The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Kai Ryssdal on Why the Economy Isn’t as Strong as It Looks

Episode Date: February 19, 2026

Kai Ryssdal, host and senior editor of Marketplace, joins Scott Galloway to assess the contradictions at the heart of today’s economy. They discuss the “low hire, low fire” labor market, why consumer sentiment feels worse than the headline data suggests, and how tariffs are quietly working their way into higher prices. Kai also shares his skepticism about the AI boom, whether white-collar workers should be worried, and why income inequality continues to widen despite record markets. The conversation also explores prediction markets, national service, military leadership, and the future of public media. Algebra of Happiness: do you have a debt? Join us in the ‘Resist and Unsubscribe’ movement: https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Episode 384, 384,000 kilometers is the average distance from Earth to the moon. In 1984, The Terminator premiered. What's the difference between The Terminator and my dad? The Terminator came back. Hold me. Welcome to the 384th episode of the Prof. G-Pod. What's happening?

I am enjoying ski week. Actually, that's not true. I fucking hate skiing. Let me just come out of the closet as someone who has, you know, tolerated. I did skiing. I didn't start skiing until I was a senior in high school. I went on a trip. I remember it cost $53, which was a lot of money for me and my mom at the time and skiing I've just never been good at. I hate the cold. I hate the equipment. I'm absent-minded. Everything about skiing is just like not my vibe. And I'm at this point in my life all about entry prevention. But I'm in a beautiful mountain town.

I love the culture, basically ski for a little bit, then start drinking. And I decided very early, I wanted to give my kids the gift I didn't have. And that is get them to my kids. skis from when they're like, you know, yay, high, and then there'll be beautiful skiers the rest of their lives. So I've done that. I'm out. I've had it. So here I am inside my room ordering fondue and speaking to you. Resist and unsubscribe. A quick update. I think we're on to something here, folks, and I've been trying to figure out what drives traffic, trying to figure out attribution, because I think it's fascinating what new media, traditional media, print, podcast drives the most traffic to resist and unsubscribe, which now has an aggregate, 1.1 million unique visits.

If you were to try and inspire 1.1 million unique visits to a website, you would need $4 million in paid ads. We have spent zero on paid ads, which is interesting. I would, I would have used alphabet and meta because they're monopolies. And if you want to get something out there, you unfortunately have to use Instagram. You have to use these platforms. They would not let us buy paid ads, which I find kind of interesting because they say it's political. But anyways, even without that $1.1.1 million. Now, what drives the most traffic and what is the net end or attribution? And I like to think of myself as someone who's very analytical and holds their feet to the flame. So far, it looks as, I mean, this is across CNN, you know, MS now, Fortune,

Forbes. I've been everywhere, right? And it looks as if, as of today, the two things that are or the three things that drove the most unique visits. And you don't know if it drives awareness. And there's different types of outcomes. Awareness, actual unsubscribes, unsubscribing without going to the website. But in terms of driving actual traffic to the site, number one, it looks like an article and an interview in NPR. And it drove what looks to be 27,000 unique visits to resist and unsubscribed. So let's do the math here.

27,000. Most good e-commerce sites do 2 to 4% conversion. I'm going to go with five because this is purposeful. Someone decides on their own, no paid ad, no clicking on anything to come to this site. And then I'm assuming that they unsubscribe from two platforms. When I see screenshots, it's usually they post one to five. So I'm going to assume an average of two. Average of $240 lost the first year. So I'm going to round up to $500 of the 5% who convert to unsubscribing. So what does that mean? With 24,000 times 5%, that is, I believe, 1,200, right? 1,200 people unsubscribing.

What does that mean? 1,200 people unsubscribing times 500. That is $600,000. These companies trade at an average multiple of 10 times revenues. That is $6 million in lost market cap across big tech. Now, $6 million in lost market cap across big tech. These companies are worth trillions of dollars, no big deal. One article likely costs big tech $6 million in market cap.

And let's go to what movements are about and what economic strikes are successful. The most successful or the most, I don't know, famous is the Montgomery bus strike. Now, the cinematic moment that everybody talks about is a courageous woman refusing to give up her bus seat. But that's not what moved the needle. What moved the needle was a young reverent named Martin Luther King organized a years-long carpooling effort such that non-whites or people who didn't want to be part of a segregated bus system could avoid taking the bus. The tremendous amount of organization, and slowly but surely the municipal bus system recognized they were losing a quarter of a million dollars a month in bus fares from a large segment of the population that was no longer taking the bus. And once it got to about two, two and a half million dollars, they decided to acquiesce and they desegregated the municipal transportation infrastructure from Montgomery, Alabama.

