hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler today I'm delighted to be chatting with Kyla scandin who is here with us in the studio I have described Kyla as a force of nature from the point of view of this New Jersey boy she has come out of
nowhere from Western Kentucky and is all of a sudden one of the best and also most popular just discussers of economics and economic reasoning and economic thinking so this in my view is fantastic she is super active on Tik Tok she has a substack very active on
YouTube on Twitter and now she's also she exists in real life also but she has a book out in this economy how money and markets really work did I leave anything out I think that's pretty comprehensive yeah welcome Kyla oh thanks for having me let's start with your origin story so
when you're young you're going to libraries a lot right and what is it you're reading and why do you read that stuff oh I read a lot of fiction when I was younger yeah and it was mostly because I was trying to understand World building like I was really fascinated by
that so I read the gracing series and Harry Potter um but for me the library was also a place to go that like supported that kind of learning like it was kind of I I didn't realize that reading books was cool until I went to the library and so it had just been
really formative with how I thought about learning throughout my entire you know childhood and adolescence and are you still doing World building with economics is that like a better more fun more complex world or you given up World building well I tried in the book I had
something called economic Kingdom because for me like I I think thinking in in games is really helpful for econ because there are so many moving pieces and everything is interconnected and so the first chapter of the book was my attempt to describe the economic Kingdom
you know monetary policy Castle you know fiscal policy Castle inflation Castle labor market Castle so I still try to World build when I can and any science fiction when you're young or not so much fantasy more yeah yeah more fantasy yeah science fiction was always a little too
real for me too real yeah more generally why do you think young women are more likely to read fantasy than science fiction I mean and maybe it's because it is too real right I think younger women are more empathetic and so maybe they're able to pick up on the nuances of Science
Fiction um or perhaps it's just not the interest in like aliens and in other worlds like that I think there's more Romanticism that happens for younger women versus men and you get a lot of that in fantasy not like romantic in in the sense of like love but just sort of
like beautiful places and science fiction can um tend to be more Warfare okay so now fast forward to age 16 you're in high school all of a sudden you've become an options trading how did that happen yeah so my my dad uh he was options trading with a group called tast
trade just sort of selftaught and I was really interested in it because I was like what is he what is this um and so I sort of watched him do it and he was like do you want to try and so I selftaught myself um and it was fun because like we had something to chat
about and then I just I did that for an entire summer is like a summer job and I was really bad at it but you know I gave it a shot and I ended up writing a Blog called scandin on stocks where I talked about my options trading experience um
that was my first foray into internet writing and it was it was enjoyable I wouldn't recommend it but I learned a lot about how markets function um and then I didn't even know until I got to school that you could major in finance and so like then I got to school and I
was like I'm going to be an engineer and then I was like oh you can like do this and so it it was cool yeah how efficient do you think the options Market is I would say it's you know the pricing strategies are interesting uh I don't spend as much time on it but like I know
that the volatility metrics are pretty useful um and I think that there's interesting things that you can do like combinations of calls and puts on uh you just have more optionality than like buying a stock and hoping it goes up but in terms of efficiency um I think it's
hard to make money in it how is it you lost so much money trading a Brazilian ETF oh I just I everything I did I was pretty risk averse and so I wanted to be neutral and so I put on this trade called an iron Condor which you do have protection against um but I just kept on
making these trades where I was almost too um I didn't want to take on any risk and you if you don't take on risk you really can't make a ton of money but you can lose money and so that's what happened to me so high school finishes up you're going to college and you you
end up going to Western Kentucky University right why not go to an IV League school um it was too expensive too expensive but you could have yeah I mean I I had really good grades in high school I took all the AP classes is um but was what was really nice about
Western is I had a full ride and I got paid to go there and then I ran cross country in track and field for the school uh so there's just a lot of options there like I look back and I loved my professors there but it's it's interesting because when I graduated I
went out to work for Capital group in Los Angeles and the only way that I got in um was through a blind resume like the ivy league does matter for a lot of the big finance jobs um and so it was a really really good experience but uh yeah it's funny like
the credentialism and just sort of navigating that when you don't have it do you think you're better off for having gone to Western Kentucky I think so I had a lot of opportunity there so I ended up you know triple majoring came in with with a ton of credits you know I
did research and uh worked as a tutor and was you know I graduated as valedictorian which was really cool ran there for few years and so I just think like at a school like that and the professors were so supportive like really just a great learning environment
so at a school like that there's there's more time and space for you to mold your own Learning Journey and that's what I did like I wrote a Blog all throughout school scandin on stocks um and you had three jobs you once said right what are the three so I was a research assistant
I was a tutor um and then I helped uh out in the office at the school um and so yeah it was busy yeah and what is it you did you learned the most from or what was the the generative experience at Western Kentucky for you taking economics or something else yeah running
running had its own like life lessons for sure uh and how you balance time and and Sport um but I think for me it like I just sort of learned that you can design your own path like when I got there I didn't know you could really major in finance I was going to be an
engineer I didn't really like the math classes so then I was like okay I'll be a doctor and uh and I didn't really like that path either and then I took an econ class with Dr Brian stra and I was like oh this is really fascinating like I didn't know that you could sort of study
human dynamics in money and the philosophy of money and for me I just started adding on classes and I began picking up Finance classes began picking up data analytics classes and I think I've sort of carried that optionality into life now where it is like you can
design your own path if you have the right supports if you have you know the intentionality behind the decisions that you're making and so it was very like at a school like that um everyone was so kind and supportive that there was just support for every crazy idea I had like
I started a club and I just I was able to do so many different things um because people cared yeah yeah I went to a state school as an undergrad Georg Mason and I'm actually very glad I did but it's unusual and then you finish and obviously you didn't go to graduate
school is it just like you're fed up or too many other things intervened or what what was your thinking then yeah so um I wanted to do a PhD yeah in economics or Finance both either one I was kind of and I and I talked it over with my professors and they were like you should
get some experience with institutions before you do a PhD like you know spend some time working at a big firm and then you can go back and get a PhD if that's what you want to do and so I graduate and 6 months later the pandemic happens
