a little more than $5 trillion.

And what you can see is that there's a lot here.

There's $1.4 trillion there, the orange on the close to the right, which is need for alternative capital and governments, which was interesting then and I think is even more interesting now.

So the point, though, about this great piece, the J.P. Morgan piece, wrote almost a year ago is that they undersold it, right? They're underestimating how much money is required for the AI CapEx build out in the largest instance of the word.

So this is from Goldman Sachs.

This was from this summer, late summer.

I think it came out in August and you know, forget Forget $5 trillion over five years.

say, oh, no, no, no, that's not

Ah.

As, as big as the written word.

Um, I think that's what...

It's as big as that, right? So I...

And I see it every day or get little glimpses in our own world, own company, where it is, you know, what we can do today, what's possible today is, you know, not just an order of magnitude, but probably two orders of magnitude greater than it was six months ago.

Uh, and the, the, the rate of advancement is, is, it's, it is staggering.

But I also think it is...

Mm-hmm

Ah.

As, as big as the written word.

Um, I think that's what...

It's as big as that, right? So I...

And I see it every day or get little glimpses in our own world, own company, where it is, you know, what we can do today, what's possible today is, you know, not just an order of magnitude, but probably two orders of magnitude greater than it was six months ago.

Uh, and the, the, the rate of advancement is, is, it's, it is staggering.

But I also think it is...

Mm-hmm

Like, were you having a eureka moment?

I really was, Dave.

That's a great observation.

Even the Eureka being what Archimedes said from his bathtub, I've got it.

Because the aha moment was actually thinking about, maybe not Archimedes, but pretty much a contemporary of his, was Plato and the allegory of the cave and ideas that have been around for literally thousands of years.

But we now have the toolkit.

to re-evaluate those ideas as more than allegory.

Part of the aha moment

Why is theater and other kinds of creative practice an effective technique of animal advocacy? Like, how does it make a difference? I

think there's a few things.

So it's a bit of a long story, but I was a big theater... fan and I studied it and then I got a bit disillusioned by it and then I became an animal rights activist and then I started doing activism and then I started to see that we were actually using theatre not even as like explicitly so my first My first experience was vigils.

So I was vigils just up in Newcastle in the UK.

And I was like, hang on a second.

I've done a master's in theatre malarkey and I've kind of given up hope with it because of many reasons.

But I was like, hang on, this is theatrical.

But like, do they actually change their behavior because of the arts?

Yeah,

it's been a crazy year, mate, and that's rugby league for you, isn't it? You know, from the penthouse to the you-know-what, it's...

Yeah, it's been a tough year, mate.

Obviously, on the field and off the field, there's been a lot going on.

But, you know, it's a great club.

I really love being around the place.

There's a great group of fellas.

Guys, are they part of that premiership with you?

you like to, or he likes to say is the goal here.

But when you come out and you say, what he said, which was basically, ah, new boss, same as the old boss, lots of words, lots of talk talk, but they will never do anything to raise rates if they can possibly help it.

Then That's when gold skyrocketed.

I'm going to show you stuff on our narrative signals that shows just what a supernova this was at the end of July when he basically broke his credibility as being an inflation fighter.

Now, he's tried to reclaim the credibility at Jackson Hole with his speech last Friday.

The market correctly said, oh, this is a very hawkish speech.

But he's got himself in such a bind now because it'll just be more words.

the big financial firms that he controls.

the big financial firms that he controls.

And so this is something that's been going on for a long time, not in as egregious a manner as Mark Walters did it, where he's borrowing from companies he controls to buy the Lakers and buy the Dodgers.

But look, this has been something that Berkshire Hathaway has done for a long time.

They've got Geico as a source of permanent capital to fund what Warren Buffett does.

This is what Apollo does with their captive insurer, Athene.

something I've been writing about for a couple of years now, that we've developed this banking system, shadow banking system.

It's not regulated like the commercial banking system, but this is a source of funding for so much private credit activity, private equity activity.

So please unpack what you mean by this.

And it was just this remarkable climb that, holy crap, people believe in the Fed again.

Because he talked a good game.

He talked a great game about being, I'm going to be tough on inflation.

We're going to let the market make the decisions.

