WEBVTT - Our Year in Review 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.200 Welcome to Crash Course, a podcast about business, political, and 0:00:05.240 --> 0:00:08.800 social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm 0:00:08.840 --> 0:00:14.480 Tim O'Brien. Today's Crash Course, our year in review. It's 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:17.079 been one year since Crash Course launched in your favorite 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:20.800 podcast feed, and what a year it's been. From Trump 0:00:20.960 --> 0:00:26.600 to putin, climate change, to artificial intelligence SVB to SBF 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.600 Florida to Gaza, the Supreme Court to Barbie and so 0:00:31.720 --> 0:00:34.280 much more. We covered a lot of ground this year, 0:00:34.800 --> 0:00:37.040 and we learned a lot. Because that's a key part 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:39.560 of Crash Course. We want to learn something new in 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.680 every episode and share that with you. So to mark 0:00:42.720 --> 0:00:45.320 our one year anniversary, I wanted to listen back through 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:47.760 the tape and remember some of the key learnings from 0:00:47.760 --> 0:00:51.559 the past year. We'll remember the people, conflicts, and cultural 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:53.880 moments that made this year one for the history books, 0:00:54.560 --> 0:00:56.600 and we'll link to all of those episodes in the 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:01.400 show notes so you can listen to each episode in full. 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:03.360 Let's start with some of the big names we've heard 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:06.840 about this year, beginning with Elon Musk at Twitter. Our 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:09.559 very first episode ever was just a few months after 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.840 Musk took over at Twitter, so we called up Kurt Wagner. 0:01:13.480 --> 0:01:16.920 He's a Bloomberg News reporter who spent years covering social media, 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:21.280 especially Twitter. Here's Kurt's lesson from last January. 0:01:22.280 --> 0:01:22.800 I think that. 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:28.120 I've just grown a greater appreciation for what can happen 0:01:28.600 --> 0:01:31.440 when someone is very rich and powerful in terms of 0:01:31.640 --> 0:01:35.440 sort of like forcing things that you wouldn't think would 0:01:35.480 --> 0:01:38.440 be possible, and not all good things right, like we've seen, 0:01:39.040 --> 0:01:44.200 for example, he's just sort of ignoring regulatory requirements. He 0:01:44.640 --> 0:01:46.720 signed an agreement to buy this company and then just 0:01:46.720 --> 0:01:48.520 simply said I'm not going to buy it, Like that 0:01:48.600 --> 0:01:50.920 is not something that could normally happen. But he is 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:54.720 elon Musk, he has infinite resources. He seems to have 0:01:54.800 --> 0:01:58.360 no regard for kind of general rules that most of 0:01:58.400 --> 0:02:00.840 the rest of us play by, And so I think 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:03.480 for me, it's just sort of like opened my eyes 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:06.320 to the fact that we think something is supposed to 0:02:06.400 --> 0:02:09.840 work a certain way, and yet that's not set in 0:02:09.880 --> 0:02:13.520 stone or very rigid necessarily, especially when you are a 0:02:13.639 --> 0:02:16.080 very rich and powerful person, which he is. And so 0:02:16.600 --> 0:02:20.480 maybe I was just too naive previously to assume, like, Okay, 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:23.000 a binding contract means everyone will actually do what they 0:02:23.000 --> 0:02:25.280 say they're going to do, but he's just sort of 0:02:25.360 --> 0:02:29.960 like proved that almost nothing that's even said or agreed 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:32.280 to is set in stone until he decides that it is. 0:02:33.600 --> 0:02:36.240 Since then, I've learned that Elon Musk was even more 0:02:36.360 --> 0:02:39.839 incapable of running Twitter than I originally thought, and he's 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:42.160 been more than willing to engage personally in some of 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:52.360 the platform's most abusive and divisive practices. Next up, Russia's 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.680 President Vladimir Putin. We marked the one year anniversary of 0:02:55.680 --> 0:02:58.440 the Russia Ukraine War last year by speaking with one 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:02.120 of the foremost experts on Russia, Stephen Kotkin. He's a 0:03:02.160 --> 0:03:06.400 senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Here's what Stephen 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:08.200 has learned from watching the war unfold. