0:00

This podcast is supported by Global

0:02

X ETFs. The financial services

0:04

landscape is shifting before our eyes.

0:06

Whether paying for groceries, applying for mortgage,

0:08

or even buying an NFT, Almost anything

0:10

you could imagine is at your fingertips. As

0:12

these transactions become more and more seamless,

0:15

it's easy to forget the innovative technologies

0:17

making it all possible. Disruptions like

0:19

fintech, blockchain, and yes,

0:21

digital assets aren't just pixels on

0:23

the screen. They're led by forward thinking companies

0:26

helping shape the future of finance. Learn

0:28

more about investing in these emerging themes

0:30

at global x ETFs dot com.

0:33

Kevin,

0:33

can I tell you how heard about the Elon News?

0:36

please.

0:36

So it's morning in San Francisco. I

0:39

had just finished at the gym. I go to my

0:41

locker. I pick up my phone and there's

0:43

a text message from producer at CNBC.

0:45

and it says, can you come on right now

0:47

to talk about the Elon and Twitter

0:49

news? And

0:52

of course, I think I haven't looked at my

0:54

phone in fifty minutes. Like, what what has happened?

0:56

Did you do it? Did you do the hit, like, from the

0:59

exercise bike? So I said,

1:01

I'm gonna need a few minutes because I'm

1:03

I'm just leaving the gym, but also like you

1:05

can't turn the camera on because I look like

1:07

I've just done high intensity interval training.

1:10

And she said, it's fine. We'll

1:12

call you. Like, but can it be right now?

1:15

And I said, no. I need two minutes

1:17

to read tweets. So

1:20

I spent two minutes reading

1:23

tweets and

1:24

then I was on CNBC presenting

1:26

my grand's take that I have

1:29

no idea what's happening. Iconic.

1:33

love it.

1:38

I'm

1:38

Kevin Rouss. I'm a tech columnist at New York

1:40

Times. I'm Casey Newton from platformer, and

1:43

this is hard work.

1:50

Well, Casey, I'm glad that you went to the

1:52

gym. You know, gotta take care of number one.

1:54

and I'm also glad that you were

1:56

able to give CNBC viewers the

1:59

two minutes' worth of analysis that

2:01

you were able to do. Well, speaking

2:03

getting through segments, Kevin, we got really

2:05

punched out for you this week. Yeah.

2:07

Tell us what we're gonna talk about. Well, we're

2:09

gonna get into Elon Musk and not

2:11

just the stuff off the top of my head.

2:13

We both now spent a couple days

2:16

actually talking to people inside Twitter,

2:18

outside Twitter, and we think we've arrived at some

2:20

conclusions about what's going on.

2:22

We're also gonna talk to Kashmere Hill,

2:24

one of the great reporters at The New York Times

2:26

about a bunch of times she recently

2:28

spent in the metaverse. And

2:30

then coming up at the end of the show, it's gonna

2:33

be the first ever hard fork transparency

2:35

report.

2:51

Should

2:53

we play the Elon theme? Yes, please.

2:55

Let's play the Elon theme.

3:15

Alright. So this week we learned that Elon Musk

3:17

is apparently changing his mind

3:20

again about Twitter. This company

3:22

that he's sort of been in and on again,

3:24

off again with since

3:26

earlier this year, which now appears

3:28

like it's going to be

3:31

a thing. Elon Musk, it looks

3:33

like he's gonna buy Twitter. I don't know.

3:36

Okay. So maybe we should start there. Like,

3:38

Is Elon Musk going to buy

3:40

Twitter? Because, you know, there's been

3:42

this month's long drama they

3:45

were supposed to go to trial in Delaware

3:47

to settle this this month, and

3:49

then we got this sort of string of news

3:51

this week. So Monday night, Elon

3:54

and his lawyer sent a letter to Twitter

3:56

saying that, yes, he was prepared to buy the company

3:58

for his original proposed price of

4:00

forty four billion dollars. And

4:02

Twitter basically said, yeah. Like,

4:05

we also want you to buy us

4:07

for forty four billion dollars as you said

4:09

you would. And then there was kind of

4:11

some messy back and forth about

4:13

delaying the trial and financing, whether

4:16

these banks that had put up money for the

4:18

deal were actually gonna

4:20

come through with that money.

4:22

And then on Thursday, the judge agreed

4:25

to postpone the trial which was supposed

4:27

to start next week and set

4:29

a new deadline of October

4:31

twenty eighth. And if they

4:33

don't close the deal by October

4:35

twenty eighth, then they will go to

4:37

trial. So that's where we are right

4:39

now when we're taping this. And

4:42

the people that I've talked to are

4:44

pretty certain that despite all of

4:46

this sort of eleventh hour

4:48

drama, this deal is actually

4:51

going to close, and then it could happen

4:53

as soon as next week. So Casey

4:56

What are you hearing about this? Do you still

4:58

have doubts that this deal is going to

5:00

close? Where do we stand now?

5:02

Yes. I have all sorts of doubts about

5:05

this this situation that

5:07

we're in. You know, I think, you

5:09

know, maybe helpful to take a step back

5:11

and ask ourselves, well, how do we

5:13

get here? And if you're a wind all the way

5:15

back to April, news breaks

5:17

that Elon Musk takes a

5:19

large position in Twitter. He's so suddenly

5:21

very interested in it. then he

5:23

joins the board. Then a few

5:25

days later, he leaves the board. Then

5:27

a couple weeks after that, he says I'm gonna

5:29

buy the company and he signs a deal to buy

5:31

the company. And then, like, a

5:33

day later, he starts criticizing executives

5:35

on Twitter. Then a couple weeks after that, he says,

5:37

you know what, this deal is on hold while

5:39

I decide if I wanna buy it. never mind the

5:41

fact that he already signed the deal. And

5:43

then he wages like a months

5:45

long campaign to get out of the

5:47

deal, you know, accusing of Twitter

5:49

of, like, everything short of war crimes.

5:51

Right? Oh, it's full of bots and spam. And

5:53

then a whistleblower pops up and says

5:55

Twitter's a national security risk. Elad

5:57

is absolutely everything he can to get

5:59

on his deal. And then one one Monday

6:01

night, he says, you know what? Actually,

6:04

Sure. Here's forty four billion

6:06

dollars. Like, there is

6:08

such a massive gap

6:10

in between the story I just

6:12

laid out and the decision that he made Monday.

6:14

And until I hear some sort of explanation

6:16

for it, I'm very suspicious. Yeah.

6:18

It's definitely strange and,

6:20

you know, the the leading theories so

6:22

that I've heard are basically, you

6:25

know, he decided

6:27

that he was probably going to lose his

6:29

court case. and his advisors

6:31

were telling him, you know, you don't actually have a

6:33

strong case to get out of this deal. He,

6:36

you know, was scheduled to be deposed

6:38

this week. And so maybe he wanted to avoid

6:41

having to appear in court

6:43

having, you know, more of his embarrassing,

6:45

you know, text messages or whatever

6:47

revealed as part of lawsuit and

6:49

ultimately just cut his losses and

6:51

and, you know, buy the company as he originally

6:53

agreed to do. Do you find that explanation plausible?

6:56

Well, I think it could

6:58

be an explanation. I'd like to

7:00

know more about what might

7:02

have come out at this trial, whether it

7:04

took place this month, next month. What

7:06

what is he so desperate to avoid having

7:08

revealed? We know that last week,

7:11

some text messages between him and his

7:13

other billionaire friends came out. And

7:15

honestly, I don't think they made him look that

7:17

bad. I think they made some of his friends look

7:19

silly as they told you that to him and try to see how

7:21

they could, you know, be involved in the Twitter of the

7:23

future. I agree. It was very embarrassing

7:25

for Elon's friends, but actually, like,

7:28

much more normal than I expected from him.

7:30

Yeah. You know, he's like, you know, Marc Benioff would

7:32

be like, hey, what if Twitter was the conversational

7:34

OS for Earth and humanity? And Elon

7:36

Musk was like, don't even own it yet. You know,

7:38

like, that's not embarrassing for Elon Musk.

7:41

Yeah. But, you know, so, you

7:43

know, maybe something else would have come out in in

7:45

this trial, but, like, Elad musk, how

7:47

many lawsuits has he been deposed in at

7:49

this point? I can't imagine this was that terrifying

7:51

a prospect for him. And here's the other thing that

7:53

I think is interesting. So According

7:55

to the legal analysis I've read,

7:57

there were two potential outcomes to this trial.

7:59

One is the judge says, you know what, Elon

8:02

Musk you're on the hook. You actually do have to buy

8:04

Twitter and you have to pay the forty four billion dollars.

8:06

Right? And so maybe if that's the case, then he just

8:08

kinda wants to skip to the end. but there's

8:10

this other possibility that she

8:12

would have said, yes, you are liable, but you

8:14

just have to pay the one billion dollar breakup

8:16

fee and then you can walk away.

8:18

Right? Because it would seem weird to force you

8:20

to buy a company that you don't actually wanna own.

8:22

So if that's the case, Wouldn't you

8:24

be willing to roll the dice to

8:26

save yourself forty three

8:28

billion dollars? Right?

