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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome back to Firewall. I'm your host, Bradley Tusk. It's a Tuesday episode, so with us is our friend and producer, Hugo Lindgren. Hugo, how are you?
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B
Good morning, Bradley. You are off today on kind of an adventure. Could I call it an adventure?
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A
Is mental health an adventure?
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B
Well, it can be.
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A
I mean it's certainly right. I'm for a lot of people talk
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B
about what it is if you.
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A
Yeah. So I'm going to this thing today starts I guess tonight called the Hoffman Institute and it is a week long intensive therapy program that's kind of somatic therapy. So it's. How do you take all of the feelings of anxiety or frustration or whatever you store, I think primarily triggered by events of your childhood and learn how to both release them and manage them better. And I think the idea is that it can get to things and help you address things in a way that talk therapy does not. And so like the, the best, the most, the most optimistic version of it that someone said to me is it's like 10 years of therapy in a week.
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B
Wow.
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A
So, you know, who knows? But.
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B
And is it solo, just you and therapists or.
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A
No, no, it's. I think it's part mostly grew partly solo with a coach and you know, I've probably talked to now about a dozen different people that have done it and I've gotten anywhere from, yeah, it was helpful to like change my life. So, you know, hope I assume mine will fall somewhere in between. But the other interesting thing though is when I get there, I give them my phone and I will be totally off the grid for a week. Like, no, nothing. No access to Internet, text, email.
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B
And what was the last time you went that long without a Canadian before
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A
they invented phone for the invented phones?
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B
Yes. So that's like part of. That's a big piece of it.
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A
I guess so, yeah. I mean, basically, you know, every year
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B
we can get a hold of you if we absolutely need.
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A
There is an emergency number. I won't give it out on the air. Not that any of the listeners really need to reach anyway. But yeah, like my kids and Issa and you know, Megan and others have it, right?
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B
I don't have it.
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A
But you.
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B
I could get.
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A
You could get. I could get it, yes, but I really don't. Unless like literally someone nothing we're not to be like, so. So Chris has it. Chris, like, so what's the level? I'm like, yeah, somebody dies, the place burns down. Something like that. Call me. You know, we get or lose a client I'll find out, you know, when you get back.
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B
Just tell me quickly, how did you get to this place? You said you had some. You know, people have done it. Was it just word of mouth or was it.
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A
Well, Issa, my girlfriend, was the one that told me about it originally. She went.
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B
And you never heard of it? No. Okay.
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A
She went to it. She said it was really incredible. It was one of those things where, um, there's like a name for this in behavioral economics where like once you notice something, then all of a sudden you start noticing it everywhere.
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B
Yeah. Right.
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A
So what is that? It has an.
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B
Is that the. It's not like the lamppost theory where you're like, you only. It's not like you only look where you. Where the light is. Right.
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A
It's not that I don't.
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B
That's a different one maybe.
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A
But anyway, so. But since then, now, as it's just like occasionally, if it's. For whatever reason comes up, I'm amazed at how people were like, oh, yeah, I did that, or my sister did that, or my friend, connections, whatever it is. Yeah. Like, I mean, look, I think we're talking about a very, very tiny world of people who have the means and inclination to spend the money that it costs and a week of their time to just get therapy.
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B
Is the place gorgeous? Is it like. Or.
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A
I don't think so, but I don't know. The one I'm. There's a couple locations. The one I'm going to is outside of about two hours outside of Calgary.
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B
So I'm a big fan of Calgary. I don't know if I told you that I like that city, like because
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A
of the western vibe to it.
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B
You know, it's funny. It's just, it's. It's kind of walkable. It's. It's very. It's pretty.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And it also has a kind of like a little bit of a bohemian sort of vibe to it that I
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A
totally did not expect to go to the rodeo.
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B
I did not go to the road. I went to a hockey game, which is.
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A
Right. Which is like the rodeo of ice.
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B
And it was at a place called the Saddle Dome, which is a terrific name. I think they've replaced it or they're going to replace it.
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A
Got it. Right. The Flames, right?
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B
Calgary Flames.
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A
Yeah. Yeah. I've got like a day. Apparently you need to sort of detox from Hoffman. So I've got like a 36 hour stay just at a hotel in Calgary afterwards.
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B
And you're gonna do the rodeo?
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A
I don't My plan is actually to not plan, because.
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B
Yeah, good idea.
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A
You know, if I get there and I feel like, oh, I'd like to see Calgary, like, I'll do stuff if it's like, I just want to order room service and I'll watch some hdtv. Yeah, like, that's right. That. That's fine too. Right.
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B
Okay, well, we'll be interested to hear how it goes.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Today you're gonna talk about. You've. You've written a piece called how to Write. Is that being published on Substack?
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A
Yep.
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B
Okay.
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A
Yep.
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B
So we have how to Write. We're gonna talk about the sort of Stuyvesant, which is the sort of elite New York City public high school. There's a sort of annual hand wringing over how the admissions to that place are handled. You're gonna talk about that, and then we're gonna do stuff a little bit. You've been pretty visible this week, talking about Governor Hochul's moratorium on data centers. So we're talking about that.
