Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal, and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tracy, where were you in the nineties.
Speaker 4: Uh, good question. I was in Chicago for a couple
Speaker 4: of years, like I want to say, ninety ninety one,
Speaker 4: and then from like ninety one to ninety four, ninety
Speaker 4: five I was in Japan, and then ninety five to
Speaker 4: I guess ninety eight or ninety nine I was in Chicago.
Speaker 2: I have to say, even though we've been doing this
Speaker 2: podcast together in nine years, like, there actually is quite
Speaker 2: a bit that I don't know about you, And I
Speaker 2: feel like there is a lot of as the kids
Speaker 2: say these days, Tracy lore that comes out from time
Speaker 2: to time or the Tracy No, I just.
Speaker 4: Walked around a lot and don't remember whenever I tell
Speaker 4: you my time periods and locations.
Speaker 2: Well, that's also okay, that's okay, that's possible. I also
Speaker 2: moved around lot, But I have to say the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: So this is I'm struggling with this. The nineteen nineties,
Speaker 2: particularly the second half of the nineties. I remember it
Speaker 2: as a period of a lot of optimism and wealth
Speaker 2: and harmony and peace. But the other thing is I
Speaker 2: was young and now I'm old, and I'm sort of
Speaker 2: trying to reconcile this thing of like, was there was
Speaker 2: those Were those really good nostalgia or is it just
Speaker 2: personal nostalgia from when I wasn't old.
Speaker 4: I mean the answer is it's probably a mix, right,
Speaker 4: But you're right, there was something kind of going on
Speaker 4: in the late nineteen nineties. Actually, Joe, you'll enjoy this story.
Speaker 4: My after school job when I was in Chicago for
Speaker 4: a while was taking care of our next door neighbor's
Speaker 4: giant aquarium. And he was an early investor, apparently an
Speaker 4: oracle amazing, and he spent all his money on tropical
Speaker 4: fish amazing. So for one week it was my job
Speaker 4: to go feed the tropical fish, and I would go
Speaker 4: every day, and one by one the tropical fish started dying.
Speaker 4: Oh by the end of the week there were none left.
Speaker 4: And the guy came back and he was like, thanks
Speaker 4: for taking care of my fish. And I was so
Speaker 4: worried that I was going to get in trouble for
Speaker 4: ruining this guy's like multimillion dollar aquarium. But it turns
Speaker 4: out he had had it installed like the week before,
Speaker 4: and they hadn't got the salt levels and the water
Speaker 4: right or something.
Speaker 3: So it wasn't my fault. It was up shot.
Speaker 2: I thought that was going to be like an allegory
Speaker 2: for the dream of the dot com bubble and then
Speaker 2: it all collapsing with the fish dying.
Speaker 4: But yeah, that's where I'm going with it. That's what
Speaker 4: it is.
Speaker 2: So here's my memory of the nineties. You know, there
Speaker 2: was just it seemed like there weren't many wars happening.
Speaker 2: And of course that feeling ended very quickly not long
Speaker 2: after with September eleventh. But the other thing I have
Speaker 2: this one summer I got made two thousand dollars from
Speaker 2: a summer job and I got into day trading and
Speaker 2: I turned it into twenty thousand dollars, which was just
Speaker 2: an insane amount of money at the time. And I
Speaker 2: had this memory of walking down street somewhere and I
Speaker 2: was thinking, Wow, we're rich now. I'm rich now, and
Speaker 2: I never thought this should happen. I'm a rich person
Speaker 2: and my family is rich because I turned two thousand
Speaker 2: dollars into twenty thousand dollars. And so there was that
Speaker 2: personal experience in retrospect, twenty thousand dollars not really rich,
Speaker 2: but also in retrospect the whole thing wasn't sustainable and durable.
Speaker 2: But I do remember this one specific moment feeling life
Speaker 2: is really good these days.
Speaker 4: So there's two things I would point out other than
Speaker 4: the idea that everyone was getting rich. So number one,
Speaker 4: it was the time where we were just discovering new
Speaker 4: technology without realizing how terrible it actually could be. Ye,
Speaker 4: Like I remember specifically being eleven years old on AOL
Speaker 4: chatting on instant messager, probably to adult men, but you know,
Speaker 4: we didn't know that back then, and everything was fine.
Speaker 4: Everyone was really relaxed about it. And then the other
Speaker 4: thing is there seemed to be like this very the
Speaker 4: sense that like humanity could triumph over physical constraints, right,
Speaker 4: Like everything was going to be online, everything was going
Speaker 4: to be software. We didn't really have to worry any
Speaker 4: more about the physical world. And you know, fast forward
Speaker 4: to the post twenty twenty years that turned out not
Speaker 4: to be true.
Speaker 2: You know, not to just keep droning on, but it
Speaker 2: was this period between the Cold War in two thousand
Speaker 2: and one two and it felt like with the end
Speaker 2: of Cold war, Like, okay, the questions of society and
Speaker 2: democracy and markets, they've been solid.
Speaker 3: By the end of history.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you could. Like.
Speaker 2: My takeaway from that back then is like, I get
Speaker 2: why people got caught up in it.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Well, you and I just got caught up in
Speaker 4: it because we both went on to do international relations.
Speaker 3: That's right at university.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 3: It's not a useful degree, not.
Speaker 2: A useful degree at all. And I don't know why
Speaker 2: I did. But only twenty years later in retrospect did
Speaker 2: I realize why I went and majored in international relations.
Speaker 2: And I was like, oh, yeah, because I didn't know
Speaker 2: I was living in a moment of history. In retrospect,
Speaker 2: I realized I was living in a moment of hait
Speaker 2: story where people thought multilateralism and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: We're all products of our time.
