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- [00:00]
Comcast Business Announcer
Modern enterprise. It's a lot of moving parts. Comcast business helps orchestrate it all, with SD Wan keeping 150 hospital locations connected and zero trust security protecting a bank's 2,000 branches. No one does business like Comcast business.
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Amazon Health AI presents Painful thoughts I.
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Amazon Health AI User
I can't stop scratching my downtown. Mm, yeah, but I'm not itching to go downtown and tell a receptionist I'm here to talk about my downtown. Some things rather type than say out loud.
- [00:35]
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- [00:48]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, Radio news Max Chaffkin. Stacy Vanek Smith, I have a question for you.
- [00:58]
Ruchir Sharma
Shoot.
- [00:58]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Have you seen the Odyssey, Stacy?
- [01:00]
Max Chafkin
It is so hard to see the Odyssey. I want to see the Odyssey.
- [01:04]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Everyone see the Odyssey.
- [01:06]
Max Chafkin
But I can. It's the theaters are all sold out. There's the question of do you see it in imax? Do you see it on a normal screen? Is the IMAX screen you are watching it on a real IMAX screen? Or is it lmax, which is like a fake imac? There's a whole bunch of stuff, but yes, very.
- [01:21]
Stacey Vanek Smith
There's also a huge secondary market for tickets, especially for IMAX tickets. And this is just the hottest ticket in town right now.
- [01:28]
Max Chafkin
My favorite thing about the Odyssey, Stacey, is that the Odyssey metaphors, because it's such a universal story, we could use
- [01:34]
Stacey Vanek Smith
it absolutely all the time. It's an economy of twists and turns, from Scylla to sirens. It's all there. So I propose that today for this episode, we go on a little bit of an odyssey of our own into the U.S. economy.
- [01:51]
Max Chafkin
Okay. I feel like we do that every week, Stacey, but I'm with you.
- [01:55]
Stacey Vanek Smith
We're branding it. That's the difference. This is everybody's business. From Bloomberg Businessweek, I'm Stacey Vanek Smith.
- [02:06]
Max Chafkin
I'm Max Shavkin.
- [02:07]
Stacey Vanek Smith
And today on the show, Max, we are going on an odyssey of our own into the heart of the economy. We have got Ruchir Sharma talking about where we are in our economy right now and why maybe the stock market is the economy.
- [02:21]
Max Chafkin
Yeah. And we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, how AI companies brand themselves. We've got Sarah Fryer, Bloomberg managing editor, author of a great book on Instagram,
- [02:31]
Stacey Vanek Smith
here to talk about that and how they are getting into the fashion business. Yeah, they're one of our big.
- [02:37]
Max Chafkin
They are fashion houses now. AI companies, if you didn't know Absolutely.
- [02:41]
Stacey Vanek Smith
We also have some great underrated stories. We have got Python pizza and the new rat$.
- [02:48]
Max Chafkin
And a sequel, a potential sequel to the Odyssey. You may not have seen it yet, but there's another one coming by the
- [02:55]
Stacey Vanek Smith
end of the year, maybe ever so slightly less great than this one. So, Max, Americans feel awful about the economy right now, which is kind of strange because in a lot of ways, the economy is actually doing pretty well. But, you know, I think people are feeling like we're not going in a good direction.
- [03:24]
Max Chafkin
Yeah. I mean, on one hand, you have the stock market is, is. Is ripping. You have the job market is. Okay, we've talked about this. On the other hand, even today, oil prices going above 100 today, as we record this amid a new, you know, sort of back and forth with Iran, a lot of uncertainty. I don't know, it's a weird time.
- [03:42]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So here to help us make sense of this moment is Ruchir Sharma, chairman of Rockefeller International and author of what Went Wrong with Capitalism? Welcome, Ruchir.
- [03:51]
Ruchir Sharma
Thanks so much, Stacey, for having me.
- [03:53]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So before we kind of dive into the particulars, I'd love to get your overview of the economy right now, because in a lot of ways it's quite strong, but also what I consider to be kind of two of the main pillars of it, that being the job market and inflation has. Have been kind of middling and seemingly going in a circle of sorts for years now.
- [04:13]
Ruchir Sharma
Yep.
- [04:14]
Stacey Vanek Smith
When you look at the economy, what do you see?
