E95: Winter is Coming, Europe's energy crisis, Kim Kardashian's new PE firm & more

0:00 Bestie intros: Luxury brand influencers, Birthday Party stories and more! 3:34 Jason reflects on the final Kara Swisher-hosted Code Conference, All-In media and hit piece requests 12:53 Passing of Queen Elizabeth II 15:39 Winter is Coming: Europe's energy crisis, potential fracturing of the Western Alliance, how we got here, endgame, and more 53:03 Kim Kardashian's new PE firm, content as the dominant distribution channel, what will mega-influencers do to legacy brands 1:03:46 Overprescribing of amphetamines to children 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/theallinpod/status/1568294657632907268 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg https://www.goldmansachs.com/insights/pages/europe-energy-crisis-is-at-a-tipping-point.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/truss-ukraine-ally-tory-leadership-race-b2151390.html https://www.voanews.com/a/scholz-g-7-will-support-ukraine-for-as-long-as-necessary-/6623196.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/macron-vows-to-prevent-russia-from-winning-war-in-ukraine/2022/09/01/ba57cb7a-29f3-11ed-a90a-fce4015dfc8f_story.html https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1566484400224993280

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

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Point of privilege, Sax wore this hat last week. What's this brand? Is this a Montclair hat?

• 0:07David Sacks?

  And actually, did you see that that tweet?

• 0:11David Sacks?

  It started trending after I wore it, so.

• 0:14Jason Calacanis?

  It's sold out, dude. You sold out the Montclair hat. So we have no advertising.

• 0:18David Friedberg?

  I feel like if we're not going to do any advertising on the show, we should at least get free clothes. We get to pick through them. Wear what we like.

• 0:25David Sacks?

  I know. Where's my cut? Where's my cut as an influencer?

• 0:28Speaker 03

  The tweet basically said that I name dropped Laura Piana and sent it through the roof and then Sax name dropped Montclair. Both brands, obviously, are Italian. Both entrepreneurs, we know very well. And so I asked Matt, I said, Matt, can you basically send this tweet over to them? So maybe they can give us free clothes.

• 0:45Jason Calacanis?

  Let's get the grift going, boys. Now we're talking. Now we got some bestie grifts. Now you're speaking my language.

• 0:51David Friedberg?

  Yeah, this is a cup of tea.

• 0:52Jason Calacanis?

  Speaking of grifts.

• 0:53David Sacks?

  I do like Montclair the way that Chamath likes Laura Piana.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Just so you guys know, at the birthday, Jason, that you missed.

• 1:01Jason Calacanis?

  Are we allowed to talk?

• 1:02Speaker 03

  We played poker. We had a birthday. We had a surprise birthday party for me. Nat threw it. Sax showed up. Freebro showed up. Their wife showed up. It was incredible. J. Cal basically stiffed me.

• 1:15Jason Calacanis?

  I'm very sorry. By the way, that came together four days before your birthday. So just so you know.

• 1:20Speaker 03

  Well, you know what? Kevin Hart showed up.

• 1:22Jason Calacanis?

  Give us the best one liner. Which one landed?

• 1:24Speaker 03

  Oh, no, J. Cal, you have no idea. These guys roasted me. It was fucking incredible. But the best of it was, at the end, K. Hart gets up with no preparation and skewers everybody. Freebro, I mean, what did you think of like Kevin's roast?

• 1:41David Friedberg?

  He was so funny. He's like, my wife walked in here and she looks at me and she's like, these, these guys? It was so fucking funny. Bleeped my shit out, Nick, but it was so funny. He dropped line after line.

• 1:55David Sacks?

  He's a ringer. He's a professional.

• 1:57Speaker 03

  Well, he's maybe the funniest person in the world.

• 2:00David Friedberg?

  And then Sax had to come after.

• 2:01David Sacks?

  Yeah, exactly. Xander, I don't know why Xander was the emcee. But he should have saved Kevin Hart for last, but instead he calls up K. Hart in the middle.

• 2:11Speaker 03

  Sax was so tilted.

• 2:13Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so wait. So I couldn't make it because I had Burning Man. Xander does the emceeing. Then Kevin Hart, what you're saying is just to fill in the audience here so they can understand it. Kevin Hart comes in, he gives this incredible ad lib roast and then Sax has to go after him?

• 2:31David Sacks?

  Yeah, first of all, Xander's as funny as a root canal.

• 2:35Jason Calacanis?

  What a sandbag.

• 2:36David Friedberg?

  It's a root canal.

• 2:37David Sacks?

  Xander's as funny as a root canal. He should not have been the MC. So yes, we did miss you, Jake How, you should have been the MC. Second, K Hart should have been left for last, obviously.

• 2:47Jason Calacanis?

  Of course.

• 2:47David Sacks?

  But Xander, you know, Xander being a good liberal couldn't censor me outright. So he had me go after K Hart. That's like the next best thing.

• 2:57Jason Calacanis?

  Did you steal his documents? Did you steal all his jokes and put them in your?

• 3:00David Sacks?

  I just threw, I had all these like jokes written. I just threw them out the window because I can't, what am I going to do? I'm not going to deliver jokes after Kevin Hart. So I just told a story, you know?

• 3:09David Friedberg?

  Kevin Hart like killed. I mean, the room was.

• 3:11Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, that's like, that's like getting punched by Mike Tyson and being like, oh my God, that hurt. It's like, shit, it's Mike Tyson.

• 3:35Jason Calacanis?

  We were at the, the code conference. We had the poker game. It was the last one after 20.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Big shout out to Kara Swisher. Big shout out to Kara Swisher.

• 3:42Jason Calacanis?

  I want to say to Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, um, because they did the conference many years together. Congratulations on a 20 year run. Uh, they're not going to do it. Kara's not going to do it next year, but uh, my friend Jim Bankoff, uh, who runs Vox is going to run it next year. Uh, so congratulations to him and Kara for, for a great run in all things D. They, you know, they, they, they, they had Steve Jobs at the first one, first speaker, and um, you can look it up. I got to ask him a question.

• 4:06Speaker 03

  Jake How, I don't know if you remember this, but you and I were there when uh, Gates and Jobs did that speech together.

• 4:13Jason Calacanis?

  Unbelievable. What a, what, what an incredible legacy that she documented all of this.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Code, code is incredible. Like, I mean, the number, the amount of memories I have from that place is incredible.

• 4:22Jason Calacanis?

  That's great. And so we'll see where the poker game goes next year, probably the all in summit.

• 4:25David Friedberg?

  To think the all in summit could have been that.

• 4:28Jason Calacanis?

  It's heartbreaking. It's heartbreaking. I'm not saying that I'll be hosting the code conference next year, but. You know, they're looking for an impresario. This is the problem with this pod is we're drawing too many high-profile people in now. But interestingly, Freeberg and I, we now have the press wants, the, the, the press are trying to do a profile of the pod. And so we had three or four different press outlets now. I won't say which ones, but have all asked us to do like a, sit for a profile. We've said no, but just because

• 4:57David Friedberg?

  And I said, why don't we do a profile of them? Who's to make them the media, you know?

• 5:02Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, exactly.

• 5:03David Sacks?

  Our competitors, our competitors want to do a piece on us. Why would we cooperate with that? You know, it's gonna be a hit, a hit piece.

• 5:11Jason Calacanis?

  It'd probably be a hit piece, yeah.

• 5:13David Sacks?

  Of course, because we're, we're stealing influence and clicks and views away from them. And besides, they're ideologically motivated anyway. So they're, they're message police.

• 5:24David Friedberg?

  Sacks, you don't think you're ideologically motivated?

• 5:26David Sacks?

  Listen, if you contradict the official narrative, then they write a hit piece about you. That's how they try to enforce discipline.

• 5:32Jason Calacanis?

  It's true, actually, but not all outlets. I like the independent ones. I do have to say like, this whole, you know, Substack movement in, in independent artists or independent journalists becoming even more indie. In fact, Kara Swisher is more indie now. She left the New York Times, specifically because they were, you know, giving her a hard time about certain guests or certain conversations. And now she's, you know, doing her podcast independently with Vox publishing it for her. So you're seeing more and more of the voices go independent.

• 5:59David Sacks?

  New Republic is doing a hit piece on me right now. I have no idea why.

• 6:03Jason Calacanis?

  I know that. They emailed me and ICC'd them. And I was like, here's my official comment. I can't wait to visit Sacks when he's in the White House in 20 years. And the guy's like, so you're saying Sacks is writing for a president? I'm saying, no, I'm saying that you don't understand a joke. That was a joke.

• 6:17David Sacks?

  Yeah. And then, and then after you copied me, then they're like, oh yeah, we were reaching out to David too, to get, and no.

• 6:24Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, and they hadn't reached out to you yet, right?

• 6:26David Sacks?

  They hadn't reached out. Anyway.

• 6:27Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah. So they were going a little sneaky sneak. They were trying to get me to talk about you before.

• 6:31David Sacks?

  I don't have time. I don't have time to talk to them.

• 6:32Jason Calacanis?

  New Republic's a nice, that would be a nice profile, I think. Nobody reads Sacks.

• 6:37David Sacks?

  It's not what it used to be. If it were, if it were Michael Kinsley running the New Republic, I'd be happy to, you know, take the time, but it's not that anymore. It's just another left-wing rag that's into policing speech. You know, they asked, they sent us a bunch of questions, like, you know, why?

• 6:54David Sacks?

  Well, I don't, I don't have them in front of me, but they're like, they're basically like, why did you support the recall of Chesa Boudin and stuff like that? And my, you know, PR person got back to him and said, have you seen the All In Pod? Have you read David's like Twitter? Because he explained this like abundantly for the two years he was advocating.

• 7:11Jason Calacanis?

  Like every week, we talked about it.

• 7:13David Sacks?

  We talked about this.

• 7:14Jason Calacanis?

