From ClawdBots to Sauna Bros: Silicon Valley in 2026

Summary

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More or Less — From ClawdBots to Sauna Bros: Silicon Valley in 2026

Episode Date: Jan 23, 2026
Hosts: Brit Morin, Sam Lessin, Dave Morin (Jessica Lessin traveling)

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into the latest trends and cultural quirks shaping Silicon Valley as we head into 2026. Brit, Sam, and Dave provide a candid, witty debate about the absurdities of startup valuations, the reality of investing in the generative AI gold rush, what’s actually happening with “agents” and AI assistants, and the relentless innovation (and self-parody) inside the technorati. Not to be missed: Why Apple’s rumored “AI pen” isn’t the revolution some hope for, how ClaudeBots are changing hacker culture, and why “Sauna Bros” are the new wellness meme.

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Main Topics & Discussion Highlights

1. Debating AI Company Valuations & Seed Fund Madness

[00:00–11:15]

• The group opens with satire about the week’s “insane” seed rounds—like a company raising $480M at a $4.48B valuation.
• FOMO & Echoes of OpenAI/Anthropic:
  Dave and Sam stress that most investors regret missing out on AI darlings, but even a 25x or 80x outcome (as seed investors in OpenAI/Anthropic) wouldn’t return a typical seed fund.
  • Dave: “If you had invested in Anthropic ... it wouldn't have returned a seed fund. ... Like you make $80 million, that's great. ... But it was not ... I don't want to poo poo it.” [00:54, 10:11]
  • Sam: “You don't actually want to be in super capital-consumptive things as a seed investor. ... There’s only two ways to make money: have a secret, or own the narrative.” [08:56]
• Current AI mega-rounds are “about FOMO” and narrative ownership, not real returns.

Notable Quote:
“Everyone’s looking back to 2023 and saying, I wish I was in Anthropic and OpenAI ... dear God, I must do something to get this, you know, to get some of this. That’s what’s going on.”
— Dave Morin [08:10]

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2. Turbulence in AI Founder Culture

[11:07–13:39]

• Huge seed rounds (e.g., Thinking Machines Lab) are losing executive teams as soon as the money comes in.
• Sam: “These are large co-founding teams ... co-founder title is thrown around loosely ... mercenary, sports-oriented. ... The opportunity cost is ridiculous given what people are getting paid. ... It’s understandable in context right now.” [12:07]
• No “real assets”—these AI companies are pure human capital.

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3. Recursive AI & the “Claude Constitution” Paradox

[13:39–18:15]

• Dave brings up Anthropic’s new “Claude Constitution”—partially written by Claude itself.
• He wonders aloud: “Does this just become the recursive loop that we've all been afraid of over time?” [13:39]
• Sam: “Junk in, junk out.” [14:23]
• They riff on “AI slop,” human-in-the-loop, and whether AI-authored documents should concern us.
• Sam argues that the value of AI “is just advanced spell check”—unless you become a world-class prompt engineer.

Notable Quote:
“It’s how you ask the question that matters ... the human thing is you have to become the best questioner in the world.”
— Sam Lessin [17:17]

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4. The Real Magic of Incantations, ClaudeBots, and Hacking the Stack

[18:38–25:10]

• Brit asks if anyone’s built anything new with these AI stacks or ClaudeBots.
• Sam describes a “first time I thought, oh, if I encant properly with weird ideas, [the model] actually gives me back other ideas that are interesting.” [18:46]
• Dave references “route,” a new recursive engineering method—AI breaks down and executes a large project by running against each PRD step in succession: “It’s like, please come back—talk to God and come back with a browser.” [21:30]
• The hosts agree that combining deep context, custom prompts, and chained actions is where true innovation (and competitive edge) is emerging.

Defining “ClaudeBot”

• Brit: “It’s not just like having an agent, it's having like an army of agents ... it has access to a bunch of things which ... is a big security concern.” [24:35]
• Dave: “Agentic is a misnomer ... what this thing is: like a computer version of AI ... where you have this ability to interact with your entire computer using it.” [25:13]

Notable Moment:
The hosts lament how hard it is to explain ClaudeBots—people who haven't tried them “want to try it,” but it's “quite technical” to set up. [24:49]

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5. Apple’s Wearable “AI Pin” and the Inevitable Rebirth of Hardware

[26:36–31:32]

• Brit introduces The Information’s scoop: Apple is developing a wearable AI pin with cameras, speaker, microphones—think “AirTag-sized personal AI.”

• Skepticism:

  • Dave: “Look, the market already rejected this ... why are we doing this again?” [27:40]
  • Brit: “I think this is where everyone's going ... gone are the days of phones with glass on them.” [27:50]
  • Sam: “The phone format is getting tired, but it's also, I don’t think, going anywhere.” [28:26]

• Dave advances the “orchestra of compute” thesis: Now, you can hack any device, tie together APIs, and build “symphony experiences.” Hardware uniqueness is less important than it was.

  Quote:
  “We've assembled an orchestra of compute, but nobody's written a symphony.”
  — Dave Morin [29:07]

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6. End of SaaS Lock-In? Business Models in the AI Scriptable Future

[31:32–39:59]

• Sam and Dave debate the “reversion to shrink-wrap software”—with ClaudeBots, every device and service is scriptable, private APIs cease to matter, and SaaS/subscription models break down.
• Sam: "Maybe devices get really expensive, and really open ... perhaps it's a dramatic shift because your business models don't work anymore."
• Specific examples:
  • Whoop and Eight Sleep depend on subscriptions, but could be “hacked”.
  • Apple’s subscription-ification of hardware is cited as an exception, as it continues to add value year after year.
  • Tesla moves autopilot to subscription (counterexample).

Notable Quote:
“Technology sets the table and then everyone figures out, given the new technical state, how to negotiate the world.”
— Sam Lessin [34:32]

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7. Sauna Bros: Meme Culture & The American Wellness Quest

[41:00–44:39]

• Brit introduces a NYT article on “Sauna Bros”: Americans are “distorting” European sauna culture by making it about wellness metrics, wearables, and self-optimization rather than relaxation.
• Dave: “Why does the New York Times want to moralize and shame Americans for doing the most healthy thing you can possibly do?” [42:14]
• Sam (joking): “Are they calling it cultural appropriation? Because I appropriate the shit out of your sauna culture.” [42:03]
• Joking suggestion: Calculate the energy costs of “sauna bro” culture and blame them for melting the planet.

