E60: The 2021 Bestie Awards PLUS Jack Dorsey starts the Web3 Wars

Jason Calacanis 0:00 Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the All-In Podcast and it is our year end episode. It is our 2021 Bestie Awards. This is where we give our awards for the best and worst of what happened in 2021. We did it last year, kinda half-heartedly, but this year hopefully we put a little bit more work into it. With me again, of course, David Friedberg, uh, the sultan of science, the rain man, David Sacks, and sweater Jesus, Chamath Palihapitiya. How's everybody doing? We're ready to go. Did anybody do their homework?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:34 Oh my God. We are nine away from episode-

Jason Calacanis 0:37 (laughs)

David Friedberg 0:37 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:39 ... 69.

Jason Calacanis 0:39 And?

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:39 Where we will have a special guest.

Jason Calacanis 0:41 A special guest, who I've given the choice of coming on episode 69 or 420.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:46 No, no, no. He has to do 69.

Jason Calacanis 0:48 Or both.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:48 He can't do 420. He can do both.

Jason Calacanis 0:49 Or he can do both.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:50 He can do whatever he wants.

Jason Calacanis 0:51 (laughs) The guy basically could do no wrong.

David Friedberg 0:53 Is he committed?

David Sacks 0:54 I got Jack. Can we get Jack on?

David Friedberg 0:56 Don't talk about that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 0:57 If you stop, if you stop grinding Jack, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 0:59 Yeah, maybe if you stop dunking on Jack for no reason, you insufferable Sacks.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04 Seriously, you insufferable-

Jason Calacanis 1:05 It's bad enough that, like-

David Sacks 1:06 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:06 ... I've alienated potential guests, Chamath alienated pasts. Now you're getting in on alienating the guests?

David Friedberg 1:11 Do you think it would be too much-

David Sacks 1:12 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:12 ... to have Jack and Chris Dixon on together?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:15 Who?

David Sacks 1:16 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:17 Who? (laughs) Sorry.

Jason Calacanis 1:18 Oh my God, that is so gross. (laughs)

David Sacks 1:20 Delete that.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:22 Ugh.

Jason Calacanis 1:22 No, don't play it like a free-

David Friedberg 1:23 Delete everything.

Jason Calacanis 1:25 I don't care about my relationship with AC-16Z.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:27 Jack Dorsey, we all know. Who, who's the other person?

David Friedberg 1:29 Th- Chris Dixon.

Jason Calacanis 1:30 Chris Dixon.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:31 Yeah, who is that?

David Friedberg 1:32 He's a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, who runs their crypto fund.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:35 Oh, nice.

David Sacks 1:36 It wasn't just me. I mean, Chris-

David Friedberg 1:37 He's been very vocal lately about Web3.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:40 Why don't you guys invite the, uh, CFO of Greylock as well while you're at it?

David Sacks 1:43 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:44 (laughs) Oh my God.

Jason Calacanis 1:45 We couldn't get the, uh, partner in charge of human capital at Excel?

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:50 Go, do you wanna be, uh-

David Sacks 1:51 You're getting, you're getting a little bit far afield. Chris posted something pretty innocuous on Web3 and Jack jumped down his throat, and same thing with Balaji as well, so-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:58 No, he didn't. I saw the C. Dixon quote.

David Sacks 2:00 It wasn't just me.

Jason Calacanis 2:01 Yeah.

David Sacks 2:01 Jason, now you're pretending... You retweeted a photo of Jack jumping down Chris Dixon's throat and saying, "Whoa, what's going on here?" Now you're trying to pretend-

Jason Calacanis 2:10 I won't lie, I love Jack after dark.

David Sacks 2:11 Now you're trying to pretend like he was triggered by me. He wasn't triggered by... He's been on-

Jason Calacanis 2:14 I love Jack after dark. Jack is gone wild.

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:18 Chris Dixon did, did try a little misappropriation.

David Sacks 2:21 For which Jack jumped down his throat. Basically, ever since-

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:23 Well, that's Andreessen Horowitz's thing, they always culture appropriate, right? Like-

David Sacks 2:26 Jack is just like any other guy who quits his job and then goes on a shit-posting rampage, and-

Jason Calacanis 2:32 Oh, really like you did after Yammer?

David Sacks 2:35 Yes. (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 2:36 (laughs)

David Friedberg 2:36 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 2:36 (laughs) Like Chamath did after shutting down social capital?

David Sacks 2:38 Guys, I'm just one, I'm just one of his casualties. There's a bunch of people he's gone after the last couple days.

Jason Calacanis 2:41 I thought Big Jack Energy was great. I think he quit-

David Sacks 2:44 No, I think it's great too.

Jason Calacanis 2:45 ... as CEO of Twitter so he could tweet.

David Friedberg 2:47 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 2:47 He wanted to get in there.

David Friedberg 2:48 No, he wants to focus on blockchain, clearly.

Jason Calacanis 2:51 Yes.

David Friedberg 2:51 He, he ha- he has religion on this and he believes that it's the future of the internet and he cares deeply about the democratization of access to finance. And I think it would be awesome to hear his views on this. I would love for him-

Jason Calacanis 3:00 Yes.

David Friedberg 3:00 ... to come on and not be badgered about censorship in the role that he used to run. How would you like him talking to you about, you know, being the CEO of Zenefits, Sacks? Like it's, you know-

David Sacks 3:10 Okay. Honestly, I'm not trying to badger him. I only have one question, which is, the reason why he loves Bitcoin is for its censorship resistance. So why, when he had the opportunity as CEO of Twitter, didn't he stand tall for resisting censorship?

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:22 Maybe he did, David.

David Sacks 3:23 I don't get it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:23 Maybe he did and-

David Sacks 3:24 Okay, so just tell us that.

Jason Calacanis 3:25 Read between the lines, dude.

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:27 I don't think he has to answer to the Twitter mob and try to say, "Here's all the hard decisions I made that you guys didn't see." You know this. There's a, there's a-

David Friedberg 3:34 In the dynamics of a board and lawsuits and politicians-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:37 Hundreds of hard decisions that CEOs make.

Jason Calacanis 3:39 And the president inciting a riot at the Capitol. I mean-

Chamath Palihapitiya 3:42 You're not supposed to create a list and publish it and say, "Look at me, I'm such a good boy." I mean, it's not reasonable.

David Sacks 3:47 I just think it's a reasonable question for me to ask.

Jason Calacanis 3:49 Yeah, but the way you asked it was like, "Isn't Jack at an ashram, like, praying" (laughing) .

David Sacks 3:53 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:54 Like, you were full dunk mode. I know that's one of your comedy writers writing those tweets for you.

David Sacks 3:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 3:58 Did you get... Was that a punched-up tweet or not?

David Sacks 3:59 (laughs) No.

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:00 It was a punched-up tweet.

Jason Calacanis 4:01 I felt punched up.

David Sacks 4:01 I can't actually be funny. No, it was not punched up, true.

Jason Calacanis 4:04 But also-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:04 It sounds funnier than you actually are. That's why I'm saying something. Hey, Ashram, why did you have to throw my people in the mix?

Jason Calacanis 4:08 Yeah, why did they have to go to the ashram?

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:09 Why are you-

David Sacks 4:10 Jack has spent years-

Jason Calacanis 4:12 Ashrams-

David Sacks 4:12 ... trying to cultivate this, like, zen approach and all of a sudden-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:15 That has nothing to do with my people, bro.

Jason Calacanis 4:16 Nothing to do-

Chamath Palihapitiya 4:17 Nothing to do with an ashram. That's not what we're doing here.

David Sacks 4:20 Yes, yes.

Narrator 4:20 (instrumental music)

Jason Calacanis 4:20 We're getting lost in the weeds here.

David Sacks 4:22 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:23 We just, you can apologize later.

David Friedberg 4:24 Do you have a music-

Jason Calacanis 4:25 We have an awards show to do.

David Friedberg 4:25 Do you have a music intro, like a (singing) .

Narrator 4:27 (instrumental music)

Jason Calacanis 4:28 Please welcome everybody to the 2021-

David Friedberg 4:31 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:31 ... Bestie Awards. Now just put in, like, everybody, like Denzel Washington and-

David Friedberg 4:35 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 4:36 ... you know, like, uh-

David Friedberg 4:37 Yeah, can we edit screenshots from, like, the last Oscars-

Jason Calacanis 4:40 Yes.

David Friedberg 4:40 ... that, you know, everyone in our audience.

Jason Calacanis 4:41 Oh, Oscars from the '80s.

David Friedberg 4:43 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 4:43 Like, Tom Cruise getting up and cheering and whooping. Okay, here we go.

Narrator 4:48 Going all in. Let your winner slide. Rain Man, David Sacks. I'm going all in. As I said. We open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it.

Jason Calacanis 5:02 Love you, man.

David Friedberg 5:03 Queen of quinoa. I'm going all in.

Jason Calacanis 5:07 There's a lot at stake here, folks. And we're gonna start it off with

Jason Calacanis 5:10 biggest winner in politics. A very difficult decision here. Sacks, biggest winner in politics, who do you got?

David Sacks 5:17 I got Eric Adams, the new m- uh, mayor of New York City. He was a huge underdog candidate. Th- he won by not being woke. He rejected the, you know, woke sensibilities of the other Democratic candidates. He is a former cop who still packs a gun and he made his issues, um, supporting the police, public safety, um, charter schools, you know, as an instrument of minority advancement, and he even pushed to make New York City a tech and crypto hub. He is gonna reverse the damage done under de Blasio. He won four or five boroughs in the Democratic primary and overwhelmingly carried Black and Latino precincts. If the Democratic Party has a future after the rejection of woke, it is Eric Adams.

Jason Calacanis 6:00 Okay. Friedberg, who you got?

David Friedberg 6:01 Okay, mine's a little, um, esoteric, but my biggest winner for politics this year-... is the blockchain. And I'll tell you why. I think that the, um, embracing the blockchain as a technology that enables an evolution away from what folks consider to be, um, you know, centralized control systems and ultimately, uh, underscores the interest of the populous notion that's sweeping over the United States is very strong. And I think it's waking up politicians, and it's gonna wake up the political class to the fact that this system of organizing social, economic, and political action may ultimately evolve us away from the systems that we run today. And it is a very serious threat to the current system of politics and economics and social order, and I think it's starting to kind of rear its head, and f- and, and politicians are starting to wake up to it and they're all thinking very deeply about what it means. Uh, and so I would say the blockchain has really kind of created a new model for organization amongst humans that is waking us up, um, in, in the political class more than anything else.

Jason Calacanis 7:06 Okay, Chamath, who do you got?

