Sharp Tech with Ben Thompson - The Business of Taylor Swift, 'Eras' and Social Media, The Two Big Obstacles Preventing an Apple and Disney Merger

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

Ben’s experience seeing Taylor Swift live in Los Angeles, what her success can teach us about the modern entertainment landscape, and a closer look at Apple and Disney. At the end: Harsh reality after a hell of a ride for LK-99.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Sharp Tech. I'm Andrew Sharp and on the other line, Ben Thompson. Ben, how you doing? Doing okay. Doing okay. Feel it a little hot. It's a little back in the Toasty, Toasty island of Taiwan. But other than that, I'm doing well. Well, I'm right there with you.

Toasty, Washington, D.C. right now. A lot of humidity. Pretty similar climates. And if anything, it's nice to know that there might be somewhere on Earth that's even more humid. than DC in August. Yeah, it's not pleasant. I was in actually, I stopped by Arizona on my way back. And it was like 115, which is ridiculous.

But it is true. There is a difference between dry heat and wet heat. They, when similarity they share is they both suck. But the humidity is definitely not fun. Well, you know, on a brighter note, I need to congratulate you on today's podcast. In the past three weeks, not including retweets or replies, you have tweeted a total of three times from your main account at Ben Thompson. And the topics addressed. Sorry, tweet?

What is tweet? Oh, you're right. You have posted on X. I believe that's the nomenclature they're pushing on the masses. So you have posted on X a total of three times. The topics of those posts. Number one, the joys of plugging back into your home office after a summer on the road. Number two, showering praise on Taylor Swift after a concert you took your daughter to.

And number three, complaining about the weight distribution of luggage and online reviews that failed to highlight a particular deficiency in luggage that you were complaining about. Without question, I care the most strongly about the third. I am offended not just by the fact that I have this very expensive piece of luggage that tips over constantly, but also that this somehow was not the primary factor in reviews, and it wasn't immediately sort of crossed out. Online reviews are fundamentally broken. I'm looking at you wirecutter. As the biggest cold, like, they spend too much time on stuff like value and how much it costs, right?

what I want from an interview, look, I know how much money I have and how much I'm willing to spend. I don't need your help with that. What I need help with is having actually used the product and how well the product works. That's the feedback I want and I will decide if it's worth it to me or not. Instead, they will tell you up and down, left and right, oh, is this worth it or is it not? And they won't, they won't tell you that it tips over constantly, which makes it unusable. Yeah. Well, listen, I don't want to allow.

this to become a luggage podcast. I'm part of several group chats where you have gone off the deep end on your luggage rants over the last four or five days. The point is the three tweets in combination. Building all summer. They're just, it went over the top. And you know what?

I felt bad. I felt bad about tweeting that because it's like a $600 bag or $7 bag. I don't want to like sort of flot my privilege as it were. But if it's $700, it should stand up on its own in an airport. That's right. Well, not just that, but also the fact that, like,

obviously I do travel an extensive about. So it actually has a sizable sort of impact on my life. So, I mean, I'm definitely going to spend on things that are important. But also, you know what? I, there's people out there that need to know the truth. And it irks me that this bag gets so many good reviews and does not have this, this fundamental flaw in it. And you know what made me happy?

Is someone right after I tweet that said, wow, I was about to buy that. But now I'm going to go show us. I'm like, you know what? I did a public service today. I feel good about myself. There you go. Speaking truth to power at Ben Thompson on X. You can follow him now.

And in general, it was a plane of dad enlightenment that few of us will ever reach. Home office, euphoria, complaining about luggage and showering praise on Taylor Swift. None of it had anything to do with technology. But I hope you're enjoying the view from the dad mountain top. I think it was delightful to me. Well, I am. Thank you. Okay. So we aren't going to make this a luggage podcast. We are, however, going to start with the Taylor Swift concert that you attended last week.

You tweeted, or excuse me, you posted to X. Well, Taylor Swift was incredible. The atmosphere was electric. Never seen anything like it. parentheses and so-fi is the best stadium I've been to. It's unbelievable. Like it's incredible. I've been to a lot of,

I've been fortunate to go to a lot of games in my life. I can't imagine going to a football game there. It's awesome. Really? So looking at it on TV, it seems too big to be that awesome. That is true. It is super large.

And that was actually, you know, one. So I, you know, just to sort of deepen my Taylor Swift and dad lord here. I have had the fortune of going to other Taylor Swift shows. most recently the Taylor Swift reputation tour in Tokyo at the Tokyo Dome, which is significantly smaller, and there's definitely benefits to that.

Like I shared a couple of videos with my wife and she's like, wow, I can't believe you're sitting so far away. I'm like, look, relatively speaking, these were good seats. It is definitely very, very large. It's just the whole, like, it's mostly underground, as I think people know. There's like this covering. There's actually only half bits over the stadium. Part of it's like this concourse area.

it's like open air, but then you go in and just, it's so nice. And like the concourses are really nice. And the way you can move around the stadium even within your level is really nice. And then the screen is just ridiculous. You know, like this circular screen that has screens on both the inside and the outside. So you always sort of have a view of that. And it just like, I mean, it feels like a stadium. Like you go to the Los Angeles airport, right?

Yeah. And you're like, how does this? How is this the airport? One of the biggest cities in the world. One of the worst airports in the history of civilization, right? And it's one of those things where, you know, the reason why U.S. airports are generally fairly rough, relatively speaking, is because we built airports first, right? When they were built, they were fantastic.

And then once they're built up, it's really hard to do something a second time. Yeah. I mean, this applies to lots of stuff. I'm using the context of like payments, for example. Why are we still on credit cards and not these other fancy things? Because we got credit cards first. We beat the rest of the world by 25 years. Yeah.

Right. That definitely applies to LAX. But SoFi feels like, okay, what happens if the richest country in the world, when the richest cities in the world decides to build a stadium from scratch, what's it going to be like? That's the exact sort of sensation you get. And it's great. Yeah, it definitely has some utopian vibes to it. The pictures are gorgeous. But I hadn't considered it as like the best stadium in America until hearing you.

And a couple other people who attended the Taylor Swift concerts last week talk so glad. glowingly about it. And now it's on my bucket list. The Rams games out there were not really like swaying me one way or another. But the T. Swift concert did it. So just to frame the conversation. I would advise buying tickets for the Rams instead of Taylor Swift, though, just to see the stadium. Okay.

Good point. Probably better return on your money. Well, so to frame the Taylor Swift conversation for anyone who's unfamiliar with the summer of Taylor Swift and why buying Taylor Swift tickets might bankrupt you if you're not careful. Maybe our audience actually is unfamiliar with the summer of Taylor Swift, which I appreciate, but I'll continue. Exactly. It's a big tent here at Sharp Tech.

