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Frank Cappello: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to this week's special bonus episode for paid subscribers. I'm Lever Time producer Frank Capello. Today we'll be sharing David Sirota's interview with Brett Christophers.

Brett is a political economist, economic geographer, and author of the new book, Our Lives in Their Portfolios,

Why Asset Managers Own the World. As you all know, The Lever is one of the few news outlets that regularly reports on the private equity industry, which is wild when you consider how much influence they have over the American economy.

This interview with David and Brett is a wonky deep dive into the world of private equity. How firms use public money to become the private owners of a range of assets.

The private equity industry's impact on the housing and rental market, and how the Inflation Reduction Act was, in certain ways, the [00:01:00] opposite of the New Deal.

It's a really fascinating conversation, I personally learned a lot just from producing this episode, so we are excited to share it with you. Thank you again for being a supporting subscriber and funding the work that we do here at The Lever. Now, here's David Sirota's interview with Brett Christophers.

David Sirota: Hey Brett. Thanks for being here.

Brett Christophers: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

David Sirota: I'm so glad you wrote this book. It's such an important topic. our lives in their portfolios, such a great title. So let's start there. What does that mean to you? What does it mean that our lives are in their portfolios?

Brett Christophers: Yeah, good, good place to start. So by there, I'm talking about, asset management firms. Often people will think of them as, know them as private equity firms, for example, companies like Blackstone, companies like Brookfield Asset Management. As most people know, I think,What asset management firms do is they take, , the money that's given to them, given to them to [00:02:00] invest by others.

They invest it on those people's behalf and earn fees for doing that and try to make a profit for those end investors. And so they have investment portfolios. They, invest in all sorts of different things and that's their investment portfolios. And, you know, historically they've invested almost exclusively in the past in financial assets, stocks, bonds, so on and so forth.

And so their portfolios have been, I would argue, pretty distant from every, everyday people's everyday lives. but what the book is about is saying, hang on a second, they're not just investing in financial assets anymore. They're also investing increasingly in what the industry refers to as real assets.

And the ones I focus on in the book, Of things like housing and various forms of essential infrastructure of other kinds, water delivery infrastructure, transportation infrastructure, what have you. And so what they're doing is they're investing in owning, [00:03:00] physical systems, physical infrastructures in which our daily lives are fundamentally embedded.

They're owning things and making profits from things that are very, very important to each and every one of us is everyday life. And so that's what I mean by the title of that book. Uh, it was just to say that our lives are kind of fundamentally embedded now in these investment portfolios that asset managers are putting together and making money from.

David Sirota: So it's not only. Our lives in their portfolios. It's, it's also our in the collective, our, our money. I want to go into that a little bit, right? I mean, this is not just what you're talking about is not just, you know, uh, a billionaire using, his or her own money to buy things. This is, in many cases, billionaires using institutional, uh, investors money.

Brett Christophers: correct.

David Sirota: [00:04:00] And institutional investors sounds like, I'm sure to a lot of people who are listening, sounds like a really esoteric kind of abstract term, but ultimately many institutional investors money is effectively Our money, in the form of pension contributions, in the form of insurance premiums, and the like. So in a sense, this is people at the top, billionaires, using our money to buy up more of the physical systems that we actually need.

So then, of course, the question becomes, well, how are they getting access? To so much of that money, right? What are the inherent conflicts and tensions in so much of this money that's being used to buy up so much around us? What are the inherent conflicts and tensions of that, of the resources for that effectively being our money?

Brett Christophers: Yeah, absolutely right. And, and the way you put it is a [00:05:00] really lovely way of putting it, because, because essentially what you're saying is they're using not just our money, but in significant part our money to own our stuff. And, and they're kind of acting as this intermediary through which the money is being routed.

and as, as the, as I think the book does, I think a pretty decent job of showing, you know, they're skimming off enormous amounts of Profit in the process of doing that. I mean, the question you are, that you finished there with is a really good, good one to, I guess, start with when you say, well, how, you know, how are they getting hold of that money?

You're right that a significant part of the money is pension contributions, which is held in, uh, in pension plans, whether those are private or public pension plans. And if you go back to the 1960s, 1970s, Pension fund trustees, those people who are charged with managing those, uh, pension contributions, those retirement savings, they typically [00:06:00] carried out that investment themselves.

