July 24, 2025 • 37 mins
After 10 years, CBS announced it was cancelling Stephen Colbert’s Late Show. This coincidentally came on the heels of his humorous excoriation of parent company Paramount’s $16 million deal with President Donald Trump over what the Republican claimed was bias in the editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. CBS journalists denied the allegation and legal experts said Trump’s claim was dead on arrival in court.
Colbert meanwhile referred to the payment as a “big fat bribe,” going on to imply that Paramount—led by Chair Shari Redstone—was paying off Trump in the hope he would green-light an $8 billion merger with SkyDance. (On Thursday evening, also the same day this episode was recorded, the FCC approved the deal). Given that Colbert had the best-rated show in its time slot, the move to cancel him was widely seen as a quid pro quo, driving yet another nail into the coffin of free expression. Add to that a GOP-controlled Congress taking back previously approved funding for public media (at Trump’s direction), and some see the end of a free press in America.
Or, less pessimistically, could it just be the end of outdated business models? This week on Everybody’s Business from Bloomberg Businessweek, Felix Gillette joins Max Chafkin and me to break down the Colbert firing. Gillette contends that, despite its ratings, Colbert’s show has been losing money since the pandemic and that it may have been cancelled in the near future anyway. He also points to the most recent episode of South Park, which tackles the issue of Colbert’s cancellation while taking aim at Trump. The creators of South Park just signed a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount (which owns Comedy Central). So maybe free expression is still alive and well, only it’s not so free anymore?
Then we take a look at the federal government. Max and Stacey talk with a former employee of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau about his experience getting fired by the “Department of Government Efficiency,” what he’s seen happen to the department since and some of the CFPB’s work that isn’t being done (and, in some cases, being undone). Also on this episode:
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Max and Stacey discuss the return of meme stocks: Kohls, GoPro, and Krispy Kreme are feeling the boost. Stacey gets reactions from Krispy Kreme customers.
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The underrated story of the week: Starbucks’ big plan for turning business around? Serving more coffee. Max takes issue.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacy Vanicksmith and Max. This week,
I think, is all about battles. We have got Trump
versus the media.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
We've also got Trump versus the federal government.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Oh yes, the Battle Royale. We talked to a former
worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And finally, our underrated story of the week, Stacey, Starbucks
battling its way back from losses.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Apparently the plan is selling coffee. Wow, wild, mind blown.
So the latest issue of Business Week is out and Max,
You've got the cover story. It's all about Elon and
Tesla and it's great. You should check it out.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, as you know, Stacy, I'm on the Elon In
podcast that's.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
You think about Elon Musky.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is thinking about Elon Musk all the time, and the
story I wrote is all about the ways in which
his empire has been stretched thin. It's been really interesting
following this, just talking to people who've been around him,
and also just reflecting on my own kind of long
relationship with Musk. I don't think things have ever been
this dire in his business empire, and he's been through
some difficult times. And that's interesting because Tesla, which as
(01:23):
we're recording this, the stock is down like nine percent today.
They just reported earnings. Wow, the earnings were bad. It's
been like this meme stock. It's been this thing that
no matter what they did, the stock price would go up.
And what's kind of funny is we're at this moment
where all the memestocks are actually doing quite well right now.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yes, meme stocks are back in the news in case
they have wandered out of the transm of your mind
or you're new to meme stock. So there's like this
group of investors, these kind of individual investors. It's a
group on Reddit, the social media site called Wall Street Bets,
and they kind of picked stocks and they all kind
of band together and buy them. And it's sort to
(02:01):
counteract the big, big short sellers of the world, who
will often target companies they think are failing, they'll bet
on them failing. And so Wall Street Bets comes in
and they're like, no, we love these companies like GameStop,
AMC theaters. These have been kind of the big ones.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Roaring Kitty, Tesla, Nvidia, a lot of companies you've heard
of too have been part of these dynamics, but like
right now, there's some new ones. There's some new Yeah,
suck all right, listeners, get out your robin Hood's no
just kidding, but beyond meat, which is like the fake
meat company, Coles, the ailing department store. I always love
(02:35):
Coles as like the worst department store in my town,
but I guess I know a lot of that was
like in the nineteen nineties. But anyway, Coles is soaring.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And then one other Stacy Krispy Kreme. Krispy Kreme Donuts.
It's been struggling for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
The taste of two thousand is back.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
But in the last month its stock is up seventy
five percent, And so I thought I should go, oh
two way Krispy Kreme Donuts. There's one in Times Square
that gets just a ton of traffic, And so I
stood outside and talked to some people coming out of
the Krispy Kreme to ask them what they were ordering
and how they felt about the company.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Do they think that the future value of this company
has increased by seventy f yes.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I feel like people on the street in Times Square
have a lot to tay about rock valuation.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I can't remember how you whatever it is you know.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Did you eat Krispy Kreme today?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What'd you get?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
One that was the classical, another with chocolate, and another
way of pink lay slow pink laze.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Glazed, donut plain blaze, yeah, plane glades. I got cake
batter and that was busting. Would you buy Krispy Kreme stock?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
No?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Why not? Because I'm all in on Solana. Would you
buy Krispy kremestock? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Maybe Krispy Kream is good in my eyes?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
More into crypto, so invest in doge coin?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Doge coin? Did you eat Krispy Kreme?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I did it today.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I've eaten a lot like raisin gains.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Too much chicken?
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Yeah, too much chicken. I would like to have one
in my season.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Oh are you from Italy?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know you guys have like the best food in
the world. Yeah, yeah, I know we have the best food.
But I love raisin cas Would you buy stock and
raisin canes?
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Would you buy Krispy kremestock? What is the company that
you would if you had extra money, if you would
invest in that company?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So many questions here? If listeners don't know. There was
a reference to Solana, which is a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I had not heard of it, but all these kids
were super into it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Amazing and kind of proves your point. You could imagine
a case, I suppose for buying Krispy kremestock. But I
feel like what that clip shows us is just that
this is a real thing, like young people, at least
the donut going public. Yeah, they like trading currencies and
stocks and doing all kinds of financial speculation that is
(04:59):
new in different.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, everybody there seemed to own crypto, except the Italian
who's really into fast food chicken.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
All right, Stacey. The big news and media this week
has been CBS's decision to cancel the Late Show. This
is Stephen Colbert's eleven thirty show. This is the show
that David Letterman created in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
The most popular show in that time slot.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. This is a business story, of course, because broadcast
TV has been a declining business. But it's also a
political story because, as you probably know, and as most
of our listeners know, Donald Trump has been on this
like revenge tour, basically going after everyone in media.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Trump versus media, who was mean to him.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We've seen sixty minutes pay a sixteen million dollar settlement
to Trump for what most people in the media anyways
see as a pretty normal interview with Kamala Harris for
a presidential candidate, which is like edited differently. Yeah, exactly.
We had this passage of a bill that cuts for funding
to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's the group that.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Finds us MBR always spent most of my career.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And the latest thing, of course, is Donald Trump suing
the Wall Street Journal for I believe ten billion dollars
that having to do with a report on the President's
alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein. So we had this battle
media versus Trump, but also media maybe against its own
declining business. And the perfect person is here to discuss this.
Felix Gillette, Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor, entertainment editor, author of It's
(06:29):
Not TV, The Spectacular, Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO. Felix,
How are.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
You good, Hi, Felix, Hi, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Felix. The cancelation of Colbert's show I think surprised a
lot of people. I mean, you saw it, even in
the audience reaction when Colbert told them that the show
is getting canceled, as Stacy said, I don't think the ratings.
You'll have to enlighten us. I don't think the ratings
were awesome, but they also weren't terrible. Were you surprised
by this?
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Well, the timing of it is little, sus As you
would say, it's the kids would say, yeah. Sherry Redstone,
the controlling owner of Paramount Global, is still trying to
get this deal done, to merge it with Skydance, to
cash out, finally, to get out of the media business.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
This is like would be this Megamurger.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Megan merger. It's an eight billion dollar deal.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
It's been just basically waiting for the FCC to sign
off on it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And just so people in a Paramount owns CBS, which
airs the late show the Red Minutes, Yeah, sixty minutes.