- [04:16]
Ruchir Sharma
Well, I see a very big disconnect, a big disconnect which has never been there before between what the sentiment surveys are telling you and what economic growth is actually doing. And there's a perfectly logical explanation for why this is happening, because the economic growth is being entirely driven by. By the top 10 or 20%. If you look at all the spending, all the wealth creation which is accruing to them from the stock market, it's all concentrated in that top cohort. So now the surveys which people take, those are asking the average person how they're feeling, and the average person is not doing that well, if you look at what real wages are doing, particularly after inflation. And then also if you look at basic stuff that can they afford a home, the ownership of equities, it's all concentrated in the older generation. Very few of the young generation have that much equity wealth. And that's what's generating so much of the buzz in the economy today, the wealth creation coming from the stock market. And then there is the relative argument, which is that as you know that even today, surveys show that people with 300,000 or 400,000 of earnings a year, they are also feeling miserable, partly because of social media and other things where we are always hearing about how the billionaires or the multi billionaires are doing so well. And so that sort of feeds even more insecurity. So as you know, so much of how you feel is a relative game. And so we look at the other people who are doing really well, and then we look at ourselves and we are comparing our insights to their outside. Right. And so we are feeling miserable about it. So I think, therefore, this massive gap has opened up between how the real economy is doing and how the average person is feeling. And so the average person, they're not feeling that great about the economy for understandable reasons.
- [06:09]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So one thing I wanted to ask about within the gains of the stock market is almost a reflection of how there's a top cohort of consumers driving all consumer spending. There are a few stocks that are really driving the gains in the stock market.
- [06:23]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah.
- [06:24]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Does this put us in a precarious position? You've written about this a little bit. Also in what went wrong with capitalism, you talk about the dangers of companies getting so big, they're kind of tangled up with the government. Do you see that moment happening right now? How do you look at this moment where we have a few companies driving gains that we've never seen before in the stock market?
- [06:45]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah, I think that's the problem of the entire economy today, which is that it's not just stock market, but this concentration which is happening is happening at a corporate level as well. In three out of four industries, we have seen much greater concentration over the last few decades take place. And the stock market has never been this concentrated. Now, of course, this is a unique moment because we are seeing this incredible AI boom. And that's what's driving a lot of the returns in the stock market as well. So I think there are two factors. One, that over time we have seen that the gains have become increasingly concentrated. That's reflected today in the S&P 500, that it's never been this concentrated. That the trend top 10 companies are whatever, nearly 40% of the entire market cap or so. But the other thing which is going on also is that and this is happening across the world, which is that there's only one factor driving returns today, which is AI. So it's like across the world, what you're seeing is AI or bye bye, which either you have AI or you don't. If you don't have AI any stock market around the world. The positive returns this year have almost all been driven by which countries are doing well on AI and which, and which countries are not doing well on AI. They in fact have negative returns. So that's the sort of world order we have been for the first six, seven months of this year.
- [08:05]
Max Chafkin
When you say it's being driven by AI, I'm kind of curious what you mean because I almost would say it's being driven by AI hype or AI enthusiasm. Like, because there is this, there's a story we could tell. It's not happened yet, I don't think where AI, everyone, you know, buys a bunch of GPUs and we all get large language models and we do our job so much better. We, we make twice as many podcast episodes and the economy booms and it's amazing that has not happened yet. I don't think we're still making the same number of podcast episodes each week. But so what is when, when you say AI is driving it, what are we actually saying?
- [08:41]
Ruchir Sharma
Well, it's the AI spend which is driving it. Right.
- [08:44]
Max Chafkin
So it's people buying stuff to do AI in the future.
- [08:47]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah. So this is a massive investment cycle which is going on around the world. In fact, this is the fastest increase we have seen in any investment cycle, in any technological breakthrough. And this is where I've been writing a lot about this, which is that the greater the technological breakthrough, the greater the financial bubble tends to be. That's the 300 year history of bubbles, because the excitement tends to be huge. You end up spending a lot, there's a lot of over investment which happens. And then what happens typically is that after a while, when this investment goes on, you typically get an increase in interest rates for some reason. And that's what ends the bubble. So I'm very clear about this, which is that the technology is great and you're totally correct that there's a lot of hype around it as well. It's driving this massive investment boom around the world. That spend is showing up in the GDP numbers also going up. But the fault line here is that this is happening at a time when money is relatively easily available. That if you look at interest rates today, by any measure, interest rates are relatively low after adjusting for inflation. So if you end up getting any increase in interest rates, I think this AI hype and this AI bubble comes to an end.
