The a16z Show - The Common Thread of All Technology: Monitoring the Situation, Ep.1

Episode Date: September 27, 2025

Announcing our new show, Monitoring the Situation, hosted by a16z General Partners Erik Torenberg and Katherine Boyle, with guest Eddie Lazzarin, CTO of a16z crypto. In this first episode, we ask how American Dynamism, consumer, games, and crypto all fit together, from Palmer/Oculus to Marc Andreessen’s Techno-Optimist Manifesto, while also exploring crypto × AD values, parenting in the AI era, and how internet subcultures shape the news. Timecodes: 0:00 Introduction1:25  Tech Coherence: American Dynamism & Consumer Crypto4:55 The Hero’s Journey in Tech5:59 Games, Toys, and Defense Innovation6:38 Crypto & American Values11:25 Decentralization, Federalism, and Tech13:08 AI, China, and Competing Values14:18 Medicine, Parenting, and the Wisdom of Crowds20:47 ADHD, Diagnosis Incentives, and Education27:31 Alternative Schooling & AI Tutors35:46 Parenting, Family, and Modern Support Systems42:24 Zoomer Culture, Internet Fragmentation, and X54:38 Media, Social Networks, and Cultural Shifts Resources: Find Eddy on X: https://x.com/eddylazzarinFind Katherine on X: https://x.com/KTmBoyleFind Erik on X: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends!Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16zFind a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16zListen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYXListen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenbergPlease note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated:Find a16z on YouTube: YouTubeFind a16z on XFind a16z on LinkedInListen to the a16z Show on SpotifyListen to the a16z Show on Apple PodcastsFollow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I think of crypto as freedom-promoting technology. I guess you could see crypto as a hedge. And that's kind of what Satoshi meant when he was talking about the banking system failing, right? And he wanted to create this technological option. I think of him as trying to create in software a way to represent those same values that was in some sense immune to whatever the states happened to be doing at the time. I think the New York Times Exposé that came out a couple months ago basically said 23% of all 17-year-old boys have been given an ADHD diagnosis.

You can say, okay, we're medicating boyhood, but why is it incentivized that doctors give them this diagnosis? If you want to find, like, the ground truth, and you do the legwork, and you kind of, like, follow the right people, and you kind of go through and look for it, the answer is probably on X in a way that is unlike other places. We're kicking off a new series where we run the Internet's biggest stories. Today, Catherine Boyle and I sit down with Eddie Lerner,

Lazarin from the A16Z crypto team to explore what connects consumer, crypto, and American dynamism. From games fueling defense tech to decentralization echoing federalism. We also dive into AI as the second new opinion, ADHD in schools, the future of tutoring, parenting in the modern village, and how Zumer culture and X are reshaping the internet. Let's get into it. We're excited to do our first episode of Catherine and I's new podcast series with A16Z. run through the stories of the internet. Eddie, thank you for being our first guest. I thought an appropriate topic to sort of begin as we have you from the crypto team. I'm trying to do more of

these mash-up episodes with people from different teams is one thing we see a little bit, Catherine, is some people say, oh, how is A6 and Z coherent in that they really are leaning into the American dynamism brand with Art Deco and all of our investments, but also on the other side, I see all these consumer investments. How does that make any sense? More seriously, how should one think about sort of the variety of what we do and how it is coherent and cohesive to do something as serious as American dynamism, but to also do consumer internet, for example.

Yeah, well, I always get the question, or someone put on the internet maybe a week ago. Like, how does they have anything to do with American dynamism? And I always answer that question with one word, which is Palmer. Because Anderl would not have happened, if not for Oculus.

Oculus would not have happened, if not for Palmer's obsession with gaming. There's so much continuity in the world of tech But I sometimes think people silo things, almost because we silo things, right? Like we're in very different worlds. We have very different types of expertise in terms of what we're looking for as investors. But sort of the continuity of what is building and what is technology, it spans all sorts of realms. And frankly, it spans every industry.

It spans every realm of human life to say, oh, well, games have nothing in common or crypto has nothing in common or these people have nothing in common. It's all one boiling mass. It's all interconnected. I mean, I was like, GPUs still internally use all the logic of showing things on a screen. You buy like a GPU for a data center. It still has little ports on the back to connect a monitor to it. They'll never be used, right? Like, it's all deeply intertwined.

Every piece of technological progress can be reapplied somewhere else. That's the whole beauty of software. That's the whole beauty of computing. So I don't even understand the question. I don't even understand the question. Eric, I've been begging you and telling you, we have to have the techno-optimist man. on the front page of our website, right? Because to me, that is the coherent thesis of what all

building is. It's the thesis of every founder's journey, right? Like, the founder's journey is pretty universal across every sector. It's sort of a universal story arc in terms of what they experience, even if they're building in different realms. I think the sort of atoms and bits sort of playful battles between our founders is actually more of, it's sort of like a humorous thing versus one that's really grounded in philosophy, because at the same time, everyone's going do the same thing of building, and no one can predict, like, you can be directionally correct on where you believe the future is headed, but no one can make predictions that no one would have ever looked at Palmer in his motor home living outside his parents' house when he was trying

to build Oculus and say, he's going to remake American defense. I don't even think Palmer would have said that about himself, right? So there's something about the hero's journey and the building journey that is very universal that brings all of these categories together, where tech, should be aligned on these things and shouldn't necessarily have infighting or think of these categories is very different. And I know, Eddie, we're going to get into like where the sort of unique kind of, I don't know, philosophical overlaps between American dynamism and crypto, which I actually there are many kind of similar personality profiles of the founders that are attracted to these categories. But I think if people question, how can you do it all? Or what is the unifying force

between all of these categories? Go back and read Mark's Techno Optimist Manifesto, right? Because that, to be, exemplifies how all of this. these things are really on the same hero's journey. Yeah, I think, you know, to riff on Chris Dixon's great line, everything great starts looking like a toy, it's toys or games can inspire so much beyond that, can sort of be a playground to experiment with new technologies that can then, you know, sort of be the inspiration for something way bigger or very different. And then to your point, it's all a boiling pot.