8:31

What sort of damage to Elon

8:33

Musk's reputation would not be

8:35

worth the opportunity to

8:37

hang on to forty three billion

8:39

dollars. So that's the aspect of this that I

8:41

just find the strangest. Yeah. I mean, it's

8:43

worth noting, like, forty three

8:45

or forty four billion dollars. That that's, like, a lot

8:47

of money. It can be sort of numbing once you

8:49

get into the billions. It's just like all sounds

8:51

like a lot of money. But, like, even Elon

8:53

Musk, the richest man in the world, his

8:56

net worth is more

8:58

than two hundred billion dollars

9:00

most days. So even for

9:02

him, this is an extraordinary amount

9:04

of money he's lined up financing.

9:06

It's not all his personal money, but

9:08

a lot of his personal money and and his,

9:10

you know, Tesla shares will

9:13

be on the line. And

9:15

so it also strikes me as very strange that you

9:17

would spend months talking about

9:19

how awful this company is.

9:22

like, basically trying to talk your way out

9:24

of the deal. And then

9:26

now you own it. And it's like, well, if I

9:28

if I'm one of the the banks or the,

9:30

you know, the people who put up money for this bid

9:32

in the first place, I'm going, well, was

9:34

all the stuff you said about Twitter back then when you

9:36

were trying to get out of the deal true? Or is all the

9:38

stuff that you're gonna say now that you actually own

9:40

it true? And why am I backing you

9:42

if you think you just overpaid

9:44

for something that is, like, irredeemably

9:46

broken? Exactly. Right? I mean,

9:48

you know, again, he he adopted

9:50

the arguments of this Twitter

9:52

whistleblower Peter Mudge Zuckerberg.

9:55

And and said, like, you know, Twitter's a national

9:57

security risk. He's like, okay. But, you know, on

9:59

reflection, I've decided to spend forty four billion

10:01

dollars to acquire this national security

10:03

risk. Like, There's there's

10:05

such a missing piece here. So let me introduce

10:07

another question into the mix. If you

10:09

read the letter that he sends

10:11

on Monday his legal team does, it makes

10:14

clear that he will close this

10:16

deal assuming that all the

10:18

financing is still there. Right? because he brought in some

10:20

equity partners and he lines some banks

10:22

up. So, one of this whole thing is just him

10:24

playing for time. Right? He

10:26

he gets out of this lawsuit that was about to

10:28

start in a couple of weeks. and

10:30

he then kind of runs out the clock

10:32

and then a couple months later shows up and say, oh

10:34

gosh, you know, I wanted this thing so bad,

10:36

but unfortunately, I was not able to line up the

10:38

necessary financing. So with deepest

10:40

regrets, I'm going to have to step away from

10:42

the Twitter Corporation. Like Is that

10:44

not actually a much more plausible explanation than

10:46

him waking up one day in the sinus by forty

10:48

four billion dollars? Yeah. I mean, it would be

10:50

a plausible explanation except for the fact that,

10:52

like, we live in a nation of laws because I

10:54

was I was skeptical too. When I first heard this, I

10:56

thought, okay. Here we go again. He's just

10:58

gonna, like, toy around with this company and

11:00

then back out at the last minute. But

11:02

I've I've spent, you know, the past day, like,

11:05

reading smart takes

11:07

from lawyers, securities

11:09

lawyers, people who have done

11:11

large m and a deals before. And

11:13

I've gotten much more skeptical

11:15

of what you're saying, which is that this is

11:17

just deployed to sort of run out the clock

11:19

in part because, like, I

11:21

think Twitter is obviously going to

11:23

do it best to try to make sure that he

11:25

comes through that he actually, you know, delivers

11:27

this money. They're gonna be watching him

11:30

like a hawk The judge in the

11:32

Delaware Chancery Court, who is going to hear this

11:34

trial, is going to be very

11:36

upset if this is just another

11:38

ploy to waste you know, her

11:40

time and Twitter's time and everyone's

11:42

time. So I actually III

11:44

started where you are. And

11:46

by the end of the day, was basically convinced

11:49

that this is going to happen. And

11:51

I haven't yet come to the

11:53

conclusion about why, which is the big question,

11:55

why this sort of sudden change of

11:57

mind -- Uh-huh. -- except to say that,

11:59

like, you know, this is not

12:01

a guy who, like, does due

12:03

diligence. He does, like, vibe checks.

12:05

essentially. And I

12:07

got I, you know, I got the sense when

12:09

he was trying to pull out of the deal that it

12:11

was just sort of because he was bored

12:13

and because it seemed like more annoying to

12:16

buy Twitter than not to buy

12:18

it. And, like, you know, he probably had a

12:20

lot of other work going on at Tesla and SpaceX

12:22

that he was, like, not that excited

12:24

about distracting himself from. And

12:26

now maybe it feels like, okay. Well, everyone

12:28

expects me not to buy this thing. So

12:30

maybe I'm gonna buy it after all. Like, maybe

12:32

the the, like, you know, the fun

12:34

thing to do would be to actually acquire

12:36

Twitter, try to, you know,

12:38

turn it around, make it profitable, fix

12:40

the things that are wrong with it. And by the

12:42

way, like, you know, getting to

12:44

run Twitter is, like, you know, a pretty

12:47

big deal if you're

12:49

Elon Musk, you know, you're not just one of the biggest

12:51

users of the platform, like, you also run the thing

12:53

now. So I you know, this is my

12:55

sort of unsatisfying explanation for why

12:57

is just like, you

12:59

know, the the vibes, basically.

13:01

The vibes shifted Yeah. That

13:03

you know, we we do live in a world where I feel

13:05

like vibes explains maybe seventy percent

13:07

of all things. At least

13:09

seventy percent of all things involving Elon

13:11

Musk. Yeah. I

13:14

think I I think we're

13:16

still missing a beat here. You know? It's

13:18

like, you you know what I think Elon Musk

13:20

doesn't care about whether a judge is upset with him.

13:22

I don't think he's losing a lot of sleep.

13:25

Wondering what Kathleen over at the chance rate

13:27

court has to say, Right?

13:29

So there's gonna be another

13:31

twist to the story. Like, I

13:33

would be truly astonished

13:35

if this were the final beat of the

13:37

story. And that within a few weeks, Elon

13:39

Musk were the owner of Twitter. But by the

13:41

way, if he does become the owner of Twitter, is

13:43

gonna be so much more annoying to run

13:45

than he ever imagined.

13:48

Okay? Everything that he thought was gonna be

13:50

annoying about running this company

13:52

after he initially signed the deal this

13:54

spring, like, will only be more

13:56

so as we head into a midterm

13:58

election, a presidential election, and

14:00

who knows what other controversies will

14:02

arise, you know, not to even mention all the

14:04

business issues that he has to solve.

14:06

So if indeed he has bought the company

14:08

Good luck, Elon Musk. You're gonna need it. Yeah. Well, I

14:10

think he is gonna buy the company. I think that in a

14:13

couple weeks, he will be the owner of Twitter

14:15

probably before the midterms. So

14:18

I guess we'll see who's right on that.

14:20

I'm glad we're recording this. I'm really looking

14:22

forward to playing this back to you in,

14:24

like, two years. I will say that.

14:26

Yeah. Let's start

14:28

our podcast with me just viciously

14:30

owning myself or you're viciously owning

14:32

yourself. Let's talk about though what

14:34

happens So -- Yeah. -- let's assume,

14:36

let's enter my world

14:38

where I'm pretty sure this deal. I would

14:40

put my certainty at, like, ninety five

14:42

percent that this deal is gonna close. God.

14:44

I know. I know. fool me once, but

14:47

I I really think there's like no way out for

14:49

him at this point. Alright. So

14:51

let's talk about what happens

14:53

next, if he does, in fact, become the

14:55

the new owner of Twitter. So I wrote

14:57

a column this week laying

14:59

out sort of six things that I think will

15:02

happen pretty much immediately if Elon Musk

15:04

buys Twitter. I won't go through them

15:06

all, but the first is I think obviously

15:08

he's gonna fire Paragagro all,

15:10

Twitter's CEO. Oh, and and

15:12

Parag is excited about that. Like, because

15:14

the moment he gets fired, Parag equival gets

15:16

forty two million dollars. Like, that's gonna be the

15:18

best firing a problem.

15:20

Right. Like, he's been the CEO

15:23

for less than a year. He

15:25

comes in. He immediately gets

15:27

fired by Elon Musk. and gets a

15:29

forty two million dollar payout. Like, not a bad

15:31

year. Sure. That's the CEO gig,

15:33

I think, we all want. You know, come in, do

15:35

as little as possible, get fired

15:38

for forty two million. Yeah. So

15:40

I think that's an easy call to make Elon

15:42

Musk, you know, from his text messages that

15:44

we saw last week. they

15:46

clearly don't see eye to eye.

