Pirate Wires - Elizabeth Warren Gaslights Inflation, The Enhanced Olympics Are Here, Woke Kindergarten

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

EPISODE #37: The Pirate Wires crew is back for your weekly podcast! This week we jump into discussing our pal, E Warren, blaming corporations for shrinkflation. Instead of.. you know.. blaming actual inflation. We are then joined by a special guest! Christian Angermayer jumps on to discuss the Enhanced Games, the sporting event where athletes can use performance enhancing drugs. We debate the pros and cons of the games and the potential downstream effects on culture. After wrapping with Christian, we move on to Woke Kindergarten that promotes protests and trans liberation. Finally, we wrap up the show talking about Kara Swisher. The tech journalist who hates the tech industry and blames white men for everything. Featuring Mike Solana, Brandon Gorrell, River Page, Sanjana Friedman Subscribe to Pirate Wires: https://www.piratewires.com/ Topics Discussed: https://www.piratewires.com/p/the-great-billionaire-bogeyman?f=home Pirate Wires Twitter: https://twitter.com/PirateWires Mike Twitter: https://twitter.com/micsolana Brandon Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandongorrell River Twitter: https://twitter.com/river_is_nice Sanjana Twitter: https://twitter.com/metaversehell TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 - Welcome Back To The Pod! 1:00 - Thank you for the views and subscribers! The show is starting to gain momentum 2:00 - Elizabeth Warren Blames Corporations Of Shrinkflation 9:15 - Welcome Christian Angermayer! Discussing The Enhanced Games 40:00 - What Will Be The Long Term Societal Effects From The Enhanced Games? 50:15 - Woke Kindergarten Is Insane - And Yes.. That’s The Actual Name 1:03:00 - Kara Swisher Hates Tech & White Men - Discussing An Excerpt From Her New Book 1:18:45 - Thanks For Watching! Like & Subscribe! See You Next Week!

Hold on a sec. I'm gonna get me, um, a beer. Greedy corporations are jacking up prices on items. Why is Big Oreo softening the load of Oreos? She wants to regulate the poison that your fat children are putting in their bodies. Peter Thiel, billionaire, transhumanist crazy person, is creating an Olympics where you have to do drugs. You don't have to, you can. But you should. If you're entering the Drug Olympics you have to do drugs. You don't have to. You can. But you should.

If you're entering the drug Olympics, you got to do drugs. Woke kindergarten. It's actually called woke kindergarten. Here's what you might smell. You might smell tear gas and you might feel heat. Pro-black and queer and trans liberation. Imagine being pro-queer at age six. And then we wonder why the hard right is like, they're all groomers.

We'll just stop teaching them about sex at age five. I don't get it. Welcome back to the pod, guys. Another Friday, another moment with you all to discuss the news. First, actually, before we get into the topics, I just want to say thank you guys. The show has definitely, it seems to have reached an inflection point. It's pretty interesting. We've doubled the amount of views and comments and whatnot over just the last couple of months. It's like we have more growth now than we've had for the first six months of the show. I think we're definitely getting there. It's exciting.

And this is the moment. It's definitely subscribe. If you haven't. Please rate it. Comment. This is the kind of stuff that helps it on the algorithm side. Tell all your friends. Force them to watch it. This is important. This is for you, not for us. It's for us. But thank you. I do want to... We have a special guest today for the first time. Well, first time in a while, I guess. We've been doing this thing where we do kind of interviews sometimes, and then it's like, it's the crew here.

I'm going to bring someone in to talk about a topic that I think is going to be really fun. We're going to talk about the Special Special Olympics with Christian Angermeyer. This is... We'll get into it in a minute, but he's going to be on after our first topic, which is we got to talk about Elizabeth Warren. So Elizabeth Warren, she's been doing this. She's been kind of like beating around this topic for quite a bit. She's referenced it before, alluded to it before.

And I've seen the sort of left talk about this before. It was more popular during the height of the inflation conversation, maybe a couple of years ago, two years ago. The idea is this. It is greedy corporations are jacking up prices on items. That's actually what's happened. There no inflation it's just it's just big bad evil corporations um who are colluding and uh and just raising the price on on goods that used to be sort of less expensive now a version of that is um okay so the goods let's say consumer goods like oreos or doritos, are actually the same price, but you're getting less. And that is, what is the exact phrase?

Shrinkflation. What was it called? Shrinkflation. Shrinkflation. I have a lot of, I mean, I've got thoughts on Elizabeth Warren. I have thoughts on shrinkflation. But maybe we just start with like have you guys noticed uh have you been getting less less less doritos well this is the i think we call this the the this is

the greedy oreo theory of economics um is that what's happening i don't know have you guys yeah i feel like i mean maybe i start with kick it to you river i feel like if someone in this chat is like buying doritos i don't know i think it's i think it i think it's you what have i put on a couple of pounds is that what you know i'm just kidding no no it's not the pounds it's like the it's like your working class vibe it's part of your brand i think uh um i mean i did so i haven't noticed anything personally but i did watch this uh sort of like kind of autistic guy on uh youtube who like keeps track of all this and he's like look half an ounce lower than it was last year it's like all these cereal boxes or whatever so apparently it is kind of a thing but it's like really small um and there are people

out here out there that apparently are keeping track of it yeah i mean i think it's it's definitely a thing but the why are they doing it why why why is oreo why is big oreo softening the load of oreos and it's because the cost of everything is higher and so they're trying to deliver value in a way that does not completely um infuriate and turn off consumers and this is kind of what they have to do it's not like there's nothing some giant meeting of all the people producing just the worst food ever there by the way i think it's another part of this i think it's kind of funny it's like elizabeth warren trying to speak to poor people and so she's like they're going after your doritos how do you feel about that um which is just i mean it's it's that's funny to me going after the rivers of the world

yeah right yeah she's always had this uh like patronizing schoolmarm uh tone that she addresses people with i remember like in the 2020 campaign there was a bernie staffer he's like a really just like a funny internet gay guy named ben more who got fired because he had all these like mean tweets behind a locked account where he said that like elizabeth warren talks like an adult diaper fetishist and like okay because she does she's like the price they're getting smaller the prices are getting small like and it's it's weird like the way that she talks to people she does talk to you like a child. Yeah. I remember, I mean, this is an adjacent conversation, but it's iconic. Do you guys remember the beer thing where she was running for president?

Hold on a sec. I'm going to get me a beer. Hey, my husband Bruce is now in here. You want a beer? No, I'll pass on the beer for now. You sure? Come over and say hello to the folks. Yes. So this is my sweetie.

Hello. And I'm Bruce. I love you. I love you too. Thank you for being here. Pleasure. I'm glad you're here. Enjoy your beer. Cracks it open. She's like, we love you too. Thank you for being here. Pleasure. I'm glad you're here. Enjoy your beer.

