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A
Foreign.
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Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so this is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how are you?
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Good morning, Bradley. It's blizzard day in New York City. Hopefully by the time people hear this, it will have stopped. Maybe.
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B
Maybe. Yeah. We are not recording live from PNT Network because it literally is like a snow apocalypse outside. And if I was saying to Hugo, I just went to the gym and I've got really good snow boots and the snow was still so deep that it still went all. All inside of them. So, yeah, were there a lot of
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people at the gym? I'm amazing, More than you would expect.
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But. But it wasn't crowded. And it's actually the single worst equinox, I think, probably at least in New York, to go to the one in soho and which is usually almost impossible to get on equipment because it's so crowded and certainly was not an issue.
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A
Today we have two things we're going to do today. We have one, one main event, which is going sort of essay on the rise of the radical rest, you're calling it, which is a pretty long and spirited argument that I'm excited to hear you make. And then we're going to do a sort of a kind of a little short, gimmicky thing at the end where we're going to. Bradley's going to create a prediction portfolio. I picked six categories. We might add or subtract, depending on how he thinks when we raise them. But he's going to buy a bunch of positions in the prediction market and then we're going to check in on them week to week. And one of the keys, I want to actually set this up right. But Bradley, you will be able to trade in and out. So if you, you can, you know, are we actually.
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B
Are you buying them or we're just all theoretical?
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A
Well, we can make a decision on that. Maybe I'll buy them. Why not? I mean, I'm not going to put a lot of money on them, but sure, a few bucks. Why not? It might be an easier way to track the winnings just to have the, the dollar amounts in there.
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B
So, yeah, we'll buy them.
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A
Why not? Anyway, so we're going to do that at the end. That's going to be a short thing. But, but Bradley, why don't you kick things off with, with.
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B
With Jessica. Yeah. So I was reading a novel last week and there was a line in there, and it was a spy novel called the Cormorant. Hunt by Michael Edobb. By the way. It's the second in a trilogy, and it's excellent.
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A
It happens to be Michael Idoff, by the way. I know Michael, and he's a great guy.
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B
Oh, you do? Okay, when this comes out tomorrow, please send it to him then. Cause he's literally the beginning of the whole substack.
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A
Absolutely. Well, Michael worked at New York Magazine when I was there, and he's a terrific guy and a great writer.
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B
Great writer. So, anyway, here was his line, and it's not like an interesting integral line to the book itself, so he might be surprised at this kind of throwaway line. Kicked this off. And the line was. And it was. It was from a. His kind of main character, guy named Ari Falk, who's a kind of rogue CIA agent. And the quote is the left, right distinction he kept having to remind himself, no longer applied. The only existential standoff now is between the people who want to replace institutions with better institutions and the people who wanted to replace institutions with themselves. And so it's the kind of thing where it was a line where I was like, oh, that's smart. And then just sort of accepted it as sort of like, oh, yeah, he. He gets it. And then it kept coming back to me. And the reason why, in a way, is, I think that it's a very easy thing to say, but in reality, the former, the way that Idol frames this as is sort of good versus bad. Right. If you're the kind of person that wants to replace institutions with better institutions, you're good. If you're. If you want to replace institutions with yourself, you're bad. And I can accept sort of the latter. But on the former, the reason it kind of stuck in my head was it actually just didn't seem right to me in that, like, yeah, of course we want to replace institutions with better institutions, but I think the vast majority of the time, all that means is people fighting and believing that what they already thought was the right way to do institution is the right way to do it. And. And every election, in some ways, is just a fight over two existing visions for institutions, and it's just one or the other. And, you know, so, look, obviously the latter part, just to be clear, is happening. Trump, Putin, Xi. I mean, we see world leaders all over the place, certainly trying to replace our country's institutions with themselves, and that applies in other forms of the economy and life as well. But it seems to me that if you want better institutions, if you truly want it, not just like, oh, I'm a Democrat, and I want to see us in power and I believe that our version of institutions is better than their version of institutions, or vice versa. It's a lot more than that. What it means is really looking up, looking at, at the institutions themselves we have, and asking very hard questions about do they work, do they serve the greater good, or do they mainly serve the people who run the institutions themselves? And, and if the answer is they serve the people who run the institutions themselves, which I think is frequently the case, then we might need to radically remake these institutions. And it's putting in the work to think about what works and what doesn't work. And are we willing to undergo the sacrifice and pain that it would take to remake them in a way that could serve people better? So look, because Trump has destroyed the rule of law, and obviously the Supreme Court on Friday overturn the tariff stuff. And that was a good step, not just in terms of the economy, but in terms of the court finally asserting some independence and doing their job and not effectively allowing Trump to just consistently subjugate the rule of law. But when we look at the institutions that have guided our society for, at this point, hundreds of years, so the government obviously, but media, Wall street, the church, higher education, they were all in need of severe disruption. Right? So what propelled Trump to power is that he knew that and he raised those questions and said, only I can disrupt them and change them. And enough people in both 2016 and 2024 believed him to choose to elect him now because he effectively then just uses that frustration to enrich himself and empower himself at the expense of everyone else. His vision is not the answer because his vision is just about his own needs and nothing else. But neither is just trying to revert back to an era where a handful of elites controlled everything either. And even if those elites believe themselves to be quite benevolent, they were effectively also exerting their power for their own benefit. So as we're heading into a midterms in 2026 and a presidential in 2028, where it's going to so clearly be about this one man who has reshaped institutions for short term benefit and nothing else, the natural alternative is going to be, well, it's, we have to go back to the way it was before. And, and I don't think that's right either. So a world where institutions mainly serve those who run them expense of everyone else is not a world that I really want to live in. And a world where an institutional message is used to empower individuals who then Use that power to benefit themselves. Expense of everyone else is also not a world that I really want to live in. And so after thinking about it for a while, I believe that it's time to usher in the era of the radical rest. And it's time to reject the zero sum mentality that consistently puts individual needs and misconceived notions of personal success out of the collective good. It's time to reject the failed institutions of the past, reject those trying to exploit institutions to enrich themselves, and to use both the opportunities offered by technology and the lessons of history, what has worked and what hasn't worked, to do a much better job meeting the needs of regular people. And I'm calling it the radical rest because I was originally wrote this and called it radical centrism. But you know, in a way that felt kind of like a tired cliche. And we have built a society, we obviously talk about this a lot of this podcast because of things like mobile voting that really empower the extremes at the expense of everyone else. And yet I still think that the everyone else is 70, 80% of the country, but they are effectively disempowered, disenfranchised, don't have a voice. And it is time to change that. It is time to empower them. It is time to have a country that starts working for them again.
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A
Well, talk about, just for a second, why you don't like the radical centrism thing. Why is the radical rest better than that?
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Because centrism implies a specific set of policies. And even if those policies might generally be things that I agree with, they are still all facets of the existing system. They still are all policies that apply to here's how we run higher education, here's how we run the media, here's how we run religion. And I don't think it's enough. I think it's not just that we need to act in the interest of the collective good, ahead of the interest of the extremes, but that doing so very well may mean blowing up a lot of those institutions entirely. And I think centrism implies an adherence to those institutions that is not accurate, simply because if those institutions were doing so well, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place.
