Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - January 13th, 2023

By the way, it's an opener if you will to this week's Bloomberg Live event happening in Davos, which is also occurring as the World Economic Forum hosts its annual meeting there, and of course we will have full coverage from Switzerland throughout the week on all of our Bloomberg platforms. We're not going there right now. I just couldn't squeeze it in this year. Okay, just making sure I haven't

booked the play. I want to make sure. Ahead on this program, we're going to dive into Business Week's annual list of the fifty companies to watch over the next

twelve months. Are we such a cool list? We're also going to break down a critical year for both the global travel and automobile industries as part of the magazines look at the consumer, you know me, you tim everybody out there, Well, then examine Silicon Valleys, changing business landscape when it comes to digital advertising and alongheld duopoly that is under a lot of pressure more than ever from tech rivals both big and small, but have become really

valuable for advertisers. And not only are they valuable, but they're also accessible not only to the big advertisers UM, but also to small businesses, which were kind of the bread and butter of the meta and alphabets UM advertising business. So that first subset, I think is the big one. These e commerce UM retailers who are adding ads for businesses and really sniping some of that share which started during COVID when everyone was online, and now it seems

like they're really going to push forward. In Blessed, we'll find out just how tough employers around the country are being on their workers when it comes to returning to the office. Look, we're here every day. Certainly increasingly we're starting to hear more more companies are requiring their at least employees to come in three to four days a week, like, hey, team, remember us, come on back in such a difference than

before the pandemic. And then later in the program, we're gonna talk with the head of a cutting edge aviation company that sees fully autonomous flight as the future. How do you feel about that? Um, not there yet? Okay, me neither. All of that to come. We begin with Stephanie Flanders. She is Bloomberg News Senior executive editor for

Economics and Government. She's in from London this week at our global headquarters in New York, and also found some time depend the cover story in the Year Ahead issue. It's an essay breaking down why we can all expect the global economy to be nothing short of a wild ride. Well, let's talk about the Year Ahead, because you write about these three pillars that kind of held together the global economy was helpful to have low rates, but it was also helpful to have a kind of a conflict free world,

you know, notwithstanding some minor conflicts here and there. And then also, of course energy prices were kept low for quite a while. If we look back on those pillars are kind of crumbled, Yes, And that's what I was thinking. So what's useful about doing this exercise for for Business Week, and I have done it a few years now. Is you sort of obviously you're quite caught up in especially these days, on exactly what's going to happen to the economy this year? And are we going to get heads

around inflation? Is the FED going to stop tightening? But you also want to step back and think, Okay, what how is the world fundamentally changed? And I think this was one of those years where I thought, Wow, we really have had these fundamental assumptions underpinning maybe thirty forty years of global economic history, certainly my lifetime of thinking about economics and thinking about the world, all having kind of been kicked away over the last couple of years.

It's not just cheap energy prices, it's not just cheap labor costs and transportation costs, and as you said, the sort of friction free period for geopolitics at least when it came to you know, am I going to find it fairly easy to set up a complicated supply chain in Asia or China? And all of that has gone away? And then on top of all that, you know, you kind of every time any one of those pillars was

sort of shaky. You always had the FED put right, You always had the FED there um super easy money, kind of free money to make everything still make the numbers still add up. And when you start looking ahead and thinking, okay, if if, if those have gone in quite a lasting way, decoupling whatever you want to call it, as well as potentially kind of higher interest rates sticking around for a while, you know that that could mean something quite fundamental, not just for economic growth, but also

for global politics. You know, we talk about pivots, and I do think about Stephanie. Is it just a case of a reset, certainly here in the United States, but elsewhere, this whole idea of cheap money no more? Yeah, And I think, I mean, as you know, I'm normally in London, and that the sheer pace of change there has been extraordinary.

I mean, people, you know, the different between getting a mortgage in July and getting it in September, partly thanks to the sort of craziness we had in Parliament, but actually not just that you had rates double or treble. In many cases, people are going to be going up in the next few months, renegotiating their mortgages and going from a one percent rate to six and they're going to fail their affordability tests and you know, so, yeah, we don't know how that's going to play out. Well,

how do you think about this? Like this whole idea of the Fed still thinks they're going to get down to two percent right in terms of inflation, and that that's their target. There are many people say, no, way, things have changed dramatically. How do you think about that globally? Like has something is a different this time around? Is there kind of a new rate because of some global

macro forces that have changed forever? Yeah? I think so. There's, as you know, a big debate about this, and there are plenty of economists on both sides as always, so we can keep up the keep up the debate. But I think, um, it's gonna I think this year it's

going to depend quite a lot on China. So you have the very rapid reopening actually may be unhelpful to the j pals of this world, because, as you know, we could then see maybe an extra one percentage point, maybe an extra two percentage points on global inflation just because of faster China growth and higher energy prices from that. But looking further ahead. Has there been a more fundamental

shift between the relationship between unemployment and wages. You know, we've had all these years where you had super low unemployment, you know, very tight labor market, but wages didn't budge. Now you know, the dam is kind of broken, and you have got these much bigger wage rises coming down the track in many countries. If they get locked in, then you're right, you know, we're in a we're in

a different world. You right, at the end of the piece that the microeconomic trend for three is going to be near shoring the idea of untangling some of these supply chains that companies have spent a generation building as they've gotten concerned about, Okay, maybe COVID zero in China or trade relationships with countries including China. Um, how do

you think that's going to continue to play out? Because at the same time, it does seem like labor is so you know, you don't want to you don't want to unravel too much in a company like Apple, for example, is so inextricably bound to a to a country like Chinel And I actually think that's one of the fundamental tensions, and that's actually it's why I've I've set up a whole squad. Now I've got control of the economics and government.

Here at Bloomberg, We've got a geoeconomic squad precisely because the economics and the politics is really kind of coming into inter tention at the moment. I don't think any of these big companies wanted niche near shore, particularly, it wouldn't be their first choice. They certainly it wouldn't be their choice to come out of China, and they're resisting that in many areas. But they're also looking at the

riding on the wall. But as the geopolitical trends that we talked about from the last thirty years have gone into reverse, you know, the politicians in a sense and no longer on the side of closer and closer integration and globalization. So I think businesses for the first time in a long time, have to reckon with you know, if you like the kind of a current of history

running against them. You know, whereas previously, you know, in most places people wanted to make things easier for global business, that's not the case. Now you've got President Biden, You've got politicians all around the world actively making their lives harder. Um it feels kind of glum if you're not alone. Even the good news in China is exactly like and there's a lot of individuals. So maybe it's not so great in the first half better in the second half.

