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Episode 248.
248 is the area code covering parts of Michigan in 1948.
The Honda Motor Company was founded in Hamamatsu, Japan and Diamond Rings became synonymous
with marriage and engagement due to the De Beers ad campaign which had the iconic tagline
A diamond is forever.
My partner and I decided that we would act like we were married without the ceremony.
She stopped giving me a head and I stopped pretending to listen.
I came up with that on my own.
Go, go, go!
Welcome to the 248th episode of the ProfG pod.
Let's reminisce a little bit.
The first one, the first ProfG pod was at the Rosewood Mya Koba and Oswata Motoran was
our first guest and I did it literally from the basement of this home we had rented in
the resort.
There was no one there because it was two weeks into COVID or maybe a week.
Let's talk a little bit about me and this has nothing to do with today's news or our
script.
I had talked to or we had a couple epidemiologists on the pod talking about the Wuhan virus and
there had been some dusted senior homes in Washington where I was trying to figure it
out.
I called him and I said, can you help me get my head around this?
He said, Scott, this is worse than anyone thinks.
I went into our office at the time.
We had just started our edtech company section 4 and in an incredible rookie move.
I had leased a ton of office space, fancy office space and so when I went in and what freaked
me out is all 10 people in this huge space were sitting very close to each other and I
said, everyone should go home.
I'm getting out of New York.
I've just talked to this very smart guy from the University of Maryland who says New York's
about to get hit hard.
It was the first time I think or one of the first times where age and neuroses had started
to take over in a good way and I put together the spreadsheet of I wanted a low density resort.
I wanted a place that was an hour or less drive from a good hospital, an hour or less
flight from a world-class teaching hospital.
At that time, I thought or I had read somewhere that the virus didn't heat so I wanted somewhere
hot and I came up with the Rosewood Mya Coba and called everybody and said, all right,
get the kids, let's get on it.
We're going to the Rosewood Mya Coba.
I thought I was kind of like fucking crazy and we went to the Rosewood Mya Coba and one
of the only other people there was Troy Aikman who was quarterback at UCLA when I was there
anyways, we ended up being there for about three, three and a half weeks and that's where
we launched the Prop G pod was at the very outset of the pandemic.
Little reminiscing, what does that have to do with anything we're talking about today?
Almost nothing.
Almost nothing.
Anyways, what's happening?
Unfortunately, bad news in the banking sector can't seem to let up.
That's the bad news.
The good news is it looks like it might be ending or at least let's hope so.
First Republic Bank became the third bank failure of the year and the second largest
in banking history.
JPMorgan, the nation's largest bank is acquiring most of first Republic's assets, including
173 billion in loans, roughly 30 billion of securities and 92 billion in deposits.
They will also register a one time gain, get this of 2.6 billion on the deal.
However, the financial time support of the JPMorgan is expected to spend 2 billion on
restructuring costs over the next 18 months.
Restructure means firing people such that they can begin to clock.
I think it's going to be about 500 million in additional EBITDA a year.
If JP Morgan trades and I'm going to get somewhere between 6 and 10 times EBITDA, that means that
they're going to get another $5 billion.
I don't know, what is that?
Another $3 billion to $5 billion in market cap.
This is just, it's not getting around it.
This is an amazing deal for JP Morgan.
I'll come back in a second.
At the time of the firm's earnings, it was reported that it's stock.
When I say the firm, first Republic had lost 93% of its value.
In a statement, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, our government invited us and others to step
up and we did.
This acquisition modestly benefits our company overall.
It is a creative to shareholders.
It helps further advance our wealth strategy and it is complementary to our existing franchise.
So first off, let's talk about the biggest winner here.
The biggest winner here is JP Morgan.
I have worked, invested in or been an operator in every part of the capital stack.
What do I mean by that?
I've started companies.
That's literally the inception or tried to find angel investments from friends.
I've literally raised money, $10,000 and $50,000 at a time for some of my companies.
Then there's venture where you go get an institutional venture capitalist to put in
$2,000, $3,000, $3,000, $30,000.
Then there's growth where a bigger fund thinks, there's a good chance you're going to go public.
We'll put it much more than that.
Then there's public markets investing, mature company investing.
Then there's declining and then there's distressed and bankruptcy.
I have found on a risk-adjusted basis that the best returns if you're just an economic
animal are in the distressed part of the economy.
Why is that?
We are biologically driven.
Everybody wants to hang out with Tom Brady in Giselle.
Everybody wants to hang out with the hot, cool, good-looking, exciting companies, the
gross stuff, the shit that's on fire.
Hey, do you want to invest in open AI?
No, said no one ever.
The old stuff, old people smell a little bit funny.
Old people, you're polite to them, but you're not very nice to them.
I've noticed that at parties when my friends bring their parents, everyone's polite to
them, but no one's really interested in hanging out with them.
Essentially, I think one of the reasons that old people or the grandparents have such a
special relationship with their grandkids is grandkids illuminate just how age is society
is.
That is when my kids see their grandparents, they just think, oh my God, these are the most
interesting people in the world.
What is interesting in the eyes of a four-year-old, someone who brings toys and lets you do whatever
you want instead of having dinner gives you Oreos and lets you eat sour patch kids until
you throw up and then gives you pistachio ice cream.
That is interesting in the eyes of a four-year-old, but you see just the sheer excitement that
these people get from kids.
It makes you realize that nobody else reflects that sort of interest in these people.
Anyway, as long wind of way of saying, distressed companies are old people, and that is, we're
agist.
