Shownotes Transcript
Do you like my sweatshirt? I think you should turn off the blur. That's what I think. Hey, Alex, I never wanted to be a video star. But here you are. Yet here you are. The reluctant podcaster. I'm happy to do a podcast. I just don't want to be like a YouTube character. It's not my jam. I don't want to wear pants, but here we are.
Perfect analogy. Brilliant. You got a sermon to give, Brian. Well, I do, actually. Welcome to People vs. Algorithms. I'm Brian Morrissey, joined by Troy Young with a blur on his camera. Troy, you got a zen in. You're ready to go. Ready to go.
I saw a guy at an airport earlier today, earlier today, yesterday, who he was wearing shorts in Detroit and like a backwards baseball cap. And I was thinking, that's a Zins guy. And sure enough, he popped one in. So that was fun. And Alex Schleifer. Alex, welcome. Can we talk about Zins for a sec? Can we talk about it? Do you want to start with a nice... That's all you want to talk about. Why not? What, Zins? Well, I bought...
I just wanted to try. I'm looking for the perfect zin, and there's European zins, and there's American zins. The American ones are much better, in my opinion. Some of them are like wet, and they're not nice. So I tried this new product called Athletic. It's like an athletic nicotine zin. Athletic. You've got it.
It's like the athletic greens of nicotine addiction. Multiple flavors. And you can see why it would appeal to someone that you're having a product that's an athletic. There's a non-alcoholic beer called Athletic too. That's not part of the same. So their slogan, their line is taste victory. This is going to catch you. And I think they have, they actually had Rick Rubin and Joe Rogan on their website. I don't know if they're official sponsors. It's notable because they have a 1.5.
which is very light and they have a no taste one. Like I do threes, but you can go up to like nines. Like nines are like crazy, crazy. Threes are nice. 1.5, light little buzz. Anyway, they suck. They're no good. And I don't mean, you know, good luck to the people that are making them. But the thing is that the packets that enclose the beautiful powdery nicotine on the zins have not been, you know, beaten. And these are the best.
And this is the content you guys come here for. This was our nicotine patch review corner. So don't buy athletic. I've struggled with nicotine addiction for a long time, and it doesn't always make me feel good about myself. You and me both, buddy. You and me both. You know that as a boy, I like cigarettes. As I got, I'm like Obama. I like a cigarette.
And then I went into the gum phase and I had gum, but there was gum everywhere in my house, underneath every surface. There was, Jill used to yell at me about gum everywhere. Then I started hitting the mints. I think we lost like a third of our audience just now, but keep going. Yeah, but the mints were nice, but I got so addicted to the mints. I was doing like at least a bundle of mints a day.
And the whole problem was, is that I kept like when I would go to Europe or when I would like, you know, be like a quiet moment away from the house, I might sneak a cigarette here or there. So I was always trapped in this addictive cycle. And these keep me there, but they prevent me from smoking. The thing is, is that I just need to cut the nicotine habit because it's a 30 year habit. But it brings out the best in me, as you've seen in this podcast. Yeah, well, it's worth a try.
Good luck with your addiction, but for now, at least it's giving you some leverage on the podcast YouTuber front. I want to start by talking about something that I wrote about in the newsletter. In my newsletter, I'm trying to link the two a little bit more. It was kind of about how tech is creating this alternative media ecosystem. Slowly but surely, it's putting together the pieces. And we had talked about this TBPN, the Technology Brothers Programming Network. And I
And I think it represents something important to where the media business is going, particularly in tech, because as we know, everything is downstream of tech. But it's a live streamed three hour YouTube show hosted by entrepreneurs, John Coogan and Jordy Hayes. Coogan was a co-founder of Soylent and apparently he was in on some nicotine gum product. Lucies. He did Lucies. Do you know them? Yeah. Are they good? Yeah.
No, it's people putting a brand on a product that's inferior. Oh my God. Nobody would ever do that. Never. Not in DTC. That would be crazy. Anyway, TBPN is, it's a fast growing, it's nicely produced, I think. I see it mostly all over X, which is my addiction. I don't have a nicotine addiction. I have an X addiction. You still have that. It's probably worse for you than nicotine, actually.
Yeah, I'm blowing past. I'm like, don't remind me until tomorrow. I'm fine for today. I can quit anytime I want. Those dudes are handsome, too. Yeah, they're handsome. And they also have, it has all the trappings of CNBC. It has a running ticker. It has multiple tickers. It has like three tickers. It has tech. It has all these tech sponsors. They have, they do this three panel thing.
sort of shot where the guest is like in the middle and then the two dudes who are handsome are on the sides. And anytime I see it on X, I know it's the technology brothers. And I don't know, it's being shoved down my throat or I'm just finding it.
And they have all these entrepreneur guests and whatnot. And I thought about it. It's kind of, in many ways, what All In used to be. It was before it veered into its Manosphere lane. But TVPN, they basically are the tech world's version of CNBC. Yeah.
And it's like a place where you're not going to get like hard hitting like interviews or adversarial, quote unquote, journalism. In fact, Coogan was in EIR at Founders Fund.
Okay. And Founders Fund has, they've already spun out Pirate Wires, which is another element of this. Okay. And then I was looking at other sponsors because I was like, wow, you got a lot of sponsors. And like half of them are Founders Fund portfolio companies. So, this is a great model, right? Like, and I think that it's part- This got your conspiratorial juices flowing. It's not a conspiracy. I am-
I have taken over a room in my house to take over the wall. It's a media conspiracy. What you can see is in the product is because they started with sponsors, they made room for sponsors in the interface. You can see them all over. The top one is Ramp.
Yeah. It's like a NASCAR. I love it. Yeah. No, that's my goal. I want to have you wearing an ad tech company sweatshirt. I wrote about them and then he like followed me on X. So I think like he's found himself. It's crazy that I hadn't heard about it. The first time I heard about it was when you guys discussed it as a topic and
But yeah, it's funny that the format is very CNBC and it maybe shows that there's still some valid formats out there. You just need to change the cost structure and simplify everything and you can build a beautiful media business. It's not a
Well, here's the thing, Alex. You don't only change the cross structure, you change the entire business model. So this is one of them, but there's a lot of these outlets because to me, this is a typical instance of an arbitrage opportunity. Media has a tremendous amount of influence. The influence is high, but the market value is low and it's never been lower really for media. It's really difficult to make money in media. I don't know if you know that.
