Ted Audio Collective.
Hi everyone. You're listening to After Hours.
I'm Youngmi. I'm Felix.
I'm Mihear. And this is going to be a fun episode guys, because Mihear you wanted to talk about your favorite company.
Oh my God, don't tell me it's Apple.
It's Apple. Look, we're 10 years into Tim Cook.
They just came out with a bunch of launches.
We need a State of the Union on Apple.
And Felix, you brought in a fun topic too.
Yes. And this one's truly fun.
I know one of the guilty pleasures that unites us is following celebrity news.
And there's so much happening now.
Yes. We have to talk about all these celebrity stories.
Is there a celebrity you guys are obsessed with?
Well, we'll get to it.
But like there are so many celebrities doing interesting things, right?
Rhys, Rihanna. By the way, I plan to use only first names from now on during this entire segment.
Because you're such an insider.
Exactly. It's just the way I roll, Felix.
But there are a lot of celebrities making big moves in the business world.
And so I think it's just a great topic.
Yeah. So this should be fun.
We'll talk about Apple.
We're going to talk about the business of Hollywood and celebrities.
But before we get to it, one quick listener note.
And that is we have been thinking about ways to get more listener voices into this podcast.
And so if you want to send us a note, you can send it to harvardafterhours at gmail .com.
You can certainly send us your thoughts on any of the topics we discuss on this podcast.
But you can also send us other kinds of notes as well.
You can send us recommendations.
You can send us a note giving us a little sense of how this podcast fits into your life.
We're always so amazed by how many listeners we have in different cities and countries around the world.
So give us a little window into your world and we'll look for ways to include some of your voices in upcoming episodes.
Yeah, that would be great.
You know, this reminds me of early in the pandemic, we asked people to send in audio clips from all around the world.
That was so cool. And then we weaved them into the end of the podcast.
Yes. And that was so fantastic.
Yeah, we'll have to do that again as well.
But for now, we'd love to see your notes.
We are also thinking of doing an episode devoted entirely to your questions.
So if you have a question, shoot us an email.
And we will try to get to as many of those as we can.
Sounds good. Okay, so let's jump into the episode.
Okay, Mehere. Well, we are 10 years into Tim Cook.
And it's an important time to take a look at one of the most important companies in the world.
So let's just take a quick inventory of what's happened in the 10 years.
But what I really want to know is what you all think.
So first, during his reign, we've seen something like a 5x change in market capitalization.
It generates cash like you wouldn't believe.
In the most recent quarter, revenues were up 35, 40%.
So on the one hand, we have this remarkable machine that just keeps on going and going and going.
On the other hand, you have people saying, Oh, my God, did we just release Apple 13?
Like where is the innovation?
This is a company that's run out of gas.
So I want to know, is this a finely tuned engine that is whirring along as good as ever?
Or is it something that's kind of out of gas and broken?
One of the most remarkable things about Apple is the continued strength of the iPhone.
It is just truly amazing.
As you pointed out, it's not a new phone.
Yeah, the camera is a little better, but it's an old product.
And it has pretty serious competition across many other producers.
In fact, Apple has now globally fallen from rank two to rank three because Xiaomi is now the second largest phone company.
And on the one hand, all the things that you said are exactly right, this amazing cash generation.
And I find actually most interesting that it happens as a result of a dynamics that has very little to do with Apple.
I don't know about you, but my last invoice from my carrier offered me $500 to upgrade to a next iPhone.
I've heard that some people received offers of up to $700.
And on the carrier side, we have this interesting situation that they've invested so much money in 5G.
And the short summary is no one cares.
So you need to do something to hold on to people.
And the good old model of two year contracts is over.
And so now what they do is they give you an amazing discount.
And then you pay for the new phone in installments.
From Apple's perspective, what's really beautiful about this is you have a product that's aging, and there is someone else who subsidizes it like he wouldn't believe.
I mean, what could be better?
So, Youngmi, I mean, Felix is telling a story which is all this strength that Apple seems to be displaying is really a demonstration of the weakness of the carriers.
