For years, we’ve been making predictions. The objective isn’t only to be right more than we’re wrong, but to catalyze a productive dialog that might shape better outcomes. If you get most/all your predictions right, you’re not predicting … you’re stating the obvious. Also, predic … | Continue reading
This week I spoke at TED2024, the iconic program’s 40th anniversary event. I joined RuPaul, Kesha, and two different astrophysicists on the stage in Vancouver. I was given 15 minutes, and took 17, to riffle through 47 slides articulating what I believe is the greatest challenge f … | Continue reading
No Mercy / No Malice has been nominated for a Webby Award. Vote for us here, and I will surround you with white light. _____________ Daniel Kahneman, who died last month, leaves an extraordinary intellectual legacy. Few people have unpacked our behaviors with greater insight than … | Continue reading
Florida is now one of the most restrictive states in the country for abortion rights: The state’s supreme court reversed its own precedents on April 1 and upheld a ban on abortions after six weeks. Women in Florida, as in many states after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, now face ha … | Continue reading
Florida is now one of the most restrictive states in the country for abortion rights: The state’s supreme court reversed its own precedents on April 1 and upheld a ban on abortions after six weeks. Women in Florida, as in many states after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, now face ha … | Continue reading
I experienced ketamine therapy a few weeks ago and, after discussing it on Pivot and Prof G pods, I’ve received a great deal of inquiries from friends, strangers, and media. I wanted to let the experience settle as my perception continues to evolve/mature/unfurl (couldn’t find th … | Continue reading
Within and across species, relationships are essential to surviving and thriving. Complex social arrangements between trees and fungi sustain forests, individual bees and ants cannot feed themselves or reproduce, beavers work in groups of up to 10 to build their dams, and bald ea … | Continue reading
The market is shaped by psychology, not financials. And the psychology around IPOs has been in trauma since retail investors were run over by a semitrailer whose mud flaps read SPAC and Rate Hike. Winter came for IPOs, and we’re still waiting for the thaw. Despite a surplus of hi … | Continue reading
My next book is the product of a lifetime spent as a founder, professor, parent, and mentor. The Algebra of Wealth contains 300 pages of insights and hard lessons drawn from experience, paired with the best research on the foundational question of prosperity: how to achieve finan … | Continue reading
Each year we pick a Big Tech stock we think will outperform its peers. In November 2022 we picked Meta as our stock of 2023. For 2024 our pick is Alphabet. I believe Alphabet has been over-punished for its flaccid response to AI, as Meta was for its stupidity with the Metaverse. … | Continue reading
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Other than AI, gaming may be the fastest-growing $10-billion-plus industry in the U.S. A record 43 million Americans (1 in 6 people over the age of 18) bet on this year’s Super Bowl, wagering a total of $23 billion, a 35% jump from last year’s total. Next month, twice that many c … | Continue reading
Last week’s quarterly flogging of tech executives made for good theater. It’s a show meant to make us feel something before we return to our lives. American media soon pivoted to something more important and more American, money. Meta announced earnings on Feb. 1, posting one of … | Continue reading
Eight of the country’s elite colleges settled a lawsuit last week, agreeing to pay $118 million for colluding to match financial aid offers — price fixing. The schools deny any wrongdoing, but writing checks for $118 million does not signal innocence. The complaint lays out a str … | Continue reading
Few virtues are more celebrated in America than perseverance and grit. Commencement speakers offer a similar battle cry: “Never give up!” Jesus, what bullshit. Entrepreneurs aren’t voted into the hall of fame unless they have a story about mortgaging their house to make payroll o … | Continue reading
Aftershocks — second-order effects — can shake the ground far beyond the original shift in tectonic plates. Few predicted that an unprecedented increase in interest rates would turn mortgages into handcuffs and send housing prices skyrocketing. Or that mobile phones could facilit … | Continue reading
You are where you spend time. And my boys, like the rest of America’s youth, are TikTok. When asked whether they’d prefer TikTok or all other streaming platforms, tomorrow’s business/civic/military leaders pick the former. TikTok is the most consequential Asian import since … Dat … | Continue reading
Each year, we review/make predictions re the past/coming year. Most years, we hit more than we miss. But we do miss — if we made 10 predictions that all came true, that wouldn’t be predicting but stating the obvious. The caliber of a prediction is a function of what it reveals ab … | Continue reading
The full scope of how the Covid pandemic changed our world may not be clear for another generation. The deluge of official inquiries, political brawls, think pieces, and books (I wrote one) that have come out in the past few years are first drafts. They’re also reminders of how c … | Continue reading
The full scope of how the Covid pandemic changed our world may not be clear for another generation. The deluge of official inquiries, political brawls, think pieces, and books (I wrote one) that have come out in the past few years are first drafts. They’re also reminders of how c … | Continue reading
After a disastrous day of congressional testimony, Penn’s president and board chair resigned, and the presidents of Harvard and M.I.T. are under intense pressure. The cause is easier to diagnose than the mechanics of the firing. Over the past several decades, universities have mo … | Continue reading
Humans have been writing for five thousand years — and drinking longer. Archeologists recently discovered a 13,000-year-old beer in a cave near modern-day Haifa, Israel, and there is archaeological evidence of alcohol consumption around the globe by 5000 BCE. Alcohol’s draw is a … | Continue reading
I just paused my Hulu subscription — pretty sure that means I’m blackmailing Bob Iger. The real tragedy of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview with a co-founder of OpenAI is that ketamine addicts deserve a better spokesperson. But that’s another post. The collapse and rebirth of the V … | Continue reading
There was controversy this month involving Kanye West. You can catch up here; I won’t reiterate it. I believe Kanye is ill, and I’ll return to ignoring him soon after this post. This post is about Adidas, Gap, CAA, and his other corporate partners. It is about the moral obligatio … | Continue reading
