Getting stronger. Carol from fighter jets, electric cars, lasers, and the marks it nitrous oxide coal cold brew. Jason here is joel weber on the elements. Was what we decided to do to cover every single element on the periodic table because it ultimately, these are all business stories. This is the story of business. Carol you took us places that were a lot of surprises. We think of it as developed a long time ago. Such a bigger, broader thing and means a lot today. Joel that is the wrong way to think about it. If you associated with High School Chemistry class and you get excited and a and you get excited anxiety. Party city helium, was Closing Stores because there is a helium shortage, and there entrepreneurs trying to solve that problem, or lithium. You think about Battery Technology and what electric vehicles will be possible, or hydrogen. Every one of these things, these are things we take for granted, like a computer chip and how many elements are required to make this. They are kind of hidden in plain sight, and yet they are absolutely fundamental to the modern economy, and the future of business. Jason put this in the perspective of a year of businessweek, how does this fit into the broader Editorial Mission . Carol all joel a lot of what we do is try and get behind the stories. One of the ways that i think this has played out is the trade war. For example have come up as a hot button topic because china happens to control a lot of the supply chain. There has been this great concern about what does it mean when rare earths might only come from china, where else can we get these things. When we are talking about rare earths . We are talking about the periodic table of elements. Greenland, Donald Trumps preferred acquisition, it is so resource rich that one of the reasons that i think it become such a fascinating topic is because it is packed with the future of where we think these rare earth will come from. Carol i was thinking about how it was the Building Blocks for so much. We think about it differently in this Climate Change environment. We look at it in a different way. Joel carbon is one of those elements as well. Carbon is an absolute war course. There are a lot of elements that are totally useless or that we do not have uses for e at, and yet uses for it yet, but there is carbon which has more potential in how we are able to sequester it and build things in the future. Of the ways that this is the joel weber businessweek, it is very character driven. You have people through which you tell these stories, entrepreneurs, people who you are not quite sure whether they are on the up and up, but clearly these are people with a lot of ambition. Joel there is one who thinks he has the next great jewelry. And it is a little pricey, will it become the next big thing. There is a guy who basically hordes elements, that he thinks that there will be a market for in 20 years time. You suddenly need something to make a photocopier with new material, then he is the guy who cornered the market. You will have to be dealing with the middleman, effectively. We thinkeaks to about how do we tell stories that stick to you long after you have read them. Oftentimes, one way that we do that is by finding characters, who once you start reading about them and learning about them, you cannot look away because of how fascinating they are. That gets us back to the table, because it is endlessly fascinating. And thatme into being, it continues to resonate. Jason there is a character behind the creation of the table. Joel Dimitri Mandala created it. Me tree mendelev. Created thehe greatest chart in business history. Spreading the coverage over a couple of weeks, it is a double issue. I know i cannot ask you to pick a favorite, but is there a story that you thought, this is exactly what i envisioned. Joel they are all special, but remarks on opening why matter Still Matters is incredibly illuminating about why this is crucial for business, and i think austins story about the jewelry guy is amazing. We had pitches for helium, Everybody Loves helium. Carol it was describing the existential crisis of party city. Joel your balloons will not be hanging on the ceiling, they will be hanging on the floor. Jason the special elements issue is interactive online. Carol that is where you can search for stories by elements on the table, and find a virtual remarks, whyh his do periodic table elements are more important than ever. Peter hello, im peter coy. You might has well thought about what does the Bloomberg Businessweek magazine know about the erratic table of elements . It turns out there is a strong connection between elements and business, not just gold and silver, but also silicon, lithium for batteries, uranium for nuclear energy, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It is all vital for life, and a huge pain in the Climate Change net. You may think we live in a Virtual World where value is created by ideas, that it takes dozens of elements to make the computers that house all of more ideas, and the technology advances, the more elements we find uses for. That is why, on the 150th anniversary of the formulation of the periodic table by Dimitri Mandalay of matter will matter. Jason carol why greenland is trumps treasure island. