E7: California's collapse, how SPACs are opening the markets for growth stocks & more

**Jason Calacanis** (0:00)
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the All-In Podcast. Besties have reunited. It's been a bestie summer. Chamath, how are you doing? You're back in America, yes?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:08)
I am back in America.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:10)
Back in America.
Feels great. Good summer, yes? I had an incredible summer.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:15)
I had seven weeks in Italy. It was really incredible.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:19)
What is the vibe in Italy post-pandemic? Obviously, they had the roughest of any nation, I think, except for China and Wuhan with COVID-19.
How is the psyche there?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:30)
No, it was incredible because they're so resilient. They basically decided that they don't ever want to go through it again.
Everybody wore a mask and people socially distanced. There's lots of dinners outside. No restaurants were really seating people indoors. You'd walk into a store and you'd have to put some Purell on your hands and wear a mask.
There was like 40, 50 cases a day. Then I keep looking at the news when I was there, 60,000 a day here. It was just really, it was sad. Then on top of that to see the riots, the fires, I mean, there's a-

**Jason Calacanis** (1:08)
It's been a disturbing summer here. How are you doing, David Sacks? You're back in San Francisco and you got to spend a little bit of time in an undisclosed location as we know from the last couple of episodes of the podcast.
How is San Francisco right now? How has your bestie summer been?

**David Sacks** (1:26)
It's been great. Yeah, I guess I can now disclose that my undisclosed location was Mexico, specifically Cabo, and that was a great place to be for a couple of months.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:38)
Nobody cares.

**David Sacks** (1:38)
Yeah, exactly.
But actually, it was great. It was a great place to be in the early stages of the pandemic because everyone was wearing masks. They did take it really seriously, and there were very few cases and seemed like it was under control, at least in the area I was. And then we came back to San Francisco for school, for the kids' school, which I'm not sure we have to be here, but that's what we came back for.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:06)
Is the kids' school actually open? Are they going to school or they keep pushing it out two weeks like my kids are?

**David Sacks** (2:12)
Yeah, they're not going in person yet, but I think they keep trying to figure out when they're going to start doing that. So it's all Zoom based right now.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:20)
Yeah, which means no learning, right? I mean, do you think these kids are actually learning on Zoom, or do you think it's just glorified?

**David Sacks** (2:26)
A little bit. I mean, a little bit. I think it's difficult.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:30)
Yeah, we gave up on it. And Friedberg, are you there?

**David Friedberg** (2:33)
I'm here, Bay Area.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:36)
How's your bestie summer been during this crazy time?

**David Friedberg** (2:40)
I've been in the Bay Area. I've been crossing all seven layers of Dante's Inferno here in California, moving from the outer layer of COVID to the middle layer of California's proposed wealth tax to the inner layers of extreme heat, smoke and the absolute central layer of pain. More recently, my three year old daughter decided 34 nights ago to not sleep anymore.
So, yeah, we've been living the life. It's been glorious.
And, you know, I wear a mask now for COVID and then I wear another mask on top of that mask for the smoke. So we're just living the California dream. What my parents immigrated here for, you know, paradise.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:24)
Well, I guess that's a good place to start. And just if anybody cares, I spent 10 days in Malibu and had a great time. I guess nobody cares.

**SPEAKER_5** (3:33)
To ask me how my best summer was.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:36)
Jason, how's your best summer?

**Jason Calacanis** (3:40)
You know, I've been lonely and I tweeted, I'm lonely. And I got about 50 phone calls from people who are like, I can't imagine J Cal being sad. But I actually had a talk with my wife and I said, what are the symptoms of depression? Because I think I might have depression. And I went through and I was like, I don't have depression. I'm just I have great empathy for all the people suffering.
And, you know, I just being isolated. You guys know me very well better than anybody. Like I like to talk to people and it's been really difficult for me to be totally candid to be isolated like this. And the podcast is great and doing this podcast is great.