Ted Audio Collective.
Hi, everyone. You're listening to HBS After Hours, the podcast where we talk about business and culture and society and politics and anything we find interesting and feel compelled to talk about.
I'm Yangmi Moon. I'm here with my friends, Felix O 'Roehosu -Ji and Meher Desai.
Hi, guys. Hey, Yangmi.
Are you ready for episode two?
I'm so ready. I'm ready as well.
Did you listen to our episode one?
I couldn't actually listen to it because it's just too painful.
It's excruciating. But my wife did and she loved your voice and I had some students look at it and listen to it and they loved it too long.
Too long. Way too long.
It was so long. It was even two and a half times speed.
It was long. I was like, how many minutes does it take to make a simple point?
Is it that surprising that you put three HBS professors together and we're a little bit windy?
We're a little bit talking, exactly.
So we have to get more concise, guys.
Yes. So one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to be super de crony in about time.
Did you see? We're ready.
We need the disciplines.
Okay. I brought a clock.
Okay. Let's get started then.
Great. Let's do it.
All right. Perfect.
Felix, what do you want to talk about?
We're going to talk about online reviews.
And what I would like to know from both of you is, what are instances when you use online reviews?
When you find them really helpful?
What makes it useful?
And when do you wish online reviews were just very differently from how we do them today?
I'll get started. I have a love -hate relationship with online reviews.
Like the rest of humanity.
You mean that's my feeling towards the rest of humanity or humanity has that feeling?
Yeah. So I think here's my sense, which is I don't like looking at them, but I end up looking at them and I don't want to look at them, but I find myself gravitating towards them.
So what's the reason why you don't like looking at them?
I don't like, it's like a mess of, it's just a mess of feedback.
I want authoritative feedback.
More and more in life, I want somebody who I respect to tell me, this is a good thing and this is a bad thing.
I don't want to hear from like, you know, Joe 77, you know, about what he thinks about the donut shop.
I want to know, like eater .com tells me that that donut shop is good.
But nonetheless, I end up looking at them.
So that's my love -hate relationship with them.
I have to agree. So I would say I find them useless and yet indispensable.
They're useless for all the reasons that you describe.
A lot of them seem fake.
There's great inflation with respect to, you know, your Uber driver rating is just so inflated.
On the other hand, I would imagine if they didn't exist, like I went to Amazon and was about to buy something and there were no ratings, I would feel the vacuum.
It would feel strange to me.
So, you know, most importantly, though, I think it's a huge missed opportunity, right, for businesses.
The fact that we do this in such a clumsy fashion.
And that, I think, what strikes me increasingly as I look at the way we do reviews.
What's the first thing that you would change about online reviews?
Say you ran a business that either has post -its reviews or would depend on reviews.
What would you change?
So I think it depends.
I mean, I think one of the problems with online reviews is we've taken sort of a one -size -fits -all solution to everything.
Everything is a five -star rating now.
And I think in some cases that works really well.
In some cases that doesn't work really well.
So, for example, with respect to the Uber rating, in the beginning, when Uber was a relatively new service, the ratings were actually pretty useful as a way to kind of ease any kind of psychological friction you felt about trying the service.
Over time, though, of course, everybody has a 4 .9 rating.
And so they're utterly useless in the way that grade inflation starts to create a loss of meaning.
So, if you think about, I don't know, Uber, for example, what would I change it to?
I would change it to...
So imagine there were...
You had four options to rate.
And it really steered you to two options, which were the most common options.
And those two options are you could say it was fine.
The driver was fine.
And then the second option was, it was okay, but I have a little feedback that is gentle feedback that is designed to be constructive and please don't let it be punitive.
Okay. Okay. Then I think you would get a lot of people saying, you know, it was okay, but made me a little nervous that you were texting while you were driving, or that your car's a mess or whatever, right?
And I think for the most part, if we knew that the feedback wasn't going to be punitive, then people would gravitate to one of those.
