Slate Money — "Male Mass Hysteria" (May 22, 2021)

Host: Felix Salmon
Co-hosts: Emily Peck, Stacy-Marie Ishmael
Guest: Edmund Lee

Episode Overview

This episode of Slate Money dives into a tumultuous week for business and finance, covering three major themes:

• The unraveling of AT&T’s media ambitions through the "mega demerger" with Discovery,
• The mass hysteria surrounding cryptocurrencies, and
• Widespread burnout across American workplaces, with a focus on its root causes and disparate impacts.

The conversation is lively, skeptical, and critical, often laced with humor and insight, particularly in the media and tech sphere. The podcast features guest Edmund Lee, media correspondent at the New York Times, who brings deep expertise on the media business.

1. AT&T, WarnerMedia, and Discovery: The $100 Billion Mulligan

[00:54–23:36]

Background: AT&T's Content Gamble Fails

• AT&T bought Time Warner for $107 billion (including debt).
• The acquisition was always questioned by media observers.

Edmund Lee:
"Five years ago... I wrote a cheeky column for Recode at the time saying, this deal makes no sense. Right? I'm not the only one who said that... Here we are, right? The deal never made sense from the get go, even after it closed three years ago..." [02:10]

• The purchase was driven by a quest for content—after having realized DirecTV was simply a distributor, not a content producer.
• Justice Department tried to block the deal over vertical integration concerns, a process that arguably drained two years without any strategic gains.

Felix Salmon:
"Literally everyone I know basically thought it made no sense. The only place where it seemed to make any sense or people who seemed to think it made any sense were the Justice Department." [03:48]

The Unwinding: Merger with Discovery

• Time Warner's media assets are being spun off and combined with Discovery, forming a yet-unnamed conglomerate.
• Discovery specializes in "ambient TV" like HGTV, Food Network, and other casual-viewership channels.

Edmund Lee:
"It's the kind of basic cable that plays sort of in dentist offices and doctor's offices... the light FM of basic cable." [06:05]

Why the New Combo Makes Sense — or Doesn’t

• Combining prestige (HBO, CNN) and background (Discovery) content may allow a streaming platform to compete with Netflix’s broad appeal.
• The real value of CNN as a daily-use property is emphasized.

Felix Salmon:
"You don’t want Succession on in the background, you want HGTV..." [06:38]

Major Obstacles

• "Linear bundles": Existing agreements with cable distributors make it very difficult (contractually and operationally) to move content, especially news and sports, directly to streaming.
• David Zaslav (Discovery CEO, now head of combined company) must decide how to reallocate vast content budgets toward streaming vs. cable.

Edmund Lee:
"How much of that $20 billion is going to be spent towards streaming... And how he allocates that money will tell you what he really thinks the future is." [09:08]

Impacts on Key Players

• Jeff Zucker (CNN): Likely a winner; personal ties with Zaslav ("golf buddies") portend stability and expansion for Zucker at CNN.
• Jason Kilar (WarnerMedia CEO): Loser; recently hired, aggressively streamlined operations, angered Hollywood by premiering films on HBO Max, and is likely squeezed out.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael:
"Is Kilar the person who was responsible for deciding to piss off half of Hollywood by saying, we are going to stream movies day of?" [12:51]

AT&T’s Justification and the Real Math

• AT&T claims to have recouped most of its investment via asset sales, deleveraging, and a new ownership stake, but the hosts are deeply skeptical.
• Actual market value destruction could reach $50 billion, especially once all costs, debt, and lost strategic opportunity are factored in.

Felix Salmon:
"Congratulations, John Stankey, for destroying $50 billion of value. Not many people can make that claim." [59:44]

Broader Industry Implications

• NBC/CBS merger speculated but seen as unlikely due to antitrust—unless the competitive set is redefined to include tech giants like Google and Facebook.
• Phone companies (AT&T, Verizon) have proven poor at content and innovation, with Comcast being a rare exception by simply letting NBCUniversal operate independently.

Emily Peck:
"My takeaway... phone companies are bad at content and they're bad at innovation. They're widget makers." [22:45]

2. Crypto Markets: Hysteria, Exchange Failures, and Elon

[23:36–36:41]

Crypto’s Volatility and Systemic Weakness

• Massive swings in crypto prices, especially Bitcoin and Ether, spurred speculation and concern this week.
• The supposed utility of cryptos as payments networks has been eclipsed by their use as speculative commodities.

Felix Salmon:
"All the promise about a payments network and a currency has basically gone out the window. And... the world has decided it is a commodity, not a currency." [24:12]

Exchange Outages: A Store of Value That Can’t Be Stored?

• Major centralized exchanges (Coinbase, Binance) failed at critical moments, freezing ability to cash out or buy in.
• Decentralized exchanges (DEXes) kept running, but can't trade directly in dollars—so their utility for most users is limited.

Felix Salmon:
"You can convert coins into other coins, but in order to be a commodity, I really do think you need to be able to convert it into dollars." [25:53]

Edmund Lee:
"The whole point of crypto is that settlement shouldn't be a problem... there's something sort of ironic about that." [27:08]

Settlement and Scaling Problems

• Blockchains are now too slow and expensive: settlement takes hours, fees can top $50 per transaction.

