Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg business Week Inside from the reporters and
Speaker 2: editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus
Speaker 2: global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week
Speaker 2: Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: Hi, everyone, Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend podcast.
Speaker 1: Acquired week with the back of US economic data released
Speaker 1: as the warm up act to this coming week's annual
Speaker 1: gathering of central bankers, policymakers, academics and economists at the
Speaker 1: Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. The main attraction at that event
Speaker 1: fed Chair J. Powell's speech on Friday.
Speaker 3: We're going to be all Jackson Hole guests in the
Speaker 3: upcoming presidential election and its outcome may come up, if
Speaker 3: not with Jair J. Powell, perhaps with others our take
Speaker 3: on the elections this week on how to raise a
Speaker 3: citizen of all that in just a moment.
Speaker 1: Also this hour, what it's like when ozembic takes over
Speaker 1: an entire town, or when Scarlett Johansson and Chris Evans
Speaker 1: talked to US troops deployed overseas.
Speaker 3: All of that to come, We begin though, with something
Speaker 3: that might freak you out just a little bit. But
Speaker 3: it may not be all that surprising. According to the
Speaker 3: twenty twenty three Annenberg Constitution Day Civics Survey, nearly one
Speaker 3: in five Americans can't name a single branch of government.
Speaker 3: It's executive, legislative, and judicial.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's twenty percent. I know it's a lot,
Speaker 1: all right. Perhaps it's not surprising given the state of
Speaker 1: civics education in the United States. According to the Committee
Speaker 1: for Economic Development that's the public policy center of the
Speaker 1: Conference Board, only seven states require a full year of
Speaker 1: civics or government in schools, and thirteen states have no
Speaker 1: civics course requirements. Tim, I say, I feel kind of lucky.
Speaker 1: We talked about news, current events, politics at home sometimes
Speaker 1: againable heated with my older siblings. Same for my daughter.
Speaker 1: She's born into it, being the child of parents who
Speaker 1: are both in the news business. How about for you,
Speaker 1: what was it like grown up?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we talked about it all the time growing up.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to figure out what to do with my kids,
Speaker 3: are you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The thing is is they're at the age now where
Speaker 3: you can't really listen to news in the morning when
Speaker 3: they're around. Because there's so much disturbing stuff happening around
Speaker 3: the world, you don't want them to hear those things. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's kind of a delicate balance. But let's just
Speaker 3: say there are a lot of questions coming up about
Speaker 3: the way society works.
Speaker 1: You have super smart kids, especially your older one, who
Speaker 1: is really curious about things.
Speaker 3: It is almost the younger one still can't talk about
Speaker 3: she's coming.
Speaker 1: She's going to be right behind them.
Speaker 3: Well, with some thoughts on how to teach our children
Speaker 3: about the government, we turned to Lindsay Kormack, Associate Professor
Speaker 3: of Political Science and director of the Diplomacy Lab at
Speaker 3: Steven's Institute of Technology. She's got a new book out
Speaker 3: called How to Raise a Citizen and Why It's up
Speaker 3: to You to do It.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you all are lucky, because that's that's atypical.
Speaker 6: Most of our families don't have those sorts of discussions.
Speaker 6: In research that we did for the book, we found
Speaker 6: that only twenty five percent of eighteen year olds report
Speaker 6: that they ever had an intentional discussion about politics or
Speaker 6: government with their parents. And my sort of stance on
Speaker 6: this is you can't start it too early because kids
Speaker 6: are just trying to make sense of the world around them.
Speaker 6: They're soaking it up. So if they hear us talking,
Speaker 6: you know, like saying like politicians are all bad or
Speaker 6: they're negative, they're liars, they're cheaters, they're going to hear that.
Speaker 6: And so it's not that not talking to them doesn't
Speaker 6: give them a message. They sometimes just pick up the
Speaker 6: negative pieces. So it's up to us to kind of
Speaker 6: recast the narrative around this in front of them.
Speaker 1: Okay, and I have a large family, a lot of
Speaker 1: nieces and nephews. What do you do though, when a
Speaker 1: twenty something year old or an early thirties like, yeah,
Speaker 1: all the politicians they're really lousy. What's the right response?
Speaker 1: How do you deal with that where they're kind of
Speaker 1: so set in their view.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So when I hear something like that, I usually
Speaker 6: think that people are talking about federal politicians and I
Speaker 6: try to change the conversation and think about who their
Speaker 6: local and state representatives are. Yeah, because for the most part,
Speaker 6: the people who do this work at lower levels. They're
Speaker 6: not bad, they're not out there to do ill. They're
Speaker 6: really trying their best, and oftentimes they're not that well supported. Financially,
Speaker 6: the jobs don't pay that well. People yell at them,
Speaker 6: and so really, I think most of the people doing our
Speaker 6: politics are trying their best.
Speaker 3: You know, we hear what you said. We hear a
Speaker 3: lot from the mayors we talked to. We check in
Speaker 3: with mayors around the country quite a bit, and oftentimes
Speaker 3: they are Democrats or Republicans. They're required to have a
Speaker 3: party affiliation, but regardless of what party there in, they
Speaker 3: don't really consider themselves members of a certain political party
Speaker 3: because their job is to come up with solutions to
Speaker 3: you know, fixing potholes and making sure that things are
Speaker 3: running on time in a small city or in a
Speaker 3: metropolitan area. And it's an interesting issue because there is
Speaker 3: this separation between the local level versus what happens on
Speaker 3: the federal level, and so much air is taken out
Speaker 3: by national politics. And that's sort of the vibe that
Speaker 3: people pick up on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's absolutely true. You know, we talk about federal
Speaker 6: politics more than anything else, despite the fact that local
Speaker 6: politics is some of the most consequential for our quality
Speaker 6: of life decisions.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny my husband and I, as I said,
Speaker 1: he's a news guy too, and it just said, you know,
Speaker 1: when he was kind of and his way up, you
Speaker 1: always went to the town hall meetings and local politics.
Speaker 1: And part of it is, you know, the demise of
Speaker 1: local journalism, like there's just no reporting on it anymore.
Speaker 1: And so it's all kind of the same stuff, as
Speaker 1: you said, a lot of it at the federal level,
Speaker 1: but it's not really getting down to, you know, what's
Speaker 1: happening on a different level. It is why I will
Speaker 1: be Tim's right, like we love talking to mayors, We
Speaker 1: love talking to governors, like what's going on in your state,
Speaker 1: what's going on in your towns. It's really important.
Speaker 7: All right.
Speaker 1: So you've got a five year old, how do you
Speaker 1: teach them about government?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think if you have a five year old,
Speaker 6: the point is just to make sure that you are
Speaker 6: comfortable doing it in front of them, have conversations around them,
Speaker 6: have conversations in front of them. We don't need to
Speaker 6: raise like little government trivia experts.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 6: They don't need to know all the presidents, they don't
Speaker 6: need to know how Bill becomes a lot at that age.
Speaker 6: But it's about giving them the vocabulary, letting them hear
Speaker 6: these words so they can kind of start to make
Speaker 6: sense of it. For every other subject, we start kindergarten
Speaker 6: with little concepts, little vocap and we build. But for government,
Speaker 6: a lot of the times we wait until their own
Speaker 6: eighteen and then say like, here, we're going to teach
Speaker 6: you everything right now. And so it's just this idea
Speaker 6: of scaffolding, like we do with every other skill and subject.
Speaker 3: Okay, so parents can't always be the ones who are
Speaker 3: doing this because they're not necessarily the ones who are
Speaker 3: doing this. What's your view on how this should be
Speaker 3: taught in schools?
Speaker 6: So we do need to take an approach that prioritizes
Speaker 6: things younger, like we do with everything else. Well, a
Speaker 6: lot of the ways that we do this is very
Speaker 6: idiosyncratic because states will say here's how we think we
Speaker 6: should do it, but then it gets further devolved down
Speaker 6: to school boards or it gets devolved down to counties,
Speaker 6: and so we don't have a unified curriculum. We never
Speaker 6: are going to. But the thing that we can do
Speaker 6: is start earlier and start building over time instead of
Speaker 6: just backloading everything in that second semester of senior year
Speaker 6: when kids really aren't that receptive to new information anyhow.
Speaker 3: You know what's interesting I'm getting some messages from a
Speaker 3: member of our audience who says that the kids aren't
Speaker 3: necessarily the problem. It's the parents who seem to be
Speaker 3: the least educated, the most susceptible to misinformation.
Speaker 9: Those grown up kids.
Speaker 1: What do we do with it?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What do we do with those grown ups?
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 7: You know what.
Speaker 6: That's one of the reasons I wrote this book in
Speaker 6: the way I did. The first half is sort of like,
Speaker 6: here's the problem, here's what our kids need to know.
Speaker 6: And the second half is a primer because I understand
Speaker 6: that people who are parenting today, we are products of
Speaker 6: systems that were deprioritizing civic education. A lot of times
Speaker 6: we had parents who were not comfortable talking about these topics,
Speaker 6: and so whoever's pointing that out to you, I share
Speaker 6: that viewpoint with the parents. We need a little bit
Speaker 6: more education here too, And that's sort of what this
Speaker 6: effort is about.
Speaker 1: How do you you know? It's interesting because I think
Speaker 1: we've all had conversations with adults where it gets heated.
Speaker 1: How do you have that conversation like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: you don't really understand how this works, Like, how do
Speaker 1: you do that?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'll tell you the strategy. I'm mostly talking with
Speaker 6: college students I eighteen to twenty two year olds, and
Speaker 6: they get heated too. But instead of asking someone what
Speaker 6: they think or why they believe that, the first question
Speaker 6: I always like to ask is what have you heard
Speaker 6: about that? Because I think when you ask someone what
Speaker 6: have you heard? It removes them from having the responsibility
Speaker 6: of defending or justifying a position. They can say, oh,
Speaker 6: I heard this on Twitter, Oh I heard this from
Speaker 6: my uncle or whatever it is, and then you can
Speaker 6: kind of work with that instead of putting it on
Speaker 6: them to defend whatever it is. They're trying to think.
Speaker 1: Source matters, right. It's funny that, I mean, I find
Speaker 1: myself doing that to a lot, like where did you
Speaker 1: hear that?
Speaker 5: It does?
Speaker 3: But I think one challenge now is the polarization that
Speaker 3: we see on these online platforms. So you have you know,
Speaker 3: for example, the Elon Musk, the owner of X, has
Speaker 3: endorsed Donald Trump and he has hosted a conversation with
Speaker 3: him on the platform. He is in complete control of
Speaker 3: that platform. Can you imagine the outrage that you'd hear
Speaker 3: from folks out there if you saw the opposite, like
Speaker 3: on Facebook or something like the CEO of.
Speaker 6: Oh, like if Bluckerberg sat down with Kamala Harris.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exclusively or endorses her.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know what that might be like a pulse
Speaker 6: on current politics, because I imagine that that probably would
Speaker 6: have more outrage than what happened with one point two
Speaker 6: million people listening to Elon Musk and Donald Trump. But yeah,
Speaker 6: it's hard to know, but you're probably right. Your intuition
Speaker 6: there kind of goes with what I would think too.
Speaker 1: Lids, we mentioned that you have got basically five rules
Speaker 1: or five skills that you think kids ought to have.
Speaker 1: Can we go through them?
Speaker 6: Sure? Thing, This is the things that you need to
Speaker 6: go over with your kids before they leave your house,
Speaker 6: so before they're gone for college or whatever awaits them after.
Speaker 6: The first one is they need to know how to
Speaker 6: have hard conversations. And one of the reasons that I
Speaker 6: note that that's true is as a college professor, I
Speaker 6: have students who are afraid to upset anyone and they're
Speaker 6: afraid to feel this discomfort themselves, and so that's like
Speaker 6: a big skill that we need to make sure that
Speaker 6: they have. The second one is parents need to make
Speaker 6: sure their kids know how to register to vote. And
Speaker 6: then they have to change it when they move. I
Speaker 6: take our kids just to vote every year when we
Speaker 6: have an election, and without fail, some of them are
Speaker 6: turned away because they thought they were registered and they
Speaker 6: don't realize that if you're registered in one county, it
Speaker 6: doesn't transfer to the other. So make sure that they
Speaker 6: understand how to do this and how they change that
Speaker 6: when they move. The third one is they need to
Speaker 6: understand the difference between primaries and general elections. All too
Speaker 6: often we only focus on general elections when we talk
Speaker 6: about this in schools, and so they really miss out
Speaker 6: on this big piece of power, which is picking some
Speaker 6: in a primary election. The third thing is they need
Speaker 6: to have an understanding of federalism because we so are
Speaker 6: the fourth thing. Rather, we oftentimes focus on the federal level,
Speaker 6: and then they don't realize that state and local governments
Speaker 6: control so many things. When we think about big policy
Speaker 6: issues like gun licensing or healthcare or marijuana policy, things
Speaker 6: that matter to young voters, this happens at the state
Speaker 6: level for the most part, and so having an appreciation
Speaker 6: of these different levels it's an important thing for them
Speaker 6: to have. And the fifth one, and this is a
Speaker 6: hard sell, but a lot of parents that I'm talking
Speaker 6: to are pretty receptive to it. Your kids need to
Speaker 6: have read the Constitution at least once before they leave
Speaker 6: your house. It's our charter of government, is the rules
Speaker 6: of the game, and once they have an understanding of it,
Speaker 6: they can't be as suayed with bad information or misinformation
Speaker 6: because they'll really just have a rooted understanding of what
Speaker 6: our system is all about.