Chamath Palihapitiya 7:07 I think this is pretty obvious, but I think it's Glenn Youngkin, the governor of Virginia. Here's a guy that, uh, was a private equity executive who basically had to fade Trump, um, but still pretend, to feign that he needed his support and ran a pretty centrist, you know, pro-education, anti-crime, pro-business, uh, pro- just individual, um, you know, empowerment campaign in Virginia, which hasn't swung this way for a long time, and basically, uh, beat Terry McAuliffe. And I think that this is the roadmap which effectively says, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, grab into these centrist temples and run with it, and you're gonna get a ton of people in the silent majority who are sick of all of this fringe behavior, both on the left and the right. And so I think Glenn Youngkin was a real canary in the coal mine for the political future of America.

Jason Calacanis 8:01 All right, great selections so far and a lot of diversity in the picking, and so, uh, I went with Joe Manchin, uh, obviously the, uh, shadow president who was able to dictate, uh, what gets passed and, uh, Build Back Better getting canceled or, uh, cut from 6-plus billion down to maybe 1.5 billion if it ever gets passed.

David Friedberg 8:19 Trillion, trillion.

Chamath Palihapitiya 8:20 Trillion.

Jason Calacanis 8:20 Trillion, rather, sorry, thank you, um, was my, um-

David Friedberg 8:23 Hey, Sax, do you, do you think Manchin's-

Jason Calacanis 8:25 ... was my, uh, biggest winner in politics.

David Friedberg 8:26 ... a rising star or a falling star after, um, his decision to denounce the Build Back Better bill this year, this week?

David Sacks 8:33 Well, you guys have to remember that the state he's from, West Virginia, went for Trump by, like, 20 points. It is a deep red state, and Manchin himself is a major anomaly as a blue politician hanging on in that state.

David Friedberg 8:45 Yeah.

David Sacks 8:45 So the Democrats, instead of alienating him, should be thanking their lucky stars that they even have him for any votes, because any other Democratic politician in West Virginia would have gone down to defeat a long time ago. So they are lucky with that Manchin can vote with them at all on anything.

David Friedberg 9:02 To a layman like myself, or I imagine most people who aren't aware of that kind of political circumstance, he looks like a John McCain maverick kind of guy. Like, he's coming in and saying, "I'm blowing this thing up," and he gets all this attention.

David Sacks 9:13 I, I think that is-

David Friedberg 9:13 Does that light a fire for him, maybe?

David Sacks 9:16 I think that's a great analogy, which I think he is the Democrats' McCain, you know?

David Friedberg 9:20 Mm-hmm, right.

David Sacks 9:20 He is the guy coming in there, casting that very unpopular vote, the single vote, like McCain did on, on the repeal of Obamacare, the single vote that took that down. But the reality is, the Republicans on Obamacare didn't have a plausible alternative. That's why McCain voted against that. And I think here, um, in the same way, I think Manchin may be doing the Democrats a favor because we can't afford all of this spen- new spending.

David Friedberg 9:41 Super interesting, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 9:43 Here we go, biggest loser in politics. Who do you got? Let's go in, uh, reverse order now. Chamath, who do you got?

David Friedberg 9:50 You go first, Sa- J-Kell.

Jason Calacanis 9:51 My biggest loser, uh, is Elizabeth Warren. Uh, she wanted, uh, everybody to pay a lot of taxes who were in the billionaires to pay taxes. She wanted to cancel them. And now the largest tax bill ever paid by any American has been completed, um, according to a tweet from Elon, that he paid $11 billion. Every program she wanted to work for and fight for has been done, just not by her. It's been done by the private sector. She was attacking Bezos for pay in factories and getting to a $15 minimum wage. Now Amazon is regularly paying in the 20s and giving free college, something her and Bernie Sanders were not able to accomplish in their entire careers. And now she continues to dunk on capitalists, entrepreneurs as the country basically says, "We're not interested in socialism. We're not interested in this brand of politics." They lost the election. Biden won, and now, uh, this far left politics is, I think, becoming, you know, as l- as unimportant as the far right, you know, alt-right.

David Friedberg 10:59 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 11:00 She's, she's basically not important.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:02 I'll build on your theme, and I, I actually just said the progressive left and the alt-right. So I think that the-

Jason Calacanis 11:08 Sure.

Chamath Palihapitiya 11:08 ... extremes in America have basically, uh, you know, we've exposed them for the emperor with no clothes. So, you know, we have tried progressive policies in cities and states in America that's failed. We've tried far right politics at the federal level. That's basically crashed and burned as well. And now what you see is a wave of normalcy. And so, you know, y- all these chortling, you know, fringe classes get an extreme amount of attention because what they say is salacious or interesting, but underneath, there's no real substance or follow-through or real skill. There's no basic understanding of anything, economic policy, foreign policy, none of it. And so they, they make for great sound bites, but they cannot govern. And so, uh, I think the, the biggest losers, the progressive left and the alt-right.

Jason Calacanis 11:59 Sax, you wanna go next?

David Sacks 12:00 Yeah, I mean, very much in the same vein, my choice is, uh, Kamala Harris, the vice president. She has a 28% approval rating. Uh, polls show her lagging Biden by about 10 p- uh, points.No vice president has polled this poorly since, uh, Dan Quayle, uh, was the butt of every late night joke about 30 years ago. And, uh, boy, am I really dating myself with that reference. What's the problem-

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:21 Potato. Potato. (laughs)

David Sacks 12:21 (laughs) Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 12:23 Potato.

David Sacks 12:24 A lot of viewers don't even remember what we're talking about. But, so the problem here is kind of what Chamath was saying. She, Harris is an equity scold, the public is tired of being lectured and hectored about its woke sins, and trying to compensate for that and showing, you know, warmth with a fake laughing cackle isn't going to re- reassure anybody who's just been called a white supremacist.

David Friedberg 12:46 Interestingly enough, last year on our award show, Jason, uh, Kalikanis made the prediction that Kamala will be the first female president of the United States, uh, just as a gentle, uh, reminder that we had predictions like this.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:00 I love it how you, how you called him Kalikanis.

David Friedberg 13:02 Kalikanis.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:03 Kalikanis?

David Friedberg 13:03 Well, he-

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:03 Kalikanis?

David Friedberg 13:04 He likes the short name. He likes to monetize his name.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:06 Okay, Friedberg. (laughs)

David Sacks 13:07 That prediction could still come true, you know?

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:09 I mean, I, I, the prediction was made because I thought Biden wasn't going to make it through the first term because he's so old (laughs) , and that he might not be able to function.

David Friedberg 13:15 That was, that was right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That may still happen.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:18 Yeah.

David Friedberg 13:18 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:18 I mean, I, I think I might stand by that prediction.

David Friedberg 13:20 That's right. We'll save it for the prediction show.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:23 Okay, we'll save it for a prediction show next week. We're taking no weeks off is the new rule here. All right, moving on to-

David Friedberg 13:29 Oh, wait, I got my biggest loser.

Chamath Palihapitiya 13:30 Oh, yeah, biggest loser. Sorry.

David Friedberg 13:31 My biggest political loser, uh, is, um, Tony Fauci. I feel like, uh, this guy got (laughs) totally viced out this year. Determinism is a trap, right? I- in his role, you have to be deterministic, meaning you're saying you got to do X to get Y in order to get people to take action. And so, you know, in order, I- determinism was needed for clarity of action to get people to take the vaccine and he said, "Hey, this is gonna, you know, ultimately end the pandemic." And the problem with de- determinism is it drives binary outcomes. You're either right or you're wrong. And in this case, he was wrong, right? He said, "Go get the vaccine, the pandemic will end." Everyone got the vaccine and the pandemic certainly didn't end and it evolved and it became this very fuzzy, gray map on where we sit today. And I think as a result, he completely lost credibility with a broad swath of people who otherwise would have been kind of still standing behind him. Because I do think he's, you know, he's an honest, just, forthright scientist but in order to drive outcomes, he had to be very kind of stated and, and it, it was a bit of a trap this year and, and I think he got screwed. So poor, poor Tony Fauci. I mean, bless him, but i- it was a rough year.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:36 All

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:37 right. Biggest political surprise? Sax, what do you got? What's the biggest political surprise of 2021?

David Sacks 14:41 Yeah, this is where I had Glenn Youngkin. And, you know, just to add to what Chamath had already said, you know, Virginia went for Biden by 10 points just a short time before.

Chamath Palihapitiya 14:52 Mm-hmm.

David Sacks 14:52 Youngkin, he secured Trump's endorsement very early and quietly and kept the Tr- uh, kept Trump at bay, and then he ran as a genial moderate, uh, with a business pedigree, as, as kind of Chamath pointed out. But there was something else going on here as well, I don't think it was just centrism that would flip a blue state red, it was also that issue of schools where McAuliffe had that gaffe in their final debate, he said that parents shouldn't be telling the schools what to teach. Uh, basically, McAuliffe was sided with the, uh, the teachers unions and, uh, whereas Youngkin sided with parents and, um, really, I think, voiced their opposition to CRT in the schools. That became the centerpiece for his closing argument, and, uh, that's what allowed him to win, win the election.

Chamath Palihapitiya 15:35 My biggest political surprise is Joe Manchin. I think that he will probably be looked back on in time as our generation's Paul Volcker. So, let me explain what I mean by that. You know, at the time, Volcker was incredibly unpopular for what he did by raising interest rates to basically break the back of inflation. And it really wasn't until 30 or 40 years later through the, you know, fullness of time, that we appreciated that what he did took an enormous amount of courage, because in the moment, it created huge headaches and a lot of pushback and a lot of ill will and ire towards Volcker. Similarly, I think Manchin is just now starting this process of just getting completely pilloried. And, you know, people will point to a handful of elements of Build Back Better, like childcare, that have now expired, and those childcare credits and, and what it means to working families, and that is true. But, but there are ways to solve for that by just going back and respending the seven trillion we already spend a little bit better. Um, and in time, the idea and the courage to not pour three more trillion dollars on this dumpster fire without getting ourselves better organized will turn out to be an enormous gift that he gave our kids. A profile in courage. Even if we don't right now see it, and a lot of people can be angry at it. But, uh, that was the biggest political surprise is the desire for a politician... Politician, because like you have to remember, Fed chair is elected, right? You're there, you're in, you're out. But that was a surprise to me that he would go through this process and what it meant at a national level for his reputation to get to the other side. Yeah. Okay, Friedberg, what do you got?

David Friedberg 17:22 My biggest political surprise was that, that insurrection crowd made their way into the Capitol Building. I mean, do you guys remember-

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:28 (laughs)

David Friedberg 17:28 ... how shocking those images were?

Chamath Palihapitiya 17:30 Yeah.

