April 24, 2026 • 57 mins
Many contemporary talking heads take a pessimistic view of the future, but our guest today hopes to change this. Oz interviews Zachary Karabell, host of the podcast What Could Go Right? and founder of the Progress Network, about being an ‘edgy optimist’ and what that means for the future of humanity.
After that, TechStuff presents an episode of What Could Go Right? featuring Ian Bremmer, the founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media. Together, Bremmer and Karabell discuss how the post-WW2 world order has changed over the years, whether social media is a tool for freedom or a mechanism for control, and why the current moment of global chaos may simply be part of a longer geopolitical cycle — one that, like all cycles, eventually turns.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm as Voloshin, and today we're
joined by Zachary Carabell. He's an author, an investor who
has written widely on history, economics, and international relations. He
writes a substack called The Edgy Optimist, and he's the
host of a podcast called What Could Go Write, which
I'm delighted to say Kaleidoscope is now producing. Today we're
going to hear from Zachary about the podcast and why
(00:37):
you should listen before playing this week's episode, But without
further ado, Zachary, welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Why thank you as.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What makes you an Edgy Optimist?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Makes me an Edgi Optimist? Well, I'm not an optimist
full style. So I wrote this column in twenty eleven, twelve,
and thirteen for Slate and The Atlantic and Reuters right,
and I call it the Edgioptimist. And part of the
point was that was I thought when we were beginning
to descend into what I thought would be a more
temporary nature of pessimism and has remained a trough that
(01:09):
we have only deepened and have yet to get out
of it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This at the end of the first Obama presidency and
being a second rite all of a sudden, the kind
of the gold Well It's two thousand and financial crisis.
But I feel like from the nineties to the kind
of two thousand and eight era, like these are pretty good.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, nine to eleven being a you know, we had
a kind of a collective response to nine to eleven
that felt like we were coming together, and then we
you know, kept getting more and more dyspeptic and negative
at the same time. Because I had also thought about
the context of the nineteen nineties, where everything was great,
and everything we were on the cusp of utopian realizations
(01:45):
of wealth and connectivity and technical to deliberate history seriously
that if I was going to write a column that says, hey,
we should be paying attention to the things that are
good and not just paying attention to things are bad,
it is likely, given my temperament, that if we were
suddenly back on a nineteen nineties moment where everybody was
saying things are great, I would be the one saying, hey,
(02:05):
wait a minute, they're not quite as great as you think.
So I did that a little bit, as I wanted
to reserve the right to be edgy in the face
of other people's optimism. I have not yet needed to
do that because there has been no collective outbreak of
a surfeit of optimism.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
How have you managed to stay will be an edgy
one and optimist despite the chaos of the last few years.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So, first of all, I think there's a bit of
a temperament reality here, which is we do the cliche
all the time, cup half full, cup half empty. Some
people see clouds, some people still see silver linings. So
I think, honestly there is a pure temperament aspect to it, right,
or just some of us who are more likely to
look at the bright sideways.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That's always what my dad says when I'm fitting sorry
for myself. He'said, maybe it's a temperament.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And then there are those of us who constantly, in
tone the Monty Python end of the meaning of life,
you know, always look on the bright side of life
in the ironic sense as opposed to the English sense, right,
because you England doesn't have any optimists. So there's the
temperament part. Yeah, But I'm also aware of the fact
that the temperament part means that you should always surround
yourself with people of different temperaments. As a reality check.
(03:16):
I try given my inherently things are going to work out.
Human beings have a narrative of crisis followed by repair,
and that's certainly, I think been the story of humanity
large not necessarily individual nations, and definitely not individual people.
I mean, there are a lot of just really bad
stories about individual people and individual nations that don't end well.
(03:37):
So not for one minute do I think that everything
turns out okay. It's more of the grand scheme of things,
the Martin Luther King, the arc of history bends toward progress.
But in the meantime, so I don't know that there's
another answer to that. I think it is a willingness
(03:58):
and a discipline to look around the world and try
to find areas where humanity is at its best, even
if at multiple times it is in the midst of
humanity being at its worst.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
But you also media personality, and the easiest way to
succeed as a media personality is to be a doom merchant,
and yet you have persisted.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That is why I'm not a more prominent media personality.
I mean, there was someone once said to me, for
there was about a five year period where I was
on CNBC a lot and I kind of played a
role on one of these talking head shows and someone
came up to me and said, I love you on TV.
I'm not saying this is the backpanding. I'm just saying
telling a narrative that I love you on TV? Why
aren't you on more? And I said, the question you
(04:41):
should be asking is how the hell is it that
I'm on as much as I am, given who I
am and what I do, Because you know, I was
always the guy who a producer would be whispering my
ear and trying to goad me into a really binary,
really absolute statement, which I would then ignore and proceed
to as politicians often do, just to answer the question
want a d answer in a rather meta and elliptical fashion.
(05:02):
So I do think you know, I say it jokingly,
but there is some truth to it that there is
a cost to being the person who will not do that.
I mean, there are lots of people I admire who
I think whose voices are brilliant and passionate and wonderful.
So I'm not for one minute saying everybody out there
is dooming and glooming and being hysterical and binary. But
(05:25):
on the whole, increasingly, news has always rewarded bad news.
There's never been good news. It's always been if it leads,
it leads. But the ecosystem of social media certainly is
much more friendly to those who are much more binary
and much more extreme in the moment. And you know,
I strive for trying to be Hence the edgy part
(05:45):
that there is an urgency to making sure sure we
look at what's working and challenging people to do that
in their own work.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's interesting you wrote to I'm not sure there isn't
a bitchery per se, but a kind of semi obituary
of Paul Early pronouncing it right recently in your newsletter,
who famously predicted the world would starve to death in
the seventies and was the most sought after talking head
in the world. I think you mentioned he was on
Johnny Carson twenty times. You know, it wasn't exactly Digedo
(06:13):
on the Witch is Dead Now You didn't you weren't.
There was no ad hominem element a bit, but there
was a sense in which here's somebody who was totally
wrong and got very famous for being a duma. What
made you want to kind of mark his passing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I think it was important in that. Look, the world
of the commentariat is a world without consequence. You know.
We everyone can say something on Monday be proven completely
wrong on Friday. Say I said all along something that
is completely opposite to what they did, and there's zero accountability.
And that's just the way it is. I mean, there's
hardly any accountability in any walk of life these days.
(06:48):
So I think it's important to call people to account,
myself included. Right, I've had people email me with things
I've written and said, do you still think this? And
let's say eighty percent of the time the answers yes,
and twenty percent of time the answer is, yeah, no,
I got that one wrong, or I anticipated something in
a way that it didn't happen. Rlik is just so famously, profoundly,
(07:11):
unbelievably wrong and over decades and never stepped back and said, yeah, well,
maybe I got this one a little wrong. I mean,
he he was in the if you're going to predict
the end of the world, just don't give a date camp,
so that no matter how much his thesis of impending
doom wasn't playing out, he could always say, just wait
and hear are the signs? And hear the indications, and yeah,
(07:33):
maybe I got the timeframe wrong, although he actually gave
a date. I mean, as you said, like in these books,
he's like by the end of the nineteen seventies, and
then he's like by the end of the nineteen eighties,
So he at least could have been more held responsible.
I don't mean how responsible, like he should have been
taken out putting the public stocks and had rotten fruit
thrown in his face. I just mean, you know, ideas
do have consequence. I do this. You do this in
(07:56):
the belief that ideas have consequence. People value them in
a capitalist society of value them and are willing to
pay for them, or somebody is willing to subsidize them,
and that ideas matter. And his ideas shaped a generation
of attitudes and continues to.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Of scarcity, which some people trek to real world consequences
to his work, including you know, the one child policy
in China and immigration laws and stuff. But you have
focused on what Erlick missed essentially, which was there was
a technological solution that was going to emerge to take
pressure off food scarcity.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, I'm ready a book about corn as a technology
we eat.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
But explained about the corn so and what ERLK.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Missed corn was a was an answer to the problem
that Erli positive, which is we're running out of food,
and then Erlic also said we're running out of resources,
food and resources, so that the carrying capacity of the
planet was being reached by too many people, not enough stuff, basically,
and you know, corn is one of the many examples,
but certainly one of the most profound of corn yields
(08:56):
just kept going up and not down, and they went
up faster than human popular which means corn doesn't just
feed people, it feeds animals, It provides fuel. And there's
a whole pushback to every single one of these maybe
it's not a good thing, and maybe it's not a
good use of land, but simply a parallel to that
equation of we're running out of stuff, we just didn't
run out of stuff, and we didn't run out of stuff,
(09:17):
whether it's oil. There was a whole peak oil theory
in the seventies too, because our technology made it possible
not to You couldn't have anticipated in the late seventies
that corn yields would triple. You couldn't have anticipated that
you would be able to drill twenty thousand feet under
the ocean bed and find oil because the technology wasn't there.
And part of the problem today is because of the
(09:39):
legacy of the nineteen nineties where the technologists promised everything
and only delivered something. That sort of techno optimism is
in disrepute because it did over promise. So if you
say today I believe technology will solve some of the
problems of global warming and climate change, that's a dismissable
statement because as in the past it was over promised.
(10:02):
It shouldn't be nearly as dismissable statement because in the
past we've created technologies to solve for problems that human
beings created.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I mean, I'm curious about the moment in technology as
you see it. You've also written a book about statistics
and numbers and how we measure things called leading indicators.
Are you familiar with the concept of P doom?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
But I mean you're tell me do P open brackets?
Doom closed brackets? Is the probability that AI will kill
us all? And you can be on a zero to
everywhere between zero to one. I think on the P
doom spectrum, what one being that doom is inevitable? Do
you think this discourse is just silly. I mean, what what?
How do you how do you view the kind of
existential risk around AI?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We thank God because I was really worried we were
going to have a whole conversation and not mention AI
and it's going to leave me feeling kind of bereft. So,
like the problem of new technology is versus past technologies,
is that we can say with certainty that everybody freaked
out about a new technology in the past and it
all kind of turned out okay. But we know that
(11:05):
because it's the past, we don't know whether our present
will turn out okay in our future because we haven't
lived it yet and at any given moment those fears
were legit. So there's a whole uh. And I did
one of the podcasts this season with Sebastian Malami about
one of the creators of the current AI world, Demis Hasibis,
(11:26):
who created deep Mind for Google, and Sebastian actually wrote
a piece recently about Demis as Oppenheimer. You know, Oppenheimer
famously helps create the nuclear bomb and then says also
famously when the first test, you know, quotes from the Gita, says,
I'm become death, destroyer of world. But of course there
never was nuclear that was that was it? Right? I mean,
(11:47):
if you'd said to Openheim, we're going to use these
things once and then never again. But that's the thing, right,
you can only you can only speak to the president.
You can't speak to the future. And and it's interesting
you said the knock on like that's the whole optimus
pessimist problem, right in that if you say we haven't
done it yet, the realist or skeptical responses say, well, yeah,
(12:09):
but yeah, the reality is all we can do is
say what we know because we don't know about the
and you're right, maybe maybe none of you will be
listening to this because we'll all be dead. Right, let's
just stipulate that that is a possibility. And I think
that that is the you know, that's the rub of
these things, which is everything the doom, the p doom.
(12:30):
Wherever you are on that scale, every point along that
scale is right. And what I mean is every point
along that scale is justifiable by some future speculation. But
how you assess future probabilities. You look at the past,
you look at who's saying what, you try to parse it,
and then you're left with the temperament issue that we
(12:51):
talked about at the beginning, which is which story and
tone resonates most for you. I know that's really unsatisfying.
Like we want to know is this going to kill
us as this not? Is this the end of days?
Or is it not? And I get I feel like
having a certain humbleness about the inherent uncertainty of future outcomes.
