Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 1: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 1: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 1: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebek from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast.
Speaker 2: This week we are diving deep into some of the
Speaker 2: major geopolitical tensions of our time, including the ongoing tensions
Speaker 2: in the relationship between the US and China. One key
Speaker 2: driver of that stress Taiwan. We catch up with the
Speaker 2: author of The Struggle for Taiwan In just a moment.
Speaker 3: Meantime, Russian President Vladimir Putin visiting Chinese President Shijin Ping,
Speaker 3: underlining the vital importance of their relationship. As Beijing faces
Speaker 3: growing US pressure to curtail support that's helping Moscow continue
Speaker 3: its war in Ukraine, the two pledging to intensify cooperation
Speaker 3: against US containment of their countries. A new novel out
Speaker 3: takes us back to Moscow in the early nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: and to what might have been when it comes to
Speaker 3: Russia's historical path.
Speaker 2: And then there is the Middle East, which has played
Speaker 2: out in numerous protests on college campuses by pro Palestinian
Speaker 2: students and groups which have been largely shut down ahead
Speaker 2: of recent college graduation. Well, it got us thinking again
Speaker 2: about all the money in higher education, and so the
Speaker 2: author of Bankers in the Ivory Tower, the troubling rise
Speaker 2: of financiers and US higher education will be along shortly.
Speaker 3: All of that to come. We begin, though, with the
Speaker 3: US and China. This past week, JP Morgan CEO Jamie
Speaker 3: Diamond called for full and thoughtful engagement with the country
Speaker 3: as President Biden imposed sweeping tariffs on a range of
Speaker 3: Chinese imports.
Speaker 2: And then tim there's Taiwan. This past week, Reuters reporting
Speaker 2: US and Taiwan navies conducted joint drills in the Western
Speaker 2: Pacific and April, citing four unidentified people briefed on the matter,
Speaker 2: and this as China's military has ramped up its activities
Speaker 2: in and around Taiwan over the past few years. Also,
Speaker 2: a US delegation in Taiwan this weekend for the inauguration
Speaker 2: of Taiwan's next president, casting the visit as keeping with
Speaker 2: long standing practice in an effort to manage tensions between
Speaker 2: the self governing island and China.
Speaker 3: China, the US, Taiwan. As we like to say, it's complicated,
Speaker 3: and sometimes a history lesson is key in understanding the
Speaker 3: situation and what's at stake. Sulman Wassaf Khan is professor
Speaker 3: of History and International Relations at Tuff's University. His new
Speaker 3: book The Struggle for Taiwan, A History of America, China
Speaker 3: and the Island Caught Between.
Speaker 4: We're now at a point where there are large numbers
Speaker 4: of ships floating too close to one another, too many
Speaker 4: planes in the sky, and the US and China seemed
Speaker 4: to my mind to be one accident and a bad
Speaker 4: decision away from something that could go horribly, horribly wrong
Speaker 4: for all of us. And going through the history shows
Speaker 4: you both how we got here, but also that there
Speaker 4: were various ways out along the way, and there are
Speaker 4: moments that we can look to and learn from and
Speaker 4: that might help us better navigate the future.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting that you say that, and I do.
Speaker 2: I wonder it always feels so delicate, if you will,
Speaker 2: And I think about going back to when Nancy Pelosi
Speaker 2: what was it the summer of twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 2: took a visit she was then what us house speaker,
Speaker 2: and she went to visit Taipei. That was not a
Speaker 2: great situation, to say the least.
Speaker 4: It was not a great situation. And if you cast
Speaker 4: your mind back to that, you might remember who she Jin,
Speaker 4: who was the editor of a tabloid, saying her plane
Speaker 4: should be shot down, which was remarkable. It's not something
Speaker 4: that you would expect to be said, because usually Beijing
Speaker 4: has been quite good at controlling the level of vitriol
Speaker 4: that gets into propaganda. But you think about it, and
Speaker 4: then you cast your mind back to the heinan spyplane
Speaker 4: incident that kicked off George W. Bush's presidency, and you say,
Speaker 4: you know, a Chinese plane collided with an American plane.
Speaker 4: But we all managed to walk away from that alive.
Speaker 4: That was partly because there was an interest in both
Speaker 4: Beijing and in Washington and getting along and in not
Speaker 4: going to rule. When Belosi went to Taiwan, the thought
Speaker 4: that kept going through my mind was if this goes wrong,
Speaker 4: do we have that mutual commitment to getting out of
Speaker 4: it live still intact? And the answer seemed to be uncertain,
Speaker 4: which is not something you want to think about. When
Speaker 4: there are two great powers armed with nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting. I feel like we have that
Speaker 2: conversation a lot about you know, both of us, kind
Speaker 2: of whether it was the Middle East with Iran and Israel,
Speaker 2: about walking away and saying, wait a minute, the risks
Speaker 2: of moving forward are escalating. Are just it's too much
Speaker 2: that's at stake. But when you look at what's happening
Speaker 2: in Taiwan and the US and China, is that willingness
Speaker 2: to walk away and preserve some calmness if you will,
Speaker 2: Is that willingness kind of waning if you will.
Speaker 4: I think it's waxing and waning. To be honest, it
Speaker 4: depends in any given moment. It was heartening to see
Speaker 4: some commitments with both Joe Biden and reaching out to
Speaker 4: one another and saying can we walk away from this?
Speaker 4: It was heartening to an extent to see some recognition that,
Speaker 4: you know, while China might be a competitor, we don't
Speaker 4: want to go all the way into cataclysm. In some
Speaker 4: contact with Chinese officials to that effect. What was not heartening, however,
Speaker 4: was the fact that the waxing happened too. So you
Speaker 4: mentioned the terroriffs just now, you mentioned the drills, and
Speaker 4: it's an election year and in an election year, everybody
Speaker 4: advis to get tough on China. One of the things
Speaker 4: Donald Trump did was to forge a bipartisan consensus around
Speaker 4: the idea that we needed to get tough on China.
Speaker 4: And that's something that in an election year will lead
Speaker 4: to what, to my mind, amounts to a lot of
Speaker 4: fostering and a lot of dangerous bosturing, because the sensitivities
Speaker 4: in daging are such that you don't know when things
Speaker 4: will go wrong.
Speaker 2: Well as you know, getting tough, the United States getting
Speaker 2: tough on China right, maybe through tariffs, and then there's
Speaker 2: something different. I feel like when it comes to Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Is that fair to say that that is a whole
Speaker 2: other level in terms of what China, how it's used,
Speaker 2: high and the importance of it.
Speaker 4: I think it's certainly a whole other level to Beijing.
Speaker 4: I think Taiwan is one of those spots that hurt
Speaker 4: and that they felt they had a commitment from the
Speaker 4: United States to a one China principle that the United
Speaker 4: States still says we do not challenge that. But if
Speaker 4: you look at things like trying to bolster Taiwan's diplomatic partnerships,
Speaker 4: if you look at things like Belosi's visit to Taiwan
Speaker 4: and other senior lawmakers visits to Taiwan. You really do
Speaker 4: have to wonder, especially if you're sitting in Beijing, how
Speaker 4: committed is the United States to that principle that's being
Speaker 4: you know, in some ways at the core of the
Speaker 4: relationship between the two countries since Nixon and Kissinger went
Speaker 4: to China. If that is being challenged, it opens up
Speaker 4: a can of worms that's just far more sensitive than
Speaker 4: even a trade dispute would be.
Speaker 2: You know, it feels like with President g the one country,
Speaker 2: two systems policy that seem to work, it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like it does anymore.
Speaker 4: One country, two systems is a fascinating concept, and Dunshaping
Speaker 4: was actually the person who came up with it, right,
Speaker 4: And when Dun comes up with it, it's interesting he actually
Speaker 4: wants it to work like two systems. He's very explicit
Speaker 4: about saying, you know, when Hong Kong comes back under
Speaker 4: one country, two systems, I don't want to tamper with
Speaker 4: the second system. It's the goose that lays the golden eggs.
Speaker 4: Why would I change something that's working, And that actually
Speaker 4: starts off a huge debate in Taiwan at the time,
Speaker 4: maybe one country, two systems is the way to go.
Speaker 4: What changes under Xi Jinping, of course, is that the
Speaker 4: second system bit gets left out. Hong Kong, if you
Speaker 4: look at it today, is not a place that it
Speaker 4: was even ten years ago, even twenty years ago, when
Speaker 4: you could commemorate the Tianeman Square massacre, when you could
Speaker 4: criticize the government in Beijing, when you can do all
Speaker 4: sorts of things that you know mainland China proper, you
Speaker 4: probably could not have got away with. That's not the
Speaker 4: case anymore. So what Chijinping has demonstrated is that one country,
Speaker 4: two system items is a nice concept, but it can
Speaker 4: change with the people charged with implementing it. And if
Speaker 4: you're sitting in Taipei and you say, look, we worked
Speaker 4: really hard to get to a democracy where there have
Speaker 4: been peaceful transitions of power, one country, two systems doesn't
Speaker 4: look all that attractive anymore.
Speaker 2: Soman, How do we get here where Taiwan is caught
Speaker 2: between the United States and China and we know that
Speaker 2: it's a nation that Beijing covets, protects ownership. You see
Speaker 2: it very clearly, and yet as you note, it wasn't
Speaker 2: historically Chinese.
Speaker 4: Historically, it starts off being its own weird level waste
Speaker 4: station between East Asia and Southeast Asia in maritime terms,
Speaker 4: and then the Qing dynasty conquers China along with other
Speaker 4: parts of the world and conquerors Taiwan. That dynasty then
Speaker 4: loses Taiwan to the Japanese Empire in the War of
Speaker 4: eighteen ninety four to five, and Taiwan is seed it
Speaker 4: to Japan in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasts till the end of
Speaker 4: World War two, and the United States at the Cairo
Speaker 4: Declaration says that Taiwan is going to be restored to
Speaker 4: the Republic of China. Problem with that declaration being there's
Speaker 4: many different China's at the time, including of course the
Speaker 4: Communists and the civil war that erupts between the Communists
Speaker 4: and the nationalists that would be the Nationalists would be
Speaker 4: the Republic of China. Is one that the United States
Speaker 4: is not sure where it stands on. It wants to
Speaker 4: wash its hands of the nationalists, and when the Nationalists
Speaker 4: are eventually beaten back to the island of Taiwan, the
Speaker 4: betting money is sooner or later, this too is going
Speaker 4: to become part of the People's Republic of China. What
Speaker 4: the nationalists set up on Taiwan is a police state
Speaker 4: by the way, that has a whiff of settler colonialism
Speaker 4: to it, so there's not much sympathy for it. But
Speaker 4: when the Korean War breaks out, Truman sends the Seventh
Speaker 4: Fleet to the Taiwan straight and that begins the separation
Speaker 4: of the island from the government that is governing China.
Speaker 4: For much of the next few decades, the United States
Speaker 4: is going to be stopped trying to choose between two Chinas,
Speaker 4: and it's only when Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon decide
Speaker 4: to make peace with the PRC in nineteen seventy one
Speaker 4: that the United States once again has a modus of
Speaker 4: evende with Beijing. But that leaves the fate of Taiwan
Speaker 4: uncertain because for domestic reasons, the United States feels it
Speaker 4: cannot come to a definitive handing over, as it were,
Speaker 4: of Taiwan to the PRC. But the One China principle
Speaker 4: acknowledges that Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait
Speaker 4: maintained that there is but one China, that Taiwan is
Speaker 4: a part of China, that the United States does not
Speaker 4: dispute this formulation. That is more or less the situation
Speaker 4: that attains still normalization of relations between the United States
Speaker 4: and the PRC with Jimmy Carter overseas. But that normalization
Speaker 4: comes with the Taiwan Relations Act, which means that the
Speaker 4: President is supposed to think about the defense of Taiwan,
Speaker 4: that being in the interests of the United States, which
Speaker 4: of course has Beijing howling mad. But that is where
Speaker 4: we are, and as a result, Taiwan has maintained a
Speaker 4: separation from China to this date.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting, So you give that that history,
Speaker 2: and I feel like it's been a tortured relationship a
Speaker 2: little bit on the part of US and US politicians
Speaker 2: about what the US role is right in terms of
Speaker 2: protecting Taiwan.
Speaker 4: It remains a tortured relationship. You know, if you look
Speaker 4: at the Taiwan Relations Act and ask, how is this
Speaker 4: consistent with the one China principle, right, and so it
Speaker 4: doesn't look all that consistent, but one can talk one's
Speaker 4: way into thinking of it that way. If the United
Speaker 4: States remains committed to the defense of Taiwan at some level,
Speaker 4: that is saying we have an interest in what is
Speaker 4: happening here, and we're willing to tell China what to
Speaker 4: do about it. So to maintain that that is somehow
Speaker 4: consistent with the idea that Taiwan is part of China
Speaker 4: seems to me to be untenable. Why is the United
Speaker 4: States committed to this? I think there's a whole host
Speaker 4: of reasons. There is s partly credibility. One wants to
Speaker 4: show China one can be tough. There is domestic political consideration.
