♪ carol: welcome to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: i'm jason kelly. carol: this week, silicon valley is listening to you. jason: and taking a bite out of lululemon again. they returned to help and made a lot of money in the process. carol: and we hit the red carpet

to celebrate the bloomberg 50. our annual list of those that have measurable accomplishments. jason: but first, the biggest ipo, saudi aramco. those shares surge to a market value of $2 trillion. carol: a culmination of a four-year effort from the kingdom. we are in london to talk about this. a lot of questions. now it is publicly traded and it is an ipo but it is only a small percentage, 1.5% is out there in the public in terms of the company. reporter: the ipo has not turned out the way they expected it to happen. if you remember back to 2016 when they initially announced plans for the ipo, the plan was

to sell as much as 5% of the company. what we really have to look at is what is the purpose of the ipo? it is seen as a means of diversifying saudi arabia away from its oil dependent economy, to raise money from international investors and to deploy that on projects outside of the core energy industry. ipothey managed to do the and the valuation did not get close to what they wanted but it is attracting international investors into the kingdom. for the region as a whole, this is probably a great opportunity to showcase what they have. and also to attract international investors at a scale that has not been seen before. having said that, the objective has not hit the mark. saudi arabia managed to complete the ipo with the help of local

investors with families in saudi arabia and also neighborhood friends, politically countries that are close to the kingdom in the gulf region. it is still away from what they wanted. jason: thank you so much. carol: let us bring in joel weber. let's start with the cover story. culmination of amazing coverage from the bloomberg team this year about the listening devices. americans in particular really love these things. carol: we all have them, right? joel: there have been some privacy concerns that the tech team has done and we bring it together in the cover story. jason: the bloomberg 50 was this week. what a night. you guys looked great. carol: so did you. joel: this is a gala meant to

celebrate the people on the list and their amazing accomplishments throughout 2019. carol: i remember having conversations at my table and we did a broadcast from there. people were loving the eclectic group. names they knew into names they should know about. joel: bloomberg 50 is a way of using what we use better than anybody else, data. looking out across the various , and of business, finance entertainment to see who has had real impact. what is demonstratably that is measurable. jason: we will hear from some of those honorees later in the show. i have to ask you about the new red scare. this is a story that caught our attention. and once you get into it, it is a little terrifying. joel: this is another story we have done multiple times this year. peter wallman has really delivered on this line of reporting. we did it as a cover story earlier in the year especially

around what is happening in the medical and hospital worlds where we have seen chinese-americans get driven out of the country. that particular research is around cancer. and now, it turns out and this is the latest story in the politics section, the u.s. government has targeted people that work in military. particular, there is one gentleman we found that was wrongfully accused and pushed out of the government and army and ended up retiring. the whole thing is a bad look when there was never a case to be made against him. carol: really troubling. another great issue. editor of the magazine, joel weber. let's get more on that mistrust in the department of defense and how ties to china could prove fatal for applicant security clearance. jason: here is our conversation with peter wallman. peter: this is a continuation of work i have been doing all year long on the whole question of whether we are overreacting in

this country to the threat of chinese espionage. specifically the threat of the theft of international property. this week's "business week" story is about an army engineer andwas harassed by the fbi military intelligence from the army. this is a civilian engineer. and ultimately his security clearance was taken away after over 20 years of stellar performance including developing software system that the nsa uses for communications and eavesdropping and things like that. this stellar scientist, lost his security clearance forcing him to retire. he was of retirement age. it wasn't the biggest body blow but he was humiliated. he was accused of disloyalty. he had a lot of ties, friends and neighbors who were asked many times if he was a spy for

china. he is a chinese-american individual and he suffered a great deal as a result of this. i can tell you the end of the story is that ultimately the pentagon decided he was not a spy and was innocent of their suspicions. so, it is kind of a sad story. , the: this individual question is and this goes to how you kicked it off, are we overreacting? is this an isolated incident? are people being targeted in the wrong way? are we seeing a lot of that happening? peter: the distrust level and that is the key word in the story, the level of distrust of chinese-americans has soared in recent years and a colleague in the bloomberg data analytics department, andre tartare, did an enormous job of filtering and analyzing some 26,000 cases in