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A
Right. Okay, so how does the, how does the change happen then?
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B
So I was thinking I kind of start and the piece maybe goes into a little too much explanation detail. But you know, when, when, when my organization, so whether that's tough, ventures to strategies, touch philanthropies through mobile voting, hunger, whatever when we work on creating change. So legalizing a disruptive technology, changing a social norm, passing a bill, we use two approaches at the same time, top down and bottom up. So top down is what it sounds like. We use the traditional levers of power to convince whoever needs convincing. In our case, that's usually elected officials and regulators. And that requires some combination of lobbying, polling, and then mobilizing leaders of different groups to advocate directly for our position. So that's top down, bottom up is something that I think has only really become prevalent in small scale campaigns over the last 15 years or so, thanks to the Internet. And technology now allows us to reach individual voters, make our case to them, and then connect them to the relevant elected officials and regulators to show them that doing what we want is both popular and will help them with their next election, and that if they choose not to do it, it could cost them support in their next election. And I think technology has really made the means of reaching and mobilizing the public much greater than before. And that's where the opportunity here really exists. You know, pre Internet and even really pre social media, if you wanted to pass a bill, change a norm, legalize a disruptive technology, whatever it might be, in terms of reaching the public and then using that to influence the decision makers in government you were reliant on, in whatever market you were in, a handful of newspapers, papers, a handful of TV stations, a little bit of radio, and that was pretty much it. But the decline of traditional media and the rise of new forms of media, whether it's social media, substacks, podcasts, short form video, YouTube shows, digital only publications like an Axios or a Politico, whatever it might be, there are lots and lots of forms of new media. And one of the things about those forms that to me is really enticing is it does offer so many more paths to reach people, inform them and influence them. And that's both true for politicians and for voters. And, and to be clear, these forms of media have very strong downsides. You know, the New York Times, I believe, generally speaking, despite having a strong ideological point of view that I don't always agree with, generally tries to get the facts right in its story. They're not just randomly right. And I think that's true still of the most of the, you know, 10 biggest newspapers. And I think that's true of CBS and NBC and ABC and so on. Right. But there are very few of them, whereas all of the sort of, you know, I think this point, millions of forms of individual, non Traditional media, they're a lot less reliant or concerned necessarily about getting all the facts right, but they really do reach billions of people. And as regular people have tuned out a lot of the normal mainstream news and media, it is really critical and it creates real opportunity. And I will say, when I look at all the different broken institutions out there, and this might be sound surprising, but I think media has come furthest in reinventing itself through creative destruction, which is often painful. The recent layoffs, the Washington Post is a good example of that. But because media relies on market forces far more than institutions like government or religion or higher education, or quite frankly, maybe even Wall street, right? When 2008 happens, the government bails Wall street out and doesn't really hold anyone particularly accountable. When the media goes through equivalent things, nobody bails somehow, right? Maybe some rich person swoops in for a little while. We've talked about this before on the podcast, but I think in some ways, of the different institutions that we're discussing, media might be the most responsive to the market and therefore perhaps has done the best job in some ways at reinvention.
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A
Do you think that the decline of the major institutions is kind of inevitable in that context that has to give way to these smaller, more nimble organizations, I mean. Or do you think the New York Times. There's a role for the New York Times to really become more assertive.
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And the Times has done quite well economically right now, a lot of us, because their business itself has gotten better. They have figured how to monetize games and cooking apps and all kinds of things that are not direct news, but they have done really well. So I think the answer is that the two can coexist. My question a little bit is, even though I do believe the Times, for example, tries to get facts right, I also do believe that part of the reason for their success is they know their audience and they try to tell their audience what they want to hear, right? And so if a lot of the New York Times audience are people who, let's say, are in the, you know, first to 25th percent of wealth, if you kind of filter out the first, because in some ways, perhaps they're more likely to read the Journal or something else or just watch cnbc, the Times does a really good job appealing to the frustration of the people who would like to be in the 1% but are not, and showing them that they are right and morally superior and that the New York Times understands them and supports them, that they get it. And that makes those readers more loyal subscribers and customers. So I don't think that there's not ideological manipulation involved for the mainstream media outlets that are still able to succeed financially. But overall I think they can coexist.
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A
Okay, so you want to move on from the media?
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B
Yeah. I mean, so the question how should change happen instead? And I think progress can only come from empowering people directly without them having to place their faith in an ideologue from either party, whether it's MAGA or the dsa. And progress or virtue does not come from either side. Using the fear of change or fear of others to subjugate people into a never ending status quo of failing schools, massive student debt, even more massive consumer debt, limited economic mobility and opportunity, vast wealth inequality, trillions of national debt, the depletion of Medicare and Social Security bureaucracy. Democracies that exist far too much for their own benefit and don't deliver the kind of value that we need. Illogical public policies that created epidemics ranging from guns and immigration to opioids and mental illness. A health care system that is far too expensive and inaccessible. Infrastructure that is collapsing and outdated. The inability to thoughtfully regulate technology. Skyrocketing electricity costs, A climate that regularly causes hundreds of billions of dollars in damage and disruption and just so much more. And these are the problems that plague hundreds of millions of people every single day. And more important, those of us in the radical rest. We just want to see these problems solved. They don't have to be solved only if they can meet a certain ideological lens. Compromise is fine. It is good. Working across party lines is good. Change is good. We don't need purity. We don't need saviors. We don't want to anoint or worship political idols. We just want better lives. In my view, that is the position of the radical rest. And I'm not blaming neither party for that long list of problems above. They're both to blame, and neither really have the solution at the moment to fix it, because they're both highly incentivized to do whatever it takes to stay in office regardless of the cost to everyone else. And that's true of elected officials who truly are ideologues. And that's true of elected officials who are not, but will always place reelection ahead of any specific law or policy or idea. And so you gotta change those incentives if you want to start changing behavior by politicians. And I know that our listeners and readers are incredibly tired of me lecturing them about mobile voting, but I do think that that's where empowering people starts again. If we live In a world where gerrymandering has caused virtually every election to be decided in the primaries, and that's typically about 92% of congressional elections are decided in the primaries, meaning that the general election outcome is more than five points. And 93% of state legislative races decided in primaries, meaning the general election outcome is more than 5 points. If 90 plus percent of elections are determined in primaries and primary turnout is typically around 10%, and then those voters who turn out are typically at the ideological extreme, where they're from powerful special interests, then a small minority ends up dictating both who wins office and then what those election officials do once they're in office. And so we get a government that ends up protecting the extreme to the expense of everyone else. That's what we are trying to address with mobile voting. So we have built technology that's available to anyone for free that enables voting to be done securely on your phones so we can radically increase turnout, especially in primaries, and incentivize politicians to move away from the extremes and towards serving everyone else. We are currently running legislation in five states, Colorado, Minnesota, New Jersey, Maryland and Vermont that would legalize mobile voting for local elections. Anchorage, Alaska is going to have mobile voting as an option for their April municipal elections. But elements of the status quo are already in those five states doing everything they can to block change and keep things the way they are. And you know, this battle to make voting easier, to increase turnout, to move politicians incentives away from the extremes and towards the vast majority of Americans are going to be fought out in state legislatures over the next five to 10 years. And it has been extremely difficult. It's going to be extremely difficult. But I also know this, no major right in this nation's history, women's right to vote, the Civil Rights act, the Voting Rights act, same sex Marriage, Americans with Disabilities act, has ever been embraced by the status quo. They