127 – RFK’s Plan to Slash 20,000 Jobs and What It Means for Healthcare

Marcus: [00:00:00] If you enjoy this content, please take a moment to rate and review it. Your feedback will greatly impact our ability to reach more people. Thank you. Vic. What's going on in the world today? 

Vic: Uh, I don't know the last hour. There's been lots of breaking news. It seems like every day this new news outta DC I've, I'm worn out, but it keeps coming 

Marcus: is the latest thing.

Uh, RFK talking about cuts. Yes. That's the latest thing. Yeah. 

Vic: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we're recording on Thursday, but there, there's, I dunno, just like a barrage of, it's been that way since January 20th. Just kind of like this constant stream of news. A lot of it, significant changes. Did you do a bracket 

Marcus: this year?

Vic: Yeah, I did. A bracket. That's amazing. Let's talk about the bracket. Like, 

Marcus: no, listen, that's amazing. That's more fun. Tell me about your bracket. 'cause I didn't do one 'cause I can't, I have no brain space for that, so Yeah. Tell me about your bracket. 

Vic: I did a bracket with my two sons and, uh, I'm doing well. I still have my final four.

What in place? Really? Yeah. Yeah, so [00:01:00] we'll, we'll see. 

Marcus: Even with all the upset so far, you, you still, 

Vic: I mean, I, I didn't, you know, Buffett gave away the million dollars someone got every, so I did not get every game in the first round wrecked, but someone did and, and he, he's paid out a million dollars, I think yesterday.

Well, of course he would. Oh yeah. He was definitely, he, he was definitely gonna do that. Yeah. 

Marcus: Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. 

Vic: Yeah. So, uh, we'll see the games are gonna start up again tonight. 

Marcus: Yeah. I'm, I'm looking forward a lot of SEC 

Vic: teams in it. 

Marcus: Yeah, I mean, I mean, this is kind of the thing, I mean, I was so happy to see Notre Dame win the, um, national Football championship because of how stacked the SEC is just getting in every single sport.

Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's, it's totally, totally crazy. Yeah. Um, the stuff that's happening at the college level, there's some stuff happening in soccer right now. NIL and the port in the portal have very much Yeah. Completely. Turned college sports upside down. 

Vic: Yes. 

Marcus: Like the, [00:02:00] the number of things, those two things 

Vic: created.

Yeah. I think for the, for the worse, but, but people would argue both ways, but definitely changed it around. I 

Marcus: mean, it's probably for the better for the families of the athletes. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: Maybe it's probably on net better for the families of the athletes. Uh, but if you're just a fan. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. And I, I saw this one study that, uh, because of the NIL on portal, there's a lot fewer upsets in March Madness.

Mm. Just 'cause the little schools don't have as much Yeah, yeah. They don't have as much money. And you can't recruit a player outta a high school that not many people know. Maybe he grows a little bit or, and um, then all of a sudden you have a run. Now that player takes off and goes somewhere else. It's just like 

Marcus: the Mag seven man.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just like the mag seven. Yeah. We, we, we are. We we're approaching peak capitalism, man, I tell you, we are, you know, the, the, the winner take all Yeah. Mindset [00:03:00] is just kind of continuing to make its way through all aspects of America and, uh, 

Vic: you know, yeah. And, and capitalism's in college sports and just like, oh yeah.

Whoever can raise the most money from alums ends up having the most team best team. 

Marcus: Yep. Yep. Uh, well, I'm glad your bracket's doing well. Yeah. I'll, I'll have to check in with you when we get to the actual Final four and see how you did. Yeah, we'll see how I do. Yeah, I, I'm, I'm impressed that you even had the bandwidth to do it.

I couldn't, 

Vic: I mean, I didn't spend a ton of time researching it. I just sort of do it. I mean, not the, not the best, uh, mascot, but the, here's the rest. 

Marcus: Here's, here's the real question. Did did you get any help from ai? 

Vic: No, I did not. I did not even, I'm proud of you. You do consider help use AI for everything I do, but I don't know.

I think it would've been a lot of effort getting all the enough data in for AI to be good, but maybe not 

Marcus: pro. I think a lot of people used AI for their brackets, so I, I think the models [00:04:00] were probably pretty ready for it. Yeah, maybe. Well, I'm doing it the old fashioned way. Good, good. We, we gotta, we gotta keep humans in the loop.

That's right. For something, for some, uh, this is, this is our last show before the Jump Star Health Summit, which is next week. And, uh, the only reason why that's really of importance to our listeners who are not gonna be there is because we will be recording an episode at that, um, at that event and rolling that out a week later.

So we're excited about that. Um, anything else before we get to the news? No. 

Vic: No, I don't think 

Marcus: so. It's gonna good. Let's dig in.

Uh, first starting with home sales rising 4.2% in February, beating expectations. That's, uh, somewhat surprising. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. I, I was not expecting it to creep up like that. It's not a huge jump, but more than expected and positive sign. 

Marcus: Yeah. [00:05:00] 4.2% increase, uh, in existing home sales. 4.26 million. I don't know. I mean, I, I think on one hand, uh, people are settling into the idea that you're not gonna be able to wait it out when it comes to rates.

Mm-hmm. Um, I. I think there may also be a sense that, uh, your job may not be as stable. And so if you want to buy a house, you, you might need to go ahead and just buy the house. Yeah. Um, you know, while you still have the job. So, I don't know. I, I think there's a lot of things that this, this data point could tell us.

I'm not exactly sure what it tells us, but for the realtors, I'm, I'm sure they're happy with it. 

Vic: Yes. 

Marcus: Next up, uh, Trump announces 25% tariffs on imported cars and car parts. Saw this come up on, on LinkedIn. It was the first place where I saw this news. Um, you know, I guess maybe, maybe two weeks ago I was on X and I saw it.

Elon reposted that, um, [00:06:00] Teslas are like one of the only car makers that are a hundred percent made, um, in, in the United States, and was sort of showing the breakdown between parts, labor and, yeah. And assembly and all those kinds of things for all the other car makers. And, uh, it was not a complete exhaustive list, but it, it was Tesla against like six other very big names.

Mm-hmm. Um, and it was, Tesla was the only one where sort of all three of those categories were presented as being made in the United States. So, uh, you have to wonder whether or not, um, any aspect of this is, uh, you know, obviously it's, it's a, it's a natural thing for, uh, for Trump to focus on from a tariff perspective.

Automakers, you know, there's a lot of sort of different parts and components, um, and a lot of pride in, in where a car is made. Yeah. Um, but also. Tesla's been hurting pretty bad over the course of the last month or so. So, you know, you have to wonder whether or [00:07:00] not there was, um, any, any embedded support here for Elon, uh, from Trump in this move?

Vic: Yeah, I, I, I mean, I don't know about that. I think there probably is some influence there, but I think the, the main thrust is that they want to try to get America building things again. And cars is probably the most visible thing that's connected to, you said, the pride in US manufacturing. And, um, in Tennessee we build a lot of cars and it's not just in kind of the classic, uh, Midwestern states, although certainly there's a lot of car building there too.

So, I don't know. I mean, if it is, uh, if it drives foreign manufacturers to put facilities in the US and do more parts here, then it'll be good. If it turns into a tariff war and we're all basically taxing each other, that'll be bad. [00:08:00] That's sort of the case for all these terrorists. I think 

Marcus: thi this might be a good point to bring up.

I mean, things are happening. It's crazy how fast things are happening that now we do a show every week, and I feel like there's some stuff that happens in between the shows that won't, it kind of gets covered in the larger ne news cycle, and it kind of dies out by the time we get to our show. Yeah. But, um, maybe three things I I wanna bring up, um, the two all in, uh, interviews.

Yeah. Um, with Scott Bein and, and, uh, Lutnick and the JD Vance speech at the American Dynamism, uh, conference in, uh, from a 16 z in, in, in, um, DC. 

Vic: Those are all, those are all at least posted Friday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday. Yeah. Right. 

Marcus: Yeah, exactly. So, um, less lutnick, maybe more cent to, to really sort of, um, hear the articulation, uh, from our, our head of treasury around tariffs, um, [00:09:00] and sort of the, the, the thinking on that.

Um, I thought he came off very, very well in that, in that, uh, interview. And I thought he, he's a great representative for Trump. Um, on these, on these matters of, um, just, I mean it's fiscal policy, but it's also like, uh, trying to. Change the direction of the ship. Right. You know, the way that Besson tells it, he basically got involved because he was really worried about the, um, Biden administration's spending.

Mm-hmm. Um, kind of a La Ray Dalio, you know? Yeah. It was very much from, from that, that, um, that song sheet. Um, but he, he, he, he didn't really, uh, give a lot of credence to the negative, uh, that could come from these tariffs. Did, did you, did you feel like he, he spent a lot of time doing that? Or, or that, uh, the all in [00:10:00] guys, um, pre pressed him at all on, on the, on matters of like, what are the downsides of tariffs?

Vic: No, it was a, um, not a promotional speech, but he was giving to his perspective of what the administration is attempting to do with economic policy. Yeah. And. I agree that he is a, he's a very strong member of the, he might be the strongest member of the cabinet. He's ex, he's very strong. He's very strong and he's a market participant.

Like he's been in hedge funds trading for his account and for his funds account. And that's the kind of person that we want, you know, in charge of things. Yeah. 

Marcus: I mean, learned at the knee of Soros and Drucker. Right. That's, you know, 

Vic: it's pretty good. It's pretty good. Um, and I'll say that there is this, um, belief system that I think comes down from Trump that you wouldn't sign up to be in his cabinet unless [00:11:00] you at least comfortable that we're, we're at least gonna run this play.