  There's about 8,000 words sitting there in the transcripts.

• 7:16David Sacks?

  Right. He's like, oh, he talked about in the pod, he.

• 7:19Jason Calacanis?

  The guy didn't listen to the pod?

• 7:21David Sacks?

  He's like, he tweeted about this? No, he just thinks I'm like some right wing donor who was like trying to get Chesa kicked out, that kind of narrative, you know? So I'm like, this is a total waste of my time. Go read all my tweets, go watch the All In Pod and then come back with any questions that haven't been answered.

• 7:38Jason Calacanis?

  It's this lazy reporting on the New Republic's part. Why would you do a profile if you didn't actually?

• 7:42David Sacks?

  I got better.

• 7:42Speaker 03

  The two of you are having a serious conversation while Free Bird is fucking around with his background.

• 7:48Jason Calacanis?

  What is his background? What is that?

• 7:50David Friedberg?

  It's a future city in Saudi Arabia.

• 7:52David Sacks?

  Who else is planning on doing a hit piece about us?

• 7:54Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so the information reached out and we said no.

• 8:00David Friedberg?

  Are you going, are you saying this actually on the show right now?

• 8:03Jason Calacanis?

  I guess.

• 8:03David Sacks?

  I think the way we should deal with all inbound press inquiries is we'll tell them no and then discuss it on the pod.

• 8:09David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 8:09David Sacks?

  If they want to quote, if they want to quote, listen to our pod and then transcribe what we say on this pod.

• 8:15David Friedberg?

  Or reverse it.

• 8:16David Sacks?

  My quote for the New Republic is that if Michael Kinsley were still the editor, I'd be happy to spend my valuable time talking to you.

• 8:23Jason Calacanis?

  But you feel they will be a fair profile?

• 8:27David Sacks?

  Of course it's not going to be fair. They're the speech police now. And the fact he didn't even know, the fact he didn't even know that I wasn't just a donor on the Chesa Boudin thing. I was the first person that I'm aware of, at least within Silicon Valley, who called out Chesa Boudin for the horrible job he was doing.

• 8:44Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, that was bipartisan. By the way, it's not like David Sacks is one of the 3% of San Franciscans who are Republican. Like, he's not able to vote for the 69% of people who voted Chesa Boudin out. So like, you can't spin that one.

• 8:58David Sacks?

  You're categorizing me as like just a partisan. That's not really how I come at these issues.

• 9:04David Friedberg?

  Can we go back to your quotes? So that was your comment for New Republic. J Cal, do you have a comment for New York Times?

• 9:09Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, it started with Eric. I gotta be fair to Eric Newcomer, who's awesome, who worked at the information, started his own Substack, which is really good, by the way. And he comes on my other pod. He's awesome. And so I'm going to be a guest on his pod because I promised him and he does my pod, but I'm not going to be a guest. My philosophy is, I told him, I said, you can have me as a guest, but it can't be more than 10% all in because I don't want it to become an all in profile. We agreed as a group. We're not doing an all in profile right now. So up to 10% can be about all in, but the other 90% has got to be my other projects. And he said, totally fine. He understands. But he asked first. And actually, I would be inclined to do with him because he's, if we were going to do it, but then.

• 9:46David Sacks?

  What do they need? I mean, like, we create, like, hours and hours of content.

• 9:51Jason Calacanis?

  And the drama is out here for everybody to.

• 9:53David Sacks?

  Like, I don't understand. Like, what is, what do you need our cooperation for?

• 9:57Jason Calacanis?

  I think you want to, no, you want to maybe frame and get a couple of, no, you just want to get a couple of quotes that are unique so that it's worth reading. You guys have shoved your heads up each other's asses.

• 10:10David Friedberg?

  It's like a serpent. A never ending serpent.

• 10:13Jason Calacanis?

  You're clear up here. Clean bill of health, Sacks. So anyway, Eric Newcomer asked, and then the information asked, and then Kevin Ruus.

• 10:21David Sacks?

  No, the New York Times just asked, right?

• 10:22Jason Calacanis?

  Kevin Ruus.

• 10:23David Friedberg?

  Okay, what was your comment?

• 10:26Jason Calacanis?

  My comment to the New York Times is, yeah, enjoy the pod while it lasts. We're trying to keep it together. I mean, I'll say the other big issue is, I got approached by a couple of, by two different people who want to, who want to represent the pod. They say there's $7.5 million in advertising we're leaving on the table, by the way, 150 a week.

• 10:44David Sacks?

  Good.

• 10:45David Friedberg?

  What?

• 10:47Jason Calacanis?

  And literally, that was.

• 10:48David Sacks?

  I want that number to grow to 10 million, to 20 million.

• 10:52Jason Calacanis?

  You guys are killing me. You realize I would have a plane if you guys just let me sell the fucking ads on this thing. I could get like a million and a half dollars in JetSuite.

• 10:59David Friedberg?

  You would have a plane if you just did one other thing. You're doing 100 different things. Just do one thing.

• 11:04Jason Calacanis?

  I'll tell you what it is.

• 11:05David Sacks?

  You'd have a plane if you were smarter.

• 11:10Jason Calacanis?

  That's not, that's not nice. Sex, that's not nice. I would have a plane if I got luckier. I will say whoever said this is going to help our, our core businesses and that's the reason, I think it might've been you, Chamath. I am raising my fourth fund. I am doing it 5060, which is public. I tweeted about it. I had 1,200 people sign up for the webinar. And this means I might have to increase the size of my fourth venture fund because so many people listen to this pod and want to hang out. So, but thank you to everybody who listens to the pod. I think.

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Thank you, bro.

• 11:45Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I mean, it's just nice, you know, I, I, you know, I struggle to raise the first couple of funds. You guys backed me, but like, I couldn't break through as a solo GP. With the, with the big LPs, but I'm hoping to get one big LP this time. And you know, it's, I'm going to be oversubscribed with all the high net worth individuals and everything, but I'd like to get like a memorial Sloan Kettering or somebody doing cancer research, just to feel good about it, you know?

• 12:06David Sacks?

  I just want to say that I supported J. Call as a friend. In fact, I was the first LP check in your fund, but that does not mean that I endorse.

• 12:13Jason Calacanis?

  You endorse it in any way.

• 12:14David Sacks?

  In any way, that anybody else should come in.

• 12:17Jason Calacanis?

  I mean, whatever you're, I don't want to say the performance, but um, you're doing okay. Uh, let's leave it at that.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  And I would like to say that I was not the first, but I was the biggest.

• 12:28Jason Calacanis?

  You did, you did pretty big. Yeah, absolutely.

• 12:30David Friedberg?

  And I will say that I'm still waiting for that moment to join you guys in J. Call.

• 12:35Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, exactly. Uh, yeah. And I'll just keep coming to your LP meetings and entertaining your LPs. Thanks, pal.

• 12:41David Friedberg?

  Entertaining.

• 12:42David Sacks?

  Wait, is J. Callan an investor in production board?

• 12:44Jason Calacanis?

  No, uh, we, we have done, we've done a syndicate together.

• 12:47David Friedberg?

  You are my smallest investor. You're

• 12:51David Friedberg?

  I don't know how that happened, but yeah.

• 12:52Jason Calacanis?

  But let's get to work, guys.

• 12:53David Friedberg?

  Do you guys want to talk about the queen, the passing of the queen real quick before we start, or is that?

• 12:57Speaker 03

  I would like to, yeah. I was born in Sri Lanka. I was raised in Canada. So, and now I live in the United States. Obviously I've been a citizen of all three countries. So two of the three countries.

• 13:09Speaker 03

  I've been a subject to the Queen. I mean, I'm part of the Commonwealth and I just want to say, it was really sad for me. Like these last couple of days when I saw that she was sick and then she had passed. I gotta be honest with you, like it really touched me. She is an incre- I can't describe to you guys, for someone who is part of that realm, how important she is as a person. And then, you know, if you've seen, you know, the, the show on Netflix, it kind of romanticizes a little bit, but you know, she has seen seventeen prime ministers, she's seen so many presidents, she has seen the history of the world. Uh, the modern world being made in front of her.

• 13:52Speaker 03

  So yeah, I'm a little sad and I think she's an incredible person. And even if you don't agree necessarily with monarchies in general, I think you have to be super positive.

• 14:01David Friedberg?

  Or the history of imperialism, there's a lot of people that are kind of using this as a moment to be negative, right?

• 14:06Speaker 03

  Jamaica wants to be a common republic, Australia wants to become a republic. They'll prosecute that in due time, but for right now, I just think that we have to celebrate this incredible woman who lived to an incredible age, who saw incredible things and who dedicated her entire life to the public service and lived it totally neutrally, which in today's world, nobody else does. Everybody else takes a point of you.

• 14:32David Friedberg?

  That's a good point.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Everybody else, everybody else tries to basically like, you know, create a schism. She never did that in seventy years as the Queen.

• 14:40David Friedberg?

  Yeah, like very stoic, very stoic and a symbol of service, not a symbol of dictatorship, right? I mean, there seems to be a very different role that she's taken as a monarch than I think what

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:51David Friedberg?

  has maybe historically been the role, which is

• 14:53Speaker 03

  It's incredible.

• 14:55David Friedberg?

  Pretty profound, right?

• 14:56Jason Calacanis?

  It's extraordinary that somebody would put seventy years of service and be that diligent, uh, and I think stoic and and there for her people and to the people who are, you know, suffering and grieving, you know?

• 15:07Speaker 03

  That word you said really resonated with me, like diligent is such a great word because it's like, you're disciplined, you put in hard work, you're focused on a long-term goal and then you're selfless.

• 15:18Jason Calacanis?

  Yes.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  Not many people, not many people, Jake, how you know this, exhibit that at all, but then definitely don't exhibit it over seventy years.

• 15:26Jason Calacanis?