And that's where we are, folks. This movement, as of today, and I can show the math, has cost big tech about a quarter of a billion dollars in market capitalization. Is that enough to get them to change course? No, but this is what we want to do. One, we want to send a signal to consumers, that they have a weapon hiding in plain sight, and we want to change the incentives and show these big tech CEOs who are showing up for premieres, prostrating themselves to the president, sending me text messages saying they hate themselves, yet they fucking blow. this guy, hoping that if they can just stay out of his way and acquiesce to him, well, guess what,

folks? Acquiescence, appeasement is not a strategy. It's basically, when people are around you on your deathbed, they're going to be, what did you do in the war, Dad? Well, I did fucking nothing, but grab my ankles and get fucked by some obese clown who was a fascist. Is that what you want to be, is that too much? Is that too much? Anyways, bottom line, you can show up with a moped at one of those stops and give people a ride to work. You can make a small, if you go to resist and unsubscribe right now and you unsubscribe from chat, GPT, you are taking $10,000 out of their market capitalization. That's you showing up on a moped. If you're Chelsea Handler and you post about your resistant unsubscribe movement and give specific examples, and you have 110,000 likes and

likely inspire millions of views and thousands of people, you're probably costing big tech, or $800,000. She drove up to the carpool stop with a minivan. We are driving up with a bus, maybe even a tractor trailer. But if we do this long enough, if enough of us don't give any of this bullshit that it's too big, that we're just gnats on an elephant. Guess what? Enough gnats can take down an elephant.

And we are harassing this fucking fascist elephant right now. I have already heard from these companies, 20% of the CEOs, they are noticing. So this is the question you want to pose to yourself. This is over, right? Was I part of the resistance or did I do nothing? If you don't believe in this, fine. I get it. Do what you want.

This is obviously your decision, but you have the agency to absolutely do something. We have survived civil wars, plagues, incredibly racist moments in our history. We interned the Japanese. We fought world wars against fascism. And every time Americans rose to the moment. If you're like me and you think I have benefited so much from this country, If you were to summarize my benefit being born in 1964, a white heterosexual male, it's basically the following. Unprecedented prosperity and the lowest taxes paid in history with the most amount of freedoms and rights.

That is what I have taken. I have a debt. So two questions. Do you have a debt? Second question, Dad, what did you do in the war? Go to resist and unsubscribe.com and take action. Join us. Resist and unsubscribe.

All right, moving on. In today's episode, we speak with the inimitable Kai Rizdahl, senior editor and host of Marketplace. I feel as if I grew up with Kai. I thought he was one of the more thoughtful, reasoned voices about business. And we were pleasantly surprised Kai's podcast with us, the first time he was on a few months ago, is one of the most viewed and listened to podcasts we've ever had. So here's to the famous superstar and driving tons of ZipRecruiter ads, Kai Rizdahl. Kyle, where does this podcast mind you? I am in a shed attached to my garage at home in Southern California. Where in Southern California? Lackinata, just sort of north of Glendale. Yeah, yeah. I went to UCLA, so I spent a lot of time out there. So let's bust right into it, or let's draw the camera way back.

I'm curious to get your overall sense or big picture view of the economy. It feels very split screen and that we have. A stock market at record highs, according to Pam Bondi, it's $50,000. $50,000, yeah, right. Yeah, and we do have a solid GDP growth, much of it fueled by the AI boom and a disproportionate consumer spending from the wealthiest Americans. But on the other side, we're seeing what appears to be a slowing job market, affordability concerns, and consumer sentiment near historic lows, and a lot of catastrophizing about how AI

could potentially destroy the labor market. How do you make sense of this? When you do your program and someone says, summarize the American economy, what is your best shot at it right now? Yeah, it's a mixed bag, very much mixed bag, for all the reasons you said. I would say we're sort of in a labor market, not recession, but a labor market period of great, great uncertainty, right? Low hire, low fire. People aren't leaving their jobs, right? This thing called the quiz rate, people aren't leaving their jobs very much anymore.

It's at historic lows because they're afraid they can't get another job. That's really bad. That's not a good thing, right? The lack of opportunity and all that. At the same time, corporate America, thank you very much, is doing really well. Hence, the stock market at record highs, hence all those corporate profits that are coming in. But as you know, really well, income inequality in this company, the gap between the richest, like, percent of this economy and 99.9.9% of the rest of the people is growing and getting bigger. And it's just not sustainable.

It's not tenable. Any thoughts on whether the AI threat to the labor pool is overhyped, underhyped? So look, the threat of AI is real, but it comes in like 17 different categories. So let's go with the first one, the labor threat, right? It's already, as we've seen, done some damage to entry level 23, 24, 24, 25-year-old workers and the jobs that they have, right? And I totally get that. I will say here, by the way, I'm a little bit of an AI skeptic.

I think it is a bubble that spending and the debt, the debt, first of all, is huge. The spending is really circular, right? You've got opening eye giving, you know, Nvidia a zillion dollars for their chips, and then that money gets circled back into the thing. And that's definitely not sustainable. AI will be the future. It's just not there yet. And I think as we look at what's going to happen to certainly white-collar jobs, that is something that people in white-collar jobs ought to be thinking about. Not for tomorrow, but for some short number of years from now when these things are really actually workable. It's a little bit like, it's a little bit like crypto, right?

