Interview Only w/ Mike Pesca - The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust - The Chuck ToddCast

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(01:54):
a I'm not gonna sit here and say we have
a specific reason we're talking other than I like to
talk to smart, interesting people, and Mike Pesca is smart.
You'll just decide how interesting he is, but he seems
to be interesting enough. I could in that many of
you may be listeners to his podcast, maybe subscribers to
his newsletter to things that I am so with that,

(02:17):
mister Pesca, who I blew it? I thought I was
thinking fish is your last name, and you're like, no,
it's Italian for peaches, right.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
That's why the GISTs production company is Peachfish Productions, because
the peach is literally Italian. Yeah. Many Spanish verb forms
of two fish.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
Are the fish. So yeah, you know what, you know,
two things I wouldn't want to eat together.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I think that probably a good chefish marmally glad, But you.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
Would have to make the peach. You'd have to make
it more like mango and like create a salsa. I
guess you could say you could probably create a peach
salsa that's on your fish taco.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
It's a challenge, right, It would definitely be something that
would break most contestants on cooking shows.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yeah. So, first of all, I appreciate you. You seem
to be always making content, so I appreciate that you're
helping me make content. How how many how many side
hustles do you have? And what do you what do
you say you do these days for a little bit.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Sometimes you have so many side hustles that you say
is they're a real hustle. I've been doing the Gist
for twelve years, almost twelve years, the longest running news
and analysis podcast, and that is daily. It's actually six
days a week.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
That's what I used to say about Meet the Press,
the longest running television show.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
You're longest that's documentable. With podcasts, there is a little
bit of wiggle room because no one's taking account in
the beginning.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
And the fastest growing podcast in the in the two
two two zero seven zip code. I don't know about you,
but anyway.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
Wow, you know, the bragging chock is a little it's
a little bit unbecoming, is what I'm saying here. Yes,
so I do that, and then I have the substat
which is every day we have the just List, which
are a bunch of stories I maybe can't get to
on the Gist. And then I do a written piece
on Wednesday, and I'm taking over. I can't announce it,

(04:12):
but I'm taking over a new podcast where maybe maybe
you'll be on asking people how to refurbish your second floor.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Let's just say that well, all right, well I am,
I have refurbished the second floor. I need to clean
up my second floor. How do I accomplish my exercise
refurbishing of all of that. If I thought of one
theme I wanted to speak with you about, it is
the fact that you know it's interesting. I sort of
began my calendar year getting started in this world of

(04:41):
independent media going on your podcast early. You were sort
of very very gracious with that. But it's been quite
a year in media in general, especially legacy media, and
sort of like, if you think about where we began
and where we ended, is the information ecosystem at the

(05:04):
end of twenty twenty five worse or better than at
the start of twenty twenty five?

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Okay, just twenty twenty five. I say it's potentially better,
maybe because so much of the degradation is baked in
and priced in, and it's not getting worse and we've
been habituated to it.

Speaker 1 (05:24):
But a couple of the.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
Big trends, one that is often decried by my left
leaning friends is what's happening with CBS and Barry Weiss
and full disclosure. I've written a couple pieces for the
Free Press. The way I look at. That is two
things I know that people will slam Barry Weis for that.
They say bringing more of a right leaning sensibility to CBS,

(05:49):
to which I say, there are three broadcast networks and
five all news networks or quasi news networks with significant budgets.
I'm not counting oh and the like all the news
nation does some nice things, and four of them, if
we're being fair, before Barry took control, were somewhere in

(06:09):
the center to left leaning. So I know, as you
know NBC, the NBC, NBC very much tried not to
be but of course MSNBC was left leaning to be honest,
and CNN will I think they tacked more to the center,
Fox being right leaning. But what I'm saying is just
in terms of if you take away everyone's strong feelings

(06:32):
about politics, if you're just looking at them as businesses,
and four businesses on the block were selling ice cream
and kind of not doing that great, and one business
on the block was selling cotton candy and doing quite well.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Wouldn't some combo.

Speaker 2 (06:49):
Cotton candy ice cream business maybe be the smart play?
So this is all I'm saying. If you want to
call Barry right wood or center right. She would call it.
She really tried to say she's trying to keep it
between the forty yard lines. It seems like a smart
enough repositioning. And to that, I'd add, if you were
to hire a person to do this, why not hire

(07:11):
the only person who's built the truly successful media business
from scratch in the last five years. There's a case
that Ben Smith of Semaphore is doing something similar. I
think on smaller scales, even big Barry White's critics like
Oliver Darcy, I think, is making a million dollars with
his substack, and there are some substacked successes, but Barry's
the biggest success. So add that up, a little bit

(07:33):
differentiation in the news business and a track record of success.
I'm more interested than concerned. Let's say I think she
could do good things. I don't know, what do you think?

Speaker 1 (07:45):
Yeah, I've not. I am all four. I am sort
of rooting for the disruption, right, you know. I've seen
and I benefited from a disruptor coming into NBC, a
woman by the name of Debora Turnas, who I still
find to be one of the best network executives I
ever worked with. Because she wasn't afraid. She wasn't afraid

(08:08):
to break things, and look it got her the BBC job.
And then of course she had a fall on her
sword for something that happened below her. But that's also
says something about her, meaning like she sort of she
gets it. Okay, that's on me. You know, I'm the
buck stops with me. So I'm all for seeing disruption
because I've seen network executives that just try to placate

(08:33):
the bosses right don't succeed. And so my only question
of her decision was you left the Times because you
didn't like working for the Salzburgers. Are you sure you
wanted to give up your independence to work for the Eleisons? Right?
Like that? That would be and that's like, to me,

(08:53):
the biggest It's funny. I also think this has been
a turning point for the collective media, meaning that you're
starting to see the audience feel more comfortable in the
independent spaces. You're seeing more people feel more comfortable trying
to launch in the independent space. And you know, I'm

(09:16):
pessimistic that any of the legacy media companies can be
They have good brands, and they can certainly tweak shows
and use their resources. You know specific I just don't
know if any of the legacy news divisions are ever
going to be what they were, right, because there's no
money in it, right, There's no financial incentive. It is
really it's just about whether, you know, in the case

(09:38):
of the Ellison's, Like, here'd be my fear if I
were Berry, if Wes Moore is the next president of
the United States, do the Ellison's care about the news
division anymore? Right? You know, because Wes Moore isn't like
on top of them, you know, helping them with other
business deals. And in order to get those business deals,
they've got to placate the with certain things with the

(10:02):
media business, with the news side of things, right, and
that would be something which is does all of the
you know, right now I'm getting what if I'm Barry,
I'm getting some running room. I get to do a
special on Saturday nights, and which is the lowest, you know,
the lowest rated portion of network television, which is why
a lot of times you will see town halls and
special news presentations either on Friday evenings or Saturday evenings. Yes,

(10:24):
because literally those are the two nights that they can't
sell ads for or.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Counter program with a Charlie Brown special from twenty years.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Ago, exactly exactly, So that would be my concern whether
there is really an interest in allowing CBS to stay
disruptive CBS News beyond sort of what feels like performance
art for the man in the Oval office.

