Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - December 27th, 2025 - Bloomberg Businessweek

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is Bloomberg business Week Daily reporting from the magazine
that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies,
and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance
and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg business Week
Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Hi everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Happy holidays everyone. With the year nearly over, we think
it's time for reflection and anticipation. In this hour, we
sit down with the editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine to
lay out what twenty twenty six could have in store,
from big ideas to looming risks.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
Plus a guide to the best places to travel in
twenty twenty six, because yes, it's kind of a flex.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Yeah, me to start planning early. Yeah, like I'm going
so and so Like me, twenty months is like.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Right around the corner, so it is all right.

Speaker 4 (01:03):
We're going to wrap up too with a look back
at the year that was for one of the most
unpredictable figures in business, tech, and politics. We're talking about Elon.

Speaker 3 (01:10):
And in the spirit of the holiday season and mid
taking time off while playing in the snow or basking
in the sun, and spending time with friends and family,
you may also find yourself with time on your hands.
So with that in mind, in our second hour, we're
going to lay out some of our team's winter reading list,
courtesy of authors and books featured on Bloomberg Business Week
from the last six months, everything from regulating digital empires,

(01:32):
to what it means to unlock collective genius, and to
the CEO of Jamba Juice with tips on how he
built an organization with purpose.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
All of that ahead first, though, twenty twenty five, I
am having trouble believing this year is even over, and
also having trouble believing all that's happened, the ups, the downs,
No doubt, it's been a long year and one that's
gone by I think for a lot of people too
really fast.

Speaker 5 (01:57):
Yeah, no doubt.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Covering it all the major themes players from Wall Street
to Main Street to Washington and more is Bloomberg BusinessWeek Magazine.
Bradstone is the editor of Bloomberg Business Week Magazine. He
joined Bloomberg's Alexis, Christopherus and Me on the year that
was and what to expect in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 6 (02:14):
I'll start with the principle, which is that we are
in the business of covering the icons and business, politics
and culture, the companies that are transforming the world, and
the technologies and the trends that are changing our lives.
And so when we look back at the year, and
we look back at so the December issue, Keisha Steelman
from Alta Beauty, the package on the beauty industry Gap,

(02:38):
Richard Dixon to Turnaround at the Gap, Doug McMillan, Walmart. Okay,
these are classic Business Week stories, corpor profiles, narratives of
companies coming back from the brink.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
We have actually, you know, a shore. There are some
of your covers. You mentioned Alta, I mean Gavin Newsome.

Speaker 6 (02:55):
Will be more specific about this year though, Okay, because
I think this year there were two stories that really
the impacted all of us and are transforming the world
in front of our eyes. And one is AI right
in the massive bet on data centers and GPUs and
the way that it's transforming companies. And so we put
Sam Altman on the cover. In February, we have China's

(03:19):
AI the AI issue in June. But that the other
story is clearly and maybe this is the biggest one,
is Donald Trump and what has really been the pursuit
of kind of an executive presidency, the accumulation of power.
And so Scott Bessentt on the cover in September, Elon

(03:39):
and Doge on the cover in August, Trump's trade war,
after Liberation Day in May. I mean, these are all
ways we tried to cover that story, and you know,
it's massive, it's still developing. But it's not just the covers.
It's in the issues every month, and we're trying to
tell the story about a destruction of norms in Washington,

(04:03):
d C. That's radiating out into the business world and
across all our lives.

Speaker 7 (04:07):
I'm curious if there was one story and I know
this is a lot right coming because you're looking at
the whole year in review, really, but was there one
story that particularly resonated with readers this year?

Speaker 6 (04:16):
Okay, well, it's funny, Alexis, because after having laid out
all these serious topics, I'll give you one that Pop's
right to mind, which is we did the story about
doodles and the doodal industrial complex. These these dogs and
how doodle owners are battling with like the Purebread is
it the Purebread Association, I can't quite remember, but this

(04:38):
whole like the the AKC or something like that, and
this battle over this you know, ridiculous but adorably cute
muppet dog breed, and that of course went well gang
in between people in their day exactly. You know. More seriously,
we wrote the first profile of Russell Vote, the head
of the Office of Management Budget, the real spiritual leader

(04:58):
behind Doge, not even Musk, The account of you know,
his blueprint Project twenty five. This is a Max Chafkin
story and how it was transforming everything from you know,
USAID to the whole federal bureaucracy, and so those kinds
of stories. When we were early on this accumulation of
an imperial presidency of power by Trump, that's where I

(05:24):
think we really connected with our readers.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
You know, as someone who talks, you know, you think
about kind of how this presidency was going to play
out and how you wanted to cover it. I mean,
were you anticipating all the twists and turns. I mean
we had kind of a first version in his first.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
Term, but this has been a very different second term.

Speaker 6 (05:42):
I mean, I don't I don't know that anybody anticipated it.
And look, you know, nobody has a crystal ball. I
think that after Liberation Day, a lot of people automatically
assumed that it could push the economy into recession and
really hit consumer spending. What we see today is a
very complex pick. Sure, people talk about the K shaped economy.
It seems like part of this economy is doing very well.

(06:05):
Black Friday, Cyber Monday shopping was strong. Consumer sentiment is good.
But then there's another side of this economy where people
are suffering and affordability is the word of the day.
When we put Gavin news From on the cover of November,
you know, he's hitting some of those notes. Gavin was
not a story about twenty twenty eight. It was a
story about today. And now he's managed to finally articulate

(06:28):
for the Democratic Party a path forward and articulate an
argument against the current administration. And so you know, we're
trying to tell examine all dimensions, and you know, and
I wrote a story in that issue about how California
is a bit of a handicap right now. It's not
an economic success story. So we try to interrogate all
sides of the political divide.

Speaker 7 (06:48):
I do want to give a shout out though, to
a cover story in January, So going way back to
the beginning of the year, the Human Egg, which was
an amazing investigative piece that actually on a Globe award.
So I was wondering if that was one that particularly,
you know, connected with folks.

Speaker 6 (07:06):
I mean, I love when BusinessWeek becomes the home for
the most ambitious journalistic work inside the Bloomberg newsroom. And
this came from our investigations team. It is this global
investigation in how women are sometimes coersed into donating their
eggs or sometimes in economic positions where they feel like
they have to, and a whole industry that is in

(07:27):
some cases deceiving them and in some cases harming their
harming the donors. And it was sweeping, I mean from
China to India to the United States, truly global, and
we tracked in some cases our reporters traveled with these
shipments of donated eggs, and yeah, it was wonderful. It

(07:47):
did resonate with readers, and it's just the beginning of
the kinds of journalism that we're doing.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
How do you think about twenty twenty six, especially as
we get ready for midterms, and I think about how
much you guys have spent focusing on politics, and it
makes sense. How how are you beginning to think about it?

Speaker 6 (08:01):
Well, I mean, I go back to I think our principles,
which is iconic leaders in business, culture and and politics.
You know, we're We're a business magazine, so there's a
lot of business leaders and a lot of companies that
I'm curious about. I think we've only begun to explore
the the the China story, the transformation of the international

(08:24):
dynamic with the withdrawal of the United States, and a
lot of important you know, alla alliances, climate change, the
role that China will now take as it is increasingly assertive.
That's a topic that interests me. I mean, obviously, you
know the midterms, but I think, like we did with

(08:44):
Scott Besson, like we did with Gavin Newsom, we find,
you know, we interviewed Donald Trump during the campaign, did
a cover story in Kamala Harris during the campaign. We
find our opportunities and those characters that always feel larger
than life and also you know, impacting the business story,
right and who you know who are telling an economic

(09:06):
story that is interesting to our readers.

Speaker 7 (09:09):
We have to get in the Jealousy List because I
love that you do this too. It's the best journalism
in your eyes right or the the Business Week's eyes
of twenty twenty five. But it's nothing we wrote, which
I think is really cool. There was one thing on
the Jealousy List that resonated with me. It was the
spritzes and carbonaras that ate Italy and tourism. I think
it was a New York Times artic cloud tourism has

(09:30):
turned some Italian streets into monochromatic eating zones. They're actually
stopping new restaurants from opening up in some parts of Italy.
Now can you believe it?