And whether I think it's 50 50 or 80 20, I don't know. But you shouldn't join Trump unless you're gonna, unless you're willing to sort of do that thing. And I, my interpretation of that is. America is a very large economy and we have a strong military and we can demand that other countries are respectful and are fair with us.

And we think some of these aspects have not been fair for years and we wanna correct that. Not everyone shares that, uh, confidence that these acts of terrorists, which are certainly I think aggressive, are gonna lead to some negotiation where everything is happy six months from now and we're [00:12:00] back to free trade, but at a place where the US is on a much more fair playing field.

If that pans out, that will be great. It's certainly not a hundred percent. Yeah. And, but I think Beston is certainly smart enough to know that. I mean, he, I'm sure he has studied tariffs in history and it's, it can go badly too. Yes. But I don't think he would say that on, on the, I don't think he would, if he was gonna say that, I don't think he would've joined the cabinet.

Right. I, he's like trying to put this position forward and he's doing it in a way that is, you know, much more credible than how Trump, Trump talks in their soundbites. Right. 'cause he knows that's what most of his voters, I think, just, that's all they listened to. Right. It was great to have an hour, whatever, however long it was.

It was a d it was about an hour, you know, a lot of detail. And they talked about many things, but they didn't touch on sort of what could go wrong. [00:13:00] Scenarios. Yeah. I, I, and I'm not sure he would've answered it, but, but they could have asked maybe. 

Marcus: Yeah. I mean, I, I don't know. I think he would've answered it.

I think they just threw him a bunch of softballs. Mm-hmm. And kind of asked him about his background and, and, you know, some of his historic trades and things like that. Uh, maybe even more impactful was the Vance speech. Um, because he, he kind of went on the offense against globalization. He, he basically tried to look, I, I, I actually thought fans did a good thing, which was, uh, you know, as the guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy, but also hangs out with VCs, he tried to kind of be the communicator between those two worlds, right?

Yeah. Between the, between the middle to lower class populist and the tech bro. Um, or he called it tech Optimist, but like, yeah, 

Vic: whatever. And I think it's, uh, it's been. It's been a concern or something to worry about in the Republican party. Oh yeah. And instead of ignoring it, he went like directly. He went it, one of the, at the first lines, [00:14:00] he said he, he went directly 

Marcus: at it.

Yes. Which I thought 

Vic: was really good. Whether you agree with it or not, it's, IM, it's good that he addressed it. Look, 

Marcus: I, Vance has been impressing me, uh, in terms of his ability to do prepared speaking since the debate against Yeah. Walls. In fact, I think that was a little bit of a turning point in the, in the election.

Yes. Um. In the campaign. No question. Course, you know. Um, so anyway, hi. His two big, uh, things were his, the two conceit, uh mm-hmm. I mean that, yeah. It's pretty strong, right? Pretty strong. Just even framing it as two conceits. Right. Uh, the first one, uh, which, which was, he said the idea that you can separate design from manufacturing.

Yeah. Um, and this ties very much into the AI superpowers book, which is, you know, we sort of passed all the manufacturing capability off to China. What do they do? They, they get better at manufacturing and, and that actually improves design and eventually they, they're good at copying, then they get good at innovating and we have BYD.

Right, 

Vic: right. They moved op in the [00:15:00] stack as far as kind of value added manufacturing. Yeah. Starting off, not very much value added, but then doing design and, and we really didn't. No, we didn't. We just gave away all the, all the manufacturing stuff. With the conceit, you use Vance for that, that we can always keep the design.

Marcus: Yeah. And, and I, and I, I think the, the fundamental, uh, truth that I, I totally agree with here, um, look, I used to be a software engineer, right? And it's like I always believed that software engineering was a creative process. It, it was a design creative process. And, you know, you could, you could take 10 different developers, give them the same sort of, uh, PRD, here's what I need you to do, and how they actually produce the final product and what the final product looks like can be vastly different.

Yeah. Between those, those 10 different developers, there is a creative interpretation. 

Vic: Um. At least in sort of the elegance or even functionality Absolutely. Of how it's, how it's executed. 

Marcus: Absolutely. [00:16:00] So, so that, I think as someone who's got an engineering background, I, I, I could not find fault with that, that argument.

Uh, the second one, I think is maybe the one that ties into this, that I wanna talk a little bit more about, which is, um, cheap labor as a crutch, right? Mm-hmm. This idea that that cheap labor is something we should be seeking out, right? Which obviously, um, when you see cheap labor elsewhere, you do a couple things.

A, you, you, you, you, you imply that the goal of capitalism is to continue to decrease the, um, to, to decrease labor costs. Um, and, and b you also ship jobs elsewhere where people are willing to work for a lower cost than, than people in this country, right? So, and, and tho and those things do hollow out the, the, the middle class.

I don't think so. He made two compelling points, I think. How you get back from where we've been, not five, not 10, but decades of [00:17:00] globalism. Like how you get back from there. Uh, I don't see how you do that without tremendous pain. You know, I, I, I, I, I think about it basically the same as like, you haven't worked out for 10 or 20 years and then you start working out.

Like it's gonna be the, the first year is gonna be hell yes. First year is gonna be hell. Right. Um, and it's, it is just a question like after the pandemic, after all these things we've been through, like, can America go through, hell, can, can like, can we go through this? Hell, right now, I just think it's a question, you know?

Vic: Yeah. I, I, uh, part of the reason it's frustrating that there is no Democratic leadership debating Vance, whether it's directly or or other party. Other party, yeah. Democrat 

Marcus: party. Okay. 

Vic: That would, that would give another perspective is I don't think we can continue [00:18:00] on the path that we're on right now, where we outsource to other developing countries, really, uh, use their labor at very low rates and they also don't take care of the environment and do practices that we wouldn't allow here.

Both worker safety and environmental practices. And then we benefit from having cheap goods on the internet or in stores. Yep. But that advanced talked about this, that loss of purpose. Like, okay, I can, I can get a T-shirt for $2, but what am I doing with my life? Like that loss of like, I have a job that I'm proud of that I do and it gives me some sense of meaning.

Um, I think there's something that's important there. Yeah. Um, I don't think it has to be with this medicine. I mean, both Besson and JD Vance are talking about it as [00:19:00] like a, um, detox or medicine to like get us back on the right track. I think the status quo doesn't work. And so the reason we need the progressive side of our country, which is about half the population, well, yeah, sure.

Roughly half to contribute. Is that there's, that's how we'd get to the best answer. Yeah, of course. But I think, uh, it, it was for that audience, for that audience in this time. I think he did a good job sort of addressing the elephant in the room. That the Republican Party has these two camps that on the outside don't look like they would get along very well and how he would connect them where they all are aligned, uh, around this plan.

Marcus: Yep. Yeah. So I don't know. I mean, I, I. I wanted to bring those things into this 25% tariff bit because, uh, you know, I think maybe the next story [00:20:00] here with Axios, we're talking about the April 2nd tariff day, which is a reciprocal deadline for other countries to make changes. Or if they don't, then we will enact, um, a reciprocal tariff That's next Wednesday, is that right?

Yeah, next Wednesday. I, 

Vic: I think we are coming out with like a series of tariffs, uh, to try to make it equal in reciprocal between countries. How we do, we talk about it last week, how we do that is gonna be complex and then maybe it will all decline as we negotiate. But that's, that's a big, maybe. Well, 

Marcus: I mean, there's that and there's also like, there hasn't been a single tariff that's been announced that hasn't had some, um, counter, you know, measure implemented by the, by the other.

By the adversarial country in, in that context. I mean, I think it's an, it's a naturally adversarial Yeah. Move to employ a tariff. So I think calling them an adversarial Yeah. In that context is [00:21:00] correct. Um, you, you just start rolling them out across the whole world. Like Yeah. I mean, just everyone get ready for April and May to just be chaos.

Yes. It's gonna be, 

Vic: and 

Marcus: I agree with the 

Vic: thesis. 

Marcus: Yeah. And maybe stay off X and truth social if you're on either one of those. 'cause my God, it's just gonna be, 

Vic: yeah. I agree with the thesis. It should be no tariffs on either side or if, if there's some purpose of having a 5% tariff or 10% tariff. Okay. But it should be reciprocal.

Um, but it's not there now. So making that change is gonna be. Very hard. Huge change. 

Marcus: Very hard. Johnson and Johnson's gonna invest over 55 billion in the US over the next four years. This is what Trump is looking to see more of. Right. Um, US based companies that are investing, uh, more significantly than they have in the past.

Um, domestically, uh, for Johnson and Johnson, this investment represents a 25% increase from the previous four year period. So that's, [00:22:00] that's meaningful. 

Vic: Yeah. And it, it's positive. We need more of this to offset the negative sides, but, but I think every story like this is really helpful 'cause it, it's just signals, some hope that j and j.

Believes they can build factories and build pe, find people and staff jobs here in the us, which is great. Yeah. 

Marcus: Look, if if you, if you care about America, you can't be mad at that. Yeah. You know? Yeah. This part you can't be mad at. Maybe the model of diplomacy and how we're I implementing these tariffs? Uh, yes.

I mean, I think there's a lot to talk about Yeah. In terms of the how. Right. But, uh, driving more domestic investment, obviously if you care about Yeah. American, you know, citizens in the American economy, this is a good thing. Okay. So Trump takes a tough, a tough approach to choking off China's access to, to US tech.

