Latest / The Chuck ToddCast / Interview Only w/ Mike Pesca - The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust

Transcript

Interview Only w/ Mike Pesca - The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust · The Chuck ToddCast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's sponsorship time. But you know what, it's really great
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: when you get a sponsor that you already use. And
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: guess what. Quint's is something that in the Todd household
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: we already go to. Why do we go to Quint's
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Because it's a place you go where you can get
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: some really nice clothes without the really expensive prices. And
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: one of the things I've been going through is I've
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: transitioned from being mister cot and ty guy to wanting
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a little more casual but to look nice doing it.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Is I've become mister quarter zip guy. Well guess what.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Guess who's got amazing amounts of quarter zips? It is Quints.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I have gotten quite a few already from there. The
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: stuff's really nice. They have Mongolian cashmere sweaters for fifty dollars.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I just know, hey, cashmere, that's pretty good. You don't
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: normally get that for fifty bucks or less. Italian wool
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: coats that look and feel like designer the stuff. I'll
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: be honest, right, you look at it online, you think, okay,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: is this really as nice as it looks? Well, when
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I got it, I was like, oh, this is real quality.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I'm going to end up making sure I
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: take it to my dry cleaner so I don't screw
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: it up when I clean it. But I've been quite impressed.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: In Hey, it's holiday season. It is impossible to shop
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: for us middle aged men. I know this well. Tell
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: your kids, tell your spouses, tell your partners. Try Quints,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: or if you're trying to figure out what to get
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: your adult child, what to get your mom or dad.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you you're going to find something that is
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: going to be comfortable for them on Quints. So get
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: your wardrobe sorted and your gift list handled with quints.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Don't wait, go to quints dot com slash chuck for
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: five day returns now available in Canada as well. That's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: qui nce dot com, slash chuck, free shipping and three
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five day returns quints dot com slash chuck.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: Use that code. So joining me now with frankly without
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: a I'm not gonna sit here and say we have
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: a specific reason we're talking other than I like to
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: talk to smart, interesting people, and Mike Pesca is smart.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: You'll just decide how interesting he is, but he seems
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to be interesting enough. I could in that many of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: you may be listeners to his podcast, maybe subscribers to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: his newsletter to things that I am so with that,
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: mister Pesca, who I blew it? I thought I was
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: thinking fish is your last name, and you're like, no,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: it's Italian for peaches, right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: That's why the GISTs production company is Peachfish Productions, because
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: the peach is literally Italian. Yeah. Many Spanish verb forms
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: of two fish.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Are the fish. So yeah, you know what, you know,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: two things I wouldn't want to eat together.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: I think that probably a good chefish marmally glad, But you.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Would have to make the peach. You'd have to make
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it more like mango and like create a salsa. I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: guess you could say you could probably create a peach
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: salsa that's on your fish taco.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: It's a challenge, right, It would definitely be something that
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: would break most contestants on cooking shows.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, first of all, I appreciate you. You seem
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: to be always making content, so I appreciate that you're
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: helping me make content. How how many how many side
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: hustles do you have? And what do you what do
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: you say you do these days for a little bit.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Sometimes you have so many side hustles that you say
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: is they're a real hustle. I've been doing the Gist
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: for twelve years, almost twelve years, the longest running news
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and analysis podcast, and that is daily. It's actually six
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: days a week.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: That's what I used to say about Meet the Press,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: the longest running television show.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: You're longest that's documentable. With podcasts, there is a little
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: bit of wiggle room because no one's taking account in
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: the beginning.
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: And the fastest growing podcast in the in the two
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: two two zero seven zip code. I don't know about you,
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: but anyway.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: Wow, you know, the bragging chock is a little it's
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: a little bit unbecoming, is what I'm saying here. Yes,
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: so I do that, and then I have the substat
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: which is every day we have the just List, which
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: are a bunch of stories I maybe can't get to
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: on the Gist. And then I do a written piece
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: on Wednesday, and I'm taking over. I can't announce it,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: but I'm taking over a new podcast where maybe maybe
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: you'll be on asking people how to refurbish your second floor.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Let's just say that well, all right, well I am,
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: I have refurbished the second floor. I need to clean
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: up my second floor. How do I accomplish my exercise
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: refurbishing of all of that. If I thought of one
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: theme I wanted to speak with you about, it is
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the fact that you know it's interesting. I sort of
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: began my calendar year getting started in this world of
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: independent media going on your podcast early. You were sort
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: of very very gracious with that. But it's been quite
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: a year in media in general, especially legacy media, and
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: sort of like, if you think about where we began
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: and where we ended, is the information ecosystem at the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: end of twenty twenty five worse or better than at
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: the start of twenty twenty five?
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Okay, just twenty twenty five. I say it's potentially better,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: maybe because so much of the degradation is baked in
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: and priced in, and it's not getting worse and we've
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: been habituated to it.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: But a couple of the.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Big trends, one that is often decried by my left
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: leaning friends is what's happening with CBS and Barry Weiss
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: and full disclosure. I've written a couple pieces for the
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Free Press. The way I look at. That is two
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: things I know that people will slam Barry Weis for that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: They say bringing more of a right leaning sensibility to CBS,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: to which I say, there are three broadcast networks and
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: five all news networks or quasi news networks with significant budgets.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: I'm not counting oh and the like all the news
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: nation does some nice things, and four of them, if
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: we're being fair, before Barry took control, were somewhere in
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: the center to left leaning. So I know, as you
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: know NBC, the NBC, NBC very much tried not to
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: be but of course MSNBC was left leaning to be honest,
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: and CNN will I think they tacked more to the center,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: Fox being right leaning. But what I'm saying is just
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: in terms of if you take away everyone's strong feelings
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: about politics, if you're just looking at them as businesses,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: and four businesses on the block were selling ice cream
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: and kind of not doing that great, and one business
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: on the block was selling cotton candy and doing quite well.
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't some combo.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Cotton candy ice cream business maybe be the smart play?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: So this is all I'm saying. If you want to
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: call Barry right wood or center right. She would call it.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: She really tried to say she's trying to keep it
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: between the forty yard lines. It seems like a smart
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: enough repositioning. And to that, I'd add, if you were
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: to hire a person to do this, why not hire
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the only person who's built the truly successful media business
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: from scratch in the last five years. There's a case
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: that Ben Smith of Semaphore is doing something similar. I
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: think on smaller scales, even big Barry White's critics like
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: Oliver Darcy, I think, is making a million dollars with
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: his substack, and there are some substacked successes, but Barry's
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: the biggest success. So add that up, a little bit
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: differentiation in the news business and a track record of success.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: I'm more interested than concerned. Let's say I think she
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: could do good things. I don't know, what do you think?
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've not. I am all four. I am sort
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: of rooting for the disruption, right, you know. I've seen
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: and I benefited from a disruptor coming into NBC, a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: woman by the name of Debora Turnas, who I still
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: find to be one of the best network executives I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: ever worked with. Because she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to break things, and look it got her the BBC job.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: And then of course she had a fall on her
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: sword for something that happened below her. But that's also
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: says something about her, meaning like she sort of she
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: gets it. Okay, that's on me. You know, I'm the
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: buck stops with me. So I'm all for seeing disruption
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: because I've seen network executives that just try to placate
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the bosses right don't succeed. And so my only question
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: of her decision was you left the Times because you
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: didn't like working for the Salzburgers. Are you sure you
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: wanted to give up your independence to work for the Eleisons? Right?