Cracks it open. She's like, we're going to have a beer and talk about the world today. That is, it's the, I don't like this from, I don't think anybody likes this from their, quote, elites. I think one of the enduring fascinations of Donald Trump for a lot of people is that he just is honestly, he's like, yeah, my toilets are plated gold. Why would they not be? Are you poor? I'm really rich. I'll show you that in a second. Like he just leans into the fact that he is wealthy. He's not pretending. He sort of speaks in a cadence that I think is accessible to a lot of people from not his world of elite, you know, New York City real estate but he is that he doesn't pretend that he's not wealthy in fact it's the opposite he pretends he's wealthier than he is he's also

a great observer of behavior because in that video she thanks her husband she says thank you for being here to her husband and trump like pointed this out he was like the craziest part of the elizabeth warren beer thing like i'm just like tweeting this at 2 a.m or whatever he's like the craziest thing about the elizabeth warren beer thing is that she thanks her husband for being there it's their house he's supposed to be there like that's so great um have you guys uh sanjana brandon have you noticed uh less oreos in the bag i don't know about less or i mean i guess i've noticed chips i feel like have always they've always had like a generous amount of air in them. People have always ranted about it.

The thing I find funny about the Liz Warren stuff is the follow up in her original tweet is like, we're going to crack down on this. And it's not because she's like, you know, there's less there's fewer Oreos in the bag and there's fewer chips and whatever and it's like what is she proposing is she proposing that the government establish like you know minimum chip requirements for bags like what is the sort of actual policy that's going to come out of this um it's just it's also the people who say she's a regulator she wants to regulate the poison that your fat children are putting in their bodies but in the opposite direction she wants to make sure you have more of it it's fucking it's totally it's funny also that in her appeal to the working class she's like we're gonna make sure that you have more as river said poison in your bag um rather than we're gonna fix the border there's only one thing that anybody in this country, certainly anybody in the sort of like bottom half in terms of income cares about.

That's the border. That's the only thing they care about. And you're out here trying to talk about Oreos. It's well, it's exciting for me because I am a great purveyor of bullshit and I'm excited for this next year of it. We have Christian Angermeyer in the chat. I'm going to let him in. Here he is. The one and have Christian Angermeyer in the chat. I'm going to let him in. Here he is, the one and only Christian Angermeyer. Introduce yourself to the guests of the Pirate Nation. Tell us who you are, and then we're going to talk about...

Meaning if they know you. So we had this one funny hereticon where I was talking about psychedelics. So my name is Christian. I'm running my own investment firm, Pyron, where we do very simplified set tech and biotech. In biotech, we deal a lot of our focuses, especially on mental health and here, especially on bringing psychedelics back into the medical realm and on longevity. And sort of as kind of a side project, I think that's the occasion for today. We just started a new sports league, which is called the Enhanced Games, which is practically a little bit like Olympics or similar disciplines. But the main difference is that sort of doping is not just allowed, but actually endorsed. So we hope people will use the platform to really showcase what humans are capable of with the help of science. One of my favorite tweets of all time,

one of my favorite sort of viral tweets, it says something to the effect of like, we need to allow, I don't care about the doping thing. I we need to, I want a special games where we allow doping and then we see how high a man can really jump. And that is, it's like, it's what you're doing. So obviously you, this is announced, it's Aaron D'Souza's company, correct?

Yes. And the headlines explode because Peter is involved. So it's like Peter Thiel, like billionaire transhumanist crazy person is creating an olympics where you have to do drugs or you can't win you don't have to you can but you should if you're entering the drug olympics you got to do drugs i mean we want to see it we want to oh no sorry not just drugs so yeah i guess this is i have a bunch of questions on this i know the team has a

bunch of questions on this i'm going to start with just like, I guess I should start with the most obvious question, which is like, why? Why are you doing this? Why is it important? Okay. So by the way, on a serious note, you don't have to, because it could be actually also,

and it's already one reason, it could be the very fair, transparent platform where somebody who's extremely good without doping can show that he or she is even outperforming people with doping. Because imagine now, like fun fact is like, by the way, it's not our number. This is like external research organizations like Harvard have done surveys, like whatever, organizations like Harvard have done surveys, whatever, the assumption, but the very serious assumption is that around 40 to 50% of all Olympian athletes are doped anyway. So imagine you're number two, you win silver, you're not doped, you're what we call a natural, but you do know that number one who wins gold is doped.

You can't prove it. Yeah. Because by the way, it's a rat race at the moment just to get around all the doping controls. Like they know exactly when to stop, like a week before, whatever. So the whole science, which is a waste, by the way, the whole brain at the moment almost, or a big part of the brain output goes into how to avoid being caught. So you're silver, you know gold has has dope but

you can't prove it isn't it sad because actually you won yeah in the in our games if you're a natural and again we completely want that as well and you win silver and the gold one says hey well i was dope you feel like a winner so it's very fair for everybody. And imagine now even better, you're natural and you win gold. You're like, look, guys, even with doping, you cannot beat me. I think it's just like, so practically the short version is one of the main reasons why we're doing it. It's because people dope anyway, but they do it in the shadows. Yeah, it's unfair. It's non-transparent.

We just make level playing field you can though yeah you have to but like you have to tell us what you do yeah and then we want to see what people get done so that's one thing it's fairness and transparency the second thing is like by fairness and transparency it is much healthier yeah because like once you have to show what you do or even by the way once you can do it officially people won't do it like in the garage or the stuff online and so on. So it's better healthy for the athletes. And we have one rule. You need to be healthy when you start.

So different than the Olympics, because they cannot do it because then it would show that half of them are doping. Everybody has to do the day before a complete health checkup. And if you would do sort of, let's call it bad doping in a way, misuse of doping, and you would, for example, have an enlarged heart. That's one of the risks, but not if you do proper, let's call it better performance enhancing, because doping is such a bad word. If you do proper performance enhancing in a very medical way, yeah, you shouldn't have

any side effects. So the side effects people are always afraid of or like, oh, telling me now, oh, by the way, but like, isn't that risky when people do performance enhancement because they could have an enlarged heart? It's when you do it wrong. Yeah. And we tell the athletes, look, if you do it wrong, you get disqualified because we don't want somebody having a heart attack on the field.

Yeah. So we're going to have a full health check. We're going to pay for the athletes. And then the third reason why we're doing it, because the Olympics are inherently also bad to their athletes. Like an average Olympic gold medal winner in the prime of their time make like $30,000, $40,000 a year, including endorsements, by the way. It's a total disgrace how we treat these amazing athletes. And it's, by the way, completely different than in soccer, Formula One, in any other sports where the top athletes also get a really fair share of the revenue.

So short version is the Olympics are a very corrupt, a very self-serving, a very transparent, a very unfair organization. And we just want to bring that basic idea of the Olympics, showing what humans are capable of, into the modern world in a much fairer, much more transparent version, especially for the athletes. I keep hearing you say doping. And I looked at your website and you also mentioned performance enhancement and some other terms in your website that I think part of your project is you're trying to change this notion of doping from bad to good.

Yeah, you should change the word because doping, I think, is inherently people have a bad association. Yeah. This is why performance enhancement, I think, is a nice word. Or is this the right word? Right. Right. And that got me thinking, if you're successful, suddenly, you know, steroids in the gym is no longer, perhaps on a wide cultural perspective, all that shameful or taboo. How do you think that if you're successful, the broader fitness and athletic culture changes from, you know, your average person that goes to the gym to even like the NFL? Do you think the NFL may be forced to, if you're super successful,

allow performance enhancement and sort of integrate some of this stuff? Like, how do you see the future playing out in terms of culture? Do you think you have an impact there? So, okay. So many things. things so yeah short version is yes yeah i think the let's start with the nfl by the way my thesis is that equally to the olympics yeah most of the guys are doping yeah actually i think the nfl is even more lenient and the nba whatever because it's about money yeah so i've never heard of drug testing, whatever. It might officially still exist. But I think they're like turning very actively applied diet.

