SPEAKER_00: you gotta rise up before you begin you fit all to it hey everybody welcome back besties are back SPEAKER_03: for the all-in podcast the queen of quinoa freeberg is here the dictator chamath and of course rain man david sacks and uh it's been a big week here in silicon valley with airbnb and wish both going public for over a hundred billion dollars combined anybody get their beak wet on SPEAKER_11: that one oh hey guys oh how are you david yeah i might i might have gotten my beak wet on on a couple SPEAKER_13: of those so oh a little beak wet huh well i you know what in celebration of your recent victory with airbnb and wish i will oh no i can't zoom in on my merch but i've got my unofficial wet your beak SPEAKER_15: mug so for those of you wondering we have to uh get a little bit of housekeeping out of the way at first here uh the merch has gone crazy have you guys been watching merch on twitter SPEAKER_18: of course anybody anybody got some of those i got some of those mugs i think they arrived today David Sacks: they look great it's amazing and you know the best decision we made was was not to let you sell t-shirts jason because you would have you would have you would have uh milked this for every every nickel you could and instead and instead we we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it i mean they're literally i know that hurt you i know that hurt you a little bit SPEAKER_27: i mean the the problem i'm having here no advertising i'm picking up all the production cost here i'm sending you guys equipment you maniacs lose the equipment every time you go from one of your estates to another estate i'm sending equipment to four different places anyway uh we've got a special very special episode for you today we are doing drum roll please we're gonna add some sound effects to this afterwards we're gonna do the bestie awards today so we're gonna go through the biggest winners in politics and business and cultures and of course the losers the flashes in the pan the best business moves the stupidest business we got a lot to get through um but just in terms of housekeeping again the all-in syndicate is up and running i think SPEAKER_30: there's 4 000 people have applied in 10 days let's just talk about the market cap of airbnb SPEAKER_31: wish for that matter what round did you invest in airbnb uh series c was that the founder's fund SPEAKER_35: round yeah yeah congrats thanks oh that's so yummy but to be honest that was already over a billion SPEAKER_41: dollar valuation correct yeah it was it was i mean it's still like 80 or 100x it's like a 40x right David Sacks: 40 it's like a 40 it's like a 40x or something like that so thank you thank you brian chesky thank you peter teal peter led that round and um brian was looking to include founders in the round uh and in addition to it being led by founders fund and so peter introduced me and that's how it happened SPEAKER_27: wow fantastic i uh did not get my b wet on that but i did mention airbnb on my podcast and that you know i've been trying to get brian on the podcast for i don't know a decade and i said you know i know you guys want to have on the pod i've asked him like literally every year for 10 years but i don't SPEAKER_35: think he likes me and then he emailed me said i listened to the podcast i like you i was like oh okay great will you come on he's like i'll come on so he's going to come on this year i think David Sacks: which will be great for this weekend well i think i think uh brian and the whole team really did a masterful job of uh navigating through the whole covid crisis i mean everybody forgets how negative the publicity was people were talking about airbnb as covid roadkill back in april i i tweeted a cnbc headline from back in april wondering whether airbnb was even going to survive and they navigated the crisis they did have to cut headcount but they made the company much more profitable uh but they also did um great things for uh both the renters and the host um at the company's expense they refunded something like 250 million dollars um to the to to users who had canceled reservations but they gave the money to the host to keep them afloat so they really did a SPEAKER_50: great job navigating this whole crisis it's a pretty great company he obviously cares deeply SPEAKER_43: um it was very uh hard i think for him to cut all that staff at that time right it was kind of a tough SPEAKER_44: decision but they were very generous in how they did it yeah so congratulations on getting the beak wet SPEAKER_27: sax and uh chamath i got a bunch of inbound uh you had filed to sell some shares of virgin galactic i saw you tweeted about it and you wanted to be transparent people asked for you to address it SPEAKER_58: on up front on the show so go ahead yeah i have a lot of uh projects that i um intend to fund in 2021 i'm probably going to put another i don't know i think the forecast was almost two billion SPEAKER_60: dollars to work and uh i needed to manage my liquidity um for this year and make sure that you SPEAKER_58: know um i could continue to make all those investments and um fund my uh fund all of the other things that i need to do and that's why i did it and you're still a significant shareholder SPEAKER_62: i assume and you believe in the company yeah i mean uh i remain completely committed to that business um you know i i it would have been better if i could have sold something else but it's not SPEAKER_58: quite possible and when we're entering when we when you leave the tax year you just have to make these decisions to lock in some gains against other losses and um would have loved to have uh not had to do it but i needed to manage my liquidity and so i sold you know it's a small portion of what i SPEAKER_27: own so yeah that was sort of my point this is a small small portion of what you own and i mean this is something that you know in poker and in business you got to manage your chip stack and you got to SPEAKER_06: manage your bankroll so today we're going to do the besties uh this is our first uh attempt at talking about uh it's our award show for 2020 let's leave it at that let's start out with the biggest winner SPEAKER_69: before hold on hold on a second um how much weight did you lose because it's either that you're still fat SPEAKER_70: and you have a way where it's either you're still fat you have an incredible camera or you've actually Chamath Palihapitiya: lost weight and this reminds me by the way oh i would like to tell a story no no no no four years SPEAKER_70: ago oh my god here we go jason jason and i make a weight bet okay just don't say the dollar amount it was like you know it was like i think it was like uh ten thousand dollars a pound whatever and uh jason jason he would get 10th he was about to do and this is incredible jason comes to us five years ago and says guys you won't believe it i'm doing a show on nbc um a reality tv show that's true pilot and with SPEAKER_83: please beep that out okay beep that up beep that out i don't get canceled oh my god that guy that guy SPEAKER_70: seems like a train wreck but okay that's fine you're gonna do this pilot with beep beep don't nbc and nbc and don't you need to you know be in fighting shape and he said yes i need motivation so i said here's motivation let's make a weight bet you need to be under 190 pounds and i'll pay you 10 000 10 000 a pound that you're underneath you pay me whatever it was a pound over yeah it was like six months later and we're hosting i'm hosting a poker game and i realized oh my god this is the last this is the last day of the bet the day before oh so we started the day before and then the last day of the bet is midnight yeah i wait till midnight and i jump up and i'm like wait bet and so i say jason you got to be under 190 192.5 or 193 pounds SPEAKER_88: yeah he literally goes ash and white and he says more white than i am now okay because i just ate and i SPEAKER_92: was maintaining my weight he says he says okay okay that's fine and he had been eating pizza David Friedberg: you sandbagged me you sandbagged me he ate a brick of brie i swear to god that SPEAKER_70: and then he says he says freeberg you won't believe this he goes guys i just need five minutes before the weigh-in and then he goes to our guest bedroom and that's not true that's not true SPEAKER_98: there was no 13 in this story you're fabricating now he tried he tried to shit out five pounds SPEAKER_88: which i took a leak who could do i took a leak that's fair after after eating all that pizza SPEAKER_70: and cheese and nachos and everything anyways he loses the weight bet and he says droth this is completely unfair i'm not going to pay you he was like 196 pounds i'm not paying you this money one pound over and he said uh this bet is not over until midnight the fall obviously yes obviously yes 20 bars in fair enough so i said all right fine jake i'll find he goes home he literally takes every diuretic known to man come on and then he loses he doesn't eat the whole thing two pairs of SPEAKER_88: sweatpants and sweated it out i checked in with this guy 10 times this day he walked like 12 miles he took four shits you know i sweated it out steam room hot bath he did uh he did a colonoscopy he did David Friedberg: a colonoscopy to his credit he lost five pounds by midnight and he won the job but then i said then i SPEAKER_27: said you know what because there were two different weigh-ins uh we were gonna go play in