Speaker 2: Yes, and in a way it took me many years
Speaker 2: to realize. Anyway, these days, there's multiple major wars going
Speaker 2: on in the country. Economic sentiment has been dismal for
Speaker 2: a long time. People are less happy than they were,
Speaker 2: I believe, despite even accounting for the nostalgia factor. So
Speaker 2: let's talk about what it was like when everyone at
Speaker 2: least or at least a few of us felt we
Speaker 2: were all rich and peaceful and happy in a permanent state.
Speaker 2: We have the perfect guest we're going to be speaking with,
Speaker 2: Collect Shade. She is the author of the forthcoming book
Speaker 2: Why two K, How the two thousands Became Everything? Why
Speaker 2: two K is such a perfect stand in because that
Speaker 2: was like the one thing we didn't really know what
Speaker 2: it was. We thought all the computers were going to
Speaker 2: short circuit on January first, two thousand. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like an early foreboding symbol in retrospect, Collect that it
Speaker 2: wouldn't all last.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it wouldn't all last. And actually, just to note
Speaker 6: the reason that I picked the phrase Y two K
Speaker 6: for the book's main title is because it's the primary
Speaker 6: search term that people use on nostalgia fashion resale website
Speaker 6: Oho and also on social media, So I thought that
Speaker 6: it would be good for my SEO.
Speaker 4: Do people actually want Y two k fashion? Because that
Speaker 4: worries me a little bit.
Speaker 6: Oh, they sure do. I actually just spoke with the
Speaker 6: Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago about how
Speaker 6: to pull off the best Y two K look and
Speaker 6: why it's so challenging and why it's so popular right now.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm I just searched y two K fashion. Oh,
Speaker 2: it's bringing back the aesthetics were not that good in
Speaker 2: the early two anyway, that's just subjective.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: The kids might not know these days what to why
Speaker 2: two K ment? Which there was this fear that all
Speaker 2: the computers would short circuit because when software was first invented,
Speaker 2: they didn't have root. Everything was just truncated to have
Speaker 2: two digits for the years of ninety eight ninety nine.
Speaker 2: People thought that then computers would revert to the year
Speaker 2: zero and everything would melt down. But setting aside, that
Speaker 2: didn't happen, and they fixed it. Setting aside, why two
Speaker 2: K fashion? Why did you write this book?
Speaker 6: Well, that's a really good question. So I wrote this
Speaker 6: book because I was sort of going through a tough
Speaker 6: time in my life around twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
Speaker 6: It was a few rough years, but things were going
Speaker 6: very badly for me. And then in twenty eighteen I
Speaker 6: found this time capsule letter in my parents' house in
Speaker 6: a box in their basement that I had written for
Speaker 6: a millennium time capsule in nineteen ninety nine. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: and it was dated April nineteen ninety nine, and it
Speaker 6: was for school because our elementary school made a time capsule.
Speaker 6: And I guess what we had been assigned to do
Speaker 6: is we'd been assigned a particular year to predict. And
Speaker 6: the year I had to predict was two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: What did you say? What happened in two thousand and.
Speaker 2: Men would crash?
Speaker 4: How's it would be these complex financial instruments called CEOs,
Speaker 4: And now what did you say? What were your expectations?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 6: First I said I would be a junior at Stanford University.
Speaker 6: That didn't happen. Then I said that we would cure
Speaker 6: all cancer. I mean, you know, there have been a
Speaker 6: lot of innovations in the past twenty five years, but
Speaker 6: I can't say we've cured all of it. And I
Speaker 6: also said that we would be watching our we would
Speaker 6: be watching our movies on the computer, which you were
Speaker 6: right about.
Speaker 2: You got that right.
Speaker 1: Three.
Speaker 3: It's pretty good, not terrible.
Speaker 4: In high school, I decided to start a DVD collection
Speaker 4: because I thought I was going to have DVDs forever,
Speaker 4: and so, you know, I'm going to get started early
Speaker 4: and have this awesome library of videos. And that lasted
Speaker 4: for like a couple of years before streaming became a thing,
Speaker 4: So you were way ahead of me.
Speaker 2: Remember the DVD bros.
Speaker 5: I mean you were.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like that was a type of guys
Speaker 2: like has a really good TV?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, no, it was.
Speaker 6: It was a total data symbol, especially once you got
Speaker 6: to like the early to mid two thousands. People would
Speaker 6: collect them and it would be like, oh, this person
Speaker 6: has forty DVDs wow, or this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, come over to my house and watch Clerks because
Speaker 2: I feel like a DVD broth.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 6: Fall asleep and then the DVD intro menu is playing
Speaker 6: and then you wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 6: night and it's just on a loop. Yeah, and you're confused.
Speaker 2: There was this amazing website. I don't know if either
Speaker 2: of you remember it. It was called you Fell Asleep watching
Speaker 2: a DVD? Do any of you remember that? And it
Speaker 2: would just be this website that just had It was
Speaker 2: a picture of a living room and then there was
Speaker 2: a TV in there and it was floating that sort
Speaker 2: of DVD menu at the end. It was very peaceful website.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it still still exists.
Speaker 6: Looking for it, Yeah, I really want to see that now.
Speaker 4: But this actually reminds me, and Joe's made this point before,
Speaker 4: which is the sort of late nineteen nineties, maybe early
Speaker 4: two thousands, before the bubble burst time period was really
Speaker 4: a period of like, in some respects insane optimism about
Speaker 4: what humans would be achieving in like the coming years.