the government database of security clearance decisions, who gets it and who does not. he found that in the past decade, the rate of rejections of chinese-americans essentially for security clearances has gone from something like 44% which was the average of all the countries including other non-chinese countries to over 60% for chinese. it is a real growth in the rate of rejection for that which is a kind of barometer of suspicion, distrust, and essentially difficulty for these american citizens. carol: coming up, alexa, privacy? -- what's privacy? devices are listening and so are humans. jason: is the new applecart really elite? why the answer matters to the places where you shop.

carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm carol massar. jason: and i'm jason kelly. join us every day on the radio starting at 2 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show by checking out our podcast. get that wherever you get your podcasts. carol: and you can find us online and our mobile app. tech, safety say it's -- safe to say it's one of the major themes of 2019. jason: and the cover story for this week focuses on how silicon valley -- valley's biggest companies have fooled millions of people into allowing them to listen in on their stories. carol: austin carr joins us with the story. austin: this is a big story about how these devices like amazon echo and their virtual assistant alexa or siri -- if you have these devices in your

home or on your phone, this is a story about how these things work. these tech companies in silicon valley presented these tools as automated. it turns out there is a vast apparatus of human listeners improving the services. when voice commands are submitted to their service, they are sometimes rerouted to data centers where humans are transcribing your words to improve speech recognition. carol: there was an assumption that there is a robot listening. tell me about these humans. what kinds of conversations are they listening to? what are they hearing? you talked to a lot of people. austin: we talked to dozens of contractors, people that are placed everywhere from ireland to india. in the case of apple, they rely on an i.t. firm in cork, ireland where dozens of contractors will

be listening in on people's recordings and they told us they feel deeply uncomfortable listening to this information. called children during personal data sharing personal information. they heard couples engaging in sexual activity. very private conversations in your kitchen and bedroom. the alarming thing is how invasive this is and the people on the front lines are often the most low-paid workers in the supply chain and they found this very alarming and emotionally unethical. jason: what do the company say? -- companies say? this has been a story you have been covering through the year. one of the defining stories in many ways of 2019. broadly speaking. the discomfort we are starting to have with the relationship with technology. what do the companies say?

austin: i'm glad you asked, because one of the most profound things to us was the disparity between the contractors and how this was morally dubious versus what the tech engineers and executives were telling us. when we started reporting this, it was like they did not think it was a big deal. they did not anticipate this. it was like it was par for the course. everyone is doing it. it was just a way of fixing quality assurance issues. they described it as -- you know when your app crashes on your mac, do you want to report this bug? they described it as a voice bug. at a broader level, they say fyi, these systems are only recording when you activate them and the vast majority of voice commands are handled by computers with a small number of them needing human inputs. whether that makes you feel more comfortable using the services, there is no doubt that millions of recordings are still being transcribed by humans. carol: this holiday season, it will be the first for the applecart.

the highest new credit card in years. jason: it is exciting for apple and its users, perhaps not so much for the retailers. carol: we spoke to a bloomberg news finance reporter on what premium plastic means for consumers as well as retailers. jenny: visa and mastercard have several different tiers. up is visaep signature or mastercard world and then the premium tier. carol: we are constantly being ranked in society. jenny: yes we are, this is no different. for mastercard it is world elite. every time you swipe, it costs the retailer a little more in fees and it has been years of this huge rewards war going on with banks. retailers are like -- we have had enough and they are ready to take the visa and mastercard. jason: and here comes apple joining the party.