But traditional journalism is expensive. It's slow. It's constrained by institutional norms, all this fact-checking and nonsense. But it still shapes narratives, sets agendas, and gives legitimacy. I mean, I think that Elon Musk buying X was actually a good investment. So I think that basically...
tech is looking at media in order to have a different type of business model. Now, Andreessen Horowitz is like really deeply involved in this go direct movement, right? And I think this is the updated playbook because it says it's a media company that just monetizes through investing, right? And I know a lot of people kind of use versions of that, but I think there's something there. I mean, just this week, Andreessen acquihired Eric,
Eric Torenberg. What do you think of that homepage image? It's fine. I like it. You're talking about the Andreessen site? Yeah. Yeah, it's got a big coin with a... Is it? That's American exceptionalism right there in a coin or some kind of golden... Is it like a challenge coin? I'd like to have one of those. Yeah, it's maybe a shit coin. But hold on, we interrupted your long narrative. Yeah.
I'm trying something new with... I let you do your... I thought you said you wanted us to prepare. I prepare a little whole mini... I love it. I'm taking it in, man. I made notes. Go. Fuck. Bullshit. After breaking your flow. Let this guy cook. He was just... Yeah, he's cooking. Anyway, I think like, you know, All In showed the way with this because, you know, they monetize completely differently than regular media. And you see this in the tech media space. They kind of...
gave up on the journalistic side of media. You know, they used to spend a lot of time working the refs. Nick Denton was on here a few weeks ago. He talked about how Marc Andreessen and Musk and the others were sending him notes and trying to get him to like write about this or write about that. And that was the old way of doing things.
And now it's like, we're going to create our own media, which, you know, Andreessen does. And now with Turpentine, they'll control more media. But a lot of times it's using that sort of soft power. They're backing other kinds of media. There's friendly media. The incentives are out there if you're on Substack or in a podcast and, you
you're friendly enough, you're going to get the right guests. And Marc Andreessen pops up a lot. He'll promote it and he'll get a lot of people there. It's not exactly a new thing, but I think that they are building a really interesting ecosystem. And it's no surprise that the two totems of this
are Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund from Peter Thiel. Those are my, that's my conspiratorial, I don't think it's conspiracy. I think it's just out in the open. If you take a step back though, isn't it just that it's just becoming infrastructure? You know, like every company has become a tech company or needs to be a tech company, right? Yeah.
that every company today needs to also be a media company. And media is just infrastructure as part of building a solid company. It gives you influence, it gives you reach, it gives you access to your customer base. It is 100% what, you know, 50% of our time in our studio is
is developing media because we want to own the audience and we think that by the time we release the game having an audience is going to be very valuable but the fact that they're doing it the way they are being in in an industry like kind of vc and tech which is about backscratching and that they're using that playbook is also not surprising you know but they're good at it too right
Yeah, I mean, I think like from what I've heard, you know, having like a video studio as part of like your setup at tech companies or VC is just the regular thing. And the fact is, despite the camera troubles that Troy has and I do, it's never been more accessible than ever to do this. And it's not like they're lacking money. And you can buy distribution in lots of places, right?
And I think what's interesting is it presents, it takes on a lot of the conventions of the
sort of traditional media. Like if you look at the TBPN, it looks like a regular, you know, cable news program, right? And I'm not saying, look, the content itself is pretty good from what I see. You know, I haven't watched any three hours of it, but I have seen plenty of clips in it. And I think that there's a place for this. I think it's just really difficult to
It's yet another participant in this marketplace. And it's got a, what do they call in Silicon Valley, an orthogonal strategy to it? But I mean, that's the thing, right? They have an orthogonal strategy. Their cost structure is completely different. They record like a ton of, so they just sit down and start recording video. There's always news. They have a system of bringing people on that are,
friendly right and it becomes kind of and everybody's got different media companies so you do kind of that audience capture of bringing people to your podcast and then what they have very likely is a group of editors that go in and slice up stuff into little sound bites that addicts like you get to like just like gobble up on twitter it's a great it's a great strategy i think i think they're doing a great job like i kind of want to watch it now i find it
I find all the tickers and everything really mesmerizing. I mean, it's very maximalist.
What do you think of the design, Troy? It's definitely that. Well, it looks a little like the Onion News Network, but it's the green maybe. I mean, it could be an Onion News Network thing. Tech Bros channel, 24-7 Tech Bros just talking about themselves. Yeah. Well, they're owning the Tech Bros thing, which is fun. Yeah, they're owning that. I like that. A few observations I would have just while you were talking, Brian. One is they have this skill. Today they talked about Kevin Systrom complaining about...
in court about Zuckerberg starving Instagram of financial resources early on post-acquisition as sort of testimony to the fact that he was buying a competitor. They talked about that for like half an hour. Like I just talked about it. That's it. There's not a lot to talk about.
And so I think that's a great skill. They do that on, obviously they do that on MSNBC, on CNBC, on CNN, just people bullshitting endlessly. This, this kind of skill to just talk, talk, talk. Oh yeah. I can do that. Yeah. I saw, I talked for two and a half hours yesterday. Seriously, two and a half hours straight. Blah, blah, blah. Do you ever do that? Two and a half hours straight. No. So they do that. Troy, do you ever like sit down and pontificate for a long amount of time? Just.
I mean, I've been known to try to talk things out. You just started this podcast by talking about Zen for 15 minutes. Yeah. The other thing is that people are building media businesses on Twitter. I think probably the biggest distribution for these guys is clips on Twitter, right? And now their ad product is built into the video stream. It travels on Twitter. Like Twitter is back. They just traded the audience out.
And, you know, kids love Twitter. It's the only place. It's really the only meaningful text-based social network. Everybody that counted it out was wrong. That's crazy. You're crazy. You were wrong. You're insane. All of the libs were wrong. You're insane. This is the moment, everyone listening to the podcast, this is the moment we turn all in and next election cycle, Troy has some sort of like Twitter czar status. What are you talking about?
Twitter has people release news on Twitter. The government uses Twitter. The tech bros use Twitter. Like my kids use Twitter. I'm not sure people like Twitter. People are Brian loves Twitter. I actually know I hate it. I'm addicted. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Brian uses Twitter and regrets it.
But he uses it nonetheless. It's called X. I don't think Twitter is dead. I refuse to call it X. I don't think Twitter is dead. I think it's probably doing fine, but there are more options today than ever, and every one of these guys on every single network, Twitter definitely has its pockets of like,
especially people who have built an audience. Twitter is still massively influential. There's always going to be, you know. Traffic was down. But I would say like for these guys, like this is not a Twitter success story. This is like a YouTube success story. This stuff is like, this stuff, YouTube is so huge. It's the everything network. All these shorts and everything like that are happening on YouTube. I agree that YouTube is a big part of the formula, but distribution on Twitter is really important.
