Odd Lots - The Odd Lots AMA Episode: Joe and Tracy Answer Your Questions

Episode Date: December 25, 2023

On this episode, our listeners called in with their questions. They ranged from the personal, like "What happened with Tracy's coal?" to the editorial, such as "What are the big stories we want to be covering more?" Hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway are the ones who get interviewed in this special holiday episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening to Odd Lots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask, Alexa, play the Odd Lots podcast on Amazon Music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Wisenthall. Joe, it's my favorite time of year. That could mean so many things. Holidays. That's right. It's earning season. Again, no, it is the holiday season, the festive season. And more importantly, it is our annual Ask Me Anything episode. I love the end of the year because rather than, you know, like coming up with new guests

and like figuring out what the big stories are, we can just do like roundup episodes and sort of lookbacks and retrospectives. No, but for real. I genuinely enjoyed this episode. I like it. I like that it has that old timey radio call in feel. And I always like to hear what's sort of resonating with our listeners and what they're curious. to hear more about. Totally. And you know, sometimes people are curious about us and our careers and stuff. And we don't really like, I don't know, I'm not that into like talking about ourselves.

You know, I want to be the question asker, you know. That's why we went into journalism. Yeah, but it's fun to hear what people are curious about. And every once in a while, I guess having the microphones turn, so to speak. Yes. So we invited all of our listeners and readers and Discord subscribers to send in their questions. anything at all that they wanted to ask us, and we have a selection of those questions here. So without further ado, why don't we hear from our first caller?

I'm Alfredo. As of now, I live in Bonn, Germany. I had a question pertaining to how you actually started the podcast, where you got the idea, and how you two went from being co-workers to co-hosts on a podcast so niche and so interesting. Thank you, Alfredo. I'll start with that one. There was no real plan. I think, so Tracy and I started working together here at Bloomberg in 2015, and we were doing digital stuff, and we've had a variety of jobs. But I think it was sometime in 2015, podcasts were getting big or starting to grow.

And I turned to Tracy, and I said, you want to do a podcast together? And she said, yep, that's my memory of it. It's a good thing I said yes. What if I said no? I have too much other stuff to do. No, that's... We did have a lot of stuff on our plane those days. Yeah, that's right.

I think at one point, Joe and I were doing three different jobs, if you include the podcast. You know, we were going on TV. We were managing the Bloomberg News Desk, lots of stuff going on. But I am really glad that we started it in 2015. If you go back and listen to some of our early episodes... Don't. Don't. Well, they are a little bit embarrassing because you can tell that we were sort of learning as we went. But they are also some of my favorite episodes.

So one of our very first ones was an episode about the banana, the evolution of the banana, how the world ended up with a boring banana. There are some really interesting episodes with an archaeologist, Arthur Demerist. Those are still, they live free in my head. Do you remember the catfish bubble episode? Yes, yes. We did some real niche stuff back in the day. And of course, I think that still exists.

But we were like, the news was like, oh, what's that? Like we were way off the news back in those days. Yeah. But I'm glad we started it. It's turned into a really great place to actually dive into topics and learn more about them in a more, I guess, intense way than you can necessarily through other journalistic mediums. So, yeah, that's how it started. And I definitely didn't think this would be our main jobs.

I always figured it was like a side hobby of a – or it was like a side job of a side job. So when I turned to Tracy, I said, should we do a podcast? It was definitely not like this is what we – are going to do with our careers. So this has been fun. This is producer Kail. Before we go into our next question, could you also say why and how you came up with the name oddlots?

Oh, we were looking for something that wouldn't necessarily pigeonhole us in one topic. And I think odd lots came from, it's a bond market term that I knew back then. it's basically like an order of a non-standard size. And I thought the idea of oddity or non-standard size was kind of perfect for what we wanted to do because we wanted to dig into things that weren't necessarily at the forefront of the news cycle. And we wanted to do it in a slightly different way where we wouldn't sacrifice nuance and detail just for like, you know, a five minute, here are the important bullet points about this particular topic. We wanted to cover it in a slightly different way.

