Ted Audio Collective Hi everyone, you're listening to After Hours.
I'm Yang Mi. I'm Felix.
I'm Miir. Happy holidays, guys.
Happy holidays. So we're taping this episode a little bit in advance so that we can sneak away for the holidays.
And then we're going to be off until mid -January.
But do you guys have any plans between now and mid -January?
Other than lying under the tree?
That sounds great to me, Felix.
That's what it's all about.
Well, you're going to do some cooking and baking, right?
Oh, yeah. That's been going on for quite some time already.
Yeah, exactly, right?
And are you going to try out some new recipes?
I'm going back to some old favorites.
The ginger molasses cookies have been in high demand.
Oh, okay. So I've got a factory now.
I'm just churning them out.
Is this the time of year where you take out the stand mixer and just leave it on the counter because you're losing it so often?
I probably should because otherwise it's so bad.
Okay, so I have to confess this is one of my favorite episodes of the year because we are doing predictions for 2022.
So you guys ready to go?
Yeah, let's do it. Okay, predictions.
Felix, get us started.
Yes, I have a big one.
So 2022 will be the year where we see important central banks issue digital currency.
This was one of mine, too.
I love it. Yes. I'm with you.
I'm with you. If two of you think it's going to happen, then for sure it's going to come true.
So, you know, we already have some Caribbean nations, about nine countries.
I think Nigeria is the largest economy that has launched something, although at fairly limited scale.
But I think 2022 will be my bets are either South Korea or China or possibly both of them really ramp up their efforts.
And one of the things that I'm paying close attention to, because it's an interesting distinction is you can do it just at the wholesale level.
So it'll basically facilitate transactions between banks in the financial system or you can do it retail.
And both China and South Korea are thinking about retail version.
And then within that, you can do token based systems that involve bank accounts and systems that are cashed or value based, where you have pseudo anonymity.
And it's really like building a relationship between individuals and the central bank.
And there's pros and cons that are really interesting to think about.
Token based systems, they give you maybe a little bit more control in the sense that it still throws through the banking system.
They're not great for poorer countries, because one of the main promises is that with central bank issue digital currencies, you finally reach all the underbanked.
So if you look at a really poor nation, that's probably not a thing to do.
On the other hand, token based systems have some advantages maybe in terms of privacy.
If you worry about the government looking over your shoulder every time you spend money on something, there's some trace of that expenditure.
But really exciting a long ways from coming.
And what's interesting is the largest, the most important central banks, the US, the EU, not among the pioneers here.
Maybe for good, maybe not so great.
I'm not sure. Yeah, I love this recommendation.
And it's really, I think, a landmark change.
And I think China is likely to be first.
I think the US will spend more time thinking about it.
And I think the Federal Reserve will come up with something, but not this year.
The neat thing to me, Felix, is first, I mean, it's really going to be transformational for a lot of people in their relationship with the financial system.
And the possibilities of these digital wallets with central banks also then creates policy tools that we have no idea about yet, right?
Like, so how do I distribute cash to people?
How do I think about actually interacting with our citizens?
It's totally fascinating.
So great prediction.
I'm all for that. And I think it's going to be super fun to watch.
The part that's most fascinating to me is the idea of new payment functionality as a result of having programmable payments just opens up a world of possibilities.
Some of which I don't think we can even imagine right now.
Exactly. And then the second piece I'll say is that there is this fascinating fragmentation happening in the financial space right now as a result of all of these things happening at the same time.
So you have central bank digital currencies, you have stable coins, and then you have these floating cryptocurrencies and how they're going to all coexist and whether they're going to run on the same rails or not.
I think it's really, really fascinating to watch.
Or do they crowd each other out?
Exactly. And then in particular, I think the central bank digital currencies are interesting because there's an ideological element associated with the floating cryptocurrencies, the bitcoins of the world, which is anti -centralization.
There's an ideological momentum behind those.
And so they really do seem to operate in different directions and appeal to different sensibilities.
And so one of the questions for me is whether or not the floating cryptocurrencies will end up getting co -opted into our existing financial and regulatory system or not.
And if that's not the case, where do they end up?
It's just fascinating right now.
