Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Tracy, do you think that the reason it's so hard
Speaker 2: to buy house it's because of black Rock is buying
Speaker 2: all that?
Speaker 1: There's a loaded question that's like, what's that famous loaded question?
Speaker 1: Maybe this is more well known in Britain, but the
Speaker 1: when did you start beating your wife? Okay, okay, it's
Speaker 1: a little different, Yeah, a little different.
Speaker 2: When did you stop by the way, Oh I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, yes, that makes oh dear, this conversation has
Speaker 1: already gone off the rails.
Speaker 2: I did a deadlift one, Jimmy.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh barges.
Speaker 2: This isn't after school Special, except I've.
Speaker 1: Decided I'm going to base my entire personality going forward
Speaker 1: on campaigning for a strategic pork reserve in the US.
Speaker 2: Where's the best posta?
Speaker 1: These are the important questions robots taking over the world.
Speaker 3: No, I think that like in a couple of years,
Speaker 3: the AI will do a really good job of making
Speaker 3: the Odd Lots podcast and people to say, I don't
Speaker 3: really need to listen to Joe and Tracy anymore.
Speaker 2: We do have touching the perfect.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Lots more where we catch up with
Speaker 1: friends about what's going on right now, because.
Speaker 2: Even when the odd lots is over, there's always lots more.
Speaker 1: And we really do have the perfect guest. Didn't we
Speaker 1: learn that big factoid, that really interesting factoid in one
Speaker 1: of our conversations that actually the single family institutional ownership
Speaker 1: includes like individual landlords in addition to huge firms like Blackrock.
Speaker 2: I just feel like, this is what I think about
Speaker 2: all the time, TikTok macro, which is like Blackrock is
Speaker 2: controlling all of the market. No, sorry, Blackrock is controlling
Speaker 2: all the market. Blackstone is why you can't buy a house.
Speaker 2: All people in Congress are insider traders. What else is there?
Speaker 2: What else is there, Kyla in terms of TikTok and yeah,
Speaker 2: like what are like the sort of like pillars of
Speaker 2: like modern beliefs about how the public that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's always the system is working against you, right,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think there's so many misbeliefs about the economy.
Speaker 4: It was just it makes it really hard to talk
Speaker 4: about the economy. Like inflation going down doesn't mean that
Speaker 4: prices are going I think that's a really big one.
Speaker 4: And then the black Rock thing really takes hold. That's
Speaker 4: very fair that's like a.
Speaker 2: Big pillar of like how yeah, people see problems with
Speaker 2: the economy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like ETFs in the world, ETFs in the world.
Speaker 1: There's a lot, I should say. We are speaking with
Speaker 1: Kyla Scanlon, our good friend who has just published a
Speaker 1: new book called Fittingly. I have to say I love
Speaker 1: this title in this Economy, How Money and Markets Really Work.
Speaker 1: She's also a Bloomberg Opinion contributor. She's been on the
Speaker 1: podcast before, and congrats on the book. Kylo.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Yeah, it's super exciting.
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming to chat with us. Oh no,
Speaker 2: thank you all for also the creator of the word
Speaker 2: vibe session. Yeah, just like become it is, but it
Speaker 2: is you right, like you said it first. Yeah. No,
Speaker 2: now everyone says it and I was like, oh, people,
Speaker 2: JP were good. I saw that this is a vibe session.
Speaker 4: But you created Yeah no, I did back in July
Speaker 4: twenty twenty two. But yeah, I know other people have
Speaker 4: taken cudit for it, which is fine. You know, No,
Speaker 4: it's not fun, it's not it's just how.
Speaker 1: But this is sort of the amazing thing about the
Speaker 1: vibe session because when you first wrote about it, it
Speaker 1: was because the hard data was still coming in relatively strong,
Speaker 1: but all the survey data, people seemed to really really
Speaker 1: down beat on the economy. And now a couple of
Speaker 1: years later that's still the case more or less.
Speaker 4: Yeah, people are still feeling really bad. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think about the Harris Guardian poll which was like fifty
Speaker 4: five percent of people think that or fifty six percent. Yeah,
Speaker 4: people think that we're in ocession. Forty nine percent of
Speaker 4: people think the stock market is down, forty nine percent
Speaker 4: of people think unemployments at a record And it's like, man,
Speaker 4: you know, there's an element of the vibe session that
Speaker 4: is structural affordability issues right, like husting, crisis, elder care, childcare.
