You Can Know Everything (About the Economy) with Kyla Scanlon

The way Americans talk about money is changing. Economic commentator Kyla Scanlon has emerged as a fresh, influential voice in that conversation. Recently named one of TIME’s 100 Creators, her New York Times bestseller, In This Economy? How Money & Markets Really Work https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737854/in-this-economy-by-kyla-scanlon/, has been hailed as “essential reading” by Jon Stewart. She joins us this week to offer her “boots-on-the-ground” understanding of the economy, ahead of the midterms. We discuss the top-line concerns she’s hearing from young Americans (2:20), the affordability crisis (4:02), why a booming stock market doesn’t reflect the broader economy (6:04), President Trump’s closing message to voters ahead of Tuesday (9:34), a stagnant labor market where companies are reluctant to hire or fire (15:03), and why traditional career advice no longer applies to today’s workplace—a subject she explores on her new Vox podcast Best of Luck https://pod.link/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vVk1QNjU2MzEwODY5Nw (16:35). On the back-half, Scanlon reflects on her imaginative childhood in Kentucky (25:30), what she learned from working at a Hyundai dealership (32:29), and the leap of faith that brought her to Los Angeles (35:50). To close, she explains how she found her audience explaining economics on social media during the pandemic (37:35), Gen Z’s changing relationship to work (41:07), the rise of speculative investing (43:43), the economic implications of AI (53:15), and the ‘duty’ we have to hold onto to optimism (1:07:06). Subscribe to our⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube channel⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/@talkeasypod. As always, our email: [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Sam Fragoso?

  Are you reading my notes? Is that what's going on here? You've been reading them the whole time?

• 0:03Speaker 01

  I'm reading them upside down, yeah.

• 0:04Sam Fragoso?

  Why are you doing this?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Sorry, because I'm curious.

• 0:07Sam Fragoso?

  Don't be reading my notes. Guys, I need font size. How's your vision?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Really good, yeah.

• 0:14Sam Fragoso?

  Size two. I won't be able to see it, but then neither of us will.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've got to have like a screen protector. Do you have one on your phone?

• 0:21Sam Fragoso?

  You know what I need? I need a Kyler protector.

• 0:25Sam Fragoso?

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Stephen Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 0:42Sam Fragoso?

  Somewhere between Wall Street and TikTok, economic commentator Kyla Scanlon has found a new way to explain the American economy. Through her popular Substack and social pages, she's become both a repository and waystation for young Americans across the country grappling with work, housing, and the rising cost of living. It's what Kyla calls a more boots-on-the-ground understanding of the economy. In 2024, she published her debut book, In This Economy: How Money and Markets Really Work. She's since joined CNN as an economic analyst and was recently recognized in the Time 100 Creators List. Her latest project is a new podcast with Vox called Best of Luck, where she sits with people who have built careers out of detours, rejections, and second choices with the aim of better understanding the economy

• 1:27Sam Fragoso?

  we're actually living and working in, which is a little bit of what I wanted to do today, especially ahead of the midterms this coming week, where affordability has been said to be the most pressing issue for voters as they head to the ballot box. But I also wanted to talk to Kyla about her trajectory as a proud member of Gen Z and how her path, undoubtedly shaped by the pandemic, may be instructive for future generations trying to find their way in these uncertain times. Does she see AI as an existential threat? Has Gen Z given up on the American dream? Are we heading toward economic collapse, the kind Michael Lewis described on the show a couple of weeks back? And what exactly can we do about any of this anyway? That's all, coming up next with Kyla Scanlon.

• 2:14Sam Fragoso?

  Kyla Scanlon, thank you for being here.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me.

• 2:17Sam Fragoso?

  How are we doing?

• 2:18Speaker 01

  I'm good, I'm good. How are you?

• 2:19Sam Fragoso?

  I'm okay. I start every episode by asking the guest how they're doing. Maybe I should rephrase for you, which is, how are we doing?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  As a country?

• 2:30Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 2:31Speaker 01

  I think there's a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry.

• 2:35Sam Fragoso?

  And where are you seeing that pop up in your work at the moment?

• 2:38Speaker 01

  I mean, so I do social media videos across all the platforms. And so I get a lot of messages, I get a lot of DMs of people, you know, expressing how they're feeling about the economy and what they're struggling with. And so that's more anecdotal. And then you can look at the actual data, like sentiment data from the University of Michigan. So that measures how people feel about the economy, and they don't feel very good.

• 3:01Sam Fragoso?

  And have they not been feeling good for a while? And why is that?

• 3:04Speaker 01

  It's been about four years, yeah. And it's been a big question as to why that is. So sentiment and economic data have pretty much disconnected, right? So like, you would imagine that if the economy is doing well, that people would feel good about the economy, more or less. And the way that we measure the economy is stuff like gross domestic product, which is how we measure the total output of the economy. It's things like inflation, so how fast prices are going up, it's the labor market strength. And all those things, we're doing pretty okay for a while post-pandemic, but people felt terrible about their economic circumstances. And there's a ton of theories about why. Structural affordability is one, so high housing costs, high childcare costs, high eldercare costs. Price level variability

• 3:48Speaker 01

  is another one. So like, the price of milk is fluctuating a ton, the price of bread is fluctuating a ton. Of course, we're in the middle of somewhat of an energy crisis, so that certainly doesn't make people feel too good. So there's a ton of reasons as to why there is this disconnect, yeah.

• 4:03Sam Fragoso?

  We're taping this right before the midterms. According to a recent analysis from the Washington Post, six in 10 families can't afford the base of cost of living in battleground districts that will determine which party controls the House, with apparently 19 of the 21 possible districts in Florida, Texas, Ohio, having become less affordable since Donald Trump was reelected in 2024. Are those numbers reflective of the conversations you've been having with people across the country, to the people writing in your DMs asking for data analysis?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  It's the thing that everybody's worried about. It's like, okay, I can't afford food, I can't afford my rent, like, what am I supposed to do? Like, why is this happening to me? Like, what did I do wrong? And so I think there's just a lot of frustration with people feeling like they should be further ahead in the economy than they are, and that their material circumstances aren't lining up to how hard that they work.

• 4:56Sam Fragoso?

  So what's the explanation you offer when they ask those questions?

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, it's been a big battle with inflation since the pandemic. Like, the pandemic caused a supply chain crisis that we never really recovered from. And then companies during the pandemic were able to take advantage of the uncertainty and raise prices on folks. And they've been able to, since also, pass through the cost of the tariffs. You know, they've been able to just kind of raise prices here and there, and people have had to bear the brunt of all of the things that are going on. And so prices are really high, and they've been high since the pandemic without much relief. The labor market has been really uncertain. That's compounded by AI and the whole technological change of it all. And then the economy is primarily growing because of AI. And so when

• 5:44Speaker 01

  you look around, like, the economic data is okay, but it's so concentrated in a couple of sectors and a couple of, you know, key industries. And then prices are skyrocketing. And so, like, of course, people feel terrible.

• 5:56Sam Fragoso?

  Well, the right makes the argument that median household income reached a record high last year. Stock market's doing well, poverty rate's low. Tell me about the gulf between the stock market and the economy.

• 6:09Speaker 01

  I mean, Kai Ristel, he's the best, and he's often the one to point out that the stock market is not the economy. So the stock market is usually a measure of the top 500 companies if we're looking at an index like the S&P 500. And that is primarily now driven by the AI companies. So Nvidia, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alphabet, Google's parent company. And so the stock market is a reflection of the AI buildout. The other 493 companies in the S&P 500 are having a really hard time, except for the AI companies. And so the stock market is not a reflection of the broad economy, because right now it is a reflection of AI. And then if it, you know, zooming out even more, it's mostly a reflection of how these companies are doing. And so it has an impact on the

• 6:54Speaker 01

  economy, but it's not the economy itself. It's a reflection of some parts of the economy.

• 6:59Sam Fragoso?

  The economist Joanne Chu, who runs the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index--

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:06Sam Fragoso?

  Bit of a mouthful, but nevertheless, often talks about how averages can obscure what's happening under the hood of the economy, so to speak. So can you talk about what's maybe getting missed, or what we're not including, or what's beyond the headlines?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, Joanne is wonderful, and she runs this sentiment survey out of the University of Michigan. Highly recommend people check it out. It's very informative.

• 7:31Sam Fragoso?

  God, you said that so much easier than I did.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I've said it so many times.

• 7:35Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, did you practice that in the mirror every morning?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do, yeah.

• 7:38Sam Fragoso?

  University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yeah. Just like, I have it on note cards, I review when I'm driving.

