AI-generated — may contain transcription errors.

Dave Morin: Anthropic must be losing again.

Jessica: Okay, so they're slowing down because they can't go faster. Their treadmill's stuck.

Dave Morin: No, because Astra is objectively just crushing them. It's so much better, it's not even close.

Sam Lessin: The fact that with open router you just switch dynamically whenever the fuck you want means that these are bad businesses, which means they have to go for regulatory capture as quickly as they possibly can before we realize the emperor has no clothes.

Brit Morin: Normal people frankly don't even want one agent, and if they want an agent at all, they're gonna have one. They don't wanna deal with switching. They wanna put all their stuff in.

Dave Morin: That- that's like saying people wanted one app and they didn't want one app.

Guest: More or less. Is it no or is it yes? We'll debate the text that's best. Will we get more or less? Dave and Brit, plus Sam and Jess. Put it all right to the test. More or less

Jessica: Why hello, friends. Welcome to More or Less. How's it cooking, Morons?

Dave Morin: Hey, Jess.

Brit Morin: We're around. Uh, we are not dead yet from the AGI. The AGI has not killed us.

Dave Morin: Oh my God.

Jessica: 10% of me is dead because that's the probability, but yes, it has been a week in the tech headline essay, missive, hot take, X culture of the internet. That's why you're listening to us, folks. We're gonna break it all down for you.

Brit Morin: We're gonna tell you how it all ends, for real.

Jessica: Well, let's welcome Sam back to the pool house. Sam, how was New York?

Sam Lessin: New York is doing really well. New York's in a great place. It's maximum great weather. You know, Central Park, you do your Central Park loops, it's like the most attractive thing in the history of the world. It's great.

Brit Morin: The most attractive thing? Why? 'Cause are there attractive people on the Central Park Loop?

Jessica: Oh yeah, guys, this is what I come home to. I come home to how hot the New York women are.

Sam Lessin: The level of talent in New York is just unbelievable.

Jessica: The level of talent of hot women? Talent... What- what are you talking about?

Brit Morin: Where are we going with this?

Sam Lessin: I'm just saying, like, it's a very attractive city, and in the beautiful weather, everyone's running, everyone's fit, everyone's having a good time. The U Open was great.

Brit Morin: What percent of these people are on peptides?

Dave Morin: Brit, this has always been the case. They didn't need peptides to be hot in New York City.

Sam Lessin: Who knows?

Brit Morin: Well, Sam, peptides.

Sam Lessin: It's just a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, San Francisco is a self-fulfilling prophecy for tech. New York is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a lot of other things, and, like, it's a wonderful thing.

Brit Morin: I find LA to be hotter than New York when it comes to hot people.

Sam Lessin: I disagree. I actually think, though, that's a really interesting question, Brit. I think it says a lot about a person, which is like, what do you find the people physically more attractive, LA or New York? And for me it's like no question New York.

Brit Morin: Okay. Well, you have to rank guys and girls separately.

Sam Lessin: No, no, I agree. I think it... But I just broadly think that, like, it's the most attractive city on earth.

Brit Morin: I'll battle you on that one.

Jessica: Not where I thought it was going with this answer, although he did come back and talk about how attractive the female runners in Central Park are, so.

Sam Lessin: Fabulous.

Brit Morin: Congratulations, Jess.

Jessica: Thank you. I, I really have either r-

Sam Lessin: We have a very trusting relationship. I don't... Like, I can say this to my wife. We can appreciate physical beauty. I don't mind.

Jessica: He does-

Sam Lessin: You're the one who likes Benson Boone's abs.

Jessica: I mean, the world likes Benson Boo-

Dave Morin: And I like Jess's abs.

Jessica: Thank you.

Sam Lessin: And you like Jess's abs, and I'm fine with that.

Brit Morin: This is getting really awkward right now.

Jessica: It's okay. I'm gonna bring us back to the end of times. Okay, so we're gonna talk AI. We have to talk some other things as well.

Dave Morin: Or the beginning of times.

Jessica: Or the beginning of times. Is that where we are, Dave?

Dave Morin: All I know is that I'm really tired of all the crying wolf.

Jessica: When you woke up on Saturday morning, or Friday night-

Dave Morin: Saturday morning

Jessica: ...

Brit Morin: No, 'cause we talked about it at dinner on Friday night, Dave.

Dave Morin: Did we?

Brit Morin: We talked about doomsday. Yeah, that was the dinner convo on Friday.

Dave Morin: We were at the University of Michigan, and that place is awesome.

Sam Lessin: Ah, little LP love there.

Brit Morin: And we talked to, like, the dean of engineering and the dean of the business school and all these smart people about whether it was gonna be the real end of times by 2030.

Jessica: Correct. So Jacob Coxon quit Anthropic, went on a media tour.

Sam Lessin: After three months?

Jessica: After a very short period of time, and-

Brit Morin: He did not vest yet

Jessica: ... by the way, already has a new venture.

Sam Lessin: In the modern world, if you're about to get fired, the best thing you can do is do something like this, right, on your way out right before you get fired.

Dave Morin: And be a whistleblower. Yeah, totally. Good point.

Jessica: I mean, if you're about to get fired and you don't do this or you...

Sam Lessin: You lose your, um, your severance package, but the level of media exposure you get is more than worth it.

Jessica: But you get, like, an event business. Okay. Second thing that happened, though, is Dario, the man took to the pen, his favorite place, and wrote a very long essay saying, "You know what, guys? We need to slow down. This AI race that I've been leading, that I'm about to ride to a multi-trillion dollar IPO, we're gonna slow down."

Sam Lessin: What happened? Wasn't he supposed to have done that the week, like, last week? What's going on?

Jessica: Stay tuned, stay tuned, stay tuned. So Dave, you are drinking your mocha latte cappo something.

Dave Morin: Just a mocha, Jess.

Jessica: Iced mocha. Love it.

Dave Morin: Today it's green juice like a real Marin County guy.

Jessica: Oh my God, we have to talk about the stereotypes later. Okay, so what did you two think?

Dave Morin: What went through my head, Anthropic must be losing again.

Sam Lessin: Yeah, 100%. Well said.

Jessica: Okay, so they're slowing down because they can't go faster. Their treadmill's stuck.

Dave Morin: No, because Astra is objectively just, like, crushing them. Like, it's so much better, it's not even close.

Sam Lessin: But this is the problem. They're just gonna go back and forth and back and forth.

Dave Morin: Astra is shockingly good.

Sam Lessin: Yeah, we just were... This is the exact same conversation about Claude, like, X months ago. It's like, whatever.

Dave Morin: No, I think this goes back... This is a shocking leap forward, even in the context of that we talk about this every week, and poor listener, you're probably extremely bored.

Brit Morin: There's a new model every week that's shockingly better.

Jessica: This one's the leap forward. It wasn't the other 12. Okay, we can come back to Astra, and everyone, like, I think you're onto something with that, but yeah.

Dave Morin: There's a second point, which is an American lab is Crushing them by every conceivable metric. Like, you look at OpenRouter's data, they're now beating Anthropic for the first time in over a year. That's happening. On the other hand, you have DeepSeek coming out with fable level model for, like, 100X less cost. And so you have, like, twin vectors here. They're, like, dramatically falling behind very, very quickly. And so I think that's, like, overarching thing that's going on here.

