Ted Audio Collective.
HBR presents. Hi everyone, you're listening to After Hours, I'm Yang Li and I'm here with Felix and we're here.
Hey guys, the holidays are upon us.
Yes. Are you guys ready?
Definitely not. I'm way behind.
Last year didn't you guys have the little elf on the shelf?
Of course we did and we did again this year, although there is a noticeable decline in their excitement about finding elf on the shelf.
You realize when they're 16 and 18 years old they're going to just be faking it on your behalf.
That may already be happening actually.
It's like oh dad with his elf on the shelf again.
You just totally shattered my whole world, but that's okay, I'll try to move on.
I'm excited, the whole family is going to Seoul.
Oh, fantastic. That'll be great.
In a way that's the best part about the holidays, as you get older, which is really all just about spending time with family.
Absolutely. And eating and laughing and all the rest of it.
Okay, so a little bit of a programming note, we're not going to post an episode next week and also the following week, which is January 1st, but we will be back on January 8th and we will come back with an episode with our predictions for 2020 and beyond.
And we'll talk about which of our predictions last year, which ones worked out, which ones didn't work out.
As for tonight, we are going to be looking back on 2019 with our awards for the year, a whole bunch of awards.
Sound good? Sounds great.
Let's do it. They can't hear you when you nod.
No, I mean, he said it.
Sounds good, yes. Okay.
Okay, let's get started.
Best trend of the year, Felix, what do you think was the best trend of the year?
Oh, I think the fact that the unemployment rate now is even lower than when we started.
This almost miraculous expansion of now years and years and years, it's really fantastic to see how a already healthy labor market continues to produce hundreds, thousands of jobs every year.
And then even better is that wages, in particular in the first and the second decile, the wages that have not moved for a very long time.
Now we have pretty solid evidence that these wages are in fact moving.
Definitely just almost, almost unbelievable how long this expansion can last.
One of the things I've noticed in that regard is the labor participation rate is also started to go up.
Yes, it's up also. Yeah, so that's all around good news.
Yeah, that is a good.
Okay, me here, what do you have?
So I am delighted with my best trend for this year to revisit my cantankerous self and talk about the bursting of the mega VC bubble.
I think it's just fantastic.
And so we have seen the full reckoning that was overdue, and we've talked about this on this podcast before, for mega venture capital, and I think it's fantastic.
So you're thinking about SoftBank?
Yeah, I'm thinking about SoftBank and the decline of the Uber IPO.
And I know it's painful to talk about other people's difficulties, but man, there were so many distortions that that whole pattern created that are now coming undone.
So that's my best trend.
So mine is actually related to that, because in order for that bubble to burst, one of the things that had to happen was that retail investors had to get essentially more skeptical about these offerings coming to the public markets.
And so my best trend of the year is that this is the year that retail investors prove more savvy than private investors.
I think among the most cynical segments of the private investor base, there's just some sense that retail investors will just gobble up anything that has the word technology in it.
And I think this was the year that retail investors actually proved more savvy than we often give them credit for.
This by the way, Youngmi, I think goes along with your call for Edgar.
Yeah, yes. You had this early call about going to the SEC website and downloading S1s, which is great.
And I think that's the kind of actions that retail investors have been taking to figure this out a little bit more.
Yeah. That is all good.
I agree. What about worst trend of the year?
This is the third year in a row that US life expectancy has fallen.
Even more concerning, it's not a US phenomenon.
So we expect that life expectancy to fall in Great Britain this year.
And so there's something really concerning going on.
Felix, I had understood the US thing to be a little bit about opioids.
Is that not right? So in the US, I think the story is exactly it's opioid and it's suicides.
It's also drinking among younger people.
We now have a trend that really almost in 100 years we haven't really seen.
We've almost taken it for granted that as economies grow and as people become richer, that they will also live longer.
When we think about life expectancy trending downward, we tend to think, well, people used to live until they were 81, and now they're dying at 80 or 79.
That's not what's happening.
What's happening is that we have lots and lots of young people dying...
Who die early. ... in the prime of their lives between the ages of 25 and 65.
And so much evidence points to these three things you mentioned, opioid -related deaths, alcohol -related disease, and suicide.
Yeah. These are what public health researchers call deaths of despair.
That is so tragic, yeah.
I was listening to our colleague Howard Koh at the School of Public Health talk about this, and the interviewer was trying to get him to explain why this was happening.
And at one point he stopped the interviewer and he said, you know, we have to stop thinking about the leading causes of death, and we have to spend more time thinking about what are the leading causes of life.