Speaker 4: One doesn't want to appear weak on China before one's constituents.
Speaker 4: And what has been created on that island is something
Speaker 4: that excites some sympathy.
Speaker 2: Well, what does Taiwan want and what's its own kind
Speaker 2: of independent thought in all of this? And I think
Speaker 2: about it especially We spent so much time, as you
Speaker 2: would imagine, talking about semiconductors, the importance of TSMC, how
Speaker 2: important it is to the world, the global world of semiconductors.
Speaker 2: But I do think about what does Taiwan want in
Speaker 2: all of this? What can it do independently if anything?
Speaker 4: So I think what Taiwan wants And you actually saw
Speaker 4: a consensus on this in the elections earlier this year.
Speaker 4: There doesn't seem to be any rush to unify with China.
Speaker 4: The three parties that were contesting the election, mainly we're
Speaker 4: all pretty much agreed on that there is a faction
Speaker 4: that wants to declare independence outright. What's weighing against that,
Speaker 4: of course, is if one declares independence outright, one is
Speaker 4: stuck with a situation where that might provoke China into
Speaker 4: destroying such independence to facto independence as exists at the
Speaker 4: moment right, and there's no guarantee that the United States
Speaker 4: would do the right thing there. One never knows what
Speaker 4: the United States will do or not do at a
Speaker 4: given moment. So I think if you asked what is
Speaker 4: the one thing most people in Taiwana agreed on, it
Speaker 4: would be we don't want to jeopardize what we have.
Speaker 4: How one goes about that as a separate thing. Does
Speaker 4: it come with a commitment to declaring independence? Maybe some
Speaker 4: point down the line, if one has prepared one's defenses
Speaker 4: to the point where they could withstand or at least
Speaker 4: cost China a lot if there were to be an assault.
Speaker 4: And one of the things that has sharpened this conversation
Speaker 4: in Taiwan is what happened in Ukraine. It looked like
Speaker 4: the reason the United States was willing to commit money
Speaker 4: to Ukraine and support to Ukraine was the fact that
Speaker 4: the Ukrainians, against quite a bit of the betting money,
Speaker 4: stood up for themselves. Would Taiwan be willing to do that?
Speaker 4: And one of the interesting things about studying the past
Speaker 4: and studying how wars break out in the past and
Speaker 4: what people do, is you never know till the last moment.
Speaker 4: There's an element of choice that comes into it. But
Speaker 4: it is a conversation that's being had over there, and
Speaker 4: it's a conversation that's being had with increasing intensity.
Speaker 2: Just thirty seconds, and I need you to be quick
Speaker 2: if I can, if I may the driver's seat. Who's
Speaker 2: in the driver's seat in this triangular relationship US, China
Speaker 2: or Taiwan.
Speaker 4: Nobody everybody has the illusion they're in the driver's seat,
Speaker 4: but they're all jostling for the steering wheel.
Speaker 2: That can cause issues, as we know. I hope we
Speaker 2: can continue this conversation in the future because I do
Speaker 2: feel like this is an important issue and you're absolutely
Speaker 2: right with what's going on in Russia Ukraine right now,
Speaker 2: very very topical and very very relevant. Congratulations on the
Speaker 2: book Suman Khan, Professor and Dennison Chair in History in
Speaker 2: International Relationships relations Excuse Me at Tufts University. His new
Speaker 2: book that is out, The Struggle for Taiwan, A History
Speaker 2: of America, China and the Island Caught Between.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast Catch Us
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Speaker 2: Russia's President Vladimir Putin in Beijing this past week, meeting
Speaker 2: with Chinese President Jijimping, publicly underlining their strong relations in
Speaker 2: a direct challenge to the United States. As Moscow presses
Speaker 2: forward with a new offensive in Ukraine. Putin's visit coming
Speaker 2: as Russia has become more economically dependent on China following
Speaker 2: Moscow's full scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
Speaker 3: A new book out takes us back to how Russia
Speaker 3: might have been more of an ally to the West
Speaker 3: and to the US. It's in a novel by Kevin Maney.
Speaker 3: He's the New York Times best selling author who was
Speaker 3: a journalist in Moscow. His work is one of fiction.
Speaker 3: It's called Red bottom Line and it was written thirty
Speaker 3: years ago.
Speaker 5: I actually was writing it when my daughter was first born,
Speaker 5: and so thirty some years later she starts asking me
Speaker 5: about it.
Speaker 6: She says, you know, you wrote that novel. Where is it?
Speaker 5: I'm going like, I wrote it at a floppy disc,
Speaker 5: I worked perfect, like I'm never gonna it. Turned out
Speaker 5: that I had a print out of it, and I
Speaker 5: pulled out the print out and I started reading it,
Speaker 5: and I'm going like, wait, this is actually pretty good
Speaker 5: with a little work.
Speaker 3: Why did it just collect dust on a floppy disc
Speaker 3: for thirty years?
Speaker 7: Though?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 3: What stopped you from pursuing?
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't know anything about the book business.
Speaker 5: I sent it to a couple of editors randomly, which
Speaker 5: was probably dumb.
Speaker 6: Didn't hear anything back, and I.
Speaker 5: Just kind of figured, well, you know, all right, never mind.
Speaker 5: You know, it's like, probably not that good. But then I,
Speaker 5: you know, I went on and started writing nonfiction books
Speaker 5: and had a lot of success. I have published nine
Speaker 5: nonfiction books, all about business and biographies and things like that.
Speaker 5: So when I returned to it, you know, I had
Speaker 5: of a path and more of a knowledge of like
Speaker 5: how to get this thing published.
Speaker 2: I think what's interesting is it takes us back to
Speaker 2: a different era, right And I know at your book
Speaker 2: party we talked a little bit about it and stuff.
Speaker 2: But you think about, you know, what our expectations were
Speaker 2: for a Russia moving forward or a Soviet or what
Speaker 2: the new Soviet Union or not, you know, the dissolution
Speaker 2: like they did their first presidential election. Like you just
Speaker 2: think about where it was and where it could have gone.
Speaker 5: Well, that was, you know, and when you read the
Speaker 5: if you read the novel, because it's you.
Speaker 6: Know, it's all real stuff that I experienced.
Speaker 5: I mean it's basically it's made up story based on
Speaker 5: real facts of what was happening.
Speaker 6: And there was this optimism. There was a sense.
Speaker 5: Among young people and there's you know, these young characters
Speaker 5: in the novel who are all into this idea of
Speaker 5: like creating businesses and you know, getting into private enterprise
Speaker 5: and you know, making contacts with Westerners, and and there
Speaker 5: was this incredible optimism that there was something new was
Speaker 5: going to arise out of.
Speaker 2: This and everybody felt that, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, everybody felt that.
Speaker 5: And you know, and us business people were starting to
Speaker 5: go over I you know, I ended up being present
Speaker 5: at the opening of the Moscow McDonald's.
Speaker 3: I was going to talk about that because that's like
Speaker 3: so iconic from that era, and it was also iconic
Speaker 3: two years ago around this time. We talked a lot
Speaker 3: about it because when McDonald's exited the country in the
Speaker 3: wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it brought back those
Speaker 3: images from the early nineties of people waiting in line
Speaker 3: to try the first big.
Speaker 6: Mac that's right, yeah, and it was.
Speaker 5: I mean, we forget about it now, but it was
Speaker 5: this incredible cultural, geopolitical event that McDonald's opened in Moscow,
Speaker 5: and there were like I think there were thirty eight
Speaker 5: thousand people that went the first day to that McDonald's
Speaker 5: because they were so hungry for.
Speaker 6: Not hungry for burgers, but hungry for like, you know,
Speaker 6: American stuff.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's funny. I have a conversation when
Speaker 2: I was with my husband and we just said, you
Speaker 2: know what, if we had decided rather than especially if
Speaker 2: you look at the tensions between US and China today,
Speaker 2: like if we decided, well, let's work with Russia and
Speaker 2: let's manufacture stuff there, Like just if we'd made as
Speaker 2: a as a world, as a you know, generally decided
Speaker 2: to work more with Russia going forward, Like you just
Speaker 2: wonder how things might have played out differently.
Speaker 5: Well, there wasn't the transition time. There wasn't enough time
Speaker 5: for enough stuff to happen because pretty quickly, and I
Speaker 5: experienced this because I wasn't living there, but I was
Speaker 5: traveling there frequently, right and from the late eighties to
Speaker 5: around nineteen ninety two, you could actually sense every trip
Speaker 5: that things were getting like more chaotic, more dangerous, more weird,
Speaker 5: because you know, there's this sort of transitions of the
Speaker 5: government from Gorbachev Yels and Yelsen was kind of a disaster.
Speaker 5: He wasn't really he started handing out whole industries to
Speaker 5: his friends, which is what the birth of the oligarchs was.
Speaker 5: Sort of mob activity was running half the economy, and
Speaker 5: so there was never a chance for this to really
Speaker 5: catch hold before the Russian society basically got sick of
Speaker 5: this and was welcoming somebody like Putin to come in
Speaker 5: and say I'm going to actually create some order out
Speaker 5: of this chaos, and then it just all kind of
Speaker 5: fell apart in terms of being able to connect with
Speaker 5: the West.
Speaker 3: What I think so notable about the novel is that
Speaker 3: it paints a picture of what could have been in
Speaker 3: Russia and what many people in the early nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: thought would actually happen. It's there collecting dust for thirty
Speaker 3: years before you go and publish it, and here you
Speaker 3: are publishing it, and it's the complete opposite of what
Speaker 3: ended up happening, as you just described, right, right, So
Speaker 3: what was the moment you think it went wrong?
Speaker 5: It was under the Elton administration, right, And you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, look, I never met Boris y Elson, but
Speaker 5: there's lots of reports about him. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: the guy was kind of a disaster as a leader,
Speaker 5: and it just let things sort of fall apart all
Speaker 5: around him. So what could have been set on a
Speaker 5: path of creating a more global, western facing country just
Speaker 5: got derailed. And then, you know when Putin wanted to
Speaker 5: take it in a completely different direction once he got
Speaker 5: a board. One of the points you were sort of
Speaker 5: alluding to here is that if I had sat down
Speaker 5: to write this novel today, trying to rely on my
Speaker 5: memory or my notes or something from I could never
Speaker 5: have captured all the details that I did, even like
Speaker 5: for me rereading it. One of the magical things about
Speaker 5: it is that I wrote it in the moment, so
Speaker 5: I was recalling like all these sort of very fresh,
Speaker 5: tiny little details about what life was like for individual
Speaker 5: Russians or for somebody who was trying to run a
Speaker 5: factory and trying to transition to capitalism and all these things.
Speaker 5: And because I was writing it while I was there,
Speaker 5: those are captured and then you know, all these years later,
Speaker 5: now I was just able to put a little bit
Speaker 5: more shine on them and make it, you know, a
Speaker 5: more holistic story.
Speaker 6: That worked better.
Speaker 2: What was that like when you picked it up again? Right,
Speaker 2: because you hadn't read it really in thirty years, there
Speaker 2: is and like to go back there and be like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, like, yeah, this is exactly what was
Speaker 2: going on.
Speaker 5: Well, what was fun for me was because I had
Speaker 5: I remember very little of it, so it was almost
Speaker 5: like I was reading it for the first time. I
Speaker 5: got I would who is this guy that wrote this?
Speaker 3: This thing is actually pretty good published?
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, right, It's like a window back into kind
Speaker 2: of exactly what you were experiencing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I wrote this little author's ode in the
Speaker 5: beginning that that you know, after before I thought of
Speaker 5: doing anything with it. I actually sent it to my daughter,
Speaker 5: and she is a she's a journalist and editor herself.
Speaker 5: So she reads it and she writes back to me
Speaker 5: and says, you know, Dad, this is really good, but
Speaker 5: like here, I've got like two pages of notes.
Speaker 6: That you can make it better. But one of the
Speaker 6: things I thought was funny that she pointed out was so.
Speaker 5: The like, especially the main character, there's kind of this
Speaker 5: nineties sort of you know, the characters from Friends kind
Speaker 5: of like language and snarkiness that are in the book
Speaker 5: that she said, like it is sort of inappropriate today, right,
Speaker 5: And like so if I were writing that book today,
Speaker 5: like it wouldn't even have that sort of.
Speaker 6: Language in it.
Speaker 3: But it's emblematic of the time.
Speaker 6: It was emblematic of the time, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like a time without iPhones and a time that
Speaker 3: people had to actually you know, make plans to meet
Speaker 3: in certain places.
Speaker 5: Right, and you know, make jokes about things that nobody
Speaker 5: would want to make jokes about it, for example, and
Speaker 5: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Right, give us some thoughts, as you've been a journalist,
Speaker 2: just thinking about kind of what's going on in the
Speaker 2: world and how democracy continues to be tested because we
Speaker 2: think every time a market seems to open up its
Speaker 2: arms to it, we think, okay, it's just going to continue.
