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- [00:00]
A
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B
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As they launch products.
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B
That's metronome.com.
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Bloomberg Audio Studios podcasts Radio.
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News.
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D
This is everybody's business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chaffkin.
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E
I'm Stacey Vanek Smith. And Max, I think the theme for this week is situationships.
- [01:20]
D
I don't know where this is going, but okay.
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E
Situationships, as in a relationship that's kind of messy, not entirely defined, source of a lot of drop. Situationships.
- [01:31]
D
All right, Stacey, I'm gonna work with you here because I think you're right a little bit. Like, it does kind of describe our situation with tariffs right now. Yes, maybe they're awesome, maybe they're not. Maybe they're legal, maybe they're not. We've got Joe Wiesenthal of Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, friend of the POD here talking markets and tariffs.
- [01:52]
E
Also, the movie of the summer is. Well, it's not in theaters, Max. It is on Netflix. I'm sorry, the movie of the summer is on Netflix.
- [02:03]
D
I'm so excited about this. I just want to say the title.
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E
I know the great Sam Sanders is here to talk. Go ahead.
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D
K Pop Demon Hunters.
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E
K Pop Demon Hunters. Max is very into this movie and we'll talk with Sam about it.
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D
And finally, I'm told it's pumpkin spice latte season. Now I'm told Kensington. Love the flavor. It's everywhere. Nothing is complicated about that one, right, Stacy?
- [02:25]
E
Except most of the ingredients are imported, so tariffs are complicating our relationship with pumpkin spice lattes. It's pumpkin spice tariff season now, I think right now, in our economy, the ultimate situationship is between companies, workers and AI.
- [02:48]
D
And we talked about this two weeks ago on the episode with Zitron, which people should check out if they haven't listened to. There's all this promise with AI.
- [02:56]
B
We're all.
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D
A lot of businesses are super excited about it. They're investing billions, in some cases tens of billions of workers that will be.
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E
Replaced by this technology in some cases.
- [03:06]
D
Right. And. And there's also the promise that it could create more jobs. It's just. It just feels like so much there is up in the air. We really don't know anything yet except we're all spending tons of money on it.
- [03:17]
E
Yes, well, and I think things are changing really fast and everyone's like, is this going to take my job? Is this going to help me do my job? But I thought I would go to school students, because they are tend to be more comfortable with new technology on the cutting edge. So to Columbia, to nyu to kind of track down some students and ask them how they are using AI. And here's what they said. Do you guys use AI? Yes, all the time. All the time. We're actually AI students. Grad students. Really? Yes. What do you use it for? Editing. So like if you write a paper, it could be like as simple as just like a text. Text just to polish my language or just like some simple researches. I don't trust Gen AI on like super deep academic stuff yet. And what about like with schoolwork? Is it like a big helper? I would say take AI with a grain of salt because they make mistakes just like humans do as well. Always double check.
- [04:08]
D
Honestly, it's basically the greatest cheat code for college. Like, I'm not even kidding.
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A
I do know a few people who.
- [04:14]
E
Have used AI or ChatGPT as kind of like a friend, like getting advice from.
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D
From.
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E
I agree.
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C
But I definitely think that other people.
- [04:23]
E
Might find more comfort in AI as a friend than what we might like to think.
- [04:29]
C
I study actually in the field of public health. I study cancer and epidemiology. We are actually working with AI, like studying and working with it.
- [04:40]
E
With the rise of AI, like pretty much anything is possible. Yeah, I agree. Yeah.
- [04:45]
D
Oh my God. Oh God, I'm so worried for our future.
- [04:50]
E
Really.
- [04:51]
D
The AI students, are they. Are they AIs or are they actual people?
- [04:55]
E
What do you mean?
- [04:56]
D
Well, I just got worried for a second that you had interviewed like a couple of chatbots.
- [05:00]
E
There was in fact a chatbot in the mix. There was. One of the answers was a computer it was the one who said that AI was the best cheat code. I asked ChatGPT to. To come up with, like, it's like, Defense of AI. I was like, if you were an AI enthusiast, what would you say? And you were a student? So we said, like, AI is the greatest cheat code. I'm not even kidding. And then I used Descript. The software program has AI voices that you can interject. And so I mixed that in. But everybody else was real. Everybody else was a real student.
- [05:29]
D
Okay, a couple of things. One is, I'm glad at least one person said, yeah, you can't trust it for everything because. Yes.
- [05:37]
E
Yeah, she was one of the AI grad students.
- [05:39]
D
Yeah, well, that makes sense, because she's actually an expert. The funniest thing about being an AI hater is that the biggest AI haters are AI experts in many cases, because they're the ones who actually understand the limitations of these technologies. Whereas, like, people who are just, like, you know, dipping in and out. I don't know. In some cases, they're using it in dangerous ways, like trying to trick their co host into misidentifying.
- [06:05]
E
I think I was doing that for illustrative purposes. Not for gas.
- [06:09]
D
Not mal intent.
- [06:10]
E
No, there was no mal intent. I was just kind of showing you that. If that voice had been, like, 10% better, I don't think you would have picked it up.
- [06:18]
D
No. Yeah. I don't know. It's super interesting. Like, I do think that the. In terms of these, like, questions of new technology, they're probably, like, two categories that are worth looking at. Like, one is pornography, because that's where all new technologies seem to start. And the other are the. Are the Youngs who are using AI.