Sam Lessin: I think you guys scope out here. The overarching theme is there's not a compounding advantage. Because there's no compounding advantage, there is no return on being first, which means you're in a brutal competition to zero on all this shit, right? Which means it's a bad fucking business, right? Now, it doesn't mean they don't IPO for lots of money and, like, people trade their way to riches, but, like, we've been saying this for years. Like, it doesn't matter. It... The fact that there's someone hasn't broken out and will win forever, the fact that with OpenRouter you just switch dynamically whenever the fuck you want means that these are bad businesses, which means they have to go for regulatory capture as quickly as they possibly can before we realize the emperor has no clothes.

Jessica: So then, Brit, I want your reaction, and also part of Dario's proposal was independent assessors, right? This idea that Anthropic, they're gonna slow down, they're gonna prioritize safety even more. Apparently, they were prioritizing it all along. And they are gonna let in these assessors who are gonna have a lot of access and will somehow determine that they are complying with the slowdown mandate.

Brit Morin: Okay. I hear Dave and Sam, and I understand the point of view. I think it's somewhere in the gray area, right? Like, there definitely is stuff to be concerned about. We don't have safety mechanisms set up for a lot of the things that these agents can now do. We've seen them break out. They've, like, the, the bioweapons is, like, one of the most scary things that everyone's talking about. You've seen Demis at DeepMind today, I think, suggest there should be the DeepMind Institute, and everyone's calling for these standards committees and independent sort of validators of all of these things. So I don't think everyone would do that for no reason. It's... So it's not just marketing.

Dave Morin: Yeah, marketing.

Brit Morin: No, it's not just marketing. I think there's real stuff to figure out. But we can't because China's racing ahead. Trump calls in in the All-In podcast stage or whatever- ... and says like, "No, it's all a hoax. Like, keep going because we're competing with... And we're competing with China, and we have to stay ahead." And so it's like a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Sam Lessin: But here's the funny thing, guys. I actually agree. Like, I, I was on with a very smart investor recently this week, and they're like, "Sam," like, "what's the chance that, like... Is Hugging Face a red herring, or is it like a canary? Like, which bird is it?" And I'm like-

Dave Morin: It's clearly-

Sam Lessin: ... it's a hawk

Dave Morin: ... it's definitely a canary.

Brit Morin: It's such a canary.

Sam Lessin: Of course it's a canary.

Brit Morin: Yeah.

Sam Lessin: Of course it's a canary. We don't need super intelligence for AI to fuck everything. Like, obviously-

Dave Morin: Totally

Sam Lessin: ... all the banks are gonna get hacked. Like- ... all the bad shit is going to happen, right?

Dave Morin: And all of your own stuff. Like, everybody's everything.

Sam Lessin: 100%. And the, the downstream effects of that will be wild, right? 'Cause like, you know, JP Morgan say, "Ha," and the government says, "Well, we have to regulate this shit and reset everything." It's gonna be a complete fucking mess, right? Like, we're at the point of complete mess. The things people are putting in place to, like, solve the mess will do nothing. They're, they... We're, like, way past that point. So, like, it's funny 'cause on one hand I'm not a doomer and, like, AGI's gonna drag a black hole over and paperclip optimize us all to death. I do think, like, the level of chaos coming is insanely high. But I also think that if you're these lead labs with trillion dollar valuation in a rapidly commoditizing space where you can't defend your lead 'cause the lead's gonna switch every five moments, and then everyone's just gonna switch on the fly 'cause there's no lock into any of these things, they're using it as marketing, right, to try to get an advantage. I think they're both true, right?

Jessica: Y- you know, it's interesting. So next Wednesday I'm gonna be interviewing Quoraie Kavokulu, who now runs DeepMind because Demis has been, kicked himself upstairs. And I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about prep calls before interviews. I'm probably not.

Dave Morin: I don't know. That sounds like 2026 to me.

Brit Morin: Let's break the rules, Jess.

Jessica: We're gonna break the rules. And so I had a prep call with him on Friday. So this was when we were, Jacob Cox on, but we were pre-Demis. I just said, you know, I said, "I'm obviously gonna ask you about AI safety in this." And I won't reveal exactly what he said, but it was clear to me his thinking is sort of what Satya has come out to say, which is like, yeah, it's called product development. And if you aren't building something while you're building the safety alongside it in 2026, like, you have a research lab that has not built an effective engineering organization. And Satya said this in a tweet storm shortly, like, after. And now on one hand, I think it's probably nice for the incumbent legacy guys to be able to say that because they probably feel like they have existed in a world of more constraints. I think Mark's has said something similarly. But, like, that is also kind of what's happening here and why we need to... why Dario and Sam and Elon have to cloak it in the slowing down, which implies, like, losing a race or putting your foot off the gas, as opposed to like, yeah, it's getting harder to build this stuff as responsibly as we can, and we're just gonna keep trying our best, and we're gonna talk more about that.

Sam Lessin: Yeah, Mark did an amazing job articulating this, and I've never seen people on X actually like what Mark says, but there's a lot of people being like, "Thank you."

Jessica: I know. And I, I think Satya sounded very smart on it. I think it's Quoraie's point of view as well, and it just shows how Sam and Dario and Elon, they gravitate towards much different frameworks. Like, they have to convince us all this thing is so powerful and so new and so crazy.

Sam Lessin: That's how they raised all the money.

Jessica: Right. That's how they raised all their money. OpenAI is out there again We and others reported trying to do a round around 1.5 trillion privately. They also are saying that they're slowing their IPO because of this. OpenAI has not been on a reasonable path to an IPO in any reasonable timeframe. They just don't want to feel left out. They have been at the beginning of a long journey, and they keep taking other news as evidence for why they're not ready to IPO. The-- It's just sort of maddening to the point I'm now yelling about it.

Sam Lessin: No, it's just obvious, but it's just a game. I posted about this the other day, which is like, look, there have been three eras of how tech deals with, like, messaging and marketing. Era one, I think we'll call it the Bill Gates era, where, like, you get called before the stand and you're super indignant about it, you're super pissed off, and you look terrible. It ends up being a disaster. Like, it really hurt Microsoft, right? It, like, kind of broke its spirit when the world said, "You're doing something bad." They said-- And, like, it was just the, the indignation. Era two was, like, the Google and Facebook era, where everyone looked at what Bill Gates did and they're like, "Well, that was a mistake, so we're gonna fight this." The fight back has actually worked better than at least what Bill Gates did, right? In terms of being like, "Okay-

Jessica: Yeah, Google wasn't broken up. Meta hasn't been broken up. Yeah.

Sam Lessin: Yeah. Like, they've done better, right? And so that's good. And then I think honestly, what we now see is, like, I'll call it third wave tech policy, which is the classic answer, which is embrace and extend, right? Like, you're not gonna change the narrative. The narrative is, this is scary. So like, great, let's take that narrative, let's double down on it, and then twist it and use it in a way that's advantage to us. So for OpenAI, it can be like, "Well, we're not gonna IPO," right? Or like, you know, for Anthropic or it's like, it's like we need regulatory capture. Like-

Jessica: That's so funny

Sam Lessin: ... but it's just, it's fascinating 'cause, like, in our era, I would say that the policy department, it wasn't that they didn't exist, and there were some very great people who worked for it, but they weren't, like, that important on a rel- Like, it was products, right? Now I think we're in a world where, like, if you think about, like, who gets paid the most, who matters the most, it's who's representing these guys in DC and the spin mastering of it is just, like, very valuable and correct in a way that, like, I, I, like, I wonder if policy people are making 10 times what they used to. I guess they kind of are.