Speaker 2: And it's not the case. It wasn't certainly in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, it hasn't really been in China. You mean,
Speaker 2: though a lot of Western companies moved in there and
Speaker 2: we thought it would be a different outcome.
Speaker 5: I think there's an interesting nuance to that. There was
Speaker 5: not so much about like this anticipation that Russia or
Speaker 5: China when you know, in this nineties and we're going
Speaker 5: to be democratic, But there was this anticipation that there
Speaker 5: was going to be a legal system, a rule of law,
Speaker 5: a set of rules that everybody could play by that
Speaker 5: was not the whims of a dictator or something like that.
Speaker 5: That's what's really important to businesses, more than more than
Speaker 5: the fact that the people are going to vote for
Speaker 5: their leaders. The fact that, you know the opposite of
Speaker 5: what's happening now in Russia or in China, you know,
Speaker 5: where she is sort of taking all these these sort
Speaker 5: of random actions of penalizing tech companies.
Speaker 6: And other you know, and there's an uncertainty, and that
Speaker 6: uncertainty is what the business business people don't want.
Speaker 5: You know less than the idea of purityocracy.
Speaker 2: Right, the rules change. It's funny that you say that,
Speaker 2: you know, Zekeer like having Chinese ev maker making its
Speaker 2: debut here in New York and IPO. It was a
Speaker 2: big deal here. But part of the questioning with the
Speaker 2: executive about okay, Chinese government involvement. And that's part of
Speaker 2: the problem right now, right like we just don't know
Speaker 2: as investors, and we've seen certainly investors pull back when
Speaker 2: it comes to China overall of just not knowing do
Speaker 2: the rules change, especially if you're investing in a business.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And and there was this, you know, in the
Speaker 5: in the moment when the book is said, there was
Speaker 5: this rush into into Russia by a lot of businesses
Speaker 5: McDonald's and Procter and Gamble. There was there was one
Speaker 5: of the emphasises for me going over in the first place,
Speaker 5: in fact, was there was you know, the Russian people
Speaker 5: had never seen much of anything of American products. And
Speaker 5: I learned about a convention that was going to happen
Speaker 5: where all these companies like Procter and Gamble and Unilever
Speaker 5: or whatever, We're going to show stuff like tooth based
Speaker 5: and deodorant and you know, an enormous convention center where
Speaker 5: there was all these you know, typical displays of all
Speaker 5: these little things, and there just mobs of Russian citizens
Speaker 5: coming in and just with bags and trying to grab
Speaker 5: everything that they could. But all those companies wanted to
Speaker 5: go in because they were anticipating that the economy is
Speaker 5: going to open up, there's going to be this hunger
Speaker 5: for Western may products, but also that there was going
Speaker 5: to emerge out of this, you know, the Gorbachev era,
Speaker 5: something that was more predictable and stable than you know,
Speaker 5: under the whims of the former Soviet premiers, that could
Speaker 5: just basically, you know, order anything to have happened.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 3: You know, you say you're not a political expert, You're
Speaker 3: more an expert in business. But I'm still going to
Speaker 3: ask you some questions about the politics, because you'll you
Speaker 3: absolutely understand of it all. We had it on the
Speaker 3: program a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 6: David E.
Speaker 3: Sanger from The New York Times. He's got a new
Speaker 3: book out called New Cold Wars China's Rise, Russia's invasion
Speaker 3: in America's struggle to defend the West, and he argues
Speaker 3: that the West didn't see coming post the collapse of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, what we see today busy fighting, you know,
Speaker 3: this war on terror, and in the meantime, China's has
Speaker 3: the Belton Road initiative around the world, and Russia is
Speaker 3: coming back with its plans for an empire once again.
Speaker 3: And I'm wondering if you see any similarities now in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four what we saw before the fall of
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, Like if there is sort of a
Speaker 3: new kind of axis forming right now between Russia and China.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean it seems like to me, like the
Speaker 5: opposite of what was happening back then, right, I mean,
Speaker 5: there was this there was this moment in time. It's
Speaker 5: so different now that we almost can't believe that it
Speaker 5: actually was happening.
Speaker 1: But the.
Speaker 5: In the if you grew up in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 5: there was this thing called the Iron Curtains, Yeah, which
Speaker 5: was impenetrable, right, it was you know, it was all
Speaker 5: those Eastern European countries, It was a Soviet Union. China
Speaker 5: was a closed nation essentially to the West. So there
Speaker 5: was this entire part of the world that wasn't even
Speaker 5: part of the global economy.
Speaker 3: But is that happening again?
Speaker 5: So well, that's what that seems to be working, were returning, Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's what there was this. Yeah, so there was this
Speaker 5: moment in time that was mostly contained in the nineteen
Speaker 5: nineties really between China and Russia and the Deng Jumping
Speaker 5: are era in China, when it seemed like all of
Speaker 5: that was this. I mean, this was the era when
Speaker 5: the idea of globalization was birth, because there was this
Speaker 5: moment in time when it seemed like the whole world
Speaker 5: was going to play together. And if the whole world
Speaker 5: was going to play together, then there was this prospect
Speaker 5: for a kind of global peace that was never possible before.
Speaker 6: And in the late nineteen nineties that was.
Speaker 5: Sort of the that was sort of where we were,
Speaker 5: and the economies around the world were absolutely booming, you know,
Speaker 5: and that was the whole dot com move in the US,
Speaker 5: and the markets were going crazy, and to me, what
Speaker 5: marked the end of that was nine to eleven. Suddenly
Speaker 5: it just was like this this wake up call that
Speaker 5: the world was not playing going to play together, and
Speaker 5: you know, and then we started to see things roll
Speaker 5: back in Russia and China through the two thousand and
Speaker 5: twenty tens and we are we've kind of moved back
Speaker 5: to that era when there was this entire part of
Speaker 5: the world that was operating separately from the rest of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's kind of fascinating. I do feel like,
Speaker 2: you know, some of the alliances. We've talked a lot
Speaker 2: about kind of the Middle East, and I'm lumping a
Speaker 2: lot in there, but just kind of the amount of
Speaker 2: money that's coming out of the Middle East and going
Speaker 2: into so many different areas, whether it's business, whether it's renewables,
Speaker 2: whether it's sports, and just that how countries, United States
Speaker 2: and others are picking when to look away because of
Speaker 2: the money involved or they needed the need for an alliance,
Speaker 2: versus when to say, wait a minute, something's not here.
Speaker 2: It's just it's an interesting time to say the least.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, And you know, the and there's another sort
Speaker 5: of sad thing about this.
Speaker 2: Too, is that it just got about forty seconds last.
Speaker 5: I rushed you because I I've always written about technology,
Speaker 5: and so one of the things I sought out in
Speaker 5: Moscow in the late eighties and early nineties were these
Speaker 5: little startups that were starting to bloom. And there were
Speaker 5: so many smart, incredibly talented software people in Russia at
Speaker 5: the time, and there was this seed of what could
Speaker 5: have been a global tech industry that came out of
Speaker 5: there that just got snuffed and either the smart people
Speaker 5: that had those ambitions came to the US and set
Speaker 5: up in Silicon Valley, which a lot of them did,
Speaker 5: or they just sort of disappeared and that never materialized.
Speaker 2: Right like what could have been right, very different. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much. This is what we were I was
Speaker 2: hoping we could do with you, so thank you so
Speaker 2: much for fantastic really appreciating this awesome Kevin Maney, we said,
Speaker 2: New Times best selling journalist and author his book Red
Speaker 2: bottom Line.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
Speaker 1: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern Town, Applecar Play,
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Speaker 2: The college graduation season is underway, Columbia University canceling its
Speaker 2: main commencement ceremony here in New York City, others pulling
Speaker 2: back as well, following the recent pro Palestinian protests on
Speaker 2: campuses around the country. That led to police arrests and
Speaker 2: a clampdown on protest activities.
Speaker 3: As part of the protest, students called for universities to
Speaker 3: pull back on investments linked to Israel, which once again
Speaker 3: brought to light the many rich endowments and their specific
Speaker 3: investments and their ties to various forms of Wall Street.
Speaker 2: Right, and those ties made us want to explore more.
Speaker 2: So we sat down with Charlie Eaton, Associate professor of
Speaker 2: sociology at University of California, merced. He is the author
Speaker 2: of Bankers in the Ivory Tower, The Troubling Rise Financiers
Speaker 2: in US higher education.
Speaker 10: You know, our wealthiest universities now have endowments that are
Speaker 10: valued in the tens of billions of dollars, and that
Speaker 10: connects them to every corner of the global economy. A
Speaker 10: lot of that is via hedge fund and private equity investments.
Speaker 10: The wealthiest endowments now invest more than sixty percent or
Speaker 10: sometimes even more than seventy percent of their endowments with
Speaker 10: private equity and hedge funds.
Speaker 3: I wonder how that's different now than versus the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: Because something that we've been talking a lot about, Professor,
Speaker 3: over the last few weeks has been what happened on
Speaker 3: Columbia's campus, for example, during the nineteen eighties when the
Speaker 3: students were protesting apartheid in South Africa. How is the
Speaker 3: relationship between money and education changed between then and now?
Speaker 10: If you go back to the eighties, very few of
Speaker 10: the endowments, even the wealthiest endowments, we're investing with private
Speaker 10: equity and hedge funds. It starts in the eighties, but
Speaker 10: over the last forty years those endowments have grown through
Speaker 10: those kinds of endowments by an average of ten percent
Speaker 10: average annual rate of return over the years, so that
Speaker 10: what the portfolio is invested in has really changed.
Speaker 2: What's most problematic about the relationship today? Is it just
Speaker 2: that it's heightened? Is it the amount of money involved?
Speaker 2: The financial entanglement? You know, over fifty billion at Harvard,
Speaker 2: forty at Yale, thirty four at Princeton, thirty four billion,
Speaker 2: thirty thirteen billion, almost fourteen billion at Columbia, twenty one
Speaker 2: at the University of Pennsylvania. Real money. These are big money.
Speaker 2: And you know when we inquire about them, you know,
Speaker 2: many say, well, this is what's required at an institution
Speaker 2: of this caliber, and this size if you will, to
Speaker 2: attract professors in the facilities. But I do wonder these
Speaker 2: are big numbers, and I just wonder how you know
Speaker 2: the amount of money that's involved this financial entanglement. What's
Speaker 2: most problematic about it in your view? And from the
Speaker 2: research and analysis that you've done.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's two sides of it.
Speaker 10: I mean, one is, you know, are the thing that
Speaker 10: endowments invest in are they consistent with the values of
Speaker 10: the university, So you know, questions like fossil fuel divestment
Speaker 10: have gotten at those kind of questions. But the other
Speaker 10: side of it is what are the universities use the
Speaker 10: funds for? And if you look at the largest head
Speaker 10: the largest university endowments, they've gone up tenfold since the
Speaker 10: nineteen seventies. Princeton's a good example because there's no law school,
Speaker 10: no business school there to complicate it. Their endowments up tenfold,
Speaker 10: but they still enroll a similar number of undergraduate students
Speaker 10: to what they enrolled in the seventies. And what that
Speaker 10: means is you go back to the seventies, they spend
Speaker 10: about ten thousand dollars per year per student from the
Speaker 10: endowment to support university activities. Today, they spend about one
Speaker 10: hundred thousand dollars per year per student from the endowment
Speaker 10: to support university activities. The question I ask is would
Speaker 10: Princeton still be a world class university if it enrolled
Speaker 10: twice as many students to serve more Americans for more
Speaker 10: walks of life and only spend fifty thousand dollars per
Speaker 10: year per student. So there's two sides of the question
Speaker 10: of how should endowments be managed and what should the
Speaker 10: funds be used for.
Speaker 3: I wonder about the demands that protesters are making today.
Speaker 3: There are lots of different protests happening or were happening
Speaker 3: on campuses around the country, but in some cases, like
Speaker 3: at Columbia for example, calling for the school to divest
Speaker 3: from companies that support the government of Israel or do
Speaker 3: business there, for example, I'm curious if that type of
Speaker 3: action would even be possible for an endowment given the
Speaker 3: complexity of endowments today.
Speaker 10: Well, you know, Brown University in Northwestern University have recently
Speaker 10: suggested they can. The example of fossil fuel divestment has
Speaker 10: suggested that you can do some pretty complex divestment. I
Speaker 10: I think we like to think of universities as innovative places.
Speaker 10: And we like to think of finances an innovative sector.
Speaker 10: That's a can do sector where we can use technology
Speaker 10: and use use innovation to be thoughtful about what we
Speaker 10: invest in. So, you know, at a certain level, I
Speaker 10: think there is a kind of can do thing if
Speaker 10: you get a little bit more brass tacks.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 10: One thing is that particularly smaller endowments invest more of
Speaker 10: their portfolio with index funds and other passive funds. And
Speaker 10: there's a growing community of passive fund managers that use ESG, Environmental,
Speaker 10: social and governance principles for managing endowment for managing investments,
Speaker 10: and they use screens. There's over three hundred such fund
Speaker 10: managers who screen out weapons manufacturers.
