This Week in Startups - FTX & Alameda execs plead guilty, YouTube inks NFL Sunday Ticket deal + Tár review | E1645

Episode Date: December 23, 2022

Molly and Jason discuss Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang pleading guilty to securities fraud. (2:04) Then Lon Harris joins J+M for this week’s edition of This Week in Streaming, where they discuss YouTube’s new 7-year multibillion-dollar deal with the NFL. (36:57) We wrap with Part 1 of their review of Todd Field’s latest film Tár. (1:06:12) (0:00) J+M Kick off the show (2:04) Molly and Jason react to Caroline Ellison and Gary Wang pleading guilty to securities fraud (8:36) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (12:29) The Truth of FTX is confirmed + the difference between marketing a product and a security (22:49) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist (23:59) How will VCs fair if tokens are ruled as securities (30:16) Molly and Jason’s hot takes on the FTX fallout (35:17) Founder University - Build your MVP with help from Founder University at course.founder.university (36:57) YouTube inks multibillion-dollar streaming deal with the NFL (55:40) Lon runs down the topics in his newsletter, including Netflix’s Wednesday becoming a smash hit + actors who have not acted in a streaming series  (1:06:12) Part 1: Molly, Jason and Lon review Todd Field’s Tár (TO BE CONTINUED)

Hey, everybody, welcome to Thursday. Huge show for you today. Huge show for you today. You know we had to do it. We actually got formal charges against scam, bank run frauds, top lieutenants. They have apparently flipped on him and pled guilty. Yeah, massive drop from the SEC today. We're going to break it down.

SDNY is not for play. And we're going to break down three very important hot takes. Spoiler alert. I'm number two and number three on the hot takes. Molly wins on the podcast. Aw. I got one. You did it.

And then Lon Harris is on the show to talk about streaming. Yeah, we got YouTube securing the rights to NFL Sunday ticket for two Billy a year. And we're going to talk about who this is the important loss leader for in the streaming world and who might just say like, you know what? You can have it at that price. Yep. And then back to A.O. Scott Gate, this top 10 list, we picked another film. It's a film called TAR. It's incredibly topical.

It has a lot to do with the online brigading communities, but it actually turns out to be an absolutely fantastic film. We're going to go into detail about it for about 20 minutes, and then we'll stop there. And we have a special announcement at the end of the program of what we did with the additional 40 minutes of our tar debate discussion. It's going to be a great show. Great show. Stick with us.

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at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today atembroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code list. Hey, everybody, welcome to Thursday. Molly, we thought, hey, you know, we'll just go right into Christmas. The mountains behind me. I should jump on and do a little slopes. We chill.

And then what happens? We're not chilling. Remember I said it, the Southern District of New York. Yes. Read. Never. Armada. Juliana's alma mater.

Never mess. Never mess with SDNY. SDNY has not only, do we have news that apparently SBF himself, Sam Bankman-Fried, is in FBI custody on his way to the United States, being extradited. Charges were dropped today, I believe, Thursday. Not dropped.

Wait, let's do it against. Oh, yeah, yeah. Not like, I meant like the album. Yeah. Right. Charges were announced. Announced. Thank you.

They didn't drop the charges. They're building the charges. Leave this in. Man, American language has gotten so confusing, hasn't it? You know, they're on legal terms of art. It's a legal term of art. You know, like out of pocket used to just mean I'm not available right now. And now it means you've lost your damn mind.

Like, he can't keep up. I think the Stanford, did you see the Stanford list of words to just try to change that everybody's having like a connoption over? No, but I'm going to have to look because that's one of them. The Stanford created a, this is, leave this in the show, it's hilarious. Stanford made a list, the college of like, they created a, just less anybody think of because it's so fantastical, it sounds like an S&L satire. They put a committee together to say, hey, what are problematic words or things we could do better with?

Obviously, you don't want to say certain words. Like, you know, we understand. We're leaving out now. You don't have to give examples. Right. Like there's a baseball team called the Redskins. And we change the name out of respect. It's the right thing to do.

So they're coming up with names like that. Right. But like they're literally giving guidance like losing your mind, having a hard time understanding. and they literally give you the words for people who've gotten into Harvard to Stanford of how to use words that maybe don't make people with mental illness feel bad about themselves

and I'm just... I mean, the internet's going insane over it. Of course it is. It's only because it's so comprehensive. It's like a very comprehensive list. Oh, dear. Yes. It's a raw shock test of like, yeah.

Oh. So walk in versus drop in. Walk in. trivializes people with disabilities. Yeah. So this is where we're at. Okay. Let's keep going.

Let's just stop. Let's just stop. We have to stop. I don't want to get into language policing. Oh, no. Charges have been announced. Thank you. Against Alameda co-CEO Caroline Ellison, who I think is the most interesting, intriguing,

and mysterious figure in this whole thing. And FTX co-founder, Gary Wang, who pled guilty to those charges. They have both flipped. And pleading guilty and have pled guilty to federal charges in the Southern District of New York. I believe they are both fraud charges. Simultaneously, the SEC and the CFTC filed a civil, aka non-criminal complaints in which two of SBF's top lieutenants, I assume this is Ellison and Wang. It is. Radded him out.

And here is an 80-second clip from the U.S. attorney at the Southern District of New York, Damien Williams. Last week, we announced charges against Samuel Bankman-Fried for a sweeping fraud scheme that contributed to FTX's collapse and for a campaign finance scheme that sought to influence public policy in Washington. As I said last week, this investigation is very much ongoing and it's moving very quickly. I also said that last week's announcement would not be our last, and let me be clear once again, neither is today's. I want to make two announcements. First, I'm announcing that the Southern District of New York has filed charges against Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of Alameda Research and Gary Wong, a co-founder of FTX, in connection with their roles in the frauds that contributed to FTX's collapse. Both Ms. Ellison and Mr. Wong have pled guilty to those charges,

and they are both cooperating with the Southern District of New York. Let me reiterate a call that I made last week. If you participated in misconduct at FTX or Alameda, now is the time to get ahead of it. We are moving quickly, and our patience is not eternal. Second, I'm announcing that Samuel Bankman-Fried is now in FBI custody and is on his way back to the United States. He will be transported directly to the Southern District of New York, and he will appear in court before a judge in this district as soon as possible. Many individuals in the Bahamas and in the United States contributed to the swiftness of the defendant's return. And I want to thank the Bahamas for its outstanding assistance and excellent coordination with us. We continue to work around the clock, and we are far from done.

This is what you have to know about SDNY, their career prosecutors. When they say your name, you are effed. I mean, you see the level of seriousness? Yeah. Let me be clear. It's terrifying. I mean, that is some scary stuff. And we are not done.

He says Wong, by the way, which it probably is. I said Gary Wang, but it probably is Wong, realistically. It's spelled W-A-N-G, but yes, our patience is not eternal. Like when he tells people, come flip now, get the best deal. He's saying right now, best deal, two for one, you know, you want to get out with five years, or do you want to get 25? That's really what I think his co-conspirators are looking at right now. You always flip to the top.

This is the strategy of SDNY. You flip the low-level people. You work your way up to the big fish. The people who flip first get the best deal because they make it easier to wrap things up and move on to the next prosecution. That's why I'm talking about my girl, Carolyn, Ellison. Say more. While Sam Bingman-Fried was on his ill-advised media tour,

Carolyn Ellison got her ass to New York and flipped immediately. And Gary Wong seems to have done the same thing. The only mistake that he made that my girl Carolyn did not make is his name is on all of this stuff. He wrote the back door. He wrote, I think he's the guy who wrote the back door. He was a 10% owner in Alameda where, you know, Sam McMahon Fried owned 90%. He's just all, I think Carolyn, my prediction is that Carolyn gets the best deal here because she is the mastermind.

She's the brains of this operation. She's the actual Lex Luther is your... She's the actual left. But she flipped early and often. She flipped immediately. She was like, have fun at deal book. Bebo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo, bo. Roadrunner. Straight to SD&Y.

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need. We're talking CRM, marketing, accounting, manufacturing, inventory, you name it. O-Doo's got it. So, as your business grows and your needs change, O-Doo will be there every step of the way with dozens of user-friendly solutions to choose from, and you get it all for under $25. To learn more, go to O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-O-D-O-O-D. Get more done in less time for a fraction of the price with O-Doo. Do you remember, though, a couple weeks ago, I think this was when we had Sunny Sandeep, Sunny, Sundip and Vinion, there was like a picture of her getting a cup of coffee in New York. And it was like, well, that's peculiar. Is that really her?

No. She's not. She's gone to Moscow. She must be in like North Korea. She's somewhere with a dictator or Hong Kong, somewhere where she can get not extradited. Nope. Nope. She was in Chelsea getting a latte.

Yeah. She did not listen to her parents. She got a real lawyer. There she is. And they gave her good advice. Listen, this is going to be extraordinary. There she is getting her coffee.