We're kind of getting away from the forward guidance.

And people are going, all right, I like that.

That sounds good.

And

Because he talked a good game.

He talked a great game about being, I'm going to be tough on inflation.

We're going to let the market make the decisions.

We're kind of getting away from the forward guidance.

And people are going, what? All right.

I like that.

That sounds good.

multi-year

The season can't finish, can it, quick enough?

Yeah, [laughs] that's probably right, mate.

Um, yeah, really disappointing, Dobbo.

Like, you know, they just turned up and ran harder and tackled harder, to be honest.

Like, you know, we gave ourself a little bit of a chance at the start of the first half.

Then we just made silly errors and, you know.

They're a good team when they're playing good footy.

From within the playing group, you know what's gone wrong.

I know how frustrated a season can't finish quick enough.

Yeah, that's probably right, mate.

Yeah.

Yeah, really disappointing, Dobbo.

They just turned up and ran harder and tackled harder, to be honest.

We gave ourselves a little bit of a chance at the start of the first half.

Then we just made silly errors.

From within the playing group, you know what's gone wrong?

The season can't finish, can it, quick enough.

Yeah, [laughs] that's probably right, mate.

Um, yeah, really disappointing, Dobbo.

Like, you know, they just turned up and ran harder and tackled harder, to be honest.

Like, you know, we gave ourself a little bit of a chance at the start of the first half.

Then we just made silly errors and, you know, they're a good team when they're playing good footy.

Whenever they come to Suncorp they, [laughs] they seem to play good footy, and we just gave them too many opportunities.

From within the playing group, do you know what's gone wrong?

The season can't finish, can it, quick enough?

Yeah, [laughs] that's probably right, mate.

Um, yeah, really disappointing, Dobbo.

Like, you know, they just turned up and ran harder and tackled harder, to be honest.

Like, you know, we gave ourself a little bit of a chance at the start of the first half.

Then we just made silly errors and, you know, they're a good team when they're playing good footy.

Whenever they come to Suncorp [laughs] they seem to play good footy and we just gave 'em too many opportunities.

From within the playing group, you know what's gone wrong?

So fire away, host Ben.

Well, you are on fire yourself, Matt.

I mean, this is two for two for notes of yours.

I mean, I always love reading what you write, but these last two notes that you wrote, first it was nobody wants to earn their shit, right? You put the little asterisks in there, but I don't have to.

And then this one, more eccentrics, less influencers, are just both notes that I'll say have, I don't want to put this.

All right, here's how I want to put this.

You write every day, Matt.

And I wanted the reader to be on the journey of the progression with me that I didn't know what I wanted to say when I sat down at the top.

And I like see the little nails coming out when I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh my God, Ben just got all of this now compressed to this size.

Yeah, and compression is always a problem.

If you read the note, you'll understand about compression of information and how that's both the most wonderful thing and a difficult thing.

Yeah, Matt, it is.

I mean, the note starts off, the conceit of the note is, hey, wait a minute.

Here's Plato's allegory of the cave.

And I want you to think of it as a real thing, not as an allegory.

How much of this was working out what you thought? Oh, an enormous amount.

I'm gonna tell you to say it a third time because I think this is a fairly shocking statistic on the size of AI CapEx contribution to GDP right now, and then why you've been telling us this is such an important government initiative.

Yeah, we're pot committed.

I mean, I mean, so if you took away half of GDP growth, it wouldn't put us in a recession, but it would sure as hell feel like a recession.

And for markets, I mean, forget, forget about it.

Forget about it.

So, so the, the AI CapEx story, this is what's driven multiple for this market for the last eight months.

We're, like I say, we're, we're, we're pot committed, both in terms of markets, both in terms of government wanting to avoid a, a, a recession.

... one other issue.

I must tell you to say it a third time because I think this is a fairly shocking statistic on the size of AI CapEx contribution to GDP right now and then why you've been telling us this is such an important government initiative.

Yeah, we're pot committed.

I mean, so if you took away half of GDP growth, It wouldn't put us in a recession, but it would sure as hell feel like a recession.

And for markets, I mean, forget, forget about it.

Forget about it.