But I also think the toys or games or platforms themselves are underrated just as is. I remember Teal's famous line, we wanted flying cars. We got 140 characters. Turns out 140 characters is way more impactful than flying cars. So these toys or games or products are underrated just on their own merits, separate from them being inspiration for other things. I actually have a great story, a very timely story about this. We were just in Washington, D.C. with Mark, and a senator, who I won't name, was in the meeting

and was talking about what could be very valuable for the defense world. And he was talking about basically in Ukraine, just how this just-in-time manufacturing then feeds into building things in the trenches very quickly and basically doing this iteration live with people who are then using the products, changing the products every few days. And his sort of question was, why can't we do this inside the defense industrial base? And Mark actually responded to him and he said, well, we do this with toys. This is how we build hardware toys. Of course we can do this with hardware in America because this is how any type of toy is built,

any type of hardware is built. Like you iterate very rapidly and you can iterate in the field. It's only in defense where we don't do this, right? Because there's infrastructure that makes it impossible for us to do this. But it is very possible and we do it in consumer land. And so I thought that was like a very interesting thing. You could kind of see the light bulbs going off. like, oh, American dynamism actually does exist in various categories,

and you can bring some of those learnings from consumer land into defense land, and it will be incredibly impactful, and clearly that's what the Ukrainians have done. Yeah. Let's segue to the crypto-American dynamism interplay. Eddie, I remember we were at a retreat a few years ago, and someone smartly asked, hey, how do we think about, on the one hand, we're trying to strengthen American power and strengthen the dollar and strengthen our influence globally.

And on the other hand, crypto seems like it could be a threat to that. to some degree. How do we sort of think about how American dynamism and crypto are interlinked from a philosophical or practical level? Yeah. So the trick here is that like American whatever, right, is kind of hiding what values are underneath it, right? I think of crypto as freedom promoting technology. Right. Now in the case, in the horrible case, and I don't think that's the case today, where America becomes not freedom promoting, right, then you could see, I guess, you could see crypto as a hedge. And that's kind of what Satoshi meant when he was. talking about the banking system failing, right, and he wanted to create this technological

option, I think of him as trying to create in software a way to represent those same values that was, in some sense, immune to whatever the states happened to be doing at the time. So I don't think that there are necessarily replacements. I think that they're compliments, right? They're trying to get at the same underlying value system, the same concepts about freedom to move capital, property rights for individuals, the ability of capital. to flow freely, payments to flow freely for people to be able to own things. Just two different mechanisms for putting them in place. And I don't think that there are replacements by any means.

There will be states for the foreseeable future. There will be the internet for the foreseeable future. How do you want them to actually represent these things? I think they can be incredibly complementary. There's another spin on it, kind of connecting to what we were talking about now, is experimentation. Being able to experiment with the means of ownership and the means of morphing and moving around capital, that's hard to do because you have to do it in the construct of the state.

And the state has certain degrees of freedom that it can take, right? It has to be very, very careful and very protective of these things for totally good reasons. If you can allow those types of experiments to happen in a totally open source and visible way out in the public for everybody to scrutinize in a way that doesn't give anyone outside the state asymmetric power, then you allow for those exact types of experiments, right? I mean, another way to put it is, does the state really want someone outside the state to have all the power and to make all these experiments? I don't think it does.

I think that what the state would like to see, if the state is freedom promoting in America, it certainly is, I think the state would like to see people doing these experiments in a way that's totally visible and legible, right? And that's exactly what crypto does. So I see there being profound conceptual overlaps. We haven't even talked about, like, privacy. We haven't even talked about ways that consumers can be actually protected.

I have a whole riff on how the whole point of crypto is actually to protect consumers from software developers. Right. And that's really what it is. But anyway. The things that I've anecdotally seen the connection on, and again, I'm not a crypto person. I consider myself kind of a normie. The things that I've picked up on over 10 years of investing is really, like, a philosophical alignment between the types of founders who start crypto companies and the types of founders who start American Dynamism. companies. So much so that some founders that we have backed, I will not out them without their

permission, but some founders that we have backed that are now leading unicorn companies in American dynamism, we're toying with the idea, do I want to start something in crypto or do I want to start something in American dynamism? And people would say, like, that's crazy, right? Like, ones like hardware, ones, you know, like these are completely different things. But from a philosophical level, the conversations we were having about what does America need? Like, what are the biggest problems for our generation. Like, these people are very aligned at what the problems are. 100%.

And I think that's probably where there's the most alignment, right? Like, you can come to different results. Like, I always say, like, Balagia and I have a ton in common. We come to completely different ends on where we end up in many cases. We have a ton in common on what we agree is the problem, right? And so I think in some ways, there's like a unifying sort of philosophical connection between the people who operate in these ecosystems. And then the other thing that I always point out, that's an end.

out too. It's like the first time that like I've, like, the sovereign individual and sort of like the canonical books that like, you know, led to people really investigating as this a category, all of those people that, that introduced those books to me like 10 years ago when I first moved to the Valley, those people are like all American dynamism, hardware, early SpaceX investors, early Palantir, right? Like they, these, these people have a lot in common philosophically. And, you know, when you look at sort of the, you know, even just the way I describe myself, like, as an American dynamist, like, I always describe myself as a federalist. Like, someone who was in deep favor of...

I thought you said you're a normie. Come on a normal. I'm a federalist. Right? Yeah, me... Right? But, like, I believe in federalism. That's why I live in Florida.

Like, I believe in the federalist experiment, right? I think that's something that's, like, underdiscust about what makes America extraordinary and unique. And sort of the... Where is decentralization most prominent in the tech community? It is in the crypto world, right? Like, that's where you actually use words, and it's very much aligned to, I would say, a strain of, you know, political philosophy that really focuses on sort of the federalist experiment as the unique part of America, not necessarily the, you know, the other parts that people always point to is like, makes American great. So in some ways, I think, like, there's a ton of alignment between how the people view why it's so necessary to build for America in a startup versus why it's, you know, why, you know, anyone could go into government. they could go into other means to serve their country.

But I think there's a lot of philosophical alignment from like why you need American dynamism companies and why decentralization is important in tech. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I put the bluntest, the most blunt point I can put on it is that it's incredibly obvious that crypto is American culturally. Like the crypto ethos is a uniquely American cultural phenomenon.

I didn't know if we were allowed to claim it. I'm glad to do. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, there's a lot of things the people don't appreciate are really American that feel like they're the global now. As is the startup. The startup is an American concept. Totally.

