SPEAKER_00: all right everybody we're back and today we're kicking it off with lon harris because it's thursday and he's helping us break down a pretty major shakeup in the media space this was like you can't usually it's been a long time since twitter was talking about just one thing

SPEAKER_02: and that was happening yeah that's happening and we're talking about warner brothers discovery because we always do this week in streaming on thursdays our little segment with lon and as you know i bought some warner brothers discovery because my guy discovery ceo david

SPEAKER_04: zaslav uh took over and heads have rolled products are being canceled movies are being canceled it's very controversial we're gonna break down what we think is happening here and then who is going to win the streaming wars and we touch on a little bit of power mount as well

SPEAKER_00: it's a great it's a perfectly timely awesome conversation and then we're gonna break down a little bit of uh series a and m a we've talked a lot about social media alternatives and these apps mostly we've talked about be real but turns out locket might be creeping up fast from behind yes and

SPEAKER_11: lena khan head of the ftc is making her first move she's suing meta from buying a very tiny little company but her methodology and the new methodology she's bringing to antitrust is what is at stake right

SPEAKER_12: here it's going to be a great episode stick with us this week in startups is brought to you by

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SPEAKER_18: streaming segment molly our favorite favorite favorite guest co-host individual human on planet

SPEAKER_19: earth is here lon harris lon's like you're freaking me out why are you making it so nice right now

SPEAKER_22: what a lovely intro well i don't pay him for the segment so it's true what uh delight and also

SPEAKER_00: what good timing thank god we had this plan because the streaming universe has blown up twitter is going crazy the warner j trade that jason was like about to make i made it oh yeah you made it that's i made the j trade yeah it's working out so jcal dropped fifty thousand dollars on the thing that

SPEAKER_23: became the biggest news in the world one day later story of my life we got a lot to talk about with

SPEAKER_29: lon today lots of the glasses oh my gosh wow uh oh we're doing accounting on the show today is he gonna

SPEAKER_33: buy more or is he gonna sell i'm up four thousand four i'm up four large on my warner brothers

SPEAKER_36: discovery trade in a week or less not investment advice but what is going on yeah you're the only one

SPEAKER_38: feeling good about that right now what is going on you have to t us up here david zaslav is my guy

SPEAKER_11: this guy is a wartime ceo i met with him with harvey weinstein as well um when i was doing my reality tv show six years ago and i was in the meeting with him this guy controls the room he's in general he knows how to make you feel a hundred i felt a hundred feet tall i felt taller than the skyscraper in manhattan we were meeting it and i saw him also speak at another conference uh when he was doing discovery and talking about how they were taking over the planet i saw that 12 years ago this guy's a murderer

SPEAKER_45: what is i mean this guy's killing it looks like figuratively and it looks like a scene from 300

SPEAKER_00: out here right now so just literally as jason's giving this talk about what a great wartime ceo this is going to be and zaslav is all about cutting costs all of a sudden we find out uh all kinds of things one batgirl shelved right they've already made this movie it's already being shown to test audiences they spent 90 million dollars on it not coming out and then uh sources apparently told the rap that the conglomerate now this you know newly joined behemoth of warner brothers and discovery which joined in a 43 billion dollar merger plan to lay off 70 percent of the new company's development business plan to restructure both hbo max and discovery plus either during the earnings results or soon after and that the move will quote again from the rap result in a gutting of hbo max significant layoffs for its executives and staff to minimize redundancies with hbo

SPEAKER_52: and a combined streaming service with discovery plus so what this seems to start to mean nice we

SPEAKER_00: think is that some hbo originals could go away like peacemaker with john cena our flag means death with taika watiti so far the hbo development team behind game of thrones westworld and the really big expensive stuff don't seem to be impacted yet and then also and this is just really interesting on top of all of this vulture critic katherine van arendonk pointed out that some hbo shows are being vanished

SPEAKER_57: are being disappeared off of hbo max yeah we know vinyl uh mrs fletcher that katherine han

SPEAKER_59: uh i liked mrs fletcher that one's gone and then camping that lena dunham show for i believe lasted just two seasons appears she's insufferable i'm glad she's gone but why also we have we have some

SPEAKER_65: original hbo max films like moonshot an american pickle that one with seth rogan six of those also

SPEAKER_67: just appear to be gone the word is it's this is this is tax stuff because of the merger they could still get tax write-offs if they remove some of these films or god maybe it's for saving on residuals

SPEAKER_70: it appears to be a a cost-saving measure great all right uh-huh we have to separate two days

SPEAKER_18: art and commerce what did one say well there's three things here we have art

SPEAKER_06: commerce and then we have the operations of this company right which is merger mechanisms really right

SPEAKER_05: because none of this is unusual in a merger which is why mergers are always painful in lots of different

SPEAKER_11: ways and can we start with art this bat girl film yes if it's done and you showed it to a test audience

SPEAKER_85: it's done done it's edited it's got special effects in it yeah i mean it's mostly it's mostly done yeah

SPEAKER_65: okay how bad must this film be for it to be canned i don't think we know that for sure uh it apparently got uh you know a a rating ratings from those test audiences were in the 60 percent range which is not amazing but we've certainly seen films that get those kinds of tests and then go on to become popular films uh it chapter one tested in the same exact range went on to become a monster hit so quite

SPEAKER_67: literally a monster hit yeah i don't exactly i don't think this is batgirl's terrible there was that new york post article came out and said batgirl sucks but like they like they like a headline who cares they like the saltiest take we we don't know and and the cal like the the pedigree of the film is pretty good the the bad boys three directors directed it they also recently did moon knight and

SPEAKER_93: ms marvel for disney plus which were well regarded leslie grace is terrific she was in the heights

SPEAKER_96: wait but michael keaton is in this and they came here's the bad guy like wait a second anticipated

SPEAKER_00: movie i'm just saying yes and the right wing is like oh good they dumped this woke movie right that

SPEAKER_99: has a woman of color latina woman batman batgirl exactly muslim directors i'm just saying like you

SPEAKER_101: have that you have a whole bunch of celebration over on breitbart about it yeah i mean for clicks if you

SPEAKER_103: take what the wb discovery team is saying it's a look it is a culture war look and it's a choice

SPEAKER_67: to to try on that look but they also they also have a latina fronted supergirl movie that's still in the works that we could hear about what's going on there and there's a blue the blue beetle movie

SPEAKER_113: that i have questions they're also is latino he's a mexican actor that's coming out or they got canned

SPEAKER_65: we don't know the status of those very much up in the air because they're in the same category of these are hbo max originals and that's what seems to be the problem is it seems like the hbo team casey bloys his longtime team exactly what you're saying the west world game of thrones developers that team

SPEAKER_67: seems like it's gonna be okay it's this hbo max originals that are in danger all right i'm starting

SPEAKER_19: to piece something together here there are some tax savings that are occurring yes and dc

SPEAKER_18: is super important i said this the other day i did my little role playing of david zaslov coming in to meet the dc team and he came in and he said okay what should you know marvel said this great success and i see dc you know i'm the new owner here i'm in charge tell me what made marvel so successful and they go around the table all people explain marvel phases and characters and you know how they