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A
Cool. All right, let's start with how to write. And I just, you know, I don't know exactly why I. There was no specific impetus for choosing to make this my substack. But, you know, I write a lot, right? So I've written a couple of books. I write a substack. I write a daily news column, TV series, memos. TV series, all this stuff, right. And some of it has come out well, some of it less so. But I love doing it, and it makes me happy to write. But it's not one of the things where, like, either you're good at it or bad at it. It is always. And you're a terrific writer, you know, so, you know, this. It's just. It's hard, right? Writing well, is really hard, kind of no matter how good you are at it. But I was thinking about, like, okay, yes, but there have to be tricks and approaches and techniques that you can use to. To do it better. And I was thinking, okay, what are the things that I do? And that's what this piece is. So the first one is write like you speak. You know, when most people talk, they're just trying to communicate whatever it is they need to say as clearly and plainly as possible. And that's how you should write too. You know, your voice verbally should be your voice on paper. Number two is, you know, don't try to sound smart to me. The worst writing is when someone's like, oh, I'm gonna use as many, you know, complex sat Words and long sentences with like, you know, really over the top structure and everything else. Because then people will think I'm really smart. If you were really smart, you wouldn't need to do that. And the best way to alienate your audience is to try to sound really smart. I remember when I was in law school, my worst grade was in legal writing. And I remember the professor saying to me, like, you have to write a certain way. And I was like, but that's bad writing. And she's like, it's not bad writing. And it's how the legal profession works. I was like, I'm not going to do it. And she's like, all right, you know, then you'll have to bear the consequences. Which I did.
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B
I got.
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A
I passed, but just barely. And I remember when I published my first book, the Fixer, I had this vague notion for a moment of like, I should track her down and send her the book.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Or the reviews. I couldn't remember her name and it felt petty. But like, but, but I am glad that I ignored her. Her advice. I think she very much was of the. The school of, you know, the smarter it sounds, the smarter you must be. Third is speak your mind, right? Slash, don't sound like a politician. If you're too afraid to write how you actually feel, then don't waste the reader's time. Politicians, biographies particularly, are just always totally unreadable because they're trying to be politic. And if what you're trying to do is not offend anyone or say anything disagreeable, that means you don't have anything worth saying in the first place. For use most of your time for editing. There's a. It's funny, I looked. I try to figure out who it was attributed to. I remember some. There being a story of someone writing a long letter and concluding saying, if I had more time, this letter would have been shorter. I thought it was Mark Twain. The Internet seems to think it was Blaise Pascal.
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B
Really? I don't even know who Blaze Pascal, Mathematician. Oh, the mathematician Pascal.
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A
I don't think I ever heard of first name. Yeah, I didn't know either, but I agree with it. And when I write, I try to get down whatever I can on paper as quickly as possible. And then I spend almost all of my time for editing and having time to rethink the piece, see what does work, what doesn't work, what belongs where, what's essential. That's what makes the piece worth reading to me. You agree with that?
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B
Yeah, totally. Although I have the opposite Problem. But keep going, and we'll get to it at the end.
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A
The other part here is that if someone asks you to read a draft of something, in my opinion, the best thing, if you really want to help them, is to focus on the writing itself. You can give your opinion on the ideas, but the reality, you know, what's that saying? Opinions are like, everyone has one. Like, you know, it's just another opinion. But if you can say to them, like, hey, this part of the writing works really well. This did not. Here's why. I actually think that is very, vastly more helpful feedback. But number five, then put it to bed. You know, editing. I definitely most important part. But there also does come point. You just have to stop. And, you know, you can always keep editing. You can always make it incrementally better. But the diminishing returns kick in. And look, if I went back right now to anything I've ever written, I'm sure I'd have a million edits that I would make to it. But at some point, you just got to stop. Six is to keep your subconscious going. So if I'm working on a column or a chapter or script that I'm excited about, my subconscious kind of never stops thinking about it. Right. Like, I'll often wake up in the middle of the night and I'll realize, oh, this sentence needs to go here, or this argument doesn't work, and here's why. Or here's why I need to rewrite the opening and how. And then I did something stupid that every sleep expert would disagree with, which is that I get up, get up and do it. So. But, you know, do you still do that?
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B
I feel like that's a little old, Bradley.
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A
No. Do you remember maybe a month ago, I wrote this very long substack analyzing a potential OpenAI IPO?
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B
Yeah, yeah, of course.
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A
And it's. It was funny. It's one of the things where I spent an incredible amount of time working on it and got virtually zero feedback whatsoever from anyone.
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B
Really?
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A
Yeah. I know sometimes you write something and, you know, that's much more. That's faster, and people have a lot to say. But. But it was really in my head. And yeah, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and then opening the document and rewriting parts of it. So obviously not good sleep advice. But how many of the sleep experts are good? Writer number seven have regular milestones, you know, deadlines and accountability helps with writing. Just like.
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B
So, like, doing your substack every week.
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A
Every week helps daily. Just column every Month helps. And it just. It keeps you in practice. It keeps you going. It forces you to constantly think about it. I would say I certainly do feel a little bit of constant pressure of, okay, what's the next column?
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B
What's the next column?
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A
What's the next column? 90% of the time, I like that process. Cause I just like thinking and writing.
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B
10%.
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A
Yeah. Yes. Right. Say. You know, it's funny, I. I will say this to Megan every once every month. I'm like, we're not gonna have a substack this week because I got nothing I want to say. And then almost invariably I have something else.
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B
Right. That's like almost a part of the process. You have to get to that point, threaten. Right.
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Free thing.
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B
Megan.
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That 99.9999 people of the world has zero interest in any way. Might not happen. Number eight, talk out your ideas. So I mean, literally, it's this. Right? So I have a very specific, useful mechanism, which is this podcast comes out on Tuesdays. We almost always talk about whatever my substance is gonna be as one of the topics we record on Mondays, although today happens to be Friday. And in the process of talking about it, I realize what's not working in the piece itself, and I go back and fix it. And I Even in this piece, specifically about how to write, I've seen things
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B
that you're starting to fix it in your head.
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A
Yeah. But I know that's a very specific setup that probably doesn't apply to almost anyone. El. But one thing that I know, and it's funny, I don't like doing this, but it really does help, is if you read your piece out loud, you will.