Yeah. If you look at the number of subscribers for this product... It's a part of it. It's a part of it. Hey, buddy, why don't you do this? They've got 5,000 subscribers on YouTube. Yeah, that's true actually. What the hell? It's nothing. Now, pop over to X and look at the brothers. The technology brothers. Yeah. Are they actually brothers? No. No. You know, brothers.
They have 50,000 of them. They're still small. So they have 10 times the distribution on Twitter. But let's look at some tweets. Let's look at some tweets. Like,
Like, you're talking out of your ass. This got like seven... This is a podcast, as Brian would say. But it's like they've got 20 retweets for something they posted 18 hours ago. I don't know what their distribution is, but it's not that. Hey, Alex, I'm not talking out of my ass. They have 58 people watching it on YouTube right now.
But maybe we're just talking about something that nobody's watching. It could be. It could be. But here's the thing. It's like they are getting like the, they are getting like real guests on here. And it is, I think, look, you can buy distribution. Like,
I think in some ways, Carlos Watson was on to something. He was creating. He was just ahead of his time with the media entity that he was creating. So this is a great topic, actually. This is good. Tech has a group of successful people. I don't think CEOs and founders outside of tech have ever had the status of being celebrities.
But we know for a fact that bringing on some of these CEOs on your podcast will make your podcast. Zuckerberg appearing on your podcast, Brian Chesky, my old boss, appearing on our podcast. It brings an audience with it because all of these guys have huge followers. Maybe we can get them on our podcast if
Well, you know, I haven't been trying not to use like my, you know, influence. No, we'll do it for you. Maybe I should. Maybe I should. That would be a terrible idea, Alex. It's a great model. Like, you know. Alex, while you're at it, though, it's interesting to look at the distribution for me because there isn't a single video on YouTube that has more than 2,000 views.
Okay, so it's pretty niche on YouTube. If you go here, they have 50,000 followers. I don't know what the reach is on a post, but it doesn't look like it's massive. They're pretty aggressive on Instagram. Would you mind flipping over to Instagram quickly? Yep. TBPN Live on Instagram. Look, it's very well produced. Yeah. I guess it's easy to do these things. They have no followers. They're a little too close up. They have no followers. What are we talking about here? Maybe we're TikTok. TikTok.
You see, this is like it's outsized influence because you're just bringing people on. They have 270,000 followers on TikTok. So this is something we should really look into. How old is this brand? How long have they been in business? So they started doing it daily, I think, in January. Coogan just left.
Founders Fund as the EIR. So this is it. So you have very little of a footprint, right? This is what I'm talking about. They used to call it AstroTurf media, right? Where it just becomes, it's just, you know, RT and whatnot. Like you just like set up things that look like media, but actually is something else. I'm not saying that this is, you know, that, but it's kind of like this version where it looks completely like, you know, regular startup media, but no, it's not. This is this,
was incubated out of a venture capital fund. And so all of a sudden you, I look at all of those sponsors and I was like, Oh my God. Wow. Like this is like, this is like a big thing. The guy on the left though, looks like he's going to star on a show about a banker that becomes a serial killer.
I think that's the Soylent guy. There's not even enough data on Google Trends to have them. This is it. I mean, I think it's a very, but here's the interesting thing. I think this is a very insular kind of group of people that can get each other on the podcast because the entire VC and tech industry is about this kind of backstroke.
But a lot of industries are about this. And I guess I think about it a lot because I was talking to like a B2B company. But no other industry, Brian, no other industry has a kind of such a wide network of people with that footprint, with like clear success stories to talk about, with like media savviness and stuff like that. We're not seeing the petroleum industry do this. We're not seeing the car industry do this. We're not seeing any other industry do this. We're not even seeing the media industry do this. And you guys love to talk about yourselves.
I mean, you know. That's true. Thank you. Hey, Brian, I guess we're in the media industry. The thing is, is that just an observation. So this is a nascent media startup. Really nice idea unfolding in public. As I've said many times, everybody in media lies. Typically what you would do at this stage of the development of the company is talk about how big you are and grow into that.
Right. Except that you live on platforms. So everything is transparent and you can see that there's not a tremendous amount of distribution across any of the channels. The thing is, is this format of two guys talking about Kevin's system for half an hour is really boring.
Like the, you know, transplanting the sort of CNBC format onto YouTube in a live thing with account, it's really hard to get audience and to kind of amass it into a kind of time and place. So you then rely on the editing and the cutting and the distribution across other channels. And hopefully that's how you kind of realize the potential of the brand. And it hasn't happened yet.
Well, okay, fine. It hasn't happened yet. But like, let's, let us remember Cheddar. Okay, just for a moment. Let us remember. Yeah, huge failure. No, Cheddar sold for, let me get how much. $200 million. $200 million. Like, John is the best salesperson in the world next to his dad, who apparently is the best real estate salesperson in the history of Manhattan. Yeah.
Do you know Cheddar? We must have talked about it before. I know Cheddar. I just, I get all of those things. Yeah, you probably saw it at the gas station or something. I get all of those things confused. Thank you. I was part of that. Anyway, it was basically trying to create this kind of cable news network for the distributed world. I mean, they didn't like start off on YouTube, which was probably a mistake. They just tried to go on all platforms, particularly Twitter. Anyway, I think you're going to see more of these kinds of things because Cheddar, there's Cheddar. Yeah.
Yeah, the logo for Cheddar is also Swiss, too. That was also a tell. But I want to call out the format. Troy was kind of blaming that format. The format does work. I mean, if you look at political pundit slash gamer data,
like destiny and hassan and these types of guys this is what they do they sit at a computer and they just pontificate about like whatever else they've got like i mean you know they've got this kind of crazy chat going on and you know they're different kinds of guys alex that's a different kind of format really is it though i mean are they not just trying to transplant that format of like just like
To me, it's not something reminiscent of CNBC, which is a sort of news-based talking heads thing. It's opinion. It's more like Rush Limbaugh.
And I think that kind of format works, and it works as an audio product, and then people watch it either sort of half-tuned in or not on YouTube. All right, let's leave it there. Let's move on to the chaos economy. Troy, this is your time to shine. Tell us what you're seeing in the chaos economy. Well, it was a really, you know, well, maybe I can combine good product into this, Brian, if you would. Oh, wow.
I mean, it was a beautiful day in Brooklyn. Of course. I've heard this from everyone in New York City. It's like there's one good day and you will know it. There's been a couple of them, Brian. And it's sort of God's country when it's a beautiful spring day and people are out getting pastries and walking. It's never God's country. I'm sorry. Okay. Yeah.
So maybe that was a little bit of a detour. I was walking around and I, you know, using, you know, I was on the internet and then I was on the street and I was thinking, you know, there's an insane amount of innovation in this country.