Speaker 4: But then there is an element of the vibe session
Speaker 4: which is media right and TikTok as we were talking
Speaker 4: about with like the black rockets, yeah, and how it's
Speaker 4: buying up single family homes apparently, but yeah, it's complicated.
Speaker 2: Where do you think this comes from? So this sort
Speaker 2: of I don't know, people talk about trust and this
Speaker 2: sort of you know, people just not believing things that
Speaker 2: are objective facts, the sort of deep skepticism or typathy
Speaker 2: maybe towards large institutions or conspiratorial beliefs like where do
Speaker 2: you think is it like a social media thing, Like
Speaker 2: what do you think it's all about?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it's information overload,
Speaker 4: like we just have way too much going on all
Speaker 4: of the time, and I don't think we're kind of
Speaker 4: built to process all of that. And then just the
Speaker 4: framing of things really can be impactful. Like if a
Speaker 4: media headline is negative, that increases the click through rate
Speaker 4: by two point three percent, if it's positive, it decreases
Speaker 4: it by one point nine percent. So the incentives are
Speaker 4: very clear there. But I also think you know, if
Speaker 4: you're not free out, it means that you don't care.
Speaker 4: And so I think the overall idea is that you
Speaker 4: have to be like anxious and worried, and there are
Speaker 4: things be anxious and worried about. But I think it's
Speaker 4: exacerbated by the way that we engage with one another online.
Speaker 1: What sort of engagement do you see on a platform
Speaker 1: like TikTok, Because I feel like I'm not on TikTok,
Speaker 1: but I am on Twitter, slash x And one rule
Speaker 1: of social media seems to be if you say something
Speaker 1: negative about the economy, it's almost guaranteed to get more
Speaker 1: retweets and engagement than something that's positive or nuanced or educational.
Speaker 1: Is that something that you experienced as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think the whole thing is doumerism
Speaker 4: can absolutely take over. Dumers sound really smart, like if
Speaker 4: you're like the world's ending, everyone's like that guy knows
Speaker 4: what he's saying. And I think that that is just
Speaker 4: a great way to sell a newsletter. And so you
Speaker 4: see a lot of people selling newsletters by selling a narrative.
Speaker 4: And I think it's the same on TikTok, like all
Speaker 4: the algorithmic incentives are for you to post very negatively,
Speaker 4: and it's hard as a creator because you know that.
Speaker 4: But there's one of my favorite sayings right now is
Speaker 4: nuance doesn't sell. And I think that's a big part
Speaker 4: of what we see on social media is people feel
Speaker 4: like they have to take a clear side on what
Speaker 4: they're talking about.
Speaker 2: By the way, I see your book in This Economy
Speaker 2: number one bestseller in the Business Encyclopedia. The number two
Speaker 2: is the audiobook version, and then three and four are
Speaker 2: both Robert's Rules of Orders, and then five is again
Speaker 2: is the Kindle. So congratulations on your absolute dominance of
Speaker 2: the business Encyclopedia's category on Amazon.
Speaker 4: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it's funny what they
Speaker 4: end up categorizing you on on Amazon. It's also doing
Speaker 4: well in the money and Monetary policy section, which is fun. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know it was a business encyclopedia, so
Speaker 4: it's good to.
Speaker 2: Know that it is.
Speaker 1: That's very cool. What was one of the things that
Speaker 1: you sort of learned through writing the book? So I
Speaker 1: was flipping through it, and first of all, I love
Speaker 1: the little cartoons and the drawings and the diagrams. They're very,
Speaker 1: very sweet and also very illustrative of some of the
Speaker 1: points that you're trying to make. But I'm curious, is
Speaker 1: there one thing that sort of stood out to you
Speaker 1: when you were researching the book?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think that for me, like there
Speaker 4: was two things, right, like how do you structure a book?
Speaker 4: And then what should a book be about?