Founder is an American concept, right? Like, why do we call them founders? Like, you know, we don't use the French term. We don't use entrepreneur. You know, it is a very American thing what we do. Not what I do, but what the people we support do. It is interesting how ironic that China got sort of an early lead on some of this open source AI stuff. And going back to, you know, Kathleen's mention of some of the meetings in DC,

one of the things, you know, senators were asking, Mark is just about the U.S.-China sort of AI race and what we should do. And Mark has this phrase, which is, you know, are we going to win by being more like them or more like us, more like our values and leaning into what made us so great? And I found that a really compelling phrasing. And it's just interesting as we're at a time where sort of AI policy is going to be litigated and then set in terms of how we compete. Maybe let's use that as a segue into the stories of the day. There's been a lot of, or stories of the week. There's been a lot in health care this week. We had Dr. Buticharya on the day of the autism announcement. We were joking that the administration has previously been so friendly to

Silicon Valley startups, but now with this work in reducing autism, you know, it seems like a great threat. Catherine, what struck to you about some of the health-related news of the week? One of the things that I've been reflecting on a lot, and again, I know we're going to talk about Eddie has a new arrival to his family. I'm going to have my third child just here in a few months. But there's something about the way that this generation understands medicine that I actually think comes from like the internet is your doctor now.

Right? And maybe 10 years ago, there was a lot of fear around that. There was a lot of, oh, you can't trust the internet. You can't trust, you know, information sources that are not, you know, reviewed by government and aren't passed down by experts. And I think we're just living in this, like, completely different reality where the people who are having children now who are sort of entering their 30s, their 40s, and really vocal around a lot of these topics, grew up at an age of just completely. distributed information, particularly around things like medicine, and they follow the wisdom of crowds. They've been pitched. I just posted about sort of the history of OxyContin, right, where it's like there was a whole decade where they were preparing class action lawsuits against Purdue Pharma before 2013 when FDA took the drug off the market and it had been on the market for 20 years as sort of this miracle drug. And so I think what you're seeing from this generation isn't like skepticism of experts. It's like, it's not how it's portrayed. Like, you know, the New York Times had this big expose,

maybe a week ago where they were like, you can't trust these sort of internet quacks, right? And it's like, like, Gwyneth Paltrow's been selling us weird stuff for like 15 years. And like, it's like, it's so part of our DNA now that you can't call it quackery. You can't, you kind of have to call it, like, wisdom of crowds. And I, you know, I have a lot of doctor friends,

I have a lot of people I, you know, grew up with who are in the medical community. And the way that these doctors are, doctors practice medicine now is they realize that you're not just practicing it in the, you know, the, the, the, the doctor's office. Like, you're competing with all of these different information sources, all of these different backgrounds. People are a lot more open with their questions. I'm having my third child. I joke, it's my chat GPT baby because I upload every single medical diagnostic, every blood report, everything to chat GPT. And it gives me a ton of data

that the doctors don't have time to give me. I share it with my doctors. They think it's cool. It's like, we're just in this totally different generation where people are a lot more open-minded. They expect things to swing faster than the Purdue Pharma case, which was a 20-year, you know, it was a 20-year issue where it went from, this is a miracle drug to this is terrible for you. And I just think people have expectations of speed. Yeah, my wife has been the same. Like, she's a total expert on all this stuff. I would frame it as, and I really channeling this through the lens of like seeing my wife really spend so much time on this is like, It's just a higher information standard.

It's a higher epistemic standard. It's not just skeptical of experts. It's maybe resisting the idea to accept, like, unchallenged what the first expert you talk to said. That's how I'm seeing it. We see doctors, but we always come to the doctor now informed by a bunch of research. And that's also not taking for granted even what chat GPT says. To be honest, I'll send the same thing to chat GPT, anthropic, Grock at the same time, force them to fight against each other, and then end up with just kind of a

list of interesting sources that I put in front of the doctor, right? Like, that's like, that's, that's the, that's the feedback loop now. And I think that's far better. Of course, it's so funny when people say LMs make mistakes. Like, yeah, of course, they make mistakes. But so do human doctors. So what's the, you know, so what's the answer, right? The answer is obviously a more rigorous standard of information, more information sources, uncorrelated channels of information, right? How do you do more information processing? Well, computers and the internet, right? And AI models.

It's actually not that complicated a way to see the world. Totally. It shouldn't be so miraculous to see it this way, like, yet it is, right? Totally. Well, and it's so funny. I was having this exact conversation with my phlebotomist at LabCore. I'm like, how often do you see people come in and talk to you about, like, what they've uploaded to chat GPT?

he's like all the time. He's like, this is like one of the number one use cases, like, you know, like he didn't say use cases, right? He's like, enormous. He was like, yeah, like, no one just goes to the doctor. No one just comes here and then gives their results to the doctor and has them read them out. Like, everyone is putting them into chat GPT.

Everyone is having some sort of additional analysis and it's been, like, it's been eye-opening for people. And this is, and in some ways, I feel like we should feel really good that, like, America is adopting, you know, like adopting, like, questioning, like questioning, wanting me. more information, like this is a good thing. In some ways, I feel like, you know, when people were always talking by M.D, it was like, yeah, maybe that was like 1.0, but like, here we are now and people really want more information. Yeah, what people are worried about, I think, is when they

imagine that someone just picks the cheapest, lowest IQ LLM, and then accepts the first thing that it says uncritical, right? That's what people imagine, and that's what they're worried about. Yeah. But that's the same thing. If you go to a terrible doctor who you just happen to get, It's kind of the same effect, to be honest. Like, I totally, I'll make this as short as possible, but a few years ago I was kind of worried about my cholesterol. And I had a new GP, my old GP retired. And this candidate GP they put in front of me,

first thing she says when she sees my cholesterol, she says, oh, I think, you know, you should probably eat fewer eggs, which is like a totally, based on a discredited, like, 60-year-old study on rabbits. It's like completely wrong way to think about serum cholesterol and dietary cholesterol. And she's in her 30s. This doctor was in her 30.

So I was just like, where did you get this? And I pulled up chat, GPD, and I was like, see how this is like not a thing? And she was shocked, mind blown. I don't think all doctors are like this. I don't think people should assume that all doctors are incompetent by any means. But the point is that we have more tools at our disposal. So totally agree with that, Catherine. Totally.

The autism rates have significantly increased the past couple of decades. I want to segue this to ADHD in a second, but do we have a pet conspiracy theory on why, or is it just purely a diagnosis thing? Well, I mean, I want to get to the ADHD. I actually think, let's move to ADHD because I think that one, one I'm more familiar with it, I'm not going to say personally, but like more familiar with the data, right? I have sons. So I'm like preparing myself for the inevitable ADHD diagnosis.