And there, you know, you were you're sort of simultaneously trying to process this insane macro narrative, which is, you know, Trump is destroying the country. You know, tariffs are going to suffocate, you know, companies large and small, all of which may be true, by the way. And that that, you know, we're heading for a cliff. And then you see, on the other hand, just like this is like hustle nation, you know, like there is.
There's something like you can, this is the most resilient country, you know, because under, and, and, and it just got me wondering, like, are we approaching a kind of very new industrial sort of innovation structure where we're
It doesn't matter if Harvard isn't doing basic research. It doesn't matter if we've kind of strangled Walmart's business in selling low-cost Chinese products to people. We will just kind of soldier on, and there's a really fundamentally new kind of ingredient in the economy, which is AI.
And it's empowering people to, in a very kind of micro fashion, to kind of build and
to create like, you know, all the theory that used to exist about corporations. Why do they exist? Because they, they're more efficient than markets in making decisions and moving information. They internalize trust. Everything isn't a negotiation. It made me wonder if like the fundamental structure of corporations isn't changing to a, you know, smaller, more nimble kind of entity empowered by technology and that the fundamental structure
kind of modern reality of media, which is people and platforms, right? These great big platforms that allow you to create, distribute,
kind of manufacture any type of media isn't coming to the rest of the economy where we can use all of this crazy technology at an individual or you know small group kind of level that we're you know kind of in a new period where we're just going to see a new wave of of growth and innovation powered in the most distributed way that will apply to kind of virtually every industry
And even though it feels completely chaotic out there, you have this kind of economy that lives inside of the chaos that where people are,
you know, kind of like everybody's kind of entrepreneurial and everybody has access to incredible tools and people are building new things. And, and so that, that's what I was wondering about. Yeah. And you know, I'll leave it there and then I have a kind of related thing, but to me it started in media. We see it in retail, we see it in education and, and are we going to see it in industry where new types of factories kind of, you know,
provide AWS like capabilities to entrepreneurs that want to make things that are powered by kind of machines and robotics. And, and I think that's the big fear right now is that that particular capability of atoms of creating, you know, physical things has been lost in this country and there's no kind of
you know, capability to kind of create the atom space side of there's no platform for atoms in this country, that that needs to get fixed and that some type of industrial policy has to kind of figure that out. But, you know, there are things that need big coordination, right? You know, transportation, you know, military, you
maybe home building, stuff like that. But there's a lot of things that are just going to rocket forward because of this tremendous innovation potential of AI connected to platforms. And so that was my thought on that. There's a lot there. I mean, I think what maybe you're talking about is that it's no longer linear.
And it used to be that you used to go into a field and had a clear path in front of you and that the industry and opportunities that the country would provide were clearly laid out in front of you so that if you went down a path of getting educated, because you mentioned universities and getting proficient at something, you could go down this path.
this path and then the country would get better and better at say building cars or airplanes, et cetera. And it now feels much more chaotic and nonlinear because, you know, industry has been not only shipped out, but we'll get automated and, and yeah, exactly turned into like an Amazon AWS that provide a service for everyone who wanted to build a tool. Now maybe you can just start printing out, you know, physical products out of that. And the fact that you, you know,
started off in one career path and ended up, you know, selling custom ashtrays that are manufactured 3D printed somewhere. It's just a path that people are going to take. And that's going to not only apply to individuals, you know, starting businesses, but also potentially like industries as a whole. And so it feels kind of messy right now, but it maybe isn't that bad because AI is going to save us.
Yeah, I've noticed like an interesting thing about that because I think that the pendulum is kind of swinging back towards, you know, small versus big. Because there was always like if you were starting something new, people would say, well, how many people are you? Like, and it was always the idea was the more than the number that was bigger, that meant like it was you were more successful, right?
And so, I feel like that is changing to some degree. I had a podcast conversation with Janice Min who, she was behind the rise of Us Weekly in the 2000s and then she took over Hollywood Reporter and did its reinvention. She's very well known in the magazine world.
She's now running the Ankler, which is, it's on Substack, you know, and they have like 14 people. And she had said basically that, you know, the game now is about like how like lean you can be for as long as you can. And I think that is like changing because you have, and I think it's just at the start of it. I know for myself, it's like,
When I read a lot of, like Barack Obama was out talking about AI, which is always interesting when the politicians are talking about to see how they frame it. He's a master communicator.
And he was like sounding basically the alarm and he was doing it with, and we'll talk about this a little bit later, but with analogies about the automation that came to manufacturing and that obviously had a major impact on employment there. And that it coming to just about every area, you know, people go to like coding now and how it is evaporating this job.
I mean, Bill Gates was saying, you know, nobody even flinches at these things now. He was talking about doctors and teachers being replaced by AI in 10 years. And I guess if you look at it, and, you know, I apologize that my thesis isn't crisply articulated, but the small teams are building planes. New companies are creating new types of, you know, really important companies in the defense industry like Anduril.
All kinds of small businesses are creating and challenging packaged goods companies. We've seen that, of course, with DTC. People, Alex, if you look up on YouTube, are 3D printing the most amazing things like gaming peripherals and crazy stuff people are making in their houses. And then you look a little further and you're like, wait, Foxconn, the company that
makes and assembles iPhones is about to turn, is about to make cars. And they're going to look like, you know, conceivably had it not been for this, you know, kind of tension between the US and China, you would see like, why can't they make a car for Apple?
Why can't they make a car for somebody else who wants to make a car? Like, you know, the production of something that is a major driver of the industrial economy is being created by a company that puts, you know, boards together with batteries and screens, primarily driven by software.
And, you know, you got to look at it and wonder if it wasn't, you know, abandoning whatever kind of approach they took to the, you know, they're entering the automotive industry beyond just car play that all of these firms, Xiaomi, Huawei, Alibaba and Baidu are in some shape or form building automobiles, Chinese technology firms that previously made, you know, mobile phones.
or other types of software products. Yeah, it's all true. I feel that the changes happening, which is more ways to distribute, which we've talked about, but now also more ways to get things into production, is really benefiting small industries or small startups because it's much easier to apply those changes to certain types of products. But the one thing that will come in between
Where we are today in utopia is the fact that all of that production capacity lies in China. And that's a huge, I think, geopolitical risk long term because, you know, Troy, you still need to build infrastructure.
big airplanes and big ships and big buildings and big factories and all of that stuff is... Those are the physical platforms that you need, Alex. I think we own the communication platforms, but we don't own the physical platforms. And the communication platforms are easy to replace because at some point,
You just need to turn off the internet on your side of the country and launch your whole own internet, which China did. And so it's not a very defensible position to be in. And the West, and America specifically, has been building this service, IP, communication, media-based industry that is now at risk of not looking as... There's this utopian world where you have...
