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 3: Hi, everyone, Welcome to a holiday edition of our Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Business Wee Weekend podcast. We hope you had a wonderful
Speaker 3: Christmas and are having a happy Hanukkah and Kwanza. And
Speaker 3: in the spirit of the holiday season, amid the playing
Speaker 3: in the snow or basket in the sun, spending time
Speaker 3: with loved ones, friends, family, you may also find yourself
Speaker 3: with a little bit of time on your hands.
Speaker 4: With that in mind, here's our team's winter reading list,
Speaker 4: courtesy of authors and books featured on a Bloomberg Business
Speaker 4: Week just over the last six months. Everything from America's
Speaker 4: government teacher to the hidden intricacies of zoning, to the
Speaker 4: journalists who took a journey into the heart of American
Speaker 4: democracy and the Mac and Cheese millionaire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, miyamyelm love that we begin with our team's pick.
Speaker 3: It's something we cannot seem to stop talking about this
Speaker 3: year the AI revolution. We've recently dedicated an entire weekend
Speaker 3: podcast and broadcast to artificial intelligence, covering everything from big
Speaker 3: tech's massive gains this year and Part two investments in
Speaker 3: artificial intelligence, to the large sums of energy needed to
Speaker 3: power the data centers doing all the computing required by AI.
Speaker 4: As investors reward companies use of AI, others are ringing
Speaker 4: alarm bells about getting the tech under control before it
Speaker 4: controls US. Doctor Terrence Sanowski is Francis Crickchair at the
Speaker 4: Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the
Speaker 4: University of California at San Diego. He's also President of
Speaker 4: the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation. His dual expertise in
Speaker 4: AI and neuroscience led him to write the book Chat,
Speaker 4: GPT and the Future of AI, The Deep Language Revolution.
Speaker 5: I think that what's happening right now is really unbelievable
Speaker 5: in terms of the breath and the depth and the excitement,
Speaker 5: and so I was there at the beginning. Jeffrey Hinton
Speaker 5: and I collaborated in the nineteen eighties all the learning
Speaker 5: algorithms that are being used today for these large language
Speaker 5: models and deep learning were developed by US back in
Speaker 5: that era, and of course what we didn't have back
Speaker 5: then were computers that were fast enough that could scale
Speaker 5: up these models to be be able to solve these
Speaker 5: very difficult problems in artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: So I want to ask you, how did you think
Speaker 3: about neural networks in large language models in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: how do you think about them today.
Speaker 5: We actually had a premonition that these large language models
Speaker 5: were really good at language, and that was a particular project,
Speaker 5: a summer project for a gratitude in my lap called
Speaker 5: net talk, which was trained on a dictionary to be
Speaker 5: able to pronounce English tesch, you know, if you give
Speaker 5: it an article from the Wall Street Journal and they
Speaker 5: would pronounce it in an understandable way. And this in
Speaker 5: linguistics is a very difficult problem because English is so irregular.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of regularities, but you also have irregularities,
Speaker 5: and then you have rules for the irregularities. But it
Speaker 5: really was amazing that a small, tiny network with just
Speaker 5: a few hundred units and tens of thousands of weights,
Speaker 5: the parameters, the connections between the units could do that.
Speaker 5: It was like an amazing compression of complexity, and now
Speaker 5: we know that these large language models, the deep learning networks,
Speaker 5: they love language and they are capable of things that
Speaker 5: we never could have imagined.
Speaker 4: That's really what I wanted to talk about the idea
Speaker 4: of super intelligent AI. What are we not thinking about?
Speaker 4: What's the threat out there?
Speaker 5: My good friend Jeff is very concerned, and I think
Speaker 5: he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And
Speaker 5: if he's worried about it, then there's some as a concern. However,
Speaker 5: I think that even if you're concerned, it's very difficult
Speaker 5: to know when that's going to happen, if it ever
Speaker 5: will happen. And there are super forecasters out there, and
Speaker 5: this is from the Economist magazine, who are much better
Speaker 5: at people who are experts at predicting you know, if
Speaker 5: and when there may be a catastrophic or existential threat,
Speaker 5: and it turns out that in fact, they're not as
Speaker 5: concerned as the experts in AI. I'm happy that someone
Speaker 5: is thinking about the worst case outcome, because if not,
Speaker 5: then if it ever happens, we're in trouble.
Speaker 4: But paint that picture for us, because I think a
Speaker 4: lot of people are worried about doomsday scenarios here. And
Speaker 4: if Jeffrey Hinton is worried about that stuff, I mean,
Speaker 4: should we we should be worried about it.
Speaker 6: You're saying, I think that we should could be cautious,
Speaker 6: that is to say, we we should be constantly thinking
Speaker 6: along the lines that Jeff is in terms of what
Speaker 6: could possibly happen, and you know, be cautious and put
Speaker 6: in precautions so that it can't happen.
Speaker 5: What I'm really concerned about are the unintended consequences, things
Speaker 5: that you cannot predict. Something may happen that you know,
Speaker 5: no one thought of, even Jeff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like you know, we have learned certainly, right,
Speaker 3: great financial crisis pandemic like the un the unthinkable can
Speaker 3: happen and you throw technology into it and you just
Speaker 3: kind of don't know where it's going to go exactly. Okay,
Speaker 3: So now I'm terrified.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 3: You know when you talk to people, do you say, wait,
Speaker 3: this is really going to be net a good thing.
Speaker 5: Look, all the technologies have good and bad consequences, and
Speaker 5: you try to mitigate the bad and you have to
Speaker 5: balance them, you know. Yeah, and right now it looks
Speaker 5: like the good is way way ahead of the bad
Speaker 5: in terms of the act that may have on us
Speaker 5: and society and businesses. But you know, like I say,
Speaker 5: we have to be careful because we don't really know
Speaker 5: where it's heading.
Speaker 3: I got to ask you because I am still trying
Speaker 3: to understand, and I get worried that we throw these
Speaker 3: words around, certainly not you, but we as we try
Speaker 3: to understand this, not having full comprehension of what artificial intelligence,
Speaker 3: the large language models that we're talking about today, where
Speaker 3: it takes us. Is it as subtle at evolving in
Speaker 3: life changing as the Internet was for us.
Speaker 5: So this is something that is emerging. And I have
Speaker 5: since the book was sent to press in the summer,
Speaker 5: I have a sub stack where I have tried to
Speaker 5: fill in with, you know, the new things that are happening.
Speaker 5: And I'm preparing something a twelfth version the blog on
Speaker 5: the question of whether AI is overhyped or underhyped, And
Speaker 5: you know, I've thought a lot about this, and you know,
Speaker 5: I think that it depends on the timescale. I think
Speaker 5: that on the short timescale it is overhyped. There's no
Speaker 5: doubt about it. There's just so much out there. I mean,
Speaker 5: every day, the newspapers are filled with AI and your program.
Speaker 5: But I think in the long run it's actually under hyped.
Speaker 5: I think the real change in the Internet, for example,
Speaker 5: didn't occur within the first ten years. It was much later. Again,
Speaker 5: unintended applications that marriage that you know, have enormous impact
Speaker 5: on our lives, like social media. So I think the
Speaker 5: same thing's going to happen with AI.
Speaker 3: But is it is it different like anternet is not
Speaker 3: I wanted to say comfortable, but it's not because there's
Speaker 3: some really bad things that happen and we know that, right,
Speaker 3: and that's the battle we have with social media. And
Speaker 3: we want to talk to you about kind of regulatory
Speaker 3: oversight of AI in a moment. But I just I'm
Speaker 3: just trying to understand. You know, it does feel so
Speaker 3: seamless and just such a part of everything we do.
Speaker 3: But it hasn't necessarily replace a ton of jobs. It's
Speaker 3: created jobs, it's replaced some jobs. I guess you could say,
Speaker 3: I'm just trying to understand, Like on what scale do
Speaker 3: you put it? You mentioned the Internet, so is it
Speaker 3: apples to apples or is it something else?
Speaker 5: No, Well, first of all, it uses the internet, So
Speaker 5: I mean that's like the the machinery that you need
Speaker 5: to reach to scale up and reach a large population.
Speaker 5: But it's more intimate than the Internet in the following
Speaker 5: sense that it talks to us, right. I mean, it's
Speaker 5: as if an alien landed on the Earth and could
Speaker 5: talk to us in English and it knew everything about
Speaker 5: you know, what, human's history, everything, and the only thing
Speaker 5: we can be sure if it's not human. But it's
Speaker 5: really quite remarkable. Let me give you one example of
Speaker 5: something that I was really surprised at when they did
Speaker 5: a study of whether people who needed cognitive therapy preferred
Speaker 5: real humans or AI. They preferred AI, which was really
Speaker 5: quite remarkable. I didn't expect that. And part of the
Speaker 5: reason is that the AI is not judgmental like humans.
Speaker 3: Well wait, but isn't it depend on the data like
Speaker 3: we talk.
Speaker 4: About, it wasn't getting trained on judgmental data.
Speaker 5: Actually, it's a good question. What was it trained on.
Speaker 5: I think that it was fine tuned with you know,
Speaker 5: data from real subjects that we're talking with a doctor.
Speaker 5: But even without that, I'll tell you something again it's
Speaker 5: shocking is that it is actually empathy. These large language
Speaker 5: models can empathize with humans. And why is it. How
Speaker 5: is that? Well, it actually absorbed a lot of text
Speaker 5: out there, novels, letters, and read it and so forth,
Speaker 5: and where empathy was being you know, part of the discussion,
Speaker 5: and so it absorbed that too.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: I wanted to hear hear a little bit of your
Speaker 4: thoughts on on what we heard from you Musk. He
Speaker 4: actually participated in a surprise conversation at the Future Investment
Speaker 4: Initiative to discuss the future of AI.
Speaker 8: It's most likely going to be great, and there's this
Speaker 8: some chance which could be ten to twenty percent that
Speaker 8: it goes bad. The chances on.
Speaker 9: Zero that it goes bad.
Speaker 8: But overall, at one point where we said the covers
Speaker 8: eighty percent full is one positive way to look at it.
Speaker 4: Maybe ninety percent, okay, eighty or ninety percent positive. The
Speaker 4: question I have for you, professor, do we need an
Speaker 4: international regulatory body? Do we need the largest, most powerful
Speaker 4: governments around the world to create some sort of standard
Speaker 4: to ensure or help ensure that this goes the right way.
Speaker 5: Well, as you know, in the UK, they have passed
Speaker 5: an AI Act which is like one hundred pages long
Speaker 5: and you know, incredibly detailed, and it's already obsolete. I
Speaker 5: just moving blasting forward and you know, you trying to
Speaker 5: catch up with it. But I do believe that it's
Speaker 5: absolutely essential that it be regulated, and it should be
Speaker 5: regulated by people who are building it. The government, okay,
Speaker 5: is the business of protecting people. And we'll see how
Speaker 5: that plays out. But for example, genetics, this happened, you know,
Speaker 5: back in the sixties seventies. They had a meeting where
Speaker 5: they came together at a soilomar and they came up
Speaker 5: with rules and regulations for doing experiments under the careful
Speaker 5: protection so that nothing leaks out, nothing gets out. And
Speaker 5: I think we need to do the same.
Speaker 10: Okay.
Speaker 3: So when does as you said, ten years for the
Speaker 3: internet to really kind of make its impact and presence
Speaker 3: really known and maybe, you know, integrated into our lives.
Speaker 3: So is it a decade before we see LMS and
Speaker 3: AI at this level integrated into our lives.
