Hey, everybody. Welcome once again. It is the final weekly show, potapalooza, at the end of this very tumultuous 2024. We've been delighted, that you have stuck around and that you've, listened to these fine conversations as as much as you can, and and I hope that you've enjoyed it. And we're gonna keep going.

We're gonna be on ourselves a a little bit of a break. Some rumors that I am taking a a few weeks to soak in the Juan So to signing. No. That's not true. That's not true.

I I I knew it was gone. I don't you know? Listen. When you're a Mets fan, you expect the best. You expect it all to to go your way.

You're like a Gatsby. No. It was a it was a complete, and and utter shock and joy. But we are gonna do our our final conversation for this year with our with our go to dude who does our our final conversations, Mark Cuban. As you know, we had, Bernie Sanders on last week.

We like to do, we like to go from Bernie Sanders to Mark Cuban. You go from, the democratic socialist, to the billionaire, and you hope that the audience does not sustain a groin pull, in that transition. But, a really interesting guy, really smart guy, and I'm really looking forward to the conversation. I hope you guys are too. So let's let's just get on damn to it.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is our annual, weekly show pod wrap up, as per tradition, Mark Cuban will be joining us. He is the cofounder of Cost Plus Drugs. Mark Cuban, welcome to the weekly show pod year end. Ronda, from now on, I am only going to introduce you as cofounder of cost plus drug. As far as I'm concerned, Mavericks, Shark Tank, billionaire, none of that.

It's cofounder cost plus drugs.

That's all I care about.

That's all that's that's all we care about. Mark Cuban, the year has ended. This has been a tumultuous a tumultuous year. For you personally, you've, you've changed in terms of you're done with Shark Tank now. You have you taped your last episode?

I have taped my last episode. I'll have to do some updates for some of the companies I invested in.

Okay.

But in terms of sitting in the chair, done.

Now did they throw at the end of it, was there, like, a dog pile? Was there, like, a a what was the type of celebration that was done to end your reign?

There was cake and alcohol and a little going away party, so it was fun.

Alright. Fair enough. Fair enough. No nudity, I'm assuming. It was all above board.

It was all, parental consent and and and that type of thing.

I have an NDA.

That's an absolutely a wise choice. The 1 thing I wanna ask you about, you stepped into the political arena in a way that you have not in the past. What was your experience like there? Did it leave you wanting more? Did it leave you cynical?

What what was your experience being a surrogate on the on the political circuit?

I mean, it didn't leave me wanting more. That's for sure. Right. But it wasn't cynical either. I kind of enjoyed it.

I mean, it was a unique experience. I loved going out there and talking to people about America and, you know, what I'd hoped the future would look like, how businesses would impact them. And, you know, the Harris campaign had me talking primarily to, small to medium sized businesses who were not Kamala Harris supporters. So I got to, you know, respond to their questions and talk about the economy and businesses and starting companies, and I really enjoyed it.

What were when you talk to small business and and medium business, what are the frustrations and complaints that you that you hear the most? Are they are they anything that surprised you about that?

No. There there were no surprises at all. I mean, it was you know, small business people are just trying to get by for the most part. And, you know, I I had my kind of got into my rote approach where, I talked about the fact that there were 33,000,000 businesses in the country. 98% of them are small businesses that are passed through, and 98% of them make $400,000 or less.

And the bottom line was the hope was

Profit or is that are you talking about that's that's net or that's No.

That's net. That's what you earn. Because if it's a pass through business, that individual entrepreneur or the entrepreneur is making $400,000 or less, and that's a magic number because, remember, Kamala Harris said, if you make $400,000 or less, your taxes weren't going up. They potentially were only going down.

Okay.

So that was an important component of the discussion. And then we talked about potential tariffs, and, you know, I tried to project out and say, look, if it's a year from now, and it's December of 2025, and you're, you know, you're in the retail business as an example, if there are 60% tariffs on products from China, how's that going to impact your Christmas selling season?

Right.

And for nobody, you know, nobody says, oh, that's a great thing. And how does that impact you as a family? You know, now all of a sudden, all your Christmas presents, or most of your Christmas presents cost 60% more, you're going to be able to not buy as much, you're buying less. And so, not only are you not going to be happy as a family, but the vendors that you deal with, the retailers, the online, whatever it may be, they're not gonna sell as much either, so there's a cascading impact. And then, I would go into, immigration.

And, you know, and and I was honest. I would not let the Harris campaign tell me what to say. You know? They would try to give me notes, and I would say, I don't care. You know?

You

That's what they love from that's what they always want from a surrogate is for them to go like, hey, man. Screw your notes. I'm just gonna say what I'm were were you able to have any influence on policy at all? You know, I know there was some discrepancy between unrealized gains, and that was something you thought was a kind of a nonstarter. Did you have some influence on policy there?

I think I did. I mean, I talked a lot about unrealized gains. And, you know, when I went out there and said, you know, for the first time, it was ridiculous, and I went back and spoke to them and said, you know, I'm not hearing you guys challenge me at all. And they're like, well, you're saying things that we'd like to say but we can't say, So I I kept on going with it. So I took that as tacit approval and and went with it.

So that that was 1 area. Another area was crypto. I mean, I was very clear early on that there was data from Pew Research that said, you know, at least 40% of young men were into crypto. And the way I explained it to them wasn't a big picture crypto thing at all. I was like, look, for a 21 year old kid, particularly men these days, they're not like we were when we were growing up, where it was a rite of passage to open up a bank account or to get a savings account.

Now they download Robinhood or Coinbase or some app, and they live in an app economy. And if you downloaded Robinhood or Coinbase, you're buying crypto over stocks. And you're buying crypto not just because you wanna see it go up, but because it makes you part of a community. You know, Dogecoin is a meme stock that everybody talks about it, Bitcoin, whatever it may be. And so if these young men have their entire net worth tied up in crypto, And you've got a SEC head, Gary Gensler, doing everything possible to reduce the value of their net worth, and everything they read in in those apps about, you know, what's happening to the price of their crypto is, you know, driven and talked about relating to Gary Gensler, they're not gonna vote for you.

And I said it to Gary Gensler directly, I said it to Kamala, I said it to her team, that Gary Gensler could cost her the election. And there's an argument to be made when you look at the numbers. You know, a whole lot of young men voted against Kamala Harris, and I think a crypto had a lot to do with it.

So you're saying the the conventional wisdom, which is, she should've gone on Joe Rogan's podcast is wrong. She should've gone on Gary Gensler's podcast

Yeah.