a poker SPEAKER_39: tournament so we went and played in the poker tournament i said chamath buy me into the poker tournament we'll whatever we win we'll chop it up if it happens so we just made it into a friendly SPEAKER_125: thing um and obviously but great now that story is out there and now i'm gonna everybody's gonna be SPEAKER_70: on twitter with the code their t-shirt and i hope somebody in the all in army does the t-shirt that just says 192.5 and we'll all know what it means which is the way the 190 it was 193 SPEAKER_06: 193 which is crazy that i'm one it was 193 anyway here we go getting into the categories our first category is the biggest winner in politics biggest winner in politics i'm going to ask you gentlemen to raise your hand if you have a strong feeling on this i'll call on one of you who's got a big winner in politics go ahead chamath joe biden joe biden okay going out on a limb there SPEAKER_70: i mean let's be honest there's nobody bigger and actually if you wanted to abstract it what i would say is centrism was the big winner and uh and it kind of feeds the losers which is sort of the extreme left and the extreme right but i would say that centrism and joe biden were the huge huge SPEAKER_31: huge winners well i'll give a i'll give a um an orthodox pick which is uh xi jinping the chairman David Sacks: of the chinese communist party you would have thought he would have had a bad year starting off with you know covid uh starting in his country at the beginning of the year but he wasn't able they you know the a global plague came from china but they were able to kind of uh they were able to use a very gullible who to launder uh responsibility for the catastrophe and they took advantage of the crisis to build more client states and asia and africa with promises of vaccines and and money and finally his uh biggest global nemesis uh trump and then you know pompeo lost in the election so you SPEAKER_142: have to say he came out on top at the end of this year free yeah i i um i put i have the exact same answer as sex i put the chinese communist party as a whole actually and i feel like um on the world SPEAKER_144: stage they're uh they're strengthened uh in in the post-covid world so i had kamala yeah because she SPEAKER_06: went from the famous quote in the debates there was a little girl in california who was bused to school that little girl was me where she took on joe biden and then she winds up getting the vp slot SPEAKER_149: and i think she winds up actually becoming president and will be the first female president of the year of the of the history of the united states and that could happen in the first term or if joe biden doesn't run for a second term and they do a halfway decent job kamala plus pete budaj is a pretty great ticket as well who's the biggest loser who's your biggest loser chamath SPEAKER_152: in politics uh donald j trump and uh the extreme left the extreme left and the extreme right David Sacks: got it i'll i'll i'll i'll agree with that but i'd also add uh nancy pelosi the speaker of the house uh her impeachment of trump at the beginning of the year went absolutely nowhere it wasn't even an issue in the election and her majority in the house has almost completely disappeared she lost a dozen seats i think the um the the i think she's down to about four or five seats as a razor-thin majority in the house and she's set to lose more in the midterm elections i predict that she is set to not be speaker anymore in two years and headed for retirement okay freeberg you got one biggest SPEAKER_142: loser i have i have the uh institution of american democracy is the biggest loser of 2020 SPEAKER_158: i feel like we're coming out of this year with like no belief that our election was valid for a vast majority for for a sizable minority of this country that um that the whole system some democrats believe that the election was fraudulent now too i mean if you say something enough times everyone believes it SPEAKER_144: so um you know here we are coming out of this year where with a crippling um lack of faith in our electoral system and uh it's scary that american democracy is being fundamentally questioned by its own constituents so um so i think that's the biggest loser the i i had uh i had uh two choices SPEAKER_27: here one of them was already said i said the hysterical left as my runner-up bernie and warren SPEAKER_06: just dismissed by biden kamala they they are not even part of the discussion anymore and they didn't SPEAKER_27: even get cabinet positions so the hysterical left and the socialist communist party is out of the democratic party thank the lord but my biggest loser i have to say that this is the worst run of any SPEAKER_06: politician i've ever seen in a year which is rudy giuliani under investigation for les parnas and eager fromman then the bogus lawsuit elections then farting during a hearing then doing the barat shirt tuck i don't know if we have feelings on if that was a tuck or if he was trying to wake up SPEAKER_168: the genie and then he bleeds hair dye then he starts bleeding hair dye wake up the genie man he got SPEAKER_174: covid no he got covid wait and he's in the hospital with covid i mean just think if you think you had a SPEAKER_12: shitty year i think there's gonna be the fans of the show are now registering domain names of things we SPEAKER_158: say the upside for him is that donald trump's campaign is paying him twenty thousand dollars a SPEAKER_180: day in legal fees so no i think it was 200 no it's 20 grand a day oh it's only 20 that's his going rate David Sacks: for making a fool of himself i have a i've i've i have a feeling that rate was adjusted when uh rudy couldn't get uh the case to the supreme court well we all know that trump pays his bills on time so SPEAKER_168: it shouldn't be a problem right all right uh now we're gonna have some more fun biggest winner in SPEAKER_03: business biggest winner in business freeberg you want to lead us off you haven't let us off yet SPEAKER_144: i'll take this one i think that the biggest winner in business this year is a company that started a few years ago called moderna this company had a ipo in december of 18 at seven and a half billion dollar market cap it traded between four and five billion throughout 2019 and all of a sudden covid hits and this becomes a vaccine candidate uh driver for moderna and the stock shoots up it's worth 60 billion today this company has not had a product that's gone to market prior to covid and they struggled uh getting this business um well i wouldn't say struggle but they never really had a uh an application for their mrna technology they looked at it for years iterating and pivoting this business and covid like a lot of other businesses really gave them an unbelievable uh kick SPEAKER_191: one might even say a shot in the arm a shot in the arm and tonight they got approval from the fda and SPEAKER_158: they're going to be shipping starting to on monday i think sacks who you got for the biggest winner in David Sacks: business we're moving on a good pace here elon musk uh our friend rose to become the second richest man in the world ahead of bill gates uh and you know right on the heels of jeff bezos uh his company tesla had something like a 8 or 10x gain so over a 500 billion dollar company of course the products are awesome it joined the s p 500 and spacex is doing amazing as well uh we saw the launcher starship the other day and i have just been mesmerized by all these unboxing videos for starlink which you can see on youtube and it is just magic that you can unbox this little satellite dish plug it in and you have broadband internet from space so um i think you know elon seems to be on track to be uh not only SPEAKER_197: the world's richest man but the world's first trillionaire wow big uh big uh big ups there to e SPEAKER_198: uh chamath what do you got for the biggest winner in business of 2020 yeah i have to agree with Chamath Palihapitiya: saxipu uh elon is the elon basically has had over the last 10 or 15 years an incredible amount of challenges that he's overcome he's had an incredible amount of haters he's had probably had to deal with stuff that most of us would have broken under and uh he just fought through it and the guy just basically bended all the haters until he crushed SPEAKER_58: their souls and i just think that that's incredible absolutely so elon musk is the hands down the biggest SPEAKER_27: biggest most obvious winner of 2020 that's the obvious winner um i'll give a couple of runner-ups here um i thought also on the runner-ups uh after elon zoom beating skype slack video google hangouts and fixing all their china issues and getting to 100 billion dollar valuation is notable obviously amazon did a great job um because of the pandemic uh and then just as an oddball out there i just thought adam silver and the nba bubble was an incredibly bold project that was executed so well and was such a delightful business moment and also a cultural moment that you know you had the nba shutting down during the pandemic remember that dramatic night on a thursday night and they cancel the games and then they do the bubble and it works and that gave me hope that we could get through the virus so SPEAKER_146: those were some of my other runners up all right the biggest loser in business in 2020 go ahead SPEAKER_206: chamoff facebook and google exiting the year with umpteen antitrust lawsuits um i think morale