But I think there's a lot of debate over that too. Could things actually come in better? Could the US fear better too than the rest of the world. Are are a lot of the world. Yeah, and actually I even say that there. I think there's a scenario which says, um, the US dodges recession or has a very shallow recession.

Even in the Eurozone it's looking like I don't think my optimism extends to the UK at last, but in the Eurozone it's looking like it's going to be a very shallow recession, and quite a lot of the country's may even dodge a formal recession. If we get to the end of the year and central banks have also kind of have basically got control of inflation, and that we are within sight of two, then as I say, at the end of the piece, everything does become a

bit easier. You know, we may still have these structural trends, these question marks, but it's on a slower burn and you're not talking about these relationships, just kind of going up in smoke. Definitely. Does it feel since you've said, you've done this a couple of times for Business Week, kind of setting what the economic outlook is for the year, does it how does it feel different from last year? Do you remember, like does it feel more certain or

still uncertain? But different debates. I think the fundamental sort of narratives are actually clearer, and actually going back to that point of geoeconomics, I sort of feel like I know what the story is or what the different elements of the story are going forward, But of course I never know what's going to happen, and that's what makes life so interesting. Okay, thirty seconds just to enter on Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I think it's been a monster

a full year. At the end of February and thirty seconds again, Stephanie, I mean, how does this How does this play out in Europe? I would say one positive. I mean, of course it's a massively negative event for the continent to have a war on its on its shores. But the way that Europe has hung together, not just the governments but the people, I think is a source of inspiration and potential optimism. We'll just we'll see how

whether they managed to carry that forward. That was Bloomberg News Senior Executive Editor for Economics and Government, Stephanie Flanders on the cover story for three Year Ahead issue coming up, from eBay to Porsche, the select group of global stocks to keep an eye on this year, for better or

for worse. The fifty is the real deal. And what what basically um the team of of analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence does is take that two thousand plus companies and push it through Excel sheets and it spits out a couple of dozen companies that we really want to kind of talk about. It's a great little mix of companies that we just think are going to have interesting years. More from the Year Ahead issue. You're listening to Bloomberg

Business Week. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinebec from Bloomberg Radio. The latest issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine. It is out now, It's online on newsstands, of course, always on the Bloomberg terminal. It's the annual Erahead issue. Right now, though we're going to talk about one of the favorite features of this

issue the fifty Companies to Watch. The team at Bloomberg Intelligence tracks some two thousand companies and sectors, ranging from communications and commodities to finance and food. B I has identified a select group of fifty that weren't a closer look this year based on a list of focus ideas,

which combine contrarian views and upcoming catalyst for change. You know to what our analysts do is they consider factors such as growth prospects, resilience in an inflationary environment, changes in the C suite, and plans for new products and services. The team also weighs in on external conditions such as Russia's war in Ukraine, challenges in the tech supply chain, and the continuing effects of the COVID nineteen pandemic. Bloomberg

te Levision in radio markets. Correspondent Creedy Goopda and I caught up with a Business Week Solutions and Strategy Senior editor Rebecca Penty, as well as the editor of the magazine, Joel Webber to break down the list and also to better understand exactly how Bloomberg Intelligence narrows this field. Carol, it's a feat what they do on in a given day.

And one of the things that we've long done with them is this project which culminates, Uh it's it's actually like months in the making and then culminates with the publication of the list. We've also gone on and done quarterly installments, um that we now do. So this is fifty companies to watch for the year. But you'll hear us come back and ahead of every quarter will tell you companies to watch this quarter. Um. But the fifty

is the real deal. And what what basically, um, the team of of analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence Intelligence does is take that two thousand plus companies and push it through Excel sheets and it spits out, uh, just a couple of dozen company is that we really want to kind of talk about. And we can't tell you these are bys and cells that we're not gonna do anything, um that foolish with that much conviction. But we can look at hindsight as the measure of that. Yeah, exactly, that's

what hindsights for right. Um. We we look we call this watch because some of them we expect will i'll perform and others might lack. And so it's a great little mix of companies that we just think are going to have interesting years. Um. Rebecca was one of the Business Week editors who worked closely with b I to come up with that list and refine it and turn it into the magic that it is. Rebecca, I'm curious, what was the company that m was your was the

one that you liked the most on the list? Well?

I think Disney and Um, it was interesting. You know, b I has these focus ideas and they you know, basically they're they're high conviction ideas of companies where they think the market is not recognizing something about the me and so either the markets under valuing overvaluing, and Disney was one of them that was really beat up during the pandemic and you know, continues to be beat up once recession risks started looming because of all their theme parks.

And the thing that was so interesting for me is that b I had this conviction that, you know, Disney is really poised for a rebound um due to restructuring

and accelerating stream strategy. And we'd already landed on Disney as a company, and then the announcement of Bob Biker's return as CEO and and so that just reinforced the view from b I that this is the company to watch, and I think you know, the bi's view that it could be a tale of two halves for for Disney, where you know the second half is the stronger of the two. Okay, Well, if you're gonna talk about Disney, we should talk about Netflix. Um because Netflix also on

the list. Why why did Netflix make it H In that same conversation, since obviously it's been the dominant streaming video provider. Yeah, that's true. And I think this is an interesting one where um B I zeroing in on

Netflix is adds supported pricings. Here. For the longest time, it's been a company that's dependent on UM subscriptions but not advertising, and so ba's view is that the market isn't fully recognizing the additional revenue and sales growth that could come from that advertising, which which they see as supporting higher average revenue per user and offsetting cantaly ization

of subscription revenue from customers downgrading to cheaper plans. Okay, so worth mentioning that to US companies, perhaps you've heard of them? Right. The other thing I love about this project, though, Rebecca, is how global it is. Right. So, in addition, to some marquee American names, tell us about ones that people outside of the US might not even heard of. Yeah,

this one was an interesting one for me. I think, you know, we often hear about China being, you know, the world's manufacturing center, but we don't often know the names of the companies that make the stuff that we use. And one of the ones featured here is t s m C. It is the world's largest semiconductor foundry. And you know, with with the recession looming with with um, the economy taking a beating, worldwide chip making is slowing down.