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8. Closing Banter: Gender in Tech, Bro Events, and Old-School Networking

[44:39–45:56]

• The gang jokes about men-only and women-only conferences and bro trips (e.g., long-distance shooting in Montana).
• Sam unveils a tongue-in-cheek protest T-shirt: “No queens. Down with the matriarchy.” [44:10]

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9. Super Bowl, Football Fatalities, and Media Habits

[46:18–48:19]

• Sam riffs on going to the Super Bowl despite not being a football fan; they share wild historical facts about college football deaths.
• Brit: “And today we don't kill as many people, but we definitely mess up their brains quite a bit, which is why our children will never play football.” [48:04]

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “If you had invested in Anthropic, it wouldn't have returned a seed fund. ... Like you make $80 million. That's great. ... But it was not ... I don't want to poo poo it.” — Dave [00:54, 10:11]
• “You don't actually want to be in the seed of OpenAI ... that's the irony ... the seed investors are sitting at about 25x.” — Sam [00:17, 08:26]
• “Technology sets the table and then everyone figures out, given the new technical state how to negotiate the world.” — Sam [34:32]
• “We've assembled an orchestra of compute, but nobody's written a symphony.” — Dave [29:07]
• “It's how you ask the question that matters ... you have to become the best questioner in the world.” — Sam [17:17]
• “Why does the New York Times want to moralize and shame Americans for doing the most healthy thing you can possibly do for your cardiovascular, mental, and metabolic health?” — Dave [42:14]

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Essential Timestamps

• Seed fund madness & AI round FOMO: [00:00–11:15]
• AI founder turnover & “NFL culture”: [11:07–13:39]
• Recursive AI, Claude Constitution & human-in-the-loop: [13:39–18:15]
• ClaudeBots, hacking the stack, the age of incantation: [18:38–25:10]
• Apple’s AI wearable rumors, hardware as orchestra: [26:36–31:32]
• Business model shifts, end of SaaS lock-in: [31:32–39:59]
• Sauna Bros, moralizing wellness, meme culture: [41:00–44:39]
• Conferences, bro trips, gender in tech banter: [44:39–45:56]
• Super Bowl, football death stats, kids & sports: [46:18–48:19]

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Tone & Style

The hosts maintain their trademark mix of irreverence, deep industry expertise, skepticism, and inside jokes. They lean on “riffing,” drop pop culture references (e.g., Love Island, Joe Rogan, The Simpsons), and frequently poke fun at both their own status in tech, each other, and surging trends.

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Summary for the Uninitiated

This episode is a candid tour of Silicon Valley as only true insiders can deliver: cutting through AI hype, mocking and analyzing the investor “groupthink,” exploring how ClaudeBots and recursive AI are changing what it means to tinker, and questioning what happens to business models when everything is hackable. With musings on the future of hardware, privacy, wellness memes, and the “Sauna Bro” phenomenon, it captures both the excitement and the absurdity of tech in 2026.

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Recommended for:

• Investors, founders, and tech enthusiasts curious about the reality behind the AI hype cycle
• Those interested in the next phase of hardware, agentic software, and the rapidly evolving Valley culture
• Anyone who enjoys whip-smart, snarky, deeply informed tech banter

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Transcript

[Brit Morin]

Would you ever invest in a company raising at a $4.48 billion valuation who's raising 480 million? Because that's what happened this week.

[Sam Lessin]

A seed company.

[Dave Morin]

It's like the land of FOMO, Brit. Everybody's looking back to 2023 and saying, I wish I was in anthropic and OpenAI.

[Sam Lessin]

You actually don't want to be in the seed of OpenAI.

[Dave Morin]

No.

[Sam Lessin]

That's the irony of the whole thing, right? The seed investors are sitting at about 25x.

[Dave Morin]

If you had invested in Anthropic, it wouldn't have returned a seed fund. Even Today, you make 80 million. That's great. But it was not. I don't want to poo poo it.

[Brit Morin]

Welcome back to another episode of More or Less. This is Brit Morin, your host for the week. Because that's not just. Yeah, Jess is in Davos with all the fancy people and all of us VCs who don't run media companies are here.

[Sam Lessin]

Just went to Davos to do. Did you. To do her version, her solo version of More or Less with, like, Andy Jassy and, like, left us left the riffraff behind in California.

[Brit Morin]

Hey, we're clearly the more entertaining riffraff. Just saying.

[Dave Morin]

Did she get blocked from the USA house like everybody else from California?

[Sam Lessin]

I don't know. Did that happen?

[Dave Morin]

I guess Gavin Newsom got blocked to go into the America house.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, does he have a California house?

[Brit Morin]

Is this like the Olympics? There are different houses at Davos you go into.

[Dave Morin]

I think we should have a California house probably at Davos.

[Sam Lessin]

My sense, I haven't gotten to speak to Jessica much in the week because she's very busy in Davos. But I think my guess is that she'll come back and say that she went in a little skeptical, but it turns out that, like, these are her people. Like, it's like, it turns out that, like, it's like she's a total celebrity in the context of Davos. Davos. And people stop her in the streets and she gets all the interviews she wants. I think she's in, like, hog heaven.

[Brit Morin]

Well, she did say she's run into a lot of pod listeners on the streets in Davos. So hello, all you pod listeners in Davos.

[Sam Lessin]

It's probably the highest concentration of POD listeners, if you just think about the profile, right? Because it's like, it's people who, like, go to Davos who want a insidery, like, snarky read on Silicon Valley from the outside. I feel like that's probably Our demo. Right.

[Dave Morin]

Because, like, totally.

[Sam Lessin]

We insult too much of the core tech audience for them to like us. Right. Like, like. Or maybe they listen, but they would never admit it because it's like, we're just too insulting. But then, like, at least I am. But then, like, the Davos people are like, love this shit, Sam.

[Dave Morin]

We should go to Davos and just go skiing and not go to the conference. Be the only people on the chairlift.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't think it's that good, though. I think we. We ski in better places.

[Dave Morin]

That's fair is the problem.

[Brit Morin]

It's like, I think it does seem like there's, like, a lot of media people this year in Davos, like, and sort of influencer people. Like, Dr. Becky is there. I've noticed. Who's, like, the number one parenting influencer?

[Sam Lessin]

Steve Bartlett is there.

[Dave Morin]

Ooh, I like Steve Bartlett.

[Sam Lessin]

Jess is like. I just was. I just moderated a panel with Steve Bartlett. It turns out you guys invested in him. I'm like, yeah, that's. Yes, that's.

[Dave Morin]

That's news.

[Brit Morin]

We invested in Dr. Becky so that we both have creators. We invested in there.

[Dave Morin]

Sam, do you have, like, a founder working behind you during the podcast?

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, that's Jack. Oh.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, it's Jack. Oh, hey, Jack.

[Sam Lessin]

Jack made a terrible career decision, which is to move to New York. I don't understand that. I understand a life decision, but. But now he came to visit to keep his job before he goes back to New York.

[Dave Morin]

I did just convince New York GP to not move to Silicon Valley and stay in New York.

[Brit Morin]

Why?

[Sam Lessin]

Why would you.

[Dave Morin]

Because.

[Sam Lessin]

Just to keep the competition out. I mean, like, this is, like, the moment. San Francisco is, like, the place to be.

[Dave Morin]

But, I don't know. New York still has its place, right?

[Sam Lessin]

I love New York.

[Brit Morin]

Well, it's definitely, like, more. More fashionable.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. The New York's got a On culture. I don't know, maybe I'm just watching too much of the. The new season of industry, and I'm inspired by New York and London.

[Sam Lessin]

Again, I will say I have you. I've only watched the first episode of it, and I have seen the season.

[Dave Morin]

It is pretty gnarly.

[Sam Lessin]

I. It's. It's just dark, right? It's like, it's not. I actually watched that show and I'm like, huh, Is this the cultural zeitgeist? Because it kind of feels like it is, but the net of the show is everyone's awful and lying and cheating. Like, that's kind of the message of the show. It's like the finance people, the tech, everyone is just lying and cheating and terrible.

[Dave Morin]

And you're like, huh, it's really bad.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like if that's what the youth are watching and believing is a dark

[Brit Morin]

world out there, I think they're watching that. And anything that's a crime series or a reality love, love romance show like Love island and these things.

[Dave Morin]

The.

[Sam Lessin]

I have there's some hockey player gay thing.