And that's like even a weird thing to say, right? I have, you know, a four and a half year old and a two and a half year old. And just looking at their energy levels, I always joke, like, I have to run them before they go to school. Because if I don't get the energy out, like a dog before they go to school, like something will happen in school. And it will be, oh. And I can already kind of see, and I don't blame, again, I don't blame teachers for this. I don't blame doctors. These are more, like, systematic issues.

Like, if you have an energetic boy, it's mostly boys, right? I think that the New York Times Exposé that came out a couple months ago basically said that 17% or no, no, 23% of all 17-year-old boys have been given an ADHD diagnosis. So that's one in four boys in America. There's something wrong with them, right? And you can say, okay, there's clearly something wrong with all these boys, or you can say, okay, we're medicating boyhood.

But what is it about, you know, what is it about why, like, why is it incentivized that doctors give them this diagnosis and why is it, why is it, you know, something that. that I think teachers in some ways, I don't want to say encourage, but it is sort of this strange thing where if you have a child who is very energetic in a pre-K, they sort of say,

well, next time at their four-year-old checkup, maybe talk to them about some of these behavioral things, right? And like now my son is like an angel, he's grown up like a little bit, and they're like, oh, he's doing green school, right? But for like a year, we were like, oh, clearly is just a high-energy boy. And the incentive systems around a lot of these things

are, like, if you go to the doctor, parents, one, want these ADHD, you know, want, want these diagnoses. And the reason parents want them is because it gives you extra time. It gives you extra resources. You can then opt your kid out of certain things in school. It makes school more manageable for high-energy boys. The reasons the school wants it is because they get more dollars from the state if they have special needs students across a variety of different special needs.

Everyone knows this, that the schools will tell you this, right? So it's like, it is better if they have a student. who needs additional attention or in their words or needs something special. For them to get the diagnosis from the doctor, again, the diagnosis is not something that anyone stigmatizes anymore, and then the school can get more dollars from the state.

But what that means is that both parents and teachers are incentivized for a number of different reasons, especially if you're like, wow, like my kid's about to take the ACT and I want them to have an extra hour so that they can perform higher than the other, you know, 25% of children who have this diagnosis.

So there's a systematic reasons why people are actually asking for the diagnosis. And what I've joked with both of you all is it takes like a very disagreeable, sadly principled mother to be like, no, like, I'm not getting my hyper-energetic boy a diagnosis for life. And I'm definitely not going to put him on drugs because I realize the incentive system that's set up.

And it's funny, like, again, like a couple years ago, if you talked about this, you were an absolute quack. And then this piece comes out in the New York Times, you know, in April, and it's like, oh, yeah, actually the medical community kind of agrees that, like, this ADHD, like, Adderall pill mill thing might be a huge problem. And so I think there's something about, you know, if you look at Purdue Pharma, if you look at ADHD and you look at sort of our generation's experience with the medical community, you know, it's like it is this like consistent experience of all the incentives of large systems that go beyond individuals are pushing you to one thing. And years later, you might find out, as Eric has found out, you didn't need Ritalin. Right.

You're just an unarmed-geted guy. Yeah. And Sam, and there's no downside to a diagnosis. That's the thing. You have total optionality on whether you want to take the medication. You have no downside in school. Yeah. Even a very well-meaning teacher who may, like, there's almost like an optimism, actually, in giving these diagnoses because we're saying, like, look, like, we can identify the pathologies in students.

We want to help students. Yeah. We have tools to help them. And so, and there's no downside to identifying them, misidentifying them. So let's just generously hand these out, right? Like, like, I see it, I see nothing but good intention. Oh, totally.

And, you know, I was the same. I was the same error. We were talking about this before. I also had an ADHD diagnosis when I forget how old, eight or nine years old, whatever. In retrospect, I think it was totally nonsense, right? Like, I mean, whatever, not for everybody necessarily, but in my case, I think it was,

It was nonsense. And it was just that my behavior was not kind of fitting within what they believed was the proper mold. And they wanted to help fix me, right? That's like how they thought of it. I hated Ritalin. I tried concerto Ritalin, dexedrin, or, you know, all this stuff by Vance. I tried them all. Hated them all.

Turns out that just a little bit of like guilt and discipline was what you really, what you honestly needed. Yeah, in my case, at least. But I see, but more specifically connecting to that, and to some degree, the autism, although I'm not as, you know, I don't have as much personal experience with that. One of the issues is the diagnostic criteria can shift, right? As people want to identify these cases, see very little downside in identifying them, they may broaden, right, in an effort to precisify the diagnostic criteria,

They may broaden it. And I've heard that as a plausible explanation among ADHD and autism cases part of explaining the rise, right? It can be rising or it can just be that you're moving down the curve of diminishing marginal precision and identifying more and more and more cases with the hope that you can, with very little cost, to treat the issue. And that alone can explain what appears to be an increase in prevalence. Yeah, they sort of told me at ADHD because I wouldn't focus in school and just did whatever I wanted, but that's because I just hated school.

I could actually focus on things I was super interested in. And I think it's interesting segue to Alpha School, which is getting a lot of attention right now. And, you know, Eddie, in just having newborn, you're thinking about future schooling. And obviously, Catherine, you've thought quite a bit about it. Alpha school is interesting because one of their main KPIs is do kids love school. And my school is, I don't know what you guys, but mine was like a print. Like, I didn't have any inspiring teachers in elementary school or middle school. It was so boring.

And so it's exciting to see kind of different models. And I've, you know, parent friends who are starting to homeschool their kids and just think about it's kind of alternative. Eddie, how have you been thinking about it? I mean, I feel like there's three branches now, right? There's three possible ways. There's the traditional school system. And by that, I mean both public and private schools, right? I just mean like conventional school system.

there's this somewhat growing alternative school system. I think Alpha School is a really cool example that I'd love to learn a lot more about. I saw this fantastic interview on the next couple weeks ago about it. And then the third is like something that I've heard people talk about, but maybe doesn't exist yet. Maybe that actually just gets into merging into Branch 2, which is like the AI tutor world, right?

