LA Fires, Trump Trades, TikTok, and Legacy Media’s Fate — ft. Andrew Ross Sorkin | Prof G Markets

And then a friend of mine said, oh, we're having dinner in Palm Beach. And then I ran into another guy. I'm one name-dropped I'm dying to because they're both really cool, famous people. Please do. I can't do it. I've been doing too much for it lately. Elon Musk. Got it. Okay. Yeah. And then I went down to Miami. and Saturday night, I'm like, oh my God, this alcohol thing. I forgot how great this alcohol thing is. And I went out with my friend Pablo Doritos and we went to this great restaurant called Sparrow Italia, which actually has a London sister, which I didn't know about. I had a great time there. And then I went to Houston yesterday for a hot minute. Not as much fun, not as much fun. And I was there for a total of like 90 minutes. And I made this, I spoke in front of this great organization that brings together event planners. And you can imagine when event planners are at an event, they're so cheery and so nice and so mutually supportive. And I was their keynote. And I got up and the woman came out at the end and asked me a question. And I broke into my song about young men and mentoring. And I immediately got, you know, I was jet lagged and upset and hung over. And I go, Michael Jackson and the Catholic Church have fucked it up for all of

us and men want to be involved in young men's lives and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with them and she was sort of like okay that's sort of and then unfortunate programming note immediately following me was the houston boys latino choir and i'm like did i just talk about pedophilia before like nine eight-year-olds rolled out here to sing and it was so i'm literally like That was poor programming on that part. No, no. You don't follow Scott Galloway with a choir. Yeah, and I'm sitting back in the green room with my head in my hands and they're supposed to have this like VIP guy. gathering for me where I sign books, I'm like, no one's going to come to my VIP gathering.

Anyway, so let's get to work and make some money here. Get on with the news, Ed. Now is the time to buy. I hope you have plenty of the well at all. Prediction market Kalshi has named Donald Trump Jr. as its new advisor. The company said Trump Jr. will play a key role in expanding its reach and building strategic partnerships. Tipping in America has hit a six-year low, with the average tip at full-service restaurants falling to 19.3%. Meanwhile, only 38% of consumers reported tipping restaurants 20% or more, and that's down from 56% of consumers in 2021. And finally, the wildfires in Los Angeles could become the most expensive in U.S. history, with total economic losses estimated to reach up to $275 billion.

Analysts have estimated that insured losses from the fire could exceed $30 billion. Scott, your thoughts, starting with Kalshi, the prediction market, hiring Don Jr. to the board. Well, I mean, he's a very thoughtful, experienced business person who brings a lot of gravitas and insight to platforms and technology companies. So I just think this is a great—look, this is more kleptocracy. and people would throw back in my face, well, okay, now do Hunter Biden. Yeah, I don't think it's, like, it's not that unusual. It's not that big a story. Obviously, Don has, Don Jr., through no fault of his own, has very strong political connections.

It's pure nepotism, but we live in a world of nepotism. You know, Donald Trump Jr. going on the board of Kelsey, who gives a fuck? I don't, you know, put a jacket on and go to Greenland. I don't, I don't care. I think what I found strange was, I mean, you made the comparison to Hunter Biden, which I think is the correct one. But I find it strange that you're framing it as like a defense of Don Jr. When in reality, I mean, these guys have been criticizing Hunter Biden for years about the time when he was an advisor to this energy company in Ukraine. And I've always thought that criticism was completely valid.

We shouldn't be having the children of elected officials selling access to their parents. Well, here we are a week before Inauguration Day. That's exactly what Don Jr. is doing. So I think the comparison to Don Jr. and Hunter Biden is the correct one. He is the new Hunter. But that's not a defense of Don Jr. I mean, these guys shouldn't be doing this in the first place. But at the same time, credit to Kalshi in my view, because as I've said over and over, if you can buy access to this administration, it is your fiduciary duty to do that. Because as you've said, this economy is turning into a kleptocracy.

And I think CEOs need to get wise on that and figure out how to capitalize on that if they want to create shareholder value. Well, look at this. Unusual Machines, a drone parts manufacturer, and PSQ Holdings, an anti-woke e-commerce platform, popped more than 200 percent, tripled, after adding Donald Trump Jr. to their boards post-election. I mean, shares of Liberty Energy surged 12 percent the week after Trump named its CEO, Chris Wright, as his energy secretary. Tesla surged over 60 percent between the election and the end of 2024. I mean, and it's a race to the bottom. What are you going to see?