Speaker 4: And I think even now, obviously there's a lot of
Speaker 4: excitement in the stock market about things like AI and
Speaker 4: what that's going to be able to do, but even
Speaker 4: now it's still tinged with some degree of skepticism, some
Speaker 4: degree of worry over what's going to happen to jobs
Speaker 4: and things like that, Whereas around like two thousand that
Speaker 4: just wasn't there. It was like we were really looking
Speaker 4: at this nirvana like future.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I think that that's a really good term nirvana,
Speaker 6: which I can get to a little later. Talking about
Speaker 6: the culture of Silicon Valley, there were some really strange
Speaker 6: things that I found in my reporting in my research
Speaker 6: for this book. So to be clear, I started researching
Speaker 6: the book in I mean, I really started around the
Speaker 6: time I found that letter, and I was getting very
Speaker 6: into these nostalgia accounts on Instagram and watch all these
Speaker 6: old movies and listening to old music and all that
Speaker 6: sort of thing, and then I signed the contract for
Speaker 6: the book in twenty twenty two because I was like, well,
Speaker 6: I'm totally obsessed with this thing. I'd like to write
Speaker 6: a book about it. And so one of the things
Speaker 6: that I found were really odd quotes from really respected figures.
Speaker 6: So an example would be there was an MIT economist
Speaker 6: in nineteen ninety eight who said, we will never have
Speaker 6: another recession again. The economy will keep going up forever.
Speaker 6: And then here's the really interesting thing that he said.
Speaker 6: He said, we don't want one, we don't need one,
Speaker 6: and we have the tools to prevent one. So it's
Speaker 6: almost as if the laws.
Speaker 4: Of the previous generations were too stupid to do not
Speaker 4: want one.
Speaker 6: Yes, it was quite a lot of hubris, right, if
Speaker 6: they had only changed how things worked in their mind differently,
Speaker 6: than they could have easily avoided all of those other
Speaker 6: depressions and recessions.
Speaker 2: I kind of still think that's the case. I kind
Speaker 2: of still think, but sitting as that human nations, and
Speaker 2: there is probably some human nature is cyclical, and we
Speaker 2: were wrong to think it would be permanent piece and
Speaker 2: expansion forever. So here's I guess another way of entering.
Speaker 2: I mentioned my epiphany that at some point in like
Speaker 2: nineteen nine and nine, I was like, everyone is rich
Speaker 2: in life is great?
Speaker 6: Was that rare?
Speaker 2: We're a lot of people in those years having personal
Speaker 2: feelings of that. Talk to us about again, not everyone
Speaker 2: remembers it. How widespread was this feeling of abundance and
Speaker 2: wealth that the general population. Obviously there were exceptions, there
Speaker 2: were poor people, obviously, But how widespread was were these
Speaker 2: feelings of wealth and so forth?
Speaker 6: I mean, they were extremely widespread. So on a sort
Speaker 6: of macro level, you have these big figures like this
Speaker 6: MIT economist saying we're never going to have another recession.
Speaker 5: You have a book that.
Speaker 6: Comes out in nineteen ninety nine called Dow thirty six thousand,
Speaker 6: which I know that number doesn't sound impressive now, but
Speaker 6: at the time, the Dow had just hit ten thousand,
Speaker 6: and that was a really big deal. And that was like,
Speaker 6: by the way, that was like practically a holiday. One
Speaker 6: of the chairmen of the New York Stock Exchange and
Speaker 6: Rudy Giuliani, who's at the time the New York City Mayor,
Speaker 6: wore special hats that said Dow ten thousand, and they
Speaker 6: rang the closing Bell in March March nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 6: But yeah, there's this book called Dow thirty six thousand,
Speaker 6: which argued that you could basically expect like three hundred
Speaker 6: percent returns on your investments in the next three to
Speaker 6: five years. And that is kind of crazy that that
Speaker 6: was out there. And if you see movies also like
Speaker 6: to move away from kind of the nuts and bolts,
Speaker 6: there was this feeling of, oh, everything's really great. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 6: isn't it sad?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 6: You know American Beauty, which is a movie, you know,
Speaker 6: big award winning movie nineteen ninety nine. It's all about how, oh,
Speaker 6: we're all so affluent now and there aren't any problems.
Speaker 5: Isn't that sad?
Speaker 3: Sort of right, those sort of like suburban.
Speaker 6: Urbana, which I guess you had before. But there is
Speaker 6: a sort of funny thing looking at it now or
Speaker 6: watching You've Got Mail or any of these movies from
Speaker 6: the late nineties where it's like, what are you people
Speaker 6: so upset about you? You own property, you're you know,
Speaker 6: your portfolio is doing great, You're gonna be fine.
Speaker 4: So if you had to pinpoint like the foremost reason
Speaker 4: behind this sense of optimism about the future, what do
Speaker 4: you think it was looking back.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the foremost reason was the dot com bubble.
Speaker 3: So everyone was in fact getting rich.
Speaker 6: Not Well, here's the thing, Okay, So I see culture
Speaker 6: as being downstream from big forces, whether they're economic forces
Speaker 6: or technology. And you know, it takes a few years.
Speaker 6: Now it's faster because we have social media, but it
Speaker 6: takes a few years for it to kind of trickle
Speaker 6: through the culture for the vibe of the structural things
Speaker 6: that are happening to inform fashion, to inform design, music,
Speaker 6: things like that. And so even if you weren't personally
Speaker 6: invested in the stock market or you weren't involved in
Speaker 6: the tech world, I think that the feeling just permeated culture.
Speaker 6: So there are a couple of examples. So in the book,
Speaker 6: I talk about this inflatable chair I have, which, by
Speaker 6: the way, I.
Speaker 4: Had one of those two yes. Yes, yeah, So I'll
Speaker 4: just say I've read all of Collette's book, and like
Speaker 4: page after page I'm just nodding, going like, yes, this
Speaker 4: was my experience as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, say more about the wait, say more about this.
Speaker 4: Well, mine was blue and you would inflate it and
Speaker 4: sit on it, and inevitably it would eventually spring a
Speaker 4: leak and you would just sort of be sitting on
Speaker 4: it while it slowly like collapsed onto the floor.
Speaker 3: But they were a big deal.
