E60: The 2021 Bestie Awards PLUS Jack Dorsey starts the Web3 Wars

(0:00) Catching up on the Web3 wars and Jack Dorsey sounding off (5:10) Biggest Winner - Politics (9:43) Biggest Loser - Politics (14:37) Biggest Political Surprise (22:24) Biggest Winner - Business (26:03) Biggest Loser - Business (30:54) Biggest Business Surprise (35:27) Best Science Breakthrough (42:56) Biggest Flash in the Pan (47:08) Best CEO (52:43) Best Investor (57:12) Best Turnaround (1:02:47) Worth Human Being (1:07:31) Best Meme (1:10:02) Most Loathsome Company (1:14:47) Best New Tech (1:20:22) Best Trend (1:22:17) Worst Trend (1:26:02) Favorite Media (1:34:15) The Rudy Giuliani Award for Self-Immolation (1:39:07) The Besties spread holiday cheer with each other Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://twitter.com/jack https://twitter.com/Jason/status/1473321415285751811 https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1473150192400486401 https://twitter.com/jack/status/1473155226194616325 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1472754632325795843 https://www.theinformation.com/articles/coinbase-enters-the-metaverse-an-exodus-from-meta-s-novi-unit?rc=g3wfdp https://dune.xyz/rchen8/opensea https://phys.org/news/2021-09-chinese-scientists-starch-synthesis-carbon.html https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55564448 https://www.amazon.com/Gray-Lady-Winked-Misreporting-Fabrications/dp/1736703315 https://www.wsj.com/articles/washington-post-grasps-for-new-direction-as-trump-era-boom-fades-11639695007 https://twitter.com/GavinSBaker/status/1473326791293128706 https://scitechdaily.com/fusion-breakthrough-at-the-brink-of-fusion-ignition-at-national-ignition-facility https://www.amazon.com/Grinding-It-Out-audiobook/dp/B07H4WXR4N https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276 https://www.amazon.com/San-Fransicko-Progressives-Ruin-Cities/dp/0063093626 https://www.amazon.com/Wanting-Power-Mimetic-Desire-Everyday/dp/1250262488

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the All In Podcast and it is our year end episode. It is our 2021 Bestie Awards. This is where we give our awards for the best and worst of what happened in 2021. We did it last year, kind of half-heartedly, but this year, hopefully, we put a little bit more work into it. With me again, of course, David Friedberg, the Sultan of Science, the Rain Man, David Sacks, and Sweater Jesus, Chamath Palihapitiya. How's everybody doing? Ready to go? Did anybody do their homework?

• 0:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh my God. We are nine away from episode 69.

• 0:38Jason Calacanis?

  And?

• 0:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where we will have a special guest.

• 0:41Jason Calacanis?

  A special guest, who I've given the choice of coming on episode 69 or 420.

• 0:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, no, no. He has to do 69. He can't do 420. He can do whatever he wants.

• 0:51Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, basically, he could do no wrong.

• 0:53David Friedberg?

  Is he committed?

• 0:54David Sacks?

  What about Jack? Can we get Jack on?

• 0:56David Friedberg?

  Don't talk about that.

• 0:57Chamath Palihapitiya?

  If you stop grinding Jack, yeah.

• 0:59Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, maybe if you stop dunking on Jack for no reason, you're insufferable, Sacks.

• 1:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Seriously, you're insufferable.

• 1:06Jason Calacanis?

  It's bad enough that like I've alienated potential guests, Chamath's alienated best, now you're getting in on alienating the guests?

• 1:11David Friedberg?

  Do you think it would be too much to have Jack and Chris Dixon on together?

• 1:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who?

• 1:16Jason Calacanis?

  Who? Oh my God, that is so gross.

• 1:20David Friedberg?

  Delete that.

• 1:21Jason Calacanis?

  No, don't. Like, Friedberg's trying to maintain his relationship. I don't care about my relationship with AC16Z.

• 1:27Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Jack Dorsey, we all know. Who's the other person?

• 1:29David Friedberg?

  Chris Dixon?

• 1:30Jason Calacanis?

  Chris Dixon.

• 1:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, who's that?

• 1:32David Friedberg?

  He's the general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who runs their crypto fund.

• 1:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:35David Sacks?

  It wasn't just me.

• 1:37David Friedberg?

  He's been very vocal lately about Web3.

• 1:39Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Why don't you guys invite the CFO of Greylock as well while you're at it?

• 1:44Jason Calacanis?

  Oh my God. We couldn't get the partner in charge of human capital at Excel?

• 1:50David Sacks?

  You're getting a little bit far afield. Chris posted something pretty innocuous on Web3 and Jack jumped down his throat and same thing with Bollinger as well.

• 1:58Jason Calacanis?

  I saw the C. Dixon quote.

• 2:00David Sacks?

  It wasn't just me. Jason, now you're pretending, you retweeted a photo of Jack jumping down Chris Dixon's throat and saying, whoa, what's going on here? Now you're trying to pretend like he was triggered by me. He wasn't triggered by.

• 2:14Jason Calacanis?

  I love Jack After Dark. Jack is gone wild.

• 2:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Chris Dixon did, did try a little misappropriation.

• 2:20David Sacks?

  For which Jack jumped down his throat. Basically.

• 2:23Jason Calacanis?

  That's Andreessen Horowitz's thing. They always culture appropriate, right?

• 2:26David Sacks?

  Jack is just like any other guy who quits his job and then goes on a shitposting rampage.

• 2:32Jason Calacanis?

  Really? Like you did after Yammer? Like Chabot did after shutting down Social Capital?

• 2:38David Sacks?

  I'm just one of his casualties. There's a bunch of people he's gone after.

• 2:41Jason Calacanis?

  I thought that Jack Energy was great. I think he quit as CEO of Twitter so he could tweet.

• 2:47David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 2:47Jason Calacanis?

  He wanted to get in there.

• 2:48David Friedberg?

  No, he wants to focus on blockchain. Clearly, he has religion on this and he believes that it's the future of the internet and he cares deeply about the democratization of access to finance. And I think it would be awesome to hear his views on this. I would love for him to come on and not be badgered about censorship in the role that he used to run. How would you like him talking to you about, you know, being the CEO of Zenefits, Sacks?

• 3:09David Sacks?

  Okay, honestly, I'm not trying to badger him. I only have one question, which is, the reason why he loves Bitcoin is for its censorship resistance. So why, when he had the opportunity as CEO of Twitter, didn't he stand tall for resisting censorship?

• 3:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Maybe he did, David. Maybe he did.

• 3:24David Sacks?

  Okay, so just tell us that.

• 3:25Jason Calacanis?

  Read between the lines, dude.

• 3:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I don't think he has to answer to the Twitter mob and try to say, here's all the hard decisions I made that you guys didn't see. You know this. There's a.

• 3:34David Friedberg?

  And the dynamics of a board and lawsuits and politicians.

• 3:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Hundreds of hard decisions that CEOs make.

• 3:40Jason Calacanis?

  And the president inciting a riot at the Capitol.

• 3:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You're not supposed to create a list and publish it and say, look at me, I'm such a good boy. I mean, it's not reasonable.

• 3:46David Sacks?

  I just think it's a reasonable question for me to ask.

• 3:49Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, but the way you asked it was like, isn't Jack at an ashram like praying ba ba ba ba ba? Like you were full dunk mode. I know that's one of your comedy writers writing those tweets for you. Did you get, was that a punched up tweet or not? It was a punched up tweet.

• 4:01David Sacks?

  I can't actually be funny. No, it was not punched up.

• 4:04Jason Calacanis?

  But also funnier than you actually are. That's why I'm saying so. Why did you have to throw my people in the mix? Yeah, why did I have to go to the ashram? Yeah.

• 4:09David Sacks?

  Jack has spent years trying to cultivate this like zen approach.

• 4:15Jason Calacanis?

  That has nothing to do with my people, bro. Nothing to do. Nothing to do with the ashram. That's not what we do. We're getting lost in the weeds here.

• 4:22David Friedberg?

  We have an award show to do. Do you have a music, do you have a music intro? Like a da da da da.

• 4:28Jason Calacanis?

  Please welcome everybody to the 2021 Bestie Awards. Now just put in like everybody like Denzel Washington and you know, like.

• 4:37David Friedberg?

  Yeah, can we edit screenshots from like the last Oscars that, you know, everyone did in our audience?

• 4:41Jason Calacanis?

  Oscars from the eighties, like Tom Cruise getting up and cheering and whooping. Okay, here we go.

• 5:02Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, besties.

• 5:06Jason Calacanis?

  So there's a lot at stake here, folks, and we're going to start it off with biggest winner in politics. A very difficult decision here. Sacks, biggest winner in politics. Who do you got?

• 5:17David Sacks?

  I got Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City. He was a huge underdog candidate. He won by not being woke. He rejected the, you know, woke sensibilities of the other Democratic candidates. He is a former cop who still packs a gun. And he made his issues, um, supporting the police, public safety, um, charter schools. You know, as an instrument of minority advancement, and he even pushed to make New York City a tech and crypto hub. He is going to reverse the damage done under de Blasio. He won four or five boroughs in the Democratic primary and overwhelmingly carried Black Le Tino precincts. If the Democratic Party has a future after the rejection of woke, it is Eric Adams.

• 5:59Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Friedberg, who you got?

• 6:01David Friedberg?

  Okay, mine's a little, um, esoteric, but my biggest winner for politics this year. Is the blockchain and I'll tell you why I think that the embracing the blockchain as a technology that enables an evolution away from what folks consider to be you know centralized control systems and ultimately underscores the interest of the populist notion that's sweeping over the United States is very strong and I think it's waking up politicians and it's going to wake up the political class to the fact that this system of organizing social economic and political action may ultimately evolve us away from

• 6:42David Friedberg?

  the systems that we run today and it is a very serious threat to the current system of politics and economics and social order and I think it's starting to kind of rear its head and politicians are starting to wake up to it and they're all thinking very deeply about what it means and so I would say the blockchain has really kind of created a new model for organization amongst humans that is waking us up in the political class more than anything else.

• 7:06Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Chamath, who do you got?

• 7:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think this is pretty obvious, but I think it's Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia. Here's a guy that was a private equity executive who basically had to fade Trump, but still pretend to feign that he needed his support and ran a pretty centrist, you know, pro-education, anti-crime, pro-business, pro just individual, you know, empowerment campaign in Virginia, which hasn't swung this way for a long time and basically beat Terry McAuliffe. And I think that this is the roadmap, which effectively says whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, grab into these centrist temples and run with it and

• 7:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  you're going to get a ton of people in the silent majority who are sick of all of this fringe behavior, both on the left and the right. And so I think Glenn Youngkin was a real canary in the coalmine for the political future of America.

• 8:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right, great selection so far and a lot of diversity in the picking. And so I went with Joe Manchin, obviously the shadow president who was able to dictate what gets passed and Build Back Better getting canceled or cut from six plus billion down to maybe 1.5 billion if it ever gets passed.

• 8:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Trillion.

• 8:20Jason Calacanis?

  Trillion, rather, sorry, thank you, was my biggest winner in politics.

• 8:25David Friedberg?

  Hey, Sax, do you think Manchin's a rising star or a foiling star after his decision to denounce the Build Back Better bill this year, this week?

• 8:33David Sacks?

  Well, you guys have to remember that the state he's from, West Virginia, went for Trump by like 20 points. It is a deep red state and Manchin himself is a major anomaly as a blue politician hanging on in that state.

• 8:45David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 8:45David Sacks?

  So the Democrats, instead of alienating him, should be thanking their lucky stars that they even have him for any votes, because any other Democratic politician in West Virginia would have gone down to defeat a long time ago. So they are lucky that Manchin can vote with them at all on anything.

• 9:02David Friedberg?

  To a layman like myself, or I imagine most people who aren't aware of that kind of political circumstance, he looks like a John McCain Maverick kind of guy, like he's coming in and saying, "I'm blowing this thing up", and he gets all this attention. Does that light a fire for him, maybe?

• 9:16David Sacks?

  I think that's a great analogy, which I think he is the Democrats' McCain. You know, he is the guy coming in there casting that very unpopular vote, the single vote, like McCain did on the repeal of Obamacare, the single vote that took that down. But the reality is the Republicans on Obamacare didn't have a plausible alternative. That's why McCain voted against that. And I think here, in the same way, I think Manchin may be doing the Democrats a favor, because we can't afford all this new spending.

• 9:41David Friedberg?

  Super interesting, yeah.

• 9:43Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go. Biggest loser in politics. Who do you got? Let's go in reverse order now. Chamath, who do you got?

• 9:50David Friedberg?

  You go first, Jiggle.

• 9:51Jason Calacanis?

  My biggest loser is Elizabeth Warren. She wanted everybody to pay a lot of taxes who were in the billionaires to pay taxes. She wanted to cancel them. And now the largest tax bill ever paid by any American has been completed, according to a tweet from Elon, that he paid $11 billion. Every program she wanted to work for and fight for has been done, just not by her. It's been done by the private sector. She was attacking Bezos for pay in factories and getting to a $15 minimum wage. Now Amazon is regularly paying in the 20s and giving free college, something her and Bernie Sanders were not able to accomplish in their entire careers. And now she continues to dunk on?

• 10:37Jason Calacanis?

  Capitalists, entrepreneurs, as the country basically says, we're not interested in socialism, we're not interested in this brand of politics. They lost the election. Biden won, and now this far-left politics is, I think, becoming, you know, as unimportant as the far-right, you know, alt-right.

• 11:00Jason Calacanis?

  She's basically not important.