And so I think the All Thoughts name turned out to be perfect. Yeah. And I like the fact that, like, you don't necessarily know what it's about. I feel... It's given us a lot of flexibility over the years. And finance media can be a little bit cliche. You know, you just sort of pick some random words like you're doing for juretorate or poetry, like Market Wire or Market Lot, whatever it is.

And so I like that you don't really, it's not too... It doesn't beat you over the head with the idea that this is a Markets podcast or economics podcast. Hi, Tracy and Joe. I love the show. This is Jeffrey Ting from Chicago. I'm an actuary. And my question for you, too, is at what point did you decide to introduce each guest as the perfect guest in every episode? I don't think we ever actually decided that. I think if you go back and listen to a lot of our old episodes, it took us a while to get into a rhythm of even introductory. our old, how we do it. Oh, yeah, we used to include our full job titles,

and it took, like, five minutes just to do the introduction for ourselves. Well, also I remember, like, we used to do this thing where, like, we would sort of pretend that one of us didn't know what the episode was getting on. Oh, yeah. We did all kinds of stuff. Sometimes it wasn't pretending, though, because we were doing it on such an ad hoc casual basis that sometimes we genuinely didn't know who had been booked. But one thing I'll say is that I learned, by the way, our first ever guest was our colleague, Tom Keane.

and one thing, having watched Tom Keene on TV over the years, he is one thing that he's great is he sort of like puffs up the guest. And there's a good reason for that. If the guest is here, it's because you think they're great. Because if they're not the perfect guest, why are you talking to them? So I sort of always thought that that was a great thing that Tom did, which is make the guest feel special, make the audience feel like, yeah, we're really excited about talking to this person. So I think that's sort of part of how it slipped into our consciousness to do that. Yeah. None of the sort of taglines that people are familiar with now, like, let's leave it there.

Shall we leave it there? None of that was premeditated. It just kind of came naturally and then we kept doing it. And especially with the perfect guest, I feel like if you say it once, it's sort of an insult to other people. If you don't also call them the perfect guest. We don't always say it, but it's never intentional. Yeah. Hi, my name is Roy. I'm from Detroit, Michigan. And my question was, how do you find the perfect guests? If you have an idea for a specific episode like the legal cannabis market in New York or energy drinks or small modular nuclear reactors, does the episode idea come first? And if so, how do you find the right person to speak to that?

Hi, Roy, from Michigan. So there are a couple ways we go about finding the proverbial perfect guess. So sometimes we have an idea for an episode. So for instance, there's an episode that I really want to do right now about why headlights on cars are so freaking bright nowadays. And so we're sort of in the early processes of trying to find good people for that. And the way we typically go about it is we'll often look on Twitter because frankly, if your whole life is tweeting about one particular topic, the chances are you would make a really good odd lots guest if you sort of eat, breathe, and discuss. particular topics. And also sometimes we'll just come across someone who we think is very, very interesting, who we think would be fascinating to talk to. And so we'll do it that way, too. There's sort of a variety of ways that we go about it. Sometimes we'll read research. We'll pick out particular academics that we think have done really interesting papers on a particular topic.

We can kind of come across them anyway. But I will say in more recent years, one of the ways we have been finding more people is through suggestions from listeners. And so we sort of have this network now of people in the all thoughts world who might hear that we are interested in doing a particular show topic and will make a suggestion for someone that they think is really good. Yeah, you know, a lot of the guests that we have themselves will pitch a guest. They're like, oh, you were interested in that point. I know someone who would be good. It really is all different kinds of things. But, you know, at the end of a lot of episodes, we're like, we should do an episode on this. We should do an episode on that. And then someone hears that. And they said,

hey, I know the perfect person. So it really is sort of as the network and community and audience builds, we get, it makes it easier to find people. Hey, Tracy. Hey, Joe. This is Ethan from Annapolis, Maryland. With the cryptocurrency total market cap up over 100% this year to north of 1.5 trillion, I was wondering what your guys' general thoughts were on the industry and it's outlawful. look going forward. And specifically if you had looked into Solana or Avalanche or any of the gaming things going on. We can't escape crypto, can we? You know what I think is really funny? So he mentioned, I think the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies is like $1.7 billion or something like that, which is kind of big. But like the market cap of Apple is $3 billion. So what I kind of find to be

fascinating about the crypto industry, so to speak, is that the entire thing, which is like captured so much public attention over the last decade. And executives talk about all the time and this huge culture, smaller still the entire thing than one prominent companies. And there are other companies that are, you know, about as big as well. So I kind of find that fascinating for like all of this attention and fascination still feels kind of small to me. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, Joe and I could probably do this entire show just talking about crypto. But part of me thinks I can't believe we're doing this again. And some of the froth that we've seen in the market is already reminiscent of stuff that was happening in like, you know, 2020, 2021.

