E40: A Bestie gets COVID, Delta breakthrough, Billionaire Space Race & more

00:00:00.400 | this week we're gonna play our favorite new game show guess who's got covid yes that's right

00:00:05.840 | somebody on the pod somebody's got coved it it it it's not the me oh you're ruining the game java

00:00:16.160 | oh sorry so here's the game person who got coven have they been vaccinated or not okay all four of

00:00:23.280 | us have been vaccinated we covered that on our previous pod so everybody's been vaccinated

00:00:26.560 | double vaxxed everybody's been double vaxxed did we all get pfizer i was pfizer pfizer pfizer pfizer

00:00:32.960 | okay so pfizer across the board we got quads and this is a breakthrough infection has anybody

00:00:41.760 | taken a z-pack after a night of partying

00:00:44.480 | i have oh my god

00:00:47.840 | i'll give the pod lasted 39 episodes i'm done that was good that was good okay so number one

00:00:55.680 | clue number one

00:00:56.480 | this bestie got a breakthrough infection outdoors at a restaurant number one got it outdoors number

00:01:04.640 | two got it from somebody who was also vaccinated number three this bestie does not fly commercial

00:01:11.040 | and he's not a fan of being interrupted and he is not an evangelical david the breakthrough

00:01:20.080 | vaccination david sacks

00:01:23.440 | i'm glad that we got that

00:01:26.080 | i'm glad that uh my getting a breakthrough case of covet is uh is comedy fodder for you somehow

00:01:31.680 | let your winners ride

00:01:35.360 | rain man david sacks

00:01:38.240 | and instead we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy

00:01:44.640 | sassy poop break it down walk us through the like what happened and then how you felt yeah okay so

00:01:55.600 | what happened and we're glad you're safe obviously obviously we wouldn't be joking you're still

00:01:59.680 | losing weight you lost five pounds so yeah yeah you may want to read some of the beautiful text

00:02:05.040 | messages we sent you when we found out this week yes

00:02:07.600 | jason what did you say jason you said uh i was just like wow think about who we could recruit

00:02:16.320 | for the fourth spot we need keith raboy we get peter teal in here i said that i really really

00:02:22.320 | hope you didn't die but if you did i would love to have your plane as a support plane for my plane

00:02:28.080 | and i was thinking you know what i might be pro san francisco if you die i could i might want

00:02:32.480 | all right well sorry guys i'm gonna live sorry jason i'm gonna live here's basically what happened

00:02:37.440 | okay is um so tuesday of last week i had dinner with a few friends and then my friend just we're

00:02:46.080 | out outdoors in a restaurant yeah i'll tell you exactly where we were at matzahisa in l.a which

00:02:50.720 | had the outdoor parking lot yeah yes the outdoor parking lot area which is a covered outdoor area

00:02:55.440 | so you know these like covered areas are effectively inside because it traps the air in

00:03:00.880 | there but in any event we had dinner there um the next day he woke up with a fever and sore throat

00:03:07.200 | he went and got a covet test he tested positive he is also double vaxxed with pfizer okay so and

00:03:14.160 | and i reported this to you guys last week on last week's show so i went out right away on wednesday

00:03:20.400 | got

00:03:20.640 | a covet test was negative i repeated the test on friday was negative and then sunday rolls around

00:03:27.440 | and i wake up and i got a fever i don't really have a sore throat but i've got kind of a i'd say

00:03:32.880 | an occasional dry cough and i've got and i've got some sinus congestion david mild fever or like like

00:03:39.200 | 99.9 or like 102.1 it topped off at about 99.9 and it's barely a fever yeah yeah a fever barely

00:03:48.240 | fever but i mean it was definitely there and i took tyler

00:03:50.560 | and all and it brought it down to the low 99s and uh so any event first thing monday morning i went

00:03:57.360 | and got the covet test and sure enough i had covet uh they can't confirm that it's delta variant but

00:04:02.000 | they think it is because that's what's like exploding in la right now and so yeah i mean look

00:04:07.040 | i mean the good news is it's very mild i mean i'm it's now thursday and i feel like i'm like

00:04:14.160 | 99 recovered i don't have a fever anymore my feet are you 10 days in now this no no no no

00:04:20.400 | no no this is the you know i i came down with symptoms on this past sunday and it's now thursday

00:04:26.240 | so i am and wendy were you exposed tuesday night so i was exposed yes you're right it's about 10

00:04:31.200 | days but you're convinced that was the only way you could have gotten it right yeah because somebody

00:04:36.480 | else at the dinner got has symptoms now too ah so it's a super spreader at matsuhisa yeah yeah

00:04:43.200 | basically but it shows you how virulent this new delta variant is i mean you've got there are

00:04:50.800 | four people out that night plus the person who who had it and two out of the four

00:04:56.960 | basically got it and we were all vaccinated including the person who had it and of course

00:05:03.600 | he didn't know he had it he didn't have any symptoms till the next day so um and you know

00:05:08.640 | i got it i got it five days after exposure it's that five days is like clockwork you know did you

00:05:14.880 | um did you have like a pulse ox did you measure any of these other things did any stuff change at

00:05:19.120 | all yeah

00:05:20.080 | yeah i mean i've i've have the pulse ox meter and it's been around 95

00:05:23.360 | so it is down yeah you should be like 98 right yeah it is down slightly it is down slightly and

00:05:29.760 | if you go to 92 or 93 they say go to the emergency room i think and and did you self-isolate from

00:05:36.000 | your family yeah i did but we were lulled a little bit into a place of overconfidence yeah well i

00:05:43.520 | remember i got i got coveted tests on wednesday and then friday and they're both negative i

00:05:46.800 | thought we were through it so i was at home

00:05:49.520 | and um and then and then so my 11 year old got it even though i was isolating this thing is i mean

00:05:57.200 | this thing is so contagious so you know what i've read is that delta variant is 60 more transmissible

00:06:03.040 | than the uk variant which was the alpha variant the alpha variant was 60 more transmissible than

00:06:07.840 | original covet so you're looking at a transmissibility you multiply those together of

00:06:12.240 | two and a half times the original and the original covet had an r naught of two to three so you

00:06:18.000 | multiply two to three by two and a half times and you're looking at five to eight and you know at

00:06:23.520 | the explain to the audience what that means in terms of reality it means the r naught is uh how

00:06:28.960 | many people does the average infected person transmit before they know they have it and can

00:06:35.200 | fully self-isolate and so you're going from the original covet was two to three delta variant

00:06:40.960 | might be like eight we're getting up into like smallpox territory with this thing and it's all

00:06:47.440 | because vaccinated people can get it. The Israel data that we talked about on the show last week

00:06:54.800 | was 64% effectiveness. Israel reported that the effectiveness of Pfizer had gone from 95% to 64%

00:07:03.720 | in terms of preventing infection. So you have maybe a third of vaccinated people can get it,

00:07:09.140 | and then they can spread it without even knowing they have it. So I think we're at the point now

00:07:14.680 | where if you're not vaccinated, you're going to get the Delta variant. We're seeing now cases

00:07:20.360 | explode all over the country. Even in LA County, they've now had a, the five-day average of cases

00:07:27.760 | has jumped 500% in one month. So pretty much, and Jason, you've tweeted this, if you are not

00:07:34.000 | vaccinated, you are choosing to get the Delta variant at this point. I mean, this thing is

00:07:37.880 | extremely transmissible. That's what, there was a great tweet by Scott Adams, the guy who,

00:07:43.000 | the cartoonist who,

00:07:44.560 | I wouldn't,

00:07:45.060 | who listens to the pod, by the way,

00:07:46.360 | who does listen to the pod. He had a, he had a really great quote. He's like,

00:07:50.440 | today is either Wednesday for those that are vaccinated or yet another day where the unvaccinated

00:08:02.800 | amongst you are likely to get COVID. Something like that, right? Was that the tweet?

00:08:06.680 | Yeah, yeah. It was basically today's Wednesday for people who are vaccinated,

00:08:10.160 | or it is the day you're going to get, you know, the virus.

00:08:14.440 | Yeah. I'm trying to stop messing around with this thing. Now, here's some good news, actually, is,

00:08:18.880 | is so on the Wednesday when we found out that my friend had tested positive, but again,

00:08:24.820 | I was still negative. I had no symptoms. I had nothing. I told my wife, she had gotten one shot.

00:08:30.400 | She hadn't gotten the second shot. And we were on the fence about whether my 13-year-old should

00:08:33.880 | get the vaccine. They both raced out that day, got vaccinated. Of course.

00:08:37.840 | And he did not get the virus. So they had basically, call it three or four days of the vaccine

00:08:44.320 | to trigger an immune response in their system and that protected them. They did not get sick.

00:08:48.220 | And David, did you take anything else like prednisone? You took nothing, no steroid,

00:08:52.960 | nothing.

00:08:53.260 | Nothing. The only stuff I, so my friend did take, he did get prescribed prednisone. My doctor thought

00:08:58.780 | that was unnecessary or a bad idea for me. All I took, okay, was Tylenol to control the fever,

00:09:04.480 | and I took Flonase to reduce the sinus congestion. Look, I mean,

00:09:08.500 | I don't want to overstate this. It was a very mild cold for me. And that is why I think

00:09:14.200 | everybody should run out and get vaccinated. What did you pair it with? Like a Pappy Van

00:09:17.620 | Winkle or did you go with the Screaming Eagle? What did you pair your cup with?

00:09:21.100 | Also, the worst part is Matsuhisa has such a shit wine list. You probably drank this

00:09:26.320 | like random swill. That's probably why. You were drinking some like

00:09:29.140 | nigiri sake in all likelihood. Freeburg, last week, I was asking you,

00:09:34.060 | or maybe it was two weeks ago, I was considering getting the Moderna because I was like,

00:09:38.140 | I think getting two of these things will boost you into the high 90s. You said I was crazy. Has

00:09:44.080 | your position changed on that? Yes.

00:09:45.700 | Okay, explain. Because this is the one time I'm ever going to be right about science,

00:09:50.260 | a week before you. So, I think the data up to that point didn't necessarily kind of validate

00:09:57.700 | that additional level of action, but now it does. And I think new data is coming out. So, I saw

00:10:03.760 | an executive from a pharmaceutical company a few days ago who broke down some statistics that they

00:10:12.580 | looked at in Israel. Yeah. And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing. This is a good thing.

00:10:13.960 | This is a good thing." And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing." And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing."

00:10:14.500 | And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing." And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing."

00:10:14.800 | And what they were identifying was that of the newly infected cases in Israel,

00:10:20.260 | of people that are vaccinated, nearly two-thirds of those people were vaccinated in January.

00:10:27.220 | About 30% were vaccinated in February and less than 10% were vaccinated in March. And I'm just

00:10:33.340 | approximating and I'm just kind of transcribing from kind of what I remember him saying. And so,

00:10:40.960 | he said, "The more recent vaccinations, we're not seeing any of that." And I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to go ahead and do this."

00:10:43.840 | "We're not seeing breakthrough cases, breakthrough infections." So, the more recently you're

00:10:47.860 | vaccinated, the less likely you are to have this. And then I met with a pretty well-known

00:10:55.180 | virologist a few days ago as well, who highlighted for me that we are seeing antibody titers decline

00:11:02.500 | over time in people. But there's other studies that are showing, which means that the antibodies

00:11:08.320 | against COVID in your blood after you get the vaccine slowly go down over time. So, we're seeing

00:11:12.100 | that. We knew that, right? We knew that.

