Episode 130

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Published on:

18th Apr 2025

Hyperpunditry

This week we dig into the spread of hyperpunditry and why the Information Space rewards those who confidently switch lanes with abandon. Plus: AI’s bottoms-up adoption curve, Anonymous Banker on golf media’s strength and the crazy life of sea turtles.

Transcript
Brian:

Welcome guys.

Brian:

How are you?

Troy:

We're good.

Troy:

I'm good.

Troy:

I don't know how Alex is.

Troy:

I'm good.

Alex:

I'm great.

Alex:

I'm in Palm Springs, not Palm Springs.

Alex:

I'm in the desert.

Alex:

No, I'm in 29.

Alex:

Palms.

Troy:

Is that that kind of little hotel thing

Troy:

called 29 Palms?

Alex:

There's more than one

Alex:

hotel.

Troy:

That's a fun spot.

Troy:

I like it there.

Alex:

It's very nice.

Alex:

I like the desert.

Alex:

It's peaceful.

Brian:

We got a lot to get, get to today.

Brian:

So I wanna

Brian:

get

Troy:

got a lot on the docket.

Brian:

vacation travel

Brian:

log has been fascinating.

Brian:

Maybe we cut it out.

Brian:

Maybe we leave it in.

Brian:

All right, let's get started.

Brian:

Welcome to People versus Algorithms.

Brian:

I'm Brian Morrissey.

Brian:

Joined as always by Troy Young and Alex Schleifer.

Brian:

we are gonna have

Brian:

an, an, anonymous banker is coming on later I'd like them to discuss, golf media because banking, golf seems like it makes a lot of sense.

Brian:

And I think golf is actually really interesting.

Brian:

But we want to get started a little bit of a carryover from last week, although we got some negative feedbacks and I'll, I'll share that in a little bit.

Brian:

But one of the things I think I got wrong about the decentralization of media was this assumption, that I had that in a world flooded with content, expertise would naturally rise in value.

Brian:

And the idea was like, there's more noise.

Brian:

So the signal will emerge.

Brian:

It will be more valuable than ever.

Brian:

And there's definitely examples of this, but I think what it's led to is a creation of what Alex Expertly branded and Troy tried to rip off as the hyper pundits.

Brian:

And I'm gonna do my best of, of sort of framing this, but to me.

Brian:

I think it's a flattening of hierarchy and punditry works better than say, like news reporting in this kind of environment.

Brian:

First of all, it's scalable, it's flexible, and it's cheap.

Brian:

The margins are great on punditry.

Brian:

Kara Swisher probably makes orders of magnitude more doing hyper punditry than she did when she was running, a news operation at Recode.

Brian:

Same with Scott Galloway.

Brian:

I mean, I give this guy a lot of credit.

Brian:

I remember watching his videos when he was doing it L two, that luxury consultancy, and I was like, why is this ball guy doing these videos?

Brian:

People don't wanna look at that.

Brian:

And he just put in the 10,000

Brian:

hours, became really good at it, and then didn't stay in his

Brian:

lane.

Brian:

I mean, he's now got like Prof chi markets.

Brian:

He like holds court on politics.

Brian:

He's, he's gonna reinvent masculinity.

Alex:

he's

Alex:

telling The young men how how to

Troy:

Brian, as a sign of

Troy:

the Times, I kind of f found this staggering and maybe we can answer your question about.

Troy:

Whether you were wrong or not around expertise, 'cause I don't think you're wrong, but Scott interviewed the prime minister of Canada on his prof, G pod yesterday.

Brian:

Yeah,

Troy:

I just think that's

Troy:

like a kind of important sign of where we're at.

Brian:

well, Jason Cals had to buy all these

Brian:

suits because, you know, they're like interviewing like cabinet secretaries and hanging out

Brian:

at the White House, although it seems like when they go to the

Brian:

White House, Jason, Jason doesn't get invited.

Brian:

but this is, you know, part and parcel of this world.

Alex:

Jason, seems like a guy that doesn't get invited to parties.

Brian:

I'm not gonna comment on that.

Brian:

But, you know, just a couple weeks ago we had, you know, Nick Denton on and he was like a short seller.

Brian:

I kept trying to ask him about media and he kept wanting, wanting to like, go over to like the Chinese battery production statistics and whatnot.

Brian:

and that's just, that's just the way of the world these days.

Brian:

And to me.

Brian:

This is the way I look at it, and then I want to get into the conversation.

Brian:

This is just another market that has just been democratized and it's the marketplace of ideas has become this insane, bizarre, and that was because the supply was always artificially constricted.

Brian:

Now it's always

Brian:

one of those, be careful what you wish for, but to me, the expert

Brian:

class in quotes, they're gonna just need to compete with these information entrepreneurs.

Brian:

Like there's no putting the genie back in the

Brian:

bottle.

Brian:

So like whining about the fact that venture capitalists, you know, are holding forth on Ukraine and all the rest of it isn't really gonna do much.

Brian:

I mean, the experts have to get better at what, the information entrepreneurs are running laps around them at.

Brian:

And that's mostly in presentation and format and being able to mix it up and look, infotainment has always done better than like, quote unquote hard news.

Brian:

So I don't think this is anything particularly new.

Brian:

So I wanna gi I wanna give it first to, to you Alex, since you coined the term hyper pundit.

Brian:

I think there's some controversy about that, but I think you

Alex:

There's no controversy about that.

Alex:

We have the rec, we have the receipts.

Troy:

I think actually the AI invented it and you appropriated it.

Alex:

No, I mean, that's the risk though.

Alex:

Like, you go out and you start using my term without telling who it is, and

Troy:

I didn't do it.

Alex:

then you ask AI and,

Alex:

and they

Brian:

We're, we're getting into the decline of IP next, so, so

Brian:

we can

Alex:

So, so, but first, Brian, what was the, you said we had, we had some blow

Brian:

Oh, well, the negative feedback was,

Brian:

you know, because nobody stays in their lanes.

Brian:

And so like, but to me, like we, obviously this is,

Brian:

is media and tech and culture, so that's very broad and, and you can't avoid the the overall environment, otherwise you're just gonna be myopic.

Brian:

And so I think last week we, we had a,

Brian:

a very, I, I thought it was an enjoyable discussion, about expertise.

Brian:

and Troy had his, I, it should be like a viral, would it be a screed?

Brian:

Troy?

Brian:

Troy?

Brian:

what was it like about Jamma pate?

Brian:

I think it was, it's scree.

Brian:

anyway, there was some politics in there, but I didn't think it was too heavy Politics.

Brian:

But, I got an email, from a listener.

Brian:

I'll keep, I'll keep them, anonymous.

Brian:

And, this is what it said, Brian, the PVA pod is just a very bad political show between Alex and his Trump slash Elon Derangement syndrome and Troy's embrace of the clearly impaired tale of the wr. You have all

Brian:

lost the PVA plot.

Brian:

The show

Brian:

was great.

Brian:

Using the past tense there is tough.

Brian:

the other, this person, this correspondent did say that they're happy that, my other

Brian:

podcast seems insulated for now.

Brian:

that was I guess, a bit of a threat and they urged

Brian:

go back and ask why PVA exists.

Brian:

and I, bet you'll find there isn't much of a reason if you break down the last six months of shows.

Brian:

So, there's that, dunno if I totally agree on, on all of that, but I do think that that is just a, a, a sign of the times.

Brian:

I mean, you can't, to me, I'm, I like this show because we can go into a lot of different areas.

Troy:

Comments.

Brian:

I mean, you got compared to Te Taylor, what is it that you're, Taylor Uh, it's, this is offensive to both you and Taylor.

Troy:

it's more to me, it's an absurd note, but, no, we appreciate the feedback, but I, I don't likening me to Taylor Loren's.

Troy:

I mean, Alex does have Elon Derangement syndrome, so I think that's

Alex:

Uh, I mean, it's true and I have no, no reason for it.

Alex:

It's absolutely fine.

Alex:

He's fine, he's

Alex:

fine.

Alex:

He guys,

Alex:

every,

Troy:

Alex, well, I didn't mean to trigger you, Alex.

Troy:

We're we're, let's focus on the

Troy:

question.

Alex:

not, I'm not,

Alex:

triggered.

Alex:

I'm fine.

Alex:

He's fine.

Troy:

Yeah, he's fine.

Alex:

He's, he's fine, right?

Alex:

Like, we all like

Alex:

him.

Alex:

He's fine.

Alex:

I

Brian:

this is a symptom.

Alex:

You know

Alex:

what, the funny

Troy:

No, no.

Troy:

So this is happening again.

Troy:

It's happening.

Alex:

Hang on, hang on.

