back to indexE32: Behind the scenes of Elon hosting SNL, CDC failures, America's real-time UBI experiment & more
Chapters
0:0 Jason goes behind the scenes of Elon's SNL appearance
23:36 CDC failures, misleading information on COVID spreading outdoors
39:10 Reacting to Stanley Druckenmiller's thoughts on current Fed policy, decoupling of capital markets from policy
48:32 America's real-time UBI experiment, Business Insider's piece covering All-In
65:23 Friedberg's science corner: synthetic biology IPO/SPACs, stem cell breakthroughs & more
79:15 Should the besties start a third party? Is it possible?
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Look at this red on my stock screen. I can't believe what's going on. Stocks are down. 00:00:09.040 |
Does it mean I'm a loser? I don't know. I need some self-worth now. 00:00:29.980 |
We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. 00:00:37.220 |
Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. The All In Podcast is back. Apologies about last week. I had a personal emergency. 00:01:04.000 |
I'll tell the story. Obviously, I don't like to talk about a certain friend of mine because he's very high profile. 00:01:14.180 |
I have been lifting. I just want to let people know the gun shows back. 00:01:17.080 |
No, you were backstage at SNL helping Elon with the SNL appearance. Were you not? 00:01:26.180 |
Tell us about the backstage experience at SNL. 00:01:27.940 |
Yeah, tell us about the backstage experience. 00:01:29.500 |
I mean, we were living it out in real time with you guys, but tell us what it was really like. 00:01:33.020 |
First, tell us why Elon recruited you to do it. 00:01:42.900 |
Don't you remember the joke at Saks' roast five years ago? 00:01:48.340 |
Remember when Elon was late and I had that ad lib joke? 00:01:51.800 |
There were two jokes that I landed at Saks' thing, which I thought were the two fun. 00:02:16.980 |
We'll have to tell stories from that sometime. 00:02:20.700 |
You probably are Elon's funniest friend and have a talent for writing. 00:02:29.020 |
So I left to go on a little trip to go to Austin to see some friends and then Miami 00:02:34.020 |
to see some friends, one of those friends who I hooked up with and was hanging out with 00:02:39.600 |
And he was doing Saturday Night Live and we were just coming up with ideas around the 00:02:46.380 |
dinner table and we were just laughing our asses off, just brainstorming ideas that would 00:02:50.960 |
never be allowed on television, you know, and he said, 00:02:55.520 |
Hey, would you come with me to Saturday Night Live? 00:02:59.360 |
I assumed he meant Saturday night, you know, and you know, he said, no, I don't have a lot of tickets. 00:03:04.700 |
I would you come with me to the writer's room and just, you know, be my wingman basically. 00:03:09.920 |
So I had like three or four board meetings and five podcasts. 00:03:25.360 |
You're like, can you give me about half a second to decide? 00:03:28.460 |
I had already made the decision in my mind that if my friend needs help, you guys have 00:03:32.120 |
been in similar situations where you've asked me for help. 00:03:34.420 |
I've rolled with Chamath on speaking gigs or going down to try to, you know, save Saks 00:03:48.160 |
And you know, without giving, well, without giving away anything that was private or confidential, 00:03:55.200 |
they have a process that they've been doing for 46 years. 00:03:59.140 |
And we came in, you know, with our own process of what we wanted to do. 00:04:04.780 |
And it kind of was, you know, kind of an interesting thing because a lot of the ideas I had were, 00:04:11.620 |
let's just say a little too far out for the cast or for the writers, but some of them 00:04:16.960 |
And I got to spend a lot of time with Lorne Michaels and I really worked on my impersonation 00:04:27.880 |
And I was like, so Lorne, tell us who were the worst hosts ever? 00:04:30.340 |
And he's like, um, it's an interesting question, Jason. 00:04:33.700 |
You know, we don't like to think of it that way, but, um, with, um, there in terms of 00:04:41.400 |
people who thought they were smart and maybe were not as smart as they thought they were. 00:04:46.120 |