And a lot of the knowledge work that can be done with AI. So a small team can do that. Then you have all the means of distribution and communication that are your fingertips. And now the means of production where you can outsource things big and small. A friend of mine gets...
like custom PCBs done so that you can build these custom computers. They come back from China. They're amazing. And you could absolutely also build a car, right? The infrastructure for building cars as platform is available. It's in China right now, which is why there's like an explosion of electric cars. All of the issues that we're going to face, all the headwinds that we're going to face seem to be geopolitical because you just need to turn that faucet off. Like if AWS was...
Amazon's AWS, which people might not know, is where a lot of the internet hosts their sites and it's compute on demand. If that was a Chinese company, you would always be at risk of that stuff being turned off. And I think it's going to severely slow down this trend.
Yeah, which is kind of my point about this chaos economy. I think in the innovation space, in the chaos space, we're going to do really well. I think the American economy is really well suited to that type of innovation. But when you need big coordinated things that require industrial policy and potentially public investment and lots of coordination, whether that's roads or military or transportation or...
you know, healthcare things, we're terrible at it. Well, I mean, this is the centralized versus decentralized, you're right. I mean, we like America is Android. I mean, and China is Apple to a degree. I mean, that's like a top-down system. And, you know, we're not, we never will be.
I wonder about, by the way, related to this, and I think this might make you cringe, but this won't be the first time or the last. Absolutely not. You know, Elon's got a problem because he fucked up the Tesla brand. Maybe Apple could take it off his hands and then they'd be in the car business.
They could. That's an exit. Just to put a point on that, just not in the car economy, but Windsurf, the coding assistant, I guess OpenAI is looking to buy it for $3 billion. 170 employees. Yeah.
And they tried to acquire Cursor, which is probably the leader in the field of AI programming. And Cursor refused, so Windsurf is the next best thing. Yeah, $100 million in revenue for a company this small. There is a lot of money to be made right now. What is that, $10 to $15 million an employee? Yeah.
Pretty nice. Yeah. I mean, this is the sort of new math, I guess, that can exist in some of these kinds of companies in the sort of knowledge outside of the bits, the actual, you know, the atom space. The paradox with these types of movements is that the fact that you can kind of generate so much revenue so efficiently means that there's going to be so many competitors and that revenue is going to be peanut buttered.
throughout that, right? Like through the first movers get a huge advantage of showing like the efficiency and, you know, the same way when you were moving first into YouTube or podcasting, you got there early with your team of two and all of a sudden your podcast was making, you know, $10 million a year. I think we're going to have these like
you know, small teams creating artisanal state software that generates a lot of revenue, but it's going to get a lot of copycats. And somebody's going to figure out how to do it with three people.
and how to provide the service for $8 versus $9. It's why I would have sold if I was them. Did you, I don't know if you saw, there was some clip going around of Jeffrey Hinton talking about, I wished we had anonymous background for this, how we were, the human brain is not actually rational. It's an analogy machine and how we need analogies to make sense of things. This is
this hit close to home for me. I think we're entering, because Troy, you've made this period where we're entering into a period, particularly with AI, where a lot of the stuff is so complex and when we get into quantum computing, it's like, forget about it. Is that the only way normal people can make sense of it is through analogy. And really we have
kind of all along, this is how we do it. And I noticed whenever you look at how politicians talk about things, they always are using analogies to try to communicate too. And Anonymous Banker, who unfortunately was not able to be here, was talking about how
Because the rational sort of explanation about things in a very technical is like one form, but it doesn't really break through. And I feel like that is, particularly as the world becomes more complex, that we're going to lean on analogy more than ever.
Who was the OG there? Wasn't it Douglas Hofstadter, the philosopher? Richard Hofstadter? Douglas, I think his name is. Is that his brother? He's the cognitive science guy. He wrote that book that everybody referenced in college. Maybe you can bring it up, Alex, if you just search Douglas Hofstadter. I think it's Richard Hofstadter. Well, we'll find out really soon.
This is tension. I like it. Let's see. There we go. Who do you think is right? Yeah. And what was the name of the book? There it is. Godel Escherbach. That's the one. Click on that. Find that book, Alex. I love bossing you around like you're the guy on all in. Yeah, this one. The Eternal Golden Braid. He's the guy. You know what? His thing is analogy is the core of cognition. That's his take. What is it?
we think in analogies. Well, we also have to think in analogies when the subject matter becomes so complicated that our brains have trouble processing it, right? And I think what AI is actually really good at is analogizing all sorts of things for us. I mean, it's helped me tremendously. I've always used analogies to communicate and learn and teach things because it really helps me understand and
and store things in my brain. I wonder if it'll help you tracking a time on your schedule. I had to, well, yeah, I mean, I think if you create a calendar for analogy, like maybe it's a glass of water that gets fuller and fuller. And if I let it spill over, it'll,
But I have a funny story about analogies. I was known to really like analogies at work. And I once got a text from someone that I worked with that said, for the person who loves analogies, but iOS truncated it. So it just said, for the person who loves anal. Yeah.
And I didn't know if I should tap on it. I was kind of... You thought it was a gift card? I thought it was... I genuinely, like, so many thoughts went through my... I said, this is somebody... Yeah, give me some affiliate links. Texting me something by mistake. And I nearly... Yeah, it was fun. But yeah. That's a great story, Alex. Thank you.
It's what the listeners come here for. All right. Are we done on analogies? I mean, what else? I mean, Brian, you know, I don't know what else to say because I don't know anything about it other than I do know that you are an exceptional narrative thinker. That's what you do. Maybe it's just years and years of writing stories. I think it's years and years of writing stories. I mean, analogies are how...
People relate to information that they're unfamiliar with. I always find, like, there's this engineering brain that...
is a little bit different than the narrative brain. And the reality is that there's different forms of intelligence. And I think what Obama was saying, and I don't necessarily think this is true. He was like, you're better off with a liberal arts degree because we're entering into a period where a lot of technical knowledge, and we talked about this last week, is being commoditized. And we kind of are not...
