0:00:06 The following is a conversation with Cenk Yuger, a progressive political commentator and host of the
0:00:11 Young Turks. As I’ve said before, I will speak with everyone, including on the left and the right
0:00:18 of the political spectrum, always in good faith with empathy, rigor, and backbone. Sometimes I fail,
0:00:25 sometimes I say stupid, inaccurate, ineliquent things, and I frequently change my mind as I’m
0:00:32 learning and thinking about the world. For all this, I often get attacked, sometimes fairly,
0:00:39 sometimes not. But just know that I’m aware when I fall short, and I will keep trying to do better.
0:00:46 I love you all. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the
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0:01:22 to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please do check out our sponsors. I enjoy their
0:01:30 stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by Seili, a brand new eSim service offering
0:01:36 several affordable data plans in over 150 countries. I’ve had a bunch of experience when I was
0:01:46 traveling. Where was the legitimate pay in the ass to get a sim card or an eSim working? And being
0:01:55 abroad in the foreign land, far away from home. All these signs and ways of life you don’t understand
0:02:01 all around you. All that combined with the fact that you don’t have access to this little tablet
0:02:09 of wisdom, which is the smartphone. It can be a real pain in the ass. So a great eSim that works,
0:02:15 easy to set up, is worth its weight in gold. That said, when I was in the Amazon, it was also nice
0:02:20 to have no reception whatsoever, to be completely disconnected from the world. At first, it was
0:02:28 painful. But after going rapidly through all the stages of grief, I was able to discover freedom.
0:02:36 I was able to, let’s say, quiet the mind to a degree that I’m not usually able to in the business
0:02:43 of urban life. And the smartphone certainly is a thing that creates that turmoil in the mind.
0:02:49 You can always look and something in there can just perturbate the mind and now it’s off to the
0:02:58 races. So not having a smartphone to do that is a really nice catalyst for peace. Anyway,
0:03:02 when you are traveling, you should have a smartphone and it should work and it should be easy.
0:03:12 Go to salee.com/lex and choose the one gigabyte salee data plan to get it for free. That’s salee.com/lex
0:03:18 to get one free gig of salee. This episode is also brought to you by Policy Genius,
0:03:25 a marketplace for insurance, all kinds, life, auto, home, disability, and so on. Really nice
0:03:32 tools for comparisons. Having talked to Peter Levels, I realized how awesome it is to create a
0:03:44 website that compares stuff, whether it’s hotels, neighborhoods, and whatever else. It’s nice. Some
0:03:48 of it is an interface challenge. Some of it is a data challenge, all of that. When a company,
0:03:52 when a service does it well, it just makes life easier. You can compare stuff, you can choose
0:03:59 the thing that’s right for you. I know how powerful it is because most people do it poorly.
0:04:04 And it’s a real pain in the ass. Like with hotels, booking hotels, and I just saw, I need to check
0:04:10 out a little bit better that Peter threw up hotel list. That looks really exciting. You’ll be able
0:04:16 to compare all different kinds of hotels. Anyway, Policy Genius does that for insurances. You know,
0:04:23 insurance is a fascinating thing because basically life is full of risks. Much of progress in a human
0:04:32 life occurs when you take risks. You can use insurance to kind of muffle the pain felt when,
0:04:37 after taking the risk, the negative consequences are experienced. So it’s really interesting just
0:04:44 looking at the landscape of human experience and seeing how insurance muffles the lows.
0:04:51 It can create a floor, a protection against the lows, especially the real lows. And it works,
0:04:55 of course, because a lot of people don’t experience those lows and therefore they’re
0:05:02 funding the people that do. It’s a fascinating system. And I’m glad we figured out a way how to
0:05:07 take risks together in this society and help each other out financially for the people who
0:05:12 feel the pain of it. So with Policy Genius, you can find life insurance policies that start at
0:05:21 just $292 per year for $1 million of coverage. Head to PolicyGenius.com/Lex or click the link
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0:05:33 PolicyGenius.com/Lex. This episode was also brought to you by AG1, the thing I just drank.
0:05:40 And I sometimes drink twice a day and I’m traveling for a bit here and I don’t have travel packs.
0:05:47 And so I will be going without AG1 for a couple of days and I’ll miss it because it makes me feel
0:05:54 like home. So I need to get the travel packs. It’s just a really, really nice multivitamin
0:06:01 that provides a nutritional basis for a crazy physical and mental existence. All the crazy
0:06:08 stuff I do that wise. I’m still doing mostly one meal a day, mostly low carb. And so for that,
0:06:12 you know, it’s nice to make sure you’re getting all the right nutrition. I find when I’m extremely
0:06:20 stressed, my ability to enjoy long run or enjoy a hard training session in jujitsu is diminished.
0:06:28 The physical challenge is a kind of catalyst to let whatever the underlying reason for the stress
0:06:34 come out and pass through you. And maybe you even get a chance to let it go. But when you’re in it,
0:06:41 sometimes it’s rough. Anyway, jujitsu is still a huge source of happiness for me. I think the
0:06:46 puzzle of it, I still try to train with a very large variety of people from white belt to black
0:06:51 belt. As I’ve talked about with Craig Jones, it could be sometimes a little bit difficult.
0:06:55 Certain people, especially the lower ranks go a little bit too hard. So you have to figure out
0:07:01 that puzzle, let them submit you a few times, kind of let them chill out. But it’s still a fascinating
0:07:10 puzzle of human psychology, of human sort of biomechanics from arms and legs and sort of
0:07:17 pressure and dynamic movement and transitions, all that kind of stuff. It’s just a fascinating game.
0:07:22 It’s a fascinating dynamic game. It really is not like chess, because chess is a static game.
0:07:28 There are elements of chess, but it’s not discreet. It’s continuous. And sometimes the
0:07:33 subtlest movements make all the difference. And the timing of those movements can make all the
0:07:38 difference. Anyway, go check out AG1. They’ll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up
0:07:44 at drinkag1.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Masterclass, where you can watch over
0:07:50 200 classes from the best people in the world and their respective disciplines. I really enjoyed
0:07:57 the one that Martin Scorsese did on filmmaking. I’m fascinated by dialogue and film and the
0:08:04 contrast that that dialogue has with, say, podcasts. Because podcasts is a single take,
0:08:13 if you will. It’s sort of a genuine, relaxed conversation. It’s not really planned. There’s
0:08:20 not a script. And so it’s a single take. And now you take film. And depending on the director,
0:08:30 you’re doing five, 10, 20, 30 takes on a single piece of dialogue. And you’re crafting that with
0:08:37 the lighting, with the mood, with the intensity of the faces of the actors and the music, all of that.
0:08:43 And the final results, honestly, is looking for the same kind of thing. It’s looking for something
0:08:53 real. Now, great interviews, great conversations arrive at that something real, like an improvised
0:09:00 dance, let’s say. And sort of great film arises something real, like a great choreographed dance.
0:09:07 And it still does have similar elements. Like I think about with lighting and all the kinds of
0:09:16 things I have very little idea about. But as someone who can appreciate it, I can reach out
0:09:23 towards that and try to achieve that in some kind of way to really see a person to really bring out
0:09:31 the beauty of that person is something I would love to do. And I listen to a lot of great
0:09:39 interviewers in podcasts. And I’m just in awe inspired, truly, truly inspired and humbled.
0:09:44 There’s just so, so many people that do a much, much better job than me. And I learned from them,
0:09:51 I’m inspired by them. It’s just great. I think I really enjoy just being a fan. Masterclass lets
0:09:57 me be a fan of all these cool people. Get unlimited access to every masterclass and get an additional
0:10:06 15% off an annual membership at masterclass.com/lexpod. That’s masterclass.com/lexpod. This episode
0:10:12 is brought to you by Element, my daily zero sugar and delicious electrolyte mix. My favorite flavor
0:10:19 is watermelon salt. But there’s a bunch of other flavors that are great. And like I said, when I’m
0:10:25 training really hard in jujitsu, in especially in the Texas heat, this is something I noticed most
0:10:31 clearly because I usually don’t like drinking water during training. And so what happens is I drink
0:10:37 some element beforehand. I train for, you know, an hour and a half, a bunch of hard rounds, and
0:10:43 you just, I mean, you’re drained from water. Just, just, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know how many
0:10:49 pounds of water I lose, but it’s a lot. And you kind of start to feel shitty. And the moment I drink
0:10:55 element just, just within a few minutes, you just start feeling much, much better. And you just feel
0:11:02 viscerally the effect of electrolytes of sodium, potassium, magnesium on the body. Water and
0:11:07 electrolytes, it’s quite incredible. And the same is actually true when you’re fasting. And it’s been
0:11:12 actually a while since I’ve fasted for more than 24 hours. So most days I fast, I guess you could say
0:11:19 24 hours, I eat one meal a day, you know, 22 hours or whatever it is, 23 hours. But what I do even
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0:11:46 In this episode, we jank, we talk a lot about capitalism. Now, I think I disagree with him.
0:11:54 And I do in the episode, and I’ll have to really think through it. And really my favorite episodes
0:12:02 is when I’m really challenged to think and learn for weeks and months afterwards. But I don’t think
0:12:10 our capitalist system is as broken as Jank suggests. So he feels that companies have completely
0:12:22 captured our politicians, our government. But I think that a significant number of companies
0:12:29 have undue influence on our politicians. But not as much as Jank says, and I have a lot of hope.
0:12:36 Primarily underlying that hope is a kind of sense that even among the politicians,
0:12:41 there’s integrity. Not every politician, but a lot of them. I don’t think that money can
0:12:49 so easily buy the human heart. Can so easily corrupt the values of the people who want to serve.
0:12:54 So I don’t know. I just think if you want to make money, you’re not going to go into politics.
0:13:02 There’s a lot easier ways, cleaner ways, more pleasant ways to make money. It’s just such a dirty
0:13:10 game. And I think you go in that game to try to help. So anyway, but yes, corporatism is a very
0:13:16 serious problem. So the way out to me is great companies, quite honestly, and celebrating those
0:13:20 companies. And that’s something I try to do. Call out bullshit, call out shitty behavior
0:13:25 on the parts of companies when they do it, but celebrate companies when they do great stuff.
0:13:34 Anyway, underlying the flourishing of our nation is great companies and the very system of capitalism.
0:13:40 So if you’re running a company, you should be using the best tools for the job of running that
0:13:47 company because it is an incredible machine with so many moving pieces. And so it’s not an easy job
0:13:53 to run it, no matter the scale. Over 37,000 companies have upgraded to Netsuite by Oracle.
0:14:01 Take advantage of Netsuite’s flexible financing plan at Netsuite.com/Lex. That’s Netsuite.com/Lex.
0:14:07 This is a Lex Freeman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
0:14:12 And now, dear friends, here’s Cenk Yuger.
0:14:33 You wrote a book, a manifesto, that outlines the progressive vision for America. So
0:14:37 the big question, what are some defining ideas of progressivism?
0:14:43 Yes. So in order to do that, Lex, we got to talk about where we are in the political spectrum.
0:14:49 And in fact, there’s two different spectrums now. People often think of left, right. And that’s
0:14:55 true that exists. But layered on top of that is now populist versus establishment. So
0:15:05 I’m center left on the left, right spectrum. But I’m all the way on the populist end of the
0:15:11 second spectrum. So where does progressivism lie within that? Well, I would argue that it’s
0:15:20 exactly in those places. It’s populist and it’s on the left. But it is not far left. So far left
0:15:26 is a different animal. And we could talk about that in a little bit. So in terms of what makes a
0:15:33 progressive, so expand the circle of liberty and justice for all and equality of opportunity.
0:15:40 Now, people will say, well, that seems pretty broad and all American. But is it? Think about it.
0:15:46 So expand the circle of liberty. Everybody’s in favor of that, right? No, absolutely not. So
0:15:51 certainly the King of England was not in favor of expanding the circle of liberty and the Founding
0:15:56 Father said, we’re going to expand it. And they expanded it to property white men. And then
0:16:02 their progressives, because they expanded the circle of liberty, they then from then on,
0:16:06 as we were perfecting the union, progressives always say, expand it further, include women,
0:16:12 include people without property, include all races, and at every turn, conservatives fight
0:16:17 against it. So that doesn’t mean if you’re a conservative today, you don’t want to include
0:16:23 women or minorities, et cetera. But today, you would say, for example, well, I don’t want to
0:16:28 expand the circle of liberty to, for example, undocumented immigrants. And maybe you’re right
0:16:33 about that. And we could have that discussion in terms of a specific philosophy. And I don’t believe
0:16:37 that undocumented immigrants should immediately be citizens or anything along those lines.
0:16:42 But I do believe in expanding liberty overall. And the contours of that are what’s interesting.
0:16:47 And then you say justice for all. Everybody’s for justice. No, right now, marijuana possession
0:16:52 is still illegal in a lot of parts of the country. Now a lot of right-wingers and left-wingers agree
0:16:57 that it should be legal. But for my entire lifetime, black people have been arrested at about
0:17:04 3.7 times the rate of white people. And the entire country has been fine with it. So is that justice?
0:17:09 No, they smoke. White people, black people smoke marijuana at the same rate. Black people get
0:17:14 arrested about four times the rate. That is an injustice that an enormous percentage of the
0:17:19 country was comfortable with. Well, progressives aren’t comfortable with it. We want justice for
0:17:23 all. So the quality of opportunity is an interesting one because the far left will say,
0:17:31 at least some portions of them will say, equality of results, right? So progressives just want a
0:17:38 fair chance. So free college education, but afterwards, you don’t get to have exact same
0:17:42 results as either the wealthiest person or we’re not all going to be equal. We don’t have equal
0:17:47 talents, skills, abilities, et cetera. There’s a lot of questions that can ask that. So on the
0:17:54 circle of liberty, yes, so expanding the number of people whose freedoms are protected. But what
0:18:01 about the magnitude of freedom for each individual person? So expanding the freedom of the individual
0:18:06 and protecting the freedoms of the individual. It seems like progressives are more willing
0:18:11 to expand the size of government where government can do all kinds of regulation,
0:18:16 all kinds of controls in the individual. So Lex, what we’re probably going to talk about a lot
0:18:24 today is balance. And so a lot of people think, oh, I’m on the right, I’m on the left. And that
0:18:30 comes with a certain preset ideology. So the right is always correct. The left is always correct.
0:18:36 So there’s two problems with that. Number one, how could you possibly believe in a preset ideology
0:18:42 if you’re an independent thinker? It’s literally, by definition, not possible. If you say I lent
0:18:48 my brain to an ideology that was created 80 years ago or eight years ago or 800 years ago,
0:18:53 and I’m not going to change it, you’re saying, I don’t think for myself. I bought into a culture
0:18:58 and, by the way, there’s a lot of different forms of culture you could buy into, religion, politics,
0:19:06 sometimes racial, etc. So that’s why you need actually balance. The second reason you need
0:19:11 balance, other than independent thought, is because the answer is almost never black and white.
0:19:17 And that gets into a really interesting nuance because mainstream media, in my opinion, is the
0:19:24 matrix. And its job is to delude you into thinking corporate rule is great for you. And we should
0:19:32 never change it. And the status quo is wonderful. So they have created a false middle. What mainstream
0:19:40 media calls moderate is actually, in my opinion, extremist corporate ideology. So for example,
0:19:44 they’ll say Joe Manchin is a moderate. None of his positions are moderate other than potentially
0:19:49 gun control in West Virginia. He’s not for gun control. The people of West Virginia are not
0:19:54 for gun control, generally speaking. And he uses that, and they usually have these shiny objects
0:19:59 where they’re like, you see this? I’m a moderate because of guns. Or I’m a moderate because I’m
0:20:03 a Democrat from West Virginia. But wait, let’s look at your positions. You’re against paid family
0:20:09 leave. That pulls at 84%. So you’re a radical corporatist who say that women should be forced
0:20:15 back into work the day after they have birth. You’re against the higher minimum wage. You’re
0:20:24 for every corporate position, and they all pull at 33% or less. So Joe Manchin is not at all a
0:20:28 moderate. And this applies to almost every corporate Republican and every corporate Democrat.
0:20:34 They’re all extremists in supporting what I call corporatism. So you have to get to a balance in
0:20:38 order to get to the right answer. So that’s an interesting distinction here. So you’re actually,
0:20:43 as far as I understand pro-capitalism, which is an interesting place to be. That’s the thing that
0:20:50 probably makes you center left, and then still populist. You’re full of beautiful contradictions,
0:20:56 let’s say this, which will be great to untangle. But what’s the difference between corporatism and
0:21:03 capitalism? Is there a difference? So I really believe in capitalism. I don’t think that there’s
0:21:09 really a second choice. Where it gets super interesting is the distinction between capitalism
0:21:15 and socialism, because that’s not at all as clear as people think it is. And people often
0:21:21 say socialism and communism as synonyms when they’re not synonyms, right? And so I view it as
0:21:28 there’s basically four distinct areas. It’s obviously a spectrum. Everything is a spectrum,
0:21:33 right? On one end, you have communism on the left. And on the other end, you have corporatism
0:21:39 on the right, okay? And I would argue that capitalism is in the middle. And so communism,
0:21:46 we know, state owns all property. You’re not allowed to have private property. So I will piss
0:21:52 off a lot of people in this show. And so I’m asking for their patience, please hear me out.
0:21:58 And because don’t worry, I’m going to piss off the other side too, okay? So communism makes
0:22:04 no sense at all, totally opposed to human nature. It never works. It always evolves into
0:22:11 dictatorship, because it is not built for human nature. It we’re never going to act like that.
0:22:18 It’s not in our DNA. You could try to wish it into existence and they have. And it never works.
0:22:25 And it’s because once you have almost no rules in terms of, oh, we’re all equal. And even though
0:22:33 communism eventually winds up having an enormous amount of rules, right? It creates a power vacuum
0:22:38 when you say, Hey, there’s no structure of power here, right? We’re all equal. It’s a flat line.
0:22:44 One guy usually gets up because that’s human nature and goes, I don’t think so. I think if
0:22:48 you’re going to leave a power vacuum, I’m going to take that power vacuum. That’s actually a really
0:22:55 interesting way to put it. Because when everyone is equal, nobody is in power and human nature is
0:22:59 such that there’s everybody’s that there’s a will to power. So when you create a power vacuum,
0:23:05 somebody’s going to to fill it. So the alternative is to have people in power, but there’s a balance
0:23:09 of power. And then there’s like a democratic system that elects the people in power and
0:23:15 keeps churning and rotating. That is exactly it. Like you got it exactly right in my opinion. Okay.
0:23:23 So that’s why communism never works and can never work. So they it’s an idea of like,
0:23:27 we’re all going to work as hard as we possibly can and take only what we need.
0:23:33 Where? When? When has that ever happened in the history of humanity? Right? We’re just not built
0:23:38 that way. So okay, we can get into that debate with my friends on the left, etc. Now, corporatism
0:23:43 is just as extreme and just as dangerous. And that is basically what we have in America now.
0:23:49 What we have in America now, and this is another giant trick that the matrix played on everybody,
0:23:56 that they they did in a shell game. And all of a sudden extreme corporates like Manchin and almost
0:24:01 every Republican in the Senate are moderates. Oh my God, Mitch McConnell all of a sudden is a
0:24:07 moderate and etc. As long as you’re not a populist, populists are never moderate. Okay.
0:24:13 But if you love corporations and corporate tax cuts and everything in favor of corporations,
0:24:16 you’re magically called a moderate when you actually according to the polling have super
0:24:21 extreme positions that the American people hate. And by the way, that’s part of the reason for the
0:24:28 rise of Trump and come back to that. Okay. But the second shell game is taking out capitalism,
0:24:33 putting in corporatism, but still calling it capitalism. Okay. So what is corporatism?
0:24:39 It is when corporations slowly take over the system and create monopoly and oligopoly power.
0:24:48 So that snuffs out equality of opportunity. So how do they do that? When people say the
0:24:54 the system is rigged, they oftentimes can’t explain it that well. And then mainstream media
0:25:02 goes, Oh, your sound conspiratorial rigged. Yeah, I wonder how. Yeah, super easy to explain it.
0:25:08 Here’s one of dozens of examples, carried interest loophole. So that is for hedge funds,
0:25:15 private equity, the top people on Wall Street, that’s part of their income, they get two and 20,
0:25:22 right? So 2% is a flat fee, no matter what happens to the fund. And 20% of the profits of the fund
0:25:27 goes back to the people who invested it. It’s not their money. It’s not their investment.
0:25:32 What they’re getting is actually just income. It should be taxed at the highest rate.
0:25:36 But it’s because of this loophole, it’s taxed at a much lower rate at around 20%.
0:25:45 So do you know what income level you go above 20% if you’re a regular Joe? It’s at $84,000 a year.
0:25:52 So these billionaires are getting the same tax rate as people making $84,000 a year.
0:25:58 It’s unbelievably unfair. And that’s corporatism taking over and starting to rig the rules. I’m
0:26:03 going to pay less taxes, you’re going to pay more taxes. Okay. So again, I can give you dozens of
0:26:09 those examples. And mergers so that they get to oligopoly power. That’s how you rig a system,
0:26:14 lowering the corporate tax rates, making sure that there is no real minimum wage,
0:26:20 making sure there’s no universal healthcare. We all get become indentured servants of corporations.
0:26:24 They take away power from the average guy, give it to the most powerful people in the world.
0:26:31 But the most important distinction, Lex, is that corporatism hates competition.
0:26:37 It wants monopoly and oligopoly power. Whereas capitalism loves competition
0:26:44 and wants to free markets. And I remember, we started Young Turks back in 2002. So we’ve been
0:26:53 around for 22 years, longest running daily show on the internet ever. And so we were pre-Iraq war.
0:26:56 And the Iraq war starts and Dick Cheney starts handing out no bid contracts.
0:27:04 I’m like, what part of capitalism is a no bid contract? You can’t negotiate drug prices.
0:27:12 The most anti-free market thing I have ever heard. It’s almost like communism for corporations.
0:27:19 They get everything, you get nothing, right? So it’s preposterous, it’s awful,
0:27:26 and it kills the free markets and it’s killing this country. And it is the main ideology and
0:27:32 religion of the establishment. Are all companies built the same here? So when you say corporatism,
0:27:41 it seems like just looking here at the list of by industry lobbyists, it seems like there are
0:27:48 certain industries that are worse offenders than others, like pharmaceuticals, like insurance,
0:27:58 oil and gas. So it seems to me, it feels wrong to just throw all companies into the same bucket
0:28:03 of like they’re all guilty. No, they’re not all guilty. So let’s make a bunch of distinctions
0:28:09 here. So first of all, can you, first of all, are they quote unquote guilty? No, they’re doing
0:28:13 something that is logical and natural, right? So if you’re a company, do you want to pay higher
0:28:17 taxes or lower taxes? Of course you want to pay lower taxes, right? Do you want to have higher
0:28:21 employee costs or lower employee costs? Of course you want lower employee costs, right?
0:28:28 So but the government needs to understand that and protect us from that power that they are
0:28:34 going to exercise to get to those results. And if you, if you think free markets is there is no
0:28:41 government, you, you read it wrong, go read, go back and reread Adam Smith. He says you must
0:28:46 protect against monopoly power. If you do not protect against monopoly power, you will have
0:28:53 no free markets and he’s absolutely right. So the second distinction is between small business
0:28:57 and big business. That’s why Republicans will always be like, oh, we’re doing this for small
0:29:02 business. That’s why we got the biggest oil companies in the world, $30 billion in subsidies.
0:29:08 What happened to small business, right? So I run a small business and so if people were to say like,
0:29:14 hey, maybe there should be exemptions for some of the regulations. If your company has less than
0:29:19 five employees, 10 employees, 50 employees, et cetera, there’s some logic in that because
0:29:23 businesses have different stages of growth and they have different interests and different
0:29:29 needs in those stages of growth. And we want to facilitate small business growth because that’s
0:29:35 great for the economy. That’s great for markets, freedom, et cetera. But the bigger corporations,
0:29:40 even there, there’s a third distinction. It isn’t that there are certain industries that are worse.
0:29:47 There’s just that there are industries that are better at lobbying. So anyone who like right now,
0:29:51 number one donor in Washington, a lot of people make a mistake. They think it’s
0:29:57 APAC or they think it’s the oil companies or the banks. No, it’s big pharma. Okay. And who has the
0:30:04 most power in this country? Big pharma. So we can’t even negotiate the drug prices. I mean,
0:30:07 look, guys, think about it this way. That’s like saying, okay, here’s a bottle of water.
0:30:14 And normally in the free market, that would cost about a dollar, right? And for Medicare,
0:30:18 the drug companies come in and go, no, I’m not charging a dollar for that water. I’m charging
0:30:23 $100. And the government has to say, yes, sir, thank you, sir. Of course, sir, we’ll pay $100.
0:30:30 That’s why compared to communism, because I can’t imagine anything more diametrically opposed
0:30:36 to the free market than you, the consumer have to pay whatever the hell a corporation charges.
0:30:42 That’s insanity, let alone the patents, let alone the fact that the American people pay for the
0:30:47 research, and then they make billions of dollars off of it, and we get nothing but robbed by them.
0:30:52 So it’s about lobby power. Oil companies have huge lobby power, defense contractors have huge
0:30:57 lobby power. It’s not that they’re more evil, it’s just that they have figured out the game better,
0:31:03 and they have basically taken the influence they need to capture the market, capture the government,
0:31:06 and snuff out all competition. Or a lot of companies.
0:31:16 Figured out the game better. So I think a lot of companies are good at winning the right way
0:31:22 by building better products, by making people happier with the work they’re doing,
0:31:27 and winning at the game of capitalism. And then there’s other companies that win at the game of
0:31:32 lobbying. And I just want to draw that distinction, because I think it’s a small subset of companies
0:31:36 that are playing the game of lobbying. It’s a big pharma.
0:31:41 So Lex, first of all, you have to set rules for what makes sense, not, oh, I don’t like this
0:31:46 industry, or I don’t like this company, or hey, this company’s not doing that much lobbying at this
0:31:51 point. They will later when they realize what’s going on. So for example, in my opinion, APAC
0:31:56 has totally bought almost all of Congress. And so now other countries are going to wake up and go,
0:32:03 wait, you could just buy the American government. So APAC is going to spend about $100 million in
0:32:09 this cycle, and then they’re getting $26 billion back. So every country in the world is soon going
0:32:15 to realize, oh, take American citizens that live there, get them a tremendous amount of money,
0:32:21 and just buy the US government. But for corporations, they’ve already realized that on a massive
0:32:28 scale. So for example, in the two industries you gave, automotive. So in New Jersey, about a decade
0:32:36 ago or so, one of the most powerful lobbies is car dealerships. So at the national level, you got
0:32:40 pharma, and you’ve got defense contractors, et cetera. At the local level, guys who have huge
0:32:46 power, number one is utilities. Number two is real estate. And then car dealerships are hilariously
0:32:52 among the top, right? Because it’s local businesses that are financing the politicians at the local
0:33:00 level. So they passed a law saying that you have to sell through dealerships, but Tesla doesn’t
0:33:05 sell through dealerships. And it was intended to bully, intimidate, and push out Tesla out of the
0:33:11 market. They then did that in a number of different states throughout the country. So does that make
0:33:16 any sense in a democracy? Of course not. Why do you have to sell your product through a specific
0:33:20 vehicle or medium? You can sell it any way you like. That’s the most anti-free market thing
0:33:26 possible. Why? It was just total utter corruption. But it’s not, but it’s perfectly legal. The
0:33:31 Supreme Court legalized bribery. So then what happened in that case? So then Elon came in
0:33:37 and gave campaign contributions and reversed it. So now we’re in a battle where it’s an open
0:33:42 auction, right? Different companies are buying different politicians, and then they’re pretending
0:33:50 to have debates about principles and ideas, etc. So now let’s look at tech. In the beginning,
0:33:55 Facebook was not spending any money in politics, or almost any money in politics. So what happens?
0:34:01 They’re getting hammered. They get pulled into congressional hearings, and Facebook’s got fake
0:34:07 news, and oh my god, all this trouble from Facebook. Then Facebook does the logical thing. Oh,
0:34:11 it turns out I need to grease these sons of bitches, okay? So then they hire a whole bunch of
0:34:17 Republicans consultants. They go grease all the Republicans and most of the corporate Democrats.
0:34:22 And then all of a sudden, we’re no longer talking about Facebook at all. And Facebook are angels.
0:34:28 And now we’ve turned our attention to who? Facebook’s top competitor, TikTok. Funny how
0:34:35 that works, okay? And by the way, then Donald Trump goes, oh, and TikTok’s big dangerous company,
0:34:42 they’re working with China, okay? And then Jeff Yaz comes in on this cycle, part owner of TikTok,
0:34:47 and he doesn’t want TikTok banished, of course, right? So he gives Trump a couple of million
0:34:53 dollars. Trump turns around the next day and goes, we love TikTok. TikTok’s a good company, right?
0:35:00 So that’s a big contributor to influencing what politicians say and what they think. But it’s
0:35:05 not the entire thing, right? No, it is. It’s 98%. I’ll go on mainstream media and they’ll be like,
0:35:10 oh, I see what you’re saying. I can see how that influences politicians about 10%. I’m like, no,
0:35:18 no, it’s 98%. So a lot of good people think it’s 50/50. They have principles and they have money.
0:35:23 No, they have money and there’s major principles. That’s why I wanted to clarify 98Tube.
0:35:28 Okay, so how do we fix it? So it’s really interesting and nice that you’re pro-capitalism
0:35:36 and anti-corporatism. So how do we create a system where the free market can rule,
0:35:42 where capitalism can rule, we can have these vibrant flourishing of all these companies competing
0:35:48 against each other and creating awesome stuff? Yeah, so in the book, I call it democratic capitalism,
0:35:52 as opposed to Bernie’s democratic socialism, right? We can get into that distinction in a minute.
0:36:01 So as Adam Smith said, and anyone who studies capitalism knows, you need the government to
0:36:07 protect the market as well as the people. Why do we have cops? Because if we don’t have cops,
0:36:11 somebody’s going to go, well, I like Lex’s equipment. Why don’t I just go into his house and take it?
0:36:16 So you need the cops to protect you and that’s the government. So people say, oh, I hate big
0:36:21 government. Do you? It depends, right? If your house is getting robbed, all of a sudden you like
0:36:26 the government, but you also need cops on Wall Street because if you allow insider trading,
0:36:29 the powerful are going to rob you blind and the little guy is going to get screwed. So that’s
0:36:36 this easy example. And so if you don’t have those cops, the bad guys are going to take over,
0:36:42 they’re going to set the rules, rig the rules in their favor. So that’s why you need regulation.
0:36:47 And so the Republicans on purpose made regulation a dirty word. They’re like, all
0:36:53 regulation is bad. And then sometimes on the left, people fall for the trap of all regulation is
0:37:00 good. Guy I liken has a great analogy on this. Matt Stolar, he’s one of the original, I would
0:37:06 argue, progressives. And there’s about four of us. I’m sure there’s more, but that have stayed true
0:37:14 to the original meaning of progressivism and populism. Me, Matt Stolar, David Sarota, Ryan Grimm.
0:37:20 Okay. And it used to be in that original blogger group, there was guys like Glenn Greenwald and
0:37:26 other interesting cats, right? But they went in different directions. So Matt has a great line.
0:37:34 If somebody comes up to you and says, how big a pipe do you want? There is no answer for that.
0:37:39 It depends on the job, doesn’t it? Right? What are we doing? What are we building? I’m going to
0:37:45 tell you the size of the pipe, depending on the project. So when people say, are you in favor
0:37:49 of regulation or against it? That’s an absurd question. Of course you need regulation. It just
0:37:58 means laws, right? So don’t kill your neighbor is a regulation, right? So my idea is a simple one
0:38:03 and one we’re going to keep coming back to balance. So when my dad was a small business owner in New
0:38:11 Jersey and they inspected the elevator six times a year, that was over-regulation. And I said to
0:38:16 my dad, so should they not inspected at all? I’m a young kid growing up. And he said, no, no, no,
0:38:20 you got inspected at least twice a year. I said, why? He said, because in Turkey, sometimes they
0:38:27 don’t inspect it and then the elevator falls. Okay. So, so bounds are reason, correct regulation to
0:38:32 protect the markets and to protect the American people. Yeah, but finding the right level of
0:38:36 regulation, especially in, for example, in tech, something I’m much more familiar with is very
0:38:42 difficult because people in Congress are living in the 20th century before the internet was
0:38:49 invented. So like, how are they supposed to come up with regulations? Yeah, that’s the idea of the
0:38:55 free market is you should be able to sort of compete the market regulates. And then the government
0:39:01 can step in and protect the market from forming monopolies, for example, which is easier to do.
