652. Inside the Horse-Industrial Complex
This episode examines the modern thoroughbred horse industry, from elite breeding operations in Kentucky to the lived experience and economics of being a jockey and a backstretch worker. Former jockey Richard Migliore describes the physical and psychological demands, risks, and rewards of his nearly 30-year riding career, while industry participants like economist Jill Stowe and farm operator Mark Taylor explain the business structures, sales markets, and breeding strategies that underpin the sport. The conversation also explores how immigration rules shape the racing workforce and how long-standing breeding rules, especially the ban on artificial insemination, help keep Kentucky at the center of the global thoroughbred economy.
Everything's more expensive!! Pet care!! Concert tickets!! (Two Indicators)
This episode presents two Indicator stories on the rising cost of living, focusing first on concert ticket prices and then on veterinary care. The hosts examine how ticket reseller bots, mispricing by artists, and the secondary market contribute to high concert prices, as well as how one state is trying to regulate resales. They then explore why veterinary costs have risen much faster than general inflation, highlighting Baumol's cost disease, higher input and labor costs, corporate ownership pressures, and stronger emotional bonds between pet owners and their animals.
Nvidia Hits $5 Trillion, Elon Musk Launches Grokipedia, and OpenAI's IPO Future
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway open with personal updates about travel, anxiety when far from home, co-sleeping and parenting, as well as Kara's visit to a Ken Burns screening and Scott receiving a Spirit of Hope award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Toronto. They then dive into OpenAI's shift to a public benefit corporation structure and potential IPO, AI's use in mental health and risks for minors, Nvidia's explosive valuation and Jensen Huang's praise of Donald Trump, Elon Musk's Grokpedia and Truth Social's prediction market, Tesla's proposed trillion‑dollar pay package, major tech earnings and AI-driven capex, CNN's new streaming strategy, and the broader impact of AI as a "corporate Ozempic" driving layoffs and inequality.
The remittance mystery
The episode investigates a puzzling surge in remittances flowing from the United States to several Central American and Caribbean countries, especially Honduras, despite heightened immigration enforcement and declining new immigration. Through interviews with a Honduran bank remittance manager, migrants, and economists, the reporters explore how fear of deportation, a looming remittance tax, and migrants' desire to build savings back home are driving this spike. They also examine how critical remittances are to economies like Honduras, the risks of over-dependence on this income, and the potential economic shock if these flows decline in the near future.
650. The Doctor Won't See You Now
Stephen Dubner examines the growing shortage of physicians in the United States, exploring both demand-side pressures like an aging population and supply-side constraints in medical education and training. Former CDC director and infectious disease physician Rochelle Walensky outlines workforce data, training bottlenecks, burnout, debt, and rural access problems, while economic historian Karen Clay explains how the early 20th-century Flexner Report raised medical standards but also sharply reduced the number of medical schools and doctors, with complex long-term consequences. Throughout, practicing and former physicians describe how bureaucracy, insurance rules, changing public attitudes, and alternative career options are reshaping the medical profession.
TECH004: Sam Altman & the Rise of OpenAI w/ Seb Bunney
Host Preston Pysh and guest Seb Bunney discuss Karen Howe's book "Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares of Sam Altman's OpenAI," using it as a springboard to explore Sam Altman's biography, the founding and evolution of OpenAI, and the opaque 2023 boardroom crisis that briefly ousted Altman. They examine OpenAI's unusual nonprofit/for‑profit hybrid structure, its partnership with Microsoft, tensions between AI safety and competitive speed, and the hidden labor and economic costs of training large AI models. The conversation also touches on AGI definitions, human-AI interaction, other labs like Anthropic and DeepMind, NVIDIA's role in AI, and briefly previews their next book on longevity.
648. The Merger You Never Knew You Wanted
Host Stephen Dubner explores an ostensibly "absurd" idea: merging the NFL with NCAA football (and possibly the NBA with NCAA basketball) and introducing promotion and relegation, using it as a lens to examine the economics and governance of big-time American sports. The episode details how college sports historically exploited unpaid athletes, the legal and economic changes brought by NIL and antitrust litigation, and how this evolution makes top-tier college sports increasingly similar to professional leagues. It also examines the NFL's cartel-like power, antitrust exemptions, public stadium subsidies, and why a more open, competitive system might address problems like tanking and entrenched inequality.
TECH003: Elon Musk's Tesla Robotaxi, Optimus, and more w/ Cern Basher (Tech Podcast)
Host Preston Pysh interviews investor and technologist Cern Basher about Elon Musk's ecosystem of companies, focusing on Tesla's pivot away from the Dojo training supercomputer toward custom inference chips, and how this underpins autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots. They explore the economics and deflationary impact of Tesla RoboTaxis and autonomous trucking, the massive potential of the Optimus robot to transform labor and corporate balance sheets, the role of Tesla Energy in enabling abundant power, and how these automation trends connect to Bitcoin as a long-term treasury asset in an AI-driven world.