I take solace in, of course, other people. That's really unsettling.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
But you've you've written recently in the Washington Post that
focusing on negative possibilities rather than probabilities is actually harmful. Yes, well,
what makes it harmful.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Because it at any given time, there's a lot of
negative possibilities. And look, we are wired to be highly
attuned to risks, and there's a lot of healthiness to that.
You know, we are wired to preserve ourselves, our species,
our family, our own bodies. And if you're too blithe
(13:44):
about the absence of risks, we know that can do
you harm. So I think there's there's healthiness in being
attuned to risk. But if you are unable to distinguish
between possibilities and probabilities, the manifold risks of what it's possible,
we'll just drown it out. So be an expert in
the field of AI do and be an expert in
(14:06):
the field of counter terrorism of biological warfare. You know,
how they sleep at night is really fascinating, right, because
they basically spend their days dealing with worst case scenarios
and like really bad worst case scenarios, and yet they
you know, they go to bed, they have kids, they
wake up, they live their lives, right, They live their
lives as if either they're going to prevent those worst
case scenarios from happening or as if they won't. And
(14:27):
then that's also pretty fascinating as an indicator.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, that's that's uh. I guess that's the kind of
the magic locomotive of human nature that is without which.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We would write. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
So, but talk about the question, which is also the
type of your podcast, the.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
What could go right? Yeah, we always ask what could
go wrong? Back to that observation of human beings are
wired to observe risks, and I think that that can
be healthy. But if you're not asking what could go
right in a particular situation, you're also leaving a lot
of opportunities, possibilities on the table in a way that's deleterious.
And if you start losing sight of the work that
(15:04):
people are doing, the efforts that are being made, the
change that has happened, the progress that is observable. My
fear is that individuals, groups, and societies that are convinced
that everything is going wrong are much more likely to
engage in behavior that enhance the likelihood that everything will
go wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This is like if there's a whole bunch of dog
shit on the street, and you're less like to pick
up the dog shit.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right, because you're like, what's the point, It's an endless
task that will go nowhere. It is the feeling of
why should I invest my time and energy in an
improbable future? Why start a business? Why right? Why you
have kids? Why do anything other than try to get
as much as you can as quickly as you can.
And I think we are in risk in the United
(15:50):
States in particular, of a degree of cynicism and pessimism
that leads to apathy, disengagement. Look, I think the angrier
people are, the more engaged they are, the more present.
They are probably a healthy thing, even though it's unpleasant
and difficult to live through. It's when you disengage and
retreat into I'm going to get as much as I
can while I can, because the world is going to
hell in a handbasket and there's no reason to think otherwise.
(16:12):
That you then lose whatever loco force you have. So
I'm trying to deal with issues in a constructive fashion,
but really deal with issues. I mean, as you'll see
if you listen to it, the podcast is not a
series of light easy topics like fun places to go
in Europe this summer like it's this. This is not
a podcast about let's just pay attention to what's joyful
(16:36):
and happy in my world. It's let's look at what's
really hard, but with a constructive eye.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So I mean, talk about what listeners can expect tangibly
from the podcast. We're going to play your episode with
Ian Bremer after this conversation between the two of us.
But you mentioned Sebastian Manabi is also am Marie Slaughter
and Anthony Scaramucci. A big list of household names. What's
your approach to a booky, and then what do you
do with the guests once you've got them in a seat.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So aspiration, I want to get as much of a
conversation as possible. That's hard to do, you know, as
we've observed, and I do the same thing. You know,
people promoting a book want to promote the book. They
don't want to have a conversation about whatever, even though
having that conversation in fact promotes them in the book.
So I want to have a conversation and a back
and forth. I want people to challenge me. I want
to challenge them. Sometimes that works better than other times,
(17:24):
and that depends on the chemistry with a guest. And
I want to engage ideas that they're passionate about, whether
that's AI, whether that's global politics, whether that's domestic politics,
whether that's our economy, how we're living socially, social isolating,
you know, any of these topics environment engage them with
an eye to be constructive. And often the conversation is
(17:47):
going to be looking at what's going wrong, but it's
looking at it from a perspective of are we missing something?
Are we missing something? You know, we're missing the green
shoots because we're focused on the dark clouds. And I
hope these conversations allow for a different tonality, a different sensibility. Again,
those are hard things. To market right, Come listen, because
(18:09):
you're going to get a different tone. But that's exactly it.
And I think that's the advantage of podcasts. It's the
advantage of a conversation. It's the advantage of a long
form thing. Tone shapes the entire conversation in a way
that it doesn't clearly as immediately do in the written form.
And so I hope this is a way of going, Hey,
we can talk about hard things with an eye toward
(18:31):
It's not the end of the world. There's other things
going on. There may be some hopeful patterns. Although I'm
not a call to action guy. Another one people have
always encouraged me. What's your call to action? What should
people do when they listen to this? And I'm like,
I don't know, Tell your friends listen more. I have
more of these conversations because ideas are not really a
(18:52):
bad action that they are ideas. They can lead to action,
They can spur action. If it leads to action, it
leads to a framework that's going to be all the best.
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into your episode with Ian Bremer. Now, just before we
(20:26):
do that, what should you know? What's the framework for it?
What should listeners be looking forward to?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So this is one of these episodes where I have
a long personal relationship with a person who I'm interview,
which I will do consistently. So I've known Ian for
a long time and we have had an ongoing discussion
about focusing too much on the risks and not enough
on the possibility.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
And he's one of the foremost foreign policy thinkers prognosticators, right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
But he's also built a business focusing on risks to
help companies understand the risk matrix that they are entering
into and help government to help individuals, all which is
vital and important, and he's brilliant at it. But my
challenge to him is, often, if we're focusing so much
on the risks, what are we potentially missing? And in
the conversation I have with him, may not do that
(21:12):
as much, but that's the spirit in which I enter
into it. Zichary Caribell, thank you, Thank you, Ian. It's
a pleasure to have you back. So we had this
conversation more than two years ago, right after October seventh,
twenty twenty three. If you're going to look at the
(21:32):
past two and a half years in the Middle East
from a risk perspective, I imagine things have probably gone worse
than one would have expected. But how much of this
would you have anticipated, not obviously in its specificity, but
in its general chaos.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So the big picture thing that was not surprising is
that Israel, given its military escalation dominance in the region,
was going to continue to be able to call the
shop some of the abilities that they displayed in terms
of targeting and assassinating all of the leaders of Hezbollah,
(22:07):
for example. I mean, the trade craft is quite something,
but that's not surprising. I think the surprising thing is
that Trump decided to go much bigger on Iran as
opposed to a repetition of the Twelve Day War, and
(22:28):
he's now gotten himself in the thick of it. And
the result of that has been that the one thing
that has been the most extraordinary development coming out of
the Middle East in the last twenty years, which has
been the globalization, and these world class economic models that
are being developed out of the Gulf, are now being
(22:51):
proven to be geopolitically extremely vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Because the Gulf States, of course, are also being targeted
and Iranian drones struck the grounds of a US consulate
in Dubai, setting it ablaze.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Multiple attacks on Kuwait last night.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It has been a pretty heavy day of Iranian missile
and drone attacks here in the Gulf.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Despite the ceasefire.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
There's a great deal of economic impact there's already been
felt in this region.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That is a surprise. It's not a surprise that they're
in the Middle East.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
It's just a surprise that the Tacit deal that had
been made to keep them out of the Fray has
completely unwound as a consequence of Trump deciding to decapitate
the Islamic Republic. He went bigger than the rules of
the game allowed, and now the dominoes have all come
(23:43):
tumbling down.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
So we're recording this at a time where we don't
really know, you know, what's going to happen by the
time you're listening to this. The straight up worms could
be open, it could be closed. It could be open
end closed. There could be ground troops, there could not
be ground troops. So we don't really know right now
exactly where this is headed in the next couple of
weeks between this conversation and when people are listening to
this conversation, I have to say one thing I've been
(24:05):
struck by, and I don't know if this is just
my own lack of focus, is you know, if you
step back from the strategic vulnerabilities of all the Gulf
states and the degree to which they have been drawn
into this conflict. Literally palpably that their air defenses and
their missile defenses and their drone defenses seem to be
extraordinarily good. You know, it seemed for years particular, the
(24:26):
Saudis were just sort of buying vanity hardware to make
their state look better, but that their military capacity was
fairly limited. It's kind of surprising how adept they are
at their own self defense and how much they have
clearly prepared. I don't know if they were preparing for
an Israeli attack, but they certainly were preparing for some
sort of airborne attacks.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So I guess I agree with that, Zach.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
But you know, the funny thing is, I don't think
I would have taken.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
That as a as a conclusion.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I mean, the Iranians have done a lot of learning.
They have been much more capable of hiding and dispersing
their weaponry to be able to continue to fire even
ballistic missiles after now as you and I are talking,
some four weeks of getting just the crap pounded out
of them by the Americans and the Israelis. Never mind
(25:18):
the drone capabilities that we knew that they had, and
that while the numbers of ballistic missiles that have been
used has gone down since the opening days of the war,
the percentage of targets that have gotten hit has gone up.
And the reason for that is not about capability. It's
(25:38):
about how much hardware these countries still have that they
are running out of the adequate defenses to ensure that
they can keep Iran.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Off of them.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
When I saw that the Prince Altan Airbase in Saudi Arabia,
which is the hardest target in Saudi Arabia to hit,
it is the most defended, was hit directly by an
Iranian missile after four weeks of the war, that makes
you think differently about war fighting. And when I see
(26:10):
twenty billion dollars of damage done to a cuttery LNG
facility that will take a minimum of three years to
repair by a drone from Iran that costs maybe one
hundred thousand dollars probably less, the answer to that is
we are in a much more asymmetric warfighting environment where
(26:31):
the Ukrainians can do a lot of damage to Russia
and where the Iranians can bring the global economy to
their knees. To me, that is the more surprising outcome
from the opening weeks of this war.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
There's always the kind of the bigger picture part, which
is obviously this particular kinetic conflict is going to end.
There's still going to be massive capacity for energy production,
fertilized production LNG oil in the Gulf. They're still likely,
although let's just say, we don't quite know going to
be an entrenched Islamic Republic in Iran for x period
(27:06):
of time, albeit a week in one. I'm not sure
what sort of lies on the other side in terms
of the global system, other than there will be a
continued preaching of we need to be more resilient. We
can't be said dependent on anyone choke point. I assume
there will be lots of money spent by lots of
people to create alternate supply chains for these things. But
(27:27):
kind of like all the things that were said during COVID,
where we were going to make all these supply chains
more resilient and never again, I'm sort of struck in
a way that even I had not really And what
I mean by even I is like I've written about
this stuff, have thought about it, but I hadn't been
as palpably aware that here we are again, right.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
European diversification post Russia Ukraine has helped them respond to
this crisis in a way that the Asians, for example,
are more vulnerable. I think that's interesting, But your broader
point holds. I mean, desalination is an absolutely critical node.
It's not hardened facilities, and you've got countries that are
(28:08):
relying on those plants for ninety percent in some cases
ninety eight percent of their water, and they are being
held hostage by the Iranians right now. If they are
taken out, then you're going to have mass exodus of
major cities.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
So that's a huge vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But also, I mean I don't see any amount because
supply chain resilience is expensive and you can do it
in limited ways to deal with you know, sort of
more expected shocks, but taking more than ten million barrels
of oil a day off of the market, not to
(28:50):
mention all the natural gas, the fertilizers, the plastics and
the rest. Taking that off the market for a month
or two months or more.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I don't see a world where.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You're going to have people spend to prepare for that.
I don't see that. What I see is that there
are certain countries that have been investing longer term that
are in better shape by virtue of the nature of
their political system. So the Chinese have just much more
full stockpiling in every commodity known demand that's helping them now.