0:39:05 Yeah, but that’s their former regulation. Right. But then there’s like more check and
0:39:10 elevator twice a year. That’s a more sort of specific watching, micromanaging.
0:39:20 So Lex, here’s the deal. There is no way around the laws are made by politicians. Okay. So, and so
0:39:25 you can’t give up then and go, oh, it’s a bunch of schmucks. I think most politicians are just
0:39:30 servants for the donor class. All right. The, you know, the media makes it sound like they’re the
0:39:35 best of us. Oh, they deserve a lot of honor and respect and they kiss their ass, etc. I think
0:39:39 generally speaking, they’re usually the worst of us, especially in this corporate structure,
0:39:46 right? Because they’re the guys who their number one talent is. Yes, sir. No, sir. What would you
0:39:52 like me to do with your donor money, sir? Absolutely. I’ll serve you completely or 98%. Right. So in
0:39:57 this structure, the politicians are the worst of us. But at some point, you need somebody elected
0:40:03 to be your representative to do democratic capitalism so that you have capitalism, but it’s
0:40:09 checked by the government on behalf of the people. It’s the people that are saying these are the
0:40:16 rules of the land and you have to abide by them. So how do you get to the best possible answer?
0:40:23 Which is related to an earlier question you asked, Lex, which is the number one thing you have to do
0:40:30 is get big money out of politics. Everything else is near impossible as long as we are drowned in
0:40:35 money and whoever has more money wins. And by the way, when it comes to legislation, again,
0:40:40 that’s true about 98% of the time. We predict things ahead of time. People are like, wow,
0:40:43 how did you know that that bill wasn’t going to pass or was going to pass? It’s the easiest thing
0:40:49 in the world. And we literally teach our audience on the young Turks, watch, you’ll be able to see
0:40:55 for yourself. And now like our members comment in, they do these predictions, they’re almost always
0:41:00 right, right? Because it’s so simple, follow the money. So if you get big money out of politics,
0:41:07 and I can explain how to do that in a sec, then you’re at a place where you got your best shot
0:41:12 and honest representatives that are going to try their best to get to the right answer. Are they
0:41:16 going to get to the right answer out of the gate? Usually not. So they pass a law, there’s something
0:41:22 wrong with the law. They then fix that part. It’s a pendulum. You know, you don’t want it to swing
0:41:27 too wildly, but you do need a little bit of oscillation in that pendulum to get to the right
0:41:34 balance. By the way, I was listening to Joe Biden from when he was like 30 years old, the speeches,
0:41:41 he was eloquent as hell. It’s fun to listen to actually. And he has a speech he gives, or just
0:41:45 maybe a conversation in Congress, I’m not sure where, where he talks about how corrupt the whole
0:41:53 system is. And he’s really honest and fun. And that Joe Biden is great, by the way. That guy,
0:41:59 I mean, age sucks. You know, people get older. But he was talking quite honestly about having
0:42:05 to suck up to all these rich people, and that he couldn’t really suck up to the really rich people.
0:42:13 They said, come back to us 10 years later, when you’re more integrated into the system.
0:42:18 But he was really honest about it. And he’s saying that’s, that’s how it is. That’s what
0:42:20 we have to do. And that really sucks that that’s what we have to do.
0:42:27 Yeah. So we did a video on our TikTok channel then and now of Joe Biden. This is when I was
0:42:33 trying to push Biden out. We should say you’re one of the people early on saying Biden needs to
0:42:38 step down. Yeah, I started about a year ago because I was positive that Biden had a 0% chance of winning.
0:42:45 And and it turned out, by the way, two days before he dropped out, his inside advisors inside the
0:42:50 White House said, yeah, near 0% chance of winning. So we were right all along. You got a lot of
0:42:55 criticism for that, by the way. But yeah, yeah, we can come back to that. Yes, I did. And which
0:43:03 makes it Tuesday for me. Get a lot of criticism for everything. And by the way, Democratic Party,
0:43:10 you’re welcome. So, but Biden’s a really interesting example. I’m really glad you brought it up. So
0:43:16 the video on TikTok was just showing Biden then Biden now. And you’re right, Biden was so dynamic.
0:43:21 When you see how dynamic he was, we did like side by side, right? And then you see him now going
0:43:26 like, you know, get married eventually. Anyways, right, you’re like, Oh, that’s not the same guy,
0:43:31 I get it, right? So and I got like 5 million views because because it resonates. They’re like,
0:43:35 yeah, yeah, of course, right. But when he first started to the point you were making likes,
0:43:40 he want to, in fact, I know, because I talked to him about this, his very first bill was
0:43:47 anti corruption. Why? Because at that point, everything changes in 1976, 78, the Supreme
0:43:52 Court decisions that basically legalized bribery. But remember, Biden is ancient. So he’s coming
0:43:57 into politics at a time when money has not yet drowned politics. And in fact, the American
0:44:03 population is super pissed about the fact that it’s begun, they don’t like corruption. So early
0:44:09 Biden, because he’s reading the room is very anti corruption. And the first bill he proposes is to
0:44:17 get money out of politics. Okay. But as Biden goes on for his epic 200 year career in Washington,
0:44:22 he starts to get not more conservative, more corporate, because he’s just taken more and more
0:44:29 money by the middle of his career. He has a nickname, the Senator from MBNA. Okay, MBNA was a
0:44:34 credit card company based in Delaware. The reason he had that nickname is because there isn’t anything
0:44:39 Joe Biden wouldn’t have done for credit card companies and corporations based in Delaware,
0:44:47 which are almost all corporations. Okay, so he became the most corporate Senator in the country,
0:44:53 and hence the most beloved by corporate media. And corporate media has protected him his entire
0:44:59 career until about a month ago. So for example, in the primaries, both in 2020 and 2024, if you
0:45:04 said the Senator from MBNA, I guarantee you almost no one in the audience has heard of it. If you
0:45:09 heard of it, good job, you know, politics really well. Okay. But the reason you didn’t hear of it
0:45:14 is because the mainstream media wouldn’t say that’s outrageous of Joe Biden to be such a corporate
0:45:18 stooge. They’d say that’s outrageous of you to point out something that’s true and something
0:45:24 we reported on earlier. Okay. And so they protected him at all costs. Now, finally,
0:45:32 when you get to this version of Joe Biden, we, he can’t talk, he can’t walk. He’s, he bears no
0:45:38 resemblance to the young guy who came in saying that money and politics was a problem. Now he’s
0:45:43 saying money and politics is the solution. And in 2020, he said, well, I can raise more money
0:45:49 than Bernie. I can kiss corporate ass better than Bernie. I’m the biggest corporate ass kisser in
0:45:53 the world. So I’m going to raise a billion dollars and you need to support me. Now, of course, he
0:45:57 doesn’t say it in those words, but that was a message to the establishment and Buttigieg,
0:46:03 Klobuchar, Obama, Clyburn, everybody goes, oh, that’s right. Biden, Biden, Biden, Biden, not Bernie.
0:46:09 I don’t know that there’s anybody in the country who instinctually dislikes Bernie more than Barack
0:46:14 Obama. Oh, that’s an interesting, I’m not taking that tangent at this moment. Let’s, because you
0:46:19 mentioned mainstream media. What’s the motivation for mainstream media to be corporatist also?
0:46:25 So first of all, they’re giant corporations. So they’re all multi-billion-dollar corporations.
0:46:31 In the old days, we had an incredible number of media outlets. So you go to San Francisco,
0:46:35 there’d be at least two papers, and there’d be a paper boy, and I’m going all the way back,
0:46:38 paper boy on each corner, and they’re competing with one another. Literally,
0:46:43 they’d be catty corner, right? And one guy’s going, oh, here are all these details. They’re
0:46:47 trying to get an audience. They’re trying to get people interested. So they’re populist. They’re
0:46:54 interesting. They’re muckrakers. They’re challenging the government. Fast forward to now, or not now,
0:47:02 but about a decade ago, five years ago in that ballpark, in that ballpark. Now, there’s only six
0:47:07 giant media corporations left, and it’s an oligopoly, right? And they’re all multi-billion
0:47:13 dollar corporations. They all want tax cuts. Half of them are also, especially about 20 years ago,
0:47:18 during the Iraq war, half of them are defense contractors. So they’re just using the news as
0:47:24 marketing to start wars, like the Iraq war, and then GE, which owned MSNBC, makes a tremendous
0:47:30 amount of money. So much more money from war than it does from media, that media is a good
0:47:36 marketing spend for these corporations. Now, that’s part of it, that they themselves want
0:47:42 the same exact thing as the rest of corporations do for corporate rule, lower tax cuts, deregulation,
0:47:47 so they can merge, et cetera. But the second part of it is arguably even more important.
0:47:55 So where does all that money and politics go? So for example, in 2022, it’s just a midterm election,
0:48:03 not no presidential should be lower spending. A ridiculous $17 billion are spent on the
0:48:10 election cycle. Where does the $17 billion go? Almost all of it goes into corporate media,
0:48:14 mainstream media, television, newspapers, radio. They’re buying ads like nuts.
0:48:20 So we have a reporter at TYT, David Schuster. He used to work at MSNBC, Fox News, et cetera.
0:48:26 And David once did a piece about money and politics at a local NBC news station, and his
0:48:35 editor or GM spiked the story. And David goes into his office and asks him, “Why? This story is
0:48:40 true. It’s a huge part of politics. If we’re going to report on this issue, we got to tell
0:48:44 you what’s actually happening.” So he says, “David, come here.” It puts his arm around his shoulders,
0:48:50 takes him to the big newsroom, and he goes, “You see all this? Money and politics paid for that.”
0:48:58 That’s really fascinating. So big corporations are giving money to politicians through different
0:49:05 channels, and then the politicians are spending that money on mainstream media. And so there’s
0:49:11 a vicious cycle where it’s in the interest of the mainstream media not to criticize the
0:49:17 very corporations that are feeding that cycle. It’s not actually direct. It’s not like corporations
0:49:24 are… Because I was thinking one of the ways is direct advertisement. Pharmaceuticals obviously
0:49:30 advertise a lot on mainstream media, but there’s also indirect, which is giving the politicians
0:49:39 money or super PACs and the super PACs that spend money on the… That’s why mainstream media never
0:49:46 talks about the number one factor in politics, which is money. As we talked about earlier,
0:49:51 we see it with our own eyes, open auction, any country, any company, anybody that has money,
0:49:56 the politicians will now literally say, “I am now working for this guy,” as Trump says,
0:50:02 because he gave me a strong endorsement, which means a lot of money. And the press never covers
0:50:08 it, almost never. So you’re telling me you’re doing an article on the infrastructure build
0:50:15 or build back better, et cetera, and you’re not going to mention the enormous amount of money
0:50:22 that every lobbyist spent on that bill? That’s absurd. That’s absurd. That’s 98% of the ballgame.
0:50:26 And the reason they hide the ball is because they don’t want you to know this whole thing
0:50:31 is based on the money that they are receiving. And by the way, one more thing about that, Alex,
0:50:40 it’s that the ads themselves, actually, they work and they work pretty well, but that’s not
0:50:47 the main reason you spend money on ads. You spend the money on ads to get friendly coverage from
0:50:52 the content, from the free media that you’re getting from that same outlet. And so since
0:51:00 every newspaper and every news television station and network knows that the Democratic Party and
0:51:05 the Republican Party are their top clients, they’re going to get billions of dollars from them.
0:51:09 They never really criticized the Republican and Democratic Party. On the other hand,
0:51:15 if you’re an outsider, they’ll rip your face off. That’s also really interesting. So if you’re an
0:51:21 advertiser, if you’re a big farmer and you’re advertising, it’s not that the advertisement
0:51:28 works. It’s that the hosts are too afraid, not explicitly, just even implicitly. They’re
0:51:33 self-censoring. They’re not going to have any guests that are like controversial anti-big
0:51:37 farmer or they’re not going to make any jokes about big farming. They’re not going to make,
0:51:42 and that continues and expands. That’s really interesting.
0:51:50 Sometimes it’s super direct. When I was a host on MSNBC, I had a company that I was criticizing in
0:51:55 my script and management looked at it. And by the way, I used to go off-promptor a lot and it
0:52:00 drove them crazy. Not because I wasn’t good at it. I think my ratings went up whenever I went off
0:52:06 prompter, but because they couldn’t pre-approve the script. And what do they want to pre-approve?
0:52:10 Hey, are you going to criticize one of our sponsors, one of our advertisers, et cetera?
0:52:18 We had a giant fight over it and the compromise was I moved them lower in the script but kept
0:52:23 them in the story. So sometimes it’s super direct like that, but way more often,
0:52:32 it’s implicit. It’s indirect. You don’t have to say it. I give you a spectacular example of it
0:52:39 so that you get a sense of how it works implicitly. Since G is a giant defense contractor, they own
0:52:44 MSNBC at the time of the Iraq war. They fired everyone who was against the Iraq war on air.
0:52:49 So Phil Donahue, Jesse Ventura, Ashley Banfield, but Ashley Banfield, they did something different
0:52:56 with. She was a rising star at the time. She goes and gives a speech in Kansas. Not really
0:53:01 even having a policy position, but just talking about the actual cost of this Iraq war
0:53:07 and how we should be really careful. They hate that. So they take their rising star
0:53:11 and they take her off air. And she goes, okay, good. Let me out of my contract. It’s okay.
0:53:15 I’ll go because she was such a star at that time. She could have easily gotten somewhere else.
0:53:19 And they go, no, we’re not going to let you out of your contract. Why not? You’re going to pay me
0:53:24 to do nothing? Yeah. Not only that, we’re moving your office. Where are you moving it to? They
0:53:31 literally moved it into a closet. And they made sure that everybody in the building saw her getting
0:53:37 taken off the air and moved into a closet. The closet is the memo, right? That’s the memo to
0:53:43 the whole building. You better shut up and do as you’re told. Okay. So that way I don’t have to
0:53:49 tell you and get myself in trouble. It’s super obvious. There are guardrails here and you are
0:53:54 not allowed to go beyond acceptable thought. And acceptable thought is our sponsors are great,
0:54:00 politicians are great, the powerful are great. So how do we begin to fix that? And what exactly
0:54:05 we’re fixing is that the influence of the lobbyists, the influence of, it feels like there’s,
0:54:14 companies have found different ways to achieve influence. So how do we get money out of politics?
0:54:20 So it’s very difficult, but doable. And we will do it. But in order to do it, the populace left
0:54:25 and the populace right have to unite. And by the way, that is why we have the cultural wars.
0:54:31 That’s why you’re voting for Trump. No chance. Okay. So we can get into that in a minute.
0:54:36 So the cultural wars are meant to divide us. If we get united, we have enough leverage and
0:54:41 power to be able to do it. But you can’t do it through a normal bill. Because if you do it in a
0:54:47 bill, the whole point of capturing the Supreme Court was to make sure that they kill any piece
0:54:50 of legislation that would protect the American people. You’re saying the Supreme Court is also
0:54:57 captured by this? Oh, 100%. So, okay. So let me explain. Again, people for the uninitiated,
0:55:01 they think, oh, that sounds conspiratorial. Well, in this case, that’s actually somewhat true,
0:55:07 because people now know about this. It’s the Powell memo, right? The most infamous political
0:55:13 memo in history, Lewis Powell writes a memo for the Chamber of Commerce in 1971. That’s basically
0:55:18 a blueprint for how the Chamber of Commerce can take over the government. And Lewis Powell explains
0:55:22 one of the most important things you have to do is take over the media. But even more important
0:55:27 than that is taking over the Supreme Court. Because the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter
0:55:35 of what is allowed and not allowed. And he says, we need, quote, activist judges
0:55:43 to help business interests on the court. Okay. And then Nixon reads the memo and goes,
0:55:47 that sounds like a really good idea. How about I put you on the Supreme Court? And he puts Lewis
0:55:52 Powell, the guy who wrote the memo, on the Supreme Court, where he’s the deciding vote
0:56:00 in Bellotti and Buckley. So Bellotti’s, those two decisions are 76 and 78. And what they say is,
0:56:08 yeah, yeah, I read the Constitution and it says that money is speech. No, it isn’t. And no, it
0:56:13 didn’t. That’s not even close to true. They just made it up. And they said, okay, in corporations,
0:56:19 they’re human beings. No, they’re not. That’s preposterous, right? And they have the same
0:56:28 inalienable rights as human beings and citizens do. And money is speech and speech is an
0:56:33 inalienable right. So corporations can spend unlimited money in politics. And there goes our
0:56:39 democracy gone. Okay. So citizens united just shot a dead horse with a gatling gun and made it worse
0:56:45 and put it on steroids. But it was already dead in 78. So that’s why every chart you see for the
0:56:52 rest of your life, you’ll see this, every chart and about the American economy starts to diverge
0:57:01 in 1978. So until 38 to 78, we have golden 40 years of economic prosperity. We create the greatest
0:57:08 middle class the world has ever seen. And our productivity sky high, but our wages match our
0:57:15 productivity. After 78, productivity is still sky high best in the world. Okay, sometimes people
0:57:22 who are the American workers lazy, not remotely true, we work our ass off, okay, but wages flat
0:57:28 line. And they’ve been flat lining for about 50 years straight. And the reason is because the
0:57:33 Supreme Court made bribery legal. So in order to get past the Supreme Court, you only have one
0:57:38 choice. That’s an amendment. And so you have to get an amendment. Amendments are very difficult.
0:57:46 But so for example, you, you need two thirds of Congress to even propose the amendment. So well,
0:57:50 why would Congress propose an amendment that would take away their own power, right? Because
0:57:55 almost everybody in Congress got there through corruption. Their main talent is I can kiss
0:58:00 corporate ass better than you can, right? So I they take the most amount of person with more
0:58:05 money in Congress was 95% of the time, right? But the good news is the founding fathers were
0:58:11 geniuses. And they put in a second outlet, they said, or two thirds of the states can call for a
0:58:17 convention where you can propose an amendment. And after an amendment is proposed, then three
0:58:22 quarters of the states have to ratify. That’s what makes it so difficult. Because getting three
0:58:27 quarters of the states, there’s so many red states, so many blue states, getting three quarters of the
0:58:32 states, they agree is near impossible. But there is one issue that the whole country agrees on 93%
0:58:38 of Americans believe that politicians serve their donors and not their voters. So this is
0:58:43 the one thing we can unite on if we unite on this, we push our states to call for a convention,
0:58:49 we all go to the convention together, we bring democracy alive, and we propose amendments to
0:58:54 the Constitution. And the best amendment gets three quarters of the states to ratify, you go
0:59:02 above the Supreme Court, and you solve the whole thing. So if 93% of people want this, why hasn’t
0:59:08 it happened yet? I mean, the obvious answer is there’s corporate control of the media and the
0:59:13 politicians, but it seems like our current system and the megaphone that a president has,
0:59:20 we should be able to kind of unite the populist left and right. So it shouldn’t be that difficult
0:59:28 to do. Like, why hasn’t a person like Trump with a billionaire or on the left a rich businessman
0:59:34 run just on this and win? Well, eventually they will, right? And so that’s why I actually have a
0:59:39 lot of hope, even though things seem super dark right now. So, and that’s why I was for Bernie,
0:59:44 and so I can come back to that. But why hasn’t Trump done it as easy? He’s like, what am I, a
0:59:49 sucker? The guy gives me money, I do what the guy wants. Why would I get rid of that? That’s
0:59:54 how I got into power. And so that’s how I’m doing it now. I get go to Mary Mendel’s sentence to give
0:59:59 me a hundred million dollars and I’ll let Israel annex the West Bank, right? So I’ll go to the oil
1:00:03 companies and give me a billion dollars and I’ll give you tax subsidies. I’ll let you drill. I’ll
1:00:08 take away a regulation. Why would I stop that? You think he likes money more than he likes being
1:00:16 popular? Because there’s a big part of him as a populist in the sense that like he loves being
1:00:22 admired by large masses of people. Yeah. So, and you’re absolutely right. But that is the fault
1:00:31 of MAGA. And so MAGA, you’re screwing populists in a way that is infuriating, okay? And smart
1:00:36 libertarians like Dave Smith have figured this out. And that’s why he’s just as mad at Trump as I am.
1:00:45 And it’s because he took a populist movement and he redirected it for his own personal gain.
1:00:50 MAGA, figure it out. Come on, right? And so if you say, oh, you think Democrats have figured out
1:00:54 that these, no, they largely haven’t figured it out either. And I think there’s blue MAGA,
1:00:58 and I could talk about that as well. But for those of us on the populist left,
1:01:03 yeah, we’re not enamored by politicians. And for example, when Bernie does the wrong thing,
1:01:08 we call him out. Well, I’m not, Bernie’s not my goddamn uncle. I don’t like him for some
1:01:12 personality reason. It’s not a cult of personality. You do the right thing I love you for. You do
1:01:16 the wrong thing. I’m gonna kick your ass for it, right? So, but Donald Trump does this massive,
1:01:20 ridiculous corruption over and over again. And MAGA is like, I’m here for it. Love it.
1:01:24 As long as you’re doing the corruption, I’m okay with it. What does Trump say about getting
1:01:29 money out of politics? Does he he says nothing about it? Go and MAGA, why haven’t you held him
1:01:35 to account? Like, so when Bernie, it helped Biden take out $15 minimum wage from the Senate bill
1:01:41 on the first bill that was introduced in the Biden administration, we went nuts. We did a petition.
1:01:47 We sent in videos to Bernie, our audience going, don’t kill it, Bernie, don’t kill it. And so,
1:01:52 Bernie then reintroduced it as an amendment. It got voted down, but he did the right thing, right?
1:01:58 That is us holding our top leader accountable and saying, you better get back on track, okay?
1:02:03 Because we’re not here for you and your personal self and grant a grandisement. We’re here for
1:02:09 policy, right? And if MAGA was actually here for policy, they would have absolutely leveled Trump
1:02:14 on the fact that he, I mean, remember what he ran on, drain the swamp. That’s why he won in 2016,
1:02:21 right? So I predicted on ABC right after the DNC and Hillary Clinton was up 10, 12 points,
1:02:26 whatever she was. And I said, Trump would win, okay? And the whole panel laughed out loud,
1:02:32 right? They’re like, get a load of this crazy guy. I said, he’s a populist who seems to hate
1:02:42 the establishment in a populist time. And so, and drain the swamp is a great slogan. And I knew
1:02:49 he would win when he was in a Republican debate. And he said, I paid all these guys before I paid
1:02:54 them and they did whatever I wanted. And I was like, that’s so true, right? And people will love
1:02:57 that. And especially Republican voters will love that. I actually have a lot of respect
1:03:00 for Republican voters because they actually genuinely hate corruption.
1:03:08 So what would an amendment look like that helps prevent money being an influence in politics?
1:03:11 So I started a group called Wolfpack.
1:03:13 Nice name.
1:03:19 Thank you, wolf-pack.com. And the reason why I named a Wolfpack is because everyone in Washington,
1:03:25 I knew would hate that name. It’s a populist name. And everybody in Washington is snickers.
1:03:30 You’re supposed to name it Americans for America and just trick people, etc. No, no, no.
1:03:34 Wolfpack means we’re coming for you. We’re not coming for you in a weirdo,
1:03:39 physical or violent way. We’re coming for you in a Democratic way. So we’re going to go to those
1:03:44 houses. We’re going to get them to propose a convention and we did it in five states.
1:03:47 But then the Democratic Party started beating us back. We’ll get to that.
1:03:55 And so we are going to overturn your apple cart and we’re going to put the American people back
1:04:01 in charge. So what does the amendment say? Number one, a lot of people will have different opinions
1:04:04 on what it should say and that’s what you sort out in a convention. So for example, one of the
1:04:10 things that conservatives can propose, which makes sense, is term limits. Because the reason why
1:04:15 these super old politicians are in charge is because they provide a return on investment.
1:04:20 So you know if you give to Biden, Pelosi or McConnell, they’re going to deliver for you.
1:04:23 They love that return on investment. They don’t want to risk it on a new guy.
1:04:30 The new guy might have principles or you know, might want to actually do a little bit for his
1:04:38 voters. Whereas these old, you know, and every corrupt system has these old guys hanging around
1:04:45 that help maintain power, etc. So my particular proposal in the amendments would be a couple
1:04:51 of things. One is end private financing of elections. So if and look, if you’re a business
1:04:58 person, you’re a capitalist, you know this with absolute certainty. If somebody signs your check,
1:05:04 that’s the person you work for, right? So if private interests are funding politicians,
1:05:09 the politicians will serve private interests. And then you’re going to get into a fight like
1:05:16 Elon did in New Jersey, where the car dealerships and Tesla are getting into an auction. Can I hear
1:05:21 100,000 a million, two million, three million, right? And now you got to go bribe the government
1:05:27 official, that’s called a campaign contribution. And this is a terrible system, right? And the
1:05:32 private financing go to complete public financing of elections. That’s when the conservatives,
1:05:37 because they’ve been propagandized by corporate media. Yes, mainstream media got into your head too,
1:05:42 and right wing media got into your head too. And right wing media also financed by a lot of this
1:05:47 corrupt interest. And so they tell you, Oh, you don’t want to publicly finance. Oh my God,
1:05:51 you’d be spending like a billion dollars on politicians. Brother, they’re spending trillions
1:05:56 of dollars on your money because they’re financed by the guys that they’re giving all of your money
1:06:01 to. So can you educate me? Does that prevent something like Citizen United? So like super
1:06:07 packs are all gone in this case? So all gone. So indirect funding is also indirect funding is gone.
1:06:12 Direct funding is gone. You have to set up some thresholds. Not everybody can just get money
1:06:18 to run. You have to prove that you have some sort of popular support. So signature gathering,
1:06:24 you would still allow for small money donations like up to $100, something along those lines.
1:06:29 That’s not 5000 or whatever it is now. Yeah, I think 5000 is too high. But those are fine debates.
1:06:33 Yeah, you know, but you basically want to create an incentive. Everything is about incentives and
1:06:38 disincentives. Again, capitalists realize it’s better than anyone else, right? So you want to
1:06:45 set up an incentive to serve your voters, not your donors. So if you take away private donors,
1:06:50 well, there goes that incentive. And that’s gigantic, right? And then if you set up small
1:06:55 grassroots funding as a way to get past the threshold to get the funding to run an election,
1:07:00 well, then good because then you’re serving small donors, which are generally voters,
1:07:06 right? So that’s what you want. And ending private financing is critical. But the second thing is
1:07:12 ending corporate personhood. So this is where you get into a lot of fights, because you have
1:07:18 two reasons. One is some folks have a principled position against it. And they say, well, I mean,
1:07:26 the Sierra Club is technically a corporation, ACLU is technically a corporation. And so if you
1:07:32 end corporate personhood, then they, you know, that could endanger their existence, right? No,
1:07:37 it doesn’t endanger their existence at all, right? So it doesn’t endanger GM or GE’s existence. It
1:07:42 doesn’t endanger anybody’s existence. Corporations exist. We’re not trying to take them away. I
1:07:47 would never do that, right? That’s not smart. That’s not workable, etc. We’re just saying they
1:07:53 don’t have constitutional rights. So they have the rights that we give them. And by the way,
1:08:00 read The Founding Fathers is also in my book. They hated corporations. The American Revolution
1:08:06 was partly against the British East India Company. And so the Tea Party in Boston
1:08:11 was against that corporation. They threw their tea overboard. It was not against the British
1:08:17 monarchy. And so they, and all the Founding Fathers warned us over and over again,
1:08:24 watch out for corporations, okay? Because once they form, they will amass money and power and
1:08:31 look to kill off democracy. And they were totally right. That’s exactly what happened. And so it’s
1:08:36 not that you don’t have them. It’s that you, through democratic capitalism, you limit their power.
1:08:40 They definitely, you can give them a bunch of rights. You say, hey, you have a right to exist.
1:08:45 You have a right to do this, this and this, okay? But you do not have constitutional rights
1:08:53 of a citizen. And so you don’t have the right to speak to a politician by giving them a billion
1:08:59 dollars. And you believe that the people will be able to find the right policies to regulate
1:09:04 and tax the corporations such that capitalism can flourish still?
1:09:10 Yes. You know why? Because I’m a real populist and I believe in the people. So I drive the
1:09:16 establishment crazy because they don’t believe in the people. They think, oh, check, have you
1:09:20 seen MAGA? Have you seen these guys? Have you seen the radicals on the left? We’re so much smarter.
1:09:25 Well, you know how many Ivy League degrees we have, right? And we know what we’re doing. No,
1:09:32 you don’t. No, you’re, everybody to some degree looks out for their own interests, right? Why I
1:09:38 like capitalism and why I love democracy is because it’s the wisdom of the crowd. And so in the long
1:09:42 run, the crowd is right. Oftentimes in the short term, we’re wrong, okay? But the wisdom of the
1:09:48 crowd in the long run is much, much better than the elites that run things. The elites say, well,
1:09:52 we’re so smart and educated. So we’re going to know better what’s good for you. No, brother,
1:09:57 you’re going to know what’s better for you. And so here’s something that a lot of people get wrong
1:10:02 on the populist left and right. They think, oh, those guys are evil. They’re not evil. I met them.
1:10:07 I worked at MSNBC. I worked on cable. I went to Wharton, you know, Columbia Law. I know a lot
1:10:13 of those guys. And so they’re not at all evil. They don’t even know that they’re mainly serving
1:10:18 their own interests. They just naturally do it, right? And so they think the carrot interest loop
1:10:24 hole makes a lot of sense, right? They think corporate tax cuts makes a lot of sense. You
1:10:29 not getting higher wages. You not having healthcare makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t make any goddamn
1:10:34 sense, but they get themselves to believe it. And that’s another portion of the invisible hand
1:10:39 on the market. So there’s problems with every, every path. So the elite, like you mentioned,
1:10:45 can be corrupted by greed, by power and so on. But the crowd, I agree with you, by the way,
1:10:49 about the wisdom of the crowd versus the wisdom of the elite, but the crowd can be captured by
1:10:56 charismatic leader. So the problem with populism, and I’m probably a populist myself, the problem
1:11:02 with populism is it, it can be and has been throughout history captured by bad people.
1:11:07 But if you say to me, trust elites or trust the people, I’m going to trust the people
1:11:12 every single time. Well, that’s why you’re such an interesting, I don’t want to say contradiction,
1:11:21 but there’s a tension that creates the balance. So to me, in the way you’re speaking might result
1:11:28 in hurting capitalism. So it’s easy to in fighting corporatism to, to hurt companies.
1:11:34 So to go too far the other way. Yeah, of course, of course. And so like when you talked about
1:11:40 corporate tax, so what’s, what’s the magic, what’s the magic number for the corporate tax?
1:11:48 Because if it’s too high, the companies leave. Yeah, companies have so much power right now.
1:11:54 This pendulum has swung so far. And we’re guys, we’re almost out of time, the windows closing,
1:11:59 the minute private equity buys all of our homes, the residential real estate market,
1:12:05 we’re screwed, we’re indentured servants forever. Okay, there goes wealth creation for the average
1:12:12 American. So your right likes this is that it’s not a contradiction, it’s a tension that is
1:12:18 inevitable to get to balance. The reason why people kind of can’t figure me out, they’re like,
1:12:24 well, you’re on the left, but you’re a capitalist, etc. That’s not a contradiction,
1:12:29 that’s getting to the right balance. And in order to do that, like if you say, well,
1:12:34 if we change the system, I’m afraid of change, because what if the pendulum swings too far in
1:12:41 the other direction, right? Well, then you would be opposed to change at all times. So if you do
1:12:48 that, it actually reminds me of the Biden fight, right? So I’m like, guys, he has, he has almost
1:12:54 no chance of winning. He stands for the establishment, he can’t talk. But then the number one pushback
1:13:02 I’d get from Democrats was, yeah, but what if we change? It’s so scary. We don’t know about Kamala
1:13:07 Harris. What if it’s not Kamala Harris? It’s so scary. Don’t change. And I’m like, yeah, but
1:13:15 if you say change might be worse, it also might be better. And you’re at zero. Anything is better,
1:13:23 right? And right now, in terms of corruption in America, we’re at 98% corruption. So we got 2%
1:13:31 decency left. Brother, this is when you want change. And so to, and, and, and Lex, if you
1:13:36 actually have wisdom of the crowd, just like a supply and demand, and how it works in economics,
1:13:43 it works the same way in a functioning democracy, you go too far, you come back in. So for example,
1:13:49 when Reagan came into office, me and my dad, my family, we were Republicans. Why? At that point,
1:13:56 the highest marginal tax rate was at 70%. 70% is too high, right? Now they, then he brought it
1:14:02 all the way down to 28%. That’s too low, right? So, and, and, but, and that’s how the, the system
1:14:07 modulates itself. Already, we were headed towards corruption. And because it’s the 80s now, we’re
1:14:14 past 78, magic 78 marker, right? So, and, and even Carter was way more conservative economically
1:14:19 than people realize because we’re already getting past it by the time it’s in his administration.
