Big Tech might not be able to use Section 230 for protection anymore
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies.

On today's episode, the future of Section 230. If you ask the companies or if you ask Section 230's big defenders, they will say, you know, everything is at stake. Barry's CEO, Joey Gonzalez, on motivating clients. Yeah, I don't think it's really possible to motivate people. And some keeping tabs. I forgot that was a movie. Yeah, that was the thing. But first, here's a new segment we're calling The Download. The Download.

This is the news to know this week in the world of business and innovation. Apple will use Face ID to fit Vision Pro users. So the $3,500 Vision Pro headset that we've talked about on this show before is produced in different sizes that need to be custom fit to your face. So Apple announced it will use Face ID, which will determine what size headband and light seal will fit people's faces.

The Vision Pro is set to launch in February. - And you're still gonna look like a user even if it fits your face. - Yeah, I'm not into it. And I have glasses, so I would need to get prescriptions.

So next, it's tax season, baby. The free file software service from the IRS went live last Friday. Taxpayers can start using it on January 29th. This means that taxpayers with an adjusted gross income of $79,000 or less during 2023 can file and process a simple federal tax return for free instead of giving your money to Intuit.

Yeah, I don't need to give any more money to Intuit. They've got enough of my money. Next, more CFOs are becoming CEOs. So CFOs, or Chief Financial Officers, if you don't know what that means. I always wanted to be Chief Fun Officers, but they have historically been known for number crunching. But recently, more and more are taking on operational responsibilities.

About 8% of the S&P 500 and Fortune 500 firms promoted the finance chief to CEO. The ascendancy of finance chiefs might also help women reach more top jobs as they hold about 19% of CFO positions at big U.S. firms.

And this is partly because companies have spent years sort of blowing their budgets and raising tons of money from venture capital. That's no longer the case. And these companies need to start turning a profit. So who better to run them than somebody who knows about finances?

Now, speaking of women CEOs, Barstool Sports CEO Erica Ayers-Bedan is stepping down. Check on your most toxic friends. Make sure they're okay. Yeah, if you have a friend who's really into Barstool Sports, maybe reconsider that friendship. Yeah, I know. Cut them out of your life.

Erica took the position in 2016 and led the company through enormous growth and relevance. The brand was sold back to its founder, Dave Portnoy, in August for $1. As a southern New England boy myself, I have to support Dave Portnoy. That's just, I don't support Dave Portnoy.

Anyways. I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. He does do a TikTok where he tries pizza. Oh, I've seen that. You have done that? But that is it for today's download. For more on the latest stories in the world of business, go to FastCompany.com or follow the links in our show notes.

But now on to the important stuff. Josh, what is your favorite Josh wine meme? I actually have not seen any of the Josh wine memes, but as a Josh myself, I do have a photo of me at like 23 years old holding up a bottle of Josh wine Cabernet and pointing at it like this. I don't know if the social cameras will post this out there, but I was just kind of like...

It's really weird. I'll send it to you later. We'll put it up on socials for Josh Wines. But that has nothing to do with what we're... Why are you into Josh Wine memes? Before we get into what we're talking about today... My whole Twitter feed is about Josh Wine right now. Well, I think this... Like, truly, that's all. It's like memes of, like, Don Draper talking to people, being like, a wine named Josh. You know? Like...

I'm into it. I think more things need to be named Josh. I do follow several social media accounts that are just like Josh is assembled. The internet's off the rails. And honestly, these memes are why we need to reform Section 230. No, never change. Also, because Section 230, as we'll go into soon, means that I could defame Josh.

No, actually, you know what? It totally means that I could defame Josh and I'd be to blame and not Twitter. Never mind. Yeah, so maybe you should be rooting against that. How dare you? Yeah, you should sue Instagram when I post bad things about you. I'm very litigious, clearly, famously.

