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This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. The Bloomberg Business Week Podcast with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck from Bloomberg Radio.
Hi, everyone, Welcome to a holiday edition of our Bloomberg Business Wee Weekend podcast. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are having a happy Hanukkah and Kwanza. And in the spirit of the holiday season, amid the playing in the snow or basket in the sun, spending time with loved ones, friends, family, you may also find yourself with a little bit of time on your hands.
With that in mind, here's our team's winter reading list, courtesy of authors and books featured on a Bloomberg Business Week just over the last six months. Everything from America's government teacher to the hidden intricacies of zoning, to the journalists who took a journey into the heart of American democracy and the Mac and Cheese millionaire.
Yeah, miyamyelm love that we begin with our team's pick. It's something we cannot seem to stop talking about this year the AI revolution. We've recently dedicated an entire weekend podcast and broadcast to artificial intelligence, covering everything from big tech's massive gains this year and Part two investments in artificial intelligence, to the large sums of energy needed to power the data centers doing all the computing required by AI.
As investors reward companies use of AI, others are ringing alarm bells about getting the tech under control before it controls US. Doctor Terrence Sanowski is Francis Crickchair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego. He's also President of
the Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation. His dual expertise in AI and neuroscience led him to write the book Chat, GPT and the Future of AI, The Deep Language Revolution.
I think that what's happening right now is really unbelievable in terms of the breath and the depth and the excitement,
and so I was there at the beginning. Jeffrey Hinton and I collaborated in the nineteen eighties all the learning algorithms that are being used today for these large language models and deep learning were developed by US back in that era, and of course what we didn't have back then were computers that were fast enough that could scale up these models to be be able to solve these very difficult problems in artificial intelligence.
So I want to ask you, how did you think about neural networks in large language models in the nineteen eighties, how do you think about them today.
We actually had a premonition that these large language models were really good at language, and that was a particular project, a summer project for a gratitude in my lap called net talk, which was trained on a dictionary to be able to pronounce English tesch, you know, if you give it an article from the Wall Street Journal and they would pronounce it in an understandable way. And this in linguistics is a very difficult problem because English is so irregular.
There are a lot of regularities, but you also have irregularities, and then you have rules for the irregularities. But it really was amazing that a small, tiny network with just a few hundred units and tens of thousands of weights, the parameters, the connections between the units could do that.
It was like an amazing compression of complexity, and now we know that these large language models, the deep learning networks, they love language and they are capable of things that we never could have imagined.
That's really what I wanted to talk about the idea of super intelligent AI. What are we not thinking about? What's the threat out there?
My good friend Jeff is very concerned, and I think he's one of the smartest people I've ever met. And if he's worried about it, then there's some as a concern. However, I think that even if you're concerned, it's very difficult to know when that's going to happen, if it ever
will happen. And there are super forecasters out there, and this is from the Economist magazine, who are much better at people who are experts at predicting you know, if and when there may be a catastrophic or existential threat, and it turns out that in fact, they're not as concerned as the experts in AI. I'm happy that someone is thinking about the worst case outcome, because if not, then if it ever happens, we're in trouble.
But paint that picture for us, because I think a lot of people are worried about doomsday scenarios here. And if Jeffrey Hinton is worried about that stuff, I mean, should we we should be worried about it.
You're saying, I think that we should could be cautious, that is to say, we we should be constantly thinking along the lines that Jeff is in terms of what could possibly happen, and you know, be cautious and put in precautions so that it can't happen.
What I'm really concerned about are the unintended consequences, things that you cannot predict. Something may happen that you know, no one thought of, even Jeff.
Yeah, and like you know, we have learned certainly, right, great financial crisis pandemic like the un the unthinkable can happen and you throw technology into it and you just kind of don't know where it's going to go exactly. Okay, So now I'm terrified.
Okay.
You know when you talk to people, do you say, wait, this is really going to be net a good thing.
Look, all the technologies have good and bad consequences, and you try to mitigate the bad and you have to balance them, you know. Yeah, and right now it looks like the good is way way ahead of the bad in terms of the act that may have on us and society and businesses. But you know, like I say, we have to be careful because we don't really know where it's heading.
I got to ask you because I am still trying to understand, and I get worried that we throw these words around, certainly not you, but we as we try to understand this, not having full comprehension of what artificial intelligence, the large language models that we're talking about today, where it takes us. Is it as subtle at evolving in life changing as the Internet was for us.
So this is something that is emerging. And I have since the book was sent to press in the summer, I have a sub stack where I have tried to fill in with, you know, the new things that are happening. And I'm preparing something a twelfth version the blog on the question of whether AI is overhyped or underhyped, And you know, I've thought a lot about this, and you know, I think that it depends on the timescale. I think that on the short timescale it is overhyped. There's no
doubt about it. There's just so much out there. I mean, every day, the newspapers are filled with AI and your program. But I think in the long run it's actually under hyped. I think the real change in the Internet, for example, didn't occur within the first ten years. It was much later. Again, unintended applications that marriage that you know, have enormous impact on our lives, like social media. So I think the same thing's going to happen with AI.
But is it is it different like anternet is not I wanted to say comfortable, but it's not because there's some really bad things that happen and we know that, right, and that's the battle we have with social media. And we want to talk to you about kind of regulatory oversight of AI in a moment. But I just I'm just trying to understand. You know, it does feel so seamless and just such a part of everything we do. But it hasn't necessarily replace a ton of jobs. It's
created jobs, it's replaced some jobs. I guess you could say, I'm just trying to understand, Like on what scale do you put it? You mentioned the Internet, so is it apples to apples or is it something else?
No, Well, first of all, it uses the internet, So I mean that's like the the machinery that you need to reach to scale up and reach a large population. But it's more intimate than the Internet in the following sense that it talks to us, right. I mean, it's as if an alien landed on the Earth and could talk to us in English and it knew everything about you know, what, human's history, everything, and the only thing we can be sure if it's not human. But it's
really quite remarkable. Let me give you one example of something that I was really surprised at when they did a study of whether people who needed cognitive therapy preferred real humans or AI. They preferred AI, which was really quite remarkable. I didn't expect that. And part of the reason is that the AI is not judgmental like humans.
Well wait, but isn't it depend on the data like we talk.
About, it wasn't getting trained on judgmental data.
Actually, it's a good question. What was it trained on. I think that it was fine tuned with you know, data from real subjects that we're talking with a doctor. But even without that, I'll tell you something again it's shocking is that it is actually empathy. These large language models can empathize with humans. And why is it. How
is that? Well, it actually absorbed a lot of text out there, novels, letters, and read it and so forth, and where empathy was being you know, part of the discussion, and so it absorbed that too.
Well.
I wanted to hear hear a little bit of your thoughts on on what we heard from you Musk. He actually participated in a surprise conversation at the Future Investment Initiative to discuss the future of AI.
It's most likely going to be great, and there's this some chance which could be ten to twenty percent that it goes bad. The chances on.
Zero that it goes bad.
But overall, at one point where we said the covers eighty percent full is one positive way to look at it.
Maybe ninety percent, okay, eighty or ninety percent positive. The question I have for you, professor, do we need an international regulatory body? Do we need the largest, most powerful governments around the world to create some sort of standard to ensure or help ensure that this goes the right way.
Well, as you know, in the UK, they have passed an AI Act which is like one hundred pages long and you know, incredibly detailed, and it's already obsolete. I just moving blasting forward and you know, you trying to catch up with it. But I do believe that it's absolutely essential that it be regulated, and it should be regulated by people who are building it. The government, okay, is the business of protecting people. And we'll see how
that plays out. But for example, genetics, this happened, you know, back in the sixties seventies. They had a meeting where they came together at a soilomar and they came up with rules and regulations for doing experiments under the careful protection so that nothing leaks out, nothing gets out. And I think we need to do the same.