Where like every kid gets a Socrates, right? Like that's that, that, that line. I think they're all so, so interesting. But what has really leapt out to me, about like the Alpha School and even the Socrates' option is it turns out there's with all this great development and software

we can put an infinite treadmill in front of kids about things that they can learn at a low-cost infinite treadmill where they can just train and learn whatever they want to arbitrary depth and designing something that is rigorous enough and gives them strong enough feedback and kind of encourages them to really maximize that

that seems like the educational challenge of the 21st century to me. You couldn't do that before, right? You couldn't do that 30 years ago when you had to put them in a space with like specific teachers who have specific strengths and have to get specific,

you know, expensive books and stuff. Now it's just like an unbounded road ahead. I'm very, very excited about the prospect of being able to give kind of arbitrary depth to whatever interesting, challenging topic is available to my son. And what's interesting about our children

versus how we grew up is that arbitrary depth couldn't be nurtured when we were kids around random things. You would have to go to the public library and see if there's a book on septic tank installation, which my son was into about six months ago, like deeply into septic tanks. Now he's into garbage disposals.

There is no book in the public library on garbage disposals and how they work. Absolutely not. Of course not. But there are hundreds of YouTube videos, right? On how to install your own garbage disposal, how does it work? Like diagrams, like all the things. all the things that he's interested in as a kid who's obsessed with garbage disposals. That's so cool.

So in some ways, it's like our kids' play comes before they go to school, and their play is so hyper-specialized, and their entertainment is so hyper-specialized. And if you're, like, a very hands-on parent and your kid's, like, I want to learn about septic tanks. Like, you help them learn about that in a way that, like, parents before, like, unless you knew a lot about septic tanks or had a friend in that business, how are you going to educate your kid on how that works.

So I think that you should be a new. people may react to say like, what's the point of your kid learning about septic tanks, right? Or like, garbage disposal is right? And the thing is, it's so obvious to me that if you really learn a lot about how a garbage disposal works, like, you really like get into the way, like you see a one cut in half and a diagram and you see the pipes and you kind of learn about it. Like, there's so many proximate or adjacent things to that that end up generalizing. I promise you that a kid who becomes an expert in it, just how a garbage disposal works, a little kid. They're so primed to learn about like other mechanical systems,

other hydraulic systems, like the manufacturer of like bespoke appliances. Like there's so many cool things next to that. I just think of when I was a kid and I was learning those types of things as much as I could and which is not nearly as much as you could now. And you end up just applying, reapplying that knowledge. Like the compounding nature of knowledge

is maybe its most interesting part. If you can really allow a kid to lean as deep as possible in the way, into that thing, just go as deep as you conceivably can. I think the benefits are unbelievable. So I'm excited to find how to do that for my kid. I don't know yet. I'm really excited about Alpha School and weird stuff like that.

I do wonder, though, like maybe to put the other spin on it, how much of that is a selection effect, right? Like the incredible results of Alpha School, I actually believe them completely. Like, I totally believe these positive results. I just wonder, to what extent those results are, crazy-ass parents who did a ton of work and have, like, infinite resource at their disposal to jam them into this obscure school. Like, these are obviously not normal families that are doing it,

right? So I want to ensure, I mean, I'll exploit every tool at my disposal, obviously, from my kid, but I'm also think about, like, you know, what are the kinds of things that we can learn and apply to all kids? Totally. Totally. And the other thing that's really interesting is, like, you know, I'm not, I'm very sympathetic to the homeschooling movement. I'm not homeschooler for obvious reasons. But you can, like, do a lot of the homeschool stuff on the weekend. And one of the things that I've become much more sympathetic to now that I have, you know, kids who are exhibiting their own passions and sort of own personalities, like, there is probably something good about being a slightly weird kid in a school. You know,

like, I remember that experience of being, like, kind of bored or slightly weird and being in a normal school around normal people. And that was, like, a very good thing. Like, I look back on I'm like, that was probably very good for me. And it's probably very good for, like, you know, there's one school of thought, which is you have a bright kid or a weird kid or someone who's really interested in something and you put them in alpha school and, like, let them go down the rabbit hole. Which, again, I think that's awesome.

But then there's the other thing, like, boredom's actually good. Like, a lot of our life is pretty boring. Like, it is important to learn how to work in big systems. Like, it is important to kind of realize that, like, not everyone's going to, like, entertain your weird rabbit hole. And so there is something about, like, like getting that lesson early and having that sort of, I'm bored, I hate school, I'm going to figure out how to make it interesting for me,

that, like, could be very valuable for kids as well. So I'm always, like, on the fence. Like, I feel like you can kind of dabble in different things and, like, you know, on the weekends, teach one thing during the week, teach another. And the outcomes are probably going to be the same no matter what. It's good that there's choice, right? Like, it's good that there's a lot of choice now so the parents who know their kid can be like, oh, like, clearly my kid's going to thrive in a individual

personalized environment, or actually I have this kid who like is, you know, the ham of the group and like loves being in school and like put them in school. It would be great. Yeah. Yeah, I think a hybrid is interesting. There's certainly a lot to be learned for navigating social hierarchies and, you know, all these different types of people. I'd say maybe there's, in my case, maybe diminishing returns after after learning those skills. You learned those skills, Eric. You did. Yeah, exactly. One thing that's interesting in about Alpha school that they'll say is they customized the lesson plans based on what the kid is interested in. So as a kid, I was obsessed with basketball. And I didn't like school. I remember writing a note

to my math teacher being like, what's the point of math? Like, help me understand why I need to learn math because this just doesn't seem like relevant to my life. And they just didn't give a compelling answer. But you could imagine a world where it's like, okay, you love basketball. You want to be a GM of this team, like figure out the salary cap or like figure out like what players based on other players based on statistical analysis. There's just so many ways they could have made it super relevant to my interest.

100%. I love that. Eddie, I want to hear how fatherhood has been. I always feel like the first few months of becoming a new mom or dad, you have all these weird insights that are partially driven by sleep deprivation and then partially driven by this new,

important experience that happened in your life. So I'd love to hear the high-level takeaways as they're fresh. Yeah, that's a great question. So much has crossed my mind. It is, it is crazy. I mean, I would say the thing that has struck me, the moment in, right?

