Ted Audio Collective Hello everyone, this is After Hours.
I'm Felix. I'm Mi here.
And I'm Yangmi. Hey, guys!
Happy New Year! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! And my favorite episode of the year, I have to say.
I love this episode too.
Predictions! I know.
It's so fun. It's so fun.
I agree with you. So, how did we do last year?
First of all, Felix, your prediction that 2022 would be the end of the necktie?
Totally true. 100 % true.
Called that a winner.
Mi here, I remember you made a prediction that 2022, there was going to be some kind of big financial scandal.
Really? Did anything happen?
Yes, something important.
And the value growth thing?
Yeah, it was good. Not a bad year.
But Yangmi, not bad for you too.
I kind of had a good one.
I called it on Bob Chapek.
I said he would not last the year.
And you managed to make it come true with just a month left.
I know. He really must have pulled some strings.
Close call. You never want anyone to be fired.
But, as November approached, I thought, oh, there's not enough time.
Come on, get over there.
And did anyone notice the bias in our memory?
Of course we only remember that.
Yes, so true. And not the 15 ,000 predictions where we were wildly off the mark.
Yeah, exactly. And you brought predictions this time, right?
Oh yeah. I can't wait to hear what you guys brought in.
Mi here, you want to go first?
Sure. So, I think this last year we've talked a little bit about GE and Kellogg's and these spinoffs.
I think it's time for two of the following four companies to do a large -sized split.
So, Meta, Google, Amazon, and Disney.
I think two of the four will do something very large in terms of a spinoff or a split.
So, the least likely of them is Amazon, but one could tell a story for why that would happen.
I think in Disney, it's a clear story that something big has to happen and one could imagine a really full -size split or certainly the hiving off of assets.
But the most intriguing one to me is Meta.
So, with Meta, what is the fundamental problem?
He has committed to using basically the cash flows from the profitable business, the ad business, and using it to build the Metaverse.
Now, that will happen over the course of ten years, according to his plans.
But, of course, debt and a spin could allow that to happen immediately.
One could immediately borrow maybe fifty, eighty billion dollars on the back of the traditional Facebook businesses, use that as a pile of cash, put it into Meta, spin Meta, let Zuckerberg run the virtual reality business, and then, I don't know, bring back Charles Amburg, God knows what, on the more
traditional business, and split it that way.
Google also could take all of its non -traditional businesses, the so -called moonshots, a lot of these other things, and spin them out, as well.
I think that kind of basic logic of rationalization and splitting that has been permeating our capital markets for the last five years in more traditional companies, like GE and J &J and so on but I think it is the year of the big corporate split in tech.
That's my call. I buy the Google story more than I buy the Meta story.
I think in Google's case, it is literally a question of, can you organize the funding so that you can pursue these various initiatives?
Many elements of the category that they label other bets, I think, are very tangentially related to their underlying business.
Meta, what's interesting to me, and where I'm not sure, is you can think he will realize his full -blown vision that it'll be the Metaverse where interesting things will happen.
Many elements of the technology also lend themselves to thinking about mixed reality versions, where you have a little bit of AR and a little bit of VR, and then, I think, the case for splitting Instagram in particular from those technological advances is a little bit less obvious, because when you
look at what Snap is doing at this moment, I think it's maybe among the most successful companies, maybe because it has far fewer means, but much of that has to do with mixed reality advances.
And then I think having a social network at scale under the same roof is an advantage.
You know, one of the reasons I like predictions like this is that regardless of whether you agree that they're going to happen or not, they do really force you to think about what is the logic behind how we draw a boundary around a particular business, and does it make sense for this to be one business
or three businesses?
And what makes it tricky with, in this particular case that I'm talking about Meta, is you have, for lack of a better word, the ego of the founder.
Absolutely. Who has an outsized voting stake.
And so when you have that kind of governance structure, it really makes it very, very difficult.
I think that's exactly right.
Although one of the tensions that's become apparent is, yes, he has voting rights, but the stock is so critical for employees and for employee engagement and for recruitment, that a lagging price is not great and infects all kinds of things.
Yeah. So it is true that he can do whatever the hell he wants, undoubtedly true.