(29:26):
And they're also investing much longer term and moving away from.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Oil and gas and towards renewables.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And think about what this means for the importance of
their electric vehicle, you know, sort of capabilities in BYD,
which was looking problematic because of involution competition suddenly looks
amazing again because Europeans and Asians just are going to
continue to turn away.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
From fossil fuel automobiles.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So China to me looks much stronger, not because they've
got suddenly resilience for ten million barrels of oil off
the table, but rather because they've been investing for the
long term for a long time.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
You know, one of the peculiarities I find of the
past month or two is we've got a lot of
satellite imagery of how war is playing out. We've got
a lot of pictures the Israeli's clearly had a lot
of on the ground intelligence, otherwise they couldn't have carried
out very since sundry assassinations of people in specific locations.
(30:26):
But there seems to be very little publicly disseminated information
about anything that's actually going on inside of Iran, Like
why is that? Is there information that just isn't being
publicly disseminated. So whatever the Israeli government has at its
disposal or the American government through human intelligence and or
(30:47):
other signal stuff is just not getting out. I mean,
that is possible, it's unusual that none of that gets out.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
One problem is that there is a state media in
Iran is a propaganda organ and unuseful from that regard.
Second problem is that there's almost no foreign media allowed.
Inter Ron CNN was allowed one journalist with a cameraman
and a driver.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
He was there for a bit and you.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Got a lot of information, But you don't have different
outlets that are providing information, so you're not getting those conversations.
Internet's shutdowns, so we're not hearing from average Iranians on
the ground, citizens and the rest. But also the Iranians
are putting out these memes and the memes are doing
extremely well, and the American government's putting out memes and
(31:35):
the memes are doing extremely well, and there's enormous amounts
of disinformation also, and so people are getting maximally their
attention is grabbed and they don't know what to believe,
meaning that the space for the limited amount of real
war journalism that's occurring, and there's not much of it,
(31:55):
is just not getting to people. I mean, if you
were following Al Jazeera on a daily basis, you'd be
getting a better sense of what's happening in Iran on
the ground, but you'd also have to do your own
fact checking because a lot of it turns out to
be badly sourced and faults, and not many people are
willing to do that, and certainly and understandably, the mainstream
(32:16):
media in the United States and in Europe is not
going to take that at face value.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
So you know what you're missing. I want to see vice.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
On the ground, right, like, I mean seriously, like who
are the people that are like have like the local
war correspondents that like have their phones and it's gritty
and it's not well produced, but they're at least getting
real stories out to.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Americans about here's what's happening. Like the Houthis.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Who's talking to the Hoothis. But what everyone understands that
they are in an utterly indispensable position if they decide
to go after the Saudi East West pipeline, individually, seven
million barrels of oil off the table. And it's because
they're now getting bought off by the Saudis. We have
heard from sources on the ground in Yemen that are
(33:05):
very credible that Yemeny fighter Huthi fighters have now in
the last week, for the.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
First time in months, gotten half salary.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
They were not getting paid at all, and it's because
the Saudis have provided them money, not a lot of money,
but some. And that's really important because it makes it
Everyone saw the headlines the Hoothies are in the war.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
No they're not.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
The Houthis launched the missile against Israel. The Hoothis are
not shutting down the Red Sea, They're not attacking Saudi energy.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
That is incredibly important. No one is talking to.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
The Hoothies except the other Hoodies.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
It's exactly your point, right, It's exactly your point.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So problem, let's broaden this from a moment because there's
that sort of information asymmetry and I'm struck in the
past month or so of you know, we live in
a world where we talk about just the sheer proliferation
tsunami of information and data, and yet in these in
certain areas of the world, right Turkmenistan, North Korea, Iran,
(34:01):
to a large degree, some aspects of Yemen, we have
remarkable little visibility and the capacity of governments clearly to
control that information outflow. And I suppose information inflow as
well seems remarkably high. I mean, not even including China obviously,
where there it's more of information as control more than
(34:22):
it is actually controlled information. But I mean, I wonder
if you've thought about this or what does this portend.
Are these the kind of the rule the exceptions of
the rules, or are these going to be the new
rules and the more open is going to be the exception.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Look, I don't think the United States is going to
become Turkmenistan. But obviously, when Trump is meeting with chijin
Ping and talking with them over the last year, Trump's
top priority in those bilateral conversations has been the acquisition
of TikTok before the midterm elections. Look, they allowed TikTok
(34:57):
to keep running in defiance of a piece of legislation.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
As ruled by Congress, which has the right to do that.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So it was they were ignoring law, and China eventually
allowed the sale to politically sanitized, acceptable people.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
It was not feasible that that.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Sale was going to go to someone that was a
political opponent of Trump in the United States. Why not
in an open media environment where your ostensible concern is
that you don't want the Chinese surveilling your data, it
just needs to be.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
An American company. That was never what was going to happen.
So I do.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Worry that increasingly, as you know, we talk about CNN
and Fox, but very few people watch those channels, and
they're mostly over seventy years old, so those are dying,
literally dying channels. And what people are getting their news
from social media. They're getting their news from TikTok and
(35:58):
Instagram and you tube and the rest, and algorithmically, the
control of what you see is increasingly in a small
number of hands which are themselves politically influenced or at
least subject to political influence, susceptible to political influence, and
that I think makes it a lot harder to imagine
(36:22):
that we're going to see a perpetuation of more free
flow of information where high quality outlets are available to
the average person. I think high quality outputs are still
available to a small number of people that are prepared
to pay for them. But that is very different than
the kind of information flow that you and I are
(36:44):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Seth. Actually, let's pivot from him and talk about that
information flow as it pertains to you in G zero. So, look,
you have a good deal of influence, you have a
certain amount of fame. You also have a lot of
elite access. But one of the things that has done
best for you over the past year, almost entirely via
social media, are your puppets and the social media virality
(37:07):
of the puppets. I mean, anyone who hasn't seen the
jew zero puppets? Is that? Am I calling them right?
Just as a title.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Puppet regime, which is the right name, It's definitely the
right name.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
It's political satire, it's political commentary, it's a good degree
of embedded information, meaning it's all the above at the
same time.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Don't need congressionization, that's not it goes special operation special.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I'm just doing my own version. You really are these
days so clearly there's a kind of a mixed bag. Right.
We're in a moment in time where the evils and
ills of social media, either as control as you just
talked about in the TikTok sale case, or as Jonathan
Height and the ills of which social media has done
to a generation, and laws banning that in Australia and
(37:55):
states in the United States, and suits coming down against
meta at a state level the States. And yet you
do have this kind of social media virality and education
that is powerful reaches a lot of people. Is clearly
it's not countercultural, right, but it is. It is speaking
some truth to power. It is a voice of independence
that if you were someone who wanted power and control,
(38:17):
you wouldn't probably be that fond of right And how
do you spare those Well.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I think that it's again, it's not centralized control. It's
just a wave of bots.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
My view, and it's sort of similar.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
You know that I started my education on the former
Soviet Union and my friends were dissidents, and they were
people that believed in the free flow of information and
they weren't going to get shut down, but they just
weren't very influential.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
And I think that this is a similar environment.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Like, Okay, I've got, you know, over a million followers
on Twitter, and if we put out a video with puppets,
it'll get some of them will get five million views,
which is pretty cool. And nobody owns us, nobody influences us, so.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
We can do what we want.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
I can't get fired in the way that CBS would
not do a show like this, no matter how well
they thought it would perform. They just wouldn't do it
because it's too vulnerable for them politically, given their relationship
with the government. And yet these are tiny drops in
an ocean compared to the vast.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Majority of information and disinformation that.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Is being algorithmically promoted to people in the United States
and elsewhere. I mean, when Elon owns the platform, when
Zuck owns the platform, when Trump's buddy owns TikTok, the
information that you're going to get is largely going to
be different than if the people were just creating things
(39:46):
that they.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Thought were interesting and worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So I don't pretend that most of what people are
doing is the interesting and worthwhile. But the more we
can do, and if I had ten times as many resources,
I'd have a lot more each and you know you
can aim and aspire towards that, but you know, as
long as I'm here, I'm gonna at least try. That's
I guess the way I view it is that you've
got to try. You've got to try, even if it's
(40:10):
not super effective. And and the fact that I've got
a platform and I'm pretty well known. If I'm trying,
that will also inspire younger people and other people in
my field that don't have the same reach. They say, well,
Eatan can get away with it, so I can get
away with it. It's important that they feel like they
can also be more public in their commentary and saying
(40:31):
what they think. At the end of the day, the
Soviet Union succeeded because people were censoring themselves. Self censorship
is the worst kind of censorship. It's the most pernicious.
You make an example of one person or ten, and
then a million decide that they're going to not act
in certain ways because it's not worth the risk. And
(40:52):
so you've got to You've got to do what you
can to try to erode the horrors of self censorship.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
It's funny, I mean, I think of it a little
differently and that the Progress Network also does these social
media clips, some of which get millions of views. And
I'm only saying that by way of yet, relative to
hundreds of billions or trillions of views, a few million
is not necessarily any more significant than any other few million.
And the ai cat video and the Bill Maher had
(41:21):
a hilarious reference the other day saying, the combined viewership
of Fox, MS now CNN is less than the guy
powerwashing his driveway on a TikTok video? Right, probably right?
Which is right? I mean, at that moment, I think
he said, you know, the amount that were watching any
of the cable channels on a nightly basis is three million,
(41:42):
maybe four million. The amount watching that view, right, even
your even one of the puppet views or one of
the viral Progress network views can get three four million views.
It's more that the noise drowns out all of it.
And I think there's that interesting question. And I don't
know how you feel about this now. I mean, you're
so in the risks of the world. It can be difficult,
I think to keep that in perspective. And maybe that's
(42:04):
entirely the right thing. But there's also the question of
is the noise a form of its own control, because
you can make the argument that the best way to
control an open society that prizes the theory or the
abstract theory of its openness is just flood the zone
with noise, because then you can get away with things
because there's so much noise, you just won't get noticed,
(42:25):
rather than go through the really herculean efforts of control,
which you do see in other societies, like the closed societies,
or like China, which is spent you know, good fifteen
years building.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Completely with this completely.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
But you could say the other side, which is the
noise is our source of freedom.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
The noise would be a source of freedom if it
was actually random noise coming from all these citizens.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
The noise is actually meant to induce anger and concern
and stress, and it's addictive.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
It's not just random walk through the hark, all these
different people doing different things noise and putin. This has
always been his strategy is I don't need to know
that to have the truth. I just need for people
to not know what the truth is. As long as
everything out there is plausible, then you can't turn anything away,
(43:20):
and that itself is a mechanism for control, and absolutely
I think that this is part of the Strategy's when
Steve Bannon says flood the zone with shit, I think
that's part of the strategy.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
And yet you do have the optimism of may Maybe
optimism is too extreme, but you do have the belief
that within that reality, putting out information in the case
of the puppets, satire in the case of your own
commentary is unarguably unbiased. You know, no one's paying you
to put out a set of views for a political purpose. Right,
(43:54):
I could be wrong.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
It happens all the time, but it's purely my being wrong.
It's not because someone's paying maybe.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
But you also believe that that noise will have an audience,
and a constructive one. As you said that if someone
sees you doing it, they might go, hey, this is doable.
