Paramount vs Netflix: Who Really Wins Warner Bros And What's Next?

Summary

Podcast Summary: More or Less

Episode: Paramount vs Netflix: Who Really Wins Warner Bros And What's Next?

Hosts: Dave Morin, Jessica Lessin, Brit Morin, Sam Lessin
Date: December 12, 2025

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Overview

This episode dives deep into the unfolding bidding war over Warner Bros, pitting Paramount, led by David Ellison and politically backed by Middle Eastern investment (notably Jared Kushner), against Netflix. The hosts unpack implications for the streaming and theatrical film industry, analyze the business and cultural ramifications, and wander into discussions on media consolidation, technology infrastructure, and market bubbles. True to the show’s playful and irreverent style, diversions abound: health fads, airplane wifi, self-driving cars, and the business of narratives in tech.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Warner Bros Bidding War: Paramount vs Netflix

• Market Context: As of recording, betting markets put Netflix and Paramount at nearly even odds to acquire Warner Bros (05:32).
• Recent Bids & Backlash: Netflix’s $70-80B offer shook the market; Paramount (with Ellison, CBS acquisition, and Kushner’s influence) countered with more, creating political backlash due to its Trump admin connections (06:05–07:16).
• Shareholder Reaction:
  • Netflix's bid is controversial; it would be ~20% of their market cap (07:34).
  • Sam Lessin: “It's just math. You're going to make the revenue grow less quickly... if you buy a legacy media asset, it's going to fuck your growth rate.” (07:45)
  • Hollywood as a distraction engine—no clear winner, likely years of posturing and legal fights (11:21).
• Theoretical Impact:
  • Heavy focus on the end of theatrical releases if Netflix buys Warner Bros (08:31-09:11).
  • Paramount pitches itself as preserving movie theaters and the “immersive group experience” (09:11–09:40).
  • Debate over whether the cultural love affair with movie-going is actually dead.
• Echoes of AOL/Time Warner:
  • Sam Lessin draws a parallel to the notorious AOL/Time Warner deal, but inverse: now a “real” digital company buys a distressed legacy media asset (10:11-11:19).
• Geopolitical Angle:
  • KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) and Middle Eastern money are driving Paramount’s push to turn itself into a media powerhouse (13:05–13:58).
  • Jessica Lessin: “We don't want the Middle East to have CNN” (12:51).

2. Media Consolidation & Streaming Wars

• Shrinking Landscape: Disney, Paramount, and Netflix are now the dominant streaming powers; consolidation reigns. Docuseries (Taylor Swift!) play a big role in the new content war (15:03–15:28).
• Bundles Reborn:
  • Joke: “Bundle, unbundle, bundle, unbundle. It’s the most boring business.” (Dave Morin, 18:53)
  • YouTube launches “skinny bundles” (17:02), signaling the inevitable return to pay TV cable logic.
  • Sam Lessin: "You always become the thing you set out to kill." (17:41)

3. Consumer Impact & Experience

• Subscription Fatigue & the Return of Bundles: Fewer services might be good for consumers, but Sam Lessin points out that prices won’t drop—just the packaging will change (16:49–16:57).
• Sports Streaming: Dave Morin praises YouTube TV for its simplicity but notes major user experience flaws when traveling (19:22–20:14).
• Starlink WiFi on Planes: Starlink-supported flights and the implications for our always-connected world (20:31–22:26).
  • Sam Lessin: “Once the Internet is too good on airplanes, you can no longer do anything other than work on airplanes.” (21:30)
  • Predictions of airlines catering to passengers who crave digital disconnection.

4. Self-Driving Cars: Zoox vs. Waymo

• Product Experience: Brit and Dave Morin rave about Zoox in Vegas, stating its social interior beats Waymo (23:49–24:50).
• Changing Use-Cases: The crew jokes about future use cases: mobile offices, meeting rooms, even adding printers to autonomous vehicles (25:19–26:07).

5. Space, Data Centers, and the AI Narrative

• “Data centers in space” as latest hype: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos' visions for satellites with solar panels powering AI—interpreted mostly as IPO/valuation fuel (27:05–29:01).
• Pivot Narrative:
  • Sam Lessin details how companies are now experts at pivoting their narratives to match the current hype (31:26–33:05).
  • “The speed of pivoting... has gotten way faster. And narrative is everything.” (31:39)
• AI, Energy, & Meme Markets: Growing debate—are AI’s energy demands a real constraint or manufactured? The “narrative machine” (the internet) now dictates resource allocation as much as capitalism’s “dollar engine.” (34:23–35:17)
• The Art of Tech Narratives:
  • “Story begets primary capital begets more story... and it’s a flywheel, but a lot of it’s story driven.” (Sam Lessin, 36:52)
  • Winners build a “narrative expansion multiple,” getting more trust and capital with each success (37:33).
  • Hosts lament lack of women in this art of “narrative selling”—straight lying gets you Theranos, not Tesla (38:30–39:02).

6. China, Chips, Journalism, and “Fake News”

• Nvidia & China: Jessi Hempel recounts getting CNBC to correct a headline misrepresenting her reporting about Nvidia chips smuggled into China—a rare win for journalism standards (40:25–44:15).
• China’s AI Focus: China discusses AI in practical, citizen-benefiting terms, versus the West’s focus on tech arms races (44:48–45:52).
• Rising AI Backlash: Growing opposition from both politicians and the public, tied to energy prices, water, and mental health impacts (47:13–47:44).
• Parallels with Social Media: The group compares today’s AI panic to 2010s anxiety about Facebook and Twitter—regulation lags far behind mass adoption and cultural damage (48:31–49:20).

7. Bubble Watch: Billboard & IPO Mania

• Bay Area Billboards as Leading Indicators:
  • Sam Lessin proposes a “billboard bubble” index for Silicon Valley: more unreadable, company-for-companies AI ads = deeper bubble (51:08–52:23).
  • “You always become the thing you set out to kill.” (17:41)
• Upcoming IPOs: Group forecasts a wave of giant public debuts: SpaceX, OpenAI, Anduril, Anthropic, possibly ByteDance (54:15–55:07).
• Macroeconomic Worries:
  • US debt crisis, AI as the only economic driver preventing a recession, and the hope that an IPO boom can maintain momentum (55:08–56:21).
• Zeitgeist, Narrative, and Sorkin's Book:
  • Discussion about how zeitgeist books like Sorkin’s latest (on the 1929 crash) can shape investor sentiment (57:07–59:02).
  • “It just happens to hit at the exact right time for what the conversation about the conversation is right now.” (Dave Morin, 59:33)

8. Pop Culture, Influencer Economy, and Fan Pages

• Brit Morin gets followed by “Swifties for Eternity”; crew ponders the business of manufacturing and managing fan pages (61:23–61:57).
• Playful musings on fame, influencer culture, and the next generation of media manipulation (62:05–62:12).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Legacy Media Math:
  Sam Lessin: “You're going to make the revenue grow less quickly... if you buy a legacy media asset, it's going to fuck your growth rate.” (07:45)

• On Narrative in Tech:
  Sam Lessin: “The speed of pivoting... has gotten way faster. And narrative is everything.” (31:39)

• Bubble Indicators:
  Sam Lessin: “I just think we’re like tending into this zone where you’re not even selling B2B companies, it’s B2B 2B Cloud sub blah blahs.” (52:09)

• Consolidation Fatigue:
  Dave Morin: “This is all so boring. ...are we bundling or unbundling?... most boring business.” (18:53)

• On Trust & Hype:
  Sam Lessin: “You need infinite TAM, right? Like, story must be huge. Then there's... a trust multiplier on the narrative.” (37:33)

• On the Rise of Narrative Markets:
  Sam Lessin: “We now have a narrative machine in the Internet which produces a different signal... It's not a market; it's an attention market.” (34:23)

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Key Timestamps for Segments

• Warner Bros bidding context, Netflix vs. Paramount odds: 05:32–07:16
• AOL/Time Warner deal as analogy: 10:11–11:19
• Geopolitics and KSA/Paramount: 13:05–13:58
• Bundles, YouTube TV, and the return of cable: 17:02–18:53
• AI, energy, and narrative markets: 27:05–35:17
• Nvidia, China, and journalism on chip smuggling: 40:25–44:15
• AI resistance: energy, jobs, mental health: 47:13–49:20
• SV bubble indicators and billboards: 51:08–55:07
• Sorkin’s 1929 finance book & market narrative: 57:07–59:02
• Pop culture and fan economy: 61:23–62:12

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Personality & Tone

The episode maintains the group’s trademark irreverence and spontaneity—bouncing between serious analysis and cultural satire. There’s a healthy mix of sharp business critique, tech industry in-jokes, and playful tangents about personal health fads, air travel, and influencer economics. The hosts push back on each other, bringing a “bullshit-detecting” spirit to even the biggest industry narratives.

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For Listeners: Why This Episode Matters

Even if you’ve missed the Warner Bros drama, this episode is a primer on how tech and narrative economics increasingly power the business (and culture) of media, AI, and beyond. The hosts’ broad range—media mergers, bundles, tech hype cycles, self-driving cars, and internet-driven narrative markets—captures the current mood (and tensions) of Silicon Valley as we near the end of 2025.

