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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Bloomberg This Weekend podcast with David Gura, Christina Ruffini, and Lisa Mateo.
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Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us for today's selection of conversations from the show.
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Speaker 4: You can listen to our favorite discussions right here on the podcast. Also make sure to join us live every Saturday and Sunday morning starting at 7 a.m.
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Speaker 1: Eastern.
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Speaker 2: We're on Bloomberg Television, radio and the Bloomberg Business App, bringing you unique takes and in-depth interviews on news, politics, lifestyle and culture.
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Speaker 3: Okay, new this morning, Ukraine's Ministry of Defense says all restrictions on Starlink have been lifted after two weeks of slower speeds. This comes after President Trump reportedly called Elon Musk on Wednesday and asked him to lift the restrictions, according to the Wall Street Journal.
00:00:54
Speaker 4: Also on Wednesday, Russia released a 74-year-old American prisoner named Stephen Hubbard. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff thanked Vladimir Putin directly for that release. Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent Evan Gershkovich is the author of a new book, This Cursed and Beautiful Land. He himself, of course, was held in a Russian prison for 16 months. We started our conversation with him by talking about Hubbard's release.
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Speaker 5: I'm incredibly happy for Stephen. It seemed like he got caught up, you know, very cynically and tragically in the fog of war at the beginning of the invasion in Ukraine. And he was absolutely miserably treated, tortured, deprived of food. And it's been years, right? We're already in late 2026 and he was taken in early 2022.
00:01:36
Speaker 6: And so it's about time, obviously, for him to get home.
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Speaker 5: But I mean, as with all of these trades, you can see how cynical Moscow is. It seems like if they're not getting anything in return, which, you know, I haven't seen news that says they're getting something in return. It's a way to continue getting U.S. President Donald Trump on board with piece that's favorable to them. That's my early read here, but we'll see if there's any sort of news about what else Moscow gets.
00:02:07
Speaker 3: The State Department is always really cautious to even let people know publicly who is in custody because of these negotiations. Do you have any insight into how many other people are in this predicament? Are you expecting to hear more names kind of dangled in front of the president? Are there more people who the Russian government can use in these kinds of negotiations?
00:02:29
Speaker 5: I mean, we understand that there's a list of about 10 people that, uh, Washington asks Moscow every time. Uh, well, one less now, it seems like with, uh, with Stephen, we'll see if there's any more, uh, you know, there's plenty of Americans being held. Uh, and so hopefully, hopefully there's more efforts being made. Uh, partly it's, uh, you know, in my case or in Brittany Griner's case, uh, it's clear that public support for people in prison really matters. It helps push an administration to try to get them home. So whoever, you know, the families and the advocacy groups and the loved ones of whoever's remaining, the more they can press, the more it helps remind the State Department, not just the State Department, the White House to work to bring them home.
00:03:16
Speaker 4: You write about how when you're in prison, you're kind of following through the news who's been released. You kind of hear from your lawyers as well. I noted in the book that you have political prisoners who write to you now asking you for advice and for help. And I'm curious if you respond to them and sort of what your counsel is to them. Is there, in a predicament like the one that you were in, kind of waiting for an indefinite period of time here for some resolution to these cases, which can drag on for many months and years?
00:03:44
Speaker 6: I mean, who I bring up in the book, it's quite different.
00:03:47
Speaker 5: So I'm talking about Russian political prisoners in that situation. So if Americans are useful to.
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Speaker 6: Extract concessions from the U.S.
00:03:57
Speaker 5: Government or to get something in return, whether that's to return a person, like in my case, or perhaps it's to butter up an administration in peace talks, Russian political prisoners are faced with years and years in prison. They're not pawns in a hostage game. And so it's really difficult to receive those letters and try to offer some sort of not false hope, let's say. The Atlantic reported about an effort that perhaps the Trump administration will be making to ease sanctions on Russia in exchange for the release of Russian political prisoners. And that's, again, than hearing from Russian prisons, from people on that side that, you know, they're asking, when is this going to happen? And so each time, it's very different compared to a situation of a foreign citizen being used in what we call hostage diplomacy. When they're taken, the Russians actually call what the group of foreign citizens that it's holding to be swapped the exchange fund.
00:04:58
Speaker 6: They even have a term for this.
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Speaker 5: And so Russian political prisoners are in a much more depressing and disheartening predicament.
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Speaker 3: Evan, I'm curious, I mean, we were talking before we started rolling about how as a journalist who goes to some dangerous places, we've all had to go to this training where they kind of try to prepare you for this exact thing. But as you're going through the training, your hope is that you never have to use that training. And I'm wondering if when you were first picked up, if any of that kind of, I don't know, I've talked to another friend who was detained for a short period of time and she said it played out so much like the training that she was
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almost laughing to herself as they were, you know, throwing her in the van. Obviously, it's a very similar situation, but did it feel surreal? Did you feel at all prepared? Was this something in your head that you thought was even a possibility of something you'd have to deal with?
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Speaker 5: So I open my book, This Cursed Beautiful Land, which is about basically my 16 months in imprisonment, taking on false espionage charges in Russia in 2023.
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Speaker 6: With the arrest scene.