• 11:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'll build on your theme, and I actually just said the progressive left and the alt-right. So I think that the

• 11:07Jason Calacanis?

  Sure.

• 11:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  extremes in America have basically, you know, we've exposed them for the emperor with no clothes. So, you know, we have tried progressive policies in cities and states in America that's failed. We've tried far-right politics at the federal level, that's basically crashed and burned as well. And now what you see is a wave of normalcy. And so, you know, all these chortling, you know, fringe classes get an extreme amount of attention because what they say is salacious or interesting, but underneath there's no real substance or follow-through or real skill. There's no basic understanding of anything, economic policy, foreign policy,

• 11:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  none of it. And so they make for great soundbites, but they cannot govern. And so I think the biggest loser is the progressive left and the alt-right.

• 11:59Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, you want to go next?

• 12:00David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, very much in the same vein. My choice is Kamala Harris, the vice president. She has a 28% approval rating. Polls show her lagging Biden by about 10 points. No vice president has polled this poorly since Dan Quayle was the butt of every late-night joke about 30 years ago. And, boy, am I really dating myself with that reference. What's the problem? Yeah, exactly.

• 12:23Jason Calacanis?

  Potato.

• 12:24David Sacks?

  A lot of viewers don't even remember what we're talking about. But so the problem here is kind of what Chamath was saying. She, Harris is an equity scold. The public is tired of being lectured and hectored about its woke sins and trying to compensate for that and showing, you know, warmth with a fake laughing cackle isn't going to reassure anybody who's just been called a white supremacist.

• 12:46David Friedberg?

  Interestingly enough, last year on our award show, Jason Calacanis made the prediction that Kamala will be the first female president of the United States, just as a gentle reminder that we had predictions.

• 13:00Jason Calacanis?

  I love it how you how you called him Calacanis.

• 13:02David Friedberg?

  Calacanis.

• 13:03Jason Calacanis?

  Calacanis?

• 13:04David Friedberg?

  He likes to monetize his name.

• 13:06Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Friedberg.

• 13:07David Sacks?

  That prediction could still come true, you know?

• 13:09Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, the prediction was made because I thought Biden wasn't going to make it through the first term because he's so old and that he might not be able to function.

• 13:15David Friedberg?

  That was that was right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That may still happen. Yeah.

• 13:18Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I think I might stand by that prediction.

• 13:20David Friedberg?

  That's right. We'll save it for the prediction show.

• 13:23Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we'll save it for a prediction show next week. We're taking no weeks off is the new rule here. All right, moving on.

• 13:29David Friedberg?

  Oh, wait, I got my biggest loser.

• 13:30Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, yeah, basically, sorry.

• 13:31David Friedberg?

  My biggest political loser is Tony Fauci. I feel like this guy got totally viced out this year. Determinism is a trap, right? In his role, you have to be deterministic, meaning you're saying you gotta do X to get Y in order to get people to take action. And so, you know, in order, determinism was needed for clarity of action to get people to take the vaccine. And he said, hey, this is gonna, you know, ultimately end the pandemic. And the problem with determinism is it drives binary outcomes. You're either right or you're wrong. And in this case, he was wrong, right? He said, go get the vaccine, the pandemic will end. Everyone got the vaccine and the pandemic certainly didn't end and it evolved and it became this very fuzzy gray map on where we sit today. And I think as a result,

• 14:16David Friedberg?

  he completely lost credibility with a broad swath of people who otherwise would have been kind of still standing behind him. Because I do think he's, you know, he's an honest, just, forthright scientist, but in order to drive outcomes, he had to be very kind of stated and it was a bit of a trap this year and I think he got screwed. So, poor Tony Fauci. I mean, bless him, but it was a rough year.

• 14:36Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Biggest political surprise? Sax, what do you got? What's the biggest political surprise?

• 14:41David Sacks?

  Yeah, this is where I had Glenn Youngkin. And, you know, just to add to what Chamath already said, you know, Virginia went for Biden by 10 points just a short time before. Yonkin, he secured Trump's endorsement very early and quietly and kept Trump at bay. And then he ran as a general moderate with a business pedigree, as kind of Tomah pointed out. But there was something else going on here as well. I don't think it was just centrism that would flip a blue state red. It was also that issue of schools where McAuliffe had that gaffe in their final debate. He said that parents shouldn't be telling the schools what to teach. Basically, McAuliffe was sided with the teachers' unions and whereas

• 15:22David Sacks?

  Yonkin sided with parents and really, I think, voiced their opposition to CRT in the schools. That became the centerpiece of his closing argument, and that's what allowed him to win the election.

• 15:35Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My biggest political surprise is Joe Manchin. I think that he will probably be looked back on in time as our generation's Paul Volcker. So let me explain what I mean by that. You know, at the time, Volcker was incredibly unpopular for what he did by raising interest rates to basically break the back of inflation. And it really wasn't until 30 or 40 years later, through the fullness of time, that we appreciated that what he did took an enormous amount of courage, because in the moment, it created huge headaches and a lot of pushback and a lot of ill will and ire towards Volcker. Similarly, I think

• 16:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Manchin is just now starting this process of just getting completely pilloried. And, you know, people will point to a handful of elements of Build Back Better, like childcare, that have now expired, and those childcare credits and what it means to working families. And that is true. But there are ways to solve for that by just going back and respending the 7 trillion we already spend a little bit better. And in time, the idea and the courage to not pour three more trillion dollars on this dumpster fire without getting ourselves better organized will turn out to be an enormous gift that he gave our kids.

• 16:57Jason Calacanis?

  A profile in courage.

• 16:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Even if we don't right now see it and a lot of people can be angry at it. But that was the biggest political surprise is the desire for a politician. Politician, because like you have to remember Fed Chair is elected, right? You're there, you're in, you're out. But that was a surprise to me that he would go through this process and what it meant at a national level for his reputation to get to the other side.

• 17:21Jason Calacanis?

  Yep. Okay, Friedberg, what do you got?

• 17:22David Friedberg?

  My biggest political surprise was that that insurrection crowd made their way into the Capitol building. I mean, do you guys remember how shocking those images were?

• 17:30Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 17:31David Friedberg?

  And what an incredible day that was. I mean, it was almost a year ago now and we watched on screen what felt like the crumbling of institutions that we always took for being, we always took for granted and assumed were impenetrable, both politically, but more importantly, physically. And to see people physically break into that Capitol building and cause mayhem and damage, it really kind of exposed, I think, a nerve. And it was a really kind of shocking moment, a shocking day. So, you know, to this day, I still kind of think that that's been the biggest surprise for me of the year. I, you know, I don't think any of us thought that that would happen, both in terms of like that we let our defenses down and let people into that building like that, and that there was enough of a ground swell to break their way into that building. Both sides were surprising.

• 18:13Jason Calacanis?

  And also just super disturbing to watch a bunch of elected officials cowering under tables while Secret Service had guns drawn and doors were being kicked in.

• 18:23David Friedberg?

  And also while some elected officials were kind of endorsing the behavior to some extent, you know, at a distance, the whole thing was just shocking. And I think a lot of us realized that maybe our democracy, and I think I mentioned this on the show last year, is not, is a little more fragile than perhaps we, we think it is.

• 18:41Jason Calacanis?

  Trump was the biggest stress test ever for me. Uh, the biggest political surprise, uh, was Kamala Harris being sidelined. Where is she? What is she working on? Uh, I thought that the Democratic Party was going to want to feature her, showcase her with some great projects, uh, in order to, uh, maybe prep her for running, if need be in 24, uh, and certainly in 2028. And it seems like they have sidelined her deliberately. And they don't believe in her, which is, they don't believe in the first female vice president and of color.

• 19:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, I don't think it's that. I think that they think that she's not, she's not, they think that she's not electable. And so they're hedging.

• 19:16Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 19:17David Sacks?

  Maybe they're, uh, racist, J. Cal.

• 19:20Jason Calacanis?

  Or maybe they are saving her till after the midterms and then going to feature her. I don't know what the strategy is.

• 19:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  After they lose the house.

• 19:27David Sacks?

  Like a fighter, they're saving, they're saying, protecting her.

• 19:31Jason Calacanis?

  But if she was good enough to get, to help get Biden in office, why isn't she good enough to, uh, feature now? It just doesn't make sense to me. Uh, that she was so sidelined.

• 19:41David Sacks?

  Well, they did give her tasks, like they sent her to the border. The problem is she doesn't have anything to say that's, that will resonate with the American people, but also be acceptable to her progressive base.

• 19:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Or her perceived, her perceived progressive base is because I actually think that she also has the ability and has in the past, you know, had the ability to be tough.

• 20:03Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, wasn't she a law and order DA?

• 20:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, she's, she's ripped. So she, she completely has the ability to just be nails if she wants to be. But again, she, and again, maybe even Biden to some degree, still believe that the progressive left is the future of the party. I think that most of us here think that it's a head fake. And, uh, until she comes to those terms herself, she's not, she's going to continue to be sidelined. But if she tacks back to the center and actually gets out there, I think she's really. Capable of, of, of doing some stuff here. She's very articulate. She's very punchy.

• 20:40Jason Calacanis?

  Did anybody?

• 20:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  She took, you know, she can really tell the truth, but then she can also really just chuck and jive and say nothing when she wants to. And that's just what's, that corporal speak isn't working for her.

• 20:50Jason Calacanis?

  Did anybody else notice, Friedberg, Sax, that the initial reaction to Manchin's vote, or saying he wasn't going to vote for this on Sunday during the talk shows, was like dunking on him, oh my God, he's horrible. And then immediately Monday, they were trying to reconcile with him and say, hey, let's have a reasonable discussion about this. We value your opinion as a partner.

• 21:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, it was this weird emotional reaction. Like I got this email. I forwarded to you guys from Jen Sackey.

• 21:15Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah.

• 21:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And it's like crazy. In that email, like in that, in her press release or whatever, that email that she sent to us, a bunch of us got it. I mean, Jen's going crazy.

• 21:23Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, hysterical.

• 21:25David Sacks?

  It was such CYA by the administration. Like they wasted everyone's time for six months pushing this bill forward without checking to see if the swing votes would go for it. So then the swing votes don't go for it. The bill fails and they're blaming those votes. That doesn't make sense.

• 21:40Jason Calacanis?

  I think it's that they just ignored what the swing votes were saying. He's been saying from the beginning, it's too big. And his number was 1.5. And they just said, you know what? We'll wait till the end and then try to high pressure him or something or flip him at the end.

• 21:51David Sacks?

  It doesn't make sense to push for-

• 21:52Jason Calacanis?

  It was a stupid strategy.

• 21:53David Sacks?

  It doesn't make sense to push for that big a bill when it's a 50 50 Senate. They should have gone for something smaller and more reasonable.

• 21:59Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Either that, or they should have made a better calculation on inflation. Because again, the minute that we had these big inflation prints and the Fed basically changed their tapering posture, that was the bullet in the gun. And you basically handed Manchin a loaded weapon and said, here you go. Do what you will with this bill.

• 22:15Jason Calacanis?

  This was a terrible betting strategy by the Republican Party.

• 22:18David Sacks?

  Well, he warned them. He warned them in May that he was very worried about inflation. And they were saying it was transitory. And then he turned out to be right.

• 22:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 22:24Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Biggest winner in business. Friedberg, who you got? Biggest winner 2021?

• 22:30David Friedberg?

  My biggest winner in business goes back to the GameStop days and I think it was the retail investor class. You know, they were always there to trade on the wings and in the wake of the institutions and the markets prior to, I think, what took place this year. And after what happened this year where they were able to coalesce and organize to make trades that move the market against institutions in a really meaningful way and broke several institutions in the process, it highlighted that retail has power, retail can organize and retail in aggregate can act to be a stronger force in the markets than institutions. And so the retail investor is my biggest winner for 2021.

• 23:12Jason Calacanis?

  Who's your biggest winner, Chamath, in business?

• 23:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I mean, this is pretty obvious. It's Elon Musk. You know, as a former owner of Tesla, as a current shareholder of SpaceX, as somebody who sold him a company this year, David and I did, to see him work is magical, absolutely magical. And I think that this guy, you know, you know, there's, there are these impresarios who just have these virtuosos who have these moments where they're just in the zone.

• 23:41Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 23:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And he's in the zone. He's in his zone of mastery. And to see a guy like that execute, I think, is a privilege. So he's my biggest winner.

• 23:51Jason Calacanis?

  If not Elon, who would you have? Because it's pretty obvious it's Elon. So did you have a second place consideration?

• 23:56Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I would actually probably double down with what Freebrooke said. I do think that there was, it's more sort of what I would say is the outsider class versus insiders. I think that whether it's blockchain or Web3 or NFTs or GameStop, this was the year, you know, the Constitution Dow, this was the year that loose affiliations of individuals could compete on a level playing field with organized capital. And I think that that's a really important trend for the future.

• 24:28Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, who do you have biggest winner in business? If it is Elon, who's your runner up?

• 24:33David Sacks?

  Yeah. So, I mean, can't fault the Elon choice. It's pretty obvious. But I would say in our world... The biggest winner was Tiger Global. They basically productized growth stage capital by far.

• 24:45Jason Calacanis?

  Good one.

• 24:45David Sacks?

  Biggest deployer of late-stage funding. They productized it. So, pretty much founders can just send their metrics on like a single sheet of paper and they get a term sheet within two days. They did by far the most deals. It's really the SoftBank strategy done right.

• 25:01Jason Calacanis?

  That's a great pick.

• 25:02David Friedberg?

  15 billion, I think it's the amount they deployed this year. I don't know if you guys heard that number, but.

• 25:06David Sacks?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:07David Friedberg?