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B
How often do you make.
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A
Not that often. I should do it every time. It really would be a best practice to do. For some reason, there's something off putting about it. But when I actually do do it, and in fact, when I wrote the Fixer, I didn't do that. And then when I was recording the audiobook, which at this point it was too late to fix the actual book, I realized stuff and I was like, oh, fuck. You know, So I do think it's a good thing to do. Number nine, you know, if you're writing fiction, have empathy for your characters. If it's nonfiction, have empathy for yourself. So I remember there was this guy in Chicago once who was angry at me because he kind of was a guy like permanently wants to run for office, and he had asked me about running for U.S. senate. And I. I was ungenerous in saying, you're being absurd. Don't waste your time with this thing. And he got angry. And in trying to insult me and hurt my feelings, he said, well, I didn't like your novel and the reason why is cause you clearly hated all of your characters. And I think what he really wanted to say was that because the main character was sort of an evil version of me, you hate yourself. Right. And I kind of. Instead of kind of firing back, I kind of actually took a half a step back and I was like, you know what? I think he's kind of right.
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B
So it's hard to do that.
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I was so focused when I was writing the book itself on emotional, intellectual honesty, that I really did it at the expense of making my characters relatable and sympathetic and human.
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B
Yeah, well, I think. I mean, I think you are in the book. I think you are very hard on the main character. But I think the other ones. But the thing that leavens it is there is a satirical quality that I think it's not. I. It's not this dark, like, Visiting of the Soul kind of book. It's. It's a story, satire.
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A
And look, despite the guy's criticism, despite me even thinking that part of what he said was right, you know, look, this book did got very, very little attention. But the reviews that it did get or the. More when people who, you know, read it have come back to me, I think people like it. If you're a listener and you haven't read it and you're interested in it, I would love for you to read it. But I thought there was something to what. What he said.
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B
Yeah, well, it's great to be able to take criticism, even in that kind of situation where, like, you're. You're almost. Your biology is telling you to, like, reject it because you're in a kind of fight mode, you know, like.
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A
Yeah, it's funny if you think about a piece that did get a lot of attention, meaning people reaching out to me about it was the thing we did, I guess, would have been last week, if you're hearing this on Tuesday, about grace. Right. And that was an example of. Of showing grace instead of sort of just telling the guy something even more hurtful in response. I just kind of took a minute and, you know, and then from there we kind of worked it out. And the final thing is to read a lot. I just don't know how you could be a really good writer in a vacuum. And being good at anything takes a lot of practice. That 10,000 hour rule probably applies to Writing just like it does to anything else. But I think maybe writing is unique in that you could write for 10,000 hours and get better and better at the craft of it. But I don't think you can get really good unless you read a lot. You need to see how others express themselves, how they tell a story, how they write concisely, how they structure their sentences, their paragraphs. In fact, when I read on a Kindle, I've noticed I don't. I don't highlight a lot, but when I do, it's usually not because of the substance of something. It's because there's a particular turn of phrase or something like the same way. That's a really good way. This was good writing like this. And just to sort of note it, you know. Now, with that said, as a reader, I am very protective of my time, right? So if I don't like something after 40 pages, I'm out. If it's a kind of genre I don't like, I don't read it. If everyone loves a book and I don't, I put it down. There's something like 150 million books have been written in human history. And if you read 100 books a year, you lived to a hundred and you started reading when you came out of the womb, that's still like 0.00006% of them. And you can't even make a vague dent in the total. So just read what you like. So anyway, look, not everyone loves to write, and not everyone needs to write, but if you do like it, or if you really have to do it a lot because of work or school or whatever, then you should do it as well as you can. And, you know, the tips above are by no means the entirety of writing advice, but they are things that have worked for me.
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B
Have you. Speaking of reading, have you read the big Atlantic story on the crisis of reading? Did you try to get through that?
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A
No. You know what?
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B
The end of reading let me complain
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A
about the Atlantic, which was had a subscription. And then my mom and Jamie kept sending me articles on Apple News, which I did not have a subscription to, so I finally got one. And then an Apple News you're supposed to be able to get the Atlantic on. This was like, oh, I don't need my Atlantic subscription anymore. Somehow I found I just don't like Apple News.
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B
Yeah, I don't like it ever.
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A
And yet I have tried five times to read, subscribe to the Atlantic, and I get like some sort of error message every single time. So like when you guys are bitching about, like, no one pays money for reading anymore or whatever, I was like, fix your own fucking website.
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B
Okay. All right. Well, I haven't read it yet either. I don't. I don't actually like reading stories like this for some reason because I always feel like, whatever, they never turn out to be right. The end of this, the end of that. Things are constantly ending and also coming back. In fact, I think one of. I mentioned to you that I'm working on the Life magazine sort of relaunch. And my favorite idea coming up with stories is just do the counter trend for everybody. If everybody says things, you read Axios and it's just filled with everybody's not drinking or everybody doesn't go to church, or everybody. You know, it's like. And you're like, yeah, but within each of those things, there's still drinkers and there's still lots of people going to church.
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A
And maybe how many people drink in church?
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B
That's a good question. Maybe that's.
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A
That's perfect. And then you cross. That is your life story, magazine cover story.
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B
So I have a question on writing for you. One of the things that stands out to me in my many conversations with you over the years about writing was when you. You sent me. I think you sent me three scripts for the television adaptation of the Fixer.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And you'd written them on your phone on vacation.
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A
Yes.
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B
Okay, so that's. It was three of them. Right.
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A
Have been more. But yeah.
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B
Anyway, I was. I was amazed. And they were.
