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Better Offline

Monologue: Silicon Valley is A Cargo Cult

24 Jun 2026

Transcription

Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 19.93 Brendan Boyle

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. Run a business and not thinking about podcasting? Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than add supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-iHeart.

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19.91 - 45.072 Hoda Kotb

Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotb. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Joy 101, and listen now.

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45.492 - 49.596 Hoda Kotb

Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb is presented by CVS.

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51.044 - 71.993

My first guest is Terrence Hilton. Shakira. Luke and Yerin. We have surprises. Many surprises. Welcome to the Sweet 305 podcast where the group chat comes to life. What up? You're the only person I know that loves a yellow Starburst. It's lemonade. This is Sweet 305. Here, oversharing is encouraged.

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72.274 - 88.675

Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It just came out. Jeremy, what did you just do? You just set yourself up for failure. I've never heard you tell this story. I've never told this story. This must have been tucked deep, deep in the Jeremy Lin file.

88.695 - 109.873 MC Jin

My name is MC Jin. I'm excited to tell you about Laugh But Not Least. I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. These will be conversations that remind us all, life is hard, laugh harder. Listen to Laugh But Not Least with MC Jin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

109.853 - 143.978 Ed Zitron

Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue, I'm your host Ed Zetron. It's gonna be a double monologue week, after last week's dramatic exclusive I've been slammed with interviews and personal life stuff that made it feel like I was being hit in the head with a pool noodle 24-7. Feeling a lot better now, but nevertheless, this is where I need to focus myself.

143.958 - 150.267 Ed Zitron

I've also been enjoying a lot of the responses to my exclusive about OpenAI's 2024 and 2025 financials.

151.108 - 172.598 Ed Zitron

Now, some have been mighty confident about inference being profitable due to a $7.5 billion cost of revenue on $13.07 billion in revenue, but overlooked my reporting from last year, verified by the Financial Times, by the way, that showed OpenAI spent $8.67 billion specifically on inference in the first nine months of 2025.

Chapter 2: What does Ed Zitron mean by Silicon Valley as a cargo cult?

505.471 - 522.113 Ed Zitron

Nevertheless, this is Silicon Valley now. Silicon Valley is just a cult. It's a cargo cult where everyone's trying to shuffle shit around, put things in the right order to try and usher in the next Steve Jobs or the next Bill Gates. You ever notice as well that that's all they talk about? It's always the guys. It's never the product.

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522.093 - 545.788 Ed Zitron

You also ever notice that all of these extremely well-paid AI guys like Noam Chazir, who left Google and got bought for $2.7 billion by Google to go back to Google, then went to OpenAI a month ago. What do you think he did at Google? What do you think Barrett Zoff, who left OpenAI to went to Thinking Machines, then he came back to OpenAI and now he's left OpenAI. What do you think he's done?

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545.768 - 563.423 Ed Zitron

And that Andrej Karpathy, he just went to Anthropic, and he wasn't doing anything for two years. Isn't it weird that Andrej Karpathy, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, formerly of Tesla, he sat around for two years and really didn't do anything. He had that Eureka Labs education startup. Nothing happened with that.

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563.403 - 581.728 Ed Zitron

It's almost as if the Valley moves around different forms of symbology, hoping that when they're in the right place, the next era of growth will begin. And doing this allows them to get away from the horrible fact that they're out of hyper growth ideas, that they don't have the people who have the ideas anymore.

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582.369 - 604.412 Ed Zitron

The original iPhone was created by a competing team, Tony Fidel and John Forstall, I believe, the software and hardware teams coming together and actually building something. People with real industrial expertise. The Valley now is just, I don't know, trading different kinds of AI scientists and mathematicians in the hopes that one of them can usher in the digital god. It's fucking depressing.

604.763 - 628.835 Ed Zitron

It's depressing, and make no mistake, it will lead Silicon Valley to its ruin. Faith can't fill your belly or cover $1.1 trillion in spending commitments or magic up the more than $2 trillion in revenue that big tech needs to make AI worth it by 2030. I don't think it can pay Larry Ellison's bills either. In fact, Faith can't really do much other than create speculative wealth.

629.556 - 637.588 Ed Zitron

And speculative wealth can't pay for everything forever. I'll catch you on Friday. This has been Better Offline, and I've been Ed Zitron.

644.572 - 669.737 Hoda Kotb

Joy is essential and it's also elusive. But now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotb. If you're craving inspiration to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Open your free iHeartRadio app, search Joy 101, and listen now.

670.137 - 674.241 Hoda Kotb

Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb is presented by CVS.

Chapter 3: How does OpenAI's financial strategy reflect Silicon Valley's culture?

691.737 - 713.283

It's lemonade. This is Sweet 305. Here, oversharing is encouraged. Listen to Sweet 305 with Lele Pons on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It just came out. Jeremy, what did you just do? You just set yourself up for failure. I've never heard you tell this story. I've never told this story. This must have been tucked deep, deep in the Jeremy Lin file.

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713.343 - 734.502 MC Jin

My name is MC Jin. I'm excited to tell you about Laugh But Not Least. I'll be chatting with guests from all walks of life about the power of humor when it comes to facing difficult times. These will be conversations that remind us all, life is hard, laugh harder. Listen to Laugh But Not Least with MC Jin on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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734.482 - 756.522 Chuck Nice

This Black Music Month, the Questlove Show celebrates the visionaries shaping culture through sound. From country trailblazer Mickey Guyton to hip-hop icon Fab Five Freddy, the sonic genius of Thundercat, and the revolutionary voice of Chuck D. I want it loud. So the timing might be off. The sound might be muffled, but what's going to come out of there is something that you can feel.

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756.622 - 765.641 Chuck Nice

Celebrate Black Music Month with special episodes of The Questlove Show. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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765.661 - 769.99 Brendan Boyle

This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.

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