Speaker 2 (10:49):
So, yeah, a couple points. Did Barry and I've never
talked to her about the Sulzburgers per se or ae
did she defect? She defected from The New York Times?
Was it Salzburger thing? The way I analyze what happened.

Speaker 1 (11:03):
I don't know. I mean, that's my point, But you
are the Salzburgers do care about that opinion page?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
I think at the time, which was the height of
the New York Times being sort of redefined away from
the idea of objectivity, it had gotten out of control
and out of the hands of a Salzburger. And you
probably read I don't know how many.

Speaker 1 (11:25):
Out of the hands of Dean Buckay. I mean, who
was trying. He couldn't manage his own You know, you
had basically a revolt. I believe you let the And
this to me has been something I've been obsessed with,
which is be careful of the audience you build, because
you may become captive of your audience subscribers.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
I think at a certain point Nicole Hannah Jones was
more important in the New York Times than Dean Buckay,
and she's done great work. But this is a bad situation.
You know. These are we know from sports, when the
star becomes more important than the coach, who you defer to.
My point with the Salzburgers is I see a lot
of evidence that he specifically was uncomfortable with where his

(12:08):
newspaper had gone, and he wrote a large piece in
the Columbia Journalism Review, which is only going to be
read by journalists, but it was a signal we are
getting back to the idea of objectivity. He knew he
couldn't use the word objectivity. It's a really interesting essay.
He even said that word is so toxic among so

(12:28):
many people in news, which I think is really interesting
and alarming that I'm not even going to try to
defend the word objectivity. We just believe in independence journalism.
And then he goes on to define independent journalism as
objectivity or something like objectivity.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
So that's point one.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
I think that where the New York Times is now
is a place that is a bit more aligned with
maybe Barrywise's worldview. The other thing I'd say about the
Ellisons is, you're right if Wes Moore, if someone common
soothing or at least just not.

Speaker 1 (13:03):
Just sort of like less a little boring. Let's be honest, right,
Andy Bisheer, And I say this, though you know that
sounds like a big criticizing It may be that America
wants boring come twenty twenty nine.

Speaker 2 (13:13):
So you're saying not Gavin Newsome, like Gavin might be
a lightning rod would I would.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
Be surprised if we go from big personality to big personality. Yeah,
I actually think you know, usually what we do as
a country, if you think about it, when we elect
a new president, and we will be electing a new
one in twenty eight, we usually elect somebody who has
more of a character trait that the previous one is missing.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Right after that week got Pope, a skinny pope. All
that's sort of mindset, like I go through it right. H. W.
Bush was kind of detached. Bill Clinton was feel your
pain right. Bill Clinton was a bit of a party animal.

Speaker 1 (13:52):
George W. Bush was the reformed alcoholic that wasn't going
to you know, stray. George Bush saw everything in black
and white. Barack Obama was nothing but gray area nuanced right,
you know. So we do have this tendency, and so
that's why I am I wouldn't you know, this is
not personal to Gavin Newsom. I'm bearish on his chances

(14:13):
to be the next president, more out of character and
temperament sort of comparisons to Trump. Well, do we want
another big personality that's constantly where the world revolves around
the personality rather than the country as a whole.

Speaker 2 (14:29):
Good analysis, as always is what we expect from you.
But my point was was this, if people, I know
you don't think this, I assume you don't. If people
took your analysis about if it's Wes Moore, do they
become unengaged. It is not the case that, especially David Allison,
who has more hands on control of the newsroom, is maga.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Is even agast maga.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
I'm not a Republican conservative. He gave one hundred million
to the Joe Biden Fund. So it is not if
people hear that and say, oh, unless the unless CBS
is allowed to run an ideological newsroom, he's going to
become uninvolved. That's not the case, and that's not what
you're saying. It's just if things calm down and politics

(15:17):
aren't the way to get people's attention or for him
to make money. Because a politician donald Trump will be
so involved in our regulatory schemes, he might get less involved.
But it's not because that he's ideologically committed.

Speaker 1 (15:32):
No, I think it's more of that, And I've never
thought I think you know, I don't think Silicon Valley
is ideologically aligned with Trump. I think they are just
seeing it as the fastest way to get from A
to B. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:45):
I think many in Silicon Valley are, if not ideologically
aligned with things like tariffs, were extremely upset with DEI
and wokeism, and also thought that there were elements of
the Biden regulatory scheme that are challenging what they were
trying to do to improve society.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
I'll give you a shorter version of that. Biden did
allow the bureaucrats to play a role. Trump will allow
you to shortcut and in getting around regulatory issues. Yes,
but of.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Course it's just had not because of some well thought
out planned.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
No, it's transaction, and that's my point, right, is to
go back to the original point, will Barry have a
budget in twenty nine If the Ellisons decide, hey, they
don't need to placate a president with the news division anymore,
we'll spend our lobbying dollars another way. Essentially, it's sort

(16:43):
of like it's almost as if the news division is
part of your lobbying budget, right, And if you're Frankly,
if you're Disney, if you're Comcast and your paramount skuidant,
you kind of are operating that way.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
And the other thing to say is that this is
all fascinating to us in some portion of your audience.
But with the CBS news viewers, we're talking about five
percent of America.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Well, and we're also talking about generationally only one demographic group.
I mean, have you seen the average age of the
cable newsviewer.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
It's not seventy They died three years ago. And the
other thing with CBS, well, they have these amazing properties,
these legacy properties. Sixty minutes. I love sixty minutes, but
I'm not convinced that sixty minutes. The reason that they're
so popular is because of who they are and their

(17:38):
attention to detail and their story selection but I think
it all comes down to there after football.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Of it comes down. By the way, do you know
what they never do? They never They never saved their
best stuff for the spring. No, okay, which, by the way,
you know, it's like why do you what do they ask?
Is it the and Clyde? Why do you rob banks?
That's where the money is. It's like, you know, why
do you save your stories for the faults where the

(18:07):
audience is right. It's where it's right after football, So
of course you do. But i'd look at do I think.
I will say this about CBS if you think about it,
they have between Sunday morning and sixty minutes, they have
two of the more interesting brands that have a chance

(18:27):
to survive even if the network doesn't.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
Yeah, distinct brands, brands that mean something. And not only
will people be sad that they go, but if you
took them and put them somewhere else, it's very clear.
Their DNA is so unique that you could have a
turnkey operation.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
We know, I think sixty minutes, I think, and so
I have this. We're about to see the next big
shake up in the way people consume information. It's going
to come at the local TV affiliate level right where
you have the So we have this mega merger coming
up between Tech and next Star, and what that is
going to create is a lot of overlap in a
lot of their markets, and you're going to have these

