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all right everybody welcome back it is our fourth annual bestie Awards yes everybody is incredibly excited to hear
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the biggest winners in politics and losers in business best science breakthrough so many amazing categories
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with me again chairman dictator chamath poopaa our billionaire Pac welcome back to the program chamath bip bipac that's
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what I said billionaire Pac billionaire person of color yes please get it right and running the Allin Dei group the
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Rainman himself David Sachs welcome back to the program good to be here okay and
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the Sultan of science welcome back to the program are you ready with your selections gentlemen are we ready to do
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this jel this is the holiday episode you got to have a little more cheer this isn't all business dude cue the music
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Nick three two yes and here we are everybody back again for the 2023 bestie Awards this is
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where everybody goes crazy oh my God standing ovation hold on who's drinking some champagne with me I need some
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champagne popping what are you guys drinking these are the awards everybody wants to know who's going to be a winner
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you're right I need a drink hold on he needs a drink for this I need a drink too can you can I go get a drink hang on
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everybody get a drink loosen it up I'm at my office I don't have alcohol here look at the second
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draw let your winners ride Rainman David and instead we open sourc it to the fans
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and they've just gone crazy with it queen of all right everybody Welcome to the bestie awards for 2023 what are you
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drinking I got a little V Cleo you know I love are you actually going to drink it you know I people don't know this
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about me but that was um my beverage of choice was the old v c Co when I would go out in New York what have you got
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there saaks what are you drinking for the 2023 besti Awards what are you you drinking I'm
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drinking my classes old Reposado in uh a glass with a single big rock and I broke out my uh patriotic
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Great Seal of the United States class this is a tribute to the Border you got a little bit of Mexico a little bit of
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the United States and is it flowing between the border and you is that it it's open border now open at this point
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gotcha okay just flooding in yeah chath you're not drinking you're at the office
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free I mean I didn't I didn't plan I brought my props to wish everybody happy holidays and this festive sweater
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amazing freeberg everybody knows that you're a a quiet solo Drinker in Your Darkest Hours what are you drinking
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there's no surprises there what are you drinking I'm always drinking when I got to hang out with you Jal I'm drinking a
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Victoria beer a Victoria beer true actually yeah I don't think you hang out with Jak C sober do you oh everybody
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there it is wo I cannot yeah we've got the V clo unfortunately at my ski house I can't find the flute so I'm going to
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put this in a wine glass sorry for the sacrilege but cheers here's to another amazing year of the Allin podcast and
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the besties hang out cheers you want to say a few words J like like to say words
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in memorium of the Year yes working with you guys has been delightful miserable and everything in between
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congratulations on all of our success and uh here's to an amazing 2024 and hopefully we find a CEO and we
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can keep this thing going for another 150 or so episodes nobody thought we would get here everybody hates us for
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our success and the mids and the haters love you besties cheers well I would like to make
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a toast here we go here is to three of the most talented warm friendly guys and J yeah he was coming that joke
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format from me I T you that one I T you misdirection don't ever forget it brother all right well to three of the
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most sincere heartfelt intelligent loving individuals and David Sachs welcome to the program we've got a big
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huge lineup here for you and let's just get to it we're going to give our 2023 award for the biggest winner in politics
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last year chamath you said that your prediction for 2023 now we're going to give the actual award for 2023 but in
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our predictions episode last year you said you were long Nikki Aly and short to santis what a preent call what do you
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have this year that spread trade paid off in Spades yeah big spread trade looking back I think the biggest
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political winner was Donald Trump okay I think that the documents case galvanized his leadership in the
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Republican nomination and I think that this move by the Colorado Supreme Court basically sealed the deal I think he is
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going to run away with the Republican nomination and barring some catastrophic meltdown has a better chance to get into
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the White House than before this Colorado case so he was the biggest political winner I think of 2023 it just
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seems to me that if I had to really put it in a nutshell I think that the the Dem in this weird way actually want
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Trump back in office more than the Republicans do because everything they've done H has been nearsighted and
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I think has actually galvanized his support and increased his popularity and his ability to fund raise more than
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anything else fredberg who is your biggest political winner of 20 23 who did I give it to last year do do you
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remember you gave it to NBS and Saudi that they would have the your prediction was they would have the most year in the
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M well but in some ways I think they are Center Stage that's what I thought so I
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am giving my biggest winner I'm giving my biggest political winner award to the nation state of Saudi Arabia oh wow like
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they are sitting in the middle of the US China Iran Israel Russia they have relations with all of those Nations and
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relations where they are trying to be productive extraordinary leverage with both their Capital their Geographic
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positioning and their energy resourcing and painting a very positive future on how they want to reinvest their capital
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and modernize the country and I think one of the biggest coups that they pulled this year was turning Jal to
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being a big promoter of Saudi after his visit to the Middle East and so I think they're entering 2024 with great
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strength and leverage so I give them credit for riding out many storms this year and coming out ahead so it's just
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it's been interesting to watch I'm not I'm not close or tied to them in any way but I just think from a global leverage
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point of view they seem to be in a very strong place so that's my my award I can't disagree with you that the place
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has made incredible progress personal freedoms economic freedoms they their the country is
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evolving and embracing every country on the planet right so you have to take that as a win I have no business
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interest there but I I am impressed with the progress so saak that means it's your turn to give us your 2023 biggest
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winner my biggest winner in politics J C I think you'll like this one is abortion
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rights abortion rights abortion rights after dos abortion rights are winning on every battle where they're at issue it's
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one referenda in very red States like Kansas Kentucky Montana and Ohio it swung legislatures to the Dems in swing
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States like Michigan Pennsylvania and Virginia it swung State suprem Court races in penssylvania Wisconsin I'd go
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so far as to say it's the Democrats only winning issue and they are putting it on
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the ballot everywhere they can Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed out around 30 years ago that we likely could have
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reached this resolution decades ago if the courts hadn't stolen the issue from the political process because abortion
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rights were in the process of being liberalized everywhere and in my view the political process is messy but it's
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how we finally move past the issue as a nation which is why I think dos was the right decision even if it was a
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difficult one huh interesting so you are smoo over Trump's taking away the right
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for women to choose and saying that this is a net positive for the country if I'm