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Like that? That would be and that's like, to me,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the biggest It's funny. I also think this has been
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: a turning point for the collective media, meaning that you're
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: starting to see the audience feel more comfortable in the
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: independent spaces. You're seeing more people feel more comfortable trying
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: to launch in the independent space. And you know, I'm
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: pessimistic that any of the legacy media companies can be
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: They have good brands, and they can certainly tweak shows
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: and use their resources. You know specific I just don't
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: know if any of the legacy news divisions are ever
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: going to be what they were, right, because there's no
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: money in it, right, There's no financial incentive. It is
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: really it's just about whether, you know, in the case
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: of the Ellison's, Like, here'd be my fear if I
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: were Berry, if Wes Moore is the next president of
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the United States, do the Ellison's care about the news
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: division anymore? Right? You know, because Wes Moore isn't like
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: on top of them, you know, helping them with other
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: business deals. And in order to get those business deals,
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: they've got to placate the with certain things with the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: media business, with the news side of things, right, and
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: that would be something which is does all of the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: you know, right now I'm getting what if I'm Barry,
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I'm getting some running room. I get to do a
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: special on Saturday nights, and which is the lowest, you know,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: the lowest rated portion of network television, which is why
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of times you will see town halls and
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: special news presentations either on Friday evenings or Saturday evenings. Yes,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: because literally those are the two nights that they can't
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: sell ads for or.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: Counter program with a Charlie Brown special from twenty years.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: Ago, exactly exactly, So that would be my concern whether
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: there is really an interest in allowing CBS to stay
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: disruptive CBS News beyond sort of what feels like performance
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: art for the man in the Oval office.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, a couple points. Did Barry and I've never
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: talked to her about the Sulzburgers per se or ae
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: did she defect? She defected from The New York Times?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Was it Salzburger thing? The way I analyze what happened.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, that's my point, But you
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: are the Salzburgers do care about that opinion page?
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I think at the time, which was the height of
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: the New York Times being sort of redefined away from
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: the idea of objectivity, it had gotten out of control
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: and out of the hands of a Salzburger. And you
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: probably read I don't know how many.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Out of the hands of Dean Buckay. I mean, who
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: was trying. He couldn't manage his own You know, you
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: had basically a revolt. I believe you let the And
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: this to me has been something I've been obsessed with,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: which is be careful of the audience you build, because
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you may become captive of your audience subscribers.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: I think at a certain point Nicole Hannah Jones was
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: more important in the New York Times than Dean Buckay,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: and she's done great work. But this is a bad situation.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: You know. These are we know from sports, when the
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: star becomes more important than the coach, who you defer to.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: My point with the Salzburgers is I see a lot
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: of evidence that he specifically was uncomfortable with where his
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: newspaper had gone, and he wrote a large piece in
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: the Columbia Journalism Review, which is only going to be
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: read by journalists, but it was a signal we are
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: getting back to the idea of objectivity. He knew he
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: couldn't use the word objectivity. It's a really interesting essay.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: He even said that word is so toxic among so
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: many people in news, which I think is really interesting
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: and alarming that I'm not even going to try to
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: defend the word objectivity. We just believe in independence journalism.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: And then he goes on to define independent journalism as
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: objectivity or something like objectivity.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: So that's point one.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: I think that where the New York Times is now
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: is a place that is a bit more aligned with
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: maybe Barrywise's worldview. The other thing I'd say about the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Ellisons is, you're right if Wes Moore, if someone common
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: soothing or at least just not.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Just sort of like less a little boring. Let's be honest, right,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Andy Bisheer, And I say this, though you know that
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: sounds like a big criticizing It may be that America
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: wants boring come twenty twenty nine.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: So you're saying not Gavin Newsome, like Gavin might be
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: a lightning rod would I would.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: Be surprised if we go from big personality to big personality. Yeah,
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: I actually think you know, usually what we do as
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: a country, if you think about it, when we elect
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a new president, and we will be electing a new
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: one in twenty eight, we usually elect somebody who has
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: more of a character trait that the previous one is missing.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Right after that week got Pope, a skinny pope. All
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: that's sort of mindset, like I go through it right. H. W.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Bush was kind of detached. Bill Clinton was feel your
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: pain right. Bill Clinton was a bit of a party animal.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: George W. Bush was the reformed alcoholic that wasn't going
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: to you know, stray. George Bush saw everything in black
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: and white. Barack Obama was nothing but gray area nuanced right,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: you know. So we do have this tendency, and so
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: that's why I am I wouldn't you know, this is
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: not personal to Gavin Newsom. I'm bearish on his chances
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: to be the next president, more out of character and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: temperament sort of comparisons to Trump. Well, do we want
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: another big personality that's constantly where the world revolves around
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: the personality rather than the country as a whole.
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: Good analysis, as always is what we expect from you.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: But my point was was this, if people, I know
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: you don't think this, I assume you don't. If people
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: took your analysis about if it's Wes Moore, do they
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: become unengaged. It is not the case that, especially David Allison,
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: who has more hands on control of the newsroom, is maga.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: Is even agast maga.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not a Republican conservative. He gave one hundred million
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: to the Joe Biden Fund. So it is not if
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: people hear that and say, oh, unless the unless CBS
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: is allowed to run an ideological newsroom, he's going to
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: become uninvolved. That's not the case, and that's not what
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: you're saying. It's just if things calm down and politics
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: aren't the way to get people's attention or for him
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: to make money. Because a politician donald Trump will be
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: so involved in our regulatory schemes, he might get less involved.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: But it's not because that he's ideologically committed.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: No, I think it's more of that, And I've never
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: thought I think you know, I don't think Silicon Valley
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: is ideologically aligned with Trump. I think they are just
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: seeing it as the fastest way to get from A
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: to B. Yeah.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I think many in Silicon Valley are, if not ideologically
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: aligned with things like tariffs, were extremely upset with DEI
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: and wokeism, and also thought that there were elements of
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: the Biden regulatory scheme that are challenging what they were
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: trying to do to improve society.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: I'll give you a shorter version of that. Biden did
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: allow the bureaucrats to play a role. Trump will allow
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: you to shortcut and in getting around regulatory issues. Yes,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: but of.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Course it's just had not because of some well thought
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: out planned.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: No, it's transaction, and that's my point, right, is to
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: go back to the original point, will Barry have a
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: budget in twenty nine If the Ellisons decide, hey, they
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: don't need to placate a president with the news division anymore,
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: we'll spend our lobbying dollars another way. Essentially, it's sort
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: of like it's almost as if the news division is
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: part of your lobbying budget, right, And if you're Frankly,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: if you're Disney, if you're Comcast and your paramount skuidant,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: you kind of are operating that way.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: And the other thing to say is that this is
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: all fascinating to us in some portion of your audience.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: But with the CBS news viewers, we're talking about five
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: percent of America.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Well, and we're also talking about generationally only one demographic group.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, have you seen the average age of the
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: cable newsviewer.
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: It's not seventy They died three years ago. And the
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: other thing with CBS, well, they have these amazing properties,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: these legacy properties. Sixty minutes. I love sixty minutes, but
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not convinced that sixty minutes. The reason that they're
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: so popular is because of who they are and their
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: attention to detail and their story selection but I think
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: it all comes down to there after football.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: Of it comes down. By the way, do you know
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: what they never do? They never They never saved their
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: best stuff for the spring. No, okay, which, by the way,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like why do you what do they ask?