Speaker 1: And yes, you can start with Hamilton, like it'll get
Speaker 1: you really excited like that. No, seriously, Like I think
Speaker 1: about something like that gets people interested, like, oh wait
Speaker 1: a minute, this is really our history in a fun form.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of information there. What is it
Speaker 1: that the kids that you teach eighteen to twenty one,
Speaker 1: twenty two? You've got a young daughter too. But I
Speaker 1: am curious about the questions that come up the most
Speaker 1: when it comes to government politics. What do they want
Speaker 1: to know? What is it that they're like, I don't
Speaker 1: really understand this. I feel like when there's a piece
Speaker 1: of legislation going through Congress, we all are kind of like, wait,
Speaker 1: where are we in this process? And where are we
Speaker 1: and what vote is this and how does this work?
Speaker 1: Because there's still things I think the mechanics that don't
Speaker 1: always make sense or don't you know, there's just it
Speaker 1: feels like nuances do it. But anyway, what do kids
Speaker 1: ask you the most?
Speaker 6: I mean, I wish I could tell you that there
Speaker 6: was this one thing that they didn't understand, but truly
Speaker 6: they're lost. Like their understanding of the courts is based
Speaker 6: on like courtroom drama TV. Their understanding of the presidency
Speaker 6: is sort of like whatever they've seen on Instagram or
Speaker 6: TikTok that morning. And when it comes to like how
Speaker 6: the legislature works, it's really hard and so it's not
Speaker 6: something where we can fix it overnight. But I do
Speaker 6: think that if we start a little earlier, if we're
Speaker 6: a little bit more intentional about it, and we recognize
Speaker 6: that we have a role as families in writing this thing,
Speaker 6: we can get to a lot of their questions because
Speaker 6: they're kind of lost all over the place.
Speaker 3: Do the social platforms have a role too? You mentioned
Speaker 3: Instagram and TikTok just now, how do you see them?
Speaker 6: I mean, they're already here. They're going to be here
Speaker 6: for good, I think, and so we have to understand
Speaker 6: what they are. I think something that parents can do is,
Speaker 6: you know, We're not going to see the same things
Speaker 6: as our kids. We're algorithmically fed different things. We all
Speaker 6: know this, and something that I argue in my book
Speaker 6: is that take a little time with each other and say, like,
Speaker 6: what is it that you're seeing and make sure that
Speaker 6: you kind of have an understanding of what their algorithm
Speaker 6: feeds them, and let them see what you're getting fed
Speaker 6: as well. That way, you can talk about things with
Speaker 6: a better understanding of the background inputs that either side has.
Speaker 1: We talked about education, Tim, you asked earlier. I think
Speaker 1: let's you some questions. But do we need to have
Speaker 1: mandatory civics classes in school? Do we need to have
Speaker 1: a civics test before people vote?
Speaker 6: I don't think a civics test is necessarily the way
Speaker 6: to do it. The people who study like education, the
Speaker 6: people who are experts in this field, always come back
Speaker 6: to this idea of action civics, which is like giving
Speaker 6: kids a project so that they can really see how
Speaker 6: the process works. You know, they find like a playground
Speaker 6: and say, oh, our basketball courts are kind of cracked
Speaker 6: and they don't really work. How can we figure out
Speaker 6: how to fix that? And that process is, you know,
Speaker 6: figuring out which branch of government is responsible, which level
Speaker 6: is responsible, trying to figure out how you activate to
Speaker 6: talk to those people, and even if you don't succeed
Speaker 6: in getting better basketball courts, you understand a lot more
Speaker 6: about the process. And so the people who study that
Speaker 6: sort of like what can we do in schools, they
Speaker 6: mostly point to action civics versus study for a test,
Speaker 6: get ten answers right, and go on with your life.
Speaker 1: The January sixth riot on the Capitol was that, I mean,
Speaker 1: how do you think about that in our political history?
Speaker 1: And I'm just thinking, like, does it make you nervous?
Speaker 1: Like those individuals did they think, well, this is democracy.
Speaker 1: I believe the vote was stolen. You know, like, how
Speaker 1: do you kind of teach around that that those are
Speaker 1: citizens to people who may have thought, listen, you know,
Speaker 1: we think things weren't democratic, and so we're protecting our state.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a really hard one, and I talk about
Speaker 6: this a little bit in the book. I think one
Speaker 6: of the things that's challenging there is my guess is
Speaker 6: that people who are stormed in the Capitol on January
Speaker 6: six I don't think many of them ever worked as
Speaker 6: poll workers or election workers. Because I think if you had,
Speaker 6: you would understand how difficult it is to actually steal
Speaker 6: an election or how unlikely it is that enough people
Speaker 6: would conspire to do that. And so this is all
Speaker 6: sort of going back to the point of like, if
Speaker 6: we understand our systems better, I think they operate in
Speaker 6: better ways and we're less prone to things like misinformation
Speaker 6: that could incite violence. So I think about January six
Speaker 6: as an ultimate failure of political education more than anything else.
Speaker 3: But many Americans do still believe the twenty twenty election
Speaker 3: was stolen and question and again I'm going to the
Speaker 3: American Bar Association. They write that they question the integrity
Speaker 3: of our election systems, and you actually hear the current
Speaker 3: front runner and Republican nominee still questioning the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 3: How do you view those in positions of power making
Speaker 3: comments like that.
Speaker 6: So I think it's easier to give Donald Trump a
Speaker 6: pass versus season of politicians a past, because seasoned politicians,
Speaker 6: you know, they understand these systems, they've interacted with them
Speaker 6: for a longer time. I think what Donald Trump kind
Speaker 6: of brings is more of an infotainment style of things
Speaker 6: and not a deep rooted understanding of how the processes
Speaker 6: that underlie our systems work. I think it's kind of
Speaker 6: dangerous for us to kind of take that as the
Speaker 6: teaching versus going back to basics and saying, you know what,
Speaker 6: maybe I'll go volunteer as a poll worker and go
Speaker 6: see how that actually is. That would be the version
Speaker 6: of doing like your own real research. And I think
Speaker 6: when people do that, they realize it's very hard to
Speaker 6: steal an election. It's very hard to do these sorts
Speaker 6: of things because we have so much redundancy in place
Speaker 6: in the US system.
Speaker 1: Hey, lindsay one last question. We've got to wrap up,
Speaker 1: but got about a minute. I think there are a
Speaker 1: lot of folks too there like this isn't my government,
Speaker 1: it's companies who do lobbying. You worked at a lobbyist
Speaker 1: in Washington for about a year. They're like, why should
Speaker 1: I vote because it doesn't really matter, because my vote
Speaker 1: doesn't matter because it's money that matters. What do you
Speaker 1: say to them? And again, we just got about forty
Speaker 1: five seconds.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think I think that's a hard feeling, and
Speaker 6: I understand it to think that you're inconsequential. So the
Speaker 6: thing is, you're truly not at all the local and
Speaker 6: state levels. Federal government, sure, you're a small piece of that,
Speaker 6: but when you're doing things that are understand local level,
Speaker 6: you are pivotal. We have elections that are decided in
Speaker 6: fewer than hundreds of votes, So I understand that concern.
Speaker 6: I think you should put it away and still exercise
Speaker 6: the rights that you have here.
Speaker 3: That was Lindsay Kormack, Associate Professor of Political Science and
Speaker 3: director of the Diplomacy Lab at Steven's Institute of Technology,
Speaker 3: her new book, How to Raise a Citizen and Why
Speaker 3: It's up to You to Do.
Speaker 1: It coming up. For more than eighty years, the USO
Speaker 1: has been supporting members of the US Armed Forces and
Speaker 1: their families. The CEO of the nonprofit joins us.
Speaker 3: On the other side, you're listening to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This
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Speaker 1: Our next guest has quite the resume. He was Assistant
Speaker 1: to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor from March
Speaker 1: two thousand and five until June two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: he served as US Ambassador to Romania in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands. He also served as Assistant Secretary of Defense
Speaker 1: for International Security Policy from two thousand and one to
Speaker 1: two thousand and three.
Speaker 3: From nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety two, he was the
Speaker 3: Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy,
Speaker 3: and from nineteen eighty four to nineteen eighty six he
Speaker 3: worked for the Assistant Director for Strategic Programs in the
Speaker 3: US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was also an
Speaker 3: advisor to the US Delegation on Nuclear and space arms
Speaker 3: talks with the former Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: And yeah, he also founded a tech company. We could
Speaker 1: definitely go on and on and on, but what we
Speaker 1: really wanted to do is talk to our next guest
Speaker 1: about so much, including now running the organization that's been
Speaker 1: serving the men and women in the US military since
Speaker 1: nineteen forty one.
Speaker 2: JD.
Speaker 3: Crouch, President and CEO at USO, also known as United
Speaker 3: Service Organizations, on why what they do today carries the
Speaker 3: same significance as it did more than eighty years ago.
Speaker 5: The USO today is in many ways, it's a modernized
Speaker 5: version right of what in a very relevant version of
Speaker 5: what happened in nineteen forty one. We still have entertainment connections.
Speaker 5: It's not Bob Hope today, but it's Scarlett Jorhanssen, or
Speaker 5: it's Chris Evans, or it's people like that who go
Speaker 5: out and talk to the troops, spend time with the troops,
Speaker 5: and the purpose is really the same. It's to really
Speaker 5: give them a taste of home and make sure that
Speaker 5: they understand that people back home are supporting them and
Speaker 5: are thinking about them. But we also do it in
Speaker 5: a million other ways, not just entertainers. You know, we
Speaker 5: have two hundred and seventy five locations all around the world.
Speaker 5: There's just as an example, there's over ten thousand American
Speaker 5: troops in Eastern Europe right now as a result of
Speaker 5: the situation in Ukraine, and the USO is there with them,
Speaker 5: providing support through centers that we've built on military basis,
Speaker 5: and all kinds of other programs like care packages and
Speaker 5: things like that. So the USO is a multifaceted set
Speaker 5: of programs. It's all designed to make sure that our
Speaker 5: service members understand the gratitude of the American people.
Speaker 3: Can you remind everyone about the structure of the organization
Speaker 3: where the funding comes from, because this is a it's
Speaker 3: a nonprofit, terrible corporation that is chartered by Congress. Where
Speaker 3: does the money come from?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, the money largely comes from the American people.
Speaker 5: We have, you know, donations that are as small as
Speaker 5: you know, five dollars or less from people who've been
Speaker 5: supporting I've actually gotten I got a letter from a
Speaker 5: little lady who's who met her husband at a USO
Speaker 5: dance in nineteen forty four, and she sent me a
Speaker 5: quarter that that was, you know, taped to the letter. Okay, wow,
Speaker 5: all the way up to big corporations and companies that
Speaker 5: we have strategic partnerships with. I know you've got a
Speaker 5: lot of businesses that are watching this. You know, we
Speaker 5: have got some great strategic partners with fantastic brands that
Speaker 5: go back a Coke back to nineteen forty one, the NFL, Kroger,
Speaker 5: and lots of others. The Boeing Company, Lockheed Martin, people
Speaker 5: like that, Companies like that that really are leaning in
Speaker 5: on supporting the troops. So there's all kinds of ways
Speaker 5: to help support what we're doing at USO dot org.
Speaker 1: What about when you know, individuals come home. I always
Speaker 1: think about the support once they come back. How do
Speaker 1: you guys kind of continue the support there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, when they are overseas, we're actually
Speaker 5: back home supporting their families. I mentioned the Eastern European
Speaker 5: deployments that those are unaccompanied tours. They're not going with
Speaker 5: family members, so we're back home supporting them around the basis.