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol join us every day on the radio starting at 2 00 p. M. Wall street time, and catch up on our daily show by listening to our podcast on apple podcast, soundcloud and bloomberg. Com. Carol you can jason you can find us online and our mobile app. We are breaking down businessweeks elements issue, including how rare earths are part of that neverending u. S. China trade war. Carol the metals are necessary for all kinds of consumer and Industrial Products including smartphones, solar panels, and defense technology. Accountss out, china for at least 70 of the global supply. Jason taylor riggs is helping us break it down in a bloomberg way. Taylor there is a rare earth metal etf, because that is the way we do things. This gives us a good gauge of where we are. As you know, march 2018, we will start it this we will call it the start of the trade flights. We are looking at the trade prices falling that make a lot of consumer electronics. Very interesting on the bottom, in blue. You have the fund flows into the etf. Investors buying into this hoping that the tariffs will be resolved if they do not see tariffs. Carol a good illustration especially with the trade war. Also explain why president is interested in taking taking greenland off of green denmarks hands. From the greenland perspective it is important for them to develop these operations because they have trying to become independent for a long time. They achieved a big step in that in 2008, they passed a referendum that move powers from denmark to greenland. And now, they need to develop the atoll to me which is wrigley alec ash agricultural and small. And since there is so much International Interest in rare earth metals, that is a big part of the plan. It has not happened so far. Jillian development has been slow because of the hostile environment. As International Attention picks up, the momentum in the interest picks up, and that might accelerate. What i thought was interesting is that china has investments there. And the u. S. Do, Geological Survey has been on the ground for months. This announcement by President Trump and admission that he was a interested in buying bank greenland buying greenland was interesting. It did not make quite sense, jillian and yet we have had a Diplomatic Mission there. Let us talk about the pictures. You guys sent a photographer there and got a bunch of pictures. You look at the wilderness and see how it is a tough territory in terms of developing. You took pictures of some of the rare earth minimals minerals. A ton of potential. Jillian one of the images we have is an image where we have rocks that are glowing fluorescent under black light, and this mineral that we are seeing that is glowing indicates the presence of which rare earth metals. You can see a lot of them going and theres a lot of potential for mining x mining. There has been mining in the past. Uranium denmark banned mining as part of a nonproliferation action and that was recently overturned, that operation has not gotten started. There is one town that everybody is focusing on. Jillian the area around it is particularly rich in these minerals. You guys are working on stories. You have been working on this for a while. Just over the last couple of weeks we are talking about greenland. Jillian it fell into our laps. What you think in terms of our audience, viewers, and listeners, the takeaway. Bringn it does sort of the global interest in greenland and the global interest in these metals into perspective. The extent to which they are used and found in greenland, and all of the various claims kind of brings it all together. Carol more from jason more from our special issue. How one mans passion help build the Digital World. Carol fitbit expands a chip from hardware to software. We sit down with james park. Carol jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. You can also listen to us on the radio. Boston, 90 91 fm and washington, d. C. On dmv digitaly and on the business app. On the 150th anniversary of the periodic table, businessweek explores why it is the biggest chart in history. Jason it is part of the elements issue that covers all of the elements including germanium and one mans passion for it helped build the Digital World. Here is dan for our up. Othere was obsessed, and people were working on silicon, he was trying to say no, germanium is the stuff. His particular data passion was creating a form that had incredibly high quality. Doing Perfect Place to be this, although he had a percy a pushy taste. They were pushing him off the side and finally he was like, go work on it. Ofhad to work on a lab, kind cloak and dagger, office hours, in the middle of the night and clean up before he left. Daniel he was obsessed with the use of germanium while the people were slightly higher prestige were working with silicon, and he said you guys are missing it. And his superiors allowed him to basically shift his work schedule so he worked overnight to work on purifying the geranium press crystal and there was a moment where he got it right and they said, ok, you can come more you can come work in the daytime and we will use this product, and it changed the companies approaches. In doing this story, what is it that stuck out. I feel like this is not an individual that we talk about. It is not one of those scientists that is in household is a household name. What he did was dramatic. Knowl i think people who the history of technology, they do know his name. He is just below that level where he is a household name. But his contribution was really very significant. Dedicated up having a lab to him in particular. Daniel think about what is it like to grow germanium crystals for a living. It is an odd thing to perfect, but that was his passion. The end ofually by 1952, he went to Texas Instruments and they were focusing on transistor technology. Tell us about his time there. , they had been doing germanium, but it became evident that silicon would be a superior product