Alex:

The funny thing, the, the, the irony, I just wanna point out the irony of being of someone telling you to stay in your lane when you're complaining about Elon Sting in his

Alex:

lane.

Alex:

Like, you know when he was done building rockets,

Alex:

he decided to re reformat the government.

Alex:

So like, yeah, we all have

Alex:

opinions, man.

Alex:

I don't know who this is.

Brian:

But I think that is the, a core of this is we do all have opinions and we got our

Brian:

like hot takes and whatnot, but I think that gets at the heart of, of,

Brian:

what becomes hyper punditry.

Brian:

and I think it is like an enduring feature of the information space.

Brian:

So unpack it for us.

Brian:

Alex, this is your term.

Brian:

This is

Brian:

trademarked.

Alex:

yeah, unpack it.

Alex:

I don't know.

Alex:

I, I, this podcast, you know, we say it's about the intersection or the

Alex:

patterns in media, technology and culture.

Alex:

so we're gonna talk about media, technology and culture.

Alex:

and unfortunately or

Alex:

fortunately, these are very broad topics.

Alex:

It's a very kind of wide circles that form this really broad Venn diagram.

Alex:

and I wish we could have, you know, I wish I was part of more like of a

Alex:

focused tech PO podcast.

Alex:

I like talking about this stuff, but unfortunately

Brian:

no

Brian:

no offense

Brian:

taken.

Alex:

No, I mean, I, I, it is mostly, it's mostly because that's what I know most about and I appreciate that.

Alex:

I don't know much about a lot of the other topics, but what happens is, things are constantly brought into the, the, the fray.

Alex:

Like it's impor possible to talk about culture and media without, slipping into politics.

Alex:

It's very hard to keep your opinion away from, from your takes.

Alex:

but I don't want to

Alex:

kind of dwell too much on that email.

Alex:

I kind of regret asking you to read it actually, but it's, yeah, we, feedback is, always welcome.

Alex:

but, you know, none always agreed to, I think the challenge for me with those, those new types of pundits is that there is no, there are no real stakes.

Alex:

because you don't really have to be Right.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

I think, a lot of the, the tech journalists that I used to read, and even Kara Swisher used to have takes and they were playing within their field, and therefore that was their currency, that they would

Alex:

exist within tech and the quality of their takes in tech would build up the equity that they had in that market.

Alex:

But right now, everybody has

Alex:

a kind of be, is able to bring, to be brought in, in,

Alex:

and and there's deliver

Alex:

so much content.

Alex:

It's kind of hard to see.

Alex:

To track what bullshit Scott Galloway might have said, you know, he might say 80% of stuff that, that sounds

Alex:

correct, and then it gets all

Alex:

chopped up and he has opinions about

Alex:

everything.

Alex:

So it's hard to, it's hard to grade those

Alex:

people.

Alex:

I think that's part of that challenge for me.

Alex:

and and when it's, whether it's Chamath or one of, or Scott or, or any one of

Alex:

these guys, everybody's got opinion

Alex:

about everything.

Alex:

And that's a part of that is because, I mean, we're, we're kind of in the middle of it because culture, technology, and media has all blended together.

Alex:

Like, you know, the, the business of media, everybody participates in it.

Alex:

we're seeing kind of these, you know, a hundred year old

Alex:

brands, that are you know, you

Alex:

competing against kind of dudes in

Alex:

their bedrooms.

Alex:

everybody has access to technology.

Alex:

Everybody has opinions and it's

Alex:

be, it's, and it's made this market where the only

Alex:

thing that you really need is.

Alex:

Some form of measure of

Alex:

success.

Alex:

So it could be, you know, oh, this guy's got 16 million Twitter followers.

Alex:

Scott Galloway and Chamath are both rich guys.

Alex:

Like the amount of the the pipeline from rich guy to

Alex:

influencer is huge because rich guys immediately

Alex:

get more attention immediately the, their words come out truer because

Alex:

they say, well, This

Alex:

person's rich.

Alex:

The amount of times that I hear that, well, you know, he is a billionaire, you know, he must know.

Alex:

Right?

Brian:

Well, maybe

Brian:

that's the new credential.

Brian:

You don't

Alex:

it's the new credential.

Brian:

the PhD

Troy:

Well, but let's deconstruct it in maybe a bit different way, talking about why, you know, trying to

Troy:

understand why.

Troy:

And the first is, Brian.

Troy:

I think that if you're gonna read about something, expertise does really matter, right?

Troy:

Expertise in, you know, articulating a position through, well-crafted argument in a, you know, a written format.

Troy:

So I think that, you know,

Troy:

faced with a lot of options, you know, in, in what you consume from, you know, people putting, you know, text-based content primarily out into the internet, you're gonna go to where you find substance and expertise.

Troy:

I think that once you move to, you know, audio and video, it's a very different equation.

Troy:

And, that's why comedians do so well here, because your ability to engage in banter back and forth to, you know, juggle both sides, of

Troy:

a position without maybe the depth substance, you know, bonafides, whatever becomes, you know, the thing that wins in the medium.

Troy:

And then as you know, institutionalized media starts to disintegrate.

Troy:

Where do people that are important?

Troy:

Like this is imp Like, it, it, it's pre pretty interesting, right?

Troy:

Like.

Troy:

Where does Carney, the prime minister of like, you know, a big country, go to be heard in America and he is gonna go to where the people are and you know, so is Scott Galloway a credible interviewer?

Troy:

I think he can do an okay job in that forum.

Troy:

Does he have, you know, the structure and, and, and, and, and all of the things that we would expect in institutional media to

Troy:

prepare for that discussion and, you know, to maybe intersect it with, you know, experts or, you know, provide the right kind of form.

Troy:

Maybe it's not perfect, but it's still a place for discussion.

Troy:

And we're seeing this kind of emergence of the, this kind of public commons where people kind of talk it out.

Troy:

And so then we see, and we know that the first and most important thing is, as you said at this kind of in infotainment equation, that's why you see the emergence of debate because debate is, is is something that.

Troy:

Creates, you know, tension and throws the audience into the frame, because now I can take a side, I can participate, but also,

Troy:

you know, we're getting this other sort of slightly performative thing where Ezra Kline goes on the All In podcast, right?

Troy:

Where Steve Bannon is invited onto the Newsom podcast

Brian:

it's the man in the arena.

Troy:

yeah, it's, and is it a display of courage from Ezra?

Troy:

Is it a sort of, is it, is it, is it, is it his social obligation that he feels he needs to defend the virtues of liberal, you know, thinking inside of the lion's den?

Troy:

You know, I, I, I'm not quite sure what the, is he promoting the book?

Troy:

I think sort of all of the above, right?

Troy:

And, but, but really what's happening is podcasting has, in, in my mind it's sort of like if, if text.

Troy:

Democratic publishing of, you know, upended media, like, like, you know, legacy media.

Troy:

Podcasting is building on that, right?

Troy:

Like now, all of the people that are in my podcast feed, I mean, some of them may be monetized by established media like Vox, but they're all independence.

Troy:

Like no one listens to, I mean, maybe you listen to like Morning Update from NPR, but you're not listening to like CBS podcasts, you're not listening to Fox Podcasts, you're listening to Independence.

Troy:

You know, the structure's completely broken down and therefore the people that win from an audience perspective, are the ones that have, you know, manufactured a product that that travels.

Troy:

And so that, that's what's

Brian:

Yeah, mean, it's kind of like the packaging is almost more important than the quote, what used to be the substance of the product.

Brian:

Right?

Brian:

Which is, to me, indicative of where we are just overall, right?

Brian:

Like the tariffs have brought very clear that most of our companies in America don't make anything.

Brian:

They're brands.

Brian:

And they, they might design it or something.

Brian:

They might send the CAD design over to, to the supply chain in China.

Brian:

I dunno if you've seen all these TikTok videos from the OEM manufacturers, which by the way has been a great advertisement for those who want to ban TikTok.

Brian:

'cause it's very clear what the Chinese government could do with TikTok, for instance, to get, their viewpoints in front of, the American people.

Brian:

but they've all been basically, you know, pulling back the curtain on the fact that none of these.

Brian:

Quote unquote, luxury brands make anything really.

Brian:

I mean, they might do a little bit of final stitching in Italy, but it's all done in, in China.

Brian:

And you know, they got really mad, I think for a good reason when, JD Vance called them peasants.

Brian:

I've never been to China.

Brian:

Everything I see from there, they're not peasants.

Brian:

They've got some, I saw some drone delivery.

Brian:

They, somebody got a cheeseburger delivered by drone.

Brian:

anyway, I, I think that that is part of all of this in that the packaging in some ways becomes more important in the substance.