Just having a digital currency that is a true store of value, that alone is a game changer.
And so we have to be able to be able to support financial inclusion also in ways that we haven't been able to be serious about just because the transactions costs are so high.
Can you imagine how you can support the poor all of a sudden?
And then on the other hand, it's like the more fringe cryptocurrencies today, part of what they're doing is skirting informational requirements and regulatory requirements, right?
And so then you have this thing come along that actually is the worst at that, because you're literally dealing with a central bank.
So it will be really fun to see.
So I'm going to go next, because this one's a little bit related, I think, okay?
So my prediction is that 2022 is the year that Amazon introduces a closed loop loyalty program as a way to familiarize its customers with the notion of an Amazon coin.
I don't think Amazon is ready to fully introduce its own cryptocurrency, but I think it's absolutely in a position to introduce Amazon points, that consumers start to treat as a virtual currency within the Amazon ecosystem using the model of a traditional loyalty program.
So imagine earning points or an Amazon coin for everything you buy on Amazon, every movie you watch, every piece of music you listen to.
And then you can then spend the points within the system, just like, you know, any kind of traditional loyalty program.
But it becomes a way for them to introduce a virtual coin.
And in fact, they actually have an Amazon coin, but they haven't really marketed yet.
Facebook got a ton of pushback when it tried to introduce a cryptocurrency.
So I don't think Amazon's going to do that.
But I do think they are really ready to launch this loyalty program based on an Amazon virtual coin, which becomes a much more prominent part of their ecosystem.
And remember, it's all about engagement and keeping people in the ecosystem for all these big tech players.
So this becomes another lever that they begin to use in a much more aggressive way.
So that's my prediction.
In that view, how important is the digital part?
Should I think of it as just a modern version of a loyalty program, or does the fact that it's digital somehow transforms an older approach to loyalty?
If I had to predict, I would predict that they position it as a traditional loyalty program.
I think they're going to create a business unit around it in the same way that airlines sell points.
And before you know it, it becomes a revenue stream for them as well.
I mean, imagine how big that business could be.
And so I think that's where it begins.
But I think more importantly, Amazon is doing some really interesting exploratory things around checkout.
And I think they are in a position to begin to think of themselves as being closed loop.
And I think that closed loop ecosystem with the number of transactions they fulfill every day, I think this is an exploratory mechanism for them.
Yeah. The fascinating thing to me about this, young me is, relative to Facebook, for example, Amazon has so much commerce in its ecosystem.
That the introduction of a currency actually...
Exactly. There's a use case.
On the other hand, if it's closed loop to Felix's question, it's not really a currency anymore.
It's a loyalty program.
For now. For now. So maybe it's a little bit of a stalking horse or something, which you build it this way and then it becomes something much larger.
That I think would be super fun to watch.
Right. But what if you fast forward and then the little bakery down the street says, we accept Amazon coins.
That's right. You have the loyalty points.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And then you're in another universe.
That is fascinating.
You know what I like best about this?
That you didn't use the word flywheel to describe it?
Or Metaverse. Unprecedented flywheels or unprecedented.
Perfect. Okay, me here, what did you get?
Okay, so a little bit less uplifting, but I think we are ripe for a nice big financial scandal.
Tell us more. So I think we have all the ingredients in place.
I don't know where it's going to come from.
I'm not going to tell you who, but I just think we're ripe for it.
So what do I mean by that?
So we've had just incredible amounts of insider selling all through 2021, and especially at the end of 2021, we have had lots of hidden leverage that has been kind of masked by lots of rising asset prices.
And we now have more regulatory enforcement than we've ever had before, at least certainly in the last five years.
So that combination and lots of frothy activity that's been fostered by that combination, I think is going to show up in some pretty egregious financial scandals that will break over the next 12 months.
I don't know what it'll be exactly, but it feels to me like we're overdue for some pretty nasty stuff.
So you're talking about individuals.
It could be, but it's also at institutional levels.
There's all kinds of things that have been going on and that have been allowed in the last 12, 24 months that I think we're going to take a second look at.
And once prices start coming down or even they level, all kinds of things that get permitted in a frothy atmosphere start to show up.