The complaint details a number of things. The SEC complaint does. So maybe just a couple of highlights here because I don't think this is new news, Molly, correct me if I'm wrong. This is just confirmation of the stuff everybody was saying allegedly, allegedly, and letting this kid be on every podcast, giving key notes. deal book, blah, blah, blah, blah. Softball questions from Andrew Ross, Sorkin, all this nonsense. All of it turns out to be true. Pretty much all turns out to be true. That's the high level.

Well, that's the high level. Yes, exactly. The high level takeaway from the civil complaint filed by the SEC and criminal charges are yet to follow. Okay. Related to all of this. But the high level takeaway is that everything is a direct contradiction to everything that he has said.

For example, yes, he did, according to this complaint. Sam Bankman-Free did indeed divert customer deposits from F-TX straight to Alameda through the backdoor that was built by Gary Wong, SBF's co-founder at F-TX. Is it Warren or Wang? It's spelled W-A-N-G, but that, I'm going to go with what the SD&Y prosecutor said. He said Wong. Okay. So I'm going to go with that. Let's make sure my dyslexia is going crazy. I know.

It's, yeah, totally. But I think like, anyway, I'm going, I'm going with. Okay, we've heard both. Okay. We've heard both. We've heard both, but I'm going with SD&Y because I don't want to get in trouble. Carolyn Ellison, the co-CEO. Criminal masterminds who stole billions of dollars we're trying to be.

I know, right? We're like, well, I just want to get his name right. You want to pronounce your name correctly before you go to jail for 10 years. Yeah, no, my radio like brain is pinging like crazy. It's driving me crazy. But I'm going with what he said. So we at least have consistency in the show. The complaint also alleges that Carolyn Ellison, the co-CIO,

of Alameda used customer deposits to trade at Alameda. Shack, that was another thing they were trying to pretend wasn't happening, and that Sam Bankman-Fried himself used customer deposits to make investments, donate to politicians, and buy real estate. So that not only did they commit what the SEC is calling securities fraud by commingling these funds, but that he actually used customer deposits to just like live the high life and buy politicians. And that's where additional charges about around I think there are going to be some charges.

I don't know if they dropped here, but I was seeing speculation online about doing, when you try to pay off politicians, I don't know if it's bribery, but there is some charges that could relate to that. Oh, my Lord.

I do think the SEC is going to have some interesting charges here around the FTT token. Yeah. Because it does seem at the core. Yeah, we'll get to that too. Yeah, please. Cue it up then.

Because that, to me, has always been the issue. in crypto writ large. So first of all, he used the deposits as his personal piggy bank. But second, it says that the SBF ordered Carolyn Ellison to make automated purchases of FTT across various platforms to increase Alameda's collateral, which then allowed them to borrow more. So just a pure manipulation of this already fictional thing

to make it look more valuable so that they could then borrow against it, which is just complete like capital F fraud, if true. If true. FTT, of course, was FTTX's platform token and Alameda controlled most of the supply of it and then also used as their collateral.

So the more it was worth, the more they could borrow. And then the SEC, and this is the biggie, declared FTT a security. Okay. And they are officially alleging securities fraud. Yes, boom. The SEC, okay, because this is going to get confirmed, confusing. There's an S. There are SEC charges and then there are going to be criminal charges.

This is all a moving target right now, but the SEC has said it's a token. And its civil complaint said it's a security. Now, right now, anybody, it's bad, bad, anybody who has a token right now, who use the token in any way to build consensus around the token's validity. And I'll explain what this means in a moment. Right now it needs to lawyer up. you may remember, I did an emergency podcast about Ripple. Ripple also released, right, that company, their token. Yeah. They then used that token to, they gave it to venture capitalists to start funds.

They gave it to donations. They were the original splashy cashies. Pull up the Ripple complaint from the SEC. They took a currency and they used it in my mind to build consensus, which is a generous way other people might interpret it. I'm using very clear language here, Molly, you understand. We're professionals.

Allegedly. Allegedly. No, but it is in the SEC complaint. In this case, yes, no, totally. In this case. But some people might generously say, oh, you're building consensus around, just like we do in venture capital.

Everybody invests in a company, right? The more people who invested in Uber, the greater the chance you have more people rooting for Uber, the more people who buy Google stock, the more people are rooting for Google. Okay, yeah, it's a security. And if you play by the rules, you're building consensus amongst the investment community that this is the best bet to make.

Now, what happens when you do that, but you break all of the securities laws in the world? Then it's fraud. So if I, and everybody told me, J-Cal, when this stuff was coming out, let's make J-coin. You're popular. You've got a podcast. You invest in startups. We'll do J-coin. And I was getting pitched left and right.

And I would joke about it. I'm going to create J-coin. And it's going to be worth a billion dollars. And then they were like, yeah, create J-coin. and then give J-coin to every company you invest in. So you give them, you know, you invest a million J-coins, and you give the founders a million J-coins, and then the LPs and your fund get J-coins.

And it was like, I was like, that seems like, illegal to me, for me to print my own currency that has no value and then pretend it has value. And I was like, so I laughed about it. And you can look at this podcast transcripts and be joking about J-Coyn for the last 10 years. Yeah.

Ripple also did all of these donations and paying people off perhaps would be one way to say it to build consensus around the ripple coin, right? That's what you want to do when you have a project, right? All these crypto projects are about building consensus. Well, how do you build consensus? You get more people to have ownership in it.

Guess what? Board apes. What's the difference between what board apes did by giving celebrities? My understanding, I don't know if this is true, is that many of these, I'll broaden it here. Take board apes off the table. many of the NFT projects would give NFTs at discounts for free anywhere in between

to celebrities to get them to put as their avatars on Twitter or other places to then get civilians to buy it. Well, and to be clear, that's a product. That's like a, that's a product marketing thing, right? Anytime you introduce a new product in the world, if I had been the inventor of Swiffer, I would have gone to market with my product in exactly the same way. And you give free stuff to influencers and you do that with your new restaurant. And that's all completely accepted in the world of creating and selling products.

And then on the other hand, you have this token that you are financializing. You're lending against it. You're getting people to invest in it. You are artificially inflating its values so that you can borrow against it and use it as collateral. You're selling it. So that's where we're going to start to see. Right. Exactly.

Printing more of it. then creating automatic buys so that it looks super valuable because you're creating artificial demand. So like the SEC is basically saying, look, everybody knows that in the world, there are Swifers and there are securities. And a security looks like this. And I think it's so interesting what Gary Gensler did here in the SEC by saying consistently, right? Consistently, they were like, this is what a security is.

your job creators of securities is to follow the law right here's your driver's license everybody walk right into the trap exactly he's like here's our driver's license

you have a car with insurance here are the rules of the road good luck you took your driver's license exam you got your driver's license there are a bunch of signs that explain how to drive and you took the test

exactly if you chose to drive on the wrong side of the road if you choose to, you know, break the speed limit and you decided to have a couple of pops before you got behind the wheel, that's on you. Whether you're Ripple, whether you're FTX, whoever. And I'm not saying Ripple is a fraud or a giant scam, but the SEC is going after them too. And this is what I'll tell you. Sometimes I'm wrong. You ever been in a relationship, Molly, where you're in love and you have a deep relationship and you and your partner have a difference of opinion. And then you're you. You're in love and you have a deep relationship. And then you're you and your partner have a difference of opinion. And then you're, you're wrong. And then it comes out clearly you were wrong. You know what my partner does to me? She goes, see? So we have a joke.

We have a joke. So when I'm wrong about something, she pokes me in my ribs and says, see? Now, it doesn't happen all the time, but when it does, it's particularly in the ribs. It stings a little bit.

Not so much because I have a finger between two ribs and it's incredibly sensitive as a human, but because the see means I was dead to rights wrong and it's just a running joke this is Gary Gansom

That's adorable See This is his moment This is a Gary Gensler He's like I told you And I want everybody who hears fans of This Week in startups To make it a meme

When you're right Molly's been right about a lot of things We're just going to do a quick See See See Gary Gensler has a C moment. And he is, if you gave coins, NFTs, any of this grifty stuff, if you gave it out,

splashing cashier like FTCS, you got a lawyer up now. Yeah. You got to figure out because they're going to go right down the line. They start with the $30 billion fraud, then they go to the $10, then they go to the two. They got many of these coming. And you know what? I'm glad. I'm sitting here cleaning by the rules.

Clean it up. I kind of sit here, play by the rules. It's really infuriating to play the startup investing capital allocator game for the last 10 years. I'll be totally frank. I've been jealous of watching the crypto people run amok with a vision of, hey, people should be able to do what they want to do with their money. People should be able to make transactions. I wish that I could say, I'm investing, you know, from our fund, a quarter million dollars in this. Anybody on the planet who wants to join us can put in $1,000.

go here. I wish that was fluid and easy like crypto made it. I wish I had that. I am jealous of it. That's the vision I have for how the securities should grow. And these idiots, criminals, grifters, have ruined it for the people who play by the rules. It's literally like we have to drive 55 miles an hour. Cars are safer now.