We discriminate against them.
We don't find them interesting.
We think they're close to death.
We're scared to death, so we don't want to be around them because they remind us or these
companies remind us that our businesses might fail and that we at some point are going to
die.
However, however, one of the keys to ROI is going into something that's underinvested.
When everyone's buying Miami condos and the prices get radically bid up beyond any sort
of cash flow, they could create, if you rented them out or any sort of reasonable cash flow,
you could create if you rented them out, then you know that the prices are about to come
way down.
The prices come way down and you can't give these things away.
They're underinvested.
That's the time to swoop in.
And by Miami, real estate is probably overpriced right now.
It was probably underpriced in 2011.
I actually bought a bunch of apartments in 2011 and 2012.
Probably the best investment I've ever made.
It's what I call my winter.
Remember that movie with Billy Chris Sorey's comedian and he was sick going on cruise ships
with his winter?
These places are my plan B.
If I again, yet again, fuck up my professional life and go back to not being financially secure,
I'm going to go collect rent, bang on doors, collect rent and coach Little League.
That is my plan B.
I will not sell these things.
Kind of the smartest investment we have made.
Anyways, you want to go where other people don't want to go.
You want to run into the fire and people hate distressed assets because they feel old and
they feel like they're dying.
When Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan buy a distressed asset that has systemic rest of the whole
nation, basically the government comes in and back stops it and says, all right, heads
we lose, tails you win.
Basically the government is absorbing a lot of the downside risk here while letting JP
Morgan capture a lot of the upside.
This is going to be a fantastic acquisition.
By the way, by the way, the best acquisitions usually are corporate orphans.
What do I mean by that?
I co-invested with Apollo and Yahoo.
I love Yahoo.
I've sentimental value for Yahoo.
Specifically, I'm trying to invest in companies that are pushing back on some other players
or big tech.
But effectively Yahoo went from being one of the most valuable tech companies in the world
to an all-star ran.
Verizon purchased it thinking we need to go vertical.
They saw what AT&T did with Time Warner and some weird, I don't want to be left out thing.
But Yahoo, did that make sense?
It made no fucking sense whatsoever for Verizon to own a digital content company.
Yahoo had given up on search.
Think about this.
Think about how just strange this is.
Yahoo owns search and they decided we need to be in digital content and took their eye
off the ball and basically seeded a $150 billion high margin business to Google.
Probably one of the greatest strategic missteps in history.
Anyways, fast forward what, 20 years later?
Verizon just wanted to out.
And so they sell to Apollo for I think about $5 billion bucks.
Apollo turns around, sells Yahoo Japan.
They get a billion or a billion and a half, billion dollars on the balance sheet.
Effectively picked up what is the fourth or fifth most traffic site in the world for
$2 billion.
So this is an incredible acquisition.
When a corporation decides they want to out, the highest bidder is not the only consideration.
But they just want out.
And so they are typically the best sellers from an acquire standpoint.
There are kind of three things you want to look at in an acquisition.
Is the market growing?
Are you getting it for the right price?
And do you have the right guy or gal running it?
Usually if you can tick all three of those boxes, which is hard to do, only a third of
acquisitions work out.
But if you can tick all three of those boxes, you usually do okay.
Jamie Diamond and JP Morgan are running into the fire here.
They extracted not even a pound, but a ton of flesh from the government to back this because
the government wants to move on from this.
I thought the PNC was going to acquire.
I didn't think the Biden administration would let JP Morgan, the biggest bank buy assets
under management.
They have 16% of all deposits.
There's about 17 banks that I think control about 75% of all deposits.
That doesn't sound too concentrated, but maybe it is too concentrated.
But I didn't think the Biden administration would let JP Morgan acquire this.
I thought it was going to go to PNC.
It ends up.
But actually, you could argue they're supposed to do.
And that is the auction wasn't who's going to pay the most, but who's going to cost us,
meaning the FDIC the least.
And I think it's going to end up costing the FDIC in about 12 or maybe 16 billion, I forget,
which still leaves the FDIC pretty healthy.
This is not costing taxpayers a dollar.
Why?
Because the FDIC is an off balance sheet organization that takes fees, collects fees based on the
assets under management and creates an insurance fund such that if there's a bank failure,
they step in and deposits up to $250,000 they covered.
Now, now this gets to the heart of the issue.
And that is that $250,000 limit, which above the FDIC no longer ensures, is kind of nebulous
sort of bullshit.
And that is of the 53 banks that have failed in the last 30 years, 52 have had all the
deposits covered.
And I think the 53rd has an 800 number on the FDIC's website, which I've been to that
says if you add over $250,000, call this number.
And some, it sounds like every depositor has been backed and bank failures by the full
faith and credit of the US government.
And what happened at first republic?
The money men are talking about what led to their downfall, increasing interest rates,
poor risk management.
But at the end of the day, it's a bank run.
It's a flight of capital.
And that is two thirds of their assets three months ago, where from accounts or deposits
that had more than $250,000.
So they were not subject to coverage by FDIC, insurance, see above at least theoretically.
Because of the data, the acquisition, it was less than a quarter of their deposits under
management qualified or had more than a quarter of a million dollars.
Because in a frictionless banking economy, where you can transfer assets out and you have
more than a quarter of a million dollars, then why on earth would you take the risk?
It's not hard to transfer your assets to a bigger bank.
And this is effectively what's happened.
There is FDIC insurance at JP Morgan, or effectively FDIC insurance above $250,000 in deposits
called the US government.