- [06:35]
E
Well, I chose to go with the Youngs for this episode because we are a family podcast, Max. You do what you need to do, though, for research. Max. Without a doubt, the situationship I believe is dominating our economy right now, at least this week, is tariff.
- [07:00]
D
I hate the word, but you're right. This is. That is what this is.
- [07:02]
E
And I felt like it was really worth exploring this, because I looked into this, and since Liberation Day, the tariffs have been, like, postponed, paused, modified, you know, enacted, redacted more than a hundred times. It has been so much back and.
- [07:17]
D
Forth, a lot of defining the relationship.
- [07:19]
E
Going on, lot of, like, DTR talks that just seem to be going nowhere. And in the latest twist, there's a big question about their legality. So Trump used something called IPA to pass the tariffs. That's the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It was put in place in 1977 and it essentially, because normally Congress has to okay the tariffs. They, this gives the president like an emergency power to override Congress and just make it happen.
- [07:46]
D
Yeah. And OG listeners of everybody's business will remember that we talked about this when a lower court initially invalidated this basically said, no, the Trump is sort of abusing this law. He doesn't have, have all the power that he says he has to to do these Liberation Day tariffs.
- [08:02]
E
Right. He's claiming the trade deficit is the emergency and so our trade deficit with all these countries is an emergency. The Supreme Court is now going to be hearing this case and Trump has asked to fast track it. But if it doesn't happen, it would mean all the tariffs were invalidated and the US Would have to refund the money it's collected so far. It would be a mess. It was very complicated. We decided we would bring in someone to help us kind of navigate like, why the markets are reacting to this as they are.
- [08:30]
D
Yeah. We walked all the way over to the other side, a journey of the floor where our desks are, and found.
- [08:37]
E
Joe Weisenthal leaping over desks.
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D
Odd Lots podcast, which is awesome if you don't listen to it. Joe is like one of the smartest, one of the most entertaining people on markets Agreed we could find.
- [08:50]
E
And here he is in the studio with us. Joe Wiesenthal, co host of Odd Lots. Welcome, Joe.
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C
Hi. Thank you for having me.
- [08:57]
E
Well, we're very excited to have you here, especially since we are confused. Max and I are confused right now and we're hoping you can clear this up. So when tariffs were first put in place, I think it's fair to say that some people liked them, some people hated them, the markets did not like them.
- [09:12]
C
Sure. Correct.
- [09:14]
E
Now that they, their legality is being questioned, it seems like the markets do not like the idea of the tariffs going away.
- [09:21]
D
Yeah. And amid this, like, ruling, Trump got up at a podium, the market was going down and he said, he said this. Let's just listen. And now it's going to the Supreme Court and we're going to ask for expedited. An expedited ruling. Because, you know, when you look at the stock markets down today, the stock market's down because of that. Because the stock market needs the tariffs. They want the tariffs. Like, I listened to that.
- [09:45]
C
Yeah.
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D
And I was like, okay, Trump's probably just saying that because he's likes the tariffs. But like, it made me wonder, is there any truth to that? Does the Stock market. We can talk about the bond market too. Do the markets like the tariffs? And some. Is there any aspect of this that is that. That he's right about?
- [10:03]
C
I will try to maybe make the strongest defense of that claim, which is there probably is some truth to the idea that policy uncertainty is not great for the market. And this would clearly reinject, I guess, I suppose policy uncertainty on the volatility of the tariff policy is probably narrower than it was back in early April, although there still seems to be changes every day. So I guess the idea that the tariffs could be pulled out the rug from the whole thing. I would not entirely, I suppose, discount the possibility that investors aren't crazy about that. I don't really believe it directly. I mean, the thing is, this market is driven by a handful of gigantic tech companies and it's mostly an AI story at this point, and that is an industry and space that largely is unaffected by the tariffs. So the market is up a lot since early April, in part because there's been some walk back from the Liberation Day levels and also because nothing has derailed the AI story. Now, there's one other element that could be interesting, which is that there is quite a bit of revenue coming into the federal government thanks to the tariffs. Yes, one of the anxieties in markets is what's been happening at the long end of developed market yield curves and sort of bond yields blowing out. If there is some perception that, okay, deficits are already very wide and one of the few sources of growing revenue is going to suddenly disappear, maybe there could be something where people get more concerned about the fiscal equilibrium and that having an effect. That was kind of the story on Tuesday. Like how far I would take that, I'm not sure, but I suppose I wouldn't completely say this is not a factor.
- [11:46]
E
I mean, beyond just the uncertainty, which markets notoriously do not like, it also seems like if for some reason the tariffs are declared illegal, this is just gonna be a mess because everybody would have to get their money back. I can imagine businesses could sue the government for like lost business or increased costs. I mean, it seems like as much as you might dislike the tariffs, as much as someone might dislike the tariffs, doing away with the tariffs is a mess.
- [12:14]
C
Yeah, it would be a mess. I mean, there's sort of two things going on at once here that are both very interesting. I think longer term economists would say, look, even if it's messy, in the short term, tariffs are bad. Tariffs create inefficiencies, they create all kinds of problems. They Create divisions between trading partners and allies that make it hard to plan. There are all kinds of issues that tariffs raise. And they would probably say, look, yeah, maybe it'll be a mess in the short term to dial them back, but does not compare to the mess that tariffs introduce.