You know, the water just goes back a little and you start to see lots of rocks.
And so I think that's kind of maybe what's going to happen this year.
So it's predicated on the market giving up some of the gains.
Or even just not rising by 2030 points.
You know, there are institutions that have grown up in the last 12 or 24 months, which have been very large.
New mutual fund companies, ETF companies, where we really don't know what's been going on.
And similarly in SPAC land.
So I don't know. I think we're up for a good juicy financial scandal.
Here, when you started talking, my mind immediately went to the number of new fintech companies that are crashing the space.
And how many relatively immature players are now operating in this increasingly crowded space.
And that's where my head went through and I thought, oh, there's too much frothiness combined with what you just described, combined with this.
That you're right. It makes me think we're ripe for something going wrong.
Something. And I don't know what it is exactly, but it should be fun.
Interesting. I like that one.
Felix, what's next?
I think 2022 will bring the really serious deployment of plastic roads.
What? What? Wait, is this a way of talking about PVC?
Young Me is going to turn into a PVC road.
Trust me. You remember asphalt is basically sand or gravel plus you need some agent that binds the sand and the gravel?
Young Me, I like how you started that.
But like, you'll remember.
So plastic can be used instead of more traditional binding agents.
And it has two really interesting properties.
The first one is from a climate change perspective.
It's really fantastic.
It's much better to use bitumen, which is the traditional binding.
And then, of course, we have 350 million tons of plastic.
Produce every year and only 10 percent of it is recycled.
And so the question is, what do you do with the rest?
So far, India is the leader in this because they've done it for quite some time.
There's 60 ,000 miles of roads that is basically a combination of plastic and asphalt.
And there's in particular one company that I follow closely is a Scottish company, Reboor.
And they have just entered the U .S.
They're working with different transportation units.
It often happens, interestingly, at the local level.
Australia has a lot of activity and usually local town councils that are maybe a little less risk averse than the bigger entities.
But I think it could be some estimates say as much as 40 percent of the total plastic that is being produced every year could be observed by road building activity that involves plastic.
And the early experiments look really great.
I think the single biggest question is around what's the long term performance, short term performance.
We already know equal or better than traditional road building.
And then, of course, we just don't have the 20 year experience.
What happens after long periods of time?
What does it look like on the cost side, Felix?
The raw materials themselves, of course, is fantastic.
These companies typically start that as waste recycling companies.
And then they're just thinking, you know, what do you do with the stuff?
Like you hopefully don't throw it in the ocean.
There's interesting questions around the impact on carbon emissions.
If you heat plastic a lot, it will emit carbon also.
And then the question is, do you lose some of the advantages that this method has?
If you don't have to heat it that much, actually there's very little carbon emission.
And so it might be a net positive.
Also, just think about really valuable carbon certificates that then might support the road building activity.
That's great. So 2022 will be the year that we start to talk about plastic roads more broadly.
Yes. Interesting. I think more serious.
So Caltrans has run first experiment.
They're in for other experiments.
And I think as it sort of bubbles up, we will hear much more about it.
That sounds fantastic.
This is even more interesting than PVC pipes.
Oh, well. But seriously, if you talk about that comparison, how long did it take for PVC piping to replace the old piping?
20, 25 years, right?
But every time something needed to be replaced, you took out the old one and put in something new, right?
So maybe the roads would be the same way.
Yes, I think that's right.
But PVC I think is special because it took a long time.
Well, but once it achieves some kind of a flywheel effect, it'll all be fine.
And then it would be unprecedented.
Completely. Okay. So I have three education -related predictions.
So I'm going to bundle them together very quickly.
Ooh, okay. So my first education -related prediction, 2022 will be the year that multiple colleges will start to eliminate legacy admissions.
So if you remember Amherst did this last year?
Yeah. Universities like Johns Hopkins and MIT already don't have legacy admissions.
But I think this next year is the year that you're going to see lots of colleges move away from legacy admissions.
And I have to say, I'm a little cynical here, but I think one of the reasons colleges and universities are ready to do this is that their admissions department still retain an enormous amount of discretion in who they admit.
And so I think once they get comfortable with that idea, I think it becomes possible to move away from legacy admissions.