Why would you want to have to can Stephen.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Colbert in theory, this would just be another way to
play k Trump. It's another one of his critics, someone
he doesn't like. Oh, we're getting rid of him, and
they're waiting for Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC
who's close with Trump, to finally give regulatory approval for
this deal, which has been stuck in limbo. It's not
good for the company. The media landscape is changing every day,
(07:55):
it's evolving. They're kind of stuck in this awkward position
waiting for this deal to get approval. They've settled the
CBS lawsuit, which legal scholars have said had no merit whatsoever,
and so this could be seen as another thing to
do to try and get this merger approved.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
But I will say there's been no smoking gun.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yet so far for people that have really dug into
this soaking done about in terms of like Sherry Redstone
or David Ellison, who are trying to get this merger done,
stepping in saying what else could we do to get
the deal done to make Trump happy?
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Let's get rid of Colbert right Like, there's been nothing
that definitively showing there.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Was an explicit link between politics and this decisions.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
However, like a week ago or something, Colbert did a
whole segment about the settlement that you were just talking
about that paramount made with Trump over the over the
Kama Harris interview, and he called it a big, fat bribe.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with
a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
It's big fat bribe.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The fact that a week later this happened to happen. Yeah,
I mean, okay, correlation is not causation, but it's not
not causation, right.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
You have to look at the context.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And when CBS made this decision, they came out and said, oh,
this is for purely financial reasons, just coincidental, and there
are very good financial reasons for canceling this show.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Can you just lay those out for us Felix. Yes,
the show costs.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
One hundred million dollars plus to produce each year. But
it's also like ten years ago, you know, the show
is profitable.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
All these late night shows were profitable.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
During COVID nineteen, during the pandemic, the advertising really started
to fall down very very precipitously. And for the past
couple of years now the show has been losing money,
and not an insignificant amount of money. You know, the
reports that are up to you know, forty million dollars
a year and losses this year for the late show,
And they've looked at, you know, potentially ways of cutting
(09:52):
the costs. You know, Colbert makes I don't know, twenty
million dollars a year or something like that. You have
a staff of two hundred people to produce the show,
potentially cut, I mean.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
There's banned, you get a theater.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
But in the end, the economics of the entire genre
are just terrible. The advertising has plummeted, it's not coming back.
And yes, you know, Colbert has since come out and said,
how could this purely be a financial decision? Like, I'm
the leader in Late Night, I have the best ratings.
I'm beating you know, Jimmy Kimmel, I'm beating Jimmy Fallon.
(10:24):
But if the viewers aren't adding up to profits, if
it's losing tens of millions.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Of dollars, it's a loss leader.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
But if it's losing a bunch of money and it's
causing you potential headaches, and it's slightly off brand from
what the new owner wants, which is they don't want
to be known as this big resistance network. They want
to be presented as a very middle of the road
American network. And at the same time, once this deal
gets done, the future of the whole media world right now,
(10:53):
and very much for Paramount Global when it merges with
Skydance is streaming right, Like they're trying to transition from broadcast,
asked and cable era to streaming. And what does Colbert
do for you in the streaming era? Well, the answer
is he does nothing right Like, these shows have not
been able to make that transition from broadcasting cable to streaming.
(11:15):
I mean a bunch of people have tried, but for
whatever reason, that comedian hosted late night talk show format
has not transferred in the same way that like almost
every other genre of show has made it over to streaming.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I think anyone who's worked in media for a long
time knows that, like media companies don't make decisions that
are purely political or purely business, right, they'd be willing
to endure the hore of President Trump. I think if
it was minting money. And part of the issue is
it's like hard for an executive to justify a show
that is losing money and is creating political problems.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yes, do you think that the Colbert Show would have
been canceled if Stephen Colbert hadn't gone after Trump like that?
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Yes, it would be one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Maybe not now, but his contract is up next year, right,
so they were going to have to make a decision
about the show, and maybe they re up for another year,
maybe two years, but it is going away. These shows
are not going to sustain and the question was just
when was the whole thing and to disappear.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So I think another reason to be somewhat skeptical of
the business only argument is some of these other stories. Right,
we should talk about the general sense that media companies
are sort of bending the knee to President Trump, which
is not something that is kind of unique to media, right,
We've seen it in tech, and it came up during
the inauguration and so on this thing with NPR, Stacey,
(12:40):
can you explain what the cuts to NPR mean for
these radio stations because it's a story that's politicized, but
I don't know that it's totally political in the end.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That's interesting. I mean, I don't claim to have a
super deep understanding of it, but my understanding is this,
and Felix definitely correct me with what I get wrong here.
But so, the federal government gives a certain amount of
money to NPR itself, which is the national organization, but
also to the member stations, and the member stations operate
like little businesses, and so they will take this money
(13:14):
and they will use that money to pay staff and
things like that, but also to buy programming from NPR.
So one of there's biggest customers is these little stations
all around the country, some not so little, which will
you know, pay them for morning edition and all things
considered in all the flagship shows. So the major concern
(13:36):
here is that those stations often rely enormously on money
from the federal government NPR not as much.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Little radio stations like you know, in the middle of
the country where maybe the advertising market isn't great and
maybe if.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You're shout out to Boise State Public Radio, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
If you're if you're like a person who lives there,
this is like one of the only options you have, yeah,
for getting the news on the radio. I'm sure there's
debate there. Felix, what do you make of this sort
of argument of a chilling effect. Are you hearing concern
from people in media about this, about the sort of
dangers that this poses potentially to speech or something like that.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean I think it's been a concern. I
think that you know, the primary concern was the settlement
of these lawsuits.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
That had no merit.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
We've talked now extensively about what happened in CBS News,
but similar thing happened at ABC with George chap Monopolis. Again,
Disney owns ABC. This was another case where Trump sued
for I believe it was defamation, and another one where
legal scholars were like, if they fight this, they go
to court, they're going to win.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Before we end here, I just want to say one thing,
which is that I think Colbart is going to be
fine here, Like he's going to get more than twenty
million dollars in his next jobs.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's twenty million dollars a year. Like that's buy your
own island money.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And I feel like this is maybe hanging over the conversation,
but like, I think one reason these late night talk
shows had failed to take off in stream is because
there's a competitor to them, and it's podcasts, yes, and
those are generating tons of money. There was this article
in The Times earlier this week about Joe Budden's podcast,
which I have never listened to. I don't even know
if I've ever seen a clip of the podcast before.
(15:13):
And he's making twenty million bucks a year. He's making
Colbert money, right, So I got to think, like, I mean,
part of this is some media company will pay Colbert
to criticize President Trump. It's just going to be in
a different format.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And he'll have a podcast he'll have, you know, the
clips will be on YouTube. They're fans of Colbert will
get there, Colbert fixed one way or the other. Maybe
he'll have like a travel show where he goes to
it or something like that. Like he'll be around, he'll
be fine. The difference really is just what those podcasts.
One way that they're very different though, is they have
such tiny staffs, like you know, no band, yeah, and
(15:47):
you know, five people work on the show, right, as
opposed to two hundred staffers for Colbert. You know, Joe
Rogan has probably the you know, the most popular podcast
in the world, and it's like maybe it does and
people work on that time.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I mean, one thing that I do feel compelled to
mension is that, like the money might be the same,
but a lot is lost in that transition because if
you have a whole news organization, they can cover like
conflicts overseas, they can send people to Ukraine. If you're
Joe Rogan, even if you're making the same amount of money,
just the scope of what you do is a little different.
(16:22):
The idea that news is no longer like viable. It
feels very scary.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Today for that though. But one more counterpoint, which is
a Paramount also just paid one point five billion dollars
for the rights of south Park.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Park?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Makes me feel better? They're not going to send someone
to Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
They're not going to send someone to Ukraine. But did
either of you watched last night South Park episode No,
it is vicious? Yeah, Felix has probably watched this clip already.
It's very convoluted, but it's essentially the show is all
about the merger with Paramount, all about the risk of
free speech, and it ends Spoiler alert listeners, fast forward
(17:02):
the podcast if you don't want to hear this. It
ends with South Park the show essentially being forced to
create a pro Trump infomercial, and the infomercial that they
create is this. You're not going to be able to
describe it on.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It Trump walking through the desert. I mean, he's hot,
he's taking his jacket off, his guitar music playing Donald J. Trump.