[Brit Morin]

Heated rivalry. Yeah, that's heated rivalry.

[Sam Lessin]

The gay hockey player thing.

[Brit Morin]

I started it last night. I started it last night, Dave, and you made me turn it off. Okay, we're going to skip through that. We're going to get to pop culture corner. At the end of this episode, we've got more important things to talk about. There are some new announcements. You guys from Apple. There's some interesting news from OpenAI.

[Dave Morin]

What's news from Apple.

[Brit Morin]

And we have more companies raising seed rounds at multibillion dollar valuations. Very exciting. To prove that we are not yet out of the.

[Sam Lessin]

You guys do this part of the pod. I'm going to do some email. Let me know when we get to things that actually are interesting.

[Brit Morin]

Well, Sam, would you ever invest in a company raising at a 4.48 billion dollar valuation? 480 million. Because that's what happened this week.

[Sam Lessin]

But I recently did. I recently was doing some analysis of what we've really made money on and it was actually for hilariously. Actually, I think I'm for the. The Midas seed investor list which, which

[Dave Morin]

I call like, it's like the junior varsity.

[Sam Lessin]

It's the all American junior varsity capitalism team. I've made the. I've been on this list. It's like the 25 top seed investors. I was like, should I submit for this again? Do I care? It is kind of funny.

[Dave Morin]

I've just never submitted for it.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't even know how I ended up. I think I ended up on like a salon here. They just put me on or whatever. It's like fine. But it was funny. I was like doing the analysis and it turned out that like basically all the things that we've ever made serious money on, even ones I had forgotten were this are like under 10 free. Yep.

[Brit Morin]

But that was like in a different vintage, Sam. That's not in today's world.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't know. I'm not convinced. I like, you know, look, I've in the last few weeks done two deals where I bought 10% of a company for a quarter million bucks each. Each time because they're like Interesting, really weird ideas that I helped in SAP and like, I don't need to own the whole thing and I'm not going to work on it, but if the entrepreneur is going to with it and they're interesting. So like, I'm just not, I don't know, like, I understand. Like, look, I obviously have invested in things that more than like a 10 post and like will continue to when it makes sense and it all lines up. But like, I don't know, I just don't really buy that. These are money makers, right. I think, I think if you're trying to like demonstrate access or if you're like not sure where to put the seed money and like there's like there are, you know, there's like, I mean there's a great story of our friends who had a seed fund. They pitched a seed fund to investors and then turned around and immediately put the entire thing into stripe at a pretty good price. And like they'll make a bunch of money on it because it's like one in companies. But they also like had a really hard time raising their next seed fund because it's not what you're supposed to do. It's like not what you're getting paid by managers to do. So I'm like, as a seed fund, I'm not that into it.

[Brit Morin]

So what's your idea, Sam, of a seed round that is too large for slow right now or too high of a valuation? Do you have bans on that or

[Sam Lessin]

is it for like a real proper seed round? I mean, like, look, we're very transparent what we do, right? Which is we spend 1 to 3 million dollars and we want to own 10% of things. That's it. Like it's quite simple. Yeah.

[Brit Morin]

Okay. And I would call that like straight up the fairway of what's happening in seed right now. But then we're seeing all this crazy stuff, whether it's $100 million value valuation or this humans and company that raised at a four and a half billion dollar valuation. Like people are, are raising all kinds of numbers.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, because it's like the land of FOMO, Brit. Like everybody's looking back to 2023 and saying, I wish I was in anthropic and OpenAI and blah blah, blah. Dear God, I must do something to get this, you know, to get some of this right. Like that's what's going on.

[Sam Lessin]

The funny thing I'll keep reminding people of because it's just so funny, is like you actually don't want to be in the seat of OpenAI. No, that's the irony of the whole thing, right Is that like even at these ridiculous prices because of how that all got renegotiated again, I could be wrong and someone correct me if I am. The Internet loves that. But like if you look at the math on it, I believe that the answer still holds that the seed investors are sitting at about a 25x. That's not a terrible investment. That's not a firm returner for a seed fund. It's like eh. So the answer is you don't even.

[Dave Morin]

I actually ran the math, Sam. I ran.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, I did at one point too. I just haven't recently. I just. You don't actually want to be in super capital consumptive things as a seed investor. Now I will say just to justify it, I think there is one, like I've been telling entrepreneurs a lot this year, like this is my theme of the month, that there's only two ways to make money right now and build companies, right. One which we've talked about, one is have a secret that no one knows, right. And like just send it capital efficiently. I, I know people doing this, it's great. The other is own the narrative. And the only justification you could give right Is like for something that everyone agrees right is good or is a good idea and it's just a matter of can you be the company that quote unquote owns the narrative and gets cheaper acquisition for customers? And there's an argument that if it's very capital consumptive to do that, you might need a lot more capital to own a narrative than you would to like go from a series seed to your million ARR. To get your series A in the oil world. So like you can kind of squint and make adjust. I just don't think it's going to work out very well for most people.

[Brit Morin]

Dave, what were you going to add on to that?

[Dave Morin]

No, it's definitely won't. I, I mean I ran the numbers. If you had invested in 2023 in anthropic, you know, if you had taken like a core seed check for example, like a million, like exactly what we're talking about. It wouldn't, it wouldn't have returned to seed fund even today it still wouldn't

[Sam Lessin]

be a good investment. I mean I have a.

[Dave Morin]

It's fine. Like you make 80 million, that's great. Like it's not nothing. I don't want to poo poo.

[Sam Lessin]

It's an ADX in three years. Liquid is not bad. It's actually better than the OpenAI outcome. Right? By a lot, right?

[Dave Morin]

Yeah.

[Sam Lessin]

I will say the fun. I had a funny realization which is I was talking to an old associate of mine who used to work at SLOW who kind of with me and it was really funny. I was recalling the fact that just a few years ago he had messaged me and he had like two job offers, one or anthropic and one somewhere else with a comp package associated with them. In the classic, Sam does get things massively wrong. At one point he was like, where should I go? I was like, you know, you should probably go to anthropic because like, like I just think there's really high quality people and you'll learn a lot there. It seems like a good career move for you. It's like one of those types of things but like I have no idea what it's worth and who knows if it's the better comp package and like blah blah, blah, blah blah. But like I, I haven't actually run the numbers, but I think, I think that person's done extremely well on their, on their, on their, on their equity. So good for them.

[Brit Morin]

Good for them, good for them. All right, so we're not willing to pay up. We're staying in the fairway. It sounds like at least for the three of us on this call of what's rational, there's so still definitely an AI bubble. By the way, Thinking Machines Lab, which is one of the only other seed rounds to be a multibillion dollar valuation. This is Miramorati's company. $2 billion has now lost half of the executive team. Half of the executive team has left over the last few weeks. So these investors who invested in this round are super pissed.

[Dave Morin]

Why is there so much drama with the AI people? Is it just that the money is at stake?

[Sam Lessin]

It's hard being snoop do double G.

[Brit Morin]

What I'm gathering is these in rounds are investment. The people similar with this humans and company. There's like 20 people, former Google open AI, blah blah blah. And those people can just leave. And then these investors are losing so much of the value.

[Dave Morin]

When did it become okay to do this in the Valley is the real question. Like it like leaving after 12 months, six months like this is just bad behavior?

[Sam Lessin]

Well no, I don't think so. I think here's what's going on. I just think there's a few things. One is I don't think like we

[Dave Morin]

have an NFL culture now.