1:14:24 But the bottom line is, yes, you’re going, whenever you have real wisdom of the crowd,
1:14:28 whether it’s in business or in politics, you’re going to have fluctuation. You’re going to have
1:14:34 that pendulum swinging back and forth. You don’t want wild swings, communism, corporatism, right?
1:14:38 You want to get to, hey, where, where’s the right balance here between capitalism
1:14:46 and what people think is socialism? Yeah, so I guess I agree with most of the things you said
1:14:54 about the corruption. I just wish there would be more celebration of the fact that capitalism and
1:14:59 some incredible companies in the history of the 20th century has created so much wealth,
1:15:03 so much innovation that has increased the quality of life on average. They’ve also increased the
1:15:07 wealth and equality and exploitation of the workers and this kind of stuff. But you, you
1:15:14 want to not forget to celebrate the awesomeness that companies have also brought outside the
1:15:21 political sphere, just in creating awesome stuff. Look, I run a company. And so I don’t want companies
1:15:26 to go away. And, and I don’t want you to hate all companies. I think Young Turks is a wonderful
1:15:30 company, right? We provide great healthcare, we take care of our employees, we care about the
1:15:37 community, etc. And we’re building a whole nation online on, on those principles in the right way
1:15:44 to run a company, right? But guys, we’re at the wrong part of the pendulum. The companies have
1:15:51 overwhelming power and they’re crushing us. We’re like that scene in Star Wars with the trash
1:15:57 compactors closing in on them, the walls are closing in. We’re almost out of time because
1:16:02 they’ve captured the government almost entirely. They’re only serving corporate interests. We’ve
1:16:07 got to get back into balance before it’s too late. And that’s why I care so much about structural
1:16:16 issues. So I formed Justice Democrats. So that’s AOC, etc. Right? That’s people know it as the
1:16:21 squad. They know it as Justice Democrats, etc. One of the co-founders of that. And my number one rule
1:16:27 was no corporate PAC money. Okay, so you’re not allowed to take corporate PAC money. By the way,
1:16:32 now Matt Gaetz and Josh Hawley have stopped taking corporate PAC money, and they’ve become to some
1:16:39 degree on economic issues, genuine populace. It’s amazing. It happens overnight. All of a sudden,
1:16:43 they’re holding, they’re talking about holding corporations accountable, etc. Now, Justice
1:16:49 Democrats wind up having other problems. They got too deep into social issues, not economic issues.
1:16:56 There’s a general sort of criticism of billionaires, right? This idea. Now, you could say that
1:17:01 billionaires are avoiding taxes and they’re not getting taxed enough. But I think under that flag
1:17:10 of criticizing billionaires is criticizing all companies that do epic shit, that build stuff.
1:17:14 Oh, okay. So great stuff. That’s what I’m worried about. I don’t hear enough,
1:17:21 like genuine. I like celebrating people. I like celebrating ideas. I just don’t hear enough
1:17:28 genuine celebration of companies when they do cool things. No, okay. So are you right? Not
1:17:35 about companies, but about capitalism? Yes. Because you look at life expectancy 200 years ago,
1:17:40 and you look at it now, and you go, “Wow, holy shit. We did amazing things.”
1:17:47 And what happened in the last 200 years? We went from dictatorships more towards democracy,
1:17:54 wisdom of the crowd. We went from serfs and indentured servants and a nobility that holds the
1:18:01 land to more towards capitalism. And boom, the crowd is right. Things go really well.
1:18:07 The advances in medicine are amazing. And medicine is a great example. And on our show,
1:18:12 I point all those things out and I say, “Look, we hate the drug companies because
1:18:15 of how they’ve captured the government, right? But we don’t hate the drug companies for creating
1:18:20 great drugs. Those drugs save lives. They just saved my life. They saved countless millions
1:18:26 upon millions of lives. So the right idea isn’t shut down drug companies. The right idea is don’t
1:18:34 let them buy the government, right? And I know we get back into our instinctual shells. So on the
1:18:40 left, they’ll be, “Oh, we should get rid of all billionaires.” Why? Like, how does that fix the
1:18:46 system? Tell me how it fixes the system. And I’m all ears, right? My solution is end private
1:18:50 financing. Then you can be a billionaire all you like. You can’t buy the government, right?
1:18:56 That’s a more logical way to go about it. I’ve never worn an “eat the rich” shirt and it drives me
1:19:02 crazy. I’m like, you would have eaten FDR, right? And FDR is the best president, most populous
1:19:08 president, in my opinion. And so, no, there’s wonderful rich people. Of course, of course,
1:19:12 there’s a range of humanity, right? But you don’t want to get rid of the rich. You don’t want to
1:19:16 get rid of companies. But you also don’t want to let them control everything. So, okay, I’ll give
1:19:21 you an example that’s really, and that informs a lot of how I think about things, which is my dad.
1:19:28 So my dad was a farmer in southeastern Turkey, near the Syrian border. No money. In fact, his dad
1:19:36 died when he was six months old, and so they were saddled with debt. And no electricity in his house,
1:19:42 like as poor as poor gets. And he wound up living the American dream. And so,
1:19:49 how did he do that? What made the difference? Well, what made the difference is opportunity,
1:20:00 right? So, I’m a populous because my dad was in the masses, right? And the elites say the masses
1:20:06 are no good. We’re smart, you’re not. We’re educated, you’re not. We at Meritocracy, we talk
1:20:12 about that. We have earned merit. And if you’re a poor middle class, you have not earned merit,
1:20:19 okay? You’re useless and worthless. And I hate that. So what did Turkey do back in the 1960s,
1:20:24 that liberated my dad? They provided free college education. You had to test into it,
1:20:31 okay? But the top 15% got a free college education at the best colleges in Turkey.
1:20:37 So, my uncle saved all of our lives when he came to my dad and said, “Do you like working on this
1:20:42 farm?” And my dad was like, “Fuck no, right? It’s super hot. It’s super hard. They gotta get up at
1:20:48 four in the morning. If they’re lucky, the next store gives them a mule. If they’re not, they gotta
1:20:55 carry the shit themselves, okay?” So my uncle told them, “Work just as hard in school and you’ll be
1:21:01 able to get a house, a car, pretty girls, etc.” So my dad works his ass off, gets in the school,
1:21:06 and he comes out a mechanical engineer and starts his own company. He creates a company in Turkey,
1:21:12 hires hundreds of people. He then moves to America, creates a company here, hires tons of people,
1:21:18 right? So do I hate companies? No, my dad set up two companies and I saw how much it benefited
1:21:24 people. I saw how much employees would come up to my dad 20, 30 years later in the street and hug
1:21:29 him. And they’d tell me as a young kid, “Your dad’s the most fair boss we ever had and we love him
1:21:34 for it,” right? That’s how you run a company. And he taught me the value of hard work. But the reason
1:21:43 I brought up here is because he taught me, look, skill and ability is a genetic lottery. So you’re
1:21:48 not going to just get the rich to win all the genetic lottery. No, there’s going to be tons
1:21:54 of poor kids and middle-class kids who are just as good if not better. You have to provide them
1:22:01 the opportunity, the fair chance to succeed. You have to believe in them. So this isn’t
1:22:06 about disempowering anyone. It’s about empowering all of those kids who are doing the right thing
1:22:11 or smart and want to work hard so they could build their own companies and add to their economy.
1:22:18 What in general is your view on meritocracy? So I love meritocracy. I wish that we lived
1:22:23 in a meritocracy and I want to drive towards living in a meritocracy. So that’s why I don’t
1:22:28 like your quality of results. So, okay, now people that are on the left will get super mad at that
1:22:32 and go, “What do you mean?” Well, okay, brother, let’s say you’re at work and you got one guy
1:22:38 who’s working his ass off, another guy that’s going, “I don’t care. I’m not going to do it,”
1:22:42 right? Well, the guy who works super hard has to pick up the slack. Now, he’s working twice as
1:22:48 hard, right? And now you want the same results. You want the same salary as that guy? No, brother,
1:22:54 no. He’s working twice, four times, ten times harder than you. That’s not fair. Fairness matters.
1:22:59 I lived, we wound up, I mean, we were in the suburbs of Jersey, but we wound up in Freehold
1:23:04 eventually and we lived across a farm, which is kind of in Central Jersey, it happens, right?
1:23:12 And it was called Fair Chance Farm. I was like, “This is amazing,” right? And I love that.
1:23:19 That’s the essence of America and that’s what I want to go back to. So, we’ve got to create that
1:23:26 opportunity of not just because it’s the moral thing to do, but because it’s also the economically
1:23:34 smart thing to do. If you enable all those great people that are in lower income classes and middle
1:23:40 income classes, you’re going to get a much better economy, a much stronger democracy. So, that’s
1:23:46 the direction we got. So, again, it’s about balance. But what do you think about DEI policies?
1:23:56 Say, in academia and companies, so the movement as it has evolved, where’s that on the balance?
1:24:05 Is that how far is it pushing towards equality of outcome versus equality of opportunity?
1:24:08 Okay, so now we’re getting into social issues, right? So, this is where we all
1:24:14 rip each other apart and then the people at the top laugh their ass off at us and go,
1:24:20 “We got to fighting over trans issues. They’re killing each other. It’s hilarious and they’re
1:24:25 so busy, they don’t realize we’re running the place,” right? Okay, but let’s engage. Some people
1:24:31 will look at DEI and go, “Well, that just gives me an opportunity. Just like anyone else, I love
1:24:38 DEI.” Another person will look at it and go, “No, that says that you should be picked above me,
1:24:43 and I hate DEI,” right? So, the reality of DEI is a little bit more complicated.
1:24:49 But you got to go back. So, first, did we need affirmative action in the 1960s? Definitely.
1:24:56 Why? All the firefighter jobs in South Carolina, as an example, are going to white guys. All the
1:25:01 Longshoremen jobs in New York, LA, wherever you have it, are all going to white guys,
1:25:06 because that’s how the system was. Yes, also in the North, right? So, we now are in a civil
1:25:13 rights area. We decide we’re going to go towards equality. Minorities, in that case, mainly Black
1:25:18 Americans, had to find a way to break in. Like, if you’re a Longshoreman and it’s a good job,
1:25:22 you naturally want to pass it on to your son. I get your instinct. I don’t hate you for it,
1:25:27 right? But we got to let Black kids also have a shot at it, right? So, you need it in the beginning.
1:25:33 But, at a certain point, you have to phase it out. So, when I was growing up, it’s now in the
1:25:38 late ’80s, early ’90s, I hated affirmative action. And I’ve been principled on it from day one
1:25:44 and to this day. I’m not in favor of affirmative action. I say it on the show all the time. Why?
1:25:53 I’m a minority. Being a Turk, I grew up Muslim. I’m an atheist now. But generally speaking,
1:25:59 a Muslim is certainly a minority in America and pretty much a hated one overall. So,
1:26:04 but I didn’t check off Muslim or Turkish or any ethnicity when I applied to college,
1:26:10 because I believe in a meritocracy, as we were talking about. But we don’t really have a meritocracy
1:26:17 now. So, I can come back to that. But right now, so I didn’t check it off because I didn’t want an
1:26:24 unfair advantage. Because I want to earn it. I want to earn it. So, now I’m in law school and
1:26:30 I’m hanging out with right-wingers because at that point, I’m a Republican. And one of the guys says
1:26:36 to me about one of our Black student going to Columbia. He says, “Oh, I wonder how he got in here.”
1:26:43 God, that is the problem with affirmative action. It devalues the accomplishments of
1:26:48 every minority in the country. You have to transition away from it. If you don’t,
1:26:54 it sets up a caste system. And that caste system is lethal to democracy. So,
1:27:01 does DEI go too far in some instances? Yes. But is it a boogeyman that’s going to take all the
1:27:07 white jobs and make them Black? Trump would say Black jobs, right? And give minorities too much
1:27:13 power, et cetera. No, the idea isn’t to rob you and to give all the opportunity to minorities.
1:27:18 The idea is to make it equal. But as the pendulum swings, did it swing too far in some directions?
1:27:23 Yes. So, the left can’t acknowledge that and the right thinks can’t acknowledge that. Of course,
1:27:28 at some point, you’ve got to give a chance for others to break in so they have a fair chance.
1:27:33 By the way, Michelle Obama had a good line about the Black jobs and the DNC speech where
1:27:38 somebody should tell Trump that the presidency might be just one of those Black jobs.
1:27:44 Anyway, but why do you think the left doesn’t acknowledge when DEI gets ridiculous,
1:27:51 which in certain places at a large scale has gotten ridiculous?
1:27:58 Because people are taught to just be in the tribe they’re in and to believe in 100%.
1:28:05 Like, I’ve gotten kicked out of every tribe. I might be the most attack man in internet history,
1:28:10 partly because we’ve been around forever and partly because I disagree with every part of the
1:28:14 political spectrum because I believe in independent thought. And the minute you vary a little bit,
1:28:25 people go nuts. And so, the far left tribe is going to go with their preset ideology just like
1:28:31 the far right tribe is. So, for example, on trans issues, we’ve protected trans people
1:28:37 for over 20 years in the young Turks. We fought for equality for trans people and for all LGBTQ
1:28:44 people. For two decades, we did it way before anyone else did. When Biden came out in favor
1:28:49 of gay marriage in 2013, we’re like, this is comically late. So, like, we’re all supposed
1:28:53 to like congratulate him in the year 2013 that these things gay people should have the same
1:28:58 rights as straight people. And then he had to push Obama to get there, right? So,
1:29:07 on the other hand, I’m like, guys, if you allow trans women to go into professional sports,
1:29:11 not at the high school level, but professional sports, but let’s say they go into MMA or boxing
1:29:20 and a trans woman, I mean, it happens in boxing, it happens in MMA, punches a biological woman so
1:29:28 hard that she kills her, right? So, you’re going to set back trans rights 50 years. I’m not trying
1:29:33 to hurt you. I’m trying to help you. You have to do bounds of reason. So, when I say simple things
1:29:39 like that, and I say you give LeBron James every hormone blocker on planet earth, he’s still going
1:29:46 to dominate the WNBA, okay? It would be comical. He might score 100 points a night, okay? And
1:29:53 they’ll say, oh, that’s outrageous. And some have called me Nazi for saying that trans women or
1:29:58 that professional leagues should make their own decisions on whether they allow trans women in
1:30:04 or not. So, why do they say that? Because they’re so besieged, they think we cannot give an inch,
1:30:10 we cannot give any ground. If you give any ground, you’re a Nazi, okay? So, we’ve got to get out of
1:30:18 that mindset. You can’t function in a democracy and be in an extreme position and expect the rest
1:30:23 of the country to go towards your extreme position. So, why do you think we are not in the
1:30:29 meritocracy? So, because of the corruption, it’s so, for example, but there’s also, but
1:30:37 remember, corporate media is the matrix. And they plug you into cable, right, in the old days. Now,
1:30:42 it’s a little bit different because of online media. But especially 10 years ago, and remember,
1:30:47 we started 22 years ago, so I’ve been losing my mind over how obvious corporate media corruption
1:30:52 has been for decades now, right? But no one acknowledged it until online media got stronger.
1:30:58 But one of the myths that corporate media creates is the myth of meritocracy. Not that
1:31:05 meritocracy can’t exist or shouldn’t exist, but they pretend it exists today. So, the problem with
1:31:11 that myth, Lex, is that it gets people thinking, well, if they’re already rich, they must have
1:31:19 merited it by definition. So, all the rich have merit. And the reverse of that, if you’re poor,
1:31:26 middle class, well, you must not have merited wealth. So, you’re no good. We don’t have to listen to
1:31:35 you. And that’s a really dangerous, awful idea. And so, if we get to meritocracy one day, I’ll
1:31:41 be the happiest person in America. But right now, it’s, look, here, I’ll give you an example that
1:31:47 I put in the book. And it’s not us, this other folks did this YouTube video. I can’t even quite
1:31:52 find who they were, but it was a brilliant video. And they said, okay, we’re going to do 100-yard
1:31:57 race. But hold on, before we start, anyone who has two parents take two steps forward. Anyone who
1:32:03 has went to college, take another two steps forward. Anyone who doesn’t have bills to pay for
1:32:07 education anymore, take two steps forward. They do all these things, right? And then, at the end,
1:32:12 before they start, somebody’s 20 yards from the finish line, and a lot of people are still at
1:32:17 the starting line. And then they go, okay, now we’re going to run a race. And the guy who’s right
1:32:24 next to the finish line wins. And they go, meritocracy. Okay. So the challenge there is to
1:32:28 know which disparities when you just freeze the system and observe are actually a result of some
1:32:34 kind of discrimination or a flaw in the system versus the result of meritocracy of the better
1:32:40 runner being ahead. That’s right. There are some parts that are easy to solve, Lex. So,
1:32:47 you know, if you donated to a politician and he gave you a billion-dollar subsidy,
1:32:52 that’s not meritocracy, right? So if you follow the money, you can see the flaws in the system.
1:32:57 Exactly. And so, and again, nothing’s ever perfect at any snapshot of history, right,
1:33:02 or of the moment. You’re going to be at some point in the pendulum swing. But if you let,
1:33:07 if you trust the people and you let the pendulum swing, but not wildly,
1:33:10 then you’re going to get to the right answers in the long run.
1:33:18 So you think this woke mind virus that the right refers to is a problem, but not a big problem?
1:33:29 No. So the right wing drives me crazy. So look, guys, your instincts of populism is correct. Your
1:33:35 instincts of anti-corruption is correct, right? And I love you for it. And so, and in a lot of
1:33:40 ways, the right wing voters figured out that the whole system screwed before left-wing voters did.
1:33:43 I shouldn’t say left-wing voters because progressives and left-wing have been saying it for
1:33:49 not only decades, but maybe centuries, right? But Democratic voters. A lot of Democratic voters,
1:33:54 some of them actually like this current system. Some of them, a lot of them have been tricked into
1:33:59 liking this current system. And the left should be fighting against corruption harder than the right.
1:34:04 But right now, unfortunately, that’s not the case. So there’s a lot that I like about right-wing
1:34:12 voters, okay? But you guys get tricked on social issues so easily, right? So how many people are
1:34:20 involved in trans high school sports and a girl who should have finished first in that track
1:34:26 race in the middle of Indiana finished second? First of all, this is the big crime. And how
1:34:32 many people are involved? About 7, 13 out of a country of 330 million people. And you can’t see
1:34:42 that that’s a distraction, right? So and everything that is like bait that the right-wing media puts
1:34:48 out there, they run after. I mean, Tucker Carlson doing insane segments about M&M should be sexier.
1:34:56 Mr. Potato Head has gender issues. Guys, get out of there. Get out of there. It’s a trap, okay?
1:35:01 Yeah, that doesn’t mean that there, absolutely. It doesn’t mean that there’s larger scale
1:35:09 issues with things like DEI that aren’t so fun to talk about or viral to talk about and anecdotal
1:35:16 scale. There is, DEI does create a culture of fear with cancer culture. And it does create a kind of
1:35:24 culture that limits the freedom of expression. And it does limit the meritocracy in another way.
1:35:32 So you’re basically saying, forget all these other problems. Money is the biggest problem.
1:35:38 So first of all, on AOC, as an example, and I don’t mean to pick on her, but she won through the
1:35:45 great work of her and Shorikat Chakrabarti and Corbin Trent and others who were leaders of the
1:35:51 just Democrats that went and helped her campaign. They were critical help. And we all told her the
1:35:58 same thing. So it’s not about me, me, me. And so we all said, you’ve got to challenge the establishment
1:36:02 and you’ve got to work on money and politics first. Because if you don’t work on money and politics
1:36:08 and you don’t fix that, you’re going to lose on almost all other issues. But she didn’t believe us
1:36:14 because it’s uncomfortable. And all the progressives that went into Congress, they drive me crazy.
1:36:18 They think, oh, no, no, you’re exaggerating. No, these are, and the minute they get in,
1:36:23 all of a sudden, my colleagues, right, your colleagues hate you, and they’re going to drive
1:36:29 you out. You’re a sucker. And in Jamal Bohman, Corey Bush, what did they do? They drove them out,
1:36:35 Marie Newman drove them out, right? And because they’re not on your side, they’re not your colleagues.
1:36:39 And what happened to $15 Minute Wage? And I remember talking to one of those congresspeople,
1:36:44 I won’t leave out the name, and saying, hey, you know, they’re not going to do $15 Minute Wage.
1:36:49 And he’s like, oh, Jank, you’re out of the loop. Nancy Pelosi assured us that they are going to
1:36:55 do $15 Minute Wage. I’m like, I love you, but you’re totally wrong. Moneyed interests are not
1:37:02 going to do $15 Minute Wage. You have to start fighting now, right? And they didn’t get it.
1:37:06 So they lost on almost all those issues, because it’s all about incentives and disincentives and
1:37:11 rules. If you don’t fix the rules, you’re going to constantly run into the same brick wall.
1:37:14 Now, the second issue that we were talking about is in the culture wars,
1:37:21 the rest of us are stuck between the two extreme two percenters, right, on both sides.
1:37:28 So the two percenter on the left goes, you know, if you’re a white woman, you need to shut up and
1:37:34 listen now, okay? That’s ridiculous. No, you don’t. If you’re a white woman, you have every right to
1:37:40 speak out, you have every right that every other human being has. And so would I love for all of
1:37:44 us to listen to one another, to have empathy for one another, and go, hey, I wonder how a right
1:37:48 winger thinks about this. I wonder how a left winger thinks about this. I wonder why they
1:37:53 think that way, right? I love that and I want that. So I want you to listen, but I don’t want you to
1:38:01 shut up. So that two percent gets extreme and I don’t like it. But on the right wing, you got your
1:38:05 two percent who think that that’s all that’s happening on the left. And that’s all that’s
1:38:10 happening in American politics. And they think the entire left believes that tiny two percent,
1:38:15 right? And so they hate the left and they’re like, oh, I’m not going to shut up. I’m not going to wear
1:38:20 a mask. I’m not going to do any of these things. And I’m not going to do anything. That’s a freedom.
1:38:25 And then a Republican comes along and goes, oh, yeah, that thing you call freedom. That’s
1:38:30 deregulation for corporations because you shouldn’t really have freedom. Companies should have
1:38:36 freedom, right? And then the guy goes, yeah, freedom for AxonMobil. No, brother, they tricked you.
1:38:41 Yeah, the two percent on each side is a useful distraction for, yes, for the corruption of the
1:38:47 politicians via money. Still, I’m talking about the 96% that remains in the middle and the impact
1:38:52 that DEI policy says on them. Yeah, so here’s where it gets absurd. I’ll give you a good example
1:39:02 of absurdity. So in a school, I believe in California, they noticed that Latino students
1:39:08 were not doing as well in AP and honors classes. So they canceled AP and honors classes. Oh,
1:39:15 come on, what are you doing? That’s nuts. No, your job is to help them get better grades,
1:39:21 get better opportunity, etc. That’s the harder thing to do and the right thing to do. Your job
1:39:27 isn’t, I’m going to make everything equal by taking away the opportunity for higher achievement
1:39:31 for other students. If that’s what you’re doing and you think you’re on the left, you’re not
1:39:36 really on the left. I actually think that’s like an authoritarian position that a no progressive
1:39:42 in their right mind would be in favor of. But it’s all definitional. So here’s another example
1:39:46 of definitional, communism. Like they say, oh my god, Kamala Harris is a communist.
1:39:52 Well, when you’re telling on yourself, brothers and sisters, when you say that,
1:39:58 that means A, I don’t know what communism means, and B, I don’t have any idea what’s going on in
1:40:05 American politics. Kamala Harris is a corporatist. That’s her problem. Not that she’s a communist,
1:40:11 she’s on the other end of the spectrum, right? The idea that Kamala Harris would come into office
1:40:15 and say, that’s it, there’s no more private property. We’re going to take all of your homes
1:40:20 and this down government property, all your cars, etc. She was not going to get within a billion
1:40:25 miles of that. Her donors would never allow her to get within a billion miles of that.
1:40:29 That is so preposterous that when you say something like that, it’s disqualifying.
1:40:34 Like I can’t debate someone who thinks that Democrats are communists when they’re actually
1:40:40 largely corporatists. Do you see what I’m saying? Yeah. So let’s go there. So when people call her
1:40:46 communist, they’re usually referring to certain kinds of policies. So do you think, I mean,
1:40:52 I think it’s a ridiculous label to assign to Kamala Harris, especially given the history of
1:40:58 communism in the 20th century and what those economic and political policies have led to the
1:41:04 scale of suffering that led to. And it just degrades the meaning of the word, right? But
1:41:10 to take that seriously, why is she not a communist? So you said she’s not a communist because she’s
1:41:18 a corporatist. Okay, but that can’t be, okay, everybody in politics is a corporatist.
1:41:22 Almost. Almost everybody in politics is a corporatist. But that doesn’t mean
1:41:27 the corporations have completely bought their mind. They have an influence on their mind and
1:41:33 issues that matter to those corporations. Yeah. Right? Yeah. Outside of that, they’re still
1:41:39 thinking for the voters because they still have to win the votes. Barely. Okay. So here,
1:41:44 let me give you an example. So you see what I’m saying. So if you just wanted votes,
1:41:50 you would do a lot of what Tim Walsh did. Okay. And by the way, a lot of what Bernie did,
1:41:57 that’s why Bernie, who had no media coverage, went from like 2% in 2015 to by the end,
1:42:02 about 48% because he was just doing things that were popular, right? And that American people
1:42:06 wanted, et cetera, right? Because he’s not controlled by corporations. By the way, neither
1:42:11 is Tom Massey on the right wing side, on the Republican side, right? So it’s not all, that’s
1:42:15 why I always say almost all, right? So if you’re doing things that are popular, people love it.
1:42:21 So today, what would Kamala Harris do if she actually just wanted to win, right? So number one,
1:42:30 she was trying to pass paid family leave right now. Why? It pulls at 84% and even 74% of Republicans
1:42:36 want it. Why? Because it says, hey, when you have a baby, you should get 12 weeks off, bond with
1:42:43 your baby. Right now, in a lot of states that don’t have paid family leave, you have to go back
1:42:47 to work the very next day, or you have to use all of your sick days, all your vacation days,
1:42:53 just to have one or two weeks with your baby, right? So conservatives love paid family leave,
1:42:58 liberals love paid family leave. That’s why it pulls so high. So why isn’t she proposing it?
1:43:03 It’s not in our economic plan. Tim Walsh already passed it in Minnesota. He showed how easy it was.
1:43:07 If you want votes, and then you know what’s going to happen if you propose paid family leave,
1:43:12 the Republicans are going to go, no, our beloved corporations don’t want to spend another dollar
1:43:18 on moms, right? And they fall for that trap and then you’re in an infinitely better shape. So why
1:43:24 does she do it? She doesn’t do it because her corporate donors don’t want her to do it. $15
1:43:29 minimum wage layup over 2/3 of the country wants it because it not only gives you higher wages for
1:43:33 minimum wage folks, but it pushes wages up for others. And what do the elites say?
1:43:37 Oh, that’s going to drive up inflation. No, you shouldn’t get paid anymore. Wait,
1:43:42 wait, wait, hold on. So you’re saying all other prices should go up, but the only thing that
1:43:49 shouldn’t go up is our wages? No, our wages should go up. Okay. So these are all easy ones. Here’s
1:43:54 another one, anti-corruption. Why is she running on getting money out of politics? It pulls it over
1:44:01 90%. Why isn’t Trump running on it anymore? He won when he ran on it in 2016. He didn’t mean a word
1:44:06 of it, but he ran on it. It was smart. They don’t do it because their corporate donors
1:44:10 take their heads off if they do it. So in contradiction to that, why did she propose to
1:44:18 raise the corporate tax rate from whatever, 21% to 28%? Because that’s easy because that is
1:44:25 something that’s super popular and she’s not going to do it. That’s why. So guys, this is where I
1:44:31 break the hearts of BlueMaga. BlueMaga thinks, oh my God, these Democrats, they’re angels and the
1:44:37 right wingers and the Republicans are evil and they work for big business, but not Kamala Harris,
1:44:44 not Joe Biden, right? Okay. Well, Donald Trump took the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
1:44:49 So that’s trillions of dollars that got transferred because guys, you got to understand
1:44:56 if the corporations don’t pay it, we have to pay it because we’re running up these giant deficits
1:45:00 and eventually either they’re going to, not eventually they keep raising our taxes in different
1:45:06 ways that you’re not noticing. They keep increasing fees and fines and different ways for the government
1:45:10 to collect money. So we’re paying for it. And on top of that, eventually they’re going to cut
1:45:13 your social security and Medicare because they’re going to say, oh, we don’t have any options left
1:45:17 anymore. Yeah, you don’t have any options left anymore because you kept giving trillions of dollars
1:45:22 in tax cuts to corporations. So we’re going to have to pay for that. So then Trump, then Biden
1:45:27 says, oh my God, I’m going to bring corporate taxes back up to 28%. I’m like, wait, hold on.
1:45:33 They were at 35. You already did a slide of hand and said 28. Okay. Then he gets into office
1:45:41 and Manchin says, no, 25. That’s the highest I’ll go. And he goes, okay, fine, 25. And then while
1:45:47 you’re not looking, they just dump it. They don’t even do 25. It’s still a 21. So hear me now,
1:45:51 quote me later. I do predictions on the show all the time because you should hold me accountable.
1:45:55 You should hold all your pundits accountable. If you held all your pundits accountable, we’d be
1:46:01 the last man standing. And that’s kind of what happened. Okay. So I guarantee you she will not
1:46:06 increase corporate taxes. So would the same be the case for price controls or the anti-price
1:46:12 gouging that she’s supposed to? So it’s not price controls, it’s price gouging. It is price controls,
1:46:16 but I mean, minimum wage is price controls also. Now we’re going to get into a lot of
1:46:22 minutiae, but I’ll try to keep it broad. So price controls are a disaster. They never work. If you
1:46:27 say, oh, here’s a banana. It has to stay at a dollar a pound and make up a number, right?
1:46:32 Well, supply and demand is going to move. And then that’s going to, and so the minute it moves to
1:46:36 $2 at where the price should be, then you’re going to run into shortages. So we all know this,
1:46:41 it’s a bad idea, right? But are there laws against price gouging? There already are,
1:46:48 and they’re a good idea. So why? Like you have a natural disaster, all of a sudden the water that
1:46:53 was a dollar, now they’re charging $100. The government has to come in, democratic capitalism,
1:46:58 they come in and go, no, I’m going to protect the people. So you’re not allowed to price gouge,
1:47:02 you know, maybe charge $2, et cetera, but you’re not going to charge $100. But it is temporary.
1:47:08 We get that done, we end the problem there, and then we bring it back to a normal supply and
1:47:15 demand, okay? So that’s what she’s proposing. That’s all political because the price gouging has
1:47:21 already passed. They did it in ’21 and ’22. And so now the grocery stores are actually a low margin
1:47:26 business. She says grocery stores, that’s how I know she doesn’t mean it, because the grocery
1:47:30 stores weren’t the problem, consumer goods were the problem, those companies.
1:47:34 She’s following the polls where most people will say that the groceries are too expensive,
1:47:39 so she’s just basically saying the most popular thing, yeah.
1:47:44 100%. And you could tell in which proposals she means it and which proposals she doesn’t,
1:47:52 because of the framing, right? So this is a mediocre example, but in housing, she said,
1:48:00 “We have to stop private equity from buying houses in bulk.” I’m curious that they put
1:48:05 the word “in bulk” there. Why does it have to be in bulk? Why don’t we just stop them from
1:48:09 buying any residential home? Like you could set up normal boundaries, right? For example,
1:48:15 Charlie Kirk was on The Young Turks this week. By the way, sorry to take that tangent. I really
1:48:19 enjoyed that conversation. I really enjoyed that you talked to… That was like civil.
1:48:24 You guys disagreed pretty intensely, but there was a lot of respect. I really enjoyed that.
1:48:25 Thank you, brother.
1:48:28 That was beautiful. You and Charlie Kirk and I think Anna was there.
