back to indexE60: The 2021 Bestie Awards PLUS Jack Dorsey starts the Web3 Wars
Chapters
0:0 Catching up on the Web3 wars and Jack Dorsey sounding off
5:10 Biggest Winner - Politics
9:43 Biggest Loser - Politics
14:37 Biggest Political Surprise
22:24 Biggest Winner - Business
26:3 Biggest Loser - Business
30:54 Biggest Business Surprise
35:27 Best Science Breakthrough
42:56 Biggest Flash in the Pan
47:8 Best CEO
52:43 Best Investor
57:12 Best Turnaround
62:47 Worth Human Being
67:31 Best Meme
70:2 Most Loathsome Company
74:47 Best New Tech
80:22 Best Trend
82:17 Worst Trend
86:2 Favorite Media
94:15 The Rudy Giuliani Award for Self-Immolation
99:7 The Besties spread holiday cheer with each other
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Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of the all in 00:00:03.440 |
podcast. And it is our year end episode. It is our 2021 Bestie 00:00:09.360 |
Awards. This is where we give our awards for the best and 00:00:12.880 |
worst of what happened in 2021. We did it last year, kind of 00:00:17.280 |
halfheartedly. But this year, hopefully we put a little bit 00:00:19.440 |
more work into it with me again, of course, David Friedberg, the 00:00:24.080 |
Sultan of Science, the Rain Man, David Sachs and sweater Jesus 00:00:29.640 |
Chamath polyhapitia. How's everybody doing? Ready to go? 00:00:33.240 |
Did anybody do their homework? Oh, my God. We are nine away 00:00:37.020 |
from episode 69. And where we will have a special guest, 00:00:41.420 |
special guest who I've given the choice of coming on episode 69. 00:00:45.480 |
Or 420. No, no, no, he has to do 69. He can do for 20. He can do 00:00:49.700 |
both. He can do whatever he wants. I basically could do no 00:00:53.160 |
wrong. Is he committed? What about jack? Can we get jack on? 00:00:56.220 |
Don't talk about that. If you stop grinding jack? Yeah. 00:00:59.280 |
Yeah. Maybe if you stop dunking on jack for no reason, you 00:01:02.880 |
insufferable sacks. Seriously, you'd suffer enough that like 00:01:06.480 |
I've alienated potential guests Chamath alienated best now 00:01:09.840 |
you're getting in on alienating the guests. You think it would 00:01:11.760 |
be too much to have Jack and Chris Dixon on together? Who? 00:01:15.360 |
Who? Oh, my God. That is so gross. Delete that. No, don't 00:01:22.320 |
look at free. I don't care about my relationship with AC 00:01:26.400 |
sixteen. Jack Dorsey. We all know who who's the other person? 00:01:28.920 |
Dick Chris Dixon. Chris Dixon. Yeah, who's a general partner 00:01:32.220 |
at Andreessen Horowitz who runs their crypto fund? Oh, nice. It 00:01:35.460 |
wasn't just me. I mean, very vocal lately about web three. 00:01:39.120 |
Why don't you guys invite the CFO of Greylock as well while 00:01:42.480 |
you're at it? We couldn't get the partner in charge of human 00:01:47.580 |
capital at Excel. You're getting a little bit far afield. Chris 00:01:52.980 |
posted something pretty innocuous on web three and Jack 00:01:55.680 |
jumped down his throat and same thing with biology as well. I 00:01:58.560 |
I saw the C Dixon quote. It wasn't just me. Jason, now you're 00:02:02.100 |
pretending. You retweeted a photo of Jack jumping down Chris 00:02:07.020 |
Dixon's throat and saying, whoa, what's going on here? Now, you're 00:02:10.020 |
trying to pretend. I love Jack. Now, you're trying to pretend 00:02:11.940 |
like he was triggered by me. He wasn't triggered by. He's been 00:02:14.820 |
Jack after dark. Jack is gone wild. Chris Dixon did did try a 00:02:19.620 |
little misappropriation. For which Jack jumped down his 00:02:22.440 |
throat. Basically, ever since Horowitz's thing, they always 00:02:25.080 |
culture appropriate, right? Like Jack is just like any other guy 00:02:28.200 |
who quits his job and then goes on a shitposting rampage. And 00:02:32.340 |
really like you did. Like Jamal did after shutting down. I'm 00:02:38.820 |
just one of his casualties. There's a bunch of people he's 00:02:41.040 |
gone. I thought energy was great. I think he quit. I think 00:02:44.340 |
it's great to have Twitter so he could tweet. Yeah, he wanted to 00:02:48.120 |
get in there. No, he wants to focus on blockchain. Clearly, 00:02:50.880 |
he has religion on this and he believes that it's the future 00:02:54.000 |
of the internet and he cares deeply about the democratization 00:02:57.840 |