SPEAKER_11: cast things how important that was right lon and they said well why aren't we doing that and then crickets with this just fakaka crazy dc strategy of like there's a flash on or batman or a green arrow

SPEAKER_04: occurring on this network tv show that sucks and then there's like the justice league and that kind of sucks and then there's a snyder verse and that's kind of better it's just too much not coordinated

SPEAKER_11: action it's a management disaster and he just fires everybody and lo and behold here we are he's firing everybody because there is another management issue and i've said this i had hbo then i had hbo now then

SPEAKER_04: i had hbo max i just want hbo i don't need you to put a superlative or a plus or a now or this or that i don't need hbo two three four five it's enough it's hbo i know what hbo means to me as a value

SPEAKER_123: proposition you have to call it max so this is dumb to have two different content teams when we all know hbo made sopranos the wire game of thrones we know what hbo means don't it's the idea of it's hbo and

SPEAKER_65: it's the warner brothers so like you're also getting the wb movies you're also getting that that library and

SPEAKER_126: the the cartoon network it doesn't mean anything to it doesn't mean anything to consumers it came

SPEAKER_67: from of the new brand because it's it's not just hbo it's it's all these other warner media holdings

SPEAKER_19: are so he's cleaning house so now we're onto the we're onto the organization structure and the merger

Chamath Palihapitiya: he's got a clean house and get this thing aligned sure this movie is bad but it also doesn't make sense that he wouldn't release it well he said it's a 60. but anyway so yeah we don't know so what

SPEAKER_65: they're saying is that it's in this in-between category jason kylar the last team the warner media team before the merger their dictate from at&t the owners of the company at the time was you got to

SPEAKER_67: compete with netflix you got to complete with disney plus beef up the hbo max service that was the goal

SPEAKER_65: and so that was when he's making the decision pull all warner brothers movies from theaters we're

SPEAKER_05: putting them all on hbo max opening weekend that's the other big part of the bat the bat girl part of this is that it was scheduled to be released simultaneously on streaming and movies and he

SPEAKER_65: it was always kind of aimed for streaming right that girl was always kind of aimed for streaming because that was the other part of this strategy was we're also going to make

SPEAKER_67: mid-budget movies just for hbo max never go into theaters just for hbo max and that's really what they're rolling back right now they don't want to do that anymore zaslav seems to feel pretty strongly if we make a movie we gotta you need to make the money that you would make at the box office we can't it's just a lost leader to put it on streaming i think to me that's what we're running is that a

SPEAKER_139: valid strategy is is that is that a valid point from zaslav i think so i mean i think what we're

SPEAKER_93: running into is the reality that stream that you can't it's hard to make money developing new

SPEAKER_65: expensive projects for a streaming platform got it we just don't you don't know how much you can really make per new project from new signups after a while you're throwing expensive content at people

SPEAKER_67: who are already signed up and i think that's what he's running into right now and so it's like well we got to spend a lot less on the content that we're presenting to the people who've already we probably don't need to spend what we're spending to keep these people who already signed up on hbo max so let's massively cut our spend and see if we can hang on to all the subscribers listen i am paying

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SPEAKER_147: top gun maverick best film of the year you see the success of uh thor uh there's been other notable

SPEAKER_148: yeah i think it did pretty well yeah yeah things are doing well yeah people want to go out so molly

SPEAKER_124: how much of this minions how much of this has to do with jurassic world we've seen we've seen a few movies getting unbelievable this level so certainly go back to that i i think that's what this is about

SPEAKER_00: right oh i'm sure that's what this is about i think it's the what you know and lon you tweeted about this it's sort of this there's a couple ways to approach this like you could move forward with a new strategy and start that strategy without killing a bunch of stuff that's already basically done right like i get the they're probably good financial reasons like kill it for a tax write-off or something um there's a way to be a wartime ceo that doesn't necessarily alienate so many people this much or make them so worried about the brand like lon was tweeting if you take stuff away and you take away this like really high quality i mean our perception of hbo because of everything you've said extends to hbo max in some ways because like the hbo brand is like good stuff and so here comes this company and they're like we're killing this and we're killing this and we're killing this and there's some like social justice stuff attached to it that is like kind of icky feeling maybe and then on top of that you're like but chip and joanna gaines are going to be on there with the you know makeover shows and and the the there does seem to be this perception at least on twitter that like now we're just going to like mergers ruin everything we're just going to be flooded with

SPEAKER_67: a bunch of shitty netflix stuff yeah i agree i think there was a probably a gentler way to do this and it definitely seems like he's drawing this weird line in the sand like batgirl was like we could put 40 million more into it and make it look like a theatrical film and release it in theaters but we don't want to spend that money we could just put it out as is on hbo max and just let people know we're not going to do this anymore but now we don't want to do that we want to move forward with this new strategy so just kill it and i feel like that's a that's a risky thing to sell to fans and to filmmakers we're just going to kill you know what if you make a movie for us and

SPEAKER_18: we might just kill it like it seems profoundly unfair to the people who put effort into this sure to get this close to the finish line in canon if it's a 60. right yeah it's unnecessary i i would

SPEAKER_04: if it was a 30 or 40 if it was an embarrassment and it would damage the batman brand and they had big plans for batman maybe maybe i could see but that would have to be like a real dog of a film

SPEAKER_163: right like a laughable right there's no sense that it's that i i would struggle with these guys did you

SPEAKER_67: guys i don't know if you saw bad boys for life it's terrific i have a hard time believing those guys would turn in a terrible unwatchable batgirl film i mean sony just released morbius if if morbius could come out in theaters i have a hard time believing batgirl's too terrible but i do i feel like

SPEAKER_65: they're they're creating this problem which is if you start making this change these changes on the heels of canceling things people were excited for the perception whether it's true or not becomes that the new stuff you're doing comes at the expense of the old stuff people like and it might be like a

SPEAKER_00: business you know assassination move that's that's smart in the long term that's what it is you know

SPEAKER_170: what it is though it's a it's a pr own goal well it's also i feel like anytime there's a new

SPEAKER_67: creative team coming in there is also that instinct to like the stuff your predecessors did is kind of

SPEAKER_65: lose lose not my project if it succeeds your new strategy looks dumb because the stuff people were

SPEAKER_67: doing before you is working and if it fails what are you doing releasing that crap it's a it's a turkey and so it's like what what does he really stand to gain perception wise by releasing something the old team green lid anyway if he doesn't believe in it but what does he stand to lose also like well and then you create this like every like hacks fans are now terrified like what if season three of hacks doesn't happen because that's an hbo max original and like you don't want to worry the hacks fans that's an emmy winning show i like that show and they killed they canceled snowpiercer they're not

SPEAKER_05: gonna make that anymore like people like that show all the tbs i mean it literally is like look if you take i mean it just it's the the vibe i was getting from twitter is like if you're gonna take away snowpiercer and batgirl and you know maybe hacks and you're gonna give us chip and joanna gaines like

SPEAKER_179: this is not this is what are you talking about that i'm so into it feels like what is chip and joanna

SPEAKER_182: gaines i don't understand i don't speak french they're like hgtv they're like a hgtv couple that does

SPEAKER_65: like cutesy cottage makeovers they do a show called fixer upper uh one of those home renovation shows where they help people renovate their their their family home but they got so popular discovery