Is that the whole story at Apple, or is there more there to appreciate or to denigrate?
Yeah. So I think I disagree a bit with Felix for a couple of reasons.
One is, if you think about the discount that carriers offer, the reason that's so appealing to consumers is because there is a perception of value.
In other words, if they didn't think it was a big deal to have an iPhone, to get a $700 discount on one wouldn't be something that would enable the kind of lock -in that you describe.
And then the second thing is, it's not as if their pricing power is limited to iPhones.
In fact, one of the most impressive things they have done is been able to both create and maintain a high willingness to pay across their entire product portfolio.
I mean, their latest AirPods cost $250.
If you want a new keyboard for your Mac, you're paying $150.
It is not easy to maintain that kind of pricing power, and so I think that's quite impressive.
The other thing I will say is if you think about the Steve Jobs era, that was an era of disruptive innovation and once in a generation kind of creativity.
The decade of Tim Cook has been the decade of building out the Apple ecosystem that ties all the pieces together.
The heartbeat of the ecosystem is still, of course, the iPhone.
The connective tissue is the iOS, the operating system that runs everything from your phone to your Apple watch, and the muscle is the services business, the app store, the subscription.
I mean, by the way, do you like this metaphor, guys?
Like with the body and the heartbeat?
So the reason I think they're very well positioned is if they play their cards right.
Number one, I think there are pieces of that ecosystem, in particular the service business, that is still really underdeveloped.
Number two, there's a lot of space for horizontal expansion into new categories that extend that ecosystem into new devices, and then the final reason, and maybe we'll talk about this in a second, I still think there are some very profitable low -hanging fruit for Apple to pick whenever they want, although I
really hope they don't.
This is my sense of this, young me, which is for the last 10 years, people have been saying, oh, the innovation engine's done.
Tim Cook is not Steve Jobs.
And the reality is none of it mattered, right?
Like none of it really mattered.
The franchise itself, it's just banging.
And it would be nice to see new innovative products, but you know what?
They are doing that in ways that are a little bit under the radar, especially with services.
So I don't know, I guess I confess it feels like the same refrain for the last 10 years, which is, nah, they run out of gas.
Sometimes I wonder if that's just totally ill -conceived.
So Mihir and Felix, what do you guys think are the biggest missteps Apple's making right now?
So this shift from hardware to the services business is just really amazing.
And now we had this really remarkable lawsuit of Epic Games against Apple.
This is not the final round of the skirmish, of course, but we just heard the judges ruling a few weeks ago and no one quite knows what the revenue impact is going to be.
But one of the really interesting questions to me is this ability to monetize the services business.
Have we seen the peak of this now and it's only going down or is it somehow, yeah, I know, but it's more convenient to just buy everything through the app store.
And I don't really care as a consumer and I don't know where I should come out.
Yeah. That's where my spotlight is as well on that services revenue.
One of the things that Apple does that I just cannot get behind is the take rate.
The company charges developers on the app store, which can range from 20 to 30%, which means that if you a consumer, you spend any money on an app, Apple takes as much as 30%.
Now, when you build a two -sided platform that delivers that value to developers and consumers, you should absolutely have the right to charge whatever you want.
But just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
In other words, here's what I would like in it to imagine if every time you used your bank credit card at a store, the retailer had to give 30 % of what you paid to the bank.
That would be outrageous.
What's not outrageous is the principle of the thing, right?
I mean, of course, the platform should be able to take a fee, but 30%.
I agree with Young B.
Some of the moves on monetization smack, I don't want to say desperation at this level of profitability.
That's totally the wrong word, but you're pushing the boundaries.
So for instance, you created something amazing, but we give you all the visibility.
I think charging for visibility, I think that's okay to me.
When they then charge for in -app purchases where they really have done nothing and you take 30 % just because you can, that doesn't feel great.
I think the most healthy platforms are not the ones where the platform provider wins.