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Next week: Predictions for 2026, with a review of last year’s boldest calls.

Transcript

[Brit Morin]

We should go around and do our vote of who gets the assets, Netflix or Paramount.

[Sam Lessin]

I just think these people are all so. They're so sad. They haven't been in a media news cycle in a while. It's all been Trump or AI. They're like, we need a news cycle. Like, we need to be like, relevant.

[Jessi Hempel]

David Ellison has been in the news. Second of all, David Ellison is the scion of Oracle. I see some irony here.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, he's jealous of his dad. Or less.

[Jessi Hempel]

Is he? No. Or is it yes. We'll debate the text. That's best when we get more or less Dave and grip.

[Brit Morin]

No salmon jest.

[Jessi Hempel]

Put it all right to the test.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, I'm here.

[Jessi Hempel]

Sam's here. Welcome everybody to this week's more or less.

[Sam Lessin]

For now, I don't have anything to eat. I'm just go get something to eat. I'm so hungry.

[Jessi Hempel]

You don't have yaso stacked just behind you? What's going on?

[Sam Lessin]

I've like eaten them all.

[Dave Morin]

Sam, we need you to have energy, man.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't know. I think you guys can carry this one. I'll just, you know, scroll the Internet and buy things. What do you got?

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, folks, it's December. The year is not yet over. The news is flying. How's everyone doing? How's everyone holding up? Who's got a flu like symptoms, raise your hand. That would be me.

[Brit Morin]

Our household has flu symptoms. Dave and I are waiting for it. We're waiting for it to hit us.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I don't have it yet, but

[Brit Morin]

the offline holiday party's tomorrow and we can't be sick.

[Sam Lessin]

You'll be fine. Just pound emergency. I was running a call last week. But the key is just like, you know, like. Like as much emergency as your body can handle and you'll blow right through it.

[Brit Morin]

Have you guys seen those nasal sprays that actually prevent you from inhaling all of the bad germs and things like Covid? Actually, Alex Roche sent out an email about this.

[Dave Morin]

Does this actually work?

[Jessi Hempel]

Wait, tell me more.

[Sam Lessin]

Now you know about this? Jess, we have a mutual friend who was very into this during COVID Sorry, what is it? A nasal spray to stop you from getting Covid. You don't remember this whole series?

[Jessi Hempel]

Oh, yeah, that's old news. That is old news.

[Brit Morin]

Wait, are we not into this? Does it not work? Wait, I have it right here. It's called Profi. Profi P R O F I more or less.

[Dave Morin]

Brought to you by Profi.

[Brit Morin]

Helps block and remove airborne contaminants. For up to eight hours. Guys, I'm shooting up right now. I'm not getting sick. I got 24 hours to go.

[Jessi Hempel]

That's preventative.

[Brit Morin]

This is preventative. You're supposed to take it, like when you get on the airplane and when you're around sick people.

[Sam Lessin]

You know what that is, Brit? That's subsidized by the Colombians. They want you to get used to sticking things up your nose.

[Jessi Hempel]

That's not funny.

[Brit Morin]

Actually, One of our LPs told me about this. I'm trusting them to tell me that it's real.

[Sam Lessin]

It's a loss leader for using a different set of holes in your face.

[Brit Morin]

I'm going to do a double spray, actually, just to be safe.

[Dave Morin]

Exactly, Sam, none of those drugs are getting to America anymore.

[Sam Lessin]

I mean, if they start blowing up boats carrying that shit, you know, like, that'd be pretty funny.

[Dave Morin]

Isn't that what they are blowing up the boats carrying the nasal spray?

[Sam Lessin]

No.

[Jessi Hempel]

Oh, my God. Do we have to talk about blown up boats? Let's not. Let's not. Okay, so everyone gets their health. Tip of the week, Brits, is that everything has failed me this time. The emergency, the electrolytes, the. The zinc, the red light, everything's failed me. So I have nothing. Those are. Those are my go tos.

[Dave Morin]

What about sauna?

[Jessi Hempel]

The sauna dehydrates me.

[Sam Lessin]

I've saunaed twice today already.

[Jessi Hempel]

I'd like the record to show it is solidly midday. It is solidly midday at the taping of this podcast. Okay, so consider that I also hot

[Sam Lessin]

tubbed and cold plunged and worked out.

[Brit Morin]

And red light therapy.

[Sam Lessin]

No, I found time for red light. Problem with red light is you can't really do conference calls while you do that.

[Jessi Hempel]

No. Because you're supposed to be naked.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, Audio only.

[Sam Lessin]

You gotta be real careful with that. Do not turn on the. The camera button.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, that's a. That's an HR lawsuit waiting to happen.

[Sam Lessin]

For people like me, what I really want is them to release a version of Zune with like, no camera. Because it's so fucking dangerous. Right? Like, I'm like terrified of like the hot tub, you know, Turn on camera button.

[Brit Morin]

You're one of few people who has this concern, Sam.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like the platinum edition of Zoom just has no camera. Because it's like you can't. It's too dangerous.

[Brit Morin]

Guys, I was. We were at a hotel this weekend and I was on the treadmill, and there was a guy on the treadmill next to me who was on a video Chat with someone. And this woman was naked. She was full naked. Like, I saw.

[Dave Morin]

What, her?

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah.

[Brit Morin]

And he's on the treadmill next to me, just casually talking to her. And she's just.

[Sam Lessin]

I'm not gonna lie. That's amazing.

[Brit Morin]

She wasn't sexually naked. She wasn't doing, like, sexual things, but she was just like.

[Dave Morin]

How do you know?

[Brit Morin]

Because I was looking at it while I was running on the treadmill.

[Sam Lessin]

Maybe he has a fetish for that stuff. It's just like.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, that's wild.

[Brit Morin]

What is going on? He wasn't even hiding it. He put it in the phone holder on the treadmill. It was interesting anyway, but we were in Vegas, so maybe that was. I don't know. Maybe there's some tie there. I don't know really what was happening.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, any other health tips? Health corner. We gotta. I gotta tell her. We're talking about Netflix, Paramount, Warner Brothers. Guys, we're this tech podcast. I'm pulling you over to the media side.

[Brit Morin]

We have media people here.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, we talk media.

[Sam Lessin]

I'm happy to bullshit about anything. No knowledge required. What are these things? Let's talk about it.

[Dave Morin]

Okay.

[Jessi Hempel]

No one's got more health. That's fine. We. We'll all just survive. Okay. So as of an hour ago, Polymarket put the odds that either Netflix buys Warner Brothers home to hbo, among other things, or that Paramount, with David Ellison, buys it each at 48%, according to Poly Markets. So I think everyone probably knows Warner Brothers has been for sale for some time. All or pieces of it. There's a difference whether CNN plus some other stuff goes Netflix.

[Sam Lessin]

Does anyone want cnn? No one wants cnn? Who wants cnn? CNN is free. You have to, like, pay someone to take a cnn.

[Jessi Hempel]

Well, if you're David Ellison and you think that the idea of you controlling CNN will be something that the Trump administration will look favorably on, maybe you do want cnn. But basically, the quick recap here is Netflix made a move, some $80 billion bid, which is kind of wilder, wild and crazy. Ellison countered, having recently bought CBS with an even bigger bid for the whole company. But then there was a little bit of a backlash. And the. The idea that Paramount is so cozy with the Trump administration. Jared Kushner was one of the backers of the Paramount bid, and now there's a little bit of a backlash. And so now we're kind of at even odds, according to the Polymarket. Well, the backlash was against Paramount. So the. The thinking was that this would be Ellison's to lose because the Trump administration would be Friendly to it. It's more money, yada yada. But Netflix isn't really backing down. And I think Paramount probably still ends up with. It would be my bet at this point, but. But it's pretty.

[Dave Morin]

You think Paramount's going to end up with it?

[Jessi Hempel]

Well, but it's pretty close. It's pretty close.

[Sam Lessin]

Why did Netflix announce this big. Is it down like 20% in the last month? Is it just. Is that just like, how much of the cost of this deal is just the driving people. The Netflix stock price?

[Jessi Hempel]

Well, well, Netflix shareholders are not happy about this.

[Dave Morin]

Well, because Netflix, it's like, what, it's 20%. It's like 20% of their market cap.

[Brit Morin]

It's buying a content library. Not necessarily revenue.

[Sam Lessin]

It's just math. You're going to make the revenue grow less quickly. Like, if you're valued on revenue growth and you buy a legacy media asset, it's going to like, fuck your growth rate. Number top line A.

[Jessi Hempel]

The signaling's not great. The we need dying Hollywood studio to keep growing from the young buck innovator. These are the stereotypes. Is not a great.

[Dave Morin]

To be clear, HBO is pretty awesome.

[Sam Lessin]

There's great content. Does it make good? Does it make money?

[Brit Morin]

Just the fact that they have friends matters to me.

[Jessi Hempel]

Shareholders aren't happy because Netflix buying this would be a protracted legal battle. That would distract them as well.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, but on the flip side, it would distract Paramount more and they can't do shit during it. So doesn't it actually help Netflix get ahead?

[Jessi Hempel]

I guess. Netflix only bid 70 billion.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh, just 70.