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Speaker 5: And I think, you know, later in the book, I describe how foreign correspondents go through what we call hostile environment training.
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Speaker 6: You get taken hostage.
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Speaker 5: And it's pretend terrorists, sort of what we can imagine. And it was happening to journalists in the Middle East over the years. Or you learn where to take cover from shelling. These days, journalists are also learning how to deal with drone warfare. But you don't exactly learn how to handle, you know, a paranoid counterintelligence agency and an authoritarian regime. So when I'm actually arrested, it's a dual feeling.
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Speaker 6: On the one hand, it's pure fear.
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Speaker 5: When the men approached to arrest me, they announced that they are with the.
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Speaker 6: Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
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Speaker 5: This is the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, formerly known as the KGB in the Soviet period. And it answers directly to Putin. So this is not a sort of case of local police picking up a foreign correspondent, roughing him up, and then maybe calling Moscow and saying, we got one, and Moscow says, let him go. We don't arrest foreign correspondents. You realize that the order has come from on high. On the other hand, yeah, I mean, I was taken to the station and being dragged around in with a hood over my head, with my legs dangling through different rooms, up and down stairs. And that is what we go through in hostile environment training when you get taken captive and taken hostage. They disorient you in the beginning. And so that kind of felt like reliving what we went through. But I mean, it's very different. I knew I was taken for a long time. It's the FSB that's arresting me. And they charged me with espionage. And most of the time when foreign correspondents get taken, they're detained, roughed up.
00:07:42
Speaker 6: It's a few days they get kicked out of the country. It's rare.
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Speaker 5: It's very rare for a foreign correspondent to be held for a year and a half.
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Speaker 4: Evan, how much mystery was there for you about the way that all of this would play out? I was struck by you having reported on both domestic political prisoners and those from overseas. You knew them as persons. You knew about what the process would be like. Obviously, your facility with the language was extremely helpful here. In the first prison in which you're housed, you're able to speak with your cellmate. You have a sense of customs and language that obviously is helpful. You're able to watch the whatever's on TV, be that sports or entertainment or otherwise. Did it play out the way that you thought it would? How much of it was different than what you thought it might be?
00:08:26
Speaker 6: So the question, you.
00:08:28
Speaker 5: Know, this question of whether I expected something like this could happen, I mean, foreign correspondents, we were discussing amongst ourselves, you know, during the first, this first year of the full-scale invasion and the environment, you know, changing seriously, where Russia exists at war, not just with Ukraine, but at this point, what it calls a in quotes, the collective West. And so, you know, we really didn't think that it was highly likely. I think it was maybe a two or three percent chance that some people were discussing amongst themselves. The idea was that you were always a kind of quasi-diplomat in Russia. Up until my arrest, two, if I remember correctly, foreign journalists were expelled and other foreign journalists, you know, maybe behind closed doors, as Your visa is not being extended. But the last time somebody was arrested on fabricated espionage charges was in the late 80s, still the Soviet period. So when it happened, I've described it as shock, not surprise, not surprising in the sense of how the regime works. Shock in the sense that they've crossed this red line. But when I'm taken to the station after the arrest and, you know, I'm just calmly handed my espionage charges. I'm not tortured in any way. And I've reported on cases where people are really abused. I mean, Stephen Hubbard, as we discussed at the start of this. And I'm brought to Moscow. And the first day I meet my investigator, the FSB in Moscow brings up this question of swap lists. And then in my cell, I have a TV. And on the second night in.
00:09:52
Speaker 6: Prison, I see.
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Speaker 5: You know, on a nightly news show, a host saying, you know, about my case, as cynical as it sounds, we've replenished our exchange fund, right?
00:09:59
Speaker 6: And so and I'd reported on these cases. Right. Trevor Reed had come and gone to an American Marine.
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Speaker 5: Brittany Griner, the basketball player, Paul Whelan had been taken and being held in. And so I, you know, quickly intuit, OK, this is specifically for a swap case. There's no mistake about this. But I had also been reporting on Paul Whelan's case. And at that point, the Americans were trying to get him home and the Russians were saying nothing. You know, it's all well and good, but we actually want a certain Russian who's being held in Germany, Vadim Krasik, of an FSB assassin who was sent there on a state mission to kill somebody in broad daylight. He had been caught and sentenced to life in prison. And the Americans were saying, well, this is insane. How does, you know, how are we, how do we have anything to do with it?
00:10:42
Speaker 3: And the Germans had told them no. Like, initially, the Germans said no.
00:10:46
Speaker 5: From what I understood, from what I understood in the reporting I did after my release about this, the Germans said, please.
00:10:53
Speaker 6: Don't ask us because we'll have to say no.
00:10:55
Speaker 5: And so it was a sort of don't, let's not close the door, which is why when I get taken, the Americans are able, they waited, right?
00:11:03
Speaker 6: There was also this.