Okay.
So when does as you said, ten years for the internet to really kind of make its impact and presence really known and maybe, you know, integrated into our lives. So is it a decade before we see LMS and AI at this level integrated into our lives.
We are at a stage that aviation was at when at Kitty Hawk the Wright brothers made the first flight. It was ten feet up and one hundred feet long, and that really was the you know, something that then took decades and decades to build. And the most difficult thing, by the way, that airplanes. You know, design of airplanes had to solve was control. How do you make a go where you want to go without crashing? And that's something that again it's like we're going through right now
with AI. And yes, it will take decades. It's not going to happen overnight.
That was doctor Terrence Sadowski, Francis Crick, Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and Distinguished Professor at the University of California at San Diego. His new book chat GPT in the Future of AI, The Deep Language Revolution is out.
Now you're listening to Bloomberg Business Week. AI certainly in focus this year. Another thing in focus US politics.
A book that our team liked came from America, so called The Government Teacher who wrote about the small and the Mighty, twelve unsung Americans who changed the course of history.
That happens to be my pick more when we come back right here on BusinessWeek.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Apple car Play and and Brout Auto with a Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on YouTube all right.
Everybody, think back to your history classes growing up, you probably remember learning about, yeah, of course, the president's wars, major wars, and the social issues of our past. But some things that may have gone under the radar were the lesser known figures in American history who had a major impact. And that's what our next author wanted to bring to light.
This next book. It's actually Carol's pick is by number one New York Times bestselling author, educator, and podcast host Sharon McMahon. Known to many as America's government teacher, she informs her million plus audience about history, government and current events.
Now, we should note we spoke to Sharon weeks before the presidential election. We did get her take on whether the electoral system in the United States is working or if it should change. So here's my pick for your winter holiday read from author Sharon McMahon and her book The Small and the Mighty Twelve Unsung Americans who changed the course of history.
I do think that it is time to reform the electoral system in a number of ways. I don't think the system, first of all, works the way that the founders or the framers intended it to work. But I also think that The Framers were very clear that the system should be refined as needed, which is why they built two separate ways to amend the Constitution right there into the document. This is not holy scripture. This is a like, hey, here's a working document with some of
our ideas of how we might run this country. And if it's not working out, here's two ways we can change it. So the concept of winner take all in the electoral college that's not in the constitution. Winner take all actually didn't develop until thirty to forty years after the Constitution was ratified. The Framers never intended for a winner take all electoral college, and most Americans do not feel well represented by the way the current system works.
If you are a Blue voter in Alabama or a Red voter in California, I guarantee that there's an element of feeling disenfranchised by the way the system works. But I would also advocate for a couple of other changes. One of them is, as you mentioned, an abbreviated election period. We don't need we don't need to spend one billion
dollars each. That's what Biden and Trump each spent in twenty twenty one billion dollars each Most Americans agree we could find better things to spend two billion dollars on then flyers that are put in the trash and commercials that air for thirty seconds at a time. That's one way. I also think so many Americans feel like the way, the way the process for choosing nominees is broken, the process for how do we get to pick which person
is going to represent us? The primary process because they happen in a you know, sort of like dominoes fall. If you're in a state with early primary, you get an outsize amount of input. State with a late primary, often there's only one person left standing. Why can't all Americans have to say on one national primary election day?
I agree. You know, it's interesting. I'd heard on a podcast that I listened to and said that one thing to keep in mind, though, when you look at the
election outcome when Donald Trump was elected. And I'm not taking sides here, but just so, you need to understand that when you have candidates who are very very different individuals, that depending on who wins or loses in the case of when Donald Trump was in the White House, that there is roughly half of America who agree with or like who he is as a leader, and you could say for the other side, and when you have such a difference, how do we I don't know, how do
we make it so a government that is much more representative of people who feel very different about the way forward, not just as leaders but as Americans.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think there's this is the problem that we're having now, which is that there is not an ideological center of the country. We have these sort of you know, farther left and farther right. And yes, you can make a lot of arguments that what's far left in America is not far left overseas.
I do.
I understand all of that. But an ideological center is a moderating force in politics. It's a moderating force on the Supreme Court, it's a moderating force in Congress. You have to convince the people in the ideological center that the side, that the position that's slightly to the right or slightly to the left, is the one worth taking.
And that ideological center is often persuadable by the best arguments, by the best ideas, And so right now, the electoral system heavily favors people who are more ideologically extreme, more ideological you know, farther to the right or to the left. And that ideological center is something that we've eliminated by and large by Jerrymangering and by other mechanisms that again were never intended by the Framers to be used. And that ideological center is something that Americans can choose to
vote for if they want to. They can choose to vote for those candidates who are less extreme.
So you're optimistic about that because it does seem like in recent years we've just become more polarized and we've become more extreme.
Well, I mean, we can't make positive change by having a fatalistic viewpoint that nothing good can ever happen. If you want positive change to happen, you have to hope that it will. And I like to reiterate that hope is not a feeling that you wait to experience where you're going to wake up one morning and the birds are going to be chirping and this guy's going to
be blue. Our ancestors, the people who built this country, operated on this assumption that hope was a choice that they could make, and it was that choice from which all good things would follow.
Sharon, who are these unsung heroes, and like, I don't know, how did you kind of go about this process, Why did you want to write it? Give us a little bit of background.
You know, as you mentioned, I've been a teacher for a long time, and it is often the stories of the people you ever heard of that are some of the most interesting. They're the stories that children and adults alike feel like, dang, I wish I had known about them before, you know, So those kinds of stories, the stories that you just don't see in the bold face
and the textbooks that are often the most intriguing. You know, Americans love like the secret of some kind, the secret story behind something that happened, right, that's just sort of innate human nature. So I have found them interesting for
a long time. And when I conceptualized this book and wanted to sort of bring some of these these stories to bear, bring some of these characters to the table, that was one of the things I was thinking about, is who has made a significant contribution, a significant impact
where they were with the resources available to them. I think we often mistakenly believe that the levers of power that are accessed by government are the only ways to make a difference, and the people in this book by and large do not access power via the levers of government. They most of the time, are not wealthy or famous.
Most of them had very significant challenges in their own lives, and yet they set out, by virtue of circumstance and luck in many cases, did something truly extraordinary with their lives.
The examples in your book end in the nineteen fifties, and I'm wondering if there are any examples today of people who are alive that wielded power outside of traditional government channels that we can look to who are currently alive.
Well, there's many of them, of course, whether I would put them in a book is another story, a good one, But of course, like Elon Musk is a great example of somebody who doesn't belong in my book, of course, but he's a great example of somebody who is using a tremendous amount of power outside of the levers of government.
But most of the people in this book had no such large platform from which to jump like Ewon does, did not have billions of dollars, did not have to have the ability to buy a mouthpiece the size of Twitter slash X. But there are absolutely still great Americans. I think we often think of Great Americans as being like the people in the black and white pictures are the oil paintings of the past, and I really wanted to dispell that notion that Great Americans were people.
Of the past.
There are people today, and I think many would argue that some of the poll workers right of the last few years elections are those unsung Americans and heroes. Give us one or two if you will, that are in your book.
One of the people that I really love in this book is a woman named Septa Mclark who had a very tumultuous upbringing. She almost commits suicide, is saved the last moment from committing suicide. On more than one occasion. She's like falsely arrested and fired, had just terrible circumstances happened to her, and she's eventually let go from her job as a teacher. And it is being let go from her job that allows her at the time to
start teaching adults. And one of the people that she begins to teach is a woman named Rosa Parks, and it is Septima Clark who begins something called Citizenship School that helps train African Americans all over the South, to become voters, to become elected officials, to figure out how to make things happen for their own communities. And she said something that I think is really worth remembering today, which is that at the end of her life, someone
asked her, how what have you learned? And she says, I have learned that I can work with my enemies because you never know when they might have a change of heart at any moment. And what a sentiment that I feel like we really need today because in an era where we just delete and block people we don't like, Septam macclark was out there working with her enemies because she knew they could have a change of hearted end moment.
