Sam and Shaan react to the week’s big tech stories: Elon’s public Twitter fight with a disabled employee (Hallie), Biden’s TikTok national security bill, a new study overturning the “$70K happiness ceiling,” Dana White’s Power Slap league, and Sam’s passionate recommendation of the Korean Netflix show Physical 100.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Intro [00:00:00]
Sam: Anytime a rich person tells you that money doesn’t make you happy, just ask them for their money. Like, cool, cool, cool — I guess it’s useless, right? Can I just — give me a bunch of it then.
Shaan: All right, fellas, welcome to the Friday episode. The boys react and go through some news stories. Let’s start with the thing that everyone is talking about — which is Elon. Elon has gotten himself in trouble a couple times this week. First, he tried selling some house plants — office plants, I should say — to his employees to raise money.
Sam: Wait, really?
Shaan: And then also he ridiculed and sort of kind of fired an employee who is disabled. Your thoughts on the endless drama of Elon? What do you think?
Elon Fires Disabled Twitter Employee [00:00:40]
Sam: Yeah, Elon is the cringe master. He has to make everything about him. Like, it’s just me, me, me. He’s now known as “Milon Musk” in my house. This guy’s too much.
Shaan: The crazy thing — Sam, did you watch this all go down with the guy that was like, “Hey, am I fired?” I think we should explain this.
Sam: Yeah, do a recap. I didn’t understand all of it at first — I had to click around.
Shaan: So a guy goes on Twitter — I never heard of this guy, but he’s got like 150,000 followers — and he says, “Hey, nine days ago I lost access to my work computer. I can’t access Twitter anymore. I work at Twitter. My work computer doesn’t log in. It doesn’t work. Can’t get into my email, can’t do anything. I’m not sure if I’m fired. Nobody told me I’m fired. But I just can’t get into my email or my computer. I’ve emailed them, I’ve waited nine days, I’ve got no reply from HR, from anybody. So I’m guessing — hey, at Elon Musk, am I fired?” So he tweets that out.
Sam: Was he getting paid still?
Shaan: I don’t know. I don’t think so — or it was only nine days so maybe he just hadn’t gotten in between yet. So he tweets that out and he goes, “Maybe if this gets enough retweets I’ll get a response.” And it gets retweeted a bunch because there’s the whole group of people that love to hate Elon — myself included — and so people are like, this is another example of how poorly Twitter’s being run right now. Like, why would you, if you’re gonna fire somebody, not tell them they’re fired? That’s common decency.
I feel like Elon’s got this flowchart where it’s like: “I’m firing this person — should I tell them?” And there’s a “yes” path and a “no” path and he’s like, “No, I’m gonna go with no.” And then what happens after no? “Should I meet with them in person?” He’s basically Irish goodbye-ing their jobs. It’s just walking out without saying anything.
Sam: Exactly.
Shaan: So this thing goes viral. Elon sees it going viral, and instead of just saying “Yes, you are fired” or “No, you’re not fired,” he says, “What have you been working on? What have you accomplished?”
Sam: So then the guy goes, “Well, if I say what I’m working on I think I’d be breaking my NDA. Do I have permission to break my NDA and tell you publicly what I work on?” And Elon replies, “Yes, go ahead.” So — dude — what a pathetic start to the story that’s already pathetic. The guy goes, “All right, well, I was leveling up the design of this, I was working on this, I was helping save money on this contract,” and Elon replies, “Level up the design from what to what? Pictures or it didn’t happen.” And yo — you cut off his computer access. How is he supposed to have screenshots of his work if you took away his computer? He can’t even get to it.
Shaan: And Elon’s just mocking him. He’s replying with the crying-laughing emoji, trolling him with a clip from Office Space.
Sam: Now here’s where Elon went wrong. Elon’s not dumb, but he’s a dumbass. And there’s a big difference. Dumb is you’re just not smart. A dumbass is you’re smart but you do dumb things. And that’s what Elon does here.
Shaan: So he basically picks on a guy — and it comes out — this guy sold his company to Twitter. And Elon says, “The reality is this is a guy who was independently wealthy, did no actual work, and claimed as an excuse that he has a disability preventing him from typing, yet here he is tweeting up a storm.” And Elon’s like, “I can’t say I have a lot of respect for that.”
Sam: What a douche. How could he even say that?