Speaker 5: We are at a stage that aviation was at when
Speaker 5: at Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers made the first flight.
Speaker 5: It was ten feet up and one hundred feet long,
Speaker 5: and that really was the you know, something that then
Speaker 5: took decades and decades to build. And the most difficult thing,
Speaker 5: by the way, that airplanes. You know, design of airplanes
Speaker 5: had to solve was control. How do you make a
Speaker 5: go where you want to go without crashing? And that's
Speaker 5: something that again it's like we're going through right now
Speaker 5: with AI. And yes, it will take decades. It's not
Speaker 5: going to happen overnight.
Speaker 4: That was doctor Terrence Sadowski, Francis Crick, Chair at the
Speaker 4: Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the
Speaker 4: University of California at San Diego. His new book chat
Speaker 4: GPT in the Future of AI, The Deep Language Revolution
Speaker 4: is out.
Speaker 3: Now you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. AI certainly in
Speaker 3: focus this year. Another thing in focus US politics.
Speaker 4: A book that our team liked came from America, so
Speaker 4: called The Government Teacher who wrote about the small and
Speaker 4: the Mighty, twelve unsung Americans who changed the course of history.
Speaker 3: That happens to be my pick more when we come
Speaker 3: back right here on BusinessWeek.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen
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Speaker 3: Everybody, think back to your history classes growing up, you
Speaker 3: probably remember learning about, yeah, of course, the president's wars,
Speaker 3: major wars, and the social issues of our past. But
Speaker 3: some things that may have gone under the radar were
Speaker 3: the lesser known figures in American history who had a
Speaker 3: major impact. And that's what our next author wanted to
Speaker 3: bring to light.
Speaker 4: This next book. It's actually Carol's pick is by number
Speaker 4: one New York Times bestselling author, educator, and podcast host
Speaker 4: Sharon McMahon. Known to many as America's government teacher, she
Speaker 4: informs her million plus audience about history, government and current events.
Speaker 3: Now, we should note we spoke to Sharon weeks before
Speaker 3: the presidential election. We did get her take on whether
Speaker 3: the electoral system in the United States is working or
Speaker 3: if it should change. So here's my pick for your
Speaker 3: winter holiday read from author Sharon McMahon and her book
Speaker 3: The Small and the Mighty Twelve Unsung Americans who changed
Speaker 3: the course of history.
Speaker 11: I do think that it is time to reform the
Speaker 11: electoral system in a number of ways. I don't think
Speaker 11: the system, first of all, works the way that the
Speaker 11: founders or the framers intended it to work. But I
Speaker 11: also think that The Framers were very clear that the
Speaker 11: system should be refined as needed, which is why they
Speaker 11: built two separate ways to amend the Constitution right there
Speaker 11: into the document. This is not holy scripture. This is
Speaker 11: a like, hey, here's a working document with some of
Speaker 11: our ideas of how we might run this country. And
Speaker 11: if it's not working out, here's two ways we can
Speaker 11: change it. So the concept of winner take all in
Speaker 11: the electoral college that's not in the constitution. Winner take
Speaker 11: all actually didn't develop until thirty to forty years after
Speaker 11: the Constitution was ratified. The Framers never intended for a
Speaker 11: winner take all electoral college, and most Americans do not
Speaker 11: feel well represented by the way the current system works.
Speaker 11: If you are a Blue voter in Alabama or a
Speaker 11: Red voter in California, I guarantee that there's an element
Speaker 11: of feeling disenfranchised by the way the system works. But
Speaker 11: I would also advocate for a couple of other changes.
Speaker 11: One of them is, as you mentioned, an abbreviated election period.
Speaker 11: We don't need we don't need to spend one billion
Speaker 11: dollars each. That's what Biden and Trump each spent in
Speaker 11: twenty twenty one billion dollars each Most Americans agree we
Speaker 11: could find better things to spend two billion dollars on
Speaker 11: then flyers that are put in the trash and commercials
Speaker 11: that air for thirty seconds at a time. That's one way.
Speaker 11: I also think so many Americans feel like the way,
Speaker 11: the way the process for choosing nominees is broken, the
Speaker 11: process for how do we get to pick which person
Speaker 11: is going to represent us? The primary process because they
Speaker 11: happen in a you know, sort of like dominoes fall.
Speaker 11: If you're in a state with early primary, you get
Speaker 11: an outsize amount of input. State with a late primary,
Speaker 11: often there's only one person left standing. Why can't all
Speaker 11: Americans have to say on one national primary election day?
Speaker 3: I agree. You know, it's interesting. I'd heard on a
Speaker 3: podcast that I listened to and said that one thing
Speaker 3: to keep in mind, though, when you look at the
Speaker 3: election outcome when Donald Trump was elected. And I'm not
Speaker 3: taking sides here, but just so, you need to understand
Speaker 3: that when you have candidates who are very very different individuals,
Speaker 3: that depending on who wins or loses in the case
Speaker 3: of when Donald Trump was in the White House, that
Speaker 3: there is roughly half of America who agree with or
Speaker 3: like who he is as a leader, and you could
Speaker 3: say for the other side, and when you have such
Speaker 3: a difference, how do we I don't know, how do
Speaker 3: we make it so a government that is much more
Speaker 3: representative of people who feel very different about the way forward,
Speaker 3: not just as leaders but as Americans.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, you know, I think there's this is the
Speaker 11: problem that we're having now, which is that there is
Speaker 11: not an ideological center of the country. We have these
Speaker 11: sort of you know, farther left and farther right. And yes,
Speaker 11: you can make a lot of arguments that what's far
Speaker 11: left in America is not far left overseas.
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 11: I understand all of that. But an ideological center is
Speaker 11: a moderating force in politics. It's a moderating force on
Speaker 11: the Supreme Court, it's a moderating force in Congress. You
Speaker 11: have to convince the people in the ideological center that
Speaker 11: the side, that the position that's slightly to the right
Speaker 11: or slightly to the left, is the one worth taking.
Speaker 11: And that ideological center is often persuadable by the best arguments,
Speaker 11: by the best ideas, And so right now, the electoral
Speaker 11: system heavily favors people who are more ideologically extreme, more
Speaker 11: ideological you know, farther to the right or to the left.
Speaker 11: And that ideological center is something that we've eliminated by
Speaker 11: and large by Jerrymangering and by other mechanisms that again
Speaker 11: were never intended by the Framers to be used. And
Speaker 11: that ideological center is something that Americans can choose to
Speaker 11: vote for if they want to. They can choose to
Speaker 11: vote for those candidates who are less extreme.
Speaker 4: So you're optimistic about that because it does seem like
Speaker 4: in recent years we've just become more polarized and we've
Speaker 4: become more extreme.
Speaker 11: Well, I mean, we can't make positive change by having
Speaker 11: a fatalistic viewpoint that nothing good can ever happen. If
Speaker 11: you want positive change to happen, you have to hope
Speaker 11: that it will. And I like to reiterate that hope
Speaker 11: is not a feeling that you wait to experience where
Speaker 11: you're going to wake up one morning and the birds
Speaker 11: are going to be chirping and this guy's going to
Speaker 11: be blue. Our ancestors, the people who built this country,
Speaker 11: operated on this assumption that hope was a choice that
Speaker 11: they could make, and it was that choice from which
Speaker 11: all good things would follow.
Speaker 3: Sharon, who are these unsung heroes, and like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: how did you kind of go about this process, Why
Speaker 3: did you want to write it? Give us a little
Speaker 3: bit of background.
Speaker 11: You know, as you mentioned, I've been a teacher for
Speaker 11: a long time, and it is often the stories of
Speaker 11: the people you ever heard of that are some of
Speaker 11: the most interesting. They're the stories that children and adults
Speaker 11: alike feel like, dang, I wish I had known about
Speaker 11: them before, you know, So those kinds of stories, the
Speaker 11: stories that you just don't see in the bold face
Speaker 11: and the textbooks that are often the most intriguing. You know,
Speaker 11: Americans love like the secret of some kind, the secret
Speaker 11: story behind something that happened, right, that's just sort of
Speaker 11: innate human nature. So I have found them interesting for
Speaker 11: a long time. And when I conceptualized this book and
Speaker 11: wanted to sort of bring some of these these stories
Speaker 11: to bear, bring some of these characters to the table,
Speaker 11: that was one of the things I was thinking about,
Speaker 11: is who has made a significant contribution, a significant impact
Speaker 11: where they were with the resources available to them. I
Speaker 11: think we often mistakenly believe that the levers of power
Speaker 11: that are accessed by government are the only ways to
Speaker 11: make a difference, and the people in this book by
Speaker 11: and large do not access power via the levers of government.
Speaker 11: They most of the time, are not wealthy or famous.
Speaker 11: Most of them had very significant challenges in their own lives,
Speaker 11: and yet they set out, by virtue of circumstance and
Speaker 11: luck in many cases, did something truly extraordinary with their lives.
Speaker 4: The examples in your book end in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 4: and I'm wondering if there are any examples today of
Speaker 4: people who are alive that wielded power outside of traditional
Speaker 4: government channels that we can look to who are currently alive.
Speaker 11: Well, there's many of them, of course, whether I would
Speaker 11: put them in a book is another story, a good one,
Speaker 11: But of course, like Elon Musk is a great example
Speaker 11: of somebody who doesn't belong in my book, of course,
Speaker 11: but he's a great example of somebody who is using
Speaker 11: a tremendous amount of power outside of the levers of government.
Speaker 11: But most of the people in this book had no
Speaker 11: such large platform from which to jump like Ewon does,
Speaker 11: did not have billions of dollars, did not have to
Speaker 11: have the ability to buy a mouthpiece the size of
Speaker 11: Twitter slash X. But there are absolutely still great Americans.
Speaker 11: I think we often think of Great Americans as being
Speaker 11: like the people in the black and white pictures are
Speaker 11: the oil paintings of the past, and I really wanted
Speaker 11: to dispell that notion that Great Americans were people.
Speaker 9: Of the past.
Speaker 3: There are people today, and I think many would argue
Speaker 3: that some of the poll workers right of the last
Speaker 3: few years elections are those unsung Americans and heroes. Give
Speaker 3: us one or two if you will, that are in
Speaker 3: your book.
Speaker 11: One of the people that I really love in this
Speaker 11: book is a woman named Septa Mclark who had a
Speaker 11: very tumultuous upbringing. She almost commits suicide, is saved the
Speaker 11: last moment from committing suicide. On more than one occasion.
Speaker 11: She's like falsely arrested and fired, had just terrible circumstances
Speaker 11: happened to her, and she's eventually let go from her
Speaker 11: job as a teacher. And it is being let go
Speaker 11: from her job that allows her at the time to
Speaker 11: start teaching adults. And one of the people that she
Speaker 11: begins to teach is a woman named Rosa Parks, and
Speaker 11: it is Septima Clark who begins something called Citizenship School
Speaker 11: that helps train African Americans all over the South, to
Speaker 11: become voters, to become elected officials, to figure out how
Speaker 11: to make things happen for their own communities. And she
Speaker 11: said something that I think is really worth remembering today,
Speaker 11: which is that at the end of her life, someone
Speaker 11: asked her, how what have you learned? And she says,
Speaker 11: I have learned that I can work with my enemies
Speaker 11: because you never know when they might have a change
Speaker 11: of heart at any moment. And what a sentiment that
Speaker 11: I feel like we really need today because in an
Speaker 11: era where we just delete and block people we don't like,
Speaker 11: Septam macclark was out there working with her enemies because
Speaker 11: she knew they could have a change of hearted end moment.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm wondering, Sharon, about whether or not you're concerned
Speaker 4: that stories such as these get buried in the fights
Speaker 4: about US history that are happening across the country. The
Speaker 4: book bans the changing of curriculums.
