Don't you always want to be the best you can be. The Frankie Boyer
Show it's more than a lifestyle show. It's a show about living in today's
world. I think something is happening. Frankie enthusiastically brings an amazing, eclectic
mix to the airwaves. One of the reasons she's earned legions of loyal fans
is very simple. When you listen to The Frankie Boyer Show, you just
never know what's going to happen. So listen for yourself. Here is Frankie
Boyer and welcome. It's Frankie Boyer. Glad you're with us today and joining
us someone that I think you're going to all enjoy this conversation today, Michael
Robbins is with us and it is such a fascinating topic in Michael, you're
a leading member of the board of directors of Glystone Corporation. You're on the
board of directors of Urban Edge Capital hedge fund, and you develop investment models
that allow many management firms to invest in large numbers of stock stocks to produce
positive returns. It's also fascinating and I'm so thrilled you with us today as
the chief investment officer of six large investment firms. Michael, tell us this
model and tell us about your new book. Hi, thank you for having
me. Yeah, I've been investing with quantitative methods for a long long time
now, and they're becoming very popular in the news, which is very good,
and they're becoming more powerful, easy to use, and also easy to
misuse. So I thought it was a good idea to write a book to
try to help people understand how to do that and to do it correctly.
Absolutely, because many of us have no clue what you're talking about. So
please take us back a little bit and explain. Because you're using big data
combined with machine learning and AI, and people are like freaked out about all
of it. So take a step by step. Please see how people have
been using numbers to invest for a really long time, even before computers were
popular, and then almost everyone was using a spreadsheet in the early nineties.
Then they became very involved in using different type statistics. But statistics are pretty
hard to manage and they require a lot of training to use. Now there
are these really powerful machines that can create the statistics sold by themselves, these
machine learning algorithms, these artificial intelligence programs. Yeah, and they're really good
at coming up with answers, but the answers aren't always right. Sure,
you've heard some of the stories about chech CBT and how you know some of
it makes no sense, And that's fine when you're writing a letter, but
if you're investing real money, you have to be pretty careful about how you
use these things and guide them to give you the right answers. I'm not
just one that sounds really good, Michael. As your role as a professor,
what do you at Columbia? What are you sharing with your students about
AI? I just want to ask that question because so many of us are
fascinated by it. I interviewed a while ago a couple of young men that
are using AI technology to help with a medical device that could possibly be a
game changer, and it's so it's so exciting. But tell tell me what
you're sharing with your students and what are their concerns you any So, Yeah,
their concerns and interests I think are opposite of your viewers. They're really
interested and knowledgeable about machine learning techniques and they're just need a lot of help
applying them properly to get the right answers. We do have some students doing
cancer research with the National Institutes of Help and they use artistical intelligence extensively,
but they're really experts at it. Your listeners, I think, maybe come
from the other end of the spectrum where they might be really interested in using
it. They can get their hands on some of the technology through pypon or
some other widely accessible technology, and then they run the risk of misusing it
and coming up with, you know, these crazy answers. There's a lot
of blog posts and people talking about how to use it, and a lot
of these people are either ill informed or they just don't have enough time to
give sorrow answer. There's a lot of very simple examples that you can extrapolate
and use for yourself. So I think for people who are interested in it
but are not schooled in it, I think caution is really the word of
the day. So your career is so fascinating. You started out in in
physics and later worked in electronic warfare. Then you transitioned into working as a
primary prime loan and derivative portfolio manager in Washington's Mutual Treasury department. You've had
the most fascinating background. Michael Robbins, I've been lucky that I've been able
to make a lot of the opportunities that I found. Like you mentioned,
I was originally a physicist, and I joined Wall Street when computers are becoming
really important on the trading desk. They've always always been important in the back
office, but they didn't really know who to hire, and so they hired
physicists, and so I got lucky. And I also got lucky in that
the job that I had allowed me to trade all different kinds of things.