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reading it correctly well Trump didn't take anything away the Supreme Court cour didn't take anything away thee
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Court hold on I just explained it you're not listening Supreme Court gave the issue back to the Democratic process the
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Democratic process is now voting to maintain abortion rights and that is going to settle the issue once and for
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all so all of your fears that abortion rights would fall by the wayside because that's from Court
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decision have actually proven to be null and void what we're ending up with is a
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better solution where the country doesn't need to fight about this anymore because the voters have expressed the
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will of the people fantastic framing great save for the Republican party there well it won't be unless they learn
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how to talk about the issue yeah I mean the way I would frame the same issue is that Trump stacked the deck to take away
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women's right to choose in order to get elected but are your framing is pretty good too and you're a master of framing
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these things so I was torn here for mine I had two different choices I was either
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going to go with Nikki Hy because what an amazing feat for her to to even be getting close to Trump in some of these
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primaries but I think really the biggest winners in this year of 2023 were non-traditional candidates actually
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becoming somewhat viable and capturing the imagination of young people the RFK de Phillips being I think the three
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leading candidates so I'm going to go with the non-traditional candidates being the big winners for
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2023 and for last year I had said that my prediction was for 2023 was that Trump would get indicted win the
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nomination and then agree to not run because he gets a pardon so I think I've got two or three of those in the parlay
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in the bag let's go on to biggest l The Biggest Loser in politics when we did our
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predictions for 2023 chamath you said that you were short to santis here we are we're giving our actual award for
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the biggest political loser in 2023 freeberg I'll start with you who is your biggest political loser for 2023 my
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biggest political loser is the Dei movement ah I heard obviously post October 7th the Hamas attacks on
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Israel and then the following support for Hamas that came out of what have historically been groups that are
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aligned with Dei interests and then the Dei driven leaders of the universities that went in front of Congress to defend
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their freedom of speech rules around anti-semitic protests caused a lot of folks that I know who are very liberal
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and very influential to wake up to the negative impacts of uh the Dei movement and it's linkage potentially
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anti-Semitism which is massed in this oppressor oppressed ideology that is the basis of a lot of these Dei protocols
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and so I think it really shined a negative light on Dei this year in a way that hasn't been the case in a broad way
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with very influential people in a very long time and so I think that that movement is going to take a big hit and
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took a big hit the end of this year and will continue to I think be questioned by donors and supporters of the
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ideologies of that movement okay SA who is your biggest loser in politics for 2023 my biggest loser in politics for
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this year is Vladimir zalinsky the president of Ukraine and you can see this pretty clearly by just looking at
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the cover of Time Magazine he began the year fresh off of winning Time magazine's person of the year and by the
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end of the year the same author at Time Magazine was writing a new cover story saying that zilinsky had become
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delusional he had become Messianic he was ordering his troops on suicide missions and his own Inner Circle had
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turned on him and of course who could forget that other photo from the middle of the year
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at vilus when all those Euros snobs turned the back on zalinsky that was a brutal
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image that went viral on social media literally the European Elite turning their backs on a frustrated zalinsky
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sadly zalinsky had the opportunity in April of 2022 to make peace to sign a a peace deal and unfortunately he took
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Boris Johnson and and Joe Biden's advice to pressure Putin rather than make peace
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and I think that gamble has turned into a disaster for him jth your biggest political loser in 2023 I had a
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different choice but I think game time change yeah hearing David has convinced me I will I will go
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with the death of the acronyms it was it was close for me between that and I actually think that Joe Biden
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unfortunately had a very difficult run of it in 2023 when you actually think about it the Ukraine
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thing was a fiasco all of this stuff around maybe putting the hand on the scale whether it's on Elon or against
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Donald Trump it's all just very messy I think for him but I do think that freeberg is right this is probably the
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beginning of the end of the acronyms and if you look at ESG and Dei together ESG
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is a little bit more measurable but sustainable asset ownership and ESG ownership across the world shrank by 15%
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which you may say is that a big number or not it's $5 trillion and so where the money goes typically so goes everything
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else in modern society and so when the money starts to Scurry I think that you can pretty much expect that people's
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patience and support of these kinds of movements are waning I'll go with death of the acronyms are the biggest
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political you started you were going to say bye but you changed it in real time and you went deg acronyms acronyms yeah
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okay death of the acronyms you know I had a lot of talks with folks about this one people had a lot of
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input some people said Dan santis some people said Biden I think the biggest 2023 loser in politics is the American
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people who are now faced with a Biden Trump rematch both of those individuals clearly being in different stages of
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decline being over 80 and the GOP just can't quit Trump and it seems like the Democrats can't quit Biden despite 78%
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of the country not wanting the rematch so I'm going to give the American people are the biggest political Losers of
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2023 all right here we go biggest political surprise this is the biggest political surprise of
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2023 Sachs what's your biggest political surprise well I think the biggest political surprise and it was a very
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negative one was the Hamas attack on Israel on the morning of October 7th which really seemed to come out of
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nowhere only 8 days before Jake Sullivan who bid's National Security adviser had
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declared that the Middle East had been quieter than it had been in two decades and those words obviously Pro prove very
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ill time but he wasn't alone in thinking that I think almost everybody was really
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surprised by this attack I think until then the Middle East seemed to be on a path of progress with the Abraham
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Accords being negoti between Israel and several Gulf monarchies and I think that
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October 7th has really changed the political Paradigm certainly in Israel in the Middle East and I think even in
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American politics okay freeberg it's a little bit of a Nuance take on that but I said the
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rise of Hamas was the biggest political surprise you know Hamas is a self-proclaimed political party that was
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thrust to the center of geopolitics and domestic social issues across the West after October 7th which was I I think
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probably a surprise to many that plann these attacks as well basically it feels to me like Hamas is the pawn that
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crossed the chess board and became a queen it's an organization that you know had resourcing and was influenced by you
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know many have shown connections to Iran and and other wealthy States and had very low attention levels
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prior to October 7th on a global basis and post October 7th now has recognition and sympathy and a great deal of
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interest in the the root cause of their party so really incredible surprise I don't think anyone could have predicted