always fight change. But when enough people stand up loud enough and long enough and demand change, the status quo always loses. And they will here too. So the first step to me is you can't empower the radical rest if they are not politically relevant. If they don't vote, they are not politically relevant. But if they do vote, they are. It seems very clear that they are not going to miss taking their kid to school on a Tuesday or, or be late for work or anything else to vote in a state senate primary, in a city council primary, in the vast majority elections that are not the presidential election. But the result of that is all of the problems that I described above and the inability to truly deal with them. Because if you have to only solve a problem with ideological purity, you can't solve a problem. And so the first step in empowering the radical rest is making it far more feasible for them to vote, especially in state and local primaries, and therefore changing the underlying incentives of elected officials so that now their primaries have 30% turnout, not 10% turnout. And that 30% is far more reflective of the mainstream. And therefore it is in their political and electoral interest to start compromising, start working with others, to start doing what that 30% wants, which is actual results. But I think it can go further than that. I think that because of technology, regular people, the radical rest and can change laws and policies and regulations and you don't any longer, I believe, have to be a powerful special interest group or a political party or a political insider or a billionaire to impact public policy. So before the Internet, yes, the only way to get something done was typically that you hire the guy that knew the guy and that guy said something and it got taken care of. But I don't think that's the way the world works anymore. I think because of technology, because of the decentralization of media, regular people can now identify causes that they care about. So let's take say banning cell phones in your kids school or putting a stop sign on your street corner and then they can build coalitions of other regular people who care about the same thing and then use online tools to actually achieve it. And so as you know, Hugo, we are building a AI agent out of touch philanthropy. It's called how to create Societal Change. And once it is done, our hope is to launch it this fall. It will produce a full, comprehensive, multifaceted, completely free campaign plan covering every aspect of the inside game and the outside game. So if you said, I want to ban cell phones in my kids school, we would ask you, where do you live? What's the school? We'd figure out kind of what the specific law or regulation was that governed that issue, how it would need to change legally, what it would need to say. And then more important, said, okay, here's a plan for you to go about doing that. Here are the people you need to lobby, here are the things that they care about, here's what they're responsive to, here's what their last election was like. Here's how you use social media, earned media, paid media, digital media. Here's what polling looks like and how you could possibly use it. Here's how you mobilize regular people and have Them talking to the right elected officials. Here's how you do opposition research and get it out there. Here are all the elements of the campaign. It's still going to take a lot of work. And it needs to be someone who.
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A
It's kind of like, ask Bradley a little bit.
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I mean, I think the idea is when I started tusk strategies in 2010, so 16 years ago now, my thesis was what we just said, which is the days where things get done because a guy knows a guy are no longer true. And that a successful campaign requires an inside game and an outside game that takes advantage of technology. And. And then the other part about our business that was unique was firms typically worked either in one jurisdiction and they might run a more multifaceted campaign, but it was just in Albany, Sacramento, Washington, D.C. whatever it was. Or there were people in the world of politics who worked nationally, but they had one function. They were upholster. They made ads, something like that. And my view was we could run full multifaceted campaigns everywhere at once, at the same time.
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And.
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And that was the birth genesis, Tough strategies. And, you know, we're now in year 16. And I do think that our way of thought back in 2010 has become much more of the norm in 2026, which is good, because what it means is that political professionals and politicians are now used to the notion of things other than insiders talking to insiders being used to change public policy and laws and regulations. The next step is to take that power and not just let people like me enjoy it and use it, but let anybody use it. Right. And so that's the idea. You're right. And look, the agents are being trained on the 15, 16 years now worth of campaign plans and memos and case studies and all the different things that we've done in order to run and generally win campaigns. So the first part is giving people the tools to be empowered and not just leaving it for the insiders and the extremes. But then the next tool is you got to make the system deliver for the people that it's meant to serve. Right? So let's start with economic inequality. A country where 1% has 31% of the national wealth and the bottom 50% of people hold just 2.5% of wealth is not sustainable. You know, my view, if some people are living insanely well and then half the country is just struggling to just pay the basic bills and not get evicted and have heat come through the pipes and food for their kids, that is not a good society, nor a sustainable society. And if you don't, if you just ignore it, you're asking for the French Revolution. But at the same time, the way the left use this, in my view, is totally wrong. Which is their answer is, well, we just need to tax rich people more, take more money away from them, have more government agencies and programs in order to deal with different issues, and that'll solve it. But that's like the far left, in my experience, lives in a world of coffee shops where they have these sort of conceptual policy discussions and debates, but very few of them have run actual governments or certainly not businesses or ever had to make payroll or anything else. And so as a result, they live in a theory, a world of theory that just doesn't actually work in reality. And on this issue specifically, when I was deputy governor of Illinois, I oversaw the state budget and I did it for four years. And it became clear to me over time that when we received a dollar in taxes, by the time that that dollar reached the poor person that we were intending to help with the money, once you took out money for all the people running those programs, government worker salaries, benefits, pensions, facilities, IT and all the other overhead, at least 20 to 30 cents of that dollar just disappeared. And that doesn't even count the fact that you then also have to be able to then use some of that dollar on other stuff to get people to vote for the thing that you want to put in the budget. And so you put that all together, and I'm a person that has a dollar that I probably don't need to survive on. Another person doesn't have food and they need that dollar, by the time that dollar reaches them, you know, 30, 40, 50 cents is gone. And it just went to process, right? And it just went to bureaucracy and administration and overhead and why do we do that? And so to me, and again, I've talked this on the podcast before, but something like universal basic income, where my dollar is the direct transfer to the dollar of the person in need, you know, get some 100 cents on the dollar. And yeah, you know, some small percentage will waste the money on stupid things, but I truly believe that the vast majority of people will use it to pay the rent, to pay the electric bill, to buy food, to pay down debt, they will use it responsibly because those are the choices that ultimately the best, especially for them. And if they have kids, for their, for their family. But you know, if, look, if UBI isn't the answer, then you gotta find something else. You can't just say, well, the right thinks this, and the left thinks that, and it's a choice between two bad choices. So, for example, if you insist on having these programs and look, some of them work better than others. So like Medicare, for example, I do think works really well because you need a centralized system and therefore that works pretty well. School meals, even though in my perfect world, you don't need school meals programs because families have enough money to just feed their kids overall. And we're not trying to patch the holes through different types of programs along the course of the day. But, you know, let's say that you feel like that idea is too radical, it doesn't work for you for whatever reason, then try something else. Like, for example, that same 20 to 30 cents, a lot of it could be eliminated if you just started using AI. If you used AI to handle things like compliance and licensing and permitting and data management and facilities management and program administration and all of these other things, you could very least make sure that a lot more of that dollar actually gets to the person in need. But this all requires arguably taking things out of the hands of the current powers that be. So Republicans, for example, won't like, certainly won't like direct transfer like UBI because their view is like, oh, people are just going to steal the money and waste it and not do good things with it, and we just need to let the market provide. And then on the Democratic side, if you were to have something like BBI in lieu of social services, then you would then eliminate a lot of government programs that provide those services because you can't ask someone to give 20% of their income to UBI and then still pay the same existing tax rate. You have to reduce the taxes commensurately and you don't need as many taxes because ultimately now if people who are in need are getting what they need directly in a far more efficient and effective way, you need a lot fewer government agencies and employees and everything else. Democrats will hate that because a huge base of their political support comes from public sector unions and from government workers who, you know, vote for them.