No one's going to let JP Morgan go out of business because if all of a sudden 16 or now 17 or
18% of all deposits were under risk, you would definitely see, honey, get the Glock,
we're going to the bank to get our assets.
So FDIC insurance, if you're going to have a robust regional banking system and you want
them to be able to attract assets more than a quarter of a million dollars, which isn't
a lot.
A lot of small businesses carry more than that on their balance sheet.
The company I've started as more than a quarter of a million dollars at some point in the
bank somewhere, then they're going to have to dramatically elevate the cap on FDIC insurance.
But still the cap is somewhat meaningless.
What's the lesson here?
A few things.
One, it does look like the banking crisis might be, this might be the beginning of the
end of the banking crisis.
I don't think enough credit is given to the US government.
I think you need a certain number of ring fence controlled managed bank failures.
Why?
It's like skiing.
You're not wiping out every once in a while.
You're not skiing hard enough.
The modern miracle of the economy is the US banking system.
Why?
Because with $100 in deposits, they can loan out $120.
They can deploy $120 into the economy in the form of loans.
If that capital produces a 6% or 8% in growth, you're not getting 6%.
You're getting 8% because you're getting that 6% on $120.
It's probably 7.2%.
You get the idea.
You feel me.
You feel where I'm coming from.
You get additional leverage, which grows the economy faster than it would otherwise.
How are you able to loan out $120 on $100 in deposits?
As long as the people who deposit that $100, don't ask for their money back at the same
time, you create a sort of a luxury capital or synthetic capital that has the same growth,
that has the same traction, the same opportunities, provides the same opportunities to buy more
plans, property equipment, and hire people than the actual money that was deposited.
If you didn't have any bank failures, it would probably mean the economy isn't growing
as quickly as it could.
I think this is actually a good sign.
I don't want to say it's a great day for America, but I think that the government has
handled this well.
You want to run into the fire to stress assets, usually spell tons of opportunity.
Again, and again, you want to see whether there's opportunity and dislocation and disaster,
if you will.
This is where the biggest opportunities investing are.
It's distressed.
And that is my kids love their grandparents.
We'll be right back for our conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy to discuss the nation's epidemic
of loneliness.
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Welcome back.
Here's our conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General of the United States,
and Vice Admiral of the Public Health Service Commission Corps.
I think the world of the sky, I think he is bringing back the gravitas and the kind of
research and action orientation that we would hope from what is arguably America's top medical
professional.
I think the Surgeon General ship, whatever you would call it, has become sort of a weird
position.
I think of Surgeon General Koop selling a life alert in daytime TV.
But anyways, I think Vivek is doing a great job of sort of bringing back a certain clarity
of thought and real actionable change and bringing key issues to life here.
Anyways, big fan.
Obviously a big fan.
Dr. Murthy, where does this podcast find you?
I'm in New York City today.
In New York?
Are you on the media circuit?
What are you doing in New York?
I am.
I'm based in Washington, D.C.
But I'm in New York to do interviews for the release of our Surgeon General's advisory
on loneliness and isolation.
I will be traveling to LA next and more trips to fall.
That's great.
So in your recent op-ed in the New York Times, you wrote that, quote, at any moment, about
one out of every two Americans is experiencing measurable levels of loneliness.
One and two.
Let's start there.
How did we end up with this epidemic of loneliness?
Well, Scott, I think it's multiple factors over more than half a century that have come
brought us to this point.
And the truth is loneliness has been building for years.
We've had a reduction in participation in the community organizations that used to bring
us together, like faith organizations and recreational leagues and civic and service-oriented
organizations.
But we've also seen that technology has dramatically changed how we interact with one another, how
we communicate with each other, and not always for the better.
So while we have gained efficiencies from technology, we have too often replaced in-person
offline connections with online connections, which aren't always of equal or higher quality.
And so I think we have suffered on that basis as well.
But one last thing I think it's critical to keep in mind here is that I just think we
also haven't prioritized relationships in our life.
And as simple as that seems, when the pace of life is changing so quickly, when people
are moving around a lot more, changing jobs more often, dealing with the stresses and
strains that are all around us, whether it's from a pandemic that we have been going through
recently or economic strains, we all need people around us.
We need people to support us.
Our relationships serve as buffers to stress.
But we just haven't prioritized building them.
I think we've assumed that they just happen or they don't.
But we now have to be intentional about rebuilding the infrastructure for social connection and
their individual lives in our communities.
And if we don't do that, I worry that we will continue to experience greater levels of loneliness.
So some of the science you highlighted in your outfit is really staggering.
We reported that lacking social connection can increase the risk of premature death as
much as smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day.
And then insufficient social connections associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease
and a 32% increased risk of stroke.
It's even associated with an increasing risk of dementia.
What is the science here?
What is happening inside the body when you're not in proximity to others?
Yeah.
And this is a part that's really fascinating.
Because when you understand the science, you realize loneliness is a lot more than a bad
feeling.
But it can have real impacts on our health, mental health, increasing our risk of depression,
anxiety, and suicide.
And the physical health effects are what you mentioned, which are profound.
Here's how it works.
Loneliness affects us on a biological level.
So when we are separated from one another, that actually puts us in a physiologic stress
state when we feel lonely.
And the reason for that is that, think about thousands of years ago when we were hunters
and gatherers.
We actually needed strong, strong trusted relationships for our safety to make sure that we had an
adequate and stable food supply.
We all needed to share our food.
We needed to pool our resources.