Speaker 2: And this is important for me and Tracy, by the way,
Speaker 2: because every once in a while we talk about writing
Speaker 2: a book. Yeah, and we're not we're close, so we're
Speaker 2: going to listen very intensely to learn how it's done.
Speaker 4: Well, this is how I did. I don't know what
Speaker 4: it's done. But yeah, I learned. You know, you have
Speaker 4: to have a flow to a book in the structure,
Speaker 4: it really matters. Even though each chapter can be read separately,
Speaker 4: you kind of have to tell a narrative throughout it.
Speaker 4: And that's a little bit difficult with something as big
Speaker 4: as the economy.
Speaker 1: Right because your book is quite wide ranging. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: basically everything that you find interesting about markets and the economy.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, And I rewrote it three times, so the
Speaker 4: structure of the book was it was a big one.
Speaker 4: And then I think too, like I spend a lot
Speaker 4: of time trying to understand the history of the economy
Speaker 4: because I felt like that was really important to include
Speaker 4: in some of the beginning chapters, like how did we
Speaker 4: get here? And so the beginning of the book is
Speaker 4: kind of like the teap history of the economy, the
Speaker 4: economic kingdom, so the Federal Reserve Castle, the Monechechy policy Castle,
Speaker 4: the fiscal policy inflation.
Speaker 1: Just like the inflation pizza by the Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and all the diagrams are meant to sort of
Speaker 4: guide people throughout the book. And I guess it's like
Speaker 4: the biggest lesson learned for like writing an Econ book,
Speaker 4: And it was an interesting lesson to learn as the
Speaker 4: structure really matters, and how you guide people through something
Speaker 4: as harry and confusing and big as the economy is important.
Speaker 2: You say, people don't click on nuanced. They don't click,
Speaker 2: and yet you're into nuance yourself, and so like, as
Speaker 2: someone who has been a successful financial system educator and
Speaker 2: now a successful author, it's apparently possible. It's apparently possible
Speaker 2: to be successful and nuanced.
Speaker 4: At the sometime. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it totally is.
Speaker 4: I just think it's much easier to be zumeristic. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and so I think it's super important to have nuanced
Speaker 4: because as with the economy is all about you know,
Speaker 4: everything has an opposite and equal reaction, and it's the
Speaker 4: same in the economy. But I think it's just easier
Speaker 4: to tell lies.
Speaker 2: Tracy the last So my last job, like about ten
Speaker 2: years ago Business Insider, I sort of wrote my last
Speaker 2: post there was about why I really like covering markets,
Speaker 2: Like I sort of thought about the blind men touching
Speaker 2: the elephant, except the elephant keeps moving. So not only
Speaker 2: do you never really get the full picture, like at
Speaker 2: any given time, by the time you think you're getting
Speaker 2: the full picture, it's like there's still there's another way.
Speaker 2: The elephant is already involved into a new species.
Speaker 1: It's not easy, but you know, you know what I think, Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not an authority on this subject by any means,
Speaker 1: but you know what I think the solution is to
Speaker 1: nuance is like comedy and entertainment in some respects. And
Speaker 1: that's kind of what you've been doing on TikTok, right,
Speaker 1: Like you make informational videos, but they're fun and engaging
Speaker 1: to watch, and so you can still provide nuance, but
Speaker 1: you still come out the attention of the audience because
Speaker 1: they want to watch them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, that's the goal with like making, and that's
Speaker 4: why the book has illustrations too. It's like, if you
Speaker 4: make things fun, people are more likely to pay attention.
Speaker 4: It's like a game of human behavior, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 4: if you can like tell jokes about things that are
Speaker 4: inherently kind of funny, like a lot of stuff in
Speaker 4: the economy, even though some parts of it are very serious,
Speaker 4: like unemployment and inflation, Like some parts of it you
Speaker 4: can have fun with. And I try to do that
Speaker 4: as much as I can, because I think that's how
Speaker 4: you engage people. People who think they're outside of the economy,
Speaker 4: within economics education, you know what.
Speaker 2: I don't know, how did you realize what your career was? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 2: like you know, it's like, you know, you people tweet
Speaker 2: and people post, and then suddenly it's like, oh, like
Speaker 2: people listen, and this is what I do now, Like
Speaker 2: it took me. It was not until a couple of
Speaker 2: years of being a journalist that I realized like, oh,
Speaker 2: I guess this is what I'm gonna be journalists. Like,
Speaker 2: at what point did you realize that this is what
Speaker 2: you do?