[Sam Lessin]

These are large co founding teams, right? Co founder title is thrown around very loosely. Right. And it's pretty mercenary, sports oriented. Right. And so I do think that, you know, if you are not the principal, but you are kind of a quote unquote, co founder and the principal convinces you to come do a thing and then it starts not working, you're not delivering on it, you go somewhere else. Right. Especially because the opportunity cost is ridiculous given what people are getting paid right now. And I just don't think, I think that's kind of like if you're promised something that ends up being a bill of goods, right? You're like, there's, you know, like it's not working, like you just leave. And I think that, that it's very mercenary, but I think it's quite understandable in context right now. And yeah, I do think to everyone's points, like, because these are all purely human capital plays, like there's no assets to any of these things. Right. Like, it's super easy to be like, oh, like someone's going to pay me like 10 times as much over there. Sure. If that makes sense. Like, I'm not leaving anything. So I don't know. I think it's all pretty understandable. But I do think it kind of makes the point that, like, I don't know, it's a very dangerous game and these numbers are all quite silly. Is like what it comes down to.

[Brit Morin]

What's crazy is this company, which originally raised a $2 billion seed round, went on to raise at a 10 billion, is now in the process of raising at a $50 billion valuation.

[Sam Lessin]

Who is this?

[Brit Morin]

Thinking machines?

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, but that's just, that's just what they, that's just marketing. I mean, like, it's not like, it's just wild.

[Brit Morin]

To me, it's been a year and it's, it's, it's crazy that this stuff is happening right now. I don't know.

[Dave Morin]

I have a more important AI question, which is that Anthropic announced that they've written a new constitution for Claude. And I'm looking at it and I'm reading it and it looks suspiciously like AI writing. And so the question in my head is, what percentage of the Claude constitution was written by Claude? It's like a teenager trying to write their own curfew or something. And I read down to the bottom and sure enough, it's like this was written by a lot of human. It was also written by some of our models. And so what percentage of the constitution was written by the models itself is like, I think a really interesting question. Like, does this just become the recursive loop that we've all been afraid of over time? Or how should we think about this?

[Sam Lessin]

Junk in, junk out.

[Brit Morin]

I mean, it seems like it's a. This is back to the AI slop thing, where, Dave, you didn't necessarily resonate with the idea of, like, a human in the loop writing model, but I think that's what most people are doing right now. Everyone's using AI to write something. They're editing it, they're making it sound more human, and then they're sending it or posting it or whatever. And the question is, is that just the new normal, or are we against having AI be part of the genesis of any of these ideas?

[Dave Morin]

I think it's different when it's the actual constitution for one of the models. Or is it just the same as coding? I guess? Like, is it all the codes being written by models now? Like, doesn't matter. It's just turtles all the way down, and we're fine with it.

[Sam Lessin]

So I think it's. Here's the question is, look, in the end of the day, like, people talk about what we're really dealing with is just super advanced spell check. Everyone uses spell check, right? Like, there's nothing wrong with using spell check, right? Like, I mean, I actually sometimes don't use spell check because I think it's, like, proof of humanity. But that's, like, a very niche Sam thing, right?

[Brit Morin]

Like, you also write in, like, mostly lowercase.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah. And, like, I think that is fine.

[Dave Morin]

But, like, although I saw something you wrote the other day, and it looked too perfect, and I'm like, oh, Sam has AI in his workflow now?

[Sam Lessin]

Well, that's what I was gonna say is I actually. So there's one essay.

[Dave Morin]

You put an essay on Twitter that looks suspiciously AI Ish.

[Sam Lessin]

Those are not. Like, the two I put on Twitter are actually not. You think was AI driven. There's a theme that mattered in 2026, which is actually a good essay, which has no AI use in it. There's the future is flat Earth, which I think I may have passed, actually.

[Dave Morin]

The future is flat Earth.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah. I passed that through AI And I was like, yeah, yeah. But it's interesting, like, to. To the point of, like, the experience here is like. It's funny. Like, I. I wrote a version of that that was fine. I passed it through. I was like, this is like, basically the same thing and maybe slightly more readable. And so I just posted it. But I think, one, you immediately know that. And two, I would never do that for an idea I actually really cared about. Like it's more just like. But it is interesting, right? It's a question about whether I should. How to. How to approach some of that stuff. I will tell you, I actually did have one really interesting experience, even I will admit, like somewhat co writing. I haven't published this yet and I need to do another draft, but I was actually impressed with it. I did have my first experience where I was reading a pretty esoteric book and I had a kind of half baked idea coming out of the book and I kind of wrote something which was like my like high level framing coming out of it. And actually Gemini did a good job giving me more context and information I didn't have that like became iterative and interesting. So the funny part about that is I actually think this set of ideas is interesting enough and I will then have to go reread all this stuff, think about it and like go from there. But I did have that kind of interesting moment. I was like, ah, like this is a good example of not pure slop. This actually gave me shortcuts to a bunch of other thinking I didn't know and makes sense sense right now. Is it all true or just what I wanted to hear? Who knows? But like it's interesting, right?

[Brit Morin]

I think it advances your thinking more than anything.

[Sam Lessin]

In this case. It was my first experience and it started. The reason is it's almost like if you think about all this stuff as like if the future is basically what matters is the question, not the answer. Barry Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy right? Like it's. It's how you ask the question that matters. The answer. And like that's the human thing is like you have to become the best questioner in the world. And then you're like, okay, well how unique are your questions, right? Becomes this interesting thing. It's like if you read weirder shit or connect problems differently, you almost end up with these secret weird incantations that feel more unique and yield then if you prompt correctly, more interesting outcomes which you can then kind of. So it's. It was my first glimpse in a while because I'm obviously very cynical about 99.999% of this stuff. But I was like, oh, I can go read weird shit other people haven't read. Think of ideas that maybe some people have thought of, but not in this context. And then present incantations that other people haven't before. To get more magic out of the box effectively was almost the feeling of

[Brit Morin]

it I'm surprised that's a new feeling for you. I feel like that's what everyone. I mean, the reading things people haven't read and stuff. I get that part. It's sort of like illegible from a lot of people, but I think that's like part of the magic that people are feeling and utilizing this for and, and with Quadbot, which, by the way, I'm curious to hear if anyone else, if any of you have been playing more with building things on the side.

[Dave Morin]

Yes.

[Brit Morin]

I think it's unlocking this new level of ways that people are using all of this stuff to get that magical moment.

[Sam Lessin]

So I guess I would just distinguish between like the things which is like auto complete or auto compress. Right. Which is what I see most people using in any, like, Clabba is mostly auto complete, auto compress. It's like, like it's not. It's first order, it's fine. And like, it is efficient. Like, it means I don't have to hire engineers for X, Y, like there, there's like, I can, but it's not like it doesn't change how you look at things. Right. Like, what I. The, the unique experience I had here, which I just haven't had before, maybe other people do, is being like, oh, that's like, if I encant properly with weird enough other ideas, it will actually give me back other ideas that are interesting and require like the first time I've actually thought to myself, like, oh, I need to like, go now, reread more carefully this thread as opposed to be like, yeah, this is fine. You know, like, it's kind of the way I look at it.