[Brit Morin]

Well, but isn't part of this also that Netflix. Everyone says if Netflix acquires them, it's also kind of the end of theatrical releases. And Netflix has tried to dispute this, saying, no, of course we'll put things in theaters.

[Jessi Hempel]

The theatrical releases ended.

[Brit Morin]

No, they've totally come back.

[Sam Lessin]

Come back. Please come back.

[Jessi Hempel]

I don't even have to. Gemini the answer from the pandemic guys.

[Brit Morin]

There are films grossing hundreds of millions in revenue. There are films that are doing well in theaters. Well, Paramount's media statement.

[Sam Lessin]

Remember, brit tickets cost $100 a pop. So like 12 people went to that.

[Brit Morin]

No, they don't. For adults. But you got to get, like, the senior discount. So Paramount State making a statement that they should get to own Warner Brothers because they will reserve the right to continue to release the movies in theaters and Netflix won't. And it's like one of their big sticking points in this battle.

[Dave Morin]

Whose sticking point?

[Sam Lessin]

That's not gonna fly with anyone. This Is like America's love affair with cars and movie theaters is over. Guys like owning cars. Like we're just past that shit you're calling cars.

[Brit Morin]

I don't know.

[Sam Lessin]

The muscle car to a movie theater era.

[Brit Morin]

I think the immersive group experience is going to last and endure. It might not be at the same level.

[Jessi Hempel]

Every movie theater I've gone to in the past 12 months, I have been one of four people in what movie

[Dave Morin]

theater are you going to?

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, you're going to bad movies, Jess.

[Sam Lessin]

Clearly one of the other four is me.

[Jessi Hempel]

Yeah. No, Sam, would we go to like San Mateo to see something?

[Sam Lessin]

We did go to one movie in New York. We went to Superman in New York. There was like a half. The theater was full.

[Brit Morin]

We go to the big movies on opening day and they're full.

[Sam Lessin]

To me, here's the interesting story. One of the greatest deals in history was AOL Time Warner for AOL shareholders.

[Jessi Hempel]

I was going to say define great, incredible deal.

[Sam Lessin]

The AOL stock had run up to bejesus dollars, right? They turned around and said, this number is a made up number. But you know what we can do with this? We can go buy Time Warner. And they turned around and bought a super real company that was like a good company at the time, right? For nothing on a relative basis. And bada bing, bada boom, great deal. I mean, it's one of the worst. It was the worst deal in history for the time order people. Was a great deal for aol. I think this is kind of an interesting like echo boom to that, right? Well, now we have the opposite, right? Which is instead of the fake currency company buying the real legacy asset, now we have the real value modern digital company that actually is a good company. Netflix buying the fictitious value of a Legacy Media Library, etc. For inflated price. So I think, look, if you're on the HBO side of this and you're selling, God bless, you should sell. Right? Like I think that'll look like. No question. But it's just an interesting thing where it's. I look at this as an inverse AOL time order.

[Jessi Hempel]

Yes, I think that's right. So what do you think will happen?

[Sam Lessin]

Nothing. It's gonna be like two years of legal fights and Hollywood loves to talk and they love this fight. Like this is I think Hollywood's biggest thing in general. All these people love attention. And so because they just love attention, they're just gonna like, more bids will come in, there'll be more kerfuffle just so they can see their names in Print in, like, the Hollywood Reporter or something for the next three years of arguing and nothing will happen. And, you know, maybe, maybe HBO will change his logo four more times before anything happens.

[Brit Morin]

Its logo or its name. We should go around and do our vote of who gets, gets the assets, Netflix or Paramount?

[Sam Lessin]

I think it's someone else. It's polymarket.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. You can throw in a TikTok. You can throw in a polymarket.

[Brit Morin]

Wait, you think it's neither of them?

[Jessi Hempel]

No, no, I, I, I think Paramount probably wins it in the end.

[Sam Lessin]

I just think these people are all so. They're so sad. They haven't been in a media news cycle in a while. It's all been Trump or AI. They're like, we need a news cycle. Like, we need to be, like, relevant to be fair.

[Jessi Hempel]

David Ellison. So a couple points. David Ellison has been in the news. Second of all, David Ellison is the scion of Oracle, which is the leader, our leader in the AI.

[Brit Morin]

Boom.

[Jessi Hempel]

So I see some irony here.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, he's jealous of his dad.

[Jessi Hempel]

I see some irony here.

[Sam Lessin]

Look, can they still, can he still afford it after Oracle sell off?

[Brit Morin]

Yes, because it's all coming from the Middle East.

[Jessi Hempel]

Jared Kushner's pay.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh, Kushner's backstopping it. Got it.

[Brit Morin]

Kushner in the Middle East. Those are the people buying HBO and Warner Brothers.

[Jessi Hempel]

Yeah. Which we don't want the Chinese to have TikTok, although we actually seem to not really care about that, as turns out. But we don't want the Middle east to have C at head.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, what do we do? We care about anything anymore? I don't think we care about anything.

[Dave Morin]

From what I understand, the KSA strategy here is to run the Japan in the 80s, K pop in the 90s, 2000s strategy, and to try to establish itself as a media powerhouse over the next decade. If the group that wants it most wins, it's probably the Paramount consortium.

[Sam Lessin]

The most committed wins.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, like, they're probably the most committed. It's like a nice thing to have for Netflix, but they don't need it.

[Sam Lessin]

Right.

[Brit Morin]

How are they going to leverage the distribution of this media then? And to infiltrate American brains? The Middle East?

[Dave Morin]

No, no, no. It has nothing to do with infiltration or anything. It's about building the brand of the ksa, you know, world. Like, they're trying to build, like, an actual new media powerhouse. And so it has nothing to do with the actual content, has to do with actually having a studio.

[Jessi Hempel]

When did everyone start calling them ksa?

[Brit Morin]

Dave?

[Jessi Hempel]

To end this. This is a new thing. Is this what, what you. I know what it stands for, but like, is this what you VCs call it?

[Sam Lessin]

I didn't. I thought it was a pop band.

[Jessi Hempel]

Is it like trying to rebrand is like piff out and ksa. Is it KSA since like kyc?

[Brit Morin]

Well, what else do you call them?

[Sam Lessin]

It's just like the doe. Every time there's a scandal, you just rename it and people don't even know what it is.

[Dave Morin]

Depends on which trade route you're talking upon.

[Sam Lessin]

Love trade routes. Look, here's the thing. If you guys. Did you guys watch the south park about the sponsoring of the South Park 5k for the Turkey Trot?

[Brit Morin]

No.

[Sam Lessin]

It's great. The kingdom sponsored the. The South Park Turkey Trot 5K. Just the greatest social commentary. That's the play. That's the play.

[Brit Morin]

I love that Sam doesn't watch a lot of tv, but does watch south park, like religiously.

[Dave Morin]

South Park's great.

[Brit Morin]

Nominees were presented.

[Jessi Hempel]

Oh yeah, we can. We can end with pop culture corner.

[Sam Lessin]

Brit, I'm so glad that you're in touch with this part of America for us that cares about any of this stuff.

[Brit Morin]

Guys, I know mainstream America. I'm just letting you know, I don't

[Sam Lessin]

think that's even mainstream anymore.

[Brit Morin]

What is it? The Golden Globes are mainstream. And by the way, we didn't talk about Disney plus and Disney's like, this really is like consolidating all streaming media down to potentially Paramount, Netflix and Disney.

[Sam Lessin]

Guys, let me tell you something. It's called Bundle Unbundle.

[Brit Morin]

I know, but guess who has the Taylor Swift docu series premiere this Friday? Disney. And so they're still. There's still my horse, my lead horse in the race.

[Sam Lessin]

Didn't she only make a documentary? She made another documentary. The first one didn't do well enough.

[Jessi Hempel]

She. This is her second.

[Brit Morin]

It's a six episode series.

[Sam Lessin]

I love that. It's like what? We could choose one distribution strategy or we could just make 50 documentaries and distribute them in 50 places.

[Jessi Hempel]

I mean, more power to our lady. I mean, if I had a franchise where I could do that, like we do.

[Sam Lessin]

It's called more or less. We just bullshit on the Internet once a week and post it.

[Brit Morin]

But did you know we could be nominated for a Golden Globe next year? Because now that's a podcast. Our category at the Golden Globes. Just letting you know.

[Jessi Hempel]

This is so ridiculous, but I actually want to know. I want to bring it back to the consumer for a sec.

[Brit Morin]

Vote for us, everyone, please.

[Sam Lessin]

Don't it.

[Jessi Hempel]

Let's go for a webby first. Okay. Low stakes.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh, my God. No, please.

[Brit Morin]

That's so 1995. Okay, keep going.

[Jessi Hempel]

It was a joke for it.

[Sam Lessin]

What are they? What's. What's gay? Greg Galanto on the shorties. That's where you want to be.

[Brit Morin]

There's no new awards. You should invent the new awards show for 2026.

[Sam Lessin]

I'm very pro Awards.

[Jessi Hempel]

I learned recently that the Golden Globes is the only fun award show because it's the only one you can drink at. That's my Golden Globes trivia of the. Didn't know that.