So now we're actually going to dive into what's going on with the law known as Section 230. And here to break it all down for us is Fast Company contributing writer, Issy Lepowski. Thanks for having me. So to sort of start at the beginning, tell us what Section 230 is. Section 230 is this nearly three-decade-old law that is really foundational to the creation of the internet as we know it. It's the law that basically said if you are a platform, a company like Facebook,

or Twitter, and you allow third parties, your users, to post things on your platform, you cannot be held liable as a company for the things that those users post. So if somebody writes something defamatory on Facebook or Twitter, the person who was defamed cannot sue Facebook or Twitter, or at least they can sue them. But if they go to court, the judge is going to throw the case out because they're going to say Section 230 prevents this case from going forward.

Right. So if I defame Josh on Twitter, he can't sue Twitter. He's just going to have to sue me for spreading rumors. Exactly. It's happened many times. Yeah.

You can try to sue Twitter, but, and we'll get to this, the point of the law is that it's been fairly easy to get those kinds of lawsuits thrown out. Yeah. And, you know, in recent years, there have been court cases, right, against Snap, against Meta, about sort of addicting kids to platforms or, you know, causing harm to them. How does Section 230 play into that?

So going back over the last 30 years, there have been tons of Section 230 lawsuits. And typically, those lawsuits proceed just the way we were discussing. So I've said something bad about Josh on Facebook, and Josh tries to sue Facebook.

because he says that you have used these words, you've published these words to defame me. Section 230 says that these platforms cannot be treated as publishers, right? So for a long time, people have gone to court and tried to sue over the actual content itself. The cases you're talking about are part of this new generation of cases that have sprung up really in the last couple of years.

And they are trying to find a workaround to Section 230. And they're doing that by focusing not on the content, not on the defamatory words that were said, but on bigger ideas around how these products were designed and what sorts of safeguards they lack,

what sorts of design defects, quote unquote, they might possess. And so in that way, these suits are trying to follow more of a typical product liability. If a child gets injured in a defective car seat, you know, that's a product liability suit. These people are now trying to bring suits along the same lines, but around these digital products.

What are some sort of features that you can point to that they may be like, this is an example of bad design? One case that I wrote about recently for Fast Company is having to do with Snapchat. The case was brought by a number of parents whose children overdosed on fentanyl-based pills that they were able to acquire via Snapchat. And the allegation in that case is

is that the very fundamental design of Snapchat, which is these ephemeral messages, basically make it a very attractive platform for drug dealers and provide very few protections for young people who are on Snapchat. So, you know, the ephemeral messaging, that's something they're alleging is a design defect.

Lack of robust sort of age gating, lack of robust parental controls. These are sort of like design features that the plaintiffs in that case are alleging that Snapchat has not put in place. And they're alleging that therefore that means it is a defective product.

Why do you think that product liability strategy is winning at the moment? Or I don't know if it's winning, actually, you'll have to tell me, but why do you think that strategy is working? What I wrote about is that, you know, it is winning. And I want to be cautious here. We haven't seen any of these cases go through to completion. So it's not like

We say, you know, the plaintiffs in that Snapchat case have won. But remember, going back to what I was saying, the point of Section 230 has really been to help companies get these cases dismissed quickly. And they don't have to spend a ton of money and a ton of time fighting these legal battles. The early wins in these cases are because judges are letting these cases proceed. In the Snapchat case, the company came back to the court and filed a motion to dismiss. And

And the judge said, no, this is not something that is protected by Section 230 because they are not treating you as a publisher. They were treating you as a creator of a product and they're alleging that the product is defective. And now the judge has not ruled on whether the product actually is defective. But what the judge is saying is that the case has to at least go forward, that the case has to be heard. And the trend that we're seeing is that

A lot of these rulings are piling up, these early rulings. Usually, companies have been able to swat away these lawsuits under Section 230, and more and more, we're seeing cases kind of get through. And maybe they get pared down a little bit. Maybe judges say, okay, you know, this allegation is protected by Section 230, and that one's not. But still, we're going to let the case be heard. And we're seeing a lot more of these. Why?