15:48

He, you know, they had this very snappy

15:50

exchange where Parag was basically like,

15:52

hey, could you stop, like, tweeting mean

15:54

things about us and Elon said

15:56

sort of famously, what have

15:59

you done this week? Just

16:01

sort of like accusing him of like being,

16:03

you know, lazy and overpaid and, like, not doing

16:06

his job. So Farag's

16:08

gone. I think a lot of Twitter executives

16:10

will be gone. Elon has made no

16:13

secret of the fact that he does not

16:15

like a lot of the company's leadership

16:18

So that's prediction number one. It's just

16:20

total clearing of the executive ranks.

16:22

I think there's gonna be a larger employee

16:24

revolt too. mean, I know we've both been

16:26

talking to folks inside Twitter. The

16:28

people I'm talking to are

16:30

not happy and they don't want to

16:32

work freelance And if this

16:34

deal closes, I think that

16:36

some or maybe most of them

16:38

will leave. I

16:40

think, obviously, you know, Donald Trump will be

16:42

allowed back on the platform. That's something that Elon

16:44

Musk has said he would do if he

16:46

buys Twitter And

16:48

Elon has also said in in

16:50

these texts that he wants to reverse all

16:52

permanent bans on Twitter except

16:54

for, I think, spam accounts and direct

16:57

incitement to violence. So, you

16:59

know, it will be a field day for

17:01

people who have been banned from Twitter

17:03

in the past who will be allowed to come back

17:06

And then, you know, I had a couple more sort of predictions about

17:08

what's gonna happen with Twitter's products, but just just

17:10

react to that so far. Like, am I am I

17:12

often any of these predictions? Do you think any of that

17:14

is unlikely? If this deal does go through.

17:17

Yeah. I I think your your predictions are accurate.

17:19

I think, like, like, the one I'm most interested

17:21

in is the one where he just, like, reverses

17:23

all of these bands. You know?

17:25

It's, like, It's like the Joker takes over Arkem asylum and then

17:27

just releases all of the supervillains, like, back

17:29

out into Gotham City. It's like, like,

17:31

the the world that we're about

17:33

people living in. And we'll certainly make

17:35

the timeline more interesting. But

17:39

the the employee attrition thing, I think,

17:41

is worth taking a beat

17:43

on because at the end of the day,

17:45

it's not Elon Musk who is gonna be

17:47

riding the code. Right? He

17:49

has to rely on people who

17:51

have built the system over the years.

17:53

It's a famously complicated system,

17:55

you know. There are people inside Twitter who

17:57

say, like, look at these five engineers

17:59

leave, like, we we don't know how to restart the

18:02

the the servers, like, if if they shut

18:04

down. So there's a really interesting

18:06

issue there where they lost, like, seven

18:08

hundred employees on that by

18:10

September, they're gonna lose a lot

18:12

more. So what does Twitter look like

18:14

when people truly start heading for the exits? And, you know,

18:16

would Elon must be able to

18:18

replace those people, you know, with

18:20

folks who can build his vision for it? These are

18:22

all open questions. And

18:24

I mean, to to be fair, like, a lot of the

18:26

people close to Elon would probably say,

18:28

like, good. These employees should

18:30

leave. They are you know, clearly not

18:33

on board with the idea of a social

18:35

network that, you know, champions

18:37

free speech. They're,

18:39

like, sensorious and woke, and they're

18:41

not gonna, you know, they're gonna try to

18:43

sabotage this from within if they stay. So,

18:45

like, basically good ridden.

18:47

And Elon will need to

18:49

cut some costs. Like, that's part of his plan

18:51

for Twitter is to, you know, he said

18:54

explicitly in the pitch deck that he submitted

18:56

to investors. that they would, you know, they

18:58

would shed employees in the

19:00

first year. And so

19:02

the more people quit on their own, the

19:04

fewer he has to go through and

19:06

fire or lay off. So I

19:08

think in in some ways, like, this is

19:10

not an outcome that Elon Musk

19:12

would be unhappy with. If a

19:14

bunch of politically, you know, sort of,

19:16

minded Twitter employees decide to get

19:18

up and quit altogether. But but

19:20

can we talk about why he's gonna get slapped

19:22

upside the head by reality on

19:24

that one? Yes. So that there is this idea

19:27

that if for social networks to be

19:29

truly great, we must stop

19:31

moderating content. We must stop

19:33

removing posts Right? Or we have to treat

19:35

every post as equal, something like

19:37

that. Keep in mind, the reason that all these

19:39

rules arose was that

19:41

users hated living in a world

19:43

where they saw constant hate speech

19:46

harassment abuse, and they literally

19:48

did leave Twitter. Right?

19:50

Disney refused to buy the company at one point

19:52

because there was so much harassment on

19:54

it. And so the market responded

19:56

by saying we're gonna introduce new

19:58

rules to make people feel safer,

20:01

happier, like they can have a good

20:03

conversation. So if you

20:05

think that Twitter is going to

20:07

go Supernova just by like

20:09

getting rid of its community standards.

20:11

Go check on on some of these Twitter clones

20:13

that have been created by conservatives

20:15

over the past couple years. Right? Look

20:17

at truth social parlor, getter.

20:19

These apps are not

20:21

monoliths, be striding the earth.

20:23

They're struggling to hang on. And I would argue

20:25

a big reason for that. is

20:27

they don't take the the well-being of their users as

20:30

seriously as some of these other platforms.

20:32

Totally. And and look at the success of

20:34

tick Talk, which is the fastest growing social

20:36

network in the US, and is also

20:38

one of the most heavily moderated.

20:40

So I think you're right. he's

20:42

gonna get slapped upside the face by reality. I

20:44

was also talking to a former

20:46

Twitter executive who was

20:48

making the point that basic the the

20:50

the biggest outcome of this

20:52

acquisition, if it goes through, could be

20:54

something that nobody expects. Right?

20:57

Like, sort of to the point that you were making about

20:59

how, you know, there's only five people who, like, understand

21:01

how to fix this particular part of

21:03

Twitter. Like, it's not a huge

21:06

company with, like, a very

21:08

stable infrastructure. Yeah. And

21:10

this person was making the point that, like,

21:12

basically, you know, there are lots of things that could happen and there

21:14

could be a huge data breach because

21:16

the the five security engineers who

21:18

understand the inner workings of the

21:20

company have all left because they

21:22

don't wanna work free on Musk. Like, DMs

21:24

on Twitter are not end to

21:26

end encrypted. So, you know, those

21:28

could come out and cause all kinds

21:30

of havoc. So, I think this person's point

21:32

was like basically, you know, there's kinds

21:35

of chaos that we can foresee

21:37

now, but there could also be something

21:39

totally out of left field. that

21:41

no one including Elon Musk sees coming. And that's what this

21:43

podcast is about. Actually, the secret chaos you

21:46

never saw coming that has

21:48

changed your life forever. So

21:51

Casey, what do you think comes next in this deal?

21:53

Like, we have this new deadline

21:55

of October twenty eighth. They

21:57

have to close the deal or it's gonna

21:59

go to trial sometime in November. There

22:02

are still some questions about

22:04

whether Elon actually has

22:06

the money in hand to write

22:08

the check to Twitter for forty four billion

22:11

dollars. What do you think the next

22:13

wave of news on this is going

22:15

to be? Well, the next wave is gonna be

22:17

Elon Musk trying to find new

22:19

excuses to get out of this deal. Like, this

22:21

is what I believe in my heart. You can read it in

22:23

the Twitter lawyer's response to him

22:25

asking for a stay in the trial. They point out

22:27

that in his communications, he

22:29

clearly seems to be angling for

22:31

potential new escape hashes.

22:33

So I think, you know, I I would again

22:36

be surprised if we make it all the way to

22:38

October twenty eighth, and what we find

22:40

is that Elon Musk has closed

22:42

that deal. I think he is still scrambling,

22:44

trying to find a way out. I also

22:46

think he's scrambling to find a way out. I

22:48

just don't think he will. I think he

22:50

has no way out. and think he's gonna

22:52

end up working over forty four billion

22:55

dollars and becoming the owner of

22:57

Twitter. So you think he's in the

22:59

critical effing around stage And

23:01

on October twenty eight, he's gonna find

23:03

out. I think so. And I

23:05

guess we will know who is right and

23:07

who is wrong, maybe even by

23:10

Halloween. Spooky season is upon

23:12

us. Alright.

23:17

I think we're done talking about

23:19

Elon Musk for now. Let's

23:21

move on. Like, here we have an

23:23

appointment in the metaverse. We do. It's

23:25

coming up right after the

23:27

break.

23:41

This podcast is

23:43

supported by Global X ETFs.

23:45

The financial

23:46

services landscape is shifting before

23:49

our eyes. Whether paying for grocery applying for mortgage

23:51

or even buying an NFT, almost

23:53

anything you could imagine is at your

23:55

fingertips, as these transactions become more and

23:57

more seamless, It's

23:59

easy to forget the innovative technologies

24:01

making it all possible. Disruptions

24:03

like fintech, blockchain, and yes,

24:05

digital assets aren't just pixels

24:07

on a screen. They're led by forward thinking

24:09

companies helping shape the future of

24:11

finance. Learn more about investing

24:13

in these emerging themes at global x

24:15

ETFs dot com.

24:17

Hi.

24:17

I'm Megan Lauren, the director of

24:19

photography at The New

24:19

York Times.