00:11:13.720 | We knew that to some extent. But there was another study that showed that memory B cells, B cells are

00:11:19.180 | the immune cells that make antibodies, and they remember the antibodies to make. And they were

00:11:23.920 | worried, are we losing those B cells in the human body? And another study found, actually, they're

00:11:28.180 | in your lymph nodes. So, they went in, they pulled them out, and they identified, "Look,

00:11:31.180 | these B cells are persistent. We are having a persistent immune memory to COVID when we

00:11:36.340 | get exposed to the vaccine or the virus." And so, you know, those two data points, both

00:11:43.600 | of them kind of said, "I think we're going to need to do a booster very soon for everyone,

00:11:47.260 | and we're going to need to get a third shot."

00:11:48.700 | The tail, Friedberg, seems like it's like six months.

00:11:52.300 | Yeah, it sounds like he was saying that you're going to see an efficacy drop to that kind of

00:11:56.440 | two-thirds level after about six months of your - after getting your vaccine. And, you know,

00:12:01.780 | he said, "Look, this Delta variant is virulent, but, you know, the more pressing kind of point

00:12:06.520 | isn't that it's this variant that's breaking through. It's that the efficiency of these vaccines, at

00:12:13.480 | this point, looks like it's such that we're going to need to do boosters."

00:12:16.360 | Now, Pfizer went to the White House this week with some of this data, and they presented it

00:12:21.280 | to the White House. And the White House said, "If you guys follow the news, I'm hearing this,

00:12:26.320 | I'm repeating what I read in news reports at this point." But what they said was,

00:12:31.780 | you know, "We're not ready to kind of commit to doing booster shots for a couple of reasons. One

00:12:37.900 | is there are a lot of people out there that haven't had their first shots. And we're seeing

00:12:43.360 | the people that are having these breakthrough infections almost universally, not always,

00:12:49.060 | but very large majority having very mild symptoms and not getting hospitalized,

00:12:53.860 | and the death rate is still very, very low." In other words, the vaccine did its job.

00:12:58.420 | The vaccine didn't prevent, you know, an infection, meaning that the virus starts

00:13:03.040 | replicating in a way that's uncontrolled in your body, but that your immune system had enough of

00:13:07.960 | a defense to keep it from causing severe disease in your body. 99% of the people going to the hospital

00:13:13.240 | are unvaccinated, right? Exactly. And so, we're seeing that great success still with the vaccine,

00:13:20.260 | but they are seeing and there are now studies that, you know, I think reference to your earlier

00:13:24.940 | point that, you know, if you put a different RNA strain, RNA sequence into your body, which Moderna

00:13:31.120 | and Pfizer have slightly different, you know, sequences, you end up creating different antibodies

00:13:35.260 | and having more diversity of antibodies can kind of provide greater immunity.

00:13:40.240 | So, it's almost certain we're going to get boosters,

00:13:43.120 | and that we're going to end up seeing them hit the market next month in September. Yeah.

00:13:46.780 | Is the booster different than the original? So, for example, if I get a Pfizer booster,

00:13:52.300 | am I only basically getting still an expression of that RNA strand that I'm supposed to basically,

00:13:59.320 | like is it the same formulation, the same dosage?

00:14:02.320 | So, both of those options are still up in the air. And so, we may still get the same vaccines that we

00:14:08.620 | were getting before. You could go get a Moderna shot, you could go get another Pfizer shot of the

00:14:12.280 | exact same,

00:14:13.000 | RNA sequence that you got before, or they may introduce some new ones. And so,

00:14:17.920 | all the pharma companies are proposing both approaches, and they're pursuing both paths

00:14:23.260 | right now. And we'll see where we end up. And what about swapping between an RNA approach

00:14:27.460 | and a traditional vaccine approach? So, getting J&J plus Moderna or Pfizer versus like, there's

00:14:32.860 | a lot of AB testing we need to do to figure out what is the most efficacious and useful pathway.

00:14:36.820 | This is exactly like the, this reminds me exactly of HIV, where it took 10 years for them to figure

00:14:42.280 | out what cocktail.

00:14:42.880 | And now look, HIV is I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of like nothing, it's really not that not

00:14:49.660 | that bad. And the way that we probably for those of us in our 40s have it emblazoned in our mind is

00:14:54.580 | how bad it is versus how bad it is. It was a death sentence.

00:14:57.040 | It seemed like a death sentence. And today, it's kind of more, it's more manageable than frankly,

00:15:01.540 | it's a chronic disease now. That's like having diabetes or something.

00:15:05.200 | I have another crazy statement here, which is that if you take the the case fatality rate of COVID,

00:15:12.760 | and now you think about the fact that there's going to be call it 60% of America that's

00:15:18.760 | vaccinated, and then every six months, we'll be getting boosters. And then you have the Petri dish

00:15:24.640 | on the other side of the 40%, where you'll just be ripping through variant after variant after

00:15:30.160 | variant, eventually, it stands to reason that if 40% of Americans remain unvaccinated two or

00:15:36.940 | three years from now, the odds that there will be a strain, that is the

00:15:42.640 | killer strain that does meaningful damage to those people, I think is basically 100%.

00:15:48.880 | And if you think about a case fatality rate, that's meaningfully high, what you're effectively

00:15:54.340 | going to do is start to call these people from the earth. And that is a crazy idea. But that's

00:16:00.100 | what folks who choose to not get vaccinated are setting themselves up for.

00:16:03.040 | I mean, it's the quintessential, you know, Darwin.

00:16:06.460 | Is that just not probabilities? Like, am I getting something wrong here? Probabilistically,

00:16:09.580 | isn't that?

00:16:10.000 | That's what I'm concerned about. And it's not just

00:16:12.520 | Americans not getting vaccinated. It's the rest of the world. I mean, even if we got to

00:16:16.600 | extraordinarily, extraordinarily high vaccination rates in the US, there's gonna be large, you know,

00:16:21.700 | numbers of people outside the US who never get vaccinated, who will continue to be a Petri dish.

00:16:25.720 | To give you to, you know, comparison, the common cold has 1800 variants. That's why we can't get

00:16:32.620 | vaccinated. So, you know, we're on the Delta variant right now, I think they actually have

00:16:37.060 | numbered variants up to lambda, we're going to run out of letters the alphabet really soon. You know,

00:16:41.920 | how long will it be until there are these killer variants that act? I mean, look, I mean,

00:16:46.960 | that can punch through the vaccines. It's pretty scary, actually. And I would say that this is like

00:16:55.120 | quite a come down off where we were just two weeks ago, you know, where we thought the Pfizer vaccine

00:16:59.560 | was still 95% effective. Now it's 64% effective. I mean, look, I do want to like underscore that

00:17:06.220 | the vaccine worked in the sense that what I got was super mild. I mean, it was really just like getting,

00:17:11.560 | like, a cold. I mean, I didn't need to take anything more serious than Tylenol. But,

00:17:16.360 | but it does show that the virus is mutating really fast. It's highly transmissible. And I'm not sure

00:17:24.100 | we're totally done with this thing. You still have it, right?

00:17:26.620 | I still have it. Yeah.

00:17:27.460 | Yeah. So when will you get tested to figure out when you don't have it anymore?

00:17:31.120 | I'll probably go in tomorrow. You know, because it feels to me like I'm about 98% better.

00:17:36.280 | Freebrook, is there any data

00:17:38.260 | about the pattern of people?

00:17:41.140 | People who are vaccinated getting this thing? Like, is there - remember how like,

00:17:44.680 | you know, there was early data that showed, you know, women had a different immune response than

00:17:49.600 | men and like people who were, what was it, O positive or, you know, a certain blood type

00:17:54.400 | effectively had inborn immunity?

00:17:56.440 | I haven't heard or read anything like that. And so, this is still an emerging issue, I think,

00:18:02.140 | you know, what we're seeing.

00:18:03.880 | By the way, I was vaccinated a few months ago, guys. Like, I mean, I am like recently vaccinated.

00:18:08.680 | When was your second shot?

00:18:10.720 | Basically, like a few months ago.

00:18:13.840 | Yeah, it's -

00:18:15.040 | Mine was in March. Yeah.

00:18:16.600 | One thing I think it's worth highlighting just to reinforce the vaccine importance,

00:18:20.560 | you know, the virologist, the infectious disease guy I met with was telling me that,

00:18:25.120 | you know, one way to think about this is the more opportunity the virus has to replicate,

00:18:31.420 | the more opportunity it has to evolve.

00:18:33.760 | And so, when you're vaccinated and you have a mild case and your body recovers in a few days,

00:18:40.420 | just to give you guys a sense, the difference when someone that's not vaccinated has COVID and

00:18:45.940 | they've measured the viral load in the nose from day one when they start having their infectious

00:18:50.380 | kind of presentation to day four, which is when they peak, the viral load is 10 to the eighth

00:18:56.080 | higher. Okay, that's like 100 million times higher. And so, that's 100 million times more

00:19:02.080 | viruses that are being produced on day four than were being produced on day one when you were

00:19:05.860 | already showing symptoms. So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body, you're going to have a lot of symptoms.

00:19:06.860 | So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body, you're going to have a lot of symptoms.

00:19:06.860 | So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body,

00:19:10.380 | it's getting a chance to mutate. The important point he emphasized was what matters most is we

00:19:15.980 | get the most number of people on planet Earth vaccinated as fast as possible. Because the

00:19:20.540 | faster you can get more people vaccinated, the fewer opportunities you give the virus to replicate

00:19:25.260 | and find itself a mutational path that can ultimately break through all these vaccines and

00:19:29.660 | cause real severe loss of life. And so, the presentation that Sachs kind of described

00:19:36.220 | it is encouraging in the sense that it likely means that the virus did not create that there

00:19:41.180 | wasn't that much of a viral load or a huge viral load relative to what there would have been if he

00:19:45.020 | wasn't vaccinated. And so, even though he did have an infection, you know, the virus didn't get as

00:19:51.420 | much of a chance to spread to other people. It didn't get as much of a chance to mutate.

00:19:54.540 | But it did because my friend who I got it from after one having dinner one night,

00:19:59.260 | he was double vaxxed with Pfizer. And in my, you know, my 11 year old daughter got it.

00:20:05.100 | Yeah.

00:20:05.580 | It's for her again, it's just like a cold.

00:20:07.980 | Yeah.

00:20:08.540 | But so, this thing is highly transmissible.

00:20:11.740 | And what is it?

00:20:13.340 | It changes the equation, I think, on some policy questions. So,

00:20:17.180 | Yeah. That's what I was gonna ask you. What does it mean for the fall? What now? What?

00:20:20.540 | So, two weeks ago, I thought that because I was vaccinated, I didn't need to care

00:20:27.100 | whether other people were vaccinated because, you know, up until that point, the data was you were

00:20:31.980 | 95% plus, you know, effectiveness. So, why care?

00:20:35.100 | Yeah.

00:20:35.420 | If other people get vaccinated. Now, we can say for sure that unvaccinated people can,

00:20:42.220 | or vaccinated people even can get, other people can get you sick, even if you are vaccinated. So,

00:20:47.580 | I think it absolutely changes the equation on, so, for example, colleges were requiring students to

00:20:54.060 | get vaccinated to return in the fall. Like before, I didn't think that necessarily made a lot of

00:20:58.460 | sense because if you wanted to protect yourself, you just get vaccinated. But now, it makes sense,

00:21:02.940 | right? Because the college needs to get to the top of the list.