Speaker 5: But when they do return, if you know, obviously we're
Speaker 5: usually there with some kind of a welcome home for them.
Speaker 5: We had a great welcome home for the aircraft carriers
Speaker 5: that have just deployed to the Middle East that came
Speaker 5: home to Norfolk. But beyond that, as they're looking to
Speaker 5: transition out of the military, the USO has a broad
Speaker 5: range of services that help them smooth that transition so
Speaker 5: that they can get we had a good job, get
Speaker 5: the educational benefits that they deserve, and integrate into their community.
Speaker 5: So we really are there from the time they enter
Speaker 5: the service and you know, raise their right hand all
Speaker 5: the way to the time that they transition out.
Speaker 1: Jadie, you know what I always think about with an
Speaker 1: organization like this is folks who might be listening to
Speaker 1: this conversation right now, are just Americans in general, what
Speaker 1: would surprise them about? I think we just forgive me,
Speaker 1: but I think take for granted that there's going to
Speaker 1: be people doing military service and protecting our nation, protecting
Speaker 1: you know, our allies. But what would they be surprised about,
Speaker 1: Like what you guys see on a regular basis, maybe
Speaker 1: some of the folks that help you, whether it's going
Speaker 1: to entertain the troops, what would they be surprised that
Speaker 1: they might find or what that you guys find on
Speaker 1: a regular basis.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, the first thing I would say is, you know,
Speaker 5: I think there's tremendous in some cases sympathy or certainly
Speaker 5: pride in our military among most Americans. But that's different
Speaker 5: than really understanding what it's like to wear the uniform.
Speaker 5: And so part of this, you know, part of the
Speaker 5: thing I think when they when they when they do
Speaker 5: get an opportunity to see either what we do or
Speaker 5: what they do, they're amazed by a lot of things.
Speaker 5: One is they're just amazed at how, you know, really
Speaker 5: how American people are that are serving. That is to
Speaker 5: say they're like them. You know, we tend sometimes to
Speaker 5: put our military on either on a pedestal or or
Speaker 5: some people might tear them down, but but where they
Speaker 5: might feel like they're victims or something. But that's not
Speaker 5: the way they see themselves. They see themselves as just
Speaker 5: patriotic Americans who are doing their job for the country.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot of Americans would be surprised
Speaker 5: at that. I mean, you know, we we tend to
Speaker 5: get what we get from the movies and things like that,
Speaker 5: so that's certainly one thing, you know, And in terms
Speaker 5: of what the USO does, I think I think maybe
Speaker 5: people would be surprised at how much we're supporting families,
Speaker 5: you know. So this force is very different than the
Speaker 5: World War II force. Sixty percent of them are married
Speaker 5: and over half of them have children, and so it's
Speaker 5: a very different type of force. And consequently supporting their
Speaker 5: families back home, I think is a critical part to
Speaker 5: getting future generations of Americans to raise their hand and
Speaker 5: say they want to serve.
Speaker 3: It's also interesting the way that technology has changed deployment
Speaker 3: and keeping in touch with family. If you think about
Speaker 3: it from the perspective of Okay, waiting months to get
Speaker 3: letters back in World War Two or even Vietnam to
Speaker 3: getting emails in post war, during the War on Terror,
Speaker 3: and now troops abroad being able to maybe do skype
Speaker 3: or FaceTime with their families. How do you think about
Speaker 3: the ways that families are able to keep in touch
Speaker 3: while folks are deployed.
Speaker 5: Well, as you know, this is the in touch generation.
Speaker 5: I mean most of most of the rank and file,
Speaker 5: as we say and listed are actually gen Z now
Speaker 5: and obviously gen Z and millennial and consequently they're used
Speaker 5: to being in touch. So what's the most requested service
Speaker 5: at USO centers everywhere? Internet? Wi Fi? Yeah, absolutely, it
Speaker 5: brings them in. It's what keeps them connected. One of
Speaker 5: our really exciting programs is our gaming program. And you know,
Speaker 5: gaming used to be kind of isolating, but now it's not.
Speaker 5: It can be a fan activity, it can be a
Speaker 5: friends activity, and so we host gaming competitions and things
Speaker 5: like that, and a lot of times people just want
Speaker 5: to come into our center relax, game with their friends
Speaker 5: who might be next door or they might be four
Speaker 5: thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: You've been CEO for about a decade. How has the
Speaker 1: organization changed and where do you think the USO needs
Speaker 1: to go in the next ten years.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, we have spent a lot of time
Speaker 5: something you you wouldn't see you from an organizational stape,
Speaker 5: but consolidating the organization and bringing it to together. When
Speaker 5: I first joined, we were nineteen independent five oh one
Speaker 5: c threes. We're now one. And this has really helped
Speaker 5: us to be able to not only raise more funds,
Speaker 5: but also to move those resources where we need them
Speaker 5: because the troops are moving in different places. Who would
Speaker 5: have thought two years ago we would have had five
Speaker 5: or six centers in Eastern Europe, for example, And so
Speaker 5: where it's going is always where they're going. And I
Speaker 5: give you an example of the innovation that we're just now.
Speaker 5: I think your earlier clip talked about the Abraham Lincoln
Speaker 5: sailing to the Middle East. The USL is now putting
Speaker 5: USO centers on aircraft carriers. Wow, very cool program. And
Speaker 5: again this is this is five thousand people on a
Speaker 5: contained area with nothing to do except their jobs. And
Speaker 5: so this is a little R in R center buried
Speaker 5: right in the middle of the aircraft carrier. We'll be
Speaker 5: on nine carriers by the end of the year and
Speaker 5: then hope to get on the other ones in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five. So it's those kinds of innovations that we
Speaker 5: will always seek to make sure that we are with
Speaker 5: our service members and their families wherever they go.
Speaker 3: You mentioned Eastern Europe, and you have a lot of
Speaker 3: experience in Eastern Europe, as we mentioned before, you were
Speaker 3: US Ambassador to Romania two thousand and four to two
Speaker 3: thousand and five. You also were an advisor to the
Speaker 3: US Delegation on Nuclear and space arms talks with the
Speaker 3: former Soviet Union back in the nineteen eighties, I believe.
Speaker 3: So I want to talk a little bit about what's
Speaker 3: happening in Ukraine and in Eastern Europe right now and
Speaker 3: the different philosophies that are existing in the modern political environment,
Speaker 3: because it does seem like there's increasingly a large number
Speaker 3: of folks here in the US who are thinking about
Speaker 3: the United States and has taking a more isolationist approach,
Speaker 3: and we're certainly seeing that in Congress each time a
Speaker 3: funding bill comes up to support Ukraine and President Zelenski,
Speaker 3: how do you think about the US's role around the
Speaker 3: world right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, you know, obviously the USO doesn't take positions
Speaker 5: right on wars or political positions on things like that,
Speaker 5: But I think, you know, personally, we do need to
Speaker 5: recognize that it's a pretty dangerous world. We've got the
Speaker 5: rise of China to become a global power. We have
Speaker 5: a riventrous Russia which is really seeking to kind of
Speaker 5: recreate and those are their words, not mine, recreate the
Speaker 5: former Soviet Lands. And then we have a revolutionary Iran
Speaker 5: in the Middle East. And not only are all these
Speaker 5: things happening at the same time, but they're actually aligned,
Speaker 5: they're working together, and so that presents the United States
Speaker 5: and its allies with a lot of challenges, and it
Speaker 5: has an impact on our business because it means the
Speaker 5: operational tempo of our military has gone up dramatically, and
Speaker 5: you see it in the Middle East, to see it
Speaker 5: in Eastern Europe and not so much, but it is
Speaker 5: also there in the Far East, and it means that
Speaker 5: the demand for our services is going up dramatically as
Speaker 5: a result of that operational tempo. So it is a
Speaker 5: very dangerous world out there, and it's one that I
Speaker 5: think we ignore it our own peril.
Speaker 1: Do you feel like it's more dangerous than some of
Speaker 1: the times where you were serving, whether it's George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush or different George W. Bush excuse me, other times
Speaker 1: where you were helping out administrations. Does it feel more dangerous?
Speaker 5: Every generation has its challenge, Carroll, You know what I mean.
Speaker 5: It is what it is. And obviously during two thousand
Speaker 5: and one that was nine to eleven and the terrorist
Speaker 5: attacks and things like that. But this does feel like
Speaker 5: a return to kind of great power conflict and that
Speaker 5: has obviously the risk of escalation and things like that.
Speaker 5: So yes, I guess I would generally say it does
Speaker 5: feel a little bit more dangerous, almost a little bit
Speaker 5: maybe like it felt back in the early late seventies
Speaker 5: and early eighties. Well, oh, go ahead, Carol.
Speaker 1: Well, and I wonder you know, the US and its
Speaker 1: traditional allies in Europe. Do you think that comes undone
Speaker 1: or do you think that survives?
Speaker 5: Well, I think we have very strong alliance relationships and
Speaker 5: you know, not some obviously the older traditional ones with
Speaker 5: the United Kingdom as well as the other founding NATO members.
Speaker 5: But also I will say just a shout out to
Speaker 5: the polls and the Romanians who not only supported the
Speaker 5: United States after nine to eleven, not only sent troops
Speaker 5: to Iraq and Afghanistan, but who are actually investing in
Speaker 5: their defense in a serious way. And consequently, are you know,
Speaker 5: they're arm in arm with us as we're in Eastern
Speaker 5: Europe right now, we're not alone there.
Speaker 3: It's interesting to hear you say this just because we're
Speaker 3: in this political environment right now where I think a
Speaker 3: lot of folks are saying, you know, it's okay for
Speaker 3: us to ignore what's going on in other parts of
Speaker 3: the world. The alliance as of old aren't necessarily the
Speaker 3: alliances that we want to continue with. We hear criticism
Speaker 3: of some of these alliances from one presidential candidate in particular,
Speaker 3: what would you say to Americans who would say that
Speaker 3: they're critical of some of these alliances that have been
Speaker 3: traditional post World War Two?
Speaker 5: You know, I actually think if you go back and
Speaker 5: you look at the history of NATO, for example, even
Speaker 5: going back into the nineteen fifties, there have been president
Speaker 5: after president after president who said they need to do more,
Speaker 5: you know, they need to step up and invest more
Speaker 5: in their defense. And so there's a you know, in
Speaker 5: a way, it's I always say, it's a little bit
Speaker 5: like deja vu all over again, you know, And yes,
Speaker 5: these things wax and wane a little bit, but in particular,
Speaker 5: when the demand on American resources is higher. Is not wrong.
Speaker 5: I think for Americans to expect that our allies do more.
Speaker 5: Sometimes we don't hear about what they're doing. We don't
Speaker 5: really how much they're doing, and some of them, frankly,
Speaker 5: can do a lot more. So I think it's a balance.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have allies, you know.
Speaker 5: In other words, we need to have allies I think
Speaker 5: and support our way of life. I mean we're not
Speaker 5: I don't think we're doing it for them or just
Speaker 5: for them. We're doing it because it's something that's important
Speaker 5: for us.
Speaker 1: Hey, Jad, just to wrap up, when someone mentions the USO,
Speaker 1: what do you want people to think of? First?
Speaker 5: I want them to think about a service member who
Speaker 5: is out somewhere on the frontiers of freedom, who's alone
Speaker 5: at Christmas, who is separated from their wives or their families.
Speaker 5: And I want them to realize that that there's almost
Speaker 5: nothing like that in the world, and that they need
Speaker 5: our continual support. And they need to know that Americans,
Speaker 5: no matter what their views are on you know, the
Speaker 5: political issues of the day. You know, they didn't make
Speaker 5: the decision to get sent to Eastern Europe or to
Speaker 5: the Middle East or someplace like that. Somebody else made
Speaker 5: that decision. But that means Americans still have an obligation
Speaker 5: to show them our gratitude and show them our support.
Speaker 5: And of course I think the best way to do
Speaker 5: that is supporting the USO, but there are other ways too,
Speaker 5: But that's what I want them to think when they
Speaker 5: think of the USO.
Speaker 3: That was JD. Crouch, President and CEO at USO, also
Speaker 3: known as United Service Organizations.
Speaker 1: Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, All aboard the GLP
Speaker 1: one train.
Speaker 3: It's time to head on over to ozempic Town. That
Speaker 3: story next.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast.
Speaker 2: Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on
Speaker 2: applecar Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App.