24:21

A photograph can do a lot of different things.

24:23

It can connect us It can bring

24:25

us to places we've never been

24:28

before. It can capture a

24:29

story in a universal visual

24:31

language. But one thing that all these

24:33

photographs have in common is that, you know,

24:34

they don't just come out of the ether. We

24:37

spend a lot of time anticipating news

24:40

stories working with the best photographers across the

24:42

globe. These are photographers who have

24:44

spent years mastering their

24:46

technical craft, developing their

24:48

skills as visual chroniclers

24:50

of our world. You know, getting certified as

24:52

a scuba diver and learning how to shoot underwater

24:55

to document climate change or

24:57

tremendous cardiovascular training

24:59

in order to ski on the slopes next to

25:01

Olympic athletes. This is an effort

25:03

that takes tons of time and

25:05

consideration and resources. All of

25:07

this is possible only because of New

25:09

York Times subscribers. If you're not

25:10

a subscriber yet, you can become

25:12

one at n y times dot com

25:15

slash subscribe.

25:16

Alright. I

25:19

got

25:20

my VR headset on. I'm

25:24

go into Horizon World. Mhmm.

25:26

And I'm supposed to

25:28

meet cash at

25:31

a very British

25:35

pub.

25:40

Hello? Cash?

25:43

Hello?

25:46

I don't see Cashmere. Cashmere

25:49

cashmere. Okay. I'm going

25:51

into like a little

25:53

bar. There's some tables. There's a

25:56

fireplace. Oh, fun. What's

25:58

cozy. There's some

25:59

beer. I'm a grab of

26:02

beer. Okay. I'm a drink of

26:04

beer. I'm a Metiverse fan

26:06

of to check my ID.

26:08

Oh, wait. Is

26:10

that

26:10

cash? Yeah. It's me. It starts. Oh,

26:12

I have my recording. Hello?

26:15

How's it going? So

26:18

is he seeing you

26:20

here? Should we move somewhere a little

26:22

more private? sync it with your Over to the The

26:24

problem in the metaverse is not being

26:27

alone. Okay.

26:32

Now what happened?

26:36

No. Wait. Did I just get booted? I

26:38

got booted. No. it

26:41

get up. No.

26:44

No. No. No. No. No. Get me back. Get me back. Get

26:46

me back. Perfect. Go back.

26:48

Okay. It's the

26:52

game. Wait.

26:54

Are you punching me? Am I good? Yeah. Am

26:56

I in a firefighter? Come

26:59

in. Okay. Complete you off.

27:01

Whoa. Kevin, are you you here.

27:03

I go. Kevin.

27:06

Wait. What happened? Oh, I don't

27:08

do that. You're here. But I'm here.

27:11

spongy beans is trying to fight

27:13

me. Oh my gosh. Wow.

27:15

This counts. And

27:17

I got kicked in. Oh, now I'm

27:20

by myself.

27:22

I don't know what's going

27:24

on. Okay. Well, we have a backup

27:26

plan, Kash. Casey has actually they set

27:28

up a room for us in Horizon. Workroom is

27:30

the other meta, metaverse

27:33

app. So I think we should go

27:35

there and meet him. Oh,

27:37

yeah. Sure.

27:41

Oh, there's Kevin. Yeah.

27:43

He's wearing a cowboy hat.

27:47

Incredible. It looks like

27:49

like it's like JRU ing from Dallas

27:51

or something. Hey,

27:54

she's here. I'm here. Hello?

27:57

Hi. So, Kash,

27:59

thank you for coming to this

28:01

more private space. This feels

28:03

way less chaotic than that British

28:06

pub. So we are in a

28:08

virtual metaverse room. We're

28:10

at the beach, it looks like. It's

28:12

kinda like a Greek look. like a

28:14

a Greek beach. Yeah. There's like a sign that looks

28:17

to be, like, in Greek. There's a

28:19

blackboard if we needed to get up

28:21

there. Okay. So

28:23

now that we're here and Casey's here

28:25

and we're all together in this

28:28

strange matter verse, conference room

28:30

thing. I wanna ask you about this

28:32

story of yours that just came out in the

28:34

times, about a

28:36

truly incredible amount

28:38

of time that you have spent

28:41

inside Meta's metaverse. You've

28:43

been here for how long?

28:45

What did you start this? I started at the end

28:46

of July. This has

28:48

been a couple now. Wow.

28:49

Dozens and dozens of hours. And

28:52

why did you do

28:53

this? Well, I'm

28:55

a technology reporter and

28:57

So I like many people have been hearing a lot about

28:59

this so called metaverse and how it's

29:01

going to change everything, change the way

29:03

we live, change the way we do the Internet,

29:06

this immersive, three-dimensional,

29:09

co presence, spatial

29:12

version of the Internet. And as much as

29:14

I heard people talking about it, I still didn't

29:16

really understand what it was. I've read

29:18

a lot of science fiction, I'd read snow

29:20

crash years ago, the, you

29:23

know, sci fi novel, that

29:25

the term that averse came from, but

29:27

I just wanted to see what it was like to

29:29

immerse myself in the immersive Internet

29:32

and see who's there. what

29:34

they're doing, and whether

29:36

this thing that Meta,

29:38

the company formerly known as Facebook, has

29:40

staked its future on, seems

29:42

like it's worth it. So I've

29:44

spent much less time in the metaverse than

29:46

you. I've spent some time using

29:48

this like VR workout app a few

29:50

years ago during COVID when I couldn't

29:52

leave my house. And I I

29:54

played a little, like, poker and

29:57

other games in, like, this

29:59

metaverse casino. But

30:01

what did you do in the Metiverse? How did you

30:03

start? Where did you go? What kind

30:05

of things did you participate in?

30:07

Yeah. I decided that I was just gonna

30:09

I know there's a lot of apps. There's, like, gaming apps.

30:11

I did get kind of obsessed with beat saber,

30:14

which is, like,

30:14

guitar hero and virtual

30:16

reality. But for the immersion, I just want

30:18

to focus on meta's

30:20

social network, which is

30:23

called horizon horizon world

30:24

or horizon work rooms or horizon

30:25

venues depending on which kind of

30:28

version of it you're using. because I figured,

30:30

you know, Meta is a social

30:32

networking company So

30:34

if there's any part of the meta versus

30:36

furthest along at this point, it must be

30:38

this social network. And

30:40

so over the last couple

30:42

of I have been going to

30:44

Horizon every day. My

30:46

goal was to do all twenty four

30:48

hours of the day -- Oh. --

30:50

non consecutively. And so I

30:52

did that and and more. I think

30:54

it's it's over forty hours at

30:56

this point. Wow. A full work

30:58

week. Full work week. And I did

31:00

have to base it out, like, I would need breaks,

31:02

though not everybody feels that way. There I met

31:04

people who go into virtual

31:06

reality, into horizon every

31:08

single day. Wow. So,

31:10

Kash,

31:10

you've seen a few generations

31:12

of technology come and go, and

31:14

I'm curious having now had this experience.

31:16

much of this has felt like a fun novelty,

31:19

something different to do, and how much of

31:21

it has felt like maybe this could

31:23

be the next big thing. I mean,

31:24

it really it reminded me of a few

31:27

different things technologies I've

31:29

experienced over the years. I mean, it felt

31:31

like an AOL chat room. for sure.

31:33

Like, it was it took me

31:35

back to the nineties, dial

31:37

up Internet, just going

31:39

into room and talking to strangers. And at the

31:41

time that incredible. Like, wow,

31:43

I'm talking to somebody who lives across the

31:45

country or across the world. But

31:47

it was different in that

31:50

you are kind of in that space with them and you hear their

31:52

voice. So that was interesting because I don't

31:54

know when I went on the

31:55

Internet in the nineties, I always would lie about

31:57

who I was. I was always, you

31:59

know, ten years

31:59

older. Maybe I was a man. Maybe

32:02

I was a woman. Like, you I really played

32:04

around with identity when I got on

32:06

the Internet. but it is harder to

32:08

do that in horizon work rooms because you

32:10

hear people's voices. So unless you're

32:12

using some kind of, you

32:13

know, modulating software to change

32:16

your voice there is some sense of who that person really

32:18

is. And, yeah, I don't it's

32:20

hard it's so hard to

32:22

predict if it is

32:23

kind of a lark or fad

32:26

but I I did have the sense that me writing about

32:28

this social network on the metaverse as

32:30

kind of the future of

32:33

the metaverse would be like trying to

32:35

write about the future of the Internet from

32:37

a chat room on AOL in the

32:39

nineties. And

32:39

let's talk about some of the

32:42

people that you met in the Meta like, who were

32:44

they? Why were they

32:46

there? Like, because you were you were

32:48

interviewing people too. Right? So what did

32:50

you learn about the other people who in the

32:52

metaverse with you. As many journals have

32:53

written, there are a lot of kids in there.

32:56

Meta finally has a product that the young

32:58

people like. A lot of

33:00

teenagers, there was a six year old.