The most healthy platforms are the ones that create win -wins where everybody wins, which means everybody gets to capture value in a fair way.
I really have an issue with that.
I guess I'm a lot more sanguine about this than both of you in the following sense.
I don't see this getting a lot of traction, right?
Is it going to be something where developers say, I don't want to play?
I don't think so. It doesn't feel like it's a threat to the franchise.
So while we might like them to reduce those costs, I'm not sure they will.
I guess I would spot two separate things.
One is they have really chosen a route on privacy that is fascinating and in a very public way have disagreed with a lot of Silicon Valley about the monetization of user information.
And I think power to them A, but what happens over time to that position?
Because they've staked out such a high moral ground almost like a little bit of a snobby moral ground that it can become untenable as it has with recent decisions about child pornography.
I think that's very complicated to maintain that position over time.
Yeah. It is so interesting.
Meher, as you put it, Apple is positioning itself as being the privacy player, anti -data tracking, anti -targeting, which seems to imply that they are anti -advertising, which in actuality they are clearly not.
In essence, they are putting themselves in the position to be much more aggressive about building a large advertising business for themselves, which could be so profitable, such low hanging fruit, and it's something that would really depress me.
You remember that beautiful body metaphor I used earlier?
Yeah. With the heartbeat and the connective tissue and the muscle?
Yeah. It would be like deciding to clog up all the arteries.
It's like cholesterol lining the walls of the entire Apple ecosystem, but I could really see it happening.
And Youngmi, is it cholesterol because it's so antithetical to the other workings of the body, like to use your metaphor?
We have come a long way from Steve Jobs and the ethos he really brought to the company.
And part of that ethos was about simplicity and the clarity of vision and making the user experience as frictionless as possible.
Advertising gets in the way.
I remember a few years ago beginning to talk about Amazon.
And one of the things we all warned our listeners was, watch out.
Here comes Amazon's advertising business.
And of course, when you shop Amazon today, you can see with your own eyes how much that business has exploded.
Sponsored products completely dominate the Amazon website now.
It's just cholesterol.
It clogs up everything.
But having said that, I really think advertising could very easily become Apple's next $30, $40, $50 billion business very, very easily.
So I'm calling it now, guys.
So one interesting question is, Youngmi, is your sense that advertising is so annoying because we just don't get it right?
We annoy people with products that they're not really interested in, if they were so good at it, that you would actually discover useful products, interesting services.
Would that trade off go away?
So the closest version of what you're describing, Felix, is the way that Instagram did advertising about a year ago.
The advertising seemed to just flow with everything else in your Instagram feed in the personalization.
So for example, I'm seeing a lot of golf apparel by Instagram feed.
But I do think Instagram has sort of jumped the shark in the sense that there's too much of it now.
But that's an example of when they were doing it, say, a year ago.
And so, yeah, that's the most optimistic version.
But I don't see it playing out that way, Felix.
This is a company that is still hungry.
They're still hungry.
They're taking 30 % from their developers.
These guys are hungry.
And when you have a market cap that size, you cannot do small things and change the trajectory of the business.
In other words, you can't be looking around and saying, oh, wow, there's a really great business we can build over there that could be, I don't know, a $2 billion business.
That's completely uninteresting to Apple.
That doesn't even move the needle.
They have to build $100 billion businesses.
That's the problem with the AirPods.
That's the problem with all the small peripherals.
They're nice. They're really useful.
They just don't move the needle.
But they do enhance the ecosystem.
They do. And they are kind of additive to the whole sense of customer loyalty.
But I think the point is right.
At $2 .5 trillion market cap, I think the trap is almost that, well, we need to go do vehicles.
We need to go do something massive.
You have to. Well, but I think it's a little bit of a trap.
My instincts are a little counter to that.
I'd rather them think harder about incrementally growing the services business, incrementally thinking about getting greater market share more than like, oh my God, you've got to come up with something to compete with Tesla.
Yeah. Although they could increase their market share tomorrow by just lowering their prices.