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.720 Sadly, I've learned many things I already knew that the 0:03:12.760 --> 0:03:19.360 world is full of evil, that war is still a problem. Happens, 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:24.400 it's not something that is, let's say, rare. I've also 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:29.160 learned that the West, rather than one world ism is 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:33.520 the basis of our security and prosperity. So the GAT 0:03:33.639 --> 0:03:37.720 rather than the wto NATO, the EU, and the First 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:42.960 Island chain rather than Kumbayah. Those are all things that 0:03:43.000 --> 0:03:46.400 I thought before that have been strengthened with this war. 0:03:47.160 --> 0:03:50.520 The biggest thing I got wrong is I expected another 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:54.480 part of the world to blow up while this was happening. 0:03:55.040 --> 0:03:58.440 I expected other countries to take advantage of the situation, 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:03.760 whether that would be something happening with Iran, something happening 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:09.640 with North Korea, with China. I expected maybe it wouldn't 0:04:09.680 --> 0:04:11.840 even be in a place that I was paying attention to. 0:04:12.320 --> 0:04:16.640 So one bad thing happens, and it's not an isolated event. 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:20.880 It's a potential trigger for other bad things to happen 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.279 in an unraveling. So far, that's not been the case. 0:04:25.040 --> 0:04:27.520 I predicted that that would happen, and I've been wrong 0:04:27.560 --> 0:04:30.800 about that, fortunately, So let's hope I continue to be 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:35.679 wrong about that going forward, because it's enough already trying 0:04:35.680 --> 0:04:39.400 to resolve this criminal aggression against Ukraine. 0:04:39.600 --> 0:04:42.320 Since that episode aired, I've learned that Vladimir Putin is 0:04:42.360 --> 0:04:45.400 willing to allow massive losses among his own troops to 0:04:45.480 --> 0:04:49.480 continue prosecuting a devastating war that has no end in sight. 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.799 If you didn't already know the acronym SBF, you probably 0:04:58.880 --> 0:05:01.640 learned it in the last few month months. Sam Bankman 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:06.160 freed once captured the world's attention with his crypto company FTX, 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.360 but then he was convicted of fraud and conspiracy. While 0:05:10.360 --> 0:05:12.719 we were waiting for his trial to start, I spoke 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.000 with Hannah Miller, who covers crypto for Bloomberg News and 0:05:16.080 --> 0:05:21.320 hosts the podcast Spellcaster, about the life and times of SBF. 0:05:22.160 --> 0:05:24.039 Here's what Hannah learned in her reporting. 0:05:24.839 --> 0:05:27.719 I think the top thing I've learned is that be 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:30.839 suspicious of anyone who claims to be a hero, especially 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:35.400 in this industry, and really question their motivations, look at 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:39.680 how it benefits them personally, and then I don't know. 0:05:39.680 --> 0:05:42.760 I still think crypto has to figure out what exactly 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:45.840 it wants to use boxing technology for. You know, this 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:50.560 is an industry still finding its legs, and these bad 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:53.440 actors are just hobbling things. 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.880 Since the trial, I've learned that SBF wasn't just your 0:05:56.920 --> 0:05:59.960 average grifter. He was convicted of fraud in a federal 0:06:00.000 --> 0:06:03.200 courtroom for presiding over one of the business world's biggest 0:06:03.240 --> 0:06:12.599 financial scandals. And of course there's Donald Trump. The former 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.840 president faces a total of ninety one charges across four 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.479 criminal cases and he's still the front runner in the 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:22.680 Republican primary. After his first indictment, I sat down with 0:06:22.720 --> 0:06:25.800 my colleague Noah Feldman to dig into what it all meant. 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.719 Noah is a professor at Harvard Law School and a 0:06:28.760 --> 0:06:32.440 columnist here at Bloomberg Opinion. Here's what Noah learned in 0:06:32.480 --> 0:06:35.039 the aftermath of those first charges being filed. 0:06:35.680 --> 0:06:38.640 The biggest aha for me is that a value that 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:41.920 we all usually like, namely prosecutors should do things slowly 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:46.640 and methodically, is actually a disaster when it comes to 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:50.880 someone like Donald Trump, a politician who has lost an 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:54.000 election and is planning to run again. I wish that 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:56.880 you and I were having this entire set of conversations 0:06:57.640 --> 0:07:01.240 eighteen months ago, in the early days of the Biden administration, 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:03.800 when whatever Trump might say about running for office, it 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:07.520 was a long way off before midterms, a whole different world. 