1:48:37 Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, quick tangent. Look, I’ve done a lot of yelling online,
1:48:46 okay. And I yell when A, there’s an issue that you should be passionate about. 40,000 people,
1:48:52 25,000 women and children slaughtered in Gaza. If you’re not emotionally upset by that and you
1:48:57 think it’s no big deal, I think that’s a problem. But when you add gas lighting on top, that’s what
1:49:03 drives me crazy. And then when you add filibustering on top, then that sets me off. So for all my life,
1:49:07 right wing has gone on cable and filibustered. They take up so much more time than the left-wing
1:49:13 guests. And the left-wing guests always goes, “Okay, well, I’m offended. He’s taking up too much
1:49:17 time. No, brother, go over the top. Go over the top. You’re not going to talk over me. I’m going
1:49:26 to talk over you, okay?” And then when you gaslight and you go, “Oh, no, 1,200 people in Israel being
1:49:31 killed is awful,” which it is. But 40,000 people being killed in Gaza is no big deal. We should
1:49:36 keep giving them money, keep killing, keep killing. And that that’s normal. No, it’s not normal. I’m
1:49:42 not going to let you say it’s normal. That’s nuts, okay? When we were against the Iraq war,
1:49:46 there was only two shows that were on the air nationally that were against the Iraq war, us
1:49:54 and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman. And at the time, I used to yell all the time because mainstream
1:49:59 media would gaslight the fuck out of us. We’re going to be greeted as liberators. Me and Ben
1:50:03 Manquitz on the air. Ben doesn’t yell as much. He’s now the host of Turner Classic Movies. But
1:50:10 he’s saying it in a calm way. I’m saying it in a screaming way. We’re not going to be greeted as
1:50:16 liberators when you drop a bomb on someone’s head. They don’t greet you as a liberator. Stop saying
1:50:21 insane things. And 7 out of 10 Americans thought that Saddam Hussein had personally attacked us
1:50:28 on 9/11. We got lied into that war by corporate media, okay? Now there’s a couple of good things
1:50:34 that Trump has done. One is get people to realize corporate media is the matrix, right? And so now
1:50:38 and get them to an anti-war position. He himself doesn’t have an anti-war position,
1:50:42 but his voters do, and that’s a positive. We can come back to that. But these days, the reason
1:50:48 why the Charlie Kirk conversations are going great, and Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell. And
1:50:55 historically though, we’ve been, go back, again, 10 years, 20 years, we’ve always been respectful
1:50:59 when someone comes on our show and we have a debate. As long as they’re not yelling,
1:51:04 I matched a tenor of the host, right? You and I are having a reasonable conversation. I’m not
1:51:10 raising my voice. I’m not yelling at you for no reason, right? So now when Charlie’s not going
1:51:18 to battle anymore for like talking points, I’m shutting off my mind, all I’m doing is yelling
1:51:22 at you, then I’m going to yell back at him. But now he’s saying, okay, let’s have a reasonable
1:51:27 conversation. Great, I love it. I love reasonable conversation. It was great. It was refreshing.
1:51:34 And what were we talking about? You buying up housing. Yes. So Charlie, when he was on, said,
1:51:38 hey, listen, you know, I think that there should be a cap, though, I forget if he said $10 billion
1:51:43 or $100 billion in assets. If you have less than that, you should be still be able to do real estate
1:51:48 as an investment, even if it’s residential. But above that, he gets to, okay, that’s good. No
1:51:54 problem. We can have a debate about that when we figure out is the right number, 10, 125, no problem.
1:51:59 You could put in reasonable limitations. But we got to get them to stop buying their homes.
1:52:05 So when Kamala Harris says, oh, we’ll stop them from buying homes in bulk, I’m like, okay,
1:52:09 there’s the loophole. And so they’re going to use that loophole. And besides, which it’s not going
1:52:15 to pass, Wall Street owns the government. So there’s no way corporate Republicans and Democrats,
1:52:20 which are about 98% of politicians, are going to limit private equity. And so when do we ever get
1:52:27 a little bit of change? When Democrats are in charge, they do five to 15% of their agenda.
1:52:36 And that’s not because they’re warmhearted. It’s a release valve, right? Oh, see, under Obama,
1:52:43 we got about 5% change. And what was that? That was Obamacare, right? That was most of the change
1:52:49 that we got. And what’s the greatest part of Obamacare? And now a lot of right wing also agree,
1:52:52 almost all of right wing agree about this portion, which is they got rid of the
1:52:59 bias against preexisting conditions. Why did they do that particularly? Because the country was
1:53:05 about to get in a fucking rage. We all have preexisting conditions. If you deny me when
1:53:10 I’m sick, what the fuck’s the point of insurance, right? And the anger had gotten to a nuclear level.
1:53:15 So they’re like, release valve, get rid of preexisting conditions. Let’s go back to just
1:53:21 milking them regularly. And oh, by the way, put in a mandate so that they have to buy it from us,
1:53:26 right? Do you know who originally came up with Obamacare? The Heritage Foundation.
1:53:32 It was their proposal. Romney did it in Massachusetts. It was called Romney Care.
1:53:37 So I think this is a super important election. But I’ve earned the credibility to be able to
1:53:42 say that. Because in 2012, I said this is a largely unimportant election. Mitt Romney and
1:53:51 Barack Obama’s policies on economic issues are near identical. Obamacare was literally Romney Care.
1:53:55 Right now the left says, oh, the Heritage Foundation, it’s so dangerous. Project 2025.
1:54:00 Well, brother, they’re the ones who wrote Obamacare. And you say that’s the greatest
1:54:07 change in the world, right? So that’s why the Democrats, yeah, I’ll take the 10% change overall.
1:54:14 I think Biden did about 15%. Obama did 5%. But they’re gonna, they’ll also march you backwards
1:54:19 by deregulating like Clinton did and Obama did the bank bailouts like Obama did. But 10% is
1:54:24 better than 0%. But it’s not to help you. It’s the release valve. So the system keeps going.
1:54:27 Is it possible to steal man the case that,
1:54:37 that not all politicians are corporatists? Or maybe how would you approach that? For example,
1:54:43 this podcast has a bunch of sponsors. I give zero fucks about what they think about what I’m
1:54:48 saying. Like they have zero control over me. Maybe you could say that’s not, that’s because it’s not
1:54:56 a lot of money. Or maybe, maybe I’m a unique person or something like this. But I just think
1:55:01 it’s possible to have, and I would like to believe a lot of politicians that this way,
1:55:09 that they have ideas. And while they take money, they kind of see it as a game that, you know,
1:55:15 you accept the money, kind of go to certain parties, hug people and so on. But it doesn’t
1:55:21 actually fundamentally compromise your integrity on issues you actually care about.
1:55:27 I can steal man almost anything. I can steal man Trump. I can steal man conservatives easily,
1:55:34 right? Corporate politicians, the hard one. So first, it’s not all politicians. We can
1:55:41 start out nice and easy. Tom Massie, now Holly and Gates, taking, not taking corporate PAC money.
1:55:46 Bernie, the squad, they don’t take corporate PAC money. You could disagree on either end of those
1:55:54 folks on social issues. But generally, they are a thousand times less corrupt. They’re more honest.
1:55:59 And part of the reason you might hate the squad is because they’re so honest. They tell you
1:56:02 their real opinion on social issues that you really disagree with. A lot of the corporate
1:56:06 politicians won’t do that because they’re trying to get as many votes as possible so they can
1:56:10 fillate their donors when they get into office and do all their favors for them.
1:56:14 Okay. But you see, I’m already falling apart on the steelmaking of corporate politicians.
1:56:20 Let’s zoom in on that. So if you take corporate PAC money, you’re that’s it. You’re you’re
1:56:24 corrupted. Can you imagine yourself, say you’re a politician, you’re a president.
1:56:31 You’re a human being. You’re a person with integrity. You’re a person who thinks about the
1:56:38 world. You’re saying if I was a corporate PAC and I give you a billion dollars, you still you’d be,
1:56:43 I could tell you anything. So Lex, everything is a spectrum. Humanity is a spectrum. So can you
1:56:51 find outliers who could take corporate PAC money and still be principled enough to resist its lure?
1:56:56 Yeah. And and I would hope that I would be a person like that, but I wouldn’t take corporate
1:57:02 PAC money. But if you force me to, I think I would still stay principled and do it. Could you find
1:57:09 10, 20 other people in the country? Yeah. But on average, that is not what will happen. What
1:57:14 will happen is they will take the money and do exactly as they are told.
1:57:21 I think most people have integrity. Okay. Okay. So what I’m more worried about is when you take
1:57:27 corporate PAC money, it’s not that you are immediately sold is over time. Over time. That’s
1:57:34 true. So yeah, I get it. But I wonder if the integrity that I think most people have can
1:57:44 withstand the gradual slippery slope of the effect of corporate money, which if what I’m
1:57:49 saying is true, then most people have integrity. One of the ways to solve the effect of corporate
1:57:55 money is term limits because it takes time to corrupt people. You can’t buy them immediately.
1:58:02 And then the term limits for the listener. Cenk is shaking his head.
1:58:07 Yeah. So look, you’re right that over time it gets way worse. And as we talked about earlier,
1:58:12 Biden’s a great example of that. Comes in anti-corruption, winds up being totally pro-corruption
1:58:18 by the end. But he was also here for almost all of it as we started in a world that was not run
1:58:24 by money in politics and is now completely run by money in politics. So does it get worse over
1:58:29 time? Cinnamon is a Christian cinnamon. Arizona is a great example that comes in as a progressive,
1:58:36 doesn’t want to take back money, cares about the average person, etc. Over time,
1:58:43 she becomes the biggest corporatist in the Senate and a total disaster. But if you say that the
1:58:49 majority of politicians have been, I don’t know if this is what you’re saying, majority of politicians
1:58:56 have integrity? No, let’s start at the majority of human beings. And I think that politicians
1:59:06 are not a special group of sociopaths. They lean a little bit towards that direction,
1:59:10 but they’re not like only sociopaths go into politics. It’s like you have to have some
1:59:15 sociopathic qualities, I think, to go into politics, but they’re not completely sociopath.
1:59:22 I think they do have integrity because sometimes for very selfish reasons, it’s not all about money,
1:59:28 even for a selfish person, for a narcissist. It’s also about being recognized for having
1:59:34 had positive impact on the world. Yeah, I get it. But all right, so let’s break it down.
1:59:39 So first, human beings, then we’ll get the politicians. Do human beings have integrity?
1:59:46 Well, it’s a spectrum. So some people have enormous integrity, some people have no integrity.
1:59:52 So there is not one type or character, right? So some people have a ton of empathy for other
1:59:58 human beings, and they literally feel it. Like I feel the pain of someone else. And I’m not alone,
2:00:03 most people feel the pain of someone else. If you see it on video, a baby being hurt,
2:00:10 an overwhelming majority of human beings will go, “No!” Right? You have empathy,
2:00:15 that’s a natural feeling that you have. Some people have no empathy because they’re on the
2:00:22 extreme end of the spectrum, serial killers and Donald Trump. Okay. And so I’m partly joking,
2:00:29 but not really. He has never demonstrated any empathy that I have ever seen for any other human
2:00:33 being. I’m going to trigger some right-wingers because they think every terrible thing he said
2:00:39 is out of context or joking or not real or fake news. But his chief of staff didn’t make it up.
2:00:45 He called the people who went into the military suckers and losers. Why? Why did he say that?
2:00:49 Just hang with me for a second, don’t have your head explode, okay? I’m not saying the
2:00:54 likes, I’m saying the right-wingers out there, right? So the reason is because if you’re like
2:01:01 Trump and you literally don’t feel the empathy, you think, “Why the hell would I go in the military?
2:01:06 Get killed for someone else.” What a sucker! No, I’m going to stay out of the military,
2:01:09 I’m going to stay alive, I’m going to make a ton of money and I’m going to look out for myself.
2:01:16 And he assumes, because everybody does this, you assume that everyone thinks like you do,
2:01:22 but they don’t. So Trump assumes everybody’s as much of a dirtbag as he is and because he doesn’t
2:01:28 feel it, he doesn’t feel the empathy. And so he’s like, “Yeah, you’d be an idiot, a sucker and a
2:01:33 loser to go into the military and have a sacrifice for other people.” So you see this spectrum.
2:01:36 Even if you think Trump’s not on that end and you think I’m wrong about that, you get that
2:01:42 there are people on that end, right? So you have a spectrum of integrity, empathy, etc.
2:01:47 That’s what I would call your hardware. You layer on top of that your software, okay? And the
2:01:54 software is cultural influences. Your parents, media, your friends, all these are cultural influences.
2:02:01 So now when you’re in certain industries, they value more integrity. So
2:02:07 religious leaders, if you’re doing it right, which is also very rare, right? But if you’re doing it
2:02:12 right, you’re supposed to have empathy for the poor, the needy, the whole flock, right? So that
2:02:19 profession is incentivizing you towards empathy and integrity, okay? And even then,
2:02:26 a giant amount of people abuse it, right? But okay, good. In politics, it creates incentives
2:02:34 for the opposite, no integrity. And that software, to your point, over time, gets stronger and
2:02:39 stronger and stronger until it takes over. Now, you might have someone with a lot of integrity,
2:02:46 like Tom Massey, right? A little Republican from Kentucky. And whether I agree with him or disagree
2:02:51 with him on policy, I get that the brother is actually doing it based on principles.
2:02:55 And there isn’t any amount of money you can give Tom Massey for him to change his principles.
2:03:00 Why? He’s on the principled end of the spectrum as a human being, right? So is Bernie. They’re on
2:03:07 the same part of that spectrum, right? But for most people, the great majority of the spectrum,
2:03:12 if you overload them with software that incentivizes them to not have integrity,
2:03:17 they will succumb. And now let’s switch to politicians in particular. Why do I think that
2:03:25 they’re, on average, far more likely to be on the sociopathic part of the spectrum? Because
2:03:31 of the incentives and disincentives. So this changes every congressional cycle. And when
2:03:36 just Democrats were winning a lot, it got all the way down to 87.5%. But on average,
2:03:41 for congressional elections, the person with more money wins 95% of the time. It doesn’t
2:03:46 matter if they’re a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, or any ideology they
2:03:54 have, 95%. Okay. So now let’s say you got the 5% that went in that are not hooked on the money.
2:03:58 Well, they’re going to get a primary challenge, then they’re going to get a general election
2:04:04 challenge. And 95% of the time, the one with more money wins. So eventually, this system cycles
2:04:12 through until almost only the corrupt are left. Wait, hold on a second. Is that real? 95%. So if
2:04:24 you have more money, 95% of the time you win, huh? Yes. I’d like to believe that’s less the case,
2:04:30 for example, for higher you get. Yes, that’s true. You’re right. So you know why? So the
2:04:37 presidential race is ironically in some ways the least corrupt. So let’s dive into why. If you’re
2:04:41 running a local race anywhere in the country, you’re going to get almost no press coverage,
2:04:46 meaning congressional race, right? If you’re running a Senate race in the middle of Montana,
2:04:52 you’re going to get almost no media coverage. So that’s where your money in politics has the most
2:04:57 effect, because then you could just buy the airwaves. You outspend the other guy, you get all
2:05:01 the ads plus you get the friendly media coverage because you just bought a couple of million
2:05:06 dollars of ads in the middle of Montana. So the local news loves you, the TV stations, the radio
2:05:11 stations, the papers. So some of the papers are principal, they might say, oh no, but overall
2:05:15 they’re not calling you a radical, they’re not calling you anything, and you’re buying those
2:05:20 races. But when you get to the presidential race, that’s much harder. Because presidential race,
2:05:28 you have earned media, free media that overwhelms paid media. Perfect examples, 2016. Hillary Clinton
2:05:35 outraises Trump by about two to one, but she loses anyway. Why? Because Trump got almost twice as much
2:05:40 earned media as she did. And the earned media is better. It’s inside the content, right? It is
2:05:47 definitely better. So in a presidential election, as long as you got past the primary, you could
2:05:55 actually win with not that much money. And that’s part of the reason why I have hope, Lex. Because
2:06:00 all you got to do is get past a Republican or Democratic primary. And that’s very, very, very
2:06:06 difficult, but Trump did it, right? Now he took it in the wrong direction, but he did leave a
2:06:11 blueprint for how to do it. And so once you get to the general election, you’re off to the race,
2:06:16 you could do any goddamn thing you like, okay? You could be super popular, you don’t have to give a
2:06:20 shit about the donors, you can get into office, you could bully your own party and the other party
2:06:24 into doing what you want. And you can get everything done, you could even get money out of politics.
2:06:30 So don’t lose hope. I mean, we even started Operation Hope at TYT. And our first project
2:06:34 was to knock Biden out. And everybody said you guys are nuts. That’s totally impossible.
2:06:39 And we knocked Biden out, right? Did we do it alone? Of course not. We were a small part of it,
2:06:46 right? But we laid the groundwork for hope. And we laid the groundwork for when he flopped in the
2:06:52 debate, people had already been told, remember, he’s bad, he’s old, he’s not right. And the debate
2:06:56 proved it. If we hadn’t done that groundwork, and not just the young Turks, obviously, but
2:07:02 Axelrod and Carville and Nate Silver and Ezra Klein, et cetera, Charlemagne the God, John
2:07:09 Stewart, all these people helped a lot so that when the debate happened, it confirmed the idea
2:07:15 that out there that he was too old and couldn’t do it. So my point is hope is, if you lose hope,
2:07:20 you’re done for, then they’re definitely going to win, right? Hope is the most dangerous thing in
2:07:25 the world for the elites. So whether you’re right wing or left wing, I need you to have hope and I
2:07:30 need you to understand it’s not misplaced. We just got to get past the primary and we’re going to
2:07:35 turn this whole thing around. So you’re basically a presidential candidate who’s a populist who
2:07:45 in part runs on getting money out of politics. Okay, well, let’s talk about Donald Trump.
2:07:54 So to me, the two biggest criticisms of Trump is the fake election scheme. Out of that whole
2:07:59 2020 election, the fake election scheme is the thing that really bothers me. And then the second
2:08:08 thing across a larger time scale is the counterproductive division that he’s created in, let’s
2:08:15 say our public discourse. What are your top five criticisms of Trump? Okay, so number one, I have
2:08:21 the same exact thing as you. The fake election scheme is unacceptable, totally disqualifying.
2:08:27 So the fake election scheme was a literal coup attempt. So he doesn’t win the election. For
2:08:32 folks who don’t know, I need to explain why it’s a coup attempt, because you just throw out words
2:08:36 and then people get triggered by the words and then they go into their separate corners, right?
2:08:44 So the January 6th rioters, they were not going to keep the building. That was not a coup attempt.
2:08:50 It’s not like, oh, the MAGA guys have the building. I guess they win, right? No, that was never going
2:08:56 to happen. So what was the point of the January 6th riot? It was to delay the proceedings. Why did
2:08:59 it matter that they were going to delay the proceedings? Because if you can’t certify the
2:09:04 election, they wanted general confusion and chaos so that the Republicans in Congress could say,
2:09:08 well, we don’t know who won, so we’re going to have to kick it back to the states.
2:09:13 In the states, they had the fake electors ready. And remember, the fake electors are not Trump’s
2:09:19 electors. Both candidates have a slate of electors, Biden’s electors and Trump’s electors. They go to
2:09:27 the Trump electors first in this plan and half the Trump electors go, no, I’m not going to pretend
2:09:31 Trump won the election when he didn’t win the election. So they’re like, shit, now we’ve got to
2:09:36 come up with fake electors, okay? So they enlist these Republicans to go, yeah, I’ll pretend Trump won,
2:09:41 right? And so they sign a piece of paper. That’s fraud and that’s why a lot of them are
2:09:49 now being prosecuted in the different states. And so the idea is the Republican legislature,
2:09:55 legislators then go, we’re sending these new electors in and we think Trump won Arizona and
2:10:01 Georgia and Wisconsin, right? That was the idea. That was the plan. And then you come back to the
2:10:08 House at that point when there are two different sets of electors, the rule constitutional rule is
2:10:14 the House decides, but the House decides not on a majority because the Democrats had the majority
2:10:20 at the time. They decide on a majority of the states. They vote by state and the Republicans
2:10:25 had the majority of the states. So in that way, you steal the election even though Trump didn’t
2:10:32 win, you install them back in as president. That is a frontal assault on democracy. And I loathe it
2:10:38 and then Trump on top just blabbers out. Well, sometimes you have, if there’s massive fraud
2:10:43 in an election, in other words, I think I won. I don’t even think that I’m just saying that I won,
2:10:49 right? He says you can terminate any rule regulation or article even in the Constitution.
2:10:54 No, brother, you cannot terminate the Constitution because you’d like to do a fake
2:11:01 electors scheme and do a coup against America. Fuck you. Okay, so I’m never going to allow
2:11:07 this want to be tyrant to go back into the White House and endanger our system. And so you want
2:11:13 to endanger the corrupt system? I’m the guy. Okay, let’s go get that corrupt system and tear it down.
2:11:18 If you want to endanger the real system, democracy, capitalism, the Constitution,
2:11:23 then I’m your biggest enemy. So I’m never going to take that risk. And you see it every time he
2:11:29 goes to talk to a dictator. Look, guys, I’m asking you to be principled, right? I asked the left of
2:11:35 that and we drive away some of our audience when we do that. So we got the balls to do that to our
2:11:41 own side. So for the right wing, be honest, if it was Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Kamala Harris,
2:11:49 that went and wrote quote unquote love letters to a Communist dictator who runs concentration camps.
2:11:56 You would say, “Communist, we knew it. Look at that.” And Trump literally says about Kim Jong-un,
2:12:02 “We wrote love letters to one another. We fell in love.” If a Democrat said that,
2:12:09 they’d be politically decapitated, right? Their career would be instantly over, right? But Trump,
2:12:14 whatever is Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, I don’t get into Russia, Russia, Russia. But it’s just
2:12:22 that he’s a strong man, right? Kim Jong-un or any Victor Orban, Duterte in the Philippines,
2:12:30 anytime it’s a strong man that says, “Screw our Constitution. Screw our rules. I want total loyalty
2:12:36 to one person.” Trump loves him. He loves him. He said once, he’s like, “Oh, it’s great. You go to
2:12:43 North Korea or China,” and when the leader walks in, everybody applauds, and everybody
2:12:47 listens to what he says. That’s how it should be here. No, brother, that’s not how it should be here.
2:12:54 You hate democracy. You want to be the sole guy in charge. As a populist, you should loathe Donald Trump.
2:12:59 I agree on the fake election scheme. Can you steal man and maybe educate me on,
2:13:07 there’s a book rigged that I started reading. Is there any degree to which the election was rigged
2:13:13 or elections in general are rigged? I think the book rigged. The main case they make is not that
2:13:21 there’s some shady, fake ballots. It’s more the impact of mainstream media and the impact of big tech.
2:13:28 So, rigged is another one of those words that triggers people and is ill-defined, right? So,
2:13:36 let’s begin to define it. So, the worst case of rigged is we actually change the votes, right?
2:13:41 So, a lot of Trump people think that that’s what happened. Nonsense. That didn’t happen at all.
2:13:48 So, then you move, and by the way, some on the left thought the votes were changed in the 2016
2:13:55 primary and it was literally rigged against Bernie. No, that did not happen. That is a massive
2:14:01 crime and is very risky and is relatively easy to get caught. People who are in power are not
2:14:06 interested in getting caught. They’re not interested in going to jail, etc. It is a very extreme thing.
2:14:13 Could it happen? Yes, it could happen. Have I seen any evidence of it happening in my lifetime? Not really.
2:14:19 Given how much people hate this, you probably just need to find evidence of one time,
2:14:26 like one vote being changed where you can trace them saying something in some room,
2:14:31 somewhere, that would just explode. That evidence just doesn’t seem to be there.
2:14:36 And by the way, for the right-wing who say verify the vote, god damn right, verify the vote, right?
2:14:40 So, you want to have different proposals like paper ballots, recounts, and recounts, which by
2:14:46 the way, you had not paper ballots, but the three recounts and a hand recount in Georgia and so many
2:14:51 of these swing states, he lost, he lost, he lost. There was no significant voter fraud.
2:14:59 Now, second thing in terms of rigging is voter fraud. So, and the right-wing believes, oh my
2:15:04 god, there’s voter fraud everywhere. Not remotely true. Heritage Foundation does a study. They want
2:15:09 to prove it so badly. And it turns out, no matter how much they moved the numbers, the final number
2:15:21 they got was, it happens 0.000006% of the time. Okay. It almost never happens. They found like
2:15:27 31 instances over a decade or two decades. So, it’s- What counts as voter fraud?
2:15:31 So, a lot of times these days, it’ll be Republicans who do it because it’ll be, and it’s
2:15:36 not nefarious. It’s a knucklehead who goes in and says, “Oh, I heard they are having
2:15:40 non-documentary, the illegals vote. So, I voted for me and my mom even though she’s dead.”
2:15:46 But that’s fair. They’re doing it. No, brother, that’s not fair. That’s not how it works. You’re
2:15:51 under arrest. So, what about non-citizens voting? So, it’s preposterous. Of course,
2:15:57 non-citizens shouldn’t vote and they don’t vote. But there’s not, you don’t have to prove citizenship
2:16:02 when you’re voting, right? No, you do. I mean, it depends on what you mean by prove and when you
2:16:10 vote, right? So, you’re not allowed to vote as an undocumented immigrant. So, that happens up front
2:16:14 when you go to like, again, it’s a hall of mirrors. Like, there’s so many different ways
2:16:19 to create mirages. So, the Republicans will say, “Well, when you go to the voting booth,
2:16:24 they don’t make you show a passport.” Yeah, that’s true, but you showed it earlier when
2:16:30 you registered, right? And so, and we can get into voter ID laws. There’s all sorts of things,
2:16:34 but we got to, we’ll speed up the spectrum, right? So, these things almost never happen.
2:16:39 Voter fraud happens super rarely and not enough to swing elections. And by the way, sometimes,
2:16:42 if there is an issue, they’ll redo an election. There is actually a process for that. And it
2:16:47 happened in North Carolina because Republicans did voter fraud in this one district, okay? And it
2:16:52 wasn’t the candidate himself. It was this campaign person and they did ballot harvesting and then,
2:16:56 but ballot harvesting, again, it depends on what you mean. If you’re just collecting ballots,
2:17:02 that’s okay. He changed the ballots. That’s not okay. And so, they had to redo that election.
2:17:09 So, now, the real place where it gets rigged is before elections. And there’s two main ways that
2:17:17 things get rigged. One is almost exclusively, no, that’s not fair. I was going to say Republicans,
2:17:21 but Democrats do it too in a different way. So, Republicans will come in like Brian Kemp is the
2:17:27 king of this in Georgia. So, he was against Trump doing it ex post facto. He’s like, “No, you idiot.
2:17:32 We don’t cheat after the election. We cheat before the election.” Okay? So, they’ll go, “Well, I mean,
2:17:35 you got to clear out the voter rolls every once in a while.” And that’s true because people die,
2:17:39 people move, and you got to clean out the voter rolls. So, then they come in and they go,
2:17:44 “We will clean them out, mainly in black areas.” Okay? Oh, look at that. There goes a couple of
2:17:49 million black voters. Well, some of those, I suppose, are real voters, but they’ll have to
2:17:55 reregister, and then they’ll find that out on election day. And oh, well, now, sorry, you couldn’t
2:18:01 vote this time. Remember to reregister next time. And so, do they go, “Hey, we’re going to take black
2:18:07 people off the voter rolls?” No. What they do is, “We’re having more issues in these districts.”
2:18:13 Right? Here’s another way they do it. How many voting boosts do you have in the area? So, primarily,
2:18:18 Republican areas will get tons of voting boosts, so you don’t have to wait in line.
2:18:24 You go in, you vote, you go to work, no problem. You’re in a black area in a Republican state,
2:18:30 all of a sudden, “Hey, look, that’s city.” Well, we sent you four voting boosts. “Oh,
2:18:33 you got a million people there? Well, what are you going to do? I guess you got to wait
2:18:36 in line the whole day. You can’t go to work, et cetera.” So, that’s the way…
2:18:43 I refuse to believe it’s only the Republicans that do that. I would say…
2:18:47 So, that’s why I paused. Yeah. That just seems too obvious to do by both.
2:18:54 Yeah. No, no. The Democrats are so weak, like they mainly don’t do that, but they do do
2:18:58 the third thing, which is gerrymandering. So, both Republicans and Democrats…
2:19:02 Also, their favorite flavors of messing with the vote. Okay.
2:19:08 Yeah. So, gerrymandering is the best way to rig an election. That way, the politicians pick their
2:19:14 voters instead of the voters picking their politicians. So, all these districts are so
2:19:19 heavily gerrymandered that the incumbent almost can’t lose. They’ll push most of the
2:19:24 voters into one district, most of the voters in another district, because they don’t want
2:19:35 competition. So, then you’re screwed. The vote isn’t rigged, but the district is rigged
2:19:43 so that the incumbent wins almost no matter what. So, that’s why we’ve gotten so polarized,
2:19:49 because the gerrymandering creates 90% of seats that are safe. So, they don’t have to compromise.
2:19:53 They don’t have to get to a middle. They could just be extreme on either side,
2:19:57 because they already locked it up. Okay. So, that’s the number one way to rig an election.
2:20:02 Now, finally, the last part of it is maybe the most important, maybe even more important,
2:20:08 than gerrymandering. And that’s the media. So, it just happened to RFK Jr. It happened
2:20:14 to Bernie in 2015. It happens to any outsider, right or left. The media, if you’re an outsider,
2:20:21 will say, “Well, radical, number one, they don’t platform you.” So, they’re not going to have you
2:20:24 on to begin with. Nobody’s even going to find out about you. If nobody finds out about you,
2:20:32 you’re done for, right? So, Bernie broke through that because he was so popular, and the rallies
2:20:38 were so huge that local news couldn’t help but cover him. Jesus Christ, what are all these people
2:20:41 doing in the middle of the city, right? And he slowly broke through that. But do you know
2:20:46 that in 2015, as he’s doing this miraculous run against Hillary Clinton, nobody thinks he has
2:20:54 a chance? And here comes Bernie, and he’s almost at 48%. He had seven seconds of coverage on ABC
2:21:00 that year. They just will not put you on. That is the number one way they ring an election.
2:21:08 Bobby Kennedy Jr. is sitting at 20% in a primary, no town hall. 20% is a giant number, right? And
2:21:12 you’re not going to do a town hall. You’re not going to do a debate. 12% in the general election,
2:21:19 a giant number in a general election, no town hall, no debate. If no one finds out about you,
2:21:25 they don’t know to vote for you, right? If they don’t find out your policies. Corporate media
2:21:30 rigs elections more than anything else in the world. Now, this is something you’ve been a bit
2:21:35 controversial about. But the general sort of standard belief is that there’s a left-leaning
2:21:42 bias in the mainstream media because, as I think studies show, a large majority of journalists
2:21:49 are left-leaning, and then that there’s a bias in big tech. Employees of big tech companies
2:21:56 from search engines to social media are left-leaning. And there, that’s a huge majority is left-leaning.
2:22:04 So the conventional wisdom is that there is a bias towards the left. First of all,
2:22:10 I think you’ve argued that that’s not true, that there’s a bias in the other direction.
2:22:14 But whether there’s a bias or not, do you think that, how big of an impact that has
2:22:19 on the result of the election? Okay, so let’s break that down. Tech and
2:22:24 media are totally different. So let’s do media first and we’ll do tech. So on mainstream media,
2:22:31 corporate media, and I actually think that right-wing media like Fox News is part of
2:22:38 corporate media. They just play good cop, bad cop. And so in that realm, the bias is not right or
2:22:43 left, except on social issues. Okay, so that’s where that image comes from. On social issues,
2:22:51 yes, the media is generally on the left. And right-wing, sorry, but this started in the 1960s,
2:22:55 and the right-wing got super mad at mainstream media saying that black people were equal to white
2:23:01 people. That’s not the case anymore. Okay, right-wing, calm down. I’m not calling you all racist.
2:23:05 But in the 1960s, were there racism? Was there racism? Of course! Of course, they wouldn’t even
2:23:09 let black kids into the schools, right? There was massive segregation in the South, but a lot
2:23:13 in the North as well. And at that point, in mainstream media says, well, I mean, they are
2:23:20 citizens. They should have equal rights. And the right-wing goes, bias! Okay, yeah, I mean,
2:23:23 you’re kind of right. It is a bias. It is a bias towards equality in that case.
2:23:30 But that is perceived as on the left. Now, fast forward to today, you don’t have that on the
2:23:36 racial issues as obviously as much as we had it back then, but on gay marriage that existed for
2:23:41 a long time, where the media is like, well, they kind of should have the same rights as
2:23:47 straight people, right? And the right-wing went, bias! Right? So, okay, you’re kind of right about
2:23:54 that. But at the same time, I would argue their position is correct, right? So, can they go too
2:24:00 far? Of course, they can go too far. Okay, now, but that’s not the main deal, guys. That’s to distract
2:24:05 you. The main deal is economic issues. And again, we say it ahead of time, and you can see if we’re
2:24:12 right or wrong, right? So, we will tell folks, when we get to an economic bill, you will see,
2:24:17 all of a sudden, the guys who theoretically disagree, Fox News and MSNBC close ranks.