- [12:42]
E
So better to, like, wade through the mess.
- [12:44]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think most economists would say, please, just please get rid of them. Now. The one complication I would say here is that I would say that there is a perception in the United States right now that we have this dysfunctional public sector and decisions essentially can't get made, things can't get built, legislation can't get passed, etc. This is because of the sort of very diffuse nature of democracy where there are a lot of veto points, et cetera, and a lot of people aren't crazy about how many veto points there are in American democracy, whether at the court level or the local level, et cetera, how hard it is to build things, et cetera. There is this frustration of stagnancy in the built environment and in the policy environment. And perhaps someone would say, well, if the Supreme Court undermines the Trump tariffs, this just confirms the fact that nothing can get done in America. We can't set a new chart, a new policy course. Now, again, like, the ability to tariff is something that is theoretically in the Congress's purview and theoretically should only be used by the White House in emergency situations.
- [13:47]
E
Congress has not invoked those emergency situations, but like, for all the countries in.
- [13:52]
C
The world, and Congress has not stood up for itself. So if Trump is sort of usurping this power that belongs to Congress, it's not like Congress has really complained or certainly the Republican leaders of Congress. Nonetheless, I suppose if the Supreme Court were to rule the tariffs invalid, the money was no longer be connected. It may feed into this idea that the American sort of presidential three system of power, it's difficult.
- [14:17]
D
Well, there's also the risk, three branches. When you were talking about uncertainty, I was trying to think, okay, well, what is the uncertainty? Because if they invalidated the tariffs and like, I don't know, it seems pretty certain we don't have. We don't have those tariffs. But it seems like part of the risk is that Trump would somehow ignore the Supreme Court or do some other additional thing that would further create a sense of uncertainty.
- [14:41]
C
And, well, we're in a very weird situation right now with the TikTok ban, where there does not seem to be any legal basis whatsoever for TikTok to exist on the app stores in The United States, that law has not been repealed at all. But the White House unilaterally said, we're just gonna not ignore it. We're just not gonna pay attention to the law. We're not gonna enforce it. But that's a very weird situation. Like, Right.
- [15:05]
D
Why does he keep forgetting that? TikTok. I know it was, like, supposed to be illegal.
- [15:08]
C
No, it is illegal by the law. And yet no one is enforcing the ban, for better or worse. But that is. What if the Supreme Court said no, tariffs can no longer be collected, and the White House instructed the ports to keep collecting the tariffs? I mean, there's potentially some very weird situations here.
- [15:27]
E
I mean, also, if you're running a business and you're trying to figure out what to do, and you're like, okay, should we. If the tariffs are locked in, it would be better for us to build a factory and start making things here or invest in an iron mine or whatever it is. But it's just hard to know if it's gonna get overturned or if it's gonna go away with the next president. It's like, where do you invest your money? You can't really grow and expand the way you could if you had, like, a clear course.
- [15:49]
C
Totally. So this is a really important dimension, which is that the longer these tariffs exist in any form, the more likely it is that they will exist forever. Because once you start getting any company that is making domestic investments predicated on the existence of tariffs, that company is a perpetual lobbyist for the existence of terrorists.
- [16:09]
D
Not only a lobbyist, but, like, a lobbyist with a pretty good case to make. We should talk about the bond market a little bit because, like, what Joe said about the stock market is true. Like this. The stock market has done really well during the Trump presidency. But it's. It could just be a comment on, like, Nvidia and maybe, maybe, in fact, if. If there weren't tariffs.
- [16:26]
C
Video. But we know that a huge amount of it is attributable to these companies. Anyway, Keep going.
- [16:31]
D
Yeah. Yeah. So, anyway, I was just. That's a segue for Stacey.
- [16:34]
E
Yes. So since the tariff conundrum happens, it seems like the legalities come into question in a serious way. The bond market has reacted in this way where, like, yields have gone up. In other words, kind of interest rates have gone up. The US Is perceived to be a riskier place to put your money.
- [16:49]
C
Yes.
- [16:50]
B
Yes.
- [16:50]
E
So what is going on?
- [16:51]
C
I guess one way to think about this question and it gets back to. I think you really have to talk Politics. And you really have to talk about this idea of whether you feel that over the next several years we will still even have a nominally or truly independent central bank that can set rates at will or set rates sort of independent of the political cycle, regardless of who is in the White House. And so if you're going to put your money in the US for a long time, if you're going to lock up your money for a long time, you probably would like that, the central bank to feel you would like that confidence that the central bank will do at its job to preserve the value of your currency, avoid high inflation. If you are worried about the political status of the central bank, if you're worried that an entity will no longer exist that is committed to doing getting to 2% inflation, sort of whatever the cost because of something upstream in the political cycle, etc. I don't know, maybe you want a little bit more compensation in your long term holdings to compensate you for this risk.
- [17:54]
D
Well, wait, that doesn't really have anything to do with Liberation Day though. Or like the tariffs, I mean.
- [17:58]
C
Or it doesn't really. You're right. No, no, it's only true. So it only has anything to do with it insofar as all of this is a commentary on US political stability.