Now, again, which is more unfair than saying it openly, whatever you can. But like, but I think it's already happening. By the way, it's very simple. Take again the Olympics. Like in the moment, world records are broken all the time like over the last decade it's like there is a reason for it and it's not because we suddenly eat better maybe a tiny bit but like there is a lot of science so to say already at work and we just want to actually just talk about it actively yeah the second is uh coming to the more like sort of

and it's for everyday use or in gyms or whatever of anabolic steroids. And even for me, I was surprised when I looked at the one chart and the one graphic I was using most over the last five years. And by the way, everybody who's listening, you should Google that chart because it's my favorite, favorite thing when talking about drugs in general. Yeah, it's from a very famous friend of mine david not he's the sort of key neuroscientist here in britain and he i think it was 2012 but i don't want to say the wrong year but someone then wrote an entire book so the book is worth reading

but like the chart is sort of the essence of the book about how skewed wrong and crazy our society's view on drugs and drugs he means medical drugs illegal drugs but that they are recreational uses yeah because if you and so everybody was listening google just david nutz david and then n-u-t-t and then chart because meaning first thing what you see but by the better what he did, he defined what risk actually is people throwing that word around, oh, this is risky. This is not risky. And he was like, okay, as a scientist, let's first start what is risk? Yeah. And you see, like in the agenda, like you see, he has a very comprehensive definition of

risk. Can you die? Can you get disabled? Long-lasting side effects. Yeah. Also social effects whatsoever. Yeah. And in a comprehensive risk assessment, by far, and by the way, this study and this whole book is to date totally unchallenged. That's fact. I'm not saying that's an opinion of him.

That's a scientific fact. It was published in Lancet. Like it's the most thorough analysis of risk for recreational drugs. The number one risky drug by far, by the way, is alcohol. Closely followed by heroin. So these are the two just that we know where alcohol is. So whenever, by the way, fun fact, I have discussions like that at a dinner and people look at me and say, oh my God, did you just

say psychedelics the last five years or now anabolic steroids while they're sipping on a glass of wine? I scientifically can't take you in serious because you're drinking the worst poison while lecturing on me about something you clearly don't understand. Because if you go on the other side of the chart, hopefully people see it, on the right side, you have practically the zero risk drugs, which is psychedelics. The only risk psychedelics have, which is the, if you look at magic mushrooms, the risk is that you literally have an accident while you do it because you're tripping. So it means, by the way, which I'm a very big proponent of, you have to do it with a guide and the medical stuff. But

if you do that, zero risk. But also, and I didn't even see it because I was not interested until the enhanced gains, what is also at the very right with very, very, very, very low risk are anabolic steroids. So what the fact is that sort of the press and or so the whole craziness in the 80s and 90s about doping has completely skewed the idea of society. If you tell somebody anabolic steroids, they're like, oh my God, like, yeah, but it's practically super low risk because by the way, these were and are FDA approved drugs. These are not like crazy designer drugs somebody came up with lately. Yeah. These are FDA approved drugs, which were actually used for medical reasons for a very long time.

And practically as a, let's call it a side effect, also have to affect the positive one on your body. So when then people say, but I've heard of somebody who does most of that stuff, they are urban legends. Yeah. But by the way, and then it's always about dosing. If you drink 20 vodka shots, you're dead. Yeah. Most likely, unless you're a proven alcoholic who's like, but yeah, not in Russia.

But obviously if people do like 20, 30, 40 times too much of it. Yes. And it gets dangerous. But like as long as you use them sort of in a sensible medical way. Yeah. They practically have no risks. That's the science. I do think it's interesting what we what we term performance enhancing drugs and and what we really don't you know, there's this it's like we all drink coffee. And in fact, I think we're mostly all addicted to coffee.

Brandon might be drinking coffee right now. It's a real addiction that is broad. And I think alcohol is very similar. Speaking of charts, I saw one the other day that broke down the number of people who comprise the bulk of alcohol sales. And it is like 75% of alcohol sales are dominated by 25 of people so the entire industry is fueled by alcoholics people drinking 10 drinks a day um that is weirdly not it's like not counted because it's so pervasive and uh i mean nicotine is is a step up from that i think

because there's been recently so much um in my recent i mean the last you know three four decades so much anti-smoking um attention uh but we don't yeah it's like it's it's not it's not counted for some reason um which is just interesting in itself, you know, what drugs count, what don't, I do wonder, this whole societal historically, people in the argument is always human streak alcohols is 2000 years, but like, we also have to kill it is 2000 2000 years, and it's still not an argument to kill somebody like, it's like, just like, it's a very weird, like, few we have on drugs, it's very one of the most bizarre,

skewed, non-scientific things where nobody has a real explanation how we ended up here. I do wonder what it's like to create... We're doping aloud across the entire industry. And this is probably the question that you get, I'm assuming, the most because it's the most obvious to me.

It's like in a world where that's allowed, you kind of have to do it to perform. And how do you feel about that, about the introduction of a rule that, yes, it's optional, but if you want to compete against someone at the top of their game, who's just as strong as you, but doping, don't you sort of have to dope to compete? Aren't those your choices to sort of dope or to not? Well, but it's your choice to compete. It's a little bit like if you go in a job and if you're like, by the way, we could also talk about, because it's already happening,

so people take a lot of Modafinil, which is a very, by the way, riskless. If you look at the side effects, from my point of view, I don't want to give medical advice, but very minimal, and it makes you you look at the side effects, from my point of view, I don't want to give medical advice, but very minimal. And it makes you much better at your job. Depends which job you have. Because for example, creativity is different than just working for an Excel sheet. But for certain jobs, for certain tasks, Moodafinil gives you a real edge. Does it mean

that it forces now every young investment banker to take mood definitely no but maybe it says okay but if you want to do a certain thing like maybe you don't have by the way you're never forced to life but you can you have to maybe then reassess your decision yeah so you're not forced to go if you want to be that in the enhanced game but you should go in the enhanced it's just like i i think like there is sort of free will still exists it's like give me all right let's go maybe one step back because i think what i love when i thought about it and it's got you gotta like it because like i know you're politically not correct but like i think who did the biggest service to that whole enhancement movement is the trans movement because it's the ultimate or

queer first and then trans because like so my view on it whole stuff is that pharma follows societal norms and over the last hundred years or actually even longer but let's just look at the sort of recent history society Society was fairly normalized. So we define something as a norm. And just when you deviated from the norm, then society said, oh, you're sick. And then in pharma terms, you were allowed treatment. And by the way, being gay was labeled as sick till just some decades ago. Yeah.