2:24:21 And you just saw it happen with price gouging. That issue of price gouging? All of a sudden,
2:24:26 there’s a lot of MSNBC hosts, CNN hosts, Washington Post writes an op-ed against it,
2:24:30 and everybody panics who’s like, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can’t control anything a corporation
2:24:34 does. This is wrong! This is wrong!” Right? Oh, what happened? I thought you guys were hated each
2:24:39 other. All of a sudden, you totally agree. Fascinating. Okay? Same thing happened on
2:24:42 increasing wages. When they were talking about increasing the minimum wage,
2:24:49 Stephanie ruled, giants screed against it on MSNBC. All of a sudden, Fox News and MSNBC agree, right?
2:24:55 Do not touch beloved corporations. So, now that gets us to our real bias. It’s not left or right.
2:25:01 It’s pro-corporate for all the reasons we talked about before. Corporate media, corporate politicians.
2:25:05 So, if you don’t believe me today, whether you’re on the right or the left,
2:25:12 watch. Next time on Economic Issue, where do they fall? How do they react? When any time it’s a
2:25:18 corporate issue, where does the media go? Right? So, that’s the real bias of the media. And so,
2:25:24 since the real bias of the media is pro-corporations, that is not a left-wing position. That is
2:25:28 considered more of a right-wing position. I even think that’s a misnomer, because to be fair to
2:25:34 right-wing voters, they’re not pro-corporations. They’re not pro-big business. They’re not pro-corruption.
2:25:39 But the Republican politicians are, so it gets framed as a right-wing issue, right? So, if you
2:25:46 think that the corporate media is too populist, you just don’t get it. They aren’t. They hate populism.
2:25:54 So, now when you turn to tech. So, tech’s a complicated one, because, yeah, people write the
2:25:59 code. If they’re left-wingers, they’re going to have certain assumptions, and they might write
2:26:07 that into the codes of the rules. And so, but they’re also, generally speaking, wealthy. They’re
2:26:12 usually white. They’re usually male. And those biases also get going. And there’s a lot of people
2:26:18 on the left who object to that bias, right? Okay, but that’s a fair and interesting conversation,
2:26:22 and one we have to be careful of, and one we could hopefully find a middle ground on.
2:26:28 But that’s not the major problem. The major reason why big tech gets attacked is because
2:26:36 they are competitors of who. Social media competes with mainstream media. So, mainstream media has
2:26:43 been attacking big tech from day one, pretending that it’s a, they’re really concerned. Yeah,
2:26:48 they’re really concerned, because that’s their competition, and they’re getting their ass handed
2:26:55 to them. So, I did a story on the Young Turks about CNN article about all the dangers of social
2:27:03 media. I’m like, guys, this is written by their advertising department, okay? And in fact,
2:27:07 they go to the advertisers and they find a random video on YouTube or Facebook,
2:27:14 right out of billions of videos. And they’re like, look at your ad is on this video. Do you denounce
2:27:19 and reject every big tech company and every member of social media? And the advertisers are like,
2:27:28 yeah, I do, right? Meanwhile, they’re doing Milf Island on TV. Okay, I didn’t know that.
2:27:36 There’s literally a show that came out recently, where it’s moms and their sons and they fuck each
2:27:41 other. Oh, wow. Okay, they don’t, they don’t have sex with their mom. They have sex with a different
2:27:47 mom, or they date, but then the show is, oh, then they go off into a corner, etc. Right?
2:27:54 I’m like, you’re doing this kind of like the worst degrading, ridiculous, immoral programming.
2:27:58 And then you found a video on YouTube that has a problem. Get the fuck out of here. You’re just
2:28:05 trying to kneecap your competition. Let’s talk about the saga of Joe Biden. So over the past year,
2:28:12 over the past few months, can you just rewind? Where have you maybe tell the story of Joe Biden,
2:28:21 as you see from the election perspective? Yeah, so about a year ago, I, I’m looking at the polling.
2:28:28 And first of all, I have eyes, right? And ears. So whenever I see Biden, I’m like, this is a disaster.
2:28:34 And then I go and talk to real people. And when I say real people, I mean, not in politics. That’s
2:28:40 not their job, right? Because people involved in politics for media have a certain perspective,
2:28:47 and it’s colored by all the exchanges in mainstream media, social media, etc. Real people aren’t on
2:28:54 Twitter having political fights. They’re not watching CNN religiously, etc. Whenever I was at
2:28:59 a barbecue, you guys all Democrats and some barbecues. Yeah. What do you guys think of Joe Biden?
2:29:07 Like almost in unison, too old. Every real person said too old. So I look at what real people are
2:29:11 saying. That’s why I thought Trump was going to win in 2016. I go in the middle of Ohio. I can’t
2:29:18 see a Hillary Clinton sign for hundreds of miles, right? It’s Trump paraphernalia everywhere, right?
2:29:23 So that’s not end all be all. You could say it’s anecdotal, but you begin to collect data points,
2:29:28 right? But then the real data points are in polling. Okay, so now I’m looking at Biden polling.
2:29:35 He’s in the 30s. No incumbent in the 30s has ever come back to win. So I’m like, it’s already over.
2:29:41 Then all of a sudden, oh my God, Trump takes the lead with Latinos. It’s double over.
2:29:47 By the later in the process, Trump took the lead with young voters. I’m like, this is the most
2:29:55 over-election in history. A Democrat cannot win if they’re not winning young voters. That’s impossible.
2:30:02 Trump’s cutting into his lead with black voters. This thing is over, right? And I go tell people
2:30:08 and they’re like, you’re crazy. Why do they think I’m crazy? Because MSNBC is lying to them 24/7,
2:30:15 telling them that Joe Biden created sliced bread and the wheel and fire. And my favorite
2:30:22 target point was he’s a dynamo behind the scenes. I’m like, okay, let me get this right. It’s like
2:30:27 an SNL skit, right? I’m like, so behind the scenes is like, all right, Sally, get me the memo on that
2:30:31 and we’re okay. We’re going to do this and I’m in command of the material. Then he goes in front
2:30:38 of the cameras. Anyways, why would any politician do that? Why would they be terrible in front of
2:30:43 the camera and great off camera? That doesn’t make any sense. But once you get people enough
2:30:50 propaganda and MSNBC created Blue Maga, right, they’ll believe anything. So they believe that
2:30:56 Biden was dynamic and young, and that he was the best possible candidate to beat Donald Trump,
2:31:00 when in reality, he was about the only Democrat who couldn’t beat Donald Trump.
2:31:08 So number one, I don’t cosign on a bullshit. I don’t care which side you’re on. Number two,
2:31:13 as you heard earlier, I can’t have Trump winning. It endangers the country. It endangers our
2:31:19 constitution, etc. So I’m going to do something about it. And so I start something called Operation
2:31:25 Hope on the Young Turks. And we ask the audience, what should we do, right? So there’s different
2:31:31 projects in Operation Hope. But the first project that pops up is not Biden out of the race. Okay.
2:31:38 And so then I ask our paying members on TYT, I say, guys, you’re going to vote, and then I’m
2:31:42 going to do what you tell me to do. If you say, no, I like Biden, or I think Biden’s the best
2:31:47 candidate, or even if he isn’t, we’re not going to be able to win on this. So don’t do it, right?
2:31:57 Should I enter the primary against Biden? Okay. 7624, go, enter, right? I’m a populist. You tell
2:32:02 me to go. You’re my paying members. You’re my boss. I’m going to go. Okay. So I enter the primary.
2:32:06 Now, I’m not born in the country. So people are going to freak out about that. I’m a talk show
2:32:14 host. Like the establishment media despises me, right? So I’m not going to get any air time. In
2:32:21 fact, we consider hiring the top booking agent in New York. We talk to him and he says, well,
2:32:25 you know, I’m actually in New York this week. And he says, I’m going to go talk to those guys.
2:32:30 And I’ll come, I’ll come back to you. And he was really decent. Because normally,
2:32:35 you know, he charges a lot. Just take the money, right? And go, oh, yeah, I’ll get you on. But
2:32:40 he was a wonderful guy. He said, I talked to them, you’re banned. So don’t, don’t do it. Like
2:32:45 you’re not, you’re banned at CNN, you’re banned at MSNBC. And I think you’re banned on Fox News,
2:32:52 but I’m not sure. Okay. So, so long odds, why do you do it? Because if you think we’re going to
2:32:58 crash into the iceberg, you might as well bum rush the captain’s course, right? I’m lunging at the
2:33:03 wheel. So what difference can I make? Well, I can make a difference by going on every show on
2:33:08 planet earth and going, he’s too old. He’s in the thirties. He has no chance of winning. No chance
2:33:14 of winning. I go on Charlemagne show, breakfast club, right? Charlemagne agrees. All of a sudden,
2:33:18 we’re having buzz. And then people go, oh, Charlemagne said he has no chance of winning.
2:33:22 Then Charlemagne’s on the daily show talks to John Stuart. John Stuart does a segment. Not,
2:33:27 this is not necessarily causal, but buzz is building, right? So then John Stuart does a segment,
2:33:32 if you remember, and people got super pissed at him, too old, can’t win. And all in that buzz is
2:33:39 building. Meanwhile, unrelated to us, David Axelrod and James Carville. And I’m like, guys, figure
2:33:46 it out. Who does Axelrod speak for? The top advisor for Barack Obama. Who is James Carville the top
2:33:52 advisor for? The Clintons. This is the Clintons and the Obama sending their emissaries to say,
2:33:59 we can read a poll, he’s going to lose, change direction. So when the debate happens, we laid
2:34:05 the groundwork. If we hadn’t laid the groundwork, debate would have been the first time that blue
2:34:11 MAGA would have thought, oh, maybe Biden can’t win, right? But since all of us said it and strange
2:34:17 bedfellows, I loathe Nancy Pelosi, but she was on our side. I got a lot of issues with Bill Maher.
2:34:22 He was on our side, right? I got a lot of issues with Axelrod and Carville, and they were on our
2:34:29 side. So the people who believed in objective reality kind of independently made a plan,
2:34:35 let’s show people objective reality. And we did and we drove them out and it made all the difference.
2:34:38 So you think he stepped down voluntarily or was he forced out?
2:34:45 Both. So again, it depends on what you mean. So was he forced out? Of course he was forced out.
2:34:50 You think he just woke up? He’s like, oh yeah, you know what? Screw my legacy. I don’t want to be
2:34:54 a two-term president. I’ll just drop out for no reason. No, we forced them out. Of course we did,
2:34:59 right? And when I say we, I had a tiny, tiny, tiny role, the people who had the major roles,
2:35:06 Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and all those folks. But even they were not the main driving force.
2:35:12 The number one driving force were the donors. What is the source of power of Bernie or Massey,
2:35:18 the people, right? What is the source of power for Biden? The donors. The donors made Biden,
2:35:22 he is the donor’s candidate, and the donors, that’s why he told the donors, nothing will
2:35:30 fundamentally change. That is, like you can, if you say like, no, Cenk, I think you’re too extreme
2:35:36 that Biden works for the donors 98%. I don’t think he only works for the 80% or 55%. Fine,
2:35:41 we could have that debate. But you can’t argue that it isn’t his source of power. And you can’t
2:35:45 argue it anymore, even if you were going to argue it earlier, because once the donors said,
2:35:49 we’re not giving you any more money, he didn’t have any options. He couldn’t, he couldn’t go on.
2:35:55 So, but was he forced out at like knife point or something? No. So was it voluntary? Yeah,
2:36:01 ultimately, if Biden decided to stay in, there was nothing we could do about it. And so he had to
2:36:06 voluntarily make that decision, but he voluntarily made it because he had no choice left. Yeah, I
2:36:15 wish he stepped down voluntarily from a place of strength. So I think, I think presidents,
2:36:22 I think politicians in general, especially at the highest levels want legacy. Now, to me, at least,
2:36:28 one of the greatest things you could do is to walk away from at the top. I mean, George Washington,
2:36:34 to walk away from power, is I think universally respected, especially if you got a good speech
2:36:42 to go with it, and you do it really well, not in some kind of cynical or calculator, some kind of
2:36:47 transactional way, but just like as a great leader, and maybe be a little bit even more dramatic than
2:36:53 you need to be in doing it. Yeah, I thought that would be a beautiful moment. And then launch
2:37:02 a some kind of democratic process for electing a different option. Not only did I agree with
2:37:10 you 100%, I reached one of his top advisors, one of the guys you see in the press all the time,
2:37:15 as in his inner circle. I never said that before, because we were in the middle of it, and I’m never
2:37:22 going to betray anyone’s confidence, and I’ll never say who it was. Okay, but he was gracious enough
2:37:28 to meet with me as I was about to enter the primary. And look, it’s smart too, because get
2:37:33 information, intelligence, etc. What is this guy going to be trouble or not trouble, right?
2:37:38 But at least he took the meeting. And the case I made is exactly the one you just said, Lex.
2:37:41 I said, if he drops this about 10 months ago, I said, if he drops out now,
2:37:48 they build statues of them, right? The Democrats, you’re right, when you hate him, I get it. But
2:37:54 the Democrats would have said he beat Trump and protected democracy in 2020. And he steps down
2:38:01 graciously now to make sure we beat Trump again in 2024. And he lets go of power voluntarily.
2:38:09 He’s going to be a hero, an absolute hero. But if he doesn’t, you’re going to force all of us
2:38:14 to kick the living crap out of him, and tell everybody he’s an egomaniac, which he is,
2:38:19 and he’s doing this for two so that he could be, if you don’t know Washington in that bubble,
2:38:24 if you’re a one-term president, you’re a loser. If you’re a two-term president, you have a legacy
2:38:32 in your historic. He’s running for one reason, one reason only. My legacy. I will be a two-term
2:38:37 president. I will be considered historic. I’m like, brother, now you’re going to be considered a
2:38:42 villain, the villain of the story. You’re handing it right back to Trump. You’re not going to win.
2:38:47 And you know, look at the numbers. Any political professional knows you’re not going to win.
2:38:52 So you have hero or villain and you get to choose. But if you think you’re going to be a hero and be
2:38:56 Trump, that is not a choice you have. That is not going to happen. And they didn’t believe us.
2:38:58 But by then, they did.
2:39:05 Well, you’re troubled by the how Kamala Harris was selected after he stepped down.
2:39:14 Yes and no. So I argued for an open convention. And so if Biden had stepped down when we were
2:39:20 trying to get people into the primary knock them out, then that would have been a perfect solution.
2:39:26 Then all the governors could go in. Walsh, Bashir, Whitmer, Kamala Harris goes in, obviously.
2:39:32 They have a real primary. At that point, me and later Dean Phillips came in. Me, Dean, and I mean,
2:39:35 Mary, I wouldn’t drop out. Me and Dean would definitely drop out. Because our whole point was
2:39:40 get other people on the race, make sure we win, right? So, okay, then you would have had a great
2:39:46 primary. It would have been the right way to do it both morally, you know, constitutionally, etc.
2:39:50 But also as a matter of politics, because you would have gotten a lot of coverage for your
2:39:55 young, exciting candidates. And you would have legitimized the idea that you’re protecting
2:40:00 democracy. Okay, so that didn’t happen because of Biden. It is what it is. So now when Biden drops
2:40:05 out, at least do a vestige of democracy. Go to the commission and do what it’s designed to do,
2:40:10 which is pick a candidate. Ezra Klein made a great case for this in the New York Times podcast
2:40:16 that he did. That made a huge difference. And he was great for doing that. So I believe in an
2:40:21 opening event. But I know Democrats, they love to anoint because they don’t trust the people.
2:40:27 So they think the elites are geniuses. Don’t worry, we’ll pick the right candidate. Yeah,
2:40:31 I remember when you picked Hillary Clinton, had that workout, right? And I remember when you said
2:40:36 Joe Biden was the right candidate in 2024, had that workout, do not anoint. Right. So but in the
2:40:44 end, they didn’t. So what happened was, Biden does the first announcement, he either forgot or on
2:40:49 purpose didn’t put Kamala Harris in there. So there’s all this kumbaya now. No, they don’t like
2:40:54 each other. Okay, and Biden’s been screwing her over the entire time she’s been vice president.
2:40:59 So he doesn’t put her in the original statement. And I’m like, whoa, I do a live video on media.
2:41:03 I’m like, Kamala Harris is not in the statement, right? In the middle of my video,
2:41:07 they put out a second one. Okay, fine. Kamala Harris, right? Because that’s too much for the
2:41:13 president not to endorse it. You think he was like really like somebody like stormed into the room?
2:41:19 I said, you absolutely must. I don’t know. I wasn’t there, but probably, right? Or they plan,
2:41:24 I don’t know. But the bottom line is, it was glaring that he didn’t put her in the first letter.
2:41:31 Okay, so he had to put her in the second one. Fine, no problem. But Obama, Pelosi and Schumer
2:41:38 did not endorse Kamala Harris. That’s huge. Normally, the Democrats would all endorse her
2:41:43 and would all say, she’s anointed. Shut up, everybody. And then MSNBC would scream, shut up,
2:41:49 shut up. She’s anointed, right? But they didn’t do that. So then Kamala Harris had to win over the
2:41:54 delegates. And I thought she would win them over in the convention, but she locked them up in two
2:41:59 days. And I know because I know delegates because I ran. And the delegates are calling me saying,
2:42:06 she’s getting on a Zoom right now with us, right? She went to all the states and worked her ass off
2:42:12 and locked up enough delegates to get the nomination in two days. Yeah, but come on,
2:42:21 it’s Biden endorsed. Of course. So why is that? And of course, why not say sort of lay out walls
2:42:27 in Shapiro and Kamala Harris and the options that say, well, it’s like at least a facade of
2:42:33 democracy of a democratic process. There’s what should happen and what is likely to happen.
2:42:39 So should Biden not have endorsed? Yeah, of course. I think Biden should have done the same thing as
2:42:44 Obama and Pelosi and not endorse and say, hey, we’d love to have a process where we figure out
2:42:48 who the right nominee is. And at that point, I’m really worried about Kamala Harris because
2:42:54 she’s doing word salads nonstop, right? So I’m like, don’t make the same mistake we did before
2:42:59 and just pick someone out of a hat. Test them, test them. You get stronger candidates when you
2:43:06 test them. The authoritarian nature of the DNC drives me crazy. They don’t believe in testing
2:43:10 candidates. They don’t believe in letting their own voters decide. And look, when we were in the
2:43:15 primary, they canceled the Florida election. And then, and they took me, Dean and Marianne
2:43:19 off the ballot in North Carolina and Tennessee. I’m like, guys, if you’re going to make a case
2:43:23 for democracy in the general election, and you cancel elections in the primaries,
2:43:30 do you not get how ridiculous you look, how hypocritical you look, right? So I didn’t want
2:43:36 them to Biden to endorse anyone, but I’m shocked that they didn’t all endorse her because normally
2:43:43 what happens is they all endorse. So if bottom line Lex is, did she like earning in a perfect
2:43:49 system not even close, right? But did she earn it enough in this imperfect way where at least
2:43:56 she showed some degree of competence that assuaged my concerns? Yes. So because a normal Democrat
2:44:01 would bungle that they wouldn’t go talk like Hillary Clinton, when they talked to the delegates,
2:44:06 she would assume that she’s the queen and that they would all bow their heads. She would, you know,
2:44:12 so the fact that she did elementary politics correct for Democrats is like a big win.
2:44:21 It just really frustrated me because it smelled of the same thing of fucking over Bernie in 2015,
2:44:29 ’16, and RFK and just the anointing aspect. Now, they seem to have gotten lucky in the situation
2:44:34 that it’s very possible that Kamala Harris would have been selected through a democratic process.
2:44:41 But I have to say, listening to the speeches at the DNC, Wallace was amazing. Shapiro was really
2:44:46 strong and Kamala actually was much better as compared to her as a candidate previously,
2:44:49 but personally don’t think she would have been the result of a democratic process.
2:44:54 So you don’t often give your opinions, but when you give the opinions, I actually agree 90,
2:44:59 like a huge percentage of the time in this conversation. So I fought for Shapiro in the
2:45:03 primer and when she was trying to pick for a VP because I thought there’s no way she’s going to
2:45:08 pick walls, he’s way too not just progressive, but more importantly populist, right? So I didn’t
2:45:12 think she’d go in that direction. And Shapiro actually did a bunch of populist things in Pennsylvania.
2:45:16 That’s part of the reason why he’s so popular in Pennsylvania. He looks like a smooth talking
2:45:22 politician, but his actions are pretty good. And so Shapiro was great. Wallace was great.
2:45:28 The Obamas are legendary. Even Clinton at his advanced age makes terrific points in a speech
2:45:34 where you go, well, that one’s hard to argue with, right? And so they all, I’m shocked at the
2:45:40 competence of the DNC, shocked at it. But of all those likes, so you can give a good speech,
2:45:46 and the Obamas give a mean speech. But I saw Obama as president, you know, he didn’t deliver on that.
2:45:54 So, but the one guy that stood out is Wallace. And the reason is, because he’s a real person.
2:46:00 Yeah, real person, populist. We all got to work towards picking the most genuine candidates.
2:46:06 So here, on the right wing side, for example, I would prefer Marjorie Taylor Greene to a Mitch
2:46:13 McConnell any day. Marjorie Taylor Greene is genuine. She might be genuinely nuts. I don’t
2:46:19 agree with her. She might be even more right wing than others. But I believe that she means it.
2:46:25 And I’ll take that any day over a fraud corporates like Mitch McConnell, who’s just going to do
2:46:31 what is donor’s command of them, et cetera. I got to ask you, because I also love Bernie still
2:46:37 got it. I love Bernie. I always have. I enjoyed his, I think he might still do it, but I enjoyed
2:46:43 his conversations with Tom Hartman. He’s a genuine one, like Bernie, even though you disagree with
2:46:49 him. That’s a genuine human being. Yep. So just talk about that. Is it trouble you that he’s been
2:46:56 fucked over in 2015, 16, and again, 2020, he seems to be, and why does it keep like
2:47:04 forgiving people? Yeah. So I love Bernie for the same reason you’re saying it,
2:47:08 because he’s a real person. He’s a populist. He means it. And that is so rare in politics.
2:47:14 I feel like I’m diogenes and I went looking for the one honest man and found it in Bernie.
2:47:20 And so I did a video in 2013 saying Bernie Sanders can beat Hillary Clinton in a primary.
2:47:27 In 2013, that video exists, because why did I think that? I didn’t say it of any of the
2:47:32 corporate politicians and the guys who were supposed to challenger and stuff, because populist
2:47:38 and honest, right? And the country’s dying for an honest populist, dying for it, right? So love
2:47:44 the brother. Now, that doesn’t mean that he’s right on strategy. And he drives me crazy on
2:47:52 strategy. So two elements of that. Number one, in 2016 and in 2020, for God’s sake, attack your
2:47:59 opponent. You said something about Trump that I disagree with, where I’m defending Trump, okay?
2:48:05 You don’t like what he did to the public discourse. No, I don’t mind it. I would, and I’ll tell you
2:48:13 why, because at least he got a little bit past the fakeness. Like he’s a con man and he’s a fraud
2:48:16 overall and he does everything for his own interest, but at least he doesn’t speak like a
2:48:23 bullshitting politician, right? And he’s not wrong that you have to bully your own party to
2:48:30 amass enough power to get things done. And he showed that that’s possible. So the problem with
2:48:34 the Democrats is civility. So my whole life, they’re like, “Oh, no, no, no, don’t say anything.
2:48:41 Let’s lose with civility,” right? So for example, in debates on, you know, whether it’s on TV online
2:48:48 or whatever, Democrats or people on the left are always saying, “I’m offended. I never get offended.”
2:48:56 No, after I’m done, you’re going to be offended, okay? Fight back. Fighting back wins. And we
2:49:02 couldn’t get Bernie to fight back. In 2020, he was one state away. He won the first three states.
2:49:08 He crushed the Nevada. All we needed was South Carolina. But in order to get South Carolina,
2:49:12 we all knew. Everybody on his campaign, everyone who’s in progressive media,
2:49:17 we all knew you’ve got to attack Biden. If you don’t, they’re just going to tsunami you. You
2:49:23 know, corporate medias and the corporate politicians are going to run rough shot over you. You have
2:49:29 to make the case against them. And so two times Bernie flinched. One in 2016 in the Brooklyn debate,
2:49:33 they asked, “Did the money that Hillary Clinton taken from the banks affect her votes?”
2:49:40 And he said, “No.” Of course it affected her votes. Of course it did. You have to say yes,
2:49:44 and you have to show it and prove it. The bankruptcy bill. When she was first lady,
2:49:49 she was totally in favor of the American people and against the bankruptcy bill because it
2:49:56 has the banks. You can’t discharge any debts. You know, credit card debt and bank debt,
2:50:00 et cetera. It’s an awful bill. It’s one of the most corporate bills. She was on the right side
2:50:05 as a first lady. She becomes a senator, takes banker money, and all of a sudden she flips
2:50:11 over to the banker side. “Say it, Bernie. For God’s sake, say it.” Right? Then in one of the debates
2:50:19 in 2020, his team prepares attacks against Biden. They’re not personal. They’re not like, I,
2:50:25 you can sense by now, if I’m in a political race, my objective is rip the other guys’
2:50:34 face off. Politically, rhetorically, never physically. But I would get it to a point
2:50:37 where they’d think, “I don’t know if I’m going to vote for Cenk, but I know I’m not voting for
2:50:42 the other guy. Okay, so you got to do that if you want to win.” So they prepare this. He says,
2:50:49 “I’m going to do it.” He goes on the podium and doesn’t do it because he can’t. He’s too damn nice.
2:50:53 He just can’t attack the other guy. Now, that’s problem number one in strategy.
2:50:57 Problem number two is something you alluded to. So Biden gets in office. Bernie thinks they’re
2:51:04 friends. They’re not friends. Biden’s just using him. So he uses him to get the credibility,
2:51:11 and then he eviscerates 85% of the progressive proposals that Bernie put forward. Biden throws
2:51:17 away $15 minimum wage that was Bernie’s signature issue, doesn’t even propose the public option,
2:51:23 dumps paid family for no reason. I can go on and on. And Bernie cosigns on it because he
2:51:28 thinks he’s in an alliance. He thinks Biden’s on his side, and he thinks we’re going to get
2:51:33 things done. And to be fair to Bernie, like I said earlier, Obama got only 5% of his agenda
2:51:40 passed, and Biden got 15%. Okay, so you’re right, Bernie. You got three times more than
2:51:44 under Obama, but you’re wrong. That is not fundamental change. And without fundamental
2:51:50 change, we’re screwed. Let me ask you about another impressive speech, AOC.
2:51:56 Is it possible that she’s the future of the party, future president?
2:52:07 No. So AOC, in my opinion, lost her way. And so… In which way? So it’s tough talking about these
2:52:13 things because people take it so personally, right? And that’s why you’ll see very few politicians
2:52:20 on our shows. Because we give super tough interviews, and the words aren’t in the street,
2:52:25 right? Like, don’t go to young Turks. They’ll ask you super hard questions, right? So the only
2:52:30 couple do it. Like, Ro Khanna does it. He’s brave. We’ll get into shouting matches, sometimes in the
2:52:34 middle of bills and stuff. But at least he’s there to defend his position. I respect him for that.
2:52:38 Tim Ryan, a little bit more of a conservative Democrat when he was in the house. He would
2:52:43 take on any debate, et cetera. So there’s a couple of good guys that do it, but generally they don’t.
2:52:52 So this relates to AOC because when AOC is running, we do 34 videos on her. We get her millions of views.
2:52:59 We founded Just Democrats and now launched it on the show. Our audience, Ryan Grimm,
2:53:06 documents it in one of his books. Our audience raises $2.5 million for those progressive candidates
2:53:13 overall. And at that point, AOC and all those Rashida Tlaib, et cetera, they’re all dying to
2:53:16 come on a young Turks. Makes sense. I would too, of course, and it’s not because it’s the young
2:53:21 Turks and any media outlet. And most media outlets, almost all the media outlets reject them.
2:53:28 We cover AOC more than all the other press combined, right? And she wins for a number of
2:53:32 reasons. That’s one of the reasons, but there’s many others and she did a terrific job herself.
2:53:41 She then takes Joycott and Corbin, who were the, Joycott was the head of Just Democrats and Corbin
2:53:46 was communications director for Just Democrats. Then Joycott made one of the most brilliant
2:53:51 political decisions in arguably in American history. He said, he called me and he said,
2:53:56 “Jank, I’m going to go from head of Just Democrats to running AOC’s campaign.”
2:54:01 And I’m like, “Well, the other candidates are going to get pissed and you’re staking the entire
2:54:05 enterprise on one candidate.” And I’m like, “Joycott, I’m not in it. I’m doing the media
2:54:11 arm. You’re in the trenches. You’re the guy making the decisions. So I’m going to trust
2:54:18 whatever you say. You sure?” And he said, “Yeah, I’m sure.” So him and Corbin go over to AOC’s
2:54:25 campaign. AOC then wins, that miraculous win. Then she hires Joycott to be her chief of staff
2:54:30 and she hires Corbin to be her communications director. Within six months, they’re gone.
2:54:34 And once they’re gone, AOC then goes on an establishment path.
2:54:41 Because why were they gone? Oh, they insulted one of her colleagues. Yeah, that colleague who’s a
2:54:47 total corporatist and was selling out one of our policy proposals. If you don’t call out your own
2:54:52 side, you’re never going to get anything done. But if you call out your own side, you become
2:54:58 persona non grata and it is super uncomfortable. And we couldn’t get them to do things that were
2:55:03 uncomfortable. Now, she’s going to find that outrageous and she’s going to be very offended
2:55:08 by that. And she’s going to point to a bunch of things she did that were uncomfortable.
2:55:14 And to be fair to her, she has. Until that speech, she was pretty good on Palestine
2:55:18 when we desperately needed it. She was pretty good on a bunch of issues. Cory Bush did that
2:55:24 campaign on evictions, et cetera, on the capital stats. That was great. AOC’s original sit-in
2:55:29 in Pelosi’s office. At that point, we’re all still on the same team. It’s a spectacular success.
2:55:35 Me, Corbett and Shortcott are saying, “Do it again, do it again. Now don’t abuse it. Don’t
2:55:40 be a clown and do it every other day.” But when it matters, you need to be able to challenge Pelosi.
2:55:49 In my opinion, she just got to a point where she got exhausted being uncomfortable. It’s really
2:55:55 hard. The media hates you and they keep pounding away and calling you a radical and you’re destroying
2:56:02 the Democratic Party, you’re destroying unity. Whereas, if you go along, all of a sudden,
2:56:08 you’re a queen. And now, all of a sudden, the mainstream media is saying, “Oh, AOC.” She could
2:56:13 be the progress. I mean, there’s some degree to which you want to sometimes bide your time and
2:56:21 just rest a bit. I think, from my perspective, maybe you can educate me. She seems like a legit,
2:56:31 progressive, legit, even populist, charismatic, young. A lot of time to develop the game of
2:56:37 politics, how to play it well enough to avoid the bullshit. I guess she doesn’t take corporate
2:56:44 pack money. That’s right. No, she’s still true on that. As far as just looking over the next few
2:56:51 elections, who’s going to be Iranian? Who’s going to be a real player? Timmy seems like an
2:57:01 obvious person that’s going to be in the race. So, while I fight for the ideal, I’m very practical.
2:57:14 So, for example, she wins, and then one cycle later, after 2020, there’s these guys who want to
2:57:21 quote unquote force the vote. And it was on the speakership of Nancy Pelosi, and they wanted to
2:57:26 use it to get Medicare for all. I’m like, guys, forcing a vote is a terrific idea.
2:57:33 On the speakership, who’s your alternative? Oh, we don’t have an alternative. Already,
2:57:40 giant red flag. What’s the issue you’re looking to have them vote on? Medicare for all. Oh,
2:57:46 you don’t know politics. So, I love Medicare for all. We have to get Medicare for all. But if
2:57:52 that’s the first one you put up, without gaining any leverage, you’re going to get slaughtered.
2:57:58 Put up something easy, force a vote on $15 minimum wage, or pick another one that’s easy,
2:58:03 paid family leave. These are all polling great. Because if you force a vote on that, you could
2:58:08 actually win. And if you win, you gain leverage. And then you do the next one and the next one.
2:58:13 And then you do Medicare for all, not bullshit gradualism that the corporate Democrats do,
2:58:19 but actually strategically, practically building up power and leverage and using it at the right
2:58:25 times. So, if I thought that’s what AOC was doing, I would love it. So, I don’t need her to force a
2:58:31 vote on Medicare for all. I don’t need her to go on some wild tangents that don’t make any sense and
2:58:38 is only going to diminish your power. But when they eviscerated all the progressive proposals
2:58:44 and build back better, how did that happen? Manchin and Sinema used every ounce of leverage
2:58:50 they had. They said, “I’m just not going to vote for it. I don’t care. The status quo is
2:58:56 perfect for my donors, so I don’t need you. I vote no. Now, take out everything I want.”