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A
They're going to vote in primaries, right?
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B
So, you know.
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A
Well, let me ask you a question just on that score alone, Bradley, because given your experience in government, that's going to necessitate like a pretty significant crisis, right? Like, no one's going to just do this with, with like tax receipts coming in. Like, it's going to require like a pretty, like, I mean, we're, I guess we're starting to see it in New York City. Like there's A, you know, multibillion dollar budget deficit. Is that. Is that what's required?
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B
The crisis would be job displacement through AI, Right? If. If you were at a point where people today who have jobs and pay taxes all of a sudden don't have jobs, right? Can't pay their mortgage, can't pay rent, that's when you have a crisis. But look, what I'm trying to do here with this piece overall in this podcast is just start laying the groundwork for a different intellectual framework and approach for how to think about these issues. Every problem that I'm raising, there are different ways to solve it. But what I do believe is that just going back to some other existing way of doing it under the guise that that makes institutions better, I don't think that that is true. I think that we not only have to reject the people like Trump who are trying to just replace institutions with themselves, but at the same time we also have to reject sort of old solutions that really have failed the people. Right. Because that's not all that much better. And so in government, that might mean saying, what are the reasons why government exists? What are the functions it has to perform? There are always going to be collective action functions like hospitals or roads or military that you're going to need a government to do. But there might be a lot of other things that are just about trying to help individuals where some other approach, like UPI or something else, I don't know, is a better way to do it. But what you have to want to do is not is say it is possible that the entire structure we're using is wrong and we should change it. Right. I sent this to my friend Garrett the other over the weekend, and his. What he came back with was, well, why can't we have a liquid democracy? We use something mobile voting and let people actually vote on the issues themselves, as opposed to voting for people to then vote on those issues. And, you know, we went back and forth on it, and I think in some cases on, like, really big policy questions like abortion or whatever it is, that might make a ton of sense to have plebiscites, you know, whether it's at the state or local level or national, when it comes to setting the budget for the water department, you know, I don't think regular people are going to want to spend a lot of time on that. And you probably do need a third, a separate body to work on that kind of thing. So. But the point is, what Garrett did was he sort of looked at it, said, okay, let me question the entire system overall here is a different approach, and that's what I am hoping that we can achieve with this piece.
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A
So, on the subject of. Of institutions that have come under assault from Trump, there is higher education, which is sort of next on your list here.
- [34:01]
B
Yeah, I mean, just think about it, right? So we've built a system that benefits institutions at the expense of the students. So there's now $1.83 trillion in collective student debt. And a lot of that is because we just insist and assume that the way that we educate people for a college degree is the right way to do it. But I'm not sure that's right. Like, why is four years the number of years? Why do we need so many administrators? Why do we need to guarantee lifetime employment to tenure professors? Why do professors have a say in anything other than their area of academic expertise? Why is so much attention paid to identity rather than pedagogy? Why can't we use AI to augment teaching and replace middle management functions at universities instead of just hiring more and more staff? Why do we insist that a full liberal arts education that comes with decades of debt is somehow essential? Why do we educate students from other countries and then make them leave our country instead of just letting our economy benefit from what we just taught them? Fundamentally, there's this basic notion that everyone should have a chance to go to college. And we allow that notion to then justify an entire system that is not built or run in the best interest of the people going to college. And it only helps the people who run the system, who are often more focused on rankings than anything else than the best interest of the people seeking education. And so, like, you know, we have this entire system built on one notion. And then because we're like, oh, of course everyone should have access to a college education, we then ignore all the things that really diminish the value of that college education. As recently as 2010, 75% of Americans said that a college education was still very important. And 15 years later, August 2025, the number fell to 35%. So, you know, it basically went from three quarters of Americans saying, yes, a college education is important, to now it's just a third. And the reason why is people aren't stupid. And when they're sitting there with their $1.83 trillion in student debt and seeing a system that clearly is not built and run for their interests, they're starting to say, we don't need this entirely. And so, to me, that is an example of a massive institution and norm that has completely run amok. And while again, Trump sort of exploited all of it for his own benefit and need for attention as opposed to addressing the underlying problems, some of the stuff you talked about wasn't wrong, like the fact that identity politics became more important at universities than actual education of students. And so to me, higher education is a good example of a societal institution that to make it better, as Idol would say, isn't just to give them more money, it's to potentially question whether they should exist in their current form at all.
- [36:58]
A
Do you sometimes think that our generation of parents with kids going through college now will be like among the last who are really like sort of just basically bought this whole thing or.
- [37:07]
B
Well, yeah, and I think also, look, if it's my kids or your kids, we have the money for our kids to go get a four year liberal arts degree, maybe learn things that are totally useful, maybe not. But because we do believe that that experience is experience we want them to have in their lives and we can afford to do it without saddling them with debt. You know, maybe that always exists. Right. But again, we're, you know, if it's people in the 1% or right around there, like that's very different than everybody else. So I think the answer is yes. And you know, there will always be niches of things like for example, Medicare, healthcare. I support Medicare for all because there's a well run program and people's lives are better when they have access to health insurance than when they don't. The system works better when people are insured more than they're not. And I think we should have that. But at the same time, this sort of doctrinaire view by the left, like everyone must adhere to their standards and nothing else. And if the program is shindy, that's, well, we'll all have to suffer. I don't believe that there should be a private opt out and honestly I wouldn't be in Medicare because I have enough money not to be. Right. And just like I now don't base what doctors I see or what procedures I do or anything else on whether or not they take insurance because I don't have to. There will be people like that too. But yes, I, I do think that, that you're right.
- [38:32]
A
Religion.