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:12.120 And that is a possible scenario to imagine. Notwithstanding what 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:14.280 you were saying about the charges that the other prosecutors 0:07:14.280 --> 0:07:15.920 in the New York Days Office wanted to bring, and 0:07:16.080 --> 0:07:18.040 I'm happy to talk about that sometime in the future. 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:21.480 Basically old history. At this point, those were charges that 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.080 were ready at least a year ago, for what it's worth, 0:07:25.680 --> 0:07:29.160 and ditto for the Georgia case. The facts were gathered, 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:31.000 it took a little bit longer, perhaps in the case 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:35.200 of the federal prosecution. But the danger that our political 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.760 season keeps expanding in time, and that therefore it gets 0:07:39.840 --> 0:07:42.280 harder and harder to bring charges against someone like Donald 0:07:42.280 --> 0:07:45.640 Trump is a real one. And so my takeaway is 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:47.760 the thing that I really don't think I fully understood 0:07:47.800 --> 0:07:49.720 before we entered this season. I think I did understand 0:07:49.720 --> 0:07:51.600 that there was going to be a trade off between 0:07:51.920 --> 0:07:55.280 protecting our political process and our democracy seeming to be 0:07:55.360 --> 0:08:00.800 truly objective and being truly objective meaningfully and prosecuting Trump. 0:08:00.840 --> 0:08:02.520 I understand there was a trade off. I didn't fully 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.760 understand the time to mention, and as I see it, 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:08.360 it fills me with regret that these processes didn't go 0:08:08.440 --> 0:08:11.240 by a lot more efficiently than they seem to have done. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.040 I've reported on Trump for a long time, and I 0:08:14.160 --> 0:08:16.160 even faced off against him in a court battle of 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:18.760 my own when he sued me for defamation after I 0:08:18.800 --> 0:08:22.000 published my book Trump Nation, The Art of Being the Donald. 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.360 The case was dismissed, but I learned a lot about Trump. 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.840 From that experience, watching all of his legal woes this year, 0:08:29.120 --> 0:08:31.880 I learned that Trump is more than willing to sabotage 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.560 public trust in the nation's judicial and law enforcement systems 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:39.400 in order to save his own hide. And on that note, 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:42.440 we'll take a break. When we come back, we'll remember 0:08:42.440 --> 0:08:50.840 some of the big events of the past year. We're 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.880 back looking at our first year of learnings here at Crash. Course, 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.560 of course, the show focuses on collisions, and there have 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.360 been a lot of disruptions in big news moments here. 0:09:01.200 --> 0:09:04.880 Most recently, we've seen a war breakout between Israel and Hamas. 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:08.800 The current conflict is steeped in decades of tension, so 0:09:08.840 --> 0:09:11.120 I knew I needed to have a nuanced conversation with 0:09:11.160 --> 0:09:14.120 my colleagues and Bloomberg opinion about how we got here. 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:18.480 Mark Champion covers global politics for US, so he traveled 0:09:18.480 --> 0:09:20.760 to Israel to report from the front lines of the 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:23.840 war zone. Here's what Mark learned on the ground. 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:29.720 I think I did not understand like the Israelis. I 0:09:29.760 --> 0:09:32.240 think I mean, I was familiar with Hamas, but I 0:09:32.360 --> 0:09:38.720 did not understand how carefully they had been preparing and 0:09:38.800 --> 0:09:42.679 how frankly efficiently they had been preparing for this, and 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:49.560 they are a more dangerous fighting force than I perhaps 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:52.960 had expected. One of the things that really intrigues me 0:09:53.000 --> 0:09:58.000 about this is whether what went on in Ukraine would 0:09:58.040 --> 0:10:02.359 have been carefully watched by them. This sort of asymmetric warfare, 0:10:03.000 --> 0:10:05.600 what Hamas did is at a different level to what 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:08.800 you know. Terrisa always gaged an asymmetric warfare, but this 0:10:08.880 --> 0:10:11.120 was at a different level with you know, sort of 0:10:11.240 --> 0:10:16.760 combined force operations, you know, AirLand and sea, drones, hang gliders, 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:20.000 et cetera. And just the fact that you know, a 0:10:20.160 --> 0:10:25.440 much smaller force in Ukraine was able to force back 0:10:26.040 --> 0:10:29.720 the second largest military in the world. Who nobody thought 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.440 that was possible. That's one of the questions in my 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:35.079 mind as to whether you know, we are in an 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:39.160 era when there is an optimism for smaller forces that 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:41.880 they can do this type of thing because they've seen 0:10:41.920 --> 0:10:42.840 the Ukrainians do it. 