But Bluever Intelligence view is that t s MC is placed to better weather the cyclical market downturn than it's piers because of its dominant industry position. Yeah, I mean it is a juggernaut, right yeah, joel Um, what about your favorite on this list? Okay, well, I'll stick with tech Um and I'm gonna I'm gonna say sons Um, the little speaker company that could. Yeah, it's truly, as we say in the blurb, it is a David versus Goliath moment. There's a patent case. It's been wrestling with

Google for a really long time. As we write, b I is optimistic. Optimistic SONS will succeed in the dispute, which goes to a jury trial in May. Uh. This has been a long time coming. Uh, this showdown has been it's years in the making. UM. Sos UH has

has has had its share of some challenges. If your son NOS user like I am, there's some software decisions that will make you pull your hair out, like that app which app because there's multiple apps actually in order to use different devices that don't talk to each other always. You know, is there more to talk about here? Yes? There is. But so I like this s NOS one, UM,

but you know that's another American company. We've done tech a little bit now, Rebecca, what's another international company that that jumped out to you? Okay, I'm just looking down the list, which was Porch. Let's talk about Porsche exactly, which I thought. So this company went public this year w span out, which is just also just an incredible I p O. But now they actually have to, like, you know, make some evs and autos I think are

just a really interesting kind of your head story. We're seeing obviously the pressure on Tesla and we're going to have more automakers sort of show up and an attempt to hit velocity like Tesla's proven. Um what what what a successful company can look like? And now they have to like wade through some challenges. If I could just throw one quick one back in there. You talked a lot about companies that are poised to do well on the e V game. One of them that is maybe

poised to fair worse off is Aliston Transmission. UM another US company. Uh, it's a truck transmission supplier. And what you may have heard about EVS is that you know, it's not just regular cars, it's also trucks. So there's heightened competition in that truck space, which is going to be at some pressure to Alison Transmission. That was Bloomberg Business Week Solutions and Strategy Senior editor Rebecca pent and

once again the editor of the magazine, Joe Weber. Bloomberg TV and Radio is Crety Gupta with us there as well. And we should note that Rebecca mentioned Walt Disney at the top of our conversation. You know, already this past week we saw the company prepping for a challenge from activist investor Nelson Pelts and also naming Mark Parker as its new chairman. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, from the consumer facing firms to Silicon Valleys elite. Many iconic

American companies are facing headwinds in the year ahead. Twenty three is going to be defined more about how consumers sort of, you know, what's the new normal for consumers. In other words, you know, lots of things changed. You obviously returned to work, you know it's been an issue, but also how people want to shop, how people want

to consume. You know, what people are willing to spend on, and the way the consumer behaves is a lot different than than and so we want to capture that, and so we tried to sort of take a look at

a number of areas. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the World, Bloomberg he Love in Frio in New York, to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one oh six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine six to the country Sirius XM Chado one nine team, and around the globe the Bloomberg Business and Bloomberg Radio

dot Com. This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stanovac from Bloomberg Radio our coverage of the yearhead issue continues with a look at companies in the consumer space. The magazine taps into starbucks, unhappy New Year, the return of the jumbo jet, and the abrupt cratering of the used car market. With a round up, we turned to Bloomberg Business Week Assistant Managing editor Jim Ellis.

While the pandemic sort of defined last year, how our sort of come back from the pandemic, this year um is going to be defined more about how consumed or is sort of you know, what's the new normal for consumers? In other words, you know, lots of things changed. You obviously returned to work, you know, it's been an issue, but also how people want to shop, how people want to consume, you know, what people are willing to spend on, and the way the consumer behaves is a lot different

than than and so we want to capture that. And so we tried to sort of take a look at a number of areas. You know, one I was obviously entertained. It was travel because it's something I love, but it's also something that was really really knocked during the pandemic.

So I knew that was something we wanted to get into and also there were a lot of management shifts that happened over the uh pandemic period, and a lot of it was because of the way the consumers were changing what they wanted to do a good A good example that was Starbucks simply because China was a big piece of its business. China was going to do, um, you know, not behave this year the way it did before.

And also they were involved in a unionization drive that really picked up steam over the course of the pandemic, so that I knew I wanted that in there. So I went sort of just trying to choose things that I thought if I was a consumer, what would I care about? Now? I love that you guys say when it comes to Starbuck in the section Starbucks, excuse me, could really use some caffeine this year, And well they're getting it in the likes of bringing back Howard Schultz,

so connected obviously with this company. It's like the old leaders are all coming back Disney Tiger, but tell us, UM, they've also got what another They've got a new CEO who's coming in UM who will work with Howard Schultz. We'll see how that works out. But that oh yeah, so UM, you know when he's coming. He was the former CEO of wreck It. And the thing is that, you know, he was very he was successful there. The problem is that it's a very different type of business.

This is a this is a true consumer business that sells and you know, sort of sells food and drink in restaurants. Regt sells you know, condoms and other things. But um, it's sanitizing, sanitiz and yeah, but I mean it's consumer products, but they're not the same thing as selling at retail. And so that's the real challenge. He's gonna have to learn that job at the same time that it has a big, big challenge in unionization of its stores. And also China, which is its second most

important market, is still not back to normal. That's also supposedly the big growth market of Starbucks, and they hope that you know, they're gonna have nine thousand stories there or something in a few years. You know, that's gonna be a real lift given that China is still not

fully back from the pandemic. And this guy has to figure out how to pull all this off at the same time that his predecessor, how Schultz, is still remaining on the board and often founders, you know, sort of they tend to be sort of hands on, and especially a founder like Schultz who has already, you know, had the CEO's job three times. He's already gotten rid of

two people before a point, I gotta talk planes. Jumbo Jets important kind of, I feel like to all the carriers and well, but we previously thought they were no longer important. We said, oh my god, jumbo jets. They've got four engines. They you know, they gobble up all

this fuel. So therefore we moved beyond that. And so we saw all these new sort of what they call new generation planes, the UH seven seven seven X, the A three fifty I mean planes, and the dreamline planes that were supposedly able to do with two engines everything that the old jumbos like the seven forties seven and

the double deck A three eight could do. And the problem is that, um, you know, we've sort of retired a lot of those planes, and now demand is jumped back and they say like, oh my god, we need we need big planes, and we need big planes with big first classes all right, plane skipping trains, automobiles, the youth car market man that was on fire during the pandemic and right after and now it feels like not so much. Yeah, I mean, used car cars were a

real sort of boom time during the pandemic. What happened was that because the new car business um UH was really constrained because of chips, because of the shutdowns and auto plants in different parts of the world, um prices went up on new cars because there was no you know, there was no supply. And what that meant was a lot of people couldn't afford new cars and so they said, Okay, I'll buy something on the use line, and that sent

used car prices soaring. The problem for the used car business now is that in the last you know, six months, you know, new cars have come back. You can get them on the lots again. You don't have these long waiting periods, and so the prices of youth have dropped. And what that means is for people like CarMax and for Carbonna, people's business is heavily skewed toward that you know, they suddenly are you know, they don't have the demand, but also the values of the cars that they have

have in stock are dropping. Thanks to Bloomberg Business Week Assistant Managing editor Jim Ellis. Check out the new issue. There's also a story about Hollywood's come back. Yere Now to another area of the economy set for upheaval, the massive and increasingly crowded digital advertising market. Writing about a potential changing of the guard in the technology section is

Bloomberg News tech reporter Alex Brenka. Once upon a time there was a duopoly, and then some of the biggest competitors arrivals in the Kingdom decided they liked what Alphabet and Meta had. So when you look out in three um in terms of the digital ad market, which again as a reminder, this is the money machine that basically funds the internet. Meta and Facebook and Instagram and Alphabet and it's Google and YouTube have really owned this space

as you mentioned for a long time. But this year we have some folks pushing in with a lot of gustos, some rivals and competition that are huge, uh names like Amazon and Walmart and Target. And I want to spend a moment on that group, because this e commerce set is is probably, um you know, one of the most threatening. They have started to a lot ads on the places where folks like you and I buy things, So right, at that moment where we're making a decision that have

become really valuable for advertisers. And not only are they valuable, but they're also accessible not only to the big advertisers UM, but also to small businesses, which were kind of the bread and butter of the meta and alphabets UM advertising business.