There are a number of reasons. I would say that Section 230 has become kind of a political punching bag. You know, we've heard everyone from President Biden to former President Trump to name every member of Congress talk about wanting to curb Section 230 protections, and they have not done so. Genuinely, I do not think that most of them understand what Section 230 does.

Because most of them, particularly Trump and conservatives, were like, we need to get rid of Section 230 because of free speech. And I'm like, my guy, that's not going to help your case with this. Right. Well, I mean, there are kind of two theories of the case. One is that if Section 230 didn't exist, the internet would be a free-for-all because people would be afraid to moderate any content. And the other would be that it would be the most restrictive environment because people wouldn't want anything that even...

so much as skirts the line as problematic to be allowed online. But I think you're right. I mean, it's been sort of a point of agreement among Democrats and Republicans that something needs to be done about Section 230, but for opposite reasons, right? The Democrats want platforms to do more about restricting, you know, sort of radical fringe kind of political ideas, hate speech, all of those kinds of things. And Republicans, I think, want less restriction on political speech.

But so you asked why, you know, these suits might be getting gaining some ground. One is that Section 230 is becoming unpopular. The other is these tech companies are becoming less popular. And all of that sort of influences the courts and the courts see this. The courts see that, you know, the public.

is sort of having a problem with how this law has been applied in the past. And, you know, some are deciding to do something about it. It is kind of wild that Section 230 and really the Communications Decency Act that is 28 years old at this point is really the only measure

major piece of internet regulation from a time before we had social media. I was going to ask, what technology was around that needed this kind of law designed at the time? AOL? Online message boards, really. That was the main... It's like Craigslist. Josh, I'm going to defame you on Craigslist.

Well, yeah, I mean, you might as well. But I mean, it was chat rooms. The internet was, you know, very nascent. I mean, it is sort of an argument that we're talking about Section 230, I think, is not in the same way, but analogous to like the Second Amendment in the way that we talk about because the technology is not, it's apples to oranges comparing when these ideas were conceived and written about in the evolution of the technology that we're actually governing.

I mean, the Internet looks nothing like it did in 1996 as it does in 2024. Right. And so that's another reason that I think the plaintiffs in these cases feel that they're gaining some ground is because they're saying the real purpose of Section 230 when it was written was to defend against these defamation cases.

And since then, we've seen so many other sort of more concrete harms arise from social media that might not have been contemplated at that time. And so we need to be able to account for that, that we're not just talking about the threat of defamation, but the threat of, you know, for instance, in the Snapsuit, the threat of fraud.

being able to buy illicit drugs. In the other suit that you mentioned, Yasmin, there are another hundreds of suits ongoing that are accusing these platforms of harming teens' mental health and social media addiction and things like that. So there are a much broader range of harms tied to these platforms that I think are being contemplated now. Now, how are tech companies responding?

Tech companies are all of these suits by, you know, mounting Section 230 defenses and saying that that you cannot separate the content from the supposed defective product design. So, again, let's take the Snap Fentanyl case. They're saying that it is the content of the messages, these drug deals, essentially, that's at issue. You know, if it was ephemeral messages of, you know, selfies between teenagers, you

Are you still going to have a claim that this is a defective product or do you have to look at the content itself? So in that case, and in many other cases, tried to get these cases dismissed on Section 230 grounds. There was a case a number of years ago that sort of started off this cascade. It was another case regarding SNAP. Was this Lemon v. SNAP? Lemon v. SNAP, yes.