So when I graduated from that part of my career, I became a chief
investment officer because I knew a lot about a lot of different investments. And
I continue to apply technology to investing, which a lot of people do,
but I might have been in a different circumstance than some others, and that's
what I'm continuing to do with the Artistical intelligence is just another technology and evolution
in what we did before. But I think people are pretty clear on how
it's dramatically changing some things a little more and faster than we'd like, but
certainly with a tremendous amount of power, and it can't be overlooked and even
the average person has access to a lot of these tools and is able to
do tremendous things. But I think a lot of people are looking to replace
situations that are maybe difficult and cumbersome when technology generally just makes things more complex
and more powerful. You know, we saw it with computers. Computers didn't
do away with quite as many jobs as they created. Exactly, exactly,
Yeah, yes, Yes, a lot of people were afraid of cars driving
by themselves, and now we're afraid of that. My point though is that
we've had cruise control for forever and and and there's now a television commercial where
the father is showing the young young child he's going around to Ben and he's
not touching the car, and the car is driving itself. And my point
though is that it's become part of our marketing culture that we're starting to see
this technology taking over. Yeah, and it's very true that things like self
driving cars may become better drivers than the average person, especially when you include
all their distractions. And absolutely, absolutely I agree with you. I absolutely
agree with you. How did you start to use real life people and tell
us a little bit about It's It's almost as though you're like a clearinghouse for
ideas and then finding investors. Is that a little bit of what you're doing
well. I do advise companies on how to invest, especially when they kind
of built up the company to where they're pretty sizeable and now they need to
do things quite differently than they did before. It's a common problem with startup
companies that become real companies and then their management is really good at starting things
up and new ideas, but not quite as good at integrating with the rest
of the business culture and doing things in you know, a professional, institutional
way. But it also really helps that I have all these students feeding the
ideas all the time, and yeah, manage their projects. Yeah. I
get to see what hundreds of you know, the mistakes hundreds of people make,
and I don't have to make them myselves myself. And that helps me
advise people as well, because I didn't just learn from my career path,
but I'm learning from thousands of students. Do you have a research project that
you can share with us right now from from your students? Yeah. Yeah.
We're using AI on quite a few different investing technologies, from predicting price
movements in a short term basis to trying to find new ways to invest in
to manage the investments. The traditional ways using statistics are extended in machine learning
so that they become a little more powerful. But now that there's these really
powerful large language models like CHATSYPT, we're trying to harness them. They're Okay,
we've got to take a quick break, Michael Robbins. We have to
take a quick break. We will be back in just a moment. Give
us the best websites. Oh, my book's website is Quantitative Asset Management dot
com, spelled just like it sounds, and we'll be right back. Information.
Yeah, it's Frankie Boyer's stay too, and welcome back. It is
Frankie boy You're fascinating conversation today with Michael Robbins. Michael Robbins is really on
the cutting edge, leading so many in his teams. And he's also,
by the way, a professor at Columbia and we are so thrilled you're back
with us. Up. You're just hearing sharing some of the students and some
of the things that you're doing with your students, and go back and share
a little bit. And you're also, by the way, chief investment officer
for Larson Financial what's more fun for you being the professor? Well, I
do these chief investment offer jobs for short periods of time, usually to try
to build up companies. Actually recently left Larson and there are a lot of
fun bringing companies up to speed. But working with the students is just continually
fascinating. They're they're always bringing new and interesting ideas and giving me new things
to work on. So I would definitely say they're both great parts of my
life that work together. Well, oh, nice, nice, you were
sharing a couple of the stories, and let's go back to how long do
you think it will be before we are comfortable with AI in this country?
Yeah, that's a tough one, and I think AI is already pretty much
everywhere right next. Netflix and Amazon and all these companies use it, but
they use it kind of behind the scenes, and people are not really how
are they using Yeah, tell us, tell us how Netflix has used it.
Well, whenever you go to their website and they suggest a movie,
they're using statistics about what you like and what people like you, Yeah,
in order to suggest movies. I think it's a famous urban myth that these
pyites like Amazon know what product you're talking about. With your friends, because
they're so accurate in finding the things that you're interested in and presenting you with
ads that they're just really effective at using bits of data to come up with
a clear picture, and that's only going to get much more pervasive. I
think it's more of a privacy issue than anything else right now, that people
might get a little weirded out by having so much intelligence software involved in their
lives so much of the time. Some people like it, but a lot
of people do have problems with it and prefer that things were less powerful and
less in sight. Yeah. Yeah, I just was watching an ad for
Google versus Duck Duck dot com and they were talking about that. You know
about the privacy piece. Yeah, there are people who use websites like Duck
Duck Go and signaled because they believe it affords them more privacy and there's less
information shared. It's it's usually the kind of privacy that is only available when
it's not useful. If you're a criminal and you want to hide your information.