(19:07):
duopolies that are going to start popping up, and you
already see them. My hometown of Miami is now the
largest market in the country with the duopoly. The person
that owns the you Know channel, the Fox affiliate also
owns now the ABC affiliate. But he's only gonna have
one news division and there isn't going to be local
news for the ABC affiliate. It really is just sort
of a digital channel that will just you know, provide

(19:31):
the ABC programming, which for most people in South Florida
is football. But what you're going to have is I
actually think we're about three or four years away from
what I call a la carte where everything becomes a
la carte, where you might have a local affiliate say
you know what we want, we want Savannah Guthrie in
the morning. We want I want the Tony diacoppole in

(19:56):
the evening. I want Meet the Press on Sunday, but
I want CBS Sunday Morning, right it's good. I have
a feeling we're going in the same way we're watching
this with with people in our space here in the
independent space starting to license their content on a Pluto
or on a Netflix or on Amazon. I think we're
about to see the same thing explode in the local

(20:18):
TV Atfilly Market, which means we're going to find out,
you know, how big of a brand is Good Morning
of America, Good Morning America? How big a brand? I
think today's show's pretty big. You know what about the
Sunday morning programming? Right, you'll where the brands will matter
more than the network itself that they appear.

Speaker 2 (20:33):
Yeah, and the reason is this is how the consumer,
the under seventy three average age consumer, programs their own
news already. They you know, my kids don't know what
a network is or what a channel is.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
The channel numbers meaningless to my kids. I have an
eighteen year old and a twenty one year old. They
don't know the numbers any They know news for that's it.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah. I just I get you a PV and there
aren't numbers assigned, so news for was just I mean,
they could have called themselves news Purple. It doesn't. Yeah,
so yeah, it is all changing, and we haven't even
talked about print. We haven't even talked about what we
really need, which is investigative journalism and journalism with a

(21:18):
lot of teeth, and journalism that can stand up to pressure.
And I think that their Pro Publica does a great job.
Some of the nonprofits want to do a good job,
but I think and I think there is a certain
amount of appetite for it. But what the great newspapers,
especially newspapers used to be able to do, was fund
these efforts from their advertising, from their car advertising, from

(21:40):
especially their want ads and their classifieds. And that's all done.
So not only do you have these, you know, all
these city councils not being covered. You just don't have
the great investigation that the Indianapolis Star or the Kansas
City Star or the Sacramento Bee was gonna do. As
a matter of course, because that's what you did. Then
we don't even know, oh what the price of having

(22:01):
all that lost is. And maybe it's just local and
maybe it doesn't get above the land commissioner for Albuquerque,
but it's a big loss.

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(24:00):
a gap in the market. I completely agree. And you
know what I worry about is some journalism can be
done independently in solo. You and I are proven this,
But there are some things I could I would love
to do, but I need more resources. I need literally
more physical human beings. I don't care how many Geminis
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(24:21):
can't walk the street, right, they can't do the door
knocking that you sometimes need in an investigative journalism. And
I think that this is what you know, my hope
is that we'll start to see new consortiums, you know,
after the sort of you know, if you look at
the history of UPI, which was a wire service before

(24:41):
the AP existed, and AP was a different type of
wire service they really were. They started off as attempts
to try to allow local news organizations to share resources
and share material. It was in some ways, hey, oh
that might be of use to our readers too. You know,
we can trade off and if you figure out how
to ban these folks together that maybe they can start

(25:03):
working together on collaborative investigative pieces. Right. Pro Publica does
this a little bit, well, they'll team up with a
with a news organization. Notice is doing this with some
small independent locals there. They're being the Washington Bureau. Do
you like what I do too? Oh my gosh, I
just had two of their founders on, two of their
young folks on, Because for me, Mike, Notice is suddenly

(25:28):
the only news organization based in Washington, d C. That
covers Washington, d C. The Washington Post might as well
be called the Post. They have decided to no longer
be as it former former right they knew longer need
to be. They have gotten rid of everything that made
them Washington, right, even the food critic there. You know,

(25:48):
their their sports page has never been smaller and less impactful.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
And that was how the Post and the Boston Globe,
just the two great regional sports pages, launched so many stars.
And now they just and even before that the style section,
which was such a great section and oh no it
wasn't about styles.

Speaker 1 (26:08):
Yeah, it really frustrates me because it feels as if
Bezos said I want to be the Wall Street Journal
and you're like, well, we already have one, and they're.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Better at it than you guys are I think you
said I want to be Reason Magazine. I mean, he's
stole their.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
Entire Can I get I have one? You know, we
were talking about different editorial pages. Here's something I wish
Jeff Bezos had thought of, and I wish mister Salzburger
would think of. Why does an editor? Why why do
you have to have one? Who set the rule to
say you only are allowed to have one? Why not?
You know, Look, we live in a world where partisanship

(26:43):
is in stereo. Do I wish we didn't? Maybe I'd
wish we didn't, But you know what, two hundred of
our two hundred and fifty years. We have lived this way.
Our media has been partisan much longer than it has
been nonpartisan. Okay, we had a brief window between World
War two and nine to eleven where we had basically
a media that attempted to not affiliate with a party.

(27:06):
But before that and frankly after, it's actually been par
for the course that media sort of identified with a
with a movement.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
This is why the papers are called the Rochester Democrat.
This pretty right, I try.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
It's sort of one of these things that I tell
journalism schools all the time. Hey, guys, this is not
new right. The Waterbury Republican, the Arkansas Democrat is at
the tail Assi Democrat. You brought up Rochester is another one.
What's wrong with having two editorial pages? Wouldn't it been great?
Wouldn't it be great if the New York Times had,
you know, basically had a conservative editorial essentially section and

(27:45):
a liberal editorial section and frankly allowed them to be
side by side.

Speaker 2 (27:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:53):
Back in the nineties, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, when they
had to do their joint operating agreement on Sunday, printed
one news newspaper and their editorial page on the left
was the Atlantic Constitution and on the right was the
Atlanta Journal.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, and I lived in Atlanta then, and it the greatest.
Tell you it covered Dixie like to do.