okay and so everything just kind of got derailed um and now you've just ruled it out you don't want to do it you're too productive to go back to school yeah I mean it's something I think about a lot because I really I have had the opportunity to like go and speak in in
classrooms like Harvard and MIT and Berkeley and it's one of my favorite things is like just talking to students because I had professors that invested so much in me like when I got to school I was like this lump of a person I didn't really know what I wanted and I
had um a professor called Dr Chachi whose name is Dr Chachi whose name is Dr Chachi who just invested a lot of time in me um Dr lebedinsky too and so I think for me like there's this deep desire to reinvest in people and I get to do that a little bit with social
media but you don't really like they're abstract beings when you're making these videos right um and when you're when they're talking about the book and I just think there's something really neat about being in a classroom is you know so and given the unusual position you
have in the world how is it you think about how you build out like your small group of people in a way you don't have many peers your age but the people you chat with on WhatsApp I don't mean family friends but sort of semi-professional some version of your
peers how do how do you build that or haven't you or what what do that look like for you um I think I'm I'm bad at that yeah I have a lot of people like that I can ask questions to like Derrick Thompson has been a big Support over at the Atlantic Connors also at Bloomberg
opinion he's amazing they're both great yeah they're they're all great and like there's a lot of people that I can turn to and ask questions um but yeah in terms of peer group it's a little funny uh there there's some people like Josh Ain who runs the YouTube uh Channel
ordinary things he's been a we're talking about cameras today so it's just like it's sort of a weird intersection where it's like economic theory but then how do you deliver um this to to a wide audience it's sort of a weird mix yeah yeah and then for a while you're selling
cars do I have that right yeah yeah what did you learn selling cars yeah I I learned a a lot it was actually a really formative experience and um I didn't realize how formative it was until I was talking about it a few months ago because like when you're dealing with
people buying cars you're with them during an incredibly vulnerable Financial experience and like they hate you right they're like this person's trying to rip me off and so I sold Hyundai uh during I was 19 years old um during one of my college Summers and I
just learned how important it is to have economics education a lot of people come in maybe they don't understand what a down payment is or what interest rates are or like what sort of financing they have to look at everybody came in way over budget so that's your start as a
Tik tocker YouTuber everything else with selling cars I think so yeah without even realizing it because I was so frustrated because the industry is just you know it's ridiculous everybody wants to make money it's a business and uh yeah for me I looked at that and I was
like wow there's so much opportunity to like help people just understand this stuff understand the world around them and that's yeah definitely Fade Into the content and were you good at selling cars I was very good yeah surprisingly because I'm I'm quite introverted um but
you know most in my experience most sales things especially something like that people just kind of want you to listen to them and so that's something I immensely enjoy it's just listening and so um yeah I was I sold I think 38 cars my whole summer I was on the lot I
worked in insane hours but um yeah sold a lot of cars and met a lot of really interesting people so you say you're introverted now how many Tik Tok videos do you think you have not including any alts I think over 500 over 500 and how many YouTubes oh my gosh probably over 150
200 yeah substack other things how does that square with you being an introvert what's the bigger model here I think so I started making videos during the pandemic uh like you know I was living alone in Los Angeles it was just losing my mind in this 350 foot
apartment and I realized that like I you know nobody knew when it was going to end and so I said the only way that I'm probably going to have connection is if I'm talking to people through a screen and so I just started talking about stuff and I've always loved educating
like that was the point of the blog and with videos like it it's actually quite ideal for an introvert because you're literally in a room all alone talking to yourself and and uh that's that's what I have I'm so grateful to do it every day uh but yeah
it's a when people meet me in real life I think it can be jarring because I'm I'm quite quiet yeah I prefer to listen and I think most people expect people to that post on social media to be more um boisterous and do you have a method where you produce perfect paragraphs
spontaneously or you have to rehearse it or you do different takes what's the equilibrium here so I it depends on what style I'm doing so I have a whiteboard that I'll sometimes write on but more and more I've tried to just riff like have it be more stream of conscious I
don't know if that works but what I normally would do is write out a script in my notes app and just kind of read from that and then pull um but you're not looking at it when you're talking right you're just saying things so you write it out and then you put it aside
yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah no I the goal is to keep your eyes on the screen at all times yeah yeah to be looking at the other person person who's watching it yeah and now you can just refund anything so you're with a friend and the friend says I want three minutes of Kyla
on interest and you can just do it yeah no it's a there's definitely like the Federal Reserve if somebody gets me talking about the Federal Reserve there's actually within my friend group there's usually some sort of countdown until I mention the Federal Reserve all
hanging out yeah it's something I really enjoy talking about um and I don't quite understand like Obsession human Obsession like why people get interested in things is something that's very interesting to me um and I don't quite know why uh the the economy is so
fascinating to me personally but I I think it's really important that people understand it as someone who would count as an outsider by most typical standards compared to other commentators on the FED what is it you think that you might
see or understand that others undervalue I mean I think there's definitely uh sort of a young person audience that I that I pull from so every every day I get hundreds of comments uh from people telling me their own personal experience um what they're going through and and my
audience is younger right like you know 20 to 35 and uh so I think that is very useful it's a more boots on the ground kind of approach um and then yeah I I would say that's probably the primary thing does being on social media so much drive you crazy yeah you know this I
don't feel it drives me crazy actually really no I don't think so maybe it's not for me to judge do you separate yourself from it yeah yeah so you like post something and you're like okay and I don't follow much politics I mean we're here in early July I've actually
been following Politics the last week to but that's unusual yeah and I'll just look the other way and read about China or India or something that's politics of a different kind right yeah and so for you how do you separate yourself from it I think I'm a very good person at
compartmentalizing but you think it does Drive you crazy I I think so because like a lot of the comments are personal like they see you as um a non-objective commentator even if you're talking about data um and so for me it's it's been difficult the past few months because
you're talking about various data sources like what's going on with inflation what's going on with the labor market but because we're in a post-truth society um everybody is like you're lying and you're a liar and you're horrible for that and so I think I I've
worked on that because it's um you're just a a figment of their imagination right of the audience's imagination in a way they're making a deal with you they promise to listen and give you numbers and you promise to let them abuse you and that's the exchange like that's what
