this week we're gonna play our favorite new game show guess who's got covid yes that's right somebody on the pod somebody's got coved it it it it's not the me oh you're ruining the game java oh sorry so here's the game person who got coven have they been vaccinated or not okay all four of us have been vaccinated we covered that on our previous pod so everybody's been vaccinated double vaxxed everybody's been double vaxxed did we all get pfizer i was pfizer pfizer pfizer pfizer okay so pfizer across the board we got quads and this is a breakthrough infection has anybody taken a z-pack after a night of partying i have oh my god i'll give the pod lasted 39 episodes i'm done that was good that was good okay so number one clue number one this bestie got a breakthrough infection outdoors at a restaurant number one got it outdoors number two got it from somebody who was also vaccinated number three this bestie does not fly commercial and he's not a fan of being interrupted and he is not an evangelical david the breakthrough vaccination david sacks i'm glad that we got that i'm glad that uh my getting a breakthrough case of covet is uh is comedy fodder for you somehow let your winners ride rain man david sacks and instead we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy sassy poop break it down walk us through the like what happened and then how you felt yeah okay so what happened and we're glad you're safe obviously obviously we wouldn't be joking you're still losing weight you lost five pounds so yeah yeah you may want to read some of the beautiful text messages we sent you when we found out this week yes jason what did you say jason you said uh i was just like wow think about who we could recruit for the fourth spot we need keith raboy we get peter teal in here i said that i really really hope you didn't die but if you did i would love to have your plane as a support plane for my plane and i was thinking you know what i might be pro san francisco if you die i could i might want all right well sorry guys i'm gonna live sorry jason i'm gonna live here's basically what happened okay is um so tuesday of last week i had dinner with a few friends and then my friend just we're out outdoors in a restaurant yeah i'll tell you exactly where we were at matzahisa in l.a which had the outdoor parking lot yeah yes the outdoor parking lot area which is a covered outdoor area so you know these like covered areas are effectively inside because it traps the air in there but in any event we had dinner there um the next day he woke up with a fever and sore throat he went and got a covet test he tested positive he is also double vaxxed with pfizer okay so and and i reported this to you guys last week on last week's show so i went out right away on wednesday got a covet test was negative i repeated the test on friday was negative and then sunday rolls around 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 an occasional dry cough and i've got and i've got some sinus congestion david mild fever or like like 99.9 or like 102.1 it topped off at about 99.9 and it's barely a fever yeah yeah a fever barely fever but i mean it was definitely there and i took tyler and all and it brought it down to the low 99s and uh so any event first thing monday morning i went and got the covet test and sure enough i had covet uh they can't confirm that it's delta variant but they think it is because that's what's like exploding in la right now and so yeah i mean look 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 99 recovered i don't have a fever anymore my feet are you 10 days in now this no no no no no no this is the you know i i came down with symptoms on this past sunday and it's now thursday so i am and wendy were you exposed tuesday night so i was exposed yes you're right it's about 10 days but you're convinced that was the only way you could have gotten it right yeah because somebody else at the dinner got has symptoms now too ah so it's a super spreader at matsuhisa yeah yeah basically but it shows you how virulent this new delta variant is i mean you've got there are four people out that night plus the person who who had it and two out of the four basically got it and we were all vaccinated including the person who had it and of course he didn't know he had it he didn't have any symptoms till the next day so um and you know i got it i got it five days after exposure it's that five days is like clockwork you know did you um did you have like a pulse ox did you measure any of these other things did any stuff change at all yeah yeah i mean i've i've have the pulse ox meter and it's been around 95 so it is down yeah you should be like 98 right yeah it is down slightly it is down slightly and if you go to 92 or 93 they say go to the emergency room i think and and did you self-isolate from your family yeah i did but we were lulled a little bit into a place of overconfidence yeah well i remember i got i got coveted tests on wednesday and then friday and they're both negative i thought we were through it so i was at home and um and then and then so my 11 year old got it even though i was isolating this thing is i mean this thing is so contagious so you know what i've read is that delta variant is 60 more transmissible than the uk variant which was the alpha variant the alpha variant was 60 more transmissible than original covet so you're looking at a transmissibility you multiply those together of two and a half times the original and the original covet had an r naught of two to three so you multiply two to three by two and a half times and you're looking at five to eight and you know at the explain to the audience what that means in terms of reality it means the r naught is uh how many people does the average infected person transmit before they know they have it and can fully self-isolate and so you're going from the original covet was two to three delta variant might be like eight we're getting up into like smallpox territory with this thing and it's all because vaccinated people can get it.

The Israel data that we talked about on the show last week was 64% effectiveness. Israel reported that the effectiveness of Pfizer had gone from 95% to 64% in terms of preventing infection. So you have maybe a third of vaccinated people can get it, and then they can spread it without even knowing they have it.

So I think we're at the point now where if you're not vaccinated, you're going to get the Delta variant. We're seeing now cases explode all over the country. Even in LA County, they've now had a, the five-day average of cases has jumped 500% in one month. So pretty much, and Jason, you've tweeted this, if you are not vaccinated, you are choosing to get the Delta variant at this point.

I mean, this thing is extremely transmissible. That's what, there was a great tweet by Scott Adams, the guy who, the cartoonist who, I wouldn't, who listens to the pod, by the way, who does listen to the pod. He had a, he had a really great quote. He's like, today is either Wednesday for those that are vaccinated or yet another day where the unvaccinated amongst you are likely to get COVID.

Something like that, right? Was that the tweet? Yeah, yeah. It was basically today's Wednesday for people who are vaccinated, or it is the day you're going to get, you know, the virus. Yeah. I'm trying to stop messing around with this thing. Now, here's some good news, actually, is, is so on the Wednesday when we found out that my friend had tested positive, but again, I was still negative.

I had no symptoms. I had nothing. I told my wife, she had gotten one shot. She hadn't gotten the second shot. And we were on the fence about whether my 13-year-old should get the vaccine. They both raced out that day, got vaccinated. Of course. And he did not get the virus.

So they had basically, call it three or four days of the vaccine to trigger an immune response in their system and that protected them. They did not get sick. And David, did you take anything else like prednisone? You took nothing, no steroid, nothing. Nothing. The only stuff I, so my friend did take, he did get prescribed prednisone.

My doctor thought that was unnecessary or a bad idea for me. All I took, okay, was Tylenol to control the fever, and I took Flonase to reduce the sinus congestion. Look, I mean, I don't want to overstate this. It was a very mild cold for me. And that is why I think everybody should run out and get vaccinated.

What did you pair it with? Like a Pappy Van Winkle or did you go with the Screaming Eagle? What did you pair your cup with? Also, the worst part is Matsuhisa has such a shit wine list. You probably drank this like random swill. That's probably why. You were drinking some like nigiri sake in all likelihood.

Freeburg, last week, I was asking you, or maybe it was two weeks ago, I was considering getting the Moderna because I was like, I think getting two of these things will boost you into the high 90s. You said I was crazy. Has your position changed on that? Yes. Okay, explain.

Because this is the one time I'm ever going to be right about science, a week before you. So, I think the data up to that point didn't necessarily kind of validate that additional level of action, but now it does. And I think new data is coming out. So, I saw an executive from a pharmaceutical company a few days ago who broke down some statistics that they looked at in Israel.

Yeah. And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing. This is a good thing. 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." And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing." And they were like, "Oh, this is a good thing." And what they were identifying was that of the newly infected cases in Israel, of people that are vaccinated, nearly two-thirds of those people were vaccinated in January.

About 30% were vaccinated in February and less than 10% were vaccinated in March. And I'm just approximating and I'm just kind of transcribing from kind of what I remember him saying. And so, 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." "We're not seeing breakthrough cases, breakthrough infections." So, the more recently you're vaccinated, the less likely you are to have this.

And then I met with a pretty well-known virologist a few days ago as well, who highlighted for me that we are seeing antibody titers decline over time in people. But there's other studies that are showing, which means that the antibodies against COVID in your blood after you get the vaccine slowly go down over time.