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.040 Since the war broke out, I've learned that a brutal 0:10:46.040 --> 0:10:49.080 conflict in Gaza is unlikely to be solved through diplomacy 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:56.480 or even the end of the current war. Earlier in 0:10:56.480 --> 0:10:59.240 the year, the banking system was rocked by the failures 0:10:59.240 --> 0:11:04.000 of Silicon Valley Bank, First Republic Bank, Credit Sweese, and more. 0:11:04.720 --> 0:11:08.320 Those crises exposed fault lines running beneath our fragile financial 0:11:08.320 --> 0:11:11.880 ecosystem and called into question the power of the Federal Reserve. 0:11:12.720 --> 0:11:14.880 In the midst of that turmoil, I sat down with 0:11:14.920 --> 0:11:19.200 Paul Davies, a financial columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Here's what 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:20.880 that episode taught Paul. 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:23.679 I think the key thing that it's taught me is 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:28.640 even when all of the fundamentals, all of the foundational 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.280 numbers of the state of an institution, say that it 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:35.480 sounds and say that it's trustworthy, you can still have 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.920 people turn around and say, ah, I don't like it, 0:11:39.160 --> 0:11:39.760 I'm leaving. 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.800 Since that episode aired, I've learned that maybe things weren't 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:46.880 as threatening to the entire banking system as everyone seemed 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:51.160 to think when SVB began teetering. Most US banks now 0:11:51.480 --> 0:11:59.480 seem to be doing just fine. Fox News has been 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:01.360 at the center of a lot of issues that are 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:05.600 fodder for crash course, trump mania, culture wars, and misinformation. 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.360 The latter came into focus in a lawsuit brought by 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:14.040 Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine company that Fox erroneously 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:17.720 claimed had switched votes from Trump to Biden in twenty twenty. 0:12:18.520 --> 0:12:21.480 To dig into the implications of that defamation case, I 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:24.920 called on David Fokenflick, who followed the whole ordeal as 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:29.320 NPR's media correspondent and the author of Murdoch's World, The 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.960 Last of the Old Media Empires. Here's what David learned 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:35.040 watching that case shake out. 0:12:35.360 --> 0:12:39.200 You know, each generation, each epic, has its own moments 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:45.679 in which things like how defamation is defined are either affirmed, reshaped, 0:12:45.800 --> 0:12:50.120 or utterly rewritten. You know, you have three Supreme Court 0:12:50.240 --> 0:12:52.840 justices who, in different ways and from different perspectives, have 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:56.880 registered themselves over the years as being open to reviewing 0:12:56.920 --> 0:13:00.920 this question and this definition. And there's so concerned, or 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.520 at least there was before all this evidence was developed 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.120 against Fox, but some concern that were Fox to be 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:08.200 found liable, it would be appealed to the Supreme Court, 0:13:08.240 --> 0:13:09.760 and then the Supreme Court would use that as an 0:13:09.760 --> 0:13:13.280 opportunity to change how restrictive and how difficult that bar 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.600 is for people to meet. I think that Fox is 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.280 raising a question which I think is interesting one, which 0:13:20.320 --> 0:13:22.080 is for all the people who are happy to see 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:24.240 Fox get a come up and many of them in 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:26.280 the media, many of them liberals, and some of them 0:13:26.360 --> 0:13:30.640 just deeply scornful and contemptuous of the things that have 0:13:30.720 --> 0:13:33.600 been revealed about the fundamental nature of the way Fox operates. 