- [10:01]
Stacey Vanek Smith
You're saying there is an AI bubble?
- [10:03]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah.
- [10:04]
Stacey Vanek Smith
What happens when this bubble pops?
- [10:06]
Ruchir Sharma
I think then we are Left with a massive amount of overinvestment and it'll be a long clean out of the cycle. In a bubble, you typically tend to get over investment. You get overvaluation, you get over leverage and you end up getting over ownership. So those are the four rules. Yeah. So that's a very interesting which is that a lot of people own the same stocks and they own it in big size. Now one very interesting thing which has happened here, going back to the top of our discussion, is that today, for the first time in America's history, more of America's wealth is in the stock market than in property.
- [10:50]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Oh, wow.
- [10:50]
Ruchir Sharma
Yes.
- [10:51]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Rather than in their homes, which is
- [10:52]
Ruchir Sharma
the traditional store of wealth, rather than their own homes or even a second home, more of the wealth today. So if you look at the total bucket Today, more than 30% of America's wealth today is in the stock market. And that is slightly above for the first time, crossed over how much is in the property.
- [11:09]
Max Chafkin
That's crazy. Especially given how home prices have been, have gone up a lot and so on. You brought this up at the beginning of our conversation. The, the kind of disconnect between the way people feel and the way the economy actually is. And I'm curious, you have on one hand AI kind of causing the economy to go berserk, you know, firing on all cylinders. And then you also have this story that's happening at the same time about the same technology that's it's going to take your jobs. It's going to be scary. I mean, we'll get to this in the next segment. But I'm kind of curious how you see those things playing against each other.
- [11:44]
Ruchir Sharma
This is what's unique about this boom, that historically with the Internet or other technological progresses, there was a lot of excitement even amongst the average person. This is possibly the most hated technological innovation of all time, like as a boom, partly because the tech Bros. And everyone is going out there has been telling you that, you know, like you're gonna have 10, 20% unemployment and you're sitting there at home and you're hearing about all these cases of how the data centers, these boxes are coming up somewhere and that your electricity bill is going up. You know, so now while none of this has really happened as far as job losses are concerned in any size, the employment rate is still relatively healthy. But I'd say that the feeling which has been conveyed is that this is coming for you.
- [12:29]
Max Chafkin
No, no. And you better get with it now or you're gonna get left behind.
- [12:32]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah. And it's also like, I think there's also been a bit of arrogance, you know, like in some of these closed door meetings, you know, of some of these top tech people, they sort of, you know, their sort of attitude. And I've seen this is the fact that, listen, this is happening. We have to win this arms race. You better get in line. And if you don't get in line, you know, too bad.
- [12:51]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I wanted to ask you, like relating back to your book, is this capitalism sort of succeeding until it fails? Do you see this as a moment of capitalism success and promise or why capitalism isn't working?
- [13:07]
Ruchir Sharma
No, for me, as I said that I am a huge believer in capitalism.
- [13:11]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Okay.
- [13:12]
Ruchir Sharma
But I feel, but I'm very distressed by the fact that today most Americans, young Americans in particular, have more of a positive view of socialism than capitalism.
- [13:22]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I mean, look at the city we're in, in our mayor who is a socialist Democrat. Yeah.
- [13:26]
Ruchir Sharma
And that's where like wrote this book to show the history of capitalism and to argue in the book that capitalism hasn't failed the current system we have is broken and that what we have today is not capitalism, that it is a very distorted form of capitalism which favors the incumbents, where the government keeps on intervening to help the establishment out there. So capitalism did not fail big government, which has failed it, and that the government policies progressively over the last 40, 50 years, whether it's regulation or it's monetary policy or it's the culture of bailouts, all these have helped the established players and that's what's fueling the resentment amongst the average person. They're like, you know, that the government seems to only help the rich. Like they socialize their losses when they're in trouble. And for us, we don't get that much benefit out of the system.
- [14:21]
Stacey Vanek Smith
All right, well, Rusheer, thank you so much for talking with us. It's been great having you on this journey with us into the heart of the economy.
- [14:28]
Max Chafkin
We'll have you back when we bail out those AI six months from now.
- [14:33]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah, we'll justify it saying China, you know, is doing X.
- [14:37]
Max Chafkin
Of course.
- [14:37]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah, you got to do it national.
- [14:38]
Stacey Vanek Smith
It's a matter of national security.