So they would, they would take the money and they would put it in stocks of, you know, General Electric or whatever, whatever it was, or the municipal bonds of a particular local municipality or whatever else. But what happened from the 1970s onwards was two things. First of all, there was an explosion in the amount of money that was available to invest, not just pension money, but in particular pension money.

And secondly, more and more of that investment was rooted through these intermediaries whereby these pension fund trustees and others said, okay, we're not going to invest this ourselves. We're going to hand the job over to quote unquote experts, asset management companies who will carry out that investment on our behalf.

You know, lower our costs and, and ideally at least generate greater returns for us. So those are the kind of the two key background trends is more money to invest and more of it being rooted via the likes of Blackstone, BlackRock, [00:07:00] Vanguard, and all the other asset managers that, that many of your listeners will have heard of.

David Sirota: Right. And I think that's, that's so key. So I mean, what, what I hear you saying is, is that in the, let's say the 1960s, the local or state pension fund. was buying, uh, municipal bonds, right? I mean, they would buy, you know, the, uh, a city in the, in the state would issue debt. The pension fund would buy that debt by buying the bond.

Now we have a situation where, uh, pension funds, in this example, are actually turning over hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars at a time to people like, uh, the CEO of Blackstone. To people like the CEO of the Carlyle Group or KKR for them to decide how to invest. Now, of course, the argument for that is, well, those firms, those asset management firms, they have a level of expertise that the average pension [00:08:00] trustee or, insurance companies, uh, investment board doesn't have.

And so that's the argument that, that asset management, the service that it's providing as it's by the way, skimming fees off of the money that it's getting the, the The service that it's providing is that the asset management industry has investment expertise to get the even better returns for the investors.

Does that end up being true?

Brett Christophers: sometimes, I mean, let's be clear about this, I mean, the range of returns on these types of, uh, investments ranges very, very greatly, and sometimes the funds that they invest through perform very, very well, sometimes they don't,you know, most of the data I've seen suggests that once you strip out their fees,the performance of private equity and other types of investment of this type, is [00:09:00] not, materially better than, than you can get by putting your money into a bog standard index fund over the long haul, and a lot of that has to do with the fact that, you know, maybe we can come back to this point, you know, the level of fees that is being extracted by these companies for that service, Are very, very high, but you're right.

I mean, their argument is that we are the experts and, and, and I think , there's another couple of arguments they make, which are really important to understand because they're very, very powerful arguments and they, they do a great deal of work politically in sustaining this industry. The first is, is, Is they say, well, look, you know, a lot of these things we're buying like housing, like infrastructures, transportation, infrastructures, energy infrastructure, whatever else they say, look, it's good that these things are owned by us because we are better owners and custodians of these types of assets than other potential owners are.

And the [00:10:00] one they obviously point to most commonly is the state itself is governments. They say, look, a lot of these types of infrastructures. have historically been owned by the state. We all know that the public sector is this classically kind of inefficient, bureaucratically addled, terrible custodian of these assets.

Let's give these assets kind of a dose of private sector efficiency and therefore it's good for these assets to be owned by us, rather than by other types of owner. That's argument A. The other argument they make is they say, Not only are we doing, doing good by owning these assets, but we are also doing good precisely by generating, significant investment returns for those whose money is being invested.

Now, the clever thing, the very clever argument they make is they obviously don't say, look, we're performing this great public service because we're, we're taking the money of very, very wealthy people and making them even wealthier. [00:11:00] That's not what they say. What they say is, look, we are taking the money of these public pension schemes, which represent the retirement savings of, of nurses, firefighters, of humble school teachers.

And we are producing a good, solid, profitable pension specifically for those types of individuals. And so that's what they say. And so when someone turns around and says, look, the private equity industry is this horrible thing that kind of ransacks. different sectors, they say, well, actually, you know, you shouldn't clamp down on the private equity industry.

Because at the end of the day, the private equity industry is securing the long term pensions of firefighters and nurses and so on. And people go, oh, yeah, that's right. And that becomes a very politically powerful argument. And I, and I would say that what, what my book tries to do, probably above all, is kind of.

interrogate and also, ultimately I think demolish both [00:12:00] of those arguments both about them as being good owners and them as being working in the service of kind of the most humble Employees in the community.