This is another Wall Street Journal story. Starting to see rumblings that Silicon Valley is feeling like this is not what they signed up for. [00:23:00] Uh, when they decided to totally back Trump, maybe they thought it was going to be much more of a, um. Shindig for the private markets. And No, I mean, I, I, I think the, the succession of these stories really demonstrates that, that, uh, you know, Trump is very savvy in terms of what he does during an election cycle and what he does to make bedfellows.

And, and, and he does make good on many of those promises. But, um, sometimes people will extrapolate those into other things that he never actually agreed to. Right. And they, and they discount the principles that he said he was going to bring into office when he was elected. And I think that has been a fatal mistake for, for many who backed him thinking he was going to take their personal agenda.

Uh, I, I, I, I principally think about, uh, Silicon Valley and, and, uh, the crypto community. Yeah. These, these are kind of the two key communities that I think about here that thought he was gonna be all [00:24:00] about their agenda, right? And lo and behold, he's about the principles that he said he was gonna be about.

Vic: Yeah. And he is also changed from Trump administration won. That's I think, where a lot of people that I was talking to before the inauguration that I've been talking to now, that's been the big change. Like, oh gosh, yeah, we knew he is blustery, but in Trump won, as long as the stock market was doing well, he, he was sort of also there and that he had worked to almost like a, not quite a put call, but he, he was trying to make businesses successful in the stock market, which was helpful to people that have a lot of financial assets.

This, this time around he is not doing that, and that's a pretty big change. Yeah. Yeah. 

Marcus: So before we go any further, like what's, what's the detail here on, on the, the, the China access to US Tech? 

Vic: Well, so, I mean, we [00:25:00] were talking about China's, uh, acceleration and capacities in ai. And how it could be really damaging for the US if they, if they beat us dramatically.

It's very similar to atomic weapons or something. If you, if you have an outsized lead in ai, that could be really damaging. So we, we want to try to r reduce China's pace in that. So the Nvidia chips and we're trying to reduce their ability to get us technology to compete with us. Yeah. So we're 

Marcus: limiting 

Vic: their trade access.

Yes. We're not allowing them to buy Nvidia Blackwell chips. 

Marcus: Yeah. And of course, conversely, that will boost Huawei chips. 

Vic: It boost Huawei chips and it leads to deep seek where they, they're like forced to reinvent a whole new architecture. Right. That's the, that's the human innovative spirit. This, so Biden [00:26:00] started this and so.

Trump didn't start this Biden. No. So Trump, Trump set deep, deep seek up. 

Marcus: Biden. Biden said deep seek up. I'm sorry. Biden. Biden said up. Biden set. Deep seek up. 

Vic: Yes. And Trump is doubling down and extending Yes. Into many more products and closing even, kinda like pretty small loopholes because he's, he's doing it using AI and with technology.

And he has brought in people from Silicon Valley that can, that can go find even, even fairly small loopholes and closed them, which I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's gonna be more, it's gonna be a tighter, uh, export controls on any technology, which might mean that we handicap their ability to grow.

It also might force them to innovate and invent new things. 

Marcus: I, I think at this point, there's no way it, it actually handicaps them. I, I, I just, that, that just doesn't feel. [00:27:00] Real to me, like Yeah. You know, um, I think they're already plenty advanced. Yes. Um, and I don't believe we have that much of a technological edge on them, um, that they can't fix through some, uh, crafty thinking like, like they did with deep seek, using less powerful Huawei chips, but maybe just a lot more of them.

Yes. So, you know, to me it just, yeah, I, I don't. I agree. I don't think it's gonna work. Yeah. I, I don't, I'm not, I'm not against it really. China in particular, I just don't think this is an effective strategy against, against China. Uh, Delaware punches back at Texas efforts to lure away companies. So we've been talking for months now about how Elon specifically has been driving, uh, corporations away from Delaware, uh, and to Texas and Nevada, uh, but principally to Texas.

And we've seen and talked about the Texas, uh, stock exchange. Yeah. Which is really New York Stock Exchange, setting up office in Texas. Um, NASDAQ last week we reported [00:28:00] on them, you know, moving, uh, an office to, to Texas, to Dallas, I think it was, um, for y'all's trade. Uh, and so, so the governor of Delaware, uh, realizes this is their cash cow and has basically, uh, put a new law in place to, to basically address what that judge in the case with, with Tesla and the shareholders.

Um. Got wrong, uh, uh, per, at least our analysis, right? Yeah. Uh, which is basically limiting the ability of minority shareholders to sue, um, the, the majority shareholders of a company, specifically the decis, the deciding shareholders, which are usually founders, right? Even if you've got like multiple different, uh, 

Vic: yeah.

Marcus: Uh, classes of stock and there may be many more, uh, sort of in the, the B class, the A class holds, holds the decision making authority, and, and they're starting to implement, uh, laws that will limit the ability for the shareholders to sue the company. So it's, it's interesting, right? It's like, [00:29:00] um, they're not holding the line.

What they're instead doing is they're saying, we're gonna be more like Texas, right? 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: That's what they're doing 

Vic: here. Yeah. I mean, that's probably okay, but it, it seems like, I mean, Elon won, or the corporate power should be held by controlling shareholders, one. We should have a legal person maybe talk through it, but there, there might have been a reason why this law was there and it, it could have been interpreted differently.

In this particular case. It, it feels to me like they're letting one high profile case change the whole structure. But, but that's what they're doing. And it, and I think it will stop some of the people fleeing out. Well, 

Marcus: I don't think it's just the high profile case. I mean, I think this tells us what the news stories haven't been able to tell us, which is, um, which is that in fact, companies have been going away from Delaware.

Yes. Oh, definitely. And moving to [00:30:00] Texas. Right. That, that, that they are losing business. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: They're losing business. I think that's 

Vic: clear from the fact that they made this change. 

Marcus: Yep. Moving into vc, Nina lands $55 million from Goldman Sachs. This is a series C, uh, round of, uh, of funding. It's clinical intelligence company.

Um. This round was led by, in addition to Goldman Sachs, vertex Vir, uh, ventures, Israel Grove Ventures, a lot of Israel health tech funds, obviously an Israel based company, um, or at least founded in mm-hmm. In Israel. Um, total funding now for Navea is a hundred million dollars. Uh, it's going to, this round's gonna accelerate the development of AI tools to help providers with visit preparation, pre charting diagnosis, capturing and automating documentation.

Vic: Yeah. And so it's going full steam at sort of being a copilot for the doctor in the clinical setting, helping with differential diagnosis, helping prepare for the visit, helping, charting and follow up. It's like the, it's [00:31:00] a doctor copilot. Yep. Yep. Which I think is good that we are seeing this and there's a lot of things to consider with that.

Marcus: Yeah. I mean, we're, we're, it's crazy 'cause we've been talking about this for, it feel, it feels like almost a year now mm-hmm. Where the majority of the VC stories have been AI. 

Vic: Oh yeah, it feels 

Marcus: like about a year. 

Vic: Um, at first they weren't in the clinic. They weren't like in clinical. Yeah. Now 

Marcus: that's over.

That's over now. Now that's over. Um, but but truly it's like we're really just getting started, aren't we? Yeah. Yeah. Like, we're like, we're really just getting started. 

Vic: Yes. The, um, the oldest, the oldest clinical AI companies are probably nine months old. 

Marcus: Yeah. 

Vic: And so they're not even a year old. No, 

Marcus: no. We're, we're just getting started.

I was listening to No Priors, which is like kind of the big AI podcast and Abridge was on there. Oh, really? Uhhuh. Yeah. Uhhuh and I, I bet it's probably the first time they've covered like healthcare ai Yeah. [00:32:00] On, on that, on that pod. Yeah. So yeah. We're, we're, we're ju I think we're just the beginning, Vic.

Yeah. Just at the beginning. Uh, CNA Health, this is Axios, gets 27 million for insurance automation. So, you know, yet another revenue cycle management. Yeah, automation company. I mean, I don't know, not that exciting, but it just shows you how ripe, um, the revenue cycle management space is for ai. Yeah. Uh, not just in terms of like the need, but also the appetite.

Huge, huge appetite on both the payer and the provider side to just automate this whole thing. 

Vic: Yeah. Revenue cycle's been the, the easiest place to look to gain efficiencies and get some better cash flow for gosh, for 15 years. Yes. And I like Axios comment, it's at least the seventh, um, major health revenue cycle investment round that they've covered since last summer.

So there's all these new [00:33:00] rounds, new companies getting started, which is. Good. There's a lot of options, but I was talking to a guy yesterday in the revenue cycle, he said, Hey, it's just overwhelming. It's hard to even evaluate what to look at. 

Marcus: Yeah. I, I don't, uh, knowing all the stuff that's going on in this space, I, I would not be all that excited about investing in Yeah.

In one of these companies. Um, and again, this is why I think we're just getting started. 'cause I think people have tackled, when we first started talking about a lot of ai, it was all like rad tech. You know? Now we've been, we've been basically talking about scribes and revenue cycle management. Yeah.

Nonstop. And, and you know, it's interesting that NNA was a little bit more across the board in terms of all the things they're working on from an AI perspective. But yeah, it's, it's, uh, we're we, are, we're just getting started, I think. Yeah. Startup insurer, Arlo raises $4 million on back of AI powered underwriting.

Vic: Yeah. So this is pretty interesting. This is, uh, using, I mean this just different ways you can point ai right? So. [00:34:00] Instead of using it to figure out how to treat a patient or do revenue cycle, they're using it to kind of crawl through all the claims for an employer and then underwrite the risk more effectively.

And then either help the employer, employer rebid it, or maybe take it self-insured or, you know, just be smarter about how they do it. They have a, um, partner that will take the kind of co-insurance as well. So it's an interesting use case. 