Speaker 6 (09:37):
I mean, I love the Jealousy List. I basically send
out an email to all of our contributors in the
newsroom and I say, you know, what did what did
our competitors do that you were a little jealous of
over the last twelve months? And we get stories and
some podcasts. In one case, we even got a series
of tweets Derek Derek Guy, the fashion influencer. Yeah, I mean,

(10:01):
it's just and it turns out I think a lot
of people open that up in bookmark stories and Yeah,
we're we're being a little like benevolent here with our
attention and calling calling attention to our competitors. But it's
a ritual. We've done it, I think seven or eight
years in a row.

Speaker 4 (10:15):
I love it.

Speaker 8 (10:16):
I've contributed to it.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
It's like it's it's a lot of fun and I
always feel like what it reminds me of, like these
are a bunch of things I want to read and
then the same thing that Business Week doese throughout the year,
whether it's movies, whether it's theater. You know, kind of
the Pursuits group has done this, whether it's books to read,
Like you guys are always tapping into all of this.

Speaker 6 (10:33):
Yeah, well, you know it's the curse of the journalists,
Like we have to pay attention off to everything. We
can't turn it off. We're news junkies, and so this is,
I guess, a way of sharing the obsession.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Brad, you talked about the doodle story and how much
people responded to it. Is there any story though, that
you guys have put out where people like.

Speaker 5 (10:52):
Are really fighting back against it and giving you guys.

Speaker 6 (10:54):
Oh, that's a good question.

Speaker 8 (10:55):
I just wonder.

Speaker 6 (10:56):
I mean, look, any politics story that probably any media outlet,
and Bloomberg is no exception. Right, you hear it, You
hear like. We do not have a monolithic audience. You know,
there are there are plenty of our readers from all
both sides of the political aisle, and they tell you
when you don't get it right. So I think you

(11:17):
know hear it too. Yeah, from the from our Gavin
covered or Scott Bessent interview to our coverage of Doge
and Elon, you know, you hear it. And something about
the political discussion has shifted where you know, they if
somebody doesn't like it, you don't get a you know, disciplined,
civilized letter to the editor. They tweet, they tweet something

(11:39):
and they whip up, you know. And so yeah, that
that certainly happened for for a lot of what we write.
And look, I mean, we wouldn't be doing our job
if companies weren't regularly calling and lodging complaints of some kind.
And I could list a couple, but maybe more more
polite to just leave it at that. But part part
of the job is you do get.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
Some pushback and people are reading and you're getting it
from all sides.

Speaker 8 (11:59):
Great stuff. We love We love having.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Everybody, all the members of your team and you stop by,
so thank you so much.

Speaker 6 (12:04):
Good lucky.

Speaker 8 (12:05):
I know it's not twenty twenty six rush us.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
It just feels like, you know, it's all of a sudden,
it's here.

Speaker 7 (12:11):
Can tease the cover for January?

Speaker 6 (12:14):
You know, I will say, alexis that annually we do
a year ahead issue in January. So it's a guy
that's your map to twenty twenty six and I've contributed
a couple stories. The team has come together, so basically
how to stay sane next year? Look for that in
the January issue.

Speaker 8 (12:31):
Like copy good stuff as always.

Speaker 6 (12:33):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Bradstone, editor of Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Joining us right here in studio.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
What do Gabone, Almadi, Kazakhstan, San Francisco, Lima, Texas and
I Pay all have in common?

Speaker 6 (13:02):
Hmm?

Speaker 5 (13:02):
That has me scratching my head. Well, I'll tell you
what they have in common.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
They are all on Bloomberg Pursuit's list of where to
go in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
The Bloomberg Pursuits tenth annual travel guide for the year
ahead makes it easier than ever to cut through the
noise and book your next vacation. The list of twenty
five destinations is quite the mix reinvigorated classics and under
the radar gems, each brimming with new luxuries and creative
energy and places that won't strain your wallet.

Speaker 5 (13:29):
I'm ready. I'm so ready, so you.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Can you can definitely find a place to strain your.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Wallet, all right?

Speaker 3 (13:34):
With our deep dive on where to travel in twenty
twenty six in the new year is Bloomberg Pursuits Global
Travels are Nikki Eckstein. Nikki, we always love this list,
We always love talking about it with you, But first
of all, remind us how this list gets put together,
because the world is a pretty big place. I mean
it's a group effort.

Speaker 9 (13:51):
Oh yeah, it takes a village. I say that creating
this list each year is almost like having a child.
I have two of them, so I don't take that lightly.
But we do an all year round effort. Sometimes it
takes multiple years for news to kind of bubble up
in the way that we want in a particular place.
So we're tracking places for a very long time all
around the world, and as we see pockets of news,

(14:12):
you know, hotel openings, museum expansions, airport expansions, new airports,
new flights, what have you, we are looking at all
of that news and more and kind of watching for
little hot zones where a lot of things are going
on all at once and making a place feel really
magnetic at a particular moment in time.

Speaker 8 (14:32):
And then there's kind of intangibles.

Speaker 9 (14:34):
Where we just see that the culture is shifting in
a particular way, the conversation is moving, and there's something
in the zeitgeist that is homing in on particular parts
of the world in ways that we can put our
fingers on because we're watching this stuff day in and
day out, but other people might not notice until they
see it all over their Instagram feeds next year.

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Well, let's start with one of those places that I
was surprised to see on the list, and that's Gabone.

Speaker 9 (14:58):
Yeah, Gabone is really interesting. So this is a particularly
interesting case because you can really point a finger at
what is happening and why and how, And it really
started in many ways with Jeff Bezos. That's a surprising connection, right,
like who saw that coming? But his Earth Fund pledged
some thirty million dollars into conservation efforts across the country

(15:21):
just a couple of years ago, and those efforts are
really bearing fruit and helping turn them into robust wildlife
tourism destinations where, among other things, you can see gorillas
in really small groups of people, much smaller even than
in Rwanda, which is so known for its gorilla tourism,

(15:41):
and you can get these really really intimate sightings. One
of the things that's school about Gubbon is that the
wildlife parks are right against the coast, and so you
can stay in these beachside resorts and like you're not
fighting for lounge chairs with other people. The quote unquote
people on the beach are hippos and elephants.

Speaker 8 (16:00):
Okay, I love that. I still love that.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Oh yeah, And it's you know, I think about, like,
you know, Africa in general and going on safaris and
things like these are things that have been around for
a long time, but this just does feel like a
much more intimate, intimate twist on.

Speaker 9 (16:17):
All of that oh yeah, you're not going to run
into another jeep for a mile?

Speaker 3 (16:22):
Hey listen one of the things and when like when
should we go? Because I think I just want to
point out that what's cool about this list is should Yeah,
I'm on it begs packed.

Speaker 10 (16:33):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
You guys do different factors that kind of determine the experiences,
you know, and when is the right place to go
and when not to go?

Speaker 5 (16:40):
So when should we go to Gabon?

Speaker 9 (16:42):
You know, we try really hard to make this list
very useful. A lot of our competitors in the travel
space do really interesting lists that are meant to surprise
you in so many ways. We do that, but we
also try to make it really really useful. And the
way that we do that is exactly like you're saying,
we're providing a ton of data. We have a partnership

(17:03):
with Kayak. They supply us with two point five billion
data points each year to get this project off the ground,
and those data points power these incredible charts that are interactive.
You can select your closest airport and then get predictive
price insights month by month to understand what flights and

(17:23):
hotels will cost you to go to each of the
twenty five places that we're excited about this year, and
then on top of that, we layer in expert insights
from travel agents and operators that are real experts in
these destinations. So for a place like Ubone, we can
tell you very clearly that the summer months are summer
months June, July, August are the best time to go.

Speaker 8 (17:42):
Because prices are favorable, but also that's.

Speaker 9 (17:44):
When you're going to get the best wildlife sidings. It's
the dry season, so you'll not only be able to
see gorillas, but also migratory whales. On the coast, there's
a national park where there are lots of mandrel monkeys
and that's their mating season.

Speaker 8 (18:00):
Like all of these.

Speaker 9 (18:00):
Reasons why the summer months are really the best time.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
I love. I love hey listen.

Speaker 3 (18:04):
I always think about People always talk about Greece, and
when you haven't been to Greece like me, they're like,
what you haven't been to Greece? But I always think
about the Greek Isles and you guys actually include on
this list the Greek mountains.

Speaker 9 (18:16):
Wait, what you haven't been to see I have either, Well,
my parents went, they're on their honeymoon.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
Yeah, This was like, you know, back before everyone was
posting Greek Isles on Instagram, well many decades before that.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
Apparently now we should go to the Greek mountains.