You're going to see Democrats and other people say, fuck it. I'm going to put my family members on boards under the auspices of – and they can buy stocks. And by the way, our elected representatives, Speaker Pelosi, can still buy stocks because the punishment is almost nonexistent. If you could make tens of millions of dollars investing in a defense contractor the day before it's publicly announced that they're about to get an enormous contract to build multibillion-dollar nuclear-class submarines, tell your husband to go buy it and he says, well, isn't that illegal? Yeah, but we're not – we're not – so what?

We'll be out of here. We'll be out of here by the time it's illegal and we'll have to pay. We'll get slapped on the risk and nobody cares. The guys at the SEC are our friends anyway. And nobody cares because – and Pam, the attorney general, is not going to go after any Republican. And nobody cares because everybody instead is looking at the real, you know, all-caps kleptocracy on Pennsylvania Avenue. So this is a downward spiral where we all – no one wants to disarm unilaterally. No one wants to not engage in tax avoidance to be a good guy or good gal. They're like, well, everyone else is doing it.

I'm going to do it. Let's go to this tipping story where tipping is declining. And Lois, it's been six years in America. I find this so interesting because the whole point of all of these digital tipping platforms that you see at the coffee shop, you know, those tablets where it gives you all of your options, the whole pitch with those technologies was that it was going to make tipping easier. It was going to make it frictionless, seamless, etc. theory, that should have increased tipping. But it's so fascinating that like many other technologies, it's actually having the opposite effect. Instead, because everywhere we go, we get this prompt to tip, it's made people resentful of tipping. And now instead of feeling that you don't want to thank your server, it feels like you're just paying this tax.

And so in response to all of that negative sentiment around tipping, it looks like tipping is actually now decreasing. So what is your reaction to this decline in tipping and perhaps tipping culture is ending in America? It's really interesting. And I can't figure out if it's an indicator on the economy where people just don't feel as generous because they're having to tighten their belts. Sure, that's part of it. Or as you said, it's a cultural or it's pushed back on the zeitgeist. I was at Heckfield Place, which I love, and I spent time there with my dogs and my boys. In my bill, I stayed there for the better part of a week. My bill was 5,500 pounds, which is a lot of money. And I saw this 550-pound charge that said service charge. And I said, what's a service charge? And they said, well, it's a gratuity for the staff. And they said, but it's optional. And I'm like, well, it's not optional if you didn't point it out. I have to ask about it. It's uncomfortable for me to say to you, to ask you what it is. And they said, the only problem would take it off. And I'm like, I'm a big boy. I know how to tip people. I'm not afraid to tip people. And as a matter of fact, because I grew up in services jobs, ranging from

box boy to waiter to bartender to parking cars, I love to tip. It's fun. It makes me feel strong. I'm an outstanding tipper. The moment I see service charged included, that's it. I'm done. I don't, nothing more. Because my attitude is, well, if you have decided the service was excellent, and it used to be the general rule is 15%, so 20% was for good slash great service. I did not know that. When did it change? When I was a kid, the general math you did was 15%. Wow. And in Europe, you remember. In Europe, it's like 10. Yep, they didn't tip it. Or nothing, yeah. In Europe, when I was your age, the general consent, if you had a restaurant, you'd leave like some change.

You wouldn't tip 10%. No way. You'd leave a few shillings or quid or whatever the fuck you guys call your monkey money. I don't think anyone was giving shillings back then. It happens. What do they call it? Unfortunately, you'd like to think, and there's probably some truth to this, it's increased wages at the low end. And at the low end, you have seen a dramatic increase in wages post-COVID. But not because anyone's more ethical about it, but because people have decided, I have had it with the general public. And if you want me to work at Panera, you better pay me 20 bucks an hour, not 12, right?

People have had it. If I got to wear a mask to work and be one of the few people that actually has to get my ass out of bed and get into work, they've had to pay. And this is a wonderful thing. They have to pay more money. But what I worry about, and I'm wondering if there's any data on this, it's a transfer of wealth mostly to the host institution that is now paying people less because they say you're making more in tips, and so they're paying them less. So I don't— Oh, definitely. Let's stop calling it tip. Let's just say it's a charge, and you have no choice. It's not a tip. Right. And I do find it obnoxious when I'm getting a coffee and they just flip it around and then stare at you.