But there will be pressures, not from an activist, but from that fundamental mechanism, which is still going to be operative.
Interesting. Okay. Should I go next?
Yes. Young me, go. So here's my prediction.
We have hit a tipping point with respect to the adoption of electric vehicles.
The demand for electric vehicles now exceeds current supply.
So my prediction, 2023 will be the year when it will become evident that the next big land grab is going to be the nation's EV charging network.
Oh, your eyes be here.
Was this one of your predictions?
Totally, but keep going.
I got a supplement.
I'm loving it. Go, go, go.
Okay. So maybe great minds be here.
So right now there are a whole host of reasons the US doesn't have enough charging stations.
They're huge startup costs, particularly in rural locations, long payback periods.
There are also these turf wars between utility companies and gas stations.
It's all a bit of a mess.
But my prediction is 2023 will be the year that some big player decides to go big.
I don't know who it's going to be, but it's going to be a player accustomed to making big capital investments in infrastructure with a long -term view.
And it's so tempting to always go back to, well, maybe it's Amazon.
Well, maybe it's Alphabet.
And I think the reason why we keep going back to those types of players is that those players have done this.
I mean, a lot of people forget Google slash Alphabet spends billions of dollars laying cables around the globe underneath the ocean between continents so that we have faster internet connections.
But I think there are other players here to think about as well, not just those big tech players, but there is a huge amount of leverage to be associated with controlling both the data associated with a nationwide charging network, as well as the membership fees and the additional services you could provide.
So Meir, I'm going to turn to you because you're obviously thinking about something along these lines.
What are your thoughts on this?
Well, first of all, let me just finish off your direction.
I think you're exactly right about EVs.
I think this year is absolutely going to be transformational.
And on your point about the charging stations, I think that's right.
That's not where I was going to go, but I think you're right.
And if I was to throw out a name, it would be Nextera, which is Florida Power and Light and kind of renewables.
That's an unusual player, but they could do it and they know how to do it.
But I think the other point I would just want to make is on actual vehicle sales, it is going to be the first year where we have lots and lots of models being introduced by lots of players at lots of price points.
And in particular, I want to highlight GM.
I think GM is going to be coming out with some really, really interesting models, not the least of which is the Silverado.
And then finally, don't forget the IRA, which is the Inflation Reduction Act, which has pretty substantial credits, not just on purchases of new EVs, but they are now creating credits for used EVs, which is going to have a huge impact.
So every year, BCG publishes a report that forecasts adoption for EVs, what the 2030 number is, what the 2025 number is.
And for the last three years, they've been wrong and they've underestimated because it's growing faster.
And I think the degree to which we underestimate EV adoption in 2023 is going to be massive because new models, because of IRA, and because the price points are getting filled in by all kinds of models.
And the winner I think is GM, and I think the loser, it's going to be like Lucid, Rivian, Polestar, like those guys.
But I think it's just super exciting.
I'm totally with you, young me on this one.
You buy it, Felix? I do, yes.
So I do think that demand for EVs looks very promising for capacity constraints, obviously, because it's all happening very quickly.
And then there's, as always, the big questions about compliments here, in particular the charging stations.
I was not surprised to see that Tesla now decided to open up its charging network, which is the leading network at this moment in time to everyone.
Once you get mass adoption, you typically have the early players that need to be vertically integrated to 100%, because the industry doesn't exist, there's no one else that provides the compliments.
And then at this phase, I think the single biggest question that companies like Tesla and like Rivian and others face is, well, should I really have my own network of charging stations?
Should I try to build the very best batteries on the planet, or is it better if I buy from the market?
And the reordering of the market, as I see it, I think the one really big thing that is going to happen is the emergence of really specialized players.
I'm only doing charging stations, I'm only doing batteries, I'm only doing a software part for the cars.
And vertical integration, if you take many other industries as examples, is usually not the winner.
Apple, in that sense, is the exception.
But the rule is that we get many more players who enter, and the winner is usually a category winner in one of the components of the system.
I'm very worried about the role of utilities, to be frank.
Utilities are in a better starting position because they don't need to answer the question, what's the business model for charging?
But at the same time, to have the kind of cross subsidy that we get if utilities provide the charging stations, it's not great for the utilities longer run.
