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Welcome to the Prophecy Pod's Office Hours. This is the part of the show where we answer questions about business, big tech, entrepreneurship, and whatever else is on your mind. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to officehoursapropsymedia.com. Again, that's officehoursapropsymedia.com. So with that, first question. Hey, Prophecy, this is Daniel from Chicago. And I have a question for you about Apple and
tech regulation in the new Trump era. So the price of Apple products, if these Trump tariffs, he talks about going to effect with the products coming out of China. Now, could Apple decide to self-regulate and start to impose age gating as kind of a way to counter these things? I also think this might be an opportunity for them to kind of stick it to meta in another way. So your thoughts on Apple and self-regulation.
Self-regulation is nothing but an attempt to create a prophylactic in the 11th hour hoping that
If you make a peace offering, it won't be as bad. There is zero self-regulation as far as I can tell. I've always been a fan of Apple, but let's be honest. Tim Cook and Senator Pichai are really likable, but they're really likable crack dealers outside of junior high school. Oxford just came out with a study showing a linear correlation between social media use
and depression, anxiety, and eating disorders and self-harm among teenagers. Let me repeat that. Social media use is directly correlated to self-harm, anxiety, depression, and self-harm. So is it Mark Zuckerberg's fault? Yeah. But also, also, the person delivering and selling this crack cocaine or these opiates or this meth is, in fact, Google.
And Apple, they're the ones that could probably more easily age gate their products. There's no reason any 14 year old should have a smartphone. There's no reason anyone under the age of 16 should be on social media. We're starting to see real pushback from the private sector. I would say the public private sector, specifically schools that are starting to ban phones, mostly because my colleagues
break through seminal landmark work, the anxious generation. You're seeing entire countries, I think New Zealand has banned funds in schools. It's like, it's just a talk everywhere banning funds in schools. And as someone who's a father of two sons, spare me your bullshit that it's about parenting, it's not. If you have kids, they're going to be on social media because when they're not on social media, they actually end up more depressed and the depressed kids on social media because they're ostracized and they feel alone. I don't think there's going to be any self-regulation here.
I think that you're going to see. I mean, they might do it to try and stave off more punitive regulation, but be clear. If we're waiting for the better angels to show up, you're going to.
I don't know. You might as well wait for autonomous Tesla. Anyways, in terms of tariffs, Tim Cook has been very savvy. Trump seems to have a soft spot for Cook. He was able to avoid the majority of tariffs on most of its products during the first Trump presidency. How? Back during Trump's first term, Apple CEO Tim Cook convinced the White House to keep most of Apple's products, including iPhones, off the tariff list. Does that make sense now?
Even though most are made in China, he argued that tariffs would end up raising prices on products, including smartphones, tablets, and computers, which would hurt Apple and some of its tech peers. The White House seemed to agree. And he's right, but why do you have tariffs on fucking anything? The argument that Tim Cook made could be made for any toy, any piece of clothing, anything. This is nothing but a tax on consumers, except him and Apple are cool and
I think Trump liked hanging out with Tim Cook and thought, no, Apple's kind of happily and I want to be with the cool kids. It makes no sense. Now things could possibly change with Trump's second term. I doubt it. Trump has talked about putting a 10 to 20% tariff on all imported goods with a 60% higher tariff on imports from China. Good fucking luck is all I have to say with that. First off, the reason why I don't think tariffs are going to come through or
be levied to nearly the extent that Trump has been blustering about. First off, for Apple, economists estimate that if Trump implemented new tariffs on goods made in China, the price of your next $1,000 iPhone would cost an extra $300. If you want to see people get really angry before they start self-cutting or throwing up their lunch, raise their iPhone price $300. But some experts think it's possible that the next White House will skip tariffs on smartphones, computers, and tablets again.
Also, many companies have successfully shifted some of their marketing to other countries to steer clear of the higher tariffs on products made in China. In fact, Apple is one of them. Apple, you got to think in every goddamn meeting, he's like diversify away from China. Oh, factoring India? Yeah, sure, we'll do that. Factoring Mexico, 100%. Also, one of the reasons I don't think these tariffs are going to have nearly the traction he's hoping is a couple things. One,
Republicans do get the economy. Oftentimes they get it more than Democrats. And you're going to see a lot of Republicans grow up backbone and say, if you put these kind of tariffs on this, you're going to raise 88% of toys under the Christmas tree come from China. What happens when everyone's Christmas gets 20% more expensive for people with kids? You're going to see a number of Republicans break from the administration. Because one, they understand economics. They like populist arguments. And also, also what people aren't talking about.
In a couple of weeks, President Trump is a lame duck. He can't run again. He can't boot people out of office. He can probably boot them out of office if they're up for reelection in the house in 2026. But other than that, he's not going to carry the kind of Valerium steel he's had all along. He's been able to make or break careers pretty soon. He's going to be kind of Joe Biden on his way out and not be able to intimidate nearly as many Republicans. Send them for tariff. Let me think. Tax.