Usually these sites. I don't know about these sites in particular, but
companies in general give up your information to the authorities, So it's not really
clear to me exactly what the privacy is good for if it's fragile like that,
but it will be harder and harder to find. And these sites generally
are not as useful as the mainstream sites just because they don't have as many
people using them, and so the companies don't have as as as many resources
to build them out and make them competitive. And I think people who want
to live the unibomber life and sit in the woods and not use technology are
going to have to make a lot of concessions that people who are less interested
in the privacy will will have to. So are we going to see because
the way in which our educational system is right now, our kids they're not
being taught anything. They're picking things up because they're so smart and they've been
you know, they've been exposed to computers for their whole life since they we're
babies. So are we only to seek Yeah, So when will the school
systems catch up? Michael? I mean, come on, they're not.
I don't know about the pre college people, how how well that's going to
work. I bet there's going to be a lot of things that they can
do without programming. But it reminds me of when I started the business.
And I pretty much taught programming to myself when I was a kid, and
I was a little worried that this the next generation who grew up with computers
when they were kids, would be so much their programmers, and they're really
not. They're they're no better at it than their previous generation was. People
are just people, and you know, some of them like complexity and some
don't. And I don't really think that the fact that they're growing up with
the stuff is really going to change whether they're going to become experts at it.
They will be using it throughout their life and they'll have a level of
competency that maybe some older people will never get. But it would be just
that, just competency in using the tools, not expertise. You see it
now with people who try to call themselves prompt engineers, who are trying to
come experts using Shaypt, Well, they're just basically using an appliance, right,
They're not learning how to build new models using mathematics. They're just trying
to use technology that already exists. And so they might become more comfortable with
that. I don't know for sure how that's going to work. You're gonna
have to talk to a sociologist about whether they'll be comfortable with machines doing work
that people traditionally thought something that we would do. Are you seeing with your
students at Columbia and they creative place in which they see AI and that it
will open up as as you were just sharing the world of cancer, the
world of the future is is for me from where I'm sitting as a layperson,
sounds extremely exciting. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely going to be tremendous
innovations in medicine and other fields. There is going to be kind of a
middle ground which is going to get left behind, just the same way a
lot of artisans were no longer able to do their jobs. A generation later,
there'll be some people who are file clerks and do some administrative tasks the
computers will be able to do. But the benefit will be that we'll be
able to cure diseases, will be able to fix things, and we'll be
able to make things that are much more complicated than they were in the past,
and that will open up new problems and new jobs and new tools to
manage these amazingly complex things. Yeah, it's pretty impressive how complex like a
modern airline is. And I think that's the line. It's so fast.
We could talk to you, we could talk to you forever. This has
been so terrific. Michael Robbins, thank you so much for being with us,
and give us, please the best website, so yeah, thank you.
Please go to Quantitative Asset Management dot com where you can see my book
and podcasts and all sorts of other information, and also about my course at
Columbia. If you're matriculated, we'd like to have you as a student.
Wonderful. Thank you so much, and we'll take a quick break and be
right back. Frankie Bowyer and welcome back at his Frankie Lawyer. And you
know, growing up with Walt Disney and the amazing, amazing impact that he
has had on all of our lives. Brilliant visionary, brilliant, brilliant visionary
what we may not know. And I didn't know this until I found out
about Disneyland on the Mountain and joining us today Katherine Mayer and Greg Glasgow,
who are the authors of this new book. And I had no idea that
Walt Disney wanted to take a ski resort area in southern California and create.
Was it going to be something like Disneyland on the Mountain so Gasin No,
I mean we call it Disneyland on the Mountain because there was certainly a lot
of fear that that was going to happen as far as those who opposed it.