- [38:33]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot of ways the same thing as higher ed and government, which is that over the past 50 years, many people have just disengaged. In 1955, 75% of Catholics said they attended weekly services. Today, attendance is half that in the early 1970s, less than 5% of Americans claim no religious affiliation. It's now sixfold since then. And people just don't attend services or participate in their churches or synagogues or mosques or Hindu temples, whatever it is, I think for two reasons. One, they don't see the practice as relevant and helpful to their actual lives. And two, a lot of scandals across organized religion, especially the Catholic Church's pedophilia, has soured them completely on the credibility of the clergy itself. And again, I think that religion is another example, just like government, just like higher ed, where it has been perverted, where the people in charge of it think that the point of it itself is to benefit the institution and the people in charge as opposed to the people that it's meant to serve. And to me, religion should provide people with human connection. It should provide them with a broader sense of how we fit into the world, a moral framework for how we inform our choices. And there should be a demonstrable benefit to the community. But that's not how people see it. Especially when you look at surveys of like Gen Z. And it's not just that, oh well, people used to believe in God and, and were part of this and now they're not, and therefore no big deal. There is real downside to religion falling apart because you have this massive epidemic of loneliness and isolation in this country. And if more people attended religious services, you would have less of that. But more people can't attend religious services unless they think there's value in doing so. And they're not going to do that when the system itself seems totally structured to benefit the people who run religion at the expense of everyone else. And look, I get that this one is a little different because clergy have been using the threat of God and damnation and everything else to control other people for millennial right, this is not a new thing at all. But the fact that in the US attendance has plunged this dramatically and people not affiliated with religion has increased this dramatically tells you that they don't believe that religion exists for their benefit. And you have to reinvent it so that the followers are benefited from it and not that the followers exist for the benefit of the religion itself. I don't know if you remember, we did a podcast, I don't know, maybe almost a year ago, where I proposed just a different way for Judaism religious services to work, right? And my view was when I do go to synagogue, it is a waste of time because one, it's in a language that I don't speak. And I know that I can address that by going to a reform instead of a conservative. But then when you go to reform, they are prayers that are just not particularly helpful. So, you know, I was at my nephew's bar mitzvah about a year ago and I was bored and I went through the prayer book and what I counted was what percentage of prayers are about the glorification of God. And it was well over 50%. And to me, if you are at least a Jew and you believe in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God, that God is not Donald Trump. It doesn't have a fragile ego. It doesn't need me to spend an hour of a two hour, hour and a half of a three hour service.
- [42:09]
A
Doesn't need a standing ovation.
- [42:11]
B
Right. That doesn't need it. Right. And so you're sitting here wasting all this time glorifying something that clearly based on the beliefs of your own religion, clearly doesn't need it. And it doesn't. Like, I don't, you know, people have asked us, well, it's so that we remember that we are below God. I don't ever think again, Trump's a person I know that might think that he's not below God. Right. If you, if you cannot believe in God, that's obviously totally legitimate. But if you, I don't know anyone that believes in God, God and then thinks that they're better than God. Right. So, so the whole point of believing in God is to not think that. So it, like, to me, you know, what I proposed and people go back and find it, or we can put in the show notes was the idea of, like, why not have a Jewish service? Which is what I'm mostly familiar with, where, you know, you can say, hey, for tradition purposes, we like these particular prayers and songs and whatever. Great. Let every congregation pick the ones that work for them. It could be 10 minutes worth, it could be an hour, whatever people prefer, but then spend the rest of the time doing something productive. So, like, for example, getting back to the, like, you know, we talk about banning cell phones in kids schools. If, if there were people who could say, here's what the Talmud would say today about teenage use of technology and social media and everything else, I would find that really interesting and useful. And I understand that the Talmud doesn't talk about cell phones, but I think there are clearly experts who can extrapolate and tell you that. And I think the Jewish community specifically is so loaded with people who are, you know, really educated and intellectual and Philosophical that you could take, you know, people who are experts in different things and also members of your synagogue or just, you know, around and bring them in to have that conversation and let people participate as a. Just in an interaction, interactive discussion, as opposed to just sitting there and doing it. And I think it'd be so much better.
- [44:00]
A
Look, we have talked about this before, and I think you make a number of really good points, but what you're painting here is a picture of these institutions that are losing audience, that are losing members, that are losing congregations. Why aren't they doing this? I mean, they do have market pressure. They do have.
- [44:20]
B
I mean, you might have some reformers. I mean, there are reform sects of. Of religion by definition. And there are, you know, I know that everyone seems to hate for profit higher education and online education, but those are versions of Reform. And I think some of them do work really well and some of them don't. And in the K12 world charter schools is another version of it. So look specifically in the religious space,
- [44:42]
A
like, because I agree with you completely, a religious service that fit more into where your life is and helped you with the dilemmas and the. And the sort of need for social connection. And for.
- [44:56]
B
Because I think that the religious leaders worry. One, they are inculcated in a certain mentality and system that they were educated in and born into, usually, and have spent their whole lives doing so. It is hard for them to see out of the box because they have never known anything but the box. And they are the biggest practitioners of the box. But at the same time, I think it's also threatening to them. Right? So if you are someone who derives your power, your job, your income, everything else, and your status, because the people who do still attend your services believe that you in some ways have a more direct connection to God that they do. Most people don't want to lose that, you know, source of power. They may not think about it this explicitly, and they may be a little less selfish and say, your average elected official, but nonetheless, they're clinging to their sources of power and authority just like everyone else. But, you know, look, look at Martin Luther, right? Like, there are people throughout time who look at religion and do make major reforms. Like, I don't know, the Protestant movement today is meaningfully different or better than the Catholic movement today, but it certainly was a big deal when he originally, you know, broke off from Catholicism. So I do think that those people exist. But could I tell you who that person is in society today about religion?
- [46:30]
A
No.
- [46:31]
B
But here's the Good news, you know, there is because of all the decentralization of media. Should that person come to light, they will have opportunity to be heard. But that person needs to be someone who is doing it genuinely to try to make an institution better, even if it's radically different, as opposed to using it and using frustration with the status quo to simply empower themselves. So we typically see is there are no shortage of people on the Internet who proclaim themselves to be the reformer and the savior and everything else. The problem is that typically they're just looking to replace someone else's, you know, to take someone else's power for themselves as opposed to genuinely changing things.
- [47:17]
A
What is the sort of next or what is the first? So. So people have been listening to you on talk about this. What should people do?