Brian:

And I think when you're talking about this, when you talk about infotainment, the, the being able to package an argument and being entertaining and being compelling is more important than being credentialed

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

I mean, which is why I kind of think Troy Troy's point, and we had another email from someone who, who mentioned that, I mean, Troy's point

Alex:

last week was that, you know, sometimes he wants to hear from the economist or, or from an economist or a scientist about a scientific topic.

Alex:

But I think pundits were never that.

Alex:

And if they were economists and, and scientists, they might have not been the best one, but they were definitely the most entertaining.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

and it is, it is entirely, it is entirely entertainment.

Alex:

But the, the, the, the challenge I have, and I wonder if it's like, do you think it's kind of the death of.

Alex:

You know, we, we've talked about this before there, the death of the written word and the fact that even that term podcast is not the right, it's not the right media format.

Alex:

Those are like just little shows they exist on, you know, they're distributed on podcasts, they exist on YouTube, et cetera.

Alex:

And, and because of the format, because of the long form format, there's a lot less scrutiny on what's being said.

Alex:

Like, I know that if we had to record a 20 minute podcast that then had to be transcribed into something readable, I would definitely fail.

Alex:

Right.

Brian:

you're actually arguing against yourself, who you're, you're the anti writing person on this

Alex:

I'm not the anti Right.

Brian:

I'll turn on you.

Alex:

Just go ahead.

Alex:

This is what makes good.

Alex:

It's a good infotainment.

Brian:

what, I know what retails,

Troy:

the, but Brian said I, he's sent calling you illiterate.

Alex:

Yeah, that's right.

Brian:

I didn't go that far, although that might work.

Alex:

Yeah,

Brian:

No, but you're anti writing.

Brian:

'cause to me, like writing, the reason that Jeff Bezos has this thing about writing out everything in a memo is because you can't hide.

Brian:

You when you have like shitty logic, you cannot hide it in, in writing if, if someone knows how to truly do critical reading.

Brian:

Whereas you can do all kinds of performative hand waving stuff, verbally and particularly when, when, in person too.

Brian:

I mean, like I always, there's people who were always great at meetings, right?

Brian:

And like, then you started unpacking.

Brian:

You're like, oh, that's just like charisma and confidence.

Brian:

There's like literally no substance here.

Brian:

We've all had that experience.

Brian:

I think

Troy:

Yeah, I just was sort of breaking down.

Troy:

Maybe you guys can help me, like what would've happened before.

Troy:

So, Mark Carney has, a agenda.

Troy:

And so Mark Carney has legions of PR people and, you know, foreign service people that would say you are going, how do we influence this, you know, evil company that's, you know, tanking our economy.

Troy:

And so Mark Carney has to go somewhere, do something, travel to Washington, get on CNN, you know, I don't know, do a long form interview on 60 minutes or something.

Troy:

And there used to be a structure for that, or maybe it was less important before because we didn't hash these things out in, in public.

Troy:

And so you, you have basically a new mechanism for someone that has an old fashioned PR objective, like the prime minister of a country wanting to influence.

Troy:

The dialogue in, in, in, in another country.

Troy:

And then you have a whole, a different kind of thing where a whole new kind of legion of entitled, sort of quote unquote first principle thinkers out of Silicon Valley

Troy:

who've succeeded in building a product and accumulating wealth now asserting themselves, which is the big shift that's happened in Washington on the public space, right?

Troy:

So this is, you know, everyone that's got money and influence from Silicon Valley kind of, marching on Washington.

Troy:

And, and there it's a different thing because you've got a new type of participant in this, kind of information space wanting to influence.

Troy:

Policy and how we think.

Troy:

And that ranges from, you know, people that have been absorbed into, you know, into Washington like Sachs to the guys in the All In Podcast to like, I would argue Palmer Lucky on being interviewed

Troy:

by Rick Rubin and advancing, you know, his new kind of point of view on the failure of the American kind of military industrial complex.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

Like the, the, and where would Palmer Lucky have gone before to do that?

Troy:

It didn't exist,

Brian:

I mean, he would get like a Fortune article or

Troy:

right?

Troy:

Massively processed through a machine,

Alex:

I mean, he'd write, he'd need to write a, I mean, here's what it used, used to happen.

Alex:

You'd write a book and then you'd do a press tour and you'd, you'd repeat your talking points, on that press tour.

Alex:

You'd get some media training to make sure that you get all your points across.

Alex:

And, and you'd do that for a month and a half, right?

Alex:

Isn't that what people would do?

Alex:

So, uh, but, but now, now it can be, I'm gonna drop a tweet, and then I'm gonna go, you know, and I'm, and I'm going on these podcasts.

Alex:

Everybody, everybody wins because I mean, even Ezra Klein, I ping on the All In.

Alex:

That's like, that's, you know, audience capture in a lot of ways.

Alex:

You know?

Alex:

Oh, we bring an audience that wasn't, that has less of an overlap with ours.

Alex:

And so it grows our audience.

Alex:

Everybody wins and everybody's in on it.

Alex:

Because as a client, Al also wants to do audience capture, you know?

Alex:

and now, I mean, it's, I. You know, our governor here in California has his own podcast, so, so that becomes the deal with him now.

Alex:

And now I wonder how

Troy:

It really is bizarre.

Troy:

It really, and it got me thinking because I would contrast two types of formats or podcast formats.

Troy:

'cause I listened to them back to back yesterday in the car.

Troy:

And one was Newsom interviewing Ra Emmanuel Ram Emmanuel.

Troy:

who is a very compelling speaker and may well be the Democratic candidate for president.

Troy:

And so it was kind of interesting 'cause they're both vying for that, right?

Troy:

But with Newsom, what you get is, I think he was civil to Bannon in some ways engaged them.

Troy:

This is one of the problems on the left where the, they've been effectively de platformed by Trump and they're trying to figure out

Troy:

where they sit alongside, you know, right wing media or right wing, you know, kind of the, the, the right wing influencer class.

Troy:

But you've got a guy doing a podcast who has an agenda.

Troy:

Newsom has an agenda.

Troy:

So he, he brings that to his podcast as opposed to, Rick Rubin who just comes as a sort of like music kind of geek who doesn't know anything and just asks good questions.

Troy:

He sits and he gives Palmer lucky an immense amount of space, and just tries to find a way to guide the conversation by not really saying anything, not having a point of view,

Troy:

not inserting himself into the debate, but just giving someone a platform with really intelligent prompts, which I would sort of say probably mirrors how he operates in the studio.

Troy:

I'm not here to make music for you.

Troy:

I'm here to help you make the best music you can make.

Alex:

Yeah, the, the, the problem with that is that there is absolutely no, there are absolutely no boundaries to what's being said.

Alex:

There's no, attention to what's being said.

Alex:

I think Lex Friedman is, is, is also guilty of that playing the, I'm just here to listen.

Alex:

But what you're creating is you're packaging a media product for people, and you, you are authenticating the stuff that's being said just by having it on your podcast because the format is meant to be debate.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

The format is not just I'm, you know, this is, this, this, I mean, Troy, you must have done it.

Alex:

It's the fire set format where you go in, it's a friendly crowd, somebody's just prompting you so you can say things, right?

Alex:

So you can kind of frame your argument to the audience and, and by doing that, you're legitimizing whatever content comes out of your mouth because that person on the other side is not there to debate you.

Alex:

Right?

Alex:

You know, Rick Rubin and Lex Freeman oftentimes just are incredibly passive and just, just reinforce the thing that you're saying.

Alex:

And I think that's, that's a disservice to the audience,

Brian:

But I, you know, who are you to say, honestly, like, I mean, that's just preference.

Brian:

Why, why is one better than the other?

Brian:

I mean, there's, there's plenty of adversarial interviews out there.

Brian:

I mean, there, why can this format, this, this approach not exist alongside and be additive?

Brian:

I think you get different, you, I don't expect Theo Vaughn to be grilling Trump on the intricacies of the tariff policy.

Brian:

I mean, I'd actually like to see that.

Brian:

but I don't

Alex:

I, I,

Alex:

so here's the thing.

Alex:

I don't disagree with you.

Alex:

The problem is that when there's so much choice, I, and there's, and there's so many ways of getting my message out there, I'm not going to go to the one that gets grilled.

Alex:

I'm not gonna do the 60 minute interview anymore.

Alex:

I'm not gonna go to the thing that's actually going to, you know,

Troy:

Which is why the Ezra thing was cool.

Troy:

Cool.

Troy:

Alex, because like Sacks came at him in Larry Summers, like it was, it had the feeling of a kinda hostile debate club in high school

Alex:

to who won.

Troy:

well.

Brian:

wins.

Brian:

Nobody wins in

Troy:

No one ever wins.

Troy:

It's, it's like, did you enjoy the performance?

Brian:

Yeah, were you entertained?

Brian:

That's what's important.