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Is it the and Clyde? Why do you rob banks?
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: That's where the money is. It's like, you know, why
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: do you save your stories for the faults where the
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: audience is right. It's where it's right after football, So
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: of course you do. But i'd look at do I think.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I will say this about CBS if you think about it,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: they have between Sunday morning and sixty minutes, they have
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: two of the more interesting brands that have a chance
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: to survive even if the network doesn't.
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, distinct brands, brands that mean something. And not only
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: will people be sad that they go, but if you
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: took them and put them somewhere else, it's very clear.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Their DNA is so unique that you could have a
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: turnkey operation.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: We know, I think sixty minutes, I think, and so
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: I have this. We're about to see the next big
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: shake up in the way people consume information. It's going
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: to come at the local TV affiliate level right where
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: you have the So we have this mega merger coming
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: up between Tech and next Star, and what that is
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: going to create is a lot of overlap in a
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: lot of their markets, and you're going to have these
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: duopolies that are going to start popping up, and you
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: already see them. My hometown of Miami is now the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: largest market in the country with the duopoly. The person
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: that owns the you Know channel, the Fox affiliate also
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: owns now the ABC affiliate. But he's only gonna have
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: one news division and there isn't going to be local
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: news for the ABC affiliate. It really is just sort
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: of a digital channel that will just you know, provide
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: the ABC programming, which for most people in South Florida
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: is football. But what you're going to have is I
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: actually think we're about three or four years away from
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: what I call a la carte where everything becomes a
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: la carte, where you might have a local affiliate say
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: you know what we want, we want Savannah Guthrie in
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: the morning. We want I want the Tony diacoppole in
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the evening. I want Meet the Press on Sunday, but
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: I want CBS Sunday Morning, right it's good. I have
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: a feeling we're going in the same way we're watching
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: this with with people in our space here in the
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: independent space starting to license their content on a Pluto
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: or on a Netflix or on Amazon. I think we're
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: about to see the same thing explode in the local
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: TV Atfilly Market, which means we're going to find out,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you know, how big of a brand is Good Morning
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: of America, Good Morning America? How big a brand? I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: think today's show's pretty big. You know what about the
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Sunday morning programming? Right, you'll where the brands will matter
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: more than the network itself that they appear.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the reason is this is how the consumer,
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: the under seventy three average age consumer, programs their own
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: news already. They you know, my kids don't know what
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: a network is or what a channel is.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: The channel numbers meaningless to my kids. I have an
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: eighteen year old and a twenty one year old. They
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: don't know the numbers any They know news for that's it.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I just I get you a PV and there
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: aren't numbers assigned, so news for was just I mean,
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: they could have called themselves news Purple. It doesn't. Yeah,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: so yeah, it is all changing, and we haven't even
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: talked about print. We haven't even talked about what we
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: really need, which is investigative journalism and journalism with a
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: lot of teeth, and journalism that can stand up to pressure.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: And I think that their Pro Publica does a great job.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Some of the nonprofits want to do a good job,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: but I think and I think there is a certain
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: amount of appetite for it. But what the great newspapers,
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: especially newspapers used to be able to do, was fund
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: these efforts from their advertising, from their car advertising, from
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: especially their want ads and their classifieds. And that's all done.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: So not only do you have these, you know, all
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: these city councils not being covered. You just don't have
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: the great investigation that the Indianapolis Star or the Kansas
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: City Star or the Sacramento Bee was gonna do. As
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: a matter of course, because that's what you did. Then
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: we don't even know, oh what the price of having
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: all that lost is. And maybe it's just local and
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: maybe it doesn't get above the land commissioner for Albuquerque,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: but it's a big loss.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Having good life insurance is incredibly important. I know from
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: personal experience. I was sixteen when my father passed away.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: We didn't have any money. He didn't leave us in
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: the best shape. My mother, single mother, now widow, myself
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: sixteen trying to figure out how am I going to
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: pay for college? And lo and behold, my dad had
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: one life insurance policy that we found. It wasn't a lot,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: but it was important at the time, and it's why
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I was able to go to college. Little did he
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: know how important that would be in that moment. Well,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: guess what. That's why I am here to tell you
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: about Etho's life. They can provide you with peace of
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: mind knowing your family is protected even if the worst
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: comes to pass. Ethos is an online platform that makes
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: getting life insurance fast and easy, all designed to protect
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: your family's future in minutes, not months. There's no complicated process,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and it's one hundred percent online. There's no medical exam
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: require you just answer a few health questions online. You
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: can get a quote in as little as ten minutes,
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: and you can get same day coverage without ever leaving
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: your home. You can get up to three million dollars
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: in coverage, and some policies start as low as two
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: dollars a day. That would be billed monthly. As of
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: March twenty twenty five, Business Insider named Ethos the number
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: one no medical exam instant life insurance provider. So protect
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get your free
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: quote at ethos dot com slash chuck. So again, that's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: Ethos dot com slash chuck. Application times may vary and
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: the rates themselves may vary as well, but trust me,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: life insurance is something you should really think about it,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: especially if you've got a growing family. I guess I'm
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: like A, I'm optimistic because B I want to try
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: to build something that scales that because I think that's
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: a gap in the market. I completely agree. And you
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: know what I worry about is some journalism can be
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: done independently in solo. You and I are proven this,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: But there are some things I could I would love
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: to do, but I need more resources. I need literally
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: more physical human beings. I don't care how many Geminis
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: or chat Gypts you're going to give me. They all
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: can't walk the street, right, they can't do the door
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: knocking that you sometimes need in an investigative journalism. And
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I think that this is what you know, my hope
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: is that we'll start to see new consortiums, you know,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: after the sort of you know, if you look at
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: the history of UPI, which was a wire service before
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: the AP existed, and AP was a different type of
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: wire service they really were. They started off as attempts
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to try to allow local news organizations to share resources
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: and share material. It was in some ways, hey, oh
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: that might be of use to our readers too. You know,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: we can trade off and if you figure out how
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: to ban these folks together that maybe they can start
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: working together on collaborative investigative pieces. Right. Pro Publica does
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: this a little bit, well, they'll team up with a
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: with a news organization. Notice is doing this with some
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: small independent locals there. They're being the Washington Bureau. Do
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: you like what I do too? Oh my gosh, I
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: just had two of their founders on, two of their
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: young folks on, Because for me, Mike, Notice is suddenly
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the only news organization based in Washington, d C. That
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: covers Washington, d C. The Washington Post might as well
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: be called the Post. They have decided to no longer
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: be as it former former right they knew longer need
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: to be. They have gotten rid of everything that made
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: them Washington, right, even the food critic there. You know,
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: their their sports page has never been smaller and less impactful.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: And that was how the Post and the Boston Globe,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: just the two great regional sports pages, launched so many stars.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: And now they just and even before that the style section,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: which was such a great section and oh no it
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: wasn't about styles.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really frustrates me because it feels as if
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: Bezos said I want to be the Wall Street Journal
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: and you're like, well, we already have one, and they're.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Better at it than you guys are I think you
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: said I want to be Reason Magazine. I mean, he's
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: stole their.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Entire Can I get I have one? You know, we
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: were talking about different editorial pages. Here's something I wish
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos had thought of, and I wish mister Salzburger
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: would think of. Why does an editor? Why why do
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: you have to have one? Who set the rule to
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: say you only are allowed to have one? Why not?
