Make Me Smart February 26, 2024 Transcript

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Kai Ryssdal 

Open link. I’m ready. Yeah, man. I’m here. I’ll be there in like two seconds. There we go. No audio. Turning on the camera. There we go.

Kimberly Adams 

Hello everyone, I’m Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where we make today make sense when we are graced by the appearance of Kai Ryssdal.

Kai Ryssdal 

Oh, my goodness gracious. I didn’t even dress for it or anything. I’m Kai Ryssdal. Thanks for joining us on this Monday. It is the 26th of February and yes, you can see us on YouTube, I guess, or I don’t even know where we put these. Our social team puts them out anyway. Anyway.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s always fun. Yes. So today, since it’s Monday, we’re going to do some news and some smiles. And we will start with the news as we do. Kai, what’s your news?

Kai Ryssdal 

So. So basically, I’ve got two smiles today, but one of them I put in the news because, number one, we all know what the big news is. There’s nothing you know, earth shaking out there happening that everybody listening this podcast hasn’t already seen or heard go by in their feeds or what have you. So, I will not suppose to tell people things they don’t know. That said, there was a totally fascinating article in The New York Times this past weekend. I think it was Saturday. It was behind the scenes, basically, of how those TikTok trick shot videos, you try to say that 10 times fast, get made. How much time it takes. How these guys, because most of them are guys, do it. We should also probably interrogate why it’s guys who do this stuff, right? I mean, because women have too much sense than to spend. Here’s the headline, 35 hours making a 10-second clip. I mean, they’re super fun to watch as they go by on TikTok but oh my god, the productive capacity of this economy that goes into making them. Anyway, read it. It’s super interesting. And look, these guys are making a living for it, as it says in the article at one point, you know, when paying the bills depends on making the shots, you will do it as long as it takes. It’s totally interesting. Totally interesting.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and how much money do they stand to make off of these videos because if you actually break it down. If it takes you 35 hours, and you make 100 grand off of it, you know, that’s worth it. Or even if you make 50 grand, you’re still doing better. I guess it just kind of depends.

Kai Ryssdal 

Exactly. It’s just. It’s so interesting. Look, I’m the first guy who’s like, “Oh, that’s a cool video, man.” And you know, I like it or thumbs up it or whatever the hell it is. But, you know, there’s just stuff going on out there. You’re like, oh yeah, this is an occupation. This is a thing that people do to get by.

Kimberly Adams 

Yeah, and it’s harmless. And I love all these things that are just nice and easy and harmless, and they allow us to stop thinking about it about life for a minute because when I woke up this morning and started reading my newsletters. I was just like, oh God. And it was best encapsulated for me in this Editor’s Note in Roll Call. And it says, “Editor’s Note: Never mind the Ides of March, beware all of March. It will be one packed month for Congress, the presidency and the courts.” I’m not going to read all of this, but I’m just going to read you some of the things that are coming up, right? So. “In Washington, we just need overlapping calendars to be aware of what’s going on, and there is a lot. The first of the month gets things started with the expiration of a stopgap short-term continuing resolutions for fiscal 2024 appropriations bills: Agriculture, Military Construction-VA, Energy-Water and Transportation-HUD. But wait: There’s a late-February prequel to that drama. And that would be whatever transpires in the impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. When the Senate returns Monday today, the House does not arrive back until Wednesday, the earliest it would get on with the presentation of articles to the Senate. Mon past the impeachment proceedings, then, in the exploration of funding for a good chunk of the federal government, the next week is our real banger. March 5 is Super Tuesday. Super Tuesday also features congressional primaries and a bunch of states that represent 115 House seats.” I’m summarizing here. And then “two days later on March 7, Biden delivers his State of the Union address,” which “also comes on the eve of another deadline, the March 8 expiration of the second batch of appropriations bills. The following Monday, March 11, Biden sends his fiscal 2025 budget to Capitol Hill.” Sidenote here, Biden on Monday, March 11, will send his fiscal 2025 budget to Congress. We are still working on the fiscal 2024 budget. Then there’s another batch of presidential primaries that are on March 19. More primaries and then recess and then on March 25, we have the first criminal trial of a former US president getting underway. And then oral arguments in the Supreme Court on the FDA versus the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which has to deal with the abortion bill, the abortion pill. So that’s March, and I want to watch some trick shot videos now.

Kai Ryssdal 

There you go. That’s a nice little segue. Oh yeah, it’s crazy. Hey, you got the sniffles? Are you sick or is that allergy season in Washington?

Kimberly Adams 

It’s allergy season. It’s starting to get warm that means that I will be sniffling. I will be sneezing. I will be rubbing my eyes and as much as I love cherry blossoms, the rest of it can just go kick rocks.

Kai Ryssdal 

I’m so sorry. Oh, Jay Siebold at the control. Nicely done. Nicely done. Alright, hit that next thing in your playlist there. There we go. Talk to me about video games, Kimberly Adams. What do you got?