Crypto will be the future of money. It is not the future of money right now. It's not actual money right now. AI will be a future of this economy, but it's not yet. It's not right now at scale. The Wall Street Journal is reporting the companies across retail and consumer goods are raising prices again this year. Many by high single digits, citing tariffs, higher labor costs, and rising health insurance expenses. In terms of affordability, lack of, you know, which obviously reduces,

the prosperity of Americans. Do you think it's going to get worse, get better? What do you see as signals out there? Yeah, I think it actually is going to go worse. And let's think about why for a second. What's happening here is the knock-on effect, the lagging effect of tariffs. For a long time since Trump's tariff-Paloosa back in April,

companies, by and large, bit the bullet. And they absorbed a lot of the cost. Let's just say here, parenthetically, that there have been studies from the Fed and from Keith the Grupina, the IMF, something between 94 and 96% of tariff costs are passed through directly to American businesses and American consumers. Businesses have been taking that hit for the past, whatever April is, eight, nine months ago,

right? Now they're getting fed up with it. It's squeezing them. They can't do it anymore. And more importantly, consumers, even though, as you rightly pointed out, consumers are really cranking consumer sentiments in the toilet, we're still spending money. We're still paying whatever the consumers, whatever the companies are demanding. So we are going to see those prices take up by sort of high-ish single digits.

That will have a knock-on effect on inflation. I don't know that I buy the Fed's theory here. This is Powell and Austin Goolsbee, among others, who say it's going to be a one-time pastor, right? Tariffs are going to hit the economy one time and then stay. I don't know that I see that. But look, Goolsby is a trained economist. I'm not. But definitely now we're seeing companies saying, you know what, consumers, you got to pay a little bit more now.

And that's what's going to start happening. And I read somewhere that, so if you look at the genoc coefficient on income inequality, zero meaning everybody has the exact same amount, 100 meaning one person has everything, that the French Revolution and Let Them Eat Cake happened when France was at about 81 in terms of income inequality. And there's some reports saying that the U.S. right now is at 83. Do you feel it's sort of progressive catastrophism that there's a revolution coming because of income inequality hitting these? levels or that as America, we're sort of down with levels of this type of inequality? Well, look, I think sadly, as history demonstrates, you go back to the Gilded Age, we are down

with it. There have been corrections, of course, passed in history of when that's happened, but not without a little bit of societal stress. And look, we're definitely there. I mean, forget the trillionaire, or the almost trillionaires, right? But so much of the wealth in this country is now going to capital as opposed to labor. And that's just upside down from the thing that made this economy great in the 40s and 50s and 60s. Look, there were bad things about this economy back then, too. I get that.

But if you want solid, middle-class jobs, where everybody can grow and be reasonably happy and successful, this ain't it. This ain't it. How do you think that manifests in terms of, is that we constantly ping from one extreme to the other, that people decide to pick up pitchforks and lantern, Like what, what do you think, how does it play out in terms of, you know, if we've reached some sort of tipping point?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't think it's pitchforks. The premise behind your question is where does the leadership come from, right? How does this change happen? And the answer is that we're not seeing leadership now on virtually every level of governance and the body politic in the society, right? We have Republicans who are going along with whatever the president decides to do because they, are afraid, right?

And their cowardice is becoming manifest. And we have Democrats who can't decide what they're for. And the internal schisms in the Democratic Party prevent them from leading. So I don't know where the leadership, where the motivation, where the rallying cry comes from to say, this cannot stand. And just empirically, it just can't. It just, it can't. A society can't work when everybody doesn't have what the top nth percent has. curious just when we talk about trying to predict where the economy is headed, we're increasingly

in the media, and I can send myself media adjacent, looking at this, what appears to be the most accurate or least flawed predictor, and that is the prediction markets. And I find myself consistently quoting data from Kalshi and Polly Market. And I'm just curious what your take is on these prediction markets. So, number one, they are, kind of a black box, right, which is really, really troubling. We don't know what's in there. We don't know who are making these bets. You heard, of course, about this $400,000 bet on Maduro being ousted about two hours before he was, and then it paid off to some unknown bethore, right? I mean, that, what is that? How is that a valid statistical sample of anything?

Let me give you an example really close to sort of my professional line of work. So in the in the days slash week before Trump named Kevin Warsh to head the Federal Reserve, a guy by the name of Rick Reeder, who you may know, I'm sure you know of him, he does fixed income investment. He's the head of fixed income at Black Rock, the huge money management. He'd been a dark horse all along, and then somehow, for some reason, his odds on Cal Shee popped up to like 62-something percent, and out of nowhere. And I will say, by the way, the only reason I found out about this is because I'm on a thread of emails with about 50 or 60 of my fraternity brothers. Rick Reeder was a fraternity brother of mine 45 years ago.