[Dave Morin]

I like this. I was watching the interview that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon did on Joe Rogan about the movie industry, and they were talking about how the models are not good at storytelling largely because they regress to the mean. Right. Like, the math of these models is to compress, like you're saying, right? And so you're sort of compressing, compressing, compressing a lot into the mean. And so to get it to do what you're talking about, which is like in kink, in a weird direction or synthesize things that it's not naturally going to do, requires some judo that I think most people aren't willing to put in, but it is possible. And perhaps that's a new form of knowledge creation that is going to be a huge part of the future. Right. Like the ability to kind of like, I was looking at this one new engineering method that people are using. I've just recently, it's sort of because I've been talking about cloudbot so much. People are sending me a lot of different things to look at. And there's this new recursive engineering idea called route. Have you seen this, Sam?

[Sam Lessin]

I haven't actually.

[Dave Morin]

And as I understand it, you effectively write a PRD or you work with, you know, the model to write a prd. And the PRD can be pretty long. And the model then runs against each step of the prd. So each task it needs to accomplish, it runs a new context window on that task until it's finished. And then once it's finished, it goes to the next one, starts a new context window with what it learned, and then it just burns through this and you can let it run for like, like six hours or seven hours or something. And so a lot of people are getting very excited about this. I haven't tried it myself personally, but it's kind of like the. There's like short incantations like you were talking about, and then it seems like there's this new emergent thing, like a long incantation where you're like, I'm gonna long incant like for seven hours or I saw cursor or something, did like a seven day build of an entire web browser. And so there's like these long things you can do now too.

[Sam Lessin]

It's when you send Cursor on an Ayahuasca trip.

[Dave Morin]

Exactly. It's like, please come back with. Please talk to God and come back with a browser.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my AI agent is busy. I sent it on a six day Ayahuasca trip.

[Brit Morin]

It only threw up three times, but

[Dave Morin]

it came back with some good stuff.

[Brit Morin]

All right, Dave, is there anything new you've been playing with that you've been building and all this while you're. No, I just told you, plotting and like Ralph. Okay, you haven't used Ralph though.

[Dave Morin]

I have learned about Ralph. Ralph and I do not have a. Ralph and I do not have a relationship.

[Sam Lessin]

That's what you do during the Ayahuasca trip is you Ralph all over the place.

[Brit Morin]

Okay, for anyone who's listening and doesn't isn't up to speed.

[Dave Morin]

Ralph is named after a Simpsons character.

[Brit Morin]

Okay? Clawed butt like lobster claws. Not like clawed by anthropic.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, I liked. I liked our editors and the podcast got that wrong. And then everybody in the comments corrected them. It was a classic Internet moment.

[Dave Morin]

They're like, I can't find this.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, the best was just like, it's the classic Internet meme of, like, the best way to get to engage people on the Internet is to, like, give them something to correct. Right. Like, they can't help themselves. You want comments, you just like, spell

[Dave Morin]

Claude bottle everything wrong.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, we should get some comments. That raises engagement. That's all I'm saying.

[Dave Morin]

That's what I learned with this essay that I wrote. Like, everybody, I wrote this essay that's, you know, AI is the new ui. And I basically just spent the last week having everyone correct me. I learned the same lesson. Lesson.

[Sam Lessin]

It's great. It's great that you just have to, like, not care at all. But I will say, Dave, you're m. I actually didn't even see exactly the thread, but I got some, like, notification for some reason about your post and it was like you apologizing or something. Like, this is 2026. We don't apologize for things.

[Dave Morin]

What did I apologize?

[Sam Lessin]

You were like, oh, we'll try to get that right in the future. On sounds like, what are you doing? You're apologizing. Don't apologize.

[Dave Morin]

I think maybe cloudbot was apologizing on my behalf.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, yeah. Dave has many digital twins that can just comment as him.

[Sam Lessin]

I actually think it'd be pretty fun. Maybe I'll have to. That's like a fun, like, vibe coded. Our project is I'm going to make like a website which is like another Sam bot. And all it does is just like, apolog apologize.

[Brit Morin]

Everyone would really know it's not you at that point. Sam.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, please write your grievance. And then it just, like writes an apology so that I don't have to.

[Dave Morin]

It's like, please see Sam Grievance bot.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, it's like, oh, you're mad. Please go to Sam Grievance dot com. It's like, I'm sorry.

[Brit Morin]

No, you have to state the reason

[Dave Morin]

why you're mad, I guess. Brit, my answer to your question about the. My answer to your question about claudebot is I don't even know what to describe this as. Like, it feels like a new thing and I don't. And it's interesting. And the people that haven't tried it, they hear you describe it and then they want to try it. But it's quite technical. To set up and to get it set up in the right way, where it's doing the kind of things I think that we are excitedly talking about on this podcast is not trivial. But once you have it working. It's one of these things where once you experience it, you want this to be the way you're interacting with this stuff all the time. But I'm not totally sure how to describe what exactly the feeling is, is. And I've had a lot of people asking me that over the last week. Sam, I don't know if you have any other better ideas of how to describe this.

[Brit Morin]

Isn't it more like if you were, if you're layman's terms describing it, it's, it's not just like having an agent, it's having like an army of agents that you just can text with on WhatsApp or messaging platform and tell it what you want it to do. And it has access to a bunch of things which we. All we talked about is a big security concern. And by the way, the CEO of Signal came out this week, of course, course, talking about how dangerous all this stuff is and encryption, blah, blah, blah. Of course. I know, I know. But it is the like hypey thing right now happening at the inner, inner, inner circle of Silicon Valley thinkers. So I think it's important that people know about it.

[Sam Lessin]

It's super dangerous. There's no question. It's. I mean, he's not.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I think that agentic is agents and agentic is a misnomer. I don't think that it's the right way to describe what these things are. And I actually think that's one of the reasons why it's so hard to describe what it is. Like it's not what everyone's talking about. There's like a hundred essays per week right now about agentic, this, agent that agent, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like all that anybody's talking about and it's not what this thing is. It's like you're giving. I don't even know, it's like computer version of AI or like it's like personal AI or something like that where you have this, this ability to interact with the, with your entire computer using it. That's why, Sam, your first reaction to it was so this security question. But the trade off is great power, right? And I think that's what's got people doing it. Even though, yeah, it is scary. It's like very clear to me actually that this is the direction that Apple should go. I think is maybe the thing that I've been thinking about a lot, which is to say that it's surprising to me that they haven't been thinking this way or maybe they are behind the scenes. I don't know. But the notion that you can just make your computer do whatever you want that, you know, the computer can do if you were sitting in front of it and you can do that via text message or voice or whatever is, like a really powerful thing that is far beyond the way that you can interact with these things in a web browser tab.

[Brit Morin]

Well, that's a good and interesting segue because I also. I too, don't know if Apple's working on it down to, like, the computer level, but they did. There was a big information scoop today. I've got to honor. I've got to honor Jeff, while she's not here, that they are developing. Drumroll, please. An AI wearable pen. It's our favorite topic. And by the way, if we go back to our 2026 predictions, which of the four of us on more or less said we would all be wearing a wearable thing in the next year? That was me. Okay. So.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, but Brit, you've got one key problem, which is we're not going to be.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Brit Morin]

Well, we're developing them.

[Dave Morin]

Nobody wants a wearable pin.

[Brit Morin]

20 million units at launch, you guys. It features two cameras, a speaker, microphones, and wireless charging. It is about the size of an airtag. They are trying, you know, to advance this very quickly to compete more effectively with OpenAI and Meta and tie it into the AI assistant and smart glasses markets, blah, blah, blah.

[Dave Morin]

I'm confused.