for certain kinds of applications, specifically, it was for applications that produced a lot of heat. This was during world war ii. There was a shift to silicon, and he did that work. Silicon, the shift to and the shift the production of the early silicon transistors, which became this big phenomenon. There is an anecdote about him wowing the crowd by pulling a silicon transistor from his pocket. We areybody was like going to do this, but as a matter of fact. Daniel he says eventually is now. I feel like with any kind of scientist, the work they do in the past and the work that they did on germanium helped them in terms of what they were able to do. He was at an advanced level because he of what he had learned. Daniel he was all about making perfect crystals, so he switched materials, but he was a germanium man. It just reminds you that these individuals who brought this on, in science or looking at the periodic table, it has just think about what it has brought us. Daniel what is also fascinating, when you think about bell labs, for love amazing people and geniuses who are collaborating full of amazing people who are collaborating. Jason from the start of the Digital World to what is next, a lot of elements in this. We go outside to our sit down with fitbit chairman, james park. Carol the company had struggled to compete against digger companies such as apple and samsung, shares were down 85 from its ipo price. Jason in an effort to convince launching aitbit is new Subscription Service called premium. As part of a new lineup announced earlier this week. Of excitingve a lot announcements that you mentioned and devices as well. It is all too and support of our companys mission which is to make everyone healthier and to make Health Accessible to everybody, that is important. At the same time we are in the middle of transforming our company from being a purely divisive company to be a service and Device Company with more recurring Revenue Streams. Premium is an important step in that transformation. What we announced is an allinone comprehensive Health Service that takes data from your wrist, and turns it into actionable guidance and coaching that helps you get more active, eat better, and sleep better. It has programs, content, coaching, motivation in the form of health games, a port that you can take to your adult a report that you can take to your doctor. Carol heres Something Else you can do. James it is beyond the metrics and the data. So how do we actually coach and guide you to the next app, and that is important and what we have been hearing. Jason tell us more about that, because this is a response to the market. What did you specifically hear from your previous products . James it is not so much from the market, but from the customer. We collected a lot of data, we often see how well that they are doing, how much weight they are using, and we felt that focusing more on software and services aspect of health was the next step in getting our users to become healthier. I think we had taken to the limit of what we could do with giving people a metric and they needed to understand what to do with the data. Carol jason and i talk about this a lot. We think that the health care area, most everybody has some kind of device tracking their health care metric. You are competing with big players, apple, and samsung among them. Have a significant market share, as do they. How do you compete . James we are the number two wearable brand. People know the fitbit brand on being focused on health and fitness rather than 100 other things as well. The way we design our products of sex that. For instance reflects that. For instance are hardware has a lot of battery life, which allows us to do things like sleep tracking. And where a device 24 7, and sleep is such an important part of your overall health. Error thereir are a few more features that we are launching. Sleep score tells you how well you have slept throughout the night, and we are launching smart wake, which tries to wake you up at the right moment in the morning. Carol i love those kinds of devices. James we are trying to solve peoples problems. If we stay focused, carol you are not worried . James obviously, it goes without saying, you have watched the stoplight price closer than we do. They have driven the price down, help us understand what they are saying and you are saying back to them in terms of how this transformation and transition may portend that a revenue in the future. Ames i think investors have wait and see attitude, and i think we understand it. We had challenges earlier, being very upfront with the launch of our product. That being said, we learned a lot of lessons that we will carry forward. Execute oninuing to our transformation, and i think what investors have to look forward to is, for instance, with the launch of premium that we are hitting important milestones. The launch of premium is going to end accelerate our transformation into a business that has much more predictable Revenue Streams and we are doing things that accelerate that. We long we announced a deal with singapore. To getyou beat apple that . James we cannot talk about the competitive element. We are happy to work with them to try and improve the health of their citizens. The next step is with the launch of premia premium, we are bundling them together at retail and trying to transform the debt the idea of fitbit not as a hardware company, but a solutions company. Carol you can listen to more of our interview with james park. Find that on our businessweek extra podcast. Jason still ahead, we speak to the editor behind the special elements issue. Metals,lus, precious things start to mask for one of the rarest metals on the planet. From the 5am wakers, to the 6am sleepers. Everyone uses their phone differently and in different places. Thats why Xfinity Mobile created a Wireless Network that auto connects you to millions of secure wifi hot spots. And the best lte everywhere else. Xfinity mobile is a different kind of Wireless Network designed to save you money. Save up to 400 a year on your wireless bill. Plus get 250 back when you buy an eligible phone. Click, call or visit a store today. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason still ahead, more from our special issue. It is the 150th anniversary of the periodic table. And its not your normal issue or normal take on the table. Jason a huge relief to me. Carol and more on chemistry in business and how its getting stronger. Jason it covers all of the elements, including those the Power Electric cars. Carol and turning seawater into a cult culinary following. Jason for more on how this issue came together, here is the editor behind it all. Last year, we started talking about doing Something Like this. We wanted to focus on metals and things bloomberg does really well. Then we thought, why not do it around the periodic table . Then we found out it was the anniversary. Carol tell us about coming up with stories. The head of the Commodities Team was our first stop, asking people to send ideas of what is going on in the world of Precious Metals. And was sent out to our network of writers and we said, hey, we are doing the entire table. They dont need to be long, some can be short. We did silver and gold, we had our photo editor who just loves the stuff so she found some amazing photography to do with it and it all took off from there. Jason how did you sort through that . You start with the table but you have to matrix over how you tell the stories. Right, what will be most important six months from now. At the time we were discussing it, the helium shortage, everybody was talking about the party city balloons story and we had many ideas. That was the approach we decided we wanted to take. We had a writer who had an idea about tanzania and its helium reserves. Jason what was the toughest one to get your head around . Oh boy. In some ways, there were two. One was uranium because it is such a powerful symbol of the table. Theres the bomb, theres nuclear power, there are all of these byproducts. So that was one of them and it took us quite a while to decide we wanted to look at china and its Nuclear Reactor buildings. They are one of the only countries who are still gung ho about nuclear power. The other is carbon. As you would expect, there are so many we could have looked at. Climate change, diamonds, anything. Carol everything, right . Thats what we ended up doing. Looking at carbon and special properties and how, in the area era of industrial chemistry, how we have used it to create all of these products. Carol i think thats the slogan, living better through chemistry. Its going to one era and a different one today. Jason the peter coy era. Carol chemicals, just putting chemicals and everything. Think about it in cleaner fuel and energy and different types of Building Blocks. There is a lot of awareness now that we have been through this era. All of this excitement about Silicon Valley and the ideas and things we can experience. People are starting to think more about the ethics about the cobalt going into batteries, where do the rare earths we need to make solar panels come from and can we resolve the ethical issues around them . Jason in some stories, you get into this notion of diamonds come up maybe they are not so cool diamonds, maybe they are not so cool. That was a twist i did not see coming. Yeah, and how do we prescribe diamonds to some things . They are cool, but there also a story about marketing. So we have this German Institute which is like osmium is rare and can be made beautiful. Lets get on it. So we get on him as he tries to pitch his osmium. Jason we spoke with reporter austin carr. Carol who traveled to nevada to meet with an entrepreneur who is betting big on the element that could disrupt the diamond industry. There is a wizard behind the story, a crazy german guy. I thought it was a fake name at the beginning. He has been working on what we described as alchemizing one of the most Precious Metals on earth and making it into the next generation diamond. I dont know what you guys wear, but hopefully if you are wearing diamonds, he thinks that market will go kaput and his bet is to replace it with osmium. Jason who is he . He has a unique past. He describes himself as everything from a rockabilly singer to a serial entrepreneur to someone who has started 14 ventures. Everything from an electric car company to an online tv company. He grew up in germany and have his long career in the Business Space but eventually got interested in commodities and got involved in goldmining. Randomly, at a commodities conference, he met this guy who we promised we would not name who developed this crystallization process to turn raw osmium, which can cause damage to your lungs and stain your corneas. Carol highly toxic. Highly toxic. Crystallizing that, rendering it harmless, and turning it into something incredibly shiny. If youve seen them in person, they have this bluish, beautiful finish and they do sparkle more than diamonds. At the same time, you have to balance the cost. There were only 38 kilograms imported to the u. S. Compared to 60,000 kilograms of platinum imported to the u. S. , compared to 60,000 kilograms of platinum. Jason diamonds are overhyped, they estimate there are