Speaker 6: They were a huge deal. And yeah, mine was silver.
Speaker 6: The exact same thing happened, which I write about in
Speaker 6: the book. It's kind of like the fish. It's almost
Speaker 6: a perfect metaphor for the dot com bubble. But they
Speaker 6: were these inflatable chairs that you sat on. Mine was silver,
Speaker 6: and I was obsessed with it because I was like,
Speaker 6: this is the chair of the future. In the new millennium,
Speaker 6: we will all be sitting on silver inflatable furniture. Everything's
Speaker 6: going to be silver. Our clothes, our makeup. We're going
Speaker 6: to have these big clear blobby IMACG three's which had
Speaker 6: just come out. That was a huge Yeah you did
Speaker 6: any of you?
Speaker 1: Ye?
Speaker 6: Did either of you have those?
Speaker 2: So I remember what year did the colorful Imax come out?
Speaker 4: That was that?
Speaker 6: So that was ninety eight. They came out the first
Speaker 6: in ninety eight, and then ninety nine was when they
Speaker 6: had the full range.
Speaker 2: Right, they were so cool on the different Yeah, and
Speaker 2: they just looked cool and I just I think in
Speaker 2: my imagination at the time, like this is what you
Speaker 2: used is if I were, like, if I're in my
Speaker 2: mid twenties and I work again Seattle or San Francisco
Speaker 2: or New York doing something like being an editor for
Speaker 2: a magazine, I would be on one of these cool computers.
Speaker 2: Care more about just sort of right exactly, say more
Speaker 2: about the cultural downstream of the time. What are other
Speaker 2: things that were sort of going on in the late
Speaker 2: nineties that are emblematic of this society feeling very happy
Speaker 2: and rich.
Speaker 6: Well, yeah, so there's this thing called the now it's
Speaker 6: called the Y two K aesthetic. Broadly, there's a really
Speaker 6: cool collective of archivists who catalog They're called the Consumer
Speaker 6: Aesthetics Research Institute. You should totally check them out, maybe
Speaker 6: have them on the show.
Speaker 5: They do a lot.
Speaker 6: Of stuff about just design and marketing trends from the
Speaker 6: late twentieth century to the present, and they and others
Speaker 6: coin this term the Y two case, which was where
Speaker 6: everything was really blobby, so it was really round, There
Speaker 6: weren't sharp edges, everything was very transparent, which to me,
Speaker 6: when I kind of did a deep read of it,
Speaker 6: almost seemed like it was symbolizing like the Internet will
Speaker 6: bring about transparency, like political transparency, and things aren't going
Speaker 6: to have sharp militaristic edges. They're going to be round
Speaker 6: and blobby, right, So just imagine think about the new Beetle,
Speaker 6: which was the Volkswagen Yeah, super trendy, why two K
Speaker 6: car that came in all these cute colors, like kind
Speaker 6: of a Parado green one that I really wanted. And
Speaker 6: think about that compared to the cyber truck, which is
Speaker 6: like scary and sharp and the windows are small.
Speaker 4: You know, cyber Truck's ugly, so ugly, Sorry but it is. Okay,
Speaker 4: So speaking of Y two K one thing that never happened, well,
Speaker 4: you actually don't write in your book that much about
Speaker 4: the actual Y two K moment right now? Was that
Speaker 4: like a conscious choice to avoid that?
Speaker 6: Well, it just didn't figure into my analysis because in
Speaker 6: hind site. Okay, So, first of all, I was calling
Speaker 6: it Y two K because I wanted to talk about
Speaker 6: this era basically between squarely between the dot com bubble
Speaker 6: and the two thousand and eight crash and the culture
Speaker 6: around it, as well as my own coming of age
Speaker 6: which coincided with that, and I wanted to kind of
Speaker 6: weave them all together to talk about these to kind
Speaker 6: of situate my own memoir and coming of age within
Speaker 6: this broader narrative of what was happening economically, politically, technologically,
Speaker 6: et cetera. And the term that people like I said,
Speaker 6: the term that people I found people using on social
Speaker 6: media is y two K.
Speaker 5: So that's what I used.
Speaker 6: And I think the reason I didn't include discussions of
Speaker 6: the y two K bug or the Y two K scare,
Speaker 6: I think at all was because it just in hindsight,
Speaker 6: when I'm analyzing the moment, it doesn't really figure large
Speaker 6: into what the true story was.
Speaker 1: To me.
Speaker 2: I was at a New Year's Eve party on December
Speaker 2: thirty first, nineteen ninety nine, and a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: his dad went into the basement and turned off all
Speaker 2: the power of the house, right, So we had for
Speaker 2: a second, and I think we knew it was a joke,
Speaker 2: but it was a pretty good gag because there were
Speaker 2: fears that all the power was going to go out
Speaker 2: because all the utilities their software would break, et cetera.
Speaker 2: It hadn't occurred to me though. You know the other
Speaker 2: thing about that Volkswagen Beetle that came out in the
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties, and you know, it's cute and comparing in
Speaker 2: contrast to the Cyberg truck aesthetic. But just to dwell
Speaker 2: on this because I hadn't clicked it's really not aggressive,
Speaker 2: it's small, it's compact. We're really just sort of not
Speaker 2: going to take up space. It's sort of a preemptive
Speaker 2: surrender or sort of everyone agrees we're just going to
Speaker 2: be very tidy and contained. At that time, I hadn't
Speaker 2: really thought about that in terms of the core imagery
Speaker 2: of what that meant at the time, that that was
Speaker 2: aspirational to people.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's peaceful, it's smooth, it's modern, and we're all
Speaker 6: just going to get culifish and fuel weight.
Speaker 4: But there were other cars that were popular at that
Speaker 4: time that were not that small.