SPEAKER_67: he's actually given them their own cable network so the magnolia network on your cable dial

SPEAKER_65: is programmed entirely with home renovation diy fix it kind of content from this couple like produced

SPEAKER_93: by chip and joanna gaines right so like good for them but snowpiercer own the town of waco texas

SPEAKER_45: they're totally on the town oh i do know about this they have a cute line in target i have the

SPEAKER_136: mirror yeah and she's also because joanna gains also hosts a cooking show called the magnolia table

SPEAKER_121: so they're really spidering into a lot of these different like all the areas that discovery kind

SPEAKER_04: of specializes in these are the people who bought like they i'm looking at this thing they got these like silos or whatever the magnolia place these people seem completely insufferable they renovate

SPEAKER_192: barns and old buildings this is the last this is the couple this is the couple when they show up at

SPEAKER_195: the dinner party i just go right to the other side i got to use the bathroom i got to make a call

SPEAKER_197: i mean let me tell you i do not want to sit between these two talking about crafts no offense

SPEAKER_110: no are you kidding me it's like michael's i bought the mirror that's what i bought what that's

SPEAKER_101: what i'm saying you took i would have watched batgirl probably 15 times and i'm not watching this like i'm just saying it's a perception problem the other thing is it like these are very

SPEAKER_65: these are great complimentary like topic you know like hbo content and discovery content hits totally

SPEAKER_67: different quadrants so it makes total sense to put them together like well you've got this for

SPEAKER_201: absolutely you know you got three reasons to subscribe you got dc comics cartoon network hbo

SPEAKER_86: and these insufferable workshop you just don't want to make it the perception that we're losing this

SPEAKER_207: stuff together oh yeah shark week exactly yeah it's great you want it to be a little bit of everything for everybody here on whatever this platform the whole family can enjoy one of these

SPEAKER_211: things this is that i got six wings at bat right mommy instead of kicking the nerds out of the

SPEAKER_212: tent which is how i feel right now like that was a big thing for disney right he's gonna reverse it

SPEAKER_133: launched he's gonna reverse it you get pixar you get marvel you get national geographic like disney did a really good job of star wars that one twitter just cartoons it's this it's that it's this

SPEAKER_219: i'm guaranteeing this is getting reversed majority chance this gets reversed the audience always wins

SPEAKER_223: it well then give us back they're gonna redo they're gonna i i i they're gonna they're gonna release background about background but now i weirdly do no the background they're gonna release this

SPEAKER_04: background they're gonna guarantee they release it it's gonna be this is like a snyder cut kind of play the audience is gonna revolt there's gonna be some twitter campaign somebody's gonna hire some

SPEAKER_198: bots and they're gonna release this then on snowpiercer i don't know they could wind up i'm not

SPEAKER_93: watching it i'm just saying haxing on tbs also axed uh there's a comedy show called chad nassim pedrad

SPEAKER_67: she used to be on snl she plays a teenage boy named chad they have a season in the can they made it produced done but tbs decided no more scripted comedy so they're just never going to release it

SPEAKER_110: it's sitting i don't agree with this you can't do this to the artist that's if you made it it's that's

SPEAKER_52: what i'm saying it's a bad reputational look like if you made it release it don't screw creatives

SPEAKER_67: that will come back to haunt you yeah it's bad from a creator relationship if you were going to

SPEAKER_238: make a show you would now hesitate before doing it for warner because well is it going to see the

SPEAKER_242: light of day yeah well in fairness though he is canceling anything with john cena so that's good um because i just that guy's like i had enough of him um was it good oh i just saw like the trailer for it and i was like i just i don't know i got the boys on amazon i'm good um so interesting

SPEAKER_249: parallels but it's a very different show i really enjoyed it listen it's been a big summer for

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SPEAKER_04: please so they know i sent you this is going to become i think zaslov is taking dramatic action early i like it now do they still own cnn is that still part of this yes in fact we also another announcement

SPEAKER_67: today a lot of the cnn library is going to discovery plus so as we're getting all these magnolia shows are going to hbo max cnn films and originals are going to discovery plus so they're

SPEAKER_65: going to get the stanley tucci travel show the full anthony bourdain library cnn film stuff that's all

SPEAKER_264: going to live on discovery plus well now hold on one thing i'm not understanding is is all of this

SPEAKER_128: under one bundle so if i pay you 15 bucks for hbo max do i get discovery plus and everything

SPEAKER_65: what we will probably hear today during the earnings call some kind of so far we don't know

SPEAKER_67: that nothing's formally been announced about hbo max and discovery plus themselves joining forces

SPEAKER_238: we're still talking about them like two totally separate entities but i don't know how much longer

SPEAKER_18: that's going to last would you put everything under hbo or discovery hbo because hbo is the greatest brand of the collection the most well respected but discovery is a close second so what would you do molly lon would you if you had to pick one to put it under the umbrellas the umbrella discovery and it

SPEAKER_11: has hbo and cartoon network or do you say it's hbo and it has discovery and all this other stuff

SPEAKER_264: which one because it's got to be one brand there has to be one brand going forward it can't be multiple lead brands when i subscribe to something you gotta give me something like hulu

SPEAKER_05: you know yeah when you put it under hbo max and then you'd go there and it would be like when you open up disney and you have the marvel portal and this portal and but i think it has

SPEAKER_272: to that's what i would do hbo portable and i think it has to be under hbo max that's what i guess that

SPEAKER_00: actually makes perfect sense to me like it's hbo and all the max and maximum awesome all concluded

SPEAKER_273: now zaslov spent all this time building discovery so maybe

SPEAKER_93: he feels a little ego with the discovery brand i mean the top three definitely in the u.s the top three are definitely netflix disney plus hbo max yeah so you gotta go with your winner you can't get

SPEAKER_238: like it'd be foolish to leave the hbo max brand on the table when it's more notable more people have it more popular than discovery plus if he pushes discovery plus down our throats and tries to kill

SPEAKER_235: hbo max jacal you better sell yeah yeah i don't feel like that anyway here's what i like if you care about shark week and fix it shows but the hbo brand is strong on a much broader level yeah now dc

SPEAKER_18: should be given to the creatives at hbo to run because they know storytelling and they'll make it

SPEAKER_242: serious and interesting or should they build a team like the uh what is it feige feige yeah

SPEAKER_04: should they find a feige or and should that be snyder no or should they just give it to hbo and say hey hbo you know how to do this build a team in the hbo world it's a fascinating question i mean i i

SPEAKER_65: don't know the i i don't know that anybody else could just take what marvel did and like do enough it was

SPEAKER_292: very it was like threading a needle okay marvel did i i feel like dc's overall strategy isn't

SPEAKER_93: terrible and it's produced like the batman did really well it was really good joker did really well it was really good aquaman did really well it was good uh wonder woman fantastic they've they've

SPEAKER_00: had hits so i don't know man with christian bale the only reason you think it's a dog is because of the snyder like bot war like literally the snyder cut bots created this broader umbrella impression well that the dc brand is kind of a dog and sure it hasn't performed as well justice league but it's

David Friedberg: not a dog i would say justice league is what i i know it's done okay but the justice league and that we just mentioned yeah the just the original justice league and batman versus superman were very