Jessica: It's funny you say this. One of widely respected, can you call them operatives? They don't, probably don't like to be called operatives. I don't even know what these people like to be called. But political lobbyist, advisor, they probably like to be called advisors, who's as connected as they come, was coming through San Francisco last week. Had a lovely coffee with her, and I said, "What's the vibe on Anthropic in DC?" And she goes, "Money." And what she basically meant is everybody is sw- Every lobbyist, every advisor, every lawyer, they're like, "Anthropic is... On one hand, we're scared of all these things, but good golly, I want to be working for them because I'm gonna make a lot of money." And I thought it was a very interesting reaction, this person shared. And actually today, as we tape this, I believe Anthropic's l- one of their heads of policy's on stage at a Politico event saying they're on the phone with the White House daily, or something to that effect, right? So yes, it's a completely-

Sam Lessin: Everyone's getting their bag.

Jessica: Everyone's getting their bag. Okay. So Dave, can I drill in a bit on the monitoring question? So there's been some rush now, like these independent monitors. Let's take the slowing down or not, but is there a next wave of safety measure that potentially requires more collaboration or something? Would that be useful or more independence? Like, is that a pipe dream, or is this a good path to pursue?

Dave Morin: There's actually good precedent for this in the security community, and I think I heard, it was maybe Elon or somebody else, I can't remember, propose a different idea, which is that as a new model is about to go into market, the big labs, whether they're United States, China, wherever, should allow the other labs to red team their models before they go-

Jessica: Yeah, that was an Elon idea.

Dave Morin: Okay. I think that's your next level way of looking at this, and this is a, by the way, a standard practice in the industry. There are several organizations, I believe the, the one that's the most powerful was bought by Google, that maintains a list of all of the most important bugs and the most important software in the world, and they all red team each other. They all report bugs. They all fix them immediately. I mean, this is the way that we have to go. We have to depend on each other's systems to test each other's systems and really test them with the most powerful tools, right? And I think that's one of your next questions that you'll see people talking about. I don't know about independent auditing with people having employee badges, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Sounds, like, pretty hard to coordinate and hard to trust, or harder to trust. Maybe you need both.

Jessica: But what about on the US, China vector?

Dave Morin: No idea.

Jessica: Yeah, I don't think DeepSeek is gonna be like, "Why, yes, Anthropic."

Sam Lessin: It's an interesting company. So we funded a long time ago. We were the first investment called Sublime Security. When we were talking to the founders of this, the whole point with Sublime early on was like, look, we all know the top 10 tech companies in the world. What they do is they get on a weekly call between the CISOs, right? And they're like, "This is what we're seeing," blah, blah, blah. They're, like, sharing things.

Jessica: Does that really happen? I didn't know that.

Dave Morin: Oh yeah. This is major. Yeah.

Sam Lessin: That, that's like the biggest companies in the world, they kind of unofficially do that. And the Sublime's pitch early on was like, look, that's fine for the top 10 companies, but, like, there's no collaboration in security between anyone else. Like, you're just kind of on your own, right? And so, like, how do you build, like, a collaborative platform for everyone to do security as a, as in, like a, in, like, a place that, like, is compounding? And so you could see some of that type of stuff start to evolve for this stuff. I mean, it's not gonna be humans because again, like, this stuff happens too fast, right? You're gonna have to have kind of, like, a framework for it. Like, how this all works is TBD and, like, who pays for it and whatever. I mean, like, I don't know. It's gonna, like, kinda... It's a nice idea. I will see how it actually plays out in a practical way. You know, for all we know, I would kind of expect there already are working groups on this between all the big companies, just as there are in other security domains. But who knows? I mean, I think it's, it's an interesting moment.

Dave Morin: I think you're right, Sam, but I think they have not actually started testing each other, as far as I understand.

Sam Lessin: I don't know. It's an interesting question of how it plays out. I mean, like, look, this does speak to my other big hot take on this, which is the only way, in my mind, that Anthropic and OpenAI become really, really valuable companies long term, not trading, not short term, whatever, five to 10 years, longer, uh, is effectively as defense companies, right? If you said to me, "Hey, what they're actually doing all day long with these super fancy computers and all this computing," you can't compete in the token marketplace You just can't, like, make any money. What you can do at the edge with, uh, 10,000 PhDs is develop a bunch of, like, zero days against other LLMs and not release them. Like, make Mythos squared-

Guest: So they're offense and defense?

Sam Lessin: Just make money on the defense.

Guest: You're anticipating every possible bad thing that can happen, and you have this thing ready to go.

Dave Morin: I think what this is not hypothetical, and this is actually just what's happening.

Sam Lessin: But the business model is you don't release the models. You basically just, like, keep, like, the nuclear weapons, and then when a country gets subverted, there's only one person or two people you can call to fix it.

Dave Morin: I think we're already there.

Sam Lessin: And it's gonna cost you, like, a gajillion dollars, right? And so you're just like, the entire business model of the labs... First of all, they caused the problem to some degree. It was gonna happen anyway. But you're just like, "Look, I don't- can't shut this shit off," and the only thing you're gonna be able to shut it off with is, like, effectively a zero-day model, like a new intelligence that hasn't already been exposed. 'Cause the second it's exposed to the web or if people have seen it, it will get built on top of and built around, so y- it's over, right? So it has to be zero-days, but you're basically out there developing zero-day fancy models to quash the bad models that take over banks. Like, that's how you make a lot of money.

Guest: Dave, you think y- we're here already. Say more.

Dave Morin: I think this is just true. I think that these things have... I mean, you see this every week. There's a massive conversation at the national security level. It's popping up every single week everywhere. Like, that's why you have the president commenting on this issue.

Sam Lessin: The comment is, but no one's out there saying, "I'm gonna spend billions of dollars building a model I'm never gonna release, ever, and I'm, like, holding it in reserve for when shit goes wrong, and you can call me, and you can pay me $10 billion to fix your bank," which I think is the business model.

Guest: But aren't there a bunch of companies, like, starting to do this that are not the model companies?

Dave Morin: No. Nobody can afford that.

Guest: Nobody can afford it?

Dave Morin: No. You can't train... Like, training these models is like-

Sam Lessin: It's like the future is instead of having 10,000 nuclear weapons, you're gonna have 10,000 super intelligences in silos, and, like, when you need them, you call them, and the nice part is, is once your country is subverted by an evil AI, there's no price you won't pay to fix it. That's how you get, like, a great Austin Powers movie, by the way.

Guest: Are you saying, Sam, that things that aim to be free and democratic then become premium and exclusive and-

Sam Lessin: Isn't that generally how things work?

Guest: Yes. No. I, that, I was just taking that opportunity to point out that this is all the same narrative, especially if they're really expensive to make.

Sam Lessin: I've been reading more Talmud, and I'll tell you there's, and it's in Torah, and there is nothing new in the world.

Dave Morin: I think it's worth going a little bit more nuanced about this around the concept of alignment. Like, I think that actually Mark Zuckerberg had a really thoughtful point of view here that companies that create models that are misaligned from their users, the users just won't use them, right? And I think that this is, like, actually a very simple but very important point, and I would actually push it even further to say yes and. Right now, when you're using, uh, any agent of any kind, you have to ask this question, like, "Does this agent work for me, and does it do what I tell it to do?" And if it doesn't, you're not going to use it. And I think there's a even further nuanced point, which is that is this agent actually aligned, faithfully aligned with me, or is it aligned with the model company? And this is, like, I think the next frontier of thinking about this. Most people aren't thinking about this. They kind of accept, Sam made this point a couple weeks ago, that Claude literally won't do things for you in certain zones, uh, that relate to its values and its founder's values. And the same is the case of Grok, and same is the case of Muse now.