  In a single year to invest 15 billion to see him a five-year fund. You know, you're at a $75 billion run rate. It's pretty incredible. I mean, it really is the size of Vision Fund. And I heard, I don't know if you guys heard, but they are heavily dependent, not dependent, but they've built infrastructure with third parties. Who source all this data for them. To really kind of measure everything prior to making investments. They built a machine. It's amazing.

• 25:33Jason Calacanis?

  My biggest winner in business is the Ang, not the Fang. Drop the F and go with the A and G. Amazon has a new CEO and they haven't missed a beat. Apple is about to hit 3 trillion. And Susan Wojcicki and YouTube, if you don't know, is now at 2 billion users, 30 billion in revenue. And this, of course, is after Elon, because that's the obvious choice. So after Elon, Alphabet stock up 66%, Apple stock up 31%. You guys know what's going on with those big companies. So I'm going to go with the Yang. Biggest loser in business. The biggest loser in business, who do you have? Friedberg, who's your biggest loser?

• 26:09David Friedberg?

  Well, I went, I went through the opposite of my biggest winner. I went for those institutions that, that, you know, got their lunch eaten by the retail. Gabe Plotkin and, you know, he lost so much money. Shorting GameStop against these guys buying GameStop to the moon. He had to borrow $2.75 billion from Citadel and .72 just to get through his mump.

• 26:35David Friedberg?

  Talk about embarrassing. Talk about reversal of fortune. You know, he's obviously been a renowned investor prior to this. And, you know, there's a few others that, that were, you know, casualties of war. White Square, a firm in London, shut down, half a billion AUM. So all these folks who tried to bet against retail during the GameStop saga and since. Thinking that the world was the way it used to be have had to kind of.

• 26:59Jason Calacanis?

  It's amazing that that and the insurrection bolt happened in this year. Like it time is moving so fast.

• 27:04David Friedberg?

  This year is insane. Yeah.

• 27:05Jason Calacanis?

  It's been a crazy year. All of this happened in this past year. It's crazy to think about. We were here and I was up in Tahoe skiing and all this stuff was breaking. It was crazy that time. That was actually our record episode. When all in had that breakout episode. Who do you have for your biggest loser? David Sacks?

• 27:20David Sacks?

  I have Chinese billionaires were the biggest loser this year. I wonder if you guys remember. Yeah, exactly. A year ago, we were all asking, where is Jack Ma? Will he eventually turned up looking very thin and kind of broken. But his experience was just an early sort of manifestation and sort of a canary in the coal mine of a larger CCP crackdown on all Chinese billionaires. And the CCP really seems to be increasing its control and putting these people under its thumb. And there are a bunch of tech companies there like Alibaba, DD, Tencent, Baidu, JD.com. They've all been targeted for fines and tighter controls. And China's pretty much shut down the foreign IPO market for their tech companies. They've banned crypto.

• 28:02Jason Calacanis?

  Moving it to Hong Kong, right?

• 28:03David Sacks?

  Yeah, exactly. The CCP has basically brought all the billionaires under their thumb.

• 28:09Jason Calacanis?

  Wow. Chamath, who do you have? And this is amazing. Just so the audience knows, we do not reveal our choices until in the moment, which makes this so great.

• 28:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I love hearing some of these things. It makes me think for sure.

• 28:20Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My, my biggest loser is big tech. If you look at this year and you annotate it not for their stock price, but for what I think is sort of the precursor to longer term success. There was a lot of signs that there's pressure building. So whether that's measured in lawsuits, fines, bad PR. If you put all of that stuff together, I think the thing that that drives is decaying morale. And when you have decaying morale, you have human capital flight. So people leave. There were some articles just recently even about, you know, an exodus at, you know, Novi, Novi, I don't know how to pronounce it, the cryptocurrency business of Meta.

• 29:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's just a really, really difficult thing to deal with when folks start walking out the door because they're just bummed out from working there. And if you just, and if you just, you know, Google search the, the number of issues that all of these companies collectively are dealing with, I think that.

• 29:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  This is sort of peak big tech market cap is probably within the next year or two.

• 29:30Jason Calacanis?

  Interesting. This is just so great that we all had different choices. I picked the Ang as the winner. I'm picking the F in Fang as the loser. Meta was a complete flop. It was a stupid idea to change the name of the company. The product they showed in that big tip off was like every science fiction movie we've seen for the last 30 years. The leaks, the Apple headwinds against their ads, the political headwinds. And my last point is exactly Chamath's last point, which is no one wants to work there. It's becoming more and more difficult if you're in Silicon Valley or you're a tech executive to see a reason to go work at that company. I think that their VR efforts, AR efforts will be beaten handily by Apple and by the Metaverse and

• 30:14Jason Calacanis?

  you know, open source slash decentralized solutions. I think the F in Fang should be replaced with the T of Tesla and be Tang.

• 30:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Facebook, Meta traded up 25% this year, Jack Cal.

• 30:24Jason Calacanis?

  Listen, I do think it's a juggernaut and when things go wrong, it does take a while. So these are forward looking. If people are leaving now, maybe you'd see the impact of that in three, four or five years, but I would not buy the stock. I'd buy the other three letters. I would buy the Tang, but not the F in Fang. But I think it's a good counterpoint. Yeah, these things take a while to unravel.

• 30:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Well, I think, you know, I think the better trade is pick the one that you love in Fang and short the one that you hate in Fang. And if you get that right, you can make a lot of money pretty safely.

• 30:51Jason Calacanis?

  Big spread there, right? The spread trade like we talked about. All right. Biggest business surprise. What do you got, Sacks? What's your biggest business surprise this year?

• 30:59David Sacks?

  I thought the biggest business surprise was tech leaders and startups moving to Miami. Its emergence from really nothing in the tech scene to being a major tech hub. It was just a year ago, one year ago, last December, that Delian sort of mused on Twitter about, hey, can we just relocate Silicon Valley to Miami? The Miami mayor, Francis Suarez jumped in, he responded, how can I help? And then since then, it's just been snowballing. And as San Francisco has basically been sliding into what it's become, Miami just keeps blowing up. And it helps, I think, what's been happening on the state level there that DeSantis has kept the state open for business and he's kept schools open. And of course, the tax rate is zero.

• 31:42David Sacks?

  The income tax and the capital gains tax that is are zero. So it's really pretty amazing how fast it has become a major tech hub.

• 31:51David Friedberg?

  My answer, which was really surprising to me, starting in January, and I think I started texting you guys in January saying, I really think we should talk about this on the pod, if you'll remember. And it's obviously just become a crescendo since then, is NFTs. And it really has been incredible to watch how, you know, the individual folks in crypto have embraced NFTs as a way, you know, to tokenize the value that creators can bring to the world. And I think, yeah, there's a lot of fluff and a lot of noise and a lot of bubbles going on within this NFT space right now. Most of it will die and it will look terrible when people lose lots of money and feel bad about the decisions they made during this phase.

• 32:33David Friedberg?

  But what I think is really wonderful about it is the opportunity it creates for creators to monetize their talent in a way that doesn't require them going through middlemen to get distribution and middlemen who take, you know, huge slugs or huge chunks of the margin out of, out of what they create. And this can ultimately translate into music, into art, into writing, into all sorts of things. So I'm, I'm pretty excited, not necessarily about where NFTs sit today. I think it's a disaster where it sits today. But I think over the long run, I just love this.

• 33:04Jason Calacanis?

  Why is it a disaster?

• 33:05David Friedberg?

  I, I just think there's too much of this bubbly stuff that's going on where people are buying into speculative transactions that are going to lose their money and then people are going to be really hurt and really upset. But, but the general.

• 33:14Jason Calacanis?

  But you love the core tech.

• 33:16David Friedberg?

  I love the fact, I love the fact that creators, people that are great at art and people that are creative can develop stuff and make money because people will appreciate it and pay for it. And I just think that's awesome.

• 33:25Jason Calacanis?

  Fantastic. All right. So for me, it was that DAOs were able to raise $40 million in a couple of days for this constitution and get, and basically captures every, capture the entire world's imagination for, you know, a 72 hour news cycle. Much in the way the day traders did with AMC and GameStop to free Burke's point earlier and the big winners. And I'm, I have a dual one here. I'm absolutely surprised about this, you know, the, the DAO that was able to raise 40 million for the constitution. But I was also. Disappointed that the SEC in your 10 plus of crypto has not defined the rules of the

• 34:08Jason Calacanis?

  road yet, so that one group of people, professional capital allocators play by one set of rules, and then another group of people, DAOs, tokens, are playing by no set of rules, or their interpretation of unclear rules, I guess would be the most charitable way. So that's my biggest surprise. We have to have a regulatory framework for crypto, for DAOs, for NFTs, for tokens, and it's just crazy that it hasn't happened yet. What do you got, Chama?

• 34:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My big business winner breakout company, I have two, but they're the same really as Moderna slash Biontech. You know, these were guys that were kind of swimming at the edges of science and R and D and somewhat was just incapable of putting one foot in front of the other until this pandemic and through a bunch of, you know, emergency use authorizations. These guys have really shown up to help the world. And in 2020, I think they cemented themselves as now on a path to not just, you know, be a vaccine maker for COVID, but a whole bunch of other things, including cancer treatments and everything else. So I think these two companies, these two companies really took a big step forward in 2020.

• 35:16Jason Calacanis?

  Absolutely. And just as a side note, OpenSea had 8 million in monthly volume at the beginning of the year in January and 3.46 billion in August. Just give you a little idea of the scale of that. Okay. Best science breakthrough. What do you got, Friedberg? Everybody wants to know the Sultan of Sciences best science breakthrough.

• 35:33David Friedberg?

  I'm a little bit blinders on this one because I think I mentioned this on the show a few weeks ago, and I'm spending quite a bit of time at work on it, which is that starch synthesis system that was demonstrated by those Chinese scientists. And the system itself is likely not going to be the production system that saves the world, but the concept that we can take proteins that are expressed by different plants and put them together in a tank, and then that tank can Convert molecules from one form to another by leveraging these proteins that just interact and move around in the tank is really an incredible demonstration. And the demonstration is inspiring.

• 36:16David Friedberg?

  We can take carbon out of the atmosphere and make food with a minimal amount of renewable electricity. And I think that's really a moment that will inspire a whole new realm of industrial synthetic biology work, a lot of which I hope to kind of, you know, build and participate in pretty heavily in the work that we do day to day. But it was really exciting for me.

• 36:36Jason Calacanis?

  So the Start Synthesis system is your best science breakthrough. What do you got, Sax?

• 36:41David Sacks?

  I've got these new oral COVID antiviral pills that are coming out from Pfizer and Merck. The FDA is supposed to be approving them by the end of this week. As you'll recall, last year around this time, it was these new mRNA vaccines from Pfizer Moderna, but we now have to admit that the vaccines have not ended the pandemic because the virus can mutate its spike proteins around the vaccine. So the vaccines by itself cannot end the pandemic. These new pills have, I think, a very good shot of doing it next year because they're protease inhibitors, so they stop the virus from replicating. And just, and even if the spike proteins mutate, it will not prevent these protease inhibitors from working.

• 37:26David Sacks?

  So I am hopeful that this will be the thing, hopefully, that ends the pandemic next year, are these new antiviral pills.

• 37:34Jason Calacanis?

  Great one.

• 37:35David Friedberg?

  I would like to make a counter to Sax's point. I would be very cautious about the side effects that are going to arise from these protease inhibitors. And, you know, they're not as well studied as they normally would be, but they have a serious biological effect in normal cells in the human body. And I think as more people use them, you'll see more crazy stories about side effects that are really significantly adverse.

• 37:58Jason Calacanis?

  What do you think the side effects would be?

• 37:59David Friedberg?

  There's a lot that are well documented, but the way they work biologically is they disrupt, you know, certain systems. And those are not just systems related to the virus, they're systems in our own cells. And so I'm personally quite nervous about them. I know that folks are pretty encouraged by them and excited, but I'm nervous about them.

• 38:17David Sacks?

  There's a similar medication that's been developed for HIV, right? It's called PrEP, right? Does that cause similar side effects? Or, because people use that prophylactically.

• 38:27David Friedberg?

  Yeah, to some extent. You know, and the dosage matters. And so normally you would go through many more years, I think, of testing on these things to kind of truly quantify, you know, when you have half a percent or 1% of a population, you know, let's say, take the most extreme case, die, then a million people use it, you're gonna have a lot of people dying. And I'm not sure we've really gotten the the boundaries of this yet. And the dosage is pretty significant on them. So, yeah, like, let's, you know, let's keep a watchful eye on this stuff. But I'm hopeful, but I'm also nervous.

• 39:02Jason Calacanis?

  Well, hopefully, the number of people who need to take it, Free Bird, correct me if I'm wrong, if we got this many people vaxxed who will not need to take it, and then Omicron.

• 39:10David Friedberg?

  My biggest optimism is just that Omicron is a much less virulent virus, and it sweeps through the population, and we slowly see this pandemic kind of, you know, becoming less severe.

• 39:21Jason Calacanis?

  Which is what was predicted.

• 39:23David Sacks?

  Do you think herd immunity even exists?

• 39:25David Friedberg?

  In the way that the virus evolves, no. So there, and by the way, it's not binary. It's not like, hey, you get herd immunity, and no one's gonna catch this thing. There's clearly a spectrum of immunity, meaning like, I can maybe get the virus and be somewhat contagious for half a day or a day, and I don't even know it. And then I'm spreading it for that half day, but I didn't even know I had it. That's kind of, you know, not all the way over to herd immunity and the traditional kind of definition of the way that we talk about it. But it reduces the spread and the severity in aggregate. On the other end is like, everyone gets it, it spreads like crazy, no vaccine stops it, changes anything, no amount of antibodies changes anything, and everyone just dies. And so somewhere in the middle, I think, is where we find our kind of, you know, our ground. But I don't think

• 40:10David Friedberg?

  that the traditional definition, or the way that people talk about herd immunity, which is, hey, everyone get the shot, and this thing's over, is gonna play out that way at all. This is gonna be a slow, slow wind down.