SPEAKER_93: disappointing well that they're but i mean birds of prey was kind of disappointing all through all the ones

SPEAKER_172: that i mentioned right yeah after all the ones i mentioned there were other examples of ones that

SPEAKER_65: didn't hit so that's what they're missing is they don't have that marvel consistency where everyone that comes out does a baseline hundred million is this because out on it but is this because of their

SPEAKER_18: casting and directorial mercurial quixotic approach to this which is everybody gets to play the joker everybody gets to play batman everybody gets to make their version of this because i do in some ways

SPEAKER_128: really appreciate the joker and you know what they did there and you know but i i kind of feel like you know i want to have my iron man i want to have my black widow and i want to just know who's playing

SPEAKER_65: that person and just walk into it i don't know i feel very confused you've got the casting one pipeline you've got marvel studios it all goes through kevin feige he's the deciderer and like even the disney

SPEAKER_67: plus shows don't have show writers they only have head writers or show show runners they only have head writers because kevin feige is the show runner and like all these movies they say you know oh it's directed by sam raimi or taika waitini or chloe zhao it's co-directed by them and kevin feige okay at warner's you do not have that you've got the dc comics team and they've got dc films and then you've got the warner brothers team and these two teams are both making these movies and sometimes the warner team is like we're working with this director and they don't want to have involvement from you know christopher nolan doesn't want people from dc looking over his shoulder so we're giving him final cut dc you don't have a say in the moon you know like marvel doesn't ever have that there's no like hey

SPEAKER_309: i'm going to decide what thor does this time kevin feige knocks on your door and says no he's going over

SPEAKER_18: to this planet so this is a molly decision of you know do you let people you know take their own spin on things and you have a decentralized control and decision making or centralized control decision

SPEAKER_11: making if it's decentralized you can get these incredible moments like the joker or you know uh you know the batman or the christopher nolan versions of batman you get these incredible

SPEAKER_07: moments of excellence which you can also get these things that are just incongruous to the you know the great moments and then we're never going to see christian bell and joaquin phoenix

SPEAKER_312: you know and i'm trying to think of who's played these roles the best ben affleck jared leto i wouldn't want jared letter to come in there i want him patinson he's like he's just gone he did pretty

SPEAKER_309: good passing i think um now we've got barry keegan as our new joker all right paul dano is the real

SPEAKER_253: all right all right so i like where it's going and this leads to i guess roku and paramount plus did

SPEAKER_00: pretty good right yeah so this is another interesting like uh branding shoving down our throats that i wasn't sure was going to work when you know cbs went from all access and rolled it all in i think right to paramount plus and paramount plus it seems like has sort of become low-key indispensable there was something actually that i went to watch the other day and my brother was like it's on paramount plus you got to get it and anyway now paramount plus seems to be doing well enough and seems to be having enough uh can't miss content that it's now launching as a premium subscription within the roku channel they'll have this ad supported essential plan that costs 4.99 a month and the ad free premium plan for 9.99 a month within roku what one what's your take on paramount plus what's what's so valuable here that roku would make it part of the offering they have

SPEAKER_136: that leg up on you know say a netflix or an amazon they're apple they're not starting from scratch they've

SPEAKER_67: got this vast library they can pull from uh so you know that they can do a star trek strange new worlds they can become a hit that's drawing on this audience of star trek fans that was already there and they're making theatrical films already so they had the lost city with sondra bullock and channing tatum that's now a paramount plus exclusive sonic the hedgehog 2 that's now a paramount plus exclusive uh the jackass movies are on there the other big advantage they have is cbs is already a player in the sports world so whereas a lot of these other services have to go out and start amazon's like making an nfl deal so they can get sports all the cbs sports deals now are just paramount plus deals as well so even during the earnings report today they highlighted champions league soccer as like a huge draw in european territories that you can watch these or even in you know north america where people are soccer fans they can just watch all these cbs sports matches right from paramount plus right away so yeah i mean i think they're they're seeing some success they've got 64 million subscribers to all the paramount streaming services worldwide which also includes showtime that's the other thing to to bear in mind and they also on pluto tv which is the the one of the bigger free ad supported streaming services that's been growing they're at uh around 70 million monthly active users now huh so is paramount

SPEAKER_128: going to consolidate all of this like is showtime going to be under paramount and be part of like one

SPEAKER_05: subscription price i feel like and can that just please start to include cinemax i only want to watch one thing on skinemax and it's strike back that's and it's so stupid i know it is it's hbo cinemax would

SPEAKER_207: be under the wb discovery and strike back something that's just absorb it for god's sake was originally

SPEAKER_67: a cinemax show and they're making a new season of it for hbo max right now so yeah but they don't not all the cinemax shows made it to hbo max for some reason it must be a rights issue

SPEAKER_219: but showtime is cbs did you use overshare this might be tmi molly i don't strike back

SPEAKER_101: is this like a cinemax it's not i call i call the channel skinemax and i will never stop but strike back is like freaking awesome i thought this was after midnight situation

SPEAKER_00: uh it's a weird name that's a weird name but no it is amazing if you just want like a awesome stupid action like team show with tons of betrayals and you never know who's going to die it is the

SPEAKER_264: greatest if you could only have one paramount or netflix which you go for if it included showtime which would you go for lon i mean there's a lot i i've been saying with

SPEAKER_93: paramount there's like only one or two things on there at a time that i like but i really like them

SPEAKER_65: like i love strange new world i love evil which is on there right now and which is terrific interesting but i mean netflix netflix has more stuff i got okay not as much of it reaches that point where i'm like excited to check it out every week so i don't know to be clear hbo max with the collection we

SPEAKER_218: talked about for you would be you would pick that over netflix i think right now hbo max is probably

SPEAKER_350: the the overall you could only have one netflix or uh hbo max oh it's hbo max it's okay max i'm just

SPEAKER_353: i think i feel max to be i'm making j trades based on your opinion just so you know max and hulu i think

SPEAKER_238: right now are they're both like ascendant like those are by far i think the two strongest right

SPEAKER_355: now in terms of the content and hulu of course is owned by disney it is right yeah so i have my

SPEAKER_285: disney stock i have my warner brothers hbo stock i don't own netflix i don't own paramount so just so

SPEAKER_128: people know how i'm playing this i feel like i'm betting on the winners and i'm not betting on the

SPEAKER_93: losers i'm not shorting the losers or the also runs but paramount is is pretty close like they're

SPEAKER_65: one acquisition away from a real like a real killer offering like if you if paramount brought in showtime and then they grabbed like lions gate now you've got now you've got a competitive sort of

SPEAKER_67: interesting it's like something something like that i feel like they're one they're they're like

SPEAKER_363: one new content library way like if amc and and uh paramount united unstoppable if you're running a

SPEAKER_364: startup you know that every little bit of help counts between running your team building the product

SPEAKER_18: getting compliant hiring people studying customer support everything it's overwhelming i know that i work with y'all every day but the microsoft for startups founders hub is here to help you they're going to help you build a better startup from day one whether you're plugged into silicon valley or not microsoft for startup founders hub is a digital platform created by founders for founders and they give you amazing benefits the first one right off the bat unbelievable up to a hundred fifty thousand dollars in azure credits and then one-to-one technical advisory on scalability best practices security your tech stack all that stuff and you get access to a huge mentor network plus free dev tools like github enterprise access to partners like open ai bubble and others free microsoft software including

