Calley Means on MAHA food dye phase-out: correcting corrupt incentives, not nanny-state regulation

feels likely to me. Uh I the way that they're pacing Yep. is generational. We have some posts in there. Uh, Callie's here. I'll let you take the intro. I'll be right back. Welcome in, Callie. I'm gonna play a sound effect here. Boom. Uh, what's going on? Looking good in the suit.

You've been wearing those a lot these days. A lot of a lot of the tech folks have been brushing off the suits these days and coming to DC. It's been nice to nice to nice to get out of the closet. How do you stay healthy when you're in DC?

Do you have a good uh do you have a workout routine, a couple favorite restaurants, or you just uh you know, five coffees a day, no breakfast or lunch? I would love to say I'm on the True Med good energy uh program. Um but the sleep has been lacking, I will say. Try try trying to find good food, but not eating much.

Just a lot of caffeine. Yeah, I bet. Um let's jump right into uh this food dye ban. I'd love to get your highlevel take on it.

Um it uh it seems you know the big question we're a technology and business uh there you go looking good uh we we focus on uh business uh and my big question is how uh manufacturers will respond uh to the ban given that you know uh it's hard enough to even just deliver on the existing demand that they have much less uh you know um uh make you know fundamental changes.

And to be clear, I'm I'm very much in in favor of the ban, but I'm I'm curious what you think this kind of looks like in practice. Yeah. I mean, I I'll back up a little bit. I think there's a lot of lessons for business in this environment we're in right now. But, you know, I never expected to be here.

I'm I'm at the White House now. I'm a special government employee as well as running True Med with Justin Mayers. And Justin and I, you know, started the company on the mission of I think a lot of founders do this. We we just wanted to impact the world and change health incentives.

And just through the advocacy, you know, Justin and I going on podcasts and and and talking about this, something started resonating on this idea that our healthcare and food systems are broken in the past year. Uh got to know Bobby Kennedy, got to know President Trump, helped connect them for the endorsement.

Um now coming on and and helping to advise the next couple months. Um but I I think the big lesson of this food diet ban, I I don't even know I really like the word ban.

I like phase out because because banning implies overregulation and I think I think what people are waking up to is there's mass distrust of legacy industry right now. I mean you know I talk a lot about the food industry was run by the cigarette industry in the 1990s.

Few people remember this but 50% of the US food supply was controlled by Philip Morris and R. J. Reynolds in the early 1990s. They consolidated the food industry when smoking rates were going down.

They were actually some of the largest companies in the world in the 80s like highest market caps and some of the biggest balance sheets in history of capitalism tobacco companies.

It's a good business nicotine and um they they consolidated craft US food Nabiscoco and very deliberately bought off the USDA uh to recommend the the food pyramid which is basically a recommendation for ultrarocessed food and they they shifted very strategically thousands of scientists from the tobacco department to the food department and really added all these chemicals in our food to make them hyper addictive.

So through that corporate capture and what I would call the weaponization of food today in America a child's diet is 70% ultrarocessed food in in Japan or Italy it's 15%. Wow.

So so my big argument is that you know we don't really have a free market with these outcomes where of course the disease rates are just skyrocketing. I mean the stats are crazy. We're digging into this for a report uh for the administration.

We spend five times more per capita on health care than Spain but live six years less. I mean, and Spain doesn't even have a good healthare program. So, so these are common sense actions.

And I think I think there's a really a moment I'm meeting with a lot of food companies, a lot of pharma companies, you know, and they they they're running scared because Americans have lost trust. I mean, we all know this.

I think it's why there's such a robust, you know, tech ecosystem, building a startup ecosystem, you know, it's because these large companies have really lost trust with the American consumer and the American public. I I think often for good reason.

So, so I would call this not as much a ban, it's a correcting of corrupt incentives where these food dyes, I mean, just total no-brainer. They're they're petroleum based. They're literally crude oil.

They they add a molecule to crude oil, make that bright neon color, uh, and they're phased out of essentially every other country. So, it's an example of common sense actions that I think are are quite needed. that that phase out in other countries.

Does that mean that a lot of these manufacturers fully have the ability to sell these products in and make, you know, these products to sell into the US market and they're just choosing not to for the most part? Oh, it's it's even more shocking than that. They actually often make the product in the United States.

So, Kelloggs makes Froot Loops uh with carrot juice and watermelon juice and ships them across the border to Canada and ships them over to Europe. They make the same product with petroleum based dyes here in the US.