And told him, what was happening here. Now as someone who is, I understand slightly about blockchain, and I certainly understand the utility of something like that. In terms of crypto, look, if you talk about young men and on apps, as far as I can see, they're also on FanDuel and all these other gambling act. So explain to me help me understand why this isn't just a a random gamble for these young men that isn't gonna come back and bite them in the ass. What's the underpinnings of it, and and why is it better than just jumping on FanDuel and trying to hit a parlay on Saquon Barkley, which we won't get into.

Right. Well, there there are a lot of analogies. I'm not gonna argue with that. Right. But think about gold.

I mean, all that gold we have in Fort Knox

Mhmm.

It's not because the United States government is betting on how much jewelry is gonna be sold at Christmas.

I hope not.

Right. I mean, there's no intrinsic value to gold other than we say there's intrinsic value to gold.

I see.

Gold is a store of value, and so people hope it goes up. There are some people who think that, you know, if there's a catastrophe and, the economy craters, then gold will retain its value, but it's not like you can walk around with a bar of gold and, you know, like it's 18/22, and you slice off a little sliver and you weigh it. Uh-huh. Someone's just gonna knock you out and take your bar of gold.

That's how I've been getting at the supermarket. I've been I've been slicing my gold Yeah. Getting my eggs. For you,

a little smipple for you.

That's what that's that's what I'm talking about.

So let me translate that to Bitcoin. Yeah.

Okay. Right.

Bitcoin has become a store of value. It's, you know, marketed that way and has been marketed for the last, you know, 15 years or whatever it is, and it's gotten to a point of acceptance. Just like way way way back when, gold got to a point of acceptance as an alternative for legal currency or as a foundation behind legal currency.

Right.

Bitcoin has kinda taken that place, and it makes more sense in a lot of respects. You're not gonna carry around that bar of gold, but you can carry around, you know, your phone, as an example, that has Bitcoin on it. And if you need to transfer value to somebody else, it's easier to do it right now, particularly if you're 21 with Bitcoin than it is with gold. So there truly is an economic value there.

But now we have between gold and and Bitcoin, there's this other thing that we have, which is currency. And and and is this meant to augment that, to replace that? What are the transactions that are made better by using either Bitcoin or or crypto or those things? Where what need is it filling, I guess, is what

we're going faster and cheaper, particularly for international exchanges.

So Okay.

You know, if if you're in pick a country. Right? And you're like, Mark, I need, you know, I need some something to spend. Right? I need some money.

It's a whole lot easier for me to send you, you know, a $100 in Bitcoin or Ethereum, or USDC than it is in cash.

Now is the idea then that, like, what would happen with, like, say, an Apple Pay or something along those lines, that stores will begin to adopt a technology so that it its use becomes more convenient even at like, if I'm running down to Wawa and I wanna grab myself an iced tea.

No. So let's talk about 2 different things there.

It does 2 different things. Okay. Okay. I but by the way, I apologize for making you do this remedially. No.

That's okay. Really don't know it so well, and I would like to know it.

So just think of Bitcoin like digital gold. Period. End of story. Oh. It's just built on supply and demand.

Only the difference is people are still mining gold, and it's physical. You have to pull it out of the ground. There's a lot of costs associated with that. Bitcoin is all digital, but it's limited in the number of Bitcoins that will ever be created to 21,000,000.

Now who limits that? Is is there an an overseeing body that makes

That was part of the original plan. That's the way it was designed originally. So right now, there are about 19,800,000 Bitcoin out there, minus what's been lost along the way.

How do you how do you lose it?

So early on, you know, you might not you might have bought a bunch of Bitcoin in 2012 for 10¢ each, didn't think twice about it, threw away that phone, and you had 10,000 Bitcoin on it.

Oh, dear god.

Yeah. So there's stories about people literally who Oh. Put hard drives into, trash sheets and lost it, and now we're searching in trash that I was looking for. So but that's Bitcoin, and it's just supply and demand that Right. Finds what it's worth.

So right now, the price is near a $100,000. That means a lot more people are buying it than selling it. Very analogous to gold. And so, then there are other cryptos. There are, Ethereum is 1 that I also own a bunch of.

And the difference with Ethereum is it really takes advantage of the blockchain, but it adds something called smart contracts. And what a smart contract is, it allows, activity to be triggered by other activity. So, for instance, you know, I won't go into deep details, but if, I want to create an NFT and use that for books, like just just say for textbooks, right?

Right.

That smart contract associated with that NFT has specific features about it. 1 of the unique features that are part of Ethereum and smart contracts and NFTs is they can pay royalties. So if Jon Stewart writes a book for a college, right, and it's a textbook on accounting, right now it's got to be physical, and then you go to the bookstore and you buy a used copy.

Or an ebook that they would download or something along those lines.

Right? Right. The physical copies, you don't make another nickel in royalties as it's sold and resold. If you do it as a digital version using Ethereum and a smart contract and an NFT, the royalties can be paid on and on and on and on again, as as that digital textbook is resold. Has this is this something that's been applied yet to music publishing?

Because that seems like it would cure an an awful lot of of the difficulties in in the royalties of music publishing.

Yeah. In all IP for that matter. But the reality is it's only been done on a small scale. The challenge for crypto right now, in all candor, it hasn't had its Instagram moment. If you remember going back to the original App Store in 2009, I think it was, there was there weren't a lot of people downloading apps for their smartphones.

I mean, unless you were really geeky and into it. But then all of a sudden, Instagram came along, and grandma and grandpa and mom and dad needed it. Then Facebook had an app. And so that really got people into smartphones and and, using downloading apps. We haven't had that moment with crypto yet.

That's still something that's an that has ultimate utility for everyone and anyone. That doesn't exist yet, and that's kind of the ongoing hope. But now, let's tie that back to Gary Gensler.

Right.

So all these people trying to come up with apps that run on smart contracts on top of Ethereum, Solana, whatever it may be, whatever form of crypto it may be, Gary Gensler wanted to call all forms of that a security.

Right. He wanted to regulate it like you would regulate stocks for those that are Okay.

And in some cases, they were securities. If you're selling them to raise money for a business, that's a security. Nobody's arguing that. But if you happen to buy, an NFT, as a textbook, he wanted to call that a security as well. If you use your, Solana or Matic or, not Ethereum, but let's say Solana or Matic, 2 smaller, cryptocurrencies to purchase something online.

He wanted to call that, security as well. And Right. As a result, that sent a lot of developers who were trying to create these new smart contract apps out of the United States, to other parts of the world, Singapore, Japan, Korea, you name it, to start companies that otherwise would have been in the United States. I had 2 companies that actually left the US to do their development because they could just sell to crypto enthusiasts and and users in other countries and not worry about it here.

I feel like this is turning into digital currency for dummies where

it is.

And and, unfortunately, I'm the dummy. So we gotta take a quick break. We'll be right back. We we are back. So in in my mind and and this is perhaps, you know, rigid thinking to to a larger extent.

