So Kai was in the book business at the exact same time as Jeff Bezos, and the same zip code as the dot-com boom.

When we got to Palo Alto, I had thought I would get some job in this dot-com thing that was happening.

And I poked around a little bit.

I couldn't find anything interesting.

I probably didn't know what I was doing because I hadn't really had any professional interviewing experience.

I hadn't really done that right.

I mean, look, I took some exams and got into flight school.

that.

Yes.

Obviously, there's a team of producers at Marketplace who do the booking of the interview.

They'll do sometimes an initial conversation with that person and then sometimes, you know, actually think about the questions they wanna ask, and they give me basically a one-sheet, and they say, "Listen, this is why we're interviewing this person.

Here are my thoughts on this, and here's a couple of questions." I take that, and I internalize it, and then I put it away, and I will not go into a studio with a list of questions in front of me.

I will have major points and things that really need to be said, especially if it's a big deal interview.

Like if I'm talking to Jay Powell, you know, there's some things I have to ask him, and, and I'll note those down.

But the name of the game is to be there, and by being there, I mean you have to listen because w- we can all hear when an interviewer is literally running down a list of questions and has not paid attention to the answer preceding the next question and just moves right on, and that makes me crazy.

How do you thread that needle of acknowledging the emotion, the anxiety in the moment, but also not getting people so upset and fearful that they tune out?

Can you explain at all why that's the case?

Yeah.

So look, you're a listener, you know this, everybody who's listening to this knows this, the stock market is not the economy, right? There are things happening in the real economy that are not being reflected in the stock market.

Prices are going up.

Consumers are getting skittish.

We're still spending, but we're getting skittish, uh, and, and we're feeling it, and we can talk about PPI and CPI and all that stuff in a minute.

But here's what's driving the stock market.

Years

Can you explain at all why that's the case?

Yeah, so look, uh, you're a listener, you know this, everybody who's listening to this knows this, the stock market is not the economy, right? There are things happening in the real economy that are not being reflected in the stock market.

Prices are going up.

Consumers are getting skittish.

We're still spending, but we're getting skittish, uh, and, and we're feeling it, and we can talk about PPI and CPI and all that stuff in a minute.

But here's what's driving the stock market, two things primarily: artificial intelligence spending to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, and then as we saw last Friday with the jobs market, 115,000 new jobs, not great, not terrible, but definitely solid.

So if you look at those two sort of macro factors, the stock market says, "You know what? Things are gonna be okay." A- and let's remember what the stock market is, right? It's just a bet on future performance of these companies, specifically now very big companies spending on AI, and then consumer goods companies who are boosted by consumers still spending because we still have a solid labor market.

Years

So can you explain what we measure when we measure productivity?

Yeah, in the most basic sense, worker productivity is widgets produced per hour work, whatever your widgets are, right? Yours and mine are putting a program on the radio with our production staff.

Somebody else's is making cars, right? So that's the fundamental definition that we're looking at.

The catch with artificial intelligence, as it was with the internet and as it was with the printing press and all other technological innovations, is that we have not yet figured out what and how AI is going to do to the US labor market productivity.

So there are going to be fewer jobs, right? And we are going to have to figure out how to do that.

I don't know what the answer is.

The answer is very far away because we're so early in AI.

Can you explain a little bit of that to our listeners?

What were some of the key themes you heard from folks?

Couple of things.

Number one, and the premise for this whole series, is that the prime age workforce economic advantage that the United States and most of Europe and Japan have had for the past 60 to 80 years is changing.

We all, as societies, are getting older.

And the thing is that that prime age workforce, workers 25 to 54, are what has given us, collectively, our economic advantage.

And that advantage is going to change because we're getting older, and parts of the world that are younger are going to have more dynamic and educated prime age workforces than they have had in generations.

So for example, in Vietnam, after the war ended in 1975, there was a baby boom there.

Where did you go here, and how did that tie in to what you then saw in Vietnam?

Hmm

...

Kavanaugh interestingly raised the issue of refunds and how it's going to be messy, and it is.

But you know what? If a statute, uh, says something's illegal, like the president did, it does- the whole refunds thing doesn't really matter.

Um, so the fact is, he misused IEEPA, uh, in an illegal way.