Hey, I'm wondering, Sharon, about whether or not you're concerned that stories such as these get buried in the fights about US history that are happening across the country. The book bans the changing of curriculums.
You know, I don't think that my book is going to be banned necessarily.
But outside your book necessarily, But where there's stories appear outside of your book, you know, students not learning about these people.
I absolutely do. I absolutely share the very real concern about the sanitizing of history, because history is full of amazing, amazing things, but it's also full of many, many difficult things with which we must grapple. And that actually, that exercise of grappling with our history is an important one. It's an important one for our own in the life actual development, and it's an important one for our own reckoning with our country. How can we be better if we don't know where we've come from?
You know, one of the things. And I'm gonna give this props to one of our producers, CC, who's sharing. Are you a gen Z.
More or less? Okay, more or less millennial?
I guess she's young, though, a young girl in terms of how do we get like, what are your thoughts about getting gen Z to vote? Get them to the voting booth? Actually, you know, participant in the election? Is it about education?
What is it?
Yeah?
I think gen Z is actually really motivated to vote, more than millennials were motivated to vote when they came of age, certainly more than Gen X or boomers when they came of age. I think gen Z is uniquely motivated to vote this election season. And I think they are one of the demographics that is very significantly undercounted when it comes to polling results. Do you know any gen z or the ants or the telephone. No, they don't answer the phone, so their ability to poll gen
z is very very limited. So in terms of how to motivate them to show up, I think we're doing it. I think understanding the gravity of an election like this is important.
That was Sharon McMahon her book The Small and the Mighty, Twelve Unsung Americans who Change the course of History.
Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week. From raging wildfires and atmospheric rivers to powerful and unusual hurricanes, it was another year of extreme weather with no end in sight.
The author of slow Burn, The Hidden Costs of a Warming World, joins us for another one of our memorable book picks of twenty twenty four. This is Bloomberg.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Easter on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business App. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
We continue with our holiday reading list to pick number three. It comes courtesy of our Bloomberg Business Week weekend of remote broadcast producer Sebastian Escobar.
Also all around. Just great guy. I'm just going to throw that out there that's not in the scripts.
Are you saying that?
Because he's listening right now?
Oh a, Sebastian, I see you there, he Sebastian.
He says this next book helps put into perspective the real costs of climate change, not just from the possible mass extinction of communities in the world as a whole, but more about the everyday implications of global warming here and now.
Sebastian's choice comes from doctor R. G. Sung Park, Assistant professor at U Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice, as well as an environmental and labor economist, who argues that climate change headlines often missed some of the most important costs that we just don't see, and how climate change already affects everyone and may act as an amplifier of inequality, like what happens to people downwind of wildfire smoke, or to children who cannot attend school because air quality
is so bad.
Yeah, we know the economy and inflation, we're front and center on most Americans' minds during this year's election, also this past week with the FED meeting. But according to a Pew Research survey, eighty percent of Americans say climate news makes them feel frustrated by political disagreements over the messaging on the issue of climate change and thus creating more political division. That's something doctor Park says is only
making the issue worse. He caught up with Tim and Bloomberg's Katie Greifeld to talk about his book and Sebastian's pick Slow Bird, The Hidden Costs of a warming world.
When we talk about wildfires, typically what's most salient and visible are the flames, right, they burned down homes, they force us to evacuate, as very destructive, But at least according to recent research by research at Harvard and Stanford and elsewhere, the hidden costs associated with wildfire's smoke maybe
just as damaging, if not more so. The last numbers that I saw suggest that, you know, maybe dozens of people have died due to wild fire flames in the past several years in the United States, but the estimates are that anywhere between five and fifteen thousand may have died every year due to the additional air pollution caused by the wildfire smoke, which, as you may know, can travel large distances. So that's just one example of the
many hidden costs. I mean, just to take a step back, one of the reasons why I wrote the book is is, you know, as you mentioned, climate change has become such a visceral issue, but it's also very complex issue, and we all need sort of you know, simplifying mental heuristics to help us think about it and for better or for worse. You know, I had the observation that a lot of the discussion around climate change has tended to have sort of a black or white kind of almost fatalistic.
Hue to it.
And it's useful to think about climate change, of course, as sort of an insurance problem, right, how are we ensuring against the risk of potential planetary catastrophe. That's obviously
one important way to think about it. But one of the additional mental heuristics that I certainly hope we can add to our toolkit is to think of it as a slow burn, right, as not so much an imminent crisis for you know, all of life on planet Earth, but more of a slow burning kind of degradation of quality of life crisis that is already unfolding, sometimes in visually salient ways, but often.
In hidden ways.
Well, if you think about it as a slow burn, what does that mean in terms of addressing climate change?
Because it feels like, you.
Know, with so many things, there's this big, dramatic event and then there's all this urgency created around it to address it. If it is a slow burn, do you think that that takes the urgency out of trying to combat this problem.
Yeah, I mean that's certainly a risk, and that's probably one of the reasons why, you know, there's so much disagreement about how we should communicate climate change, you know, the politics behind it.
It's always been contentious.
A good argument for at least jolting us out of our complacency, you know, via images that are more you know, salient, and some might argue extreme, but I would argue that if you believe in you know, evidence based policy, and if you and if you believe in the public's ability to understand and digest even some modicum of data, the data kind of speaks for itself almost overwhelmingly.
Now that even even if you think about.
Just the economic consequences of the slow burn aspect of climate change. Putting aside the sort of distant potential annihilation prospect, you know, the data suggests that it makes cost benefit sense from a societal standpoint to aggressively reduced emissions. Now, how we communicate that, who we communicate that to? In what settings? You know, I'm not an expert in that,
and I'm sure that that will vary. But if you care about just understanding the basic economics behind, you know, the cost benefit, the social cost benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions aggressively, which is what is it needed right to slow the slow burn? The data sort of speaks for itself at this point.
I think, well, how do you think about I think the conversation we're having today is going to be a lot different than the conversation we would have had two weeks ago, because now Trump has been elected to another term. He's now tapped former New York Congressman Lee Zelden is EPA chief. This is somebody who's a climate skeptic. How do you think about the federal government and the new administration playing a role in everything that you're talking about.
Yeah, that's a great question. I wish I had a crystal ball.
I was speaking to one of my colleagues the other day about we were just speculating, okay, like, how durable do we think the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act and other legislative measures on climate change that we're passed during the Biden administration will be over the next four years? And we weren't sure. I don't think anyone is sure about that. I will just say there's a lot of
uncertainty there. My read of the data also suggests that there's a lot of momentum that is more a product of a combination of previous policy and technical change that I imagine will be in the background regardless of what the specific policies tomorrow or not taken in this coming administration.
So maybe that's room for a little bit of hope.
I'm wondering how you think about government role here versus the role of the market versus the role of individuals.
It's a big issue, yeah, absolutely, and so maybe it's worth taking a step back and separating out what realm in which we are referring to it when it comes to climate change. The right you can think about mitigation, right reducing emissions, the energy transition, whatever name you want to put to it. Right, the government role, the role of government there is in some ways unambiguous, at least in terms of whether there should be some government role,
and we can get into why that is. But the short story is that, you know, climate change constitutes a classic negative externality problem and a global public good problem, and so government needs to play some role in setting the market signals straight. Of course, that doesn't mean that government is the only player it. You know, there's a huge role to be played by the private sector. We could also talk about what is the government's role in adaptation.