What what can we put in place if it's not, a securities regime that has regulation? What do you put in place that can protect people who wanna invest in this, but are not like, in the way that the government would put in FDIC protections if you had a certain amount of money in there? Are there protections that you think would be worthwhile?

Oh, yeah. For

sure. At what level would those, regulations become too onerous and start to stifle the creativity?

So, you know, I have this company called lazy.com. So all it is is a place for you to show your NFTs. So if you go to lazy.com/mcuben, you get to see the the NFTs that I own. I wanted to register it with the SEC to make sure they didn't come after me in the event I decided to raise money. When you go into and start filling out the forms, you find out immediately that it's apples and oranges, that it doesn't you're trying to fit, you know, something that, you know, the round into the square, and it and it just doesn't work.

And so all the crypto industry has asked for is to modify the, the forms and the regulations to be suitable to crypto. It's not that, you know, we don't wanna register. It's just like oil and and energy has got their own special set of forms with the SEC. Finance has got their own special set of forms. Crypto needs a special set of forms.

That's all anybody's asked for.

You you don't want somebody to start regulating it that doesn't understand it as a commodity. And this gets into the larger question that maybe ties together the 2 things that we're kinda talking about, which is your experience kind of in that political arena and also your experience within these sort of new, more higher tech financial industries, and that is with democracy being, at best an analog system, you know, sort of designed for the slow, temperance and and the idea of chewing on these, checks and balances and all these things. It is so outmatched by this new digital economy. And was there ever a thought I've I've always kind of, in my mind, dreamed about this kind of almost bureaucratic moonshot, a kind of Manhattan project to to help. And I imagine you saw this when you talk to small businesses.

Regulation is typically, the domain of larger companies. They're the ones that make regulations complicated. Poor people don't. Middle class people don't. Small businesses don't make it complicated.

It's people that have 2 floors of lawyers 4%. Bringing all these loopholes. Do do you see a pathway through to create a governmental, moonshot like that that that can clean out a lot of these regulations that are hurting the small businesses, but still protect them.

So that that's a deep, deep, deep question.

Or is that Doge? Is that is

that what

the Doge is?

That's a deep question. So regulatory capture is a real thing. The bigger companies can introduce regulations that make it harder for the smaller companies to compete. They can introduce friction that makes, you know, filling out forms and all these things very much more difficult to even get started.

And state and local that you pile on top of that. I mean, it's it it kind of, really rolls like a snowball down a hill.

Yeah. And that's where AI more than crypto look. To just to wrap up on the crypto side, there's this thing called DAO, d a o. Right? Distributed autonomous organization, I think is what it stands for.

Mhmm.

And within with DAOs, it's really easy to set it up so that any for anything to happen within that blockchain or within that organization with those smart contracts has to be voted on, and it's voted on by people who actually own the cryptocurrency, which could be well, it's not Doge, but there's other types of cryptos.

So this is crowds it's it's a a crowdsourced regulatory idea?

Yeah. I wouldn't call it crowdsourced, but it's a progressives' dream. We don't from each according to their ability to each, you know Right. It's just, you know, it's everybody gets an equal vote, and whatever the crowd whatever the the group decides, and it's up to the DAO to set up the principles of it, and what's voted on, and what, you know, is it a majority, a super majority, whatever it may be, and then you get to decide, and that goes into evolving that digital currency or the digital applications that are there. So that's on 1 side.

That those haven't really taken off. I thought really thought they would a lot more than they did, but they have not. Then there's using AI. And so there are things like NEPA, right, which go into, the environmental protection stuff, to try to find out that there's a little frog or whatever before something's built. Mhmm.

In my opinion, in the conversations I had with some of the Harris folks, is that's where AI really, really can apply, because there's a process designed for the people in NEPA who go through and determine what should be approved and what data is required and, how it's, you know, what friction should be added or what friction should be removed. Artificial intelligence is great for that. All the rules that the individuals on those councils and boards does make those determinations, you know, they have rules that they follow. They have guidebooks that they follow. They have, you know

It's onerous. Yeah.

Yeah. It's onerous. There's tons of bureaucracy, but tons of data there. You put that into artificial intelligence into a large language model, and you let you know, you use that to train the large language model. And then when a new project comes along, you set up agents, which then feed the questions and the answers and the answers to the responses, to that new organization, whatever it is they may be building.

But is that does that abdicate our autonomy in in because I was looking at it like common sense. Like, if you remember, in, Pennsylvania. Right? This was not very long ago. There was a huge fire on 95, and the highway collapsed.

Under the typical regulatory regimes, you're talking about 5 or 10 years of, incredibly expensive bureaucratic red tape that's going and and this, really important artery for, interstate commerce and all these other things would have been closed down. At some level through common sense, the governor just said, fuck it. We're we're just gonna build it, and and it was done in 10 days or something like that. And it really demonstrated how government could be more agile, and and do we need to rely on some large language model, or should we just look at things and go, oh, we need housing, and we're crushing our ability to create, allow the markets to create this or to do those things through these other regulations?

All the above. Right? Because there was the bridge in Baltimore. There was a bridge in Pittsburgh

Right.

Where the same things happened. They turned around quickly. The challenge is, who makes that decision? When it's obvious, it's easy. Mhmm.

When it's not so obvious, it's far more difficult. And so that's where the AI comes in in large language models because across the breadth, the how however many instances of evaluations that need to take place across the country, you don't want, you know, individuals having to make those decisions.

But I thought that's the whole point. I thought the whole point of people running for office is that they've got a vision for and and they earn our trust as opposed to AI. And this, again, may be more of the Luddite's view of not understanding of AI. I'm I'm nervous about abdicating that. At least with people, there is a certain regime of accountability that we can bring through.

I can't vote out a large language model.

No. This is the soiling green thing. Right? Because

Wait. What? We got to we're we're eating people now? It's the people. Oh, no.

Because it was the people that the politicians that made those decisions who got us where we are right now. Right. And so there's never, in my mind, a question that if you give somebody power, they're gonna take that power and want more. If you're using AI, you wouldn't use it for the final decision. You would use it for all the the administrivia that happens between the application being made and the point where a presentation is made to a board of some sort who would make the final decision.

You're not removing people. Yeah. So let's put it in sort of an athletic, analogous model. We're we're talking a little bit about analytics then. You it's really more about, here are the analytics.

Here are the different, metrics that we're going to plug into this, and now we're gonna hand it over to the GM or the the managers or whoever it is that's responsible for these things. And it it it's a tool to help them make more informed decisions.

Right. Because, you know, you're all using the same data and the same precedence.

Mhmm.