33:02

This morning, I was in there playing basketball

33:04

with two seven year olds because they're off

33:06

today. And then I kind of found my

33:08

tribe of parents with young

33:10

kids who can't go out anymore. And so

33:12

especially when I did late night metaverse which

33:14

was my favorite metaverse, it would just

33:16

be like, you know, a

33:18

single mom from Southern California who

33:21

was sending

33:21

her daughter off to with her partner

33:23

the

33:23

next day. So she was up late just like hanging out

33:26

with adults. yeah, a lot a lot of

33:28

parents who don't go out anymore, but who can

33:30

go out in a metaverse. I met people

33:32

who were who were isolated and lonely

33:34

during the pandemic who kind of

33:36

came to virtual reality in twenty twenty

33:38

as a way of socializing

33:40

and liked it so much that they

33:42

keep doing it. I met entrepreneurs who

33:45

are trying to figure out how to make money off of the

33:47

metaverse who are creating worlds or

33:49

trying to create assets to sell,

33:51

very very second lifey. was

33:53

a diverse community. I mean, it's hard to tell because you're

33:55

looking at avatars and I don't know if people

33:57

have chosen an avatar that's really

33:59

them. But

33:59

I would say it was a very diverse

34:02

group of people there?

34:04

So, Kash,

34:04

I think the

34:05

sort of general impression

34:08

of the metaverse

34:10

so far, at least if you talk

34:12

to people who are skeptical of

34:14

what meta is doing here, is

34:16

that it's just not super

34:18

compelling yet that there aren't a lot of

34:20

things that would make you wanna spend hours

34:22

or days inside this meta verse that

34:24

maybe this is something is gonna arrive at

34:26

some point in the future, but that today,

34:29

there's really not that much there. But

34:31

it sounds like your experience

34:33

was actually pretty positive.

34:36

Yeah.

34:36

So I too was skeptical

34:38

of a technology I had never

34:40

really tried, and I didn't

34:42

think I would like it very much because putting

34:45

this pound of plastic on my head just

34:48

there's something inside

34:50

me that kind of

34:52

revolts against that.

34:54

So it surprised me when I actually

34:56

enjoyed the time that I spent there.

34:58

And I was surprised by the number

35:00

of people I met who love being

35:03

in the metaverse.

35:05

who love socializing there,

35:06

who are having so much fun

35:09

that they're not

35:11

willing to stop at two

35:13

hours when their battery runs out on

35:15

their headset who are getting external

35:18

batteries, who are plugging themselves into

35:20

the wall. which people called plug and play.

35:22

And every time I was like, oh my battery's dying, I

35:24

gotta go. People would just be like, well, why don't you

35:26

plug and

35:28

play? then

35:28

I was just very disturbed that there's already an expression for

35:30

that. Yeah. People like it

35:31

in there. I I like

35:34

this

35:34

idea that there are people who

35:37

are already so devoted to the metaverse that they're, you know, strapping extra batteries

35:39

to their persons at all times. And

35:41

I think this has actually been one of

35:43

the big questions about

35:46

VR is are people going to want to do this for extended

35:48

periods of time? I think there's a lot of skepticism

35:50

about that point. You know, people don't wanna

35:52

remove themselves from the so called real world.

35:55

But I've always thought that VR was absolutely

35:58

gonna take off because when I

36:00

walk around outside, all

36:02

I see are people staring down at their

36:04

phones. Right? go to any restaurant

36:06

and a couple will be having dinner and both of

36:08

them are staring at their phones. So to me, it

36:10

stands to reason that if you could just sort of

36:12

staple that phone to

36:14

your face, forever, you would do it. And I feel like the

36:16

experience that you had suggests

36:18

that we are on our way to

36:20

that reality. Yeah.

36:21

I was talking to this one

36:24

world creator who designed

36:26

a very British pub where Kevin

36:28

and I tried to meet up earlier.

36:30

And he just got his head to a couple of months ago,

36:32

like, in June. And he told

36:35

me he's already spending up to

36:37

forty hours a

36:38

week. wearing his

36:39

headset on top of his full time job

36:42

just basically to run his pub

36:44

and deal with troubleshooting and fix

36:46

design issues. And

36:48

he said, oh, you know, I just use the,

36:50

you know, the long Apple

36:52

charging cord, the USB cord, so I can

36:54

basically be further away from

36:56

the wall. while I'm in the

36:58

headset. But this is very common. Like, yeah, people like this thing that's

37:00

not stapled to their heads, but

37:03

encircling it very very

37:06

snuggly. So, you know,

37:07

it's been estimated that Meta

37:09

has sold something like fifteen

37:11

million of its latest

37:14

VR headset which is like a decent number. And yet, like,

37:16

my impression from my own

37:18

usage of this stuff and from people that I

37:20

know is that a lot

37:22

of people They take this out of the box. Maybe they got it for

37:24

Christmas. They, you know, use it for a couple

37:26

weeks pretty intensely. They find some

37:28

fun stuff

37:30

to do. And then they kind of forget about it. They put it in a

37:32

box. They put it in their closet.

37:34

It's not a regular part of

37:36

their lives. And to

37:38

Casey's point about the smartphone

37:40

comparison, like, no one did that

37:42

with smartphones. No one got an

37:44

iPhone and used it for a

37:46

couple weeks. and then was like, you know, I kinda prefer using my

37:48

old phone and like put the iPhone in a closet

37:50

and never picked it up again. So what

37:52

is it about this

37:54

metaverse experience that is

37:56

not turning people into

37:58

habitual repeat users for the

38:00

most part, although you certainly did meet some of

38:02

those people. you know, I

38:03

mean, it's a real barrier

38:05

to entry to pull this head to

38:07

onto your head. Like, I did

38:09

not wanna do it. it just doesn't it's

38:11

not natural. It's not like that beautiful iPhone that's in your hand just

38:13

feels good. You just wanna keep, like, touching

38:15

it and rubbing it and putting it in

38:18

your pocket and then taking it

38:20

out again, it is

38:22

not aesthetically pleasing. And

38:24

so I think that's a big big hump to

38:26

get over. I'm

38:27

thinking about, you know, like, Kevin, I am the person

38:29

that you described who got this thing. I use it for

38:31

about a month. Like, I

38:33

did a supernatural sort of fitness app that

38:35

Facebook tried to buy but got shut down by the FTC. I used that for

38:37

like a month and then I felt like,

38:40

okay. Like, but it's

38:42

sort of felt

38:44

like, to to use an

38:46

analogy, when the first Apple Watch came out,

38:48

like, it didn't the screen didn't show

38:50

the time unless you tapped it. And I

38:52

thought, it's worse than being a watch than a

38:55

watch is. So I don't want this watch. You know, I'm

38:57

just gonna wait. But then eventually, they came out with an

38:59

Apple Watch that just hadn't always on display. And

39:01

I said, great. And I bought and I think

39:03

it's, like, pretty good. With the Mediquest too, I sort of feel like that, like,

39:05

I can use it for a month

39:07

and I can play

39:09

some games and I can talk to friends and I

39:12

can engage with what's there.

39:14

But, like, none of it is as

39:16

good at, like, being a game

39:18

as like the games on my PlayStation five. None of

39:20

it is as good as talking to my

39:22

friends as like

39:24

Zoom. So I I wonder if we are just kind of in that

39:26

intermediate zone between,

39:28

you know, it's better than basic.

39:30

Right? It's they've figured out a lot

39:34

of stuff. There's a lot of, like, technological achievement there. But

39:36

I do think for most people right now, it

39:38

still feels like more of a novelty

39:40

than a

39:42

permanent homebase.

39:42

Yeah. I definitely noticed, like,

39:44

it tells you, right, who of

39:46

your friends is on meta or

39:48

has the quest too? And so I

39:50

just assumed I'd eventually hang out one of

39:52

those people, and none of

39:54

those people ever came online. So it

39:56

was definitely in including Well, I

39:58

think I tried to friend you, Kevin, you didn't even

40:00

ever respond. Could you laugh at your

40:02

head classic, Kevin. I I did accept your friend request.

40:04

This is in the next morning.

40:07

Yeah. You will accept

40:09

it at this point. you

40:11

know, I'm very Put it in months

40:14

ago. But, yeah, the people that

40:16

are kind of in my circles are

40:18

not naturally gravitating towards using

40:20

their quest to you right now. so was interacting

40:22

strangers, which is why it reminded me so much of

40:24

the early Internet and getting on

40:26

chat rooms and talking

40:28

to people. But if

40:29

you were Mark Zuckerberg, you would invest ten

40:32

billion dollars in this

40:34

this year. man,

40:37

that's a lot of money. That's a lot of money. I mean, here's the good news.

40:39

You have it. Well,

40:44

so Speaking of money, I mean, one of the big reasons

40:46

that meta is spending all this money

40:48

developing the metaverse is because they

40:50

believe it will eventually make

40:53

money. Like, this is not a charitable project for

40:56

them. They think that they will be paid

40:58

back in not just headset sales,

41:00

but all So, you know, maybe

41:02

showing you targeted ads inside

41:04

the metaverse. Maybe people

41:06

will pay for, you know,

41:08

content for experiences for

41:10

concerts in the Metiverse.