Speaker 1 (28:15):
But how great is that? Like? Why is that? Why
is that not? Like that's the world I lived in.
My father was a conservative who always wanted to know
what the liberals were saying. So he subscribed to National
Review and New Republic. Yeah, all right. He thought the
Nation was too far of the left, but he was
in the New Republic. It was like, that's al Gore's
It was like I remember him saying, yeah, the guy

(28:35):
is a big al Gore guy. And you know, you know,
back in the day Marty parrots and yet but the
point was he wanted both sides of an argument. He
wanted to hear it, both sides of the argument. I
don't know why newspapers decided they only should have one voice.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
That's how I was raised. My dad was a social
studies teacher, the consummate social studies teacher. When I got
into news, he said, let me subscribe you to I
swear the two magazines that I got from the age
of twelve to eighteen, where the National Review in the
New Republic. I mean those were trailblazing magazines then, and
I learned the latter from them. I think one of
the reasons it doesn't work is that what you just

(29:11):
said audience capture, and that the audience you and I
want that. And if you poll people, they would say
they want that, but.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
I say they want it, yeah, but they don't.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
I think feel dedicated news consumers? Are they? Some are
news consumers, many are ideology consumers. Many are tell me
the world, give me a reflection of the world as
I see it consumers. And I don't know this is
overly harsh a criticism, but what if The New York
Times did a liberal or conservative editorial page. I'm sure

(29:42):
someone listening to this would say they tried it, and
then James Bennett got fired based on publishing the Tom
Cotton op ed. I think that, Yeah, that's an ideal.
I don't know that we'll ever regain that time.

Speaker 1 (29:55):
No, we're not. But the reason I'm disappointed in Bezos
in this is that he had actually applied the lessons
he learned from building Amazon the Everything store. Imagine imagine
if he behaved as if I want to build the
Everything information.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Store yes, but he wants to maximize profit with Amazon,
and the Post is a different consideration.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Well, he bought a trophy. I thought he wanted to
help the business, and it turns out he just wanted
a trophy. And then suddenly it wasn't cool to own
the trophy, and he was like, oh shit, I either
think he's used in the trophy or do I now
just use it for my own benefit.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
And that's why he's using it as he uses his
contract to do a biopic of Malanya Trump. He uses
it for lobbying.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
Although when he bought the.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Trophy, I remember, I think it was a two hundred
and fifty million dollar purchase. Was that the price? I
remember the Jacksonville Jaguars went for I think three seventy five,
and I remember thinking, what are we doing with society
that the Jaguars are worth only one hundred and twenty
five million more? Now, the Jaguar, like every NFL franchise,

(31:02):
is probably worth a billion.

Speaker 1 (31:03):
In the post can be sold.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
For food, for parts. It's five billion, I think.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
Remember there's only thirty two trophies available in the NFL.
Even the least valuable trophies, probably a five billion dollar
trophy now.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Yeah, yeah, five billion.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, So let's talk about AI, because you know, I've
I can vacillate. I am. I am a long term
AI optimist, meaning I'm betting on human beings that we're not.
We're a species that has survived quite a bit over
a million years, and we're not going to let robots
replace us. So I am, but I am mindful that

(31:42):
the transition is going to be quite painful, and I
do think that increasingly the next three years are going
to be about fear of AI displacement, even though again
I think, you know, we'll, we'll probably. My guess is
the fears a little too soon. Like anything, it's probably
coming sooner than we should actually be fearing it. But

(32:04):
that's how I try to comfort myself and how I
remain optimistic in the long run about AI, even though
this is going to be extraordinarily disruptive in the moment.
Where's your head on this?

Speaker 2 (32:15):
There was just a pull out that showed a huge
decline in optimism or even excitement about AI. They expect,
I mean, the vast majority of people expect AI to
harm human abilities by twenty thirty five.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
Do you blame them for thinking that, by the way, no,
given what social media, given what the tech companies did
to us with social media, right.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
People, And also science fiction and our storytelling plays a role,
and so there's I'd say the ratio of dystopian to
utopian science fiction is something like one hundred to one.
It's more easy to tell stories about destruction, although Star
Trek is utopian science fiction. So you know, our mind
goes to threats. The reason that we are here, as

(32:59):
the people who've evolved over a million years, is because
we understand threats.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
Right.

Speaker 2 (33:03):
We evolve from the people who were best position to
understand the threats and flee the saber tooth tiger, whereas
our would be ancestors who were like, no big deal,
they got eaten. They didn't get to reproduce. All that said,
there are three camps with AI. The accelerationists who say,
bring it on, it's going to change humanity. A lot

(33:24):
of them have money involved, right. The doomers, who some
prominent people who could have made a lot of money
with AI give it a twenty percent chance of killing
us all one day. There are a couple prominent people
give it a ninety eight percent chance. Then in between
and This is a phrase invented by my friend Andy Mills,
who just made a good podcast, great podcast about this

(33:45):
called the Last Invention the Scouts. And this is where
I am, which is pay attention, don't be afraid, be
very afraid, but understand the transformative power of this. When
Sam Altman testified, maybe you remembering three, he was greeted,
he shocked the Senate Commerce Committee because he said, yes,

(34:06):
please regulate me. And this was a message that they
wanted to hear. That was a message I wanted to hear.
It was refreshing and unusual for a captain of industry
to ask for regulation. Cut to two years later, the
big concern is China, and he said, well, I don't
know about all this regulation. We've got to beat China.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
So what changed?

Speaker 2 (34:27):
Was it just China? Was it Sam Altman in both
cases trying to play cat or meet Congress where it was.
I'm definitely not a doomer. I think it can be
totally transformative, especially when it reaches what's called artificial general intelligence.
This is the computers teaching themselves and accelerating and accelerating.

(34:50):
But man, do we need more visibility into how it works?
And I'll add this, They don't even know how it works.
The people who program AI, who invented AI, will tell you, yeah,
we it's kind of a black box and we can't
exactly pick it apart and tell you why it did that,
not just beforehand, but even afterwards. And that's that is legitimately.

Speaker 1 (35:12):
Scary, No, it is, especially when we realize that also
we're I mean, we've not had the correct generation matched
with the technological regulatory demands that we've had. Right when
the Internet first came along, we had a whole bunch
of people that were very analogued right by the time

(35:32):
social media came.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
Along, saying the Internet was a system of tubes.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Right, and then you go to you know, as we
go to social media, you have people that are still
trying to figure out how to use email with their
Aol dot com. You know, they're still figuring out tact
By the time we've got an AI, you have people
that are still just now getting comfortable with the iPhone premise. Right.
So that's that's what's scary, is that the people we

(35:59):
all like to be the watchers are probably not qualified
to know what to watch for. Yeah, even if it
adds to the concern.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Right, and even if they were, I mean, some of
these people have backgrounds in the extractive industries. They don't
seem too keen on regulating them. There is a Congress
doesn't seem keen on being Congress. You know, even Nancy
Mace is writing op eds. What is Congress for? They've
willingly abdicated their regulative responsibilities. One of the things though,

(36:27):
that gives me pause. I have great hope for it,
and I always think, even with the Internet, I'm more
in favor of it than opposed. I owe my life
to the idea of podcasting. Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't
be able to get my voice outside wherever a radio
tower would take me. Maybe satellites would exist. But I
look at the history of big innovations and there's always