trillions of diamonds. They are forever . No, they can burn. They are unique . No. And synthetic diamonds are naturally cheaper than their organic counterparts. He has not down knocked down the entire diamond market. Carol they were brilliant in terms of creating a marketing machine to get everyone to buy diamonds. That is one of the compelling parts of this. The cmo of Berkshire Hathaway told me you cant just take shining rocks and throw the jewelry. You have to develop an emotional marketing story. The idea of an Engagement Ring as something synonymous with commitment that did not exist. The idea is you have to do that with osmium. It is one thing to have a natural element that is harder and has higher abrasion resistance, it doesnt burn, its harder than a diamond. But you have to sell it as something that symbolizes love. That is how you are going to turn it from a rock into a longterm symbol of love. Carol i love that you brought up Berkshire Hathaway. They are looking into this. Thats what i was told. The cmo told me he was very impressed with of the top the with the talk this guy gave in reno and looked into it. Others are skeptical. We talked to a professor who was concerned about the claims about toxicity. Whether it is completely immune for humans. Jason up next, the elements that drive electric cars. Carol plus, a frothy update to your cup of coffee. Jason this is Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol join us every day on the radio starting at 2 p. M. Wall street time. You can also catch up on our daily show. Check out our podcast. Jason and you can find us online at businessweek. Com and through our mobile app. Back to our special elements issue. It is the 150th anniversary of the periodic table we have an indepth look at why matter Still Matters. Carol and the elements of the Power Electric cars and the ethical concerns. If the 20th century was the age of the internal combustion engine, the 21st century will belong to the battery. By 2040, the majority of cars will be powered by batteries, emitting far less pollution. But the elements provide their own challenges. Lithium is a water guzzler and may not be worth the cost of mine. The industry may opt for the method of pumping saltwater underground. Nickel is used in lithium ion batteries, boosting Energy Density to let electric vehicles travel faster and farther. But is not clear whether minors in indonesia and keep a steady stream of nickel coming and cobalt presents an ethics problem. There are terrible conditions for miners in congo, the worlds top producer. Some workers are as young as four years old. For more on mining cobalt jason we caught up with the writer behind the story in london. About two thirds of the worlds supply comes from the drc. You have established Mining Companies there working broadly the same kind of Industrial Mining practices you would see elsewhere. But also a large chunk of supply comes from much more informal mining methods where you have workers exploiting deposits by hand and often in very dangerous working conditions. Up to this point, the industry has really kind of focused on how to solve the cobalt problem. Really, the industry is in an early stage in working out how to tackle this problem. It is similar to the diamond industrys difficulty with blood diamonds, for example. Coffee is something that everyone loves and cant do without but there has been a very concerted effort in the Agricultural Industry to reassure consumers that they can buy coffee from sustainable sources. And if you look at at bmw etc. , in the early stages of developing similar assurance systems to say there may be problems but we are certified our cobalt to make sure it is coming from reputable and sustainable sources. Carol smart, but i do wonder about this. We all know with electric vehicles are they easier to make . Are they easier to be recycled . I think we need to think more about the environment. Where are we going when it comes to that . Exactly. If you look at the demand projections for electric vehicles, people expect them to take off in the way mobile phones did, in the way microwaves or fridges did. So the question now, considering the size of batteries that go into these vehicles, the industry as a whole and consumers are looking with greater focus on what kind of toll that would take on the resources that go into these cars. For instance, if you are looking at lithium, it is perhaps very beneficial to be using it because it can be recycled. But in terms of the way it is produced now, a large majority comes from a desert in chile, one of the driest places on earth. You needed to extract the lithium by evaporating it from brine water and extracting water from the water table in one of the driest places on earth perhaps is not an ideal alternative to the gas and oil industry we are leaving behind. Jason coming up, more from our special elements issue. Why matter Still Matters, especially when it comes to food. Carol we talk about the power of salt and nitro brew. This is Bloomberg Businessweek. Carol welcome back to Bloomberg Businessweek. Jason you can also listen to us on the radio on sirius xm channel 119, and on 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, over in london on dab digital, and of course, through the Bloomberg Business app. Back to our special double issue, a look at how the periodic table shaped and continues to shape business. We turn to sodium. Jason heres our contributor in d. C. He runs his own salt operation on the coast of oregon. He pumps in seawater from a bay, and through a series of processes, makes his own flaky sea salt. This is what he does now and what he