Marcus: Yeah. Series of stories here from, uh, wall Street Journal Pro, uh, first one, health Tech VCs look to AI for next wave of returns.

I mean, 

Vic: this is like a hope story. Um, yeah, I, I mean, we're all, we're all hoping to have big exits and I think, uh, probably health tech VCs are like every other vc. Yeah. 

Marcus: Yeah. Uh, maybe a little worse. Wait, maybe. Alright. Two of a kind founder [00:35:00] of Snack company seeks to back next big consumer health startup.

Daniel Lubetsky, um, invests in health and longevity companies through Camino Partners. So I like this guy. Um, I, I saw, I I, I've seen him in a couple of different podcasts and he is, um, he's a big thinker. Like he's got a, a pretty non-traditional background. He, he created the kind bar, um, you know, which Right.

I think when he did it, nobody thought it was gonna be anything. Yeah. And it's a, you know, it's a multi-billion dollar company that sold us 5 

Vic: billion. 

Marcus: Yeah, yeah. Sold, sold to Mars. Um, you know, and, and he, he's out here looking for things to do to make the world a better place. That that's, that's kind of his mm-hmm.

His, uh, his entire focus. And so it's good to have him, uh, added into the group of people who are gonna be investing in, uh, longevity technology. I think. I think that's good. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. And, and longevity is a really interesting, uh, market because you have people that [00:36:00] believe they can do A, B, C, and D and live to 150.

Yep. And so that, that can feed a lot of excitement and a lot of revenue and growth in this space. That could be really good. 

Marcus: Yep. Absolutely. Uh, alright, this is, uh, an important one. Andresen Harus aims to raise a smaller bio fund the firm sees to, seeks to raise seven 50 million for its next life science and healthcare fund.

Half the amount collected for the strategy in 2022. So, um, you know, this is the kind of thing that you want to be careful about reading too much into because there could be all manner of reasons why they're doing this and we're not inside of their office. Right. Uh, deciding what the right strategy is for how you size a fund.

Okay. We know that they are massive, massive believers in ai, and it could be their belief that AI is going to dramatically lower the cost of drug discovery and development and that it just should not take as much capital to start the [00:37:00] next one. So, 

Vic: yeah. You know, it could also be that they're not putting any AI investments in this fund, or I don't know how they structured it.

Yes. Like you're saying that we don't have the inside scoop on it. Right. But, but half as big as last time is a significant change. 

Marcus: To me. It's, it's a data point to watch and see if any of their other funds, they've, they manage many funds. Yeah. If any of their other funds end up being smaller than the last vintage.

Yeah. If so, so that would indicate that even the Mighty Andreas and Horowitz is not exempt from the lack of liquidity in the private VC markets. Right. 

Vic: Yeah. I, I think, I think probably both are true, but I. I don't think anyone's exempt from the lack of liquidity. Doesn't feel like it, 

Marcus: doesn't feel like it to me.

Um, alright. Moving to Fierce Healthcare. Duke Margolis launches a council to build health focused frameworks for private equity. So this is kind of the, you know, the academic world trying to step in [00:38:00] and from a think tank perspective, I, it feels like here, uh, try to help private equity clean up its act in terms of the way that it approaches healthcare.

Vic: Yeah. That, that's right. I don't have a lot of confidence that it is going to be listened to by the entire private equity market. Right. I'm mean, I'm sure there'll be some private equity firms that, um, are fine with this, but it's a, it's a pretty large and diverse set of people in private equity. Um, who, who did you know they lead with because of the inclusion that Steward Health Health.

It's a poor example. We need to set a better, better framework. 

Marcus: Yeah. And also a recognition that private investment is really important. Yeah. In healthcare. And I think even more now that the government's pulling back Yeah. So much like, you know, you're gonna need these private dollars, otherwise there's gonna be a lot of implosions happening in the healthcare ecosystem.

So look, I I have [00:39:00] certainly applaud the initiative and the, the why behind it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, and then, and then, and then you're probably correct in just acknowledging capital animals or you know, capital animals. So 

Vic: Yeah, I mean, it either is legal to invest in anything in healthcare or it's only legal in this framework.

Right. And I don't think they're gonna have that kind of strength. Influence. No. So you're just gonna be asking, you know, some of the most financially oriented incentive folks to. Please follow these guidelines 'cause we're asking you to Yeah, I mean, it feels like ESG to me. Yes. 

Marcus: Yeah. Yeah. That's, uh, RFK Junior prepares 10,000 more job cuts across HHS outlines, office consolidations.

When you pair that with the early retirement and fork in the road offering from early this year, HHS will decrease its headcount by 20,000 members. 

Vic: Yeah, it's, I mean this is the story that just came [00:40:00] out a couple hours ago. It is, um, they're cutting from 82,000, I think, to 62. So it's a significant number of people and it's also a percentage.

Um, we, we have it, and we'll put it in the show notes. Robert Kennedy did a six minute, uh, thing he published on X just to get his story directly to. The people, he says a lot of nice things. It's hard to know what's true and what's not true. Right. So he's saying there's duplication of departments, I can't quote it exactly, but maybe there are 18 different HR departments, 15 different IT departments and we don't need all of this duplication.

Yeah. Which, which is sounds right. But we also I think need to recognize we're losing a quarter of our staff at HHS. Yeah. Which is gonna be a lot of people 

Marcus: in, in his talk. He, he says, um, under the Biden administration, HHS increases budget [00:41:00] by, uh, around 38% and, and staffing by about 17%. So, you know, he, he's, he's, he's laying out his case.

It's worth listening to for sure. Um, and also that's a lot of job cuts. Yeah. That's a lot of job cuts. Alright, here's a story from the Wall Street Journal and you know, I, I think we're gonna get. More of these. It's not like we didn't have 'em before, but now there, there's a lot of, uh, I think appetite for these kinds of stories where you're talking about fraud, waste, and abuse or, or it probably waste is, is is probably the, the correct thing to, to frame this particular article on.

Vic: Um, well, and I think government workers. Starting close to the top or also kind of like trying to get these stories out. 

Marcus: Yeah, yeah. Probably. Uh, the headline here is taxpayers spent billions cons covering the same Medicaid patients twice. So the, the story kind of lays out that in the, in the height of Medicaid enrollment, rolling off of the, the pandemic, basically you had [00:42:00] somebody, they were enrolled in Medicaid if they moved from one state to the other state.

Basically both states were paying for the same person, even though the person is only living in one of the two states. Right. So that's, that's one example. And then they kind of extrapolate that and show you how close to $5 billion was, was wasted, you know, um, in this kind of scenario. Yeah. Yeah. Um, kind of one, two states covering the same person.

Um, they do a breakdown of the different payers and, and how that waste laid out. Um, uh, to, to, to be fair, the payers are, um. Are referenced in the article, they do talk about how much money was paid back and, and how, you know, this, this article is not complete and in, its in its assessment. Generally speaking, when, when I read, you know, um, uh, big brand publications talking about healthcare, I, I tend to agree with that because they're not trade pubs.

They, they're not gonna get into the wonky stuff. And, and also, you know, they, they get into, they're into rage. You know what I mean? So if they can make people upset, that's, that's part of their, their goal [00:43:00] here. Um, but I think we're gonna get more of this, right? I mean, there was a while there where there was a steady drumbeat of stories about the PBMs.

We know we're not seeing this many of those anymore, but there was a steady drumbeat, then there was a state drumbeat about private equity. Yeah, I think this whole waste, Medicaid waste thing, it feels like we're moving into a new drumbeat of stories rolling out around this. 

Vic: Yeah, I think that's, I think that's probably right.

And I understand why in the middle of the pandemic it made sense to. Not worry about who was eligible for Medicaid and who wasn't, or like if you claim to need Medicaid, there was a period of time when we as a country said, we're, we're just gonna let everyone that needs care for our poorest, you know, our, our poverty prevention health system, we're gonna give everyone care.

Yep. And I think that was the right thing to do. And I think sometime between then and now, it should have been fixed. [00:44:00] And so if someone, in the example, in the story, someone moved from Florida to Georgia, I'm sure that happens all the time. And it seems to me Florida should be checking their Medicaid roles every year.

And if that person's not there anymore, they shouldn't pay for it. I mean, I don't, but, but, 

Marcus: but, but as you, as you know. States don't have good systems between them and Medicaid patients are very, very hard to track. I'm not making excuses, I'm just saying. Yeah. What are, what are the, like we gotta make sure we talk about the reality of the, of the situation as it exists today.

Um, you know, you, you may not know that the person left. Yeah. You, you know, or, or, or it may, there may be some delay in you actually finding out, and while that's happening, you're still rolling out payments and then you kind of have to, you know, go ahead and, and clean that up, um, later on. Yeah. So, I, I, I, it's a hard 

Vic: population to keep track of.

Marcus: It is a very hard population to keep track of, 

Vic: [00:45:00] and we don't want people to lose coverage because they moved a block away. No. And so, 

Marcus: so, so, so what would you err on? Would you Right. You know what I mean? Like it is, it is just kind of making sure that we're, we're being intellectually honest around the challenge here and around what would be the logical way to operate this.

Um, and, and, and again, like I, I'm not for wasting taxpayer dollars, that's not, that's not the point. It's just, to me this feels like, um, one of many hit piece is too strong, but one of many, uh, stories around the, this, this particular storyline that somebody wants to make sure get out, you know, that, that there is waste may maybe even fraud, but there, there's certainly waste, uh, in, in the Medicaid system that needs to be addressed so that when the Medicaid cuts come, it, it tracks with the narrative that's been, you know, rolling out there.