Speaker 11: You know, I don't think that my book is going
Speaker 11: to be banned necessarily.
Speaker 4: But outside your book necessarily, But where there's stories appear
Speaker 4: outside of your book, you know, students not learning about
Speaker 4: these people.
Speaker 11: I absolutely do. I absolutely share the very real concern
Speaker 11: about the sanitizing of history, because history is full of amazing,
Speaker 11: amazing things, but it's also full of many, many difficult
Speaker 11: things with which we must grapple. And that actually, that
Speaker 11: exercise of grappling with our history is an important one.
Speaker 11: It's an important one for our own in the life
Speaker 11: actual development, and it's an important one for our own
Speaker 11: reckoning with our country. How can we be better if
Speaker 11: we don't know where we've come from?
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things. And I'm gonna give
Speaker 3: this props to one of our producers, CC, who's sharing.
Speaker 3: Are you a gen Z.
Speaker 4: More or less? Okay, more or less millennial?
Speaker 3: I guess she's young, though, a young girl in terms
Speaker 3: of how do we get like, what are your thoughts
Speaker 3: about getting gen Z to vote? Get them to the
Speaker 3: voting booth? Actually, you know, participant in the election? Is
Speaker 3: it about education?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 11: I think gen Z is actually really motivated to vote,
Speaker 11: more than millennials were motivated to vote when they came
Speaker 11: of age, certainly more than Gen X or boomers when
Speaker 11: they came of age. I think gen Z is uniquely
Speaker 11: motivated to vote this election season. And I think they
Speaker 11: are one of the demographics that is very significantly undercounted
Speaker 11: when it comes to polling results. Do you know any
Speaker 11: gen z or the ants or the telephone. No, they
Speaker 11: don't answer the phone, so their ability to poll gen
Speaker 11: z is very very limited. So in terms of how
Speaker 11: to motivate them to show up, I think we're doing it.
Speaker 11: I think understanding the gravity of an election like this
Speaker 11: is important.
Speaker 4: That was Sharon McMahon her book The Small and the Mighty,
Speaker 4: Twelve Unsung Americans who Change the course of History.
Speaker 3: Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. From raging wildfires and
Speaker 3: atmospheric rivers to powerful and unusual hurricanes, it was another
Speaker 3: year of extreme weather with no end in sight.
Speaker 4: The author of slow Burn, The Hidden Costs of a
Speaker 4: Warming World, joins us for another one of our memorable
Speaker 4: book picks of twenty twenty four. This is Bloomberg.
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Speaker 3: We continue with our holiday reading list to pick number three.
Speaker 3: It comes courtesy of our Bloomberg Business Week weekend of
Speaker 3: remote broadcast producer Sebastian Escobar.
Speaker 4: Also all around. Just great guy. I'm just going to
Speaker 4: throw that out there that's not in the scripts.
Speaker 12: Are you saying that?
Speaker 3: Because he's listening right now?
Speaker 4: Oh a, Sebastian, I see you there, he Sebastian.
Speaker 3: He says this next book helps put into perspective the
Speaker 3: real costs of climate change, not just from the possible
Speaker 3: mass extinction of communities in the world as a whole,
Speaker 3: but more about the everyday implications of global warming here
Speaker 3: and now.
Speaker 4: Sebastian's choice comes from doctor R. G. Sung Park, Assistant
Speaker 4: professor at U Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice,
Speaker 4: as well as an environmental and labor economist, who argues
Speaker 4: that climate change headlines often missed some of the most
Speaker 4: important costs that we just don't see, and how climate
Speaker 4: change already affects everyone and may act as an amplifier
Speaker 4: of inequality, like what happens to people downwind of wildfire smoke,
Speaker 4: or to children who cannot attend school because air quality
Speaker 4: is so bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we know the economy and inflation, we're front and
Speaker 3: center on most Americans' minds during this year's election, also
Speaker 3: this past week with the FED meeting. But according to
Speaker 3: a Pew Research survey, eighty percent of Americans say climate
Speaker 3: news makes them feel frustrated by political disagreements over the
Speaker 3: messaging on the issue of climate change and thus creating
Speaker 3: more political division. That's something doctor Park says is only
Speaker 3: making the issue worse. He caught up with Tim and
Speaker 3: Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld to talk about his book and Sebastian's
Speaker 3: pick Slow Bird, The Hidden Costs of a warming world.
Speaker 13: When we talk about wildfires, typically what's most salient and
Speaker 13: visible are the flames, right, they burned down homes, they
Speaker 13: force us to evacuate, as very destructive, But at least
Speaker 13: according to recent research by research at Harvard and Stanford
Speaker 13: and elsewhere, the hidden costs associated with wildfire's smoke maybe
Speaker 13: just as damaging, if not more so. The last numbers
Speaker 13: that I saw suggest that, you know, maybe dozens of
Speaker 13: people have died due to wild fire flames in the
Speaker 13: past several years in the United States, but the estimates
Speaker 13: are that anywhere between five and fifteen thousand may have
Speaker 13: died every year due to the additional air pollution caused
Speaker 13: by the wildfire smoke, which, as you may know, can
Speaker 13: travel large distances. So that's just one example of the
Speaker 13: many hidden costs. I mean, just to take a step back,
Speaker 13: one of the reasons why I wrote the book is is,
Speaker 13: you know, as you mentioned, climate change has become such
Speaker 13: a visceral issue, but it's also very complex issue, and
Speaker 13: we all need sort of you know, simplifying mental heuristics
Speaker 13: to help us think about it and for better or
Speaker 13: for worse. You know, I had the observation that a
Speaker 13: lot of the discussion around climate change has tended to
Speaker 13: have sort of a black or white kind of almost fatalistic.
Speaker 9: Hue to it.
Speaker 13: And it's useful to think about climate change, of course,
Speaker 13: as sort of an insurance problem, right, how are we
Speaker 13: ensuring against the risk of potential planetary catastrophe. That's obviously
Speaker 13: one important way to think about it. But one of
Speaker 13: the additional mental heuristics that I certainly hope we can
Speaker 13: add to our toolkit is to think of it as
Speaker 13: a slow burn, right, as not so much an imminent
Speaker 13: crisis for you know, all of life on planet Earth,
Speaker 13: but more of a slow burning kind of degradation of
Speaker 13: quality of life crisis that is already unfolding, sometimes in
Speaker 13: visually salient ways, but often.
Speaker 9: In hidden ways.
Speaker 1: Well, if you think about it as a slow burn,
Speaker 1: what does that mean in terms of addressing climate change?
Speaker 10: Because it feels like, you.
Speaker 1: Know, with so many things, there's this big, dramatic event
Speaker 1: and then there's all this urgency created around it to
Speaker 1: address it. If it is a slow burn, do you
Speaker 1: think that that takes the urgency out of trying to
Speaker 1: combat this problem.
Speaker 13: Yeah, I mean that's certainly a risk, and that's probably
Speaker 13: one of the reasons why, you know, there's so much
Speaker 13: disagreement about how we should communicate climate change, you know,
Speaker 13: the politics behind it.
Speaker 9: It's always been contentious.
Speaker 13: A good argument for at least jolting us out of
Speaker 13: our complacency, you know, via images that are more you know, salient,
Speaker 13: and some might argue extreme, but I would argue that
Speaker 13: if you believe in you know, evidence based policy, and
Speaker 13: if you and if you believe in the public's ability
Speaker 13: to understand and digest even some modicum of data, the
Speaker 13: data kind of speaks for itself almost overwhelmingly.
Speaker 9: Now that even even if you think about.
Speaker 13: Just the economic consequences of the slow burn aspect of
Speaker 13: climate change. Putting aside the sort of distant potential annihilation prospect,
Speaker 13: you know, the data suggests that it makes cost benefit
Speaker 13: sense from a societal standpoint to aggressively reduced emissions. Now,
Speaker 13: how we communicate that, who we communicate that to? In
Speaker 13: what settings? You know, I'm not an expert in that,
Speaker 13: and I'm sure that that will vary. But if you
Speaker 13: care about just understanding the basic economics behind, you know,
Speaker 13: the cost benefit, the social cost benefit of reducing greenhouse
Speaker 13: gas emissions aggressively, which is what is it needed right
Speaker 13: to slow the slow burn? The data sort of speaks
Speaker 13: for itself at this point.
Speaker 4: I think, well, how do you think about I think
Speaker 4: the conversation we're having today is going to be a
Speaker 4: lot different than the conversation we would have had two
Speaker 4: weeks ago, because now Trump has been elected to another term.
Speaker 4: He's now tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zelden is
Speaker 4: EPA chief. This is somebody who's a climate skeptic. How
Speaker 4: do you think about the federal government and the new
Speaker 4: administration playing a role in everything that you're talking about.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I had a
Speaker 9: crystal ball.
Speaker 13: I was speaking to one of my colleagues the other
Speaker 13: day about we were just speculating, okay, like, how durable
Speaker 13: do we think the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act
Speaker 13: and other legislative measures on climate change that we're passed
Speaker 13: during the Biden administration will be over the next four years?
Speaker 13: And we weren't sure. I don't think anyone is sure
Speaker 13: about that. I will just say there's a lot of
Speaker 13: uncertainty there. My read of the data also suggests that
Speaker 13: there's a lot of momentum that is more a product
Speaker 13: of a combination of previous policy and technical change that
Speaker 13: I imagine will be in the background regardless of what the
Speaker 13: specific policies tomorrow or not taken in this coming administration.
Speaker 9: So maybe that's room for a little bit of hope.
Speaker 4: I'm wondering how you think about government role here versus
Speaker 4: the role of the market versus the role of individuals.
Speaker 13: It's a big issue, yeah, absolutely, and so maybe it's
Speaker 13: worth taking a step back and separating out what realm
Speaker 13: in which we are referring to it when it comes
Speaker 13: to climate change. The right you can think about mitigation,
Speaker 13: right reducing emissions, the energy transition, whatever name you want
Speaker 13: to put to it. Right, the government role, the role
Speaker 13: of government there is in some ways unambiguous, at least
Speaker 13: in terms of whether there should be some government role,
Speaker 13: and we can get into why that is. But the
Speaker 13: short story is that, you know, climate change constitutes a
Speaker 13: classic negative externality problem and a global public good problem,
Speaker 13: and so government needs to play some role in setting
Speaker 13: the market signals straight. Of course, that doesn't mean that
Speaker 13: government is the only player it. You know, there's a
Speaker 13: huge role to be played by the private sector. We
Speaker 13: could also talk about what is the government's role in adaptation.
Speaker 13: I mean, that's just one example of many ways in
Speaker 13: which you know, we can expect ongoing climate change regardless
Speaker 13: of what we do in terms of emissions reductions. How
Speaker 13: how climate change will affect our quality of life, and
Speaker 13: what the government role is there in terms of helping
Speaker 13: us adapt to those risk is less clear.
Speaker 9: I think.