David Sirota: Yeah, I mean, it's the classic neoliberal win win argument. I put that in quotes, right? I mean, oh, you know, our fleecing and pillaging the earth, the workplace, the labor market, all of that. Uh, produces, creative destruction of capitalism, innovation, uh, and it produces great profits that ultimately trickle down to teachers, firefighters, cops, insurance policy holders, et cetera, et cetera.

It's the win win argument, uh, that has defined effectively the post New Deal era, uh, and of course, in, in my view, that's. It's rooted in a fundamental lie, uh, and, and I want to get to that [00:13:00] part here because all of that win win idea is predicated on the fact that the net effect of this, even with the downsides, end up benefiting, uh, the public at large.

The argument is it benefits more than just the, the general partners, the asset. management companies. I think that's false. And I want to go into, uh, one emblematic example that you've written about. One example. You haven't you talk about in the boot book is Brookfield Renewable Partners.

We could talk about that, but if there's an even better example maybe from your book, you can throw that out there too. Like give us a tangible example of where these arguments have been made to the public to justify asset management companies owning an ever bigger share of the public space. The arguments that said that was, that that would be a good thing where it ended up not being such a good thing for most people.[00:14:00]

Brett Christophers: Yeah. I would say that the best examples relate to, infrastructures that used to be owned by, by the government, but that are now owned by the, almost exclusively by the private sector in general and by asset management companies in particular, and I'm thinking of things like water and sewage infrastructures and so on, where the service, the infrastructure quality has deteriorated massively under asset manager ownership.

Thank you. While the rates that users pay have gone up rates far faster than they ever did under public ownership. So I would say that in the UK case, that's probably the best example, but let's focus on the US. In the US case, I would say that far and away the clearest example concerns housing. And it concerns, an example that many, listeners will have heard of, which is the fact that subsequent to the global financial crisis, a lot of the housing that was foreclosed upon, in the period between around 2009 and [00:15:00] 2011, and in particular a lot of the single family housing that was foreclosed upon, ended up, being bought up at incredibly cheap prices, precisely by asset management companies, among whom some of the names you already mentioned were key actors, the likes of Blackstone, the likes of Carlisle.

and, and many, many others. And again, they have pushed this very line. First of all, we're making money for, you know, ordinary workers. And second of all, we are good landlords. We take care of these properties. , we act in the best interest of tenants and so on and so forth.

David Sirota: Right. Everybody, everybody wins, right? I mean, that was the argument. Everybody wins.

Brett Christophers: Everybody wins. Now, 10, 12 years later, there's now a significant body of, of, uh, of work that shows that's just blatantly not the case.

David Sirota: Yeah. Let me get, let me guess, let me guess. Not everybody won, right?

Brett Christophers: yeah. And, and, and, you know, [00:16:00] some of that research admittedly is anecdotal. So there's been all manner of different newspaper, investigative newspaper reports.

in published in, in sites ranging from the Washington Post to, to Reuters and many, many others that have talked to countless numbers of tenants of these, uh, asset manager controlled landlords. And there's horrific story after horrific story of, you know, appalling maintenance of, of, uh, rents going up at astronomical rates of just everything you can imagine.

that could be a part of a bad experience of a tenant has happened in these cases. But of course, the asset managers turn around and say, well, some of those stories aren't true in any way. It's all anecdotal. And the general experience is not that. But there's also lots of scientific research that's now been done, which shows, well, this isn't isolated examples.

This is a generalized phenomenon. And so let me, let me give, give [00:17:00] you one. Example of that, a lot of research has shown that if you look at, in any particular metropolitan region where asset managers in the last decade have become significant buyers of single family housing, if you look at rates of eviction, in housing that is controlled by asset managers, Versus housing that is controlled by other types of landlord, whether that's mom and pop landlords or bog standard property companies or whatever else it is.

Again and again, that research has shown that you have significantly higher rates of eviction in housing that is owned by asset managers than in housing owned by other types of landlords. And it's, and it's pretty obvious why that's occurring, right? Is that they are much more ruthless.

about trying to maximize rental income. And if they get tenants that are standing in the way of them doing everything they can to maximize, uh, increases in rental rates, then that tends to end up in greater levels of eviction. and so there's lots of scientific research showing this as well. So the, the, the tenant [00:18:00] experience in this context has been a bad, has been a bad one.

There's, there's no doubt about that in my mind at all. Uh, and I think the research shows that now very, very compellingly.