He was a year ahead of me. We didn't really know each other or whatever. But anyway, so that's how I found out about it. And I go looking at it. And then I start looking for news. And there is no news about why Rick Reader is somehow going to be the chairman of the Fed. And then sure as hell, Trump says, oh, no, it's going to be one of the two Kevin's, Kevin Warsh. So I don't know that, yes, wisdom of the crowds and all that.

and people are putting actual money on the line. But you have to take it with a really big grain of soul. And when you think of these prediction markets, do you think that they're going to play a role in, I mean, do you think they're going to sort of become the primary data streams for traders? And my mind sort of starts spinning in terms of how this might impact hedge funds, alternative investments. Because you will be able to lay trades with real money,

on virtually everything, right? Not just, you know, what color jacket is Kamala Harris going to wear it a debate, just to pick an old historical example, but also, right, what policy issues are going to be decided, where the Supreme Court might come down, all of those big, you know, significant policy moves. And then those Kalshi markets and polymarket and all the rest of them

are going to be followed by people actually making those decisions. And you're like, what are we doing? We'll be right back after a quick break. Support for the show comes from Pipe Drive. Success in sales comes down to timing. You have to be nimble and fast on your feet. But if you're spending time chasing down leads or organizing your contact book, that's going to slow you down. And when sales slowed down, the growth of your business slows down too.

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go to Wix.com slash Harmony. That's Wix.com slash Harmony. Young people seem especially upset or a lot of lack of confidence, consumer confidence, confidence, confidence in our institutions. Do you blame them? I don't, but, The institutions especially, but I just read an article in the economist saying, realistically, it's not as bad as they think, that their wage growth is growing. Youth unemployment is at 10%, which is about average if you go back. Do you think that there's something to social media creating sort of a negative vibe, if you will, that makes a bad situation even worse? Yeah, look, social media is a double-edged sword, and that's sword, rather. And that's putting it kindly.

But look, let's not talk about young people. Let's not talk about 25-year-olds just to pick a demographic. Today, let's think about the future that they're looking at, which is, we've already talked about income inequality. The politics of this country are ruptured at best, completely broken at worst. There's no national ambition, national aim. You and I have talked about this before, about what young people need and value in the society and what can help them get there.

A national service, I think, is a common interest that you and I both have, right? There is none of that shared experience in America today. And so if you're a 25-year-old looking at the future, and look, I should ask my own kids, but what do you see? Are you hopeful? Are you ever going to own a house? How are you going to build wealth? What about your kids in the college application process?

And look, I know higher education is a thing for you. And it's deeply, deeply broken. So it's not 25-year-olds today. it's 25-year-olds thinking about, well, as much as 25-year-olds ever do, thinking about when they're 50. Yeah, I was thinking about if you're 21, it means since the age of 10, the dominant political role model has been Trump.

And so during the years where your brain is getting hardwired around incentives and role models, you have someone who is about kind of performative, coarseness, virality, all about money. No shame, right? Zero shame. Double down. A lie is less of a lie.

The more you repeat it. I mean, it just feels as if, you know, one of the many things I really respect about you, eight years in the Navy, it feels like it's so his, the way he acquits himself personally is so, such an oxymoran or so anathema to the basic code

of military service. I don't know if you speak to young men and women service people in the Navy. How do they feel about Trump in our politics right now? I don't. It's been a while since I've talked to those folks. But I will tell you that it's not the young people actually in the military. I mean, yes, it is, right? They do the work, the hard work, whether it's a young enlisted sailor on an aircraft carrier someplace or on a base someplace.

But really the people that I worry about who I put the responsibility, on are the senior officers, the flag officers, the general officers who know better, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, who, the Constitution not to do the things, some of the things the president's asking them to do. And I'm, I'm, I'm looking now at, at the American Navy Admiral, uh, who resigned out of Southern command over these, over these fishing boat strikes, right? Um, those are the ones who, you know, the video of the six, you know, the

national security experts and veterans in Congress who made that tape that the grand jury just said, no, we're not going to without you for this. They're not talking to the enlisted Marine, right? They're talking to the Marine colonel. They're talking to the Navy Admiral about illegal orders and knowing where that line is. I am, and, you know, I'll just go off topic a little bit. I am, I am the absolute cowardice and fear with which the American military is being run now by the Secretary of Defense is, to me, just, it's incredibly damaging. And his behavior and his, his ethos and what he thinks the American military stands for is so deeply destructive and corrosive. Going to young people in the military, we talk a lot about trying to find a code, trying to find something to do. A lot of young men lost.

Talk about the armed services and the role it can play in a young person's life in terms of giving them a code. I knew when I was downstairs, I'm in Europe right now on a ski holiday with my family, and when my producer called me and said, you're up with Kai Rizdahl at six. When I heard Kai Rizdahl in six, I thought, if I don't get through $5.59, I'll be late. because this guy is just on time. Talk about, and I'm curious if you've talked about this with your own kids, but talk about military service as it relates to helping young people establish a code, if you will. It is an obligation to something bigger than yourself.

It is a sense of duty. It is a way you conduct yourself, and it's a way that you interact with others. It's respect up and down the chain of command. it is loyalty, and it is mission first. That said, military is not for everybody, and I get that. But I firmly believe that some kind of national service at this point in our history and at this point right now in society is a valuable, valuable thing.