And the leading causes of life are things like stronger communities where people don't feel alone, a social safety net where they're not worried about their financial security.
I really like that framing issue.
Yeah, that's fantastic, yeah.
So, okay, Mehere, what did you have under your worst trend of the year?
Well, so it's a little financier, but...
Oh, big surprise. Yeah, so financial markets have really stopped processing firm -specific information.
You know, which is one of the things we expect financial markets to do is to tell us about firms being different and to actually use that information in kind of setting prices.
And what we've seen over the last 12 months has been a pretty significant increase in these measures of things like...
it's a little geeky, but pairwise correlations between stocks or even kind of the degree of co -movement between stocks.
So, effectively, the whole market is working off of interest rates and trade disputes, and that's about it.
And so, there's not as much kind of firm -specific information that's actually getting processed in financial markets.
It really feels like financial markets are not doing the work they're supposed to be doing, of processing information about companies in a rigorous way.
And we see that in these measures of just everything going together at the same time, and that's really disturbing.
Is this because the politics and the trade war seems so first order?
Nothing that happens at the company level matters as much, and so we don't pay much attention to it.
That's right, but the question is, first off, how long good does that go on for?
And you want them to be processing both, right?
And I don't think it's necessarily that it dominates it as much as it is what is dominating price movements.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Okay, my worst trend of the year is cancel culture.
Yeah. So, I think call out culture.
You know, you call out someone for doing something wrong.
On the whole, I think it's been a good thing.
Cancel culture, I have real problems with.
Well, do you want to say a little more?
Yeah, cancel culture refers to when someone does something that we consider to be wrong, and it could be anything.
It could be something really egregious like sexual harassment.
It could be an impolitic comment.
I mean, it could be anything, but as a result, we consider them canceled, which essentially means we block them metaphorically from any kind of further interaction or conversation.
So, what troubles me about the moment we're in culturally is that we have figured out that people shouldn't get away with things that are wrong, and I think that's really important, and that's progress.
What we haven't figured out yet is forgiveness.
We haven't figured out reconciliation.
We haven't figured out remediation.
We haven't figured out whether or when we should be satisfied with an apology or not.
We also haven't figured out degrees of transgression.
So, when someone does something egregiously wrong, we become very good at demonstrating our outrage.
But when someone does something that is wrong but the transgression is of a lower intensity, we haven't figured out how to gauge what our response should be.
And so, we end up jumping to this place we've called cancellation, which feels in some cases really extreme to me.
I think this is a great pick.
I think it's not just about overreaction, but it's also about the failure to engage with ideas and the failure to engage with ideas that are...
Yeah. ...contrary to the way we think about the world, and that's really important.
I mean, as a pedagogue, that's like what we care about, right?
So, I think it's a great pick.
It's... anyway. Okay.
I'm going to move us along because we have a lot more.
Felix, did you bring a Sleeper Award?
Yes. So, I want to recognize John Richards.
He is now, I have to say, the former leader of the Apostrophe Protection Society.
You know, you said John Richards, and I'm thinking, wait, have I been living in a cave?
I've never heard of John Richards.
And now I realize, no, I've just been a normal person who understandably has never heard of this human.
So, what is the issue with the apostrophe?
Because I've been paying attention more to the comma, frankly.
So, what is the issue with the apostrophe?
The comma is doing fine.
It's maybe doing too fine, yeah.
People are overusing the comma.
What's the apostrophe situation, Felix?
So, John Richards founded this society about 20 years ago, and the idea was to do broad public education around the appropriate use of apostrophe.
And now he stepped down, he gave up, and he cited general ignorance and laziness as the reasons why he failed.
So, he is not a happy camper.
And so, I thought, at least, you know, sweeten his life a little bit by giving him the Sleeper Award.
Okay. Excellent. Young me, what do you say for your Sleeper?
Well, this is going to be a hard laugh, because I went with Shopify, and I don't know how to build a segue from apostrophes to Shopify.
But nonetheless, I'm going to do my best.
So, I love Shopify.
I mean, just put that out there.
And I think it is a complete myth that if you are a small retailer, you have to sell your goods on Amazon.
That is completely not true.
What Shopify does is it gives you the tools to build your own online store.
So, if you're a consumer out there, and you have purchased anything directly from your favorite brands, you've gone to yourfavoritebrand .com, chances are that online store is being powered by Shopify.
And what I love about Shopify is it not only gives you the tools, but in the process of giving you the tools to build your own online store, it enables you to retain control over your brand.