Speaker 8: For example.
Speaker 10: So you do have private sector finance partners who you
Speaker 10: can work with to do this, and I think that's
Speaker 10: why some universities have expressed some openness to looking at
Speaker 10: what can be done and what should be done. I
Speaker 10: think the harder question is what are your values and
Speaker 10: how should you apply your values to your investing. It's
Speaker 10: not the technical question of how to do it well.
Speaker 2: And I do wonder, you know, going back to those
Speaker 2: endowment size and the importance that these schools hold in
Speaker 2: terms of having relationships with big donors, major donors and
Speaker 2: making sure that they can maintain that endowment. But what
Speaker 2: does it do to kind of who has the power
Speaker 2: in an academic economy?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 10: No, absolutely, And you know, another issue that your question
Speaker 10: gets at is the issue of transparency. Endowments have a
Speaker 10: culture and an institutional history of operating in the dark.
Speaker 10: They're managed by a chief investment officer with oversight from
Speaker 10: a board of trustees, and they often work with private
Speaker 10: equity or hedge fund managers who themselves value secrecy because
Speaker 10: that's part of the business. You're trying to beat the market.
Speaker 10: You're trying to use private information and your own smarts
Speaker 10: to outsmart the marketing. You don't want people others to
Speaker 10: know what your strategy is. So I think opening up
Speaker 10: your endowments to invest according to other principles, being more
Speaker 10: inclusive to students and community members who want to have
Speaker 10: a say in the endowment, being managed according to their
Speaker 10: values requires a shift in transparency in some of these
Speaker 10: practices that aren't how endowment managers have been built historically.
Speaker 3: Should the endowments be taxed based on your view your
Speaker 3: research It.
Speaker 10: Depends on whether the endowment is being used sufficiently to
Speaker 10: serve enough students and students from all backgrounds. So if
Speaker 10: a university uses it endowment to enroll, to grow its
Speaker 10: enrollment to serve all communities, then it should be tax exempt.
Speaker 10: If not, then I think there's reason to tax the
Speaker 10: endowment so that we can supports to go where there's
Speaker 10: not as my resources.
Speaker 2: Is it tough to make sure that the right values
Speaker 2: are in place, especially when the board members are overwhelmingly,
Speaker 2: as you write about, drawn from the alumni who tend
Speaker 2: to donate most generously.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think it is tough.
Speaker 10: But universities are supposed to be places of innovation and ideas,
Speaker 10: and so I think reimagining the university and reimagining finance
Speaker 10: to be more inclusive and to give us say to
Speaker 10: our students and our community members is something that we're
Speaker 10: up to.
Speaker 3: Professor, appreciate you taking the time. That's Charlie Eaton, Associate
Speaker 3: Professor of Sociology at the University of California Mercett. He
Speaker 3: joins us from Merset today. He's the author of Bankers
Speaker 3: in the Ivory Tower, The Troubling Rise of Financiers in
Speaker 3: US Higher Education.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: Live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern. Listen
Speaker 1: on applecar Play and ed Broight Auto with a Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Business app, or want us Live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: I want this semity shade on the ball of broken dreams.
Speaker 2: All right, folks, sleep, sit down, grab something to drink,
Speaker 2: because this is a story of broken dreams. It's also
Speaker 2: a story that's among our most read on the Bloomberg Today.
Speaker 2: It's a story about I Am Academy, also known as
Speaker 2: the Harvard of Trading, that grew from a small New
Speaker 2: York operation into a global phenomenon during the pandemic by
Speaker 2: selling the promise that it could teach anyone, particularly teens
Speaker 2: and twenty somethings, how to become a savvy retail investors
Speaker 2: for a fee. Of course, it promised a lot, and
Speaker 2: many lost a lot. We know we not wanted to
Speaker 2: know more about this story, So with us as Bloomberg
Speaker 2: News Personal Finance reporter Alice Cantor. She's joining us from London,
Speaker 2: where we know it's a little bit later. So Alice,
Speaker 2: we so appreciate you hanging around to talk with us.
Speaker 2: This story, by the way, to be featured in the
Speaker 2: forthcoming issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. You can read
Speaker 2: it now on the Bloomberg and also find it at
Speaker 2: bloomberg dot com slash BusinessWeek. First of all, a story
Speaker 2: like this, Alice, how did you first come across it?
Speaker 11: Carol, Well, first things for having me on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so I it was in the midst of the
Speaker 12: pandemic actually, and I was looking at stories around financial
Speaker 12: crimes in France because at the time I was in Paris,
Speaker 12: and I saw this like small news website that did
Speaker 12: an investigation about iam Academy in France, and it was
Speaker 12: about all these teenagers who were getting really excited in
Speaker 12: the pandemic about making money from memes, talks and bitcoin.
Speaker 11: I'm sure you're familiar with that.
Speaker 12: And they had come across IAM Academy, this company that
Speaker 12: promised them that within a few months they could really
Speaker 12: become multimillionaires. They could earn a passive income if they
Speaker 12: just knew the right strategy to trade online.
Speaker 11: You know, they this company had the recipe for them.
Speaker 12: So yeah, I started digging into it and found out
Speaker 12: that France was just one of the many, many countries
Speaker 12: that this New York based company had expanded in and
Speaker 12: was making a lot of victims.
Speaker 2: Essentially, Well, I wouldn't how to get into the size
Speaker 2: and scope in terms of how many got impacted, but
Speaker 2: tell me, like how it works. I mean, I've kind
Speaker 2: of read through here, so I have an idea. But
Speaker 2: tell our world how this company worked. How it said, Okay,
Speaker 2: you're going to make money, and you know what was
Speaker 2: involved in terms of becoming a member and what you
Speaker 2: had to kind of give across. Could you have to
Speaker 2: pay a fee right to be a part of this?
Speaker 12: Yeah, So initially it worked like any subscription to an
Speaker 12: online product.
Speaker 11: It's like an online educational platform.
Speaker 12: So you paid two hundred and fifty dollars to join,
Speaker 12: and then you'd have to pay two hundred and fifty
Speaker 12: dollars every month to keep having access to this online platform.
Speaker 12: And on the platform, you'd get sort of pre recorded
Speaker 12: videos of I am so called I am educators that
Speaker 12: would teach you the basics of markets, you know, how
Speaker 12: do you make a stop loss, how do you figure
Speaker 12: out a difference in percentage points?
Speaker 11: And how do you take advantage of them?
Speaker 12: And then they also said, well they have this amazing
Speaker 12: algorithm that charts price of currencies and stocks and any
Speaker 12: financial product. And this algorithm can sort of tell you
Speaker 12: when a price is.
Speaker 11: Going to go up or going to go down.
Speaker 12: And so if you just pay the subscription, you'll have
Speaker 12: access to all that information and you can you can
Speaker 12: really quite quickly earn money by using that.
Speaker 11: Trading advice and learning how to read those graphs.
Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of folks in the financial
Speaker 2: community would be like, wait a minute, like what is
Speaker 2: this algorithm? And it almost sounds too good to be true?
Speaker 2: Tell us about that they targeted really a younger generation.
Speaker 2: How did they do that? I mean it sounds like,
Speaker 2: you know, I was looking through it, you know, it
Speaker 2: almost sounds like there were influencers on there about like,
Speaker 2: look at all the money you can you can make here.
Speaker 12: Absolutely so, at the end of the day, the software
Speaker 12: that they promoted, the algorithm doesn't work. It's very basic,
Speaker 12: it's not really predictive. But they really lured people in
Speaker 12: through the lifestyle that you could that you could have
Speaker 12: once you get those millions, And they did that on
Speaker 12: social media, and essentially the CEO of the company hired
Speaker 12: these really muscular, energetic salesmen that went on Instagram and
Speaker 12: showed their lives on a Dubai yacht or at a
Speaker 12: five star villa in Italy saying, look, I'm this rich,
Speaker 12: you know I'm You want to be like me?
Speaker 11: Well why don't you just join?
Speaker 8: I am?
Speaker 12: And this is the recipe for success eventually, So that's
Speaker 12: really how they attracted people that way.
Speaker 2: Who's behind it all? Tell us a bit about the
Speaker 2: company's CEO and how he did in all of this.
Speaker 12: Yes, so, Chris Terry is a man who was born
Speaker 12: in the Bronx and he started working construction. He had
Speaker 12: apparently the construction company had ties to a mob family
Speaker 12: and he had to pay a fine.
Speaker 11: He was like implicated in a criminal conspiracy.
Speaker 12: So that's where he started, and he likes to mention
Speaker 12: his mob background quite often. But then he went on
Speaker 12: too Amway and was a salesman's for another multi level
Speaker 12: marketing company. And then after that he tried to build
Speaker 12: a reputation of himself as a trader, saying he was
Speaker 12: managing hedge funds and he knew all about financial markets,
Speaker 12: but really he was never a financial broker. He has
Speaker 12: no financial real accreditation from any real US institution, and
Speaker 12: he's made very well for himself, so he's definitely a
Speaker 12: multi millionaire. I AM at its height in the pandemic
Speaker 12: was selling the equivalent of five hundred to six hundred
Speaker 12: million dollars in.
Speaker 11: Subscriptions for the year.
Speaker 12: And he flies around in his private jet and has
Speaker 12: a bunch of condos around the world in Dubai and
Speaker 12: Las Vegas in New York.
Speaker 11: So he's making a lot of money from all this.
Speaker 2: Tell us about I mean, so he made a lot
Speaker 2: of money, But tell us about some of the individuals
Speaker 2: who paid, who got a part of the platform, did
Speaker 2: some of the trading. Some of these young individuals some
Speaker 2: really sad stories in terms of what happened to them.
Speaker 2: They lost a lot.
Speaker 12: Yeah, So people would come in thinking I'm going to
Speaker 12: learn all about retail trading, make a lot of money,
Speaker 12: And what happens is not only do they pay the subscription,
Speaker 12: but often they start trading and kind of gambling their
Speaker 12: money away using strategies that don't work, so pretty quickly
Speaker 12: they'll have a lot of losses. But what i AM
Speaker 12: educators will tell them then is, well, there's this other
Speaker 12: side of the business. You can earn a commission if
Speaker 12: you sell subscriptions to other members. And so that's the
Speaker 12: multi level marketing aspect of it. And so where it
Speaker 12: gets a bit tricky and where people feel like they
Speaker 12: can't leave the company and they end up losing way
Speaker 12: more than just like a regular financial service, is that
Speaker 12: these teenagers end up really kind of being gas lit
Speaker 12: and a little bit sort of brainwashed into believing that,
Speaker 12: you know, it's their life's purpose to be in this company.
Speaker 12: They have to keep trying to recruit, they have to
Speaker 12: keep bringing more people. If they're failing, it's their fault.
Speaker 12: So there's this whole strategy to keep people involved, to
Speaker 12: keep people selling more subscriptions to others, even when they
Speaker 12: realize the trading lessons are really basic and not helpful
Speaker 12: at all.
Speaker 2: It does sound like h and I know you get
Speaker 2: into this. I mean, it's prime for regulators. It feels
Speaker 2: like to take a look, Alice, where are we on
Speaker 2: that front? Because it sounds like this, you know, has
Speaker 2: to be on their radar absolutely.
Speaker 12: So, I mean across Europe, a bunch of investigations are
Speaker 12: open at the moment, but nothing.
Speaker 11: Has really has really happened so far.
Speaker 12: And then the biggest investigation that's ongoing right now is
Speaker 12: by the FDC in the US that is looking.
Speaker 11: At IAM Academy.
Speaker 12: They're reviewing complaints, they're talking to the CEO, and well,
Speaker 12: it looks like there might there might be in discussions
Speaker 12: to kind of try to put an end to this
Speaker 12: company's activities.
Speaker 11: But to be.
Speaker 12: Honest with you, Carol, there's not that many regulations around
Speaker 12: multi level marketing companies or these kinds of financial education platforms,
Speaker 12: so they might just go on. They might just like
Speaker 12: filter through all these regulations that come come kind of
Speaker 12: they might pay a fine and just and just get
Speaker 12: on with their business.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do wonder on something like this. I mean,
Speaker 2: is it kind of eyes wide open if you're gonna
Speaker 2: pay money, like you have to kind of know what
Speaker 2: you're getting into. Or is it a case of is
Speaker 2: there a way of proving And I'm not saying there is,
Speaker 2: but you know, fraud of some sort in promising an
Speaker 2: algorithm that's going to kind of do everything, or do
Speaker 2: we all just kind of know that maybe if it
Speaker 2: sounds too good to be true, it's not going to
Speaker 2: be true.
Speaker 12: Well, yes, they can be liable for making false income claims,
Speaker 12: so early on they would have people on Instagram posting
Speaker 12: like pictures of their rolelexes and bills and saying, you know,
Speaker 12: I make ten grand a month in passive earning and
Speaker 12: passive income. So those kinds of figures can really put
Speaker 12: the company in difficulty because you're not allowed to make
Speaker 12: these claims unless you can back them up, and in
Speaker 12: this case they can't.