must be Chamath Palihapitiya: pretty brutal over there um there's no amount of money at some point that people are willing to get paid to walk in the door every day and just have to do have to deal with those kinds of accusations SPEAKER_58: and so um for all the good in the world that they do um which so it just must be really tough that they have to deal with it but uh those guys are i think are the biggest losers in business who do you got David Sacks: sacks the small business person um you know whether it's restaurants retail hospitality what have you small business people really took it on the chin this year i agree with chamoff about you know companies like google and facebook losing esteem in the eyes of the public for good reason censorship so on but tech still are you know stocks are at all-time highs the politicians got to keep eating at french laundry but it was a small business people who got absolutely decimated by these lockdowns which don't even work and so they are the big loser of 2020 business i'm a little more SPEAKER_158: vanilla than the rest of you guys i went with amc entertainment holdings talk about a fucked business and covid restaurants at least you can do takeout you can't take out a movie from amc they're they're shut down all over the country their creditors are telling them to declare bankruptcy it's a total shit show you think people go back to movies you don't think they go back i don't think they go i don't know what the hell like amc is gonna do what do you do with all those theaters they're awesome i love going to the movies but i'm not going to the movies for at least another year so and it's sad because honestly like movies are a big part of my life always have been and it's sad to see movie theaters you know they're gonna come back strong they're gonna come SPEAKER_146: back stronger i think amazon will buy one chain i think netflix buys the other and then with your membership you get to go and see all the range of stuff and maybe even see like queen's gambit SPEAKER_220: in the theater it's such a great experience right yeah like yeah i would have loved to see queen's SPEAKER_221: gambit in a theater totally there's so much you could do with theaters and i think um there's an opportunity but man did those guys get screwed this year well i always thought they should do an SPEAKER_146: extended edition so imagine if when hbo or one of those did you know game of thrones if they had it out the day before in movie theaters or the week before uh or two days before and they did an extra 10 minutes people would love that my biggest loser was of course same as david uh real world businesses absolutely demolished and the government after that first stimulus which was incredible trump did an SPEAKER_06: amazing job of just dropping buckets of money whether it was that pp loans and ppe loans whatever the ppp loans ppp loans all this stuff was incredible and then what complete utter bullshit and incompetence from our government that they couldn't get the second one done it's absolutely fucking infuriating that the democrats and the republicans these selfish fuckers couldn't get another billion dollars dropped on people said and here we are in december that shit needed to drop in august or september not december it's just absolutely disgraceful it's they're i'm just disgusted that they couldn't even get some more money to people who are suffering unemployment and these restaurants a hundred thousand restaurant closures by the end of 2020 it's just unconscionable that the the stock market is ripping and we can't get just some money in SPEAKER_27: people's pockets just drop the money to infuriate and we're sitting here at the taping of this that might actually happen um okay biggest winner in culture who's got a big winner in culture SPEAKER_144: anybody got one i got the um the black lives matter movement and i think it um i think it was such a like meaningful um and impactful uh um kind of shift in how people were thinking fundamentally about behavior in society it's still persisting you know there's corporate action there's state action this regulatory action um and i think it's uh it's a meaningful movement that's going to persist i think it came at a time when we all felt like you know a lot of people felt locked up in their homes people were angry people were frustrated with the system and um just uh it just was a very poignant moment uh especially occurring during covid that it really took hold um and i think it's going to last and i think that the uh um the movement itself is going to spawn a lot of change SPEAKER_40: yeah i think it's well said david who do you got uh in culture uh baby yoda uh star so you went pop David Sacks: culture on that one it's yeah star star of the mandalorian show uh that his his ascent icon status uh helped disney get 86 million subscribers grogu for for for disney plus uh which just blew expectations and uh has established disney plus as the main rival to netflix SPEAKER_30: do you think netflix uh you think disney will pass netflix correct i don't know if they'll pass SPEAKER_51: them but they're now certainly going to be a major rival to them i think that i think they pass them Chamath Palihapitiya: okay chamath who do you got i would pick uh a combination of fortnight roblox and among me which i think has for at least um a lot of high school and middle school uh kids but i may be a lot of adults the only form of social interaction that we've had for an entire year what a great what a great selection and uh and i think it's important to understand how much lonelier we all would have SPEAKER_58: been and how much more mental illness and depression we all would have dealt with if we couldn't have even just talked to our friends and i think that there's something really beautiful that those games SPEAKER_43: did for people that's a good one that's a good one i i went with podcasting i think on a SPEAKER_27: cultural basis joe rogan and what's happening in podcasting these long-form discussions even this podcast um has become just an amazing amazing movement and people are having better discussions SPEAKER_06: and i consider it the antidote to what's happening on social media when people hear us discussing stuff SPEAKER_146: on this podcast they feel like they ate something nutritious they had a great salad they had some healthy food and then when they're on social media and they consume the same tweets that we're doing SPEAKER_149: they feel like it's junk food right and so i think that podcasting long-form discussions listening to each other maybe you know republicans and democrats left right everybody listening to each other and podcasting is just such a great meeting medium for discussion who is the biggest loser on a cultural David Sacks: basis in 2020 mr david sachs the media starting with the new york times and other sort of elite media they ripped the umpire jersey off their backs to go after trump well they got him but at what cost half the country will never trust them again this makes conspiracy theories more likely it makes cultural divides deeper and they've been revealed to be corporate journalists journalists who subscribe to and serve an agenda of their corporate masters they've lost the public's trust friedberg what do you SPEAKER_142: got on the biggest cultural loser uh climate change took a back seat this year um it you know it had momentum as a as a cultural meme it's uh it's lost its uh its luster and it's been um shadowed a SPEAKER_144: little bit this year with blm and uh and covid and lack of faith and institutions and all the other SPEAKER_245: stuff that's been going on do you think that people now when they see the collective response to SPEAKER_149: covid and the pen uh the the vaccines and us our ability with science and technology to solve the SPEAKER_35: pandemic we will have a newfound appreciation for coordinated global action on global warming david SPEAKER_144: i think are you asking me i think um i think the uh i think the faith in institutions has eroded tremendously this year the who telling people not to wear masks and then telling them my masks are good SPEAKER_149: uh the fda that hits the um i think just global warming movement as well yeah i think the the lack SPEAKER_144: of faith in institutions as well as in the media um makes it really difficult for things that require a coordinated effort uh and a coordinated cultural shift uh to take hold um you know are really challenged uh in this new kind of model where where you don't know what to believe and you don't believe institutions and you don't believe old school and you don't believe states and you don't believe you know anything structural anymore so it's it's a scary it's a scary kind of moment i don't know i think climate change is going to have momentum with the new administration at least coming into office in the u.s but um but generally like institutional guidance is lost its luster SPEAKER_252: shabath what do you got Chamath Palihapitiya: i think when you now look at the realization of what we've gone through um people have realized that you know you can you can be extremely anti-racist and think latinx is just a stupid label you know SPEAKER_206: you can be an entirely complete 100 000 million percent supporter of lgbtq but think that you know Chamath Palihapitiya: all these complicated pronouns aren't really necessary um and i think that people are coming to a point where you can have um nuance