carol: it is an elite card. >> it is expensive for retailers. it had a huge launch. 10 billion dollars in line extended to consumers in the first month it was out. a very popular card. retailers feel it is just another thing they have to spend money on. it is holiday season. they are trying their best to compete with the amazons of the world and this is one more thing in the negative bucket. carol: when we talked about this on our radio show, we did not know there was this incredible set of tiers with credit cards. with the elite card, there is an assumption that they make more money and will spend more. sorry, merchant, you are going to pay a little bit more. you will win in the end is the thinking. >> i think historically that is

what visa and mastercard have said when they complain. these people come in and have way more buying power. ticket sizes are much bigger. that has been the justification. retailers are coming back and saying, look, if i'm a gas station or a grocer, people with these high rewards are not necessarily spending more on gas or groceries. this retailers are saying we have reached our breaking point. our margins are already thin. we need a break. carol: turning lemons into lemonade at lululemon again. jason: by exclusive conversation with the lululemon ceo and private equity investor who wins big on the retailer and comes back to fix it. carol: great story. this is bloomberg. ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: you can also listen to us on the radio. on sirius xm channel 119. including on am 11 in new york. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area. over in london on dab digital and always on the bloomberg business app. lululemon earnings are out this week and although the stock dropped shares, they have gained 90% this year. it is a remarkable turnaround. there's also a win for this

boston-based investment firm. jason: interesting. this is a never before told story of the money behind one of the most influential brands of our time -- talking about lululemon. the pe firm, advent, they first invested $74 million, not that much in private equity, and they got eight times as much from that 2005 deal. fast-forward to 2014, another deal and a lot more money. i sat down exclusively with advent managing partner david rutherford and calvin mcconnell, the ceo at a store right here in new york city. >> the business had its challenges but at its core, the issue was alignment. part of the power that private equity can bring is that alignment. and so, in this case, we had a situation where the founder was not aligned with the core and

the management team so you had some turnover of the senior management. you also did not have the company in sync with the ability to make investments. they were following wall street and thinking about what they needed to do that quarter. and so, i feel like what we saw was this fundamental opportunity was to help regain that alignment and put the platform in place so the company could establish a really strategic proposition and not just the here and now. but part of the real opportunity is to help them get out of the penny a share game and make some of these investments that had been deferred. jason: i want to get to the moment when calvin came into the company but leading up to that you do have a series of ceos. leadership becomes something you have to deal with in terms of the various issues you have to

address. >> firstly, we had a situation where the board really loves this company and wanted to see it succeed. and so, in that regard, when we came back in in 2014, we were able to create some of that alignment. pretty easily. and help create the ability to put some of these ideas in place. the idea of a longer term plan. but, you are right, i think some of those challenges with the founder made it hard. the point that the founder exited the company in 2015, we were able to begin assembling a world-class management team. and so, with a cfo who initially was stuart now coo and a talent along the way leading to people

like glenn and calvin and sun and a host of really world-class business leaders. and the exciting part is that this business had that potential -- it just needed the opportunity and the framework from this point and beyond. it really feels like the business is just getting started. and seeing what calvin and the team have already done with the manifestation of this next step vision in chicago and the membership and loyalty program, you are already beginning to see the seeds of thinking about what the broader vision might look like. jason: what does that look like going forward? it seems like we are in an interesting moment in retail growth. >> we have a huge runway growth. we have double-digit growth. and new categories. into our women's category and

omni guest category. this is an emotional branch. and expanding into markets. we still have a lot of opportunity in north america not to mention what is happening in international markets including europe and china. we are trying to double our men's business. proving that this business resonates with men as much as women. >> for our category it is a dual category. there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to. carol: borrowing money is easy for american corporations, even those of us who sell credit. jason: some of the riskiest borrowers and the firms the backup, they are massaging a key

measure of earnings. carol: let us get to this week's "bloomberg businessweek" explainer. >> it is called earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization. it is a metric that became popular in the 1980's and it gave corporate raiders like carl icahn and saul steinberg a way to evaluate potential targets. it even would measure the ability of a company to generate cash. but it does not take into consideration the impact of debt on the bottom line. and companies are finding more ways to tweak the numbers. take excel -- a $350 million for the 12 months prior. based on generally accepted accounting principles, the company lost almost $48 billion in the same period. more recently, wework used a community adjusted metric.