Sam Lessin: No, Grok will basically do anything.

Dave Morin: That's alignment, right? And so the question is whether or not it's faithfully aligned with you or not, or the lab. And I think that that's also going to be one of the next frontiers of this.

Sam Lessin: I don't know that it's a you thing. I think it's more nuanced, like, per task. I actually now use Grok a bunch, right, because of that. I hadn't been using Grok. Now I have a whole set of workflows on Grok, which are my things that Grok does workflow. I have other stuff on Claude. Now just in a lot of cases, if someone's like, "I'm not gonna do this," or, "I don't do it well," you're just like, "Find me someone that will." I mean, this is the thing about these models is if you just think about them as they're just like people, and you're gonna find some guy. You find some annoying person at your company who's like, "I won't do that 'cause it violates my morals." You're like, "Whatever. I'm just gonna go to Steve, and he'll do it," right? And so, like, I think it's like, I don't think it's, like, a personal human of full alignment. I think it's more just like, yeah, you're gonna work with a lot of people, and, like, Bob's super cheap and will do a bunch of basic tasks, and, like, if he's gonna be all curmudgeonly about taking out the trash, then you call Charlie, and Charlie's fine with it.

Dave Morin: I actually think this is a good pivot to the next topic, which is our polyagentomerous future. I think that last week we were talking about Muse's launch, and in the first day of Muse's launch, it was like, you know, I think last week I was talking about how Muse would not, basically wouldn't query my Instagram post for me, and I was frustrated by it. I spent the rest of the week playing around with it, and it turns out that Muse is in- insanely good at interest-based stuff. Anybody... I guess I benefit from having worked on Facebook for many, many years, so, like, my mind understands the datasets that Meta has access to, and so I've been pushing it to the limit in terms of finding things related to my interests, vintage car parts or whatever, and it's so insane at this. But I'm never gonna use it for a bunch of work use cases that totally not Meta's domain, right? And I think what a lot of people do is they're like, "Oh, I need to have one of these and not many of them." And I just don't think that's true. I think Sam's actually right that we're now in this, like, polyagentomerous future where you're just gonna talk to whatever ones work for whatever it works for.

Guest: I actually disagree. I wanna state my disagreement.

Dave Morin: Brit, you use, you use, like, 10 of these every day.

Sam Lessin: You told us you got a whole extra monitor for them.

Guest: I have a screen right here. All my agents are doing things right now. Yes. And let me point out to you

Brit Morin: ... crazy tech people on camera with me, that we have worked in Silicon Valley for 20 years. We do this for our jobs. We have to, like, try all of them. We are way more technologically advanced than normies out there. Normal people frankly don't even want one agent, and if they want an agent at all, they're gonna have one. They don't wanna deal with switching. They wanna put all their stuff in.

Sam Lessin: But the switching is free. Like, I, like, like, it doesn't matter.

Brit Morin: They just want one thing. They don't wanna, like, deal with lots of things.

Dave Morin: Uh, that's like saying people wanted one app and they didn't want one app.

Sam Lessin: Or one friend.

Brit Morin: I think they want one thing. When they start to, like, really understand what an agent is and what it can do for you-

Dave Morin: I think this is actually offensive to the everyman

Brit Morin: ... maybe two. Maybe they have a work agent and a home ag- personal.

Dave Morin: Brit, how many apps do you have on your phone?

Brit Morin: I am a different user than every internet user.

Dave Morin: You're saying that normal people don't have many apps on their phone?

Sam Lessin: Well, they actually don't have that many.

Brit Morin: Apps are different. Way less than I have on my phone.

Dave Morin: They have way more than one.

Jessica: I have a relevant experience to share on this topic, because if you look at, there's still a question, right? Are the Groks, the Muses, what... Because also apps are building their own agents really well as well. I mean, this is sort of why the SaaS industry is still alive, because it turns out that, like, Rippling can build really, really, really, really, really good AI with all of the Rippling context. You don't just wanna, like, export some of your Rippling data into Claude. So that's another thing, and I have to give props to Aura's agent, Aura Ring, the new one.

Brit Morin: Oh.

Jessica: Because I was getting high sleep scores and I was still exhausted. Didn't know what was happening.

Brit Morin: And what happened?

Jessica: And I was like-

Dave Morin: Peptides.

Jessica: No, I don't peptide, Dave. Um, accidentally pressed the agent that... And, and instantly, if I do that by accident, I, like, pop it away usually, 'cause I don't, I wanna chat with something. But I was like, "Well, let's see. Like, let's push it." And it'll be like, "Well, I got a 93 last night, but I'm falling asleep at 1:00 PM." And it went back multiple days to, like, what happened in my REM cycle on Wednesday that explained why, despite sleeping well Friday night, I was a wreck midday Saturday. And it was interesting, and, like, that is a cool experience. And then I was like, "Well, let me push it and ask it, can I change my, like, snack schedule to maybe, like, mitigate this?" And it also had some really good feedback.

Brit Morin: But don't you think in the future you're gonna have that all wrapped into your own personal agent, and then you're just gonna know that in one place?

Sam Lessin: Like, I have it all wrapped in one place.

Jessica: Yeah, but other people might use it through their existing things.

Brit Morin: Fair.

Sam Lessin: Well, this is going back to the whole, the business thing. We have trillion-dollar stories being told, right? And you're like, if you're using many of them, and you can hot swap them, and it's a constellation of friends, it's very hard for any one of them to be worth infinity, right? Like, there's not a compounding advantage, and, like, I think that's all she wrote. Now, again, I wanna be really clear, that doesn't mean I wouldn't love to have a bunch of Anthropic stock at zero and trade out. There's money to be made, and I think everyone kinda gets that, but any thinking person, it's just so hard. The only bet I've heard people making, which I'm like, I rationally get it, is you're like, this shit, the world gets so weird, and, like, everything kind of falls apart, and it's just an asymmetry story. Who the fuck knows? And that's, like, pretty loose analysis.

Jessica: Well, so what do you guys make... I think it was on this pod a week or two ago that UVC has made fun of me for not having used Instinct yet. I was tickled that The Information's reported it's looking to raise at a $10 billion valuation with-

Brit Morin: That's only because they're out of compute. These numbers are fake.

Jessica: But for those who care, Coatue, Sequoia, and Benchmark are in talks to lead. But say more about the numbers being fake, but also this whole category, like, if we're already multi-agented, is there room for more?

Sam Lessin: Sure. You can always have more friends.

Brit Morin: I think Instinct is a really good product. It's one of my many agents that I've tried and use. It has, their moat so far is that it's really simple and it's text message based, so you can just text with it and it does things. Fine. It launched a few weeks ago.

Jessica: So their moat is, like, an API that could be vibe coded?

Brit Morin: It's a harness. It has a, yeah, you have a phone number that you can just text. But then you can, like, do things like a phone number can. It can call people. It can, like, do whatever. So-

Dave Morin: It's just an agent.

Brit Morin: Yes, and so there are many of these agents of, as we've been talking about. They raised their first round at two and a half billion.