David Friedberg 17:31 And what an incredible day that was. I mean, it was almost a year ago now and we watched on screen what felt like the crumbling of institutions that we always took for being, uh, we always took for granted and assumed were impenetrable, um, both politically but more importantly physically. And to see people physically break into that Capitol Building and cause mayhem and damage, it really kind of exposed, I think, a nerve. Um, and it was a really kind of shocking moment and a shocking day. So, uh, you know, to this day, I still kind of think that that's been the biggest surprise for me of the year. I, you know, I don't think any of us thought that that would happen, both in terms of like, that we let our defenses down and let people into that building like that, and that there was enough of a ground swell to break their way into that building. Both sides were surprising.

Chamath Palihapitiya 18:13 And also just-

Jason Calacanis 18:15 ... super disturbing to watch a bunch of elected officials cowering under tables while Secret Service had guns drawn and doors were being kicked in.

David Friedberg 18:24 Well, also, and, and also while some elected officials were kind of endorsing the behavior to some extent, you know, at a distance, and the whole thing was just shocking. And I think a lot of us realized that maybe our democracy, and I think I mentioned this on the show last year, uh, is not, uh, is a little more fragile, uh, than perhaps we, uh, we, we think it is.

Jason Calacanis 18:41 Trump was the biggest stress test ever. For me, uh, the biggest political surprise, uh, was Kamala Harris being sidelined. Where is she? What is she working on? Uh, I thought that the Democratic Party was going to want to feature her, showcase her with some great projects, uh, in order to, uh, maybe prep her for running, if need be, in '24, uh, and certainly in 2028. And it seems like they have sidelined her deliberately, and they don't believe in her, which is w- they don't believe in the first female vice president a- and of color? Uh, that's very weird.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:11 I don't, I don't think it's that.

Jason Calacanis 19:12 What is it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:12 I think that they think that she's not, she's not a ... They think that she's not electable, and so they're edging.

Jason Calacanis 19:17 Yeah. Yeah, so that was my-

David Sacks 19:17 Maybe, maybe they're, uh, racist, J-Cal.

Jason Calacanis 19:20 Or maybe they are saving her till after the midterms and then gonna feature her. I don't know what the strategy is here, but I think-

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:26 After they raise the House? I don't think so.

David Sacks 19:28 Like a fighter?

Jason Calacanis 19:29 I don't know. Who knows?

David Sacks 19:29 They're saving, they're saving ... They're protecting her.

Jason Calacanis 19:31 But if she was good enough to get, to help get Biden in office, why isn't she good enough to, uh, feature now? It just doesn't make sense to me, uh, that she was so sidelined.

David Sacks 19:41 Well, they did give her a task. Like, they sent her to the border. The problem is she doesn't have anything to say that's, that will resonate with the American people but also be acceptable to her progressive base.

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:54 Or her perceived-

Jason Calacanis 19:55 So-

Chamath Palihapitiya 19:55 ... her perceived progressive base because I actually think that she also has the ability and has in the past, you know, had the ability to be tough, tough on crime.

Jason Calacanis 20:03 Yeah, wasn't she a law and order DA?

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:05 I mean, she's, she's-

David Sacks 20:06 Totally. She flipped.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:06 She's re- so she-

David Sacks 20:07 She flipped.

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:07 She completely has the ability to just be nails if she wants to be. But again, she, and again, maybe even Biden to some degree, still believe that the progressive left is the future of the party. I think that most of us here think that it's a head fake. And, uh, until she comes to those terms herself, she's not, she's gonna continue to be sidelined. But if she tacks back to the center and actually gets out there, I think she's really capable of, uh, of, of doing some stuff here. She's very articulate. She's very punchy.

Jason Calacanis 20:40 Did anybody-

Chamath Palihapitiya 20:41 She t- you know, she can really tell the truth, but then she can also really just shuck and jive and say nothing when she wants to, and that's just what's ... That corpo speak isn't working for her.

Jason Calacanis 20:50 Did anybody else notice, Friedberg, Sax, that, uh, the initial reaction to Manchin's vote or saying he wasn't gonna vote for this on Sunday during the talk shows, uh, was like, dunking on him, "Oh my God, he's horrible," and then immediately Monday, they were trying to reconcile with him and say, "Hey, let's have a reasonable discussion about this. We value your opinion as a partner"?

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:10 Well, it, it was this weird emotional reaction. Like, I got this email. I forwarded it to you guys from Jen Psaki.

Jason Calacanis 21:15 Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:16 And it's, like, crazy. In that email, like, in that, in her press release or whatever, that email that she sent to us, a bunch of us got it. I mean, Jen's going crazy. She's hysterical. I mean, it's triggering.

Jason Calacanis 21:25 Uh, yeah.

David Sacks 21:25 It was such CYA by the administration. Like, they wasted everyone's time for six months pushing this bill forward without checking to see if the swing votes would go for it. So then the swing votes don't go for it, the bill fails, and they're blaming those votes.

Jason Calacanis 21:39 Wait a second, David, though.

David Sacks 21:39 That doesn't make sense.

Jason Calacanis 21:40 I think it's that they just ignored what the swing votes were saying. He's been saying from the beginning it's too big.

David Sacks 21:45 Totally.

Jason Calacanis 21:45 And his number was 1.5, and they just said, "You know what? We'll wait till the end and then try to high pressure him or something or flip him at the end."

David Sacks 21:51 It doesn't make sense to push for-

Jason Calacanis 21:52 It was a stupid strategy.

David Sacks 21:53 It doesn't make sense to push for that big a bill when it's a 50/50 Senate. They should've gone for something m- smaller and more reasonable.

Jason Calacanis 21:59 Absolutely.

Chamath Palihapitiya 21:59 I think either that or they should've made a better calculation on inflation, because again, the minute that we had these big inflation prints and the Fed basically changed their tapering posture, that was the bullet in the gun. And you basically handed Manchin a loaded weapon and said, "Here you go. Do what you will with this bill."

Jason Calacanis 22:15 This was a terrible betting strategy by the Republican Party.

David Sacks 22:18 Well, he warned them. He warned them in May-

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:20 He warned them. Yes.

David Sacks 22:20 ... that he was very worried about inflation, and they were saying it was transitory, and then he turned out to

David Sacks 22:24 be right.

Chamath Palihapitiya 22:24 Right.

Jason Calacanis 22:24 All right, biggest winner in business. Friedberg, who do you got? Biggest winner 2021 business.

David Friedberg 22:30 My, my biggest winner in business, um, goes back to the GameStop days, and I think it was the retail investor class. You know, they were always there to trade on the wings and in the wake of the institutions in the markets prior to, I think, what took place this year. And after what happened this year where they were able to coalesce and organize to make trades that moved the market against institutions in a really meaningful way and broke several institutions in the process, it highlighted that retail has power, retail can organize, and retail in aggregate can act to be a stronger force in the markets than institutions. And so the retail investor is my biggest winner, uh, for 2021.

Jason Calacanis 23:12 Who's your biggest winner, Chamath, in business?

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:15 I mean, this is pretty obvious. It's Elon Musk. Um, you know, as a former owner of Tesla, as a current, uh, shareholder of SpaceX, uh, as somebody who sold him a company this year, David and I did, to see him work is magical, uh, absolutely magical. And, uh, I think that this guy ... You know, you know, there's, there are these impresarios who just have, these virtuosos who have these moments where they're just in the zone.

Jason Calacanis 23:41 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:42 Uh, and he's in the zone. He's in his zone of mastery. And to see a guy like that execute, I think, is a privilege. So he's my big winner for the year.

Jason Calacanis 23:51 If not Elon, who would you have? 'Cause it's pretty obvious it's Elon, so did you have a second place consideration?

Chamath Palihapitiya 23:57 I would actually probably double down with what Friedberg said. I do think that there was, um ... It's more sort of what I would say is the outsider class versus insiders. I think that whether it's blockchain or Web3 or NFTs or GameStop, this was the year, uh, you know, the ConstitutionDAO. This was the year that loose affiliations of individuals-... um, could compete on a level playing field with organized capital. And I think that that's a really important trend for the future.

Jason Calacanis 24:28 Sacks, uh, who do you have, uh, biggest winner in business? If it is Elon, who's your runner up?

David Sacks 24:33 Yeah. So, I mean, can't fault the Elon choice, that's pretty obvious. Um, but I would say in our world, the biggest winner was Tiger Global. Um-

Jason Calacanis 24:42 Hmm.

David Sacks 24:42 ... they basically productized growth stage capital by far-

Jason Calacanis 24:45 Good one.

David Sacks 24:45 ... the biggest, uh, deployer of late-stage funding. They productized it, so pretty much founders can just send their metrics on like a single sheet of paper and they get an, a term sheet within two days. They did by far the most deals. Uh, it's really the SoftBank strategy done right.

Jason Calacanis 25:01 That's a great pick.

David Friedberg 25:02 15 billion, uh, I think is the amount they deployed this year. I don't know if you guys heard that number, but-

David Sacks 25:07 Yeah, yeah.

David Friedberg 25:07 ... uh, in a-

David Sacks 25:08 Heard that.

David Friedberg 25:08 ... single year to invest 15 billion, assume a five-year fund, you know, you're at a $75 billion run rate. It's pretty incredible. I mean, it really is the size of Vision Fund. Um, and, uh, I heard, I don't know if you guys heard, but they are heavily dependent ... not dependent, but they've built infrastructure with third parties who source all this data for them, uh, to really kind of measure everything prior to making investments. So they, they've built a machine. It's amazing.

Jason Calacanis 25:33 Uh, my biggest winner in business is the Ang, not the Fang. Drop the F and go with the A-N-G. Amazon, um, has a new CEO and they haven't missed a beat. Apple is about to hit three trillion. And Susan Wojcicki and YouTube, if you don't know, is now at two billion users, 30 billion in revenue. And this, of course, is after Elon because that's the obvious choice. So after Elon, um, Alphabet stock up 66%, Apple stock up 31%. You guys know what's going on with those big companies, so I'm gonna go with the Ang.

Jason Calacanis 26:03 Biggest loser in business (drum roll) , the biggest loser in business. Who do you have, Friedberg? Who's your biggest loser in business?

David Friedberg 26:09 Well, I went, I went the opposite of my biggest winner. I went for those institutions that, that, you know, got their lunch eaten by the retail. Uh, Gabe Plotkin and, um, you know, he lost so much money shorting GameStop against these guys, uh, buying GameStop to the moon. He had to borrow $2.75 billion from Citadel and .7, uh, .72 just to get through his month. (laughs) I mean, talk about embarrassing, uh, talk about reversal of fortune. You know, he's obviously been a, a renowned investor prior to this. Um, and, you know, there's a few others that, that were, you know, casualties of war. White Square, a firm in London, shut down, half a billion AUM. Um, so all these folks who tried to bet against retail during the GameStop saga and since, um, thinking that the world was the way it used to be have had to kind of change and, you know-

Jason Calacanis 26:59 It's amazing that that and the insurrection both happened in this year. Like, it ... time is moving so fast.