Speaker 11: So that's one area that's problematic.
Speaker 12: The other one is that they do They say they
Speaker 12: don't give financial advice, but really they kind of do,
Speaker 12: and they almost trade for the people that are part
Speaker 12: of the company. It's kind of tricky, but they usually
Speaker 12: just right like tell them which brokers to go with.
Speaker 12: Used to mirror trades automatically, so just like copy and
Speaker 12: paste trades from traders and give a challenge with the members.
Speaker 2: I have to ask you only got about thirty seconds,
Speaker 2: so just quickly. Company is still active, Yes, it.
Speaker 11: Is still active.
Speaker 12: I was just at a conference there in Budapest that
Speaker 12: they had a huge company rally a few months ago.
Speaker 12: So you're still active and doing well.
Speaker 2: I got to say, you paint such incredible pictures in
Speaker 2: this story. I feel like it's like a mini documentary
Speaker 2: just waiting to happen, but it sounds like the story
Speaker 2: still to be played out here, so we'll continue to
Speaker 2: follow any updates. I'm so glad we could get some
Speaker 2: time with you to kind of spell it out for us.
Speaker 2: As we said, it's among the most read stories on
Speaker 2: the Bloomberg Today. Alice Kanter, She's a Bloomberg News Personal
Speaker 2: finance reporter joining us from London.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
Speaker 1: each weekday starting at two pm Easter on Apple car
Speaker 1: Play and Android Auto with the blue Burg Business ad.
Speaker 1: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 1: flagship New York station Just Say Alexa, playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: Plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 2: of Bloomberg business Week, including the new Apple Plus mini
Speaker 2: series about the Black Panther being smuggled to Cuba under
Speaker 2: the guise of a fake Hollywood production. Yeah sounds like Argo,
Speaker 2: but it's not. We talked with the executive producer of
Speaker 2: The Big Cigar.
Speaker 3: Plus the Best Art Exhibitions in Venice. Why the cassette
Speaker 3: tape revival is a past? Yeah, I mean, my little brother,
Speaker 3: What uses cassette tapes. But you remember dating it's like this,
Speaker 3: he's cool. I guess I just remember dating guys like you.
Speaker 3: I have a cassette tape for you. Yeah, but that's
Speaker 3: because that's what comes because there was no Sidify then
Speaker 3: Carroll who had a Walkman.
Speaker 2: I had both Walkman's cassette and CD mixtapes. All right,
Speaker 2: so we've got Bloomberg Pursuits coming up first up this hour.
Speaker 2: You may have heard, the world's biggest sporting tournament is
Speaker 2: coming to North America in twenty twenty six, Soccer's FIFA
Speaker 2: World CU We played in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
Speaker 3: Overseeing the matches in Miami is the former CEO of
Speaker 3: Celebrity Cruises, Lisa lutov Perlo, who went from selling cruises
Speaker 3: at door to door to becoming CEO of the company.
Speaker 3: She wrote about all that in her book Making Waves
Speaker 3: of Woman's Rise to the Top using Smart's heart and courage,
Speaker 3: all of which she will likely use in her new
Speaker 3: job as CEO of World Cut Miami. Being asked to
Speaker 3: do the job initially, though, came as a bit of
Speaker 3: a surprise.
Speaker 13: One day, just out of the blue, I got a
Speaker 13: text from a woman that I know I met under
Speaker 13: different circumstances, and she texted me and said, got a
Speaker 13: minute and had no idea why she was asking that,
Speaker 13: and I said, for you.
Speaker 14: Of course. She called me and talked to.
Speaker 13: Me about this, and I wasn't sure that I really
Speaker 13: wanted to jump in.
Speaker 3: And what was there? What was the trepidation?
Speaker 13: You know, I was just stepping away after a crazy
Speaker 13: career and working really hard and being so busy, and
Speaker 13: I knew I wanted to do some things. I just
Speaker 13: wasn't sure I wanted to take on something so big
Speaker 13: and and something I really didn't know anything about, you know,
Speaker 13: men's soccer and the World Cup.
Speaker 14: But the more I talked to people, the more excited
Speaker 14: I got.
Speaker 13: And just like everything else I've done in my life
Speaker 13: and career, I said, what the heck, I'm a lifelong learner.
Speaker 14: I'll figure it out. And here I am.
Speaker 3: I was. I was going to say, it kind of
Speaker 3: sounds like your path to becoming CEO at Celebrity, which was,
Speaker 3: you know, taking advantage of the opportunities that I don't
Speaker 3: want to say we're given to you, but that you
Speaker 3: had earned. There was a reason people you were asking
Speaker 3: you to do these things going from you know, essentially
Speaker 3: a salesperson all the way up to CEO.
Speaker 8: Sure.
Speaker 13: And there was a reason that she reached out to me,
Speaker 13: and she because she was in a meeting. Here's the
Speaker 13: here's how the story went. She was in a meeting
Speaker 13: and she was she's representing a big stakeholder in the
Speaker 13: Miami Day Miami World Cup, and they were describing the
Speaker 13: attributes of the ideal CEO that they wanted to run it,
Speaker 13: and she said, every time they mentioned an attribute, which
Speaker 13: one of them was actually being a CEO, she said,
Speaker 13: my name kept popping into her head and she just
Speaker 13: had to reach out to me to do this. And
Speaker 13: as I've learned, as I've gone through this, I realized
Speaker 13: that understanding and knowing soccer isn't what they were looking for.
Speaker 13: They were looking for someone who ran a serious business,
Speaker 13: because this is a serious business. Someone who could bring
Speaker 13: communities together.
Speaker 14: And there's no more bringing of.
Speaker 13: Communities better than the cruise industry collaborating because we have
Speaker 13: to collaborate across many different cities and counties to pull
Speaker 13: this off, and running extraordinary events, which and guest experiences
Speaker 13: which I did, and also really challenging logistical issues that
Speaker 13: you have to deal with. And you know, we're going
Speaker 13: to have six one hundred thousand to a million visitors
Speaker 13: in South Florida during those five weeks. So those were
Speaker 13: all the reasons that I think I was some on
Speaker 13: their list and why they chose me.
Speaker 2: Well, wait, so how quickly did you say yes? After
Speaker 2: some like trepidation? Like, how quickly did you say yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm on it?
Speaker 14: It took me a little while.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 13: First of all, it was a long process, as you
Speaker 13: probably know, as these things go. The more people I
Speaker 13: talked to, though, the more excited I got about it. Listen,
Speaker 13: this is historic, this has never been done before. It's
Speaker 13: the biggest World Cup in the history of the World Cup.
Speaker 13: There are forty eight teams, one hundred and four matches,
Speaker 13: three different countries.
Speaker 14: This is big.
Speaker 13: You know, the world stops when the World Cup happens.
Speaker 13: I thought about all the people I was going to
Speaker 13: meet and all the opportunities that I was going to
Speaker 13: be a part of that are historic and that have
Speaker 13: never happened to me before.
Speaker 14: And it's a two year gig. So I'm like, all right,
Speaker 14: you can do this.
Speaker 13: You can sign up for this, and it has a
Speaker 13: beginning it has an end.
Speaker 2: So I'm in You're so real, and I got to
Speaker 2: ask you, did you, like, I don't know bingeon ted Lasso.
Speaker 2: Did you do a lot of googling online? Since this
Speaker 2: wasn't necessarily something you were so familiar with, what did
Speaker 2: you do to kind of be like, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: kind of cool.
Speaker 13: Well, first of all, Carol, I have binged on ted Lasso,
Speaker 13: probably we all three times for all three seasons, right,
Speaker 13: the greatest show ever, and so sure and listen, I'm
Speaker 13: in Miami. We've got messy, We've got backdam This is
Speaker 13: the soccer capital, the football capital of the United States.
Speaker 13: It's the gateway to Latin America. Miami is a sexy,
Speaker 13: wonderful city. Everyone wants to be here. So there were
Speaker 13: so many great things about it. It's not going to
Speaker 13: be easy, but nothing in my career has been. But
Speaker 13: I just thought about how cool and exciting this was
Speaker 13: going to be. And my husband is a huge soccer fan,
Speaker 13: loves soccer, loves the World Cup. And I worked with
Speaker 13: twenty thousand crew members from all over the world who
Speaker 13: all played football.
Speaker 14: That was their sport and that's what they loved.
Speaker 13: So I do have an affection for the sport, even
Speaker 13: though I don't know a lot about it.
Speaker 2: Well, and my understanding, you really kind of lay it
Speaker 2: out really well. Why you it doesn't make sense for
Speaker 2: you to be doing this. My understanding is that this
Speaker 2: is going to bring in more visitors in the Super Bowl.
Speaker 2: So it's a lot, right, I mean, this is just massive.
Speaker 2: We all know it. We've I've all I just remember
Speaker 2: when it's going on, like it doesn't matter what company
Speaker 2: you're at. There's like viewing rooms because everybody is watching it.
Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about like how you're
Speaker 2: thinking about how do you put your own spin on it,
Speaker 2: your own mark on it.
Speaker 13: Well, we're in the planning stages of that right now.
Speaker 13: So you know, I have two ambitions as the CEO
Speaker 13: of the FIFA twenty twenty six Miami World Cup. One
Speaker 13: is to be the envy of every other city in
Speaker 13: North America that's hosting these matches, and the other is
Speaker 13: to ensure that it performs financially, because you know, I
Speaker 13: want to surplus. I don't care if it's a dollar.
Speaker 13: And so we're in the planning process right now. Over
Speaker 13: the next like ninety days, we're going to put our
Speaker 13: plan together about, you know, what we need to raise
Speaker 13: and how we need to offset the costs. And I
Speaker 13: really want to think about what's going to attract companies
Speaker 13: to sponsor this. I will tell you every time that
Speaker 13: I am talking to someone and they say, so, what
Speaker 13: are you doing, and I mentioned what I'm doing, their
Speaker 13: eyes light up. Everybody wants to be a part of this.
Speaker 13: It's families, it's companies, it's employees, it's communities, it's everybody.
Speaker 14: Soccer is just you know, nineteen billion viewers.
Speaker 13: Now it's over a period of five weeks, but there
Speaker 13: are nineteen billion people watching all of these matches all
Speaker 13: over the world. When the World's Cup happens, one point
Speaker 13: five billion watched the Super Bowl.
Speaker 14: So this in order of magnitude is ginormous.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, and I'm just thinking about Tim and
Speaker 2: I are lucky enough that we've covered the US Open
Speaker 2: here in New York City and it's you know, yes,
Speaker 2: it's about the matches and the players, no doubt about it.
Speaker 2: But it is such a hospitality experience in terms of
Speaker 2: the food and the venues. And we've got about forty
Speaker 2: seconds then we'll come back. I can talk more. But
Speaker 2: is that are you thinking a lot about that. The
Speaker 2: you understand hospitality.
Speaker 14: Yeah, that was one of the big reasons they liked
Speaker 14: me for the role.
Speaker 13: And I do understand hospitality, and absolutely we are looking
Speaker 13: at every venue in Miami Dade County. We're looking at
Speaker 13: outside of the county because we're going to have to
Speaker 13: spread out with all those people, as you can imagine.
Speaker 14: But yeah, we're going.
Speaker 13: To We're going to figure out some fantastic events and
Speaker 13: hospitality for everyone, for sure.
Speaker 3: Do you think we should go down there Carol for
Speaker 3: the rematch?
Speaker 2: Lisa? I think make that part of like you.
Speaker 3: Know you broadcast, bring us down and we'll.
Speaker 2: Do a live broadcast along with everybody else who's going
Speaker 2: to be there.
Speaker 13: Well, you two are my favorites, so I'll figure if
Speaker 13: we can figure that out.
Speaker 14: For sure.
Speaker 2: Score it's official.
Speaker 3: I mean your home of New Jersey will be pulling
Speaker 3: you that way too for matches.
Speaker 14: Hey, listen, New York, New Jersey has.
Speaker 3: The final exactly, Lisa.
Speaker 2: One thing I wanted to ask you, and I was
Speaker 2: looking through in prep for this, there was an Instagram
Speaker 2: post and it reminded us that you are the first
Speaker 2: former CEO from outside the world of sports to lead
Speaker 2: a FIFA World Cup twenty sixth host committee. Do you
Speaker 2: feel pressure as a result of that?
Speaker 13: No different than I felt my entire career, Carol. It's
Speaker 13: you know, when it was when the announcement was made,
Speaker 13: the local announcement in the I think it was the
Speaker 13: Miami Herald, Yet was the Miami Herald.
Speaker 14: My husband took the page and he put it on
Speaker 14: my desk.
Speaker 13: And I took a photo of it and I posted
Speaker 13: on social media that day.
Speaker 14: And I have had so many.
Speaker 13: Opportunities to be covered by the press, whether it's business
Speaker 13: press like yours, lifestyle press, travel press, consumer press, magazines, newspapers,
Speaker 13: but I have never until now been headlined in the
Speaker 13: sports section.
Speaker 14: And I just thought that was hilarious that I've actually
Speaker 14: made the sports section.