Speaker 9 (18:31):
Well, I do recommend that you go to the Greek
Islands at some point in your life, but I think
that a mistake that people make is overly focusing on
the Greek Islands, and a change in behavior is happening
now where people are understanding that the Greek Islands are
very saturated, they're very expensive. Hotels are easily pushing one
thousand dollars a night if you can even get in.

(18:52):
The fairies are you know, there's difficulties with the fairies.
There's always protests and strikes, and there's weather concern and
there have been wildfires the last few years, very extreme temperatures.
That doesn't make the Greek Islands any less magical. They're
a very very special place. But people have understood that
the headache that's associated with the Greek Isles means that

(19:14):
sometimes you need to pair them with another place that's
a little less stressful, And a really common solution to that,
which is sometimes also just replacing the Greek Isles, is
to go north to the mountains where you can get
a lot of the same cultural draws, a lot of
the same food even, but with a much quieter, more
countryside vibe. Small villages where the culture is really still

(19:39):
a Greek authentic experience. You know, you're going to get
farmers and cheesemakers and very old monasteries and old stone
buildings and just that kind of charm that in a
lot of the islands has been eroded to kind of
peddling to masterism.

Speaker 4 (19:54):
Okay, so that's an area that is certainly on my list.
I want to talk a little bit about budgets here.
We mentioned that you can go on both ends of
the budget extreme, so stuff that's affordable and stuff that
many would classify as splurging. Let's start with the splurging
side of things. If you look at this entire list
of more than two dozen places, where do you go
if you win the power ball?

Speaker 6 (20:16):
Wooh?

Speaker 8 (20:18):
That's a great question.

Speaker 9 (20:20):
So I would say my personal answer to that question
is not born out by the data that we're showing necessarily,
but I would go to wrote island in Indonesia, where
a new hotel is soon to open called me he wrote. Now,
if you're a hotel nerd like I am, then Niki

(20:42):
has a strong connotation to you because about almost fifteen
years ago, the entrepreneur Chris Birch and the Hotelia James
McBride became like overnight sensations in the luxury travel world
by opening what soon became known as the most luxurious
resort in the whole life world. And it was called
Meihi Wacho. Now it's just called me He they changed it.

(21:03):
But this Indonesian private island resort has developed such a
strong following. It really is known as one of the
finest places you can stay. And for the first time,
they're opening their second hotel, a spinoff to Nihim, on
a tiny island called Rote And what's interesting about it
is that they're also creating a big hospitality academy for
locals there so that they can help Indonesians kind of

(21:25):
capitalize on their own travel economy. It's a really interesting model.
These are expensive hotels, but that's where I would go.
The nice thing is that because that hotel isn't open yet,
it's not reflected in Kayak's hotel data, and if you
wanted to stay anywhere else, our price information shows that
you can stay for as little as one hundred and

(21:46):
sixteen dollars a night in a luxury hotel.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
I have to say I would love to go to
Tanzania's Spice Islands. That's my kind of favorite pick in
this list. Having said that, I got to go to
the United States because there are a couple of places Ozarks,
which made me think of the streaming series, and then Charleston,
South Carolina, which made me think of the reality show
Southern Charm.

Speaker 5 (22:06):
But they are on.

Speaker 3 (22:07):
Your list as places that are in the US that
people might want to think about. Top up, they're among
your tops.

Speaker 9 (22:15):
Yeah. Absolutely, so the Ozarks are really interesting. I think
most people probably don't even know exactly.

Speaker 8 (22:21):
Where they are. They're in the South.

Speaker 9 (22:23):
There's a big kind of mountain range and connects numerous
destinations that you probably do know about. There's Brandson, Missouri
on one side, and then Bentonville, Arkansas, is on another side.
And if you know anything about Bentonville, you know that
it's the HQ for Walmart.

Speaker 4 (22:40):
I thought you were going to say it's the cycling
capital of the country.

Speaker 5 (22:44):
Oh stops it is.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
It's also true thanks to the Walton family that have
you know, they've actually just had a big race there.

Speaker 9 (22:53):
The Walton family has done so much for this part
of the US, and their biggest contribution, and in my
opinion and probably in a lot of people's opinion, is
the museum that they created in Bentonville called Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art, and it is truly one of
the finest art institutions in the country, if not possibly
the world, frankly, and they are they're doing a massive,

(23:16):
massive expansion of their gallery spaces. They're adding one hundred
and fourteen thousand square feet of exhibition space. And this
is like really architecturally impressive gallery space, Like we're not
talking about like just boxy buildings. It's like beautiful, like
you know, it's a complex worth seeing on its own.
But it's also surrounded with like James Trell exhibit installations

(23:39):
like those sky Space installations, and trails of one hundred
public artworks that you can go biking around. Plus there's
like all these new hotels in the area that make
it really really quite fascinating culturally from an adventure standpoint.
For a family standpoint, it's got everything.

Speaker 5 (23:57):
I think Corsica now may be my favorite place.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Of this This.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
List is changing.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
It's oh my god, there's like it's really cool. It's
really cool.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
We have to leave it there, unfortunately, but I do
love how you say. It's interactive. We highly recommend everybodyhead
either to the Bloomberg or Bloomberg dot com play around
with it because you know, you can select an origin,
you can you just kind of can play around with
it and figure out the best time of the year
to go.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
You know.

Speaker 3 (24:26):
The financial part and what it would cost is all
part of it. It's very cool how you guys put
this list together. Nikki, thank you so much. Happy holidays
and happy almost a new year. Places to go we
travel Hapy travels.

Speaker 5 (24:38):
Love it. Take care of Nikki.

Speaker 4 (24:39):
That's Nikki x Stein Bloomberg pursuits that global travels are
and be sure to check out the list at Bloomberg
dot com and of course on the Bloomberg terminal too.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
Where would you go? Rocky Mountains were in there too,
you know.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
Well Canadian Canada's rocky mountains still rocky mountains. Yeah, that's
a great place. I would I would I want to
go to Kazakhstan.

Speaker 5 (24:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's right. It sounds like.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
What yeah, really cool. This is the scener is just unbelievable.

Speaker 3 (25:04):
The information this list tells you why you really want
to go there. And I love that they did the homework.

Speaker 4 (25:08):
Since you and I started doing this together, Carol, what
I been to zero of these places?

Speaker 5 (25:14):
Welcome to having kids?

Speaker 8 (25:15):
Hey still I had.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
On Bloomberg Business Week, we reflect on the year that
was for the world's richest man.

Speaker 5 (25:20):
Elon. This is Bloomberg.

Speaker 2 (25:23):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You
can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
New York station, Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 3 (25:40):
Let's now turn to someone who seemed to dominate the
news cycle in twenty twenty five. Seem to yeah, he
totally dominates. Elon Musk wasn't just sending rockets to space
and pushing robotaxis forward. He began the year by plunging
head first into politics, taking the advisory role in the
Trump Administration's Department of Government Efficiency or do Where Musk

(26:01):
and his team of dozers helped is that what they
call them do they call them dozers.

Speaker 11 (26:05):
Doge kids, doge doge kids.

Speaker 5 (26:07):
That's Maxis scientific.

Speaker 4 (26:09):
Doge boys, doage boys.

Speaker 5 (26:10):
He's going to come in just a moment, all right.

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Well, they helped lead sweeping federal spending cuts and stirred controversy.

Speaker 5 (26:15):
Yeah, just a little bit over the reach of private
power in US government.

Speaker 4 (26:19):
It was a time when you would often see Elon
and sometimes his young son alongside President Trump in the
Oval Office, Elon and the President both taking questions from
reporters addressing US government business. That was early on in
the year totally. And then of course there was Elon's
black eyes seen around the world from the Oval Office,
and later the public fallout with President Trump. That still
seems to exist on some level. It's kind of news

(26:40):
when you see these two together now.

Speaker 3 (26:42):
But the bromance not what it was, it seems. Although
let's remember in November, Elon was actually back at a
White House dinner for Mohammed Ben Salmon NBS Saudi Arabia's
crown prints along with other big tech bros.

Speaker 5 (26:53):
Remember those sneakers at Elon War. They were all over
social media, all right.