Shaan: Here’s the other side of the story. This guy is in a wheelchair. He’s had muscular dystrophy for 25 years. So he comes back — and this is what you’d call a solo Thunderclap, basically — he goes, “Glad to see you’re taking such an interest in my health. I assume what you’re talking about when you’re sharing my private health information online is the fact that I’ve had muscular dystrophy for 25 years. I guess I’ll go ahead and tell the story now.”
Sam: So here’s the story. This guy’s got muscular dystrophy, he’s losing strength in his arms, it’s becoming very painful to type. He decides, “Okay, I’m gonna sell my company.” And instead of taking a lump sum payment, he chose to get paid out through a salary rather than upfront money.
Shaan: Why? Because he wanted to pay more taxes in Iceland, where he’s from.
Sam: Wait, really? More taxes? Why do you want to pay more taxes?
Shaan: Because he felt like, as a disabled person, he had benefited a lot from the social welfare system there and wanted to contribute as much as he could to that. Which honestly sounds too good to be true — it’s so different from me. I almost can’t fathom that. I’m almost like, why don’t you just take the money and donate it instead of paying taxes? I don’t understand that.
But either way — this guy built a company, had 100 employees, it was profitable, he decides to sell it. His body’s basically been giving out on him. He goes, “Financially it wasn’t the best decision. My company was making a lot of money. Twitter’s offer was lower than other companies, but I made a bet on Twitter — it was growing at the time.”
And then he goes, “Anyways, I digress — are you still reading or is your bathroom break over?” And then, “So you bought the company, told employees you weren’t firing them, then fired 75% of them. I was not in the first batch, or the second batch, or the third batch of layoffs. I don’t know which batch we’re on now. But I think I’m fired. I just want to make sure I get paid out.” Because in his contract, he had it where: “I’ll take the money as a yearly salary rather than an upfront payment, but if you ever fire me you have to pay out the rest.” So he’s guaranteed this money.
Sam: He also mentioned how he was typing.
Shaan: Yeah, he was like, “I can’t do sustained typing, but I can type with one finger on my phone.”
Sam: And anyways, this guy was literally named person of the year in Iceland. His side hustle is building wheelchair ramps throughout Iceland so that other disabled people can get around. He’s built hundreds of these wheelchair ramps. Like — that’s who you chose to fight with?
I saw this great quote: “Elon messed with the wheelchair Mr. Rogers.” Like, what is this guy thinking? I read this thread and I was literally like — 911, I’d like to report a murder. It was just the ultimate clap-back.
Shaan: And then Elon tries to backtrack. Some random dude tweets into the thread, “I know Hallie, and you’re saying he’s a liar who was just trying to do no work and get paid out — that’s not who this guy is.” And then Elon reads that and goes — this is the most of all the things — he goes, “Based on that comment, I decided to call Hallie rather than just tweet at each other. We had a video chat. Turns out there was a misunderstanding. The information I was given was either incorrect, or correct but not important.” That’s the white flag, bro. You lost.
Sam: “We’ve discussed him staying with the company.” That’s the ultimate backtrack. First of all, you want him to stay because you have to pay him out if you fire him. That’s the first thing. Second thing — you messed up and stepped in it, and this guy could sue you for a whole bunch of money for discriminating against a disabled person, for disclosing his private health information, and probably three or four other labor law violations in this process.
But the thing is — you decided to have a video chat not when your own employee said he hadn’t heard from you, not when he asked for an explanation, but when a random guy on Twitter said, “Hey, he’s a good guy.” You stopped in your tracks for that. That’s what did it. The whole thing is ridiculous and Elon continues to be king of it.
Shaan: You know that song “Damn It Feels Good to Be a Gangster”? There’s a line in it — real gangsters don’t flex because real gangsters know they’ve got it. Right now Elon is flexing hard and he shouldn’t be.
Sam: I get the personality type where some people are like, “Dude, he’s just saying what he wants, same thing with Trump, he just says it like it is.” And I actually dislike that framing. Like, just because you say it like it is — he’s just doing what he wants. Yeah, but just because you do what you want, does that mean I want to, like, take a dump in the corner of the room? There’s “do what you want,” and then there’s “let’s also be polite to one another if possible.” And that’s kind of how he acts right now, and it’s not cool.
The $100 Million Rumor and Elon’s Self-Own [00:09:30]
Sam: Two other parts of this story. One — it’s going around that this guy’s payout was $100 million, which makes no sense to anybody in business. There’s no way he’s getting paid $9 million a year in salary. There’s no way they bought his agency for $100 million — it’s not how much you’d aqui-hire an agency for. It’s probably more like 10.