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Speaker 5: weight where the Americans are trying to see, is there any sort of way we can do this swap? The Biden administration was scouring the globe for Russian spies in other countries. They ended up making an offer of a four for two for myself and Paul Whalen. The Russians said, no, we want this guy, this FSB assassin Krasnikov. So then eventually, Berlin and Washington realize, okay, it's going to have to go through Berlin. Um, and so I, yeah, I intuit, okay, this swap is, this is probably who they want. This is probably not going to be easy because yeah, exactly. Uh, there was news of in the, in that earlier Berlin was basically being.
00:11:38
Speaker 6: Resistant to it.
00:11:39
Speaker 5: Um, and so I assume I'm hoping, you know, maybe it's a bit irrational and hopeful that it'll take a year and a half to three years. Um, because you know, there's no way it's going to be as quick as Brittany Griner's case of, um, 10 months because the swap's not straightforward, but I'm really hoping it won't take five years.
00:11:57
Speaker 6: And so eventually it took 16 months. So, you know, a broken clock is right twice a day.
00:12:04
Speaker 5: I was literally wrong about the fact that they wouldn't take a foreign correspondent hostage for a swap, but I was.
00:12:10
Speaker 6: I guess, right about the length of time that it would take to get me home. All right.
00:12:15
Speaker 3: So when you are coming to this realization, you're watching this on the news, You are looking at mentally, okay, this is the next year and a half to three years on the low end of my life. How do you prepare for that? How do you mentally go through every day? What are the small things you use to goalpost time? You talk a little bit about your reading list, which I thought was fascinating. Just tell us what that was like looking forward to. For me, it seems like the thing that would stress me out the most is exactly what you just said, not knowing how long.
00:12:45
Speaker 6: I was going to be there.
00:12:46
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:12:47
Speaker 5: So the biggest difficulty, I mean, I think we have to be really clear that I'm treated differently than, you know, Stephen Hubbard or Victoria Roshan, a Ukrainian journalist who's taken captive around the same time. She was tortured like Stephen in prison. She was eventually killed and sent home in a body bag without her teeth and her internal organs. The Ukrainian government, her family can't even figure out how she was killed. And so as a journalist, You know, what helped me and I think what what's easier for somebody like me in a situation like this is as a reporter, I have this kind of knowledge. And so I can read the signals. How are they treating me? And they were clearly treating me in a different way before the U.S. ambassador, Lynn Tracy, would come to visit me. The prison warden would come and check in and ask if everything's OK. It's a big case with a big global uproar. There's public uproar about it. And I think they want to be able to say, look, we're not mistreating him. He was caught red-handed. He has due process. And the fact of being a journalist helps. I know that there's a 99.7% conviction rate in Russia. I know how long these cases take, so there's nothing that's going to surprise me in the prison system.
00:13:53
Speaker 6: I also grew up in a home speaking Russian. My parents are from the Soviet Union.
00:13:58
Speaker 5: I answered to the name Ivan or Vanya before I ever answered to Evan in American schools. And so, yeah, I can communicate with the prison guards. I can communicate with my cellmates. I can read books. And the library had a, you know, it was a really rich library, which came as a surprise to me. And when I told my Russian lawyers on the first visit, they said, They laughed and they were like, well, there's a lot of smart people who've gone through this prison from Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
00:14:23
Speaker 6: And, you know, the library had.
00:14:25
Speaker 2: You're in great company, right?
00:14:27
Speaker 6: Exactly. Yeah. And so what you.
00:14:29
Speaker 5: Start doing, what I started doing, at least, is a kind of coping mechanism. I started on the one hand thinking, well, I can't change the fact that I'm here. And it is interesting. Reporters don't get to be here every day. So I might as well report on it.
00:14:42
Speaker 4: One of the many surprises in this book was what he's just talking about, which is, yes, the expansiveness of this library, 9,000 volumes in this prison library, but also he could get things sent to him. Letters were translated into Russian and then given to him. Clothing, foodstuffs, it was just like a different way of prison life than I would think of here in the U.S.
00:14:59
Speaker 3: It's very interesting, and some of the other detainees, including Paul Whelan, have been able to.
00:15:02
Speaker 6: Call reporters in the U.S.
00:15:04
Speaker 3: While they're in custody, which is something we wouldn't be allowed to do here, but in other ways, obviously, it's much harsher conditions.
00:15:10
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
00:15:13
Speaker 4: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg This Weekend, right after this. It is the end of October, which means open enrollment for benefits at many large corporations this year.
00:15:33
Speaker 7: Inflation is still rising.
00:15:34
Speaker 4: Both employers and employees are seeing their health care costs rise as well.
00:15:39
Speaker 3: One projection from the consulting firm Aon
expects employer healthcare costs to jump nearly 10% in 2027. SHRM, the world's largest HR management association, says those high costs are the new norm. We spoke with CEO Johnny Taylor for this week's C-Suite Saturday. It is open enrollment season. It is select your healthcare season. What is your advice to companies? What is your advice to employees? And how much support should HR departments have available for employees trying to navigate what is really a difficult thing to choose right now, given these costs?
00:16:08
Speaker 7: So, companies communicate, over-communicate, communicate. This is a real education business. People don't understand benefits. They don't understand the costs of them, the tax implications, etc., So to the company, you can't over-communicate. The days of taking people through open enrollment, handing them a pack of documents for them to read, those days are done.