they want it's the right to selectively abuse yeah no and uh they there something to project on right and so it's never about you and that's what I uh my ego gets horribly in the way because ideally I'd remove all ego and realize it's not about me but I I'm
working on that still and you think by now you have a thick skin oh yeah yeah so you've worked on it and you've succeeded well I think success is an instate here where it's I don't know if I'll reach it yeah um for for me it's it's a more of a process than I'd like I
still take a lot of stuff very personally because I just take it personally when it feels like the data isn't resonating or if I'm not explaining something properly or if I haven't done a good job at conveying the idea of the video and I think that's like the hardest part it's like how
could I have done that better and luckily I get another chance to try tomorrow um but I would say it's it's disheartening sometimes putting aside your own work what kind of Economics do you think young people are learning from Tik Tok uh concerning concerning is it
conspiratorial is it leaning in some particular direction I would say it's definitely conspiratorial that there's a lot of desire to pin inflation on on to companies um I which I don't know if that's the best thing to do there's a lot of desire to have a scapegoat right
I think a lot of people are frustrated with their economic situation and so they look at Tik Tok videos and somebody's telling them that yes black rocket is conspiring against them and uh that's very soothing right and so I think that's where We've Ended up with
Tik Tok and econ so if you're on social media so much and they've driven you crazy why is your own analysis so free from conspiratorial thinking oh what's the what's the antidote you have taken I don't know I mean I I think I I try to read as many possible sources as I can
like if I'm not talking on a podcast or like doing a speaking event uh or in a meeting I'm I'm usually reading and so I just try to read as much as I can and I have the opportunity to have like one-on-one interviews with you know the deputy secretary of the treasury I just
interviewed Austin gby of the Chicago fed and I feel like having that um oneon-one sort of talk helps me realize okay this is not like there's there's real stuff going on here right yeah are there any conspiracy theories you believe in I've asked myself this question
there's very few but there are a few what do you believe in well I think JFK probably was killed by more than one gunman yeah not not for sure uh I think there was some concered effort to adjust the timing of the arrival of the vaccinations before the election I think
more sports events are fixed than we realize those would be the three I'm inclined to believe in I it's hard for me to think of others and do you think they're fixed because of gambling yeah just gambling and it's often the referees more than the players oh wow or
team coaches or someone who knows about an injury and you know there's now betting like how many rebounds did you pull down so some of it's even the players there was this one guy in Toronto he's been banned from the NBA yeah so I suspect that's tip of the
iceberg yeah yeah I mean yeah those are only conspiracy theories I feel impoverished no I those are more than I have um I don't know if I'm even wise enough to like know what conspiracy theories I believe in um because I tend to take everything and be like okay that
that makes most most sense to me um but I I think that the thing with conspiracy theories is there's often times more incentives in place than we know um which goes to the point of like JFK and like what that could have meant but yeah I don't I don't have any direct ones
that I'm like yeah that probably happened how is Tik Tok changing putting a side possible band but just the thing itself um I mean there's a couple of things that are happening people aren't on there as much it's not I think Instagram reals has surpassed it in
popularity uh Mark Zuckerberg just continues his domination path and I think also um the algorithm is maybe not as good as it used to be perhaps it's because not as many people are scrolling but there's uh more and more focus on Tik Tok shop Tik Tok really wants to
make a lot of money and they're like if we sell Commerce if we sell goods and to people that'll be the way that we make money and so now every other video for people is like um a face mask or a purse or clothes and so you have users that are constantly being advertised to and
so I think more people view Tik Tok as an exhausting experience than one of connection as it was in 2020 and in general terms how do you think reals is different is it more wholesome or well so um I I I only Scroll once a week and that's usually just to get a sense of
what's happening this is on reals or you mean on Tik Tok both yeah so I try not to actually use social media other than Twitter I'm a Twitter power user or Twitter power scroller I suppose um but yeah reals is a little bit different because it they have curated it to be
more wholesome you're not constantly being advertised to at least not as directly and as um gimmicky as Tik talk and I think that there's more focus on the authentic Creator and what's nice about the Instagram what's nice about Instagram as a platform is that you have
stories and that you have posts and you have reals versus Tik Tok does have stories but you don't when you scroll on Tik Tok you don't really scroll for a single person but Instagram you're able to curate more of a personality because there's like a profile page it's not as
algorithmic um there's more intentionality I think with the platform design versus Tik Tok just wants to keep you scrolling and scrolling and scrolling but I think Instagram it seems to be okay if you you know Stray From the Path a while and SA five or 10 years
from now what do you think reals will look like or what will it do or how will it differ I mean I I think it'll be much more engaging I think there'll be arvr uh I know Mark Zuckerberg is quite interested or he used to be in the metaverse I'm sure AI will have some
sort of involvement with that whether it's AI creators or um something else so I think that the scroll model will have to shift I'm not sure what it'll shift to but I think that sort of motion is going to not be so enticing soon um but yeah I think it'll definitely be much
more interactive and much more the user will be able to direct it much more than the algorithm if that makes sense yeah and someone who's been and still is an Avid Reader if you think about teens or people in their early 20s what's the future of print culture and
reading does that worry you or you think it's fine or Tik Tok is just selling books and it's wonderful or it's falling to pieces what what's your take what do you think from the data I see print culture is declining unless you count the internet which is not what I would mean
by print culture but if you you can be on a flight say sit in business class the most elite group of people you could imagine like pick an elite route and everyone's looking at a screen and I'm the only person reading yeah and that worries me yeah do you think they're
reading on their screens or do you no they're watching movies or videos now Book Sales are fine I think romance right now is the most sharply growing category Hoover yeah that may be good culturally but I'm not sure it's good for print culture as we
understand it no I mean like it's like a big deal if you sell it your Advance yeah right uh and I think it's like 99% of authors don't like it's an alarming statistic uh so like the whole business model of print is a little bit funky like in terms of the Publishers um you
know I just published a book so I'm hoping that people in this economy how money and markets really work yeah very good book I but I don't know like for me and I I feel like it's probably the same for you like books I I try to read as much as I can especially print um I just
feel like there's something so beautiful about having a paper experience um and being able to like write on the page and annotate it but yeah I mean I think the more more and more people I talk to say like oh I don't read or I need to get back into reading
um and that's just like my anecdote total experience but you look at the numbers too and it's it's the numbers don't show what's happening so I'm unsure but what is read and I also have noticed the last 10 or 15 years I don't see many big non-fiction books that have