41:12

Did you buy anything in your

41:14

time in the Metiverse, or were you to buy

41:16

anything? So I

41:17

didn't I actually did see some,

41:19

like, real basic ads. In the metaverse,

41:21

there's this one world called The Party House,

41:23

which has one of the bigger limits for how many people

41:25

can be there, so it gets pretty, like,

41:27

wild in there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so they had some,

41:30

like, crude kind of,

41:33

like, home designed ads

41:36

for dating apps I saw, which I thought was funny.

41:39

A lot of the world

41:41

you could become a supporter And

41:43

so, actually, I was gonna do that for one

41:45

of the comedy clubs I went to, and

41:48

you can you can just basically

41:50

donate some

41:50

money and I met I get to cut of

41:52

it. and to get you in the soapstone comedy

41:54

club world, which which Mark Zuckerberg shouted

41:56

out when he was on Joe Regan's

42:00

podcast. If you donate if you become a supporter,

42:01

there's, like, a special part of the world. You can go

42:03

to, like, a supporters lounge. You can get,

42:06

like, a

42:06

button and put it on.

42:09

But other than that, yeah, there wasn't a lot for me to

42:11

buy yet. I mean, there's lots of apps to buy on

42:13

the headset. I bought

42:16

super hot this like kind

42:17

of cool VR game where when you

42:19

move the world moves, which is kind

42:21

of playing with what VR is, which was cool.

42:23

But, yeah, lots of

42:24

app to buying the headset, horizon yet

42:27

is not super monetized. And

42:29

you talked

42:29

about reading

42:32

science fiction a lot as part of the inspiration for why you

42:34

wanted to do this project. And

42:36

in science fiction, you know, when

42:38

something like the

42:40

metaverse is portrayed, especially in snow crash, the book

42:42

that sort of coined the term

42:44

metaverse. It was a place where people

42:46

sort of went

42:48

to escape the real world

42:50

because the real world was, you know, on

42:52

fire, it was, you know, things

42:54

were sort of apocalyptically bad.

42:56

And so the metaverse was this kind

42:58

of, like, place where they could hang out that wasn't falling

43:00

apart. Did you get a sense from

43:02

talking to people in the metaverse that any

43:04

of them

43:06

were using the metaverse this way as sort of an escape from

43:08

parts of their life that weren't all that

43:10

great. I had this

43:11

one encounter that reminded me

43:13

so much of kind of

43:15

the original coining

43:16

of the metaverse in in

43:18

books like ready player one. I

43:21

met this woman who

43:23

is an Illustrator, she's twenty

43:25

five, and we are talking to

43:27

Plaza. And she was just saying she hates that

43:29

the Metiverse gets portrayed as

43:32

like a nerdy place

43:33

for people who don't have a life.

43:36

And she said, you know, I don't wanna

43:38

be dramatic but if I hadn't got my VR headset when I did, I

43:40

might be dead right now. Wow. She said,

43:42

you know, she's had mental health

43:44

issues, that she's dealing with depression, that

43:46

she was

43:48

super isolated at the beginning of the pandemic. She had moved across the

43:50

country to get away from

43:52

an abusive relationship and

43:56

she was she had no friends, and there was a pandemic going

43:58

on. And she walked into

44:00

an Amazon four star store

44:02

one day, saw the headset and

44:05

bought it, and she's been going into

44:07

VR every night since then. And

44:09

that she's formed, like, these really

44:11

deep connections and horizons. She loves

44:13

her friends there. She

44:15

says she loves that there's no small talk

44:17

really in VR. You kinda go straight to

44:19

the deep stuff. She doesn't get judged on

44:21

how she looks. Yeah. She she really really loves VR, and she

44:23

said she still goes out, she

44:25

still hangs out with real world friends, but

44:27

she just she loves

44:30

getting on her headset from like one to three AM in her bed

44:32

with like some snacks and a drink next

44:34

to her and a way to blanket over her

44:36

body and just chatting for hours.

44:38

adding for hours You

44:40

know, and I think it's worth saying that this is something that the internet is

44:42

good at and has always been good at. It is

44:44

helping people feel a little bit less alone, meeting

44:48

new people, who are like

44:50

you. And that story,

44:52

I think, is is powerful and speaks to

44:54

the fact that a lot of people probably are

44:57

gonna find cool new connections in

45:00

here. In a way that for some of the reasons

45:02

you just mentioned, maybe they would not

45:04

have in a previous generation technology. At the same time

45:06

though, I I do wanna just like sound a

45:08

note of skepticism here because I

45:10

think that

45:12

But it's a bad cop in here. Well, I

45:14

I just like I I understand. I'd

45:16

appreciate everything you're saying, but it

45:18

it does strike me as like,

45:21

kind of dystopian that you

45:23

have people who, you know,

45:25

we have we have

45:27

an Internet that connects

45:28

people, you know, anyone can talk to anyone. We have all

45:30

these technologies that that have enabled us

45:32

to communicate at scale. And

45:35

yet, like, the way

45:37

that people are finding connection is to go into this

45:40

like walled garden meta

45:42

verse experience where everything they

45:44

do, everything

45:46

they say, every every movement they make is being tracked and

45:48

logged somewhere for, you know, meta

45:50

to see where the whole

45:52

point of the thing commercially is to sell

45:54

them stuff

45:56

It just feels like a a really poor substitute

45:59

for the real world. I

46:01

mean does that Am I

46:03

being too cynical here? I

46:06

mean, the smartphone was a poor substitute for the real world, but we

46:08

moved to there. I mean, everything

46:10

it's all yeah. Mark

46:13

Zuckerberg. I listened to the three hour

46:15

podcast he did with Joe Hogan.

46:17

And, you know, he basically

46:19

said technology is getting in the way

46:21

of our interactions. Like, everyone's looking away. They're

46:24

looking at their phone. They're looking at

46:26

screens. They're not with the people around

46:28

them. So I decided to make

46:30

the metaverse because then it will get

46:32

technology out of the way and we'll just be immersed inside it. You know, I

46:34

I think all technology is kind of interrupting

46:36

our ability to be with each other,

46:39

and it enables things that enables

46:41

bad things. But yeah, for me personally, I

46:44

don't know, I didn't necessarily wanna leave my

46:46

family or

46:49

or

46:49

go indoors instead of hang out

46:52

outside playing with my kids, go

46:54

indoors and put on

46:56

this headset. it does take you away from the people you're

46:58

with. But if you're in a situation

47:00

where you're lonely and you

47:02

don't have people around you, you don't

47:04

have like

47:04

support system or something to do, I

47:07

guess I can see the appeal. So

47:09

meta has an event scheduled for next

47:11

week called Connect. It's basically it's VR

47:14

developer conference and it's supposed to

47:16

release some new tools. It

47:18

is rumored to be coming out with a

47:20

new headset. It's just gonna sort of

47:22

update people on the progress that they're making toward building the metaverse.

47:24

What do you expect to hear during

47:28

that event? So

47:28

it does sound like they're coming out with a more

47:30

expensive headset that will have more sensors on it, maybe

47:33

is lighter than the one

47:35

that's currently available

47:38

able to people. You know, Mark Zuckerberg did have this Instagram

47:40

photo he did of himself in

47:43

this kind of sleek new headset

47:46

on Joe Rogen's podcast. Apparently, Joe

47:48

Rogen has gotten to try out the new headset

47:50

already because he was talking about

47:54

wearing it and looking at kind of an alien

47:56

avatar version of himself. And when he

47:58

moved his face, the avatar also

47:59

moved its face in the same way, which is the

48:02

current headset does not do.

48:04

I mean,

48:04

I think we should say, this is a huge

48:06

moment for them. They've had a terrible

48:08

year. Their stock has lost over

48:10

half of its value. They're trying to

48:12

figure out how to compete against TikTok

48:15

and struggling. And the whole

48:17

reason they're going through all of that

48:19

is to fund this project. Right? This

48:21

sort of next generation set of things. And once a year,

48:23

they bring everyone together to let us know how it's going.

48:25

And so they're gonna have

48:28

that moment next week.

48:29

Yeah. I imagine I imagine it'll probably have some new numbers

48:31

about how many people have joined. And, you

48:33

know, they're kind of treating the

48:35

horizon, the social network I was focusing

48:38

on, like they did the original

48:40

Facebook. Like it rolled out in

48:42

the US and Canada first, kind of

48:44

like Facebook

48:44

rolled out to Harvard first, and

48:46

they're spreading it to new countries, kind of

48:48

like a Facebook went to new colleges. And

48:51

so that alone, I think, is going

48:53

to help their numbers because they've made it

48:55

available. In the UK, they've made it available in Spain. And

48:57

so I'm sure they'll have some new number

48:59

for Horizon about how many people are in

49:01

there now new. will be

49:03

bigger than three hundred thousand. I hope they announce how

49:06

many people are asleep in ocularness right

49:08

now. So I

49:10

talked to

49:10

the person who

49:12

ran the very British pub. He's

49:14

like, yeah, sometimes I come in here and

49:16

there's people that are just sleeping on

49:19

their headset downstairs. because they wanna be at the top of

49:21

the leader board for people who have

49:23

spent the most time

49:26

here. I'm just like, oh my gosh,

49:28

people are

49:30

so

49:33

wild.

