Surveillance: This AI Cycle Is Different, NYU's Dhar Says

year note two point four six three percent. That's where I want to start this morning, at the front end of the yield curve, and we have a great gust to do it with Jerum Schneider, PIMCO, Head of short term bond Portfolios. Good morning to Jerome, Good morning, Good morning. Let's just start with two lines that I picked up from the notes I saw in your most recent research. Short term bond strategy to manage two things, potential defense in volatile markets and the optionality to move to higher

risk allocations opportunistically. Let's just walk through those two issues right now. Why do I need the potential defense in volatile markets with VOLTSI love so. The question that remains for investors is how long is this economic cycle going to persist for and admittedly the financial conditions have eased quite a bit since the concerns of the fourth quarter, but monetary policy is only one ingredient to to the

market conditions that helped perpetuate positive returns going forward. Ultimately, what we're gonna be dealing with is continued bouts of illiquidity,

continued increases of volatility within the marketplace. And what's really happened is investors, whether your retail or investors or institutional have to be thinking about returns or expected returns from the construct of not only thinking about, hey, I could earn five seven percent or even more obviously historically in equities or emerging markets those higher higher beta allocations, but

doing so with higher volatility expectations. In other words, we need to calibrate expectations for returns on a risk adjusted basis taking into account more volatility due to the uncertainty within the marketplace. So at the moment, volatility is really loud cross asset exactly what binds effects, et cetera. But think about how quick that healing process happened, and think how quickly how many bouts of illiquity we've had simply over the past three years and illiquidity. I'm using as

a proxy here for volatility. But the volatility could emanate from politics. It could it could emanate from left tail risks such as China trade. And while these risks have actually been elongated, the runways of these risks, whether from monetary policy, trade policy, or even Brexit, they've elongated. The uncertainty could actually persist for quite some time over the

over the next few years. So while we have a relative period of warmth as as spring approaches, don't be don't be fooled, and we should be prepared for that higher volatility. I just figured this out. Are you here to do a double? Is he gonna be on the real yield today? One television at least? But you're just this is your power, This is the power of feraoh booking the brightest guy in the world. Short term paper. Yeah, what the commercial paper used to be the thing we

looked at the pulse. What's the new commercial paper? Guys like you look at every day. I'll tell your story, Tom, it's really interesting. So two years ago, when I was sitting in these seats, we're talking about the evolution of money market funds. Money market fund reform and putting people to sleep, telling him that the end of the money market fund world was coming soon, and we saw a

trillion dollars worth of prime money market fund assets. Those that buy commercial paper go and buy government only money organt funds, those buy T bills de risking. So the story now has actually changed over the past few months. People have been lulled to sleep that they want to de risk. They're de risking out of these higher volatility classes equities, and they're putting their money, ironically back into

prime money market funds. There's been a hundred billion dollars of new assets put into prime money market funds for an incremental return of just a few basis points over the safety of T bills. So why would you do that? And I think ultimately the world of commercial paper has once again become rather complacent to the to the notion of any type of credit risk, and we have to be more discerning in terms of credit risk. Clearly, you

can steal that for the real appreciating seeds. So let's go to the next line to to have the optionality to move to higher risk allocations opportunistically. Are you looking for another December kind of moment, not an end of cycle moment, but a moment where that risk aversion builds, the faith in the cycle fades rapidly, and you get to deploy some capital into risk assets. So the starting point of analysis and portfolio management is diversification, but more importantly,

managing downside risks. And we've really viewsed that managing downside risk is beginning in two thousand eighteen at Pimcoe, where we were really thinking about focusing on corporate credit and differentiating corporate credit from the data the index, picking specific stories that we liked, under accentuating those that we didn't,

and diversizing. Now, granted, this was a process that began in late two thousand seventeen early two eighteen, and we didn't know when when actually the opportunity would would persist, but we thought, you know, there would be some some tail risks along the way, maybe some rude awakenings, but ultimately the growth, the slowing growth that we were seeing in the globe economy would translate into opportunity. When it

happened in the fourth quarter, we had access liquidity. We saw some inclinations that liquidity was being dampened back in October off of our short term team at PIMCO, and that there was. As a result, we became more cautious from a liquidity standpoint when those opportunities pent became opportunistic. We found that the recalibration in in in UH spreads wider actually made things pretty good on a risk adjusta basis. To take some of our underweights back to market weight.