But then I think there should be two other options that are less common.
And one is for really, truly exceptional service.
And the other is for really egregiously bad service.
And just think about the kind of information that would get the company, because now the company can say, can actually use it constructively to give feedback to the drivers, to identify really excellent service providers and so on.
So this idea of having influence when you provide feedback, I think is a really interesting idea.
There's academic research that finds businesses that, you know, say on TripAdvisor, some hotels would always respond to negative feedback.
And they would always say, oh, we're so sorry.
They didn't have a great experience, and so on and so on.
So there's academic research.
People who have looked at this and said, what's the impact of this?
And what they find is, if you are the kind of business that seems responsive, two things happen.
You get more feedback, and you get more negative feedback.
Why? Well, because the people who give feedback, if you think you're responsive, are the people who want things changed.
And so it's from a business point of view, it's actually quite tricky to figure out, who do you want to give feedback in the first place?
And then what do you do with the feedback that you get?
Do you want to seem responsive or do you not want to seem responsive, because it's going to have big selection if.
See, this is why I never ask anyone if they like the food I cooked.
You don't want to take responsibility for the improvement associated with asking for feedback.
For feedback. I think I like your suggestion about fine, because the reality is 80 % of experiences are just fine.
And then when you call them five stars, you're kind of polluting the whole rating system.
And the vast majority of time, it's just fine.
I think what I would like to do is, I like what Amazon does with Vine and with these highlighted reviewers.
So I want more kind of cultivation of reviewers who are more professional in what they do.
And then if I know that there are serious reviewers, I'm going to take them more seriously.
I guess I want a more tiering.
I don't want the masses.
I want to know there's something the masses say, but then there's young me who's like one of our reviewers and she's really good at this.
That's kind of what I want.
And I want that hierarchy.
I just don't want all this mess of opinion aggregated up in a silly way.
So let me build on this point, which I think is really interesting.
And one of the things that I have never understood about online reviews, when you think about Amazon is a good example, we're doing such a great job at knowing you bought book X, here is a slew of other items that you might be interested in.
And then we know your interest and we were so thoughtful about what else we recommend to purchase.
And then the reviews are exactly identical across everyone.
So I, before when the winter season started, I bought a humidifier on Amazon.
And all that matters to me when I buy a humidifier is how loud is this thing?
I can't sleep right next to a lawnmower type noise.
And so that's my number one criterion.
Why can I not sort the reviews by decibels listed in, like this thing is really loud or this hotel has really the best mini bar you will ever see if that's how you choose hotels.
And I find it interesting how on the product and service side, we really have this astonishing personalization.
And then on the review side, we have none of that.
Well to do that, to implement that, are you suggesting that we would actually have separate kinds of dimensions of a review for different products?
So humidifiers would have noise and they would have cost or whatever it is.
It's actually quite interesting because I would like that information and I would like to be able to search it and scan it.
I think that would help.
It is my number one difficulty making sense of say reviews on TripAdvisor.
But I never quite know how people trade off quality and price.
You see these, like you know, the best hotel in location X.
And I don't know, does that mean it's incredibly, it's a crappy place but it's incredibly inexpensive.
And that's why people really love it.
Like even just the simplest of things, like separate price from everything else.
Right. Or use AI to at least figure out the dimensions that people talk about when they give reviews.
And then let me choose.
That should be a simple thing to do.
You're right, which is you should be able to look at all the humidifier reviews and just take out the characteristics that are most present and then aggregate them in that way.
That would help a lot, I think.
I think the fact that that doesn't exist, you know, it seems so obvious to talk about, just demonstrates how little thought companies put into how they think about their online reviews.
So even the solution that we're proposing, I would argue, would work under certain circumstances but in other circumstances, less so.
I mean, the easiest way to impose sophistication on something is to make it more complicated, right?
So I think in some cases, like in the case of your humidifier, you would absolutely want something that you could sort according to the features that matter to you.