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:35.800 You know, it's a careful what you wish for thing, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.320 because this stuff could be turned against the New York 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:42.760 Times or NBC or the Associated Press too, depending on 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.839 the circumstances and the nature of the judges who are 0:13:45.880 --> 0:13:46.920 hearing such cases. 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:50.319 Fox was forced to pay seven hundred and eighty seven 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:54.120 million dollars to settle that lawsuit with dominion, and then 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.280 changes followed. Rupert Murdoch slept down as the head of 0:13:57.280 --> 0:14:00.280 the company he founded. We did a whole separate episod 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:03.680 about the end of his reign. But watching Fox unravel 0:14:03.800 --> 0:14:05.760 even more in the past year, I've learned that we 0:14:05.760 --> 0:14:10.320 shouldn't expect Fox to change. It only changes its leadership, 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:13.560 It never really changes its spots, and the Carneact just 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:21.280 goes on. In our time of climate change, in extreme weather, 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:25.280 it was perhaps not entirely surprising that twenty twenty three 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.080 was another year for the record books. So I turned 0:14:28.080 --> 0:14:31.520 to my colleague Mark Gongloff, a columnist with Bloomberg Opinion, 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:35.640 who specializes in covering the environment and climate change. I 0:14:35.720 --> 0:14:38.880 call him the climates are inside Bloomberg Opinion, and he 0:14:39.000 --> 0:14:41.080 told me there's still time to learn from our climate 0:14:41.120 --> 0:14:43.960 related mistakes and invest in the future of our planet. 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:49.400 I am learning that the changes are much more complicated 0:14:49.440 --> 0:14:53.400 than I even realized at first. The biggest thing, though, 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:56.320 I think, is just the energy transitions can be so expensive. 0:14:56.320 --> 0:14:58.800 I mean, Bloomberg and EF I always hate to say 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:00.920 this number because it's so terrified, but Bloomberg and ef 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:02.440 estimated the world is going to have to spend two 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.600 hundred trillion dollars to get our emissions down to avoid 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:08.760 the worst climate disasters. And that sounds like a lot, 0:15:08.920 --> 0:15:10.880 but that is over the next between now and say 0:15:10.880 --> 0:15:13.840 twenty fifty, And then if you start to add up 0:15:13.880 --> 0:15:17.480 the costs that happen. Claudia sam Great Economists, just wrote 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:19.560 a column for us that said it's going to cost 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:22.920 maybe three hundred billion dollars a year in lost worker 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:26.200 productivity due to heat alone by twenty fifty. And so 0:15:26.280 --> 0:15:29.080 you take those little effects and the effects of hurricanes 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:32.880 and droughts and wildfires and just general health. We haven't 0:15:32.880 --> 0:15:35.320 even gotten into the health effects of climate change, how 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:38.960 diseases are moving there, are expanding their horizons and moving 0:15:39.040 --> 0:15:42.240 into new areas. All that stuff adds up, and so 0:15:42.480 --> 0:15:45.680 the biggest thing I've learned is to think about these things, 0:15:45.800 --> 0:15:48.960 the transition, the spending on green energy and the like, 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:52.240 as investments rather than costs, because the real costs are 0:15:52.240 --> 0:15:55.240 what happened if we don't do anything. What we're spending 0:15:55.240 --> 0:15:57.880 to avoid that stuff is an investment and a better future. 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.200 Since that conversation, and I've learned the climate catastrophes seem 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:04.640 to be the only things that focus the public's attention 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.920 on a world growing dangerously warmer, and even then, people 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:13.120 still aren't taking the threat seriously enough. We're going to 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:15.320 take a quick break then come back to look at 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:25.840 cultural collisions. We're back, and we're going to end our 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.280 tour through the past year by remembering some of the 0:16:28.280 --> 0:16:31.720 big cultural moments of the year. After the COVID nineteen 0:16:31.760 --> 0:16:35.480 pandemic popularized working from home, twenty twenty three marked a 0:16:35.520 --> 0:16:40.280 big push in rto return to office. Some companies handle 0:16:40.360 --> 0:16:43.120 the transition better than others, and I wanted to talk 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:46.880 to my colleague at Bloomberg opinion Sarah Green Carmichael about 0:16:46.960 --> 0:16:51.280 changes in office culture since the pandemic. Here's what Sarah's learned. 