turning a loss into a positive earnings segment after the adjustments. critics worry about what it is doing to the $2.5 trillion market for junk bonds, saying it blurs the picture of america's health and creating false perceptions of safety. carol: coming up, the bloomberg 50. jason: from finance and politics to tech and entertainment, we talk to those that have shaped 2019 in unexpected ways. carol: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

♪ jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." i'm jason kelly. carol: and i'm carol massar. still ahead, we take a look at a data nerd's guide to doing good. jason: you have to give away some money this season. plus, provocative remarks. why companies run by women are not always fair to them. carol: first, we have to talk about the bloomberg 50. jason: it is all the people whose 2019 accomplishments merit recognition.

carol: we caught up with a bunch of these names on the list, two of them on the red carpet, matt lieber and alex blumberg, the cofounders of gimlet media. jason: the company they sold to spotify for $238 million earlier this year. carol: it made it the biggest deal in the podcast industry. alex: we started the company in 2014, and we were coming at it from separate perspectives. i was working at this american life, and i had started planting money with my co-founder. i was seeing this excitement building around this on-demand way that audio was getting delivered by people. i saw the excitement building and i said somebody should make more of these. then matt was on the other side of the scene, looking and seeing the same sort of thing. carol: is that true, matt? matt: if you look over the whole

history of media, every time a new medium comes about, a new media company is built. 100 years ago the new medium was radio. that is when cbs got else. -- got built. that is when nbc got built. we felt on-demand digital podcasts was a new medium and we wanted to build the defining brand for this new medium. that was gimlet. carol: isn't it fascinating, because it is like radio in terms of listening to great stories being told. i think it is such a simple thing. it harkens back to radio. alex: even further back than that. what we are doing is one of the oldest forms of media in human existence, telling stories. we have been telling stories to one another before there was any other media available. many of the oldest stories in human history were oral stories before they were ever written down. they were telling them before human written language was invented.

it is very deep and very primal, and i think that was one of the issues when we were first starting. it is just talking, right? no, no, no but it is also on the back of new technology and all these new tools that we bring to it. jason: so where are we in the evolution here? you guys, as we said, were early. a lot of people have piled in, it feels like. we have a podcast, everybody probably has a podcast. everyone standing around the subway has a podcast. where does it go next? matt: we are just at the very beginning. the term that i think you have been using is we are at the dawn of the second golden age of audio. the first golden age of audio was in the 1930's and 1940's. it was when broadcast news was born, it was when you saw fiction, like "the shadow" with orson welles. audio has not evolved that much in the last 60, 70 years until now.

now you have a couple big technology changes. you have smartphones in every pocket, connected cars coming online. a lot of listening happens in cars. and you have smart home devices that people are listening at home, and even talking when they are in their car. all of these things have combined to this all new kinds of listening experiences and new sorts of storytelling. it is a new generation of creators being born to work with this medium. it is like radio, but more intimate. carol: there is something about putting on your headphones and going into a different world. matt: it feels like you are listening to your best friend hang out with you or tell you a story just made for you. carol: someone else that made this year's list, boris jordan. jason: he is the executive chairman of curaleaf, one of the world's most valuable cannabis companies. it is the biggest one in the u.s. it has a market cap of $2.8 billion. carol: jason and i spoke with

him and talked about a lot of things, including the future of cannabis. boris: i was very surprised. i will be very honest with you. i have opened up the russian privatization market, but the last thing i thought was a cannabis company listed in the bloomberg 50. i think what is great about it is it reflects the fact that people are starting to accept the fact that cannabis is going to be a part of our lives. we have 33 states that have legalized cannabis in one form or another. more and more people are using it. the fact that bloomberg has recognized that is a big deal. it shows it is becoming mainstream. carol: for a while, we talked about the canadian cannabis companies. i feel 2019 was more about the u.s. companies, yours included. what do you think 2020 is going to be when it comes to the cannabis story? we are waiting for regulations to come out from the government. i am curious what you think.