And it's like, you know, it's like 20%, 30% are herpes. You pick. I mean, it's like, okay, what am I supposed to do here? But that's not the barista's fault. That's Square's fault for making those the default options or the restaurant's fault. 100%. And now we have to take it out on the baristas. And, you know, you look at that look on their face and you assume it's them who's imposing this tax on you. It's not them. Well, here, and this is my latest pet peeve, tipping is now even offered as an option on GoFundMe on top of transaction fees. The transaction automatically defaults to a 14% tip for any donation under $200.

And I've been looking at, again, I'm never one to not virtue signal. I'm doing a bunch of GoFundMes for people in Los Angeles. it is so they take such extraordinary fees 14 default tip is what gofundme is charging it so in in other words this is like a huge business opportunity and let's let's use this as a way to segue into the la fires headline this is like a huge business for them but wait real quick let's change let's let's let's just do some branding here instead of gofundme i want to say oh i'm doing a go fuck yourself good people at gofundme let's wrap ourselves in a virtue blanket as we charge people to get money to people suffering from the fires and call it a tip i just can't believe that who are we tipping tips are for servers not for software engineers who exactly are we tipping yeah exactly that's all i have to say on the gofundme point but what is your reaction to just all of the amounting damages that are piling up in la right

anyways what are your thoughts the thing i've been obsessing over maybe wrongly but i've just been thinking about a lot is this dei conversation that this has created elon saying that this is you know all a result of dei programs he said dei means people die people calling the mayor of la a diversity hire basically this big conversation that the reason this has all happened and the reason it was not managed as it should have been managed is that we have all these dei policies and it's making California terrible.

You know, there's such a simple explanation for why this has all happened. And the answer is climate change. 2024 was the hottest year in recorded history. The next hottest year in history was 2023. So the earth is rapidly overheating. It's resulting in droughts, mass heat waves, and yes, wildfires. And this isn't like a question of correlation. This is pure causation. This has been empirically proven to be a catalyst of wildfires. And that is why we've seen the number of wildfires in the U.S. double in the past 40 years. So I think this is an important moment for America because we have a choice again.

Do we want to subscribe to this cultic religion? anti-DEI, which has totally devolved into groupthink? You know, it's the same groupthink that the entire movement was supposed to dismantle in the first place. Or do we want to actually do the research and figure out what the problems in our society actually are? And in this case, it's very, very simple. If you do the research, you will come to a conclusion quite swiftly, this was a direct result of the Earth getting too hot. Well, just as the pendulum on a clock, you can never visually spot it at the bottom, at the middle. America has become unable to spot nuance and have any middle ground.

But when you immediately leap to bigotry and hate field invective around a tragedy and you use it as a means of separating people. Or if you use it as a means to just completely not address the elephant in the room, which is the fact that climate change is causing mass wildfires around the world. I mean, the fact that the conversation has not been about climate change is crazy, because this is like, what worst situation do we need to be thrown into our faces to basically tell us, OK, we should probably start to take this thing seriously? What you're doing is a bit of the same, but it's Diet Coke. It's not as mendacious.

And that is you're leaping to an assumption. I think the thesis that climate change played a role here is a fair thesis. But the honest answer is we don't know yet. No, we know. It's possible that this might have happened without climate change. Now, having said that, nine out of 10 superfires in California in the last century have taken place in the last 10 years. Something is going on. But what I would argue is in the middle of a crisis, it's not helpful to go there, nor is it helpful to go to bigotry under DEI. Where should we go? Where is this conversation, in your view, supposed to be going. All eyes, all efforts, all hands on deck should be to the following.

How do we save lives and property? And what people don't want to acknowledge about this crisis or isn't getting enough news is that the job of the government and of the community is to save lives and property in that order. And while 13,000 houses have been destroyed and there'll be massive economic loss and there's a reckoning, a time to look at it, if the government and the community's responsibility is to protect lives. They've done an A-plus fucking job here. And that doesn't get... any recognition. So my thinking around this stuff is I've tried not to go on social as I do a lot and assign Blaine and use it as a means of cementing, sanctifying, validating my political beliefs. I think climate change is real. But to be focused on, all right, what can we do to be as supportive as possible, get people out of harm's way, try and reduce these fires, bring attention to the incredible aerial firefighters.