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: You know, Look, we live in a world where partisanship
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: is in stereo. Do I wish we didn't? Maybe I'd
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: wish we didn't, But you know what, two hundred of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: our two hundred and fifty years. We have lived this way.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Our media has been partisan much longer than it has
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: been nonpartisan. Okay, we had a brief window between World
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: War two and nine to eleven where we had basically
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a media that attempted to not affiliate with a party.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: But before that and frankly after, it's actually been par
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: for the course that media sort of identified with a
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: with a movement.
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: This is why the papers are called the Rochester Democrat.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: This pretty right, I try.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: It's sort of one of these things that I tell
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: journalism schools all the time. Hey, guys, this is not
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: new right. The Waterbury Republican, the Arkansas Democrat is at
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: the tail Assi Democrat. You brought up Rochester is another one.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: What's wrong with having two editorial pages? Wouldn't it been great?
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: Wouldn't it be great if the New York Times had,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you know, basically had a conservative editorial essentially section and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: a liberal editorial section and frankly allowed them to be
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: side by side.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: Back in the nineties, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, when they
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: had to do their joint operating agreement on Sunday, printed
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: one news newspaper and their editorial page on the left
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: was the Atlantic Constitution and on the right was the
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: Atlanta Journal.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I lived in Atlanta then, and it the greatest.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: Tell you it covered Dixie like to do.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: But how great is that? Like? Why is that? Why
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: is that not? Like that's the world I lived in.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: My father was a conservative who always wanted to know
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: what the liberals were saying. So he subscribed to National
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Review and New Republic. Yeah, all right. He thought the
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Nation was too far of the left, but he was
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: in the New Republic. It was like, that's al Gore's
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: It was like I remember him saying, yeah, the guy
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: is a big al Gore guy. And you know, you know,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: back in the day Marty parrots and yet but the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: point was he wanted both sides of an argument. He
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: wanted to hear it, both sides of the argument. I
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: don't know why newspapers decided they only should have one voice.
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: That's how I was raised. My dad was a social
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: studies teacher, the consummate social studies teacher. When I got
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: into news, he said, let me subscribe you to I
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: swear the two magazines that I got from the age
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: of twelve to eighteen, where the National Review in the
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: New Republic. I mean those were trailblazing magazines then, and
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: I learned the latter from them. I think one of
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: the reasons it doesn't work is that what you just
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: said audience capture, and that the audience you and I
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: want that. And if you poll people, they would say
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: they want that, but.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: I say they want it, yeah, but they don't.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: I think feel dedicated news consumers? Are they? Some are
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: news consumers, many are ideology consumers. Many are tell me
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: the world, give me a reflection of the world as
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: I see it consumers. And I don't know this is
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: overly harsh a criticism, but what if The New York
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: Times did a liberal or conservative editorial page. I'm sure
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: someone listening to this would say they tried it, and
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: then James Bennett got fired based on publishing the Tom
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: Cotton op ed. I think that, Yeah, that's an ideal.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know that we'll ever regain that time.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: No, we're not. But the reason I'm disappointed in Bezos
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: in this is that he had actually applied the lessons
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: he learned from building Amazon the Everything store. Imagine imagine
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: if he behaved as if I want to build the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Everything information.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Store yes, but he wants to maximize profit with Amazon,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: and the Post is a different consideration.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Well, he bought a trophy. I thought he wanted to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: help the business, and it turns out he just wanted
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: a trophy. And then suddenly it wasn't cool to own
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: the trophy, and he was like, oh shit, I either
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: think he's used in the trophy or do I now
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: just use it for my own benefit.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: And that's why he's using it as he uses his
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: contract to do a biopic of Malanya Trump. He uses
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: it for lobbying.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Although when he bought the.
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: Trophy, I remember, I think it was a two hundred
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: and fifty million dollar purchase. Was that the price? I
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: remember the Jacksonville Jaguars went for I think three seventy five,
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: and I remember thinking, what are we doing with society
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: that the Jaguars are worth only one hundred and twenty
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: five million more? Now, the Jaguar, like every NFL franchise,
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: is probably worth a billion.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: In the post can be sold.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: For food, for parts. It's five billion, I think.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: Remember there's only thirty two trophies available in the NFL.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: Even the least valuable trophies, probably a five billion dollar
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: trophy now.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, five billion.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's talk about AI, because you know, I've
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I can vacillate. I am. I am a long term
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: AI optimist, meaning I'm betting on human beings that we're not.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: We're a species that has survived quite a bit over
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: a million years, and we're not going to let robots
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: replace us. So I am, but I am mindful that
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: the transition is going to be quite painful, and I
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: do think that increasingly the next three years are going
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: to be about fear of AI displacement, even though again
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: I think, you know, we'll, we'll probably. My guess is
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the fears a little too soon. Like anything, it's probably
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: coming sooner than we should actually be fearing it. But
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: that's how I try to comfort myself and how I
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: remain optimistic in the long run about AI, even though
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: this is going to be extraordinarily disruptive in the moment.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Where's your head on this?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: There was just a pull out that showed a huge
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: decline in optimism or even excitement about AI. They expect,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: I mean, the vast majority of people expect AI to
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: harm human abilities by twenty thirty five.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Do you blame them for thinking that, by the way, no,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: given what social media, given what the tech companies did
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: to us with social media, right.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: People, And also science fiction and our storytelling plays a role,
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: and so there's I'd say the ratio of dystopian to
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: utopian science fiction is something like one hundred to one.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: It's more easy to tell stories about destruction, although Star
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: Trek is utopian science fiction. So you know, our mind
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: goes to threats. The reason that we are here, as
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: the people who've evolved over a million years, is because
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: we understand threats.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: We evolve from the people who were best position to
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: understand the threats and flee the saber tooth tiger, whereas
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: our would be ancestors who were like, no big deal,
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: they got eaten. They didn't get to reproduce. All that said,
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: there are three camps with AI. The accelerationists who say,
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: bring it on, it's going to change humanity. A lot
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: of them have money involved, right. The doomers, who some
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: prominent people who could have made a lot of money
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: with AI give it a twenty percent chance of killing
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: us all one day. There are a couple prominent people
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: give it a ninety eight percent chance. Then in between
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: and This is a phrase invented by my friend Andy Mills,
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: who just made a good podcast, great podcast about this
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: called the Last Invention the Scouts. And this is where
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: I am, which is pay attention, don't be afraid, be
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: very afraid, but understand the transformative power of this. When
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Sam Altman testified, maybe you remembering three, he was greeted,
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: he shocked the Senate Commerce Committee because he said, yes,
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: please regulate me. And this was a message that they
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: wanted to hear. That was a message I wanted to hear.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: It was refreshing and unusual for a captain of industry
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: to ask for regulation. Cut to two years later, the
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: big concern is China, and he said, well, I don't
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: know about all this regulation. We've got to beat China.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: So what changed?
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Was it just China? Was it Sam Altman in both
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: cases trying to play cat or meet Congress where it was.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: I'm definitely not a doomer. I think it can be
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: totally transformative, especially when it reaches what's called artificial general intelligence.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: This is the computers teaching themselves and accelerating and accelerating.
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: But man, do we need more visibility into how it works?
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: And I'll add this, They don't even know how it works.