• 7:43Sam Fragoso?

  That's how you practice for your own show?

• 7:45Speaker 01

  That's true, yeah, you have to. Because I have trouble pronouncing words in general.

• 7:48Sam Fragoso?

  Do you?

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:49Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, me too.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, big time.

• 7:51Sam Fragoso?

  But I'm also imagining you preparing to do your TikToks in the mirror going, vibe session, vibe session, vibe session.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:00Sam Fragoso?

  Flag nation, wait, stagnation, shrug nation?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Shrugflation.

• 8:03Sam Fragoso?

  Shrugflation.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:05Sam Fragoso?

  Still don't know what that is.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, nah.

• 8:07Sam Fragoso?

  I'm trying to figure it out.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  It's all right. Yeah, I make up a lot of words.

• 8:11Sam Fragoso?

  The Yolo Folio?

• 8:12Speaker 01

  That was a fun one.

• 8:13Sam Fragoso?

  Unbelievable.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. Somebody left a comment on some podcast that I was on, and they're like, this lady seems like she has a short tongue.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  I was like, I've never heard that. Or an underbite.

• 8:26Sam Fragoso?

  So under the hood--

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:29Sam Fragoso?

  What would be found?

• 8:30Speaker 01

  So Joanne's really great, and she, yeah, she runs this survey out of Michigan, the University of Michigan. And she'll often talk about that sentiment is one person, one vote, but things like the stock market are $1, one vote. So like, it really can get confusing.

• 8:44Sam Fragoso?

  Can you explain that for me?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like, the stock market can be a reflection of, like, you know, just a few people with a lot of dollars being really stoked on what's going on. Whereas sentiment, you can see every single person responding to that survey, and it's not skewed by just a couple of people responding in a certain way. Like, it's one person responding, so they have one vote. Whereas the stock market, like, you can have a person who's really excited, they want to put $100,000 in the meta, or whatever it may be, and that's one person with a ton of money who's influencing the stock market. And so she'll often talk about that the way that we describe economic data, it's in terms of averages, it's in terms of medians. And so she makes the case that, yeah, like, average parts of the economy

• 9:29Speaker 01

  are doing fine, but like, if you look outside the averages, that's where you're going to see a lot of pain.

• 9:34Sam Fragoso?

  And yet, for all of us outside the average, looking at the midterms, we have been told by President Trump that if Republicans keep control of Congress, they will get $5,000.

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Right, I remember that.

• 9:49Sam Fragoso?

  The cost of which would total somewhere between $1.2 trillion and $1.35 trillion. He's been on the campaign trail, by the way, doubling down on that promise. And here is part of his closing message to voters out of Tuesday.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  You could even come to Mar-a-Lago. I said it the other night. You'll be my guest at Mar-a-Lago. The problem is that for $5,000, the most you'll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I don't, I'm not even sure you could buy that. No, don't go there. That's not a good place if you're price conscious.

• 10:31Sam Fragoso?

  You look like you just saw a ghost.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  I mean, that wasn't a good thing to hear.

• 10:38Speaker 01

  That's a weird thing. I mean, that's weird. It's weird that he jokes about it.

• 10:45Sam Fragoso?

  Jokes about what?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Jokes about affordability like that. You know, at the same time that so many families are really struggling, it's just, um, it's just not appropriate. Yeah.

• 10:56Sam Fragoso?

  Well, it's interesting because he's doubling down on the pledge to give $5,000 to each American if Republicans hold Congress, which in and of itself

• 11:06Sam Fragoso?

  has a whole bunch of legal ramifications.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 11:10Sam Fragoso?

  But like, I want to go back towards every part of the sentence, like, then if you receive the $5,000, you won't be able to do much with it, according to him, especially if you try to enter his domain in Mar-a-Lago, which is, quote, "not a good place" if you're price conscious.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:31Sam Fragoso?

  How do you square that away?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  I think it's a fact objectively that he's a bit out of touch. I mean, a bit is probably an understatement here. The entire government could do a lot more for affordability and for people's concerns than they are. Right? And like giving people a $5,000 check is a Band-Aid. And if it does even happen, and there's so many legal problems with it. Like, what we really need to do is fix the structural problems that people are having a hard time with, which is like, I can't get my kid into daycare. I can't take care of my aging parent. I can't afford to send my kid to college. I can't afford to buy a house in the neighborhood that I want to live in. I got fired and I don't know how to be retrained because my boss said I have to use AI and I don't want to use AI, right?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  And so like, we have all of these things that, you know, money itself can help with, but it's not like, sticking a check into everybody's hands is not going to fix the problems that people are really, really having a hard time with. But making policies hard, you know, doing the good thing is hard.

• 12:33Sam Fragoso?

  One of Trump's selling points is the no tax on tip policy.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 12:38Sam Fragoso?

  That came from the big, beautiful bill. And you've written a lot about how in the 1950s, over a fifth of federal revenue came from the corporate income tax. Quote, "But today, it's under 10th due to the tax cuts and loophole shenanigans." So the government used to collect more money from capital and instead collects it from paychecks. The tax code migrated in the same direction as everything else, toward favoring ownership over work.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:02Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me more about that.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  That idea is from Paul Krugman's newsletter, who's a great economist. And essentially, the idea is that the whole economy has been shifting away from favoring workers, which it did in the back half of, I guess, the 1900s, the 1950s to the early 2000s. And ever since, like, the 1980s or so, there's really been a lot of favorable treatment for corporations. You know, we can point to Reagan as kind of the driving force with that. And instead of workers kind of getting a leg up, it's increasingly, you know, corporations. And you can look at that as a share of gross domestic income too, which is another way that we measure the whole pie of the economy. You know, workers were getting almost 60% of the whole economy in the 1980s

• 13:49Speaker 01

  and now it's 51%. At the same time that corporate profit share of the whole economy has increased. So the theory there is that ownership matters increasingly more than labor income, which is just like a very different way of thinking about the economy than we're used to.

• 14:05Sam Fragoso?

  You also noted in that piece, "The US added 1,200 new millionaires a day through 2025, mostly due to stock market gains. Financial assets like stocks and bonds account for almost 80% of gross wealth in the US." Which is something I did not know. Can you explain how in recent history that's come to be?

• 14:26Speaker 01

  Stock market has been going up a lot. And so we have like these huge companies. The big AI companies have gained a lot of value over the past. They're now increasingly being punished by the market, but they've gained a lot of value over the past couple of years. You know, we had a big boom in the stock market in the 2010s and things have just been sort of gangbusters. And so a lot of people have allocated money towards the stock market. They've seen it grow and the way that you grow money really fast is by having a lot of money. And so we have people who are really benefiting from that. It's not, it's not a bad thing or anything, but yeah, it's just, um, it's noticeable.

• 15:03Sam Fragoso?

  When you spoke to the Chicago Fed president.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Austin Golesby.

• 15:06Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  He's great.

• 15:08Sam Fragoso?

  He talked about, in the data, it's still true that the hiring rate is as low as it normally is in a recession and the layoff rate is as low as it is normally in a boom. How have you made sense of that juxtaposition?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  So in that interview, he was like, "We don't totally know what's happening." And we can't just point to businesses being uncertain about higher healthcare costs or about tariffs or about whatever else is like a war, you know, going on in the economy. Like, there's just sort of this hesitation from businesses to hire and to maintain employees. And there's a bunch of different reasons for that, but it has created a pretty stagnant labor market. And then when you look at the data a bit deeper, one of the only sectors that has been hiring for most, um, for most quarters is the healthcare sector, for most months, is the healthcare sector.

• 16:01Sam Fragoso?

  And why is that?

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Because there's a lot of demand for healthcare jobs. We have an aging population. That is just where a ton of money is going, a ton of attention is going. And so that's been a pretty popular field for people to go into. But the labor market itself, it's not broad based. Like, not every industry is doing that well. It's primarily the healthcare sector and a couple of other industries. And so not only do we have a low hiring rate and a low firing rate, we also have a labor market that is pretty good in one spot, but pretty bad in a bunch of other industries.

• 16:35Sam Fragoso?

  On your new show, Best of Luck.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:38Sam Fragoso?

  You talk a lot about how

• 16:41Sam Fragoso?

  a lot of the career advice people get and give is for an economy that no longer exists.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:48Sam Fragoso?

  In this moment, what do you think is helpful advice for people in the job market? Either at a job they've been at for a while or looking to get a new job or not really sure what to do next in their career?