Dave Morin: There's 3 million new open claws every week.

Brit Morin: And now they're gonna raise it 10 billion, like, two weeks later. There's, like, 100,000 reported users, which is, like, maybe a lot for two weeks, but not worth $10 billion in valuation. So it's just that they were like-

Dave Morin: How is this healthy? I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be down on founders of any kind, but, like, this is not healthy for your company.

Brit Morin: They don't wanna be diluted, so they're just negotiating the terms.

Dave Morin: No, no, no, it's not about not being diluted. It's about how do you actually build a business that's worth $10 billion?

Sam Lessin: You don't. You sell it to someone.

Brit Morin: Well, OpenRouter proved that you can just sell it. Maybe that's how you make it valuable.

Dave Morin: I'm sorry, Brit, but OpenRouter was ac- had a actual business.

Brit Morin: How much revenue did they have?

Jessica: I mean, we've reported their revenue. They had revenue. I mean, it was like a-

Sam Lessin: They have usage. The, the announcement that they were thinking of being acquired tripled their usage, so it was a good PR.

Brit Morin: So Sam, do you think Instinct's worth 10 billion?

Sam Lessin: What do you think? I think the really interesting thing is just everyone's trading and no one's investing.

Jessica: Is there any investing going on? I feel like there's gotta some.

Dave Morin: I am definitely investing.

Sam Lessin: I'm investing, but you know what, Dave? You and I have not made gajillions of dollars because we're not trading on AI. Like, we're doing fine.

Brit Morin: Well, you're not king making. You're doing normal investing. You're not doing king making, trading investing.

Sam Lessin: I'm, like, finding things at zero and giving them money, and then want them to create businesses and number go up, and then every once in a while someone pays a lot for the business or whatever. But I, I, like, I haven't changed our investing that much. And you know what? In the Silicon Valley ecosystem, financially, that's, like, insanely wrong right now. This is all, like, secure your bag, get liquid. There's a deep market to buy this shit on the other side, especially as a seed investor. I am currently wrong, right? I'm betting I become right But I could stay along for a long time. I just don't like the trading game, and maybe that makes me bad. I don't know.

Brit Morin: When do you think the trading game really started?

Jessica: So it was 13 million in monthly revenue.

Brit Morin: 13 million monthly revenue, so like 150 million.

Sam Lessin: Look, Openwater was... It was good. It was a good, good in, good out. But just remember, I mean, I just go back to, like, don't you remember the quaint old days when Instagram was shockingly worth a billion dollars when it was bought? I mean, it's, like, hilarious.

Brit Morin: No, we were talking last week about, like, when Flickr was bought for, like, 20 million. That was a big deal. And Summize was bought.

Sam Lessin: Well, I was talking about Summize the other day with Borthwick, who just made a killing, by the way, on... Which one did he make a killing on?

Jessica: Oh, my God, I forgot about Summize. Yeah, well, everyone just wants to know, so the so what?

Sam Lessin: The thing that's so interesting is that there's actually, if is liquidity, right? 'Cause there's so much money. Like-

Brit Morin: Sam's right

Sam Lessin: ... that's the thing that's interesting, and that's the thing that's different.

Brit Morin: You can be extremely successful as a trader. Even if you look at who's buying Instinct's next round or whatever, it's all traders.

Sam Lessin: Well, and what's really interesting, right, is you have this thing where, like, take Bending Spoons. Bending Spoons is making really good business deals offering, like, a tenth of the private price because there's no liquidity. They're the liquidity provider and, right, and for this type of business. And then you have a lot of people who are like, "There's so much money with asymmetry on the minds." And if it... Drying up is more of a macro event than it is a tech event, right, is the interesting thing from my perspective. I don't know. I don't know how the ballgame ends. I mean, I know that we're so disconnected from any semblance of normal capitalism or reality, and I know it's gonna drive an unbelievable amount of, like, fear, loathing, anger, and, like, resentment in all sorts of ways. Like, this makes the dot com bubble look quaint. But who knows? Like, I'm open to the fact that this could go on for years. Or it just could be we've hit a too big to point fail, and this is the greatest stories ever told, right? The greatest stories ever sold.

Brit Morin: That's never the case, Sam. To your point about reading the Talmud a lot, this is not the case.

Sam Lessin: To the Talmud.

Jessica: Do you wanna talk about your app Jewish combo, Sam, or is that-

Sam Lessin: Oh, I just like... It's... Like, Claude is so good at Judaism. It's wild. Like, I just, I-

Jessica: Say more. Say more.

Brit Morin: I thought it was bad at Judaism. I thought Claude was not a f- like, not into giving you...

Sam Lessin: No, no, no, it won't tell me who's Jewish. It won't help me my distribute my Jewish apps, but it'll help me build them, right? I need Grok to distribute them. I basically... Look, it's, it's the high holy days. I think that a lot of stuff is interesting, so I literally, like, I did a few things, but I created a great app which is just, like, combination Bible, Talmud, and then history kind of woven together with an agent I can talk to and ask questions of that's quite good and interesting. And then I just started having it send me, like, daily, like, "What's the Torah portion? You know me. Like, what am I gonna be most interested in? What are the big debates in it? How does it relate to, like, religion disconnected from land?" Which is one of the big innovations in Judaism. And it's like, it's so good, and I've said it to people who know a lot more about religion than I do, and they're like, "This is insanely good. Like, what are the sources on this?" So, like, I don't know. There's enough stuff online to make great Bible study, I guess, for interesting Old Testament Talmud stories, plus Talmud stories.

Jessica: There you go. Bot use case of the week.

Sam Lessin: By the way, yeah, torah.wlesson.com if you wanna sign up. It's actually really excellent.

Brit Morin: Oh, God.

Jessica: Got a little app store going. Got, got a big app store.

Brit Morin: Are you charging for that?

Sam Lessin: That's just for the community, but it's really freaking good.

Brit Morin: God wants everyone to have it. Yeah. This is evangelism.

Jessica: Speaking of religion and AI. All right, so things are getting weird. I, I think I may have said this on the pod, but I have, like, my... They... There's just those signs things are getting weird. For me, the billboards that are just 150 million in ARR, and that's the whole billboard.

Brit Morin: Because there's traders amongst us, Jess, and there's someone who just needs to mark that company up 'cause it's obviously worth 10 billion.

Jessica: It's a very funny thing to put on a billboard. But anyway, what else is cooking? What are people paying attention to? We talked Apple phone. We've got Apple contemplating the server business again, something reporting in the information.

Sam Lessin: They just noticed people are making money on that. Maybe they should do that.

Jessica: Apple's like, "Wait a second."

Brit Morin: John Ternus is a cyclist, I read. Isn't everyone that's an exec at Apple a cyclist?

Sam Lessin: Well, if you live in the South Bay, you're a cyclist, right? The problem is, I wonder what the insurance cost is on that. That skyline's a dangerous road to bike.

Brit Morin: What's John Ternus's life insurance policy?

Sam Lessin: Guilty as charged. I, I am looking at a new bike.

Brit Morin: This is not good. Guys, my Eight Sleep told me my sleep age. How many years younger do you think I am in my sleep age?

Jessica: Four.

Sam Lessin: And what are you gonna do if I'm younger than you? You're not.

Brit Morin: You're definitely not younger than me.

Jessica: You're definitely not younger than-

Sam Lessin: Uh, I don't know.

Brit Morin: Dave, let's be honest here.