So we're being careful. I'll read a note from the Wall Street Journal. They write, it's simple Taylornomics. When Taylor Swift comes to town, Swifties go on a spending spree. Her fans have been filling hotels, packing restaurants, and crowding bars during Swift's 20 city eras tour in the U.S. Cities say the tour has helped them recover from the economic toll of the pandemic by bringing back tourists and their wallets.

The Ares Tour, which started in March and ends in the U.S. on August 9th, is on track to become the biggest in concert history, potentially grossing $1 billion. It's filling football stadiums that hold more than 70,000 people, and Swift is often staying in town for several days, giving local business. businesses time to soak up the Swifty money. Cities went all out trying to welcome Swifties. Glendale, Arizona temporarily renamed itself Swift City. Swift was named an honorary mayor of Santa Clara, California, and the Willis Tower in Chicago was lit purple and gold one night and green and teal another in homage to some of Swift's albums. And so that just gives people a general idea of the temporary

insanity that has gripped the entire country as Taylor Swift has been touring from city to city here. And you saw the final show of the summer, not in fact the final show of the tour itself, because she's now added dates in Miami and Indianapolis randomly in the fall. Also the international, the international market does exist as well. But yes, it was funny because it was going to be the final show of the tour, like back when it was announced. And it was going to be one of four shows in LA. She added two shows in L.A. So it was actually six shows in seven nights, which is also out, which is pretty insane. Yeah. And Arthur, you asked me to give a rating here. I do have to dock a point because I actually thought she was pretty tired. Uh, there's certain

times you could, you could kind of sense. But, you know, all things considered, uh, still full marks, uh, by and large for, for what was, I think we had the longest show, the tour was like three hours and 50 minutes or something like that. It was unbelievable, just sort of ongoing. But And also they added on these additional U.S. shows in addition to the international tour. But she still called it the last show of the first leg of the U.S. tour. To give everyone who probably bought tickets thinking would be the last show, let them feel good about themselves. So that was very nice of her. She was saying it's the last show of the North American leg.

And I guess we're just pretending those fall shows don't exist, which is fine. Look, it was pretty funny. I was laughing at it. Six shows in front of 70,000 people in seven nights. She can say whatever she wants. Hats off to her and her work ethic for pulling it off. I would consider myself a T Swift respecter and enjoyer. I wouldn't call myself a fan after your experience last week.

Do you now consider yourself a fan? And I do need a one to 10 review. Oh, I'll give it a solid nine. Like I'm going to dock the one point because like said, There was, she did seem a little bit tired of sort of, especially sort of towards the end of the show. But I was talking to, you know, Nathan Hubbard sort of the ringer sort of resident Taylor Swift focuser. Yeah. And he kind of sheepishly agreed with me that, that, that I was, I was not off face there.

But, you know, no one's allowed to say that. But we are truth tellers here on Sharp Tech. So we will, we'll admit that's the case. But everything else, I mean, it was, it was incredible. And the, what was incredible about it was arguably the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the most. The craziest part was before the show started. Like, and that's what I talked about, like, the energy being sort of electric. It was like, I mean, it was like, you go into a big game.

Like, we've got to be big games, right? And there's that atmosphere sort of in the stadium. But those, that atmosphere is a nervous energy, right? Like, there's it, because you don't know what's going to happen. That's why we love sports so much, right? I'm an absolute sports junkie. You know, we were talking, like, I'll watch, like, a tennis match. I'll watch anything.

there's that aspect of uncertainty that is very, very alluring. And obviously with Taylor Swift, and to her credit, you know you are on the verge of getting a great show, right? Like that's sort of like what she does. And so this energy wasn't a nervous energy, but it was just this anticipatory energy that was just overwhelming in its collectiveness. Like that's what you get from going to this show. This isn't going to a small music club in seeing an act, right? You are, it's like a football game. You are going for the overall sort of experience.

And what you get from an experience, the reason why you can go to SoFi and you can sit at the top of the stadium where the players are like ants down there and you just end up watching on the screen. The reason you do that is for the collective experience of enjoying that, that game with sort of everyone else, right? There's, there's an emotional valence that comes from being with a huge crowd of people that are all sort of. sort of pulling in the same direction. That is, it's hard to describe if you haven't actually experienced that. And that's what you got, even just before the show started. And everyone here is on the same team. Everyone knows it's going to be great.

They're demanding it's going to be great, but not in a petulant sort of way. It's just like, you can almost understand why she could do six shows in seven days. Because how could you go out there and disappoint this crowd, right? It's just like the expectations will pull, out sort of something, something fantastic. And that aspect was, that's the part I had an experience before. I've been to small shows, big shows. I've been to Taylor Swift shows.

My first Taylor Swift show was 1989 at the Seattle, at the Seattle Stadium. And that was, it was a great experience, but it didn't have that energy from the crowd. That was, that was, that was incredible. And that was the part that I had never sort of experienced before. Yeah. Well, and we've talked a lot on this podcast about how. valuable experiences have become and as content has become more commoditized, experiences are what can really distinguish like the more elite players in the entertainment world. And this is the most

emphatic example of that phenomenon yet. I mean, it's a billion dollar tour. Yeah, there's like sort of a lot going on here. So I sort of, I made this list that you hopefully put in the show notes in one of the aforementioned sort of group chats about this. And, you know, why was it, why was it so incredible. I mean, some of it is about Taylor Swift and like her catalog. And the reality is, is like her catalog is incredible, right? I mean, I, long time listeners to me and sort of like back in like the expoited days or early trajectory will recall that, um, I had never really listened to any, like Taylor Swift mostly became a thing while I was in Taiwan. Like, I had long since shifted away from listening to music to listening to podcasts. So I never really, I knew who she was, but I'd

never really listened to her music until she wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. in like 2014 or something. It was whatever the year that 1990 came out, before it came out, basically defending the album and saying why it's still sort of mattered. And everyone in tech kind of like dumped on her and dumped on the article that's saying, you don't understand the economics, blah, blah, blah. And it was, and I actually thought it was great.