00:16:28
Speaker 2: I feel like that's every company I've ever been at. It's like, here is your massive folder of 128 pages.
00:16:32
Speaker 6: And go figure it out.
00:16:33
Speaker 7: And use all sorts of acronyms that people don't understand. We're not consumers of benefits in the traditional sense. So that's important. On the other side, employees have to listen. They have to really be willing to learn. So I'm educating you as an employer. You have to be willing to put time into it to actually understand. An example we see all the time, someone has a kid. They've taken the daycare. There are ways to pay for that daycare benefit pre-tax. So you're going to spend it anyway. Why not take it out and make it work for you? And employees don't fully understand it in some instances because they haven't taken the time to really listen during an open enrollment.
00:17:10
Speaker 4: We're at this moment where I think a lot of executives are trying to figure out the transformational nature of AI. And I wonder, in human resources, in people management, the effect that it's having now and sort of where you see it headed.
00:17:21
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's scary.
00:17:23
Speaker 7: If you think about it, traditionally in sort of the industrial world that we kind of know, a little bit of information technology, technologies came about and they made us better. They complemented and supplemented. We used them. This is the first technology, this whole AI thing that says expressly, my job is to replace you.
00:17:40
Speaker 3: Right.
00:17:40
Speaker 7: And so that is a very different dynamic. In the past, you could teach me to use this new tool because it was going to make me better. There's no way I'm going to embrace technology that's going to replace me.
00:17:50
Speaker 2: Right.
00:17:50
Speaker 7: And so we're seeing a real struggle there in HR and finance. Think about the people. Think about actuaries. That was a job that the really smart people went to do. And now it can be done instantly in many instances with just a little bit of management oversight to make sure there are no hallucinations and quality assurance. But you don't need 10 actuaries now. You can do it with three. Really hard to convince an actuary to go teach that machine how to learn my job.
00:18:17
Speaker 3: How are you advising companies to, especially with hiring, use that tool but still use humans at the end of the day?
00:18:23
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's both and. I mean, that's the real deal. AI is here to complement HI. We call it human intelligence. Real basic math that I do, AI plus HI is the new ROI. And so this idea that you introduce AI and don't help human beings with it is to my earlier point. Essentially, it makes people not embrace it. So when you're bringing in these new employees, it's really important to explain the why AI is being utilized and then how to utilize it in a way to make you better at your job, not so that you don't see it as a threat.
00:18:55
Speaker 4: We're here just a couple of weeks away from the midterm elections. And I'm curious of how you're thinking about the role that politics plays in the workplace, how much that's evolved.
00:19:04
Speaker 7: Let me tell you.
00:19:04
Speaker 4: Is it something we should be open to talking about? Are companies less willing to kind of have that free dialogue within their walls? How is it being regarded right now?
00:19:13
Speaker 7: So, we've debated this forever. Do you just ban it? If you remember three or four cycles ago, it was like, just ban it. We're not going to talk about politics at work because it's causing too much division.
00:19:21
Speaker 3: Because there's a moment when we were all talking about it. Companies were getting on board. I mean, I covered the BLM movement. Companies were signing up and sending. And that's gone really the other way, I feel like.
00:19:30
Speaker 7: Pendulum has swung. People are like, listen, I come to work to work. I actually don't want to come and debate with you, my colleague, about how you see the world and how I see the world. And we used to say, don't talk politics, but everything is political now. You know, everything is the signal for your political affiliation or how you lean. So what companies have done is we're not going to ban it. We're going to teach you how to disagree better. And that's the most important thing. We went through this thing where everyone's going to agree. That was one time. And they're like, no, everyone's not going to agree. And frankly, that diversity is good. We don't want everyone agreeing. But now we've got to teach you how to disagree better such that it doesn't affect our retention. People don't quit because they don't want to work here. And that you come to work and you don't feel like you have toxicity in the workplace.
00:20:13
Speaker 6: It's interesting.
00:20:13
Speaker 7: Sherm just had some research. It's coming out next week, so you're all the first to hear it, on civility. But the first time, our data suggests that it's no longer political affiliation, sort of divisiveness, that's
a cause of toxicity. But guess what it is now? Generational difference.
00:20:29
Speaker 5: Interesting.
00:20:31
Speaker 7: They're close, but it used to always be number one driving force, politics. And we thought that this data is coming out right now that ahead of midterms that it would clearly be politics.
00:20:42
Speaker 6: It's not.
00:20:43
Speaker 7: It's generational differences. Just think about your friends who make the jokes that work. Oh, you're a boomer. Well, guess what? Some people are quite offended by that. You know, it's funny and they're not so funny.
00:20:53
Speaker 3: Also the, the, you know, the Gen Z divide, the just communicating differently than people who've been in the workplace longer.
00:20:58
Speaker 2: They grew up in an era of remote work.
00:21:00
Speaker 7: Digital natives.
00:21:01
Speaker 6: Exactly.
00:21:01
Speaker 3: Even elevator culture, like getting in an elevator with someone who just doesn't give you the, you know, it's just very odd to me, but they didn't have to do it.
00:21:08
Speaker 7: So let me tell you the worst is the kid comes in for an interview and says, Hey Johnny, We would never do it.