  It's extraordinary and you know, I know a lot of people are grieving right now, so you have our

• 15:31Speaker 03

  As somebody, as a citizen of the monarchy, I am of the Commonwealth, rather, I am pro-Queen Elizabeth and it deeply saddens me to see that she passed.

• 15:39Jason Calacanis?

  All right, listen, we gotta talk about, uh, winter is coming. I'm not talking about Game of Thrones. Let's talk about something serious that's going on here. Um, and we, you know, we don't like to be too repetitive here, but I think we correctly predicted that, you know, this, if this Ukraine, I think maybe Sax, you pointed this out of this Ukraine.

• 15:55David Sacks?

  What do you mean, we, Kimosabi?

• 15:58Jason Calacanis?

  All right, listen, I'm trying to give you fucking credit and you're interrupting me. Can you just take the fucking win? You're such a miserable bastard. I tried to give you one fucking win.

• 16:05David Sacks?

  Okay, finish, finish what you're saying.

• 16:07Jason Calacanis?

  And you cut me off. All right, listen, we've been talking about this Ukraine thing. Sax correctly predicted if this goes to winter, this is going to get acute. And of course, uh, right on cue, here we have it. Russia has essentially cut off, uh, gas, uh, to Europe right now by claiming that the Nord Stream won, uh, the North Pipeline, uh, that Russia built that goes under the Baltic Sea.

• 16:31Jason Calacanis?

  They basically say a turbine's broken in it magically at this point in time, right before winter, this turbine broke, according to Putin. Um, and he needs a turbine. Um, and if they give him a turbine, he said he's going to turn it back on. Uh, this in the face of, uh, Europe saying they were going to cap the price of Russian gas. I don't know how that works exactly, that you tell people what they can charge for gas, but, uh, Russian gas shipments, uh, which Germany is particularly, uh, dependent on have fallen 89% since last year. And the price of liquefied natural gas in Europe is four times the level a year ago, uh, and eight times, uh, the level of the US. Obviously, we are, have gotten incredibly lucky to find all this, uh, natural gas here,

• 17:12Jason Calacanis?

  and we are a huge exporter of natural gas and oil in the United States. So we're good. Uh, this is the highest power prices have been in three decades. And the perfect storm is not limited to oil and the Russia and the Ukraine war. France's 56 nuclear power plants are running at half strength because of shutdowns over corrosion problems and as we talked about maybe two episodes droughts have undermined hydroelectric power because of these.

• 17:39David Sacks?

  That's not the main issue here. The main issue is the

• 17:41Jason Calacanis?

  Well, no, I'm just saying, there is a perfect storm here.

• 17:44David Friedberg?

  It's not just that. Forty percent of Europe's energy consumption comes from Russian natural gas. Forty percent. And so you could see variance. There's a baseload requirement for lighting and electricity and then there's industrial production and then there's heating and cooling. Heating and cooling demand is linearly tied to the number of degrees above or below 65 Fahrenheit on average. And so as the temperature goes up, people turn air conditioners on. If the temperature goes below 65, they turn their heaters on. So there's a linear demand for power consumption at those. So number one is you could kind of, you could either cut baseload, which is lighting and basic kind of operations. Number two is cut industrial production, which is already happening. A lot of fertilizer plants

• 18:27David Friedberg?

  are shutting down in the country that are dependent on natural, in the continent that are dependent on natural gas. And number three is the cooling, heating and cooling. And that really ends up being kind of a market-driven function, which is how pricey is this stuff? Because there's limited supply. So you could normally, in a normal year, see fluctuations around 5, 10, 15 percent, maybe, with good kind of action and behavior. Forty percent of energy being cut is a massive, massive problem. There will be significant price climbs for the kind of variable demand in heating and cooling and so on. But for the price to go up by 6x, 7x, 8x, 10x, 15x over normal prices for someone is unbearable by the average

• 19:11David Friedberg?

  household, unbearable by the average small business, unbearable by the average small building. And so it's causing critical failure across the economy, across the currencies, across debt markets. And there's real concern that ultimately the shutting off of 40% of the energy supply to the continent leading into winter, winter is coming, where energy demand spikes because of the need for heating, is going to cause real kind of problems. So there's the cataclysmic problem of people actually being able to heat their homes. There's the industrial problem of parts of the economy shutting down. And then there's the currency Problem of the governments needing to step in and bail out industry, buy super expensive

• 19:54David Friedberg?

  gas, give it to their citizens and their businesses at a discounted price, and seeing their national and sovereign debts skyrocket, which is now expected to happen. And as a result, the British pound is trading at its lowest level since 1985. And as a result, people are rushing to the street from Prague to Cologne, Germany, even in London, proclaiming that the governments aren't doing enough, number one, to stall the rate of inflation, to make energy prices cheaper through action by having the government subsidize. And number three, which I think was inevitable and is now becoming kind of the surprise factor to the Ukraine crisis, citizens are saying, end this war now. Get to the table with Russia, come up with a settlement, and get the heck out of Ukraine. By the way, that's not everyone

• 20:39David Friedberg?

  saying it, just to be clear, but there is this rising rioting protesting behavior happening across Europe, particularly in Eastern Europe, as a result of the Ukraine war. And so we're seeing, you know, I think a big shift in attitude and a big shift in kind of the societal perception of this war, particularly in Europe, because they're so acutely feeling the effects, and we are not in the US. They're acutely feeling the effects and they're saying, we need to stop this war now. We need to get out of the way. We need to let Russia turn the gas pipeline back on, and we need to figure out a resolution. Stop supporting Ukraine.

• 21:09Jason Calacanis?

  What is the

• 21:10David Friedberg?

  That's a voice that did not exist very loudly at the beginning, and it's starting to swell.

• 21:15Jason Calacanis?

  Running out of food, or, you know, running out of heat to keep your kids warm. I mean, these are pretty acute situations. What's the vibe in the Middle East about this? Are they looking at it and seeing it as an opportunity? Are they looking at it and seeing it as, you know, a manageable crises? And what do they consider their participation in this to be?

• 21:34Speaker 03

  There's a very structured framework for energy production, which is OPEC and OPEC+ plus. And, you know, they have done, not just the Middle East, but frankly, the Middle East plus the United States, the best job possible to basically get the maximum demand so that there's as much energy as possible. The reasons that Europe are in an energy crisis really should be discussed, honestly. So, number one.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  An entire continent essentially allowed a 16-year-old girl to dictate their energy policy.

• 22:14Speaker 03

  And when Greta Thunberg was able to shame an entire continent into basically walking away from nuclear and not really evaluating how you can actually have energy independence, what they did was they put Europe in an incredibly fragile position. And at the beginning of this war, it wasn't clear how much damage the lack of Russian energy would do to the European economy, but now it's absolutely clear. How did they not see that, Jomah?

• 22:47David Friedberg?

  We said it on the pod, we said it on the pod in February.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  How did they not, I mean, Trump said it years ago.

• 22:52David Friedberg?

  The first thing we said.

• 22:53Speaker 03

  How is it not obvious? The problem is, you had these, look, to be honest, you had these two goofballs. You had a goofball on the left, which was a 16-year-old girl who knew nothing. And you had a goofball on the right, which is a president whose language turned people off, even though the message that he was delivering was 100% right. When, when Trump went to the United Nations, he was clear, he was precise, and in hindsight, and I'm saying this as a Democrat, he was right. Oh, obviously right, yeah. About the German reliance on Russian gas and, and the European reliance on gas. What did they think would happen?

• 23:31David Sacks?

  The important thing was, was the reaction. Remember the German delegation snickering while he was talking?

• 23:35Speaker 03

  They were laughing, they were laughing, but, but we're, but we're missing the real lesson. The real lesson is that in all of our haste to basically overtly judge Trump because of his delivery and his, you know, his personal style or whatever, we ran towards a 16-year-old person who has no rooting in science or technology to dictate the energy policy of an entire continent. I mean, she was nominated for a Nobel Prize. Just to remind you guys, this is how insane all of these people were. So in an effort to virtue signal to the hilt and beyond, what we essentially did, what

• 24:16Speaker 03

  the entire world did, was turn a blind eye to science and turn a blind eye to mathematics and simple understanding of supply and demand. And so now you have this situation where... The entire continent of Europe is probably on the precipice of, at the minimum of recession. But frankly, there's a lot of scenarios where it could be meaningfully worse. And I think what it does is ultimately it is forced the Russian endgame. And that Russian endgame is essentially the following, which is that

• 24:51Speaker 03

  Germany will probably be the first to capitulate. But it'll be the combination of the United States and Europe who negotiate some kind of a settlement.

• 25:03Jason Calacanis?

  They have to fold.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  And, and the reason, well, without calling it folding, I would just say there's a settlement. And the reason that settlement is necessary is you're going to start to impact tens of millions of people's lives in an incredibly arduous way. And those people are asking their leaders to tell them why it's worth it. That's why you're seeing protests all around Europe. People have decided that this war has gotten two or three steps beyond what they thought they were getting into. And that it was shining light on a whole set of decisions that never should have been made.

• 25:45Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, what's, I, I, I think what people most want to know, and I, I'll go to Friedberg, yeah, for Sax. Friedberg, I think people are going to want to know, how do they close this gap in terms of the 40% dependency? So you can start thinking about that. But Sax, how do we resolve this issue with Russia without enabling them? Because nobody wants to enable them and reward them for evading countries. But here we are, they didn't settle this thing in the whatever nine months we're in now. And they don't have any more cards to play. They, they need heat, they need, people can't freeze to death in Germany. So they're going to have to fold in some way. And it doesn't seem like there's any gap that can be closed here in terms, there's not enough firewood to go around. It's all these stories about stockpiling firewood. That doesn't seem practical. Sure, you could reduce consumption by 10, 20, maybe 25%.

• 26:29Jason Calacanis?