[Sam Lessin]

Can you sauna at it? Because that I would go to.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, God. Keep going, Jess.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, as consumers, like, do we feel like all this consolidation, like two prime flicks plus I'll call it. Is it affecting us as consumers? How do we feel about it?

[Brit Morin]

I feel really good about it because I have less things that I'm subscribed to.

[Sam Lessin]

No, you're not subscribed to at all. You kidding? They're not going to take you less money. They're just going to, like, make you

[Brit Morin]

chart YouTube this week. YouTube this week launched a skinny bundle.

[Jessi Hempel]

I know. I cried when I saw it. I laughed so hard. I thought it was so funny.

[Brit Morin]

Skinny Bundle. We took YouTube, took some GLP ones, and now we can pay.

[Sam Lessin]

Plus, Skinny is in.

[Jessi Hempel]

Let's just acknowledge the greatness of YouTube, right? So they forever. They were like, we don't need the cable bundle. We'll just kill it. Then they were like, actually, it's taking us some time to kill it, so we're just going to replace it. And then they were like, okay, we're basically a winner in replacing it. We're going to slice and dice it the way we think people want to consume it and just, like, throw the old models of, like, verticals out so, like, we determine what the bundles are. I thought it's so smart.

[Sam Lessin]

I was talking recently, somebody about how, like, Coinbase is just becoming a diversified financial institution. One of the rules in business is you always become the thing you set out to kill. Like, that's how this works, right? And so, like, obviously YouTube set out to kill cable, and it's just going to become cable. Coinbase set out to kill. The financial world is just going to become a mini J.P. morgan. Like, that's how this works. Facebook set out to kill traditional media, and it now is traditional media, guys.

[Jessi Hempel]

People refer to us as legacy media, and I think it's so funny.

[Brit Morin]

So I think that, you know, we had this big blow up with ESPN/ABC/Disney a couple weeks ago with YouTube TV, where they pulled all content off of YouTube TV and everyone freaked out. And I actually then subscribed to espn, which I hadn't done before as part of my Disney package because I needed to watch my sports. But then a week later, it reversed. However, now within two weeks later, there's a skinny bundle and one of them is a sports bundle. So there's definitely some weird business dynamics happening here between, I think probably ESPN driving this.

[Jessi Hempel]

Dave, how do you feel as a consumer? Is consumer Dave satisfied?

[Dave Morin]

This is also boring.

[Sam Lessin]

Boring.

[Jessi Hempel]

It's not, though.

[Dave Morin]

This is all so boring. I just think back to some of the media conferences that I've been to over the years where all they talk about for like the entire conference is, are we bundling or unbundling? Bundling or unbundling. It's the most boring business.

[Jessi Hempel]

But is the content good? Are you satisfied as a consumer? This is what I want to know

[Dave Morin]

with what all of it state of streaming.

[Jessi Hempel]

Like, a big part of these deals is they're going to have to make the case that it's good for the consumer and for the content creator. Probably. Although I don't really understand.

[Dave Morin]

YouTube TV has been a great thing in terms of sports for the last couple of years. And I find that to be the best sports experience because you can just open it and press play and it's like always got the right thing that you're looking for, which is a surprisingly simple thing to deliver. It's just like, just give me the sports that are playing right now in NCAA and NFL and whatnot.

[Sam Lessin]

Unless you're on an airplane and traveling and then it's like gets mad about it.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, that sucks.

[Sam Lessin]

You're out of your zone. I'm like, just, I'll pay more for the day. Like, why can't I just put a. It's like ridiculous. I know it's not going to ever be addressed because it's too corner a case, but just, can you please just charge me a hundred dollars so I can watch it? Not in my time zone for one day.

[Dave Morin]

Totally. I bet it's not that corner of a case. I think that this is like, I don't know. That is the worst part. That is the worst part of the user experience.

[Sam Lessin]

Brit, do people who watch the Golden Globes travel?

[Brit Morin]

Yes, they do. And they're probably also watching them on YouTube TV quite often.

[Dave Morin]

I just saw some stats. I mean, the travels Travels up. Like, travels. Really?

[Sam Lessin]

Half of Americans have never gotten on a plane.

[Dave Morin]

Travel's really up, man.

[Brit Morin]

Guys, Dave and I had our first Starlink experience on two different airlines.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, I'm officially moving the topic. I want to move it to your Starlink experience, and then I want to talk a little bit about data centers in space. So, Brett, connect those things. Go.

[Brit Morin]

Okay. I don't know if I can connect it to data centers in space, but I'll do so. Starlink is now available on many United flights.

[Dave Morin]

I mean, they are the same thing.

[Sam Lessin]

44% of Americans fly commercial every year, and the other 44% ain't flying private.

[Brit Morin]

And also on JSX, which is my favorite airline for those who know, you know, and this is a game changer, because now you can actually watch streaming video. You can play, like, video games. You can do. You can do Zoom calls.

[Jessi Hempel]

Were people on Zoom Calls? Cause that would annoy me.

[Brit Morin]

I didn't see anyone on Zoom Calls. You know what else is less annoying? The Internet doesn't shut off when you're descending and ascending. You've got, like, an extra probably 30 minutes of Internet per flight because of Star.

[Sam Lessin]

Can I challenge you on this? I don't think that's where this nets out. Like, I think what nets out in terms of what happens is once the Internet is too good on airplanes, you can no longer do anything other than work on airplanes, because there's no excuse where it's like, oh, the Internet's down. I'm going to watch a stupid movie. So, like, I actually think what'll happen is you'll have fewer red eyes. You'll have more daytime flights, because it doesn't really matter if you're flying on the country. If you have a perfect Internet, you can just do a normal work day. Right?

[Brit Morin]

Isn't that a good thing? Fear, red eyes.

[Sam Lessin]

I mean, Brian Johnson will be happy.

[Brit Morin]

My sleep is the number one most important thing for my health.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, that'd be pretty cool if United had a little, like, thing where, like, you pay more. It's like your sleep score will be impacted. Negative 30%. How much is your sleep score worth in United points? There's, like, some sort of exchange rate,

[Brit Morin]

especially for the live flat seats. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think we will ultimately, as a species, miss having the disconnected moments of our lives.

[Sam Lessin]

Just think, they used to have, like, weeks of that on ocean liners. They play shuffleboard. It was amazing.

[Brit Morin]

I think we will see stuff like that pop up where maybe there will be a WI fi free airline pop up where you can be guaranteed no WI fi on your flight and pay extra for it.

[Sam Lessin]

There's no chance that. I actually think there's no chance.

[Jessi Hempel]

Was it this crew that had the idea of like a fake airline where you would just go, take advantage of these stationary business class seats?

[Sam Lessin]

That's Ricky Van Veen and me. We were iterating on. This is the idea of like, I want to book a ticket. You don't even need to fly me anywhere. I just want like an airplane configuration. I get on, I sit in a chair, and I book the hours of the flight and I get to put it on my calendar as I'm on the air. And then like, you sit and you have a lay flatbed and a stewardess serves you. Can we say stewardess anymore? And like, you can just be like. It's like two. When else do you have 2pm permission to take a nap in the middle of a Tuesday? Right. Like you need to be on a flight, but you don't need to fly me anywhere.

[Brit Morin]

You know, this is what I pitched for Waymo, by the way, where I just want to be in a driverless car for an hour with my meditation music. I don't care what drives me around the city. I just want to be chill for an hour.

[Sam Lessin]

People actually are apparently talking about and doing this, which is usually like go from like San Jose or whatever. Whatever. And if you just. It's the cheapest hotel room, you know, type thing.

[Brit Morin]

Well, wait, speaking of, Dave and I also lived in the future again.

[Jessi Hempel]

Yeah, let's go to self driving cars.

[Brit Morin]

Okay, so Dave and I were in Vegas this big weekend, which is the only city that is currently testing Zoox autonomous vehicles.

[Dave Morin]

That's not true.

[Sam Lessin]

It's testing in San Francisco. I have an invite to it.

[Dave Morin]

No, it's not actually running in San Francisco yet, Sam.

[Sam Lessin]

I don't know. I got an invite. I haven't used it yet, but I got an invite.

[Dave Morin]

No, we got the invites too, but the cars aren't available.

[Sam Lessin]

Hmm.

[Brit Morin]

They're still in testing, I think.

[Jessi Hempel]

How did it measure to the almighty Waymo?

[Dave Morin]

Tell me it's so good.

[Brit Morin]

Never riding in a Waymo again. I'm pro Zooks all the way short Waymo. Did you hear, by the way? A woman delivered a baby in a Waymo this week in San Francisco. Okay, we can skip, but that's gonna

[Sam Lessin]

lower her driver score.

[Brit Morin]

It's like a booth. You're facing each other.

[Dave Morin]

It's really awesome.

[Brit Morin]

And you can have conversations and it's way more social of an experience. And I was saying how like I would have meetings in this car.

[Dave Morin]

I actually think that it's a different app entirely. The way I was thinking about it is that the cars themselves are like different apps on top of the self driving car experience. And the, the ones that have this social experience, like you're definitely going to want them when you're out with your family or your friends. Like people are going to make the choice between these different types of cars based on, you know, what they want to experience.