- [18:11]
D
Well, totally. Like if you're, if you're lending money to the US Government, you're like, okay, I've liked the most of those people. Like the global financial system as it exists today, like the US is like integrated. This like incredibly successful experiment in politics and capitalism that played out starting after World War II.
- [18:30]
C
Yeah.
- [18:30]
D
And if Trump is blowing that up, that makes you nervous. I think that's what it is.
- [18:34]
C
Yeah, I think that's right. And all of these things are just sort of novelties within the American political system. Right. Say the Supreme Court were to say tariffs are illegal. I mean broad based, first of all, the broad based tariffs on these emergency claims, that's a novelty. The idea of the Supreme Court then reversing tariffs, that's a novelty. A potential dispute between the White House and the judicial branch, that's a novelty. All of these things, right. That we sort of took for granted certain institutional arrangements. And this is where it gets back to the Fed itself. The way I think about the Fed is it's been encased in glass, right. And it sort of let operate to do its own thing and the independence.
- [19:13]
E
Is like a little glass.
- [19:14]
C
But it could get shattered and maybe it will get shattered at some point or maybe it already has been shattered or at least cracked based on the fact that it's already coming under a lot of criticism. So a lot of institutional arrangements which had been perceived to be stable are perceived to be less stable. And once again, the Fed is part of that and could have a factor in the degree of the payment that you want in order to keep your money in dollars long term.
- [19:39]
D
And just to bring it back to this initial question, like, treasury yields went up yesterday, which again, kind of feeds Trump's idea that like, yeah, we need those tariffs. And what you're saying is this is another. The story is kind of the same. It's an uncertainty, it's a certainty versus.
- [19:54]
C
And I think part of this, too, you know, where it's really bad is in the UK right now that it's getting a lot of attention is how much their bond yields are blowing out at the long end. But it's really, it's Japan too. And they're, you know, for them, long term rates are like 1, 1.8%, which is very low, but it's Japan. So for them that's very high by their grand standard of things. But there is this concern, I would say two concerns at least in maybe three concerns within rich developed countries, which is that they have unfavorable demographics, that they have aging populations that are going to require a lot of resources that and a lot of that will soak up and burden a lot of the productive labor to some combination of this burden of the aging population and then other sort of the hollowing out of industrial activity specifically because of competition with China, is this fear that the productive base of rich Western or, you know, sort of rich liberal countries is going to get hollowed out, et cetera, and then finally add on to these things this sort of evident political dysfunction which kind of exists everywhere. I mean, we see it, I think people perceive political volatility in the U.S. they certainly, you look at the U.K. it also doesn't look like they can get anything done. They're always having these very picayune scandals that seem to be at the COVID of the paper. But everywhere you look, there's similar things going on. There's these sort of stresses that are being put on the sort of political arrangements. So you combine all these three things together and there's sort of this global story going on that is beyond just the question of tariff revenue.
- [21:33]
E
So, Joe, little known fact. Well, maybe not that little known, but you are in a band.
- [21:38]
C
That's right.
- [21:38]
E
Called My Sweet Cruise.
- [21:39]
C
That's right.
- [21:40]
E
And I had a musical questions for you because this is so weird. Max is going to die. But it's. It's the first thing that came into my head when I read about the illegal. Possibly illegal tariffs, which was that song by the Clash, like, do I stay or do I go?
- [21:54]
C
Oh, yeah. Great song.
- [21:55]
E
Because it seems like with the tariffs, this is the case. Kind of like if they stay in place, there's going to be trouble. If they go away, it'll be double. It'll be double.
- [22:04]
C
I love the setup. That was really.
- [22:06]
E
Thank you. It's a really long setup.
- [22:08]
C
No, but it paid off.
- [22:08]
E
I appreciate you rolling with it.
- [22:10]
C
I think there are a lot of things like that these days where we sort of arrive at these forks in the road and we'd sort of want them to never be resolved because neither of the resolutions seem great. I mean, I think about this with AI. Do we want the AI bubble to burst or do we want AI to take all our jobs? I'm not sure at this point. I think with tariffs, I. Look, I have no. I'm a journalist. I have no opinion on tariffs. I just. I just report the news, and usually I just ask the questions. Rarely am I answered them. Yes, the. All of these things are very strange. And I don't, you know, from a. Sort of. When you balance out economics with sort of institutional stability, et cetera, I don't know, I think there's this feeling that we're hurtling towards genuinely uncharted territory.
- [22:52]
D
I feel like that Clash song is how investors feel about everything. Like, not just terrorists.
- [22:57]
C
Yeah.
- [22:57]
E
I mean, I feel like it also works with the AI bubble, too. I mean, do we want things to keep going and get super overheated? No. Do we want the bubble to burst?
- [23:05]
D
No.
- [23:06]
E
Yeah.
- [23:06]
C
I gotta retire. Not soon, but yeah.
- [23:11]
D
Joe Weisenthal, thanks for being here.
- [23:12]
C
Thanks for having me. That was a lot of fun.
- [23:16]
D
Should I stay or should I go?
- [23:20]
B
If you say that you are mine.
- [23:24]
D
I'll be here till the end of.
- [23:26]
C
Time.
- [23:28]
F
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- [24:35]
A
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- [25:05]
E
You can get the news whenever you.
- [25:07]
D
Want it with Bloomberg News Now.