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this at the start of the year that not just the attacks happened but the resulting shift in the discourse and
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influence that's happened Cham biggest political surprise of 2023 I'm going to go with a domestic choice and I think
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it's quite obvious but the biggest political surprises are of Kennedy Robert of Kennedy
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Jr I don't think any body would have predicted that he would both drop out of the
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democratic party run as an independent and essentially collect he is in terms of
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favorability in the polls he's the leading 2024 candidate right now it's incredible people like him that's for
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sure and nobody would have predicted it that's a really good one what do we think he will get if he runs as an
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independent just percentage wise Ross perau as a third party C got 19% you think better than 19% because the the
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the country is much more fragmented today there's a lot more protest votes today there's just a lot of reasons
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where RFK can Garner a lot of support and build a plurality among centrists that wasn't possible that when perau was
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running because when he ran you have you have to remember like this the country was in a very different place
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psychologically than it is right now yeah I too had third party candidates as being my biggest surprise I didn't give
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it to a specific one I was debating these third party candidates against the GOP not being able to feel
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the better option than Trump but I think I'm going to go again with third party candidates but I'll include Dean
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Phillips in that breaking ranks I'll include vi just a very young very smart individual capturing people's
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imagination third party candidates for me is the biggest surprise and and I do think it could have a meaningful impact
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if you're right that he gets over 19% who does that chth in your mind who does that benefit and who does it hurt if the
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candidates are Biden and trump it hurts Biden the most you believe that okay what about you sax who do you think it
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hurts the most unclear right now yeah I mean I think on the issues I can see a lot of
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populist voters wanting to go with RFK but on the other hand maybe he does peel away some democratic party voters so I'm
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not sure to be honest I've heard this before any thoughts freeberg on that what's the question if RFK were to get
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as jamat thinks more than perau so that's 20% or more of the popular vote who is that going to harm and who's it
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going to hurt Trump or Biden I saw a Gallup survey that showed that there's a real shot at more than 40% of Americans
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being interested in a third party and so I I'm sorry I could be totally wrong on
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that but I pretty sure I saw that and it really kind of resonated with me and I think our discourse here and you know
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obviously conversations with our friend group Nick might have something on this support for third us political party up
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to 63% this is the Gallup data yeah so I was right I think that this is one of the most kind
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of profound shifts in American politics at least in our lifetimes that the right has gone very
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right the left has gone very left and they've been so rooted in identity politics that you can't really see any
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of these issues kind of finding compromise and finding a way to lean across the aisle and get things done and
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I think that's where a lot of people are just fed up so I would love to see a third political party emerge and if RFK
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breaks the dam on this it would be fantastic it will take as these things always do a number of years
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for a group of Independents to coales around what that third party looks like and how it's going to be governed and so
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on but this could be a really interesting shift in the Dynamics of American politics so pretty pretty cool
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I'm not into politics in the US that much but pretty cool I think opportunity to reframe you know how do we want to
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build America going forward and thinking about using a new party as a way to do that and we haven't even heard of uh No
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Labels the third party platform they're probably going to announce Joe Mansion any day now and so that could change
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things as well so that's a very interesting take the biggest problem that we have this may sound really dumb
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but I think it's true in launching a third party is a viable name I think it's the most important
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boundary condition to have a sustainable third party is a is a good name like an
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iconic person the chairman like whatever we call this party the name of the party not the person they
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feel no labels is a terrible name terrible name party is perfect terrible green part's terrible the Patriot party
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Freedom Party they're all terrible because they all feel like they're rooted in some you know either
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conservative or liberal cause there there's got to be some element of like what's the right decision on each on
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each topic not necessarily you know how do we fight the identity politics I think that's the key piece that's
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missing and I like the party like a party of feels disparaging to a degree you know yeah branding what would you
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call it the third party republicans People's Republic of I don't know sakan jamat do you have an idea for a name I'm
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not gonna comment on this issue po Something Brewing J would you have a name for a third party you like
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the rational party the rational party or something like that where it kind of evoked you know people who are being
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thoughtful and were trying to make rational decisions in everybody's best interest right something that was not
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about us versus them abortion or you know Dei or ESG just something focused more on getting things done the the
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getting things done party something like that getting things done party so on the
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nose but better than the derangement party yeah absolutely all right let's keep going let's keep going here we go
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oh man he's always trying to derell the show I will not engage with all right it's time for our biggest business
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winner biggest winner in business who you gotta M who's your biggest winner in business I mean I don't think this is
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even close but I think it's Elon Musk oh H three things obviously three different
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companies but the rebasing of Twitter actually had an even more profound impact I think on and Valley that it
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necessarily did on Twitter second was I think SpaceX has really turned a corner starlink is
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really at scale Starship looks like it's viable and then the third is Tesla really
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Consolidated its leadership in EVs and batteries and Battery Technology and FSD so I think on the merits it was not even
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close okay saak who you got who's your biggest business winner the magnificent 7 these are the seven companies that
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accounted for almost all of the stock market gains this year you can see it in this chart it's about a 63% gap between
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the performance of the top names top seven names in the S&P 500 and then the other 493 of
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them I think that the S&P 493 had a 12% gain this year which isn't bad but it was dwarfed by the munificent 7 which
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was almost 80% incredible all right sack says the M7 freeberg who you got yeah I'm going to
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pick one of the seven which is Microsoft just a shot down the the middle of the Fairway here despite only seeing I think
00:24:39
roughly 8% Topline growth the business saw its market cap grow by over trillion dollars 1.7 to 2.7 trillion this year
00:24:47
just an incredible number I mean can you imagine if we ever said that 10 years ago whether anyone would believe it
00:24:52
consumer and Enterprise strength and strategic strength the fact that they were able to close the Activision Act
00:24:57
acquisition in this sort of regulatory environment and then the strength that Sach showed and the the speed at which
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he acted during the open AI weekend debacle where he set up this whole thing where he got Sam on board and was going
00:25:09
to retain all this value that he was extracting from open Ai and partnership was I I think great
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leadership and cemented his his position and standing as being a really thoughtful fast acting strategic
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leader for a business that's been around forever but amazingly added a trillion of market cap in 12 mons so I I just
