these
SPEAKER_02: water particles on my chin? But I had like no desire, I would say before she said that to
SPEAKER_00: go to space, but it was a can I can I was kind of poignant moment that like, man, this like, moment of like inspiration of like going to space is something that like, I think is going to inspire, you know, a generation and I told my daughter, I said, you know, you are going to go to space. I hope I can be there with you. Yeah, yeah. Can I give you an idea?
SPEAKER_01: Two different ideas, but they're roughly related. When each of your kids turn 18, buy them a ticket to space so that they become an astronaut. Which I think is like a beautiful kind of an idea where like, you know, what an incredible present to give somebody as they mature into age. You know, if you if you read if you if you basically have heard all these astronauts have said, you know, the the overview effect, like when you're above the earth looking down, it has this completely transformational effect on your outlook on life and the planet. And so, you know, to the extent that that's a quantifiable thing to give that to your child seems like an enormous gift, or, or, when everybody's of age or whatever, where all of you guys go as a family, so that the whole cabin is your family, that would be really cool to either those ideas. I will do one of those two. Hold on a second. Shabbat. There were four people correct on this
SPEAKER_02: fight. If I remember this one, there's four passengers. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, wait a second. There are four besties. How are you not
SPEAKER_02: setting up a flight for the hundredth episode of all in to be on Virgin Galactic? Can you imagine watching David cry and be so scared? I mean, I can pretty much guarantee you
SPEAKER_01: about sex, obviously, you guys have to buy tickets. But I can pretty much guarantee you that if the three of you decided to buy tickets, I'm pretty sure I can organize that we all go on the same flight. That would be ratings.
SPEAKER_02: That's all I need is to be entombed with you guys for
SPEAKER_03: eternity.
SPEAKER_02: You want it? Hey, Shammoth, can you address the von Karman line
SPEAKER_00: controversy around you know, what's the right point to be in space? Because it came up a lot this week in the news. I didn't want to kind of came up by one person. Well, no, no, there was
SPEAKER_02: people talking about on the news and stuff. Like maybe you can
SPEAKER_00: share for everyone blue origin being lame. Honestly, that's so
SPEAKER_02: petty by Bezos. Maybe just share what happened and kind of, you
SPEAKER_00: know, the point of view on this be awesome. But basically, the question is, what defines space, right? So if
SPEAKER_01: you if you just like start from the bottom from ground level, ground level, right, you have the trophosphere, right? So you have like the first kind of like 1020 kilometers or so right, then you have the stratosphere, right? That's where like, a lot of like weather balloon activity happens. That's a 50 kilometers, then you have the mesosphere, right? That's where you'll see things like meteors and stuff. Then you get to basically the Karman line, which is around, I don't know, 100 kilometers or so there are a bunch of countries that either have no opinion, or point to this kind of group to define what the beginning of space is. And they define that at about 100 clicks, which is I want to say 62 miles, okay? Then there's the United States. And the DOD and NASA, etc. And we define it at a different level 50 odd miles. And so in the United States, you need to pass the US regulatory bodies definition of what the threshold of space is to be considered an astronaut. There is other countries that would then point to a different line, the Karman line has the line. I think the point is, it's all much ado about nothing. I think in the end, I think Virgin stated that they went to 52 and a half or 53 and a half. You know, things are iterative. So over time, folks will get higher and higher. But the point is, okay, and what you basically go into space, you get to see the planet, you get to feel microgravity. You know, you get the benefit of the overview effect, whether you're at 52 and a half, I'm guessing you'll get the same effect at 58 or 60 or 61. And then you come back to Earth. So I thought it was kind of a little cheap and unnecessary, because there's nothing there's nothing
SPEAKER_00: experience wise that changes, right? I mean, like the my understanding, yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Blue Origin did a tweet from the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Karman line. So none of our astronauts would have an Asterix next to their name. For 96% of the world's population space begins 100 kilometers up in the interest of blah, blah, blah. It's just like, why would they do that the days before the Richard Branson goes up? It's just totally classless. It shows that Bezos has a competitive streak, which is just not graceful, I would say. And I think there's a little bit of bitterness there. And then you look at Elon. What did you want to do? He went so classy. He went so classy. He took a picture with Branson and he went to support him and wrote a congratulatory tweet. You want does not feel he's in competition. But for some reason, Bezos, you know, Bezos had to, like draft and approve this specific tweet from Blue Origin. And I just thought it was classless. And just stupid, Jeff really made you look so
SPEAKER_01: bad. Elon. Elon was so fabulous. I mean, it just shows you like what a class act he is and what he cares about, which is like he cares about advancing humans and our ability to do things that are incredible and inspiring. And when other people do it, he's not zero sum about it. As you said, Jason, he was there. He was supportive. It was just lovely to see. I think Bezos is still stung for when Elon said he couldn't get
SPEAKER_03: it up. Meaning he couldn't get his couldn't get his rocket into space. So so I don't know if that was that was too classy of
SPEAKER_00: Elon.
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, I don't know if you guys have seen Jeff's rocket.
SPEAKER_02: Kind of small. So rocket is I mean, it's Jason, now you're doing it got a tiny rocket. Just so we put a pin in it. Melvin Capital, the people who went to war with the Reddit traders or vice versa lost $5 billion. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.