So, we're seeing that. We knew that, right? We knew that. We knew that to some extent. But there was another study that showed that memory B cells, B cells are the immune cells that make antibodies, and they remember the antibodies to make. And they were worried, are we losing those B cells in the human body?

And another study found, actually, they're in your lymph nodes. So, they went in, they pulled them out, and they identified, "Look, these B cells are persistent. We are having a persistent immune memory to COVID when we get exposed to the vaccine or the virus." And so, you know, those two data points, both of them kind of said, "I think we're going to need to do a booster very soon for everyone, and we're going to need to get a third shot." The tail, Friedberg, seems like it's like six months.

Yeah, it sounds like he was saying that you're going to see an efficacy drop to that kind of two-thirds level after about six months of your - after getting your vaccine. And, you know, he said, "Look, this Delta variant is virulent, but, you know, the more pressing kind of point isn't that it's this variant that's breaking through.

It's that the efficiency of these vaccines, at this point, looks like it's such that we're going to need to do boosters." Now, Pfizer went to the White House this week with some of this data, and they presented it to the White House. And the White House said, "If you guys follow the news, I'm hearing this, I'm repeating what I read in news reports at this point." But what they said was, you know, "We're not ready to kind of commit to doing booster shots for a couple of reasons.

One is there are a lot of people out there that haven't had their first shots. And we're seeing the people that are having these breakthrough infections almost universally, not always, but very large majority having very mild symptoms and not getting hospitalized, and the death rate is still very, very low." In other words, the vaccine did its job.

The vaccine didn't prevent, you know, an infection, meaning that the virus starts replicating in a way that's uncontrolled in your body, but that your immune system had enough of a defense to keep it from causing severe disease in your body. 99% of the people going to the hospital are unvaccinated, right?

Exactly. And so, we're seeing that great success still with the vaccine, but they are seeing and there are now studies that, you know, I think reference to your earlier point that, you know, if you put a different RNA strain, RNA sequence into your body, which Moderna and Pfizer have slightly different, you know, sequences, you end up creating different antibodies and having more diversity of antibodies can kind of provide greater immunity.

So, it's almost certain we're going to get boosters, and that we're going to end up seeing them hit the market next month in September. Yeah. Is the booster different than the original? So, for example, if I get a Pfizer booster, am I only basically getting still an expression of that RNA strand that I'm supposed to basically, like is it the same formulation, the same dosage?

So, both of those options are still up in the air. And so, we may still get the same vaccines that we were getting before. You could go get a Moderna shot, you could go get another Pfizer shot of the exact same, RNA sequence that you got before, or they may introduce some new ones.

And so, all the pharma companies are proposing both approaches, and they're pursuing both paths right now. And we'll see where we end up. And what about swapping between an RNA approach and a traditional vaccine approach? So, getting J&J plus Moderna or Pfizer versus like, there's a lot of AB testing we need to do to figure out what is the most efficacious and useful pathway.

This is exactly like the, this reminds me exactly of HIV, where it took 10 years for them to figure out what cocktail. And now look, HIV is I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of like nothing, it's really not that not that bad. And the way that we probably for those of us in our 40s have it emblazoned in our mind is how bad it is versus how bad it is.

It was a death sentence. It seemed like a death sentence. And today, it's kind of more, it's more manageable than frankly, it's a chronic disease now. That's like having diabetes or something. I have another crazy statement here, which is that if you take the the case fatality rate of COVID, and now you think about the fact that there's going to be call it 60% of America that's vaccinated, and then every six months, we'll be getting boosters.

And then you have the Petri dish on the other side of the 40%, where you'll just be ripping through variant after variant after variant, eventually, it stands to reason that if 40% of Americans remain unvaccinated two or three years from now, the odds that there will be a strain, that is the killer strain that does meaningful damage to those people, I think is basically 100%.

And if you think about a case fatality rate, that's meaningfully high, what you're effectively going to do is start to call these people from the earth. And that is a crazy idea. But that's what folks who choose to not get vaccinated are setting themselves up for. I mean, it's the quintessential, you know, Darwin.

Is that just not probabilities? Like, am I getting something wrong here? Probabilistically, isn't that? That's what I'm concerned about. And it's not just Americans not getting vaccinated. It's the rest of the world. I mean, even if we got to extraordinarily, extraordinarily high vaccination rates in the US, there's gonna be large, you know, numbers of people outside the US who never get vaccinated, who will continue to be a Petri dish.

To give you to, you know, comparison, the common cold has 1800 variants. That's why we can't get vaccinated. So, you know, we're on the Delta variant right now, I think they actually have numbered variants up to lambda, we're going to run out of letters the alphabet really soon. You know, how long will it be until there are these killer variants that act?

I mean, look, I mean, that can punch through the vaccines. It's pretty scary, actually. And I would say that this is like quite a come down off where we were just two weeks ago, you know, where we thought the Pfizer vaccine was still 95% effective. Now it's 64% effective.

I mean, look, I do want to like underscore that the vaccine worked in the sense that what I got was super mild. I mean, it was really just like getting, like, a cold. I mean, I didn't need to take anything more serious than Tylenol. But, but it does show that the virus is mutating really fast.

It's highly transmissible. And I'm not sure we're totally done with this thing. You still have it, right? I still have it. Yeah. Yeah. So when will you get tested to figure out when you don't have it anymore? I'll probably go in tomorrow. You know, because it feels to me like I'm about 98% better.

Freebrook, is there any data about the pattern of people? People who are vaccinated getting this thing? Like, is there - remember how like, you know, there was early data that showed, you know, women had a different immune response than men and like people who were, what was it, O positive or, you know, a certain blood type effectively had inborn immunity?

I haven't heard or read anything like that. And so, this is still an emerging issue, I think, you know, what we're seeing. By the way, I was vaccinated a few months ago, guys. Like, I mean, I am like recently vaccinated. When was your second shot? Basically, like a few months ago.

Yeah, it's - Mine was in March. Yeah. One thing I think it's worth highlighting just to reinforce the vaccine importance, you know, the virologist, the infectious disease guy I met with was telling me that, you know, one way to think about this is the more opportunity the virus has to replicate, the more opportunity it has to evolve.

And so, when you're vaccinated and you have a mild case and your body recovers in a few days, just to give you guys a sense, the difference when someone that's not vaccinated has COVID and they've measured the viral load in the nose from day one when they start having their infectious kind of presentation to day four, which is when they peak, the viral load is 10 to the eighth higher.

Okay, that's like 100 million times higher. And so, that's 100 million times more viruses that are being produced on day four than were being produced on day one when you were 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.

So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body, you're going to have a lot of symptoms. So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body, you're going to have a lot of symptoms. So, every time a virus is being produced and is replicating within your body, it's getting a chance to mutate.

The important point he emphasized was what matters most is we get the most number of people on planet Earth vaccinated as fast as possible. Because the faster you can get more people vaccinated, the fewer opportunities you give the virus to replicate and find itself a mutational path that can ultimately break through all these vaccines and cause real severe loss of life.

And so, the presentation that Sachs kind of described it is encouraging in the sense that it likely means that the virus did not create that there wasn't that much of a viral load or a huge viral load relative to what there would have been if he wasn't vaccinated. And so, even though he did have an infection, you know, the virus didn't get as much of a chance to spread to other people.

It didn't get as much of a chance to mutate. But it did because my friend who I got it from after one having dinner one night, he was double vaxxed with Pfizer. And in my, you know, my 11 year old daughter got it. Yeah. It's for her again, it's just like a cold.

Yeah. But so, this thing is highly transmissible. And what is it? It changes the equation, I think, on some policy questions. So, Yeah. That's what I was gonna ask you. What does it mean for the fall? What now? What? So, two weeks ago, I thought that because I was vaccinated, I didn't need to care whether other people were vaccinated because, you know, up until that point, the data was you were 95% plus, you know, effectiveness.