You know, even within that more grim description, there's a
reality of they might not be neutral funnels, but they
are not completely controlled ones either. Right, there are things
that can coalesce and get out. I'm still struck by
(44:20):
somewhat of the eye of the beholder in that information
ecosystem where you can find a lot of information about
everything that can be incredibly valuable, it can be entertaining,
It can be both entertaining and valuable allah of the
puppet regime, And I take some hope from that, meaning
I'm not as grim about the noise as control, even though,
as I mean I brought it up in the first place,
(44:40):
I'm acutely aware of the degree to which that is
a theory of the case.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I just think that objectively, the information environment is worse
today than it was twenty or thirty years ago, and
we don't believe as much in our established media organs,
and I think with good reason, and there's much more
disinformation out there, and that's a problem, and people are
getting more addicted in their own filter bubbles and they're
(45:06):
not listening as much across those streams, and that's a problem.
But it is very different from saying that the information
environment is controlled, that you don't matter, that you can't
make a difference. I'm very sympathetic to people that are
in positions, they're senior positions, they're in the establishment media,
(45:27):
but they are working for someone else, and they understand
that that means that they can be fired. Right And
the media companies right now are mostly downsizing they're mostly
shedding employees because.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
They're not performing as well.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
The AD revenue isn't what it used to be, and
so these people are scared and they're not doing the
same job that they were doing twenty or thirty years ago.
And I think that that means for someone like myself,
I don't.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Answer to anybody. It's more incumbent on me to be
out there.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I think the person who's doing a better job is
someone that you and I both know and like quite
a bit.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
And that's for.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Reed, because Fared, in my view, has been every bit
as forthcoming and honest and speaking with authenticity and integrity
as I have tried to over the last five years.
But he's working for CNN right Actually much harder for
him to do it, much more consequential for him to
(46:26):
do it. And I speak to him about this a lot,
and how much I appreciate and respect the fact that
he continues to speak truth to power, and frankly, in
some ways in an uncomfort it's kind of uncomfortable for him.
My natural personality is to be out there and say
what I want. You know, I get on stage and
Farid is a little bit more buttoned up he's a
(46:47):
little more cautious, right. I don't think he'd wear a
hoodie with a blazer. I mean, that's just freed, right.
But he understands the importance of the moment. And for me,
the optimism doesn't come from the system. It doesn't come
from the institutions. The optimism comes from the people. The
optimism is that despite all of our lack of belief
(47:08):
in the fact that so much of this is coin operated,
so much of this is non representative, that actually individuals,
when you sit down and talk with them, are good people,
and they still want the truth and they want people
to believe in and they got it. They can sniff
it out when you're full of crap, and they'll turn
the channel when they think you're inauthentic, and they want that.
(47:31):
They want people that they can really connect with, and
that at the end of the day, that still matters,
And it mattered even in a system like the Soviet system.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
People understood.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
They used to say, you know, we pretend to work,
they pretend to pay us, which is a very empowering
thing to say in a dictatorship. It's a very empowered
thing to say in a place where what is truth
is determined. I mean, zan Yatin was out there for
the Russians, just like Orwell was in the West. But
they were living that and I think that the Soviets
(48:04):
damn well knew truth when they heard it. And I
think at the end of the day, so to Americans,
so do people all over the world.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
That to me is what drives optimism.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, I mean, oddly, one of the things that many
people who support Trump say that they appreciate about Trump
is this feeling of his authenticity. And I suppose, you know,
compared to how politicians tended to sound in the United
States in the latter part of the twentieth century into
the twenty first, he does sound authentic. I mean, he's
not beholden to the same conventions and you know, third
(48:37):
rails or things you're supposed to say and not to say.
And there is, at least in a nominally democratic society,
some degree of people kind of like that. Right.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Well, I think that Trump is authentically a bad person,
and I wish that weren't true, but I do.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
He was raised badly. I mean, if you've read any
of the history.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Right, I mean, like it was a very challenging and
kind of emotionally abusive environment, and he wasn't really cared
for adequately. And he's a bully, and he cares about himself,
and he doesn't really have affect for others around him.
He certainly doesn't care about his country. He's very short
term oriented. But I think he's authentic about all of
(49:24):
those things. That does not make him a good president,
but it does make him someone that people want to
listen to because they're sort of interest that they know
that when he says something, probably is the way he
actually cares. Trump does not give a fuck, right, and
there's something very liberating about not giving a fuck.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Now, I'm very different from that.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
People in my firm will tell you this, you're a
good friend, Zach, So you know this. I'm a chaos monkey, right,
but I do care about my fellow people like I
like to cause trouble. I'm mischievous, but I'm fundamentally good.
So I'm chaotic good. Trump is not good and and
and at the end of the day, as much as
we need authenticity, we also need to keep people that
(50:09):
aren't good away from us. And we certainly don't want
them in positions of leadership because they destroy shit and
and that that's what's happening with Trump. And a lot
of people out there say that I sain wash Trump.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
That's not true. I don't. I analyze him and.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
I try to help people understand what's happening without having.
Speaker 4 (50:27):
My hair on fire.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah, but I firmly believe he's unfit for the job.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, I mean, I just gorited. In an earlier piece,
I described Trump as a narcissistic chaos monkey, which I
kind of liked as a as a phraseology.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
It's too bad because since I just used chaos monkey
to describe myself.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
That I know, but not the narcissistic part.
Speaker 4 (50:46):
Uh no.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
But but the throwing is pooh at the wall perhaps part.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
That's what the narcissism part makes a big difference. I
know everyone uses the word narcissism these days, like everybody's
a narcissist, But there are some, and.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
He is one, mostly men, by the way.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
But that's beside the point. I mean, there is this
larger question right which we've had about democracies in the
world today, and there's the kind of you know, a
lot of these democracies, particularly in Northern Europe, have seemingly
succeeded in a lot of what governments were supposed to
do from time immempoyal. They've made sure that people were fed,
they've made sure people are housed, they've created social safety nets,
(51:24):
and yet everywhere we see these things fraying intensively with
a lot of populist anger. The United States is by
no means singular in this. It is particularly in the
Trump's story, right, but the trends and the flows are
not unique to the United States by any means. When
you kind of look around the world and then you
go to somewhere like China, which for the moment has
(51:45):
huge issues, but those are not its issues, right, how
do we explain all this in the world today? This
really easy question to answer.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
That when people feel, for a host of reasons that
are well known, that their leaders do not represent them,
and they do not believe that they can elicit change
through the existing system.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
They will operate outside that system.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Now, in some cases that means that they will have
a gray market or a black market, or they will
lay flat. As they hear in China among a lot
of young people, they're laying flat. They don't want to work.
They're not going to be a part of a state
owned enterprise, they don't join the communist party because there's
no benefit for it. In some cases they'll turn to violence,
(52:34):
they'll demonstrate. You know, we just did a survey at
G zero of the greatest number of political demonstrations in
the world over the last year, number being described as
people gathering nonviolent more than three for a political purpose.
India was number one, not a surprise. Also, the most
populus country in the world, the United States, was number.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
Two, and Iran was number three in the last year.
So interesting metal table.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Maybe not the one you would have expected, But there
also is increasingly political violence, right And I worry in
the same way that when the CEO of United Healthcare
is gone down by a relatively articulate college student who
decides the only way out of the system is through
that's a really bad signal. It's not data, it's just
(53:19):
a signal. But you and I are seeing more signals
like that now. I believe that some of those signals
are constructive. I believe in no King's Rally is a
constructive signal. I believe that FDR was a constructive response
in the United States to a kleptocratic system that provided
(53:41):
for its elites and FDR tried some things that were
against the law, tried to pack the Supreme Court, he
tried to purge his own Democratic Party. Failed, but he
eventually created an administrative state that was professional, that provided for
the people. He provided a new deal, He created the
basis for a working class and a middle class in
the United States. I think that we are going to
see more political revolutionaries in America after Trump fails, but
(54:04):
they don't need to be like Trump, and in fact,
it's highly unlikely they will, because Trump is a fairly
singular figure, right, I mean not just in the kind
of person he is, but also in how talented he is,
Like he's extraordinary communicator, world class communicator, and awareness of
how to build and maintain a brand.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
So bringing those two things together, that's hard.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
I suspect that it's at least as likely, maybe more likely,
the next political revolutionary in the US will be more
like FDR.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
And less like Trump.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
And I think that's great because obviously much of the
system needs to change, and it's not going to change
through its existing institutional frameworks.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
So as we wrap up, you know, we both sort
of came to frame the world in the nineteen nineties
at a time when the primary frame you were setting,
the Sevict Union had fallen apart, Berlin Wall had fallen,
there was the formation of the EU after decades of effort.
Fukiyama has been made fun of for prematurely declaring the
end of history, but it was a view of the
world that felt very palpable at the time, that much
(55:08):
of what had ailed the twentieth century, let alone human history,
had been resolved in a much more favorable fashion than
most people had dreamt of, and that there was a
really bright future on the other side of that, of technology,
of prosperity, and a lot of that. As we can
look back at thirty years, twenty five years, whatever the
decades are, was clearly excessively starry eyed about the world
(55:30):
and didn't acknowledge all the problems that remained. I just
wonder if we're if we have the privilege of having
this kind of conversation twenty five years from now, will
we feel as well that we were too focused on
all the things that were ailing us given that.
Speaker 4 (55:45):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
I think that geopolitics are cyclical, and in the same
way that economics are cyclical, they're boom and bus cycles.
And if you're in a bus cycle, you too gloomy
about everything. I mean, you know, a lot of traders say, like,
you know, so the the worst moment, that's just when
things are going to get great, that's when you should buy.
But I mean, the point is that geopolitical cycles are
long cycles. I wrote about the G zero world in
twenty twelve. It was obvious that we were coming to
(56:08):
a period where the balance of power was no longer
aligned with the rules of the road, with.
Speaker 4 (56:14):
The international architecture.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
And as that plays out, you're going to need to
reform your existing institutions, create new ones, and you're going
to see a lot more conflict in war.
Speaker 4 (56:23):
And that's what we're going through right now.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
So of course it's going to feel a lot more
negative because you're going through the long geopolitical recession. We
will get through it. There will be something afterwards. There
will be new rules, there will be new leadership, and
that's happening institutionally inside our countries too.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
So I think the fact that something is cyclical.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Gives you that push and pull, and when things are
at the peak, you start to feel really ebulliant and
think that trees can grow to the heavens and they can't.
And when things are towards the trough, you end up
seeing a lot more negative news coverage and not recognizing
that you're going to rebound, is the way I think
about the geopolitics.
Speaker 2 (57:02):
Well, that's a good way to end it, or a
good way to end the discussion. That a good way
to end the cycles. Thank you for your time. As always,
everyone should if you take one thing away from this conversation,
go check out puppet regime. I mean, if you know
Van's work, that's great, but if you haven't been paying
attention to the puppets, it's the best way to feel
like you're on top of what's going on in the world.
(57:23):
But you can also laugh about it.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
And if you take one other thing away from these conversations,
if you're at a basketball game, you see me and Zach,
you want to hang with us because that's where the
real conversation is happening.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Absolutely, please send me your thoughts at the progressnetwork dot
org or to my Edgy Optimist newsletter and we will
try to take them up. I'd certainly value the time
that you are dedicating to listening to this and hope
to be with you again. Next week,
Welcome to tech Stuff. I'm as Voloshin, and today we're
joined by Zachary Carabell. He's an author, an investor who
has written widely on history, economics, and international relations. He
writes a substack called The Edgy Optimist, and he's the
host of a podcast called What Could Go Write, which
I'm delighted to say Kaleidoscope is now producing. Today we're
going to hear from Zachary about the podcast and why
(00:37):
you should listen before playing this week's episode, But without
further ado, Zachary, welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Why thank you as.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
What makes you an Edgy Optimist?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Makes me an Edgi Optimist? Well, I'm not an optimist
full style. So I wrote this column in twenty eleven, twelve,
and thirteen for Slate and The Atlantic and Reuters right,
and I call it the Edgioptimist. And part of the
point was that was I thought when we were beginning
to descend into what I thought would be a more
temporary nature of pessimism and has remained a trough that
(01:09):
we have only deepened and have yet to get out
of it.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
This at the end of the first Obama presidency and
being a second rite all of a sudden, the kind
of the gold Well It's two thousand and financial crisis.