- [25:09]
E
I'm Amy Morris. And I'm Karen Moscow, here to tell you about our new on demand news report delivered right to your podcast feed. Bloomberg News now is a short 5 minute audio report on the day's top stories. Episodes are published throughout the day with the latest information and data to keep you informed. Yes, there are other products like this from a variety of news organizations, but.
- [25:32]
D
They usually rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day.
- [25:36]
A
That's not what we do.
- [25:37]
E
We create customized episodes that can only.
- [25:40]
D
Be heard on Bloomberg News now and.
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E
We don't wait an hour to publish breaking news. When news breaks, we'll have an episode up in your podcast feed within minutes. So you're always getting the latest stories and developments.
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D
Get the reporting and the context from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts. We're all over the world.
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E
Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News.
- [26:00]
D
Now on Apple, Spotify or anywhere you listen. Stacey, have you seen K Pop Demon Hunters?
- [26:08]
E
Okay, yes. This is this movie on Netflix. It's this huge hit. I had not watched it until last night when you your enthusiasm about this topic encouraged me to watch it and I really liked it.
- [26:19]
D
All right. So listeners of the show know that I have three children. My oldest is 10. I think this movie I think snuck up on everyone who isn't 10 years old. It is on Netflix. Came out almost three months ago, maybe two and a half months ago. It is on track to be the most watched film, or maybe it already is the most watched film on Netflix. 266 million views.
- [26:40]
E
Definitely the movie of the summer as we're recording.
- [26:44]
D
Yeah. And it is the movie of the summer, I think, which is weird because there have been a couple other big Netflix movies before, big streaming things before, but I don't think they've ever quite broken out culturally in the way that this one has. And again, it's not just Netflix. If you pull up Spotify, their Global 100 list of top songs, you got what it sounds like, which is number nine. This is a musical, by the way, how it's Done. Number six, your idol, number five, Soda Pop, number four. And these are all songs.
- [27:12]
E
So this song, golden, is a banger.
- [27:14]
D
It is, like, the hottest song right now.
- [27:16]
E
It's on my exercising mix.
- [27:18]
D
This movie is gonna make a fortune, and we have a great person to talk about it.
- [27:23]
E
Yes, we do.
- [27:23]
D
Sam Sanders is here. He is host of the Sam Sanders show, which you should subscribe to if you don't. Just a really smart cultural commentator. Sam, how you doing?
- [27:33]
B
I'm good. Y' all finally got me to watch K Pop Demon Hunters, which had been on my list. And let me tell you, I was dancing in the living room with the dog last night. It's really cute, and it's really fun.
- [27:45]
D
All right, so, Stacey, you. You wanted to just kind of quickly summarize the premise here. I mean, it's basically in the title. They're K Pop stars, and they hunt demons. It's like snakes on a plane level, like, obvious.
- [27:58]
E
Well, okay, so there is a band. It's three women, and they are, like, born, like, demon slayers, and they slay the demons of the world with their voices, which creates some kind of a network that slays demons. Anyway, but there's also a. An evil boy band made up of, like, five very handsome men who are singing for evil.
- [28:22]
D
They're demons too. It's an animated film. It's a musical. And it came out, like I said, like, back in June. And I think it snuck up on a lot of people. It snuck up on me for sure. Like, I only really became aware of it over the last week when I was on vacation and my children watched it, like, seven times in a row. But, like, I'm kind of curious when you started to kind of hear chatter about this, like, when you became aware that this was gonna be a phenomenon, that you were gonna be talking about this, you know, in a professional capacity.
- [28:52]
B
At some point, the songs kind of crept into my algorithm. I use Spotify mostly for streaming. And all of a sudden, golden began to show up. And for the longest time, I just said, oh, that's some new K Pop band. They Always got a new one over there in K Pop world. Then I realized, oh, this is from a movie. Then I Google the movie and I'm like, oh, it's a massive, massive hit. It really surprised everybody. It surprised Sony, it surprised Netflix. And I think that says a lot about how most executives in the entertainment industry actually don't know anything. They don't know anything.
- [29:27]
D
Yeah. This movie, I didn't know this going in to taping this, but, like, I guess animated movies are really expensive to make. This movie cost $100 million to make.
- [29:36]
E
Oh, wow.
- [29:36]
D
I've read that, like, it is going to be a billion dollar movie and that's a big deal because it didn't have a theatrical release. Sam. Like, people who don't pay attention to this business, like, how do you get to a billion dollars or a big number for a movie that, like, I can go on Netflix and stream for free. My kids are streaming for free nonstop. Like, where is the money in something like this?
- [29:57]
B
For Netflix, it's fuzzy math and they'll never tell us everything. The biggest shift between watching movie and TV viewing go to streamers as opposed to being in networks back in the day and in movie theaters. Back in the day, we had really distinct measures of how shows and movies did. There were Nielsen ratings that told you that Seinfeld had 35 viewers a week and box office numbers that said this movie made $100 million this weekend. Netflix hides a bunch of that data, but what they're hoping is that this movie being so popular keeps people coming back and subscribed, and those subscriber fees will help their bottom line. There's also an ad tier of Netflix now that exists, but most people I know don't use it. So all this to say whatever hard number they give you about this movie, it's less about that and more about winning the conversation and being seen as the biggest, baddest, best streamer that matters.