So, like, am I a father? I don't even know if I'm a father, right? Like, I like this little guy who's around, but like, am I at that? And like, I'm not different. Right? So I'll say that. But I am struck by how obvious it is,

how totally helpless they are, right? They are like functionally blind, deaf. Like they're like a little ball of like nothing, right? It's ridiculous. It really, it really struck. This is such a dorky thing to have observed, so I almost regret. But it's just, it's so obvious how human intelligence is the reason why they are allowed to be so pathetic when they're born, right? Because we're so capable of extremely specialized caregiving that they would never have.

have survived without it. So like their helplessness is kind of the mirror of our capability. And we should like take that. We should like really lean into that. Like that is what human beings are to some degree specialized for. I feel that so intensely. I also feel like incredible empathy for people who don't have like, who don't have maternity or paternity leave or don't have resources to put it.

Because my God, if I had to like, I took a couple weeks off and my wife. wife is on maternity leave still. It's great. Without that, it would be incredibly difficult. And it makes it very obvious to me how why, in some sense, like, fertility is declining because the opportunity cost of this suffering is massive, right? It's a massive cost. Now, it's totally worth it.

I know the hackney thing you hear from parents, like, all the time. Like, it's horrible. Also, it's great. Do it. Like, that's like the thing you always hear. I heard the same thing. I'm going to repeat exactly that same thing. But it highlights for me that the more opportunity you have and the more things that you could be doing,

which is just obviously the case in light of progress, like general technological progress, the more you're kind of giving up when you do it. And I think people find that choice in advance, very daunting and very scary. Now, I would encourage them to take the leap, but I understand why it's daunting when you hear all these stories. That's very fresh in my mind. Totally, totally. And that's one of the – I always point. to like the, you know, the rise of cheap airfare and sort of international travel also becoming

sort of like a widespread middle class phenomena, right? Like, it's not like you have to be, you know, like when we were growing up, if you knew someone who went to Europe, you were like, seriously? Like, how, how did you do that? Right? Like, it was like it was a very luxurious elite thing to do. And I think, you know, when you look at sort of the sort of that is like a, you know, if you're fortunate enough to go to university, like, you know, you can travel abroad anywhere, right? Like universities, like, you know, make that a possibility where it's like life has become so much more interesting,

as you said, opportunity costs across a wide degree of sets where the, you are having to think through, okay, like, you might have the most interesting life. You might get to go to brunch, right? I don't get to go to brunch anymore. You might get to go to brunch. And, like, that might be an enjoyable thing you do every Saturday. So, like, that is definitely, I think, a huge part of it.

The other thing that I'll point out, like my experience of, I'm fortunate enough to have my mother live with us, but she has been a godsend in holding these babies as they cry for those of us who are working and that sort of thing. And it's like there used to be sort of a familial unit that took care. I mean, like it's very, it's only been like the last, you know, like the nuclear case. That is so apparent to me. That is so apparent to me.

Yes. Yeah. And especially if you don't have it, you're like, how do two people do this? It's like, well, it used to be a tribe. And then, like, only until the nuclear family post-war did we really move to suburbs and separate sort of multi-generational family units from each other,

where then you have, you know, one mother doing this all alone, which, of course, was the big complaint was loneliness in the 50s and 60s of these housewives, right? Like, even though they didn't work, it was just extreme loneliness that had never really existed because you were constantly surrounded by siblings, family, multi-generations, and that sort of thing. So there is something about that aspect,

where if you're at sea, it's almost impossible to have that experience of having a multi-generational family. There are so many trivial questions that come to mind, right, when you have a baby, right? Like, especially the first one. So many, like, is this normal? Is this weird? How do I fix this problem? That comes up so much. It's so obvious to me how many of those questions, which once you kind of get the answer, easy, kind of you figure it out pretty fast. But so many of those things would be obvious if you're growing up around a family where there's a lot of children already and a lot of people who had been caretakers of children and they would you would just have absorbed it either through osmosis or through a benign observation by mom or dad or grandma or

grandpa right they just would have said like oh yeah yeah we just do this thing and it'd just be nothing whereas now like yeah i'm sure you have many parents like through totally understandable neuroses worry about the most trivial thing and like go to the doctor and it becomes this like entire rigamarole right whereas we forget like that little thing that was lost the the benefit of just the family around many there's many little things that lost it's interesting because there's sort of a left wing and a right wing critique of the nuclear family these days and the right wing critique i think or from the right i think similar to what we just said of like hey it used to be you had much more support and we sort of lost that support and we need that support yeah and from the left it's kind of like it's the

opposite it's like don't you dare assume that people need two parents at home to you know to raise a kid or don't you dare assume that not everybody's gay or bisexual or polyamorous or so like don't assume that this is the this is the default and so it leads to just you know the nuclear family being critiqued from from all sides for for almost opposite reasons yeah yeah i think i think there is i would hope there's large scale agreement that people need people need help that if you see someone in your life who is having a baby, help them. They need help, no matter who it comes from or what form.

It is definitely not something to be done alone in a vacuum, whether it's friends, whether it's family or kind of any form. So I want to segue to another topic I wanted to talk about, you know, we, and it's related to the Charlie Kirk assassination, and we released an episode that Catherine did on Barry Weiss's podcast, honestly, which was a beautiful sort of, you know, commentary on the assassination and Charlie's martyrdom. And we had the funeral the other day, which is one of the most moving things I've ever seen. And we were talking offline.

And you talked a little bit about how to sort of the reactions to the assassination as it sort of played out on the internet, sort of demonstrated a bit of a gap between sort of Zoomer culture, internet culture and sort of the rest of the population when you sort of share that reflection. Well, something that really stuck out to me was how I think there's a

pervasive, well, there was a belief maybe that as the internet became mainstream, internet culture would become mainstream. And that in some sense, like culture and internet, the line between so-called internet culture and mainstream culture would dissolve, right, because

of its mainstreaming. And there's a lot of truth to that, right? A lot of people are kind of parts of the normal memetic and cultural milieu is internet-based. But I was really struck by how what I considered, because I'm kind of like, I mean, I'm like a normie here in these kinds of settings, Eric, like on a podcast, I'm a little bit. I'm a specialized, but whatever. But like in real life, you know, in real life, I have like a discord of a bunch of my friends for like, I've been running for like eight years and I play video games and, you know, my brother's... I didn't know on the internet.

Yeah, no, yeah. No, I know. It's crazy. You know. It's uncanny. That's true. But, you know, there's, like, this whole universe that I've been in and, like, most of my friends are in, right? And, like, even, like, crypto culture, like, part of why my crypto network in the Bay Area started, like, very online and whatever, whatever.