And I wrote an article defending it. And this is when she pulled her music off of Spotify. And the point that I made there is it was a class. example of like sort of tech people getting way too stuck in the weeds and in pedantic breakdowns and sort of missing like the essence of it of like the point was and the takeaway I had then when she pulled her music off Spotify. She's talking about the importance of the album and all those sorts of things is yes. Of course from a sort of technical perspective, that's a silly sort of viewpoint. We are in the world of post-Napster world. We're in the MP3 world. We're in the streaming world. Everything, the expectation is that everything is widely available and to fight that. is to fight gravity, right? But what I think she was getting at at that point is, and what I found so impressive as I then sort of sort of to dive into her and dive into, you know, her past and like all the sorts of things

and the whole sort of swiftly phenomena is her point is she wanted to establish a relationship with her fans. And a relationship to be meaningful cannot be one-sided, right? It's not just, I just give you stuff. and you're like, wow, this is great. Wow, another song. By this sort of like pushing people to buy her album, she was actually, you could frame it as asking people

or demanding people to pay $15 or whatever it is for 1989. Or you could actually frame it as she was giving her fans the opportunity to substantiate their fandom by giving her money. Right. And I found that so powerful and insightful. and in some respects affirming this is back when Shrachry had just started.

I was maybe sort of a year or so in where there's a bit and something I'd come to realize about the subscription model and people giving you money is people like supporting other people. They like giving them money.

It's like the internet is so depersonalized and content and all these manifestations of creative ability are so devalued that the opportunity to actually do something is actually very meaningful and you're doing your fans of favor by letting them do that. And there's some aspect of that that I feel she has sort of consistently tapped into what we're giving her fans an opportunity to not just like post online, right? But there's a whole thing that it's fun to make fun of people online where I'm standing up

against injustice X and what are they actually doing? They're posting on X, right? It's like, oh, look at me really making a big sacrifice. No, people want to do more than that. You know, there's actually value that comes from that. And that's what I think she was tapping into sort of with that article. Now, you fast forward a few years. And obviously, everything's available on streaming.

Economic reality comes for Taylor Swift as well. She can't just have herself available as albums. Although 1989 still sold for a million dollars. She succeeded. 1989 did really well. And if I recall what she did was she refused to make it available on streaming. And I think in addition to everything you said about giving her fans an opportunity to support her, she was also signaling that this is valuable content.

And I'm not just going to give it away, which I think is what rubbed people the wrong way. There were a lot of people finger wagging saying Taylor Swift, you don't understand the economics of the internet. And ultimately Taylor won. Ultimately, Taylor won. She did evolve, but still. Well, but even in the evolution, I think that there is, there's something compelling here, which is, so today, obviously, all our stuff is available, right? So what can you as a fan do to show your support for Taylor Swift when the music is just there and you can listen to it anytime you want? Well, when you go to Spotify, you can decide, are you going to listen to the original version?

or are you going to listen to Taylor's version, right? And she has like harnessed her whole like army of folks to support her fight, her own fight against injustice. Which by the way, totally aligns with her own personal financial interest and all these sorts of things. I'm not saying this is like some holy sort of like a fight. But that's the way it's actually interpreted and internalized by her fans. And again, leaving aside the validity of it or the like justice of it. Because honestly, at the end of the day, who cares?

Taylor Swift is fine regardless. She lets her fans feel like my choice on Spotify. Sticking it to the man. That's right. That's right. And so it's a bit where you're leveraging the, in this case, it's actually leveraging the abundance of streaming while still giving fans the sense that they're giving back. It's a remarkable sort of accomplishment. Okay, so our co-worker Duman said, if you guys talk Taylor Swift, I need a quick refresh on why she's doing Taylor's versions of all her albums. And so again, for anybody who's just completely unfamiliar with this, first of all, as I imagine you can sense, Taylor Swift is more interesting as a business story than as a music story, in my opinion. And as a business story, can you give people the cliff notes of what happened with those masters and why she's,

she wound up re-recording every album she had released until like 2019 or 2020. Yeah. When you record, like there's basically sort of in general two parties involved, whoever owns the copyright of the song, whoever owns sort of the master recording. And the way the music industry works by and large, it's kind of like a venture capital industry in that you're making bets on a whole bunch of folks and the ones that succeed sort of pay for everyone else, right?

And so you sign a promising artist to a, four record deal or a six record deal or a two record deal and you extend it or whatever it might be. And then you own those recordings in perpetuity. And this is actually arguably, not only is it one that does make sense generally speaking, because for every Taylor Swift, there's a hundred other artists that don't succeed and they never make the money back on sort of those recordings, but also it's arguably helped the music industry as a whole because it gives a negotiating leverage relative to a Spotify, right? And that's why so much money from Spotify still goes to the record companies.

For all the complaints about Spotify's payouts, Spotify is not a profitable company. They've never been a profitable company. And all this is downstream of the negotiating leverage that recording companies have with Spotify because they own all these old sort of records. Like if you want to listen to something, you can't have a viable music service

without negotiating with UMG and Sony and whoever else it might be. And so Taylor Swift owns obviously the, copyright because she wrote she wrote the songs, but she doesn't own the master recordings that are actually sort of available. So, you know, long and short of it, I don't remember the name of her label. I know like, Big machine records. My tears, my tears ricochet is about the owner. That's all I know. But, you know, we sold the, the masters to Scooter Braun. She claims she wanted to buy them. There's a lot of dispute about what actually happened, what didn't happen. And then she's like, well, screw you guys, I am going to record my own versions because I own the copyright.

I can do that. I will own those master recordings because they're mine. Like there's no contractual sort of where I'm tied to sort of a label here. And then I am going to leverage my fan base to make sure those recordings you acquired never make any money ever again. And it's not just the streaming thing. Like if you want to license a Taylor Swift song for a commercial, you have to get a sign up from both sides, from the copyright owner and from the owner of the master recordings.

So that's why there's been no Taylor Swift like songs for a long time used for commercial purposes because she wasn't going to sign off on any use of her recordings. And then, but she will sign off on like the Taylor version. Taylor's version. Yeah. That's right. And so now you see it sort of out there more often. And I think it's a remarkable story because we've aside the interpersonal sort of grievances and debates and who's right and who's wrong.

And since then the recordings have been sold to like a private equity firm and And now I think like they'd probably be happy to give them back to her because she really because she's made them worthless. And it's a powerful example of we talk about on the internet. It's all about controlling demand, right? The aggregators are so powerful because they control demand. This is a case where the artist, because they have the direct connection with fans, you know, manifested via social media, manifested via concerts, all these sorts of things. she is directly leveraging that to wage economic war against like her former label owner and has succeeded. And in the process, as I just noted, has reaffirmed and strengthened her hold over her demand base by letting them feel like they're a part of the fight.