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SPEAKER_07: pen get a paper aka.ms this week in startups that's simple aka.ms this week in startups as we wrap here

SPEAKER_11: we talked about uh doing a show bible and a pilot episode yeah of ruga is that you pronounce her name

SPEAKER_141: ruha or ru i i i i would i would love to get a ruja ignatova i believe is how you and that's how i've been

SPEAKER_274: saying all right as we wrap up here you've started to investigate this you got a researcher you're

SPEAKER_292: working with there's a there's a bbc reporter named jamie bartlett who's really done the the best work i think or the most thorough work on this story he wrote a book called the missing crypto queen that i

SPEAKER_67: have read oh okay great so i had uh he also made a bbc podcast then the by i have a researcher drew grant she's listening to that while i read the book so we'll we'll have we'll we'll share notes after that's done for anything that was in one and not the other got it so based on what you know is this going to be a

SPEAKER_93: great streaming series i think there's a ton of potential here i i think what i what i really like

SPEAKER_67: about it and what i think that this hits so well because i don't know how much you know about her scam we don't have to get into the the deep i know a decent amount i haven't listened to i

SPEAKER_65: haven't read the book but she's really bringing together two scams in one it's multi-level marketing it's a multi-level marketing scam and it's a crypto scam in one so the idea is your multi-level marketing your sales people instead of selling knives or workout tapes or skin cream or whatever they're selling crypto and then they're getting their money from their downstream like all the other sales people working under them they're getting like 60 of it in cash 40 of it in the coin that they're selling so it's like a double it's like a it's like a double scam and i think what that gets across so well it's a great way to explore the entire concept of crypto investment and how it was people who understood it kind of hoping to appeal how do they sell this to people who don't understand it but we want to take their money anyway i think this story is a fascinating look into that world because the the book makes it clear not only did most of the people buying one coin not

SPEAKER_67: really understand crypto most of the people she was hiring to sell one coin didn't understand it either it was like her and two other people really got what was going on and nobody else even knows enough to ask the right questions and that's why i think this is such a fascinating so this is going to be

Chamath Palihapitiya: another one of these situations where there could be multiple people writing the same story because

SPEAKER_377: they sold that series to new regency already oh wow i didn't even know yeah so i mean that's obvious but this is like the elizabeth holmes thing there could be multiple swings at bat here sure so

SPEAKER_379: then i was thinking about this there's the we're making the real story with the real names about

SPEAKER_93: these real people right the other option would be this would not be that hard to fictionalize not use real names not use real people just use as a jumping off point right inspired by

SPEAKER_382: okay cool all right so we'll talk about that offline but i think that's a good yeah that's

SPEAKER_67: a conversation we should have is like do we want to make this do we want me to stick to the facts

SPEAKER_172: or take this as a jumping off a springboard for a picture yeah my gut was with the latter like it's

SPEAKER_194: an interesting springboard i wonder if there are one or two other crypto stories that you could weave

SPEAKER_195: into this right where you know there's like the nft of like the i don't know loosely based on the the

SPEAKER_11: apes and then there's the the satoshi bitcoin creator and you weave multiple stories of crypto insanity

SPEAKER_390: exactly over an arcing series right and then is it is it an open-ended are we leaving this for

SPEAKER_67: maybe there's a season two yes are we closing it out because it's a real story and like here's what happens all discussions that we should have all right well done salon all right thank you all right

SPEAKER_285: well we'll see you next week well done see you next week see you guys at lawns all right everybody next up our series a segment continues with the very popular social app lock it getting a decent

SPEAKER_04: amount of funding and then we talk about m a or not lena khan making her first big move at the ftc

SPEAKER_00: maybe trying to shut down a little bit of m a in a test case that could reverberate throughout the

SPEAKER_18: industry uh it's big news it's big news enjoy all right what's going on in series a and m a molly

SPEAKER_05: so i don't think this is technically a series a but i don't care because it's a super interesting raise

SPEAKER_00: in a in a verdict in a topic bucket that we've been talking about non-stop lock it so we've been talking about the latest in social apps and all this competition and lock it is one of these new contenders alongside be real and uh paparazzi that's just been kind of hot lately and just raised 12 million dollars with investors including open ai ceo sam altman instagram co-founder mike krieger and quora ceo adam d'angelo so this is so interesting because not only we've been talking about this rachel and i talked all about be real while you were out and kind of like what the kids are doing and who which app everybody seems to be choosing and it's mostly been be real so i find it very interesting that these kind of like tech veterans and the instagram co-founder are actually putting their money into locket and the the conceit with this app is that users can take photos and post them to their friends home screens in like a widget and so whenever a friend takes a new photo the old one gets replaced so if your friends are like really fast you might miss a post or if your friends aren't a doubt adopting the app then you could have the same thing on your home screen for a while yeah but it also has this 20 friend restriction and we rachel made us a little video because of

SPEAKER_242: course she's like using all of these she's very social though rachel i watch her on the social i watch her on twitter she's getting quite a following uh producer rachel because she's hilarious

SPEAKER_11: she's pretty funny yeah um path.com had this as well there's something called the dunbar number uh you can look it up basically it was a study done by a professor basically it figured out who the

SPEAKER_242: connectors were in the world people who knew a large number of people by first name is how you do the

SPEAKER_07: test so if i said to molly hey how many people do you know what the name mike list them all and i had a mic i can list them all some people were just off the charts in terms of how many mics they knew right these are people like me or possibly molly uh in fact they wrote a story about me in the new york are called the connector which was based on this concept the dunbar number that was a number that a lot of people in social in the first wave of social companies were aware of and that's how they came up with uh on path you could only have 50 people and then i think they made it 200 and path.com was really beautiful so yeah if you want the technical definition dunbar number by using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships and there were all kinds of tests to kind of prove

SPEAKER_143: this theory and then who you know kind of broke through it and social media molly does help you break this right you wind up who has 150 people in their social networks nobody people have thousands now yeah and what these apps are trying to do is bring it back down to a manageable number which is why

SPEAKER_242: you have close friends i think is the term they use on instagram which yeah instagram and facebook stole everything from dave more and actually even on twitter now they have close friends or your

SPEAKER_07: your circle actually they call it and google when they did google plus which was their failed attempt to compete with facebook but it's really actually a pretty good product they had a concept of circles

SPEAKER_413: where you could create circles and share things with just your circles now twitter's using that same term which is like your circle on there yeah so this is the same concept which is like circles you

SPEAKER_242: know narrow it down so that you can have a more loosey-goosey discussion maybe let your hair down a little bit which is what you say molly you're doing with group chat oh absolutely everything

SPEAKER_05: now everything i'm sorry to everybody who is waiting for like fun content on twitter i just

SPEAKER_00: um it's only text right now no but what's the other thing that i think is very interesting about locket is that um it's like uh you can have this kind of passive experience like rachel pointed out that she could see someone who isn't very tech native loving this because if you put this app and the widget on your phone it's like one of those digital picture frames like new pictures just keep rolling in yep and it's kind of this nice i like the idea that it's sort of a widgety picture frame that's just on your phone all the time and it's only people you really care about so this is a for those who are watching the video this is rachel scrolling through i guess the feed of the 20 friends you can sort of interact like you can send a reaction to somebody's picture it's less about like love me world