2:59:08 And Biden did. Progressives had to push back and say, “Here is two to three proposals. Not
2:59:14 everything, not everything. Two to three proposals. They all poll over 70 percent. They’re all no
2:59:19 brainers and they’re all things that Joe Biden promised. We want those in the bill, otherwise
2:59:25 we’re voting no.” At that point, what would have happened is the media would have exploded and they
2:59:30 would have said AOC and the rest are the scum of the earth. They’re ruining the Democratic Party.
2:59:36 We’re not going to get the bill. They’re the worst. You have to withstand that. If you cannot
2:59:42 withstand a nuclear blast for mainstream media, you’re not the person because you have to run
2:59:48 that obstacle course to get to change. If they had stood their ground, they definitely would have won
2:59:54 on one to two of those issues. Instead, they went with a strategy that was called, it was literally
3:00:04 called Trust Biden. All right. So big question. Who wins this election? Kamala or Trump and what’s
3:00:09 Kamala’s path to victory? And if you can steal man, what’s Trump’s path to victory?
3:00:16 Yeah. So there’s not enough information yet. So since I make a lot of predictions on air
3:00:24 and then brag about it unbearably, people are always, they’ll stop in the streets and they’ll
3:00:28 be like, “Predict this. Predict my marriage. Brother, I don’t know anything about your marriage.
3:00:31 How could I possibly predict something without having any information?”
3:00:38 So in the case of this campaign, right now, I got Kamala Harris at 55% chance of winning,
3:00:42 okay, which is not bad. Doesn’t mean she’s going to win by 55% because then that would be a 10-point
3:00:49 margin. That’s not going to happen, right? But I say around 51 to 55, but it’s nowhere near over
3:00:56 because of a lot of things. One, the Democrats are still seen as more establishment and people
3:01:02 hate the establishment. Two, if war breaks out in the Middle East, which is now unfortunately
3:01:09 bordering on likely, right? If that war breaks out, all bets are off.
3:01:15 Do you mean a regional war? Yeah. Iran, Israel gets to be a real thing,
3:01:20 not just a pinprick and a little bombing here and an assassination there. But no,
3:01:25 we’re going to war, right? If that happens, then all bets are off and no one has any idea who’s
3:01:29 going to win, okay? And if they’re pretending that they know, that’s ridiculous because it’s so
3:01:41 unpredictable. And then the third bogey for her is if she goes back towards south. So there’s
3:01:47 three phases of Kamala Harris’s career. She’s not necessarily any different in terms of policy.
3:01:51 You can frame it in a bad way, you can frame it in a good way. You can say,
3:01:57 oh, she’s just seeing which way the wind is blowing and then, oh, she’s a tough cop
3:02:01 prosecutor. Oh, and then she’s doing justice reform when you need people who want justice
3:02:08 reform. Oh, she’s a waffler, right? Or you could paint it as she’s pretty balanced, right? She
3:02:14 prosecuted serious criminals very harshly, but then on marijuana possession got them into rehab.
3:02:20 And you know what? That’s actually what you should do, right? So I’m not talking about policy. So
3:02:24 there you could have one of those views about Kamala Harris and I get it. I’m talking about
3:02:33 stylistically. So Kamala Harris, until the second debate in the primaries in 2020,
3:02:41 is a very competent politician who’s in line to be the next Obama, right? She’s killing it,
3:02:47 district attorney, attorney general, senator. And then the first debate, if you remember,
3:02:54 she won. She had that great line about, you know, there was a little girl on that bus that
3:02:59 was integrating the schools and that girl was me. And Biden being the knucklehead that he is,
3:03:06 he’s caught on tape going, you’re like, don’t have that reaction, brother. Okay, because she’s
3:03:12 criticizing his segregation policy on buses back in the 70s, right? So anyways, so she’s doing terrific.
3:03:21 And then after that debate, until Biden drops out, is it disaster area for Kamala Harris’s
3:03:28 career? In the primary, she starts falling apart. She can’t strategize, right? She’s for
3:03:32 Medicare for all. No, she’s not. She’s for Medicare for some. What’s Medicare for some? I don’t know,
3:03:36 right? And she goes into the next debate and Tulsi Gabbard kicks her ass and then goes into
3:03:42 the third debate, gets her ass kicked again, and she’s starting to drift away. Then at this point,
3:03:48 and this is funny, I have more votes for president than Kamala Harris does. Because Kamala Harris
3:03:54 dropped out before Iowa, because that’s how much of a disaster her campaign turned into when she
3:04:00 was leading. She was leading, right? So then she becomes vice president. And Biden, probably because
3:04:07 of that bus line, Jill Biden caught tremendous feelings over that line. Okay. So Biden’s like,
3:04:12 here, have this albatross around your neck. It’s called immigration. Good luck. I’m not going to
3:04:16 do anything about it. I’m not going to change policy, but I’m putting you in charge of it to
3:04:21 get your ass handed to you. Okay. And she does. So that’s a disaster. And then she starts doing
3:04:28 interviews where she’s like, we have to become the change, the being, but not the thing we were
3:04:32 and the unbecoming. And you’re like, what is going on? Why can neither one of them speak?
3:04:43 And so, but then the third act shocks me. So Biden steps down, she goes, grabs all those delegates
3:04:47 in a super competent way that we talked about earlier. And then she goes out and gives a speech.
3:04:51 I’m like, oh, that speech is good. Okay, here’s another one, another one. I’m like, wait a minute,
3:04:57 these are good speeches, no more word salads. Then she picks Tim Walls and shocks the world.
3:05:03 I’m like, that’s a correct VP pick. That is a miracle, right? And then she goes and does the
3:05:09 economically populist plan, all those proposals about housing that people care about,
3:05:14 grocery prices that people care about, real or not real, that is correct political strategy.
3:05:22 So this Kamala Harris is back to their original Kamala Harris, who was a very competent, skilled
3:05:29 politician. And as I was telling you offline, she’s doing, whoever’s doing her TikTok is like
3:05:36 blowing up and they’re doing risky, edgy stuff. Yes. I did not expect that from somebody that
3:05:41 kind of comes from the Biden camp of just like, be safe, be boring, all this kind of stuff.
3:05:45 So you have to give Kamala Harris ultimate credit because she’s the leader of the campaign
3:05:50 and she makes the final decisions. But there’s got, there’s apparently a couple of people inside
3:05:55 that campaign that are ass kickers. And they’re, and they have convinced her to take risk, which
3:06:01 Democrats never take. And it is correct to take risk. You cannot get to victory without risk.
3:06:09 So the vice president pick was, is the bellwether. When Hillary Clinton picked Tim Kaine, I said,
3:06:13 that’s it, she’s going to lose because Tim Kaine is playing prevent defense. He’s,
3:06:18 he’s, he’s wallpaper. I mean, he’d be lucky to be wallpaper. He’s just a white wall, right? He’s
3:06:22 just, and when he speaks, it’s white noise. He never says anything interesting. He’s the most
3:06:28 boring pick of all time. That’s saying we already won. Ha ha. Okay. If Kamala Harris had picked
3:06:33 Mark Kelly, that’s the Tim Kaine equivalent. Okay. Oh, he’s an astronaut. I don’t give a
3:06:38 shit that he’s an astronaut. What is he saying? Is he a good politician? Does he have good policies?
3:06:44 Is he exciting on the campaign trail? Is he going to add to your momentum? Mark Kelly,
3:06:49 he might be a good guy, but number one, he’s a very corporate Democrat. And number two,
3:06:55 it’s like watching grass grow. He, oh, he’s terrible at speaking if you ask me, right? So,
3:07:00 so I thought for sure she’s going to pick Mark Kelly because that’s what a normal Democrat does.
3:07:04 Or if they want to go wild and crazy, they’ll go to be sure. So I was like,
3:07:10 please let it be Shapiro because he’s at least not bad. He’s done some populist things and he’s
3:07:14 strategic. He’s really smart. I need smart candidates. Dumb candidates don’t help. They
3:07:18 don’t have a mind of their own. They can’t take risks. They’re not independent thinkers. They’re,
3:07:22 they’re going to lose. So she picks the smartest, most populous candidate. Boom,
3:07:28 boom, we got a winner. That’s a good campaign. Speaking of risks, when they debate,
3:07:34 when Kamala and Trump debate, what do you think that’s going to look like? Who do you think is
3:07:41 going to win? Oh, that’s not close. Got my hair. So yeah, unless she falls apart, unless she goes
3:07:47 back to the bad era, right? That’s risk number three. Hold on a second. Oh, I guess in a debate,
3:07:51 you don’t have, you can have pre-written. It seems like when she’s going off the top of her head
3:07:56 is when the word salad sometimes comes out. Sometimes. Yeah, we’ll have to see. Right? We’ll
3:08:00 have to see. Because she hasn’t done any tough interviews. She hasn’t really been challenged.
3:08:05 So I hope to God that doesn’t happen. That she doesn’t fall apart, you mean? Because I hope she
3:08:12 does a bunch of interviews, right? Oh, definitely, definitely. I’m like, I’m, this is going to sound
3:08:18 really funny. I’m too honest. But I am, like in the context of Kamala Harris probably shouldn’t
3:08:22 come on The Young Turks. We do a really tough interview and it would hurt her. Okay? You know,
3:08:27 like it’s tough, but like you’re pretty respectful. Maybe I just have my sort of,
3:08:34 like I’m okay with a little bit of tension. You’re pretty respectful. Even when you’re yelling,
3:08:42 there’s like respect. Like you don’t do like a gotcha type thing. There’s certain things you
3:08:48 could do. Like you said this in the past, you can say a line from the past that’s out of context.
3:08:55 It forces the other person to have to define the context. You just, you know, sort of debate type
3:09:01 tactics over and over. Like you don’t seem to do that. You just like ask them questions genuinely
3:09:06 and then you argue the point. And then you also like hear what they say. The only thing you,
3:09:09 I’ve seen you do sometimes tough that you sometimes like interrupt, like you speak over
3:09:15 the person. If they are trying to do the same. Right. Only to their filibuster. Yeah. If they’re
3:09:19 filibustering. But like that, that’s a tricky one. That’s a, yeah, that’s a tricky one. Right.
3:09:25 No, but like the problem for her coming on our show, isn’t that we would be unfair to her.
3:09:30 It’s that we would be fair. So we would ask questions. She is going to have trouble answering.
3:09:36 Other corporatists. Right. I mean like, so Biden said he was going to take the corporate tax rate
3:09:42 to 28% and he barely tried. You say you’re going to take it to 28%. Why should we trust you?
3:09:48 Right. You guys said $15 minimum wage and then you took it out of the bill. Why should we trust
3:09:53 you? Right. Those are very tough questions. She’s never going to get that in mainstream media.
3:09:58 Mainstream media is going to have faux toughness, but in reality, they’re going to be soft balls.
3:10:04 Right. And so the debates you’re right, Lex, is a little bit easier because Sarah Palin proved
3:10:12 that you could just memorize scripted talking points. And she admitted it later. She’s like,
3:10:16 she was super nervous. She memorized the talking points. And no matter what they asked,
3:10:22 she just gave the talking point, which by the way, people barely noticed because that’s what all
3:10:31 politicians do. She just admitted it. And so, no, Trump’s a disaster in a debate. He’s a one-man
3:10:37 wrecking crew of his own campaign. So any competent debater would eviscerate Donald Trump.
3:10:44 I mean, they just, on any given topic, when he says something like, here, let’s take one
3:10:49 lunatic conspiracy theory that he just had recently. And by the way, if you’re a right
3:10:55 winger and you keep getting hurt every time I say he’s a lunatic or I insult Donald Trump,
3:11:00 don’t like, you sound like a left winger. I’m offended. I’m offended. I’m offended. Get over
3:11:06 it. Get over it. Okay. So we have disagreements. Hear what the other side is saying. And by the
3:11:11 way, I say the same thing to the left. Okay. I say, you think everybody on the right’s evil?
3:11:15 You’re crazy. No, they just have a different way of looking at the world, which by the way,
3:11:20 is an interesting conversation. We should talk about that in a minute too. But so I do it to
3:11:27 both sides. But okay, Trump says, oh, I don’t think there’s anyone at Kamala Harris’s rallies.
3:11:33 It’s all the pictures are AI. Okay. So let’s say he says that in a debate because he’s liable to
3:11:40 say anything, right? You just say, okay, so you think every reporter that was there, every photographer
3:11:46 that was there, every human being that was there, they’re all lying. They have a conspiracy of
3:11:53 thousands of people, but none of them were actually there. Do you understand how insane you sound?
3:11:58 So this is a good place to, can you steal man the case for Trump?
3:12:05 Yeah. Yeah. So Trump is a massive risk because of all the things we talked about earlier. But
3:12:11 there is a percentage chance that he’s such a wild card that he overturns the whole system.
3:12:17 And that is why the establishment is a little scared of him. So if he’s in office here, I’ll
3:12:21 give you a case of Donald Trump doing something right. Something wrong first and then something
3:12:28 right. So he bombs Soleimani, the top general of Iran and kills him. That risks World War Three,
3:12:33 that risks a giant war with Iran that devolves Iran is four times the size of Iraq. If you’re
3:12:40 anti-war, you should have hated that he assassinated Soleimani. But after the assassination, Iran
3:12:44 doesn’t want to get into it even though they’re in a rage and they do a small bombing. You could
3:12:49 tell if it’s a smaller or a big one, right? So that’s them saying, we don’t really want war,
3:12:54 but for our domestic crowd, we have to bomb you back, right? And that’s when the military
3:13:01 industrial complex comes to Trump and says, no, you have to show him who’s tough and bomb this area.
3:13:07 And Trump says, no, they did a small bombing, not a large bombing. I don’t want the war.
3:13:10 I’m not going to do that bombing. That was this shining moment.
3:13:16 Yeah. For me, one of the biggest deal man for Trump is that he has both the skill
3:13:23 and the predisposition to not be a warm auger. He, I think, better than the other candidates
3:13:29 I’ve seen is able to end wars and end them. Now, you might disagree with it, but in a way where
3:13:37 there’s legitimately effective negotiation that happens. I just don’t see any other candidate
3:13:44 currently being able to sit down with Zelensky and Putin and to negotiate a peace treaty that
3:13:54 both are equally unhappy with. So on the one hand, almost all other politicians are going to be
3:14:00 controlled by the military industrial complex. And that complex wants to bleed Russia dry.
3:14:06 And that’s what the Ukraine war is doing. It’s a double win for the defense contractors. Number
3:14:13 one, every dollar we send to Ukraine is actually not going to Ukraine. It’s going to US defense
3:14:18 contractors. And then they are sending old weapons to Ukraine. The money is to build
3:14:23 new weapons for us. So a lot of people don’t know that. So the defense contractors want
3:14:29 that war to go on forever. And they’re an enormous influence on Washington. The second
3:14:35 win is they’re depleting Russia. And Russia’s gotten them themselves into a quagmire like we
3:14:42 did in Iraq and Afghanistan. And they’re bleeding out. So the military industrial complex wants
3:14:47 Russia to bleed out for as long as humanly possible. They actually care more about their own
3:14:52 interests, of course, than they do about Ukrainian interests. So in fact, there’s a good argument
3:14:58 to be made that Ukraine could have gotten a peace deal earlier. And we prevented it. So,
3:15:05 but the bottom line now is probably how a deal gets done is they let go of three more
3:15:11 areas in Ukraine. They already lost Crimea. They’d have to let go of three more regions.
3:15:18 And that is tough. Because at that point, Russia’s a little bit encouraged. Every time they do an
3:15:22 invasion, they get more land. They might not get all the land they wanted, but they get a lot of
3:15:30 land. So that’s, it’s a very difficult issue. But literally, which, which person, if they become
3:15:37 president, will end the war? Trump will end that war. Because Trump will go in and he loves Russia
3:15:43 and Putin anyway. I just disagree with him. He loves Russia. The implication of that, meaning
3:15:50 he will do whatever Putin tells him. I think he’ll do 90% of what Putin tells him. I just
3:15:57 disagree with that. I think, I think he wants to be the kind of person that says, fuck you to
3:16:03 Putin while, while patting them, while patting them on the back and being, you know, but out
3:16:08 negotiating Putin. So I don’t like talking about Russia because there’s so much emotions that go
3:16:14 into that topic. The right wing, the minute you mentioned Russia, they’re like, oh, it’s a hoax
3:16:19 and all this baggage that comes with it, et cetera. To me, Russia’s not any different than
3:16:26 Saudi Arabia or Israel for Trump. You give me money. I like you. You get by my apartments. I
3:16:31 like you, right? If you don’t give me money, I don’t like you. It’s not that complicated.
3:16:37 So, okay, take like, don’t worry about the Russia part of it. Like the bottom line is
3:16:43 Trump thinks, what do I care about those three regions of Ukraine? I want to get this thing done.
3:16:49 Right. So he’ll go and he’ll say Ukraine, we’re going to withdraw all help unless you agree to
3:16:53 a peace deal with Russia and Russia wants those three regions. That’s the peace deal.
3:17:00 That’s it. So Ukraine will lose a part of their country and we’ll get to a peace deal.
3:17:10 Yeah, I hope not. I hope not. I think Trump sees themselves and wants to be a great negotiator. So
3:17:18 and I personally want the death, the death of people to end and I think Trump would bring
3:17:25 that much faster and I disagree with you. At least that my hope is that he would negotiate
3:17:33 something that would be fair. He’s not, his anti-war record is so complicated because
3:17:40 moving the embassy in Israel and killing the top Iranian general were super provocative
3:17:45 and they could have easily triggered a giant war there. And then you know what’s going to
3:17:49 happen if you get into any kind of real war. Trump’s going to want to prove his buttons larger.
3:17:55 So then he’s going to do massive ridiculous bombings. I mean, I’m worried about nukes.
3:18:00 And so we had Giuliani on the show on the RNC and I asked him this question. I said,
3:18:06 you know, I keep saying, oh, they wouldn’t do it if I was in charge. I’m like, what does that mean?
3:18:11 Because it sounds like what it means is they wouldn’t do it because they know if they did it,
3:18:19 I would do something insane like attack Russia or use nukes. And Rudy said, yeah, that’s what it means.
3:18:25 So that means you have to at least bluff that and you have to get them to believe that he’s a madman.
3:18:31 That’s the madman theory of Nixon and Nixon and Rudy said that too. He was very clear about it.
3:18:37 But the problem is if you get your bluff called and so if you actually attack Russia, you’re
3:18:45 going to start World War Three. So that’s why, yeah, if you could, if you could just get away
3:18:52 with bluffing, maybe, but he’s playing a very dangerous game and he massively increased drone
3:18:57 strikes. On the other hand, he didn’t bomb Iran further. And on the other hand, he started the
3:19:04 process of withdrawal from Afghanistan. So not black and white, complicated record.
3:19:09 And one thing I’ll give him another piece of credit here. I think I’m taking the steelmaning
3:19:19 too far. But the credit was that he changed the rhetoric of the right wing. They went from the
3:19:28 party of Dick Cheney. War is great. And let’s see, you know, all Muslims are evil. And so he
3:19:33 hates Muslims too, but that’s a different thing, right? But like, oh, we have to attack the enemy.
3:19:39 We have to start wars, et cetera. To now, Republican voters are generally anti-war and hate Dick
3:19:44 Cheney. Oh, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. So that’s a great thing that Trump did. Even if he didn’t
3:19:49 mean it, even if he does these provocative things that could lead to a much worse war, even if I’m
3:19:55 worried that he’ll be so reckless, he’ll start a bigger war. At least he did that right. And so
3:20:01 I’m happy to have our right wing brothers and sisters join us in the anti-war movement. And
3:20:08 I’m not being a jerk about it. Like, I love it. And so this is another thing the left does wrong
3:20:14 from time to time, which is, if you agree with a right winger 2%, they’ll be like, oh, welcome in.
3:20:20 Come on, vote for Trump. Come on in. Yeah, woohoo. Water’s warm, right? If you, if you disagree with
3:20:26 the left 2%, they’re like, that’s it. You’re banished and you’re a Nazi. Well, brother,
3:20:31 how are we going to win an election if you’re banishing everybody there is, right? So hold up.
3:20:38 These Republican voters are coming at your anti-war position. Take the win. No, they’re
3:20:43 MAGA and I won’t deal with them. Even when they agree with you, that doesn’t make any sense. That
3:20:48 doesn’t make any sense. Take the win, right? So when Charlie Kirk says yes to paid family leave,
3:20:54 when Patrick Bette David on his program says yes, roughly says yes to paid family leave,
3:21:03 take the win. RFK Junior, you said some positive things for a while about RFK Junior. And I think
3:21:10 you said you would even consider voting for him given the slate of people. This was at the time
3:21:16 when Biden was still in. What do you think about him? What do you think about RFK Junior?
3:21:22 As a candidate, as a person, he’s been on the show, right? Yeah. So he was on our show.
3:21:28 People love that interview. You could check it out anytime, right? And why do people love it,
3:21:32 whether they’re right or left? Because we’re fair. We actually asked him about his policy
3:21:37 positions. He explained them. I challenge him and then he explains and we give him a fair hearing.
3:21:42 But I knew Bobby a little bit before he ran when he was an environmental lawyer, right?
3:21:52 And his legal work is excellent. And he’s been on the right side of most of the issues for most
3:21:59 of his life. So, A, I like him on that. Two, on his wildlife, the dead bear and the worms and all
3:22:06 that stuff, right? So, there’s two important lessons you should get out of that. Well, one’s
3:22:10 just about Bobby, but the other one’s a general one that’s really important for you to know,
3:22:14 no matter what you think of Bobby Kennedy. On the personal front, I have a friend that’s very
3:22:20 similar to him. In fact, he’s one of my best friends. And I know why, this is my theory,
3:22:28 on why Bobby and my friend led a wildlife. Both of their dads died young. When my friend’s dad
3:22:35 died, he was 18 and his dad died in his arms. And he has a motto, “What is lived cannot be unlived.”
3:22:42 So, if I had a great time and I thought it was hilarious to dump a dead bear in Central Park,
3:22:46 then I lived it and I had a great time and nothing you could do about it, okay?
3:22:53 And sometimes that’ll get you in trouble. And sometimes you’ll have a fantastic time, right?
3:23:01 And obviously, Bobby’s dad was killed when he was young and maybe that got into his head of like,
3:23:08 “You better live strong and live an interesting life.” And so, I don’t begrudge him that. Even
3:23:14 if I begrudge some of the things that he did in that life, I get why he did it. So, I don’t hate
3:23:19 him like other people hate him for some of those personal stuff, right? So, and I like him for
3:23:25 all the things that he did positive, holding fossil fuel companies accountable, protecting
3:23:31 communities that had poison dumped into their rivers, et cetera, right? So, the thing that affects
3:23:38 everybody is when he gets like corporate media smeared the hell out of them and they didn’t
3:23:45 allow him to speak and then they did the needle in a haystack trick. So, whenever it’s an insider,
3:23:53 they find the best parts of their lives and then they amplify. So, Joe Biden is average Joe from
3:23:58 Scranton. Motherfuckers been in DC for the last 52 years. You think we don’t have eyes and ears?
3:24:04 Okay, like average Joe from Scranton, who are you kidding? So, there’s a guy named Fred Thompson,
3:24:08 who’s an actor and he was a senator from Tennessee later. And he had this great little trick that
3:24:12 he would do as a red pickup truck that he would campaign with, right? So, he looks like a regular
3:24:17 Joe, right? But he’s a millionaire actor. But here’s the funny part. He would drive the red
3:24:24 pickup truck in a limo and he would drive back from the campaign event in a limo, but the press
3:24:29 never reported the limo. They only reported him in the red pickup truck as if that’s what he drives.
3:24:37 See, that’s the theater of politics. Why? Because Fred Thompson was a corporate Republican. So,
3:24:42 they loved him. So, they go, “Yeah, sure. Yeah, red pickup truck. Oh, good old Fred Thompson, right?”
3:24:48 So, but if you’re an outsider and they don’t like you, then they’re going to look at the haystack
3:24:53 of your life and they’re going to try to find needles. So, they’ve done this to Trump. They’ve
3:25:00 done this to Bernie. They’ve done this to Bobby Kennedy Jr. And with Bobby, they’re like, “Ooh,
3:25:06 there’s some juicy needles in here, okay?” So, they find those and they go, “You see this? The only
3:25:11 thing you should know about Bobby Kennedy Jr. is that he found a dead bear and put it in Central Park.”
3:25:16 Oh, wait, wait, wait. I found another one. The other thing you should know about Bobby is that
3:25:21 he once said in a divorced deposition that he had a brainworm. By the way, it turns out that
3:25:27 affects millions of people and it’s not that big a deal, right? But look, he has a radical. Ah, he
3:25:33 is. This defines him completely. This spectacular case of that actually happened to me. So, I ran
3:25:41 for Congress in 2020 and the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, they all butchered me with needles,
3:25:48 okay? So, they said, “It is a long history of making anti-Muslim jokes.” Well, first of all,
3:25:56 they didn’t even say jokes. They said, “Anti-Muslim rhetoric.” I’m like, “I’m Muslim. I mean, I’m
3:26:01 atheist, but I grew up Muslim. My family’s Muslim. My background’s Muslim. You don’t think that’s
3:26:07 relevant in the story?” And they did it based on one joke I told about and they said, “Oh, also,
3:26:13 of course, I’m anti-Semitic.” That’s like, you start with that. That’s just baked in for everyone,
3:26:22 right? So, I made a joke about how Orthodox Jews and Muslims, they think that getting into heaven
3:26:28 is a little bit of a fashion contest, okay? So, the Orthodox Jews go in there with a Russian
3:26:33 coast from the 1800s and the giant Russian hat. You know, the Muslims go in with their robe and
3:26:40 the skull cap and stuff and God’s looking around going, “No, no, no. Oh, nice outfit. Come on in.”
3:26:46 Right? Like, do you really think the creator of the universe gives a damn what you wear, okay?
3:26:51 So, the New York Times took that and said, “Long history of being anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim.”
3:26:58 Right. Okay. So, there’s this… Oh, this is a famous one. Relatively, right? I did a joke
3:27:05 about bestiality like a dozen years ago. Very nice. So, I start out the joke nice and dry and I go,
3:27:11 “Look, is the horse going to object if he’s the one getting pleasure?” Now, Anna is my co-host.
3:27:15 She’s younger at that time and she’s like, “That seems like a bad idea, Jake.” I’m like,
3:27:20 “Of course it’s a bad idea, okay? But I’m being dry.” But some people are laughing in the studio
3:27:26 and stuff. And then I say, you know, if I was emperor of the world, I would make that legal.
3:27:32 And they cut the tape. If you watch the rest of the tape, I say, “Now, would the horse object?”
3:27:41 “No.” So, but they cut the tape. So, the New York Times… So, originally, a right-winger did
3:27:49 that and then an establishment troll in that primary started putting out those tapes to everyone.
3:27:54 Jake Tapper retweeted it. Didn’t look to see if it’s edited or not edited.
3:28:00 The New York Times implied that bestiality was part of my agenda. Jesus Christ.
3:28:06 Please tell me that’s part of your Wikipedia. That the bestiality thing is part of your…
3:28:13 I don’t know. I don’t know. But guys, so in those stories, I’m not important and even Bobby Kennedy
3:28:19 Jr. is not important. What it reveals about the media is what’s important. So, they’re going to
3:28:22 find those needles, whether it’s… And even if they don’t have the needles, you know what?
3:28:28 We’ll cut the tape before your jokes punchline. So, we’ll just run it and we’ll lie about you.
3:28:36 Who cares? And so, oh, they also said that I had David Duke on to share his anti-Semitic point of
3:28:42 view. If you watch the interview, I told David Duke, “You’re an anti-Semite. You’re a racist.
3:28:46 You’re a bigot. You’re an idiot.” It was the toughest interview he’s probably ever had in his life.
3:28:52 And other journalists got mad at that part. And they were like, “No, guys, you’re just flat
3:28:58 out lying.” Like, I watched the interview. Did any of you watch the interview? He takes the guy’s
3:29:03 head off, right? And so, the New York Times issued a correction on that one. So, they’re like, “Okay,
3:29:08 fine. He was being sarcastic when he said, “Sure, you’re not racist, Dave.” Okay.
3:29:15 Well, one of the sources of hope to all of this is there’s a lot of independent media now.
3:29:20 But mainstream media has a lot of power still and cares a lot of power. Do you think they’re
3:29:25 going to die eventually? Yeah, definitely. So, two things about that that are super important.
3:29:30 First of all, this is why I tell people to have hope. I don’t believe in false hope, right? So,
3:29:34 if you think Kamala Harris is your knight in shining armor and she’s going to come in,
3:29:37 she’s going to get money out of politics, she’s going to ignore the donors, that’s false hope.
3:29:42 That’s crazy talk, right? So, why am I in favor of Kamala Harris? I’m going to live to fight another
3:29:45 day. I’m worried that Trump’s going to end the whole thing and then we’re not going to have
3:29:51 an opportunity to actually get a populist win, right? So, and I’m encouraged by some of the
3:29:54 things she’s doing. Maybe she does even 25% of her agenda, but I’m not going to give you false
3:30:01 hope that she’s your savior, right? But I believe massively in hope. And number one, because it’s
3:30:07 true to the point that we were talking about earlier, Alex, and how last 200 years have been
3:30:13 choppy, but overall fantastic. Terrible things have happened in that time period. Some of the
3:30:17 worst things that have ever happened in history, but overall life expectancy is higher, everything
3:30:24 is, you know, incomes are higher, health is better, etc., right? So, hope is not misplaced. It’s real,
3:30:30 it’s empirical, okay? So, now we talked about how you could get money out of politics and that’s a
3:30:38 legitimate hope, but media is another place where we have huge hope. So, of all the corporate robots,
3:30:45 the most important robot is media. So, when mainstream media has you hooked in at the back
3:30:50 of your neck, you’re going to believe all these fairy tales about how politicians are nice people
3:30:53 and they’re trying to do the right thing and donor money doesn’t have any influence on them,
3:31:00 right? So, once you unplug from the matrix, well, then you begin to see, oh yeah, hey look,
3:31:03 he took the donor money, did what the donors wanted. He took the donor money, did what the
3:31:10 donors want, 98% of the time, right? So, then you see clearly. So, now what’s happening at large?
3:31:17 Mainstream media is losing their power and now online media is swarming, swarming, swarming,
3:31:23 swarming and so this goes back to why I started The Young Turks. So, let me touch on that here
3:31:31 and then we can come back to it if you want. So, in 1998, I write an email to my friends and I say,
3:31:39 “Online video is going to be television.” And unsurprisingly, and they say, “You’re nuts. That’s
3:31:46 never going to happen.” At that point, we’re still doing AOL dialogues, right? The online video barely
3:31:54 exists and television’s mammoth. I say, “Guys, it’s just a matter of logic. Like, for me, it’s,
3:32:00 there’s so many ironies. I’m known for yelling online sometimes, but in reality, I’m obsessed with
3:32:07 logic.” So, when you have gatekeepers, gatekeepers pick based on what they want, what the powerful
3:32:12 one, in that case, advertisers, politicians, et cetera, they are never going to design programming
3:32:18 as good as wisdom of the crowd. When people start doing online video, I’m like, “Boom,
3:32:23 there’s no gatekeepers. This is democratized. Wisdom of the crowd is going to win.” So,
3:32:28 if you start with no money, and let’s pick a different example, not The Young Turks. Let’s
3:32:35 say, Phil DeFranco. He’s been around forever. And he also does news. And so, Phil starts doing a show
3:32:43 and he doesn’t have any money, just like us. And so, what does he have to do to get an audience?
3:32:47 He has to do a show that is really popular. He’s got to figure out a way. How do I get
3:32:53 their attention? How do I keep their attention? And he starts doing a great show, right? And so,
3:33:00 every year, it’s us and Phil for best news show for like a decade, right? And meanwhile, I’m back
3:33:08 over at CNN, Wolf Blitzer still droning on from a teleprompter. You put Wolf Blitzer online without
3:33:13 the force of CNN with him. He gets negative seven views. No one’s interested in what Wolf
3:33:18 Blitzer has to say. It’s not personal. I don’t know the brother, right? I’m just saying institutionally,
3:33:25 logically, etc. So, I’m like, these guys are going to win. So, when YouTube starts, we go on YouTube
3:33:30 right away. We’re the first YouTube partner. So, I am literally the original YouTuber, okay?
3:33:39 Nice. Susan Wojcicki, former CEO of the late Susan Wojcicki, wonderful woman. And if that triggers
3:33:47 you again on the right, you’re wrong. She was a terrific person. And when she started her own
3:33:51 YouTube channel, I was the first interview because we were the first YouTube partner.