00:21:15
Speaker 1: I'm Mr.
00:21:15
Speaker 7: Taylor until you tell me.
00:21:16
Speaker 6: Right.
00:21:17
Speaker 7: Those are the sorts of generational differences that are real. So the managers making the hiring decisions are like, we're not friends. Have you ever met me before? Like, I'm Mr. Taylor until I give you permission to call me. And so the kids roll their eyes and they're like, okay. Thus, the disagreements at work. And it becomes uncivil.
00:21:36
Speaker 3: So with the disagreements at work, before we let you go, I want to ask you about what is kind of referred to as the weaponization of HR. Because when I was a young person in the workplace, we had no HR, and it was insane. And the things people were... I mean, I was sent to pharmacies to get people's prescriptions. I was waiting in... I mean, it was.
00:21:55
Speaker 3: None of it would have been okay today. Some of it was fun. Some of it was out of control. Some of it was dangerous and some of it was uncomfortable. There is a need for this at companies, but as the pendulum swings, I do think that in some places it has become suffocating. People feel like they can't have discussions. They can't speak their opinion. They are afraid of getting written up. Where is that balance and how does it strike it? And where's that trend going?
00:22:16
Speaker 7: So employers, well, the best I could, Devil Wears Prada 1 and Devil Wears Prada 2.
00:22:21
Speaker 6: If you remember that, it was classic, right?
00:22:23
Speaker 7: It's exactly it. I think the issue is HR is not looking to enforce more rules. Hell, we got enough work to do, right? The problem is employees too often. The reason we have these rules is because someone complains and says, I was offended, I was this, I was that, and we have to react to it. So it's a tough, tough job because
you've got to protect the company and you've got to protect employees at the same time. And oftentimes, but the trend, you asked about it. The trend is to being a little bit more relaxed because you can't like, no one wants to.
00:22:54
Speaker 6: Come to work every day.
00:22:54
Speaker 3: You must be drowning and just overwhelmed.
00:22:57
Speaker 7: Overwhelmed. Our diversity is our strength, but it's also quite a bit to manage a diverse workforce. And I'm not just talking race and age and gender. I'm talking about just people's lived experiences, different perspectives, managing.
00:23:09
Speaker 6: All of that.
00:23:09
Speaker 7: And everyone, I hate to say this is going to overstate it, but Everyone wants to be aggrieved about something, and it shows up in our offices, right?
00:23:17
Speaker 6: I mean, so what's your advice?
00:23:18
Speaker 3: Should employees maybe try to work it out amongst themselves?
00:23:20
Speaker 7: That's the goal. Teach people, managers, to work it out amongst themselves. Be adults. Fancy that.
00:23:26
Speaker 6: Mr.
00:23:26
Speaker 4: Taylor, Johnny Taylor, thank you very much.
00:23:27
Speaker 6: Appreciate it.
00:23:30
Speaker 3: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg this weekend, right after this.
00:23:46
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Bloomberg This Weekend. I'm David Gurra, alongside Christina Ruffini and the great philosopher Jennifer Lopez. One said, love don't cost a thing, but finding it might, especially for wealthy people around the tech industry who are increasingly turning to matchmakers to help them find a partner.
00:24:03
Speaker 6: Really?
00:24:03
Speaker 4: Think you're going to keep me iced?
00:24:05
Speaker 6: You won't.
00:24:06
Speaker 3: I have no words.
00:24:08
Speaker 4: All right.
00:24:09
Speaker 3: These are people who may have, I can't even, I literally can't speak after that.
00:24:13
Speaker 2: All right.
00:24:14
Speaker 3: The clients here are people who might have a lot of money, but not a lot of time, and they're willing to drop some serious cash to find love. That's a topic of a new Bloomberg Pursuits piece. The AI boom is creating a new market for $ 500, 000 matchmakers.
00:24:27
Speaker 4: We spoke to one of those matchmakers, the founder and CEO of Lynx Dating, one Amy Anderson. What has changed? I understand business is booming. Why is that the case?
00:24:37
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, there's so many newly minted centi-millionaires from the AI boom in Silicon Valley and beyond. And they have been working so hard their whole life to get to this incredibly exciting point in their professional careers. And the stakes are really high. They want to find love and it's really challenging for them to find a like-minded match. So they are contacting my business nonstop to try to help them find that incredible match because they're working all the time and there's such also an exodus of people using dating apps. So it's a really fascinating time for us.
00:25:19
Speaker 2: At Lynx
Dating.
00:25:20
Speaker 3: Are they also looking to you for advice on how to do this? Because in general, I don't think it's that hard for a newly minted multimillionaire to find someone to date them, but maybe it is. I don't know.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there's definitely been a big percentage of men and women who've been just so bunkered down, focused on career, almost to the detriment of having a personal life and getting any dating experience under their kind of belt, so to speak. So they do need some guidance and coaching. And actually, a pretty big part of my job is the strategy that goes on behind the scenes for my clients, I think. Even those with a ton of dating experience can still get derailed when it comes to matters of the heart. I mean, this is such an emotionally charged business. So it takes somebody like myself to just guide them and give them that strategy and counsel so they stay just cool, calm, and collected and focused on the big picture of that relationship success and not getting too derailed from why he said this, why did she do that, etc.