There's nothing that all of a sudden just presented itself. So if it's replicated over and over with the same data within that same realm, that's perfect application for AI, but you don't want to be completely dependent on AI because it's hard to know the genealogy of the decision, meaning what exactly went into the final determination that the AI spit out. Right? So then, that's where you have your board who says, okay, this is what the AI recommends. We have these additional comments to make or additional concerns, and then the board makes the final decision.

But you consolidate that review process from in what, in some cases, could be years, a decade to

I get it. You're you're talking about condensing a bureaucratic process through this new tool that allows you to make these decisions at a much more rapid pace

Right.

As opposed to just abdicating to let the computer goes, don't rebuild the bridge. And you're like, yes, master. No no bridge. No bridge.

Yeah. You you still want, you know, some human intervention. You need some common sense, and AIs can do a lot of things, but they're best with repetitive things. And they're best with taking vast volumes of data and information and applying those to processes. And so let the AI do what the AI can do, but leave the final decision to people who are Yeah.

You know, who understand the context.

Here's the $64,000 question then. As the AI condenses that, you're talking about a great deal of human legwork and and sweat equity that goes into these things. What happens to that labor? Is is the speed of that worth the cataclysm that you're going to have

Oh, yeah.

In in white collar? You know, in the way that, let's say, industrialization, you know, changed the economy over a 100 years. Globalization changed it over decades, but it had, as we saw, devastating effect for the manufacturing base. Does AI devastate No. White collar work but in a very condensed form?

So if your job is answering the question yes or no all the time, AI is going to have an impact.

Right.

If your job requires you to think, AI won't have much of an impact. Really? Yeah. So in this particular case, let's go back to the NEPA type example.

Right.

Somebody's got to make sure the model's getting all the information and that it's structured correctly, and there's It's all

data entry. We we all become data entry.

Just notes. It's not even just typing. Right? It takes intellectual capacity. So somebody who understands what the goal is, somebody who's been doing this for years has got to be able to input feedback on everything that the models collect and are trained on.

You don't just assume the model knows everything. You want somebody to to check, to to grade their responses, and make corrections. And so while that model is being analog is being developed and trained, there's a huge need for people to, contribute value. You know, the the better example is if you want an artificial intelligence that talks about Shakespeare and, you know, spits out things about Shakespeare, somebody's gotta teach it, you know, contribute the nuanced things that you're not gonna find just from reading their books.

Don't you think it's already got I always get the sense that the AI models have already sucked up whatever 15000 years of human existence we have, and they've already moved on. That I I feel like the AI models are like, what else you got, man? No. What else you got? Songs?

What do you got?

No. It's exact opposite right now. Here's the real problem. I'm glad you brought this up. Another great question, John Stewart.

Boom. Come on. End of year, baby. Let's do this.

Say it. Okay. So IP you you seen The New York Times and others sue different, creators of large language models like OpenAI, MET, etcetera, because they just automatically went out and spidered and in input, their text and their in intellectual property into their models. That intellectual property is still owned by the creator, and so you're not gonna find the models being able to just go out and get everything. Everything that was on the Internet up to, you know, this minute, whatever it is, that was openly available and, you know, stuff that's added that's openly available.

Yes.

Wait. AI cannot get past a paywall? Is that what I'm hearing?

A little bit. Yeah.

I'm hearing that that AI, it gets to a place to go, oh, I can't read this article.

Yeah. And I've been through my credit card.

Oh, I'm not a subscriber.

The AI is, oh, where's my credit card? No. But think it in the terms of medicine. You know? And so you're MD Anderson or you're Stanford Medical or, you know, pick all the different, you know, UPMC, and you have a doctor or a research that's really good in this specialty.

You're not

going to

just say it's a meta or OpenAI or Google, hey, you just take it for your medical models. You just go ahead and take it. You're gonna say, no. I'll do my own. I don't need you, and I'll I'll take my specialty.

Let's just say my specialty is oncology and cancer.

I'll

have all these experts, and I'm gonna create my own model. I'll go out and, you know, use an open source model that spidered everything on that's open and free on the Internet, but I'm gonna add all the expertise that I have and all the expertise that I create in the future so that it is specific to me, and I can charge for it or use it however I deem fit. And what's gonna end up happening is, within medicine, you know, some of the models will pay. You know, if you pay the Mayo Clinic enough money, they'll let you have that stuff. And others will wanna retain it as part of their brand.

Right. On a bigger picture, there are going to be millions of models. It's right now, we see it as open AI, we see it as Gemini, Meta, whatever it is, these big foundational models, but the reality is there's gonna be millions of them. John Stewart's gonna have a model

for you. I've got, like, 5 of them in the backyard right now.

So we're

gonna take a quick break. We'll be right back. We are back. Let's use the flip side of this. So you've you've got people looking, to to use AI models or analytics or to shorten the bureaucratic space between making decisions or to to, you know, increase productivity or efficiency.

You know, just recently, we saw the anger erupt in this country. This this young kid assassinates a a a health care executive. And underneath that, the big surprise is the level of anger, the level of sympathy for the kid, and the level of anger against these algorithms that are now being deployed not to make things more efficient, but to help them deny coverage or to not pay certain things. And that's the counterweight, is it not?

Well, yes and no. Right? I just did this big post on Blue Sky.

Right. M

Cuban on Blue Sky, if you wanna read it.

I I don't even know how to log on to it. I don't I know I'm supposed to It's easy. Migrate there. I have no idea how to get on it. Yeah.

It's actually a great platform. Just download that app, Blue Sky app.

Alright.

But in any event, the bigger question is, why are we putting insurance companies in that role? Why are you was asking

In the role of of denying? I thought that

Yes. Pre authorizations. Why would why would anybody hire an insurance company who tries to make money by reducing, the amount they pay out? That's their interest. Why would we ask them to do preauthorizations?

That's the whole business model. That's what we're trying to get out of. I I I completely agree.

Right. But the whole point is probably half the people who are con covered in this country, the ins the insurance companies are are involved, but they don't really act as insurance companies.

Well, they're adver they're adversarial.

Well, no. What I'm saying is, like, for there are 50,000,000, lives covered by self insured, organizations, from companies to, you know, unions, whatever it may be. And they use insurance companies for their network, you know, all the hospitals they put together and for their apps, but they also use them to do the pre authorizations. And my question to them has been, over the past 4 or 5 months, has been, why are you using insurance companies for pre authorizations when you are the you, CEO of that union or company, are, you know, basically the ones that make that decision whether or not you're willing to pay for it or not.

But there's so many different ways that that money is sucked out of that system. You're talking about

Oh, yeah.

You know, money out of your paycheck to pay a premium that has a deductible. So you're still paying this large

Let me just tell you how one's saying

our our It's it's it's truly insane.

Right. It was mind boggling to me. I was almost this many days old when I found this out.

Okay.