So that's first subset I think is the big one, these e commerce UM retailers who are adding ads for businesses and really sniping some of that share which started during COVID when everyone was online, and now it seems like they're really going to push forward in well all right, so Alex, that's a big part of it, right, the competition for the digital ad market that pie right, everybody's there's more people going after that pie. That's one thing.

But what about the impact still that changed by the Apple policy when it comes to privacy, is that's still you know, a bit of a sting for some of these big players, definitely a staying so um just to at everyone up to speed. Apple change their policy basically gave users the ability to opt out of what information to share it with advertisers. That made it much more difficult for folks like meta and Alphabet to track the effectiveness of their ads and also to target people. And

I mentioned those small businesses. A lot of those small businesses who built their businesses advertising on social media, they're the ones who took a really big hit here. So Apple kind of made that swipe, made it more difficult, made the ads less effective for Alphabet and Meta. And now, you know, Bloomberg's reported that they're starting to add ad

offerings of their own. So on the back of you know, this hangover from the changes Apple made, on the back of a really kind of choppy economic year where it seems like the digital ad market might not be growing forever, you then have all of these rivals pushing in to kind of take advantage of the stumble that Meta and Alphabet had in two What is the one company that could be the biggest competitor too, you know, Alphabet and Meta. I mean, I guess apart from TikTok, I think that

Amazon is kind of this one that looms large. Right. Um, you mentioned Netflix, you mentioned some of them, you know, the video streaming services. That's a smaller, kind of newer way of advertising that's starting to open up for small businesses. But the vast majority of folks who spend money to get their stuff seen by customers online are going to be small businesses, and Amazon has really done the most

and they have the biggest audience. UM, that's really an attractive lore for businesses to advertise that you know you're right there where somebody is making a purchasing decision, and you're basically guaranteeing your stuff is going to get in front of the folks who are most likely to check out. Bloomberg News technology reporter Alex Brinko with us. Check out our full story it's in the yearhead issue and the

full interview on our business Week podcast feed. You are listening to Bloomberg Business Week up next, where the return to the office push stands entering the new year. Castle Systems chairman Mark Ein joins us. This is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. What will the year ahead mean for working from home, being in the office and that hybrid work that we've been hearing about for so long.

Hard to say, but one thing Tim and I can definitely say is that the New York City subway ridership recently hit a post pandemic high of nearly four million. We're still a far cry from the more than five and a half million riders who wrote each day pre pandemic. But Tim, the trend is definitely moving in the right direction, and that means more crowded trains. We're seeing that firsthand. Yeah, I am standing room only a lot of the trains to and from the office. So are people actually going

back to the office? And what do have in store? Mark and his chairman of Castle Systems. His company provides security services for offices here in the US. Think of swiping your badge when you go into the office. Mark joined with some insight and of course some data. So look, I think we do have to keep this in perspective. From the beginning of twenty two to the end of twenty two, the average utilization of office space nearly doubled. We started the year in the mid twenties and we

ended the year near fift on a national average. So well, sometimes it feels like it's not fully back to normal. It was a huge increase last year, and there was a meaningful increase after labor Day, and so that's what the data shows. UM. We also have noticed over the last several years since the pandemic started that employers generally use big calendar events to put stakes in the ground

and ask people to come back. And consistently the two biggest have been Labor Day in New Year's And we we know from talking to our clients UH and users of office space that use CASTLE, that a bunch of the companies that have had policies wanting people to come back, if not all the time, at least some of the time, are starting to enforce them more strongly, and many of them use the beginning of the year after New Year's

as a stake in the ground. And so we did see a meaningful increase last year, and we think that you're going to continue to see a meaningful increases we start. I'm looking at the Castle Back to Work Barometer average available on the Bloomberg terminal. Just type in ks l b W A one, and I gotta tell you it is looking like it is a far cry from where

we were right before the pandemic hit. If we look at it on the level of one hundred back in March of we're right now, you know, the highest we've been is what close to fifty at one point mark. So do you think we get back to pre pandemic levels. I don't think we get back to a if is the pre pandemic baseline. I think you need to go one step deeper and to continue sort of where where

I'd left off. What you do notice, though, when you look at days of the week, is that on certain days of the week, namely Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, the occupancy is meaningfully higher, and it's meaningfully lower on particularly

Fridays and Mondays. And so when you go a level deeper, what you see is that, well, what you just quoted where the averages across the week, but on a national average on Friday it's thirty three percent, whereas on a national average on I think it's Tuesday or Wednesday, it's probably the same. It's but some markets, like in Texas, those numbers are now in the sixties and seventies on the highdays. So what's clear is that people are using

off the space differently. It's less consistent across the week. The spread in the low day to the highday on a national average one from nine percent at the beginning of twenty two to now at the end of two thousand twenty two, and so I think you just have you have to look at it in that lens that I think what you're gonna see is on the peak days you're gonna continue to see an increase. The Fridays and Mondays are probably gonna lag, and that's going to

keep the weekly average down pretty meaningfully. That was Mark Going. He has the chairman of Castle Systems. That reps up our first hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Carol Masser and I'm Tim Stanebeck. Ahead in our next hour, the good, the bad, and the ugly, when it comes to expectations for global climate change in the year ahead and beyond, and how markets maybe feeling a void that governments won't. Plus new advances

and aviation are on the horizon. We'll talk to the head of a company that's using artificial intelligence to fly planes dun Dune done autonomously. What that enables is that Jetson's future in a bartist in future where craft are flown completely without human air crew aboard, but baby steps to be able to beget there. Are you ready? There's still a pilot in there at least for now. Yeah, but does it mean it eventually goes away? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe not in our life. This is Bloomberg.