Speaker 4 (26:57):
Then that's Elon the person. Then there's also Elon Empire,
the ev company, the clean energy stuff Tesla facing a
backlash protest tied to his ties to the White House
and political moves.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
And then there's SpaceX. It launched more Falcon rockets, had
successful test flights of its starship Mega Rocket, the world's
largest and most powerful, shot more Starlink satellites into space,
and then in December we all got the long awaited
and anticipated news about a possible blockbuster IPO for SpaceX
that could be the largest ever with a target evaluation
of about one and a half trillion. December two, we

(27:30):
saw Tesla hitting an all time high. It's first in
about a year we had to talk about all of this.
It's kind of our backdrop.

Speaker 4 (27:37):
Max Chafkin is Bloomberg BusinessWeek senior reporter. He's co host
of the Everybody's Business podcast. He's the author of the
Contrarian Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power. So, Max,
when you think about the year that was for Elon Musk,
I mean I think about the politics of it. That's
kind of my biggest My biggest takeaway is his closeness
and then distance to the President.

Speaker 11 (27:59):
Yeah, I mean he was briefly probably the most powerful
person in the US government besides Donald Trump. I mean,
he was at Trump's side pretty much continuously. Trump made
Musk and this this Doge effort, and these young people
that Elon Musk brought into government central to the beginning

(28:19):
of his administration. It was a big part of this
effort early on to kind of like flood the zone,
which was a term you heard from Republican operatives.

Speaker 8 (28:27):
And that didn't last very long.

Speaker 11 (28:30):
But at the same time this year, Elon Musk also
increased his net worth, you know, tremendously. He briefly he
was briefly not the world's richest man. I think Larry Ellison,
I can't remember.

Speaker 1 (28:41):
He's a couple of days.

Speaker 11 (28:43):
And he got the Tesla board to give him a
trillion dollar pay package. So he simultaneously was kind of
at the seat of power and getting paid more money
than anybody in history. I mean, of course, those two
things are related, but they're also complicated by the fact that,
as he said to him, the relationship with Trump has
been rocky.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
You know, he was in the White House but still
also running a bunch of companies.

Speaker 11 (29:08):
He was running, you know, five companies and that created
all sorts of interesting complications, and you kind of see
both the way that Elon Musk leveraged his political power
in the sort of asset prices of these stocks right
where one of the reasons Tesla's value has gone up
so much, and that's that's why what has driven Elon
Musk net worth is this belief that his proximity to

(29:32):
Republicans will allow him to get concessions on policies for
driverless cars. So driverless cars, of course are not widely available.
They're sort of different explanations for that. But if you
are a teslable, you think one of the explanations is
regulatory and you believe that Elon Musk's proximity to power
is going to facilitate that. And so we've seen, you know,

(29:55):
a dramatic run up in the price of Tesla driving
up to Elon musk Networth. It's kind of similar dynamic
with SpaceX, which of course is a government contractor. On
the flip side in terms of consumers, Elon Musk's association
with what is by now you know, a pretty unpopular
presidency has really hurt him and you've sort of seen

(30:15):
it in Tesla's sales where Tesla's sales. He did have
a decent quarter right as the EV tax credits expired,
but overall, I mean, the sales have been really poor.
You're really seeing a backlash. You're seeing a company that
managed to alienate a pretty decent swath of its customer base.
But for now that doesn't matter because Tesla has sort

(30:36):
of transcended into AI, into the AI firmament, and for
whatever reason, Tesla has been able to kind of float
above that. And I think some of that has to
do with politics. Some of that has to do with
Elon musk kind of unique relationship with his investor base
and with his fan base, and yeah, it's just kind
of the aura of Elon improbably continued this year despite

(30:58):
all of the controversy and the black eye and all
of that.

Speaker 3 (31:01):
It makes me think that even with all of that
and the volatility and the pushback maybe among consumers, still
a good year.

Speaker 11 (31:07):
I mean, if I told you that there were gonna
be that Elon Musk was gonna leave the White House
having a huge Twitter war with Donald Trump where they'd
be trading insults over Epstein, that he would have a
literal black guy, that there would be reports in the
New York Times which Elon must denied.

Speaker 6 (31:23):
About his drug use.

Speaker 11 (31:24):
You have the President of the United States commenting on
those reports.

Speaker 6 (31:27):
You would say like that, you must have.

Speaker 1 (31:31):
He must have been a.

Speaker 11 (31:31):
Terrible year for Elon. And yet this guy is he
is Teflon right. There are there are there are things,
reputational things that would hurt other people and that seem
to hurt other business people that do not that where
he is able to float above it. He has this
very like I said, a very unique relationship with his
investors and with his fans. And I think that the

(31:52):
truth of it is that Elon may say he's done
with politics. He may want to be done with politics,
but he can't be done with politics because he is
operating in businesses that are are just very close to
the political heat. Right, Tesla is doing AI stuff. AI stuff,
of course, is going to be sub subject to regulatory scrutiny.

(32:12):
You have all this stuff with the AI tax credits.
You have his rocket company, which depends on on government contracts. Like,
all of this has politics baked into it. So he
can't get away from politics if he wants to run
his companies. This idea that he could step away from
politics to run his business empire. It almost doesn't make
sense if you actually understand what his business empire is.

Speaker 3 (32:33):
There's a great story in the Bloomberg Tesla's Musk Premium
in focus with the SpaceX ipo on the horizon, and
it reminds us that the shares are up more than
one hundred percent since April eighth, making it one of
the best performers in the S and P five hundred index.
We won't talk about the valuation because that always freaks
out everybody because it's pretty high. Having said that, I
want to talk about its businesses because go back to
Kathy Wood in the early days, who talked and was

(32:56):
a big supporter, likened Elon to a Thomas Edison of
our times. Is he you know Max when it's Neuralink,
it's AI, it's Grock, it's SpaceX, it's Starlink, Like, there's
a lot of stuff boring company.

Speaker 5 (33:10):
I don't even know what's going on with that anymore.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Is he still though kind of seen as a creative
genius and moving the needle in our world?

Speaker 11 (33:19):
Well, he's within some corners of the business world. He
is absolutely seen as as somebody on that level, on
the Thomas Edison level. I mean, I think in terms
of inventions and and that comparison. He didn't invent electric cars,
he didn't invent the rocket engine that he is he's using,
But but he has been a very successful at sort

(33:41):
of taking existing technologies and manufacturing them and marketing him
you know, he's it's it's almost a cliche to compare
him to Steve Jobs, but I think it's similar to
Steve Jobs. It's it's not he's not a technical genius,
but he is really really good at marketing and sort
of understanding how to how to create, you know, products,

(34:01):
whether those are products that are sold to the government
or products that are sold to consumers. And I mean,
I think you also have to say he is pretty
good at managing investors and managing politics. I mean, as
messed up as it was, as chaotic as it was,
he managed to play a pretty big role in Donald
Trump's election, and he is still like a political powerbroker,

(34:24):
and he's he's going to continue to be that, I
think in the years to come.

Speaker 3 (34:29):
I feel like the bulk of this conversation was about
politics rather than his businesses. Does that say something or
or the politics is what really supports As you said,
they're intertwined in many ways, right.

Speaker 11 (34:41):
I mean, I think the story around Elon now is
an investor story. It's it's a story about investors making
a bet and believing, as you said, Carol, running that
stock up really really high, based on a belief in
the future. And it's it's less about what the company
is doing now, because what the company is doing now,
ESLA is doing now anyway, has not been particularly successful.

(35:03):
But it's a belief that you know, driverlest cars are
coming any day now, and you know there are a
lot of people in the stock market who think that's true.

Speaker 5 (35:10):
So we're not gonna hear about him in twenty twenty.

Speaker 4 (35:13):
Okay, So just we could have done this for twenty
thirty forty minutes, Max, we.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
Barely scratch the surface.

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Yeah, twenty twenty six SpaceX's IPO. I imagine we are
going to be spending quite a bit of time talking
about Elon next year.

Speaker 11 (35:28):
I mean, we're definitely gonna be talking about Elon. I
think that, you know, we'll see if that IPO happens
on schedule.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
You're a little skeptical, No, No, I'm not skeptical.