When we were separated from our group, that's actually when we were greater risk of me eating
my predator or starting from an insufficient food supply.
So separation triggered a sense of stress within our body.
And that prompted us to quickly find our people again.
What's interesting, Scott, is that even though our lives are dramatically different than they
were in our hunter-gatherer days, our brains and our nervous systems are remarkably similar.
And when we feel loneliness, we feel the same type of stress from at a biological level.
And so when that stress persists for a long period of time, as it does when people are
chronically lonely, that's when stress becomes bad.
That's when it can have harmful effects on increasing levels of inflammation, damaging
tissues and blood vessels, and increasing our risk of illnesses like heart disease and diabetes.
The other thing just to mention, too, is beyond the biological effects, we know that when people
struggle with loneliness, that's a real problem from a psychological perspective, because a
lot of us draw meaning from our relationships.
In fact, the majority of people when surveyed say that their relationships are among the
most important sources of meaning.
So when we don't have that, it makes it harder for us to engage, including engaging on our
health, which brings up finally the actual practices and behaviors in our life.
I know from taking care of patients over the years that a patient's ability to actually
take their medications, go to their follow up appointments, especially if they have really
complicated chronic illnesses that a lot of that is dependent on what kind of support
they have around them.
And if they're not supported, it's not only harder to do those things, but think about
how much easier it is to fall off the wagon with your diet or with your physical exercise
routine when you don't have buddies that you're accountable to or people who are encouraging
every day.
So if you put all these things together and you see it at a biological, psychological,
and behavioral level, loneliness has a profound impact on our health.
I read your op-ed.
You're what I call a really measured, balanced person.
And I think one of the reasons you're so effective is you don't come across as political.
I don't think people rear up and feel threatened or that in any way there's any malice that
you're, you know, if you're like, but you're just a little bit more.
What you've just seen is, you know, your aim is true.
I immediately go to, okay, someone's that followed here and I immediately go to social
media that there's some studies recently showing that where we saw a real spike, especially
in teen depression is when social went on mobile.
And I saw some recent research that absolutely blew me away.
Two things went from Jonathan Hyde and one from, gosh, I'm forgetting her name.
She just did some really some great research.
And the first is the cohort effect that the kind of the solution to loneliness with kids
who are on too much social media, which just takes snap away, you negligent parents, it's
your fault.
And what they found is that when the kid is off of social media, he too, or she too,
becomes depressed because they're isolated and ostracized from all their friends who
are on social media.
And that also social distancing, the ultimate social distancing through the pandemic was
caused by social media.
And mental health is actually more a function of social distancing from social media than
from the pandemic.
So I find that the culprit here, I know there's a variety of factors here, but as always,
and this is my go to, that social media firms who have an economic incentive in delaying
and obfuscating anything around the externalities of the harms here are playing an enormous
role in this depression and loneliness epidemic.
Your thoughts.
Yeah.
And I mentioned that technology has helped us in some ways to harm this in other ways.
This is one of the areas that I'm deeply concerned about, which is the impact of social media
on our connection to one another.
Look, now I think many of the people who built social media platforms built in thinking
that they would foster greater community and connection.
And while I admire the intention, I think we have to look at the reality of what's going
on right now, which is that when I talk to kids around the country, as I do very often,
when I hold round tables, when I travel, you know, kids tell me three things very consistently
about social media.
They say it makes them feel worse about themselves as they're constantly comparing themselves
to other people online.
It makes them feel worse about their friendships as they see their friends constantly doing
things without them.
But it also is something that they can't get off of.
And that is the part that worries me too, that these platforms have often been designed
to maximize the amount of time that people spend on them, not the quality of time that
they're spending, the quality of relationships that they're building.
And that has real impacts, you know, on us.
It's not just the direct psychological impacts on how we see ourselves and others.
It's not, but it's also the opportunity cost here.
The time I'm spending online is time I'm not spending in person with other people.
It's time that I'm not spending, you know, doing activities that support my health and
well being like sleep.
Like, it turns out a disturbing portion of young people stay up to midnight or later on
weekday nights using social media.
These are, and I'm talking about kids in school, right?
So, and it's robbing them of their sleep, which increases the risk of mental health
concerns.
So what we don't have, Scott, with social media is what we have for many other products
that kids use, which are actual safety standards and data transparency so that we understand
the full impact of these platforms and that we hold them to account because I just think
that we are going to look back on this time, you know, in five years, 10 years and ask
ourselves, if we don't take action now, what were we doing at a time where our kids were
struggling with their mental health and where social media has likely had a significant
effect here, we've got to take action and safety standards have to be a key part of
that.
But what does that mean?
Because I think that there's general consensus and even the PR people at the social media
companies will claim that we need something.
You know, they publicly say we need regulation and then they deploy an army of capital and
lobbyists to get in the way of all regulation.
Do we need an SEC?
Do we need criminal and civil penalties?
Like when you talk to other branches of the government, because if we don't create the
right incentives and deterrence, quite frankly, and penalties and regulation, I don't think
any amount of third places or parks or new leagues is going to compensate for the damage
of when your kid goes into his or her room and goes down a rabbit hole and starts getting
more reaffirmation, they should be depressed or getting shamed, whatever it might be, you
know, on and on and on.
But what do you think we need to do specifically?
Do we need a regulatory agency?
Do we need more more punishment here?
What would be your advice?
So I think there's the thing is we need several things.
Number one, we need clear rules, right?
It rules around what age is appropriate, what safety standards have to be made.