Now he's okay. Now he's taking his shirt off he's okay,
well now he's naked except his socks. Oh wow, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But anyway, Stacy, I don't even think he's gonna be
able to describe this because her mouth is a game,
but because it's a family god, it's a very unflattering
everything and also delicious.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Yeah, it is amazing.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
This aired last night again from the company that's trying
to get this regulatory approval in Washington, that needs Trump
to basically sign off on it to get FCC to
prove it. You gotta think, you know, Sherry Redstone and
David Allison woke up this morning just like, are you
kidding me?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
What's next? This is crazy, But in a way it
makes their point, right, It shows in a strange way
if they're if they're trying to argue that, hey, we're
not silencing voices, right, maybe to have this as a yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
And then from purely financial reasons, the reason they're paying
one point five billion dollars to South Park for whatever
it is, dozens of new episodes, but also to control
the entire library of South Park for paramount plus for
their streaming service is because that is an incredibly valuable
asset for your streaming service. In a way that back
old episodes of The Tonight Show are worthless. Basically, no
(18:45):
one's going to go watch it, like even like a
week later. But those South Park episodes, you know, young viewers, teens, tweens,
college kids will be watching for potentially decades and they
generate a huge amount of engagement for your streaming service.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
Incredibly valuable.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
And so yeah, it's valuable, and it makes fun of
the president. Then it seems like that's okay, at least
for now, We'll see.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Felix Jillett covers entertainment for Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
So obviously, Max Trump versus the media is a big
battle going on right now. But I would argue maybe
the biggest battle going on since Trump took office is
almost Trump versus the federal government. And you have covered
this a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, I've been covering this all year, and this is
one of those stories that kind of I think receded
the background for a lot of people because Elon Musk
was sort of at the center of it. Remember he
created this thing called DOGE, the Department of Government of
Headlines everywhere's running around Shane Shane sawing the federal workforce,
and that's a big part of the story I just
(19:53):
wrote for Business Week, and he was kind of bounced
from the White House. And I think most people have assumed, Okay,
Doge is over right this Like it turns out that
you know, no one liked what Ela Musk was doing.
This and this kind of attack on the federal workforce
had come to an end, which I think is politically
what Trump was going for because that was very unpopular.
(20:14):
The problem is stacy, it is not really true.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yes, Doge is still going and so we wanted to
kind of check in and see what was going on there.
We wanted to talk to some of the workers who
were affected. We're really lucky to have right now with us.
Nick hand. He is a former employee at the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah. Nick is a technologist and he had worked basically
as an investigator for the CFPB looking into potential cases
of fraud or cases where banks were behaving inappropriately towards consumers.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Welcome, Nick, thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
So you lost your job at the CFPB under Doge,
if you don't mind, take us back to the I
guess moment when you found out you lost your job, Like,
how did that happen.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well, first, we got locked out of our accounts in
mid February. I was at home. It was dinner time
for the toddlers in the house, so I was cooking
dinner for my kids and got an alert on my
phone that I had to sign back to Outlook, which
was not a good sign, and tried to do that,
realized I couldn't, and then about an hour later, got
(21:20):
an email of standard form letter to my personal email
account that said that I had been terminated due to
the executive order from President Trump.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, that was the executive order, the President's sign that
called for a reduction in the federal workforce. Now, I'm guessing, Nick,
you were braced for a moment like this because by
February that there had already been news about the Trump
administration's plans to cut federal agencies. You had Elon Musk
doing his thing with Doge, and just a few days
before this moment, we're talking about the head of the
(21:50):
Office of Management and Budget. This is Russell Vote. He's
a figure within sort of the right wing movement, the
conservative movement. He co author of Project twenty twenty five.
Big guy in the sort of hard right world of
Trump had been appointed as the acting director of the CFPB,
the agency you worked for.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yes, Russell Vote had been appointed, I think just a
few days before that, and that was sort of the
sign that we were all getting prepared for this kind
of action. Elon Musk had tweeted delete CFPB I think
a few weeks before that. But everyone at the CPB
is used to this kind of thing. They've been trying
to get rid of the CPB for a long time, really,
since it has not been a popular agency with Republicans.
(22:30):
But once once Russell Bolge got appointed, we sort of
saw the writing on the wall.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Nick, tell us about some of the work you were
doing at the CFPB. You were a technologist. What does
that mean.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, I was in the enforcement division, and so my
day to day was working with attorneys to investigate big
banks or tech companies, you know, digital payment apps that
were using technology in some way to violate the law,
or to steal from consumers or you know, to cheat
consumers out of money, things like that. So you know
(23:04):
a lot a lot of times these days, it's it's
AI models. It's how they're using data, how they're using software.
If you're applying for a loan, for example, and you
get a sort of mysterious messages that you've been denied
because you know, some algorithm that they have denied you.
There are laws around how they can do that process,
what kinds of data they can use to deny people,
(23:25):
things like that, and we would dig into their algorithms
and their models and kind of find the proof that
you know, oh, you know, they're not following this law
and not following that law when they're dealing with consumers.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Nick, there were a lot of enforcement actions that I
guess over the last few months have have been dropped
or paused and so on. I'm kind of curious, can
you tell us, like which one specifically you're working on
or yeah, I can.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, you're exactly right. I think it's I think it's
been more than twenty now have been dropped. These were
cases that were brought twenty twenty four, twenty twenty three
and have been have been since dropped. One of the
cases I worked on was a case against the banks
who created the zell app.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
The money transfer app essentially exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, and we you know, alleged in that case that
we brought that these banks launched this product, they weren't
the main player in the space when they launched it.
Venmo was, and they sort of launched it without the
proper controls in place, the proper safeguards to prevent people
from you know, being scammed or defrauded, and it cost
(24:30):
consumers hundreds of millions of dollars that they got you know,
defrauded out of they weren't reimbursed for it. You know,
consumers would complain to these companies, oh, you know, my
phone was stolen. A thief you know, used it to
transfer away my life savings, like I need that money back.
But they weren't doing the proper investigations to then reimburse them,
so they were just denying, denying these requests for you know, reimbursement.
(24:54):
So we brought that case and unfortunately they dropped the
case in court a few months ago and sort of
letting you know, big banks off the hook.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, and we should say that the banks maintained that
the lawsuit didn't have merit. They called it quote legally
and factually flawed. Nick, you mentioned there's been a contingent
of both Republican politicians as well as lobbyists who really
hate this thing.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
On the other hand.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
A lot of the stuff that the CFPB has been
involved with has been I think, pretty popular and matters
to a lot of people. I'm kind of curious just
you're like, I think like a lot of people in government, right,
Like you are a well educated guy who had a
lot of job opportunities. I think, right, do you have
a PhD? Maybe in PhDs, So that's a good job.
(25:44):
As I understand it, physics PhDs are very employable. I mean,
I know that the technology job market is not quite
what it was maybe five years ago, but you know,
there's a time when people with your qualifications were getting
like massive job offers from the likes of Google and
Facebook and so on. And I'm just kind of curious,
kind of what prompted you to go into this work,
(26:07):
and like why you went into this in the first place.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, you're right. A lot of my graduate school colleagues
went to work for Facebook or for Google.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I went to Yeah, you could have been working on
the algorithms that the CFPB was trying to regulate.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
It's true, It's true, it's true. But you know, pretty
quickly I saw that these companies were just like hoovering
up data and you know, working every day to make
Mark Zuckerberg more money didn't seem like something that I
wanted to kind of dedicate my life to. And I
came back to my home city, Phildelphia, started working for
(26:40):
the local government here doing data science work, and kind
of fell in love with public service, and you know,
was lucky enough to land at the CPB, where every
day you're you're fighting really to get money back into
the pockets of people. The agency has returned over twenty
billion dollars directly to consumers since it was created, which
(27:02):
is kind of a shocking number. It's one of the
most efficient agencies in the federal governments. And you know,
not only do they we get that money back, but
they stopped that behavior, you know, moving forward. It's banks
overdraft fees, it's mortgage companies. If they you know, mess
up your mortgage, you know, people can lose their homes.
This is how the agency was created in the aftermath
(27:22):
of the Great Recession, payday lenders and increasingly it was
you know, tech companies, you know, these digital payment apps,
and we weren't trying to supervise those companies as well.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Now, shortly after you received this email, you got reinstated.