00:25:29
throw it to Microsoft this year it's very hard to kind of break that business apart and say Here's all the things that
00:25:33
are wrong with it it's just you know it's just moving all right very well done we got Elon didn't you didn't you
00:25:39
work there for a while one year at at Twitter or no at Microsoft Microsoft oh Microsoft one year did I was actually no
00:25:47
I was locked up for two years in the wake of the emmer deal yeah I was a corporate vice president of Microsoft
00:25:52
did you like it yeah it was I mean it's a high quality company for sure I mean I
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was like super active for one year because I was still in charge of I still had a p&l running Yammer but then after
00:26:03
one year Yammer was sort of assimilated into the Borg and yeah I didn't have anything to do I was kind of just like
00:26:09
on call right right all right I am going to talk my own book on this one and give
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it to DAR and the team at Uber they got into the S&P 500 became profitable planning stock BuyBacks they resolved
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almost all of the regulatory res issues including getting the taxis in London to
00:26:30
be on the app which was their big adversary and they were going to get kicked out of London if you remember is
00:26:34
the company that five years ago the press and the fake news were saying could never be profitable and was going
00:26:40
to fail and now it is the most successful new start up in the last cycle bigger than
00:26:47
everybody and so congratulations to the team over there all right Biggest Loser in business the biggest loser it's
00:26:56
2023 freeberg just so you know last year your prediction was Capital intensive series b c's and D's of growth companies
00:27:03
well done on that prediction but give me freeberg your actual who was Your Biggest Loser in 2023 oh Sultan of
00:27:11
science it's sort of tied up obviously there's a tale to the effect but it's VCS who deployed most of their capital
00:27:17
in 2021 obviously it was the year where a venture capital deployments peaked and what I've heard from
00:27:25
institutional LPS this year is that you know not only will that vintage underperform but it could
00:27:31
torpedo as many as 50% of firms that are managing Capital today in Silicon Valley
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and it could switch the capital allocation model that reduces allocation to Venture as an asset class
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significantly because of the torpedo that the 2021 vintage represents in performance so that was my biggest loser
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for the year good for me and saxs because we were diligent during that time all right let's go to you Sachs
00:27:58
Who's Your Biggest Loser in business in 2023 my biggest business loser is Disney
00:28:04
it seems that every aspect of Disney's business the bed in 2023 I mean all their major theatrical
00:28:12
releases flopped and missed a conservative backlash against its woke social stances you may recall that the
00:28:19
actress who played Snow White in the remake accused Prince Charming of being a stalker I mean there's a million
00:28:26
examples even there their Marvel franchise suddenly had bombs they had to fire Jonathan major who was doing a
00:28:33
fantastic job playing Kang and an entire franchise Arc they're going to have to reset now because of a criminal
00:28:39
conviction involving him Disney plus subscriptions fell off a cliff even attendance at its theme parks declined
00:28:44
dramatically because they charged way too much for families to visit and then finally Bob Iger picked a fight with
00:28:51
Elon Musk over advertising remember Elon probably told Iger to gfy could for you
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yep and tens of thousands of Disney plus subscribers cancel their subscriptions because of that and it all makes you
00:29:04
wonder if Iger now wishes he had stayed retired I too picked Disney I put Disney
00:29:09
and Warner Brothers uh both of them had their comic book franchises collaps simultaneously on the on the Warner
00:29:17
Brother side and the DC side The Flash and Justice League everything came apart streaming was too expensive and you
00:29:23
didn't mention these uh horrific strikes that they had to and it feels like they
00:29:28
had to give a ton of concession so Disney was my biggest loser as well with Warner Brothers as their little brother
00:29:34
there chamath we have a consensus there rare consensus between sax and IA who did you have for your biggest loser in
00:29:40
business well you you guys partially win Okay because I'm going to have to agree with you guys but I think the
00:29:48
biggest loser in business was the go woke Community who tried to synthetically and artificially use
00:29:58
all these social movements as a way to drive revenue and just got totally burned so Disney Bud
00:30:06
Target and I think the statement from consumers is look just sell a product stay in your
00:30:14
lane make a better and better product for us at lower and lower prices and otherwise just let the politicians and
00:30:20
the voters decide social issues and I think that was pretty clear all right there you have it folks if you're going
00:30:27
to make Bud Light people just want to drink the damn beer they're not interested in your politics all right
00:30:32
here we go biggest business surprise of 20123 who do you got saxs who was your biggest business surprise of
00:30:40
2023 I think it was the fed's bank term funding program or btfp in response to the collapse of
00:30:48
Silicon Valley Bank and the regional banking crisis as you may recall it wasn't just svb there were several
00:30:54
dominoes in the regional banking system that fell it was svb signature First Republic and even in Europe credit s
00:31:02
basically fell apart all because of the sudden spike in interest rates a lot of people tried to blame VC's for this jcal
00:31:11
yeah even you and me took took some heat uh the truth is that if the dominoes had
00:31:15
fallen in a slightly different order no one would have thought to blame VC's for
00:31:19
this it was obviously the fact that rates had spiked up and these Banks got caught off sides because their deposit
00:31:26
base is vol and they had loaded up on government bonds at a 1% interest and then the
00:31:33
value of those bonds plummeted the FED then stepped in to prevent this from turning into a contagion that was where
00:31:41
the btfp came in and I'm ambivalent about it because I think that we don't know the long-term consequences of the
00:31:48
FED basically providing this liquidity to the banking system however it's very clear to me that there was a regional
00:31:54
banking crisis underway and the FED stepping in I think probably saved us from having a recession this year
00:32:01
amazing so the FED there I picked Facebook for my biggest surprise this year they changed the name of the
00:32:08
company two years ago to meta they were pouring tens of billions of dollars into
00:32:13
VR which nobody wanted to use the CEO was focused on the wrong thing but they turned it around the stock dropped to 90
00:32:21
and Zuckerberg I guess didn't want to lose and so he laid off tens of thousands of employees said every no
00:32:28
more middle managers everybody's got to get to work and they double down on their existing businesses and they've
00:32:33
made some great progress on AI so my biggest business surprise was the Resurgence of Zuckerberg and Facebook
00:32:40
chth who did you have for your biggest business surprise I'll pick J Powell and the FED
00:32:48
capitulation I think that I've been saying for a while that rates will be higher for
00:32:53
longer for quite a while now and I I was really surprised when J Powell had this
00:33:01
press conference in December in early December and just basically capitulated and just said you know what guys we're
00:33:07
going to be cutting probably three times next year that was effectively the gist
00:33:10
of what he said and immediately the 10e basically just completely changed course and it
00:33:17
went from almost at 5% to below 4% within a matter of two and a half or three weeks so and then the stock market
00:33:26
has basically done nothing but go straight up that's a huge surprise to me because I think now what the setup is
00:33:32
for 2024 is basically we will melt up up until the first cut and then there'll probably be some real selling and I I
00:33:43
would not have predicted that the markets have become a lot more accommodative as a result I didn't
00:33:48
expect that so J Powell really I think surprised a lot of us he could have been more tempered but
00:33:56
but he did essentially decided to give away the playbook in the last month of the year here and it's important for
00:34:03
everybody to understand the FED acts independently of the administration it's just a coincidence correct Sachs that
00:34:09
their cuts are going to come just in time for Biden economics and if it happens to go up in the next nine months
00:34:15
that has nothing to do with the Biden Administration who might benefit from that if the econom Jason Jason Nick I
00:34:22
have I have a quote that I sent Nick this is a this was what Larry Summers said and I just think it's such an
00:34:29
unbelievable quote that is just worth internalizing if you just start reading here so I prefer the vulcar greenpan
00:34:36
approach which is to recognize that the FED is a little bit like the delic oracles people regarded them as
00:34:43
omnicient and omnipotent but they were in fact neither so the oracles kept their pronouncements vague and oracular
00:34:49
not concrete and specific because it was impossible to be concrete and specific without being wrong frequently and
00:34:55
undercutting credibility sure I mean that is just a perfect General yeah summary of what probably should have
00:35:01
happened in these pressures and this was an example where it was the exact opposite and the market just took it and
00:35:08
said I'm off to the races just to uh agree with that and butress it it's not only the fact that they gave this
00:35:14
guidance this year as you remember back when we started having inflation the FED
00:35:19
still stuck to the story that it would not be raising rates for some extended period of time and a lot of these banks
00:35:26
that had problems basically because they bought too many long-term government bonds a lot of those Bonds were bought
00:35:33
during that period when the Fed was assuring him it wasn't going to be jacking up rates so if the FED hadn't
00:35:38
misled them maybe they would have made better risk decisions yeah so it works both ways freeberg got a business
00:35:46
surprise for 2023 for the audience here at the besti awards the biggest surprise
00:35:49
was Sam alman's aler and return all in a weekend so that was kind of crazy so I just give it to that nothing else to be
00:35:55
said okay the flip-flop love it okay best science breakthrough this is everybody's favorite also the time when
00:36:01
Sak goes and takes a leak 2023 biggest science breakthrough I've got one you got saak you're awake during the second
00:36:08
go ahead what's the biggest science breakthrough for you sa well according to NASA there's a new look at
00:36:13
