E101: Ye acquires Parler, Snap drops 30%, macro outlook, VC metrics, valuing stocks & more

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
Welcome, everybody, to episode 101 David Sacks is on vacation, sitting in, Brad Gerstner from Altimeter Group. Welcome back to the pod.
Brad, how are you doing?

**Brad Gerstner** (0:10)
Good to be back.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:11)
Good to be back.

**Brad Gerstner** (0:11)
I mean, first, you guys tilted Friedberg and now a little bit on Sacks, is getting attacked on Twitter. And so you roll me back in when we've got a little problem.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:21)
Whenever the Brigadoons come out, Brad Gerstner comes out.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:25)
I love that term. I think Sacks will be okay. But shout out to Sacks.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:27)
You know who probably hates the term Brigadoons? The nitwits that are in the Brigadoons.
The Brigadoons.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:35)
It's all going to end at some point because I think the Brigadoons. New ownership at Twitter is going to change the whole spam thing.

**David Friedberg** (0:42)
That's a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, right? Brigadoon.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:45)
Brigadoon, yeah.
But now I think Brigadoons could stick. I've never heard anybody use that for the Bervaders.

**David Friedberg** (0:51)
Calling the Twitter mob the Brigadoons is a good new thing.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:54)
I like it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:55)
It's pejorative. It's funny.

**David Friedberg** (0:57)
It softens everything a little bit, cones it down. I like it.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:59)
It feels goofy.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:00)
It completely disempowers them. They really want to be taken seriously, but they're just a Brigadoon.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:08)
I mean, to be a Brigadoon though, you have to have four or more accounts and you have to reply to each of those accounts as if it's an actual conversation. Can you be a solo Brigadoon?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:17)
Yeah. When you retweet something as a social justice warrior, as an example, you're trying to join the Brigadoon.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:23)
Ah, got it.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:24)
It's just a different Brigadoon.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:26)
It's a Brigadoon.

**David Friedberg** (1:27)
Cal, are you sometimes a Brigadoon, right?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:29)
You've heard of Brigadoons, J. Cal?

**Jason Calacanis** (1:31)
No, I'm not part of any Brigadoon.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:32)
You're totally Brigadoon, come on.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:34)
I do not, no. Brigadoon. I've never been a Brigadoon. I've never been a Brigadoon. I mean, I may have been a Brigadoon once or twice for my burner.
Which apparently Candace Owens' husband, George Farmer, had created. So he's going to buy his own social network. If you don't remember, Parler is like a really shitty version of Twitter. That never seems to have worked or been stable. It crashed the first 10 times I used it.
Miraculously, this steaming pile of garbage had raised $56 million in funding.
And Kanye is on a social media slash media tour saying horrific anti-Semitic stuff. He seems to be having a mental breakdown again. There's a big discussion now, I guess. Should people be platforming them to the point that he's doing three, four, five hour interviews with people? And it does seem like it's acute mental illness slash breakdown. I don't want to like diagnose anybody from afar here. And I'm not qualified to do that. Well, I mean, he has been public about his struggles with mental illness.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:08)
It's not a huge leap for any of us that have had family members have manic episodes. I mean, this is clearly a manic episode. It's pretty much right out of a textbook.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:19)
So my question for you guys is what you have somebody with great wealth, great creativity. He's obviously a savant in so many different categories with a huge social media following, plus money, plus fame.
And then you add social media to the mix, which is an accelerant. And then all of these, you know, Tucker Carlson and every other publication, every podcast using this moment, I think in a way to kind of, I don't know, get ratings off of this train wreck. I find it abhorrent to interview somebody when they're in a manic episode like this. I'll be totally honest. I wouldn't do it.
What is your take on this?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:54)
I have a family member, a blood relative that is in severe mental health crisis.
If the emails and the text messages that this person sent were public, you, I read these things and they've severely, severely impacted me to the point now where I have like a rule that when they're in a manic episode, I just kind of harvest them and archive them just in case something bad happens. But I can't even take the effort to read it because it takes such a toll. And then I feel really guilty because I think maybe there's something in there where I could be missing something. So this is what, when you're in the middle of a severe episode, this is what the family and the loved ones of that person is also dealing with. So I have no idea what's happening with Kanye. But what I would tell you is when you're in a manic episode, the more the thing that you need is for the people around you to try to step in to help you. And it's really freaking hard. And I can tell you that I've seen this person in my family say and say things and do things that are just so beyond the pale. Yeah.