3:34:00 So, I love that. So, we’re in that, but let me connect it back to the hope. When mainstream media
3:34:06 has you hooked, you got no hope because you don’t have the right information. You have propaganda.
3:34:11 You have marketing. You don’t have real news. When you’re in the online world, it’s chaotic.
3:34:16 And don’t get me wrong, it’s got plenty of downsides, right? But within that chaos,
3:34:22 the truth begins to emerge. And so, for example, young Turks has had dozens of fights with different
3:34:28 creators throughout history. Why? When you’re number one in news online, the algorithm rewards
3:34:33 anyone attacking you because then you get into their algorithmic loop. It’s not an accident
3:34:38 that we’ve been attacked dozens of times. One, we’re independent thinkers. So, anyone, if we
3:34:42 don’t match their ideology, they’re going to attack us. But number two, they get in our algorithm
3:34:47 loop. It’s too hard to resist, right? So, all of a sudden, they think that we’re being funded by
3:34:53 Nancy Pelosi or the CIA and oh, we’re off to the races. There’s another fight, right? But our
3:35:02 competition’s a graveyard. And so, we’ve won almost all of those fights. Why? Because we try
3:35:09 really hard to stick with the truth, with logic, and we don’t do audience capture. Even if our
3:35:13 audience is going in one direction, we don’t think it’s right. Anna and I will come out and go,
3:35:21 “No, sorry guys, love you, but rent control is not a good idea.” Okay, et cetera. So, in that world,
3:35:27 the people, it’s going to take a while, guys. But people who are telling the truth are eventually
3:35:33 going to rise up. And when they do, now we’re free. And now, the second part is even more
3:35:39 devastating for mainstream media, because I’m a businessman, right? I keep looking at the revenue
3:35:45 for CNN, et cetera. And they have a massive problem. And people don’t realize how big the
3:35:51 problem is. That thing’s going to capsize. I don’t talk about it often because I don’t want more
3:36:00 competition. I also have a company, right? In the online world, et cetera. But I’m too
3:36:05 honest, or I got to say it. I got to say it. So, they have two revenue streams. One is ads.
3:36:09 That’s why they serve advertisers, and politicians are huge advertisers, as we mentioned.
3:36:15 The second revenue stream, depending on the company, is arguably more important,
3:36:23 which is subscribers. So, now what happens in a business normally is, so they started out low,
3:36:30 and then they got high, and now they got a ton of subscribers. At its peak, cable has 100 million
3:36:36 households, right? So, they’re raking in unbelievable money from subscriber fees,
3:36:41 and they got advertising on top. So, when you’re all the way up here, your costs start to rise.
3:36:46 Why do they rise? Because then the on-air talent has leverage. And as an example,
3:36:52 there’s many others. And so, the on-air talent, like Sean Hannity says, I do a program that brings in
3:36:58 X amount of maybe 100 million, maybe 200 million. So, give me 40 million a year. And they do.
3:37:04 Sean is making 40 million a year last I checked, okay? So, I don’t know if he’s still getting that
3:37:08 kind of money, and I’m just basing it on reporting, right? But that’s a monster. So, they have all
3:37:15 these giant costs. But the minute you go from 100 million, now where I think around 70 million,
3:37:21 you just lost a giant chunk of your revenue. Now, when your costs are higher than your revenue,
3:37:28 99, it’s been nice knowing you. Yeah, it’s going to collapse. It’s going to be painful.
3:37:33 But what we need, guys, is like, sorry, last thing on that, is we need the print guys like AP,
3:37:40 Reuters, Intercept, the lever, the Serota runs, whatever Ryan’s working on now, it’s that Ryan
3:37:47 Grimm. So, we need those badly. We need someone to collect actual information and do the best they
3:37:52 can and presenting it in an objective way. We all got to support that. So, you can’t lose text.
3:37:57 That’s so important. The TV guys are just actors. You can lose them overnight, and it won’t hurt
3:38:04 you. It’ll help you. Yeah, it’s going to be a messy battle for truth, because the reality is,
3:38:10 there’s a lot of money to be made, and a lot of attention to be gained from drama farming,
3:38:17 sort of just constantly creating drama. And sometimes drama helps find the truth,
3:38:21 like we were mentioning, but most of the time it’s just drama. It doesn’t care about the truth,
3:38:26 it just cares about drama. And then the same is like conspiracy theories. Now, some conspiracy
3:38:33 theories have value and depth, and they allow us to question the establishment of institutions,
3:38:39 but the bottom line is conspiracy theories get clicks. And so, you can just keep coming up
3:38:43 with random conspiracy theories. Many of them don’t have to be grounded in the truth at all.
3:38:49 And so, that’s the sea we’re operating in. And so, it’s a tricky space too.
3:38:54 But Lex, look at all the people who are the biggest now, because we’ve now had a couple
3:39:03 of decades at this, right? So, and I mean as an industry. So, I would argue you’re huge,
3:39:08 and you don’t do that. You don’t do the conspiracy theories. You don’t do the drama at all, right?
3:39:16 Rogan is huge. Yeah, maybe there’s drama, but he’s genuine, right? I got a lot of issues with
3:39:20 some of his policies. I mixed opinions on Joe in a lot of different ways.
3:39:27 But I don’t doubt that he’s genuine, and people can sense that, right? And he’s huge. We’re genuine,
3:39:34 we’re huge. So, this is the market beginning to work. Yeah. So, speaking of Joe, let me ask you
3:39:41 about this. Here we go. I didn’t actually know this, but when I was prepping for this conversation,
3:39:45 I saw that you actually said at some point in the past that you can beat up Rogan in a fight.
3:39:51 No, you said that you have a shot. It’s a non-zero probability. Yes. Do you still believe this?
3:39:57 Yes, but the probability is dropping. It’s dropping every day. I think it’s probably the
3:40:03 stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say. So, I wrestled and did Jijitsu and Judo and all the
3:40:09 kinds of fighting sports my whole life. And I just observed a lot of really confident,
3:40:16 large guys roll into gyms. He’s ripped. He could deadlift. He could talk all kinds of
3:40:20 shit. And he believes he’s going to be the next world champion, and he just gets his ass kicked.
3:40:30 Yeah. Of course. Okay. And I’ve seen, like I saw this Israeli MMA fighter taking on an anti-Semite
3:40:35 who was huge and thought that, you know, he believed in like Nick Fuentes’ conspiracy theories or
3:40:40 something. And the MMA fighter dismantled him and I loved it. Okay. And then he like,
3:40:46 we tweeted back and forth, et cetera. So, guys, first, let me just assure you, I get it. So,
3:40:53 now let me tell you why I said it and then why I think it’s a non-zero chance. So,
3:41:00 Michael Smirkonish had written this blog, like, I don’t know, 10, 15 years ago on Huffington Post.
3:41:05 We’re both bloggers at that point about the wussification of America. Now, he was saying
3:41:10 the left is a bunch of wussies, right? So, I wrote a blog saying, “Hey, Michael,
3:41:15 I would rather debate you. So, if you want to debate about how we’re wussies, let’s do it. Let’s
3:41:21 find out.” But, you know, you’re mentioning physicality, right? And how you guys are tougher.
3:41:26 So, if you prefer, only in a prescribed setting, right? And we’re not going to go do it in the
3:41:30 streets like idiots, right? But if you want, we’ll have a boxing match or whatever you want.
3:41:38 And we’ll see who’s tougher. And he panicked and he cried to mommy, which is Ariana Huffington,
3:41:42 and, “Oh, Jake’s intimidating me.” Right? Okay. All right. Well, who’s the wussie now,
3:41:49 bitch? Right? So, that is not to actually get into a fight with poor Michael Smirkonish, right?
3:41:54 It’s to prove, “Hey, don’t use rhetoric like that. That’s dumb.” And this is me proving that
3:42:00 it’s dumb. Okay. So, now, Joe had said, “I forget what he said at the time.” And he said something
3:42:05 similar, right? And I’m up to here with Joe at that point. I don’t know if we’ll ever talking yet,
3:42:08 right? But… You’ve been on a show and I really… That was a good conversation.
3:42:12 It was a great conversation. That’s a while back. Yeah. I hope he has you on again.
3:42:18 Yeah. So, I get it. I bet you, I don’t like this take you have a lot. I bet you
3:42:26 he hates it because him as an MMA commentator, he gets to hear so many bros. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:42:33 It’s all about the mindset, bro. Now, the steelman, the point you’re making, which I do think it’s the
3:42:41 stupidest thing you’ve ever said, but the actual intent, which is whether you’re left or right,
3:42:48 there’s strong people on the left, like mentally strong, physically strong. I think the whole
3:42:53 point is not that you can beat them, but you’re willing to step, you’re willing to fight if you
3:42:59 need to. It’s 100%. So, it’s not like I believe I could beat them. It’s like I’m willing, like all
3:43:04 this shit, calling the people on the left wusses or whatever, I’m willing to step in the fight.
3:43:09 Even if I’m on train, even if I’m out of shape, I’m willing to fight. Yeah, I get it. I understand
3:43:16 that, but it’s just pick a different person. That’s why I wrote down on my genuine curiosity,
3:43:23 is if you can beat up Alex, Alex Jones versus Cenk, that the legumes, I would pay for that,
3:43:30 because you’re both untrained. You both got, I would say the spirit. No, no, he has, look,
3:43:35 I’ll give the same fairness. Yeah. I think I got an 8% chance of beating Rogan.
3:43:41 You’re lost. I know, I got it. Hold on. And I think, to be fair, Alex has an 8% chance of
3:43:46 beating me. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay, because you never know. He catches you on a lucky punch. I got
3:43:51 punched in the ear once, and you lose your balance, and then you’re in a lot of trouble, right?
3:43:58 So, I can get lucky. Alex Jones can’t get lucky. It’s me against Rogan is harder. If you said to
3:44:08 me, you don’t have 8% chance, but Alex does. Okay. I’m not gonna, it’s fine, right? So, why would it
3:44:12 does Alex stand almost no chance? He asked me. So, first of all, it’s not just because I’m big,
3:44:18 and he’s big. One, I wrestled. Are you wrestled? Yeah. If you wrestled, then you’re like, I watched
3:44:22 this show with my kids, Physical 100. It’s like a Korean show, where they try to find out who’s
3:44:27 the best athlete. They have one thing where they have to wrestle away the ball and keep it this
3:44:31 big giant ball. I’m like, every wrestler’s gonna win. Every MMA fighter’s gonna win, and every
3:44:36 time they win. And they’re like, Dad, how’d you know that? Because we get trained. We’re not gonna
3:44:42 lose to a non-wrestler in a wrestling contest. It’s not gonna happen, right? So, you can get lucky,
3:44:47 but it’s unlikely. So, one wrestling, now that was from a long time ago, but at least you know the
3:44:53 mechanics, right? Number two, I’ve gotten into about 30 actual street fights in my life, and you
3:44:57 can say street fights are not the same as MMA. Of course, that’s true. Obviously, true, right?
3:45:03 But it’s not no experience. It’s some experience. And the most important part of a street fight is
3:45:07 being able to take a punch to the face. Okay. Yeah, knowing what it feels like to get punched
3:45:11 in the face. Yeah. So, I’ve been punched in the face, I don’t know, dozens of times in my life.
3:45:18 I used to start fights by saying, I’ll let you take the first punch. Okay. So, I didn’t start the
3:45:25 fights. They just started because they’d punched me in the face. Okay. So, and then for Alex,
3:45:35 the main thing, and also true for Rogan, is it’s about willpower, right? So, if Joe has a 92%
3:45:39 chance, in my opinion, of knocking me out or beating me because he has the skill, and he’s
3:45:44 trained and he knows what he’s doing, so all the willpower in the world isn’t gonna help you if
3:45:51 you get kicked upside the hat, right? So, but in the unlikely circumstances that I’ve worn him down,
3:45:55 right, that I’m a little bit more in the ballgame because I got willpower. For Alex,
3:46:01 he doesn’t have the willpower I have. Okay. I’m, because to me, the idea of losing to Alex Jones
3:46:08 is unthinkable. I would do anything not to lose, anything. Let me just say, that’s beautiful. I
3:46:14 love this. I would pay a lot of money to watch the two of you just even like Russell. But with Joe,
3:46:23 I think, I just, I have to say, it’s like, it’s, it’s 0.0001% chance. You have a chance before you
3:46:30 even get to the mentality. And the other thing is, on the mentality side, one of the fascinating
3:46:36 things about Joe, is he’s actually a sweetheart in person like this. But there’s something that
3:46:41 takes over him when he competes. Brother, we’ve been around 22 years in the toughest industry
3:46:46 in the world. I understand. Yeah. Right. If you like, you have any idea how hard it is to run a
3:46:52 75 person company and make money online and survive after all the guys who took billions of dollars
3:46:58 went. I hear you. Tremendous willpower. So, but overall, you’re, this is not the hill I’m dying
3:47:07 on. Okay. Joe would win. I get it. I think we’re all allowed one kind of blind spot, I suppose.
3:47:14 So, you don’t think a huge, a big guy that still is in good shape, that was a wrestler
3:47:19 that’s been in a lot of street fights. You still think 0.0001. It depends on street fights, but
3:47:25 yeah, 0.001. I just see that. Yeah. And it’s such a minute disagreement because, so take me out of
3:47:29 it. So, you take out the willpower part of blah, blah, blah. I think it’s one to 2%. Yeah, he could
3:47:34 catch the guy and about, you know, get lucky. I think it’s because I’ve talked to, so I train
3:47:39 with a coach named John Donner. And we talk about this a lot. And I think technique is just such,
3:47:46 technique is the thing that also feeds the willpower. It actually builds up your confidence in the way
3:47:55 that like nothing else does in the more actionable way because you won’t need that much willpower.
3:48:01 No, I fully agree. If the technique is backed, you don’t have to be like a tough guy to win debates
3:48:06 if you’re just fucking good at debates, right? So, I think people just don’t understand the
3:48:13 value in sport and especially in combat of technique. No, great irony here is I actually
3:48:19 totally agree with that. That’s why I mentioned the physical 100. Technique’s gonna win almost
3:48:24 every time. We’re having a debate about whether it’s eight or one or 0.01. Like it’s either way,
3:48:31 technique wins. We agree. Okay, beautiful. In the one of the controversial things you’ve done,
3:48:38 in the 90s as a student at UPenn, you publicly denied the Armenian genocide,
3:48:46 which is the mass murder of over a million Armenians in 1915 and 16 in the Ottoman Empire.
3:48:52 You have since then publicly and clearly changed your mind on this.
3:48:56 Tell me the process you went through to change your mind.
3:49:03 Yeah. So, when you’re a kid, you’re taught a whole bunch of things. That’s the software
3:49:08 that we talked about earlier, right? So, cultural software is media, family, friends,
3:49:15 social media, et cetera. And so, growing up in any tribe, whether it’s a religious tribe
3:49:21 or an ethnic tribe, you’re gonna get indoctrinated into that tribe’s way of thinking. So, you take
3:49:26 a Turkish person who’s super progressive, loves Bernie, believes with all their heart and peace
3:49:32 and you tell them something about Kurds and they’ll say, “Oh, no, not those guys. They’re
3:49:36 terrible and evil and we have to do what we do to them.” You see, that’s the tribe taking over,
3:49:43 right? And so, you tell any religious person what’s wrong with the other religions, they’re like,
3:49:47 “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s totally true.” You get to their religion, tribe takes over,
3:49:51 know how dare you, I’m offended, right? So, I grew up with Turkish propaganda. So,
3:49:56 I’ll tell you a couple of funny instances of it. When we were kids, we’d go Turkish American Day
3:50:02 Parade, I’m like 10 or 12 years old. It’s in the middle of New York because I grew up in Jersey.
3:50:09 That’s why I got to know those fights. And we would chant in Turkish, “Turkey is the biggest
3:50:14 country. There’s no other country that’s even big.” And I was like, “This is crazy.” I’m like,
3:50:19 “Dad, isn’t this crazy? America’s big, China’s big. Why are we chanting this non-sensical chant?”
3:50:23 Right? So, that’s the beginning of beginning to realize your indoctrination. I’m in college
3:50:29 and I read about some battle that the Ottoman Empire lost. And I’m like, “That can’t be, right?
3:50:35 The Turks have only lost one war, World War I.” And I was like, “Oh, my God, I’m an idiot.
3:50:39 I got taught that in third grade in Turkey.” Of course, that’s not true. That’s ridiculously
3:50:44 untrue, right? All those thoughts are in your head. You don’t even realize it. And so,
3:50:50 on the Armenian genocide, I read the Turkish version. And the Turkish version has all of these
3:50:55 as evidence, right? So, it’s real in that it exists. But here, I’ll give you a great example of it.
3:51:02 I think it was Colonel Chester, some random American military guy after World War I.
3:51:10 And he says about the Armenians after the mass march, the forced marches. He says,
3:51:15 “They returned the area fat and entirely unmaskered.” Okay, I’m like, “Hey, that’s an
3:51:20 American colonel that’s saying that.” So, that’s obviously true. You see, they didn’t happen,
3:51:24 right? Or at least in the way that the Armenians say. Now, as a grown-up, I look at it and I go,
3:51:27 “Are you kidding me? That guy’s obviously trying to get a contract with the Turkish government,
3:51:35 right? Nobody returns from a forced march fat and entirely unmaskered, right?” So, that’s propaganda.
3:51:44 And so, and that one was so indoctrinated that it was tough to let go. So, at Penn, I write
3:51:50 that op-ed, et cetera. And then over the course of time. And so, Anna and I disagree on things from
3:51:56 time to time. And we’ve been co-hosting now for, she’s been at the Young Turks for 18 years and
3:52:03 co-hosting for, you know, almost 18. And so, she’s Armenian. And by the way, I love America. I mean,
3:52:07 look, we came to America because we love this country, land of hope and opportunity. That’s
3:52:11 part of why I fight so hard for the average American, for the American idea. So, here’s
3:52:16 a Turk and an Armenian doing a show together and it becomes the number one online news show.
3:52:22 That’s the beauty of America, right? So, she’s telling me things and we’re having some
3:52:28 on-air discussions about it, et cetera. And then, it just dawned on me like, no, this was,
3:52:35 this too was obviously propaganda. So, at that point, once you realize that, it becomes easier.
3:52:40 That’s why I’m trying to unplug people from the matrix. Because once you realize it’s propaganda,
3:52:43 oh my God, it gets infinitely easier to start telling what’s true or not true.
3:52:49 So, maybe by way of advice, how do you know when you’re deluded by propaganda? How do you know
3:52:54 you’re not believing a kind of, how do you know when you’re not plugged into the matrix, when you’re
3:53:00 plugged into the matrix? You have to keep testing it against objective reality. Okay, they said
3:53:07 something. Did it happen or did it not happen? So, here’s an easy one. Alex Jones for a long time,
3:53:12 especially under Obama, kept saying, they’re not going to put us on FEMA camps until they’re going
3:53:15 to stop us on the FEMA camps and they’re going to put us down and they’re going to let us out.
3:53:20 I know it, I know it for sure, right? Nobody’s been in a FEMA camp. Obama left, there was no
3:53:26 FEMA camps. So, what I asked like for the right wing conspiracy guys, guys, has any of their things
3:53:32 ever come true? Like they always say all these crazy things that never, ever happened. So,
3:53:38 the third time it doesn’t happen, can you please start to wonder, maybe I’m on the wrong side,
3:53:44 maybe, but that’s not just for right wingers, that’s easy, right? But it’s also for mainstream
3:53:51 media and that’s where I get the biggest pushback and that’s where, because my tribe is, is what
3:53:58 the kids call PMC, professional management class, okay? They’re careerists, you go up the ladder,
3:54:05 you have this route, that route, etc. And so, for that class, the status quo is pretty good.
3:54:11 So, when you get, when Biden gives you 15% change, you’re like, what else do you want?
3:54:17 That’s amazing. He just course corrected a little bit, now it’s perfect, right? But for the average
3:54:24 guy who needs 100% change, not 15, they look at it and they go, what the fuck? He only did 15%
3:54:29 and everybody’s declaring him a hero, right? So, those are the hardest guys to get through on and
3:54:33 those are the guys who get most mad at me, not the right wingers, the establishment. That’s why I,
3:54:41 I’m nails on a chalkboard for them because I’m on the left, but I call out their crap and they’re
3:54:47 marketing and propaganda and that’s why I mentioned earlier, no one probably,
3:54:51 nah, he might not even consciously know it, but no one dislikes Bernie more than Obama,
3:54:57 because if Bernie got into office, he’d embarrass Obama by doing a lot more change
3:55:04 and Obama told us the change wasn’t possible, you could only get 5%. And so, if Bernie does 50%,
3:55:10 then Obama’s humiliated and his record and his legacy is ruined, right? So, I don’t think he makes
3:55:17 that conscious decision, right? But it’s subconscious, it’s a way of thinking. So, if you’re watching
3:55:25 Morning Joe, test them. He says something that Biden is for $15 minimum wage. When Biden takes it
3:55:31 out of the bill, know that Morning Joe was lying to you. He says that Biden said he was for the
3:55:36 public option, but he never even proposed it. When Morning Joe still defends him and you see
3:55:42 an objective reality, Biden didn’t actually propose that bill. You know that they’re lying to you.
3:55:45 Tested against objective reality. Did it actually happen or didn’t it?
3:55:50 I mean, there’s some of that, just to steal a man some of the conspiracy theories. Do you think
3:55:57 there’s some value to the conspiracy theories that come from the right, but actually more so come
3:56:05 from the anti-establishment? I mean, for me, there’s a lot that raise a bit of a question.
3:56:10 A lot of them could probably be explained by corporatism and the military industrial complex,
3:56:17 but there’s also a lot of them could be explained by creepiness and shadiness in human nature.
3:56:21 Epstein is an example of that. There’s a lot of ways to explain Epstein,
3:56:30 including the basic creepiness of human nature, but there could be bigger explanations. I’m
3:56:36 delying it. Sometimes when we have long, thoughtful conversations like this, I’ll say it depends a
3:56:41 lot and then people get frustrated by that, but then you’re frustrated by the world because
3:56:48 it depends. So conspiracy theories, if you say, “Are they all right or are they all wrong,”
3:56:55 already the question is wrong. So it depends. What is the conspiracy theory? So if it’s some
3:57:01 of the absurd ones we’ve mentioned here, it’s easily disproven. On the other hand,
3:57:09 there’s a conspiracy theory about JFK’s assassination. Which one is the conspiracy
3:57:15 theory that Lee Harvey Oswald from like 12 miles away shot a magic bullet that went like this and
3:57:22 hit like 13 people and came out Kennedy’s brain or that the government might have wanted to cover up
3:57:28 an assassination of the president for whatever reason. Come on. Now, of course,
3:57:32 doing hyperbole and the JFK enthusiasts will be like, “No, the bullet didn’t actually go
3:57:38 like this. It didn’t actually hit 13 people.” I’m kidding, guys. But in terms of,
3:57:44 is that conspiracy theory real that JFK was not just killed by Lee Harvey Oswald? Almost
3:57:53 certainly. And so if you read real books with tons of information, the most likely culprit is
3:57:58 Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA that he fired. Back when there was a deep state,
3:58:05 there actually was a deep state. They did coups against other countries’ leaders all the time,
3:58:10 but they tell us, “Oh, they wouldn’t do it to our own leader.” But remember, it’s not the CIA.
3:58:16 He’d left the CIA already. So I don’t know if it was X CIA guys. I don’t know if the mob was
3:58:22 involved. I don’t know any of those details, but I know things that are obvious. That bullet didn’t
3:58:30 magically hit him from over there. Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Jack Ruby was a mobster who
3:58:35 on the record had said that he hated Kennedy. All of a sudden, he became patriotic overnight
3:58:41 and shot the assailant who was unguarded, maybe less likely. Okay, so let’s speed up though.
3:58:47 So my point is, yes, some conspiracy theories could be true. It depends on objective reality,
3:58:56 right? You get to Epstein. Again, I always do it ahead of time because I want you to test me
3:59:02 and see, does it match objective reality? So I said the minute that it happened, you’ll have your
3:59:07 answer based on whether the video in the hallway worked or not. If the video in the hallway works,
3:59:13 there’ll be just as many conspiracy theories, but it’ll show actually who went in and didn’t go in.
3:59:19 Okay, but if the video in the hallway doesn’t work, they definitely killed him. Okay, so a couple
3:59:26 of days later, oh, the video in that particular hallway happened to not be working. And the guards
3:59:33 both happened to be on break at the same time. And the most notorious pedophile criminal in the
3:59:41 country happened to be unguarded. And that is the one time he decided to hang himself. Listen,
3:59:47 man, the only way you believe that is if you got mainstream media to get you to believe
3:59:52 that the word, that the minute the phrase conspiracy theory is mentioned, you have to shut
3:59:57 off your mind. And you have to believe whatever the media tells you. Yeah, well, it’s interesting
4:00:03 you just mentioned, do you think the CIA has not grown in power versus? No, no, they’ve greatly
4:00:09 waned in power. Interesting. So, so in the old days, the CIA has an actual deep state. And because
4:00:15 the country was run by a bunch of families, right? So you go to Yale, the scum bones thing was real,
4:00:20 right? And you go to Harvard, you go to this and half the look at the Dulles family, right?
4:00:25 Half of them go into government, the other half go into banking. Why are the Central American
4:00:32 countries called banana republics? Because we we’d America did a coup against one of those
4:00:37 countries, because a banana company wanted it. Okay, because they’re like, how dare you charge
4:00:42 whatever you want for your natural resource. We American corporations have the right to all
4:00:48 of your natural resources at the lowest possible rate. Alan, get rid of these guys. Okay. And
4:00:56 and Alan would. And so, and sometimes they would go extrajudicial, right? Like potentially with the
4:01:04 JFK assassination. So now and and by the way, you pissed off a J. Edgar Hoover, he was just
4:01:08 going to put a bullet in your head. And we were done with you. Okay, Fred Hampton, among others.
4:01:17 So, but nowadays, that’s not how the world works. So a small number of families cannot control a
4:01:24 country and an economy this size. New people pop up. Well, Mark Zuckerberg wasn’t part of those
4:01:30 families. Elon Musk wasn’t part of those families. Neither was Bezos, right? For you to believe those
4:01:35 conspiracy theories, you have to think that Bezos and Musk, etc. were like, Oh, you guys are still
4:01:43 running the country. No problem. Go ahead. Gonna do that, right? So now we’ve gotten into a system
4:01:48 where it’s the invisible hand of the market that runs the country. But unfortunately,
4:01:55 only for the powerful. And so it’s more of a machine. And they don’t do, and this is super
4:01:59 interesting in ties to what we’re talking about earlier, Lex, which is that they don’t do political
4:02:04 assassinations anymore. They do character assassinations. That’s the needle in the haystack
4:02:11 thing. So, and if you do an assassination of someone, you build up their status, they become
4:02:18 a martyr and you build up their cause. But if you do a character assassination, you smear the cause
4:02:26 with the person. And the cause goes down, not up. So the market found a better way of getting rid of
4:02:31 agitating outsiders. Well, that’s, you know, one of the conspiracy theories with Epstein is that
4:02:42 he’s a front for like, I guess CIA, and they’re getting data on people like creepy pedophile
4:02:50 kind of data that they can use to threaten character assassination. And then they put them,
4:02:57 in this way, put the people in their pockets. So look, we’re not in on it. So there’s no way we
4:03:06 can know, right? But I just always go back to logic. So he has dirt on a lot of powerful people.
4:03:13 He dies in a way that is an obvious murder and not a suicide. And then you begin to think,
4:03:20 who would have enough power to be able to get away with that crime? And that is a very limited
4:03:28 number of either people or governments, right? So that’s probably your answer without knowing
4:03:34 anything that’s internal. Yeah, that’s crazy. We don’t have the list of clients. What is the best
4:03:42 way to achieve stability and peace in Israel and Palestine in the current situation and in the
4:03:48 next five, 10 years? If people wanted to get to peace, it’s relatively straightforward. There’s
4:03:55 already a deal that was negotiated. The Saudis agreed to it. And they’re an important player in
4:04:01 this game. The Palestinians and the Israelis have initially agreed to it, even Hamas has kind of
4:04:06 agreed to it. That deal exists, and it’s just waiting on the shelf to get done, right? And it’s
4:04:12 pretty straightforward. Israel gets out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but they keep an X
4:04:18 percentage. It used to be 4%, then it went up to 6%. It’s probably a higher number now.
4:04:22 The Palestinians keep losing leverage as we go, right? So remember how hard it was
4:04:28 to get a deal on Ukraine, I thought. That’s a very complicated one. Israel’s much more
4:04:33 straightforward. Get the hell out of the occupying territories. Keep some of the God, like, those
4:04:38 settlements are the worst thing. They’re cancer. But anyway, I don’t know, there’s, but there is
4:04:42 an answer to the settlements, and it’s probably that Israel keeps them, even though that drives me
4:04:47 crazy. No right of return for Palestinians. There’ll be symbolic right of return for a couple of
4:04:52 families. And so Palestinians go, oh, no way, guys, you have no leverage. Take the deal. Take
4:04:58 the deal. Okay. So you’re not going to get a right of return. Israel’s not going to allow millions
4:05:03 of Palestinians to go and vote in Israel. It would end the Jewish state. You have to get to a
4:05:10 practical solution. So honestly, the number one person blocking it now is then Yahoo. It’s not
4:05:16 even, that’s obvious. That’s, that doesn’t take a lot of courage to say that. He says publicly,
4:05:21 I don’t want a Palestinian state. I’m against a two state solution. He’s been monstrous. He’s one
4:05:27 of the worst terrorists of my lifetime. So that’s easy. The right wing of Israel has lost its mind.
4:05:32 So the Smotrich and the Ben Gavir is openly talking about ethnic cleansing and driving them
4:05:40 into other Arab countries. I mean, this is the definition of ethnic cleansing. So, but is like,
4:05:48 I know that the Arabs are going to take the deal. Saudi Arabia cannot wait to take the deal because
4:05:53 they just want to get business going, right? Do you think Hamas takes the deal? So I had
4:05:57 ever a solution where you don’t need Hamas. But yes, Hamas would definitely take the deal.
4:06:02 Hamas already publicly said that they would even get rid of that Israel doesn’t have a right to
4:06:09 exist. But we, there’s so much propaganda in American media. It’s maddening, right? So in this
4:06:16 idea that you don’t deal with Hamas is so dumb. So the reason it’s dumb is you don’t negotiate with
4:06:22 your friends. You negotiate with your enemies. Well, I don’t want to negotiate with them. I
4:06:26 don’t like them. Well, then you’re not going to get to peace, right? But still, there is a path
4:06:34 that doesn’t include Hamas. So make a deal with Fatah that runs the best West Bank. Then they get,
4:06:39 right now, if Fatah went into Gaza Strip, they wouldn’t be able to manage it because they don’t
4:06:44 have enough credibility. They’re mainly seen as in cahoots with the occupiers, whereas Hamas is
4:06:52 hardcore and fighting against the occupiers. But if Fatah delivers a peace, not only a peace deal,
4:06:57 but a Palestinian state, then they come in as heroes. So you make the deal with them,
4:07:03 you let them run the Gaza Strip, and you empower them to drive out Hamas. That way,
4:07:08 they do your dirty work for you, in a sense, right? But good because Hamas is a terrorist
4:07:14 organization. They’re not helpful. And especially if the Palestinians get a state, the violence has
4:07:21 to stop immediately. That’s the whole point. The trade is you get a state, Israel gets safety and
4:07:27 peace. So no more rockets than Israel. No more rockets. If you do any other rockets,
4:07:33 and Israel does the barbaric thing they just did, even I would say, “Hey, brother, we had a peace
4:07:39 deal.” So if you violate a peace deal and you do a bomb, they’re going to do a bomb and their
4:07:47 bomb is much larger. And by the way, can it work? It already has worked. Israel already did it with
4:07:56 Egypt. So Egypt was a hundred times Hamas. Egypt gathered all the Arab armies and actually physically
4:08:02 invaded Israel when Israel could lose. And they did it several times. And like at the time, all,
4:08:09 not just the right, like the war hawks, but most people thought there’s no way Egypt will keep
4:08:16 that peace deal. Oh, they’re suckers. We’re giving them the Sinai Peninsula back, and then they’re
4:08:20 just going to keep bombing and attacking us. There hasn’t been a single bomb from Egypt since the
4:08:29 peace deal. Peace deals work. War gets you more war. Peace deals get your peace. And you should never,
4:08:35 this is true of all of life, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. So if you’re saying,
4:08:41 “Well, I’m not positive that a peace deal is going to be perfect,” and 12 more rockets might be fired.