I mean, that's just one example of many ways in which you know, we can expect ongoing climate change regardless of what we do in terms of emissions reductions. How how climate change will affect our quality of life, and what the government role is there in terms of helping us adapt to those risk is less clear.
I think.
I think it will depend in large part on you know, what are the marketing perfections at play when it comes to these kinds of adaptation decisions. Are there important information asymmetries or is there sort of a coordination role to be played? But to answer your question, Yeah, I think it kind of depends, but certainly in the context of, you know, mitigating emissions so that we can slow global
warming climate change overall. Yeah, I think it's quite quite obvious that government has to play at least to catalyzing and sort of price signal setting role, if that makes sense, whether that's with a price on carbon or something else.
Let's talk a little bit more about consequences, because you make the point in the book that it's not just some of the obvious day to day consequences that you might think of, but you also talk about lower test scores. For example, you talk about higher crime rates, not issues that people would typically associate with a hotter planet.
Draw that link for us.
Yeah, sure, And again, you know that was one of the motivations.
You know, the research that I've engaged in it and I'm familiar with that there's this increasingly intricate and compelling story of how even so called non catastrophic amounts of warming appear to have you know, subtle but cumulatively meaningful and pervasive sequences for day to day life.
So you mentioned test scores.
You know, there are a number of studies that now show that students taking their exams on a hot day, even in a place like New York City, which you know is one of the materially wealthiest you know, places on Earth. Nevertheless, students who take their exam on a ninety degree day, you know, roughly ten percent less likely these are New York City regions exams to pass a given subject.
You know.
Another example that may not.
Be obvious is just thinking about how climate change interacts with the world of work. You know, even in the United States, again, you know, one of the most highly industrialized countries in the world, there are many millions of workers, in fact, over two thirds of the roughly one hundred million or so workers without a bachelor's degree who are routinely exposed to the elements on the job. Agriculture workers, construction workers are you know, the first two categories that
come to mind, but there are many others. You know, utility repair crew, warehouse workers. Even in some indoor settings where there are already ambient sources of heat or cooling, is difficult. You know, there's evidence to suggests that when temperatures rise, and they don't have to be in the triple digits, you know, even moderately elevated temperatures in the eighties and nineties can lead to a significant uptick in the risk of serious accident or injury or illness on
the job. So, you know, these are the kinds of you know, what I'm calling subtle climate risks that are more more pervasive than first meets the eye, and which you know, the data and the research that have come online in the past decade plus given so much better insight into.
How do we make people care. We just went through an election where overwhelmingly what we learned was the only thing that matters is inflation in the economy. It's what polls are showing us how people feel about their economic situation. How do you get them to care about the temperature that kids take a test when they can't afford to feed their family at the grocery store.
That's a great question.
I don't know if I have a great answer, Tom, But you know, one way that I continue to think about this problem is, you know, by clarifying the links between something like climate change and the economy and making it you know, maybe moving climate change as an issue out of what has historically been you know, an environmental policy issue per se into a more.
Hey, it actually matters for.
The broader operating you know, infrastructure of the economy. It matters for how we understand economic well being, probably because shoot.
That may be one way we make people to care a little bit more.
That was g Sung Park, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, an author of the book slow Burn, The Hidden Costs of a Warming World.
And that wraps up our first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Our holiday reading list continues in the next hour with more picks, including an eye opening exploration of one of the little known levers that controls our world zoning codes and a call to arms for using them to improve American society at every level.
Plus Frank Berry and his wife traveled across the US and an RV into the heart of American democracy to find what binds Americans together in this divided time.
And our producer Paul Brennan's favorite, The Mac and Cheese Millionaire, a book about one woman's quest of fall in love with her job and then ended up transforming the restaurant industry along the way. This is Bloomberg Business Week.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm Easter Listen on Apple car Play and and Brout Auto with a Bloomberg Business app, or watch us live on.
YouTube plenty ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, Our team's holiday reading list continues in including with a book about road trips, blue Highways and backwater Americana with the hopes of seeing more clearly what holds the country together and how we can keep it together.
Also, from an overworked lawyer to restaurant owner, a look into the journey of the Mac and Cheese millionaire.
First up this hour the fourth book on our winter holiday reading list. It's Tim's Pick, which is a book that covers something invisible yet also holds significant regulatory power over local government and determines how we experience cities. We're talking about zoning. You love this one.
Yeah, everybody's talking about zoning right now. I mean, it's when we talk about affordability and cities. Everyone's taking a look at zoning because this is a real local issue. Many people argue that central to the housing crisis in the US is zoning. The notion that only certain things of certain sizes can be built in specific areas. Sarah Bronan is a legal scholar and architect. She's also Professor
of Law and Urban Planning at Cornell University. She argues that once we recognize the power of zoning, we can harness it to create vibrant communities and ensure everyone has access to affordable housing, public transit, and healthy food. Her book Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes Our World.
Zoning, which is enacted at the local level by maybe thirty thousand counties and cities and towns across the country, has huge impacts on our housing market and our ability to provide affordable and accessible housing to people who need it.
We're talking about the idea of nimbiism and the idea that in certain areas you're only allowed to build a single family home of a certain size on a certain plot of land. And if Carol, we had zoning for more dense housing, we could build more housing and provide more people with shelter.
You know, I feel like this is something Sara, that we have been talking about for a long time, right, the housing shortages and for people who work in major cities who can't afford to live in those cities, and nobody wants to build, and so they've got to commute long commutes to get into the city to get to their jobs. So how do we change some of this And is it if we could just change zoning, would everything be fine?
Well, zoning is definitely just one piece of the puzzle. But Carol, you raise a really good example of people who have to live maybe out in the suburbs because we're not building enough housing where they want to live
or how they want to live. So typically in this country, across far too many jurisdictions, we've seen zoning that provides what you might consider one size fits all or cookie cutter development, a house on a half acre or an acre, or even the size of a football field about two acres or more, all across this country dictated by zoning rules, and so we don't see town homes, we don't see multi family housing, we don't see more affordable options or
more appealing options to people who may not want to drive, to seniors who want to age in place in some of those suburbs and in their small towns. We're not really providing that diversity of housing and I think that has had huge ripple effects on our economy and on our growth.
When you think about zoning, is it twofold or threefold or fourfold? In other words, is it about supply? Is it about variety of housing being afforded? Is it also about thinking about the space itself? And that sometimes means open space and places to farm, do urban farming, whatever. It's a lot of components.
Yeah, I think it's all of the above. But I want to touch on the last thing that you mentioned, which is essentially the characteristic of all these large zoning codes that make us push farther outward into farmland and into forest land. And essentially what we have said to developers to property owners is if you want housing, you've got to go outward to build. Now, that's a big problem for us from an environmental standpoint. It's also a
big problem from a food security standpoint. So the point I try to make in the book is, hey, look around, zoning is controlling a lot of the outcomes that we see and some of the outcomes that we probably don't really want, not just as a resident in a particular town, but as Americans on the whole.
Trying to think about.
A broader approach to land development that will benefit our economy, our society, our food security, our transportation security, and so much more. But housing, I think is one of the core issues.
And when it comes to.
Zoning, what about something like historic preservation? And I'm asking you because you have a lot of experience with historic preservation. You served as the chair of the Advisory Council and historic preservation. Is that a position you still have. I think you're on office until twenty twenty five.
Yes, I still serve in this federal role, but I'm talking today in my professor role and as a preservationist. And from a zoning code standpoint, you do see a lot of zoning codes that do integrate some nod to historic structures. And I think we love most about historic neighborhoods is lively, They're dynamic, I think, got a lot of mix of uses, and they're beautiful. And to the extent that zoning can encourage that kind of formula, they
don't now too often. But to encourage that and maybe to recreate and support the historic neighborhoods we have all the better.
But is there this this tension there between preserving history but also making sure that you rezone something for the future.