00:21:03.980 | Yeah.

00:21:04.220 | Yeah.

00:21:04.380 | Yeah.

00:21:04.620 | Yeah.

00:21:04.860 | Yeah.

00:21:05.100 | herd immunity to protect everybody against you know potentially right delta variant right so

00:21:11.340 | i do think it changes the equation quite a bit and i think we need to make a big push here to

00:21:16.460 | get everyone vaccinated then in fact sacks for uh vax passports which as um you know uh libertarian

00:21:25.420 | i think uh is i think part of your political i think everybody on this call has kind of got a

00:21:30.140 | little libertarian like you got to make your own choices here but does it change your thinking

00:21:33.740 | about that i.e employers uh colleges uh city state workers teachers are either get vaxxed or don't

00:21:42.860 | come back to the office and you're fired well i'll tell you i don't like the idea of government

00:21:48.780 | having the power to to stick a needle in your arm but i do think that

00:21:54.300 | employers workplaces schools i think it's very reasonable

00:21:58.220 | for them to say if you want to come back to the workplace you have to get vaccinated

00:22:02.380 | because your unvaccinated status creates a risk it creates an externality for everybody

00:22:07.180 | should they be able to fire you if you're a teacher should they be able to fire you if you're

00:22:10.860 | a bus driver if you're a pilot yes okay so here's the craziness this is a a self-inflicted wound we

00:22:18.860 | are down to only 700 000 vaccines being given a day we peaked we had the ability to do five million

00:22:25.820 | shots a day at the peak back in april we hit over five million shots in one day in the united states

00:22:31.020 | states and that's a country where you know whatever 270 million adults you know were able

00:22:36.300 | to get it in other words two percent of the pop adult population in a single day could have gotten

00:22:40.540 | it now we're down to 700 we have over a billion vaccines sitting on shelves eighty percent of

00:22:44.780 | democrats have received one shot compared to 49 of republicans 27 of republicans say

00:22:51.420 | that they won't get vaccinated under any circumstances compared to three percent of

00:22:55.980 | democrats answering that question the same way and an additional nine percent will only do so if

00:23:00.460 | required again three percent of democrats said they would only do so required so that's 36

00:23:04.700 | are opting out forever i get it but it's because we allowed it to become a position

00:23:11.100 | meaning it's not it's not like anybody has a position on breathing breathing is not a political

00:23:16.380 | position right it's not like i choose to not breathe or drinking water or trying to you know

00:23:21.740 | like these like eating three meals a day if you can we have allowed the most basic of issues in

00:23:28.780 | this case you know collaboration and the lack of collaboration and the lack of collaboration and

00:23:29.900 | you know collective public health to be politicized in a way and that is entirely the government's

00:23:34.140 | fault it's the government's fault and it's the media and the media because the media has

00:23:39.340 | exacerbated it so that they can have power people on the conservative side of the spectrum have

00:23:44.620 | learned to distrust the media and big corporations because and government because they've been lied

00:23:49.340 | to so often most recently yeah right most recently with like the lab leak theory

00:23:54.380 | and so you know there's this suspicion on the right like what aren't they telling us

00:23:58.620 | you know um now look i think we got to get over this i think you know we need to get everyone

00:24:02.780 | vaccinated for all the reasons that freiburg said or look everyone's going to get delta variant i

00:24:08.460 | mean maybe this is a good news is that we can rapidly get to herd immunity by everyone getting

00:24:12.220 | delta variant well that's the inevitable outcome for any infectious disease right

00:24:15.820 | highly infectious diseases either you can vaccinate or everyone's going to get it

00:24:19.900 | uh and it's gonna you know i mean you've got a delta variant maybe then whatever the

00:24:23.820 | you know whatever the more dangerous deadly one is yeah let me just highlight what i'm most concerned

00:24:27.740 | about i i am most concerned about what's what's happening with sax just anecdotally speaking i'm

00:24:32.300 | not going to speak to the i'll speak to one statistic but like anecdotally speaking i'm hearing

00:24:36.700 | this happening more more frequently i don't know about you guys other friends other people you know

00:24:41.260 | but a lot of other people i'm hearing about their double backs that are now getting covid so as that

00:24:47.340 | starts to happen uh the implications for the economy i think are pretty significant um

00:24:53.260 | because i think people whether there's a policy change or not people are going to get scared again

00:24:59.580 | and people if we're not kind of enforcing economic lockdown people will go into social lockdown

00:25:04.380 | and we're going to revisit uh you know more of the behavior we saw over the past year

00:25:09.420 | where people are going to be nervous to travel people are going to be nervous to fly people

00:25:13.580 | are going to be nervous to go to restaurants and you know the downstream consequences of

00:25:17.500 | everyone kind of locking up again even if the government doesn't enforce lockups uh could be

00:25:22.700 | pretty catastrophic are you feeling that way yourself freeburg in other words am i going to

00:25:26.940 | lock myself up are you going to go to dinner are you going to go to travel to italy or to

00:25:32.220 | you know japan or you know would you go to disneyland with your kids how is it affecting

00:25:36.460 | you your personal behavior being a man of science uh so my personal circumstances are

00:25:42.460 | a little different right now uh not not to get into it um uh just with my uh

00:25:47.420 | you know my wife's pregnant and we're moving houses and so we've got a bunch of reasons why we're not

00:25:52.140 | traveling and and exposing ourselves unnecessarily right now um but uh i i would say that at this

00:25:59.580 | point uh you know if all other things being equal would i go to disneyland with my kids i would

00:26:04.860 | probably wait right now six to twelve weeks to see what happens here right well i think like if i'm

00:26:11.740 | feeling that way now i think a lot of people are going to be feeling that way in in the next four

00:26:15.420 | weeks as they hear about more friends getting covid now the good news is the hospital so i am

00:26:21.580 | in a very very very very delicate economic recovery right now and you know we have put out

00:26:27.100 | so much money to stimulate this economy everyone is so walking on like the razor's edge to keep

00:26:32.940 | things you know growing we were afraid of inflation lumber prices today by the way

00:26:37.020 | are lower than they were when this whole kind of inflationary thing started and everyone was

00:26:40.380 | freaking out about it so um you know lumber prices are lower than they were at the start of the year

00:26:44.860 | which is you know like a lot of this kind of inflation risk has kind

00:26:47.500 | of come out of the equation already so the markets have taken that pricing out

00:26:51.020 | and now we're going to be in a circumstance where people might cancel their travel people might

00:26:54.780 | cancel their their restaurants people might stop going to the office again stop you know getting in

00:26:59.100 | the car etc etc so i am most concerned about like the psychological effects of of what we're seeing

00:27:05.660 | with these breakthrough infections the frequency of them now if you look at the israel data so

00:27:10.460 | israel had zero deaths for two weeks they're now averaging about one death a day um and despite this

00:27:16.860 | you know huge increment they're getting about i think 500 breakthrough infections a day right now

00:27:20.460 | so that is good statistical news right statistically these breakthrough infections are

00:27:26.220 | not fatal they're not causing hospitalizations they're they're you know if you kind of did the

00:27:29.820 | math going back a year and said these are the actual statistics of covid people would be like

00:27:33.820 | okay no big deal let's move on it's a it's a tough kind of uh virus but because of the

00:27:38.860 | circumstances where we we are kind of under these these feelings that this is a fatal

00:27:44.300 | disease and could cause fatalities those statistics don't matter the fear is what matters and people

00:27:49.900 | are going to start to behave quite differently i think in the next few weeks i have a slightly

00:27:52.940 | different point of view here but um i think freeburg you're you're i think you're right in

00:27:58.300 | some respects um but i don't think it's going to come from people i don't think people uh i think

00:28:04.300 | people are exhausted and they want to go back to life as normal yeah and i think this summer

00:28:09.260 | was a window into some amount of normalcy for a lot of us and i don't think we really do want to

00:28:15.500 | go back um and so i think what's what's really going to happen is that we're going to have to

00:28:19.340 | going to happen is there's going to be essentially some form of class warfare. And instead of rich

00:28:25.460 | versus poor and left versus right, it's sort of between people who believe in science and then the

00:28:31.220 | ideologically dogmatic who refuse to get it. And that's going to play itself out economically,

00:28:37.660 | I agree with you. There's going to be meaningful forms of economic discrimination against people

00:28:42.000 | who are unnecessarily compounding risk for the rest of us, who want to deal with it,

00:28:47.900 | ideally, touch wood as a common cold, like David said, and move the fuck on. And if we are

00:28:54.620 | prevented from doing so, because economic policy and healthcare policy has to constantly get

00:29:00.060 | rerated for a cohort of people who could protect themselves and everybody else but chooses not to,

00:29:05.640 | there is going to be a real pushback on that. The second thing that I think is going to happen is

00:29:12.020 | politicians proved that if you give them a window to seize power,

00:29:16.460 | they will do it. And I think what's really going to happen in the fall is if there's even a small

00:29:21.780 | modicum of risk, which there will be as we just talked about, yeah, it exists now. Yeah, I think

00:29:28.540 | it's the politicians that are going to want to jump all over this and say, Okay, guys, you know,

00:29:32.300 | lockdowns here, you can't do this, you can't do that. Literally, Gavin Newsom just did the big

00:29:36.760 | grand reopening California's back, you could see him locking it back up in September.

00:29:40.380 | Oh, that's the best way to it's the best way to snuff out any chance of the recall going against

00:29:45.220 | them is that even if you were angry, you're going to be able to do it. And I think that's going to

00:29:46.440 | be a massive form of voter suppression. Well, I think that would backfire pretty bad.

00:29:54.220 | You saw the flip flopping that he already did actually on schools where

00:29:57.960 | the government of California basically said, Hey, you know, we're going to mandate a mask policy in

00:30:03.500 | the fall. And then Newsom came out because people freaked out and said, actually, no,

00:30:08.060 | each local municipality can figure it out based on you know, what it what it means for them.

00:30:13.000 | The point is, guys,

00:30:15.300 | freebrook is right. These things aren't going away. We have a cohort of people who will continue

00:30:21.540 | to allow this thing to become worse than it has to be. And I think that there will be economic

00:30:27.480 | repercussions and discrimination against those people for that. And I think economically, we are

00:30:33.960 | going to take a step back because politicians will try to slow the economy down again.

00:30:39.520 | And there is definitely from the right, not to get political here, but they've been pretty silent about

00:30:45.120 | encouraging people to get vaccinated. And, you know, at CPAC and other places, people were

00:30:50.940 | cheering the anti vax movement, Mitt Romney came out. We don't control conservative media figures,

00:30:56.580 | so far as I know, at least I don't. That being said, I think it's an enormous error for anyone

00:31:00.620 | to suggest that we shouldn't be taking vaccines. Look, the politics is politicization of vaccination

00:31:06.260 | is an outrage and frankly, moronic. Mitch McConnell came out and says a polio victim

00:31:10.960 | myself when I was young. I've studied that disease. It took 70 years 70 years to come up with two

00:31:15.100 | vaccines that finally ended the polio threat. As a result of Operation Warp Speed, we have not one,

00:31:21.020 | not two, but three highly effective vaccines. So I'm perplexed by the difficulty we're having

00:31:24.700 | finishing the job. This is where you can expect the politically correct companies

00:31:30.220 | to act first because they're the woke mob will force some action on this issue. Whether you like

00:31:36.940 | it or not, but this is this is where the next petition will come from Apple, where the two or

00:31:41.420 | 3000 employees who are vaccinated, etc, who have people with

00:31:45.080 | you know, people in their households with with who are immunologically suppressed. And they're

00:31:50.940 | going to say, Hey, guys, this is crazy. Well, that that petition might be the first

00:31:54.500 | Apple petition that would make sense because those employees are directly impacted by other

00:31:58.540 | employees who come to the workplace on vaccinated unlike, you know, the issues around Israel or

00:32:03.420 | Antonio's book, whatever that they shouldn't have taken a position on.