But other times, I mean, I got to tell you, when I'm looking, I'm looking at books, for example, just in old -fashioned books and reading book reviews, you know, the star rating means nothing and it's all about the paragraphs that people write about the book, right?
And it's that sort of qualitative, you know, and you get a sense, is this reader like me?
Do they have sort of the same sensibility to I?
And I think there's a little bit of art to kind of sorting through those kinds of reviews, you know, I would say.
You know, the other thing I'm struck by is...
But even that, if I can just interject, you know how there's often this feature that you can say this review was really helpful.
Why doesn't give me a waiting of, Oh, I must be like that person because I thought this was really helpful.
Next time I go back, I see reviews by people who write the kinds of reviews that I find helpful.
It's just astonishing how little differentiation there is.
I think on this paragraph point, I mean, that's the other thing I would like is I don't think you should be able to provide a review unless you can dedicate the time to write a paragraph.
Like if you can't dedicate the time to write a paragraph, I don't really want to know what you have to say.
Like you have to, like with the books thing, it's exactly right, right?
Then stars doesn't mean anything.
But if you take the time to say, this book was good for this reason and bad for this reason, that's something.
Let me give you a counter example.
I mean, I think you might be right.
It depends on what the purpose of the review is.
If the purpose of the review is designed to provide additional information to other consumers, to other people who might, then I think you might be right.
On the other hand, if the purpose is to give feedback input to the company, I'm not sure you're right.
I mean, did you guys read, I think it was a few weeks ago, the New Yorker had this article about this company and they created this, the simplest consumer feedback device you could imagine.
And it's just physical, it's just four buttons and you can push one of them and it goes from an angry face to a smiley face.
And what they do is they install them in places and it gives companies real time information on how people are doing it.
So one of the most effective tests they did was in Heathrow Airport at the security lines where people just get super, super angry.
Yeah. And what they found is that when they put these things up, because they're so easy, you just punch it as you're walking through.
So and it's purely anonymous.
You don't have to do anything.
You just punch, punch, punch, punch.
They found that there were these huge differences in the lines, even when the lines were long at all the lines.
And then in addition, they found that if you not only monitored in real time, which lines were happy and which lines were unhappy and you let the security personnel see the real time monitoring.
And so the security personnel could see when their line was unhappy relative to all the other lines, it motivated them to change their behavior and an increased satisfaction in the security lines.
The whole story sounds a little dubious to me because I was just in Heathrow.
And you can now imagine that anyone was happy.
You know, but I'm just telling you what I've read.
But this is a good example of your previous point, I think, which I now take seriously, which is that actually when you complexify something, that doesn't help.
This is like simplification, right?
In some cases, and that's what I mean, I think we have to be sophisticated in how we think about why are we doing this?
Who is it for? And in some cases, how the complexity is the answer.
And in other cases, I think something's really useful.
What a group of researchers found when they looked at Glassdoor, the company that provides reviews on what it's like to work at a particular firm, they found that really the extremes provide reviews.
It's the people who love, love, love their job and people really, you know, if they couldn't, they wouldn't go in tomorrow.
And it's such a simple fix.
They provide monetary incentives to provide reviews.
And what you see is that the distribution of reviews is much less biased because now you get the lukewarm people who also say what it's like to work.
Right. So those, I think we identify two interesting dimensions.
What's the future of reviews when it comes to personalization?
And then what's the future of reviews when it comes to thinking deeply about who provides information and who doesn't?
So what was the catalyst for you wanting to talk about this?
I'm curious. I have a similar response to your to Meir's response when it comes to reviews.
It's like such a big part of my life.
And then I never really like it.
Why is it? You know, after the 52nd TripAdvisor review, I go, oh my god, there might be a construction right around the corner from the hotel where in innocent Tennessee, the review is like two years old and things like, why am I spending time doing this?