So a lot of our food can't actually be exported to Europe based on just just the chemicals in them right now. So So actually the US are Yeah. What is the is it a margin thing? You know, is it is it a is it just economic incentives? Yeah. Is it purely economics or or is there something else? Yeah, it's the food diet.

Again, I think this is one of the most no-brainer unimpeachable things they could start with because it's actually not a cost thing. Uh we've done a lot of engagement with the food industry on this. Um actually they've done a lot of research and they actually cite this as a reason for why they should keep it.

They say well the kids in focus groups lunge for the neon bright colors and it's like well I'm sure they do but you're feeding them crude oil.

So so it's really actually they say it's consumer preference and actually when pushed before the food industry said well we believe in consumer choice and kids prefer uh these bright colors. So, that's one reason I think uh the administration and secretary started with the food diet.

My Yeah, my three my three-year-old would love to eat cake for dinner every single night, but that doesn't mean that he should have, you know, the the uh you know, autonomy to just make that decision himself as a three-year-old. Yeah. How do you think about the history here with like corn subsidies?

Um, is there is there a risk of like playing whack-a-ole as the government decides what uh what to push or what to incentivize?

Um, what do you take away from not just what the food companies have done historically, but what the government has done historically to kind of like steer the food supply in one direction or another? Yeah. So, so, so I been an entrepreneur for more than 10 years, but I grew up in DC.

Started my career, you know, early on as a lobbyist in the food industry. And we used to weaponize this nanny state argument um and say, you know, you don't want to be nanny state.

But what what what I really have been trying to communicate, you know, and particularly to frankly a right-ward audience, you know, going on Tucker and Joe Rogan, things like that. What what I've really been trying to do is articulate that this is not a nanny state regulation issue. It's a correction of corruption.

Um when you look at agriculture subsidies, more than 90% go to corn, soy, and meat, which are essentially the components of ultrarocessed food.

and the grocery lobbyists and the food lobbyists uh push for that because at a supermarket when you can put something in a box and it lasts forever and it's you know bright neon colors the profit margins are much higher whereas natural food is low.

So there's a huge incentive to shove ultrarocessed food down our throats which has led to agriculture incentives that make a Coke at a supermarket cheaper than water because the Coke has so much subsidized ingredients in it. So that's not a free market that's totally rigged.

uh 90% to corn, soy wheat, point4% of subsidies go to uh uh fruits and vegetables. Then you get to something like SNAP, the food stamp program. Now Elon's looking at this. This is the fourth largest entitlement program. It's $140 billion a year.

The number one item on food stamps is soda and more than 60% go to ultrarocessed food. We're the only country in the world where a low-income nutrition assistance program goes to soda and Twinkies.

Um, so, so you have, you know, go down the list, school lunches, the largest source of calories for kids, federally funded, no nutrition guidelines whatsoever, no sugar, no sugar limits.

So, so you've actually just very deliberately, you know, from the history of the tobacco companies really weaponizing these regulations. By my calculations, it's been a trillion dollars over the last 10 years of of subsidies to ultrarocessed food.

Um, so we're trying to take stepby-step common sense actions to kind of unwind that. We're I also quite frankly think there's a cultural awakening happening where people realize the system is pretty screwed and you know hopefully you know we were talking about it more. We're talking about on a tech podcast.

So the fact that people are trying to be healthier, reading labels more, Justin's talking a lot about this obviously. I think that's a good thing, too.

And and very unexpectedly, you know, I do think President Trump, Bobby Kennedy, you wouldn't expected this coalition, they're leading to an awakening where 24 states right now are passing legislation on food ingredients, school lunches. So, I think it's very positive what's happening. Yeah.

I I always thought it was fascinating that uh the food issue is it it it it it's secretly very bipartisan because because you get like the right-wing like trad folks who want to, you know, clean up the food supply, but then you also get like the left-wing hippie who's hanging out at the farmers market and is just like, "Yeah, I grew these vegetables myself.

They're way better than the processed foods. " So, yeah. I'm curious. There should be a coalition there. Is food and health as political as it seems in the news?

I feel like if you talk to people individually, you know, it's it's like John said, it's bipartisan like we want everybody to be healthier and then you get into Washington and it feels like you you you mentioned you started your career uh in the lobbying space.

Um so I'm curious like where where you think it's, you know, if it's actually a political issue for the average uh citizen or it's just sort of manufactured by special interest groups. Oh, there's zero reason uh food and poisoning our kids should be political.

And frankly, these things about reforming food stamps, you know, and taking the dyes out of our food were leftward issues, you know, 5 to 10 years ago. You know, digging into the health issue, I think one of the most pernitious and chronic conditions in America is is Trump derangement syndrome.