You know, you're not going to find a code in the military. You're not going to find honor and obligation and duty. But if you have a sense of it, it will refine it and it will sharpen it and it will distill it to a way that helps you live your life. As someone who served, I was just absolutely, I'm curious to get your thoughts. I'm fascinated by the military and its operational capabilities. The operation of Venezuela, I just couldn't. I literally thought this is something out of a Bond film. Do you have, I mean, my sense is almost every branch in the military was in

involved here. What were your thoughts when you heard about this operation and how it was pulled off? Look, it's really impressive, and it is something fundamentally that only the American military can do, right? It's just, that's just the way it is. You look at the Russians. You look at the Europeans. I mean, nobody has the capability we do. Nobody has the professionalism we do. And nobody has the technology that we do. Now, look, you can buy technology and you can buy capability to some degree. What you can't by, and what is, to get back to my prior point about Secretary of Defense, what is being destroyed by the way he is running that department, and by the way, the president is letting him run that department is the professionalism of the American military, both the enlisted ranks and the officer

rank. Look, it was an amazing military operation. It was great. There was a story today about Hegeseth denying a promotion to a guy who used to be the spokesman for Mark Millie. who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Trump's first term and then for a little while after. And who Trump has said ought to be executed. And this guy, because he had worked for Millie, career Army officer,

up for promotion to Brigadier General, because he had worked for Millie, the reporting is, Hegsa said, nope, I'm going to fire you. And he basically slow rolled his nomination to Brigadier General until the guy said, you know what? I'm not going to hold up the promotion

of all of my fellow colonels to general. so I'm going to retire. I mean, that's insane. That's insane. It's operating from a position of fear and weakness. And it, to me, it's just, it's one of the most discouraging things, actually, about the second Trump administration.

I'm curious, you said you left the service of 29, and I'm sure you know people who decided to spend the next one or two decades in the service. Oh, yeah. How would you distinguish the difference between the people who serve, as you did, for several years versus those who decide to make it their career.

Yeah, so I think about this every now and then, actually. If I'd stayed, well, I'd probably be retired by now. But, you know, I could have been like a two-star, maybe, maybe, maybe a three-star. You know, I'm a reasonably competent guy. Look, the military was for me an amazing thing that I did when I was 21, 22 years old. It was not, though, as it was for most of the guys. in some of the guys in my squadron, right? I was flying E2Cs at a,

out of Norfolk, Virginia off the USS Theodore Roosevelt. For some of the guys in my squadron, that was their whole gig. That was all they wanted to do. That was it for them. And for me, it was an opportunity to, number one, serve, right? Which was really important to me. But also to refine and help define my character.

And then by the time I left the Navy, I had done everything that I joined the Navy to do, right? I had seen the world. I had got a graduate school. I had learned how to fly, you know, all that stuff. And it was time to do something else. And obviously, most veterans out there are like me. They've done a tour, four years.

They've done maybe eight years. There aren't, you know, most people don't stick for 20 years in the military or 25. But I would bet the value judgment coming out is the same. After four years or 20 years, this was an experience that helped define my life. And look, there are many, many terrible things. I know I'm caveating a lot of things here, but there are some not great things about, number one, the American military, but number two, about the lifestyle

and the challenges that it creates for families and for young people. I mean, the idea that we have American enlisted people on food stands is insane and embarrassing. But it is, no matter how you slice it, a definitional moment. So trying to collide your experience in the Navy with a one-man prediction market,

Cai Rizal, when you see or hear about the movements of care, strike forces into the Mediterranean and in and around Iran. What's your best guess as to what's going to happen there? Oh, man. Number one, I have no idea because the president of the United States is a chaos agent and trying to predict him is a fool's errand. Number two is, look, this is part of what these carry movements are is a show of force,

and we can do this. And that is literally what carrier strike forces are for, right? Number one, projection of power, sure. But number two, showing the flag, showing that we can if we want to. The challenge, of course, again, to go back to point number one, is that the president of the United States is a chaos agent, and you don't know what he's going to do. So I don't think you can put a lot of stock in the mere movement, right?

Maybe negotiating, maybe we're not. You know, Steve Whitkoff is doing this. Jared Kushner's doing that. Who knows? The mere movement of a carrier strike force is a tried and true presidential tactic. You know, lots of people have done it. We'll be right back. Before Minnesota, Illinois basically wrote a playbook on how to fight back against Trump's ice crackdown.

Governor J.B. Pritzker told everyone in the state to take action when ice came to town. Pull out your phones. Film everything. They're shooting moms in the face. Yeah. So peaceful protest seems like the least you could do. And what we should be encouraging people to do. They've shot somebody here in Chicago five times for just observing. from her car.

Illinois created an accountability commission, took ICE agents to court, and when Trump sent in the National Guard, they blocked them from the streets and they won. A model for Trump resistance on the state level. Today, explain, jobs every weekday and now Saturdays too.