And then I go back to looking at averages and then I have no intuition about what the averages tell me.
So it hits a no win solution.
So are you guys consumers of reviews or do you actually provide them as well?
I never provide. I have never written a review.
Exactly. This tells us something though.
That is something. Either there were shirkers or the people who provide reviews are.
The times I'm tempted to are the extreme cases.
Right? So when you have like a phenomenal experience or when you have a really bad, by the way, what is the best and or worse service experience you've had recently?
I can't say recently, but one thing that drives me nuts is, you know, when you call a service and then they ask you, what's your account number?
What's your street address?
What's your social security number?
You hand on over all this information and then you wait for 10 minutes and then the person comes on and she asks, who are you?
What's your account number?
What's your site? Like really?
Like, why did I just provide all that information?
I completely used that.
That's a good one. That's horrible.
What's yours? So I'm going to be positive.
So I take the shuttle pretty frequently.
The American Airlines shuttle.
And there's a guy at LaGuardia who's a gate agent and he's my buddy.
Is he the American guy?
American Airlines? Yeah, his name is Mario and I love the guy and he greets me every time and he's fantastic and he like, we do a fist bump and we talk about our kids and he calls me professor.
It's like spectacular.
Oh, that's heartwarming.
How do you feel like you know that guy?
You must know this guy and he's just so special.
And it's one of these things where you go into this completely anonymous frustrating setting in an airport and you see a friendly face and it's like so good.
Everything is different.
And everything is different and you just feel like fantastic because he's a friendly face in this kind of very anonymous place.
So I find more and more when people recognize me when I'm a repeat customer, it just makes me feel like a million bucks.
Like if they know my order in advance, and like I used to go to Darwin's Coffee and they got my order in advance, they didn't even have to have me say it, I was like, I have finally arrived in the world because now they know my order.
It's interesting how it seems really low hanging fruit for many businesses.
I remember working with a law firm in DC that had this rule that they would recognize the clients and they would know the client's name when you walk in.
And their sense was also it makes all the difference just because the person at the front desk knows your name.
I find it interesting how many times when I ask this question, people get their examples from the airlines or some experience.
So I have to say there are a couple that I just that make me crazy.
One is usually when I travel, I check in online.
But every once in a while for some reason you can't so you actually have to go to the ticket counter.
The beautiful thing about checking online is they actually made it really easy to do.
And if you have the mobile app, it just takes seconds.
You just boom. So then you go to the checkout counter because you couldn't check in online.
And the person sits there and they ask for your name and you give it and then they type and then they type.
And then they type and you're just thinking, what are they typing?
You just want to say, look, just go to the website.
It's really easy. You said they spent hours.
Use your phone. Just use the mobile app.
So I'm going to move us along because I really want to talk about Spotify.
They're going to be trading on the public market soon.
You know, they filed for their IPO.
So they're all over the news.
But you know, it got me thinking about this company.
And it's one of those companies that, you know, someone who thinks about consumers all the time, the amount of affection that consumers have in this company right now is at an all -time high.
Everybody I know uses Spotify.
Every teenager I know, every millennial I know, and every colleague I know uses Spotify, pretty incessantly.
And yet, when I think about the company, it feels fragile to me.
It feels like a fragile company.
One of the questions I like to ask my students with respect to a company, when we're studying a company, is I ask them to give me an up or down.
And the up or down is, do you think this company is going to be stronger in the next sort of three to five years?
Or is it going to be weaker?
Is it sort of trending up or is it trending down?
If I asked you guys that about Spotify, how would you answer a Spotify up or down?
Oh, God, you made it really easy.
So, I'm a fan as a consumer.
And I think it's a really tough business to be in.
So, the margins are razor thin.
When I see a platform, I would generally think about, I would ask three questions.
How big are the network effects?
Does the fact that they have 160 million users, does that mean every artist has to be on Spotify?
I would ask, what's the scope for differentiation?