- [47:26]
B
Well, look, so first of all, this to me has really been an issue since the Vietnam War. When you look at polling around the loss of trust and faith institutions, that's really when it all started. I think the reason why is because it was the first time in history where everyone had television. There was a war where everyone knew people who were being drafted and dying in that war. So it was very tangible and real. And the government, whether it was initially Kennedy, then lbj, the Nixons of both parties were just outwardly lying to the American public about the war and then getting caught constantly because people could see for themselves on TV that what they were being told by their government fundamentally wasn't true. Like I have said before that I think in some ways that moment was really the birth of crypto right. Like Satoshi Nakamoto might not have written the white paper, whoever Toshi Nakamoto is or group of people, it is until 2008. But I think in many ways that was birthed in 1968. And so we've had since then just a steady decline in all of it. And what's interesting is it's an error that did enact many positive changes towards individual rights. Lbj, the same guy that probably did the most damage around the Vietnam War is also the guy that passed the Civil Rights act and the Voting Rights act, which brought about tremendous improvements in individual rights. But I think at the same time, and you wouldn't obviously take back that, because it is clear progress for humanity and basic decency and humanity rights, but still the culture of self advancement, the expense of the collective good, I do think really changed around then. So in 19. Let me get the date here. Sorry. In 1965, the ratio of a CEO's compensation compared to the lowest paid worker was 21 to 1. Today it's 281 to 1. So it's like a 13x increase. And I think that to me, that's just a good stat that is indicative of we shifted from a worldview that on one hand it was very complicated because on one hand it was a worldview that was racist, sexist, homophobic, anti Semitic, all these different things. But at the same time, there was also a belief in a responsibility by those in power to look out for those not in power. And there was a sense of the collective good. In World War II, was the United States effectively making massive sacrifices for its own, you know, in order to save the world for that very purpose itself. Right. But, you know, I kind of think that the baby boomers are the single worst generation, at least in American history, if not global history, and they are the most selfish. It always baffles me that how the greatest generation who won World War II seem to also be the worst possible parents imaginable in the way that they raise their kids. And there has been this culture of selfishness in the United States, I think, since the 1960s, that while that did produce some really good outcomes in terms of individual rights, it also created a culture where the point of being empowered, institution was to enrich and empower yourself and to do things that were good for you and not look critically at whether or not your work was benefiting everybody else. And so I think, to me, the rise of the radical rest is a recognition of this and a rejection of it. It is saying we need to empower regular people to have a lot more say in how our institutions work, that we need to look closely and unemotionally at why our institutions have failed us, and then use advances in technology and use the lessons of what has and hasn't worked to make those institutions more democratic, more resilient, and less elite. And it means that people like me and you who have a lot, have to be willing to sacrifice. And that might be sacrificing economically, it might be sacrificing in terms of stat. I try to do so by just giving away the majority of the money that I have make and continue to make every year. And by willing to say things that I believe to be true, even when I know that they upset and offend powerful people in ways that then cost me money and status. But I try to live my life according to my values and I try to lead by example. I'm not always perfect, but I genuinely do put a lot of effort in as you know. And I think that's what if we want a better and different world, what those of us who have a lot of privilege need to be able to do. And to be clear, what I'm talking about, ironically, even though I'm talking about 78% of people, mobilizing them is actually a lot harder than mobilizing the 10 to 15% on either extreme right. People who are already easily angered and aggrieved and motivated can be mobilized far more easily than people who are rightfully really cynical and really busy and really stressed and feel like they've heard it all before and they're not really interested in devoting a lot of time and effort that they don't particularly have to try to produce societal change. And that's one of the reasons why I'm making that app, which is, rather than expecting people to just buy into a notion of entire remake of society, let's start with individual issues and showing them that it's even possible. But I think it's doable. As bad as this all sounds, and I know that, that if you've been listening to the last 45 minutes or so, it sounds really bad. I don't think we're doomed. I think we can do much better. I think we can build a better future. And I know it'll take work and sacrifice and commitment. But if you're not willing to fight for your own future, if you're not willing to fight for a better life, if you're not willing to fight for your children and your grandchildren, what's the point of your life in the first place? We're at the 250th anniversary of our country. Let's use that as an opportunity. Let's take our country back. Let's take our future back. Let's emulate what our nation's founders did, and let's fight for our rights. Let's have the courage to think differently and to embrace change and give our country and the people within it the love and the respect and the opportunity that I think it so richly and desperately deserves. So that's my take on all of them.
- [53:51]
A
I guess my first question for you is just like, so where do we start getting people to get off the couch, Right? Like, where. What's the. What's the trigger? You know, you've cited all these areas and all these kind of, like, institutions are so powerful and entrenched. So where's the one that the, you know, that really inspires people to make a change first?
- [54:15]
B
You know, I think we have to prove to them that it's possible. Right? Even if all the rhetoric that I just used was inspiring to anyone and typically probably wasn't, because my strengths tend to not be, you know, motivational speaking. Even if it was, why would you believe me? And to me, you have to prove to people that change is possible and that with the right approach, it can be achieved. And that's why so much of my effort is going into these specific projects like mobile voting, like the AI tool and how to create societal change. To do that, let's start putting more power in people's hands in ways that are, you know, reflect the life that they live right now, which is completely digital on their phones, and let them start to see that if they just engage in a fairly basic and simple way, there can start to be results and change. And I think that once they start to believe that it is possible, then the cynicism that they feel can decrease a little bit. You know, when I speak about mobile voting and college campuses and grad schools around the country, you know, I always ask the question, who here thinks government can solve your problem? Nobody ever raises their hand. It's like a running joke now between me and the team because we don't know what's ever going to raise their hand. And you can't blame them. But imagine a world where mobile voting exists and all of a sudden the political incentives for elected officials start to shift, where if they only represent the extremes at the expense of everyone else, it will start to cost them politically. So they start crossing the aisle a little more and they start getting a few things done, then they've solved some problems. And when you solve a problem, people A, can see that and say, okay, there is, you know, sometimes examples of government being effective and B, they see it much more important in their actual lives. And a problem that they had is now less of a problem. And it's not going to happen overnight. But if you can do enough of that, you start to rewire the brain and you start to change the underlying normative thinking by people about how government works and doesn't work. And rather than seeing it as completely useless and corrupt, they can maybe see it only for a while as partially useless and corrupt. And so more people then choose to work in government and more people choose to vote, more people choose to run for office. When I was at Uber, when I was working with Uber and generally in tech, as I invest in startups, there's something called network effect, which means, does this company have kind of a flywheel or approach where once its strengths are up and running, each part reinforces the other. So with something like Uber, the more drivers you have, the less the wait time for passengers. The less wait time for passengers, the more the passengers want to use Uber because they want to get to where they're going as quickly as possible. The more passengers then sign up for Uber, the more drivers say, oh, there's a lot more business to be had here than I thought they sign up. That makes wait times even shorter and it just keeps fulfilling itself. And so that's a network effect. So I think we could have those here, too.
- [57:21]
A
The name Trump has come up a little bit in the discussion today, but not that much. And you, I think, very purposely made this not a sort of anti Trump screed. But it does kind of start with rolling back the kind of power that Trump has sort of exhibited over the last in this sort of first year of his second term.
- [57:44]
B
Sorry, both my. But yes,
- [57:49]
A
it does bring Trump into this front and center. That's what I mean.