Can you talk a little bit about like what that
moment was, like how much time went by and what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It was, yeah, very strange. I think I was laid
off for about six weeks. It was just long enough
to kind of go through the unemployment process and got reinstated.
Of course, I had mailed my computer back, mailed my
laptop back, my ID car, all of that, so it
actually took them another two or three weeks to send
me my laptop back. So I was sort of being
(28:07):
paid to do nothing for the first two or three weeks.
It was sort of the model of inefficiency, if you will.
It was just really an insane process. And then I
had been reinstated. I think I was back for about
a month or so, but had already gone through the
process of applying for jobs and all of that, and
ended up putting in my two week notice and taking
(28:29):
another role because you know, I didn't have a lot
of confidence that I would stay employed at the CPB.
They tried to fire ninety five percent of the agency
the day that I gave my two week notice. That
was stopped by a court and is still stopped by
a court, so people are still employed there, but I
was at the time optimistic that I would stay employed
for the long term.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
You know, we heard a lot on the outside about
how DOS is operated, but I'm wondering what it was
like for you and your colleagues watching it happen to
your own agency.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
It was sad. It was frustrating. Everyone who works there
does such good work. Really, everyone is necessary, and to
have people come in and not understand what the agency
was doing, not understand a lot of the functions were
mandated by law that they were trying to get rid
of was just really unfortunate and shocking a lot of times.
I mean, some some pretty shocking testimony came out the
(29:25):
ongoing court case about how they wanted to reduce the
agency to five guys in a phone.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I've guys in a room, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, in a room. Yeah. So it's just a complete
lack of acknowledging that people this agency are humans who
are doing good work. But also this agency is just
on the side of ordinary Americans. So it's just everything
they were trying to do was just hurting you know,
ordinary Americans.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I mean, what's weird about the CFPB And I mean,
and I think it's one of the reasons it's gotten attention,
one of the reasons I focused on it in my
own reporting. Nick said this already, But like, it wasn't
that they tried to make it more efficient. They just
tried to get rid of it like all together. So
it was, in certain ways, like the most extreme version
of DOGE.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, and from the start it was obvious that the
goal was to just completely shut out the agency, you know,
as much as possible without without the input from Congress.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Weird side note. Also, CFPB is not funded by the
US It's funded by the FED, so it's not congressionally funded.
I mean that this opens up a whole other can
of worms. But but it doesn't really cost taxpayers, at
least not directly money. And I think you can make
an argument. Nick's making the argument now that you know it,
actually it probably makes money for taxpayer money with these
(30:41):
reclaiming settlements and so on.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, that's exactly exactly right. It costs taxpayers nothing, and
it just returns a lot of money to them when
you get screwed over by your bank or by your
your mortgage company for example.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
We've touched on Elon Musk a couple of times in
this conversation. But I just was thinking about the fact that,
like you mentioned Facebook, right, but you could have probably
got a job at SpaceX right, like your background as
for physics, pH he loves hiring those, right. I'm just
kind of curious if you say something to him now
about this, or could have had a chance to say
something to him, what would would it have been.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's a great question. I don't know if I have
something pithy to say to him. It's it's very clear
to me that this was never about fixing government. It
was about power. You know, his corporate interests and things
like that. You know, his his app. He's trying to
chart it into a payments app that he filed, you know,
(31:34):
for something called X Payments and that they're supposedly launching
this year. And you know, the CPP, they would be
the regulator who would regulate that payment service to make
sure people don't get you know, defraud and you don't
get scanned. I mean, there's already a lot of scammers
on X and you know, if you know, you introduced payments,
(31:57):
people are sending money around, it could be rife for
for fraudsters and scammers and the CPB would be the
government agency that was tasked with ensuring that they had
fraud controls and they were file following the law, you know,
in terms of consumer protection.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
That was Nick Hanned, astrophysicist and former employee at the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All right, Stacy, time for the
underrated story of the week.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
We agreed on this one, I think for.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Well, we did agree on this one.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, Stacy. Starbucks, the embattled coffee chain not totally dissimilar
from the embattled donut chain or the embattled department.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Store Chainey, what goes better with coffee than donuts?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Nothing?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But the thing you may not realize, Stacy, is that
Starbucks has been struggling in the last few years. And
it's partly because they kind of got away from coffee.
There all these donut eaters would go into a Starbucks
and there would be just a mass of teenage or
all buying these crazy drinks. Yes, and they got frustrated.
The coffee buyers have gotten frustrated. The drink buyers, even
(33:08):
some of them, have gotten frustrated because the lines were
so long. They got a new CEO. He's turning things around,
and can you guess what he's doing, Stacy.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I know that he's like trying to make the stores nicer,
having people write on the cups with sharpies and kind
of bringing things back to where they.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Started re emphasizing coffee. He's like, guys, guys, Starbucks, We're
a coffee company. We make coffee, and we should say that.
This is a BusinessWeek story that just came out how
Starbucks CEO plans to tame the rush hour free for all.
This is Brian Nichole. He is known as the guy
who turned around Taco Bell and then moved from that
(33:46):
great success. He introduced the Dorito's Locos taco.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Which, okay, well that was a stroke of g yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
He moved on to Chipotle, helped them recover from the
incident where they were accidentally wrapping e coli up with
their burritos, making people sick, and now he's here to
fix Starbucks the problem. I find this fascinating. As someone
who used to go to Starbucks a lot. You used
to a lot of love for Starbucks too, and I
guess people who spend time there know this. But Starbucks,
(34:12):
especially during the pandemic, did this huge business and having
people order stuff on their phones, and it kind of
just totally screwed up their business because it taught everyone
to order these insane like the Yolo drinks. I don't
even know what these things are, but it's like a
red thing and it's got like the cold phone.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
The Unicorn drinks. They went viral. They would be like
film videos on tiktoks. There were like really beautiful, kind
of ice creamy drinks.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
And these drinks are awesome at least some probably like
twelve year olds, think they're awesome, but like they're really
hard to make and they take a really long time
to make, which is okay maybe in the pandemic era
when you're ordering on your phone and maybe you're like
not working that hard and.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You also want to film yourself drinking something viral.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
But terrible during rush hour. What's so funny here? Is okay?
So it's like it's like all the obvious stuff, the coffee,
having the workers write little nice notes on the cups.
They're sort of imposing more of a dress code. I
guess they're basically trying to make Starbucks feel like the
way probably someone Brian Nichols Age maybe thinks of when.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
They think of Star Wars seasoned and correct, and they're
thinking it hasn't.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Gone that well yet. The story has a funny line
about a misstep where during pumpkin spice season, and listeners
may remember this, they not only had pumpkin spice, but
there were eight other apple and pecan flavored drinks. Eight. Yeah,
that's a lot, And like some of the things they
even still have still sound like pretty complicated to me,
(35:39):
like borderline mad libs, Like I guess one of the
new ones is sugar free vanilla latte with banana protein
cold foam so like, which I guess is what people want.
And so I don't know how you go.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Back to the bananny protein.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
When people want the banana.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Protein, the protein things the macros in that proteins having
a moment. Well, I will tell you this as someone
who used to go to Starbucks a lot. It just
takes so long to get coffee now, and they're all
like all these crazy fancy drinks that are going out
and the orders take a long time and are sort
of mesmerizing.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The weird thing is they're talking about going back to coffee.
But I think maybe they're wrong here, Stacey. I think
maybe the core identity of Starbucks. Even this is sad
for me as a coffee drinker to admit it's crazy.
Drinks like crazy, They just need to go crazier. Just
make them more expensive, make them more involved, more cold foam,
more weird protein.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Mom lines outside the shop just below the line.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
In there, it's gonna be the coals of coffee shops.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Mangus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer, Amy Keene our editor, and Brendan Francis
Newnham is our executive producer, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special thanks to Jeff Muscus,
Julia Rubin, and Maria Lynk. If you have a minute, listeners,
rate and review this show. It means a lot to us.
(37:05):
And you know what, Send us an email at Everybody's
at Bloomberg dot net. Tell us what your crazy Starbucks
order is or what your crazy meme stock is, and
you know we will think about it and take that
under consideration, think about ignoring that in the next episode
of the show. But that email is everybody with an
s at Bloomberg dot net. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
(37:27):
Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
This is Everybody's Business from Bloomberg BusinessWeek.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacy Vanicksmith and Max. This week,
I think, is all about battles. We have got Trump
versus the media.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
We've also got Trump versus the federal government.