But the other part of me, and I've written about this, thinks that crypto kind of, there's a reason people are really into it. And personally, I think it has to do with like, it's so, sort of. of postmodern that you can make it anything that you want it to be. And some people have dubbed this the narrative flexibility of crypto. So the idea that when it first started, you know, it was sort of post-2008, central banks were intervening in the market for the first time in a long time in such a dramatic way. And people thought of it as like central bank proof currency. And that was the big attraction. And then as it matured, it was, you know, it was digital. gold, it was inflation proof. Then earlier this year when we had the banking crisis, it was like

an anti-bank, bank proof currency. And it just sort of moves from thing to thing to thing. And I think that gives it a resilience or a sort of attraction that is far longer lived than a lot of people give it credit for. That doesn't necessarily mean that, you know, it's the future of money or it's the way we're going to do transactions. And Joe and I have talked about this a lot on the podcast, the idea that despite, you know, more than a decade of cryptocurrency existing, we have yet to see a real use case. I don't think like either of us have been convinced of a real use case here. But the fact that it's so kind of detached from reality means that it is excellent for pinning a narrative to. And we've seen that time and time again at this point. And I'll just add to the question. And I'll just add to the

her like on some of these alt layer ones like Avalanche and Solana. I haven't checked in lately on the state of crypto games. I sort of get it in theory, but I still have yet to hear of one that's like genuinely fun and not just a thing. You know, you know, we sort of talked about this in our recent Magic episode where Magic the Gathering cards, you could make a lot of money at some point if you held the right ones, but the game was also just really fun to play. If there's really a fun game in crypto that people are excited about playing for the gameplay itself. And it's not really about making money on NFTs or something. I would love to see one.

So if someone wants to shoot one to me and show it to me, I'd love to check it out. The news doesn't stop on the weekends. Context changes constantly. And now Bloomberg is the place to stay on top of it all. Hi, I'm David Gurra. Join us every Saturday and Sunday for the new Bloomberg this weekend. I'm Christina Ruffini. We'll bring you the latest headlines in-depth analysis.

and big interviews. All the stories that hit home on your days off. And I'm Lisa Mateo. Watch and listen to Bloomberg this weekend for thoughtful, enlightening conversations about business, lifestyle, people, and culture. On Saturday mornings, we put the past week's events into context, examining what happened in the markets and the world. Then on Sundays, we speak with journalists, columnists, and key political figures to prepare you for the week ahead. Join us as soon as you wake up and bring us with you wherever your weekend plans take you. Watch us on Bloomberg Television.

Listen on Bloomberg Radio, stream the show live on the Bloomberg business app, or listen to the podcast. That's Bloomberg this weekend. Saturdays and Sundays starting at 7 a.m. Eastern. Make us part of your weekend routine on Bloomberg Television, radio, and wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Scott from the University of Paso, where I teach business English. Tracy, I'm just sort of interested, because I think you once said in one episode that you have an Austrian connection. I'm just sort of curious what that connection is. Hi, Scott.

Yeah, sure. That is an easy one. My mother is Austrian. She's from a relatively small town called Klauggenfort near the southern border with Italy. And I used to go there all the time when I was a kid. I tried my best to learn German, but as a person who hates grammar, I will say it's a struggle. I can understand pretty much anything, but my grammar is still pretty bad. But yeah, I'm half Austrian.

That's it. My name is Gabriel from Columbus, Ohio, and I'm a huge fan of the podcast. My question is, if you were forced to make the case, how would you steal man Austrian economics? That's a good one. Joe, you go first. I could definitely do it. I mean, I'm very ideologically malleable. I don't have strong views on anything.

