Odd Lots

The private credit market has grown enormously fast in recent years — so much so that by some estimates it's now bigger than the market for junk-rated corporate bonds. So what's driven all that growth? What impact has private credit had on other types of corporate debt? And why are there so many concerns around the space right now? In this episode, we speak with John Sheehan and Craig Manchuck, two veteran portfolio managers for the strategic income fund at Osterweis Capital Management. We talk about the history of private credit before and after 2008, private credit's links with private equity and insurance, the prospect of higher defaults, and what to watch for right now.
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The Killing of Bob Lee, Part 1: San Francisco Has Blood On Its Hands
Three years ago, Bob Lee, a tech executive famous for creating Cash App, was found stabbed in San Francisco. His killing set off a wave of online fury. Reporter Shawn Wen takes us back to the turbulent days before his killer was arrested, when misinformation and rumors ran rampant. Several tech industry leaders decried violent crime in San Francisco, including David Sacks, who “bet dollars to dimes” that Lee was stabbed by “a psychotic homeless person,” and Elon Musk, who called the city “horrific.”

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We live in an era of charts that are going up and to the right. This image obviously describes the stock market, particularly any company whose business is adjacent to artificial intelligence. But beyond stocks, another sort of chart we keep seeing is of AI capabilities also going up and to the right. The most famous and viral of these comes from an organization called METR, which stands for Model Evaluation and Threat Research. The organization is focused on understanding the degree to which AI models can engage in autonomous, complex tasks. METR see this is as a particularly important benchmark, given the risk that AI could one day be engaged in recursive self improvement, taking humans out of the loop. But how do you really gauge a model's ability to do complex problems. And what is being measured for exactly? On this episode, we speak with METR's President Chris Painter as well as Joel Becker, a member of the technical staff who works on evaluation methods for the organization. We discuss both the mechanics and the philosophy of METR's work, and what it means when we see a a chart showing that Clause Opus 4.6 can do a task that would take a human nearly 12 hours.
Read more:DeepSeek Unveils Flagship AI Model a Year After BreakthroughMeta Inks Deal to Use Amazon’s Graviton Processors for AI
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We're living in an extraordinary moment for Latin American politics. From the ousting of Maduro to the ongoing oil blockade of Cuba to Javier Milei revving up a chainsaw at CPAC. Various leaders in different countries are taking different approaches to their relationship with the US. Each is aware that there is a high value in being close to Trump, but also each know that Trump won't be the US President forever. So how should we understand the different approaches being taken? Today we talk to James Bosworth, who is the the founder of Hxagon, a company that does political risk analysis and research primarily in Latin America. He is also the author the Latin America Risk Report newsletter. Our conversation with Bos covered what he calls the "orange shift," a region-wide realignment towards dealmaking with the Trump administration. We discuss how Latin American leaders are dealing with inflation, why Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum and El Salvador's Nayib Bukele are so popular, how Brazil's Lula has surprised economic observers, and whether Trump will be able to find a "Delcy" elsewhere in the region.
Read more:Brazil Oil Driller Expanding in Venezuela as US Eases SanctionsMexico Inflation Slows Slightly, Keeping Another Rate Cut in Play
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Not too long ago, search engines were the dominant form of querying the internet. But that's changing since the rise of large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's Gemini. More and more people are getting their online info through AI, effectively bypassing the search bars of old and creating a tension for large tech companies that offer AI models, but also make money from web traffic and search-related advertising. In this episode, we speak with Elizabeth Reid, VP of search at Google. Liz has been with the company for more than two decades, witnessing multiple tech transformations in that time. So we talk with her about how Google is incorporating Gemini into search via AI overviews, what that means for traffic and ad sales, and the practical experience of search in an age of LLMs and internet slop.

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