It's definitely not great for the market for leaked vehicles.
I do think the result of all of those market dynamics that you described, consumers are going to win because they're going to have more choices, they're going to be more players in the market, but also it's just going to get better.
So take chargers for example, right now they're very dumb.
They are going to become more intelligent.
They're going to become smarter.
Even little things, like right now there is a one to one correlation between a single charger and a single parking space.
So if you occupy a parking space overnight and you monopolize the charger for the entire night, then no one else can use a charger.
Even if your car only takes an hour to charge, it makes no sense at all for apartment complexes and things like that.
So these chargers will become more intelligent.
The more players hit the market, the prices of EVs as you point out in here, the price points are going to start to get filled in.
The market is going to move forward.
It's kind of a fun time.
It's really exciting.
Felix, give us one.
My prediction is that Twitter at the end of 2023 will have 200 million daily active users, the same number as today.
Is this a prediction or a non -prediction?
So nothing's going to change.
Nothing's going to change against all the predictions that everybody else is making.
So everybody, oh my God, all the talent is leaving Twitter and he's making a mess of the service and this and that and the other thing.
My intuition on this is guided by Craigslist.
Craigslist has not done a thing since basically forever.
It is just the absolutely worst sort of classified business that you put online.
And Craigslist has 200 million users visit each year.
It has more than 500 million dollars in revenue.
And guess what? The kicker?
It has 50 employees.
So when people talk about you can't run Twitter, you can't run one of the, well, yeah, it's not going to change dramatically, but it can be wildly profitable.
And I think this view of Twitter is the Craigslist of communications platforms.
That I think is what will become self -evident at the end of 2023.
So I love this prediction and I think it's right in the sense of usage.
Although I do think Felix, underneath the hood, there are things that are going to be changing.
So if you do the economics of Twitter, historically it was five billion of revenue, five billion of costs.
So those numbers are going to change.
I think the revenue number is going to be two.
I think the cost number will be two.
And the problem, of course, is there's going to be a billion of debt service, which is on top of that two of costs.
Now maybe he gets the cost down to one, so he can have two of revenue, one of costs, and one of interest costs.
But it's complicated at that level.
But I think what we observe as a product, I think you're exactly right, is not dramatically different.
I just can't believe that we ended up talking about Twitter and Elon Musk again.
Wait, I have a prediction that's related to this.
Can I just make my quick prediction?
Which is we are completely at peak Musk.
So I'm calling peak Musk.
Oh, thank you. I would love for that to be true.
So this year has just been peak Musk because of, of course, Tesla, because of Twitter, because of the takeover, because of everything he's doing at Twitter.
We will now look back at 2022 as the time when he jumped the shark.
And there will be a long period of decline in the place he plays in our imagination.
So I'm calling peak Musk in December 2022.
I don't know why he can't just get back to making amazing stuff, you know, shooting rockets into space and making great cars.
Anyway, should I do another one?
Okay. 2023 will be a year when we see a couple of different kinds of disruption in higher education.
So the first, which is, I think it feels almost like a foreground conclusion, is the end of affirmative action.
But I think what isn't a foreground conclusion is what that means and what colleges and universities will do without it because they will be scrambling to figure out how to do diversity without it.
And it could mean a host of things.
It could mean introducing socioeconomic scoring.
I think zip codes could become very important.
It could mean a continued de -emphasis on standardized test scores.
But I do think there's going to be a real shift in how admissions offices begin to think about how to build a class.
The second is, I think you're going to see more colleges bail from the traditional college ranking system.
So you started to see this happen with law schools.
And I think you're going to start to see this with colleges too.
The ranking systems, in my opinion, are an atrocity with so many adverse effects.
But I also think you're going to start to see some alternative kinds of rankings emerge.
So, for example, I think you're going to start to see ESG rankings for colleges and universities.
Who does best on diversity among students, faculty and staff?
How well do they perform on sustainability efforts?
How much emphasis on legacy admissions?
What kind of governance do they have in place?
And so on, because I think a lot of young people want to make choices where they have some visibility into those things as well.
So I think there's going to be a different kind of shakeup in higher ed in 2023.