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A
I hate writing my phone, by the way.
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B
But, but you. But you. Do you still do stuff like that?
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A
Like that, kind of. Yeah, Yeah, I do.
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B
So you can just like, get rocking even on your phone.
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A
Yeah. Although I have really, like, kind of clumsy finger. You know what? I really. I wonder if that was one. There was a period after the BlackBerry went away where there was still, like, a way that you could, like, graft this BlackBerry keyboard on top of an iPhone.
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B
Yeah, I remember that.
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A
And those were popular for that. I could do. I. I do sometimes write columns on my phone, but I hate it. And one of the nice things. So, yeah, when I'm away, like when I was in Copenhagen, Stockholm, I was working on that Grace column. But it'll be super hot because I actually can't. Right. I will not have access to any sort of device. You know, I guess I could take notes on paper for something, but I'm not going to write the whole thing out.
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B
Right. Should we talk about Stuyvesant Yeah.
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A
So Stuyvesant is this, you know, kind of very, very elite, famous public high school in New York City, the complex. I think people.
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B
Do we have any friends in common who went there? Did Dave. Ali go there?
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A
No, Dave went to Friends.
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B
Oh, he did. That's right.
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A
Yeah. Micah went to Stuyvesant.
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B
Oh, he did. Okay.
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A
Yeah. No, when you start going through it, a lot of people did.
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B
Yeah.
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A
But it's sort of the most famous. There's sort of. I think there are eight specialized high schools in New York City where the only way to get in is by passing a test called the shsat, and
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B
that's the number one.
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A
Yeah. So, right. That Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, some others. So. And it is totally blind to anything other than a test score, which means whoever gets in is because you scored high enough on the test, and that's it. Right. And this year, 777 students received offers, and only three were black. And there's sort of an annual kind of New York Times story of look at how few people of color received offers to Stuyvesant. And then the immediate reaction from typically, the Times reporter, whoever it is, and the left in general, is ban the test. You know, clearly the test is racist, and we shouldn't have these specialized schools.
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B
Right.
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A
And one, I think that's crazy because you have these incredible schools that provide, you know, a certain number of kids with an amazing education. And when you talk to anyone who went to one of these schools, no matter what, they're racist. If you take Jimane Williams, for example, who's the New York State public advocate, he's black. He's very, very, very left wing. He went to Brooklyn Tech. He in no way supports getting rid of the test. Mandani went to Bronx Science, does not support, I think, getting rid of the test. So anyone who went there of any ethnic background pretty much invariably says, Megan's wife, Brianna is black. She went to Bronx Science very much for keeping the test. So I don't think it's not. But beyond that specifically, it just really feels like they're asking the wrong question. Right. Which is. It's not. Isn't it so bad that this test clearly isn't producing enough equity? It should be. Why is it that so few kids of color, when we say of color, it means specifically black and Latino? Because most of the kids who gal offers are Asian, actually.
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B
Is it a majority?
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A
I think so. Is it. Why is our public school system so bad that we're failing so many kids that they're not in A position to pass this test or forget about this particular test, to get into one of a handful of high schools.
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B
Yeah, it's not passing the test, obviously,
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A
to get a high enough score. Why is it that we're not focused on how do we give them a much better education in the first place? Whether it's to, you know, get the requisite score to get the Stuyvesant, or just generally, you know, New York City schools, A fifth of kids don't graduate, and that's with, like, massive grade inflation that basically carries people through, and as a result, only half are considered college ready. That's a failed system. Right. And, you know, when you ask people, what do we need to do? The instinctive answer is more money. We spent $43 billion on our public school system, and yet the results are still terrible. And every year, more and more money gets thrown at it. Because the easiest way for a politician to say they're doing something about it is just to say, look, I've put even more money into it. Clearly, I've done the thing I can do. But, you know, since COVID 127,000 kids, that's like more than 10% of the. What was the total student population have left the school system. And the results have not improved at all. And there's no indication that, you know, the reduced cost of serving so many fewer kids is put to any good use whatsoever. The average teacher makes about $99,000 a year, and that's about 30% of the budget. Right. So, like, where's the other 70% going? That's like $30 billion. You know, some of it's more people. De Blasio added 10,000 people. But a lot of that was his, you know, pre K expansion, which is great. I don't. Again, great as in it's great that they passed a law. It's great that they funded it. I don't know if there are any actual stats to show whether it's working. And I suspect that what people in government tend to do all the time, and this is true of the left, the right, whoever, oh, we passed a law. The problem is solved. No, you pass the law to create an attempt to try to solve a problem. Unless you then measure how it's working and change it, you didn't do anything. But that is not the way that people in government want to think. And money goes to overhead, to bureaucracy, to maintenance. But I would say the money itself isn't even the core issue. It's the inability to look at the system and figure out what is working, what isn't working and how do you change it? And if we were to approach running our schools just as the best interest of kids, we'd come up with a lot of answers. And you know what? Every single one of them would piss off somebody, right? Some would accept the unions, the U of T, the CSA, DC 37. Some would upset parent groups, some would upset education reformers. So fucking what? You know what all those people have in common? They're adults, they're not kids. And their interests are not what matters most. But I would argue the reason why we have such a failed school system is we are constantly solving for the complaints of various adults in and around the system as opposed to the people the system is meant to serve. And I think people have tried. Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein tried a bunch of reforms. They broke up a lot of failing big high schools into more personalized smaller schools. They closed persistently underperforming schools. They certainly expanded charter schools quite a bit. A lot of that did help. De Blasio added pre K. But that's not the norm for how the system is run. The norm is to keep us doing what's already been done, make excuses about larger societies vital problems. Like I once heard Mike Mulgrew who runs the teachers union say, well, we can't solve education until we solve poverty, right? And it's like, well, the way you solve poverty is by giving kids a better education. And what it really, what he was really saying was we shouldn't ever be held accountable for our work. Give us more money, give us less work, and don't ever expect anything out of us in return. And they just confuse process with results. And the dsa, which is Mondami's party, you know, they posit themselves in a very, very self aggrandizing, self righteous way as we are the protector of the least fortunate among us who is less fortunate than kids in a highly underperforming school system. And yet they never hold the adults in the system accountable, ever. And if the mayor and Chancellor Samuels really do care about helping poor kids learn, then they will sit down and question every policy, every program, every entrenched interest and take on all of them and then go wherever the evidence takes you. If that means copying Neva Moskowitz Success, which is the best charter school network in the world, and she is, you know, hated by the left, so what? Do it. And if Mike Mulgrew has genuinely good ideas that help kids and not adults do those, some of it will mean pissing off mayor's base. And look, going out of your comfort zone is hard, but that's what great leaders do. And quite frankly, that's what Mondavi doesn't do so far. Right. He is an incredible politician. Other than keeping Jesse Tish's police commissioner, it seems like every single thing he does is just meant to reinforce what he already believes, that all the people around him already believe. And I don't think the real world impact of anything is something they even want to be aware of. Because that's hard. Right. What's easy is to do what you already think, what the people around you want you to do. What's hard is to say no, what you think, what you want is not actually working. We're going to do this instead. And when they get upset is to ignore them. But if you want to ensure that enough kids get the scores to get into Stuyvesant or just to get a good education that gives them a chance at college and life, then you have to have the courage to truly examine and radically change a system that just fails far too many of our kids. And at least to me, that's the least we can do.
- [28:18]
B
Is this a potential problem for Madani standing behind the test when you have a lot of people on the left who don't like.
- [28:25]
A
He's so popular and he's so. And I it. I've not heard him. I've heard him extol the virtues of Bronx science and all that. I don't know what he would do if there was a big effort. In fact, I should know this. Should have looked this up before we started the podcast, which was how he acted on the issue when it was in Albany and he was an assembly member. But. But I know that he did say when the story came out that we basically. He said the same thing I said, which is why isn't the system working? We should be educating kids better in the first place. But saying it and doing it are two very different things. I don't have. I always have confidence in him knowing the right thing to say. So far, I have seen very little evidence of him ever knowing the right thing to do.
- [29:12]
B
This is something I texted you about over this week was that Mandani watched the one of the World cup games at Rikers island with inmates there. Struck me as a little weird only because there's a lot of groups that one might think to watch the game with maybe some young soccer players in New York City from interesting backgrounds going to.
- [29:35]
A
Yeah. And there seems to be no regard for the victims of the crimes committed by the people he was watching the game with?
- [29:42]
B
Well, I assume not, but it's just an interesting choice. And I guess the question I had for you was, does that. That. That resonates with the base? Like, wow, cool.
- [29:53]
A
I think so. And I think also he's in a position that, one, his things are incredible. Right. You can't question them at all. Two, I think he's now in a position where it's not. He doesn't do something because it's cool. It's cool because he does it. Right. So, yeah, you know, that's a good
- [30:08]
B
way of putting it. Yeah. Governor Hochul signed a moratorium on the construction of new data centers until some regulatory frameworks in place.
- [30:16]
A
Yeah, I mean, it's. So what happened was the New York legislature passed a moratorium on the construction of data centers, which had also passed in Maine and Vermont, but both of those governors vetoed it. Hochul didn't sign the bill. She issued an executive order, effectively doing the same thing that the bill would do, but adding more structure and specificity around it. And I mean, there's sort of two questions here, which is one, the politics of what she did, but then two, the substance on the politics. She's a politician.
- [30:47]
B
She had to do it.
- [30:48]
A
I don't know if she had to do it because the governors of Maine and Vermont did not do it, but she chose to do it. And AI is broadly unpopular. We've talked about it a lot on this podcast. And she's a politician up for reelection. So she does what's politically salient and that's who and what politicians are. So I'm not surprised that she did it. And look, in fairness to Hochul, she is, you know, among the more pro business Democrats in the country. And so generally speaking, I don't think that she is someone that instinctively just doesn't understand and hates business and technology and capitalism and everything else. But what she also did in kind of the executive order is kind of lay out to me a framework for really not only what should happen in New York, but how I think this whole issue gets resolved overall. Right. Which is you can't just not build data centers or have AI. You know, that's like the equivalent of sticking your, you know, thumb in the. In the dam or whatever it is. Right. So. And we need AI. Right, we need AI because one, there are a lot of incredible things like figuring out how to remove carbon from the atmosphere or figure out how to make it so that teachers can teach the learning style of every kid or how to cure cancer or whatever else that AI could potentially do that nothing else has been able to do. So, one, to deny yourself those benefits would be crazy. And two, there is a huge economic competition between the US and China. And for us to be able to maintain our standing, we have to keep up with the latest technology, and that latest technology is AI. So trying to just stop the world in its tracks is a failed strategy, and it doesn't work. But at the same time, it doesn't mean that. The answer is. And this is kind of the way that Trump tends to see is like, all or nothing. Right. So do we need data centers all over the country? Yes. And it's not. I was like, on CNBC yesterday, and Kelly, the host, was asking me, well, could this just be a red state, blue state thing? And I'm like, no. Because one, AI is unpopular in. On both sides.
- [33:06]
B
Yeah.
- [33:07]
A
And two, because of the latency, you can't just have data centers in red states. Like, it doesn't work. Like, they need to be all over the place.