• 40:21Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, and to give Shemat some credit, you said it would be a nothing burger, and so far, it looks like deaths and hospitalization, specifically ICUs, admittance has not turned out to be a major issue yet, knock on wood.

• 40:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Unless something escapes from the lab again, I think that we're gonna be okay. I think this is the end of the end, so.

• 40:40Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, that would be so great if this was the end of the end game.

• 40:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My best science breakthrough is that this year, we actually were able to inject in vivo, so in the body, genetic code for CRISPR, two cases specifically. One was to basically reduce the production of this toxic. Liver protein in a bunch of folks. And then the second one moderately improved the vision of some people who had some form of inherited blindness. And that's pretty incredible stuff that you can, you know, make something, uh, put it into your body and then, you know, your body does the work of editing out the bad genes and, um, that's a, I think that's a pretty incredible breakthrough.

• 41:19Jason Calacanis?

  I had the Starship on my list too, but, um, I went with Starship. Uh, for people who don't know, on March 3rd, Starship, serial number 10, SN10, completed SpaceX's third high altitude flight test of a prototype and they were able to ascend, um, and then reorient themselves and land. If you don't know, Starship is ginormous when compared to the Falcon and the other rockets, uh, that SpaceX has produced. I got to see it, actually, I went to Boca and when you look inside that nose cone, uh, you can fit 300 people in it. Uh, it is a payload that is absolutely unprecedented in terms of sending people or things to space.

• 42:04Jason Calacanis?

  And the fact that this has succeeded means all, um, uh, the folks at SpaceX, uh, need to do is to scale it and they're pretty good at scaling things. They just had their 100th landing of their smaller rocket. And so when this, uh, big boy, this, uh, BFR, big frickin' rocket gets going, it's going to change the nature of our species as multi-planetary, planetary, uh, and being able to reach and put things in space that we've never been able to do. So kind of an engineering feat, but I put it under science, uh, and also to not pick the same one as Free Bird.

• 42:41Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you think Starship is going to be able to orbit Uranus?

• 42:43Jason Calacanis?

  Enough, leave it out, Nick. No, Nick, you can't take that out. We have veto rights.

• 42:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You can't, Nick, you can't. No, no, no, all of this needs to stay.

• 42:54Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Biggest flash in the pan. Biggest flash in the pan. Sax, you picked people, uh, you told me earlier.

• 43:01David Sacks?

  No, I said-

• 43:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We love people, please.

• 43:03David Sacks?

  Yeah. No, that was yours. I had, I think the, the use of the word transitory was my biggest flash in the pan. It seemed like for a brief moment that every administration official, every democratic political consultant, every talking head on TV kept using the word transitory. It was very much the vocabulary word of the day. But now it turned out that the inflation was not transitory and so the use of the word transitory, I predict will in fact be transitory.

• 43:38David Friedberg?

  Hmm. Nice summary. Like that.

• 43:42Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you got, Chamath? Uh, I picked all things Metaverse and Web 3.

• 43:51David Friedberg?

  And Web 3.

• 43:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, I did. writ large. If you guys were around in the emergence of Web 2.0, there was, there was a period when, where this gaggle of investors were just clamoring about Web 2.0. None of us understood what it is and we were building it, it turned out. Yep. And so I think that these trends

• 44:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  actually have names and those names are of companies and those companies create experiences that people want. And so I just think that this whole concept of Metaverse and Web 3 goes away and we replace it with real solutions for people that give them value and then we'll be obsessed with these companies. And this, this too will be transitory.

• 44:39David Friedberg?

  I went with the Constitution Dow. While, while I believe, Jason, that the concept was inspiring and will echo for quite some time with other- You know, kind of improved versions and different applications. This particular DAO caused a lot of people to lose a lot of money in gas fees, transferring tokens over to cover the expense of the ultimate purchase that was not actually done. It felt a little disorganized. There was questions around equity and securities and legality and misaligned expectations. And while I get that there was a good intent and that folks that were involved in it were felt like it worked and it did what it was meant to do, which was to be inspiring.

• 45:24David Friedberg?

  That particular DAO came and went in three days. And I'm not, not, not to discredit the concept, and I think that more will come in the future. But it really was such a loud moment, and then it went silent two days later.

• 45:36Jason Calacanis?

  Yep. Okay. And I picked the woke socialist leadership of cities, specifically the once great city of, the once great city of San Francisco, where they thought they had figured it all out and that they would be able to run roughshod over the citizens of their own city. And low and behold, when an investigative journalist was hired by myself and Gary Tan did the Democratic recall and Sacks supported the Republican recall, low and behold, London Breed has decided that she does not want to get recalled and she is fed up with the bullshit in San Francisco and Chesa Boudin and all of these whack jobs are all going to get voted out and recalled.

• 46:20Jason Calacanis?

  And we've seen it and it came up earlier in the program, "Suck to beat a dead horse." But these failed policies of letting people run amok and not having some base level of protection and not listening to your citizens.

• 46:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They belong in a textbook and in a preschool.

• 46:34Jason Calacanis?

  You could talk about them in graduate school, yes. This is great for a college dorm to talk about what would life be like as a communist, as a socialist. In the real world, people want to be safe when they take their kids to fucking school. Period. End of story. And if people don't feel safe, you're not going to get reelected. Game over.

• 46:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I also think that people have a reasonable right to have their kids educated and not managed to some watered down lowest common denominator so as to not, so as to try to make everybody around them feel better.

• 47:05Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, 100%. All right.

• 47:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have a feeling that we're gonna, this is gonna sweep here. Best CEO? Should we just say 3, 2, 1 and say the name? I'll go first. I'm gonna pick Satya Nadella. Oh, well done. And the reason I say that is that, you know, he, if you look at this track record, and I thought this business could not get any bigger, but it just is a compounding, absolute juggernaut and a machine. He has completely turned that company around and from, you know, big chunky acquisitions, he's unafraid to pull the trigger and rip the money in. LinkedIn, GitHub, this year he did Nuance. The product portfolio, he, you know, we had to compete with him at Slack when he was,

• 47:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  you know, he decided to turn the, the sites on, on, with Teams onto us. We had no choice but to basically sell to Salesforce. This guy is a master executor. Has kept the entire company out of the press. Has had the least amount of pushback around their growth and expansion. The least amount of lawsuits, the least amount of bad PR. So just in terms of a, you know, first-class CEO, he, he's, he's running a masterclass right now.

• 48:20David Friedberg?

  He's crushed it. Crushed it. Crushed it at scale. Totally.

• 48:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What can Brown do for you? That was a UPS logo and it's now, it's now what the shareholders of Google, Microsoft, Twitter. Twitter, Palo Alto Networks, and Adobe have said. Yeah, okay. Fucking proud to do it for you, okay? Uh, so much for the curry ceiling. Uh, okay. We, we have smashed through the curry ceiling. Absolutely. There's curry everywhere. Penetrated the samosa ceiling. There we go. Friedberg, what you got?

• 48:51David Sacks?

  You're making me hungry.

• 48:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I know.

• 48:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm having crab curry tonight. Can you believe it? I went fishing. I told you guys this. I went, bleep out the name. I went fishing, fishing. And we caught some crabs.

• 49:04Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, where'd you do that?

• 49:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  In the bay, San Francisco Bay, yeah.

• 49:07Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, did you go up to like Chrissy Field?

• 49:09Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, we go, we go to the pier and then they take us out past Golden Gate Bridge, Two Point Reyes. We caught rockfish, which we ate yesterday. Delicious.

• 49:17Jason Calacanis?

  This is on a boat? You did it?

• 49:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  On a boat, yeah.

• 49:20Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, wow.

• 49:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Great, great captain.

• 49:22Jason Calacanis?

  Awesome. I would do that.

• 49:23Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's cool.

• 49:24Jason Calacanis?

  I would take London, my 12-year-old crabbing when I lived in San Francisco off of Chrissy Field and we bring crabs home and all that. You can get these incredible crabs.

• 49:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, you can get a one-day sport license from the state of California. It's good for 10 fish and 10 crab.

• 49:38Jason Calacanis?

  It's amazing. All right. So who do you got? Friedberg, best CEO?

• 49:42David Friedberg?

  Well, I like, I like the Jack and Elon going direct experience this year. And what I mean by that is it's less about like how well did the business perform? I mean, so many tech company CEOs have performed so well this year. It's hard to pick someone for driving business outcomes. But what I liked about Jack and Elon, Jack in particular in the last day, is, you know, having a voice and going direct and being inspiring. I think that leadership is all about defining where you're headed and then creating religion in the troops to follow you to go there. And I think the way that both of these folks speak directly to people and the way that they speak authentically

• 50:23David Friedberg?

  and that they tell a big story about where they believe the world should go and why you should follow them to get there. You know, creates a model that a lot of other CEOs I think should and will start to follow. And I think we'll see a lot more of this kind of like Twitter going direct type of activity happening in the, in the years ahead.

• 50:42Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, what do you got? Best CEO?

• 50:44David Sacks?

  I have Brian Armstrong because it was about this time a year ago that he drew a line in the sand and said that he was not going to allow politics in the workplace. It was going to be a demilitarized zone for politics. It was pulling people off mission and a year later he gave us an update. It's been the best thing they ever did. They gave a generous severance package to anyone who didn't go along with it. It was only 5%. Took it. They then went on to have a very successful IPO. It's now 65%. billion dollar public company and a year later they are more mission focused they've attracted more employees their diversity numbers have not gone down and the reason I pick I'm picking him is not just because of the business success but I think there's a lot of CEOs

• 51:26David Sacks?

  in fact I'd say most CEOs including some of the bigger names that we're all kind of talking about are secretly would love to do what Brian did they would love to basically ban politics in the workplace but for whatever reason they just don't have the cojones to do it I applaud Brian for taking the hit of the New York Times hit piece that then came after him and to stick to his guns he did this policy and I think Coinbase had a great year

• 51:52Jason Calacanis?

  amazing choice wow three great choices Satya Jack Armstrong I think Elon clearly is but I'm gonna pick somebody else so it's not all Elon all the time I'm gonna go with Frank Slutman from Snowflake this company has grown incredibly at a incredible velocity but I just read his book I got a pre order of his book pre pre release of his book called Amp It Up and I had him on this week in startups which will come out in the new year when the book comes out and he's a killer he absolutely

• 52:21Chamath Palihapitiya?

  like a killer he seems like an absolute killer

• 52:23Jason Calacanis?

  and the book basically is I do not care about how you think business works here's the zero sum game of competitive business and here's 205 pages it's a must read and he just wants to win and so my hat's off to him 100 billion dollar company and they've absolutely crushed it so best investor Chamath are you gonna pick yourself for the third year in a row or do you have somebody else in mind

• 52:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  this one this one I think is a is an absolutely easy one but it's my dear friend Dan Loeb

• 52:55Jason Calacanis?

  oh

• 52:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  founder and CIO

• 52:56Jason Calacanis?

  when did that happen

• 52:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  founder and CIO of Third Point and of as I've seen I talked to him yesterday actually I called him just to wish him a happy birthday by the way it's his birthday

• 53:08Jason Calacanis?

  ah happy birthday

• 53:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But he has shown the widest range this year and really put everything together. Yet again, kind of one of these virtuoso performances. Early-stage success, so he was a, you know, early-stage investor. I think they did the Series A incentive in one that had a big IPO this year. Growth investing, he, you know, was a, was a great investor, early investor in Rivian that won public this year. He had great public performance in Upstart and a bunch of other ones. Activism, he went after Shell. Crypto, I think he's an investor in FTX and a bunch of other things. I mean, just tundid. And to be able to put together a team that can execute across all of those business lines

• 53:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  and risk manage and then where he still sizes, like I'm telling you, like, it is so hard to size this stuff properly and get it right. He did an incredible job and he's just a beautiful, lovely human being. So Dan.

• 54:07Jason Calacanis?

  All right, we're, we're cooked with Oy Hill. We're moving at a nice pace. I picked the Sequoia Fund, the new Evergreen Sequoia and the Sequoia Fund, the new Evergreen Fund. Obviously, over the past two years, they've had DoorDash, Airbnb, Snowflake, Unity, all these incredible companies worth over $300 billion combined. And now those LPs get to keep their money in this one vehicle. And I think it's going to make Sequoia even more powerful. Great innovation. Shout out to my friend Ruloff. And I gave a runner-up to Brad Gersner, friend of the pod, who obviously did Snowflake last year, but had the Grab IPO this year, which I think was the largest SPAC in history. And, you know, I don't think it traded particularly well yet, but congratulations to Brad as my runner-up. Who do you got, Sacks?

• 54:49David Sacks?

  Well, my first thought was Nancy Pelosi, but.

• 54:53Jason Calacanis?

  So you're just going on performance?

• 54:54David Sacks?

  Yeah, I don't think it counts though, if you do it through insider trading. So I had to rule her out.

• 54:58Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, sure.

• 54:59David Sacks?