Speaker 13: I think it will depend in large part on you know,
Speaker 13: what are the marketing perfections at play when it comes
Speaker 13: to these kinds of adaptation decisions. Are there important information
Speaker 13: asymmetries or is there sort of a coordination role to
Speaker 13: be played? But to answer your question, Yeah, I think
Speaker 13: it kind of depends, but certainly in the context of,
Speaker 13: you know, mitigating emissions so that we can slow global
Speaker 13: warming climate change overall. Yeah, I think it's quite quite
Speaker 13: obvious that government has to play at least to catalyzing
Speaker 13: and sort of price signal setting role, if that makes sense,
Speaker 13: whether that's with a price on carbon or something else.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit more about consequences, because you
Speaker 1: make the point in the book that it's not just
Speaker 1: some of the obvious day to day consequences that you
Speaker 1: might think of, but you also talk about lower test scores.
Speaker 1: For example, you talk about higher crime rates, not issues
Speaker 1: that people would typically associate with a hotter planet.
Speaker 11: Draw that link for us.
Speaker 9: Yeah, sure, And again, you know that was one of
Speaker 9: the motivations.
Speaker 13: You know, the research that I've engaged in it and
Speaker 13: I'm familiar with that there's this increasingly intricate and compelling
Speaker 13: story of how even so called non catastrophic amounts of
Speaker 13: warming appear to have you know, subtle but cumulatively meaningful
Speaker 13: and pervasive sequences for day to day life.
Speaker 9: So you mentioned test scores.
Speaker 13: You know, there are a number of studies that now
Speaker 13: show that students taking their exams on a hot day,
Speaker 13: even in a place like New York City, which you
Speaker 13: know is one of the materially wealthiest you know, places
Speaker 13: on Earth. Nevertheless, students who take their exam on a
Speaker 13: ninety degree day, you know, roughly ten percent less likely
Speaker 13: these are New York City regions exams to pass a
Speaker 13: given subject.
Speaker 14: You know.
Speaker 9: Another example that may not.
Speaker 13: Be obvious is just thinking about how climate change interacts
Speaker 13: with the world of work. You know, even in the
Speaker 13: United States, again, you know, one of the most highly
Speaker 13: industrialized countries in the world, there are many millions of workers,
Speaker 13: in fact, over two thirds of the roughly one hundred
Speaker 13: million or so workers without a bachelor's degree who are
Speaker 13: routinely exposed to the elements on the job. Agriculture workers,
Speaker 13: construction workers are you know, the first two categories that
Speaker 13: come to mind, but there are many others. You know,
Speaker 13: utility repair crew, warehouse workers. Even in some indoor settings
Speaker 13: where there are already ambient sources of heat or cooling,
Speaker 13: is difficult. You know, there's evidence to suggests that when
Speaker 13: temperatures rise, and they don't have to be in the
Speaker 13: triple digits, you know, even moderately elevated temperatures in the
Speaker 13: eighties and nineties can lead to a significant uptick in
Speaker 13: the risk of serious accident or injury or illness on
Speaker 13: the job. So, you know, these are the kinds of
Speaker 13: you know, what I'm calling subtle climate risks that are
Speaker 13: more more pervasive than first meets the eye, and which
Speaker 13: you know, the data and the research that have come
Speaker 13: online in the past decade plus given so much better
Speaker 13: insight into.
Speaker 4: How do we make people care. We just went through
Speaker 4: an election where overwhelmingly what we learned was the only
Speaker 4: thing that matters is inflation in the economy. It's what
Speaker 4: polls are showing us how people feel about their economic situation.
Speaker 4: How do you get them to care about the temperature
Speaker 4: that kids take a test when they can't afford to
Speaker 4: feed their family at the grocery store.
Speaker 9: That's a great question.
Speaker 13: I don't know if I have a great answer, Tom,
Speaker 13: But you know, one way that I continue to think
Speaker 13: about this problem is, you know, by clarifying the links
Speaker 13: between something like climate change and the economy and making
Speaker 13: it you know, maybe moving climate change as an issue
Speaker 13: out of what has historically been you know, an environmental
Speaker 13: policy issue per se into a more.
Speaker 9: Hey, it actually matters for.
Speaker 13: The broader operating you know, infrastructure of the economy. It
Speaker 13: matters for how we understand economic well being, probably because shoot.
Speaker 9: That may be one way we make people to care
Speaker 9: a little bit more.
Speaker 4: That was g Sung Park, assistant professor at the University
Speaker 4: of Pennsylvania, an author of the book slow Burn, The
Speaker 4: Hidden Costs of a Warming World.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up our first hour of the weekend
Speaker 3: edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Our holiday
Speaker 3: reading list continues in the next hour with more picks,
Speaker 3: including an eye opening exploration of one of the little
Speaker 3: known levers that controls our world zoning codes and a
Speaker 3: call to arms for using them to improve American society
Speaker 3: at every level.
Speaker 4: Plus Frank Berry and his wife traveled across the US
Speaker 4: and an RV into the heart of American democracy to
Speaker 4: find what binds Americans together in this divided time.
Speaker 3: And our producer Paul Brennan's favorite, The Mac and Cheese Millionaire,
Speaker 3: a book about one woman's quest of fall in love
Speaker 3: with her job and then ended up transforming the restaurant
Speaker 3: industry along the way. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Easter Listen
Speaker 2: on Apple car Play and and Brout Auto with a
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on.
Speaker 3: YouTube plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend
Speaker 3: edition of Bloomberg Business Week, Our team's holiday reading list
Speaker 3: continues in including with a book about road trips, blue
Speaker 3: Highways and backwater Americana with the hopes of seeing more
Speaker 3: clearly what holds the country together and how we can
Speaker 3: keep it together.
Speaker 4: Also, from an overworked lawyer to restaurant owner, a look
Speaker 4: into the journey of the Mac and Cheese millionaire.
Speaker 3: First up this hour the fourth book on our winter
Speaker 3: holiday reading list. It's Tim's Pick, which is a book
Speaker 3: that covers something invisible yet also holds significant regulatory power
Speaker 3: over local government and determines how we experience cities. We're
Speaker 3: talking about zoning. You love this one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, everybody's talking about zoning right now. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: when we talk about affordability and cities. Everyone's taking a
Speaker 4: look at zoning because this is a real local issue.
Speaker 4: Many people argue that central to the housing crisis in
Speaker 4: the US is zoning. The notion that only certain things
Speaker 4: of certain sizes can be built in specific areas. Sarah
Speaker 4: Bronan is a legal scholar and architect. She's also Professor
Speaker 4: of Law and Urban Planning at Cornell University. She argues
Speaker 4: that once we recognize the power of zoning, we can
Speaker 4: harness it to create vibrant communities and ensure everyone has
Speaker 4: access to affordable housing, public transit, and healthy food. Her
Speaker 4: book Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes Our World.
Speaker 15: Zoning, which is enacted at the local level by maybe
Speaker 15: thirty thousand counties and cities and towns across the country,
Speaker 15: has huge impacts on our housing market and our ability
Speaker 15: to provide affordable and accessible housing to people who need it.
Speaker 4: We're talking about the idea of nimbiism and the idea
Speaker 4: that in certain areas you're only allowed to build a
Speaker 4: single family home of a certain size on a certain
Speaker 4: plot of land. And if Carol, we had zoning for
Speaker 4: more dense housing, we could build more housing and provide
Speaker 4: more people with shelter.
Speaker 3: You know, I feel like this is something Sara, that
Speaker 3: we have been talking about for a long time, right,
Speaker 3: the housing shortages and for people who work in major
Speaker 3: cities who can't afford to live in those cities, and
Speaker 3: nobody wants to build, and so they've got to commute
Speaker 3: long commutes to get into the city to get to
Speaker 3: their jobs. So how do we change some of this
Speaker 3: And is it if we could just change zoning, would
Speaker 3: everything be fine?
Speaker 15: Well, zoning is definitely just one piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 15: But Carol, you raise a really good example of people
Speaker 15: who have to live maybe out in the suburbs because
Speaker 15: we're not building enough housing where they want to live
Speaker 15: or how they want to live. So typically in this country,
Speaker 15: across far too many jurisdictions, we've seen zoning that provides
Speaker 15: what you might consider one size fits all or cookie
Speaker 15: cutter development, a house on a half acre or an acre,
Speaker 15: or even the size of a football field about two
Speaker 15: acres or more, all across this country dictated by zoning rules,
Speaker 15: and so we don't see town homes, we don't see
Speaker 15: multi family housing, we don't see more affordable options or
Speaker 15: more appealing options to people who may not want to drive,
Speaker 15: to seniors who want to age in place in some
Speaker 15: of those suburbs and in their small towns. We're not
Speaker 15: really providing that diversity of housing and I think that
Speaker 15: has had huge ripple effects on our economy and on
Speaker 15: our growth.
Speaker 3: When you think about zoning, is it twofold or threefold
Speaker 3: or fourfold? In other words, is it about supply? Is
Speaker 3: it about variety of housing being afforded? Is it also
Speaker 3: about thinking about the space itself? And that sometimes means
Speaker 3: open space and places to farm, do urban farming, whatever.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of components.
Speaker 15: Yeah, I think it's all of the above. But I
Speaker 15: want to touch on the last thing that you mentioned,
Speaker 15: which is essentially the characteristic of all these large zoning
Speaker 15: codes that make us push farther outward into farmland and
Speaker 15: into forest land. And essentially what we have said to
Speaker 15: developers to property owners is if you want housing, you've
Speaker 15: got to go outward to build. Now, that's a big
Speaker 15: problem for us from an environmental standpoint. It's also a
Speaker 15: big problem from a food security standpoint. So the point
Speaker 15: I try to make in the book is, hey, look around,
Speaker 15: zoning is controlling a lot of the outcomes that we
Speaker 15: see and some of the outcomes that we probably don't
Speaker 15: really want, not just as a resident in a particular town,
Speaker 15: but as Americans on the whole.
Speaker 10: Trying to think about.
Speaker 15: A broader approach to land development that will benefit our economy,
Speaker 15: our society, our food security, our transportation security, and so
Speaker 15: much more. But housing, I think is one of the
Speaker 15: core issues.
Speaker 10: And when it comes to.
Speaker 4: Zoning, what about something like historic preservation? And I'm asking
Speaker 4: you because you have a lot of experience with historic preservation.
Speaker 4: You served as the chair of the Advisory Council and
Speaker 4: historic preservation. Is that a position you still have. I
Speaker 4: think you're on office until twenty twenty five.
Speaker 15: Yes, I still serve in this federal role, but I'm
Speaker 15: talking today in my professor role and as a preservationist.
Speaker 15: And from a zoning code standpoint, you do see a
Speaker 15: lot of zoning codes that do integrate some nod to
Speaker 15: historic structures. And I think we love most about historic
Speaker 15: neighborhoods is lively, They're dynamic, I think, got a lot
Speaker 15: of mix of uses, and they're beautiful. And to the
Speaker 15: extent that zoning can encourage that kind of formula, they
Speaker 15: don't now too often. But to encourage that and maybe
Speaker 15: to recreate and support the historic neighborhoods we have all
Speaker 15: the better.
Speaker 4: But is there this this tension there between preserving history
Speaker 4: but also making sure that you rezone something for the future.
Speaker 15: I mean, if you're thinking about you know, there's a
Speaker 15: lot of dialogue about preservation being in tension with housing
Speaker 15: development in particular, but if you look actually at their research.
Speaker 15: So I'll put on my professor Lea.
Speaker 4: I will say you have a lot of different hats
Speaker 4: I think, you know, just to.