In other words, some of the richness in the market was not really attractive. We sold it, and then as an active manager, we found an opportunity to actually redeploy capital when it became cheap, and more importantly, earned a liquidity premium or excess return by providing the market liquidity when traditional equity providers like banks, etcetera. Weren't there. So you've played it really well the last few months. You bought the weakness of December. I just wanted to what

degree you're fighting the strength of the first quarter. So we've seen credits move in dramatic fashion. Some credits that were used at Libor plus forty six to nine months ago and blew out to Lybra plus three hundred or more are back to Libra plus fifty. So there's been almost a round trip. So you're right. This is a this is a market where you want to be trading simply focusing on credit work from the bottom up, and and that's what we're doing on our corporate credit side.

So there is a there's basically a momentum now to take a breath. Let's find some opportunities to potentially be more defensive. At this point in time, in two thousand and six, people were screaming for seven basis points, ten basis points. Are we back to that silliness? No, where people are just trying to find the next ten basis points. It's hundreds of a percentage point. It's more fundamental now. So that was more structured, the leverage in the system.

With structured now it's more fun fundamental, whereby we have to differgiate, you know, the you know, the cream from the from the rest of from the rest of the product. And as a result, that just takes homework, it takes resources. And as a result, having diversification, finding other opportunities to earn spread an income as we're doing, and mortgages some high quality ASSETBAC securities that actually offers your plenty of

plenty of avenues. More importantly, I think this is The thing time is there's no real reason to reach for yield when you have portfolios they can yield between three and three and a half percent. Those are actually pretty attractive in a world where dividends are less than two percent, So why take the why take equity risk of this

than you Pimco as well? What a joy for John Farrell and me always have Brian Weezer in our studios with pivotal research and of course brilliant work on the linkage of advertising into social We learned a few weeks ago that he had gone to the dark side and returned to the death start the sound side of group EM where he is helping them not so much with messaging but just thinking about what's out there. And the

first we've got to talk about is absolute brilliance. Is there's not one office dog a group M is there? How many are there? Well? It? I work out of the Portland, Oregon office of one of our agency's mind Share and we have three dogs. You have a three dog night. We need a dog in the office. And and to be clear, the one of the dogs wears a bow tie every day. Tell me a code him Tom No, his name is Cooper. I think Cooper, that's cute, but it's a wonderful environment. It really is. What told

you about how different it is. You used to cover these companies on the South Side, thinking about a sad on w p P. Once upon a time I had cells, I had buys. My position on the durability the agency model never changed, I'd argue, even when I had cell ratings from every agency holding company, I argued I was probably the greatest long term champion in the sense that I believed in the durability in a way that I think very few people, uh in equity markets. Yeah, I

heard that. Yeah, absolutely. What's the state of advertising right now? I mean it is Facebook, Google, Facebook, Google, Facebook Google. Do you go in and try to change that with a new w PP after sir Martin or do you live with Facebook? No? Well, I mean here's the thing, And I think when I joined I worked for another holding company in two thousand three ten, and when I showed up, they're also coming from all street. The weird thing was how everyone's complaining about how dependent they were

on television, how bad it was alternatives. Well, they have alternaate exactly. And but the point is that even then, every advertiser needed to think what was our alternative. In cinema, for example, was something that was held out as a hope, right, the idea that you could put it put money into on screen advertising in different minds, and then of course the Internet was considered an alternative. There will be alternatives, and every advertiser needs to think of the best alternative

negotiating agreement. You have been more than anyone I know, strongest on you know what TV will survive, etcetera. Now there's certain networks I'll lead with NBC Universal who are saying we need fewer ads in prime time or on YouTube. They have those silly ads where you hit skip ad to get through them. That's a guy like you're it's your fault we're seeing those ads. What is the new Brian?