00:32:06.140 | Wait a second, you're saying Antonio's book wouldn't make them feel safe and getting COVID

00:32:09.620 | would make them unsafe? Yeah, actually, actually, yes. Yes.

00:32:15.060 | COVID COVID is COVID in the workplace is a real safety issue. Not you know, not whether somebody

00:32:20.160 | wrote a book five years ago. So So I think they do. I think employees do have a right to say to

00:32:25.200 | their employers, listen, are we going to be a vaccinated workplace or not? Because it does

00:32:29.360 | impact their risk. But But Jason, it's your question about should people change their

00:32:34.040 | behavior? In light of this news, okay, in light of the fact that we now are learning

00:32:39.360 | about some reduced effectiveness of the vaccines. Here's what I would tell people sitting where I am,

00:32:44.680 | this is not a big deal. I mean, for me, okay, it was not a big deal. It was like a mild cold, I am not

00:32:51.100 | going to change my I'm going to go back to normal, like my pre COVID behavior. And I would tell you,

00:32:56.920 | like, if you're double vax, I don't think you need to be that afraid of this. Because, you know,

00:33:01.660 | my doctor said they are seeing a bunch of these breakthrough cases, but they're all very mild. It

00:33:05.380 | really is like getting a cold. I'm not changing my behaviors. I made my I made my decision. My risk

00:33:09.760 | assessment is if I get it, then I'm doubly protected. And I'm not going to change my behavior.

00:33:14.660 | I'm not going to wind up in the hospital, I'm going to focus all my energy on riding my bike

00:33:17.720 | and taking my kids out and having a good time. I'm not going back in lockdown.

00:33:21.200 | So I think that's right for you. But But here's where it gets a little bit complicated is my

00:33:24.980 | parents who are in their 70s. And one of them has an immune condition asked what they should do. And

00:33:29.300 | I said, Listen, if I were you guys, I would not be going to public places, I'd be masking up.

00:33:34.400 | They're asking me if they should go on a trip. And I said, No, I would actually if I were you,

00:33:39.260 | I would lock down until this blows over because they're at elevated risk. And so yeah, for me,

00:33:44.640 | getting COVID was like a mild case, but for them, maybe it could be more serious. So

00:33:49.260 | all it takes is 10% of the population acting like what you just described,

00:33:53.340 | you recommended to your parents sex for there to be economic ripples associated with this,

00:33:58.080 | this this breakthrough kind of condition for a while. And that's where I have the most concern

00:34:03.120 | is again, like, you know, we're kind of you're not concerned about the deaths free bird,

00:34:06.960 | you're concerned about the economic impact and the psychological scars that are now in place.

00:34:11.460 | I will explain I sent you guys a link to the Reuters

00:34:14.620 | article where they covered the press conference with the Prime Minister of Israel the other day.

00:34:18.280 | And basically, they are taking what they're calling a soft suppression strategy,

00:34:23.000 | where they're encouraging Israelis to learn to live with the virus, involving the fewest

00:34:28.600 | possible restrictions and avoiding a fourth national lockdown that could do further harm

00:34:32.680 | to the economy. And he said implementing the strategy will entail taking certain risks,

00:34:38.200 | but in the overall consideration, including economic factors, this is the necessary balance.

00:34:44.600 | And so it's a it's a it's a very kind of pointed position that they're coming to,

00:34:49.340 | I think the US government, the federal government is going to have to come to the same one. But we

00:34:53.540 | have different states and different local governments that are going to act differently.

00:34:56.840 | And because we've you know, we have authority vested in those different jurisdictions,

00:35:02.060 | you could see different public policy officials take different positions. And what we're talking

00:35:07.280 | about, if San Francisco said, restaurants have to go back to 25% capacity, it would decimate these

00:35:12.980 | already struggling small businesses. And then they would have to go back to 25% capacity. And then

00:35:14.580 | there's no more stimulus dollars available. And so you kind of think about this, or 10% of people

00:35:19.320 | cancel their vacation plans. What's that going to do to airlines and hotels? So again, my concern is,

00:35:25.200 | are we about to hit a wave of economic ripples that aren't necessarily tied to what is the right

00:35:31.020 | thing to do from a policy perspective, or a science or health perspective, but really,

00:35:35.100 | the psychological effects of the scared and concerned saying, you know what, there's more

00:35:40.140 | money available, like, you know, we got bailed out before we'll get bailed out again, let's implement

00:35:44.560 | a shutdown, let's implement a lockdown, let's not go to work and set whatever the decision tree you

00:35:49.540 | may have as a business owner or a policymaker. Well, there's an important point here,

00:35:53.140 | which is listen, COVID is going to be with us for a long time, we're going to need to make really

00:35:56.860 | smart cost benefit analysis decisions in how to deal with it. We can't go back to lockdowns,

00:36:02.980 | because they didn't work. And they're extremely expensive. We spent $10 trillion battling COVID

00:36:07.960 | last year, we cannot do that again, we don't have the bullets in our gun to keep firing at this

00:36:13.300 | thing like that. We got to start doing it again. And we're going to have to do it again. And we're

00:36:14.540 | going to have to do it again. And we're going to have to do it again. And we're going to have to

00:36:15.040 | make smart cost benefit decisions. And we're going to have to make smart cost benefit decisions.

00:36:15.540 | Zeroism is not going to work this idea that the premise of zeroism is that we can stamp out every

00:36:22.480 | last vestige of COVID. But maybe that was even a possibility when vaccines were 99% effective. But

00:36:28.720 | now that they're not, there's no chance of stamping out COVID. So we have got to learn,

00:36:33.200 | we've got to like like the Israel example, we've got to learn to live with this thing, and make

00:36:38.520 | smart cost benefit decisions. But I also think, you know, this is kind of a disaster for humanity. We

00:36:44.520 | now have this new category of illness that's rapidly mutating, we don't know what the end of

00:36:49.520 | it's going to be. Like I said, there's 1800 variants of the common cold.

00:36:52.900 | You know what though, David?

00:36:53.700 | That's causing these symptoms. By the way, has anyone noticed how many different symptoms this

00:36:58.260 | virus causes in people? There's over 200 long long COVID symptoms.

00:37:01.800 | Well, they worked on it for a long time, David, in fairness.

00:37:04.020 | Yes, exactly. Everyone knows it's a lab engineered virus that's now a plague on

00:37:09.000 | humanity. This is really a disaster. This is going to, I think, permanently impact human

00:37:14.500 | life expectancy. I mean, this is this is a serious problem.

00:37:17.800 | We could have avoided this entire thing here in the United States, at least.

00:37:22.060 | If people just took the win, how frustrating is this that we would probably have cases down to

00:37:30.160 | 1000 a day, and deaths down to 10 a day, like Israel, if we had just gotten everybody to take

00:37:36.940 | one of the billions of excess vaccines sitting on shelves and in CVSs and Walgreens across the

00:37:44.480 | country? How stupid are we?

00:37:46.160 | We don't have the collectivism to make those actions. If you think about what's happening in

00:37:51.680 | Israel did two different examples in China, collectivism manifests as like basically a top

00:37:57.860 | down, you know, form of governance, okay? In Israel, collectivism comes from a need for state

00:38:06.620 | level security, right? I mean, I've traveled to Israel a lot. I've worked there. And it's crazy

00:38:12.080 | when you see how people cooperate together.

00:38:14.460 | The minute you hear the missile alarms, right? And so there is a way for people to do cost benefit

00:38:21.720 | analyses in Israel, because it's a matter of life or death. And they've been trained to do that. So

00:38:26.520 | either it's imposed on you, like in China, or people bottoms up can understand these tradeoffs,

00:38:31.560 | like in Israel, we're in a very different place, where literally what we have are three things

00:38:37.920 | that are in conflict with each other, Jason, we have politics and the desire for power,

00:38:44.440 | we have the deconstruction of power by social media, and then we have the traditional media

00:38:50.740 | trying to stay relevant. That's a toxic thing that's spinning around and spinning around and

00:38:55.780 | spinning around. Trying to allocate this very ephemeral thing called power and influence,

00:39:02.140 | and we don't know how it works anymore. And so we cannot get our shit together. Half the people care

00:39:07.300 | about vegan fucking milk. The other half the people care. I mean, it's it's we are in a alternate

00:39:12.820 | universe,

00:39:13.420 | as bad as we are.

00:39:14.420 | Europe, and even Japan have done even worse because, I mean, our government was fairly

00:39:20.300 | efficient about the distribution of the vaccines. In Europe, they've just completely botched it.

00:39:24.920 | Same thing in Japan. So, we are not the worst on vaccination rates. Yes, it should be better,

00:39:30.360 | but this is a global problem.

00:39:31.400 | Well, we are the worst on capturing the opportunity, David. We have the opportunity

00:39:36.080 | to have everybody vaccinated.

00:39:36.540 | No, listen, let's be honest. America is the most exceptional country in the world.

00:39:41.000 | It has been for hundreds of years. It should be for several hundred more.

00:39:44.940 | There is no excuse for this country to have fucked this up this badly. I've spent enough time,

00:39:51.340 | as you guys have in Europe and in Japan, it's understandable why those countries are in the

00:39:56.940 | positions they're in. It is not understandable why America is in the position.

00:40:00.580 | So dumb. It's like having a 20-point lead with eight minutes to go, and you just screw up,

00:40:06.120 | and you lose the game. So stupid. All right, do we want to move on to the

00:40:10.760 | billion-dollar question?

00:40:10.980 | Yeah, I think that's positive news.

00:40:13.860 | This company, what's it called? Virgin Galactic? There's a company called Virgin Galactic,

00:40:19.240 | and they take people to space. It's $200,000. Stock seems to be doing pretty well.

00:40:24.100 | Anybody have thoughts on Richard Branson getting to space? I don't know. Let's just

00:40:28.660 | randomly go to somebody. Chima? No, in all seriousness, congratulations.

00:40:34.800 | I cried. Nat and I.

00:40:36.960 | Start the SEC transcript, public statement. Here we go.

00:40:40.740 | Nat and I watched it together.

00:40:43.020 | You cried?

00:40:44.620 | And it was emotional. It's emotional because you know, I mean, being a little bit more on the

00:40:50.320 | inside, how hard they worked. I mean, we've all been there where we're all toiling in obscurity,

00:40:57.000 | where there are moments where everybody thinks that what you're doing either is crazy or isn't

00:41:01.960 | going to work or is going to fail. And there's a moment where you just have to push through it,

00:41:06.900 | right? And find people that believe in you.

00:41:10.000 | I think I came in very late to that, but I had the opportunity to find these incredible people,

00:41:16.960 | believe in them, help them, give them capital, which was essentially oxygen, right? That's oxygen

00:41:21.700 | for a company. And then to see them achieve it, it felt so special to be a part of it. So yeah,

00:41:27.640 | I mean, I was really emotional. And it was beautiful. So I don't know. I think this is

00:41:33.800 | the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out. But basically, if you think about, and there's

00:41:39.800 | other people out there, but I think this is the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out.