um and i think that that's really important i think that SPEAKER_58: this whole cancel culture and wokeness was um incredibly corrosive um and i think that that they SPEAKER_27: lost i think it's actually a great um i think it's i think it's a great point you're making chamath SPEAKER_06: because on the last episode i fumbled the word mx which none of us have ever seen we all laughed about it and then i just had this little thing i was like okay i guess this is when i get canceled because i laughed at the fact that or i mispronounced it right and the fact that i thought even for a second that mispronouncing this term mx which i then did research on and i said does anybody know how to pronounce word mx mx on twitter so i figured i would preempt the the dropping of the um podcast by bringing it up on my twitter and people are like are you trolling i'm like no i'm asking and i found SPEAKER_146: videos and it turns out there is an actual controversy in the trans community where mx some people believe means mixed m-i-x-e-d other people think it's um mx as x the variable as in the variable x and so they're having their own debate they're figuring it out that's great everybody loves them everybody SPEAKER_30: supports them but the fact that i mispronounce it you know should i be canceled for mispronouncing SPEAKER_206: with that yeah well jason can i tell you can i tell those people that are struggling with whether x equals anything or x equals mixed human just to touch upon friedberg's point um the human race Chamath Palihapitiya: has caused eight percent of all the species in the world to go extinct and we have put another 22 SPEAKER_206: percent of every single other species at the at the brink of extinction at the same time we have now expanded our footprint to touch 75 of the earth's land surface so until somebody fixes those problems i don't actually want to know what the x stands for yeah i mean we were this idea that we're going to cancel until we put until we put stimulus checks put the fucking stimulus checks into people's hands get these small businesses back to work then you can tell me what the x stands for SPEAKER_149: yeah okay my uh biggest loser on culture was the same exact as you david we're thinking similar i have taken the red pill you gave me i crushed it up i've been snorting these the red pill like crazy SPEAKER_06: people think i'm turning into a republican but i thought mainstream media and late stage journalism sacrificed objectivity specifically to get subscriptions and they use the anti-trump feelings and they worked them and got the the ratings from them and they literally use that new york times is the is the the best example i think the work you guys use for best SPEAKER_146: example is canonical of like using their anti-trump feelings to get people to take out their wallets and SPEAKER_27: subscribe everybody realizes it they drove out barry weiss they drove out their editor of the page for making people feel unsafe with their words and then new york magazine drove out SPEAKER_06: andrew sullivan and then glenn greenwald gets leaves his publication i mean anybody who dissents inside of one of these publications they canceled them inside of a publication for an opinion on an opinion page it's crazy okay let's keep everything moving here biggest turnaround in i guess this is SPEAKER_27: biggest turnaround anything but i did business i'll lead off with mine my best turnaround was airbnb they laid off 25 of the company in july 1900 of 7500 employees they cut their marketing budget by 800 million and then they ipo five months later uh and they had raised a billion dollars at an 18 billion dollar valuation according to pitch book and now worth 88 billion a week after the ipo that is a David Sacks: turnaround of all turnarounds david who did you have this is where i had joe biden he finished fourth in iowa fifth in new hampshire no candidate has ever bombed that badly in the first two contests and gone on to win the nomination biden roared back in south carolina and then won big on super tuesday and wrapped up the party nomination by march uh biggest political comeback ever SPEAKER_142: who do you got freeberg i got airbnb as well i mean from yeah and here's the here's one of the craziest SPEAKER_144: stats they're sitting there in q1 with a great business revenue dropped 67 percent in q2 can you just imagine the experience of 67 percent of your revenue going away in one quarter uh cash burn skyrockets and just having to respond quickly and still maintain integrity with your customers and your employees as the leadership team i mean it was an incredible leadership um uh demonstration SPEAKER_06: it's a five alarm fire right i mean it's literally you got to get everybody out of the building SPEAKER_278: here here we go i agree with that i agree with that SPEAKER_282: who do you got chamath i'm curious who is your biggest censorship big censorship censor censorship Chamath Palihapitiya: existed in in draconian and the dark ages of our of our journey as a country and in the world and it came roaring back this year the amount of people that have been muzzled stifled the amount of fact and science that literally just gets judged willy-nilly by our distribution points like facebook and twitter SPEAKER_206: and medium it's really scary so censorship made a roaring comeback in 2020 i i like it i like it a lot SPEAKER_146: okay now we go on to the biggest flash in the pan you can interpret this any way you like SPEAKER_289: what do you got saxy poo David Sacks: the w-h-o the w-h-o nobody knew who the dub the world health organization nobody knew what the w-h-o was before this year then they have become you know somehow this global authority on covet despite getting everything wrong they initially said that we didn't need to wear masks they didn't update that until june 5th this was about 10 weeks after my blog saying that you know masks were a good idea they got the method of transmission wrong they were saying that transmission mainly occurred through fomites which is contagious surfaces instead of respiratory particles they initially said that lockdowns worked then they modified their policy on that because of its impact to marginal groups and so the w-h-o has just gotten everything wrong this year and despite that fact you now have to chamas point google youtube and even sites like linkedin or nextdoor are now censoring people's statements if they contradict the w-h-o apparently without irony because nobody has contradicted the w-h-o more than the w-h-o itself i look forward to next year when nobody cares about the w-h-o anymore SPEAKER_158: great friedberg what do you got flash in the pan uh i put hydroxychloroquine you guys remember it was gonna it was gonna save the world for a minute or two and then you know here we are and uh so i'm just gonna leave it at that yeah here we okay yeah everybody knows you may have SPEAKER_298: heard of hydroxychloroquine okay miracle some people say it's a miracle i took it it's great SPEAKER_303: chamath what do you got it's actually quite related to this and i thought that she was marvelous but i Chamath Palihapitiya: do think she will disappear off the scene which is sarah cooper which uh you know basically in the last month of the campaign um kind of just disappeared and now is uh i don't think uh anybody knows who sarah cooper is and probably in a year from now won't but for for the period for the for those dark months of the pandemic her mockery of trump was some of the funniest stuff on twitter that i know SPEAKER_50: sarah cooper is amazing yeah she she got a netflix and i don't think she'll be a flash in the pan i think SPEAKER_27: she'll come back um i would have loved to pick um who was the press secretary for um with the southern SPEAKER_06: accent for for trump sex sarah huckabee sanders yeah huckabee she but i think she was gone in 20 by 2020 so i can't pick her but she was amazing at defending trump she's like you all are dumb and trump is smart and he has 150 iq and he owns mar-a-lago and he has a jet and his jet and you are the fake news media and i don't care what you say american public government you say and trump is amazing in bed he was banging porn stars when y'all were jerking i mean he's just she would defend him i that's who i want as my pr person she defended him for all time my biggest flash in the SPEAKER_120: plan though i think you need a pr person i don't need a pr person i got this we got this podcast now we don't need the press or pr we just go right to the audience um nicola trading at 34 billion SPEAKER_06: dollars they took your precious spax chamath and they perverted it with a dipshit milton who was on my podcast and couldn't answer basic questions it's now worth six billion i predict it will be worth 60 cents i kid you not this company will go to zero is my prediction if you are buying companies SPEAKER_144: and i made jason you're gonna scare all founder all founder ceos are gonna avoid coming on your SPEAKER_317: podcast now no no no i'm delightful but for this kid uh he's he's under investigation your company is SPEAKER_318: worth nothing yeah yeah you're weak listen you're no he's under investigation the thing's a disaster SPEAKER_06: they're obviously riding on elon's coattails he couldn't make a decision if it was hydrogen power SPEAKER_27: cars or electric trucks or whatever and uh the company's in chaos and i i made a rule which is if a company has not released