We'ser attention span? Well for seconds? To be clear, I think that clutter is a significant problem, and I think that individuals. It doesn't take thought leadership to know that John and I are living in it it. I know, but I think every advertiser has to think differently about whether or not they should be allocating as much money to UH spots and dots for lack of a better do you guys know how much we hate that garbage cluttering

up everything out there. We're not going to a commercial break now, are we, No, I know, But it's people. I mean, can you put any more ads on the uniforms? And English question? To what degree? Halfway established a bit of a false economy web by the advertiser believes that they're getting clicks and each month, but actually there's nothing behind it. So this is arguably the most important thing when it comes to UH. Well, a lot of the people I work with things that are focusing on it's

things like viewability of ads. It's things like, uh, knowing that ads were actually engaging with consumers. Unfortunately, the industry is really good at optimizing trees and not so good at optimizing forests. And what that means practically is, uh, there's a focus on keeping costs down, which means quality may also go down. It's really hard to justify that. Let's just say you're you could own the entirety of an AD block, and maybe that AD block maybe a

thirty second block instead of two minutes. That might be worth five times or ten times as much. The problem is so much of the industry so focused on the cost per unit, and that focus on the individual unit is a big problem and we actually need to in my position, we need to help marketers think more holistically about how to optimize the entirety of what they're doing. So it is a problem, and I think people might try to helps is that the Pluck go the distance

radio is a really strong media. Actually all seriousness, I mean, but that's a good example that radio and audio more generally speaking, is something that more markers should be thinking of. Stop they're doing. I mean, we have been humbled by the success of our podcast. John and I collectively fell off the chair when Bank of America first stepped up and said we believe in your project, Apple Music, Spotify and the whole thing. There's Brian, They're doing audio because

they don't have tough time to score around with video. Right. Well, I think that frankly that because television and video based advertising it is expensive at a per unit basis, is perceived as being cluttered. Uh. There is a real problem, especially with younger audiences, in terms of reaching them on traditional TV. You're reaching frequency curves look all out of whack. There's a lot of interest in audio. Now that said, I could have said that five years ago, and radio

broadly to find early grew right. There's a shift to spend to Spotify, Pandora to some degree, but the industry collectively didn't grow. That said, we can still advocate for Hey, Marketer, if you haven't thought of this, you really need to. Let's talk about the privacy scandal that has engulfed the likes of Facebook over the last twelve months. How does

that change things for your clients? So every brand has to think whether they think or not they should be thinking about whether or not risks and rewards of working with any given media partner are worthwhile, right, and so when it comes to the privacy issues with Facebook in particular, but more generally, we call it brand safety, right, Uh, brands have to consider if their association with a media owner has a negative effect or if because the consumer

might see that they might be self loathing essentially, and while they're consuming the medium, think I hate being on this medium and I hate the advertisers who are making this possible. I mean, that can happen, but more generally, UH, there's a risk of association with media owners too, in the mind of people who are not using the platform right, enabling bad behaviors, enabling societal problems, whatever. Every brand has to consider whether or not their brand is tarnished by

any association. The vast majority of advertisers have not considered that they are negatively impacted at this point in time. But that is the way to think about it. Again, even in my prior role, I still would have said Facebook and the lights are going to keep growing, because that's not a connection. That's let's think about private data

as a currency. At some point, private datoris a currency is going to become so expensive that the advertiser and advertising incrementally is going to have to get more expensive. Let's say, yes, Okay, now I see what you're saying. So I would argue that every brand needs to make sure that if they can't persuade a consumer to supply willingly their data to the brand for use in targeting, they probably don't deserve it. And that goes back to the whole idea. What is a brand? Of brand is

supposed to be a mark of trust. Of brand is supposed to be a mark of why a consumer should want to engage. You think, Feral thinks this is an interview. You're here to consult. What does radio need to do to stay red. It's fiber right now. I mean, come on, give me some thought leadership on how to drive Bloomberg surveillance forward over the next five years. Oh yeah, I know,

i'd focus. Well, I mean, I'm going to bridge these two comments here because to the extent that if you can imagine a world where concerns around privacy are enhanced, where laws and regulations are more pronounced with respect how data is shared, and the relative advantage of using different media will evolve. Radio doesn't quite have that issue, at least traditional audio. Now that said, I think that every advertiser wants to find ways to use data that they have.