Let me see, be clear, but what I mean by safety standards, right now, kids are exposed
to a lot of harmful content online, whether that's violence, whether that's hate speech,
whether it's pornography, and it's happening to young kids too, right?
And we've got to ensure that the kind of safety standards we put in place are ones that demand
and require platforms to create environments where kids are not exposed to these kind of
harmful content where they aren't designed features that are pushing them to maximize
the amount of time spent, specifically during sleeping hours.
We've got to make sure also that there aren't features that are actually having a negative
impact directly on the mental health and wellbeing of kids and there aren't also driving content
to them, algorithms that are driving content that's harmful.
Like I talk to parents often who tell me that their child wasn't doing well from a psychological
perspective and they happen to type in the word suicide, you know, into a search when
they sort of, you know, consumed a video that had content related to suicide.
Suddenly they go or push all kinds of content that was not helpful to them.
One mom told me that she was having a very difficult time because her kid was getting
all of these videos that suggested, you know, teaching him how to actually take his own
life.
And in some cases, encouraging him to do so as a way of taking control of his life.
And she was, as any parent would be, was absolutely just incensed that this was happening and
in disbelief that such content would be pushed to her child.
Then safety standards need to prevent these from happening.
But the other thing that's important in addition to having rules gone is that they're
actually enforced.
Right?
Right now, in theory, platforms have a rule that 13-year-olds and above are allowed to
use their platforms.
Yet why do we have 40% of kids 7-12 who are on social media?
That doesn't make sense, right?
If we're actually going to be enforcing rules.
So they've got to be enforced.
And I just don't think we're in a place where we can rely on the industry itself or individual
companies to self-regulate and to figure this out by themselves because it's been more than
a decade and we've not seen, I think, the kind of changes and the extent of changes that
we need to truly protect our kids.
And one of the reasons I've spoken publicly about this as well about my concerns about
the age at which kids start using these products, the lack of enforcement, about the need for
not only for safety standards but also for data transparency because researchers are
telling us independent researchers who are trying to understand the full impact on mental
health of kids, they're telling us they can't get access to the full data from the companies.
So you're proposing a national framework to rebuild social connection in the United States.
What does that look like?
So what it looks like is six pillars that we have laid out that actually will help guide
us in how we rebuild the social fabric of our country.
And I'll sort of quickly take you through a couple of those.
But one of the key pillars that we talk about in the advisory is about rebuilding our social
infrastructure in our communities.
What is social infrastructure?
These are the programs and the structures that actually support the development of healthy
relationships.
These are the opportunities for people to gather, you know, sponsored by the YMCA.
These are the church and synagogue gatherings.
These are the school programs.
They teach kids about emotions and about building healthy relationships.
But these are also the workplace cultures that bosses and managers can help cultivate,
that help people build relationships with one another.
And finally there's an infrastructure component here too.
Like think about the fact that our infrastructure in our cities affects how easy it is for us
to walk and come and see in one another and interact with people in our community.
All of this is part of the social infrastructure that we need to rebuild.
But the second pillar that we lay out in this infrastructure has to do with policies.
With the fact that in the government we think that we always think about the financial impact
of our policies.
What I worry about is that we don't often enough think about the social impact of our
policies.
Sometimes well intended education or transportation policies may actually have the untoward effect
of creating more separation or physical barriers in communities for them to make it harder
for people to see one another.
But the third thing we've got to do, the third pillar is around the healthcare sector.
We've got to mobilize our healthcare sector to get involved here.
That means training doctors and nurses to be able to identify loneliness and isolation.
It means insurance companies actually supporting and paying for services that will help people
build greater connection in their life, particularly elderly patients.
So this is part of the health sector involvement.
And then the last three that I'll mention briefly is we have a call here to reform digital
environments.
You and I have been talking about that because we've got to make technology something that
supports healthy connection.
And we've got to our fifth pillars around research and knowledge.
There's a lot we know now about the impact of loneliness.
But this is not an area that we have prioritized in research as a country.
You think about the stat you mentioned at the beginning Scott, one in two adults who are
reporting measurable levels of loneliness.
This is more than the number of adults who have diabetes in the country.
It's more than the number of adults who smoke in the country.
We should be devoting more resources to this.
But there's one last pillar, a sixth pillar, which reminds me of conversations you and
I have had in the past, which has to do with how we build a culture of connection.
You can't legislate culture.
You can't pass some rule that creates the culture.
Culture is built by you and me and all of us in our community.
It's by what we think, what we believe, what we feel and how we treat each other.
What I worry about Scott is that it now feels so many times, when you're so many people
around the country who say it feels like we've become somehow mean spirited.
It feels like we don't care about one another, that we're everyone's just out there for themselves.
But to me, the foundation of a truly connected society is a core set of values centered around
kindness, generosity, service and connection to one another.
We've got to bring those values to life.
We've got to put them center stage and we bring them to life by acting on them, by having
leaders who actually model those values, by selecting and choosing leaders who speak to
and live up to those values and by designing workplaces and schools that also teach kids
at a young age about these values and live out these values in practice.
So to me, this is a critical part of how we build a culture of connection and what we
need to do to help them create a more connected America.
When I look back at my childhood and I think about the opportunities for socialization,
I played sports after school.
I was a member of a Boy Scout troop.
On weekends, I'd go see my dad and his second, third or fourth wife and most of them would
take me to church.
My Boy Scout troop, 42's gone away in Culver City.
I don't know if it's because of demographics.
I don't know if it's because of the bad reputation that Boy Scouts got.