• 34:56
  Speaker 2: The people who program AI, who invented AI, will tell you, yeah,
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: we it's kind of a black box and we can't
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: exactly pick it apart and tell you why it did that,
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: not just beforehand, but even afterwards. And that's that is legitimately.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Scary, No, it is, especially when we realize that also
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: we're I mean, we've not had the correct generation matched
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: with the technological regulatory demands that we've had. Right when
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: the Internet first came along, we had a whole bunch
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of people that were very analogued right by the time
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: social media came.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: Along, saying the Internet was a system of tubes.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Right, and then you go to you know, as we
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: go to social media, you have people that are still
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to use email with their
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Aol dot com. You know, they're still figuring out tact
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: By the time we've got an AI, you have people
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: that are still just now getting comfortable with the iPhone premise. Right.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: So that's that's what's scary, is that the people we
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: all like to be the watchers are probably not qualified
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: to know what to watch for. Yeah, even if it
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: adds to the concern.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: Right, and even if they were, I mean, some of
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: these people have backgrounds in the extractive industries. They don't
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: seem too keen on regulating them. There is a Congress
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem keen on being Congress. You know, even Nancy
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: Mace is writing op eds. What is Congress for? They've
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: willingly abdicated their regulative responsibilities. One of the things though,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: that gives me pause. I have great hope for it,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: and I always think, even with the Internet, I'm more
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: in favor of it than opposed. I owe my life
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: to the idea of podcasting. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: be able to get my voice outside wherever a radio
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: tower would take me. Maybe satellites would exist. But I
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: look at the history of big innovations and there's always
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: the doomer. There's always the person who's an expert who
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: gets a lot of attention, because, like I said, our
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: minds go towards, well, what's the worst thing that can happen.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: And at one point it was this guy named King
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Hubbert who predicted peak oil, and he was an experty
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: worked for Shell. He had many people with their colorful
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: charts written in you know, nineteen nineties, fonts we're gonna
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: run out of oil. That was a big concern I
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: think cuts it. Today. A lot of environmentalists would say,
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: thank god, we're going to run out of oil. But
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: we're not going to run out of oil. Shell gets invented,
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: Fracking gets invented. Paul Erlik, who's the most frequent guest
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: on Johnny Carson, wrote the population bomb. It seemed plausible,
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: we're going to outstrip our means of production. So throughout history,
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: Greta Tuneberg, throughout history, there have always been these doomers.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: It's a long tradition of dumers. I'm not even talking
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: about you know, the people who said that the hell
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Bop comet was going to so.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: I guess Jeffrey Hinton would be the AI doomer in
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: this case, right, isn't he the inventor who says be weary?
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Right, there's a twenty percent chance. But there are forever
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: hint in there is one hundred people. Many of them
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: have their fortunes tied to AI. But I'll tell you
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: something else I learned from Andy series, the Last Invention.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Many of the people working in the companies are not doomers,
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: but they're really worried, and they say to themselves. Maybe
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: they don't say I'm a genius, they're geniuses. They're good
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: at this, and they're involved in the work with the
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: knowledge that if it goes wrong, it could go very,
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: very wrong in a way that goes way beyond replacing
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: menial labor and not having some substitute for that. It
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: could I'm not saying death of humanity, but.
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: Maybe they are.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: So. There are a lot of people within the industry
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: who don't want the industry just to go off the rails.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: Maybe you can make an analogy. I don't know the
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: people who work in bioweapons research. I would assume a
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: lot of them think the same thing, and every once
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: in a while bad stuff happens there too.
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: There's one phenomenon that I'm fascinated by that is taking
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: place sort of simultaneously as we're having this sort of
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: race towards AI, and that is it is the one
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: issue that unites left and right, which is should we
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: get this technology out of the schools.
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: I had a woman on from an organization that she
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: founded called Mama Mothers Against Media Addiction, And it's not
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: just about you know, getting rid of phones in classrooms.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: It's also about should we stop handing out iPads and
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: laptops in schools? Right, like do we? You know? And boy,
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty torn on this because on the one hand,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I think we should evolve with technology. On the other hand,
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: I understand the concerns and fears, and there's no doubt
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of study on screen time and what that's done.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: But does fear of screen time in the social media
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: aspect mean you should toss away all technology you know,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: in the classroom. And that's where that's where where I
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: get concerned. But what I find fascinating is that we
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: have a collective fear of what our kids, of how
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: our kids learn, and we're actually it seems like it's
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: the one place where we think we can try and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: do something about it where there's almost like the least
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: amount of political combat over too.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I would remember remember when the big issue
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: was the digital divide, the fear that not enough people
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: would have technology.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: And now we're going the other way. We're like, no, no, no,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: we don't want it in the classroom. It's terrible.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: So where I come down is just because there is
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: junk food doesn't mean there shouldn't be culinary schools just.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Because there are.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Just because there is pornography doesn't mean we shouldn't teach
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: art or figure drawing in school, or even new drawing
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: on the college level. So I definitely think that this
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: is where the world is today. You have to There's
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: always been panics about technology. I don't know if this
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: is a panic. There are legitimate concerns, right the Corruption
• 40:57
  Speaker 2: of the Innocent was congressional hearings about comic books. I
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: do think that.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Video games or Tipper Gore in the music industry, I'm
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: going have to remember when Twisted Sister with something that
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: our parents thought was warping the minds of people like myself.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Sure, Dee Snyder testifying on Capitol Hill in his Twisted
• 41:20
  Speaker 2: Sister Regelia did not wear a suit. Yeah. I also
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: remember Blackie Lawless from a group called Wasp, and I
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: can't even quote on a podcast what his big songs were.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: But yes, so this is a perennial. These are the
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: tools that we use. I think a flat out band
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: would not serve our children well, especially as we compete
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: against China in Singapore. But you know, we saw another
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: version of this where the answer is never just take
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: off the guardrails and trust in technology. With the legalization
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: of sports gambling, it has been a disaster.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: There's a reason results matter more than promises, just like
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: there's a reason Morgan and Morgan is America's largest injury
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: law firm. For the last thirty five years, they've recovered
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: twenty five billion dollars for more than half a million clients.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: It includes cases where insurance companies offered next to nothing,
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: just hoping to get away with paying as little as possible.
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: Morgan and Morgan fought back ended up winning millions. In fact,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, one client was awarded twenty six million dollars,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: which was a staggering forty times the amount that the
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: insurance company originally offered. That original offer six hundred and
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars twenty six million, six hundred and fifty
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: thousand dollars. So with more than one thousand lawyers across
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: the country, they know how to deliver for everyday people.
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: If you're injured, you need a lawyer, You need somebody
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: to get your back. Check out for Thepeople dot Com,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: Slash podcast or Dow Pound Law Pound five to two
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: nine law on your cell phone. And remember all law
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: firms are not the same. So check out Morgan and Morgan.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Their fee is free unless they win. You went to
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: the place I wanted to go because I want to
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: go to prediction markets here And what's CNN and call
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: she are doing? Which I think is I say this.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I love gambling, Mike, I love football gambling. I have
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: also my own biases about what you should be allowed
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: to gamble on and what you're not allowed to gamble on.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: For instance, I don't gamble on player props. You know
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: why because I don't feel like it's an honest market
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: because at the end of the day, you're relying on
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: one person versus a team sport. Like I don't like
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: to bet on individual sports. I don't bet on tennis.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: I don't bet on golf because again, one person. You know,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: it's it is known that tennis players just take an acceptance,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: you know, take an appearance fee and bail. Right, That
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: is just sort of how it works. And it's like
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: it's like betting on the NBA what players are sitting out.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: You know that's now, you know, I enjoy betting on
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: a team sport when I know there's maximum effort, and
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: I know that it's really going to be about somewhat
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: of a game of chance, but also a game of strategy. Yeah,
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: but you're right, keep going. It's interesting fact burn you out.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: I mean, look at the NBA gambling scandal, Look at
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: the baseball gambling scandal.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Where why is this offered? Why are you allowed to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: bet on the first pitch?