49:39

Kesh, thank you so much for joining

49:42

us. Really, really fun to talk

49:44

to you. I'm honored to be on the the first episode.

49:46

Thank you, Kash. This is

49:48

great. Alright.

49:50

We're gonna take a quick break.

49:53

but when we come back,

49:56

some transparency.

50:15

The financial services

50:17

landscape is shifting before our

50:20

eyes from the rise of blockchain and

50:22

digital assets to the emergence

50:24

of cryptocurrencies Almost anything

50:26

you could imagine is available at your

50:28

fingertips. Learn more about investing

50:30

in these disruptions at global

50:32

x ETFs

50:34

dot com. Casey, one of the things that

50:35

I've always admired about you is just

50:37

how transparent you are with your

50:40

audience. I remember when you started

50:42

your newsletter, you

50:44

wrote this like big sort of disclosure page -- Yeah.

50:46

-- almost like a transparency report where it's

50:49

like you're talking about how you

50:51

get information and how you report

50:54

and how people can contact you. But

50:56

also, like, you just write some sort

50:58

of bullet points about things

51:00

that you believe, about the topics that

51:02

you cover. And I think that's extremely

51:04

helpful for readers of your newsletter to understand where you're coming from. It's sort

51:06

of like an FAQ page for

51:10

like you. Yeah. I mean, I

51:12

think it's a really great exercise for

51:14

any journalist to go through, honestly.

51:16

Sometimes writing down what you think is

51:18

the only way to

51:20

know it. And this is an idea I took from Jay Rosen, who's a great

51:22

press critic and thinker at

51:24

NYU. And he's been sort of

51:26

advocating for many

51:28

years that more people would trust journalists if people knew

51:30

where we come from. And so I tried

51:32

to write a page that says, hey, here's where I'm

51:34

coming from.

51:36

Yeah. And so I thought that we could maybe just like

51:38

borrow from your document and

51:40

just kind of for this podcast as

51:42

we set out to like start

51:45

a new show that's going to look

51:48

at technology just by, like,

51:50

giving people a little

51:52

sense of who we are

51:54

and some things that we believe that

51:56

might help interpret what we're

51:58

saying. I love this idea. Well, obviously,

51:59

you love

52:02

this idea. So

52:04

I got inspired and I

52:06

wrote down just three sort

52:08

of I statements about myself and

52:10

my outlook and my beliefs about tech and

52:12

and this stuff we'll be covering on the show. You

52:14

agreed to also come up with three

52:17

i statements. We have not heard

52:20

each other's So let's run through them and just give

52:22

people the inaugural hard fork

52:24

transparency report. Alright. Here

52:26

we go.

52:28

So

52:35

I'll go first. my first i statement is

52:38

that I am a

52:40

recovering tech cynic. Mhmm. And

52:42

what I mean by that is like, you know, I

52:44

grew up as a total

52:46

nerd, I was deeply in

52:48

love with the Internet and

52:50

computers. My first job was like

52:52

building websites in you know, multimedia

52:54

dreamweaver with my brother.

52:56

Like, all my free time was

52:58

spent in chat rooms and message boards just like

53:00

a total Internet

53:02

kid. Yeah. And then I became a

53:04

journalist. And for a

53:06

while, like, all I was reporting

53:08

on was, like, how this thing I the

53:10

internet was getting screwed up.

53:12

So I spent, you know, most of the

53:14

past five years just reporting on things that

53:16

were bad,

53:18

like, queen on and neo Nazis organizing and

53:20

chat rooms and like YouTube turning,

53:22

you know, young men into racists.

53:24

And like I just spent

53:27

every day dunking my head

53:29

into, like, the toilet of

53:31

the Internet. And it kinda gave

53:33

me this, like, cynical reflex -- Yeah. -- where, like, every time

53:35

I would see something new intact, I would I would

53:38

think, like, okay, well, this is

53:40

obviously gonna be used to

53:42

kill someone. Like,

53:44

that was just that was

53:46

like how I thought. And I think that's

53:48

changing for me why I say I'm

53:50

a recovering tech centric is because I

53:52

became a dad this year. I I had a kid. And I think

53:54

that having a kid has forced me to

53:57

kind of like reexamine my

53:59

attitudes about technology, not because, like, you know, he's still,

54:02

like, too young to use anything. But

54:04

because, like, he will use

54:06

technology. And I don't want him to be scared

54:08

of it, and I

54:10

don't want to teach my son that, like, only horrible things

54:12

happen on the Internet. So,

54:14

like, you know, I obviously there's

54:16

a lot in

54:18

tech that I'm skeptical of. It doesn't mean that we

54:20

can't be, you know, skeptical or critical

54:22

on this show, but I am

54:24

starting to try to

54:26

find things that I like about Tech

54:28

again after many years of just

54:30

being depressed and angry about

54:32

it. And I think that's why I was

54:34

drawn to this metiverse

54:36

story of cash viewers, which

54:38

is this thing that I still have a lot

54:40

of questions, and frankly, I'm kind of

54:42

skeptical of, but that she

54:44

approached with and open mind

54:46

and curiosity and ended

54:48

up kinda liking it. Yeah. Well, I

54:50

think that ties it well to mine.

54:53

Mine is I want the Internet to be as

54:55

good for everyone else as it has

54:57

been for me. I'm somebody who

54:59

grew up on the Internet,

55:01

I learned a ton on the Internet. I met so

55:03

many creative people on the Internet. I saw how much

55:06

fun it could be when people were

55:08

suddenly granted

55:10

access to a big audience of like minded people who wanted

55:12

to make stuff together. And if you fast

55:14

forward all the way from like high school

55:16

to now, I now make

55:18

my living on the Internet. I write a

55:20

newsletter that I sell to

55:22

thousands of subscribers who have given me

55:24

a job that really can't be taken away from me unless they

55:26

all independently decide they don't wanna hire me

55:28

anymore. Right? And so when I

55:30

think about what

55:32

kind of products I wanna see, what kind of policies I wanna see,

55:34

what kinds of regulations I wanna see.

55:37

I'm just asking myself, Does

55:39

this make the sort of Internet that makes people

55:41

feel more creative, that gives them

55:43

economic opportunity, or is this gonna take

55:45

us in the other direction? So that's

55:47

my first one. Alright. Number two, here's

55:49

mine. I don't believe that technology can

55:52

be neutral. Mhmm. So

55:54

there's this thing that you hear all

55:56

the time when

55:58

talking to people in tech. That's like basically that

56:00

technology is just a tool. And it's

56:02

one of my biggest pet peeves

56:06

And I I especially hate it when they use

56:08

this stupid hammer analogy. I I know

56:10

you know what I'm talking about where they say like,

56:12

well, hammer is just a tool, like,

56:14

can use it to build a house or you can use

56:16

it to kill someone and then they'll use that logic to like say

56:18

that, you know, Bitcoin is

56:21

neutral or like AI is neutral or

56:23

social media is neutral, that it all depends

56:26

on how you use it, and that we

56:28

should basically

56:30

stop trying to, like, control how these things are built and designed because people

56:32

are inevitable be going to use them for like

56:34

good purposes and bad purposes. And

56:37

to me, like, every time I

56:40

hear the hammer analogy or this

56:42

broader point about tech being neutral,

56:44

like, it's always a mark of someone who just like

56:46

hasn't thought deeply about what they're

56:48

doing. Like, Obviously,

56:48

a hammer and how we use hammers has a lot

56:50

to do with how they're designed. It's

56:52

a pretty bad tool for

56:56

killing someone It's like a hammer.

56:58

It's not designed for that. It's

57:00

like heavy. It's slow.

57:02

But if you made it very good

57:04

for killing people, if you like put an floating,

57:06

you know, tip on it if you, like, you know, attached

57:08

it to, like, hammer swinging robots and, like,

57:10

sent them loose through the streets. Like,

57:13

Obviously, hammers would be very threatening, and we'd probably

57:15

wanna, like, pass a bunch of new laws to

57:17

regulate hammers. So, like, I think we

57:20

should have, like, a soundboard that,

57:22

like, anytime we're talking to someone in

57:24

tech and they start explaining how their tool

57:26

is neutral, we just, like, hit the whammy

57:28

button and it, like, eject them

57:30

forcefully out of the zoom because that is

57:32

just my pet peeve, and I don't know if that's something that

57:34

bothers you too. Yeah. For

57:36

sure. You know, I think sometimes it definitely

57:38

is a case of people not thinking through the potential

57:40

consequences of their actions, but it can also just

57:42

be choosing not to think about the consequences of

57:44

your actions. Right? Or maybe there's gonna be so much

57:46

financial upside in this thing that, like, it's

57:48

just sort of more profitable not to think

57:50

about it. So, yeah, I'm in

57:52

the same camp as you. I don't think tech

57:54

is neutral. And I think a role of

57:56

journalism is to explain the non

57:58

neutrality of the things that we're talking about. Right?

58:00

That is that is a big part of what we're

58:02

doing. Awesome. Let's hear your second one.

58:04

Yeah. So I think the world

58:06

is moving too fast for

58:08

average people to understand.

