The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello!

And welcome to the preserving optionality edition of Slate Money, your guide to the Business and Finance News of the Week.

The title, by the way, is a financial in-joke.

It's all to do with investment bankers, and investment bankers charge enormous fees

of providing advice to companies.

And the thing that they often do when they provide advice to companies is they,

you know, cash their enormous check. And then they say, I think what you should do is preserve

optionality, which is basically a very fancy way of saying do nothing at all. Yes. And so if you

want to, if you want to get paid lots of money for advising people to do absolutely nothing, you have to

learn this phrase. Preserve optionality. It comes in surprisingly handy in many different contexts.

I am Felix Ammon of Fusion. I am joined with the core slate money team. No minute swap out so felix i wanted to call this

episode the getting the band back together episode i think exactly i can't remember the last time

we were all in the slate studios together it feels cozy it is it feels cozy um kathy o'neill. You have a book coming out. It's really exciting. It's

four days from now. I'm just about to vomit with excitement. I feel like next week... That's the best

kind of assignment. The part that gives you a queasy, like, queasy feeling in your stomach.

I'll tell you, it's like, I alternate between between like nausea and and ecstasy.

So, um, so next week I think we're going to just devote the entire episode to Kathy's book.

That's if Jordan can actually get, find time to read it. I'm going to read the book. Have I been

interested? No, this is how I'm being introduced. I'm going to read the book. I'm looking for it.

But what is the book?

We need the official plug.

...