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Why the 2026 GDP boom could reshape California taxes

Strong growth forecasts anchor predictions on SaaS disruption; a California wealth tax fight and Trump boom macro bet define the hosts 2026 draft.

David FriedberghostJason CalacanishostChamath Palihapitiyahost
Jan 10, 20261h 31mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 12:27

    California exodus, asset seizure tax, Besties to Austin?

    1. DF

      This is what we need. Let him go.

    2. JC

      All right, here we go.

    3. DF

      This is Jason-

    4. JC

      In three-

    5. DF

      -in the corner warming up

    6. JC

      ... two, shut the [beep] up, Friedberg, it's my show. [laughing] Three, two. All right, everybody, welcome back to the number one podcast in the world, the podcast I, Jason Calacanis, named, created-

    7. DF

      [laughing]

    8. JC

      -and I'm the executive producer for life. With me, my three miscreant friends, Chamath Palihapitiya, our dictator. Love you, brother. Good seeing you in Tokyo.

    9. CP

      Love you.

    10. JC

      Uh, David Friedberg, our sultan of science, and, yeah, the tsar, yeah, who's now made his way down to Austin. Welcome, brother. Let's go shooting. Let's get those beef ribs. David Sacks, how are you, how are you, uh, how are you settling in to the great state of Texas? Everybody wants to know, David.

    11. DS

      I'm loving the 70-degree weather. Is it like this all year round? [chuckles]

    12. JC

      You know, it's, uh, this is a very wonderful time of year. Uh, you miss the two weeks where it goes to freezing temperatures. We have 10 days of freezing temperatures, and then we have 80 days of 100-degree temperatures, but you'll be on a yacht or Italy or somewhere, uh, during that, like the rest of us. That's basically all you need to know about Austin. Just get out during the summers, 'cause it's brutal. That's it.

    13. DS

      Yeah.

    14. JC

      Everything else is fan-freaking-tastic. But in all seriousness, you're here. You're here. You're... Y- you've moved, you've domiciled in Texas.

    15. DS

      Oh, yeah.

    16. JC

      This is, this is, this has happened. Two or three Besties.

    17. DS

      No, it happened, it happened in December.

    18. JC

      Yes.

    19. DS

      And so we closed on a new house, moved in, went to the DMV.

    20. JC

      Wow.

    21. DS

      I signed a lease for an Austin office for Craft.

    22. JC

      Nice!

    23. DS

      It's done.

    24. JC

      It's done?

    25. DS

      It's done.

    26. JC

      Okay. I'm gonna... I, I'll get you a dentist and whatever else you need.

    27. DS

      [chuckles] I got a doctor, too. I've been-

    28. JC

      Okay. Does this mean I have to bring Moose back?

    29. DS

      [chuckles]

    30. JC

      This has been the big discussion in our house. Does this mean we lose Moose, or-

  2. 12:27 – 17:45

    Biggest Political Winner

    1. JC

      The biggest political winner. Last year's prediction for biggest political winner for 2025, to remind everybody, Friedberg said, "Young candidates." Well done. Gavin, who was on the show sitting in for Sacks, who was busy joining the administration, he said, "Trump and centrism would be the biggest political winner." Chamath, you said, "Fiscal conservatives, uh, who asked for restrained spending." Mm, it was a good thought. And I said, "Gen X and elder millennials, the J.D. Vance, Tulsi Sachs group." So let's go around the horn here. I wonder, Friedberg, who you think will be the biggest political winner of 2026? Friedberg, your chance.

    2. DF

      Democratic Socialists of America, the DSA, just like the MAGA movement, took over the Republican Party. I think the DSA is taking over the, the, the Democratic Party, and I think that's the move we'll see solidified in 2026.

    3. JC

      Okay, tight is right. Well done. Chamath, who do you got for biggest political winner, 2026?

    4. CP

      Whoever is going to fight waste, fraud, and abuse at the-

    5. JC

      Ah

    6. CP

      ... federal, state, and local level.

    7. JC

      Got it. So it's an open lane to anybody.

    8. CP

      It's an open lane. It's a political gambit that I think will work really well in '26.

    9. JC

      Very nicely done. David Sacks, gosh, I can't imagine who you would pick-

    10. DS

      [chuckles]

    11. JC

      ... as a political winner in 2026. [chuckles]

    12. DS

      Well, I'm gonna-

    13. JC

      But go ahead. [chuckles]

    14. DS

      I'm gonna say that the Trump boom is gonna be the biggest political winner of 2026.

    15. JC

      [chuckles]

    16. DS

      The good economic news has started breaking out before 2025 was even over. We have 2.7% inflation, core CPI 2.6. Both those are 40 basis points below expectations. 4.3% GDP growth in Q3, lowest trade deficit since 2009. The Challenger Gray report out today show that job cuts dropped 50% from November, which was itself down about 50% from October.

    17. JC

      Give us a number for the boom. What is it gonna be?

    18. DS

      Hold on. The S&P 500 keeps making record highs. People are paying less for gas. Mortgage costs have fallen by $3,000. Real wages are up over $1,000. And by June, I predict we will see more rate cuts, possibly 75 to 100 basis points, and big tax refunds are coming in April, thanks to a bigger standard deduction and no tax on tips, overtime, and Social Security. So I think there is so much good economic news coming, and it's already started, and I think that it's gonna have a huge impact, not just on the economy, but also on political perceptions for next year.

    19. JC

      Pick your GDP for this boom year, three, four, five, or six points. Sacks, I'm pinning you down. Pick a-

    20. CP

      Oh, wait, well, if you-

    21. JC

      Three, four, five, six

    22. CP

      ... if you make it a prediction, then I, I'd like to pick as well.

    23. JC

      Okay, I'm gonna go Sacks first.

    24. DS

      I'm gonna go for 5%.

    25. JC

      Ooh!

    26. DS

      Within a rounding error, I believe 5%.

    27. JC

      Sure, sure, sure, plus or minus. Chamath, do you wanna pick a number? You said you did.

    28. CP

      I think the lower bound is five. I think the upper bound is six, too.

    29. JC

      Wow, incredible. Well...

    30. CP

      Just to put that in perspective, if we print six, the only country in the modern world that we think of as a quasi-peer competitor that has printed six is the Chinese, in a period where it had complete and total coordination and domination of a federal, state, and local economy. And the fact that we can do it under democracy and capitalism is outrageous.

  3. 17:45 – 32:15

    Biggest Political Loser

    1. JC

      Biggest political loser. Last year's predictions, I said Putin, Gavin said Putin. Chamath, you said progressivism. Mm. And, uh, Friedberg, you said the pro-war neocons would be the biggest political losers. Uh, let's get into who we think will be the loser this year. Uh, Sacks, why don't you start? Who's your big political loser in 2026, you think?