Speaker 4: It was really around GameStop is kind of when the
Speaker 4: video started, and then I spent probably six months being
Speaker 4: like I don't know what's happening, and I was just
Speaker 4: making these videos and I didn't know if anything would work.
Speaker 4: And then I kept on writing my newsletter and then
Speaker 4: in July twenty twenty two, the Vibe session kind of
Speaker 4: took off. And I think that was kind of when
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, okay, I'm saying things and people
Speaker 4: are listening. And I had the New York Times opinion piece,
Speaker 4: which was really awesome, and that's kind of when I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, okay, wow, whoops.
Speaker 1: You know, so, why do you think vibe session took
Speaker 1: off as a term.
Speaker 4: I think people were just really like or this has
Speaker 4: been feedback though people have given me. I think people
Speaker 4: were just looking for something to explain this discrepancy between
Speaker 4: consumer sentiment and economic data. Like so many of my
Speaker 4: conversations are about why do people feel the way that
Speaker 4: they do, And I think the vib session word was
Speaker 4: at least a step in the direction of addressing, you know,
Speaker 4: why there is such a big gap and why people
Speaker 4: were a little bit worried about why that gap existed.
Speaker 2: Neither Tracy and I are on TikTok. Are we like
Speaker 2: at risk of just becoming completely irrelevant? Like I don't
Speaker 2: even use reels. All I do is like do the
Speaker 2: podcast and post tweets and stuff. How separated am I
Speaker 2: from actually the real world of where people, actual people
Speaker 2: are actually getting there?
Speaker 4: I don't know TikTok is the real world. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I think TikTok is at risk of being
Speaker 4: banned in the United States, but.
Speaker 2: I don't I'm biased, but that you know, it's like, Okay.
Speaker 1: Well that that's fine with you, That's.
Speaker 2: Fine with me. There's level of the playing field for
Speaker 2: me because I'm so far behind. No, But I have
Speaker 2: no opinion on this.
Speaker 4: But no, a lot of young people do get their
Speaker 4: news from social media, and that's why I made my
Speaker 4: videos on social media. It was because I was like,
Speaker 4: this is where people are. They need information about the
Speaker 4: economy where they are, and so that's what I set
Speaker 4: out to do. But yeah, it's it's definitely where people
Speaker 4: It's like the watering hole of the Internet in a
Speaker 4: big way, but not like Twitter. Twitter is a little
Speaker 4: bit different. It's very direct on Twitter.
Speaker 1: You know who I blame for TikTok thing massive hole
Speaker 1: in our consciousness show. Ironically, I kind of blame samro
Speaker 1: because he amalgamates the best of TikTok and then posts
Speaker 1: it on Instagram, which means I never have to go
Speaker 1: on TikTok because he just does all the aggregation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a public service for sure, Kyla. I want to
Speaker 1: talk more about like the Vibe session and where we
Speaker 1: are in the economy now. But so inflation has been
Speaker 1: coming down a little bit, and yet the sentiment surveys
Speaker 1: are still coming in pretty I mean I'm generalizing here, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're bad. If this is a structural problem with some
Speaker 1: of the surveys, if people are too polarized because of
Speaker 1: the media, or if people are reflecting on the longer
Speaker 1: term outlook and just thinking I'm never going to be
Speaker 1: able to buy a house, or I'm never going to
Speaker 1: be able to retire, and that's feeding into some of
Speaker 1: the shorter term responses. Is this discrepancy ever going to
Speaker 1: go away or is this something that we and economists
Speaker 1: are going to have to learn to accept and kind
Speaker 1: of analyze and digest.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's something I've been wrestling with quite a bit
Speaker 4: ever since the Hairst Guardian. And you've got to take
Speaker 4: all surveys with the grain of salt. But ever since
Speaker 4: the Hairris Guardian survey came out where it was about
Speaker 4: more than just vibes, like it was a clear disconnect
Speaker 4: from reality, right, Like it was like, we're not believing
Speaker 4: in truth, which is stock markets up, on employments, styllars,
Speaker 4: we're not in a recession. I do think that because
Speaker 4: of information being a playing field for foreign adversaries, that
Speaker 4: there is more and more of an incentive to push
Speaker 4: consumer sentiment down. People are getting their information from all
Speaker 4: sorts of disparate sources, and so there really isn't a
Speaker 4: cohesive way to consume information, like how you know we
Speaker 4: used to when it was just like one cable TV show.