David Sirota: So let's talk about the Inflation Reduction Act. Let, let's, let's bring this up into the present. We just talked about the financial crisis and the foreclosure disaster that happened in the aftermath of that, the Inflation Reduction Act. This is the one of the centerpieces of so-called Bidenomics. It has been compared to, in some cases, the New Deal, some of the biggest, I guess, sycophants of President Biden have used it to liken him to Franklin Roosevelt.

You have written about, uh, the Inflation Reduction Act in a piece for the New York Times through the prism of your book, uh, of this idea of asset management. And, and you argue the Inflation Reduction Act is actually... Significantly divergent from [00:19:00] the ethos of the new deal that the comparisons are essentially wrong in the sense that the basis of the Inflation Reduction Act is actually the opposite.

Of the basis of the new deal. And to understand that you have to understand that the asset management, facts that we've been discussing right here on this podcast. So tell us about that. How does the Inflation Reduction Act diverge from the new deal? And how does that divergence reflect the centrality of the asset management industry now in the American economy?

Uh, and

Brett Christophers: The starting place for this is, is, is to focus on the question of ownership, right? Which is, which is to say, both the Inflation Reduction Act and the New Deal were slash are in significant part about building, rebuilding critical parts of America's infrastructural landscape.[00:20:00]

So under the New Deal, you had enormous amounts of new infrastructure being, being built. And the same will be, and to a certain extent already is true under the Inflation Reduction Act. and in both cases, the government is playing a very significant role and is, and is providing a lot of funding and is, and is kind of prime pumping this.

But the big difference is ownership. So most of the, infrastructure that was. In fact, almost all of the infrastructure that was built under New Deal was publicly owned infrastructure that remained publicly owned infrastructure. And what that meant was that to the extent that those infrastructures were revenue generating infrastructures, in, you know, through the payment of, of rates, water rates, whether it's transportation infrastructures, energy infrastructures, whatever else, those.

revenues that were generated accrued to the government. And so they kind of repaid, over the long [00:21:00] term, the money that the government had put into the funding and construction of those infrastructures in the first place. Now the Inflation Reduction Act is very, very different from that. So yes, government money is being used, and you know, the news reports you read about this, put, you know, cite all these figures about the amount of government money that's been going into it.

But that money... is not going into funding the ownership by the public sector of these infrastructures. almost all of the infrastructures that are being built, in particular the clean energy infrastructures, will be owned by the private sector. So the government money, that money there, It's not to kind of build and own the infrastructure, the government money there is to subsidize and de risk private investment in these types of infrastructures.

What the government and what Biden's team are basically saying is, look, unless we subsidize these investments, the investment won't take place. Now, I actually am very, very sympathetic to that argument. And the reason I'm sympathetic to [00:22:00] it, and this is actually the subject of my next book, is that clean energy is not a very good business.

You don't generate, broadly speaking, and there's all sorts of different reasons for this, very much money by owning and operating solar and wind farms and selling electricity. And unless governments subsidize those investments, they won't take place. That's a basic fact. So I'm totally sympathetic to the fact that they feel that they need to subsidize it.

what I would argue is what that means is that, well, you should abandon private ownership, private leadership of ownership of those infrastructures altogether and focus on public ownership. But if you assume that these things should be privately owned, then you do need public, uh, subsidization. But that's what the public money is going towards.

It's to subsidize private ownership of these infrastructures. So public money going in, the, the, the infrastructures will be almost exclusively privately owned. and therefore the revenues that those infrastructures, uh, generate over the long term will be accruing to private sector shareholders, not to the public [00:23:00] sector in the way that was the case on the New Deal.

So, that's the, the basic story. Where do asset managers fit in? Well, they come into this story very, very significantly, specifically because if, if you look around the world in general, but, but the U. S. in particular, about what types of infrastructures asset managers increasingly own than its energy infrastructures, and in particular its clean energy infrastructures.

So Brookfield, you mentioned earlier, Brookfield Renewable Partners, which is, which is essentially a vehicle of Brookfield Asset Management, the, the, uh, umbrella company, is one of the world's biggest owners of any type of renewable energy infrastructures. Macquarie, a big Australian asset manager, another massive owner of clean energy infrastructure.