    2. DS

      Well, I said Democratic centrism or Democratic centrists, which is sort of the flip side of you guys saying that socialism or progressives are-... uh, winners.

    3. CP

      Hmm.

    4. DS

      And there's two reasons for this. One is because the socialist ideology has sort of ascended among the Democratic base, especially the young people who support Mamdani, things like that. Unfortunately, our universities, our woke madrassas, have done a terrible job educating these students, and they've brainwashed a lot of them into this woke ideology. But also, there's the fact that there's so few House districts anymore that are truly competitive. So both the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, they say that there's fewer than two dozen House races that are genuinely competitive going into 2026. That's because of, uh, gerrymandering and so on. So if you're a Democrat incumbent who is in one of these districts, like all but a couple dozen of them, your only real threat to losing your office is from the left, right? It's some young AOC type coming up to challenge you, and so you don't wanna expose your left flank. So even the Democratic moderates have been shifting further and further to the left, and so you see this AOC Mamdani effect happening there. So I'm kind of in the same camp as you guys, as this is not a good trend, but, uh, I put this as biggest political loser.

    5. CP

      Biggest political loser?

    6. DS

      Democratic centrism.

    7. CP

      Got it. Chamath, what do you got? Can I just go back and just nitpick with you a little bit? Why do you think progressivism didn't fail? And the only reason I ask you that is, outside of a few pockets of progressivism, and specifically Mamdani, if you look at the elections in Virginia or the elections in New Jersey, those are more centrist than progressive.

    8. DS

      Hmm.

    9. CP

      And if you look at the general approval rates of Democrats, they trended consistently down through 2025 as they hand-wrung themselves about leaving centrism and embracing progressivism. So the more talking points around progressivism that emerged, the poorer they performed. So I know your perception or some people's perceptions may be different based on one localized win, but if you look at the broad trend, it didn't work. I just put that out there- Yeah, sure ... just as, just as the facts and not the vibes.

    10. DS

      Well, I don't want it to be true, just to be clear. I would-

    11. CP

      Oh, I'm, I'm, I'm picking bullets

    12. DS

      ... I would love for the Democratic Party to be as centrist as possible.

    13. CP

      No, I don't want it to be true either, but it does seem like that part is certain. No, but you twisted it like it was wrong, and it wasn't wrong, so- Well, I... It might be a jump ball. It might be the best way to describe it, because you have the Mamdani effect- It's not a jump ball. I, I was right. And- Okay. Just look at the numerical numbers. Okay. The trends were horrible. Like, meaning wherever the Democrats started, the more progressive talking points they added, the poorer and poorer they performed. The approval ratings went down; the disapproval ratings went up. I'm not saying that they didn't win a mayoral race. They did do that. I'm just saying, broadly speaking, nationwide, is the Democratic Party and its embrace of progressivism, at least at the federal level, has it paid off over 2025? And I would say categorically, mathematically not. Okay. Okay, now going to 2026, what is- Yeah ... my biggest political loser? What I would say is the biggest loser of '26 is the Monroe Doctrine. I think that when historians look back on the Trump presidency, they're going to rewrite it. I think people have tried to minimize Trump's worldview as a Trump corollary. I don't think that's what this is. They even try to minimize it by calling it the Donroe Doctrine. I don't think that's what this is. I think that there is a clear Trump doctrine that trumped the Monroe Doctrine, and I think that is the political loser because there is a huge body politic that has been built around the Monroe Doctrine. How do we view wars? How do we view our spheres of influence? How do we view economic multilateralism versus unilateralism? All of that is out the window. You know, we view this as hemispheric dominance. That's Trump. We view it as proactive and, in very specific cases, interventionist. We intervene against drug cartels. We control immigration. We secure vital assets. That was, you know, not really the scope of the Monroe Doctrine. We have more transactional relationships, quite honestly, which allows us to react in the moment. So I think the Monroe Doctrine is the biggest loser of 2026. Friedberg, your biggest loser, 2026.

    14. DF

      My biggest political loser of 2026 is the tech industry. I think AI-

    15. CP

      Mm-hmm

    16. DF

      ... and tech wealth have become the lightning rod for populism on both sides of the aisle. I think, um, the right is fracturing a bit, where this call it alliance between tech and MAGA seems to be getting a really strong challenge from the more populist movement. In the same sense, the left is turning hard on tech because of tech's alignment with the right, and so I think we're gonna see, in the midterms, a really big referendum against the tech industry coming out of-

    17. CP

      Good one

    18. DF

      ... this populist movement.

    19. CP

      That's a great one. Can I tell you guys a little story from yesterday? I had a meeting with three very senior sitting senators before I flew back to California. These are Republican senators. And Friedberg, I was surprised, exactly what you said. There is a couple of companies that have exacerbated their frustration. They view those companies, these are techs and the tech leaders of these companies, as just not trustworthy, and they've largely been grin [beep] these guys for a long time, and they're pretty frustrated with it. So to your point, it is palpable.

    20. DS

      Look, I can tell you that the natural ally for tech is with MAGA because we still believe in property rights and innovation, and if the Democratic Party is truly going progressive, which means socialist, they want to rewrite your relationship to property rights, whatever that means, and impose wealth taxes and unrealized gains taxes, and all the rest of it. So look, I don't think tech has that much of a choice. As Arnold Schwarzenegger said in one of those movies, "Come with me if you want to live."

    21. CP

      Come with me if you want to live.

    22. DS

      Yes.

    23. CP

      Get in the choppa.

    24. DS

      ... But let me say this: the reason why there's anger on the populist right is because they remember the censorship and the deplatforming and the shadow banning and all that kind of stuff, and what there needs to be is, I think there just needs to be some meetings, some truth and reconciliation that happens between some of these tech leaders and some of these conservative influencers.

    25. DF

      Guess what, David Sacks? I know one guy who can help make that happen. [laughing]

    26. DS

      No, I would, I would like to host some of these meetings in 2026 and get these people together. 'Cause I think that the tech companies have either realized their mistake or they were pushed into it, in a lot of cases, by the-

    27. DF

      That's right

    28. DS

      ... Biden administration.

    29. JC

      Get a gun to their head, yeah.

    30. DS

      They had a gun to their head. Now, I also think that one other mistake they've made is, quite frankly, they've been donors to only left-wing causes. And so if you listen to Cernovich's account, he's like: "Look, guys, you banned us. You cost us our livelihood for years."