We should be able to drive 75. That should be the speed limit. But all you dumb-dums. But all you dumb-dums. have to be on your goddamn phones or drinking, and you can't stay in the lane, and you're eating a slice of pizza, putting on your makeup,

you're drinking a beer, smoking a joint, smoking a j, having an edible, and now the speed limit's got to be 55. And in Europe, you want to go on the Autobahn? You decide how fast you go

because everybody's got a good car that they maintain, et cetera. The speeding limit is now limited for the rest of us because of you criminals, I hope you go to jail for life. SBF,

literally a life sentence, is the minimum for me to be satisfied here. And for these other two knuckleheads, 15 years will be the minimum, even with the plea deals for me to feel justice was done. If they get under 10, I will absolutely be infuriated. They need to get 10 minimum. And I'm not talking 10 sentence. I'm talking 10 served. Listen, I've been dealing with business insurance for three decades. I kid you not. Switching providers has always been a nightmare. Too expensive, takes too much time, and it often doesn't guarantee you're going to get any better coverage. But now you can make switching radically simple with inbroker.

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What do you think about? Sunny and Vinny are not here today to talk about this with us, but they did send us a little note earlier, a link to a Twitter thread suggesting that if tokens are securities, I'm just pulling this up now from Compound 248, quick aside, and this is in a thread that's summarizing these SEC charges. And this person noted, quick aside, unrelated to FDX. If tokens are securities, many, many people broke the law.

Entrepreneurs, promoters, and yikes, prominent venture capitalists. I'd watch out here. We may see BCs in handcuffs. Okay. This is the, this is like the tricky thing about, like, again, the SEC is not retroactively declaring FTT a security, right? What they're saying is this was a security all along. Here were the rules.

You're the one smoking pot in the car while you're driving. Yep. what personally i think i would eat my hat before prominent vCs ended up in handcuffs over this they will not end up in handcuffs but it is an interesting question sure because a lot has been happening with tokens and some firms um the people who committed the crimes obviously they go to jail yeah the people who were involved in the periphery will pay fines because they didn't commit the crimes but they were on the periphery of the crimes and in some way that might have enabled it in some way.

And if there is some connection that can be, there's still, you still have to go to court. You still have to go to trial. So remember when all the banking stuff happened in 2008? Yeah. How many people, you covered this in the marketplace.

This is your, you tell me, educate me, please, Molly. How many of those people wound up doing a park and handcuffs? I think one person went to jail in a financial crisis that encapsulated the entire world. And if you were, lack of trust and institutions. and the overall reputational damage that has been done as a result of that is like incalculable.

Okay. And you know what? This kid's sitting in jail right now who have 10 years for, you know, selling a little bit of weed, maybe slinging some rock, whatever it is. You know, we have to really have a deep look at the justice system and make sure that, you know, and I think this is what SDNY does particularly well. I'll give them credit for this. We need to understand the justice system and understand the actual harm to something. society. A kid selling crack in the projects or some kids selling weed on campus and they get 10 years. They get five years. And then these people, and what damage did they cause?

Yeah. What damage did they actually cause? I'm not saying it's great. I'm not saying it's not a crime. They broke the rules. They get something. But when you compare some of these sentences, you know, we have to make sure that white-collar criminals get the book thrown at them proportional. Serenos made off bless you man bless you but they never have before no you know it's infuriating to Theranos had the book thrown at him

because her own investors who enabled the whole freaking thing suitor right like they went down because their investors came for them but no investors ever go down like I mean I'm not trying to be super cynical here but like Sam Bankman Fried is accused of and you know

his co-founders they are accused of very real crimes that they committed and they are not in a vacuum. Restitution is important in this case. If you were an investor, I'm not going to pick any specific venture firms. I'm not going to put it on anybody. But let's say you were a venture firm

and you backed a token or an NFT project. Let's say you got a bunch of NFTs because you were part of it, right? You're like, okay, we're going to put $100 million into this NFT project and we're going to have first shot at these NFTs. And let's say the NFTs. take off and you sell them. You know there were securities. You're amongst the most sophisticated. So what should happen? A sanction is what should happen. And what that could be, so this is the

equivalent of the perp walk in this case. You didn't commit like the most heinous crime of all, etc. You're not going to go to jail. But you could get banned from being on the board of a publicly traded company. You could get banned from being in the securities industry. You could be banned from being a venture capitalist, basically. You get banned from raising funds. So it is conceivable here. I don't think it's probable. I think it's possible that we could see a venture capitalist, an investor, an angel investor, whatever, if they were to have flipped securities as part of their plea deal, if this does get to that point, I could see this happening with Ripple. I could see executives at a company like that that are, you know, in a lawsuit with the SEC.

I could see them settling in the way Henry Blodget did. If you remember the Henry Blasett case, he was banned from for life, I believe. Somebody can pull it up. Yeah. My memory. I think he got banned for life for from being in the securities industry. I think so. Something like that.

From building business insider into a couple hundred million dollar business. Right. But he was technically banned from being on a publicly traded company as board and doing securities, I believe. So, you know, this is a, this is a possibility, but not a probability. I don't think you can go after VCs for making investments in companies that wind up being frauds. I don't know what crime there actually is there.

But you could have sanctions. Unless they got tokens. Unless they sold. Then it gets a little, right? Like if they were issued tokens ahead of the public and then they maybe sold them or they were involved in bumping those tokens, that's where. If they sold them is where it gets tricky. I don't think if they got them, that would be a crime.

It'd be like, you know, if I joined, if I invested in a video game company and they gave me a bunch of mona in the video game, you know, or digital assets in the game, am I guilty of anything? I don't think so. No, but those aren't securities. But they do have tradable vows. you. And that's where I think a settlement occurs. Right. Totally. It's like, do you want to take this to court and like 12 people in a jury are like, I'm sorry, you got a mythical sword that you traded? Like, that's how a defense might put up their defense, right? Yeah. And I think it winds up being a hung jury. And it, you know, like, all you need is one person to be like, well, I believe in crypto and I don't think that's a security. It's just a token. And people understood it. So very hard to prosecute that. That's very hard. And I will say, orchestrated it. One last point for me, at least on this entire. And higher musugina is that if I were a central bank or a financial institution that did not want

crypto to come and disrupt my entire lifeblood of the global economy, I could not have engineered a better situation than FTX and the downfall of San Bankman-Fried because just like to your point about 55 miles an hour, now all the rules come in. Like if I am a Bitcoin purist, if I'm a decentralized missionary. And what I want is to overthrow this like fiat control. I have just lost a decade in that fight because of this. I thought I was going to have the hot take on this. You beat me.

You're right. Thanks. You get the number on hot take for this. My hot take, which is now by default coming in second. You got me, I thought I had this one. I feel bad. Man. Shoot.

No, I had two. hot takes. Gary Gensler now has the C, but I think you have the better C. Because now if you are Goldman Sachs, you could be like, see. Yeah. We told you that they should be regulated. So Gary, now my Gary Gensler take automatically moves to number two because they are the beneficiary of this.

Nobody can do these. Nobody can compete with them. Because every time it comes up, they're going to say, oh, you can complain about Goldman Sachs, you can complain about, you know, whatever, you know, financial institution, all you want, Chase, whatever, Bank of a, Oh, we put out too many cards, the fees on the cards. At least we didn't build a back door to steal everybody's money. Like Wells Fargo is literally out here paying more billion-dollar fines, more billion-dollar fines for just scamming people.

Whatever. And now crypto's the one with the black guy, you know? Now they have the C. Yeah. Okay, yeah, we charge for fees. Okay, yeah, maybe our fees were too much, but we didn't steal. We charged fees, see. Right.

Genser's got his C. And then here's SBFs. This is what I believe SBF's defense is going to be. I thought this would be the hot take. You can rank our hot takes on Twitter, everybody. Yeah, there you go. Here's my hot takes. It's not a contest.

Well, it is. I mean, they should be the hottest of hot takes. We should rank the hot takes. Well, it is. We should aspire to have the hottest of the hot takes. Right, okay. My hot take is SBF's defense, because we're cooking going to be going into that. Yeah.

Because what's the defense? You know, and Sonnyubon Wally and Madoff, everybody, you know, who doesn't take a plea deal has some sort of defense. SBF's defense is going to be drug psychosis. He's wearing that goddamn patch. I was making his brain go whoop, whoop, and then he was, I guess, he admitted to the patch. I don't know if he admitted to Adderall

or other stuff, but they were talking about Adderall. I believe he's going with the drug psychosis defense. And I believe he's not going to get away with it, but it could be a hung jury or it could be a result in a settlement because they don't want to go to trial on this.