(36:49):
the doomer. There's always the person who's an expert who
gets a lot of attention, because, like I said, our
minds go towards, well, what's the worst thing that can happen.
And at one point it was this guy named King
Hubbert who predicted peak oil, and he was an experty
worked for Shell. He had many people with their colorful
charts written in you know, nineteen nineties, fonts we're gonna

(37:14):
run out of oil. That was a big concern I
think cuts it. Today. A lot of environmentalists would say,
thank god, we're going to run out of oil. But
we're not going to run out of oil. Shell gets invented,
Fracking gets invented. Paul Erlik, who's the most frequent guest
on Johnny Carson, wrote the population bomb. It seemed plausible,
we're going to outstrip our means of production. So throughout history,

(37:34):
Greta Tuneberg, throughout history, there have always been these doomers.
It's a long tradition of dumers. I'm not even talking
about you know, the people who said that the hell
Bop comet was going to so.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
I guess Jeffrey Hinton would be the AI doomer in
this case, right, isn't he the inventor who says be weary?

Speaker 2 (37:50):
Right, there's a twenty percent chance. But there are forever
hint in there is one hundred people. Many of them
have their fortunes tied to AI. But I'll tell you
something else I learned from Andy series, the Last Invention.
Many of the people working in the companies are not doomers,
but they're really worried, and they say to themselves. Maybe
they don't say I'm a genius, they're geniuses. They're good

(38:12):
at this, and they're involved in the work with the
knowledge that if it goes wrong, it could go very,
very wrong in a way that goes way beyond replacing
menial labor and not having some substitute for that. It
could I'm not saying death of humanity, but.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
Maybe they are.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
So. There are a lot of people within the industry
who don't want the industry just to go off the rails.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Maybe you can make an analogy. I don't know the
people who work in bioweapons research. I would assume a
lot of them think the same thing, and every once
in a while bad stuff happens there too.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
There's one phenomenon that I'm fascinated by that is taking
place sort of simultaneously as we're having this sort of
race towards AI, and that is it is the one
issue that unites left and right, which is should we
get this technology out of the schools.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I had a woman on from an organization that she
founded called Mama Mothers Against Media Addiction, And it's not
just about you know, getting rid of phones in classrooms.
It's also about should we stop handing out iPads and
laptops in schools? Right, like do we? You know? And boy,

(39:29):
I'm pretty torn on this because on the one hand,
I think we should evolve with technology. On the other hand,
I understand the concerns and fears, and there's no doubt
there's plenty of study on screen time and what that's done.
But does fear of screen time in the social media
aspect mean you should toss away all technology you know,

(39:52):
in the classroom. And that's where that's where where I
get concerned. But what I find fascinating is that we
have a collective fear of what our kids, of how
our kids learn, and we're actually it seems like it's
the one place where we think we can try and
do something about it where there's almost like the least
amount of political combat over too.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Yeah, And I would remember remember when the big issue
was the digital divide, the fear that not enough people
would have technology.

Speaker 1 (40:23):
And now we're going the other way. We're like, no, no, no,
we don't want it in the classroom. It's terrible.

Speaker 2 (40:27):
So where I come down is just because there is
junk food doesn't mean there shouldn't be culinary schools just.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
Because there are.

Speaker 2 (40:37):
Just because there is pornography doesn't mean we shouldn't teach
art or figure drawing in school, or even new drawing
on the college level. So I definitely think that this
is where the world is today. You have to There's
always been panics about technology. I don't know if this
is a panic. There are legitimate concerns, right the Corruption

(40:57):
of the Innocent was congressional hearings about comic books. I
do think that.

Speaker 1 (41:03):
Video games or Tipper Gore in the music industry, I'm
going have to remember when Twisted Sister with something that
our parents thought was warping the minds of people like myself.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Sure, Dee Snyder testifying on Capitol Hill in his Twisted
Sister Regelia did not wear a suit. Yeah. I also
remember Blackie Lawless from a group called Wasp, and I
can't even quote on a podcast what his big songs were.
But yes, so this is a perennial. These are the
tools that we use. I think a flat out band

(41:37):
would not serve our children well, especially as we compete
against China in Singapore. But you know, we saw another
version of this where the answer is never just take
off the guardrails and trust in technology. With the legalization
of sports gambling, it has been a disaster.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
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Their fee is free unless they win. You went to
the place I wanted to go because I want to

(43:04):
go to prediction markets here And what's CNN and call
she are doing? Which I think is I say this.
I love gambling, Mike, I love football gambling. I have
also my own biases about what you should be allowed
to gamble on and what you're not allowed to gamble on.
For instance, I don't gamble on player props. You know

(43:24):
why because I don't feel like it's an honest market
because at the end of the day, you're relying on
one person versus a team sport. Like I don't like
to bet on individual sports. I don't bet on tennis.
I don't bet on golf because again, one person. You know,
it's it is known that tennis players just take an acceptance,

(43:48):
you know, take an appearance fee and bail. Right, That
is just sort of how it works. And it's like
it's like betting on the NBA what players are sitting out.
You know that's now, you know, I enjoy betting on
a team sport when I know there's maximum effort, and
I know that it's really going to be about somewhat
of a game of chance, but also a game of strategy. Yeah,

(44:09):
but you're right, keep going. It's interesting fact burn you out.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
I mean, look at the NBA gambling scandal, Look at
the baseball gambling scandal.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Where why is this offered? Why are you allowed to
bet on the first pitch?

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, and Emmanuel class A can throw the ball directly
into the dirt and think he's going to get away
from something.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
And think about this, right, these guys, some of them,
Let's say you come from a community that didn't have
a lot of money. You don't have enough to throw
money around to them, but you want to throw them
a bone, all right. You know, I see how these
individual players rationalize it. I'm just trying to help on
my pals. I want to help them make a couple
of bucks. This is something I can do for them,

(44:51):
No harm, no foul, Right, that's I really think that's
the rationalization.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
And Yeah, the idea was that the gigantic salaries played
to the hate to these players would protect or indemnify
them from ever being tempted. However, at the same time,
people were making these arguments and believing it. They weren't
just self motivated. We also know about the gigantic rates
of bankruptcy among professional athletes. They don't always take care

(45:17):
of their money so well. So you have guys like
Johntay Porter in the NBA who apparently owed a lot
of money to a lot of people, and so all
he has to do is claim an injury, take himself
out of a game, and then everyone who bet the unders,
which for the audience, I'm sure you know, it's if
you think he's going to get less than four rebounds
or less than three assists or whatever the statistic is,

(45:39):
if you fake an injury, you're definitely going to get
less than that. He has been thrown out of basketball.
Terry Rozier is another one who's on the hook. There's
the separate gambling scandal with this is so fascinating. The
mafia and some coaches and popa gigs that can be
read with essentially X ray vision.

