Aug 16, 2024 · 59m · more-or-less
#60: Body Futurism and Why Gen Z is Ditching Tech · More or Less Podcast
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of the More or Less podcast, hosts Jessica Lessin, Sam Lessin, Brit Morin, and Dave Morin debate Big Tech workplace complacency and executive tenure before exploring why Gen Z is abandoning software utopianism for 'body futurism,' physical optimization, and real-world gatherings.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 99.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 6.9 Guest teaching 4.2 Guest disagreement 4.1 The hosts pushing back 4.5
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 5:23 Sam dismisses Google's 20 percent time as slacking
Sam bluntly invalidates Brit's experience, arguing that 20 percent time was merely an excuse to do less work and goof off without joining competitors.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 4:34 Brit forcefully rejects Sam's cushy Google claimBrit immediately halts Sam's framing of Google engineering as lazy, citing her intense four-year tenure and the demanding onsite hours required of employees.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 5:40 Brit details the rigor of 20 percent executive pitchesBrit educates Sam on the formal operational realities of pitching projects directly to Larry, Sergey, and Eric while maintaining full-time deliverables.
The host holds their own ▶ 55:42 Jessica unpacks JPMorgan's post-SVB Silicon Valley strategyJessica showcases her reporting acumen by connecting JPMorgan's Chase Center podcast sponsorship directly to its First Republic acquisition and private wealth ambitions.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Back-to-School Banter and Tracking Remote Work | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 | The co-hosts open with playful banter about kids returning to in-person school and Eric Schmidt's critique of Google's remote work policies. They collaboratively brainstorm media products and alternative data concepts like flight radar APIs to monitor corporate travel. | |
| Debating Google's Engineering Culture and 20% Time | 8 | 7 | 7 | 8 | Sam provokes the room by asserting Google invented a cushy, low-work culture. Brit pushes back aggressively with firsthand domain expertise from her four years there, detailing how the 20% projects required direct executive pitches to Larry and Sergey. | |
| The Executive Tenure Debate: Old Guard vs. Fresh Energy | 7 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Brit and Sam argue that entrenched executive suites promote coasting and bloated compensation, advocating for fresher talent. Dave counters with a nuanced sports analogy about the Golden State Warriors, arguing long-tenured teams build irreplaceable communicative shorthand. | |
| Post-COVID Workplace Psychology and Broken Company Cultures | 6 | 3 | 3 | 3 | The conversation examines how post-COVID shifts altered office attendance psychology and workplace culture. Sam shares an anecdote from a peer whose company was permanently broken by remote transitions. | |
| Autonomous Commutes: Waymo's Freeway Testing and Urban Hubs | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | After brief banter on Waymo opening freeway routes to employees, the hosts pivot to an earnest tribute honoring the late Susan Wojcicki. Jessica and Brit articulate her peerless business legacy across AdSense and YouTube. | |
| Is Tech Losing Cultural Influence? Generational Counterculture | 7 | 5 | 4 | 3 | Jessica introduces the core question of whether tech has lost its cultural prestige among Gen Z. Sam reframes the issue around structural asset ownership, explaining that countercultures emerge when younger generations are locked out of existing capital. | |
| Gen Z Career Shifts: Ditching Tech for Creator Work | 7 | 4 | 3 | 4 | Brit brings concrete survey data showing media and creator industries have surpassed tech as Gen Z's top career preference. Sam jokes about older generations copying youth trends while Jessica synthesizes the shift in what society considers cool. | |
| Body Futurism and Protocolism: Shift to Physical Optimization | 8 | 6 | 5 | 5 | Dave outlines Toby Shoren's thesis of body futurism and protocolism, pointing to massive phone-free crowds at music festivals and biometric optimization. Sam initially wants to mock the trend as vanity photo filters for the rich before acknowledging its cultural resonance. | |