And he says, I'll take 25. I'll take 35 because I'll still get out 18 or something and I still have like I'm still a young man. I'll be out of jail at 50 and we'll be sitting here in 20 years going wow, he got out of jail 20 years later. The drug psychosis defense, he was on such a cocktail of crazy drugs that he can say, I lacked inhibition. I lacked inhibition and I was so hopped up on speed basically essentially and also whatever. I don't know what the patch does and so I'm no expert, but I would love a psychiatric person to explain to me what exactly he was on, what combination, because that's what this is going to be the core of the defense,

what combination of drugs he was on, and what are the side effects of those drugs or the combination of those drugs? And then, they'll say, do you remember when my attorneys told me to not talk and to build a defense? And my co-conspirators went and flip, I was so hopped up on those drugs that I did 10 interviews. And I just kept talking. And I don't even remember what I said because I was on speed. I was on patches. These doctors gave it to me. And it's not my fault. This is so dark. Molly,

I was hopped up on drugs that my doctor gave me because, you know, are you going to criticize me for my, you know, that I have psychological problems and I have mental illness and I just listened to my doctors and they put the patch on me. And then I snorted a bunch of AdRow, I mean, I didn't, I shouldn't have snorted it, but I heard I read on a Reddit forum that maybe I could be better and I could solve my problems if I took these addies. And I just, you know, they gave me 40, I was banging 40 milligrams. And I just thought, well, 80's better than 40. And that's where this, that was the whole problem. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Have you seen those TikToks? I'm just a baby. No. Really? Oh, it's like, it'll be like a vicious dog or whatever. And then it's like, you know, it's, it's like being snuggled. And it's like, I'm just a baby. Anyway, that's like, literally deleted TikTok two weeks ago.

My life is a thousand percent better. Yeah, you were using it all wrong. I'm like once a week, once a week animal thing. Off my phone. Off my phone. And then the, wow. All right. All right, everybody. There it is.

Next up, Lonhangers. Hey, everybody. It's Molly Wood, co-host of this week in Startups and Managing Director here at launch. And our mission at launch is to back builders and help build founders. Founder University is one of the ways that we do that. We've got a 12-week online course to help you build and launch your MVP or idea. It's a hybrid course, meaning there are live presentations virtually twice a week and asynchronous learning. At the live sessions, those include presentations from industry experts, and you'll get a Q&A with these experts and members of the launch team.

Plus, deep dives every week to cover what you're learning. And then asynchronously, we're going to give you homework, a little extra videos and reading each week, and we'll go step by step with you as you build your MVP. Now, I know you're wondering, how much does this cost? Okay, so we want founders to have skin in the game, but we don't want to take money from our bootstrap. builders. So here's what we do. We charge $500 up front for the Founder University 12-week course. But if you attend the live sessions and you launch an MVP, we'll give it back. In other words, this is our ethos in action. Do the work. And we return the entire $500 at the end. And it's free. So do you have an excellent idea for a startup, but you don't know where to start? Or are you in the

early stages of launching your MVP looking for those first customers, Founder University is a place to guide you through those early stages. Cohort five of our 12-week Founder University will kick off in March, 2023. You can learn more and apply at course.foundor.com. Hope to see you there. All right, everybody. So everybody's favorite reason to exist on a Thursday, right?

If you're going to exist on a Thursday, the reason you should breathe oxygen as a human. and continue this brutal life as we know it is for this week in streaming with Alon Harris. He sees back, Molly. Yeah, if you must be perceived, the horrors of being perceived, why not be perceived here on inside streaming?

Oh, this week in streaming, yes. Very well done. This week in streaming, it is. It's the reason, it's the reason to get out of bed every week. It's actually, we have a lot to talk about today because there is a huge breaking news story. To be fair, we have been following, but in sports and streaming,

we now know the answer to who's getting NFL Sunday ticket. Before you say it, we're going to talk about another A.O. Scott's top 10 film at the end of this. Don't worry. You're not going to believe it, but I have very strong feelings and opinions about not only A.O. Scott, but another famous film critic. And that's going to be at the end here. We're going to talk about TAR. We are going to talk about TAR.

We are going to talk about TAR. But let's get into the news first. invited to the National Border Review. You're literally, you're ruining my chances. Depends on how you defend him. He's going to be off the screener list. Otherwise, it was totally going to happen, but there's.

That's it now. All right. Okay, but before that, it's true, we have saved the best for last because we think we could go on a minute about that 159 minute TAR and, Flew by. But let's start with, yes, the answer to who is going to bring us NFL Sunday ticket in

2023. It is YouTube. YouTube has closed a deal for Sunday ticket worth $2 billion per year. Yeah, it's for seven years. For seven years. I have so many thoughts,

but let's do the details. It'll be similar. So if you aren't familiar with NFL Sunday ticket, because you never wanted to pay for it before because it was so freaking expensive, it is the TV sports package that lets you watch all the out-of-market NFL football games.

So no blackouts, like I think you might get local blackouts maybe. I'm curious to see how YouTube is going to handle that. You don't get whatever's on your CBS. Right. It's whatever your local market, those are on TV so you don't get them. But you get everything that's out of your market. Right.

Similar to the NBA League Pass. So the deal starts in 2023. It'll run through 2030. And it makes YouTube the third big tech company to pay a crap ton of money for sports streaming. Amazon signed that big deal for Thursday night football last year. and Apple sign that big 10-year deal for Major League Soccer. What do we think? It's fascinating because it's both YouTube TV and YouTube.

They're going to make it available through either. So if you're a YouTube TV subscriber, that's like $65 per month platform that's sort of like a cable replacement for cord cutters, you can add Sunday ticket through there. But you don't have to, there was some concern that they were going to lock you into having to get YouTube TV in order to access Sunday. ticket, but no, you can get it as a standalone a la carte thing through just YouTube in the same way like you can rent a movie through YouTube. This to me is the best news of all, actually, because I was afraid they were going to not let you get it if you had YouTube TV the way that you now pay for YouTube premium, but not YouTube TV and those are not the same service.

And I was like how far I was worried that they were going to separate these two things. And I love the fact. Like, to me, the best news as a consumer is that you could have it either way. Good job, YouTube. This is what we call in the business, the paradigm shift. There was a moment in time when the technology, known as satellite television, was the most extraordinary technology in the world of broadcasting. Now, why? Because there were no bandwidth or few bandwidth constraints.

They put up a lot of satellites. And you could get HD, right? Remember, DirecTV was like, whoa, you can get HD. And then they kept putting up more Because it was the best picture quality by far Like far far It was new Literally you would go to a TV store

To buy a television And they would either show you a Blu-ray Molly or you remember this Because you were at Sina at the time Or they would show you direct TV Well you know We're going to have a very big celebration here For Molly's 40th in seven years

So we're planning that now Getting out there early So what this is about Is paradigm shifts The paradigm of DirecTV, which I loved for 20 years, I was so subscriber to DirecTV, you could get the most number of channels. It had the best interface, a little bit laggy when you change channels, but combined with the TiVo, it was the most extraordinary experience.

But all things come to an end. Nobody believed that the bandwidth of the internet could support the number of users in HD. Mark Cuban, who had started broadcast.com, and who was an expert on this, and who owned HDTV, two networks on direct TV. I think that was his first place where they had them. People would go to that channel because none of the other content

was in HD. So if you got a HD TV, remember this long, you would go to the HD TV channel just to show your friends. Look! Look at that. Look at the lizard.

Look at the lizard. You know, like in some nature documentary. Most stuff was not converted or recorded in HD, so you couldn't take advantage of. Okay, that paradigm did particularly well

because there was no constraint on the number of channels. So when direct TV, when you wanted to do a league pass type product, you know, other people couldn't do it. There wasn't the bandwidth. How would you simultaneously have 10 channels? And this is why, if you had this,

you were the most popular person in your group. Well, things have changed. Now, in your pocket, and just, I want everybody to just think about the paradigm shift that has occurred. Now in your pocket is a device that can stream in HD with a screen resolution

that is, I mean, it's even more than 4K on a lot of phones with these incredible pixels and densities. And you can do it from anywhere. And everybody's got one. And it has a payment platform built in. So the friction that came with DirecTV was you had to have somebody climb on your goddamn roof. Most people couldn't get it.

Some people, law, you remember this, Molly, would put it in their goddamn windows. And they would open their window and hanging out their windows just to get access to this. So this is about the paradigm shifting. The same thing happened with satellite radio. those things are dead in the water, they're over.

And now it is really just about the internet. This is a play for YouTube to get advertisers onto the YouTube platform. They can lose a billion dollars a year on this and make it up in the halo effect. This is why you do not see the ESPNs of the world, the ABCs of the world, being able to compete for this, because they would have to compete for it and make it break even or profitable or maybe modestly. It doesn't matter to YouTube. if YouTube gets premier advertisers on this and they make a little they lose a little they make a little

who cares it just solidifies the number of minutes and then penetration of YouTube and makes it the number one ad buy Google is the number one ad buy in the world beginning and end of the sentence YouTube slash Google

is the most important advertising platform in the world all this does is cemented that's it it's a really great point because when you look at the numbers live sports are, it's the crown jewel and all of these streamers have been in these big races for them and they're spending billions and billions of dollars. But the fact is, like, even the viewership so far on this experiment, like at Amazon, who has Thursday night football, the viewership

has not been even what they predicted, right? According to Nielsen, so far this season, the viewership was 9.6 million per game, which is way below the 12.5 million viewers per game that Amazon predicted. Amazon disputes it and says it's actually 11.4.4. but that's still less. But like previously, live sports were the loss leader to keep people buying cable bundles. And it sounds like what you're saying

is that they will likely, it will likely stay a loss leader. Yeah, which I think is a good thing to keep in mind that like they maybe don't care at all what they spend on it. But is the same true for Amazon and Apple, which are not like Apple isn't an ad platform.