And I I think uh TDS has led many people on the left to reflexively uh be opposed to these common sense policies. You know, probably a lot of the tech folks listening, I know cut politics is complicated. There's a lot going on, a lot of change happening. My hope is that we can all come together on these maja policies.

I mean, these are absolute no-brainer. It's taking on incentives of the pharmaceutical industry, which is something the left used to talk a lot about. It's taking on the interest of, you know, processed food makers that are really doing some harmful things for kids.

But you've had a wild situation where you've had Democrats now passionately arguing to keep food dyes in the food. You've had Democrats passionately arguing that we need to continue to have a $10 billion subsidy from the federal government to soda companies on SNAP.

Just reflexively because, you know, the Trump administration happens to be talking about this. You've had almost no support from Democrats. I called out Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, who I've worked with before, I've met, I know he cares about these issues. Where the hell is Cory Booker?

Why wasn't he at the Health and Human Services Department on Tuesday when Secretary Kennedy was announcing this policy on food dies? Where is he helping um on these issues? I mean, this is as bipartisan as it gets. How much you know? Yeah.

How much does uh pharma's, you know, position end up influencing media narratives? They obviously spend, you know, an exceptional amount uh advertising with different media companies.

This has been, you know, maybe a big issue in in mainstream television where, uh, you know, a television network is not going to, you know, bring somebody on to talk poorly about a company that, you know, is a big sponsor.

Uh, if you wanted to come here and and talk negatively about RAMP, uh, we'd probably change the conversation. I have nothing negative. I have nothing negative to say about RAM. We love RAM. Fantastic. Of course. Of course. Um but uh h how you know is that a is that a focal point at all?

Do you think we need some some reform there? Is it just the sort of free market doing the free market? Yeah, this this is how this framework I have and you know so privileged to be fighting this fight with Justin and and with Trum and and and trying to help the administration.

But I think what we're doing with the strategy is we're putting a stake in the ground that everyone can agree with where that in 10 years our incentives of our system are changed. And the way I define those incentives is that nobody wants this.

But the fact is the health care system, you know, a lot of health startups quite frankly still. The their business model is predicated on more people uh being sick. Uh the pharmaceutical industry makes more money when people are sicker for longer periods of time.

Hospitals make more money when the meds are full, not when they're empty. You know, insurance companies actually make more money when people are sicker uh because of this horrible medical loss ratio issue where they actually have an incentive to raise premiums.

So, so, so you actually have every single lever of the health care system predicated on sickness. Now, that same system, the pharma industry particularly is the lifeblood of news advertising over 50% for most news channels. So, that creates not a direct, you know, there's not a direct edict going down.

But you have a zero lack of curiosity from the media about why people are getting sick. It's really just referees about, you know, hey, you need to take this drug. Ozimpic is the standard of care for kids. You know, with COVID, I mean, COVID was a metabolic health crisis.

We were 16% of COVID deaths and 4% of the world's population. And the CDC said at the time it's because our immune systems are so weak. We're dying very quickly when we get this disease. Yet, the media was it was just about the COVID vaccine for six-month-olds.

So, um you you do have a very very damaging situation where there's selfcensorship.

And you know what I the strategy is to get to that long-term world where new startups are thinking about how to make people healthy, not how to take advantage of a system and you know deliver direct to consumer oimpic or you know a better UX on medical records.

A better UX on medical records is putting lipstick on a pig. The problem is the underlying incentives of the system. Um you know shipping pills in a millennial pink packaging is an innovation.

You know, a lot of healthcare startups are just rappers on the existing broken health incentives that are destroying the country and going to bankrupt us. So, um, that's the stake we have. The way we get there is let's do unimpeachable things. So, this food die thing is one.

Obviously, there's been a lot of talk about pharmaceutical ads. Uh, Secretary Kennedy and Marty McCary, the amazing new FDA commissioner, have talked about that. No announcements right now, but that's, you know, something they've said they're clearly looking at.

So, it's it's just getting these things that are 90% support issues, um, bipartisan issues, um, and I think you'll be seeing them, uh, in rapid succession, these announcements. Yeah. Uh, does does the, uh, media, you know, incredible growth of uh, drugs like Ompic scare you?

Uh, that obviously being overweight is uh, unhealthy. That's uh you know not not a political um uh point, but uh when I hear people you know saying that they're sort of like losing more muscle than you know fat, that can be uh that that personally um is uh you know can can be concerning.

And then I'm curious um if you have a general, you know, just personal personal opinion only on the sort of balance between like compounding and and getting drugs that are benefiting people out quickly and affordably versus like you know protecting uh the the in intellectual property of of of the companies that you know develop these uh drugs.