Uranus that's right Jal gotcha that's right Jal these are never before seen deep penetrating shots of Uranus how
00:36:24
deep and penetrating are these very deep very pen training from the James web Space
00:36:29
Telescope freeberg when your anus gets probed this deeply what's your takeaway what what's the feeling you get in this
00:36:38
deep probing of your anus all Wonder mystery on wonder well it's a space colonoscopy something gets moved within
00:36:48
absolutely I'm going to save you for last free broke trth you have one yeah I think that this unfortunately did not
00:36:53
get nearly the attention it deserves but I'm going to pick the crisper FDA approved crisper treatment of CLE Cel
00:37:00
anemia I think that this is just an incredibly important breakthrough and so you know CLE cell basically is just a
00:37:06
condition where the shape of your red blood cells change it causes a lot of very painful inflammation and
00:37:12
damage disproportionately affects the black population African-American population and so now there's an
00:37:19
approved therapy which goes in and makes the gene edits and fixes these folks so
00:37:23
congratulations to vertex and crisper and I think it's just incredible there was uh my big breakthrough was this
00:37:31
brain decoder technology we didn't talk about it here on the show but this project was crazy they they did MRI
00:37:37
scans or fmri scans of blood flow to different areas in the brain they then had people listen to podcasts like the
00:37:45
moth and they tracked individuals brain activity with specific words that were said during the podcast and they had
00:37:55
them repeat words then they attached it to a language model gpt1 I believe and narrowed down
00:38:02
what people were thinking then they had people think thoughts and it started to use the predictive model of gpt1 and
00:38:10
combined it with what was happening in their brain chemistry now this is a far way from being able to read people's
00:38:14
minds but for somebody who couldn't speak let's say the idea that you could think and then have your thoughts and
00:38:20
the story you were telling actually come out of a computer just by thinking would
00:38:24
be miraculous obviously neuralink does this with a direct but right now sex still thinking about
00:38:31
Uranus he's he's going deep into Uranus right now he's reading that paper I can see it in his eyes you guys know I got a
00:38:37
colonoscopy thank goodness how was it I I doubted on did they put you under Tuesday yeah but I got I didn't get the
00:38:44
propa fall I got Demerol I think Demerol oh you gotta go prop I had like the Twilight sedation so it's kind of like
00:38:50
you know it was great don't get me wrong but it was like 15 20 minutes like it was not but you were a kind of awake and
00:38:57
Lucid while I woke up like halfway through yeah you woke up halfway through yeah huh did they give you a drink a
00:39:03
little red wine or anything nothing no no they didn't talk to me no I I just saw the I saw the screen I was like what
00:39:09
the he and then I just went back to sleep let me tell you propop fall it's drip drip drip and then you wake up four
00:39:17
hours later it's the most restful sleep you ever had hours no dude I had minutes it's an hour yeah yeah I I
00:39:24
had like a 20 minute Twilight sedation that was it I asked them to go back up in there twice just to make sure
00:39:31
freeberg enough about Uranus what was your biggest science surprise of 23 I know it's hard to surprise you I know
00:39:37
you guys want to hear some crazy specific thing but I I actually just said that there were too many
00:39:42
breakthroughs with machine learned models with AI this year to list llms that can run on small desktop machines
00:39:49
that are open source that outperform all models that were in existence even a few
00:39:53
months prior it highlights the Leaps and Bounds of this trajectory of of development and models and there's other
00:40:00
specific examples like we talked about deep mind's graph cast model which is a a graph neural network on the show and
00:40:07
obviously all the generative models in imagery and movies and music but it's just such an extraordinary time to see
00:40:13
us leverage our combined capabilities to drive these extraordinary surpris is the
00:40:19
pace of language model so the pace of AI development just all these breakthroughs
00:40:23
in aggregate I mean I I I think it's hard it's hard to pay attention to want there's a constellation of change
00:40:27
underway it's incredible yeah okay now it's time for our biggest flash in the pan who is your biggest flash in the
00:40:35
pantra month oh my gosh this is um well I'll it could be business it could be Society it could be pop culture
00:40:43
I wrote down SPF okay I think like from what looked like a too good to be Wonder
00:40:50
kind frankly just turned out to be an Aderall addicted grifter bring user accounts
00:40:58
saak I hope that doesn't hit too close to home who was yours same ballpark I said effective altruism the EA movement
00:41:05
took a big hit with SPF I would have thought that'd be enough to polish it off but then we had the open AI board as
00:41:15
Sam Alman like we talked about apparently that was driven by a couple of their nonprofit board members who
00:41:21
were effective altruists I think the failure of that whole debacle will put the nail in the coffin of the EA
00:41:29
movement okay freeberg you got a flash in the pan for 2023 the obvious breakthrough in super conducting room
00:41:36
temperature material lk99 yeah it came and it went everyone thought it was going to change the world
00:41:42
couple weeks later couldn't be replicated was disproven ultimately and for a hot minute there everyone thought
00:41:48
the world was going to change so it was super exciting to see room temperature superc conductivity in the search for
00:41:54
room temperature superc conducting materials get so much attention as I mentioned it's something I've thought a
00:41:59
lot about since I was 13 years old so it's super cool but didn't happen came in it went I went with a
00:42:05
wild card here I said George Santos the diva drama queen and congressman who slayed from 2023 to
00:42:13
2023 and used his election campaign funds to buy clo and get BOTOX so y ask Queen and
00:42:23
Sephora and seph not bad not bad ask Queen just making bank over a cameo going to
00:42:29
have him come in he's going to do a uh he's going to do a quick Cameo here on Allin podcast all right best CEO your
00:42:36
best CEO best CEO I'll go first I'll go first I haven't gone first yet I picked a wild
00:42:43
card here I went Taylor Swift $4 billion do in revenue from the tour and the merchandise and the movie and everything
00:42:50
each tour stop generates $90 million for the city she lands in she's getting 85%
00:42:56
% she went direct to movie theaters with that concert movie and made a quar billion dollar she hands down the best
00:43:04
CEO of 2023 for me who you got j s Nella CEO of Microsoft I just think the gross tonnage
00:43:14
of market cap dollars he added in 2023 plus figuring out how to close Activision plus retaining maximum
00:43:22
optionality with open AI is just the Master Class CL in heads down management well done saak who do
00:43:31
you got I have Jensen Wang the CEO of Nvidia and King of the GPU we talked about the Magnificent 7 but none was
00:43:40
more magnificent than Nvidia whose stock is up 235% and earnings and forecast keep
00:43:46
blowing doors off Jensen has been planning this moment for many years before the whole AI frenzy took hold and
00:43:54
Nvidia is now reaping the the benefit of that who do he got freedberg I give it to Sam Alman because I don't think any
00:44:01
individual has generated more attention on a private company and its effect on the world and the
00:44:07
future than Sam mman and open Ai and I think that he's been aggressive in raising Capital this guy can raise like
00:44:15
he can raise and then he over bets on people he he finds Talent he gives them extraordinary comp packages gets them to
00:44:21
come and work on this this extraordinary effort and then gets them to deliver results he pushes the limits he pushes
00:44:27
the boundaries even Beyond what's comfortable for his board members clearly that you know that comes
00:44:33
with the good and the bad and then even after he got ousted by his board his entire employee base threw a coup and
00:44:39
got him back and sure everyone's got their economic motivations to see that happen but I still think that the setup
00:44:45
was you know largely his his work so he does deserve credit for that so all in I
00:44:50
think it's it's an incredible year for Sam Alman Now we move on to 2023 best in investor chamat who was your best
00:44:58
investor for 2023 here at the besti awards it was a continuation of the last couple of years but it's the Pod shops
00:45:05
and specifically Citadel so I give that award to Ken Griffin you know pod shops I think have
00:45:11
really become the hallway bully of the public Capital markets and Citadel is the
00:45:19
Kingpin they returned $7 billion to their investors in 23 I think if you go back since 2020 they've returned more
00:45:27
than 20 billion they generated you know 15% very steady returns uncorrelated to the market it's just a machine I mean
00:45:36
it's incred it's an incredible business that he's built so he is there's nobody close Sach who do you got I've got Bill
00:45:44
Amman here for timing the bond market perfectly he shorted bonds for most of the year making hundreds of millions of
00:45:50
dollars and then on October 23rd he announced that he was covering his positions and that it was too risk to
00:45:56
stay short in bonds and he was going long and that very day was the high point of the 10year bond yield the
00:46:02
market made a bottom October 27th since then yields have plummeted which means that the value bonds is soared and the
00:46:09
best part of it is that Amman is using his new Fu money to take on IV Le University presidents for their woke Dei
00:46:16
double standards grifting and plagiarism well done all right free Brook who you got I also said Amman for his timing on
00:46:23
the the treasury trade I was right there with you guys except I wanted to go with
00:46:27
the wild card I am astounded by the growth of Tik Tok but I just work backwards Arthur danek who I've never
00:46:34
met from SES Guana International Group referred to as Sig in the industry still owns according to sources 15% of this
00:46:43
company which could be worth three four 500 billion dollar when it goes out and despite all the saber rattling the CCP
00:46:51
has not divested from it even though Trump and Biden both said they were going to try to do that and bite dance
00:46:57
was caught spying on American journalists using their Tik Tok data so the fact that that investment is still
00:47:02
in place to me is extraordinary so congratulations to them but i' Sol it quick all right now we move on we're
00:47:08
moving quickly here 2023 best turnaround who's your best turnaround jaman this was like three years in the making but
00:47:15
I'll give it to Nova Nordisk I think the amount of attention that Novo has gotten
00:47:20
for zic wovi and rybelsus in 2023 was incredible but you have to go back to the last decade where the first five
00:47:30
years there was just not much activity and they had to maintain their investment stay strong stay focused and
00:47:38
then starting in about 2019 the stock has been about a four or 5x in the last four or five years and I think these