And like you can you can you can fight for me. You know, I'm so persecuted. I'm only like a billionaire or whatever might be. right? If you step back, it's kind of ridiculous, but it's also sort of a phenomenal example of what war looks like on the internet, right? Oh, yeah. And she's won. And, you know, I could be getting some of these details wrong. So Nathan Hubbard, if you're out there, email us any corrections here. I'm not a Swifty expert. But if I recall correctly, what she tried to do was weaponize her fan base and shame Scooter Braun into giving her the Masters like four or five years ago.

That didn't work. And so then she said, all right, I'm just going to re-record all of these albums and weaponize my fan base that way. And they'll support these new versions of the albums. There was a tweet that came through from Variety last week. It was about the show that you attended. Swifties felt sure a 1989 announcement was coming for her tour closer because 3,208 days had transpired since 1989 came out, and 3 plus 2 plus 0 plus 8 equals 13. That length of time also pans out to 8 years, 9 months, and you guessed it, 13 days. Oh, look, even this is trying a little too hard. So my daughter, my daughter correctly informed me, correctly informed me actually several weeks ago that this would be the 1989 announcement just because it's 8, 9.

So it's August. Much simpler than the other Zwifties. And that is exactly what she said when she announced it. She said it is the eighth month and the ninth day. And instead of telling you, I'm going to show you. And there was a big, you know, 1989 thing. And actually this is one of the, I might have to deduct a quarter point on the rating there.

So there's this big sort of like, you know, well, she's singing new radicals, new republic. What is it called? Whatever. This is a business podcast. Not a music podcast. Which is like the big sort of special song everyone, everyone was sort of waiting for. New Romantics, that's what it is. It was like the album art of like her new 1989 sort of thing.

And then there's like a button that said order now or pre-order now. It's like, okay, that's like I think everyone got the idea that you can pre-order now. You didn't need to put plaster that on there. It was a little sort of like, it was a little shameless. It was a little sort of reinsertion of like, look, Taylor Swift is like a business, right? And like all of this experience, all this feeds towards this sort of thing. So probably could have done without the button. But, uh, but yeah.

And then apparently like 1989's like first hour pre-orders like were the highest of like her career or some crazy ass number like that. Well. And look, 1989, great album. I appreciated that tweet from Variety last week because on Sharp Tech like a month ago, I had alluded to. the psychotic numerology that Swifties engage in with the number 13. And no better example than the fans adding up 3,000 days to somehow get to 1989. I don't understand why that was such a big deal. Like, this is not a new album.

And among the re-recorded albums that she's releasing, it's not like this was a surprise. I mean, your daughter expected it. But to hear some of the Swifties tell it in the aftermath of that, that concert, it was like being at Woodstock in 1968 because they were there when she finally announced that she was re-recording an album that came out like eight years ago. So it's really not that big a deal to me. That's the point. The reason why it's a big deal is not because it's not about the music. It's about it is the masses being presented an opportunity to once again go to war for their hero. Like that's that's what it's about. And it's a remarkable sort of

accomplishment that that is the case. And like I said, like that's when I first started, you know, paying attention to Swift because of 1989, that Wall Street Journal article, over time, you know, and especially as my daughter has gotten older and now she's solidly in her teenage years and basically listens to Taylor Swift exclusively, I've heard a lot of Taylor Swift. You know, her catalog is incredible. Like the show, like it was a four-hour show and they're just like banger after banger. You're like, okay, this is actually a pretty impressive, just the sheer number of like unbelievably popular songs. songs that are like, you know, that are great in concert setting.

That gets lost too frequently when people are marveling at the Taylor Swift business story. People are like, you know, she's a mastermind. She understands this industry better than anyone else, which may be true. But also like the quality of the hits is unparalleled in any genre over the last like 25 years. Like she's a genius first and foremost at making catchy music that appeals to massive audiences. And there's really, that no one like her

in the last like 20 years. Right, for sure. And then you had like, she's done four albums since her last show, right? So there, the, the, the pent up demand was massive

in two of those albums. And I think probably folklore in particular, were I think, real cultural breakthroughs for her in the sense that they were like, that was like the final crumbling of the Swift haters.

It's like, everyone had to admit like, okay, that's actually a pretty phenomenal album. And then, sort of like it adds a new shine to sort of all her old stuff. I'm just going through my list of reasons

why the show was incredible. She is a massively improved singer and performer. Like this is the, like I said, this is the third one I've gone to. She's gotten just a lot better, even in that time frame. And that was already when she was much better than when she was like, you know,

a little girl, whatever. And, uh, I went to a concert at that point. Yeah, it was writing articles about how well she couldn't sing. Um, the art and expense that went into the show is crazy. Like, there's like 40-some songs. The presentation of, Every single song is different.

It's not just sort of a video thing. There's huge props. There's all these sorts of things that are going on. You know, it's obviously the different eras, you know, of her sort of career. So that's super impressive. There is a bit here, though, and this sort of gets to the Wall Street Journal article talking about economic recovery post sort of the pandemic. People are so hungry for this, right?

Like, there's, you know, after the pandemic to have this sort of communal experience, I think can't be underrated. and people are excited about everyone being excited. Like there's a sort of like a virality to this experience. And it's like, yeah, we could sit here and hate on the Swifties. But you know what? It's great. Everyone's excited about this concert.

It's fun to talk about this sort of thing sort of going on. And that's magnified by the internet effect on sort of the fracturing of culture, right? There are so few shared experiences and shared icons. and you have this sort of bit with the Marvel movies where, you know, very average movies, let's be very honest with themselves, but they were something that everyone sort of related to and connected to. Well, and experience together. It's fun to go to opening weekend and then talk about it on Monday with a bunch of people who saw the same movie, which is how all of America used to experience pop culture and then it just stopped happening about 10 years ago.

Well, this is where the social media bit comes in. I think it's very, very interesting. where the trick when it comes to whenever a business model is disrupted, you need to come up with a new model that incorporates and leverages what came along as opposed to trying to fight it, right? And so I talk about with social media, social media was very bad for traditional media because it was a competitor for advertising. And so their business models sort of gutted and they had these big cost structures that they were carrying along. And they weren't well suited to this age. They're trying to fight it, right? Someone like me comes along and social media is.

is it godsend. It's basically free marketing. All of my readers got a megaphone to say, hey, here's a great article, oh, go, check out this person. And so beyond the fact that the internet and Stripe and all those sorts of things from a technical perspective makes a trajectory possible, from a distribution perspective, social media was essential, and this ability to sort of acquire customers for free. And so the trajectory business model is one that is native to the internet and benefits from the exact same factors on the internet, that hurt traditional media companies. And there's a bit where this, this,

we talk about sort of off-handle musicians have to make money on the road. This is like the ultimate manifestation of when there's widespread sharing of these concerts, right? During a concert, if you're on any sort of social media, you're going to be inundated with like videos and posts of people sort of showing you in the 1989 thing goes off, you know, it's like shining on the roof of sofa

and people are taking pictures from airplanes. Like this whole thing is sort of, of like happening. What does that do? The, the essence of FOMO where everyone, even if they don't like Taylor Swift, it's like, man, I got to get to one of these concerts. And she could have done six more shows in L.A. I don't think there's any question about that.