When you think about your deductible Mhmm. Your co pay, and your coinsurance. Right? What it is you have to pay up to before the real company kicks in, your co pay a specific amount to see a doctor, or your coinsurance, like on original Medicare where you have to pay 20% or some percentage of the total.

That's right.

You know do you know who accepts the default risk on all of that?

I would assume the patient.

No. The hospitals and the doctors take that credit risk, and they literally yes. It's insane.

But then why are patients going bankrupt when they can't?

So that's what happens. So you were turning hospitals and doctors into some subprime lenders without assets against them.

Oh, Jesus. Okay. I see I see where you're going.

You know, You're a hospital. When I talk to hospitals, a lot of them, they have default rates of 50 to 60% or more depending on where the hospital is located. Right. Now with hospital, half the deductibles, co pays, and coinsurance that they are supposed to be paid by the patient, they don't collect on it. So a couple things happen downstream from there.

1, they turn into, like, a a mortgage servicer where they try to collect it.

Mhmm.

You know? And it makes them look bad. They hate being put in that position Right. Because there's no upside. You know?

Maybe you collect some money, but on the downside, the patients hate you. The every the whole world hates you because of all the patient debts and medical debt and and, bankruptcies as a result. But when you can't collect them, what do you do to compensate for that lack of revenue? You jack up your fucking price.

Right.

Right? So now all of a sudden

So we're all subsidizing this system of, delinquency to some extent.

No. Nobody. It's just the hospitals accept that risk, and I guess you could say we subsidize it if when you cash pay a higher price at the hospital.

Well, that that's what I'm saying. If they're if they're jacking up their prices and either insurance pays it or or you pay it, that's subsidizing this much larger default rate in a system.

And but it gets worse.

Okay.

And so now these providers, the hospitals and doctors, they negotiate with the big insurance companies. And it's fascinating if you walk into a hospital or pay for an MRI as an example, and you say you don't mention your insurance. You just say, I want a cash price. They'll probably say it's 350 to $450 depending on where you live. That same hospital will negotiate with what they call the BUCA, the big insurance companies.

Mhmm. Right? For that same thing, they'll negotiate a price of $2,000.

What?

Yeah. So you would think that big insurance company negotiating with the hospital, and that insurance company covers millions of lives.

Why wouldn't they negotiate that, if there's a bulk thing, to $100? Why would it be higher?

Because the hospital needs the insurance company as a sales funnel to bring patients in so they can, you know, pay their bills, and the insurance company wants that price to be higher, particularly for things like the ACA because the ACA requires, for all the plans they cover, that, they spend up to 85%. So having This

how is this not collusion then? If if both sides needed to be higher, that's that's colluding on a certain price and beyond that.

Well, but it's by law the way the ACA works. So think about this, John. So somebody who gets an individual plan on the ACA, say, 1 of the the bronze plans, which is the least effective. Right?

Right.

And it has a $9,000 deductible. So this individual can't afford much in premiums, decides they want a 9,000 deductible. You know who's truly subsidizing that deductible? The fucking hospital. Wow.

And when you get your insurance, or anybody Right. Get the insurance from a big company, and they show you 5, 6, 7 different plans Mhmm. And 1 of them is a $1500 deductible, but you're 25, you know, and so you you take the $5,000 deductible. Who takes on that risk of the $1500 versus the 5,000? The doctors and the hospitals.

But you still pay the price on your credit score and on a bankruptcy. Like, you pay the price

Now there's a limit. Like, only if it's above 500. They changed some of the rules. Right. And for some of the the, lost money by the hospital, there's this thing called dish payments that the government will give the hospital to try to make up for it, but it doesn't.

But isn't the whole fucking system, Mark? Isn't it all, especially with the ACA, a bribe? Isn't it a governmental bribe to to give to hospitals and insurance companies to say, as a way of saying people with preexisting conditions have to be able to get themselves some coverage. The whole thing is is almost a $1,000,000,000,000 bribe. And when you look at the the levels of profits that are rolling through these insurance companies, clearly, we find ourselves in an unsustainable moment.

Clearly. Clearly. But it's worse than that because it's the government making the determination of which insurance plans that they approve for Medicare and Medicare Advantage.

Well, that's when they tried to privatize Medicare. I don't understand, you know, with, the satisfaction most people had with Medicare, now they've gone to privatizing that that, part b or whatever they they they call it, and that's starting to this let's back up for a second because this brings us to a very interesting point that I wanna ask you about. Alright. It seems to me that with all the checks and balances within the government, legislative, judicial, executive, all those different things, the 1 thing the founders didn't really add into the equation is corporate power. This idea that there has to be an entity that is large enough to, in some ways, be a counterweight to unfettered.

The system we've chosen for progress and money is incredibly efficient at creating wealth, but it has a lot of collateral damage.

Yeah. So here's here's the thing.

Yes.

The government can work okay if it's an efficient, transparent market.

Mhmm.

If it's not efficient and transparent, even though it's big and you would think it can negotiate well, it doesn't.

But it doesn't because the lobbyists and the money and the billionaires that are putting their money, to lobby against the government.

No. Sure. Government just isn't smart enough sometimes to make the obvious decision. We want you we're only gonna do business with you, pharmacy benefit manager, if you publish us exact prices, and we're not gonna allow you to use rebates if you wanna use business do business with us because we'll just go to the pass through PBMs.

Right.

Government has choices. They just don't choose to make the obvious and best choice.

And and you you wouldn't you wouldn't say that big money, influencing politicians is the largest driver of those bad decisions?

No. It could be for sure.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. That's what it seems like.

There's no in there's nobody with clean hands in any of this.

Right.

Everybody has the role. So then the question, if Bernie was on here again, he'd be like, well, single payer, Medicare for all. That's where we're going.

That that that's that's what he would suggest, and I I I tend to agree with him, or at least a governmental system for all that allows for private insurance outside of it.

The question is, how do you get there? Right? Right. How do you get there, and who are the participants that are making it work? And so

AI with a team of experts.

AI would be better than the people we are negotiating right now Right. Because every because we are in this form of government with this republic that we have, and there's so many influences and so many, you know, constituencies that have to be, you know, appeased, you're not gonna get an optimal system.

Right.

And so, the only way to get through that is to educate the people who have an influence. So, you know, for instance, I'm going out there and talking to CEOs, and I'm saying, Look, you self insure, and you're hiring this insurance company to do pre authorizations that only make your life more miserable because your employees are upset, HR is upset, when at the end of the day, you're paying for it anyways. So But

that's not how it's incentivized. Like, even that guy you know, the big thing about that guy that was Gilgamesh, he turned that company a giant profit by putting in those algorithms that were Yeah.