I think that sounds right to me, young me in particular, on the affirmative action front.
What worries me is that it seems to be emblematic of a broader trend that makes higher ed and maybe education more generally less and less transparent over time.
Yes, I understand there's issues with standardized tests, but then if we just do away with these tests and we're totally unclear about how we choose now that we don't have these tests, that's not a good thing.
Are there issues with rankings?
Absolutely, there are issues with rankings and we should think about making them better.
But I think you're exactly right.
What's going to happen?
We'll just do away with rankings.
And then it's everybody's guess.
I was shocked to learn in a recent government report how many colleges don't even let applicants know net tuition costs.
You apply to a particular institution and the institution just refuses to tell you how expensive it's going to be with the consequence that then students end up attending universities and colleges that are too expensive given their financial means and lead to greater indebtedness.
So I worry that this is yet one more facet of where in the end you might have thought the current criteria are great, maybe the current criteria are not so great, but it all seems to point towards a future where the market becomes less transparent than it is today.
Yeah, I think this is super interesting.
I think on affirmative action you're right.
I think the decision will come.
And I love your idea of somebody developing a rating system that speaks to the questions you're speaking to.
I think the thing that kind of stuns me, and this goes back to our conversation last week about chat GPT, which is if we don't rely on quantitative elements of a person's record, and we don't rely on test scores, and then we rely on qualitative assessments of records, and then essays are effectively
manufactured just as easily as one could, possibly manufacturing essay.
Oh, and then you take into account grade inflation and some schools more than others.
Yeah, and then the qualitative markers are even less clear.
So all of this is a way of saying pity the admissions officer, because it is really, really hard.
But I think this is a great space to watch.
So it's a great prediction.
Absolutely. It's really hard, but I think these colleges and universities have really protected their ability to cloak how they make decisions.
It's like a black box how they make decisions.
And the more we take away some of these quantitative metrics, the more discretion we're giving them.
On the other hand, I mean, there are problems with some of the quantitative metrics, too, so you're sort of stuck in the middle.
It's a very, very difficult problem.
Yeah. But if you compare it to, say, developments in accounting, where the three of us could agree in a minute that, oh, there's lots of ways that we do accounting that are not exactly right.
And what happens over time is we get more rules.
We're trying to do a better job producing the kinds of information that is important for investors.
And that's the part that I find discouraging about the education sector.
I don't really see that.
I see us do the exact opposite, where we create more discretion.
And in the end, the concern is that you have lots and lots of students who end up in the wrong places.
That is just super costly for these individuals.
Yeah, we could talk about this forever, because it is interesting to think too about what the different incentives are for the schools themselves and how they maintain their status.
I loved your comment, Mihir, because this was one of my predictions that chat G .D .P.
would mean the death of the college application essay.
Because it's just doing such a great job mimicking whatever the university wants to see, that basically essays become meaningless.
And so do cover letters for applications.
It's actually fascinating to think about all the formal pieces of communication that will die simply because we have machines that can do a fairly good job mimicking humans.
But on a more serious note, one of my predictions is that we will see some sort of a tie up between Spotify and Netflix.
Wait, I... Okay. I'm going to build on yours.
Go, go. I can't believe how we have some similar things.
The reason why I think that is one, Spotify is really inexpensive at this moment in time.
So it's just ripe to be acquired by someone.
There is a worrisome part to the data in that some of the Spotify users seem to be trading down from the subscription based model to the advertising based model.
Because if you think about the Netflix side where advertising used to be not even the beginning of a conversation, now they're building this advertising business.
And so you have two companies whose business model becomes more similar over time, both companies that could use the marketing advantages, in particular, first party data that arise from a tie up or an acquisition.
So everything says these two somehow have to find together and maybe it's an acquisition and maybe it's a little less than that.
So I had Spotify as one of my predictions as well.
And so what I wrote down here is 2023 will be the year that Spotify is involved in some major M &A.
And the reason I didn't say Netflix is that I have a sense that it wouldn't be one of the more obvious players just because of the antitrust difficulties in getting the deal done.
So I actually think it might be somebody that's not Netflix.
But if you look at the business of Spotify today, it is exactly as you said, Spotify is too mediocre a business to go it alone.