But, um, I was struck. by how when they shared a lot of the memes and references that this shooter was engaging in and sort of the kind of culture he was in, it was a culture I'm very familiar with, right? Just like Discord, gamer, online, Zoomer culture, like there's many concentric circles. I'm not so much in furry culture, you know, but like it's adjacent to cultures that I'm in.

So all the reference, even like the Hell Divers 500 K-G bomb, like aero sequence is like something my friends that I know, right? Like, it was obvious to me. And when I saw a lot of people on my Facebook, like people, I hardly checked my Facebook, my big blue Facebook, I saw so many people speculating about the meaning of these things, right? And they were so off. They were just unbelievably off. It was like they were scrutinizing like an alien culture.

And it really struck me that although there have been elements of internet culture that have mainstreamed, we have managed to create isolated pockets that will just permanently. permanently remain separated. And it's like, let me try to put a really fine point in this one thing is because the internet is so open by default, anyone can make an account anywhere. I think there's this assumption that it's all accessible, right, and therefore should permeate. But we have managed to create new gradients, new selection methods to create isolated little

corners of the internet. Like, gamer culture, you can't learn those things unless you play games, right? Like, you have to play a bunch of video games and know a bunch of people think. video games to be a part of that. We've still, despite things being more connected than ever, there are still these distant branches and rabbit holes. And it just got me really thinking about like the diversity of online culture and what leads to the proliferation of many diverse online cultures

and their mutual unintelligibility. I love that you brought this up, Eddie, because I had a conversation with my best friend, Normie, throwing that out. I am a creature of the internet, clearly, but I was having a conversation with her at one point last week. And I explicitly remember saying to her, your Insta is not my ex. Like, we were in totally different worlds.

Oh, yeah. Like what she was saying from her takes on things on Instagram last week was wildly different than what I had seen on X, right? And I think there's something about, I actually think X is sort of a unifying platform from all of the different pockets that you talked about because if you're a power user of X, a lot of the early data that was coming out

on anything. I mean, not just Charlie Kirk's assassination, but on anything, things get to X early. People really do the investigative work early. Last week I was saying, you know, it's, it probably, like, I don't know if the FBI or if intelligence agencies actually have people. I mean, there's that whole meme of like the, you know,

the show that was just taken off the air because maybe for a variety of reasons, but that whole meme is, people looking at the internet and saying, like, is, what's going on here? What are these kids talking about, right? But, like, there is probably some truth to the fact that it's so siloed

from what, like, just real world law enforcement or real world government officials, like the worlds they live in, that the information gets to them late. There's an information lapse. Like, you really want to know what's going on on anything, whether it's, you know, a tragic event or even the election,

Right? Like I think, you know, I talked to a lot of people about the election 2024, and I said, like, you know, the meme, X is not real life. Like, no, no, X was the only place. If you were spending time on X, yeah, exactly what was going to happen. I feel really strongly about it. I check so many sources. I mean, Reddit for many years. I even check Blue Sky occasionally, Instagram, Facebook, like I'm all, you know, and I will honestly, I can say with total conviction that although there's, of course, a lot of, like, misconduct. misinformation on X as there would be on any rich and complex and highly engaged system. As is there misinformation in your PTA group, right? Like the PTA calls their misinformation all the time. If you want to find like the ground truth and you do the legwork and you kind of like follow the right people and you kind of go through and really like look for it, the answer is probably on X in a way that is unlike other places.

And I really struggle with that. I wonder whether that's like a cultural thing. Like it has to do with the type of people on it, right? its roots as a journalistic, you know, outlet and so on. Or is it something technological, right? Does it have to do with the fact that it's an open graph, quote tweets, and sort of like correcting people as a part of the norm in a way that is just totally not on Facebook or on Instagram?

You know, they even lack that technical capability, right? So, in other words, is it like the product features that lead to this sort of dialogical conflict that often ends up with the truth? Or is it just the people? I don't know really, but it's an interesting thing. There is something about, I think it also could be generational. And I haven't really thought through this fully. But I said something on X like a couple weeks ago that resonated with people,

which was that I feel like there's this elder millennial cohort that is really, really good at translating across the entire living existence of humanity right now. Like we remember what the world was like before the Internet. And that's like 1980s and 1980s. 1986, like we have deep memories of landlines of, like, car phones, right? Like, we remember the 80s, but we also remember the 90s, right? Like, there's something about, like, we remember the shifts, but we're also, like, we're not digital natives, but we grew up with the internet.

And so we understand the pace of change. And there's something about, like, I look at, like, you know, AOC is kind of part of, maybe she's a little on the cusp of this cohort, but, like, J.D. Vance is on this cohort. You know, a lot of sort of our political leadership, I think, is going to come from this cohort that remembers, but also is very fluent. Like I'd say, like, we have the first poster in chief and the vice president, right?

So it's like there's something about X that maybe captures a generation that's, like, really good at amalgamating across different platforms, right? Like, you spend a lot of time on Discord. Like, you know, there are a lot of people who also spend time on Facebook and Insta who are on X, right?

So they're able to, like, so there's something about it being like a truly, not like just the Global Town Square, but like it's a translation layer. And then the other thing that I often tell people because they're like, like people will say horrible things back to you after you post. Does it bother you? And I'm like, no, it's actually great because it gives you a theory of mind.

For people you otherwise would not have a theory of mind for. And I think there's something about sort of the pseudo-anonymous accounts on X, but actually do a really good job of giving you a full picture. I agree so strongly with that. I agree so strongly. In fact, that exactly has been my big argument for why it matters that you're engaging with real people. on certain networks, not on all networks.

Like on TikTok, for example, I don't think it matters whether the content was specific, if it's just for entertainment, was specifically produced totally by a machine. Like it could be literally produced by TikTok itself through a data center. And like it wouldn't matter because it's for entertainment alone. But because of the dialogical components of X,

how you're really trying to develop like a sense of what people think and you're getting pushback and the add-ons are fighting you, it's actually kind of important that they're, people in a way that doesn't, you know, it's not exactly like a poll. You know, no one would pretend that your comment section is a scientific poll, right? But you are getting, you're completing, you're filling out your theory of how others may be or interpret such a thing. And it matters that they're people.