I don't know what it is.
I know that economics have led public schools to cancel a lot of after school programs.
Is there some sort of economic program where we could offer subsidies or additional tax
breaks to nonprofits that are in the business of getting large groups of people together?
How do we, what type of programs lift, get everyone thinking about opening parks and
leagues and places of worship again?
Well, it's a really good point, Scott.
And I do think that we need a couple of things here if we want to truly resurrect those community
institutions and build new ones, which is we've got to make it clear to the public and to
the country that this has to be a priority.
Like right now, it's not clear to people that we need to rebuild our social infrastructure.
Many people remember the days when folks used to get together in the ways that you're describing.
But the second thing we've got to do is we've got to lay out a series of, as I think of it,
guidelines, frameworks, a pathway for how people can go about doing that in their communities
so that we can empower local organizations, workplaces and individuals to come together
and to create these types of gatherings.
And the third thing we've got to do is support them with material funding and resources.
And right now, look, there's a lot of money that governments at all levels, local, state
and federal, put to word addressing health and building infrastructure.
To me, this is an important area for us to invest in a place where I'd like to see government
overall invest more and to see the private sector work together with the public sector
to fund these kind of initiatives locally, because these matter.
And look, I'll just tell you one quick story I think about that speaks to the power of what
individuals can do.
Some years ago, I was introduced to this incredibly inspiring woman named Sarah Harmeyer, who had
just moved to Dallas, Texas.
She got there, didn't know anybody.
She was single, she was in a relationship, so she didn't have a built-in network for somebody
at home, and she felt lonely.
And she wasn't quite sure what to do, but she wasn't finding organizations, associations
that were bringing people together.
So she, one day, just had this idea of inviting people over for a meal.
And it seemed actually quite risky at the time, because she thought, well, what if they
don't want to come?
What if they're already busy with their own families?
What if I look like a loser, because I don't have anyone around me?
All these worries were going through her head.
But her, and she also had a small place, and she thought, well, my place is small, I can't
really entertain people.
But her father actually came and came in and said, you know, I'll help you build a table,
a big wooden table that you can put outside of the yard, and you can just have people
over for a pop-up.
So that's what she decided to do.
And she sent an invitation out to all of the neighbors, and the response got utterly overwhelmed
her.
Everyone wanted to come to this party.
And they showed up, they brought food, they bought drinks.
They had an incredible time together, which she did as she would just go around and say,
hey, you know, this is Vivek, he's a doctor, this is, you know, Brian, he's a lawyer, this
is John, he's a plumber, he used what he does, you know, have a good time, chat, she invited
people to pour drinks and do dishes and just make it their home.
And this became a lifeline for not just for her, but for so many people in the community,
and she realized that those neighbors, even the life who had been there for a long time,
they were feeling lonely and isolated too.
So Sarah Armier's neighbors table, you know, as we came to call it, became a gathering
point for people in her community.
This is what individuals can do, you know, in addition to the organizations that we need
to step up.
Yeah, I love that and just a couple, I think about this a lot, because I'm naturally an
introvert and as I get older, it's weird.
I think all of us at certain points in our life feel a sense of loneliness and people,
and it's embarrassing to say because you're worried that it it it out to you as someone
who's not as successful or as masculine as you'd like to think.
And there's two hacks I would suggest to almost everybody.
The first is just say yes more.
Yes, you know, Netflix and your dogs are always calling to stay home and just try and push
the limits of your comfort zone and say yes to more invitations.
And the second thing, and this has been more liberating and I think an easier hack, is to
separate the person from the politics because it doubles the opportunity for relationships.
And I live in Florida and I'm surrounded by people who do not share my political views.
And I found myself getting a tighter and tighter and narrow set of social circles because I
was turned off by someone's political views.
And the reality is 40 years ago, people didn't know what their neighbors political views
are and quite frankly, they didn't care it.
They just knew that, oh Bob seems like a nice guy.
You know what I mean?
Why wouldn't I have a beer with them, right?
Now I immediately go to, well he's a Trump run.
Well, nothing to do with this guy.
And you immediately shut off 50% of potential relationships.
Anyways, how old are your kids?
They're finding six.
Based on your research and what you're seeing here, how is your approach to fathering change
or going to change?
I guess, do you have, well I'll start.
When my kids were younger, I was very much the ambition dad.
Have you done your homework?
I always felt it was my role to teach them lessons, to coach them.
This is what you did wrong here.
This is how you do better.
And then as I've gotten older and I've become much more aware of these mental health issues
that are just a really art crisis among our kids, you know, you have your role to work,
you have your role to fund, some comes off the tracks when your kids, your whole world
chinks to that.
And I've kind of, I once I've gone 180, but I'm no longer the ambition dad.
I'm like, how do I build that in my kids?
How do I build that sense of mental and emotional well-being and ease and confidence?
And if they don't end up at college, I'll be disappointed.
That's meaningful, it's not profound.
And I try to do every day I try to coach less, if you will, or reprimand less or discipline
less, and find something they're doing and just say, wow, you're great at that.
Or God, I just think, you know, I told my kid the other day, I'm like, God, I just can't
get over how handsome you are.
I don't know where you got that.
You know, just every day trying to build them up and make them like themselves more.
Anyways, I'm done with my virtue signaling.
What do you do each day to try and give your sense that your kids that sense of self and
confidence?
Well, first I just love that we're talking about this because this is a stuff I think
parents need opportunities to talk about more with each other so they can learn from
each other.