But I feel like from the nineties to the kind
of two thousand and eight era, like these are pretty good.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Yeah, nine to eleven being a you know, we had
a kind of a collective response to nine to eleven
that felt like we were coming together, and then we
you know, kept getting more and more dyspeptic and negative
at the same time. Because I had also thought about
the context of the nineteen nineties, where everything was great,
and everything we were on the cusp of utopian realizations
(01:45):
of wealth and connectivity and technical to deliberate history seriously
that if I was going to write a column that says, hey,
we should be paying attention to the things that are
good and not just paying attention to things are bad,
it is likely, given my temperament, that if we were
suddenly back on a nineteen nineties moment where everybody was
saying things are great, I would be the one saying, hey,
(02:05):
wait a minute, they're not quite as great as you think.
So I did that a little bit, as I wanted
to reserve the right to be edgy in the face
of other people's optimism. I have not yet needed to
do that because there has been no collective outbreak of
a surfeit of optimism.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
How have you managed to stay will be an edgy
one and optimist despite the chaos of the last few years.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
So, first of all, I think there's a bit of
a temperament reality here, which is we do the cliche
all the time, cup half full, cup half empty. Some
people see clouds, some people still see silver linings. So
I think, honestly there is a pure temperament aspect to it, right,
or just some of us who are more likely to
look at the bright sideways.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That's always what my dad says when I'm fitting sorry
for myself. He'said, maybe it's a temperament.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
And then there are those of us who constantly, in
tone the Monty Python end of the meaning of life,
you know, always look on the bright side of life
in the ironic sense as opposed to the English sense, right,
because you England doesn't have any optimists. So there's the
temperament part. Yeah, But I'm also aware of the fact
that the temperament part means that you should always surround
yourself with people of different temperaments. As a reality check.
(03:16):
I try given my inherently things are going to work out.
Human beings have a narrative of crisis followed by repair,
and that's certainly, I think been the story of humanity
large not necessarily individual nations, and definitely not individual people.
I mean, there are a lot of just really bad
stories about individual people and individual nations that don't end well.
(03:37):
So not for one minute do I think that everything
turns out okay. It's more of the grand scheme of things,
the Martin Luther King, the arc of history bends toward progress.
But in the meantime, so I don't know that there's
another answer to that. I think it is a willingness
(03:58):
and a discipline to look around the world and try
to find areas where humanity is at its best, even
if at multiple times it is in the midst of
humanity being at its worst.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
But you also media personality, and the easiest way to
succeed as a media personality is to be a doom merchant,
and yet you have persisted.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
That is why I'm not a more prominent media personality.
I mean, there was someone once said to me, for
there was about a five year period where I was
on CNBC a lot and I kind of played a
role on one of these talking head shows and someone
came up to me and said, I love you on TV.
I'm not saying this is the backpanding. I'm just saying
telling a narrative that I love you on TV? Why
aren't you on more? And I said, the question you
(04:41):
should be asking is how the hell is it that
I'm on as much as I am, given who I
am and what I do, Because you know, I was
always the guy who a producer would be whispering my
ear and trying to goad me into a really binary,
really absolute statement, which I would then ignore and proceed
to as politicians often do, just to answer the question
want a d answer in a rather meta and elliptical fashion.
(05:02):
So I do think you know, I say it jokingly,
but there is some truth to it that there is
a cost to being the person who will not do that.
I mean, there are lots of people I admire who
I think whose voices are brilliant and passionate and wonderful.
So I'm not for one minute saying everybody out there
is dooming and glooming and being hysterical and binary. But
(05:25):
on the whole, increasingly, news has always rewarded bad news.
There's never been good news. It's always been if it leads,
it leads. But the ecosystem of social media certainly is
much more friendly to those who are much more binary
and much more extreme in the moment. And you know,
I strive for trying to be Hence the edgy part
(05:45):
that there is an urgency to making sure sure we
look at what's working and challenging people to do that
in their own work.
Speaker 1 (05:52):
It's interesting you wrote to I'm not sure there isn't
a bitchery per se, but a kind of semi obituary
of Paul Early pronouncing it right recently in your newsletter,
who famously predicted the world would starve to death in
the seventies and was the most sought after talking head
in the world. I think you mentioned he was on
Johnny Carson twenty times. You know, it wasn't exactly Digedo
(06:13):
on the Witch is Dead Now You didn't you weren't.
There was no ad hominem element a bit, but there
was a sense in which here's somebody who was totally
wrong and got very famous for being a duma. What
made you want to kind of mark his passing.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I think it was important in that. Look, the world
of the commentariat is a world without consequence. You know.
We everyone can say something on Monday be proven completely
wrong on Friday. Say I said all along something that
is completely opposite to what they did, and there's zero accountability.
And that's just the way it is. I mean, there's
hardly any accountability in any walk of life these days.
(06:48):
So I think it's important to call people to account,
myself included. Right, I've had people email me with things
I've written and said, do you still think this? And
let's say eighty percent of the time the answers yes,
and twenty percent of time the answer is, yeah, no,
I got that one wrong, or I anticipated something in
a way that it didn't happen. Rlik is just so famously, profoundly,
(07:11):
unbelievably wrong and over decades and never stepped back and said, yeah, well,
maybe I got this one a little wrong. I mean,
he he was in the if you're going to predict
the end of the world, just don't give a date camp,
so that no matter how much his thesis of impending
doom wasn't playing out, he could always say, just wait
and hear are the signs? And hear the indications, and yeah,
(07:33):
maybe I got the timeframe wrong, although he actually gave
a date. I mean, as you said, like in these books,
he's like by the end of the nineteen seventies, and
then he's like by the end of the nineteen eighties,
So he at least could have been more held responsible.
I don't mean how responsible, like he should have been
taken out putting the public stocks and had rotten fruit
thrown in his face. I just mean, you know, ideas
do have consequence. I do this. You do this in
(07:56):
the belief that ideas have consequence. People value them in
a capitalist society of value them and are willing to
pay for them, or somebody is willing to subsidize them,
and that ideas matter. And his ideas shaped a generation
of attitudes and continues to.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Of scarcity, which some people trek to real world consequences
to his work, including you know, the one child policy
in China and immigration laws and stuff. But you have
focused on what Erlick missed essentially, which was there was
a technological solution that was going to emerge to take
pressure off food scarcity.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Yeah, I'm ready a book about corn as a technology
we eat.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
But explained about the corn so and what ERLK.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
Missed corn was a was an answer to the problem
that Erli positive, which is we're running out of food,
and then Erlic also said we're running out of resources,
food and resources, so that the carrying capacity of the
planet was being reached by too many people, not enough stuff, basically,
and you know, corn is one of the many examples,
but certainly one of the most profound of corn yields
(08:56):
just kept going up and not down, and they went
up faster than human popular which means corn doesn't just
feed people, it feeds animals, It provides fuel. And there's
a whole pushback to every single one of these maybe
it's not a good thing, and maybe it's not a
good use of land, but simply a parallel to that
equation of we're running out of stuff, we just didn't
run out of stuff, and we didn't run out of stuff,
(09:17):
whether it's oil. There was a whole peak oil theory
in the seventies too, because our technology made it possible
not to You couldn't have anticipated in the late seventies
that corn yields would triple. You couldn't have anticipated that
you would be able to drill twenty thousand feet under
the ocean bed and find oil because the technology wasn't there.
And part of the problem today is because of the
(09:39):
legacy of the nineteen nineties where the technologists promised everything
and only delivered something. That sort of techno optimism is
in disrepute because it did over promise. So if you
say today I believe technology will solve some of the
problems of global warming and climate change, that's a dismissable
statement because as in the past it was over promised.
(10:02):
It shouldn't be nearly as dismissable statement because in the
past we've created technologies to solve for problems that human
beings created.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I mean, I'm curious about the moment in technology as
you see it. You've also written a book about statistics
and numbers and how we measure things called leading indicators.
Are you familiar with the concept of P doom?
Speaker 2 (10:23):
No?
Speaker 1 (10:24):
But I mean you're tell me do P open brackets?
Doom closed brackets? Is the probability that AI will kill
us all? And you can be on a zero to
everywhere between zero to one. I think on the P
doom spectrum, what one being that doom is inevitable? Do
you think this discourse is just silly. I mean, what what?
How do you how do you view the kind of
existential risk around AI?
Speaker 2 (10:44):
We thank God because I was really worried we were
going to have a whole conversation and not mention AI
and it's going to leave me feeling kind of bereft. So,
like the problem of new technology is versus past technologies,
is that we can say with certainty that everybody freaked
out about a new technology in the past and it
all kind of turned out okay. But we know that
(11:05):
because it's the past, we don't know whether our present
will turn out okay in our future because we haven't
lived it yet and at any given moment those fears
were legit. So there's a whole uh. And I did
one of the podcasts this season with Sebastian Malami about
one of the creators of the current AI world, Demis Hasibis,
(11:26):
who created deep Mind for Google, and Sebastian actually wrote
a piece recently about Demis as Oppenheimer. You know, Oppenheimer
famously helps create the nuclear bomb and then says also
famously when the first test, you know, quotes from the Gita, says,
I'm become death, destroyer of world. But of course there
never was nuclear that was that was it? Right? I mean,
(11:47):
if you'd said to Openheim, we're going to use these
things once and then never again. But that's the thing, right,
you can only you can only speak to the president.
You can't speak to the future. And and it's interesting
you said the knock on like that's the whole optimus
pessimist problem, right in that if you say we haven't
done it yet, the realist or skeptical responses say, well, yeah,
(12:09):
but yeah, the reality is all we can do is
say what we know because we don't know about the
and you're right, maybe maybe none of you will be
listening to this because we'll all be dead. Right, let's
just stipulate that that is a possibility. And I think
that that is the you know, that's the rub of
these things, which is everything the doom, the p doom.
(12:30):
Wherever you are on that scale, every point along that
scale is right. And what I mean is every point
along that scale is justifiable by some future speculation. But
how you assess future probabilities. You look at the past,
you look at who's saying what, you try to parse it,
and then you're left with the temperament issue that we
(12:51):
talked about at the beginning, which is which story and
tone resonates most for you. I know that's really unsatisfying.
Like we want to know is this going to kill
us as this not? Is this the end of days?
Or is it not? And I get I feel like
having a certain humbleness about the inherent uncertainty of future outcomes.
I take solace in, of course, other people. That's really unsettling.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
But you've you've written recently in the Washington Post that
focusing on negative possibilities rather than probabilities is actually harmful. Yes, well,
what makes it harmful.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Because it at any given time, there's a lot of
negative possibilities. And look, we are wired to be highly
attuned to risks, and there's a lot of healthiness to that.
You know, we are wired to preserve ourselves, our species,
our family, our own bodies. And if you're too blithe
(13:44):
about the absence of risks, we know that can do
you harm. So I think there's there's healthiness in being
attuned to risk. But if you are unable to distinguish
between possibilities and probabilities, the manifold risks of what it's possible,
we'll just drown it out. So be an expert in
the field of AI do and be an expert in
(14:06):
the field of counter terrorism of biological warfare. You know,
how they sleep at night is really fascinating, right, because
they basically spend their days dealing with worst case scenarios
and like really bad worst case scenarios, and yet they
you know, they go to bed, they have kids, they
wake up, they live their lives, right, They live their
lives as if either they're going to prevent those worst
case scenarios from happening or as if they won't. And
(14:27):
then that's also pretty fascinating as an indicator.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Yeah, that's that's uh. I guess that's the kind of
the magic locomotive of human nature that is without which.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
We would write. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
So, but talk about the question, which is also the
type of your podcast, the.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
What could go right? Yeah, we always ask what could
go wrong? Back to that observation of human beings are
wired to observe risks, and I think that that can
be healthy. But if you're not asking what could go
right in a particular situation, you're also leaving a lot
of opportunities, possibilities on the table in a way that's deleterious.