I would argue an advertiser's best position to do gather a ton of data on the insights of consumers using a given media, use a ton of data on the output of an impact, and then let the art take the work in the middle. Yeah, we did all that and we come up with John's TV platform. The real yield. I mean, they saw a pure fixed income. That's all that one of the Brian Weezer. This has been painful. Thank you so much as well. Congratulations. Do you know

what I'm you have no idea. Yeah, Field of Dreams, okay, Radiota out of the corn field. No, no idea, Okay, thank you, I mean it works. Brian Weezer, thank you so much. I'm sorry, but I think this. Yeah, that's a baseball movie. You have seen that movie. Okay, But anyways, just as really the association is is you just you work into it. It's like you don't it's heaven. No, it's Bloomberg surveillance. And we almost went with that phrase. I have been so so so waiting for this conversation.

We're gonna go for you two hours NonStop. I'm kidding, of course, but we're gonna carve out on a Friday, clear language on what's all the rage. And it may be one you're in nanotechnology and this, that and the other, but once again it is the use and abuse of

the phrase artificial intelligence. All of this goes back to a meeting in nineteen at Dartmouth College where the the brains of Pittsburgh showed up from the University of Pittsburgh in a small school called Carnegie Mellon University and Allen Newell and her Herbert Simon and other giants. Actually, he tried to figure out how we would handle computers and machines. Flash forward and out of Pittsburgh at n y U as vacant dar and he joins us this morning. We

are honored to have you here, professor. There's so much to straighten out here. What is most wrong in the new vogue of artificial intelligence is it's covered by the media. What drives you nuts the most? Um? Really happy to be here, Tom, And incidentally, Hope Simon was one of my mentors and graduate school and on my thesis committee, so I was honored to have him um and get to know him. I think AI has seen several hype cycles lost four decades full disclosure, my brother was in

one of them. Continued, So you know we've so so I've seen several of these hype cycles during my career, and h we're seeing another one at the moment. What do we get wrong? What's the hype that drives you nuts? Well, you know the by the way, I think this one is different, right, So as just want to qualify that. But I think the there's a lot of misunderstanding that AI will solve everything that machines have, you know, will

have become incredibly intelligent and they'll replace us. And you know that may well happen in the very long term, but I think that we ought to have some somewhat muted expectations. I mean, we've certainly come a long way, but I think we have a really long way to go go. Jack Clark, writing for Bloomberg four years ago, says, this time is different. You just alluded to that what's different now within artificial intelligence or these machines running our lives.

So I think what's what's different now is that we've made a dent in solving perception kinds of problems. So machines have gotten a lot better at seeing, hearing, getting better at reading um And I think what that does is it changes the nature of interaction with the machine. The machine can now ingest inputs directly from the environment instead of them being formatted in a way and structured

in the way that it can understand. Right, So it's able to deal with more instructured kind of input like humans are. And and that's interesting in many domains, including healthcare. But you can look at images and stuff like that. But in your high school math in India, I'm sure you got to this quickly. Linear regressions and you've got a signal on the back end, which is that risk

that's out there, that unknowable that's out there. We're all living this right now with the emotion of two plane crashes over software in a cockpit that just flat out didn't work. That's certainly what the FAA is getting too quickly. Is there a new reliance on machines and on computer technology where that risk, that sigma it becomes too unknowable. Well, you know, you're you're raising an incredibly important question. And you know, one of my questions really is when do

we trust machines? And the way I look at trust is in terms of risk. In my mind, it boils down to how often will the machine be wrong? And what are the consequences when the machine is wrong? Things like drive a less cars, autopilot. The consequences of era are severe. Uh. And so those kinds of decisions tend to be particularly sensitive. When they talk about handing control. You're in class throwing chalk at somebody at n WANT.