Speaker 11 (35:36):
I just think it's very I think anytime we're talking
about a mega IPO like that, we're talking about trying
to time the markets, and and I think there's just
a lot of uncertainty in the market. So so yeah,
I mean, if markets are doing what they're currently doing,
then I think there's a very good chance that Elon
Musk might say, yeah, this is this makes sense. On

(35:57):
the other hand, he has for years and years and
years talked about how much he hates running a public company.
Remember he nuked his reputation like seven years ago because
he hated having Tesla a public so much. And I
think it makes sense to do it again with SpaceX,
just because the public markets give him so much leverage.
His ability to just get whatever he wants from the

(36:19):
stock market and from kind of retail investors is so important.
Would be helpful to SpaceX, just as it's helpful to Tesla.
But if he can't do that at a good price,
I don't think he will because why would he doesn't
necessarily have to.

Speaker 3 (36:31):
I gotta ask, and I know we have to wrap
but X formally Twitter is I we talk about it,
I know, is it just didn't significant or it's just
I don't even know does he even use it that
much anymore?

Speaker 11 (36:41):
You know, I think part so x is definitely less
like broadly influential than it used to be as a
kind of like media thing.

Speaker 6 (36:51):
Now.

Speaker 11 (36:51):
Part of that is because Elon Musk brought back all
these kind of right wingers who were banned for various reasons,
and the site has become sort of more of a
conservative social network. Right, it's kind of like Fox News
to Instagram's you know, MSNBC or something like that. And
so as a result, right it doesn't have the same

(37:12):
kind of broad influence where but it is still very
influential kind of on the right. It is where like
if you are if you're on the right, it's where
you're talking to your friends, rivals, et cetera. The other
thing is like it's it's like an AI thing now
it's just a it's just a way for grock x
AI Elon Musk's answer, just chat GPT to to sort

(37:32):
of gather information. And so for those it's it's not
like it's become less valuable. I think, in fact, it's
probably become more valuable over the last year, but it's
probably less influential than it was.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
Max Chafkin, we could go on with you for hours.
We appreciate you taking the time. That's Max Chaffkin, Bloomberg
BusinessWeek Senior reporter. He's the co host of the Everybody's
Business podcast. He's the author of The Concherion, Peter Thiel
and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
And that wraps up our first hour of the weekend
edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio.

Speaker 5 (38:01):
Coming up in the next.

Speaker 3 (38:02):
Sixty minutes a holiday reading list, perhaps including an eye
opening exploration into digital empires and the global regulation of
AI technology.

Speaker 4 (38:11):
Plus unlocking the best in one another. That's what behavioral
psychologist John Leevy calls collective genius. And he was the
CEO of John Bajuice, on the board of the honest
Company CAVA, and now he's helping others build an organization
with purpose.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
James D. White joins us in the next hour.

Speaker 5 (38:27):
This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masser.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
And I'm Tim Stenebeck.

Speaker 2 (38:35):
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch us
live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
on Applecarplay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app,
or watch us live on.

Speaker 3 (38:47):
YouTube Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend
edition of Bloomberg Business Week, It's a holiday reading list
from some of the authors we spoke to in the
last few months, including one the author of a book
about an alternative way we think about great leaders, and
I gotta tell you it just may be time to
throw out all those other management books. We will talk
to the author of Team Intelligence, how brilliant leaders unlock

(39:10):
collective genius.

Speaker 4 (39:11):
Plus the former CEO of jam Bajus on shaping company
culture in the age of gen Z employees. First up
this hour, though our phones, our data, the apps we
use every day. Behind it all is a quiet but
consequential power struggle over who gets to make the rules
of the digital world. Our next guest examines how the
world's biggest powers, the US, China and the EU are

(39:33):
exporting their digital rule books and what that means for
all of us. The question how is the future of
the digital world going?

Speaker 3 (39:40):
To Look For help Answering that question, Emily Graffeo and
Tim spoke to a new Bradford.

Speaker 5 (39:45):
She is Henry L.

Speaker 3 (39:46):
Moses Professor of Law and International Organization at Columbia Law School.
She's also the author of the book Digital Empires, The
Global Battle to regulate Technology.

Speaker 12 (39:57):
So thanks so much for having me, Tim and Emily.
We may well be cooked, but the question is what
are we most worried about. I think there are many
exciting developments. I think we're certainly more entertained in many ways.
But at the same time, I think those who warned
us early on that this is not the kind of
AI revolution that we should be just leaving for the

(40:19):
tech companies to govern to manage. We do need governments involved.
We need some guardrails, we need some regulation to make
sure that these fast advances that we are witnessing are
moving to the direction that we're comfortable with.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
It seems like it's too late, though.

Speaker 12 (40:34):
I don't think it's too late. I think we certainly
are not at the point where we can say that
AI is done. I think we will continue to see
massive developments in coming years, and we already have AI
governance regulation on the radar of many lawmakers. And obviously
the Europeans have been most proactive, as they usually are,

(40:57):
and they have the AI a comprehensive piece of legislation
that is already in force, and now it's then the
matter of implementing it effectively. And then we also need
to see what happens in the United States at the
state level. China is definitely interested in governing AI. We
have many other jurisdictions, so I think there is a

(41:19):
lot that is happening and a lot more that needs
to be done.

Speaker 13 (41:23):
In your new book, Digital Empires, you break apart how
basically different regimes across the globe are governing and regulating
AI differently. So there's the US, there's Europe, there's China.
In your research, have you found one nation is kind

(41:44):
of doing that balancing act the best so far in
terms of balancing out They don't want to stifle innovation,
but they also want to protect users of AI, consumers
of AI, companies that are getting involved with AI. Who's
doing balancing act the best?

Speaker 11 (42:01):
In your view?

Speaker 12 (42:02):
So I think any regulator really needs to think about
this balancing to make sure that we harness these tremendous
benefits that are associated with AI, but also really safeguard
our citizens and societies from various risks. And in many ways,
there is a perception that the Europeans are airing on

(42:22):
the side or preemptively protecting against these risks and maybe
then foregoing some of the innovation benefits, whereas the Americans
would be airing on the side of maybe being very
techno optimists and not thinking about all those potential downsides.
I think in many ways I do like and endorse

(42:44):
the European model in the sense that, in my view,
that best safeguards the public interest and really takes seriously
the fundamental rights of individuals and democratic structures of the society.
But there is always I really reject this notion that
this comes at the cost of innovation. There definitely is

(43:04):
a gap where the Americans are doing much better in
generating AI innovations compared to the Europeans. But the reason
is not that the Europeans are so keen on regulating.
I think there are many other reasons that explain why.
There are just fundamental pillars of the tech ecosystem in
the US that are much stronger and the Europeans have
fallen short in replicating that. So regulation as such, the

(43:29):
protection of those rights is not a choice that needs
to come at the cost of making beneficial progress in
this space.

Speaker 4 (43:39):
So you know, I keep going back to our conversation
that I had with you two years ago, because the
world has changed so much since then. Two years ago,
Joe Biden was president, there were a lot of folks
who didn't think that Donald Trump would win another term.
Fast forward two years, Donald Trump is the president. David

(44:01):
Sachs's crypto and aisar the regime is thinks about this
completely differently than I think it's fair to say the
Biden administration. What do you think the US needs to
be doing right now to regulate this technology? What would
you like to see David Sachs do?

Speaker 12 (44:20):
Yeah, so you're so right. There has been a complete
U turn in many ways. Towards the end of the
Biden administration. There was closer alignment between the traditional Transatlantic allies,
where the US was really moving closer to the European
view that technology like AI needs guardrails, and there was
a genuine attempt to join forces among the world's techno

(44:43):
democracies in order to halt the advances of Chinese digital
authoritarian views of governing technology. So I really saw this
potential for the US and the EU to join forces
to bring about a very beneficial chase in this space.
The US is doing, I think two things. So it's
first of all, giving a lot more power to the

(45:04):
tech companies, walking away from regulation, impraising these deregulatory zeal
that really reflects the very strong form of Technolbertarian techno
optimist firl wheel. But in many ways, the US is
also playing Beijing's game and becoming very state driven. We
see a nassive state investment in some of these leading

(45:30):
tech companies. We see our export controls, investment restrictions, we
see subsidies. So the US is, to me are losing
some of its own goals. And if you think about
how that will also impact the US's adamant goal of
being a leader in AI, what is happening in the
space of integration, I think that is really counterproductive if

(45:53):
you think about where all those AI innovation comes innovations
come from the US. So what the US would need
to do first, The US would need to regulate this space.
We need to make sure that fundamental rights are protected,
we need to make sure that those societal risks are
under control, and we need to also, at the same
time make sure that we will continue to invest in

(46:16):
the development of the AI by retaining the world's best talent,
which often is immigrant talent, including then Chinese data scientists
who have been contributing to advances in this space in
the US.