I mean, then they've completely conceded the market share battle to Android.
That's right. And so you can see where are they focused.
They are focused on huge business opportunities.
So that would be advertising.
That would be healthcare.
That would be vehicles.
That would be FinTech.
I mean, when you're that big, those are the kinds of targets you have to have in your site.
Because otherwise, none of this stuff will ever fulfill the promise embedded in that market capitalization.
I think the two businesses that have enormous potential is Apple pay and electronic wallets.
Yeah. I think that can open up a completely new suite of services, having to do with financial services, having to do with loans.
I think that's an enormous opportunity.
Right. You know, we haven't even mentioned it, but they launched Apple pay in the last couple of years.
Yeah. But then also healthcare is a good example.
Yeah. Because it is adding to the ecosystem.
It is fundamentally consumer friendly.
You can stay true to the notion of privacy.
When you start to think about advertising, you run into the problems you're talking about.
I mean, it's harder to maintain this pro -consumer spirit and pro -privacy spirit.
100%. But that's why I called advertising low hanging fruit.
Everything else, healthcare is really hard.
Vehicles really hard.
FinTech, I mean, all of these things are really hard.
Advertising, they could be off and running within the next 12 months.
So let's finish this up with a question about where you think Apple will be in 10 years.
So presumably Tim Cook will be gone, but will we still speak with it in the same regard?
Or are we at peak Apple craziness right now?
I think we will always have admiration for the hardware side of the business.
And I can well imagine that there are interesting peripherals that we don't know about right now.
I think we're at the very beginning of seeing some forms of virtual reality where Apple has, I think a lot of runway to do really amazing things.
The bigger question I think is just the astonishing profitability.
If someone would have told you there is going to be a company that is this profitable, it would be hard to believe to begin with, right?
And so it's even harder to imagine that it's going to last for another 10 years.
And I think I know I would be personally disappointed if they didn't come up with amazing hardware that is beautiful and easy to use.
The financial underpinnings of everything, they seem a little more brittle to me.
So Mihir, where do you think they're going to be in 10 years?
Honestly, I think they're going to be similar to where they are today.
I think they're going to be a leading company that has figured out how to keep the customer and design at the center of their technologies.
They will be generating new revenues from new products.
And I think the phone will be the underlying bedrock franchise.
The shift in the profit pools towards the services will continue.
And I think it will not be explosive growth, but it will be continued, steady, remarkably disciplined, profitable growth.
That would be my guess.
What do you see, young me?
So I have no idea, but I hope you guys are both wrong.
I really do. I think we forget how quickly, you know, the world can change on a dime.
Sure. A week before the Apple iPhone was introduced.
Remember that famous Forbes magazine cover with Nokia on it?
And can anything defeat Nokia?
I think a week later, the iPhone was introduced and Nokia is completely irrelevant in that space today.
So I think we have no idea what the world's going to look like.
I think we have no idea how much technology can change the way that we interact.
And so it's my hope, and this is not my prediction, but it is my hope that between now and then we see radical innovation, disruptive innovation.
These are very, very mature companies.
And so I'm ready. I'm ready.
Well, I think this is a humbling thing.
We don't know what's going to happen, but we just saw two very different visions of what could happen.
So I say we recommit to talking about Apple in 10 years.
What do you say? Yes.
So Felix, now we get to talk about celebrities.
Yeah. Celebrities. So the first headline that I chose for you, and I'm sure you've seen this, is Reese Witherspoon sold her company Hello Sunshine.
Remember, she had this production company.
The broad idea was to produce content that would showcase women.
And now she sold it for the amazing sum of $900 million to a company that doesn't have a name yet, but it's backed by Blackstone.
What did you make of that transaction?
Yeah. So I have to say, I think it's completely fascinating.
And I think what it tells you is maybe two or three things.
First, it is about talent taking over the reins of power and exerting themselves in interesting new ways and creative talent, in particular actors, being able to take control away from maybe some of the other intermediaries.