had a lot of impact yeah I guess it's like Ray doio and it may be just luck of the draw and it will come back but it feels the 80s 90s maybe early audies you you had more of that books like Jared Diamond whether or not you agree with it but everyone would read it talk about it
uh maybe piy was the last one yeah but I don't see that much of it well do you think it's like escapism like people just don't want to deal with non-fiction because that's reality and it's easier to escape from it or maybe the lwh hanging fruit has been plucked there's
like a good Popular Science book on everything now everything's in covered you know plants are intelligent and here's how geology works and okay I've checked all my boxes I don't know I guess so I mean I actually I I think most of what I like I Love non-fiction I
I read quite a bit of it paved Paradise I just finished that which is a book about like parking lots and cars and car culture it's very very good um yeah but then there there's something appealing about fiction but yeah non-fiction is it's it's definitely a tough space
philosophy of philosophy of money Morgan hous that did very well yeah so yeah what shapes what you choose to read you go to book talk or friends tell you or you visit bookstores or anything yeah it's usually through visiting bookstores
and then I I normally have a topic of the week that I'm pretty interested in so like it'll be dominoes and I'll read the history of dominoes or um I read a book about cults like it's just kind of whatever my mind wanders to there's always a book about it yeah uh so yeah I
just sort of Follow that and I I ride my bike a lot and so I just sort of listen to audio books and podcasts on the on the bike yeah the best book in an area you don't care about is very very good and probably you should read it even if you don't care about like Cults right
sure what was the book on Cults um I'm trying to remember it was actually called cultish by is it Amanda Montel have you heard it I don't think so okay I might have said her last name wrong um but it was good it was talking about like you know Cults of the past and then
Cults of the present like Core Power CrossFit um just sort of like what happens when people get sucked into a cult and I I think that's quite interesting because like you know with people trying to figure out religion I think there's more tendency to have cult-like
Tendencies yeah we have more Cults in my opinion you think so it like AI Doomer cult right yeah there's like accelerationist cult they're both Cults you might agree with one or the other but they function as Cults yeah and do you think people are seeking that out or
do they just sort of stumble into it I think they're seeking it out that it's maybe a more volatile age and uh people want to latch on to something organized religion is weaker so they look somewhere else maybe adjacent to religion but not quite formally
religious and do you think it's just human behaviors that we always need something to latch on to like we're always going to need to seek out the Capal truth but I think when social trust is lower which we'll get to as a topic but people want to do this more yeah because
they don't trust in the authorities as much they believe in all these conspiracies right yeah what why do you think people T Trend towards conspiracies like is it just because they don't trust institutions I think there's two things at work one is we've actually had a
number of bad events financial crisis and pandemic and 9/11 would be three big obvious ones arguably there are more but those three right there a lot and that sets off a negative mood and then I think there's a lot of contagion and it feeds on itself and you get into the
cycle where it's self validating so social trust is slower things in fact work less well and politics works less well and then you think oh well I'm right not to trust all of this and it looks like you're right in a way you are right but you still would be better if
you could jump start a much more positive Dynamic yeah do you think there's a human tendency towards negativity in that sense yes absolutely especially when you have those few bad events that clearly are just very bad right yeah yeah but people don't view
them as outliers they view them as con there recency bias so if you were born and you're whatever and the three big events of your life were not like the fall of Communism but 911 great financial crisis and the pandemic you're like whoa what kind of world is this no
yeah I think for so I just turned 27 I was born in 97 so like Born Into the dotom bubble so that's you yeah yeah yeah and my my cohort which is why I think there's a tend towards nihilism yeah but you're optimistic or not not pessimistic at least oh I try to be
optimistic as much as I can um yeah I try to always see the the good in situations I I think there's um like there's a quote from James Baldwin that I really like where the essential idea is like you can look to all books of the past and realize that somebody else has
gone through exactly what you're going through before um you know history as a cycle and so I just kind of take heart in that as like you know I I believe in humans and I believe we always figure it out even if we suck momentarily and so that's how I try to remain optimistic
and you still live in Western Kentucky yes um I I bounce around so Colorado California I travel quite a bit right now yeah does being in Western Kentucky make you more or less optimistic when you're there um it Kentucky is a very beautiful state
but it was it's hard it was hard for me to to be there sometimes um there's a lot that the state could figure out and has taken steps towards figuring out but you know people struggle with their health uh the opioid epidemic hit it pretty hard um and there's just not a
lot of money for things that deserve to have money like healthcare there um it's just a state that has gotten the short end of the stick for a very long time what's your ideal place to live yeah for me personally yeah oh gosh constraints removed you can afford the r whatever
there freedom to build I I I really love the mountains and the woods um yeah I I love riding my bike so anywhere where there's trails and where I can like ride on on the road it's yeah it's a simple life you know books nearby a nice coffee shop that's all I really need yeah
celebrity dead oh yeah um and do you need celebrity you said it's all I need but in fact you have however many Tik Tock and YouTube videos I know yeah I know there's always a little bit of hypocrisy sometimes I suppose um I I think celebrity is dead I actually I put
that down because I was curious to your thoughts on that as well I mean I think people look toward influencers as celebrities now and like the celebrities themselves are just sort of these figments of of movies but like a influencer somebody who's going to be
like your quote unquote best friend somebody that you tune into every aspect of their lives and they give you access to every aspect of their lives and I think that far supersedes everything that we've ever gotten from a celebrity I think of celebrity as having peaked
maybe in the 1980s you have Eddie Murphy you have Schwarzenegger you have Madonna Michael Jackson and it was a thing yeah and then that starts to collapse and break down and we recreated this very different thing the influencer yeah that's you right I don't love the word
because I I feel like you know this is just probably me getting up on a high horse but I feel like I talk about the economy I don't really talk about like my life like I guess if I'm in influence influencing people on economic theory perhaps but I I consider an influencer
somebody more who is essentially a marketing Ploy in Disguise and I I don't consider myself that entirely but a lot of that people use as a channel for relating to you as a person right like if I hold a public event it's striking to me not just that it's predominantly
male but it's males within a certain age range something like 20 to 35 who are somehow looking for something and they are SM SM and I maybe give them some smart content they want but it's also connected to there are different models of how a person like can be or can be
curious or can be productive and they're very interested in that and the people who are like 60 years old don't feel they need to come see me because wherever they've ended up it's where they're at yeah and maybe with you there's a similar Dynamic you're a model