their product and it's worth over a billion dollars be careful because it could be a fraud um or it could be a disaster that's my biggest flash in the pan nicola um biggest breakthrough freeberg you want to start us off on this one i have an idea i think i know what SPEAKER_144: you're going to say i'm going to say alpha fold you know that we talked about in the last podcast i think um alpha fold feels to me like what arpanet was which was the origins of the internet you know uh back when it was first installed and no one really kind of grapp grappled with the ramifications of what would emerge and i think you know once we have the ability to design proteins to do things um a lot's going to change in the world of medicine and human health and longevity and the kind of environment and it's going to be pretty powerful so i'm excited about alpha fold creating SPEAKER_230: a foundation for for uh humanity's ability to do those things chabath what do you got 100 percent SPEAKER_62: alpha fold by uh there's not a close second to be honest okay sacks well as a as a close second i David Sacks: guess i would i would uh mention the mrna vaccines which we talked about on the show the ability to basically um print a vaccine in two days and hopefully they'll follow our advice about challenge vaccines so the next time we have one of these pandemics challenge trials challenge trials we can uh we can respond much more quickly and then just quickly in politics i thought the biggest breakthrough was uh pete budigieg he made the unlikely leap from mayor of south bend indiana to being the first credible openly gay candidate for president he won iowa sort of uh along with bernie sanders and was a very close second in new hampshire uh he's going to be uh the the um he's SPEAKER_291: going to be the transportation department in the biden administration uh by the way i want to just SPEAKER_158: point something out on your sorry jake out but um you know the mrna vaccine technology has been around SPEAKER_144: for like 15 years and regulatory barriers and regulatory constraints have largely kept this stuff from coming to market and it's interesting how you know in a year where we have this pandemic emergency we can take this technology that has been around and has been available to us for so long and suddenly you know all the regulatory barriers get dropped and things come to market to change the world i think it's it's a great highlight of like what's possible when some regulatory constraints are diminished a little bit and technology is really allowed to flourish and see the light of day um and you know we all act so surprised that this technology works but it's been here for a while it's pretty uh pretty astounding that it hasn't worked or hasn't been allowed to work in the past in a previous episode SPEAKER_27: yeah i think it's a really valid one because it wasn't a breakthrough that occurred this year the breakthrough was they broke through the regulations you said you wanted to wait and see some people get the vaccines first um and then that led to some accounts uh on the twitter saying are you still anti-vaccination and i i had to correct them you've never said you were anti-vaccination to be SPEAKER_341: not at all no no no you said you wanted to wait yes no no i think my point is um i think a lot of SPEAKER_158: people are gonna latch on sorry let me just be really clear i think a lot of people are gonna latch SPEAKER_144: on to the small number of cases that are gonna be amplified of people having adverse reactions to this you know new technology vaccine in alaska the other day like two days ago there was a nurse who got the vaccine and she had a really bad anaphylactic reaction to it she had to be given epinephrine twice to survive and she came out and she was fine but it's that storytelling that's like you know they they assume it should be some small percentage of people will have some reaction to this thing but that is the storytelling that will keep people from doing this and i think that is the the biggest kind of concern and that's why you've got guys like mike pence doing the the vaccine tomorrow you know he's gonna do it on live tv and uh celebrities like ian mckellen doing it SPEAKER_346: they're trying to kind of create wait wait wait are we gonna see mike pence's naked shoulder and SPEAKER_347: bicep on television will mother allow it because mom doesn't want to see that no but his mother is SPEAKER_27: mother gonna be beside him that's his wife he calls his wife actually mother's gonna give it to him because if a if a woman doctor gave it to him it would be kind of like cheating because she stuck something in him you know that's just not right um uh okay uh i can't wait to take it if anybody doesn't want their vaccine i will take it because i'm losing my mind in quarantine i mean for the love Chamath Palihapitiya: of god uh smartest business move chamath i think uh 2020 was uh the year of the spec i think that it is uh in his it's just it's an incredibly it's done it's it's done something SPEAKER_212: really really really important in the capital market so that uh can you give chamath his bestie SPEAKER_356: award now jaykel yes accepting his bestie award given to him by himself himself would you like an SPEAKER_360: acceptance speech i i would like the smartest business move i would like to say the smartest SPEAKER_365: business move me sacks what was your smartest business move or the smartest business move in David Sacks: business well i'd like to thank chamath for the spec thing too because i was in open door and uh i was in porch and both of them are spacking this year so oh i'm in desktop metal i'm gonna go SPEAKER_31: with we have to agree chamath is the best in business you've you've wet you've wet all of our beaks SPEAKER_301: so yeah i mean i mean actually if you think about it i i've done uh six deals this year SPEAKER_373: are we still talking about me or okay we have to play the music you know the walk-off music on the oscars SPEAKER_380: oh my god excepting his second bestie is he's been nominated three times but this is the only best SPEAKER_90: he's won i really wanted to be in that reality show with you and SPEAKER_06: i mean talk about dodging a bullet we went with this trailer to the top five studios SPEAKER_03: they all wanted it in the room nbc says we'll take it in the room SPEAKER_15: the the head of nbc says we'll take it we taped the pilot and then beeps whole career life blows up and thank the lord that show didn't get on tv because i it would have been executive produced SPEAKER_50: by beep uh and yeah that would have been bad so uh no reality tv for me i had i had another smart business move i just wanted to point out which was salesforce buying slack i think it's brilliant for SPEAKER_27: them i think they're going to look back on the 10 they paid of their capital for slack and i think slack will be more important than salesforce ultimately in business it's a huge the most SPEAKER_58: important brand there what a crown jewel what a great what a great move by benioff and and brett taylor and i just think what a great asset totally be better for them than youtube is for Chamath Palihapitiya: google or instagram is for i think i think it's on that level actually i think it's of that order of magnitude where the importance of those assets to those companies slack will be to salesforce SPEAKER_399: cost cost 20 times 30 times as much though so less upside but less upside but but in terms of like Chamath Palihapitiya: lock-in and value and you know the prevention of churn uh over time i think it's going to be huge SPEAKER_149: i mean it could be at some point the company is slack salesforce like slack will be the the preeminent SPEAKER_27: brand there david did you go for this for smartest business move i i agree i agree with both the ones SPEAKER_144: you've already done okay i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna rattle one off real quick i got um i think people miss this but at the bottom of the market silver lake did this massive debt deal into airbnb which if you'll remember is reminiscent to me of warren buffett you know giving five billion dollars to swissery and goldman sachs and he earned a 12 coupon and got warrants in both those companies and it just paid a tremendous return for him silver lake swooped in airbnb in april gave him a 12 debt deal for a billion dollars and they got warrants that the warrants today are worth um about 1.4 billion dollars and this debt is probably worth three times what they put in so in like five months six months these guys have basically turned a billion dollars of debt into four billion dollars of value uh it was an incredible deal incredibly gutsy if you think about what we were all feeling in early april about the market and where the world was headed we had no fucking clue for these guys to swoop in and do that i thought was super impressive the the other one i i i had a couple on this because i just i want to rattle these off the other one was bill ackman bought a fucking s&p put sorry SPEAKER_158: bought an s&p put for 27 million dollars that he sold for 2.6 billion dollars he bought he bought SPEAKER_260: credit default insurance on a whole strip of credit insurance of debt yeah yeah but he turned a 27 SPEAKER_158: million dollar insurance instrument into 2.6 billion of returns for his fund and he still didn't sell his portfolio in fact he bought at the bottom and i mean the