So, why care? Yeah. If other people get vaccinated. Now, we can say for sure that unvaccinated people can, or vaccinated people even can get, other people can get you sick, even if you are vaccinated. So, I think it absolutely changes the equation on, so, for example, colleges were requiring students to get vaccinated to return in the fall.

Like before, I didn't think that necessarily made a lot of sense because if you wanted to protect yourself, you just get vaccinated. But now, it makes sense, right? Because the college needs to get to the top of the list. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. herd immunity to protect everybody against you know potentially right delta variant right so i do think it changes the equation quite a bit and i think we need to make a big push here to get everyone vaccinated then in fact sacks for uh vax passports which as um you know uh libertarian i think uh is i think part of your political i think everybody on this call has kind of got a little libertarian like you got to make your own choices here but does it change your thinking about that i.e employers uh colleges uh city state workers teachers are either get vaxxed or don't come back to the office and you're fired well i'll tell you i don't like the idea of government having the power to to stick a needle in your arm but i do think that employers workplaces schools i think it's very reasonable for them to say if you want to come back to the workplace you have to get vaccinated because your unvaccinated status creates a risk it creates an externality for everybody should they be able to fire you if you're a teacher should they be able to fire you if you're a bus driver if you're a pilot yes okay so here's the craziness this is a a self-inflicted wound we are down to only 700 000 vaccines being given a day we peaked we had the ability to do five million shots a day at the peak back in april we hit over five million shots in one day in the united states states and that's a country where you know whatever 270 million adults you know were able to get it in other words two percent of the pop adult population in a single day could have gotten it now we're down to 700 we have over a billion vaccines sitting on shelves eighty percent of democrats have received one shot compared to 49 of republicans 27 of republicans say that they won't get vaccinated under any circumstances compared to three percent of democrats answering that question the same way and an additional nine percent will only do so if required again three percent of democrats said they would only do so required so that's 36 are opting out forever i get it but it's because we allowed it to become a position meaning it's not it's not like anybody has a position on breathing breathing is not a political position right it's not like i choose to not breathe or drinking water or trying to you know like these like eating three meals a day if you can we have allowed the most basic of issues in this case you know collaboration and the lack of collaboration and the lack of collaboration and you know collective public health to be politicized in a way and that is entirely the government's fault it's the government's fault and it's the media and the media because the media has exacerbated it so that they can have power people on the conservative side of the spectrum have learned to distrust the media and big corporations because and government because they've been lied to so often most recently yeah right most recently with like the lab leak theory and so you know there's this suspicion on the right like what aren't they telling us you know um now look i think we got to get over this i think you know we need to get everyone vaccinated for all the reasons that freiburg said or look everyone's going to get delta variant i mean maybe this is a good news is that we can rapidly get to herd immunity by everyone getting delta variant well that's the inevitable outcome for any infectious disease right highly infectious diseases either you can vaccinate or everyone's going to get it uh and it's gonna you know i mean you've got a delta variant maybe then whatever the you know whatever the more dangerous deadly one is yeah let me just highlight what i'm most concerned about i i am most concerned about what's what's happening with sax just anecdotally speaking i'm not going to speak to the i'll speak to one statistic but like anecdotally speaking i'm hearing this happening more more frequently i don't know about you guys other friends other people you know but a lot of other people i'm hearing about their double backs that are now getting covid so as that starts to happen uh the implications for the economy i think are pretty significant um because i think people whether there's a policy change or not people are going to get scared again and people if we're not kind of enforcing economic lockdown people will go into social lockdown and we're going to revisit uh you know more of the behavior we saw over the past year where people are going to be nervous to travel people are going to be nervous to fly people are going to be nervous to go to restaurants and you know the downstream consequences of everyone kind of locking up again even if the government doesn't enforce lockups uh could be pretty catastrophic are you feeling that way yourself freeburg in other words am i going to lock myself up are you going to go to dinner are you going to go to travel to italy or to you know japan or you know would you go to disneyland with your kids how is it affecting you your personal behavior being a man of science uh so my personal circumstances are a little different right now uh not not to get into it um uh just with my uh you know my wife's pregnant and we're moving houses and so we've got a bunch of reasons why we're not traveling and and exposing ourselves unnecessarily right now um but uh i i would say that at this point uh you know if all other things being equal would i go to disneyland with my kids i would probably wait right now six to twelve weeks to see what happens here right well i think like if i'm feeling that way now i think a lot of people are going to be feeling that way in in the next four weeks as they hear about more friends getting covid now the good news is the hospital so i am in a very very very very delicate economic recovery right now and you know we have put out so much money to stimulate this economy everyone is so walking on like the razor's edge to keep things you know growing we were afraid of inflation lumber prices today by the way are lower than they were when this whole kind of inflationary thing started and everyone was freaking out about it so um you know lumber prices are lower than they were at the start of the year which is you know like a lot of this kind of inflation risk has kind of come out of the equation already so the markets have taken that pricing out and now we're going to be in a circumstance where people might cancel their travel people might cancel their their restaurants people might stop going to the office again stop you know getting in the car etc etc so i am most concerned about like the psychological effects of of what we're seeing with these breakthrough infections the frequency of them now if you look at the israel data so israel had zero deaths for two weeks they're now averaging about one death a day um and despite this you know huge increment they're getting about i think 500 breakthrough infections a day right now so that is good statistical news right statistically these breakthrough infections are not fatal they're not causing hospitalizations they're they're you know if you kind of did the math going back a year and said these are the actual statistics of covid people would be like okay no big deal let's move on it's a it's a tough kind of uh virus but because of the circumstances where we we are kind of under these these feelings that this is a fatal disease and could cause fatalities those statistics don't matter the fear is what matters and people are going to start to behave quite differently i think in the next few weeks i have a slightly different point of view here but um i think freeburg you're you're i think you're right in some respects um but i don't think it's going to come from people i don't think people uh i think people are exhausted and they want to go back to life as normal yeah and i think this summer was a window into some amount of normalcy for a lot of us and i don't think we really do want to go back um and so i think what's what's really going to happen is that we're going to have to going to happen is there's going to be essentially some form of class warfare.

And instead of rich versus poor and left versus right, it's sort of between people who believe in science and then the ideologically dogmatic who refuse to get it. And that's going to play itself out economically, I agree with you. There's going to be meaningful forms of economic discrimination against people who are unnecessarily compounding risk for the rest of us, who want to deal with it, ideally, touch wood as a common cold, like David said, and move the fuck on.

And if we are prevented from doing so, because economic policy and healthcare policy has to constantly get rerated for a cohort of people who could protect themselves and everybody else but chooses not to, there is going to be a real pushback on that. The second thing that I think is going to happen is politicians proved that if you give them a window to seize power, they will do it.

And I think what's really going to happen in the fall is if there's even a small modicum of risk, which there will be as we just talked about, yeah, it exists now. Yeah, I think it's the politicians that are going to want to jump all over this and say, Okay, guys, you know, lockdowns here, you can't do this, you can't do that.

Literally, Gavin Newsom just did the big grand reopening California's back, you could see him locking it back up in September. Oh, that's the best way to it's the best way to snuff out any chance of the recall going against them is that even if you were angry, you're going to be able to do it.

And I think that's going to be a massive form of voter suppression. Well, I think that would backfire pretty bad. You saw the flip flopping that he already did actually on schools where the government of California basically said, Hey, you know, we're going to mandate a mask policy in the fall.

And then Newsom came out because people freaked out and said, actually, no, each local municipality can figure it out based on you know, what it what it means for them. The point is, guys, freebrook is right. These things aren't going away. We have a cohort of people who will continue to allow this thing to become worse than it has to be.

And I think that there will be economic repercussions and discrimination against those people for that. And I think economically, we are going to take a step back because politicians will try to slow the economy down again. And there is definitely from the right, not to get political here, but they've been pretty silent about encouraging people to get vaccinated.