This is Bloomberg Business Week inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most usted business magazine plus global business, finance and tech news. As it. Have a Sloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stentovic on Bloomberg Radio. Funny Ahead in our second hour of the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week, including a look into the future of aviation. We'll do that with the CEO of Merlin Labs. It's a company intent on propelling the

nascent business a fully autonomous flight. So for our operators being able to go introduce an AI pilot, to be able to go augment human crews uh is just like really fundamental to them being able to go keep up with the demand uh for the air network. So it's been really exciting. Uh. It's the inevitable future of aviation, and we're we're delivering on that inevitable future of aviation.

You know, really pragmatic crawl walk fly approach. Plus we dive into the Pursuit section of the magazine for a look at some of the cultural touchstones to have on your radar right now, from arts and entertainment to why Formula one wants to put women in the cockpit for the first time in nearly fifty years. We're gonna break it all down for you. Look forward to that. First up this hour. The year had issue of Bloomberg Business Week magazine includes a section devoted to the green economy

and alternative energy space. Certainly timely considering the extreme weather that we've seen in California throughout the past week or so, and really as the world noted that the last eight years were the hottest on record. For gut check on the global climate, we caught up at the editor of the Bloomberg Sustainability Team, Eric Roston. The sad fact I guess, or maybe there's some uh something we can take from this, is that the annual temperature record has become quite predictable.

As you said, the last eight years or the hottest on record dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century, it's nine years in the in according to NASA UH. And what's interesting is the predictability of global warming, the reliability for all over what it's worth of um, the

extra heat that the Earth is taking on UM. It makes that it's kind of intuitive, but the the annual temperature record actually says something else, uh than other than the globe is warming, because like obviously the globe is warming. Every decade has been warmer than the last since the nineteen sixties. UM. But back to back temperature years really give you more information about whether about weather variability, about whether there was no Nino or a hot period in

the Pacific or a cool Latina. Last year there was a latina, so it was not a record year. It was only quotation marks the fifth hottest year. Well, that variability is really what I want to talk about in the idea of of of linking that kind of large scale stuff to the extreme storms that we're starting to see.

I mean, Carol, I don't know about you, but it's like every few weeks there's some you know, once in a lifetime storm, once in a generation snow that disrupts air travel over the holidays, and then a few weeks later there's a once in a century storm in Cali Fornia that leads to what seventeen deaths, I don't know, Eric, I mean, it doesn't seem like once in a lifetime or once in adjustment generation to me anymore. That's exactly right. And I think the last five to ten years have

been continuing education in what climate change really means. And one thing you here and will continue to hear, particularly in the summer, is that every every hottest summer you've ever experienced, is the coolest summer of the rest of our lives. Um. I was thinking about that. I was trying to tell my daughter, she's nineteen, and I said, you know, growing up, we had about a week in this summer. I grew up just outside New York City, a week where my parents are like, all right, let's

put the air conditioning on. We literally go from like winter to air conditioning and it's on all season. And I've talked about this before. My brother lives in Seattle, a least lived there for years. He just installed air conditioning there. These houses were never built with air conditioning in mind, because you didn't need it until now. London, right, Well, that's a that's an extremely interesting anecdotal example of something

we have seen. Last year at the Pacific Northwest, one of the most insane heat waves that it has ever been recorded. UM and air conditioning as much as we're used to it in temperate regions, UM is a critical life saving tool that we're going to rely on increasingly as the temperature gets higher. Is our infrastructure? Let's go through This is a fully interesting story. You say, we know two was hot. Here are five climate change unknowns, and one is asked the question how resilient our societies?

Is our infrastructure ready to deal with climate change? And sorry, I give it away, no, no one, no. If I can quote Tim when he said, I spoke the other day with a well known climate scientists named Andrew Dessler who's at Texas A and m uh, and I said,

I asked him to just be glib. You know, it's like the temperature record, we know what it's going to be, But like, what else should we be thinking about if if we know that we can predict this, and that's what And he gave me five things and and one of them, uh, he talked about the lack of resilience and about how small departures from the temperatures that we're

used to are starting to wreak havoc. Uh. And you know, all of our infrastructure was built for the narrow band of weather that we got used to over the last century. Texas temperatures, you know, temperatures dropped like ten degrees or so fahrenheit below. Uh, you know what they're occasionally used to in Texas. It caused a hundred billion dollars in damage and killed almost two d and fifty people. It's incredible. I mean, it's awful, And it's not just happened in

the summer. It happens in the winter as well. We saw this play out just a couple of weeks ago, when so many people were concerned and even indeed lost power in again and once in a generation storm. Uh. Is there political will given that these are such huge projects that need to be undertaken in order to fix grids, whether it's Texas, whether it's the northeast, because it's happening so much, is there the political will to actually get

these projects done? If I can go back to your famous quotation, I think it's you know, it's almost like tautological, like if there were political will, we would be seeing improvements. Um. Uh. So, you know, we've never seen UH policy put in place at the scale that has long been recommended by scientists and other observers, by business, by investors. Um. You know, the good thing is, like the miraculous thing is that we haven't needed it in a lot of ways, you know,

like between solar and wind and electric cars and batteries. Um. The rate of invention and technological penetration and change is so much faster than anybody ever would have dreamed ten years ago. Um. It's really encouraging because we have to because the government saying you got to or what we definitely well, not that it's not coming from the government,

like they're there. There's not there hasn't like all of the solar, all of the wind, all the car stuff, like very little of it, at least in the United States, happened because Washington wanted it to happen Washington. If anything else has been uh, you know, a drag in some in some specific instances. Um. But the fact is is that the market works in the market wants this to happen, and so it's happening. UM. I do think about is it too late? Like I think about the melting ice

sheets and stuff like, there's some things I don't know. Eric, with the folks that you talked to the people who really get this and your team who really get this? Is there no way to go back? There is one of the most emboldening scientific discovery use of the last several years was really came to prominence one in in a big UN climate report UM and they really for the first time said with great confidence that if pollution stops,

warming will stop shortly thereafter. For many years, it was confusing. They didn't know. They thought maybe there was more warming built in the pipeline UM, so that even if we if if emissions ended tomorrow, you know, it would still warm for for some time, like like it's a big help, you know. They think about during the pandemic, like Tim and I were talking about it earlier, like all of a sudden the blue skies were coming back and animals were coming at It was really like very telling, Yeah

right we we UM. You know another story that I think it's very powerful and it's probably not seen by as many people as it should is UM is the ozone hole, which was the environmental plague of the ES is getting better. You know, it's healing and it's going to continue to heal UM and and that's great, But the power or full message there is that that was done by policy. You know, that was done by countries getting together, recognizing the problem and finding industrial alternatives to

uh to the chemicals that were causing it. Um. So you know, while climate change is bad and while you know people unfortunately are harmed and die every year because of climate events. Um, but like the Ozone story, it's just a very powerful lesson in the fact that we can pass policies that fix these problems. Um. And back to your question, is all it takes is is political? Will you know? And even that on the margins, is

is changing? That was Eric Roston. He's the editor of the Bloomberg Sustainability Team, and be sure to read more on the green economy and energy in the Year Ahead issue. It includes stories about the carbon capture gold rush and why three will be the year your home turns into a power plant. It's out on news stands, online and at Bloomberg dot com, Slash business Week, and of course always on the Bloomberg terminal. You are listening to Bloomberg