Vic: [00:46:00] Yeah, I think that's right. I also think we could. I mean, we have other systems that cross state lines. So the, it's, it's possible 

Marcus: to, I mean, I don't know why my driver's license isn't on my phone, Vic. I mean, there's a million systems that should be, you know, because, because some states have driver's licenses on their phone.

Right. So there's a million systems that could be upgraded. I, 

Vic: yeah, 

Marcus: I agree. 

Vic: Yeah. So I, I don't, I agree that we need to be careful about it, but, 

Marcus: and at the same time, we're trying to go back to like paper ballots and like some people, you know what I mean? So it's like, what, what are we talking about here?

Right. One hand we need ai. On the other hand, we want to go to paper ballots, you know? Uh, okay. Axios, how Medicaid and snap cuts could affect your state. So this is, uh, this, this is a bit of an analysis here. Mm-hmm. Kind of projecting what might happen. Yeah. Uh, but trying to sort of make sure people understand, um, how many jobs.

Are tied to Medicaid and SNAP benefits that roll into the [00:47:00] states. Uh, you know, you may just think about the recipients, but there's an economy underneath that as well, 

Vic: right? Yeah. And, and the, the effects are not evenly spread. So, uh, for people that aren't, aren't watching, there's a map of the US and New Mexico and Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon and New York are gonna have the most projected job losses, which was surprising to me.

I, I didn't realize, I just hadn't really thought about it, but I guess it is concentrated in different areas. 

Marcus: Well, I mean, I, I think the surprising thing is that the concentration is spread out. Spread. It's not regional. It's like, it, it's, it's, and I can't even, what's, it's not easy to see pattern what have in common, what the, yeah.

What's the pattern here? They're all over the country. Um, literally. Yeah. So there's something about those specific states and, um. Decades of policymaking that they've been doing to build infrastructure around those, those federal revenue streams. Right. It's more of that how 

Vic: they, how they, uh, dispense the money or, or [00:48:00] how it's set up or something.

Marcus: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it doesn't seem to seem to be blue or red doesn't seem to be regional or anything like that. It's just kind of some, some states versus other states. Yeah. Right. So something, something to, something to track for sure. Back to Fierce Healthcare. CDC dos claw back 11 billion in COVID-19 grants nationwide as the agency roots out censorship contracts.

So I mean, this narrative around, um, everything that was happening on Big Tech in particular, I would say Google probably got the most emphasis, particularly YouTube. Mm-hmm. Um, where, you know, you'd have a video and it would. We would review your video and then run, run some type of, uh, thing underneath it, you know, a little banner underneath it that would say, this video is talking about COVID-19 and the vaccines, the vaccines are safe, or whatever.

Click here to go to the CDC, you know, um, it's, it's all of that, right? It's, it's that, and everything related to that, that, that obviously, you know, certainly RFK [00:49:00] and many who, um, were behind Trump, uh, really hated this. And so this is not surprising at all. Not surprising one bit. 

Vic: No. And I guess CDC was providing grants to Google and other people to fund that process, that they would be flagging things and sending, 

Marcus: now I have to ask, did you know that?

No. Yeah. I, I didn't, I 

Vic: didn't, and I'm not even sure that go Google is getting money. I, I just use your example, but Right, right, right. But there's 11 billion of grants overall that are. I guess supporting or funding this in quote, censorship, censorship. We were talking before the show. It's Yeah. 

Marcus: That, that, that's, that, that's a political, it's a, it's, 

Vic: it's a politically charged word.

I mean, one person's education is another person's censorship. 

Marcus: Yeah. That, that, that's right. But that, that's the whole misinformation, disinformation Right. Conversation that we're, we're, we're not litigating that at all. We're just, we're just saying it's clearly political football at this point. Yeah. Um, but another billion another, [00:50:00] another 11 billion.

Another 11 billion. Billion here. A billion there. It's gonna be 

Vic: real 

Marcus: money. That's right. Senate confirms nominees to lead the FDA and the NIH under RFK Junior. So this is Jay Bot and Marty Macari. 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. They both got through. Not really surprising. No. Um, and I think, I think they're both, they both seem like pretty good picks.

No, 

Marcus: look, these, these two in particular, I, I would say were. So solid prior to any involvement with RK or this administration? Yeah. Um, you know, I, I, I've, I genuinely felt very bad for, uh, Dr. Bachar and, and what he, what he experienced. Um, and it, it is kind of related to the whole censorship thing, honestly.

Right. Um, what, what he experienced, Marty Macari, I think has for a long time now. I mean, did, did you get to see him in, in your fellows class? He came to our fellows class? Um, no, I don't think he came to mind. I dunno. Okay. I, I mean, you know, he's, he's, he's sharp man. Yeah. He's sharp and he's been a critic of the healthcare system Yeah.

And all the ways in which it should be [00:51:00] serving American citizens for a long time before this. So I don't know that he had aspirations to, to sort of lead the FDA. Mm-hmm. Um, I mean, I, I was actually kind of surprised he felt a little bit more like a CMS guy to me, but mm-hmm. You know, he's not quite as high profile as Dr.

Ours is. Right, right. Uh, but he, he's a sharp guy. He's a sharp guy. And, and, and it's interesting that, that his, uh, his confirmation actually, um, pulled more Democrats in. Yeah. Um, it was not a, a pure party line vote. So both, both these guys are, you know, pretty, pretty sharp. Yeah. Agree. Pretty sharp price. I agree.

Yeah. But, but, but I mean, you, you, you could say that Bachar has got a bit of a, you know, grudge. Uh, I mean given, given what he experienced, yes. I think it would be hard 

Vic: not to. Yeah. 

Marcus: Alright, so, uh, I'll let you take this one. This is sort from the New York Times talking about, um. It's really bioethics around embryos.

Vic: Yeah. Yeah. It's bioethics. So, um, it's a woman that writes about bioethics who also went through in vitro successfully. Um, and [00:52:00] she's discussing sort of the, the, uh, prevention of in scientific investigation beyond 14 days of life. And that there's, there's a lot to consider. I mean, there's a lot we could learn that would really be beneficial in medicine in those early, those early weeks and, and months.

Um, but of course it is, there's a lot of ethical considerations 'cause the, the older the embryo gets the, the, the more concern there is. Yeah. And so there's a long story in the New York Times about that, but she has a pretty interesting perspective 'cause she's kind of seen it from both sides. That's why I found it interesting.

Um. There's just a lot to consider and I think, um, the world is changing quickly. Uh, we have talked a ton about ai, but biotech and sort of all the things [00:53:00] coming off biotech like this, uh, with crispr genic engineering is right on the heels. Yeah. It's probably three years behind ai, but that's like, you know, in another year or two.

Marcus: No. And truly the only thing holding that up is the bioethics. And I think, and I think really the religious sort of, you know, um, implications of it. Right. Uh, because, you know, we're, we're talking about AI and LLMs and, and humanoids. We could just as easily be talking about cloning. 

Vic: Yeah. And, and I think there will be, I think there's gonna be some countries I.

That have different scientific rules than the US And so it's just gonna be something to keep, keep an eye on very much. And this was a well 

Marcus: written from, from a good point of view, very much. Uh, and talking about cloning, um, wall Street Journal, Chinese scientist, ostracized over gene edited babies seeks comeback.

Vic: Yeah, so this is the guy [00:54:00] that actually created the human, uh, clones, I guess, I dunno what you would call them. Maybe that's not the right thing to call them. But he, he got in trouble, cloned humans, cloned humans, and he got in trouble for it. He is trying and make a comeback. He has new ideas about how to use genetic engineering to improve human reproduction.

He's not allowed to leave China from the Chinese government, won't let him leave. And he doesn't have a, the same kind of lab he had before, but he's, he's working to get resources and, and come back, whatever that means. Yeah. So to me it's a, these are like two stories that are bookending, the, you know, the, the concepts.

Marcus: Yeah. Uh, he posted on, on March 11th that ethics is holding back science, scientific innovation and progress. He's been dubbed by [00:55:00] international media as China's Frankenstein. So I mean, the, and, and I, I think that the, the precarious place we have to just admit we will find ourselves is just as we are all walking around with supercomputers now.

Um, there's certainly going to be a day where it will be much more generally available that you can pull together the things you need. To pull off something like gene editing, um, without a lot of money or an academic affiliation or any, or, or taxing 

Vic: attention 

Marcus: or Exactly. You know, or, or any of those kinds of things.

Right. Um, and in those situations, somebody, there's billions of us here, somebody will do it. Somebody will do it, right? I mean, we, we we're moving to a world where [00:56:00] superior artificial intelligence, maybe not a GI, but certainly superior artificial intelligence is going to be accessible by us all. By us all.

Yes. Yes. And so, you know, your ability to sort of take inspiration from a guy like, uh, I'll, I'll try to pronounce his name just for the, for the benefit of the listener here. Uh, he let's, I think it's pretty good. Yeah. Um, and look, I think. 

Vic: I don't know. I, I, I, I mean what he's promising is attractive, period.

Like he's trying to prevent Alzheimer's disease in your children and your grandchildren and everyone in the future of your family line. And that's, that's something that is, that is that I would want The problem is that it's not clear that he can deliver that or what the side effects would be like, okay, no one has [00:57:00] Alzheimer's, but they have some other issues.

Yeah. But people are going to be attracted to the optimistic side because humans are attracted to the optimistic society. It 

Marcus: just rhymes with gain of function to me. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's just like, uh, should we be opening that box? You know what I mean? Like we're playing with some stuff we don't.

We should not open the box. Well, 

Vic: I wanna be on record. We should not open it. But, but there, but we are, but someone will open someone. Your point is right. 