SPEAKER_07: i need validation you know kardashian instagram nonsense or tick tock trying to or tick tock

SPEAKER_05: where it's fed to you right this is like i actually do want to know what my friends are up to

SPEAKER_146: and that's it and that's it i mean this is one of the things that you know i'm trying to do in our

SPEAKER_07: in my life and in our life here on the program is we have the notice we have like the top 100 fans of the show who come every day watch live we know their names we're collecting their emails we're

SPEAKER_427: gonna make the noti 100 you know like our 100 super fans just to invite them to come hang out with

SPEAKER_07: us and have dim sum or sushi or pizza whatever and just chill so you get to know a smaller group of people but deeper and it's kind of fun you know especially when you have mass market products or followings like we we both have six figures worth of followers on twitter it's a bit overwhelming right and it's nice to to narrow it down i think that's a great device here for uh locket it seems

SPEAKER_430: like a great idea the problem with these companies the challenge since we're talking about this is you know um how quickly is zuck going to steal this idea and do it better right which is what he is

SPEAKER_433: um he's probably not going to do it better but he's going to do it with a network effect that is

SPEAKER_242: going to make it unstoppable right it doesn't do it well he'll take five swing that's true it has to be just the same but he tends to take five swings at bat and then eventually he makes it a little better if you think about instagram filters there's many more instagram filters than on i believe snap right he generally i think overwhelms me by the fifth version which he stole by the way speaking

SPEAKER_123: of stealing his stealing strategy is stolen from bill gates that's how much of a thief zuckerberg is

SPEAKER_436: he couldn't even come up with his own way of absconding from ideas like what bill gates does

SPEAKER_438: i'm just gonna literally he's a meta thief that's hysterical you know like because he named the company

SPEAKER_143: meta he's a meta thief and the reason he's such a meta thief is because what bill gates used to do

SPEAKER_07: is he'd like okay i have a platform windows build me apps and they're like okay here's lotus one through three and one word perfect he's like that's interesting i wonder if i built these in and made microsoft office what that would look like and he literally built microsoft word and word and excel and people laughed at how horrible those programs were compared to word perfect and then by version

SPEAKER_280: five yeah it just kept yours so right it just kept getting better version of three or four of word it

SPEAKER_07: was parody and then it got better and then it was built into the operating system and that's why they got that sec i'm sorry the um ftc action doj was doj because they were bundling this bundling strategy was so good bundling another way of just saying stealing your product and putting it in mind

SPEAKER_36: which is what zuckerberg does well and then forcing you to take the whole and then you have no choice

SPEAKER_445: as a consumer right and then taking away your previous choice and forcing you into it like

SPEAKER_04: they're doing with the tick tocks on reels right it's to the point at which people are complaining like okay we get it you're shoving it down our throats we don't want it they did that with the

SPEAKER_242: browser so and that was where they got themselves in a lot of trouble um and that's why they missed mobile because they just didn't want to do acquisitions or they just lost their aggressive edge

SPEAKER_40: well they had the doj in their business for a decade yes like they couldn't they were

SPEAKER_05: you know it cost them employees it's just such an interesting yes sorry and now we look at meta

SPEAKER_18: and this is a great segue yep when we talk about m a we talked about lena khan she's the incredibly young incredibly brilliant head of the ftc and she's taking her first action she is suing to block

SPEAKER_430: zucks acquisition of fitness app maker within unlimited so to be clear it's a vr fitness app maker

SPEAKER_05: right uh within the metaverse jim it's a metaverse in the parlance i'm gonna stop saying i'm gonna stop giving them any credit for metaverse that's so irritating also so annoying also stolen so it's

SPEAKER_110: stolen and stole the concept of meta let's just all the network now on new rule we only say virtual

SPEAKER_242: reality they don't get the rebrand they don't get the rebrand so they uh entered an agreement in

SPEAKER_264: october of 2021 this past october for 400 million dollars to buy this totally insignificant in terms of

SPEAKER_242: the size of this deal this company had raised money from emerson collective that's um steve jobs's widow um lorraine power uh lorraine pal jobs lorraine pal jobs thank you uh was an investor in it and um lena khan is saying that this is going to hinder you're like why wait what does this do to consumers

SPEAKER_264: this doesn't harm consumers this doesn't consolidate some huge position she believes that this is going

SPEAKER_07: to be anti-competitive in the future just remember this whole precog concept she was putting out there that like in the future this could cause something so she's trying to change the lens what do you think of this does this make any sense to you do you think they should be doing this do you think this is retribution because they didn't or like an overreaction because they didn't stop instagram and

SPEAKER_11: whatsapp and they're now trying to slow down uh facebook do you think it's just because of facebook's reputation or because of the political stuff with facebook what do you what are

SPEAKER_05: your thinking here i think it's definitely facebook's reputation right you she wouldn't necessarily i don't think that they would have i i 100 acknowledge and agree with you that this is a pretty risky

SPEAKER_00: way to come out of the gate like there were probably i mean the ftc has taken other antitrust actions before with sort of limited success or medium success there might have been a more traditional antitrust path forward here even like it might even have been less risky to try to i don't know unwind you know there were rumors that they might try to unwind the instagram acquisition or the whatsapp acquisition which tool is you know it's too late and that would have been incredibly difficult obviously facebook was very worried about that which is why they went ahead and like mash those two together yeah so quickly but it there's no question that this was part of the microsoft strategy that you just mentioned it's been part of facebook strategy for a really long time it's part of apple strategy every every one of these big companies when they see something that could be a future competitor goes out and buys it particularly zuck he goes out and buys it and he either disappears it

SPEAKER_430: or you know makes it part of the fold more often he steals it and sometimes he just seals it right

SPEAKER_00: sometimes he buys it and and kills the competition in the crib and there i am certain that at this point the lenicon ftc is thinking like well look we have yeah it's messed up sorry she probably feels

SPEAKER_05: like the case is bolstered by the fact that there were all those documents that the whistleblower released where it was very obvious that they that facebook executives identified instagram and

SPEAKER_00: whatsapp as threats and bought them as a result to to put them out of it right to get rid of them to get them out of the competitive mix so i'm sure she's thinking we have a smoking gun of this happening in the past uh this is okay i like it if we can win this then we set this really big precedent that says like hey you can't just go around buying whatever you want to kill it i that said i

SPEAKER_07: still think it's like gonna be an uphill climb i think they basically handed facebook the perfect antitrust case to battle um and it makes facebook look you know less predatory because it's like well this is a tiny little app and we are giving these you know entrepreneurs and investors a great win and but here's this is the reason why i think facebook is going to just absolutely get crushed in the next decade because of the stupid mission to try to bet the farm on vr apple and google would never make an acquisition like this why they want to be the platform and they don't want to overreach and be the platform and the application layer zuckerberg is taking his playbook after everybody