- [33:14]
B
Is that true? I didn't realize.
- [33:15]
A
Yeah, yeah. So it's, it's, you know, just like you, you can't only have energy facilities and pipelines and production in one part of the country because you need to be able to provide energy everywhere. Same thing is true with, with the there. But at the same time, that doesn't just mean put them anywhere. And there are a few areas. What Hochul talked about, which is. Right.
- [33:42]
B
Is.
- [33:42]
A
And we talked this on this podcast before, data centers cannot just impose their energy needs and costs on everyone else. And one of the reasons this became such a hot button issue was that you had data centers in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, basically just plug into the grid. Everyone's like, why did my electricity budget go up 30%? It's like, because of the fucking data center. They just have to pay their own way. And that could. There's a lot of ways to do that. It could be behind the meter power. So that's a modular nuclear or turbine or whatever it is. It could be that they literally, economically are just fully subsidizing everyone else's bills so that they're not paying those 30% increases. That's a really expensive way to do it. I don't think that's the solution. It could be by making compute itself more efficient. We've been investing in and working with a lot of companies that have ways to make compute more efficient. And there's like, techniques like reverse computing, denture computing, Memory cylinders. We're in a company called Biological Computing Company that has artificial rat brain neurons. And it's, it's literally by, you know, through the power of that same biology that makes us able to have this conversation.
- [34:55]
B
Why rat brains?
- [34:57]
A
I think that they are replicable and cheap. Probably. Yeah. So and I think it's probably ethical, you know, issues about doing it with human brains. Right. Whereas rats are sort of accepted to be experimented on. But anyway, these are all ways to take compute and make it much, much more efficient. And also, you know, there's, you know, sort of the debate between kind of the, the GPU and TPU model. So like, basically there are areas where you do want the absolute highest form of compute, which is kind of a gpu, because you're trying to figure out things like, you know, how do I cure cancer? But a lot of it's like, you know, you and I were chatting before we were on the air, you know, when I walked to Canada in New York, we've been really hit by these wildfires that are happening in Canada. Today feels better, but I thought yesterday
- [35:44]
B
a lot better this morning.
- [35:45]
A
Yesterday was rough. I really, I'm usually not particularly sensitive to any of this. And yesterday I was like, holy shit.
- [35:51]
B
Yeah, it was unpleasant.
- [35:52]
A
So you go like, are you going to be affected by it? And you know, I went on Claude and asked a few questions and the answer is no.
- [36:00]
B
So.
- [36:00]
A
But you don't need the highest power gpu. You don't need a stable for that question.
- [36:05]
B
Right?
- [36:05]
A
You know all that.
- [36:06]
B
That's basically a Google question. Yeah, yeah.
- [36:08]
A
I mean, effectively that's the inference model, right? Which is, or could be the inference model which is, you know, you don't need to sort of rethink the whole thing every time. It's like, okay, where are the fires? Where are you going? And what's the relationship between the two? Right? And look where AI is. Great was you could have answered the same question on Google five years ago, but it would have taken like a little bit of work or you would have to find out, one, where are the fires? Two, where's the Hoffman Institute? What's the relation between two? And here you have to just say, literally I said, I'm going to the Hoffman Institute, how does it impact me with the fires? And it was as vague as that.
- [36:45]
B
And it figured all, figured out the rest.
- [36:48]
A
But that still is an inference model type of question. Right? So you're starting to see data centers that are run with TPUs instead of GPUs. And I think that, that's so interesting. So that's the energy one. The second is water. And there's two issues there. There's the major one is the water consumption problem because you need a lot of water for cooling systems. There was also a metadata facility that had. Bacteria got leaked into the water supply of their community and it got a lot of people sick. But again, there's a not particularly complicated technical fix which is called a closed loop system, which just means they bring in the water and then it never, it just, it doesn't go back through the normal water system. It just recirculates and cleans and cools and refrigerates as it's going. And then the third is a broader question of what is the relationship between a data center and the community that it sits in. Oftentimes in these types of questions the answer is, well, it's going to create this amount of jobs and therefore jobs are good. Not really true here. So data centers certainly create jobs for construction, but then the maintenance of them does not require all that many people. So if that's not your answer, so then the question becomes what is the answer? And that's things like maybe you're paying to help improve the overall energy grid in that community. Maybe you're helping pay for a property tax abatement, maybe you're helping pay for local things like parks or libraries. And there are some data center companies like fluidstack that are T5 that are really, I think I've seen thinking about this stuff the right way and that really do want to be a good partner. So the good news is of the data center construction kind of creation companies, they're not the hyperscaler, it's opera, you know, that are, you know, need the compute to be able to do their job. That took to answer my question on Claude, they seem to really have the right mentality. So I would say that even though I think some would see if you're sort of generally a pro AI, what Hochul did is a negative to me. It's sort of like, you know what, it's a reflection of the moment we're in. And I think she actually captured the problem pretty well. And the good news is this is a solvable problem.
- [38:58]
B
The Wall Street Journal referred to it as self sabotage.
- [39:02]
A
Yeah, that's because that's just the Wall Street Journal hating Democrats.
- [39:06]
B
Okay.
- [39:09]
A
If it was a permanent moratorium, yes. But the truth is, if it's truly a one year moratorium for everyone to get their shit together, I just don't think it's that big a deal.
- [39:17]
B
You refer to. We've talked about this a lot. You just mentioned it. The sort of extreme unpopularity of AI. Do you see that sort of stretching as far out as we can see at this point? Do you imagine what a turning point might be where public opinion changed?