Sam Lessin: Dave's gonna find a bot that tells him he is, though. It's not that hard. You just find another person. It's kinda like Trump's doctor.

Brit Morin: It's to your point about Aura, Jess. I feel like all these apps are starting to have more intelligence in them, and it's interesting to see, like, what things are... I'm getting sleep reports now about my sleep age. I'm trending younger than last week already. I was 35.8 last week. I'm 35.0 now.

Sam Lessin: Longevity age scores are like the doomerism of health apps. Which is funny, 'cause, like, why don't all these apps say you're gonna die because of AI? Like, I'll get upset when they're like, "Sure, you're 20, but you're gonna die next year." The AIs aren't talking to themselves. Yeah, it's all just collective delusion, whatever. Kind of fun, though.

Brit Morin: Whatever. People love this. People, like, gamify it.

Sam Lessin: People love this shit. This is the most entertaining business in the history of the world.

Brit Morin: Who cares? They can compete against each other. This is a game now. It's like, especially for couples who sleep in bed together, like me and you, Dave. It's, like, like, it's instantly created more engagement.

Sam Lessin: If you just step back and say, "Look, if you wanna understand our era, looking back 200 years, we are entertaining ourselves to death." This is the most entertaining business cycle in the fucking history of the world. It's so entertaining, right? And if you're just like, "Okay, you know what the algorithm's really good at? You know what really AI's really good at? Entertainment." And so the entire model of the world right now is let's make all the most entertaining stuff happen, and we're gonna love it Right? That's kinda where we're at.

Brit Morin: Well, it started with social media.

Jessica: My reels are getting so entertaining.

Dave Morin: Where do you even get that sleep score? I saw it yesterday and I can't find it.

Brit Morin: Maybe yours is so bad it didn't wanna tell you.

Dave Morin: No, mine was in my 30s, just like you.

Jessica: No, that's your age.

Brit Morin: No, uh, it's just on your home screen.

Dave Morin: No, it's not.

Brit Morin: It's on your home screen.

Jessica: We have to analyze this.

Sam Lessin: Your sleep score, or are we just talking about the overall age score?

Jessica: Sleep age.

Brit Morin: Your biological age based on your sleep score. Ba- when I'm 80, I'm actually gonna be 68.

Sam Lessin: If you go to, like... Like, you have the heart age. I'm seven and a half years younger than my actual age in my heart.

Jessica: I don't think that's your sleep age, Brit. I think that's your cardiovascular age.

Sam Lessin: I don't have a sleep age.

Brit Morin: It's based on my s- Maybe I'm in a private beta, you guys. My sleep duration, my HRV.

Sam Lessin: Wait, you have private Oura?

Jessica: What?

Brit Morin: I have private Eight Sleep. It's even better than private Oura.

Sam Lessin: Oh, Eight Sleep. But Eight Sleep is bullshit. I love Eight Sleep as a product, but it is the most garbage of the garbage scores because they're just trying to s- tell you how great they are at making you better. Like, Eight Sleeps is the one... Like, it's really funny. Apple wants to congratulate you. They're just nice. Garmin is an asshole, right? Oura is, like, kind of reasonable because they're selling you some semblance of reality, and Eight Sleep is the most self-congratulatory. Because of Eight Sleep, you've slept so much better and now you're 12 years old. It's like, it's basically like a marketing loop.

Jessica: Brit, it says my biological age is a calculation in progress. Requires two weeks, but I've been using Eight Sleep for two years. It's just in the, the, the right more.

Dave Morin: Oura, come on.

Brit Morin: Not Oura. Eight Sleep, Dave.

Dave Morin: No, Brit, I saw this.

Sam Lessin: Guys, we've reached a new level of not entertaining.

Dave Morin: Oh.

Brit Morin: Sorry, we can cut this part out.

Sam Lessin: No, let's not. Let's just let people know what's really going on in our worlds.

Brit Morin: Well, I just wanted everyone to know I'm six years younger in s- my sleep score.

Dave Morin: Hey, Brit, I just want you to know that I'm 6.8 years younger.

Jessica: Brit, why is it so important to you to be younger? We need to analyze this.

Sam Lessin: Which makes the whole thing deeply suspect.

Brit Morin: I would like to have sleep competitions.

Jessica: This is why people love Silicon Valley people, 'cause we're so relatable.

Dave Morin: 39.1.

Brit Morin: I just, I literally can't... Okay, now Eight Sleep's dumb. I don't believe any of this.

Dave Morin: Oh yeah, see? Once Brit's losing, this is where you guys learn how competitive Brit is. Once she's losing, she just stops playing the game.

Brit Morin: Well, it's just, it's obviously not correct. I think the point that Sam's making is the social media era of the 2010s happened. I started a media company. Jess, you started a media company. It was like, you have to get people to emote. Like, that's the whole point of, like, drawing them in.

Sam Lessin: That was not Jessica's strategy.

Jessica: That was not my strategy by any means.

Brit Morin: Okay. Well, maybe I'll just use media.

Jessica: I'm like, "You're gonna hit them with the ARR numbers, and they're gonna love you," but yes.

Sam Lessin: They emote when they're so pissed at what you've reported. You actually drove a lot of emotion.

Brit Morin: And I think we're at peak emote right now because you have to emote so hard and do the most crazy things to get attention. And so to Sam's point, you have to create entertainment amongst all of this, whether it's the narrative, whether it's in the app itself, in the reels you're watching, Jess. So I think that people are yearning for feelings.

Jessica: But what if you don't? Right? Everything swings. I don't know. This is like, I've been spending a lot of time at work thinking about the things that we should do that just no one else will do. We'll compete in the things that now we did first and everyone else is doing. I am way more interested... I have two big ones. I'm not ready to talk about them, but they're very exciting. One is a new editorial expansion, one's a new product, and they're just things other people aren't gonna do. And I believe in my bones they're insanely valuable, so we're gonna do them.

Brit Morin: Are they defensible? Can people just rip you off?

Jessica: No, the, there's no way they can rip me off. They can, they always try. The- these are good. One is, uh, like, by design, you, you can't, and the other is people won't. But they could try. They always try. The other thing, though, is I would like to say a word about how entertaining reels have been. Like, and I actually watch them and I'm like, "Thank you, AI." I am cracking up. The stuff I get about tennis is so funny. And then I'm seeing, like, these, like, pro surfers surfing with their four-year-olds, getting barreled, and it's, like, totally awesome.

Sam Lessin: Oh, I got that one, too.

Jessica: I, I know. I- they're just so good. And then, but I love these ones of people. Like, it's... Obviously describing a reel is, like, the least exciting thing you can do on a podcast, but I'm gonna do it anyway. It's, like, a mom falling over on the stairs. Like, she's exhausted. Like, she's just, like, so tired, and then this text comes in, "Can you play tennis?" And she goes, "Yes, I can play tennis." And it goes like that. I thought that was really funny.

Brit Morin: We're getting a real sense of Jess's social media feed right now. It's literally all tennis.

Jessica: And that's, like, everybody I know. "Do you wanna have dinner?" "No, I can't have dinner until February." "Oh, do you wanna hit tomorrow?" "Yeah, I'm available all day." So-

Brit Morin: That's everyone you know right now?