Speaker 2: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
Speaker 2: flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 1: So. One of the stickier investment and business trends of
Speaker 1: our world is the new class of diet drugs, the
Speaker 1: GLP one medications. They are put up by Eli, Lilly, Novo, Nordisks,
Speaker 1: and some others. The recent earning season showed Eli Lilly
Speaker 1: narrowed the gap with rival Novo in the race to
Speaker 1: dominate the red hot obesity market as it expands its
Speaker 1: supplies of weight loss drugs.
Speaker 3: A little over one week ago, Lily lifted its twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four revenue outlook for the second time this year
Speaker 3: on the strength of its weight loss drug sending the
Speaker 3: stock soaring on the news.
Speaker 1: And before that, Novo had reported disappointing second quarter sales
Speaker 1: of we Govi, saying price concessions for companies that manage
Speaker 1: prescription drug benefits in the United States cut into its performance.
Speaker 1: Novo shares sold off on the news, but if since bounce.
Speaker 3: Back bottom line industry competition continues to grow. For a gutcheck,
Speaker 3: we turned to our GLP one guru, Bloomberg News health
Speaker 3: reporter Madison Muller, who also took us to Ozempic Town,
Speaker 3: also known as Bowling Green, Kentucky first stop though recent
Speaker 3: earnings joining Carol Is Bloomberg's Matt Miller kickie it off
Speaker 3: on the business of it all.
Speaker 10: Oh, zempic and we go v same thing right and
Speaker 10: is a higher dose? Okay? But Manjaro and zep bound
Speaker 10: zet bound same thing Okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very nice.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm just when we get these stats like zep
Speaker 10: bound sold one point two billion dollars worth in the
Speaker 10: second quarter, that does not count Munjaro.
Speaker 11: Right, they're separated out. And it's interesting because Manjaro has
Speaker 11: been on the market longer, but zep Bound has just
Speaker 11: ramped up.
Speaker 10: And it's also interesting because that's the one that people
Speaker 10: talk about as the fat drug, and the same is
Speaker 10: true with Novo. It's the non fat drug people talk about. Well,
Speaker 10: whatever you want to call it. I also think it's
Speaker 10: interesting that Eli Lilly calls their weight loss drug Manjaro,
Speaker 10: which is like, so where the Italian says for go
Speaker 10: eat your dinner.
Speaker 11: Right, Well, there's actually a story behind the name. What
Speaker 11: is it Mount Kilimanjaro, like smushed together, and so if
Speaker 11: you look at the label, you can see there's like
Speaker 11: two little mountains.
Speaker 1: Oh that's interesting.
Speaker 7: Who knew?
Speaker 1: All right, fun fac So let's talk the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts of your world earnings Lily upby Novo not so much.
Speaker 1: Investors reacted accordingly, How are you thinking about the space
Speaker 1: and kind of the reporting that we're seeing.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean we've been talking about supply and the
Speaker 11: supply shortages for a long time, and that sort of
Speaker 11: continues to be the story.
Speaker 9: It's what we're seeing again with Novo and Lily.
Speaker 7: I mean, Novo.
Speaker 11: Struggled and missed sales estimates. Lily sort of smashed them
Speaker 11: out of the parks.
Speaker 1: So the business is good, it's just a matter of
Speaker 1: if you can keep up.
Speaker 9: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 11: And Lily like had I mean, both companies have invested
Speaker 11: billions into ramping up manufacturing. It just seems like Lily's
Speaker 11: issues are starting to ease a little bit faster than Novo's.
Speaker 10: Maybe are because they have way more money. So the
Speaker 10: idea is you can make as much as you can sell, right, definitely,
Speaker 10: and Eli Lilly is an eight hundred billion dollar company, right,
Speaker 10: so they have more resources to boost production. Novo is
Speaker 10: I don't know, like a ten bills million dollar company, right,
Speaker 10: I don't even know. It's less than ten.
Speaker 9: It's the biggest company in Europe.
Speaker 10: It's worth three point eight billion damage kroner.
Speaker 1: It's a five hundred and sixty eight billion dollar market
Speaker 1: cap company. The eighty rs at trade here.
Speaker 10: Oh is that three point eight trillion? In any case,
Speaker 10: it's worth less than Lily and it's done worse than Lily.
Speaker 10: Over the past five years. Eli Lilly shares are up
Speaker 10: six hundred and forty three percent.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, Novo's a small Lily's more diversified. They've
Speaker 11: been at this for I mean both companies have been
Speaker 11: at this for a long time. But up until the
Speaker 11: last few years, Novo's bread and butter was just diabetes like. So,
Speaker 11: Lily has a slew of other drugs, cancer drugs, autoimmune drugs.
Speaker 11: They know how to ramp up right, you know, production,
Speaker 11: and they know how to do this and plan for
Speaker 11: future demand. And this is all relatively new for Novo.
Speaker 11: I mean there, this market is crazy.
Speaker 1: We want to get into a story that's on the
Speaker 1: Bloomberg that's a killer, But before we do that, we're
Speaker 1: about one and a half years into talking about this
Speaker 1: class drugs. You've been reporting so much, you know, I
Speaker 1: feel like every couple of weeks or something, there's like, hey,
Speaker 1: look what else these drugs can do? Your view you're thinking,
Speaker 1: you're reporting, how does it continue to evolve and how
Speaker 1: you think.
Speaker 9: About the future.
Speaker 11: On Eli Lilly's earnings call, they kind of like slipped
Speaker 11: this into the call. It wasn't huge news but they're
Speaker 11: no longer calling their obesity and diabetes business unit just
Speaker 11: obesity and diabetes. Now it's like cardio metabolic health, which
Speaker 11: sort of signals this bigger thing that we've been talking
Speaker 11: about that these drugs, you know, aren't just weight loss drugs.
Speaker 11: They have potential indications and are potentially able to help
Speaker 11: with a lot of other conditions that are sort of
Speaker 11: interrelated with heart disease and kidney disease and liver disease,
Speaker 11: and so like, I think that that is going to
Speaker 11: be a huge theme going forward, and the fact that
Speaker 11: Lily kind of mentioned that on the earnings call today,
Speaker 11: I was like, so they're thinking about it this way, brand.
Speaker 10: I mean, I want, you know, I want I want
Speaker 10: to take this forever, as you both know, not just
Speaker 10: because I'm fat, because I only need to lose like
Speaker 10: twenty pounds, but I want to have a healthy heart
Speaker 10: so I don't die soon. And I'm pretty sure I'm
Speaker 10: going to get Alzheimer's disease. This may stop that as
Speaker 10: well or slow it down. On the other hand, there
Speaker 10: is so much optimism for mRNA as well, and that
Speaker 10: didn't cure cancer yet, so maybe it's going to take
Speaker 10: a while.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean it's it's different, right, mRNA was amazing
Speaker 11: for COVID.
Speaker 10: It just was it that great for COVID because I
Speaker 10: took it and then kept getting COVID here.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, to be fair, because I don't want
Speaker 1: to waste time, because I want to get.
Speaker 10: To the story, to the Bowling Green story.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it. It's among the most read. Take
Speaker 1: us to a ZEPK town.
Speaker 11: Yes, so we've I mean you've known about this story
Speaker 11: for a long time because I spent quite a bit
Speaker 11: of time.
Speaker 10: In Bowling Green, Kentucky.
Speaker 9: In Kentucky, yes, not.
Speaker 11: Bowling Green, Ohio, because there is a Bowling Green, Ohio
Speaker 11: as Yeah, but has you know four percent of Bowling
Speaker 11: Green and the surrounding area people are on weight loss
Speaker 11: drugs and it's just changing the fabric of the the
Speaker 11: area economically, culturally, but in sort of surprising ways. Like
Speaker 11: I thought that I would go there and the restaurants
Speaker 11: would be empty and the gyms would be closing down.
Speaker 11: But it's sort of the opposite. I mean, restaurants are
Speaker 11: still full, the gyms are doing great. But what's happened
Speaker 11: is this like side economy has sort of formed alongside
Speaker 11: the drugs. So there's medical spas that are cropping up
Speaker 11: everywhere to sell these compounded drugs. The GNC is doing,
Speaker 11: you know, great business selling supplements that help with side effects,
Speaker 11: and so it's like it's actually helping business, but in
Speaker 11: sort of surprising ways.
Speaker 1: I have a couple of listener questions, okaya time, as
Speaker 1: long as they're pertinent to this story.
Speaker 10: Yes, so listener rights in related what happens if you
Speaker 10: take the pill and you're in shape, which is I
Speaker 10: think a good question because a lot of people, especially
Speaker 10: you know, like on the Upper east Side, Yeah, they
Speaker 10: are already skinny, but they want to take it anyway.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 11: Well, I mean that's the thing, is like doctors shouldn't
Speaker 11: be prescribing these drugs because it is a it's a
Speaker 11: prescription drug.
Speaker 10: But is it a problem to you stop eating and
Speaker 10: then you become like anarexic.
Speaker 11: Or I mean you that it could be dangerous, Like
Speaker 11: if you don't need to lose that much weight and
Speaker 11: you're on a weight loss drug that's really effective, probably not.
Speaker 10: Leads into the second question, when did these become over
Speaker 10: the counter and affordable?
Speaker 9: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean they're probably never, I mean, I don't
Speaker 11: want to say never, but they are prescription drugs, so
Speaker 11: they're not over the counter. But generic drugs eventually will
Speaker 11: come down the pipeline. We're already seeing like some of
Speaker 11: the older GLP one drugs, the first sort of wave
Speaker 11: of these, like sex Senda, which is a drug called
Speaker 11: layer glue tide that's already on the way to becoming generics.
Speaker 10: So it's a better name too, or sex starter.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm gonna put you on the side
Speaker 1: for a moment, so go back to your story because
Speaker 1: it's really cool.
Speaker 7: You guys.
Speaker 1: It was several reporters involved in it, and you really
Speaker 1: get into the specific specifics of the people there. How
Speaker 1: did you find it though?
Speaker 11: Yeah, So, I mean we worked with the data team,
Speaker 11: and we worked with this analy firm called Purple Lab,
Speaker 11: and they gave us three zip code level data, which
Speaker 11: you know kind of gives you like a city and
Speaker 11: then the surrounding area. So we looked all across the US.
Speaker 11: We wanted to see what the ozembic hot spots were,
Speaker 11: and you know, Bowling Green wasn't the only one that
Speaker 11: came up in the data. There was Huntsville, Alabama. There
Speaker 11: was like a few other areas, but Kentucky as a
Speaker 11: state has the highest concentration of weight loss drug users.
Speaker 11: So we were like, this is probably a good place
Speaker 11: to start. Clearly stands out in the data. And then
Speaker 11: once we started talking to people in Bowling Green, it
Speaker 11: was like, Okay, this is our spot because everyone here
Speaker 11: is either on the drugs or nos like five other
Speaker 11: people that are on them.
Speaker 1: I mean, can we make the assumption that's just an
Speaker 1: area where there's a fair amount of people that are overweight.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean the obesity rates are high there, the
Speaker 11: diabetes rates are high there, and in Kentucky across the board.
Speaker 9: So it's actually a good thing.
Speaker 11: That there's a lot of people taking these drugs in
Speaker 11: that area because you know, it means hopefully it's helping.
Speaker 10: With not just Kentucky. I mean you get off the
Speaker 10: airplane at CMH and Columbus, Ohio, and you notice that
Speaker 10: immediately as well.
Speaker 1: Listen. I mean, I think it's been an incredible game
Speaker 1: changer for a lot of people in their lives who
Speaker 1: struggle and there are people who struggle with being overweighted
Speaker 1: and who've tried a bunch of different things, and I've
Speaker 1: seen it firsthand with individuals and then they take this
Speaker 1: drug and it's just unbelievable the difference.
Speaker 11: Right, And I mean that's the big thing with these
Speaker 11: drugs is there's also been this changing understanding of obesity
Speaker 11: as you know, a biological health condition that's driven by
Speaker 11: someone's biology. That's not necessarily just because you know, these
Speaker 11: tropes that have long been repeated that someone's lazy or
Speaker 11: that they're eating too much. Like, there are biological mechanisms
Speaker 11: driving this and the these drugs help with that. So
Speaker 11: it's it's for people who need them. It's an absolute
Speaker 11: game changer.
Speaker 1: What surprised you about like going there and talking to
Speaker 1: these people?
Speaker 9: I mean, I that's a really good question.