We're back with more from Kai Ristall. So, when we get gas and we've had very famous people, the not-so-famous people, we have a sense for how they're going to do, and occasionally someone's surprised, us to the upside and the downside. And we knew you do well, but you're one of our most downloaded guests in the history of this podcast. And so we thought we would come up with a series of questions

from like, you know, people who, people who want to know more about Kai or get inside his brain. And so I'll kick it off before we go to these listener questions. I'm curious, where do you invest your money? Huh. I have zero control over the money in my household for two reasons. Number one, my wife, is the brains in the family. She's deeply interested in investing. She takes great care with it. And she's good at it. And fundamentally, it just doesn't interest me that much at all. That's number one. Number two, though, and more substantively, I should not, given the platform that I have and the subject matter of that platform, I should not know where I'm invested. I should not have even a hint of an

interest in a story we do about Amazon or NVIDIA or or take your pick publicly traded company. So it drives my wife nuts at times, but I stay as far away from that as I reasonably can. What would you advise your kid? One of your kids says, dad, I got 10,000 bucks. Where should I invest? What would you sell? You talk to your mother. Talk to your mother. Sure. Come on. No, that is absolutely what I say. My mother is, look, my kids are bright, ambitious, and, and and they're doing really well in life, the older ones. But I have, I'm not the guy. It does, I couldn't tell you.

My wife could tell you. All right. This is unusual. We got a surprising number of beer questions. Oh, yeah. All-time favorite beer. Well, look, so the OG is a, is a stone IPA from stone breweries down in San Diego, down one by a Japanese brewery.

These days, it's hit or miss. I don't drink as much as I used to, but, but now it's, it's, a hazy IPA, good, solid, hazy IPA, and I'm in there. Give us your weekend. Give us Kai Rizdahl's weekend. How do you spend your time? So, let's see. I am a high school and college soccer referee. I do a lot of soccer for kids as well. So sometimes I'll spend four or five hours doing a soccer game. I'll get a workout. There is always stuff to do around the house. Our house is 113 years old. So everything needs to be done.

So you're handy? I am handy by virtue of owning a home for 25 years. Well, I own several homes and I'm not handy, so you're not giving yourself enough credit. You're good. You know how to fix it. I know what tools to buy. And then, you know, I hang around with my wife.

We're empty nesters now. We go for a long walks. We'll pick up a movie. We'll go out to dinner, you know. We just kind of hang around. So a few people mentioned in our request for the voicemails we've got and on Instagram, that you've been MIA from Marketplace.

What's going on? So, let's see. Number one, I got sick. So I took a couple of days off. Then I was on a trip to a conference in Prague. It was a bang, bang, in and out to Europe, which I do not recommend. And then I was off yesterday for the holiday,

and I'm off today because I have a high school playoff game at 3 o'clock, which conflicts with me actually being on the radio. And why do you enjoy coaching? I'm sorry, refereeing soccer. A couple of reasons. Number one, it's the sport I played growing up. More substantively, though, I enjoy the challenge of having to make split-second decisions

when your heart rate is 160. When you're trying to keep up with kids who are like 18 years old, it is, and this is not my phrase, it's a phrase I heard on a soccer podcast. It's a high-speed leadership test, while at the same time, you, you, You as the referee have to be the calmest guy on the field. And I find that really intellectually stimulating. The other thing is, so I run in the mornings up in the hills behind my house, and it's my time of day to just disconnect and let my brain go wherever it's going to go.

There's a corollary when you're on a soccer field in that you can't be thinking about anything else, whether it's got to get the car fixed, what am I having for dinner, that moron at work. You have to be there in that moment for the 22 players on the field. Otherwise, you're going to fuck it up and you're going to look like an idiot and you're going to change the match. And that, that's terrible. So I'm going to inject a few of my own questions. Likelihood, Governor Newsom, the president of the fourth largest economy in the world, your state, is the Democratic nominee for president. Ooh, ooh, I thought you were going to say whether he's going to run. Obviously, it's 101% chance that he's going to run. I think it's like 50-50 he gets the nomination.

That high. That's a coin flip. That's high. I think it is a coin toss, right? Because it depends on who else is in the field. You know, Whitmer, Buttigieg, Shapiro. I don't know. I mean, Newsom's almost too perfect, right?

He's got the look. He's got the smile. He's got the hair. You know, all of that jazz. But coming from California is a big, big swing. Do you think it's becoming less of a liability? My sense is that at least the portions of California that everyone seems to be obsessed with specifically San Francisco or having a bit of a renaissance.

Do you think it's going to be the same liability? San Francisco was unfairly slighted. Things were bad, right? There were really big problems. But, you know, the rule of thumb is nothing is ever as bad or as good as you think it is. California, San Francisco had some problems. L.A. has had some problems. But generally speaking, I think San Francisco is doing pretty well right now. None of that is due to anything that Newsom's doing. Same thing with Los Angeles. But you can't talk about California now as if it's a failed state.