Jessica: It's a big chunk of people I know. If, I promise you, if I'm like, "You wanna meet to talk about this?" They'll say, "No." I'm like, "You wanna meet to hit?" They'll be like, "I can be there at 9:00" Because that's the mode of where we've gotten to. I'm gonna bring us to one t- more topic, related topic to close, which is, I don't know, have you guys seen, picking up on politics a little bit more, all the tech people are waking up and realizing they need the Democrats to wake up in their corner on these tech issues. And I don't know if you saw, but Jay Carney, who ran Amazon's public policy and, and been around many big tech companies, has joined Ron Conway and SV Angel in taking on the task of educating, informing, influencing the Democratic Party about AI. And I think this will be very hard to do, but there's a lot, a big drumbeat.

Sam Lessin: I don't mean to be sleeping at the school, but didn't Ron Conway retire?

Brit Morin: This is a separate initiative, though.

Jessica: I don't believe so. Ron Conway, uh, is still active-ish. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe he does. I don't know. People are sort of talking about it, but I think now you're starting to see that wave where all these tech companies are waking up and saying, "Okay, we They're probably feeling like it served us pretty well to pivot hard Trump in terms of their business, not making a judgment on any issues other than has it helped their businesses to pivot Trump. But now they're looking down the road a little bit and they're thinking, "Uh-oh, maybe we have a bigger problem." So none of us here are Washington, D.C. experts, but would anyone like to opine on said topic?

Brit Morin: I try to stay out of politics.

Dave Morin: On the Democrats?

Jessica: Or yeah, or how... If you're Mark or Tim Cook or any of these CEOs who were behind Trump in his inauguration and are in lockstep with him, I mean, we forget how strange it was when Silicon Valley turned to support Trump. I remember-

Dave Morin: We don't forget that

Jessica: ... Well, a reporter sending me a note saying, "Mark and Ben of Andreessen Horowitz are gonna endorse Trump." And I basically, and they said, "We're about to file the story." And my instinct was, "Check your sources," right? Like I, it just didn't... And of course, the story was right, and we published it, and we broke it. That was weird. And now, not so weird, but the screw will turn again, or what swings? The, something swings, turns.

Dave Morin: Pendulum.

Jessica: Thank you.

Dave Morin: Well, I don't know. I don't know that anything turns, Jess. Like, the Democrats have been hopelessly lost for a long time, and I guess we'll see once the, you know, the election cycle starts, and we have a look at the field. But to me, like, this whole thing has been hopelessly lost for many years now. And so I think that's what everybody I know that's sort of more independently minded, we're Democrat, is kind of looking for a new message. And thus far, there isn't one. And so I, I kinda think, I don't know what's gonna happen here. I guess we're gonna see.

Jessica: I think tactically for the big companies, it just requires them to have a strategy, especially as if you have, like, investigations and all the things that could happen if Democrats are controlling-

Dave Morin: Oh, they definitely have strategies. They're heavy policy talk. Look, everyone feels like they're, like, betting right now. We talk about the pendulum or thing, the cycles. Like, the whole bet is the pendulum has broken, and we're in some, like, runaway cycle to one direction. And-

Jessica: But do you believe that, or do you believe people want us to think that because that's how you get Anthropic 3 trillion?

Dave Morin: No, I mean, I obvious- Look, the history's long. The railroads all went bankrupt. WorldCom went bankrupt. Everything goes bankrupt in these types of cycles. Think this time is not different. But the details can be different, and the reality is there's a lot of money to be made on the trade. Question is, like-

Jessica: Mm-hmm

Dave Morin: ... that can be true, and you can still make or lose a lot of money.

Jessica: Yeah.

Dave Morin: Unfortunately, the problem for anyone who grew up emotionally as an investor and believes in kind of-

Jessica: Yeah.

Dave Morin: ... is, like, we're, we're all about buying, not the selling part. It turns out you need to do both. This is not the podcast to listen to if you're looking for trading advice. If you want investing advice, we're very good at it, but, you know. We might be the worst traders in the world.

Jessica: Buy low, sell high.

Brit Morin: Yeah, but they don't sell.

Dave Morin: Go extremely long. Like, that's, like, what we're good at. We can rename this podcast Go Long. South Park had it right. It's buy... It's start up, sell out, bro down, right? That's what we're currently in. Right? Like... So we're between we'll sell out and bro down, and we're just into the bu- start up part.

Jessica: I feel like it's a new beginning. I really do.

Dave Morin: What does that mean?

Jessica: You know, I think you drown... Like, you drown out... Like, things have gotten so extreme and crazy. Like, at some point, I did not care to see, like, some nice kid I went to college with's opinion on Dario's essay on X, right? Like, at some point-

Dave Morin: But it's so entertaining

Jessica: ... pink peak spewing shit. So yeah, so with that part of your brain that you devote to entertaining, you're watching-

Dave Morin: Which is, for most people, like, the entire thing

Jessica: ... Great. You watching tennis moms fall on the stairs. It's great. Send me all of those reels. I'll take your Marin moms. I'll take your Atherton moms. I'll take all of it. But, like, for people building things, I think you actually can accept that, like, that era has been drowned out, that everyone's gonna drown themselves out in a sea of memes, and do something else.

Dave Morin: Touch grass perhaps. I will say, I liked Rob Chung, who I love, and came and played tennis with us recently, but used... He was the first employee at Fin back in the day, was posting his Dario commentary, which I thought was... With the whole thing, was just like, "All right, so, like, let's go through all the characters in Dr. Strangelove and figure out who is who in Dr. Strangelove." I'm like, "That's fun. That's, like, a good spin on this."

Jessica: So it's great. But, like, if you wanna build, it's for the entrepreneurs out there, or the real ev- Like, that, you know.

Dave Morin: Don't look at the big board. He's looking at the big board.

Jessica: No.

Dave Morin: By the way, that's what happens in Dr. Strangelove, is they bring the Russian in, and he looks at the big board. Rob Chung's awesome.

Jessica: Okay.

Dave Morin: That's, that's what we're seeing.

Brit Morin: I've never seen that.

Dave Morin: You've never seen Dr. Strangelove?

Brit Morin: No. Is that weird?

Dave Morin: Brit hasn't seen a lot of the great movies in the canon, Sam. Like, she's never seen The Big Lebowski. She's never seen, like- You've never seen The Big Lebowski?

Brit Morin: What? It's 'cause I'm 35, you guys.

Jessica: You're not 35. I went to your bra-

Brit Morin: On my sleep score, I am.

Dave Morin: You honestly fake being a cultured person with no culture, which is very impressive.

Brit Morin: I am such a cultured person. I will school you on any pop culture test.

Dave Morin: Sam, I've fought this battle her for years. Like, don't even try. So are you just gonna skip her and just go on to your kids, or are you gonna try to save her? Yeah, I'm already... Like, the kids are getting absolutely educated in the canon. Brit, Dr. Strangelove came out decades before we were born. It's not like a... It's just a-

Jessica: Okay, well, it was before me. That's all I'm saying. Guys, this is a fragmented culture universe. Brit, bring us to some... Let's wrap with some pop culture.

Brit Morin: Let me talk to you about modern culture, what's happening.

Jessica: Where's my wedding dress pictures from Taylor Swift?

Dave Morin: Brit runs a pop culture website, you guys. Let's go.

Brit Morin: The Emmys happened this week. Um I don't think Sam's watched anything that won an award on the Emmys. He has no modern, like, television taste, clearly

Sam Lessin: No one cares

Brit Morin: And Taylor Swift was in a cameo, and Taylor Swift was at the Chiefs game, and there's a lot of Taylor Swift happening. There's a bunch of rumors about what's going on. There's some big announcements to be had, and there's a lot of football going on. That's all that's happening in the pop culture world

Sam Lessin: I do like the SAS British show. Have you watched that?