We're not ready for intelligence as we understand it very narrowly to be a commodity. We were ready for physical strength to be a commodity or having manufacturing technical expertise be commoditized. But for some reason, we always think that the intellectual will not be commoditized. But it seems pretty clear that AI is going to commoditize a lot of technology.
the you know what we thought of as as being you know high level intellectual work i mean we see but doesn't that just like doesn't that just maybe clarify that a lot of this intellectual work isn't really high level and it is in fact just muscle it is in fact just like kind of you know you know turning the well of course and so maybe what happens and i don't want to kind of become too like
you know, tech utopian on this is that actually when you, in a world where you can instantiate any idea that you have and make it real, whether it's digital or, you know, physical or narrative, that the most important thing becomes like your own potential
power of like creating the pros or whatever needs to be that like instantiates that thing right and that's the way you stand out in a world of full abundance where you can just ask the computer to do anything it's the asker that gets most of the power versus a computer yeah I agree I think it's an emergent skill actually
I think that, you know, I was frustrated today because I mentioned this to you, Brian. I was taking a walk, beautiful, good product, Brooklyn. And I was thinking about all the innovation that's happening, how much chaos is in the world, but how beautiful it was in that moment. And I was like, you know, how resilient is our world? You know, I'm worrying like, you know, everybody's worrying about...
you know, what happens to my investments and, you know, where the economy's going and all of the other, you know, kind of geopolitical risks that it feels like we're living in. And then I was like, how do I reconcile that with what appears to be a tremendous amount of kind of economic activity centered around innovation and how good America is at product, service, software innovation?
And it's just like a long, long, long and experiential innovation. There's a long history there. And that actually has been where the value has accrued. And suddenly we're nervous that that has both left out a lot of people and that it's a risk to everyone.
you know, a bigger, thank you, Alex. Alex is showing Brooklyn. Very stereotypical Brooklyn. That's just part of Brooklyn. That's nice. That's Troy's part. Yeah. Anyway, you know the story. And I came back and I started asking ChatGPT to help me work that question through.
And I prompted and prompted and prompted, and I got a response back. And then I said, write me an essay on it. And I wanted to hand it over to you guys as kind of a prompt that we could use in the podcast. And to me, A, being able to ask those questions and to create scenarios that technology responds to is really an important new skill to think about questions, hypotheses, things that need to get...
you know, researched and, you know, things that you want to kind of compare and dig into and analogize and all of that, the output can be very, very frustrating because it never quite comes out the way you want it. It's either too literal or you send it down the wrong, into the wrong place because something that you've said sends the LLM to, you know, a kind of
you know, just not entirely relevant part of the knowledge space. But I think that, that people that there will be people, there are people that are good at doing this and people that are not. Yeah. It's a, it's a new skill. I've been thinking about it because I think it's a new skill and it's, it's one that's hard to triangulate our brains around because I think it is, it is kind of a mixture, an uncanny mixture of using a tool and managing a person.
And I don't mean to anthropomorphize the AI, but I think it's so counterintuitive because we are actually kind of programmed by the world around us to say like, okay, this is how you manage a tool, which is very specific. It follows a set of rules and how you manage a person, which is much more intuitive.
you know, emotionally tinted and all of that stuff. And yet here we have this tool where you have to learn how to do both. It is both a tool and dealing with an individual in a way. And I think it's a really completely new way of interfacing with a computer. And I don't think it's going to change
right? Even if they come up with AGI, I think the, even to the point that I sometimes have Claude and chat GPT open and I get Claude to help me write the prompt that will do a certain thing for chat GPT and I get better results. That makes no fucking sense. That shouldn't be happening. Alex. I think about it too in everyday like process type questions. So for example, I have a couple of friends that are creating a new energy drink and
And I had looked at it because I spoke to them about investing in the company. And I was looking at how the fundamental challenge of how this particular product would stand out in a dramatically cluttered environment inside of a bodega or Whole Foods or wherever. And their answer was, well, we'll just go hire an agency and get them someone who's made good can before to make a can now. And I'm like, that's not how I would do it anymore. Right.
And what I would do is I would really think through the prompt, right, which is what is unique about this drink? What is the positioning? Why do we think it's going to resonate with an audience? I would start working back and forth on essentially what the problem statement is and how we're going to position it for the consumer. And then I would start literally making designs. Right.
like with different, with different, you know, names and different kind of positioning hierarchies. And I would feed in a project file, the LLM, a bunch of other examples I would, and a bunch of influences and stuff that I liked. And I would literally get to a place where I had 10 examples that I was happy with that we could then mess with, you know, by hand, you know, that you could tweak inside of a design, a piece of design software. Um,
Because it's getting very specific with words to design is very hard to do. It is. And I'm so happy you said that. No, no, but just let me finish, Alex. And then what I would do is I would quickly take those out to everybody I knew. And I would line up the 10 cans and I would say, tell me what you're thinking, what you're feeling. What you're feeling. Yeah. And as opposed to like briefing a design agency and going through that whole process, you would never do that.
So wait, so unpack this. So basically you would get to start quicker, right? And it's going back, but this is not replacing the designer in the process. You know, I think you need the designer at the end of the process. I think you need them to refine some of the ideas and I think you need them to make the mechanical art perfect. But actually Brian, get to start quicker. I was having lunch with the person and I just started doing it at lunch. I just did it.
on ChatGPT. I'm like, let's just break down the hierarchy of kind of, you know, of benefits of, and let's start designing cans. And it was like, we have...
a perfect conversation around a design product like we used to in the old days, but would have taken weeks. Wait, let me say one thing on this because I think that is like the skill set that is going to be more important almost than like raw intelligence. Because I wish AB was here because he was talking about IQ and I've got to think about IQ because it's a specific type of intelligence.
But like that is going to get a lot of that kind of intelligence will be commoditized. That's why we have so many experts right now, because it's easy to read up on something, get briefed on it by ChatGPT or whatever and pass yourself off as like a quasi expert. Right. But like that sort of like, you know, in the valley, they call it high agency, like they're willing just like to dive in and like get to start. That is probably a bigger challenge.
a more important skill set to have, which really bothers me as someone who sometimes struggles with it, than raw IQ horsepower. That's important in the chaos economy.
It is. I developed this way of working, which I think applied well to me because I was a designer and I could make things real. And I would always say like, that's what I like to do. I like making things real. And it was never about, is it words or is it images or is it photos or is it fonts or is it graphics?
It's whatever you need to get the job done to remove these layers of abstraction between your idea and what it is that you're making. Right? So sometimes it could be clay or it could be like pick a right set of fonts or just drop some colors in there. And,
And this idea that you started with a document, which is why sometimes I get confused for somebody who doesn't like words, but I think that having the format set the intention of what you're trying to build completely changes what you're building. And
And yesterday we had an amazing like five hour meeting where we just had a Figma board or mirror board or whatever tool you use. And it's not like we were writing words or images. We had screenshots in there. We had little digital post-its. We had graphs. We had
examples of fonts, we had somebody scribbling something down. And and then you kind of pull that out. And we call it we call it shaping, but you pull that out and you make it as real as possible. So you can put in front of people, if it's a car, make it out of clay. If it's a soft drink, make a fake can, you know, like whatever it is, and and this idea of like, writing a spec, bringing it to an agency that's dead.