You're the dumbest kid in engineering n y U. And if you look at the risk distribution, we all understand it's not gaussy and it's not a normal bell curve like the height of our high school class. It can be a goofy distribution or whatever, which is like if I paint ten thou BMW's one of them will be wrong. That's a lot different than airplanes crash exactly. What's what's different about airplanes and driver a less cars is you're

not really interested in their distribution. You're not exactly gonna really interested in the average case. You're interested in the worst case. Right, it's that worst case Rumsfeldian unknown that you're really concerned about. That you may not have counter guy like you with the privileges studying with the CMU

guys at Pittsburgh a million years ago. If if you look at these tech boys out and still these children out in Silicon Valley saying we're gonna do driverless cars, you've got in your head all those risks out there, When do we actually get driverless cars? Given how each of us perceives the next traffic accigen accident very slowly, is my prediction. I don't think this is going to happen overnight. I think we're going to have to get used to living with these new entities on the on

the road. I think they'll be highly restricted to begin with, and we'll just have to wait and see what kinds of mistakes they make in the wild, which we haven't seen yet. Right, those are the unknowns that we have yet to see, and unless we see them, we're not going to trust them. The wild is the potholes on fifty nights. Exactly here, Anderic, if you're just joining us, v Sandar with us with an important conversation on all this uproar over AI. Okay, so we're gonna have driverless cars,

and we've established the risks that are out there. There's a whole financial thing where now we're extrapolating out billions of dollars of equity value on hopes and dreams of the technology you're actually expert in, how do you respond to finance? This has a timeline of two years, where you've got a timeline at twenty years well in you know,

in in finance. Um, it's you know, as strange as it may sound, this this is a an easier problem than uh than you know, automated and and and and uh you know, autopilot on cockpits, where the consequences of EA are really large. In finance, you can actually look at their you know, coming back to those distributions, they become important, right because you have to have expectations about how how often the machine will be wrong. But the

time this is critical. The timelines, Professor are so different from experienced, grizzled guys like you versus what I hear from the tech crew. You're you're working on two different two regimes of time, aren't you. Yes. I think that it takes time to get used to looking at the

behavior of these machines in any kind of domain. Um, And I think that one has to have expectations that, you know, when you build a machine to predict financial markets, you have to you had there's gonna be some time over which you have to observe its behavior to get comfortable with it as well. So I think, uh, you know, I think expectations have to be realistic. You can't just think about we're gonna have these intelligent machines making investment decisions.

What's your timeline on self driving cars? You're starting with Mari Barr of GM who's all pumped up about this. She's a legit engineer. She gets the math. What's your timeline on self driving cars? To Mary Bar like I said, I think it depends on the evidence that we get from the wild right when when we actually start looking at these vehicles, uh, you know, we'll get some data.

But if I were to sort of throw out a you know, a number out there, I'd say that we'll be looking at least five years before we can get comfortable that we have enough data to trust machines but driving us around. Thank you so so much. I would kill to have you together with one of that. But bring Jolson up at m I t the two of you together would just be lights out. It's dark. There's some n y you truly expertise in all the rage

the vogue that is artificial intelligence. I think you can tell from my question, you know right right, maybe no artificial intelligence to tie a bow tie, Professor dar, thank you so much. Uptown into the west and it has been a flat lands for well over twelve fifteen years. Is called Hudson Yards for those you globally on the shores of the Hudson River, our Viviana hurtado is that the newly acclaimed Hudson Yards with six beautiful skyscrapers and a lot of hopes. Viviana, what is the major hope

of this development of Hudson Yards. Well, you know it has been said Tom that this development Hudson Yards could very well shift the culture, the arts. Uh. You know, so much of the economic vibrancy of Manhattan to the West Side. And so today we are just about a less than an hour away from the real big kickoff half happening. Um. Certainly a lot of excitement. There has

been music in my chest. But that's really the hope and the vision particularly so many people involved, as you were saying, over the course of fifteen plus years, but really today the show, the vision is going to belong to related in Oxford, Viviana. How much is still the vision and how much is actually actuality at this point? How much commerce? How much a residential space has been killed? Yeah, definitely.