So if someone said, you know what, go steal man ex Austrian economics or anything else, I'm sure I could do it. I mean, I think there's something real to this idea that monetary constraints are important. And that obviously, you know, that there can be such thing, obviously, as too much money, too much money printing. That could cause inflation. It could cause difficulty in business planning, et cetera. And so the idea of like taking that to some extreme that like you come up with some sort of optimal productive outcome. by virtue of some sort of very serious commitment to monetary scarcity. I think there are weaknesses in this idea, and I think there's almost a sort of utopian fantasy

that if we have an entire monetary system around to enforcing that scarcity, then all kinds of problems get solved. I think there's issues with Austrian theories of interest rates. But I don't think that at core, you know, I think you could tell an argument or tell a story about Austrian economics that people would find compelling, like, built around this idea. I think I could do it if given some practice. Someone's going to force you to do this now. Can I just say I'm very happy that this has turned into an Austrian episode. Yeah.

Okay, if I was forced to steal man Austrian economics, I would simply call up my dad and ask him to do it, probably while stacking his hoard of silver coins. That's what I would do. Maybe that's a good show idea. Tracy, let's do it. Hey, Tracy and Joe, Ryan from Seattle, long-time listener. I want to know what the two of you talked about when the tapes stopped rolling after the infamous SBF episode. That's a good one.

Yeah. I mean, I think we were mostly still in shock. And if you listen to the episode, you can sort of hear it at the end when we do the outro. I mean, we are in shock. And we literally say, I don't know what to say. Yeah, you know, the one thing I'll say, is that that was a rare moment in life where I knew something major had happened right then that people would talk about for a long time and that in this sort of like history of crypto

or whatever, this would be a mile marker. And I mean, you know, the week after that episode recorded or air, sorry, the week after that aired, SBF was in the Bahamas on stage with Bill Clinton and the former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at their big conference. And I just remember thinking to my, and he was in shorts and sneakers and. they were in suits. And I just remember thinking to myself, okay, in one week, he sort of described crypto more or less as a Ponzi scheme. And then a week later, on stage with these two heads of state, I was like, this is a turning point. And I just intuitively felt it in real time right then. It was very surreal. One journalistic process question, I mean, we knew we were going to write

the comments up and publish an article. So we said about doing that. And one thing we made sure to do was we made sure that the resulting story was free outside of the Bloomberg paywall so that anyone could read it and so that it could kind of get as many legs as it could as a sort of, I guess, public service. Also, the headline of that story was SBF described Yield Farming and left Matt Levine stunned. I feel like that was a recognition that part of the story was leaving us stunned or leaving Matt stunned. And so we sort of recognized. at the time it wasn't just that he sort of described very clearly the Ponzoomics, but that our mouths were sort of agape.

He said the quiet part out loud, which was the major surprise there, I think. My name is Corey. I'm from New York City. What would you say is your most unpopular food opinion? Most unpopular food opinion. I can't tell what's popular and what isn't now. Oh, I hate intermittent fasting. I think it's an incredibly clever rebrand. of what women have for decades called dieting or crash dieting. And we were very much not encouraged to talk about dieting in a public setting, especially the office. But somehow, if you're intermittent fasting, it's completely acceptable to wander around the office and say that you're about to faint because you haven't eaten for three days. That's a really good take.

I really like almost all food. I consider myself sort of like an enthusiastic omnivore. I'll try anything. This might be sort of scandalous, but I'm not into like locks or smoked fish jar. Oh, I hate locks. Okay. And I feel, you know, I grew up like a Jewish family, like people eating bagels and locks and all that stuff. And I just like I feel like I should like it.

I like fish. You like sushi, though. had sushi. Totally. Smoked fish generally, those various flavors of fish that people put on bagels, it doesn't do it for me. I generally don't like fish very much, as you know. Actually, this is a funny story. The first time Joe ever invited me over to his place for dinner, he asked me if there is anything I don't eat, and I said, I'm not a big fan of fish. And then he, and then he made a pokey bowl with raw tuna for dinner. And it was very good. And it's not that I will never eat fish. It's just not, it's not my favorite. I kind of have to be in the right mood for it.