00:47:45
semi glutide gp1s are here to stay they're transformational on society so that was an enormous task of
00:47:55
corporate Focus so I'll give the turnaround a word to Nova Nordisk saak who you got in light of what's happening
00:48:02
right now in the crypto markets I'm going to go with salana oh wow wow it began the year at about $9 a
00:48:11
token it's now at 92 as of this moment obviously it's very volatile but it's up roughly 10x this year to date and in
00:48:19
light of the fact that various unscrupulous actors on the internet accuse some of us of of buying salon at
00:48:27
a discount and dumping it on retail without any evidence and that wasn't true let's just say that those of
00:48:34
us who are still holding bags of Salon are very happy campers right now bag holder bag holder for the
00:48:41
win fids freeberg who do you got biggest business turn around I give it to DAR and Uber when he took over that business
00:48:51
I think it was a 8 to9 billion do net loss in 2019 5 b billion doll ebit run rate
00:48:56
right now incredible forecasting incredible skill in forecasting the sensitivities in that business by the
00:49:02
way say more same more and you know obviously seen the market cap just this year grow from 50 billion to 126 billion
00:49:09
as of today so give it to DAR for the big turnaround product sucks though I will say it's gotten expensive hard to
00:49:15
get an Uber sit around and wait forever so Dar please fix that otherwise good job well done I went with a one that you
00:49:26
guys gave Awards to on all the previous Awards Sam wman is all over this year's besties I I thought going from being
00:49:33
fired for Mal Fein to becoming a martyr and then I'm the captain now you can throw in the I'm the captain now meme
00:49:40
right here Nick for the pod in about 10 days he captured three full new Cycles was named CEO of the year and the palace
00:49:48
Intrigue raising money for an Nvidia killer in the Middle East I mean this guy is like James Bond plus a CEO so
00:49:57
what a great turnaround from fired to desired Sam hman all right let's go to our next one here
00:50:03
2023 the worst company of the Year this is the company that is lome and horrible in our opinions and it's that's
00:50:13
all it is folks it's just four dude's opinions saxs in your opinion what was the worst company of 2023 I'm going to
00:50:21
go with fizer just last week the Wall Street Journal had an expose on the turmoil at fizer as its market cap has
00:50:28
lost $140 billion in valuation in 2023 by the way that headline is ridiculous fizer did not save the world the reason
00:50:38
why they are off so much is because of a massive drop in demand for PA slavid and
00:50:46
for covid boosters apparently people do not see the value in those products they
00:50:53
finally figured it out I would say that the company is also suffering from a credibility crisis by not leveling with
00:51:00
the public about the efficacy and safety of their vaccines the CEO Albert Bera was confronted in Davos by citizen
00:51:07
journalists for this lack of transparency back in January of this year and what's interesting is that if
00:51:12
you read The Wall Street Journal piece even his own employees are questioning bur's cander when he announced on a
00:51:20
companywide virtual Town Hall that the company was embarking on a cost cutting effort the chat room erupted in snark
00:51:27
quote future is bright but you might get fired is how one employee characterized
00:51:31
burus spin this led another employee to apply quote dumpster fires are always bright all right fredberg worst company
00:51:40
of 2023 for you you have a worst company mus loome I do I'm gonna get through this without getting interrupted the
00:51:46
worst company of 2023 is muan food stuff this company is pure evil it's got 137,000 employees it's based in China
00:51:54
it's the world's largest slaughterer of pigs Slaughters 2.1 million pigs per year with the world's largest pig farm
00:52:02
near nyang where they basically take pigs from birth and breed them all the way through to slaughter during their
00:52:09
entire lives these pigs never get to move more than a few inches they live in these multistory housing units that they
00:52:15
never get to see Sun or the light from the outside through their whole lives they're kept separate from their
00:52:20
families pigs are as smart as most dogs and even young children and at the end of their very painful awful existences
00:52:28
they're slaughtered and fed to a growing population China consumes over a billion
00:52:33
pigs a year it's a horrific situation so that's the most loome company of 2023 sounds
00:52:45
delicious I'm sorry dude you went off camera you you you were went off camera you Jacob you started laughing it's not
00:52:56
I saw you laughing that's why I started laughing I mean I had 15 jokes but I'm not going to make any of them uh yeah
00:53:02
when none of us are for factory farming it's it's horrible who was your worst company jamad come on chamad get in the
00:53:08
game here who was your worst company it's a tie between FTX and Silicon Valley Bank One stole customer accounts
00:53:15
and the other one just was run by a CEO and a risk management infrastructure that really imperiled and
00:53:23
almost imperiled an entire industry there you go for me it was Fox News they deceived their loyal customers by
00:53:28
knowingly spreading fake news about voting machines they wound up firing their most loved host in our fifth
00:53:35
bestie Tucker Carlson and they paid record setting fines for misleading the public and creating massive division in
00:53:41
our country and they're facing an even bigger lawsuit a $2.7 billion lawsuit with another election technology company
00:53:51
that will happen in 2025 Pension funds are now uing this lome company because they lost so much
00:53:58
money for them so my worst company of the year is Fox News all right Sak you had something to
00:54:07
say I'm sorry so you're going for the microphone there I'm not going to defend Fox after they fire Tucker exactly
00:54:12
exactly that's why I put in there for you I do think the judgments are the magnitude of the judgments are
00:54:16
ridiculous H okay now it's time we're going to have a little bit of fun here best meme your best meme fun stuff I'll
00:54:26
start it off this year I loves the Boston cop on a slide I don't know if you guys have seen this one but it went
00:54:32
super viral they've made millions of versions of it this is the cop in Boston going down a
00:54:42
slide and the backstory here bunch of cops were told there's a slide that's too dangerous in Boston one of them
00:54:49
tried to do their Duty and confirm that it was in fact dangerous and he got injured coming down the slide and now
00:54:54
anytime is going off the track whether it's a market or a company you play that clip saxs you're a master of memes what
00:55:05
do he got for us this year in the 2023 bestie Awards well I I think the meme of the year had to be the gfy elon's answer
00:55:13
to Bob iger's attempt to blackmail him Nick can but we need to see this in the gift version the way the hand motions
00:55:19
are it's this then this and then it comes back in good it's like a conductor of an orchestra
00:55:27
just a standard good for you jam did you have a did you have a favorite jamath a
00:55:32
favorite meme of 20123 yeah Nick if you want to just throw it up there I'm a journalist and it's the H
00:55:42
kid I'm a journalism I'm a journalist what what is this talking about I think it's it's what we all know and I think
00:55:49
it was further exposed this year just the the Brazen naked ambition and corrupt nature of the mainstream
00:55:57
media Jason you said it really well and I and it really made an impact on me so I want to give you credit we are all
00:56:03
citizen journalists investigative journalists now and I think that that's true I think we all have a
00:56:08
responsibility to pick the information source and to vet it yeah and never been more true
00:56:17
than this year you got to have multiple sources triangulate the truth for yourself yeah I wouldn't trust the
00:56:23
mainstream media at this point you know as but one of many sources freeberg got a favorite meme got a favorite meme no I
00:56:32
didn't put anything on this okay you gave us six minutes on pigs being killed but you can't come up with one meme
00:56:38
okay can't come up with a meme come on man I think it's kind of funny actually it's kind of funny he has no meme he's
00:56:46
memess wait we need to play the music all right best new Tac best new Tac we got a keep things moving last
00:56:55
year it was uh fusion and GPT across the board this year I'll just get a mine out
00:57:00
of the way real quick I'm going to go with something more specific chat gpt's app has been extraordinary it now has
00:57:05
4.0 in it it has Dolly in it I've been making incredible images to go with my my substack on my blog posts that I
00:57:12
would have paid thousands of dollars you know for each one of those when I was doing magazines and they have voice chat
00:57:19
if you haven't connected chat gpt's voice app to the new action button on the phone 15 there's a button above your
00:57:26
volume called action you can map it to a specific feature inside of any app I mapped it to voice chat on chat gbt when
00:57:35
I'm driving with my kids they have a question we put it in and we just start asking questions about history science
00:57:40
whatever it happens to be pop culture music to chat jb4 and it is an extraordinary breakthrough app and it's
00:57:48
you know been downloaded I think hundreds of millions of times now or over 100 million incredible incredible
00:57:54
progress there chth you got a best tech best new tech I don't think there was anything meaningful in 2023 I think
00:58:02
there was a lot of improvements to things that were founded and started in 2020 or 2021 or 2022 nothing new that
00:58:09
caught my eye this year sax I have Starling for jet Suite x uh I of course I've never used it but I heard it's
00:58:19
great but if you do fly with other humans who you don't know Starling for private Aviation as
00:58:26
well but I've heard it's a real game Cher on commercial flights and every kind of flight freeburn best new
00:58:34
tech my best new tech of this year I think is really important as we race to keep the promise
00:58:44
of AI alive in the face of increasing government regulation which is open- Source locally run llms so you can take
00:58:53
an llm and you can run it on your machine you don't have to be connected to the internet you don't have to have a
00:58:57
third party service provider making an llm available to you and so this allows the continued development and pursuit of
00:59:07
productivity gains and new capabilities that emerge from these llms by making them local offline disconnected from the
00:59:14
internet and and away from the scrutability of agencies that want to check your model and make sure it's okay
00:59:21
so this is really important to me I do think like my broader Trend right now is I think that there's this really scary
00:59:27
big shift of you're either going to end up in a new Enlightenment or you're going to end up in a new Dark Ages and I
00:59:33
think we're seeing this play out in all these conflicts around the world and all
00:59:36
of this regulation and all of the the technology that's being deemed either a threat or an
00:59:42