boris: if we get over impeachment, which i hope we will at some point in time, i think it will be a continuation of the u.s. story. that is not to say anything negative about canada, it is just a bigger market. the bigger companies are turning profitable. you are starting to see more and more of them. the numbers will be quite big and staggering. i think that will get recognized not only by washington, but also by the markets at large. i think the mainstream investors that largely avoided cannabis until today, you will see more of them getting involved as they see these companies put up significant numbers. jason: talk about the big companies getting involved because there has been some twists and turns with the bigger u.s. companies dipping their toe in, making investments. how does the consumer goods market get involved in this? how important is it they get involved in order to grow this business in a meaningful way?

boris: just this evening, bloomberg announced we hired someone who ran dr pepper or snapple. before that, he was at seagram's company. these are guys who have built and run very big businesses, the understand brands and supply chain. you are starting to see more of those people into this market. that is the first sign. the reason they are coming before the big companies is because we are still federally illegal. i think you will get the safe banking act and the states act. when you get the states act is when you will see the multinationals take a look at cannabis, because it fits so well with every one of their other products they sell today, whether it be beverages or food or different additives. the pharma companies will be the last because they are waiting for synthetic cannabis.

when you get synthetic cannabis you will see the pharma companies getting involved as well. carol: what does that mean for your financial model next year? if we get those pieces of legislation, the numbers will take off, is that true? boris: the cost of capital for our company, but not to the industry. we are growing at 300% a year, and we will grow from $300 million to over $1 billion. carol: but you can't do that across states? boris: you will still be siloed in the states. you will have a federal law that allows investors to invest in the sector, but you will still be site load. it is like gambling in the u.s. still be silo -- investors to invest in the sector, but you will still be siloed. you cannot go cross-border come across state lines in gambling. you have to be siloed in the state you are in. it is not federally legal. jason: coming up, more from the bloomberg 50 red carpet. we learn about a supply chain tech company worth almost $1

billion. carol: plus, the economist behind modern monetary theory. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

jason: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." carol: join "bloomberg businessweek" every day on the radio starting at 2:00 p.m. wall street time. you can also catch up on our daily show and our podcast. jason: you can also find us online at businessweek.com, and our mobile app. total ubiquity. carol: we are everywhere. we want to get back to the bloomberg 50 red carpet. jason: after a trip to bangkok, zilingo ceo ankiti bose started a direct to consumer fashion marketplace. such a cool company. >> everybody wears clothing. >> true.

ankiti: the balance sheet is almost 5% of global gdp, so it is huge. besides that, very little technology has really touched the entire industry, which is remarkable. unlike pharmaceuticals, industrials, the way your iphone is made, unlike any of that, there is very little traceability, technology, or any amount of transparency and apparel. that leads to all these problems that fashion is accused of, that we are filling up the landfills, that there are children working in factories in vietnam or indonesia making clothes for you. or that the clothing is not sustainable, people are buying too much. all of that is true and all of that can be solved with technology, creating a lot of transparency. that is where we come in. we provide a technology platform for mills, factories, to attract

the brand that wants products made by these people and make sure it is done in a sustainable, transparent way. carol: i love that part of it. jason: i love the transparency piece. if we think about our big themes of 2019, fashionopolis, the great book about fad fashion and everything bad that has done, and all the bad will it has engendered in the whole category of the population. i have to think that lack of transparency existed for a reason. people didn't want you to know. how hard was this to crack into it? ankiti: you are exactly right. today, the fashion supply chain has about 20 players and you only need five of them. so 15 of those guys or girls are just there -- jason: they are all guys. [laughter] ankiti: even the traders are not adding a lot of value in the value chain.