Speaker 13: And yeah, you know, you always feel a little bit
Speaker 13: of pressure because you're doing something new and you're in
Speaker 13: unchartered waters.
Speaker 14: If you will pardon that bad cruise pun.
Speaker 13: But but I'm also invigorated and excited by it as well.
Speaker 2: Is there anybody you talk like you want to talk
Speaker 2: to or you have been talking to though leading up
Speaker 2: to this, When you think about sport events or just
Speaker 2: experience experiential you know, things for consumers overall.
Speaker 13: Well, one of the great things about this, just like
Speaker 13: other things that I've done in my career, is I'm
Speaker 13: surrounded by.
Speaker 14: A lot of different types of experience in that regard.
Speaker 13: So I have I'm working with a group of people
Speaker 13: that has Super Bowl experience. I'm working with some people
Speaker 13: that have Conka Calf experience, some people that have experienced
Speaker 13: working with FEFA, because that's also.
Speaker 14: Very new for all of us.
Speaker 13: And you know, I you know, the subtitle of my
Speaker 13: book is A Woman's Rise to the Top using.
Speaker 14: Smart's heart and courage.
Speaker 13: And I think part of being smart is surrounding yourself
Speaker 13: with people who have different and more experience than you
Speaker 13: do in certain ways. So they add a tremendous amount
Speaker 13: of value. And I hope that I in turn at
Speaker 13: a tremendous amount of value as well. So it's a
Speaker 13: good team. We all bring some good experience that we
Speaker 13: all need. So I think it's I think it's going
Speaker 13: to work out well, at least that's the intention for sure.
Speaker 3: Are you still building the team at this point?
Speaker 14: Yes, I am.
Speaker 13: We are small and mighty right now, and over time,
Speaker 13: you know, the event is in a couple of years
Speaker 13: but right now, between now and the first of June,
Speaker 13: I'd really like to get the core leadership team together.
Speaker 13: So there's a couple of pieces of that puzzle still
Speaker 13: left to go. And then and then we'll put our
Speaker 13: planning together and then we'll start adding the rest of
Speaker 13: the team in early five.
Speaker 2: Are you leaving me too? Are you yourself?
Speaker 3: I mean in the winter? Yeah, I could go down there.
Speaker 14: In the way you Yeah, private message for you too?
Speaker 3: Sounds good? Hey, so is it is it? Are is
Speaker 3: your boss? FIFA? Essentially?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 13: No, Well, listen, all of our boss I guess, all
Speaker 13: of our host city bosses FIFA. And you know, there
Speaker 13: are a lot of restrictions. There are a lot of
Speaker 13: things that we have to follow. There are a lot
Speaker 13: of FIFA rules. This is a FIFA event in the
Speaker 13: city of Miami, New York, New Jersey, Kansas City, Seattle,
Speaker 13: you know, all of the different cities. And we work
Speaker 13: very closely with PIFA, and they're getting to know the
Speaker 13: United States a little more and we're getting to know
Speaker 13: them a little more. The way we work here is
Speaker 13: quite different. In our experience here is quite different than
Speaker 13: a lot of these other countries that they work with
Speaker 13: and so we're all finding our way together to put
Speaker 13: on an extraordinary event in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so cool, no doubt about it. Hey, one thing
Speaker 2: I was thinking, and I think about this when I'm
Speaker 2: going somewhere, whether it was a Disney theme park, whether
Speaker 2: it was the US Open, or just a concert like
Speaker 2: this combination, this balance of willing to have a great experience,
Speaker 2: but you don't want to feel like you're constantly being
Speaker 2: faced with marketing and sponsors and everything screaming money. So
Speaker 2: I'm curious how you think about that balance, how important
Speaker 2: that is to you, or how you think about applying it.
Speaker 13: Well, Listen, every experience is going to have a branding component.
Speaker 13: That's just the way it is because these people are
Speaker 13: paying the bill. But you you know, it doesn't have
Speaker 13: to be obnoxious, it doesn't have to be in your face.
Speaker 13: And if you're providing a great experience and a brand
Speaker 13: is associated with that, then you only would hope that
Speaker 13: people would have a really strong and good and positive
Speaker 13: feeling about that brand.
Speaker 14: So that's always something that's a delicate balance.
Speaker 13: I always feel like if people are having a lot
Speaker 13: of fun then and they are joining the experience, you know,
Speaker 13: just like I said, in the cruise industry, then they're
Speaker 13: going to want to spend money and they're not going
Speaker 13: to be opposed to the fact that there's a company
Speaker 13: that's associated with the experience.
Speaker 14: That they're having.
Speaker 13: So we'll make sure that experience above all else, but
Speaker 13: that brands get the recognition they deserve for the investment
Speaker 13: that they're.
Speaker 14: Going to make.
Speaker 2: All right, I got to ask you any players, any
Speaker 2: fun players you've been able to talk to kind of
Speaker 2: like pick their brain about stuff.
Speaker 13: Not yet, but I can't wait to meet Lionel MESSI
Speaker 13: very very David Bedham and David Bedtham two great players
Speaker 13: right here in my backyard.
Speaker 2: I have to say. At Milkin, which was out on
Speaker 2: the West coast last week where we were doing our
Speaker 2: live broadcast, uh, there was a line constantly for the
Speaker 2: main ballroom, which was actually kind of far away, and
Speaker 2: one of the big lines was for David David Beckham,
Speaker 2: who was there making a presentation. So it was really
Speaker 2: really he was at Milkin. You know, it's that cross
Speaker 2: section of so much Ted Lasso. Their important word was believe.
Speaker 2: Do you have kind of a word that you keep
Speaker 2: in your head?
Speaker 3: What's going over your door?
Speaker 2: To your office exactly.
Speaker 14: Okay, well, funny enough, Carol and Tim.
Speaker 13: Over the door in my home office is a Ted
Speaker 13: Lasso belief sign. No, yes, yes, yes, And it's because
Speaker 13: I believe that I can do this and I believe
Speaker 13: it's going to be fantastic. And you know there's a saying,
Speaker 13: whether you think you can or can't, you're right and
Speaker 13: I believe I can.
Speaker 2: Well listen, We wish you good luck and looking forward
Speaker 2: to hearing the plans as they roll out, and just
Speaker 2: looking forward to what you are going to be doing
Speaker 2: for the next couple of years. I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you then what's next, but I feel like I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you a break and not go there, at
Speaker 2: least not yet, because you got a lot ahead of you.
Speaker 2: We believe in you and really fun to have you
Speaker 2: back with us. So good luck with everything, and look
Speaker 2: forward to continuing the conversation. Be well.
Speaker 14: Thank you, Thank you, Carol, thank you, Jim. Always great
Speaker 14: being with you.
Speaker 2: Shall all right, take care. Lisa lutav Parlo of course,
Speaker 2: as we said, former CEO of Celebrity Cruises, now the
Speaker 2: CEO of World Cup Miami. Just taking that over and
Speaker 2: of course check out her book fun read making waves
Speaker 2: of woman's rise to the top using Smart's heart and
Speaker 2: courage and really I feel like a determination that listen,
Speaker 2: I can do this.
Speaker 3: Just go believe. Believe that's all you need.
Speaker 2: Isn't that great?
Speaker 1: That is?
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 1: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 1: on Apple car Play and then brought auto with a
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business app just Live on YouTube.
Speaker 2: It's nineteen seventy four. A leading Black revolutionary is at
Speaker 2: a party also on Trent nationwide, manhunt by the FBI,
Speaker 2: he meets a powerful Hollywood producer. They decide to create
Speaker 2: a fake movie production. Not with the goal to create films, Nope,
Speaker 2: it's to hatch his escape plan to Cuba.
Speaker 3: It's all in a new mini series that debuted Friday
Speaker 3: on Apple TV Plus. It's called The Big Cigar and
Speaker 3: follows the true story of one of the founders of
Speaker 3: the Black Panther Party, Huey P.
Speaker 1: Newton.
Speaker 3: Behind the series executive producer Jim Hackt, also known for
Speaker 3: Winning Time, The Rise of the Lakers, Dynasty, and for
Speaker 3: working on the Ice Age movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah he's done a lot. Heck joined me and in
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Equities reporter Bailey Lipschultz and began by sharing
Speaker 2: how he brought his graduate thesis to streaming twenty five
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 7: This is what I always wanted to do. And so
Speaker 7: when Josh Barman, who is a friend of mine, stold
Speaker 7: the story that ultimately became Argo to Smokehouse to George
Speaker 7: Clooney Company, I was like, I have something similar.
Speaker 8: I think it's.
Speaker 7: Better, cooler, better characters, and he sort of took a
Speaker 7: look at what I had and agreed, and so that
Speaker 7: was two thousand and nine maybe, and then he started
Speaker 7: working on the article, and we couldn't find Bert Schneider,
Speaker 7: like he had produced all these movies Easy Writers, Last
Speaker 7: Picture Show, Five Easy Pieces, the Monkeys, and he had
Speaker 7: just sort of disappeared. His house had burned down, no
Speaker 7: one knew where to find. So we were about to
Speaker 7: give up. And then I used to write at night
Speaker 7: a lot. So I went to swingers one night at
Speaker 7: like three o'clock in the morning, and they were kicking
Speaker 7: out this older, unhoused gentleman with a walker, and he
Speaker 7: dropped money on the floor, and when I bet down to.
Speaker 8: Help him pick it up.
Speaker 7: I saw the eyes and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 7: you're Bert Schneider. And he was like, yes, tell them
Speaker 7: who I am, tell them what I did with chaplain and.
Speaker 8: We sat in a booth. He was living in a
Speaker 8: one motel next to Swingers Diner on Beverly.
Speaker 9: And so I've just always been fascinated with the decision
Speaker 9: making behind this. What made you not want to make
Speaker 9: it a movie? What led to landing on a short
Speaker 9: series versus a traditional film.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a great question. And we had originally approached
Speaker 7: it as a feature, but it was like there was
Speaker 7: so much more character and story that we wanted to tell,
Speaker 7: particularly the story of the panthers Hewey's backstory, and in
Speaker 7: a two hour format it just started to get crowded
Speaker 7: out by all the caper stuff. But in a longer
Speaker 7: format six hours, eight hours, we saw that we could
Speaker 7: sort of, I don't know if you've seen Escape from Ganamora,
Speaker 7: but sort of use the caper as a thin level
Speaker 7: of story at the top, and then use but most
Speaker 7: of it is about these people and these characters and
Speaker 7: their relationships. So it just seemed like a limited series
Speaker 7: was a better format to do that.
Speaker 2: We'll talk about the relationship though, between Bert Schneider and
Speaker 2: Huey Newton.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Bert saw Hughey and was like, you know, this
Speaker 7: is a guy who had discovered Jack Nicholson an easy rider,
Speaker 7: and he was famous for sort of supporting talent and
Speaker 7: letting them do what they wanted to do. He never
Speaker 7: went to set famously, and he saw Hughe He's like,
Speaker 7: that guy is a star. And he aggressively tried to
Speaker 7: seek out Hughey and try to get involved with the Panthers.
Speaker 7: He wanted to give them money. Healey was wary of
Speaker 7: him at first, but ultimately they did start to work
Speaker 7: together and Bert would you know, write checks for Panther
Speaker 7: programs and sort of stay out of the way like
Speaker 7: he did with his with his movie productions, and and
Speaker 7: and the friendship blossomed from there. They stayed, you know,
Speaker 7: friendship friends, very close friends until hue eyed Bert was
Speaker 7: in his wedding and yeah, it was it was a
Speaker 7: close person friendship.
Speaker 2: Well, tell us about the tale of and what just
Speaker 2: give us a little bit of a tease of what
Speaker 2: someone who watches The Big Cigar what they will see
Speaker 2: and what this story is all about.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's to me. The thing that's that's cool about it.
Speaker 7: It is a portrait, a nuanced I think portrait of
Speaker 7: a of a revolutionary and crisis, which is something that
Speaker 7: you don't see often. I don't like to do hey giography,
Speaker 7: Like I don't think it's helpful for people to see
Speaker 7: perfect people do incredible things. I think it's helpful to
Speaker 7: see people that have human issues like we all do,
Speaker 7: do incredible things, because then you can do something too.
Speaker 7: And he spent three years in solitary confinement, which we
Speaker 7: now know is a form of torture for shooting a
Speaker 7: police offic officer who shot him and he was The
Speaker 7: conviction was ultimately overturned. But he comes out of prison,
Speaker 7: he has all this probably PTSD. He's an instant international celebrity,
Speaker 7: which he wasn't when he went in, and the FBI
Speaker 7: is pursuing him twenty four to seven, basically trying to
Speaker 7: kill him. But you know, it's sort of a slow
Speaker 7: motion assassination attempt where they didn't just walk up to
Speaker 7: him and shoot him, but they tried to drive him insane.
Speaker 7: They pitted panthers against each other, they wrote fake letters
Speaker 7: between leaders and from letter you know, made phony phone
Speaker 7: calls from rival factions were going to get you. They
Speaker 7: bought the apartment next door. They would break in, you know,
Speaker 7: all the time and wake him up with a gun.