So right now what we're seeing is just about half of what is going to be the full Hussant Yards complex opening, So the public square and gardens is going to open. We know that there's residential half of that is going to be for sale, half of it is going to be rental. Uh, and there's going to be the commercial space as well that opens today with global brands being located there. Loreal USA, one of those big

names that's taken up shop here. Speaking of taking up shop, we do have the shops and that's being anchored by Neiman Marcus, migrating from the big d of Dallas to the big Apple of New York City. But again, today marks what is only the half opening in many ways and opening, but only half the project. It's going to still be several more years until the full project is

built and ringing in. By the way, guys, at twenty five billion dollars, Vivianna, I have to wonder, given all of the development in Long Island City, given all of the development downtown, is there enough demand for this? Well, that's the question on everybody's mind, right, Lisa, because the truth of the matter is we are living in a time where you have retail. We're just talking about retail

and the shops opening up here anchored by Neiman. Well, this has not been a good retails season, has it, uh? And we know that here at least in Manhattan we saw the iconic Lord and Taylor Clothes Henry Bendel as well.

They are making a very bold and a very big pitch here opening a bricks and mortar store when the market, certainly and the conventional wisdom is saying that that customers are migrating online, uh, and so that is going to be the big pitch what they are hoping, of course, and that with this shift uh that's going to come to the West Side, it's going to bring in a lot of foot traffic, uh, tourists who are going to be nearby at the high Line, as well as the

people who are going to work and live here. And that it's going to really give uh this vibrancy and economic vibrancy to what some people are calling a vertical retail space. But that Lisa, you and I may remember as just being called them all Vivian or Toto, thank you so much to Hudson Yards overlooking the Hudson River. As well, I should tell you that Michael Bloomberg, the founder majority owner of Bloomberg LP, played a role in the development of the Hudson Yard project as Mayor of

New York. Lisa Brown Winson, Tom Keenan, what we're gonna do here like I used to do a lot or and maybe we'll get back to it in two thousand nineteen as well, is find books where you go, you hate the author because you go, this looks so interesting, so good, I have to push seven other books aside and read it. You will do that with ten Caesar's because every time you've tried to do Roman history, your eyes have glazed over those high above Cayuga's waters in Ithaca.

Have had the good fortune of ancient history for years with Barry Strauss. He's truly legendary within the study of Rome and bringing it to life, and he has succeeded in doing that with ten Caesar's. Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. Barry, congratulations on the accessibility of ten Caesar's. But you've written seven other books or whatever on Rome. Why ten Caesar's. Well, thanks so much for the kind words.

It's good to be hated, uh Tense Cazars. You know, I was interested in this subject ever since I saw I Claudius in the nineteen seventies, uh, and it really got me into the idea that there's something special about uh these Roman emperors, and they just had a remarkable ability to market themselves and make their own stories larger than anything else that was going on in the Roman world at the time. And I think that's one of

the reasons we're still interested in them today. This is so important, But far more important is the fact Lisa Bramowitz has had forty seven cups of coffee in Rome and is completely up to speed on all this. She will read your book anxiously at waits the movie coming out in three years. Lisa jump in here with Professor Strauss. Well, it's it's it's not only fascinating from the personalities who made their stories larger than life, but this is the

foundation of democracy as we know it. And I'm wondering with these ten Caesars, is there a unifying factor beneath their vibrant and diverse personalities. Oh yeah, I think that all of them were able to make change their friend. And you know, in a way, the model of the Roman Empire is one that comes from a more recent Italian novel, and that is, if we want things to stay the same, everything has to change. And these emperors really knew how to do it. They knew how to

keep Rome Roman by making it less Roman. Ironically, is that may seem they moved the They're able to govern without Italy, without Rome, to bring new people into the elite um, and to accept change and I think that's one of the reasons why the empire lasted so long. One thing that I love about the book is the titles for each of the chapters, Vespassion, the Commoner, Nero the Entertainer, Tiberius the Tyrant. Which was your favorite Caesar to write about? I think Hadrian, you know, because he's

so complicated. Uh he said, a combination of of good and evil, of you know, extraordinary talent and just cheer wickedness. Um, it's kind of hard to beat that. And also such a such a vast Kansas, from Hadrian's wall to Germany to Athens, to Jerusalem to North Africa. You know, he's just all over the place. Very stress for this. The book is tend Caesar's Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. And of course we deliver this to your folks on