Great question. Uh so on the first one I'd say the MA stansipic as best I can define it. my personal opinion is is there's nothing wrong with GLP1 or ZIPCI per se. Actually, I think something the administration is talking a lot about is it's not an anti-drug stance.

I think with the dawn of AI and and very exciting things quite frankly in therapeutics, there should be robust innovation and frankly deregulation at the FDA. The problem is that with the existence of Ozic, it's two problems. One is that the drug costs 10 times more than it does in Germany or Sweden.

So, and that's that's going to come from US taxpayers. So, so there's a real corruption in the pricing. And then number two, corruption in the standard of care, what I call it.

So, there was a Medicare ruling from Biden that said that Ozmpic should be the frontline defense for anyone who's obese or overweight on Medicare. So, so you know, a 15-minute appointment, you get your Ozmpic and then diet or exercise, right? Right. No, didn't even mention it. And there's no funding for diet.

So, we spend five trillion on healthcare, right? And then they were going to push this through where it was imp over $1,000 a month which would come from taxpayers.

Not with no other option or no other route for an American to get, you know, the blood testing to understand their nutrient deficiencies or talk to a dietary coach. You know, this is what Truman did. Why would we put that flag in the ground?

It's like there should be flexibility with um with where healthcare dollars can go. So the problem, you know, is not that big exists. It's that that Medicare ruling would have gone to Medicaid. it would have gone to kids because now it's being essentially pushed on six-y olds through the American Academy of Pediatric.

So, you're getting to a world where, you know, stag rates, metformin rates, anti-depressant rates have exploded among teens. 35% of teens are on some kind of chronic disease drug. You know, Zipic would just be added to that repertoire. And of course, that's just not from our medical system incentivizing the root cause.

I mean, maybe somebody that's 75 year old on Medicaid, Medicare, um, who is, you know, 400 pounds and extremely diabetic and set in their ways. Sure. I mean, probably Ozic. I'd be fine with Medicare funding for that. But, but for the vast majority of American people, um, that shouldn't be the first line defense.

That that's the problem with our healthare system right now. there's not flexibility for patients to maybe work with a functional medicine doctor or figure out a more root cause intervention because obviously obesity is not an oyic deficiency quote. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What uh what countries do you look at as models?

The the tech industry loves to poke fun at Europe. You know, they don't tend to make trillion dollar companies very often uh or or ever in the also don't win a lot of bodybuilding competitions.

We are the most obese country but we also America also wins a lot of bodybuilding competition John's point of view but but what can we you know what are you looking at in terms of like this is a you know functioning uh government in the context of personal health really interesting so I don't like giving Europe any credit whatsoever uh they don't deserve much and I will just say this is a key point Europe's health care systems are total basketcase systems they're terrible socialist systems so I think one of the things we can learn about Just just to be clear, the stuff Yeah.

The stuff they get right is like saying like, "Hey, we don't want this die. We don't want glyphosates. " You know, they get a little actually what they get right is that the healthare system is less important, is that people are healthier to begin with.

The problem with the US healthare system is not that we have the wrong Medicare, Medicaid reimbursement rates. It's the fact that we're the sickest country in the world. And that's actually because we rely too much on the healthare system.

So, what I like about some other countries in Japan, and I think we need more of this, and Bobby Kennedy is pushing this more. I mean, if your kid is obese, you are shamed as a parent. Like, it is totally society unacceptable. Like, you are shunned. Like, you're like yelled at by the school.

Like, I think we need that same type of energy in America. Like, children should not be fat and diabetic. Like, period. Like, like we have totally lost our way right now. There's a whole Tik Tok craze where they're shaming doctors for weighing patients or even talking about weight.

O obesity is a blaring warning sign that our cells aren't working. And it is not I do not blame the individuals. When 80% of American adults are overweight or obese, we have a systemic problem. But from the culture, we shouldn't accept that.

We should absolutely be declaring that we do not want to have childhood obesity or diabetes and have that culture.

Additionally, in Japan and Italy and some of the European countries, there is like total bipartisan just consensus, this sounds so obvious, but but it's not the case in the US, that we shouldn't be poisoning kids. I mean, this school lunches in America are an absolute dumpster fire.

And you know, in in in Japan and Italy and France has mandated at daycare a four course meal, including a cheese course, I think, a cigarette and wine afterwards. I mean um but that'd be healthier than what they serve in America. I mean it's absolute disaster. So there is just this cultural thing around food.

One thing I look at Europe, they spend three times less on average per capita on healthcare but two times more per capita on food.