00:41:39.960 | I think this is the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out. I think there's other stuff that

00:41:40.360 | we can't talk about with some other companies that we are all involved in David and I particularly,

00:41:44.020 | but here's the point, guys, between sending people and making us an interplanetary species,

00:41:51.640 | by creating pervasive internet access, and by enabling us to safely and reliably transport

00:41:58.560 | people either point to point sub orbitally, or basically into space. We are completely

00:42:05.320 | reimagining how the human race can work. And I think that's incredible.

00:42:09.920 | And to be a part of that is really special. There was a lot of people who got very negative.

00:42:15.920 | On Twitter, I noticed there was a lot of people that said, you know, no, like, you know, maybe now

00:42:21.080 | we can deal with, I don't know, child hunger, or, you know, hey, why are all these billionaires doing

00:42:25.940 | this out of the other end? I took a step back and I thought, my gosh, a people are in there's a small

00:42:32.840 | virulent cohort of people that are incredibly negative. And B doesn't even know what they're

00:42:39.020 | talking about. Because, you know, I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. I think that's

00:42:39.880 | the thing. I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. Because

00:42:40.000 | you're talking about issues of state responsibility and confusing it for what private citizens are

00:42:45.360 | doing to advance a set of technologies that I think have broad appeal. So, those are my thoughts. I

00:42:50.880 | mean, I was I watched every minute of it. And I thought it was incredible.

00:42:53.920 | Just to add to that. Yeah, I want to I want to take the part that all the naysayers and

00:42:58.400 | the negativity I mean, Chamath is right. All the very online people immediately came out

00:43:04.320 | attacking this extraordinary accomplishment and act of bravery by brands

00:43:09.840 | and I mean, this is a billionaire, he doesn't need to be risking his life, launching himself

00:43:13.600 | into space. I mean, this is a courageous act, you know, he's putting his his, his life where his

00:43:19.840 | mouth is. And you had all these very online people, but you had one CNN commentator basically

00:43:25.340 | said this was bad for the environment. You had another one saying that calling him a tax cheat.

00:43:31.320 | Then there was another whiner who said, What about all the starving children in the world? I mean,

00:43:37.020 | it just went on and on like this. And

00:43:39.800 | Mike Solana had a pretty funny tweet summing up the sort of the left's argument. Thusly said,

00:43:48.320 | number one, this is their argument, according to Solana, one money is evil to therefore people

00:43:53.360 | with money are evil. Three, therefore things people with money care about evil. I mean,

00:43:58.280 | that is basically the level of sophistication. Everybody's talking about that's being made.

00:44:02.120 | It's that's the argument that the left is making.

00:44:05.000 | Everybody's a bond villain.

00:44:05.960 | Right. But here's the problem is that first of all, we do get

00:44:09.760 | tremendous benefits out of these innovators who are pushing the boundaries of science and

00:44:16.120 | technology and engineering. You know, Branson actually went on Stephen Colbert show and

00:44:20.980 | defended he said, he said, Listen, I think they're not fully this is Branson. He said,

00:44:25.300 | I think they're not fully educated to what space does for Earth is connecting the billions of

00:44:30.220 | people who are not connected. Down here, he said every single spaceship that we've sent,

00:44:34.600 | putting satellites up there monitoring different things around the world, like the degradation of

00:44:38.680 | rainforest, monitoring,

00:44:39.720 | food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change. These things are essential for

00:44:43.980 | us back on Earth. So we need more spaceships going up to space, not less. So, you know,

00:44:49.320 | they're really just kind of ignorant about the benefits of technology. And what do they want to

00:44:55.140 | do with the money anyway? You know, we've got all the Yes, we do have all these problems on Earth.

00:44:58.860 | But so many of our problems are not a problem of underfunding. We have tons of money going to the

00:45:04.440 | problem of homelessness in California just keeps getting worse because we have the wrong approach.

00:45:07.980 | We have very uneducated.

00:45:09.680 | We have very wrong ideas. We have the wrong organization. We have the wrong execution.

00:45:15.020 | Fix the operating details. It's not a money issue.

00:45:18.740 | Exactly. Take education in California. We have very high levels of per pupil spending and our

00:45:24.020 | test scores keep going down. Why? Because we have unions controlling the schools. There's

00:45:28.040 | no competition. Don't worry, David, we're getting rid of testing. We've eliminated

00:45:31.580 | testing. We solved that problem. We spent more as a percentage of

00:45:34.520 | GDP on health care than any other Western country in the world. Yet the life expectancy of white men

00:45:39.640 | which is basically the top of the pyramid of health care is now sub 80 years old. What is going

00:45:44.740 | on? If all of these negative naysayers could actually just get into the arena and try to do

00:45:52.120 | something. Right. Instead of whining. Instead of whining. Instead of whining.

00:45:56.680 | Professional whiner class.

00:45:57.520 | They have no ideas. They have no ideas. They have no solutions. They just have gripes.

00:46:02.240 | And no ability to execute apparently.

00:46:04.580 | Yeah. Why don't they come up with new programs, actually test new programs at a hyperlocal

00:46:09.600 | level to see what works. Okay. Can I tell you why? Can I tell you why?

00:46:15.060 | These sort of like leftist whiners are not motivated to actually do the hard work. Meaning,

00:46:24.240 | even if they have an idea for education, the precondition to working on an education program

00:46:30.300 | or a health care program is they may need to spend four or five years in the bowels,

00:46:34.500 | in obscurity, just learning. Paying their dues. They don't want to do that either because

00:46:39.560 | they grew up in a culture of kindergarten soccer. Everybody gets the gold star. Everybody

00:46:43.740 | gets to touch the ball. Everybody gets to be at the front of the line. And they're not

00:46:47.760 | willing to put in the work because the minute they realize how much actual work is demanded

00:46:53.060 | of progress, they run away because they're scared. And the reason they're scared is because

00:46:57.380 | somewhere along the way, somebody tricked them. That it was not actually about trying.

00:47:03.360 | It was actually about succeeding.

00:47:04.940 | And that is the biggest failure that we could do to people is all of a sudden tricking them to believe.

00:47:09.520 | You have to have it work. So they'd rather be hall monitors. They'd rather be critics.

00:47:14.960 | Yeah, they'd rather be critics than try.

00:47:17.760 | Failure is just as good because you're one step closer to succeeding. Somewhere along the way,

00:47:21.760 | unfortunately, they were not taught that incredible secret hiding in plain sight.

00:47:25.440 | Friedberg, what do you think of the space race and the hall monitor whiner class?

00:47:28.720 | If you guys look, I was going to send these statistics earlier,

00:47:31.600 | but if you look at the amount of venture capital money that's gone into private space

00:47:39.480 | companies, space technology companies, I think it was a few hundred million dollars,

00:47:44.040 | call it three to $400 million pretty consistently from 2011 through 2014, pretty flat.

00:47:49.640 | And then in 2015, I think this is when SpaceX started to kind of create a lot of momentum

00:47:55.160 | and hype that private companies can't actually build businesses in kind of call it the space

00:48:00.520 | industry. The number jumped to 3 billion a year, and then it was a little over three and a half

00:48:04.600 | billion in 16. And then it jumped to almost 5 billion in 17. It was a little bit down in 18.

00:48:09.440 | 2020, it's climbed to almost 10 billion. And in Q1 of this year, I think we're at 2 billion

00:48:14.600 | of venture capital money going into private space companies. So there's clearly

00:48:19.160 | a great deal of momentum in this industry. The question is always what's the market at the end?

00:48:26.760 | And so if you break out, how do these companies make money?

00:48:29.560 | One is to provide services to governments, you know, launch services and taking people to the

00:48:35.800 | space station, what have you. And SpaceX has obviously built a tremendous business in that.

00:48:39.400 | There has been obviously a lot of interest in tourism. And I think it's, you know,

00:48:45.520 | we're seeing this first breakthrough with Virgin Galactic. And we're going to find out over the

00:48:50.320 | next couple of years, is there a tourism market? Historically, there's been interest in a market for

00:48:55.840 | visual satellites. But you know, if you look at some of the financials of companies like Planet

00:49:02.480 | Labs, they did a few acquisitions in space imaging, and the revenue hasn't really taken off

00:49:07.680 | there. And then mine is a little bit more expensive. And then, you know, the revenue hasn't

00:49:09.360 | really taken off. And mining was always this other question is, can we go out and mine,

00:49:11.720 | you know, rare minerals from space? And that one is just, you know, if you do the math on it,

00:49:15.960 | it's so far away, it's impossible to kind of model. So I think over the next... And then finally,

00:49:21.320 | it's communications. And communications are cheaper to run on Earth if you're in cities

00:49:24.840 | versus, you know, the SpaceX model is to reach rural areas that it's going to be

00:49:29.000 | more affordable to do this through space. And so, you know, there's obviously a ton of

00:49:35.240 | momentum and a ton of interest in private companies getting to space.

00:49:39.320 | So I think everyone right now, it seems is trying to figure out what's the market, right? What's the...

00:49:42.800 | How big is the market? How big is the business? And you know, how quickly can you actually see

00:49:46.320 | that capital turn around into real revenue? So, you know, there's this kind of market question

00:49:51.760 | that I think is still outstanding. In terms of, you know, the opportunity, if you go back to like

00:50:00.000 | the 15th century, I think something like 60% to 70% of ships, maritime travel, you know, got into

00:50:08.560 | shipwrecks. And you know, that's where, you know, you go back to the '70s, you know, you're like,

00:50:09.280 | you know, the, you know, that's around when, you know, we sailed across the Atlantic or the

00:50:14.600 | Spanish sailed across the Atlantic or funded... No, or they disappeared.

00:50:17.320 | Or they disappeared. I mean, they basically crashed. It didn't work.

00:50:19.640 | It was a one-way trip, sometimes to the bottom of the ocean.

00:50:22.920 | If you were sitting in Spain in 1450, and someone said, "Hey, these ships,

00:50:29.160 | it's going to be a great business. We're going to build lots of ships and we're going to go out.

00:50:31.960 | Maybe we'll get trade routes going. Maybe we'll discover new land. Maybe we'll make money.

00:50:35.960 | Maybe we'll take people on trips on these ships." You would be like, "This is

00:50:39.240 | crazy. Half the people are dying. There's no market on the other side." So, you know,

00:50:44.560 | we are in that kind of... And you would have been totally wrong.

00:50:47.280 | Yeah. And you are in that 15th century moment right now with the space industry.

00:50:51.520 | Great analogy. Now, would anyone in the space,

00:50:53.600 | would anyone in the ship business in the 15th century have been able to predict

00:50:57.920 | Carnival cruise lines or been able to predict evergreen ships taking stuff from China to America

00:51:03.520 | with these huge shipping crates? Would anyone have been able to predict, you know,

00:51:09.200 | going down to the bottom of the Atlantic? I mean, like all of the technology and the entire

00:51:14.360 | industry that kind of came out of that, you know, that set of pioneering activity in the 15th

00:51:20.120 | century transformed the planet, transformed the economy, transformed humanity. And, you know,

00:51:27.000 | it's very hard to sit here today and say, "Hey, I know where space is going, where the space

00:51:31.800 | industry is going. I know what's going to be possible." But I can tell you that if history

00:51:35.640 | is any predictor of the future, you know, this pioneer, this pioneer, this pioneer,

00:51:39.160 | hearing work that's going on, which is burning tons of money,

00:51:41.620 | and everyone's kind of questioning whether there's

00:51:43.540 | businesses here, it could transform our species. Once

00:51:47.340 | again, so yeah,

00:51:49.000 | David, your 15th century shipping example is so

00:51:53.860 | beautiful. three things that came out of that, which I think

00:51:57.160 | we all value. One insurance, to tort law, and carry. Exactly.