00:26:25
Speaker 2: So Amy, let's get into more about what you do for your clients. So the price of it, about $ 75, 000, can reach more than half a million dollars possibly. So if you can go into, I mean, that's a big number, but like we said, these folks, men and women, make a lot of money. So get into more of how much exactly the services are, but also what you do for them.
00:26:46
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
00:26:48
Speaker 1: So a really big part of what I do from the very start of working with somebody is I create a very kind of controlled environment for them. These individuals seem to respond extremely well to the process and structure that I design for them. And we really start with a just scrupulous intake process to ensure that I'm working with the exact types of individuals that adhere to the core DNA that is my brand. Highly educated, professional individuals globally minded and commitment minded individuals. And then what I'm doing is as part of this kind of process and structure, I'm building out an archetype of their dream match. And then my team really gets to work thinking about where is this individual that the client is looking for? Because the client who's incredibly successful, their bar is very high and what they're looking for in many cases can be a bit of a unicorn. especially by Silicon Valley standards. Even though the antithesis of this company is high volume dating, high volume would be what you see through dating apps, this is much more intentional. So my clients actually, even for half a million dollars, they would rather have a reduction in the number of candidates that they meet but that those candidates are such high probability candidates that they might find love from the very first, second, or third introduction than have, you know, tons of matches.
00:28:24
Speaker 4: So I think of what you're doing as kind of old school. You mentioned the dating apps and how that's kind of a much broader approach to dating. How do you make the case that this is the route that someone should go down when everything seems to be telling people who are single that, you know, there's opportunity on the apps, there's a wider field you could get into through them?
00:28:43
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
00:28:43
Speaker 1: Well, first and foremost, there is no vetting when it comes to the apps. And the stakes are so high for so many of my clients working at companies like Palantir, OpenAI, Anthropic, NVIDIA. And so they cannot afford to get it wrong. These are a lot of high-profile individuals. So the human who does the screening is a huge part of this compared to the machine who's pumping out those algorithms. Plus, what you see is what you don't get on the apps. And my clients are very selective individuals who want to meet somebody who's going to be operating at the cadence and standard that they live their life. And that's hard to find in the wild. So it really takes the human who has built a much more analog business like Lynx Dating to really help so many of these people find the love of their life.
00:29:36
Speaker 6: Don't.
00:29:37
Speaker 4: Lisa and I were wondering what your reaction was to that, Kristen. what you made of that emphasis on analog, analog dating.
00:29:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I did say I could send you a resume and she didn't seem to, she didn't seem to bite. So I think maybe I'm outsider demographic one way or the other.
00:29:50
Speaker 2: But could you like understand the frustration with the apps? Yeah, they're terrible.
00:29:53
Speaker 3: They're terrible. And it feels very impersonal. And you know that like, I just feel guilty about it. Every time I like swipe left on someone, it could be somebody you really like, but you're going on such superficial metrics.
00:30:03
Speaker 6: It's terrible. What are you going on?
00:30:04
Speaker 4: The quote that they use?
00:30:06
Speaker 2: I do read it.
00:30:07
Speaker 3: If you're so lazy that you can't write an actual bio in full sentences, that's an automatic.
00:30:12
Speaker 2: Left swipe no matter what you look like.
00:30:14
Speaker 6: All right.
00:30:14
Speaker 2: Good to know.
00:30:15
Speaker 3: We're reading the bios, gentlemen. We're reading the bios.
00:30:17
Speaker 6: All right.
00:30:19
Speaker 2: Stay with us for more on Bloomberg This Weekend right after this. Welcome back to Bloomberg This Weekend.
00:30:36
Speaker 4: It is time now, as it is every Saturday, at this appointed hour for the weekend's Pointed News Quiz. Good week for you last week.
00:30:45
Speaker 2: Are you doodling on your wish list?
00:30:47
Speaker 3: I was doodling. I'm doodling.
00:30:49
Speaker 4: Jack-o'-lantern.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: Why are you ruining my reveal?
00:30:51
Speaker 3: If I don't have the question right, I at least want a cute doodle for our TV audience.
00:30:55
Speaker 6: All right, well.
00:30:56
Speaker 2: Lisa Mateo is here.
This is like the favorite part of the show for everybody. Okay, so you guys have your chips.
00:31:00
Speaker 3: For everyone who's not us, yes.
00:31:01
Speaker 2: Yes, you have your chips in front of you.
00:31:03
Speaker 6: Yep.
00:31:03
Speaker 3: 30 chips.
00:31:04
Speaker 6: 30 chips.
00:31:04
Speaker 2: Three categories. You're going to divide them among the categories.
00:31:07
Speaker 6: Shoot.
00:31:08
Speaker 2: Depending on how we feel, how confident you are about each category. All right.
00:31:12
Speaker 3: All right.
00:31:12
Speaker 4: We were asked by our management why we have to do these.
00:31:15
Speaker 6: Increments of 10.
00:31:16
Speaker 2: Why would that be, Lisa? Because it is early. It is before 10 a.m., and Mateo does not do.