The price that these tickets were going for absolutely suggests that that was the case. And there's a bit where, you know, again, not to say this is recreateable for every artist, because as we've talked about, the internet dramatically favors the biggest and the smallest. And no one is bigger than Taylor Swift right now. But there's a degree to which she's harvesting social media where it's not just the communal experience. It's the communal experience happening in front of everyone that both makes you feel more special for being there and everyone else feeling sad.

It makes more people want to be part of it. Yeah. I mean, you know, the other thing that comes to mind when we talk to. about social media and Taylor Swift. I have talked in the past about how social media has made entertainment more risk averse and made lots of culture a little bit less interesting. And I have to say someone like Taylor Swift becoming the biggest celebrity on the planet is a good example of what that risk aversion looks like in real life. And I don't say that to be critical of Taylor Swift because I think it's really cool that she exists and I enjoy what she does.

But like she's totally inoffensive. Everything she does is so carefully choreographed. Her appeal is completely independent of sex or sexuality. And I think the fact that she's so much bigger than anyone else in entertainment right now is probably a reflection of broader trends towards sort of frictionless, risk-averse, mass appeal content that a lot of corporations are selling these days. So you started out in that statement, though, and you could have gone in either direction because on the flip side, and here I will let my full swiftiness sort of come out.

Okay. I mentioned before she writes good songs, right? And you go back, even like her old stuff, you can understand why my teenage daughter and a million other teenage daughters. And let me tell you about the gender race. at this concert was extreme, was very extreme. But you can understand, you know, and she kind of says the beginning, oh, I wrote these songs for me. It turns out lots of people could relate to them. It's like, on one hand,

you're kind of like rolling your eyes, but on the other hand, you're also like, yes, I can absolutely totally see that. So you have the aspect of good songs. Number two, she has taken risks, right? I think folklore and Evermore in particular were pretty significant departures from her previous catalog. And so there is a bit where she produces excellent work and she's not doing the same thing every single time. There's a degree of sort of surprise. Fair. That actually doesn't, though, disagree with your point.

I do think the key to success is being unpredictable in predictable ways, right? And so she is unpredictable in the sense of like she'll come out with a new CD and it will be interesting, like what direction she's sort of going with this. Yeah. But anything outside of music and outside of performance, very sort of risk ofverse, right? It's like you have to know where to take risks. And I mean, you know, again, not to sort of analogize myself to Taylor Swift again. But like one of the things is like, why do I not write about partisan politics? Well, on one hand, it's sort of a no-in situation because you're like, I'm writing about tech.

It's a sort of an orthogonal area. I write about politics. I still think I have one of the best pieces about Trump in 2016 and like why he became sort of a phenomenon. But there's a bit where number one, you don't want to sort of divide your audience. but number two, there's an expectation my audience has about what I write about and what I approach from. And even if I wrote something that they agreed with, I am sort of upsetting their expectations for sort of what they want. And you can do that once or maybe twice, but if you keep listening to a podcast about tech, for example, and they keep talking about

politics, at some point you're like, look, I actually agree with your takes. But I'd rather listen to the. the professionals talk about the politics stuff. I'm here for the tech. Right. And I think there's that that is an aspect where you can criticize Swift like you just did and say, look, she's not that controversial to the extent she's controversial with like whatever the Kanye or Kim stuff, which by the way is age very well. It's not just pure controversy that I'm seeking. It's just not very challenging art. It's not very complex. It is high quality relative to most of what's as popular. There's not really any comparable scale. in terms of popularity, but it's really high quality. Right, but what's the cause and effect there, right? Which I think the point is you're raising. Is it so popular because there is a milk-toasty element to it? Or is that actually is it is the milk-toasty element to your point, a reason why it's popular?

And milk-trosy, that's a little too rude. It's not quite the word I'm going for. Like, but to your unobjectionable. Just carefully considered. Yeah. And it's true to Taylor Swift. So it's not really a shot at Taylor. That's who she is.

It was a big deal when, like, folklore started with a swear. word. It's like, oh, my God, Taylor Swift's sore on a record, right? It's like, which I think is a perfect articulation of what you're sort of saying. Right. And it's more about the rest of culture, not really producing any counterpoints to Taylor Swift in part because the incentives are skewed right now, because everybody wants to be careful and appeal to every single person on earth when they're right. And writing about teenage girl angst is like a pretty wide lane, right? And that get, like, and so there's an aspect where even it to the extent Taylor Swift is, niche. She's like one of the largest niches of all time. And now, you know, arguably she's

now extended beyond that niche to sort of broad culture. I think that without question, that's the case. I mean, again, like, I'm like, I write about tech and media. It's like, I'm talking about strategy is a niche publication. And like relative when I started compared to when the only, you know, it was very niche, now the reality is if you start a substack today, it's going to be very difficult to succeed writing about tech and media, right? If you want to write about just Apple, or you want to write about just Amazon, or you want to focus on like specifically Hollywood, like puck or something like that.

Like that is a better, like there's a degree of success, which is, you know, being a, the size of a fish and the size of a pond. And actually by and large, the key to success on the internet is finding the right pond.

That's a, that's a better sort of driver because to be the biggest fish is pretty tough, but she's in the biggest pond and she's the biggest fish. So she's in an ocean. and it's just the biggest fish on earth right now. So yes, well, I just wanted to talk through all of that because, as I said, from a business standpoint, she is pretty fascinating. And I'm glad you enjoyed the concert. Did you wear a bracelet?

My daughter made 60 of them. So, yes, I did wear one. Love it. That was the one downside. She didn't exchange that many bracelets. But that was her own fault because there was long lines for food and for the bathroom. And she was, like, planted in her. seat and refused to leave. And so she had limited opportunities to interact with other other folks.