And I think it would be awesome to hear his views on this. I 00:03:00.180 |
would love for him to come on and not be badgered about 00:03:02.580 |
censorship in the role that he used to run. How would you like 00:03:05.520 |
him talking to you about, you know, being the CEO of Zenefits 00:03:10.500 |
I'm not trying to badger him. I only have one question, which is 00:03:13.140 |
the reason why he loves Bitcoin is for censorship resistance. 00:03:16.440 |
So why when he had the opportunity as CEO of Twitter, 00:03:20.220 |
didn't he stand tall for resisting censorship? 00:03:22.860 |
Maybe he did. Okay, so just tell us that read between the lines, 00:03:26.640 |
dude. I don't think he has to. I don't think he has to. I don't 00:03:27.480 |
think he has to answer to the Twitter mob and try to say, 00:03:30.480 |
here's all the hard decisions I made that you guys didn't see. 00:03:34.800 |
The dynamics of a board and lawsuits and politicians. 00:03:39.300 |
And the president inciting a riot at the Capitol. 00:03:41.820 |
You're not supposed to create a list and publish it and say, 00:03:44.160 |
look at me, I'm such a good boy. I mean, it's not unreasonable. 00:03:46.740 |
I just think it's a reasonable question for me to ask. 00:03:49.080 |
Yeah, but the way you asked it was like, isn't Jack at an ashram, 00:03:52.320 |
like praying, like you're full dunk mode. I know that's one of your comedy writers writing 00:03:57.120 |
those tweets for you. Did you get, was that a punched up tweet or not? 00:04:01.440 |
I felt punched up. I can't actually be funny. 00:04:04.200 |
It felt funnier than you actually are. That's why I'm saying so. 00:04:07.080 |
And an ashram? Why did you have to throw my people in the mix? 00:04:08.520 |
Yeah, why'd I have to go to the ashram? Yeah. Why are you in Kent? 00:04:10.680 |
Jack has spent years trying to cultivate this like Zen approach. 00:04:22.140 |
We have an award show to do. You can apologize later. 00:04:24.540 |
Do you have a music intro? We got an important show to do. 00:04:26.760 |
Please welcome everybody to the 2021 Bestie Awards. 00:04:31.640 |
Now just put in like everybody like Denzel Washington and you know, like, 00:04:37.240 |
Yeah, can we edit screenshots from like the last Oscars? You know, 00:04:41.760 |
Okay. Oscars from the eighties. Like Tom Cruise getting up and cheering and whooping. 00:04:56.400 |
And it said we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. 00:05:08.400 |
And we're going to start it off with biggest winner in politics. 00:05:17.800 |
I got Eric Adams, the new mayor of New York City. 00:05:26.020 |
You know, woke sensibilities of the other Democratic candidates. 00:05:29.960 |
He is a former cop who still packs a gun and he made his issues supporting the police, 00:05:37.380 |
public safety, charter schools, you know, as an instrument of minority advancement. 00:05:43.100 |
And he even pushed to make New York City a tech and crypto hub. 00:05:45.740 |
He is going to reverse the damage done under de Blasio. 00:05:48.620 |
He won four or five boroughs, the Democratic primary and overwhelmingly carried black Latino 00:35:38.020 |
I think I mentioned this on the show a few weeks ago, and I'm spending quite a bit of 00:35:41.840 |
time at work on it, which is that starch synthesis system that was demonstrated by those Chinese 00:35:49.520 |
And the system itself is likely not going to be the production system that saves the 00:35:55.260 |
But the concept that we can take proteins that are expressed by different plants and 00:36:00.620 |
put them together in a tank, and then that tank can convert molecules from one form to 00:36:07.740 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.780 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.820 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.860 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.900 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.940 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:07.980 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:08.000 |
And then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another. 00:36:08.160 |
By leveraging these proteins that just interact and move around in the tank, it's really an 00:36:15.880 |
We can take carbon out of the atmosphere and make food with a minimal amount of renewable 00:36:20.520 |