| Embodied Ideology: Seeking Presence, Feeling, and Real Connection | 7 | 5 | 5 | 6 | Jessica asks Dave to connect disparate concepts like creatine and music festivals, prompting Dave to distinguish mind-based ideologies from embodied presence. Brit rejects Sam's superficial aesthetic framing, arguing people are seeking real-life psychological relief from social media burnout. | |
| In-Person Gatherings and Escaping Digital Fatigue | 7 | 6 | 6 | 6 | Sam rejects the first-principles logic of attending live podcasts like Acquired at Chase Center when digital recordings can be sped up. Dave and Brit explain that physical events provide undeniable proof of human connection in an internet flooded with spam and bots, winning Sam over. | |
| Investing in the Real World: The In-Person Economy | 7 | 3 | 3 | 4 | The panel discusses venture investment dynamics around real-world events, acknowledging scalability challenges. Sam and Dave agree AI is becoming commodity background infrastructure, paving the way for an internet rebuilt around authenticated human interaction. | |
| The AI Disconnect: Building for Old People vs. Gen Z Reality | 8 | 5 | 5 | 6 | Sam contends modern AI startups are mistakenly building anti-loneliness bots tailored for older consumers rather than Gen Z. When Jessica asks about wearable AI devices like Friend, Dave and Sam immediately dismiss them as out-of-touch relics of tech utopianism. | |
| Commercializing Live Podcasts: Chase Center and the JPMorgan Box | 7 | 3 | 3 | 3 | Jessica analyzes JPMorgan's aggressive commercial branding and client relationship strategy surrounding the Acquired Chase Center show post-First Republic acquisition. The hosts joke about luxury stadium boxes and warm pretzels before wrapping up. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Lessin: Tech Climate Pledges Have Faltered in the AI Era
“The poor climate pledges have not fared well in the AI days.”
Sam Lessin: Google has never had a high-performance culture
“Yes, Google has not had a high performance culture Like ever.”
Sam Lessin: Google invented tech's low-work engineer culture
“So like this idea that it's work from home, Google invented the low work engineer culture.”
Morin: Google 20% projects required pitching to Page, Brin, and Schmidt
“When you pitched a 20% project, you had to pitch it to Larry, Sergey, and Eric. You had to go to, like, the exact meeting. Pitch the project and explain to them how you were going to also keep up your normal day job while doing the project.”
Sam Lessin: Senior tech executive roles are easy and practically unfireable
“Most of these, like, very senior jobs in tech companies, you get paid a ton of money, and they're relatively easy, and after a certain level of tenure, you're never gonna get fired”
Sam Lessin: Tech Companies Are Better Off With Hungry, Inexperienced Hires
“I think you're way better off having young, hungry people who might be less experienced. Right. But have something to prove they have a chip on a shoulder. They're going to drive really hard. Like I absolutely think that people are just like resting, investing…”
Brit Morin: Founders Should Stay Forever, but C-Level Executives Need Limits
“The founder should get to stay forever if they want, like Steve Jobs asks Zuck, you know, whatever. No, because the founder is like the leading vision that has to like carry the company onward forever, but these C-level people that are there for 2030, 40 years…”
Sam Lessin: Tech Companies Overpay Underperforming Rich Executives to Retain Them
“Once the senior executives are really, really rich, then you have to pay them even more money to keep them, right? Because they're like, well, I already have a shitload of money and people are like, oh shit, we really need this person. And they end up way over…”
Dave Morin: Long-Tenured Tech Leadership Teams Possess a Distinct Communication Advantage
“An executive team that's been together for a long time, Theoretically has an ability to communicate that new people that have just joined the org do not have. And so is that the other side of this argument that, you know, some of these companies that have that…”
Jessica Lessin: In-office employees work fewer hours due to psychological shifts
“People are just going into the office for fewer hours on the days they go into the office because the psychology shifted and Getting up at your desk at four or five PM is, feels very different post COVID than it did before.”
Sam Lessin: Tech giants can thrive for decades despite broken internal cultures
“These tech companies are so profitable and so good in so many ways that they can kind of run for a very long time. And parts of it will be very successful for decades to come, even if the culture is broken.”