Speaker 3 (00:25):
Oh yes, the Battle Royale. We talked to a former
worker at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And finally, our underrated story of the week, Stacey, Starbucks
battling its way back from losses.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Apparently the plan is selling coffee. Wow, wild, mind blown.
So the latest issue of Business Week is out and Max,
You've got the cover story. It's all about Elon and
Tesla and it's great. You should check it out.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, as you know, Stacy, I'm on the Elon In
podcast that's.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
You think about Elon Musky.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Is thinking about Elon Musk all the time, and the
story I wrote is all about the ways in which
his empire has been stretched thin. It's been really interesting
following this, just talking to people who've been around him,
and also just reflecting on my own kind of long
relationship with Musk. I don't think things have ever been
this dire in his business empire, and he's been through
some difficult times. And that's interesting because Tesla, which as
(01:23):
we're recording this, the stock is down like nine percent today.
They just reported earnings. Wow, the earnings were bad. It's
been like this meme stock. It's been this thing that
no matter what they did, the stock price would go up.
And what's kind of funny is we're at this moment
where all the memestocks are actually doing quite well right now.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yes, meme stocks are back in the news in case
they have wandered out of the transm of your mind
or you're new to meme stock. So there's like this
group of investors, these kind of individual investors. It's a
group on Reddit, the social media site called Wall Street Bets,
and they kind of picked stocks and they all kind
of band together and buy them. And it's sort to
(02:01):
counteract the big, big short sellers of the world, who
will often target companies they think are failing, they'll bet
on them failing. And so Wall Street Bets comes in
and they're like, no, we love these companies like GameStop,
AMC theaters. These have been kind of the big ones.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Roaring Kitty, Tesla, Nvidia, a lot of companies you've heard
of too have been part of these dynamics, but like
right now, there's some new ones. There's some new Yeah,
suck all right, listeners, get out your robin Hood's no
just kidding, but beyond meat, which is like the fake
meat company, Coles, the ailing department store. I always love
(02:35):
Coles as like the worst department store in my town,
but I guess I know a lot of that was
like in the nineteen nineties. But anyway, Coles is soaring.
Speaker 3 (02:45):
And then one other Stacy Krispy Kreme. Krispy Kreme Donuts.
It's been struggling for a while.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
The taste of two thousand is back.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
But in the last month its stock is up seventy
five percent, And so I thought I should go, oh
two way Krispy Kreme Donuts. There's one in Times Square
that gets just a ton of traffic, And so I
stood outside and talked to some people coming out of
the Krispy Kreme to ask them what they were ordering
and how they felt about the company.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Do they think that the future value of this company
has increased by seventy f yes.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
I feel like people on the street in Times Square
have a lot to tay about rock valuation.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
I can't remember how you whatever it is you know.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
Did you eat Krispy Kreme today?
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (03:28):
What'd you get?
Speaker 2 (03:29):
One that was the classical, another with chocolate, and another
way of pink lay slow pink laze.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Glazed, donut plain blaze, yeah, plane glades. I got cake
batter and that was busting. Would you buy Krispy Kreme stock?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
No?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Why not? Because I'm all in on Solana. Would you
buy Krispy kremestock? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
Maybe Krispy Kream is good in my eyes?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
More into crypto, so invest in doge coin?
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Doge coin? Did you eat Krispy Kreme?
Speaker 1 (04:00):
No?
Speaker 3 (04:00):
I did it today.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
I've eaten a lot like raisin gains.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
Too much chicken?
Speaker 5 (04:06):
Yeah, too much chicken. I would like to have one
in my season.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Oh are you from Italy?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:10):
You know you guys have like the best food in
the world. Yeah, yeah, I know we have the best food.
But I love raisin cas Would you buy stock and
raisin canes?
Speaker 5 (04:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Would you buy Krispy kremestock? What is the company that
you would if you had extra money, if you would
invest in that company?
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So many questions here? If listeners don't know. There was
a reference to Solana, which is a cryptocurrency.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
I had not heard of it, but all these kids
were super into it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Amazing and kind of proves your point. You could imagine
a case, I suppose for buying Krispy kremestock. But I
feel like what that clip shows us is just that
this is a real thing, like young people, at least
the donut going public. Yeah, they like trading currencies and
stocks and doing all kinds of financial speculation that is
(04:59):
new in different.
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Yeah, everybody there seemed to own crypto, except the Italian
who's really into fast food chicken.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
All right, Stacey. The big news and media this week
has been CBS's decision to cancel the Late Show. This
is Stephen Colbert's eleven thirty show. This is the show
that David Letterman created in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
The most popular show in that time slot.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah. This is a business story, of course, because broadcast
TV has been a declining business. But it's also a
political story because, as you probably know, and as most
of our listeners know, Donald Trump has been on this
like revenge tour, basically going after everyone in media.
Speaker 3 (05:41):
Trump versus media, who was mean to him.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
We've seen sixty minutes pay a sixteen million dollar settlement
to Trump for what most people in the media anyways
see as a pretty normal interview with Kamala Harris for
a presidential candidate, which is like edited differently. Yeah, exactly.
We had this passage of a bill that cuts for funding
to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That's the group that.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
Finds us MBR always spent most of my career.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
And the latest thing, of course, is Donald Trump suing
the Wall Street Journal for I believe ten billion dollars
that having to do with a report on the President's
alleged connections to Jeffrey Epstein. So we had this battle
media versus Trump, but also media maybe against its own
declining business. And the perfect person is here to discuss this.
Felix Gillette, Bloomberg BusinessWeek contributor, entertainment editor, author of It's
(06:29):
Not TV, The Spectacular, Rise, Revolution and Future of HBO. Felix,
How are.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
You good, Hi, Felix, Hi, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Felix. The cancelation of Colbert's show I think surprised a
lot of people. I mean, you saw it, even in
the audience reaction when Colbert told them that the show
is getting canceled, as Stacy said, I don't think the ratings.
You'll have to enlighten us. I don't think the ratings
were awesome, but they also weren't terrible. Were you surprised
by this?
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Well, the timing of it is little, sus As you
would say, it's the kids would say, yeah. Sherry Redstone,
the controlling owner of Paramount Global, is still trying to
get this deal done, to merge it with Skydance, to
cash out, finally, to get out of the media business.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
This is like would be this Megamurger.
Speaker 5 (07:15):
Megan merger. It's an eight billion dollar deal.
Speaker 4 (07:18):
It's been just basically waiting for the FCC to sign
off on it.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
And just so people in a Paramount owns CBS, which
airs the late show the Red Minutes, Yeah, sixty minutes.
Why would you want to have to can Stephen.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
Colbert in theory, this would just be another way to
play k Trump. It's another one of his critics, someone
he doesn't like. Oh, we're getting rid of him, and
they're waiting for Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC
who's close with Trump, to finally give regulatory approval for
this deal, which has been stuck in limbo. It's not
good for the company. The media landscape is changing every day,
(07:55):
it's evolving. They're kind of stuck in this awkward position
waiting for this deal to get approval. They've settled the
CBS lawsuit, which legal scholars have said had no merit whatsoever,
and so this could be seen as another thing to
do to try and get this merger approved.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
But I will say there's been no smoking gun.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yet so far for people that have really dug into
this soaking done about in terms of like Sherry Redstone
or David Ellison, who are trying to get this merger done,
stepping in saying what else could we do to get
the deal done to make Trump happy?
Speaker 5 (08:28):
Let's get rid of Colbert right Like, there's been nothing
that definitively showing there.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Was an explicit link between politics and this decisions.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
However, like a week ago or something, Colbert did a
whole segment about the settlement that you were just talking
about that paramount made with Trump over the over the
Kama Harris interview, and he called it a big, fat bribe.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
Now, I believe this kind of complicated financial settlement with
a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles.