- [14:40]
Ruchir Sharma
Yeah.
- [14:41]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Thanks, Ruchir.
- [14:42]
Ruchir Sharma
Thank you.
- [14:45]
Max Chafkin
Foreign.
- [14:50]
Comcast Business Announcer
Enterprise, that's a lot of moving parts. Comcast business helps you orchestrate it all with SD WAN working at scale to keep 150 hospital locations connected and working as one, plus SASE and Zero Trust Security protecting financial data across a bank's 2,000 branches and AI powered networking that optimizes traffic across five continents. No one does business like Comcast business.
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- [16:50]
Max Chafkin
Stacy, you know that I consider myself to be a fashionable guy, somebody who's always trying to look look his best. I did not know constantly updating my look interesting information, checking out what the new designers I'm kind of kidding. But I bring this up because there's some hot new looks that have come out from some very exciting new designers.
- [17:10]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Yes, tell us about these looks, these
- [17:13]
Max Chafkin
companies, the big new fashion firms. OpenAI the AI company Anthropic another AI
- [17:20]
Stacey Vanek Smith
company as fashion houses and talent here
- [17:24]
Max Chafkin
the slightly big brother ish surveillance thing that's AI coded. I bring this all up because AI is in kind of a weird moment where you have people with very strong feelings about it and the AI company is kind of frantically trying to figure out how to turn those strong feelings around. We have a great person to talk about this. It's Sarah Fryer. She is Bloomberg's managing editor for technology. She wrote the book no Filter, which is about Instagram. She's kind of an expert in how big tech companies market themselves, how they sell themselves to the world. Hey Sarah.
- [17:57]
Sarah Fryer
Hello.
- [17:58]
Max Chafkin
All right, I don't know if you've seen this. I don't know if Stacey's seen it and I'm guessing some listeners haven't seen It. So we should just pull up a couple of these. Jasmine, can you just, just cycle through some of these hot new looks that I'm talking about? So this is a beautiful fleece.
- [18:13]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Like a pullover.
- [18:14]
T-Mobile Announcer
Pullover.
- [18:14]
Max Chafkin
It says research. There's some really good looks from Palantir as I mentioned.
- [18:19]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Drop 16.
- [18:20]
Max Chafkin
Yeah, Palantir, the. I guess white is the thing.
- [18:23]
Stacey Vanek Smith
They've got all these tennis whites.
- [18:25]
Max Chafkin
Tennis whites. There's a tennis ball with the Palantir stock ticker.
- [18:29]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Why are they associated with tennis? They have like a tennis ball, a tennis skirt, tennis patches and. Oh, this one. I knew know about the work coat. The work coat I have heard is quite a hot item. It's a couple hundred dollars and it keeps selling out and at a couple points I think crashed the site.
- [18:46]
Max Chafkin
Yeah.
- [18:46]
Sarah Fryer
Wow.
- [18:47]
Max Chafkin
And anthropic, not to be outdone, has their own kind of fashiony thing. Here's a hat that it is a thinking.
- [18:55]
Stacey Vanek Smith
It's a thinking cap.
- [18:58]
Max Chafkin
Like a pop up store, which I think we'll see in a second.
- [19:02]
Sarah Fryer
Oh yeah, in the West Village.
- [19:03]
Max Chafkin
Yeah, in the West Village.
- [19:04]
Stacey Vanek Smith
What? Oh my gosh, a Claude clothing store.
- [19:07]
Max Chafkin
Sarah, what's going on here? Like why are these companies that are saying on one hand we need to spend all our money to buy these very expensive GPU chips so we can, you know, basically lock ourselves in a closet, do prompts all day and eventually, I don't know, cure cancer or make the world a better place. Like why are they selling all this merch?
- [19:30]
Sarah Fryer
If you're building an AI, one of the biggest things you're running up against is this idea that AI doesn't have taste. It might have information, it might have facts, it might have resources for you advice. It might be able to code you a personal website or you know, give you tips on how to declutter your
- [19:48]
Stacey Vanek Smith
home, do your taxes for you.
- [19:50]
Sarah Fryer
Yeah. It does not have fashion sense, it does not have coolness. It doesn't have the stuff we're looking for from humans, which is creativity, new ideas, like a new way of living that is inspirational. It might inspire me in, you know, very convenient ways, but not in ways that like will light my brain up. So I think what they're trying to do here is they're trying to say if people buy this stuff, they'll go around and give it a cool factor. Honestly, it feels to me like people might be buying it ironically. It might be a conversation starter. Honestly, if I'm wearing a hat that says thinking that is from Claude, do
- [20:35]
Stacey Vanek Smith
you think there is an image problem among AI companies. Is this an attempt to deal with that or is this something else?