Felix Salmon:
"It can take hours and it can cost you upwards of $50 to do a single transaction on the Ethereum network. The settlement just isn't working." [28:20]

Fundamental Questions — and the "Mass Hysteria" Frame

Edmund Lee:
"Can I ask just a very fundamental question that is, like, maybe stupid. Why does crypto exist exactly? Like, what do people use it for?" [29:45]

• Crypto’s primary non-speculative utility appears to be for ransomware and dark web transactions.
• Ether's blockchain does underlie some NFT and other “distributed computer” functions, but the majority of excitement is cultural, emotional, and more akin to fandom than investment.

Emily Peck:
"Bitcoin has filled a Trump void, like Trump left a void in Our, like, news brains, and we needed to fill it with something. And bitcoin plus Elon Musk kind of fulfills that need..." [33:10]

Edmund Lee:
"It's mostly men, maybe, who are actually emotional. And the value of bitcoin, then, is fueled by male mass hysteria." [34:06]

Memorable Exchange

• Memetic personalities in crypto: Anthony Scaramucci, Elon Musk, and other men channeled their emotional investment and follower energy into crypto, mirroring the behavior of gold bugs and meme stock enthusiasts.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael:
"Trading has always been an emotionally fueled activity. However, you might want to believe in efficient markets hypotheses... there was also a time in financial blogging where if you wrote literally anything about gold, you would have to moderate your comments for the next two days because it would just be a lot of people who were also convinced that there was about to be an electron bomb of some kind..." [35:06]

3. The Burnout Epidemic: Roots, Realities, and Inequities

[36:41–51:44]

Framing Burnout

• Burnout is now formally recognized by the WHO as an “occupational phenomenon” rooted in chronic workplace stress that is improperly managed—not a medical condition or acute event.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael:
"The clinical, clinical word burnout... is described... as a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. And to me, that's important for two reasons... it emphasizes that it isn't just something like somebody wakes up and decides that they have." [38:43]

Who Suffers Most?

• Burnout affects frontline workers (health care, service), people of color, and especially women of color at disproportionately high rates due to overlapping work, home, and societal pressures.

Emily Peck:
"Women twice as likely to be burnt out as men, and then women of color even more likely... work is stressful, and then there's added stress when you're a member of these groups that face higher hurdles all the time." [41:38]

• Origin of 'burnout': Links to Vietnam-era trauma, drug use, yuppie culture, and later frontline and privileged worker fatigue.

The "Performance" of Wellness and Culture Clash

• Many people from marginalized backgrounds must maintain a persona of professionalism or wellness, despite internalized trauma or external stresses, especially in predominantly white workplaces.

Edmund Lee:
"She was Anna Wintour's personal assistant... She quit... She was exhausted because of the Persona, the doppelganger she had to create. Coming into work every day in an office, that it was peculiarly, particularly acutely sort of the white, privileged, rich, blonde world..." [42:25]

• When major world events occur (e.g., Atlanta shootings), colleagues often remain oblivious, compounding the stress.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael:
"It's also the sense of people on the other end of it aren't even aware of how much you're holding it together despite all of that." [46:05]

The YOLO Economy: Privilege and Opting Out

• Coverage of pandemic-induced workplace resignations ("YOLO economy") often conflates real trauma responses (e.g., from journalists and frontline workers) with privileged people choosing to "find themselves" after a year of isolation.

Stacy-Marie Ishmael:
"The challenge with that article... is it really contributed to that conflation of, eh, I'm out, with people who are dealing with actual diagnosed trauma." [46:51]

• Burnout’s meaning splits between trauma/overwork and yuppie/elite anxiety—highlighting need for better language and understanding.

4. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the persistence of "bad" mergers:
  "Congratulations, John Stankey, for destroying $50 billion of value. Not many people can make that claim." —Felix Salmon [59:44]

• On crypto culture:
  "Bitcoin has filled a Trump void... And bitcoin plus Elon Musk kind of fulfills that need... because it's such an emotional. Bitcoin is so emotional. The crypto guys get really excited about it and angry about it on Twitter... it's a culture. It's a new part of society." —Emily Peck [33:12]

• On white-collar burnout:
  "The workplace is already exhausting for people of color... And couple that with a pandemic? It’s just that much more difficult." —Edmund Lee [44:17]

5. Key Segment Timestamps

• AT&T's Merger Sopabox: [00:54–23:36]
• Crypto Meltdowns, Hysteria & Cultural Impact: [23:36–36:41]
• Burnout: Who, Why, and Workplace Effects: [36:41–51:44]
• Numbers Round: [51:44–60:05]

6. Numbers Round – Highlights

• $50 billion — Value destroyed by AT&T in the WarnerMedia deals (multiple hosts) [57:44, 57:51]
• 39 million — Number of families receiving new government cash support (child tax credit) [52:56]
• $50 billion pledged vs. $250 million spent: Corporate America’s unkept commitments on racial equity after George Floyd [55:47]

7. Tone and Style

Intellectually sharp, deeply skeptical of corporate spin, and comfortable shifting between rigorous analysis and wry humor. The panel consistently grounds big headlines in economic realities and social dynamics, with an emphasis on how power, personality, and institutional inertia shape financial outcomes.

For Further Discussion:

• Will traditional media’s push into streaming ever work given the economics of both legacy TV and modern tech?
• Are crypto assets destined to remain speculative manias and toyboxes for the emotional and the online?
• What policies can address structural sources of burnout in workplaces—especially for the most marginalized?

Listen if you:

• Want to understand why corporate mega-mergers fail again and again
• Like irreverent, thoughtful takes on the absurdities of modern finance and tech
• Care about the lived realities—and hidden inequities—of workplace stress in 2021