It's too attractive a business to not be a prime target for somebody else.
It's got 200 million paid subscribers.
They have gross margins that are on 24%.
It's okay. It's not fantastic.
So it's an okay business, but it's tough to go it alone.
It's a very attractive asset as a target.
And so I do think 2023 will be the year where there just a lot of strategics that come sniffing around.
I think this is super interesting.
I don't know the right answer, but I share young me's instinct that antitrust considerations are poisoning the water for all kinds of M &A right now.
And so you can't assume that.
On the other hand, I think Sarandos has been on the board of Spotify for like 10 years or something.
So that also kind of makes sense.
The reason why I thought about antitrust and the reason why in the end, I think it's doable because I saw Spotify making roughly a billion dollars in acquisitions.
So it's about 30 acquisitions or so, including many of them in related media, in particular in the podcast space.
None of which have caused big concerns.
And so maybe the way antitrust is thinking about the issue, but I'm not sure, is it relatively category by category?
Maybe this is a way of thinking about a tie up that doesn't raise the kinds of concerns that definitely we have for many other M &A activities.
Interesting. The takeaway from this is just keep an eye on Spotify this year.
Okay, guys, I have a fun one.
2023 is going to be the year where we get space tourism by remote control.
So this prediction is inspired by, you know how whenever somebody shoots things into space and then there are these landers that land on the moon and we see all the footage that comes from it, so on.
I was thinking how cool it would be to be able to pay to control one of these landers for say a 24 hour period.
So let's say that I pay a price and I get to have a remote control and I can drive it around.
I can poke around, I can explore things.
It's like space tourism by remote control.
I think it's coming and I think it's coming in 2023 and I think people are going to pay for it.
And so you're going to be able to control a vehicle on the moon, for example.
And the camera and the vehicle for a certain amount of time.
But I think this is going to be the first way that people pay to be able to explore some bit of outer space.
That's fascinating.
What do you think the price point for someone like that is?
I think it would be high because I think if you did control it, you put it up on a big screen and maybe you would do it, I don't know, at your company in the office and you'd put it up there and you would kind of play with it.
And I think it's a great marketing thing to do to get people excited about it.
But I think it's really around the corner.
Are you sure you're not describing the metaverse?
No, this is actual space.
Oh, I see. Now I'm getting mixed up between what's real and what's just in my imagination.
So give me another one, guys.
My prediction is that at the end of 2023, we will decide that the market for office space in big cities is just fine.
There is no problem.
And I was thinking about this in the context of all of these doom loop predictions that we had in the recent past.
So the story is affluent households leave the city.
As a result, there's less tax revenue.
Workers don't have to go back to offices and there's fewer restaurants.
And that means less tax revenue as these tax revenue falls, the quality of life, policing, public transport, all of these things go down.
And some academic estimates are as much as 40 percent of the value that's related to commercial real estate is going to evaporate.
And it will basically be a replay of the 1970s when life in cities was really hard and problematic for lots of reasons.
And I think these predictions are totally wrong.
And at the end of 2023, we will look at the market and we will say it's changed and it's totally OK.
And here's why. One is that when you look at prices for office space, and this is particularly true for the very best office space in cities, it's more expensive now than it used to be.
Even cities like San Francisco where vacancy rates have really shot up, prices have risen by six percent or so.
And I think all these doom predictions in the end fail to see just how many companies clamor to be in the big cities and just feel totally priced out because they can't afford to real estate.
So my prediction is you will see many, many companies that have felt priced out of the market.
They will flock to the big cities for talent, for entertainment, for the quality of life.
And we will decide, well, maybe cities are doomed sometime in the future, but not in 2023.
I think this is fascinating.
And I think I agree with you maybe halfway, maybe three quarters of the way.
Halfway right. Well, no, I think, look, I hate all this doom saying, but there's going to be regional heterogeneity.
I think San Fran is in question.
I think office parks are in question.
So if we're talking about primary real estate in major metropolises, I'm with you.
But there's going to be stuff on the borders which are going to be getting very complicated or I would imagine will get very complicated.
But I love the thrust of it.
I love the thrust of it, too.
It does feel like that there are some pockets.
So like office parks is a great example.