Speaker 13 (46:28):
Is there any specific regulation that comes to mind like
that you would want to see in the US that
would prevent this kind of idea that Tim presented in
the beginning of the segment about this, the spaghetti test.
It sounds silly, the will Smith spaghetti test, but it gets.

Speaker 1 (46:49):
At the heart crazy.

Speaker 13 (46:52):
Yeah, concerned that people have that suddenly the Internet is
going to be, you know, filled with these videos.

Speaker 1 (46:59):
We're we are and we think it's the end.

Speaker 13 (47:03):
I'm sorry, well, maybe we can have a professor help,
she said.

Speaker 1 (47:08):
She said, it's not the end already, great.

Speaker 13 (47:09):
Right, for it's not the end. Is there a specific
piece of regulation that that comes to mind? Is it
about I don't know, digital privacy, people needing disclaimers on
top of every video that you see on the Internet.

Speaker 12 (47:22):
So I think there are many aspects, and there's no
easy way to say that you just need to do
one thing in order to then address this multitude of
different arms. But one thing, it does start from the
protection of privacy and our agency and our ability to
be able to tell what is fiction and what is not,
and our ability to engage in conversation based on real

(47:44):
information that is not manipulated by our AI. And this
information obviously existed even without chat GPT type of tools,
but they are now fueled with this AI driven ability
to manipulate our sense of reality. So in many ways,

(48:06):
I think it does need labeling. It does need the
kind of transparency and accountability that we have a sense
of how these AI systems are built and how we
engage with them. But then there are also risks around
and just protecting content content creators. We need to take
copyright seriously and the idea of how we actually train

(48:28):
these models with the data that has been generated by
individual authors, by journalists, and that needs to be also
compensated well so that we still have the incentive to
engage in that kind of content production. But privacy is
obviously very high on my list, This information is very
high on my list. Then there are questions that are

(48:48):
more about existential risks, more about systemic risks, And even
if it's hard to sometimes know the probabilities of some
of the most severe risks and how likely they are
to materialize, we still need to be prepared to also
as a society, to confront that kind of reality when

(49:09):
AI advance is really fast and we reach the point
when we find even harder to govern that technology. So
I think there are all these layers, and we are
not even really having, at least at the federal level,
a real conversation in how we go about regulating this space.

Speaker 4 (49:25):
Professor Anu Bradford Henry el Moses, Professor of Law and
an International Organization at Columbia Law School. She's the author
of several books, including her most recent Digital Empires, The
Global Battle to Regulate Technology, published back in twenty twenty three,
but as relevant right now as it was two years ago.
Please do come back soon and join us here on
at Bloomberg Business Week Daily.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Listen live
each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Play and the Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app.
You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Flag New York station Just Say Alexa played Bloomberg eleven thirty.

Speaker 3 (50:04):
Elon has it, so too does President Trump and Steve
Jobs also as well.

Speaker 4 (50:10):
We're talking about leadership. I mean, these are all leaders.
John Leevy thinks about leadership a lot. He argues, though,
that one thing all leaders have in common is not
the thing that we're told when it comes to these
executive coaches or these business school courses, like you know,
empathy or humility, those.

Speaker 1 (50:30):
Sorts of things.

Speaker 4 (50:31):
He says, it's something else. John Levy is a behavioral
scientist and New York Times bestselling author. He's got a
new book out, Team Intelligence, How brilliant leaders unlock collective genius.

Speaker 10 (50:41):
Let's think about it like this. Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, Right,
they weren't great at creating psychological safety or even getting
consensus among their leadership. Yet people still hold them up
as these examples of amazing leaders. The problem is that
what we've been sold is that, and mostly through universities
like Harvard, Gale and so on, is that we have

(51:03):
to have these essential skills if you want to be
a leader, and if you pay them a whole lot
of money, they'll teach you those skills and then you'll
be a certified leader. Congratulations. The problem is it just
doesn't track. When we really started looking at this, there
was only one trait that was common across all leaders.

Speaker 1 (51:18):
What is it?

Speaker 10 (51:19):
It's that they have followers. It's so self referential and
it's kind of ridiculous, and so we really wanted to
ask the question. Then, Okay, what causes us to follow someone?
Generally people say, okay, it's vision and charisma, but that
doesn't make sense. There are plenty of people who have
no vision and no charisma, still people follow them.

Speaker 8 (51:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (51:40):
So the answer, it turns out, comes down to this.
Do you remember how you felt when you were in
high school on Sunday at six pm? The Sunday scaries? Now,
why you think about this? You were free, you were
at home, but you felt anxious. Friday at one o'clock
you were in class. But how did you feel?

Speaker 6 (51:56):
Great?

Speaker 10 (51:57):
Yeah, so exciting, ecstatic. And that's because as human beings
don't relate to the present, they relate to the future
that they believe they have. If you can make me
feel you don't live in the moment, definitely not. We
believe we tend to have this association right now to
what we think is about to happen. And so in
high school on Sunday, what was going to happen was

(52:18):
school the next day? Or if you're about to leave
for vacation. You might be sitting at work, but you're
wildly excited. The reason we follow somebody is because when
we interact with them or their media, they cause us
to feel that there'll be a new and better future.
That's it.

Speaker 8 (52:34):
So that's fascinating. So let's take it to somebody.

Speaker 3 (52:38):
President Trump is that kind of his success or where
he is today?

Speaker 8 (52:44):
It's because of that.

Speaker 10 (52:46):
I would argue that people in general vote for whoever
they feel will cause them to have a new and
better future, whether it's President Trump or it's investing into
Elon Musk's companies. Listen, when you read the report of
what he's like as a boss at Elon, right, it's
not the type of boss that we exemplify.

Speaker 4 (53:06):
I mean, you might not even have to read reports
of what he's like as a boss. You could just
follow him on social media and he had a good
understanding of his personality.

Speaker 10 (53:13):
And when you do, you have to ask yourself like,
is this really the person I'd want to be reporting to?
And the answer is maybe not. But what he's amazing
at is he has a handful of super skills that
nobody else has. Right, he thinks at scale and moves
faster than anyone in our society. And those super skills
are so profound that when we interact with him, people

(53:36):
will either say, hey, we'll give him a trillion dollar bonus, right,
or we will come and work for you, or we
want to launch things into space. But it's not because
he's charismatic.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
Right, I mean, look at the example of when he
pieced together the Doge team. What was the what were
the qualifications that he put out there? Right, you have
to work eighty hours a week, You're not going to
get paid. Yeah, and you know he has sign he
had people from all over the country who not just
wanted to work with him, but believed in his mission.

Speaker 14 (54:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (54:03):
It's really kind of fascinating. So the things that we get,
so being nice and generous is not necessarily things that
are going to make a good leaders.

Speaker 10 (54:12):
So I want to separate two things though. Okay, let's
separate being an effective leader from having followers. Having followers
just means that people feel that you'll have a new
and better or they'll feel doesn't mean you will correct
because you could have somebody who's incompetent leading a bunch
of morons frankly and get nowhere When we actually started
looking at the research of what causes teams to be

(54:34):
really effective. It came from a woman named Anita Williams Willie,
and what she found in running a whole series of
experiments is that none of the things that we actually
thought actually make a team more effective. Right, So IQ
of the smartest person no effect, average IQ, no effect.
How much people liked each other not a great predictor, right.

(54:56):
Do you need to trust each other, sure, or think
that somebody's competent. Yeah, but you don't necessarily need to
want to invite everybody you work with your wedding or
something like that. The single greatest predictor the number of
women on the team.

Speaker 1 (55:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (55:11):
And I want to be clear, it's not because they're women.
It's not a chromosomal thing. We're not out of a job.
Don't worry.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
It was looking at me.

Speaker 10 (55:18):
Yeah, it's because women index high on emotional intelligence, and
so there are plenty of men with high emotional intelligence,
plenty of women who don't have any.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
But this makes a better Wait, so more women on
a team means what.