Speaker 11: I like didn't have a lot of I don't know
Speaker 11: understanding going in because that was my first time in Kentucky.
Speaker 11: So I was like, I don't know what this is
Speaker 11: going to be like. And everyone was so willing to
Speaker 11: talk to us and share their stories and like they
Speaker 11: were so grateful for these drugs. But I think that
Speaker 11: maybe this is the thing that surprised us is like
Speaker 11: everyone had this great success at the beginning, and then
Speaker 11: something happened either their insurance cut them off or they
Speaker 11: couldn't find the drugs anymore because of supply shortages. And
Speaker 11: I guess that shouldn't have surprised me because those are
Speaker 11: all themes that we've been reporting on for a long time.
Speaker 10: But you're saying if they stopped taking the drugs, they're
Speaker 10: no longer successful.
Speaker 11: Well no, not necessarily, but and like they have found
Speaker 11: other ways to continue taking them. But I think I
Speaker 11: was surprised to keep taking.
Speaker 10: The drugs and they're still successful. Yeah, but if you
Speaker 10: stopped taking the drugs.
Speaker 9: Then oftentimes you gain the weight back exactly.
Speaker 11: I mean that's not something that we saw with the
Speaker 11: people that we spoke to, because they all were able to,
Speaker 11: like one guy switch to another drug, someone else started
Speaker 11: taking a compound of drugs. So, but I think it
Speaker 11: was surprising to me that, like everyone across the board
Speaker 11: that we talked to encountered one of these issues with
Speaker 11: accessibility or with you know, the supply shortages or price
Speaker 11: or something like.
Speaker 9: It really is just affecting people a lot.
Speaker 1: Are most of these people though, is insurance paying or
Speaker 1: how much was out of pocket?
Speaker 11: It was most of the people insurance was paying at
Speaker 11: the beginning and then like six months in or once
Speaker 11: they lost a certain amount of weight, insurance stopped paying
Speaker 11: for them. Some people went to these compounded off brand
Speaker 11: drugs that we've talked about before. Other people were able to,
Speaker 11: like one guy switched from ozempic to manjarro because his
Speaker 11: insurance would cover manjarro but not ozempic, right, So, like
Speaker 11: everyone was able to continue taking the drugs for the
Speaker 11: most part. But I mean Pat Stiff, who's one of
Speaker 11: the characters in this story, Like he switched from ozempic
Speaker 11: to Manjarro and then couldn't find his Manjaro anywhere because
Speaker 11: the supply shortages were so bad.
Speaker 9: So he was, you know, as we're like finishing up.
Speaker 11: This story, calling me and saying that, well, I'm just
Speaker 11: gonna have to go off the drug and see what happens,
Speaker 11: and it'll be like an experiment. Hopefully I don't gain
Speaker 11: the weight back. But yeah, it's it's a struggle I think.
Speaker 9: For a lot of people.
Speaker 3: That's Bloomberg News health reporter Madison Miller her story in
Speaker 3: Bloomberg Business Week magazine. Bloomberg's Matt Miller there as well,
Speaker 3: And that.
Speaker 1: Wraps up our first hour of the weekend edition of
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Ahead in our next hour,
Speaker 1: the billionaire nerd Savior King and his quest to shape
Speaker 1: our world. You will definitely know this person, and by
Speaker 1: the way, he's also one of the richest out there.
Speaker 3: Plus how women became America's safety net, and well, no
Speaker 3: easy segue here, we're going to talk ready to drink
Speaker 3: cocktails with the head of the family owned Jeloso group
Speaker 3: of companies.
Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3: I'm Carol Messer and I'm Tim stenoveex Stay with us.
Speaker 3: Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen
Speaker 2: on Apple car Play and ed Broud Auto with a
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business at or want us live on YouTube tube.
Speaker 1: Plenty Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition
Speaker 1: of Bloomberg Business Week, including the billionaire nerd Savior King
Speaker 1: aka Bill Gates and his quest to shape our world
Speaker 1: It's all in a new book.
Speaker 3: Plus women holding it all together and becoming our safety net.
Speaker 3: And after all that heavy stuff, how about wrapping it
Speaker 3: up with Aldo Jeloso, who runs the family owned Jeloso
Speaker 3: Group of companies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm there, I'm totally there, all right, First up
Speaker 1: this hour, the team here at Bloomberg News analyzed government
Speaker 1: data and found that there's a gender divide in how
Speaker 1: recent college graduates are responding to a cooling US job market.
Speaker 1: While young college educated women are sticking with their job
Speaker 1: search even as the number of vacancy shrinks, many of
Speaker 1: their male peers are choosing to take a break, And
Speaker 1: women still aren't earning as much as men. Last year,
Speaker 1: women's earnings were eighty three point six percent of men's.
Speaker 1: This is according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Speaker 1: And yeah, come on, Tim, this shouldn't be news to
Speaker 1: anyone who's out there listening.
Speaker 3: What's talked about less though, is all of the work
Speaker 3: that women do that's unpaid. Think childcare, taking kids to
Speaker 3: the doctor, cooking for the family, managing the family budget,
Speaker 3: taking care of elderly family members, figuring out everything related
Speaker 3: to school, and yes, what the kids are doing for
Speaker 3: the summer. In a lot of ways, women are the
Speaker 3: family safety net. They're holding it together. And that's the
Speaker 3: title of Jessica Calarco's book. She's a sociologist and associate
Speaker 3: professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Her book out
Speaker 3: just a couple of months ago, Holding It Together, How
Speaker 3: Women became America's Safety Net.
Speaker 12: So essentially, women are the default caregivers for the children,
Speaker 12: for the sick, for the elderly, not only for kids,
Speaker 12: but filling in those kinds of jobs that you mentioned before,
Speaker 12: and essentially they are doing this work. This is actually
Speaker 12: related to the numbers that you mentioned before in terms
Speaker 12: of you know, women's equal pay or the lack of
Speaker 12: equal pay, in part because the kind of work that
Speaker 12: women are doing behind the scenes is a big factor
Speaker 12: in where that gender gap and pay comes from. That
Speaker 12: the more labor, the more unpaid labor, we heap onto women,
Speaker 12: the harder it is for them to advance in their careers,
Speaker 12: the harder it is for them to compete with men,
Speaker 12: and in ways that other countries don't. And research shows
Speaker 12: that one of the strongest predictors of our economic growth
Speaker 12: in countries is the amount of money that we invest
Speaker 12: in providing the kinds of supports that helped to alleviate
Speaker 12: some of those gender gaps in both unpaid work and
Speaker 12: also the kinds of gender gaps that show up and
Speaker 12: paid work as well.
Speaker 1: Jessica, if the pandemic hadn't ha happened, would you ever
Speaker 1: written this book?
Speaker 12: I don't think so.
Speaker 10: Certainly.
Speaker 12: This book started as a project. I was interested in
Speaker 12: what I thought of at the time as the sort
Speaker 12: of best laid plans of parenting, how you have ideas
Speaker 12: about the kind of parent that you want to be,
Speaker 12: and life intervenes, and life intervened in the sense of
Speaker 12: a pandemic happened in the middle of my data collection
Speaker 12: efforts and really pushed me to want to understand that
Speaker 12: the interviews that we were doing in the surveys we
Speaker 12: were doing with families across the US at the time,
Speaker 12: really showed how much of an impact the pandemic was having,
Speaker 12: especially on families with children, and especially on the moms
Speaker 12: within those families who were really trying to hold it
Speaker 12: together in the midst of this crisis, which which led
Speaker 12: me to want to understand, how did we get to
Speaker 12: this point of really lying on women to be the
Speaker 12: social safety net for us? And then, in the context
Speaker 12: of the failure of build back better, you know, why
Speaker 12: didn't we learn from the mistakes of the pandemic. Why
Speaker 12: didn't we pursue those kinds of policies that might have
Speaker 12: helped to put us on better footing, both genderwise and
Speaker 12: in terms of economic parity with other types of countries
Speaker 12: that have used those social safety nets for decades.
Speaker 3: Okay, So the simple question, with perhaps not a very
Speaker 3: simple answer, how did we get here? How did we
Speaker 3: get to the point where women became America's safety net?
Speaker 12: In the book, I traced this back to the nineteen
Speaker 12: thirties and to the pushback in the wake of Franklin
Speaker 12: Roosevelt's New Deal. Essentially, at the time, the National Association
Speaker 12: of Manufacturers, a business lobbying agency, was looking for ways
Speaker 12: to resist some of the higher corporate taxes and higher
Speaker 12: taxes on wealthy people that were needed to pay for
Speaker 12: these kinds of strong social safety net programs. And what
Speaker 12: they found at the time I talked about in the
Speaker 12: book where a group of neoliberal economists out of Austria
Speaker 12: who were developing this theory that we don't actually need
Speaker 12: social safety nets as a country because if we don't
Speaker 12: have protection p people will take steps, make better choices
Speaker 12: to keep themselves safe from risk. And this theory has
Speaker 12: been debunked over time and showing that that's not actually
Speaker 12: how people respond to risk, but they use this to
Speaker 12: fuel not only changes in policy in the US, but
Speaker 12: also massive propaganda campaigns things like General Electric Theater, which
Speaker 12: helped to create this perception of kind of pulling ourselves
Speaker 12: up by our bootstraps, this very American mentality, and also
Speaker 12: reinforce traditional gender roles, which helped to lay the groundwork
Speaker 12: for the kinds of policy decisions that we made after
Speaker 12: World War II. For example, of instead of trying to
Speaker 12: take steps to allow women to stay in the workforce
Speaker 12: to continue those rosy, the riveter jobs that they'd had,
Speaker 12: we shuddered the childcare centers that we put in place
Speaker 12: during the war, and we pushed women back home and
Speaker 12: really embraced the nineteen fifties culture around gender and that
Speaker 12: echoes of that still exist today and the way that
Speaker 12: we treat women as a reserve.
Speaker 1: Lin I have to jump in because here we are
Speaker 1: seventy years later and we're still talking about the same
Speaker 1: old problems. Teim. We talked about childcare, the costs, the juggling,
Speaker 1: like why haven't right It's.
Speaker 3: I mean, I can speak from personal experience. It's just
Speaker 3: a daily struggle figuring out who's picking up what kid,
Speaker 3: who's cooking dinner?
Speaker 1: And guys, I mean, and you guys have childcare.
Speaker 3: We have childcare.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I just feel like, why are we still having
Speaker 1: these difficult conversations? Why haven't we figured out a better system?
Speaker 1: Why isn't it It's not a new thing, is it
Speaker 1: policymakers at the federal level? Is it state level? Is
Speaker 1: it just a society so entrenched that we don't value
Speaker 1: women as much?
Speaker 7: What is it? I mean?
Speaker 12: Essentially, other countries use social safety nets to help people
Speaker 12: manage these challenges and manage these risks. They use taxes
Speaker 12: and regulations to not only protect people from falling into poverty,
Speaker 12: but to help people manage the challenges of daily living
Speaker 12: things like childcare, things like healthcare, and also to ensure
Speaker 12: with things like limits on paid work hours, to ensure
Speaker 12: that people have the time and the energy to do
Speaker 12: this work of taking care of their families, taking care
Speaker 12: of their commune, is taking care of their homes even
Speaker 12: and in the US we instead try a DIY society.
Speaker 12: We tell people that they should be able to manage
Speaker 12: this risk on their own. But the reality is that
Speaker 12: that's not possible. And that's where women come in, in
Speaker 12: the sense that they're tasked with holding it together, with
Speaker 12: doing the unpaid and underpaid labor that makes it seem
Speaker 12: like this DIY illusion is possible even when it's leaving
Speaker 12: us on the edge of collapse.
Speaker 3: Just give us an idea of how you were able
Speaker 3: to gather these stories from so many women.
Speaker 12: Sure, So we started by recruiting two hundred and fifty
Speaker 12: pregnant women from prenatal clinics in Indiana, and this was
Speaker 12: in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and we were following
Speaker 12: those same women over time with surveys and in depth
Speaker 12: interviews every six months from the time that they were
Speaker 12: pregnant through their first two years postpartum. And the pandemic
Speaker 12: hit in the middle of this, so we did three
Speaker 12: additional waves of surveys and interviews with the mothers and
Speaker 12: their partners and some of their social network contacts. And then,
Speaker 12: because this was mostly an Indiana based sample, we also
Speaker 12: did two national surveys each with over two thousand pairs.
