Make Me Smart February 15, 2024 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Let’s go, Juan Carlos. He’s looking at me going, what are you doing, man? You’re just rambling. Which is not wrong. Hey everybody, I’m Kai Ryssdal. Welcome back to Make Me smart. Where? What do we do here? Oh, yes. We make today make sense.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m Kimberly Adams. Thank you everyone for joining us on this Thursday, February the 15th. Hope you survived Valentine’s Day all right.

Kai Ryssdal 

I did. I did. Thanks for asking. Alright, so. Did you?

Kimberly Adams 

Yes, yes. It was all good.

Kai Ryssdal 

All right. Excellent. Thursday, audio of major stories of the week. We will play them and talk about them. Here we go.

Jocilyn Floyd

“Uber has proof proven time and time again that they’re putting profits over people, right? In shareholder meetings, they discuss profits. There’s no question about safety, protection from deactivation, or compensation. Drivers have been losing money for years, in an attempt to support some way of life.”

Kai Ryssdal 

You or me?

Kimberly Adams 

You go ahead.

Kai Ryssdal 

Alright. So that was an Uber driver named Jocilyn Floyd talking to a reporter from the Associated Press, with a group of drivers outside O’Hare Airport in Chicago who were on, I don’t know if you’re going to call it a strike because they’re not technically employees, blah, blah. But a work stoppage shall we say? Because groups of drivers across Uber and Lyft and DoorDash and all the other, you know, sort of app based driver and delivery companies refused to give drivers for part of the day in major cities across the country protesting, of course, low wages, safety concerns, and having their accounts unfairly suspended or deactivated, as has happened if they protested too much, I imagine or some other things. This is the perennial struggle now between are you a contractor? Or are you an actual employee? And do you get the benefits that come with being an actual employee, and they’re trying to raise the visibility on that issue.

Kimberly Adams 

You know, and it makes such a difference in terms of the benefits you have access to and the profitability of these companies because there’s another company, another rideshare company that operates here and in LA, and in a couple of other cities called Alto. And their shtick was that their drivers are salaried, or at least hourly employees with benefits, with time off, and all these things. I just got an email this week that they’re shutting down operations in DC. And I think, as of Sunday, they’re shutting down and it was just like, it was much it was a more expensive service for sure. The hours were not as available. I mean, it was nice, but like this whole, when you’re competing against the prices of a company that isn’t paying benefits, that isn’t paying, you know, hourly wages, regardless of what kind of rights you get. It’s a tough market and so yeah, makes sense.

Kai Ryssdal 

Totally. Totally. Alright.

Kimberly Adams 

Next clip. Let’s go.

President Biden’s TikTok

“Chiefs or niners? Two great quarterbacks, hard to decide, but if I didn’t say, I was for the Eagles, then I’d be sleeping alone. My wife’s a Philly girl. Game or commercials? Game. Game or halftime show? Game. Jason Kelce or Travis Kelce? Mama Kelce. I understand she makes great chocolate chip cookies. Deviously plotting to raise the season, so the Chiefs would make the Super Bowl, or the Chiefs just being a good football team? I’ll get in trouble if I don’t. Trump or Biden? Are you kidding? Biden.”

Kimberly Adams 

So, if you hadn’t seen it yet, that was President Biden’s very first TikTok. It was posted on Super Bowl Sunday. And the videos caption says, “lol hey guys.” The Biden campaign has broken down like everybody else and join TikTok attempting to connect to younger voters who are particularly upset with him at the moment over a variety of things, perceived inaction in the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, climate change, generally not a fan of his age, and this whole narrative of people not stepping aside to make space for younger generations, etc., etc. But the White House has gone went ahead and decided to make their foray into TikTok, and the posts are kind of leaning into the memes around Dark Brandon, showing Biden telling jokes talking about the dangers, according to them of a Trump reelection. Now it’s fascinating because we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about all of the efforts of the federal and state governments to ban TikTok or to get people to stop using it and it’s banned from a lot of government devices. So, I’m curious how they’re managing it. And you know, a lot of lawmakers have raised serious national security concerns over this account’s launch because TikTok parent companies ByteDance has this weird relationship with the Chinese government. And so, it’s fascinating that, you know, from a policy perspective, the White House and a lot of Democrats especially the more security minded ones, are saying TikTok is bad and it’s bad for kids because it’s addictive. It’s bad for, you know, individual security because it’s like hoovering up your data. And it’s bad from a national security perspective for a variety of reasons. But we got to reach young voters, so we’re here anyway.

Kai Ryssdal 

They probably have it on like one phone that the White House communications agency has, like sterilized somehow and isolated. I don’t even know how because otherwise they’re just opening themselves up for a ration of trouble, shall we ration rationed both anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

A lot. You know, the reporting around it says that they’ve you know, they’ve taken all the security protocols, and I imagine they don’t connect to the White House Wi-Fi and, you know, I’m sure there’s ways to do it, but it’s a little hard. Then, later on when they want to tell younger people “hey, you need to get off TikTok. It’s not good for you,” when you know they’re there.

Kai Ryssdal 

Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. Next one. Here is a clip of a guy named Andy Baehr. He works for a company called CoinDesk Indices. That’s a crypto research group. He was on CNBC the other day talking about the price of bitcoin reaching a two-year high this week. I will tell you now as we speak, it’s even higher than it was when Baehr went on CNBC. Here you go.

Andy Baehr

“We’re certainly excited to see bitcoin scrape through $52,000 for the first time since. Wow, since December 2021, which in crypto years is quite a long time ago. To think that only 16, 17 months ago, we were dealing with FTX kind of melting down and the market sort of in complete disarray.”