00:52:05.280 | And three was basically how they did risk management. So

00:52:09.100 | that, you know, each ship would take a little piece of

00:52:11.100 | everybody else's cargo so that some of the cargo would always

00:52:13.780 | get to marketplaces emerged Lloyds of London. Yeah, Lloyds

00:52:17.100 | of London emerged because of the maritime insurance that was

00:52:19.660 | required and the and almost all PNC insurance can trace its

00:52:23.200 | roots back to maritime insurance during that that era. Well, and

00:52:26.800 | so these these ancillary industries that emerged were

00:52:29.000 | like surprising, right?

00:52:30.020 | It's almost business models emerged because you had to

00:52:32.720 | figure out how you do the arbitrage and carry is the

00:52:35.160 | perfect example. People don't understand the venture capital

00:52:37.720 | carry, we get 20% of the

00:52:39.040 | profits was designed so that people with ships, the captain

00:52:42.280 | would get to say we get 20% of whatever makes it there. Now

00:52:45.740 | you're aligned, whatever makes it there, you get 20% of Okay,

00:52:48.980 | I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through that storm, and I'm gonna try to

00:52:51.280 | get it there. And we don't there's so many unknowns. But

00:52:54.200 | just looking at the one thing, you know, Starlink, I was doing

00:52:57.880 | a little research today about internet penetration, we've got,

00:53:00.640 | you know, close to 5 billion people on the internet now. But

00:53:04.000 | a very small number of them are on broadband, it's like 20%, 30%,

00:53:07.840 | somewhere in that numbers,

00:53:08.980 | it's hard to get an exact number there. But if you think about

00:53:12.040 | what's going to happen to humanity, we're talking about

00:53:14.620 | billions of people who did not have access to broadband. And

00:53:18.400 | they are going to go from not having, you know, if you think

00:53:23.680 | about what we went through in the West, when the internet first

00:53:25.840 | came out, and we got our first brown bag connections, you know,

00:53:28.060 | to find us like DSL, or whatever. We had libraries, we

00:53:31.160 | had books, we had colleges, we had stores everywhere, Barnes

00:53:35.140 | and Noble. So the internet was unbelievably transformative. But

00:53:38.920 | we were in a modern society, now you go to the developing world.

00:53:41.860 | And they're going to go from, you know, not even having

00:53:45.080 | running water, in some cases in their homes or electricity, or,

00:53:48.460 | you know, variable to having broadband. And they're gonna

00:53:51.620 | have access to YouTube circa 2022 2023, they're gonna have

00:53:56.020 | access to, you know, MIT courseware or brilliant.org. And

00:54:01.360 | all of this information and shopping, we're going to take a

00:54:04.200 | billion or 2 billion people and give them broadband instantly

00:54:07.640 | within a decade.

00:54:08.620 | This is going to change the face of the planet. I think that

00:54:13.120 | that's the revolution. And it's not just Starlink doing it.

00:54:16.480 | There's like three competitors to Starlink. Obviously,

00:54:18.460 | Starlink's got the biggest lead.

00:54:19.840 | Yeah, before SpaceX doing this, and there were others, there was

00:54:23.200 | a company called Oh, three B, it was stood for other 3 billion.

00:54:27.220 | And they had raised a ton of money to do this. I just I, by

00:54:30.160 | the way, I just want to speak to like a trend that we've seen.

00:54:32.720 | And and also speak to the quality of Elon's leadership.

00:54:37.480 | And I think that's a really important thing. And I think it's

00:54:39.880 | really important to think about that. And I think that's one of

00:54:42.280 | the things that we've been talking about, like, is the the

00:54:44.240 | world's largest satellite company, the world's largest

00:54:46.380 | satellite company, which is a company called skybox. And we've

00:54:49.660 | talked about it in a lot of our conversations, but it's a very,

00:54:52.180 | very different thing. Because, you know, so many companies have

00:54:56.080 | tried this, Google talked about it for years, which is how you

00:54:58.900 | can project, well, project loon was a follow on to what we

00:55:02.140 | talked about early on at Google, which was putting up satellites.

00:55:05.320 | And there were a bunch of startups that emerged that were

00:55:07.480 | all about building small scale satellites that could go up into

00:55:11.920 | low Earth orbit, and do things like imaging and communications.

00:55:15.220 | And a bunch of these companies were banking on the fact that

00:55:18.460 | the cost per kilogram to get your payload into space was

00:55:22.000 | declining pretty precipitously. So they were like, let's make

00:55:24.760 | super cheap commodity, you know, space imaging or space

00:55:27.880 | communication boxes, put them in space. And after a couple of

00:55:31.000 | years, they'll fall out of orbit and burn up. But it doesn't

00:55:33.220 | matter if we can get enough use out of them. And they cost so

00:55:34.960 | little.

00:55:35.260 | little to put into space, and they cost a little to make, let's

00:55:37.300 | put hundreds of them up. So there's a company called Planet

00:55:38.920 | Labs, that that does this, that's, I think, going public via

00:55:42.700 | spec. Now that again, they've been challenged with building the

00:55:45.040 | business and imaging. But there was a Google bought a company

00:55:47.800 | for I think half a billion dollars called skybox trying to

00:55:50.080 | do this, which was like imaging slash comms. And they had a

00:55:52.960 | bigger refrigerator size box that they were trying to put up.

00:55:55.420 | Ultimately, ultimately, Google, Google spun that out to Planet

00:55:59.080 | Labs. And the whole thing kind of, you know, became imaging.

00:56:01.600 | But I just want to highlight that this has been a big trend

00:56:04.120 | for a while.

00:56:04.900 | And it speaks to the quality of Elon, his leadership, because

00:56:08.380 | the fact that this guy did what 20 other 30 other people have

00:56:11.440 | tried companies have tried to do for the past decade or so. And

00:56:15.220 | he said, you know what, instead of just providing the the

00:56:18.180 | infrastructure to get all these devices into space, we're just

00:56:20.600 | going to build the actual devices, get this thing up and

00:56:22.540 | just go crazy with it and put our capital into it. And it's

00:56:26.020 | really impressive to see because it's such a no brainer. And

00:56:28.120 | people have been talking about this, this opportunity for over

00:56:30.340 | a decade. And these guys just have absolutely rushed the

00:56:33.580 | field.

00:56:34.540 | And they could build an incredible business out of this

00:56:37.360 | you know,

00:56:37.960 | the two most important companies in satellite communications are

00:56:40.360 | Starlink and swarm. And swarm was a company that I seated and

00:56:45.020 | sacks to the Series A and the if you talk to the founders of that

00:56:48.820 | company, you know, they'll give you this use case in I think it

00:56:52.000 | was in 2014. Do you guys remember there was a like a

00:56:54.840 | Malaysian Airlines flight that just disappeared? Yeah,

00:56:57.880 | disappeared. 370. Yeah, Malaysian Airlines flight 370.

00:57:02.680 | And it was like 230.

00:57:04.180 | And it was like, 240 people that passed away. And the the most,

00:57:10.000 | you know, indelible question that I remember from this was,

00:57:13.440 | we, we couldn't track it. And I thought to myself, how is that

00:57:17.440 | even possible? How do you how do you lose? How do you lose a

00:57:20.140 | flight in the middle of the earth? It's not possible. It

00:57:23.180 | turns out it is because our internet coverage is so sad,

00:57:26.180 | that it only covers small areas. And it made obvious that like,

00:57:31.520 | you know, we should live in a world where there is a lot of

00:57:33.820 | people, there is absolutely pervasive internet access

00:57:37.240 | everywhere, every single little shred inch of the world should

00:57:43.240 | be covered, and saturated, that should never happen. You know,

00:57:46.360 | the people should be able to have closure, they should be

00:57:48.820 | able to go and get that plane, recover the bodies, give them

00:57:51.340 | proper funeral. These are simple things, but they're human

00:57:53.940 | things that we should be doing as human beings, right? And just

00:57:56.200 | think about the IoT. Internet access enables us and the idea

00:57:59.380 | that we can't do that is shocking. And so I agree with

00:58:03.140 | you.

00:58:03.460 | Elon's incredible. And I think that within the next five years,

00:58:06.960 | we'll probably have pervasive internet access everywhere in

00:58:09.140 | the earth. And that's, that's transformational. You know, the

00:58:11.860 | the second most valuable private company in space is also a

00:58:17.420 | company that, you know, I invested in led the series A

00:58:21.580 | called relativity space and their idea, which I think will

00:58:25.340 | help everybody that wants to go to Mars and other places is, why

00:58:30.160 | don't we just 3d print the rockets?

00:58:33.100 | And why don't we 3d print the engines? And why don't we make

00:58:36.460 | that functionally useful, because it basically takes the

00:58:39.940 | cost of a rocket and divides it by 10. And these printers are

00:58:43.840 | small enough where you know, you can actually send them to and

00:58:48.040 | dismantle them and take them with you to Mars and set them up

00:58:50.920 | there. And all of a sudden, you can print the parts that you

00:58:53.440 | need to get back to Earth as an example. So I think that

00:58:57.640 | additive manufacturing has an enormous upside here in space.

00:59:01.780 | Um,

00:59:02.740 | and I think that that's another area that's going to be really,

00:59:04.900 | really

00:59:05.380 | anybody read Andy Weir's Hail Mary yet, the guy who did the

00:59:08.500 | Martian. He's a science fiction author, it's really great,

00:59:12.460 | because you don't actually know what you're gonna find out there.

00:59:14.860 | I think that's one of the things that, you know, to to

00:59:17.980 | freeberg's point, what do we find out there? What if we find

00:59:20.380 | a compound out there, that like, plutonium has some attributes

00:59:25.360 | that we could leverage in very small amounts to create unlimited

00:59:28.360 | energy or unlimited prosperity in some ways there are there are

00:59:31.900 | there are

00:59:32.380 | things that can exist that we have not been exposed to. And of

00:59:35.080 | course, the probability is there are many things that we have yet

00:59:38.080 | to be exposed to.

00:59:39.040 | 100%

00:59:39.880 | Yeah, look, I don't subscribe to to that thesis. I'll tell you.

00:59:45.820 | I'll tell you why. And this maybe also speaks a little bit

00:59:49.540 | to some of the counterpoints against the space industry

00:59:52.540 | getting the attention and resourcing it has relative to

00:59:56.020 | call it other places to allocate capital and human resourcing.

00:59:58.840 | And that is like the tool that we use.