Speaker 8: In his face.
Speaker 7: They staged a shootout in the hallway of his apartment
Speaker 7: building to try to draw him out to shoot him.
Speaker 7: So it was just this constant, you know, like someone's
Speaker 7: trying to kill you, and it's the federal government with
Speaker 7: the full force and urchs of the FBI and Jaegerhuver
Speaker 7: personally targeting you. And they ultimately were able to charge
Speaker 7: him with this murder. And he'd become friends with Bert
Speaker 7: and with nowhere else to go, And that's part of
Speaker 7: the success of cointelpro. It cut him off of all
Speaker 7: of his allies in the movement and locally in Oakland,
Speaker 7: where he didn't know how to trust. He had a
Speaker 7: safe haven in Hollywood, and he fled there. They bulldozed
Speaker 7: the car and hit it and hit him out and
Speaker 7: ultimately hatched this plot of getting him to Cuba under
Speaker 7: the guise of making a movie. And they all had
Speaker 7: code names. You know, this guy's the producer, that guy's
Speaker 7: the director. Hueye is the package or the star and
Speaker 7: the story is about how the producer got the star
Speaker 7: to Big Cigar aka Cuba without landing in the pokey.
Speaker 7: But there's a shootout that was real in Canter's Deli.
Speaker 7: They hired a pilot to like somebody's drug dealer who
Speaker 7: was known for making runs to South America, to build
Speaker 7: an airstrip and fly him to Hughey. But the guy
Speaker 7: pocketed the money and tipped off the mob, who already
Speaker 7: had a hit out on Heey, So they came down
Speaker 7: to Hollywood and took a shot. They hired a boat,
Speaker 7: and I don't want to get into too much what happened.
Speaker 8: With the boat, but it will blow your mind when.
Speaker 7: You see it. But that's all true. You know, it's
Speaker 7: just a series of like any production, things went, especially
Speaker 7: when you're dealing with seventies Hollywood, things are going crazy.
Speaker 7: These guys are putting out fires and hewey at the
Speaker 7: same time dealing with He's ad what I loved about
Speaker 7: this race. He's at a crossroads in his life where
Speaker 7: he really has to re evaluate everything and get back
Speaker 7: on the beam because he had made a pivot from
Speaker 7: you know, you're used to seeing the black panthers. You
Speaker 7: look on Google, you're going to find a bunch of
Speaker 7: images of guys with guns.
Speaker 8: But which you don't see is that they were.
Speaker 7: Getting up at five a every day and feeding Oakland's
Speaker 7: school children in a program that's still in operation and
Speaker 7: feeds millions of kids. You don't see that they built
Speaker 7: housing and education and hospitals and ambulance serving service. They
Speaker 7: built a factory for clothes and food. And so that's
Speaker 7: what he had pivoted to, and that is why the
Speaker 7: FBI declared war on him, not because of the guns,
Speaker 7: but because he was doing these programs and they saw
Speaker 7: these programs could work and people were going to want change,
Speaker 7: and so they declared war on him before he could
Speaker 7: you know, usher in this revolution that he was talking about.
Speaker 7: They saw it was real and that he could do it,
Speaker 7: and they tried to break him.
Speaker 2: Before we move on, Jim, I do want to ask
Speaker 2: you on the Big Cigar and telling HM unit and story.
Speaker 2: I mean, why do you think it hasn't been done before?
Speaker 2: Like he's a really interesting, gosh individual.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I think there's like at least four
Speaker 7: hundred and fifty years of history.
Speaker 8: Beyond that question.
Speaker 9: Fair.
Speaker 8: I think it's it's hard breaking.
Speaker 7: You know that that there hasn't been a Hueton movie
Speaker 7: that you know, there's a lot more story to tell,
Speaker 7: and somebody should do the eight season Panthers, you know,
Speaker 7: Game of Thrones, gigantic epic series about about you know,
Speaker 7: everything that they did. I think it is, you know,
Speaker 7: it's hard to get stories around.
Speaker 8: People of color made. Then you have other dirty words
Speaker 8: like politics, and people don't want to do political and period,
Speaker 8: and you know it's just those are things that I
Speaker 8: think are turn off for people.
Speaker 2: That how hard was it for you to get this done?
Speaker 7: I've been working on this for twenty five years, Like
Speaker 7: I said, this was my thesis project at USC, so yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean it's been uh, you know, it all came
Speaker 7: out of a like a personal bottom for me where
Speaker 7: I had this conversation with myself which was like, you
Speaker 7: can no longer do stuff that you like anymore, just
Speaker 7: do stuff that you love, and you can't try to
Speaker 7: make shows that you think people want to watch anymore.
Speaker 7: You have to make the show that you would want
Speaker 7: to see. And that led to you know, I think
Speaker 7: it was the day after that self conversation that I
Speaker 7: found the book that became Winning Time and then people
Speaker 7: were like, what else do you want to do? And
Speaker 7: I was like, this, this is the story I want
Speaker 7: to do more than anything else.
Speaker 9: As you've mentioned, twenty five years in the making, you
Speaker 9: cast Andre Holland to play Hughey. What went into the
Speaker 9: casting process? Again, given the length of time it's taken
Speaker 9: you to get this across the finish line, and what's
Speaker 9: set out about Andrea?
Speaker 8: Well, that's it.
Speaker 7: I mean I thought that's the one person that should
Speaker 7: do this. Like I watched Andrea and the Nick that's
Speaker 7: I think that's the first time I really became.
Speaker 8: You know, aware of what he could do.
Speaker 7: And I think he's one of the greatest actors living today.
Speaker 7: I don't know anybody that I would say is better.
Speaker 7: I mean that, And not only was he I mean
Speaker 7: he is breathtaking in this role. He is incredible. And
Speaker 7: not only was he incredible on camera, but working with him,
Speaker 7: he fought tooth and nail to make sure we got
Speaker 7: it right, to make sure that the perspective stayed with Healey,
Speaker 7: to make sure that we didn't dip into any tropes.
Speaker 7: I mean, Andre was in the details and is just
Speaker 7: an incredible creative partner and an inspiring actor. To work
Speaker 7: with and we were blessed. So when his agent called
Speaker 7: and said, what about Andre Hewnt, I was like, you
Speaker 7: don't have to, Like, that's it, there's a list of
Speaker 7: one that's the guy I want.
Speaker 9: And Jim, I'm a big fan of nonfiction. When you're
Speaker 9: working with stories based in reality and you're trying to
Speaker 9: hold them up, you know, it's kind of like what
Speaker 9: we do with in journalism. How does that impact your
Speaker 9: ability to stick to a script and make sure that
Speaker 9: you're delivering what actually happened and not kind of fraying
Speaker 9: too far into reading between the lines or kind of
Speaker 9: implying what could or could have happened.
Speaker 8: And this one we.
Speaker 7: Felt more of a responsibility to stick as close to
Speaker 7: the truth as we absolutely could. In certain cases, we
Speaker 7: had to combine scenes just because of budget, basically because
Speaker 7: we wanted to portray certain things. We didn't want to
Speaker 7: lose them, and we wanted to you know, I think
Speaker 7: your guiding principle is stick to the capital T truth
Speaker 7: of the story that you're trying to tell and the
Speaker 7: characters that you're representing. There were a few things that
Speaker 7: I mean, I'll give you one example, like we had
Speaker 7: a bombing there's a bombing portrayed in one of the
Speaker 7: social programs, and I don't know that that went down
Speaker 7: that way, but it is reflective of the measures that
Speaker 7: people took at the time against the Panthers, like a
Speaker 7: rap Browns was bombed, Fred Hampton was shot in bed,
Speaker 7: you know, like.
Speaker 8: It is indicative of the kind of things that happened.
Speaker 7: And so we wanted to portray a that they that
Speaker 7: they were opening this thing, and b also get a
Speaker 7: part the measures that get across the measures that the
Speaker 7: FBI took against the Panthers and co Intel pro and
Speaker 7: that this was indicative of the kind of things that
Speaker 7: they did.
Speaker 2: What did you learn in the process. This is obviously
Speaker 2: someone that you like, As you said, did your thesis
Speaker 2: you knew a lot about obviously you know knew this
Speaker 2: subject the history, But what did you learn the process?
Speaker 7: Jim, Oh, my god, that is a great question. I mean, well,
Speaker 7: first of all, when I first became attracted to the story,
Speaker 7: I was sort of and this is an overshare for
Speaker 7: television radio, I was sort of in the midst of
Speaker 7: becoming an addict myself, and so I was attracted to
Speaker 7: certain elements of seventies Hollywood that I thought were heroic
Speaker 7: or really cool, and I got you know, I got
Speaker 7: sober in two thousand and one. So in the twenty
Speaker 7: two years that followed, my perspective on this story has
Speaker 7: shifted a lot, because I do think these are incredible
Speaker 7: people too, incredible people who were derailed by addiction and
Speaker 7: mental health not being the topic that it was in
Speaker 7: the early seventies, particularly for men. You can just kind of,
Speaker 7: you know, see the way that the insidiousness of addiction
Speaker 7: and mental illness sort of impact, you know, took away
Speaker 7: to great thinkers from our times.
Speaker 8: I also, I just think you don't know what you
Speaker 8: don't know.
Speaker 7: Like, you know, I came into this as someone who
Speaker 7: studied a lot of radical politics and just every day
Speaker 7: was a constant, you know, checking of yourself of what
Speaker 7: tropes are you bringing to this process? Like we're you know,
Speaker 7: how are you thinking about things? And I think when
Speaker 7: you're when you consider yourself as sort of like, for
Speaker 7: lack of a better word, liberal kind of a person,
Speaker 7: it's surprising at first to see how much is you know,
Speaker 7: of your own thinking is out of line and needs
Speaker 7: you know, a little bit.
Speaker 8: Of a step back.
Speaker 7: And and and fortunately I work with people that could
Speaker 7: explain things, Jimmy. You know, in a way, it was
Speaker 7: just a constant learning. Every day was a learning experience,
Speaker 7: and that's that's part of the great thing about this
Speaker 7: artistic process on this show is like I didn't even
Speaker 7: know how much it was going to be, like putting
Speaker 7: myself out there.
Speaker 8: People are going to see what you think when you
Speaker 8: pick up a pen and start writing.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's safe to say that the last
Speaker 2: few years and really coming off the pandemic, and just
Speaker 2: things that we continue to learn about our history as
Speaker 2: a nation and just people in general, like things that
Speaker 2: we just actually don't know a lot about. And so
Speaker 2: it's this and other things that really kind of help
Speaker 2: fill in some of the gaps and have these conversations
Speaker 2: like you've been having. It sounds like with yourself, Jim.
Speaker 2: So fun to get some time with you. Good luck
Speaker 2: with it, Jim Hecked, creator The Big Cigar. Catch It
Speaker 2: because it is making its debate debut on Friday on
Speaker 2: Apple TV Plus. Jim Take Care Jim joining us there
Speaker 2: in La.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
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Speaker 2: What to see at the BI Andala in vettics this
Speaker 2: year because sett tapes are back, Who Knew? And the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five Aston Martin advantage. I guess it's.
Speaker 3: Said you say it right?
Speaker 9: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Carol, Yes, I guess you can have.
Speaker 3: We'll catch you if you said you said it right,
Speaker 3: so we'll get you one of those vehicles. Hey, also
Speaker 3: tasting notes in stemlessses and no we're not talking about
Speaker 3: a vineyard but instead the Napa Valley of beer. It's
Speaker 3: all in this week's Pursuits here with more. The editor
Speaker 3: of Bloomberg Pursuits, Chris Rouser, Chris, that's exactly where I
Speaker 3: want to start, this idea that I knew it, you
Speaker 3: knew it. What I love about this story is it's
Speaker 3: all about taking sort of a wine approach to beer
Speaker 3: in this day and age, the idea of being at
Speaker 3: a vineyard but you're at a brewery.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 15: The original pitch for the story was the winification of beer,
Speaker 15: which is the idea being like you go to a
Speaker 15: place where terroir is much more present when you experience
Speaker 15: the beer. It's also a leisurely experienced so you go
Speaker 15: to a tasting room, you maybe have some food paired
Speaker 15: with it, you hang out all day. And in the
Speaker 15: Hudson Valley there are a bunch of breweries that are
Speaker 15: really taking the Napa Valley approach and creating this kind
Speaker 15: of environment. So you come, you're in a special place.
Speaker 15: You get to see where the plants grow, and you
Speaker 15: get to taste. You get to taste the stuff that's
Speaker 15: made on the land, and it just really gives you
Speaker 15: a full sense of the product. Many of us live
Speaker 15: in cities, so we think of a brewery as like
Speaker 15: a bar you know that you go to and has
Speaker 15: a million taps, and like a chalk board that has
Speaker 15: a million beers that you don't really understand what the
Speaker 15: difference between honey of the beers are. And then this
Speaker 15: is like you're there with the brewers, with the farmers,
Speaker 15: with the people who make it. You can look out
Speaker 15: over the field and see the apple orchards and the
Speaker 15: pear orchards that they use the fruit to mix in
Speaker 15: to the.