Disaster for Amazon and Apple to not get this. It's a disaster. For them to not get. Well, you're also looking at the top. I mean, YouTube already is the dominant, the most popular, the most watch streaming platform in the U.S. already. So now this is just putting them even further ahead, even harder to catch for every other player. It's just advancing their lead to the point that it's going to be essentially impot. Like Netflix is never going to catch them at this

rate now that they're adding Sunday ticket football on top of what, you know, all the YouTube content that's already being viewed. It's a disaster. I mean, Amazon, and Apple have the money to do this. Amazon is on their heels because of their stock price and they don't have a founder there. No founder, no founder authority. You know, they should have...

Why would it be, if it may... It 100% makes sense to me why it makes sense for Google. Stay the number one ad platform in the world. Yes. Amazon has a budding ad platform but it's not super built out. Apple doesn't really...

Like, why is it a disaster? What's the business that they would build on? top of it. Is it advertising also? For Amazon, they do have a vibrant, um, click, e-commerce based, right? Business. They are seeking to develop a more branded, you know, prestige level of advertising, right? And if they could have that prestige level, then when an advertiser, let's pick one, um, Apple as one of the great advertisers in the world. They believe in advertising. Apple loves to put ads that people click on and purchase, right? Those are

performance-based ads. That's Amazon Sweet Spot. But additionally, Apple loves to make those beautiful ads for every product that evoke emotion in you. They spend money two ways, right? And you can only spend money one way on Amazon. It's like performance-based ads. You don't really get the display gorgeous ads like you can do on YouTube or you can do on television. And then for Apple, how amazing would it be if this was bundled into the Apple Bundle? What do they call the Apple Bundle? Apple One or something? Yeah. Apple One. Do you either of you, you pay for it? You know, I was, but I dropped down because I'm being

cheap now for 2023. I pay for TV plus, but that's it. And cloud and cloud. So, you know, I cloud. Yeah, so I pay for this for the entire family and it has the arcade in it, which is great. You have extra storage, which is great. All five devices get it. All five individuals, I should say in the family get it. We have music.

All five people get it. I might cancel Spotify. I pay for both right now, a little redundant. And so you start looking at that bundle. You want to just increase the number of people in the bundle. Once you get on the bundle, you don't come off the bundle. It's kind of how it is.

It's very rare, Molly, for people like you to unsubscribe for you. You happen to be highly financially illiterate. Cheap as hell. You're cheap. I said it. I said financially literate, but okay. Same name.

It's the platform thing. Like Amazon, they're all competing. They want to be the hub. Like Verizon even just launched its own version of this. Like, everybody wants to do what Roku did a decade ago and become the one, the hub you go to access all your other. streaming services and then they get to like, you know, sort of skim a little off the top or

whatever. So like that's definitely what Amazon was thinking is like this goes in Amazon channels. And then Sunday ticket, you subscribe to that just like you'd get AMC plus through Amazon. And then for Apple, I think it's the same thing. It's the, it would be in Apple TV. You'd have to get, you'd get on your Apple TV platform. And then we've got you into Apple TV in perpetuity. You can't stop using us as your hub because we've got Sunday. Has anybody here watched YouTube videos on their big screen television? I do that all the time. Okay, all the time.

When did you first install the YouTube? I use the YouTube app via my Apple TV, have it on Apple TVs on every TV. I think in two homes, yeah. So this is, you know, like seven between the two houses. Seven Apple TV is rocking right now. I think it was PlayStation. We are increasingly watching YouTube. videos and going to the YouTube app.

And so, I think this is about getting YouTube on your television. Yeah, that's what I was. It's right now, like it's, yeah. Yes. And not everybody opens the YouTube app yet. I watch Nixfan TV on my television set sometimes. I will watch, you know, other podcasts on my, I'll watch sports highlights, whatever. I'm increasingly when I'm in the gym, instead of going to Amazon or Netflix or Disney Plus, I'm going to the

YouTube app. Very interesting, right? To watch on the big screen. Just like any other streaming app at this point, it's like you just, you know, you got the app next to Netflix, HBO Max, and then it's just like, you know, shorter form content usually. But not even necessarily, YouTube videos are not necessarily, and a half at this point. Like, uh, yeah, I don't, I probably, I think I probably watch more YouTube, like actually sit and watch a full video. What's your behavior, Molly? On, what do you watch on your television? It was a very specific question. television YouTube versus phone and iPad YouTube or desktop YouTube. I personally use YouTube still on my phone, but I live on my phone to a weird degree.

Like I will sit in front of my giant TV watching a YouTube video on my phone, like a weirdo. That's a little weird. Like I literally, sometimes my brother will come over and just shout the word laptop at me because I'm trying to do some really complicated thing like on my phone and there's a laptop right there, a TV right there. So that's a, but my son and I will sit and start. YouTube videos and either stream them from his phone or we'll use the YouTube app. I have Roku TVs.

So we'll use the YouTube app that's built in. So but all of that, like I will say, all of that has 100% answered the question of why Google alphabet, YouTube, whatever, business division we're talking about here, would go to the mattress for these rights. It also to me answers the question of why Amazon and Apple would set a budget and stay within it. Like it doesn't, the benefit to them is obvious, but not as obvious, especially since this could end up being a lost leader. Okay, fair point. It's an exist that said another way.

This is existential for YouTube and Google. They can't lose this business line. They have no choice but to win this auction. Apple or Amazon, if they lose this, well, they've got AWS on one side. They got the iPhone franchise on the other. They don't have to win it. But this is showing you a level of discipline. This auction took place in the wrong.

year. This auction should have taken place in 21, 20, 21. Because at that point, it would have been 50% more money and Amazon would have taken it. I predict. In a stock market where, you know, these companies have been hit hard, I think this, they could have gotten $3 billion a year and or 2.5 or whatever. Right now people are making a very logical decision. There's 1.5 to 2 million subscribers, I think, for this, which is a very small number of people pay for this. You have to be a really wonky, crazy person. I pay for NBA League Pass. I'm one of those also crazy people.

There are people who pay for the cricket, right? That was one of the big things we talked about previously. I do think you're going to see a jump, though, because direct TV, you're talking about a platform that's been dwindling, that's been losing enthusiasm and momentum for a long time. So I think once this is more readily available on a platform, everybody's already on, like YouTube, that's so immediate. I think you're going to get a huge. influx of people who are going to sign up for the first time

once this is on YouTube. I had YouTube TV and then I felt like it got too expensive and then I went back to cable and now I'm like, this is so stupid. Why do I have cable? And this news alone will probably make me switch back to YouTube TV. I'm on Hulu. But I'm about to cancel because I do my yearly ritual where when I move up to the mountains for the winter, I switch my Hulu and it's like, by the way, you're in a different place and now you have one more switch left and then you can't use it and my kids are going to go back

and they're going to start using a Hulu there and it doesn't respect it and so just this is a message to Hulu please respect the fact that a family might want to use Hulu in two different locations right and they just have screwed that and YouTube from what I understand doesn't

and then I have to hack it like I have to I was playing Hulu on my phone and air playing to the TV and that's just I feel so ghetto to me I'm like, it's janky so janky like I don't understand why to me was then. Don't cancel me for using ghetto They're going to make you set up for like a second.

There's going to be my tar. I'm going to get canceled for using ghetto instead of using Janky. Not yet, not yet. We're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. We're almost there. Okay.

Well, like on this note. No, no, don't cut it. Leave it in. I can use the word. I mean, I'm from Brooklyn. When we say ghetto, just a way of saying janky. Yeah. In the 90s, this was, it was very, very common.

It would throw it around. We grew up at that. Yes. It was okay. Yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't think it's okay in 2020. I would not. either.

No. It's got an uncomfortable pejorative. It's a problematic for me to say it's problematic. It's like how people used to say urban to mean a certain demographic of people who lived in cities and now we're like, that's uncomfortable now, but it used to be okay. This is the more you know. It's interesting too because it's a very like urban. It's a very old word.

I mean, it used to, it's what they used to call. They called the Warsaw Gettos, you know. Right. The ghetto used to be my house. I mean, there's ghetto. But in the U.S. It just meant the cheapest homes. Yeah.

Right. But that's over now. It's over now. It's a negative. So the ghetto doesn't exist anymore. Let's do some. Yeah, we fixed it.

We solved it by not talking about it. It's like how they stop calling it South Central and just changes to South L.A. It's fine now. Now it's all better. Oh, it solves the problem. Okay. What about Skid Row?