And that has changed now because first the queer movement sort of pushed societal norms in terms of whom you love. And then sort of the trans movement went even one step further and said, look, even who I am, what my gender is, what my identity is, whatever, I can define for myself. And I think we're just starting to see that that societal movement now I think we're just starting to see that that societal movement now also has an effect on pharma because there is no logic anymore. I would say if somebody can change it, by the way, I give them the right. As long as you don't bother me, I think people should have the right to identify whatever they are and even should have the right to use certain medications to sort of change their sex. But at the same time, you can't then say, oh, but you are not allowed to take anabolic steroids to look better. Because again, maybe for me, that is equally important. I'm

joking. I know all the sensitivities yeah but i'm jokingly always use it as an example i always felt like an olympic swimmer like i always i was standing you identified you identify identify by the way i identify body wise as an olympic swimmer but unfortunately i'm trapped in a finance dude's body yeah so but now i realized i can go to a doctor and uh help get help to sort of adjust my inner body to my feelings that might have something you know what i want to say like so anyway i'm very grateful i don't mean it's sorry i'm very grateful both for the queer movement because i'm gay like but like but also the trans movement because it liberates us from a completely idiotic view that you have to be sick in order to be allowed to

access medication yes but it also there i don't it's not as risk-free as um i don't think it's risk-free at all from what i've read i mean it's it's it fundamentally alters your body and i've been kind of around enough meatheads to know that there are all sorts of risks about um tea production following doping and things like this like you it's there are consequences right for your life you're changing we're seeing this now in the trans movement specifically we're seeing this that there are consequences especially of of uh of hormones as introduced to the opposite gender um buck angel is a famous trans male who has talked a lot about what has happened to him in older in sort of older age due to all of this right like there are there are, there are, it is an extreme intervention to some extent.

No? Yes. No, no, but that is more extreme than light doping. I would say it that way. I have a weird, maybe mix of libertarian and conservative view on that stuff.

Yeah, more conservative than people might think who are like, oh, what he just said. Like the one is like, I think once you're, by the way, a certain age, because I think you should understand what you're doing. Yeah. And I think you don't,

when you're like 16, 18. Like, I really think also scientifically, if you look at the brain, like 21 should be the age where I would say people have the full agency to, to make these very, very profound decisions for their body. So that's one thing. The second thing is my libertarian part says, once you're 21, you should be allowed to define your own body in terms of gender, but also in terms of performance enhancement. However, just in the realm, there comes my conservative view of FDA approved drugs together with a doctor. So the same, by the way, is my view on psychedelics. I think psychedelics are extremely beneficial therapeutics. But I don't think because they are they are that efficient because they're very

strong yeah so i don't think we should sell psychedelics like cannabis in a coffee shop but uh what we're working on with one of my portfolio companies is that you have to go to a doctor or a therapist yeah we at the moment bringing all these psychedelics through FDA approved trials. So we really show the world, look, these are the risks. Because by the way, as much as sometimes the FDA is cumbersome, but it's the gold standard globally of how to scientifically rigorously prove that something is working, but also show are there side effects? And if so, which are they? working, but also show are there side effects? And if so, which are they? So we want to bring, or we are about to bring all these psychedelics through FDA approval processes. So, and then after people can go to the doctor and then trip with their doctor. They can't even take it home.

Yeah. I want them to do the psychedelic experience with the doctor. And the same view I have on performance enhancement is like, first of all, don't buy any shit on the internet. So I want it to be that open and that sort of normalized that once you're 21, you can go to your doctor, you can talk with your doctor about your goals. You're going to have a professional

sort of not just giving it to you, but monitoring you. And just FDA approved drugs. So first of all, I think that the trans comparison is very interesting. And it actually reminds me of a piece we had published a few months ago about these trans maxers who basically decide to take, they're males who decide to take estrogen and they don't even necessarily identify as trans, but they specifically say they're doing it for like some form of physical enhancement. So I do think that that's this kind of interesting way to think about these body modifications. But my question is a bit more pragmatic. I'm

curious if you guys think, like who, what does the athletic demographic you think is going to participate? Because I sort of, I don't know if like, if participation in these games would disqualify people from them participating in the regular Olympics? Or is there kind of, like, who do you think is gonna sign up? So first of all, like, so it's an interesting question. So the one is like, we gotta be so economic, that people, even like my assumption, but not just by my assumption, we have, and we can't obviously disclose names here, but like we have active athletes who are competing this year in France, in the Olympics, reaching out to us and like, hey guys, if you put a million dollar price money on breaking a world record, yeah, I'm in because I'm getting paid nothing.

And a million dollars is like... So I think we're going to get a ton of very active current Olympians who say, look, this is just cooler, more fun. I do it anyway, by the way, again. And now I'm really going to make money because we got to provide... It's one of the big parts of our strategy we're gonna provide a much more economic uh offering to athletes the other thing which is super interesting which is by the way also again very sort of diverse is who are reaching out are a lot of

senior athletes senior i mean in their 30s who practically, they can't go to the Olympics because they're too old. Yeah. So we have in sports, you have an extreme version of casting out old people. It all starts with early 30s. By the way, a lot of soccer players, really like two actually very famous soccer players reached out to us in their 30s who are not active anymore on the superstar level they were in their 20s because they can't physically. And're like wow i can do what i love being an athlete and now very officially with performance enhancement have a second career in my n30s yeah so we actually opening up the field to people who have a passion for sports who haven't been able to do it because in the current version, they would not be able to. Yeah, my question was about, so I'm wondering, is doctor supervision and FDA approval really enough

to stop people from abusing? Because, I mean, OxyContin was FDA approved. It was prescribed by people's doctors. And it led to a massive epidemic of opioid addiction and i like i i just kind of especially in the united states where um draw like you can if you can basically get whatever drugs you want from your doctor like it is like a very capitalist like health care system where like you can kind of shop around for doctors if they won't give you whatever. There's already market incentives there, I think, that can produce abuse. And I don't know. I'm concerned about,

or I guess I wonder if you think our doctor supervision and FDA approval is really going to be enough to keep people from... I don't think it's perfect. I think it's the best we can do because every system in the world, every rule set you can do, every protective provision, you can always game and rig. So if somebody... It's a little bit like I always say, look, murder is forbidden, people do it still. Even if we have police, even if we have everything, we have CCTV, whatever. If people want to do bad stuff, they got to do bad stuff. So if somebody is- Yeah, but Christian, they're going to do a lot more murder if murder is legal, right? We don't think that, we look at San Francisco, there's more crime because people aren't really enforcing it.

You're arguing for, and I'm interested, I'm open to it, but you are making the case for a world where people are doing many more performance enhancing drugs. So like, what does that look like? Great. We all it's gonna be much better. We're all going to be gradually smarter. Let me give you one more current example. Because I think if you break it down or make it more tangible, people see that it's actually nice.

Like, is Ozempic? By the way, the first mass performance or looks enhancing drug is Ozempic. Because people think Ozempic is approved for weight loss. It is not. It is approved for clinically obese people to lose weight. I am on Ozempic. I love it because it helps me with weight management, but I'm not clinically obese, hopefully.

Yeah. So, and I think that the estimated number is that 90% of people who do Ozempic are not clinically obese, but they use it for just convenience reasons. So, and I think that is the first out of many sort of drugs. And by the way, the interesting thing is, to come back to what we said at the beginning, I think two things have happened the last 10 years. The one is the trans movement, which really like changed society fundamentally, how much authority we give the individual about their body.

But the second is money talks. we give the individual about their body. But the second is money talks, and people are looking at Ozempic and Novo Nordisk, and they added more than 150, I think in the meantime, more than $200 billion market cap. And suddenly pharma industry is waking up and saying,

maybe we were wrong, and I think they were wrong over the last 30, 40 years to just look at smaller and smaller niche and niche diseases instead of doing by the way what the tech industry has done all along one thing which puzzled me in biotech the last 20 years since i'm in it because i'm doing tech at the same time in tech the key word is total addressable market if somebody would come to you and say hey i have an app which is great for 40,000 people in the world you you would say you're an idiot. But that's what pharma did.