In the longer sweep of things, if you think about actors in the early 20th century, mid -20th centuries, they were owned by studios.
Yeah. Literally owned by studios.
It's totally reversed.
It's totally reversed, right?
And it's this wonderful upending where talent gets to take ownership.
The second thing I take away from it is, it's interesting to me that it was Reese Witherspoon.
Now, of course, she's an exceptional person, but part of her production company efforts were born out of her frustration with the kind of roles she was getting, right?
So that's another way of saying, it's not Tom Hanks and Brad Pitt doing this.
They're kind of getting what they want out of the system.
It's actually Reese Witherspoon who's doing this.
Now, in addition, she's a remarkably capable person, but the system wasn't really working for her in the early 2010s.
And so she decided to create her own production company.
So there's kind of this interesting story about voices and people for whom the system may not be working upending the talent equation and taking power.
And I think that's super interesting.
Yeah. What do you think, Yang Mi?
I thought it was fascinating too.
I mean, one question to ask yourself when you see the headline like this is what exactly are you buying when you buy a production company?
Or you take part ownership in a production company?
Like what is the asset that you are buying?
You're not buying a factory.
You're not buying a big widget business.
In some ways what you're buying is more like buying a fashion house or something where there are some physical assets, but the real asset you're buying is much more intangible.
You are buying taste, curation, a sensibility, a vision of a specific kind of content along with an ability to bring the right people together to make that vision come alive.
And Reese Witherspoon in Building Hello Sunshine has just been exceptional at building something that is now clearly associated with a particular kind of content.
Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, Gone Girl.
There is such a thing as a Reese Witherspoon E kind of production.
She has built and branded something so cohesive in nature.
And there are not a lot of celebrities who have done this well.
Oprah, of course, has done a spectacular job of this.
Anything produced by Oprah, you sort of have a sense of what the themes of that content are going to be like.
But these tend to be the exceptions, not the rule.
So with her laser focus on a specific kind of content, she has built a brand worth investing in.
And the other thing I'll say is just the savvy here.
It's like she built this thing to sell it.
In other words, if you were to give her a brand coach on day one of this thing, you could not have coached her to do this in a better way.
And I think that's really interesting.
If I can add two more things that surprise me, or I thought was sort of interesting, I mean, this would not be possible if it wasn't for the context of the streaming wars, where Netflix and Amazon and HBO and everybody is just incredibly hungry.
You know in an environment where there's so much demand for content.
This deal is probably not that risky.
This is, I think, what's kind of going on more generally in the market, Felix, which is your point about the streaming wars is exactly right.
One way to interpret this is power shifting to talent because you have competition amongst the platforms of Netflix and Disney and everyone else.
And then who ends up winning in that game?
And the answer is maybe not Netflix, but it's Reese Witherspoon who's going to end up winning.
And in this case, Blackstone.
And that's certainly what Blackstone's betting on, which is those dynamics in the streaming wars more than anything else.
And then of course, the other big news that you saw is Rihanna is a billionaire.
Thirty -three years old, I think.
We had a whole episode.
What was it? Last season?
The season before on Fenty Beauty?
Look at her, she's a star.
Look, I think it's remarkable.
And it speaks to the same thing that happened with Reese Witherspoon, which is she found a way to capture who she was and get it reified into a property and own it.
You know, as your point, a young me on Reese Witherspoon, which is, you know what a Reese Witherspoon property is.
And with Rihanna, she took her personality and her attitude and she created a whole product line about it.
And oh, by the way, in the background, of course, is just huge unmet demand for the kinds of things she was doing with her foundations that people really, really appreciate.
So this combination of super savvy marketing, where you capture the personality, which is very distinctive and true and authentic with, I think, Rihanna and Reese Witherspoon.
And then you see this remarkable unmet demand, and then the last and the best pieces, they remember that they have to own it.
And you know, in general, what's happening everywhere, which is people are saying, do I want income?
Or do I want ownership?