for something for them productivity I don't know maybe um I haven't really thought about that I I guess like I guess so like I I'm not sure what people would find in me if you hold a public event like who shows up a book signing or it's what you just described yeah the
same group of people same group of people yeah and they're looking for something yeah yeah and what do they think they'll find like from you through you with you I mean I I think so I get approached after events sometime most of the time and people often just thank me
for simplifying economics and so I think that's like the main thing um the most recent conversation I had was this person who felt like his worries weren't being recognized as a young person and um I think that's what I try to spend a lot of time doing is like you know I
talk a lot about the housing crisis um talk a lot about what it's like to sort of move up the quote unquote ladder and so perhaps it's that like there's maybe not a lot of there's a lot of focus on being 40 and being a part of the economy but maybe not being 20 and being
a part of the economy yeah yeah how good or bad do you think economics education is today I mean I think there's a lot of really great resources like you all do a great job with that thank you yeah um and I I I uh I think that I don't know
if we like need to start in high school like require an econ class um but it's it's quite I think even the concept of supply and demand sometimes can be confounding to people um and so I would say that there's plenty of resources and I don't know if people just don't want
to have access to it uh but there's maybe not a lot of interest yeah have you found that my intuitive sense not Based on data is economics education was better in the 1990s in the sense that often what really changes people's minds are events and people were more sensible
then and less conspiratorial and there's way more resources now obviously yeah t uh but I'm not sure it's improved the actual educational outcomes if anything it seems to have gone backwards and do you think that's just across the board like we have way too much information
and not no I think it's that events have gone a bad way and that makes people more negative in ways that are not useful so like because we haven't had a moon landing or something exciting yeah now we may have those in biom medicine with AI but even those
they seem to freak people out a bit people are really freaked by AI yeah I would say on average more people are freaked out than excited I think that's right so I'm not sure it's going to serve that function even if you think it should and and so do you think the
hesitancy to education then is like people are like it's just not exciting to me and because there's no event to base exciting things off of I think it's too exciting but in the negative Direction sure like oh someone stole the election or there so many different
versions of whatever uh some you know mistaken belief about covid and very negative and if people have negative feelings I think their actual thoughts become worse even though sometimes the negative feelings are Justified and what role do you think media plays
in all of that do you think it's perpetuated a bad cycle there's some negative bias in media which is hard to overcome one of the things I've liked best about your work is you never fall for that uh always trying to be objective and analytic so there's some negative bias
uh and then I think the us having lost relative status in the world people may not be directly aware of it but at some level they sense it and that makes people more negative sure not in all other countries to be clear uh but here and then I think that adds
on to these other negative events and people become more emotional and just have worse ideas the worst ideas about economics sure about many other things too but certainly about economics yeah and just like what's the right economic path and maybe not seeing Economic
Policy as a whole the 1990s was very polygonish mistakenly so I think in retrospect but I think it was good for people's ideas to be more optimistic yeah the gains from trade was more easily grasped yeah yeah yeah the place where I've seen the best economic education I think is
Singapore and uh try to go there if you can like it's not surprising if you have a taxi driver lecture you about comparative advantage like even using the term it's happened to me and it doesn't seem weird people there just know a lot and do you think that's
because of good public education a very good education system but I think they've had so much recent success yeah uh it's raying now but overall there's still enough positive outlook yeah that it steers them in better directions yeah and because there's such
a negative outlook here of course the direction is going to be negative I worry the negative outlook is spreading to many other places including Singapore actually oh so the US is exporting negative possibly we'll see so if you go to different countries like you go to
Poland things feel very positive well they've had 4% growth for now like over 30 years of course it'll feel pretty good uh India people seem quite optimistic but it's it's harder to think of places like that than it used to be yeah and do you think it's the worries of you know
you said the US is losing status losing status to China to China but just a general sense of we're not Kings of the world anymore of course we never were but now it just seems more obvious that our face is being rubbed in the mud right yeah and that reads some amount of
resentment yeah towards policy makers and just everything right it may not be policy makers it could be Elites or people think somehow Bill Gates or someone is pulling all the strings often the policy makers get off easy and it's some set of figures who have actually
nothing to do with the matter who get blamed do you think there's a way out of it historically you see societies finding ways out but if we knew the formula I think we'd be out of it already and we're not out of it and I know that I don't know the formula like I try to do my small bit um
but no there's no formula I think some of it's luck better Dynamics maybe people who are more analytic making more of an effort but that might be small relative to just events yeah and it's interesting too because like you see people wanting to escape I think like
the people that normally might have contributed to a shifting towards positivity or instead like retreating into subgroups yeah yeah which is not like everything's fragmenting it harder to dig out of the various ditches yeah but you also hope well
there are all these fragments some of them will turn positive and maybe one of the fragments becomes a spark I hope so that's speculative and it hasn't happened yet but that's my hope yeah I hope so too I think right now a lot of people feel pretty bleak more so than ever right yeah
yeah what would you do to improve mainstream media you're in charge you own a TV station a major newspaper what would you do I mean I think that we were just talking about negativity in in media and there's a chart that I like that shows the sentiment in media
headlines has gotten extraordinarily negative like everything is a story it's just it's a business model right and so I don't know if this plan would make a lot of money but I think there's a lot of Need for foundational resources on media sites which a lot of them do have
access to um I think no pay wall which is you know money hard to manage money problem number one but you have no pay wall I have no pay wall yeah um and uh yeah and I think just like really objective stories I really like what simor does where they tell a story and
then they say where the reporter's bias might be um I think that's just useful I think you kind of have to parcel out media stories as much as you can be like here's the facts here's where potential bias might be because that's what people you know at least right now um this idea
is very responsive to the moment uh people are constantly seeking where they could possibly be lied to um and so that I would try to do everything I can to make it as straightforward as possible give access to the data sources that I'm talking
about like if I'm talking about CPI you know here's where you can go and check CPI um that's how I would run a media site uh yeah and if people want to use Twitter now X better what's your advice for them you do it I do it right so we we do something some people don't manage