And if you start losing sight of the work that
(15:04):
people are doing, the efforts that are being made, the
change that has happened, the progress that is observable. My
fear is that individuals, groups, and societies that are convinced
that everything is going wrong are much more likely to
engage in behavior that enhance the likelihood that everything will
go wrong.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
This is like if there's a whole bunch of dog
shit on the street, and you're less like to pick
up the dog shit.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Right, because you're like, what's the point, It's an endless
task that will go nowhere. It is the feeling of
why should I invest my time and energy in an
improbable future? Why start a business? Why right? Why you
have kids? Why do anything other than try to get
as much as you can as quickly as you can.
And I think we are in risk in the United
(15:50):
States in particular, of a degree of cynicism and pessimism
that leads to apathy, disengagement. Look, I think the angrier
people are, the more engaged they are, the more present.
They are probably a healthy thing, even though it's unpleasant
and difficult to live through. It's when you disengage and
retreat into I'm going to get as much as I
can while I can, because the world is going to
hell in a handbasket and there's no reason to think otherwise.
(16:12):
That you then lose whatever loco force you have. So
I'm trying to deal with issues in a constructive fashion,
but really deal with issues. I mean, as you'll see
if you listen to it, the podcast is not a
series of light easy topics like fun places to go
in Europe this summer like it's this. This is not
a podcast about let's just pay attention to what's joyful
(16:36):
and happy in my world. It's let's look at what's
really hard, but with a constructive eye.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
So I mean, talk about what listeners can expect tangibly
from the podcast. We're going to play your episode with
Ian Bremer after this conversation between the two of us.
But you mentioned Sebastian Manabi is also am Marie Slaughter
and Anthony Scaramucci. A big list of household names. What's
your approach to a booky, and then what do you
do with the guests once you've got them in a seat.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
So aspiration, I want to get as much of a
conversation as possible. That's hard to do, you know, as
we've observed, and I do the same thing. You know,
people promoting a book want to promote the book. They
don't want to have a conversation about whatever, even though
having that conversation in fact promotes them in the book.
So I want to have a conversation and a back
and forth. I want people to challenge me. I want
to challenge them. Sometimes that works better than other times,
(17:24):
and that depends on the chemistry with a guest. And
I want to engage ideas that they're passionate about, whether
that's AI, whether that's global politics, whether that's domestic politics,
whether that's our economy, how we're living socially, social isolating,
you know, any of these topics environment engage them with
an eye to be constructive. And often the conversation is
(17:47):
going to be looking at what's going wrong, but it's
looking at it from a perspective of are we missing something?
Are we missing something? You know, we're missing the green
shoots because we're focused on the dark clouds. And I
hope these conversations allow for a different tonality, a different sensibility. Again,
those are hard things. To market right, Come listen, because
(18:09):
you're going to get a different tone. But that's exactly it.
And I think that's the advantage of podcasts. It's the
advantage of a conversation. It's the advantage of a long
form thing. Tone shapes the entire conversation in a way
that it doesn't clearly as immediately do in the written form.
And so I hope this is a way of going, Hey,
we can talk about hard things with an eye toward
(18:31):
It's not the end of the world. There's other things
going on. There may be some hopeful patterns. Although I'm
not a call to action guy. Another one people have
always encouraged me. What's your call to action? What should
people do when they listen to this? And I'm like,
I don't know, Tell your friends listen more. I have
more of these conversations because ideas are not really a
(18:52):
bad action that they are ideas. They can lead to action,
They can spur action. If it leads to action, it
leads to a framework that's going to be all the best.
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(20:26):
do that, what should you know? What's the framework for it?
What should listeners be looking forward to?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
So this is one of these episodes where I have
a long personal relationship with a person who I'm interview,
which I will do consistently. So I've known Ian for
a long time and we have had an ongoing discussion
about focusing too much on the risks and not enough
on the possibility.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
And he's one of the foremost foreign policy thinkers prognosticators, right.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
But he's also built a business focusing on risks to
help companies understand the risk matrix that they are entering
into and help government to help individuals, all which is
vital and important, and he's brilliant at it. But my
challenge to him is, often, if we're focusing so much
on the risks, what are we potentially missing? And in
the conversation I have with him, may not do that
(21:12):
as much, but that's the spirit in which I enter
into it. Zichary Caribell, thank you, Thank you, Ian. It's
a pleasure to have you back. So we had this
conversation more than two years ago, right after October seventh,
twenty twenty three. If you're going to look at the
(21:32):
past two and a half years in the Middle East
from a risk perspective, I imagine things have probably gone worse
than one would have expected. But how much of this
would you have anticipated, not obviously in its specificity, but
in its general chaos.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
So the big picture thing that was not surprising is
that Israel, given its military escalation dominance in the region,
was going to continue to be able to call the
shop some of the abilities that they displayed in terms
of targeting and assassinating all of the leaders of Hezbollah,
(22:07):
for example. I mean, the trade craft is quite something,
but that's not surprising. I think the surprising thing is
that Trump decided to go much bigger on Iran as
opposed to a repetition of the Twelve Day War, and
(22:28):
he's now gotten himself in the thick of it. And
the result of that has been that the one thing
that has been the most extraordinary development coming out of
the Middle East in the last twenty years, which has
been the globalization, and these world class economic models that
are being developed out of the Gulf, are now being
(22:51):
proven to be geopolitically extremely vulnerable.
Speaker 4 (22:55):
Because the Gulf States, of course, are also being targeted
and Iranian drones struck the grounds of a US consulate
in Dubai, setting it ablaze.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Multiple attacks on Kuwait last night.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
It has been a pretty heavy day of Iranian missile
and drone attacks here in the Gulf.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Despite the ceasefire.
Speaker 3 (23:13):
There's a great deal of economic impact there's already been
felt in this region.
Speaker 4 (23:17):
That is a surprise. It's not a surprise that they're
in the Middle East.
Speaker 3 (23:22):
It's just a surprise that the Tacit deal that had
been made to keep them out of the Fray has
completely unwound as a consequence of Trump deciding to decapitate
the Islamic Republic. He went bigger than the rules of
the game allowed, and now the dominoes have all come
(23:43):
tumbling down.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
So we're recording this at a time where we don't
really know, you know, what's going to happen by the
time you're listening to this. The straight up worms could
be open, it could be closed. It could be open
end closed. There could be ground troops, there could not
be ground troops. So we don't really know right now
exactly where this is headed in the next couple of
weeks between this conversation and when people are listening to
this conversation, I have to say one thing I've been
(24:05):
struck by, and I don't know if this is just
my own lack of focus, is you know, if you
step back from the strategic vulnerabilities of all the Gulf
states and the degree to which they have been drawn
into this conflict. Literally palpably that their air defenses and
their missile defenses and their drone defenses seem to be
extraordinarily good. You know, it seemed for years particular, the
(24:26):
Saudis were just sort of buying vanity hardware to make
their state look better, but that their military capacity was
fairly limited. It's kind of surprising how adept they are
at their own self defense and how much they have
clearly prepared. I don't know if they were preparing for
an Israeli attack, but they certainly were preparing for some
sort of airborne attacks.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So I guess I agree with that, Zach.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
But you know, the funny thing is, I don't think
I would have taken.
Speaker 4 (24:53):
That as a as a conclusion.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I mean, the Iranians have done a lot of learning.
They have been much more capable of hiding and dispersing
their weaponry to be able to continue to fire even
ballistic missiles after now as you and I are talking,
some four weeks of getting just the crap pounded out
of them by the Americans and the Israelis. Never mind
(25:18):
the drone capabilities that we knew that they had, and
that while the numbers of ballistic missiles that have been
used has gone down since the opening days of the war,
the percentage of targets that have gotten hit has gone up.
And the reason for that is not about capability. It's
(25:38):
about how much hardware these countries still have that they
are running out of the adequate defenses to ensure that
they can keep Iran.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
Off of them.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
When I saw that the Prince Altan Airbase in Saudi Arabia,
which is the hardest target in Saudi Arabia to hit,
it is the most defended, was hit directly by an
Iranian missile after four weeks of the war, that makes
you think differently about war fighting. And when I see
(26:10):
twenty billion dollars of damage done to a cuttery LNG
facility that will take a minimum of three years to
repair by a drone from Iran that costs maybe one
hundred thousand dollars probably less, the answer to that is
we are in a much more asymmetric warfighting environment where
(26:31):
the Ukrainians can do a lot of damage to Russia
and where the Iranians can bring the global economy to
their knees. To me, that is the more surprising outcome
from the opening weeks of this war.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
There's always the kind of the bigger picture part, which
is obviously this particular kinetic conflict is going to end.
There's still going to be massive capacity for energy production,
fertilized production LNG oil in the Gulf. They're still likely,
although let's just say, we don't quite know going to
be an entrenched Islamic Republic in Iran for x period
(27:06):
of time, albeit a week in one. I'm not sure
what sort of lies on the other side in terms
of the global system, other than there will be a
continued preaching of we need to be more resilient. We
can't be said dependent on anyone choke point. I assume
there will be lots of money spent by lots of
people to create alternate supply chains for these things. But
(27:27):
kind of like all the things that were said during COVID,
where we were going to make all these supply chains
more resilient and never again, I'm sort of struck in
a way that even I had not really And what
I mean by even I is like I've written about
this stuff, have thought about it, but I hadn't been
as palpably aware that here we are again, right.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
European diversification post Russia Ukraine has helped them respond to
this crisis in a way that the Asians, for example,
are more vulnerable. I think that's interesting, But your broader
point holds. I mean, desalination is an absolutely critical node.
It's not hardened facilities, and you've got countries that are
(28:08):
relying on those plants for ninety percent in some cases
ninety eight percent of their water, and they are being
held hostage by the Iranians right now. If they are
taken out, then you're going to have mass exodus of
major cities.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
So that's a huge vulnerability.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
But also, I mean I don't see any amount because
supply chain resilience is expensive and you can do it
in limited ways to deal with you know, sort of
more expected shocks, but taking more than ten million barrels
of oil a day off of the market, not to
(28:50):
mention all the natural gas, the fertilizers, the plastics and
the rest. Taking that off the market for a month
or two months or more.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
I don't see a world where.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
You're going to have people spend to prepare for that.
I don't see that. What I see is that there
are certain countries that have been investing longer term that
are in better shape by virtue of the nature of
their political system. So the Chinese have just much more
full stockpiling in every commodity known demand that's helping them now.
(29:26):
And they're also investing much longer term and moving away from.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Oil and gas and towards renewables.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
And think about what this means for the importance of
their electric vehicle, you know, sort of capabilities in BYD,
which was looking problematic because of involution competition suddenly looks
amazing again because Europeans and Asians just are going to
continue to turn away.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
From fossil fuel automobiles.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So China to me looks much stronger, not because they've
got suddenly resilience for ten million barrels of oil off
the table, but rather because they've been investing for the
long term for a long time.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
You know, one of the peculiarities I find of the
past month or two is we've got a lot of
satellite imagery of how war is playing out. We've got
a lot of pictures the Israeli's clearly had a lot
of on the ground intelligence, otherwise they couldn't have carried
out very since sundry assassinations of people in specific locations.
(30:26):
But there seems to be very little publicly disseminated information
about anything that's actually going on inside of Iran, Like
why is that? Is there information that just isn't being
publicly disseminated. So whatever the Israeli government has at its
disposal or the American government through human intelligence and or
(30:47):
other signal stuff is just not getting out. I mean,
that is possible, it's unusual that none of that gets out.