Business Week. While we're on the topic of innovation in the energy and green space. Up next, we'll talk to the head of a company using AI artificial intelligence to help bring autonomous aircraft into the mainstream. Elevators without human operators were really scary at one point. Uh, the technology mature to the point where we're able to go deliver that safely. Trains without human operators were really really scary. Uh, and then the technology got to the point that we

were able to go do it. So we believe in Merlin in the crawl walk fly approach to be able to go get there, to be able to go do it safely, and to build that public, regulatory and operator trust in the system. Merlin Lab CEO Matt George stops by. That's on the other side. This is Bloomberg. Please sees Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim Stinevic from Bloomberg Radio. Well, for any members of our audience who may not be aware, my co host Tim Stanovik is

a bit of a plane fan. Is that a safe way of describing it? What does that mean? I just like watching planes take off and land and like going to aviation museums. Do you go to airports and just hang out? I have in the past. Are you kidding? Yeah? My wife for my birthday one year got like we went to the t W a hotel and got like a room that overlooked the runway. It's pretty cool. Oh my god, that is so sweet. All right, we know

you like planes. Well. Earlier in the broadcast, we talked about the commercial aviation business and what we can expect from that industry in the year ahead. In this next segment, we're gonna look at a different corner of the business that's attracting attention from the likes of the U. S Military autonomous aircraft. And we're not talking about drones. These are full size planes for more. Here's Tim and Bloomberg

TV and Radio Markets correspondent. I don't know about you, creating, but when I get on an airplane, I always look to the left and I like to see a couple of pilots in the cockpit getting ready to fly at plane to wherever I'm going. Here's the thing, Those days might be coming to an end where we have actual human pilots in the plane with us. Is it going to happen during our lifetimes? Merlin Labs is an aviation technology company that's working on AI technology to allow planes

to fly fully autonomously. They've got the tech already. They use them in King Airs right now. The company over the summer raised more than one million dollars to bring their total funding to about a hundred and thirty million. Matt George joins us now. He's the CEO of Merlin Labs. Everyone knows I love talking plane, so this one I've been pretty excited about. So are we gonna be uh taking passenger flights without human pilots in the in the plane with us anytime soon? Yeah? I want to pour

through cold water on Okay. The pathway for autonomy is really a junctive to pilots. So a lot of the stuff that we're working on at Merlin is truly how to be able to go create an a I pilot, But unlike some others in the space, we fund only don't believe that you can put that pilot alone in the cockpit, at least at first alone in the cockpit, meaning the co pilot will still need to be there, or meaning that you could fly with just one pilot. Yeah, So we are working h a lot of our operators.

We've made a big announcement in the Air Force about being able to go pair the Merlin pilot, which what we're developing with a human pilot, Uh, to enable safe aircraft operations. So just like any student pilot UH, there's a really, really, really long period where that pilot has to be supervised and trained by a human UH. And

it's the same with any AI system UH. And once again, we're starting out first with some of our partners UH in the defense department specifically working on some cargo and mobility applications UH and then also working in the civilian realm on cargo. So the end state of Merlin is

being an adjunctive pilot on large passenger aircraft. But then also what that enables is that Jetson's future UH in a far distant future where craft are flown completely without human air crew aboard, but baby steps to be able to go get there far distant? How many years is that? Oh? I I I If I had a crystal ball, I

would be in a very very very different business. But we will be performing our first commercial flights UH certified commercial flights UH in the next about two years with the pilot in charge, but still with a you know, human crew member sitting next to the to the moment pilot. Well. As incredible as at all sounds, it also sounds a little terrifying. I'm not gonna lie talk to us a

little bit about the pushback that you're getting here. Yeah, So anything in aviation has to be done super safely, right, Like, there's there's a reason that flying is actually one of the safes activities you can do, uh, much more so than driving. Uh, And that reaction is like really real. So that's why we we believe uh that the autonous system has to be paired with the human pilot uh and not just sort of putting anybody alone. Uh, you know,

sort of in an aircraft. That's totally uncrude. But once again, right, elevators without human operators were really scary at one point, Uh, the technology mature to the point where we're able to go deliver that safely. Trains without human operators were really really scary, uh, and then the technology got to the point that we were able to go do it. So we believe in Merlin and the crawl walk fly approach to be able to go get there, to be able to go do it safely, and to build that public,

regulatory and operator trust in the system. But once again, it's not gonna be overnight where the where the aircraft are flying uh without anybody aboard. There's a long period where computer UH and trained human pilot are teaming up together to provide a really safe experience, first for boxes

and cargo and then eventually for people. So, I don't you know, we've been covering this for a couple of years, but the pilot shortage that's played out here in the US since COVID is really creating some difficult situations for for many operators. What are you hearing from commercial aviation firms airlines about their desire for this type of technology because not only would it save them a ton of money, but it would alleviate a lot of headaches too. Yeah.

So the Internet provides ubiquitous digital connectivity for the world, and then the air network provides ubiquitous physical connectivity. So as people buy more and more things online, I don't think there's anybody who realistically believes in a world where folks are going to start buying stuff less online. So as people buy stuff more online, the demand on the

air cargo network is shot through the roof. So for our operators being able to go introduce an AI pilot to be able to go augment human crews, UH is just like really fundamental to them being able to go keep up with the demand, uh for the air network. So it's been really exciting. Uh. It's the inevitable future of aviation, and we're we're delivering on that inevitable future of aviation in a really pragmatic crawl, walk, fly approach.