I found where it started. Some random guy goes, “Oh man, Elon’s backtracking now because he realized Hallie has a $100 million payout.” And like five tweets in, somebody asks, “Where’d you read the $100 million? I never saw that.” And he goes, “I’m just estimating. Aqui-hires are a million dollars a head, they had 100 employees, so 100 million dollars.” And now that’s just everywhere. That’s how fake news starts.
Shaan: The second thing — Elon owned himself at the end of all this when he says, “Better to communicate through talking instead of communicating on Twitter.” He just literally crapped on his own platform. Self-owning all around.
Office Plants and the Marketing Genius Question [00:11:00]
Sam: And then the office plant thing — what do you make of that? I muted Elon — I love what he’s doing but it’s hard to be on his team.
Shaan: So he’s been selling office furniture and memorabilia from the Twitter offices, just liquidating to get more cash. They had plants in the office that he tried selling to an engineer — one of the employees. I mean, I don’t know — either this guy’s a marketing genius trying to get PR, or it’s like the Amazon “we use doors as desks to save money” thing. That story sounds like, man, he’s really turning over every rock to save money at this bleeding company. But by the way — I tried doing that. An Ikea desk is significantly cheaper than a door from Home Depot.
Sam: Exactly. A desk is way cheaper. You can’t even write on a door properly.
Shaan: So I don’t know what to make of the story. It just makes no sense. Either he’s lost his mind, or there’s some masterful PR thing that’s 9,000 IQ and I can’t understand it, or someone’s just making things up.
Sam: Maybe all of those things. An exaggeration about a weird thing he said because he’s lost his mind — and it makes for good PR. It could be all of those things. He’s not dumb, but he’s a dumbass. That’s a great line.
Shaan: I saw people calling him “Elmo Musk” and I thought that was pretty funny.
Money and Happiness — New Study Overturns the $70K Rule [00:13:10]
Shaan: All right, what else you got?
Sam: Let’s go with money and happiness. So there was a 2010 paper that said basically above $70,000, more money does not make you more happy. Turns out Mo Money, fewer problems — because a new study says that is completely untrue. It starts to flatten a little bit as it goes up, but what do you guys think?
Shaan: So here’s what it says. If you are in the unhappiest 20%, it does plateau after reaching about $100,000. But after that, if you’re not in that group, more money does mean more happiness. They studied it all the way up to $500,000 and said after that we didn’t study it much — but up to $500,000 people do get happier. That said, the researchers found that the overall emotional effect of more money is small compared to other circumstances. A fourfold difference in income is roughly equal to the effect of a weekend.
Sam: Wow.
Shaan: But that said — more money makes you happy. And this is the 2010 study — from the beginning I thought that $70,000 thing was the most nonsense study. $70,000? My sister when she was younger lived in New York on $70,000. You’re basically below the poverty line. That is not happy. Not a chance.
Sam: I used to think it was around $250,000. I actually believe it could be $500,000 or even more. But you do get happier.
This is one of those things — when I heard this study I was like, that might be true. But you know what? I’m gonna go ahead and test it for myself. I don’t know if the Earth is flat — I don’t have the ability to go out and check that. I don’t know if sulfur gas is poisonous — no need to test that one. But this is one of those scientific claims where I decided a long time ago I’m going to do my own research. I’m going to go get a bunch of money and see how it feels.
Shaan: And what were the results?
Sam: I’m glad I did. The study was wrong. Dude, I got an MRI yesterday and the lady at the front desk handed me a bill. She thought I was going to freak out and I was like, “All right, you take Apple Pay?” and I just scanned my card. And I remember thinking — I am so happy I’m in a spot where I can do that. I used to not be able to afford that at all.
You know what I call that? Braces money. Being able to swipe your card and get your kid braces without thinking twice. When I was younger my parents bought me braces and told me it was $2,000 they had to put on a credit card. At the time they had like $6,000 total. And I remember thinking, God damn, that sucks. I would be a lot happier if I had nine million dollars in the bank as opposed to nine thousand dollars.
Shaan: Yeah. And let’s look at actions versus words in a lot of these cases. I always thought this study was off. I also wonder how much bias goes into a study based on what the researchers themselves make.
Sam: That’s exactly it. They’re making $50K and they’re like, “Hey, $70K is the ceiling.”