Blackrock is increasingly a major owner of renewable energy infrastructure. If you drive around Sweden, where I live, into the wilds of Sweden and you come across a big wind farm in the wilds of [00:24:00] Sweden, the odds are pretty good that it's owned by Blackrock. And so asset managers have a huge vested interest in wanting to see investment in new clean energy infrastructures being as profitable as possible.

And so they were fully behind the Inflation Reduction Act. They lobbied hard for its passage. They were amongst the first to come out when the, when the, the Act was signed into law to say, well, this is, this is great news. This is gonna be generating fantastic profits for our funds in the long term. So they are right at the heart of that, of the kind of broader political economy of which the Inflation Reduction Act is, is, is the most important manifestation.

David Sirota: Then let's do the devil's advocate question. So it's 5, 10, 15 years from now. We have a lot more clean energy infrastructure, but it's owned by asset management firms. Let's just imagine that future. Some might say [00:25:00] that's great that we built out clean energy infrastructure. Who cares who owns it? Others may say, uh, yeah, but there are humongous problems with These asset management firms, these intermediaries, these Wall Street intermediaries owning all of this now, uh, critical infrastructure.

So I guess the question is, where do you come down on that? And what would be, in the kind of nightmare scenario, what would be the worst aspects, or what could be the worst aspects, of yes, we built out clean energy, great, but the private ownership model of it means? What? What is that nightmare?

Brett Christophers: I guess in, in this particular example, I think my, my concerns would be threefold. And I think the third and final one that I'll come to is the most important one. But the first two are to say the following. So first of all, it's a fact of, [00:26:00] of infrastructure industries worldwide, which are heavily regulated industries.

That the dominant,industry practitioners, the dominant players in any particular infrastructure industry sector play a very, very significant role, not least through regulatory capture of various kinds in shaping the terms on which markets are built and operate in those sectors. That's been very much true of the electricity sector, uh, in the U.

S. historically, and it's going to continue to be true in future. So the more that the asset management industry. it owns and dominates the clean energy business in the us. The more it will shape the terms of trade in that sector to reflect its own interests, we should be under no illusions about that.

That's the first thing to say. The second thing to say is if you look at infrastructure investment by asset managers worldwide and the UK that I case that I mentioned earlier is probably the best example of this. The, [00:27:00] the recurring thing that you see is underinvestment in the infrastructure, and the re, and one of the main reasons for that is that for all the talk about being long term investors committed for, you know, committed for the long term, asset managers are not long term investors for the most part.

They invest through, for the most part, investment funds that have a fixed life of, say, 10 years. So a few years after they've bought a particular infrastructure asset, whatever it might be, they immediately turn their minds to selling it and to making the maximum profit upon that short term disposal that they possibly can.

Now, if you're looking to sell an asset three years after you buy it, the very last thing you're concerned about Is kind of long term upkeep and maintenance and making sure that that asset is going to be ship shape for 15 20 years time. And that's what you find. You find kind of, chronic underinvestment in these types of infrastructure assets.

And I would suggest that's precisely what you will see in the clean energy sector as it [00:28:00] becomes increasingly dominated by asset management groups. So that's the second thing. The third and final thing,and, and as I say the most important thing, is that it won't go fast enough. The reason why I'm skeptical about the energy transition remaining something that is principally expected to be driven by private sector interest and the profit motive is that there is not a motive for asset managers or indeed for any other private sector actor to build out clean energy infrastructures around the world.

As rapidly as we need that to happen, to do so at, you know, as rapidly as we need it to happen would in fact go against the profit motive, it would, you know, it would push down returns. and, and the only, I think the only actor that can do that is, is the public sector. So you started by saying, well, look, let's say in 10, 15 years time, if this energy infrastructure has been built out and it's been by asset managers.

As well. If it has been, it won't have [00:29:00] happened fast enough. It's not happening fast enough and it will continue to not happen fast enough to the extent that it remains something that is driven by the private sector, albeit with various forms of government subsidies.

David Sirota: Seems to me, and I think this is a good place to, to end, which is, it seems to me, this is the political compromise. that was made in the post New Deal era, a political compromise with capital. So, scope of history here in the United States, the New Deal happens, massive public, uh, investment and public ownership.