And I'm learning from you as you're talking.
But I think dads in particular, so that's something we tend to talk about a lot with
each other.
What I do is, first of all, make sure that my kids know that I love them.
I tell them often.
You know, I'm very physically affectionate with them.
They're in the age where they let me, so I'm going to take advantage of that.
Thank you, Paul, give them as long as I can.
But I want them to know that they're loved because we know that secure attachments are
one of the greatest predictors for kids of happiness, fulfillment, help and economic
success.
The other thing that we do with our kids also is we do try to make sure we are always
pointing out the things that they are doing well, right?
So whether that's, you know, doing a good job practicing the piano that day or whether
it's being good about, you know, taking the initiative to like, you know, say hi to somebody
that they were shy around, but it could be small, it could be big, but we try to highlight
that for them.
I want to be clear though, because of many people think that what you and I are talking
about, you know, is perhaps too soft or it could be construed as too weak.
It's not at all.
You know, like we can both be disciplined with our kids and encourage them and push
them to do more and support them in times of adversity and not shield them entirely
from adversity, while we're also making sure our kids know that they are a lot, that they
are supported, that they remember what they have going for them and all the beauty they
have inside them.
Those two things are not incompatible, but prior earlier generations thought they were,
like I remember my parents in my parents' generation feeling like if you complimented
your kids too much or told them that they were good, that that would make them unmotivated
and that it was the lack of something, the lack of compliments, the lack of approval
from their parents that would become a driver for success.
And I think that just leads to pathology, you know, down down the line.
And I think we need to affirm our kids, we can encourage our kids, and we need to, you
know, support them in the adversity that they take on, because kids also grow through adversity,
but they grow the most when they know that they have support, that they've got people
who love them, whether they succeed or whether they fail.
Is this, so assuming the present gets reelected, you with Obama, you might be in Washington
another six years or longer, is loneliness your thing?
Is this your thing that you're, of all the health issues, whether it's pandemics or preparing
for another pandemic or vaccine research or obesity, there's just so many issues.
And my sense is to be effective, it's not what to do, it's what you don't do.
What's your focus, is loneliness your kind of your thing?
So this is to me, I see that my most important focus is I'm going to remain a mental health
and well-being within that.
The issue of rebuilding social connection and community is my top priority of the area
I'm most interested in, but also most concerned about, because I think it's got that if we
want to, if we want what I suspect you and I want and what parents all over the country
want for our kids, which is to be healthy, to be happy, to be fulfilled, to be productive
members of society and to inherit a world that is welcome and open and that's full of
opportunity.
I don't see how we can do that when we're increasingly fragmented, when we're more and
more distant from one another.
Like I think about the future pandemics all the time, there's something we have to prepare
for.
How are we going to manage the next pandemic when it comes through if we aren't invested
in one another?
No one in other feel connected to each other if we're all out there by ourselves.
The data is really interesting that when you look at communities that have a high degree
of social connection, they have lower rates of violence, they have higher economic prosperity,
they're more resilient in the face of natural disasters like hurricanes or tornadoes because
they've pulled together, they help each other more.
This is the issue that for me is the central focus of my tenure as Virgin General, because
I just think it's foundational, Scott.
We just can't do the things we need to do.
We can overcome adversity and build the future we want for our kids when we're fragmented
and separated.
Dr. Vivek Murthy serves as the 21st Surgeon General of the United States and the Vice
Admiral of the US Public Health Service Commission Corps.
While serving as Surgeon General, Dr. Murthy is focused on drawing attention to a number
of critical public issues, including the growing proliferation of health misinformation, the
ongoing youth mental health crisis, well-being and burnout in the health worker community,
and social isolation and loneliness.
He joins us from New York City.
Vivek, I think you are doing such important work and you bring such grace, this unique
combination of grace and a lack.
I really think you're making a big difference and really appreciate your public service.
Well, that's so kind of you to say.
It means a lot coming from someone who's worked I've admired over the years.
So thank you, Scott, for this conversation, for your friendship and for all the good work
that you're doing to help lift up the mental health challenges that our kids are facing.
I appreciate you.
We'll be right back.
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When trouble strikes in music town, there's one guy who gets the call.
That's me, Joe Treble, forensic musicologist.
And this week on Switch Don Pop, I've got one of the most shocking cases I've ever worked
on.
Someone killed the key change in pop music, and I'm going to find out who.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, a quarter of all hit songs featured a key change.
But today, the key change has virtually disappeared from the Hot 100.
Songs start and end in the same key, and no one seems to have even noticed.
Except me.
And that means whoever is behind this heinous crime has nowhere to hide.
Join me on Switch Don Pop as I tackle the hardest case of my career, the case of the
missing key change.
Algebra of happiness.
I'm about to finish my book called The Algebra of Wealth, Strategies for Economic Security.
And one of the things that I'm doing to try and stay mentally fit, in addition to physically
fit, is writing books.
It's the hardest thing I do.
Every time I start a new book, I'm angry that I agreed to do another book.
But it keeps me, it's hard and I think it keeps me mentally youthful, if you will.
Anyway, I'm thinking my next book is going to be on masculinity.
And this is, I apologize, a little bit redundant from the pivot podcast where I talked about
the same thing.
I've been spending a lot of time finding videos and interesting examples of men who I think
demonstrate a dimension of masculinity.
And first you'd have to define it, which I'm still in the midst of doing.
But what we have is, I would argue not only a crisis in loneliness, but a crisis in masculinity
in that we decided that masculinity was toxic.