Speaker 4: So I do think that sentiment will be impacted just
Speaker 4: because of the way that we get our information now
Speaker 4: is so confusing. But I am very optimistic that it'll improve,
Speaker 4: but I'm not sure yet how it will. I think
Speaker 4: it has something to do with transparency and trust and
Speaker 4: rebuilding that. But that is a big project to undertake.
Speaker 2: It seems like a really big project. Why can't everyone
Speaker 2: just do what I do? Was just fire up the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg terminal type out top and look at the most
Speaker 2: credible selection of news stories related to business in the world.
Speaker 2: It's easy. I never get any misinformation.
Speaker 1: I know, don't respond. I've learned the best thing to
Speaker 1: do is just don't respond to you.
Speaker 2: And then you have your information. Fire hose Alt.
Speaker 4: There's this crazy statistic about and I say that, and
Speaker 4: it sort of refused what I'm just saying about media
Speaker 4: being a way that people will get confused. Is like,
Speaker 4: the average American spends like five minutes a month on
Speaker 4: the top twenty five news sites, so people are really
Speaker 4: just scrolling headlines, and so I think it's like all
Speaker 4: of these things, and also I think the decline of
Speaker 4: local papers. Everything has become very big and national and
Speaker 4: algorithmically designed, which sounds very dumor of me, but I
Speaker 4: think we're in a weird weird there's so much uncertainty
Speaker 4: going into the election too. I think it's just going
Speaker 4: to be a funky a few months.
Speaker 1: What's your creative process like for creating the TikTok videos?
Speaker 1: And I have to say at this point, sometimes when
Speaker 1: I'm imagining, like the FOMC meeting around like a big
Speaker 1: table in a poort room, I sometimes have visions of
Speaker 1: like talking to yourself the way you do from like
Speaker 1: different camera angles, and Jerome Powell going, I think we
Speaker 1: should do this, and then Kyla response like, no, we
Speaker 1: should do this anyway. That's just me.
Speaker 4: That's so funny. Yeah, the creative process is kind of
Speaker 4: like whatever I'm into that day on it. I get
Speaker 4: a lot of inspiration from other videos, all sorts of
Speaker 4: like movie makers and video creators, and that is how
Speaker 4: the creative process is driven. What I try to do
Speaker 4: is a multidisciplinary approach. So in the book, I have
Speaker 4: a lot of poems in philosophy and literature, and I
Speaker 4: feel like, that's really fun because I feel like with
Speaker 4: economics we kind of stay in one line most of
Speaker 4: the time, which is like money. But you can really
Speaker 4: you can have a lot of fun just talking about
Speaker 4: how all this stuff relates to everything else totally.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this is one of the things
Speaker 2: we've learned on odd lots. There are very few topics
Speaker 2: that can't fit in in some way, like some way, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you just sort of realized in some way it's all
Speaker 2: business and economics. One of the questions that people ask me, like, well,
Speaker 2: what should I read or what should I What do
Speaker 2: you like to consume? What's your other books that you
Speaker 2: like a media diet or like someone said, like I
Speaker 2: want to learn more about the economy or I want
Speaker 2: to learn more about markets. What should I read?
Speaker 4: What do you tell people I have a great book
Speaker 4: you can read in this economy. But yeah, I love
Speaker 4: reading books that aren't about the economy but like kind
Speaker 4: of an economics angle. So I'm reading this book called
Speaker 4: Paved Paradise right now, which is very good. It's about
Speaker 4: parking lots and like the history of parking lots, and
Speaker 4: that's been really fun. I feel like that's right up
Speaker 4: your guys's alleys.
