As an investor in these companies, my concern is not that they're spending money. I think they can afford to spend the money. I can see that they're going for growth, but none of these companies has enunciated what exactly the business model it is that they hope to deliver. And maybe they don't know, but then they need to be open about the fact that they're trying stuff out just as much as the rest of us. It's scary for markets, but you know what? If you don't say something, markets fill in the vacuum.
Today's number 48. That's the percentage of US adults who now support the idea of banning phones for the full school day. Ed, why did the smartphone need glasses?
Why? Because it lost all its contacts.
I'm doing well. I got to tell you, I'm excited for vacation, which is happening for me in about two weeks.
Where are you headed? Oh, wait. We talked about where you're going somewhere fabulous.
I'm going to Austria. I'm going to a wedding in Germany and then I'm going to drive to Kitzbühel in Austria.
Oh, Kitzbühel. I've been to Kitzbühel. It's great. Quite frankly, it's great for kids.
I'm very excited. It'll be very nice. We'll go hiking. We'll play sports. We'll do saunas and swim. It'll be a very health-oriented vacation, which is exactly what I want right now.
It's a wedding, you said?
Yeah, I have a wedding first and then I've attached sort of bolted on a vacation next to it. So I'm pretty proud of how I've kind of maneuvered this because we have the wedding in Bavaria which will be awesome and then rent the car, drive about two hours into Austria and then spend the week at a hotel. So I'm very excited about this one.
That is exciting. You know what Austria's greatest achievement is?
Convincing everyone Hitler was German.
He's back. I was waiting for Hitler back.
I knew it had something to do with Hitler. That's actually a good point. Yeah, that's true. They did convince him he's an Austrian.
Yeah, everyone said that everybody's a German. Nope. Austrian.
Nope. Do you have vacation plans?
The better question is, do I have work plans? I'm on vacation most of the time, as your team knows.
Yeah, I'm here in Colorado and I had to—
Well, on vacation. I'm up at 7:30 doing these Joey Bagodona podcasts with you, but I'm technically— I mean, my kids are out causing trouble and bored and doing hikes and like that. And we saw a bear last night actually in town, which was kind of fun.
Yeah, a little brown bear. My son said, 'Should we run?' I'm like, 'No, you stay here. I'm going to run.'
Those are very, very dangerous animals. I saw one of those TikToks about what animal kills the most people, and everyone's so freaked out about sharks. Moose kill more people than sharks.
Yeah, moose. I've heard that moose can be quite aggressive.
Yeah. And hippopotami and crocodiles. Snakes kill a ton of people. I think mostly in India. But—
This is what you've been doing on your vacation.
Well, of course you know the animal that kills the most people, right?
Um, no, I don't. What is that?
The amateur answer is the mosquito. But the animal that kills the most humans is other humans. So it's true. We're the problem. We're the problem.
The amateur answer is the mosquito. How many times have you had this conversation?
I think it's fascinating. Have you been through this? It's really interesting what animals are dangerous and which ones aren't.
Should we turn this into an animals podcast? Maybe that's what this should be.
Oh, I would love to bring on— I like that guy, the dog with the Oscar guy who goes into homes and then establishes his dominance over the Chihuahua that thinks it's a—
Yes. Cesar Millan. Is that who you're talking about?
Yeah. Yeah, he was really good.
Despite the fact you hate dogs.
That's the underrated side about me. I do prefer cats.
That's not going to help our downloads.
You had a dog, but not a cat growing up, right?
I did have a dog. And as everyone knows, he was okay. He was an average dog at best.
I think it's more the owner that was the problem here.
That's fair enough. I think that's probably true.
All right. Well, we've got a very exciting interview to get into here. We recorded this conversation live on Substack earlier this week. And if you'd like to catch the next live stream, we'll be doing plenty more. Then you should head over to profgmedia.com and subscribe to ProfG Plus. Without further ado, let's get into it. Today, we are joined by the one and only Dean of Valuation, Professor Aswath Damodaran, for our quarterly review. We will break down the latest earnings from big tech. We'll get his take on SpaceX after its blockbuster IPO, and we'll discuss whether we should be worried about the growing debt behind the AI buildout, among plenty of other topics. So, let's get into it. Professor Damodaran, thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to launch us right into it. I want to start with big tech earnings. It seemed pretty good across the board. Microsoft revenue up nearly 20%, Amazon revenue up 20%, Meta revenue up nearly 30%. The response was kind of mixed. I have some underlying questions about these earnings, but I'd love to just start with your reactions to what we saw in Q2 from big tech.