Speaker 12: It's from across the US to better understand how to
Speaker 12: kind of contextualize the findings from our qualitative data. And
Speaker 12: then I also dug into a lot of the historical
Speaker 12: research and some media case studies for the book as
Speaker 12: well to better understand, you know, how do we get here?
Speaker 12: And then what are some of the myths that are
Speaker 12: helping to the cultural myths that are helping to keep
Speaker 12: us from changing.
Speaker 1: Let's go there, because that's where I want to go.
Speaker 1: Chapter six, The Mars Venus myth. I can't tell you
Speaker 1: how many times we're having conversations and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, Mars Venus. We're different, we're wired differently,
Speaker 1: so of course women are the caregivers. It's just the
Speaker 1: way it is. Go there because I love this.
Speaker 4: Sure.
Speaker 12: So essentially there's this myth that is perpetuated by many
Speaker 12: parts of our culture that suggests that men and women
Speaker 12: are just fundamentally different. Butgard the book women are the
Speaker 12: book two exactly, so I mean it stems in part,
Speaker 12: and certainly these ideas are much older than that, but
Speaker 12: it's echoed in this kind of John Gray's kind of
Speaker 12: classic Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, which almost,
Speaker 12: you know, suggests that men and women are from different planets,
Speaker 12: not only different species even and it's echoes of this.
Speaker 12: You can hear this in you know, recent conversations, things
Speaker 12: like Harrison Butker's commencement speech around this idea that women
Speaker 12: are just happier at home, that women are that that's
Speaker 12: their natural duty or their natural responsibility to be in
Speaker 12: the home. And what research shows is that belief in
Speaker 12: these kinds of mythical ideas and that they are mythical,
Speaker 12: That the gender is way more complicated than this sort
Speaker 12: of simple pink blue binary, and that socialization, early exposure,
Speaker 12: that parents and adult caregivers treat children very differently on
Speaker 12: the basis of perceived gender from very early on in
Speaker 12: their lives, and that this lay is the groundwork. You know,
Speaker 12: we expect girls to be mothers from the time that
Speaker 12: they're old enough to hold a baby doll in ways
Speaker 12: that we simply don't expect for boys.
Speaker 1: Oh what's interesting is you know, and I just want
Speaker 1: to stop for a moment. There was an interview you did,
Speaker 1: and Tim and I both like reading this. You know
Speaker 1: that Mars and Venus men and women are just fundamentally different,
Speaker 1: both psychologically. Is explanation rights also very convenient you have
Speaker 1: said in the past. It means though we don't need
Speaker 1: big structural solutions. That's kind of the payoff, right, If
Speaker 1: we believe that we are fundamentally different, it's not that
Speaker 1: there's something structurally wrong, and that is maybe why we
Speaker 1: continue to have this conversation decade after decade.
Speaker 12: Exactly what I find in the national surveys that I've
Speaker 12: conducted with parents is that the majority of dads, for example,
Speaker 12: believe that kids are better off with their mothers at home.
Speaker 12: And what I also find is that the dads who
Speaker 12: believe in that myth, who believe that it's better for
Speaker 12: kids to have a mother at home than to have
Speaker 12: a mother who's engaged in paid work, is that those
Speaker 12: are also disproportionately the dads who reject the need for
Speaker 12: a stronger social safety net, and essentially believing this myth,
Speaker 12: believing that women are just happier at home or that
Speaker 12: it's better for kids to have mom at home, allows
Speaker 12: us to feel like, well, maybe we don't need to
Speaker 12: invest in that stronger social safety net. Maybe we don't
Speaker 12: need paid parntal leave or universal affordable childcare because it
Speaker 12: just works better for everyone if mom is at home
Speaker 12: as opposed to in the paid work horse.
Speaker 3: What are we right now as we head into the
Speaker 3: election of twenty twenty four, because I was actually talking
Speaker 3: with I was talking with a guest early on our
Speaker 3: crypto show, and she she's big in the It was
Speaker 3: a crypto show, so she's big into crypto. And she
Speaker 3: sent a tweet out earlier this year, Jessica that talked
Speaker 3: about choosing between on the ballot women's bodies and the
Speaker 3: right to have autonomy over your body versus your wallet,
Speaker 3: because she doesn't believe that the Biden administration is pro
Speaker 3: crypto enough. And it was interesting to hear that juxtaposition
Speaker 3: because and I asked her, is it actually that black
Speaker 3: and that white for you? And she said, there are
Speaker 3: a lot of people who are single issue voters when
Speaker 3: it comes to crypto.
Speaker 5: But here in.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty four, I think we're at a time when
Speaker 3: a lot of people never thought that Roe v. Wade
Speaker 3: would actually be overturned. How does the conversation in your
Speaker 3: world shift in an election.
Speaker 12: Year like this, Yeah, I mean, I think we have
Speaker 12: to think about the way that denying people bodily autonomy,
Speaker 12: denying reproductive rights makes it easier to exploit women labor.
Speaker 12: It can push them into motherhood in ways that make
Speaker 12: it difficult for them not only to have choices about
Speaker 12: things like finishing college or investing in the kinds of
Speaker 12: careers that they need to take time for, but can
Speaker 12: also lead them pushed into the kinds of low wage
Speaker 12: jobs that offer limited options for their families that make
Speaker 12: it harder for them to get ahead. And so I
Speaker 12: think we have to think about the way that these
Speaker 12: kinds of attacks on reproductive freedom are attacks also on
Speaker 12: women's economic opportunities and on their ability to take care
Speaker 12: of themselves and their families financially as well.
Speaker 1: You get into this idea, I don't want to end
Speaker 1: without thinking about, like, how do we fix this? You
Speaker 1: talk about a union of care. So we've got about
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes left. How do we move forward
Speaker 1: so that in ten years from now you and I
Speaker 1: aren't having this same conversation.
Speaker 12: Absolutely, I think we have to You mentioned before the
Speaker 12: importance of valuing care work in the sense that we
Speaker 12: know that women do twice as much unpaid care work
Speaker 12: in the US as women, and estimates suggests that that
Speaker 12: unpaid care work done by women is valued at over
Speaker 12: six hundred billion dollars a year. And so I think
Speaker 12: we can think about that the value that women are
Speaker 12: adding to the economy, even if they're not themselves being
Speaker 12: compensated for it, and also recognize how that kind of
Speaker 12: care work benefits all of us, and that if we
Speaker 12: all had the kinds of policy protections in place, that
Speaker 12: we could share that unpaid care work more equitably and
Speaker 12: also ensure that we have the time and energy to
Speaker 12: do it sustainably.
Speaker 3: That was Jessica Klarko, sociologist and associate professor at the
Speaker 3: University of Wisconsin Madison, her book, Holding It Together. How
Speaker 3: Women Became America's Safety Nut.
Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. Coming up, the tech
Speaker 1: Entrepreneur in Titan, the Philanthropist, the Billionaire, the Nerd, the Savior,
Speaker 1: the King.
Speaker 3: A new book on one of the few billionaires who
Speaker 3: has been in the public eye longer than most. This
Speaker 3: is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Easter I'll Applecar Player
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Speaker 2: Bloomberg exclusive.
Speaker 1: This past week, The USED Department of Justice is mulling
Speaker 1: over a breakup of Alphabet's Google after a landmark court
Speaker 1: ruling found that the company monopolized the online search market.
Speaker 1: According to people with knowledge of the deliberations, the move
Speaker 1: would be Washington's first push to dismantle a company for
Speaker 1: illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft two
Speaker 1: decades ago.
Speaker 3: Bill Gates, co founder and former CEO of Microsoft, figured
Speaker 3: prominently in the US government's anti trust case that time,
Speaker 3: along with many others. Included in a new book on
Speaker 3: Gates by Anuprida Das, South Asia, correspondent for The New
Speaker 3: York Times. The book Billionaire Nerd Savior King Bill Gates
Speaker 3: in his Quest to Shape Our World. Our Conversation starts
Speaker 3: with the often talked and written about friendship between Gates
Speaker 3: and Warren Buffett that, like many things changed over time,
Speaker 3: spoke on the record.
Speaker 8: You know he is in fact, you know I used
Speaker 8: to cover Again, A lot of this goes back to
Speaker 8: the journal when I was a reporter. You know, I
Speaker 8: used to write about Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. So
Speaker 8: the relationship of the two men was also equally interesting.
Speaker 8: The first time I saw them at the Berkshire Hathway meeting,
Speaker 8: just kind of walking around, you know, talking to shareholders,
Speaker 8: and it just struck me as kind of a you know,
Speaker 8: a very casual but very intimate friendship. And then I
Speaker 8: began looking at it and seeing that, you know, they've
Speaker 8: talked about each has talked about the other and sort
Speaker 8: of the magic of their friendship over the decades. And
Speaker 8: you know, Bill Gates definitely has kind of advertised that
Speaker 8: piece of it. It's almost like part of his brand.
Speaker 8: Every year, nearly every year on Gates Notes his blog,
Speaker 8: he posts something like a goofy video or post dedicated
Speaker 8: to Buffet, And so that's that was really interesting to me.
Speaker 8: But in recent years, I think once Buffett decided that
Speaker 8: he wasn't he had always said that he wasn't going.
Speaker 7: To give his money to anyone.
Speaker 8: He hadn't decided who he was going to give his
Speaker 8: money to after his death, but there was always like
Speaker 8: an assumption that the Gates Foundation stood to get all
Speaker 8: of the money. And when he eventually decided who was
Speaker 8: going to get that money after he died, it was
Speaker 8: not going to be the Gates foundation, and so I
Speaker 8: think there was a little bit of tension there that
Speaker 8: I tried to capture in that piece that The Times ran,
Speaker 8: and it was you know, I think they have very
Speaker 8: different lifestyles. Buffett, as I'm sure you guys know, is
Speaker 8: a kind of more folksy, simple sort of person, very Midwestern,
Speaker 8: and then Gates has more of the traditional trappings of
Speaker 8: a billionaire. So it was interesting to see their divergent
Speaker 8: paths but also examine the basis of their friendship.
Speaker 1: You know, you said earlier about you know, you wanted
Speaker 1: to kind of dig into the persona and the man.
Speaker 1: Are they that different?
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's that's a really interesting question.
Speaker 8: I think that plays into a lot of what we
Speaker 8: in the media, How we and what we write and
Speaker 8: what we choose to write feeds into the image of
Speaker 8: a person who's in the in you know, the public eye,
Speaker 8: in the sense that you interact with someone, you see
Speaker 8: him or her in a closed setting, you get more
Speaker 8: of a sense of who they are based on interactions,
Speaker 8: based on your sources. You start creating this image of
Speaker 8: a person in the media. So it's true the persona
Speaker 8: is based on many fundamental elements of who the person is,
Speaker 8: but then it also takes on its own life. And
Speaker 8: then if you're a billionaire or you have like a
Speaker 8: lot of resources that you can dedicate to that, then
Speaker 8: I think you're basically sustaining, nurturing, minimizing, you know, enhancing
Speaker 8: certain aspects of that image to really suit your needs
Speaker 8: and ends.
Speaker 7: And this isn't.
Speaker 8: Necessarily nefarious, but it's just what image making can do.
Speaker 8: And so I think their elements of a person's internal
Speaker 8: personality or like in closed settings, and then how that gets,
Speaker 8: how that feeds into a persona, and how then people
Speaker 8: kind of keep manufacturing and finessing it, which to me
Speaker 8: was really interesting.
Speaker 1: Budgates, did you like him as you did this process?
Speaker 8: Well, he didn't grant me an interview, so that you know,
Speaker 8: I couldn't tell you any more than that, But.
Speaker 1: But you talk to a lot of people about him,
Speaker 1: and we can get for a picture of someone maybe
Speaker 1: clearer than the narrative that's out there publicly.
Speaker 7: Absolutely.
Speaker 8: I think what was most interesting to me is that
Speaker 8: the essential person has not changed.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: He's mellowed obviously over the decades, we all.
Speaker 8: Do, but his essential personality the way he's obviously supremely smart,
Speaker 8: but he can sometimes be abrasive, He can be impatient
Speaker 8: with employees. He enjoys a you know, working in a
Speaker 8: combative culture. And that was the case of Microsoft, and
Speaker 8: that is also the case of the Gates Foundation, except
Speaker 8: that what happens is that Microsoft rewarded that sort of competitive,
Speaker 8: you know, culture, whereas the Gates Foundation. I think people
Speaker 8: come from very different backgrounds. So it sat uncomfortably inside
Speaker 8: the Gates Foundation. But it struck me as really interesting
Speaker 8: that he was essentially the same person, but he had
Speaker 8: also changed his image over the decades, you know, to
Speaker 8: find that continuity, the consistency in so many ways, but
Speaker 8: to then place it against how we looked at him
Speaker 8: as a nerd, this sort of ruthless monopolist, this this
Speaker 8: you know, philanthropist.