Steven Seagal, um, was a little bit difficult and. 00:04:54.720 |
Offerson, um, you know, back in 78, he wasn't a musical, um, guest that was Carly Simon. 00:05:03.460 |
And um, he liked to drink and, uh, in this very green room in 78, he had a couple of 00:05:10.540 |
drinks during the rehearsal, the dress rehearsal. 00:05:13.700 |
So we, we, we all did some coffee and like any sports team, when the game starts, we 00:05:27.660 |
And that was a really amazing one to watch because we went to Brooklyn to a warehouse 00:05:33.920 |
And what the role I played, if I'm being totally honest is to just, you know, be Elon's friend 00:05:38.400 |
and be there with him, but also, you know, was that funny for you? 00:05:44.780 |
Cause there are some no, you were a punch up man. 00:05:46.780 |
I wrote some lines without, you know, taking anything away from the writers there who do 00:05:50.540 |
the bulk of the work and the actors and the set designers. 00:05:54.800 |
Uh, like we had to go through 40 scripts and you know, when you read something in a script, 00:05:58.220 |
it's kind of hard to know if it's funny, but then when you put Chloe or, you know, Kate 00:06:01.680 |
McKinnon or Colin Jost or Che or Mikey day, like these people are phenomenally talented. 00:06:07.760 |
So all of a sudden the script comes alive, but for the, for the, um, the, the, the, the 00:06:16.560 |
Cause I don't want to get myself in too much trouble. 00:06:18.040 |
Were you responsible for besties in the Gen Z hospital? 00:06:25.720 |
And then the other one that I thought was incredibly well done was murder dirter. 00:06:32.700 |
Um, and I thought we thought that was like, we thought that one was incredibly dumb. 00:06:36.640 |
Like when you read it on the script, it was like, is this funny or not? 00:06:39.460 |
But they, you know, this is the thing you add tremendous performance and you, uh, add 00:06:46.580 |
And we were, we were in Brooklyn at three in the morning and Elon comes out with that 00:06:53.480 |
And he's like, oh, I'm going to be a laughing hysterical. 00:07:02.980 |
Cause you use that as a tease, uh, amongst people we may mutually know a lot. 00:07:07.600 |
And so when I heard it, I was like, oh, that's a Jason joke. 00:07:14.360 |
No, but what's so ironic is the Asperger's joke came out and then everyone, all these 00:07:19.680 |
press articles got written saying Elon has admitted publicly. 00:07:23.320 |
And he is, we are so proud of him and it is such a moment to come clean about having this, 00:07:33.440 |
This Jason joke that became a, uh, oh my gosh. 00:07:37.020 |
I'm particularly proud of that one because here's how that one went down. 00:07:40.120 |
They had an idea to do jeopardy and it was probably the flattest pitch. 00:07:44.080 |
Um, because you know, it's like 11 o'clock at night, a writer comes in and says, we want 00:07:50.260 |
And we want, it's a kind of a feature for the cast to do auditions. 00:07:53.160 |
Have you ever saw the star Wars or additions or the Jurassic park or additions kind of 00:07:57.280 |
So I was like, for me, I was like, oh, that sounds like it's got potential, but it was 00:08:02.520 |
And when they actually did it, it was like really weird characters that were obscure. 00:08:06.740 |
So I had pitched, uh, my own version of jeopardy and Elon had his version of jeopardy. 00:08:12.540 |
Elon's version of jeopardy was dictator jeopardy, which was Kim. 00:08:23.000 |
And he was like, how to deal with your adversaries. 00:08:25.580 |
And he was like, uh, for 800 and he's like, Plinonium. 00:08:33.620 |
So we are laughing our asses about that, you know, but then like there were security concerns. 00:08:39.500 |
Basically we're kind of dialing this around the, it would be as funny as the, it would 00:08:44.000 |
be a direct correlation of funny to the chances of Elon being assassinated by one of those 00:08:50.120 |
So then we decided maybe we don't do that one. 00:09:09.300 |
And so you'd have Elon playing Zuck, somebody playing Elon, and then Chloe playing Elizabeth 00:09:14.020 |
Holmes, and they would be like, you know, how to deal with an intense situation with 00:09:20.500 |