I was in a big pokey phase in those days. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your pokey passion, Joe. I'm Francine Lacqua, an award-winning journalist. And I've got a new podcast, leaders with Francine Lacqua from Bloomberg podcasts. I've interviewed everyone from heads of state to fashion icons about the news of the moment. but I've always been curious who are these people as leaders. I don't think there's one right way to be a leader. Make decisions. A poor decision is always better than no decision. Listen to new episodes every other Monday.

Follow leaders with Francine Lacroix wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Mike. I'm from New York. And my question is really for the producers. How big a prima donnas are Joe and Tracy off the mics? Or are they really easy to deal with? And if you're not going to answer that question, my question for Joe and Tracy is, in the era of Venmo and Zell, is FedNow a solution in search of a problem,

or is there a real use case for it in 2023, 2024? Should we let the producers answer that question? Since we have about half a dozen producers on the show currently, I will say for the listeners, Joe and Tracy are probably the easy. people I've ever worked with as a producer. That is incredibly sweet, kale. I feel like I have to say you've only been working for us for like two months, but I appreciate that.

I'm sure it'll get worse. I'm sure it will, but it's also their, Joe and Tracy are both the most willing to do their job every single day. I've worked with people who are maybe a little bit more reluctant to do this and, you know, oh, we have to go and we have to re-record something. We have to, you know, we let's schedule one more episode for that. same day and Joe and Tracy are always completely willing and actually probably more often than not pegging us to do more work. So they are the most willing and the most kind of on the spot

capable people that I've worked with. That is very kind. That's very nice. I will just say on that last point, like I really enjoy this job. I really, I think it's like a real privilege to get to host odd lots. So when you say like we're into doing it, I really am and I sort of feel the, I guess you know, it's an honor. It's great to be able to do this job and that people listen to us. And so the idea of not wanting to put in the work or not being enthusiastic about showing up and recording, even when there's something, you know, extra or takes time. Like, it's unfathomable to me. Yeah. Part of me still, I still can't believe that this is our main job now. And we basically get paid to talk about things that we're interested in and to learn more about them.

The other thing that I would say is kale is 100% correct that probably the main, source of tension between us and the producers is that we constantly kind of want to tear up the schedule because we found something new and interesting yeah exactly and we want to get it out ASAP and nine times out of 10 they are completely willing and accommodating and very flexible and will let us kind of do that on a regular basis so thank you guys for for bearing with us in our enthusiasm to get stuff out quickly always our pleasure. Oh yeah. As for the other question to me and Joe about Fed Now, I think it's really interesting because part of me cannot believe that the U.S. has existed for so long without this kind of real-time settlement program. And I think in our episode with Michael Barr, I mentioned this, that in the U.K., I can remember when an equivalent system came into being, I think it was like 2008 or something like that. It was more than a decade ago.

And here we are in 2023 and the Fed is unveiling an equivalent. That said, you're absolutely right that there is instantaneous payment technology that already exists. There's also the clearinghouse system. And I think it's kind of interesting that the Fed has basically created a competitor to the clearinghouse payment system. And again, we spoke about this with Michael Barr. really interesting to see the take-up for the Fed system, how it compares with the clearinghouse one, and whether or not we see different types of payments sort of splitting on those two channels. Right now, it's just myself and our rotator, Ashtna, in the studio, because all the other

producers are currently out with COVID. And one of them, our show lead, Carmen, has a question for Joe and Tracy. While she's having COVID-induced fever dreams, she's wondering if you have ever had any odd lots related dreams or nightmares. Oh, I know why she's asking this. It's because I posted in our little internal office chat, I posted a dream last week that was very odd-lotsie. Okay, I will answer this.

I have extremely literal dreams that you can very easily connect with things that happen to me, during that particular day. So recently, we had drinks with some of our listeners who are active in the Discord. And one of them gave us a very nice present. It was some chocolate from Germany. It's really delicious. I've eaten it all already.

And that day, I think during one of our recordings, I also, I mispronounce something. And so one of the producers asked me to re-record a sentence, which is not an unusual practice in podcast land. And that night, I had a dream where we met with one of our listeners and he gave us a present. It was like a card game, sort of like cards against humanity. And the name of the game was he dropped a consonant and she swallowed a vowel. And it was so amazing. It was literally a game for spotting podcast hosts verbal tics.