Speaker 1: Rockefeller, like Robert Baron kind of thing.
Speaker 7: As you're right about absolutely.
Speaker 3: What was the anti trust? Was the anti trust issue
Speaker 3: at Microsoft? Was that a pivotal turning point for him?
Speaker 3: Or when do you think this metamorphosis or transformation began?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it did.
Speaker 8: I think he had always said that he was going
Speaker 8: to give the bulk of his fortune to philanthropy. I
Speaker 8: think the time hadn't been decided. And you have to
Speaker 8: remember that in the nineteen nineties there was only Microsoft.
Speaker 8: Now we think about Google and Amazon and Facebook and
Speaker 8: a lot of companies that are facing similar antitrust scrutiny.
Speaker 8: But in the nineteen nineties, the late the second half
Speaker 8: of the nineties, Microsoft was it. It was the company.
Speaker 8: It captured everyone's imagination. But also, and as a result
Speaker 8: of that, I think Gates' performance, even though we didn't
Speaker 8: have social media then and we didn't have viral moments,
Speaker 8: Gates's performance riveted the nation and people realized that this
Speaker 8: was a man who just who had become a distraction
Speaker 8: from Microsoft. So I think it made sense for him
Speaker 8: to then step step down from the CEO role in
Speaker 8: two thousand and Also, he was tired. I think he
Speaker 8: just he said a source of mind told me that
Speaker 8: he was tired, didn't nowhere else to go. And he
Speaker 8: just also felt that Microsoft was a shiny example of
Speaker 8: American innovation and why was the government going against him?
Speaker 8: And so I think there was a lot of confusion
Speaker 8: and a lot of pain. And then he turned to
Speaker 8: philanthropy because it was there. It was something he had
Speaker 8: always intended to do, and he found that he really
Speaker 8: liked it, and then it was go big or go home,
Speaker 8: because that's what Gates, that's who Gates is. He started Microsoft,
Speaker 8: changed the personal computing world, and now he's changed philanthropy
Speaker 8: with this Mammoth Foundation.
Speaker 1: Did you find a lot of surprises in this process
Speaker 1: in terms of new things you learned about Bill Gates?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things, Carol
Speaker 8: is we didn't really understand and I think that despite
Speaker 8: I think the entire world AID doesn't quite understand why
Speaker 8: he met with Jeffrey Epstein times. And the question for
Speaker 8: me that's been the most interesting to explore is that
Speaker 8: if your Gates, or if you're a billionaire, you have
Speaker 8: armies of people whose job it is to sustain and
Speaker 8: polish and nurtery your image right. Building Bill's brand is
Speaker 8: something I examined in the book, and yet you have,
Speaker 8: despite having all these people, even a basic Google search
Speaker 8: right would reveal that Epstein by then was a convicted
Speaker 8: sex offender and someone who perhaps wasn't the best kind
Speaker 8: of person from an optics standpoint for a billionaire with
Speaker 8: what Gates was trying to do to interact. So that
Speaker 8: was surprising to me. It was a failure lapse of
Speaker 8: judgment that I wouldn't expect. But it also ties back
Speaker 8: to the personality that Gates.
Speaker 3: Is pretty You were talking about Jeffrey Epstein just moments
Speaker 3: ago and the relationship that Bill Gates had with Jeffrey Epstein,
Speaker 3: and I got to tell you the parts in your
Speaker 3: book that focus on that. I've gotten a lot of
Speaker 3: me attention over the last couple of weeks. Just explain
Speaker 3: what you learned about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and
Speaker 3: why they found themselves having a relationship.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So what happened. My best reconstruction, based on my
Speaker 8: reporting and documents, is that in twenty ten you had
Speaker 8: the Giving Pledge, which was this effort, essentially a get
Speaker 8: out of the vote campaign by Gates, Warren Buffett, and
Speaker 8: Milliner French Gates to get other billionaires to commit to
Speaker 8: pledge to commit half or more of their fortunes to charity.
Speaker 8: And at that time a lot of billionaires were very
Speaker 8: interested in finding a way to put their money to use.
Speaker 8: Having the money is almost easier than figuring out how
Speaker 8: to give it away wisely, and so the Gates Foundation
Speaker 8: was very much set up to use billions of dollars
Speaker 8: and Gates was in the middle of this massive push
Speaker 8: toward polio eradication. He'd been the Foundation, being worked with
Speaker 8: other entities, and it was one of those times when
Speaker 8: Gates wanted to raise a lot of money. So Epstein
Speaker 8: kind of being in these circles of influence and power,
Speaker 8: he's someone who kind of collects, you know, collected bits
Speaker 8: and pieces of information, used leverage wherever he could, and
Speaker 8: realized that there might be an opportunity for him to
Speaker 8: pitch something called the donor advised fund, and he wrote
Speaker 8: in JP Morgan and Gibi Morgan had like another relationship
Speaker 8: with the Gates Foundation, so he looked at all of this.
Speaker 8: He began pitching this idea for a donor advised fund.
Speaker 8: He reached out to people who he knew at the
Speaker 8: Gates Foundation, who you know, had an overlap with Gates,
Speaker 8: of course, and began seeking an introduction. Now Gates took
Speaker 8: that introduction.
Speaker 7: There was there.
Speaker 8: He came and visited Epstein at his house the first time,
Speaker 8: and then there was another meeting where there was a presentation.
Speaker 8: Epstein had slides and everything. So that until then perhaps
Speaker 8: all well and good, but after that, the fact that
Speaker 8: he kept meeting with Epstein several times, ostensibly to discuss philanthropy,
Speaker 8: and Gates has always said that he hasn't That was
Speaker 8: the only reason then that he was sorry for the
Speaker 8: lapse in judgment.
Speaker 7: But it's still.
Speaker 8: Is a question for for Gates, essentially because he is
Speaker 8: perhaps the only person who would know why he kept
Speaker 8: going back and meeting with Epstein. There are people who
Speaker 8: say that Gates was enamored of Epstein's lifestyle. He did
Speaker 8: write to some employees and the Gates Foundation after saying
Speaker 8: that you know, he does have an adventure's different lifestyle,
Speaker 8: but it's not for me. I'm not putting words into
Speaker 8: Gates's mouth, but that was essentially the point of what
Speaker 8: he was saying, and so clearly there was maybe be amusement,
Speaker 8: maybe surprise, maybe anticipation. It's hard to say. But again,
Speaker 8: coming back to the point I was making earlier, it
Speaker 8: is a surprising lapse in judgment for the people who
Speaker 8: work for him, but for Gates himself it's actually not
Speaker 8: that surprising, given that he does have a certain naivete
Speaker 8: when it comes to personal relationships.
Speaker 1: Now, you said you didn't get to talk to Bill Gates,
Speaker 1: right for the book.
Speaker 8: No, I didn't. He turned down my request for an interview.
Speaker 1: Did he Were you able to ask him any questions
Speaker 1: like write and get responses or no?
Speaker 7: Nothing at all. No.
Speaker 8: So what happened was that it was interesting because I
Speaker 8: sent them detailed fact checking lists, both at Gates Ventures,
Speaker 8: which is a private firm, and the Gates Foundation back
Speaker 8: in January or February, months months before. They stalled in
Speaker 8: stonewalled and didn't acknowledge my emails, and at the end
Speaker 8: when I said you have to give me a comment,
Speaker 8: they said it was hearsay. And then just weeks before
Speaker 8: we went to publication, they got back on some of
Speaker 8: the Epstein related points and they refuted and said that
Speaker 8: they could present documented evidence, and I asked for that audden.
Speaker 8: They didn't provide anything, and the book went to print,
Speaker 8: and then the Daily Mail, of all the Daily Mail
Speaker 8: and the New York Post put out these tidbits from
Speaker 8: my book and they were overblown, then not entirely accurate,
Speaker 8: but the Gates found But then Gates is private firm,
Speaker 8: then put out a statement saying that it was all
Speaker 8: wild allegations and that they presented me with documented evidence
Speaker 8: that I chose to ignore.
Speaker 3: Which is not true speaking of wild things that potentially
Speaker 3: could come up. I was joking at the top when
Speaker 3: I said the microchip vaccine stuff, but only half joking
Speaker 3: in the sense that these are real conspiracy theories about
Speaker 3: Bill Gates. Can you talk a little bit about where
Speaker 3: those come from and the idea of this quote unquote
Speaker 3: Davos elite that wants to control the world.
Speaker 8: I think the fact that Gates was so prominent suddenly
Speaker 8: in everywhere he was suddenly everywhere. He was talking about vaccines,
Speaker 8: He was sharing the stage with doctor Anthony Fauci, he
Speaker 8: was advocating. He was kind of out there everywhere. He
Speaker 8: couldn't miss him, which led a lot of people to wonder,
Speaker 8: and I speak to I have one person in the
Speaker 8: book who said, who made the point that you know,
Speaker 8: I had always thought of Gates at the Microsoft co
Speaker 8: founder and suddenly, why is this guy talking about vaccines?
Speaker 8: And so I think if you are grown to conspiracy theories,
Speaker 8: I think that was kind of the first signed for
Speaker 8: a lot of people that maybe Gates has some kind
Speaker 8: of vested interest. And you know, conspiracy theories obviously take
Speaker 8: on a life of their own, and I think there
Speaker 8: was a study and don't quote me on this, but
Speaker 8: I think there's a study looking at the feasibility of
Speaker 8: having some information, you know, implanted into a person's under
Speaker 8: a person's skin, and it was an mit feasibility study
Speaker 8: and nothing came of it. But that led to this
Speaker 8: kind of big idea that somehow Gates was trying to,
Speaker 8: you know, implant chips and people and kind of all
Speaker 8: manner of things now I think for the vaccines, and
Speaker 8: you know, Gates was He's a rational guy. He's driven
Speaker 8: by evidence and science and tech, and I think he
Speaker 8: just didn't understand why there were people questioning what seemed
Speaker 8: to him very obvious steps. He couldn't understand being a
Speaker 8: personal target of the conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: We just have about forty five seconds left here. Your
Speaker 1: title Billionaire, Nerd Savior King? Which is the most appropriate
Speaker 1: as you finish your book in terms of which word
Speaker 1: really you would most closely identify with him, And as
Speaker 1: I said, only got about forty seconds.
Speaker 7: Today, it would be King.
Speaker 8: He really kind of is on top of so many
Speaker 8: you know, I would say Savior King. Perhaps the billionaire
Speaker 8: is a fact the nerd is a version of him
Speaker 8: back in the day, but today he's kind of on
Speaker 8: top of the world, sharing the stage with heads of state,
Speaker 8: and he is a savior of people in the global
Speaker 8: South with the Gates Foundation.
Speaker 7: So I would say Savior King.
Speaker 3: That was on Uprida Das, South Asia, correspondent for The
Speaker 3: New York Times her new book Billionaire Nerd Savior King
Speaker 3: Bill Gates in his quest to Shape.
Speaker 1: Our World Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. Nothing like
Speaker 1: wrapping up the week with a ready to make cocktail?
Speaker 1: Are you in?
Speaker 5: Hey?
Speaker 3: You know how I roll? If it's non alcoholic, maybe
Speaker 3: has some bubbles, little fruit juice, not too much sugar.
Speaker 3: Though I'm really not fun. You need to know something
Speaker 3: about me. I'm not fun to hang out with.
Speaker 1: You are fun to hang out with you, just not
Speaker 1: necessarily with an alcoholic Where to come?
Speaker 3: This is Bloomberg.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast live weekday
Speaker 2: afternoons from two to five pm Eastern Listen on Apple
Speaker 2: car Play and and Broun Auto with a Bloomberg Business
Speaker 2: act or wanted us live on YouTube.
Speaker 1: As a former colleague of ours used to say, it's
Speaker 1: five o'clock summer, doesn't Jimmy Buffett didn't he used to
Speaker 1: say that all the time too, ya.
Speaker 10: A lot of people do.
Speaker 1: One of the trends we are increasingly seeing from startups
Speaker 1: and the establishment alike is pre mad cocktails, easy to buy,
Speaker 1: no shaking nor stirring necessary.