58:10

And I don't think it's just that

58:12

we have access to social networks that give

58:14

us us sort of, you know, pulse

58:16

by pulse sense of every catastrophe

58:19

happening in the world. I think

58:21

that the technology industry is

58:23

moving quickly above. that, you know, if you went and lived on an

58:25

island for a year and came back in at this time

58:27

in twenty twenty three, I think you would be

58:30

shocked by some of

58:32

the changes around you.

58:34

And one of the reasons I've wanted to do the

58:36

show with you is to kind of capture that

58:38

feeling week to week and say,

58:40

oh, man, there's that feeling again. That sense of of being overwhelmed and

58:42

a little bit uncertain, but let's talk

58:44

to the smartest person we can find and

58:46

learn a little bit more

58:48

about that. Yeah. This is an

58:50

interesting one. And I actually kind of

58:52

wonder if this is a new feeling or if people

58:54

just always feel like this. I mean, there was

58:56

that famous book from the seventies called Future

58:58

Shock that sold like millions of copies

59:00

and popularized the phrase

59:02

information overload because it

59:04

was like, all these

59:06

people sending faxes, like,

59:08

I'm really stressed out and I don't

59:10

understand. Like, and the the

59:12

technology that they're talking about really stressing them out

59:14

is, like, a microwave. Yeah. You know? And so I just wonder if this is kind

59:16

of just like the universal condition

59:18

that we always kind of feel

59:20

like we're behind and catching up

59:24

but I agree. I do wanna bring that sense of, like, getting our

59:26

arms around what is changing and,

59:28

like, what people need to be

59:30

thinking about and, like, what we need to be thinking

59:32

about, frankly. Alright. Give me your

59:34

number three. Alright. My

59:36

number three, I think it's trade

59:38

offs all the way down.

59:40

So this is a thing

59:42

that I've sort of, like, changed my mind on in the last few

59:44

years. I used to, like, get

59:46

asked a lot. Like, okay. How would how

59:48

would you fix you know, Facebook.

59:50

How would you fix Twitter? How would you, you know,

59:52

fix YouTube, whatever? These are the kinds of

59:54

things that people ask tech

59:56

columnist. And

59:58

I used to, like, have a set of pretty simple answers,

1:00:00

like, oh, I would just, like, you

1:00:02

know, disable the news feed or, like,

1:00:04

ban all political advertising

1:00:08

or, like, you know, let users own their own

1:00:10

data. And you still, like, hear

1:00:12

these things sort of floating around in, like,

1:00:14

Washington and, you know, big tech

1:00:16

conferences and

1:00:18

stuff. I I think in the last few years, I've looked at these platforms

1:00:20

closely enough and some of the proposals

1:00:22

to fix them closely enough that I've

1:00:24

seen that basically every time you

1:00:27

could try to, like, fix something with a platform,

1:00:30

you you'll open up, like, seven or eight

1:00:32

other disasters that might actually

1:00:34

be worse than the problem that you're trying

1:00:36

to solve. you know, something we have talked about a lot is like TikTok

1:00:38

and this movement to ban TikTok

1:00:40

because it's like a Chinese owned

1:00:42

company and

1:00:44

who knows what they're doing with the data, and

1:00:46

maybe the CCP is, like, covertly manipulating American public opinion

1:00:48

through this, like, video app. And,

1:00:52

like, you could ban TikTok. That's like a thing you could do.

1:00:54

And it would seem like a simple

1:00:56

fix, but, like, other things

1:00:58

would come up to replace it that

1:01:02

have some of the same issues. And you would

1:01:04

be like basically giving like the

1:01:06

biggest gift imaginable to

1:01:08

Facebook, To

1:01:10

Mehta, which would love for TikTok to be banned in the US. So you'd be

1:01:12

entrenched in meta

1:01:14

by banning TikTok. So I

1:01:16

hope that we can get serious

1:01:20

about talking about some of the risks and

1:01:22

trade offs of all these proposed

1:01:24

solutions and really have, like, a

1:01:26

pretty realistic and nuanced conversation

1:01:28

about it. Yeah. I love the idea of as we're talking about these issues, asking

1:01:30

ourselves, like, what are the next two things that might

1:01:32

happen after that? Right? And using

1:01:34

that to try to ground the

1:01:36

discussion. Because you're absolutely right.

1:01:38

Anytime you make a change, like like some

1:01:40

of the ones that you described, it really is

1:01:42

like the butterfly, like flatter in its wings in

1:01:44

Australia and, you know, causing a tropical

1:01:46

storm somewhere else. So I think, like,

1:01:48

all tech regulation is kind of chaos

1:01:50

theory, and so you, you know, you wanna approach

1:01:52

it with is some caution. Totally. Alright. Hit me with

1:01:54

your number three. Yeah. Okay.

1:01:56

So number three, I think

1:01:58

something is going

1:02:00

to come out of

1:02:02

crypto. Hat take. Yeah.

1:02:04

So crypto has had an

1:02:06

absolutely terrible year. It has

1:02:08

mostly been catastrophes. It

1:02:10

has lost trillions of dollars. It is becoming

1:02:12

ever less mainstream and

1:02:14

basically almost everything that

1:02:17

critics said about it like

1:02:19

last year and before, has come

1:02:21

true this year. And

1:02:24

yet, I still know so many talented people

1:02:26

who are working on this who are pouring

1:02:28

money into it and who have

1:02:30

infinite ideas for where it

1:02:32

can go next. And I

1:02:34

want to ground our podcast

1:02:37

just in the the knowledge that I

1:02:39

personally think that all of those efforts

1:02:41

will not amount to nothing. I think

1:02:43

something is going to come out of

1:02:45

it. important to say by the way is

1:02:47

that sometimes when journalists talk

1:02:50

about Crypto in a way that

1:02:52

acknowledges that something

1:02:54

might succeed, it will come back

1:02:56

on them as, oh, well, you're shilling this, you know, you're

1:02:58

pumping this, you're ignoring all of the criticism.

1:03:00

And so some people really don't want

1:03:02

journalists to talk about crypto at all, right,

1:03:04

or at least not without sort of adding fifty

1:03:06

caveats? Right. And I've

1:03:08

experienced this too, you know, I'll write something about

1:03:10

crypto that is, you

1:03:12

know, just explanatory and what I think is pretty even

1:03:14

handed, but that doesn't,

1:03:16

like, explicitly say, like and

1:03:19

this is all bad and a scam, and everyone's gonna lose

1:03:21

all their money, and people will get just

1:03:24

very mad and accuse me of shilling

1:03:26

for the industry three. Yeah. And I

1:03:28

think I I, you know, I share this sense too that,

1:03:30

like, something will probably come of

1:03:32

crypto. I don't think it's gonna be, like,

1:03:34

the, you know, the

1:03:36

replacement for the entire Internet that like

1:03:38

a lot of, you know, sort of web three

1:03:40

boosters do, it may be that

1:03:42

this sphere of, like, defy

1:03:44

or, you know, finance adjacent stuff takes

1:03:46

off and the rest of it just flops or that,

1:03:48

like, you know,

1:03:50

three border like retain their value and everything else goes to

1:03:52

zero. But like, I I do think that

1:03:54

there's sort of enough there that I wanted

1:03:56

to, like,

1:03:58

you know, explain it seriously to people and there were people

1:04:00

got very mad. Yeah. People get

1:04:02

very mad. And I imagine they

1:04:05

will get mad sometimes if they listen to this show and we're

1:04:08

talking about something in the crypto world where we're

1:04:10

not just sort of

1:04:12

observing a catastrophe.

1:04:14

Right? Maybe we do see something come along. We think that seems sort of interesting.

1:04:16

So the thing that I wanna say up front of those people

1:04:18

is the reason that we're talking about, the reason we're

1:04:20

trying to learn more is because we

1:04:22

want to keep an eye on

1:04:24

this. We do not want to be

1:04:26

surprised by it. If it winds up

1:04:28

having big effects on the world, I'd

1:04:30

rather be learning about

1:04:32

it now. And so that's kind of the thing that I wanted to say the listeners,

1:04:34

like, right up front is, like, we will be talking

1:04:36

about this, and we're gonna try to bring

1:04:38

skepticism to everything that we talk

1:04:40

about. But We are

1:04:42

gonna make room for some optimism too because I

1:04:44

think it's intellectually dishonest not to. A

1:04:46

hundred percent agree. Yeah. And then just to

1:04:48

say one more thing that some of those people ask

1:04:50

about, like, We don't own crypto. We have no financial interest in

1:04:52

the outcome of any crypto thing. Like, we

1:04:54

truly are just curious people wondering what's

1:04:56

gonna happen next in the tech

1:04:58

industry. Totally. Alright, Casey.

1:05:00

Thank you for helping me with this order

1:05:02

recalling this The Hard Fork

1:05:04

Transparency Report. That's right.

1:05:06

And by the way, we really want

1:05:08

to hear from you, the listeners, what feedback you have about

1:05:10

this episode? Who do you think we should

1:05:12

bring on for future episodes? What

1:05:15

should we be looking into, let us know our

1:05:17

email is hard fork at n y times

1:05:20

dot com.

1:05:28

Heartful