Different social networks, I think it will matter whether they're largely human or not. But anyway, yeah, totally agree with that. And this is my argument, too, why more people should post. because it becomes a personal thing if it's like your idea and then Anons are engaging with you. It resonates more where you're like,

oh, I hadn't really thought about how that would be insulting to this group or I hadn't really thought about how half the country would perceive this thing that I thought was innocuous. So like there is something there too where it's like you learn a ton, you get the feedback loop if you're posting.

Whereas if you're just looking at other people which is also fun, you're lurking but it doesn't resonate the same way with your kind of core and kind of allow it to revolt. Every tweet is a focus group on some idea in a way. I remember this funny anecdote where Jan Lacoon got so frustrated at X that he started posting on LinkedIn. He would respond to people on LinkedIn and someone quote tweeted him and it was like,

come to X and fight me like a man, you coward. This is where the actual arena is. Who's the arena? Yeah. One thing this is more broadly is, you know, the internet has become, even just since COVID, more fragmented and more sort of intellectually diverse. like, you know, I remember, you know, Mike Solana was complaining, or was sort of, you know, observing the sort of activism on Instagram around BLM.

And he's like, Instagram is the butt app. Why are you bringing, you know, in Twitter the word app, like if you want to have ideas, go here, what is the point of Instagram? But just around BLM, around Ukraine, remember, you know, sort of when Mark had the current thing, discourse, there was a lot of sort of legible unification, like dissent was on the group chat. dissent was private and it didn't seem to be this like public place for dissent in the same way that you know things like october 7th things like the charlie kirk assassination these are current things but but in a much more divert like the response to it is not unified across across the board and i i wonder

yeah is that a response to just social media fragmenting in a different way whereas like blue sky is seen as way more you know legitimate than gab ever was or or sort of you know parlor or something um or if it's just these these issues are You know, something, the vibe shift is, I don't know, to Eddie's question, if it's technological or if it's actual. Yeah. Well, I don't think, I mean, although there, I mean, I don't think what makes blue sky, blue sky is technological, really. I think that has a lot to do with, like, it's interesting. I always thought that like the ad protocol, the underlying like protocol was interesting. It was interesting. The effort was to be a more decentralized open sort of censorship resistant network. I think what makes, blue sky, blue sky today has to do with the people who sort of seeded it in its early days, right? And then later, the people who kind of exodus to it in reaction to like different, you know, things on X and so on. And it's interesting how important that is, right? The seeding

culture ends up leading to the downstream culture. It's sort of a, you know, it's a, yeah. One just quick comment. One old Curtis Art Yorbin ideas, he would say, hey, Jeff Bezos can take over the Washington Post, Washington Post, not going to change. You can take it. over the New York Times, it's not going to change. You can take over X. It's not going to change. And I think the last few years have disproved them in a number of ways, that idea in a number of ways. But Elon taking over X actually did change the whole sort of makeup of the platform. And so it just requires an owner who's willing to, willing to do what it takes. Yeah.

Yeah. You can also make an argument as a former postie that Jeff Bezos taking over the Washington Post and infusing it with limitless capital actually did change the Washington Post. Sure. Like it changed in the opposite direction of where people would have. thought, right? But it's like if you have a struggling, like, part of the reason I left the Washington Post was because it was about to go into bankruptcy. And if you have a business that's actually, you know, forced to rethink its views based on competitive dynamics and where the market wants it to go, if, you know, if one of the richest people in the world buys it and infuses it with cash and doesn't

have a strong opinion of where it's going, like you could make the argument that part of the reason why the Washington Post, you know, why it took so long for it to sort of, I would argue it now normalizing, right? Like normalizing to where it's, it's readership, was when I was there, which is still left of center, but not nearly what it was and, you know, democracy dies and darkness. There's an argument that the actual, like, infusion of cash was actually the thing that radicalized that I think most people don't talk about when they talk about sort of these media properties and sort of the growth of them. Yeah, this is kind of an incomplete thought and related to what Catherine's saying, but is that every network when it's developed

has sort of selection pressures for the participants in those networks, right? Like if it's a highly politically polarized group, then to get a lot of engagement, you need to kind of play to that gradient, right? Because there's those type of people around it. Certainly, unlimited money that has come with a few strings attached,

allows things to develop one way. On the other hand, as Elon did, scrapping 80% of the staff and, you know, ripping out a lot of the prior discourse guiding apparatus, which he allegedly did, that certainly changes things. But perhaps even more importantly, in Elon's case, there was this shift where certain people felt more comfortable returning, certain people wanted to exit. And so then the makeup of the graph changing led to different types of behavior because you're catering to a slightly evolving audience. The ways that

the graphs evolve is maybe very complex. So I don't think that it's... It's simply that, like, they can't be changed or are trivial to change. I think it's kind of the type of influence is important in determining how they can change. Totally. Yeah. Can I go back to something you said about the group chat? Please. Like, I've slightly mourned the death of the group chat as a person who looks back fondly on those years and the friends we made.

I mean, it's probably like some people have some people view summer camp. was the group chat era. It is definitely a good thing that the group chats are no longer siloed are no longer necessary. Like I do think a lot of the real interesting conversations have moved to X and that is a good thing.

But there's also something about, I don't know, there was something special about that moment that I think all of us will always miss. There's peacetime social networks and wartime social networks. Yes. Yeah.

Yes. I'm clear which time we're in right now. Yeah, yeah, I was going to say, I'm not sure. One other comment I want to make is, you know, you were talking about the Washington Post finally normalizing. It's been interesting how sort of the media class, the political class has become so much more extreme than the class it reports to, than the people reports to represent. And I think that's another sort of, it's going back to Eddie's point about the opportunity

costs as it relates to parenting. There's also the opportunity costs as it relates to the opportunity class of going into media or going into politics has just become so much higher that in order for people, to want to do that. They have to be irrational. They have to have some irrationality, which is usually a form of active. Sometimes it's a form of principle and, you know, nobility, but other times it's a form of sort of, you know, chronic status seeking via some sort of activism, not to be too cynical. But Eddie, thank you for being our first guest. We're excited to continue the series. My pleasure. Thanks so much, Eddie. Thanks for listening to this episode

of the A16D podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review, and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X at A16Z and subscribe to our Substack at A16Z.com. Thanks again for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode. As a reminder, the content here is for informational purposes only. Should not be taken as legal business, tax, or investment advice,

or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. Please note that A16Z and its affiliates may also maintain investments in the companies discussed in this podcast. For more details, including a link to our investments, please see A16Z.com forward slash disclosures.