If you're doing that right now, you're setting yourself up to be 10 times slower than anybody else to get your idea out to market. And that's the biggest skill. And it's not about being dogmatic about which tool you use or how you express yourself, but maybe kind of this new technology like AI...
not only is giving us more capabilities, but it's also teaching us like, maybe we kind of need to be multimodal. Maybe we need to be like video and image and text generators supported by this tool. Like generate yourself a fake ad, make it see how you feel, see if you're going in the right direction.
It's so powerful. Computers are so powerful. And yet we've like forced ourselves down this like archaic academic kind of path of like, well, you first you set this up and then you turn it into a list of to do's. And then you give each one of those to their own professional who owns a piece of that slice. And the problem is if you do that, if you individualize like, well, you do this, you do this, you do this. Everybody's doing five percent. Everyone's five percent becomes their hundred percent.
And nobody's, you know, nobody's looking at the whole picture. And the truth is that the distance briefs were usually stupid and designers usually didn't really pay much attention to them. No. Do you know what I mean? It's just like. Because we're feeling, we're feeling, seeing, hearing, tasting creatures, right? And we always want to imagine our own thing in it. And the more you allow for that abstraction to happen, the more it happens. As Gavin Newsom would say, hear, hear.
Okay. Let's move on. No, it's got to be what Houston would say on his podcast. And now for an ad break. Next time. He's monetizing very heavily, right? Oh, yeah. I heard radio is monetizing heavily. I love that. Does he read them? I don't listen to it. Does he read them? No, he's not a reader. That would be great if he read them. You don't have the governor doing reads. 30 seconds. 30 seconds. That the governor of California...
has ads on his podcast is and more than most is absolutely fucking insane and i meant that question asking if he if he was reading them it was completely plausible like he was like reading an athletic greens ad right
Before we go, before, before we return to Kanye West, let's listen to an ad for me on these. That's why I never listened to like Ben Shapiro podcast or something. He just, all of a sudden there's no like interlude or any sort of break. He just be like, you know, like about like cancel culture. And then it'd be like, boom. And he's running, he's like reading out like with gusto, like a prepper. He's amazing. He's amazing. Yeah. He's great.
You know, Troy and I make fun that you're shameless at plugging, but like, you know, you need more of that Shapiro energy. Yeah, I'll do it. No problem. Did you see, I don't know if you saw, but Pete Buttigieg went on to the Andrew Schultz podcast. What is that? What is his podcast? I love this for those that can't see it. It's like, it's like Ben Shapiro ASMR. It's just like, we're talking and we're just, we just have a talking head beside us of Shapiro.
Oh, he looks good now. You see what he's got a beard now, Buttigieg. Yeah, Buttigieg has a beard. He went on Flagrant, which is the very popular Andrew Schultz podcast. He's also part of this Manosphere media, which is, I'm trying to unpack. I'm also doing a conspiracy sort of
the matrix for, for that. But anyway, Pete is famous for going on Fox news and to the lion's den and holding his own. And he's great. He's really good. He did the same. He did the same in on flagrant and, you know, he took a lot of like, you know, the jokes and all the, and, you know, come in and he took them in stride. And I, and from everything I've read and whatever I saw, you know, he did real well. And so I think,
I think we're starting to see, and we're talking about people emerge on different sides of the political spectrum who are willing to go into these environments. On the contrast- It's like we're sorting through the talent based on a different medium. By the way, he should roid up a bit. He should TRT that shit. Yeah, you think he should wear a baggy t-shirt and start wearing a chain like Zuckerberg?
No, I think he should start doing the jab and hitting the weight room. The royal blue linens, yeah, a tight t-shirt would be better. But it is true. And so I was listening to, I don't love it, but I was listening to Hasan speak about the topic that
that the Democrats should really put themselves out there and keep pushing because Americans are more malleable than we think. Like media really influences people. And the more you go out and talk your book on all of these podcasts, the more you're going to kind of start incepting some of these ideas in people's heads. And they're finally doing it. And I think that they're doing it with mediums that actually –
Don't only reach people just in numbers, but just like emotionally, right? Because I think these things no longer work on CNN. By the way, you just need to be a better bullshitter.
Like he's good. I mean, he's, I find him to be a, I mean, I agree with a lot of what he says, but yes, I don't mean bullshitting is, is a term. Yeah. The bullshitters are well, are actually really well positioned for, for the future. I think, I mean, people can just talk. I mean, that's the power, right? Speaking of bullshit, Brian, if you don't mind me hijacking your agenda a little bit, I was on the phone with you before the podcast and you started rendering out the battles inside of the kind of manosphere podcast.
podcast world as if it was a, you know, an epic wrestling match. Well, it's like, would you, would you do that for, for the, for the audience? Absolutely. So basically I was spurred down this, this path with the Douglas Murray character.
And he, cause I, I remembered seeing remind people who Douglas Murray, Douglas Murray, but I remember seeing him before. Cause he is, he's conservative. He's like a, he's a British journalist, but like anti-woke anti-woke. And so I thought of him as like conservative side. And also he's got like a knit to pick with, you know, with Islam. I always like heard him like talking, you know, a lot of stuff about, about Israel, Palestine and, and, and that. And, and,
And then he went on to worry about sort of sovereign purity. He worries about the decline and fall of Western civilizations. You know, that's his that's his lane. And he's got the British accent. So, you know, Americans, you know, 20 percent. Yeah. Twenty twenty twenty to four. I mean, this is this is how agencies you talk about this briefs. I mean, this every single every single planner is British for a reason. Yeah. And so he went on Joe Rogan and just went and went right after him.
and went right after him for platforming Holocaust deniers and whatnot. And he had Joe on the ropes. Joe brought this comedian, Dave White, who we talked about. Dave Smith. Dave Smith, sorry. Dave White. It could be Dave White. It's like the most anonymous name. Nobody's actually ever seen him be funny, but I've only seen him basically just be libertarian on these things. And so he really held his own because Joe is the kind of king of this area.
But then after the podcast, he goes on to Sam Harris's podcast. Now, Sam Harris was formerly linked with Elon Musk.
They were good friends. Good friends, but then they broke up over COVID. And then he still kind of buddies with Joe Rogan, but they're trying to have an intervention. He's like the thinking man's Joe Rogan, right? Like he's like smart and sensitive. But he's also very, he also has a problem with Islam too. So they like kind of allied on that because the Douglas Murray guy is promoting his book, Democracy and Death Cults. And so-
Basically, then Joe Rogan has, it's Joe Rogan and that guy, Tim Dillon, who I guess is a comedian, but he's also involved in this weird world where the comedians and the sort of libertarians are overlapping. And they're making fun of...