We'll talk to us a little bit about the business itself, because I'm reading a little bit about your company here. Found in twenty headquartered in Boston, You've got offices around the country. You also have offices in New Zealand. We have a we have an incredible team in New Zealand. We've partnered with the Government of New Zealand to be able to go certify the first version of the Merland Pilot, and that's a joint certification program between the New Zealand

Civil Aviation Authority and the US Federal Aviation Administration. New Zealand has built an incredible reputation as being a nimble, agile regulator that's able to go try new things and do that in a really safe and reliable way. UH. So we are standing up the world's first fully autonomous still with the Safety pilot, but fully autonomous takeoff to touchdown Eric Cargo Network on the North Island of New Zealand based in Carry Carry in the Bay of Islands

in in New Zealand. Uh And New Zealand really is uh you know, going to be one of the first places in the world where a lot of the autonomy takes place, first gets tested and then exported into the rest of the world. We're super proud of our partnership between the US and New Zealand and being really critical link between those two countries. Yeah, it looks like even in New Zealand right now, just to speak to that reputation that it's built, you can get drone delivery of

certain products through wing food, coffee, hardware, pet supplies and more. So. I'm not surprised to see that you have a presence in an environment that has a regulatory environment such as that. So, Matt, before we let you go, talk to us a little bit about this partnership with the U. S. Air Force, the super Hercules transport aircraft. So what can you do in the U. S. Air Force do now to the super Hercules that you weren't able to do a couple

of years ago. Yeah, we're really excited about our partnership with the United Air Force, who clearly has been trying to bring autonomy out uh into operational service for a really long time. And the challenge always is the problem and the question that you alluded to at sort of the start of our of our chat, how do you get from where we are today to fully uncrewed operations? The Air Force has partnered with us to be able to go do sort of that two crew uh, you know,

an augmented service. That was Matt George, he's the CEO of Merlin Labs. He spoke with a creaty group to end me on Monday. So after speaking with him, are you even more comfortable about getting into something that didn't have a maybe person? Well, we're years away from it's more assistance right now. Yeah. I do think it's more years.

I mean it's such a highly regulated environment and I think passengers would say no way, but you know they're working with the military right now on those transport planes. I think it's really interesting, all right, Still to come on Bloomberg Business Week the year ahead in Luxury and Culture with our intrupid colleagues from Bloomberg. Pursuits including a look at how the city of light is reclaiming its

place at the top of the European art scene. When it comes to commerce in the top of the art market. Other cities UM, particularly London and New York UM have really have really been at the top for a long time because they have big fair UM and they have really the presences of the world's major galleries UM. But Paris in the last few years, especially with this last year with a major art fair, has kind of coming back to the place where people to go to buy

and trade art. It's just another reason to head to Paris, as if you needed another one exactly. This is Bloomberg Broadcasting from the financial capital of the world, Bloomberg Eleve in Frio in New York to Washington, d C. Bloomberg to Boston, Bloomberg one O six one to San Francisco, Bloomberg nine sixty to the country Sirius XM Channel one nine team and around the globe the Bloomberg Business app in Bloomberg Radio dot com. This is Bloomberg Business Week

with Carol Messer and Tim Stenove from Bloomberg Radio. Well as you know that your head issue, it is out and it wouldn't be complete without a peek into what three may hold when it comes to our worlds of luxury and culture. Have no fear. The Bloomberg Pursuits team is here joining us. Now we've got Pursuits editor Chris Rouser along with the Bloomberg Pursuits arts columnist James Army. James has got the lead story in this week's Pursuits section about how the Paris art scene has come roaring

back to life. Chris, first up. Okay, So I gotta be honest about this. Maybe it's because I don't know about art and culture, but I didn't realize that Paris. I believe it's culture culture. I didn't realize that Paris wasn't kind of at the top when it came to the arts scene. I mean, where did I go wrong? If you are like an attendee of museum. Certainly Paris is one of the greatest cities in the world. Have you heard of the Mona Lisa. It's not going anywhere, UM.

But when it comes to commerce in the top of the art market, other cities UM, particularly London and New York UM have really have really been at the top for a long time because they have big fairs UM and they have really the presences of the world's major galleries. Um, but Paris in the last few years, especially with this last year with a major art fair, has kind of been coming back to the place where people go to buy and trade art. And so we had James. Well,

I say, James told me this, and so you didn't. Okay, that makes me feel better. Christy, you're the ed. Really, come on, it's always a good sign for that's always a good sign for a story. Though, James, come on in on, tell us about the pitch and then actually you know more of what's going on there in Paris. I have to say that I was kind of shocked when I went, maybe right after COVID and the transformation had been kind of complete. It had been in the works for years. As I say in my piece, it's

it's not just one thing. But if you were to trace it back, you can see this huge infusion of capital from the city's luxury barons. First Pino m bernard or No than the Cardio Foundation, than the family behind gallas By at the department store. All these people have been pouring money not just into the art world, but specifically contemptor art and that sort of stead this ecosystem of not only art galleries, but also art fairs, also

contemporary artis exhibitions, and then also artists themselves. Well, does it always take a benefactor such as a Bernardo no To to kick something off like this or is it does it turn into sort of a sustaining cycle. Well, it's it's funny because you know, contemporary art follows the money. Um. With art that's being made, you need someone to pay for it, and if you don't have anyone to pay for it, you're not going to really find out about

it very often. Um, A lot of these really really rich people are funding these private museums which buy from galleries, which buy from artists studios, and which have cutting edge exhibitions, which of course then feeds more galleries and feeds more artists coming to the city. And you know, the curators who are involved in these private museums are very involved in fostering the art scene. So does it take one person, No,

But does it take rich people? Absolutely. And you can actually look at Berlin, which for a very long time was this place that I've been so excited about, um, to actually see what happens when there aren't a lot of rich people. Eventually artists migrated elsewhere because they just weren't getting enough traction from the people who mattered. Paris

has a lot of people who matter. And the other thing that I thought was kind of interesting is, yeah, it's a lot of wealthy folks coming in and private money, if you will. But the government, right, Chris, and France is also super supportive, uh, not only in its actions but also in financial support. Yeah. So France is very generous with uh its arts funding more than a lot of other European countries. Last year it's spent more than

four billion euros on it. In Germany as to what James was just saying, spent about two point three billion euros. So it's you know, this is a lot of money, um that's available in a lot of different ways for artists and enjoyers of ore to take advantage of. Okay, Chris Rouser. So let's say you want to take a little trip to Paris, but maybe you want that little

trip to be an extended stay. Don't do it. Don't do it not thou Increasingly now these boutique hotels or at least big companies, I should say, are betting on extended stay businesses, and it's in the new issue of Bloomberg Pursuits in Bloomberg Business Week. So take us into why the big hotels are kind of getting in on this. I mean, does it have anything to do with Airbnb? Yeah, well it does. It has it to do with a

lot of things. So a lot of really big hotel companies are getting into a space that we used to probably think of it maybe a little bit sad, so an extended to stay hotels. I think of it as like a sort of grab like uh place for a traveling sales and with day in a strip mall somewhere, and it's very cookie cutter beach probably smells like cigarette and or maybe it's a thing where like Chris Rouser's opinions are his own. No sorry, go ahead, keep going.