• 17:02Speaker 01

  What a lot of the guests have pointed out. We had the CEO for Teach for America on. And one thing that he pointed out that we have to start asking ourselves is like, it's not what job do I want to have? It's like, what problems do I want to solve? Because we have thought about jobs as this like singular one career path that you do for 40 years and you work for the same company forever and ever. But everything is so dynamic and different that you have to be able to ask yourself about the problems rather than the path.

• 17:28Sam Fragoso?

  It's not about the job you want to have.

• 17:30Speaker 01

  It's about the problems you want to solve.

• 17:32Sam Fragoso?

  And people listening going, "The problem I want to solve is going on more vacations."

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you've got to be like reasonable.

• 17:43Sam Fragoso?

  But you know what I mean? A lot of people listening are going, "I didn't get into jobs to solve a problem. I got into jobs."

• 17:50Speaker 01

  To make some money.

• 17:51Sam Fragoso?

  To have a job. You're suggesting a sort of moral bent.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Do you think it's moral to ask yourself about problems?

• 17:59Sam Fragoso?

  It's a loftier ask, certainly.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think a lot of people want to like have lofty goals with work. And if they don't, then there's like, you know, that's different. That's a different type of conversation. So for example, to use myself as an example, I was like, "I really want to do economics education." I was in a job that wasn't quite right for me. And I was like, "Well, what do I really care about? I care about economics education." I see this huge, you know, there's like, "How are we going to fix this? It's a big, big issue." And I knew that if I tried out a bunch of different tools, I'd be able to go and try to fix it. And one of those tools was social media and that tool works, you know? And so now I'm able to focus on economics education. But that was a problem that I wanted to solve. I didn't set out being like, "I want to make TikToks." Like, it was more like, "How do I fix economics education or help fix?"

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Like, a lot of core components of the economy that we knew it is changing. And it's always changing. The economy is always going to be evolving and being different. But like, we have to have career advice that keeps up with that, right? We have to make sure that we're setting people up who do want to go on a path that they're like, "Woohoo, you know, I'm excited about finding my purpose." If it's through work, right? You have to be able to set them up properly and give them good advice. And especially as the world shifts around all of us. And this impacts all age groups, you know? Like, it could be in a couple of years, like, two AIs of us sitting in a podcast studio with mics, right? Yeah, so you just have to think about it. And that's the goal of the show. It's like, what does the future of work look like?

• 19:27Sam Fragoso?

  I'm trying to imagine what two AI versions of us would look like.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  I literally, yeah, I got deep faked. There's a account on TikTok that has taken my image and it talks about Canada's economy. And it's like a total AI voice, but yeah, it's happening.

• 19:41Sam Fragoso?

  Is it accurate?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  It actually does pretty good analysis of Canada's economy. But it's really freaky. So, I mean.

• 19:50Sam Fragoso?

  Is it Kylo Ren?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And I don't know, that's again, more of an example about me, so it's not totally relevant. But there's just so much to think about. And I think a lot of the ways that we talk about work is stuck in an economy that doesn't exist anymore. And that applies to jobs too, right? So even if you don't wake up every morning and you're like, "Woohoo", you have to, it's, you don't have to do anything, but it's important to understand how the labor market is changing, what the labor market metrics are doing, so you can best prepare yourself.

• 20:21Sam Fragoso?

  To go back to something you said earlier, the daylight between sentiment and spending.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  That's a pretty way to describe it.

• 20:28Sam Fragoso?

  For decades, when people felt bad about the economy, they would historically spend less in it. But you've suggested that in the last two years, that link has faded a bit. And people, according to the numbers, are still spending a lot of money. What do you think that's about?

• 20:46Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, so people like Joey Anne will be like, "Well, what are they spending it on? Are they having to spend more on groceries because groceries are more expensive? Are they having to spend more on rent because rent is more expensive?" And I, this is something that comes up a lot, is people will be like, "Okay, you're saying people are feeling so bad about the economy, but they're still spending money, like, they can't be feeling that bad." And it's like, I didn't know that like spending money meant you would be happy. Also, like, I think when we think about sentiment, it is a reflection of current economic circumstances, but it's also a reflection of how people feel about their economic ladder. If they feel like they're going to be able to get the job or career that they want, if they feel like they're going to be able to get the house that they want, if they feel like they're going to be able to have kids and get married and retire safely, right?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  And so that's, I think, what is truly reflected in sentiment is there's this distrust in institutions and distrust in the American dream. And people are still going to be spending while all that is on their shoulders. Yeah.

• 21:40Sam Fragoso?

  But like, if the idea of homeownership feels like science fiction.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:45Sam Fragoso?

  If promotions and raises are stalling and Gen Z, I think wisely, has doubts about the prospect of climbing the corporate ladder. Why would they not spend what they have on something, anything, just to feel something, anything?

• 22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. There's a 2025 paper that I talk a lot about. It's called Giving Up. Have you heard of it?

• 22:07Sam Fragoso?

  I wrote it.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  You wrote it? And it ties perceived housing affordability, so people feeling like they're going to be able to afford a home to their risk-taking behavior. So perhaps they're more likely to gamble if they feel like they're not able to afford a home. They're more likely to buy what some might call little treats. So like whatever that might be, like Dubai chocolate, Lu Bu Bu lattes. I think none of this is like saying that people shouldn't do this. I think it's all very rational. And I think that it is a form of seeking control, right? Like if, if all this does feel so far away, like why wouldn't you go get yourself a nice little skincare product or a nice pen or whatever? Why wouldn't you like lean back at work and be like, I'm, this is going nowhere for me?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Why wouldn't you go to prediction markets and be like, let me try my hand at this? You know? It makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

• 22:57Sam Fragoso?

  I want to talk a lot about gambling and this generation that finds hope in prediction markets a little bit after the break.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 23:05Sam Fragoso?

  That's coming up next. I think one of the most frustrating things about paying off debt is how tedious it can be to see your progress. I've had periods where I was trying to chip away at a credit card balance, and even when I was paying it off consistently, it was hard to imagine when I'd finally be finished. That's something I appreciate about Monarch. Their debt paydown simulator takes your actual balances and payments and turns them into a visual timeline, showing when you could be debt-free. You can also experiment with different payment amounts and see how each one changes your payoff date. I like that it gives you something concrete to work toward. Instead of wondering how long it will take, you can actually see the finish line getting closer and closer.

• 23:48Sam Fragoso?

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• 24:32Sam Fragoso?

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• 25:13Sam Fragoso?

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• 25:57Sam Fragoso?

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• 26:38Sam Fragoso?

  Official rules available at shop.com. Coming back, we've talked about this kind of like anonymous, amorphous bunch of young people trying to find their way, but I want to talk about you and how you built this career of yours. You grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where you spent a lot of time in public libraries reading fiction because, quote, "I was trying to understand world-building," which sounds like, again, not to use this word, but fairly lofty for a young child.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Oh, of course.

• 27:18Sam Fragoso?

  Like, what do you think that was all about?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  I was very lonely. Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that was a big part of it, is like books were my, my friends and so, yeah, yeah, I just, I loved the library and I loved escaping. And so that, that was, and I loved being in a world that wasn't the world that I was in.

• 27:39Sam Fragoso?

  What world did you want to escape from?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, I think like, I just, I've never, you know, you do this to people, don't you? I mean, I think that it was just, and it was funny, like when I found economics and sort of let myself start making videos, I was like, okay, this is like who I am. But like, through all of my childhood, I was like trying to push down like kind of the nerdy, weird parts of myself. And so I just, I was very isolated. I had a couple of friends, but like, I got, you know, it's hard for me to make, make friends. And like, books were just my, my companion.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  And my parents let me read a lot, and that's what I did. I just read so many books all day long, and I worked really hard at school. I was just really quiet, so, yeah.

• 28:35Sam Fragoso?

  Why did you push it down?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  I didn't want to get bullied.

• 28:39Sam Fragoso?

  Is that why you started running cross-country?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, my parents are very fit and very, they've done Ironmans, like they're really something. And that, so like health and fitness.

• 28:49Sam Fragoso?

  You ran like 10K, 20Ks, all kinds of things.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But they are otherworldly and they're incredible. They're just so.

• 29:01Sam Fragoso?

  Like they're in the gym six days a week, seven days a week?

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's really, and so my, my father had been diagnosed with stage four cancer like three, four, three days before I left for college, my freshman year. And throughout all of his chemotherapy, he was still on the bike. He was still like working out, like it was just, it's such an integral part of them. And so that, you know, it was just kind of a thing to, to run. And I like running and I like being active, so, yeah.

• 29:27Sam Fragoso?