Speaker 3: And that brings us to the family owned Jeloso Group
Speaker 3: of Companies, whose parent company was founded nearly six decades
Speaker 3: ago in Montreal, Canada, and now produces over one hundred
Speaker 3: alcoholic beverage products in the US and Canada with over
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty employees and seven warehouses.
Speaker 1: Although Jeloso runs the second generation of the family owned
Speaker 1: Jelosa Group of Companies, which includes Jelosa Beverage Group USA.
Speaker 1: He sat down in studio joining Bloomberg's Matt Miller and
Speaker 1: me taking us back to how it all began.
Speaker 4: We're a family owned business. Immigrant parents immigrated in nineteen
Speaker 4: fifty seven, came here for a better life. We're from
Speaker 4: the South of it and basically my father ventured into
Speaker 4: importing grapes from California because in Canada you have liquor boards.
Speaker 4: And my father realized that in Quebec you only drink beer,
Speaker 4: and he said, we don't drink beer. As Italian so
Speaker 4: basically there was no wines to be had, and the
Speaker 4: wines that were available were very expensive, and being a farmer,
Speaker 4: he said, you know what, let me bring in grapes
Speaker 4: for the immigrant community. And then that's the story.
Speaker 10: So he brought in grapes to make your own wine
Speaker 10: in Quebec for immigrants exactly so, because you know, we're
Speaker 10: a legislative state, so there's a lot of taxation.
Speaker 4: It's not free market like it is here in the US.
Speaker 4: So that's how we started. And basically from there it
Speaker 4: went on and when people started hearing about my father
Speaker 4: making wine, he was never really making wine. He was
Speaker 4: crushing grapes and the must people would be bringing it
Speaker 4: home to ferment it. And the local authorities got wind
Speaker 4: of this and say, hey, this man is bootlegging.
Speaker 10: He's actually making wine.
Speaker 4: We're in control of the wine industry in Quebec, and
Speaker 4: they sequestered all the liquids that were in my father's
Speaker 4: warehouse and the liquids were then juice. Then six months later,
Speaker 4: my father's lawyer contacts them says, by the way, mister Jeloso,
Speaker 4: you know what, You're going to be charged with bootlegging.
Speaker 4: He goes, what it. You know what, they did a
Speaker 4: test and it's wine. He goes, but naturally it's going
Speaker 4: to ferment.
Speaker 1: It will turn into wine.
Speaker 4: So basically, my father brought in an anologist from Europe
Speaker 4: and my father won the case. And the lawyer asked
Speaker 4: my father, listen, now's the time to sue the government.
Speaker 4: My father said, I came here as an immigrant for
Speaker 4: a better life. I want them to give me a
Speaker 4: wine permit. That's why our family has the first wine
Speaker 4: permit in Quebec.
Speaker 10: Zero zero role, what a story.
Speaker 1: So tell us about what you got, what it's grown in.
Speaker 10: You've turned this into a company that does do you
Speaker 10: deal with beer now as well?
Speaker 4: We deal with beer, we deal with cider, we deal
Speaker 4: with spirits. We represent Bacardi, we represent Boston Beer in Quebec.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 4: Basically we are a one stop shop.
Speaker 10: And this is like one of the hottest growing areas
Speaker 10: of the alcoholic beverage segment, right, I mean everything from
Speaker 10: the from the lowest level to I mean there's really
Speaker 10: uppity mixed cockte pre mixed cocktails that you can order
Speaker 10: at a restaurant.
Speaker 4: What you have to realize is that whenever you're drinking
Speaker 4: a cocktail, at a restaurant, you'll never You'll never find
Speaker 4: unisons and taste. Somebody will add one more ounce of cognac,
Speaker 4: one more ounce of vodka. So what we ventured out
Speaker 4: was basically creating a malt. Why malt because malt gives
Speaker 4: us access to people, to markets, whereby spirits you're limited
Speaker 4: in general. So we actually patented the process whereby we
Speaker 4: cleaned the malt and we add the proper salts, the
Speaker 4: proper sugar levels, so that at the end of the
Speaker 4: day you can receive the natural flavors of whatever cocktail
Speaker 4: you want to build on. And what you have here
Speaker 4: cocktails being the first original cocktail and Sonny Margarita is
Speaker 4: the number one selling cocktail in the usseving Wow, it
Speaker 4: beats up every every other cocktail and this from Quebec.
Speaker 1: Could you believe that it's pretty cool stuff. It's a
Speaker 1: crowded market though increasingly. How do you get yourself noticed
Speaker 1: or how do you think about that? Because it feels
Speaker 1: like we talk to a lot of folks in the
Speaker 1: beverage in the alcohol space, and I just feel like
Speaker 1: there's a lot of startups, there's a lot of the
Speaker 1: establishment that are coming out with different brands. So how
Speaker 1: do you distinguish yourself or get noticed.
Speaker 4: You need agility, you need flexibility. You have to address
Speaker 4: not what the consumer wants, what you believe they want.
Speaker 4: One of the things that we pride ourselves is having
Speaker 4: the proper contacts with distributors, because, like you said, Carol,
Speaker 4: there are so many people out there wanting to load
Speaker 4: up the warehouses of all these distributors. Whereby, at the
Speaker 4: end of the day, you saw it in the craft
Speaker 4: beer business, whereby everybody got on board and everybody got
Speaker 4: stinged by it because the craft beer business somehow sued.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 4: So what we've done is we provide proper quantities, We
Speaker 4: provide constant updates and flavor profiles. But at the same
Speaker 4: time we are authentic in terms of flavor. There is
Speaker 4: no nat there is no unnatural ingredients. And what we
Speaker 4: do is Okay, that's the sunny margarita.
Speaker 10: You're gonna enjoy it.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a beer, guys, it's not.
Speaker 4: It's not a beer like you know what. At the beginning,
Speaker 4: everybody used to tell me, by the way, it's mold.
Speaker 4: I go tell me something you like Scotch.
Speaker 10: Scotch is malt.
Speaker 4: So you have to get the people to understand that
Speaker 4: it's only the alcohol stream that gives you access to
Speaker 4: a network. So it tastes exactly like spirits because we
Speaker 4: redesigned it as spirits.
Speaker 10: All right, Carol is taking a sip now. Now you've
Speaker 10: poured it into margarita and it's nice.
Speaker 4: It has a hint of salt.
Speaker 1: And I'm picky about margarita's.
Speaker 10: It does have a hint of salt. That's an important part.
Speaker 10: So I haven't had a drink.
Speaker 9: I'm not going to put it near you.
Speaker 10: I haven't had a drink in two years, but I
Speaker 10: did drink alcohol. I loved the salt in the Martin margarita.
Speaker 9: Right, Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 10: What does this cost into retail? Yeah, that's a good question.
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Look to go to your website.
Speaker 10: It's like it's like I would say a thing about sorry,
Speaker 10: I didn't mean to do that to a It's a
Speaker 10: twenty two ounce can, so it's like a tall boy.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: What do you think because I think about when you
Speaker 1: go to a bar, right, like a margarita is.
Speaker 10: Like ten twelve dollars team yah, Depending on do you
Speaker 10: make an alcohol free version or do you make alcohol
Speaker 10: free cocktails as well.
Speaker 4: We are the biggest producers of non alcoholic beverages. We
Speaker 4: started in nineteen eighty nine with wine coolers and what
Speaker 4: and what you have to realize we have we have
Speaker 4: brands that are non alcoholic because the demographics, the population, age, aging,
Speaker 4: better lifestyle. I say between now and twenty fifty, fifty
Speaker 4: percent of the people won't be drinking alcohol.
Speaker 1: Although I do wonder you know, Map brought up a
Speaker 1: great point about how a lot of people don't want
Speaker 1: any alcohol anymore. There's that trend. There's also a wellness
Speaker 1: healthier trend, no sugars, that kind of thing that's a
Speaker 1: real concern for a lot of individuals called bucha. How
Speaker 1: are you thinking about that in terms of how you
Speaker 1: guys do things well? And are you seeing that in
Speaker 1: adaptation as.
Speaker 4: A result, I mean, you see you when you see
Speaker 4: players like Molsen Cores change their name to the Molten
Speaker 4: Cores Beverage Company, they're starting to realize they have to
Speaker 4: walk away from beers of certain staple items. So you
Speaker 4: have non alcoholic was always considered zero point five because
Speaker 4: of the changing demographics. Now everybody's focusing on zero point
Speaker 4: zero because we have to attend certain other demographics or
Speaker 4: religious beliefs going forward because the population is changing and
Speaker 4: the wellness, I mean, there's hydration, there's longevity. You have
Speaker 4: to address it today and how we do it. Also,
Speaker 4: a non alcoholic and non acoholic is that we started
Speaker 4: in the eighties for the simple reason that we knew
Speaker 4: that people need an alternative and children. To make sure
Speaker 4: that children don't drink, they have to have products that
Speaker 4: are non alcoholic with a name that is alcoholic. So
Speaker 4: it takes that stigma away from them and that pressure
Speaker 4: because pure pressure is very strong. So we have non
Speaker 4: alcoholic champagnes, non alcoholic cocktails, and yeah, when you look
Speaker 4: at that, we offer that range across the board.
Speaker 1: You see a lot of growth in that area so.
Speaker 4: Much, and especially when you see big players themselves like Heineken,
Speaker 4: Budweis or and everybody.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about for something like this where I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I've actually you know, been either on a
Speaker 1: vacation or I sail and like there's not a lot
Speaker 1: of we don't keep a lot of stuff on the
Speaker 1: you know there and I've picked up these pre made
Speaker 1: cocktails and there it's really nice and convenient. So I
Speaker 1: am curious, what kind of growth are you seeing in
Speaker 1: this area.
Speaker 4: Well, we have grown double digits ready to drink Yeah,
Speaker 4: last six years. Every month we control the category in
Speaker 4: terms of margarita. We're the third largest in America and
Speaker 4: we still do our runway is still is still there
Speaker 4: because you know, it's like at the end of the day,
Speaker 4: we're fighting big boys and like, like Matt was saying,
Speaker 4: what makes us pertinent is the fact that we keep
Speaker 4: our ear with the distributor. We may we attend to
Speaker 4: their needs in terms of inventory levels. Uh. And at
Speaker 4: the end of the day, people only come back for
Speaker 4: only one simple reason, plaffability. It has to taste good.
Speaker 4: People will adopt at once, but they have to.
Speaker 1: I've had some non alcoholic stuff, and I have to
Speaker 1: be honest with you, I didn't like it.
Speaker 10: That's probably beer, right, non alcoholic beer and wine is
Speaker 10: no bueno.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 10: But you can easily make a non alcoholic sex on
Speaker 10: the beach, you know, because these cocktails. I'm looking through
Speaker 10: what you got. Carol's drinking the margarita, you got the screwdriver.
Speaker 10: Obviously you've got Alabama slammer.
Speaker 1: Sex on the beach.
Speaker 10: Yes, sex on the beach along islandized tea. Most of
Speaker 10: these cocktails were mixed originally so that you couldn't taste
Speaker 10: the alcohol in them, and I imagine that makes it
Speaker 10: easy to make non alcoholic non alcoholic versions. How important
Speaker 10: is your distributor relationship. You must get all your intel
Speaker 10: that way.
Speaker 4: Our intel comes from the fact that we know the industry.
Speaker 4: Our distributor is our segue to the market. They have
Speaker 4: to believe in us. So our intel comes from the
Speaker 4: fact that we develop quaffable product and that are pure
Speaker 4: and taste and have no sugars in them. The only
Speaker 4: sugars are basically the alcohol itself, that is naturally sugar. Right.
Speaker 3: That's Aldo Jeloso of the family owned Jeloso Group of companies,
Speaker 3: which includes Jeloso Beverage Group USA along with Bloomberg's Matt Miller.
Speaker 1: Who, like you, is also into non alcoholic beverages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: been like sober for or not sober. I shouldn't say that,
Speaker 1: but that's staining. You could say that was my word,
Speaker 1: not Mad's. He's just been, you know, he's been on
Speaker 1: a healthier kind of kick.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's like one of many right now, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of people are
Speaker 1: rethinking this.
Speaker 2: Also.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to see research coming out rethinking you know,
Speaker 1: a glass of wine or alcohol, you know the impact
Speaker 1: it can have on your health longer term.
Speaker 3: I think for Matt and me, I don't want to
Speaker 3: speak for him, but he's got young kids too, Like
Speaker 3: you know, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, you want to be
Speaker 3: there to chase them around.
Speaker 9: Did you love me?
Speaker 1: They come over and they open up your eyes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: That wraps up our weekend edition to Bloomberg Business Week
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