[Brit Morin]

And, you know, this is becoming a thing.

[Dave Morin]

Look, the market already rejected this. Why? Why are we doing it again?

[Brit Morin]

I don't think they did. I think this is where everyone's going. I think if. I'm guessing the strategy meetings at the top are saying, like, gone are the days of these phones with glass on them. We will therefore have a wearable circular device that's recording everything we're doing both visually and via audio in our days that we can talk to probably some AirPods or something in our ears and something in our eyes, and we will be, like, fully transformed into digital humans because of this.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know.

[Brit Morin]

Agree, disagree. Are the phones dead? Are we all going to be using wearables and glasses?

[Sam Lessin]

I think the phone format is getting tired, but it's also, I don't think, going anywhere. And I think that there's no new information here. Like, people have been having these.

[Brit Morin]

I disagree. I disagree. I think we're going to have one of these in our.

[Sam Lessin]

Do you think there's any new here?

[Brit Morin]

Yeah.

[Sam Lessin]

What's new?

[Brit Morin]

Well, the fact that, well, it's not new, but Apple doing it is new.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know, Brit, like, it's just taking the watch form factor and putting it in another, in another form factor.

[Sam Lessin]

It's up, sticking, it's sticking your. It's a pocket watch.

[Brit Morin]

No, but it's an always on pen. It's listening, it's able to talk to you, it has cameras, it's different than a watch in that regard. And I truly believe that they're looking at this as like, what is the thing after phones and is it like a wearable and something on your eyes and maybe your ears?

[Dave Morin]

I have a totally different take on this stuff, which is, is that, you know, Brit, you'll, you'll remember this, but when we first started Offline Ventures, one of our first pitch decks, we talked about this idea that there is a Cambrian, we're at a Cambrian moment in computing, and that the amount of compute that is surrounding all of us, whether that's the phone on, you know, the phone in your pocket or the AirPods in your ears or the, you know, watch on your wrist, there's like more power in a single AirPod than the entire Apollo mission. And that it's like we've assembled an orchestra of compute, but nobody's written a symphony. And the thing that claudebot has taught me over the last couple of weeks, three weeks, four weeks, however long this has been, is that, you know, you can now reverse engineer basically anything that has compute that's around you, whether it's the Samsung frame on your wall or the mural frames that are showing the photos or my tonal, or these old computers behind me. Like you can very easily now just like tie together APIs put together. You know, it's so interesting to me that you can just reverse engineer an API for something that doesn't have one. You can talk to any API on the Internet really, really easily. You can pull it all together super fast into a totally new interface to do something fun. You know, I made a bunch of just fun things this weekend that would have taken me forever before, but it was just like great fun to just put together a bunch of things. And so is it actually that like individual hardware devices don't matter that much anymore. You can kind of of create these symphony experiences across all of this stuff and even just old stuff that exists. Like watching our son, our oldest son, Ansel, he has been really inspired by Claude code and he started building his own Nintendo games. And we got this little cartridge that's like an eight bit cartridge, you can get them off Amazon that has an SD card in it. And then you can create your own games and load them into your Game Boy. And so I got him one of those new mod retro game boys that Palmer Lucky created, which are awesome.

[Sam Lessin]

They are great, great, big fan.

[Dave Morin]

Now our kids are making their own games for it. Right. Like, that's just wild. And so is that actually the new thing that's going on is it doesn't really matter what the hardware is anymore. It doesn't matter if Johnny Ivan OpenAI makes something fantastical and new with another PCB in it. Right. That talks to some APIs. It's like you can do that to anything now. And you know, that's pretty awesome. And that's a new thing going on.

[Sam Lessin]

I will say so to that. Let me riff on that for a second. If you think thoughts. One is, we've lived in this era right now for a long time, effectively with SaaS like you buy a piece of light, you buy usage of a service within a set of parameters which you don't control and can be changed any way you want. In the future. It can be deprecated, whatever. You own nothing. Right. Like you're just like paying a subscription.

[Dave Morin]

You're lucky they're listening to you.

[Sam Lessin]

You know the world you with Shrink Wrap software used to be. Right. Like closer to you just bought the thing and it's yours. Right. There's open source, which is like you bought. You literally can just do whatever you want with it. And I think in some ways what maybe was happening a little bit is if you believe the cloud bot, whatever future where everything can be scripted and built on top of it remixed and everything becomes open and there are no private APIs anymore. You kind of have to move into a world where like, you think about anything you're buying as an asset that you can do whatever you want with

[Dave Morin]

like a return to Shrink Wrap.

[Sam Lessin]

Sure. Even like a step beyond that, which is it's like a return to Shrink Wrap where like nothing is closed source, if that makes sense. You know what I mean? Like. Like you're just buying like a resource or an asset and then you do whatever you want with it. And like it's actually interesting because if you think about the move for the last many years has been the opposite. Like John Deere, for instance. Like, people got really mad because they were doing stuff like, we're giving you a tractor, we're selling you, but we're locking it down so much and all the pieces around it. You can't do Anything but come back to us for service. So we'll basically give you the hardware for free and then you pay us and we control your usage of it.

[Dave Morin]

Right.

[Sam Lessin]

And if you believe the Claude bot,

[Dave Morin]

wasn't that the same thing that happened with Monsanto and farms like they had seeds with certain genetics that you couldn't, you couldn't replicate?

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah. The whole way to make money, right, was like you don't. You give people capabilities and you rent them to them. You never. And you give away the hardware like it doesn't matter. You give away the capabilities and you're just locking people into your ecosystem. I think what might happen with where we're going if everything becomes scriptable and open, you can't lock anything down or whatever is. You kind of just like chain you, you, you revert that entire business model trend and it has to be I'm selling you assets and they're yours because how am I going to stop you from doing whatever you want with them once they're in your right. And so maybe like devices get really expensive or capabilities get really expensive and really open will be one possible future. Right. That we kind of move into because you just can't. Your business models don't work anymore. Right.

[Dave Morin]

It's like there's going to be luxury PCBs, like luxury devices that have like. I mean, I was thinking about this. There's a Nvidia makes a DGX, I think it's called a Spark. It's like a $3,500 machine learning, you know, AI compute thing that you can put into your, your home network stack. And so like, are people just going to, you know, go after interesting configurations of hardware that they can hack themselves?

[Brit Morin]

Okay. Not normal people.

[Dave Morin]

The return of Dell, I don't know

[Sam Lessin]

how you differentiate enough. People like to say that like SaaS was like the best business model ever. Right? Because like, you know, and like we can argue about that being true anymore or whatever and like, you know, et cetera. But there was a period where that,

[Dave Morin]

I mean, infinite margin, you know, no marginal cost of replication. Best business model ever, right?

[Sam Lessin]

To a point. I mean it depends on like, I mean it's also like how you calculate it and like whether you think like the LT is infinity and like all like. Sure, sure, sure. There was certainly an in vogue moment there. But a lot of that was if you think about it, like culture, business models, they, they're downstream of technology. Like everything is downstream of technology. Technology sets the table and then everyone figures out, given the new technical state like how to negotiate the world and what to do with it. And so much of business culture has been downstream of the Internet, right, And like, what you can do with it and how it works and what's and what isn't and what you have to give up for the last many years. And like now it's like, again, if you really believe that we're all going to have agents locally and like, there's no way to lock down any application, any service, any capability available to your eyes, right? It's all copyable, it's all scriptable. There's no lock in on anything. People just have to change the business models dramatically to do anything, right, is what it comes down to.