And, you know, at CPAC and other places, people were cheering the anti vax movement, Mitt Romney came out. We don't control conservative media figures, so far as I know, at least I don't. That being said, I think it's an enormous error for anyone to suggest that we shouldn't be taking vaccines.

Look, the politics is politicization of vaccination is an outrage and frankly, moronic. Mitch McConnell came out and says a polio victim myself when I was young. I've studied that disease. It took 70 years 70 years to come up with two vaccines that finally ended the polio threat. As a result of Operation Warp Speed, we have not one, not two, but three highly effective vaccines.

So I'm perplexed by the difficulty we're having finishing the job. This is where you can expect the politically correct companies to act first because they're the woke mob will force some action on this issue. Whether you like it or not, but this is this is where the next petition will come from Apple, where the two or 3000 employees who are vaccinated, etc, who have people with you know, people in their households with with who are immunologically suppressed.

And they're going to say, Hey, guys, this is crazy. Well, that that petition might be the first Apple petition that would make sense because those employees are directly impacted by other employees who come to the workplace on vaccinated unlike, you know, the issues around Israel or Antonio's book, whatever that they shouldn't have taken a position on.

Wait a second, you're saying Antonio's book wouldn't make them feel safe and getting COVID would make them unsafe? Yeah, actually, actually, yes. Yes. COVID COVID is COVID in the workplace is a real safety issue. Not you know, not whether somebody wrote a book five years ago. So So I think they do.

I think employees do have a right to say to their employers, listen, are we going to be a vaccinated workplace or not? Because it does impact their risk. But But Jason, it's your question about should people change their behavior? In light of this news, okay, in light of the fact that we now are learning about some reduced effectiveness of the vaccines.

Here's what I would tell people sitting where I am, 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 going to change my I'm going to go back to normal, like my pre COVID behavior.

And I would tell you, like, if you're double vax, I don't think you need to be that afraid of this. Because, you know, my doctor said they are seeing a bunch of these breakthrough cases, but they're all very mild. It really is like getting a cold. I'm not changing my behaviors.

I made my I made my decision. My risk assessment is if I get it, then I'm doubly protected. And I'm not going to change my behavior. I'm not going to wind up in the hospital, I'm going to focus all my energy on riding my bike and taking my kids out and having a good time.

I'm not going back in lockdown. So I think that's right for you. But But here's where it gets a little bit complicated is my parents who are in their 70s. And one of them has an immune condition asked what they should do. And I said, Listen, if I were you guys, I would not be going to public places, I'd be masking up.

They're asking me if they should go on a trip. And I said, No, I would actually if I were you, I would lock down until this blows over because they're at elevated risk. And so yeah, for me, getting COVID was like a mild case, but for them, maybe it could be more serious.

So all it takes is 10% of the population acting like what you just described, you recommended to your parents sex for there to be economic ripples associated with this, this this breakthrough kind of condition for a while. And that's where I have the most concern is again, like, you know, we're kind of you're not concerned about the deaths free bird, you're concerned about the economic impact and the psychological scars that are now in place.

I will explain I sent you guys a link to the Reuters article where they covered the press conference with the Prime Minister of Israel the other day. And basically, they are taking what they're calling a soft suppression strategy, where they're encouraging Israelis to learn to live with the virus, involving the fewest possible restrictions and avoiding a fourth national lockdown that could do further harm to the economy.

And he said implementing the strategy will entail taking certain risks, but in the overall consideration, including economic factors, this is the necessary balance. And so it's a it's a it's a very kind of pointed position that they're coming to, I think the US government, the federal government is going to have to come to the same one.

But we have different states and different local governments that are going to act differently. And because we've you know, we have authority vested in those different jurisdictions, you could see different public policy officials take different positions. And what we're talking about, if San Francisco said, restaurants have to go back to 25% capacity, it would decimate these already struggling small businesses.

And then they would have to go back to 25% capacity. And then there's no more stimulus dollars available. And so you kind of think about this, or 10% of people cancel their vacation plans. What's that going to do to airlines and hotels? So again, my concern is, are we about to hit a wave of economic ripples that aren't necessarily tied to what is the right thing to do from a policy perspective, or a science or health perspective, but really, the psychological effects of the scared and concerned saying, you know what, there's more money available, like, you know, we got bailed out before we'll get bailed out again, let's implement a shutdown, let's implement a lockdown, let's not go to work and set whatever the decision tree you may have as a business owner or a policymaker.

Well, there's an important point here, which is listen, COVID is going to be with us for a long time, we're going to need to make really smart cost benefit analysis decisions in how to deal with it. We can't go back to lockdowns, because they didn't work. And they're extremely expensive.

We spent $10 trillion battling COVID last year, we cannot do that again, we don't have the bullets in our gun to keep firing at this thing like that. We got to start doing it again. And we're going to have to do it again. And we're going to have to do it again.

And we're going to have to do it again. And we're going to have to make smart cost benefit decisions. And we're going to have to make smart cost benefit decisions. Zeroism is not going to work this idea that the premise of zeroism is that we can stamp out every last vestige of COVID.

But maybe that was even a possibility when vaccines were 99% effective. But now that they're not, there's no chance of stamping out COVID. So we have got to learn, we've got to like like the Israel example, we've got to learn to live with this thing, and make smart cost benefit decisions.

But I also think, you know, this is kind of a disaster for humanity. We now have this new category of illness that's rapidly mutating, we don't know what the end of it's going to be. Like I said, there's 1800 variants of the common cold. You know what though, David?

That's causing these symptoms. By the way, has anyone noticed how many different symptoms this virus causes in people? There's over 200 long long COVID symptoms. Well, they worked on it for a long time, David, in fairness. Yes, exactly. Everyone knows it's a lab engineered virus that's now a plague on humanity.

This is really a disaster. This is going to, I think, permanently impact human life expectancy. I mean, this is this is a serious problem. We could have avoided this entire thing here in the United States, at least. If people just took the win, how frustrating is this that we would probably have cases down to 1000 a day, and deaths down to 10 a day, like Israel, if we had just gotten everybody to take one of the billions of excess vaccines sitting on shelves and in CVSs and Walgreens across the country?

How stupid are we? We don't have the collectivism to make those actions. If you think about what's happening in Israel did two different examples in China, collectivism manifests as like basically a top down, you know, form of governance, okay? In Israel, collectivism comes from a need for state level security, right?

I mean, I've traveled to Israel a lot. I've worked there. And it's crazy when you see how people cooperate together. The minute you hear the missile alarms, right? And so there is a way for people to do cost benefit analyses in Israel, because it's a matter of life or death.

And they've been trained to do that. So either it's imposed on you, like in China, or people bottoms up can understand these tradeoffs, like in Israel, we're in a very different place, where literally what we have are three things that are in conflict with each other, Jason, we have politics and the desire for power, we have the deconstruction of power by social media, and then we have the traditional media trying to stay relevant.

That's a toxic thing that's spinning around and spinning around and spinning around. Trying to allocate this very ephemeral thing called power and influence, and we don't know how it works anymore. And so we cannot get our shit together. Half the people care about vegan fucking milk. The other half the people care.

I mean, it's it's we are in a alternate universe, as bad as we are. Europe, and even Japan have done even worse because, I mean, our government was fairly efficient about the distribution of the vaccines. In Europe, they've just completely botched it. Same thing in Japan. So, we are not the worst on vaccination rates.

Yes, it should be better, but this is a global problem. Well, we are the worst on capturing the opportunity, David. We have the opportunity to have everybody vaccinated. No, listen, let's be honest. America is the most exceptional country in the world. It has been for hundreds of years. It should be for several hundred more.

There is no excuse for this country to have fucked this up this badly. I've spent enough time, as you guys have in Europe and in Japan, it's understandable why those countries are in the positions they're in. It is not understandable why America is in the position. So dumb. It's like having a 20-point lead with eight minutes to go, and you just screw up, and you lose the game.