- [20:43]
Sarah Fryer
This is an attempt to deal with the blandness problem. I think that AI is. It's very predictable. I mean, people make fun of like, the EM dashes or the. It's not this. It's that, you know, all these things that come as like, the. The way of talking that is so recognizably from a chatbot that they're trying to say that there's a different flavor. If you go to this one versus that one. People might stan chatgpt, or they might be more of a Claude person. And the more they can connect it to personal identity, the more staying power they have. Look at the market right now. Like, everyone's got a chatbot. They have to build stuff on top of the chatbot to make it a desirable chatbot that you want to keep coming back to. Instead of going to Gemini, instead of going to Grok like you, you want to have people stay with the one that they identify with and build perhaps a relationship with a dependability with.
- [21:40]
Max Chafkin
I will say that a lot of these slides that I just showed, they sort of look derivative in their own way, almost like a chatgpt version of fashion or something. I mean, it's like the anthropic one particularly looks like a store that was cool around the time that the average anthropic engineer locked himself in and started, you know, vibe coding or whatever. Like. But putting that aside. And a bunch of people have criticized. These are getting dunked on for being kind of like, try to trying, but
- [22:11]
Sarah Fryer
attention is good attention when it comes to, like, increasing awareness of the brand, you know.
- [22:16]
Max Chafkin
Okay, but just put all that aside because I do think some people think these are cool. Stacy mentioned the. The chore coat, and it does seem like, okay, there's probably some people are buying that ironically, because it's funny to buy a chore coat from a surveillance company. But also, I think some people are buying it's a cute coat because it's a cute coat. And I wonder. Stacy brought up this. This issue, but, you know, AI is just ridiculously unpopular, and it almost feels like these companies are just trying to meme themselves into some kind of popularity here. Like, maybe if they sell you a basketball or something, you. You won't focus. I don't know.
- [22:52]
Sarah Fryer
I think it's this moment where there is a lot of unpopularity of AI. They have to try to figure out a way to turn it around. I don't know if this is the way. I think some of the work they've done with studios or with influencers or celebrities, it might help. But then I feel like with those groups, it's playing with fire because they don't want to outsource their livelihoods to AI. Like you said, it's bland advice because it's the compilation of advice from the entire Internet, right? Like, whatever you're getting from AI comes from every bit of documentation it can possibly ingest and then bring back to you. It's going to be bland. It's going to be very basic.
- [23:40]
Stacey Vanek Smith
So you say that AI is kind of known for being bland, and I think that's true. But also it's known, I think, for being a little sinister. I think there's a sinister element, particularly in regards to jobs. I think people are so worried about jobs going away and AI's impact on our relationships, on our work, all these things, and it being kind of a force for the not good. And it occurs to me that all of these fashions are sort of Carhartt, like, which is a brand that I grew up with in Idaho, like a farming brand. And then now it's all over Brooklyn, which is interesting. But it seems like, yeah, workwear, it seems like kind of coded for workers. Are they trying to, like, is this like a Trojan horse situation where they're kind of trying to introduce their brand as like, the friend of the worker while possibly taking workers jobs?
- [24:33]
Sarah Fryer
I don't think a $200 coat is what I can. What I associate with the average American worker. I see where you're going with that, but, like, I see this more as like, someone. Someone who's like a fan of this company would maybe buy it or an employee or an investor would want to, like, present these. Like, I wouldn't wear it if I were a college professor.
- [24:58]
Max Chafkin
Let me just play one more thing. This is a commercial that Anthropic is running. All the AI companies are advertising now, and they're. They're average. They're actually starting to talk to these specific issues. Like some images of
- [25:13]
Stacey Vanek Smith
a burning house is an interesting. Can AI be trusted Graveyard?
- [25:18]
Commercial Disclaimer Voice
Who's gonna hit the brakes if we need to?
- [25:20]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Oh, my gosh.
- [25:20]
Anthropic AI Representative
How do we really ensure that what we're aiming to achieve really does benefit the majority of people?
- [25:28]
Stacey Vanek Smith
What is this?