I mean, if you're thinking about you know, there's a lot of dialogue about preservation being in tension with housing development in particular, but if you look actually at their research. So I'll put on my professor Lea.
I will say you have a lot of different hats I think, you know, just to.
Say that, you know, the research has shown that historic districts in cities including New York City and la are denser than non historic districts. And why is that. It's because typically in historic neighborhoods, we've always allowed historic buildings to grow and change. If you think about you know, before zone zoning was imposed about one hundred years ago, and lots of towns that already existed, and so you know,
you have that layer. And one of the things that I've noticed, I have a project called the National Zoning out List that log zoning codes all over the country. One of the things I've noticed is that zoning codes have often like what gone reversed how a neighborhood initially developed. For example, many zoning codes on what you might consider a historic main street say no housing on the upper floors. Well, that's exactly how those buildings developed, and that's what made
those neighborhoods so vibrant and so attractive. Zoning fifty years ago might have said, okay, now this is one hundred percent commercial uses. You can't put housing up. But you know that was a bad idea. We should go back to that historic mixing. We should go back to a twenty four to seven, you know, concept of some of these places so that we can really, I think, revitalize those communities.
This is super interesting.
I wasn't joking when I said she has a lot of hats. She's an architect, she's an attorney, she's a policymaker, an author, and a professor, just to name a few things.
So okay, now I feel like I've done nothing with my life. It's super impressive. Having said that, I'm listening to you, and I feel like, so what. I live in a historic neighborhood, and you know, there are rules when you do things, and it's as the years have gone by, the rules have gotten even tougher. And that has to do with adding on and all that kind
of stuff. And yet the city seems to push in terms of newer development, squeezing things in almost everywhere and it's getting to point where it's little bit of a pushback and fight to kind of preserve some of the open space or preserve some of the old you know, train embankment or something like that that is part of the neighborhood. When does you know what's the right balance and how you think about development that is needed, maybe in terms of housing, but then there's over development that
just makes it not a great place to live. How do we assess that.
Zoning can be a really good tool for providing and protecting for urban space, for open space, especially in urban environments, and you know, you can zone for open space, you can zone for parkland, as they point out in the book, you can zone for street trees and the kind of environmental infrastructure that actually can benefit us and make us healthier,
make us calmer. But going back to your question on density in historic neighborhoods, I'm a proponent of lots of different housing options, whether it's carriage house conversions to accessory dwelling units, or you know, allowing for one, two, three
family housing where it's appropriate. But I'm also a big fan of looking outside of those historic districts to say what kind of compatible development can happen that can be complementary of the existing historic districts, because you do want to keep that sense of viruc you do want to allow historic neighborhoods to change. And I will say, you know, think about the approach to historic preservation you've talked about,
you know, add ons and additions. There's a whole other set of rules, historic preservation rules, design control rules that layer on top of zoning and that I've argued in other work is maybe sometimes too restrictive when we think too much about the materiality of a place and not about sort of the long term goals of the community and the people who live there. And I think housing is one of those places where we could stand a little bit more flexibility when it comes to those design rules.
I'll also just add, you know, I don't know where you live, but places like New York City, places like Hartford, where I had shared the Planning and Zoning Commission, have really taken a look at a different kind of historic building stock, and that's industrial and manufacturing building stock and trying to figure out ways to rezone that for housing. Lots of cities have often sort of adopted a zoning
code and then left it there for decades. I think that has really hurt the revitalization redevelopment of industrial neighborhoods and these big mill buildings and factories that aren't well positioned. We don't have the same kind of manufacturing demands anymore, but often they're in a neighborhood which had worker housing around it. So thinking about those historic buildings, repurposing those, I think is also an important thing for cities to do.
You were saying something about Guanas and the conversion from an industrial area to a residential area and the challenges that the area is dealing with toxic chemicals, And.
That's why I said at the beginning of this conversation that zoning is just one piece, and so thinking about you know, when cities are trying to figure out how do we re vitalize this neighborhood, zoning is a critical part because it says how it can be revitalized. But there's all of these other issues too, including financing, including
environmental cleanup. You've tackled it in New York City at Guanas with a huge rezoning and you know, done some cleanup and you know, seeing a lot of development happening and on the way I use Baltimore in the book to talk about a different kind of industrial rehabilitation effort that's happening in the Remington neighborhood there and different cities at different skills are trying different things, but in all of them, when you're thinking about revitalizing a neighborhood, reviving
its economy, making new connections, making neighborhoods more accessible, zoning is an essential part of the discussion.
I want to go continue kind of with our some other places around the country. Having said that, I do want to ask you, might it be a city like Atlantic City or Detroit where revitalizing it continues to be a year after year a struggle. Are there some areas that cannot be revitalized?
So both of these cities present very different studies of the issues. I mean when it comes to Detroit, I think what has happened there as has happened in Hartford in Buffalo. Similarly, post industrial cities that have seen population loss and have seen disinvestment, is that increasingly city leaders have turned to the zoning code. In Detroit's case, lots of different uses allowed in places they weren't before, as
well as urban agriculture you see that in Hertford. Again, where I work in Buffalo, you saw and in Hertford you see elimination of minimum parking requirements which and pose significant costs on new housing.
Those moves have.
Really helped to encourage new investment because developers know with greater certainty exactly how much money they'll have to spend in order to get a development over the finish line,
and also thinking about things like process improvements. Zoning codes can be thousands of pages long in the case of New York City, and believe it or not, Boston is at the very top of the list at I think thirty eight hundred pages of zoning code, and that I think comes with it inherently it's a complexity, and so stripping away some of that complexity writing the rules of the game in advance is a strategy that places like Detroit can use to help to spur growth through the
creation of certainty. And you see that across regulations, right, business people want certainty and zoning is no different and land, of course a highly important commodity.
Okay, can we talk cars real quick? You mentioned minimum parking requirement being removed, something I think they did with some projects in New York City.
What does that mean minimum?
So correct me if I'm wrong, professor, But the idea with a development, you have to guarantee a certain number of parking spaces per number of units in a building.
Is that right?
That's right?
So what that means?
In some cases we've seen codes that require four parking spaces for a single apartment. Often what that means is that you're building more parking than housing. So what does that tell you about the jurisdiction's approach to housing development. It's almost like they're stacking the deck against new housing. We also know that parking is it's not beautiful, it's a lot of pavement. It is not necessary in places like New York City. But I'm going to use New
York City as an example. I know they're trying to change that right now with the City of Yes zoning proposal, But right now, overwhelmingly in New York City, a place where I think the majority of residents don't have cars or don't use them regularly, there are minimum parking requirements in the vast majority of land in New York City, including in Manhattan. Just posted New York City to the National zoning out Lists it's a zoning outlest dot org if anybody wants to check it out, and you can
see where those minimum parking requirements exist. And it's not the way that we should be developing our cities. We should be promoting lots of different kinds of ways of moving around, because again, not everybody wants to drive, not everybody can afford a car.
It's a perfect segway. Sorry I want to jump in because we only have three minutes left, but it's the perfect segway to talk about public transit and cars in the United States. And it just to me feels like this is such a car centric culture and this country was designed essentially for the automobile, and it makes me think that so much of what we see with zoning and development is inextricably bound to the idea that we
are driving ourselves from one place to another place. Convince me that I'm wrong.
You're right.
Is that what you wanted to hear, because.
No, that's not what I wanted to hear.
And I think it has huge negative consequences, not only on the environment in the form of sprawl, which we've talked about, but also on our health. And I used in the book an example of a neighborhood in Hartford where you have a thoroughfare that was rezoned in the nineteen fifties when we thought, oh, suburban commuters is exactly what we need to provide for and zone for gas stations and parking lots and strip malls and fast food joints.
And guess what happened.