And in that case, there were two young men who died in a car crash while using a Snapchat created filter that recorded how fast they were going. And so at the time of the crash, they were using the filter. They were going something like 113 miles an hour and they died. And their parents brought this suit and snap and they said, look,

This is your filter. You created this. This is not third-party content. This is your product. That suit was allowed to proceed. It eventually settled. But the fact that that suit was allowed to proceed...

kind of opened the floodgates to all these other suits. The Supreme Court is also slated to hear a couple of Section 230 cases this term. Tell me a little more about that and how that's going to shape how courts consider these claims. Right. So the Supreme Court is considering two cases, slightly different, but both about Section 230. They deal with the laws that were passed in Texas and in Florida, which had...

with content moderation. They were trying to legislate how online platforms could moderate content. In Texas, I believe it was about whether platforms could moderate content based on viewpoint discrimination, quote unquote. And in the Florida case, it was about the extent to which platforms could moderate political speech, speech by politicians.

by political candidates. In the Florida and Texas cases, the states were basically saying that platforms could not moderate content based on viewpoint discrimination, and they could not moderate, you know, certain types of political speech. The court systems basically reached split decisions in those cases as to whether or not this was allowed. Now the Supreme Court is going to sort of reconcile those two decisions. Does Section 230 prohibit the government from sort of

saying what platforms can or cannot publish. And I should say, it's not just Section 230 that matters here, right? The First Amendment is a law that, you know, ostensibly protects these companies. Never heard of it. But it should also protect these companies in terms of, you know, how they present and display and what they choose to publish and what they choose not to publish.

So the Supreme Court will hear those two cases. And because it has to do with Section 230, you know, the lawyers I've talked to have said, you know, we're going to be reading those cases very closely, even though it's not...

directly applicable to the idea of product liability, there still may be something in the justice's opinion that becomes applicable to our cases. Before we wrap up, I guess the best way to end this or the best thing I can ask, even though it's kind of vague, is what are the sort of broader implications of this debate for the internet at large that we haven't touched on? And

I mean, it totally depends on who you ask. If you ask the companies or if you ask Section 230's big defenders, they will say, you know, everything is at stake. That, you know, once you allow the courts to dictate what these platforms can and can't publish or

Or what is or is not a defective design? Like, where does that end, right? You kind of backtrack into saying that, oh, Snapchat is a defective product because it has ephemeral messaging. Well, can the same be said about encrypted apps? Are they defective products because the companies cannot monitor conversations and therefore any number of crimes could be committed via encrypted apps?

In a situation like Snap, if we're saying it's defective because of the ephemeral messaging, would a ruling basically mean that they may have to shut down that feature? Just so I understand how companies can follow through, does it mean they have to just settle with this one person? What does that look like? Gosh, I guess it depends on if that case goes forward, it would depend on sort of...

Where the endpoint is. I mean, do they settle beforehand? I would think that a company like Snap is going to do whatever it can not to have to change the essential fundamental feature of its platform. But I want to get to what the opposing side would say, because I kind of gave you what the Section 230 defenders would say.

Section 230 defenders would say, next to falls encrypted apps and then everyone's privacy is going to be violated. The folks who are suing, who are bringing these cases are saying that that is doomsday scenario that's meant to scare the courts off from doing anything to limit Section 230. They're not saying get rid of Section 230 altogether. They're saying that it has been interpreted too broadly, more broadly than anyone else

intended for it to be and that these cases are sort of right-sizing the law and providing an outlet for people who have suffered real harms, children being killed, providing them an outlet to get some sort of justice in the courts. That makes a lot of sense. It's kind of crazy anyone who still assumes we have any amount of privacy on the internet, but sure. Yeah, I was going to say this is going to take down our privacy. Get in line. Yeah, I know.

We're going to take a quick break, followed by my roundtable conversation with Tracy Anderson, Barry's CEO, Joey Gonzalez, and Y7's founder and CEO, Sarah Larson Levy, about innovating in the fitness industry.

Welcome, everyone. I am familiar with all of your workouts, and I do all three actually pretty frequently. I'm supposed to do Tracy Anderson after this. I'm in London at the moment. I took a Barry's class a couple days ago. I was trying to prepare for this conversation, and it totally wiped me out. It was so hard. But Joey, I want to start with you first and go back to COVID. COVID hit the boutique. Do we have to? No.

Don't worry, it's not the whole conversation. But at the time, I don't think Barry's had any sort of at-home offerings. Tell me about how you all survived that period of time. Yes, it was definitely, you know, really challenging because everything that we knew, all of our core competencies were really about how to engage with people in person and how to create and foster relationships in real life.