[Sam Lessin]

Do you remember the era when all the VCs were getting like buses?

[Brit Morin]

Shervin did this.

[Dave Morin]

I remember it was right before the

[Sam Lessin]

pandemic and they would just like drive their buses up to San Francisco and like work out of the bus. It's kind of like that, right?

[Dave Morin]

It was the last of, the last of zerp.

[Brit Morin]

I bet there are venture funds. Okay. Within two years if Sumin Zoox is approved in San Francisco. I bet there are deals for corporations where they can rent a Zoox for a day and just like people will host their meetings there all day.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I would host meetings in Zoox's all day long.

[Sam Lessin]

You know what I would love? I think just for fun they should have a Zoox that has a printer in it. Like you can order a Zoox with a printer. You know, it's like I need to go somewhere, I need to print some just because it'd be fucking hilarious to make it like an office.

[Jessi Hempel]

I mean why not a fax machine while you're at it?

[Sam Lessin]

And like it's like if it runs out of paper it like drives itself to a Kinkos.

[Brit Morin]

I don't think those exist anymore. Oh, they're owned by FedEx.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. So, so self driving car wars heating up. You guys heard it here first.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah.

[Jessi Hempel]

The Zooks are coming.

[Dave Morin]

I wonder if it's going to be this like real battle, like iterative battle where you have to change the type of car pretty aggressively to be the, the experience that people want. Because it's so shockingly better in the Zoox that it would. It would strike me that this is going to be true.

[Jessi Hempel]

Well, I have a couple of thoughts first. Have you. There's, there's a Waymo minivan out and about being tested.

[Dave Morin]

I don't think it's, I don't think they're facing each other though.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. But that does not seem like this war is won or lost by the current configuration. Like I'm pretty sure they can figure this out.

[Sam Lessin]

It's also like London and cabs. You can face each other London and like it's marginally better, but it's not like the end of the world. I don't know.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, this brings me to another. Are we done with self driving cars? I have another topic that's, that's related, which is traffic and billboards.

[Sam Lessin]

Wait first, before we do that, can we talk about space AI?

[Brit Morin]

Oh, I never connected the space data centers to my Starlink.

[Jessi Hempel]

Sam, I'll let you kick this off, but I have some thoughts.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, okay, this is the way I think about this years and years ago. You guys remember when Elon bought SolarCity like overnight to save his cousin's company? And he wrote this memo being like, it's because we want to put solar panels on the roofs of Teslas. And everyone's like, that's stupid. But like it's kind of the top level justification. I think he learned a lot from that because that worked really well. And so now it's like, ah, here's the intersection. Yeah, it's rockets plus data centers plus solar. It's like that's the era we're in is we scaled up from like the very quaint put a solar panel on a Tesla to put the data centers in space with solar panels. That's kind of my take on it. Great marketing. Great marketing.

[Dave Morin]

Cool.

[Sam Lessin]

Gro generated images. As a, as a SpaceX shareholder, I want that the only, the I, the only Elon company I love is SpaceX. I love SpaceX. I've always loved it. I'm a shareholder. I God bless if they can get out of 1,5 trillion. And you know what? I won't even sell. Right? Like I am very pro SpaceX. So if he wants to come up with a cockamamie story about it, God bless. But it's pretty crazy.

[Jessi Hempel]

So here's some interesting data. A year or so ago, one of my great editors and reporters, Nick Wingfield, interviewed Jeff Bezos about Blue Origin. And I hope I'm getting this right. Sorry, Nick, if I'm not. But basically he floats this idea of data centers in space sort of like orthogonally or it comes up in some context, but it's not a big thing that people want to go into. And then the noise around it builds and Sundar talks about it and it's like kind of surprising that Elon is not talking about it yet, because Elon talks about everything. He talks about everything. Space and whatever.

[Sam Lessin]

It's all his favorite things.

[Jessi Hempel]

But the missing piece of this was reported by the information when we reported that SpaceX is telling some of its investors that they could be IPO ready at the end of next year. And now what is really clear is that this is part of his big thesis about how at an ipo he is going to convince people that this already pretty incredible and incredibly valued company is going to be worth 10 or 20x more or whatever you have to believe to buy into an IPO at like $800 billion.

[Sam Lessin]

He says 1,5 trillion, of course, right?

[Jessi Hempel]

So to get to 5 trillion.

[Sam Lessin]

And look, it's the one Elon. It's the one Elon narrative. Here's the thing, you like the teams you're on, God bless, you know, make that happen. That'd be awesome.

[Jessi Hempel]

At the risk of like, everyone who understands the energy crisis or the energy situation making fun of me, every conference I attend has a data center and energy panel. And the panel always has three people. One to two are on the side of, holy shit, this is a crisis and we will never have the energy we need to fuel AI. And then the other one to two, depending on the panel, is like, this is a solved problem. We have total visibility towards how we're going to get there. And this is made up. And I assume the truth is somewhere in the middle, but I'm actually curious, like, which one it is.

[Sam Lessin]

So my favorite thing that I saw float through the feeds on this the other day is, you guys remember Boom Supersonic. That was like going to deliver supersonic.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, I saw that.

[Sam Lessin]

Look, I love the ambition. No fucking way. Like, this is like, not a thing. Here's what I saw float through is amazing, is, you know, they've pivoted into. They're like, we're using the engine generators.

[Dave Morin]

Supersonic generators.

[Sam Lessin]

The supersonic generator engine. And now we have a data center play. And like, to me, I'm like, this is hilarious. Because one, it's like whoever invested in Boom, Supersonic thinking they were going to deliver profitable supersonic airplanes, I thought for a moment maybe Trump deregulation. There's some. It's not going to happen. So you're like, that was a dumb investment, but you'll be saved by the narrative, right? Because if they can pull off the narrative shift, which is kind of like a mini elon of. No, no, no, no. We actually just have this amazing engine we built, like, for powering data centers. That's like, hilarious and like a great example of where we are in 2025 in the most risky and also interesting way where, like, it's all narrative. And like, it might. They might pull it off. They might pull it off.

[Dave Morin]

Is that one of the new. Is that one of the new strategies for company, like later stage startups in 2025, which is how effectively can you pivot into the narrative shift with your next product line?

[Sam Lessin]

So, Dave, I really think so, and I think it's a really interesting startup framework because here's, here's. Hear me, hear me on this for a second. I was thinking about this. All this AI shit, generative, da da, da, da. It for sure means that you can pivot faster, right? Because, like, think about it, like, how the hell do you do this stuff? Whatever. Let's imagine all the deep research, regulatory filings, like, all this complexity. This is actually the leverage of AI is pivot speed, right? Because all these things you need. You need 50 experts to figure out. Now you're like, I'll get half of it really quickly. That then becomes interesting is like, what is a startup? It's like you collect people on a thesis. You want to be in like the right zip code where you're doing something of value. That's kind of hard, right? But then you got to just watch the narratives and be ready to pivot it and move into like the central thesis so that you have a story that you can sell, right? I think this is always somewhat true on the Internet. Like, this happened a lot in like ad tech or whatever. You kind of build a stack and you squint at it. Or like, remember like app Nexus was like building a competitive cloud and then became an ads thing. Like, people pivot. But I think the speed of pivoting and speed of pivoting crazy things has gotten way faster. And narrative is everything.

[Dave Morin]

And it may also be that the meme machine that is the Internet has become even more effective at distributing to all of the entrepreneurs what there is demand for and what products, like the market needs it.

[Jessi Hempel]

That's so short term.

[Dave Morin]

Well, it's an interesting frame to think about these panels because you're right. There is this. There is this pretty intense conversation going on, like every podcast and every panel, like almost every day about where are we going to get all this energy? Well, we can get the energy from fossil fuels or, you know, we would have to burn all the dinosaurs on Earth or we can build nuclear. And now you sort of have this new thing happening, which it's not just Elon. I noticed that Sundar is like every single media hit that he did in the last two weeks is talking about data centers in space. And so he's also talking about. He's actually citing very specific, you know, this is the energy level that we need to achieve. We think we can only achieve it if we're actually like up there, you know, closer to the sun. Now, whether or not you believe any

[Sam Lessin]

of that, what's doing Dyson spheres now is like, are we already moved on from like circulating satellites to Dyson spheres? People love science fiction.

[Dave Morin]

That's what people are. I mean, that's what people are talking about, right? And so whether or not this is a real thing, everyone is talking about this energy constraint. So all the entrepreneurs are looking at it like, ah, no energy constraint in space. No energy constraint with supersonic generator. Like, I can apply my technology to this. And so I will do it.

[Sam Lessin]

Here's the thing though, that is like, this is the question about efficient allocation of human resources at a big picture, right? Like the beauty of capitalism and markets is supposed to be this machine for allocating real resources based on actual dollar demand for things, right? Like this is Hayek 101. I love Hayek. Right? Like the world is too complicated to understand. Reduce it to prices, trade it. This is kind of Polymarket has some vibes around this sort of. But this is the other thing is like, we now have a narrative machine in the Internet which produces a different signal of what to go work on and spend effort on, which is actually not a real dollar engine. It's not a market. It's like a attention market. And the, the good news about that is in some ways even faster and can run faster than a dollar market. The bad news about it is I think it is very, very prone to dramatic distortion or ending up putting a lot of people and resources on narratives that don't actually make sense because you're not actually transacting the dollars, right? Like you're transacting attention.