Brian:

And you know, the, the important thing is to have the clips that your supporters can use to validate their, their viewpoints.

Brian:

That's, that's the, that's the end goal.

Brian:

That's why I don't

Alex:

do you think that's

Alex:

valuable?

Alex:

I mean, do you think

Brian:

well, I had a little back and forth with Ben Smith about that.

Brian:

Like, he just sent me like three words about it.

Brian:

But like, you know, like they, he had on Jubilee Media's, CEO, Jason Lee, and they do a lot of these debate things.

Brian:

They're almost like that, like, do you know Lily Phillips, the like porn stars, like sleeping with a thousand dudes in a day or something.

Brian:

It's like the stunt thing, like even like porn now has this like element or the spectacle element,

Alex:

you gotta get, you gotta get picked up by the algorithm.

Troy:

it never had it before.

Brian:

Well, I don't, I, I don't know.

Brian:

I didn't, I I, I haven't followed, this is outside of my lane, so I'll, I'm gonna defer to you on that one,

Alex:

We found one thing that was outside of Brian's lane.

Brian:

Yeah, exactly.

Brian:

there's just no market for that.

Brian:

I'm smart, smart enough for to know that.

Brian:

But they do a lot of these videos, like Pete Judi, Buttigieg, I don't know how to say his name still.

Troy:

That poor porn star's father.

Troy:

I mean, God, that's horrible.

Brian:

it's the marketplace.

Troy:

awful.

Brian:

look, it's a very crowded marketplace.

Brian:

You got o OnlyFans has like exploded that, and so you gotta, again, it's competitive like any of these marketplaces.

Brian:

But Jubilee Media does a lot of this with Pete Buttigieg trying to convince 35, Undecided voters or Charlie Kirk taking on like, I don't know, like a hundred, like angry Gen Z women.

Brian:

and to me it's, it's spectacle.

Brian:

It's not, and that's fine.

Brian:

Like, and the reality is, like you said, you know, you, you're not gonna have Cheetos for dinner, but like, you can have Cheetos for dinner.

Brian:

Like if you wanna have Cheetos for dinner, nobody's gonna stop you from having Cheetos for dinner.

Brian:

So, you know, ultimately I think that this needs to be hashed out by people, just be choosing to have a more nutritious, information diet.

Brian:

And I understand that in the marketplace, just like in food, you know, fast food does well because it's convenient, it's cheap, it, it's got a lot of carbs and it's satisfying in the moment.

Alex:

I don't think we should expect people to go out and choose the best information diet.

Alex:

I think at the very least with food, you have some sort of labeling.

Alex:

I mean, here you don't, it's really hard to understand what is a valid source.

Alex:

I mean, I don't even know, I know that I'm picking off my biases and to think I, you know, I listen to what I want to hear, and I totally get the thing where you go into a debate and you, I mean, it's so funny.

Alex:

Every time there's one of those left versus right debates, you'll find little clips on YouTube and you say, destiny destroys right wing pundit.

Alex:

And then, you know, the other one is like, Charlie Kirk destroys destiny.

Alex:

It's the same fucking thing.

Alex:

It's the same fucking interview.

Alex:

And, and, and of course, and of course that's the deal.

Alex:

And I, and, you know, we've, we've talked for a long time on this podcast about the, you know, everything being entertainment and that's what's winning right now.

Alex:

And it's definitely reinforced by the way the algorithms work.

Alex:

and, and what they surface.

Alex:

But I don't know if, if it's really, practical to have a healthy media diet these

Alex:

days.

Alex:

I don't think mines

Brian:

think, but, but I do think it plays into something that you've astutely mentioned before, which is the participatory nature of media that is ascendant right now.

Brian:

I mean, if you look at, just take like the Minecraft movie, what is it called?

Brian:

A a, a Minecraft movie.

Brian:

it's getting all these kids to go out there having like mini riots in the theater.

Brian:

Like it's a participatory, experience.

Brian:

I mean, Mr. Beast built like his empire on basically content.

Brian:

That's a game.

Brian:

Taylor Swift concerts or rituals.

Brian:

you know, Fox, did you see this new Fox?

Brian:

it's like a game show slash reality show that there may, I think this is a great idea.

Brian:

They basically locked four people in some sort of upstate asylum, right after the inauguration until recently.

Brian:

And then they're, they're surfacing them and then they're going to have a game show in which they try to guess which

Troy:

This is a, this is a brilliant, brilliant concept.

Brian:

Which is fake.

Alex:

Um, that I, it's super smart.

Alex:

It also sounds like something made up for a dystopian movie, doesn't it?

Alex:

It's just crazy.

Alex:

It's, I mean, it is amazing though.

Alex:

I gotta give it to them.

Alex:

That sounds

Troy:

Yeah, so really what it is, is an admission that you cannot predict the shit that we're experiencing right now.

Troy:

So we're gonna put people in a box and then expose them to the reality of our times.

Troy:

Just to show you how ridiculous and crazy this

Brian:

I love it.

Brian:

I love this stuff.

Brian:

I mean, I liked even the David Blaine stuff, so like I'm a sucker for this.

Troy:

True.

Alex:

You know, it's like that, that, that Japanese World War II soldier that was discovered, you know, 20 years after the war ended,

Brian:

so Alex, what is your take?

Brian:

Like why, what is.

Brian:

Participation is the point, right?

Brian:

Like, so how I, to me that's the interesting, it's like how do you design media around participation?

Brian:

Because this is, this is a real challenge for the industrial side of media where all the processes, all the skill sets, all of the rewards were around really a passive one-way experience and this participatory experience.

Brian:

And you're from the video game world, you know, like it's not one that comes like easily to a lot of people from the traditional media industry.

Alex:

No, it's actually, I mean, it's, it's it across media and art and we talked last week about, you know, I mentioned how supers stardom or, or the, the, the traditional.

Alex:

concept of, of a superstar, kind of like this, like a-list or George Clooney, it's kind of, it's going away.

Alex:

it used to be like everybody kind of were, were, were, and, and with that, a lot of, like, the paparazzi stuff is going away as well.

Alex:

There were these, celebrities that nobody had access to, right?

Alex:

And you just, you knew them for being famous and you really wanted access to them.

Alex:

So the way to get access was through, you know, either a late night interview or vanity affair cover, or a paparazzi shot.

Alex:

And like that stuff, I feel, is slowly dying because the act of celebrity right now is the act of access, right?

Alex:

YouTubers start with, you know, Hey guys, you know, they're talking straight to their audience.

Alex:

they're communicating straight to their audience.

Alex:

You know, destiny has these feeds where, you know, chat is just like running while he's having an interview with someone.

Alex:

and, and it's all become, just like this.

Alex:

Para social access game, where you are, you are, you know, connecting with your audience.

Alex:

You bring your audience along with you, you know, when you go for an interview somewhere else, which is why that whole, exchange works so well.

Alex:

You know, you jump on my podcast and bring some of my audience with you, they jump, you know, and then, and then we do the same, game in, in reverse.

Alex:

and so having that audience that you carry along with you and communicating with them and managing them through all sorts of ways, right?

Alex:

I think we wanna do more stuff on Substack.

Alex:

We wanna do more stuff between, podcasts and newsletters where we communicate with our, with our users.

Alex:

We definitely have users that have followed us since the beginning that, you know, send us notes, you know, in, in, you know, that, that,

Alex:

that don't feel like this kind of traditional, like, we're making media, we're putting it out there and people are consuming it.

Alex:

so I, I think that whole thing is changing and I don't know where it's headed, but it's very different.

Alex:

and it also creates this, Content that exists outside of the entertainer or outside of the, the pundit class where if you, like Troy, you talked about those Chamath fan boys, right?

Alex:

Like every one of these guys, Ezra has the same, right?

Alex:

The All In podcast has the same, you, you'll, you'll go to these, these folks, discord and Reddit, and there's stuff happening around their celebrity and their content all the time by a community all the time.

Alex:

Very active people fighting for them in the trenches, you know, you know, pulling stuff out from another podcast that somebody said about them and making sure that they see the

Brian:

you need a legion, Alex, you're, you're developing a legion.

Brian:

You know Elon is developing his legion and you, and you're developing in your own way, your legion.

Alex:

that's right?

Alex:

I am I Where, where you

Brian:

I get notes all the

Alex:

I'm

Alex:

not seeing those

Brian:

about you.

Brian:

I th I think for grow, I think for growth, we need to, we need to throw Troy into the all in thunderdome,

Alex:

I mean, that's what we need to do.

Brian:

let, let Sax and Chamath maul

Brian:

him.

Brian:

And,

Alex:

do you think he's, he's gonna let Sachs Red pill him, and then you've always been our sax, Troy.

Troy:

Mm-hmm.