  When you went to college, I heard you talk about this in your piece, the ozemification of the economy. You write, "Personally, when I was in college and my dad was very sick, I developed an extreme eating disorder to try and regain control," which is what I guess you just talked about.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Control.

• 29:46Sam Fragoso?

  This control thing.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:48Sam Fragoso?

  "The control over the body is the first refuge when everything external becomes unmanageable."

• 29:52Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 29:53Sam Fragoso?

  So like, when you're a kid in college, having just left home

• 29:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:58Sam Fragoso?

  a few days after your father receives this diagnosis, did your life feel unmanageable?

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, of course.

• 30:06Sam Fragoso?

  And what did that look like day-to-day for you?

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, you know, you're 18, so you push it all down. And you don't deal with any of it. And unfortunately, when you push things down, it still manifests within you. Like, you really can't push anything down effectively. And so for me, what I did, because I couldn't control my dad's stage-four diagnosis, and I couldn't control that I was two hours away, and I couldn't control anything that I wanted to, and I couldn't control my freshman year, and I couldn't control the adaptation to college. And so I just was like, well, what can I control? Like, you know, I control how much I eat. And that, you know, went extreme, like it does for a lot of women and men, yeah.

• 30:48Sam Fragoso?

  Did it help?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  No, it made everything worse, yeah.

• 30:52Sam Fragoso?

  It did?

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, because like, imagine you have a stage-four cancer diagnosis, and then all of a sudden your daughter comes home and she's like 85 pounds, you know? You're like, okay, what? Can you not do this right now? That's not how they acted at all, but it was selfish, yeah.

• 31:08Sam Fragoso?

  To be fair, you were 18.

• 31:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, but.

• 31:12Sam Fragoso?

  Being selfish is sort of.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  It's part of it, yeah. It's part of being that age. But yeah, I mean, I wish I'd handled it better, but I learned a lot, and I gained a lot of respect for my, my body and for Faeud and for my dad. I mean, he beat cancer, he's alive today.

• 31:27Sam Fragoso?

  That's amazing.

• 31:28Speaker 01

  He's so great, yeah. He's so strong. He's really, it's just the best.

• 31:31Sam Fragoso?

  When the two of you look back on that period or think about where you both were at, which seems like two very difficult

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:39Sam Fragoso?

  situations, inflection points.

• 31:42Sam Fragoso?

  How do you guys understand that period now?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  I mean, I think I personally understand it as a moment that was very hard. And it was kind of like my first real reckoning with dying. You had to think about that, like, what if my dad dies? What if I die? And so I think that was just very like, oh, like, I don't think I want that, you know? And so I think a lot of people kind of will reach that knife's edge and you have to decide, right? And so you have to decide what's worth it. And I feel like very luckily, I had a lot to choose.

• 32:24Sam Fragoso?

  So tell me how you decided to come back and away from the edge of all that?

• 32:31Speaker 01

  It was just, there was a lot that was going on and I was running, yeah, for the school. And then like, that got really complicated and I was almost, I was like too unhealthy to run. Like, I was so small that like, they were like, meh.

• 32:47Sam Fragoso?

  Did the teachers say that?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  The coach.

• 32:50Sam Fragoso?

  The coach, sorry.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And I was so cold all the time. I was so cold and I was so miserable. And the recovery from it was harder than being in it, I would say.

• 33:02Sam Fragoso?

  How does one recover? Or how did you?

• 33:05Speaker 01

  You know, it took a really long time and I think there was a lot of like internal pain and not wanting to open up to folks about it. And I want to talk about it. And it was only like a couple of years ago that I was finally able to like, open up. And I try to sneak it into my pieces now to like, practice the vulnerability because I'm not very good at it. I'm learning how to be better at it.

• 33:26Sam Fragoso?

  I find them in different pieces.

• 33:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I try.

• 33:28Sam Fragoso?

  You kind of drop it in.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:31Sam Fragoso?

  And then you move on.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  It's not jarring.

• 33:33Sam Fragoso?

  It's not jarring to me. But I read it and the reason I want to talk about it with you is that you do find from that, this like love of economics and education.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:46Sam Fragoso?

  But that love is born out of this very challenging period.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:50Sam Fragoso?

  When you are 19, during a summer internship at Hyundai, can you explain what the day to day of that job was and how it shaped your understanding of economics?

• 34:05Speaker 01

  It was just kind of fun, yeah, I was selling cars. So in Louisville, I was selling cars at a Hyundai dealership.

• 34:10Sam Fragoso?

  I'm trying to imagine you selling cars.

• 34:12Speaker 01

  I mean, it was so funny because I was so shy, like, I was so introverted, still am, but like, I didn't really talk a lot. And so all of a sudden, I had this job where I literally had to go up to people and be like, you want to buy a car? And like, they hate you, right? Like, nobody likes a car salesperson.

• 34:28Sam Fragoso?

  They're like, I'm going in.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:30Sam Fragoso?

  I'm looking for a car. What was your pitch?

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Hey, what are you looking for today? Yeah, and then you'd be like, well, I'm just browsing. Or you would tell me exactly what you want and we would go drive around. And then if it didn't work for you, like, a lot of customers would come in with some dream car. That wasn't quite aligned with their credit score or their income. So we had to work together to get them into a different car, which was very instructive. You know, it's so intimate buying a car. And you have to really tell the car salesperson a lot about yourself and like, what you're using it for, like, what you're thinking about. And so I feel like for me, it was just a really, really nice way to like, help people through that process as much as I could. You know, I still was selling cars at the end of the day.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  And then it was a great way to like, learn about folks and to, you know, make them feel a bit more comfortable about having to deal with this like, really big purchase, right?

• 35:23Sam Fragoso?

  Do you remember an experience or an exchange with someone who was buying a car? Where they were like, telling you their life and why they needed it and by proxy, sharing a whole bunch of facts and realities about their existence?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I had one customer come on the lot that had this dream car, this black Hyundai Sonata. It was a nice car, it was tripped out. And we kind of spent all day together, you know, test driving it. He was telling me that he was going to take it to the lake and he was going to take it to work and it was going to be his car. And then, you know, he didn't have quite the job for it, nor did he have the income level. And there were a lot of situations like that, yeah.

• 36:03Sam Fragoso?

  What are you thinking about?

• 36:06Speaker 01

  It sucks. Yeah, it's the worst to have to, you know, for somebody to want something so badly and not be able to get it. And for him, like, he needed a car to get to work and he couldn't afford a car, right? And so he couldn't get to work. And so how are you gonna afford a car if you can't work, right? And so you just, you would see people stuck in these like, cycles that felt, and we got him into a car luckily, but like,

• 36:38Speaker 01

  and there are just a lot of ways for people to have one over on them, right? Like, to be, not necessarily with car sales, but just anything, right? Like, people will take advantage of folks that don't have a lot of knowledge about the economy.

• 36:54Sam Fragoso?

  Tell me how you get toward the end of college. You're a valedictorian?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was awesome.

• 37:00Sam Fragoso?

  You've described yourself as a spreadsheet with a ton of anxiety.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yes, recently, I've described myself that way, yeah.

• 37:06Sam Fragoso?

  Your father gets healthy?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, he gets healthy. So I graduated in 2018 and my dad was okay. And I had a job lined up in LA at a really awesome firm and I liked that job a lot. It just wasn't the right fit for me. So I graduate 2019, pandemic hits, right?

• 37:21Sam Fragoso?

  Hold on, let's go back here. You graduate in 2019.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  Am I skipping something?

• 37:25Sam Fragoso?

  You're skipping something.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  What am I skipping? No, I'm curious.

• 37:27Sam Fragoso?

  Are you reading my notes? Is that what's going on here? You've been reading them the whole time?

• 37:30Speaker 01

  I'm reading them upside down, yeah.

• 37:32Sam Fragoso?

  Why are you doing this?

• 37:33Speaker 01

  Sorry, because I'm curious.

• 37:35Sam Fragoso?

  Don't be reading my notes.

• 37:38Sam Fragoso?

  Guys, I need font size. How's your vision?

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Really good, yeah.

• 37:42Sam Fragoso?

  Size two. I won't be able to see it, but then neither of us will.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  You gotta have like a screen protector. Do you have one on your phone?

• 37:48Sam Fragoso?

  You know what I need? I need a Kyler protector.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true. I'm nosey, I'm really nosey.

• 37:53Sam Fragoso?

  I thought, I thought we were getting along.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Sorry, I didn't know it'd be a violation of our friendship.

• 37:58Sam Fragoso?

  It's a violation of the podcast code.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Don't read the whole notes.