And we had to all of a sudden, every studio across the world, the red lights went off. We had to figure out very quickly how to change that. And so we started connecting with our clients. I went live on Instagram randomly the day after just to sort of test the appetite of our clients. And we had around, I think it was over 20,000 people join us for

But what I think was like a really bad workout for 30 minutes, trying to figure out how it goes, doing my best, but was actually really fun, pretty emotional and allowed us to really start to give birth to what is now Barry's X. So we sat down as a team and looked at our mission, our vision, our values and

and hash out like, what would a digital Barry's experience look like if we were to try to stay as true to who we are? And Barry's X is the product of that.

So I want to come back and ask a little bit more about Barry's X in a second. But Tracy, you were in a different situation. You've had DVDs. Now you have streaming to use your method for a really long time, in addition to operating physical studios. Tell me about what the transition was like when you were closing studios or talking to people at home.

Yeah, I'm an old lady here. I filmed more fitness DVDs than anyone in our market. But I didn't love filming DVDs because there was such a delay. There was so much. It just took the human experience out of what is meant to be the most important connected human experience. And

So for me, I've always loved since day one when we launched streaming and I wanted to do it in such a pure, unproduced, real way. And I had already been doing that for many years. So for me, with COVID,

I'm a safety first because stupid hurts kind of mindset. And so for me, I didn't want people to marinate in a virus that infectious in the studios until we understood more about it. So for me, closing the studios was super easy. People were really infuriated with me, but I felt like

I had to lean into my mom gut there and say, sorry, we're not going to do this, but don't worry because I have you and you have yourself more than anything. And so what I decided to do was to

use my own heightened movement during that time. And I put myself up on these lives for two hours because there was this research that had been done before on ECSOD, which is you can actually produce this. Your body produces it with exercise. It's an incredible lung protectant too. So I also leaned into whatever science I could, experts I could, called up as many different kind of leaders and

Integral functional medicine and things like that to think, well, how can I be creative in my lane? And more than anything, I think it was a need to amplify to everyone that you're not alone. We're not alone. We have this incredible tool to be able to connect and we must move, right?

So for me, it was just being in the moment and walking through it with everyone. We were all walking through it together. So our streaming grew like 126% overnight. People had to stay home. Sarah, I feel like you were in some ways in the toughest position of all three, purely because I imagine a lot of people have treadmills and weights at home, but not many of us have heated treads.

Yoga studios. Yeah. Tell me about launching your digital offering, but also tell me about the split today. You've obviously been to all three of our studios and they have such incredible

an incredible in-studio experience. I was at Barry's yesterday. So I know that like for me, I'm not going to go on a treadmill by myself. That's like not for me. I need those instructors. I need them pushing me. And I'm the same way about yoga too, right? I think that yoga is something that we've always seen digitally a lot, right? Adrienne has crafted this like beautiful community on YouTube and a lot of teachers already had digital offerings. So for us, even before COVID,

going digital wasn't something we were really interested in because how am I going to look through a camera, look at my clients and say, okay, turn your heat up.

cover your mirrors, turn the lights down, and really force all of these elements that we use in studio to create our experience that aren't as easy to do at home. So when we really thought about, okay, COVID, everything's closed, we're not allowed to reopen. And what does that look like for us in the business? And how are we still serving our clients? It was that music piece was the thing that

can really set us apart. We spent a long time in conversation with Universal Music Group and became the first yoga forward platform to have licensed music. And that was our differentiating factor when it came to launching our digital platform. We know we can't have everything, but we really thought that with the music component, at least we could give our clients, our community what they really wanted, which was that kind of motivation through the music and the movement together.