Brian:

those guys are brutal.

Brian:

The, the debate the debate guys, you don't wanna get involved in with, you know,

Alex:

I mean,

Alex:

sax is very good at what he does.

Brian:

yeah, he's,

Brian:

he's debate club.

Brian:

Debate club is in innocent.

Brian:

any thoughts on this story before we move on to IP law And it's discontent.

Troy:

No, I think Alex did a good job.

Troy:

I mean, I, I think once again, we're seeing the cultural importance of a, of a, a generation raised on gaming, and I think that that, that, that visual is really

Troy:

influential to me of like having the chat flow down the side while you're engaged with a headphone on, like in, in the media.

Troy:

I think that, I think that that for, for a lot of people, the idea of sitting back and reading an article is lost on their generation.

Troy:

It's either coming at you via video or you're participating in it, or you're making it, you know, you know, or you're engaged in some shape or form.

Troy:

And I, I think that it's, it's kind of a requirement for, for the next generation of successful media,

Brian:

This is why I am very, just as an aside, this is why I am very excited for my upcoming online forum, next week, on

Troy:

you know, you, you end up positioning yourself

Troy:

as like a, A BA B2B grandpa, like you should cool.

Troy:

It, it is, it's not cool.

Brian:

What are you talking about?

Brian:

I just, it's very pertinent.

Brian:

You talked about it being participatory.

Brian:

The great thing about the online forum with Marigold about email newsletter personalization is that I've got one pain, it's like destiny.

Brian:

I'm like, destiny on these things, except we're talking about email and open rates and, and so we've got people incoming, we've got a lot of questions.

Brian:

We weave it in there.

Brian:

It's totally participatory.

Brian:

Otherwise, it's just like a, a video of people watch live.

Brian:

Why would they want that?

Brian:

So you gotta have the participation.

Brian:

let's move

Alex:

you,

Alex:

just before, just before

Brian:

Oh, what do you want?

Brian:

The time that it's at?

Brian:

1:00 PM Eastern

Alex:

yes, that's what I wanted also.

Alex:

Did you, do you want to, I, I've, I've talked to a few teachers and, you know, my, my wife works in, in schools and 90% of the kids, when you ask them what they want to be, they wanna be a streamer, they want to be a YouTuber.

Alex:

It used to be fucking astronaut.

Alex:

And now that is, you know, and I'm pretty sure it applies across the board.

Alex:

and so if you're in media and you're lo you're trying to think like, where's the world change?

Alex:

Where, where's the world going?

Alex:

Those changes are profound and we're seeing them and it's not gonna get.

Alex:

I think it's not gonna get any better or, or, or worse depending

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

That's why some of the complaints on this I take with a grain of salt, the pearl clutching because it's, it's sort of boxing your own corner.

Brian:

You're just trying to crowd out competition.

Brian:

I mean, who wants, nobody wants more competition.

Brian:

Let's be real.

Brian:

People don't like change than they don't want competition.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

But that doesn't mean you can't have an, you can't be critical of the quality of the content.

Alex:

Right.

Alex:

And I think, and I think that people like Chamath, for example, are, are, are.

Alex:

You know, the, the, the value per word from somebody coming from Chamath, you know, when he steps outside of his lane, starts dropping pretty fast.

Alex:

There's some people who can carry over.

Alex:

You know, you know, you, you, you, you, you listen to Alan Toos talking about anything from some, you know, 1813 German industrial strike to, you know, the Chinese economy.

Alex:

And he seems to know everything.

Alex:

but we, we should al we should also remain very critical about, about the, the, the type of punditry that we have because it's becoming more important.

Alex:

Because I don't think Rick Rubin talking about the military industrial complex is something that we need in this world,

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Although I have my doubts.

Brian:

I have my doubts about Adam Toos.

Brian:

Like I think he's doing an academic parlor trick that's pretty adjacent

Brian:

to what Chamath Chamath does.

Brian:

No, I think that there's certain people, particularly in academia, that if you give them like eight hours, they can like basically come out and present as knowing everything

Brian:

about everything,

Alex:

No, but it's, that's fine.

Alex:

He does his research, but I can't do that.

Alex:

Like, it's like saying, you know, like, you know, Hey, can you come, can you, sure.

Alex:

Can you come back to more and juggle?

Alex:

I can't.

Alex:

But Adam two can, Adam two can, he can juggle, you know, and the next day he'll, he'll,

Brian:

Okay, let's talk about I IP Law, Jack Dorsey, you know, released, we talked about how you, you wanna release memes these days and he's, he's pretty good at it.

Brian:

You know, he's, he's trying to be a Rick Rubin type.

Brian:

He's certainly looking more and more like Rick Rubin as the years go on.

Brian:

he just posted a, an X is, is that what we're calling it?

Brian:

A tweet, an X, whatever it is, delete IP laws.

Brian:

And Elon agreed with this.

Brian:

and you know, this is obviously people get very, I. Upset about IP on both sides.

Brian:

Right.

Brian:

And it is pretty clear though, with where we're going, that IP laws will need to be modernized.

Brian:

and so the people taking like extremist positions on one side, to me it's like free speech content, moderations, like, come on, like you gotta be grownups because this stuff is getting very, very, very messy.

Brian:

I mean, you look at the studio Ghibli, is it Ghibli or Ghibli?

Brian:

I don't know, style like art through Chachi pt. You know, I can understand how the artists are very upset at the same time.

Brian:

It was very fun to make a, studio ly image of Lake Troy on the mission accomplished, banner when GDPR

Brian:

fell.

Alex:

No.

Alex:

You know what else was fun?

Alex:

Napster was super fun.

Alex:

BitTorrent was super fun.

Alex:

I mean, I, I think it was, it was great, but at the end of the day, somebody has to pay artists, and I'm not, and, and I don't want this to sound like I'm just, like, IP law I think is perfect today.

Alex:

but, you always have to look at people's motivations.

Alex:

And one thing's for sure is that, because crypto didn't work out so well, Dorsey is now all in on ai, because he's very much a legacy guy

Alex:

and he wants to, he wants to have a legacy I think you have to look at the motivations behind, behind the things that they're

Brian:

Oh, yeah.

Brian:

Yeah.

Brian:

Co Everyone's biased.

Brian:

Everyone, everyone has their own sort of, you know, as what, what Nick said, like, you know, he's got skin in the game now.

Brian:

Everyone's got skin in the game, and that's fine, that's fine.

Alex:

Yeah.

Alex:

So, so actually there was a conversation with James Cameron and he said something interesting that got me thinking about is that, you know, in the age of ai, and I'm paraphrasing, what

Alex:

we're really going to have to do is look at the output and not the input, which is, which is the way IP has always worked, right?

Alex:

Like, when I'm making a a, my movie, I can use somebody's copyrighted material as a, as a, as a, as something to inspire me.

Alex:

But once it goes out into the public, you know, I need to, to have those rights.

Alex:

and in the same way with ai, I think we should be paying more attention to the outputs than the inputs.

Alex:

So, so the problem isn't really what these things ingest, but what you create with them now, I think.

Alex:

It becomes complicated because like, does that mean open AI should be forced to regulate the stuff because it looks like Ghibli, right?

Alex:

Or it looks like Disney, or it looks like a character that is copyrighted.

Alex:

but that's the type of stuff that's going to be very, very, very difficult.

Alex:

But it does mean a a, a that wouldn't mean such a huge rewrite of copyright law.

Alex:

but it would, it would, it would mean, something.

Alex:

I don't know what that means.

Brian:

agreed.

Brian:

Troy.

Troy:

Well, first observation is saying extreme things, you know, is the modern distribution tactic.

Troy:

So if Jack can say, get rid of IP law and you can agree with him, it's hard to, on some level, you can appreciate, again, these sort of, we're

Troy:

getting used to the, the kind of proclamations from, you know, whatever these big, you know, big, big, big thinkers that build things like that.

Troy:

We would be that the death of IP would accelerate innovation and, you know, get more people, you know, kind of using other people's ideas to build on them and make things and propel us forward as a civilization.

Troy:

So, I, I, I get it.

Troy:

I think what it also, ma to your point around, you know, what are, what are the motivations, I think it massively, creates, it creates massive value for the aggregators.

Troy:

And who, if you're an AI company, the last thing you want is to wade through, you know, a bunch of pesky IP litigation.

Troy:

So I think it makes sense.

Troy:

And, but you have to ask yourself what happens to, like pharma and entertainment companies when there's no longer incentives to invest

Troy:

and make things to really do, you know, kind of scaled innovation around an idea that can only be paid back through IP protection.

Troy:

And then we hear, you know, some fuzzy principles that, you know, we we're gonna use blockchain somehow to kind of register the providence of, of an idea and, and that will somehow protect, you know, the creator.