  So my, my actual choice, my actual choice is Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel. He generated something like 10% returns on a $500 billion fund. I mean, just mammoth, mammoth amounts of money, but it wasn't just his economic return. He's obviously a cash generating machine, but it wasn't just that. It was all. So the way that he came out on this whole Wall Street Bets Robinhood scandal way back in January, remember of the whole payment for order flow was a gigantic scandal with with Robinhood and he along with Vlad and others was hauled up to Capitol Hill, but they could not lay a glove on him. He demonstrated, I think, in commanding testimony that all these conspiracy

• 55:44David Sacks?

  theories around his role had no merit and the populist revolt around this whole payment for order flow Robinhood thing broke against the rock of Ken Griffin. He comes out as a huge winner, both economically and politically.

• 56:00Jason Calacanis?

  And you left out the most important part. He was the supervillain in buying the Constitution Dow.

• 56:05David Sacks?

  Yeah, and he got revenge.

• 56:06Jason Calacanis?

  For one extra dollar.

• 56:06David Sacks?

  Yes, he got he got revenge on the crypto people. That's right.

• 56:11David Sacks?

  That's right.

• 56:12Jason Calacanis?

  Great, great financial troll. Friedberg, did we get yours yet? Best investor of 2021?

• 56:17David Friedberg?

  I kind of stuck to private markets just because they're illiquid, which means it's harder to source. Not everyone has the same data. We all have different data and different points of view. So within that, I kind of said, look, what makes the best investor? And number one is obviously good returns. You know, who's got the best returns? But second is how scalable is your investing machine? And third is how durable is it? Like, does it get worse as you scale up?

• 56:40Jason Calacanis?

  I know where you're going with this.

• 56:41David Friedberg?

  So, you know, I had three kind of finalists. One was Founders Fund, and I would argue they probably have the best consistent returns in terms of the multiples on their funds. Tiger Global, which we talked about earlier, which I would argue is the most scalable and durable, as we've seen deploying 15 billion this year. And then finally, Sequoia, which has near the best returns, scalable and durable with this new transition you talked about. And ultimately, Sequoia won out. So that's my my tree of success.

• 57:08Jason Calacanis?

  This is one of the first times we've had two of the same in the voting. This is incredible. Best turnaround. What do you got for best turnaround, Trama? Best turnaround?

• 57:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I picked Ford.

• 57:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Enormous performance this year. The stock's up 130-odd percent.

• 57:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Good portfolio mix of, you know, gas guzzling cars that still make a ton of money like the Ford F-150s. But, you know, they have the Mustang, they have the electric versions of the Ford F-150s. They had some great investments. I think they printed like a $20 billion gain on Rivian. So it's just a really, really good turnaround from what that company was, which was if you talked any car company that could have been up 132% at the beginning of 2021, it would not have been Ford. So, well done by that team. Who do you have, Sax? Are you an investor in Fortuma? Uh, no, no.

• 58:05David Sacks?

  So I went a little different for this. I said the best turnaround was Kyle Rittenhouse's reputation. Um, as you recall, Rittenhouse shot three white attackers, including two of whom were sex offenders at a violent BLM protest in Kenosha. The media then painted him without any evidence as a white supremacist terrorist who went there looking to shoot people like some sort of frustrated school shooter. It turned out not to be true. There was clear video evidence at the scene that he acted in self-defense. Once there was a jury trial, all of this came out. He was acquitted on all charges and the prosecution was revealed to be politically motivated. I would say that Rittenhouse now has his freedom and he has his reputation back in the eyes of all fair observers.

• 58:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Who do you got, Friedberg?

• 58:50David Friedberg?

  Well, I went from who was in the worst shape and, you know, came back from that. And I put WeWork on here, um, which is an obvious and easy choice. WeWork to me is like Rocky Balboa. Um, you know, Rocky Balboa could not win the match. Rocky Balboa got so beat up, goes to the, you know, to his corner. He gets patched up. He's bleeding from his eyes, bleeding from his nose. He's literally about to die. His coach gives him a little smack on the butt and says, get back out there and he keeps going. He's not going to win the match, um, but man, for WeWork to go from where it was a few years ago, which was days or weeks away from bankruptcy. Millions of dollars of money injected by SoftBank and for them to orchestrate

• 59:34David Friedberg?

  basically this this whole you know juggernaut into what looks like a business now and get it public via SPAC and it now has enough capital and a good game plan and it looks like maybe a normal you know challenged technology business was really quite a turnaround. There was no one to sell this thing to. They had to get in there and they had to rework this whole thing and they reworked WeWork and Rocky Balboa is going to make it to the 10th round. He may not win the match, but you know, he's still in it. It was pretty, pretty impressive to see them get it out this year.

• 1:00:07Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Listen, I struggle with this one. I had two companies that I really wanted to highlight for two different reasons. One was Twitter, which had no product velocity and people thought, and I'm taking out financial performance right now. I'm just looking at the product itself. And my Lord, have they increased their product velocity, releasing newsletters, audio spaces and countless other features. And so I like them, but I actually think Disney, which was, and it hasn't performed well this year, but they had 44 million subs. They added 44 million paid subs this year. And people thought theme parks would be a problem, et cetera. And I think they're going to have an absolute killer future.

• 1:00:52Jason Calacanis?

  If Apple had not, if it hadn't been for antitrust right now, I think Apple will be looking at buying Disney if they had had any way to get it through there because the juggernaut has been amazing.

• 1:01:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do they turn around exactly? Like turnaround means it's crappy and then it's not crappy.

• 1:01:07Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I didn't do stock price, but I think they had a major threat and a major question of could they actually create their own streaming platform? Would it work? And getting out of the pandemic? Could the parks rebound? The parks have rebounded.

• 1:01:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I see.

• 1:01:20Jason Calacanis?

  I think they're going to roll over Netflix. So the sentiment was like, God, the stock, I don't know. And they've really, I think, turned it around.

• 1:01:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah, the stock's been a dog this year, but yeah.

• 1:01:30Jason Calacanis?

  That's why I said like, it's kind of hard to pick it, but I do think like, if you look at the fundamentals of the business.

• 1:01:35David Friedberg?

  Twitter's down this year too, right?

• 1:01:37Jason Calacanis?

  Is going to go to 300 million because. They announced so much content from the Star Wars Marvel Pixar Disney ecosystem. That is coming this year and next year. Um, and it's going from Book of Boba Fett Mandalorian Obi-Wan Kenobi. Where, um, you know, uh, Hayden Christensen and the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi are coming back like this. Library is going to have a ridiculous 2022.

• 1:02:03David Friedberg?

  I like HBO Max more than Disney plus. I mean, my kids watch a little Disney plus, but they watch all the other streaming services too.

• 1:02:10Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:10David Friedberg?

  Uh, Disney plus doesn't seem to have a monopoly for me. HBO Max is such a depth of content.

• 1:02:14Jason Calacanis?

  HBO Max is killing it right now.

• 1:02:16David Friedberg?

  When that Warner Media deal gets done, I think that's the juggernaut stock you want to own. It's going to have an incredible library to compete with Disney.

• 1:02:23Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, secession.

• 1:02:25David Friedberg?

  There's a library, man. They've so much in there. They're releasing, uh, they're releasing The Matrix tomorrow on HBO plus, like HBO Max.

• 1:02:32Jason Calacanis?

  And they redid the Justice League.

• 1:02:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, the new, the new, the new one?

• 1:02:35David Friedberg?

  The new Matrix comes out on HBO Max tomorrow.

• 1:02:37Jason Calacanis?

  Day and date.

• 1:02:38Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I love that because I, I love that they did that with Dune. I love Dune.

• 1:02:42David Friedberg?

  Totally.

• 1:02:42Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Dune is an incredible movie.

• 1:02:44Jason Calacanis?

  I'm in my movie theater right now, so I'm going to watch it in my movie theater this week. Okay. Worst human being. I'm going to go first. I'm going to say Elizabeth Warren. Um, I think trying to raise money off of the back of the person who raised the most money. For our taxes from taxes is just lame. If you haven't seen, she's attacking, um, Elon and Bezos. In Facebook ads, trying to grift to get $10 while she's got 12 million in equities that she paid like $0 on because that's how the tax system that she has operated under for decades works. Worst human being to me, Elizabeth Warren.

• 1:03:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, I am going to pick Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, William Rhodey Bryan, Roddy Bryan. And Derek Chauvin, four white men who, uh, killed in two different incidents, uh, an unarmed black man. They are scumbags and they should go to jail and they will for the rest of their lives. They are terrible human beings. Great job. Sax, who you got for worst?

• 1:03:46David Sacks?

  Yeah, I've got a name here. I don't know if the audience knows yet. It's a guy named Peter Dazek, who's a British zoologist. He's head of a group called the Eco Health Alliance that received millions of dollars in NIH grants for gain-of-function research in bat viruses. If that sounds familiar, it's because some of that was given to the lab in Wuhan from which COVID likely leaked. But that by itself is not the reason why he's my choice. He then became one of the leading signers and organizers of a letter that was published in The Lancet in February of 2020 insisting with total certainty that the virus had made the leap from animals and humans rather than being, rather than leaking from a lab. In fact, he basically painted anyone who

• 1:04:31David Sacks?

  had put forward the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theorist. He, you know, his influence made this so-called zoonotic theory, the official narrative that could not be questioned online for well over a year. All the social networks then censored on that basis, and he never disclosed his obvious conflict of interest, given that his millions of research was threatened if the lab leak theory were proven right. So this, you know, this guy not only helped unleash a plague upon the world, he then lied about it to cover his ass and protect his millions. That makes him the worst in my

• 1:05:07David Friedberg?

  If you're interested in hearing a point of view on this, Jamie Metzl did an interview with Lex Friedman on Lex's podcast. It's worth listening to. It's five hours long, but the, the section where they talk about what Sax is sharing, I think it's around the one hour mark. And it's a really interesting narrative that Jamie shares about what this individual did during this period of time and why.

• 1:05:31David Sacks?

  Does this support what I'm saying?

• 1:05:33David Friedberg?

  Yes.

• 1:05:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's not gonna listen, but now he feels smug with himself. So, thanks.

• 1:05:38David Sacks?

  Okay, Sax loves it. Lex is a genius. Yeah, Lex is great. So my source for this has been the reporting of Glenn Greenwald, who did some pretty good research on, great, I mean, sort of expose on the conflict of interest that was never disclosed. And it was on this basis that all the social networking sites then engaged in censorship. So just a whole, you know, cluster of bad motives by, you know, people looking to cover their ass.

• 1:06:07David Friedberg?

  But I mean, it's worth hearing Jamie's point of view on this, which is he tries to identify the motivation and the incentives that those people had when they made those cover-up decisions along the way. And I think it's really worth everyone taking that in. That's what I really liked about Lex's podcast interview with Jamie, was, you know, none of these things come from a place of pure evil. They come from a place of incentive and motivation, where these individuals think that they're doing the right thing for some reason. And that's what motivated their behavior. But that's also why, and just to jump the gun here, I am not giving you a worst human being answer, not a virtue signal. Really, I just go back to this point, that I don't think humans are, you know, intrinsically evil.

• 1:06:48David Friedberg?

  I think that a lot of people make decisions for what they consider to be good reasons, or the right reasons, or reasons that are, in their mind, altruistic, but ultimately have adverse consequences for another population.

• 1:07:00Jason Calacanis?

  Not Derek Shumah.

• 1:07:01David Friedberg?

  Yeah. I would argue that in some cases, people who are selfish, don't make it very far in life. And so they generally don't have that much of an impact in an evil way. There's very few people that are purely selfish and make it to scale. But, anyway, that's my very esoteric.

• 1:07:18David Sacks?

  I think Freeburger raised a good point, which is, I think we can judge this not by people's internal motivations, because we don't really know, but rather by the consequences of their choices.

• 1:07:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, the outcome.

• 1:07:28David Sacks?

  The adverse consequences.

• 1:07:29Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. So, best meme? I'll go first. I love Daniel Craig's "The Weekend," because I've been so exhausted from this year, that when Friday rolls around, that's all I can think about, is Daniel Craig saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, the weekend." He's just exacerbated and exhausted, as am I. My runner-up was Anakin and Padme doing their conversation, you know, for the better, right? And you can look that up online. It's a four-paying, it's one of those four-paying conversation ones. What do you got, Chamath? You have any best memes?

• 1:08:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's the Bernie Sanders inauguration outfit.

• 1:08:06Jason Calacanis?

  Amazing.

• 1:08:07Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Always a great go-to.

• 1:08:09David Friedberg?

  That was a good one.

• 1:08:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  His little mittens and, you know, his detached communist glare.

• 1:08:16David Friedberg?

  Totally, forgot about that.

• 1:08:17Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Great meme.

• 1:08:18Jason Calacanis?

  It's like he's at a sit-in at, like, some college in Vermont.

• 1:08:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So funny.

• 1:08:23Jason Calacanis?

  In Russia in the wintertime. Exactly, exactly.

• 1:08:25David Friedberg?

  It's like a little chipmunk.

• 1:08:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. All right. Who do you got, Sax? You got a best meme?

• 1:08:29David Sacks?

  The ever given forklift meme. This was that little forklift trying to push that gigantic barge out of the Suez Canal. And they got hilariously repurposed.

• 1:08:41Jason Calacanis?

  Wasn't that like 10 years ago?

• 1:08:43David Sacks?

  I know. Is this year? Can you believe it? And a close runner up was my fall plans versus the Delta variant. If you remember that one, that was a good one.

• 1:08:51Jason Calacanis?

  That was a great one.

• 1:08:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That was a good one.

• 1:08:52Jason Calacanis?

  Friedberg, I know you don't care about pop culture or consume much of it, but give us your best meme.

• 1:08:57David Friedberg?

  No, I don't. I don't have a meme. Sorry.

• 1:09:00Jason Calacanis?

  I do not have a meme upgrade. I have no sense of.