- [39:33]
A
There could be one, but I think it would require. So the data center thing I think actually will get solved. There are three buckets to me of where people get upset about AI. The risk of losing their job, of which there's been some displacement, but not a ton yet. The risk of their energy bills going way up and the risk of their kids being exposed to really terrible shit
- [39:53]
B
on chat, sort of social media.
- [39:55]
A
Social media, you know, more. Right. So we talked about the data center 1. Electricity prices on the job front. You know, if that proves real, then it's very hard for AI's public standing to really recover. Because if people look, you know, I have found, for example, that we don't have a particularly quick trigger figure when it comes to firing people. And we will give people usually a decent amount of time to try to improve and we'll work with them. But sometimes you fire people, occasionally you fire someone quickly because it's for cause they did something bad. But most of the time it's not bad. It's that they're just not quite up to the task. And after a point you're like, yeah, we have an obligation to our clients, our portfolio companies, the other employees, to deliver a certain standard. If you can't meet it, it can't work here. But I've learned that no matter how generous you are with someone, once they are fired, they hate you for life. There's no coming back ever. Right. And I accept that as a boss, there's very rarely any recognition of what you tried to do to prevent it. So same thing.
- [40:56]
B
Never any, I'm sure. No.
- [40:58]
A
So the same thing is true here, right? Which is like if someone loses their job because of AI, there's nothing AI can ever do to change that. So then that leads to the. Some people argue that the job displacement is not going to happen. Okay, I hope that's right. I think everyone hopes that's right. I don't think it is, but I don't know. Second would be like we had that amazing episode, I thought, with Daniel Schreiber, if you like what we're discussion right now. And you didn't happen to catch that one. It was maybe like three or four weeks ago. If you go back, Daniel is the on the business side, the co founder and CEO of Lemonade insurance startup, but he funded the creation thing called Mosaic, which is a kind of think tank. And they did this really interesting study that basically created almost a negative income tax where companies who lay people off because of AI or able to reduce their cost of production to sell something because of AI pay an incremental tax based on the increased profits. And that gets redistributed to people who lost their jobs due to AI and the modeling they've done, it actually works out very well. So maybe there's a solution like that. Or like yesterday I had a meeting with someone that's big in the ESOP world. That's like an employee stock option purchase, I think it's called. And I thought that was sort of maybe an interesting potential solution in a way, which is that, you know, the more that people, the employees are also owners, the more they either will benefit from the upside of AI or if they do lose their job but the company is more profitable that at least they're seeing, you know, a benefit that way, in some way. I'm not an easy outbacker in the slightest, but it just struck me as like Daniel's idea, like universal basic income, like another arguably really interesting structural way to start to deal with that problem. So there's that. But if, if, if we don't do something like that and a lot of people lose their jobs, it's gonna be really hard. The third area, which is people worried about their kids and whatever else. So especially in mental health, this has been an issue. And there are examples of like an AI chat bot, especially ones that are even supposed to be about mental health, effectively hallucinating and telling kids to hurt themselves, and kids have killed themselves because of it. So you've seen lots of states pass regulation over the last year or two dealing specifically with this provision of mental health services via AI. I've seen some companies, limbic being one of them, that I think are really impressive in terms of how they're going about it. And I actually think that you should, could and should stringently regulate this thing, but in a way that allows only the best AI that can actually help people to happen. Right? You have in this country alone, I was doing the math the other day. There's 330 million people in the US and there's about 500,000 licensed clinicians to provide some sort of behavioral health service, you know, and that the disparity means that, you know, all of us can benefit from some sort of therapy in some way. And yet only a tiny. You know, if every one of those therapists could even see, you know, 20 patients a week, that's like 10 million people or something like that. It's a fraction. Right. So I think there is a way to solve for all of that, but it will take time. And then the final piece would be when the real benefits do kick in. Right. It's cool that I was able to save a few steps. Bass and Claude, where I was going in relation to the wildfires. But if they're like, oh, we've now solved pancreatic cancer, or we now know how to actually suck carbon out of the atmosphere and store it safely underground, or here's a mechanism that a teacher can, you know, do the lesson in a way where Hugo, who learns best by reading, and Bradley by writing, and Steve by seeing or whatever else, are all able to get that material in a way that kind of fits their learning style best. Then I think you'll start to see perceptions change simply because people will start to see the benefit, but they have to be real, not the potential.
- [44:57]
B
Yeah, maybe Al some really good ideas of how to save jobs. So I have one more question on this. You went on Fox Business.
- [45:05]
A
Yes.
- [45:06]
B
First of all, I was struck by how warmly you were greeted by Stuart Varney.
- [45:09]
A
Stuart and I get along really well.
- [45:10]
B
He loves you.
- [45:12]
A
I like him a lot.
- [45:13]
B
He would have hugged you. He almost did hug you. Yeah. But he said something that I wanted to ask about. So he was talking about sort of, you know, when Anthropic goes public, presumably in the next, whatever, six months, year, whatever it might be, there's going to be just this sort of wealth storm. Seven billionaires, dozens and dozens of centimillionaires, and then thousands of really rich people.
- [45:36]
A
Yeah.
- [45:37]
B
Do you think that kind of thing where a really small number of people, but more than, you know, it's not just like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. You're going to have a lot of people making a lot of money.
- [45:46]
A
Yeah, well, yes and no. Right. So Stuart asked me that question. I really do love Stuart in the form of. Don't you? It's still. It's Fox Business is very different than Fox, but it's still Fox. Right. In a way. Right. His point was like, don't you think the left's gonna make a big deal about this? And. Yes, probably.
- [46:03]
B
So what's it gonna do to real estate values in San Francisco?