My second education -related prediction is I think you're going to start to see some of the most prominent companies in the world begin an experiment where they hire kids at a high school in exchange for paying for their college education.
So the deal is you're a college senior, we will pay for your college education, and then after you graduate, you come and work for us for a minimum of, say, two years.
I think you're going to start to see some of the most prominent companies in the world begin to experiment with this, where they strike a deal with a lot of these promising high school seniors.
And then my third education -related prediction is that I think Microsoft is going to purchase some major ed tech company and fold it into LinkedIn, particularly an ed tech company that is focused on the future of work, kind of upskilling people.
I think they will purchase some kind of major ed tech company and make it a part of LinkedIn.
So those are my three education -related predictions.
Super interesting. Because you see the nascent activity on LinkedIn, where they try to figure out what works, what doesn't work, how can you educate.
And what's particularly interesting, it seems to be all throughout people's careers.
It's not so early career focused the way many ed tech companies have been career focused, but often it's mid -career kind of content, it's content for really senior folks.
And the world is moving so fast now that you could be well into your career and still feel the need to educate yourself about something, right?
Yeah. And I think the legacy admissions one I really think is interesting.
I wonder, young me, if there'll be some kind of separation between folks who preserve it and folks who don't.
So I think I can imagine a lot of institutions dumping it just for the reasons you said, and I think that is great and right.
But I don't know, I kind of imagine some kind of a story where we end up with two types of schools.
If it all goes one way, or instead it kind of just splits, which I think would be really interesting as well.
I love that prediction.
Yeah, me here. So my prediction is a little bit related to our conversation in the last episode about things going on in the labor market and people reassessing everything, whether the world ends up being a lot more like it is today or whether everything changes.
And I think we're going to look back at like the December 2021 labor market as being completely unique and different from what December 2022 looks like, which is the underlying idea that there's a permanent shift towards workers.
I think we're going to have a pretty tough reckoning to that idea in the next 12 months.
That doesn't mean remote work doesn't continue.
But I think this idea that this is heralded a new era of worker power I think is going to come up for a tough comeuppance.
And the December 2021 period is going to look, I think in a way, like a very odd and weird time in our history.
So labor markets are reverting a little bit more to normal, and it may be an appreciation that what is happening in December 2021 is completely weird.
And you think that's true across the spectrum.
So, for example, there's a lot of conversation now about labor regaining leverage.
I think the idea that there's like some wide broad growth of labor power because of what's happened in the last 24 months I think is fanciful.
It is true that elite workers will continue to benefit because of technology and other things to have power and to be able to work remotely.
But the idea that it's widespread in the economy I think is going to turn out to be.
Wow. I think it's going to be tough.
I know. I'm sorry. I know it's supposed to be happy.
I can see two places where it might be more permanent to the extent that the changes are driven by people retiring early.
That will be harder to replace because people will take part time jobs, but you probably can't get them back full time.
And then you see a lot of people leaving the least desirable jobs, like I think the restaurant industry, the hotel industry has like some kinds of jobs that people leave behind now, because they're at a moment when they have better opportunities.
And there it's hard for me to imagine that you then go back.
The traditional response I think would have been immigration, but immigration for political reasons, I think that's unlikely going to bring a lot of relief.
And so in a way, I agree that many of the conversations that sort of paint a completely different labor market are unreasonable.
But there is stickiness in some parts of the changes that I think it will be really interesting to see how it plays out.
Maybe the answer is you just have to pay restaurant workers in the end much better than you do today to learn them back to jobs that they didn't love to begin with.
Right. But I think the tricky part is just to also just remember that during this time there's so many transitory things that are still going on with amounts of people flush with cash in their checking accounts.
People struggling with supply chain problems, a willingness to pay, and there's a lot of things that are very idiosyncratic.
And so in part, what we're going to have to see is what's idiosyncratic to this moment and what is really something more significantly longer.
So true, yeah, interesting.
So we have lots more predictions, but let's take a break and come back with more.
Okay, more predictions.
So I have a few predictions related to high profile executives.
2022 will be the year that Disney fires its new CEO, Bob Chappack.