What do they call that? S row? Is it still call it C-Row? They still call that Skid Row, but it's shrinking. Like, every year it gets a little smaller in another neighborhood and crotches. So at some point, it'll just go on it. If they called it Ciro, then it would be like the Fidae, if I die, or it would be like Soho. We could just call it Cero.

We call the tenderloin. Displacing all those people to elsewhere. If we call tenderloin, Tilo, it would end the suffering in the time. That's actually true. It would end the suffering. You're right. It would immediately be revived. This has been a guitar moment.

Okay, let's do a quick hit on some streaming stories. Because you may know that Lawn writes a weekly newsletter. I do. inside streaming. And so we were like, hey, every day or every week we have to come on and we talk about these headlines. Let's just make it a segment. What's in the newsletter?

Okay. What is in the newsletter? Quick hits. A couple of quick hits. Very quick hits. The big thing we're talking about in terms of viewership is Wednesday, which has been by Nielsen standards and Netflix standards, a smash hit for them, the second most popular English language show ever on the platform.

after Stranger Things 4. Nielsen's data hit this week for the debut week. Six billion minutes during its first five days on the platform, according to Nielsen, which they do say is second only to Stranger Things among English language shows. The entire Nielsen top five, by the way, for biggest weeks ever, all Netflix. Wednesday, Stranger Things, Tiger King, Ozark, Dahmer. So Netflix's totally dominant as far as that show. Dang. Also, the kids are on Netflix.

This has. made Netflix a kid's destination again. My kids over this holiday break have watched Wednesday two or three times with their cousins. I like that. And this is great for dad jokes because they said, can we watch Wednesday? I said, well, it's Sunday. So yes, I'll give you one hour of TV on Wednesday. And they're like, no, we want to watch Wednesday today.

I'm like, you want to watch Wednesday on Sunday? You can't watch Wednesday on Sunday. Now, if you want to watch Sunday, we can watch on Sunday. But I don't think you guys have been out on the mouth. enough and that's my dad rule. I have dad rules. And one of my dad rules is when we're in the mountains,

no screens until after dinner. And if you ski every hour of skiing or ice skating, whatever activity, you could earn iPad time. So I'm trying to make them not into like a little fentanyl iPad addicts. Yeah. We were just noting while you were on your dad

rant that MGM. owns the rights to the Adams family. They're amazing. MGM, which is Amazon. So Amazon produces Wednesday for Netflix in a weird. Uncomfortable. Right? This reminds me, wait, hold on.

This uncomfortable moment also, didn't you explain this to us happened with Yellowstone as well? Wasn't there an uncomfortable thing where somebody sold a hit to another streamer and they're like banging their hand, head against the wall? Viacom several years ago sold the streaming rights for the cable show. Yellowstone, which airs on the Paramount Network to NBC Universal. So those back catalog of Yellowstead episodes air on Peacock. They didn't know two things. One, it was going to become one of the biggest cable TV shows of all time. And the most popular show on cable TV in America right now.

The other thing they didn't know is that they were going to have their own bespoke streaming destination Parabal Plus. So that deal has really, that's why we're getting all these Yellowstone prequels. They just had that new one 1923 with Harrison Ford. I want to watch that on my big screen. And they're giving Taylor Sheridan who created Yellowstone so many other shows he does, Mayor of Kigsaw. He's doing Tulsa Kays.

They basically turned over Paramount Plus to him in entirety. They gunned it because they can't put his big most popular show. Yeah. Well, Taylor Sheridan is the king of Paramount Plus. You go to the front page of Paramount Plus. It's like all his shows and then the good fight is basically the only one that's not. How much do they, this sounds like, we're sorry, we ish to the bed here? Well, they're hoping he's going to lightning in a bottle it again and Yellowstone 2 and then

they're going to own that one forever. But and eventually, I think 2024, 2025, they get it back. So eventually the full Yellowstone catalog will be on. It's interesting. Wait, is this the same thing that happened with Marvel with defenders, um, yeah, yeah. And that reverted back? Or it hasn't reverted back. Disney, they didn't have Disney plus yet.

So they met Marvel TV made a deal with Netflix and they produced all of those those. Yeah, Daredevil Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, that generation. But those rights have since reverted. And so all those shows are now on Disney Plus. And they're making, they're making a new Daredevil show. Like they brought Charlie Cox back from Daredevil Netflix Daredevil. He was in Sheehawk. He was in Sheehawk.

They brought him back already. She hooks got a boyfriend. She hopes that's what I did in when I was watching Shehawk with my daughters. He's going to spend all next year making the new revival show for Disney Plus It's a whole this is all dad wisdom brought to you I've been giving dad lessons all week when I'm up in Tahoe Like on the lift ski lift and dads are talking dad stuff And I'm like here's how you solve that problem

But we watch the she hock did you watch she hoke molly No Oh it's so good I know I heard it was so good I know I just you know She daredevil is her boyfriend And it's so great because I my daughters were so like into it

and then I started doing my dad's up she oaks got a boy and you ruined it I'm sorry it's funny to me can I ask you Molly just for the audience wants to know how deep into the Yellowstone verse are you Mollywood because this seems like this could be your

like if you were going to have an addiction this would be it have you started going deep into this or have you abstained I love Yellowstone the show but I'm still exactly and like every time I watch it, I'm like, I need to buy that land in Montana. And I call my uncle, I'm like, do you still have that land that you couldn't sell? You know, like, every time.

My whole, most of my family is all still in Montana. So like, I know, I will eventually get back. So Yellowstone, yes, I'm obsessed with. But my version of obsession is limited by like, I don't watch that much stuff. Yes. So I've been working my way. I think I'm still on season three of Yellowstone. Like, I've been making my way through it for a couple of years now.

And that is my version of obsessed. But I love it. And someday, I really hope to watch the other ones. That's the upside and all of this streaming stuff. I'm not a big, like, period piece person, though, I will say. Like, I don't know if I'm that stoked about the prequel. Good cast with Harrison Ford. Yeah, they're doing interesting stuff with it.

And I like, I like that it's, you know, it's only like six, eight episodes and then you're on to the next era. That's cool. That's cool. I haven't gone back and watched the Yellowstone prequels. But I'm curious. May I ask you a question on? Sure. Harrison Ford is in this prequel.

He is. Harrison Ford. A true movie star. He's got an Apple TV Plus show coming up next month too. Okay. What is he like 107 years old? Like, how's he doing this? He's great.

I'm just hanging. You saw the pic. You saw the celebrity photos on the internet when I was hanging out with Harrison Ford probably. You saw those, right, when I was hanging out with Harrison Ford? Mm-hmm. So anyway, when I was hanging out with Harrison. We saw that time you were hanging out with Harrison and he was all J-Cal. He called you J-Cal.

He dropped the name. Let me pick it up here. Remember that time he called you J-Cal? He did. He said, son. I remember you, you know more about this movie than I do. I was in it. Yes, Harrison, that is true.

But I want to ask a lot of very pointed question. If Harrison Ford now has secured the streaming bag, is there an award-winning actor? And there are very few on Harrison Ford's level in my mind, a true movie star of our generation. Is there a white whale? Is there a Moby Dick of movie stars, male, female, otherwise,

that has not secured the streaming bag? We're getting down to it. We're getting close. Merrill Streep was a big one when she did big little lies that HBO show. Everybody was like, oh, my God, Merrill doing TV. That was a huge, that was a huge job. Kate Winslet now has come. Amy Adams is regularly doing it.

I think the only two I can really think of who have yet, like Leonardo DiCaprio, he exclusively does big end of the year prestige films. Do you remember that Christian Bale interview from a few months ago where he basically said, Every big movie gets offered first to Leo DiCaprio. So Christopher Bale's like, if you saw me in a movie, it's because Leo passed and then they offered it to me. So DiCaprio's yet to, I mean, he's doing those Apple movies with Scorsese. So flowers. No, no, that's a movie, though.

Those are prestige movies. That's a prestige movie. I don't think of that as like a streaming. They're going to put that in theaters. Extremely. That's a prestige movie. The other one is TC, Tom Cruise. Exactly.

That's what I was thinking of too. riding motorcycles off of cliffs only on the big screen. He's a big believer in that theatrical big screen experience. Dustin Hoffman. Huh, interesting. I mean, I don't think of him. He's still an A-List. He's semi-Ritored at that.

He's a-list. He's a-lis-T. He's a-lis-A-List. But he's currently working. Yeah, he's sort of sunset his career at the dawn of the streaming era. Still A-List. I mean, so it was like Richard Drenters. He's still A-List.

Those guys are amazing legendary actors. What about Tom? But Dustin Hoffman has not. Tom Cruise has not. Leonardo DiCaprio is not. Because Donovan is not, to my knowledge, done a stream. And I don't think Tom Hanks has either. Well, Tom Hanks, he produces a lot of, like, HBO stuff.

He just did that reprehensible, Disney plus the Tokyo movie. I'm going to give you another one. Okay, and then we got to talk about TAR. We've got one more, and then we got to go. I'll give you two more. You give me your record. I don't know if they have. R.D.J. and Brad Pitt, Prestige Actors A list.