Uh in Europe they they do have a lot more respect for their agriculture system and their farmers and the consumption of whole food there is much lower the you know thoughts about pesticides and what's going on the food. So, so you always hear you go to Italy, the posi, the gelato, you lose weight.

I mean, that's really true.

So, I think what needs to happen and and what I hope culturally happens with these step-by-step wins is we move culturally to a system that puts less emphasis on getting sick and then getting drugged and more emphasis on what I really think is a spiritual issue of having more curiosity and awe about what we're putting in our body, our environment, how that impacts the soil, how that impacts the food, and then just getting back to basics on, you know, not poisoning kids.

Is there anything that the government can do or even America could do about on the fitness side of things? Yeah. What happened to the presidential fitness test? It got kind of phased out. There was a new program in 2013 of the battle here.

We're we're addressing a lot of the diet and the food supply stuff, but fitness is extremely important, but it's harder to incentivize or subsidize. May maybe I don't know. What What is your take on fitness?

Well, I was just with Secretary Kennedy in Miami at a UFC fight and you know, Shaq was there and a bunch of A-list celebrities talking about how they can help, you know, encourage youth fitness and rejuvenate.

So I don't want to get in front of any announcements here, but I think that type of education and inspiration among kids uh for more fitness to not be I mean a a boy in America, you know, a teenager boy in America has less testosterone than a 68-y old man.

Like like like there's been a depletion of testosterone among kids. Uh obviously because of our food or sedentary lifestyle, we're soft. I mean, you know, 77% of of of you military- aed youth cannot uh join the military in America right now. It's a national security crisis.

So, my one two kind of framework in my head is let's get the wins like the food dies. But I you can't underount the cultural education elements to this. You know, bringing what Justin Mayers and and Mark Heyman and a lot of people have been talking about this for a long time.

Bringing that to the forefront, these common sense solutions. So, you're going to see a lot of initiatives. And one thing I'm excited about is when Secretary Kennedy was uh sworn in by President Trump, he signed an executive order.

And on May 22nd, in about a month, they're releasing a 100 day report on the chronic disease crisis, why kids are getting so sick. Uh it's going to say things that the US government's never said before, uh about environmental toxins, about our water quality, about our food quality, about our sedentary lifestyle.

So, so getting the facts down and having the conversation on a factual basis and not letting industry and I'll say this, a lot of people in industry lobby not on policies but actually to prevent transparency about what's happening. You know, there's pressure, you know, to not talk about pesticides.

There's pressure to, you know, not talk about certain topics because it's going to scare consumers or it's going to confuse consumers.

Um there is a good trend right now where the government is going to talk about anything they want to and they're going to give Americans uh uh information not infantilize the American people as we often do.

Um, and I think that's the necessary precondition for a long-term conversation about policy change to systems that are going to uh bankrupt the country and and cause us to cease to exist which is I think is true given the trajectory of our healthcare budget which which will bankrupt us and the decimation to American competitiveness when you have 50% of teens overweight or obese and 38% of teens pre-diabetic.

those kind of uh numbers are so shocking living in California or any you know if if you live in California and New York it's just you would never believe those numbers you have to go to to places that don't where wellness is not you know the the number one trend I'm curious do you think uh this movement around making America healthy would have been possible before decentralized media feels like we kind of needed podcasts we needed social media uh we needed people We needed like a mom some random place to discover that when she removed red dye from her kids food that this thing happened and then she shared it and people start collaborating.

So I feel like uh you know a lot of this movement just would have been impossible when you only could get your news from magazines or newspapers or radios that are all captured in some way by you know uh large corporates.

No, the uh independent media ecosystem is an absolutely necessary condition to the opportunity we have right now. Um it can't be overstated how destructive it is that our core information source has been co-opted by an industry that profits from Americans being sick and that's had devastating consequences.

I think what's happened with independent media is one of the major historical events in American history.

Like when you read about the American Revolution, it was really propagated by the ability to easily print pamphlets and Ben Franklin and others, you know, getting ideas out that have never been able to get out before in a in a mass way. I think this is a huge shift.

I mean, for, you know, since World War II, we've had a corporateowned essentially media and now we're able, you know, you guys and people at a microphone are able to get more distribution than CNN. Um, the, you know, Secretary Kennedy, you know, was called a whack job by everyone.

actually him and President Trump are the two most popular political figures in America still uh he he was able to get through on independent media podcasts like Joe Rogan um and actually Americans you know determined a lot of them that he actually makes a lot of sense with what he's talking about really about these overarching incentives of healthcare.

I can't stress that enough.