So, so the, the AI CapEx story, this is what's driven multiple for this market for the last eight months.

Like I said, we're pot committed, both in terms of markets, in terms of government wanting to avoid a recession.

And that's a whole other

... whole other issue.

And so just, just to keep our energy, energy consumption at the same amount, going from 96 to 75%, you've gotta build a bigger pie.

And now conceptually, 75% of a much bigger pie is better than 96% of a smaller pie.

We can't get there.

It-- th-there's not enough turbines and gas generation or anything.

We can't build the generation pie big enough to accommodate the growing slice that data centers are gonna take.

So what that means is higher prices and ultimately rationing.

... one of the more ins- this is why it's World War AI, not US Civil War AI.

I must tell you to say it a third time because I think this is a fairly shocking statistic on the size of AI CapEx contribution to GDP right now and then why you've been telling us this is such an important government initiative.

Yeah, we're pot committed.

I mean, so if you took away half of GDP growth, It wouldn't put us in a recession, but it would sure as hell feel like a recession.

And for markets, I mean, forget, forget about it.

Forget about it.

So, so the, the AI CapEx story, this is what's driven multiple for this market for the last eight months.

Like I said, we're pot committed, both in terms of markets, in terms of government wanting to avoid a recession.

And that's a two-weather

Unpacked out for people who might not think of narratives that way.

Well, this was actually something that John Maynard Keynes back in the 30s was talking and writing about.

And he was trying to understand markets, as were we.

And his observation was that you'd often see this sort of, I'll call it crowd behavior.

We all see it in markets today.

How does storytelling work so that we understand all apparently seem to act at once according to the same beliefs.

And what he proposed was that this was an entirely rational process.

If AI can detect narrative manipulation, spin, script injection, coordinated messaging, what happens when the actors generating those narratives also have access to AI, and are we heading to some sort of semantic arms race?

When did you realise that you're actually okay at this rally thing?

I did a few rallies in the Starlet Nelson Rally and Western Rally and then between Dad and a few of his mates and near Walpole and the likes of that taught me into doing the Rally New Zealand Rising Stars Scholarship in 2009.

I wasn't really that keen.

I just wanted to go to skids in the starlet and have fun with my group of mates that were helping me out.

But yeah, we ended up doing it.

And, you know, lucky enough for me, I played tennis and being through all that high performance stuff.

So the fitness side of it and everything was really easy.

I'm going to, this may sound like an odd question, but did you, was Possum with you? Did you feel Possum in the car?

I think some people are gonna fall out of their chair.

This is a wild chart, right? Because so this is data that, like you just described, why we're, uh, just seeing this now, right? [laughs] As I said, so, so we've made a lot of improvements in our underlying technology, and so, you know, we read everything in the world, and then we track narratives.

You know, how present is it in, fancy word, semantic density.

But just how loud is it? How loud is a narrative? And so what we've built now is a way of filtering, so it's not just central banks in general.

We're now able to filter down on Fed credibility versus BOJ, Bank of Japan credibility, versus ECB credibility, versus Bank of England credibility.

We're able to filter down to these really, we like to call it resolution.

We're able to take much higher resolution snapshots of all of this.

... with the Fed.

This is a

wild chart.

Right.

Because so this is data that you just described why we're just seeing this now.

So we've made a lot of improvements in our underlying technology.

And so, you know, we read everything in the world and then we track narratives.

You know, how present is it in technology? Fancy word, semantic density.

when we look at this, what's the translation? How do you use this to help explain both what's been going on in a portfolio versus where this puts us now? Because again, and I'm with you, different framing than where my brain was processing what's going on with the Fed.

Talk me through what, what you've found so far.

We chose a much more diverse species mix than farmers would normally sow for a cover crop mix.

It was a 14 species mix consisting of, I think, seven different plant families, so very diverse.

The idea of getting maximum diversity into your cover crop mixes and your rotation in general is a really good thing for the soil.

Each species of seed will bring its own microbiome to the soil, so you're almost inoculating the soil with new unique microbiome.

If you're not growing those crops in your cash crop rotation, including them in your cover crops is a great way of inoculating your soil with some new, new biology.

Each species of cover crop has its own unique growing style or properties.