That's what that particular avenue became to the detriment in the form of asthma, in the form of obesity related illnesses of people in the immediate neighborhood. And so just in that one story, you see the power of zoning to completely reshape a community, an urban community that had been built out, you know, a century or more ago, that area with beautiful buildings on it, walkable and so on, and a lot of that got changed over. I think
it's a nineteen fifties, nineteen sixties mindset. But again, too many zoning codes have just been sitting there with these cumulative effects on us now that we need to really revisit.
Sarah, I just got thirty seconds left hair climate change, how is that going to probably up end zoning codes in some ways just quickly.
Zoning is allowing far too many things to be built in places we have no business building. We are doing research on sea level rise. With the national zoning out lists, We're going to be seeing a lot more data on this come out. And I think to the extent that we are making these little decisions at the local level, we've got to start broadening this out and saying, how are zoning codes affecting our ability as a nation to respond to climate change? And I think our answer will
be unfortunately, we're not, but we can do better. And that's the hope that I try to put forward in the book.
We can always do better. I agree with you. Sarah Brennan, she's professor of law and urban Planning at Cornell University. Her new book, Key to the City, How Zoning Shapes Our World. Great stuff in at the book. She takes you to Ames, Iowa, she takes you to Alabama, she takes you to Vegas, Georgetown, some specific situations and stories when it comes to zoning around the country.
So really cool.
Check it out. Yeah, exactly.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Listen live each weekday starting at two pm Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Now let's get to our fifth pick on our team's holiday reading list. This one comes from from our team's video producer, Elizabeth Cedrin, who liked the story of a trip along the back roads of the United States known as the Lincoln Highway. If you don't know what it is, you're about to find out. It's all in a book by Frank S. Berry, who took a road trip with his wife.
Frank Berry is a Bloomberg opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering national affairs. We should also note he was chief speechwriter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg during the twenty twenty presidential campaign and in New York City Hall. Michael Bloomberg, of course, the founder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg Philanthropies.
Now, Frank Berry's mission of wandering America with his wife to understand what binds our country together despite the great political divide, is all in his new book, Back Roads and Better Angels, a Journey into the Heart of American Democracy. He spoke about that journey with Bloomberg's Matt Miller and me.
Back in twenty sixteen, when the country seemed to be coming a part of the seams, I was looking for a different way into the story that everybody was talking about, which is what's happening and why is the country so divided? And I wanted to go exploring what holds the country to gather? And I stumbled across this thing called the Lincoln Highway, which, as it turns out, starts here in New York in Times Square and runs all the way across the country to San Francisco. And it was the
first road to connect the two coasts. It was dedicated in nineteen thirteen, and so I thought, what better way to explore what holds the country together than by channeling the spirit of Lincoln and driving this road. Now, it didn't happen because life got in the way, but the pandemic came along in twenty twenty, and my wife and I realized this was our opportunities now or never.
Was it snap judgment, no problem, Your wife said, yep, I'm in.
It took a little work, it wasn't quite that quick, but she was all in and it did happen really quickly. We had never driven an RV before, and so we had to move quickly, and.
Twenty five feet twenty seventeen Winnebago exactly.
We decided it was the biggest RV we wanted to drive and the smallest RV we wanted to live in. But it had everything we needed. A bed, a kitchen, a bathroom, and an off I.
Mean, obviously you had a job to do. You weren't just driving and sight seeing, That's right. You wanted to stop and talk too important people. How did you choose you know, with whom you would speak, and you know, how do you set up I feel like you had to have a tour manager in order to organize everything.
I wish I had a tour manager. It was very much happening on the fly. I didn't have a lot of time to put it together. But I wanted to talk with people who would represent a cross section of the country, people from all different backgrounds and working all different types of jobs and different industries. And I wanted to talk with people who had interesting stories to tell that would represent what I was after, which was this
better sense of what holds us together? And so in some cases the people we spoke with, of course, it was just spontaneous people we met along the way always you know, interested to hear those stories. But I also would reach out to people before we arrived in town and ask, you know, do you have time to sit down. Sometimes it was a civic leader, sometimes as a business leader. Sometimes it was a farmer. Sometimes it was an activist.
And the good thing about the pandemic, the extent there was a good thing is people had more time on their hands. Everyone's schedule was interrupted, and people were really generous with their time.
We found it just kind of once everybody got up and running and being on air and working from our homes, everybody was accessible because everybody was home.
That's right.
I do want to ask you your first interview who that was. And I also want to even take one more step back. Why the Lincoln Highway?
Yeah, So the Lincoln Highway to me represented a it was a hopeful idea in nineteen thirteen, when there was no road across the country. It was a way to stitch the country together, a way to encourage more people to see more of the country. I think that's still something that we need more of today. A time when we talk about flyover country. The Lincoln Highway was kind of the original idea of combating the notion of flyover country.
And so we left on September eleventh from New York City, and even we did, we did because having lived in New York on September eleventh, it's impossible not to carry with you the spirit, I think, the spirit of unity that we all felt in the in the aftermath, and so that's what I wanted to take with us and to try to try to channel. And so my first interview on September eleventh was actually with the mayor of Jersey City, Steve Pullip, who was downtown as I was.
My home city right very far, it didn't get very far at all.
Started stop here first, first off, Yeah, and we stopped. There's a Lincoln statue in Jersey City, a great one, uh, And so I had a great conversation with him about his nine to eleventh story. He was working downtown as I was on that day. He ended up joining the Marines, and he talked about, you know, his journey from there and what led him to end up running for office.
So what about when you actually get into fly over country, because you're still a long way from Jersey City, Okay, I yeah, even got to the Newport.
So like when you get to the.
Real America, it's all real. Who were you talking to in the heartland.
Though, well as people from all different walks of life and so you know, the heartland also includes Chicago. The Lincoln Highway runs through big cities and small towns. But in Ohio I spoke with a farmer, Chris Gibbs, who had a real interesting story. A friend of mine introduced
me to him. He was a lifelong Republican, very active and Republican party politics, grew disillusioned with the party under Trump, decided to become an independent, and in doing that he found something happened you didn't expect, which is he lost most of his friends. And that was a really tough story to hear, but it was representative of how personal politics has become, I think, and a lot of people have a version of that, where we've lost friendships over that.
The good news of his story is he didn't give up. He decided to become an independent, and as it turns out, the Democratic Party asked him to chair the local county Party committee and he's now doing that.
I'm just trying to get to the other side, because you know, you're we're here in New York. When we put together a two sided panel, neither one likes Trump.
Right, when you talk to.
A Republican, you're talking to one who doesn't support Trump. But yet half the country does support Trump. And I imagine you left this you know, bubble in order to get in touch with that other half to find out what these hillbilly elergy people were all about.
So when you run into any.
Well, of course, yeah, of course we did lots of Trump supporters and saw Trump signs all along the route, lots of them. But my purpose was not to try to explain other people to readers. Right, this was not hillbilly elogy. I wasn't trying to do that. I was trying to let people speak of their own experiences in ways that would remind us of what holds us together. And So to give you one example of a Trump supporter, a really strong Trump supporter, I spoke with two husband
and wife out in Arizona. When we made it to the end of the Lincoln Highway. We kept going two ranchers, and they talked about how difficult life had been for them under the Obama administration because of a change in an EPA rule and the difficulty they were facing because of an EPA rule that would require them to fence their ranchers. It's open range, require them to fence their road, and it would have cost two million dollars one point six million. I said, one point six million dollars to
put a fence up, Granted it's a big property. And he said, well, you know, I could do it for sixty thousand dollars, but because of federal regulations, it would cost me one point six million. And so that's an example of someone who I think the more you listen to people's stories about why they support the other party, the more understandable they become.
Did you find most people were willing to talk?
Absolutely?
In fact, almost no one said I don't want to talk r I don't have time. People were really forthcoming and welcoming.