Troy:

I don't really understand

Brian:

Yeah, I think the, the issue with all of these things is ip, like law is a regulation.

Brian:

It's like anything, the regulations are just rules it.

Brian:

These are rules, right?

Brian:

And rules are always twisted by incumbents to crowd out competition.

Brian:

They always are.

Brian:

That's why regulations, a lot of them end up being very well-meaning, but they end up doing the opposite of what they're intended to do because incumbent players use that to make sure that they don't have to face new entrants.

Brian:

And IP law is typical of that.

Brian:

You see, you see that the kinds of business process patents over the years and things like this entire area is rife with, you know, true like waste, fraud and abuse.

Brian:

and yeah, you wanna have incentives for people to make breakthrough biotech, et cetera.

Brian:

but.

Brian:

Particularly when it comes to, to media and ip, it's pretty clear that the genie is not going back in the bottle with, with ai.

Brian:

but time will tell as they say.

Brian:

Did you see Andre Carpathy?

Brian:

I think he's actually an I AI expert.

Brian:

I think he, he qualifies as one, right?

Brian:

he had, he had an interesting post this week where he pointed out something kind of basic, but I think it's, it's important, which is that at this point of AI adoption, like individuals are.

Brian:

Ahead of the enterprise.

Brian:

And I think it, originally it was, it was, oh, this is gonna flood the enterprise.

Brian:

But it seems like enterprise adoption is lagging behind what just individuals can do because they, obviously, individuals can move quickly.

Brian:

They're not siloed into like groups of co of, of supposed experts within a company.

Brian:

they don't have individuals, don't have legal departments.

Brian:

At least they don't need permissions.

Brian:

and, and that's where the momentum is coming from.

Brian:

I thought this was pretty interesting.

Brian:

Is this, what is this how you see things developing ox.

Alex:

yeah, I think so.

Alex:

I mean, I think there's always the, the large company kind of change tax that needs to happen.

Alex:

A lot of, I think sentiment around AI is generally negative right from every study that we're seeing.

Alex:

And it's been shown that people are reluctant to apply to their work.

Alex:

You know, a couple of weeks ago we saw to, Toby from, Shopify, try to, to really engage the company by saying that performance reviews would be based on AI.

Alex:

Adoption seems to be working pretty well at Shopify, but I know it's not working well at other companies.

Alex:

I know it's creating chaos at other companies where people are like, I don't know what to use this.

Alex:

I'm being told to use this.

Alex:

It doesn't really work for me.

Alex:

And also I think part of the thing is that the tools are, the tools require a fair amount of flexibility and, and the qualities of like being able to try shit out, which actually don't, apply really well to cooperative work at scale, right?

Alex:

So when you're like vibe coding something, your vibe code is not something that you can just merge into like the bigger code base.

Alex:

And it's gonna make a lot of sense.

Alex:

You know, a lot of this, this stuff is messier sloppy, it's less organized.

Alex:

it's harder to plan.

Alex:

so there's a lot of structural reasons why just being a solo developer right now, you can probably like do 80% more than you could before because now you can do stuff that a designer could do.

Alex:

You could do stuff that an engineer could do.

Alex:

You could put all these things together and working by yourself on your own code base is, is, You know, relatively straightforward.

Alex:

If you work in a group, it's actually much harder.

Alex:

Just like the, the, the tools themselves make all of this kind of harder.

Alex:

yeah, so I think that you are definitely going to see like two or three person companies doing things that, are going to be pretty substantial.

Alex:

yeah, small, small teams right now have a huge advantage.

Alex:

I think it's gonna be hard to change large companies to adopt this stuff like so hard.

Brian:

Yeah, but this is just another, this is another example of how being very lean and nimble, as lean as possible is such, is such a competitive advantage.

Brian:

and, and there's just so many different areas where the, the bigger you are, the more challenging it can be these days it seems.

Alex:

It's always been like that though, right?

Troy:

no, but, but I, I think what's disruptive about, Alex, you make a great point about merging your vibe code into the code base of a company, and I think that that's written across every department.

Troy:

When you think about how legal response to the request to enable an AI feature, who's, you know, output is unpredictable, you know, big company litigious scenario.

Troy:

Like it's, it's, it's a fuzzy.

Troy:

It's a technology that's the opposite of, you know, the history of most technology we use.

Troy:

It's not declarative, the results are unpredictable and fuzzy.

Troy:

But I think what it does do, and the point that that he made in, in, in, in that expost was I think in some ways it starts to recon, it creates new, a a a really important new input into what

Troy:

modern industrial structure looks like, where you have far more companies that are built around a small empowered group of people that are using tools at the individual level in a new way.

Troy:

So I watch, you know, the example we brought up last week is how Brian works.

Troy:

And, you know, I've seen, you know, a new generation come into media companies and go, why are there so many people here?

Troy:

Like we, we, we don't need that many people.

Troy:

and, and I think we're seeing that in software and we're seeing it all over the place.

Troy:

So it's, it's, it's, it's probably great.

Troy:

Actually, it probably means you're gonna get, it's kind of like the creator economy, you know?

Troy:

And, and you're gonna get, you know, lots of innovation in, in, in, in the economy.

Troy:

And I think though, what you, what you can't do at kind of micro microscale, but at least not yet, is the kind of, you know,

Troy:

large scale Chinese type manufacturing that requires lots of people, lots of investment, incredibly sophisticated technology at scale.

Troy:

you know, the, that that kind of, you know, those kind of companies, you know, really benefit from, you know, industrial policy, huge amounts of investment and, and lots of people.

Brian:

It seems like we're gonna have like armies of like one to like 10 person like companies and like a bunch of foxcon,

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

I was fascinated this idea of, do you know this idea of dark factories?

Brian:

No.

Troy:

It's a, it's a concept that you see in China and places.

Troy:

It'd be really interesting to see where there's no lights on inside because you don't need lights.

Troy:

'cause it's just robots working.

Troy:

Robots don't, don't need lights,

Brian:

dystopia.

Troy:

dark factories.

Brian:

Is that what

Brian:

we're gonna get?

Alex:

I thought you were going to talk about Ghost Kitchens, but Yeah, I think, I think having, a lot of the infrastructure now for software kind of works like the Foxconn industrial

Alex:

system where, you know, when you're making a piece of software, you are outsourcing a lot of the big stuff, a lot of the big stuff like the AWS, the server hosting, the AI itself, right?

Alex:

All, all of that stuff.

Alex:

You, the, the payment processing, all of these things that actually require big teams and a lot of, you know, legal experts and infrastructure and services, stuff like that.

Alex:

All that stuff you can plug into, right?

Alex:

So, so the software environment is already made for that.

Alex:

So a, a small team can build something at real scale now.

Troy:

Yeah.

Troy:

Meanwhile, Brian, it was interesting that Elon Musk is trying to create a baby factory, a

Brian:

Yeah, a legion, his own legion.

Brian:

Alex has his legion, and Elon is going a

Alex:

Uh, we should stay in LA and apparently you, you're not allowed to talk about Elon.

Brian:

by making, his own legion to me.

Brian:

What was nowhere?

Brian:

This was a Wall Street Journal, I guess it was an expose.

Brian:

they've had a few good ones on the Elon beat.

Brian:

They were, they were the ones who got the, apparent, liaison that he had with, former vice presidential candidate and Serge Brin's ex-wife.

Brian:

this is a strange timeline we're living on.

Brian:

but the

Alex:

I think

Alex:

he's great.

Alex:

I just wanna put

Troy:

But don't Hold on, Alex.

Troy:

Let him make the point.

Troy:

Let.

Brian:

But the Wall Street Journal has, it's become friskier.

Brian:

I think we've mentioned it a few times here, but this is a great example.

Brian:

I don't think there was anything necessarily quote unquote wrong with the Wall Street Journal.

Brian:

It was just stodgy.

Brian:

It's the Wall Street Journal and they brought in Emma Tucker.

Brian:

I guess it's been like a year and a half or so now, and I've noticed it just, I think it's, it's a much better and livelier read I, that was a great story.

Brian:

This is the most under, this is the most over covered, overexposed individual in the history of humanity, probably at this point.

Brian:

And they came out with a new original and gripping story about him.

Brian:

So kudos to the Wall

Troy:

kudos.

Troy:

Just, I would say cancel the New York Times and replace it with Financial Times and Wall Street Journal.

Troy:

It would be fine.

Alex:

Where do you get

Brian:

It's,

Brian:

yeah,

Troy:

you gotta

Troy:

just get a games membership for connection.

Alex:

All right.

Alex:

Well, there you have it.

Alex:

That's the, That's

Alex:

the media diet.

Alex:

That's your media diet.

Troy:

Yeah.