Speaker 15: Say that, you know, the research has shown that historic
Speaker 15: districts in cities including New York City and la are
Speaker 15: denser than non historic districts. And why is that. It's
Speaker 15: because typically in historic neighborhoods, we've always allowed historic buildings
Speaker 15: to grow and change. If you think about you know,
Speaker 15: before zone zoning was imposed about one hundred years ago,
Speaker 15: and lots of towns that already existed, and so you know,
Speaker 15: you have that layer. And one of the things that
Speaker 15: I've noticed, I have a project called the National Zoning
Speaker 15: out List that log zoning codes all over the country.
Speaker 15: One of the things I've noticed is that zoning codes
Speaker 15: have often like what gone reversed how a neighborhood initially developed.
Speaker 15: For example, many zoning codes on what you might consider
Speaker 15: a historic main street say no housing on the upper floors. Well,
Speaker 15: that's exactly how those buildings developed, and that's what made
Speaker 15: those neighborhoods so vibrant and so attractive. Zoning fifty years
Speaker 15: ago might have said, okay, now this is one hundred
Speaker 15: percent commercial uses. You can't put housing up. But you
Speaker 15: know that was a bad idea. We should go back
Speaker 15: to that historic mixing. We should go back to a
Speaker 15: twenty four to seven, you know, concept of some of
Speaker 15: these places so that we can really, I think, revitalize
Speaker 15: those communities.
Speaker 3: This is super interesting.
Speaker 4: I wasn't joking when I said she has a lot
Speaker 4: of hats. She's an architect, she's an attorney, she's a policymaker,
Speaker 4: an author, and a professor, just to name a few things.
Speaker 3: So okay, now I feel like I've done nothing with
Speaker 3: my life. It's super impressive. Having said that, I'm listening
Speaker 3: to you, and I feel like, so what. I live
Speaker 3: in a historic neighborhood, and you know, there are rules
Speaker 3: when you do things, and it's as the years have
Speaker 3: gone by, the rules have gotten even tougher. And that
Speaker 3: has to do with adding on and all that kind
Speaker 3: of stuff. And yet the city seems to push in
Speaker 3: terms of newer development, squeezing things in almost everywhere and
Speaker 3: it's getting to point where it's little bit of a
Speaker 3: pushback and fight to kind of preserve some of the
Speaker 3: open space or preserve some of the old you know,
Speaker 3: train embankment or something like that that is part of
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. When does you know what's the right balance
Speaker 3: and how you think about development that is needed, maybe
Speaker 3: in terms of housing, but then there's over development that
Speaker 3: just makes it not a great place to live. How
Speaker 3: do we assess that.
Speaker 15: Zoning can be a really good tool for providing and
Speaker 15: protecting for urban space, for open space, especially in urban environments,
Speaker 15: and you know, you can zone for open space, you
Speaker 15: can zone for parkland, as they point out in the book,
Speaker 15: you can zone for street trees and the kind of
Speaker 15: environmental infrastructure that actually can benefit us and make us healthier,
Speaker 15: make us calmer. But going back to your question on
Speaker 15: density in historic neighborhoods, I'm a proponent of lots of
Speaker 15: different housing options, whether it's carriage house conversions to accessory
Speaker 15: dwelling units, or you know, allowing for one, two, three
Speaker 15: family housing where it's appropriate. But I'm also a big
Speaker 15: fan of looking outside of those historic districts to say
Speaker 15: what kind of compatible development can happen that can be
Speaker 15: complementary of the existing historic districts, because you do want
Speaker 15: to keep that sense of viruc you do want to
Speaker 15: allow historic neighborhoods to change. And I will say, you know,
Speaker 15: think about the approach to historic preservation you've talked about,
Speaker 15: you know, add ons and additions. There's a whole other
Speaker 15: set of rules, historic preservation rules, design control rules that
Speaker 15: layer on top of zoning and that I've argued in
Speaker 15: other work is maybe sometimes too restrictive when we think
Speaker 15: too much about the materiality of a place and not
Speaker 15: about sort of the long term goals of the community
Speaker 15: and the people who live there. And I think housing
Speaker 15: is one of those places where we could stand a
Speaker 15: little bit more flexibility when it comes to those design rules.
Speaker 15: I'll also just add, you know, I don't know where
Speaker 15: you live, but places like New York City, places like Hartford,
Speaker 15: where I had shared the Planning and Zoning Commission, have
Speaker 15: really taken a look at a different kind of historic
Speaker 15: building stock, and that's industrial and manufacturing building stock and
Speaker 15: trying to figure out ways to rezone that for housing.
Speaker 15: Lots of cities have often sort of adopted a zoning
Speaker 15: code and then left it there for decades. I think
Speaker 15: that has really hurt the revitalization redevelopment of industrial neighborhoods
Speaker 15: and these big mill buildings and factories that aren't well positioned.
Speaker 15: We don't have the same kind of manufacturing demands anymore,
Speaker 15: but often they're in a neighborhood which had worker housing
Speaker 15: around it. So thinking about those historic buildings, repurposing those,
Speaker 15: I think is also an important thing for cities to do.
Speaker 4: You were saying something about Guanas and the conversion from
Speaker 4: an industrial area to a residential area and the challenges
Speaker 4: that the area is dealing with toxic chemicals, And.
Speaker 15: That's why I said at the beginning of this conversation
Speaker 15: that zoning is just one piece, and so thinking about
Speaker 15: you know, when cities are trying to figure out how
Speaker 15: do we re vitalize this neighborhood, zoning is a critical
Speaker 15: part because it says how it can be revitalized. But
Speaker 15: there's all of these other issues too, including financing, including
Speaker 15: environmental cleanup. You've tackled it in New York City at
Speaker 15: Guanas with a huge rezoning and you know, done some
Speaker 15: cleanup and you know, seeing a lot of development happening
Speaker 15: and on the way I use Baltimore in the book
Speaker 15: to talk about a different kind of industrial rehabilitation effort
Speaker 15: that's happening in the Remington neighborhood there and different cities
Speaker 15: at different skills are trying different things, but in all
Speaker 15: of them, when you're thinking about revitalizing a neighborhood, reviving
Speaker 15: its economy, making new connections, making neighborhoods more accessible, zoning
Speaker 15: is an essential part of the discussion.
Speaker 3: I want to go continue kind of with our some
Speaker 3: other places around the country. Having said that, I do
Speaker 3: want to ask you, might it be a city like
Speaker 3: Atlantic City or Detroit where revitalizing it continues to be
Speaker 3: a year after year a struggle. Are there some areas
Speaker 3: that cannot be revitalized?
Speaker 15: So both of these cities present very different studies of
Speaker 15: the issues. I mean when it comes to Detroit, I
Speaker 15: think what has happened there as has happened in Hartford
Speaker 15: in Buffalo. Similarly, post industrial cities that have seen population
Speaker 15: loss and have seen disinvestment, is that increasingly city leaders
Speaker 15: have turned to the zoning code. In Detroit's case, lots
Speaker 15: of different uses allowed in places they weren't before, as
Speaker 15: well as urban agriculture you see that in Hertford. Again,
Speaker 15: where I work in Buffalo, you saw and in Hertford
Speaker 15: you see elimination of minimum parking requirements which and pose
Speaker 15: significant costs on new housing.
Speaker 10: Those moves have.
Speaker 15: Really helped to encourage new investment because developers know with
Speaker 15: greater certainty exactly how much money they'll have to spend
Speaker 15: in order to get a development over the finish line,
Speaker 15: and also thinking about things like process improvements. Zoning codes
Speaker 15: can be thousands of pages long in the case of
Speaker 15: New York City, and believe it or not, Boston is
Speaker 15: at the very top of the list at I think
Speaker 15: thirty eight hundred pages of zoning code, and that I
Speaker 15: think comes with it inherently it's a complexity, and so
Speaker 15: stripping away some of that complexity writing the rules of
Speaker 15: the game in advance is a strategy that places like
Speaker 15: Detroit can use to help to spur growth through the
Speaker 15: creation of certainty. And you see that across regulations, right,
Speaker 15: business people want certainty and zoning is no different and land,
Speaker 15: of course a highly important commodity.
Speaker 4: Okay, can we talk cars real quick? You mentioned minimum
Speaker 4: parking requirement being removed, something I think they did with
Speaker 4: some projects in New York City.
Speaker 3: What does that mean minimum?
Speaker 4: So correct me if I'm wrong, professor, But the idea
Speaker 4: with a development, you have to guarantee a certain number
Speaker 4: of parking spaces per number of units in a building.
Speaker 3: Is that right?
Speaker 7: That's right?
Speaker 10: So what that means?
Speaker 15: In some cases we've seen codes that require four parking
Speaker 15: spaces for a single apartment. Often what that means is
Speaker 15: that you're building more parking than housing. So what does
Speaker 15: that tell you about the jurisdiction's approach to housing development.
Speaker 15: It's almost like they're stacking the deck against new housing.
Speaker 15: We also know that parking is it's not beautiful, it's
Speaker 15: a lot of pavement. It is not necessary in places
Speaker 15: like New York City. But I'm going to use New
Speaker 15: York City as an example. I know they're trying to
Speaker 15: change that right now with the City of Yes zoning proposal,
Speaker 15: But right now, overwhelmingly in New York City, a place
Speaker 15: where I think the majority of residents don't have cars
Speaker 15: or don't use them regularly, there are minimum parking requirements
Speaker 15: in the vast majority of land in New York City,
Speaker 15: including in Manhattan. Just posted New York City to the
Speaker 15: National zoning out Lists it's a zoning outlest dot org
Speaker 15: if anybody wants to check it out, and you can
Speaker 15: see where those minimum parking requirements exist. And it's not
Speaker 15: the way that we should be developing our cities. We
Speaker 15: should be promoting lots of different kinds of ways of
Speaker 15: moving around, because again, not everybody wants to drive, not
Speaker 15: everybody can afford a car.
Speaker 4: It's a perfect segway. Sorry I want to jump in
Speaker 4: because we only have three minutes left, but it's the
Speaker 4: perfect segway to talk about public transit and cars in
Speaker 4: the United States. And it just to me feels like
Speaker 4: this is such a car centric culture and this country
Speaker 4: was designed essentially for the automobile, and it makes me
Speaker 4: think that so much of what we see with zoning
Speaker 4: and development is inextricably bound to the idea that we
Speaker 4: are driving ourselves from one place to another place. Convince
Speaker 4: me that I'm wrong.
Speaker 10: You're right.
Speaker 5: Is that what you wanted to hear, because.
Speaker 4: No, that's not what I wanted to hear.
Speaker 15: And I think it has huge negative consequences, not only
Speaker 15: on the environment in the form of sprawl, which we've
Speaker 15: talked about, but also on our health. And I used
Speaker 15: in the book an example of a neighborhood in Hartford
Speaker 15: where you have a thoroughfare that was rezoned in the
Speaker 15: nineteen fifties when we thought, oh, suburban commuters is exactly
Speaker 15: what we need to provide for and zone for gas
Speaker 15: stations and parking lots and strip malls and fast food joints.
Speaker 10: And guess what happened.
Speaker 15: That's what that particular avenue became to the detriment in
Speaker 15: the form of asthma, in the form of obesity related
Speaker 15: illnesses of people in the immediate neighborhood. And so just
Speaker 15: in that one story, you see the power of zoning
Speaker 15: to completely reshape a community, an urban community that had
Speaker 15: been built out, you know, a century or more ago,
Speaker 15: that area with beautiful buildings on it, walkable and so on,
Speaker 15: and a lot of that got changed over. I think
Speaker 15: it's a nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties mindset. But again, too
Speaker 15: many zoning codes have just been sitting there with these
Speaker 15: cumulative effects on us now that we need to really revisit.