Marcus: Yeah. But that, that's my point because in, in a world of infinite possibilities with billions of people, and as you make capabilities more broadly accessible to those people, someone will do it.

Yes. That's, 

Vic: that's just, that will happen. And it might be really bad with, you know, children that are not really very healthy. But it also could be another version of bad, which is we have wealthy people that can give their kids higher IQs, [00:58:00] better athletic ability, whatever they want to program in. But it's only open to some, some subset of the population, which also has a lot of.

Negative repercussions. So I, I think it's bad all around, but, but at the same time, it's likely to happen. Yeah. 

Marcus: Alright. Optum CVS and Express Scripts, Glip one programs entice employers, so they are, uh, putting a little, uh, wellness protocol in front of the Glip ones to try to manage costs for, uh, for the employers and saying that, you know, they want to see employees, um, not just take the Glip ones, but also, uh, get engaged and go into the gym.

Vic: Yeah, I mean, I think this is, I think on the balance, it's good. I mean, it is a good practice to have exercise and eating lifestyle nutrition plans when you're also on a GLP one. So putting that in front of it and making [00:59:00] sure that they're committed before they get the drug, I think makes sense. But the, the other thing is it's, it reduces the utilization.

Reduces utilization. 

Marcus: Yes. 

Vic: So it's kind of both end. 

Marcus: Yeah. Hospitals, establishing hubs for digital health operations. This is just kind of a, a cool story, especially the pictures here, uh, in this modern healthcare story, uh, it just shows control centers basically. Yeah. Um, you know, various nurses, at least that's what it appears to be here as a nursing team.

Mm-hmm. Um, and they're all sort of looking at these huge screens and they're all in a, in a row here, and it looks like, it looks like they're driving a command center, probably, you know, controlling and tracking an entire floor of patients. Yeah. 

Vic: From here. Yeah. At vi uh, last year, I guess 24, the CIO or someone at Guthrie presented, uh, sort of their, their, um, monitoring.

So they, they're using cameras to, to watch patients and sort of monitor them for, for falls and things like that. Sure. That's great. And they, they're great. They're having [01:00:00] great success and so why wouldn't you? Yeah. I mean, so pulling together. Medical professionals with technology in a central location, but then treating your entire catchment area, every health system should be doing that.

I don't know why. It's not common. 

Marcus: No, that's very cool. Alright, uh, sad story of the week 23, me finally, finally files for bankruptcy, CEO Anne Wikki resigns. And, uh, it's all sorts of stress and chaos for the customers of 23 and me as they're trying to get their data off the platform and, yeah, not, not great.

Vic: Yeah, I mean, this is a, a sad ending to a, a sad story. I mean, it, it was exciting for a while, but they never really built a business that that could work. And the motivation to figure out where is my, where my ancestors from, I. [01:01:00] That doesn't last that long. It's not enough. It's enough. Like you learn that enough.

Well, you learn that and then Okay, I know it's not enough, and then you don't need to pay the monthly subscription for that anymore. 

Marcus: Yeah. 

Vic: Uh, so there wasn't really, it, it just didn't, didn't play out to a, a real business. 

Marcus: Yeah. I mean, to, to me it just feels like it, it just got way out in front of where we actually are.

Mm-hmm. With gen, with genomics. Yeah. And, um, you know, I I, I actually think like the interface and, and the branding and the customer experience was actually quite good. I just think they were way out in front of Yeah. Where the, where the market was for it. Like, you know, the healthcare industry is not engaging them.

The research industry is not engaging them. Right. They, they didn't, they didn't have those things locked in. So, you know, this is one of those like build it and they'll come, let me aggregate all of, all of these genomes and that will be sufficient for me to sort of, uh, encourage these industries to engage with me.

And it simply didn't, didn't do it. Yeah. I think that's right. [01:02:00] I, I, I think the bigger thing that this is going to do is it's going to question all genomics based businesses, all biobanks that are not sort of embedded inside of a health system or something like that. Um, just anything like that. You're gonna look and you're gonna say, why, why would we walk down the same path as 23?

And me? Because it, it honestly, it doesn't really feel like, uh, uh, it doesn't really feel like it was a completely mismanaged business. It was just more there wasn't a business there. Yeah. Right. It wasn't really a business there. 

Vic: Yeah. I think that's right. And, and, and you trust this company. Um, but then when they go into business and go bankrupt, it's gonna be bought by some someone else.

And that's why all the customers are trying to get their data out now. Um, 'cause who knows who's gonna. Purchase it. 

Marcus: Yeah. So things, things can, things can go bad in the, in the business world. And this is one of those unfortunate stories and I, I personally, I hate to see it. I, I really liked [01:03:00] 23 and me, um, as a concept.

I thought their execution in terms of, uh, customer experience, branding, you know, yeah. What they did, you know, what they were able to generally maintain in terms of, uh, uh, security. Um, you know, they didn't have massive, massive high profile hacks or things like that. Right. I think they did a lot of things right.

Just, uh, there wasn't a real market there. Right. There wasn't a real market there. So, um, unfortunate for sure. Uh, this is a pretty cool story. You want, you wanna take the lead on this one? 

Vic: Yeah. Yeah, sure. So, um. A figure skater, her name is Amber Glenn. She had a career, which happens to a lot of athletes that she would perform very well in sort of the preliminaries or lead up events, but she never really won the big events.

She kind of choked or, or she couldn't, she couldn't win the, the big World, world Championship events. Um, and so she went and talked to her, her trainers and, and sort of [01:04:00] rethought how she would approach it. She started doing, um, biofeedback training to really kind of put her body into the, into the experience where she's all kind of keyed up and, you know, fast heart rate, exercising really well, and then be able to calm herself down like you would practice anything.

You can practice, um, getting control over your, your internal. Your heart rate, your mental state, your brainwaves, right. And she has not lost in, uh, I think 10 months. She's just like killing it. Yeah. So I think it's interesting. I really like the intersection between like sports medicine and psychology in general.

Um, so I was interested to see her doing this. I think biofeedback training and meditation is something that's a lot of promise for, I haven't spent enough time when it, but I want to learn more about it. 

Marcus: Yeah. I'm, I'm big on this stuff for sure. [01:05:00] Big, big on neurofeedback. Mm-hmm. Um, big on biofeedback. Uh, I'm just now getting back into meditation.

I did my third meditation session this morning, uh, for the week. And, um, I mean, I, I go on these like stints where I'm like, good for like a year. Mm-hmm. And then I, I'm, yeah. And then I'm shit for a year. So I, I've been in like a not good for a year kind of period, so I'm trying to kinda get back on the, 

Vic: on the boat.

Um, I, I like yoga or more like movie meditations. I find that more easy to stick to, but yeah, it's not, it's not it same, it's not the same benefit. It's not, it's not the 

Marcus: same. 

Vic: Like 

Marcus: the thing that I, that, that I noticed just on day three is, uh. I, I, I think, I think you just get a better sense of like the, the soundtrack of thoughts running around in your head.

Yeah. And, and, you know, I've been doing it long enough that it doesn't take me that long to catch it. I don't judge myself and I can observe it. Yeah. And be like, oh, snap man, the, these, these thoughts are like on repeat. [01:06:00] Yeah. You know, so it, it's just something to know. Yeah. It's just, it's just helpful to know that you've got certain soundtracks that are going on and you think they're you, they're 

Vic: not you.

Yeah. That's the, that's the benefit I've found when I've been able to do, is like getting even just like a little bit of distance between that soundtrack or my thoughts and then what is really me or what I have to take action on. They're not the same thing. They're, they're not the same thing. 

Marcus: Right. Yeah.

So this stuff is awesome. I, obviously, as, as an athlete and mm-hmm. And, uh, you know, you know, someone who, who kind of learned how to compete as a child. So I don't, uh, I don't as much understand. How I do it. Yeah. But I, but I, but I know other people, um, who actually compete quite a bit, but struggle rising to the moment when, you know, in the training room or in practice, they're unbelievable.

Yeah. But then they go out on the mats and they can't quite, uh, yeah. Deliver the same performance there. It's a pretty consistent thing amongst, amongst athletes. [01:07:00] Um, and it would be great if we could figure out a way to unlock that. 

Vic: Yeah. 

Marcus: Because it would translate into performance in more than just this area.

I think it would translate into relationships and, and, you know, definitely the workplace, et cetera. Right, right. Here's another sort of, uh, health in US story. What happens to your brain when you retire? Um, I think this is gonna be a bigger story than most people think it's going to be because, uh, AI is gonna force some early retirements, unfortunately.

Uh, or at least people needing to reboot their career and rethink what they're going to be doing. So, uh, it's, it's probably worth thinking about. What happens when either you retire or your job is retired for you? Um, but what's, what's kind of the key takeaway here? I think the 

Vic: key takeaway is that a lot of us, I'm not sure I'm in this camp, but a lot of people are looking forward to retirement.

I can, I can, I can take a break. I cannot be stressed. I won't have to work so much. I won't have all this pressure. [01:08:00] But they don't really prepare for what they're gonna do. They're just so excited to go relax that they don't plan for it, and then they don't have anything to really keep themselves busy intellectually.

And so you atrophy your, your, your brain over a pretty short amount of time. Six to 12 months is what the article says. You start to atrophy. 

Marcus: Mm-hmm. 

Vic: And I, I think, um, I've been thinking about this a lot. I hadn't connected it until you just did the intro, but I kind of think that, um. In order to keep up with a new technology, it really is about just like trying to fight through the interface or the confusion.