Brian:

that one kind of like went over like a fart in an elevator?

Brian:

I thought it was gonna be a little bit more better, but,

Troy:

Should we have, anonymous banker join?

Brian:

yeah.

Brian:

'cause I gotta talk with Janice Min in like 20 minutes

Alex:

And I've

Alex:

got a hard stop now,

Brian:

celebrity.

Troy:

Okay, so let's, let's swap out Alex.

Troy:

That's, that's hard.

Troy:

What do you call it?

Troy:

hot swap.

Alex:

say hi.

Alex:

To say hi to anonymous banker for me.

Brian:

Okay, great.

Brian:

We got ab on ab.

Brian:

Thank you for, for joining us.

Brian:

I wanted to talk about golf media because you're a banker, so you must know golf, and I think it's a very vibrant area.

Brian:

There's a, I don't golf, so I don't, I'm not totally in on it, but I, I keep getting notes about the, the different, like how interesting like YouTube centric golf media is, and we're seeing a lot of like activities in this area.

Brian:

What, what's interesting to me about golf

AB:

I think so.

AB:

When people look at

AB:

sports.

AB:

Group, all of them together.

AB:

But golf is unique.

AB:

It's, it's similar to like a Formula One, in that

AB:

there's effectively like one, one and a half governing bodies, right?

AB:

You have the PGA and Liv.

AB:

so it's a streamlined.

AB:

Ownership of the tournament component and then the teams, or in the, in the situation of golf, the players are all independent contractors, so you have a lot more flexibility when it

AB:

comes

AB:

to the participatory nature of

AB:

the athletes in the content.

AB:

whereas in, in other

AB:

sports, like N-B-A-M-L-B, things like that, there's a, a, a lot more rules around how the athletes can participate.

AB:

and the other thing that's really interesting about golf, I was, I was looking up some of these numbers, the amount of people that play.

AB:

Both on and off course, it's like 45 million

AB:

people a year.

AB:

So there's like 25 million people that are going to the actual golf courses and then another large chunk that are going to like top golf and things like that.

AB:

So between the media side where people are watching the sports

AB:

and then playing

AB:

them, buying all the equipment, it's a big

AB:

industry.

Brian:

Who, so I saw like good, good golf, raised 40 million.

Brian:

and then full swing, which is from, Chad Mum, who encouraged me actually is the reason I got a pizza steal.

Brian:

I did, a podcast with him, over the pandemic and he convinced me to get a, pizza steal.

Brian:

but he started this with X, I think x the, former puck.

Brian:

CEO is, is in this too called full

Brian:

swing.

Brian:

They raised 20 million.

Brian:

who are the other players in this?

Brian:

'cause there's, there's a lot of them.

Brian:

We talked about that one

AB:

There's a, yeah, there's a bunch of smaller YouTube

AB:

channels I think.

AB:

Good, good golf.

AB:

' This is one of these, we've talked about this before, where some of these businesses have been in market trying to find capital or some m and a for over a year, and the markets come around to appreciating what can be done on the digital side.

AB:

But what's interesting about both of these businesses is they have.

AB:

Legitimate partnerships with like the actual league in the sense of, pro shop, the full swing, business.

AB:

It's like basically they're pulling out from PGA, the production apparatus and then looking to stand up the digital side and then commerce, and then good, good Golf has

AB:

a partnership with one of the large networks, so they're, yes, they're focused on YouTube and going after this younger demographic.

AB:

But they also have ties into the incumbents in the space.

AB:

So they're, I think looking, yeah, it's not just digital.

AB:

They have an eye towards, and that's like one of the things that has to happen to get people to

AB:

watch golf on TV is to push the audience from

AB:

digital back to the traditional

AB:

media

Troy:

The, the commerce angle on, it's interesting too because there's this you know, not only is the sport

Troy:

something you can watch, by the

Troy:

way, legendary masters last weekend, you know, record numbers, great story for the people of Ireland.

Troy:

You know, just incredible entertainment.

Troy:

with Rory McElroy winning that, you know, coming from, you know, a really uneven game to

Troy:

win.

Troy:

It was great entertainment, but it's, it really is a

Troy:

kind of unique lifestyle integration where, you know, you watch, you play, you can live in the clothing, and as a result we see commerce brands emerging around these media brands in ways that maybe will work better than it has elsewhere.

Troy:

Right.

Troy:

They're full.

Troy:

They're full on like life, lifestyle kind of

Troy:

integration with the sport.

Brian:

I mean, they, and they're perfect for this content to commerce thing that has a, a rocky history.

Brian:

But, I'm, remember I got, I got a note, from, from one of our listeners about this a few months ago.

Brian:

I had mentioned it, like he talked about the YouTubers, like Grant aught, and he's like selling clubs and whatnot.

Brian:

He's got, he's got licensing deals.

Brian:

I.

Brian:

I guess Bryson Busta, Jack.

Brian:

I don't know who these people are.

Brian:

taco golf.

Brian:

Do you know taco golf?

AB:

No, but I mean the, good thing there's ver, if you compare this to like A UFC, right?

AB:

That's also big among this 18 to 30 5-year-old demographic.

AB:

the only way that that.

AB:

Sport is getting monetized is through like pay-per-view buys, right.

AB:

The athletes, even though if you follow the UFC, there's notable names, no end.

AB:

There's, there's various few endemic brands in the the fighting game and then all those athletes Have a hard time getting sports deals.

AB:

Getting, sponsorship deals elsewhere, but, but golf is one of these things, like, Troy mentioned, like you're gonna buy a golf shirt, you're buying golf clubs.

AB:

There's all these things that you're buying around participating in the sport, and people are actually playing golf.

AB:

You're not gonna go, maybe you join a UFC gym, but otherwise you're not gonna really play this sport.

AB:

And then more broadly speaking, brands love to be tied to the athletes, right?

AB:

Car OEMs.

AB:

Like it's, it's, it's Like tennis in that it's,

AB:

a really brand safe space.

Brian:

one other thing.

Brian:

This is not golf related.

Brian:

and that's, you know, OpenAI had raised I think 40 billion a couple weeks ago at this point.

Brian:

It's, it's interesting because, you know, an AI company raising 40 billion is, is like, gets a little bit of attention for a couple days and then people just move on from it.

Brian:

But they have a lot of money obviously, and, If they're now talking about building a social network, which gives me some amount of

Brian:

pause, but it is pretty clear that to, at least to me, I,

Brian:

I think of them like, it seems like they're moving Into being like a real product company.

Brian:

what, what is your analysis about, about what they're, what direction they'll end up going as a company?

AB:

I, I mean the, the new model just came out, the oh three, yesterday and it's, it's amazing like the progression of the tech from just an output.

AB:

Have you guys tried it?

Troy:

it's cool.

AB:

Yeah.

AB:

I mean, I feel like the last

AB:

one was like, you know, people would term it the intern.

AB:

This one

AB:

feels

Troy:

What's weird is the sort of parasocial relationship you have with a piece of technology because the, the, its beauty is in the nuance of how it responds to things, right?

Troy:

It, it's, it's in, you know, the language and what it sounds like and how it assembles it.

Troy:

And it's so, it's really a, uh, I find I gravitate to the OpenAI product just because I like the, the, the way they, they, they make the output feel.

Brian:

Well, I trust that it remembers things before they even came out with this memory thing.

Brian:

I'm like, they have all my data.

Brian:

I've uploaded all my key data and I'm always gonna go to it.

Brian:

I'll go to Grok for a few things.

Brian:

Claude.

Brian:

No, I've done, I'm done with Claude.

Brian:

I'm just going all in on chat.

Troy:

well, that's one of the reasons that the social networking thing is interesting because gr is good when, particularly when you wanna dig something outta x. And

Troy:

one of the reasons you might want your own social network is to kind of create your

Troy:

na, your own native data repository.

AB:

bring up the new model because I think that open AI will continue to get.

AB:

Into more areas where it, it's, it's sort of unintentional, but it just happens because of the power of the model.

AB:

example, we're testing right now a lot of the investment banking, AI companies, platforms, and to justify the additional cost per seat.

AB:

I've been just sort of testing between these more specialized platforms, which say, we can go get better data.

AB:

We know what you're doing versus what a open AI can do.

AB:

And in a lot of cases, open AI is actually providing a

AB:

better

Troy:

You know what, on that ab you, you get a sense of how truly disruptive it is when you see it applying horizontally like that better than

Troy:

a, vertical company could do it, The other I, and I noticed this in a, simple way, yesterday, I used to scan bottles of wine with vineo.

Troy:

I wanna know their providence and where to buy 'em or

Troy:

how expensive they were, that kind of stuff.

Troy:

Yesterday I scanned it with OpenAI with at bt and it was a better result.

AB:

hundred percent.