What was the big moment in your career that sort of, was there an inflection point where things really started to take off for you? You mean it professionally? Yeah. Oh, yeah. So there were two. One was getting into radio in the first place. And I'll give you the very short version of a very long story. but my wife was in an a was about to start her MBA program uh and up in the Bay Area and I was 34 years old we were freshly married we were thinking about starting a family and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life I had done eight years in the military four years in the foreign service and she sat me down one day and she said look I think you ought to try journalism because you're this freak who gets up at five o'clock in the morning to figure out what's going on you get the New York Times first thing off the doorstep that shows you how long ago this was um and and and long

story short, I applied for and got an internship at KQED, which is the public radio station up in San Francisco. And so the very first day of our internship, there were five of us around the second floor conference table. Four of them were 19, and I was 34. But they taught me, KQED taught me everything I need to know about radio and being on the air. And so I did that for a couple of years. And then the guy who used to run Marketplace heard me, and they were looking for a person to host their overnight program. It airs at 250 in the morning, L.A. time to get the East Coast drive time. So obviously it's, you know, you work midnight to noon, basically. And he heard me on a report up at KQD, and he called me, again, very long story short.

I started there in 2001, working the overnights. And that was, you know, 25 years ago. And here I am 25 years later. So those were the two moments, really. I kind of grew up with your voice when I was a little bit older, but when I was younger, my first job out of school was Morgan Stanley, and I drove from, I was living with my mother, and I drove from Westwood to downtown to Figueroa Street. And there was a voice of, I don't know, was it, KQED or KCRW. I forget which the L.A. St.RW.

KSRW. And there was a voice, similar to your voice, just great voice that sort of reeked of credibility who hosted in the mornings. And I listened for two years, and I thought, and I had never done this before. I'm not, I wasn't a philanthropic person. I thought I should probably give up 50 or 100 bucks. And I didn't know how to do it. So I called in a lesson in how scrappy KCRW was, the host answered the phone. Yeah. Yeah, that was back in the day, man. That was back in the day. It was like, okay, this is literally feels like a guy and a producer and tens of thousands of people listening to this person driving downtown. So when I think of public radio,

I think of a little bit, depending on the generosity of strangers. And then I can't help but bridge to, you know, Republican billioners by football teams, Democratic billionaires by media companies. We had one, I don't know if he's Democrat,

I don't know what his politics are, but we had a billionaire Joe Bezos by the Washington Post. What are your thoughts on how the post has played out and Bezos's role in it? It's a travesty. It's a travesty. You have to,

give him credit, though, for the first, look, he bought it in 2013, really invested, expanded the newsroom, and then, you know, comes that spiking of the Kamala Harris endorsement by the now former publisher Will Lewis, almost certainly at Bezos's behest. I don't think Louis does that by himself. And then it all goes downhole from there. And look, Lewis and Bezos, because he owns the thing, we're not able to capitalize on the changes in the news environment, right? They weren't able to adjust and flow with the times, much as many other media organizations, including some in public radio, have not been able to do. And then the cut started.

And Lewis lost credibility, and the newsroom shrank, and now you've just seen, you know, what, three weeks ago, 300 more people out the door. It is absolutely travesty that they haven't been able to figure this out, that Bayesel has allowed to happen what he is allowed to happen. It's a loss for, number one, the people of that area, right? Because the Washington Post is, first and foremost, a regional newspaper. They do incredible national work, but they're the regional paper in a really influential and significant market.

And then just for what it says about journalism and how we are now at the whims, you know, look at the L.A. Times in Patrick's Jun, Sean. we're at the whim of incredibly wealthy people, and that's no way to run a democracy. If an incredibly wealthy person came to you and said, I want to buy a media property that you think is under-leveraged, and I want you to run it. What would you want to buy? Well, first of all, I would say, you don't want me running anything.

There's a reason I'm talent and not management. So look, I would probably try to put together some consortium of the big public radio stations. I would take WNYC, I would take WBZ in Chicago, I would take KQED, I would take KPCC here in Los Angeles, and then maybe two in the south, maybe in Dallas and in Atlanta, and try to form some consortium and change the organizational structure. Look, I love public radio. It has given me everything in my professional life the last 25 years. The way the command structure works, between the local stations and the national management is just, it's a recipe for disaster. So that would be my whack, right? Because I think it is truly an under-leveraged asset, both in terms of its financial abilities, right? We have tens and tens and tens and millions of listeners, but also in its structure. And what's wrong with the structure? Why is it so dysfunctional? So the problem is that we are built on a network of member stations. We, and I'm, look,

Marketplace is not a NPR program. If you're listening to this and you want to write to me about the actual structure of Marketplace and APM, go ahead and do that. But I'll speak about public radio. We are built on a network of stations across the country, hundreds and hundreds of them. They pay, number one, carriage fees and then also program fees up the chain so that public radio program providers, American Public Media, my employer, NPR, others can produce those programs. and then send them down the chain. The catch is that those stations rightly want a vote in the running of the larger organization. And the tension is, are you responsible in your management of this entire structure?

Are you responsible for the national strategy? Or are you responsible for what the station in Sheboygan wants or the station in Charlotte, North Carolina wants. And that is the tension between the stations and the national strategy. And it's really, really hard, and I get it. And it's a 50, 60-year organizational structure that has been cemented now and changing it would be really, really hard. But if I had a gazillion dollars, that's where I would put my money.