So stupid. All right, do we want to move on to the billion-dollar question? Yeah, I think that's positive news. This company, what's it called? Virgin Galactic? There's a company called Virgin Galactic, and they take people to space. It's $200,000. Stock seems to be doing pretty well. Anybody have thoughts on Richard Branson getting to space?

I don't know. Let's just randomly go to somebody. Chima? No, in all seriousness, congratulations. I cried. Nat and I. Start the SEC transcript, public statement. Here we go. Nat and I watched it together. You cried? And it was emotional. It's emotional because you know, I mean, being a little bit more on the inside, how hard they worked.

I mean, we've all been there where we're all toiling in obscurity, where there are moments where everybody thinks that what you're doing either is crazy or isn't going to work or is going to fail. And there's a moment where you just have to push through it, right? And find people that believe in you.

I think I came in very late to that, but I had the opportunity to find these incredible people, believe in them, help them, give them capital, which was essentially oxygen, right? That's oxygen for a company. And then to see them achieve it, it felt so special to be a part of it.

So yeah, I mean, I was really emotional. And it was beautiful. So I don't know. I think this is the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out. But basically, if you think about, and there's other people out there, but I think this is the beginning of the beginning.

I tweeted this out. I think this is the beginning of the beginning. I tweeted this out. I think there's other stuff that we can't talk about with some other companies that we are all involved in David and I particularly, but here's the point, guys, between sending people and making us an interplanetary species, by creating pervasive internet access, and by enabling us to safely and reliably transport people either point to point sub orbitally, or basically into space.

We are completely reimagining how the human race can work. And I think that's incredible. And to be a part of that is really special. There was a lot of people who got very negative. On Twitter, I noticed there was a lot of people that said, you know, no, like, you know, maybe now we can deal with, I don't know, child hunger, or, you know, hey, why are all these billionaires doing this out of the other end?

I took a step back and I thought, my gosh, a people are in there's a small virulent cohort of people that are incredibly negative. And B doesn't even know what they're talking about. Because, you know, I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing.

I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. I think that's the thing. Because you're talking about issues of state responsibility and confusing it for what private citizens are doing to advance a set of technologies that I think have broad appeal. So, those are my thoughts. I mean, I was I watched every minute of it.

And I thought it was incredible. Just to add to that. Yeah, I want to I want to take the part that all the naysayers and the negativity I mean, Chamath is right. All the very online people immediately came out attacking this extraordinary accomplishment and act of bravery by brands and I mean, this is a billionaire, he doesn't need to be risking his life, launching himself into space.

I mean, this is a courageous act, you know, he's putting his his, his life where his mouth is. And you had all these very online people, but you had one CNN commentator basically said this was bad for the environment. You had another one saying that calling him a tax cheat.

Then there was another whiner who said, What about all the starving children in the world? I mean, it just went on and on like this. And Mike Solana had a pretty funny tweet summing up the sort of the left's argument. Thusly said, number one, this is their argument, according to Solana, one money is evil to therefore people with money are evil.

Three, therefore things people with money care about evil. I mean, that is basically the level of sophistication. Everybody's talking about that's being made. It's that's the argument that the left is making. Everybody's a bond villain. Right. But here's the problem is that first of all, we do get tremendous benefits out of these innovators who are pushing the boundaries of science and technology and engineering.

You know, Branson actually went on Stephen Colbert show and defended he said, he said, Listen, I think they're not fully this is Branson. He said, I think they're not fully educated to what space does for Earth is connecting the billions of people who are not connected. Down here, he said every single spaceship that we've sent, putting satellites up there monitoring different things around the world, like the degradation of rainforest, monitoring, food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change.

These things are essential for us back on Earth. So we need more spaceships going up to space, not less. So, you know, they're really just kind of ignorant about the benefits of technology. And what do they want to do with the money anyway? You know, we've got all the Yes, we do have all these problems on Earth.

But so many of our problems are not a problem of underfunding. We have tons of money going to the problem of homelessness in California just keeps getting worse because we have the wrong approach. We have very uneducated. We have very wrong ideas. We have the wrong organization. We have the wrong execution.

Fix the operating details. It's not a money issue. Exactly. Take education in California. We have very high levels of per pupil spending and our test scores keep going down. Why? Because we have unions controlling the schools. There's no competition. Don't worry, David, we're getting rid of testing. We've eliminated testing.

We solved that problem. We spent more as a percentage of GDP on health care than any other Western country in the world. Yet the life expectancy of white men which is basically the top of the pyramid of health care is now sub 80 years old. What is going on?

If all of these negative naysayers could actually just get into the arena and try to do something. Right. Instead of whining. Instead of whining. Instead of whining. Professional whiner class. They have no ideas. They have no ideas. They have no solutions. They just have gripes. And no ability to execute apparently.

Yeah. Why don't they come up with new programs, actually test new programs at a hyperlocal level to see what works. Okay. Can I tell you why? Can I tell you why? These sort of like leftist whiners are not motivated to actually do the hard work. Meaning, even if they have an idea for education, the precondition to working on an education program or a health care program is they may need to spend four or five years in the bowels, in obscurity, just learning.

Paying their dues. They don't want to do that either because they grew up in a culture of kindergarten soccer. Everybody gets the gold star. Everybody gets to touch the ball. Everybody gets to be at the front of the line. And they're not willing to put in the work because the minute they realize how much actual work is demanded of progress, they run away because they're scared.

And the reason they're scared is because somewhere along the way, somebody tricked them. That it was not actually about trying. It was actually about succeeding. And that is the biggest failure that we could do to people is all of a sudden tricking them to believe. You have to have it work.

So they'd rather be hall monitors. They'd rather be critics. Yeah, they'd rather be critics than try. Failure is just as good because you're one step closer to succeeding. Somewhere along the way, unfortunately, they were not taught that incredible secret hiding in plain sight. Friedberg, what do you think of the space race and the hall monitor whiner class?

If you guys look, I was going to send these statistics earlier, but if you look at the amount of venture capital money that's gone into private space companies, space technology companies, I think it was a few hundred million dollars, call it three to $400 million pretty consistently from 2011 through 2014, pretty flat.

And then in 2015, I think this is when SpaceX started to kind of create a lot of momentum and hype that private companies can't actually build businesses in kind of call it the space industry. The number jumped to 3 billion a year, and then it was a little over three and a half billion in 16.

And then it jumped to almost 5 billion in 17. It was a little bit down in 18. 2020, it's climbed to almost 10 billion. And in Q1 of this year, I think we're at 2 billion of venture capital money going into private space companies. So there's clearly a great deal of momentum in this industry.

The question is always what's the market at the end? And so if you break out, how do these companies make money? One is to provide services to governments, you know, launch services and taking people to the space station, what have you. And SpaceX has obviously built a tremendous business in that.

There has been obviously a lot of interest in tourism. And I think it's, you know, we're seeing this first breakthrough with Virgin Galactic. And we're going to find out over the next couple of years, is there a tourism market? Historically, there's been interest in a market for visual satellites.

But you know, if you look at some of the financials of companies like Planet Labs, they did a few acquisitions in space imaging, and the revenue hasn't really taken off there. And then mine is a little bit more expensive. And then, you know, the revenue hasn't really taken off.

And mining was always this other question is, can we go out and mine, you know, rare minerals from space? And that one is just, you know, if you do the math on it, it's so far away, it's impossible to kind of model. So I think over the next... And then finally, it's communications.

And communications are cheaper to run on Earth if you're in cities versus, you know, the SpaceX model is to reach rural areas that it's going to be more affordable to do this through space. And so, you know, there's obviously a ton of momentum and a ton of interest in private companies getting to space.

So I think everyone right now, it seems is trying to figure out what's the market, right? What's the... How big is the market? How big is the business? And you know, how quickly can you actually see that capital turn around into real revenue? So, you know, there's this kind of market question that I think is still outstanding.