Speaker 6: That's absolutely true, and that's something that I talk about
Speaker 6: in the book as well, and I argue that, well,
Speaker 6: this is a whole other this is a whole other
Speaker 6: kind of train of thought or suv of thought. But yeah,
Speaker 6: SUVs started to get really popular in the early nineties,
Speaker 6: and they went up. I mean there the numbers of
Speaker 6: SUVs being purchased went up every year throughout it from
Speaker 6: the beginning to the end of the nineties. And then
Speaker 6: I think I forget what year it's in my book.
Speaker 6: I believe it was two thousand, but it's in the book.
Speaker 6: So they hummer with the Hummer H two, which was
Speaker 6: the opposite of the VW bug esthetic.
Speaker 2: That's really interesting. I remember there was a lot of
Speaker 2: sneering at SUVs in the early days. And now most
Speaker 2: cars are basically SUV, right, suv of everything.
Speaker 5: But in the.
Speaker 2: Beginning there was I hadn't really this again, I hadn't
Speaker 2: really thought.
Speaker 4: You drive down the highway and see someone in like
Speaker 4: a crazy hommer an suv and you'd be like, oh,
Speaker 4: look at those selfish people polluting the world. And now
Speaker 4: it's like, oh, yeah, everyone has that.
Speaker 2: But this idea of like, okay, there were multiple forces emerging.
Speaker 2: Once there's the tiny, modest VW beetle people, and then
Speaker 2: the rise of the SUV people, and the SUV people won.
Speaker 5: They won.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I mean my dad used to call
Speaker 6: those people they not the people. Well, he said, they're stupid.
Speaker 6: He was like, they don't know how to read science papers,
Speaker 6: because he was an engineer, and I was like, well,
Speaker 6: I don't know if that's the issue, but yeah, he
Speaker 6: would say, oh, look there's a stupid ugly vehicle. And
Speaker 6: actually the essay in the book about SUVs is called
Speaker 6: Stupid Ugly Vehicles.
Speaker 4: So, speaking of essays in the book, and you have
Speaker 4: one of my all time favorite chapter titles that I've
Speaker 4: ever seen, which is Larry Summers Caused My Eating Disorder,
Speaker 4: which is absolutely amazing. And the chapter in case you
Speaker 4: think that's a joke, it's about basically the explosion in
Speaker 4: models in this sort of nineteen nineties early two thousands.
Speaker 4: A lot of them came from Eastern Europe, and Larry
Speaker 4: Summers sort of indirectly had a hand in the opening
Speaker 4: up of Eastern Europe, in the collapse of the Soviet
Speaker 4: Union and things like that. I did want to ask
Speaker 4: you because we're talking about how great that period was,
Speaker 4: but I also remember, and I'm sure you will as well,
Speaker 4: given that we're roughly the same age, but there was
Speaker 4: like this sort of undertone of misogyny in all of that,
Speaker 4: and it like, in many respects, it was not a
Speaker 4: great time to be a young girl growing up in
Speaker 4: that particular era. Why do you think, like, on the
Speaker 4: one hand, there was this unbridled optimism, but that on
Speaker 4: the other hand, girls in particular seemed to be under pressure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, that's a really good question, and I
Speaker 6: do want to add that I think things got even
Speaker 6: worse after nine to eleven. You had this real reactionary shift,
Speaker 6: and to go back to the suv topic, I think
Speaker 6: the suv aesthetic really that's when it really really stopped
Speaker 6: being as much of a joke and it was like, okay, no,
Speaker 6: this is the winning aesthetic. But yeah, like, I think
Speaker 6: there also just was a general reactionary cultural turn after
Speaker 6: nine to eleven. But even before, as you point out,
Speaker 6: there was incredible misogyny.
Speaker 5: Throughout pop culture.
Speaker 6: I mean, I think there are a lot of reasons
Speaker 6: for that. I mean, I find Susan Fuluti's argument of
Speaker 6: backlash to be convincing, which is basically that there was
Speaker 6: widespread resentment about gains that had been made by the
Speaker 6: feminist movement through the seventies and the eighties, you know,
Speaker 6: and there was just this cultural like, Okay, we're done
Speaker 6: with all of this. Let's you know, let's have the movie.
Speaker 4: Going back to the idea of nature being like cyclical.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, yes, yes, But I also think, you know,
Speaker 6: and again I'm a cultural critic here, and I speak
Speaker 6: throughout the book as a cultural critic, not as an academic,
Speaker 6: but my kind of guess is that a lot of
Speaker 6: cultural reaction and culture war stuff, whatever form that takes,
Speaker 6: is kind of a proxy for economic anxiety or concerns,
Speaker 6: or sometimes technological anxiety or concerns. I think that the
Speaker 6: reason that, say, right now, there's so much just insane
Speaker 6: culture war stuff is because people are scared. People are
Speaker 6: scared of AI, They're scared of you know, inequality, or
Speaker 6: they feel like their standard of living has declined. And
Speaker 6: the thing is for a lot of Americans and people
Speaker 6: in other parts of the world, but I'm you know,
Speaker 6: I'm writing about America. A lot of Americans, their living
Speaker 6: standard had declined even you know, basically from the late
Speaker 6: seventies onwards and then even through the nineties, but that
Speaker 6: was not being fully reflected by these big indicators in
Speaker 6: the late nineties.
Speaker 2: You know, you mentioned the sort of cultural shifts that
Speaker 2: happened after nine to eleven, and I think there's absolutely
Speaker 2: the case in many respects. But so there are really
Speaker 2: two events. I mean, there was the peak of the
Speaker 2: dot com bubble, which was in March two thousand and
Speaker 2: it sort of took us a little while afterwards to realize, oh,
Speaker 2: this actually has come to an end, because it could
Speaker 2: have just been a blip, and you know, things kept
Speaker 2: going a little bit this year, and then I guess
Speaker 2: eighteen months later with the September eleventh attack, and so
Speaker 2: you have the economic bubble punctured and then the world
Speaker 2: peace bubble. This idea that after the Cold War, now
Speaker 2: we have the issues of geopolitics are solved, and so
Speaker 2: really there's sort of the economic story got blown to
Speaker 2: bits and then the political story, or the geopolitical story
Speaker 2: specifically got blown into bits, and it's sort of a
Speaker 2: real double whammy for us.