So, uh, but that was a small disappointment, but now she has a large clear bag of like 60 bracelets with like Taylor's with lyrics on them. So great. Oh, you guys as a family. Okay. Well, so be, I mean, it's not a complaint. This is a very selfish sort of complaint. So if I did realize that sort of maybe they adjusted after the first couple days, but the sort of gender ratio. And so several of the men's bathrooms were converted to, uh, to, to women's bathrooms, uh, which probably a good thing all things considered was not good for me in the middle of the concert. You took it on the chin. Missed more songs than I anticipated by the last son. I, you know, I'm willing to sacrifice. So. Well, listen, my Taylor Swift experience, I, I will always

feel loyalty to Taylor Swift because as a millennial, she is our most successful cultural institution. You We've had some cultural institutions go sideways the past few years. Kanye, not in the greatest place. The Obama administration, not aging all that well. We had like 10 to 15 years of digital media that has really kind of gone up in smoke over the last couple of years. So as a millennial, I have to really celebrate Taylor Swift an undeniable home run. But I first discovered her like in 2009, 2010. Went to you back back back when back when she was good before she was very early on and I was a big fan and I went to the fearless tour and it was me and like thousands and thousands and thousands of 11 year old girls and it was a real eye opening experience where I was like all right this ironic Taylor Swift fandom has maybe gone a little bit too far let me back pedal out of here.

Yeah. But it sounds like the fan base has really diversified over the last 10 years or so. And now every woman in America is a Taylor Swift fan. And well, no, it's all those same 11 year old girls. So. Plus some new, some new generations of 11 year old girls. So there you go. Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm glad your daughter enjoyed it. To keep it moving, we'll go to an email from Anthony that was timely. this past week, Anthony says, I was thrilled to hear about the introduction of the dumb ideas segment on Sharp Tech. Here are a few ideas related to Apple acquiring better vision pro content in ascending order of dumbness. One, possibly not dumb, could Apple forge a strategic partnership or acquisition of ESPN? It sounds like Iger is looking for an exit. With Apple at the controls, could ESPN content be optimized for Apple Vision Pro to create a true killer app for the nascent platform?

From Apple's perspective, ownership could be valuable as they could potentially foreclose properties like Monday Night Football from competing VR platforms, parentheses meta. And then two, he says, this is probably dumb, but could Apple just buy Disney altogether and maybe spin out the parks?

All the reasons for buying ESPNs, still apply, but adding the world's most differentiated content to Apple's library could be compelling. Apple has the cash, and Disney's stock is at COVID lows. And the reason I say that's timely is because a couple days after he sent that email, I saw a headline from the Hollywood Reporter, which reads, a Disney sale to Apple, don't count it out this time. So Ben, as someone who's been in this world much longer than I have, how old are these rumors? How familiar is this cycle? And is there any reason to think that this could ever actually happen?

Well, just to jump to point number two, you would never want to buy Disney without the parks. The parks are the park that actually make money, just to be clear. So that would be sort of very value destructive. And you have sort of the, like we just talked about it with Taylor Swift. part of the vision of the whole streaming service and all these sorts of things is that Disney has a back-end experiential aspect where they can make massive amounts of money. And even who's been to Disney recently knows it's going to cost you a massive amount of money, but most people are sort of happy to pay it.

And that's that sort of part and parcel of the business that I don't think you would want to get rid of. It's very unique. It'd be very, very sort of hard to replicate. There's a bit where it sort of universal is like the Andorra. of theme parks. Like everyone else just throws their stuff there.

So you go there, you get some universal stuff, you get some Sony stuff, you get all the like everything else sort of mismatched together. You get the more sort of Apple-like experience at a Disney park. One of the mistakes I made, though,

in articulating this model back in the day, is one of the challenges, and this is a challenge for music. It's a challenge for Taylor Swift. At the end of the day, to fully capitalize on her business, she has to perform six shows in seven nights.

It's like physically exhausting. I can't imagine how much money this tour costs. Like it's the extravagance is remarkable, but it's necessary, right? You don't become this cultural moment without this sort of massive investment. It's like Amazon just spending a gazillion dollars to get you next day of delivery. And it's like there's a huge amount of upfront investment. And when it comes to the experience, you're kept. The entire reason it's valuable is not everyone can be there.

There's just sort of a limited number. And again, you're going in this case, the SOFI, a massive stadium where I thought I had good seats. I'm still very sort of far away. The reason why it's still worth it is because it doesn't matter what seat I am in. I'm at the Taylor Swift concert. You were closer than I was. Yeah, for exactly.

For her to accomplish that is sort of remarkable. But number one, you're limited on your audience size. And number two, your cost of good sold is very high. Like there's an actual cost to providing that. and your sort of return on invested capital is never going to be like a tech company where it sort of scales infinitely, right, where you can reach sort of the whole world. So even as remarkable as all this is, at some point this tour is going to come to an end. If it didn't come to an end, it would actually devalue itself because it's the scarcity that is providing the sort of value. And that applies to the parks as much as it applies to Swift, right?

If we got to a point where there's a Disney, Disneyland around every corner, it would arguably be sort of less valuable because it's like less of a sort of a special occurrence and the return on capital is going to get so low because they're going to have to provide this experience. So what happens? Then you provide a worse experience. It gets crappier. It gets crappier. And suddenly it's not Disney anymore, right? Like, and so like there's a bit where I do Doc Taylor Swift a point for being tired. Like, this is the event of the summer.

I want the full experience, right? And you talk to people who were there on Tuesday. It's like, oh, yeah, her energy was unbelievable. I mean, you feel like actually she like gave it all the last night. Like, what about us on the final night, right? Now, again, the whole show pulled through. It's okay. Like, I'm not, you know, I'm not going to be crying.

She got an 8.75 out of 10, according to Ben here. That's right. And 0.25 was on so five for making me walk a long way to use the bathroom. So there's a, there's a. So that's just a reality, right? Like, like, and that's tough. The real world business, the experiential business is a tough. business and when I talked about the value of the parks in Disney's sort of streaming efforts,

that was a mistake that I made is that's a less valuable business, even if it is a real business that is essential to sort of Disney being something valuable sort of in the long run. So that's just sort of an aside on sort of the point. And just to refresh my memory, your take initially was that the parks would increase the value of streaming or vice versa. No, streaming would increase the value of the parks. Okay. And there's a ability to build a direct connection to the customer.

Yeah. And like, because, you know, Disney never had a direct connection with the customer. They were just sort of pushing content out there. I overvalued that. I think I was, I, in, in, just to go back to Disney in general, I, my initial reaction to the Fox deal was to praise Rupert Murdoch and say, what, this is a hell of a deal, right? And like, and just doubling down on news and getting out of the content business, I was insufficiently critical of how much Disney was paying for relatively undifferentated content.

I would say I wasn't super enthusiastic about it, but I wish I would have thought more about how much they're paying and the burden that debt would have sort of on them going forward. But as far as Apple, this is a perfect sort of dumb idea because it is very smart in a way. Like, obviously Apple and Disney should have a partnership, right? Like Apple needs great content. Content is going to make or great sort of the Vision Pro. Again, we're in the early days. It's very expensive.