Speaker 1: I single topics are so good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, yeah, and then I just finished Cultish, which
Speaker 4: is about like cults and how they started up. And
Speaker 4: then I'm reading The Material World by Ed Conway and
Speaker 4: that's been really fun. Yeah, that's that's a good one.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I basically read everything. I read a lot
Speaker 4: of philosophy during the pandemic, which I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people did. And now I'm kind of on this
Speaker 4: like real world kick where I really am obsessed with geology,
Speaker 4: materials and stuff like that and how that can be
Speaker 4: applied to the economy.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned, you know, things sort of taking off
Speaker 1: for you during game stop, and I think the last
Speaker 1: time we had you on was to talk about meme stocks,
Speaker 1: and maybe we did a little bit of crypto then
Speaker 1: as well. But of course in recent weeks we have
Speaker 1: seen the return of some meme stoks, although it seems
Speaker 1: to have kind of gone away relatively quickly.
Speaker 2: Recording this, it was up like twenty yesterday.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a lot, but like not not quite
Speaker 1: on the scale of the first round of MEMESNIA and
Speaker 1: it's dropped again. But what do you think is happening there?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 1: Why does it seem to resonate, you know, even two years.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think rowing kitty returning probably had
Speaker 4: something to do with it. But you know, one topic
Speaker 4: I've thought a lot about is financial nihilism, So people
Speaker 4: sort of not believing in markets. But I also think
Speaker 4: like game stop is sort of fun, Like it is
Speaker 4: a casino in the way that if you throw some
Speaker 4: money at it, you could make a lot of money,
Speaker 4: and so I think people view it that way. But
Speaker 4: then I do think there's an element of financial nihilism,
Speaker 4: which I know that you will just cover sports gambling.
Speaker 4: I think that is maybe sort of in the same bucket. Connerson,
Speaker 4: also from Bloomberg Opinion, has a great theory where he's like,
Speaker 4: because millennials and young people can't buy a home, they
Speaker 4: sort of have this extra cash that they're gonna throw
Speaker 4: at things like GameStop and sports gambling. And I think
Speaker 4: that all of those things are simultaneously sort of true.
Speaker 2: Eventually somehow, you know, even the most online gen zers, like,
Speaker 2: eventually they'll get old like we are, and eventually some
Speaker 2: of them will own homes, and eventually some of them
Speaker 2: will have kids. Do you think that for younger generations
Speaker 2: they're just going to permanently see the world differently than
Speaker 2: many other people, or do you think it's gonna be, like, know,
Speaker 2: the constraints that inevitably happened as people will get older
Speaker 2: and having to save pay for childcare and pay for
Speaker 2: elder care will be a sort of forcing mechanism for
Speaker 2: having I guess views or media diet that we sort
Speaker 2: of see as a little bit more normy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think the mean reversion I suppose
Speaker 4: is normy. As you might say, yeah, I think that like,
Speaker 4: as you get older, you just have more responsibilities, so
Speaker 4: you're more likely to become more normy. To say it again,
Speaker 4: but you know, people aren't having kids like they used to,
Speaker 4: Like everybody knows, and you know, it's really tough to
Speaker 4: get home. So I think that that will be something
Speaker 4: that we see. I just think that's something that happens
Speaker 4: over time. But it'll be interesting to see how the
Speaker 4: gen zers move throughout the world. I wrote this piece
Speaker 4: for Fast Company this time last year or a little
Speaker 4: bit earlier about how gin Z thinks about work, which
Speaker 4: is very very different like all the media terms. There yes,
Speaker 4: a quiet quitting and all that stuff. All right, they
Speaker 4: just had something where it was like quiet lunch or
Speaker 4: something where people were like going to lunch and they
Speaker 4: were like, why would you do that when you could
Speaker 4: work for a corporation and not take lunch and just
Speaker 4: work all day. So I think that there is more
Speaker 4: of a desire for work life balance, and you know,
Speaker 4: corporations don't provide perhaps the same support that they used to,
Speaker 4: like when there was pensions and you know, more supportive
Speaker 4: healthcare possibly. So I think it's just a totally different
Speaker 4: relationship with work. And I don't know if that'll carry
Speaker 4: through to the future though.
Speaker 2: Again, Tercy and I maybe one day will write a
Speaker 2: book ourselves. So we were curious about this whole process
Speaker 2: and what happened. What's next for you now? So the
Speaker 2: book just came out, came out May twenty eighth. What
Speaker 2: happens now?