they they quit they leave they're disgusted whatever do you block no I've never had I've blocked like one or two people yeah do you mute sometimes but the people I mute are not bad they're just too prolific yeah just saying too much yeah yeah um I mean
I I like I love Twitter I think that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Twitter and I'm very aware of that um just because so many smart people are on there yeah um and so that's kind of where I got my my start uh so I think that for me like I just I know who's
really good to listen to like employ America great Think Tank um you know the people over at Bloomberg always tweeting great stuff and I kind of know what not to be paying attention to there's a component of media literacy to it like you have to sort of scroll by the viral
video and get to like the data source right and so I think that's the way to use Twitter and then of course it's the cess pool like it's the harassment is unreal right now but you just mute your Tweet when you tweet it and then you just don't check yeah yeah yeah I like
animal videos too so some of there was one today like two big bears wrestling with each other I watched the whole 30 seconds oh did you what were they doing just sort of like fighting oh you don't get to see the end which I suspect was not decisive oh no but they're they're
pretty rough with each other were they black bears I think so yeah big black bears yeah they're pretty I I saw a bear up close and it was one of the scariest moments of my life this was in Colorado it was in Colorado yeah we were on a hike and um my dog I have a dog named moo and
she froze up and I was like okay what's going on and I look over and there's a bear 3 feet away from us very scary yeah High housing costs how much of it do you think is nimbyism and how much is it it's just worth more than it used to be to live near the right people oh are
those not the same thing well they're interrelated but let's say there's no nimi like South Korea sa they've built an orous amount it's a very vertical City it has like a third of the country's GDP uh but it's still very expensive to live there you can't say they're too
nimi but it's worth a lot to be in Soul yeah and Busan is important but there's nothing really close to being in the economic financial and Cultural Center MH so at least in Korea it seems well it's about collocation and not about nimi but if it's Oakland California I
suspect it's mostly about Nim be Berkeley yeah um yeah I would say definitely some areas it's about nimi it's people really trying to protect the value of their home and the value of what they perceive their surroundings to be and they don't
want any change ever um and so I think some components of it are definitely people being resistant to any idea of progress um and then I think a lot of it too is just we haven't built enough I interviewed the deputy secretary of the treasury about the housing crisis and
yeah it's just a problem that we've had since the Great Recession you know home builders got freaked out when the housing market crashed and so of course they're not going to build right um and now rates are really high so it's even harder to build uh and we have all these
zoning restrictions and we just make it really hard to build too and so I think it's this you know Perfect Storm of events and then also a house is meant to be both a speculative asset and then a place that you live yeah and so we have um there's one of my favorite charts
from the FED I talk about it all the time time because it's a distribution of financial assets and it shows the bottom 50% all their wealth is tied up into housing and so if you say to those people like we're going to build around you and potentially reduce the value of
your home they're not going to be so happy about that there study showing that building more doesn't reduce the value of a home but I think you're sort of fighting an uphill battle with housing because we tell people that this is like the ticket to the American dream
um and then also just don't have enough of it because of that right so if someone with real money came to you and said should I invest more in real estate in very high quality locations what would you tell them how should they think about that I mean I I I guess so
yeah like if you want into I think 70% of homes in New York were recently bought up with cash uh so people are definitely still investing in those areas um you know I'm this is a dynamic that I'm quite interested in because I think you saw during the pandemic people
you know moving away from Urban centers and moving out to the suburbs or rural areas to have more space um and so I don't know if like with Transit and like cars and stuff will will the outskirts become more desirable like I think you can look at Texas and sort of see that
um so it just depends on what highly desirable area that they're talking about um but you don't think the MS will win and crash the price of real estate well I think you can look at Austin Texas and and see that the MS did win there and you know the housing prices
are going down I think they were down 12% um as of December 2023 and so I think in some places they'll win but then in some places like New York for example the resistance is just going to be far too high um so it'll just depend on what city it's in but I I
think you're seeing a lot of progress in certain places progress meaning building more yeah yeah yeah yeah Allison shager had a recent column for Bloomberg you may have seen it she argued today's Young investors take on too much risk oh do you agree was she referring to
crypto some of it crypto but not only you know Meme stocks would be another simple example they can be risky yeah uh do you think that they do I don't think I have enough data I suspect they're in a position where they can afford it yeah but that they're also not optimizing
that would be my intuitive response Connor sin has a theory on this where he thinks that because Millennials jiny can't afford homes that they're gambling um on crypto and on Meme stocks and um I think I I I could see that I I think that one of the comments I get the most
often is people asking me how they can make the most money as quickly as possible yeah and you have a simple answer right yeah and I'm like oh man yeah that's why I'm making these videos because I know the answer um and so I think there that you see a total
disconnect in the market right now between any sense of fundamentals like The Magnificent Seven are up I think 8% on the week uh 8% on the past week perhaps um on on basically no news so the stock market is sort of driven by hype Cycles right now more so than ever
I believe you know if you remove the top five companies AI companies Nvidia included the market is actually down and so I think like number to answer this question more concretely number one there is a desire to gamble and then number two I think people don't see the
stock market as a reflection of fundamentals they see it as an opportunity to gamble because it is so removed from elements of reality is that a hype cycle or is it the reality that AI will displace a lot of traditional economic activity but yeah and newer
companies will gain more yes um I well so I I know that you're a big proponent of AI did you see the Sequoia memo where they were talking about like how much would have to be produced in order to absolutely and what did you think about that oh I think it's all going to crash
like with the railroads and the dotom bubble but that it will come back and then make a fortune oh wow so you think it'll like right now it's too hyped up it'll swing back down well it depends there's publicly traded stuff and inside stuff and it may be quite different
answers but all the major technological revolutions I've seen in history they have bubbles yeah and the bubbles pop and a lot of people lose a lot of money so I would be surprised if this time it were different but I would be surprised if it just stayed down low and never
came back like you know pets.com is gone but the internet is with us yeah that's true and I guess like you know part of the SEO was like we don't know how some of this application will be applied like we don't know where AI will be actually
useful do you think that's sort of the example of pets.com with the internet bubble like there is useful parts of AI and the unuseful parts the pet.com of AI will get washed out in the cycle it may be more dramatic than that so one possible model is the AI Services become