Denying what him to do that is the question. The question he got that opportunity to do it, and he's grabbing all the money he can, but Thoo hired him to do the preauthorization process. That's the question people aren't asking, and that needs to be answered.

When you talk to like, you've talked to, Vivek Ramaswami. He's he's on the Doge board, and Elon's doing the Doge board. What do you think their mindset is about is their mindset to go into government and say, look. We need government to make better decisions. I think for a long time, people have felt that that feeling that we're not getting value for the money and that there's inefficiencies there.

I think we look at it as a system that's been co opted and corrupted. So what is the mindset going in there? Is it a Silicon Valley efficiency model? Because government does have this responsibility in a way that business never would for people's well-being.

Yeah. It's to be determined. There's a couple elements there. Number 1 is the deficit. You know?

And and, Elon and others on both sides have rightfully said, it's a threat. Right? It's a problem.

Even with interest rates coming down, you think it's still

See, that that's exactly where I was going because even if interest rates come down a little bit interest rates are the majority of the ongoing annual expense. Mhmm. And interest rates will come down some, but they're not gonna come all the way down because that will inflate the economy again and create other issues and create more inflation. And Donald Trump, I don't think, is going to want to see that during his term, which is why Elon, at 1 point on on Twitter, someone said, you know, we could see a collapse in the 1st 2 years. And, Elon said, most likely or something to that effect.

A collapse of what?

Of the economy. Of the economy. Because if the economy collapses like we saw during COVID, what happened to interest rates? Interest rates collapsed as well.

Sure. I mean, no no economic activity, you know, then everyone's gonna want that. But in 2008, the government collapsed the interest rates so that the people at the top could could get that free money.

Whatever it is whatever it is, that's the only way you're gonna have a dramatic impact on the debt.

Well, let's look at it this way. Let's flip it to, you know, the there's a lot of people, and and it's, you know, this this modern monetary, policy

M and T. Yeah.

Where they they talk about that the deficit doesn't matter because and and I tend to be sympathetic to this. You can print money, and why are we selling this debt to other people anyway? Why don't we buy it ourselves? I mean, it's all kind of a shell game to begin with. Why not make it easier on ourselves to pay that down through the minting?

Just blame more money, but now all of a sudden, more money is in the economy, and the economy reinflates. And, you know, it you you start then having to pay

You think MMT does not you're not a proponent of that?

No. I I actually, I I read the books, and, you know, I talked to the people behind it. Right. When interest rates were 0 or near 0, it made a 100% sense. When interest rates skyrocketed to where they are now, it doesn't make sense because even if you just printed all that money the government can't just print money.

They have to borrow money to you know, even in a fractionalized environment, there has to be some reason to do it. It's not like there's a printing press that just goes brr brr brr brr.

I'm gonna blow your mind here. We've created this new market of of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin and all these other things that kind of has, in some respects, out of nothing, made something. What if that was utilized to bring down those more, troublesome aspects of deficits? Because we do need government to spend to help stimulate certain things, to, stabilize people, to do things that have real value in people's lives.

Sure. But there's still you know, debits and credits still have to balance. And I'm not I'm not the economist who can give you detailed analysis of all this stuff.

They by the way, they can't either. They just do it in a really, like, smug shitty way, but

I just looked at it just, you know, as a business guy, and when if we were just you still gotta balance things. Right? And so we in order to print that money, we gotta borrow it from someone, even if it's ourselves, and that inflates the balance sheet, and that creates other problems with inflation.

Right. Right.

Because, think of it this way, John. Look at all Zimbabwe and all these other third world countries that tried to do the exact same thing.

But that's different. They were coming out of a place from, very little stability. I mean, I think No. It's not even part What what under what undergirds our financial system is the stability of our political system. And if you start to undermine that stability, I think it's by by paying that off, you continue to reinforce the infrastructure and stability of your system, which creates, in and of itself.

I mean, so much of this is perception. And Zimbabwe is in a like, look what's happening in Argentina right now. Okay. So Malay goes in there, and he's got that more, libertarian. He's got, you know, 4 dogs named after Hayek and whoever other economists are are going that.

He goes and he dives into an austerity plan.

Program. Yep.

He they plunge their their inflation rate, but drives them into a recession and creates a political crisis.

And more poverty, etcetera. Right? And he'd probably argue the opposite, but still

I understand.

But you if you're gonna print a lot of money, you are going to have a lot of inflation. And that you know, again, I'm not the economist, but I don't see that as being a significant positive. I think, you know, if you have 26, 30, 50 percent inflation, your stability goes out the door.

Even if you did a 1 time reset, like, you you looked at it, like, this is not going to be an an ongoing thing. But, you know, as Krugman would say, I've got a $1,000,000,000,000 coin. And it turns out, I'll just flip that thing over there, and we're we've cleaned it out a little bit, and we're gonna give ourselves a little bit more of a fresh start.

I don't think that works, but, again Right. Maybe there's an angle there where that I don't

know. And you won't you know, because I know you love to spend your time thinking about this, and it's always and I I thank you so much. We probably went off the rails on crypto, but I I've learned an awful lot. You still don't consider yourself, though, a viable political player No.

In No.

Right. And having that experience, do you think being on the trail for the Harris campaign really dissuaded you of that ever as a possibility.

No. I loved it. Right? It wasn't that. It's my family.

I mean, look at all the shit they're doing to that they did to shady Vance. I don't want my kids hearing me about me fucking a couch, you know, or, you know, when I was

doing it. That's really a you issue, though, more than anything.

It was a nice couch. I took it to dinner. You know?

It was nice. But listen, man. Do you really think that as a viable political candidate, you would take more shit than you take today? I mean, there's no question the amount of shit you take today. Just getting involved with the Harris campaign was extraordinary.

I mean, they went after you like crazy as as everybody. Look. I I take it just from being on fucking basic cable. Like, it's extraordinary, the reach of that now.

Yeah. I mean but it was mostly on Twitter. I'm fine with that. But it's if they go after my kids and my family and dealing with that my kids are 15, 18, and 21 now.

Right.

Right. More importantly than that, I wanna be around them. That's the key reason why I sold a big chunk of the Mavs, why I got out of Shark Tank. Shark Tank films, June September. My kids get out of school in June,

go back

to September. I miss birthdays. I mean, that's fucked up, and it it bothered me to no end. And, you know, like like our conversations, I get into this stuff. I always wanna you know, going even back to Elon and Vivek, there's a difference between just deficit reduction, which seems to be their their focus, and problem solving.

In between, there is efficiency. Right? You always wanna be more efficient with whatever tools, you know, people or AI, whatever it takes, you wanna be more efficient. But the question becomes, how do you solve problems, and what problems are you start trying to solve? Because at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to give our taxpayer money to the government for to solve problems that we need solved.