the the foresight this guy had going into the down market ahead of march he saw that the market was going to tank because of covid um he SPEAKER_144: made a bet on it it was a tiny bet for him but man to turn 27 million into 2.6 billion in like 60 days or 90 days unbelievable and then he bought stock in his companies at the bottom um what a gutsy investor SPEAKER_27: and then i was there anything yeah was there anything fugazi on that with where he had gone on cnbc and talked and he did this whole big you know no no longer yeah he did it afterwards but i SPEAKER_303: think he's i think he's great i think he's great yeah i think it was it was incredible and my third SPEAKER_158: one which we don't talk about a lot is larry ellison bought a billion dollars of tesla stock less than SPEAKER_144: two years ago that is now worth over 10 billion dollars and he did it he joined the board and um you know you put your money where your mouth is and you take ownership and um you know i don't know much about larry but uh there was a lot of naysayers about tesla saying they were bubbly and overvalued SPEAKER_06: at that time and it was really he did it in the middle of the tesla q shorting movement and now he can buy not just lanai but he could probably get kawai to go with it he could buy another island SPEAKER_221: anyway those were three gutsy bets that i thought were worth highlighting that that just really impressed SPEAKER_144: me and and you know it's when the markets are down when you're facing the abyss when everyone else is telling you you're wrong and you make a big bet like that um and it pays off that's the kind of stuff that i think returns are made from and characters built SPEAKER_221: and those are those are just really impressive moves for me that all right there's a lot of SPEAKER_186: impressive moves this year the tide went out and came back in real quick uh so there were some dumb SPEAKER_27: business moves as well sacks you got a dumb business move that was a highlight for 2020 David Sacks: the city of san francisco biting the hand that feeds it for years these politicians have been shitting on the tech community acting like the tech community was somehow a parasite on san francisco well you know now because of covid congratulations the tech community has the option to leave you have a lot of people leaving and there are gigantic budget deficits for the city the schools have giant budget deficits it's not clear how they're going to close these things and it's looking that more and more like it wasn't tech that was a parasite it was the politicians who are the parasites and nobody knows SPEAKER_420: how to fix the city of san francisco anymore yeah okay uh dumbest business move chamath um i think it was SPEAKER_424: i think it was probably for me um the governor of california's handling of covid um well i guess SPEAKER_39: that's more political than business but um well no i mean it did impact businesses so i think you're Chamath Palihapitiya: you're i think that i'll allow it i'll allow it i think that i think that what he showed was how naked partisanship was in decision making that had that should have been based on science in fact and the quality of the decision making just eroded every single decision that he made and then now you know as david said it's kind of like you have this just just you know um you have this moment where it's like you know the just eat cake moment where he's eating at french laundry and the day after he's basically shutting the whole world down again it's it's very frustrating so so i think that he also SPEAKER_27: is shutting down beaches right and then you know the stay-at-home orders and not letting people leave SPEAKER_146: their house and go to a beach or eat outdoors all that does is send them inside they're gonna have a Chamath Palihapitiya: party inside their house well there's a great tweet stupid there's a great tweet that said um you know i'm not allowed to go to the store i'm not allowed to go to the shopping center but i'm gonna take my child on a walk and if anybody stops me i'm just gonna tell them i'm taking her to the nail salon and the reason is because you couldn't walk to the park but you could you could go to the nail salon and so you know this tweet was just reminiscent of just how arbitrary and random this stuff was and it had just so many downstream impact so i think that was a huge fail of 20 and nobody loves hypocrisy i SPEAKER_67: picked my smartest business move with salesforce buying slack conversely i'm picking my dumbest business SPEAKER_149: move with slacks board selling slack this is the stupidest thing i've ever seen i understand they felt like maybe uh it was a great deal but i would have much rather them see seen them do what Chamath Palihapitiya: to be honest with you i mean i left the board and i just don't know why i i wish i could have gotten the call because i would have bought it yeah i i agree with you i think network effects are incredibly SPEAKER_206: unique assets they're very very rare i think we've all been around them we've worked in them david has david the other david has i have jason you have it is the single most incredible moment momentum driver Chamath Palihapitiya: and you know sort of tailwind and when it exists you just never give it up and so i agree with you i would have bought slack if i could have if they would have given me a shot we ride our winners and you SPEAKER_146: appreciate network effects if you look at what jeff lawson did at twilio he started with much less SPEAKER_27: i think uh he started with nothing started nothing with twilio jeff lawson then he buys sengrid and segment their market cap has gone 12 it was it's 12x market cap they went from 29 dollars a share to SPEAKER_146: 365 dollars a year in three years they're at 60 billion slack should have been buying other SPEAKER_06: companies with their equity and they and they should have built and rolled up all of the other hub spots or whatever else is out there that they could afford by zendesk whatever i'm not sure that Chamath Palihapitiya: the m&a strategy was the hard part i just think that it's when you're in the bowels of these companies as we all know it's super hard right so i mean i don't think you can fail stewart uh and the team but i think that somewhere along the way just the realization of how special and unique that network effect was um didn't happen because it would have given a different team a level of energy or comfort to kind of really go for the brass ring as you said and um but you know hopefully they'll be able SPEAKER_285: to execute it at salesforce okay did i get everybody's dumbest business move my dumbest business SPEAKER_142: move was myself um so i will take uh i will take the award for being a schmuck SPEAKER_158: is free for me me and anyone else that fucking hedged or shorted the market or sold during the dip SPEAKER_144: in march uh i learned the most valuable lesson i've learned in my investing career to date you just want to invest and hold shares in great businesses and not try and time markets because that's always a loser's game and a fool's errand um and i think you know worrying about the market going down or up as long as you hold shares in great businesses it doesn't matter trading is not for me it was stupid um and i just feel like a lot of people learned that lesson this year i've heard a lot of people that kind of freaked out and got out of the market and then they regretted it and tried to get back in it was too late and yada yada i um i read a document um that someone wrote Chamath Palihapitiya: um for me um and she wrote this incredible quote that i had never heard from buffett and i'll give it to you friedberg because it's right it's very uh apropos of this buffett had this statement which is that you know um it's not about timing the market it is about time in market and i just SPEAKER_71: think that's so that's so beautiful because it's so simple but it basically summarizes exactly what Chamath Palihapitiya: you said which is get in close your eyes and if you if again unless for liquidity you just don't SPEAKER_57: ever sell yeah it's a fool's errand to try to time the market sit on your hands ride your winners SPEAKER_27: uh and and he always said listen if a business is on if i own this business and i love it and it's at a discount i should want to own more of it i believe that was another buffett i don't know the exact quote but let's go to smartx political move and we'll go to our token uh republican david SPEAKER_31: tax for that well uh well it's it's it's yeah it's funny you identify me that way because uh my David Sacks: my smart the smartest political move goes to congressman jim claiborne a democrat of south carolina for endorsing joe biden just before the south carolina primary uh a number of people on the biden campaign were uh panicking they wanted him to do it early because biden had bombed in iowa and new hampshire and uh claiborne kept his powder dry and endorsed biden at the absolute perfect time it caused biden to win south carolina and that led him to sweep on super tuesday SPEAKER_291: jim claiborne was the kingmaker of 2020 without him joe biden would not be president wow okay who SPEAKER_461: you got freeberg smartest political move of 2020 was joe biden staying quiet hanging out in his bunker and letting trump do his own damage end of story i feel like i feel like if you know that biden knew SPEAKER_144: that it wasn't