Um, those tariffs cannot stand, and if somebody has taken your money illegally, they have to give it back, no matter how messy it is.

Now, interestingly, of course, Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Bessent, and some others have said, "Well, we're gonna, we're gonna just leave that and figure it out later," and that's not the right answer, right? The right answer is, "We took your money illegally.

Mm-hmm.

I don't know if you speak to young men and women, service people in the Navy, how do they feel about Trump and our politics right now?

I, I don't.

It's been, it's been a while since I've talked to those folks.

But, but I will tell you that, um, it's not, it's not the young people actually in the military.

I mean, yes, it is, right? They do the, they do the work, the hard work, whether it's a, a young enlisted sailor, you know, on an aircraft carrier someplace or, or o- on a base someplace.

But, but really, the people that I worry about, who I put the responsibility on, are, are the senior officers, uh, the flag officers, the general officers, um, who know better, who, um, who, who, who are obliged by their oath and by the Constitution not to do the things, some of the things the president's asking them to do.

And I'm, I'm looking now at, at the American Navy admiral, uh, who resigned out of Southern Command over these, over these fishing boat strikes, right? Um, tho- those are the ones who...

How would you distinguish the difference between the people who serve, as you did, for several years versus those who decide to make it their career?

(smacks lips) Mm.

... has defenestrated itself in- in virtually every way up to and including the most significant power they have which is the power of the purse, setting aside the power to declare war, right? The Congress of the United States literal- And we all know this.

We all took Civics 101 in ninth grade or whatever it was, has the power of the purse.

And the president is steamrolling it and Republicans in Congress, in both the House and the Senate, are rolling over and saying, "Please scratch my belly." It's insane.

It absolutely makes no sense.

And the thing that really just bewilders me about this is I don't know why you go to the expense, the personal sacrifice, the time, and the energy to run for one of these jobs, get it, and then say, "Yeah, no, whatever the president wants to do, that's fine with me." So- so we have an Article I failure and then we have Article II, the executive branch just blowing past all constraints, all of them.

Everybody who is in or near the Executive Office of the President is just saying, "Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I, what- what were your reactions when you saw that speech?

I, um, uh, it was disgraceful, it was laughable, and it was an embarrassment to the Armed Forces of the United States.

And- and people need to understand, you know, I've been in journalism now for 25-ish years, but- but the most important thing to know about me is that I'm a veteran and- and how that shapes, um, how I see the world.

Secretary Hegseth is unqualified, full stop.

I am as qualified as he is to be the Secretary of Defense and (laughs) I'm not- I'm not qualified, right? I was heartened in that speech to see all those flag and general officers sitting on their hands, um, and doing exactly what one would expect of them.

Uh, I am, I- I feel badly for them because they're gonna have to go back to the troops and explain what the hell happened and what the marching instructions are, and they're gonna have to do it i- in a way that maintains unit cohesion and the viability of the force.

And- and that's gonna be really challenging, uh, because of the way the Secretary and also the President treat the military, as if it's, here's the quote, "They are his generals," which of course, they are not.

as you try to thread the needle between economic viability and thoughtful fact-checked journalism, which by the way is, uh, uh, I find is just a shitty business and economically really challenged, what do you think you guys are doing well and not well and how are you adapting to this new environment of media while trying to stay true to the roots of journalism which sometimes quite frankly is just not economically viable?

So, you know, how that can be happening so deep into this crisis, um, is a question that I'm going to leave to historians, and I'm sure they will be trying to sort through this, you know, 20, 30, 50 years from now.

Uh, I'm just gonna point out, just to bring a little contemporary political reality into this, that today, the Secretary of the Interior of the United States of America, a guy by the name of Doug Burgum, who was governor of North Dakota, who built a company and sold it to Microsoft for $1 billion, said on CNBC, "Well, what about all these expensive renewables? The wind doesn't blow all the time.

The sun doesn't shine all the time.

What are we gonna do?" So, there, I mean, there's demonstrable bad faith.

But setting that aside for a minute, um, I was...

So I- I was fortunate enough to be able to host a season of How We Survive, uh, about the military and climate change, which was a- a fascinating topic that I didn't know a whole lot about.

It was...

So these are huge challenges that we need to get on.