Ooh. 2022 will be the year that Sheryl Sandberg leaves Facebook as part of the reorganization of the company.
That seems right. Yeah.
2022 will be the year that Jack Dorsey pushes Square much more aggressively into blockchain related services.
You mean Block? Yes, that was a little bit of a hint, right?
And then 2022 will be the year that Oprah launches a live streaming shopping channel.
Ooh, I like them all.
Very fun. I'll take the other side of that Disney bet, but all the other ones I like.
Yeah. To be honest, I think it might take more than a year, but I don't think he's long for this job.
Yeah, that is interesting.
Okay, so I have a Hollywood related light none.
Okay. I'm going to go with Will Smith Edges Out Denzel Washington for the Best Actor Award.
And West Side Story Beats Power of the Dog for Best Movies.
Wait, what's Will Smith going to be in?
What's the movie? Will Smith is in King Richard, which is the story of the Williams Sisters.
Oh, for that performance.
I see. Yeah, I see.
And then he Edges Out Denzel Washington in what role?
In Macbeth. How? Okay, so King Richard, I got to tell you, is almost like a throwback to the 90s.
You know, it's like a family movie where everyone can love it, and he has a really, really good performance in it.
And I think it's kind of like that heartwarming performance, a mass performance that I think could win it for him.
That's interesting.
My prediction is a long -run prediction.
Starting in 2022 and for many, many years to come, we will clean and make up our own hotel rooms.
Wow. So this is one of a series of changes that began in COVID.
And then you like it or you don't like it.
The hotels have now discovered, well, actually, the person who's in the room is not so terrible at making up the room.
And really, do you need to have your cover tucked in perfectly every day?
Maybe yes, maybe no.
Interesting. And I can think of other things like that.
For instance, there's now often a 90 -minute time limit when you go to a restaurant.
And the idea was also, oh, there's constrained capacity.
But I think this is also something that is not going to go away, simply because the economics are such that it's really profitable for restaurants, just like you make up your own room is profitable for the hotels.
When you went to restaurants, I thought you were going to say, it'll also be the year that when you go to a restaurant, you have to cook your own dinner.
And wash your own dishes.
That'll be 2025. Okay.
Here's one. So, you know, the US has a space force.
And it's a bit of a joke, but I think 2022 is the year it stops becoming a joke.
Because I think we will have our first really scary space weapons test in 2022 that freaks everyone out and makes us take the US Space Force more seriously.
The only thing that I'm really interested in in the US Space Force is what are the uniforms?
Which is part of the reason they became a bit of a laughingstock, a little insignia.
Yes. So, can we do the upgrade in uniforms before we do the weapons stuff?
You're laughing now, I'm telling you.
2022, you won't be laughing anymore.
Me here. What do you have?
So, I don't know if you saw this, but New Zealand made a really interesting announcement about banning smoking for the next generation.
Oh, I saw that. And effectively making it clear that people younger than age 14 are going to basically not have tobacco available to them.
Ever. Ever for the rest of their life.
So, it's not a ban on youth's buying, it's literally for the rest of their life they're trying to phase out smoking.
And they, by the way, have already made huge strides in reducing smoking.
So, I think that is going to be really interesting to watch.
And in particular it's going to be tough because there are populations within New Zealand where smoking is considerably higher incidence.
And so, it's going to feel like it's going to be problematic, but if it works and they figure out how to do that, I think that's going to set the stage for a lot of higher income countries thinking about doing something similar.
And that would be really interesting to watch.
Okay, interesting. In 2022, we will get laptops that have their cameras built into the screen.
You know how irritating now the camera is at the top of the screen?
So, when you're on Zoom, you can make it look like you look at them, or you can actually pay attention to their features and how they respond to what you're saying.
But you can't do both at one at the same time.
Why does the camera have to be at the frame at the top of the screen?
It makes no sense. Oh, but this is a little scary, Felix.
You'll never know if it's on or not.
Yeah, you have to be able to cover it.
I'll give you a little light when it's on.
And you believe that little light, Felix.
At least I can look you in the eye and you can feel like I'm looking at you.
It does feel like we should be able to fix this problem.
Someone who's gifted is listening.