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Emmanuel class A can throw the ball directly
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: into the dirt and think he's going to get away
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: from something.
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: And think about this, right, these guys, some of them,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: Let's say you come from a community that didn't have
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of money. You don't have enough to throw
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: money around to them, but you want to throw them
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: a bone, all right. You know, I see how these
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: individual players rationalize it. I'm just trying to help on
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: my pals. I want to help them make a couple
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: of bucks. This is something I can do for them,
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: No harm, no foul, Right, that's I really think that's
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: the rationalization.
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: And Yeah, the idea was that the gigantic salaries played
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: to the hate to these players would protect or indemnify
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: them from ever being tempted. However, at the same time,
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: people were making these arguments and believing it. They weren't
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: just self motivated. We also know about the gigantic rates
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: of bankruptcy among professional athletes. They don't always take care
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: of their money so well. So you have guys like
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: Johntay Porter in the NBA who apparently owed a lot
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: of money to a lot of people, and so all
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: he has to do is claim an injury, take himself
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: out of a game, and then everyone who bet the unders,
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: which for the audience, I'm sure you know, it's if
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: you think he's going to get less than four rebounds
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: or less than three assists or whatever the statistic is,
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: if you fake an injury, you're definitely going to get
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: less than that. He has been thrown out of basketball.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: Terry Rozier is another one who's on the hook. There's
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: the separate gambling scandal with this is so fascinating. The
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: mafia and some coaches and popa gigs that can be
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: read with essentially X ray vision.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: But yeah, bets now, I think that.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: The form of let's just get rid of these silly
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: little prop bets that we're not making that much money
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: on that is that's the deminimus that they have to do.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: The real problem with sports gambling or gambling on the
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: phones isn't even sports gambling or gambling on games where
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: a lot of millionaires have a stake. There are you
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: could still gamble on college games where even though kids
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: are paid the nil money, it's not that much. And
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: there are a lot of very very low level Division
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: one games that were clearly thrown a couple of years ago,
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: and some enforcement though not criminals, been brought against players
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: on I think Mississippi Valley State and some other schools.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: The huge problem there's been a lot of good reporting
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: on this is the online casinos on phones, and this
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: is we maybe you and I focus on sports gambling.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: This is just sad and should never been allowed. And
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: you have home Healthcare AIDS losing fifteen thousand dollars because
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: they're constantly betting slot machines. And if you look at
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: the amount of revenue that the states have taken in sports,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: some of them didn't make good deals with the sports companies.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: And by the way, a lot of these sites, maybe
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: not Fan Duel and DraftKings, but a lot of these
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: other sites are not making anywhere near the money and
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: they thought they would on sports gambling, But if you
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: look at the casino gambling, it's just a roundabout means
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: of addiction. Now on Calshi, we thought we were talking
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: about the prop bets. What about this prop bet? I
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: have my calshilp app open. I don't know if you
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: could see it. Who will be the first member of
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Trump's cabinet to leave?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Now?
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: My update is since that Vanity Fair piece came out
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: rocket Yeah.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: But then you know, well, it's what's funny about the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: prediction markets. It's like, look, I am, I'm trying to
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: keep an open mind about the prediction markets. We used
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: to call the prediction markets the stock market, but I'll
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: set that aside here a minute. Like I would argue
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: that that kind of served as the prediction markets, at
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: least when it came to nonsports events, right, certain stocks
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: went up or down based on, oh, the economy. Economic
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: numbers are based on oh like remember when when ozempic
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: first took off, suddenly didn't freedom lays stock collapse or
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: something like, you know, oh, no, nobody's gonna nobody's gonna
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: eat snacks anymore. Snacking is dead, you know, or good
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: luck with edmands, Like that's a brand that might disappear
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: with with everybody taking ozempic. But it's the it's it's
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: the fact that CNN signed to deal with Calci like
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: incorporating Like is it what does this fact tell you
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: about Susie wilds Now being at the top of this
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: prediction market. Is it just a whole bunch of people
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: wanting to react to something that happened in the news
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: or is there somebody with insider information right now during
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I will confess. So I made my first calshy trade
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: the morning of the college football playoff show. I'm a
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: University of Miami guy, and I was curious to see
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: if things were going to leak the way the Pope
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: not the Pope, the Nobel Peace Prize leaked, and all
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, the prediction market spiked for Machado, and
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, what's that about. Somebody must know something
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: right here was somebody that didn't have any other reason
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: to spike it. So I was curious to see, and
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: I was watching and I literally did it to see
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: if it would leak. Now it turned out it didn't leak.
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: Miami's number was fluctuating up and down somewhere between it
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: got as low as six, got as high as thirty eight,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: But it was in the range of what was what
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: would you would expect if people didn't know the outcome, okay,
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: where they were trying to reject, rather than there wasn't anything.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: But that's why I did it. I didn't do it
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: because I thought. I did it because I thought somebody
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: might know the answer. I didn't do it because I
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: thought crowdsourcing was gonna tell me what the answer was, right.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: I do it because I like to bet eleven dollars
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: on the Jets while they're losing, to give myself some
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: enjoyment of the game. My average bet is like six dollars,
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: so you don't have to worry about me. But the
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: same thing happened with the Time Person of the Year
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: whenever it's a non random outcome, and who will make
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: the college football playoffs. But that's a well guarded outcome,
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: the sort of outcome that someone would get fired if
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: at least they leaked it. I don't know if Vanity
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: Fair or Time magazine, but if you were a copy
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: editor at Vanity Fair and you knew about this market,
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: you knew this Susie Wild's piece, don't.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: You buy Susie wildstock yesterday, right, yeah, and you sell
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: it now yeah right right, That's what you're doing, is
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: you're that's insider trading. And that's where ultimately, I don't
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: know how you can guarantee, you know, other than are
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: we going to have apply insider trading rules to copy
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: editors now in the same way we apply insider trading
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: rules to people that work it?
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Say it, Jore thing. Can you articulate a difference?
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I can't.
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: That's my point. The market with material information that the.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Do we have enough to do? We have enough regulators
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: to keep track of all this?
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To me, the big concern this is a concern.
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: You articulated a concern. The other big concern is when
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: you look at sports coverage and now that all the
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: sport although ESPN has gotten out of it, most of
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: the networks are in bed with this.
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: Or that they didn't get out of it. They just
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: read they just did their deal with DraftKings, right, just shake.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: Got out of it. In terms of it's not ESPN bets.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Sure, but they're doing it's no, I mean, you know,
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: they're just they just took a bigger check from DraftKings, right.
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: So now it really affects the coverage. And maybe you
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: can make the case that CNN could just take some
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: hail Mary's to borrow football term and it's not like
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: their coverage will affect ratings on the downside that much.