Speaker 4: What would your book be about?
Speaker 2: I don't know, just the problem. We can never think
Speaker 2: of an idea. You stole an idea, oh you know,
Speaker 2: no money, and I have no idea what it would
Speaker 2: be about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you could just see a compilation of
Speaker 4: all the odd episodes.
Speaker 2: Yeah we could. We were thinking about something like oh.
Speaker 1: Like wait, wait, wait, can we not have this on
Speaker 1: the thing because we might actually do it.
Speaker 2: All right, so we've thought about ideas like that, But
Speaker 2: what's next, what happens after you write about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know yet. It was like a really
Speaker 4: big project for about a year, and like right now,
Speaker 4: I'm just very interested. This is like personally, I suppose,
Speaker 4: but I'm very interested in learning. You know, everything that
Speaker 4: I've done has been in my bedroom. You know, it's
Speaker 4: been like, you know, low resource. It just sort of
Speaker 4: hacked from from zero and now I have you know,
Speaker 4: everybody's been so supportive and kind, but I'm really curious
Speaker 4: to explore like other mediums like radio, TV, see what
Speaker 4: that's like.
Speaker 1: I could see like in this Economy Netflix documentary.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah, I'm really interested in exploring how the government works.
Speaker 4: I feel like one theory that I had and I
Speaker 4: didn't really explore it throughout the book is you know,
Speaker 4: if you don't understand the system that you're in, it
Speaker 4: it's tough to make good decisions about the system. But
Speaker 4: you're also more likely to not trust the system if
Speaker 4: you don't understand the complexities. And so I think a
Speaker 4: really useful thing would be to explore the complexities of
Speaker 4: the system. What is the US Post Office. You all
Speaker 4: do such a good job with this with the podcast,
Speaker 4: but I think, like really going deep into the more
Speaker 4: government facing I think.
Speaker 2: That's a great idea, like what do all these agencies
Speaker 2: actually do and how they operate? The total black box?
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think that leads to the distrust and the
Speaker 4: dismay and all the stuff we've been talking about throughout
Speaker 4: the podcast. But I would really like to explore that.
Speaker 4: Like I'm just very fascinated by different mediums to educate
Speaker 4: about the economy, and like it's this thing that people
Speaker 4: think they're not a part of, but like, you know,
Speaker 4: I got a coffee about an hour ago, and that
Speaker 4: was like an economic transaction. I took the subway here,
Speaker 4: that's an economic transaction. We're sitting in chairs which are
Speaker 4: made of material and probably like put together by hand
Speaker 4: machine and all this is like part of the economy.
Speaker 4: And I think that the more that people can sort
Speaker 4: of resonate with that and see themselves as part of
Speaker 4: the economy, the better off we could be. And so
Speaker 4: that's my soapbox on it, but I think it's important.
Speaker 2: So I remember actually going back to game stuff and
Speaker 2: maybe this you know gets into the nuanced thing. I
Speaker 2: remember we did a handful of like there was a
Speaker 2: lot of financial nihil it. You know, you mentioned the
Speaker 2: term financial nihilism and you know, people just doing their
Speaker 2: yolo bets and their yolo loss.
Speaker 1: It's the lottery ticket philosophy.
Speaker 2: There were a few people who like actually use that
Speaker 2: moment to learn more, and like we did a few
Speaker 2: episodes on how you know what is like gamma squeezes
Speaker 2: and stuff, and like probably most people didn't care what
Speaker 2: they were a handful that's like I really like want
Speaker 2: to learn more and then actually use that moment, like
Speaker 2: I don't understand about how you know the Greek letters
Speaker 2: work and options of math and stuff like that. What
Speaker 2: have you found, Like, is there like a cohort of
Speaker 2: people that you've been able to connect with online who
Speaker 2: like through your stuff, like have really gone deep to
Speaker 2: these topics.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean I get like really special messages
Speaker 4: from people being like I majored in economics because if
Speaker 4: you yeah, it's so kind, or like you know, I
Speaker 4: passed an e contest because of your video on Veblin
Speaker 4: goods and yeah, so like I don't know if that's
Speaker 4: exactly what you're asking. But there's been a lot of
Speaker 4: like really kind notes about how people realized, like the
Speaker 4: economics world can be fun, that they're a part of it,
Speaker 4: that you can understand it doesn't have to be a
Speaker 4: bunch of charts on the screen, right, And so yeah,
Speaker 4: and I think also game Stop kind of opened up
Speaker 4: to people's minds to investing. Like before, when I talk
Speaker 4: to my friends about investing, they would be like, that's
Speaker 4: not something I'm ever interested in. But now game Stop
Speaker 4: they're like, oh, okay, I could make like a million dollars.