I still think about, I think this was a few years ago, there was a lawsuit against Peloton. Peloton had to play like kids bop covers of songs, which was so crazy. Yeah, it's so antiquated in the way that they really kind of run the business and how it just hasn't really caught up with streaming yet.

and what that means. So it's not always super accessible for boutique studios to get access to that streaming. It's really costly. And there's a lot of legal that has to be done too. So it's a lot of hurdles to jump through. Right. But good for you, Sarah, for doing it properly. Peloton basically said,

Screw you to all of those people that deserve the money that they deserve for their art form. Yeah. And until the music industry does figure it out to make sure that the writers get paid and the producers get paid and all of the people playing the instruments get paid and whether they make a lot or not, or whatever choice they end up making, I did the right thing immediately. And as did you, but so many people did not. And so many people to this day,

are not doing the right thing by the artists. We know what it means to pay for an in-studio experience. We know what it means to pay for live, but this streamed is a gray area right now. So I think it's awesome that you stuck with one label and you did the hard work there to come to an actual agreement with them because so many people are just taking it. That was important for us, I think, too,

have that with our experience and how we sequence the classes in terms of kind of the peaks and valleys. And that's how we went into digital. Joey, tell me about both launching Barry's X, but also what has been like post-pandemic? Were people keeping up on it? Do you find you've attracted different clients or more clients? How do you think about that? Yeah. And by the way, it can totally relate to the music licensing thing.

It was very, very time intensive, very costly. And we actually ended up pivoting last year and we moved off of it onto Feed.fm. And what that did for us was not only allowed us to get Barry's X into a more financially optimized business, but also to start to scale it globally, which was something, one of the ways you're restricted with, you

music licensing. That's smart, Joey. I actually did the same thing because it's just at the end of the day, when you're sitting in a CEO position too, it's like, well, it's just too much. It's yeah. Well over seven figures. I mean, it's a lot of money, especially when it's for us, it's not our core product. And for us, when studios started to open back up, our membership base went from in the thousands down into the hundreds and

And it always it wasn't much of a disappointment because we always sort of envisioned ourselves getting back to studio life. Got it. So you weren't like this is a permanent transition for our business. No, I mean, I deep down inside hope not. Right. But I obviously I was there for it if that's where the world was going to go. But I never in my wildest dreams did I think people wouldn't come back to in-person. Yeah.

And so now it's remained a way for our clients to stay connected to the brand if they're traveling, if they move, if they live in another city where Barry's doesn't yet exist and they want to try it and their friends all try it. It still serves a really great purpose, but it's definitely not our core focus. Sarah, for you, has it become more of a core focus or are you in the same situation as Joey when it comes to in-studio? We're in the same situation where digital for us has become just a really great perk

an add-on for our clients when they travel or a lot of people moved, I think during 2020, 2021. You moved to a city without a seven, right? Yeah. I just opened one here because Sarah and I were so cliche. Me to Miami. I know. Me to Austin. Yeah. It's true. You guys can have Texas. I won't go there. I think everybody is very familiar with

Getting back into the swing of things, seeing all these discounted gym memberships, and basically everybody sort of has made these New Year's resolutions to, like, recommit to...

their bodies, I guess. Sarah, I want to start with you. Tell me how the new year affects your business. Do you see more customers and then some drop off or what does that look like? Yeah, we definitely see, I mean, January, February, March are definitely kind of the biggest months for us in terms of attendance and what we see. Everyone's coming off of the holidays. What day is it? You know, kids are home from school, kind of the whole thing. And it feels really good to get back into a routine. Yeah.

I feel that from a personal level. It's, I'm like, oh, I can't wait when I know what my schedule is going to be like somewhat. We see a lot of bookings throughout those three months, but our core clients are pretty dedicated throughout the year. I think the only time we see seasonal dips, I think through summer and then through the holidays with a lot of travel, but I think it shows how strong the fitness community is that everyone is able

ready to recommit to themselves through movement. And I think that's really beautiful. And it's always an exciting time. And there's always such an electric energy, I think, in the studios. Joey, what does that look like at Barry's? It's interesting. Our seasonality, it starts to pick up in January, but we don't really peak till January.