Well, no, I'm just I'm curious about the Winnebago side of it, because I would love to do that.
Also, I've never driven an RV. We'll talk about when you.
First got it. You had to go to was it Tennessee? Where you to pick it out?
So we U we bought it used and a woman in Florida was kind enough to drive it halfway. So I met her in North Carolina, Carolina, picked it up, had no idea what I was doing, got in the driver's seat, feared that I had bit off more than I could chew, and kind of did. But at that point it's too late, and so we drove it back to New York and then off we went. But yeah, neither was my wife nor I had driven an RV before. We had never lived in an RV.
On the street in the city.
Well, we brought it up state for a few days and then and then we brought it back into the city. But no, I never actually, in fact, we walked the first mile of the Lincoln Highway from Times Square to the river, and then we got a fairy and picked up Yes, a smart move.
Yeah, we're a young country, a young democracy, right, We've definitely seen our moments of strife. We've had a civil war. After talking to people, do you have more hope?
A lot?
Yeah, it came away really optimistic actually, and full with hope, partly because that's what I heard from people. When you know, there was a lot of frustration. I'd hear from both Democrats and Republicans about how divided we were, but in the end, most people expressed hope that we would get through it. They weren't always able to articulate exactly why, but there was this sense that we would get through
it because that's what we do. And actually, there's a lot of history in the book, but that's probably the most historically accurate assessment that you could make, because we've been through so much as a country, even though we're relatively young, so much violence and division, civil war being the worst of it, but plenty of other episodes too. But we found ways to get through it, and part of the story of the book is highlighting those ways, the kind of the values that have led us out
of the dark times. And I think the more we can recognize that we've been through versions of what we're experiencing today, the more kind of hope and faith we will have that we can get through it.
Are there any prescriptions?
I mean, hopefully we don't have to get to a civil war before we can reset. Right, How should we deal with this division?
Well, there's a lot I think that we can learn from Lincoln, and that's why he's the perfect guide for the trip. And so one thing to keep in mind is, you know, Lincoln in the eighteen fifties, as the country was heading towards Civil War, said of white Southerners, they are just as we would be if we were in their situation. Now, Lincoln abhorred slavery, thought of it as a moral abomination, but here he was speaking about Southerners
and their support for slavery with no judgment. And I think that is something that we can learn from because today there's so much judgment about the other side and so much kind of quickness to decide that the other
side is not just wrong, but they're evil. And I think the more that we can recognize that we're shaped by our circumstances and that different points of view can still hold valid perspectives, to not assume that we are entirely correct, that others have valid viewpoints, the more that we can try to hold the whole thing together. The forces that are dividing the country right now, and you see it anytime you pick up social media, you see it on your phone, but you hear it in conversations
and you sense it in people's anxiety. All of that is going to be with us, and it really requires leaders to tap into as say in the book, the Better Angels of Our Nature. It's a link and phrase, but it does require leadership that reminds us of the best of America and the best of our values, and to recognize when when leaders are trying to exploit the worst in us, and to tap into our fears and hatred.
Well, I guess we have to be open as well.
You know, when I think about the problems on the left, you've got the sort of cancel culture and sort of this gas lighting censorship. I'm sure a lot of people on the right feel that they can't speak or be heard because they're not allowed to say how they feel.
Absolutely, I couldn't agree more and that's something I speak with people in the book about that that also is a threat to democracy, and sometimes Democrats fall into the trap of thinking that threats only exist on the right, and that's wrong. They exist on the left too, And that censorship that you're talking about is a big part
of it. And I heard that from people in different parts of our journey, the fear of speaking their minds, and a lot of times that fear was on the left because of either you know, facing personal or professional repercussions for stating their opinion. That's a really unhealthy thing in a democratic society. If people feel afraid to express an opinion.
Does z academia make it worse? I used to think about one of our producers said, that's what colleges. You say stupid things and then you learn, Yeah, and we don't do that anymore, or if you do, the penalties are incredible.
Yeah they're talking about professors or students.
About both, but you know what I'm saying, Like it was further.
Capable of saying, you know what, Yeah, college should be a place where you make mistakes and learn and grow. But also any community should have a level of forgiveness and understanding that we're not going to see things differently. And the desire to shame and punish people for being on what someone uses the wrong side of an issue is really counterproductive to a civil, democratic society.
Your last person, we've only got about forty seconds. Did you think long and hard about who the last person you wanted to speak to?
Well, as it happens, the trip we went across the country and back, we ended up the Lincoln Memorial, and so I had an old friend hadn't spoken to him many years. Sergeant Mike roccarty is a Capitol police officer. He was on duty on January sixth, and so I spoke to him about his day. He's a conservative Republican, and he relayed the events of that day and how harrowing and dangerous and how much worse it almost was.
And that was a really powerful thing to hear from him, And so that helps to conclude the story.
I'm interested in the Winnebago. How did you like it? And would you do it again?
We would do it again in a heartbeat. We loved it. We got very comfortable in it, very quickly. We made plenty of mistakes and learned along the way, but yes, do it again. In the second.
If you didn't know Mark, Mark Mattark. It's been a super long week, Frank, thank you so much. Good luck with it.
Thank you.
The book Back Roads and Better Angels, A Journey into the Heart of American Democracy. It is out now. This is Bloomberg business Week.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from two to five pm. Easter Listen on Apple car Play and and Bright Auto with a Bloomberg Business act or watch us live on YouTube.
Now to our final pick from the producer who books all of our great authors and produces our daily Bloomberg Business Week broadcast and podcast. We're talking about Paul Brennan. Paul says, I chose The Mac and Cheese Millionaire because, having come from a family of restaurant owners, I know how difficult the business is, and Aaron Wade's perseverance and love of food was inspiring. Plus, who doesn't love portions with a quarter pound of cheese.
Paul is right about that. The book is all about Aaron Wade, who quit her job as a lawyer to start a restaurant. Now she calls herself quote the world's leading expert on macaroni and cheese.
Aaron is author of the book The Mac and Cheese Millionaire, Building a better business by thinking outside the box. She joined me alongside Bloomberg Daybreak Europe co anchor Steven Carroll.
I began my career with a huge passion for food and had you know, cooked in restaurants, but found that it was a really dead end job. The pay is low, the treatment is not great, so I just did not see a future for myself. So I decided to go to law school and do what you know, generations of lost people with no direction have done and become a lawyer.
But I didn't. I didn't love it, so I actually got fired.
Turns out you're not good at what you don't like doing. And I decided I wanted to create the restaurant that I wish that I could have worked at. So not just was it a love of family, my family recipe of mac and cheese and wanting to bring that to the market, because I just didn't see that being filled anywhere. You know, there's like pizza restaurants, barbecue, but not mac
and cheese. But I really want to focus on how do I create the kind of workplace that I wish, the kind of restaurant that I could have worked in, and what do I need to do to do that?
So what in particular did you want in terms of making it the place that you wanted to work at? What was it that needed to be different?
You know, my book is filled with a lot of trial and error. I think the twoth is I didn't know. I knew what I didn't want to do right, But sometimes it's harder when you haven't had the example set of what.
You do want to do.
So I found that it really came down to three things, which was you know, communication, collaboration, and collective success. And I'm having to give you examples of you know, ways that we did all those three things.
But that I found was really the secret to our success.
And you know, not only in an industry where the average tenure is you know, less than ninety days. Our average tenure is two and a half years. But our profitability was in the top.
One percent of restaurants. So I'm really proud of what we achieved.
Yeah, because look, it's a difficult business to get into, and I think if you know, if you're going to make a leap of faith into something new, you didn't perhaps pick the clearest or the easiest path to do that. Talk us about getting getting the first the first homeroom started.