Speaker 4: But they're just more likely to be receptive to the
Speaker 4: knowledge because game Stop streamlined so many conversations about the
Speaker 4: stock market.
Speaker 1: Well, this is the other thing about your content and
Speaker 1: your approach to economics especially, is I feel like you
Speaker 1: take into account human behavior in a way traditional economics,
Speaker 1: with the exception of behavioralist economics, obviously doesn't necessarily do so.
Speaker 1: In like a classical interpretation of the economy or even
Speaker 1: the market. Stuff like GameStop isn't really supposed to happen,
Speaker 1: and people are always supposed to act rationally and things
Speaker 1: should eventually balance out. And yet we've seen time and
Speaker 1: time again that the economy is, you know, the result
Speaker 1: of individual human decisions, and sometimes it doesn't work precisely
Speaker 1: as expected.
Speaker 4: Yeah, humans are irrational, which kind of goes against you know,
Speaker 4: what we think they should be, which is rational. But
Speaker 4: I think that's what I tried to do with the
Speaker 4: book because there's so many like brilliant economists out there,
Speaker 4: Like this book is a consolidation. It's not Kylo's big
Speaker 4: original ideas. It's all these other ideas from all these
Speaker 4: other amazing economists, like Basic Economics by so you know
Speaker 4: Economics and One Lesson by Hasli, Like all of those
Speaker 4: books are so good, but they're so dense and like
Speaker 4: sometimes they don't attach back to the real world. And
Speaker 4: so what I really wanted to do with this book
Speaker 4: was get into theory and like why stuff how happens,
Speaker 4: but then also be like, oh, look like this soew
Speaker 4: inflation impacts you, and this is how the living market
Speaker 4: impacts you, and this so GDP impacts you, and here
Speaker 4: real world examples of all of those things. And yeah,
Speaker 4: instead of being like, here's the supply and demand graph
Speaker 4: and that's all you get to know about, I just.
Speaker 2: Want to say economics and one lesson is the biggest
Speaker 2: lie there is. That's a two eighteen page book. Someone
Speaker 2: handed me that to me when I was like in college,
Speaker 2: Henry Haslin's book. I don't understand how they got it
Speaker 2: with titling just marketing. Yeah, one lesson. It's a two
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty page book. You mentioned charts. Do people
Speaker 2: still twitch stream? And could we have a show Tracy
Speaker 2: and I where we look at charts on the Bloomberg
Speaker 2: terminal live on Twitch and talk about that. Would that
Speaker 2: be a hit.
Speaker 4: You're really innovating on show format right now. A good
Speaker 4: app and switch. Yeah, I mean I think people just
Speaker 4: like to watch people talk about stuff. Okay, that's like
Speaker 4: my big theory. Like I think people love watching podcasts
Speaker 4: because it kind of feels like you're just hanging out.
Speaker 4: So I think you all could definitely get on Twitch
Speaker 4: and stream some charts and show people Bloomberg terminal that.
Speaker 1: You gotta do like competitive charting?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Should competitive?
Speaker 2: Someone could say, like housing and then we raised to
Speaker 2: see you the most interesting housing chart.
Speaker 1: That be fun?
Speaker 4: I like to be fun.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Lots more is produced by Carmen Rodriguez
Speaker 1: and dash Ell Bennett, with help from Moses ONAM and
Speaker 1: Cal Brooks.
Speaker 2: Our sound engineer is Blake Maple's Sage Bauman is the
Speaker 2: head of Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 1: Please rate, review, and subscribe to Odd, Lots and Lots
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