  4. 32:15 – 40:51

    Biggest Business Winner

    1. JC

      Biggest business winner for 2025, uh, looks like Friedberg picked robots and autonomous hardware, year of the robot. I think, uh, if you include robotaxi there, you nailed it. Certainly, next year will be the year of Optimus, uh, 2027. Chamath, you said dollar-denominated stablecoins. I think, uh, given what we've seen with regulation, that was spot on. Gavin, shout-out to our friend, Gavin, he said, "Big businesses that use AI thoughtfully," another great one. I picked Tesla, which is at an all-time high, and Google, which of all of the Mag Seven-

    2. DS

      Crushed

    3. JC

      ... is the biggest winner, and they did 65%, so I nailed both of those. We did-- I think all, all of us crushed that one. Who do you have, Friedberg, as your biggest business winner prediction for 2026? Go ahead, Friedberg.

    4. DF

      I couldn't decide. My number one is Huawei, which I've mentioned in the past, out of China. I think Huawei's-

    5. JC

      Hmm

    6. DF

      ... effort to partner with SMIC to go deeper in the chip stack, and they're just firing on all cylinders. I do think keep an eye on Huawei over the next year. It's, um, it's gonna outperform expectations, at least the Western expectations, and the second is, uh, Polymarket. I think Polymarket's evolved from being kind of this one-off, quirky prediction market to actually really providing insights into current events and the news in a way that none of us anticipated.

    7. JC

      Hmm.

    8. DF

      And I do expect that after the deal we saw with NICE, that all of the exchanges, and we're already seeing this with Robinhood and Coinbase, and we should expect something from Nasdaq this year. Dina Friedman talked to us about this. But I do think that prediction markets could become not just markets, but also news, and I think Polymarket's, um, just in such a position to have a breakout year.

    9. JC

      Okay, great one. Chamath, biggest business winner for 2026 after yourself. Who do you got?

    10. CP

      Yeah, it's hard. Uh, I mean, I will pick me.

    11. JC

      Yep, we knew that. [chuckles]

    12. CP

      It's already done.

    13. JC

      I knew that was coming. [laughing]

    14. CP

      It's already in the books.

    15. JC

      Don't hurt your elbow. Don't hyperextend your elbow.

    16. CP

      Already in the books, so okay, it's all downhill from here. [chuckles]

    17. DS

      Nick, we need to use that meme of Obama giving himself a medal. [laughing]

    18. JC

      [laughing] Chamath is giving himself... [laughing]

    19. CP

      I will pick copper.

    20. JC

      Okay, copper.

    21. CP

      We are still completely underestimating how short we are in terms of the global demand-supply dynamics of a handful of critical elements that we need. Again, in the Trump doctrine view of the world, that is no longer as multilateral as it was, and we need to have unilateral national security, and if you look through that lens, the asset that is set up to go absolutely parabolic is copper. And the reason is that it is, at least as it stands today, the most useful, cheap, amenable, conductive material that we have. That material manifests in everything from our data centers, to our chips, to our weapons systems. It's just everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, and right now, Jason, we are on a path by 2040, where we will be short about 70% of the global supply at current course and speed. [microphone static] And, uh-

    22. JC

      Copper

    23. CP

      ... so I will pick copper.

    24. JC

      Sacks, what do you got? Biggest business winner, 2026, your prediction.

    25. DS

      I said the IPO.

    26. JC

      Hmm.

    27. DS

      I think 2026 is gonna be a big year for IPOs. I'm not gonna say which ones.

    28. JC

      Ooh, great one.

    29. DS

      I think there's gonna be a bunch of them, a bunch of successful ones, and I think we could see trillions of dollars of new market cap created of public companies.

    30. CP

      Totally.

  5. 40:51 – 49:34

    Biggest Business Loser

    1. JC

      What do you got this year, Friedberg? Who do you think is gonna be the biggest business loser of this year?

    2. DF

      To follow up on Chamath and my conversation at the Christmas dinner, I think the state governments are gonna have a real problem with finding financing, because what's going on with the exposés that are underway on waste, fraud, and abuse in state agencies, I think is going to lead to a conversation that's gonna cause folks to question the long-term solvency and operations, because the response won't be, "Hey, let's cut out the waste, fraud, and the abuse." The response is gonna be, "We got to keep it going." And that is what is gonna give people fear, is that if they did respond, call it equivocally, to the discoveries that the governments did, then I think that there's an opportunity to continue to be able to borrow and access capital markets. But I do worry a lot about state governments, um, borrowing. I think the other thing that's gonna hit the, the fan this year in state governments is all of these, um, unrealized pension liabilities. I think when these numbers start to come out this year, and a lot of people are now digging deep into it, folks are gonna wake up and be like: "Holy [beep] ! There's a ginormous hole in these states and their obligations."

    3. JC

      And why does the government have to do these pensions? Why can't we do superannuation like Australia does? We have to get this out of the... I love that pick.

    4. DF

      That's called a defined contribution instead of a defined benefit.

    5. JC

      Exactly.

    6. DF

      And if you get this defined contribution model and then just have good management, it all works out. So this is basically the problem with Social Security. Social Security is a defined benefit, and then all the money just doesn't sit anywhere. It doesn't exist.

    7. JC

      Right.

    8. DF

      If it was a defined contribution-

    9. JC

      It's just a liability

    10. DF

      ... Li- And let me, let me give a shout-out. If it was a defined contribution, like Invest America accounts or Trump accounts, as they're being called, and you put the money in, and you see how much you have, and every year you track it, and that's what your retirement is gonna be, just like w-we might have with our 401 (k) s or our IRAs-... that is a system that actually has true solvency. Otherwise, it becomes this runaway train of liability, and that's effectively what the states have set up, and it's very dangerous.

    11. JC

      And if we were to take government out of it, and then every American just had to put ten, twelve, fourteen percent into their retirement account, and it was forced, you would have happy people who feel some agency in their lives, which the people of Australia do. Chamath, who's your loser twenty twenty-six?

    12. CP

      I will pick the software industrial complex. So these are the companies that sell licensed SaaS to the corporations of America. It's about a three to four trillion dollar a year economy that is separated into three buckets. Bucket one, which is the smallest, is the initial licensing. That's probably five to ten percent. Buckets two and three, where all the money is made, is what's called maintenance and migration, which is, how do I just maintain this big, bulky license that I just bought for three hundred million dollars, as an example?

    13. JC

      Hmm.

    14. CP

      Or how do I migrate it from product A to product B? Those last two buckets represent ninety percent of all the dollars in revenue that's generated in software. And because of the advancement of these models and the advancement of these technological techniques that we are all uncovering, building agents, building systems, I think you're going to see that total economic opportunity shrink and contract aggressively. The companies will still be able to do their business. It'll just be at a much, much lower incremental revenue. The customers will be able to do their business. They'll have a lot more flexibility, and a lot of upstarts, I think, will have opportunity. I'm speaking my book, obviously, but I'm seeing it on the ground with eighty/ninety-

    15. JC

      Because you have a company building software.