- [30:59]
D
Subscription fees, I mean, is the short answer like people like this and they keep subscribing to Netflix or they don't subscribe and they resubscribe because they gotta watch K Pop Demon Hunters.
- [31:08]
E
I want to jump in here and ask you about something you said earlier, Sam, which is that nobody knows anything, which I think is really interesting. I mean, the summer movie of the summer has always been this big deal. This big deal in business, too. Nobody hit it, right next. Netflix seems to have accidentally hit it, right? Like, what's going on here? Why does nobody know nothing right now?
- [31:31]
B
So there's a few things Going on, we are seeing moviegoing in general just go down. There used to be a time in our youth where on the weekends you would go to the movies even if there wasn't a movie that you really wanted to go watch.
- [31:46]
E
Well, Barbie Heimer happened not that long ago. There was the.
- [31:49]
B
But those are few and far between. Yeah, there are very few monoculture moments in movies anymore. And only about 12% of Americans now go to the movies at least once a month. And about a quarter of Americans don't go to the movies at all.
- [32:04]
C
Wow.
- [32:04]
B
In the midst of this, these studios rely a lot more on IP like Barbie and other things that folks already know and will go see. And so if you look at the biggest performing movies of this year so far, it's all existing ip, how to Train youn Dragon, Fantastic Four, Jurassic World, Superman, the Lilo and Stitch Sequel. So moviegoing is going down. Which means that movie studios rely on old names that we all know, which means that a movie like K Pop Demon Hunters, they don't know what to do with it because it's new and they're afraid to take that chance and put it in theaters. There's also a really weird story about the way that Sony and Netflix made the deal that put this film on Netflix and not in theaters.
- [32:52]
D
Sam, you wanna just explain that?
- [32:54]
B
Yeah. So, as I mentioned, on top of Americans just going to movies less the pandemic and that era of lockdown really decimated movie theaters for a while. They're still bouncing back, but they're not back to what they were pre Covid and they might never get there, if I'm being honest. However, during that lockdown moment, a lot of movie studios said, what can we do to keep making movies and not close our businesses and not lay off all of our staff? Sony inked a deal with Netflix during lockdown that basically said, we'll make movies, but we know they can't go to theaters. So we'll sell movies at a flat rate to Netflix that will then stream these movies on their platform and then they'll get all the rights. So K Pop Demon Hunters was a part of this deal, which meant that even though Sony made the movie, they were paid $20 million for it, and Netflix got all the rights and the benefits from having this big hit.
- [33:54]
D
And Netflix paid to make it. Paid the 100 million bucks to make it and then another 20.
- [33:59]
C
Yeah.
- [33:59]
D
On top of that, that was the.
- [34:00]
B
Flat fee part to Sony.
- [34:02]
D
Yeah.
- [34:03]
B
Yes. Yes. But that means that Sony will see no upside from this movie and Even when Netflix put K Pop Demon Hunters in theaters for one weekend for a special sing along edition of this film, Sony, the movie studio saw none of that money.
- [34:19]
E
Whoa.
- [34:19]
B
Netflix.
- [34:20]
D
You know, there's been this debate in Hollywood, I think, over, over some period of time, Sam, and I know you're probably familiar with this, but, like, we have traditional Hollywood, including a lot of, like, filmmakers and so on, who feel like theaters are really important. Theatrical releases are really important. There's like a kind of cultural reason for that, which is like, they feel like that's what a movie should be. But there's also like a marketing argument, which is that theaters are how you create, like, cultural moments. Like, you can't have a movie of the summer without a theatre.
- [34:50]
E
Yeah. The producers of Crazy Rich Asians turn down more money from Netflix because the theatrical release was so important to them.
- [34:57]
D
And Netflix has been kind of like the. The one saying, no, no, no, you don't need this. So. So Ted Sarandos is the CEO of Netflix at the TIME 100 Summit in April, which. That's funny. I don't know what that is, but. But it's an event in April held by Time magazine, and he was asked about theaters. Just listen to what he said.
- [35:15]
B
Folks grew up thinking, I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and five strangers watch them and, and play in the theaters for two months and people cry and sold out shows. It just doesn't happen very much anymore.
- [35:26]
D
It's outdated. So I'm kind of curious, Sam, if you agree with that or if there's anything to what he's saying and if K Pop Demon Hunters maybe helps make the point because they did create a cultural moment in a kind of an interesting and maybe arguably new way.
- [35:43]
B
Yeah, I mean, I talk a lot about the ways in which Americans are just not going to the movies like they used to. It kind of makes me sad. I love movies. I actually that moviegoing does a lot for social and cultural adhesion. Like, it is a community experience. There are few feelings better than watching a really good movie in a theater and then talking to the stranger next to you about how it was afterwards. I think it's good for, like, society. So I'm sad that we don't go as much, but I think that the trend lines are just inevitable. I tell folks a lot. I compare movie going right now to opera going. There was a time in Western culture where opera was the most popular thing ever. And on the weekends you went to the opera, and at night for a date, you went to the Opera. And everyone went to the opera, right? Opera doesn't not exist now. It still exists. There are people who sing opera and make money doing opera. But it's not nearly as dominant as a cultural force. I think moviegoing in the classical sense at the movie theater is going the way of opera.