• 38:03Sam Fragoso?

  You can read whatever you want. I'm still gonna ask it, it doesn't really matter.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm curious, yeah.

• 38:08Sam Fragoso?

  Five days after you graduate college, you leave Kentucky for a job in Los Angeles. Now, I gotta tell you, five days? That sounds like someone with a plan. And so I want to know, when did you know you had to leave and how did you know?

• 38:24Speaker 01

  I knew that I wanted to see more than just Kentucky. And I knew that there were opportunities outside of Kentucky that were like, really exciting. And I knew I'd be able to like, test myself and be around people who loved, I was kind of naive. I was like, everyone's gonna love economics like me. And that was maybe not the case.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  I can finally be around people like me.

• 38:50Sam Fragoso?

  I'm so sorry.

• 38:50Speaker 01

  I know.

• 38:51Sam Fragoso?

  And by the way, Los Angeles?

• 38:53Speaker 01

  So the only time I'd ever been to LA outside of the time I moved after graduation was for the interview for this job. And the interview was like, one day. So I'd only ever been in LA for one day.

• 39:03Sam Fragoso?

  Capital Group?

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yes, that was the company. And I'd never been to LA before when I moved here. And so it was like, a huge learning curve. It was really, really hard. And then the pandemic happened. And so it was just kind of like, one thing after another. And then I was like, well, what do I really care about, right? Like, I care about economics education. I care about helping people, like, I tutored economics in college. Like, it's just always been something that really matters to me. And so I quit that nice job at Capital Group, which is a great company. And I joined a startup and built out their investment education product.

• 39:35Sam Fragoso?

  And this is during the pandemic?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  During the pandemic. And then I started making TikToks, you know, because I was like, I can, maybe I'll find my people here. And I did, I did, I did.

• 39:45Sam Fragoso?

  In terms of being part of Gen Z, you're part of the group that finished college before the pandemic.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:51Sam Fragoso?

  But the moment they got a job, six months after you got a normal job, the pandemic takes hold.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:58Sam Fragoso?

  As someone who, as you've said, a walking spreadsheet with anxiety, you make the leap. You quit these jobs, you have to call back home to your parents, inside your 350 square foot apartment in Los Angeles, telling them, I am gonna make videos on TikTok.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:22Sam Fragoso?

  But given how much anxiety you say you have. And you're a big planner. This seems like a huge courageous leap to make. Did it feel that way to you? Were you nervous?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I had negative dollars, right? Like, it was no good.

• 40:38Sam Fragoso?

  How many negative dollars?

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Like, I had enough to pay rent. And that's kind of it. It was really, I was, I was kind of living life on hard mode. And so I think that I, I was very dramatic about it when I was making the decision.

• 40:55Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean?

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Well, I was like, if I die, I will really regret never having tried. And I told my parents that and they were like, okay, uh, good luck. So that's what I did.

• 41:09Sam Fragoso?

  Had you ever been dramatic like that in the past? Were they surprised by the call?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  I think that they knew I was really wanting to try something different than what I was doing at the job I was at. And they knew that I would be probably best served working for myself.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I don't think they were too shocked. I think they were worried. They were kind of like, oh, man, she had this awesome job that had a career ladder. Like, if I did this and that, then I would do this and then I'd be there. And like 50 years later, I'd die, you know? Um, and that was it. That was the whole thing.

• 41:47Sam Fragoso?

  It's a lot of death in this conversation.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Isn't that what it's all about? Like, you can't talk about living without dying.

• 41:52Sam Fragoso?

  So true, Kyla.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that's what I meant when I said death is like something I became really aware of when my dad got sick and when I got sick. So it's something just always, what if, you know? You don't want to die with too much regret.

• 42:06Sam Fragoso?

  And, and given that your dad had gone through that, when you called him and told him, do you think that's why he was so supportive? Because he had been given this diagnosis?

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Maybe, yeah. I mean, I think that they were like, she can go try and find another job if it doesn't work.

• 42:24Sam Fragoso?

  You've described your generation as being at the end of predictable progress. Can you walk us through that?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, so that idea.

• 42:33Sam Fragoso?

  I mean, now, if you don't want to, you don't have to.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  No, sorry, that, that line really got me a lot of emails. Um, I mean, every generation has had their own issues, right? Like, my dad will talk about when he was buying a house in 1980s, interest rates were sky high. It was terrible, it was really hard. But there was more than two. But I think like with this current situation, what's happening for young folks is the career ladder is changing, the way that we buy a house is changing, homes are so expensive. The way that we get married and we have kids and we retire is changing. So that economic ladder, right? So like, all these things are changing. And so it isn't really clear what you can do and have a path to success. Like, it used to be like you join, like my grandma, when she immigrated from Ireland,

• 43:18Speaker 01

  she joined a big corporation and she was a cleaner. And she worked at that company for 40 years and she kind of just knew every day that she'd go into work. She had a pension that she retired with. And that is not as accessible as it once was, right? And so that path to predictable progress is evolving and shifting in, in the modern economy.

• 43:39Sam Fragoso?

  So how are you thinking about it specifically for, for Gen Z? Because as you probably remember, there was a viral essay in the New York Times this summer, "Gen Z Fell Out of Love With Work, I Don't Blame Them." And she wrote, "Younger people no longer believe work in the traditional sense leads to any reliable payoff. The casino economy they're entering doles out success in the form of windfalls and makes those winds vanish just suddenly. Ambition requires a belief that you have meaningful control over your future." There's that word again. "With so much uncertainty today, it can feel pointless to prepare for tomorrow."

• 44:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I think that a lot of people are struggling with that. They're trying to figure out what to believe in and what to do. And that's a big part of the reason why I started the show, the Best of Luck Show, the Careered by Show, is to give people a sense of control, to talk about what might work, to give people a guidebook. Because we don't really set folks up too well for, for things. We kind of saddle them with student loan debt if they choose to go to college. And then we graduate them and then we're like, good luck. Um, and I just, I think that there's a lot more that we could be doing to prepare people for tomorrow, to her point. Um, but yeah, I think there's a lot of worry and there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of anxiety and understandably so.

• 44:56Sam Fragoso?

  Since you're reading my notes, you know that what I'm asking about next.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  I can't see that one.

• 45:00Sam Fragoso?

  Speculative investments. Can you talk about the rise of them, especially within Gen Z and millennials?

• 45:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, GameStop was a big thing during the pandemic. AMC, big thing during the pandemic, where you have these companies that were going up massively for no reason, other than like, people were like, this rocks and I'm going to buy this company. And so you saw fundamentals be totally detached from the direction a company was going. And so that was kind of like one of the first, like, whoa, things are way different. And then crypto, which has good underlying technology, but really lost its soul, came along and that became like the NFTs and, uh, what else? Like the fart coin and the Dogecoin, like all of these things that are, again, detached from fundamentals, detached from reality, but because people believed in them,

• 45:49Speaker 01

  because they were speculating on them, they would go up in value. So that's a speculative asset, is people believe in it and it goes up in value.

• 45:58Sam Fragoso?

  Northwestern Mutual noted in the study that 80% and 75% of Gen Zers and millennials are drawn to speculative investments because they feel financially behind. This is a prospect theory at a generational scale. When normal life pulls out of reach, lottery-like bets, crypto, meme stocks, option trading starts looking pretty rational. And I was, I was looking at these, these adverts for Coinbase and CalShe. The CEO of CalShe, one of the slogans is, "You owe it to your grandchildren. The odds are not zero and it's free. Coinbase, game not over, it's time to take back control. Presenting Your Way Out."

• 46:42Sam Fragoso?

  This is a video game, The Extended Cut. What do you make of this?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  They're totally exploiting people's fears. The prediction markets and Coinbase, which is a crypto trading platform, they know why people go to them, right? As, you know, like, CalShe will be like, we're a way for people to hedge against the weather. And it's like, it's sports betting. 90% of your flow is sports betting. And, and if you look at the actual data behind these companies, so Polymarket, for example, which is, um, you know, a prediction markets company as well, they have it where 0.1% of accounts make 70% of the profits.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  And for CalShe, for every one profitable user, there's 2.9 unprofitable users. And so you just have to look at the math here and know that you're not taking back control. You're not helping out your grandbabies. Like, you're making things worse potentially. But these companies are like, if you want to get rich quick, like, we have the toolbook for you. And it is, uh, totally the Wild West in terms of regulation. The prediction market companies are not really regulated at the moment. And they are getting away with, um, I think, really harming people.

• 48:01Sam Fragoso?