Speaker 3: Sarah, I just got thirty seconds left hair climate change,
Speaker 3: how is that going to probably up end zoning codes
Speaker 3: in some ways just quickly.
Speaker 15: Zoning is allowing far too many things to be built
Speaker 15: in places we have no business building. We are doing
Speaker 15: research on sea level rise. With the national zoning out lists,
Speaker 15: We're going to be seeing a lot more data on
Speaker 15: this come out. And I think to the extent that
Speaker 15: we are making these little decisions at the local level,
Speaker 15: we've got to start broadening this out and saying, how
Speaker 15: are zoning codes affecting our ability as a nation to
Speaker 15: respond to climate change? And I think our answer will
Speaker 15: be unfortunately, we're not, but we can do better. And
Speaker 15: that's the hope that I try to put forward in
Speaker 15: the book.
Speaker 3: We can always do better. I agree with you. Sarah Brennan,
Speaker 3: she's professor of law and urban Planning at Cornell University.
Speaker 3: Her new book, Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes
Speaker 3: Our World. Great stuff in at the book. She takes
Speaker 3: you to Ames, Iowa, she takes you to Alabama, she
Speaker 3: takes you to Vegas, Georgetown, some specific situations and stories
Speaker 3: when it comes to zoning around the country.
Speaker 4: So really cool.
Speaker 3: Check it out. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live
Speaker 2: each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car
Speaker 2: Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You
Speaker 2: can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship
Speaker 2: New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 3: Now let's get to our fifth pick on our team's
Speaker 3: holiday reading list. This one comes from from our team's
Speaker 3: video producer, Elizabeth Cedrin, who liked the story of a
Speaker 3: trip along the back roads of the United States known
Speaker 3: as the Lincoln Highway. If you don't know what it is,
Speaker 3: you're about to find out. It's all in a book
Speaker 3: by Frank S. Berry, who took a road trip with
Speaker 3: his wife.
Speaker 4: Frank Berry is a Bloomberg opinion columnist and member of
Speaker 4: the editorial board covering national affairs. We should also note
Speaker 4: he was chief speechwriter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the
Speaker 4: twenty twenty presidential campaign and in New York City Hall.
Speaker 4: Michael Bloomberg, of course, the founder of Bloomberg LP and
Speaker 4: Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Speaker 3: Now, Frank Berry's mission of wandering America with his wife
Speaker 3: to understand what binds our country together despite the great
Speaker 3: political divide, is all in his new book, Back Roads
Speaker 3: and Better Angels, a Journey into the Heart of American Democracy.
Speaker 3: He spoke about that journey with Bloomberg's Matt Miller and me.
Speaker 16: Back in twenty sixteen, when the country seemed to be
Speaker 16: coming a part of the seams, I was looking for
Speaker 16: a different way into the story that everybody was talking about,
Speaker 16: which is what's happening and why is the country so divided?
Speaker 16: And I wanted to go exploring what holds the country
Speaker 16: to gather? And I stumbled across this thing called the
Speaker 16: Lincoln Highway, which, as it turns out, starts here in
Speaker 16: New York in Times Square and runs all the way
Speaker 16: across the country to San Francisco. And it was the
Speaker 16: first road to connect the two coasts. It was dedicated
Speaker 16: in nineteen thirteen, and so I thought, what better way
Speaker 16: to explore what holds the country together than by channeling
Speaker 16: the spirit of Lincoln and driving this road. Now, it
Speaker 16: didn't happen because life got in the way, but the
Speaker 16: pandemic came along in twenty twenty, and my wife and
Speaker 16: I realized this was our opportunities now or never.
Speaker 3: Was it snap judgment, no problem, Your wife said, yep,
Speaker 3: I'm in.
Speaker 16: It took a little work, it wasn't quite that quick,
Speaker 16: but she was all in and it did happen really quickly.
Speaker 16: We had never driven an RV before, and so we
Speaker 16: had to move quickly, and.
Speaker 3: Twenty five feet twenty seventeen Winnebago exactly.
Speaker 16: We decided it was the biggest RV we wanted to
Speaker 16: drive and the smallest RV we wanted to live in.
Speaker 16: But it had everything we needed. A bed, a kitchen,
Speaker 16: a bathroom, and an off I.
Speaker 14: Mean, obviously you had a job to do. You weren't
Speaker 14: just driving and sight seeing, That's right. You wanted to
Speaker 14: stop and talk too important people. How did you choose
Speaker 14: you know, with whom you would speak, and you know,
Speaker 14: how do you set up I feel like you had
Speaker 14: to have a tour manager in order to organize everything.
Speaker 16: I wish I had a tour manager. It was very
Speaker 16: much happening on the fly. I didn't have a lot
Speaker 16: of time to put it together. But I wanted to
Speaker 16: talk with people who would represent a cross section of
Speaker 16: the country, people from all different backgrounds and working all
Speaker 16: different types of jobs and different industries. And I wanted
Speaker 16: to talk with people who had interesting stories to tell
Speaker 16: that would represent what I was after, which was this
Speaker 16: better sense of what holds us together? And so in
Speaker 16: some cases the people we spoke with, of course, it
Speaker 16: was just spontaneous people we met along the way always
Speaker 16: you know, interested to hear those stories. But I also
Speaker 16: would reach out to people before we arrived in town
Speaker 16: and ask, you know, do you have time to sit down.
Speaker 16: Sometimes it was a civic leader, sometimes as a business leader.
Speaker 16: Sometimes it was a farmer. Sometimes it was an activist.
Speaker 16: And the good thing about the pandemic, the extent there
Speaker 16: was a good thing is people had more time on
Speaker 16: their hands. Everyone's schedule was interrupted, and people were really
Speaker 16: generous with their time.
Speaker 3: We found it just kind of once everybody got up
Speaker 3: and running and being on air and working from our homes,
Speaker 3: everybody was accessible because everybody was home.
Speaker 7: That's right.
Speaker 3: I do want to ask you your first interview who
Speaker 3: that was. And I also want to even take one
Speaker 3: more step back. Why the Lincoln Highway?
Speaker 16: Yeah, So the Lincoln Highway to me represented a it
Speaker 16: was a hopeful idea in nineteen thirteen, when there was
Speaker 16: no road across the country. It was a way to
Speaker 16: stitch the country together, a way to encourage more people
Speaker 16: to see more of the country. I think that's still
Speaker 16: something that we need more of today. A time when
Speaker 16: we talk about flyover country. The Lincoln Highway was kind
Speaker 16: of the original idea of combating the notion of flyover country.
Speaker 16: And so we left on September eleventh from New York City,
Speaker 16: and even we did, we did because having lived in
Speaker 16: New York on September eleventh, it's impossible not to carry
Speaker 16: with you the spirit, I think, the spirit of unity
Speaker 16: that we all felt in the in the aftermath, and
Speaker 16: so that's what I wanted to take with us and
Speaker 16: to try to try to channel. And so my first
Speaker 16: interview on September eleventh was actually with the mayor of
Speaker 16: Jersey City, Steve Pullip, who was downtown as I was.
Speaker 3: My home city right very far, it didn't get very
Speaker 3: far at all.
Speaker 16: Started stop here first, first off, Yeah, and we stopped.
Speaker 16: There's a Lincoln statue in Jersey City, a great one, uh,
Speaker 16: And so I had a great conversation with him about
Speaker 16: his nine to eleventh story. He was working downtown as
Speaker 16: I was on that day. He ended up joining the Marines,
Speaker 16: and he talked about, you know, his journey from there
Speaker 16: and what led him to end up running for office.
Speaker 14: So what about when you actually get into fly over country,
Speaker 14: because you're still a long way from Jersey City, Okay,
Speaker 14: I yeah, even got to the Newport.
Speaker 7: So like when you get to the.
Speaker 14: Real America, it's all real. Who were you talking to
Speaker 14: in the heartland.
Speaker 16: Though, well as people from all different walks of life
Speaker 16: and so you know, the heartland also includes Chicago. The
Speaker 16: Lincoln Highway runs through big cities and small towns. But
Speaker 16: in Ohio I spoke with a farmer, Chris Gibbs, who
Speaker 16: had a real interesting story. A friend of mine introduced
Speaker 16: me to him. He was a lifelong Republican, very active
Speaker 16: and Republican party politics, grew disillusioned with the party under Trump,
Speaker 16: decided to become an independent, and in doing that he
Speaker 16: found something happened you didn't expect, which is he lost
Speaker 16: most of his friends. And that was a really tough
Speaker 16: story to hear, but it was representative of how personal
Speaker 16: politics has become, I think, and a lot of people
Speaker 16: have a version of that, where we've lost friendships over that.
Speaker 16: The good news of his story is he didn't give up.
Speaker 16: He decided to become an independent, and as it turns out,
Speaker 16: the Democratic Party asked him to chair the local county
Speaker 16: Party committee and he's now doing that.
Speaker 14: I'm just trying to get to the other side, because
Speaker 14: you know, you're we're here in New York. When we
Speaker 14: put together a two sided panel, neither one likes Trump.
Speaker 7: Right, when you talk to.
Speaker 14: A Republican, you're talking to one who doesn't support Trump.
Speaker 14: But yet half the country does support Trump. And I
Speaker 14: imagine you left this you know, bubble in order to
Speaker 14: get in touch with that other half to find out
Speaker 14: what these hillbilly elergy people were all about.
Speaker 7: So when you run into any.
Speaker 16: Well, of course, yeah, of course we did lots of
Speaker 16: Trump supporters and saw Trump signs all along the route,
Speaker 16: lots of them. But my purpose was not to try
Speaker 16: to explain other people to readers. Right, this was not
Speaker 16: hillbilly elogy. I wasn't trying to do that. I was
Speaker 16: trying to let people speak of their own experiences in
Speaker 16: ways that would remind us of what holds us together.
Speaker 16: And So to give you one example of a Trump supporter,
Speaker 16: a really strong Trump supporter, I spoke with two husband
Speaker 16: and wife out in Arizona. When we made it to
Speaker 16: the end of the Lincoln Highway. We kept going two ranchers,
Speaker 16: and they talked about how difficult life had been for
Speaker 16: them under the Obama administration because of a change in
Speaker 16: an EPA rule and the difficulty they were facing because
Speaker 16: of an EPA rule that would require them to fence
Speaker 16: their ranchers. It's open range, require them to fence their road,
Speaker 16: and it would have cost two million dollars one point
Speaker 16: six million. I said, one point six million dollars to
Speaker 16: put a fence up, Granted it's a big property. And
Speaker 16: he said, well, you know, I could do it for
Speaker 16: sixty thousand dollars, but because of federal regulations, it would
Speaker 16: cost me one point six million. And so that's an
Speaker 16: example of someone who I think the more you listen
Speaker 16: to people's stories about why they support the other party,
Speaker 16: the more understandable they become.
Speaker 3: Did you find most people were willing to talk?
Speaker 13: Absolutely?
Speaker 16: In fact, almost no one said I don't want to
Speaker 16: talk r I don't have time. People were really forthcoming
Speaker 16: and welcoming.
Speaker 14: Well, no, I'm just I'm curious about the Winnebago side
Speaker 14: of it, because I would love to do that.
Speaker 7: Also, I've never driven an RV. We'll talk about when you.
Speaker 3: First got it. You had to go to was it Tennessee?
Speaker 3: Where you to pick it out?