In terms of, you know, the opportunity, if you go back to like the 15th century, I think something like 60% to 70% of ships, maritime travel, you know, got into shipwrecks. And you know, that's where, you know, you go back to the '70s, you know, you're like, you know, the, you know, that's around when, you know, we sailed across the Atlantic or the Spanish sailed across the Atlantic or funded...

No, or they disappeared. Or they disappeared. I mean, they basically crashed. It didn't work. It was a one-way trip, sometimes to the bottom of the ocean. If you were sitting in Spain in 1450, and someone said, "Hey, these ships, it's going to be a great business. We're going to build lots of ships and we're going to go out.

Maybe we'll get trade routes going. Maybe we'll discover new land. Maybe we'll make money. Maybe we'll take people on trips on these ships." You would be like, "This is crazy. Half the people are dying. There's no market on the other side." So, you know, we are in that kind of...

And you would have been totally wrong. Yeah. And you are in that 15th century moment right now with the space industry. Great analogy. Now, would anyone in the space, would anyone in the ship business in the 15th century have been able to predict Carnival cruise lines or been able to predict evergreen ships taking stuff from China to America with these huge shipping crates?

Would anyone have been able to predict, you know, going down to the bottom of the Atlantic? I mean, like all of the technology and the entire industry that kind of came out of that, you know, that set of pioneering activity in the 15th century transformed the planet, transformed the economy, transformed humanity.

And, you know, it's very hard to sit here today and say, "Hey, I know where space is going, where the space industry is going. I know what's going to be possible." But I can tell you that if history is any predictor of the future, you know, this pioneer, this pioneer, this pioneer, hearing work that's going on, which is burning tons of money, and everyone's kind of questioning whether there's businesses here, it could transform our species.

Once again, so yeah, David, your 15th century shipping example is so beautiful. three things that came out of that, which I think we all value. One insurance, to tort law, and carry. Exactly. And three was basically how they did risk management. So that, you know, each ship would take a little piece of everybody else's cargo so that some of the cargo would always get to marketplaces emerged Lloyds of London.

Yeah, Lloyds of London emerged because of the maritime insurance that was required and the and almost all PNC insurance can trace its roots back to maritime insurance during that that era. Well, and so these these ancillary industries that emerged were like surprising, right? It's almost business models emerged because you had to figure out how you do the arbitrage and carry is the perfect example.

People don't understand the venture capital carry, we get 20% of the profits was designed so that people with ships, the captain would get to say we get 20% of whatever makes it there. Now you're aligned, whatever makes it there, you get 20% of Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go through that storm, and I'm gonna try to get it there.

And we don't there's so many unknowns. But just looking at the one thing, you know, Starlink, I was doing a little research today about internet penetration, we've got, you know, close to 5 billion people on the internet now. But a very small number of them are on broadband, it's like 20%, 30%, somewhere in that numbers, it's hard to get an exact number there.

But if you think about what's going to happen to humanity, we're talking about billions of people who did not have access to broadband. And they are going to go from not having, you know, if you think about what we went through in the West, when the internet first came out, and we got our first brown bag connections, you know, to find us like DSL, or whatever.

We had libraries, we had books, we had colleges, we had stores everywhere, Barnes and Noble. So the internet was unbelievably transformative. But we were in a modern society, now you go to the developing world. And they're going to go from, you know, not even having running water, in some cases in their homes or electricity, or, you know, variable to having broadband.

And they're gonna have access to YouTube circa 2022 2023, they're gonna have access to, you know, MIT courseware or brilliant.org. And all of this information and shopping, we're going to take a billion or 2 billion people and give them broadband instantly within a decade. This is going to change the face of the planet.

I think that that's the revolution. And it's not just Starlink doing it. There's like three competitors to Starlink. Obviously, Starlink's got the biggest lead. Yeah, before SpaceX doing this, and there were others, there was a company called Oh, three B, it was stood for other 3 billion. And they had raised a ton of money to do this.

I just I, by the way, I just want to speak to like a trend that we've seen. And and also speak to the quality of Elon's leadership. And I think that's a really important thing. And I think it's really important to think about that. And I think that's one of the things that we've been talking about, like, is the the world's largest satellite company, the world's largest satellite company, which is a company called skybox.

And we've talked about it in a lot of our conversations, but it's a very, very different thing. Because, you know, so many companies have tried this, Google talked about it for years, which is how you can project, well, project loon was a follow on to what we talked about early on at Google, which was putting up satellites.

And there were a bunch of startups that emerged that were all about building small scale satellites that could go up into low Earth orbit, and do things like imaging and communications. And a bunch of these companies were banking on the fact that the cost per kilogram to get your payload into space was declining pretty precipitously.

So they were like, let's make super cheap commodity, you know, space imaging or space communication boxes, put them in space. And after a couple of years, they'll fall out of orbit and burn up. But it doesn't matter if we can get enough use out of them. And they cost so little.

little to put into space, and they cost a little to make, let's put hundreds of them up. So there's a company called Planet Labs, that that does this, that's, I think, going public via spec. Now that again, they've been challenged with building the business and imaging. But there was a Google bought a company for I think half a billion dollars called skybox trying to do this, which was like imaging slash comms.

And they had a bigger refrigerator size box that they were trying to put up. Ultimately, ultimately, Google, Google spun that out to Planet Labs. And the whole thing kind of, you know, became imaging. But I just want to highlight that this has been a big trend for a while.

And it speaks to the quality of Elon, his leadership, because the fact that this guy did what 20 other 30 other people have tried companies have tried to do for the past decade or so. And he said, you know what, instead of just providing the the infrastructure to get all these devices into space, we're just going to build the actual devices, get this thing up and just go crazy with it and put our capital into it.

And it's really impressive to see because it's such a no brainer. And people have been talking about this, this opportunity for over a decade. And these guys just have absolutely rushed the field. And they could build an incredible business out of this you know, the two most important companies in satellite communications are Starlink and swarm.

And swarm was a company that I seated and sacks to the Series A and the if you talk to the founders of that company, you know, they'll give you this use case in I think it was in 2014. Do you guys remember there was a like a Malaysian Airlines flight that just disappeared?

Yeah, disappeared. 370. Yeah, Malaysian Airlines flight 370. And it was like 230. And it was like, 240 people that passed away. And the the most, you know, indelible question that I remember from this was, we, we couldn't track it. And I thought to myself, how is that even possible?

How do you how do you lose? How do you lose a flight in the middle of the earth? It's not possible. It turns out it is because our internet coverage is so sad, that it only covers small areas. And it made obvious that like, you know, we should live in a world where there is a lot of people, there is absolutely pervasive internet access everywhere, every single little shred inch of the world should be covered, and saturated, that should never happen.

You know, the people should be able to have closure, they should be able to go and get that plane, recover the bodies, give them proper funeral. These are simple things, but they're human things that we should be doing as human beings, right? And just think about the IoT. Internet access enables us and the idea that we can't do that is shocking.

And so I agree with you. Elon's incredible. And I think that within the next five years, we'll probably have pervasive internet access everywhere in the earth. And that's, that's transformational. You know, the the second most valuable private company in space is also a company that, you know, I invested in led the series A called relativity space and their idea, which I think will help everybody that wants to go to Mars and other places is, why don't we just 3d print the rockets?

And why don't we 3d print the engines? And why don't we make that functionally useful, because it basically takes the cost of a rocket and divides it by 10. And these printers are small enough where you know, you can actually send them to and dismantle them and take them with you to Mars and set them up there.

And all of a sudden, you can print the parts that you need to get back to Earth as an example. So I think that additive manufacturing has an enormous upside here in space. Um, and I think that that's another area that's going to be really, really anybody read Andy Weir's Hail Mary yet, the guy who did the Martian.