    16. CP

      Our entire business, eighty/ninety's business, has basically migrated to disrupting maintenance and migration patterns. I cannot describe how much opportunity there is. It's very tactical, mundane, not very sexy work, but it's incredibly lucrative, and so I expect that that thing is gonna shrink. It's gonna impact SaaS companies, public SaaS companies, particularly quite severely in twenty twenty-six.

    17. JC

      Who do you got, Sacks, for your biggest business loser of twenty twenty-six prediction?

    18. DS

      For me, we already talked about this, but it was California because of the wealth tax and also the onerous regulations driving business and capital out of the state. I hope you guys are right, that it does not make the ballot. If it does, I think there will be a panic and rush for the exits. Regardless, there's two major refineries closing by the spring. Higher gas prices will be the result. I just think that the politicians are not doing a good enough job in California dispelling the fears-

    19. JC

      Hmm

    20. DS

      ... and the actual hostility of the business environment.

    21. JC

      That's a great one, and I went with young white-collar workers in America. I think they're gonna be the biggest business loser. I think it's getting really hard for them to get entry-level, uh, jobs. I'm seeing that all over the place because companies are having an easier job, uh, just automating with AI than training up Gen Z graduates. That's my belief. That's why I'm launched founder university on three continents. If you are a young person, you gotta be resilient. You're gonna have to be self-reliant, independent of what Mondami, Mondami says about collectivism. It's easier to use AI than it is to train up, and we don't have professional development. That needs to come back. I just did an interview with the CEO of McKinsey, which you may have seen on the feed, and this is the big challenge in corporate America is they're taking out the bottom two or three rungs and automating stuff, and we really need to develop young people so that they have a path to take the CEO jobs eventually, and I don't think they're gonna have an easy time doing that. That's why I think all young people should start companies. I am talking my own book. I am talking about founder.university. Please apply, Japan, Saudi, and in America. We're gonna help you build companies. Thank you for my promo.

    22. DF

      Jason, I got a text last night from a friend, and it's in response to your comments about young people not being able to find jobs because of AI, which is the statement you've made a couple times. He said, " [beep] went to a roundabout of fifty CEOs of public and private companies and asked everyone if they were hiring junior engineers. Everyone said they are still, but not as much as before, because during COVID, every college lowered the bar on admissions, and the talent just isn't as good anymore." My friend went on, and he said, "You should talk about this to counter JCal's point about AI taking young people's jobs. We see this with financial analysts, and we see this with salespeople we hire. The Gen Z kids are all really challenging to hire because of cultural issues, not because we're not hiring them due to AI. So we try and hire older people primarily to s-- to fill those roles." So there's a real interesting point that he was making. I texted a couple of their friends to ask them their opinion, and I've heard this concurrence, JCal, which is like a lot of people think that recent grads out of college, and this may be a, a Covid-era phenomenon, they just don't seem to have the temperament, the motivation, the organizational skills-

    23. JC

      Executive function, yeah.

    24. DF

      Executive function, and by the way, some of our friends who I've talked to who have kids graduating college, there's even a conversation about none of these kids are motivated to get jobs or to make money. There's a very weird phenomenon in the youth right now, and this may be a Covid phenomenon, and it may be a cultural thing that's part of the long form of what's going on in our society, or it may be a socialist trend, or it may be a populist trend, or it may just be that people have gotten too wealthy and the nation has truly split, and you can't climb the ladder anymore. There's a bunch of things going on here, but I do not think, and I think a lot of people are echoing this, JCal, that challenges that young people are having finding employment is purely rooted in, in an AI and automation phenomenon, but it may be a cultural phenomenon, and so I just put that on the plate for you to consider that there's something else going on here.

    25. JC

      I do think it's both. I do think it is partially what you're saying, is that maybe these young folks, um, have-... you know, they, they're just either entitled or their parents have enough money for them to escape and go sideways and maybe not be as career-motivated. It could be a social thing, it could be a Covid thing, it could be all of those, and it's certainly multifactor. I just know what I see on the ground, which is, you know, so many companies coming to me saying, "We can replace the bottom third of these tasks," and that those bottom third of tasks are typically done by young people out of school. So I think both things are probably true to a certain extent, and time will tell. I do think it's gonna be challenging and continue to be challenging, and you see that in the numbers from, you know, Google, Uber, Coinbase, all these companies are doing more with less. And, and maybe that's just the nature of AI. Maybe the first thing you do is cut costs, and maybe the second thing you do is hire people who know how to use these tools. If you are a young person who uses AI tools, you're gonna find a job. If you're a young person who isn't motivated and doesn't use AI tools, you're gonna have a hard time. Let's

  6. 49:34 – 56:15

    Biggest Business Deal

    1. JC

      go with the biggest deal. Last year's predictions for biggest deal for twenty twenty-five, traditional auto OEM consolidation. That was you, Chamath. I think that we haven't seen exactly the consolidation, but we have seen those businesses come apart, so I think it's-- I give you definitely two-thirds of a credit there. Uh, Gavin said a tidal wave of M&A. I think he's not wrong there. That has started to happen, certainly. Friedberg, you said massive compute build-out deals. Of course, you nailed that one. I said consolidation in, uh, amongst the on-demand economy. That hasn't happened, but we do see a lot of deals occurring. And I said also Apple would buy Warner Brothers. I got that like a... I guess, uh, that wound up going to Netflix, so I'll give myself a half point for that. What do you have as your biggest deal for twenty twenty-six, David Sacks?

    2. DS

      Well, I don't want to get-

    3. JC

      Your prediction.

    4. DS

      I don't want to get too specific here in terms of names of companies and that sort of thing.

    5. JC

      Oh, yes, because of your role. Yeah.

    6. DS

      But, uh, what I would say is that I think there was a breakthrough in the last couple of months in terms of these coding assistants, where they've been around for a while, but there seems to have been another level of quality achieved just in the last month or so, and you're really starting to hear-- I mean, maybe a lot of it is hype, but there is... I think a lot of people are getting very excited about the potential here, and part of it is coding, part of it is just tool use. You can download the programs, and so it has access to your file drive, and it can take actions on your computer. This trend feels to me like chatbots did at the end of twenty twenty-two, going into twenty twenty-three, where it's like people were really hyped about it, but then it continued to play it out, play out in the next year. And so I think these, let's call it coding assistant/tool use, I think will get bigger and bigger this year.

    7. JC

      Friedberg, what do you got? Biggest deal.