[Brit Morin]

Which companies therefore, do you think are like, most at risk in that future?

[Sam Lessin]

I think it's anyone who's been. I think it's just anyone who's been selling you a monthly set of capabilities, basically, right?

[Dave Morin]

Like, or the ones that are like loosely locked behind APIs that are easy

[Brit Morin]

to figure out, like tonal or mural or these things.

[Dave Morin]

No, I mean, no, tonal. Tonal's fine. Like it's, you know, it's a pretty sophisticated robot that you depend on the actual mechanical hardware to get the strength training workout that you want to do do, right?

[Sam Lessin]

Kind of. But Dave, just to push you on that, it's like, okay, let's take wearables for a second. I would argue that Whoop has been shockingly durable as a business and successful. Why? Why? Because you're like, well, you're selling me this fitness band thing that's like, not that good a business, right?

[Dave Morin]

Like, you don't have a whoop, do you?

[Sam Lessin]

No, I have a Garmin. But like, you saw me, this fitness

[Dave Morin]

bandy thing, I need an update on your Garmin hacking.

[Sam Lessin]

The reason that it's a good business is because they're like, I'm going to charge you a ton of money, money every month for a subscription. And the only reason they've survived, right, they've thrived is because they make so much money on the subscription. And rich people are like, that doesn't really matter that much. Like, why is my dad. Why does eight Sleep have a subscription? Right? Why? Everything?

[Brit Morin]

Everything that's hardware has a subscription, but

[Sam Lessin]

that's because it's a better business model. Here's the problem. When my eight Sleep, all of a sudden I'm like, I can just make my own interface for it. All of a sudden the device has to cost a lot more money or something has to change because, like, it doesn't make any sense. Like it's not fundamental to the hardware that I'm paying. Why am I paying a subscription for my bed? I'm paying a subscription for my bed because they can't actually make the business work selling the thing for a thousand bucks. And people value the subscription durability and like candidly I end up paying 10 times more than that on a subscription basis. But like the something has to change

[Dave Morin]

kind of what Apple's done, right? Like the Apple, the iPhone is basically a subscription, right? Like you upgrade it, they even will charge you for it as such. Such these days, right? Like you can. There's a variety of different financing models and so Apple might actually tell us something about the future here, which is that if you can combine hardware of a certain quality with like the software package that people want, then you can

[Sam Lessin]

and it has to keep getting better. Like the reason, what does Apple really sell? They sell two things, right? They sell your battery because it degrades, right? And they sell you a camera that keeps getting better. Everything else is actually like no one upgrades for that anything else. Like the only two reasons people upgrade is for like a clearer camera.

[Dave Morin]

I think people maybe marginally up upgrade for the chip. I think the chip plus the camera marginally.

[Sam Lessin]

But like I just, I think super margin. The problem is like the eight sleep 6.0 versus 5.0 versus whatever.0. Or like almost no hardware has that thing if that makes sense. You just don't need to upgrade it that much which then just means it to needs needs to be ten times more expensive. If you can't support a subscription business which you can no longer support. Because it makes no sense, right? Like it only made sense.

[Brit Morin]

But why, why can't 8 sleep just block you from hacking into their software?

[Sam Lessin]

It's just a game of chicken. It's just a game of chicken. Like if, if you. I don't know how, like if they're going to have APIs for their own software then like someone's going to reverse engineer it. It's going to be too easy and like it's too hard to stop anyway. It's like one thing. If like a company is doing it, like the eight Sleep hacked version, like that's pretty difficult. Whatever. If CL bought locally, you can just do it for your own hardware all the time. It's just like an interesting configuration and I just, I think a lot of people are like, well I'm not going to pay you whatever it is, I don't even know what it costs. But like way too much per month.

[Brit Morin]

Peloton is like 50 bucks a month for my subscription.

[Sam Lessin]

Take the peloton thing. It's like Peloton not the greatest stock in the history of the world. If you were just selling a bike, the bike isn't that expensive. Right. If there was no subscription revenue associated with it. Because I can put whatever content I want on it. And by the way, it can all be whatever generated. It's like, I don't know why you'd pay for it. Right, right.

[Brit Morin]

If I could just hack the screen and like play my YouTube Live or YouTube TV, I would just do that every time.

[Dave Morin]

Here's a good counterexample. Tesla actually announced, I think last week that they are switching the autopilot to a subscription starting next month or the month after. So they were selling it as a, as an asset. Right. Like you bought it for something like, I don't know what the price has been for the last couple years. $10,000. It's 99amonth now, but they're switching to $99 a month. So what are you buying for 99? Do a month with Autopilot, you're, you're basically buying the research stream, right? That like the data being produced by a million miles a day being driven, plus the inference research is going to, you know, continue getting better. Like that's basically what you're buying.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, no, what you're buying is Elon probably realized he doesn't need the cash anymore up front or can finance it otherwise. Right. And it's strictly a better business model to like charge people continuously than charge them once.

[Dave Morin]

But it's the opposite direction of what you're suggesting.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, I agree. I, and I do wonder though, like,

[Dave Morin]

I guess I'm looking at it as a counterfactual, like what businesses can go that direction, not the other direction.

[Sam Lessin]

The thing there is like, like if, if someone came out with a competitive model that could run on the Tesla, right. Like then that would be a problem. I think the problem is, I don't. I think Tesla will play that game. And like, I think people on, on the margin. It's interesting. I feel like with driving, what you're really buying is I'm not going to die. Insurance.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, Safety.

[Sam Lessin]

Right.

[Dave Morin]

That's what I mean by research. Like you're buying that, like the research is getting better and therefore you're buying

[Sam Lessin]

that you're not going to die at a higher rate than the. You just the same rate. But it will be funny.

[Brit Morin]

It's like, all right, I Want to. I want to. We only have a little bit left. But I. I would be remiss not to talk about the thing Jess begged us to talk about. I don't know why.

[Dave Morin]

Which is what?

[Brit Morin]

Sauna Bros. Sauna Bros. Oh, is this

[Dave Morin]

the, Is this the, like, awful New York Times article? Correct.

[Brit Morin]

There's a New York Times article that was published in the last week that is titled the Europeans have said some notes about American Sauna Culture. Don't get them started on the bathing suits or the dancing tldr. This article is saying we're a bunch of.

[Dave Morin]

We're a bunch of puritan prudes.

[Brit Morin]

Well, A, we're prudes, but B, we're like just trying to use the sauna to like hack our way to wellness. And like, we're measuring our heat and our time and we're doing all this like Brian Johnson stuff about our sauna instead of just like relaxing in the sauna like we used to do at bath houses and having leisure time. And so these Europeans are concerned about us and they're baffled by our behavior and worried that we're like warping this millennia old tradition of sauna. And they're specifically calling out the sauna Bros in this article.

[Sam Lessin]

Are they calling it cultural appropriation? Because that would be great. Perhaps it's like, because I appropriate the shit out of your con. So your sonic culture.

[Dave Morin]

Why does the New York Times want to moralize and shame Americans for doing the most healthy thing you can possibly do for your cardiovascular, mental, and metabolic health? That's like the real question.

[Sam Lessin]

Because the reporters hate fun and capitalism.

[Brit Morin]

I think the point of what they're saying is we're overthinking it though.