I think that's why actually it makes for such a great business book, because you know, if we were using these techniques success fully. I mean, it is the hardest industry to make it, so, you know, I really think they can these ideas can work anywhere. But yeah, I mean it's it's crazy. I mean, banks won't even give you loans because it's considered you know, your your odds are better and less Vegas than investing in a restaurant.
But I do think that with sort of you know, by using these techniques, I think people in all kinds of businesses can can beat the odds.
Talk us through the first few months of that business, though, at what point did you know that you hot you around to something and that you that was going to take off into something that of course it became a hit.
Luckily, we're packed from you know, day one, and I really credit it to frankly, just having an exceptionally good quality product. So you know, at most restaurants, if they have mac and cheese at all, it is a side dish.
It's something that is not paid very much attention to, and for us, this is really the main thing.
So you know, we made each one to order, We used my family recipe. We put nearly a quarter pound of cheese in each portion, so you know, it's incredibly cheesy, it's fresh, it's made with love and care, and you know, and that makes a huge difference versus sitting in a vat somewhere. So I think people were very, very obsessed
with the products from day one. But frankly, I think also what we did is like created tremendous value surrounding the experience because I had worked a lot in fine dining, but something that I thought was really lacking in a more casual setting is like, you know, great design and great service. Those things don't need to cost more, They
just need someone to care more. And so, you know, I think that people's perception of value of getting to sit in this really beautifully designed space, getting you know, some of the best service that they've had in a restaurant while eating, you know, the best version of mac and cheese they've ever had.
It's just a winning combo.
I have to say. There's a restaurant in our neighborhood, a local, one family run, and they have an incredible mac and cheese, and we will go there just for the mac and cheese. And it used to be a place downtown. I don't even know if it exists, but that's all it did. And great you know, cast iron skillets and any kind of like varieties of mac and cheese. It is like just that food that we just love.
We just love.
What's one of the biggest I don't know what was one of the biggest moments in this process. I feel like everybody who started a business, especially in the restaurant industry, we've all seen the bear and loved it. But I do wonder where you were. I don't know. It was either just a huge learning experience, whether from your team, from your workers, I don't know. Tell us.
You know, I have to say we used a lot of like really interesting techniques to engage people in the business. For instance, we're an open book company and so share financials and teach financial literacy, and I think that was a huge aha, right, It like really unlocks people's like potential and power to understand business in a deep way and to feel like they're part of something that's bigger
than themselves versus just showing up every day to cook. So, you know, I'd say that's one moment that I'm incredibly proud of. But you know, another is that we used all these techniques of you know, we had a lot of different tools to be communicating, collaborating, and we actually came up with a solution to sexual harassment which our staff was experiencing. And I wrote a viral piece in the Washington Post about it. It got adopted by the EEOC.
I went to Washington to go testify about it, and it's now used by restaurants and bars all around the world, So, you know, I think that also, frankly, when you tap into the power of a workforce. You know, we were just a small restaurant but made a difference on a global scale, and I'm incredibly proud of that.
But talk to us little bit more about that, like how you came to realize it's something needed to be done differently.
Well, I was approached by a number of female servers at the restaurant who all were complaining, and honestly, they said they'd worked at a ton of places and this had happened everywhere. This was just the first time that they thought maybe someone would actually do something about it. And so I did what I usually did when someone brings up a problem, which is include them in the solution to it.
So, you know, we came up with a.
System that our entire staff that wanted to participate did participate in creating it. And I think the reason it's so effective is that, honestly, it really sort of honors people wherever they are. It's like basically a color coded system, and when someone experiences something with that color, they just report the color and an action is taken. So you know, for instance, a yellow is just you get a bad vibe at a table.
You just say hey, I've got a yellow at table two, and.
A manager will take it over for you. And an orange is you have a bad feeling. Plus let's say an ambiguous comment something like I like your shirt. You know, depending on who says that to you and how they say it to you, it might feel totally benign or aggressive.
And so same deal.
Someone just goes to manager and says, hey, I've got an orange at table too, and the manager takes it over.
And with a red, that's.
Someone saying something overtly sexual or touching a staff member, and in that case, again the staff member just says the color and then the manager's required to kick the person out.
And you know, I.
Think what's so cool about the system is that you know, guests honestly don't I was being used on them.
So as very customer friendly.
You know, staff members are going to have all kinds of different experiences, and some people are going to find certain things threatening and other ones won't, And so it allows us to meet staff where they are and take action and it's really easy for managers to use.
And what we found is amazing.
As we thought it would just be a way of coping with harassment and just giving us a way to deal with it, but actually what it did is it really nearly eliminated the worst forms of it. Because very few people walk into a restaurant and like stick their hand up someone's shirt. But you know, they will usually start with lower level things like checking them out or making low level comments, and then once.
Things are tolerated, they escalate their behavior.
So it just really sort of stopped the problem from happening, and in a way that I think is really respectful to people, you know, no matter if their customer, staff manager.
I think what I find really interesting about this, this Color Crowd of Conduct is you're giving people language to be able to talk about how they feel and how they feel affected by it. And it's a model it's been taken up by business is elsewhere as well. Talk to us a little bit about how you're seeing you know, what you've heard about how the Color Code of conducts being used outside of your business.
Yeah, I mean I've gotten like from just fabulous feedback. And actually, you know, one of the most fun parts is there's plenty of people that use it that I'll never know. But I'll walk into a bar and I'll find like one of our posters on the wall. Or I went to speak at a conference and it was like all these you know, bar owners from like across America and the globe. And I was so surprised because at the end of my session, I didn't, you know, I wasn't.
Getting a ton of questions, and I was like, what is happening here?
And then I asked people to raise their hand if they had known of the system or if they use it in.
Their bar, and like everyone raised their hand, and it's like, okay, cool.
So I wonder it doesn't help people.
This is an industry where there's a huge staff turnover, right, and I wonder how much that's helped towards staff retention at a time. You know, we talk so much about the tight labor markets, and we know that hospitality is one sector really affected by that. Has it helped you to keep people good people on your staff?
Oh?
I got one hundred percent.
I mean to my point about sort of all the tools in the book, right, if we can use them, then anyone can. Because I think you know, something really missing from the conversation right now about the labor market and what to do is that, in my experience, the most meaningful things actually don't cost money.
They just take time and care. Right, Like, we are constrained.
There's only so much we can pay people when we're charging folks ten dollars for mac and.
Cheese, right Like, it's just that's just true.
It's not going to be the most highly paid job of someone's life, probably, but you know, there's so much you can do that makes work an enjoyable place to come to and meaningful and purposeful. And I think those are the things, honestly that you know, make life worth living.
One of the things that I really liked about your book and your own story as well as you're talking about wanting to fall in love with work, And do you think that we need to be in love with what we do in order to succeed.
I mean, in my experience, yes, I mean, you know, I'm really smart and I was working as a lure and I got fired, and I don't I think it's an accident. I found it very hard to be good at something that I didn't like doing, you know, versus something I'm passionate about. You know, my my worst days as an entrepreneur have been better than my best days as a lawyer. But you know, I think, I think it's a real gift, you know, to wake up and
enjoy going to work. And it's one I didn't, you know, previous to starting my own restaurant think was possible.
So I guess I just wanted to.
Communicate people to people that I do think it's possible, and I try to give them tips and tools for, you know, how to find that passion within yourself, how to pursue it, how to create spaces where other people can't to because I think, honestly, we spend more of our lives at work than in almost anything else, and we don't enjoy it, Like what are we doing here?
That was Aaron Wade, author of the book The Mac and Cheese Millionaire, Building a Better business by Thinking outside the box. Our thanks as well to Bloomberg Daybreak year up coank or Stephen Carroll for co hosting when I was out.
And that wraps up our weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. We hope we gave you just a few books to enjoy and maybe think about over the holidays, something to read. Thanks so much for joining us.
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