And because we didn't want to address the issues around addiction, incarceration, loneliness,
dating inequality, suicide, very real issues.
Because people saw this politically incorrect to, in any way, show compassion for men into
that void, jumped in people like Andrew Tate, who basically used it as a means of promoting
misogyny and just a weird fucked up sense of masculinity, where you know, buy a McLaren
and treat women like property and, oh, that's how you regain masculinity.
And nothing could be further from the truth.
Anyways, I found three examples of what I would like to believe demonstrate this new
form of masculinity.
And we need to take this, we need to take masculinity back and redefine it.
And rather than trying to define it, I just want to play these videos and give a brief
description of what I found was so important and inspiring.
The first is a video from Michael J. Fox.
My life is set up so I can, I part this as long as I have to.
You've not squandered any of your capacity.
But at some point, Parkinson's going to make the call for you, isn't it?
Yeah, he's playing the door.
Yeah, I'm a lion.
It's getting harder.
It's getting tougher.
Every day gets tougher.
But that's what is a means of what we see about that.
Here Michael is showing his vulnerability.
This is someone who's known for his comedic acting.
You know, he's probably not going to go down as one of the greatest actors in history,
but he's having a really meaningful impact on the world because most men are afraid
to show their vulnerability.
And what you do when you show your vulnerability is you say to the rest of the world, I'm struggling.
And if I'm someone famous or someone strong, the temptation would be not to show that side.
Nobody wants to, or I think few people have the courage to reveal that kind of vulnerability.
And there's no doubt about it.
This video is rattling when you see this guy who, if like me, kind of grew up with him to
see just how much he's suffering visibly.
But he and his family have made the conscious decision to say that this type of leadership,
this type of vulnerability will make it easier for other people suffering from Parkinson's.
And there was a time when if someone had Down syndrome, you hid them from the public, there
was a time where we didn't talk about, you know, our mother's breast cancer, we didn't
talk about our prostate cancer.
We didn't talk about our kid engaging in self harm.
And until you start talking about those things, it's difficult to address them because people
can't relate to them and don't think they happen to them or the people they know and
they do.
The second video is from Joe Rogan.
We should be taking care of our own.
This should be a primary thing like this to strengthen our community, to strengthen our
civilization.
One of the primary things is we should be taking care of each other physically.
It should be like above all, right?
Education.
You shouldn't have to fucking be in debt a quarter million dollars if you get a fucking
education.
Don't we want less losers?
I think this is an important video because I think Joe Rogan is someone that a lot of
young men look up to.
He's an amazing physical shape.
I watch videos on him and his fitness routine and I appreciate and admire just how fucking
strong he is at his age.
The guy is jacked and works out very seriously every day.
I admire that and I think that is an expression of masculinity.
I think we're meant to be strong.
I've said several times that any man under the age of 30 should be able to walk into any
room and know if she got real, they could kill and eat everybody or outrun them.
You're going to look back if you're a young man and wish you'd gotten as strong as possible
because you'll marvel at what is the human male form under the age of 30.
It's okay as you get older, but there's something about that form that is in that strength,
in that bone structure and that double twitch muscle that is just remarkable at that age.
Anyways, enough about me slobbering off Joe Spiezic.
In addition, he communicates in a way that young people, especially young men really,
really appreciate.
He just kind of burst into this moment of empathy talking about how important education
and health care is.
More specifically that a lot of people don't appreciate what it's like to be unfortunate.
But a lot of our blessings are just a function of our luck.
When guys like that who are seen as tough and truth tellers in their own aggressive, robust,
masculine way, demonstrate that type of empathy, I think we move the world forward.
Then finally, the last video is from Michael Keaton.
He's someone I just think is a fantastic actor, whether it was night shift.
I think he's a great comedic actor, Beetlejuice, kind of went through a desert, a little bit
of a desert of a career.
10 or 15 years wasn't in a lot and then came back just so strong.
I was a bird man that he got the best actor for.
I thought Dopesick was one of the better miniseries I've ever seen.
I thought it was so moving, so accurate, so well done, kind of a crowning achievement
for him.
He just simply says, spend more time with your kids.
I was having this conversation with Bill Hader the other day and he was going through something.
I said, dude, trust me.
Hang out with your kids as much as you can, as long as you can.
You will never regret it.
You'll look back.
You're going to lose some jobs.
It's okay.
In the long run, that's the thing.
And I find that a decent definition or a decent dimension of masculinity would be that you
always, regardless of what a baller you are, attempt to find or allocate a lot of your
spare time to just being with your kids.
Not necessarily doing anything.
I think the whole notion of quality time is bullshit.
I think there is no such thing as quality time because the thing about the randomness
of children means that you never know when quality moments of time are going to happen.
They can happen in the car.
They can happen over dinner.
And the only way you get that quality time is through one thing and that is time and that's
a lot of it.
We need to take back this space of masculinity and redefine more positive dimensions around
it.
It says that being a man and I recognize that it's a continuum and that we need to respect
everyone along that continuum.
But for the 95% or the 47% of men who do identify with some sort of masculine attributes, we
need to redefine what those are so that we can help our young men exhibit a more productive
and more modern and more thoughtful and more empathetic and a more productive means of
masculinity.
That's all I have.
This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin.
Jennifer Sanchez is our associate producer and Drew Burrows is our technical director.
Thank you for listening to the Prof. G. Pott from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy No Malice as read by George Hahn and on Monday
with our weekly markets show.
I like marriage jokes.