00:31:20
Speaker 4: Math before 10 a.m.
00:31:21
Speaker 2: Mateo does not do math.
00:31:22
Speaker 6: Sorry.
00:31:22
Speaker 2: But let's keep it simple. 10, 10, and 10.
00:31:23
Speaker 3: All right.
00:31:24
Speaker 6: What are the categories?
00:31:25
Speaker 2: Let's do it.
00:31:25
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:31:26
Speaker 2: First category is movies.
00:31:27
Speaker 6: Okay.
00:31:28
Speaker 2: Second is musk.
00:31:30
Speaker 6: Like the smell.
00:31:30
Speaker 4: Like a musky smell.
00:31:32
Speaker 2: No. Maybe like a certain person with a lot of money. Carry on.
00:31:37
Speaker 4: Multi-billionaire.
00:31:39
Speaker 2: And airports is the third one. So think about it.
00:31:41
Speaker 3: All right.
00:31:42
Speaker 6: I don't remember.
00:31:43
Speaker 2: Place your bets.
00:31:43
Speaker 4: I'm going to bet that she's going to do 10 on each.
00:31:46
Speaker 3: You know what?
00:31:47
Speaker 6: Oh. Oh.
00:31:48
Speaker 2: What is happening?
00:31:49
Speaker 3: I don't know what the movies one is, so I'm doubling up on movies. No, I'm doubling up on Musk and on airports.
00:31:55
Speaker 2: I'm not doing movies.
00:31:56
Speaker 4: She's doubling up on Musk.
00:31:57
Speaker 2: Okay, you're doubling up on Musk. All right, David, you're going across the board. I'm going to go 10, 10, 10.
00:32:00
Speaker 3: Oh, if I regret this, I'm going to regret this.
00:32:01
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
00:32:02
Speaker 6: All right.
00:32:03
Speaker 2: God, the strategy.
00:32:04
Speaker 6: No regrets.
00:32:04
Speaker 2: Okay.
00:32:05
Speaker 3: I know. No regrets.
00:32:06
Speaker 2: Everyone, play along at home, okay? We're starting with movies. See if you can get this one.
00:32:10
Speaker 1: Okay.
00:32:10
Speaker 2: The documentary, You Can See Everything, grossed. $ 15. 6 million on its opening weekend. So the question is, which 2004 documentary holds the opening weekend record?
00:32:23
Speaker 4: Opening weekend record, 2004 documentary.
00:32:28
Speaker 2: Think around the time, 2000. What's that called? Okay.
00:32:30
Speaker 6: Okay.
00:32:37
Speaker 2: That's a pretty big number. You can see everything. $ 15. 6 million.
00:32:40
Speaker 4: You know, very big.
00:32:41
Speaker 2: Disgrace Theranos
founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
00:32:44
Speaker 4: I don't know. I feel like this is bad radio as I'm deliberating.
00:32:48
Speaker 3: All right.
00:32:48
Speaker 6: Come on.
00:32:49
Speaker 3: Just commit to something.
00:32:51
Speaker 2: Name a documentary.
00:32:52
Speaker 6: I have no idea.
00:32:53
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
00:32:54
Speaker 6: I'm nothing.
00:32:54
Speaker 2: I'm going to put a person on nothing.
00:32:56
Speaker 1: Man on a Wire?
00:32:56
Speaker 4: Man on a Wire.
00:32:57
Speaker 2: No, it's Fahrenheit.
00:32:59
Speaker 4: Oh, Michael Moore.
00:33:00
Speaker 2: Yes, that was big.
00:33:02
Speaker 7: Very good. All right, well.
00:33:03
Speaker 2: Remember, I criticized President Bush. I've never put nothing down before.
00:33:07
Speaker 3: Oh, look who lost some chips. Oh, so sad.
00:33:09
Speaker 2: All mine, David Gurr.
00:33:11
Speaker 1: All mine.
00:33:11
Speaker 6: So sad.
00:33:12
Speaker 2: See, but smart move for Christina. She did not place anything on that. Well, smart move until we get to these other ones. Let's see how this goes. Until we move to Musk. Let's go to Musk. Okay, here's your question for Musk. In a post on X, Elon Musk, he pledged to give what gift to every child in the U.S. in 2027?
00:33:31
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:33:32
Speaker 2: What was that gift? You were going to ask me what they were worth. I was like, I don't know. I'll tell you that later.
00:33:38
Speaker 3: Okay.
00:33:38
Speaker 2: He pledged to give every child in the U.S. in 2027. Okay, so what do you have, David?
00:33:44
Speaker 4: One share of SpaceX stock.
00:33:45
Speaker 3: SpaceX share.
00:33:45
Speaker 2: SpaceX share, ding, ding. You both got it right.
00:33:48
Speaker 4: Yes.
00:33:48
Speaker 6: Oh, come on.
00:33:49
Speaker 2: That counts, that counts.
00:33:50
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
00:33:51
Speaker 3: Because he's giving them to the children, so they are plural because they're going out to the children.
00:33:55
Speaker 2: And there were a lot. There were 72 million children.