And I think that's really a moment that will inspire a whole new realm of industrial synthetic 00:36:27.100 |
biology work, a lot of which I hope to kind of, you know, build and participate in pretty 00:36:37.960 |
So the starch synthesis system is your best science breakthrough. 00:36:41.920 |
I've got these new oral COVID antiviral pills that are coming out from Pfizer and Merck. 00:36:47.180 |
The FDA is supposed to be approving them by the end of this week. 00:36:51.280 |
As you recall, last year around this time, it was these new mRNA vaccines from Pfizer 00:36:56.960 |
But we now have to admit that the vaccines have not ended the pandemic because the virus 00:37:01.600 |
can mutate its spike proteins around the vaccine. 00:37:07.020 |
So the vaccines by itself are not going to be able to mutate. 00:37:07.920 |
So the vaccines by itself cannot end the pandemic. 00:37:10.320 |
These new pills have, I think, a very good shot of doing it next year because they're 00:37:19.780 |
And just even if the spike proteins mutate, it will not prevent these protease inhibitors 00:37:26.360 |
So I am hopeful that this will be the thing hopefully that ends the pandemic next year 00:37:39.560 |
I would be very cautious about the side effects that are going to arise from these protease 00:37:44.500 |
And, you know, they're not as well studied as they normally would be, but there are, 00:37:48.500 |
they have a serious biological effect in normal cells in the human body. 00:37:52.780 |
And I think as more people use them, you'll see more crazy stories about side effects 00:37:59.060 |
There's a lot that are well documented, but the way they work biologically is they disrupt, 00:38:05.180 |
And those are not just systems related to the virus. 00:38:10.500 |
And so I'm personally quite nervous about them. 00:38:13.320 |
I know that folks are pretty encouraged by them and excited, but I'm nervous about them. 00:38:17.600 |
There's a similar medication that's been developed for HIV, right? 00:38:23.880 |
Does that cause similar side effects or because people use that prophylactically? 00:38:27.280 |
Yeah, to some extent, you know, and the dosage matters. 00:38:31.680 |
And so normally, you would go through many more years, I think of testing on these things 00:38:37.800 |
But I think, you know, when you have half a percent or 1% of a population, you know, 00:38:42.560 |
let's say take the most extreme case die, then a million people use it, you're gonna 00:38:48.160 |
And I'm not sure we've really gotten the boundaries of this yet. 00:38:52.300 |
And the dosage is pretty significant on them. 00:38:54.320 |
So yeah, like, let's, you know, let's keep a watchful eye on this stuff. 00:39:02.200 |
Well, hopefully, the number of people who need to take it, Freiburg, correct me if I'm 00:39:05.200 |
wrong, if we've got this many people vaxxed who will not need to take it. 00:39:07.760 |
And then Omicron, my biggest optimism is that Omicron is a much less virulent virus, and 00:39:17.520 |
And we slowly see this pandemic kind of, you know, becoming less severe, which is what 00:39:31.940 |
It's not like, hey, you get herd immunity, and no one's gonna catch this thing. 00:39:36.760 |
Meaning like, you know, you're gonna get a lot of immunity. 00:57:26.340 |
Good portfolio mix of gas guzzling cars that still make a ton of money like the Ford F-150s. 00:57:35.620 |
They have electric versions of the Ford F-150s. 00:57:40.300 |
I think they printed like a $20 billion gain on Rivian. 00:57:47.700 |
Turnaround from what that company was, which was if you talked any car company that could 00:57:52.740 |
have been up 132% at the beginning of 2021, it would not have been Ford. 00:58:06.960 |
I said the best turnaround was Kyle Rittenhouse's reputation. 00:58:11.220 |
As you recall, Rittenhouse shot three white attackers, including two of them were sex 00:58:19.940 |
The media then painted him without any evidence as a white supremacist terrorist who went there 00:58:24.580 |
looking to shoot people like some sort of frustrated school shooter. 00:58:29.800 |
There was clear video evidence at the scene that he acted in self-defense. 00:58:33.600 |
Once there was a jury trial, all of this came out. 00:58:37.480 |
He was acquitted on all charges and the prosecution was revealed to be politically motivated. 00:58:42.280 |
I would say that Rittenhouse now has his freedom and he has a reputation back in the office.