Or maybe there's like a duchess who like moved to New York and she's staying at the wall door and

she's living there for a long time. That sounds less sad. Yeah, So it's you know, big companies um like Hyatt and Marriott are getting into the middle range of of extended state hotels, which are you know, more luxurious, more comfortable, maybe even more comfortable than your home, um, and feeling very homey because they know that people are can work from anywhere these days, and there the idea of working living in another city at a sort of a reasonable rate,

but with the comforts and conveniences of hotel is a big business. And of course, even before the pandemic started that trend, we saw airbnb really take over the world and turn you know, open up a lot of avenues for staying for a while with the conveniences of home but far from home. Now. I know, James, when you went over to Paris to do your story, it was all work and no play. But Chris, but Chris, this

is a big deal where like people want to combine. Yep, we're going to do some work, but we're also gonna have some play. Yeah, I mean, Belie sure is probably one of the most painful works that we've come across recently. Portmanto's as far as they go. But it's really true. And um, you know, they're sending hundreds of millions of dollars on these and and we're seeing them everywhere from Tokyo to Bangkok, um to Atlanta, Georgia, and um, the idea is kind of like they're built around communities. A

lot of these new places, UM. So you know there's communal spaces. There's a coffee shop that turned into a bar. At night, maybe you walk up a staircase to your room instead of an elevator, which makes you feel a little bit more like you're at home and in a

connected space. And in a lot of cases, these are being built um you know, attached to stadiums or concert halls or malls or air even airports, so that there's like an additional UM lifestyle aspects for community or travel aspect sort of built right into into where you're going to be, right And a lot of it has to do with you know, maybe you're going to experience something like maybe you want to go see an F one race? How do you like this? For a second, can we

get to another story in the section? Uh F one women in the cockpit for the first time in about fifty years? What's going on? Chris? So you know as Americans we have really caught onto F one pretty recently, UM. And you know, part of it has to do with that with that Netflix show which everybody really loved, Drive to Survive UM, and it really made the characters of F one, the drivers into these people that we sort

of fell in love with a little bit. And if you watch the show, you'll notice that they're all men um And it's not that there are no women drivers out there, it's just that there's not been really a funnel for women drivers in the various competitions that feed into form one Formula one. There's not really been a funnel for them explicitly to try to get into Formula one. And it's certainly not that Formula one only has men's racers. There there have been female racers, but the last one

was in nineteen seventies six. And Hannah Elliott writes this story. I mean, she's a perfect person to write the story because she's a great perspective on the auto industry um from the perspective of one of the few women calumnists. And this woman, Lela Lombardi, who raced in nineteen seventy six, was a formerly former delivery van driver for her family's

butcher shop in Italy. It's when a journal when a journalist asked her how it felt to drive such big cars, she said, I don't have to carry it, I just had to drive it. So you asked a dumb questions, you get a good answer. Okay, you feel like it was like, hey, little lady, how did you do this? That's what's going on. A great section looking forward to the new year and all of the coverage you guys

are going to be doing from the Pursuits team. So you guys, thank you so much, big thank you to Bloomberg BusinessWeek Arts columns James T. Me In a Bloomberg for Stats editor Chris Rouser. You're listening to Bloomberg business Week. Coming up a new book explains how to win the fight against perpetual distraction in our increasingly digital world. That I was doing something else not fine, Okay, this is Bloomberg. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and

Tim Stinovic from Bloomberg Radio. So how many times do you sit down to do something only to be distracted by the pin of your phone? So you pick it up, you look at the text, and the next thing you know, you're on Instagram watching videos of airplanes tam taking off in landing at forty minutes has passed and you never got to that thing that you sat down to do.

How often does that have every day. It is crazy, like I feel like I'm working on something and then like somebody something comes at me an email and I'm off, And then I start Google League and I'm donn a rabbit hole and I'm like, what was my initial test? Yeah? My question is is there any hope? Right? There has to be Well, it sounds like I know a little thing or two about this. It's because it's the kind of you know, what happens in our lives right now.

Getting that focus back is the subject of a new book. It's called Attention Span by Dr Gloria Mark. She's Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and we asked whether our various digital stimuli are affecting our brains. There's some research that suggests that there there could be some changes to our brain. What I can say is that there are changes to our behavior, to our attention behaviors, and and that's uh something that we can you know,

empirically measure and show. We also show that there's a relationship between this fast attention shifting and an increase in stress. How about behavior change? Because I want to know how I can and I noticed this. I just sometimes I'll delete Twitter from my phone because I know I'm spending too much time on it, even though the app is

no enger on my phone. Sometimes I'll still open up my phone instinctively when I'm like on an escalator, in an elevator or something, and then try to find Twitter, even though I know it's not there. It's like a reflex for me sickness. Please please help me, doctor. Yeah, it's it's a muscle memory. I mean, you know, when you do something for a long time, it becomes a habit,

you know. And I want to emphasize that we we tend to blame notifications for you know, this is the reason why we're distracted, But it's just as likely for people to interrupt themselves. So about half the time people, we are our worst interrupters. Uh, you know, so it's not we can't just blame it on things that are external to us. Remember when multitasking um dr mark was considered a good thing. But you know, the research shows

that it's not. There's actually it's actually research that's been going on for decades that shows that when people switch their attention two different asks. We know that blood pressure goes up. There are physiological markers that indicate stress that show this this goes up as well. We know my own research looking at people in the wild where they wore heart rate monitors. We find that stress goes up when people are switching their attention and and people report

subjectively that their stress is higher. So all these measures are consistent. So how do we find focus and fight distraction which is the subtitle of your book. We need to do work on different levels there. You know, there are individual solutions, there are also collective solutions that could be done at an organizational level or even societal level.

At an individual level, I think that we can draw in the work of Albert Banduri's a very famous social psychologist who had a lot of success in getting people to improve their self efficacy. They could change they could stop smoking, top substance abuse, and I think there are certain principles that could be applied to help us, you know, control our attention better. For example, we have so many automatic actions. We we grab our phones, which check email,

we check social media. These are done automatically. Dr Gloria Mark is the Chancellor's Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine. Her new book is out now. It's called Attention Span. I'm just gonna start putting my headphones on more. What did you say? Something funny? Funny? All right. That wraps up the weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm Carol Masser and Tim Stanovk. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street Time on Bloomberg Radio. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Global News and check out our Bloomberg Business Week podcast. You can find that at Bloomberg dot com, Apple, or wherever

you get your podcast. Bloomberg Business Week is available on newsstands now at Bloomberg dot com and always on the Bloomberg terminal, and you can also see us on Bloomberg Quicktake. We're available on Bloomberg dot com, slash qt, and streaming platforms like Roku, Apple TV, Samsung TV, and more. Have a good weekend, everyone, stay say this is Bloomberg