It's hard. I don't know how to use whatever tool I'm trying. And there's a point in people's life where they just feel like, well, I'm, I'm old enough that I'm not going to, I've done this enough. I'm not gonna go through that anymore. I don't need to learn that my kids will do it or, or I don't, I don't [01:09:00] need to do it anymore.

And so you stop fighting through that learning curve and then it's just, then this is over and it, it, um, I mean, I, I see it with older people and like apps or cell phones or, I think it's gonna happen with AI quickly. And it is really, um, it is that like there's a aspect of curiosity and aspect of like.

This is the work of keeping up to date. Yeah. Just like of, of working a little bit every week on the learning curve of what, whether it's AI or some new medical technology or whatever you're interested in. I don't think it has to be one particular thing, but just keeping cognitively your interest level up is important in retirement.

Yeah, 

Marcus: for sure. Alright, our AI rundown, trampoline AI launches out of redesign health to empower health plan call centers. 

Vic: Yeah. So thi this is, uh, one of the most likely early [01:10:00] places where AI just runs the table. Call centers, AI call centers in general, uh, because people don't like to wait on hold and, and it's, it's hard to be in the call center in that job.

And so, um, so they're coming outta redesign, um. And I think it's gonna be good. 

Marcus: And also the conversational LLMs are getting really good, ridiculously good. Yeah. Right? Yes. Ridiculously good. That, that's the, that's to me is the thing is all of, and we're about to do the AI rundown, so we're gonna talk about some incredible things that happened this week.

Um, but it, it, it, it's, it's crazy how just in the last week, I feel like the media that I have seen produced, and I'm not just talking about people showing me stuff from the latest open AI thing. Yeah. I just like, I'm stumbling upon things like on X or, or Instagram or whatever. Yeah. And I'm like, no, whoa.

Like, you know, it's AI that made it, but you're like, but [01:11:00] did AI make it? You know? And then when you, when, and then when you accept that AI made it, you, you realize how good it is. Like it's so good. Yeah. And you're just like, oh man, we're cooked. We're cooked. Like, 'cause it, because it's this stuff is still in Beta Vic.

I know. It's all still in beta. This, it's not, we we're not even in like ready to go general availability with, with this stuff, and it's just getting so good so fast. What a ridiculous time to be alive right now. It's just, 

Vic: yeah. I was trying to learn about, uh, the MCP protocol that we'll talk about it in a minute.

Yeah. Uh, so I just did a search for podcasts and the, the first four were AI generated podcasts, but I listened to one and it was useful. Oh yeah. I mean, it was, it was a, it was a, it, what I wanted was to quickly get up to speed Yeah. On this model context protocol. And you were able to, and it was, it was great.

Yeah. And, you know, they had two, I mean, just like us, they had two people, a man and a woman going back and forth. The only, and I wasn't even sure it was ai. [01:12:00] The only reason I, I realized, I mean, I thought this doesn't seem real, but I couldn't prove, I couldn't really know. But then the, um, the next one on the list was the same two voices, but with a different spin.

They, that one was done for a sponsor. Yeah. So they had, they were positioning it for a particular sponsor. 

Marcus: Yeah. And by the way, uh, if anyone's played with Notebook, lm, uh, it, look, this, this stuff advances so fast that like, I have no idea what the quality of it is now, but basically you can generate a podcast based on notes that you put into Notebook alum and it'll have two people talking about it.

Yeah, right. Literally just right in the interface. You just, you upload the docs or you, you tie in the YouTube feeds or whatever. Yeah. And then there's a little thing just like generate audio. You click that and the two people will have a conversation. Yeah. A guy and a man and a woman. Yeah. Have a conversation about all the stuff you put in there.

Yeah, it's, and it's pretty good. Just AI powered databases boost the Alzheimer's drug discovery process. This is another [01:13:00] Alzheimer, um, story related to, you know, how technology is likely going to be, um, cracking the code on Alzheimer's. I mean, it, it's, it's starting to feel inevitable, uh, quite frankly, like just the, the mountain of, um, of technologies and the advancements of it.

It's like, we're gonna figure this out, aren't we? Like, I just feel like we're on that timeline. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're gonna figure this out. We're actually gonna solve this one. 

Vic: I think, uh, there's enough attention and enough sort of compute power on it now that we'll figure out something. 

Marcus: Yeah. By, by the way, this is, this is, uh, Oxford.

The Oxford Drug Discovery Institute is, is leveraging AI and knowledge graphs, uh, to go through Biometrical data to work on finding a cure for Alzheimer's. Yeah. Now I think we're getting into our, our industry stories here. So, OpenAI rolls out image generation powered by GPT-4 Oh to chat GPT. The images are, I mean, this is the first one I, I've, I've been down on, on, on the [01:14:00] image generation stuff Yeah.

For a while. 'cause it always, it all has this look to it. This is definitely the first one where I'm like, oh man. Like the deep fakes are are gonna be everywhere now. Yeah, everywhere. That's it. We, we've, we've crossed the Rubicon this week. This very week. Yes. Is the week. 

Vic: It used to be that if you were not, there's like quickly glancing at something, almost anyone could spot an AI image generated the fingers weren't typically that good.

Oh yeah. Background people Or even like trees and things weren't just, it didn't have all the, all the landscape. Correct. That's right. And then you, you really. Couldn't manage text 

Marcus: ever, ever. The text was terrible. Can't have 

Vic: any text. 

Marcus: Yeah, the text was always bad. 

Vic: Um, so, and, and I didn't think about it, but there's a lot of texts, just like a, a restaurant sign.

Oh, yeah. There's texts in all kinds of stuff That's right. That, uh, when you try to [01:15:00] actually use, this didn't work and that got fixed this week. So this, this one, if you, if you're watching online, I mean, I mean, come on, the four most popular cocktails and they have a picture of the AOL spritz, margarita, espresso martini and mojito and how to make it.

And it is, it's really good. It's perfect. Yeah. 

Marcus: It's not just really good. It's like, it's 

Vic: better than you. And I could do, like, if we took half a day and like set it all up in a studio, it's perfect. Yes. 

Marcus: So, yeah. Uh. I mean, photographers, graphic designers. Yeah, graphic design tools. The, the amount, the wave of disruption that's coming from, from this one release.

Vic: Yes. There, there's something about crazy, um, fixing the, like the text and the colors and the image characteristics together when it moves [01:16:00] around the scene that OpenAI and Google both figure it out in the same week or they released it in the same week. 

Marcus: That image that you need for your presentation, we need to see if we can generate it.

Let's talk about that later. I don't know. 

Vic: I'm not, I, I gotta catch up with what you mean. Fondo s. Oh yeah, yeah. Yes, we can definitely do that. Definitely do that. Yes. 

Marcus: Right. Like literally just hit me like, why aren't we just like doing that? Yeah, we can do that. Why don't we just do that? Okay, great. Uh, open AI adopts rival anthropic standard for connecting AI models to data.

So this is the, uh, the MCP or model context protocol that you were talking about earlier. This is a little bit wonky, but every once in a while we wanna take you guys into the depths of what's going on here with this AI stuff. Yeah. So you can understand like some of the, the protocols that are being built under the hood to connect all these systems together.

Um, this is an important one because it's open source, uh, anthropic, uh, released it, but open AI adopting it kind of means that this is gonna be the, the protocol now. Yeah. So this is how, um, different AI systems will be able to talk [01:17:00] to software systems. It's, it kind of, you can kind of think about it like an API, um, that, that is AI readable.

Vic: Yeah. I mean the context. Not a lot of people that haven't played with AI that much. Think about context, but there's sort of the intelligence layer, then there's what can it do? Like, can it look at a website, can it, um, send an email? Those are more like, uh, capabilities, but then the context is really important.

'cause it, it allows the, a AI to respond in a way that makes sense for the environment. So a lot of times I'll be putting in 20, 30 pages of content context into the prompt, because then I get a much better answer out. Yeah, 

Marcus: but you have to feed it manually, but you have to 

Vic: feed it in there. And so this is a way to store context, um, either for your own models to be able just to pull.

Um, like you, you might have like 15 [01:18:00] different. Four page documents about different aspects of the healthcare industry that I'm investing in. Right. And I don't need them all, every time, right. But when I'm investing in this one niche, I wanna pull them in. I would have a library and just be able to tick off the boxes.

But then what's really interesting is you can then share it. So like if another venture firm wanted to collaborate with me, we can on this, on this context protocol, we can help, we can share with each other, or we can even sell it to each other or market it. And so I think it's gonna be a whole nother layer.

It's like, you're right, it's like an API or SDK kind of layer. Yeah. 

Marcus: Yeah. Re really. Really good news that OpenAI adopted this. 'cause I think there was some question as to whether or not the anthropic, you know, uh, sort of, uh, backing was sufficient to make this open protocol work, right? There were a lot of other cloud providers, you know, repli, et cetera, right.

That had signed onto it, but OpenAI really pushes it over the Yeah. Over the line. So that, that's great. Uh, anthropic Databricks team up for, uh, in a scramble for AI revenue. So this is just, I think this is good for, uh, anthropic. [01:19:00] Databricks is already massive, um, you know, B2B platform, uh, in the, in the cloud storage, um, integration space.

And, uh, they, they've decided to partner with Anthropic, so that's awesome. Pro likely because of the, the coding capabilities of, of Claude. Mm-hmm. Uh, 3.7 sonnet and, and whatever else is on their roadmap. Um, but it's gonna be great to, you know, for all the Databricks clients to be able to have, you know, Claude integrated into their software.