Right? So Brad Pitt's doing endorsement deals around the world and he's making coin from like endorsing DeLongi coffee, but Rihanna's owning something.
And that is, I think, really, really exciting.
Different, yeah. Here I think that the distinction you made between earning income and owning something, that's the big unlock here that celebrities are really gravitating toward.
If you think about it today, the way celebrities can monetize their celebrity now has so many different levels.
Right. The first level, the simplest level is the Brad Pitt example that you get.
Just endorsements, advertisement.
The second level is product line affiliation.
So think of the Air Jordan product line that Nike sells.
Right, inside Nike.
Now you have this third level where you launch your own company.
So George Clooney has a tequila company called Casa Midos that he sold for a billion dollars to Diageo.
He doesn't have any particular expertise in tequila, I don't think, other than perhaps being an avid consumer, but he has star power.
But I do think the apex level now, the hardest level, is creating a multi -dimensional enterprise that is truly a reflection of your multi -dimensionality as a creative person, as a curator of culture.
So this is what Rihanna is doing with Fenty Beauty, with Savage X, her most recent launch.
I think this is what Kanye does.
So Kanye is his music.
He's got the Yeezy collection.
He has his collaborations.
And so when you see this kind of horizontal expansion into fashion, into art, into collectibles, into music, into video, and you see these celebrities creating and owning these multi -dimensional enterprises, I think that's the apex level.
By the way, the goat, the pioneer of all of this, Kim Kardashian.
Yeah, of course. What I find so interesting about the Rihanna story is, to your earlier point about authenticity and the reflection of who she truly is as a person and as an artist, it then shows the kinds of businesses that work and the kinds of businesses that don't work.
So Fenty Beauty, huge success.
That move really spoke to people who saw themselves reflected in what she was trying to do.
Savage X, the lingerie line.
It's early days, obviously, but so far with the significant range in the sizes that she offers, expressions of sensuality, that is really her.
And then interestingly, Fenty Fashion, which wasn't an instantaneous success.
It's on pause now, too, right?
It's on pause now. It's a little unclear what the future is.
And so what I find fascinating is you probably learn as a star sort of, what are the kinds of things you can do really well, where authenticity still leads you, where people recognize, oh yes, this is Rihanna.
This is what she cares about.
This is what she stands for.
And then maybe the reach to high fashion was just too much.
Yeah. The thing that I really just love about this story is that she is in that position now of being able to flex her creative muscles across multiple spaces.
And as you put it, some of the stuff works better than others, which is fine for any creative person.
Of course, you're not going to hit every time.
But the fact that she has now put herself in a position, she has the leverage to be able to move across these category boundaries in this way, I just think is absolutely phenomenal.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why I'm just so fascinated by Kanye, to watch him navigate these categories and to be able to release a product line that really changes the conversation about fashion in that moment.
I just find it to be really revealing about where we are as a culture today.
Yeah. Speaking of leverage, Scarlett Johansson.
Oh, another star in the news.
Sewing Disney for a hundred million dollars.
Yeah. What did you think?
What was your response?
Is she out of her mind?
So this sort of the flip side to this, right?
The Scarlett Johansson story is the old world story of I'm an actor, I expect to get paid and I expect to get paid the old fashioned way, which is I'm going to get some kind of income associated with appearing in a movie, and then I'm going to get some kind of cut of the back end.
And now the world has shifted and we have moved into this world of streaming.
And so the financial calculus has changed.
And I guess she's feeling short changed.
My first thought when I saw this was, I think this would have never happened under Bob Iger.
Yes. So in many ways Disney is paying the cost of moving on from Bob Iger and his retirement.
So true. So think about the Marvel movie franchise and think about the star power they have assembled in the Avengers.
You have Iron Man and you have Captain America and the Hulk and all those incredible A -list actors.
And over the last decade, you have never heard a peep about salary complaints.
Yeah. Never heard any jealousy about this person getting paid more than this person.
Right. Not even a hint of it.