David Friedberg 27:04 Oh, my God. This year is insane. Yeah. It's been a crazy year.

Jason Calacanis 27:05 I mean, all of this happened in this past year. It's crazy to think about. We were here and I was up in Tahoe, uh, skiing and, and all this stuff was breaking. It was crazy at that time. That was actually our record episode when All In had that breakout episode. Who do you have for your biggest loser, David Sacks?

David Sacks 27:20 I have Chinese billionaires were the biggest loser this year. Uh, I don't know if you guys remember.

Jason Calacanis 27:25 Where are they? (laughs)

David Sacks 27:25 Yeah, exactly. A year ago we were all asking, "Where is Jack Ma?" Well, he eventually turned up looking very thin and, and kind of broken. Uh, but his experience was just an early sort of manifestation and sort of a canary in the coal mine of a larger CCP crackdown on all Chinese billionaires. Um, and the CCP really seems to be increasing its control and putting these people under its thumb. And there are a bunch of tech companies there like Alibaba, Didi, Tencent, Baidu, jd.com. They've all been targeted for fines and tighter controls. Uh, and China's pretty much shut down the foreign IPO market for their tech companies. They've banned crypto-

Jason Calacanis 28:02 Yeah. Moving it to Hong Kong, right? I mean-

David Sacks 28:03 Yeah, exactly. They're ... The CCP has basically brought all the billionaires under their thumb.

Jason Calacanis 28:09 Wow. Chamath, who do you have? And this is amazing. Just so the audience knows, we do not reveal our choices until in the moment-

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:15 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's really great to hear.

Jason Calacanis 28:16 ... which makes this so great.

David Sacks 28:17 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:17 Yeah. I love hearing some of these things. It makes me think, for sure. Um-

Jason Calacanis 28:21 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 28:21 My, my biggest loser is big tech. Um, if you look at this year and you annotate it, not for their stock price but for, uh, what I think is sort of the, the precursor to longer term success, there was a lot of signs that there's pressure building. So whether that's measured in lawsuits, fines, uh, bad PR, if you put all of that stuff together, I think the thing that that drives is decaying morale. And when you have decaying morale, you have human capital flight, so people leave. Um, there were some articles just recently even about, you know, an exodus at, you know, uh, Novi, Novi, I don't know how to pronounce it, the cryptocurrency business of Meta. It's just a really, really difficult thing to deal with when folks start walking out the door because they're just, uh, bummed out from working there. And if you just, and if you just, you know, Google search the, the number of issues that all of these companies collectively, uh, are dealing with, I think that this is sort of peak, uh, big tech market cap is probably within the next year or two.

Jason Calacanis 29:30 Interesting. Uh, this is just so great that we all had different choices. Um, I picked the Ang as the winner. Um, I'm picking the F in Fang as the loser. Meta was a complete flop. It was a stupid idea to change the name of the company. The product they showed in that big tip off was like every science fiction movie we've seen for the last 30 years. The leaks, the Apple headwinds against their ads, uh, the political headwinds. And my last point is exactly Chamath's last point, which is no one wants to work there. It's becoming more and more difficult if you're in Silicon Valley or you're a tech executive to see a reason to go work at that company. I think that their VR efforts, AR efforts will be beaten handily by Apple and by the metaverse and, you know, open source/decentralized solutions. I think the F in Fang should be replaced with the T of Tesla and be Tang.

David Friedberg 30:21 Facebook, uh, Meta traded up 25% this year, J-Cal. Yeah, though-

Jason Calacanis 30:24 Listen, I do think it's a juggernaut. And when things go wrong, it does take a while. So these are forward-looking. If people are leaving now, maybe you'd see the impact of that in three, four, or five years. But I would not buy the stock. I'd buy the other three letters. I would buy the Tang, but not the F in Fang.... uh, but I think it's a good counterpoint. Yeah, these things take a while to unravel.

Chamath Palihapitiya 30:42 Well, I think, you know, I think the- the be- the better trade is pick the one that you love in FANG and short the one that you hate in FANG. And if you get that right, you can make a lot of money pretty safely.

Jason Calacanis 30:51 A big spread there, right? The be- the spread trade, like we talked about.

Jason Calacanis 30:54 Uh, all right. Biggest business surprise. What do you got, Sax? What's your biggest business surprise this year, Sax?

David Sacks 30:59 I thought the b- the biggest business surprise was tech leaders and startups moving to Miami.

David Friedberg 31:04 Mm. Mm.

David Sacks 31:04 Its emergence from really nothing in the tech scene to being a- ... major tech hub. It was just a year ago, one year ago last December, that Delian sort of mused on Twitter about, "Hey, can we just relocate Silicon Valley to Miami?" Uh, the Miami Mayor Francis Suarez jumped in. He responded, "How can I help?" And then since then, it's just been snowballing. And as San Francisco has basically been sliding into what it's become, uh, Miami just keeps blowing up. And it helps, I think, what's been happening on the state level there, that, um, DeSantis has kept the state open for business, and he's kept schools open. And of course, the tax rate is zero. Uh, the income tax and the capital gains tax, that is, are zero. So, uh, it's really pretty amazing how fast it has become a major tech hub.

David Friedberg 31:51 My answer, which was really surprising to me starting in January, and I think I, I started texting you guys in January saying, "I really think we should talk about this on the pod," if you'll remember. And it's obviously just become a crescendo since then, is NFTs. Um, and it, it really has been incredible to watch how, uh, you know, the individual, um, folks in crypto have embraced NFTs as a way, uh, you know, to tokenize the value that creators can bring to the world. And I think, yeah, there's a lot of fluff and a lot of noise and a lot of bubbles going on within this NFT space right now. Most of it will die, and it will look terrible when people lose lots of money and feel bad about the decisions they made during this phase. But what I think is really wonderful about it is the opportunity it creates for creators to monetize their talent in a way that doesn't require them going through middlemen to get distribution and middlemen who take, you know, huge slugs or huge chunks of the margin out of, um, out of what they create. And this can ultimately translate into music, into art, into writing-

Jason Calacanis 32:56 Great.

David Friedberg 32:56 ... um, into all sorts of things. So I'm, I'm pretty excited, uh, not necessarily about where NFTs sit today. I think it's a disaster where it sits today. But I think over the long run, I just love the-

Jason Calacanis 33:04 Why is it a disaster?

David Friedberg 33:05 I, I just think there's too much of this bubbly stuff that's going on-

Jason Calacanis 33:08 Got it. Okay.

David Friedberg 33:08 ... where people are buying into speculative transactions that are gonna lose them money, and then people are gonna be really hurt and really upset. Uh, but-

Jason Calacanis 33:14 Got it.

David Friedberg 33:14 But the general-

Jason Calacanis 33:15 But you love the core tech and the promise.

David Friedberg 33:16 I love the fact, I love the fact that creators, people that are great at art and people that are creative, uh, can develop stuff and make money because people will appreciate it and pay for it. And I just think that's awesome.

Jason Calacanis 33:26 Fantastic. All right, so for me, um, it was that DAOs, um, were able to raise $40 million in a couple of days for this constitution, uh, and get, and basically captures every, capture the entire world's imagination for, you know, a 72-hour news cycle, uh, much in the way day, the day traders did, um, with AMC, uh, and GameStop, to Friedberg's point earlier in the big winners. And, um, I have a dual one here. I'm absolutely surprised about this, you know, the, the, the DAO that was able to raise 40 million for the constitution. But I was also disappointed that the SEC, in year 10 plus of crypto, has not defined the rules of the road yet so that one group of people, professional capital allocators, play by one set of rules and then another group of people, DAOs, tokens are playing by no set of rules or their interpretation of unclear rules, I guess, would be the most charitable way. So that's my biggest surprise. We have to have a regulatory framework for crypto, for DAOs, for NFTs, for tokens, and it's just crazy that it hasn't happened yet. What do you got, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 34:35 Uh, my, my, my big, big business winner breakout company, uh, I have two, but they're the same really, is Moderna/BioNTech. Uh, you know, these were guys that were kind of swimming at the edges of science and R&D and somewhat was just incapable of putting one foot in front of the other until this pandemic and through a bunch of, you know, emergency use authorizations. These guys have really shown up to help the world. Uh, and in 2020, I think they cemented themselves as now on a path to not just, you know, be a vaccine maker for COVID, but a whole bunch of other things, including cancer treatments and everything else. So I think-

Jason Calacanis 35:12 Great. Great move forward.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:13 ... these two companies, these two companies really took a big step forward in 2020.

Jason Calacanis 35:16 Absolutely.

Chamath Palihapitiya 35:17 2020.

Jason Calacanis 35:17 And just as a side note, OpenSea had 8 million in monthly vol- volume at the beginning of the year in January and 3.46 billion in August. Just to give you an idea of the scale of that.

Jason Calacanis 35:27 Okay, best science breakthrough. What do you got, Friedberg? Everybody wants to know, the sultan of science's best science breakthrough.

David Friedberg 35:34 I'm a little bit, um, blinders on this one because-

Jason Calacanis 35:37 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 35:37 ... I think I mentioned this on the show a few weeks ago, and I'm spending quite a bit of time at work on it, which is that starch synthesis system that was demonstrated by those Chinese scientists. Um, and the system itself is likely not gonna be the production system that saves the world, but the concept that we can take proteins that are expressed by different plants and put them together in a tank, and then that tank can convert molecules from one form to another by leveraging these proteins that just interact and move a- move around in the tank, is really an incredible demonstration. And the demonstration is inspiring. We can take carbon out of the atmosphere and make food with a minimal amount of renewable electricity. Um, and I think that's really, um, a moment that will inspire a whole new realm of industrial synthetic biology work. Uh, a lot of which I hope to kind of, you know, build and participate in pretty heavily in the work that we do day to day. But it was really exciting for me.

Jason Calacanis 36:36 So the starch syntho- synthesis system is your, uh, best science breakthrough. What do you got, Sax?

David Sacks 36:42 I've got these new oral COVID antiviral pills that are coming out from Pfizer and Merck. The FDA is supposed to be approving them by the end-

Jason Calacanis 36:49 Good one.

David Sacks 36:49 ... of this week. Uh, as you'll recall, last year around this time, it was these new mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, but we now have to admit-... that the vaccines have not ended the pandemic because the virus can, uh, mutate its spike proteins around the, the, um, vaccine. So, the vaccines by itself cannot end the pandemic. These new, uh, pills have, I think, a, a very good shot of doing it next year because they're protease inhibitors, so they stop the virus from replicating and just, and even if the, uh, spike proteins mutate, it will not prevent these protease inhibitors from working. So, I am hopeful that this will be the thing, hopefully, that ends the pandemic next year, are these new, uh-

Jason Calacanis 37:33 Hmm.