Speaker 1 (45:59):
But yeah, bets now, I think that.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
The form of let's just get rid of these silly
little prop bets that we're not making that much money
on that is that's the deminimus that they have to do.
The real problem with sports gambling or gambling on the
phones isn't even sports gambling or gambling on games where
a lot of millionaires have a stake. There are you

(46:25):
could still gamble on college games where even though kids
are paid the nil money, it's not that much. And
there are a lot of very very low level Division
one games that were clearly thrown a couple of years ago,
and some enforcement though not criminals, been brought against players
on I think Mississippi Valley State and some other schools.

(46:45):
The huge problem there's been a lot of good reporting
on this is the online casinos on phones, and this
is we maybe you and I focus on sports gambling.
This is just sad and should never been allowed. And
you have home Healthcare AIDS losing fifteen thousand dollars because
they're constantly betting slot machines. And if you look at

(47:07):
the amount of revenue that the states have taken in sports,
some of them didn't make good deals with the sports companies.
And by the way, a lot of these sites, maybe
not Fan Duel and DraftKings, but a lot of these
other sites are not making anywhere near the money and
they thought they would on sports gambling, But if you
look at the casino gambling, it's just a roundabout means

(47:28):
of addiction. Now on Calshi, we thought we were talking
about the prop bets. What about this prop bet? I
have my calshilp app open. I don't know if you
could see it. Who will be the first member of
Trump's cabinet to leave?

Speaker 1 (47:43):
Now?

Speaker 2 (47:43):
My update is since that Vanity Fair piece came out
rocket Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:49):
But then you know, well, it's what's funny about the
prediction markets. It's like, look, I am, I'm trying to
keep an open mind about the prediction markets. We used
to call the prediction markets the stock market, but I'll
set that aside here a minute. Like I would argue
that that kind of served as the prediction markets, at
least when it came to nonsports events, right, certain stocks

(48:11):
went up or down based on, oh, the economy. Economic
numbers are based on oh like remember when when ozempic
first took off, suddenly didn't freedom lays stock collapse or
something like, you know, oh, no, nobody's gonna nobody's gonna
eat snacks anymore. Snacking is dead, you know, or good
luck with edmands, Like that's a brand that might disappear

(48:32):
with with everybody taking ozempic. But it's the it's it's
the fact that CNN signed to deal with Calci like
incorporating Like is it what does this fact tell you
about Susie wilds Now being at the top of this
prediction market. Is it just a whole bunch of people

(48:55):
wanting to react to something that happened in the news
or is there somebody with insider information right now during
I will confess. So I made my first calshy trade
the morning of the college football playoff show. I'm a
University of Miami guy, and I was curious to see

(49:19):
if things were going to leak the way the Pope
not the Pope, the Nobel Peace Prize leaked, and all
of a sudden, the prediction market spiked for Machado, and
You're like, oh, what's that about. Somebody must know something
right here was somebody that didn't have any other reason
to spike it. So I was curious to see, and
I was watching and I literally did it to see

(49:41):
if it would leak. Now it turned out it didn't leak.
Miami's number was fluctuating up and down somewhere between it
got as low as six, got as high as thirty eight,
But it was in the range of what was what
would you would expect if people didn't know the outcome, okay,
where they were trying to reject, rather than there wasn't anything.

(50:03):
But that's why I did it. I didn't do it
because I thought. I did it because I thought somebody
might know the answer. I didn't do it because I
thought crowdsourcing was gonna tell me what the answer was, right.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
I do it because I like to bet eleven dollars
on the Jets while they're losing, to give myself some
enjoyment of the game. My average bet is like six dollars,
so you don't have to worry about me. But the
same thing happened with the Time Person of the Year
whenever it's a non random outcome, and who will make

(50:40):
the college football playoffs. But that's a well guarded outcome,
the sort of outcome that someone would get fired if
at least they leaked it. I don't know if Vanity
Fair or Time magazine, but if you were a copy
editor at Vanity Fair and you knew about this market,
you knew this Susie Wild's piece, don't.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
You buy Susie wildstock yesterday, right, yeah, and you sell
it now yeah right right, That's what you're doing, is
you're that's insider trading. And that's where ultimately, I don't
know how you can guarantee, you know, other than are
we going to have apply insider trading rules to copy
editors now in the same way we apply insider trading

(51:18):
rules to people that work it?

Speaker 2 (51:20):
Say it, Jore thing. Can you articulate a difference?

Speaker 1 (51:24):
I can't.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
That's my point. The market with material information that the.

Speaker 1 (51:28):
Do we have enough to do? We have enough regulators
to keep track of all this?

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Yeah. To me, the big concern this is a concern.
You articulated a concern. The other big concern is when
you look at sports coverage and now that all the
sport although ESPN has gotten out of it, most of
the networks are in bed with this.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
Or that they didn't get out of it. They just
read they just did their deal with DraftKings, right, just shake.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Got out of it. In terms of it's not ESPN bets.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Sure, but they're doing it's no, I mean, you know,
they're just they just took a bigger check from DraftKings, right.

Speaker 2 (52:03):
So now it really affects the coverage. And maybe you
can make the case that CNN could just take some
hail Mary's to borrow football term and it's not like
their coverage will affect ratings on the downside that much.
But it does affect the coverage, and it gears the
coverage towards the relatively few people who really care about
this stuff.

Speaker 1 (52:23):
And even if you do.

Speaker 2 (52:24):
Care about sports gambling in general, do you really care
in the start of the fourth quarter when they flash
what Van Duel says the Nickson my goods of winning.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
It just really find that's so annoying. Do you know
why I watched? In fact, this gets it to my
frustration with the college football playoff, with the idea of
the subjective committee, where you like, hey, give me what
the statistically best teams are. When I'm like, I've said
this to various people who are sports fans, and I'll
ask you the question, Mike, do you watch sports to

(52:57):
see the most probable outcomes happen? Or do you watch
it enjoy sports because every once in a while there's
an improbable result and you're like, wow, my son will
tell you why is he a college football fan? Because
the first college football memory he has was from watching
my wife and I go crazy over the kick six

(53:18):
the Auburn Alabama game where he kicks a field where
he attempts the field goal and the guy runs it
back to win the You're like, oh my god, I've
never seen a game end like that. That's unbelievable. Alabama
was the better football team. Alabama always is the better
football team. Nine times out of ten, Alabama wins that game.
So why do we bother playing the games? Because we're
kind of we're kind of curious to see if the

(53:38):
improbable happens, which is why when they do stupid things
like lee Florida State out a couple of years ago.
You're like, you're actually taking away the opportunity for a
sports movie, which, Oh, by the way, what do we love.
We love a good sports movie. We love a grandpa
that takes a snap in an NFL game. That's pretty interesting.
I kind of want to see that, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
The kicks a field goal.