  That does seem reasonable, but there's still a huge gap here. So, so what's the endgame Sax? I mean,

• 26:35David Sacks?

  Well, first, just to put some numbers on this, there's a good report by Goldman Sachs called Europe's energy crisis is at a tipping point. This came out on September 8th. And it says here that the price of natural gas in Europe, it used to just be 20 euros per megawatt hour. It's now above 200 per megawatt hour. So we're at 10 times the 10 year average in the market and winter isn't even here. So, you know, Europe is the Titanic, winter is the iceberg. The main difference between this and the Titanic story is that everyone can see the iceberg. And yet, no one is really changing course. So Liz Truss,

• 27:16David Sacks?

  the new Prime Minister of the UK, said that Ukraine can depend on UK for support in the long term. Olaf Scholz said that Germany will support Ukraine as long as it takes. Macron, you know, from France said that NATO will stand together and prevent Russia from winning the war. So, you know, leader after leader is doing the opposite of what you and Chamath have just said, which is try to figure out a compromise. In fact, in the last week or so, new information came out about actions Boris Johnson took back in March or April, when there were, remember when there was discussion about a peace deal about a month into the war? It turns out that Boris Johnson went to Ukraine and said, no deal, do not take the deal. We need to weaken Putin and Russia, not compromise with

• 27:59David Sacks?

  them. So the fact of the matter is that the European leaders are increasingly out of touch with their own people. The agenda they are serving is not the agenda of, or the desire of their people to basically stay warm in the winter or pay reasonable energy bills. They are serving this larger foreign policy agenda. This is why you're seeing people in the streets in Czechoslovakia and these other countries. And this is why the crisis will only grow in winter. I think you guys are just assuming there's going to be a compromise. I'm not sure that's true. These leaders are stubborn. So this is why, for example, we've already now seen in the UK Boris Johnson. Lost power, although Liz Truss basically has the same policy.

• 28:44David Sacks?

  Mario Draghi has basically lost in Italy. Bulgaria replaced their PM. So the leaders, the dominos are starting to fall in Europe, and I think there's going to be a lot more of this. And who knows what governments we're going to end up with in Europe in six months.

• 28:59Jason Calacanis?

  What's the endgame then? I mean, what do you predict will happen? You think they're going to hold their ground and not have a compromise?

• 29:04David Sacks?

  So Jamar pointed out the mistakes that these leaders made following Greta Thunberg. I think there's another mistake they've made, which is I think all of these leaders have pulled a Tony Blair. Do you remember Tony Blair? Tony Blair was the Bill Clinton of the UK. After Margaret Thatcher, he was the first Labour PM to get elected. He was incredibly talented as a politician, and he was very popular in the UK until he did one thing. You know what that one thing was? He went along with George W. Bush's Iraq war. The people of the UK did not want to get involved in that war. And Blair acted as W's lapdog and went along with it and bought into all of the lies about that war.

• 29:46David Sacks?

  And today he has zero credibility in the UK. It's really actually a sad story. I think that these European leaders are making a similar kind of mistake with respect to Biden's proxy war against Russia. Now, let's go back. I want to go back to a point you made, Jason, just to now let turn to Friedberg, which is you talked about the fig leaf, that the Russians are blaming this on a turbine. I don't think that's even really true anymore. I mean, the Russians have basically said-

• 30:12Jason Calacanis?

  Well, of course, Putin's lying, of course, yeah.

• 30:13David Sacks?

  Yeah, but I think the Russians have basically said that, that, listen, this is about your sanctions. It's about sanctions.

• 30:21Jason Calacanis?

  It's sanctions and a turbine. It's like, pick one.

• 30:23David Sacks?

  Right, but listen, but the point I'm trying to make it, look, obviously, this is retaliation by the Russians. The problem is the stupidity of Western leaders in not thinking there's going to be retaliation. I mean, all you're hearing right now from Western leaders is indignation that Russia would play the only card they have, the card that was obvious they were going to play. You know, meanwhile, look at what we've done.

• 30:49David Sacks?

  So you've got administration officials talking about the fact that we have commandos on the ground in Ukraine. You've got administration officials bragging about the fact that we are helping to paint targets on the backs of Russian generals so they can be killed. You have administration officials boasting about providing the artillery spotting so we could sink the Moskva, the Russian flagship. I'll provide receipts for all of these things, okay? You've got Biden saying that Putin cannot remain in power. You've got Lindsey Graham saying he needs to be assassinated.

• 31:18Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we know all this. What is the... Let's go forward. How does it resolve?

• 31:22David Sacks?

  You've got Lindsey Graham saying he needs to be assassinated like Caesar. You've got the US appropriating 40 billion...

• 31:26Jason Calacanis?

  Yes, we got two Hawkeyes.

• 31:27David Sacks?

  Hold on a second. In weapons to Ukraine. So my point is this, okay? The US and the Western Alliance, they are doing everything in Ukraine except pulling the triggers, okay? They are doing the artillery spotting.

• 31:40Jason Calacanis?

  We get this point.

• 31:41David Sacks?

  Okay, so the point is, we are in a proxy war with Russia. What did you expect was gonna happen? These leaders are not even playing checkers.

• 31:49Jason Calacanis?

  Going forward, what should happen? Going forward.

• 31:51David Sacks?

  Hold on a second.

• 31:52Jason Calacanis?

  You're in the Rivian.

• 31:53David Sacks?

  Forget about playing chess. They're not even playing checkers, meaning they cannot even anticipate what the Russians are gonna do next. It was imminently predictable, imminently predictable, that the Russians were gonna turn off European gas and create this crisis. So what should they have done? What they should have done was work out a peace deal.

• 32:10Jason Calacanis?

  I know that, but we're kind of repeating the same position you have every week here. I'm trying to get to going forward. So Friedberg, what should we do going forward here, both on an energy basis and a political basis? That's the thing. I get the sort of breakdown of what occurred here and your position, Sax, but what do you think, Friedberg, should happen going forward? How do we resolve this?

• 32:29David Friedberg?

  As I said, there's an acute energy shortfall. You can't just make that up. You can't convert oil into natural gas to heat people's homes. It's impossible structurally right now in the timeframe that it's needed.

• 32:39Jason Calacanis?

  So what should the US and what should the EU be doing now that they're not doing?

• 32:44David Friedberg?

  Yeah, I think that there's gonna be this inevitability that we're gonna need to broker a deal with Russia. And there's... And what I think you'll see over the next couple of months particularly, because winter is coming... Is you need to, uh, there's gonna be a lot of saving face. And so I think, I've always said from the beginning, I think that Putin's calculus is to go as far and as deep as he can go. So that he could eventually negotiate himself back out in a way that leaves him with what he originally wanted in the first place. And I think that there are certain strategic regions and certain strategic assets that it's pretty clear and evident he wanted.

• 33:25David Friedberg?

  And if he's gotten enough in addition to that, he can give up the additional part and he can get sanctions lifted and he can turn gas back on and be left with what he actually wanted and ultimately get out of this thing. And then the face saving will be, from the West will be, hey, we got him to give up this, we got him to give up this, we got him to agree to non-incursion. And there'll be some sort of, you know, hey, we got Putin knocked down a bit and, you know, we got him out of there. We did it, we won, high five. Meanwhile, Putin's smiling because he got exactly what he wanted. I think that's where this is all gonna end up over the next several months. I think that's, that's, if it doesn't, there's gonna be significant rioting and civil unrest in Europe and, um, and there will be a significant, significant economic effect.

• 34:10David Friedberg?

  Because so much of Germany and so much of the broader continent is dependent on a stable, low-cost energy or lower enough cost energy supply for the production of things that are produced in Europe. And if those things can't be produced profitably because the end market won't pay for it, the economy will be shattered. Economies will be shattered and people will be really unhappy. Food will climb and the currency will, will be destroyed. And you know what happens when currencies get destroyed? All imports become inflated in price. And then you have inflation. If there isn't a resolution in the next few weeks, there will be civil unrest. There will be a really cataclysmic concerning economic effect.

• 34:48Jason Calacanis?

  And you think that forces the governments to just fold to Putin and give him some portion of the Ukraine?

• 34:53David Friedberg?

  Yeah, and I think the thing that we don't know for sure is what are they gonna do from a face-saving move perspective? What are they gonna say they got from Putin?

• 34:59Jason Calacanis?

  Ukraine or the, the West alliance?

• 35:01David Friedberg?

  The West plus Ukraine. We are gonna have to plow so much money into the Ukraine. To make them feel okay about what we're going to ask them to do in order to remove or to end the crisis. And so there's going to be this huge check, this huge investment in Ukraine, the Western investment in Ukraine, the support mechanism for the country, for the people left behind, in order to get this thing resolved. And so my guess is huge amount of money from the West and EU going into Ukraine. Ukraine agrees to let Putin keep some regions, some assets. Putin agrees to remove himself from certain regions and give up certain assets. Sanctions are partially lifted, but they're partially lifted enough to get the flow of gas going and to get the economy turning again.

• 35:44Jason Calacanis?

  Chamath, any final thoughts here as we turn around third base here on this, lessons learned and how to avoid this in the future?

• 35:52Speaker 03

  You may, you may want to find the clip, Nick, from July where I said the tip of the spear in the fall was going to be the European energy crisis.

• 36:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oil is at 105 bucks a barrel. Russia is basically trying to break the bank of Europe by now messing with their nat gas supplies. The German energy minister yesterday said that if that happens, it could be a contagion equivalent to Lehman Brothers with respect to energy. You're already starting to see food riots, food insecurity, energy insecurity, rampant inflation, sovereign defaults. And you have to ask yourself, like, how are we going to really tourniquet this whole thing and prevent a much bigger contagion like Freebro just talked about? If Russia decides to play hardball against Europe or America,

• 36:43Chamath Palihapitiya?

  we better hope that it's a mild winter because very quickly you can go from plus 1 million barrels to minus 2 in a heartbeat.