He's a science fiction author, it's really great, because you don't actually know what you're gonna find out there. I think that's one of the things that, you know, to to freeberg's point, what do we find out there? What if we find a compound out there, that like, plutonium has some attributes that we could leverage in very small amounts to create unlimited energy or unlimited prosperity in some ways there are there are there are things that can exist that we have not been exposed to.

And of course, the probability is there are many things that we have yet to be exposed to. 100% Yeah, look, I don't subscribe to to that thesis. I'll tell you. I'll tell you why. And this maybe also speaks a little bit to some of the counterpoints against the space industry getting the attention and resourcing it has relative to call it other places to allocate capital and human resourcing.

And that is like the tool that we use. The tools that we have in science and engineering today as a species continues to expand at kind of a geometric pace, our ability to convert any molecule into any other molecule is basically fulfilled now. It's a function at this point of how much energy and time it takes to do that work.

So almost all industry, the function of industry is to convert molecules from one form to another. And we have tools ranging from hardware engineering, mechanical engineering, and more and more recently in the early 20th century, chemical engineering, and in the 21st century, biochemical engineering, those tools are allowing us to invent, discover and convert molecules and even in some cases, kind of elemental forms that into nearly anything else we want to produce.

And the technology is accelerating in such a way the set of technologies compound that if you think about 100 years from now, 200 years from now, 500 years from now, the human species theoretically, for very minimal time and very minimal energy should be able to have something that looks akin today to the Star Trek replicator, you basically type into a device what you'd like to make, and it makes it for you in a few minutes.

And you could just like Mr. Fusion and Back to the Future two, you could put any input you want into the thing, you could throw in bananas and cans and whatever, and outcomes this thing you want to make. So as the human species evolved towards that capability, and we don't need to get into the details, that's just like the general trendline, it becomes less relevant that we need to go get other molecules or go get other things from extra planetary sources.

The planet Earth has, you know, the order of 10 to the 23rd atoms, you know, two thirds of the surface is water, there is so much that is like unexplored and untapped from a resource perspective within this this spaceship that we're already on, that the argument would be made that our technology is allowing us to effectively recreate all of our fantastic dreams, right here where we live today.

And, you know, first thing we're gonna have to do is fix this planet and fix the ecosystems that are kind of at risk. But as we progress, and as these technologies progress, we can do these extraordinary things that we don't necessarily need to rely on extra planetary travel and colonization in order to achieve those objectives.

So that's, that's, that's, that's the that's the optimistic counter argument. Yeah, but we keep finding things like these molecules and Titan's atmosphere, etc, that we can't explain. And we're finding those through telescopes, let alone we get out there. I mean, we might be able to create them. Sure. Yeah.

But we're going to discover them in other places, we they may be beyond our human comprehension that these things could even exist, David, there are interesting things we're seeing there, for sure. And I think, you know, there's a I think I mentioned this book before, it's so esoteric and difficult, but it's called Every Life is on Fire by this guy named Jeremy England.

And he highlights how all of evolution is effectively predicted by statistical physics, and the energy bath and the molecules within a system, create a structure of molecules that you wouldn't see, except for that condition, meaning that over time, the complexity of that system evolves to create an equilibrium with the energy that it's that it's covered in.

So what we see on planet Earth, he argues is organic molecules in what we call life, which are these molecules that are really good at copying themselves to absorb energy and dissipate energy. So the molecules and the energy state of, you know, Titan is different than what we see at Earth.

So the way the molecules have evolved there are so different than what we've seen on Earth. And you can see these incredible concept of what we we wouldn't call life today, but really could be defined as life there. And so there's certainly a lot to learn a lot to explore.

It doesn't mean that we're limited in terms of our ability to kind of realize those things here on planet Earth. But you're absolutely right. Like exploration is the core of being a human, right. And for people who don't know, Titan is one of the, it's the largest moon of Saturn.

And it's got its own really weird dense atmosphere that's icy and slushy. And we don't even we can't even comprehend half the stuff going on there yet. Would any of you guys take the Richard Branson trip? Would you do the you know, like next week or two years? I guess at what point would you be comfortable taking it?

I'm sure you've taken your your side. I can answer for sacks. The answer is no. 600 and 600 and something. So how many flights more would you want to see? You would want to do 10 more flights 20 more flights? No, I feel I feel really confident. That we know what we're doing the this flight was so critical because it was about figuring out what it was like to have passengers in the back and how they'd all behave when you had multiple folks.

And I think once that readout is done, and Richard apparently took a bunch of notes. So you know, we'll, we'll be starting commercial ops, I think, you know, the next two or three quarters. So Wow. Yeah, when you have well, I mean, if I had a $500 million super yacht, like Jeff Bezos, that's where I'd be hanging out.

I don't think I'd be blasting. I wouldn't be blasting myself into space. But I mean, look more power to them. I mean, they got, you know, they certainly have got guts. Yeah, he's doing both. Yeah. Jake, how would you do it? I you know, I my my theory is with kids, I kind of think differently about it.

But if I was over 70, like Branson, certainly I would do it. Yeah, I would have to have that conversation with my spouse and my kids and say, you know, hey, this opportunity exists. They've done let's call it 100 flights. Somewhere in that neighborhood, I would I think I would feel pretty comfortable doing it.

But I would want to check in with my family and kids and see if we were all in sync on taking that lever. I stopped riding motorcycles as an example. I think that flying and space tourism in the next year or two will be safer than riding a motorcycle.

And then eventually it'll be safer than, you know, driving a car or something. It's quite possible. I was I was watching a space show with my daughter. She's three years old on the couch the other day. And then she she was like, Oh, space, it looks so fun. And I'm like, make you I said, Do you want to go to space?

And she said, she looked back at me and she said, I want to go to space with you. And it made me cry. It was the first time I'd ever thought like, man, I first time you'd ever cried for some ever crying. Back to his firmware. Yeah, crying. I was like, are these water particles on my chin?

But I had no desire, I would say before she said that to go to space, but it was a moment of like, man, this like, moment of like inspiration of like going to space is something that like, I think is going to inspire, you know, a generation and I told my daughter, I said, you know, you are going to go to space.

I hope I can be there with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I give you an idea? Two different ideas, but they're roughly related. When each of your kids turn 18. Buy them a ticket to space so that they become an astronaut, which I think is like a beautiful kind of an idea.

We're like, you know, what an incredible present to give somebody as they mature into age, you know, if you if you read if you if you basically have heard all these astronauts have said, you know, the the overview effect, like when you're above the earth looking down, it has this completely transformational effect on your outlook on life and the planet.

And so, you know, to the extent that that's a quantifiable thing to give that to your child seems like an enormous gift or, or when everybody's of age or whatever, where all of your kids are of you guys go as a family so that the whole cabin is your family?

That would be really cool to either those ideas. I will do one of those two on a second. There were four people Correct in this fight if I remember. This one, there's four passengers. Okay, wait a second. There are four besties. How are you not setting up a flight for the hundredth episode of all in to be on Virgin Galactic?

Can you imagine watching David cry and be so scared? I mean, I can pretty much guarantee you, obviously, you guys have to buy tickets, but I can pretty much guarantee you that if the three of you decided to buy tickets, I'm pretty sure I can organize that we all go on the same flight.

That would be ratings bonanza. That would be bigger than Saxon and Covenants. That's all I need is to be entombed with you guys for eternity. You know you want it. You know you want it. Hey, Chamath, can you address the von Karman line controversy around you know, what's the right point to be in space?

Because it came up a lot this week in the news. I didn't want to kind of came up by one person. Well, no, no, there was people talking about on the news and stuff like maybe you can just share for everyone. Blue Origin being lame. Honestly, that's so petty by Bezos.

So maybe just share what happened and kind of, you know, the point of view on this. Be awesome. But basically, the question is what defines space, right? So if you if you just like start from the bottom from ground level, right, you have the trophosphere, right? So you have like the first kind of like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, you know, like, 1020 kilometers or so right, then you have the stratosphere, right?