But over time, the experience of the Vision Pro is remarkable. It really is. And it's going to come down to how much remarkable content is going to be on there. And the sports thing in particular is, it's astounding. It is really sort of something that's special. And now is that special in the sense of a Taylor Swift concert? No, it's actually, it's interesting because it's technically going to be better. To watch a Taylor Swift concert in the Vision Pro where you can be like you're in the front row would be a phenomenal experience.

It's going to be less valuable than my seats relatively far away because anyone could access it, right? There's that aspect that sort of makes it. Not only that though, there was the communal. Yeah, exactly. It's the community. Absolutely. Which was, again, that was the value of the show. It was just incredible.

Like the energy, like I said in my tweet or my tweet or my post, it was something that it was, it was unprecedented experience. And I, you know, I've been to big games. I've been to lots of NBA finals games. I've been to, you know, it was just something that was unique and was well worth it sort of in that regard. And so Apple would absolutely benefit from a partnership here. It makes Disney absolutely needs that sort of distribution partner. They need someone with the sort of pocketbooks of an Apple to make this all work. there's just there's two very very large problems okay apple and disney these are two companies

that are used to calling the shots that are used to being in charge that are used to dictating to other folks the way that they will accommodate themselves to them that are used to forming business deals that are lopsided in their favor right like Disney does this with movie stars right like what like you're going to sign like a 10 movie deal to be whatever of Avengers character and you're going to do it because it's more money you're going to get, but you're going to be ultimately be replaceable and you're going to be sort of subject, we're taking a decade of your career. And like,

like there's, there's a price to be paid to be a part of sort of the Disney machine that applies. They did this with the cable distributors, right? Like, I remember when Swing TV came out, which like the first sort of like virtual cable bundle or whatever. And it only had the big channels and then it had like Maker TV. It's like,

why is Maker TV on here? Because Maker TV is a Disney channel. And that was the point. price of getting it. Take it or leave it. Yeah. That's right. And so Disney is like that. Apple is like that times 100. Every partnership with Apple, everyone generally comes to regret it because like Apple's in charge. Apple had this unique situation in music where the labels were so scared of and devastated by Napster that Apple came in and Apple was a savior. And so Apple got this sweetheart deal with iTunes that

that was a great thing for them, helped them sell iPods, and was very favorable in that regard. There was the foundation of the 30% model that was like part of the app store sort of today. And Apple has sort of like come to expect that every deal is going to be as good as that going forward. Honestly,

this weekend, because of that. Yeah, I was reading about a sweetheart deal they have with TSMC over the weekend in the information. And then this also reminds me of the offer they reportedly made to Facebook like four or five years ago. which is we should be partners, which meant that Facebook should just pay them some of the money that they're making on iPhones.

And so, yes, it seems like they have sort of a facelined expectation. And if you don't, we are going to kill you, right? Like that, that is, that is Apple. Apple is unbelievably ruthless. They're, they're so hardcore. And it's, that, that makes the miracle of their branding that much more impressive, right? That they, they're, they're viewed as the good guys. when anyone in any industry that deals with Apple knows they are the most difficult to deal with.

And like in things like manufacturing, companies do it. They know they're signing their life away because the volume is so great, right? That's why they sort of get, they sort of get away with it. But you have, this is the number one obstacle. Apple and Disney is a match made in heaven. It absolutely is to a much greater extent than Apple versus Nintendo or whatever, you know, the sort of like lifelong desire of like Apple fans sort of everywhere that doesn't. brought up a few weeks ago. The big issue is culturally, and Disney's going to have to get in a

much more desperate place, I suspect, before this sort of makes sense. Yeah. Well, that's what I was going to ask is, is it essentially just a question of how bad will things get at Disney before they consider selling? Because it seems like the momentum has not been super positive even since Iger came back and rally the troops to some degree. Yeah, I mean, I think there's just a bit where even the best case scenario for Disney, they're a less valuable company because like, oh, they have the experiential aspect. Well, experiential aspects are not worth nearly as much as infinitely scalable media

models, right? And the TV model is going away. And this ESPN bit is like, what value is ESPN providing to the rest of Disney? It's like it used to help get Maker TV on the Sling TV, right? That was the value of ESPN, right? And getting other, you know, there's a bundle within a bundle and it threw off so much cash what paid for all those acquisitions. ESPN did because it threw off so much cash that was sort of go to these sorts of things.

Now it's sort of like it's tipping over, I think not this past earnings, but the one before it. They finally tipped over where their built in price increases from carriage fees was still more than the number of subscribers they were losing. So their actual revenue was still going up. It's now tipped over. It's now going down in conjunction with sports rights fees continuing to go up. Skyrocket.

Yeah. Yeah, and so, but the problem is there's still cash flow that comes from that. They have all this debt from Fox in particular. They need the cash flow to sort of pay off. And all the, you know, and they have issues of quality issues, right? Like, are Disney movies consistently good anymore? It's like a reasonable question to ask. The Avengers gravy train is mostly over.

Pixar, they obliterated the value by putting it on streaming right away, right? like viewing it as sort of a first class sort of sort of vehicle. And so, you know, then obviously to continue this point, they got a meshed in politics, not a really smart thing to do for an entertainment company, right? They should have had Taylor Swift advising them, although she got involved in politics too. But like, she's very careful about her political involvement. It's part of the brand, I think. Yeah, like, but so like, you know, the, I think it's definitely worse than I you're expected.

I think it was very convenient to blame everything on Bob Sheapec, even though Bob Sheapec was executing Iger's vision. Like Sheapec's mistake was not in course correcting away from the course that Iger set, right? And so there's a bit where everyone at Disney, I think, could see it was going wrong, but it was easier to blame Sheapec than to face the reality of sort of their business. And if anything, the value Iger has brought by coming back is not necessarily in fixing Disney, but enforcing real honesty about sort of the challenges that they feel. face. Yep. Well, we'll continue to monitor things over the next couple months because there's

also talk that they should spin out the linear TV networks and sell them to private equity. That was Bloomberg Sunday night. For now, a Hail Mary. Well, to be clear, this is Bloomberg rewriting trajectory. I predicted that sort of a while ago, which is that makes like what you're going to see with the cable channels is what happened newspapers. So brace yourself. Yeah. Where like you're basically, private equity went around buying all these newspapers with the goal of harvesting as much cash as possible as they could from old people before they died and didn't know to cancel their subscription.

That's basically was the private equity newspaper business model slash costs utterly and completely. And some number of people have been receiving the newspaper for 50 years and they're going to keep receiving it until the day they die. And that's what's going to happen with the winner networks is people, there's people that are subscribed to cable. There's losers like you and I that do it. I was going to say.