But that's the kind of thinking, though, that's so crucial because there's 2 sides of the coin. 1 is profligate spending from the government that doesn't consider you know, I had a conversation with the deputy secretary of defense where we were talking about the $850,000,000,000 budget, and you would have thought, like, I asked what underwear she was wearing. Like, her response to being questioned about the lack of, passing an audit on $850,000,000,000

Multiple times. It would Multiple times.

Just, you know, went like, how dare you? Do you even know what an audit is? And I'm like, I thought I did, but maybe I don't. But the arrogance of it was wild. So the idea of connecting spending to value but the flip side of that is the idea of cutting spending with no discernment for value either.

It's 1 thing to say, I'm getting rid of the Department of Education. It's another thing to say, here are the aspects of the Department of Education that are viable. Here's the aspects that are wasteful. Hopefully, do you think it will be that considered a process, or will it be just a giant reaper that goes through?

Here's what I think happens, and this is just my guess. I think they go in trying to have a big PR impact. Right? We're cutting this, and we're cutting that. And they'll find the things that have always been, about have always had notoriety.

You know, the $1200 toilet type things, you know, the $800,000, you know, mice experiment, whatever it may be. And we'll chop those. And then from there, they'll have to actually think. You know? They'll have to actually dig in, and they'll have to find ways to measure what they're evaluating.

And that's gonna be the challenge.

Efficacy. Yeah.

Yeah. Because how could you determine if it's efficient or not or if you've improved efficiency unless you measure and you come up with benchmarks that everybody agrees on? Because they're gonna be taking money away from republican districts as well.

Right. Or or maybe they won't. I mean, maybe this will be another 1 of those, like, how how can we fuck New York? How can we

Well, yeah. But they can come to midterms. It's a whole different conversation. Right. And so and they I think they understand that they've only got 2 years to do something.

Absolutely. And it's already listen. It's a it's as tight a squeeze in the house of representatives as you could ever imagine. I think they've got a little breathing room in the senate, but that's designed in such an undemocratic way that, it it it can present a difficulty to begin with. But Mark Cuban, my god.

I'm gonna I know you're a busy man. I'm gonna let you go. Next time you're in town, you gotta come and let me

Yeah.

Get some FaceTime at a pizza joint, learn more about all this crypto and everything else. I appreciate it so much. You're our end of year go to, and I can't thank you enough. As always, really wonderful to talk to you.

Thanks for having me on, John. I love it. I love our conversations.

Alright, man. Good to see you, brother.

You too.

Alright. Take care. Talk to you later. Alright. Final final pod conversation of the year.

We are joined, of course, by, our great producer, Lauren Walker, Britney Mametevic, and Jillian Spear. What a what a good first date. Not even a first date. That was that might have been a 3rd date with me and Cuban. I think did we consummate?

Every first date, somebody brings up crypto. That's that's the world's really.

It's definitely on mine with all the fun news pros.

Are you saying that that that date was a cliche, Dillian? Is that No.

It's just a it was a very modern date,

I would say. I guess I guess I'm looking for a man in finance.

Mhmm. And boy did you find him.

Boy did and and and boy did I find him. Do you understand any of that, by the way? Like, I I hated to have him walk me through it. Like, I'm a crypto kindergartner, but it was helpful for me to sort of understand what the the the idea of it is, and it's it really does seem to be just an agreed upon. The idea that it's been agreed upon.

We've agreed upon that this has value.

Mhmm.

We've agreed upon a system in which it will be, traded.

Right.

And and we're gonna keep the innovation going. Are you guys in the crypto? Are you No. Are you finance pros?

It's gonna be a no.

Beanie Babies. Does that count?

See, how is it not Beanie Babies is why

I'm with you, John, where to me it still seems like a solution in search of a problem. And what Mark was saying about, you know, you're in a foreign country and somebody needs to send you money. It's like bank transfer me. I'll go to an ATM. I have a credit card.

Like Right. I don't know what sums of money we're talking about. I don't know if this is like a this is like a Liam Neeson and Taken situation, but I I just Listen. I can't find a use for it.

Jillian, you'd you'd you're dead on right, and I swear to you. And thank god I didn't go there, but I was like, you mean like Western Union? Like, you you go there in a telegram and you tell a friend, telegraph me a cashier's check for $150. But it really is, 1 of those things where at its heart and I understand that it's popular, but you really are like it's kind of a mass illusion. And then when he starts talking about your, you know, gold, then you're like, oh, the whole fucking system's a mass illusion.

And maybe it's nice that they're kind of creating a new 1. And maybe that, you know, supplants it or just injects more wealth, into what can only be considered the bro podcast world. Yes. Maybe that's

Business is booming. Exactly.

What he was saying about AI really stood out to me.

Uh-huh.

The fact that no 1 in the white collar world is going to be affected by

Yeah. I don't

AI, but it's just not true, and it's already happening. And, I was just thinking back to back at the problem. We had talked to someone who, works at a helpline for people with eating disorders, and her group tried to unionize because they'd been overworked and they got replaced by AI.

At a helpline? Mhmm.

And when they called in, the AI that the place had started using was not working properly and within a few interactions was suggesting calorie counting. And that was years ago.

So Shit.

You you understand how quickly this all develops.

Yeah.

I know friends who have lost jobs.

You know, it's already happening. It's so crazy. I feel like so many of these tech people, they'll point to these historical examples of technology coming along and people losing their jobs and how they were then redistributed into, like, other parts of the economy. And it's like, yeah, I get that. But you're also the same people arguing that this is the most this is the biggest technological innovation since fire.

So you don't get to have it both ways where you're like, this is the biggest thing since fire, but also ATMs, they didn't ruin bank tellers.

Do they fire when people fire came out, people were like, I'm gonna lose my heating

job. I

I remember, I'm the guy who walks around and rubs everybody's hands. Now fire's gonna fuck it all up for me.

And those people never recovered, John.

Well, even that, like, the dystopian aspect of, like, oh, yeah. No. You gotta plug into AI whether or not to fix the road, and you're like, there's an accountability in government that well, it'll be a tool to help. But, yeah, you're right. It's I I think they haven't quite figured it out, and there's I think when you are on that cutting edge of innovation, there is an exuberance, irrational and otherwise, that comes along with it.

And it's hard not to get swept up in that enthusiasm. I'm assuming that that's what, you know, angel investor meetings look like. But at some level, stepping back and going like, hey. Just just so we're clear here, you're saying that the computer controls the entire hospital and decides, like, what oxygen to turn on and turn off through analytics? Because it is that algorithm is what was denying everybody insurance.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Mhmm.

So crazy. You want some listener questions?

Let's hit them, man. This is end of year. Come at me, bro. Whatever whatever they got, man. I'm handling it.

