Sources with Alex Heath
00:03:23 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath
[00:03:23] S1: Well... They're like, yo, we gotta have sources.news on the ground. [00:03:28] S2: No. My friend Ash at Brunswick invited me and I'm doing interviews at the Brunswick Home. Brunswick is a PR firm, but I don't know what this says about me, that I can go to a Davos happy hour and, like, know people there. I think it means that I'm probably have over indexed on networking in my career, to a point where now I should probably just dial back and like hide in a hole somewhere, or just go off on the mountain here and ski. I mean, it's beautiful, man. It's, yeah. I'm like, I'm staying on a ski slope. And the juxtaposition of like waking up every morning and seeing the most beautiful, you know, like mountains I've ever seen and then trekking to the, the KPMG AI house, to watch, you know, whatever's going on, that day. It's it's quite something. [00:04:19] S1: What's the highest quality water that you've consumed? [00:04:22] S2: I mean, Swiss are are very good with the water. I will say the tap water is great. They really love sparkling water. Everything's sparkling. They're an interesting people. They're they're very hospitable, but also, would say, independent. You know? Like, they... It's it's just the kind of a [00:04:38] S1: That tracks with what I've read on Wikipedia about that culture. [00:04:41] S2: But, like, to get, you know, to get back tonight, I was like, oh, yeah. I need to figure this out. I need to hike up the mountain to to come back and pod with you. So
00:04:41 · Alex Heath, Ellis Hamburger
[00:04:41] S2: But, like, to get, you know, to get back tonight, I was like, oh, yeah. I need to figure this out. I need to hike up the mountain to to come back and pod with you. So [00:04:50] S1: What elevation are we at? Is that helping with the newsletter writing or or hurting it? [00:04:54] S2: I don't... I'm... It's like 6,000 feet, whatever that is in meters. It's pretty wild. I mean, you'll walk down the street here and it's like it's like Eric Schmidt or like a head of state and, like, instead of an entourage, it's like one person with them, you know. There's just... It's such a small space to have so many high net worth powerful people, whether it's from tech, you know, business, politics, whatever. Everyone's like regulated to the same space in a way that is just very unusual. I've never seen anything like it. [00:05:25] S1: So how do you, like, remember all the conversations? Do you have, like, a Rolodex that you bring with you in, like, aluminum suitcase? Or, like, how do you how do you do that these days? You've gotta be, like, a contacts app master.
00:05:25 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath
[00:05:25] S1: So how do you, like, remember all the conversations? Do you have, like, a Rolodex that you bring with you in, like, aluminum suitcase? Or, like, how do you how do you do that these days? You've gotta be, like, a contacts app master. [00:05:39] S2: My memory for now is okay. I mean, we'll see after a few nights of this how it is, but my memory is, still serving me well. I mean, have that... I talked about this on our CS episode. Like, I have a scratch pad where I just kinda note app jot things down, which is only decipherable by me. And granola is my best friend. I mean, I have granola meetings and, you know, I'm kinda shameless about that now. I don't really know how I could do, like, turn... Do a live interview and turn around a newsletter three hours later without it, you know, because, like, the the team has not even been able to process the footage, from the interview by that point. So, yeah, man. I'm I'm, I'm running hard and heavy. It's it's a lot. [00:06:20] S1: Do you know the article that I'm most famous for, Alex? [00:06:23] S2: It had probably something with airplanes. [00:06:25] S1: No. Back at Business Insider, I incidentally stumbled on the world's best slideshow series of Android or iPhone, your favorite blank revealed. And I did it for, like, politicians, VCs, executives, sports stars, and it just went absolutely gangbusters. And so I wish I was there to do a beautiful reprise of that series, find out who's actually using the Pixel phone or not, or is it all iPhone, Pro Max, and orange?
00:06:58 · Alex Heath, Tony Zhao, Ellis Hamburger
[00:06:58] S2: It's mostly iPhone. I mean, you've got people from all over the world. Right? So there are actually a decent Android content... Contingency. You could do so many good slideshows, like the dignitaries slipping on ice, as they walk down the promenade. Here, the horrible taglines on the on the houses. I mean, they take this little ski town and, like, the companies build these huge facades on the front of them for one week only that become... It's kind of... I mean, it's like CS a little bit, but, the only store... Original store that is still intact and not... Has not been taken over is Rolex. And that's that's when you know, like, the clientele is a bunch of billionaires. I put this in the newsletter, but it is the only place in the world where you're in the line for the bathroom and it's like a tech billionaire founder and a head of state and, you know, Matt Damon. And that that is kind of like this place in a nutshell. I mean, at a party tonight, I literally watched like the co founder of a very famous payment startup have to go like stand in a alt like, wait line because he didn't have the QR code to get in. The dude's worth, like, $9,000,000,000. It's just, like, it's it's absurd, man. This this place is absurd. [00:08:10] S0: Fucking [00:08:11] S1: love to hear that. Everyone should wait in a line once in a while.
00:08:11 · Ellis Hamburger, Alex Heath, S3
[00:08:11] S1: love to hear that. Everyone should wait in a line once in a while. [00:08:16] S2: But every... I mean, I will say, like, topic wise, everything here is AI. And... But it's like AI, it's a bunch of people talking about AI who don't actually know how AI works. So there's a people who do, you know, like Dario from Anthropic here. I was watching him in a couple talks today, like Demis who... From Google who I interviewed for Sources, some of the OpenAI people, like, they're like gods. Right? Like, are just all these hanger ons and people just waiting... Just like, tell me about, you know, the impact on the economy. And it's like, none of them actually know the impact on the economy. Right? But they're here to talk about that. And I don't know. It's just a sign of I think how much money and power is intact these days. [00:08:57] S1: Is there a drug of choice at Davos or just trade... Trading, GPU credits? [00:09:02] S2: I'm sure there is. I haven't run into it yet. I'm probably not at the right parties. For me, it's Tylenol and and vitamin zinc. But, there are stories, of course. I'm sure that's happening. I I did have... I had a good bourbon tasting tonight. There's lots of good wine, but, I don't I don't know. I mean, the Swiss are... They don't seem like a druggy culture. I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't I don't... I haven't really sussed it out enough to know. [00:09:30] S1: Hard to be precise when you're lagging behind. [00:09:38] S3: This episode is brought to you
00:09:38 · S3, S4, S5, Ellis Hamburger
[00:09:38] S3: This episode is brought to you [00:09:40] S4: by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at accenture.com slash Spotify. [00:10:09] S5: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini in Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus. [00:10:39] S1: Well, back here in The States, we've had some interesting news, some of which I've read on your newsletter. Feel like the one that was most interesting to me was the one that I knew the least about, which was Thinking Machines seemingly quasi imploding before it even launches. Can you tell me some more of that?