• 1:09:03David Friedberg?

  I like Chamath's meme. That was a good one. I'll take that one.

• 1:09:05Jason Calacanis?

  I enjoy your memes, but not enough. Okay, can we upgrade his meme subroutine?

• 1:09:10David Friedberg?

  I love pop culture. This, the meme thing, I just don't, it doesn't resonate for me. It just doesn't.

• 1:09:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I love pop culture.

• 1:09:15Jason Calacanis?

  I am a fan of pop culture. Madonna was my favorite. Ha ha. Patch up boys were great.

• 1:09:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have trouble processing imagery and text all at the same time.

• 1:09:25Jason Calacanis?

  My subroutine is indexing all images and GPT-3, I'm going to produce funny jokes. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

• 1:09:36Jason Calacanis?

  My laughing subroutine has been upgraded. Ha, ha, ha, ha.

• 1:09:41Jason Calacanis?

  Sorry, it's too easy. Sorry, Allison.

• 1:09:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Most loads of company.

• 1:09:45Jason Calacanis?

  You have to live with them.

• 1:09:46Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Most loads of company.

• 1:09:48David Friedberg?

  I don't think she listens to this, by the way.

• 1:09:50Jason Calacanis?

  No, my wife doesn't listen to it. I was talking to my wife about sweater care or whatever. She said, what are you talking about? I'm like, the pod that everybody listens to. None of our wives listen to this crap. Number 40 in the world. No?

• 1:10:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay, most loads of company. This one is an absolutely easy one. Slam dunk. It is PG&E who this year was charged with felonies and manslaughter in the death of four people because of the wildfires that they started because of their inability to maintain their power infrastructure throughout the state of California. Very rare that a for-profit corporation gets charged with felony murder and manslaughter. So I think that's a pretty easy one.

• 1:10:31Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got, Friedberg?

• 1:10:32David Friedberg?

  I think one day the human race will look back and identify animal agriculture as worse than human slavery.

• 1:10:43David Friedberg?

  I do think that that will be a profound realization over the next century for our species.

• 1:10:48Jason Calacanis?

  Wait, did you say worse than human slavery?

• 1:10:51David Friedberg?

  I believe that that's what we will realize because the the scale of death caused by animal agriculture.

• 1:10:57Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, oh, I understand now what you're saying.

• 1:10:58David Friedberg?

  The birth to death cycle that these animals live in, in cages with no ability to touch or interact with their families. The hurt, the pain, it's extraordinary. And part of my work that I do day to day is to figure out ways that we can use science to replace animal agriculture. So the penultimate kind of animal agriculture processor in the US is Tyson Foods. They are the most low company to me. And I stick by my, by my answer.

• 1:11:28Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I, can I give you a counterpoint?

• 1:11:29David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  But it's delicious.

• 1:11:31Jason Calacanis?

  It's a joke, don't.

• 1:11:34Jason Calacanis?

  That's not cool. I mean, that was a spicy take, I mean, to the human suffering of slavery and then equate it, but you added their murder.

• 1:11:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Honestly, Friedberg, like, if you, yeah, but the thing is, look, you have, you've never eaten any form of animal protein, so how do you know what you're missing?

• 1:11:51Jason Calacanis?

  It's true, but he does know about cruelty.

• 1:11:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Um, yeah, I guess, I'm just saying.

• 1:11:58Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think there's any winners in this conversation at this point.

• 1:11:59David Friedberg?

  Yeah, this is a longer pod. We could do this another time.

• 1:12:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Fried chicken is really delicious.

• 1:12:04Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, man.

• 1:12:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  So is a good steak.

• 1:12:07Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we gotta stop, I'm hungry. Sax, did you have a, besides Tyson Foods?

• 1:12:16Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got?

• 1:12:17David Sacks?

  Okay.

• 1:12:17Jason Calacanis?

  Twitter first answering you and putting a label on your thing.

• 1:12:19David Sacks?

  No, no, the most loathsome company I had the New York Times. A new book came out this year in 2021 called The Gray Lady Winked. Uh, the author Ashley Rensberg details decades of misinformation and agenda driven journalism published by the Times, starting in the 1930s at a Nazi sympathizer as their German correspondent. They covered up Stalin's genocide in Ukraine. They assisted Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba. They lied us into Vietnam and Iraq. They, and they perpetuated the Russian collusion hoax. More recently, the New York Times has gone all in on woke journalism and cancel culture, purging anyone from its ranks who commits a transgression against woke sensibilities. From, uh, Brian Armstrong to Kyle Rittenhouse, they've routinely smeared people as racist

• 1:13:04David Sacks?

  with no evidence to back it up. Remember they are not a nonprofit, they are a corporation and they have an agenda. New York Times, most loathsome company in my view.

• 1:13:13Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And David, can I double down on this? I posted Nick, maybe you can find this, but there was a, there was an article in the Washington Post that I put into the group chat where the Washington Post article was effectively like Washington Post forced to revisit journalism practices because of falling click through rates and lack of viewership. So in a post-Trump era.

• 1:13:29Jason Calacanis?

  Because of Trump, yeah.

• 1:13:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. Post-Trump era, two years on, you know, they're, they're, the number of premium subscribers at Wapo has, has pretty materially changed, I guess. And so, you know, they're revisiting what they're trying to write. And as you can imagine, they're going to err towards more clickbait and it's the same for the Times. And so, you know, to your point, we have to remember that these things are not run as public trusts. They're run as for-profit businesses.

• 1:13:52Jason Calacanis?

  Yep.

• 1:13:53Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We've seen what other for-profit businesses do as it relates to information and misinformation and disinformation. And so you have to heavily discount what you read in these places.

• 1:14:02Jason Calacanis?

  Information after profits, trust after growth.

• 1:14:05David Sacks?

  And this is why tech leaders and other people are increasingly going direct as we talked about all year in the pod.

• 1:14:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Go direct.

• 1:14:10David Sacks?

  They are not the paper of record anymore. Direct is the new, the internet is the paper of record.

• 1:14:16Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, look at this podcast. I mean, I think like we're going direct. We get more views on this than any other press hit we could ever do and we get to talk to you.

• 1:14:22Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I think we've probably eclipsed MSNBC, any show that, and we're probably going to pass CNBC and Fox by the end of this year.

• 1:14:29Jason Calacanis?

  Sure. So for me, I would pick the MyPillow guy, but that's not a real company. So I just picked Meta, which is just so obvious. I just think.

• 1:14:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Bro, you have these themes. You're like, you're so after Facebook. You're super tilted about Facebook. You're super tilted about Senator Karen.

• 1:14:43Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 1:14:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They just keep cropping up in every category.

• 1:14:45Jason Calacanis?

  I just, it's hard for me not to pick Meta here. Best new tech for me, it's DAOs. I mentioned it earlier. I think it's phenomenal. I think that they're going to evolve and global capital formation.

• 1:14:55Chamath Palihapitiya?

  What do you think it is?

• 1:14:57Jason Calacanis?

  DAOs.

• 1:14:58Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, there was?

• 1:14:59Jason Calacanis?

  Global Capital Formation.

• 1:15:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Are phenomenal?

• 1:15:02Jason Calacanis?

  They're phenomenal. I said phenomenal. Alright, stop making fun of the kid from Brooklyn, okay? Do you think this podcast will be number 40 if I didn't? Okay, enough, enough, you ungrateful prick. Listen, DAOs, you're tilting me now. I'm trying to get the show over. We're 75 minutes in.

• 1:15:18Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Okay.

• 1:15:19Jason Calacanis?

  I say DAOs because I believe that they will become legal and global capital formation for the first time on an instant basis will exist. And I believe 40 million is the dry run for the Constitution. 400 million and 4 billion will happen in the next 10 years to do bigger and bigger challenges. The world wants to bet as a unit together, and this is going to be the crowning achievement of Web 3, DAOs. What's the best new tech for you, Mr. Polly Hapatia?

• 1:15:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I have two choices.

• 1:15:49Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:15:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  One is in the heavens, and that is human space travel.

• 1:15:54Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:15:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We had three different companies create astronauts this year. Three.

• 1:15:59Jason Calacanis?

  Amazing.

• 1:16:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's like insanity.

• 1:16:01Jason Calacanis?

  Mind blowing.

• 1:16:02Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That, that, it's mind blowing. And so if you think about what the next five to 10 years can bring, Jason, at what you said earlier about, you know, making ourselves a multi-planetary species, what an inspiring thing that these thousands of employees across these three businesses did. Huge congrats to all three of them. I found it really inspiring. So I think human space travel. And then the second, which is much more closer to Earth, is Substack, I think, really got to a level of scale this year that is really profound. I have found it to be an incredible way to stay connected to the truth. And there are some unbelievable people who are now able to create a life for themselves by telling the truth.

• 1:16:47Jason Calacanis?

  Independent voices, yeah.

• 1:16:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And you can support them directly.

• 1:16:51Jason Calacanis?

  Incredible.

• 1:16:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know, a handful of people, Matt Taibbi, Barry Weiss, Eric Newcomer, just a handful that jump off the top, Glenn Greenwald, but there's many more. Substack's gonna learn how to promote these things to you in a better way, I think, over time.

• 1:17:06Jason Calacanis?

  But I think that was incredible, incredible technology. Eventually, Chamath, there'll be some sort of group subscription and then you'll be able to put Glenn Greenwald and Barry Weiss and have multiple publishers come in like an aggregated feed or something to that effect. In other words, you can subscribe to the New York Times of these independent voices and maybe split the money across them.

• 1:17:25Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's the closest thing to truth as a service that we have.

• 1:17:28Jason Calacanis?

  And with, no, I'd say podcasts is right up there, too. Sacks, I'm obviously, you're gonna pick call in, but after call in, what do you got?

• 1:17:36David Sacks?

  Well, you know, I originally had the Christopher Jean and anything, but Chamath already mentioned that. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with Starlink. It got, yes, it, it just came out at the end of 2020, but this year it kept getting better and faster. And now it's reported that Starlink is faster than the fixed broadband average in Belgium, Canada, Australia, Germany, the UK, New Zealand, and France.

• 1:17:57David Friedberg?

  Come on, no way, really?

• 1:17:58David Sacks?

  Yeah, it's pretty unbelievable.

• 1:18:00David Friedberg?

  Wow.

• 1:18:00David Sacks?

  Gavin Baker just tweeted this earlier today, this morning.

• 1:18:05David Friedberg?

  That's the data?

• 1:18:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  All I can say, all I can say for all of us who own SpaceX, yum, yum.

• 1:18:10David Friedberg?

  Yum, yum. That's so delicious. Okay, my best new technology.

• 1:18:17David Friedberg?

  I think that 2021 was the year of plasma fusion. There were several iterations and step function improvements in plasma fusion.

• 1:18:27Jason Calacanis?

  Can you explain what it is to people who don't know?

• 1:18:29David Friedberg?

  The concept ultimately for plasma fusion is that you can generate a controlled nuclear, series of nuclear reactions where energy is released and as these atoms transform and energy is released, rather than have a runaway breakthrough effect, which you would have in a nuclear bomb, for example, you can actually control it and harness the energy that comes out. And there are several technologies and techniques that have been theorized for 50 years that we could do this in a way that the energy that we put in to create and start the fusion reaction allows us to get more energy out and therefore you have a net energy creator just by turning atoms into energy in a way that doesn't cause a runaway breakthrough nuclear reaction that would be the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.

• 1:19:14David Friedberg?

  And so, you know, the MIT-CFS collaboration had an excellent breakthrough that we spoke about on one of our pods. The National Ignition Facility, which is actually a US DOE-funded facility, came very close to energy abundance and they have a wonderful chart that shows 20 years of doing this work and then this year it suddenly balloons.

• 1:19:34Jason Calacanis?

  Is that how they make energy on the sun?

• 1:19:37David Friedberg?

  This one, so, so all of this is fusion, that's correct.

• 1:19:40Jason Calacanis?

  That's how they make energy on the sun?

• 1:19:43David Friedberg?

  Well, what we're doing here is we're basically using lasers to create the same density that you would get on the sun that triggers that same sort of nuclear.

• 1:19:52Jason Calacanis?

  And what about Uranus?

• 1:19:54David Friedberg?

  Different, different. It's different. It never stops being funny. Yeah. General Fusion had a big breakthrough and Bill Gates is a big backer of a company called TerraPower that announced that they're building a new reactor. But I think generally speaking, we are seeing 2021 as kind of that big step change where this stuff is starting to move from theory.

• 1:20:15Jason Calacanis?

  But we'll have it online.

• 1:20:16David Friedberg?

  Still, as everyone's been saying for decades, 10 years. So every year, every 10 years, we say 10 years.

• 1:20:22Jason Calacanis?

  Okay. Best trend, worst trend, here we go. I'm gonna go with the best trend being... Centrism, purple pills, recalls of DA's, reasonableness, and maybe the political class actually representing what most of the country wants, which is a high-functioning government that gets the hell out of the way. What do you got, Sax?

• 1:20:41David Sacks?

  Best trend, hashtag woke lash. We saw, this is similar to yours, we saw a major pushback against woke ideology on several fronts this year. First, you had parents pushing back on CRT, leading to a Republican sweep in deep-blue Virginia. Then, the whole "defund the police" initiative was rejected on the ballot of Minneapolis, where it all started. Even the mayor of San Francisco now wants to refund the police. The attempt to cancel Dave Chappelle totally fizzled out after the walkout protest at Netflix. And even Barack Obama told the progressive left to, quote, "get over their woke purity" earlier this year. They should have listened to him, and maybe they finally will next year, after losing more elections.

• 1:21:23David Friedberg?