April, May, June. Oh, people want to look hot for summer. I think Barry's is really like a summer body. I think it on the scale of like, what's the hardest to least hard workout? For a lot, it's at the top. So that's when they like really give it their all. And we're really busy throughout the summer. And then the fall for us really starts to fall off until January again, the build starts.

Interesting. Tracy, how about Tracy Anderson? Do you see a lot of new customers in the new year or not so much? What I usually get is I'll get stopped somewhere and people will say, oh my gosh, I would love to try your workout, but I'm just intimidated or I'm not there yet or I need to lose 30 pounds. And I'm like, okay, but you do know this is my whole life's work and I'm for all of you. And there are all these different levels. So I don't think that I'm top of mind for a quick fix. I think that...

Like I said, I have a 95% retention rate. And I think that when people come to my practice and once they realize how much I expect from them,

I think they know pretty quick or not if they... If they want to stick with it. I'm not the person to come to if you want to fake yourself out for a quick January, like, oh, I started my New Year's resolution and then I just became old me. I'm not that girl. I'm going to insist that you grow. And if you want results, you have to grow. You have to learn. You have to

get to know yourself. You have to explore within your body and you have to learn new choreography every single week. Sarah, what advice you have for our listeners when it comes to just staying motivated and keeping going? That's a difficult one for me because I think that everyone has their own motivations, right? For me, the thing about fitness is I don't need a six pack.

I'll never have one. And like, I'm cool. Like it's never been a goal of mine regarding like movement and my body. What's really important to me is that my body is able to move that the way I want it to move. And I think,

the killer of any goal is the lack of consistency. And that's really where the motivation I think should come from is that you have to show up. You have to show up for yourself. You have to show up for the people that you love. I think having kids is kind of a game changer for that. So you have these little people who need you to be functioning at your best. And that's been my motivation recently when I'm tired or I have a one-year-old who's very

recently decided to wake up in the middle of the night again. So that's been fun for me. But, you know, I need that movement and I want my body to be strong to continue to do the things that I love, which I think really is at the crux of what boutique fitness was started on, which is really this love your body,

love to move your body. And it has such incredible mental benefits too. Just that way that when you're in these classes and you're moving your body, you can just blank out everything else and just focus on where you are in the present moment is incredible. Tracy, how do you tell your clients to stay motivated when they're like,

Tracy, I'm so tired. I don't tell my clients to do anything. I don't think we're always motivated and I think that's okay.

I think that certain days when we're not as motivated as other days are signals we have to listen to. And sometimes being motivated and going and going and going and doing and doing and doing isn't what we need, right? I've got to ask you the same question to end this segment, which is just our listeners are tuning in and they're like, how do I do this?

How do you motivate them? I don't think it's really possible to motivate people because I think people always want to talk about motivation. And for me, it's the word is really discipline. And I am very disciplined. I work out a lot. I spend a lot of time working out because it makes me happy, which is an unfair advantage, right? So that's like my happy place. I can't imagine if I didn't like to work out how much more challenging it would be.

But when I set my mind to something, I will always do it. And I'm very disciplined. And I just think that's a little bit different than motivation because it's the ability to actually pursue something despite how tempting it might be to abandon it. And for me, abandoning it isn't an option.

Well, I think it comes down to your core values. Clearly, Joey has one of his core values is his health and his workout. And he knows that those go together. Right. So it's one of my core values, too. So that's what keeps you with a pretty great attendance record or, you know, that you're like, I'm not going to go two weeks without finding motivation. And then I'd be like, OK, something's going on. I'm talking about like a day here or there.

But it has to be part of your character. And this is where people in the new year fail all the time because they haven't bought into it as one of their core values. They believe it should be one of their core values. They don't understand why it's not. But until they believe that for themselves and until they find that for themselves and it's part of their actual character, they're not going to have the discipline. She's like spot on because I'm the son of two immigrants who have worked so hard through their lives.