And the revenue model, I don't know how it breaks down. Who funds it? Where does it get its funding from? So as we all know, the federal government no longer supports public media. And I will say, and this may brand me something of a heretic and maybe I'll get in trouble. I don't know. I think that's a good thing. I think it was a terrible, terrible sequence of events that got public media hooked on federal financing.

I think if LBJ in the Public Broadcasting Act of 67 and whatever it was had said, here's $10 million in 1967 money, here's your seed money, go forward. Fourth, build, but that's it. Then we wouldn't be in the place we are now where small stations and some big ones are in real financial challenge because they don't have federal funding coming anymore. This is way down, way, way, way down the rabbit hole, right? Now what's happened is that we're without that money and we're scrambling. And so the big program providers are having to subsidize smaller stations and organizations so that they can keep carrying marketplace and all things considered. and all the other national programs.

So that's actually the real funding challenge. Then, of course, we have advertising. We call it underwriting on public radio because we have to be cute about that. It makes me crazy. And then we have philanthropy, both people and philanthropic groups who give us grants.

And in theory, it's a really nice triad, right? That we have ads, we have large philanthropy, and then we have listeners. But we need to scale it better than we have. Last question as we wrap up here, Kai. What do you think of economic strikes? Of economic strikes?

Like general strikes? This is a loaded question because obviously I'm involved in one, but national economic strikes is the meaning of trying to dictate policy. Look, the best lever consumers have in this economy is to not consume, right? Can you repeat that? I'm preaching to the choir here, right? And I've watched with interest your, what is it, unsubscribe and resist. Resist and unsubscribe.

Yeah. I think it's really interesting. I think it's interesting that that's where you've gone, just as a guy with your history and your skill at capitalism. But I also think it's an object lesson. The most significant thing we can do is withhold our money. And that's the way you get people's attention. That's the way you get the CEO's attention. That's the way you get the regional attention. That's the way you get your supermarkets.

That's the way you get it. The most significant thing we can do is withhold our money. Kai Rizzdahl is a genius. This is a man with a Brad Pitt-like voice who has incredible insight. He's also the host and senior editor of the Public Media Program Marketplace, the nation's most listened to show on business and the economy. The most listened to show on business and the economy. He joins us from his home or a shed behind his home in Los Angeles, California.

Kai Rizdahl, one of our most popular guests, very much appreciate your time today. Always great to me on, Scott. I appreciate you. Algebra of happiness. Do you have a debt? I have a debt. I've talked about this before, but I think it's worth mentioning again. Look at everything in your life that wasn't your fault. Look at the components of your success and your blessings that weren't your fault.

Was it the irrational passion for your well-being? bang of your parents? Was it Pell Grants? Was it getting to build a company on a massive communications network that became the internet? Was it enjoying low taxes of which America's had extraordinarily low taxes for the last 40 years? What is it? Is it a group or a way that you met other really interesting people called college? Like, what was it that America welcomed your parents into this country? Like, what about your success when you reverse engineer it is not your fault? And then try and support those things. Also, do you have a debt? I look at my life, I've gotten so much from this country, and that's not just pounding my chest. And again, assisted lunch, student loans.

Unparalleled prosperity in the history of mankind. From 1945 to 2000, the U.S. registered a third of the world's economic growth with 5% of the population. So 6x, the prosperity. And then the majority of that 6x was crammed into the fraction of the population or the third of the population that was white, heterosexual and male. Not a good thing, by the way. But I recognize that I've had 10 to 15x the prosperity of the average citizen born in 1964 through no fault of my own. So what got me there? incredible civil rights, incredible prosperity, capitalism, competitive markets, state-sponsored, higher ed. I got to go to UCLA and Berkeley for a total of $7,000 for seven years undergrad and grad, total tuition, $7,000, and not only was it affordable, it was accessible, 74% admissions rate when I applied to UCLA. So bottom line, as awesome as I am, like, how can I not give back to the University of California?

How can I not nod to the California taxpayers and the regions of the University of California? Do you have a debt? Right? If you're my age and you have some prosperity, you have a debt. And through civil war, world wars, plagues, incredible challenges to our democracy, whether it was slavery, whether it was putting people because of their Japanese ancestry behind barbed wire encampments, whether it was incredible racism, whether it was homophobia, whether it was not acknowledging AIDS was a crisis. Americans of that generation have risen to the moment, realizing they have a debt and realizing that America is what we make of it.

And I believe we're in one of these moments right now that we have. effectively lost the script around the Constitution, co-equal branches of government, the importance of dignity across all individuals, the importance of voting, and how important it is to have free and safe elections. I generally don't get freaked out. I think this is go time. And again, you're going to have to ask yourself, dad, mom, what does you do during the war? So two questions. And I'll go in reverse order. What did you do? And two, do you have a debt? Do you feel as if you owe that you need to nod to the things that got you here now? And so what do you do? I like the advice from Teddy Roosevelt. He said, do what you can with what you have in this moment. This episode was produced by Jennifer

Sanchez and Laura Jenaer. Cammy Rieke is our social producer, Bianca Rosario Ramirez, is our video editor. And Drew Burroughs is our technical director. Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod from PropG Media.