And one of the things that makes running a company like Disney different than running a company like, I don't know, GM, is that you not only have to run the business operationally and be a strategist, but you also have to manage really difficult relationships.
And the guy they have in there now, Bob Chappack, he has a reputation as being an operator, but absolutely not a relationship person.
And as a result, you end up with having these very public schisms with some of your most valuable talent.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree.
It's the Disney part that is so fascinating.
Yeah. And I think it reflects the choice of Bob Chappack, someone who made huge contributions to Disney parks, which is just a completely different business.
Completely different.
That's not the business where you have to have dinner with celebrities every night.
And what I find interesting as we talk about the shift of power towards individuals, the shift of power towards celebrities, what Bob Eiger did so well, of course you would think that the company knows that this is even more important in the future.
And then the choice of executive, when he gets approached, they tell him about the issue.
And essentially his response is, my people will call you.
Yeah. He's not taking ownership.
He's not the person who wants to grapple with these kinds of issues.
Yeah. And by the way, I have no idea who's right or wrong in this.
I don't know what the contract read.
I don't know if she deserves to get paid.
All I'm saying is it should never have gotten to this point.
And if you're Disney, you handle this quietly, you make sure everybody's happy.
You figure out a way to make this not explode in public in this way.
It's just a bad look.
It's just a really, really bad look for Tizny.
The other example in celebrity land that I think is kind of intriguing is George Clooney and what he did apparently with his Nespresso earnings.
He made a lot of money from Nespresso all around the world.
And he's publicly said that he used all those funds to finance his campaign in the Sudan.
And to me, it's a really compelling example of a celebrity thinking about how to monetize, which is what we think about a lot.
But then also thinking about how they use their place in the world to the greatest good.
One of the things that is really challenging is if you want to become a commercial operator, it's not so easy to speak out on everything.
And so what Clooney has figured out to do, and to some degree, Brianna, they're maintaining their place in the world and they're maintaining their voice.
And they're finding a way to both be commercially very successful, meaning monetize their celebrity, but also use it to fuel a broader agenda.
And I think that's the apex, apex, right?
Which is, it's not just like I figured out how to monetize and commercialize, but I don't sacrifice myself in that process.
And I figure out a way to impact the world in a really interesting way.
And then of course, if it works really well, it reflects again on your own brand.
And now you're this person who's not only an actor, but you also save a country or two.
So that becomes self -reinforcing when it works well.
It's remarkable in the case of Brianna also when you think about how long she has not had a music album.
It's much bigger now than just a famous musician.
The only thing I'll add to this conversation is as we sit here tonight, and I look at the two of you, I think both of you have a resemblance to George Clooney.
Oh God. I think, you know, in this lighting...
Felix with the facial hair is looking...
Oh, young me, by the way.
Could you tell someone at Nespresso?
Yeah, exactly. That we're available.
You have a lot of time in our head.
Even better. I think we want young me as an agent.
Right, Felix? Yeah, I could be your agent.
There you go. Now you're talking.
All right. That was fun.
Thank you both. Okay.
Okay. So, Pix, you guys have recommendations?
I do. Yes. Have you used Google Lens recently?
I don't know. I don't think so.
I don't know if I've ever used it.
So, it's an app. I think it was first published in 2007.
And the idea was that you can look through your phone and you can direct it at a building if you travel somewhere or maybe at a tree that you don't recognize.
And then with the help of artificial intelligence, it would tell you what it is.
See, if I pointed it at you, it would say, George Clooney.
Yes. I'm telling you, she totally should be our agent.
Totally. So, the issue was when I first tried it, I think it was maybe two or three years ago, it didn't really say much that was super smart.
And it's a great example of just how with more data and more time and maybe better algorithms, this thing has become really amazing.
I was on a trip in the mountains recently.
And so, I tested the app by taking ever smaller snippets of a landscape, trying to see if it still recognized what it was.
And I mean, it's just astounding.
If you travel and you see a menu in a foreign language, you direct the app at it, translates in real time, you can order like a local.
Really totally amazing.