[Dave Morin]

And is that the art of it, Sam? Like, you've been right to point this out. You know, Elon's narratives are like this a lot. Is the art of this type of entrepreneurship being able to harness the, you know, the narrative and the memes to attract the capital and then actually apply the capital to real, you know, quote, unquote, real business. And that's like the real art now.

[Sam Lessin]

Now we're figuring it out. I think that's exactly right, Dave. But I think the interesting thing is, like, Elon is the king of this cheap dollars in. But then because he's so good at narrative, he's able to. And he's a public markets guy. Like, he needs the public market in his stocks, because he needs the people, the riff raff, to like, bid it up and buy the narrative, which then becomes a flywheel of more capital. Right?

[Dave Morin]

But you can't just keep doing that without delivering something that actually works, right?

[Sam Lessin]

Well, but here's the thing. The question, the delivering something that works, it has to work a little bit because otherwise the narrative falls apart, right? So, like, you think about, like, Tesla does not financially work as a public company. It doesn't. But they have a cool car and you need the cool car, even if it costs way too much, like, in and out, right? And to sell the dream. SpaceX, again, I keep saying it. I love SpaceX. The rockets are so cool. Starlink is awesome, right? Financially, it's not going to justify being a $1.5 trillion company. That's a narrative, right? But it's interesting because it's like there is this interplay, which is like, story begets primary capital begets more story, and something real begets more capital, begets valuation. And it's like this flywheel, but a lot of it's story driven. Like, OpenAI is trying to do this too. It's like, what is OpenAI worth? Discounted cash flow. It sense on the dollar, right?

[Dave Morin]

It feels like the art is in the narrative choice, right? Like, how far is the narrative from what is possible today with your current technology? It's like, it's not this crazy idea that they could take the same satellite technology that they're using to do Starlink, add more satellites to the Constellation that have GPUs in them, use the same backhaul, you know, like, that's not the craziest narrative, nor is like, you know, we can use the same robotic manufacturing lines at Tesla to build, you know, more sophisticated robots than the cybertruck. And those are called humanoid robots. And it's like just enough crazy that it's on the far end of crazy. And the art of it is figuring that out. I love it.

[Sam Lessin]

You need infinite tam, right? Like, story must be huge. Then there's something like a trust multiplier on the narrative. Whereas, like, if you're elon because you've pulled off a few hat tricks in your life, which he has, he gets like a multiple expansion on trust, like a multiple expansion on the narrative that, like, you don't get and I don't get. Right the same way. And so there's like a. There's almost like a narrative expansion. Multiple. Not just a financial multiple. Right? All right. We've solved the world's problems. I love it, Dave. This is why we do this.

[Brit Morin]

I like it when Dave and Sam go on a journey together.

[Jessi Hempel]

On this journey, the journey is basically decided. Say whatever you want and ride the moment and raise the capital.

[Dave Morin]

No, but not everybody can do this.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, but build. Build a trust machine. Build a machine, and then you got to, like, at least deliver 20 cents on the dollar. You know, you got to deliver. That's what Tesla is open.

[Dave Morin]

You got to.

[Sam Lessin]

You got to deliver 20 cents on the dollar.

[Dave Morin]

Right?

[Jessi Hempel]

20 cents is the new 8020.

[Brit Morin]

I wish more women leaders would be able to sell big narratives. I feel like women can't do this well enough.

[Jessi Hempel]

They end up in jail. Although they deserve to. They deserve to. To be clear, I would like to be on the record about Elizabeth Home.

[Dave Morin]

I don't know, the founder of.

[Brit Morin]

I think that women could be more crazy, push the envelope a little bit more.

[Sam Lessin]

But straight lying is almost the point. You can't straight lie if you straight. Well, but Theranos did.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, yeah, because that's.

[Sam Lessin]

That's. That collapses your. Your multiple expansion on the narrative. Yeah, for sure.

[Jessi Hempel]

Going to jail discounts you for the next narrative a little.

[Brit Morin]

Yes.

[Dave Morin]

Or if you start tweeting from jail, you might be able to establish the next narrative.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, or it's like, you know, it's interesting in terms of trust narratives. Like, what's happening with sbf? It's like, it turns out SBF had a great venture portfolio, right? Like, great venture portfolio. Right. Like, but he also just completely cheated. And, like, I. It's like. I don't know. It's, like, kind of wild when you think about these characters.

[Jessi Hempel]

I think also Elon needs the money for X and Xai, too. I think there's, like. You have to remember, you were very smart to bring up Solar City, Sam. That is a very illustrative example of how he thinks.

[Brit Morin]

You know, what we didn't get to do in Vegas that I'm a little bummed about is go in a tunnel. And apparently the tunnel project. The boring project, the boring company, whatever, it's like a real. It's really happening. And there's a new. There's a new tunnel being dug from the Strip to the airport that'll be live next year, so. And only Teslas can ride in it. So we'll have to get out of our Zooks and get into a Tesla.

[Jessi Hempel]

It sounds like the Big Dig. This was our college experience.

[Sam Lessin]

But in fairness to Elon, again, it's like you just. It's like you Television, you get the trust, multiple expansion that no one else can get. You get the capital. It turns out you should be able to dig a tunnel for a tenth the price of what it costs to dig a tunnel. He figures it out. Good for him.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, I want to talk about my victory of the day. Can I talk about my victory of the day?

[Brit Morin]

Go for it.

[Sam Lessin]

You've only had one.

[Jessi Hempel]

There was fake news and I got it corrected about the information. You guys want to hear the story? Yeah, you have to hear the story. I have the mic. So my incredible reporters in Asia who have been all over all things chip and AI Nvidia Huawei Award winning reporters published a story this morning, actually published two. One saying that Deep Seq's latest model is being trained on smuggled Blackwells. Nvidia's latest.

[Sam Lessin]

Awesome. It's trade routes, basically.

[Jessi Hempel]

So black. The other big news of this week, also foreshadowed in the information weeks ago, was that the Trump administration would allow a more advanced chip to be sold to China, the H200. This was really interesting and we had a great discussion with Patrick Moorhead on TITV about it this week because it's unclear that China actually is going to allow its companies to use this chip because China, of course, is pushing its dominance. One of the stories the team broke was overnight the meeting where the Chinese government assembled all its top tech companies to figure out what is the actual demand for this chip. Do you need it to be competitive? So that was one great story inside the China government confab with its leading tech titans. Second story, Deep Seq training its model on the most advanced tech there is out there. Now, there's been a lot of great reporting on smuggling. We are not the first to do that. I think Reuters had a great series about it last year. The Journal's done some reporting. So it is well known that these chips are getting smuggled into China and companies getting access to them. So in the story, we asked Nvidia for comment. Nvidia, which you know, takes any point, will be as aggressive as they can be in denying a story. And they didn't deny it. They said, we have no knowledge of this, but we'll investigate all claims of smuggling.

[Brit Morin]

Right?

[Jessi Hempel]

So then I wake up and, you know, everyone's reported our story and understandably, Nvidia's comment, which is relevant, we put it in our story to begin with, but CNBC said it refuted our story. I was like, I don't believe that comment refutes the story. They're trying to cast Doubt on it for sure. But there is nothing in there that is a refutation. And I would like to thank the very smart editors at CNBC who corrected

[Sam Lessin]

their headline, truth and Journalism.

[Jessi Hempel]

And I am telling that story also

[Dave Morin]

because it's a big one.

[Jessi Hempel]

Well, I'm proud of it, and I'm proud of cnbc. And I'm also.

[Brit Morin]

Is that rare for one to correct?

[Jessi Hempel]

It's very rare. And I also think this isn't a big deal. No one was debating the substance of the article or what was said. But I believe there's a difference between denying something and the statement they put out there. And I think news organizations that take that statement and use it to throw shade against other professional journalists is just really not what we need of in this era when CEOs and executives are just pushing the boundary of calling true reporting fake news. And so, you know, my team, like, historically, I would have ignored that. And my team was like, you have to get it corrected. And I'm like, you know what? I'll do my best. And so I appreciated that. And I think this is definitely how we're going to continue to respond. I mean, Marc Benioff denied a story that his CTO told us on the record and was quoted in the story. This is months ago now, but this is the new state we like. We wrote a story where the chief product officer, chief innovation officer, chief technology officer of Salesforce told us on the record they were in talks with companies about this project. We published 24 hours later the story, and Benioff called it fake news. And I was like, does your. Does this executive rescind the entire interview? No. So he said it and we can believe it? Yes. Then why are you calling it fake news?

[Brit Morin]

That's weird.

[Sam Lessin]

That's. Well done. News is expensive. Truth is expensive.

[Brit Morin]

Good job getting to the truth.

[Sam Lessin]

Jess, here's a question. How long do you think it'll be before we're, like, shooting boats full of H2 hundreds offshore?

[Dave Morin]

Wasn't that the joke that. That was the joke at the beginning, right. That, you know, we'd be hitting data centers.