- [57:52]
B
It does. The reason why I didn't make this too much about Trump and there are other times where I've written things, we've had podcasts that really are is what that then posits. It leads to a conclusion of, well, then if we're just anti Trump, that will fix everything and solve our problem. Problem. And it won't. Right. So, like, one of the things that I think Democrats consistently screw up on is they think that the world starts and ends inside the Beltway. And so therefore, if you pass a bill, you solve the problem. I remember when Biden passed the infrastructure bill, which was, which is a good deal. There's a lot of stuff in there that we needed. But Bob and I wrote a column saying if you don't find ways to really expedite the process and get money out the door and get groundbreakings going and get ribbon cuttings going and have better roads quickly and all that, you're not, at the very least, you're not going to see any political benefit in 2024 because it's just some bill that you passed and it didn't translate into anyone's lives. And they brought in Mitch Landrieu and the idea was that's who he was going to do. And he failed completely, from what I could tell. I'm sure he would gladly tell you why he didn't. But nonetheless, I didn't see Kamala Harris get a single vote that I'm aware of because people said, oh, that infrastructure bill was so amazing. It made my commute to minutes shorter. And part of the problem is that Democrats tend to think that as long as their white papers are being read and listened to, that everything is fine. And that is just only one step. So if I made this all about Trump, it would create a implication that the answer is just to be the opposite of Trump. And it's not. It's not A or B, it's C. Right.
- [59:34]
A
Should we switch to a little bit of our prediction game?
- [59:36]
B
Yeah, sure, sure.
- [59:37]
A
Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're using Kalsh odds, and I'm going to just ask you to take a position on a number of things. Now, you can decline anything you want if you don't want to take one, although, and I won't judge you for that. But we're just going to start. I'm going to read you. We're going to start with a couple of politics ones we're going to do. I think maybe just one culture one, and then a couple of sports ones. You ready?
- [59:59]
B
Yeah.
- [60:00]
A
Okay, so we're going to start with the Republican nominee for president. And I'm just going to read you the prices. These are all out of a dollar. So JD Vance is at 45 cents, Marco Rubio is at 19 cents, Ron DeSantis is at 6 cents, and Donald Trump himself is at 3 cents. There's some others below that if you
- [60:19]
B
want some of those is what I'm doing is I'm picking one of these that I think will be the case, and it will generate the greatest financial yield for us. Yeah.
- [60:29]
A
The thing is that one of the parts of this game is that if you think someone's undervalued. Right.
- [60:35]
B
Rubio is undervalued.
- [60:36]
A
So, yeah, I would say so. So Rubio definitely makes sense. Yeah. And then, and then you can also change out, like if, even if, even if, like, like if Rubio goes up to 30 cents in the next, like, say, six weeks, you could say, oh, that's about right. And. And sell your position.
- [60:52]
B
Right. Because ultimately the only Vance is. There was a poll that came out Washington Post, ABC News today that had Trump at 39, approved, 60 disapprove, and the 39 that approve are people who just really love Donald. Point. I don't think that love extends to J.D. vance. I think Vance tries to imitate Trump and often looks like a clown as a result. We talked this last week in the way that Rubio and Vance each gave effectively the same speech to European leaders, but they were perceived much Differently. And I think that when you try to just imitate someone else, it doesn't work. And I also don't know that Trump's even going to endorse Vance in her primary. He might just, he might not want him or he might say that, that he wants the nominee to come from his world. And therefore it could be Rubio or Vance. So anyway, I think Vance is a highly overvalued, and I think at 19 cents, Rubio is undervalued.
- [61:45]
A
Okay, Democratic nominee, we have Newsom at 30 cents. We have AOC at 10 cents. John Ossoff. Ossoff at 7 cents. Josh Shapiro at 6 cents, Kamala at 6 cents.
- [61:58]
B
So I'd buy AOC in that one. I don't even know that she's going to run for president. But, and I think we discussed this before, you know, to win a primary, you just need a plurality. You don't need a majority. Maybe there's one or two states that have different rules, but by and large. And so if roughly 20 people run, which is probably what we'll get, and if, you know, 19 of them are sort of center left by and large, and then there's only one person that is seen as the like true progressive, just by definition, that person is going to get more votes. Because even if group progressives are only 25% of the party, party, if 25% of the party were for one person, and then the 75% that remain split their votes among 19 other people, the person getting 25% is going to win. Now, Bernie was doing that in 2020 until Covid came along. You had sort of Bernie, Pete, I guess they pretty well Iowa, but overall, Bernie basically winning the early states. And then you had Bloomberg implode in a debate that kind of took him out of the mix. Covid hits everyone's like, well, Bernie can't be the nominee during a global pandemic and crisis. And it just basically fell to Biden. So what I would imagine would happen is, you know, aoc, I could see if she does, if she does run for president, I would if I were her, but she might not. But if she does, actually does really well in the early stage, she's not gonna have any trouble raising money. It'll be more small dollar donations, but politically that's usually more helpful anyway. And then probably what would happen is one person on the kind of center left would become the alternative to her, and then that person probably beats her going forward, but who knows? And so at least of the choices you gave me and the prices, I would take her.
- [63:44]
A
Okay, so Republican or the presidential winner in 2028. We have Vance at 23 cents, Newsom at 19 cents, Rubio at 9 cents, and AOC at 6 cents. There's some other candidates with. With lower numbers, if you want to see here, some other ones. Your friend Pete Buttigieg is at 3 cents, Ron DeSantis at 3 cents. Donald Trump is at 3 cents. Who do you like there?
- [64:09]
B
I think that of those, I go. So I don't see the Republican winning unless it's AOC as the nominee, by and large. So if it were, I guess, newsome of those. Because I think. Yeah, because I think it's gonna be very hard for the Republican to win unless it's someone that is considered radical on the Democratic side. And I think that if it is someone radical, Democratic side, meaning aoc, I do think she would have a hard time winning general election. So you put all that together, and
- [64:44]
A
it puts you okay winning the House in 2026. You can buy the Democrats for 81 cents or you can buy the Republicans for 20 cents.
- [64:54]
B
Sense. I mean, you know, as a expected value play, you'd buy the Republicans simply because it's still relatively close and any individual race, weird shit happens and you never know and redistricting and everything else. But with that said, you know, the midterms are almost always, you know, setbacks for the party and the White House and the party in charge. And I think this time, especially with Trump being so unpopular, the world feeling so out of control, and the Republicans being so boxed in, I'd still take the 81 cents, but I wouldn't buy. There's no point. I just wouldn't participate if I were someone doing this stuff.
- [65:40]
A
If you were putting real money on the line, yeah, I'm gonna put it in your portfolio anyway. Cause it's more interesting, Republicans and Democrats, which will win the Senate. The Republicans are at 60 cents, the Democrats are at 41 cents. Sense.
- [65:52]
B
You know, it's sort of the same thing, right? The analysis that we just gave, which is it still seems to me very likely that the Republicans hold the Senate because it just requires, you know, states that are very Republican, a Alaska, a Texas, a Kansas, whatever it might be to flip. And it's not impossible. Sometimes someone does win a Senate seat as a Democrat or Independent from one of those states, but it's still not particularly likely, which means teams. I'd probably bet the Republicans even. But. But with that said, the Democrats at 41 cents. If you were saying, how do I maximize the value of my position. I mean that's sort of the problem with this game a little bit. Which is if it's pure, does he binary yes or no? That's one set of answers. If it's expected value based on the price, that's a. That could be another. Sometimes the two come together and sometimes they don't.