David Sacks 37:33 ... antiviral pills.

Jason Calacanis 37:34 Great one.

David Friedberg 37:35 I would like to make a counter to Sax's, um-

David Sacks 37:38 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 37:38 Oh.

David Friedberg 37:38 ... point. I would be very cautious about the side effects that are going to arise from these protease inhibitors. And, um, you know, they're, they're, they're not as well studied as they normally would be, but there are, they have a serious biological effect in normal cells in the human body. Um, and I think as more people use them, you'll see more crazy stories about side effects that are really, uh, significantly

Chamath Palihapitiya 37:57 What do you think the side effects would be? That we sh-

David Friedberg 37:59 There's a, there's a lot that are well documented-

Chamath Palihapitiya 38:00 Huh.

David Friedberg 38:00 ... but the way they work biologically is, is they disrupt, um, you know, certain systems. Uh, a- and those are not just systems related to the virus. They're systems in our own cells. And so, I, I, I, I'm personally quite nervous about them. Uh, I know that folks, uh, are pretty e- encouraged by them and excited, but I, I'm nervous about them.

David Sacks 38:17 There's a similar medication that's been developed, uh, for HIV, right? Uh, uh, it's called PrEP, right? Um, does that cause similar side effects or... 'cause people use that prophylactically.

David Friedberg 38:27 Yeah, to some extent, you know, and the dosage matters. (laughs) And so, w- normally you would go through many more years, I think, of testing on these things to kind of truly quantify. You know, when you have 0.5% or 1% of a population, you know, let's say, take the most extreme case, die, then a million people use it, you're gonna have a lot of people dying. Um, and, and I'm not sure we've really gotten the, the boundaries of this yet. And the dosage is pretty significant on them. Uh, so, uh, yeah, I, like, l- l- let's, you know, let's keep a watchful eye on this stuff. But, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm hopeful, but I'm also nervous.

Jason Calacanis 39:02 Well, hopefully the number of people who need to take it, Freeberg, correct me if I'm wrong, if we got this many people vaxxed who will not need to take it, and then Omicron, Omicron whips through-

David Friedberg 39:10 My biggest optimism is just that Omicron-

Jason Calacanis 39:12 Yeah.

David Friedberg 39:12 ... is a, um, much less virulent virus-

Jason Calacanis 39:15 Yeah.

David Friedberg 39:15 ... and it sweeps through the population and we slowly see this pandemic kind of, you know, becoming less severe.

Jason Calacanis 39:21 Which is what was predicted.

David Sacks 39:23 Do, do you think herd immunity even exists?

David Friedberg 39:25 The, in the, in the way that the virus evolves, no. Uh, so, um, there, and, and by the way, it's not binary. Uh, it's not like, "Hey, you get herd immunity and no one's gonna catch this thing." There's clearly a spectrum of immunity, meaning, like, I can maybe get the virus and be somewhat contagious for half a day or a day and I don't even know it, and then I'm spreading it for that half day, but I didn't even know I had it. Um, that's kind of, you know, not all the way over to herd immunity in the traditional kind of definition of the way that we talk about it. Um, but it reduces the spread and the severity in aggregate. Um, on the other end is, like, everyone gets it. It spreads like crazy. No, no vaccine stops it, changes anything. No amount of antibodies changes anything and everyone just dies. Um, and so somewhere in the middle, I think, is where we find our kind of, you know, our ground. But I, I don't think that the traditional definition or the way that people talk about herd immunity which is, "Hey, everyone get the shot and this thing's over," uh, is gonna play out that way at all. This is gonna be a slow, slow wind down.

Jason Calacanis 40:21 Okay. And to give Chamath some credit, you said it would be a nothing burger and, uh, so far it looks like deaths and hospitalizations, specifically ICUs, uh, admittance has not turned out to be a major issue yet. Knock on wood.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:34 Unless something escapes from the lab again-

Jason Calacanis 40:36 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:36 ... I think that we're b- we're gonna be okay. I think this is the end of the end, so...

Jason Calacanis 40:40 Ugh, that would be so great if this was the, uh, end of the end game.

Chamath Palihapitiya 40:43 My best science breakthrough is that this year we actually were able to inject invivo, so in the body, genetic code for CRISPR. Two cases specifically. One was to basically reduce the production of this toxic liver protein in a bunch of folks, and then the second one moderately improved the vision of some people who hadn't, some form of inherited blindness. And that's pretty incredible stuff that you can, you know, make something, uh, put it into your body, and then, you know, your body does the work of editing out the bad genes and, um, that's a, I think that's a pretty incredible breakthrough.

Jason Calacanis 41:19 I had the star shot on my list too, but, um, I went with Starship. Uh, for people who don't know, on March 3rd, Starship serial number 10, SN10, completed Space X third high altitude flight test of a proto top- type, and they were able to ascend, um, and then reorienta- themselves and land. If you don't know, Starship is ginormous when compared to the Falcon and the other rockets, uh, that Space X has produced. I got to see it actually. I went to Boca and when you look inside that nose cone, uh, you can fit 300 people in it. Uh, it is a payload that is absolutely unprecedented in terms of sending people or things to space. And the fact that this has succeeded means all, um, s- uh, the folks at Space X, uh, need to do is to scale it, and they're pretty good at scaling things. They just had their 100th landing of their smaller rocket. And so when this, uh, big boy, this, uh, BFR, big freaking rocket, gets going, it's going to change the nature of our species as multi-planetary, planetary, uh, and being able to reach and put things in space that we've never been able to do. So, kind of an engineering feat, but I put it under science, uh, and also to not pick the same one as Freeberg.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:41 Do you think Starship is gonna be able to orbit Uranus?

David Sacks 42:44 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 42:44 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:45 Enough. Bleep it out, Nick.

David Friedberg 42:47 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 42:47 No, Nick. You can't take that out.

David Friedberg 42:49 The honesty.

David Sacks 42:49 The honesty.

Jason Calacanis 42:49 We have veto rights.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:50 You cannot take that clip out.

Jason Calacanis 42:51 Please do a bleep out on releasing all of the tapes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 42:52 Nick, you can't... No, no, no. All of this needs to stay.

Jason Calacanis 42:54 All right. Biggest flash

Jason Calacanis 42:56 in the pan. Biggest flash in the pan. Sax, you picked beeple, uh, you told me earlier.

David Sacks 43:00 (laughs) No, I said-

Jason Calacanis 43:02 Oh, we love beeple. Please.

David Sacks 43:03 Yeah. No, that was yours. Um...

Jason Calacanis 43:05 (laughs)

David Sacks 43:06 I had, uh, I think the, the use of the word, uh, transitory, uh-

Jason Calacanis 43:12 (laughs)

David Friedberg 43:12 (laughs)

David Sacks 43:12 ... was my biggest, uh, flash in the pan.

David Friedberg 43:15 Yeah.

David Sacks 43:15 It seemed like, for a brief moment, that every, uh, administration official, every, uh, Democratic political consultant, every talking head on TV kept using the word transitory. It was very much the ve- vocabulary word of the day. But now, uh, it turned out that the inflation was not transitory and so the use of the word transitory, I predict, will in fact be transitory.

David Friedberg 43:39 Mm.

Jason Calacanis 43:40 (laughs)

David Friedberg 43:40 Nice summary.

David Sacks 43:41 (laughs) I like that.

Jason Calacanis 43:42 What do you got, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:44 Uh, I picked, uh, all things, uh, metaverse and-

David Friedberg 43:49 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:52 ... Web 3.0.

David Friedberg 43:52 And Web 3.0.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:53 Yeah, I did-

David Friedberg 43:54 And Web 3.0. Writ large.

Chamath Palihapitiya 43:55 I, if you guys were around in the emergence of Web 2.0, there was-

David Friedberg 44:00 Oh, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:00 ... there was a period when, where this gaggle of investors were just clamoring about Web 2.0. None of us understood what it is, and we were building it, it turned out.

Jason Calacanis 44:10 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 44:11 And so I think that, uh, these trends actually have names and those names are of companies, and those companies create experiences that people want. And so, I just think that this whole concept of metaverse and Web 3.0 goes away, and we replace it with real solutions for people that give them value, and then we'll be obsessed with these companies. And, uh, this, this too will be transitory.

David Friedberg 44:39 I went with the, uh, Constitution DAO. Um, while, while I believe, Jason, that the concept was inspiring and will echo for quite some time with other, um, you know, kind of improved, uh, versions, uh, and different applications, this particular DAO, uh, caused a lot of people to lose a lot of money in gas fees, transferring tokens over to cover the expense of the, uh, ultimate purchase that was not actually done. It felt a little disorganized. There was questions around equity and securities and the legality and misaligned expectations. And while I get that there was a good, um, intent and that folks that were involved in it were, uh, felt like it worked and, and it did what it was meant to do, which was to be inspiring, that particular DAO came and went in three days. Um, and I'm not, not, not to discredit the concept, and I think that more will come in the future, but it really was such a loud moment and then it went silent two days later.

Jason Calacanis 45:37 Yep. Okay. And I picked the woke socialist leadership of cities, uh, specifically the-

David Friedberg 45:43 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 45:43 ... once great city of, um, the once great city of San Francisco, where they thought they had figured it all out and that they would be able to run roughshod over the citizens of their own city. And lo and behold, when, um, uh, an investigative journalist was hired by myself, and, uh, Garry Tan did the Democratic recall, and Sax supported the Republican recall, lo and behold, London Breed has decided that she does not want to get recalled, and she is fed up with the bullshit in San Francisco. And Chesa Boudin and all of these whack jobs are all gonna get voted out and recalled. And we've seen it and it came up earlier in the program, so I don't have to beat a dead horse, uh, but these failed policies of letting people run amok and not having some base level of protection and not listening to your citizens-

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:31 They belong in a textbook and in a preschool.

Jason Calacanis 46:34 You could talk about them in graduate school, yes. This is great for a college dorm to talk about what would life be like as a communist, as a socialist. In the real world, people want to be safe when they take their kids to fucking school, period, end of story. And if people don't feel safe, you're not gonna get reelected. Game over.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:52 I also think that people have, uh, a reasonable right to have their kids educated and not-

Jason Calacanis 46:57 Yes.

Chamath Palihapitiya 46:57 ... managed to some watered-down, lowest common denominator so as to not, so as to-

Jason Calacanis 47:02 Mm-hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:02 ... try to make everybody around them feel better.

Jason Calacanis 47:05 Yeah, 100%. All right.

Jason Calacanis 47:08 I have a feeling that we're gonna, this is gonna sweep here. Best CEO? (drum roll) Should we just say three, two, one and say the name? (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:16 I'll go first. I'm gonna pick-

Jason Calacanis 47:17 Okay.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:17 ... Satya Nadella.

Jason Calacanis 47:18 Oh, well done.