But it was, you know, it was it was going to be
first and foremost the ski resorts, this outdoor recreation type destination that really kind
of showed off nature, wildlife, that kind of thing. But it was
really going to rely more on kind of outdoor activities and kind of to show
off the pristine area. But it was going to have some kind of fun
type attractions and of course lots of Disney type magic. So, Greg,
you're a longtime writer and journalists for many publications including the Denver Host and Catherine
you're a writer and journalist as well, and all of your publications you've been
been doing this and you guys are both married. So how did this project
come about? Tell us the backstory about we're both you know, sort of
Disney people. Katherine grew up going to the parks and that kind of thing,
and she kind of put me into it as we you know, our
relationship developed and We actually went to the Walt Disney Family Museum back in twenty
eighteen where they had a little mention of this ski resort on a giant timeline
of Walt's life, and it interested us right away because his partner on the
project, as mentioned on the timeline, was a guy named Willie Schaeffler,
who was actually the ski coach at the University of Denver for many years here
where we live in Colorado. Katherine actually graduated from the University of Denver and
we met working there, so that name really stood out to us, and
we started just looking into it and found it was this really big story that
involved a environmental battle that went to the Supreme Court. It was like this
eighteen year sort of saga that went on, and we thought it would make
a great book. Oh yeah, it's it is a great book. So
the environmental were and I'm so shocked because did Walt realize that it would be
a problem for the environment or he was really sick, wasn't he? And
much older in the in the time of this whole thing he was, And
a lot of the opposition began. There was a little bit of it,
certainly at the very beginning, but Walt actually had passed away pretty unexpectedly in
nineteen sixty six, in late nineteen sixty six, and this was, you
know, very soon after they announced this project. So finally there were some
you know, there was some opposition to it, but it certainly intensified after
Walt Disney passed away. So I think that certainly would have surprised him because
he actually and we talked about this in the book and we're excited for people
who read it to find out more about this, but he considered himself a
big conservationist and an environmentalist, that's right. Yea quite a bit of work.
Yeah, he did quit work on that side. So that's actually a
really surprising part of the story was he created quite a bit of momentum on
that he created these very popular wildlife documentaries starting in the late nineteen forties that
won a ton of awards and basically kind of spurred a lot of young people
to then care about the environment. So then later on, the same people
that grew up on these films and and kind of credited well Disney for a
lot of their beliefs then later opposed one of his big creations, right right,
It's so it's so interesting. I just have to ask you, guys,
because you obviously did a lot of research on this man, this extraordinary
human being. I think he was such a vision visionary, he really was.
How do you think, how do you think, Catherine, he would
feel about what's happening today with all of his merchandising and the way in which
it is spread and the outrageous pricing and all of that. How do you
think he would feel about that today? What a great question. It's I
don't know. I mean, I kind of go back and forth, because
you know, it's it's certainly so different than what he originally created. At
the same time, one of the things that I that stands out to me
and to us is that, you know, a lot of what the company
did post his death with kind of stay in tune with Walt, and they
really wanted to do things what Walt wanted. And you know, you walk
into Walt Disney World, there's a statue of him there, and we celebrate
him a lot. But it'll be it would be really interesting to find out
kind of you know, what he what he certainly thought of how things have
gone because there's been so many different Jacks that have been created since he passed
away, and things obviously have gotten very very expensive and unfortunately sometimes kind of
price about the average family, which is which is really yeah, just switch
back. I'd love to talk with you guys about this is really important.
Is the the battle to save the Sequoia Groves in the High Sierra from from
Disney Resources and whatever happened. Tell us a little bit more about the case
and where it finally ended up. Yeah, So the case, you know,
once this was announced in nineteen sixty five, as we think the book,
this environmental resistance began sort of slowly, and it started very grassroots,
with you know, different protests, and there was some hike in protests.