Okay, I have another one, guys.
In 2022, we are going to see some really strange acquisition or merger attempts that will only make sense in the context of the idea that everybody is still chasing the notion of a super app.
So, remember that moment in time when PayPal was rumored to be buying Pinterest and everybody was like, what?
Well, there are two holy grails in big tech right now.
One is the buzzword that Mihir won't let us say anymore, the metaverse.
But the other is the notion of a super app because everybody, of course, continues to look at China and their super apps and WeChat and so on.
So I think we're still going to see a few more attempted acquisition or mergers that seem bewildering except in this context.
So maybe Salesforce tries to buy a gaming company and fold it into Slack or Stripe decides to buy a travel company.
But I think we're going to see a few of these odd mashup attempts in 2022.
And then the investments.
Well, or they might fall through like the PayPal Pinterest one or not.
I mean, this is not a prediction about the outcome.
This is not about the wisdom.
This is about the attempt.
Mihir. Yeah. So this is a little bit of a financing one.
But these last 12 years without even knowing it, you know, we've lived through a very peculiar time where one type of stock has completely dominated the performance of another type of stock.
So typically that's referred to as value and growth, which is we've never really seen this.
But like in the last 12 years, growth stocks where people are motivated to buy them because they think they're really high growth have really outperformed quote unquote value stocks, which is stocks that people believe to be cheap by some metric.
That's like the rough way to think about it.
And there was like a brief reversion of that earlier this year.
But I think this is the year where that trend turns around and value comes roaring back.
And so it'll be interesting to watch.
It's not a statement about the level of the market.
It's really about what the subset is that kind of outperforms the rest.
And we've just in the last 12, 13 years, never seen a year where that was true, where value actually outperformed.
And I think this might be that year.
So 2022, there you go.
What makes you believe it will happen now?
Because it's part and parcel of this kind of reckoning on retail investors.
It's part and parcel of rising rates.
It's part and parcel of just how expensive some things have gotten and how cheap other things have gotten.
I think it's all those things coming together.
That's an interesting one.
Felix, do you have another one?
I have one. In 2022, it will be the year when neckties die officially.
Oh. Of wearing a necktie is like wearing a bow tie.
Everybody thinks, oh my God, what is wrong with you?
Oh, wow. That's interesting.
I kind of feel like that's right, Felix.
Yeah. People have already started to.
Yeah. So it's on a longer term decline.
But this could really be the cliff that it falls off of.
And are you envisioning a complete cliff?
I think for extra special occasions, it is literally like a little bit like the bow tie, which is why.
It'll become a bow tie.
You know how for this very special occasion you wear it, but for a regular day you'll be like, what is wrong with you?
But you know, it's so true that the full blown suit and tie has become a bit of a relic in business.
And so, oh, I like that one a lot.
So Felix, this semester, did you teach with a tie on?
I did not. I did not either, Felix.
Yeah. Yeah, there we go.
That was, for me, at least really the first or second.
First or second. Oh, I used to wear a tie.
That's interesting.
And now I feel like, what's the point of wrapping something colorful around your neck?
Like, why did I ever do that?
Interesting. Yeah. So here's another one.
You know how when you check out online on anything, you have the option for some kind of buy now, pay later service.
They're everywhere, all of these buy now, pay later services.
I think in 2028, too, will be the year you also begin to see options to buy carbon credits and offsets at checkout associated with the thing that you're buying.
And I think travel sites are an obvious place to start, but I think there's so many possibilities.
So Singapore Airlines is already experimenting with this when you buy a ticket from Singapore Airlines.
But I think this is going to become something you start to see more and more at checkout.
Interesting. Here. Well, this relates a little bit to a conversation we had last week about fossil fuel companies.
And I think what we're going to see, and Felix, you mentioned this last time, the whole idea that these people are credible as renewable providers will get shattered.
And it will become completely impossible to believe that story.
And so you will kind of come to think about these companies more and more as basically run -off companies.
And I think that could be a wonderful development.
That's dramatic, right?
That would be a very dramatic thing.
That is a very dramatic prediction.
That's an out there prediction for you.
Yeah. I have a dire prediction that goes along with that.