That's where like, a lot of like weather balloon activity happens. That's a 50 kilometers, then you have the mesosphere, right? That's where you'll see things like meteors and stuff. Then you get to basically the Karman line, which is around I don't know, 100 kilometers or so there are a bunch of countries that either have no opinion, or point to this kind of group to define what the stratosphere is.

define what the beginning of space is. And they define that at about 100 clicks, which is I want to say 62 miles, okay. Then there's the United States. And the DoD and NASA, etc. And we define it at a different level 50 odd miles. And so in the United States, you need to pass the US regulatory standards.

So there's a lot of different ways to define the stratosphere. But I think it's important to understand the definition of what the threshold of space is to be considered an astronaut. There is other countries that would then point to a different line, the Karman line has the line. I think the point is, it's all much ado about nothing, I think, in the end, I think Virgin stated that they went to 52 and a half or 53 and a half.

You know, things are iterative. So over time, you'll get to see the planet, you get to feel microgravity. You know, you get the benefit of the overview effect, whether you're at 52 and a half, I'm guessing you'll get the same effect at 58 or 60 or 61. And then you come back to Earth.

So I thought it was kind of a little cheap and unnecessary, because there's not there's, there's nothing experience wise that changes, right? I mean, like the understanding. Yeah. Blue Origin did a tweet from a friend of mine, he said, I'm from the beginning, New Shepard was designed to fly above the Carmen line.

So none of our astronauts would have an asterix next to their name. For 96% of the world's population space begins 100 kilometers up the insurance blah, blah, blah. It's just like, why would they do that the days before the Richard Branson goes up. It's just totally classless. It shows that Bezos has a competitive streak, which is just not graceful, I would say.

And I think there's a little bit of bitterness there. And then you look at Elon. What did Elon do? He went so classy. He went so classy. He took a picture with Branson and he went to support him and wrote a congratulatory tweet. Elon does not feel he's in competition.

But for some reason, Bezos, you know, Bezos had to, like draft and approve this specific tweet from Blue Origin. And I just thought it was classless and just stupid. Jeff really made you look so bad. Elon, Elon was so fabulous. I mean, it just shows you like, what's the difference between the two.

I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two.

I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just like, what's the difference between the two. I mean, it's just shows you like what a class act he is and what he cares about, which is like he cares about advancing humans and our ability to do things that are incredible and inspiring.

And when other people do it, he's not zero sum about it. As you said, Jason, he was there, he was supportive. It was just lovely to see. I think Bezos is still stung for when Elon said he couldn't get it up. Meaning he couldn't get his rocket into space.

So, I don't know if that was - That was too classy of Elon. Well, it was funny. It was funny. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you guys have seen Jeff's rocket. Kind of small. His rocket is, I mean, Jason, now you're doing it. Kind of tiny rocket. I'm just joking.

Just so we put a pin in it, Melvin Capital, the people who went to war with the Reddit traders or vice versa, lost $5 billion. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people. I mean, they're down 46%, which is just shocking in and of itself in this kind of upmarket.

But then to actually quantify it, they lost $5 billion fighting a bunch of self-proclaimed Rs. I won't say the word because I don't want to get canceled, but they call themselves Rs on . On Reddit. On Redditers. They cost them $5 billion. Jason, you can say it. You're not calling them that.

They call themselves that. They call themselves that, yes. . All right. Listen, love you, besties. Sacks, we're glad that you're safe and you're healthy. No thanks to you. No thanks to you. No jokes. I didn't put any jokes in there. I have so many jokes. I'm going to save them.

I mean, honestly, my thought on your recovery is no comment. I'm just jealous you're going to lose another five fricking pounds because of this. Oh, yeah. I'm down to 178, by the way. Come on. Stop. Are you really? Stop, you manorexic. I can't even break one. When are you going to stop?

Was there a bet or no? No bet. I don't want to lose that bet. That'd be like me playing sacks in chess. It's just not going to- Jason, what are you tipping the scales at right now? 190. One. 190 and you're about to come to Italy and basically you're going to gain 15 pounds for sure.

No, I'm doing one meal a day. What? No. One meal a day. That's it. One meal a day. That's it. I'm eating one meal a day. That's my good thing. How are you going to turn down the food? But what if you eat for three hours in that one meal?

I try everything. I'll just try and then I have discipline now. Just like I stopped using Twitter. I'm stopping Twitter. Can I tell one funny story about Jcal in Italy? Talking about discipline? Okay. So, we were there in Italy. When was this Jcal? A few years ago, whatever? This is a long time ago.

Is this when we were in Venice? Yeah. You were with Jade and I was with Jaqueline. Oh, that's a great story. And we went to some ice cream place, right? And so, we all had these like ice cream gelato with like two scoops or whatever on there. So, Jason finishes his in like five seconds.

It would just disappear. . And then he walks up to Jaqueline and just goes like that. And in one fell swoop, he ate the gelato off her ice cream cone. That's not true. That's not true. It was like a bulldog. It was like a bulldog just eating your ice cream.

But how good was that fish that we got? Remember that restaurant I found? Yeah. The Dorade. The Dorade. The Dorade. I mean, we still talk about that place. That was incredible. Yeah. That was like one of the best meals you ever had. I've been having a gelato, guys, every day.

Every day. But they're so small. That's what I love about the Italian. They're so small. It's a little – it's such a cute little – And it doesn't feel like there's like a lot of preservatives and stuff in there. No. It's just like butter and sugar, heavy cream, whatever it is.

It's so good. It's so good. It's so good. How are the tomatoes right now? I can't wait to see some tomatoes. Oh, incredible. Incredible. I mean, I eat them, I bathe in them, I rub them on my face. You rub them all. What about the moots? You got the moots?

How's the burrata and the moots? I can't wait. Oh, he's going to gain 15 pounds. 100% he's going to break. Look at him. Look at him. 100%. We should do a weigh-in when we get there and a weigh-in at the end. That would be the bet. 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 the pasta. You'll have pasta at lunch, pasta at dinner. You're just going to go crazy. I'm going to just have two bites of everything. Two bites of six different pastas, and I'll be fine. By the way, by the way, the best kept secret is the quality of Italian white wine is outrageous.

Really? Really. It is outrageous. We should play some cards and drink some wine. I think we're going to play. No? How many calories are in the white wine, Chamath? Calories? I don't know. I mean, I have no idea. But look, the thing in the summertime here is you end up walking.

So I end up walking a lot or bicycling a little bit, blah, blah, blah. At the end of the day, you're burning through everything. I got to say, this e-bike I got, I got a rad power bike. No, no, no. The whole point is to not have a motor that powers it, you fucking lazy bastard.

No, no, no. What you don't understand is, because you have the motor in it, Chamath, you ride your bike normal. But then like, let's say you do have dinner or something like that, or you want to go to dinner 10 miles away or 15 miles away, you might not take your bike.

It's too long of a ride. With these electric bikes, instead of going 10 miles on the way there, it takes your 10 mile ride and just puts you at 25, but you're still burning the same number of calories. It's like augmenting. I really think that electric bikes are going to change cities like in a major way.

They're already starting to in Europe and in China. But all right, everybody, we'll see you next time on the All In the Podcast. Love you, Sax. Back at you. Sax, I hope you get better. Feel better. Thank you. Thanks, guys. I'm better. I'm already better. Don't worry about it.

And wait, Freeburg, you have nothing to say. Computer. It does not compute. It is nice to see the three of you. It was nice to check off the box for my social interactions for the week. I will now go back. I have now done 75 minutes of social interaction, powering down in three, two, one.

Ma, ma, ma, ma, ma, ma. See you next time. Bye-bye. We'll let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sack. And it said, we open source it to the fans, and they've just gone crazy with it. I love you, West Navy. I'm the queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

We'll let your winners ride. Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway. Oh, man. We should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy, because they're all just useless. It's like this sexual tension, but they just need to release it somehow.

Wet your feet. Wet your feet. We need to get merchies. I'm going all in. I'm going all in. © transcript Emily Beynon