Speaker 5 (08:57):
It's big fat bribe.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
The fact that a week later this happened to happen. Yeah,
I mean, okay, correlation is not causation, but it's not
not causation, right.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
You have to look at the context.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
And when CBS made this decision, they came out and said, oh,
this is for purely financial reasons, just coincidental, and there
are very good financial reasons for canceling this show.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Can you just lay those out for us Felix. Yes,
the show costs.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
One hundred million dollars plus to produce each year. But
it's also like ten years ago, you know, the show
is profitable.
Speaker 5 (09:28):
All these late night shows were profitable.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
During COVID nineteen, during the pandemic, the advertising really started
to fall down very very precipitously. And for the past
couple of years now the show has been losing money,
and not an insignificant amount of money. You know, the
reports that are up to you know, forty million dollars
a year and losses this year for the late show,
And they've looked at, you know, potentially ways of cutting
(09:52):
the costs. You know, Colbert makes I don't know, twenty
million dollars a year or something like that. You have
a staff of two hundred people to produce the show,
potentially cut, I mean.
Speaker 5 (10:01):
There's banned, you get a theater.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
But in the end, the economics of the entire genre
are just terrible. The advertising has plummeted, it's not coming back.
And yes, you know, Colbert has since come out and said,
how could this purely be a financial decision? Like, I'm
the leader in Late Night, I have the best ratings.
I'm beating you know, Jimmy Kimmel, I'm beating Jimmy Fallon.
(10:24):
But if the viewers aren't adding up to profits, if
it's losing tens of millions.
Speaker 5 (10:29):
Of dollars, it's a loss leader.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
But if it's losing a bunch of money and it's
causing you potential headaches, and it's slightly off brand from
what the new owner wants, which is they don't want
to be known as this big resistance network. They want
to be presented as a very middle of the road
American network. And at the same time, once this deal
gets done, the future of the whole media world right now,
(10:53):
and very much for Paramount Global when it merges with
Skydance is streaming right, Like they're trying to transition from broadcast,
asked and cable era to streaming. And what does Colbert
do for you in the streaming era? Well, the answer
is he does nothing right Like, these shows have not
been able to make that transition from broadcasting cable to streaming.
(11:15):
I mean a bunch of people have tried, but for
whatever reason, that comedian hosted late night talk show format
has not transferred in the same way that like almost
every other genre of show has made it over to streaming.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
I think anyone who's worked in media for a long
time knows that, like media companies don't make decisions that
are purely political or purely business, right, they'd be willing
to endure the hore of President Trump. I think if
it was minting money. And part of the issue is
it's like hard for an executive to justify a show
that is losing money and is creating political problems.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Yes, do you think that the Colbert Show would have
been canceled if Stephen Colbert hadn't gone after Trump like that?
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Yes, it would be one hundred percent.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Maybe not now, but his contract is up next year, right,
so they were going to have to make a decision
about the show, and maybe they re up for another year,
maybe two years, but it is going away. These shows
are not going to sustain and the question was just
when was the whole thing and to disappear.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
So I think another reason to be somewhat skeptical of
the business only argument is some of these other stories. Right,
we should talk about the general sense that media companies
are sort of bending the knee to President Trump, which
is not something that is kind of unique to media, right,
We've seen it in tech, and it came up during
the inauguration and so on this thing with NPR, Stacey,
(12:40):
can you explain what the cuts to NPR mean for
these radio stations because it's a story that's politicized, but
I don't know that it's totally political in the end.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
That's interesting. I mean, I don't claim to have a
super deep understanding of it, but my understanding is this,
and Felix definitely correct me with what I get wrong here.
But so, the federal government gives a certain amount of
money to NPR itself, which is the national organization, but
also to the member stations, and the member stations operate
like little businesses, and so they will take this money
(13:14):
and they will use that money to pay staff and
things like that, but also to buy programming from NPR.
So one of there's biggest customers is these little stations
all around the country, some not so little, which will
you know, pay them for morning edition and all things
considered in all the flagship shows. So the major concern
(13:36):
here is that those stations often rely enormously on money
from the federal government NPR not as much.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Little radio stations like you know, in the middle of
the country where maybe the advertising market isn't great and
maybe if.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
You're shout out to Boise State Public Radio, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
If you're if you're like a person who lives there,
this is like one of the only options you have, yeah,
for getting the news on the radio. I'm sure there's
debate there. Felix, what do you make of this sort
of argument of a chilling effect. Are you hearing concern
from people in media about this, about the sort of
dangers that this poses potentially to speech or something like that.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
Yeah, I mean I think it's been a concern. I
think that you know, the primary concern was the settlement
of these lawsuits.
Speaker 5 (14:16):
That had no merit.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
We've talked now extensively about what happened in CBS News,
but similar thing happened at ABC with George chap Monopolis. Again,
Disney owns ABC. This was another case where Trump sued
for I believe it was defamation, and another one where
legal scholars were like, if they fight this, they go
to court, they're going to win.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
Before we end here, I just want to say one thing,
which is that I think Colbart is going to be
fine here, Like he's going to get more than twenty
million dollars in his next jobs.
Speaker 3 (14:48):
It's twenty million dollars a year. Like that's buy your
own island money.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
And I feel like this is maybe hanging over the conversation,
but like, I think one reason these late night talk
shows had failed to take off in stream is because
there's a competitor to them, and it's podcasts, yes, and
those are generating tons of money. There was this article
in The Times earlier this week about Joe Budden's podcast,
which I have never listened to. I don't even know
if I've ever seen a clip of the podcast before.
(15:13):
And he's making twenty million bucks a year. He's making
Colbert money, right, So I got to think, like, I mean,
part of this is some media company will pay Colbert
to criticize President Trump. It's just going to be in
a different format.
Speaker 4 (15:25):
And he'll have a podcast he'll have, you know, the
clips will be on YouTube. They're fans of Colbert will
get there, Colbert fixed one way or the other. Maybe
he'll have like a travel show where he goes to
it or something like that. Like he'll be around, he'll
be fine. The difference really is just what those podcasts.
One way that they're very different though, is they have
such tiny staffs, like you know, no band, yeah, and
(15:47):
you know, five people work on the show, right, as
opposed to two hundred staffers for Colbert. You know, Joe
Rogan has probably the you know, the most popular podcast
in the world, and it's like maybe it does and
people work on that time.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
I mean, one thing that I do feel compelled to
mension is that, like the money might be the same,
but a lot is lost in that transition because if
you have a whole news organization, they can cover like
conflicts overseas, they can send people to Ukraine. If you're
Joe Rogan, even if you're making the same amount of money,
just the scope of what you do is a little different.
(16:22):
The idea that news is no longer like viable. It
feels very scary.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Today for that though. But one more counterpoint, which is
a Paramount also just paid one point five billion dollars
for the rights of south Park.
Speaker 5 (16:36):
Did you see that?
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Park?
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Makes me feel better? They're not going to send someone
to Ukraine.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
They're not going to send someone to Ukraine. But did
either of you watched last night South Park episode No,
it is vicious? Yeah, Felix has probably watched this clip already.
It's very convoluted, but it's essentially the show is all
about the merger with Paramount, all about the risk of
free speech, and it ends Spoiler alert listeners, fast forward
(17:02):
the podcast if you don't want to hear this. It
ends with South Park the show essentially being forced to
create a pro Trump infomercial, and the infomercial that they
create is this. You're not going to be able to
describe it on.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It Trump walking through the desert. I mean, he's hot,
he's taking his jacket off, his guitar music playing Donald J. Trump.
Now he's okay. Now he's taking his shirt off he's okay,
well now he's naked except his socks. Oh wow, okay.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But anyway, Stacy, I don't even think he's gonna be
able to describe this because her mouth is a game,
but because it's a family god, it's a very unflattering
everything and also delicious.
Speaker 5 (17:49):
Yeah, it is amazing.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
This aired last night again from the company that's trying
to get this regulatory approval in Washington, that needs Trump
to basically sign off on it to get FCC to
prove it. You gotta think, you know, Sherry Redstone and
David Allison woke up this morning just like, are you
kidding me?
Speaker 2 (18:08):
What's next? This is crazy, But in a way it
makes their point, right, It shows in a strange way
if they're if they're trying to argue that, hey, we're
not silencing voices, right, maybe to have this as a yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:21):
And then from purely financial reasons, the reason they're paying
one point five billion dollars to South Park for whatever
it is, dozens of new episodes, but also to control
the entire library of South Park for paramount plus for
their streaming service is because that is an incredibly valuable
asset for your streaming service. In a way that back
old episodes of The Tonight Show are worthless. Basically, no
(18:45):
one's going to go watch it, like even like a
week later. But those South Park episodes, you know, young viewers, teens, tweens,
college kids will be watching for potentially decades and they
generate a huge amount of engagement for your streaming service.