There was a movie created, flyers and things like that. Nothing really stopped
it too much. And then when Disney submitted their final plans in nineteen sixty
nine, the Sierra Club, which of course is one of the biggest environmental
groups in the country that still is today, decided to go to the court
with to see if there was a legal remedy, which was sort of a
new idea really at the time hadn't been done too much prior to that,
so they filed a lawsuit against the Disney Resort. They it's important to note
that they never actually named Disney in their suits. They filed it against the
government agencies that were sort of behind, you know, the leasing of the
land and that sort of thing, and eventually, you know, they won
on the first round. Eventually on appeal made all the way to the Supreme
Court, and then the Supreme Court made a ruling actually in favor of the
Disney Resort. But they ruled in such a way that they sort of created
this blueprint for groups to go forward with environmental cases and kind of show how
they would personally be affected by these. And there was a couple of famous
descents in this case that sort of began this idea that the environment, you
know, almost could be its own plaintiff, could stand up for itself and
core So really was a landmark case in a lot of ways. Yeah.
Yeah, Disney Lander on the Mountain. Tell me about the cover, Katherine,
who the who who's on the cover? Sure it's Walt Disney is on
the cover. And this is at a scene basically this is in Mineral Kane,
California, where the area where they planned to build this resort, and
this old in this picture I'm sorry. How old is he in the picture?
Sixty five? Sixty five and he died actually, believe it or not,
just a few months after this photo was taken. So this was in
nineteen sixty six. This was this was his final press conference, believe it
or not. It was really one of his final public events. And this
was at Mineral Kane, California. They were basically announcing kind of an update
to their plans, including the development of this all weather highway that would have
to be did governor California Governor Pat Brown is also in the cover, as
well as a couple other Disney employees and one of Walt Disney's part project who
Greg had mentioned, Willi Schaffler. And yeah, this was a really important
important day of the story and really in Walt Disney's life. Because this was
people were kind of noticing, you know, he doesn't see he doesn't seem
well. Actually, so, yeah, he doesn't look well on the cover.
He just doesn't look well. This has been so fascinating, guys,
Thank you so much because it's a story that for many of us we didn't
we never knew, and I love that you're writing about it. It's called
Disney Land on the Mountain and one of the things before I let you go,
whatever happened to the area that he was looking at. The area really
still is the same today as it was back in nineteen sixty five. Their
plans really never got off the ground. This environmental fight just sort of kept
laying things and putting things in lembo, and eventually the area was actually eventually
put into Sequoia National Park in nineteen seventy eight by Jimmy Carter, which is
kind of a spoiler alert of how the book ends. But yeah, pretty
much today, I mean there's still a little cabin community there, but really
it's remained, you know, thanks to the Fair Club, remained really very
Christine natural beautiful area. Give us the best website excellence. So we do
have a website Disneylands on the Mountain dot com. So it's there where you
can find you know, you could buy the book, find different places to
buy the book, and please contact us as well. We'd love to hear
from people who have read it and you know, tell us what side you're
on and what you thought of it. Wonderful. Thank you so much.
We'll take a quick break and be right back. I'm Frankie Boyer, Stay
tune, hi, everybody, Frankie Boyer, and welcome back. I have
been looking forward to this interview. Joining me today is Tracy Zabar. And
for those of you that are savvy enough to live in New York City,
you know that name because the most iconic, I mean, is there another.
I wouldn't even know what to call it. It's beyond a Delhi,
it's beyond a gourmet food store. It is. It's an institution. It's
zay Bars. And Tracy Zabar is with us today. Tracy, you're a
baker, hey, jewelry designer, author of six books, including One Sweet
Cookie and Chocolate Chip Sweet. Your collections have been sold at Barney's and Bergdoff's
and Browns of London and Kate Spade and oh my God, it goes on
and on and on. You were also the jewelry stylish stylist for Sex in
the City. You're a food influencer, I mean, it goes on and
on and on, and tell us about the cakes from missus Zabar's bake shop
that are featured at zay Bars in New York. First, thank you so
much for inviting me so the way that this book started was I knew I
was going to write a clipbook that was the third in the series of these
clipbooks, and I wanted to write a book about cake. And my point
of view is I have four brothers and four sons and a husband and a
grandson, and everybody comes to our house because the food is really good and
I'm always cooking and baking for twenty Wait wait, can one can only imagine,
only imagine your house at the holidays with z bars in the family,
I can only imagine. Yes, yes, yes, it's so I mean,
it's so much fun because my boys are very lively and they're there.