Sam Lessin: Meta's post-COVID culture and performance have worked effectively
“It seems like Meta is performing really well, right? Like, it seems like they've got, you know, their ass in gear on a lot of stuff, not everything, but like a lot of stuff, you know, post COVID and like, you know, Mark set a tone and the organization set a to…”
Sam Lessin: Google's AI team should be more aggressive and ship beyond demos
“Should Google and their AI team be far more aggressive and like In the war room trenches right now? Probably. Like, I don't, you know, it just seems like they should be like, or they should be like shipping more than demos. Like it should, you know what I mean…”
Lessin: Hard to think of a woman with greater tech impact than Susan Wojcicki
“Her success as a business leader, if you look at all the things she touched, and she didn't have a lot of ego about it, and she wasn't the first to put herself on a magazine cover, but it's actually hard to think of a woman who's had a greater impact on the te…”
Sam Lessin: Youth countercultures emerge because younger generations lack equity
“In every generation, what happens? It's like you have a bunch of new people coming into society that are the youths, and they have this really interesting thing. Which is, they don't own anything, and like, they have no equity, and they have no control over sh…”
Sam Lessin: Gen Z struggles to find an unclaimed, valuable frontier
“What's now happening, I think is that like our generation owns the internet, right? And the younger generation desperately wants to own things. They're searching around. Okay. Is it crypto? Is it AI? Like we need a narrow, they need something valuable, but the…”
Dave Morin: Tech has mostly delivered dystopian nightmares, fatiguing society
“And I think that culture and society is broadly just tired of this. It largely hasn't delivered. In fact, it's mostly delivered dystopian nightmares to parents to, we've talked about it on this podcast for a year.”
Dave Morin: Culture has shifted from software utopianism to body futurism
“We've shifted from a software utopian vision where we're talking about what software can do for our minds and do for our social cultures, and now we're focused on consciousness hacking, body improvement protocols, peptides, AI-guided meditation, designer babie…”
Morin: Body optimization protocols represent a new moral framework, not a fad
“This is not just a fad. This is, like, actually a new moral framework. Like, I think this is actually, like, a new moral framework.”
Morin: The next frontier is the physical world, not more screens
“The next frontier isn't more cloud, isn't more screen. It's something else. It's in the physical world. It's Big concerts. It's big. It's connecting with other people. It's taking care of your body. It's health.”
Sam Lessin: High-friction physical space demands broad culture unlike virtual spaces
“The thing about virtual space is because it's frictionless and free and global, you can have incredibly niche interests that can find their own pocket and go in their own corner and discuss random shit and get really into it. Whereas If you're going to be in p…”
Morin: A leading dating app's primary metric is maximizing user swipes
“We were talking to a friend who, I won't say which one, but works on one of the largest dating apps, lives out here, and was telling us that actually their key metric is number of swipes. Like, they want to, like, their business model depends on maximizing the…”
Brit Morin: IRL Experiences Have Shitty Business Models Compared to Internet
“I think that the IRL experience realm is more interesting than a lot of VCs give it credit for, and we're still waiting. I don't think there's like a waiting thing there. The problem is it's so high friction and so non-scalable, and such a shitty business mode…”
Dave Morin: AI is merely pervasive infrastructure, not the next wave
“Sam, your intuition might be right that like, we've got a big new wave coming and everyone's focused on AI, but actually we all know anybody who's thoughtful knows that AI is just the water. It's like in the water. Now it's going to be in everything.”
Sam Lessin: Transportation Like Waymo Capitalizes on In-Person Trend
“Waymo. Because if you, all of these people got to go places, then all of a sudden you got to get them there, right? So it's like transportation shit is where to be at.”
Sam Lessin: AI Companions and Anti-Loneliness Apps Target Wrong Cultural Trend
“What we're building is, like, anti-loneliness technology, where people are building, like, fake friends and all this shit, which is basically just Russian, more Russian bots.
But like better ones, right?
It's the wrong cultural trend.
Probably the wrong app…”