And by the way, I'm announcing our next trip and event, our next live whatever is going to be in Los Angeles. We are going to LA. Me and Scott are buying a house in Pacific Palisades and we're going to live together. We're in Pacific Palisades. We'll be right back after the break for our conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin. And if you're enjoying the show so far, hit follow and leave us a review on Prof G Markets wherever you get your podcasts. to make informed decisions. AlphaSpace by Yahoo Finance utilizes a Yahoo Scout powered assistant to build a personalized view around exactly what you want to analyze, then syncs it with your portfolio for real-time tracking. You can compare multiple tickers, explore everything from candlesticks and line charts to fundamental data and layer in indicators like moving averages, Bollinger Bands, RSI, MACD, and more. So I'm in that space in between what I'd call your standard retail investor and a hedge fund manager. I think a lot about stocks, I spend a lot of time managing my money.

I advise hedge funds. This suits me perfectly. I want something more robust, better charting, that's AI-enabled, that I can ask questions, that I can create baskets of stocks to track, and it has the same intuitive visual feel that I really like from Yahoo. You can explore Alphaspace with 50% off your first year of Yahoo Finance Gold at yahoofinance.com slash prop g. That's yahoofinance.com slash prop g. Billed is $239.70 for the first year, then $479.40 thereafter. For new subscribers in the U.S., cancel anytime. Offer ends December 31st, 2026. Welcome back. Here's a conversation with Andrew Ross Sorkin, editor-at-large of DealBook at The New York Times and co-anchor of CNBC's Squawk Box. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us on Prof. G Markets. Thank you for having me. As you know, I'm a huge Scott fan and I'm a huge Ed fan. So here we are. You're an ad fan. That's amazing. So I just want to start with

I get to see you, Andrew. So U.S. stocks now represent half of total market cap globally. They're trading, I think, a P in the 30s. They're sort of at a store. It's historically expensive right now. Do you think there's a chance 2025 might be the year we see sort of the rivers reverse? We might see flows out of the U.S., out of tech into non-U.S. markets?

I think we've been waiting for that for a long time. And so I fear that if I tell you this is the year, I probably would have told you this was the year in 21, in 22, in 23, in 24, in 25. We are, what do they say? What's the phrase? We're the cleanest shirt in the hamper. In the hamper. I think we are still probably in a better place than much of the rest of the world. I don't see that actually reversing itself in the next year necessarily, but I do think these valuations are clearly, you know, I don't know if they're at the top, top of the range, but they are high. it is very hard to not to look around and go, this whole situation is relatively priced for perfection. And then you start to think about all the things that could go wrong. And you look at the fact just historically that, you know, we just had a banner a year in the stock market, 24, go back to 23, same thing. And so at some point, just history will tell you that it's got to go and it should go the other way. I remember many, many years ago, this is actually during the financial crisis, Jamie Dimon's daughter, who I think was in high school at the time, said to him, Daddy, what's a financial crisis? And he said, it's something that happens every eight years.

Well, if that's the case, we're long overdue. Yeah, it's nuts. What trends, if any, do you see?

Yeah. Just in the theme of getting kind of a temp check on Wall Street, we've seen a somewhat significant decline in the markets over the past few weeks. at least the headline this week, is that the S&P 500 has erased almost all of its gains since Trump was elected. How do you think investors on Wall Street are feeling right now going into Inauguration Day? We talked a little bit about what you're paying attention to, but what do you think they are paying attention to right now?

I think they're paying a lot of attention to the 10-year note, which, as I said, has gone up, which means that our costs are going to go up, and that becomes more complicated for just about any business that relies on any type of credit. And frankly, the entire economy, if you think about it like that. I think there was a lot of excitement, as you know, in the fall about this sort of idea that Trump was going to come in and this Trump trade and all of that. And, you know, at some point, I think people actually started to think, like think clearly or a little more clearly about just what kind of challenges and headwinds we face. And they're real. And I think there was almost a, I don't want to say a delusion, but there was lots of commentary about the complications of what was going to come next after Biden, what Trump could bring, what he couldn't bring. And the market for the most part, most people in the markets, I think, are professional optimists. They have to be. And by the way, being optimistic has been a good thing over time. It's very hard to be a short seller. You know, I'm a journalist.