- [46:10]
A
But a few things around that. So one is. Yes, but the point that you are making, I think, is Very, very good. And I think is an interesting insight into the psyche of Americans. And that may be changing a little bit. But America is an aspirational country. Right? We are a country that believes that we can, or at least historically believe that we can all get rich. Right? And that belief, I think, is what has driven so much of American innovation, the American economy. And then that wealth has allowed us to do some bad things in the world, but a lot of good things in the world, like end World War II, put people on the moon, all these things. So, yes, I think some level that still definitely exists. And I think people will find it aspirational and inspirational in a way. It's a little bit like, I remember when SpaceX went public, I was on CNBC that afternoon talking about it. And you know, I've been a bearish on SpaceX as a, as a stock buy. And we've talked about that on the podcast before. But I remember saying to the host, I think it was Leslie, that like, look, today is a great day because it's awesome that there's this space company that is doing well enough to like, even if its valuation is beyond crazy, it's a good thing, right? Space is cool. Like, there's advancements to be made. Like, this is progress, you know, this is good. It doesn't mean you should buy the stock. I would argue you should not buy the stock. But, like, that doesn't change the fact
- [47:34]
B
that we don't have to be sitting here like it's some tragedy. No, right.
- [47:38]
A
It's not a bad thing. And the same thing is true if, if thousands of people become millionaires who weren't before, that's fucking great. That's good for them, good for their families, good for the tax base. Else, yes, you'll see a lot of people on Blue sky wringing their hands and rendering their garments and whatever else. But I do think it's a good thing. I don't think it will make the average person upset at all. One thing that Stuart and I did talk about is the California billionaires tax. And I think one of the risks that California is really running, and you know, we did a whole episode on this maybe six weeks ago or something like that, is. So when Facebook went public and keep on this is only at $100 billion valuation. So Anthropic and OpenAI are both expected to be about 10x that they generate somewhere between 10 and $20 billion in income tax revenue from the employees, from the money they made. Right. So imagine instead now we're talking for an anthropic and an OpenAI PO, although fewer employees, but still, we're talking, let's say it's 100 to $400 billion by the entire California billionaires tax is expected to generate by its proponents, 100 billion. People who oppose it would say it's a fraction of that. You really run the risk of killing the golden goose with the billionaires tax in the sense that 99.999% of tech companies will not be open AI anthropic and not have those kinds of valuations. As someone who invests in early stage startups, 100% of founders believe they will be that person. Right. And if they're like, well, I'm going to make billion, I don't want to have to give it to California. They can just build their company somewhere else. They are building their company somewhere else. And I think whether it's California or New York or wherever else, if the US government raises taxes, almost nobody renounces their citizenship to get away from them. I know one guy, so do you. But when a state does it, there's tons of arbitrage, jurisdictional arbitrage. Right. Because it is not that hard, especially when you're that rich to begin with, to be like, all right, I'll sleep 180 nights in Miami or Austin or whatever it is instead of New York or LA or San Francisco. And then all of a sudden you lose all of that tax money, basically. So it is very, very dangerous for blue states to play this game where, yes, they get short term relief because they get more taxes. Yes, it makes the base who votes in their primaries happy, which is effectively, you know, what politicians care about because they care about getting reelected. But it is certainly at the expense of not just the long term revenue, but what the long term revenue goes to, which is people who need help the most. Right. For food stamps, for Medicaid, for public housing, to make schools better. So like, you really have to be careful when you're, when you're doing these kinds of things.
- [50:31]
B
So anyway, do you get to take books with you to.
- [50:34]
A
So it's interesting. Yeah. I had a call with the coach the other day, a pre call, and I asked a question, right? And he said, you can. People ask me that question all the time. To my knowledge, no one has ever read one.
- [50:45]
B
Okay, so.
- [50:46]
A
So I actually.
- [50:47]
B
A couple then.
- [50:48]
A
Well, yeah, so Barbara Kingsolver's new book, I got like an advanced copy sent to me, so I'm going to bring that because she's an incredible writer. And, you know, maybe I won't, maybe not, but then I'll still have that time kind of afterwards and it's a five hour flight to Calgary and all that. So, yeah, I'm gonna read that.
- [51:04]
B
Good. All right. Have a great trip. You don't have a recommendation, I assume, or do you? You didn't mention it.
- [51:08]
A
I read a novel called Man Overboard by Kathleen Rooney.
- [51:10]
B
Okay.
- [51:11]
A
And I have a really good book. So it's about a guy who is on a cruise with his family. And the book begins, he's in the water. And at least for most of the books, it's good.
- [51:21]
B
They don't make you wait for it. Does he get overboard? There he is. He's overboard.
- [51:24]
A
And you don't know if he, he. You don't know if he jumped or if he was, he was really drunk or, or if he fell. But either way, the whole book, 98% of the book takes place with him in the water and it's just him.
- [51:39]
B
So that movie about the guy on the sailboat that Robert Redford was in.
- [51:43]
A
Right. But what's interesting is it's partly a survival story, but it's really more about him reexamining his entire life, going back while he's in the water. And it's just the examination of his life and the choices he's made and the things he struggled with and him sort of realizing a lot of things that he's hallucinating and having, having different conversations, different kinds of fish who are of course, all these brilliant therapists in a way. And consider the book just takes place. The guy treading Water. It's an amazing book. I really, really liked it. So I recommend it.
- [52:13]
B
Good.
- [52:13]
A
All right, thank you.
- [52:14]
B
Thanks, Bradley.
- [52:20]
A
Firewalls recorded at my bookstore, PNT Netware, located at 180 Orchard street on the lower east side of Manhattan. We'd love to hear from from you with questions, feedbacks or idea for a guest. Just email me at Bradley at 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 substack at bradleytus substack. Com. Thanks again for listening.