Speaker 10 (55:32):
That, on average, you have more emotional intelligence on the team,
and then the team can function better because they can
coordinate better, and then they outperform because when you have
a single person sport, it's all about pure talent, right
or activity. But when you have a group, you've gone
from taking your shots to passing either information or the ball. Now,
if I can't communicate with you, we are not going

(55:54):
to be able to work well together. Right. Having that
high emotional intelligence on the team means that we know
when to push on a topic and when not to,
who to call on even if they're being quiet and
get the information out.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
Your behavioral side, well, what is your credential in this?
Because you've studied behavioral science, but you know there are
entire curricula that are dedicated to teaching leadership that ostensibly
have evidence backed you know, elements that are backed by

(56:26):
studies that say this is the right way.

Speaker 1 (56:27):
To do things.

Speaker 4 (56:28):
And you're essentially saying that's not really the right predictor here,
we have been looking at the right thing. What's the
evidence that you have when it comes to number.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
Of followers or people who are actually.

Speaker 4 (56:38):
Following this charismatic personality that says this is the right outcome.

Speaker 10 (56:41):
So let's separate a few things on the team stuff.
There's a bunch of research. I mentioned Anita Williams Willie,
and there's several studies that back the same thing that
teams with more emotional intelligence outperform on the leadership side.
When you actually look at all of the studies on
people who've gotten MBAs versus those didn't, there they find
that there's absolutely no improvement in performance whatsoever having an

(57:05):
NBA versus not compared. And there's like several of these
studies on the three year mark, five year mark, seven
year mark, there's no evidence in better management skills or
anything like that. And so the skills that we're told
are essential, we might not really be able to train
them in the way that these programs are running.

Speaker 4 (57:24):
The reason I ask about your reason, I know you
want to jump in, but the reason I ask about
the credentialing here is because you have this background and
having these dinners hosting thousands of people over the last
ten years, fifteen people, fifteen years, four thousand people. These
are private influencer dinners where you have had no about

(57:45):
laureates Limp. You were listening tones together from two to
five people. What the takeaways that you've been able to
gather from getting this disparate group of people together or
watch us live on you.

Speaker 10 (57:59):
So there's kind of two main things that I've really noticed.
The first is that all of them are at the
top of their industry, whether they're commanding the International Space
Station or they're running a major company, and none of
them have the same characteristics at all. Malala does not

(58:19):
produce results in the same way as a military commander,
but people follow and will go very far in both
cases right to support that cause. The second is, and
this is kind of a wilder thing that people don't
really notice, is that no matter how successful people are,
they tend not to feel like they fit in or

(58:40):
belong because the CEO knows that they've had three great quarters,
but if the next two are off there, they might
be out of a job. And the olympian knows that
maybe they won at the last Olympics, but who knows
if they'll even qualify at the next one, and then
no one will care. And so no matter what, there's
this absolute factor that people feel a great desire to

(59:01):
want to fit in and belong, which brings me to
my real desire to understand is clearly those leadership traits
didn't matter. And if there's such a great desire to belong.
It's because human beings tend to be best with each other.
So let's try and understand at our core what will
allow us to be best with each other. And that's
what the book explores, which is what are the characteristics

(59:21):
that makes teams smarter than the sum of their parts?

Speaker 8 (59:24):
Okay, so why if that is our driving force?

Speaker 3 (59:31):
When I look at Congress, and I know you layer politics.

Speaker 8 (59:34):
On things, and things change. But if we are better.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
They cannot be studied.

Speaker 8 (59:38):
If we are better as a group and a community,
and yes.

Speaker 3 (59:43):
Indeed right, they have to vote on things, and so
when they work together, things can actually move forward, or
at least move.

Speaker 8 (59:49):
Why does that not work its way out?

Speaker 10 (59:52):
So that's I think a great question. And I want
to be very clear. I don't study politics. I'm not
an actually and.

Speaker 3 (59:58):
Full disclosure like you lay politics on everything.

Speaker 8 (01:00:01):
And so a little bit different.

Speaker 10 (01:00:02):
I'm under the impression that things changed, and this is
what I've been told after Newt Gingridge was in Congress,
because he really pushed for less cooperation and also for
people to spend more time in their home districts. Now,
when that occurs, then we have something called the mirror
exposure effect. The mirror exposure effect is simply here's the
funny thing. Have you ever what would you consider the

(01:00:25):
greatest painting of all time?

Speaker 5 (01:00:27):
Well, people will say Mona Lisa exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:00:29):
Do you know why?

Speaker 1 (01:00:31):
Isn't it the perfectly symmetrical.

Speaker 10 (01:00:33):
That's what tell you. But that's frankly not true. In
nineteen eleven, a man walked into the Louver on a
Monday while it was closed. The louver was protected by
eleven mostly drunk lesionnaires, and walked into the Renaissance section,
ripped the smallest painting he could off the wall, took
it out of its frame, and then wrapped in a

(01:00:54):
workman's bock and walked out.

Speaker 5 (01:00:55):
That was the Mona Lisa, wasn't it?

Speaker 6 (01:00:57):
Yeah? Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:00:57):
Newspapers around the world spread images of it, and it's
the first time almost anybody had ever heard of it. It
was not considered a great painting. Three years later it
was returned once again. Newspapers around the world rejoiced. And
it was a way too. It was the build up
to World War One, so it was a way to
make fun of the French government and it's incompetence.

Speaker 6 (01:01:16):
At the time.

Speaker 10 (01:01:17):
Now, human beings tend to like and trust the things
that they're familiar with. And when you see you're the
person who might be across the aisle picking up kids
at school and your kids are in the same class,
and you're at the same birthday parties, and you've developed
familiarity and trust and all these other factors outside of

(01:01:39):
that voting room, then suddenly you tend to treat people
with more humanity and have a greater ability to work
with them. And so much like the Mona Lisa is
not really a great painting if you actually speak to historians,
the lack of that mere exposure and the trust that
develops from interacting outside of these traditional negotiations, Yeah, we've

(01:02:03):
lost a lot to that well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:05):
And we always bring up Alan Greenspan saying years ago
about how when he was in Washington, people actually Democrats
Republicans went to cocktail parties together, and so you know,
you have a glass of wine with somebody and yeah,
you know, you kind of relate. You're much more relatable,
if you will, John, this was really really fun. Hopefully
we can catch up again in the future.

Speaker 10 (01:02:23):
I'd be honored.

Speaker 6 (01:02:24):
Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Yeah, John Levy, he's a behavioral scientist New York Times
bestselling author. His new book is Team Intelligence, How Brilliant
Leaders unlock collective genius.

Speaker 5 (01:02:33):
Joining us right here in studio.

Speaker 4 (01:02:34):
Were you invited to one of those secret dinners?

Speaker 5 (01:02:36):
Ever, it's secret, so I can't tell.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Okay, yeah, same, same.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
You are listening to the Bloomberg Business Weekdaily Podcast. Catch
us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern.
Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg
Business app, or watch us live on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
From this small town on the central coast of California.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
Wait, you're from California.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Yeah, it's known for a few things. We've got the
last operating nuclear power plan in the state. You do,
That's why I'm glowing. Yes, Hurst Castle is right there.

Speaker 8 (01:03:11):
Oh it is right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:12):
Yeah, I forgot about that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
Also, there's this little smoothie shop. When I was growing up,
it was called Juice Club, and on for special treats
after school, I would get to go to Juice Club.
My parents would take me there or a babysitter would
take us there.

Speaker 8 (01:03:26):
It's like you loved it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:27):
Yeah, it was started by this guy who went to
cal Poly and Juice Club is what John Bajuice was
before they did a rebrand, did an IPO and became
the company that it's known for now.

Speaker 5 (01:03:39):
I love that.

Speaker 4 (01:03:40):
So John Bajuice is it began? It began his Juice
Club on you know, on Foothill.

Speaker 1 (01:03:46):
James D.

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
White knows all about this. He's former CEO of John Bajuice.
He led it from two thousand and eight to twenty sixteen.
He's also the author of several books. His new book
out this month, along with Krista White, called Culture Design
How to Build a high performing, resilient organization with Purpose.
He's also the chairman of the board of The Honest Company.
He's co founder, chair and CEO of Culture Design Lab.
He's a board member at the fast casual chain Kava.

(01:04:09):
He joins U from Scottsdale, Arizona. Good to have you
on the program, James, how are you.

Speaker 6 (01:04:14):
Sam and Carl?

Speaker 14 (01:04:14):
Thanks for hosting me.

Speaker 4 (01:04:17):
When you were CEO of John But did you ever
get to go to that foothill location in San Luis Obispo.
Absolutely the original that was the one.