Chamath Palihapitiya 47:20 And, uh, the reason I say that is that, you know, he, if you look at this track record, and I thought this business could not get any bigger, but it just is a compounding, absolute juggernaut and a machine. He has completely turned that company around. And from, you know, big, chunky acquisitions, he's unafraid to pull the trigger and rip the money in, LinkedIn, GitHub. This year, he did Nuance, the product portfolio. He, you know, we had to compete with him at Slack when he was, you know, he decided to turn the, the sights on, on, with Teams onto us. We had no choice but to basically sell to Salesforce. This guy is a master executor, has kept the entire company out of the press, has had the least amount of pushback around their growth and expansion, the least amount of lawsuits, the least amount of bad PR. So, just in terms of a, you know, first-class CEO, he, he's-

David Friedberg 48:18 Great pick.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:19 ... he's running a master class right now.

David Friedberg 48:20 He's crushed it.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:21 He's crushed it.

David Friedberg 48:21 He's crushed it at scale, totally.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:23 What can Brown do for you? That was a UPS logo and it's now-

David Friedberg 48:27 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:27 ... it's now what the shareholders-

Jason Calacanis 48:29 How you pick your CEO of your at-scale company.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:30 ... of, of Google, Microsoft-

Jason Calacanis 48:32 Twitter.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:33 ... Twitter, uh, Palo Alto Networks, uh, and Adobe-

Jason Calacanis 48:36 Alphabet?

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:36 ... have said. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 48:37 Okay then. What can Brown do for you? (laughs) Okay. Uh, so much for the curry ceiling. Uh, okay. Freeburg.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:43 We, we have smashed through the curry ceiling.

Jason Calacanis 48:46 Absolutely. (laughs) There is curry everywhere.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:48 Penetrated the samosa ceiling.

Jason Calacanis 48:50 There we go. Freeburg, who you got?

David Sacks 48:51 You're making me hungry.

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:52 Mm-hmm.

Jason Calacanis 48:53 I know. Gosh. We should actually-

Chamath Palihapitiya 48:55 I'm having, I'm having crab curry tonight. Can you believe it? I went fishing (beep) . I told you guys this. I went f- oh, bleep out the name. I went fishi- fishing with (beep) and, uh, we caught some crabs. And so we're having crab-

Jason Calacanis 49:05 Wait, where did you do that?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:05 ... curry in the Bay-

Jason Calacanis 49:06 In the Bay?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:06 ... San Francisco Bay. Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 49:07 Oh, did you go up to, like, Crissy Field and-

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:09 No, we go-

Jason Calacanis 49:10 ... went off the pier?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:10 We go to the pier and then-

Jason Calacanis 49:11 Yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:11 ... they take us out past Golden Gate Bridge to Point Reyes. We caught rock fish-

Jason Calacanis 49:16 Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:16 ... which we ate yesterday. Delicious.

Jason Calacanis 49:17 This is on a boat you did it?

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:19 On a boat, yeah.

Jason Calacanis 49:20 Oh, wow.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:20 Great, great captain. Um-

Jason Calacanis 49:22 Awesome. I wanted to-

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:23 Yeah, it's cool.

Jason Calacanis 49:24 I, I would take London, uh, my 12-year-old crabbing when I lived in San Francisco off of Crissy Field and we'd bring crabs home and all that. Uh, you can get these incredible, uh, crabs now.

Chamath Palihapitiya 49:33 Yeah, y- you can get a one-day sport license from the state of California. It's good for 10 fish and 10 crab.

Jason Calacanis 49:38 It's amazing. All right, uh, so who do you got? Freeberg. Best CEO.

David Friedberg 49:42 Well, I like, uh, I, I like the Jack and Elon, um, going direct, uh, experience this year. And what, and what I mean by that is, it's less about, like, how well did the business perform. I mean, so many tech company CEOs have performed so well this year, it's hard to pick someone, uh, for driving business outcomes. But what I liked about Jack and Elon, Jack in particular, in the last day, is, um, you know, having a voice and going direct and being inspiring. Um, I think that leadership is all about defining where you're headed and then creating religion in the troops to follow you to go there. And I think the way that both of these folks speak directly to people and the way that they speak authentically, um, and that they tell a big story about where they believe the world should go and why you should follow them to get there, um, you know, creates a model that a lot of other CEOs I think should and will start to follow. And I think we'll see a lot more of this kind of, like, Twitter-going-direct type of activity happening in the, in the years ahead.

Jason Calacanis 50:42 Sacks, what do you got? Best CEO.

David Sacks 50:44 I have Brian Armstrong because it was about this time-

Jason Calacanis 50:47 Ah, yes.

David Sacks 50:47 ... a year ago that he drew a line in the sand and said that he was not gonna allow politics in the workplace. It was gonna be a demilitarized zone for politics. It was pulling people off-mission. A y- And a year later, he rep- gave us an update. It's been the best thing they ever did. They gave a generous severance package to anyone who didn't go along with it. It was only 5% took it. They then went on to have a very successful IPO. Uh, it's now a $65 billion public company. And, um, a year later, they are more mission-focused. They've attracted more employees. Their diversity numbers have not gone down. And the reason I pick, I'm picking him is not just because of the business success, but I think there's a lot of CEOs, in fact, m- I'd say most CEOs, including some of the bigger names that we're all kinda talking about, are secretly would love to do what Brian did, they would love to basically ban politics in their workplace, but for whatever reason, they just don't have the cajones to do it. I applaud Brian for taking the hit of the New York Times hit piece that then came after him and to stick to his guns. He did this policy and I think Coinbase had a great year.

Jason Calacanis 51:53 Amazing choice. Wow. Three great choices. Satya, Jack, Armstrong. I think Elon clearly is, but I'm gonna pick somebody else so it's not, uh, all Elon all the time. I'm gonna go with Frank, uh, Slootman from, uh, Snowflake. This company has grown incredibly at a incredible velocity, but I just read his book. I got a pre, um, order of his book, pre, uh, pre-release of his book called Amp It Up! And I had him on This Week in Startups, which will come out in the new year when the book comes out. And, uh, he's a killer. He absolutely-

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:21 He seems like a killer. He seems like an absolute killer.

Jason Calacanis 52:23 And the book basically is, "I do not care about how you think business works. Here is the zero sum game of competitive business." And he writes 205 pages. It's a must-read. And he just wants to win. And, uh, so, uh, my, my hat's off to him. $100 billion company, uh, and, and they've absolutely crushed

Jason Calacanis 52:43 it. (drum roll) So, uh, best investor. Chamath, uh, are you gonna pick yourself for the third year in a row or do you have somebody else in mind?

David Friedberg 52:48 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:49 This one, this one I think is a, is an absolutely easy one, but it's my dear friend, Dan Loeb.

Jason Calacanis 52:55 Huh. Oh.

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:55 Founder and CIO.

Jason Calacanis 52:56 Dear friend? When did that happen?

Chamath Palihapitiya 52:58 Founder and CIO of Third Point. Uh, and of w-

Jason Calacanis 53:01 Good for him.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:02 ... of, of, as I've seen... I talked to him yesterday actually. I called him just to wish him a happy birthday. By the way, it's his birthday.

Jason Calacanis 53:08 Oh, happy birthday.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:11 But he has shown the widest range this year and really put everything together yet again kind of one of these virtuoso performances. Early stage success. So he was a, you know, early stage investor. I think they did the Series A in Centellum 1 that had a big IPO this year. Growth investing, he, you know, was a, was a great investor, uh, early investor in Rivian that went public this year. He had great public performance in Upstart and a bunch of other ones. Activism, he went after Shell. Crypto, I think he's an investor in FTX and a bunch of other things. I mean, just tonned it. And to be able to put together a team that can execute across all of those business lines and risk manage and then to where he still-

Jason Calacanis 53:57 Mm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 53:57 ... sizes, like, I'm telling you, like, it is so hard to size this stuff properly and get it right.

Jason Calacanis 54:02 Hmm.

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:03 He did an incredible job. And he's just a, a, a, a beautiful, lovely human being. So Dan Loeb.

Jason Calacanis 54:07 All right. We're mo- we're cooking with oil here. We're moving at a nice pace. I picked the Sequoia Fund, the new Evergreen, Sequoia and the Sequoia Fund, the new Evergreen Fund. Obviously over the past two years they've had DoorDash, Airbnb, Snowflake, Unity, all these incredible companies worth over $300 billion combined. And now those LPs get to keep their money in this one vehicle and, uh, I think it's gonna make Sequoia even more powerful, great innovation. Shout out to my friend Rulof. And I gave a runner up to Brad Gerstner, friend of the pod, um, who obviously did Snowflake, uh, last year, but, uh, had the Grab IPO this year, which I think was the largest back in history. Uh, and, uh, you know, I don't think it traded particularly well yet, uh, but, uh, congratulations to Brad as my runner up. Who do you got, Sacks?

David Sacks 54:49 Well, my first thought was Nancy Pelosi, but-

Jason Calacanis 54:52 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 54:53 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 54:53 ... she has a going on performance.

David Sacks 54:55 Yeah, I don't think it counts though if you do it through insider trading, so I had to rule her out.

Jason Calacanis 54:58 Gee, so... Okay, sure.

David Sacks 54:59 Um, so my-

Jason Calacanis 55:00 Fair enough. (laughs)

David Sacks 55:00 ... my actual choice (laughing) , my actual choice is Ken Griffin, the founder of Citadel. Um, he generated something like-... 10% returns on a $500 billion fund. I mean, just mammoth, mammoth amounts of money. But it wasn't just his economic retu- he's obviously a cash generating machine, but it wasn't just that, it was also the way that he came out on this whole, uh, Wall Street Bets, Robinhood scandal way back in January. Remember of the whole payment for order flow was a gigantic scandal with, with Robinhood, and he along with Vlad and others was hauled up to Capitol Hill, but they could not lay a glove on him. He demonstrated, I think in commanding testimony, that all these conspiracy theories around his role had no merit and the populous revolt around, uh, this whole, uh, payment for order flow Robinhood thing broke, uh, against the rock of Ken Griffin. Uh, he comes out as a huge winner, both economically and politically.

Jason Calacanis 56:00 And you left out the most important part, he was the super villain in buying the Constitution Dow- (laughs)

David Sacks 56:05 Yeah, and he got revenge.

Jason Calacanis 56:06 ... for one extra dollar. (laughs)

David Sacks 56:07 Yes, he got, he got revenge on the crypto people, that's right. He had the last laugh on, on that.

Jason Calacanis 56:10 (laughs) He, he, he got to duck on the crypto people.

David Sacks 56:11 That's right.

Jason Calacanis 56:12 Great, great financial troll. Friedberg, did we get yours yet? Best investor of 2021?