Speaker 2: Brew That's what I love how they're doing it right there, cherries, peaches, blueberries,
Speaker 2: honey from the beehives, I mean. And there was some
Speaker 2: interesting little law right or something.
Speaker 15: So this is happening in New York State. This is
Speaker 15: actually happening all over, but we're talking about New York State,
Speaker 15: which actually is sort of in the southern Hudson Valley.
Speaker 15: Is creating kind of a little bit of an informal tour,
Speaker 15: like a trail where you can go from brewery to
Speaker 15: brewery and people will recommend which one you go to next.
Speaker 15: You can spend a couple of days doing it. And
Speaker 15: the reason that this has been growing is because in
Speaker 15: twenty thirteen, the state passed legislation that allowed brewers to
Speaker 15: serve consumers directly, which means, like you were at the brewery,
Speaker 15: they serve you a beer, which they didn't used to
Speaker 15: be able to do. You think it's all you bottles,
Speaker 15: but they couldn't serve you. And if the ingredients for
Speaker 15: the beers were largely local by the year twenty nineteen,
Speaker 15: so the law passed in twenty thirteen, if you could
Speaker 15: get to more than sixty percent local ingredients by twenty nineteen,
Speaker 15: then you can start serving people. And so that's why
Speaker 15: people started building these tasting rooms and a lot of
Speaker 15: people did it. And it also influenced local ingredients and
Speaker 15: you know, growing stuff on your own farm.
Speaker 3: Who knew about these laws?
Speaker 2: You're at the beer dude, I yeah, like beer. How
Speaker 2: much do you experiment in like different Like I love
Speaker 2: the idea of like fruits and honey and all this
Speaker 2: different stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What I like about this is it's less about sort
Speaker 3: of the high alcohol IPAs that have been so popular
Speaker 3: for so many years and like just getting that bitterness there.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of variation here. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: think that's really cool. Like farmhouse ales, seasons like those
Speaker 3: are that's the good Stuffyle.
Speaker 15: And you know what's funny to me is I'm not
Speaker 15: a beer person, but I've learned a lot about beer
Speaker 15: over the past ten years and I just love that.
Speaker 15: Like when you when you taste like a peach inflected beer,
Speaker 15: it's because they literally threw peaches in that turn brewing.
Speaker 15: It's not like why more complex than it's not why
Speaker 15: where people? Yeah, it literally is they just threw a
Speaker 15: bunch of blueberries and or maple syrup, and that makes
Speaker 15: it really interesting and really fun and more accessible than
Speaker 15: wine in a lot of ways.
Speaker 3: Does it seem like this is taking off Chris the
Speaker 3: idea of creating this kind of Ale trail sort of
Speaker 3: similar to what we have in Napa Valley in California,
Speaker 3: or or maybe what we have in Kentucky. When it
Speaker 3: comes to the Bourbon.
Speaker 15: Trail, it isn't formalized yet, So this the state Tourism
Speaker 15: Agency does have like pamphlets that list about ninety breweries,
Speaker 15: but there isn't like a trail where you can check
Speaker 15: off where you've been. So our writer Tony Rehagen talked
Speaker 15: to brewers and they basically told him like, go here next,
Speaker 15: go here next, And that's how he found like his
Speaker 15: little route, and we put a map of it in
Speaker 15: the magazine season.
Speaker 3: So they're still a little choose your own adventure at
Speaker 3: this point.
Speaker 15: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 8: I love it.
Speaker 2: I just love the history and just the idea that
Speaker 2: this is kind of like growing up and it's just
Speaker 2: a few hours outside or city.
Speaker 3: Are you so, are you a beer person at all?
Speaker 2: Courl I grew up actually, you know, I mean my
Speaker 2: dad and my brothers and we liked Ale so absolutely,
Speaker 2: and you don't necessarily have to go to Venice to
Speaker 2: appreciate those I was.
Speaker 3: Gonna say, you don't have to be an artist to appreciate.
Speaker 2: Art, all right, better you one. Listen you guys, I
Speaker 2: love you. Take us everywhere and the very big art
Speaker 2: exhibition that happens in Venice. I know James Harmy loves
Speaker 2: to cover it and talk about it. Just give us
Speaker 2: an overview, just remind us of what this is all about,
Speaker 2: why it's important to the art world.
Speaker 15: So if you don't feel like sitting in a picnic
Speaker 15: bench in a field in upstate New York having a beer,
Speaker 15: you can go to Venice and go to a giant
Speaker 15: cathedral and see some absolutely new, cutting edge contemporary art.
Speaker 15: So this year is the year of the Venice Bionale,
Speaker 15: which is every two years. James calls it the most
Speaker 15: important event in contemporary art, and you know a lot
Speaker 15: of people regard.
Speaker 1: It that way.
Speaker 15: And it's technically a giant show every year that has
Speaker 15: you know, different themes and different curators, has three hundred
Speaker 15: and thirty one artists. That's the central show, which is
Speaker 15: called Foreigners everywhere this year, but then like thirty different
Speaker 15: countries have pavilions where they bring a mean like a
Speaker 15: primary artist who does a show. So the US artist
Speaker 15: this year is Jeffrey Gibson, who's an indigenous artist. There's
Speaker 15: these thirty pavilions, and then through the rest of the
Speaker 15: city there's just all these other ancillary installations and exhibits
Speaker 15: and it's way too much, honestly to see all of it.
Speaker 15: But James went during the early days, saw a bunch
Speaker 15: of it and basically picked out his favorite things to see.
Speaker 15: You know, it's very cool. You see these old palaces
Speaker 15: with tintorettos on the ceiling and then on the ground
Speaker 15: there's like a gold cube and you have to figure
Speaker 15: out what the art is, you know. So anyway, so
Speaker 15: James has a great list of stuff to see.
Speaker 4: While you're there, we gotta talk his sets.
Speaker 3: I want to talk to you about that well, Chris,
Speaker 3: when you and I were youngsters, because we're about the
Speaker 3: same vintage, we made mixtapes.
Speaker 15: I'm guessing, oh, yes, I still have many of them.
Speaker 15: I don't have a player.
Speaker 3: That's exactly what I was gonna say. And then a
Speaker 3: few years ago my brother who's like he's I guess
Speaker 3: he's considered like a young millennial. H he started having
Speaker 3: cassettes of like bands in his car. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 3: he drove me around. I was like, what what are
Speaker 3: Why do you have tapes here? Like, oh, everybody's releasing
Speaker 3: tapes now?
Speaker 15: Does he have a pencil to rewind?
Speaker 3: I have no idea. So he's doing He was like
Speaker 3: born ahead, like he was born after tapes were a thing.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so artists are still making tapes, like record labels
Speaker 15: still make tapes. So when Taylor Swift released The Tortured Poets,
Speaker 15: Department heard of it. Yeah, she they sold one point
Speaker 15: six million physical units, so that's records, CDs, and cassette tapes.
Speaker 15: She sold twenty one thousand cassette tapes, which is nothing
Speaker 15: compared to the seven hundred and fifty thousand CDs she sold,
Speaker 15: but that's a lot the twenty one thousand kids Taylor
Speaker 15: Swift fans bought cassette.
Speaker 3: So why are they doing this?
Speaker 15: Because people really like owning a physical part of the
Speaker 15: artist's project. And you know, vinyl has been back for
Speaker 15: a long time. You know, records store owners were not
Speaker 15: surprised that Vinyl came back because people loved it so
Speaker 15: much and they weren't even really surprised that cassettes came
Speaker 15: back because it's portable and it's less expensive. A vinyl
Speaker 15: album can cost like thirty bucks, a cassette tape can
Speaker 15: cost you less than ten dollars. But you feel like
Speaker 15: you're carrying around a piece of your artist. And what's
Speaker 15: been surprising to these records store owners is that it's
Speaker 15: young people that are buying. Is not like geriatric millennials
Speaker 15: like who used to run around with our Sony Walkman,
Speaker 15: but actually kids who are just like I just you know,
Speaker 15: it's sort of a secondhand nostalgia and they want to
Speaker 15: be a part of the project.
Speaker 3: What are they playing them on? Good questions?
Speaker 15: A really good question. So this story that we do
Speaker 15: by Matt Cronsberg, who's our gadget guy, we talk about
Speaker 15: three of the devices. So there's the We Are Rewind player,
Speaker 15: which actually has Bluetooth headphones, so it's a little like
Speaker 15: digital analog, but it has an input jack so you
Speaker 15: can record mixtapes like we used to do, and it
Speaker 15: even comes with a little pencil to sort of try
Speaker 15: to fix your tape if you screw it up. There's
Speaker 15: a Japanese company file that makes a CP thirteen and
Speaker 15: then Retrospect, which is a vintage e company that we've
Speaker 15: covered before. They make vintage like cameras and stuff and
Speaker 15: tape players. They have a CP eighty one which is
Speaker 15: also which has like vintage g headphones and it also
Speaker 15: you can record on it, so there's a lot of
Speaker 15: devices and they're like in the one hundred dollars range.
Speaker 3: I liked that it comes with a pencil as if
Speaker 3: you know, it anticipates that there will be issues. Yes,
Speaker 3: maybe not if, but when yes.
Speaker 2: There's always going to be an issue, just quickly. The
Speaker 2: Vantage that Hannah Elliott Aston Martin reviewed.
Speaker 15: Liked it, but it was great, but sometimes great is
Speaker 15: not good enough. So this, the Issen Martin Vantage is
Speaker 15: inarguably like a really great car. It's a coop, it's
Speaker 15: one hundred and ninety one thousand dollars, it's very powerful,
Speaker 15: very fast. But Astin Martin really needs is not doing
Speaker 15: great and this, Hannah is great at looking at this
Speaker 15: kind of stuff, like they've been having trouble over the
Speaker 15: past few years, and what they really need is a
Speaker 15: product that will beat like Porsche and Mercedes that their
Speaker 15: cars are in the same class, like the nine to
Speaker 15: eleven turbo and this one just is not it and.
Speaker 6: You could feel it.
Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah, it was like her key jerking around like
Speaker 15: she felt like it was. It doesn't have real, real steering.
Speaker 15: She felt like it was like figure skating with a
Speaker 15: heavy backpack, which is so evocative. I was like, I know,
Speaker 15: I've never done that, but I know exactly what you mean.
Speaker 4: Not great, not great.
Speaker 3: We gotta talk sunglasses. Okay, because it's spring, it's going
Speaker 3: to be summer soon. But apparently there's like a new
Speaker 3: style of sunglasses thanks to what some pretty famous actors
Speaker 3: wore on the red carpet.
Speaker 15: Yeah, so the new trend in sunglasses is sunglasses where
Speaker 15: you can see the eyes through the sunglasses, so not
Speaker 15: so tinted that you can't see through.
Speaker 2: Behind the dark. Well, I also like, especially if.
Speaker 15: I feel tired, like today, I love wearing the sunglasses.
Speaker 15: But I'm totally face blind when people wear sunglasses. I
Speaker 15: will not recognize my best friend Carol as she's walking
Speaker 15: down the street if she's wearing sunglasses.
Speaker 6: This is true, So I do appreciate it.
Speaker 15: Fazing, right, So we have the one this week is
Speaker 15: a pair of sunglasses. They're not cheap, they're eight hundred
Speaker 15: and twenty dollars some classes, and they come from a
Speaker 15: brand called Jack Marie Majet and they're called the Sandro Lenses.
Speaker 3: Can I tell a story real quick? Chris really is
Speaker 3: face blind? When I was on parnal leave, no, I
Speaker 3: actually became close friends with one of his good friends,
Speaker 3: unbeknownst to Chris, and we sent Chris a photo of
Speaker 3: the two of us, and I was wearing contacts and
Speaker 3: I usually wear glasses, but I was wearing contacts. And
Speaker 3: Chris texted back to our mutual friend Grid picture. But
Speaker 3: who is that?
Speaker 15: I said, am I supposed to know who that man is?
Speaker 3: And it was me and Chris and I've worked together
Speaker 3: for years. I was like, and I just told this guy, hey,
Speaker 3: oh I love Chris.
Speaker 2: We record every week.
Speaker 3: And then I looked like an idiot because so Chris
Speaker 3: really is face blind?
Speaker 1: I am.
Speaker 15: I thought maybe he was. I literally was like, I
Speaker 15: thought he might be like a professional athlete.
Speaker 6: But you were.
Speaker 15: Excited to be standing next to Thank you.
Speaker 3: I take that as a compliment, all right.
Speaker 2: Well said, Well said, I'm glad we did that story,
Speaker 2: all right, Chris, thank you so much, really appreciate it.
Speaker 9: You guys.
Speaker 3: That's the editor of Bloomberg Pursuits. Also, can I say
Speaker 3: this like our favorite dude around, Chris.
Speaker 2: Rous, You can yeah, like we look forward to this.
Speaker 3: You have no idea.
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