Speaker 16: So we U we bought it used and a woman
Speaker 16: in Florida was kind enough to drive it halfway. So
Speaker 16: I met her in North Carolina, Carolina, picked it up,
Speaker 16: had no idea what I was doing, got in the
Speaker 16: driver's seat, feared that I had bit off more than
Speaker 16: I could chew, and kind of did. But at that
Speaker 16: point it's too late, and so we drove it back
Speaker 16: to New York and then off we went. But yeah,
Speaker 16: neither was my wife nor I had driven an RV before.
Speaker 16: We had never lived in an RV.
Speaker 7: On the street in the city.
Speaker 16: Well, we brought it up state for a few days
Speaker 16: and then and then we brought it back into the city.
Speaker 16: But no, I never actually, in fact, we walked the
Speaker 16: first mile of the Lincoln Highway from Times Square to
Speaker 16: the river, and then we got a fairy and picked
Speaker 16: up Yes, a smart move.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're a young country, a young democracy, right, We've
Speaker 3: definitely seen our moments of strife. We've had a civil war.
Speaker 3: After talking to people, do you have more hope?
Speaker 8: A lot?
Speaker 16: Yeah, it came away really optimistic actually, and full with hope,
Speaker 16: partly because that's what I heard from people. When you know,
Speaker 16: there was a lot of frustration. I'd hear from both
Speaker 16: Democrats and Republicans about how divided we were, but in
Speaker 16: the end, most people expressed hope that we would get
Speaker 16: through it. They weren't always able to articulate exactly why,
Speaker 16: but there was this sense that we would get through
Speaker 16: it because that's what we do. And actually, there's a
Speaker 16: lot of history in the book, but that's probably the
Speaker 16: most historically accurate assessment that you could make, because we've
Speaker 16: been through so much as a country, even though we're
Speaker 16: relatively young, so much violence and division, civil war being
Speaker 16: the worst of it, but plenty of other episodes too.
Speaker 16: But we found ways to get through it, and part
Speaker 16: of the story of the book is highlighting those ways,
Speaker 16: the kind of the values that have led us out
Speaker 16: of the dark times. And I think the more we
Speaker 16: can recognize that we've been through versions of what we're
Speaker 16: experiencing today, the more kind of hope and faith we
Speaker 16: will have that we can get through it.
Speaker 7: Are there any prescriptions?
Speaker 14: I mean, hopefully we don't have to get to a
Speaker 14: civil war before we can reset. Right, How should we
Speaker 14: deal with this division?
Speaker 16: Well, there's a lot I think that we can learn
Speaker 16: from Lincoln, and that's why he's the perfect guide for
Speaker 16: the trip. And so one thing to keep in mind is,
Speaker 16: you know, Lincoln in the eighteen fifties, as the country
Speaker 16: was heading towards Civil War, said of white Southerners, they
Speaker 16: are just as we would be if we were in
Speaker 16: their situation. Now, Lincoln abhorred slavery, thought of it as
Speaker 16: a moral abomination, but here he was speaking about Southerners
Speaker 16: and their support for slavery with no judgment. And I
Speaker 16: think that is something that we can learn from because
Speaker 16: today there's so much judgment about the other side and
Speaker 16: so much kind of quickness to decide that the other
Speaker 16: side is not just wrong, but they're evil. And I
Speaker 16: think the more that we can recognize that we're shaped
Speaker 16: by our circumstances and that different points of view can
Speaker 16: still hold valid perspectives, to not assume that we are
Speaker 16: entirely correct, that others have valid viewpoints, the more that
Speaker 16: we can try to hold the whole thing together. The
Speaker 16: forces that are dividing the country right now, and you
Speaker 16: see it anytime you pick up social media, you see
Speaker 16: it on your phone, but you hear it in conversations
Speaker 16: and you sense it in people's anxiety. All of that
Speaker 16: is going to be with us, and it really requires
Speaker 16: leaders to tap into as say in the book, the
Speaker 16: Better Angels of Our Nature. It's a link and phrase,
Speaker 16: but it does require leadership that reminds us of the
Speaker 16: best of America and the best of our values, and
Speaker 16: to recognize when when leaders are trying to exploit the
Speaker 16: worst in us, and to tap into our fears and hatred.
Speaker 7: Well, I guess we have to be open as well.
Speaker 14: You know, when I think about the problems on the left,
Speaker 14: you've got the sort of cancel culture and sort of
Speaker 14: this gas lighting censorship. I'm sure a lot of people
Speaker 14: on the right feel that they can't speak or be
Speaker 14: heard because they're not allowed to say how they feel.
Speaker 16: Absolutely, I couldn't agree more and that's something I speak
Speaker 16: with people in the book about that that also is
Speaker 16: a threat to democracy, and sometimes Democrats fall into the
Speaker 16: trap of thinking that threats only exist on the right,
Speaker 16: and that's wrong. They exist on the left too, And
Speaker 16: that censorship that you're talking about is a big part
Speaker 16: of it. And I heard that from people in different
Speaker 16: parts of our journey, the fear of speaking their minds,
Speaker 16: and a lot of times that fear was on the
Speaker 16: left because of either you know, facing personal or professional
Speaker 16: repercussions for stating their opinion. That's a really unhealthy thing
Speaker 16: in a democratic society. If people feel afraid to express
Speaker 16: an opinion.
Speaker 3: Does z academia make it worse? I used to think
Speaker 3: about one of our producers said, that's what colleges. You
Speaker 3: say stupid things and then you learn, Yeah, and we
Speaker 3: don't do that anymore, or if you do, the penalties
Speaker 3: are incredible.
Speaker 7: Yeah they're talking about professors or students.
Speaker 3: About both, but you know what I'm saying, Like it
Speaker 3: was further.
Speaker 16: Capable of saying, you know what, Yeah, college should be
Speaker 16: a place where you make mistakes and learn and grow.
Speaker 16: But also any community should have a level of forgiveness
Speaker 16: and understanding that we're not going to see things differently.
Speaker 16: And the desire to shame and punish people for being
Speaker 16: on what someone uses the wrong side of an issue
Speaker 16: is really counterproductive to a civil, democratic society.
Speaker 3: Your last person, we've only got about forty seconds. Did
Speaker 3: you think long and hard about who the last person
Speaker 3: you wanted to speak to?
Speaker 16: Well, as it happens, the trip we went across the
Speaker 16: country and back, we ended up the Lincoln Memorial, and
Speaker 16: so I had an old friend hadn't spoken to him
Speaker 16: many years. Sergeant Mike roccarty is a Capitol police officer.
Speaker 16: He was on duty on January sixth, and so I
Speaker 16: spoke to him about his day. He's a conservative Republican,
Speaker 16: and he relayed the events of that day and how
Speaker 16: harrowing and dangerous and how much worse it almost was.
Speaker 16: And that was a really powerful thing to hear from him,
Speaker 16: And so that helps to conclude the story.
Speaker 7: I'm interested in the Winnebago. How did you like it?
Speaker 7: And would you do it again?
Speaker 16: We would do it again in a heartbeat. We loved it.
Speaker 16: We got very comfortable in it, very quickly. We made
Speaker 16: plenty of mistakes and learned along the way, but yes,
Speaker 16: do it again. In the second.
Speaker 3: If you didn't know Mark, Mark Mattark. It's been a
Speaker 3: super long week, Frank, thank you so much. Good luck
Speaker 3: with it.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: The book Back Roads and Better Angels, A Journey into
Speaker 3: the Heart of American Democracy. It is out now. This
Speaker 3: is Bloomberg business Week.
Speaker 2: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us
Speaker 2: live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen
Speaker 2: on Apple car Play and and Bright Auto with a
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business act or watch us live on YouTube.
Speaker 3: Now to our final pick from the producer who books
Speaker 3: all of our great authors and produces our daily Bloomberg
Speaker 3: Business Week broadcast and podcast. We're talking about Paul Brennan.
Speaker 3: Paul says, I chose The Mac and Cheese Millionaire because,
Speaker 3: having come from a family of restaurant owners, I know
Speaker 3: how difficult the business is, and Aaron Wade's perseverance and
Speaker 3: love of food was inspiring. Plus, who doesn't love portions
Speaker 3: with a quarter pound of cheese.
Speaker 4: Paul is right about that. The book is all about
Speaker 4: Aaron Wade, who quit her job as a lawyer to
Speaker 4: start a restaurant. Now she calls herself quote the world's
Speaker 4: leading expert on macaroni and cheese.
Speaker 3: Aaron is author of the book The Mac and Cheese Millionaire,
Speaker 3: Building a better business by thinking outside the box. She
Speaker 3: joined me alongside Bloomberg Daybreak Europe co anchor Steven Carroll.
Speaker 17: I began my career with a huge passion for food
Speaker 17: and had you know, cooked in restaurants, but found that
Speaker 17: it was a really dead end job. The pay is low,
Speaker 17: the treatment is not great, so I just did not
Speaker 17: see a future for myself. So I decided to go
Speaker 17: to law school and do what you know, generations of
Speaker 17: lost people with no direction have done and become a lawyer.
Speaker 10: But I didn't. I didn't love it, so I actually
Speaker 10: got fired.
Speaker 17: Turns out you're not good at what you don't like doing.
Speaker 17: And I decided I wanted to create the restaurant that
Speaker 17: I wish that I could have worked at. So not
Speaker 17: just was it a love of family, my family recipe
Speaker 17: of mac and cheese and wanting to bring that to
Speaker 17: the market, because I just didn't see that being filled anywhere.
Speaker 17: You know, there's like pizza restaurants, barbecue, but not mac
Speaker 17: and cheese. But I really want to focus on how
Speaker 17: do I create the kind of workplace that I wish,
Speaker 17: the kind of restaurant that I could have worked in,
Speaker 17: and what do I need to do to do that?
Speaker 3: So what in particular did you want in terms of
Speaker 3: making it the place that you wanted to work at?
Speaker 3: What was it that needed to be different?
Speaker 17: You know, my book is filled with a lot of
Speaker 17: trial and error. I think the twoth is I didn't know.
Speaker 17: I knew what I didn't want to do right, But
Speaker 17: sometimes it's harder when you haven't had the example set
Speaker 17: of what.
Speaker 10: You do want to do.
Speaker 17: So I found that it really came down to three things,
Speaker 17: which was you know, communication, collaboration, and collective success. And
Speaker 17: I'm having to give you examples of you know, ways
Speaker 17: that we did all those three things.
Speaker 10: But that I found was really the secret to our success.
Speaker 17: And you know, not only in an industry where the
Speaker 17: average tenure is you know, less than ninety days. Our
Speaker 17: average tenure is two and a half years. But our
Speaker 17: profitability was in the top.
Speaker 10: One percent of restaurants. So I'm really proud of what
Speaker 10: we achieved.
Speaker 12: Yeah, because look, it's a difficult business to get into,
Speaker 12: and I think if you know, if you're going to
Speaker 12: make a leap of faith into something new, you didn't
Speaker 12: perhaps pick the clearest or the easiest path to do that.
Speaker 12: Talk us about getting getting the first the first homeroom started.
Speaker 17: I think that's why actually it makes for such a
Speaker 17: great business book, because you know, if we were using
Speaker 17: these techniques success fully. I mean, it is the hardest
Speaker 17: industry to make it, so, you know, I really think
Speaker 17: they can these ideas can work anywhere. But yeah, I
Speaker 17: mean it's it's crazy. I mean, banks won't even give
Speaker 17: you loans because it's considered you know, your your odds
Speaker 17: are better and less Vegas than investing in a restaurant.
Speaker 17: But I do think that with sort of you know,
Speaker 17: by using these techniques, I think people in all kinds
Speaker 17: of businesses can can beat the odds.