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: But it does affect the coverage, and it gears the
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: coverage towards the relatively few people who really care about
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: this stuff.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: And even if you do.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Care about sports gambling in general, do you really care
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: in the start of the fourth quarter when they flash
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: what Van Duel says the Nickson my goods of winning.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: It just really find that's so annoying. Do you know
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: why I watched? In fact, this gets it to my
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: frustration with the college football playoff, with the idea of
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: the subjective committee, where you like, hey, give me what
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: the statistically best teams are. When I'm like, I've said
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: this to various people who are sports fans, and I'll
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: ask you the question, Mike, do you watch sports to
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: see the most probable outcomes happen? Or do you watch
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: it enjoy sports because every once in a while there's
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: an improbable result and you're like, wow, my son will
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: tell you why is he a college football fan? Because
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: the first college football memory he has was from watching
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: my wife and I go crazy over the kick six
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: the Auburn Alabama game where he kicks a field where
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: he attempts the field goal and the guy runs it
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: back to win the You're like, oh my god, I've
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: never seen a game end like that. That's unbelievable. Alabama
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: was the better football team. Alabama always is the better
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: football team. Nine times out of ten, Alabama wins that game.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: So why do we bother playing the games? Because we're
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: kind of we're kind of curious to see if the
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: improbable happens, which is why when they do stupid things
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: like lee Florida State out a couple of years ago.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: You're like, you're actually taking away the opportunity for a
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: sports movie, which, Oh, by the way, what do we love.
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: We love a good sports movie. We love a grandpa
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: that takes a snap in an NFL game. That's pretty interesting.
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: I kind of want to see that, right, Like.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: The kicks a field goal.
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: Oh hey, I know that movie. I know exactly the
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: one you're talking about. The Doctor, the God. I forget
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: was what the name of it was, The Donkey.
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: It was not Gladys The kicking mule. It was, yeah,
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: it'll hit me someone.
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: That's a don Knots, Right, wasn't like coach don Knots.
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he made he made a sound like whoosh
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: every time he kicked. Oh, what do you think of
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: James Madison and Tulane both in the college football playoffs,
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: but not Notre Dame.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: So I'm of two minds, Right, I want the center
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: and I know this is what and I this is
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: where I wish college football had a commissioner because I
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: think the conferences, nobody that leads a conference or an
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: athletic director has the best interest of the entire game
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: in mind. Right, there is no what's best for college football.
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: It is great for college football. If there's an opportunity
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: for a Cinderella, we want to. You know, it was
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: great to see George Mason make that run to the
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: final four, right, that was really cool. It was It's
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: awesome when Butler got to the end the final of
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: the NCAA tournament, Right, that was something we were curious about.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: That was great. And yet we also want to see
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Kentucky in North Carolina or Kentucky in Duke because that's
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: awesome too. So I get the need for that. I
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: do think people don't realize and the coverage of college
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: football is terrible. The reason they had to do that
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: is they were preventing a lawsuit from the other conferences
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: from basically, you know, they can't legally keep these other
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: They had to give a pathway to prevent a lawsuit
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: from all these group of five conferences. Who would have
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: said that the big four schools in ESPN were essentially
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: violating you know, Violet, we're a monopoly, right, violating antitrust.
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: So that's why it exists. And they had to put
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: the rules in, wrote the rules. The way they did
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: it that was a lawyer telling them, well, you need
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: to at least give the group of five conferences a
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: chance that hey, if your champion is in the top
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: five of all champions, right then then you can say no, no, no,
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: we're not blocking them out of it. I'd personally like
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: to see a group of five playoff, like you take
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: the four top group of five conferences and they play,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you know, they play a little mini tournament and the
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: winner gets to come in. It's actually how the n
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: i T and the NCAA used to work way back
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: in the fifties. If there's one school that has that
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: has won both the n T and the NC Double
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: A in the same year. Do you know the name?
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: City College of New York.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: I knew you would know. It's so interesting. You're one
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: of the few guests I could have that would be like,
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: he knows more minutia than I do, and it's you.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: Do you know their nickname?
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: The Cooney nickname? I do not think.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: I think they were the Beavers, but I'm going to
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: check that.
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: So here's where I disagree. Uh, your analysis was right.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: You set the stage, you laid the predictor correctly. I
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: don't think you want both James Madison into Lane in.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: The way we only want one, right.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, my son's a freshman at Tulane. I was never
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: a college football fan. I got so into them this year.
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: He stormed the field.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: It's fun. Oh, my son's a freshman at SMU. I
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: was at the goddamn Miami SMU game where he did
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: what storm the field? So yes, my son stormed the
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: field on a Miami game. I do.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I do think the analogy between you want George Mason
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: or Butler to make it those schools were legitimately better
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: and not only does the record show they could hold
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: their own against the power schools.
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: You know, in the final.
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: Where I was there, I was covering a fri endpr
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: The best player in that Duke Butler game was Gordon
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Hayward of Butler. So that is not the case with
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Tulane and James Madison those schools.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: Maybe Tulane is a chance.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Tulane is I would look at least Tulane played a
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: couple of power for schools, right, They played Duke and
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: they played Old miss right, like you know there. Put
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: it this way, when the ACC breaks up, they're going
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: to become a member of whatever's left of the Accah,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: They're the next, They're the next, They're sort of next
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: in line, right, Tulane and Memphis are probably in ut
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: San Antonio are probably the next three schools to get
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: the call up into the Power for if there's room
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: for more road runners. So yes, well, oh oh absolutely,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: I don't think people between UTSA and us F Bright
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: South Florida being the other one. These are schools that
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: basically have been created by the population booms of those
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: two states over the last thirty years. Where these are
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: commuter schools, and now they're just substantials in state universities.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: U TSA b TU lane quite handily this year. So
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: I can't confirm. The City College of New York's are
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: the Beavers. Their mascot is Benny the Beaver. And I
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: will also give you this. Do you know what other
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: prominent though division free school is nicknamed the Beavers? Division
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: one would be Oregon State State? Right which Division II?
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: And I'll give you a hint. The reason there the
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: beavers is that the beaver is nature's engineer.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: The beaver is nature's engineer. Interesting, is it? M I
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: T does excellent work?
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: Correct?
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: Okay? M I T?
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: Beavers?
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: That is that feels like uh, that feels like an idea.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: They came up with, Hey, what's a good reason for
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: us to have beavers? That isn't what we what everybody's
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: going to assume? What could we what could we actually?
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: What can we say that would be plausibly uh an explanation?
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: You know?
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: I mean? And when they when they face the Presbyterian
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: blue hose.