I will say there are more specialized apps if you're into nature.
Right. Like flowers and plants.
Yes. Yes. And birds.
There's this app called Picture This, which is astonishing because it also tells you then about how to take care of the plant and when to grow it and so on and so on.
But as a sort of a general purpose app, Google Lens.
Really amazing. I am going to play with it.
And just to be clear, Felix, I'm looking at it now.
This is not a distinct app.
This is inside the Google app.
Is that right? I think it's a distinct app.
Okay. At least the way I use it.
So if I walk by Mehear's house, it'll say, Mehear Desai lives there.
He is currently doing the laundry.
He's on the second half.
He's getting spooky.
Exactly. Getting spooky fast.
Okay. Well, I'll go next to how many books I read in a given year.
I recently decided to just go on Amazon and check it out.
And one of the things I noticed is how much money I spend on books every year.
I mean, it's a little crazy how much.
Yeah. And so the app I'm about to recommend came to me from my sister and she pointed out to me that, you know, you don't always have to buy a book when you want to read a book.
There is this thing called a library.
She pointed me to an app called Libby.
That is my new best friend.
This is a library on your phone.
So you log onto Libby and you input the information from your local library card.
If you don't have one, they make it super easy for you to just sign up for one from the app.
So I did it in like within, I don't know, 10 minutes.
I had a library card from the Boston public library and I was in the app.
And then just like any app, you search for books.
If they're recent books, you tend to have to wait in line for them and they'll notify you when you get them.
But many, many times, I'm looking for a book that was published quite a while ago, say five years ago or something.
And for books like that, you can typically get them immediately.
And it's free. It almost feels like you're getting away with something.
It's kind of remarkable, right, young me?
I mean, libraries have innovated tremendously on these margins.
I learned about this because of my kids, because for a while I was getting worried.
I was like, what's going on?
Like, why aren't you pestering me about buying books?
You always pester me about buying books.
And then what do I realize?
They figured this out.
They like have a Sora app and they are just reading all the time.
And in queue, as you put it, young me to like wait for the new releases.
And it's spectacular.
And the libraries have just done an amazing job in this process.
And you can download audio books as well.
So I still buy books, but for a certain kind of book, or if I just want to sample a book, because I'm not sure if I'll like it or not, it's so perfect.
So I recommend it's the Libby app.
Fantastic. That's great.
That is fantastic. So I have the anti app.
Oh, no. So, you know, when you're a finance professor, you have people come and ask you like, Oh my God, what should you do about X or Y or Z?
And in particular, sometimes they'll ask me about my kids and how I teach them about finance and saving.
And so they often ask, like, so are they on Robin Hood or whatever?
And so my answer is, no, I have like the anti app.
What is the anti app?
What I do with the girls is I give them a little bit of money.
And then basically, I create the bank of Papa, which is a bank that they bank at, but with like a normal kind of savings book, which is hard written.
But here's the trick.
You give them like 5 % per week compound interest, which is like the best deal ever.
So what do they learn?
So they have to handwrite, okay, there's $10 today.
And I got a 5 % compound interest this week.
And then they see it grow over a week.
And it teaches them about compound interest and saving in the most basic way.
And the only cost to it is there's like massive negative float for my little Papa bank.
But here's the beauty, in a non -technological way, you're teaching them about saving and about the power of compounding.
And you just have to take the negative float as part of it.
But having them write it down in a book helps with math, helps with savings, and helps with the idea of compounding, which I just think is an incredibly important idea, which is unavailable to people in today's world because of zero rates.
And so you just got to substitute yourself for the pricing of risk and everything else and just be the bank and give your kids a massive negative float.
So that's my recommendation.
I think you need to think about that negative float just part of the cost of parenting.
There you go. It's just part of the joy.
It's all fun. Yeah, exactly.
Anyway, okay. Those are great recommendations.
We are running out of time and it's getting late.
So thanks guys. Thanks everyone for listening.
That's it for tonight.
This is After Hours from the Ted audio collective.