There's a there's a in in this building in in the White House there's a there's a shift happening where we are of course talking about health care policy like what to do on Medicare and Medicaid but but it's more about the foundational incentives where what is the logic of where the $2 trillion we spend on Medicare and Medicaid going is that straight to drugs or is it more root cause interventions how are we incentivizing our food system are we really incentivizing ultimate processed food for kids is there enough transparency for Americans to make the best decisions there's more foundational topics being asked and those are very disruptive topics to the you know legacy industry.

Um and uh and that's all because of independent media.

I'll say the independent media also rightfully has led to record distrust of our major institutions from you know frankly the education system you know a lot's happening with Harvard right now um to uh the pharmaceutical industry you know to to to others that's warranted and and and one of the leverages I think um there is for change is that these industries when I meet with them you know really acknowledge that they have to make some major changes really partner frankly with Secretary Kennedy you know not to do any secretary Kennedy or President Trump any favors because they actually have to make changes to maintain their legitimacy with the American people.

I mean, it's not working right now. I mean, some of the tech bros on Twitter are saying how incredible, you know, um recent American healthcare innovation, uh how it's how it's been. I I'd love to see what they're talking about. I mean, we're literally have life expect declining.

You know, we spend four to five times more than other countries. chronic disease rates, every single one is at a record high this year in America with the highest rate of chronic disease than any country in human civilization. I I don't know what they're looking at, but we're not in a good situation right now.

How do you uh think about timelines? You're, you know, special government employee for a limited period of time. This is obviously a monumental task. It's not something that can be solved even in a single admin.

How how do you think about you know making sure that obviously you know we were headed in a to to a really bad place uh from a from a you know nationwide health standpoint from an economic standpoint due the due to the consequences of those health issues.

But um what what's the what's the strategy to make sure that this sort of movement becomes bipartisan and kind of can live uh live on after you guys are are no longer in the White House? I personally think we need to think about as a 12-year strategy.

We're not going to reorient the incentives of the largest industry in America, the the fastest growing industry in America because we're getting sick, the most employed industry in America. We're not going to change those incentives uh overnight or even in the next four years.

I think what we need to do, what I'm focused on is is maintain the political coalition of what you call this MA coalition. The reason we're able to drive change is because millions of women, quite frankly, moms voted for Trump for the first time. people who would have never considered voting for Trump years ago.

This issue has galvanized voters into a coalition. Uh President Trump uh was 5050 among young people, 50/50 among independents. We couldn't have imagined that four years ago. So m multiple factors for that, but clearly this maja kind of energy led to that.

So the reason we have an opportunity for change is because voters have really galvanized around this issue. So to me, if we can solidify that coalition, that coalition is going to continue to drive change. We need to deliver wins for the next two years. I mean, I'd love for Democrats to compete for those voters.

They've had their head in the sand. If if those voters can help Republicans, which is my hope in the midterms, I think you have 2028 where both sides are basically arguing who's more maja, which I think is a positive thing. I think we've shifted the paradigm of health.

You know, before last year, healthc care was about how to add more people to the existing broken system. That's insane. You had Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren just a couple months ago during the confirmation hearings with Bobby Kennedy eviscerating him for taking on pharma companies.

Elizabeth Warren actually said, you know, you're going to hurt their profit margins. These poor companies like like people have lost their minds when it comes to health care. Somehow arguing that more resources, more spending to this broken system is how we solve it instead of actual full reform of the system.

I want to get political victories and change the overall bipartisan way we talk about health. And I will say, everyone talks about the special interest, the money. The one thing that counteracts that is voters really voting on this issue.

And now you have maja moms and people waking up caring about this issue as a voting topic. So as long as that solidified, you'll have momentum that changes the incentives of healthcare where we can look back in 12 years and we have a thriving pharmaceutical industry, but they are incentivized to promote longevity.

They're incentivized to cure diseases, not just manage them. All farmers profits right now are managing um and you know we we have an overall healthcare ecosystem that's more value based that's more that's more geared towards keeping people healthy which can happen. Yeah. Yeah.

There does feel like a way to flip the incentive where the pharmaceutical companies are like if we can just keep this person alive for another hundred years imagine how much you know how many drugs we can sell them. They should make a lot of money for that.

Like like like imagine the impact the economy I if they could do that like they should make a ton of money for that. and they tell you off the record, right? They'd love to do that, but the incentives are all about disease management.

So, so, so this isn't a free market right now, and there's a real opportunity to nudge these incentives to a different direction. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, thank you for the work that you're doing. Yeah, and making the time. Uh, thanks, guys. I think you're doing very important work. Yeah, we'll talk to you soon.