• 36:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, my final thoughts are the following, which is that I think that the European system is going to be put under stress because there are really a bunch of different countries with very different incentives right now, where some countries are in desperate need of energy, some countries can probably stave it off for a little bit longer, other countries are so adamantly focused on their position on Russia over and above any source of energy that they may need or don't have. So I just think like this is a really good point to take a step back and realize that in all of these conflicts,

• 37:35Speaker 03

  Sadly, whenever you have like all of these very complicated countries fighting very complicated wars, it's really important to understand what these trade-offs are. Because ultimately, what we're learning in Europe is that irrespective of what you morally and ethically believe is right in the Ukraine, the minute that it affects you, and Jason, you've said this, what is it, like you're only one meal away from a revolution.

• 37:56Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, three meals away. Yeah. And I think it would be, you're only like five days away from having no heat before people riot on the street. It's probably the equivalent.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  But, but that, but that's the lesson, which is that at the end of the day, it is when you're in a position of comfort, you can focus on forward and out looking moral attributes and ethical perspectives that matter. But the minute that you are affected at home, where you cannot take care of your children or heat your house, all bets are off. And I think this just goes to show you that

• 38:34Speaker 03

  if you're going to sort of engage in proactive foreign policy, you need to make sure that domestically, you don't have any Achilles' heels. And Europe had a massive Achilles' heel, which is energy. And then, you know, the minute that they were forced.

• 38:48Jason Calacanis?

  Well, they've stress tested it now. They're gonna have to take this much more seriously going into next year because they've enabled a madman.

• 38:56David Sacks?

  That is the dominant narrative. There is a simplistic binary that has been set up that this is a war between autocracy and democracy. And that's all there is to it. And my point is that this conflict has always been more complicated than that. Okay. And if you really want to understand this conflict, you have to go back and understand the history of it. And, you know, the American media and the British media, they basically act as if this whole thing began on February 24th. For a good example of this, there was an excellent piece by William Perry, who was Bill Clinton's. Defense Secretary, okay? He said, "How the US lost Russia and how we can restore relations." And he talks about how we can chart a way forward for peace, which I think is your question.

• 39:41David Sacks?

  What Perry points out, remember, again, he was Clinton's Defense Secretary in the 1990s. He almost resigned in protest over NATO expansion eastward. This was basically a contradiction of the verbal assurances that James Baker and President George Herbert Walker Bush had given Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO one inch eastward. In any event, that's when NATO expansion began, was the late 90s. Perry was against it because, like George Kennan, like former Ambassador to the Soviet Union, James Matlock, he understood that it would be provocative. It would be seen as a provocative move by Russia. Okay, he was against that policy.

• 40:23David Sacks?

  The other thing he points out is that in the 1990s, the Russian economy collapsed because they moved off of Soviet system and we did absolutely nothing to help them. As a result of that, we bred the conditions for a strong man to emerge, who would basically prioritize the restoration of Russian pride, dignity, and strength. Okay, so he points out the ways that our policies helped create Putin. I think what he basically suggests in terms of the way forward is, "Look, we have to realize that the security architecture of Europe was crafted in the late 90s and early 2000s at a time when Russia was flat on its back."

• 41:07David Sacks?

  Okay, what are the Russians basically demanding? What were their demands prior to this war? There were two things they really didn't like, okay? Number one was they didn't want-

• 41:15Jason Calacanis?

  NATO at their doorstep, we've been on this, yeah.

• 41:16David Sacks?

  They didn't want Ukraine admitted to NATO. And then number two is they didn't want American missiles right on their border that could hit Moscow in five minutes. Okay, those were their two demands. The fact of the matter is, we never were willing to negotiate at all on those two demands, at all. And instead, we basically just claimed they were a pretext by the Russians for an invasion. Well, look- We never earned the right to call those a pretext. If you want to call them a pretext, you take those issues off the table. Then if the Russians invade, you know they're liars. The truth of matter is, we refuse to negotiate in any way.

• 41:54Jason Calacanis?

  We never played that move, and so we'll never know. I don't disagree with you about that point. Okay, the big lesson here is they need, the European Union needs to learn the lesson of energy independence and not spending more money.

• 42:06David Sacks?

  Hold on, I want to keep going with this because I think this issue is so much deeper. Okay, listen, one of the problems we have in this country is that when a war doesn't work out, we just ghost it. We never talk about Afghanistan anymore. We never talk about Iraq anymore. We understand they were gigantic mistakes, but who is analyzing why they happened? Who's responsible for the failure? The fact of the matter is, there's been no accountability. The same people who drove our disastrous foreign policy in the Middle East are the same people who have driven our Ukraine policy in Eastern Europe. There is no accountability.

• 42:40Jason Calacanis?

  The industrial military concept?

• 42:41David Sacks?

  Not just that, it's the foreign policy elite in this country, okay?

• 42:44Jason Calacanis?

  I don't disagree with you that they're talks.

• 42:47David Sacks?

  Yeah, okay, so my point is this. It sounds to me like you're willing to now say, what compromise can we find to get out of this war, okay?

• 42:54Jason Calacanis?

  Well, I've been that way since, I've been trying to avoid war from the beginning. I do think we did not play the piece of, hey, if NATO is not here, if we don't let them in NATO, and we take that off the table, will you move these troops back from the border? And we don't know if they ever offered that or not, but that's the thing.

• 43:10David Sacks?

  No, we do now. Actually, there was new information that came out of the last couple of weeks, okay?

• 43:14Jason Calacanis?

  Obviously, they should have offered that. I mean, the real issue here is dependency on dictators for energy. Because if he did not have the ability to yank that gas chain, if he didn't have that Nord, he would be neutered right now.

• 43:27David Sacks?

  Okay, but we knew that. We knew that. So if you're playing... You're not even saying it accurately.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  If he didn't have nukes, that doesn't exist without an entire other counterparty agreeing to it.

• 43:38Jason Calacanis?

  I agree. If Germany had kept their nukes going and if they had made other plans, perhaps with the Middle East.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Okay, but be intelligent.

• 43:46Jason Calacanis?

  Or the United States. I mean, we have infrastructure.

• 43:49David Sacks?

  And don't forget Biden canceled our energy independence the first day he was in office.

• 43:53David Friedberg?

  It doesn't matter that it's a dictator on the other side. There is a dependency on the other side, and that is an issue.

• 43:59Jason Calacanis?

  I've been for energy independence since the beginning. I've been talking about nuclear since the beginning. For decades, I've been talking about it.

• 44:04David Friedberg?

  But J. K. One of the challenges is if everyone creates independency on all of their supply, then there is no export market for countries that benefit from exports because they have a surplus. And so we see this around the world with food, with energy, with manufacturing.

• 44:19Jason Calacanis?

  Would that be a bad thing with oil? That'd be a good thing with oil, wouldn't it?

• 44:22David Friedberg?

  China manufacturing.

• 44:23Jason Calacanis?

  There was no market for it.

• 44:24David Friedberg?

  If there was no market for oil, then a lot of countries that are... A lot of countries that do not have energy stocks locally would not be able to acquire energy stocks. And so a more free, more global market.

• 44:37Jason Calacanis?

  If you're saying if we lowered our use of oil, that would make it cheaper, which means that developing countries would pay less.

• 44:44David Friedberg?

  J. K., just let me finish my point for one second. In every country, you are either an importer or an exporter. You're an importer of manufactured goods or an exporter of manufactured goods. You're an importer of energy, you're an exporter of energy, an importer of food, an exporter of food. It doesn't matter, and we often use this as a way to characterize the leadership of these countries as being bad when we end up in conflict with them. It doesn't matter that this person is, that there's an autocracy on the other side, or if there's a democracy on the other side. At the end of the day, if there's a global trade agreement, if there's a supply agreement, and that supply agreement gets broken, it's both parties' fault for being dependent on the supply agreement and then allowing conflict to ensue.

• 45:25Jason Calacanis?

  I don't think what you're saying is accurate, and I'll explain why. Reasonable parties who are democracies, if they get into a trade dispute, generally do not invade each other's country. So that's where your argument breaks down. It would be absolutely fantastic if the lesson the European Union learned here was, let's not be dependent

• 45:43David Friedberg?

  What did the United States do to Afghanistan?

• 45:44Jason Calacanis?

  Hold on, hold on.

• 45:45David Friedberg?

  What did the United States do to Iraq?

• 45:47Jason Calacanis?

  Okay.

• 45:48David Friedberg?

  Did we not invade those countries?

• 45:49Jason Calacanis?

  I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the dependency.

• 45:51David Friedberg?

  No, that is what you just said. You said that democracies do not invade. And Libya.

• 45:55Jason Calacanis?

  I said two democracies, two democracies, two democracies that are in a trade war are generally not going to invade each other. We invaded Afghanistan because of 9/11. Okay, and the first Iraq war, we invaded, we protected Kuwait, right? And so, you know, I'm not here to justify every war the United States has been in. I'm just talking about in this situation, the EU lowering their dependency. And if you were going to lower your dependency on any country, you'd start with the autocratic ones, you'd start with the dictatorships. Is that not logical to you, Friedberg?

• 46:24David Sacks?

  There is a neoliberal view, hold on a second, there was a neoliberal view, I'd say core neoliberalism, it's called economic interdependence theory, which is that as nations become more interdependent with each other, they're less likely to go to war.

• 46:36Jason Calacanis?

  China was the perfect example, right?

• 46:38David Sacks?

  China was the perfect example. There was also a belief that as China became richer, they'd become more democratic. That hasn't worked out so well.

• 46:43Jason Calacanis?

  No.

• 46:43David Sacks?

  I'd say economic interdependence theory hasn't worked out so well either. So, this is a core failing. Now, you're modifying the theory to say, well, only economic interdependence among democracies, fine. But that was not the view. That was not the view for the last 20 years. It was a core ten of neoliberalism.