Have they done? Downey Jr. is doing a lot of, like, streaming stuff. Not necessarily that he stars in, but his company team down. I'm only counting stars in. He has not starred in a streamer. He just, I mean, he has that, that documentary about his dad's senior that just popped up. No, he produced. And he's also, like, sort of married.

I don't, he hasn't done, like, a show, like, that stars Robert Downey Jr. Okay. And Brad Pitt hasn't. So, no, Brad Pitt has not. So we have a small list now. It's a handful. Yeah. Okay. That's it.

That's all I'm just trying to make a point here. Like has Scarjo done any streaming shows? Sandra Bullock? Again, I feel like, no, Sandra Bullock, no. Like, Sandra Bullock definitely not. Scarlet Joe has. I feel like she has, but I can't put my finger on what it was. Natalie Portman, I think.

Yeah, Natalie Portman, I don't think so. That's an A-List. She's A-List, right? No, she's working on one right now for Apple. She's got a show that she's doing right this moment. Julia Roberts, A-List. Has she done it? Julia Roberts?

You know, as long as you're in this mood, I feel like it's a good time to hit you with A.O. Scott. Let's talk about TAR. As long as you're all fired up. Now, we made a promise after our viral kerfuffle vis-a-vis the A-O Scott Gate. Top 10 movies of the year list. A-O-Scottgate.

We made a vow that we would watch these 10 films. I'm going to go ahead and predict we're going to watch two, maybe three. But we have all watched the second. I'm definitely going to get to us. I'm going to watch out time. I'm going to get the seven. I'm in two. I'm already,

I think I've already seen four. I need an assistant to watch these movies for me. I think I'm already four out of ten down. So I'm doing great. We, Neptune frost, tar, uh,

flux gourmet and then, uh, oh, nope. You must have seen no. Even one more. All right. Well,

this is your job and you're 40% through. It's not our job. It's not our job. It's not your job. You're one of the great commentators on film. It's true. It's not. It's your calling, if you will.

We watched Neptune Frost. Last week we talked about Neptune Frost. We all liked it. So much better. Two of you loved it. I liked it. We were a solid. We were the literal critic to consumer split.

Jason wrote a very eloquent review and surprised us all. Thank God. By not. Much better review than A. Scott's just in terms of pros and insight. We keep going. Bullet dodge there. This week, we're back for another review.

We all watched number six on the list, which is Todd Fields, Tar starring Kate Blanchett, Naomi Merlin and Nina Haas. The film got a critic score of 90% on Rotten Tomatoes and an audience score of 72%. It is about the life, a moment in the life of Lydia Tar, who is a renowned composer at the height of her career before the table's turn as her past catches up with her and her life begins to spiral. Okay. That's the setup.

And now we'll talk about like, okay, do we want a little. like go around the horn, what did we all think? That sounds wise. Yeah, sure. I'll go last. Okay. I'll go last. I'll go. I loved it. I think this is, it is clearly one of the best movies. I think one of the most expansive. There is a movie it really reminds me of that people,

not enough people have seen. Let me know if you guys have seen it. Kenneth Launergan, the guy did, you can count on me. He's the writer-director. It's called Margaret. Anna Pacwin is in. It's fun about, I think, from 2011. And it is, it's this very expansive, long movie, like three-hour drama that's just a character study of this young girl played by Anna Pack. But it's stuff, like a dramatic thing happens to her during the movie. So it's not like nothing happens. Yeah. But it is really not about what happens so much as it is about the extremely complex emotions and aftermath that it has and how it impacts her life. And it's almost like this coming of age kind of thing.

But it's so universal. It's really about all sorts of just like the what it is to be alive at this moment in your life and have things happen to you. And that's what Tar kind of reminded me of like it is about there are things happening to Cape Blanchett. It has a narrative thread. But I think it's it's so it's about everything. It's really about power and control and influence and regret and guilt and how all of these things sort of interact and play around with each other in, you know, an adult's life. it's very much about her it is all her like the whole thing okay so i will say so you are like give it a number oh are we doing one one to ten hold scores hold scores let's do our let's do our qualitative feelings on it

right then we'll go to specific let's do this we do our qualitative feelings on it we're on the horn then we'll go into specific scenes specific moments that will be uh spoil Spoiler territory. Right. Good call. And then we'll give scores at the end to keep the audience engaged. Yeah. Sounds like a good plan here.

Okay. So, Molly, your general feelings about the film. Pre-spoiler. I mean, I will say that in-intra-I, movies are too long. Just generally. Especially in the age of streaming. Like, if you're sitting, like, I was, you know, my son is not home. It was, I was like, okay, I'm just going to sit down and watch this movie.

Now, you will, knowing me as you do, appreciate that this is colored by the fact that all during this one hour and 59 minute movie. So it's whatever it is. Or no, more than the 159 minutes. It's over two hours. It's a solid. Two hours and 40 minutes. 2.30.

Yeah. 238 is what I kept saying because I kept. And then all throughout this two hours and 40 minutes, my brother was texting me because he got to watch the new John Ryan series or Jack Ryan series. So he's watching that, which is my favorite genre. And I'm watching two hours and 40 minutes of Kate Blanchett. it is like, that is all you're getting by God.

You have some good tertiary characters and she's amazing. But if you are either in or not in on Kate Blanchett and her performance here, I was in. And there are things about it. The more I read about it after it ended, the more intrigued I was, I found it to be a bit of a... It was too long. It was like a bit of a slog. I didn't hate it. I really like it and I like what it was doing.

I just don't. I don't have that. kind of attention. I'm adult ADHD over here. No problem. That's honest. That's honest. Films, you know, different films appeal to different people. She's phenomenal. I have a very important

announcement to me. Many of you have known that I have told everybody quite clearly. And this whole A.O. Scott Gate, the kerfuffle, the Donnybrook, this entire Donnybrook, this craziness, has all started with him leaving Maverick, the best film of the year

not even in his top 10. Him putting it, I believe, as number 6 on his list. Right? It's number 6. Can I please confirm? Atara is number 6. Yeah, it's number 6. Okay. This proves A.O. Scott's incompetence.

You wouldn't have seen this if not for him. No, I would have seen it. I heard the buzz. Oh, you would not have. This is clearly, and I haven't seen the other eight films yet, but for him to put Neptune as number two

and this is number six shows the complete absolute incompetence of AOL Scott oh god because this is definitely the last time we're doing this segment because this film I'm allowed to have my opinion

I'm allowed to have my opinion about it. He can have his opinion about mine what I'm embracing here is what I'm learning through this process is that top ten lists and film criticism is the greatest greatest honeypot in the world. I'm leaning into it.

This is tied with Top Gun Maverick for the best picture of the year. This film is going to become not only this year's number one film across the board or tied with Maverick in my mind. Not only will this be number one or two on everybody's list, etc. when they make the top 10 films of this decade,

this will be on that list and it will be high on that list. This film will age and its importance at this moment in time will grow. Now let me explain. And we're not doing spoilers right now. The film is about a problematic, Kate Blanchett, as a female, lesbian, abusive, horrible, but brilliant conductor. Let's leave it at that. That's not going to spoil the film for you.

This is all revealed in the first couple of minutes. It's, you know, it's in the trailer. She puts on a performance that will be the best performance of her career and one of the best performances in the last 20 years in any film. She's extraordinary in it. The filmmaking is unbelievable. There are memorable scenes in this. There are monologues.

There are two sentences. There are moments that we will talk about and debate at dinner parties all year long. And that's one of my criteria. May not be A.O. Scots. I don't understand his criteria. It's obviously flawed. But my criteria is, if you were to watch this film as a group, how long would it stay with you? How many hours after the film would you want to talk about it? Just like the White Lotus, season two, which last night at dinner, I had dinner with a bunch of besties, you know, eight people. Everybody had seen season two of White Lotus. They couldn't stop talking about it for the first hour of dinner. Specific scenes, specific scenes, specific. specific moments, what happened. This film is 100x that to White Lotus in terms of its importance and relevance. It will be dinner party discussions for hours afterwards. And what I love most about this film is that it challenges the viewer. It is not straightforward. Even the critics, the mighty critics who lured their lists upon us and tell us who is number one and who is number

too. They can't make sense of this film. It's so hilarious to me. It is so, it is, it proves the point that this film is so important that you have one set of critics saying that this is, this is the absolute pinnacle of the discussion about an artist creating great art versus the behavior and the human being of the artist, whether it's Bach or it's, you know, Kevin Spacey, Pick a horrible human being who, you know, Harvey Weinstein. The artist versus the art. The power of social media. The generational difference between Gen Z, Gen X, and boomers is all on display here. The power dynamics, identity politics. Everything is absolutely meditated on here, but they don't spoon feed it to you. You must take it in and interpret it for your.

yourself. And that is the brilliance of the film Tar. And that is why it is number one tied currently with Maverick. I will need to see both films again to make my ultimate decision. This is the goddamn film of the year, I believe. And Cape Blanche's wins the best actress. And A.O. Scott is absolutely drunk asleep at the wheel for making it number six behind Neptune Frost. Neptune Frost is number 60. To this being number one. That's it. I'm done.