commoditized so the people who paid for all the fixed costs of training and the like they're so to speak the suckers they'll never get that money back we'll have really cheap AI soon for every almost everyone and most of the gains will go to users and consumers oh wow
I'm not sure that's the case but that would be my default model and the investors uh just lost a lot of money yeah but you see the same like with vaccines most vaccines don't make money they may lose money they're great for the world overall uh and maybe we're just going to
keep on repeating that pattern yeah and there was a a bloom really big Bloomberg article that got a lot of push back talking about the energy usage of AI do you think that'll be like Sam wman was even like we have to have nuclear eventually like what are your thoughts
on AI blowing out grids well I would belong uh the energy you know the hard part of energy not the commoditized part but the parts of the infrastructure that you can't just build on mass at INF an item yeah so I think not only because of
AI just data centers the demand for that will go up a lot yeah uh us will be slow with nuclear but countries that are non- Nim on energy have a very big geopolitical comparative advantage and we just don't quite see it yet I think that's an underrated feature of today's
world energy energy so like UAE which has shown a lot of willingness to build a lot more and they have a lot of sun there uh I think they'll do very well for that reason yeah yeah I think energy is like it's sort of this thing that we don't really think about because we're
so used to just like flipping on the light switch and having it work like we've done such a good job at hiding it from people right yeah and so they just don't think about it and it was a big thing in the 70s and then it more or less went away and it got pretty cheap
and I just think it's going to come back yeah or it is back already I think so too yeah I think that might be bigger than like when you're talking about the AI I think the hype cycle will die down as well I think energy will be like the the point of interest when that is in a
downturn yeah especially for places that don't have Simple Solutions like hydroelectric or solar yeah the cost of that has gone down tremendously like battery power the cost of that is is down quite a bit so solar has gone down yeah but you still need some backup
right for solar uh even if batteries are good the notion that there could be like a big volcanic explosion and the Sun is somewhat blocked for a year and a half and you just don't have power yeah I think there will and should be backups of some kind probably those should be
nuclear but again it will be up for grabs and there'll be a lot of Demands that are hard to satisfy yeah yeah I think nuclear do think that's like the way that we have to go I don't know about have to so I have friends who are like utopian geothermal ists I don't
feel I can evaluate that they feel that a lot of places not just say parts of the American West can access geothermal power just by making the technology better I just can't tell if they're right or not but if they're right that's great if they're not right we're back to
nuclear yeah but voters don't like nuclear in most countries and that's just because of associations they don't like having it near their homes yeah the associations French voters seem okay with it Swedish voters so not everywhere but uh nimi is strong
and nimi versus nuclear nimi is always one and do do you think that voters oftentimes vote against their own self-interests like I think that's kind of a yeah I that's the way we voting is for feel good about yourself but make a bad decision oh and has that always been
the case it's selective I mean I think the overall composition of the federal budget it's too much to old people and not enough to young people and that is because old people vote more and you wouldn't actually say it's bad for the old people no they get more money and
then they're going to die it's okay for the old people but still there's a lot of expressive voting and people wanting to vote for causes just to send a message but when it's done on mass it screws up the system yeah and you see this in the French that were just
concluded the extreme left the extreme right they got a lot of votes because people are upset with the status quo in my view it would have been better if they all voted for macron and maybe you had you know five or 10% with protest votes but you have most of the electorate casting a protest
vote and why do you think that's happened like why is everything become you know to the taal ends of the extremes well if you mean France I think people are genuinely upset about what they consider too much immigration yeah and there's not been a real policy
response but I also think the French have a historical tradition of being especially expressive politically yeah action in the streets and Strikes more Americans have their own version of that maybe that would be listening to people on Tik Tok or something but
France you get out there and you do something and you really protest yeah but I think they end up with a less functional politics for that reason a lot of it's self-destructive do you think we don't have to get into it but do you think the US is trending toward that I think we're
trending toward greater paity where all kinds of outrageous things happen and no one protests which someone my age is quite extreme and unusual and they just operate on social media and maybe that absorbs the chaos but you get less error correction over time yeah because people
are passive people are very passive and they become more passive but they're given an outlet where they feel like they're doing something yeah like sharing a story on social media yeah yeah but in the aggregate the stories kind of wash each other out so you don't
have impact even though your story might have caught some attention but both sides do it and then you're left with uh not much protest yeah and the the passive acceptance of whatever the result is going to be you know without taking sides politically there have been
a variety of candidates elected in different places where 30 40 years ago you would have thought there going to be big protests and mostly there weren't yeah I I don't think there's been much of any I mean there was protest during 2020 you know BLM but
yeah it doesn't seem like that's something I I thought about like you know there would be like why don't I protest certain stuff right yeah you do in a way but very indirectly but yeah no it's it's sharing a story right um and yeah like with it was really interesting
watching the France election um because it sort of mirrors in a sense what's happening here especially with the the breaking a part of the left here um and I don't people just seem to want to check out you know yeah yeah and maybe the depression the paity it's all part
of some calm and negativistic picture do you think it is because of demographics like you know they're like oh the older people are taking over for younger people for example like they're like I'm just not going to do anything because it's just so far far out of my control I
don't know uh there are still Democratic incentives in the system so I think people think in generational terms Maybe more than is warranted by the data I've had this discussion with Peter teal he talks about like Boomers and Millennials and generation x and z
to me it's a Continuum and it's the events at any point in time that matter a bit more but I think people disagree on these questions I don't think it's settled in terms of how different different Generations are whether it's Continuum
or you have these fixed you know start and stop points well I think it's kind of the culty thing that you were talking about we were talking about earlier where it's like people want to belong to a certain generation it's easy to put yourself in a box that way yeah yeah uh
but when yeah I'm never convinced that's the right way to look at it I don't think so I think it creates more problems and you know answers yeah and there's some sort of solution that involves a lot of talking across Generations yeah some people have this
view like oh the Boomers they all die off and then you get something very different uh it would surprise me if that were the mechanism well I think everyone you'll just step into the Boomer shoes you know yeah exactly you the new boss the old boss you see that Gen X I think to a certain