Oh, there's a rare disease, which 40,000 people, that's great. Let's all go after it. And I was always like, why don't we go after medical drugs, which hopefully every human being can take? Because that's why, for example, why I'm looking so much on longevity, because we're all age eating, so everybody wants to slow it down. By the way, same with psychedelics. Everybody wants to be a bit happier. Yeah.

So I think we're entering this golden age of individual enhancement. Then at the moment in this talk, we talked a lot about sports and extreme versions, but I think the even cooler thing to talk about is that I think enhancement, like making you a bit smarter, making you a bit thinner, making you more muscles, whatever, whatever you please to be. Yeah, physically and mentally, I think we got to the pharma industry gonna provide sort of medical drugs over the next 20 years. But this was the whole pitch for like, Oxycontin basically is

like, you don't have to live with pain anymore. Why are we living in this paradigm where people have to live with pain and blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, that is like how you produce the opioid crisis is that people like doctors were like drilled. Because because of the content is an inherently bad product which should have never been approved. I know. But you could always find I again, for me, it's like FDA plus doctor. You can always find it's a little bit like you would say energy training is bad because there was Enron.

Enron was a bad actor. Purdue Pharma was a very bad actor. Yeah, they did stuff they should have never done. But just because they did it. Yeah, I don't think Novo Nordisk is a bad actor. Right. It's like every drug is different. I hear you.

And not every drug is. You need to have a little bit of self sort of you need to have a little bit of, of self, sort of, you need to have a little bit of responsibility of what you do in life. But I hear you. But like, again, I just want to point out that the the opioid crisis didn't happen. Because we didn't know like there was a clear if you go into the case, Purdue Pharma, the family behind the management, clearly acted bad as did Enron, as did other very bad actors.

And that should be punished. Yeah, they should go to jail. I think, by the way, they're still around, like the Sackler family. They should not be. That should be heavily, heavily punished. But it was a bad actor. And we shouldn't use one bad criminal group to make conclusions that I think are very rational other decisions. Well, we do have to wrap it up. I am excited to see where this goes.

I am- I'm a team with myself. Whenever you see me, I'm going to be more ripped than like- You're going to be jacked. I want to go to the first games. We would love to report on it. Let's definitely do it. I think that this is a conversation that is ongoing I'm excited to keep having it and thank you for joining us thank you for having me bye guys bye bye

I didn't get my question in I wanted to ask if there was going to be a psychedelics part of the games where the athletes like just took a bunch of shrooms I'll be on psychedelics watching the games we'll do that I'll be on psychedelics watching the games. That'll be the part. We'll do that. I'll be on psychedelics writing about the games. I think it's crazy how

much I'm really divided on this kind of stuff. I want maximum freedom and for people. I want this to exist. I do want people, if they want to go dope and see how far they can really jump, I'm down for that. I also this to exist. I do want people, if they want to go dope and see how far they can really jump, I'm down for that. I also, well, I don't really see an opioid sort of crisis

coming. I think it was an interesting question to raise, River. And I am worried. I think that people often don't wonder about the second order consequences of things like sudden mass legalization of steroids and we tend to think about it from the perspective of ourselves and we are all we're like four people in this chat with jobs and we're like we're like we're like functioning members of society but i always go back i'm going back again and again to that chart that i just saw um it wasn't just alcohol it was the same thing with with uh sugar it was similar candy like most people who were buying it was like a small percentage of the people who eat candy eat almost all of the candy um like we see this again and again and again in society with opiates it's very interesting because it's an addiction where it doesn't seem

like the people like it hits randomly. Some people just cannot handle it. Most people who take hydrocodone or something are fine. There's a fraction of people who are not, and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with class or background. It's just like a weird thing that happens. I don't see that necessarily happening with this, but something could happen. I mean, whenever you make a change that is that broad, it's society, something will happen. But I mean, this kind of thinking also would inhibit all progress, you know, period, right? If everything has a second order effect.

Yeah. I think just the, I think the way you have to think about these things is like, Just the, I think the way you have to think about these things is like, not how, like how this would affect me. It's like, how would this affect like somebody with like a 95 IQ who works like a blue collar job? Because like, that is like the median American, like, and you have to think about like how, like, it's going to affect somebody who's not going to like sit through like Lancet papers and like try to figure out how it's going to affect them, you know? But why, that's my, I agree with you. That's, that's the tension here, but, but we can't build a society that caters to the 95 IQ person. That isn't that like,

that seems to be one of the biggest problems we're facing right now as a society is that it does cater to that. Like look at education. Why, why is our, why are our public schools catering to the least, the lowest performing people rather than the highest like like what we can't it doesn't it seems that there there is a huge problem in um in building a society that is trying to mitigate the damage that the dumbest people in society will do to themselves and it's like we can't really do that they're always going to do damage and if we if we wrap our world around them i don't know how we progress in any meaningful way whatsoever yeah well i mean i'm just thinking about like

the schools of the likes of different covers in terms of like risk you know what i mean if you have like all of a sudden another mass epidemic of drug addiction among like working glass people or something like that could be very bad you know just for society as a whole it could lead to all sorts of secondary social problems you know um but i i mean i i kind of agree i mean it's uh i mean i take adderall and i feel like it helps me be better at my job and uh i would be pissed if somebody didn't take it away from me because i don't think that everybody should be on adderall though you know what i mean i don't think we need to change the paradigm around adderall like yeah yeah and there are definitely i said i think there are

probably there are definitely people who abuse it and are on it and shouldn't be on it because of what it's done to them and it was was over, I believe it was over-prescribed. And yet, I mean, it's a performance enhancing drug. I think it's a great comparison, actually. I almost brought it up in the context of school. There was a question, I remember in college, people being like, you shouldn't be allowed to be on, not me, I wasn't. But they were like, people should not be on Adderall because it means that everyone has to do Adderall. I remember thinking that was really stupid because I was acing everybody and I was not on Adderall. You're just not doing the reading. You could just read the reading and be fine probably. But if it were a perfect drug, if Adderall didn't have all of these, because Adderall has plenty of side effects.