01:00:02.020 | The tools that we have in science and engineering today as

01:00:04.600 | a species continues to expand at kind of a geometric pace, our

01:00:10.360 | ability to convert any molecule into any other molecule is

01:00:16.360 | basically fulfilled now. It's a function at this point of how

01:00:20.080 | much energy and time it takes to do that work. So almost all

01:00:23.680 | industry, the function of industry is to convert molecules

01:00:25.960 | from one form to another. And we have tools ranging from hardware

01:00:29.440 | engineering, mechanical engineering, and more and more

01:00:31.660 | recently in the early 20th century, chemical engineering,

01:00:34.600 | and in the 21st century, biochemical engineering, those

01:00:37.880 | tools are allowing us to invent, discover and convert molecules

01:00:43.120 | and even in some cases, kind of elemental forms that into nearly

01:00:49.280 | anything else we want to produce. And the technology is

01:00:51.940 | accelerating in such a way the set of technologies compound

01:00:55.000 | that if you think about 100 years from now, 200 years from

01:00:58.280 | now, 500 years from now, the human species theoretically, for

01:01:01.300 | very minimal time and very minimal energy should be able to

01:01:04.240 | have something that looks akin today to the Star Trek

01:01:07.240 | replicator, you basically type into a device what you'd like to

01:01:10.200 | make, and it makes it for you in a few minutes. And you could

01:01:13.140 | just like Mr. Fusion and Back to the Future two, you could put

01:01:15.540 | any input you want into the thing, you could throw in

01:01:17.560 | bananas and cans and whatever, and outcomes this thing you want

01:01:20.580 | to make. So as the human species evolved towards that capability,

01:01:24.700 | and we don't need to get into the details, that's just like

01:01:27.260 | the general trendline, it becomes less relevant that we need to go

01:01:30.940 | get other molecules or go get other things from extra

01:01:34.300 | planetary sources. The planet Earth has, you know, the order of

01:01:38.420 | 10 to the 23rd atoms, you know, two thirds of the surface is

01:01:42.820 | water, there is so much that is like unexplored and untapped

01:01:46.840 | from a resource perspective within this this spaceship that

01:01:49.720 | we're already on, that the argument would be made that our

01:01:52.740 | technology is allowing us to effectively recreate all of our

01:01:55.520 | fantastic dreams, right here where we live today. And, you

01:01:59.420 | know, first thing we're gonna have to do is

01:02:00.580 | fix this planet and fix the ecosystems that are kind of at

01:02:03.460 | risk. But as we progress, and as these technologies progress, we

01:02:07.120 | can do these extraordinary things that we don't necessarily

01:02:09.580 | need to rely on extra planetary travel and colonization in order

01:02:12.940 | to achieve those objectives. So that's, that's, that's, that's

01:02:15.460 | the that's the optimistic counter argument.

01:02:17.380 | Yeah, but we keep finding things like these molecules and

01:02:21.140 | Titan's atmosphere, etc, that we can't explain. And we're

01:02:24.580 | finding those through telescopes, let alone we get out

01:02:26.820 | there. I mean, we might be able to create them. Sure.

01:02:30.220 | Yeah. But we're going to discover them in other places,

01:02:32.980 | we they may be beyond our human comprehension that these things

01:02:36.340 | could even exist, David,

01:02:37.360 | there are interesting things we're seeing there, for sure. And

01:02:39.640 | I think, you know, there's a I think I mentioned this book

01:02:42.860 | before, it's so esoteric and difficult, but it's called Every

01:02:46.900 | Life is on Fire by this guy named Jeremy England. And he

01:02:50.380 | highlights how all of evolution is effectively predicted by

01:02:53.600 | statistical physics, and the energy bath and the molecules

01:02:57.440 | within a system,

01:02:58.420 | create a

01:03:00.100 | structure of molecules that you wouldn't see, except for that

01:03:05.140 | condition, meaning that over time, the complexity of that

01:03:08.380 | system evolves to create an equilibrium with the energy

01:03:12.700 | that it's that it's covered in. So what we see on planet Earth,

01:03:17.020 | he argues is organic molecules in what we call life, which are

01:03:20.480 | these molecules that are really good at copying themselves to

01:03:23.140 | absorb energy and dissipate energy. So the molecules and the

01:03:26.860 | energy state of, you know, Titan is different than what we

01:03:29.980 | see at Earth. So the way the molecules have evolved there are

01:03:32.100 | so different than what we've seen on Earth. And you can see

01:03:34.720 | these incredible concept of what we we wouldn't call life today,

01:03:38.080 | but really could be defined as life there. And so there's

01:03:41.220 | certainly a lot to learn a lot to explore. It doesn't mean that

01:03:44.480 | we're limited in terms of our ability to kind of realize those

01:03:46.840 | things here on planet Earth. But you're absolutely right. Like

01:03:49.700 | exploration is the core of being a human, right.

01:03:52.740 | And for people who don't know, Titan is one of the, it's the

01:03:55.720 | largest moon of Saturn. And it's got its own really weird

01:03:59.860 | dense atmosphere that's icy and slushy. And we don't even we

01:04:04.960 | can't even comprehend half the stuff going on there yet.

01:04:07.580 | Would any of you guys take the Richard Branson trip? Would you

01:04:11.860 | do the you know, like next week or two years? I guess at what

01:04:15.240 | point would you be comfortable taking it? I'm sure you've

01:04:17.140 | taken your your side.

01:04:17.960 | I can answer for sacks. The answer is no.

01:04:19.540 | 600 and 600 and something. So

01:04:23.100 | how many flights more would you want to see? You would want to

01:04:25.840 | do 10 more flights 20 more flights? No, I feel I feel really

01:04:29.440 | confident.

01:04:29.740 | That we know what we're doing the this flight was so critical

01:04:32.260 | because it was about figuring out what it was like to have

01:04:35.140 | passengers in the back and how they'd all behave when you had

01:04:37.840 | multiple folks. And I think once that readout is done, and

01:04:41.120 | Richard apparently took a bunch of notes. So you know, we'll,

01:04:46.400 | we'll be starting commercial ops, I think, you know, the

01:04:49.540 | next two or three quarters. So Wow. Yeah, when you have

01:04:53.800 | well, I mean, if I had a $500 million super yacht, like Jeff

01:04:59.620 | Bezos, that's where I'd be hanging out. I don't think I'd

01:05:01.900 | be blasting. I wouldn't be blasting myself into space. But

01:05:05.680 | I mean, look more power to them. I mean, they got, you know, they

01:05:08.980 | certainly have got guts. Yeah, he's doing both. Yeah. Jake,

01:05:13.660 | how would you do it?

01:05:14.320 | I you know, I my my theory is with kids, I kind of think

01:05:19.600 | differently about it. But if I was over 70, like Branson,

01:05:22.540 | certainly I would do it. Yeah, I would have to have that

01:05:25.440 | conversation with my spouse and my kids and say, you know, hey,

01:05:29.500 | this opportunity exists. They've done let's call it 100 flights.

01:05:34.000 | Somewhere in that neighborhood, I would I think I would feel

01:05:36.760 | pretty comfortable doing it. But I would want to check in with

01:05:38.920 | my family and kids and see if we were all in sync on taking that

01:05:42.340 | lever. I stopped riding motorcycles as an example. I

01:05:45.520 | think that flying and space tourism in the next year or two

01:05:48.820 | will be safer than riding a motorcycle. And then eventually

01:05:52.100 | it'll be safer than, you know, driving a car or something. It's

01:05:55.900 | quite possible. I was I was watching a space show with my

01:05:59.380 | daughter. She's three years old on the couch the other day. And

01:06:02.320 | then she she was like, Oh, space, it looks so fun. And I'm

01:06:06.700 | like, make you I said, Do you want to go to space? And she

01:06:08.860 | said, she looked back at me and she said, I want to go to space

01:06:11.200 | with you. And it made me cry. It was the first time I'd ever

01:06:13.660 | thought like, man, I first time you'd ever cried for some ever

01:06:16.360 | crying.

01:06:16.720 | Back to his firmware. Yeah, crying. I was like, are these

01:06:20.700 | water particles on my chin? But I had no desire, I would say

01:06:25.960 | before she said that to go to space, but it was a

01:06:29.260 | moment of like, man, this like, moment of like inspiration of

01:06:35.260 | like going to space is something that like, I think is going to

01:06:37.480 | inspire, you know, a generation and I told my daughter, I said,

01:06:41.600 | you know, you are going to go to space. I hope I can be there

01:06:45.040 | with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:46.120 | Can I give you an idea? Two different ideas, but they're

01:06:49.120 | roughly related. When each of your kids turn 18. Buy them a

01:06:53.840 | ticket to space so that they become an astronaut, which I

01:06:57.280 | think is like a beautiful kind of an idea. We're like, you know,

01:06:59.140 | what an incredible present to give somebody as they mature into

01:07:01.720 | age, you know, if you if you read if you if you basically

01:07:04.600 | have heard all these astronauts have said, you know, the the

01:07:07.840 | overview effect, like when you're above the earth looking

01:07:10.480 | down, it has this completely transformational effect on your

01:07:14.260 | outlook on life and the planet. And so, you know, to the extent

01:07:18.940 | that that's a quantifiable thing to give that to your child seems

01:07:22.780 | like an enormous gift or, or when everybody's of age or

01:07:27.580 | whatever, where all of your kids are

01:07:29.020 | of you guys go as a family so that the whole cabin is your

01:07:31.560 | family? That would be really cool to either those ideas. I

01:07:34.360 | will do one of those two on a second. There were four people

01:07:37.640 | Correct in this fight if I remember. This one, there's

01:07:39.940 | four passengers. Okay, wait a second. There are four besties.

01:07:43.380 | How are you not setting up a flight for the hundredth

01:07:47.020 | episode of all in to be on Virgin Galactic? Can you imagine

01:07:51.580 | watching David cry and be so scared? I mean, I can pretty

01:07:55.460 | much guarantee you, obviously, you guys have to buy tickets,

01:07:58.800 | but I can pretty much guarantee you that if the three of you

01:08:01.320 | decided to buy tickets, I'm pretty sure I can organize that

01:08:05.600 | we all go on the same flight. That would be ratings bonanza.

01:08:08.920 | That would be bigger than Saxon and Covenants.

01:08:11.640 | That's all I need is to be entombed with you guys for

01:08:14.460 | eternity.

01:08:15.180 | You know you want it. You know you want it.

01:08:20.300 | Hey, Chamath, can you address the von Karman line controversy

01:08:24.660 | around you know, what's the right point to be in space?

01:08:27.360 | Because it came up a lot this

01:08:28.580 | week in the news. I didn't want to kind of

01:08:30.140 | came up by one person.

01:08:32.060 | Well, no, no, there was people talking about on the news and

01:08:33.800 | stuff like maybe you can just share for everyone.

01:08:35.540 | Blue Origin being lame. Honestly, that's so petty by

01:08:39.300 | Bezos.

01:08:39.800 | So maybe just share what happened and kind of, you know,

01:08:42.500 | the point of view on this. Be awesome.

01:08:44.120 | But basically, the question is what defines space, right? So if

01:08:49.320 | you if you just like start from the bottom from ground level,

01:08:54.540 | right, you have the trophosphere, right? So you have

01:08:57.620 | like the first kind of like, you know, like, you know, like, you

01:08:58.360 | know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like,

01:08:58.860 | you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like,

01:08:59.360 | you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like,

01:08:59.740 | 1020 kilometers or so right, then you have the stratosphere,

01:09:03.700 | right? That's where like, a lot of like weather balloon activity

01:09:07.200 | happens. That's a 50 kilometers, then you have the mesosphere,

01:09:10.860 | right? That's where you'll see things like meteors and stuff.

01:09:13.060 | Then you get to basically the Karman line, which is around I

01:09:17.080 | don't know, 100 kilometers or so there are a bunch of countries

01:09:20.740 | that either have no opinion, or point to this kind of group to

01:09:27.800 | define what the stratosphere is.

01:09:28.140 | define what the beginning of space is. And they define that

01:09:31.860 | at about 100 clicks, which is I want to say 62 miles, okay. Then

01:09:38.320 | there's the United States. And the DoD and NASA, etc. And we

01:09:46.560 | define it at a different level 50 odd miles.