an employee and then press it, don't make eye contact. 00:09:24.900 |
So one of the writers, I could tell she was not happy about this. 00:09:32.000 |
And she says, listen, my husband has Asperger's, my two brothers have Asperger's. 00:09:34.700 |
And all of a sudden, we're in like, okay, you know. 00:09:40.420 |
I would say, you know, 80, 90% of the staff is very, you know, like, let's go for it. 00:09:44.780 |
And then there's probably 10 or 20 who are very sensitive to different topics. 00:09:48.060 |
And so there's a little navigation you have to do there. 00:09:50.880 |
But we really want and then so you I have Asperger's. 00:09:54.760 |
And you know, like the whole room is like, wow. 00:09:56.360 |
So then I was workshopping with somebody and I wasn't in the writers room. 00:09:59.880 |
I contributed 2% that max, other than, you know, being Elon's friend and supporting him. 00:10:07.520 |
When they didn't want to ask Elon something, they came to me. 00:10:10.740 |
And I negotiated some situations like they didn't originally want to have any Doge father 00:10:18.980 |
Well, I mean, no, they have they have they have general counsel there. 00:10:24.060 |
Now we know why the show is not funny anymore. 00:10:29.400 |
I just think Elon Elon made it culturally relevant for the first time in like a decade. 00:10:33.760 |
So they can you're describing is too many people with a veto, right? 00:10:40.980 |
No, no, I think the show I think the show is very funny. 00:10:45.680 |
And what's not funny to us might be like funny to some other folks. 00:10:50.640 |
But certainly moving the show from 1130 on the west coast definitely has an impact. 00:10:55.060 |
So what they could have done 10 years ago, before the timing was synced between the west 00:11:01.780 |
There's still a big cultural shift that's happened. 00:11:07.200 |
It's not John Belushi anymore when the the like the corporate CEO comes on the show and 00:11:12.480 |
wants to do crazier, wilder stuff than people, you know, the regulars. 00:11:19.140 |
So anyway, you know that one of the folks who's working on the monologue, you know, 00:11:24.140 |
comes in and the original monologue, you know, all these things go from rough to potential 00:11:30.880 |
And so for me, it was, you know, just you guys know my career choice, I just really 00:11:34.100 |
made me think like, maybe I picked the wrong career choice. 00:11:39.040 |
I was like, you know, I've kind of made my money already. 00:11:42.040 |
Jason, you can you can always take credit for being the third or fourth writer on Elon's 00:11:51.040 |
They said they wanted to do an Asperger's joke, I said, so I wrote the Asperger joke 00:11:58.440 |
of, you know, hey, I just want to let people know I've got Asperger's and so there's not 00:12:06.880 |
So if you see me looking off screen, it's not that I'm looking at cue cards, it's just 00:12:10.320 |
So they didn't keep the cue card part, but they kept the rest of it. 00:12:13.200 |
And then they did the OJ joke, which was written by Colin Jost, who is absolutely phenomenal 00:12:17.420 |
as a human, just as a writer and a collaborator. 00:12:21.700 |
And we spent a lot of time with Colin Jost, he came in. 00:12:24.600 |
And they had this joke about OJ having been on at 79 and 96. 00:12:30.800 |
I think that's when he went to jail or something. 00:12:33.520 |
And I said to him, I said, I don't think people understand the joke, they actually think he 00:12:38.840 |
So we're in the green room rehearsing and Elon goes, "So hey, and like OJ, like I'm 00:12:47.020 |
That's like saying OJ murdered once and now he's a murderer forever. 00:12:55.680 |
And I just go like this, and he killed both times. 00:13:00.180 |
And the room, there's like a silence and then everybody goes hysterical. 00:13:06.800 |
I'm like, "I'm gonna take a joke and I take a sip of my wine." 00:13:10.800 |
I bet there was like a split second where everyone looks left and right. 00:13:17.000 |
And Colin just looks at me and goes, "That's getting in there." 00:13:23.060 |
For me, I tell you, I'll get emotional talking about it. 00:13:28.360 |
It's one of the happiest times I've ever seen in Elon's life.