- [36:44]
E
We're all just gonna be like old people in like overdressed old people coming outta movie theaters. Is that what is? Am I gonna be one of these people?
- [36:52]
D
But do you buy the marketing argument? Everything you're saying could be true, but opera or some movie releases that are not necessarily big money makers could be events that like allow a project to gather enthusiasm or excitement or whatever. I think there have been a lot of people arguing this is a way to signal to people like this is a thing you need to see. This is a big deal, like any of that. But you think that could also go away.
- [37:16]
B
When's the last time that happened?
- [37:18]
D
Probably it's like Barbie the last several years.
- [37:21]
B
But like those were things where Christopher Nolan as a director is as close to existing IP as you can get in a human being. And Barbie is a brand that we've all known for decades. I really think that as movie goes the way of opera, the only things that will work and become cultural moments are things that were already a cultural moment.
- [37:39]
D
Before we let you go, Sam, I wanted to ask you about kind of like what happens next. I mean, we were talking about the money earlier. Like some of the money is gonna be in sequels, right? There hasn't actually been a ton of merch.
- [37:49]
E
We have not seen the last of K pop team in Hunters.
- [37:52]
D
Cause this took people by surprise. Like they didn't have enough time.
- [37:55]
C
Oh really?
- [37:56]
E
The merch hasn't even caught up.
- [37:57]
D
There's some, a little bit, but not as much as you would normally have for something like this. They're gonna be sequels. I'm kind of curious, Sam, what you think the lessons are. I mean, beyond just like we're gonna see, I'm sure copycat type stuff. What are people in entertainment? How are the smart ones thinking about this? What are they gonna learn from this?
- [38:15]
B
I mean, there has been a decade plus of movie studios relying a lot on existing IP to make their money. So big brands that you already know and love sequel after sequel after sequel. But all the trend lines say that this won't last forever. Most of the time when you extract all these sequels from ongoing ip, it's diminishing returns with each sequel. That's happening with the biggest franchises in Hollywood. And so Hollywood's about to face a problem. They actually need new ip. And you know what K Pop Demon Hunters is? It's new ip. So I think the lesson here for all of Hollywood and all these executives is that they're gonna have to start taking chances again because the trough they're feeding from is eventually going to run dry. How many Jurassic World movies can we put up with? Stacey?
- [39:06]
E
Don't ask that many questions, Sam. Cause the answer could be a lot.
- [39:11]
D
Sam Sanders, thank you for being here.
- [39:13]
E
Thanks Sam.
- [39:14]
B
To everyone listening. It's good for America. Go to the movies. Yes, please go to the movies.
- [39:20]
E
Co sign and be sure to check out Sam's show. The Sam Sanders Show. I just listened to their year in review so far episode. It's great. Check it out.
- [39:44]
A
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- [40:15]
C
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- [40:45]
D
Stacey, Max, I have a confession to make and I feel like this makes me almost like anti American. What? I hope I don't get deported for saying this, but I am not a big fan of like a pumpkin spice coffee and I feel like that is one of the institutions of this. It's as American as apple pie and basil.
- [41:04]
E
I have something to admit as well, which is I've never actually had a pumpkin spice latte.
- [41:08]
D
We're going to do this whole segment without actually trying one.
- [41:11]
E
That's.
- [41:12]
D
That seems harsh, but you have an underrated story and it pertains to this.
- [41:15]
E
Yes, in fact. So pumpkin spice season has launched. It's official and it is an economic force. The pumpkin spice, which is apparently like cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, little mix, apparently visits to Starbucks go up by 24% in pumpkin spices. And people love this mix. Apparently, you and I are just in the extreme minority of non pumpkin spice.
- [41:42]
D
Well, but also, pumpkin spice is also what you need if you're making a pumpkin pie. Right. Or a sweet potato pie. I love pumpkin pie, which is a delicious thing.
- [41:49]
E
Yes.
- [41:50]
D
So it can't just be.
- [41:51]
E
I like my coffee to taste like coffee. I'm a purist.
- [41:54]
D
I'm just glad that Starbucks has something to look forward to, because, you know, we were talking the other day about the challenges that they've had. But, yes, pumpkin spice season. This is gonna be great for them.
- [42:02]
E
Well, it is and it isn't. So Starbucks is possibly now in a situationship with the pumpkin spice latte, because not only are coffee prices up, like, 15% over last year, which is enormous for a number of reasons, but all the spices in the pumpkin spice latte are imported. And so those are all being affected by tariffs. Tariffs. And the pumpkin spice latte, since 2005, when it started being. The price started being tracked, is up by almost 70%.
- [42:31]
D
Okay, wait, wait. Break that down for us. So how much did it cost back in?
- [42:35]
E
$3.35.
- [42:37]
D
Okay. And now it is.
- [42:38]
E
It's, like, around $7.50, 8 bucks.
- [42:42]
D
And that's before these tariffs kicked in.
- [42:45]
E
Well, the tariffs may have slightly kicked in. I don't know if Starbucks has been stockpiling pumpkin spices. One can only imagine that when they saw this coming, they were like, you know, it's a very important thing. But, you know, if these tariffs get locked into place, all these spices, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, like, we do not grow them in the US So.
- [43:05]
D
Right. They're mostly coming from Asia, I think.