    8. DF

      Uh, Russia, Ukraine. I think it's gonna settle out this year. I think there's a lot of motivating factors to get it settled out this year, economic and other political factors, but I do think it's gonna settle out this year, and it's gonna bring a bit more stability to that region, and there's a whole reset that's underway this year, I think, in terms of geopolitics and where the powers all sit.

    9. JC

      Trump can stop that war.

    10. DS

      It's a good one.

    11. JC

      He would be two for two.

    12. DS

      That's a good one.

    13. DF

      I, I think this one's gonna settle.

    14. JC

      That would be, that would be great. He may not have done it on day one, but if he gets it done in, in, you know, year two, uh, that's good enough for me. Chamath, biggest deal, twenty twenty-six, what do you got?

    15. CP

      It's not a specific deal, but it's an approach. I think that M&A cannot happen, and so it's the IP license M&A workaround, and I think you're going to see hundreds of billions of dollars of these kinds of deals. So this is the deal that Google did with Character AI. It's the same thing that they did-

    16. JC

      Microsoft did it, yeah.

    17. CP

      Microsoft did it. It's obviously what NVIDIA did with Grok. Why are these deals happening? Well, if you just look at what Facebook tried to do, they tried to buy Manus for two and a half billion dollars. Manus was a Chinese company that then left China and essentially rebuilt itself as a Singaporean business. The Chinese have now said, "We're gonna look at this." They are going to actively import export controls. They're going to actively look at which technologies, and even which researchers, are working on things that are critical enough that it just can't go abroad in this existential fight that they believe they're in with the United States. The United States is in equivalent such position. All of this leads me to believe that traditional M&A is effectively dead. I think it's going to be impossible to get a large transaction done. So how will you do it? You'll do what Sundar did. You'll do what Satya did. You'll do what Jensen did. You'll do what-

    18. JC

      Which is a licensing deal

    19. CP

      ... Mark did with scale AI, these huge licensing deals that basically replace M&A, and I think that that, as a deal type, will get better and more refined and tighter and better executed. We were the third or fourth of these kinds of deals, and even the third or fourth iteration was quite good. By the time that you're into the middle part of next year and you've done fifteen or twenty of these things, I think the lawyers that work on these things and the accountants will just be bold.

    20. JC

      The, the tax treatment is not ideal, but the speed at which you can do them is phenomenal because the next day, somebody like Sandeep can be working for Jensen, which is what Jensen wants. They want the talent. Zuckerberg wants the talent working there the next day.

    21. CP

      And the IP. And the IP.

    22. JC

      And the IP, of course. Um, you know, for twenty twenty-six, I think we're gonna see some massive M&A. It doesn't matter to me how it occurs, but I do think we're gonna see a fifty billion-plus deal, and I think it could be, uh, one of the Mag Seven, an Apple, a Meta, a Microsoft, or an Amazon going out and trying to buy xAI, Mistral, Perplexity, Anthropic. One of those four comes to mind. I know most of them probably want to go public and, uh, go it alone, but I think an offer could come in, and during that race for which six or seven large language models, and man, it is a, it is a battle where they are moving up and down the rankings and beating each other out, you know, on the testing-

    23. CP

      Can I ask you a question?

    24. JC

      And I think one of them is gonna-- I think one of them is gonna go for it. I, I, I think it could wind up being Apple-

    25. CP

      I, I-

    26. JC

      ... Meta or Amazon who buys an Anthropic or a Perplexity.

    27. CP

      I started where you were, but this is why I went to this deal type as the biggest business winner, because if any of those companies tried to buy, let's just say, Anthropic, I think it's three years of antitrust, minimum.... It's worse than when Microsoft tried to buy Activision, because that was a niche product, and even that took almost two years and, like, three or four months, if I'm getting it right. It-- or it was about two years. It's a huge slog because it's a, it's about global coordination of multiple regulators.

    28. JC

      Yeah.

    29. CP

      And eventually-

    30. JC

      You do have to get through the EU and everything else.

  7. 56:15 – 1:03:05

    Most Contrarian Belief

    1. JC

      markets. Most contrarian belief, most contrarian belief, people like this one. I said, OpenAI loses its lead in the AI race. Uh, and in fact, that has happened. If you look at the, um, arenas and you look at their market share, they are being challenged. Chamath, you said the banking crisis in one of the major mainline banks. Gavin said, one year of five percent [chuckles] plus GDP growth at one point over the next couple of years. Well done to Gavin. Friedberg, you said socialism rises back, another amazing prediction. What's your prediction for this year, since you crushed it last year, Friedberg? Go ahead.

    2. DF

      My prediction is based on the premise that I think there is gonna be this revolution in Iran, and the ayatollahs are gonna be out. That's not the contrarian belief. I think that's the standard belief, and I, I think that is gonna happen, and that's the premise. But a lot of people think that Iran is part of the destabilizing force in the Middle East. And I do think that there is already an anticipation of the turnover with the ruling parties in Iran. There is already this brewing conflict amongst the other Arab states. So I think that between UAE, Saudi, Qatar, and this fraction in Yemen, and then I don't know if you guys have followed, but there's this kind of emerging independence movement for Somaliland, which is kind of north of Somalia, that there may be more conflict brewing in the Middle East than anyone anticipates for this year, that will not necessarily involve Israel and/or Iran. It will actually be amongst the other Gulf states as they vie for influence and power, and that the contrarian point may, in fact, be that Iran has been a stabilizing force in that region. And by removing Iran and by changing over Iran, and they become this kind of independent democratic state, and this particularly is gonna be heightened as there's gonna be this battle for who's gonna take care of the Palestinians as the two-state solution emerges. And what's the role that Jordan's gonna have to play versus Egypt versus Saudi? And it's gonna lead to a lot of questions about resource allocation. So I think that this year could end up being a little bit nastier than folks anticipate in the Middle East as Iran turns over.

    3. JC

      Sacks, you got a contrarian belief for twenty twenty-six?

    4. DS

      Yes. I said that AI will increase demand for knowledge workers, not decrease it.

    5. JC

      Mm.

    6. DS

      I would refer you to Aaron Levy's post called Jevons Paradox for Knowledge Workers. And the point of Jevons Paradox is that, as the cost of a resource goes down, the aggregate demand for it actually increases because you discover more and more use cases. So I think this will certainly happen with code. In the past, it's been very expensive to generate code. You have to hire engineers, there's not enough of them. It's an expensive resource, so the amount of software generated in the economy was limited by that. I think it's gonna increase massively now because the cost of generating code is coming down so much. But there's other examples, too. You take a field like radiology, that's frequently cited as a profession that AI is gonna put out of business. That's not what the data shows. The data shows that the number of radiologists is increasing. Why? Because the number of scans that people wanna make is increasing. And it's true that AI can do some of the work, but you still need a doctor to prompt the AI, to interpret the AI, to validate it. So you get more efficient, the cost of scans goes down, and instead of it being a super specialty, that happens very rarely, that you need, like, a referral on top of a referral to get, it becomes something that's normalized and everyone starts doing it, and you start getting more and more scans that leads to better and better outcomes. So I think there's gonna be a lot of those examples through the economy, and we're gonna look back and see that the job loss narrative was not only wrong, but we actually got job gains.