[Sam Lessin]

It's like, really? It's like. It's like we're going to shoot the boats on the way in with Brits nose candy and the boats on the way out with H200. The reality is they're not coming from the US what am I kidding? They're coming. Where are they coming from?

[Dave Morin]

Singapore or something? Somewhere closer.

[Jessi Hempel]

It's wild. I was at a fascinating lunch with a bunch of CMOs who are partners of ours in the valley yesterday, and one of the really smart ones made this case that when China talks about AI to its people and in general, they talk about real benefits it's delivering to people now. They talk about the health benefits. They have integrated AI into many different parts of their economy and their government. And they talk about it. They don't talk about is OpenAI beating chatgpt. I mean, sorry, beating Gemini. And at the end of the day, these models are all advanced. They're all getting access to the arms in the arms war. And I think the US should have a lot more focus on what we're doing with AI and how it's benefiting people than in all this other stuff. But that's my hobby horse of the moment. People really don't like AI. I've been testing out my thesis that we just shouldn't call it AI.

[Dave Morin]

What do you mean by that? What do you mean people don't like AI?

[Jessi Hempel]

The backlash from both a policy, but just people living their lives concerned about the impact on energy prices and mental health is growing and growing and growing. And I think it's so telling that when Trump proposed a lighter touch regulatory approach that would let the federal law that was lighter touch supersede or executive order supersede states legislations, Republicans pushed back. Even now, Republicans are feeling the pressure to push back more and regulate more heavily AI because it is really, in many circumstances, unpopular.

[Dave Morin]

People hated social media the whole way along too, but it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And it hasn't stopped. Right. And like, no regulation really had any impact at all.

[Jessi Hempel]

It's true. But countries have now are now banning it.

[Brit Morin]

Yeah, Australia went in, their ban went into effect today, I think.

[Dave Morin]

Ban what?

[Brit Morin]

Instagram and social media for people 16 and under.

[Sam Lessin]

There go all of our pictures of boomerangs and kangaroos.

[Jessi Hempel]

It's a really interesting question, Dave, and I think time will tell how this reaction is different from others.

[Dave Morin]

I guess that's what I'm asking. Like, is it because jobs. To me, like, the main difference is like, people are. People fear for their jobs.

[Sam Lessin]

I think it's also mental health.

[Jessi Hempel]

It's jobs, mental health and energy prices.

[Dave Morin]

Do you really think it's mental health?

[Sam Lessin]

I mean, I met with a candidate, I met with a candidate who's running for reasonably high office this morning, and we're going through kind of his community and what they care about in tech. And he was like, I hadn't heard much about it, but in the last two weeks, the anti AI thing is really growing. He's like, it's three things. It's energy prices, it's a narrative about water and it's mental health and kids. And like he's like, these are real things coming up from constituents at like meaningful scale all of a sudden.

[Dave Morin]

But mental health and kids.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, it's a Tristan. I mean I was, I was snarkily tweeting about this yesterday with like Tristan Harris on going, you know, who has come back around because another thing for him to be upset about, he was on the Diary of a CEO, which actually. Good podcast.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, great podcast.

[Sam Lessin]

Slows an investor. Very excited.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. Happy to be a very tiny shareholder.

[Sam Lessin]

And he's kind of doing a whole. At least I only saw the clip on social media. I haven't seen the whole thing, but he's kind of out being like chat. GPT's number one use case is now therapy. And like everyone can have a perfect therapist and problem. Like that's terrifying for everyone, including OpenAI. Like you do not want to be someone's like always on low end therapist. That is not a highly commercially viable place to be. And it's super scary because everyone's going crazy.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah. But Sam, I push back with the same counter that I just did to Jess, which is this exact same thing happened in the 2010s with mobile social media where everybody was like, mobile social media is now everybody's friends. They're now everybody's parasocial friends. And Tristan was out there warning, warning, warning about the destruction of the mind and human society and all this stuff and nothing changed.

[Sam Lessin]

That. That, that is a totally fair point. And what I said is like when Tristan's mad about it, he's probably, it's probably not the right narrative cuz that's his consistently being wrong thing.

[Dave Morin]

But like, you know, I mean there is something right. Like social media is like genuinely pretty damaging to mental health too. Right. But it's like, like, have we made meaningful progress on this? Not really. Right. Like, and so I worry that like we're going to be in the same place on AI. I don't know what the right narrative is, but like, I mean I would

[Jessi Hempel]

bet that society will take all the benefits of AI in exchange for all the negative things around AI. Like in the long run. Like, I don't, I don't think that fundamental dynamic that we've seen play out with like privacy or social media, like changes. But I think there's a strategic question these companies face versus like, I think I've talked about it at length here or I've talk about it. We'll talk about a lot of things, a lot of places. But like Gemini isn't Gemini AI. And I mean Google does have AI mode, so this is somewhat flawed example. Right? But I think there is actually a question in how these products are talked about that companies are debating. But that's all I want to say. I want to end, guys, I want to bring this to a close with can we talk about like whenever I do a Q and A, the first question I get is like, when's the bubble going to burst? Or like bubble stuff. And I'm not particularly interested in prognosticating on that, but I really have some new evidence of how frothy things are feeling at the moment. I'm curious what you guys think about. Have you seen the billboards on the 101 lately?

[Brit Morin]

We don't really. We don't really go down the 101 down to where you live.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, well, come visit. It is getting to like hype town. Like the billboards. Okay, so the billboards are now we're an AI town. We're an AI company town. Right? I mean, it just.

[Dave Morin]

I mean, Jess, what I will add to this is that Vegas, every single digital billboard in Vegas this weekend was AI billboards.

[Jessi Hempel]

Was this a tech event you guys were at or.

[Dave Morin]

No, no, no, it was the rodeo. The rodeo was going on in Vegas this weekend.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay.

[Dave Morin]

And every single billboard was AI. I mean it might have been left over from F1 last weekend, but I don't know.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, okay.

[Sam Lessin]

I really have always wanted, I've wanted this for years. I've always wanted someone to make a coffee tale book of billboards of the 101 where you just take a photo of every single one for like decades because it's fascinating to watch. The turnover on them like goes from the ipod nano mini to the blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's my basic thing. When my mother comes to town for 15 years, she'd be like, I don't know what any of these companies are, what they do, or like. And that's true. She doesn't. You see Apple, Google, you know, Phone, things like that. It's kind of the point where I go up and down the one on one. And I don't know what any of these companies do because they're just like, there are companies that serve companies that serve companies with some random AI shit, right? And every once in a while I see a company we invested, I'm like, oh, there it is.

[Jessi Hempel]

But like, well, they're not designed for us, they're recruiting engineers.

[Sam Lessin]

But I think there's something about like the bubble indicator. If you had a long term study of 101 billboards.

[Dave Morin]

I agree with this completely with the

[Sam Lessin]

further the 101 billboard getaway for my product that your mother would recognize.

[Dave Morin]

Yep, this is a great indicator.

[Sam Lessin]

The more likely you're in a bubble. Right? And like I just think we're like tending into this zone where like you're not even selling B2B companies, it's B2B 2B Cloud sub blah blahs. And you're like, I agree.

[Brit Morin]

I am laughing because I agree.

[Sam Lessin]

But you need like some hedge. I wish some hedge fund had just sent a photographer every single day for the last 15 years and just take a picture of every billboard and make a coffee table book and build a data set.

[Jessi Hempel]

The companies have them. The people who own the billboards have the data, don't they?

[Sam Lessin]

So here's the thing. I would pay Lamar Outdoor advertising or something for like the long term archive of their every single ad they run on the 101. Because I think there's a really cool data set and there just is a great day to have the information to build that out. And like you drop some AI on top of like what the fuck are these ads? And like you're going to, you're going to have some cool leading indicator of design disasters.

[Jessi Hempel]

So I'm so into this and I just, let me tell you a little bit. I'm going to give you a very short map of the one on one billboards. Right? So you have the AI companies recruiting engineers who don't, they just put their name, they don't even bother to describe what they're doing because it makes no sense. Then you have what I call Stripe Alley, which is the companies that Stripe has recently acquired or is partnered with and then acquires later. So Bridge is on there and is it Metronome? And then the billboards change and they add Stripe, a stripe company underneath. So I, I look at it for what company Stripe's going to buy. Then you have the random ones that are trying to get attention. So Solana has a billboard saying like, we're growing faster than the Mag 7. We're growing faster than a 40% faster or something, you know.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh well, let's skip over to that part of the narrative. That's fine.

[Dave Morin]

Yeah, they were growing faster than the Mag 7.

[Jessi Hempel]

They were growing faster than you take your bill or die. But I love it. And I think between the Changing landscapes of the billboard, the huge uptick in traffic. And I heard San Francisco rent prices are up 30%. I heard that from my dad, so it must be true. He's my source. I just think like we're big boom indicators.

[Sam Lessin]

Here's the fun metric. I think if you did dollars, let's not even talk about ebitda. If you just did dollars of revenue per billboard, average per day, right? So you take all the billboards and add them up and all the revenue of all the companies running all the billboards and add it up, right? And divide by the ad spend or thing, there's like some number you can pull out of that that is like a very good leading bubble indicator.

