通货膨胀多年来一直困扰着美国消费者，虽然汽油价格抢尽风头，但食品价格可能更切中要害。自2020年1月以来，食品价格平均上涨了32%，包括咖啡、谷物早餐和令人头疼的鸡蛋在内的商品涨幅更大。牛肉的涨幅也名列前茅。过去十年里，牛排和绞肉的价格几乎翻了一倍。
Inflation has been roiling American consumers for years now, but while gas prices have been grabbing headlines, food prices may be closer to the heart of the matter. Since January 2020, they have risen, on average, 32%, and items including coffee, cereal and the dreaded egg have climbed far more. Right up near the top of the list? Beef. Over the last decade, steak and ground beef prices have almost doubled.
通常情况下，这种情况会受“富有弹性的需求”制约。当一种产品变得太贵，人们就会停止购买，或改买替代品（鸡肉？鱼肉？猪排？）。但牛肉不是普通产品——人们对牛肉有情感依恋。“它适用于很多食谱，过去价格便宜，人们非常喜欢它，”专栏作家迪娜·香克说，她在最新一期文章中撰写了牛肉不断变化的经济学。“它曾是主食，现在正逐渐变成一种奢侈品。”
Normally, “elastic demand” would control in a situation like this. When a product gets too expensive, people stop buying it, or buy something else in its place (Chicken? Fish? Pork chops?). But beef isn’t just any product — people get emotional about beef. “It works in a lot of recipes, and it was inexpensive and people really love” it, says columnist Deena Shanker, who writes about beef’s changing economics in the latest issue. “It was a staple item, and now it’s turning into a bit more of a luxury one.”
香克进一步描述了一家迈阿密餐厅，提供售价1000美元的“战斧牛排”，装在镶金镶宝的公文包里，还配有烟雾机。遗憾的是，未来可能会出现更多镶宝公文包。香克继续描述关税、汽油价格、干旱和气候变化如何共同推高牛肉价格，而牛肉价格短期内不太可能回落。
Shanker goes on to describe a restaurant in Miami that offers a $1,000 “Tomahawk” steak in a gold and bejeweled brief case, complete with smoke machine. Unfortunately, there may be more bejeweled briefcases in our future. Shanker goes on to describe how tariffs, gas prices, drought and climate change have all done their part to push up the price of beef, which is not likely to go back down anytime soon.
本周在《 》节目中，主持人斯泰西·瓦内克·史密斯和马克斯·查夫金与香克探讨牛肉话题。随后他们转向本周的商业大事：人工智能。随着预期飙升，Anthropic准备推出可能是有史以来最大规模的首次公开募股（IPO），但对AI繁荣的结构性基础的担忧也日益浮现。紧张的投资者正从CoreWeave及其他AI、AI相关和科技股中撤资，将资金重新投入美国债券，（推测）那里更安全。彭博新闻编辑莎拉·弗里尔加入节目，剖析引发这些AI恐慌的原因，以及Anthropic上市可能带来的影响。
This week on , hosts Stacey Vanek Smith and Max Chafkin talk beef with Shanker. Then they pivot to the big business topic of the week: artificial intelligence. Even as expectations soar and Anthropic gets ready to launch what may be the biggest IPO of all time, more worries are surfacing about the structural underpinning of the AI boom. Nervous investors are pulling their money out of CoreWeave and other AI, AI-adjacent and tech stocks and stuffing it back into US bonds, where (presumably) it will be safer. Bloomberg News editor Sarah Frier joins to break down what’s causing these AI fears, as well as what we might expect from Anthropic going public.
最后，到了《》团队的电影之夜。团队讨论了这一巨大现象级作品——一部关于身败名裂的初创企业创始人伊丽莎白·霍姆斯的纪录片《》。当被问及她会给这部电影打几分——竖大拇指还是倒竖大拇指时，制片人贾兹明·JT·格林（Jazmine JT Green）简单地回答：“两个大拇指向上！我要是还有更多大拇指就好了！”
Finally, it’s movie night at The team discusses the mega-phenomenon, , a documentary about disgraced startup founder Elizabeth Holmes. Asked how she would rate the movie — thumbs up or thumbs down — producer Jazmine JT Green responded simply, “Two thumbs up! I wish I had more thumbs!”