    7. JC

      Okay, and for those of you who want to understand Jevons Paradox a little more, you can look at something like electricity or steel or concrete. When we lowered the cost of those things, people didn't use less of it. They built skyscrapers, and we had more routes for more airplanes to take you, uh, on more vacations, and that went from being something only rich people did to everybody. So Jevons Paradox is definitely at work. What do you got, uh, Chamath? Which on-- What's on your, uh, contrarian belief?

    8. CP

      Gosh, I have two.

    9. JC

      Okay.

    10. CP

      Well, I'll give you them both, and you can just see. My contrarian belief number one is I don't think SpaceX will IPO. I think that it will reverse merge into Tesla, and I think Elon will use it as a moment to consolidate control and power of his two seminal assets into one cap table.

    11. DF

      Oh, my God, I love that! Wow.

    12. JC

      Well, he's talked about that before. He's talked about having a holding company for years. Of all of the collection, you could put Neuralink in there, too, right, Chamath? You could put in The Boring Company as well.

    13. CP

      ... Sure, I'm just giving you my contrarian take. There will be no IPO for SpaceX. I think it will just be-

    14. JC

      Wow! Wow.

    15. CP

      It specifically will be a reverse merger.

    16. JC

      There you go.

    17. CP

      The second contrarian take is that I think the central banks will realize that there are limitations to gold and limitations to Bitcoin, and will, as a result, seek out a completely new cryptographic paradigm that they can control on their balance sheet, that is fungible, that is tradable, and that is completely secure and private. And I think the reason why that privacy needs to exist is that for the sovereignty of a country, you need to be in a position where you have assets that are not easily disclosed to anybody else, friends or enemies alike. And then separately, cryptographically, if you're going to own a currency, you need to hedge against the eventual risk in the next five to ten years that there's a quantum chip that can challenge the existing cryptographic schemes that are used.

    18. JC

      And, uh, for my contrarian, I was thinking about [chuckles] going with OpenAI losing their lead and not being the, uh, number one company again, uh, because I do think that will be the trend, that they will have the-- they'll continue to give up their market share to other players, including Google and Gemini and xAI, et cetera. But I'm gonna go with a, a pretty wild card here. I think the standoff with China is gonna be largely resolved, and I think President Trump's, when he makes his visit there, I don't know if you're gonna go on that one, Sacks, but I, I think he should be included in it, obviously, because of the AI race. I do think that the standoff, um, and the issues around Taiwan are going to be resolved, and I think this could be the signature issue of Trump's second term, is that we work out a working relationship where both China and America win without one of us losing.

  8. 1:03:05 – 1:08:02

    Best Performing Asset

    1. JC

      Best performing asset. Best performing asset. Last year's prediction, I said Mag Seven, which was up twenty-two percent versus the S&P five hundred at plus seventeen. Chamath, you were long CDS for a potential run on a major bank. You said it was a long shot. Gavin said high bandwidth memory makers like Micron, which was up two hundred and thirty percent. That was a great call. And Friedberg, you said Chinese tech stocks and ETFs. Alibaba was up eighty-five percent, Chinese tech ETF up forty-seven percent versus the S&P five hundred at plus seventeen. So I guess that means Gavin, Friedberg, and then myself. What do you got for this year's best performing asset, Friedberg?

    2. SP

      Polymarket. Polymarket's on a tear. M- network effects, replacing media, replacing markets.

    3. JC

      Congrats to our friend Shane at Polymarket. Do you have a best performing asset for twenty twenty-six?

    4. SP

      Yes.

    5. JC

      Go ahead, Chamath.

    6. CP

      I would pick a basket of critical metals.

    7. JC

      Okay. Basket of critical me- uh, metals. What do you got, Sacks?

    8. DS

      It's getting a little bit redundant for me, but I just said the expanding super cycle in tech. I mean, again, this is just another-

    9. JC

      Okay

    10. DS

      ... facet of the boom. But actually, let me just show you some data that literally just came out. I feel like this is breaking news.

    11. JC

      Oh, breaking news?

    12. DS

      Nick, can you pull this up? US productivity just surged four point nine percent, the strongest-

    13. JC

      Wow!

    14. DS

      ... reading in nearly six years. And this is the news item, is that the Atlanta Fed, their forecast for Q4 GDP just climbed to five point four percent. Can that be right?

    15. CP

      Yes.

    16. DS

      Can we get a fact check on that?

    17. CP

      Five to six is, I think, where we're gonna see it, guys. We're gonna see some sixes get printed.

    18. DS

      I mean, we said-

    19. JC

      January eighth, twenty twenty-six, the Atlanta Fed's-

    20. SP

      Here's like, you know, Sacks-

    21. JC

      ... GDP now model estimate for real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty-five is five point four percent. Significant jump-

    22. SP

      Look, you're gonna-

    23. JC

      ... from the previous estimate of two point seven percent on January fifth.

    24. CP

      You have to remember that there's going to be a hundred and fifty basis point correction in Q4 GDP because of the government furlough, okay? So let's say that GDP was probably, call it four. You're gonna see a print of two and a half. So you need to readjust that because now all the government workers are back, they're recounted in GDP. If you look through twenty twenty-six, there's a handful of things that I think people do not understand well. Number one, all of non-farm payrolls has been completely reset and rebased, and the reason why is because of immigration. So what used to be a hundred to a hundred and fifty number print is now a forty to fifty number print. Why is that important? Because when you look through earnings and you look at the lower twenty-fiv- five percent quartiles of earnings growth, they're off the charts. There's all of these anecdotal examples now of earnings just exceeding expectations. There was an article on the front page of The Wall Street Journal yesterday about Ford trying to pay mechanics a hundred and sixty thousand dollars a year and having five thousand openings. So to Sacks' point, we are a coiled spring. Closing the border, plus adding productivity lifts through AI and other things, have created a growth dynamic in the United States that will really start to show itself in twenty-six. So I think that you should be not short [chuckles] the US economy here. It is ready to rip.

    25. JC

      And, uh, adding to all that, and just giving my pick, I think if we are in a rate cut environment and the tailwinds keep happening and people have a little bit of cash laying around, my pick for best performing asset will be the Robinhood Polymarket prize picks, gambling, wagering, uh-

    26. SP

      That's a good one

    27. JC

      ... space, because people will be able to have a little cash around to make some bets.