  So if Gen Z fell out of love with work and they don't see how one could climb a corporate ladder and they see the only way out is through CalShe, which you're gonna probably lose, you know, the house always wins, so to speak. Where do young people go? Where are they supposed to go?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  That's the question, yeah. Like, I, I mean, there's always S and P 500, but that has all the exposure to the AI companies. And so that makes a lot of people nervous. I mean, that's what I invest in, not investment advice, but that's what I do. I mean, there's always taking, like, if you believe in the American experiment, right? Like, you can invest in the stock market, S and P 500 and do that, but it's hard. I mean, a lot of people just want a get rich quick check and understandably, understandably so. Yeah. But we don't really have a framework for how to guide people.

• 48:58Sam Fragoso?

  Having spent the last week preparing to talk to you, and I, and I've been following your work for a while.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 49:06Sam Fragoso?

  I feel sick. What you cover and the way you cover it, which is deeply human.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:14Sam Fragoso?

  I feel, um, like unwell.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:20Sam Fragoso?

  How are you doing?

• 49:22Speaker 01

  It's stuff that people have to know about. And if we're going to help people through the economy, they have to understand the economy, right? Like, if we understand parts of our economy a bit better, hopefully we can all make better decisions and then we're all better off at the end of this, right? And so, um, it is a lot and it's, um, definitely challenging, especially with, I know we're going to talk about AI. Like, the AI build out is, uh, very hard to talk about.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  And then just this, uh, this loss of belief, you know, loss of trust, loss of faith in one another. I mean, it really, you can't think about it too long, uh, yeah.

• 50:16Sam Fragoso?

  All you do is think about it.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  But I, I think about how to help people through it, you know? Like, how can I explain this, right? How can I make sense of this? So they don't feel overwhelmed or confused.

• 50:27Sam Fragoso?

  So that kid who was in the car dealership?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:30Sam Fragoso?

  Taking test rides with someone who wants to buy a car they cannot afford?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:36Sam Fragoso?

  Do you see the, the link between that younger person and?

• 50:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, all I've.

• 50:42Sam Fragoso?

  Person you are now?

• 50:43Speaker 01

  All I've ever wanted to do is help people.

• 50:45Sam Fragoso?

  And why is that?

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Because I care about people. Yeah, I care about people being happy and doing well. And I don't know, I, I just, I want to see people thrive. Like, when we think about the original definition of the American dream from James Treslau Adams, it was that people could reach fulfillment. It was that they could seek out the path that they most wanted to be on. And I just see so many people who, like, they just are not even able to get their hand on the rung of the ladder. And it's like, that's not right. And so I just, I mean, I do such a small little part of it. And I don't know if, hopefully it helps, but I, I just explain stuff, right? And I, and I hope that helps people, you know?

• 51:30Sam Fragoso?

  Well, I'm going to need you to explain a few more things for us.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 51:34Sam Fragoso?

  That's going to come up after the break.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 51:36Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Sam Fragoso?

  Recently, I went up to San Francisco for a conference. It was a very, very quick trip and one that I spent most of my time meeting new people and having a lot of candid conversations. But in between meetings and presentations and talking, we had unreasonably, unseasonably good weather for San Francisco. And so with that good weather, I made good use of it. I walked around the city, met up with friends for dinner, went into some bookstores. And those couple of days just made me think about breaking out of our normal routines, even if it's just for a quick work trip, and how you notice the things that give each city its own unique character. As a result, I've been thinking differently about my own place when I'm away. Rather than simply letting it sit empty while I travel, I've considered listing my space

• 52:26Sam Fragoso?

  on Airbnb and giving someone visiting Los Angeles a comfortable home where they can discover the city for themselves. Maybe they'll find a neighborhood restaurant they love or a museum they didn't know about. And the extra income can help offset my costs for a future trip. So next time you're planning a getaway for yourself, why not consider listing your space while you're gone? Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.com/host.

• 52:57Sam Fragoso?

  Coming back, you said on the Ezra Klein podcast, "To be human is to work."

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 53:04Sam Fragoso?

  Maybe the least Gen Z thing you've ever said.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  People hated that. They hated that I said that.

• 53:08Sam Fragoso?

  Do you believe to be human is to work?

• 53:11Speaker 01

  I think there's truth to it. I mean, I think that a lot of people find a lot of meaning in work. They find a lot of purpose in what they do. I mean, it's kind of the worry with the AI buildout is people not only will lose income rate, but they'll also lose sort of the... That was the big thing with the first time that technology really disrupted us was like with the, oh my God, the loom? Was it the loom? But like basically when the spinning wheel came about, people who were hand spinning stuff, the Luddites, we call them, they got really upset, not only because they were losing their jobs, but they were also losing their purpose within the work that they did. And they felt like the corporations were coming along and just like taking it from them without them having any say.

• 53:56Speaker 01

  And so I think that a lot of people find humanity and purpose in their work, but I don't think to be human is to work. I should have been more generous with that statement.

• 54:04Sam Fragoso?

  So what is the revised version you want to give now?

• 54:08Speaker 01

  To be human, for some, is to find purpose within work.

• 54:11Sam Fragoso?

  Doesn't have the same ring to it.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  I know. That first one was spicy, yeah.

• 54:17Sam Fragoso?

  I think some people maybe took issue with it because there's kind of a recurring sentiment, I know I've heard it from friends and I've seen it online, that, you know, one doesn't have a dream job, I don't dream of labor.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Sure, sure.

• 54:32Sam Fragoso?

  So when it comes to AI, do you think it is going to A, make our lives easier and B, replace the work that we do?

• 54:40Speaker 01

  I think it's making people's lives a lot harder right now. The data center, going back to the midterms, like the data center buildout is something that people hate. And I think the AI vote is driving a lot of people to be like, I don't like what's happening. I feel like the moneyed interests are getting one over on us and it's just, it doesn't seem right to me. And so I think it's not making our lives easier in that way, especially because a lot of the AI buildout, the bill is being passed off to the general public, both in terms of higher electricity costs and then the AI companies are borrowing so much money that they're pushing up, you know, essentially mortgage rates and borrowing costs across the board. And so people are paying in that way, they're paying higher electricity costs, they're

• 55:22Speaker 01

  paying higher mortgage rates, not directly because of the AI buildout, but a contribution. And then there's also all of these threats from the AI CEOs that like, not only are you going to have to pay for this without really seeing much benefit, but it's also going to potentially take your job. And we're not seeing it take people's job yet, at least in the data. But that underlying threat is of course concerning and worrying to people. So I don't think it's making lives easier. And the stated goal is for it to disrupt work, yes.

• 55:52Sam Fragoso?

  Do you think AI is going to take people's jobs?

• 55:55Speaker 01

  I think that the stated goal is for it to take jobs and that's what they're borrowing all the money for, right? Like they're borrowing billions and billions of dollars and you have to pay that money back, right? And the way they pay that money back is by having the product work. And having the product work means that this stated goal of potentially displacing people comes to fruition. And I hope it doesn't. I mean, the fact that it hasn't really happened yet says a lot. The fact that a lot of companies haven't really adopted it yet says a lot. You know, I think we can think of it, it could have been marketed so much differently. It's irritating, yeah.

• 56:30Sam Fragoso?

  What do you mean? How would you like it to be marketed?

• 56:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I don't know why it had to be like the job killer 1,000, but...

• 56:37Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, I've heard you say this many times, supposedly, although I would advocate to market it as the next internet, rather than job killer 1,000.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's so embarrassing. Yeah, I mean, that's what I would prefer and I agree with Paschala.

• 56:50Sam Fragoso?

  Although I kind of take issue with Paschala a little bit here. It sounds to me that you think the problem with AI is branding and not existential.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  No, I think it's the applied use case. I don't think it needs to be taking people's jobs. I think it could be the next iteration of the internet.

• 57:09Sam Fragoso?

  Right, but branding it as the next internet when in practice...

• 57:12Speaker 01

  I'm not seeing branding, I'm seeing application.

• 57:14Sam Fragoso?

  But those people don't have any desire to change the application.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  That's the problem.

• 57:18Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. So when you talk to those folks or you've talked to people who work in those companies and you make this case that the practice should be different, they say what?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  We're competing with China. Yeah, so we can't.

• 57:34Sam Fragoso?

  So this leaves us where?