I think many of the climate change -related promises, cap and trade in particular, very little political support.
I mean, we saw the one in Connecticut died simply because the government didn't feel like he could impose higher gas taxes.
But I think that will be a trend that we will see, much to the frustration of everyone who believes that we need to be serious about climate change.
And is this globally, Felix?
I think it's sort of similar everywhere, where in particular, the moment it hits consumers and you don't have a great way to redistribute the income that you get from the tax.
I think it's essentially politically debt.
Against the rhetoric that it's really urgent, we really need to do something.
I just don't see the political will.
So this is getting a little depressing, guys.
So I have a related one.
I think 2022 is a year that Fox News does 180 degree turn on climate change.
And instead of denying climate change, it goes overboard in hyping climate disasters, weather events, and hyping the likelihood of climate disaster because it drives viewership.
They're investing much more heavily in weather.
They have Fox weather going now.
And they're looking for who to blame and if they're going to Fox Newsify climate change.
And is that bad news or good news?
Well, what do you think?
I mean, there's a way in which getting more people to care about the problem is not a bad thing.
So that wouldn't be such a bad thing.
Creating urgency is not a bad thing.
If it becomes a let's create enemies out of certain types of people, then that's obviously very problematic.
But yeah, that's interesting.
But we can't end on that one.
We've got to end on something a little bit more uplifting.
And so if I recall last year, Mihir, you predicted that our summer was going to be an analog summer, a summer where we disconnected from Zoom.
But really it was a statement about how we were going to enjoy just physically being with each other.
And I think that sort of came true.
I mean, obviously not quite in as fulsome a way as we would have wanted, but at least partially.
So do you guys have any predictions about this next year in that regard?
Well, so I think I'm just going to double down.
In fact, this summer, we will in fact be entering a whole new era known as analog verse.
It's also known as reality.
But I think if we brand it as analog verse.
Yes. By the way, have you seen Iceland's response to that metaverse announcement?
No. They created this amazing commercial, which is like the funniest thing on the planet, where you see someone and say, oh, and look, we have water.
Yes, I love it. And you can touch it.
That's great. And it's real.
And it goes on and on and on.
And it's like a Mark Zuckerberg type guy.
Do you think Iceland might be interested in licensing the whole analog thing?
Maybe it might be possible.
Okay. We're going to go to break and be back with recommendations.
Okay, so recommendations.
This is our last episode of 2021.
So I think we should make them good.
I mean, not to put pressure, but these should be pretty good recommendations, right?
Did you set the new standard?
We each have five? That was a one time thing.
Oh, well, the question is, did Mihir understand it sometimes?
Yeah, Mihir, we're looking at you.
Well, yeah. So look, the end of the year is a good time for a lot of people to think about investing in portfolios.
And maybe you kind of caught the bug of investing, but you want to do it in a more rigorous way.
And I think of, you know, Jungmi, your classic pick on Edgar, this is in that vein, which is there is a wonderful site called Whale Wisdom.
So Whale Wisdom provides the listings of the largest holdings, and in fact, all holdings for many large institutional investors, especially hedge funds, but all kinds of funds, because they're forced to disclose what they invest in.
So it can become a great way to start exploring different investing ideas.
So one way to invest is to listen to your buddy who tells you to buy Doge.
And the other way to invest is to start finding out about companies.
And the question is, how do you find out about interesting companies from an investing perspective?
And so go to these lists, and it's a wonderful place.
You can search who the largest holders are of different company stocks.
You can find out if you know an investor, what their largest holdings are, how much of the company they own.
And it kind of gives rise to lots of interesting ideas.
And Jungmi, I'll give you one, because I know how interested you are in space.
So, you know, there are obviously these large, high -profile companies, but one that I recently found via Whale Wisdom is ViaSat.
This is like the satellite business, and there's a huge merger going on, ViaSat and InterSat.
And it's just a nice place to find weird ideas that you don't really find elsewhere.
And some of them you'll see like people are like, oh, they're just all buying Facebook and Google and that's all they're doing, right?
But then other folks, they're kind of interesting, like they're doing something different.
And it's not as if any of them are great, but they're all universally great.