Thanks. Talk soon, guys. Bye. Bye. Uh, let's tell you about Public. You heard the founders on the show earlier, but public is investing for those who take it seriously. They got multi-asset investing, industryleading yields, and they're trusted by millions. Uh we got some personnel news today.

Uh Jason Citroen is out as CEO of Discord. He's bringing on Humam Sakani Sakanini. Building Discord has been one of the most meaningful and rewarding experiences of his life. What started as a simple idea to help friends talk while playing games has grown into something far bigger than I ever imagined.

I'll be transitioning to a new member as board member and adviser and continuing to support Discord through this next chapter. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built together and even more excited for what's ahead. Uh very interesting will be interesting to see Discord uh gets out at some point.

There's been rumors about IPO uh and so yeah, maybe maybe that's the uh uh maybe this is a move to prepare for the public markets. Being a public market CEO is a different job and maybe Jason wants to step back, but we'd love to have him on the show. Do a little gaming day, talk about everything in Discord's world.

Fascinating founder, total outlier. Uh not from the typical Silicon Valley elite pipelines, not Stanford or Harvard. um uh and built uh you know one mobile game at some point uh sold one company, ran it back, built up Discord into a really really powerful company.

So uh congrats to him on the transition and good luck to the new CEO of Discord. Uh we got some uh listener feedback. We got some posts about the show. Midwest Tech Bro says, "After listen after switching to TBPN, I got my entire life back.

No more deciding what podcast to listen to, trying to write down important points or worrying that I missed some key news today. TBPN changed the way I consume media and in turn changed my family's life. Thank you, TBPN. Thank you. Thank you, Midwest Tech. He says, "From my wife, the Palace of Pump has rocked our world.

" Yes, we're we're good. We're happy to have you as a listener. Uh there's more TVPN news. Austin Peter Smith says, "Uh, people will say it isn't scalable to bring on each new podcast listener via direct sales reps, but here's a counterfactual.

I got cold emailed by a TBPN rep, ended up doing six calls with them over eight weeks before deciding to become a listener, and then I went on to spend $11 million on eight sleep mattresses with my tri ramp card, providing enough measurable ROI to cover that sales rep for the quarter. " Thank you, Austin.

Uh, oh, so good. Pavan goon based Alexandor says you should get a notification if your tweet was featured on TVPN. Well, this is your notification. We you have been featured on TVPN. You're featured on TVPN. We'll be sure to quote this. Uh we do want to build an automation something around this.

Maybe reply to this post with this clip. Uh we'll figure it out. We're hiring folks every day. Just if you apply, make sure you have at least one of the following. IMO, gold medal, we want uh Navy Seals, GP at a tier one VC, these types of things. 10 years CUDA experience, 20 years high frequency trading experience.

If you have something like that, you might be a fit for the team and still an opportunity to get in under a hundred people. Exactly. Being in the first hundred is at least you join the next organization. Yeah, exactly.

Uh uh Janon account says would be insane if there were one company with John Schman, Daria, Alec Redford, Ilia, Samma, Greg, Andre Carbathy, Meera, and Paul Cristiano. Um very very funny, but and the only person left at this company after six months is Sam. No, I think Greg's still there. Uh yeah, Greg came back.

Um but it is it is crazy how there's been this, you know, there was insane concentration of talent there.

Uh and then as they as they transitioned out of a becoming a research institute into becoming a product company uh there was a turnover in in the team um and people scattered to the wind to do all sorts of different projects but um you know I'm excited more competition better products for consumer specifically in AI.

Uh Ryan Peterson shares the Wall Street Journal talking about Flexport. It's a staggeringly tedious job that would be of little interest to anyone in normal times. Absolutely. They called they called us tariff pencil pushers. So rude. Founder mode. He is in founder mode.

He's getting he's getting uh quoted in the Wall Street Journal whenever something happens in uh logistics shipping. Uh he's the person that everyone many people many people love to say that Ryan actually created global trade. He did and so he gets quoted shipping. Yeah. Yeah.

He invented you know the ship basically verticalized the ship. Yes. The ship. Uh this post from Tyler Cosgrove uh just fantastic design close friend of the show he adds softbank treatment to open AAI's charge. I agree it looks much better with the the unicorns galloping upwards.

And so the winter projection for uh winter 2025 projection for um chat uh for OpenAI revenue is going from 1 billion in 2023 to 4 billion in 2024 to 13 billion in 2025 to 29 billion then 54 billion then 86 billion then 125 billion. We're going higher. It's fantastic.