The tsunami of private capital that crashed against digital innovation after 2008 shaped a new economic entity: the unicorn. Among the private companies valued at over $1 billion, the two that marked the era were Uber and WeWork. Uber was the second tech company to breach a $50 b … | Continue reading
I spent the first 30 years of my life not worried enough about things I could control. And the last 10, too worried about things I have almost no control over. That’s accelerated over the past few weeks, but there’s a silver lining: I’ve been so fucking freaked out over the Middl … | Continue reading
Fifty-one percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 believe the Hamas attacks of October 7 “can be justified by the grievances of the Palestinians.” That’s not how most Americans feel, and the disparity in sentiment is correlated with age. This is not unique to the Hamas attack. The old … | Continue reading
Despite receiving scant coverage, the biggest business stories last week were Netflix and Meta’s quarterly earnings. The numbers were striking: NFLX profits hit $1.6 billion (up 20% from a year earlier) and the platform added 9 million new subscribers. Meanwhile, the company is r … | Continue reading
Listening is underrated. Unlike vision, hearing works in the dark and around corners. We hear 20 to 100 times faster than we see, and what we hear stays in our heads longer, often evoking strong emotions — just listen to your favorite band from college. However, for many of us, w … | Continue reading
We receive dozens of thoughtful emails each week from people (mostly young men) asking for advice. They all deserve a response, but the time/space continuum gets in the way. So we’ve set out to leverage AI to develop a digital twin capable of answering questions in my voice. Prof … | Continue reading
A source of capital has morphed to a source of entertainment. A reality show, minus hot people and Andy Cohen. The charismatic carnival barkers on CNBC serve up a steady diet of SPACs, social media, and space, and would have you believe that’s the center of the economic universe. … | Continue reading
Last week, after five months of striking, the Writers Guild (WGA) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) reached a tentative agreement. “We can say, with great pride,” the WGA wrote in a statement, “that this deal is exceptional — with meaningful gain … | Continue reading
What has been the most significant change in the American experience over the past century? The internet, civil rights, antibiotics? The transition from a manufacturing to a service economy, or rapid urbanization? Right up there, I believe, is the displacement of religion from th … | Continue reading
“The notion that power should be limited so that no person or institution can enjoy unaccountable influence is at the very root of our democracy.” —Tim Wu Capitalism is the most powerful system so far devised for the elevation of the human condition. Its oxygen is innovation, wh … | Continue reading
For decades, America has predicted — arrogantly and repeatedly — the imminent fall of a nation. The doomed nation, according to Americans? A: America. In the ’80s, we decided Japan was doing to us economically what they couldn’t do militarily four decades prior. My second year … | Continue reading
A lot can happen in 18 months. Last January, the Nasdaq was fresh off an all-time high and venture funding was smashing records. We were birthing two unicorns (startups worth more than $1 billion) per day. Then in 2022 the music stopped. Tech stocks — some falling by as much as … | Continue reading
Then AI and steady leadership at the Fed grabbed the stick and pulled out of the dive, markets came back (again led by tech). Now the hype machine has clicked back to 11. It’s a good time to recall our tendency to put aside our skepticism when times are good. Some of today’s prop … | Continue reading
This week on No Mercy No Malice, we’re featuring a guest post from Richard Reeves. Richard, a writer and a scholar whose work focuses on what I believe are pressing issues, has become my Yoda regarding the conversation concerning failing young men. We hosted Richard on the Prof G … | Continue reading
This week on No Mercy No Malice, we’re featuring a guest post from Mo Gawdat, an Egyptian entrepreneur, former senior executive at Google, and bestselling author on human happiness. We had Mo on the Prof G Pod a few weeks ago, and his message deeply resonated with our team and li … | Continue reading
I don’t know, nobody does. However, I believe it is increasingly likely Donald Trump withdraws from the race for president as the result of a plea deal. Why? A: math. Facing prosecutions in at least three jurisdictions, it’s likely, if he is not reelected, Trump will be tried, co … | Continue reading
Hollywood’s writers and actors are on strike. As I’ve written before, their leaders have picked the wrong moment to cast themselves in a working-class drama. In sum, they have little leverage, as there are too many of them and the strike is a gift for studios looking to slow the … | Continue reading
America has a vision of itself as the land of opportunity, with rights and liberty for everyone. That is not and has never been the reality. But for 250 years we’ve been closing that gap at a greater pace than any other multicultural democracy. Lately, however, there’s eviden … | Continue reading
Last week, Twitter became MySpace: a social network void of innovation being slowly euthanized by Meta. In less than a week, Meta’s Threads registered 110 million users — equivalent to the combined population of Germany and Australia, and the most violent corporate disruption in … | Continue reading
What if there was a drug that extended life, made you happier, healthier, and wealthier, and strengthened your relationships? The good news: It exists. The bad news: It’s being needlessly hoarded. This drug is higher education. America is the world’s premier source, producing the … | Continue reading
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The search for truth is the pursuit of comfort in the face of doubt. Over the past few centuries, the scientific method — and the empirical proof it offers — has increasingly become the world’s go-to for answers. We plant and harvest crops based on meteorology, not astronomy; we … | Continue reading
iStory Every one of us has an origin story: We define ourselves by our background, the narrative of what made us who we are. However, people often don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story, and the narrative of “I” is often that, a story. James Frey found no takers for [ … | Continue reading
I’m at Founders Forum in the Cotswolds … which they assure me is somewhere outside of London. There are a lot of Teslas and recycled Mason jars as … we’re making the world a better place. As at any gathering of the tech elite in 2023, the content could best be described as AI and … | Continue reading