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: H all right, let me so prediction markets are you
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: do you think they will be legal? Or do you
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: think we will when we have a sober up moment
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: on sports gambling that the prediction markets are in trouble too.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: They shouldn't be legal. I don't mean normatively, I mean
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: according to the law there their reason for not being
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: the reason for being legal is something other than entertainment.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: Is that they try to make the case that they're
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: like more like a commodities market. There is no VIG,
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: so that's something in their favor. But I don't know
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: who's playing, what commodity or what business is benefiting from
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: the existence of a prediction market.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: Maybe you could.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: Say, if you're the if you're the sports bar in
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: Kansas City, and you bet against the Chiefs to make
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: the playoffs because you know it's going to impact business
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: in January, and that's a hedge. But that is so
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: far fetched. So as I look at the law, it
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't seem that they have a better case to not
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: be regulated than any traditional sports books. And it's not
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: the VIG isn't the big or the cut and percent
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: isn't the big reason there.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: You know, let me get you out of here. On
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: the following it's sort of a historical fact that I'm
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: curious if you'll turn into a prediction Ever since the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: end of the pandemic. I've had a different view of
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: prohibition because you now realize how did prohibitions start? You know,
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: it always had a small group of people arguing to
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: ban alcohol. Right. You watch the TV show Gilded Age, Right,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Cynthia Nixon's character is actually holding meetings, right, the Temperance
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: movement and all that stuff. But we don't actually do
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: it until just after the nineteen seventeen and eighteen pandemic,
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: which tells me that like pandemics sort of make us
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: do crazy things, right, we sort of we go to
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: our extremes, we do certain things, and within a decade
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: we decide, wholl this was a bad idea. Whether it's gambling,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: whether it's the legalization of marijuana. What's something that we've
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: been letting happen right that we'll we'll look back on
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: and say in twenty five years and say, yeah, we
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: ended that. After a decade experiment, we realized that's not
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: good for society. We sobered up. Is it sports gambling,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: is it marijuana? Is it something else? Yeah?
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: I think the casino gambling, there's just so little justification
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: for it, and it's creating more victims that the states
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: have to take care of so sports gambling. I don't know.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: I'm not willing to make that prediction, but I think
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: being able to since only a few states allow it,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: you know, bang slot machines on your phones, I do
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: think that will end. I think another one is I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: think there's going to be massive regulation of the NIL
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: business because it's not a business and it doesn't help
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: anyone everyone. You know, there are obviously a few people
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: taking advantage of it, But the why do big time
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: college sports exist. It's the fan experience, right, It's not
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: the student athletes. So schools can make money because the
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: fans enjoy watching them, and I think it is getting
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: in the way of the fan experience to some extent,
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: so there's going to be major reformation there. I would
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: also say that there's no reason just to pay kids
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: for NIL with their ability to go on Instagram, get
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: hundreds of thousands of followers and just sell their advertising.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: Maybe.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: I've also always thought that puppy mills should be illegal,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: but that's not in the that didn't happen recently. I
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: see that trend maybe coming. But you know, prohibition was
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: a big progressive movement, wasn't it. It was said to
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: be a leap forward, and all the suffragists and all
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: the people who were associated with the progressive causes were
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: most in favor of it, and it turned out to
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: be a mistake. So in that way, you know, marijuana
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: legalization or whatever the extremely flawed rollout was, it reminds
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: me of it. So I don't see us going back.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, I see, I don't think so on marijuana
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: because we're not having there isn't you know it is
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: It turns out that you know, it isn't any more
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: or less addictive than alcohol, And it might be arguments
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: it's slightly less addictive in alcohol. What's not been true?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: And you've di you know, we don't know yet that
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: it really has. What benefits there are there may be.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: Seems like almost none.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: It seems like there may be killing benefits. I could
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: see that, you.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Know, payment half people like maybe your rope is higher.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I will say this, I've had two people in
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: my life with MS and they swear by it. They
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: swear by.
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 2: It, but is there nothing else that they would.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: There's nothing else that allows them to Everything else makes
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: them too loopy or makes them too sick, right like,
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: for whatever a reason, weed is the right amount of
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: it actually helps them with an appetite right what they need,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: and at the same time still doesn't totally fog up
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: their brain. It's this fine line, right. I know, if
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: you take too much weed, it can fog up your brain.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: But some of the the you know, the painkillers you're
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: getting from the from the pharmaceutical company.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: I think the argument to the medical marijuana argument wasn't
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: that the people with glaucoma or ms were lying. It
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: was that everyone claimed to have back pain in order
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: to qualify for medical arijuana. And so eventually the states
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: just said, let's just legalize marijuana, but they didn't do
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: it in the right way, and the rollout was done
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: so inexactly. And this is where execution comes into effect.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: And this is where our state capacity. You know what
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: the abundance agenda and what Dunkleman wrote about about why
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: nothing works, like for all our arguments about this should
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: or shouldn't be done, and what are the normative changes,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: whatever you decide, doing it well is as important as
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: just doing it. So there's a way to legalize marijuana
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: where it works well. And I think there's probably a
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: way to get some version of the prediction markets work
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: that help more people than they hurt. I just I'm
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: skeptical that our government is capable of that way in
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty five.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Well, here's the problem, right, I've always said, you know,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: I think being libertarian is in the DNA of Americans. Right,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: It's sort of like no, no, no, no. The whole point
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: of this country was no, no, no. We want to we
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: want to decide for ourselves what religion we do, and
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: we want to decide for ourselves and all this stuff.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: But unfortunately, when we make it, we're making a libertarian.
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: We're sort of following through a libertarian idea about hey,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: you smoke what you want to smoke, or you take
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: what you want to take, but you do need a
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: highly regulated delivery system, right in order to fulfill this
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: libertarian demand, right, And that's I think the problem is
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: that that's that's probably they just run into each other. Right.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: Our DNA is like a live and let live to
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: a point, but you kind of need a highly structured
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: system in order to deliver this property, or at least
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: somewhat structured.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: And the libertarians I know would not say they're against
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: liquor licenses. They're just against liquor licenses that are given
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: via corruption or suppressed or or given maybe even to anyone.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: You know. Libertarians are always will also admit that their
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: arguments well, I don't know, they'll always admit it, but
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 2: the honest ones will say, our arguments do tend to
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 2: fall apart when it comes to kids.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Mike, I always enjoyed my conversations with you. Are you
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: still you still read hard copies of things? Or are
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: you all digital?
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: I mean I could reach for like my it's all
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: it's all New Yorker in print and New York Times
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: in print, and yes, yes.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: Because I miss remembering where I read something, and when
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: I read everything on digital, when I read everything on
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: the same machinery, it doesn't matter whether I'm reading The Atlantic,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: the Times, the Post, the gristlit it doesn't matter, right,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: it all looks the same. And I missed being able
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: to differentiate visually where I read stuff. So yeah, I
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: was curious if we still read.
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: I remember where on the page I read things, and
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: that's really important. And it keeps some of these books
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: behind me because I have to get to them and
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: I will be doing the interviews, but a lot of
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: them are I don't know if they're cherished. They just
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: gave me a lot of information. And even though I
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: say abstractly I suppose I could try to find it
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: on the kindle version, I can't. I definitely could find
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: it in the physical version.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah. No, I wonder if print has been more resilient
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: than I think many book publishers thought. And I'm wondering
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: if there's something there on local news that maybe that
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: maybe there's a way to bring print back selectively, even
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: in the local level.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I know Tablet has a print play that's
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: going pretty well for them. It's it's maybe like vinyl
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: with among the music officionados.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: Well we're starting to see, but I read something where.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: It's pretty it does pretty well for the record companies
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: they're vinyl divisions.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Well, especially when you're charging forty dollars an album. I
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: don't know if you bespoke, you bought one of these
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: newly new this new way that hey, get a Taylor
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: Swift album for your daughter on vinyl, you know, and
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: it's like fifty bucks even at Target. Anyway, Mike and
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: Joe the holidays, you too, Do you travel or do
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: you host?
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: I do a little of each I think I usually
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: take my vacation two weeks later to beat all the crowds.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: But as always, as always, Chuck, thank you for having
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: me and Go Beavers.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: Go be If you learned anything it's the fact that
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: the only person that knows more minutia, particularly sports venusia,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: than myself, it's you, mister Presca Cooney lifts Go Beavers.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks brother,