So, all the things we complain about with respect to Amazon and how you lose control over your brand, you get to retain on Shopify.
I love that this company is killing it.
The success of this company, I think, is proof positive that it's possible for true alternatives to Amazon to thrive.
Today, they have more than a million businesses using its platform.
Their stock has gone up more than 1 ,000 % since they went public in 2015.
So, it's a complete sleeper.
We never talk about it, but they're doing great.
So, that's my sleeper.
That's a very good one.
Yeah, nice turn for our postographies.
Yes. And so, are you going to finish us off with exclamation points?
Yeah, exactly. So, I'll try to speak in very excited ways so I can have an exclamation point at the end of our reasons.
Yeah, so my sleeper is, you know, we started talking about what's going on in banking, the digitally native banks.
And I think that's just the tip of the iceberg.
And the sleeper story I wanted to highlight is this remarkable set of developments by this guy, Jamie McAndrews, who is trying to launch something called the Narrow Bank.
He's trying to get a license so he can take money from institutional investors and effectively park it at the Federal Reserve.
He's trying to create a bank that effectively undercuts what banks have been able to do for the last five years, which is park money at the Federal Reserve, get 2%, and then give savers like zero.
And, you know, last year we talked a little bit about...
If you're lucky. Yeah, exactly.
Last year we talked a little bit about Marcus and Ally, but this guy is really trying to revolutionize things.
And he's getting blocked by the New York Fed, but it's forcing regulators and the whole banking industry to rethink what has been true for the last 10 years, which is I park my reserves at the Federal Reserve, I earn 2%, and then I give savers nothing.
And he's being super aggressive with this litigation, and it's called the Narrow Bank.
And nobody is talking about it, but it really to me is a sleeper story about how much pressure the business model of the larger banks is going to be under going forward.
That one is interesting.
Total sleeper story.
Okay, let's do one more before we take a break.
Comeback of the year.
Felix, did you have a comeback of the year?
Oh, yeah. This one was so easy.
Like I knew right away.
I think I know what you're going to say.
Cassette tapes. Of course.
That is not what I thought you were going to say.
Cassette tapes. Cassette tapes?
Wait, have they made a comeback?
Yes. So they... The market has grown by more than 100%.
Wait, it went from two people by cassette tapes?
Yeah, exactly. And he's trying to get us to do it too, and so it'll be four people, Yungmi.
If you're a serious artist today, it's unimaginable that your next album comes out without a cassette tape.
And then when you look at the messaging boards, younger people love two things about cassette tapes more than anything else.
The first is that you have to turn the thing in the middle of the album.
Yungmi, are you having like an out of body moment?
The concept of an album is back, my friends.
There is a particular order in which you listen to the music, and yes, at some point in time, you will have to pay attention to the fact there's no more music, and then you have to turn the cassette tape.
And the other thing that is, you know how there's a little bit of sound before the music starts?
People love that. Like that low hum that you have before the music actually kicks in.
You know something is working, but you're not sure what it is.
Felix, there are some downsides.
Do cassette tapes? Such as...
You're going on a plane.
You want lots of music.
You want to skip around.
There's a reason we migrated away, and the reason is called progress.
So you're telling me you have a cassette player in your home?
Of course. Oh my God.
Next to his book of maps.
Our next award is the Work Cutout for Him or Her Award.
My pick for this was Boeing.
Boeing, yes. And Dennis Muhlenberg.
So we did a podcast episode on this right after the accidents, and so we really confined our conversation to how he was managing the crisis itself.
Right. And I think we all gave him very low marks.
Since then, I think we know now a lot more about the failures of Boeing and what went wrong.
And I have to tell you, I have been so disappointed by how they have managed this ongoing crisis.
And I think restoring confidence, when they get to the point when they're able to put these planes back in the sky, I think they're really going to have their work cut out for them in reassuring the public that these planes are safe to fly.
That's a great pick.
I think that's right.
Now that we know much more, it's less of an issue with, oh, a particular product that wasn't a successful launch.
It seems to sit much deeper in the organization and a much bigger challenge also.
This was what's so fascinating to me because now that we know more, apparently what's essentially happened is just this slow degradation in the corporate culture over time, where engineers no longer have the last word and other considerations started to dominate and the incentives were misaligned.
And it turns out, in many ways, these accidents were completely overdetermined in retrospect.
So, boy, recovering from this, I think, is going to be a real challenge.
Yeah. Exactly. How about you, Felix?