I'm supposed to be a professional skeptic. So it's sort of. I'm at almost at odds with this whole sort of theory of the case. But I do think that there was an optimism. I think there still is an optimism. I don't want to say the optimism has gone away, but I think there's a recognition that by default, there's going to be greater challenges. Yeah, what do you think was that optimism when he was elected? I mean, you talked about the Trump trade. We've gone over a few of those in the past. Maybe the defense industry was something that could be a beneficiary of this administration. But what was fueling that optimism, do you think, in the markets? Was it sort of a regulatory optimism? Was it just, we have a new lease on life in America? What fueled that? I think it's probably best represented by the view of what Scott has talked about on this broadcast and in other places, sort of the tech bros.

this view that, you know, Silicon Valley was being reined in by Washington, D.C., they're being reined in by the European Union, that all of a sudden they were going to have someone who had their back. Now, it's very hard to quantify what that actually means, but all of a sudden, but the concept was that the Lena Kahn's of the world and the Gary Gensler's running the SEC were going to be completely hands-off or a lot more hands-off and that they were going to be able to do lots more things that they have been up until now unable to do. I don't know if that's true. And I really don't know how you quantify that. And I think that's the hardest part. So you had, I think, people, this sort of animal spirits excitement period. I also think, by the way, mergers and acquisitions, there's going to be a lot more dealmaking over the next couple of years. There's no question the backlog, the pipeline that I hear from talking to bankers and lawyers who are working literally around the clock right now, trying to actually get deals announced, even today, knowing that in two weeks, it's going to be a different administration. That's real.

I want to pivot just for a moment to a sector you must be talking so much about on CNBC and

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And now there are rumors that it's going to be sold to Elon Musk. This is apparently what Beijing officials are talking about. I'd just love to get your view. Do you have any thoughts on how this TikTok saga will play out? Well, the idea that it would be sold to Elon Musk I think is fascinating. There's a great irony in that, in that, by the way, there were a lot of Democrats that were pushing to have TikTok banned, if you remember. And so all of a sudden, this would get pushed into the hands of elon musk um and whatever algos they are running um you know or that he's running i i think they wouldn't ultimately be happy with at the same time i think there are republicans i'm thinking of steve bannon and others uh you know even with the party that would say they don't want Elon Musk having control of these things. There's probably, you know, an even larger question about just concentration and power. And I don't know where a Donald Trump would land there. And then to layer on top of all of that, there's a real question, which is if China is prepared to sell to Elon Musk and only to Elon Musk, what does that say about the leverage and influence that China must think that they have over Elon Musk by dint

of his factories and Tesla business in the nation state that is China. And then it probably raises a whole secondary order of questions, which is if China feels this way, how should we as Americans feel that people are calling him the co-president of the United States? Yes, exactly. Yeah. How do you think that dynamic between Elon Musk and President Trump will play out? I think this is a big question many of us are asking ourselves. Scaramucci, who we had on, says Elon's going to get stabbed in the back and then he's going to be thrown out. I mean, that's his view on anyone who works with Trump. But it is beginning to maybe feel that way. The more that people say that Elon Musk is our co-president and the more that people might assume that, as you're pointing out, perhaps he's compromised in certain ways because of his ties to China. How do you think that relationship with Trump will play out? First of all, I don't know if he's compromised or not.

I like to think the best of folks. I do want to say that. All of these people, there's like a betting line on how quickly this relationship is going to end. I actually don't think it ends so quickly and I'm not sure it ends at all. And the reason is prior to the election, Trump actually needed Elon. By the way, he needed Elon's money, right? That was what tied them together. Now that Trump is president. Elon needs Trump, given his businesses, both Tesla, particularly SpaceX and the like. So I think that there's lots of, you know, if you always just follow the money and think about the incentives, you have to say to yourself that Elon would want to align himself with the president now. And I think it would actually be hard to extricate himself, meaning if the president pushes him away, that's a problem for him.

Yeah. So I was on your sister network, MSNBC, and I said that... You were awesome, by the way. I watched it. Oh, thanks, Andrew. And I loved it. And I'm not pandering. you. You were so good. Go on. Anyways, the part you probably didn't see because MSNBC clipped it was I said that for the first time in a nation's history, a 30-year-old isn't doing as well as his or her parents, which is why we put an insurrectionist and a rapist in office in the White House. And Mika took the time at the end of the show to fact check me and said he was found liable of sexual abuse. I think she was doing her job. What I said was technically inaccurate, and she did her job. If I had said that, if they had posted the full clip on social media, social media would have loved it and circulated it, and they would have made more money. But instead, traditional media, Comcast, under the auspices of being sued, has to hire bright people to fact check me. And I appreciate it. I get it wrong all the time and not put it out there. And as a result, traditional media under the quote unquote auspices of moderation or censorship, if you're left or right, is shrinking because their means of production and fact checking, they're basically trying to run a race with one foot tied behind their back.