- [66:46]
A
Yeah, no, it's not the problem with the game. It is the game. Game. Okay, NBA champion, you ready? This is an interesting one. Oklahoma City is at 41 cents, Denver's at 14, San Antonio's at 12, Detroit's at 9, Boston's at 8, Cleveland's at 8 and the Knicks are at 6. And I'm going to stop there. Unless there's one of these other teams.
- [67:06]
B
No, no. I mean I guess Detroit is what I would take there because it's really undervalued. Now I understand the argument that na a seven game series, Detroit gets exposed because Kate is really the one that creates most of the offense. They don't really have someone else that can create their own shot in the same way. And once a team gets used to that, they will beat them. And by the way, like I'm not totally despondent about the notion of the Knicks taking on Detroit in the playoff series even though they have basically kicked our ass every game this season for that reason season, but they have the best record in the league. They absolutely destroyed the Knicks the other night. They didn't even have Jalen Durham playing and they still won. And so I would take them at nine. But to me the worst bet there by far is Oklahoma City at 41. Not that they're still not the most likely team to win. They are. But they have not been playing great for a long time now. And you know, if you're going to get at a third of that cost a bet on Wemby at 14 cents or I'm sorry 12 cents or Jokic at 14. Those are also probably pretty good buys.
- [68:14]
A
I'm going to give you a long and a short position on that. Then I'm going to say your long Detroit and short Oklahoma City. We could do that when we update this in subsequent weeks. I'll give you an option to short to anybody you like to. But that sounds like a good argument for a long and a short on that. Two more we're going to do baseball ball. Who wins the World Series? The Dodgers are at 31 or yeah, 31 cents. Seattle's at 13 cents, the Yankees are at 10 cents. The Mets are at 7 cents. And Atlanta and Boston or. And Philly are all at six cents and Toronto's at six cents also.
- [68:47]
B
Oh, well, can I have two in this case? I gotta take the Mets, because I can't not. And I think that.
- [68:54]
A
And you, like. Do you like the bet, though? A 7 cent bet? Yeah.
- [68:57]
B
Well, no. I mean. I mean, no, not really, but. But I don't know. With spring training, hope springs eternal. The Blue Jays, I mean, they came within, you know, a half an inning of winning the World Series last year. They picked up Dylan Cease. They did lose Bo Bichette, but. But overall, they're still an outstanding team. And I think they picked up some other guys, too. And the Dodgers are, you know, unquestionably the best team. And they got even better with Edwin Diaz. But, you know, repeating in any sport is really Tucker's. Yeah. And caught Tucker. I forgot that they've already got. They've won two in a row. So statistically speaking, winning three is just really, really, really hard. And so if there's a lot more economic upside on Toronto because it's such a better price, just given their result last year, I'll take them.
- [69:52]
A
I'm feeling like I might have to veto your. Your Mets bet just because I don't think you're actually arguing for it. That's just a sentimental choice. I think I'm gonna just give you a Toronto on that.
- [70:00]
B
Sorry.
- [70:00]
A
Okay. All right. This one I know you won't want to really bet on, but I'm gonna ask you to anyway. Best Picture.
- [70:09]
B
I saw a few more of the movies, so.
- [70:11]
A
Oh, yeah, It's a runaway, though, I have to say. One Battle after another is at 78 cents right now. Sinners is a 13. Hamnet is at 6. And then it falls off to a Marty Supreme.
- [70:20]
B
I guess I just don't get this bet in the sense that I just had. I thought the movie was fine, but I thought it was one of Paul Thomas Anderson's worst movies by. I thought everyone in it, other than maybe Sean Penn, it was not their best work across the board.
- [70:35]
A
I agree with that.
- [70:36]
B
And it was long and I got bored and I don't know, I mean, I guess it's going to win, but I think it's winning on Pedigree.
- [70:46]
A
I thought it's totally winning on Pedigree, but that is kind of what the Oscars is on. Yeah.
- [70:50]
B
Yeah. I thought Marty supreme was much better. I thought Hamnet was better. And then we're just betting on those.
- [70:57]
A
On those, on those. So it's. I Mean, it pretty much drops off after Marty Supreme. Begonia is at 1. F.1 is at 1. Frankenstein is at 1, you know, nothing.
- [71:06]
B
Yeah. So in terms of, again, maybe you take Marty supreme or Habit simply because they're, they're very good movies and they're very good buys. But it does seem like, and keep in mind the most when it's this coming weekend, the Oscars.
- [71:23]
A
Yeah.
- [71:24]
B
So the voting's over, right?
- [71:26]
A
Yeah, no, it's been. It's over. Yeah.
- [71:28]
B
Yeah. So if the voting, this is where like the kind of prediction market wisdom of the crowd stuff to me is really worth listening to. Not that the people who are betting are necessarily Oscar voters or 99.99% of time, they're not. But I think that the correlation here to me seems stronger.
- [71:47]
A
The Oscars, by the way, are March 15th, by the way. They are not this week.
- [71:50]
B
Oh, okay, so they're soon, but not this week. So, I mean, I guess I would just for fun throw it on Marty Supreme. But I would say that I, I don't think that's a good bet. I think the right bet.
- [72:00]
A
Okay, we're doing, we're doing good bets here. So I think, I think, I think I'm going to put you down for one battle after another. I, I agree with everything said, but I think, I think you're arguing with your own opinion. And I think what, what we're looking at here is the, the Academy, unfortunately.
- [72:12]
B
Yeah, yeah, understood.
- [72:15]
A
Do you want to recommend. Should we just recommend Michael Idov's book since you already plugged at the top, but obviously that's absolutely great.
- [72:21]
B
You know, the book that I thought I was going to recommend was Grant Ginder, so Old, so Young, which has kind of gotten a tv. You know that one, it's kind of. It came out. It just came out. And it's like the today, the Big Chill for the generation. And it's about people who went to Penn. So I guess I knew some of the landmarks and stuff graduated about a decade after I did. They were at the class of 2005 or something like that. And just the life they live and the struggles of work and relationships and getting older and having children and all the different things and, and it was Big Chill esque, in a way. It just, I was looking forward to it. And like one, one of the books this year that I was thought was I was most excited about and it was kind of like one battle after another. It was fine. Nothing wrong with it, but I'm not recommending. So, yeah, the two Michael Adolf Books. The collaborators of this trilogy and the Kimora Hunt I think are both excellent and I'm excited for the third and I'm excited that you know him because I would love to him to at least know that his what might have been in his mind a throwaway line in his book.
- [73:24]
A
Doesn't sound like a throwaway line, but
- [73:26]
B
yeah, inspire the whole thing.
- [73:28]
A
Good. I'll definitely make sure he knows. All right. Thanks Bradley.
- [73:30]
B
See you next week. Thank you. Bye bye. Firewall is recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley Firewall Media or find me on LinkedIn. And to keep up with what's on my mind and my latest writing, please follow my new substance@bradleytust substack.com thanks again for listening.