Speaker 4: Huh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it wasn't great. And if you look at just
Speaker 6: some of the crazy stuff that was happening during that
Speaker 6: second half of the Y two K era from two
Speaker 6: thousand and one to two thousand and eight, I mean,
Speaker 6: it's just really strange stuff. Like I talk about the
Speaker 6: mcbling aesthetic. Do you guys know about the mcbling aesthetic?
Speaker 3: I remember that.
Speaker 2: I'm going to google that.
Speaker 5: Keep talking, So it is it.
Speaker 6: This is a term again, like the Y two K aesthetic,
Speaker 6: These are terms that are applied now. They weren't used
Speaker 6: at the time. But the mcbling aesthetic is think Paris Hilton, Right,
Speaker 6: So you think juicy couture track suits with words on
Speaker 6: the butt, ug boots, super you know, straight bleached blonde hair,
Speaker 6: super dark, fake tan, statement teas, giant Louis Vuitton logo bags,
Speaker 6: and just this really just riding around in a hummer.
Speaker 5: It was there's a real nihilism to it, almost vulgarity.
Speaker 6: Vulgarity, right, And I think that again, to go back
Speaker 6: to this hunch I have about how culture is downstream
Speaker 6: from economic forces. I interpret that as almost a this
Speaker 6: is almost Freudian, but it's like a kind of Freudian
Speaker 6: kind of subconscious understanding of what's going on in markets
Speaker 6: with the what would become the subprime mortgage crisis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh that's good. Good. The aesthetic is downstream from
Speaker 2: the emerging subprime Let's.
Speaker 4: Talk about that, because all I was going to say
Speaker 4: was like, I think there's a tendency nowadays to think
Speaker 4: of the mcbling aesthetic as like an ironic statement. But
Speaker 4: I remember at the time it was very earnest, like
Speaker 4: there was no sense of irony about wearing a juicy
Speaker 4: couture tracksuit and like a giant gold chain.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 4: It was very serious, no chrucker hats. Maybe a chrucker hat.
Speaker 4: Paris Hilton wearing a trucker hat might have been a
Speaker 4: little less serious.
Speaker 6: Or the statement teased, but there was Yeah, I do
Speaker 6: think that there was a seriousness about it. There was
Speaker 6: a sense that it was glamour like I had a
Speaker 6: couple of juicy pieces that never I never had the tracksuit,
Speaker 6: but I had a couple of pieces that I got
Speaker 6: at Loman's and which rip. But I just felt so glamorous.
Speaker 6: I was like, look at me in my green terry
Speaker 6: cloth dress.
Speaker 5: For some reason, I am I am living.
Speaker 6: It's like I could be. It's like I could be
Speaker 6: on the OC or on Laguna Beach or something. I
Speaker 6: just felt like, this is great. You know, I did
Speaker 6: the hair straightener thing. I oh god, yeah, because I
Speaker 6: have you have a little wave in your hair, and
Speaker 6: I used too well.
Speaker 3: My hair used to be really curly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I used to relax it with like the actual chemical
Speaker 4: products that you would get from the drug store.
Speaker 3: Yeap, it was bad.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I feel like I can smell that. Yeah, like yeah, no,
Speaker 6: But it's interesting too.
Speaker 2: Is a downstream from the emerging subprime world, because right
Speaker 2: it's a very external Aesthetically, they can sort of anti taste.
Speaker 2: There's nothing internal, and so the idea of the economy
Speaker 2: is like, there's no real economic basis for it, but
Speaker 2: there's this sort of presentation of rich in a way
Speaker 2: that's unsustainable.
Speaker 6: One hundred percent. And actually I tie that in with
Speaker 6: mcmanchins as well. Yeah, because like another person you should
Speaker 6: have on is Kate Wagner, who does mcmanchin Hell, oh yeah,
Speaker 6: but mcmanonsins are structurally unsound.
Speaker 5: They are built.
Speaker 6: Like I said, my dad's an engineer and he would
Speaker 6: drive me around and look at mcmanchons in suburban Virginia
Speaker 6: and be like, this is bad. The architecture is terrible.
Speaker 6: It's gonna have roof problems in two years. I hate
Speaker 6: these things, and so I get it. I get my
Speaker 6: critique from him, but also just other stuff I've read
Speaker 6: about the actual architectural and structural integrity, and these are
Speaker 6: garish because they you know, there's no reason to have
Speaker 6: this giant foyer that Kate Wagner calls a lawyer for
Speaker 6: where it's like, for some reason, it's like this giant
Speaker 6: three story foyer with a giant fake crystal chandelier. There's
Speaker 6: just no reason for that from a functional standpoint, and
Speaker 6: it's really it's inefficient for heating and cooling.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Just these aren't even like fine luxury goods that are
Speaker 6: well made but ostentatious. These are like fake luxury goods
Speaker 6: that are ugly and tacky and are going to fall apart.
Speaker 6: But it doesn't matter, because all that matters is in
Speaker 6: that moment, you feel like you're a rich person even
Speaker 6: though you're not.
Speaker 4: So what's the through line from the tech bubble to
Speaker 4: the subprime bubble, Because on the face of it, they
Speaker 4: seem to have some similarities, you know, people getting rich
Speaker 4: in an unsustainable way. But on the other hand, there
Speaker 4: are some differences where you know, there were a lot
Speaker 4: of low income people who bought houses that they couldn't afford,
Speaker 4: whereas I don't think there were that many people necessarily
Speaker 4: buying like tech IPOs, but I could be wrong.