Shaan: I’ve always wondered about those biases. And honestly — I haven’t even had to wonder. I’m like, this is obviously not true. And you know, if I get to the finish line and I realize $5 million and $10 million felt the same — well, shame on me for going the extra mile.
Sam: Have you ever tried to read a study?
Shaan: Dude, studies are crazy. They’re hard. I follow these smart guys like Huberman who break down studies, and they’ll say “Well, this study is actually bad for this reason,” and I’m like, I guess I’ll believe you — but I can’t read this thing myself. And they’ll cite studies that I’m like, “It said the word ‘study’ in it, it must be true,” and they’re like, “No, it’s way off — the sample size was eight people.” Or it was all college students. Or there’s a chart and the error bars are enormous — it’s like, $70,000 plus or minus $500,000. Whoa, okay, hold on.
Sam: Science is used as a shield sometimes — you can’t argue with it. There’s good science and bad science and weak science and strong science. And then there’s physics, where it’s empirically true. But the only thing I know is: there’s good science, there’s bad science, and I don’t know the difference between the two. That’s the only truth I know for certain.
Shaan: That’s a t-shirt right there. Big brain day.
TikTok National Security Bill [00:19:20]
Sam: All right, let’s go with TikTok. The Biden administration, in conjunction with Congress, is evaluating a new law that would make it possible for companies to be banned if they pose a national security risk. People think this means they’re going to ban TikTok. What do you think?
Shaan: I don’t know anything about that.
Sam: Wow. That’s why they pay you the big bucks.
Shaan: Like, people talk about — I just don’t know anything about China or what they’re doing. That’s true. How would I really know?
I think being able to ban something if it’s a national security risk sounds appropriate. And I’m on TikTok a ton — I can totally see how I wouldn’t want this in the hands of my enemy. The ability to take in all of my data, my camera roll, turn my microphone and camera on, and feed me any amount of information based on a mysterious algorithm that can surface good stuff, bad stuff, weird stuff, misinformation — whatever — that’s a pretty powerful weapon. So I definitely see the merit in it. Now, is TikTok actually a threat? I don’t know.
Favorite Cities Poll [00:21:15]
Sam: All right, next one — favorite cities. A new poll from a real estate advice website reveals where Americans would move if money was no object. New York and Austin are on there — that makes sense. Also on the list: Las Vegas, and at number nine, Baltimore.
Dude, I’m from St. Louis — the city of St. Louis. A lot of people don’t know this, but if you look at the highest murder rate per 100,000 people, it’s usually St. Louis — either number one or number two for the past 10 years. About 500 murders a year. St. Louis and Baltimore are very similar. It sucks. I don’t want to move there.
Shaan: Once I worked in the media business I realized that polls, rankings, and lists are all just things designed to generate clicks, links, and controversy. If I make a list and everybody just nods and says “yeah, that makes sense” — you’re not going to share that. You’re not going to talk about that. But I throw Baltimore in as the fourth most desired city to live in? Now you’re outraged. Now you’re clicking. Now I’ve got controversy and backlinks for my SEO.
Once you know their incentives, you know why these lists are often outrageous.
Sam: Do you know what state Baltimore’s in?
Shaan: Yeah, Baltimore is in Maryland.
Sam: Nice, I didn’t think you’d get that. Google Baltimore and look at the images — very unimpressive. I’m sorry, Baltimore. That skyline is not interesting. The tourist association needs to work on their SEO.
Power Slap League and Dana White [00:23:10]
Sam: Can we wrap this up with the slap fighting one?
Shaan: Yeah, do the story, Sam.
Sam: So Dana White and the UFC are putting muscle behind the Power Slap League. If you guys haven’t seen this, it’s basically two guys — typically huge guys — standing at a table smacking each other. I think they each get three slaps?
Shaan: Yeah, what are the rules? First one knocked out loses?
Sam: Typically three to five rounds. They take turns hitting each other in the face with an open hand. The other person has to just stand there and take it. They get 60 seconds to recover and can earn up to 10 points based on the effectiveness of the slap and the defender’s reaction.
Shaan: Oh, that’s good. You get rewarded for pretending like it didn’t hurt. That’s a skill I honed as a little sibling for many, many years.
Sam: Dude, this is the stupidest thing on Earth. Look, I’m not a woke guy — I consider myself right of center, maybe getting a little more sensitive as I get older. But this slap thing is the stupidest thing on Earth. I’d prefer to see two people fighting with skill and defense and strategy — like UFC — but the slap thing, not a fan.