I had Sebastian Cunningham and Artie Minson on my list, new co -leaders of WeWork.
Oh, yeah. Of course, everybody knows the IPO that didn't happen, and everybody knows the corporate governance issues in the company.
But what's a little missing from the conversation is it was a good idea.
There was a core of something that the company did that was fresh and different.
And so I think they have an interesting job now to figure out how much of that core idea can you solve and can you build a business model around that?
And can the business model be less risky?
We talked about the mismatch between assets and liabilities in that company a couple of episodes ago, but can you somehow soften that mismatch in interesting ways, the way some of WeWork's competitors have done?
Can you use the brand recognition in a really interesting way?
So, yes, it's a very public downfall and a lot of issues that remain.
But it's also a chance to rebuild a company that I think at its core has actually done something that was quite interesting to begin with.
This is such an interesting pick because I found that my own personal emotional stance toward the company has really shifted.
So I was glad to see that they had to retrench and it was good to see almost a bit of a comeuppance.
But now that they are in this new stage, I'm sort of rooting for them almost.
So the job of turning that company around has no sex appeal anymore.
The financial upside is much more limited than it was previously.
This is going to be hard work.
In some sense, the heroes of the story are going to be the people who put it back together.
And they deserve nothing but the warmest wishes because there are real people there and there is a real opportunity there.
I think it's going to be tough, but that's your point, which is they have their work cut out for them.
But God, one can't help but wish them well.
Okay, next one, most underrated story of the year.
So my most underreported story is texting and driving.
It is an enormous issue.
In the U .S. alone, there's about 2 .3 million fatalities where people get hurt really seriously.
So serious injuries, disabilities, more than 300 ,000 of those are texting and driving.
Texting and driving is more dangerous than driving and drinking.
So the likelihood that you get into an accident rises 25 -fold if you text and drive.
Wow. People don't do this.
Because I imagine you're talking not just about texting, but messing with your phone in general.
Yes, using a cell phone in some fashion, yes.
Put it in your bag.
If you know you're susceptible, just don't have the temptation close by.
The other thing to do, if it's really important, just pull over.
Seriously. Exactly.
Just pull into a parking lot, stop the car, and make whatever call or text or whatever you need to do.
But, my goodness, okay.
That's a really good one.
That's a great one.
Me here. So, in a way, it's a narrow story, but I think it's got broader implications.
So my most underreported story is what has been going on in California with the fires and specifically with PG &E.
Oh, yes. So interesting.
So the narrow story is about, well, how culpable and liable, literally from a legal perspective, is PG &E for the forest fires and all the damage associated with that.
It's wiped out, I don't know, $40, $50 billion of market cap out of PG &E in the last couple of years.
I think we're going to start to see kind of a set of financial claims that are going to be called into question or get amplified because of the climate crisis.
And how that plays out is so important because those signals will be paid attention to by investors and then has a whole set of consequences for who gets held responsible for these things.
So PG &E to me is a little bit of a canary in the coal mine of how do we think about the pricing and the financial claims of climate catastrophe.
So that's my kind of underreported story of the year.
To me, one of the most remarkable sides of this, from sort of a catastrophe point of view, I find it astounding that we now think it's not that remarkable that hundreds of thousands of households are without power for days.
And it's not, people are not marching in the street, right?
When you think about once we see all the other consequences of climate change, is that what it's going to be like?
It just happens you're not going to have power for a couple of days and then eventually power will come back?
There are all kinds of interesting questions too about what it means when we all depend so heavily on this sort of quasi -public utility.
Exactly. Would it be better if it were publicly owned?
Well, I think a lot of things happened, young me, when they transitioned from being public utilities into privately owned companies where people didn't realize, wait a second, a lot of things are changing from a liability perspective too that we didn't acknowledge.
And so that is, I think that cuts to the core why it's so interesting.
But that's just one piece of what's going to happen, I think, in the next several years.
Yeah, that is a very good one.
Okay, next category is most overhyped story of the year.
So mine is to claim that the Ukraine and not Russia interfered in the 2016 election.
There wasn't a shred of evidence to begin with and then, you know, it didn't get much better.
But the media for some reason, like just over and over and over again, you almost walk away thinking maybe there's something there.
Otherwise, why are we still talking about this?
The sheer fact of repetition, even if included in the story, is the lack of evidence.
The cumulative effect of all of that repetition is that people walk away thinking, wait a minute, did they interfere?
Did they? Yeah, wasn't there?