Kimberly Adams 

This was a delightful story in the Washington Post profiling Koji Kondo, who wrote the theme to Mario Brothers, the Super Mario Brothers game. And that is the first video game entry that’s ever gotten into the Library of Congress list. You know, they do their sound recordings that they add every year. And so, this was added last year, the theme Super Mario Brothers. And this article goes into how influential the work of Koji Kondo has been. He’s worked for Nintendo his entire career. He has this background in music, but always loved gaming and the way that he talks about where the inspiration comes from, and how he thinks about it. He plays all the games first. What I loved about it was, you know, he mentioned that the other composers working at Nintendo at the time, they just kind of took turns of who was going to do what game and it just so happened that he ended up with Mario and you know, he loves it. It’s just beautiful.

Kai Ryssdal 

That’s cool.

Kimberly Adams 

It’s a really nice piece. Yeah, so it made me smile.

Kai Ryssdal 

Very cool. And so not to get all Marketplace weird on this, but the industry behind video games, right? The music and the voice acting and all that jazz, a huge part of the economy. I think I heard on David’s show, the morning show a number of months ago yeah, when they did this thing, right? It’s bigger than what. Hollywood and music put together, right? So, it’s a lot.

Kimberly Adams 

Because when you think about the amount of time that people spend gaming and you know, it also. I lost the exact excerpt in this. Here we go. This is what I want to say. “More than music, Kondo sculpted the soundscape for video games as audio director and engineer for Mario. From the bling of collecting coins as ubiquitous as sound as cash for cash as to cha-ching, to the elastic boiling of a jump. He quickly turned to composing songs for The Legend of Zelda, another Nintendo title in 1986 that transformed the media. Kondo and other sound engineers in the industry laid the groundwork for chiptune music today. And for years, Kondos melodies have evolved past primitive sound chips to be performed worldwide.”

Kai Ryssdal 

Yeah.

Kimberly Adams 

This is nice.

Kai Ryssdal 

Good little story. Good story.

Kimberly Adams

What’s your story?

Kai Ryssdal

Okay, so in the New York Times today. Sorry, I know there’s just two in a row for the New York Times. But you know, that’s where I saw these stories. So, there is news of a huge philanthropic donation to a medical school in the Bronx, New York. A billion-dollar donation will provide free tuition at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, which is, as this article points out, the poorest of the five boroughs of New York City. It’s a gift being given by a longtime professor at the college, and her name is Dr. Ruth Gottesman. She is now the chair of the board. She’s giving away a billion dollars. Let me say that again, which is just in and of itself, just amazing. Free tuition, which is just an enormous gift to those students who get these scholarships because medical education is just insanely expensive. Here’s why. Here’s the thing that made me chuckle about it. She is 93. Dr. Gottesman is. Her husband, David. Her late husband David was a Wall Street guy, longtime associate of Warren Buffett. And back in 1968, David Gottesman has been while working with Warren Buffett invested a bit of his money in Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock. Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock has famously never split. Warren Buffett now makes his most recent earnings report $93 billion a year that company does, right? So, lots of profit. A single share now of Berkshire Hathaway, a stock goes for $616,000. It’s up like 50,000% in the past 55 years. Invest for the long-haul people. Invest in whole. That’s all I’m saying. Invest in whole.

Kimberly Adams 

Well, and talk about investing. Look at what she’s now using that investment to invest in. Yes, that’s going to create an entire generation of doctors that will be able to maybe be family physicians or work in low-income areas because they’re not crushed with medical debt. And so, they’ll be able to take those degrees and go into communities that need doctors when a lot of times these doctors can’t because they have so much medical school debt. So, I love that story. I thought about using that, but I’m glad you did as well because that’s great.

Kai Ryssdal

Good stuff.

Kimberly Adams

All right, that is it for us today. Join us tomorrow for our weekly deep dive, and we will be talking about one of my favorite things, anime. And in particular, the rise of anime culture in the US and the economy around it, why it’s become so popular, and what it means for Hollywood and streaming and the rest of the entertainment industry.

Kai Ryssdal 

I personally am planning on learning a ton.

Kimberly Adams

And Kai’s super excited.

Kai Ryssdal

No, I know nothing about anime other than you know they’re cartoons, but it’s probably derogatory to call them cartoons. I don’t know. Whatever. Alright, we’ll get into that tomorrow. If you have questions for us about anime or if you have comments about anime because you’re a fan, we want to hear them. You know how to get a hold of us. Email us it makes me smart@marketplace.org. Leave his message 508 U-B-SMART is how you can do that.

Kimberly Adams 

Jay does not want to wait you.

Kai Ryssdal 

Jay Jay. Oh my God, Jay.

Kimberly Adams 

Makes Me Smart is produced by Courtney Bergsieker. Today’s program was engineered by Jay Siebold. Ellen Rolfes writes our newsletter. And our intern is Thalia Menchaca.

Kai Ryssdal 

It’s going to be a race to the finish on the credits. Marissa Cabrera is our senior producer. Do we have enough music going? Bridget Bodnar is the director of podcasts. Francesca Levy is the executive director of Digital. Yes, by like three beats. Boom.

Kimberly Adams 

You had plenty of time. Plenty ole time.