Speaker 1 (01:04:26):
Okay, that's amazing.

Speaker 14 (01:04:27):
And got to spend time with Kirk Paar and the
fantastic founder who we lost a few years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Yeah, very tragic.

Speaker 4 (01:04:36):
Well, I want to talk a little bit about culture design,
how to build a high performing, resilient organization with purpose.
But first I just want to remind everybody about what
John Bajuice was when you were leading it from two
thousand and eight to twenty sixteen. It's now owned by
a private equity firm, but it did have a life
as a publicly traded company. What was John Bajuice under

(01:04:58):
your tenure?

Speaker 14 (01:05:00):
Well, I joined Jamba in December two thousand and eight
and led the company through a turnaround in transformation. We're
a public company. Market cap over my tenure increase by
five hundred percent. We really reposition the company from a

(01:05:24):
smoothie chain the more healthy lifestyle brand. But had a
great run, you know, twenty eight quarters as a public company, CEO.

Speaker 3 (01:05:34):
So tell us about like going through your experiences and
kind of what you learned in terms of running a company,
building a company, going through different cycles.

Speaker 8 (01:05:48):
What that has taught you.

Speaker 14 (01:05:50):
I think for me, the place I always started, I
just go back to really my first week on the
job at Jamba is you start with the people, You
start with the key stakeholders. And you know, for me,
as I go back to that first week, we asked,
you know, four simple questions, what should the organization start doing,
what should we stop doing? And what are the things

(01:06:12):
that are working well that we should continue. And then
the final bonus question is what advice would you have
for me as CEO? And we really leverage that approach
with really all of our stakeholder groups and use that
to build a plan to turn around and transform the company.

Speaker 6 (01:06:28):
Uh.

Speaker 14 (01:06:28):
But I always start with people first. The thesis of
our book is companies have culture by designer default, So
always be intentional in building a company's culture.

Speaker 4 (01:06:39):
So, so talk about who those key stakeholders are. Uh,
And then I have this this follow up question that
I think Carol will nod because she kind of knows
exactly where I'm going. When you when you started, when
you start on a board or when you're you know,
a decision maker at a company, who are the stakeholders
you speak to understand the culture?

Speaker 14 (01:06:58):
Yeah, I always start with the employees because they actually
know what actually needs to be done to you know,
really re energize or strengthen the company. So I started
with the one hundred or so employees that we're in
our support center that supported all our stores. Obviously the
frontline workforce is a source of fantastic input the border directors,

(01:07:24):
key suppliers, but also we talk to consumers as a
part of that processes. We formulated the original Transformation Planet
job book.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
So connect that with company performance because every you know
in Zoom just reporter earnings for example, and when we
look at any company that reports it's most recent quarter,
we talk about numbers like the outlook. We talk about
top line revenue, we talk about margins, we talk about outlooks,
or we talk about what happened in the current quarter.

(01:07:56):
What we don't talk about is the company's culture. We
don't talk about how happy employees are or if they're
not happy. We don't talk about customer satisfaction because investors
don't necessarily trade on those things. How do you connect
those non tangibles to the actual numbers that a public
company reports.

Speaker 14 (01:08:16):
Yeah, the way I think about it is, and I've
got a colleague amount of board Talagmoment says, the human
capital drives the financial capital, and that directly relates to
the people and relates to the company culture. We think
about culture being the huge unlocked in this environment. And
the reason we wrote the book Culture Design is we've

(01:08:38):
felt like with the dramatic change over the course of
the last five years, the thing that we've not talked
about as much as we need to as we look
at hybrid ork the influences of AI is the company
culture and how that shift needs to happen. The best
companies become changed savvy in terms of how they lead

(01:09:04):
the companies moving forward. And the book has three pillars,
Knowing what matters that's really about the context that the
company operates in doing what matters? How do you operationalize culture?
How does culture really live day to day inside an organization?
And then anything in business that matters, you actually measure
it in the You know, there are both hard and

(01:09:27):
soft measurements. You know, employee engagement, there's pole surveys, there's
net promoter scores, but there's employee net promoter scores that
are one of the things that I find incredibly helpful.
But the best leaders are thinking harder about this, whether
they're in the boardroom or running companies today.

Speaker 3 (01:09:49):
Hey, James, one thing I want to ask you, and
I'm just curious you wrote this with your daughter, Krista,
and I was just looking at one thing in I
think it's Paige and ninety six here and how she
has kind of taught you that an effective leader actually
shares a lot of their life journey is a lot

(01:10:10):
more transparent with folks at work. And it's interesting, like
I've often heard people like, your personal life is your
personal life, don't bring it to the office, keep them separate,
Like you just don't share stuff, and yet you know
your lifeline is in there and like all the things
that you've gone through in your life. And I'm just
the importance of like leaders and leadership sharing their life

(01:10:34):
journey with the folks that work with them.

Speaker 14 (01:10:38):
We think that empathy is really a core capability. And
one of the things that I've learned in my work
with my millennial daughter is, you know, kind of sharing
more of myself really strengthens the ability for me to
connect with leaders and people on a really different level.

(01:11:00):
So this is not really where I started as a leader,
but have kind of learned this over the arc of
a career, and it's really a force multiplier. When we
get to know each other as human beings, we can
find the things that are common and what I found
from a leadership perspective is that allows you to unlock
the full potential of the organization by being more human

(01:11:24):
and kind of humanizing the leader. We interviewed one leader
that describes his version of this as he provides new
teams that he joined Sam Bright. He runs Google Play,
he describes a user manual on how to best work
with him as a leader, and he does some of
the same kinds of things where he shares information on

(01:11:46):
his family and background, which is really a shortcut to
how we might work best together as colleagues.

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
James, before I let you go, you've written this is
not your first book that you've written along with your
daughter Krista. Back in twenty twenty two, he wrote Anti
Racist Leadership, How to Transform Corporate Culture in a Race
conscious World. We spent a lot of time, Carol and
I've been doing this together for five years, and over
that period of time, the conversation around DEI has changed

(01:12:14):
a lot. Most recently, the iteration is these companies getting
rid of DEI programs, not talking about.

Speaker 5 (01:12:21):
It any not being a conversation around Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:24):
I mean we're talking.

Speaker 4 (01:12:24):
We're doing a deep dive on target in just a
few minutes and they've gone through their own issues with this.
I'm just wondering what the state of how you view
DEI and anti racism now in twenty twenty five, and
how that's different among a C suite executives versus twenty
twenty two.

Speaker 14 (01:12:44):
Yes, I think the conversation has definitely changed. But I
think the best leaders, at least the best leaders that
I work with, they've got a true north. They're very
focused on their values and they know that if you
put people first and you create an environment where all

(01:13:04):
the humans get to do their best work, you're going
to always win. And what I always advise companies and
the leaders that I work with, the labeling of things
I'm less concerned with. I'm more concerned with, you know,
really the true north of the organization and how we
focused on creating environments where everybody can do their very

(01:13:25):
best work, and that starts with people and it starts
with culture by design.

Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
I would assume that then that is like if you
had to give one piece of advice to leaders that
are out there and they get so much advice, But
I'm just curious, is that what it would be or
something else and just got about forty seconds here.

Speaker 14 (01:13:43):
It would be you know, really put the human beings,
the people in your organization first and work hard to
create and design environments where they can do their very
best work and bring their full selves to the organization.
And I think it will yield great benefits that will
deliver high performance results.

Speaker 5 (01:14:02):
Well, very much appreciate it, James, Thank you so much.

Speaker 13 (01:14:05):
James D.

Speaker 3 (01:14:06):
White, former CEO of Jambajuice. He led the company from
twenty eight to twenty sixteen. He is the co author
of a book app.

Speaker 5 (01:14:14):
That he did with his daughter. Second book that he
did with his daughter.

Speaker 3 (01:14:17):
This book though Culture Design, How to build a high performing,
resilient organization with Purpose.

Speaker 5 (01:14:22):
And you can catch that book. It is out now. James,
thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:14:27):
This is the Bloomberg Business Week Daily podcast, available on Apple, Spotify,
and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday
afternoons from two to five pm Eastern on Bloomberg dot com,
the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business App.
You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube

(01:14:47):
and always on the Bloomberg terminal

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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - December 27th, 2025

Episode Transcript

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Tim Stenovec

Carol Massar

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