AB:

And so people use these analogies, like when

AB:

Google came out, it didn't try to get into every

AB:

business line that it impacted because they had such a large.

AB:

Opportunity to go after advertising,

AB:

but in order for Google to, to move into any category, it.

AB:

was an intentional thing where they had to put people against it.

AB:

I think what's completely different

AB:

here, and I, I think what's gonna catch a lot of people off guard is the improvements in these models will just make in, in the example I gave these specialized finance

AB:

products, like not that useful.

AB:

It's everyone's just gonna be going to open ai, which is a

Troy:

and

Troy:

and you imagine also collaborative features where, let's say I use projects a lot now where I put a bunch of documents into a folder and essentially used it.

Troy:

I did it with the newsletter this week.

Troy:

I put a. bunch of transcripts in there.

Troy:

But imagine that.

Troy:

We had a project folder for this podcast.

Troy:

Imagine that You have a project folder for your neighborhood.

Troy:

Imagine that you have it for, you, know, a national, you know, like any kind of project that requires people to put information in and share in a kind of common set of data.

Troy:

You can

Troy:

see social dimensions to that as a product, right, where you can share across lots and lots of people.

AB:

so I would view, I would view that the social thing to me is like a distraction.

AB:

I think that's Sam,

AB:

just Messing with Elon.

AB:

I think the, the more interesting news was them

AB:

looking at buying Windsurf, uh, which is like the

AB:

coating, um,

Brian:

billion apparently.

Brian:

And, but this is also, this was, I mean, isn't this one of those, like wrappers?

Brian:

I mean, at first it was saying don't bill,

Brian:

like wrappers with a w that don't build like, you know, rappers, but like, clearly there's value in some of these.

AB:

Yeah, and we, I mean, we don't know all the details.

AB:

There might be

AB:

a, a talented team there where Sam effectively has unlimited

AB:

money to spend now and he's going after 20 really

AB:

good

Brian:

Oh my God.

Brian:

$3 billion.

Brian:

Acquihires We live in.

Brian:

We live in amazing

AB:

Yeah.

AB:

Well, think about, I mean, think about the original opening

AB:

idea with Microsoft.

AB:

It was like 10, $10 billion.

AB:

and so I, I think that's what coding is probably one of the first things that

AB:

is, is having, is getting the biggest impact

AB:

with these, models because coders are really good at prompting.

AB:

and so it's like this positive, and so that's probably just a land grab and to starve off other competitors

AB:

from

AB:

from leaning into that space.

AB:

But I

AB:

I just think that the evolution of this

AB:

tech is going to usurp a lot of

AB:

wrapper business models

AB:

that have raised hundreds of millions of dollars, and they have this like, unique market in a specific, vertical where the power of these models

AB:

just kind of comes over the top and can do a

AB:

better job.

Brian:

Well, I wouldn't this go

Brian:

back to our earlier conversation, like if you're like Harvey in the legal community now, I'm getting definitely out outside of any area of expertise.

Brian:

you're gonna need to comply with literally so many different things.

Brian:

So like chat BT can, you know, if I'm doing like some kind of like basic agreement or something?

Brian:

Yeah, I might, I might, I might go to like chat B-T-E-S-Q,

Brian:

but you're gonna need something a little bit more specialized in these fields, right.

Brian:

With all the regulations and,

AB:

That's, I mean, that's what I thought.

AB:

Right?

AB:

And so on the finance platform side, I thought they would do a better job.

AB:

They have access to a few data sources that OpenAI hasn't tapped into yet, but just the overall power of the, of, of the technology is, is getting better results.

AB:

maybe it, maybe it's more on the consumer side first,

AB:

and then they start to go into Harvey, like scenarios

Brian:

Troy, any final thoughts before, I regal

Brian:

everyone with my good product.

Troy:

No, other than you can hear me right guys.

Troy:

this has been a week of wonderful technology snafus.

Troy:

One thing I find interesting about the product evolution at Open API is the need that will emerge to manage different identities.

Troy:

You don't have the same conversation in all aspects of your life.

Troy:

You might have a private one, you might have a public one, you might have a professional one.

Troy:

And, and I think there's gonna be a lot of thought put towards, you know, how you show

Brian:

Well, it's gonna understand that I, I don't like, I have different projects for different, like things that I want to, I want it to focus on, but to me that's, that'll end up going away.

Troy:

Well, it's almost like people using different Twitter

Troy:

accounts, right?

Troy:

For different things.

Brian:

True.

Troy:

anyway.

Troy:

No, I'm handing a good product over to you.

Troy:

'cause I know you're passionate about

Troy:

turtles.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

This is experimental.

Brian:

'cause I have a hard stop.

Brian:

I've been very into sea turtles lately, because it is sea turtle season in, Miami.

Brian:

There's a lot of sea turtle nesting that goes on here.

Brian:

And there's all these like warning signs up that you need to keep your lights low if you, if you're, if, if you have a place on the beach, I don't, I'm across the street.

Brian:

But like, I didn't really quite understand it.

Brian:

I did, I went to chat BT and I learned a lot about it.

Brian:

It turns out that sea turtles are born with a single use tool called a Carle that is almost like one of those like IKEA tools.

Brian:

It's like you use it and then it's useless.

Brian:

And so they use that to bust out of the egg and then they actually ha, they, they, they wait a day and they feed off of the like sack.

Brian:

Juice and whatnot and get their strength up to make the dash relatively speaking to the, the ocean where they then go off for decades.

Brian:

They can float like hundreds or even over a thousand miles away.

Brian:

And what's amazing is the female turtles make their way back using something called magnetic imaging of the earth's magnetic field in order to find the exact location where they were born and they return to then, lay eggs.

Brian:

to repeat the cycle decades later, can be 30 plus years later.

Brian:

Pretty remarkable.

Brian:

All because of the kunkle.

Troy:

Nice.

Brian:

where we take that.

Troy:

No way.

Troy:

Perfect.

Brian:

We'll go back to your woofers next week.

Troy:

All right.

AB:

I have a good, I have a good, can I do my, a good product?

AB:

I know I'm not a, a regular or I'm not

AB:

on, on the

AB:

podcast, but, I've been using This AI agent called Block it for scheduling.

AB:

I think I showed it to you guys and what's interesting is like it can really pick up on the context and

AB:

conversation.

AB:

So people have tried these different scheduling bots before in, the past, and they're

AB:

always pretty shitty.

AB:

But this one is better than like an assistant because you, you I can talk to it and tell it what to do, and then you, can have different.

AB:

Sort of code words if you don't actually wanna schedule a meeting with somebody where It

AB:

picks up on that and it will kind of

AB:

just pl like play around with that person to kind of push off ever doing a real meeting.

AB:

it knows like when you're traveling, it knows to put time in between in person and Zoom meetings.

AB:

It just has all it, it basically, they've

AB:

captured all of the edge cases.

AB:

and I think the most interesting

AB:

thing cause it kind of Shows you how these AI agents are gonna be priced.

AB:

When you do the demo and you do the two week trial, they give you like a range of pricing.

AB:

So they say, Hey, this is gonna be

AB:

between 150 and

AB:

$500. And then once you, it's basically you've started using

AB:

it all the

AB:

time, two weeks later they come back and tell you the

AB:

price, you're kind of already stuck using it.

AB:

So

Brian:

Wait,

AB:

I've just

AB:

a

AB:

Yeah, they say it's based on the number of

AB:

meetings, but they, there's no, it's completely opaque

AB:

pricing.

AB:

They just, They came back and, and kind of picked a price in the

AB:

middle of the

AB:

range saying this, you're right below

AB:

a power user.

AB:

This is

AB:

what we think,

Brian:

so wait, I, I, thought that all of this AI stuff was going to make like SaaS obsolete and because it's all

Brian:

bloated and overpriced, and now you're telling me that like Calendly is gonna cost 500 bucks a month.

AB:

Hey, but this provides real utility.

Brian:

All right.

Brian:

We should leave it there.

Brian:

I'm not happy ab

Troy:

That's it for this episode of people versus algorithms where each week we uncover patterns shaping media culture and technology.

Troy:

Big thanks as always to our producer, Vanja Arsenov.

Troy:

She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable and we appreciate her very, very much.

Troy:

If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review.

Troy:

It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing.

Troy:

Remember, you can find People vs.

Troy:

Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube.

Troy:

Thanks for listening and we'll see you again next week.

Troy:

See you guys

AB:

Bye.

Brian:

all right.

Brian:

We'll leave it there.

Brian:

Thank you all.

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People vs Algorithms
A podcast for curious media minds.
Uncovering patterns of change in media, culture, and technology, each week media veterans Brian Morrissey, Alex Schleifer and Troy Young break down stuff that matters.
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