David Friedberg 56:17 I kinda stuck to private markets just because they're illiquid, which means it's harder to source.

Jason Calacanis 56:22 Good.

David Friedberg 56:23 Not everyone has the same data. Um-

Jason Calacanis 56:25 Love it.

David Friedberg 56:25 We all have different data and different points of view. So, um, within that I kinda said, "Look, what makes the best investor?" And number one is obviously good returns, you know, who's got the best returns? But second-

Jason Calacanis 56:34 Sure.

David Friedberg 56:34 ... is how scalable is your investing machine?

Jason Calacanis 56:36 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 56:37 And third is how durable is it? Like, does it get worse as you scale up?

Jason Calacanis 56:40 Okay, I know where you're going with this.

David Friedberg 56:42 Um, so, you know, I had three kind of finalists. One was Founders Fund, and I would argue they probably have the best cons- um, consistent returns in terms of the multiples on their funds. Uh, Tiger Global, which we talked about earlier-

Jason Calacanis 56:54 Mm-hmm.

David Friedberg 56:54 ... which I would argue is the most scalable and durable as we've seen, deploying-

Jason Calacanis 56:57 Okay.

David Friedberg 56:57 ... 15 billion this year. And then finally, Sequoia, which has near the best returns, scalable and durable with this new transition you talked about. And ultimately, Sequoia won out. So that's my-

Jason Calacanis 57:06 Okay.

David Friedberg 57:07 ... my tree of, of success.

Jason Calacanis 57:08 There you go. This is one of the first times we've had two of the same in the voting.

Jason Calacanis 57:12 This is incredible. Best turnaround. (drum roll) What do you got for best turnaround, Chamath? Best turnaround.

Chamath Palihapitiya 57:18 I picked Ford. Enormous performance this year, the stock's up 130 odd percent. Good portfolio mix of, uh, you know, gas guzzling cars that still make a ton of money, like the Ford F-150s, but you know, they have the Mustang, they have the electric versions of the Ford F-150s. They had some great investments. I think they printed like, a $20 billion gain on Rivian. So it's just a really, really good turnaround from what that company was, which was, if you talked any car company that, that could have been up 132% at the beginning of 2021, it would not have been Ford. So, uh, well done by that team.

Jason Calacanis 57:59 Who do you have, Sax?

David Friedberg 58:01 Are you an investor in Ford, Chamath?

Chamath Palihapitiya 58:03 Uh, no, no.

David Sacks 58:05 Th- so I went a little different for this. I said the best turnaround was Kyle Rittenhouse's reputation. Um-

Jason Calacanis 58:11 Oh, okay.

David Sacks 58:11 As you recall, uh, Rittenhouse shot three white attackers, including two of them were sex offenders, at a violent BLM protest in Kenosha. The media then painted him without any evidence as a white supremacist terrorist, who went there looking to shoot people like some sort of frustrated school shooter. It turned out not to be true, there was clear video evidence at the scene that he acted in self-defense. Once there was a jury t- trial, uh, all of this came out. He was acquitted on all charges, and the prosecution was revealed to be politically motivated. I would say that, um, Rittenhouse now has his freedom and he has his reputation back in the eyes of all fair observers.

Jason Calacanis 58:50 Who do you got, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 58:51 Well, I went from who was in the worst shape and, you know, came back from that, and I, I put WeWork on here, um-

Jason Calacanis 58:58 Great one.

David Friedberg 58:58 ... which is an obvi- an obvious and easy choice. WeWork to me is like Rocky Balboa. Um, you know, Rocky Balboa could not win the match. Rocky Balboa got so beat up, goes to the, you know, to his corner, he gets patched up, he's bleeding from his eye, he's bleeding from his nose, he's literally about to die. His coach gives him a little smack on the butt and says, "Get back out there," and he keeps going. He's not gonna win the match, um, but man, for WeWork to go from where it was a few years ago, which was days or weeks away from bankruptcy, billions of dollars of money injected by SoftBank, and for them to orchestrate, uh, basically this, this whole, you know, juggernaut into what looks like a business now, um, and get it public via a SPAC, and it now has enough capital and a good game plan and it looks like maybe a normal, you know, challenged technology business, um, was really quite a, uh, a turnaround. There was no one to sell this thing to, they had to get in there and they had to rework this whole thing, and they reworked WeWork, and Rocky Balboa is gonna make it to the 10th round. He may not win the match, but you know, he's still in it. It was pretty, pretty impressive to see them get it out this year.

Jason Calacanis 1:00:07 All right. Listen, I struggled with this one. I had two companies that I really wanted to highlight for two different reasons. One, uh, was Twitter, which had no product velocity, and people thought... and I'm taking out financial performance right now, I'm just looking at the product itself. Um, and my Lord have they, uh, increased their product velocity, releasing, uh, newsletters, audio spaces, um, and countless other features, and so I like them, but I actually think, uh, Disney, which was, and it hasn't performed well this year, but they had 44 million subs, um, they added 44 million paid subs this year, and, uh, people thought p- theme parks would be a problem, et cetera, and I think they're gonna have an absolute killer future. If Apple had not, uh, if it hadn't been for antitrust right now, I think Apple will be looking at buying Disney if they had had any way to get it through there, because the juggernaut it has been amazing.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:02 Sorry, what are they, what do they turn around exactly? Like, turnaround means it's crappy and then it's not crappy.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:07 Well, I didn't do stock price, but I think they had a major threat and a major question of could they actually create their own streaming platform, would it work?... uh, and getting out of the pandemic, could the parks rebound? The parks have rebounded.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:20 I see, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:20 And I, I think they're going to roll over Netflix. So, the sentiment was, like, "God, this stock, I don't know." Um, and they've really, I think, turned it around.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:01:28 Yeah, the stock's been a dog this year, but yeah, I understand.

Jason Calacanis 1:01:30 That's why I said, like, it's kinda hard to pick it, but I do think, like, if you look at the fundamentals of the business-

David Friedberg 1:01:35 Twitter's down this year too, right?

Jason Calacanis 1:01:37 ... I think that 118 is gonna go to 300 million, um, because-

David Friedberg 1:01:39 For Disney?

Jason Calacanis 1:01:40 ... they announced so much content from the Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney ecosystem that is coming this year and next year. Um, and it's goi- from Book of Boba Fett, Mandalorian, Obi-Wan Kenobi where, um, you know, uh, Hayden Christensen and, uh, the guy who played Obi-Wan Kenobi are coming back. Like, this library is going to have a ridiculous 2022.

David Friedberg 1:02:04 I like HBO Max more than Disney+. I mean, my kids watch a little Disney+, but they watch all the other streaming services too.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:10 Yeah.

David Friedberg 1:02:10 Uh, D- Disney+ doesn't seem to have a monopoly for me. HBO Max has such a depth of content, it's so freaking good.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:15 HBO Max is just killing it right now.

David Friedberg 1:02:16 When that Warner Media deal gets done, I think that's the juggernaut stock you wanna own. It's gonna have an incredible library to compete with Disney.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:23 Well, I mean, Succession and just like 10 other programs-

David Friedberg 1:02:26 Just library, man. They got, they have, so much in there.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:27 ... yeah.

David Friedberg 1:02:28 They're, they're releasing, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:29 The Wire, Sopranos, yeah.

David Friedberg 1:02:29 They're releasing The Matrix tomorrow on-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:31 Yes.

David Friedberg 1:02:31 ... HBO+, uh, like HBO Max, like-

Jason Calacanis 1:02:33 And they redid the Justice League, and it actually turned out to be good.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:34 Sorry, the new, the new, the new one?

David Friedberg 1:02:35 The new, new Matrix comes out on HBO Max tomorrow.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:37 Yes, day and date. Day, same day.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:39 I love that because I l- I love that they did that with Dune. I love Dune.

David Friedberg 1:02:42 Totally.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:42 Yeah. I didn't watch 3 yet, but I-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:43 Dune is an incredible movie.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:44 ... I'm in my movie theater right now, so I'm gonna watch it-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:02:46 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:02:46 ... in my movie theater

Jason Calacanis 1:02:47 this week. Okay, worst human being, I'm gonna go first. I'm gonna say Elizabeth Warren (drum roll) . Um, I think trying to raise money off of the back of the person who raised the most money for our taxes, from taxes, is just lame. If you haven't seen, she's attacking, um, Elon and Bezos in Facebook ads, trying to grift to get $10 while she's got 12 million in equities that she paid like $0 on, because that's how the tax system that she has operated under for decades works. Worst human being to me, Elizabeth Warren.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:03:20 Uh, I am going to pick Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, William "Rhody" Bryan, Roddy Bryan, and Derek Chauvin, four white men who, uh, killed, in two different incidents, uh, an unarmed Black man. They are scumbags, and they should go to jail, and they will for the rest of their lives. They are terrible human beings.

Jason Calacanis 1:03:43 Great job. Sax, who you got for worst human being?

David Sacks 1:03:46 Yeah, I've, I've got a name here. I don't know if, if the audience knows yet. It's, uh, a guy named Peter, uh, Daszak, who's a British zoologist. He's head of a group called the EcoHealth Alliance that received millions of dollars in, uh, NIH grants for gain-of-function research in bat viruses.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:04:02 Oh, sure (laughs) .

David Sacks 1:04:03 If, if that sounds familiar it's because some of that was given to the lab in Wuhan from which, uh, COVID likely leaked. Uh, but that by itself is not the r- the reason why he's my choice. He then became one of the leading s- uh, signers and organizers of a letter that was published in The Lancet in February of 2020, insisting with total certainty that the virus had made the leap from animals to humans rather than being, uh, rather than leaking from a lab. In fact, he basically painted anyone who had put forward the lab leak theory as a conspiracy theorist. Uh, he, you know, his influence made this s- so-called zoonotic theory the official narrative that could not be questioned online for well over a year, all the social networks then censored on that basis, and he never disclosed his obvious conflict of interest given that his millions of research was threatened if the lab leak theory were proven right. So, this, you know, this guy not only helped unleash a plague upon the world, he then lied about it to cover his ass and protect his millions. That makes him the worst in my view.

David Friedberg 1:05:07 If you're interested in hearing, um, a point of view on this, uh, Jamie Metzl did an interview with Lex Fridman on Lex's podcast. It's worth listening to. It's five hours long, but the, um, uh, the section where they talk about what Sax is sharing I think is around the one-hour mark. Um, and it's a, a really interesting narrative that Jamie shares about what this individual did, uh, during this period of time and why.

David Sacks 1:05:32 Does this support what I'm saying?

David Friedberg 1:05:33 Yes. Yes, okay-

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:35 He's not gonna listen, but now he feels smug with himself-

David Sacks 1:05:37 (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:05:38 (laughs)

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:05:38 ... so thanks.

Jason Calacanis 1:05:38 Oh, no, because Sax loves it.