    28. CP

      By, by the-

    29. JC

      You can put Coinbase in there, too, I guess.

    30. CP

      By the way, the corollary to what we just talked about, if you see five and a half and six and a half prints and these employment numbers, a lot of this affordability stuff may be-... not as accurate as we think it is. Everybody right now is trying to figure out, okay, well, where are the pockets of unaffordability? And there are clearly some, but those are narrow, and they can be fixed. But on a broad-based basis, what Sacks says is right. You have this combination of earnings growth, productivity growth, and now this overlay where you have these tax cuts that are gonna hit in '26. My gosh, I mean, asset prices in general I think will do well. Now, you'll also see potentially home prices correct, because if the president is successful in making sure Blackstone can't buy houses, but on the other side, people are earning more, and they can enter with interest rates that are now 100 to 150 basis points lower, you'll see a boom in housing, where it's not the corporations that are buying the houses, but individuals. Uh, there's a lot of variables here that can, that can break in America's favor. This is why I think 6% is not unrealistic, which would be absolutely nuts.

  9. 1:08:02 – 1:15:17

    Worst Performing Asset

    1. JC

      let's move on to the worst-performing asset. Last year's predictions for worst-performing asset of 2025, I said legacy car companies and real estate. Both of those turned out to be correct. Chamath, you said enterprise SaaS and the software industro- industrial complex. Again, that, uh, looked correct as well. Gavin said enterprise SaaS, and Friedberg, you said vertical SaaS. So we had three SaaS, and I had legacy car companies and real estate. We all-

    2. DF

      Let me give you... JCal, let me just give you-

    3. JC

      Nailed those.

    4. DF

      Yeah, let me just give you some numbers on that to show you.

    5. JC

      Sure.

    6. DF

      ServiceNow down 30%, Workday down 18%, DocuSign down 23%, Dropbox down 9%, and Box down 6%, while the S&P was up 17%. I think it's worth highlighting, like, it was a challenging year for this enterprise SaaS, but there's-

    7. JC

      Especially with the per-seat pricing as opposed to consumption-based pricing. If you have a static number of employees or less employees, like many of these companies do, there's just less seats to sell. So their whole growth was based on land and expand. You land the client, and then you expand the client because they're adding staff. If you're not adding staff, you can't a- uh, you know, you don't have more people using Salesforce. Okay, so let's talk about our worst-performing asset predictions for 2026. What do you got? Sacks, worst-performing asset of 2026.

    8. DS

      Well, I just said California luxury real estate because of the overhang of the wealth tax and all the things we're talking about. [laughing]

    9. JC

      Yeah. That one hits close to home, I think. [chuckles]

    10. DS

      Now... Now, yes, it does, actually. What I'm hoping for is a dead cat bounce. If you guys are right that the ballot initiative fails-

    11. JC

      Mm

    12. DS

      ... then the overhang will be lifted, and maybe I can-

    13. JC

      Clear some real estate

    14. DS

      ... clear some. [laughing]

    15. JC

      [laughing] It's not easy being-

    16. DS

      [chuckles]

    17. JC

      It's not easy being right sometimes.

    18. DS

      No.

    19. JC

      Friedberg, what do you got? Worst-performing asset, 2026.

    20. DF

      I mean, Sacks, Sacks, what, what, like, what, what's your discount price on that asset right now? I mean, like, I might make a bid, you know, if you give me a-

    21. JC

      Ooh

    22. DF

      ... give me a good clearing price.

    23. DS

      You got $100 million laying around?

    24. DF

      Yeah, I'm not paying 100. [laughing]

    25. JC

      Okay, here we go.

    26. DS

      [chuckles]

    27. JC

      Bestie negotiations occur.

    28. DF

      All right, um-

    29. JC

      Give him the bestie price, the buy it now bestie price.

    30. DF

      No-

  10. 1:15:17 – 1:21:18

    Most Anticipated Trend

    1. DF

      Yeah.

    2. JC

      Most anticipated trend of 2025, I said the wrath of Linacon ending and M&A and IPOs being back. I get some credit there. Chamath, you said the end of the deep state. I think you get a lot of credit there. Gavin said AI makes more progress per quarter in 2025 than it did in 2023. That's a great one. Friedberg, you said the nuclear power build-out. I think you get some credit there, too, yeah?

    3. DF

      Eh, not sure. Not sure. We got some work to do there.

    4. CP

      Massively-

    5. JC

      We, we definitely saw some-

    6. CP

      Massively short nuclear.

    7. JC

      You're still short nuclear, but I know-

    8. CP

      It's about this

    9. JC

      ... my guy, Howard Lutnick, when I talked to him-

    10. CP

      It's a big zero.

    11. JC

      I talked to Howard Lutnick as well. He said he's all in on nuclear.

    12. CP

      Friedberg, can I tell you why I'm short nuclear?

    13. DF

      Yeah.

    14. CP

      I think that we're in the very delicate part of the cycle where they've missed the window. So by the time that they deliver working SMRs at scale, the problem is that the marginal cost of electricity will effectively be zero, and it'll have gone to zero because of a combination of solar and storage, as well as coal and oil. And so it's just in a very delicate place where the large form factor nuclear reactors make zero economic sense by 2032 or 2035, which is when, through the Byzantine permitting and building, they get it done. And then the SMRs, by the time that they get it done, they may not be able to meet the market either. So I think it's a very complicated moment for nuclear, actually. Not scientifically, economically-

    15. DF

      Yeah

    16. CP

      ... just does not hang together mathematically.

    17. DF

      I think that's if you assume, um, no shift in the demand curve. And I think that, like, if you, if you look at China going to eight terawatts of production and by 2040 or whatever it is, and we're sitting at one, and we're not moving, we are gonna have a big catch-up to do, and the question is, can we really build out two, three terawatts of electricity generation? How are we gonna build out two to three terawatts of electricity generation? The amount of land that you would need with solar, and what's it gonna take to get all of that installed, and so on. And by the way, there's a lot of this stuff in China if you look at all the big solar build-outs that they did, where they're ripping it up now. Uh, uh, this is a longer conversation, but I really do question whether we can pin everything on solar. It's gonna be a mix of stuff. And so your point may be right that in the near term, to meet the current kind of demand curve, nuclear is gonna be economically challenged, but at some point here, there's an inflection that we have to meet.

    18. JC

      So what's your most anticipated trend of 2026, Friedberg?

    19. DF

      Iran becoming an independent democratic state.

    20. JC

      Wow!

    21. DF

      I think... I'm just speaking generally anticipated. I think a lot of people are anticipating that that's going to happen this year. There's an uprising in the streets. There is a weakening of the ayatollahs, and there seems to be a moment underway.