- [25:29]
Anthropic AI Representative
If it ends up taking, like, almost all the jobs, then what does it mean to work? Oh, wait a minute. Why do we have to have this stuff?
- [25:41]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Could AI help people stop feeling misunderstood?
- [25:46]
Anthropic AI Representative
Could AI help me build more connections?
- [25:49]
Stacey Vanek Smith
These are getting more Inspiring. Can AI help me be a better teacher, better mom?
- [25:56]
Anthropic AI Representative
Maybe it'll cure some great things.
- [25:58]
Sarah Fryer
Okay.
- [26:00]
T-Mobile User
Okay.
- [26:00]
Stacey Vanek Smith
There's hope in hard questions.
- [26:02]
M&M's Commercial Voice
Okay.
- [26:03]
Max Chafkin
Yeah. The tagline.
- [26:05]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Keep thinking.
- [26:08]
Max Chafkin
So, Sarah, I mean, this is anthropic. Their brand is kind of like we are the AI safety guys. But I find it pretty interesting that they're just how explicitly they are in acknowledging that Many people find this scary.
- [26:25]
Sarah Fryer
The images in the beginning are disturbing.
- [26:26]
Max Chafkin
It's so melodramatic that I, I mean, I, I find it very cringy. It's just like I was joking. It makes me want to be an AI accelerationist. It's so like over the top. And what is this ad trying to say?
- [26:40]
Sarah Fryer
I think it's trying to acknowledge the fear, the, the apocalyptic sense that people have around AI. The fact that they think it's going to take all the jobs, it's going to burn the cost and destroy the planet. It's trying to get people to think about the possibilities too. Like, okay, maybe we're will acknowledge that that's a concern. But what about curing disease? What about becoming a better mom? Like, I think it's trying to ask you to change your framing, whether that's going to work. I think people, a lot of people watching this would probably just have like an, like an emotional swing with it and then feel manipulated. I don't know.
- [27:21]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Does it matter if we have a bad association with AI? It's being adopted everywhere. It's, it's very useful. It kind of helps us even if we don't have a great feeling about it. Do these companies care if they are liked or feared? Is this a big deal to them economically, politically?
- [27:42]
Sarah Fryer
I think that it's a big deal for them in part because the boom for AI depends on communities letting companies build data centers in their, in their local area. It depends on states, on passing moratoriums on data centers or centers. It depends on which is happening to some extent. It depends on communities being willing to share their energy resources, water resources, land. As of now, you know, unless we have some breakthrough that doesn't require transformer architecture, as of now, we really do need people to want the build out because we live in a democracy where people get to vote on these things and politicians know that it's unpopular and it is likely going to be a big factor in the midterms as to whether people will embrace the growth of AI or not.
- [28:38]
Max Chafkin
Stick around. We are going to get to our underrated story and we have something special just for you, Sarah.
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Sarah Fryer
For me,
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Max Chafkin
Allow eight weeks a burst pipe, a
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- [30:50]
Sarah Fryer
Price void in Florida all right Stacy, it's that time.
- [30:53]
Max Chafkin
It's the time we love. We've got a special guest, Sarah Fryer here. Underrated Story why don't you start my underrated story?
- [30:59]
Stacey Vanek Smith
I think could solve a lot of problems. It has to do with a pizza place in Florida in Everglades City and the owner of the pizza place in lieu of payment will accept Burmese pythons. So let me explain. The Everglades has a Burmese python problem. It's an invasive species. They are eating all the native species and so Florida's trying all these things to get rid of the pythons including it has this big contest that just wrapped up where they send a snake hunters out to see who can collect the most pythons and they have a prize. But this pizza place will sell You a pizza for a dead python. And the owner uses the python skins to make products.
- [31:41]
Sarah Fryer
Uses not in the pizza.
- [31:43]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Also a pizza topping. So this is the story. It's very funny and delightful, but I think this is something that we could use in other places too. Here in New York, we have a major rat problem. We have a rat czar. There is a big rat infestation in our city. We have an affordability crisis happening also.
- [32:03]
Sarah Fryer
Oh, my God.
- [32:03]
Max Chafkin
Stacey, are you pitch putting rats on pizza to solve the rat shortage?
- [32:08]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Absolutely not putting rats on pizza. But I was thinking we could have like a like rat currency, like a rat dollar here. And we could have like coin star machines, except they could accept rat carcasses. They said rats and then, you know,
- [32:19]
Sarah Fryer
I thought you were gonna say introduce rats Bernese pythons to New York City to eat all the rats.