Uh, I mean, they're they're on their way and you know, yeah, you throw the you throw the unicorns on there, you throw the big PowerPoint arrow and it looks a lot better, but I mean the business is ripping. I use the product every day. I think most people do.

Uh, and so good luck to them on their path to $125 billion in revenue in 2029. Hopefully, I think that they might blow that out. Who knows? We'll be tracking it here. We'll be breaking it down. will be tracking poly markets to see where their DAUs end up or their MAUs.

Uh Sean Frank coming on the show tomorrow but had a um had a good post we wanted to highlight. He said uh or a bigger third thing, trend lines don't continue forever. Hard work built this business. Co scaled it for 24 months. Every single person in America suddenly loved the outdoors.

They went out and bought gear to enjoy them. This is the story of uh solo brands. NASDAQ uh NYC has uh suspended solo brands. Are they a casualty of tariffs or mismanagement? Sean Frank's breaking it down. He says that gear had negative network effect.

Every solo sto every solo stove stove sold increases the CAC of the next one because the next buyer is less incremental, less interested, more taking more promos or ad impressions to buy. And instead of launching a second bigger skew, they bought nonadjacent brands.

Chubbies is great, but Solo Stove buyers aren't guaranteed to be Chubbies customers and vice versa. There's no flywheel, no cross-ell, no advantage. Just a hard good company and a hard goods company and an apparel brand trying to be managed by the same team.

Yeah, I think that ultimately solo the idea of consumer holding companies is very appealing, but consumer products are a full contact sport. Yep.

And the best companies that I'm aware of have, you know, management teams that are 110% in and uh trying to then if you're not and you're trying to manage multiple brands while you're competing in the same categories with, you know, founder le or just exceptional management teams. So yeah.

Well, happy birthday to YouTube. YouTube turned 20 uh yesterday and Colin Samir remade the very first YouTube video ever. uh there at the zoo and I hadn't really watched the original YouTube video. I mean, I probably watched it at some point. This is the first video ever uploaded to YouTube.

Us at the zoo, Colin Samir recreated it and uh it's 20 21 seconds and it's uh kind of a funny watch if we can pull it up. Um let's see. Um in other news, uh Arowan raised a $2 billion valuation. Let's go. I Is this a down here. I mean, we we spend What happened?

I feel like if they have just like a few customers like you, they should be up at like 20, 40, 100, 200 billion. Yeah, the fact that I get to track my LTV in the app is wild. Wild. Um Yeah, somebody was breaking down the math here. I don't know uh how accurate this is. They have 10 stores. Um you know, I I I don't know.

I've heard a bunch of rumors uh just being around LA over the years uh of just how much money they make, but um it's you have to think of it as a grocery store, a high margin grocery store, which is non-traditional groceries, typically low margin.

They've turned grocery into a high margin uh business, plus adding on a high margin restaurant. Uh plus they sell uh you know, home products and beauty products and skincare and things like that. So, you can't look at it as a purely monolithic um you know, it's not a uh it's not a typical grocery store.

And then they also have this like cafe business. And I think when you combine all of those um they're just cash machines. Andrea here says uh she's been told by multiple sources that they claim to make $50 million per store. So 10 stores, that's $500 million in revenue.

And they also make more money from the smoothie collabs, which is very fun. One of our goals for this year is to get a TBPN smoothie at Arowan. So if you're listening on it, give us a ring. Um let's watch the Colins YouTube video. So here we are in front of the uh elephants.

Cool thing about these guys is that they have really really really long trunks. And that's that's cool. And that's pretty much all there is to say. All right. So, can you believe that? That That was the first Let's go. That was the first YouTube video. A masterpiece. A masterpiece. A masterpiece. Yeah. Chad Hurley.

Uh the YouTube team. They threw that up. And YouTube was originally We got to We got to pull up one of those videos sometime.

not today, but of the early YouTube team when they're just like, you know, talking like they look like they're in like a like a like um a dungeon basically like they're just talking about how hard it is, how how things are working, how they're not working. But, uh they cooked. They did.

Uh let's close out with a post from Sean Frank who's coming on the show tomorrow. He says he's opening a speak easy just for red dye 40 and microlastics. Uh don't let Cali means find out about that, Sean. Uh, but I like the way you're thinking. Government can't hold you back. Poison resist.

You're just going to get stronger. It can only make you stronger, Sean. I think you're in good shape. I think you can handle all of the microplastics and the red dyes. Good luck to you, though. And we'll ask you more about it tomorrow when we see you on the show. But anyway, thank you for watching everyone.

Thank you, folks. We will see you tomorrow. Have a great rest of your