opportunity and so I I think any technology capability that allows us to pursue the enlightenment is a winner for
00:59:49
me so anyway this was a big shift that happened this year and there's multiple models that are publicly available that
00:59:54
are free open source that you can run okay 2023 best trend shamat what was the best trend of 2023 for
01:00:02
you I actually uh didn't really couldn't figure one out okay Sachs you got a best
01:00:08
trend for 2023 something that happened often it became a trend my best trend is the return of color blindness as the
01:00:15
standard and the push back on Dei we already talked about the university presidents and what bill akman is doing
01:00:22
I would add to that that the Supreme Court banned race based affirmative action and University admissions in June
01:00:28
and red State Governors like Greg Abbott and Ronda santis took that as a green light to shut down Dei programs in their
01:00:34
public colleges and universities I think that this is a good Trend and hopefully it continues next
01:00:40
year because America should be a colorblind meritocracy fredberg what was your best trend of
01:00:48
2023 the profitability focus at Young companies particularly in an age of AI co-pilot tools for software development
01:00:56
from what I've seen it's pretty incredible in single person efforts can yield what
01:01:02
historically has required 6 12 or more people to do using co-pilot Tools in AI so software development is accelerated
01:01:10
new products and entire companies can be built by single individual at very low cost building totally customized
01:01:16
software so from what I've seen it's not widely adopted these these capabilities
01:01:20
as you guys probably have seen as well it's starting to be but just imagine once the majority of people are using
01:01:27
these co-piloting tools to write software and start to learn how to use these tools it's really going to
01:01:33
increase productivity globally as it finds its way into every business and everyone can become an entrepreneur and
01:01:38
so on so it's it's it's incredible to see I too Sachs was looking at the issue of Dei and I framed mine as Dei dying
01:01:46
and meritocracy thriving that was the best trend for me so we are once again sympatico you and I Dei dying and
01:01:53
meritocracy thriving nicely done you really are proving you're a centrus yeah yeah I
01:01:58
mean or I just listened to MLK's speech and I thought that seems like the most logical thing to do yeah you're right
01:02:05
absolutely 100% 100% we figured this out some time ago yeah I don't know why we have to rehash it okay 2023 worst Trend
01:02:14
I'll lead it off I had three here of worst Trends number one anti-Semitism absolutely disgusting and horrible two
01:02:20
Trump's Rehabilitation we'll just leave it at that and then three people of L moral character using the freedom of
01:02:26
speech movement to whitewash their horrible personal Behavior yes I'm talking about Alex Jones to all the mids
01:02:33
in the comments sax what was the worst trend for you you had to have three didn't you well I'm going to go with
01:02:39
anti-Semitism those are my two run two Runners all right fair enough yeah I think you guys are like my worst Trend
01:02:44
it is the metastasizing national debt this chart really makes it clear you can see here the national debt as a function
01:02:53
of deficit and revenues and it's a upside down hockey stick Jesus if a company could produce user growth that
01:03:00
looked like this I would invest all day long however this is not growth this is basically how much we owe and it is a
01:03:08
bipartisan problem it's been going on for really 20 plus years but it is getting worse and worse under Biden yeah
01:03:18
8 trillion added to the deficit under Trump and looks like five to six trillion under Biden well you know we
01:03:24
did have a CO we did have meltdown where the economy was down 30% year-over year
01:03:30
so the tax yeah both parties supported that bailout and in hindsight it was excessive yeah Biden's quote unquote
01:03:38
stimulus was passed on straight party lines after Co was already over yeah so I think we should just make sure to a
01:03:44
portion the blame correctly but like I said bipartisan problem yeah I agree bip Parson and Trump did a very ill-timed
01:03:51
tax cut before Co so it was a double hit if you want to compare it in eight years Obama added eight trillion so it
01:03:59
was 1 trillion a year these new guys getting close to two trillion per year so they doubled the velocity of spending
01:04:07
just completely disastrous Jamal what's the worst trend for you I just think it's the the General State of Affairs
01:04:14
amongst our young people our 20 year olds and our 30 year olds I think are really
01:04:20
struggling and it's gotten worse I'll give you two examples here you see on your screen this year 158,000 more
01:04:31
Americans died than expected which is more than all the wars combined in Vietnam and when you look at where those
01:04:37
death rates are those death rates were coming from 35 to 44 year olds which was up 26% and 25 to 34 year olds which was
01:04:45
up 20% about pre-co levels and all we can point to from the government establishment is that it's smoking in a
01:04:53
bad diet which doesn't really hang together and then the second trend is when you look at just general marriage
01:04:59
rates amongst these same cohort of people it's meaningfully worse than every cohort above it so just societally
01:05:07
these folks are not tracking in whatever Dimension you want to measure sort of like happiness fillment stability safety
01:05:16
something is meaningfully wrong in these cohorts of people and we owe it to them
01:05:20
to figure it out the one thing you missed there chath in the western world Le 36% increase in suicide over the past
01:05:27
two decades so a lot of another one it's another one so that might be the main one I think in this is the the mental
01:05:32
health issues are acute Okay we have freedberg your left for the worst Trend the besti award for worst trend of 20123
01:05:40
what do you got I don't know I had one I'm going to change it on the Fly I'm going to go with the normalization of
01:05:45
spending I think it's probably the worst Trend like it's you know it used to be a
01:05:49
big deal remember when the tar program happened in '08 and it was an incredible single line item of $800 billion to
01:05:58
support the troubled asset relief effort to try and keep the economy stable by buying up all of this failing debt and
01:06:06
supporting all of these equities and keeping these businesses going and now it's like hundred billion dollar for
01:06:13
this a trillion for that it's like we've normalized spending and Co just made it
01:06:18
worse it's your guys's Point earlier about the acceleration of spending once you spend a dollar you think it's okay
01:06:24
to spend a dollar and then next time you spend two it's not that bad it's only a
01:06:27
dollar more and then next time you spend five it's only three bucks more and suddenly it becomes normal and this
01:06:32
normalization catches up to us I've harped on this enough so I won't go into it too much but I think that's the worst
01:06:36
Trend who did you change from what was your what was your original my original was the merging of
01:06:42
the oppressor oppressed ideologies that are in diametric opposition to each other I just found this more ironic than
01:06:50
the worst Trend I think which is like lgbtq few groups that were Pro Hamas that were marching and supporting Hamas
01:06:59
which is anti-lgbtq it was just so mind-blowing to me to see some of the behavior over
01:07:05
the last couple of months that made absolutely no sense and it shows how little first principle thinking people
01:07:11
are actually doing about the things that they're standing up for standing up for
01:07:17
a free Palestine is one kind of point but being pro Hamas Hamas would have a responsibility of
01:07:27
eradicating people like you is just is just nuts to me so I there's just some of the stuff that I've seen where the
01:07:33
oppressor oppressed ideology is is trained to fit everything even if it makes absolutely no sense so it's just
01:07:40
really frustrating to see okay now we go on to a little casual the besti awards for 20203 favorite media favorite media
01:07:50
new things that came out in the media could be a video game book music or a TV show I'll lead us off here just get it
01:07:57
out of the way real quick for me the secession finale extraordinary one of the best pieces of Television ever made
01:08:04
and my sleeper was the bear season 2 very neat show on FX I think I turned a lot of you on to it and season two had
01:08:12
an episode episode five which is the forks episode in which Cammy sends Richie to intern at a very elite
01:08:19
restaurant and he's charged with polishing silverware and Garett him get into it why am I doing all this stupid
01:08:25
stuff and he just tells him listen every day here's a freaking Super Bowl and uh
01:08:30
it's just a great great amazing episode of television with extraordinary performances and writing
01:08:36
chth did you have any uh favorite media this year anything that Taylor Swift did
01:08:42
this year was whiteart you're a Swifty she is a tour to force she's incredible and she's a
01:08:51
genius what can you say nothing I'm going to use my spot to draw attention to some podcasts that you may
01:08:58
not have heard of some geopolitics and world affairs podcast so probably my number one is the Duran
01:09:07
with Alexander murus and Alex christoforo I'd also give honorable mention to judge
01:09:13
napalitano podcast and Colonel Daniel Davis I have found these three podcasts to be quite useful in understanding
01:09:20
what's happening in the rest of the world and I found their reporting an analysis to be more accurate than
01:09:27
anything you're going to get in the mainstream media freeberg any favorite media for you as we get close to rapping
01:09:32
here I recently read a book that I liked I don't know if I talked about it called
01:09:36
the idea Factory on the history of bell labs and the great age of American innovation strongly recommend it I had
01:09:42
no idea how much this Bell Labs institution touched Modern Life from radar to the
01:09:50
transistor to the nuclear bomb to computing even information theory was developed
01:09:56
inside of bell Labs it was an incredible organization that took its roots in an institutionalized Monopoly which then
01:10:03
enabled them to have one customer that was always a built-in customer but gave them the freedom and the resourcing to
01:10:08
build all of these great things and for anyone that wants to say that monopolies
01:10:13
stifle Innovation I encourage you to read this book because it really says the opposite may be true that a monopoly
01:10:19
enables investment in long-term thinking and long-term ideas that you never YC so
01:10:25
I give it to that I also had a softer one have you guys ever watched Bobby Al's podcast I found this so funny this
01:10:32
year you guys ever seen it her interview with Drake is hilarious it's so funny so
01:10:35
she interviewed Drake she's interviewed Cuban inter I know talking about the the
01:10:40
dead Pand yeah yeah the dead pan so she's got this like wholly disinterested Persona and it totally encapsulates like
01:10:46
a gen Z like personality in a way that you don't get in any other media it's really and she's hilarious when she does
01:10:53