jason: there are 20 and there need to be five. incredible. ankiti: we are adding an immense amount of value to their business, making sure they are held accountable. carol: to jason's point, how tough was it making your inroads? i feel like it is such an established supply chain out there. how tough was it to do this? ankiti: actually, once you go beyond the big manufacturers and go into the world of asian manufacturing or south american manufacturing or he even here in the u.s., it is quite fragmented. most fast fashion is made within a very fragmented manufacturing place. once you start giving them technology and bringing them online, it becomes much more easy for them to find their suppliers and buyers. transact without agents in the middle. maybe it is hard in the

beginning to get in a new country or a new area or a new subcategory, like denim or something, but once you do it, there is so much of a network effect. they see the value quite quickly. jason: more from the bloomberg 50 now. google searches for modern monetary theory more than quadrupled in early 2019, i think largely because of us trying to understand why this was such a thing. it turns out, a lot because of our next guest. carol: everyone wanted to know about it. economist stephanie kelton has promoted it for years. she helped raise the theory's profile this year. stephanie: it is kind of astonishing. in a lot of ways, what is happening is people are coming to some sort of terms with the idea that when the next downturn comes, policymakers are not going to be able to reach for the usual toolkits and do what they have done in the past, that

we are going to have to start thinking more creatively, more ambitiously, about what policymakers can do in response to a growing weakness in the economy. i think for many people mmt is increasingly viewed as that alternative that can help us think about ways to be more ambitious so we don't have the long, protracted recession we had last time. jason: were you surprised that this was a year where a lot of people from alexandria ocasio-cortez to bernie sanders, they introduced it? we talk about the overton window all the time, the move in mmt's favor. carol: i love when you say overton window. it makes me so proud. [laughter] jason: it was a moment. it entered into the political, and i daresay even the

mainstream business zeitgeist, to quote our colleague tom keene. were you surprised? stephanie: yes and no. when you have been pushing hard to get that breakthrough moment for a set of ideas and you have really worked as a scholar and an academic and with a number of other people as well, this is a team effort. we put heart and soul into this project for more than two decades now. at some point, you expect this to pay off. i guess, you know. but when you have that moment and you have politicians like you are talking about giving some oxygen to these ideas, it really is remarkable. carol: for everyone like a bernie sanders and other high-profile individuals who are supporting it, you have had a lot of high-profile names. i am curious if you are having more and more conversations with more folks who maybe were

against this that are starting to say, you have an idea here. stephanie: for me, some of the most fun conversations and communications i have are not public. it is people who reach out to me privately. if it was known, i think the shockwaves would reverberate in a much more dramatic fashion. but it is encouraging to know there are people who are really out there willing to take the scholarship seriously, ask questions when they are not sure, do the ideas justice. not caricature them and create an atmosphere of fear and concern. these are sensible and sound economic principles. jason: coming up, a provocative thought. the problem with female ceo's is not that they are female. it is, arguably, that they are ceo's. we will tell you why. carol: and how two individuals are showing the world how to be better at being a billionaire. jason: this is "bloomberg businessweek." ♪

carol: welcome back to "bloomberg businessweek." jason: listen to us on the radio on sirius xm, channel 119. also a.m. 1130 in new york, 106.1 in boston, 99.1 f.m. in washington, d.c. carol: a.m. 960 in the bay area. in london on dab digital, and of course, always on the bloomberg business app. jason: provocative remarks in the magazine this week. carol: they really are with the headline, the problem with female ceo's is not that they are female, it is that they are ceo's. jason: we caught up with rebecca greenfield. she drives our diversity coverage at bloomberg news. she has the remarks. rebecca: i noticed something that was happening, which is there were a lot of companies run and founded by women, but they also have these missions that we offer gender equality and our products will create this gender equality, and that's great. but then there would be these

scandals where employees would say, actually, i am a woman who works at this company and you are not practicing what you preach. we saw this happen for a few years. we saw this happen at thinx, a company that makes underwear for women to wear while they are on their period. we saw this happen at nasty gal. which was a retailer for women. more recently, i wrote about how it is happening at the wing right now, the co-working space. there is a huge backlash because there is irony happening, you are not practicing what you are preaching. i am exploring that phenomenon in this piece and saying, yeah, that's going to happen because women, when they become ceo's, act a lot like men when they become ceo's. carol: so many are young startups. you are a startup, you are constantly putting out fires. that is an element of it. rebecca: definitely. when you are a startup, you are