Speaker 1 (54:00):
Oh hey, I know that movie. I know exactly the
one you're talking about. The Doctor, the God. I forget
was what the name of it was, The Donkey.

Speaker 2 (54:10):
It was not Gladys The kicking mule. It was, yeah,
it'll hit me someone.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
That's a don Knots, Right, wasn't like coach don Knots.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
Yeah, and he made he made a sound like whoosh
every time he kicked. Oh, what do you think of
James Madison and Tulane both in the college football playoffs,
but not Notre Dame.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
So I'm of two minds, Right, I want the center
and I know this is what and I this is
where I wish college football had a commissioner because I
think the conferences, nobody that leads a conference or an
athletic director has the best interest of the entire game
in mind. Right, there is no what's best for college football.
It is great for college football. If there's an opportunity

(54:52):
for a Cinderella, we want to. You know, it was
great to see George Mason make that run to the
final four, right, that was really cool. It was It's
awesome when Butler got to the end the final of
the NCAA tournament, Right, that was something we were curious about.
That was great. And yet we also want to see
Kentucky in North Carolina or Kentucky in Duke because that's
awesome too. So I get the need for that. I

(55:16):
do think people don't realize and the coverage of college
football is terrible. The reason they had to do that
is they were preventing a lawsuit from the other conferences
from basically, you know, they can't legally keep these other
They had to give a pathway to prevent a lawsuit
from all these group of five conferences. Who would have
said that the big four schools in ESPN were essentially

(55:40):
violating you know, Violet, we're a monopoly, right, violating antitrust.
So that's why it exists. And they had to put
the rules in, wrote the rules. The way they did
it that was a lawyer telling them, well, you need
to at least give the group of five conferences a
chance that hey, if your champion is in the top
five of all champions, right then then you can say no, no, no,

(56:03):
we're not blocking them out of it. I'd personally like
to see a group of five playoff, like you take
the four top group of five conferences and they play,
you know, they play a little mini tournament and the
winner gets to come in. It's actually how the n
i T and the NCAA used to work way back

(56:25):
in the fifties. If there's one school that has that
has won both the n T and the NC Double
A in the same year. Do you know the name?

Speaker 2 (56:33):
City College of New York.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
I knew you would know. It's so interesting. You're one
of the few guests I could have that would be like,
he knows more minutia than I do, and it's you.

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Do you know their nickname?

Speaker 1 (56:44):
The Cooney nickname? I do not think.

Speaker 2 (56:46):
I think they were the Beavers, but I'm going to
check that.

Speaker 1 (56:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:49):
So here's where I disagree. Uh, your analysis was right.
You set the stage, you laid the predictor correctly. I
don't think you want both James Madison into Lane in.

Speaker 1 (57:00):
The way we only want one, right.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Yeah, my son's a freshman at Tulane. I was never
a college football fan. I got so into them this year.
He stormed the field.

Speaker 1 (57:07):
It's fun. Oh, my son's a freshman at SMU. I
was at the goddamn Miami SMU game where he did
what storm the field? So yes, my son stormed the
field on a Miami game. I do.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
I do think the analogy between you want George Mason
or Butler to make it those schools were legitimately better
and not only does the record show they could hold
their own against the power schools.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
You know, in the final.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
Where I was there, I was covering a fri endpr
The best player in that Duke Butler game was Gordon
Hayward of Butler. So that is not the case with
Tulane and James Madison those schools.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (57:44):
Maybe Tulane is a chance.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
Tulane is I would look at least Tulane played a
couple of power for schools, right, They played Duke and
they played Old miss right, like you know there. Put
it this way, when the ACC breaks up, they're going
to become a member of whatever's left of the Accah,
They're the next, They're the next, They're sort of next
in line, right, Tulane and Memphis are probably in ut

(58:08):
San Antonio are probably the next three schools to get
the call up into the Power for if there's room
for more road runners. So yes, well, oh oh absolutely,
I don't think people between UTSA and us F Bright
South Florida being the other one. These are schools that
basically have been created by the population booms of those

(58:29):
two states over the last thirty years. Where these are
commuter schools, and now they're just substantials in state universities.

Speaker 2 (58:38):
U TSA b TU lane quite handily this year. So
I can't confirm. The City College of New York's are
the Beavers. Their mascot is Benny the Beaver. And I
will also give you this. Do you know what other
prominent though division free school is nicknamed the Beavers? Division
one would be Oregon State State? Right which Division II?

(59:00):
And I'll give you a hint. The reason there the
beavers is that the beaver is nature's engineer.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
The beaver is nature's engineer. Interesting, is it? M I
T does excellent work?

Speaker 2 (59:16):
Correct?

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Okay? M I T?

Speaker 2 (59:18):
Beavers?

Speaker 1 (59:20):
That is that feels like uh, that feels like an idea.
They came up with, Hey, what's a good reason for
us to have beavers? That isn't what we what everybody's
going to assume? What could we what could we actually?
What can we say that would be plausibly uh an explanation?
You know?

Speaker 2 (59:38):
I mean? And when they when they face the Presbyterian
blue hose.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
H all right, let me so prediction markets are you
do you think they will be legal? Or do you
think we will when we have a sober up moment
on sports gambling that the prediction markets are in trouble too.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
They shouldn't be legal. I don't mean normatively, I mean
according to the law there their reason for not being
the reason for being legal is something other than entertainment.
Is that they try to make the case that they're
like more like a commodities market. There is no VIG,
so that's something in their favor. But I don't know

(01:00:23):
who's playing, what commodity or what business is benefiting from
the existence of a prediction market.

Speaker 1 (01:00:29):
Maybe you could.

Speaker 2 (01:00:30):
Say, if you're the if you're the sports bar in
Kansas City, and you bet against the Chiefs to make
the playoffs because you know it's going to impact business
in January, and that's a hedge. But that is so
far fetched. So as I look at the law, it
doesn't seem that they have a better case to not

(01:00:50):
be regulated than any traditional sports books. And it's not
the VIG isn't the big or the cut and percent
isn't the big reason there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:00):
You know, let me get you out of here. On
the following it's sort of a historical fact that I'm
curious if you'll turn into a prediction Ever since the
end of the pandemic. I've had a different view of
prohibition because you now realize how did prohibitions start? You know,
it always had a small group of people arguing to

(01:01:22):
ban alcohol. Right. You watch the TV show Gilded Age, Right,
Cynthia Nixon's character is actually holding meetings, right, the Temperance
movement and all that stuff. But we don't actually do
it until just after the nineteen seventeen and eighteen pandemic,
which tells me that like pandemics sort of make us
do crazy things, right, we sort of we go to