So if someone misstated something or mispronounced something, you would play a And I guess you would win by like playing the most cards or spotting the most verbal tics. And so yes, you can actively see me working out my issues in my dreams. As far as I know, I don't recall having like, I can't think of one right now. But just Tracy, like, I don't think that game sounds that fun. No. But I think that's a great name for a game. And so I think you should come up with a game called, or was it he dropped a consonant and she

dropped a vowel? She swallowed a vowel. Yeah. It's a great name for a game. So you've got to figure out a game for it. I just don't think there's a big enough market for spotting podcast host verbal ticks. I have a lot of like very literal finance dreams. You know when Ackman did really well on his treasury trades this year?

I had a dream that he like called me up and asked me for a date. And his pitch was literally like I had a really good year in the bond market. You want to come out and talk about it. That's amazing. Yeah. That's probably TMI. TMI. Yeah.

Yeah. we need all of the analysts in our audience to get on these stat. Hi, Joe and Tracy. My name is Devin. And I'm Sean. And we were wondering what's something that you've previously covered on odd lots that you most want to revisit in 2024. Or kind of the inverse, if there's anything that you thought was going to be a really big deal in 2020, that turned out not really to be so. I love that there's like a couple calling in and alternating sentences. Are they finishing each other sentences?

It's extremely sweet. Yeah. Okay, something that we want to cover in 2024, that's pretty easy. And we kind of alluded to this earlier when we were talking about our producers. But our major challenge is sort of streamlining all the things that we want to talk about and choosing among them. But I would say insurance is a big one for us right now. And I think it's kind of under discussed even within financial journalism, despite being this absolutely massive industry. I guess, historically it just hasn't been that sexy a topic, but we are starting to see the real world impact of insurance. And it feels to me like, I think there was a book written about this a long time ago and I read it and I really wish I could remember the title and the author of it. But there's an argument to be made that in the current environment where we are seeing these sort of like one-off risks multiplying or, you know, cascading disruptions, whatever you want to call it, the insurers kind of become the arbiters of behavior and accepted industry practice.

They're the ones making the decisions about whether or not they're going to compensate you for particular things, whether or not what you're doing is acceptable in their minds. And you've seen bits and pieces of this, right? So obviously, real estate in Florida, the fact that insurance is becoming incredibly expensive and in some cases prohibitively so is really interesting. but also, you know, like tankers in the Middle East, whether or not insurers are going to find it acceptable for people to keep going on the same routes that they historically happen. There are all these decisions being made by insurers that are having real life consequences. And I really want to dig more into that.

Totally. It's interesting that like insurance just does not get the attention other sectors of finance. And I would add to that accounting. And there's these huge accounting companies. And accounting is so interesting. And whether it's sort of forensic accounting, whether it's just sort of how the rules of accounting end up influencing real life. Because obviously people make business decisions in part because of, you know, in part because of accounting. Like it's not just a, it's not just scorekeeping. It really matters.

And so it's sort of related to this idea that there's huge swathes of money and finance that just don't get much attention, I would like to do more on that. We were talking about listener gifts before. One of the best gifts I ever got was actually, when I was on F.T. Alphaville, someone sent me a leather bound copy of a really famous and very good accounting book. And that was amazing. And I still have it. And I've been meaning to put it on my desk.

So I should probably do that in the new year. Hey, I'm Claude from New York. Tracy, what'd you do with the coal in your basement? I burned it all for heat. It's such a popular question. How many times have you been asked this, Tracy? Quite a few times. The non-interesting reality is that I used it. I burned it in the coal stove. The house we bought in Connecticut that were renovating had absolutely zero insulation. When we bought it, it was very, very cold. There's an old coal stove in the kitchen. We learned how to use it. It worked pretty well. It heated almost the entire house. We had a basement full of coal. It kept us going for a complete winter. And then the summer, we insulated the attic, which I highly recommend doing for energy efficiency purposes,

but it is not a fun job to blow in insulation. But now we have insulation. And so we've used up all the coal and we're just running normal heating oil. And the house has been pretty warm. So I'm John. I'm from New York and I did actually cancel a first date to be here and ask this question. So I wanted to know what Tracy's favorite light sweet crude song is. Oh man. Okay, two things on that. I would like to apologize to whoever your date was. But I guess thank you for being there. Secondly, I have yet to listen. This is very embarrassing. No, I have yet to listen because I'm waiting for your show, which is tomorrow. And I I want to be, I want to go into it completely blind and be completely wowed by your performance. So no pressure, Joe.