Shaan: To me, knockouts are like chips and dip. I like chips and dip — but if you take the chips away and it’s just dip, I feel a little dirty. That’s how I feel about this. I’m cool watching a fight where someone gets knocked out because there’s skill and defense and strategy. When it’s literally “you have to stand still and get hit as hard as you can by somebody else” — now I’m just eating barbecue sauce with a spoon.
Sam: And it’s kind of ridiculous, right? Like, using a chip as a spoon for cheese is considered fine, but using an actual spoon for the cheese — those two things are treated completely differently. Big questions in life.
Now let me tell you something. Michael Vick got booted from the NFL and went to jail for a dogfighting ring. Colin Kaepernick can’t get a job because he took a knee during the national anthem. Those two are not even remotely the same thing, by the way — I’m just saying, people have gotten punished for a lot less than this. How is Dana White not canceled for doing this? How is this a legitimate thing they’re allowed to do?
Shaan: I guess it’s because they’re consenting adults. That’s the line. Anything above that line works.
Sam: I think it’s so stupid. I try not to give it my attention. I can’t stand it. It’s really dumb. And yet — I watched the trailer and I was heavily entertained. So, you know.
Shaan: It’s kind of like there was this subreddit called Watch People Die — videos of people getting killed — and it was huge, and they deleted it. And I remember thinking, that’s a good idea to delete that. And yet it was really hard not to go to that subreddit. When I would see it come up I’d be like, “Oh my God, this is horrible, I cannot watch this” — and I had to stop myself from clicking. Some content is like that.
Physical 100 — Show Recommendation [00:27:00]
Sam: Let’s finish with a show recommendation. Have you watched Physical 100 on Netflix?
Shaan: You keep telling me to watch it.
Sam: Oh my God, everybody needs to go watch this show. I’ll warn you — it’s a weird show. If you just described it to me I would not have watched it. It’s the Korean Netflix thing — Squid Game but in real life, kind of.
So the premise: they got 100 athletes of different types. Bodybuilders, MMA guys, boxers, women, men, small, large, gymnasts, ice climbers, luge people from the Olympics — everything, wrestlers — and they put them all together and they walk in and it’s basically: “We’re going to see who is the mightiest. What is the perfect body? Is it this guy, or is it this girl, or is it this guy?”
The very first competition is basically there’s a ball in the middle of a mud pit and whoever has the ball at the end of three minutes wins. It’ll be a guy vs. a girl, it’ll be a giant bodybuilder vs. whatever — no weight class, nothing.
Here are the three reasons why it’s amazing. Number one: they got legitimately the best athletes. The guy from World’s Strongest Man, Olympians, gold medalists, their most famous MMA fighters. It’s like if LeBron was competing against Patrick Mahomes against Serena Williams — and they not only show up, they actually give a damn. Like, they really wanted to win. They weren’t there for reality TV drama.
Number two: they play with honor. So the winner of the first round gets to pick their opponent for the second round. An American would just be like, “I’m going to pick the weakest person.” What they would do is go to whoever they felt was the strongest and say, “It would be my honor to compete against you.” The whole thing has subtitles — I watched the dubbed version, which is hilarious because some guys speak English and they dubbed them into more English.
Shaan: Wait, what?
Sam: I know. But that’s the show. They just eliminate people until you get to the final winner of Physical 100. Once you get two episodes deep, you’re going to love the characters.
Shaan: Which body type wins?
Sam: I don’t want to give it away — that’s the whole show. You’ve got to have it all. Speed, strength, endurance, dexterity, agility — they test you in all different ways.
And here’s the other thing that’s great about it: they don’t really edit it. In an American show it’s like, start of competition, montage, then the big fight, they’ll spend five minutes on the big dramatic moment. With this show — these contestants have one hour to pull a 10,000-ton ship from one side of a room to the other, and they just show the whole thing in its entirety. It’s even a little bit boring sometimes, but it’s kind of like watching National Geographic. Like Planet Earth, where you’re like, “Oh, is the lizard gonna get the ant? I gotta watch — the whole thing’s gonna play out.” No jump cuts. It’s such a refreshing change from TikTok and all these other things that are just so chopped up.
Shaan: I’m looking up the winner.
Sam: Don’t give it away. You’d be surprised why this person won. It’s pretty crazy.
Anyways — go watch the show. It’s kind of amazing.
Shaan: All right, that’s a pod.