  I'll just repeat something I said earlier. I'll be quick about it. The creator economy blossoming, new models for monetization for folks that create content, whether it's video, art, music. And, you know, there's all these new models for bringing your art to market, your content to market, and getting paid for it. And consumers are clearly willing to pay for it. So it's awesome to see. The gatekeepers are falling away, and the go-direct model is working.

• 1:21:50Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got, YourMuff?

• 1:21:51Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm gonna double-tap that. I had the creator economy. I think it's incredible what these young creators are basically, you know, creating. It's incredible. Super, super novel and new forms of content. TikTok is super addictive. Stay out of the comments. YouTube is incredible. So this is a brave new world for creators.

• 1:22:16Jason Calacanis?

  All right. So, worst trend, the worst trend of 2021. I'm gonna go with giving credit for work that hasn't been done yet, and just straight-up founder and investor entitlement. I've never seen an all-time peak here, where people expect to be given huge rewards before they do the work. And I'm very concerned about the lack of governance, the lack of diligence, and people believing... They should get huge rewards before they actually do the work. What do you got, Chamath?

• 1:22:49Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Uh, my worst trend is the decaying uh of the national security of our supply chains. Um, if you think about some of the really important things that we're gonna have to get done over the next 10 years, just the climate as an example. China has done a masterful job. They control, you know, a lot of the lithium, a lot of the nickel, a lot of the cobalt, a lot of the graphite. They control a lot of the rare earths that go into the permanent magnets. And we don't have a solution. So uh, that is a really bad trend that accelerated. This year, um, we have some really ambitious programs in America that are unfortunately stuck because of

• 1:23:30Chamath Palihapitiya?

  you know, lawsuits uh claiming that the, you know, the wood grouse is more important than batteries. And so unless we undo that stuff, we're in a bad place.

• 1:23:40Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, Sax, what do you got?

• 1:23:42David Sacks?

  I've got uh the rise of authoritarianism around the world and here in the United States. I mean, even in Western countries like Australia, it's basically been turned into a prison colony for months in the name of stopping COVID. Here in the United States, you've got governors like Gavin Newsom, who have basically appropriated dictatorial powers through a bogus state of emergency. You've now got um the unvaccinated treated as some sort of untouchable class of of um of citizens who aren't able to leave their house, except to buy food and medicine. Um, they're even now in Europe, they're splitting, uh, they're forcing people behind uh partitions at the supermarket. Uh, Boston just announced they're banning unvaccinated people from going to all restaurants, bars,

• 1:24:24David Sacks?

  nightclubs, sport arenas, fitness centers, movie theaters, and on and on it goes. On top of that, you've got censorship, you've got um, you know, um, the censoring of speech, you've got this, this sort of uh crackdown on uh domestic political enemies. And I think it's also emboldening authoritarian regimes like China and Russia to crack down harder on their citizens because they see what's happening in the West and they think they can get away with it. So all around bad stuff.

• 1:24:52David Friedberg?

  I think to your point Sax, it's one of the reasons why we will see uh people in general looking for alternative ways to govern themselves. Um, and it will only catalyze and accelerate some of these other trends that that I think we've been talking about.

• 1:25:08David Friedberg?

  My worst trend was the metaverse. I think it's like the renaming of something that's been going on for a long time as if it's some new future thing. If anyone's played Fortnite over the last six years or five years, you know, the metaverse has been here for a long time and this notion that you can kind of take it and make it something that doesn't exist yet and it's all about the future and make some stupid video about it. I think it's a little bit lost in what's already been going on, which is people find value in digital goods. People find value in digital levels and badging and they find honor and progress in their lives by accomplishing things in a digital universe and they've been doing that from Minecraft to Fortnite to other places for a long time.

• 1:25:49David Friedberg?

  And it's fascinating to watch, but the notion that we call this thing the metaverse and everyone's trying to reclassify it as some future singular universe and therefore they can own that singular universe is a pretty misguided kind of concept.

• 1:26:02Jason Calacanis?

  Let's go on to your favorite book, movie, podcast, music discovery of 2021. For music, I had War on Drugs. For book, Ray Kroc's autobiography I listened to on Audible and it was great. On TV, Secession, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Dope Sick were my three favorites, I think. Friedberg, what do you got? Considering that you have had your pop culture.

• 1:26:27David Friedberg?

  I will tell you guys, I think it's very important that everyone on this pod and anyone listening to this that has any interest in what's going on in the world today broadly, read Ray Dalio's The Changing World Order. It is my number one, number two and number three book recommendation of the year. It is absolutely critical to understand that the global world order is being reclassified as the United States has taken on too much debt and will ultimately lose its reserve currency status as we have seen with the transition of five or six empires over the past 500 years. And this transition is very predictable as Ray Dalio highlights. We are following a pattern that we've seen over and over again.

• 1:27:12David Friedberg?

  And we are in a moment right now where populism

• 1:27:17David Friedberg?

  Whether it's authoritarianism on the right or socialism on the left is a reaction to what is effectively a very small number of people controlling a very large amount of the wealth and the power in this country and in the world. And we've seen this play out and as governments and societies evolve, eventually this happens. There's a massive revolution typically triggered by some new technology emerging like the printing press, the radio, shipping, and in our case today, I would argue what people are calling web three or the blockchain as that that triggering technology. And as that happens, the current dominant empire transitions and a new world order emerges. And this is not some conspiracy theory.

• 1:28:01David Friedberg?

  It's a it's an in-depth look at the economic, political and social organizations that have broken apart over the last 500 years and where we sit today. Um, it's not about politics. It's just about manifestations of human behavior over time. Done for that. Everyone's got to read it. My second. Oh, I got one more. Come on.

• 1:28:18Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, no, of course, keep going.

• 1:28:19David Friedberg?

  Wes Anderson's The French Dispatch is one of the best films I have seen in like a decade. Have you guys seen it?

• 1:28:24Jason Calacanis?

  No.

• 1:28:25David Friedberg?

  It is friggin amazing. I feel like every shot is like a cinematography masterpiece. Um, the writing is incredible. The acting will blow your mind. If you guys see that film, we could talk about it for hours. It is just no political agenda, no nonsense in it. It's just pure art. It's really beautiful.

• 1:28:40Jason Calacanis?

  Oh.

• 1:28:41David Friedberg?

  And then on music, I'll give a shout out to a very unknown artist who I think deserves a little shout out. His name is DK The Drummer. DK The Drummer did a collaboration with a guy named Alejandro Aranda, who was on American Idol. My kids cannot stop listening to his track that they did together. It's amazing. Uh, shout out for that guy. I just figured he deserves it for putting out an awesome track.

• 1:29:00Jason Calacanis?

  All right, Sax, um, which Steve Bannon episode was your favorite?

• 1:29:06David Sacks?

  So under book of the year, I have a very recent choice, which is San Francisco by Michael Schellenberger. It just came out, but it's already, I think, very influential. It's not just about San Francisco. It's really about how the so-called progressive agenda in cities is not working. I think it is going to be the blueprint for a major backlash that's already begun here in San Francisco with London Breed. Taking on Chase Budin, I think that's gonna be a recurring theme next year. Also, other big cultural discoveries, like Chamath, I have Red Pill journalists on Substack, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, Antonio Garcia Martinez, all of whom now have shows on Colin, so those are my choices.

• 1:29:47Jason Calacanis?

  There's a second plug. Okay, here we go. Chamath, what was your favorite app besides Colin?

• 1:29:54Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Exactly. Let's see. So my best album is Planet Her by Doja Cat. Danceable, fun, kids love it, I love it.

• 1:30:08Jason Calacanis?

  You dance? Okay, I'll wait to see that.

• 1:30:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You know that I have rhythm, bro.

• 1:30:12Jason Calacanis?

  All in Summit Dance Party, here we go.

• 1:30:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I'm black from the waist down, as you also know.

• 1:30:17Jason Calacanis?

  Just beep that out, please.

• 1:30:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Cut that out.

• 1:30:19Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, it's the truth. No, you cannot hide from the truth, boys.

• 1:30:26Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Best movie is Dune. It was so beautiful, cinematically just gorgeous.

• 1:30:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Incredible, incredible, incredible movie. And then book, I've said this before, but the way I think about the world is using these models and frameworks. One of the most useful models that I have found is this idea of mimesis or memetic theory, which is that people copy each other, that causes conflict. It was espoused by a philosopher named Rene Girard. Myself, Peter Thiel, there's a bunch of us who are pretty deep Rene Girard acolytes. The problem is that his stuff can be a little hard to penetrate. And so there was a book called Wanting, W A N T I N G, by this author named Luke Burgess. Superb book, very easy to read, very accessible, explains this really well.

• 1:31:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  One of the most useful mental models that I have.

• 1:31:21Jason Calacanis?

  And oh, just shout out, we didn't have best comedian in here, but I really enjoyed Hasan Minhaj's The King's Jester, a new show that is not yet on streaming, but that he's doing live. It was hilarious, it was insightful.

• 1:31:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's awesome.

• 1:31:37Jason Calacanis?

  Really enjoyed going to it.

• 1:31:39David Sacks?

  Did any of you like Loki?

• 1:31:42Jason Calacanis?

  I enjoyed Loki a lot. Yeah.

• 1:31:43David Sacks?

  I thought it was really good.

• 1:31:44Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. Well done.

• 1:31:45David Friedberg?

  What is it? What is Loki?

• 1:31:47Jason Calacanis?

  He is a he's Thor's stepbrother and they did a TV show called Loki, which was like a very challenging metaverse, multiple timeline, kind of conceptual.

• 1:31:56David Sacks?

  That's gonna set the stage for the whole next wave of Marvel movies. Didn't you think that was the best Marvel product this year? Or no?

• 1:32:01Jason Calacanis?

  Definitely was. Absolutely. Hundred percent. I haven't seen Spider-Man Homecoming, but I think it sets in line.

• 1:32:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Wait, wait, we haven't heard from Sacks. Did we hear from Sacks?

• 1:32:09Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, Sacks just picked like some right wing book.

• 1:32:13Jason Calacanis?

  It was like San Francisco Seco or something and then he doesn't watch TV or whatever. I mean, Sacks, did you? You actually love movies. You've made movies. Did you see a film you loved? Were you just watching like films from me?

• 1:32:25David Sacks?

  I mean, honestly, it's hard to find like even one movie that I wanna, you know, write home about. I think it's a lot easier to find TV shows. Like we're enjoying Yellowstone right now. Quite a bit. I don't know if you guys are watching that Kevin Costner.

• 1:32:36Jason Calacanis?

  Nobody who's on the left knows what Yellowstone is. Explain to people this right wing phenomenon.

• 1:32:41David Sacks?

  It's a it's a Kevin Costner show. I don't know if it's right wing. It's about a ranching like family, like they're traditional sort of cowboys. Who live in Wyoming. And or maybe it's Montana. I'm not sure. Anyway, there's all these people trying to go after them to get their land, mostly developers. And

• 1:32:59Jason Calacanis?

  I hear it's fantastic.

• 1:33:00David Sacks?

  They're fighting to preserve their way of life, which is around, you know.

• 1:33:05David Sacks?

  Raising cows.

• 1:33:06Jason Calacanis?

  It's Taylor Sheridan, who's the guy who did Sicario, which if you've never seen Sicario one and two.

• 1:33:11Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Amazing.

• 1:33:11Jason Calacanis?

  Are the most amazing thought thrillers you're ever gonna see. I mean, very hard to watch. They're so intense. And I think Yellowstone now is the reason I say it's right wing is it's doing incredibly well in the South and it's not happening in the coastal cities. So coastal elites.

• 1:33:27David Friedberg?

  Kind of like a Leave Me Alone.

• 1:33:30Jason Calacanis?

  It it very much appeals to the republic, the traditional Republican slash American sensibility. And now they're making it into a universe. They did a prequel. And it's just off the charts. It's the most viewership of any program and most people in San Francisco, New York and LA don't even know what it is.

• 1:33:45David Sacks?

  Yeah, I'm not sure it's like it has an overt political agenda. I mean, the family who's the the subject of the show, the cost of character, he's just against progress. He does not want developers coming in there, building airports, building ski resorts. He just wants to preserve his way of life, which is how it's been for 150 years, rustling cattle.

• 1:34:04Jason Calacanis?

  Can't wait to see it.

• 1:34:05David Sacks?

  And I don't know how political that is, but they are like very tough. I mean, it's like

• 1:34:10Jason Calacanis?

  So it's like San Fran, San Francisco housing policy.

• 1:34:14David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:14Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we're going to keep up with this one. This is our Rudy Giuliani Award for self-immolation. Basically, people who destroy their legacy in some way, or otherwise just bungled everything. Sax, I gotta go to you first. I know that you've got your writing team over at Fox and has something going on here for this one. Let's go.

• 1:34:36David Sacks?

  Well, yeah, I went with the Cuomo brothers.

• 1:34:39Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, great pull.

• 1:34:41David Sacks?

  Yes. So first, you have the governor, Andrew Cuomo. Remember, at the beginning of COVID, he was giving these constant press conferences. There was even talk about on the part of Democrats replacing Biden with him at the 2020 convention. This inspired the term Cuomo sexuals, who saw him as a sex symbol. And then he got taken down in August by sexual harassment allegations. Then, a few weeks later, there's a major scandal at CNN when it leaked documents from the New York AG's office showed that his brother, Chris Cuomo, had used his perch at, you know, at CNN to dig up dirt on some of his brother's accusers. Then he was suspended and ultimately fired. So both brothers self-immolated within a few months of each other.

• 1:35:25Jason Calacanis?

  And Andrew Cuomo had to return his $5 million book advance for his COVID book. Free Burke, who you got? Who lit themselves on fire?