• 46:57Jason Calacanis?

  We don't know if we've avoided war with China because of the dependency.

• 47:00David Sacks?

  If we make ourselves dependent on these other countries, then somehow it's going to lead to peace. No, it actually has just led to dependency. It was a foolish policy. We should have been energy independent. Europe should have been energy independent.

• 47:13Jason Calacanis?

  So you're agreeing with me?

• 47:14David Sacks?

  I do agree that it was foolish for them.

• 47:16Jason Calacanis?

  We're in agreement. Yes, you're disagreeing with Friedberg. Got it, okay.

• 47:18David Sacks?

  No, no, I'm not disagreeing with Friedberg. I think, but, but.

• 47:20David Friedberg?

  By the way, I'm not, I'm not a proponent of people not being energy independent. The reason I think people can be energy independent today is because of technology like nuclear. And I think that all these, every country in the world should find a way to get energy independent. I'm also an advocate of global trade. I am an advocate because I think that global trade enables economic progress. It allows the consumer to get the cheapest product possible and for the producer to find a market for the products that they make. And that, there's an element of this which is energy. But energy doesn't need to be a traded market as much anymore because of technology. Manufactured goods, food, we still haven't cracked the nut.

• 47:56Jason Calacanis?

  We are then in agreement, Friedberg.

• 47:59David Sacks?

  Yeah, I mean, this is sort of an ancillary point, but I just want to say that historically, there's been no basis for believing in economic interdependence theory. If you go back to World War I, Germany and the UK were each other's largest trading partners before World War I, didn't stop them from getting into war. World War II, I think Russia's biggest trading partner was Germany up until the moment when Hitler invaded them. So, listen, economic interdependence has never, has never.

• 48:23Jason Calacanis?

  Madman theory, right?

• 48:24David Sacks?

  Yeah, but the point is, there's very little historical basis for believing that economic interdependence prevents wars. Which, by the way, that really speaks to the foolishness of our China policy. But, look, this is sort of a side issue.

• 48:36Jason Calacanis?

  Can I ask you a question, Sax, though, with the China policy? Because I think this is a very important discussion we've discovered, which is, energy independence is one thing, and then you have trade, which is another. And does this actually push off wars? Do we actually know that we might have actually pushed off a war with China because we make iPhones together? Could we have been in a conflict earlier if we weren't so independent? And have we actually pushed out a potential conflict with Taiwan, et cetera, Hong Kong, because of the interdependence?

• 49:04David Sacks?

  With the benefit of hindsight, what we can see, with the benefit of hindsight, what we can see is that our Chinese policy of interdependency, really, was called constructive engagement, was a complete and unmitigated disaster.

• 49:17Jason Calacanis?

  It was.

• 49:18David Sacks?

  Why? It was because we made China rich. You go back to the beginning of Deng Xiaoping beginning his economic reforms. The average Chinese made $2 a day. Now their economy is roughly the same size as ours. And how are they using their newfound economic wealth to build up their military, their navy? They're basically militarizing the South China Sea. They're basically being aggressive towards their neighbors. We fed that Chinese tiger until it became a dragon that was capable of challenging us for global preeminence. That was a foolish, foolish strategy. The fact of the matter is that, and listen, this is a mistake that economists make.

• 49:58David Sacks?

  That they only look at whether trade creates surplus as opposed to the distribution of those benefits. And the fact of the matter is that China benefited disproportionately, far more than we did from the China trade over the last.

• 50:12Jason Calacanis?

  Our argument we've made on this podcast is, I think Friedberg made it, is that we lifted 500 million people. I think I made it as well, out of abject poverty in China. But as your point, what, yeah, it's, it's going towards.

• 50:23David Sacks?

  We have created, we have created the return of a, we've created the return of, of great power rivalry. We have created a competitor to the US who has roughly almost our same size economy. And that is going to challenge us for primacy in, in.

• 50:40Jason Calacanis?

  We need diplomacy. We need very sophisticated diplomacy because this situation with China, it's, it's not a clear path.

• 50:46David Sacks?

  Well, why, why, why, why is it that you think that we need diplomacy with China when we didn't need it with Russia?

• 50:52Jason Calacanis?

  No, I, I do think we did. I, I fully conceded that we should have avoided, we should have taken it off the table. I said that from day one.

• 50:58David Sacks?

  Listen, it's, it's really important to not just say that, oh, we failed to play chess here, that this policy isn't working. Like, let's not forget how we got into this conflict. We got into this conflict because the administration said, I think there were four main pillars to our current Ukraine strategy. Number one, that Ukraine could basically defeat Russia if we basically just gave them weapons. That has not happened yet. Number two, the administration said that sanctions would weaken Russia, maybe even destabilize its leadership and collapse this economy. That has not happened. The ruble's at an all time high. And because gas prices have gone up so much, their economy has suffered, but on the whole, it's still doing pretty well.

• 51:41David Sacks?

  The third contention that was made by advocates of this proxy war is that the sanctions would hurt Russia more than Europe. That has not happened. Europe is already hurting more than Russia, and it's about with winter coming, it's going to hurt even more. And then the last thing, the last contention that was made, our support for Ukraine would rally the world around us and would strengthen the Western alliance. And I think what we're starting to see is that the Western alliance is fracturing. And you see these gigantic protests in Prague and these other countries. So, listen, these were the pillars of our.

• 52:18David Sacks?

  Ukraine policy and they have all turned out to be flawed and wrong and they're becoming more wrong by the day and yet there is no reappraisal of our policy that's coming out of Washington or London or Paris. None of these leaders are saying that there's a problem. So I think we're headed for not just an economic crisis but a political crisis in Europe because the fundamental tension between the needs of these people, which is to basically preserve their economy and to stay warm in their homes and the ideology of their leaders who are fanatically committed to waging a proxy war against Russia instead of finding a diplomatic outcome that was available last year, it was available in January, it was even available in March or April. That disconnect is the fundamental problem.

• 53:03David Friedberg?

  All right, let's go. Come on, let's talk about Kim K. Come on.

• 53:06Jason Calacanis?

  There is no word on how much money she's raised for her private equity from Russian oligarchs, but Kim will serve as co-founder and co-managing partner. The firm was co-founded with 16-year Carlyle veteran Jay Salmons, who run day-to-day ops. And people may not know this, but Kim founded Skims, that's her undergarment company in 2019. It was last valued at $3.2 billion. She is obviously got the largest following and is the biggest influencer in the world, 329 million followers on Instagram alone. Our friend Gavin Baker responded with a tweet-

• 53:40Speaker 03

  Mr. Beast actually, Mr. Beast actually just passed.

• 53:43Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, so those are two examples of people who can put a consumer packaged good in the world and make it number one instantly. Gavin Baker, a friend of ours, tweeted that she adds massive value in this exact regard. What do you think, boys? Is she gonna have a-

• 54:00David Friedberg?

  Here's why I think, here's why I think this is so important.

• 54:02Jason Calacanis?

  Go.

• 54:03David Friedberg?

  I have a really strong belief that in the next 30 years or so, all traditional brands are gonna die. And I think that what we're seeing happening right now with the with the power of democratized media, like us creating a podcast, there are hundreds and now thousands of individuals who have stood up and created their own brand and their own presence because of the content that they create on Twitch, on Twitter, on YouTube, etc., on podcasting. And as a result, they become the trusted sources of influence, and it's why they're called influencers. And ultimately, these influencers are becoming the brands. They can, like Mr. Beast, launched a chocolate bar, became like the number one chocolate bar in the country. He just opened

• 54:48David Friedberg?

  up a burger restaurant last week. 10,000 people showed up. Number one, no, more than that, like 100,000 or something. It was insane. It was like the number one burger restaurant opening, or number one restaurant opening in history. Kylie Jenner launches a makeup brand, takes off, becomes this billion-dollar brand. Kim Kardashian launches a clothing brand, becomes a $3 billion brand. These are not just brands, they're businesses. And here's what I think is the most prescient M&A transaction of 2022, and you guys can tell me I'm crazy. I think the most important M&A deal of 2022 was when Penn Gaming bought Barstool Sports, because it shows that every consumer packaged good or every consumer services business ultimately needs to be a content business.

• 55:31David Friedberg?

  And if you don't naturally have content creation in your blood, you have to go and buy a content business, or you are going to die. And that's why I think all traditional brands that aren't oriented and built around content creation as their primary differentiating foundation will not survive and will not be able to compete effectively. And instead, what we're going to see is influencers and individuals that create content, build and distribute consumer goods and consumer services in a more efficient way, because guess what? They've got distribution built in. Distribution, of course. Distribution is the number one problem with all consumer services and all consumer goods. So I think in the future, all advertising, all advertising and marketing gets replaced

• 56:12David Friedberg?

  by content creation. And content creation direct to consumers through the social media platforms becomes the mechanism by which people are aware of and buy goods and services. So that's why I think this deal is so important, and I think it's another one of what we're seeing in 2022, which is the stacking away towards the end of nameless, faceless brands and the evolution of the influencer.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  I think Kim Kardashian is incredible. She is an incredible businesswoman.

• 56:38Speaker 03

  And the fact that she can stand up, what will probably be like a multi-billion dollar private equity fund. And frankly, the companies that she invests in has a really compelling chance of being successful because she can basically pour so much visibility and notoriety and awareness of a brand into that company that that cap table, if I was a director, I would say, of course, give her whatever she wants.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  So that's the first thing.