Speaker 5 (19:01):
Incredibly valuable.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
And so yeah, it's valuable, and it makes fun of
the president. Then it seems like that's okay, at least
for now, We'll see.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Felix Jillett covers entertainment for Bloomberg.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
So obviously, Max Trump versus the media is a big
battle going on right now. But I would argue maybe
the biggest battle going on since Trump took office is
almost Trump versus the federal government. And you have covered
this a lot.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
Yeah, I've been covering this all year, and this is
one of those stories that kind of I think receded
the background for a lot of people because Elon Musk
was sort of at the center of it. Remember he
created this thing called DOGE, the Department of Government of
Headlines everywhere's running around Shane Shane sawing the federal workforce,
and that's a big part of the story I just
(19:53):
wrote for Business Week, and he was kind of bounced
from the White House. And I think most people have assumed, Okay,
Doge is over right this Like it turns out that
you know, no one liked what Ela Musk was doing.
This and this kind of attack on the federal workforce
had come to an end, which I think is politically
what Trump was going for because that was very unpopular.
(20:14):
The problem is stacy, it is not really true.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Yes, Doge is still going and so we wanted to
kind of check in and see what was going on there.
We wanted to talk to some of the workers who
were affected. We're really lucky to have right now with us.
Nick hand. He is a former employee at the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
Yeah. Nick is a technologist and he had worked basically
as an investigator for the CFPB looking into potential cases
of fraud or cases where banks were behaving inappropriately towards consumers.
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Welcome, Nick, thank you.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
I'm happy to be here.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
So you lost your job at the CFPB under Doge,
if you don't mind, take us back to the I
guess moment when you found out you lost your job, Like,
how did that happen.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Well, first, we got locked out of our accounts in
mid February. I was at home. It was dinner time
for the toddlers in the house, so I was cooking
dinner for my kids and got an alert on my
phone that I had to sign back to Outlook, which
was not a good sign, and tried to do that,
realized I couldn't, and then about an hour later, got
(21:20):
an email of standard form letter to my personal email
account that said that I had been terminated due to
the executive order from President Trump.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Yeah, that was the executive order, the President's sign that
called for a reduction in the federal workforce. Now, I'm guessing, Nick,
you were braced for a moment like this because by
February that there had already been news about the Trump
administration's plans to cut federal agencies. You had Elon Musk
doing his thing with Doge, and just a few days
before this moment, we're talking about the head of the
(21:50):
Office of Management and Budget. This is Russell Vote. He's
a figure within sort of the right wing movement, the
conservative movement. He co author of Project twenty twenty five.
Big guy in the sort of hard right world of
Trump had been appointed as the acting director of the CFPB,
the agency you worked for.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
Yes, Russell Vote had been appointed, I think just a
few days before that, and that was sort of the
sign that we were all getting prepared for this kind
of action. Elon Musk had tweeted delete CFPB I think
a few weeks before that. But everyone at the CPB
is used to this kind of thing. They've been trying
to get rid of the CPB for a long time, really,
since it has not been a popular agency with Republicans.
(22:30):
But once once Russell Bolge got appointed, we sort of
saw the writing on the wall.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Nick, tell us about some of the work you were
doing at the CFPB. You were a technologist. What does
that mean.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
Yeah, I was in the enforcement division, and so my
day to day was working with attorneys to investigate big
banks or tech companies, you know, digital payment apps that
were using technology in some way to violate the law,
or to steal from consumers or you know, to cheat
consumers out of money, things like that. So you know
(23:04):
a lot a lot of times these days, it's it's
AI models. It's how they're using data, how they're using software.
If you're applying for a loan, for example, and you
get a sort of mysterious messages that you've been denied
because you know, some algorithm that they have denied you.
There are laws around how they can do that process,
what kinds of data they can use to deny people,
(23:25):
things like that, and we would dig into their algorithms
and their models and kind of find the proof that
you know, oh, you know, they're not following this law
and not following that law when they're dealing with consumers.
Speaker 2 (23:37):
Nick, there were a lot of enforcement actions that I
guess over the last few months have have been dropped
or paused and so on. I'm kind of curious, can
you tell us, like which one specifically you're working on
or yeah, I can.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Yeah, you're exactly right. I think it's I think it's
been more than twenty now have been dropped. These were
cases that were brought twenty twenty four, twenty twenty three
and have been have been since dropped. One of the
cases I worked on was a case against the banks
who created the zell app.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
The money transfer app essentially exactly.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, and we you know, alleged in that case that
we brought that these banks launched this product, they weren't
the main player in the space when they launched it.
Venmo was, and they sort of launched it without the
proper controls in place, the proper safeguards to prevent people
from you know, being scammed or defrauded, and it cost
(24:30):
consumers hundreds of millions of dollars that they got you know,
defrauded out of they weren't reimbursed for it. You know,
consumers would complain to these companies, oh, you know, my
phone was stolen. A thief you know, used it to
transfer away my life savings, like I need that money back.
But they weren't doing the proper investigations to then reimburse them,
so they were just denying, denying these requests for you know, reimbursement.
(24:54):
So we brought that case and unfortunately they dropped the
case in court a few months ago and sort of
letting you know, big banks off the hook.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
Yeah, and we should say that the banks maintained that
the lawsuit didn't have merit. They called it quote legally
and factually flawed. Nick, you mentioned there's been a contingent
of both Republican politicians as well as lobbyists who really
hate this thing.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
On the other hand.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
A lot of the stuff that the CFPB has been
involved with has been I think, pretty popular and matters
to a lot of people. I'm kind of curious just
you're like, I think like a lot of people in government, right,
Like you are a well educated guy who had a
lot of job opportunities. I think, right, do you have
a PhD? Maybe in PhDs, So that's a good job.
(25:44):
As I understand it, physics PhDs are very employable. I mean,
I know that the technology job market is not quite
what it was maybe five years ago, but you know,
there's a time when people with your qualifications were getting
like massive job offers from the likes of Google and
Facebook and so on. And I'm just kind of curious,
kind of what prompted you to go into this work,
(26:07):
and like why you went into this in the first place.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah, you're right. A lot of my graduate school colleagues
went to work for Facebook or for Google.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
I went to Yeah, you could have been working on
the algorithms that the CFPB was trying to regulate.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
It's true, It's true, it's true. But you know, pretty
quickly I saw that these companies were just like hoovering
up data and you know, working every day to make
Mark Zuckerberg more money didn't seem like something that I
wanted to kind of dedicate my life to. And I
came back to my home city, Phildelphia, started working for
(26:40):
the local government here doing data science work, and kind
of fell in love with public service, and you know,
was lucky enough to land at the CPB, where every
day you're you're fighting really to get money back into
the pockets of people. The agency has returned over twenty
billion dollars directly to consumers since it was created, which
(27:02):
is kind of a shocking number. It's one of the
most efficient agencies in the federal governments. And you know,
not only do they we get that money back, but
they stopped that behavior, you know, moving forward. It's banks
overdraft fees, it's mortgage companies. If they you know, mess
up your mortgage, you know, people can lose their homes.
This is how the agency was created in the aftermath
(27:22):
of the Great Recession, payday lenders and increasingly it was
you know, tech companies, you know, these digital payment apps,
and we weren't trying to supervise those companies as well.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Now, shortly after you received this email, you got reinstated.
Can you talk a little bit about like what that
moment was, like how much time went by and what happened.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
It was, yeah, very strange. I think I was laid
off for about six weeks. It was just long enough
to kind of go through the unemployment process and got reinstated.
Of course, I had mailed my computer back, mailed my
laptop back, my ID car, all of that, so it
actually took them another two or three weeks to send
me my laptop back. So I was sort of being
(28:07):
paid to do nothing for the first two or three weeks.
It was sort of the model of inefficiency, if you will.