Thanks for question. Question number two. Hey, Prof. G. John coming to you from Austin, Texas. In the autopsy of the presidential election, I have not heard much mentioned about the sheer number of votes cast in 2024 compared to 2020. Voter turnout percentage hasn't been calculated yet for 2024, but you can only assume it was much lower than the 66.6% from 2020.
My question is what happened in 2024 with such low voter turnout compared to 2020? Is the answer that the mass voting public was just too lazy to get out of the house and cast a vote in person in 2024? I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks. Thanks for the question, John. About two thirds or 66% of eligible voters participated in the 2020 election. That was the highest turnout for a national election since 1900. Wow.
As we're recording this, ballots are still being counted for this year's election, but according to estimates from the Associated Press and the University of Florida election lab, 64.5% of eligible voters participated. So I think that's actually a pretty decent turnout. So I think this is a very emotional election. And I think that this shows that this turnout was actually
as high or higher than most elections. And typically, oftentimes people don't vote because they get discouraged or they're confused or they don't know who to vote for. But in this instance, I think a lot of people are very motivated, very polarized, very emotional, a lot of rage. So actually, I think voter turnout was pretty strong here. Not as strong as two thirds. I think some of that was
There was a bit of a gag reflex around Trump, very emotional time around COVID. And I think there were a lot of people who were just less comfortable with Trump. Now, having said that, why didn't you have greater numbers than 2024? The honest answer is I don't know, but historically speaking, we had pretty strong voter turnout here. We have one quick break before our final question. Stay with us.
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Welcome back, question number three. Hey, Prof G, this is Will in Philadelphia. I just got out of the Navy, and now I'm using that sweet, sweet GI bill to go to grad school. Finding an internship has been an interesting process. I'm 31, and this is the first time in my life, a job interview that involved running in push-ups. I find myself spending a lot of time writing. For school work, networking emails, cover letters, and questions for podcasts. Spending this much time writing is new for me. I find the process to be much more enjoyable than imagined.
but I'm admittedly not a good writer. I'm trying to increase my skills and storytelling ability because A, I want to be good at the things I enjoy. And B, I consider it an asymmetric advantage in my professional and personal future. My question is, how did you develop your writing skills? What aspects of writing and storytelling did you want to develop specifically? Thanks again. Thanks to the question, Will, and thanks for your service. And I mean that sincerely, one of the things I regret is never having served
I think the great storytelling is the lost art or the key competence. If I could give my kids anything, and I'd say this a lot, but if bears repeating, it wouldn't be Mandarin.
computer science or programming or negotiation skills, it would be storytelling. Your ability to get capital, your ability to convince people to join you, your ability to sell clients, your ability to manage people, your ability to find a mate, friends, whatever might be, get elected to the House of Representatives based on your ability to be
a great storyteller. And that's not just standing in front of it, much people. It's, it's, are you a great storyteller over text? Good twist of phrase. Are you good on threads? And I find that the hardest skill is writing. It's the hardest thing I do. I've committed to writing a book every 18 months until I kind of dropped dead and I've done that for the last seven years.
And every time I do it, I think, what the fuck did I agree to do this again? It is really difficult. And I find I try and work out, I try and damage my muscles in such that they'll grow back stronger and faster. Although that's kind of going away. But I also try and damage the muscle in between my ears. And I find the best way to do that is to try and write.
Uh, there's a few things you can do to write well. One is academic gets drunken white elements of style and just make sure that you understand basics of grammar. I read that book six or seven times and I still struggle with grammar. By the way, I was a shitty writer up until, I don't know, 25 or 30. The second thing is it sounds Pat, you just got to write all the fucking time. The most important thing and this is true of most things is starting. You want to write something? The key
flip open your laptop and start writing because the real magic, there's two pieces of magic starting and then going back in the edit.
So you just got to open, get some thoughts. As soon as you get a thought, start writing. It doesn't mean that you don't have to start. It can be a paragraph that's going to be in the body. It can be the conclusion. But the moment you have something, some form, some coagulation of thoughts, some gestation of a concept, some narrative arc, whatever you write an Allen, whatever it is you think you have some insight into what you or some idea what you want to do, start writing.
The next thing is if you want to be a great writer is you need to read a lot because you'll start picking up on things. You'll start getting, you know, great writers will give you a sense for pace and cadence and the architecture sentences. A book that really helped me was, I think it was called On Writing by Stephen King. If you just type in Stephen King book on writing, I thought it was fantastic. And he uses these examples where he cites a passage from one of his book where he's describing
this metal chest that things are stored in, or he describes how he used to go to the doctor and have his eardrums pierced to release the fluid and he describes it in such horrific detail that you're literally just on the edge of your seat and you realize this guy has such
Such a gift. I think he's arguably my favorite writer. Is that true? Let me John Irving. I don't know. Anyways, in some, some basic academics, elements of style, just start, practice, read, wonderful writers. But again, it's like anything in life. What is the key? What is the key now? Start. That's all for this episode. If you'd like to submit a question, please email a voice recording to office hours of prop two media. Again, that's office hours of prop two media.com.
This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez and Caroline Shagrin. Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to The Prophecy Pod from the Vox Media Park Us Network. We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy No Malice, as read by George Hahn. And please follow our Prophecy Markets Pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
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