And if it were perfect and you kind of had to do it to compete, on one hand, it's great because it's a perfect jug that makes you smarter or faster or better. But on the other, do we want to live in a world where everyone needs to enhance themselves in order to function in a day job in competition with other people who are on it? I guess we're not there yet. You know, we're not there yet, but I guess that's like the kind of, I don't even know what class of question this is. Is it a moral question or a philosophical quandary? I don't know. Assange, it looks like you have something to say. I think it's a practical question. And I think, River, to your earlier point about a lot of people don't have the time to read Lancet papers and decide what the best dosing regimen is for them if they're

going to use performance-enhancing drugs. I think that's where, really, I think the analogy he made with the trans stuff is so interesting to me because one thing we've consistently seen with trans medicine, with legalizing drugs in general, is when you legalize things, there's a huge uptake in use. And so with the trans stuff, it's interesting because we've essentially, it's not that it was necessarily illegal 15 years ago, but there were not as many gender clinics and it was not as readily accessible. And you've seen a huge uptick in use. And I sort of wonder if there is a benefit to keeping things not regulated, as weird as it sounds, in that you force people, those who are like insistent that they want to use

either performance enhancing drugs or in the case of trans stuff cross-sex hormones they go through black market channels this is something people have done for you know decades um and of course there's side effects because people are doing them in not medically regulated contexts but i sort of, I do think there has to be a consideration of like, are the trade-offs of people doing black market drugs for performance enhancing, or, you know, whatever, looks maxing reasons, are they outweighed by the benefits or and the increased uptake and all the second order consequences of that with legalizing i i want to push back slightly because i agree with the the general direction of where you're going here but it it's not the legality right because of

course the trans stuff has been legal for a long long time it's It's the normalization. So it was legal plus normalized is when it really became a problem. And I think River, you mentioned on the opiate thing, it was like, it was the encouragement of your doctor to do this that got so many people on it, which I think is correct. And in the case of the trans thing, it's like the encouragement you get all day on the media saying like, no, this is normal. Like this is a normal thing you can do. If you feel weird in your body, you should do this. And that's a conversation we didn't have even five years ago, or I guess now it's been quite a while. But let's say 10 years ago, that conversation didn't exist. And so the only people going to these clinics were really, there was a social hit they had to take to do this thing. And what he's talking about now, sorry, just let me wrap this one point up, is what Christian's talking about is not just the legalization of these things, because a lot of them are not legal right now at all. But it's that plus the additional thing of like,

should we valorize this or should we normalize or valorize this and i think that almost certainly leads to it's it's not all there's no way that doesn't lead to a massive uptick in people young men probably with all in all likelihood taking um doping just to go to the gym and look a certain way which to christian's point he's like that's great like i want to live in that world but as long as we know that that is the world that we're entering, then there's a question of, I guess, what that means. Yeah. I mean, in addition to the broader social context around trans stuff, there was also a more, quote unquote, gatekeeping by doctors where in order to get cross-sex hormone you had to go through like psychological evaluations and like you really like you had to really really want it and like convince a doctor that like you needed it it wasn't you know now you have like informed consent where they basically

you just sign like a release form or whatever and it wasn't like that before it was a lot more intensive because it's such an extreme change that like you have to like doctors felt like they were compelled to make sure that people actually knew what they wanted like you know what i mean and i think i it's not an exact parallel with steroids because i mean you can stop taking steroids and my understanding is that your you know your body will sort of go back to normal in a way that like some a lot of the trans stuff is permanent um but my understanding is there is issues um I I don't know if it's a dosing thing like if you just take a low dose maybe it won't affect you I don't know but like issues uh with like fertility and um stuff like that that could be long-term

permanent and like change the course of your life right if you can't have kids because you did a bunch of steroids in your 20s like that's um i don't know i think that's something that people would need to like think about really hard talking about is it comes down for what i've read it comes down to improperly dosing yourself so if you fuck it up you can do serious damage to your body and um that falls into the classic libertarian pro-drug category which is like if it's legal and you can go to your doctor and do it in a clinic set a clinical setting and um you know your your risk from it goes down um but again the consumption does go up. We know that it's going to go up. Yeah, I do want to would be an awesome vehicle for pharmaceutical advertisements. You could be like, this athlete is on X, Y, and Z cocktail, and he's going against this athlete

with A, B, and C cocktail. Who's going to win? This is sponsored by Merck and Novo Nordisk. And then you have athletes who are going to get sponsorships for particular steroids or performance-enhancing drugs on billboards and doing commercials. There may be some regulation that gets in the way of that. But yeah, I think in a world where Christian and the Enhanced Games is massively successful, the most successful it could ever possibly be, I think the culture totally follows that. And there's this whole new side that's opened up where kids are interested in the latest, I don't don't know uh performance and hand i will say the culture's already done i mean we see this you can look at the superheroes over the last 15 years there's been a total transformation of the superhero male body and it is doped as hell and you go into the gym now and people casually talk complete openness about steroid use which is ubiquitous um to a certain extent

we have we have gone the way of this stuff without even having a conversation about it and so christian is kind of doing something that could only possibly or you know iron is doing something christian's investing in something they're all kind of working on in this space that could only possibly happen um in a culture that was somewhat like already open to it like we're there i think we're there and the trans thing is true i mean it's like we're talking about men becoming trans men really that's like no no one produces uh these hormones naturally at those levels well i guess maybe someone to hercules probably based on some guy from 2 000 years ago who actually did produce a freakish amount of male hormones. But the average guy is not at that level. I want to talk about woke kindergarten. Sanjana, tell is like, here's an example. We're talking about wanting to optimize and, you know, reward excellence.

And this woke kindergarten is a good example of going in the opposite direction. I mean, basically, this is a story that sounds like something that Babylon Bee would have written satirically, but it's actually real. satirically, but it's actually real. This Bay Area school district, Hayward, which is a city in the East Bay, has essentially, they've hired a for-profit organization. Two years ago, they hired a for-profit organization using federal money to help them improve student attendance and test scores. And the organization they chose is called Woke Kindergarten. It's actually called Woke Kindergarten. They paid them $250,000 for a three-year contract.

I'm sorry, what year was this again? This was two years ago. So I think it was either 2021 or 2022, depending on- So they knew better at this point. They knew better. 2021 or 2022 um depending they knew better at this point this is not uh woke kindergarten uh is designed to confront white supremacy disrupt racism and oppression and they describe themselves as a global abolitionist early childhood ecosystem and visionary creative portal supporting children families educators and organizations and their

commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation so imagine being pro-queer at age six yeah well so what does that even mean like how do you i had this i was on uh the gutfeld show not too long maybe a couple months a few months ago and this question of like queer children came up it was like a program in a school or maybe it was like a pride thing in a school it's like that does not there are no there's no fucking such thing as a gay six-year-old because to be gay you have to have a sexuality and they're children like why and then we wonder why the hard right is like they're all groomers we'll just stop teaching them about sex at age five. I don't get it.

Yeah, I mean, the kicker for the woke kindergarten stuff, which really is clownish, I mean, the person who runs it is non-binary. They have a sensory guide to protests for six-year-olds, which basically says, you know, it's called So You Made It to a Protest. And it's like, here's what you might smell.

You might smell tear gas, and you might feel heat, and, you know know you might hear chants sorry brandy go ahead i was just describing the poster says you might also feel things like solidarity power uh yeah yeah i mean they've got like woke wonderings so these are posters they make for kids i wonder one of them is i wonder if we eradicate borders, how might we build our communities to include and support neighbors from all over the world? But the real, I mean, the kicker for it is two years into their three-year contract with this school district, test scores have fallen to record lows at this already underperforming school. So the math proficiency scores... Wait, wait, wait, wait. But tests are just a construct of the white supremacist thinking. So in a way, they've simply decolonized their minds at age five.

I think they deserve some accolades for that, personally. You should note, too, that the funds that the school district pulled from are federal funds earmarked for improving student performance, right? Yeah. Well, so improving student performance and attendance. And yeah, I mean, I guess one thing I wonder is why they didn't redefine the tests themselves, because yeah, according to the oppressive test structures already in place, the sort of supremacist test structures, only 4% of kids at this school are proficient in math. And under 12% of kids are at grade level English proficiency. This is in the Bay Area.