SPEAKER_242: watched him do it and kill zynga's apps and everything else and every partner they've ever had they've basically stabbed in the back whereas google and apple are going to say you know what apple and google could write those like you know those briefs like friends of the court briefs amicus briefs i guess yeah they could like do and i don't know if that is something that exists in the ftc when they do this stuff but the amicus brief is going to be like we're not going to buy these apps we're

SPEAKER_128: going to have an app store where they can fight it out and uh it'll be better for consumers that everybody fights it out in an app store and the best app wins and we'll have competition and apple apple's going to just say like you know look at all the high quality stuff we have in our app store google will say the same thing why would you let them just sweep through the app store and buy the

SPEAKER_479: top 20 apps yep and it's such a stupid strategy by suck stupid strategy really is a mistake because

SPEAKER_00: by buying the other thing that that the ftc has in its corner on this one is that when you buy competition you start to tread into the easiest of all antitrust complaints which is the original test does it harm consumers does it cost consumers more and at the end of the day if there's only one place to get all your virtual reality stuff and that's meta then there's going to be a pricing concern whether that price is you know paid in data or in lack of competition so by trying to remove any competition from the market by buying it i think i do think that facebook that meta made a huge strategic error here it's a real stretch by lena khan and the ftc but it's not i don't it's not impossible that

SPEAKER_05: they end up putting a stop to this and then that will have a massive chilling effect for all kinds of

SPEAKER_358: tech companies yeah i mean who is advising facebook oh right he has super voting shares nobody right

SPEAKER_07: exactly he's this is where like the king cheryl sandberg and other folks around him were beneficial

SPEAKER_11: maybe they kept him on the rails this is such a stupid decision you don't need to buy these applications and then have lena khan be like oh oh look thank you thank you for putting this in my lap now i don't

SPEAKER_07: think it's a perfect case but i do see all the pent-up hate and distrust of facebook and zuckerberg specifically you know he's got no friends guys got no friends zero friends zero friends zuck you know the people who even worked with him you know like they don't stick around him it's the weirdest thing i've ever seen you know like usually in silicon valley when you make all these friends they kind of stick around and you make people billionaires they kind of be friends for life you're kind of a squad and like doesn't seem to cultivate a squad of loyal people around him because he's not loyal himself and this kind of stuff catches up with you it's no way to live if you're an entrepreneur watching this this is like how not to enjoy your life and be a great entrepreneur you could be successful but i don't think you're going to enjoy your life when you create this much animosity around how you do business suck is the worst of silicon valley like literally the worst actor in silicon valley i believe is zuckerberg yeah i can't really disagree

SPEAKER_05: but he's uploaded his consciousness and he's mostly robot now so i guess he doesn't care

David Friedberg: no it's just like you would think somebody who is around him would just say hey schmuck

Jason Calacanis: well i think they have and then the ones who used to say that have are leaving i mean that's what the thing maybe that's what happens when you become a king who's richer than god is people stop telling you the truth and you eventually just weed out the ones who would tell you the truth and you know you have to acknowledge at some point he's probably a different person now than he was then

SPEAKER_12: yeah he was very impressionable in the beginning like and now he's i don't think people can get to

SPEAKER_242: him stupid i mean it's actually i kind of like the fact that he's doing stupid making these stupid mistakes um like putting all this money into vr that's going to be a disaster making these crazy mna things when he knows he's under a microscope stupid these are stupid decisions and i think people

SPEAKER_07: who are working there are now looking at their options and saying like this guy is going to run us off a cliff he he burned like three billion dollars last quarter or something like that on this fakakka vr you know uh mission that nobody believes in there's nobody who works at facebook who

SPEAKER_182: is passionate about vr there's nobody there nobody uses it i hear that all the people on the meta

SPEAKER_00: team love working on the they love working on the ocular like the oculus team has been the happiest place at facebook for a long time from what i hear internally and people really want to be on that team and really want to be because how fun is it to be on the board with three billion dollars stop resources that's where all the juices like that's it's you know it's like you can have whatever you want if you're on the oculus team i think it's fun as hell like they love it so that's

SPEAKER_05: my point is we have to keep in mind is like from the outside we're like and internally they're like

SPEAKER_242: this couldn't be more fun okay yes and certainly compared with optimizing the facebook privacy

SPEAKER_353: invading ad tracking machines can't be fun either so it's like its own version of hell right but

SPEAKER_398: purgatory but here's drinking the kool-aid you're like we're building the future this is but to my

SPEAKER_18: point i i just don't think the people who are even there are going home and putting on a vr headset or can't wait on the weekend to do vr that's the thing i don't think that anybody enjoys vr it's just not fun there's yeah i mean there's like only three or four things i can think of that really make vr worth doing education some of the lightsaber games were like interesting enough for me to try them and then like want to play them one more time but even if the fidelity gets great i still don't want to do it i would do it for getting better at a sport like if you told me i could go in

SPEAKER_07: the simulator and get better at skiing or mountain biking and it would be like an instructor and i would learn certain techniques and i could see it in 360. perhaps i think everything is ar now if zuck is doing the vr and investing all this money just as a precursor to ar then maybe it's a brilliant strategy

SPEAKER_246: but i just think he's gonna get his ass handed to him by google's play store and apple's app store

SPEAKER_05: i think there's gonna be a lot of fun to be had in vr i think there's fun to be had in vr now and

SPEAKER_00: it's only gonna keep getting better would i bet my entire money printing machine on it probably not

SPEAKER_05: when's the last time you used it when my aunt was visiting because she plays this multiplayer vr game every single night that's the first i've ever heard of this hold on yeah this is somebody over

SPEAKER_512: the age of 50 yes who plays vr every night every night what game plays i don't think it's called like

SPEAKER_515: elven scroll or i don't want to mix it up with the elven ring because it's not that

SPEAKER_00: elder elden elvin i'm gonna ask we need to have her on the show no no every single night so then i'm in there and i'm like playing and you're like and i'm like doing the bow and arrow and there are people like shouting at me but also being nice like they're really nice to each other like it's this like friendly community and they like shoot monsters together i'm not kidding every night and she was like did you get the oculus 2 yet did you get it yet are you gonna get the oculus 2 and then you should really i think like i actually think that if you imagine if you weren't that she is not in this category but if you like weren't that healthy and you i mean you could imagine a scenario where it's actually like boomer popular okay all right i mean i think like i don't i wouldn't say thank you calvin i just i i'm not ready to like completely i think there's gonna be a future for vr i don't think it's gonna be as big as zuckerberg needs it to be to justify his investment and i don't want to see them own it but i'm not going to write off the whole i'm not willing

SPEAKER_242: to everybody believes in the whole pill all right fine everybody believes in ar so we have consensus on that like if they make glasses light enough you could all see i can't wait for that yeah i mean if you were getting your maps and a heads-up display like you get in your car where projects on the screen that's just like a no-brainer you could see a thousand applications there and that's gonna take like four or five cycles of those glasses at least for them to be reasonably weighted which i put it at 2030 you know it's a 10-year play 2032 i could see i could see in no sooner than 2030 us walking around with ar glasses now for vr i could see some edge cases like we had the guy in from golf plus and he said some people were using it all the time i could see if i was a golfer

SPEAKER_143: or i was a skier and i'm gonna go to hokkaido i would want to do a ski simulation of that mountain if it was really good to just see the different runs and maybe plan it out i could see doing that