• 57:36Speaker 01

  It leaves us where we are, where Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies, is going to IPO and half of their S1, which is the... So IPO means initial public offering and that means that they're going to go to the stock market and be like, okay, we're a company just like Nvidia and Meta and like the general public can now buy us. They weren't able to buy us previously because we were a private company, so we're going to IPO initial public offering. And they had a document called an S1 where they write out everything that Anthropic does, all the money that Anthropic makes. Anthropic is losing a ton of money and then also 94 pages of that document was dedicated to the catastrophic, this is their wording, catastrophic and existential risks that the company poses to humanity.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  So, I mean, we're just like in this race against money, a race against time, a race against the boogeyman of China. And, you know, it's just full steam ahead, it seems.

• 58:37Sam Fragoso?

  You recently did a TikTok where you did a kind of sketch about the AI bubble.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Is the company doing okay? We made $16 billion in the first half of this year, which is 14 times what we made in the first six months of last year. That's a lot. We also lost $80 billion. So you made $16 billion, but you lost $80 billion? So early on, some investors gave us money as a loan that turns into slices later and now the pizza's worth more, those future slices are worth more too, and something you owe gets more expensive, the account's called, had a loss. 72 billion of the 80 billion is that. So where's the real money going? I mean, to the computers, right? Giant warehouses have special chips and we rent them. $9 billion in the last six months, which is 55 cents of every dollar we make. We've signed up for a lot more between like half a trillion to 800 billion, depending on how you count. Depending on how you count? Some of it's chip leases, some of it's cloud, some of it we can cancel. What else did you disclose?

• 59:27Speaker 01

  94 pages of everything that could go wrong. The lawyers call them risk factors. One of the things says that maybe our AI could pose catastrophic and/or existential risks to humanity. So I got my start doing skits where I dress up as Jerome Powell, who's a former...

• 59:44Sam Fragoso?

  Oh, with the purple tie.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Purple tie.

• 59:46Sam Fragoso?

  I remember that.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And recently you decided to get back into skits to kind of have fun again.

• 59:53Sam Fragoso?

  You had previously given up on fun.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, yeah, I just wanted, you want to be taken seriously and it's already a little bit of an uphill battle. You know, you walk into a room and it's mostly men or like you're doing a conference and there's 30 speakers and two of them are women and you're like, okay. And that's not even from like the diversity perspective too. Like it's just a bunch of, you know, it's just not broadly representative of how the economy actually looks. So I think for me, like I stopped doing the skits because I was starting to take on more institutional work and I wanted the institutions to be like, this girl's serious and she's professional. And so I became very serious and very professional.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  But I definitely like for maybe a year after my book came out, I definitely lost...

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Uh, some of my joy. Yeah. I just kinda like became very copy paste, you know, like kinda just started mimicking other people rather than being myself, which is what I did when I was little. Like, I would pretend to be like people to try to fit in. Um, and so I just kinda lost the soul of, of the work. And this is all very fluffy, right? But that, that's kinda what happened. Yeah.

• 1:01:14Sam Fragoso?

  To bring us back to this moment, both political and economical, I'm thinking about your piece, the housing crisis is also a retirement crisis.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:25Sam Fragoso?

  And I think as people head into the midterms on Tuesday, their concerns about affordability are inextricably linked

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:01:34Sam Fragoso?

  to their concerns about housing and retirement and their future.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Sam Fragoso?

  Can you talk about the main thrust of the piece?

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Sam Fragoso?

  The loud animated responses and critiques you got for it?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was a New York Times opinion piece. And essentially, I was arguing that, listen, we have a housing crisis and we have a retirement crisis because a lot of people are treating their home as both a place to live and a speculative asset. So a lot of folks are like, well, I can't sell my house unless I sell it for $3 million or, you know, I'm not gonna sell. So a lot of sellers have this mindset that they need a huge, huge gain on their home because they need to be able to afford to retire. Their home is their nest egg. And so I make the argument in this piece that we should support alternatives to having the home as the nest egg. One of the things I advocated for is that we could seed a fund, like a Norway oil fund, where we take the AR money and we

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  don't invest just in AR companies, we invest broadly, and we have sort of like a dividend type model where folks get a paycheck from this. It's sort of a form of like, being able to benefit in the upside of the AR build out, not having to rely on your home so much as a way to retire. And that way, people will just have alternatives rather than just relying on their house as a thing to accrue so much value over time. We get younger folks in there. You know, boomers own most of the three bedroom homes in the United States, millennials with families own far less. And then people who are able to buy homes, you know, Redfin calls them nepo home buyers in a lot of instances. Some people are able to buy them by themselves, but a lot of people are getting a lot of assistance from their parents. We want an

• 1:03:13Speaker 01

  environment where people can buy a house with their own money, you know, and if their parents can help, that's great, too. But like, we want a more streamlined home transfer process. And the letters to the editor, which were really interesting to read, and I, I really appreciate people being so thoughtful. Like, a lot of people thought I was being ageist and that I was saying that we should just kick all the boomers to the streets. I did not say that anywhere in the piece. I was really just advocating for, we have to think about housing differently.

• 1:03:45Sam Fragoso?

  Were there any letters to the editor that you thought were fair critiques?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  I responded to some of them. Yeah. I mean, I think that some of them are like, oh, you should think of it more broadly. Like, what are other solutions outside of this? Like, what if I don't wanna leave? Like, what if I do wanna have this house forever?

• 1:04:00Sam Fragoso?

  And I would say of the comments that I read, the overwhelming, the prevailing sentiment was, I am dying

• 1:04:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:07Sam Fragoso?

  in this home.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:04:09Sam Fragoso?

  I will die here before you try to tell me to sell it.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  It's just not how we normally would, would think about a ladder. Normally would think, okay, people

• 1:04:20Sam Fragoso?

  It's not a ladder, it's a tomb.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Normally, you kinda downsize, right? And a lot of people are stuck, right? The mortgage rates are so high that they can't afford to downsize. And so these are all real economic realities. But, um, yeah, a lot of people took it really personally.

• 1:04:38Sam Fragoso?

  And this leaves the next generation of homeowners where? Is it, is it like a permanent class of renters?

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Right now, it is challenging for people to buy a home. New home sales are pretty low. Sellers are kinda stuck in a 2022 mindset where they're like, my home should be worth a ton of money. You know, mortgage rates have continued to go up because, you know, the Fed held rates steady at their most recent meeting, but they hiked the meeting before that and they signaled the Federal Reserve, who controls interest rates in the economy or sets interest rates in the economy. Uh, and so we've seen mortgage rates go up because the Fed has been doing that. And there's also been a lot of just general uncertainty that has made mortgage rates go up. The AR build out has contributed to some of that as well. And so a lot of folks are stuck in a world where it's hard to, to buy houses.

• 1:05:30Sam Fragoso?

  Well, in thinking about housing, I wanna play a clip before we go. Uh, this is from Michael Lewis.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Oh, great.

• 1:05:35Sam Fragoso?

  The author of The Big Short and Liar's Poker. Um, when I asked him whether 2026 is starting to feel a little bit like 2008, are you seeing 2026 the same way you felt or saw 2007?

• 1:05:48Speaker 03

  More like 2005 or 2006. I'll put it this way. I'm now, I'm, my antenna are up for another financial book because I think there's a chance there's gonna be chaos in the financial markets. And that's when it gets interesting. Um, and I, because, because of the way they're managing the finances. And, um,

• 1:06:10Sam Fragoso?

  Beyond it being interesting, does it unnerve you?

• 1:06:14Speaker 03

  Well, I moved money, some of my own money into Euro because I didn't trust the dollar as much and into gold. So yes, I've actually taken action. Um, I, I, I would, I think the dumbest thing you could do is buy like a long-term treasury bond, like long-term debt. I don't know why anybody holds it. I think in the, the truth in the end is that the country is so financially obsessed that when it gets bad, that it's the end for Trump. He's like, really the end, that all of business will flee to and leave him high and dry. And that there'll be some reckoning with how we, there might be some way we bounce back in an interesting, positive way, that it's not just decline.

• 1:06:59Speaker 03

  But, so I don't, I don't feel like, oh, I gotta leave the country. But I do feel like I need to put some of my money somewhere else.

• 1:07:05Sam Fragoso?

  So what do you think? That he, he suggests that it feels a little bit like 2005, 2006?

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Sam Fragoso?

  Is that the feeling you're getting when you talk to people around the country?