It was just really an insane process. And then I
had been reinstated. I think I was back for about
a month or so, but had already gone through the
process of applying for jobs and all of that, and
ended up putting in my two week notice and taking
(28:29):
another role because you know, I didn't have a lot
of confidence that I would stay employed at the CPB.
They tried to fire ninety five percent of the agency
the day that I gave my two week notice. That
was stopped by a court and is still stopped by
a court, so people are still employed there, but I
was at the time optimistic that I would stay employed
for the long term.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
You know, we heard a lot on the outside about
how DOS is operated, but I'm wondering what it was
like for you and your colleagues watching it happen to
your own agency.
Speaker 4 (29:02):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
It was sad. It was frustrating. Everyone who works there
does such good work. Really, everyone is necessary, and to
have people come in and not understand what the agency
was doing, not understand a lot of the functions were
mandated by law that they were trying to get rid
of was just really unfortunate and shocking a lot of times.
I mean, some some pretty shocking testimony came out the
(29:25):
ongoing court case about how they wanted to reduce the
agency to five guys in a phone.
Speaker 2 (29:31):
I've guys in a room, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Yeah, in a room. Yeah. So it's just a complete
lack of acknowledging that people this agency are humans who
are doing good work. But also this agency is just
on the side of ordinary Americans. So it's just everything
they were trying to do was just hurting you know,
ordinary Americans.
Speaker 2 (29:51):
I mean, what's weird about the CFPB And I mean,
and I think it's one of the reasons it's gotten attention,
one of the reasons I focused on it in my
own reporting. Nick said this already, But like, it wasn't
that they tried to make it more efficient. They just
tried to get rid of it like all together. So
it was, in certain ways, like the most extreme version
of DOGE.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah, and from the start it was obvious that the
goal was to just completely shut out the agency, you know,
as much as possible without without the input from Congress.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Weird side note. Also, CFPB is not funded by the
US It's funded by the FED, so it's not congressionally funded.
I mean that this opens up a whole other can
of worms. But but it doesn't really cost taxpayers, at
least not directly money. And I think you can make
an argument. Nick's making the argument now that you know it,
actually it probably makes money for taxpayer money with these
(30:41):
reclaiming settlements and so on.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, that's exactly exactly right. It costs taxpayers nothing, and
it just returns a lot of money to them when
you get screwed over by your bank or by your
your mortgage company for example.
Speaker 2 (30:53):
We've touched on Elon Musk a couple of times in
this conversation. But I just was thinking about the fact that,
like you mentioned Facebook, right, but you could have probably
got a job at SpaceX right, like your background as
for physics, pH he loves hiring those, right. I'm just
kind of curious if you say something to him now
about this, or could have had a chance to say
something to him, what would would it have been.
Speaker 1 (31:13):
That's a great question. I don't know if I have
something pithy to say to him. It's it's very clear
to me that this was never about fixing government. It
was about power. You know, his corporate interests and things
like that. You know, his his app. He's trying to
chart it into a payments app that he filed, you know,
(31:34):
for something called X Payments and that they're supposedly launching
this year. And you know, the CPP, they would be
the regulator who would regulate that payment service to make
sure people don't get you know, defraud and you don't
get scanned. I mean, there's already a lot of scammers
on X and you know, if you know, you introduced payments,
(31:57):
people are sending money around, it could be rife for
for fraudsters and scammers and the CPB would be the
government agency that was tasked with ensuring that they had
fraud controls and they were file following the law, you know,
in terms of consumer protection.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
That was Nick Hanned, astrophysicist and former employee at the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All right, Stacy, time for the
underrated story of the week.
Speaker 3 (32:28):
Yes it is.
Speaker 2 (32:29):
We agreed on this one, I think for.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Well, we did agree on this one.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Yeah, Stacy. Starbucks, the embattled coffee chain not totally dissimilar
from the embattled donut chain or the embattled department.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Store Chainey, what goes better with coffee than donuts?
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Right?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
Nothing?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
But the thing you may not realize, Stacy, is that
Starbucks has been struggling in the last few years. And
it's partly because they kind of got away from coffee.
There all these donut eaters would go into a Starbucks
and there would be just a mass of teenage or
all buying these crazy drinks. Yes, and they got frustrated.
The coffee buyers have gotten frustrated. The drink buyers, even
(33:08):
some of them, have gotten frustrated because the lines were
so long. They got a new CEO. He's turning things around,
and can you guess what he's doing, Stacy.
Speaker 3 (33:16):
I know that he's like trying to make the stores nicer,
having people write on the cups with sharpies and kind
of bringing things back to where they.
Speaker 2 (33:24):
Started re emphasizing coffee. He's like, guys, guys, Starbucks, We're
a coffee company. We make coffee, and we should say that.
This is a BusinessWeek story that just came out how
Starbucks CEO plans to tame the rush hour free for all.
This is Brian Nichole. He is known as the guy
who turned around Taco Bell and then moved from that
(33:46):
great success. He introduced the Dorito's Locos taco.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Which, okay, well that was a stroke of g yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
He moved on to Chipotle, helped them recover from the
incident where they were accidentally wrapping e coli up with
their burritos, making people sick, and now he's here to
fix Starbucks the problem. I find this fascinating. As someone
who used to go to Starbucks a lot. You used
to a lot of love for Starbucks too, and I
guess people who spend time there know this. But Starbucks,
(34:12):
especially during the pandemic, did this huge business and having
people order stuff on their phones, and it kind of
just totally screwed up their business because it taught everyone
to order these insane like the Yolo drinks. I don't
even know what these things are, but it's like a
red thing and it's got like the cold phone.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
The Unicorn drinks. They went viral. They would be like
film videos on tiktoks. There were like really beautiful, kind
of ice creamy drinks.
Speaker 2 (34:37):
And these drinks are awesome at least some probably like
twelve year olds, think they're awesome, but like they're really
hard to make and they take a really long time
to make, which is okay maybe in the pandemic era
when you're ordering on your phone and maybe you're like
not working that hard and.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
You also want to film yourself drinking something viral.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
But terrible during rush hour. What's so funny here? Is okay?
So it's like it's like all the obvious stuff, the coffee,
having the workers write little nice notes on the cups.
They're sort of imposing more of a dress code. I
guess they're basically trying to make Starbucks feel like the
way probably someone Brian Nichols Age maybe thinks of when.
Speaker 3 (35:14):
They think of Star Wars seasoned and correct, and they're
thinking it hasn't.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Gone that well yet. The story has a funny line
about a misstep where during pumpkin spice season, and listeners
may remember this, they not only had pumpkin spice, but
there were eight other apple and pecan flavored drinks. Eight. Yeah,
that's a lot, And like some of the things they
even still have still sound like pretty complicated to me,
(35:39):
like borderline mad libs, Like I guess one of the
new ones is sugar free vanilla latte with banana protein
cold foam so like, which I guess is what people want.
And so I don't know how you go.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
Back to the bananny protein.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
When people want the banana.
Speaker 3 (35:54):
Protein, the protein things the macros in that proteins having
a moment. Well, I will tell you this as someone
who used to go to Starbucks a lot. It just
takes so long to get coffee now, and they're all
like all these crazy fancy drinks that are going out
and the orders take a long time and are sort
of mesmerizing.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
The weird thing is they're talking about going back to coffee.
But I think maybe they're wrong here, Stacey. I think
maybe the core identity of Starbucks. Even this is sad
for me as a coffee drinker to admit it's crazy.
Drinks like crazy, They just need to go crazier. Just
make them more expensive, make them more involved, more cold foam,
more weird protein.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Mom lines outside the shop just below the line.
Speaker 2 (36:35):
In there, it's gonna be the coals of coffee shops.
Speaker 4 (36:38):
No.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
The show is produced by Stacy Wong. Mangus Hendrickson is
our supervising producer, Amy Keene our editor, and Brendan Francis
Newnham is our executive producer, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts Special thanks to Jeff Muscus,
Julia Rubin, and Maria Lynk. If you have a minute, listeners,
rate and review this show. It means a lot to us.
(37:05):
And you know what, Send us an email at Everybody's
at Bloomberg dot net. Tell us what your crazy Starbucks
order is or what your crazy meme stock is, and
you know we will think about it and take that
under consideration, think about ignoring that in the next episode
of the show. But that email is everybody with an
s at Bloomberg dot net. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net.
(37:27):
Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.
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