And so it's a big value for me. And it's one of the Barry's values is work hard. And one of our sayings is work out hard and be nice to people. Well, I love that. I think we can hear work out hard and be nice to people. Yeah. Take that away. That seems like a fairly not controversial statement.

Okay, we're back with Issy and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. As a reminder, again, this is where each of us shares a story, trend, or something from pop culture that we are following right now. And Issy, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on?

I am keeping tabs on, I think like a lot of people, the 2024 election where just the day after. Huge downer. I'm really interested in how the sort of fragmented social media environment is going to impact the 2024 election because in past cycles, you've had sort of one dominant platform like Facebook that have been able to, you know, become really powerful engines for like get out the vote efforts and things like that.

As far as I know, crazy old people still love Facebook. So I feel like that won't change. Josh is shaking his head. But here's the thing, as crazy old people are reliable voters and young people are not. Yeah, that's what I mean. There may be a fragmented social landscape, but the people showing up, Facebookers. Yeah, but the people that you want to turn out are the young people, especially for the left.

So, you know, they need to reach those people, whether they like it or not. And those people are now sort of all over. So it's going to be a much more challenging environment. So I'm keeping tabs on that. Josh, what are you keeping tabs on? Well, I know what you want my keeping tabs to be on. And that's that George Santos announced that he's on Ozempic, which if you've listened to this show, you know that that's a story that was built for me in particular. Our two obsessions, George Santos, former congressman,

and the first man to walk on the moon, George Santos. I just want to read one sentence, which is,

All in all, I suspended Ozempic in 2023 and gained 30 pounds throughout the year. Taking in consideration my personal stuff, it was a real shit show of a year. I love that he's self-aware and understands the kind of gravity of the situation that he finds himself in. It's terrific. No, that's not going to be my keeping tabs. I do want to actually talk about, this is not anything recent at all, but I spent the weekend

binge-watching back through the original Friday the 13th movies of Jason fame. Man, what a fun watch. Really? I need to have my keeping tabs. Do they hold up? Define hold up. Define hold up. They're fun. They're fun as shit. They're so campy and so ridiculous. And yeah, it was a good time. So if you're into re-watching campy old horror movies, go back through the classics.

Uh, I'm gonna, my wife and I are going to now, after we finish up these, we're going to go back through the nightmare on Elm streets and conclude our watch with Freddie versus Jason. We go, I forgot that was a movie. Yeah, no, that was the thing. Um,

Yeah, so that's the escapism that I needed early in 2024 as we gear up towards things like the 2024 election. I mean, for one horror show and the next, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, yikes. It just won't die for both of these stories.

Yes, what's your keeping tabs? True Detective is back and it's actually good. Is it? It's got Jodie Foster in this season. Jodie Foster stars in it. The first episode came out on Sunday and it was a phenomenal first episode. I'm really excited about this one.

Especially after... And the Mahershala Ali season was not bad. It just wasn't great. That second season, I like... I stopped after the second season. I can't. The second season was so... It's funny. I read this piece where the writer, Nick Pizzolatto, was basically like, the first season was such a hit that I had no time to come up with a plot for the second season. That's why it was bad. And I was like...

No, because no. Well, here's my thing. It's the most convoluted plot in the world. You somehow came out with too much plot. Well, that's what he really means is he didn't have time to edit the plot that he came up with. And I thought he didn't have time to come up with one. Yeah. God, that show was bad. Anyway, the new one's good so far. So far. Watch it go swiftly downhill. Like, did you watch Murder at the End of the World? No.

It's the one with Emma Corrin and Clive Owen. Oh, I just started watching that actually. So I would say it's good until the end. And I'm going to say it right now and you'll understand it when you finish it. It's basically Swagless iRobot. Okay, that's great. iRobot without that Rami Malek riz. Yeah.

There we go. And as always, we end it in the stupidest place as possible in this episode. That's it for most innovative companies. Issy, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks, Issy. Our show is produced by Avery Miles, Blake Odom, and Julia Xu. Mix and sound designed by Nicholas Torres and our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review, and we'll see you next week.