I'm very excited about this film. We're fine and then we're not fine and then we're fine again and then we're not. All over the place with this one. Anyway, anybody want to react to my feelings and then we'll get it to spoilers. This is for the audience. I think it's interesting. I think there obviously everything you're saying is present. I mean, there's a big scene that's become very sort of famous where she's at.

She's. Oh, go to spoiler territory. Here we go. Spoiler territory. Like, I feel like a lot of. of the discussion of the field does sort of come back to like Hansel culture and it's about this person who's this very prominent high status person and this scandal. And that it, all of that is in the film. But to me, it's so much more about the internal psychology. It's, it's really

we're in Lydia Tar's brain throughout the movie and we're sort of seeing the impact on her of losing her grip and like realizing what kind of a person she's been. And this experience of watching it slip through her fingers and the panic and the fear. And to me, that's what it's, it's more about that than necessarily like a treatise on what to do about this cancel culture. Like,

I feel like there's, there's a reductive, and I'm not saying you're doing this. I'm saying like in the culture more widely, I feel like there's been kind of an attempt to like put this movie in a box and like, oh, that's the problematic. Cancel culture,

woke is a movie. It is not that. Molly? It's much more than that. I agree. I think it's very. to put in that. I'm 100%.

And I find it sort of disappointed. I mean, it's really interesting because like as a, by the way, let's move into spoiler territory because we won't really be able to.

You can fast forward to the end. I think that one of the brilliant things about this movie is to use that narrative device, among many, as this sort of the most obvious lens to get where we're going with Lydia and her kind of coming apart. And it is kind of delightfully pretty. that then the U.S. media would be like, this is all about cancel culture and social media. When first of all, social media hardly figures, right?

It briefly figures as sort of a plot device to keep us moving toward her decompensation. And it is in some ways the easiest direction to go in when you have someone with this much power. Like someone with this much power, no matter who they are, is always going to have probably some abuse. Like they're always going to engage because power corrupts. They're going to engage in some kind of abuse. So it's just like, of course, that's how you get there. And the field does have.

Which isn't even to take away from that. It's so well set up and it's so taught how you get there. And it is a little bit unexpected. And so that makes it even more impactful. But yeah, like this, I'm all about the this lady cracking from the way that power not only corrupts, but destroys. There's a moment where towards the end, where she's getting a massage, she's got shoulder pain,

and she goes to get a massage, and they line up all the masseuses, and they're like, pick the masseuse you want from out of the lineup. In some Asian country that is not fully explained, maybe it's Vietnam. I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I thought somewhere, Southeast Asia somewhere, but I don't think they put a fine point. Manila, maybe, or Indonesia.

Indonesia, Malaysia, somewhere like that. So, and she's, she's picking it from this line and there's, and it's all subtle. It's all you, you kind of read into it. It's not put a fine point on it, but it's all Blanche's performance where she has this road of recognition of this is what I've been doing to people my whole life. I've been lining them up, picking the one I want. I move the, I move people around like ponds. They're not even really human to me.

And it's such a complicated idea to capture visually. Like that, that's what movies are about. You can take something abstract that we've all felt or that we've all thought about and find a purely visual cinematic way with just an actor and a scenario. What a great point. Visuals to bring it together. That's what movie making is sort of all about on the most fundamental level. And the number five.

Right. Well, the number five figures in symbolically. The number five figures in because that's the movement that she's like, the whole movie is building up to this performance, this one. And you know, like the foreboding is there from the first scenes with her, the interview where they say, you're going to give this historic performance. You're going to conduct this, you know, Mahler's fifth, the number five in the series in one month. And you pretty much know immediately that it's all going to unravel over the course of that month. And then there is, there's like this mysticism to that moment where the girl with the number five is the one who like looks up at her. Right.

Oh, I didn't notice that. Yeah. In the lineup, and let's be clear, this lineup is kind of saying, I believe that this is a house of ill repute. I don't know. I think it's the visual, like Todd Field shoots it and lines it up visually in a way that immediately suggests brothel. That's the image that we have. I don't know if he's necessarily saying it's because, again, we're refracting everything through Kate Blanchett's mind. And so that's what she's thinking about.

But maybe this is just a massage parlor. I don't think you get any indication. It's kind of, but it does a cigar is just. just a cigar. I was going to say as well, if you think about the numerical, like, ordering and ranking, that's what she's been doing with the, with the orchestra as well. It's about who's in what chair, who gets what stole, who's in what seat. So that's always been her MO. She's always putting them in order, putting people in a row. And they're even arranged like that, like they're arranged in a semi-circle. You're the next favorite. Very good, Ma. So much was

happening. I mean, despite everything I said about how I thought, I personally thought it was too long. And I personally think if you're not engaged in Kate Blanchett's performance, you're not going to be able to get involved in this movie because it's so her. Watch it in two sittings is my dog. It's a two sitting movie. If you, I mean, maybe. I did. I did. I did. Jesus, how much time do you have in your life? Um, no, no, I, I watched it in two sittings because I was watching it with my partner and. Oh, you watch it over the course of. I thought you watched it twice in a row. I was like, I'm going to watch it again. This, but you guys All of the middle details.

10 minute beat in the middle. Okay, very good. But I don't like being separate sitting. Okay. Molly finished your point. I have a point to me. The level of like care. Every single detail, every single shot, every single self-referential moment, every single

like realization that's unspooled is like taught. I mean, it's like a knife, which is crazy because I guess you have to unspool so tightly. and then it ends up at two hours and 40 minutes, which I know I should let go, but like, my God. Take 10 minutes off that for the trailers, for the credits, very interesting stylistic choice to put the credits at the start.

At the start. Film aficionados will have a lot to say about that. It's not super important to most audiences, but I want to point out there was a New Yorker review. Who wrote the New York Review? It's Richard Brody. Richard Brody is the New Yorker.

Richard Brody. Richard Brody, okay, boomer, time to retire. He reduced, reduces this film, Richard Brody. I've now found a critic worse than Aosco. Richard Brody. Please clip this.

You cannot mention both of them. He reduces this film to being a, that it's championing in some way like this right wing anti-Me2 movement or anti-identity politics

is his point. And what I'll say. Which is such a shame. This is the OK boomer moment for him when he needs to realize he's done as a film critic. He missed the point of the film. This point of the film is about narcissistic personality disorder and the descent into madness and the enablers of narcissists.

I am not a professional film critic, and I got this. What's his kid's name again? It's Richard Brody. How old is Richard Brody? He's got to be over 65 or 70. It's an okay boomer-moan. A legend in the criticism game. He's been doing it for forever.

Please, man. Forever is probably the keyword. I'm also... Did you read his review? I read his review. I'm not a huge Richard... What did you think of that review? I agree with you.

I mean, it's doing the thing that I was basically saying before, which is I think there is a... It's easy to sort of put this movie in the box of like social commentary movie about cancel culture, but that's a very limited, narrow view of what I think Todd Field

is really doing here. Okay. I was going to say about Richard Brumme. Let me just finish my point on this and then I'm going to hand it up to you because I have a lot to say. But this is about narcissistic personality disorder. This is about somebody who has an egot, right?

They've won everything. They've crafted this person, this image of themselves, and they have a blind spot. They don't realize they have narcissistic personally disorder. That's the whole point of that disease. And you look at everybody around you as objects, as tools, to be manipulated like pieces on a chessboard. Now, some of the chess pieces are more important than others to her. Maybe her daughter, maybe her apart. partner, maybe the latest fling in her orchestra. All of these different pieces, though, are chess pieces

in her game to build a brand that is tar. And this film is more analogous. It is not about cancel culture. It is not about identity profits. It's about what you see in a film like the conversation, taxi driver, Macbeth, Full Metal Jack, falling down, the shining. It's about the descent into madness of a person who is so obsessed with themselves and whatever they're building in the world. That is what this film is about. And it is going to go down in the pantheon of films and descent into madness. When people make a list about characters losing it, taxi driver full metal jacket,

I don't know what else you put in there, Lon, because you're better at this than I am. Conversation shining. This will be in that 10 list. of dissents into madness performances. And that is what the film is ultimately about. Okay, that's the first part of our Tar review, Molly. Now, this is This Week in Startups. It's not about movies.

We understand that. But we do this being streaming, because streaming is a big part of startups and the technology industry. But we went so crazy. There's another 50 minutes about Tar, which all three of us are going to give our ratings for, and we're going to drop that on Christmas morning,

a little stocking stuffer for the This Feeding Starz audience. We're like little elves right now. Yeah, we just jumped down your fireplace and we put a little extra and we're going to name it this week in streaming. So look for that in your feed on Christmas morning. And enjoy. Merry Christmas. Enjoy the show, everybody. Okay, Merry Christmas.