David Sacks 1:05:39 No, my, my source, so-

Jason Calacanis 1:05:39 Lex Fridman's a genius.

David Sacks 1:05:41 Yeah, Lex is great. No, so, uh, my, my source for this has been the reporting of Glenn Greenwald, who, um-

David Friedberg 1:05:46 Yep.

David Sacks 1:05:46 ... did some, uh, pretty good research on, a great, I mean, sort of expose on the conflict of interest that was never disclosed. And it was on this basis that all the social networking sites then engaged in censorship. So, just a whole, you know, cluster of bad motives by-

David Friedberg 1:06:04 Yeah.

David Sacks 1:06:05 ... you know, people looking to cover their ass.

David Friedberg 1:06:08 But, I mean, it's, it's worth hearing Jamie's point of view on this, which is he tries to identify the motivation and the incentives that those people had when they made those cover-up decisions along the way. Um, and I think it's really worth everyone taking that in. That's what I really liked about Lex's podcast, uh, interview with Jamie, um, was, you know, none of these things come from a place of pure evil. Uh, they come from a place of incentive and motivation where these individuals think that they're doing the right thing for some reason, and, uh, and, and that's what motivated their behavior. But that's also why, uh, just to jump the gun here, I am not giving you a worst human being answer, uh, not a virtue signal. Uh, really, I just, I go back to this point that I don't think humans are, you know, intrinsically evil. I think that a lot of people make decisions for, uh, what they consider to be good reasons or the right reasons, or reasons that are, in their mind, altruistic, but ultimately have adverse consequences for another population.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:00 Mm-hmm. Not, not Derek Chauvin.

David Friedberg 1:07:01 Yeah. I would argue that in some cases people who are selfish, um, don't make it very far in life, and so they generally don't have that much of an impact in an evil way. There's very few people that are purely selfish and make it to scale. But, um, anyway, that's my-

Jason Calacanis 1:07:16 ... very esoteric response.

David Sacks 1:07:18 I think Friedberg raised a good point, which is, I think we can judge this not by people's internal motivations, 'cause we don't really know, but rather by the consequences of their choices.

David Friedberg 1:07:28 Right.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:28 Yeah, the outcome. Right.

David Sacks 1:07:28 The ad- the adverse consequences.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:30 Okay.

Jason Calacanis 1:07:31 So, uh, best meme? I'll go first. Uh, I love Daniel Craig's, uh, The Weekend, because I've been so exhausted from this year that when Friday rolls around, that's all I can think about, is Daniel Craig saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, The Weekend." He's just exacerbated and exhausted, as am I. My runner up was Anakin and Padme doing their conversation, you know, uh, for the better, right? And you can look that up online. It's a four-pane, it's one of those four-pane conversation ones. Uh, what do you got, Shamath? You have any best memes? It's the, uh, Bernie Sanders inauguration outfit.

David Sacks 1:08:06 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:08:07 Amazing.

David Friedberg 1:08:07 Yes.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:07 Always a great go-to. That was a good one. (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:08:10 His little- his little mittens and, you know, his- his detached-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:15 Totally. ... his detached communist glare.

David Friedberg 1:08:16 Totally. Forgot about that.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:17 Uh, yeah. Great meme. Great meme. Yeah. It's like he's at a sit-in at, like, uh, some college in Vermont.

David Friedberg 1:08:22 So funny.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:23 In- in Russia in the wintertime. Exactly. Exactly.

David Friedberg 1:08:25 It's like a little chipmunk.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:27 Yeah. All right, who do you got, Sax? You got a best meme?

David Sacks 1:08:29 The Ever Given, uh, forklift meme. This was that little forklift trying to push that gigantic barge out of the-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:37 Oh, yes.

David Sacks 1:08:37 ... what was it, the Suez Canal, and, uh, it got-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:40 That's a good one.

David Sacks 1:08:40 ... hilariously repurposed, and then, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:08:41 Wasn't that, like, 10 years ago? (laughs) That was this year?

David Sacks 1:08:43 I know. It was this year. Can you believe it? And a closer runner up was my fall plans versus the Delta variant.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:49 Oh, yeah.

David Sacks 1:08:49 Do you remember that one? That was a good one too.

Jason Calacanis 1:08:51 That was a great one. That was a good one. Friedberg, uh, yeah, I know you don't care about pop culture or consume much of it, but gi- give us your best meme. Friedberg, give him one.

David Friedberg 1:08:57 No, I don't, I- I don't have a meme. Sorry. (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:00 I do not have a meme upgrade. I have no sense of humor memes.

David Friedberg 1:09:03 I liked Shamath's meme. That was a good one. I'll take that one.

David Sacks 1:09:06 Swear jar?

Jason Calacanis 1:09:06 I enjoy your memes, but not enough... Okay, can we upgrade his meme subroutine?

David Friedberg 1:09:10 I love pop culture. This, the meme thing, I just don't, it doesn't resonate for me. It just doesn't sit-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:14 I love pop culture.

David Friedberg 1:09:15 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:15 I am a fan of pop culture.

David Friedberg 1:09:17 But the memes do not make sense to me.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:19 Madonna was my favorite. Ha ha, Pet Shop Boys were great. I have trouble processing imagery and text all at the same time. Uh, my subroutine is indexing all images. And GPT-3, I'm going to produce funny jokes. Ha ha ha ha.

David Friedberg 1:09:32 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:09:33 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:34 Ha ha ha ha. My laughing subroutine has been upgraded. Ha ha ha ha.

David Friedberg 1:09:39 (laughs)

David Sacks 1:09:40 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:41 (laughs) Sorry, it's too easy. Sorry, Alison.

David Friedberg 1:09:44 Most Loathsome Company.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:45 You have to live with him.

David Friedberg 1:09:46 Most-

Jason Calacanis 1:09:47 Most loathsome company. I don't-

David Friedberg 1:09:48 I don't think- I don't think Alison- I don't think she listens to this, by the way.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:50 No, my wife doesn't listen to it.

David Friedberg 1:09:51 No, go ahead.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:51 I was talking to my wife about Sweater Carri- whatever. She's like, "What are you talking about?"

David Friedberg 1:09:54 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:09:54 I'm like, "The pod that everybody listens to." None of our wives listen to this crap.

David Friedberg 1:09:58 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:09:58 Number 40 in the world.

David Friedberg 1:10:00 None of them do.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:00 None of them do.

David Friedberg 1:10:01 Okay, Most

David Friedberg 1:10:02 Loathsome Company. This one is an absolutely easy one, slam dunk. It is, uh, PG&E, who this year was charged with felonies and manslaughter in the death of four people because of the wildfires that they started because of their inability to maintain their power infrastructure throughout the state of California. Very rare that a for-profit corporation gets charged with felony murder and manslaughter, so, uh, I think that's a pretty easy one.

Jason Calacanis 1:10:31 What do you got, Friedberg?

David Friedberg 1:10:32 I think one day, the human race will look back and identify animal agriculture as, uh, worse than human slavery. Um, I- I do think that that will be a profound realization over the next century for our species and as such-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:48 Wait, wait, did you say worse than human slavery?

David Friedberg 1:10:51 I- I believe that- that's what we will realize, because the- the scale of death caused by animal agriculture-

Jason Calacanis 1:10:57 Okay. Oh, I understand now what you're saying. Got it.

David Friedberg 1:10:59 ... the- the birth to death cycle that these animals live in, in cages, with no ability to touch or interact with their families, uh-

Jason Calacanis 1:11:06 Wow.

David Friedberg 1:11:07 ... the hurt, the pain, it's extraordinary. And, uh, part of my work that I do day to day is to figure out ways that we can use science to replace animal agriculture. So, the, uh, penultimate kind of animal agriculture processor in the US is Tyson Foods. They are the most loathsome company to me. Um, and, uh, I stick by my- my answer.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:28 Can I- can I give you a counterpoint?

David Friedberg 1:11:29 Yeah.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:31 But it's delicious. It's a joke. Don't- (laughs)

David Friedberg 1:11:33 Oh, here we go.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:33 Don't... That's not cool.

David Sacks 1:11:35 (laughs)

Jason Calacanis 1:11:35 I mean, that was a spicy take, I mean, to-

David Friedberg 1:11:38 Yeah, that's a good one.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:38 ... take the human suffering of slavery and then equate it, but you added their murder- I mean, look, ho- honesty, Friedberg, like, if you- yeah, but the thing is, look.

David Friedberg 1:11:46 That's a- that was intense.

Jason Calacanis 1:11:46 You haven't e- you've never eaten any form of animal protein, so how do you know what you're missing? That's true, but he does know about cruelty. Um, yeah, I guess. I'm just saying- All right, I don't- I don't think there's any winners in this conversation at this point.

David Friedberg 1:12:00 Yeah, this is a longer pod. We could do this another time.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:02 Fried chicken is really delicious. Oh, man. So is a good steak. Okay, we gotta stop. I'm hungry. (laughs) Me either. Sax, did you have a, um... Besides Tyson Foods, uh, what do you, who do you got?

David Sacks 1:12:17 Okay, Most Loathsome Company-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:18 Twitter for censoring you and putting a label on your thing?

David Sacks 1:12:19 No, no.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:20 Is it Twitter?

David Sacks 1:12:20 The Most Loathsome Company, I had the New York Times.

Jason Calacanis 1:12:23 Oh, wow.

David Sacks 1:12:23 A new book came out this year in 2021-

Jason Calacanis 1:12:26 Oh, they're spicy.

David Sacks 1:12:27 ... called The Gray Lady Winked. Uh, the author, Ashley Ginsberg, details decades of misinformation and agenda-driven journalism published by the Times, starting in the 1930s, they had a Nazi sympathizer as their German correspondent. They covered up Stalin's genocide in Ukraine. They assisted Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba. They lied us into Vietnam and Iraq. They, and they perpetuated the Russian collusion hoax. M- more recently, the New York Times has gone all in on woke journalism and cancel culture, purging anyone from its ranks who commits a transgression against woke sensibilities. From, uh, Brian Armstrong to Kyle Rittenhouse, they've routinely smeared people as racist with no evidence to back it up. Remember, they are not a nonprofit, they are a corporation, and they have an agenda.... New York Times most loathsome company, in my view.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:13 And David, can I double down on this? I posted, Nick, maybe you can find this, but there was a, there was an article in the Washington Post that I put into the group chat, where the Washington Post article was effectively like, "Washington Post forced to revisit journalism practices because of falling click-through rates and lack of viewership." So, in a post-Trump era-

Jason Calacanis 1:13:29 Because of Trump, yeah.

Chamath Palihapitiya 1:13:30 ... yeah, post-Trump era, two years on, you know, they're, they're, the number of premium subscribers that WaPo has, has pretty materially changed, I guess. And so, you know, they're revisiting what