But I like your prediction because I like the idea of that hustle and bustle coming back in a good way.
Do you have another one?
So the economy at the end of 2022 is seriously confusing.
Just very recently, the restoration hardware CEO said it's like a free fall.
The consumer is dying out there.
It's terrible. I've never seen anything like this before.
And then you have the Lululemon CEO basically saying our customers totally fine.
It is really confusing.
And so the question that I think we have to address is in a big way, what does the world look like in 12 months on all these things?
I think basically the economy and financial markets at the end of 2023 are where they are at the beginning of 2023, which is basically no growth, flat financial markets, rates about where they are.
But so much push and pull and confusion over 12 months that leads us back and forwards.
And I think ultimately, I think we'll realize that inflation has gotten under control, but it's persistent at levels that are still kind of unacceptable.
And we'll realize that the consumer is more exhausted than we thought, but it'll take some time into 2023 to realize the full sense of that exhaustion.
And that rates at higher levels, which they'll be at for the duration of 2023, have more macro consequences that we need to digest.
So not to say that nothing will happen, lots will happen, but it's going to be a zigzaggy up and down, lots of noise, ultimately signifying nothing in the sense of we end up very much where we began.
I'm struck by how when we started doing predictions a few years ago, the idea behind predictions was to predict some kind of change in one direction or another, because the narrative out there has become so hyperbolic in all directions that actually the bold thing is to predict that none of that's going
to happen. No, much will happen.
Yes, and I'm so struck by how many predictions, because I actually think that's a bold prediction because you're hearing everything but that.
I don't know if that feels right to me, but lots and lots of sturman -drung in between.
Yes, I have one bold one that will change things.
I think we're at the beginning of a significant development in hydrogen energy, and I think it will lead to a first set of facilities that will produce energy at zero cost.
The basic idea being very simple, if you have solar or wind that is plentiful, and then you use that energy to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, you can have energy at incredibly low cost.
And what we tend to forget is then there's all the beautiful government subsidies on top of that.
So the Inflation Reduction Act provides about three dollars per kilogram, and so it's very reasonable.
I've seen multiple models of facilities that literally produce for the facilities themselves, not for taxpayers, but literally produce energy that is basically free.
And if we can scale that, I think it will just mean everything is going to change because energy obviously dictates so many things that we do and don't do, including so many political things that we do and don't do.
I love this call. I'm a little bit more general about it because I have less knowledge than you do, Felix.
But I think the era of breakthrough discoveries in energy broadly is upon us.
Now, whether it's blue hydrogen or green hydrogen, I can't even keep all of it exactly straight in my mind.
But I think that is upon us because of the IRA, because of five years of people doing things, along with the EV stuff, I think is the most optimistic thing I felt for a long time in this space.
So I'm with you on that.
And then it's interesting that even old pieces of technology.
So say on the Christmas list of European households, one item that is way about like, you would just never really think that you would see something like this, but it's heat pumps.
Heat pumps are incredibly popular all of a sudden.
It took a war in Europe to make us now seize all of these opportunities that were at least many of them were available for a long period of time.
That's great. Okay, guys, I have another era one.
I think we're entering an era of strong state identity, which has always sort of been true in the US.
But I think now more than ever, you're going to see this distinction between progressive high tax dates versus conservative low tax dates.
I think a more explicit flow of big money to the latter.
So there will be a money drain.
I think you're already seeing it.
But I don't think there's going to be a brain drain, though, because so many of the institutions, universities, hospitals are situated in these more progressive high tax dates.
So I'm not worried about brain drain so much.
But you already see this sort of migration of money to these states.
And so I think this is going to be an era where just state identity is really, really predominant.
Obviously, this has to do with so much that's happening in our court system and the Supreme Court and so on.
But I think it's just going to become more and more prominent over the next few years.
I think that's super interesting.
First, obviously, the divergences have grown.
I think second, on your human capital point, I'm not so sure.
Oh, are you worried about the brain drain piece too?
Well, you tell me why is everyone going to Texas.
And that's responses to tax differentials.
And they're doing it in Florida, and they're doing it in Texas, and it ain't small.
I happen to think, though, that resurgence of identities will also have some backlashes, right?