Yeah. So I have actually a very related one, young me.
So my overhyped one is this idea that is just everywhere now.
It's called the Overton Window.
And I'm so tired of hearing.
So tired of hearing about the Overton Window.
The expansion of the Overton Window.
Yeah, exactly, right?
So the Overton Window is this idea that there's a range of policy ideas that are acceptable and that the dialogue is kind of governed by the quote unquote Overton Window, which is named after this guy, Overton.
But it has quickly become a recipe for everybody advocating very extreme policies all in the spirit of, it doesn't really matter, because we're expanding the Overton Window.
And my God, am I tired of this?
And people don't understand, A, the death of pragmatism, but also the backlash, which is, yeah, you think you can just advocate ideas way outside and expand the Overton Window and everything is good.
And the answer is no, there are like counter effects.
So I am so tired of hearing about the Overton Window and about how we're going to expand the Overton Window and how it's all good.
I hate it. I hate it all.
So that's my overhyped one for you.
That's very good. Okay.
Our last category is Person of the Year.
I'm going to go first.
I chose Bob Iger. And the reason I chose Bob Iger is that this was the year where the real deep paranoia over big tech really set in.
Just this idea that big tech is eating the world and there's nothing anybody can do about it and legacy companies are completely screwed.
Meanwhile, Bob Iger very deliberately and thoughtfully positioned Disney to be a real future force over the next decade alongside all of these heavyweights.
And if you think about the moves he made to get us to where we are today, the guy was playing chess while everybody else is playing checkers.
So the first thing he did is he acquired BAM Tech.
This is a technology platform that powers Disney's streaming service.
He launched and he grew ESPN Plus, which now has three, four million paid subscribers.
He acquired 21st Century Fox, which not only included a whole bunch of content brands, but also gave Disney control over Hulu with 28 million paid subscribers.
He pulled Disney properties from Netflix and other services, and then he launched Disney Plus.
So the moves have been strategically smart and bold and audacious, requiring huge investments.
He's taken on a lot of risks and yet he has pulled it off in a really disciplined, measured way.
He's managed the street beautifully, so investors haven't panic.
They've been brought along for the ride.
He's also someone who has always carried himself with this kind of fantastic emotional intelligence.
He has a very high decency quotient.
He has a reputation for treating people well, and he's never made it about him.
I just think he's been extraordinary.
That's a great choice.
It's also interesting, right?
He's 15 years in the job or something, right?
And he's in his late 60s.
And so he's really performing at a really, really high level, which is hard to do over that period of time.
So, yeah, that's a great choice.
Felix. My person of the year is also CEO, Brian Nickel, who runs Chipotle.
And you might remember he was the CEO of Taco Bell.
He came from Taco Bell to Chipotle.
The chain was not in good shape.
It had E. coli outbreaks.
It was health scares and repeatedly not a good feeling if you think this is the place where you're going to have lunch.
And one of the things I really like what Nickel has done is we tend to celebrate the CEOs who do dramatic things.
And he's basically come in and, yes, they're smart decisions, but basically it's blocking and tackling and reliability and better operations.
And it's such unglamorous work, but the performance is just the stock is up by more than 40 % this year.
And it really regained trust, which I find quite remarkable in a world in which trust seems to have become a super, super scarce commodity.
So I think he's done a really fantastic job.
You know, it is a reminder that there are so many people out there that just do their jobs really well.
Yes. Underneath the radar.
And they're just rescuing companies every day, turning cultures around, turning businesses around.
It is a nice reminder of that.
Okay, me here. So I went a different direction, which I think the person of the year is somebody who showed up on the entertainment scene, who has, I think just signals the arrival of a talent we haven't seen in a long, long time.
Wait, wait, wait. I'm trying to guess.
Felix, do you know?
You know, young me, you know.
It's Phoebe Waller Bridge.
Oh, Phoebe. Yes. It's Phoebe Waller Bridge with Fleabag and with Killing Eve.
I don't think we've seen a talent like that emerge in a long time.
And she is young and she is doing so many interesting, creative things from writing to starring to directing.
And she has a style and a voice that is so distinctive at such a young age.
I can't think of somebody else who's arrived on the entertainment scene with such a distinctive perspective.
And I kind of recommended Fleabag early this year.
But, man, do I think she is somebody who's going to be around for a long time and is really the entertainer of the year.
Me here, the category was person of the year.
It wasn't celebrity crush of the year.
Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.
She is just, are you questioning my appreciation?
I'm just saying. She is really spectacular.