Douglas Murray for his British accent. So they climbed, so Rogan and this other guy climbed up on the ropes to body slam Doug Murray. Because like he, so basically Douglas Murray was the first one to, you know, really go into Rogan and smack him around a little bit. And, and so he's become a bit of a hero to people who,
Absolutely disagree with it nine times out of 10, but you gotta, you know, you can't pick, you know, we were allied with, with, with Stalin during World War II, which is something that a lot of these guys are obsessed with.
Anyway, I'm still trying to unpack it, but that's what's going on. This is the Joe Rogan playbook, and this is why people actually, if you look at it, I mean, Elephant Graveyard has done some of that, where Joe Rogan actually in the moment might not be that great at defending his views because he's pretty malleable, right? And he's pretty, and even when people fact check him,
saying things like, well, where are you getting that from? And somebody will cite a very reputable source and it's like, well, do we really trust him? Or even especially like kind of getting a little dismantled during his own podcast and then afterwards using his massive platforms to try to destroy people. I mean, these are, it makes, I think there's a few cracks happening in a few different alliances and it does feel like there's a very Game of Thrones-y kind
happening like well okay well we both hate these people but we kind of like this guy and so we're gonna get together and then we're gonna make fun of this dude and the fact that comedians are in the center of all this is insane yeah and then Joe Rogan comes out just to kind of be a little bit disruptive and says he likes puppies and due process
Yeah. But it's like, I think it's a form of this participatory nature of media in some ways, because it's, you know, it's WWE. I mean, a lot of what's going on with Trump and Trump is like, you know, the UFC WWE president. Right. And, you know, you create drama. You have people who turn heel. You know, all of a sudden they were they were tag team partners and now they're like sworn enemies. And then you have a battle royale. Wait, is Tim Dillon the guy that was on All In last week?
Yeah. So, they all, that's why I'm saying like, so, All In left this sort of sphere of like sort of Silicon Valley media and like moved into this area because this is the sort of-
This is sort of the mass, you know, the top. There's more niche areas. I haven't mapped it all out yet, but I'm going to work on it. No, it's like us. You know, you get tired of talking about technology and stuff. You've got to move into other topics. But I mean, you know what? This is, though, it is a YouTube phenomenon that's been happening for a while with the younger YouTubers, including folks like Destiny and some of the gaming, streaming, and stuff like that, is that there's that whole meta-narrative of all the drama
There's channels, if you YouTube that, there's channels based just on YouTube drama. It's like the housewives of YouTube is happening in the background. And it's a massive ecosystem of like,
of like you know like tabloidy drama and people love it i don't know how much of it is manufactured but the amount of times this type of oh this guy did that on his stream and you know cheated on this guy's girlfriend and whatever and it's all happening there and youtube is this massive place where all of this is happening which is why going back to your point troy i don't think x is the big
It's the big driver of all that. Everything is happening on YouTube. Everything is happening on YouTube. Yeah, but I think what's interesting is podcasting has basically been swallowed by YouTube. You see basically the podcasters adopting all of the YouTube gimmicks. And that's where the debates all came. I was like, why is everyone doing these debates on these podcasts I've been listening to? And it's because it's a YouTube format.
A podcast is now a YouTube show that you also distribute as audio only. Yeah, I want to make a point about our podcast right now. I had the misfortune of following it on YouTube, Alex. And I don't love playing in the video space. But if we could do it like this, this is great. Like what? Like this? Remember, people still listen. People still listen to it.
Alex is basically surfing the web.
As we talk and it's, it's kind of soothing. It's relaxing. I really, really like it. And I'm actually enjoying making the podcast more because as we sit and talk, you're bringing up references and it's, it's kind of cool. Like I think we've stumbled on to, to maybe what our, our format is that that's acceptable. And actually, you know, cause our format on, on YouTube doesn't work in my opinion, cause it's, you know, three aging white guys talking and it just doesn't work.
I mean, that's what we got to work with, but we can embellish it. I can't change that. Yeah. I guess I could. What am I saying? You live in Miami. Of course you can change that. Just need some big fat lips and some hair plugs and you'll be good. All right. I have a hard stop. So do you have a good product except this podcast? The video version of this podcast is a great product. I would watch it. Yeah. If we could keep it up, Alex, thank you for doing that. Good podcast.
I already told you my good product. It's New York on a spring day. My good product is the Insta360 Link 2 webcam that allows you to record your video really well and not look like somebody in a dark room. I'm telling you, send me the link and I'll use it. So I have a good product, but it's a bad product, but I think it highlights a good product. So I was in the Detroit airport yesterday and I passed by one of the Economist branded stores and
And right near it was a Wall Street Journal store. They were the exact same store. And so all of these media brands, you know, in the airport retail, like there's a BuzzFeed. Just dumb licensing agreements, Brian. Yeah, dumb licensing agreements. And so they just like do them as cash grabs. It's the same neck pillows in any store. And I think it's a disservice to...
the brands to treat it this way. Compare it to someone like Monocle who makes it a real business line with their airport retail experiences. You've got to tend to these brands. I think it's pretty bad when
Look, we've talked a lot on this podcast about how IP harvesting, brand harvesting, whatever you want to call it, is a big part of the future of a lot of these brands. Well, put some effort into it. Don't just slap your logo down.
that has hard-earned respect over so many years of journalism on the same old neck pillow store. I would like to go into a very economist-oriented world. Do you think a neck pillow is a good product? If I see you in the airport with a neck pillow walking around, I'm... Look, it's very controversial in Comfort Plus. You wouldn't know it at the front of the plane. Troy, there's a divide. The seats at the back of the plane, Troy, they don't turn into beds anymore.
It's really weird. Nobody makes your bed. There's no pajamas. That's why people wear their pajamas onto the plane. So do you have a neck pillow? I own a neck pillow. Yeah. I don't use it most times.
That's it for this episode of People vs. Algorithms, where each week we uncover patterns shaping media, culture and technology. Big thanks, as always, to our producer Vanya Arsinov. She always makes us a little clearer and more understandable, and we appreciate her very, very much.
If you're enjoying these conversations, we'd love for you to leave us a review. It helps us get the word out and keeps our community growing. Remember, you can find People vs. Algorithms on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and now on YouTube. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next week. That was great. Thanks, Alex. Thanks for the visuals. That'll make the show better. Appreciate it. Cool. All right. All right. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.