these interviews and she's very unique like Andy Kaufman or Jim Carrey like in that sense like unique in how she does
01:10:59
this I just think like we'll see if the stick laughs like she may end up kind of
01:11:03
being tired soon and see if she has a second act the Drake interview was really good the one with Cuban I had two
01:11:09
problems with it one they sat on the ground and then two Cuban's feet were really dirty did you see the one with
01:11:14
Shaq and so I was like bro like yeah just keep the shoes on and just you know the Shaq one was hilarious but anyway
01:11:20
she's she's got great content it's it's Hit or Miss by the way I'll also say it's not consistent Hit or Miss but I
01:11:26
don't know I just found her to be a little bit of a a unique standout in um in content this year everyone's kind of
01:11:33
me too me too looks the same she she stood out a bit for me in that vein have you seen zway Z
01:11:39
iwe she is a woman who interviews people and then she asks people very uncomfortable questions about race like
01:11:47
how many black friends you have name them and it is hilarious it is like the greatest bit ever
01:11:54
Z shout out to zway Z since we went there on on who who's seen it you saw it jaman yeah yeah yeah I mean if you're on
01:12:01
Tik Tok you'll see it because she just had like yeah she just has anybody in pop she had the George Santos on she had
01:12:07
Geor s interview yeah wow and it was just so incred crazy on the uh podcasting front shout
01:12:16
out to our friend Gwen the palro if you don't listen to The Goo podcast she does
01:12:20
like interviews every other time really good Red Scare another great alternative
01:12:25
podcast I like to listen to from the dirt bag left as they call it and Shout Out PR Bar's Cafe Insider cafe.com all
01:12:34
right I think is this the end producer Nick are we here did we make it last one last one we have a special award here
01:12:42
the self imulation award this has been named after Rudy Giuliani so Rudy juliani self imulation award and this is
01:12:50
a tough one to give this year Sachs who do you have because this could be quite self-referential here go I am
01:13:01
going to name Liz McGill the now former president of the University of Pennsylvania ah who had been vomiting on
01:13:08
herself for two months in the aftermath of October 7th before she even appeared at that Congressional hearing with the
01:13:14
presidence of Harvard MIT she answered what was clearly a moral question with a toned deaf legalistic answer saying that
01:13:23
vacy of genocide against Jews depends on context falls into question whether one
01:13:28
is smart enough to be University president it's not a job that demands that much intelligence but it does
01:13:33
require an instinct for knowing when and how to cover your own ass when she was finally forced to step down it felt like
01:13:39
a mercy killing yeah was she the one smirking too she she had the awkward SM that was what I found the most appalling
01:13:47
was the awkward smirks yep chth Who lit them on fire most of all this year who who poured gasoline over their heads and
01:13:56
just lit up a stoy I think it's the brand and reputation of the ivies I think that there was irreparable harm
01:14:03
done well done yes we've had Generations now that have been taught that that is where we send our best and brightest
01:14:10
kids but it turns out that they're getting indoctrinated into some very kind of extreme rhetoric that then
01:14:17
produces these incapable first principles thinkers that will be the destruction of our societ if we don't
01:14:24
fix it so I think Harvard applications were down 17% already I expect that Trend across the
01:14:32
IVs to go way up I expect contributions to go down I expect governments to ratchet down their
01:14:43
spending in those schools and I expect some folks to try to take away their nonprofit status so I think that we are
01:14:50
going to reallocate the brand Equity of the IVs to good schools and we will know what the good
01:15:00
schools are based on their independence their ability to churn out first principles thinkers and their
01:15:06
respect for freedom of speech without being moral idiots fredberg what do you got well well said Jamal iy League
01:15:16
presidents okay well done no no need to add too much more there I guess you know
01:15:21
I was torn here between the namesake of this very award if you missed it Rudy John Giuliani had a $150 million
01:15:30
judgment against him maybe two weeks ago for slandering two poor innocent people
01:15:35
in his electoral scam that he ran with Trump and he I think is going to get indicted next year for these fake
01:15:43
electorates so follow the fake electorates one but that was a close one for me because Kanye West also lit
01:15:48
himself on fire the past year with the Adidas contract and his anti-Semitism getting k kicked off Twitter X but I
01:15:54
feel like that was mental illness and I think Rudy J Giuliani is just stupid so I give it to Rudy Giuliani the namesake
01:16:02
of this award and I hope the only I'll say about that jcal is I'm not going to defend him or his actions at all however
01:16:12
I do think I do think that judgment was excessive and it's part of a pattern of ridiculous judgments that we see when
01:16:19
you have for example a DC jury pool judging a conservative or a republican whose politics they disagree
01:16:26
with the plaintiffs only asked for $48 million the jury awarded three times that it's an excessive award I think a
01:16:34
few million dollars as a penalty would have been a perfectly nice award I think to bankrupt the man which is what you're
01:16:40
talking about is becoming a bit of a pylon and I'm all in favor of Rudy being the butt of jokes until the point where
01:16:48
really you're talking about destroying his life I think it's gone way too far yeah these awards are curious and how
01:16:56
large they are they all get appealed though and they all come down so I'm sure that'll come down by some massive
01:17:01
percentage in the near future this has been the yearend episode can you believe it we made it another year guys here we
01:17:08
are at the end of 2023 we'll do our predictions next week so you'll get our amazing predictions for 2024 in the next
01:17:14
episode any closing thoughts on the year we just had freeberg how you feeling here at the end of the year are you
01:17:22
hopeful are you cheery are you sad are you excited I've been up since 5 am and I just drank beers so I'm pretty tired
01:17:30
okay but uh with respect that's kind of how the whole year feels actually feel like I exhausted yeah I just got up
01:17:36
early cranked through the day had some beer and I'm ready for a nap but I'm I'm probably more optimistic
01:17:44
going into 2024 than I was going into 2023 cuz that's on a personal basis and I think yeah there's just a lot going on
01:17:53
today in the world yeah it's complex isn't it I do think as long as we embrace the Enlightenment and don't
01:17:59
embrace the Dark Ages we we stand a shot at keeping progress alive and I think that's the the the the defining
01:18:06
characteristics of human civilization is progress and that's I think ultimately resolves all the conflicts and other
01:18:13
things we just got to keep it alive well said Jam how are you feeling here as we
01:18:16
wrap up 2023 and looking into 2024 I think 2022 and 2023 have been looking back the most important two
01:18:26
years of my professional career I think I benefited like we all I think I think all four of us could say
01:18:32
this of just an incredible set of Tailwinds and 22 and 23 were the first time where I was in a position of
01:18:40
influence and capital and power where I had to confront that those Tailwinds can
01:18:45
quickly become headwinds and that we are not impervious to them so I like freedberg and looking look
01:18:53
forward to 24 where I can try to put all these learnings to good use so it's been
01:18:58
generally good and 23 was the most important year of my life in the sense that I got remarried so that's been a
01:19:03
huge personal highlight yes beautiful love that you guys all came to that as well was a highlight for us too
01:19:09
absolutely beautiful but yeah I'm ready to I'm ready to turn the page on this year and start 24 sax any closing
01:19:14
thoughts here well I think one of the biggest surprises of 2023 is that we didn't have
01:19:20
a recession I mean I think most people were betting on on a recession in 23 they thought that a soft Landing would
01:19:26
be almost impossible and in fact the data is that soft Landing is almost never occur remember what Larry Summers
01:19:32
said to us at our all-in Summit this year which is soft Landings are like second marriages it's the Triumph of
01:19:40
Hope over experience meaning they almost never happened and so the fact that we didn't get that I think that was
01:19:46
basically a pretty important bullet Dodge now that being said I do think that the whole B2B software industry
01:19:52
definitely went through through a recession but fortunately I think we bottomed out and starting to see green
01:19:57
shoots now so things are returning to normal on the global stage things are still okay in the sense
01:20:05
that the US is not directly in a war but man it is pretty scary we could be pulled into pretty Dynamic pretty
01:20:12
Dynamic very Dynamic we could be pulled into a war in the Middle East any time we still have a proxy war going in
01:20:16
Ukraine so there are a lot of risks still on the horizon I'll just say for the gentlemen and for the audience it
01:20:22
has been one Wonder F to have all of you the audience the fans of the show and you besties in my life over two really
01:20:30
tough years it was also very proud of myself going into them I knew I was Built For War and uh it was a war the
01:20:37
last few years it was difficult it was hard but we all I think learned a lot and came out stronger because of it and
01:20:42
I just want to give a particular shout out to all of you guys for making this brand extraordinary and taking it to new
01:20:49
heights almost all the times I've I've built things brand F Gadget silicon IR reporter Allin
01:20:57
whatever it is it was a solo effort and it's just been really rewarding to be part of a team and I want to just give a
01:21:02
particular note to uh freeberg who I think all of us owe a real Deb of gratitude towards he took the all-in
01:21:08
summit which was a very strong start in 2022 and he leveled it up in 2023 amazingly and I'm just so excited to to
01:21:17
see what we do in 2024 with this amazing brand memberships Tequilas another 5050
01:21:24
episode and a great Allin Summit next year I hope so shout out to my guy freeberg four the dictator the sultant
01:21:32
of science chairman dictator sorry apologize for getting that incorrect there we'll get it right chairman
01:21:37
dictator and the Rainman David saaks I am the world's greatest moderator and we will see you in
01:21:44
2024 byebye Happy New Year love you guys Happy New Year byebye love you besties let your winners ride
01:21:54
Rainman David and instead we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy
01:22:01
with it love you queen [Music] of Besties are that's my dog taking driveway oh man we should all just get a and just
01:22:23
have one big huge orgy cuz they're all this useless it's like this like sexual tension that they just need to release
01:22:28
[Music] somehow we need to get merch [Music] our I'm going all [Music] in