But some of them, you know, will just give you ideas.
So Whale Wisdom is my pick.
I like it. I'm looking at it right now.
I like it. Okay. I'll go next.
My recommendation is I was at a meeting recently, and the guy sitting next to me, he had a tablet that he was writing on.
It was not an iPad.
It was something called the Remarkable tablet.
I just saw that. I just said it to somebody.
And he was writing on this tablet.
You know, it's super, super thin, much thinner than an iPad.
And the writing was as true as anything I've ever seen.
And I love writing pen to paper.
And so, of course, I immediately got the Remarkable 2.
And I love it so much that I keep trying to invent new use cases for it.
I'm not kidding, because they're not enough, I realize.
So I'm doing a lot of writing.
Obviously, you guys know we create board plans and teaching notes and things like that.
So it's really, really wonderful for that.
But I realize I don't spend enough time actually putting pen to paper.
So now I am inventing new reasons.
I've started to keep lists, just because I like to use this device.
I've started to take notes in meetings, which I never used to do.
But I just like to write on this thing.
Well, it's also, as I recall, Youngmi, it's beautiful.
It's beautiful. It's like a beautiful product.
I noticed it, like right away.
It's so thin. It's so elegant.
It's so elegant. Even the covers are amazing.
The battery lasts forever.
Yet it is digital. So it syncs with your phone and your laptop.
So at any given moment, anything you write, you can open up your phone and you can see a PDF.
Yeah. So it syncs on the cloud.
So it's very simple and I don't use all the functionality even.
I just use it as a note taker.
So that's my recommendation.
It's a little bit old -school with a new school twist.
It's not too late to buy people gifts for the holidays.
You probably won't get it in time for the holidays.
But if you want to splurge on something for yourself, that's my recommendation.
I'm just looking at it online.
And I confess, the price point's a little bit better than I thought it would be.
So it's $2 .99, which is not bad for what this is actually.
I mean, it's expensive, but it's not terribly bad.
It's not an iPad. It's not an iPad, right?
So you're not watching Netflix on this thing.
It's truly a notebook.
Really a notebook, yeah.
That's great. Great call.
Interesting. So Felix.
I think the end of the year is a time to laugh.
And I recommend a comedy special.
You might know him.
Muamir is the Palestinian comedian who lives in Texas.
And his latest special is called Muhammad in Texas.
I cannot remember when I have seen a special that so spoke to me.
And part of it is, I think some of the jokes are funny, like, which is always true.
But the way he begins, he describes his experience during COVID.
And this ambivalence where you have these moments where all you want to do is cry.
And then you have these moments where you think, oh my God, like what else can possibly happen?
Like life has to be much better the next five minutes.
And he does it in a way that just felt so true.
He had COVID twice.
Oh my goodness. There's a pretty funny story how he got it the first and the second time.
But I can't quite remember when I thought it was such an interesting show that spoke to the time that we all lived through.
And where a big part of the comedy was about this common experience that everybody just had.
He filmed it in Houston, his hometown.
So I think it's probably even more resonant because it's literally the group of people who went through the pandemic together.
And is it in one of these huge venues or is it in a comedy club?
It's in a theater, but it doesn't feel huge.
It's not aggressive in your face kind of comedy, but it's more, I mean, he got divorced during the pandemic.
And you hear the story, you don't know, should I break out in tears?
Should I laugh? And he doesn't know.
Should he laugh? Should he break out in tears?
And so it's this really human element that's really nice.
It looks good. You learn some Arab cuss words, which might come in handy at some point in time of your life, I'm not sure.
So there's the usual comedy stuff, in particular the beginning, I think just catches a real moment.
It says it's about disappointing Bradley Cooper, hummus appropriation and the subtle art of cursing in Arabic.
I love this. Oh, I love this.
This is a great one.
You know, finding a great comedy special.
In a one hour, they can transport you and completely change your mood.
Yeah. So this is a really nice one.
Yeah. So that's it, not just for tonight, but that's it for 2021.
Happy New Year. Happy New Year, everybody.
Everybody have a wonderful holiday.
We will be back in mid January.
In the meantime, this is After Hours from the TED Audio Collective.
Thank you.