So I think people are going to realize that living in states with powerful identities is also complicated.
I think we may not want to live in states with powerful identities.
We may want to live in states with less powerful identities.
But watching that play out, I think, is a super interesting thing to watch.
What's fascinating to me is how often people don't think about how demand gets capitalized.
So think about house prices to just give the simplest of things.
In every story about California leaving Californians, high house prices feature very prominently.
But there are very few stories that say, well, if half the country moves to Texas tomorrow, maybe house prices in Texas will not remain the house prices that we see today, or energy prices will not remain the energy prices that we see today.
So while politics and identity might drive some of these changes, I do think they're always really powerful opposing forces.
And we give these short shrift until you then realize, oh my God, now all of a sudden, it's really expensive to live in Dallas, it's really expensive to live in Houston, for all the reasons that should have been pretty obvious to begin with.
So we'll end with your prediction, young me.
I have a little one about music.
Go for it. Okay. Does it involve Taylor Swift and the tour?
Oh yeah, my prediction is that we're all going to go to see the tour together.
And you guys are going to be singing the words.
No. So one of the biggest hits of the year of 2022 was a song that was 40 years old, Kate Bush's Running Up That Hill.
And I think this is going to become a regular thing now, year in and year out, for one or two of the biggest songs of the year to be oldies.
And I think because the way young people access music now has become so diversified, it's not just TikTok, but it's also through the shows they watch on Netflix, the movies they see, there's almost a rediscovery of so much of the music that we grew up listening to.
I am stunned by how much my kids and their friends are discovering music I grew up with.
And on the one hand, I think this is cool.
But on the other hand, it does make me worry for new artists.
Because if you think about it, new artists today, every new artist now has to compete not only against other new artists, but against every artist that ever existed.
Because we listen to so much music from so many eras now at the same time.
And so it's going to make it harder for new artists.
But I do think time is going to just become a flat circle.
We're just going to be listening to music from all eras all the time now.
I love this prediction.
And I think it's right.
But I'm confused about why it's right.
Like, so there's kind of two stories in my mind.
One is that there's just as you said, people are going to be picking out from the whole continuum of time their favorite songs.
But my preferred interpretation is the one that I've tried to use with my daughters, which is it was just better than it was just better.
Damn it. Like, you don't understand.
Come on. You talked about Fleetwood Mac and I mean, just better.
Just better. Can we just call it what it is?
I love that. What's really funny now is many, many channels on YouTube that essentially show you exactly this phenomenon.
So it's usually to people in their early 20s who listen to a song that we all would, of course, know.
I love that. I hear it for the first time.
Two things are interesting to me about that.
First is it turns out watching other people listening to music is somehow really interesting.
You see it everywhere.
You see it on TikTok.
You see it on YouTube.
And then in particular, if it's something that is so familiar to you and they hear it for the first time, that reaction is just really fabulous.
Especially if you know that there's a moment in the song where there's a break.
There's a really good moment.
You're just waiting and you're watching them.
That's right. OK, so we're going to come back with recommendations as well.
Yes, sounds good. I'm all out of predictions.
Sounds good. All right.
Young me. Recommendations.
OK, so I have two. My first is a book that I read recently.
It is so good. The book is called The Impossible City.
And it's a memoir by a woman named Karen Chung, and it's a memoir of growing up in Hong Kong.
And it's a great book, not just because it's about Hong Kong, but because she's living through a moment in time where there is so much disruption in the city at every level, at the level of politics, at the level of society, culture, education, everything.
And so even though it reads like a memoir, it gives you a sense of what it's like to live in one of the many cities around the world that is experiencing change and disruption.
The author was born right before the handover to China in 1997.
And so even from the time she was very little, what Hong Kong is this was a question that dominated so much of her life and her identity.
It sounds wonderful.
That sounds great. It also gives you a sense of Hong Kong's counterculture.
And you realize if you're not part of a city, a city's counterculture is really quite inaccessible to you, really gives you a sense of the multidimensionality of the city.
So it's really, really good.
The second is one of my favorite shows of last year is Back.
It's called Slow Horses.
Oh, so excited. I felt it was a hard show to get into because the first few episodes didn't speak that much to me.