So it is pretty shocking by any metric on a more serious note on the because i hate to play a game of woke whack-a-mole but this one is really egregious um there the concept wokeness is super identity based and the big part of it is like let's challenge the assumptions about our society that are inherently racist and like if something is if you are not succeeding in at something um let's interrogate the system around you that's not allowing you to succeed and whatnot and separate from all the clownery just like the introduction of the idea to these people who are these people these little kids who are already not six thriving uh the introduction of the idea that it like they were not in control

of their life which is what as like the core of wokeness is like you are not in control the system is in control that one idea more than any of the other bullshit ideas i believe is the thing that tanked their grades because you to the whole concept of like doing better implies that you are in control of your life. And what I would love to see are some contrary programs elsewhere, whereas the total opposite is just radical. It doesn't matter where you're from to a point where, I mean, I am aware that there are things that are out of people's control, but I would be really interested in a radical version of the of the self-control argument that like ignores all differences all

actual constraints like you could be a paraplegic and they're like i don't want to hear any fucking excuses like get out there and start running like i would love to see what that does to a class of people just it would be it would be interesting i think it would be it would be interesting some new data points um which we are decidedly uh at a lack for who is uh who are the students and this woke kindergarten is it like rich like bay area kids or is it like poor kids or no this is a predominantly um i believe it's predominantly low-income school two-thirds of the kids are english learners it's almost all uh hispanic or latino kids so a lot of them english is kids are English learners it's almost all Hispanic or Latino kids so a lot of them English is their second language it's like BLM shit

that doesn't make any sense to me at all I don't know it like what what are they being up what are we abolishing with the Latinos I don't know i didn't this shit always like fucks me up with the because i'm like you came here like you wanted to come here i don't know like it's yeah no it does not count there's no one i'm like why because they didn't come here by choice at the very least yeah yeah the black conversation black americans that story is complicated there are legitimate grievances that are obvious that are that persist well i wouldn't say the grievances any longer well the grievance clearly persists so i would say that there is nothing systemic any longer in place however like you can't deny that

black americans um on average are in uh a shittier place than many other people and so there are i think it's fair to ask why i think they draw the wrong i think the woke left draws the wrong conclusions but completely on your side river when it comes to the question of like how do you how is the first thing that you do when you move here like complain about oppression like why did you come i don't get it i don't understand and like obviously like i'm not blaming like the kids for that because they're being like taught that like you the immigrant children especially should not be taught that because that hinders assimilation like i mean the mexican kids that i grew up with i mean some of them were like old school like texas teotihuacan like their families have been

here for like generations but some of them like their parents were mexican immigrants and like by the time we graduated high school they were just like rednecks like everybody else because right american dream they hung out with like all these hicks and like that's just who they were yeah and like it's a hard one i don't know i feel like that's like actually hispanics actually assimilate very well if uh you just treat them like normal people instead of like telling them they have like a chip on their shoulder for reasons that have nothing to do with america yeah it is not surprising that you would have a group of people suddenly become suspicious of the system if everyone in the system is saying yo we're gonna be so racist to you just fyi like like you better buckle up because

people here hate you like and then we're surprised when they're like, damn, everyone here seems to hate us. Like the friendly white person just said it to them to their face, like verbatim. Like, that's crazy. Welcome to America.

Like it's going to be fucking brutal. Like, no, that's yeah. It's bad, bad news. God, I wish everyone was as smart as us.

Um, let's talk about my last one for the day i really do want to get it out um i want to talk about kara swisher uh kara had this phenomenal piece in new york magazine in which she talks about the evolution of the press generally media generally but the tech press in particular uh and there was this one really excellent quote, most techies now dabbling in the media are arrogant amateurs who think because they excel in one area, they are masters of all domains. What they really are is incompetent at giving any insider illumination beyond their own narrow self-interests while decidedly cheapening discourse. My first cut on this is like she swisher represents this really fascinating

trend among the tech journalists um who are really a kind of a uh an endangered species you don't see too many of them anymore um but for years it was like there was a gatekeeping of in tech these these are media people are gatekeeping tech people from following other tech people on the question of tech. And they're like, no, no, no. You can only follow these people over here who are appropriately discerning and critical of what you do and like industry at the conceptual level. And that is just, it's this weird thing that does not make sense in the context of the

internet, which is why the high level thesis of, or not thesis, I guess the arc of Kara's piece, which was just her journey in tech. And she opens up as like this hero who's telling all the newspaper guys, like, you're going to all go out of business unless you become digital first and blah, blah, blah. She paints herself as this tech forward thinker who understands the trends that are coming. But while Kara was correct about what was wrong with the model, with the business model at the time, she was totally wrong on what was right

because she is sort of, she came up, she blew up in the new media era, which is totally gone now. Like nothing has been decimated as badly as new media, the people who rushed to the internet first presence and tried to live on advertising revenue online. Nothing was hit harder than that. And now she's sort of, again, fundamentally misunderstanding how the internet works. We don't need to listen to her thoughts on what's happening in tech.

We can just ask the people who are working inside of the industry. Now, there are all sorts of ways where we need journalism and we talk about them here. But this commentary on tech themes, which is basically what she is, she's like an opinion person, nobody cares. This is why she's not relevant anymore. At the end of the day, I mean, this is a person who's trying to explain to us what's happening in tech press. What is she even? She has a podcast. That's what she has. She's a woman with a podcast. She's just another asshole with a podcast. So are we, assholes with podcasts. no difference, Kara. We're in the same swimming pool. I guess there is a difference. The difference is that Kara represents, I guess, an audience of primarily media elite type people. These are the very people who gave her the New York Magazine piece. Whereas we represent a large and growing audience of people who actually just love what we're doing and working on, which I'm forever

grateful for. Thank you guys. Continue to spread the good word. I don't know. What do you guys think? What do you guys make of Kara's journey? And maybe just like the concept of, of media gatekeepers in these different niches, kind of, I mean,

clearly this read to me like a eulogy. And, and I wonder if she even understood that. I know she's missed a lot i she can't possibly have missed that much though yeah i think there's like an enormous amount of cognitive dissonance on display in that article because she talks extensively about how much of an outsider she was at the journal when she first started and she was reporting on the internet and how she was talked down to by all of these established media

reporters. I mean, she literally says that in the article is sort of like snobby media reporter who talked down to her. And then, you know, she goes off on techies who are overplaying their hand by, you know, I don't know, blogging about what's going on in their industry. And it's, it is this kind of thing that i think often happens to people like her who begin as outsiders and then become the establishment right is like if you've built your brand on being an insurgent outsider right who's sort of you know you're writing about the internet when no one's talking about it or whatever what do you do once you've become the establishment? I mean, do you have a kind of a reckoning with yourself and an honest assessment of like where you stand

vis-a-vis the industry that you're discussing? Or do you, and I think that's probably the honest way to do it. And an acknowledgement of like, okay, I am now the establishment and maybe I should be aware of the position I stand in, right? And how my influence is waning. Or do you double down on this narrative that like the newcomers suck, basically, and they're out of their depth? I mean, she says, yes, just, I mean, I agree completely with everything that you've said. It is totally a phenomenal example of cognitive dissonance.