So yeah. Definitely. Alright. And another anthropic win. This is one in the courts. So the Anthropic scores a win in the AI copyright dispute with record labels. Universal Music Group, um, sought an injunction against anthropic, uh, training against copyrighted lyrics. Um, they basically were saying that there was gonna be, uh, reputational or market related harm.

And basically the courts denied the injunction stating that the record labels had not demonstrated, uh, like how using the material to train had actually caused that harm yet. So this is an injunction, this is not like a full on suit. This is just trying to [01:20:00] get them to stop. Um, I, I doubt this is the last of it.

Um, this is just one court, you know, these kinds of things mm-hmm. Tend to make themselves, uh, president a series of different, you know, jurisdictions, et cetera. Um, but it's certainly a win for philanthropic here just because, I mean. Anytime you can get AI sort of, uh, green lit by the courts to train on copyright, uh, copyrighted data.

That's a, that's a pretty big, big deal. 

Vic: Yeah, I mean, I think it is, um, it's gonna be really difficult if you have to show where the damage was done in order to stop the AI models, because after the damage is done, the, the damage is done. But I, that's right. They, they didn't get the injunction because they didn't demonstrate where philanthropic has, has impaired any of their, their artists or harm them at the same time.

I think it, I can make a Taylor Swift or or Grande song [01:21:00] sound pretty good. Um, so it it's inevitable. It's, it's, it's just inevitable. Yes, I think that's right. It's just, it's just gonna. 

Marcus: It's just gonna come, it's just inevitable. Uh, alright. Thomas Friedman, you may recognize that name from the world as flat.

Mm-hmm. Um, this is the guy who sort of talked about globalism, so Yeah. Uh, time for him to pop back up. I think, I mean, not to say he's gone anywhere per se, but it's probably time for him to start a pining again. Yeah. And, uh, this is really interesting, this opinion piece in the New York Times. He, he's basically talking about how AI and most importantly a GI, um, is, is about to show humanity that all of its, um, demarcations and nation states and all these different things are actually irrelevant.

And you are one human race and you're gonna have to find a way to align, uh, to try to contain a GI. 

Vic: Yes. And we should not worry about what China is [01:22:00] doing. That's immaterial. We have a bigger threat, which is a GI. Becoming the smarter, faster, better species, sort of the next step in evolution after humans.

That's his point that we should, we should align with other countries, almost the opposite of what the Trump administration is doing because of this looming threat. And I, I think it makes a lot of sense. I also don't think there's any chance gonna happen. I'm, 

Marcus: I'm glad he's on record saying it. Good for him.

Yeah. Yeah. Very smart. Like very smart to go on record saying it, you know. Um, if you turn on cable news, what percentage of the day do you think they talk about ai? 

Vic: Um, maybe 1%, 2%. Not even, not, not very much. Max five, right? Yeah, max. Very max. If there's some big story that gets attention, they might talk about That's right.

Marcus: [01:23:00] It it, it is, uh, it is really something else to be. Um, to be this close to a GI we're about to talk about Gemini 2.5 in a second here. Yeah, right. It, it is something else to be this close to it. And generally speaking, generally speaking, oblivious. If we walk outside and ask a hundred people, 

Vic: maybe two will have any opinion at all and they'll say it's a long time away and it's not.

No, I mean I think it's here now, but we'll talk about it in a minute. But, but Tom Friedman is correct and ain't nobody gonna listen to it. 

Marcus: Nope. Nope. Sure not. So. Alright. Uh, Google is rolling out Gemini's realtime AI video features. So Gemini can see screens and camera feeds in real time for some Google one.

A AI premium subscribers. Now [01:24:00] I am one of those. You are too. I'm sure I am too. Yeah. Yeah. So I gotta try this. I. This weekend. I, I don't think I can handle it tonight. We're, we're actually getting pretty late to the night here 

Vic: recording. Um, yeah, they turned this on about a month ago and I tested it, but it wasn't really, it was buggy and in work, and then they turn it off.

Okay. So, um, it'll be cool to have your AI copilot, just kind of see what 

Marcus: you see. 

Vic: Yeah. Just hanging out with you in the office. Mean, not actually sitting with you, but watching everything you 

Marcus: see. See, see what you see though. Yeah. Through, through the, through the smartphone camera. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that, that sounds awesome.

Vic: Or through or through your, uh, through your screen. I don't need em to see me. Uh, I need to see the screen. 

Marcus: Sounds great. Yeah, everything's gonna be fine. Uh, Google Gemini 2.5 Pro, uh, came out this week and on basically every benchmark beat, every top model. [01:25:00] And this is a big deal because Gemini has not beat anything in a while.

Hmm. Um, it's been considered a laggard kind of a dog, uh, and 2.5 pro like and handily beat. Yeah. In many things. Uh, the, the link we're gonna share to Matthew Berman, who's a pretty prominent YouTube AI guy, um, demonstrates this Rubik's Cube, um, test that he Yeah. It's a, it's a one shot test. He, he's, he's assembled all these one shot tests.

Yeah. He puts all the models through to kind of see how close they are to a GI. Right. Um, and Gemini 2.5 pros, the only thing to not only come, uh, come close but actually blow away the Rubik's cube test. Yeah. Um, whereas the other models struggle with it, and they can't 

Vic: even sort of, they 

Marcus: can't test, they, they 

Vic: can't even execute the test 

Marcus: much less like.

Um, run, run through all of it. So yeah, I mean, we we're putting the link in here. It's a long video. You probably can get the, the [01:26:00] gist of it in about five minutes of Yeah. Of the video. Yeah. If you watch the first, 

Vic: uh, yeah. Even three to five minutes. Yeah. To five minutes. 

Marcus: And, and you'll kind of understand, um, what Google has pulled off here and it's just,

I don't even know what to say at this point. 

Vic: Yeah. I mean, I, I tested it last, it came out yesterday. Yeah. I, I tested it last night. Driving in the car. Just, just like picked up my phone and talked to it. Well, 

Marcus: they, they said it was an AI studio, but it's rolled out if you, if you're a Google one AI premium customer, it's already rolled out there.

Can't, 

Vic: you can't, uh. The image generation that he's doing Okay. Is in AI studio, but the ex, like the, the deep thinking and then the, all of the, um, oh, complexity behind it is just in the regular Oh, wow. Interface. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I was on my phone driving in traffic and just figured I tried it out and I, I intentionally ask like a pretty vague, complex [01:27:00] question just to see.

Usually it gives me nothing bad. It stutters on that. Yeah. Yeah. 

Marcus: Can't, can't really figure it out. 

Vic: And, and it was like talking to a, um, 30-year-old person that works with me, like it's a, happens to be a female voice. She, she would ask me some follow up questions and then did a search on, uh, Google that she could do.

But the search was like this very complex set of terms with a bunch of Boolean things in that I couldn't even follow. But it got an answer. It wasn't the answer I wanted. So then I asked her to look in the, um, 10 K of a publicly traded company, which she then did, and within 10 minutes I got the answer while I was driving in traffic.

It's crazy. 

Marcus: Okay, so the final story, we, we, we made it to the end hour and a half for the show. Um, New York Times, are you smarter than ai? And, uh, [01:28:00] it's, it's some puzzles that you can play to see how you actually fare against the ai. If, if you're, you know, if you're feeling froggy, click the link in the show notes and, and play with it.

Yeah. Um, I have to tell you, I probably will not, because I don't wanna know. I don't, not only do I not wanna know, I already, I already know. Yeah, 

Vic: right. I already know I'm not smarter than Gemini 2.5. No, there's no, no way. 

Marcus: No, no. I also 

Vic: don't have the access to the entire internet in my head and I never will.

Hopefully I have some value to the world, but it's not that. 

Marcus: Oh my God. 

Vic: So I, I, you know, one of the things about a GI is, we don't have a definition for it, but we're, we're close Vic. But Vic, 

Marcus: it's, it's, it's, it's here. I think it's here. It's, it's, it's like pornography. You know? You, you know it when you see it.

Yeah. Right? And, and I, I think that's what a GI is, is going to be. Mm-hmm. It's like you'll know it when it starts doing things like a human autonomously. [01:29:00] Yeah. Like not on command, on its own. That's when we'll know it. I, I don't, I don't care about someone saying, I've run it through this benchmark of tests and this is a GI.

Yeah. Who cares about that? That I don't care. I don't care about that. When it starts acting like a sovereign individual with all of that power, then we're there and then we got a whole nother set of things. We gotta. 

Vic: I mean, if you put deal with, if you put Gemini two, five with Luna, you know Luna? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean if you give her that brain Yeah, she's there. I know. Now she doesn't have that brain. No, but uh, but she probably has it by now. Are you sure? She probably has it by now. Are we sure She didn't have it yesterday, but maybe she doesn't now. 

Marcus: Yeah, I mean, I mean like when you look at the rate of all this stuff, and you also think about the logistics of what it actually takes to roll something out, right?

Yeah. Don't you realize like, oh, this is why all the fallout's been happening at Open AI and why the people like saw something and it got spooked and they quit. It's like, we're already there. Yeah. [01:30:00] Yes, that's right. We're already there, you know, for, for all intents and purposes already there. Yes, yes. Right.

That's right. And now, so now it's just a matter of like how under control is this thing. Yes. And how 

Vic: fast does it change healthcare society, right. Our, our jobs as podcasters, right. I don't know. That is the big question, isn't it? Yes. And so I'm not gonna take, are you smarter than ai? I'm just gonna work really hard to be a very smart human that can use ai.

'cause I think it's not a test I wanna take. No, 

Marcus: same. Alright, great show. Thanks for putting it together. Um, and uh, we will both be here next week after the Jumpstart Health Summit. Yeah. Excited it for it. See you.