Speaker 6: No, no, And I think in terms of the differences
Speaker 6: between them, that's exactly it. So the dot com bubble
Speaker 6: was mostly affecting you know, upper income people, you know,
Speaker 6: maybe not the ultra ultra rich. You know, people who
Speaker 6: were upper middle class took a hit in their portfolios
Speaker 6: or whatever. Or you know, they worked at pets dot
Speaker 6: com and they got laid off. But yeah, it didn't
Speaker 6: have the same kind of effects throughout the entire economy
Speaker 6: because it was kind of contained among more affluent people,
Speaker 6: whereas the subprime mortgage crisis affected people lower down, much poorer,
Speaker 6: more middle class and poor people, and they, you know,
Speaker 6: they weren't just cutting back on luxuries, they were you know,
Speaker 6: cutting back on essentials, and that really had downstream effects
Speaker 6: on the entire economy at least. That's you know, that's
Speaker 6: what I read, and I say in my book.
Speaker 2: I don't want to take too dark of a turn here,
Speaker 2: but another incident that I recall there was a mass
Speaker 2: shooting at a day trading center in Atlanta in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety nine, and there were a lot of people getting
Speaker 2: into day trading, and the day trading centers would have
Speaker 2: all of these computers there because probably people didn't have
Speaker 2: good internet setups at home. There were these early indications
Speaker 2: in the summer of nineteen ninety nine that things were
Speaker 2: going to go off the rails, or that despite this
Speaker 2: incredible belt that was in the sort of in the
Speaker 2: headlines of the newspapers and on financial TV ET cetera,
Speaker 2: that there was something that couldn't hold there even before
Speaker 2: the formal collapse in March two thousand.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I think that that's I actually didn't know
Speaker 6: about that shooting, but yeah, I know, I think that
Speaker 6: there were there were indicators, and there were also people
Speaker 6: here and there who were saying, hey, this is not sustainable.
Speaker 6: I mean, even Alan Greenspan he talked about he called
Speaker 6: it irrational exuberance right in the market. So there were
Speaker 6: people sort of being like, you know, this is all
Speaker 6: very fun and exciting and it's this sugar rush, but
Speaker 6: it's not going to last the way you think it is.
Speaker 4: So writing the book and reflecting on your own experiences
Speaker 4: of this time period, was it cathartic for you?
Speaker 3: What did you learn?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 6: My god, so cathartic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean I felt like I had a lot to
Speaker 6: process from that time, and I felt lucky that I
Speaker 6: got to incorporate memoir elements into it because these are
Speaker 6: personal essays, but they are personal essays that are structured
Speaker 6: within a bigger historical story. And I think that when
Speaker 6: we learn how our lives that are unique to us
Speaker 6: are still within a bigger story of history, and these
Speaker 6: forces tech forces, economic forces. I think that can be
Speaker 6: really cathartic and can really give us a lot of insight,
Speaker 6: like things that we think are our fault. Say, we
Speaker 6: might think, oh, it wasn't right to go back to
Speaker 6: the Larry Summers caused my eating disorder essay. That was
Speaker 6: something I feel like I had to write because it
Speaker 6: was like my way of understanding why I was suffering
Speaker 6: with this issue for a few years and why it
Speaker 6: derailed my life in the way that it did at
Speaker 6: the time. And it wasn't just about me or oh,
Speaker 6: you know I had this issue. It was that I
Speaker 6: was picking up on currents from the bigger culture that
Speaker 6: are downstream of economic currents of sort of scarcity and
Speaker 6: managing my human capital and all of this, and so
Speaker 6: it really was very cathartic or like talking about the
Speaker 6: you know, when I talk about the dot com bubble,
Speaker 6: the dot com bubble really affected my family in a
Speaker 6: way because my uncle was involved in a star up
Speaker 6: and it really changed his fortunes. And that was a
Speaker 6: very odd experience. And now doing research, I found out
Speaker 6: that there were other people who had had similar experiences.
Speaker 2: SayMore, I knew someone in the nineties who happened to
Speaker 2: live in San Diego, and he was the first person
Speaker 2: who was aware of this company called Qualcom, which was
Speaker 2: one of the huge winners at the time because they
Speaker 2: were going to make the chips and phones, and everyone
Speaker 2: was aware of that. People in his area got made
Speaker 2: a ton of money, et cetera, because they knew about
Speaker 2: it a little bit before the people on TV knew
Speaker 2: about it. What was that experience like to what extent
Speaker 2: those people who rowed it up and then wrote it down,
Speaker 2: What did it do to them? What was it like
Speaker 2: for them on the way up and then afterwards?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean on the way up, there was just
Speaker 6: this idea that well, gee, everyone can just be rich.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 6: This is to go back to what we were talking
Speaker 6: about earlier about how there's just this kind of surreal
Speaker 6: thing of like, oh, okay, wait, suddenly I can like
Speaker 6: buy a second home, or put my job at forty
Speaker 6: or you know, forty five or thirty or whatever, or
Speaker 6: I can buy a new, you know, a new luxury
Speaker 6: car or a private jet, or go on vacation for
Speaker 6: three months all over Europe or something. Right, I mean,
Speaker 6: there's this Actually there's a video of Elon Musk in
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety nine, and he's getting he had just sold
Speaker 6: zip to I think it was when he had just
Speaker 6: sold zip to, and so he had sold his first company.
Speaker 6: And he's getting a McLaren and this is a CNN video.