SPEAKER_03: I think they're down 46%, which is just shocking in and of itself
SPEAKER_02: in this kind of upmarket. But then to actually quantify it, they lost $5 billion fighting a bunch of self proclaimed ours. I won't say the word that we get canceled, but they call themselves ours on Reddit, Reddit, Reddit, cost them 5
SPEAKER_03: billion.
SPEAKER_01: Jason, you can say it there. You're not calling them that they call themselves that they call themselves that. Yes. All
SPEAKER_02: right, listen, love you besties. Sax, we're glad that you're safe and you're healthy. No, thanks to you. No, no.
SPEAKER_03: I have so many jokes. I'm gonna save them.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, honestly, my thought on your recovery is no comment. I'm
SPEAKER_02: just jealous. You're gonna lose another five frickin pounds because Oh, yeah, I'm down to 178 By the way, come on, stop.
SPEAKER_03: Are you really? Yeah. Mannerexic. I can't even break one when when when are you gonna
SPEAKER_02: stop? Was there a bet or no? No bad. I remember losing that bet. That'd be like me playing sacks and chess. It's just not to Jason, what were you tipping the scales that right now? 191
SPEAKER_01: 190 and you're about to come to Italy and basically you're gonna gain 15 pounds. No, I'm doing one meal a day. One meal a day. That's it. One
SPEAKER_02: meal a day. That's it. I'm eating one meal a day.
SPEAKER_02: How are you gonna turn down the food? But what if you eat for
SPEAKER_01: three hours in that one meal? I just I try everything. I'll just try and then I have
SPEAKER_02: discipline now. Just like I stopped using Twitter. I'm stopping Twitter. Can I tell one funny story about J Cal in Italy? Don't tell me
SPEAKER_03: about discipline. Okay, so we were there in Italy. What was this? Jake? A few years ago, whatever. This is a long time ago. Is this when we were in Venice?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you were with Jade and I was with with Jacqueline. And we
SPEAKER_03: went to some ice cream place, right? And so we all had we all had these like ice cream Jada with like two scoops or whatever on there. So Jason finishes his in like five seconds. And then he walks up to Jacqueline and just like goes like, like that. And it one fell swoop. He ate the gelato offer ice cream. It was like it was like a bulldog. It was like it was like a bulldog just eating your ice cream.
SPEAKER_02: But how good was that fish that we got? Remember that restaurant I found the rod, the rod? I mean, we still talk about that place. So yeah, that was like one of the best meals I've been having
SPEAKER_01: a gelato guys every day, every day, but they're so small.
SPEAKER_02: That's what I love about the Italian. It's a little it's a kid. It doesn't feel like there's like a lot of
SPEAKER_01: preservatives and stuff in there. It's just butter and
SPEAKER_02: sugar, heavy cream, whatever it is. It's so good. It's so good.
SPEAKER_01: It's so good. How the tomatoes right now? I can't wait to be
SPEAKER_02: incredible. Incredible. I mean, I eat them. I bathe in them. I
SPEAKER_01: probably want to know what about the mutz? You got the mutz? How's
SPEAKER_02: the burrata and the mutz? I can't. He's gonna gain 15
SPEAKER_03: pounds. 100% we should do a weigh in when we get there.
SPEAKER_02: It's right at the end. That would be the bet.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how you're going to turn down this food. I don't know how you're going to say no to the pasta. You'll have pasta at lunch pasta dinner. You're just gonna you're gonna go crazy. I'm gonna just have two bites of everything two bites of six
SPEAKER_02: different pastas. And I'll be by the way, by the way, the the
SPEAKER_01: the biggest, the best kept secret is the Italian the quality of Italian white wine is outrageous. Really? It's
SPEAKER_02: outrageous. We should play some cards and drink some wine. I think we're gonna play know how many how many calories are in
SPEAKER_03: the white wine, she must calories. I mean, I have no idea. But you know, look, the
SPEAKER_01: thing in the summertime here is you end up walking. So I end up walking a lot or bicycling a little bit, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, like you're burning through everything. I
SPEAKER_02: gotta say this e bike I got, I got a rad power bike. No, no,
SPEAKER_01: no, the whole point is to not have a motor that powers it. You know, no, no, you don't understand is because you have
SPEAKER_02: the motor in a chamath. You ride your bike normal. But then like, let's say you do have dinner or something like that, or you want to go to dinner 10 miles away or 15 miles away, you might not take your bike, it's too long of a ride. With these electric bikes, instead of going 10 miles on the way there, it takes your 10 mile ride and just put you at 25. But you're still burning the same number of calories. It's like augmenting. I really think that electric bikes are going to change cities like in a major way. They're already starting to in Europe and in China, but alright, everybody, we'll see you next time on the all in podcast. Love you, Sax.
SPEAKER_03: Back at you. Sax. I hope I hope you get better. So thank you.
SPEAKER_03: Thanks, guys. Yeah, I'm better. I'm ready. Better. Don't worry. But and wait, freeberg. You have nothing to say computer.
SPEAKER_02: The three of you. It was nice to check off the box for my social interactions for the week. I will now go 75 minutes of social interaction powering down in 321. My mama mama mama. See you next time. Bye bye.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge or because they're all like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release.
SPEAKER_03: You're a bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee bee good. We need to get merges are