Oh, I loved it. It got so interesting and I really loved it.
It's really worth it.
Yeah. So very quickly, it's about this somewhat dysfunctional team of MI5 agents and their boss who is played by Gary Oldman.
Amazing, amazing. And the second season is out.
So I would highly, highly recommend it.
I don't want to say too much about it because I don't want to do spoilers.
But for the most part, it's the same cast of characters and it has that same feel to it.
The amazing soundtrack.
That's my recommendation.
Fantastic. That's a great recommendation.
OK, what do you have, Felix?
I would like to recommend a cookbook.
It's a cookbook on Mediterranean cooking.
And of course, your first reaction should be, oh, my God, yet another Mediterranean cookbook.
We really need one.
But this one is special, I thought.
It's called Babel and it's by a duo Ori Menashe and his wife, the pastry chef Genevieve Gurgis.
Their first restaurant was a big success already, Bastia.
And then Babel was their second restaurant.
And what they do sometimes consciously and maybe sometimes a little subconsciously is they use Mediterranean cuisine as a starting point.
And then in many of the recipes you want to say also, and yes, then, of course, it's L .A.
And many, many influences of the city influence how they think about food, how they think about the kinds of flavors that go together, how Latin food somehow enters the picture.
So it's this wonderful blend of it is still like really regional cuisine, but it's also off the moment and off the city that they both live in.
So I highly recommend that.
Babel by Ori Menashe and Genevieve Gurgis.
Have you eaten at the restaurant?
I have eaten at the restaurant.
Yeah, I love Bastia to begin with.
And Babel also is just really, really lovely.
Yeah, I'm looking at it, though.
It's beautiful. That sounds great.
Nice. OK. Me here. So I also have like a book and a show kind of a thing.
So the first is Young Me Harkens back to the best, I think, recommendation you've ever made, which is Hidden Valley Road, which is a book about kind of mental illness.
I thought that book is just amazing.
I subsequently liked Mind Fixers, which I recommended as well, which is a book about the history of pharmacology.
But the most recent one in this genre about mental health, which I just think is fascinating, is Rachel Aviv, a writer for The New Yorker who has Strangers To Ourselves, which is a narrative approach to mental health, including her own issues with mental health.
But what a brilliant book.
It doesn't have the kind of narrative structure of Hidden Valley Road, but it's got a bunch of different stories and incorporates her story into it.
And so I don't know.
I think it's just brilliant writing and mental health is fascinating.
It's just fascinating.
And then maybe oddly parallel weird TV recommendation.
You know, I'd recommend the rehearsal, which is super weird.
But here's another super weird one if you want.
And it's, I think, fairly popular, which is Severance, which I finally watched on Apple TV, which is this really weird and disturbing show about this company which partitions your brain.
And so you have a life that is at work that is completely distinct from your life at home.
I will say, I have no idea what it's really all about, but I think you'll enjoy it.
I think it's fabulous.
You watch it too? Yeah.
It raises all these interesting questions about identity.
Yeah. And how much can you separate your work life from your private life?
And then there's all of these questions floating around the officially the narrative is the worlds are separated, but how much are they really separated?
Right. Yeah, it's totally fascinating.
Yeah. It's also the way it's shot, I thought was really beautiful.
It's so beautiful. It's one of those wonderful things where it's not trying to bang you over the head with a specific idea, but there's so many ideas floating around in it.
Yeah. Bet you're kind of constantly buffeted between them.
I don't know. I thought it was interesting.
Well, so I saw the preview and I stayed away because it was so creepy.
I worried it might be horror and I can't watch horror.
Yeah. I guess more generally I couldn't figure out what genre it was and that always makes me very nervous.
I think that's right.
It's kind of genre busting and there's a horror element to it and it's scary.
There are scary elements too.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not going to be for everybody.
Yeah. Okay. But it did look intriguing though.
Yeah. Well, that was a fun way to bring in the new year.
So, do you have any resolutions for the new year?
Oh, never. Never. No.
No. No. I've already partitioned my mind and forgotten all our predictions.
Okay. Happy new year everyone.
This is it for today and this was it for 2022 after hours from the TED audio collective.
Yeah.