And meanwhile, social media is playing tennis without a net. So there's a long-winded way and a word salad of asking, what do you think of this decision to no longer moderate or censor from meta? And are you worried that traditional media just can't compete when they are subject to a set of standards and liability that the medium where two-thirds of people now get their news no longer needs to fact-check, no longer needs to have anything resembling liability? I mean, quite frankly, let me put it this way. Isn't Comcast just fucked? Well, I hope not, and I don't think so. I actually do think that people come to establish news organizations that hopefully do have credibility.

And I know people have lots of questions about it. No, and I recognize that. I recognize that. But I think that there's a distinction between journalists who hopefully are trying to act in good faith and institutions that can put resources behind real news gathering. I mean, you go look at this LA wildfire and some of the folks who've been out there on the ground. Now, you could argue. that there's classic sort of legacy traditional news reporters out there doing that work. And then there's all sorts of other people. Some of it is great citizenry journalism, right? And you're seeing it right off the phone. And that's great. And some others are making up stuff left and right.

And the big question that I have is, as a society, just how we're going to contend with that piece of it. If we are not holding the social media companies effectively accountable for some form of truth, and again, I know there's debates about what truth is today, but right now the sky is blue here in New York. No, it's not. It's DEI. But that's the point. If we can't agree that the sky is blue, if we can't agree the sky is blue today and there is not a cloud in the sky, we've got a problem. And so I think on the basics, We need to actually at least make sure that those things are taken care of.

They are not today. And clearly the worst part is that the most sensational news, which is often wrong, gets the most attention. And by the time there's even an opportunity to, quote unquote, correct it, nobody sees it. And that is, to me, the scariest part about what's happening in the social media sphere. But this has been a perennial problem for more than a decade now. I've been thinking about this a lot as someone who is kind of in the media, especially now that we've got Trump coming in on January 20th. I've been trying to think about how to maintain trust and how to just stay on top of this cultural shift that really antagonizes people like you.

And I feel like you're kind of the most, in my view, the most sober, um you're the most sober figure in the traditional legacy establishment media engine whatever we want to call it and so i was very interested to hear just how you are dealing with that and perhaps if you have a plan or if you have any ideas for how you're going to deal with the news in the next four years you know look ultimately i think this is an issue it's it's it's this age-old question of trust and who do you trust and i think that actually one of the things that this medium by the way podcasts and social media and everything else as uh while social media can undo trust very quickly you can also create trust and clearly has created trusted brands and trust people. And I think that, I hate the word authentic, but I do think that you, Ed, and Scott are super authentic and the people who follow you, if you will, genuinely trust you. And it's not necessarily that they trust every word that you're saying is accurate. They trust, hopefully, that they believe that what you're saying is in good faith. It's that you believe what you're saying is true, that you've done the homework, that you've thought about these things, that you've

spent time with other smart people debating these things. And so while they may not agree with your conclusion, they look at both of you and say, these guys are trying, right? And I think that matters. I think the traditional legacy media business needs to do, we all need to do a better job of connecting with the reader, viewer, listener in that way. Because oftentimes, I think in the sort of TV business or in the newspaper business, it comes across as more two-dimensional, right? You're reading it on a page, you're seeing it in TV with bright lights and fancy graphics and all sorts of stuff happening. And it's harder to connect in that way. But I do, look, I'm somebody, when I read a newspaper today or watch a television, I'm usually reading the byline, meaning I read the byline, then I decide whether I'm going to continue with the story. And I think big media companies are now trying to hopefully, and will have to continue to try to collect, they have to become people collectors. They're going to have to collect the trusted people that have those relationships with an audience one last question for me um if it wasn't clear you are one of my heroes professionally you know when i think about how

i'd like my career to end up you're sort of one of the first people uh that comes to mind my final question uh to you do you have any heroes of your own is there anyone you look up to professionally with someone who you have drawn inspiration from so many people um you know i started my career at the new york times when i was 18 years old i think scott knows this story working for a guy named stewart elliott uh who is still my hero he was the advertising columnist at the new york times and what he had I don't know. was what I just described, trust with a particular audience. At the time, he covered the advertising industry, but that industry read him like a religion.