his election to win it was trump's election to lose and i think he let him go out and lose it and um and that to me was uh smart advice and smart action you know sometimes the best action SPEAKER_27: is he just he just he just slow played aces he hit his set he just checked and he watched him fire uh who do you got chamath smartest political move smartest political move which you will not see SPEAKER_206: until 2022 or 23 but laid the groundwork this year and i thought it was brilliantly done was nikki haley Chamath Palihapitiya: who i think will be the republican nominee for president in 2024 and she did a an unbelievable job of tricking trump to believe that he was her supporter then getting distribution and then basically subtly telling everybody that she thought that he was an idiot and i thought that she was SPEAKER_27: brilliant in so she didn't look like a rat leaving the ship she looked like you know a rebel or Chamath Palihapitiya: something getting off i think i think if you want to find um somebody to consolidate center-right politics in 2024 uh my money would be on nikki haley all right i went with the smartest political move i SPEAKER_27: also went for the long game pete budigich going on fox recently i think he did obviously a masterful job you had that sex earlier but he started going on fox and basically being really spicy with them and supporting the hell out of um biden and then he gets himself this uh secretary of transportation and i think he's set up to either be the vp or the presidential candidate uh in the future and he's i think he's going to be one of the bright stars i also would uh i think andrew yang it did nothing happened for him this year really i don't know but i felt like he also is my understanding is he's SPEAKER_35: going to run for mayor of new york that was another amazing political winner in all of this i don't know SPEAKER_69: if anybody has feelings on either of those i love i love andrew yang i think he's uh fabulous uh he's Chamath Palihapitiya: coming on the pod pragmatic pragmatic centrist smart capable competent um good listener he attracts it David Sacks: he attracts a plurality of people yeah and i and i think he's spoken out against uh cancel culture and so you know whenever i see somebody on the left speaking out against cancel culture and censorship SPEAKER_51: like the way chamath has uh that definitely to me elevates them in my book are you saying chamath SPEAKER_480: is someone from the left well it's amazing how much we agree on you know well i mean i think that SPEAKER_146: there's you have this left and right definitions which have become very hard to understand and i think what we have to get back to is the american principled idea of freedoms and opportunity right and and and i don't think either of the parties actually were representing that properly SPEAKER_27: dumbest political move of the year i think i know where everybody's going to go with this SPEAKER_483: but i would like rudy giuliani rudy giuliani's press conference at the sex shop i mean just Chamath Palihapitiya: i mean how amateurish is that group of people the four seasons gardening we're gonna be at the first SPEAKER_484: was they were they trolling us and trying to get press for it i don't understand that one SPEAKER_482: unbelievable so you go with rudy giuliani for the dumbest political move sax what do you got SPEAKER_269: i have a feeling i know what sax got well i got i got a tie here um between uh one was uh defund the David Sacks: police you know as a political slogan the whole country you know the blm movement had the whole country on its side uh after the you know the the george floyd video came out everybody was in favor of sensible reforms to control the use of force by the police and then they they introduced the slogan of defund the police and it scared voters across the country into voting for uh republicans in congress and it uh probably cost joe biden not the presidency but uh congress and the my my tie the other half of that was uh donald trump refusing to uh wear a mask or to uh endorse mass uh he finally did it but it was two or three months too late if he had just gotten on board with mass it would have been a very easy thing to do uh politically personally uh that could have made the the margin of difference he might still be president if he had gotten on board with mass about three months earlier freeberg what SPEAKER_144: was your dumbest i actually yeah i i put making masks political more broadly um both the left and the right pointing fingers about masks i mean this is like a human life issue and um you know uh kind of shaming the republicans for not wearing masks and making it about we're the right guys you're the wrong guys everyone should have avoided pointing fingers and avoided um not doing it because the other side was doing it and it should have never ever been allowed to become political it was pure science it was about saving lives and i think uh both sides are to blame um for you know the democrats tried to make the republicans look bad because they were advocating for masks and they shouldn't have done that and the republicans should not have tried to avoid wearing masks because the democrats are SPEAKER_230: telling them to wear masks and it was just a total cluster um really sad and you know could have SPEAKER_50: made a big difference for thousands of lives i too put trump not advocating for masks as my dumbest SPEAKER_27: political move i believe he nailed the stimulus that first stimulus where he just dropped the 1200 checks and the ppp and everything he obviously nailed uh you know the operation light speed and the vaccines he didn't get credit for it um i don't know if that was political or not that they dropped them the week the weeks after the election i think it was i'm i'm i'm a little bit cynical about that but SPEAKER_146: my god is there nobody that this man would listen to um and they must have all been telling him in unison hey dipshit put the mask on we'll win the election the in july and august the numbers started SPEAKER_06: to go down precipitously and everybody fauci everybody with half a brain was saying second wave is coming wear masks and he refused to take that stance and not only did that he doubled down like the moron he is and started doing rallies this person is such a complete idiot grifter and just imbecile that he couldn't see the clear path to victory and he was tempting fate and of course he winds up getting covid i mean the idiocracy of the moment is just so profound he absolutely would have sailed into that second term we were sitting here on this very podcast and we all believed he was going to sail into the second term when the market started ripping back and the covid numbers went down and because of the stupidity of not wearing masks thank god we got him out but SPEAKER_27: to the families who lost loved ones he's a murderer period we're moving on best political theater SPEAKER_158: besides what i just said trump inhaling trump inhaling covid into his body and then taking the polyclonal antibodies to heal himself and show the american population that it's just not that bad SPEAKER_144: it was the best stunt the best act the best theater i've seen and um uh you know i i don't know what what the hell else uh could have beaten it this year i mean the guy went to the balcony SPEAKER_158: when he went to the balcony and could barely breathe he buckled himself in he you know buttoned up his jacket he stared out the lights in his face he was glowing he had the antibodies rushing through his SPEAKER_176: body he was healing his body he was on speed man come on yeah i thought i thought the best i thought Chamath Palihapitiya: the best political theater was when the democratic leadership did like the colin kaepernick SPEAKER_424: one knee in kinte cloths at the in the rotunda of the congress SPEAKER_434: can somebody nick you just throw the picture of that up there SPEAKER_508: i mean i mean half of them are half of them are so old they couldn't get down on one pick them back up they all hit their life alert they got the life alert i'm falling i can't get up SPEAKER_513: like 20 life alerts have never gone off in the same room SPEAKER_508: but the but the kinte cloths were just so over the top like you didn't need the kinte cloths SPEAKER_168: they really weren't kinte cloths oh my lord all right my best political theater in a god i'm crying i'm laughing so much SPEAKER_13: my best political theater is um i i don't know who this congresswoman is but i am falling in love with her um her name is katie porter oh my god she takes out a whiteboard SPEAKER_301: she just she's fabulous no she's so great she owns people with that whiteboard SPEAKER_13: it's the greatest she basically does math and people are just i mean she's done this now two or three times where she just takes people down and she did it to mnuchin like she was like is today tuesday he's like you know today's tuesday she's like can you tell me if today's tuesday and she just destroys people um like i i just never seen anything like it um and uh she's awesome so best political theater for me i don't know uh david did we get yours well um yeah i mean so i thought the the David Sacks: french laundry photos you know the all these politicians uh violating their own lockdown policies uh was some was some pretty good theater theater theater theater theater yeah you had you know you had uh gavin newsom and uh london uh