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  You know, I, I wasn't around, I was little then. But like, I think the exuberance is probably quite similar to what we were experiencing in the run-up to the great financial crisis where there was like this, everybody could get money, everybody could have borrowed money, the banks were giving money to anybody and not really paying attention to how they were wrapping things up. And it was creating all of these huge pressure points in the economy. And I think you can look at the AR build out and you can see like, okay, Meta has some off balance sheet leases where they're building the AR build out and it's not totally transparent as to how much money is being allocated. The companies are starting to like really lose money. They're not able to, like, the bond market is starting to punish them, especially companies like Oracle, where they're like, we just are really worried

• 1:07:58Speaker 01

  about you. And so I do think there is this broad exuberance that is a bit tough to totally reckon with. And I think a lot of people have compared it to, you know, the dot com boom, the railroad build out. Um, and I, I don't know if it's gonna end up like 2008. I sure hope not. But, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's just what we do, irrational exuberance.

• 1:08:23Sam Fragoso?

  When you're with your friends and they ask you these kind of like alarming, is it all over kind of questions? And I'm sure they do.

• 1:08:33Speaker 01

  Yes, a lot of people do.

• 1:08:34Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah. When you're with them or when you're with yourself practicing for your podcast in the morning?

• 1:08:40Speaker 01

  In the mirror, yeah.

• 1:08:40Sam Fragoso?

  Yeah, in the mirror. Can you give me the two versions, the glass half full and the glass half empty?

• 1:08:46Speaker 01

  Sure. So I, uh, love Wendell Berry. And one thing that he talks about is that hope is a duty. So it's a duty to ourselves. It's a duty to one another that we have to be hopeful. Um, and it doesn't always mean that you think like, oh, you know, Pollyanna, everything's gonna work out great, but you have to have an element of hope, right? You have to believe in the human endeavor. And so that's the glass half full version, is that I think we do owe it to ourselves to be hopeful, even when it is so scary, um, to the best of our abilities, right? It's definitely harder some days than others and

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  for some people than others. Um, and I think the glass half empty is something I, I really have a hard time with. I mean, I think that there's, like Michael was talking about, and he's expert here on how things can go wrong. There are so many ways where it can go wrong. And there are so many big swings happening that are not thinking of people first. They're thinking of money first. And that is like the surefire way to blow up is if you put money before anything else.

• 1:09:58Sam Fragoso?

  So the Wendell Berry thing sounds a lot like this Raymond Williams thing that you quote all the time, which is to be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing.

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:11Sam Fragoso?

  Which is an interesting quote because it's not actually clear he ever said that.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Okay. Oh.

• 1:10:18Sam Fragoso?

  The actual quote from the thing that he actually wrote.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 1:10:23Sam Fragoso?

  I'm so sorry.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  I'm spreading this. That's so embarrassing.

• 1:10:26Sam Fragoso?

  He wrote, "It is then in making hope practical rather than despair convincing"

• 1:10:32Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:10:34Sam Fragoso?

  "that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns."

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  So somebody simplified it. Okay, that's so embarrassing.

• 1:10:40Sam Fragoso?

  No, but I, but I wanna

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:10:43Sam Fragoso?

  Not to embarrass you.

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  The version, the better, the different, the real version. Yeah.

• 1:10:46Sam Fragoso?

  In making hope practical.

• 1:10:48Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:50Sam Fragoso?

  Is that kinda how you see your function?

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know if I always do a good job at that. Yeah, being like spreading hope. I think a lot of times I'm explaining stuff that's pretty bleak. And then in my Substack specifically, I try to make them always end on a note of optimism, like that misinformation Raymond Williams quote wasn't meaning to do that. But yeah, I mean, I think that you have to make hope accessible in the same way that you have to make economics accessible. You have to make it visible and transparent to the best of your abilities. I mean, it's, it's hard to have hope, right? And you have to sometimes help people. I mean, I, I need help with it, right? Uh, you have to find the path towards it as much as you can. There's so many people who are thinking about how to solve our problems.

• 1:11:36Speaker 01

  And like, we have the solutions in play, we just have to figure out how to put them into practice. We just have to build a God book. And so I find a lot of hope and faith in that. We have, we know pretty much what to do. We just don't do it. Is that hopeful?

• 1:11:52Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Okay. Darn. Um,

• 1:11:55Sam Fragoso?

  No.

• 1:11:55Speaker 01

  I mean, what did you find hope in?

• 1:11:58Sam Fragoso?

  I'll tell you what I don't find hope in. I wanna play that clip of Trump one more time.

• 1:12:06Sam Fragoso?

  Let's just see how it lands after all we talked about.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Circling back.

• 1:12:11Speaker 02

  You could even come to Mar-a-Lago. I said it the other night. You'll be my guest at Mar-a-Lago. The problem is that for $5,000, the most you'll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert. I don't, I'm not even sure you could buy that. No, don't go there. That's not a good place. If you're price conscious.

• 1:12:34Sam Fragoso?

  You know, watching that again, you know, he's making fun of $5,000.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  It's a lot of money.

• 1:12:40Sam Fragoso?

  He gave that speech in Corpus Christi. The median monthly income in Corpus Christi, $5,616. Poverty rate, 17%. So when you see that again, after our 90 minute talk here, where does it land with you?

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  It's disappointing. It's frustrating. It's horrible. Yeah. It's not what you want the leader of a country to be saying when so many people are in such distress. I mean, that's obvious, right? Objectively. Yeah.

• 1:13:13Sam Fragoso?

  Given all of this, why does Kyla Scanlon wake up at three in the morning? To do this work?

• 1:13:21Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think it matters. And like, my whole theory of it is that if we can all better understand the economy, we can build a better economy. And we can make better decisions and then we're all better off. And I'm greatly simplifying it, but you just gotta keep going. You just gotta keep trying. You gotta try different things. Different ways of explaining it. Different ways of communicating it. And just try.

• 1:13:49Sam Fragoso?

  At the end of your shows, you end every episode by asking the guest to fill in.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:55Sam Fragoso?

  Luck is... I present it to you. Luck is what?

• 1:14:04Speaker 01

  One of the guests said, luck is what you make it. And I like that. And then another guest said, luck is what happened. And I liked that too. And so I think it's a combination of both, that it is what you make it. It is the opportunities that you take. It is the people that you reach out to. It is the way of going into the world and just trying, just trying, trying, trying, trying. And then I also think there's elements of luck that is what happened. It's stuff that we've experienced that we have no idea was lucky at the time, right? It's just something that floats around us to a certain extent, but I also believe you can create it.

• 1:14:41Sam Fragoso?

  What was the phone call to your dad again?

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  The theory of mine that I presented to them was that yes, if I, if I die, I will live with regret that I never tried this. That I never gave myself a shot at looking at TikTok and trying to find people to talk about economics with and trying to explain economics, because that's all I thought about. It's what I did in my free time. I ran a blog that one person read and it was my dad. And so it was something that I'd always just been obsessed with. And so that was the thing. It's like, yeah, if I, if I die, that I never try, I will be very sad. Wherever we go next, I'll be sad that I never tried.

• 1:15:17Sam Fragoso?

  Well, wherever we go next, I'm certainly glad that you did try.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  Thanks. Me too.

• 1:15:22Sam Fragoso?

  I think this idea of making hope practical.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:27Sam Fragoso?

  I do think by arming people with information and knowledge about.

• 1:15:30Speaker 01

  Quality information.

• 1:15:31Sam Fragoso?

  A subject I don't know a whole lot about.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:34Sam Fragoso?

  I do think is helpful. So thank you for that and thank you for all the time.

• 1:15:38Speaker 01

  Thank you. Yay.

• 1:15:39Sam Fragoso?

  Kyla Scanlon.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Awesome. Thank you.

• 1:15:53Sam Fragoso?

  Thank you for watching Talk Easy. If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also leave us a review on Apple, drop us a comment on Spotify, or follow us across social media at Talk Easy Pod. If you aren't already subscribed to the show on those platforms, make sure you follow the show on Apple and Spotify. So you're notified about new episodes as soon as they drop every Sunday morning. Our producer is Caroline Reebok. This episode was edited by Alex Dishal. It was mixed by Andrew Vastola. Photographs are by email, Ravello. I want to give a special thanks to speak to the teams at Vox, Metro and Penguin Random House. This episode was made in partnership with the good people at Higher Ground Media and I'm Sam Fragoso. Thank you for watching. I'll see you back here next Sunday with Chris Hayes.

• 1:16:38Sam Fragoso?

  Till then, stay safe and so long.

• 1:16:42Speaker 04

  I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.

• 1:16:50Speaker 05

  We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.

• 1:16:53Speaker 04

  I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?

• 1:16:56Speaker 05

  There were 32,000 pounds of them.

• 1:16:58Speaker 04

  32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Find out what it's like to be a long haul trucker, a couples therapist, or an FBI agent, all on the podcast, What It's Like to Be.

• 1:17:12Speaker 06

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