How different can that platform be from other platform?
And then I would ask, how easy is it to multi -home?
That is, is it easy for artists to be on essentially all the platforms?
And I think the pressure to be on Spotify is pretty big, right?
So, you saw Taylor Swift, and then you come crawling back.
And you don't get the special deal.
So, I think on the network effect side, I'm actually pretty positive.
But both the scope of differentiation and multi -homing are just really serious business issues that I cannot really see how you would solve them.
Yeah, I'm with you.
I'm down on this. And I think I'm down in part because they are going public, and I think it's going to be a complicated process.
The way they're going public is super interesting.
They're doing this direct listing, which means valuation is going to be unclear.
So, it's just a fantastic thing to watch in the next couple of weeks.
Say something about the direct listings.
Which is fascinating.
So, usually you have an IPO, and it's underwritten by an investment bank.
And there's like a typical set of processes that go along with that, including a valuation process, and for example, including the underwriting commitment of an investment bank.
And obviously, this is a large set of fees for banks.
This is a direct listing straight on the NYSE, S -P -O -T, and it'll start to trade, and you'll have buy orders and sell orders, and then the price will just equilibrate based on that.
Okay. And we haven't seen things like this before.
So, it's super interesting.
The second reason I'm down is, and this is a more lay version of what you said, which is I just think the power of the content providers is greater than other platforms.
So, I think by analogy, right?
So, I think relative to Netflix, where people were really worried about the compression of economics, because the content providers would take the economics.
The question in my mind is, right now, they're paying 70 % out, I think, to artists and labels.
First off, 70 % is a lot.
And I don't know what the economics of the business are after you do that.
And then the second is, I just think the power of the content providers is greater here, or it feels like it's greater here than it is in other platforms.
So, let me push back on a few of these things.
So, the first is, their economic model is really tight, as Felix pointed out.
But part of that is because their biggest cost comes from the cost of content, and they negotiated these deals at a time when their leverage is very different than where it is today.
And I think the Taylor Swift comment reflects that.
So, Taylor Swift, there's a time where she said, I'm not going on Spotify.
Today, Spotify has a lot more leverage, so Taylor Swift goes on Spotify.
Which means that you can imagine a renegotiation of these deals, where they begin to turn the cost of content more in their favor.
So, one of the things that Netflix has in its favor, for example, is that they have a lot of leverage now, and they pay for content based on the license as opposed to royalties.
It changes everything, the economics.
Okay, so that's the first thing.
The second thing is, is it true that the power of the content providers creates a different dynamic?
You could argue that one of the effects that Spotify has had on the business is it's begun to change that.
So, an example of that would be, think about how you listen to Spotify.
The most popular content on Spotify is not only playlists, but playlists that they curate, that they curate.
In other words, they're now controlling the shelf space in a way that they didn't previously.
That really changes the dynamic a little bit.
In addition, it's easy to kind of take a snapshot of the model right now and assume that it's a static model.
And the truth is, the revenue model, the economic model, the business model, the operating model, the value proposition could look pretty dramatically different in three to five years.
If you remember, Netflix used to sell DVDs and used to mail them to our home and send them back.
They used to touch a case about that.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if it's true, and I'm not quite sure that I buy it, but if it's true, Felix, what you said at the beginning about, you worry that they're actually sort of user experience is pretty undifferentiated than what you can get elsewhere.
Although, have you tried Apple Music?
It's kind of a disaster, but anyway, that's another question.
So, for both of you guys, if you assume that all of these platforms are essentially going to carry the same kind of content, how would you begin to evolve the service proposition, the user experience, to create real differentiation if you're a player like Spotify, to actually create some different price
sensitivities around these platforms?
What would you do? So, I think one opportunity that they're starting to exploit is to be much more active in the market for compliments.
So, you now see when you type in an artist, you would actually see the tour, and then there's a link to your being able to buy tickets.