Okay, I'll accept that excuse. But then will you please give it some Spotify listens after that to boost our numbers? Well, I also don't have Spotify. Apple, whatever you use. I will. Well, to be fair, I've been talking about your show in many, many episodes. So it's not like I haven't been bigging you up. That's totally true.

But you've done more than enough. I genuinely want to go into it just completely blind and listen to it there. And I'm really, I'm super excited about it. Thank you. We're recording this on December 18th and it's tomorrow on the 19th. Should I wear like country clothes? Definitely, yes. Yeah?

Yeah. All right. Okay. So our last question once again comes from your producers. And we're wondering if you weren't doing this with us, if you weren't covering finance, is there any other topic you would ever podcast about? Ooh. For me, it would definitely have to be something music related. Like that is the, when I'm not sort of in finance mind, I listen to music all the time as much as I can. And that is definitely, you know, I said, that is the one thing that, you know, I've been obsessed with music of various flavors and genres my entire life. And if I were in a different industry, that would be what I would like to be in. We should do more music economics episodes.

There's so much to talk about. I mean, Taylor Swift would be a pretty easy one. For me, I guess, I mean, I have a lot of different hobbies, so any of those. But more conceptually, I really enjoy low-level drama. And Joe will attest to this. I get very upset by, like, unfair things happening in the world. Someone who has, like, eight followers on Twitter will say something and Trace will turn to me. send me the tweet, indignant.

If it's unfair, it genuinely will bother me. So I think I would have something where I just, like, what was that old family guy sketch of like stuff that pissed off Peter? What about a podcast, Tracy, where we argue, Tracy argues with people in the comments. And we invite people from the comment section and to, to fight with them. See if they can change their, see if you can change their. their minds. There have been instances, I mean, a truism of the internet is like, hardly ever do you get someone saying, oh, I was wrong and I apologize. But there have been a handful of instances where that has happened where after I have argued with someone. And so those five

instances versus like thousands and thousands of comments, it was worth it, Joe. Keeps me going. Fuel for 2024. Please don't say mean and unfair things to me on Twitter just to get a reaction, because it will work. Tracy, that was really fun. I love this tradition. I hope we do it for the next 20 years. Yeah. Always happy to answer anyone's questions.

Joe and I are also, obviously, on Twitter, and also on a Discord, the Odd Lots Discord. So if you have even more questions, we can answer them there. And it is really, I thank you so much to the listeners. And the fact that there are people who take time out of their day, even couples to record one and ask questions about our personal lives or things were interested, it really does mean a lot. Like, it makes me very happy to hear all of those, to hear real people calling in. So really appreciate it. Yeah. And whenever anyone says they

listen to odd lots during their commute or while doing chores or working out, that makes me feel so happy that like our conversations can make fairly routine things a little bit more bearable and interesting. So thank you to everyone who listened in 2023. Send us your ideas for 24, your guest ideas, your episode ideas. We are always eager to hear them. Love hearing from fans. Love hearing from listeners. Absolutely, as Tracy said, ideas. People sometimes feel apologetic. Like, oh, I bet you get lots of people suggesting this. But it's honestly, we never mind hearing show ideas, guest ideas, topic ideas, et cetera. So keep it coming. On that note, shall we leave it there?

Let's leave it there. All right, this has been another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Tracy Allaway. You can follow me at Tracy Allaway. And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me at the stalwart. Follow our producers, Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Armin, Dashel Bennett at Dashbot, and Kel Brooks at Kel Brooks. And thank you to our producer, Moses Ondom. For more Odd Lots content, go to Bloomberg.com slash Odd Lots, where we have transcripts, blog, and a newsletter, and check out our Discord.

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