• 1:35:32David Friedberg?

  Well, I was a little general. I kind of said, you know, all these politicians who made claims about the vaccine not being worth doing, and then they got COVID. And then on the flip side of the aisle, all the politicians who said, take the vaccine or you'll get COVID, and then they took the vaccine and they still got COVID. So, you know, I think, again, credibility, institutional credibility and deterministic statements like that from both sides. damaged a lot of reputations. And it's just brutal to watch, you know, from from one day to the next, from Elizabeth Warren to Rand Paul, people getting COVID, making one claim or another about, you know, the the good or the bad of the vaccine. And at the end of the day, COVID doesn't care, clearly. So, anyway.

• 1:36:15Jason Calacanis?

  What do you got, Jamal?

• 1:36:16Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Senator Karen, I think Senator Karen is the obvious choice for me. Kind of proved that she doesn't really know much about economics, is, you know, kind of mean. And just basically wants to, you know, is a moral absolutist authoritarian, just on the left.

• 1:36:34David Friedberg?

  By the way, I just, I'll interject because I'm so passionate about this right now, since I've read this book. But, you know, you'll hear, you'll see in this book that this populist diatribe that you hear from both sides, whether it's the right or the left, comes from a place that's driven by an allocation of a lot of the resources, capital and influence and power to a small number of people. And whether it's Senator Karen or Donald Trump, they ultimately end up being this, you know, the same characters played by different actors over time. And the left and the right stand up with authoritarianism and socialism as the answer, and the whole thing cycles over again. And we're in this moment right now, and this sort of stuff that you guys are talking about,

• 1:37:18David Friedberg?

  Senator Karen and others, kind of saying, is only going to get louder. I'm convinced.

• 1:37:23David Sacks?

  But I think it's interesting because I think she's overplayed her hand massively. I mean, she's become so shrill and such a scold that, you know, she can never win that, you know, that beer test. Remember that question they ask, they poll people on about presidential candidates, is who do you most want to have a beer with? You know, that that question actually is important because I don't think people want to have a beer with people who are scolding them, or these moral absolutists, like Jamal said. There is a check there. And so I think she's, I think what she's done has backfired.

• 1:37:54Jason Calacanis?

  And for me, it was Biden. I mean, what a disappointing performance. He couldn't control the far left of the party. He couldn't get anybody on the Republican side to give him but one vote. He declared independence from COVID in July. I know it's not a perfect science or anything like that, but I think that this presidency is one and done, obviously, to everybody. And, um, yeah, he was supposed to go right into the middle, and he has not gone anywhere near the middle or led from the front either way. All right, here we go.

• 1:38:29David Sacks?

  My God, Jason, how much Fox News have you been watching?

• 1:38:31Jason Calacanis?

  I'm just hanging out with you too much. I'm just thread with you. No, I mean, it is possible. You know, I really wanted a centrist for president. He presented as such, and then he hasn't done that. And now he's being forced into centrism, kicking and screaming. He should have just started there. That's where he, that was the promise. He should have started there.

• 1:38:48Chamath Palihapitiya?

  That's where, that's where he's most comfortable anyways. That's who he is.

• 1:38:51Jason Calacanis?

  Exactly. Like, what a head fake. And now he winds up there anyway, and it's gonna be too late. Uh, so it's just a disaster. Um, he, he basically took victory from the jaws of defeat, or took defeat from the jaws of victory, right? Like, just terrible. Okay, here's an award. I don't know if we're gonna make this, but who was your favorite bestie? So this is you picking up the three other besties? Freiburg, this is your idea? You want to create this division of why somebody is your favorite bestie on the show?

• 1:39:21David Friedberg?

  Well, I was just, I was just trying to give you a shout out for coming to my party.

• 1:39:23Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 1:39:24David Friedberg?

  You know, while the other besties sat home.

• 1:39:25Jason Calacanis?

  So I am your favorite bestie?

• 1:39:26David Friedberg?

  No, but you know what? Yesterday, Chamath served me crepes with Nutella, so he's my favorite bestie now.

• 1:39:31Jason Calacanis?

  So you're, oh my God.

• 1:39:32David Friedberg?

  Plain? No, and Sacks had an incredible, um, party, and you guys, I want to say, I think, I'll tell you something. All three of you guys have been incredibly generous, and I, I feel fortunate, and I know it's a little soft moment, but thank you, guys. That's it.

• 1:39:45Jason Calacanis?

  I have had my gratitude chip upgraded.

• 1:39:48David Friedberg?

  My emotion is complete.

• 1:39:50Jason Calacanis?

  I love you guys. My voice is cracking. This is in my programming, but I should keep it together. The tier subroutine has not been installed. Chamath, you wanna pick your favorite bestie and or go around the horn and?

• 1:40:03David Friedberg?

  This is just a bad idea.

• 1:40:06Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, I love all three of you. I love all three of you, but for different reasons. I'm really lucky to have all three of you as friends.

• 1:40:14Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, very nice. I am very lucky to have two of the three of you have planes that I get to fly on around the world. And second homes that I get to freeload off of. And Friedberg, you know, I can't just say like, you know, get, as I told your mom, Friedberg, at your wonderful Christmas party. I said, you know, getting to know your son has been one of the highlights of the last year and a half for me. So sincerely, you know, I was good friends with your mom and Sacks, but you know, you and I knew each other from poker, but you know, not great friends or super close friends yet. And I think it's been one of the highlights for me and I really have learned to love and respect your opinions, your ethos, your effort in the world and in a world of people who

• 1:40:57Jason Calacanis?

  are complaining and whining and not doing, I just feel so honored to be able to be the moderator here and spend time with you every week. I would do this if we threw the episode away every week because it's inspiring for me for the next six days until we meet again. It really fills my bucket. It recharges my batteries to, to be with folks who just aggressively want to solve problems in the world.

• 1:41:20Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Where are we taping this next week?

• 1:41:24Jason Calacanis?

  That's in like two or three weeks. We're going to be at the Upfront Summit on the second day in LA. I think it's, somebody want to give the date? I think it's January.

• 1:41:32Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Any plans to tape from Uranus?

• 1:41:34Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, he set it up. Stop with the Uranus tubes. If we can terraform, it's the 24th to 26th, but I think we're on the 26th. We're on the last day in the afternoon, All In Podcast. We're doing it. Mark Suster invited us and then the All In Summit will be in May in Miami. We have the dates we're about to announce, but don't email me for free tickets. There'll be 300 tickets to the summit. 250 of them are paid and then each bestie gets 12 tickets to give to a bestie. This is how we're going to run it. Everybody has to pay and then everything will be simulcast.

• 1:42:12Jason Calacanis?

  All right, everybody. Let's wrap up. Sax, I know you're not capable of saying anything emotional, but let's give it a shot just for the for the audience.

• 1:42:20David Sacks?

  I mean, this is a real question. This effeminate bullshit that you guys are.

• 1:42:24Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, my lord. So brutal. You're such an asshole.

• 1:42:28Jason Calacanis?

  What a piece of work.

• 1:42:29Chamath Palihapitiya?

  You are such an asshole.

• 1:42:31Jason Calacanis?

  P O W.

• 1:42:31David Friedberg?

  I will say, this this group, a few relationships in particular, had a very rocky year. And so.

• 1:42:38Jason Calacanis?

  Really?

• 1:42:38David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And so.

• 1:42:40Jason Calacanis?

  What do you mean, really? You two?

• 1:42:42David Sacks?

  That is true.

• 1:42:42David Friedberg?

  It was not it was not public, what all that went down.

• 1:42:45Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:46David Friedberg?

  But Chamath and I.

• 1:42:47Jason Calacanis?

  Here we are. Here we are. Everything's good.

• 1:42:49David Friedberg?

  Chamath and I fought very hard to keep the pot together and to make sure that you guys. And you guys are literally like the the two characters from Step Brothers. And.

• 1:42:58Jason Calacanis?

  Who? What characters are you talking about in this spot? You and Chamath?

• 1:43:00David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And it's good. It's good. It's good to see us.

• 1:43:02David Sacks?

  You're the idiot who crashed the bunk beds.

• 1:43:05David Friedberg?

  The one on top.

• 1:43:06David Sacks?

  Yeah, he jumps on top of the whole thing.

• 1:43:07Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, I don't even know what movie you're talking about. What is this?

• 1:43:10Chamath Palihapitiya?

  The two of you, you Sax and J Cal found a way to fight, to almost break up, to destroy everything we built together. Freebrook and I had to step in, not once, but on two different occasions.

• 1:43:23David Friedberg?

  The amount of time Chamath and I had to spend mediating the two of you back together was ridiculous.

• 1:43:28David Sacks?

  I didn't want to spend the time either.

• 1:43:31David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:31Jason Calacanis?

  I didn't want to spend the time either. Sax could stay in his lane and be a little.

• 1:43:36David Friedberg?

  No, no, no, no, no. Don't start. Don't start. Don't start. Don't start.

• 1:43:40David Sacks?

  Nick's reminding me of something.

• 1:43:41David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:42David Sacks?

  He says, he said, I got so mad at Jason this year that I threatened to make Nick a millionaire out of spite.

• 1:43:49David Sacks?

  Nick, I want to make you a millionaire regardless. I know your uncle's not going to do it.

• 1:43:53Jason Calacanis?

  He's doing great. He's doing great. He's got Carrie. Take it easy, everybody. No poking.

• 1:43:58David Sacks?

  No, but people still ask me to this day, was that whole feud with J Cal real or was it just for ratings?

• 1:44:03Chamath Palihapitiya?

  No, it was real.

• 1:44:03David Sacks?

  I know. It was all. It was real.

• 1:44:06David Friedberg?

  The bigger feud was not, the bigger feud was not aired on the air.

• 1:44:09Jason Calacanis?

  And right, there was a second feud.

• 1:44:11David Friedberg?

  There was a second feud. That's under NDA. That one was out of control.

• 1:44:15Jason Calacanis?

  That's under NDA. We signed it NDA. And let you say, there's an operating agreement now.

• 1:44:19David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Jason Calacanis?

  It's not easy, you know, success is hard for a band, you know, and I think one of the things I'll say about this whole brouhaha and the, and the, you know, Sax and I having debates about how to run the pod is I think we came to the right place. I, you know, I look at the comments and I think I've become a better moderator. I think Sax, Chamath, Friedberg, you've all become great at passing the ball and showing interest in each other's points. And I feel like we're playing, you know, which is always my wish for this is that, you know, we play this game as intellectually, honestly, and crisply, and as well with as much discipline, with as much hard work as like, let's say the Warriors do. And I really feel like even in the last 10 episodes, we hit a high watermark and the, and the audience and everybody I meet tells me the same thing. My God, you guys just do such a great job.

• 1:45:03David Friedberg?

  I'll say one thing, one thing that makes it really hard, I was, I was with Chamath yesterday, as you guys know.

• 1:45:07Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, secret mission.

• 1:45:09David Friedberg?

  One thing I observed with Chamath is no matter how much success or wealth Chamath has accumulated, he is still a hustler. And I think that that is true for all of us and individually and independently, we all still hustle. We try and make things happen. We find things that others aren't doing. We push hard. Grinding. We grind. We grinders. Break up at 5:00 AM. Yeah. Fly to the East Coast. Yeah. Four a day. And I think, I think all four, all four of us in the same, are in the same vein. And that makes it really hard for four personalities like that to work together in a consistent way. And that underlies a lot of what I think ultimately bubbles up to the surface with some of this stuff. But, um, you know, we, we should be thankful that we can pull it off because it's, it's pretty, pretty awesome.

• 1:45:48David Sacks?

  And can I say something nice about J Cal?

• 1:45:50Jason Calacanis?

  Here we go.

• 1:45:52David Sacks?

  So it's true that without J Cal, this pod never would have happened.

• 1:45:54Jason Calacanis?

  Never would have happened.

• 1:45:55David Sacks?

  You are the podcaster in this group. You're the master skills.

• 1:45:58Jason Calacanis?

  You are the glue.

• 1:45:59David Sacks?

  And you make the pod very entertaining and funny. And so like frankly, even though you're not as rich and smart as the rest of us, you should stop feeling, you should stop feeling so insecure because you really are the reason for this pod.

• 1:46:12Jason Calacanis?

  All right. Listen, let me give a compliment. Sax, you bring. So many great notes to the pod and you are so eloquent based on what your team writes for you and your ability to read that script and the amount of money you spend forming your opinions from Tucker Carlson's ex-writing team is just extraordinary, bringing so much to the table. I can't believe I ever wanted to replace you with beep. Nobody's gonna know who I was threatening to replace Sax with. It was like, literally like, we're gonna replace this guitarist. Boys, have a wonderful holiday. Have a great one. I love you besties. Okay, everybody, we'll see you all next week for 2022 predictions. Our promise to

• 1:46:55Jason Calacanis?

  you, no weeks off for the besties. We're gonna be with you every Friday night. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

• 1:47:01David Sacks?

  We'll let your winners ride.

• 1:47:04Jason Calacanis?

  Rain Man David Sack.

• 1:47:07David Sacks?

  And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S. I. Queen of Kewa. What your winners ride?

• 1:47:19Jason Calacanis?

  What your winners ride? Besties are back.

• 1:47:24David Friedberg?

  That is my dog taking a piss in your driveway. Oh, man.

• 1:47:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  My aviator will meet me at one. We should all just get a room and just have one big Hugh Georgie because they're all just, it's like this like sexual tension, but they just need to release themselves.

• 1:47:40David Sacks?

  What your beep beep? What your beep?

• 1:47:45Jason Calacanis?

  We need to get merch. Besties are back.