has for almost the last 10 years after bouncing around some Tech Companies and leaving Silicon Valley. Jason why salt . There a great origin story here. Carol Silicon Valley to salt. Jason is not a natural straightline. No, it is not. He was living in europe and going to business school. He had some extended family. At one point, he was making a dinner of whatever he could find cheaply and his girlfriend handed him some sea salt. He put it on his meal and he said it was one of the best meals hes ever had. When he came back to the states, he started looking around for other brands of sea salt and could not find anything. That he embarked on trying to make his own and i think his first attempt was he bought one of those inflatable kiddie pools, filled it up with seawater and just plunked it in his backyard. After month, it was still seawater. Carol i was doing that the other day. You put the stats in your story, the Global Market for gourmet salt is 1. 1 billion in 2016, expected to grow, were talking about a decent market. Yeah, and its only growing. There is this interesting evolution of it. Many did not think too much about sea salt but i spoke to someone on americas on the show americas test kitchen. He was telling me that more and more chefs at restaurants are thinking about what sorts of salt they are using and this has trickled down to mainstream america. Instead of just buying normal table salt, you go to the store and find different see salts. You can find pink himalayan salts, these flaky salts, all of these different varieties. Carol was interesting is this pursuit of refining the taste. The ed letters in about the letters in the bay, and the oysters that had a positive impact. Theres this great story of him driving around in his car with his great portuguese water dog, filling up buckets. He lands on the spot on the bay because there are thousands of oysters that are already pulling stuff like calcium out of the seawater. That, in itself, begins refining the seawater. So once he starts pumping it in, you already have seawater that is on its way to becoming good salt. Carol we here have big names in the Coffee Business are using nitrous oxide to mix up your morning cup of joe. Coffee is just beans that have been picked, roasted, and brewed. This not that much you can do historically to change a cup of coffee. And yet nitrogen, here comes nitrogen. Some certainly know it from beer, but what it does if you pump nitrogen gas which has no color or odor, if you pump it in, it creates soft bubbles and gives it a creamy flavor and slight sweetness. Carol different than a cappuccino machine . Yeah, its not Strong Enough for hot coffee. I think the pressure of the boiling water adds a texture of its own and then you add milk and thats creaminess. But for a nitro cold brew, theres definitely not milk in it. More spoiler alerts, but nitrogen ads its coming out of the tap. There is this gentle cascade of bubbles and it will form a foam on the top. Carol like a beer. Yeah. A good nitro group coffee will brew coffee will look like a beer. This is carol where was it that summary was sitting around with their cup of ice coffee and said wait and we can do something different. Wait, we can do something different. It blew up in seattle and there are different urban theories. According to one source, it might have started in queens with an experiment with a beer keg. But supposedly, the most popular theory is that it started in austin around 2012. Someone with too much time, probably over caffeinated, took his nitrous oxide and put it with coffee. The result captivated everybody. Carol lets talk about this. There are a couple companies that are pretty big players. Talk to us about stumptown. Exactly. Everyone thinks as seattle as the coffee capital but it is a major player in the scene. It has really, really come up in a big way. So stumptown was also an early adapter and started playing around with kegs and nitrogen. By 2015, i think they introduced their first cams. Cans. Whats cool is they have created these cans with a tiny widget that you can put nitrogen in. Through force of nature, when you pop open the can, the pressure from the gas explodes. So when you pour it out, you get that satisfying cascade of bubbles and everything. Jason Bloomberg Businessweek is available on newsstands now. Carol its also online on businessweek. Com. It is also on our mobile app. Jason what is your mustread . Carol peter coy, i love it. The periodic table has been around 150 years and it takes us back to our chemistry classes. But its an important table but even more than ever. Jason there was a character behind the periodic table, one of my favorites coming courtesy of austin carr. The details in that story, so rich. And who knows, maybe thats what you will be wearing. Carol maybe its not diamonds anymore. Jason what you can find more stories online over the weekend. Carol and check out our podcast. Jason more Bloomberg Television starts right now. David so you started your own company at what age . John i was 24. David and where did you get the money to capitalize it . John my mom gave me everything she had that was liquid. My dad gave me what he thought he could afford to lose. David one of the boards you are on is mcdonalds, and it is said that you eat mcdonalds every day. Is that true . John it is just about every day. David so in chicago, did you ever play basketball with barack obama . John yes, several times. David and is he that good a player . John hes a very good player. Would you fix your tie, please . David well people would not recognize me if my tie was fixed, but ok. Just leave it this way. All right