They don't just suck, though. The whole sort of end of the piece is, I mean, she goes after all of these tech companies for insufficient political censorship. She doesn't just hate the people like us who are speaking and competing and winning in the game, by the way, over her, the old guard, who's really not relevant at all anymore, other than when she pops up to say something that I think is funny like this. She wants to actually prevent it. She wants to use the government to stop it. And so it is this kind of like tragic story of a woman who, while she was wrong about what was right, she was early to the internet trend. And she was probably this really cool younger person who we all would have liked to a certain extent.

She was writing about interesting things. She was doing something that wasn't so popular. As you said, she was speaking up to the old, stuffy, stodgy media people at the time um but but her story is so much more tragic than just becoming irrelevant it's like she's actually she's like this scared old woman now who's so frightened of donald trump and elon musk that she wants she wants to become like an authoritarian it's like contrary completely to that theful, freedom-oriented internet ethos. She's just become the man, the bad guy. And I feel, in a way, bad for her because it's a sad way to conclude what could have been a pretty interesting, compelling legacy

that we look back on fondly. But now it's just like, she's just one of the other ones. And it's like, that's sad. And's complaining about like the loudest voices on social media and what and whenever people start complaining about that it means they're not good at twitter basically yeah like the only people i ever hear complain about this sort of thing are people who are not very good at marketing themselves on social media and i think that like she sees kind of the writing on the wall a little bit and yeah as you're kind of like hinting at she's kind of turned into her old editor at the beginning like this person who like doesn't see what's coming

and like uh i don't know well i think that even the idea that you would go after the sort of direct model conceptually, the idea of tech workers talking to tech workers, that's just contrary not to like the present moment that we're in. That's contrary to the last 10 years. You know, that is contrary to a trend that's been obvious for a very long time. And it's just it's a it's a betrayal of her ignorance um and she's a super arrogant person which uh i don't know i kind of like in a person sometimes honestly yeah i like harris

i think she's a decent writer i think i like her like lesbian like bravado kind of like i don't know she has like she i find her charming a little bit but i mean she trump broke her she became hysterical yeah and i think she was many such cases i think she was bad for a while i think trump really really really i agree with you completely ruined her because it's all she can think about now um i also i just think the future of media is interesting. And if you're not interested in it and you're just kind of mad about it, then you can't possibly be part of the future. And all that says is like, that's like the end of something.

And it was fitting that it was in New York Magazine, right? Because like, whoever reads that, unless something goes viral like this to make fun of. And that's, it's like you just just she continues to pick the wrong side it doesn't have to because it's like you're in you're on the internet i will say one last uh i will say one last thing um that i thought was really interesting uh you river you were saying people get frustrated when there are loud voices they say like the loud online, and that really just means they're bad at Twitter. I agree. I think maybe the lag here, the reason it's taken her so long to realize what was obviously in front of all of us, which is this trend to new media, the trend to direct, like what

actually is happening online right now, the end of new media, the rise of what, I guess you would say, subscription base and things like this, which is a trend that started years ago with Ben from Stratechery and the information. Again, this stuff's been happening for a while. She was blinded to a lot of this because she thought she was popular on Twitter. She had over a million followers years ago. And what was happening at that time was Twitter, every time you signed up for the platform, would recommend people to follow. And it would include people like if you were in tech and you followed some tech accounts, it'd be like Kara Swisher. And there were a handful of VCs that never actually had a successful venture deal, but they were on Twitter. And so they have

these brands. It's like people who mattered in venture and they never did and they still don't, but they got a lot of followers. And I also believe just based on the way things changed following the, I guess, slashing of the number of people who are at Twitter and they could no longer sort of feed things. We got rid of trending topics. We got rid of the curated topics. We got rid of a lot of those push notifications, the suggestions, recommendations, and things like this. I think that there was an artificial amplification of the correct voices. It wasn't just censorship. I think it was like a curatory. There were curators on Twitter who were pushing content. And I think it gave people like Kara a false sense of popularity on the platform. And so what they're really mad about with the

Elon Musk takeover more than anything else is they lost their secret sauce. It's funny, I've seen some of them claim the other thing was true. They claim that Elon came in and amplified all these bad people. And that's not what happened. What happened was all of the rules were flattened. Suddenly it was a level playing field and popular content rose to the top and unpopular content died. Kara's content is not popular. This is what she's feeling. The reason she's writing about it now rather than then is because it's taken her a while to feel that because um because she's just been her her own sense of the internet has been distorted for so long uh brandon actually you you have to have i mean i i want to wrap up but i do want to give you some time here to kind of reflect on this because

you've been in it in the game for a while you from the very beginning of new media i know you wanted to write that book um that ben smith came and wrote ahead of you uh traffic what do you think um i found the piece strange um a lot of her logic is just super thin um there's a quote from it in their place came an army of fleece clad adult toddlers mostly white men which i feel like if you revert to saying somebody's skin color, your arguments are already pretty, like, not fleshed out enough. It was mostly white men, some things are enduring, whose knowledge of media and history, most important, what it took to keep a democracy humming was dangerously thin. And it's just a strange way of advocating for higher quality information, which I feel like your job as a journalist or somebody that is interested in the media is to do.

You should be on the side of sort of a truth with higher valence, let's say. let's say. And so she's arguing that the people who are the closest to the truth, which are the people creating the products, building these things, because they don't have enough knowledge of media, you shouldn't listen to them. Instead, you should listen to somebody who knows more about media, but isn't as close to the truth. It just seems like very strange to me what she's arguing. And I think it broadly just reveals the fact that she's not really talking about what she's saying, if that makes sense. Yeah, what do you think she's really talking about there?

She's worried about her position. That's it. She's worried about the old guard and the um the incumbent position and and i think like you said it does seem like a eulogy it seems like a sort of death rattle regarding the uh i don't know the transition away from traditional media yeah i will say i mean on the white guy thing too speaking as a white guy i found it offensive um i don't care i i think it's she's white and like when are we gonna like how much longer do we have to endure this trend of white people talking about how bad white people are and like if it weren't for these white people other people like me a white person would have a real shot around here kara swisher's also extraordinarily wealthy she comes from family

money she's talked about it herself she's like a one per i don't know if she's a one percenter but she's fucking rich richer than me my dad was a construction my mom was a teacher in special ed and she's gonna tell me about my privilege i don't want to hear kara just be a better writer that's it just be a better writer or go away and it sounds like's going to go away. And stop talking about democracy when you really just mean establishment politics too. That's another one that annoys me. Yes. I mean, it's like an elitist thing. And that's what is dripping out of this piece is like, she's a typical rich girl who was like, she wanted to be a little badass and pretend that she was this outsider, but she comes from family wealth. She grew up in Princeton and now she, I mean, I don't think she,

she's probably fired. I don't know. She doesn't, I don't think she works for the New York Times anymore. But it's like, she has ascended the ranks of the most elitist institutions in the world. And now she's mad that other people who are not from that world

are doing better than she is at the job that she's supposed to know the most about. And I don't know, sucks to suck, but thank you for your service. She once said I was a great writer, even though I was a bad person. I don't think she said I was a bad person, but she implied it. She's like, oh, but like he can write though. It was a tweet. I loved it. It did mean a lot to me actually. And yeah, thoughts and prayers. So guys, it's been real. Go home, get doped up, come back. And I want to see 10,000 words on the future of media.

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