Uh, corporate America feels like it's on its heels. It fights back, ultimately, with the Chamber of Commerce, through the Reagan administration. This idea of neoliberalism comes up. Uh, from a kind of, it, it starts, there's like an extremist free market movement in the 40s, 50s, and 60s pushing back against the New [00:30:00] Deal.

Ultimately, it finds success in saying, okay, we're never going to really get rid of government even though our rhetoric is about getting rid of government. So what we're going to do is we're going to create this argument that says the government should be in the business of propping up private business.

The government should not be in the business of ever owning any kind of endeavor, uh, no matter how, how much of a public utility it is. And, by the way, no matter how efficient it is for the economy, for certain parts of the economy to have some level of public ownership. And that this is the compromise.

It's, but it's a political compromise. It's that the political power of corporate America or sort of global corporations became so powerful that it wasn't able to fully get rid of government, but it was able to get government to be a primary investor rather than an owner. So I guess the question that comes out of that is, [00:31:00] It's not a policy question, it's fundamentally a political question, which is, it feels like we are not anywhere near a moment in which there is,mass motivated public support for the kind of New Deal model.

That frankly, uh, built this country. I mean, when we say, when that, term make America great again is thrown around, I mean, a lot of people take a lot of things from it, but it's like, part of what made the American economy so great was a New Deal that was predicated on a very different ownership model than the current model.

But of course, Donald Trump is not talking about going back to a New Deal public ownership, or at least quasi public ownership model. So I think then the question is like, Knowing what we know about the politics of where we are, how hopeful can we be about getting to, uh, or changing the paradigm back to a paradigm that says we don't need asset management, uh, intermediaries between, uh, the, the mass [00:32:00] public's money?

And the priorities that we need taken care of, whether it's water systems or food systems or roads or the like, I mean, it's kind of like a, like a sad question, but like, what gives you any hope that the political movement is there to shift this paradigm, for instance, on the energy question fast enough to do the kind of clean energy build out that we need that won't be slowed down by this fake need to have everything be government subsidized, but privately controlled.

Brett Christophers: I'll be 100% honest with you, because I have very little hope of that, of that happening, precisely for the reasons you say, I mean, I, I, I agree with every single word you, you said there, it is, it is absolutely a political compromise, whereby the state obviously hasn't been kind of destroyed or downsized, it's become a handmaiden to capital, during the, the neoliberal era, and I think one of the, you know, one of the really shocking things has been the, You know, over recent months with, with, with the kind of the so called new industrial policy and by[00:33:00] you know, lots of people have come out and said, well, this is the, this is the end of neoliberalism.

Everything's changed. Of course, it hasn't changed. I mean, it's changed if your understanding of neoliberalism is one about kind of, letting the market do its thing and not having the state guide where investment is going. But neoliberalism was never only about that. It was never

David Sirota: Right. I mean, let's be clear. There's a difference between neoliberalism and austerity, neoliberalism and austerity are related, but you know, I do think at least at certain times in the Biden administration, thankfully,there's been a shift a little bit on austerity, right? The American rescue plan, the American, the inflation reduction act actually at least did Spend some public resources, but austerity is only a, exactly.

Austerity is only a piece of neoliberalism. The other part of this is who owns it. So sorry to interrupt you, but I agree with you.

Brett Christophers: Yeah. No, no, no. And that, and that's kind of where I keep pushing back in, in everything I write about this is we need to focus on the question of ownership and that, and there's been no shift there [00:34:00] at all. You know, for me, neoliberalism is fundamentally about the idea that the government should own and control as little as possible of anything.

And it's also, and related to the austerity question, that has, you know, the, the link between them is this, is that, that view is backed up by the idea that the government should not borrow to, to own things. And that it has to kind of, you know, tighten its belt it's not the government's job to take on debt, even if it's to build assets that generate revenues in the long term.

David Sirota: The book is called Our Lives in Their Portfolios. Why Asset Managers Own the World. It is a fascinating and super important book. The author is Brett Christophers. Brett, thank you so much for writing the book. Thanks for taking time with us today.

Brett Christophers: Thanks for having me very much.

Frank Cappello: That's it for today's show. Thank you again for being a paid subscriber to The Lever.[00:35:00] I Know you've heard it a million times, but we really could not do this work without you.

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The Lever Time Podcast is a production of The Lever and The Lever Podcast Network. It is hosted by David Sirota, it's produced by me, Frank Capello, with help from lever producer Jara Jekang Mayer.