Speaker 3 (30:54):
One problem is that there is a state media in
Iran is a propaganda organ and unuseful from that regard.
Second problem is that there's almost no foreign media allowed.
Inter Ron CNN was allowed one journalist with a cameraman
and a driver.
Speaker 4 (31:12):
He was there for a bit and you.
Speaker 3 (31:13):
Got a lot of information, But you don't have different
outlets that are providing information, so you're not getting those conversations.
Internet's shutdowns, so we're not hearing from average Iranians on
the ground, citizens and the rest. But also the Iranians
are putting out these memes and the memes are doing
extremely well, and the American government's putting out memes and
(31:35):
the memes are doing extremely well, and there's enormous amounts
of disinformation also, and so people are getting maximally their
attention is grabbed and they don't know what to believe,
meaning that the space for the limited amount of real
war journalism that's occurring, and there's not much of it,
(31:55):
is just not getting to people. I mean, if you
were following Al Jazeera on a daily basis, you'd be
getting a better sense of what's happening in Iran on
the ground, but you'd also have to do your own
fact checking because a lot of it turns out to
be badly sourced and faults, and not many people are
willing to do that, and certainly and understandably, the mainstream
(32:16):
media in the United States and in Europe is not
going to take that at face value.
Speaker 4 (32:21):
So you know what you're missing. I want to see vice.
Speaker 5 (32:24):
On the ground, right, like, I mean seriously, like who
are the people that are like have like the local
war correspondents that like have their phones and it's gritty
and it's not well produced, but they're at least getting
real stories out to.
Speaker 4 (32:39):
Americans about here's what's happening. Like the Houthis.
Speaker 3 (32:43):
Who's talking to the Hoothis. But what everyone understands that
they are in an utterly indispensable position if they decide
to go after the Saudi East West pipeline, individually, seven
million barrels of oil off the table. And it's because
they're now getting bought off by the Saudis. We have
heard from sources on the ground in Yemen that are
(33:05):
very credible that Yemeny fighter Huthi fighters have now in
the last week, for the.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
First time in months, gotten half salary.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
They were not getting paid at all, and it's because
the Saudis have provided them money, not a lot of money,
but some. And that's really important because it makes it
Everyone saw the headlines the Hoothies are in the war.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
No they're not.
Speaker 3 (33:24):
The Houthis launched the missile against Israel. The Hoothis are
not shutting down the Red Sea, They're not attacking Saudi energy.
Speaker 4 (33:31):
That is incredibly important. No one is talking to.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
The Hoothies except the other Hoodies.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
It's exactly your point, right, It's exactly your point.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
So problem, let's broaden this from a moment because there's
that sort of information asymmetry and I'm struck in the
past month or so of you know, we live in
a world where we talk about just the sheer proliferation
tsunami of information and data, and yet in these in
certain areas of the world, right Turkmenistan, North Korea, Iran,
(34:01):
to a large degree, some aspects of Yemen, we have
remarkable little visibility and the capacity of governments clearly to
control that information outflow. And I suppose information inflow as
well seems remarkably high. I mean, not even including China obviously,
where there it's more of information as control more than
(34:22):
it is actually controlled information. But I mean, I wonder
if you've thought about this or what does this portend.
Are these the kind of the rule the exceptions of
the rules, or are these going to be the new
rules and the more open is going to be the exception.
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Look, I don't think the United States is going to
become Turkmenistan. But obviously, when Trump is meeting with chijin
Ping and talking with them over the last year, Trump's
top priority in those bilateral conversations has been the acquisition
of TikTok before the midterm elections. Look, they allowed TikTok
(34:57):
to keep running in defiance of a piece of legislation.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
As ruled by Congress, which has the right to do that.
Speaker 3 (35:04):
So it was they were ignoring law, and China eventually
allowed the sale to politically sanitized, acceptable people.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
It was not feasible that that.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Sale was going to go to someone that was a
political opponent of Trump in the United States. Why not
in an open media environment where your ostensible concern is
that you don't want the Chinese surveilling your data, it
just needs to be.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
An American company. That was never what was going to happen.
So I do.
Speaker 3 (35:38):
Worry that increasingly, as you know, we talk about CNN
and Fox, but very few people watch those channels, and
they're mostly over seventy years old, so those are dying,
literally dying channels. And what people are getting their news
from social media. They're getting their news from TikTok and
(35:58):
Instagram and you tube and the rest, and algorithmically, the
control of what you see is increasingly in a small
number of hands which are themselves politically influenced or at
least subject to political influence, susceptible to political influence, and
that I think makes it a lot harder to imagine
(36:22):
that we're going to see a perpetuation of more free
flow of information where high quality outlets are available to
the average person. I think high quality outputs are still
available to a small number of people that are prepared
to pay for them. But that is very different than
the kind of information flow that you and I are
(36:44):
talking about.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Seth. Actually, let's pivot from him and talk about that
information flow as it pertains to you in G zero. So, look,
you have a good deal of influence, you have a
certain amount of fame. You also have a lot of
elite access. But one of the things that has done
best for you over the past year, almost entirely via
social media, are your puppets and the social media virality
(37:07):
of the puppets. I mean, anyone who hasn't seen the
jew zero puppets? Is that? Am I calling them right?
Just as a title.
Speaker 4 (37:12):
Puppet regime, which is the right name, It's definitely the
right name.
Speaker 2 (37:16):
It's political satire, it's political commentary, it's a good degree
of embedded information, meaning it's all the above at the
same time.
Speaker 4 (37:23):
Don't need congressionization, that's not it goes special operation special.
Speaker 2 (37:34):
I'm just doing my own version. You really are these
days so clearly there's a kind of a mixed bag. Right.
We're in a moment in time where the evils and
ills of social media, either as control as you just
talked about in the TikTok sale case, or as Jonathan
Height and the ills of which social media has done
to a generation, and laws banning that in Australia and
(37:55):
states in the United States, and suits coming down against
meta at a state level the States. And yet you
do have this kind of social media virality and education
that is powerful reaches a lot of people. Is clearly
it's not countercultural, right, but it is. It is speaking
some truth to power. It is a voice of independence
that if you were someone who wanted power and control,
(38:17):
you wouldn't probably be that fond of right And how
do you spare those Well.
Speaker 3 (38:22):
I think that it's again, it's not centralized control. It's
just a wave of bots.
Speaker 4 (38:30):
My view, and it's sort of similar.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
You know that I started my education on the former
Soviet Union and my friends were dissidents, and they were
people that believed in the free flow of information and
they weren't going to get shut down, but they just
weren't very influential.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
And I think that this is a similar environment.
Speaker 3 (38:48):
Like, Okay, I've got, you know, over a million followers
on Twitter, and if we put out a video with puppets,
it'll get some of them will get five million views,
which is pretty cool. And nobody owns us, nobody influences us, so.
Speaker 4 (39:04):
We can do what we want.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
I can't get fired in the way that CBS would
not do a show like this, no matter how well
they thought it would perform. They just wouldn't do it
because it's too vulnerable for them politically, given their relationship
with the government. And yet these are tiny drops in
an ocean compared to the vast.
Speaker 4 (39:23):
Majority of information and disinformation that.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Is being algorithmically promoted to people in the United States
and elsewhere. I mean, when Elon owns the platform, when
Zuck owns the platform, when Trump's buddy owns TikTok, the
information that you're going to get is largely going to
be different than if the people were just creating things
(39:46):
that they.
Speaker 4 (39:47):
Thought were interesting and worthwhile.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
So I don't pretend that most of what people are
doing is the interesting and worthwhile. But the more we
can do, and if I had ten times as many resources,
I'd have a lot more each and you know you
can aim and aspire towards that, but you know, as
long as I'm here, I'm gonna at least try. That's
I guess the way I view it is that you've
got to try. You've got to try, even if it's
(40:10):
not super effective. And and the fact that I've got
a platform and I'm pretty well known. If I'm trying,
that will also inspire younger people and other people in
my field that don't have the same reach. They say, well,
Eatan can get away with it, so I can get
away with it. It's important that they feel like they
can also be more public in their commentary and saying
(40:31):
what they think. At the end of the day, the
Soviet Union succeeded because people were censoring themselves. Self censorship
is the worst kind of censorship. It's the most pernicious.
You make an example of one person or ten, and
then a million decide that they're going to not act
in certain ways because it's not worth the risk. And
(40:52):
so you've got to You've got to do what you
can to try to erode the horrors of self censorship.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
It's funny, I mean, I think of it a little
differently and that the Progress Network also does these social
media clips, some of which get millions of views. And
I'm only saying that by way of yet, relative to
hundreds of billions or trillions of views, a few million
is not necessarily any more significant than any other few million.
And the ai cat video and the Bill Maher had
(41:21):
a hilarious reference the other day saying, the combined viewership
of Fox, MS now CNN is less than the guy
powerwashing his driveway on a TikTok video? Right, probably right?
Which is right? I mean, at that moment, I think
he said, you know, the amount that were watching any
of the cable channels on a nightly basis is three million,
(41:42):
maybe four million. The amount watching that view, right, even
your even one of the puppet views or one of
the viral Progress network views can get three four million views.
It's more that the noise drowns out all of it.
And I think there's that interesting question. And I don't
know how you feel about this now. I mean, you're
so in the risks of the world. It can be difficult,
I think to keep that in perspective. And maybe that's
(42:04):
entirely the right thing. But there's also the question of
is the noise a form of its own control, because
you can make the argument that the best way to
control an open society that prizes the theory or the
abstract theory of its openness is just flood the zone
with noise, because then you can get away with things
because there's so much noise, you just won't get noticed,
(42:25):
rather than go through the really herculean efforts of control,
which you do see in other societies, like the closed societies,
or like China, which is spent you know, good fifteen
years building.
Speaker 4 (42:35):
Completely with this completely.
Speaker 2 (42:37):
But you could say the other side, which is the
noise is our source of freedom.
Speaker 3 (42:40):
The noise would be a source of freedom if it
was actually random noise coming from all these citizens.
Speaker 4 (42:46):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
The noise is actually meant to induce anger and concern
and stress, and it's addictive.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
It's not.
Speaker 3 (42:57):
It's not just random walk through the hark, all these
different people doing different things noise and putin. This has
always been his strategy is I don't need to know
that to have the truth. I just need for people
to not know what the truth is. As long as
everything out there is plausible, then you can't turn anything away,
(43:20):
and that itself is a mechanism for control, and absolutely
I think that this is part of the Strategy's when
Steve Bannon says flood the zone with shit, I think
that's part of the strategy.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
And yet you do have the optimism of may Maybe
optimism is too extreme, but you do have the belief
that within that reality, putting out information in the case
of the puppets, satire in the case of your own
commentary is unarguably unbiased. You know, no one's paying you
to put out a set of views for a political purpose. Right,
(43:54):
I could be wrong.
Speaker 4 (43:55):
It happens all the time, but it's purely my being wrong.
It's not because someone's paying maybe.
Speaker 2 (44:00):
But you also believe that that noise will have an audience,
and a constructive one. As you said that if someone
sees you doing it, they might go, hey, this is doable.
You know, even within that more grim description, there's a
reality of they might not be neutral funnels, but they
are not completely controlled ones either. Right, there are things
that can coalesce and get out. I'm still struck by
(44:20):
somewhat of the eye of the beholder in that information
ecosystem where you can find a lot of information about
everything that can be incredibly valuable, it can be entertaining,
It can be both entertaining and valuable allah of the
puppet regime, And I take some hope from that, meaning
I'm not as grim about the noise as control, even though,
as I mean I brought it up in the first place,
(44:40):
I'm acutely aware of the degree to which that is
a theory of the case.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
I just think that objectively, the information environment is worse
today than it was twenty or thirty years ago, and
we don't believe as much in our established media organs,
and I think with good reason, and there's much more
disinformation out there, and that's a problem, and people are
getting more addicted in their own filter bubbles and they're
(45:06):
not listening as much across those streams, and that's a problem.