• 57:08Speaker 03

  And the second thing I would say is that I think what Friedberg says is completely right. I think we're at a point in time where the biggest thing that if you want to build a consumer business, my advice to you as an entrepreneur is you need to build direct distribution and scale. Because what that translates into, what Kim Kardashian proves, what Mr. Beast is proving is it's all about subsidized CAC. Where you don't customer acquisition, where you are not paying dollars to Facebook and Google. But instead, because you have direct distribution in a relationship with tens or hundreds of millions of users, you can pour them into different experiences. And when you can do that at basically virtually zero cost,

• 57:54Speaker 03

  your entire margin structure of how you build a consumer business has changed overnight. So that's what they've proven. They've proven that you need to first build a brand and then you can put, convert that brand into distribution funnel and then to basically pour all kinds of services into it. And one of the services, as it turns out, is now a private equity fund. So I think it's incredible and I hope she's super successful.

• 58:16Jason Calacanis?

  Sax, do you think this influencer

• 58:20Jason Calacanis?

  strategy is here for and going to have a major impact on the venture business?

• 58:25David Sacks?

  I think it's pretty interesting.

• 58:26Jason Calacanis?

  We're soaking it, but.

• 58:27David Sacks?

  I think it's pretty interesting in the consumer space for the reason Friedberg said, which is distribution is so hard. So creating a great product is hard, distribution is even harder. And this is a realization I had. Yeah, many years ago, and which is when I started doing Yammer and then, you know, Kraft started focusing on SaaS, which is at least when you do a B2B product, you know, software as a service, you can charge enough money for it that you can get a sales team to pencil. So in other words, you charge an enterprise enough money for the software that you can then pay a salesperson to go out and sell it. So there was always a distribution model built in for B2B. And that's why I've always liked that is there's a playbook there

• 59:10David Sacks?

  where if you just build a good enough piece of enterprise software, a good enough product, there's always going to be distribution for it. However, that's not true with consumer because consumer products are usually ad-based. You can't generally charge that much if you can charge it all. They have high churn rates. And so therefore, B2C only works if you can find a very low-cost, scalable distribution channel. And I think that's what, to Friedberg's point, I think that's what the Kardashians are offering. It's clearly worked for their own products. I guess we'll see how extensible it is. But this is really the key challenge with all consumer stuff is just how do you find a very cheap way of distributing it? In the past, the consumer products I've been involved in, like PayPal, or investing in

• 59:52David Sacks?

  social networks like Facebook, they were viral. Then they were exponentially viral. So they were able to basically grow virally for free. So you either have to have, you know, extraordinary virality to the product, or some other distribution trick that allows you to scale at low cost because you can't afford a sales team.

• 1:00:10David Friedberg?

  And what we're seeing is the base of doing that is to create content. Mr. Beast created content for years before he built a big enough audience to do that. Kim Kardashian did content for years before she had a distribution to do that. Dave Portnoy and Barstool Sports. I mean, the guy, Dave Portnoy, and this is incredible. Jason Calacanis, yeah, seriously. I mean, Portnoy was out rating pizza. And you know, now he has all these other kind of, you know, media and content kind of branches of his platform, but it's all content creation. And on top of that content.

• 1:00:42Jason Calacanis?

  Not everybody's good at it, Friedberg. That's the other problem.

• 1:00:45David Friedberg?

  I get it, but that's not what I'm saying. And that's my point. So let's say Coca-Cola tried to build a content business today. How good would they be? Not very good. That's why they're gonna end up dying. Or they're gonna end up needing to buy.

• 1:00:55Jason Calacanis?

  That's a really interesting concept. I mean, do you think Mr. Beast Burger could beat McDonald's?

• 1:01:01David Friedberg?

  Yes, and that's what I'm saying. That's my point. That's why I opened up by saying.

• 1:01:03Jason Calacanis?

  That's kind of insane when you think about it. If Mr. Beast had 5,000 franchisees.

• 1:01:07David Friedberg?

  Yeah, but this is exactly my point that I said at the beginning. Every traditional brand will get destroyed in 30 years. And they will get destroyed by the influencers that have built an audience through content creation. And now creating businesses on top of that that compete with the traditional incumbents. Not technology advantaged businesses. I'm talking about core consumer goods and services.

• 1:01:27Jason Calacanis?

  They also have to be good though.

• 1:01:28David Friedberg?

  Penn Gaming, Penn Gaming does betting. You know, there's no real advantage in betting. You build a sportsbook, that's it. The reason Penn Gaming bought Barstool is they now have an audience that they can drive to their sportsbooks. Right? And so the same will happen with Mr. Beast Burger.

• 1:01:41Jason Calacanis?

  You still have to make a great product, though. I mean, that's the other challenge here is can you also be a product savant? Can you be a virtuoso in building a product in addition to being an influencer?

• 1:01:51David Friedberg?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:51Jason Calacanis?

  I think that's what Kim gets right. She makes great product. And Mr. Beast, his first burger was not good, but now this new burger, from what I understand, is awesome. So you have to have both things switched on, I believe.

• 1:02:02David Friedberg?

  Think about, think about what's easier and what's harder. What's easier? Building an audience of 2 billion or a billion people that listen or watch you every week? Or building a great burger? It's a lot harder to build the audience.

• 1:02:13Jason Calacanis?

  Depends on the product. If it's a car, it's really hard.

• 1:02:17David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's not, I'm not talking about complicated cars and stuff or electronics. I'm talking about basic consumer goods, cereal, beverages, food.

• 1:02:25Jason Calacanis?

  Sure, why not?

• 1:02:25David Friedberg?

  Um, you know, music, audio, like, like all this stuff that's commodity, you know, betting. I mean, this is not like.

• 1:02:31Jason Calacanis?

  Chocolate bar, yeah.

• 1:02:32David Friedberg?

  Betting is not a differentiated service offering to consumers. So ultimately, how do you differentiate? It's the, it's the audience. That you've now built the brand that you've built through the audience because of content creation. And so this is why I just want to point out distributed content creation, I think, represents one of the most profound investing opportunities over the next decade. Because if you can give individuals the ability to make high quality content, they can scale an audience that that that now can be monetized in a thousand ways. Not just putting frigging ad spots on YouTube, but there's a thousand products you as an as an influencer can build on top of your audience or sell to your audience. Boom, it really changes the whole landscape for CPG and services.

• 1:03:11Jason Calacanis?

  Um, not to bring everything back to Mr. Beast, but a large number of his videos, he told us, um, he lost money on. So the videos at some point started losing him money. And it was an investment in that brand and you know, it's it's clearly going to pay off now. I I saw Alexis Ohanian from, um, uh, you know, Reddit fame and

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  Seven, seven, six.

• 1:03:33Jason Calacanis?

  Seven, seven, six, the fund. He went to go see the burger place and he's like, what? Like there were at that point in time, 10,000 people online. Mr. Beast had to tell people, please do not show up, which of course and 20,000 people show up. Anybody have plugs or anything that they want to get off their chest? Sacks, anything else?

• 1:03:50Speaker 03

  I do, I do.

• 1:03:51Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, we got a plug.

• 1:03:52Speaker 03

  I do.

• 1:03:54Speaker 03

  There is a an epidemic right now of the over prescription of amphetamines to children who are diagnosed with ADHD.

• 1:04:04Jason Calacanis?

  It's terrible.

• 1:04:05Speaker 03

  Um, it is an enormously important issue that doesn't just touch kids anymore, but now also touches adults. You've seen

• 1:04:17Speaker 03

  a lot of really kind of bad companies that are over prescribing this stuff, get shut down and get sanctioned. Um, so I just wanted to let anybody who's listening know.

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  And this is me talking my book, so take this with a grain of salt, but there's a company that I'm involved in that has a video game that has been approved by the FDA.

• 1:04:40Speaker 03

  To be a useful treatment for kids who have been diagnosed with ADHD. So if you have an eight to 11 year old, you can go and talk to your pediatrician to find out about this solution. It's called Achili and it will allow you to prescribe to them a video game that they play 30 minutes a day.

• 1:04:59Jason Calacanis?

  I just want to make sure people hear the name. It's Achili, A K I L I. So if you do a Google search for Achili, A K I L I, interact, you'll find it.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  Go talk to your pediatrician. If you are a parent of a child that's dealing with this, go and read the label, have the doctor decide. Okay. So I'm not telling you to go do this, but I'm asking you to prescribe to you.

• 1:05:19Jason Calacanis?

  Just look into it.

• 1:05:20Speaker 03

  But the idea is that there are drugs that affect your brain. And now we are increasingly able to design software that exquisitely targets certain aspects of your brain and are able to train them. And this is really the first example of such a thing that the FDA, who has reviewed all kinds of clinical data, has decided to approve. And so it's launching in the next few weeks. We've already written prescriptions to kids in every single state of the United States. And so to the extent that you're deciding what to do, or you have a child, or you have somebody in your family that is of age, eight to 11 years old, that's dealing

• 1:06:04Speaker 03

  with this, I would just encourage you to learn about it. That is a plug and you know, all the disclaimer.

• 1:06:08Jason Calacanis?

  I know. It's a great plug. I think we should at the end, just talk about some of the things we're working on. And this is an incredible one. The number of kids on these, you know, ADHD drugs, attention drugs, depression drugs, anxiety drugs.

• 1:06:20Speaker 03

  Millions.

• 1:06:20Jason Calacanis?

  It is out of control. There is, and I, listen, I don't want to tell parents, as a parent, but I will say, this is becoming a dependency. And the number of drugs, I don't know if you saw that New York Times story where they put this one girl on 10 drugs. They're prescribing multiple drugs and we don't know exactly what the long-term effects of children using these are. And there are other solutions. I'm not judging any parent. I'm not judging any teachers who's advising this, but this country and a society needs to really look deeply at this issue and say, should children? We didn't go on these drugs when we were kids, they didn't exist. And they haven't existed for all of humanity. And we need to think, what kind of experiment are we running on 10, 20, 30% of kids in some schools?