    22. CP

      And the demographics, our destiny, there's a lot of young people in Iran, and they do not want to live under-

    23. DF

      And, and, and look-

    24. CP

      ... the current rule. They want to be free.

    25. DF

      But there is a major economic problem in Iran in terms of affordability. You think we have an issue of affordability in the US, in Iran, it's very hard for people just to buy their basic necessities, basic needs, to the majority of people, so that, that's why they are taking to the street. There's a real economic crisis underway that is motivating this turnover. Every year, everyone, like, anticipates some big change in the Middle East, but this could be the biggest rewriting of the Middle East in a long time.

    26. JC

      Okay, Sacks, what do you got?

    27. DS

      For what category?

    28. JC

      Most anticipated trend of 2026. What do you got, Sacks?

    29. DS

      I said auditing government spending at all levels.

    30. DF

      Mm.

  11. 1:21:18 – 1:31:09

    Most Anticipated Media

    1. JC

      All right, fun one we like to do is the most anticipated media. That's a fun one, you know? What are you looking forward to in »2026? Last year, I said Superman and Andor Season 2. Turns out Superman did great, Andor did amazing. It's the best TV show of the twenty-first century, I think. Chamath, you said, uh, enormity of the files [chuckles] that will be declassified, Epstein files, halfway there. JFK files, we haven't seen those. Gavin said 1923, Season 2. I don't even know what that is, but okay. And then- David Friedberg: That's a Taylor... That's a Taylor Swift- Oh, that's the Taylor one. Yeah, yeah. Uh, you watching Landman? Landman's pretty great. Um-

    2. CP

      I have not watched that.

    3. JC

      ... Friedberg, you said AI video games. What do you got this year, Friedberg? You, you love the media. You're, you're a cinephile. What are you looking forward to in media in »2026? David Friedberg: This isn't as much as what I'm looking forward to, but I do think the big trend in media is gonna be the citizen journalism doing exposés. Hmm. David Friedberg: I think that we're just at the beginning of the exposé marathon. Man on the street. David Friedberg: Man on the street, pushing stuff, getting cameras in people's faces. The work of journalism has been decentralized, and I think there's gonna be so much more that's gonna be kind of shared and covered this year. Okay. Do you have one, uh, Chamath? David Friedberg: And by the way, the, the, the difference, I would say, in terms of what Nick Shirley's doing and what we've seen maybe in the past but is gonna be the new trend, is much of the citizen journalism in the past has been, to some degree, a little bit more passive. It's sort of like, "Hey, I caught this thing, and I observed it." But now there are people that are gonna actively take a camera and say, "Hey, I'm gonna go discover this thing. I'm gonna go deep on it," and that's what I think we're gonna see happen in a big way this year. Well, and there's a monetization path. You have Substack, where people can give donations, GoFundMes, and, uh, on top of that, YouTube allowing you and X allowing you to share revenue on this particular category, which they previously didn't, as Nick Shirley pointed out, means there is a path to profitability there. Get more clicks, get more views, you make more money, and then you can reinvest it. So I think I like your choice a lot. Chamath, you have something you're anticipating?

    4. CP

      The exact same thing as Friedberg. I'll just double down and-

    5. JC

      Okay, and what about you, Sacks? You got something you want to double down on, investigative journalism?

    6. DS

      No, I thought we were talking about entertainment here.

    7. JC

      Well, yeah, I thought I... It's okay. These guys went-- These guys zigged where we zagged, but- David Friedberg: One of my weird, like, things that I watch on TikTok that I got stuck on, and TikTok just keeps showing me them, is these auditing videos. Have you guys ever seen these? First, First Amendment auditors. So these are people who take a camera, they stand on the street, and they just point the camera into someone's store or into a bank's window- Oh, I've seen it David Friedberg: ... and they just film the people in the bank. Yes, yes.

    8. CP

      And then they wind up spraying each other [chuckles] with the pepper spray.

    9. JC

      You know, when-

    10. CP

      Somebody comes out.

    11. JC

      Yeah. David Friedberg: There's always people that come out. They're like: "You can't do that. You're not allowed to do that." They're like, "Okay, I think I would like you to leave. I don't want to talk to you." And they just do this, and they instigate people to call the police, and what they're doing is they're auditing whether the police understand First Amendment rights, and then how the police react is basically the end of the video. Sometimes the police are like: "You can't do that," and they're like, "Yes, I can. Call a supervisor." And then they teach the police officer that you're allowed to stand in public places and film. Otherwise, they're just like, "Hey," they go to the business owner, and they tell the business owner, "This guy's allowed to do this. Leave him alone." I don't know why, but these videos are so [chuckles] entertaining.

    12. CP

      Yeah, there, there's some, there's some great ones.

    13. JC

      Well, there's tension. There's a lot of tension there- David Friedberg: Yeah ... and there's something, freedom of speech- David Friedberg: There's so much drama. Yeah ... which is the First Amendment for a reason.

    14. CP

      The store owner, the store owner comes out, sometimes tries to physically confront the guy. David Friedberg: Yes. But then you'll have, like, a woman walking with her, like, two-year-old child, and then she'll get into it, and she'll be like, "Hey- David Friedberg: Exactly ... you don't violate his constitutional rights." [chuckles] David Friedberg: Exactly, exactly. "He's allowed to do this." It's the best. [chuckles] David Friedberg: Exactly. It's the best, yeah. David Friedberg: It's so good, you never know what's gonna happen. It's so good, yeah. David Friedberg: Each one of them is like a whole new adventure. Yeah. David Friedberg: I j- I don't know why. It's such an interesting form of content. I agree. David Friedberg: I like love watching it.

    15. JC

      It's a uniquely American phenomenon-

    16. CP

      I agree

    17. JC

      ... to, yeah, um, establish your freedom, your, your First Amendment rights. And, and they even go into, like... The really dicey ones are where they go to, like, the parking lot of a prison or into the lobby of a police station and do it, and it gets pretty-... spicy. What do you got, Sacks? You got, you got any media you're looking forward to? Uh, the- these guys are going First Amendment, investigative journalism, yada, yada. What do you got, Sacks?

    18. DS

      Well, the new Christopher Nolan movie's coming out, The Odyssey. Looks interesting.

    19. DF

      Ah, great call.

    20. DS

      So-

    21. DF

      Great call.

    22. DS

      Yeah.

    23. JC

      That's mine.

    24. DF

      Great call.

    25. JC

      Yeah, so-

    26. DF

      What is it?

    27. JC

      I went with The Odyssey, so go ahead.

    28. DF

      What is it? What is that, what is that about?

    29. JC

      The Odyssey?

    30. DF

      Oh, come on. Chamath?

Episode duration: 1:31:10

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