Obviously, there's lots of hardware that are compliments.
So, I can easily, the combination of Sonos and Spotify works really well, and the combination of Sonos and other music providers, more fringe providers, doesn't work well.
So, I can sort of see how they're slowly building an ecosystem where they begin to reach out to the parts of the business that are more profitable, using almost as an advantage that the core of your business is slow margin, and you're not going to make much money off of it.
The other under leveraged part I see is the social aspect, right?
So, you can do some basic things.
You can share your playlist.
You can do, but that feels really under explored.
Clunky, yeah. You can imagine what, here, do you have ideas?
So, I guess a couple of things.
One is, I mean, I'm more simple -minded, which is, I think about analytics, and I think about user interfaces, because that's what I care about.
And I find Spotify okay, but they could be much, much better on the way they feed me ideas, and on the way that I interact with them.
Like your weather app that you talked about last time.
Thank you very much.
iTunes must horrify you.
iTunes must horrify you.
This is the question I wanted to ask, which is, why does Apple Music suck so bad?
I mean, why can't they figure out this business?
Why can't Apple figure out the music business?
First off, they could do it.
This is right up their alley.
I'm hooked on Apple all the way, and so if they had a good music service, I would do it.
But why don't they?
Why is it so bad? I mean, I think there's a longer answer to that, and certainly on this podcast, I would love for us to spend one of our future episodes.
I got a lot of time on Apple.
Give us a 30 -second.
Okay, but Apple's got a lot going on.
It's got a lot going on, number one.
Number two, every company has a particular DNA.
The DNA of Apple is Apple as a product company.
That's what it's always been.
It makes beautiful products.
For many, many years, its revenue model was heavily dependent on the sale of products.
They are now in the process of trying to reposition themselves a little bit as offering services and doing other things, but that's not the core of their DNA, and I think you see that represented in their products.
So that would be kind of a short answer, but again, I would question it.
We should do a segment on this, because I think that's really interesting, because longer when they need these service revenues to kind of really sustain their model.
When we talk about the Apple case in HBS classes, one of the moments of surprise to many students is when they see that Apple makes no money off of iTunes.
After credit card processing costs, basically there's no profitability, and I think one of the things that I find super interesting in general is during this digital transition, if you have a business line by business line accounting, and you look at a business that is clearly a complement to something
else, but it's not making money off of itself, guess how much investment it gets?
It doesn't get much investment, and so there is this interesting accounting issue somewhere lurking in the background that then makes it very difficult to provide and invest in the business that might be the future of the company.
This leads to my last question about this, and that is, as you look forward, do you see this as being a space where a specialist can survive?
In other words, if you look at media in general, you have two kinds of big competitors.
You have specialists, so Spotify is a specialist, Netflix is a specialist, and then they're competing against generalists.
So Amazon does lots of things, Apple is a generalist, Google slash Alphabet, they're all generalists.
Which is one of the reasons people sometimes fantasize about a Spotify, Netflix merger, which is another interesting conversation.
But in general, do you think that this is a space in which a specialist can survive?
Actually, I think they can always survive.
I think both have their purposes, and I consume both, and I'm always happy to consume both.
It's very low cost for me to have a specialist as well as a generalist provider.
And I'm always happy to do that.
So it's not as if there are some big customer costs that make me think, no, no, no, no, no, I always want to do one -stop shopping.
To the contrary. I'm actually, I kind of like a little bit of the heterogeneity.
So I think, yeah, I think they can both survive.
Can I just say one last thing about this, though?
We should also talk about Pandora.
We have no time to talk about Pandora.
Okay, but I do think there's a cautionary tale there, which is worth thinking about.
But you can't say there's a cautionary tale, and then I have cut you off.
Like what is the...
Now we're all in a panic.
Oh my god. Do I have to...
Just trying to screw up your timeline.
All right, all right.
Sorry, go ahead, feelings.