[Dave Morin]

No, but of course Americans are going to be individualists about it and compete about it it and try to be the best at it. That's what we do. But like, people have been trying to popularize sauna for like, I don't know, 50 years in America, and it's finally happening thanks to like Andrew Huberman and Brian Johnson getting the actual word out there scientifically of how healthy it is. And it's like, who cares?

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, why is the new test want to do this? Because we're fucking talking about it. It's like, that's why it's a Gigi Quan. You know this.

[Dave Morin]

I know.

[Brit Morin]

So is this just the New York Times being the New York Times or is this like anything that anyone should care about?

[Dave Morin]

They're just so down on everything lately. I don't know. I used to Be an avid New York Times reader. And it's just like this stuff bothers me.

[Sam Lessin]

What did you want them to write? Like saunas are awesome.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. Like how exciting is this? This thing that's extremely good for your health is like spreading across America. More people should try it.

[Sam Lessin]

Someone should write. You know what they should do to be a really fun article? They should calculate. Calculate the energy cost of sauna bro and then complain about it. Like the sauna bros are melting the planet.

[Brit Morin]

Sam, you should make some sauna bro swag. I feel like you could get a lot of guys in your fan club and maybe some girls too. That could be cool. Do you have any new T shirts this week by the way? Sam? Any new things to show us under these two?

[Sam Lessin]

You know what I have for you?

[Dave Morin]

What happened to that T shirt you were going to show last week? I don't think it happened.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't think you ever unveiled the show. And I was wearing it. This is my shirt for next year's WTF conference. My wife's women in Tech and finance conference. I'm going to show it to you.

[Dave Morin]

You can tell me what you're going to protest.

[Sam Lessin]

Look at this. Can you see it?

[Dave Morin]

No queens.

[Brit Morin]

What Sam is holding up is a T shirt that was clearly made by AI that says no queens. Down with the matriarchy. And it's a bunch of mostly dudes. But I see one sort of.

[Dave Morin]

It seems like there's a woman in front there.

[Sam Lessin]

You forgot the most important. Equality for all. And we're going to wear it outside the WTF conference.

[Dave Morin]

Conference.

[Brit Morin]

All right.

[Sam Lessin]

The men who are not allowed salmon.

[Brit Morin]

Sam and Dave would like to banish women only conferences.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, or have men only conferences. Either is fine.

[Brit Morin]

We already have those Sana bros. Every trip that the guys all do together

[Sam Lessin]

where it's only bros. We always invite the women. The women don't come.

[Brit Morin]

You just don't title at a conference. I don't know if you always invite the women. Let's begin fair.

[Sam Lessin]

I.

[Dave Morin]

We do. What are you talking about?

[Brit Morin]

You two are better than others. But they're definitely bro events where women do not get invited.

[Dave Morin]

Oh God. We're not back to this again.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't know why the women don't want to come learn how to shoot long range sniper rifles like I do. I invite.

[Brit Morin]

Actually I have a trip coming up. I'm really good at shooting, but have

[Sam Lessin]

you done thousand meter shots Shots. Because that's what we're working on.

[Dave Morin]

Come on, Sam, let's go.

[Brit Morin]

I've Shot rifles and pistols.

[Sam Lessin]

No, I know. This is different. We're learning. We're learning long range, thousand meter shooting.

[Brit Morin]

I don't really understand what it means, but I'm in. And I like Montana and we go there so.

[Sam Lessin]

Great. I'll send you the link. That's the next boys trip that you're more than welcome to. Come on.

[Brit Morin]

Am I the only girl that's coming?

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah. Well, right now it's just you and me.

[Dave Morin]

I want to go. Great.

[Sam Lessin]

I'll send you the.

[Brit Morin]

Maybe we should get our spouses involved.

[Dave Morin]

Especially if it's in Montana.

[Sam Lessin]

These engineers have invented a new gun that can shoot a thousand meters out of the box. Sounds awesome. So we're gonna go check it out.

[Dave Morin]

That's fun.

[Brit Morin]

This is just the type of stuff, too that I think we should be doing with our networking and our time and not like these conference dinner things and boring events that everyone else is hosting. So let's do. Let's do that. I'm in. Okay. Anything else on everyone's radar going on in the world right now? Apparently we aren't tariffing Greenland anymore or doing any weird stuff.

[Dave Morin]

49ers.

[Sam Lessin]

49ers lost.

[Dave Morin]

So sad.

[Sam Lessin]

Are you guys going to the Super Bowl?

[Dave Morin]

No, I don't think so. Not now that the 49ers aren't. I mean, I don't know.

[Sam Lessin]

I'm going. I figure I'm not. I'm never going to travel anywhere for the Super Bowl.

[Brit Morin]

You aren't even a football person, Sam. Do you know how football is played?

[Sam Lessin]

No, but it's like so close.

[Dave Morin]

It's like you know what the rules are.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah. You hit the man and you put them down.

[Brit Morin]

It's just violent. Chess.

[Sam Lessin]

No, I will say I actually read recently. No, I didn't read. Let's not be too serious. Serious on an airplane. This is the opposite of reading. I watched. I'm forgetting where my media comes from. The Jim Thorpe documentary or one of them. What a guy. Amazing. But one of the most fascinating facts from it was in the 1920s when he was playing collegiate football. Wild era. People love football. It was all about college football. Here's a fun fact for you. The year he started playing college football, how many college kids do you think died playing college regulated college football in one year?

[Brit Morin]

What year was that?

[Sam Lessin]

It was like 19, 20 something.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, died 1022.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know what.

[Brit Morin]

That's a lot of death.

[Sam Lessin]

Can you imagine if like 3 college football players died in the. People would lose their shit. Like 22 people like getting hit.

[Dave Morin]

It was really dangerous. Like, we've come a long way. Actually.

[Brit Morin]

They had no pads and helmets. Were they not wearing anything?

[Sam Lessin]

It was considered ungentlemanly to pass.

[Dave Morin]

Pass.

[Brit Morin]

It's like gladiator. It was like the Gladiators in that

[Sam Lessin]

era, like, passing was looked down upon as, like, stupid.

[Brit Morin]

It was rugby. You just hit people.

[Sam Lessin]

It wasn't rugby, it was football. But it was like a derivative. It's just like a wild fact. Could you imagine, like 22 year old 18s they called up meeting in the White House. They're like, everyone loves this game, but you have to stop killing so many people.

[Brit Morin]

And today we don't kill as many people, but we definitely mess up their brains quite a bit, which is why our children will never play football.

[Sam Lessin]

It's okay. They don't need them anymore because of chat GPT.

[Brit Morin]

That's fair. And we're all gonna have neuralink and wearables. So we're good. Yeah, it's all good.

[Dave Morin]

But Sam's going to the Super Bowl. I don't know, man. Maybe I'll go, maybe I won't. I might go skiing.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh, we're going skiing too.

[Brit Morin]

You'll figure it out how to do that. All right, well, with that, let me do the exit. Sam, we have to thank our listeners our back check channel, all the people who, like, subscribe, comment, especially when we spell things like claudebot the wrong way and give us more ideas on the things that they're hearing and seeing in the inner circles of Silicon Valley. Jess, we miss you. And for all of you, Jess, especially, we will be back here next week for another episode of More or less. Goodbye.

[Sam Lessin]

Bye.

[Dave Morin]

See you guys later.

[Brit Morin]

If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and review viewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. Find more information about each episode in the show notes and follow us on social media by searching for more or less Avemorin, Essonlesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.