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  You're stating something so incredibly important. You know, when you have kids that are preteens and teenagers, their physiology is changing dramatically. And all of a sudden, when you introduce a secondary chemical compound into all of that, you're exactly right. We don't really know what the outcomes are. And right now, I think a lot of people are worried that the over prescription of drugs in this kind of condition is going to create a next version of an opiate pandemic or epidemic. And I think like, that's the thing.

• 1:07:31Jason Calacanis?

  That's exactly the analogy, Shama. Right now, this statistic is crazy. This is in the New York Times. Express Scripts, a mail order pharmacy, recently reported that prescriptions of antidepressants for teenagers rose 38% from 2015 to 29. We are prescribing these at an alarming rate. I have many parents in my circle who have kids who had what I would consider modest behavioral issues or modest attention issues. And they talked to me about this. And they felt in multiple cases like they were being bullied or pressured by teachers to put their kids on behavioral drugs because their kids were behaving 10% as badly as I did in middle school or high school. This is being used, I believe, this is my personal belief.

• 1:08:16Jason Calacanis?

  I know there are some kids who need these drugs, or I assume that there are. But I think this is being used to keep kids in their seats and to make it easier for parents to have to deal with what are normally the hardships of teenager, you know, teenagers. And just be very careful, parents, about the extent to which, you know, you might be being pressured. Perhaps parents have told me they felt bullied into giving their kids these drugs. It really is infuriating to me. And I think it's really great that you make an investment. People should look into it. Exercise, talking to your kids, these things also work.

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  We had a guidance counselor. We had a guidance counselor at our school tell me that they thought that one of my children should just get put on these drugs. And I was like.

• 1:09:02Speaker 03

  It was the most random statement and all I could get from her was that she just didn't want to deal with the fact that every now and then this kid would just, you know, be exuberant.

• 1:09:14Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, I want to kill their spirit. I had the same conversation. I don't want to get into it too much, but you know, I think that these teachers now, and I'm not saying it's all teachers, they are like, it's just easier to manage kids who are on focused energy drugs. And then there are some parents who want their kids to do really good on standardized testing. I would have done better on standardized testing if I was on Adderall or whatever these intention drugs are. Everybody would score 10% better. But what does it do to the quality of your life long term? That's the question we need to ask about this stuff. And we don't have answers for it. I don't want to be Tom Cruise on this podcast, but there are other ways to keep, you know, kids healthy and to deal with these issues. And I think these things are, to say they're over prescribed is going to be a huge understatement.

• 1:09:58Jason Calacanis?

  We're going to look at this like the opioid crisis, I guarantee it. I think that's exactly, if you, you start dope sick, right? And people thought they were doing the right thing. Oh, these people have pain. This drug manages pain. And then they found out like, oh yeah, you know what? This drug also makes, could make you an addict and could ruin your life. Great job on that investment and I, and I hope it works.

• 1:10:18Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:10:19Jason Calacanis?

  Sacks, anything else, any companies in your portfolio you want to give a shout out to? We might as well get something out of this fucking pod since we're leaving seven million dollars on the fucking table and you guys won't even let me run all in Summit too, so I can get a half milli.

• 1:10:30David Sacks?

  I don't have anything to plug right now, but.

• 1:10:33Jason Calacanis?

  No company you invested in you need to plug for? How about you? Supergut, can we get some supergut.com in here? These bars taste great, Friedberg. I love the Supergut.

• 1:10:40David Friedberg?

  Thank you.

• 1:10:41Jason Calacanis?

  I literally just ordered another pack of them.

• 1:10:43David Friedberg?

  I'm glad, thank you.

• 1:10:45Jason Calacanis?

  They're delicious. Supergut, do you have supergut.com?

• 1:10:48David Friedberg?

  By the way, this is where I'm having, yeah, supergut.com, but I'm, this is actually one of my D to C companies where I'm having a lot of these conversations about how do you actually avoid just buying ads on Facebook and Google? And how do you actually build an audience, right? How do you ultimately convert your customers by creating content? And so.

• 1:11:08Jason Calacanis?

  This was originally unique, right? And they changed the brand.

• 1:11:10David Friedberg?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Based on the science around. Around resistance starch and how it changes the gut biome. And so, but this is general, I'm on the board of a couple of D to C companies and it is universally the conversation right now because in the last year, the cost of D to C, direct to consumer marketing on Facebook and Google.

• 1:11:28Jason Calacanis?

  Oh, it's brutal.

• 1:11:29David Friedberg?

  Doubled, tripled, and a lot of the unit economics are falling apart on D to C businesses because of it. You know, costs a lot more to acquire the customer than you make from them. And so everyone's scrambling to figure out, okay, how do I acquire customers? And that's where this content creation strategy is becoming a critical linchpin for most consumer businesses now. It's a really important part of it.

• 1:11:47Jason Calacanis?

  I think a couple of us are investors in Eight Sleep and they were like, please let us advertise them all in. I was like, sorry, no ads, but I'll shout you out here. Eight Sleep, it's a great product.

• 1:11:55David Sacks?

  I have a plug, but I want to save it, so.

• 1:11:57Jason Calacanis?

  Fucking drop a plug for one.

• 1:11:59David Sacks?

  No, no, the product hasn't launched yet. Give me like a month.

• 1:12:03Jason Calacanis?

  All right.

• 1:12:03David Friedberg?

  There you go.

• 1:12:04Jason Calacanis?

  And if anybody wants to be a venture investor, [email protected] to come to one of my webinars and see my last fund.

• 1:12:11David Sacks?

  Since when we started allowing all of these plugs, I thought we had to do a bunch of deals.

• 1:12:15Jason Calacanis?

  It was a setup. I just wanted to do a roundup of plugs so I could get mine in. So I was being generous. Worked, plan worked. I got you on the hook for yours.

• 1:12:20David Friedberg?

  What was your, what was your plug? What were you doing, your, your venture fund?

• 1:12:24Jason Calacanis?

  I'm doing Watch Fund 4.

• 1:12:25David Sacks?

  Well, for plugging stuff, I'll plug, I'll plug the call in app.

• 1:12:29Jason Calacanis?

  [email protected] if you want to.

• 1:12:30David Friedberg?

  Calling up.

• 1:12:30Jason Calacanis?

  We're all in.

• 1:12:31David Friedberg?

  Everybody is calling up.

• 1:12:32Jason Calacanis?

  Let's, you know, we should do a call in. We should all do like an after hours where we take questions from the audience. That would be great.

• 1:12:39David Friedberg?

  I would do that.

• 1:12:39David Sacks?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Jason Calacanis?

  I would do that. Can I get a point? All right, let's go. Everybody, this has been all in episode 95.

• 1:12:44David Friedberg?

  Wait, wait, should we do that?

• 1:12:44Jason Calacanis?

  Create more.

• 1:12:45David Sacks?

  Hold on a second. Jake, that was, that, that was another deal you turned down, just like the Ukraine deal.

• 1:12:52David Sacks?

  This is a theme here is that you turn down deals you later regret and then nine months later you admit I was right. Nine months later, you admit I was right. You should have taken the deal.

• 1:13:00Jason Calacanis?

  I should have taken the call in deal.

• 1:13:01David Friedberg?

  Look how hard Chamath is crashing right now. Look at him.

• 1:13:03Jason Calacanis?

  Look at him. What time is it there?

• 1:13:06David Friedberg?

  It's like eleven thirty, right? Midnight?

• 1:13:08Speaker 03

  It's eleven thirty. It's eleven thirty.

• 1:13:11Jason Calacanis?

  That's okay.

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  I'm losing my voice. I lost my voice. I lost my voice this morning.

• 1:13:16David Friedberg?

  Send us an invite for AMA for the four of us on Call It.

• 1:13:20Jason Calacanis?

  Call it. Here we go, everybody. Download Call It.

• 1:13:22David Sacks?

  Okay.

• 1:13:22Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, just remember all of you.

• 1:13:24David Sacks?

  Like after the episode drops, maybe?

• 1:13:25David Friedberg?

  Yeah, live AMA.

• 1:13:27Jason Calacanis?

  Live AMA with the besties.

• 1:13:28David Friedberg?

  I'm gonna show a call. Jake, how you show up or don't?

• 1:13:30Jason Calacanis?

  I'll show up. Maybe I'll show up for Sacks.

• 1:13:32Speaker 03

  I'll show up. Jake, yeah, I'll show up. I'd be happy to do it. I'm back in the United States tomorrow.

• 1:13:38Jason Calacanis?

  All right, well, then we'll play poker in fourteen hours. Two hours after you get here, you're gonna ask for me to come play poker.

• 1:13:45David Friedberg?

  We'll meet you at the airport. We'll pick you up from the airport.

• 1:13:46Jason Calacanis?

  We'll pick up at the airport. We'll play Chinese poker in the back of the car. All right, everybody. It's been episode ninety-five. Better than we thought it would be.

• 1:13:52David Sacks?

  Suck a lozenge, Chamath. You need something.

• 1:13:54Jason Calacanis?

  A little honey tea.

• 1:13:55Speaker 03

  I need a lozenge. I have some tea over there.

• 1:13:58Jason Calacanis?

  Good, I get a little honey.

• 1:13:58Speaker 03

  I love you guys.

• 1:13:59Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, besties. See you soon.

• 1:14:05David Sacks?

  Rain Man David Sacks.

• 1:14:09David Sacks?

  And instead, we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

• 1:14:13Jason Calacanis?

  Love you, besties.

• 1:14:14David Sacks?

  Queen of Kinoa.

• 1:14:22David Sacks?

  Besties are gone.

• 1:14:25David Sacks?

  That's my dog taking a notice in your driveway, Sacks.

• 1:14:30Speaker 03

  Oh, man.

• 1:14:33Chamath Palihapitiya?

  We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy, because they're all just... It's like this sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

• 1:14:41David Sacks?

  What? You're the bee? What? You're a bee? Bee? What? We need to get merch. Besties are back.