So I was going to say, if one of my competitors, if the generalist competitor decides that my business is a key driver to their success, I'm dead.
So imagine a future in which that Amazon discovers tomorrow that their music service in one way is related to something that they really care about.
And I think the moment that happens, I'm dead because I don't...
They have no need to make any money off of the service.
And so right now, I think it's because music is largely a distraction for Amazon.
It's sort of, it's there, but it's not really serious.
And the service is strange, frankly.
I think that saves them.
I think, Felix, so you've identified what my biggest fear is with respect to both Spotify and Netflix.
And that is they are now looking at a horizon in which they're going to have to compete with players who don't have to make money from this business.
Yeah, that is so tough.
And they can invest almost unlimited resources in building the business and yet don't actually have to make money from it.
Amazon doesn't have to make money from its music business, and it probably never will be.
And I think that's a big threat for Netflix as well.
And by the way, that's why Amazon is so scary to everybody.
Yes, exactly. Because they appear.
But having said that, I have to believe that there's always room for a specialist if you do it well.
So there's... That's the market they're in, you ever hopeful.
All right. You guys, we are almost out of time, but I need to know if you have any after hours recommendations for us before we close.
Like, what are you recommending, picking, reading, watching this week?
What you got? So, I'm going to provide a recommendation for a utility for laptops and PCs.
It's a little program called Clear Prague.
And it basically wipes cookies, traces, and ciliary files from your hard disk.
And there's two things that I really love about it.
The first thing that I love about it is that, compared to other products, it seems to be a decent job if you run it and then you run something else.
There are no additional cookies that are identified.
But the other thing, this is like the most old fashioned utility that exists on the planet today.
There is no advertising.
There is no fancy schmancy interface that you love so much.
There is just a little utility that does a wonderful job.
And it reminds me of oh my God, the good old times when nothing was fancy and nothing was monetized on the web.
It's almost like a little bit of time travel every time I use it.
Okay, Clear Prague.
Is that what you said?
Yeah, Clear Prague.
Yeah, that's a terrible name.
But anyway, let me hear.
Yes, no marketer. Well, no marketer was involved in creating.
Okay, me here. So I'm going to go highbrow because I went lowbrow last time, which is there's a fantastic new book called We the Corporations.
And it talks about how corporations have been central to the development of America and the legal definition of corporations.
So it starts with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and how corporations were central.
There's so much concern today about the power of corporations and free speech in corporations.
This tells you how it all happened.
And the short version, which is amazing, is post -Civil War the 14th Amendment had an equal protection clause, which was meant to help former slaves.
Corporations seized on the equal protection clause.
And in the 50 years following the Civil War, got an incredible set of rights that they were never granted to.
And in fact, here's the one data point I'll give you, which is in the 50 years post -Civil War, there were like 20 cases that were involving African Americans and the 14th Amendment.
There were 330 cases that were involving corporations and the equal protection clause.
It's fascinating. And it's just fantastic.
And it really is a book that speaks to this current concern and I think to business and society.
Okay, so mine is gonna seem lowbrow, but it's not.
Okay, so I have a movie for you.
Okay, so the movie comes from Japan and it's anime, which makes it seem lowbrow, but it's not.
It's called Your Name.
Okay, remember it. Your Name.
Remember it. Your Name.
It's the most gorgeous, visually stunning, moving, melancholy, anime film I have ever seen.
Are you an anime? It is, no I'm not an anime person, but I see a few really high quality anime.
Just to give you a sense, this movie was released in 2016.
And it has since become the highest -grossing anime film of all time.
The one before it was, you know, I don't know if you watch a lot of anime, but it was Spirited Away.
I barely know what anime is.
Yeah, Miyazaki, you're behind.
You know what it's not?
It's not a cartoon.
Okay, I'm sorry. Of course, I was god forbid.
We are out of time guys, that was fun.
Thank you. Thank you all for listening.
Thank you. I'll see you guys next time.