00:33:57
Speaker 4: 72 million, yeah. We'll see if that happens.
00:33:58
Speaker 6: I don't know.
00:33:59
Speaker 3: Also, like, where's the list? Like, there's no database of, like, every child they could just click on and be like, I'm going to give you, I mean, maybe they're working on that.
00:34:05
Speaker 2: I tell you, but if he did, it would be around $ 10.
00:34:09
Speaker 6: 7 billion. Wow.
00:34:09
Speaker 2: That's what it would be worth. Well. today probably get.
00:34:12
Speaker 4: Some tax benefits for that there's also a very odd thing you can't sell it you can't refuse it it's gonna.
00:34:17
Speaker 2: Go into the account you can't refuse it you have to keep it for five years oh you can't sell it no for five years ah okay odd okay all right so where are we at we have christina up and david is through this do you need me to make some more 20 christina still has her 30 here we go airports this could break it yeah see i did the math WSI
is the code for what major cities recently opened second airport 30 miles from the Kingsford Smith Airport. It's WSI. I keep wanting to say it's a ticker. It's not the ticker. It's the name of the airport. What airport is this? It recently opened. It's a second one. Okay. 30 miles from the Kingsford Smith Airport.
00:35:04
Speaker 3: Interesting. In the United States.
00:35:05
Speaker 2: I'm not telling you where. No? No. I didn't say it was in the United States. Oh, interesting.
00:35:12
Speaker 6: It's a very commonwealthy kind of thing.
00:35:13
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah? Kingsford.
00:35:14
Speaker 2: Kingsford. All right.
00:35:17
Speaker 6: I don't know.
00:35:19
Speaker 2: WSI.
00:35:20
Speaker 4: Yeah.
00:35:21
Speaker 3: WS.
00:35:21
Speaker 4: I don't know.
00:35:22
Speaker 1: I'm going to write.
00:35:23
Speaker 2: The S plays a big part of it.
00:35:24
Speaker 6: All right. I'll do.
00:35:25
Speaker 4: I'll put Edinburgh.
00:35:26
Speaker 2: Edinburgh. Okay, there's no S in there.
00:35:30
Speaker 3: Sydney.
00:35:30
Speaker 6: Sydney, yes.
00:35:31
Speaker 4: Why does it have to have an S in there?
00:35:33
Speaker 2: It's W-S-I. W-S-I. It's Western Sydney International Airport.
00:35:37
Speaker 4: Do you know what Sydney's code is for the actual airport?
00:35:38
Speaker 2: I have no idea.
00:35:39
Speaker 3: Oh, no.
00:35:40
Speaker 2: What is it? Oh, I thought you were going to drop some guru knowledge. No, I have a friend who posted about this. It's the only reason I know it, because she's very excited. David Gurra. Hand him over. Okay, we've got David 10, Christina 30.
00:35:53
Speaker 4: Well, let's get that bonus going.
00:35:54
Speaker 2: All right, let's get the bonus because you can win back these, David Gurra, and make it a tie. Yeah, what's the category? Are you ready to redeem yourself? Here we go.
00:36:00
Speaker 4: M & A.
00:36:01
Speaker 2: M & A, great. Merchants, acquisitions. Here we go. Here's your question. Legendary Entertainment renewed its pursuit of what movie studio that owns The Hunger Games and John Wick? What is the name of that studio? So Legendary Entertainment, they renewed their pursuit of what movie studio?
00:36:19
Speaker 6: This is really a grim day for me.
00:36:20
Speaker 2: What is the name of it?
00:36:21
Speaker 5: Yeah.
00:36:22
Speaker 3: You do know this or you don't know this? TikTok guys are running out of ideas.
00:36:27
Speaker 6: 21st Century Fox.
00:36:27
Speaker 2: No, it is Lionsgate. Well, that was a lot of fun. We had a great time here.
00:36:33
Speaker 4: Thank you, Lisa.
00:36:34
Speaker 2: How are you feeling, Christina? Pretty good, pretty good.
00:36:37
Speaker 3: Lisa Mateo, I hear you're going to play this quiz next week.
00:36:39
Speaker 5: She is.
00:36:40
Speaker 6: Well, you're out. You're going to miss out. You can't defend your record.
00:36:44
Speaker 2: Is she my surrogate?
00:36:45
Speaker 3: Does her points go on my points?
00:36:47
Speaker 2: What do you mean celebrity jeopardy? I'm filling in.
00:36:49
Speaker 3: Lisa, do a good job, please. Do better than me. You did great today.
00:36:54
Speaker 4: I'll be in touch with Nathan Hager. I think he's going to be the quiz master next week. We'll chat, he and I, just to make sure he's aware of what the ground rules are, categorically and rules-wise. You can test your knowledge on all 10 questions. You can take the pointy news quiz at Bloomberg.com slash point it.
00:37:10
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us on today's Bloomberg This Weekend podcast. Don't forget to tune in live for the show every Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at 7 a.m. Eastern.
00:37:18
Speaker 4: We're on Bloomberg Television, radio, and the Bloomberg Business app, bringing you unique takes and in-depth interviews on news, politics, lifestyle, and culture.