Speaker 6: And so he bought a McLaren, which I believe at
Speaker 6: the time was a one million dollar car, and he
Speaker 6: bought himself a McLaren. And there's this video where he
Speaker 6: is getting this McLaren. And keep in mind, no one
Speaker 6: knows who Elon Musk is at the time. This is
Speaker 6: when he this is actually when he got his first
Speaker 6: big break, and he's like, oh, this is so surreal,
Speaker 6: and he's like this kid, this like little boy who
Speaker 6: is like having his dream come true. And that's really
Speaker 6: how I think it felt for a lot of people,
Speaker 6: because a lot of these people who were not all
Speaker 6: mind you, but many of these people who were in
Speaker 6: the tech world were coming out of the California Bay
Speaker 6: Area counterculture and they were kind of maybe bohemians before
Speaker 6: they were able to get into the computer world. Because
Speaker 6: back in the seventies, eighties, nineties, you could be It's
Speaker 6: not like now where you have to go on a
Speaker 6: track early in your life to get into that you
Speaker 6: could just be like, you know what, I'm tired of
Speaker 6: living in a co op and like scrounging for food.
Speaker 5: I'm going to go whatever.
Speaker 2: This is really important actually, and I hadn't thought about
Speaker 2: this before, but right now, if you want to be
Speaker 2: at tech, you know, you're probably studying like crazy while
Speaker 2: you're in high school to get into the right college
Speaker 2: and study you know, electrical engineering or whatever. But back
Speaker 2: then it was people who a few years earlier in
Speaker 2: their life were like counterculture hippies, yeah, and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and like there.
Speaker 6: Was any some of whom were self taught. Yeah, some
Speaker 6: of whom were just self taught, you know, or they
Speaker 6: were like, gee, I'm going to go back at the
Speaker 6: local community college and cakes and programming class and then
Speaker 6: you could just go on in and get a job.
Speaker 6: I mean, it helped if you were, you know, a
Speaker 6: white man. But yeah, it was really it was more open.
Speaker 6: It wasn't like this structured thing.
Speaker 5: Like it is now.
Speaker 4: Imagine if Elon Musk had gotten the new VW bug
Speaker 4: and stuff, and how different all.
Speaker 2: Of history, all of history would have changed.
Speaker 4: I'm still stuck on that possibility.
Speaker 2: Clud Shade, Thank you so much for coming on odd
Speaker 2: lots and congrats and good luck on the book.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thanks for having me, Tracy.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed that conversation. First of all, nostalgia, I'll
Speaker 2: take you back. But I hadn't really thought about this
Speaker 2: sort of connection between I guess just how sharp that
Speaker 2: aesthetic turn was between the late nineties and the sort
Speaker 2: of the aggressive mcbling culture of the tooth.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think Colett has like put her finger on something,
Speaker 4: which is there was that sense of like really unbridled
Speaker 4: optimism around that time. It wasn't like, oh, tech is cool,
Speaker 4: but maybe there are going to be downsides.
Speaker 2: No, Like, there wasn't any of that.
Speaker 4: It was like, oh, yeah, let's let the kids on
Speaker 4: AOL and they can talk to whoever they want, and
Speaker 4: we're all going to make money and we're all going
Speaker 4: to have like great new jobs in this industry and
Speaker 4: we'll live in McMansions, et cetera. And I think, you know,
Speaker 4: maybe it was because we hadn't had a big technological
Speaker 4: revolution for some time, and so people kind of had
Speaker 4: forgotten the downsides.
Speaker 3: But I think there's just.
Speaker 4: No way that you really are ever going to get
Speaker 4: that sense of optimism anytime soon, even if we invent
Speaker 4: like the coolest new piece of technology. I think everyone
Speaker 4: now is just so conditioned to like wait for the drop.
Speaker 2: I think the nineties really were a unique, unrecoverable period.
Speaker 2: And you go back and read some of the optimism
Speaker 2: the end of history stuff, and you guys like, oh,
Speaker 2: that's you know, how could they? But I've tried to
Speaker 2: do this experiment baarment in my head a bit, and
Speaker 2: it's like, I get it. I get what they saw,
Speaker 2: or I get why they thought that to some extent,
Speaker 2: certain core problems of human civilization, whether we're talking about
Speaker 2: world peace, whether we're talking about economics specifically, kind of
Speaker 2: had been solved. Like, I don't blame them much for it.
Speaker 2: Obviously a lot of the optimism in retrospect seems silly.
Speaker 2: We got nine to eleven, we got the Great Financial Crisis,
Speaker 2: we had the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, multiple wars now,
Speaker 2: But I get why in that brief period of time
Speaker 2: they sort of didn't see it coming. Should we even
Speaker 2: if they should, even if.
Speaker 4: They should have, Should we re embrace the Y two
Speaker 4: K aesthetic?
Speaker 2: You know what, I don't like it.
Speaker 3: You don't like it.
Speaker 2: I don't know like there's some you know. Sometimes I'm
Speaker 2: walking through the park and I see kids wearing stuff
Speaker 2: that I could have worn in high school, and it
Speaker 2: filled warms my heart a little bit. I don't really
Speaker 2: like it that much.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find my my low rise geek.
Speaker 2: Actually pretty bad.
Speaker 3: Start wearing those into the office.
Speaker 2: Actually pretty bad.
Speaker 3: It's not that bad. You're crazy, all right? Shall we
Speaker 3: leave it there?
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 4: This has been another episode of the Authoughts podcast. I'm
Speaker 4: Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill Wisenthal. You can follow me at the Stalwart.
Speaker 2: Follow our guest Collect Shade at Missshade and check out
Speaker 2: her new book Y two K. Follow our producers Kerman
Speaker 2: Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash O Bennett at Dashbot and
Speaker 2: Kilbrooks at Kilbrooks. Thank you to our producer Moses Ondam.
Speaker 2: From our Oddlogs content, go to bloomberg dot com slash
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Speaker 2: and you can chat about all of these topics twenty
Speaker 2: four to seven in our discord Discord dot gg, slash odd.
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