0:16:52.040 --> 0:16:55.920 I think what I am learning is that the motivational 0:16:55.960 --> 0:16:59.120 model of the last fifteen years was really about a 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.760 specific time and place in economy and when companies were 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:05.920 competing on talent and not on capital because interest rates 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:08.560 were really low for a really long time. When companies 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.760 were competing on talent, they really believed in this sort 0:17:11.800 --> 0:17:15.560 of company culture hire great people and set them free 0:17:15.800 --> 0:17:18.720 and have them deeply committed to the work sort of idea. 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.800 And I think what we're seeing now is what happens 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:26.439 when the economy slows down. When you have convinced employees 0:17:26.480 --> 0:17:28.920 to buy into an ownership culture and that they need 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:31.760 to act like owners and entrepreneurs. They are going to 0:17:31.880 --> 0:17:34.160 have some ideas on how the business should be run. 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.159 They're going to have ideas and what political causes you support. 0:17:37.200 --> 0:17:38.800 They are going to have ideas and what the remote 0:17:38.800 --> 0:17:41.520 work policy should be. And so I think that this 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.920 shift I'm seeing from sort of fed up executives who 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:46.840 are sort of like, oh my god, stop complaining, get 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:49.560 back to work. Don't be such a snowflake. It's a 0:17:49.560 --> 0:17:52.680 little bit like, but you spent fifteen years like telling 0:17:52.760 --> 0:17:55.400 us we should act like owners, like that's what we're doing. 0:17:55.600 --> 0:17:57.439 I think that's where a lot of this tension is 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:01.119 coming from. And I do not know if motivational model 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:04.280 that I have seen for the last fifteen years will persevere. 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:06.240 And in some ways it would be healthy if it didn't. 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:08.320 Maybe a lot of us could use some more distance 0:18:08.320 --> 0:18:10.560 from our jobs and not identify so much with them 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.240 and have so much of ourselves invested in them. But 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.960 if employees pull back from that, that's when you start 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:17.800 to have executives worried about quiet quitting. 0:18:18.000 --> 0:18:18.240 Right. 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:21.480 So I think that there's this sort of dance playing out. 0:18:21.800 --> 0:18:23.800 We kind of all want to have it all. Employees 0:18:23.840 --> 0:18:27.280 want to have high salaries and ownership and work life balance, 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:29.280 and then I think in some ways managers want to 0:18:29.320 --> 0:18:32.760 have a docile, obedient workforce that they can underpay, but 0:18:32.800 --> 0:18:34.760 who also will work around the clock, and like, we 0:18:34.800 --> 0:18:36.080 can't have all these things. 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.480 My own experience of Artio has taught me that the 0:18:39.520 --> 0:18:43.280 work world has changed, perhaps permanently, and managers are going 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:43.680 to have to. 0:18:43.680 --> 0:18:44.199 Change with it. 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.720 Returning to the office also looks a little different for 0:18:51.800 --> 0:18:55.399 some workers as the use of artificial intelligence or AI 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:59.960 has really ballooned. My colleague parme Olsen is Bloomberg epin 0:19:00.119 --> 0:19:04.080 is technology columnists and an AI guru. So I asked 0:19:04.119 --> 0:19:07.000 Parmi what she's learned from the past year of AI 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:08.440 innovation and disruption. 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:12.200 Well, I think the thing that really surprised me about chat, 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.199 hept and some of the latest generative AI tools to 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:19.679 come out in the past year is how creative AI 0:19:19.920 --> 0:19:23.160 seems to be. Because for years and years when people 0:19:23.200 --> 0:19:27.600 talked about AI taking people's jobs, it was about taking 0:19:27.920 --> 0:19:31.760 factory worker jobs and truck driver jobs. But now it 0:19:31.840 --> 0:19:35.120 seems like the real jobs that are at threat are 0:19:35.600 --> 0:19:40.720 the creative classes and professional mark jobs. I didn't want 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:43.399 to say it, but you did. But the other thing 0:19:43.440 --> 0:19:47.119 I want to say that as a big shortcoming of 0:19:47.200 --> 0:19:52.280 these systems is that they're often inaccurate. I shouldn't say often, 0:19:52.400 --> 0:19:56.560 but often enough that it's a problem. Open AI will 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:01.360 not say how often these systems get things wrong. I've 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:03.840 asked it, but my own experience, it's just I think 0:20:03.880 --> 0:20:06.920 it's somewhere between five and fifteen percent of the answers 0:20:06.920 --> 0:20:10.560 that it's given me are factually incorrect. Now, think about 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.080 using that as a search tool. We use search to 0:20:15.160 --> 0:20:19.680 get information, to get facts, and if it's wrong ten 0:20:19.720 --> 0:20:22.400 percent of the time, are people really going to want 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:24.159 to use it? I think that's going to be a 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:28.240 real problem for these companies using these systems, for as 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:29.760 search engine companions. 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:30.760 It's not a. 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:36.520 Trivial issue because recently Microsoft and Google had these big 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:41.320 announcements about their new chat companions, these chatbots that we're 0:20:41.359 --> 0:20:43.480 going to help Bang and we're going to help Google. 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:47.600 And in both demonstrations there were errors. So if they 0:20:47.600 --> 0:20:50.359 can't even fact check that and get that right, what 0:20:50.400 --> 0:20:52.359 are these systems going to be like when they're actually 0:20:52.359 --> 0:20:53.080 out in the wild. 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:57.200 My lessons about AI keep mounting since that episode aired. 0:20:57.760 --> 0:21:01.240 AI is everywhere and it's changing everything and we all 0:21:01.280 --> 0:21:09.600 will have to learn to adapt. And I can't look 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:13.679 back at twenty twenty three without talking about Barbie. The 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:16.960 summer blockbuster film took the world by storm and generated 0:21:17.000 --> 0:21:20.400 more hot takes than people expected. So I sat down 0:21:20.400 --> 0:21:23.520 with Emma Gray, a pop culture commentator and the author 0:21:23.560 --> 0:21:26.760 of A Girl's Guide to Joining the Resistance. Here's what 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:29.800 Emma learned from witnessing Barbie mania. 0:21:30.160 --> 0:21:32.919 I think this really drove home for me that you 0:21:33.040 --> 0:21:37.960 really can take a cultural product that is complicated, that 0:21:38.119 --> 0:21:42.040 is controversial, that is not politically perfect, and you can 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:47.560 use it to say something real and complicated and trigger 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:53.400 real and complex discourse. And I think that this has 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:57.840 really redefined for me what I look at as selling 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:01.760 out and yeah, the ways that you can take a 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:05.800 cultural product that might seem silly and surface level and 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:08.280 turn it into a story that has real heart and 0:22:08.280 --> 0:22:10.120 can actually teach us something about ourselves. 0:22:11.520 --> 0:22:16.199 Here's a little song for you. I'm just Tim, but 0:22:16.280 --> 0:22:18.840 I learned a lot from Barbie and the cultural phenomenon 0:22:18.840 --> 0:22:21.760 it sparked. Mostly, I learned that we all need to 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:24.280 keep our minds, eyes, and hearts open to what all 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:27.280 the people around us want neat, even if they're bad singers. 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.720 Thanks for listening to this special recap episode of Crash Course. 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.320 Check out the show notes to links to all of 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:40.359 the episodes mentioned in today's show. Here at Crash Course, 0:22:40.440 --> 0:22:44.280 we believe the collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.520 and always instructive. In today's Crash Course, I was reminded 0:22:48.520 --> 0:22:50.480 that you can learn about a whole bunch of different 0:22:50.520 --> 0:22:53.240 important topics over the course of one year's worth of 0:22:53.280 --> 0:22:56.600 podcast episodes, and I'm excited to keep learning more with 0:22:56.640 --> 0:22:59.640 you in the coming year. What did you learn? We'd 0:22:59.640 --> 0:23:01.680 love to hear from you. You can tweet at the 0:23:01.680 --> 0:23:05.800 Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim O'Brien 0:23:06.160 --> 0:23:10.240 using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also subscribe 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:12.760 to our show wherever you're listening right now and leave 0:23:12.800 --> 0:23:15.520 us a review that helps more people find the show. 0:23:16.640 --> 0:23:19.879 This episode was produced as they all were all year long, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:24.840 by the indispensable Anna Mazarakus and me, our supervising producers 0:23:24.840 --> 0:23:27.760