extent um just sort of accepting elements of that status quo yeah yeah reala I brought my copy of real why is real important to you oh you know I've been working through my own copy and I just I think that there's a lot of life lessons in what is being discussed in
the poems um I'm not a scholar in any sense of of the word or just a you know somebody trying to understand things um but you know there is a passage that I sent you about like you know poems are not emotions they're experiences and I think that that is just what he is able
to convey is like everything is an experience in the way that he writes and it's it's really quite beautiful yeah what else do you like in poetry like what do I look for or what other poets or however you figure it out oh I have a poem page on my oh I know what else
what's the meta algorithm I try to find answers yeah which I you know it's I don't know if it works or not but I I try I I think often times you know I I probably absorb more of the world than I should I I don't have great boundaries up against
uh emotions and so I think I it turned to poetry especially with the economy it's so it's so personal for people um I I feel like often times you can explain economic theor through the lens of poetry and so I sort of look for the world encompassing poems um that can help me
think about the economy if that makes sense and how do you think that gives you a different perspective on economics um I I what I like to say is that it gives me a more human Centric lens like I try to think people first as much as I can even though it's sometimes difficult
um and so yeah the way that the economy is composed in my head is of people and I try to see poetry and and all of it yeah it sounds very woo but yeah if you're giving advice to young people who will be investing and they have longtime Horizons right they're going to live a
lot more years is there any advice other than just buold and diversify um it's kind of the thing that's worked right historically is byold and um diversify what do with my own portfolios buy the S&P as much as I can you know have the q's which is the tech companies
um and then if I purchase certain things like you know if I I buy a certain pair of shoes from Nike or you know go to um a a restaurant uh you know I fly United I'll own some of those stocks too so I try to like build portfolio that reflects me as a consumer I don't know
if that's so you feel in touch with the companies and how they're doing yeah and then I think it's like well if my money is going towards them I should probably put some money toward them as a as a stock yeah and I try to like not look at my portfolio as much as I can I bought
up some treasuries dur when you know rates were super high um so yeah it's just it's just about kind of paying attention diversifying and then I really there's the saying like time in the market beats timing the market which I think is you know what you're saying
with the younger people having a long time Horizon I think it's really just about starting so going back to that chart that I referenced earlier you know the bottom 50% all their wealth is in real estate the top 10% all their wealth is in equity ownership and um businesses and
so like there's kind of the example right there is like you know the top 10% own stocks right and so I think the more that we can encourage people to have some sort of stock portfolio perhaps outside of the their 41k the better 62% of Americans do own stocks but it would
be nice if that was higher you use AI for your work at all um yeah I ask it questions yeah I I use Claude quite a bit for like research I'm a one person team um and so it's it's nice to have something to talk to uh so I used Claude quite a bit and then I use chat GPT just
mostly for like factchecking and grammar um and how to pronounce words I have a lot of trouble saying certain words uish is very good for that but I've also found that chat GPT can be helpful with like saying it in context of a sentence
how often do you think about the Roman Empire that Meme I honestly more so over the past couple weeks because of what's going on in the US than than usual um yeah I mean I think that they're they're quite fascinating but I think I think more about the Great Depression than I
do the Roman Empire and why the Great Depression I just I've ended up reading a lot of books about it recently like trust is a book that just won the pzer or won the pzer for a few years ago and that was kind of about the fictionalization of somebody who greatly profited from the
Great Recession um so I've just read a lot of books about that era I think the Robert Barons who are like kind of around the era as well are very fascinating like Andrew Carnegie you know Vanderbilt uh I just think that that's kind of like a interesting time in human
existence and I like to think about it because it a little bit closer than the Roman Empire yeah yeah some of it's a period where this negative sentiment spirals out of control yeah absolutely yeah I think people were totally distraught after the Great Depression
like there was no hope on Horizon but we made it through and I think another reason why I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently is there was a a statistic that was released um maybe a few months ago or a few weeks ago that said that a certain amount of people
think that now is worse than the Great Depression yeah and so I'm just I'm just trying to and unemployment is what 4.1% yeah can you believe it um yeah I don't know I just think it's um you can learn a lot from recent history as you know and so I spend a lot
of time just reading fictionalization of it and when you think about like the next steps for you building out the kyus scandin Empire of one what does that look like or what are you going to do or what are you trying to learn next or what should we expect
I'd love if there's more than one um yeah hiring is is a tough um so I I think for me like I just wrote the book and that was a big Endeavor um it's very hard to write a book there was a lot of lessons learned from it and I would like to write another one um about something
uh and that would be very nice and then I think also I'm very interested in just different mediums so like radio is something I'm very fascinated by uh TV shows very fascinated by I think for me I just would like to produce economic education across a variety of content
the reason that I produced across you know Tik Tok and substack and you know have a podcast and um have a yoube channel is because I try to reach people where they are in terms of how they consume media and so I think like having a TV show um you know like a fre freedom
to choose sure yeah I watched it as a kid yeah exactly it was on PBS yeah exactly I think something like that would be really great where there's sort of this foundational um place that you can go to get access to this stuff and so that's
something that I wanted to experiment with as much as possible um just the different mediums of Education so like lying between you and the Kyla scandin TV show like what is scarce in terms of getting there right is it money or Talent or someone to work with or
what's the most scarce thing yeah yeah I mean you know when you're in this sort of job you're a contractor right and so I make money from the platforms and I make money from the Partnerships that I have which I'm very grateful to have um but the self-sustaining aspect of it can
be interesting to to navigate um and so yeah there's aspect of that and then there's aspects of like how do you do a TV show um like who do you talk to how do you get the right connections and so it's mostly just navigating a field and you know you're in a corn maze and you
know that there's a way out but you just have to figure out what the right path is to close I'll repeat the book again in this economy how money and markets really work but please just repeat how people can find you across all your different platforms Kyla scandin k y l a
yes yes so I'm Kyla scan k y l a s CA an on Twitter on Instagram on Tik Tok I have a LinkedIn where I also post videos kyla. subs.com is my newsletter uh my YouTube channel is Kyla skinin and I have a podcast called let's appreciate and then yeah the book is called in this
economy and I narrate the audio book version there's also an ebook version and if you want to support a local bookstore you can buy a signed copy from Boulder bookstore in Boulder Colorado Kyla scandin thank you very much thanks for having me