It's like to be you and I that continue to subscribe for decades. And there's going to be nothing on there but sort of, but sort of sports and just a bunch of garbage and filler, all of which was self-inflicted because it's the, it's these companies that took the good content off and put it on streaming. And so, and then they'll harvest that money. And then that will be it.

Okay. Well, Anthony also mentioned, Hail Mary idea. Apple should build a time machine using. LK99 and go back to the early 2010s and just buy Netflix like it should have all along. Alas, LK99, maybe not going to be viable for time machines. Oh, what a bummer. I did write that Apple should buy Netflix ages ago back when they were like a $40 billion

company or something like that. That was like when they were doing their shift to the services strategy. And I think the logic still sort of holds, right? I mean, Apple has done well to build up its services business. They prefer you not look too closely at the extent to it to services businesses, taking a skim off of developers and getting money from Google for search. But, you know, there's a bit where Apple's recent earnings, which were very disappointing from a product perspective, weren't that.

I mean, their stock was down, but it wasn't that big of a deal because they have this sizable portion of their business that, like, Apple's problem is people not upgrading quickly enough. But by not upgrading, they're still using Apple's products. They're making such good iPhones that you don't need to upgrade more than once every three or four years. And they're now limiting the damage that does to their business with some of the services revenue that they've created. And so the idea was to like was basically like to own the streaming space a decade ago because that was I wrote that article in the context of Apple launched the new TV app on Apple TV that wanted to be a sort of bundler and aggregator for TV content. And it was dead on arrival because Netflix said no because Netflix wanted to sort of own.

the customer. And my take was Apple should just buy Netflix, become the aggregator of content by force in the long run. And also, like, it's a match with their business of their hardware entity that is like the ESPN in this scenario, throwing off all this sort of cash and building on this sort of, you know, that would be a better way to build out services. You know, Apple, I think, has done pretty well for itself. They, they kept innovating on the iPhone to an extensive degree where, you know, again, We're going through a slowdown now, but we've gone through a few slowdowns. They've been able to sort of pick up the pace again.

We'll see if that sort of happens. And again, like whatever you want to say about the way in which they collect services revenue, there's no denying that it's a massive business that has definitely changed the sort of view of Apple and the stock. And like, you know, it's sort of long-term viability. So they've done fine for themselves. But this sort of underlying thesis remains in place. Well, it's more entertaining to me to imagine.

Apple lighting money on fire in service of Apple TV Plus, their streamer, as opposed to dominating the streaming landscape. I like your theory that they keep Apple TV Plus around to show regulators whenever there's a little bit too much scrutiny into the other areas of their business. Whenever they talk about their services business, they talk about Apple TV Plus, right? Look at these great shows. It's tough out there. Let's ignore where all the actual services money comes from.

But hey, have you seen, you know, show XYZ? Yeah, well, we'll close with this from the verge. LK99 hasn't turned out to be the miraculous superconductor some people initially claimed it was. The newly discovered material made headlines after a research team claimed it was the first room temperature superconductor, which could revolutionize our energy system. Speculation that it could bring on a perfect power grid or easily make trains levitical. sparked a frenzy to test whether LK99 really was as game-changing as portrayed by the original team. But the results so far indicate that LK-99 is not a superconductor at room temperature or otherwise.

A slew of research groups have released studies that counterclaims originally made about LK-99. Quote, with a great deal of sadness, we now believe that the game is over. LK99 is all caps, not a superconductor, even at room temperatures. It is a very highly resistive poor quality material, period, no point in fighting with the truth. The University of Maryland's Condensed Matter Theory Center posted on August 7th. Ben, do you have any final thoughts on the LK99 journey over the past month? I did appreciate this quote with a great deal of sadness. You know, the way I'd like to think about Andrew is is the, the fun was the podcast we made along

the way, you know, I mean, I, I think we, I think we delivered an appropriate level of questioning and skepticism mixed with hope and anticipation in our, in our episode a few weeks ago. Alas, I think it was within about 36 hours that, uh, the initial reports came out that, yeah, probably not something like that. You know, maybe there's still a. chance. I think the betting markets are like 5% now or something like that. But, you know, it is what it is. I think this was the expected outcome. This was the rational sort of view. This is why I got on the podcast said, look, this has happened multiple times in the past and

almost every time it's, or definitely every time, it's turned out to not be true. I think one of the more interesting bits here was the simulations that were saying, look, this is theoretically possible. This is a way that that sort of it could work, which sort of reinforces. There's no law that says this couldn't a room temperature semiconductor couldn't exist and maybe there will be a bit where this inspires sort of more you know continued sort of deeper more sort of research in this area because the transformative aspects remain out there and and and I think it's it's a it's a reason for hope and excitement which is the world as it exists today and the limitations we face are not hard ones like there can be transformative breakthroughs and sure it didn't happen this time, but to have the idea that it's possible, I think ought to give people sort of hope and encouragement. And, you know, maybe it'll be LK100. Maybe we'll be TS-89. That's the one we're waiting for. Oh, TS-13, perhaps. Yeah. Look, I am right there with you. I'm sad that it's over, but I am genuinely glad that it happened. The podcasts we recorded along the way made it all worth it. And the two reasons I am

pretty sincere is number one, I feel like an idiot saying this out loud, but I was completely unfamiliar with the concept of superconductors or what they might mean for society long term. And I really enjoyed reading up in that area for three or four days there. We had 96 hours or so where this was the biggest story in the world. And it was pretty interesting, more interesting than most of the biggest stories we get on any given week. And to that, end, I just thought it was pretty cool to encounter something that galvanized people around the possibility of something good happening. And it was cool to have everybody just sort of rooting for this to work. Humans, rooting for other humans, increasingly rare these days. And it was refreshing

to see everybody sort of come together and root for this, even though most of the people who were involved in that process knew deep down that it was probably not going to work. But I enjoyed being along for the ride. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, like said, we got Ts. 89, no LK99. You win some, you lose some. God damn it.

Okay. Yep, the 1989 re-record coming to October. I think it's actually 89 TV is the official nomenclature, Taylor's version. So you got to get it right. Well, I hope everybody enjoyed this. Sharp Tech Taylor's version today. And we will come back later in the week.

We got some questions. we weren't able to hit some fun follow-ups to the TikTok segment that actually has generated some other questions in different areas that'll be fun for the next couple of weeks. But Ben, for now, enjoy your home office, your triumphant return, and we'll link back up later in the week. Sounds good. I'll talk to you later.