(01:01:46):
our extremes, we do certain things, and within a decade
we decide, wholl this was a bad idea. Whether it's gambling,
whether it's the legalization of marijuana. What's something that we've
been letting happen right that we'll we'll look back on
and say in twenty five years and say, yeah, we

(01:02:08):
ended that. After a decade experiment, we realized that's not
good for society. We sobered up. Is it sports gambling,
is it marijuana? Is it something else? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:02:19):
I think the casino gambling, there's just so little justification
for it, and it's creating more victims that the states
have to take care of so sports gambling. I don't know.
I'm not willing to make that prediction, but I think
being able to since only a few states allow it,
you know, bang slot machines on your phones, I do
think that will end. I think another one is I

(01:02:42):
think there's going to be massive regulation of the NIL
business because it's not a business and it doesn't help
anyone everyone. You know, there are obviously a few people
taking advantage of it, But the why do big time
college sports exist. It's the fan experience, right, It's not
the student athletes. So schools can make money because the

(01:03:05):
fans enjoy watching them, and I think it is getting
in the way of the fan experience to some extent,
so there's going to be major reformation there. I would
also say that there's no reason just to pay kids
for NIL with their ability to go on Instagram, get
hundreds of thousands of followers and just sell their advertising.

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):
Maybe.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
I've also always thought that puppy mills should be illegal,
but that's not in the that didn't happen recently. I
see that trend maybe coming. But you know, prohibition was
a big progressive movement, wasn't it. It was said to
be a leap forward, and all the suffragists and all

(01:03:49):
the people who were associated with the progressive causes were
most in favor of it, and it turned out to
be a mistake. So in that way, you know, marijuana
legalization or whatever the extremely flawed rollout was, it reminds
me of it. So I don't see us going back.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
I mean, I see, I don't think so on marijuana
because we're not having there isn't you know it is
It turns out that you know, it isn't any more
or less addictive than alcohol, And it might be arguments
it's slightly less addictive in alcohol. What's not been true?
And you've di you know, we don't know yet that

(01:04:28):
it really has. What benefits there are there may be.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Seems like almost none.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
It seems like there may be killing benefits. I could
see that, you.

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Know, payment half people like maybe your rope is higher.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Well, I will say this, I've had two people in
my life with MS and they swear by it. They
swear by.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
It, but is there nothing else that they would.

Speaker 1 (01:04:51):
There's nothing else that allows them to Everything else makes
them too loopy or makes them too sick, right like,
for whatever a reason, weed is the right amount of
it actually helps them with an appetite right what they need,
and at the same time still doesn't totally fog up
their brain. It's this fine line, right. I know, if

(01:05:12):
you take too much weed, it can fog up your brain.
But some of the the you know, the painkillers you're
getting from the from the pharmaceutical company.

Speaker 2 (01:05:18):
I think the argument to the medical marijuana argument wasn't
that the people with glaucoma or ms were lying. It
was that everyone claimed to have back pain in order
to qualify for medical arijuana. And so eventually the states
just said, let's just legalize marijuana, but they didn't do
it in the right way, and the rollout was done
so inexactly. And this is where execution comes into effect.

(01:05:40):
And this is where our state capacity. You know what
the abundance agenda and what Dunkleman wrote about about why
nothing works, like for all our arguments about this should
or shouldn't be done, and what are the normative changes,
whatever you decide, doing it well is as important as
just doing it. So there's a way to legalize marijuana

(01:06:03):
where it works well. And I think there's probably a
way to get some version of the prediction markets work
that help more people than they hurt. I just I'm
skeptical that our government is capable of that way in
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:06:19):
Well, here's the problem, right, I've always said, you know,
I think being libertarian is in the DNA of Americans. Right,
It's sort of like no, no, no, no. The whole point
of this country was no, no, no. We want to we
want to decide for ourselves what religion we do, and
we want to decide for ourselves and all this stuff.
But unfortunately, when we make it, we're making a libertarian.

(01:06:40):
We're sort of following through a libertarian idea about hey,
you smoke what you want to smoke, or you take
what you want to take, but you do need a
highly regulated delivery system, right in order to fulfill this
libertarian demand, right, And that's I think the problem is
that that's that's probably they just run into each other. Right.

(01:07:04):
Our DNA is like a live and let live to
a point, but you kind of need a highly structured
system in order to deliver this property, or at least
somewhat structured.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
And the libertarians I know would not say they're against
liquor licenses. They're just against liquor licenses that are given
via corruption or suppressed or or given maybe even to anyone.
You know. Libertarians are always will also admit that their
arguments well, I don't know, they'll always admit it, but

(01:07:35):
the honest ones will say, our arguments do tend to
fall apart when it comes to kids.

Speaker 1 (01:07:43):
Mike, I always enjoyed my conversations with you. Are you
still you still read hard copies of things? Or are
you all digital?

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
I mean I could reach for like my it's all
it's all New Yorker in print and New York Times
in print, and yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Because I miss remembering where I read something, and when
I read everything on digital, when I read everything on
the same machinery, it doesn't matter whether I'm reading The Atlantic,
the Times, the Post, the gristlit it doesn't matter, right,
it all looks the same. And I missed being able
to differentiate visually where I read stuff. So yeah, I

(01:08:22):
was curious if we still read.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
I remember where on the page I read things, and
that's really important. And it keeps some of these books
behind me because I have to get to them and
I will be doing the interviews, but a lot of
them are I don't know if they're cherished. They just
gave me a lot of information. And even though I
say abstractly I suppose I could try to find it
on the kindle version, I can't. I definitely could find

(01:08:44):
it in the physical version.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
Yeah. No, I wonder if print has been more resilient
than I think many book publishers thought. And I'm wondering
if there's something there on local news that maybe that
maybe there's a way to bring print back selectively, even
in the local level.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Yeah, well, I know Tablet has a print play that's
going pretty well for them. It's it's maybe like vinyl
with among the music officionados.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
Well we're starting to see, but I read something where.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
It's pretty it does pretty well for the record companies
they're vinyl divisions.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Well, especially when you're charging forty dollars an album. I
don't know if you bespoke, you bought one of these
newly new this new way that hey, get a Taylor
Swift album for your daughter on vinyl, you know, and
it's like fifty bucks even at Target. Anyway, Mike and
Joe the holidays, you too, Do you travel or do

(01:09:44):
you host?

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
I do a little of each I think I usually
take my vacation two weeks later to beat all the crowds.
But as always, as always, Chuck, thank you for having
me and Go Beavers.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Go be If you learned anything it's the fact that
the only person that knows more minutia, particularly sports venusia,
than myself, it's you, mister Presca Cooney lifts Go Beavers.
Thanks brother,

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Interview Only w/ Mike Pesca - The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Interview Only w/ Mike Pesca - The Media Meltdown: AI, Billionaires, and the Collapse of Trust