They all have regular jobs, but they're firefighters and medics on the weekend,
and one of them is with the FDNY, So there's just like lively and
loud and it's really really fun. And we have a giant dining room and
a giant kitchen and they only ever want to be in the kitchen, and
so if I ever baked it was. The short story is I was a
jeweler from when I was four years old. I helped my father, he
was a jeweler and an auctioneer, and when I was forty nine, I
was like, enough already, I don't want to do it anymore. So
now I only do it once a week. And I went to culinary school
not to stand on my feet for twelve hours a day, but because I
wanted to write book books because I love to bake. So when we're taking
my favorite brainstorm, this this book, you started talking about little cakes,
and I was like, why would anybody make a little cake? You go
to the store, you stand in the kitchen, you bake. It's the
same as making a big cake, but like, why would you do it?
And then all of a sudden, even though my kids are here a
lot, we had an empty nest. My kids, we're grown up,
and we have you know, salad and a chicken breasts we split for dinner,
and we didn't want a great, big cake in the house that we
would eat for three days and it would be gone. And then I started
noticing a trend. So I was taking a charge of ordering for the cake
counter at say Bars, and I started going to bakeries all over Brooklyn and
New Jersey and some New England and Westchester, and I started noticing that people
were still buying big cakes, but they were buying multiple little cakes, and
I was like, oh, this is interesting, this is a trend.
And then I started going to baby namings and showers and wed showers and different
gatherings that instead of a cake, there were little cakes all lined up with
like tiny slices already cut in them, and each one had a cake server
and people would take a little bit of this and a little of that.
My thought, this is amazing. It's such a great idea because if there's
one cake and it's a coconut cake and you don't like coconut, what do
you do? But this way you get a little taste. So I decided
it's a trend. There's hardly any books. There's no books written on this
subject. A few small batch baking books. So I was like, okay,
I'll write a book. And so I started to explore my favorite cakes,
and I will insert that the last two books, the Once Wee Cookie
I wrote with the seventy best chefs in New York and the next one was
forty five or fifty of the best pastry chefs all over the country. And
so this one, I wanted this one to be mine, my mind mind
mind. So I just scale down my recipes and I did a lot of
research, and I think we probably could have had three or four more volumes
because there's a million kicks out there. But I just love the cakes.
And am I allowed to say that I love the cakes in this book?
And you pick a favorite of like when you look through the book, did
you pick something you want to do? Oh my god? I well,
everything, because but I don't do sugar and gluten. So I take your
ideas and I transform them in my kitchen with my almond flour and my gluten
free, sugar free and the alchemist that I am and create as well magnificent,
and I think I do everything cakes that have no gluten anyway, that's
right, that's right, good cake or two. So you can already thought
of that. And I'm sorry if you can hear my other phones bringing My
child just got engaged two days ago and everybody is calling, so how I'm
citing? No, no, no, that's okay. So the new book,
though, it's just exquisite, absolutely tracy. It is so beautiful,
sweet little cakes from missus Zabar's bake shop. And when when one looks at
these, you just can't help but say wow, and what you've done though,
is you've given us an opportunity to create whatever we need. You and
the ingredients that you say we should always use fresh, and I agree with
you, fresh ingredients that are at their peak now and as we move into
autumn. And I love that you did that this book. Yeah, I
am. You know we have day bars. My husband and I are of
ficionados of farm stands and you know local greengrocers. And you know it used
to be if you wanted a raspberry you I don't mean a parcel of raspberry
the box. The raspbers who want to one of them will cost you five
dollars out of season. And now there's lots of fruits and vegetables that are
available all year around, but there's lots that aren't that are only available.
So that was why, exactly what you said, I split it up until
four seasons so you could love it. We've got to run everybody. Check
out Tracy's website. Go ahead and give it Tracy zabar dot com and it's
Tracy with an ey or go to zabars dot com and put your email in
and every other week you'll get a different cookbook review and a recipe and a
chance to win amazing, amazing baskets and prizes from Zabars. Thank you so
much, wonderful, Thank you so much, Tracy Zabar, and thank all
of you. This has been another edition of the Frankie Boyer Show. Thanks
for listening. Make it a great day, everybody, And as always,
smiles with subset will go to maybe ever sow here and if it's smile,
help read our fears and start smile, and maybe tomorrow you'll see the light
is still worth while if you tomorrow. But some more