Kai Ryssdal 

So, number one, would you take your paycheck in bitcoin? Ask yourself that question as you listen to what else is going on here. So, bitcoin, again, at $52,000. As we speak, it’s $53,048. Six months ago, it was at 25-ish. So, it’s been quite the bump. Here’s what CNBC and some others report about that bitcoin price rise. So, you might remember, and I talked about this, you know, a month ago, ish, that the Securities Exchange Commission had approved, spit spit, spot bitcoin ETFs, which is to say, you can now own a fund that trades on regular exchanges like a stock, in which the underlying asset is bitcoin and now apparently, those spot bitcoin ETFs own three and a half percent of all bitcoin that are out there. Right? There are more being minted, and we can get to the halving and blah, blah, blah, whatever. But as of right now, three and a half percent of all the bitcoin that are out there are owned by the spot bitcoin ETFs. And that is creating some demand, as you know, was predicted would happen as people try to actually get in on bitcoin in a safer but not safe way.

Kimberly Adams 

I’m stuck a little bit on this idea of would you take your paycheck in bitcoin? Would you take your biweekly paycheck and stock shares?

Kai Ryssdal 

Well, it depends on what company but no, I would take it in good old American dollars. Thank you very much.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, I mean, so then, at least the way it is right now, people who I don’t know that there’s that much of a difference between taking, you know, just for this exercise, taking a paycheck in bitcoin versus taking a paycheck in stock shares. Either way, you have to convert it back to cash. Both of these things are speculative, and have, you know, the potential to not be worth anything. Obviously, stock shares are backed by physical companies that do things, and we’ve had that discussion many times. But we also, you know, when FTX was collapsing, and all this stuff was happening, I certainly was among the people who thought this was going to be like sort of the swan song of crypto, and yet, here we are. And so, I just, I don’t know what to think about it. Like I still am not super jazzed about it for my own money. But I don’t want to dismiss the fact that it has rebounded in a way that I didn’t think it was going to.

Kai Ryssdal 

And the same things that drove it from 26 six months ago to 52 today, could drive it from 52 today to 26 tomorrow, right?

Kimberly Adams

This is true.

Kai Ryssdal 

And I don’t understand your connection between the share price of an actual company that does something and produces goods of value, and an instrument that is: number one, make believe; number two, deeply, deeply speculative; and number three, manipulated by people who have huge outstanding proportional shares of the bitcoin market.

Kimberly Adams 

The only connection I’m making there is just in terms of its liquidity at the moment in terms of getting your money, not in terms of like a strategy, a long term investment strategy, but in terms of like getting your biweekly paycheck right now, you could get stock shares or bitcoin and it would take you probably roughly the same amount of effort to convert that into, you know, cash because of, you know, these ETFs and things like that. That’s the only comparison I’m making there. A stronger criticism is the one that Gary Gensler was making in an interview he was doing, I think, was CNBC, which is just talking about, you know, how much it’s used for criminal enterprises. There’s all these human trafficking and child exploitation crimes that, you know, the briefs for it include all of these references to how these transactions are handled in cryptocurrencies and, you know, that lack of transparency and that ability to get around traditional regulation does make it you know, more likely to be used for criminal activities as well.

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah, sure does.

Kimberly Adams 

All right. One last clip for the day.

Beyoncé

This ain’t Texas. Ain’t no hold’em. So lay your cards down, down, down, down. So, park your Lexus. And throw your keys up. Stick around, ‘round, ‘round, ‘round, ‘round.

Kimberly Adams 

So, if you’ve been on the internet, you know that that was a clip from Beyoncé’s new country song called “Texas Hold ‘Em.” During a Verizon ad that aired during the Super Bowl, Beyoncé announced that new music was coming and then dropped these two singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages,” and you know, they’re country. They’re fun. They’re interesting. It’ll be fascinating to see; I doubt it’s going to be Lil Nas X all over again. But country has not traditionally been so welcoming in the modern era to a lot of Black artists trying to cross over from pop into that space. But one of the things that has been highlighted quite a bit with this release is that Beyoncé is trying to highlight country music’s Black roots. And she collaborated on that “Texas Hold ‘Em” song with a Black, you know, with notable Black country and folk artists, including Rhiannon Giddens, who plays the banjo and the viola on that track you just heard. And a lot of these music experts are expecting this album to sort of bring attention to Black artistry in the genre and the cultural roots of country music, and it will be fascinating to see how that is received.

Kai Ryssdal 

That cowboy hat she wore at the Grammys was a little bit of foreshadowing, I guess.

Kimberly Adams 

Oh yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Yeah, and then she had the cowboy hat at the New York Fashion Week, and all these many cowboy hats, but I also I think it’s a nice little shout out to Texas where she’s from so. Yay music. I’m so out of it with pop culture. I’ve already seen all these people on social media making up dances to it, so I’ll be curious when the video comes out what dance actually goes with it compared to what people have made up. Yeah, have you listened to either of these songs yet?

Kai Ryssdal 

I have not. That was first I heard it. I don’t mind it. I think it’s kind of good. And it could totally be another Lil Nas X. Totally could be. You could see it. Could totally see it.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, yeah. All right, that is it for today. Please join us tomorrow for Economics on Tap. The YouTube livestream is going to start at 3:30 Pacific, 6:30 Eastern.

Kai Ryssdal 

Make Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Juan Carlos Torrado is on the other side of the glass from me today. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. Thalia Menchaca is our intern.

Kimberly Adams 

Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts, and Francesca Levy is the Executive Director of Digital.