- [32:24]
Max Chafkin
Well, they're coming whether or not.
- [32:25]
Stacey Vanek Smith
That's also an interesting idea.
- [32:28]
Sarah Fryer
So many pythons by the end of a. They'd be feasting in the subways for a long time.
- [32:32]
Stacey Vanek Smith
But I just thought this was such an interesting solution to turn something you don't want into a currency. Because I do think it could solve an affordability problem. It could solve a pest problem. And it's like a win, win, win.
- [32:47]
Max Chafkin
I'm just glad that innovators like this pizza guy are trying to come up with unique market based solutions to this problem.
- [32:55]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Would you guys kill rats and convert it into carnivores?
- [32:57]
Domino's Pizza Announcer
No.
- [32:58]
Stacey Vanek Smith
For like $3, $5.
- [32:59]
Sarah Fryer
Oh, it's like a total health hazard.
- [33:01]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Okay, well, I didn't think of that, but yeah.
- [33:04]
Max Chafkin
Okay. My underrated story is kind of in keeping with what we were talking about before. It's about AI executives embracing their creative sides. And of course, I am talking about Elon Musk's plan to remake the Odyssey to prove that Christopher Nolan's the Odyssey sucks. Are you familiar with this, Sarah?
- [33:23]
Sarah Fryer
No, I'm not familiar with this plan.
- [33:25]
Max Chafkin
So let's just pull this up. I should say Elon Musk as you know, Sarah, because, you know, we were on the Elon Inc. Podcast together all the time. He loves side quests. He also, you know, not averse to kind of right wing cultural signaling. He has been mad along with many, many, many people on the Internet for like, I don't know, a year or so or however long ago it was when Christopher Nolan announced the casting of the Odyssey. Essentially mad that they cast a black woman as Helen of Troy, cast a trans man in a role, Elliot Page. And he has been posting up A storm, about how terrible the Odyssey is going to be, how it's all a psyop, and so on. And unfortunately for that point of view, the Odyssey has been doing really, really well. Elon Musk responded yesterday vowing to make his own Odyssey, to prove once and for all that this is bad. He's going to use Grok to do it. And he even sort of re posted kind of like, I guess what is sort of like a. An early trailer or something. We can, we can give it a look.
- [34:27]
Stacey Vanek Smith
This is an AI generated trailer.
- [34:28]
Max Chafkin
It's more like a sketch, I guess you'd call it. It's a Grok creation. Grok is the AI Chatbot. And, um, I guess this is the idea is that this would be a more palatable version of the Odyssey. To Elon Musk.
- [34:43]
Amazon Health AI User 2
The sea will take you from me I will return.
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Ruchir Sharma
I left my one love an oath called me
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Anthropic AI Representative
Troy.
- [34:56]
Max Chafkin
Sarah, do you think this could be Elon Musk's like, next big venture after SpaceX, Tesla and so on, to make movies?
- [35:04]
Sarah Fryer
I hear it's really filmmaker. I hear it's really profitable. Great business.
- [35:09]
Max Chafkin
Stacey, what do you think?
- [35:10]
Stacey Vanek Smith
It's interesting, the idea of the Odyssey 2. I feel like it's kind of a beautiful end to the journey of our show to have another Odyssey, right? Because the whole point is Ulysses coming home, right? But now Ulysses has come home. Everybody else wants to send him out on this journey again. We're like right back where we started in Another Odyssey with Angels, apparently.
- [35:37]
Max Chafkin
Sarah Fryer, author of no Filter, Bloomberg Technology Managing editor, thank you for being here.
- [35:43]
Sarah Fryer
Thanks for having me.
- [35:44]
Stacey Vanek Smith
Thanks, Sarah.
- [35:50]
Max Chafkin
This show is Produced by Jasmine J.T. green and Stacy Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. If you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It'll mean a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, if you have a. A mystery that you want us to investigate like we did last week, email us. Everybody's@Bloomberg.net that's everybody with an slumberg.net thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
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Max Chafkin
It's called soccer.
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Ruchir Sharma
It's called football.
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Football.
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Max Chafkin
Okay, we can agree on that.
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Ruchir Sharma
Yeah, fully.
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Amazon Health AI User 2
So.
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Max Chafkin
Get any pizza, including stuffed crust with any toppings for 9.99. Finally, something everyone can get behind.
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