We're we're getting out of here. We'll have a few weeks to recover. Let's fucking do this.

Alright.

Alright.

This one's a come at me, bro. Yeah. John, it seems like you're projecting a little bit. What do you think you did wrong this year?

Oh, wow. That you mean they're asking for self reflection?

Perhaps.

Well, you guys know this. I I always you know, I I get annoyed at myself for being, like, a little high horsey, and and, you know, you get a little of the sanctimony in there. So, I try to try to relax sometimes on the certainty of my opinions. You know? And I and I and I can you know?

And the contrarian thing, I could like, I really do feel like if you threw me in a room, with somebody who wanted to argue AI was gonna destroy us all, I'd I'd be the guy who'd be like, it will save us. And then you throw me in a room with a guy who's like, it'll save us, and I'll be like, it will destroy us. Like, that's I I think I have a fucking fiddler on the roof problem, which is that on the 1 hand, but on the other hand so, yeah, I've I've done I've done a lot wrong this year, but I've had an awful lot of fun doing it. So

That's all that matters.

Alright. What else what else we got? Anything?

Other than our lovely guest that we've just had on, who's your favorite billionaire and why?

Oh, wow. Oh. A favorite billionaire. You know, I'm try I I wonder if I know more than 1. Like, I've I've talked to him.

I've talked to Elon. I don't know. I'm trying to think if there's another billionaire. I probably do know them. I just don't know you know who I would say?

Seinfeld. He's actually pretty close to probably being a billionaire and funny as shit. He might be the funniest billionaire.

Okay.

Yeah. And he does he generally doesn't try and chip us, or he doesn't try and, like, do other billionaire shit to us. Yeah. So I I I give him credit on that. You know, he could.

Well, Steve Cohen just did something really nice for you.

Oh, yes.

And he's listening, waiting for you.

That is my favorite billionaire. I didn't even think of that. He he got me Juan So to for for my birthday.

Yeah. Wealth wealth redistribution

too. I don't really know. I've met him a couple of times. I met him once. We did a, boy, this ties together, the whole thing.

We did a a charity dinner at, it was stand up for heroes, and they bid on different things. And 1 of the things was you could bid on a a dinner with, myself and, Jim Gaffigan and Seinfeld and Louis CK pre Oh. Thing. So Steve Cohen bid on it. And normally, when people bid on something like that, they never fucking they never, like it's just a way for them to just give the money.

Yeah.

Cohen was like, you're coming to. So he he made us go. And I remember we went, and it ended up, for obvious reasons, being Steve, Seinfeld, Gaffigan, and me. Oh. And, I remember, making the joke, to to Jerry saying, jeez.

I I can't believe the lengths that Louie went to to get out of this dinner. But that's yeah. That was that was my experience there. Yeah. Good to have a billionaire, owner of a team you like.

Well, that actually ties into this next question.

Alright. Let's bring it.

How many world series do the Mets have to win to consider Juan So to deal a good investment?

Any. If you can just give us 5 years of good baseball, you don't understand. The Mets are not this isn't the Yankees of, like, a tradition of 26 championships, and every year we're in the playoffs. Like, in we come out we suck, and then every now and again, come out of nowhere. Like, suck, suck, suck championship in 69.

Got to the World Series, I think, in 73, but, did make it and weren't very good that year. Had to a miraculous cover. 86, suck, suck, suck, suck. Then all of a sudden, 84, 85, 86, they were good, but never got back there again. We're good through, like, a little bit of the nineties, got to the World Series again in 2000.

We're not a history of, like, steady accomplishment.

Mhmm.

So if this dude just comes in here and raises the baseline level of our team to non I used to take the kids to the last game of the season every year, at at, CityPL because you had the run of the place.

That's what I'm gonna miss. I'm gonna miss cheap baseball tickets in New York.

Do you think the the do you think he'll raise the the the prices?

I just think more people will go. Like, I could go on StubHub and get, like, like, $15, not bad seats.

Yeah. Really? That's a really good deal.

I always wait till the last minute to buy tickets to the Mets games because people people have gotten depressed at a certain point.

And that they're just giving them away. They'll pay you Yeah. To go there.

Alright. What's the better holiday? Christmas or Hanukkah?

Oh, that's just not even we're not even in the same ballpark. That's that's like when Tracy you know, when I got married and when we had kids, we're like, what are we gonna do? She's like, oh, we're gonna celebrate all the holidays. But she knew how like, I I I was about to get swamped. I was literally saying to the kids like, alright, everybody.

Who wants to light a candle? You know? And She's just like, look at all the presents under the tree. And, well, you know, when when there's little kids around, like, when my kids were little, like Maggie with Elf on a Shelf, I will forever be grateful. We once got 1, and we got a stewardess on a plane to we had brought Maggie's elf on a shelf.

We were traveling somewhere, and the stewardess came out of the cockpit going, does anyone know who this is? Hey.

And it's

all picture of Maggie's face. She's just going Oh. Like, she the the magic of it Yeah. Can't I mean

Pretty special. I thought she'd

be like, how did that narc find me here? Yeah.

You know, at 6, she was not dark. She did not she didn't have a stash, so there was no but that's that's that's a fine point. But you guys, I hope you have a great holiday. But let me just say, boy, the work that you guys have done, and and I hope that the listeners understand, that I have the part. Like, I I stand on the shoulders of real workers.

Like, you guys put together such phenomenal work this year and allowed me to just really you know what's the best part of it, I think? Because you all are so, diligent and thorough and curious, it it allows me to have that backing that I can just be present in the conversations, which is the best gift for somebody who's interviewing somebody is to feel like, the work that's been done for you is so, thorough and and interesting that you can just then plop it out and and let the conversation and let the conversation flow. So thank you guys Thank you, John. So much. Yeah.

And enjoy your holiday. Britney, what are the socials?

Twitter, we, weekly show pod. Instagram threads and TikTok, we are weekly show podcast. Drumroll, please. We are on Blue Sky Weekly Show podcast.

That's what, Cuban was talking about, the blue sky there.

Exactly. We're on it. And then you can like and subscribe our YouTube channel, the weekly show with John Stewart.

Boom. Alright, kids. Lead producer Lauren Walker, producer Britney Mamedevic, video editor and engineer Rob Vitola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce. And to the 2 of them, top fucking shelf. You guys have been crushing it all year, and, Rob, congrats on the the baby's first, holiday.

Enjoy that. Researcher and associate producer, Jillian Spear. And as always, our executive producers, Chris McShane, Katie Gray, that is, all for the weekly show pod 2024. We will see you guys, on the flip side on 2025, and, thanks again for everything. Bye.

The weekly show with Jon Stewart is a Comedy Central podcast that's produced by Paramount Audio and Bust Boy Productions.

Paramount podcasts.