- [43:07]
E
Yes. India and Indonesia. And, like, the places where the spices come from are all being hit by tariffs.
- [43:14]
D
I find it funny, there's so much political discourse right now where you have sort of like Democrats saying these tariffs are really bad, and Republicans say, no, they're not bad. And it's like, well, we don't really have to argue about it. You can just look at the prices of certain goods, and, like, they're going up. I mean, and you can sort of debate whether or not that's a big price increase, whether that's like, a politically a problem. Like, there are a bunch of debates you can have about it, but, like, the prices don't really lie.
- [43:42]
E
And lest you think, max, that coffee is the only thing on the line here, I would just like to posit that pumpkin spice has now infiltrated almost every corner of consumer Culture. There is pumpkin spice cup of noodles.
- [43:59]
D
Oh, God.
- [44:00]
E
There is pumpkin spice Spam. There are pumpkin spice Doritos, Slurpees, hummus, Ramen, Pringles, cough drops. My personal favorite, cat litter. There's pumpkin spice cat litter. It's everywhere.
- [44:16]
C
Everywhere.
- [44:17]
E
I mean, imagine the pumpkin spice inflation alone. The economic impact is gonna reverberate earthquake style through the economy.
- [44:25]
D
If we had. If we had like Scott Bessen here, he would say, look, the president is just trying to reorient the US economy away from pumpkin spice. And I would say, amen to that.
- [44:37]
E
You're all for it. You're not gonna start drinking pumpkin spice lattes or cat litter.
- [44:49]
D
All right, Stacey, before we go, I gotta just read some of the emails we got. Oh yeah, to the AI thing I mentioned.
- [44:56]
E
I know we got a lot this. We should say the show was.
- [44:59]
D
We had on Ed Zitron, noted AI hater. A really awesome conversation about. I mentioned it at the top of. About sort of the ways in which no matter how excited you are about this stuff, there are. There seem to be some real economic.
- [45:13]
E
Risk, possibly very overvalued in a way that could crash the economy.
- [45:16]
D
Yeah.
- [45:16]
E
And got a lot of people very strong.
- [45:18]
D
I gotta tell you, Stacey, we got some. Some haters listening to this show. So Rick wrote in complaining that I don't use it unless it's forced upon me. Take that, college students complaining essentially about the electricity, the water usage, and like the fact that as a consumer you don't always get value. Talking about customer service phones being converted over to AI. He complained about doctor's offices, which actually came up in another note from another correspondent. I think his name is Yoshin, but wrote in complaining about basically having his doctor's office put him in touch with like a. An AI agent. And that feeling really interesting, really icky. I mean, the most interesting note we got was a sort of lengthy one from Josh, who is by his account anyway, a Carnegie Mellon trained machine learning engineer. And he's basically saying like. Although he wrote, while I don't always agree with Ed's approach to arguing against the current hysteria gripping markets around AI, he's right about the fundamental disconnects of between hype and reality. I don't see this to mean that there's no utility in LLMs. There are clearly are narrow applications where they provide value. However, the ROI is highly suspect given the capital required to produce what we'll likely remember as the 21st century Eliza.
- [46:36]
E
Now I had to 21st century Eliza. Look as in like Eliza Doolittle.
- [46:42]
D
No, Eliza was a, a like very early chat bot from like the 1960s.
- [46:48]
E
Okay.
- [46:48]
D
And I had to, I had to Google that. But I mean, again, it didn't.
- [46:51]
E
I was all in My Fair Lady. I, you know.
- [46:54]
D
But anyway, awesome emails all around on this topic. Like, keep them coming. I think we really liked that conversation. In particular, we're going to, as we said on the other one, we're going to try to keep coming back to this topic. So keep sending us ideas, examples, let us know what you thought of K Pop Demon Hunters, what it could tell you about what we can learn from Hollywood. That's everybody's@Bloomberg.net, everybody's with an slumberg.net do.
- [47:18]
E
You still consider yourself an AI skeptic?
- [47:21]
D
I feel like everyone should be an AI skeptic, especially if you're a journalist. Like journalists by nature are supposed to be skeptical of everything. I try not to use AI because I think it's going to actually make me a worse writer. And I think that everyone is kind of melting their brains a little bit.
- [47:35]
E
So you wouldn't want us to like put it on the show or give it a job on the show?
- [47:38]
D
Definitely not.
- [47:40]
E
Well, we should probably do the credits. This show is produced by Stacey Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer and Amy Keen is our editor.
- [47:51]
C
We get engineering from Blake Maples and Dave Purcell. Fact checks. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling.
- [48:01]
D
Who are these voices?
- [48:03]
E
If you have a minute, please rate.
- [48:04]
D
And review the show. It means a lot to us. If you do, Max will drink a venti pumpkin spice latte during next week's show. This will be enforced and if you have a story that should be our business, email us@everybodysoomberg.net that's everybody with an sloomberg.net thank you for listening. See you next week.
- [48:28]
E
Resistance is futile. Max Chaffka, you will be assimilated. Accept your fate. I would like to thank the descript AI generated voices that contributed to this, including Owen and Grace. They contributed to this.
- [48:44]
D
They're not voices, they're just mathematical models. It's an auto complete.
- [48:48]
E
Apparently you have to drink a venti spice latte if somebody reviews the show. So that's interesting.
- [49:01]
A
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