01:09:50.380 | And so in the United States, you need to pass the US regulatory

01:09:57.920 | standards. So there's a lot of different ways to define the

01:10:00.380 | stratosphere. But I think it's important to understand the

01:10:03.540 | definition of what the threshold of space is to be considered an

01:10:05.980 | astronaut. There is other countries that would then point

01:10:11.720 | to a different line, the Karman line has the line. I think the

01:10:16.180 | point is, it's all much ado about nothing, I think, in the

01:10:19.340 | end, I think Virgin stated that they went to 52 and a half or 53

01:10:23.460 | and a half. You know, things are iterative. So over time, you'll

01:10:27.700 | get to see the planet, you get to feel microgravity. You know,

01:10:31.320 | you get the benefit of the overview effect, whether you're

01:10:33.700 | at 52 and a half, I'm guessing you'll get the same effect at

01:10:36.220 | 58 or 60 or 61. And then you come back to Earth. So I thought

01:10:41.560 | it was kind of a little cheap and unnecessary,

01:10:46.540 | because there's not there's, there's nothing experience wise

01:10:49.180 | that changes, right? I mean, like the understanding. Yeah.

01:10:52.180 | Blue Origin did a tweet from a friend of mine, he said, I'm

01:10:57.480 | from the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Carmen line. So none of our

01:11:01.880 | astronauts would have an asterix next to their name. For 96% of the world's population space

01:11:06.920 | begins 100 kilometers up the insurance blah, blah, blah. It's just like, why would they do

01:11:11.240 | that the days before the Richard Branson goes up. It's just totally classless. It shows that Bezos

01:11:16.680 | has a competitive streak, which is just not graceful, I would say. And I think there's a

01:11:24.600 | little bit of bitterness there. And then you look at Elon. What did Elon do? He went so classy.

01:11:30.200 | He went so classy. He took a picture with Branson and he went to support him and wrote a

01:11:35.720 | congratulatory tweet. Elon does not feel he's in competition. But for some reason, Bezos,

01:11:40.520 | you know, Bezos had to, like draft and approve this specific tweet from Blue Origin. And I just

01:11:47.080 | thought it was classless and just stupid. Jeff really made you look so bad. Elon, Elon was so

01:11:52.760 | fabulous. I mean, it just shows you like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just

01:11:53.820 | like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between

01:11:53.820 | the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's

01:11:53.820 | the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean,

01:11:53.880 | it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference

01:11:53.880 | between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just

01:11:53.880 | shows you like what a class act he is and what he cares about, which is like he cares about

01:11:58.640 | advancing humans and our ability to do things that are incredible and inspiring. And when other

01:12:07.320 | people do it, he's not zero sum about it. As you said, Jason, he was there, he was supportive.

01:12:12.040 | It was just lovely to see. I think Bezos is still stung for when Elon said he couldn't get it up.

01:12:19.200 | Meaning he couldn't get his rocket into space. So, I don't know if that was -

01:12:23.560 | That was too classy of Elon.

01:12:24.880 | Well, it was funny. It was funny.

01:12:28.720 | Yeah.

01:12:29.240 | Well, I don't know if you guys have seen Jeff's rocket. Kind of small. His rocket is, I mean,

01:12:36.880 | Jason, now you're doing it.

01:12:38.560 | Kind of tiny rocket. I'm just joking. Just so we put a pin in it, Melvin Capital,

01:12:43.600 | the people who went to war with the Reddit traders or vice versa, lost $5 billion.

01:12:49.720 | Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.

01:12:52.300 | I mean,

01:12:53.300 | they're down 46%, which is just shocking in and of itself in this kind of upmarket.

01:12:58.640 | But then to actually quantify it, they lost $5 billion fighting a bunch of self-proclaimed Rs.

01:13:07.100 | I won't say the word because I don't want to get canceled, but they call themselves Rs on

01:13:12.020 | .

01:13:13.100 | On Reddit.

01:13:14.000 | On Redditers.

01:13:14.720 | They cost them $5 billion.

01:13:17.000 | Jason, you can say it. You're not calling them that. They call themselves that.

01:13:21.260 | They call themselves that, yes.

01:13:22.580 | .

01:13:23.040 | All right. Listen, love you, besties. Sacks, we're glad that you're safe and you're healthy.

01:13:29.220 | No thanks to you. No thanks to you.

01:13:31.380 | No jokes. I didn't put any jokes in there. I have so many jokes. I'm going to save them.

01:13:35.280 | I mean, honestly, my thought on your recovery is no comment.

01:13:39.000 | I'm just jealous you're going to lose another five fricking pounds because of this.

01:13:44.160 | Oh, yeah. I'm down to 178, by the way.

01:13:46.080 | Come on. Stop. Are you really?

01:13:47.700 | Stop, you manorexic. I can't even break one.

01:13:49.920 | When are you going to stop?

01:13:51.600 | Was there a bet or no?

01:13:52.980 | No bet. I don't want to lose that bet. That'd be like me playing sacks in chess.

01:13:57.180 | It's just not going to-

01:13:58.020 | Jason, what are you tipping the scales at right now?

01:14:00.180 | 190. One.

01:14:01.380 | 190 and you're about to come to Italy and basically you're going to gain 15 pounds for sure.

01:14:06.660 | No, I'm doing one meal a day.

01:14:08.220 | What? No.

01:14:08.760 | One meal a day. That's it. One meal a day. That's it.

01:14:12.000 | I'm eating one meal a day. That's my good thing.

01:14:15.180 | How are you going to turn down the food? But what if you eat for three hours in that one meal?

01:14:18.420 | I try everything. I'll just try and then I have discipline now.

01:14:21.340 | Just like I stopped using Twitter. I'm stopping Twitter.

01:14:23.980 | Can I tell one funny story about Jcal in Italy? Talking about discipline? Okay. So,

01:14:28.420 | we were there in Italy. When was this Jcal? A few years ago, whatever?

01:14:31.780 | This is a long time ago. Is this when we were in Venice?

01:14:33.880 | Yeah. You were with Jade and I was with Jaqueline.

01:14:36.940 | Oh, that's a great story.

01:14:37.720 | And we went to some ice cream place, right? And so, we all had these like ice cream gelato

01:14:44.080 | with like two scoops or whatever on there. So, Jason finishes his in like five seconds.

01:14:49.060 | It would just disappear.

01:14:50.380 | .

01:14:51.080 | And then he walks up to Jaqueline and just goes like that. And in one fell swoop, he ate

01:14:58.880 | the gelato off her ice cream cone.

01:15:02.000 | That's not true. That's not true.

01:15:02.960 | It was like a bulldog. It was like a bulldog just eating your ice cream.

01:15:08.240 | But how good was that fish that we got? Remember that restaurant I found?

01:15:11.360 | Yeah. The Dorade.

01:15:12.260 | The Dorade.

01:15:13.040 | The Dorade. I mean, we still talk about that place. That was incredible.

01:15:15.200 | Yeah. That was like one of the best meals you ever had.

01:15:16.760 | I've been having a gelato, guys, every day. Every day.

01:15:20.120 | But they're so small. That's what I love about the Italian.

01:15:22.460 | They're so small.

01:15:22.940 | It's a little – it's such a cute little –

01:15:24.560 | And it doesn't feel like there's like a lot of preservatives and stuff in there.

01:15:27.440 | No. It's just like butter and sugar, heavy cream, whatever it is. It's so good.

01:15:31.680 | It's so good. It's so good.

01:15:33.920 | How are the tomatoes right now? I can't wait to see some tomatoes.

01:15:35.960 | Oh, incredible. Incredible. I mean, I eat them, I bathe in them, I rub them on my face.

01:15:40.220 | You rub them all. What about the moots? You got the moots? How's the burrata and the moots? I can't

01:15:45.080 | wait.

01:15:45.320 | Oh, he's going to gain 15 pounds.

01:15:46.680 | 100% he's going to break.

01:15:49.160 | Look at him. Look at him.

01:15:49.920 | 100%.

01:15:50.360 | We should do a weigh-in when we get there and a weigh-in at the end. That would be the bet.

01:15:55.320 | I don't know how you're going to turn down this food. I don't know how you're going to say no to

01:15:58.440 | the pasta. You'll have pasta at lunch, pasta at dinner. You're just going to go crazy.

01:16:02.040 | I'm going to just have two bites of everything. Two bites of six different pastas, and I'll be fine.

01:16:08.100 | By the way, by the way, the best kept secret is the quality of Italian white wine is outrageous.

01:16:18.360 | Really?

01:16:18.840 | Really.

01:16:19.720 | It is outrageous.

01:16:20.800 | We should play some cards and drink some wine.

01:16:22.840 | I think we're going to play. No?

01:16:24.880 | How many calories are in the white wine, Chamath?

01:16:28.000 | Calories? I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. But look, the thing in the summertime here is you

01:16:33.580 | end up walking. So I end up walking a lot or bicycling a little bit, blah, blah, blah. At the

01:16:38.560 | end of the day, you're burning through everything.

01:16:40.540 | I got to say, this e-bike I got, I got a rad power bike.

01:16:43.420 | No, no, no. The whole point is to not have a motor that powers it, you fucking lazy bastard.

01:16:47.560 | No, no, no. What you don't understand is,

01:16:49.000 | because you have the motor in it, Chamath, you ride your bike normal. But then like,

01:16:53.140 | let's say you do have dinner or something like that, or you want to go to dinner 10 miles away

01:16:56.260 | or 15 miles away, you might not take your bike. It's too long of a ride. With these electric bikes,

01:17:00.820 | instead of going 10 miles on the way there, it takes your 10 mile ride and just puts you at 25,

01:17:05.260 | but you're still burning the same number of calories. It's like augmenting.

01:17:08.380 | I really think that electric bikes are going to change cities like in a major way. They're already

01:17:13.660 | starting to in Europe and in China. But all right, everybody, we'll see you next time on the All In

01:17:18.100 | the Podcast. Love you, Sax. Back at you.

01:17:20.560 | Sax, I hope you get better.

01:17:22.780 | Feel better.

01:17:23.800 | Thank you. Thanks, guys. I'm better. I'm already better. Don't worry about it.

01:17:28.060 | And wait, Freeburg, you have nothing to say. Computer.

01:17:30.220 | It does not compute.

01:17:32.500 | It is nice to see the three of you.

01:17:33.460 | It was nice to check off the box for my social interactions for the week.

01:17:38.200 | I will now go back.

01:17:39.400 | I have now done 75 minutes of social interaction, powering down in three, two, one.

01:17:45.040 | Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma.

01:17:46.480 | See you next time. Bye-bye.

01:17:47.920 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:17:51.020 | Rain Man, David Sack.

01:17:53.860 | And it said, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it.

01:18:00.760 | I love you, West Navy.

01:18:01.520 | I'm the queen of quinoa.

01:18:03.140 | I'm going all in.

01:18:04.680 | We'll let your winners ride.

01:18:07.300 | Besties are gone.

01:18:10.940 | That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

01:18:14.760 | Oh, man.

01:18:18.200 | We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy, because they're all just useless.

01:18:23.840 | It's like this sexual tension, but they just need to release it somehow.

01:18:27.020 | Wet your feet.

01:18:29.520 | Wet your feet.

01:18:31.740 | We need to get merchies.

01:18:34.820 | I'm going all in.

01:18:36.780 | I'm going all in.

E40: A Bestie gets COVID, Delta breakthrough, Billionaire Space Race & more

Chapters