[Jessi Hempel]

Yeah. And also like just imagine, I mean we're wrapping up 2025. Just imagine we're sitting here at the end of 2026 and we're talking about like in real terms, like the wheels are in motion for a SpaceX IPO, an OpenAI IPO, an Anduril IPO, an anthropic IPO, like holy shit, maybe a ByteDance IPO, but probably not here. It's wild.

[Brit Morin]

We need some IPOs.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, I also think people are going to want to get all this stuff out. I mean, this is the thing is like the great question of the whole thing, as we've talked about many times, minus AI, we're in a recession, right? AI is the only thing keeping the US out of a recession politically. A huge incentive to stoke the fires of the story, right? All these companies, if you want like right now, GDP looking pretty good. Real gdp, Right, because it's all Chinese housing boom, computers. But still GDP number is better than recession, right? Like the question is, what's the next shoe? So now you're going to put out all these IPOs or whatever, let the party continue. We'll see what happens with the midterms. We'll see what happens when people realize we're screwed on the debt, right? Like there's like these shoes to drop. But there is this thing which is like in some ways, like imagine there's this huge debt problem for our society. Big picture, the only way out.

[Jessi Hempel]

I think we're there. I don't think imagine. I think we have a huge debt problem.

[Sam Lessin]

For us to say, well, we're there. There's like a debt wall. There's a wall of debt that's really bad. And like our only chance is to get ramming velocity of the economy to blow through the wall, right? Like we have to like, you know, we have to like warp through it. And so like this is just like pull out all the stops, IPO everything and pray.

[Brit Morin]

Yes, I agree.

[Jessi Hempel]

What's the opposite of a soft landing, hard crash. Like what's more extreme than a hard crash?

[Dave Morin]

Land hitting a wall, slamming into a wall, smithereens landing.

[Sam Lessin]

So we know some smart people who kind of have this thesis which is an unreasonable that like Sorkin is personally responsible for somewhat of the dip in the market recently because everyone's reading his book, which is quite good. 1929.

[Dave Morin]

Oh, it is not his fault.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. You have to, you have to give the fullness of the theory.

[Brit Morin]

All the smart people are.

[Dave Morin]

Wait, all the smart people think it's Sorkin's fault his book came out after this dip? Sam.

[Sam Lessin]

Yeah, but all the Wall Street. No, no, no, it didn't. The Wall street people are all reading the book, Dave.

[Jessi Hempel]

The theory goes. And by all the smart people, I can attest to five people. But there's. The theory goes.

[Sam Lessin]

But five very smart people who trade a lot of money.

[Jessi Hempel]

Five of the smartest is the theory goes. I'm the one who told Sam about this and I have to defend it.

[Sam Lessin]

I also talked to the same sources, but yeah, go for it.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. That if you look at the book, the zeitgeisty book that these big money people were reading in the.com rise, it was Michael Lewis's new new thing.

[Dave Morin]

I thought it was Liars Poker.

[Jessi Hempel]

No, I'm sure it switched at some point. But if you're looking at. Pick a moment. Don't, don't let data get in the way of a good story, Dave. So then if you look now it's a story about greatest financial crash in history or I don't know, maybe we've had bigger ones since, but probably not. And again, it's just in the zeitgeist, right? It's the zeitgeist book. People have read it, they've not read it, but it kind of is on people's mind. And I think there is some truth to that. Not in that it's like totally determining the outcome, but I think that juxtaposition is interesting. Okay, your take, Dave. And then we're going to give their people their piece and go, I really

[Dave Morin]

love our friend Ricky Van Veen's take from his new email newsletter last week.

[Sam Lessin]

Let's drop that. We're all on it.

[Dave Morin]

So we look cool.

[Jessi Hempel]

We all have done that so many times. Sam, that was an unfair call out the big content.

[Dave Morin]

I like this point that he make, which is like that the big content thing, whether it's a book or a movie, is no longer the front of the conversation anymore. It's actually the conversation about those things that is the conversation now. And so like, you know, most books don't get, you know, there's like a, there's sort of concentric circles. Like a book only gets read by a certain number of people, then the book gets recommended to a certain number of people and then the book gets talked about on a bunch of podcasts. And I actually think that, you know, Sorkin's book actually just fits into the zeitgeist that was already happening, Jess. That, like this worry about maybe, but

[Jessi Hempel]

it stokes it, but it's on, it's on people's mind.

[Dave Morin]

Well, that's what I'm saying. Like this worry about data center capex specifically and like all of the Meg 7 going off balance sheet sheet to borrow debt in order to finance these huge capex expenditures over the next two years was already on people's minds. And the 1929 narrative was a huge narrative of debt, as is most of these huge crashes. And so this was already something that people were talking about. And his book just happens to fit perfectly into that. Right? He started working on that book like two years ago, right?

[Jessi Hempel]

No, like 10 years. He's working on for 10 years.

[Dave Morin]

So it just happens to hit at this exact right time for what the conversation about the conversation is right now.

[Jessi Hempel]

Causation, correlation, who knows the difference? I don't know.

[Sam Lessin]

I will say in closing, I want to give you one other. I want to give you one fun bubble watch that just came into my inbox that I'm clearing as Oracle just

[Jessi Hempel]

reported and is taking everyone. So just for the bubble watch.

[Sam Lessin]

Oh my God. Pull the bids.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, this means Paramount's out too, by the way. That means Allison's out.

[Dave Morin]

Netflix wins.

[Sam Lessin]

Here's my, here's my, the, here's my. My inbox. NetJet Starlink update. We just completed our highest volume day in history, completing a thousand owner flights on Sunday after Thanksgiving. And Netflix has just inked a deal with space like to put 600, 600 netjets tail. So there's your. There's your bubble warning. Netjets all time high flights.

[Dave Morin]

You said Netflix. Did you mean Starlink?

[Brit Morin]

No, he said netjets.

[Sam Lessin]

Net jets.

[Brit Morin]

The airplane now has Starlink.

[Sam Lessin]

It's. It's netjets Starlink. Netlink.

[Dave Morin]

Netlink.

[Jessi Hempel]

Guys, I just want to say buckle up, buckle up.

[Brit Morin]

Wild times, guys, our predictions are next week. I want everyone to Come prepared.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, we're doing it. Can't wait. To our wonderful listeners, a big thank you.

[Dave Morin]

What about your pop culture culture corner?

[Sam Lessin]

We're all supposed to tell people to subscribe.

[Jessi Hempel]

I was just gonna say subscribe. And I was in the comments link.

[Brit Morin]

Oh, yeah.

[Dave Morin]

Britt has huge news.

[Brit Morin]

Okay, last thing, last thing. In honor of Taylor Swift's docuseries, which I know Sam's gonna watch, and Jess will be the only one that really understands this alongside Dave, I got followed by a really huge Instagram account this week. I don't know how they found me. They only follow, like 600 other people, and now I'm one of them. The account is Swifties for Eternity. It is the number one fan account on Instagram and she follows me. I don't know why, but I think. I think we should manifest something.

[Dave Morin]

Bring her on the pod.

[Brit Morin]

I think we're gonna put together a bae, a Bay area Taylor Swift event, and you have to prove you're a Swiftie to get in.

[Sam Lessin]

I really want to find a company to invest in that creates fan pages for people and manages them as to, like, boost the reputation. Like, we don't. I don't have a fan page. And, like, I feel like I should make my own just to make me seem more important.

[Dave Morin]

Are you sure you don't have one?

[Sam Lessin]

No, but this is my thing. I need a company that mints fan pages.

[Dave Morin]

Somebody has to have made one about you by now.

[Sam Lessin]

So then Brit, they'll follow Brit. My fan page will follow Brit and she'll feel special. It's like there's a whole strategy here

[Dave Morin]

that we're not playing is like the people who hire. Who hire paparazzi to take. Take photos of them.

[Sam Lessin]

And they're not wrong.

[Jessi Hempel]

All celebrities do that.

[Brit Morin]

You know who else follows me? Hilary Duff.

[Sam Lessin]

I'm going to start calling paparazzi and telling them where I am. You know, just so.

[Dave Morin]

I love it. Jess is done with us.

[Jessi Hempel]

I just think everybody's done with us. Let's just call a spade a spade. A thank you to those who listen this far. We love chit chatting for you every week. Brett teased the predictions episode. You will not want to miss it.

[Sam Lessin]

Is it one year or ten year Predictions?

[Brit Morin]

Next year, Sam. Next year.

[Sam Lessin]

Well, are we going to review last year's? Because there were some batshit ones that I'd like to call out and good

[Brit Morin]

ones that I'd like to call out. Yes, fine. We'll pull.

[Sam Lessin]

Fine.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay. These guys really want. Sam must really have no one coming to the sauna right now. He really wants to stay on, so I'm going to spare everyone a call.

[Sam Lessin]

I got to call an entrepreneur.

[Jessi Hempel]

Okay, Call an entrepreneur. We'll see you back here next week for another episode of More or Less. Goodbye. Bye.

[Dave Morin]

See you later.

[Sam Lessin]

Bye, everyone.

[Brit Morin]

If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing 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 or less Avemorin, Essonlesson. And as for me, I'm Brit. See you guys next time.