Phoebe Waller Bridge.
Okay, maybe it is a celebrity crush.
But I think she's fantastic and she's a talent we haven't seen in a long time.
So she's my person of the year.
That's nice, that's nice.
There you go. Yes, she's really, really nice.
Okay, we'll be back with picks.
Okay, recommendations.
These are our last recommendations of 2019.
Yeah. What do you have?
I'm going with a food recommendation.
So there is a Israeli chef whose name is Eyal Shani who had a kind of high class Tel Aviv restaurant.
And he has now got a fast food concept, which is called Miznon, and it is spectacular.
It is in Paris and in Melbourne and in New York and of course in Tel Aviv.
But this is wonderful Mediterranean food with so much flavor and a good price point.
Not cheap but like a good price point.
But the flavors are astounding.
It's signature dish is actually this baby cauliflower that he roasts and he seasons.
But it's great for vegetarians.
It's just amazing. And so it's M -I -Z -N -O -N and it's all around the world.
They've kind of invaded New York.
This is like bang bar for me.
My eyes opened and I'm like, this food is spectacular.
So and his name is Eyal Shani and the name of the restaurant is Miznon.
Is it the kind of place you go back to over and over again or is it more like a one -time experience?
I have gone back like four times.
I mean, I'm just like, I can't get the flavor out of my mind.
It is really spectacular.
So Miznon, that's my pick.
Nice. Okay. Felix. So my recommendation is the third season of The Man in the High Castle is out.
You might remember this is this crazy story about the different ending of the Second World War where the Nazis and the Japanese forces win.
The US gets split up.
The West is ruled by Japan.
The East is ruled by the Nazis.
And there's tensions between the two and it's sort of a love espionage, political story all wrapped in one.
The third season, I would particularly recommend because it's maybe the most intimate, the most personal season in that you see a little bit about how the big forces of history tend to impact individual lives and how thinking about what your life might have been if the big history happened completely
different. It's interesting to watch and interesting to think about.
So I'm so impressed by this because you recommended this when you had just finished season one.
Season one, yes. And the fact that you have stuck with it now, this is the third season?
Yeah. I mean, it must be really good.
And this one started a little slow, the very beginning of the third season, but then it had this interesting twist.
Okay. So definitely worth watching.
That's a great one.
Okay. So my recommendation is a gift giving recommendation.
If you are looking for a gift...
Ooh, how appropriate.
Exactly. Perfect. And you are stumped for something to give someone really special to you.
My recommendation is that you give a bundle of books.
And the way this works is you choose, not one book, you choose between eight and ten books.
And it's a mix. So I always choose a piece of fiction.
So last year it was station 11.
This year it might be the over story.
I choose a non -fiction book, like maybe Dopesick, a memoir, like Educated, my favorite cooking book of the year, like the Kristen Kish book.
I always include a really good graphic novel.
So the Color of Earth, very beautiful.
A cool travel book.
If it's for Felix, a book of maps.
So you get this nice stack of books and you stack them really beautifully and you don't put any wrapping paper around them.
You just get a ribbon and you just put a ribbon around it.
And then you put it in a gift bag and it's sort of a representation of all the really good books you read.
That is fantastic. And you give it to someone, it always gets a very good reaction.
Fabulous. Isn't that a nice gift idea?
I think it's a great idea.
Very nice, yes. She's just going to sneak in six recommendations into one recommendation.
That was super sneaky.
I think she learned from the master.
I've got to learn from her now.
Okay. So one quick programming note and then a thank you before we sign off.
So the programming note is just one more reminder.
We are off for two weeks, but we will be back on January 8th.
And then a special thank you.
So one of the questions that we get on our podcast...
Yes. ...is how does the thing sound so good?
The audio always sounds so perfect.
And my answer to that is two words, Peter Linney.
Yay. Who is our sound engineer.
So this podcast is a very simple affair.
It's just the three of us and Peter.
That's it. And we sit down and no matter where we're located around the world, and sometimes we're in very remote locations, far away from each other, we're always able to record.
And Peter always makes it sound.
Beautifully amazing.
Absolutely amazing.
I know he is the best to work with.
He's sitting and he's blushing over there.
But so a huge thank you to Peter.
And of course, thank you to everyone who listens, everyone who debates, everyone who thinks along.
Everyone who emails.
It's been a really great year.
Appreciative. Yeah, absolutely.
Fantastic. And have a happy new year.
We will see you in 2020.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
This is after hours from the HBO podcast network.
Thank you.