Jessica: Oh, yeah, Rogue, Rogue something.

Sam Lessin: It's so good

Jessica: Rogue-

Brit Morin: No

Jessica: ... not Rogue One. Rogue, Rogue...

Sam Lessin: Rogue Heroes? Dave-

Brit Morin: Not Emilia Annoted.

Jessica: It's really good. Highly recommend

Sam Lessin: It's about the founding of the British SAS during World War II.

Jessica: I've heard it's good

Sam Lessin: Just so good

Jessica: I will say, we just finished Silo, and Silo is incredible. I think I put Silo in top 10 TV ever. Like-

Brit Morin: Top, top three

Sam Lessin: I feel like, didn't I read the book?

Jessica: It's based on the books. The book was one of the, I guess it was the best-selling sci-fi self-published novel on Amazon ever, and it, the show is just fantastic. Like...

Sam Lessin: It's like, I haven't seen Proud to be Hal and Mary, but I read the book and really liked it. And then, what was that... Do you remember Nuclear War: A Scenario? Jess and I watched this entire movie recently, and I was like, "This is really familiar." And then, like, it took me to, like, two seconds, and I'd be like, "Oh, yeah, I read this book." Just read the books.

Jessica: Well, yeah, at the end we were like, "Oh, wait." There's some decent, I don't know, season finale of Lioness coming out. There's not... I need some more.

Sam Lessin: Lioness is fine. I'm, I'm fine with Lion- Tires

Jessica: Dip- no, it's great, but that's over. Diplomat coming back, you know. If you are a c- a fan of all things newspapers and comedy, The Office creators have a show called The Paper that's, is pretty funny.

Sam Lessin: What loving husband found that for you?

Jessica: You did.

Brit Morin: What loving husband?

Jessica: It was great

Brit Morin: You find just TV shows? That's how you show her you love her?

Jessica: It's his, his love language is, like... 'Cause I enjoy television more than Sam enjoys television, so his love language is, like, to s-

Sam Lessin: I do like this character from the Tires show, Stavros Haliakas, or Ha- this guy. Have you heard of this guy? He's the most foul comedian I've seen in a long time, and it's excellent. He's become, like, part of my sauna routine

Jessica: Oh, speaking of comedians, guys, I just announced the WTF lineup, and Whitney Cummings is coming. Do you guys know Whit- speaking of great mom humor?

Brit Morin: Isn't there a double Whitney? Isn't Whitney Wolfe Herd coming, too?

Jessica: Whitney Wolfe Herd. We got the CEO, uh, president of NASDAQ, head of Goldman Sachs Investment Banking, lots of AI.

Sam Lessin: Should I start going by Samuel Wharton Lesson if she's Whitney Wolfe Herd? Should I just be like, "You will refer to me by my full name"?

Brit Morin: It's because she became popular as Whitney Wolfe, then she got married. So now she's kept all the names

Jessica: I'm gonna be... Yeah, I'll switch to David Brooks Morin from here on out

Sam Lessin: David Brooks Morin, how do you feel about this topic?

Jessica: Great, Samuel Wharton Lesson Brooks, you're the least preppy person I know. How are you Brooks?

Sam Lessin: David Brooks Morin will get more respect than Dave Morin, just saying

Jessica: I know. I should switch to it, right? Like, guys, my whole family is from the East Coast

Sam Lessin: I mean, Brit, you changed your name. Do you feel good about the name change?

Brit Morin: Well, the name change happened because I was one of two Brittanys, and one needed to be Brit and one needed to be Brittany. But also, I started dating Dave when I was 19

Jessica: That's what happened to me, too

Brit Morin: And I felt from the brand perspective of our couple brand, it was, like, Dave and Brit was cleaner than Dave and Brittany

Sam Lessin: What, you're Brittany Bonet Morin?

Brit Morin: That's my legal name

Sam Lessin: Brittany Bonet and... Wait, what, David, what is it?

Brit Morin: David Brooks

Sam Lessin: David Brooks

Brit Morin: David Brooks

Sam Lessin: David Brooks. That's how... David Brooks can go on NPR

Brit Morin: I like that your name has SAS

Sam Lessin: David Brooks Morin is, like, a serious person on NPR. I'm into it

Jessica: Serious person

Brit Morin: David Brooks Morin, like, has a pipe

Sam Lessin: You should get a pipe

Brit Morin: You know?

Jessica: Definitely

Sam Lessin: I will get a pipe

Jessica: Dave has a pipe

Sam Lessin: I have a pipe

Jessica: I'll get a pipe for next week's podcast

Sam Lessin: Should I start smoking a pipe while we do this podcast?

Jessica: Let's do an alternative podcast under our full names

Brit Morin: Are the listeners with us at all right now? What's happening?

Jessica: There are no listeners left. It's just us. I know

Brit Morin: They tuned out at the sleep score

Jessica: Okay, we're gonna give, we're gonna give people back-

Sam Lessin: Their time? We're gonna let them... Go back to your reels, people.

Brit Morin: They do like entertainment these days. This could be entertaining for them

Jessica: Speaking of entertainment, check out The Information's Most Influential People in Tech list if you're busy this week. 50 people. I worked very hard on this

Sam Lessin: Can it be 50 reels?

Jessica: 50 reels. 50 people who are going... I held, I did it with our amazing reporter, Jemima, and we held ourselves to the standard of t- over the next 10 years, not necessarily who's gonna be, like, the biggest name in lights, but the people that other people, like, if they called you, you'd pick up the phone. Influential people

Sam Lessin: Well, David Brooks Morin should be on that. I don't know about Dave Morin, but David Brooks

Jessica: Well, I know, but I'd get accused of insider... I'd get accused of all sorts of things if I put you guys on the list. But anyway, if you want some fun weekend reading

Sam Lessin: But not David Brooks Morin

Jessica: Here's the question: Do you wanna be a three-name person or a one-name person? You know what I'm saying? Like, Miley Cyrus just became Miley

Brit Morin: She's got baggage from her parents

Jessica: You wanna be Oprah. You wanna be Rupert, you know?

Sam Lessin: I was at the US Open. The crowd cam, like, a lot of fam- like, you know, Michelle is there, whatever. Half the people get one name, man, and the other half get two names. It's very clear you wanna be a one-name per- like, SZA or some shit. I don't know. Like, there are all these, like, people who, like, it's just, like, Steve or something, and, like, that, there's no question

Jessica: But there are a lot of one-namers. What about a one-initialer?

Sam Lessin: I think the ultimate thing for the crowd cam is no name necessary. Like, what's the... There's a rap line about Prince, how Prince turned himself into a symbol. That's an Eminem line. "Ever since Prince turned himself into a symbol." Turning himself into a symbol is one step, but no name

Jessica: You gotta be an emoji. That's what you gotta be. And with that, examine your names, examine your children's names. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you back here next week, or some configuration of us and our alter egos- ... for another episode of More or Less. Bye, guys.

Brit Morin: Bye.

Jessica: See you later.

Brit Morin: If you enjoyed this show, please leave us a virtual high five by rating it and reviewing it on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Find more information about each episode in the show notes, and follow us on social media by searching for @moreorless, @davemorin, @lesson, @jlesson. And as for me, I'm @brit. See you guys next time