brie dining at french laundry you had nancy pelosi going to that hair salon any republicans do something like that well um i i would i would tell you if i knew of any but trump rallies the republicans but yeah but the republicans haven't been supporting lockdowns so um you know look if there was a republican who was supporting the rose SPEAKER_527: garden uh supreme court where they had a super spreader event at the white house but they weren't SPEAKER_31: but but that wasn't political theater because they weren't violating their own policies oh i see they SPEAKER_481: were saying that people could take the risk um got it okay i'm i'm i'm picking these um politicians SPEAKER_530: because because they're happy yeah it's the it's the hypocrisy uh the one i loved the best out of SPEAKER_27: all the hypocritical politicians was the one who was like please stay it was the governor of some SPEAKER_149: place colorado or something and he's like please stay home with your family do not travel for thanksgiving it's going to be too dangerous and then they find out he did that tweet SPEAKER_06: while at a southwest gate going with his family to thanksgiving and they literally have pictures of him on his phone and the picture was timed at the time stamp of the tweet if i have my understanding SPEAKER_15: correct i forgot the guy's name but there were so many of these yeah well let me give you another David Sacks: one there was uh la uh the la county supervisor uh sheila cool cast the deciding vote to shut down outdoor dining in los angeles only to be photographed eating at uh fornaio in santa monica two hours later so it's just completely hypocritical and um you know this is why there could be a big SPEAKER_15: recall next year in california i think we have to put political theater as one category of just SPEAKER_06: loathsome political theater because we're going on to worst political theater and the stuff we've seen has been pretty horrific i'm going to lead us off with my worst political theater which was the banning of tiktok was absolutely the right thing to do and then they just handed it off as like a gift to oracle to make money and maybe be their server farm i don't understand we were supposed to ban it and get it the fuck out of the app store and that was just terrible political theater anybody else got more SPEAKER_31: political theater that we'll put in our loathsome political theater well you uh jason just so you uh understand that i'm being uh politically even-handed this is where i had rudy giuliani and his uh tour of self-immolation uh from he did melt he did melt right from from the press conference in front of the crematorium to the the the the hair dye meltdown to the SPEAKER_541: to the moron video all right we need to hold on hold on i'm gonna make i'm gonna call an audible i'm SPEAKER_406: calling an audible here we're gonna have a new category to get in covet worst rudy giuliani moment SPEAKER_544: can we have a lot of moments can we have the giuliani award next year yeah giuliani award for SPEAKER_30: self-destructive yeah the self-immolation award what is the worst thing the worst giuliani moment SPEAKER_434: oh i think i think the saddest moment was the uh in the borat thing that was sad because you just felt SPEAKER_303: you just felt like this is an old broken man yeah um it was creepy and it was just sad he was like SPEAKER_356: desperate and he was creepy and it was but the worst giuliani lifetime award the worst though was SPEAKER_70: was actually if you listen to the testimony when he farted uh it was really terrible it was really Chamath Palihapitiya: terrible actually if you listen to the testimony you're just like what is this guy saying it's out SPEAKER_146: of control well the also i think we have to cut into here the poor woman sitting next to him who's SPEAKER_12: clearly in range um i mean she's in the blast zone he rips it he rips it and she looks him she gives SPEAKER_13: him side eye but she is so like scared to react to such an obvious carpet bombing that she just keeps SPEAKER_519: a straight face but her eyes go that was it must have been a stinker must have been a stinker i mean SPEAKER_13: it was loud it had resonance it it was yeah um can i can i can i give one can i give one other David Sacks: example and i don't know whether this is best or worst theater um but um but the the the congressional uh hearings with the tech ceos where the senators grilled all the tech ceos and it was definitely it was definitely political theater but on the other hand they all deserved it and there's going SPEAKER_158: to be more of it next year okay let's do i put that i put that i put that one as my as my worst SPEAKER_144: political theater because i thought what was so depressing about it was how little the congressional um the congress people actually understood of these businesses and they went off on rants and and tirades about you know you're blocking republican voice on twitter and you're doing this and none of it actually focused on you know the the monopolistic practices that was the intention of the hearing in the first place when they actually got into those points when they tried to talk about how the ad networks work and how targeting works they didn't have any clue i mean the people inside these SPEAKER_517: companies don't even know how it worked and they built it i mean these things i know i'll tell you SPEAKER_158: like i just i just think it's really sad that um that that folks in congress um honestly are SPEAKER_144: are so disconnected from understanding technology and understanding you know modern business practices um and they can't actually you know tackle the real issues um and it SPEAKER_146: makes me a little scared i mean aoc didn't understand what a tax break was i mean so SPEAKER_27: even the young ones don't understand stuff i mean we just we're getting the worst possible representation okay now we're gonna go to lightning round with our final two categories uh best meme uh for me it was the funeral dancers uh followed up by michael jordan i took that personally and i of course loved chamatz mix up that one of you maniac all in army members made uh who do you got for who got best memes and you got a best meme SPEAKER_31: tubin oh tubin tubin yeah that's it forever a cautionary tale about what not to do on a zoom call SPEAKER_13: yes yes that would be okay arguably in political theater let's say no uh anybody else got a meme SPEAKER_58: best or worst i like the funeral dancers but uh that's pretty great yeah david anything for you Chamath Palihapitiya: i just want to say to everybody that's listening i really hope that you guys have an incredible SPEAKER_58: holiday and um we can put this year behind us and i hope for all of you guys that have gone through hard times just know that um you know hopefully you got some friends to talk to and family to see and talk to and we love you and we really appreciate that you take the time to listen SPEAKER_152: and guys i just want to say to you guys i love you guys with all my heart thank you for SPEAKER_57: helping me get through a very difficult year uh back at you and uh i was very touched by the birthday present you sent me last week that was just oh you want to tell him what you got you want SPEAKER_267: to tell him what you got big boy i mean listen i don't want to chamath i i get a big crate at the SPEAKER_149: house it was i was born in 1970 and he got some of the best wines from 1970 and put them in a box and you know i i literally had to put them on a shelf and say do not drink these these things cost SPEAKER_57: as much as the teslas in the driveways i mean some of these bottles are ridiculous and uh i hope to crack them all open with you guys at the house in happy honestly happy happy 50th birthday big boy SPEAKER_27: it's a big big monster well you know i was it was a little bittersweet obviously you know i was going to have some kind of party or anything like that and then what made it particularly hard and SPEAKER_50: challenging was my birthday was on saturday and my friend tony shea died on friday uh on that day and i had been dealing with tony shea being in a coma for the fives for the no for 10 days before that and SPEAKER_57: then i found out that that afternoon that they tragically had to pull the plug um or i assume SPEAKER_50: that's what happened i shouldn't say that i don't speak out of turn but uh this has been a shitty year and i really hope uh that anybody out there who is suffering from mental illness uh or struggling in any way call a friend and i think the reason this podcast uh has resonated with so many people SPEAKER_146: and i hear this from people when they listen to the pod is our friendship and they and they they they hear us talk and they hear us laugh and they hear us joke and the value of friendship and the love and the joy and people just can't believe uh when chamat says and and men say to each other they love each other and they can't believe that sax almost is able to say it and they and there's people think SPEAKER_30: by episode 25 sax will be able to say it back to us but we'll try right now we'll see if we can close SPEAKER_06: 2020 we're all going to say i love you david sax and then let's just see if this can work i love you SPEAKER_82: david sax back at you we'll take it we'll take it i love you love you guys happy holidays love you SPEAKER_595: guys see you guys in the new year and see you in the new year bye bye besties