Speaker 12: Talk us through the first few months of that business, though,
Speaker 12: at what point did you know that you hot you
Speaker 12: around to something and that you that was going to
Speaker 12: take off into something that of course it became a hit.
Speaker 17: Luckily, we're packed from you know, day one, and I
Speaker 17: really credit it to frankly, just having an exceptionally good
Speaker 17: quality product. So you know, at most restaurants, if they
Speaker 17: have mac and cheese at all, it is a side dish.
Speaker 10: It's something that is not paid very much attention to,
Speaker 10: and for us, this is really the main thing.
Speaker 17: So you know, we made each one to order, We
Speaker 17: used my family recipe. We put nearly a quarter pound
Speaker 17: of cheese in each portion, so you know, it's incredibly cheesy,
Speaker 17: it's fresh, it's made with love and care, and you know,
Speaker 17: and that makes a huge difference versus sitting in a
Speaker 17: vat somewhere. So I think people were very, very obsessed
Speaker 17: with the products from day one. But frankly, I think
Speaker 17: also what we did is like created tremendous value surrounding
Speaker 17: the experience because I had worked a lot in fine dining,
Speaker 17: but something that I thought was really lacking in a
Speaker 17: more casual setting is like, you know, great design and
Speaker 17: great service. Those things don't need to cost more, They
Speaker 17: just need someone to care more. And so, you know,
Speaker 17: I think that people's perception of value of getting to
Speaker 17: sit in this really beautifully designed space, getting you know,
Speaker 17: some of the best service that they've had in a
Speaker 17: restaurant while eating, you know, the best version of mac
Speaker 17: and cheese they've ever had.
Speaker 10: It's just a winning combo.
Speaker 3: I have to say. There's a restaurant in our neighborhood,
Speaker 3: a local, one family run, and they have an incredible
Speaker 3: mac and cheese, and we will go there just for
Speaker 3: the mac and cheese. And it used to be a
Speaker 3: place downtown. I don't even know if it exists, but
Speaker 3: that's all it did. And great you know, cast iron
Speaker 3: skillets and any kind of like varieties of mac and cheese.
Speaker 3: It is like just that food that we just love.
Speaker 10: We just love.
Speaker 3: What's one of the biggest I don't know what was
Speaker 3: one of the biggest moments in this process. I feel
Speaker 3: like everybody who started a business, especially in the restaurant industry,
Speaker 3: we've all seen the bear and loved it. But I
Speaker 3: do wonder where you were. I don't know. It was
Speaker 3: either just a huge learning experience, whether from your team,
Speaker 3: from your workers, I don't know. Tell us.
Speaker 17: You know, I have to say we used a lot
Speaker 17: of like really interesting techniques to engage people in the business.
Speaker 17: For instance, we're an open book company and so share
Speaker 17: financials and teach financial literacy, and I think that was
Speaker 17: a huge aha, right, It like really unlocks people's like
Speaker 17: potential and power to understand business in a deep way
Speaker 17: and to feel like they're part of something that's bigger
Speaker 17: than themselves versus just showing up every day to cook. So,
Speaker 17: you know, I'd say that's one moment that I'm incredibly
Speaker 17: proud of. But you know, another is that we used
Speaker 17: all these techniques of you know, we had a lot
Speaker 17: of different tools to be communicating, collaborating, and we actually
Speaker 17: came up with a solution to sexual harassment which our
Speaker 17: staff was experiencing. And I wrote a viral piece in
Speaker 17: the Washington Post about it. It got adopted by the EEOC.
Speaker 17: I went to Washington to go testify about it, and
Speaker 17: it's now used by restaurants and bars all around the world, So,
Speaker 17: you know, I think that also, frankly, when you tap
Speaker 17: into the power of a workforce. You know, we were
Speaker 17: just a small restaurant but made a difference on a
Speaker 17: global scale, and I'm incredibly proud of that.
Speaker 3: But talk to us little bit more about that, like
Speaker 3: how you came to realize it's something needed to be
Speaker 3: done differently.
Speaker 17: Well, I was approached by a number of female servers
Speaker 17: at the restaurant who all were complaining, and honestly, they
Speaker 17: said they'd worked at a ton of places and this
Speaker 17: had happened everywhere. This was just the first time that
Speaker 17: they thought maybe someone would actually do something about it.
Speaker 17: And so I did what I usually did when someone
Speaker 17: brings up a problem, which is include them in the
Speaker 17: solution to it.
Speaker 10: So, you know, we came up with a.
Speaker 17: System that our entire staff that wanted to participate did
Speaker 17: participate in creating it. And I think the reason it's
Speaker 17: so effective is that, honestly, it really sort of honors
Speaker 17: people wherever they are. It's like basically a color coded system,
Speaker 17: and when someone experiences something with that color, they just
Speaker 17: report the color and an action is taken. So you know,
Speaker 17: for instance, a yellow is just you get a bad
Speaker 17: vibe at a table.
Speaker 10: You just say hey, I've got a yellow at table two, and.
Speaker 17: A manager will take it over for you. And an
Speaker 17: orange is you have a bad feeling. Plus let's say
Speaker 17: an ambiguous comment something like I like your shirt. You know,
Speaker 17: depending on who says that to you and how they
Speaker 17: say it to you, it might feel totally benign or aggressive.
Speaker 10: And so same deal.
Speaker 17: Someone just goes to manager and says, hey, I've got
Speaker 17: an orange at table too, and the manager takes it over.
Speaker 10: And with a red, that's.
Speaker 17: Someone saying something overtly sexual or touching a staff member,
Speaker 17: and in that case, again the staff member just says
Speaker 17: the color and then the manager's required to kick the
Speaker 17: person out.
Speaker 10: And you know, I.
Speaker 17: Think what's so cool about the system is that you know,
Speaker 17: guests honestly don't I was being used on them.
Speaker 10: So as very customer friendly.
Speaker 17: You know, staff members are going to have all kinds
Speaker 17: of different experiences, and some people are going to find
Speaker 17: certain things threatening and other ones won't, And so it
Speaker 17: allows us to meet staff where they are and take
Speaker 17: action and it's really easy for managers to use.
Speaker 10: And what we found is amazing.
Speaker 17: As we thought it would just be a way of
Speaker 17: coping with harassment and just giving us a way to
Speaker 17: deal with it, but actually what it did is it
Speaker 17: really nearly eliminated the worst forms of it. Because very
Speaker 17: few people walk into a restaurant and like stick their
Speaker 17: hand up someone's shirt. But you know, they will usually
Speaker 17: start with lower level things like checking them out or
Speaker 17: making low level comments, and then once.
Speaker 10: Things are tolerated, they escalate their behavior.
Speaker 17: So it just really sort of stopped the problem from happening,
Speaker 17: and in a way that I think is really respectful
Speaker 17: to people, you know, no matter if their customer, staff manager.
Speaker 12: I think what I find really interesting about this, this
Speaker 12: Color Crowd of Conduct is you're giving people language to
Speaker 12: be able to talk about how they feel and how
Speaker 12: they feel affected by it. And it's a model it's
Speaker 12: been taken up by business is elsewhere as well. Talk
Speaker 12: to us a little bit about how you're seeing you know,
Speaker 12: what you've heard about how the Color Code of conducts
Speaker 12: being used outside of your business.
Speaker 17: Yeah, I mean I've gotten like from just fabulous feedback.
Speaker 17: And actually, you know, one of the most fun parts
Speaker 17: is there's plenty of people that use it that I'll
Speaker 17: never know. But I'll walk into a bar and I'll
Speaker 17: find like one of our posters on the wall. Or
Speaker 17: I went to speak at a conference and it was
Speaker 17: like all these you know, bar owners from like across
Speaker 17: America and the globe. And I was so surprised because
Speaker 17: at the end of my session, I didn't, you know,
Speaker 17: I wasn't.
Speaker 10: Getting a ton of questions, and I was like, what
Speaker 10: is happening here?
Speaker 17: And then I asked people to raise their hand if
Speaker 17: they had known of the system or if they use
Speaker 17: it in.
Speaker 10: Their bar, and like everyone raised their hand, and it's like, okay, cool.
Speaker 7: So I wonder it doesn't help people.
Speaker 12: This is an industry where there's a huge staff turnover, right,
Speaker 12: and I wonder how much that's helped towards staff retention
Speaker 12: at a time. You know, we talk so much about
Speaker 12: the tight labor markets, and we know that hospitality is
Speaker 12: one sector really affected by that. Has it helped you
Speaker 12: to keep people good people on your staff?
Speaker 17: Oh?
Speaker 10: I got one hundred percent.
Speaker 17: I mean to my point about sort of all the
Speaker 17: tools in the book, right, if we can use them,
Speaker 17: then anyone can. Because I think you know, something really
Speaker 17: missing from the conversation right now about the labor market
Speaker 17: and what to do is that, in my experience, the
Speaker 17: most meaningful things actually don't cost money.
Speaker 10: They just take time and care. Right, Like, we are constrained.
Speaker 17: There's only so much we can pay people when we're
Speaker 17: charging folks ten dollars for mac and.
Speaker 10: Cheese, right Like, it's just that's just true.
Speaker 17: It's not going to be the most highly paid job
Speaker 17: of someone's life, probably, but you know, there's so much
Speaker 17: you can do that makes work an enjoyable place to
Speaker 17: come to and meaningful and purposeful. And I think those
Speaker 17: are the things, honestly that you know, make life worth living.
Speaker 12: One of the things that I really liked about your
Speaker 12: book and your own story as well as you're talking
Speaker 12: about wanting to fall in love with work, And do
Speaker 12: you think that we need to be in love with
Speaker 12: what we do in order to succeed.
Speaker 17: I mean, in my experience, yes, I mean, you know,
Speaker 17: I'm really smart and I was working as a lure
Speaker 17: and I got fired, and I don't I think it's
Speaker 17: an accident. I found it very hard to be good
Speaker 17: at something that I didn't like doing, you know, versus
Speaker 17: something I'm passionate about. You know, my my worst days
Speaker 17: as an entrepreneur have been better than my best days
Speaker 17: as a lawyer. But you know, I think, I think
Speaker 17: it's a real gift, you know, to wake up and
Speaker 17: enjoy going to work. And it's one I didn't, you know,
Speaker 17: previous to starting my own restaurant think was possible.
Speaker 10: So I guess I just wanted to.
Speaker 17: Communicate people to people that I do think it's possible,
Speaker 17: and I try to give them tips and tools for,
Speaker 17: you know, how to find that passion within yourself, how
Speaker 17: to pursue it, how to create spaces where other people
Speaker 17: can't to because I think, honestly, we spend more of
Speaker 17: our lives at work than in almost anything else, and
Speaker 17: we don't enjoy it, Like what are we doing here?
Speaker 4: That was Aaron Wade, author of the book The Mac
Speaker 4: and Cheese Millionaire, Building a Better business by Thinking outside
Speaker 4: the box. Our thanks as well to Bloomberg Daybreak year
Speaker 4: up coank or Stephen Carroll for co hosting when I
Speaker 4: was out.
Speaker 3: And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg Business
Speaker 3: Week from Bloomberg Radio. We hope we gave you just
Speaker 3: a few books to enjoy and maybe think about over
Speaker 3: the holidays, something to read. Thanks so much for joining us.
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Speaker 3: I'm Tim Stenebeck and I'm Carol Master. Have a good
Speaker 3: and safe holiday week and enjoy it.
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