March fifteen, The IDEs of March. Barry, when you teach the course, what is the thing that we get most wrong about the eyes of March? We use it, we say it, we do it constantly. Correct us, how should we interpret Roman IDEs of March? Oh? God, where to begin? Well, season wasn't killed on the capitol on the Capitol line, Hill um. And he wasn't killed in the senate as Shakespeare says. He wasn't killed in the senate house that

we tourists see Rome. It all took place about half mile Oi and the law of Argentina if you're if you're walking around Rome. But I guess the biggest thing is that we think that Brutus and cash Us were the guys behind it, and Brutus is the one who has said who who betrayed Caesar? Well, you know, um, So I think the biggest thing actually is into Brute.

Caesar never actually said it to Brute. He probably just groaned as he was being killeda said in Greek, you too, my son, which could have been a real insult if he actually said it. Because the room Caesar hadn't a head an affair with Brutus's mother, and the rumor was that Brutus was his illegitate son, and so Caesar saying in a way, you just killed your father and that's a terrible crime. According to Romo, just to see how stro just crushes our illusions. So much of this Lisa's

Roman excitement. And I think of Darius Aria of the great filma film and photographer PBS who want me around Rome on. But for anybody who's not been to Rome your advantages read Barry Strauss ted Caesar's And what's so cool to me, Lisa is it just comes alive. It does. And of course these personalities are really colorful, Professor Strauss,

I'd love to get your sins. As the Roman Empire progressed early Middle and then as it really was on the precipice of failure, how did some of the leaders fail to adapt to change in a way that gave it lasting power? How did they fail to adapt to change? Uh? Well, I you know, Diocletian would be a good example a failure to adapt. M He, like many Romans, after a half century of wars, invasions, defeats, epidemics, inflation, he thought there was a problem with the gods. You know, the

gods just weren't on Rome side. And the way he looked at it is the way to save Rome was to get rid of the atheists, which is how he looked at the Christians, because they didn't believe in the Olympian gods. So he started the Great Prosecution of the Christians, which is quite terrible but also an utter failure. And in the end he had to admit defeat. He is succeeded by Constantine, who is the first Christian emperor, and turns it around and says, yeah, you're right, we do

have a problem with the gods. But the solution is not doubling down on the old religion. It's accepting a new religion, UM and he sets the empire on the road to becoming Christian and also to surviving. So I think Clesia's an example of somebody who tried to dig his heels into the past and it just wasn't going to work. One other aspect that I love about the book is your highlighting of women and the relationships of some of the powerful women and the ten Caesar's throughout

these three hundred plus years. Can you talk a little bit about that. Yeah, you know, we the Romans were definitely macho and sometimes misogynistic, and we tend to just focus on the men. But all of these emperors, beginning with Augustus, knew that in order to be successful, UH, they would also have to reach out to women. Augustus is married to Olivia for fifty four years. It's one of the most interesting partnerships between UM two powerful people

in history. Um august Olivia was a Roman noble. She wasn't just Augustus's wife, but she was his advisor. He consulted her, he brought her with her when he traveled around the empire. She was very shrewd um and they were. They were a true power couple working together. Then we find some others like Vespasian, who rises from being a commoner to being emperor, and he's very much helped by the fact that his mistress is a slave woman who is working for UM, one of the top imperial women,

UM caligulous grandmother, Claudius's mother and Antonia. She helps Vespasian and ultimately he becomes emperor. He's now a widower, she becomes his common law wife. So it's stories like that and like that. Who really gives we have more to talk about. We're gonna have to have you back here to get through another seven uh emperors as well ten Caesar's Roman Emperors from Augustus to Constantine. It is shockingly accessible. I think of Robert Hughes Classic Rome and many many

other books, and you get through them. But Barry Strauss just said, does it incredibly well? In course, you remember him as author of the Death of Caesar, whos did so well as well ten Caesar's from Cornell's Barry Strauss. We thank him today. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whichever podcast platform you prefer. I'm on Twitter at Tom Keane before the podcast. You can always catch us worldwide.

I'm Bloomberg Radio.