under a lot of constraints. you have a lot of money and you have to grow really quickly. you are learning how to scale. they are learning when you scale it is hard to have feminism be your mission. that doesn't square with creating a big successful company, and maybe it shouldn't have to, or why would we accept that? jason: one of the things i took away from this, there is a distinct difference, and keep me honest in the telling of this, between the benefits of having women on a board or women in management versus diversity. that seems to be at the core of what you are arguing here, right? rebecca: i think there is this fallacy that we want more women to lead companies because women are more compassionate than men, they are more ethical, they are more moral, they create safer workplaces, and that is just not true. the research has found that is not true. in fact, that is just another gender stereotype.

i talked to a researcher who put it out there and said, women are not different from men in the way they lead. and that is the reality. the benefits of diversity come not because women are different from men, because they are not that different than men, but because they are diverse and they are different from the 10 men in the room. that is what we want from diversity. we want a mixture of different types of people, different point of views, to push back on the homogenous thinking that leads to bad decisions. jason: this week in our "pursuits" section, two individuals are showing the world how to be better at being a billionaire. maybe some tips for the rest of us. carol: let's get more from editor chris rovzar. chris: the arnolds were very private until this year. they made their money first through enron then centaurus, and john arnold is a legendary energy trader. his wife is a super high-powered mergers and acquisitions lawyer.

they are on the billionaires index. they have a couple billion dollars of their own, and a couple billion with their foundation. they have set out to reform criminal justice. also the pharmaceutical industry. and they do it by doing a ton of research. they are not liberal and they are not conservative, or they try not to be. they just do studies until they find the inequalities in the system. carol: hence the data, right? they are data-driven. in terms of what they are going after and maybe their approach? chris: they hire experts, and they really don't go after something -- it is really important if you have that kind of money that you don't try to address everything that someone asks you to address, so they picked the things they focused on. through studies, they are really obsessed with data. they did this one thing where they redid 100 different studies from psychological journals to see if they could be reproduced, and only 40% of them could. they are really testing theses.

one of the things they are focused on is criminal justice reform and bail and parole. they think the criminal justice system is one of the systems that knows the least about itself so they are trying to get some visibility into that. carol: there is a section about venice. chris: venice had its highest aqua alta since 1966 last month, and it did some serious damage, not just because places were flooded, but the force of the waters moved some stonework. save venice, a great organization working to save the treasures of venice since that 1966 flood, works to explain what they spend money on if you give money to them. $500 will get you a days work from a conservator, on experts, not just a cleaning person, who figures out the issues. for $1.1 million, you can renovate a whole basilica. it is everything in between. there are paintings.

there are old mansions that have been damaged. there is a lot to do, and the money is ready to be spent. jason: "bloomberg businessweek" is ready on business stands now. carol: it is also online. your must-read? jason: the cover story. that is the latest in a series of stories. bloomberg has been ahead on this idea that people are listening to us. carol: i think we don't realize the extent they are. it is unbelievable. it is definitely a must read. my must-read, i love what you did with lululemon. i feel like this story has gone through so much over the last 10 years, and you really get to where we are. jason: that is what i found most interesting, the coalition of things i am really interested in. the private equity story has never been told before. if you want to hear more on that story, check out our extra podcast this week. it is a longform conversation with the lead director and the ceo together for the first time.

carol: once you listen to the podcast, check out he has written a couple of books on private equity. just putting it out there. more bloomberg television starts now. ♪

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scarlet: i'm scarlet fu, this is "etf iq," where we focus on access, risks and rewards offered by exchange traded funds. ♪ scarlet: should you stay or go? the s&p 500 is enjoying its best run in six years. that sets up a clash between investors in etf's and mutual funds looking to stay put or flee. exploring the ecosystem. the crucial role of authorized participants and how they grease the wheels of the etf industry. and let's make a deal.