But it is very different from saying that the information
environment is controlled, that you don't matter, that you can't
make a difference. I'm very sympathetic to people that are
in positions, they're senior positions, they're in the establishment media,
(45:27):
but they are working for someone else, and they understand
that that means that they can be fired. Right And
the media companies right now are mostly downsizing they're mostly
shedding employees because.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
They're not performing as well.
Speaker 3 (45:42):
The AD revenue isn't what it used to be, and
so these people are scared and they're not doing the
same job that they were doing twenty or thirty years ago.
And I think that that means for someone like myself,
I don't.
Speaker 4 (45:55):
Answer to anybody. It's more incumbent on me to be
out there.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I think the person who's doing a better job is
someone that you and I both know and like quite
a bit.
Speaker 4 (46:05):
And that's for.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Reed, because Fared, in my view, has been every bit
as forthcoming and honest and speaking with authenticity and integrity
as I have tried to over the last five years.
But he's working for CNN right Actually much harder for
him to do it, much more consequential for him to
(46:26):
do it. And I speak to him about this a lot,
and how much I appreciate and respect the fact that
he continues to speak truth to power, and frankly, in
some ways in an uncomfort it's kind of uncomfortable for him.
My natural personality is to be out there and say
what I want. You know, I get on stage and
Farid is a little bit more buttoned up he's a
(46:47):
little more cautious, right. I don't think he'd wear a
hoodie with a blazer. I mean, that's just freed, right.
But he understands the importance of the moment. And for me,
the optimism doesn't come from the system. It doesn't come
from the institutions. The optimism comes from the people. The
optimism is that despite all of our lack of belief
(47:08):
in the fact that so much of this is coin operated,
so much of this is non representative, that actually individuals,
when you sit down and talk with them, are good people,
and they still want the truth and they want people
to believe in and they got it. They can sniff
it out when you're full of crap, and they'll turn
the channel when they think you're inauthentic, and they want that.
(47:31):
They want people that they can really connect with, and
that at the end of the day, that still matters,
And it mattered even in a system like the Soviet system.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
People understood.
Speaker 3 (47:40):
They used to say, you know, we pretend to work,
they pretend to pay us, which is a very empowering
thing to say in a dictatorship. It's a very empowered
thing to say in a place where what is truth
is determined. I mean, zan Yatin was out there for
the Russians, just like Orwell was in the West. But
they were living that and I think that the Soviets
(48:04):
damn well knew truth when they heard it. And I
think at the end of the day, so to Americans,
so do people all over the world.
Speaker 4 (48:11):
That to me is what drives optimism.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
Yeah, I mean, oddly, one of the things that many
people who support Trump say that they appreciate about Trump
is this feeling of his authenticity. And I suppose, you know,
compared to how politicians tended to sound in the United
States in the latter part of the twentieth century into
the twenty first, he does sound authentic. I mean, he's
not beholden to the same conventions and you know, third
(48:37):
rails or things you're supposed to say and not to say.
And there is, at least in a nominally democratic society,
some degree of people kind of like that. Right.
Speaker 3 (48:47):
Well, I think that Trump is authentically a bad person,
and I wish that weren't true, but I do.
Speaker 4 (48:58):
He was raised badly. I mean, if you've read any
of the history.
Speaker 3 (49:03):
Right, I mean, like it was a very challenging and
kind of emotionally abusive environment, and he wasn't really cared
for adequately. And he's a bully, and he cares about himself,
and he doesn't really have affect for others around him.
He certainly doesn't care about his country. He's very short
term oriented. But I think he's authentic about all of
(49:24):
those things. That does not make him a good president,
but it does make him someone that people want to
listen to because they're sort of interest that they know
that when he says something, probably is the way he
actually cares. Trump does not give a fuck, right, and
there's something very liberating about not giving a fuck.
Speaker 4 (49:43):
Now, I'm very different from that.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
People in my firm will tell you this, you're a
good friend, Zach, So you know this. I'm a chaos monkey, right,
but I do care about my fellow people like I
like to cause trouble. I'm mischievous, but I'm fundamentally good.
So I'm chaotic good. Trump is not good and and
and at the end of the day, as much as
we need authenticity, we also need to keep people that
(50:09):
aren't good away from us. And we certainly don't want
them in positions of leadership because they destroy shit and
and that that's what's happening with Trump. And a lot
of people out there say that I sain wash Trump.
Speaker 4 (50:21):
That's not true. I don't. I analyze him and.
Speaker 3 (50:23):
I try to help people understand what's happening without having.
Speaker 4 (50:27):
My hair on fire.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Yeah, but I firmly believe he's unfit for the job.
Speaker 2 (50:32):
Yeah, I mean, I just gorited. In an earlier piece,
I described Trump as a narcissistic chaos monkey, which I
kind of liked as a as a phraseology.
Speaker 3 (50:39):
It's too bad because since I just used chaos monkey
to describe myself.
Speaker 2 (50:42):
That I know, but not the narcissistic part.
Speaker 4 (50:46):
Uh no.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
But but the throwing is pooh at the wall perhaps part.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
That's what the narcissism part makes a big difference. I
know everyone uses the word narcissism these days, like everybody's
a narcissist, But there are some, and.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
He is one, mostly men, by the way.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
But that's beside the point. I mean, there is this
larger question right which we've had about democracies in the
world today, and there's the kind of you know, a
lot of these democracies, particularly in Northern Europe, have seemingly
succeeded in a lot of what governments were supposed to
do from time immempoyal. They've made sure that people were fed,
they've made sure people are housed, they've created social safety nets,
(51:24):
and yet everywhere we see these things fraying intensively with
a lot of populist anger. The United States is by
no means singular in this. It is particularly in the
Trump's story, right, but the trends and the flows are
not unique to the United States by any means. When
you kind of look around the world and then you
go to somewhere like China, which for the moment has
(51:45):
huge issues, but those are not its issues, right, how
do we explain all this in the world today? This
really easy question to answer.
Speaker 3 (51:53):
That when people feel, for a host of reasons that
are well known, that their leaders do not represent them,
and they do not believe that they can elicit change
through the existing system.
Speaker 4 (52:09):
They will operate outside that system.
Speaker 3 (52:12):
Now, in some cases that means that they will have
a gray market or a black market, or they will
lay flat. As they hear in China among a lot
of young people, they're laying flat. They don't want to work.
They're not going to be a part of a state
owned enterprise, they don't join the communist party because there's
no benefit for it. In some cases they'll turn to violence,
(52:34):
they'll demonstrate. You know, we just did a survey at
G zero of the greatest number of political demonstrations in
the world over the last year, number being described as
people gathering nonviolent more than three for a political purpose.
India was number one, not a surprise. Also, the most
populus country in the world, the United States, was number.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
Two, and Iran was number three in the last year.
So interesting metal table.
Speaker 3 (52:57):
Maybe not the one you would have expected, But there
also is increasingly political violence, right And I worry in
the same way that when the CEO of United Healthcare
is gone down by a relatively articulate college student who
decides the only way out of the system is through
that's a really bad signal. It's not data, it's just
(53:19):
a signal. But you and I are seeing more signals
like that now. I believe that some of those signals
are constructive. I believe in no King's Rally is a
constructive signal. I believe that FDR was a constructive response
in the United States to a kleptocratic system that provided
(53:41):
for its elites and FDR tried some things that were
against the law, tried to pack the Supreme Court, he
tried to purge his own Democratic Party. Failed, but he
eventually created an administrative state that was professional, that provided for
the people. He provided a new deal, He created the
basis for a working class and a middle class in
the United States. I think that we are going to
see more political revolutionaries in America after Trump fails, but
(54:04):
they don't need to be like Trump, and in fact,
it's highly unlikely they will, because Trump is a fairly
singular figure, right, I mean not just in the kind
of person he is, but also in how talented he is,
Like he's extraordinary communicator, world class communicator, and awareness of
how to build and maintain a brand.
Speaker 4 (54:24):
So bringing those two things together, that's hard.
Speaker 3 (54:28):
I suspect that it's at least as likely, maybe more likely,
the next political revolutionary in the US will be more
like FDR.
Speaker 4 (54:36):
And less like Trump.
Speaker 3 (54:38):
And I think that's great because obviously much of the
system needs to change, and it's not going to change
through its existing institutional frameworks.
Speaker 2 (54:46):
So as we wrap up, you know, we both sort
of came to frame the world in the nineteen nineties
at a time when the primary frame you were setting,
the Sevict Union had fallen apart, Berlin Wall had fallen,
there was the formation of the EU after decades of effort.
Fukiyama has been made fun of for prematurely declaring the
end of history, but it was a view of the
world that felt very palpable at the time, that much
(55:08):
of what had ailed the twentieth century, let alone human history,
had been resolved in a much more favorable fashion than
most people had dreamt of, and that there was a
really bright future on the other side of that, of technology,
of prosperity, and a lot of that. As we can
look back at thirty years, twenty five years, whatever the
decades are, was clearly excessively starry eyed about the world
(55:30):
and didn't acknowledge all the problems that remained. I just
wonder if we're if we have the privilege of having
this kind of conversation twenty five years from now, will
we feel as well that we were too focused on
all the things that were ailing us given that.
Speaker 4 (55:45):
I don't think so.
Speaker 3 (55:47):
I think that geopolitics are cyclical, and in the same
way that economics are cyclical, they're boom and bus cycles.
And if you're in a bus cycle, you too gloomy
about everything. I mean, you know, a lot of traders say, like,
you know, so the the worst moment, that's just when
things are going to get great, that's when you should buy.
But I mean, the point is that geopolitical cycles are
long cycles. I wrote about the G zero world in
twenty twelve. It was obvious that we were coming to
(56:08):
a period where the balance of power was no longer
aligned with the rules of the road, with.
Speaker 4 (56:14):
The international architecture.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
And as that plays out, you're going to need to
reform your existing institutions, create new ones, and you're going
to see a lot more conflict in war.
Speaker 4 (56:23):
And that's what we're going through right now.
Speaker 3 (56:25):
So of course it's going to feel a lot more
negative because you're going through the long geopolitical recession. We
will get through it. There will be something afterwards. There
will be new rules, there will be new leadership, and
that's happening institutionally inside our countries too.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
So I think the fact that something is cyclical.
Speaker 3 (56:42):
Gives you that push and pull, and when things are
at the peak, you start to feel really ebulliant and
think that trees can grow to the heavens and they can't.
And when things are towards the trough, you end up
seeing a lot more negative news coverage and not recognizing
that you're going to rebound, is the way I think
about the geopolitics.
Speaker 2 (57:02):
Well, that's a good way to end it, or a
good way to end the discussion. That a good way
to end the cycles. Thank you for your time. As always,
everyone should if you take one thing away from this conversation,
go check out puppet regime. I mean, if you know
Van's work, that's great, but if you haven't been paying
attention to the puppets, it's the best way to feel
like you're on top of what's going on in the world.
(57:23):
But you can also laugh about it.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
And if you take one other thing away from these conversations,
if you're at a basketball game, you see me and Zach,
you want to hang with us because that's where the
real conversation is happening.
Speaker 2 (57:31):
Absolutely, please send me your thoughts at the progressnetwork dot
org or to my Edgy Optimist newsletter and we will
try to take them up. I'd certainly value the time
that you are dedicating to listening to this and hope
to be with you again. Next week,
TechStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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