They believed in what he was writing because he was so in it. He was so deep in it. And he demonstrated his care for the art of it and how much he both loved that world, but also held that world accountable. And I think people really, you could feel that. By the way, Scott is going to think I'm pandering to him. I remember when Scott, long before he was a podcaster and a great speaker and a great writer, he was trying to take on the New York Times, actually, as an activist investor. Do you remember this, Scott, back in the day? Yeah, I remember, Andrew. You remember. And I have watched with great admiration and more than that, actually, the career that Scott's had and what he's been able to do and describe in sort of the public space as almost a public intellectual.

I don't know if you think of yourself as a public intellectual, Scott, but I think you've forced and created lots of important conversations and discourse in this country that has been super important. So, you know, it's not a long list, but there's a couple of people who I've really admired. By the way, authors. There's some great authors that I've admired and TV writers and all sorts of things. So just before I get to my last question, this is a true story. I was on the board of the New York Times and we go over compensation for the top people in succession plan. And this was in 2008. So what, 17 years ago. So you must have been like five. I don't know how old you were, but you were a big name.

I feel like 29, maybe 30. 29, 30, probably. And your name came up. And everyone we were talking about, I guess, they were thinking about giving you some role, and we were trying to cut costs or whatever it was. And someone brought up your name. And I'm not exaggerating. Everyone around the table, from the publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, to Janet Rodman, just to every board member went, pay him whatever he wants. Everyone was like, this kid is our LeBron James. It's like the entire boardroom was... Pay him. Everyone's like, fuck him. Cut her salary 20%. Let her walk. Let her go to the pub. Oh, that kid? Pay him whatever he wants. I love that. You were literally the Cole Palmer of journalism.

Anyway, my last question. I think of you as an entrepreneur. You've started kind of these businesses within platforms, and you've got obviously media, you've got TV, you've got newsletters, you've got events, you do books. if you were to pick kind of one business or which businesses are you planning to over-invest in and which might you under-invest? Like what side of your business flywheel do you think holds the most potential for you? And which do you think are probably going to decline in terms of your own human capital? That's such a great question. I imagine, look, I still think that journalism is the core of everything I do, interviewing people, talking to people, reporting into the night, working the phones last night on the TikTok story and trying to talk to insiders who are involved. And I still think that is, for me, the coin of the realm. And that's where I learn the most. And that ultimately infuses any kind of side project, whether it be a book or a TV show or this or that so i you know i to me that is always in my career i think going to be the core i would have told you a decade ago that you know the entertainment space seemed like that's where the the riches of the business might be because you know folks who were producing movies or

television shows you know there was back-end points and this and that and all sorts of things I don't know whether, I think given streaming and just what's happened to that whole business, I'm not sure economically that that is, you know, Jerry Seinfeld, they say is, you know, made a billion dollars or whatever it is. I don't think that can be accomplished in the same way that it used to be. I think potentially that the news business could actually, especially with AI, I know everybody's scared of AI in the news business, And maybe it'll accrue only to, you know, a sort of a winners and losers cast.

But I actually do think that there's still huge opportunity in journalism. especially because of this trust question. Because the trust question exists, I think it represents an opportunity from a business perspective and hopefully from a national discourse one too. Andrew Ross Sorkin is a financial columnist for the New York Times and the editor-at-large of Dealbook. He's also the co-anchor of Squawk Box, CNBC's signature morning program and the author of the best-selling book, Too Big to Fail. Andrew, it was an honor having you on. Thank you so much for joining us. It was an honor to be on. God bless you.

And Ed's professional hero, I'm not jealous at all, but let's see if he pays your bonus bitch this year. Jesus Christ. Here you go. Andrew. I love you, man. Canadian spy. No one should forget that. Canadian spy. No one should forget that. Hold on. Now I thought I'm an American spy, part of the 51st state. That's right. Oh, there you go. Well played, sir. Touché. Touché. Andrew, we're obviously huge fans. Thanks so much for your time. Me too. I'll talk to you soon. Thanks. this episode was produced by claire miller and engineered by benjamin spencer our associate producer is alison weiss mia silverio is our research lead jessica lang is our research associate drew burrows is our technical director and katherine dylan is our executive producer thank you for listening to prof g markets from the vox media podcast network if you liked what you heard give us a follow and join us for a fresh take on markets on monday