SPEAKER_07: all old people in an old age home should have oculuses put on their faces they should not be allowed to remove them and they should be given psychedelics and feel like they're 20 years old again

SPEAKER_512: it's the loculus the loculus it's literally like we're making ip on this show slow clap slow clap

SPEAKER_274: oh no the loculus absolutely it would be unbelievable that should be zuckerberg's market this is jail now

SPEAKER_05: this is what basically jail it's like you're in uh what's the the sylvester stallone one and then they like the movie and then they lock them up at the end is a demolition man i don't know there's

SPEAKER_242: like one where they put them in uh running man that was Arnold when he was in a uh but it's like wally they did it in wally yeah that was yeah that was steve jobs trolling anyway this is going to be very interesting on an m a front can't wait keep it up go lena khan there's got to be 20 more facebook cases all right here's lena khan's quotes just so we have them here even if it's not a slam dunk case even if there is a risk you might lose there can be enormous benefits from taking that

SPEAKER_266: risk i think what we can see is that inter inaction after inaction after inaction can have severe cost and that's what we're really trying to reverse so this is the whole concept of you know mean you

SPEAKER_143: know looking to the future and saying is competition going to be harmed in the future

SPEAKER_07: not does this harm competition today it's a really hard thing and it's a different metric for evaluating

SPEAKER_00: what antitrust and competition looks like previously it's all been this consumer harm does it does it harm consumers and that's been translated into prices but what the argument that they're making now is

Jason Calacanis: is that consumer harm occurs when there's not enough competition period right so does this will

SPEAKER_11: this squash competition in the future so one would say through the same lens that amazon buying whole

SPEAKER_07: foods or one medical is going to potentially do that in the future and any person with any basic level of creativity or knowing the arc of history could look at any acquisition because you wouldn't acquire it if it didn't have a chance to be successful and say yes that's going to create a monster one medical is going to automatically be given to everybody with prime oh my god that's going

SPEAKER_555: to reduce competition but it might also delight users at lower costs so then exactly so you can't

Jason Calacanis: i don't know how to pricing and consumer harm is is the metric forever it's just not there's so many

SPEAKER_00: ways to apply your anti-competitive powers that don't translate into pricing that you have to come up with a new standard i think that's what the argument is did you did you want amazon to buy whole

SPEAKER_560: foods and one medical i cannot are you excited about those or neutral about the whole foods thing

SPEAKER_00: why i didn't want it because i felt like whole foods was like a sort of a successful chain that i could feel good about and i was afraid amazon was going to corporatize it and frankly like i got super i stopped shopping at whole foods because every time i went there they were like load your amazon app and i was like i don't need amazon to have my grocery data like i actually felt the data part of

SPEAKER_155: it i was like that's irritating but i'm kind of like that so and now how do you feel about it now i don't

SPEAKER_242: use whole foods i use it i just don't use it i am uh i was excited for both these acquisitions because i love amazon and i was like if you can make amazon prime work better and put more stuff

SPEAKER_04: into it and it's seamless great now i haven't seen that actually happen yet like whole foods the whole

SPEAKER_242: foods amazon integration is not well integrated we talked about this before so i'm kind of bummed about that i really just want to when i'm in the amazon app there should just be a whole foods logo when

SPEAKER_07: i click it it should just put all the whole foods stuff in the amazon interface and have it work just

SPEAKER_36: like prime does but i guess it doesn't

SPEAKER_463: and then instead they have the amazon fresh thing which might not be whole food like i'm super confused

SPEAKER_570: about amazon fresh yes it's like they put whole foods under amazon fresh no no clue what they're

SPEAKER_00: doing with whole foods and amazon fresh and so i just have opted out of all of it and i have no i do not believe for a second that amazon is going to do anything cool with one medical that's going to benefit consumers outside of like people who work at amazon they're just a big silo decentralized organization and one medicals is going to be one medical but it's not going to be some awesome

SPEAKER_242: integration i think they're going to 10x one medical i think they're going to 10x the number of locations and they're going to let you get uh amazon prime with one medical as an upsell for

SPEAKER_00: an extra 100 bucks i mean i would love that and i would do that in a freaking nanosecond but i don't

SPEAKER_577: i think that's five to ten years away at best okay we'll see i mean so we'll see that's my over

SPEAKER_00: under wait my over under five years five years five years before one medical is um integrated into prime this is an in a very interesting instance in which amazon runs my life in every other way but they literally ruined whole foods for me completely and now when you go into the store it's so depressing is it because it's just all delivery shoppers like it has none of that you are never going to meet

SPEAKER_05: a cute guy at the buffet ever again like that's just over it's all just kind of a sad weird amazon

SPEAKER_146: locker with delivery shoppers okay i got hit on once at the uh whole foods i didn't realize i was being hit on but i was like i was at the fish counter or something and the person like oh you know what do you think of this or whatever and i was like i don't know i'm just getting this and how do you make that and i was like all of a sudden i'm in a conversation and i was like oh i get it you're

SPEAKER_585: like oh it's whole foods that's what's happening it's literally like kind of a dating scene used to

SPEAKER_587: be now it's just now it's just delivery people is it gen x tinder this whole is whole foods in real

SPEAKER_512: life it was it used to be really and now it's ruined it's ruined i was married by this time but

SPEAKER_04: that's an interesting thing so what what is the gen z rachel irl dating scene like where what retail

SPEAKER_590: experience winds up being a dating scene is it like oh gosh that's a hard one i feel like just the

SPEAKER_591: the bar there's the bar no outside of a bar i said like a retail looking sort of like you know what

SPEAKER_593: actually is if you go to no i actually think it might be no like co-working spots oh of course

SPEAKER_595: definitely cause everybody yeah definitely co-working spot okay sure co-working yeah or hipster coffee

SPEAKER_596: i can see that but co-working that's genius co-working is so gene yeah hey what are you working

SPEAKER_598: on oh did you eat yet yeah i mean and look rivka it was built in here like the love was built into the

SPEAKER_600: product here there was beer there was the good stuff all right thanks for listening everybody and make

SPEAKER_00: sure to tune in tomorrow because we have a super interesting interview with alex skrill from nutrisense

SPEAKER_252: yes they enable continuous glucose monitoring with a coach to help you lose weight i used it it really

SPEAKER_11: did help me understand why i was gaining so much goddamn weight and it helped me lose weight and i'm an investor in the company so i'm really excited to have alex from nutrisense on they're absolutely

SPEAKER_06: crushing it this is going to be a big investment for me i think it's super interesting and it's just so

SPEAKER_00: interesting because we've been having this ongoing conversation about preventative healthcare solutions we're really building like we're building story arcs here yes i'm just saying we have

SPEAKER_155: a body of work on preventative care that's really fascinating the land b we had that episode com.com

SPEAKER_242: fitbod we're really thinking about preventative healthcare and individuals taking control of

SPEAKER_12: their healthcare as opposed to just handing it over to some doctors or you know insurance companies you

SPEAKER_588: gotta take control of it right have some agency tomorrow uh i'm gonna do the news solo because molly's gonna get a little well-earned vacation enjoy yourself sister i will but i miss you guys already

SPEAKER_607: okay bye bye bye bye we'll see you tomorrow