4:08:47 “Well, brother, what do we have now?” Right? We have endless rockets now. If Israel’s supposed
4:08:55 to be a safe haven for Jews, and I get it, and I want it, okay, then become a safe haven. The way
4:09:02 that you’re a safe haven is stop the occupation. It’s not complicated. And the reason they’re not,
4:09:06 let’s be honest, the reason the right-wing government of Israel is not stopping the
4:09:12 occupation is because they want to take more and more land. And so they have throughout
4:09:17 time taken way more of the West Bank than they had originally. And now Netanyahu is saying,
4:09:24 “I want a corridor in the middle of Gaza, and I want a corridor at the border of Egypt.” Now,
4:09:30 we’re back to occupying Gaza, physically, let alone through power and et cetera.
4:09:40 So, Bibi has to go. Definitely. What’s the role of U.S. in making a peace deal like that happen?
4:09:48 It’s going to sound outlandish, but I can get you a ceasefire almost overnight if Bibi’s gone.
4:09:53 Because the Israeli negotiators have said publicly, please, not publicly,
4:09:59 got leaked, and it was in the Israeli press. You have to give us a little bit of wiggle room.
4:10:03 If you don’t give us a little bit of wiggle room, obviously they’re not going to do the deal.
4:10:07 And he’s like, “I know.” Right? That’s why he’s not giving them the wiggle room.
4:10:13 So, don’t ask for land in Gaza. Get the hell out of Gaza. You have a ceasefire. That’s the easy part.
4:10:19 So, the hard part is the occupation, ending the occupation. But even that, I can get it to you
4:10:26 in two months as long as Israel actually wants a deal. So, go to an election, get rid of Netanyahu,
4:10:33 put in Benny Gantz. Is Benny Gantz an angel? No. He’s the one that ordered all the bombings
4:10:41 of Gaza to begin with, right? Look, Benny Gantz has got massive war crimes on his record. So,
4:10:46 don’t worry. He’s not a softy, okay? But he’s not my favorite guy in the world, to say the least.
4:10:53 But Benny Gantz can do a peace deal if he wants to. So, look, only one group of people can actually
4:10:58 settle this. Well, there’s actually two groups of people. One is the Israeli population. You vote
4:11:04 in someone who wants to do a peace deal, you’ll get a peace deal, okay? Number two is the American
4:11:09 president. So, if I’m the American president, I’m saying in a hypothetical, right? Or any American
4:11:14 president that actually wants to get a peace deal done. You just say, “I’m going to cut the funding.”
4:11:18 Israel will do the deal immediately. They don’t say they want to cut the funding because APAC
4:11:27 gives them $100 million. It’s not complicated. Not 1% complicated. So, Lex, tell me this, okay?
4:11:33 So, if the US president said, “I’m going to cut the funding,” do you think that it might have a
4:11:38 giant problem for Netanyahu? Might it hurt his government? Might they have to go to an election?
4:11:42 Would Israeli politicians, let alone the population, begin to really, really worry
4:11:48 that they’re going to lose an enormous source of funding and weapons? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
4:11:51 So, why wouldn’t we use our leverage? It’s crazy not to use our leverage.
4:12:00 Yeah. And this is where we go back to the steel man of Trump. It feels like he’s the only one
4:12:06 crazy enough to use that leverage. But crazy, I mean, in a good kind of sense. Bold enough,
4:12:11 not giving a shit about convention, not giving a shit about pressures and money and influence and
4:12:16 all that kind of stuff. Yes, but with the biggest asterisks in the history of the world,
4:12:23 which is 12% chance he does that, and that’s great. But a huge chance he does the opposite.
4:12:31 And he goes, let’s call it 80 again, 80%. Oh, yeah, Miriam wanted me to give West Bank to Israel.
4:12:34 So, you have it, guys. Now, you’re just talking about the whole thing forever, okay?
4:12:40 Giant war. Oh, yeah, I’m going to prove how tough I am. I’m going to nuke Iran. Oh, no,
4:12:45 what are you doing? What are you doing? Like, Trump is a massive risk. He’s an enormous amount
4:12:50 of risk. If you were running a company and not a country, would you hire Trump as your CEO?
4:12:57 Everyone watching just screamed inside their heads, “No!” Okay, you would never take that kind of risk
4:13:03 with your company. You got an 80% chance the guy’s going to blow up the company? No way, no way,
4:13:08 and you know it too. Especially if you’re a businessman, you know you’re not going to hire
4:13:14 that loose cannon to run your company. It’s unacceptable risk. But you’re not wrong. We
4:13:18 talked about it earlier. But as part of that risk, there’s a sliver in there
4:13:23 that he could accidentally do the right thing. We talked a lot about hope in this conversation.
4:13:28 Zooming out, what gives you hope about the future of this whole thing of humanity,
4:13:33 not just the United States, of us humans on earth? So, why am I center left and not center
4:13:39 right? It gets to that question. So, you look at the polling, not just here in America,
4:13:44 but in almost any country. And it almost always breaks out to two-thirds or one-third, right?
4:13:53 Two-thirds of the people say, “Let’s be empathetic, let’s share, let’s be, let’s do equality, justice,
4:13:58 let’s be fair,” right? One-third goes, “No, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me,” okay? That’s just the
4:14:05 nature of humanity. And so, and usually the same third goes, “No change.” Another two-thirds go,
4:14:12 “Well, some change,” right? So, because if you don’t do any change, you’re never going to get to
4:14:16 the right answer. For the wisdom of the crowd to work, for free markets to work, for everything to
4:14:21 work, you have to keep changing because the times change and the culture changes and the situation
4:14:28 changes, right? So, that’s why there’s amendments in the Constitution, because you need to be able to
4:14:33 change the document from time to time. Be careful with it, right? But you need to allow for an avenue
4:14:40 for change. So, now, why does the one-third keep winning in so many different places? Because
4:14:46 they have more money in power. And by the way, if you’re more selfish, you’re more likely to get
4:14:51 more money in power, right? And I wish that weren’t the case, but it is. And these are not blanket
4:15:00 rules, they’re on average. So, that third winds up winning in so many circumstances. But the bottom
4:15:11 line is, we are a species that requires consent. So, I mean, I’m a Stone Cold Atheist. So, I don’t
4:15:18 think we’re kind of like apes. I think we are apes. Okay. And so, and all the scientists out
4:15:25 there are going, “Well, of course we are.” Everyone else is going, “That’s crazy.” Okay. So, when you
4:15:29 look at it as a species, different species react in different ways. Snakes have no empathy because
4:15:37 it’s not in their DNA. And that’s why we have a sense of what a snake does, right? So, for good
4:15:44 news is, for higher-level apes like us, bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans, we all roughly want
4:15:52 consent. So, a chimpanzee, for example, has a violent reputation and they are violent. And,
4:15:58 unfortunately, we’re pretty close to them. But what people don’t know is, a leader doesn’t win
4:16:05 through violence, especially for bonobos. They win by picking lice off of other chimpanzees,
4:16:09 by going and doing favors, going to a hunt, getting food, and giving it to someone else,
4:16:14 because what they’re gathering is the consent of the governed. And that’s how you become the alpha.
4:16:19 You don’t do it through physical dominance. You do it through consent. So, that’s how we’re
4:16:26 hardwired. That’s in our DNA. That two-thirds in the long run will win. And we will have empathy.
4:16:30 We will have change. And that’s the hope that we’re all looking for.
4:16:35 Hope has got the numbers, it seems like.
4:16:44 Yeah. And in fact, one more thing, Lex. Look at history. Hope and change always win.
4:16:50 And so, again, conservatives don’t catch feelings. There is a need for conservatives,
4:16:54 because you have to balance things out. If you just had even a wonderful two-thirds,
4:16:59 that still wouldn’t be the ideal system. You need a Winston Churchill if you’re
4:17:03 in the middle of World War II. You need someone to say, regulating, you know,
4:17:08 six inspections of the elevators is too many, right? So, you need that balance. And conservatives
4:17:15 have a role, and it’s a really important role. But having said that, they’re assigned to losing
4:17:20 throughout history, because they’re fighting on losing ground. A conservative says no change,
4:17:27 but the world is constantly changing. So, they’re destined to lose. That’s why the founding fathers
4:17:32 won against the British monarchy. That’s why the civil rights movement won. They didn’t win overnight.
4:17:39 It took them 100 years to get equal rights, let alone past slavery, right? So, we won on women’s
4:17:46 rights. We won on gay rights. We keep winning. But every snapshot in time makes it feel like
4:17:52 we’re losing. There’s a bad guy in charge. We aren’t living under corporate rule, etc. But in
4:18:01 the long tide of history, change always wins. So, the empathetic, generally speaking, left wing. But
4:18:06 again, don’t worry about the titles, right? People get obsessed with the labels. The two-thirds,
4:18:11 that’s empathetic. That includes a lot of right-wingers, right? You win at the end in history
4:18:20 every single time. So, we fight forward. We’re tough when we need to be. We need that willpower
4:18:25 to win any fight, right? But we’re civil and respectful to the other side because they are us.
4:18:33 So, progressives all the time, we say, “Look,” and this is like the ending of my book, which is,
4:18:40 for conservatives, you have a lot of empathy for inside the wagons. So, conservatives are great
4:18:45 to their family, generally speaking, to their community, to their church, to anyone that’s
4:18:52 inside the wagons. But they have, they set up electric fences and barbed wire around their
4:18:56 wagons. So, if you’re on the outside, you’re the others and you’re going to get electrified. And
4:19:04 it’s kind of like, right? And so, I like to think the left wing has wider wagons. So, we view the
4:19:12 world as more us and not you. But the good news of that is, if we win, we’re not going to do
4:19:17 Medicare for only the left, right? We’re going to do Medicare for all. You’re all going to get
4:19:22 universal health care. We’re going to do higher wages for all. The right wing is not going to be
4:19:32 left out. And Lex, I’m going to tell you a fun story. It’s about my family. And I’m sure that
4:19:40 parts of it are apocryphal because it’s from like 500 years ago. But it gives you a sense of the
4:19:48 old Mark Twain quote, if it’s really Mark Twain’s, of change happens really gradually and then all
4:19:56 of a sudden. So, my mom’s last name in Turkish is Yawasha. It means slowly. It’s a weird name
4:20:02 even in Turkish. And so, one day, we’re walking past the mosque in Istanbul when I’m a kid.
4:20:10 And it says on the mosque, Yawasha. We’re like, what is this? Okay. So, it’s a small little mosque
4:20:17 we go inside and my dad starts asking their mom questions. Okay. So, he says, why is the mosque
4:20:23 named that? And he said, well, do you don’t know? And he said, because my dad said my mom, my wife’s
4:20:30 name is, last name is Yawasha. He’s like, oh my God. And he’s like, your ancestor was the admiral
4:20:39 of the Ottoman Navy when they conquered Constantinople. Okay. So, grandpa from five, six hundred years
4:20:44 ago came up with the idea. So, you can’t ever conquer Constantinople because there’s a giant
4:20:49 chain underneath the Bosphorus. All the ships get stuck on the chain. There’s cannons on both sides.
4:20:54 Half the ancient navies in the world are at the bottom of the Bosphorus, right? So, hasn’t been
4:20:57 conquered in over a thousand years. Nobody thinks they can be conquered. Grandpa comes out with the
4:21:05 idea of why don’t we build giant wooden planks over land and grease them and pass our fleet
4:21:12 over land onto the other side. Everybody goes because whenever anybody proposes a new idea,
4:21:15 no matter how logical it is, they go, oh, that’s impossible. No way it’s going to work. Oh, you’re
4:21:20 crazy. This is an unconquerable city. What are you guys even doing? Every day, Mehmet the Conqueror
4:21:27 comes up to grandpa and says, all right, how’s your plan to do this project going? And grandpa says,
4:21:36 slowly. And he names him commander slowly. And one night after the whole thing’s done,
4:21:43 they pass the entire Ottoman fleet over the land, wind up in the middle of the Bosphorus,
4:21:49 and the Holy Roman Empire concedes. They surrender. Because change happens really
4:21:58 gradually and then all of a sudden. Good story. Well, Cenk, thank you for fighting for that change
4:22:04 for many years now, for over two decades now. And thank you for talking today. Appreciate it,
4:22:07 Lex. Thank you for having the conversation. Thanks for listening to this conversation
4:22:12 with Cenk Huger. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
4:22:20 And now let me leave you some words from Hannah Arendt. Totalitarianism is never content to rule
4:22:27 by external means, namely through the state and a machinery of violence. Thanks to its peculiar
4:22:33 ideology and the role assigned to it in the apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has
4:22:41 discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within. Thank you for listening.
4:22:51 I hope to see you next time.
4:23:01 [Music]

0:00:07 The following is a conversation with Peter Levels, also known on the X as Levels.io.
0:00:12 He is a self-taught developer and entrepreneur who designed, programmed, shipped and ran
0:00:17 over 40 startups, many of which are hugely successful.
0:00:24 In most cases, he did it all by himself while living the digital nomad life in over 40 countries
0:00:32 and over 150 cities, programming on a laptop while chilling on a couch, using vanilla HTML,
0:00:36 jQuery, PHP and SQLite.
0:00:41 He builds and ships quickly and improves on the fly, all in the open, documenting his
0:00:47 work, both his successes and failures, with the raw honesty of a true indie hacker.
0:00:53 Peter is an inspiration to a huge number of developers and entrepreneurs who love creating
0:00:58 cool things in the world that are, hopefully, useful for people.
0:01:02 This was an honor and a pleasure for me.
0:01:05 And now, a quick few second mentoring of each sponsor.
0:01:06 Check them out in the description.
0:01:09 That’s the best way to support this podcast.
0:01:18 We got Shopify for e-commerce, Motific for LLM and RAG deployment, AG1 for health, Masterclass
0:01:23 for learning, BetterHelp for the mind and AteSleep for naps.
0:01:24 Choose wisely, my friends.
0:01:30 Also, there’s a bunch of ways to get in touch with me by giving feedback, sending in questions
0:01:37 that I can answer and all other kinds of ways if you go to luxfreeman.com/contact.
0:01:38 And now, onto the full ad reads.
0:01:40 As always, no ads in the middle.
0:01:44 I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
0:01:46 I enjoy their stuff.
0:01:47 Maybe you will too.
0:01:53 This episode is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere
0:01:56 with a great looking online store.
0:02:05 I recently tweeted about my belief as it stands now that Kamala Harris is not a communist
0:02:10 and that Donald Trump is not a fascist.
0:02:13 And there’s some other nuance in that tweet.
0:02:19 And the response I got, the attacks I got from both sides that are very intense, that
0:02:21 disagree, were fascinating.
0:02:28 So one of the things I have on my to-do list is to do a lengthy video and a lengthy podcast
0:02:34 on communism and fascism and other economic and political systems.
0:02:42 There needs to be a good, solid criticism and explanation of capitalism, for example.
0:02:44 It’s an economic system.
0:02:50 It’s a way for humans to work together that has, I believe, benefited the world way more
0:02:52 than it has hurt the world.
0:02:58 But to articulate that and to still man the criticisms and the perspectives that criticize
0:03:00 capitalism is also really important.
0:03:05 And so the same applies for communism, for fascism, for all kinds of ideologies that
0:03:10 rule the world for a time and all the kinds of ways that they’ve broken down and to do
0:03:15 so seriously, objectively, calmly, walking through the fire without the misuse of those
0:03:23 words, thinking clearly, not as a partisan, but as an independent thinker, as a human
0:03:25 being.
0:03:31 I think that’s something that I would like to work on more and more, even amidst this
0:03:33 insane political season.
0:03:37 Anyway, I mention all that because when I think about Shopify, I think about capitalism.
0:03:41 It’s a bunch of small sellers getting together and being able to sell stuff to people that
0:03:46 would benefit from it and would enjoy it and then make it super easy.
0:03:50 So if you’re one such seller and you want to sell stuff and you have awesome stuff to
0:03:55 sell, sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify.com/Lex.
0:03:56 That’s all lowercase.
0:04:02 Go to Shopify.com/Lex to take your business to the next level today.
0:04:07 This episode is also brought to you by Motific, a SaaS platform that helps businesses deploy
0:04:14 LLMs and drag that’s customized, fine-tuned on organization data sources.
0:04:21 Obviously, this is often extremely sensitive data, so you have to do this carefully and
0:04:27 well, but when it is done carefully and well and in a secure way, it can be a huge benefit
0:04:34 for the company to be able to take all the data that the company has and internally be
0:04:39 able to query that data, to be able to organize that data, to leverage and answer questions
0:04:42 that would make everybody in the company more efficient.
0:04:47 So I think that’s the thing that unlocks especially for large companies, but even mid-sized companies,
0:04:52 even small companies, just the intranet, a thing that takes all the data on the inside
0:04:58 and be able to make high-quality, efficient, fast decisions based on that data.
0:05:03 I think Motific was created by Cisco, specifically their outshift group that does the cutting-edge
0:05:04 R&D.
0:05:06 So these guys are legit, it’s great.
0:05:14 Visit Motific.ai to learn more, that’s M-O-T-I-F-I-C.ai.
0:05:18 This episode is also brought to you by AG1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better
0:05:20 health and peak performance.
0:05:23 I’m going out, I think it’s 100 degrees out.
0:05:30 In Austin right now, I’m going to go out and run anywhere from 5 to 12 miles.
0:05:37 I’m feeling good right now, so I’m thinking like 10, 11, 12-mile range.
0:05:43 By the way, I just heard a little clip on Cam Haynes’ Instagram, and by the way, Cam,
0:05:44 amazing human being.
0:05:46 You should definitely go follow him.
0:05:52 He’s an inspiration to me, you know, quietly just does incredible fits of strength and
0:05:57 does it all with a kind heart and just this warmth and humor out of it.
0:06:02 Anyway, he was talking about the fact that sometimes, you know, when he’s running, crazy
0:06:07 distances or fast pace, he’ll just walk for a short period of time.
0:06:08 He’s doing it for joy.
0:06:11 He’s doing it for the love of running, like you don’t always, as he says, have to hate
0:06:12 it.
0:06:14 And I think I approach running the same way.
0:06:16 Sometimes I’ll be running really fast.
0:06:17 Sometimes I walk.
0:06:23 This oftentimes correlates with how deeply I am in thought related to an audio book I’m
0:06:24 listening to.
0:06:29 Sometimes I get this sort of discomfort when there’s a difficult part of the audio book
0:06:31 that’s really making me think.
0:06:34 At the same time, keeping a fast pace is difficult for me.
0:06:36 So I just slow down.
0:06:37 Sometimes I’ll walk.
0:06:42 Sometimes I stop and just sit on a bench, and I’m doing it all not for sort of training
0:06:45 for a marathon or training for some difficult physical endeavor.
0:06:50 I’m doing it for the love of it, for the love of running out in nature, whether it’s in
0:06:55 the heat or in the cold, just the love of life that you can get, especially when the
0:06:57 second wind hits.
0:07:01 Anyway, after all that, I’m going to drink a nice cold AG1.
0:07:08 They’ll give you a one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex.
0:07:13 This episode is also brought to you by Masterclass, where you can watch over 200 classes from the
0:07:16 best people in the world and their respective disciplines.
0:07:18 I love Masterclass.
0:07:23 I love learning from people who are the best in the world at a thing.
0:07:27 Sometimes there’s incredible lecturers that can explain a thing.
0:07:35 I also love that, but I think there’s just something indescribably powerful about not
0:07:43 a great lecturer, but a great doer stepping back and explaining the core of their art,
0:07:45 of their skill, of their genius.
0:07:50 Anyway, there’s great stuff on poker with Phil Ivy, great stuff on barbecue, man, it’s
0:07:53 been forever since I had barbecue from Aaron Franklin.
0:07:54 These are all the ones I’ve watched.
0:07:58 Martin Scorsese on filmmaking, that is one I really enjoyed.
0:08:03 I mean, Scorsese is just, his stuff is both powerful and thoughtful and deep and profound
0:08:05 about family, about human nature, all of that.
0:08:08 And it’s just fun to watch.
0:08:11 Maybe I’m one of a certain generation, but it’s just fun to watch.
0:08:15 So you get to hear how the master does it, or Masterclass.
0:08:21 Get unlimited access to every Masterclass and get an additional 15% off an annual membership
0:08:30 at masterclass.com/lexpod, that’s masterclass.com/lexpod.
0:08:36 This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help.
0:08:43 They figure out what you need and match you with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours.
0:08:50 Some of the people losing their mind in the realm of the election that’s coming up.
0:08:55 That would be a fun one if they could sign up for BetterHelp and do a couple’s therapy.
0:09:01 Somebody from the far left and the far right just sitting down together, boy, that would
0:09:05 be a fascinating challenge for any therapist.
0:09:08 And from the conversational space, I would love to just listen to that.
0:09:12 And then I’ll be talking to a bunch of people on the left and the right, and having some
0:09:19 of those tense, difficult conversations, and again, having it with compassion, but also
0:09:20 with backbone.
0:09:25 It’s not an easy line to walk, by the way, and I don’t think I’m smart enough to do
0:09:26 it.
0:09:30 On most days, I kind of feel like an idiot, but I’m doing my best.
0:09:34 Anyway, you should try out talk therapy.
0:09:36 Super easy to do with BetterHelp.
0:09:40 Check them out at betterhelp.com/lex and save on your first month.
0:09:43 That’s betterhelp.com/lex.
0:09:50 This episode is also brought to you by Aidsleep and it’s pod for Ultra that I’ve been enjoying.
0:09:51 I just recently enjoyed.
0:09:53 I enjoy it every night, multiple times a day.
0:09:55 Let’s get crazy.
0:09:56 I love it.
0:10:01 For a good nap, you can cool down on each side of the bed to 20 degrees Fahrenheit below
0:10:09 room temperature, cool bed, warm blanket, and just shut off from the world.
0:10:11 Just forget it all.
0:10:18 Forget the madness of the world, the political bickering, the attacks, the tensions, the
0:10:27 drama, all the stuff that the media and the social media that wants to pull you in, that
0:10:32 wants you desperately, like a drug wants your attention, wants to just piss you off and
0:10:36 use that anger to make you addicted to the platform so you can tell everybody how pissed
0:10:37 off you are.
0:10:41 Then the other person attacks you back, it gets them to be pissed off and you’re both
0:10:42 pissed off at each other.
0:10:47 At the end of the day, just losing your mind, all of that can dissipate.
0:10:53 For me, with a short nap, on a cold bed, short nap, feels like home.
0:10:57 It’s one of the favorite things I have about home and one of my least favorite things about
0:10:59 traveling because I don’t have Aidsleep.
0:11:03 Anyway, you can enjoy the same kind of peace of mind.
0:11:13 If you go to aidsleep.com/lex and use code Lex to get $350 off the pod for Ultra.
0:11:17 This is the Lex Friedman podcast, to support it, please check out our sponsors in the
0:11:18 description.
0:11:38 And now, dear friends, here’s Peter Levels.
0:11:42 You’ve launched a lot of companies and built a lot of products.
0:11:45 As you say, most failed, but some succeeded.
0:11:49 What’s your philosophy behind building the startups that you did?
0:11:52 I think my philosophy is very different than most people in startups because most people
0:11:57 in startups, they build a company and they raise money, and they hire people and then
0:12:00 they build a product and they find something that makes money.
0:12:01 I don’t really raise money.
0:12:02 I don’t use VC funding.
0:12:03 I do everything myself.
0:12:04 I’m a designer.
0:12:05 I’m the developer.
0:12:06 I make everything.
0:12:07 I make the logo.
0:12:10 For me, I’m much more scrappy.
0:12:12 Because I don’t have funding, I need to go fast.
0:12:17 I need to make things fast to see if an idea works.
0:12:22 I have an idea in my mind and I build it, build it like a mini startup, and I launch
0:12:26 it very quickly, like within two weeks or something of building it, and I check if there’s
0:12:27 demand.
0:12:30 If people actually sign up, and not just sign up, but if people actually pay money, they
0:12:36 need to take out their credit cards, pay me money, and then I can see if the idea is
0:12:37 validated.
0:12:40 The ideas don’t work, as you say, most feel.
0:12:45 So there’s this rapid, iterative phase where you just build a prototype that works, launch
0:12:50 it, see if people like it, improving it really, really quickly, to see if people like it a
0:12:52 little bit more enough to pay and all that.
0:12:55 That whole rapid process is how you think of…
0:12:58 I think it’s very rapid.
0:13:01 If I compare it to, for example, Google, like our big tech companies, especially Google
0:13:07 where I was now kind of struggling, they made Transformers, they invented all the AI stuff
0:13:11 years ago, and they never really shipped, like they could have shipped JetGPT, for example,
0:13:15 I think I heard in 2019, and they never shipped it because they were so stuck in bureaucracy,
0:13:16 but they had everything.
0:13:19 They had the data, they had the tech, they had the engineers, and they couldn’t do it.
0:13:24 And it’s because these big organizations, it can make you very slow.
0:13:29 So being alone by myself on my laptop, in my underwear, in the hotel room or something,
0:13:35 I can ship very fast, and I don’t need to ask like legal for, like, “Oh, can you vouch
0:13:36 for this?”
0:13:37 I can just go and ship.
0:13:38 Do you always code in your underwear?
0:13:43 Your profile picture, you’re like slouching and couching your underwear, chilling on a
0:13:44 laptop.
0:13:48 No, but I do wear shorts a lot, and I usually just wear shorts and no t-shirts because I’m
0:13:50 always too hot, I’m always overheating.
0:13:54 Thank you for showing up, not just in your underwear, but wearing shorts.
0:13:56 Yeah, and I’m still wearing this for you, but…
0:13:57 Thank you.
0:13:58 Thank you for dressing up.
0:14:01 I think it’s because since I go to the gym, I’m always too hot.
0:14:02 What’s your favorite exercise in the gym?
0:14:03 Man, over at press.
0:14:05 Over at press, like shoulder press.
0:14:06 Yeah.
0:14:07 Okay.
0:14:08 But it feels good because you’re doing, like, you win.
0:14:09 Because when you…
0:14:14 I do 60 kilos, so like 120 pounds or something, like, it’s my only thing I can do well in
0:14:15 the gym.
0:14:18 And you stand like this, and you’re like, “I did it,” you know?
0:14:19 Like a winner or a post.
0:14:20 It’s a victory thing.
0:14:21 Yeah.
0:14:22 A victory post.
0:14:23 I do bench press quads, deadlifts.
0:14:24 Hence the mug.
0:14:25 Yeah.
0:14:26 Talking to my therapist.
0:14:27 Yeah.
0:14:27 It’s a deadlift.
0:14:28 Yeah.
0:14:29 Because it acts like therapy for me, you know?
0:14:30 Yeah.
0:14:31 Yeah.
0:14:32 It is.
0:14:33 Which is controversial to say.
0:14:34 Like, if I say this on Twitter, people get angry.
0:14:35 Physical hardship is a kind of therapy.
0:14:36 Yeah.
0:14:41 I just re-watched Happy People a year in the Taiga that a Warner Herzog film where they
0:14:45 document people that are doing trapping.
0:14:50 They’re essentially just working for survival in the wilderness year-round.
0:14:55 And there’s a deep happiness to their way of life because they’re so busy in it, in
0:14:56 nature.
0:14:57 Yeah.
0:14:58 Something about that physical.
0:14:59 Physical.
0:15:00 Yeah.
0:15:01 Toil.
0:15:02 Yeah.
0:15:03 My dad taught me that.
0:15:04 My dad always does like construction in the house.
0:15:06 Like, he’s always renovating the house.
0:15:09 He breaks through one room and then he goes to the next room and he’s just going in a
0:15:12 circle around the house for like the last 40 years.
0:15:15 So he’s always doing construction in the house and it’s his hobby.
0:15:21 And he, like he taught me when I’m depressed or something, he says like get a big, like
0:15:22 what do you call it?
0:15:26 Like a big mountain of sand or something from construction and just get a shovel.
0:15:32 And bring it to the other side and just do like physical labor, do like hard work and
0:15:33 do something.
0:15:34 Like set a goal, do something.
0:15:37 And I kind of did that with startups too.
0:15:38 Yeah.
0:15:39 Construction is not about the destination, man.
0:15:40 It’s about the journey.
0:15:41 Yeah.
0:15:42 Yeah.
0:15:44 Sometimes I wonder people who are always remodeling their house.
0:15:46 Is it really about their remodeling or something?
0:15:47 No, no, it’s not.
0:15:48 Is it about the project?
0:15:49 It’s about the journey.
0:15:50 The puzzle of it.
0:15:51 No, he doesn’t care about the results.
0:15:52 Well, he shows me.
0:15:53 He’s like, it’s amazing.
0:15:54 I’m like, yeah, it’s amazing.
0:15:56 But then he wants to go to the next room, you know?
0:16:00 But I think it’s very metaphorical for work because I also, I never stop work.
0:16:03 I go to the next website or I make a new one, right?
0:16:04 Or I make a new startup.
0:16:08 So I’m always like, like to give you something to wake up in the morning and like, you know,
0:16:13 have coffee and kiss your girlfriend and then you have like a goal.
0:16:16 Not today I’m going to fix this feature or today I’m going to fix this bar or something.
0:16:17 I’m going to do something.
0:16:19 You have something to wake up to, you know?
0:16:25 And I think maybe especially as a man, also women, but you need a hard work, you know?
0:16:27 You need like an endeavor, I think.
0:16:30 How much of the building that you do is about money?
0:16:33 How much is it about just a deep internal happiness?
0:16:36 It’s really about fun because I was doing it when I didn’t make money, right?
0:16:37 That’s the point.
0:16:38 So I was always coding.
0:16:39 I was always making music.
0:16:43 I made electronic music, drum and bass music like 20 years ago.
0:16:45 And I was always making stuff.
0:16:49 So I think creative expression is like a meaningful work.
0:16:50 It’s so important.
0:16:51 It’s so fun.
0:16:54 It’s so fun to have like a daily challenge where you try to figure stuff out.
0:16:59 But the interesting thing is you’ve got a lot of successful products and you never really
0:17:05 wanted to take it to that level where you scale real big and sell it to a company or
0:17:06 something like this.
0:17:07 Yeah.
0:17:08 The problem is I don’t dictate that, right?
0:17:11 Like if more people start using it, millions of people suddenly start using it and it becomes
0:17:12 big.
0:17:17 I’m not going to say, “Oh, stop signing up to my website and pay me money.”
0:17:18 But I never raised funding for it.
0:17:22 And I think because I don’t like the stressful life that comes with it, like I have a lot
0:17:30 of founder friends and they tell me secretly like hundreds of millions of dollars in funding
0:17:31 and stuff.
0:17:34 And they tell me like, “Next time, if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it like you.”
0:17:35 Because it’s more fun.
0:17:36 It’s more indie.
0:17:37 It’s more chill.
0:17:38 It’s more creative.
0:17:39 They don’t like this.
0:17:40 They don’t like to be manager, right?
0:17:41 You become like a CEO.
0:17:42 You become a manager.
0:17:48 And I think a lot of people that start startups, when they become a CEO, they don’t like that
0:17:51 job actually, but they can’t really exit it, you know?
0:17:54 But they like to do the groundwork, the coding.
0:17:57 So I think that keeps you happy, like doing something creative.
0:17:58 Yeah.
0:18:04 It’s interesting how people are pulled towards that, to scale, to go really big.
0:18:08 And you don’t have that honest reflection with yourself like what actually makes you
0:18:09 happy.
0:18:14 Because for a lot of great engineers, what makes them happy is the building, the “individual
0:18:15 contributor.”
0:18:19 Like where you’re actually still coding or you’re actually still building.
0:18:21 And they let go of that.
0:18:23 And then they become unhappy.
0:18:28 But some of that is the sacrifice needed to have an impact to scale if you truly believe
0:18:29 in a thing you’re doing.
0:18:30 But look at Elon.
0:18:33 He’s doing things a million times bigger than me, right?
0:18:36 And would I want to do that?
0:18:37 I don’t know.
0:18:38 You can’t really choose these things, right?
0:18:39 But I really respect that.
0:18:41 I think Elon is very different from VC founders, right?
0:18:44 VC start is like software, there’s a lot of bullshit in this world, I think.
0:18:48 There’s a lot of dodgy finance stuff happening there, I think.
0:18:52 And I never have concrete evidence about it, but your gut tells you something’s going
0:18:59 on with companies getting sold to friends and VCs and then they do reciprocity and shady
0:19:00 financial dealings.
0:19:03 With Elon, that’s not, he’s just raising money from investors and he’s actually building
0:19:04 stuff.
0:19:05 He needs the money to build stuff, you know?
0:19:06 Hardware stuff.
0:19:09 And that, I really respect.
0:19:13 You said that there’s been a few low points in your life that you’ve been depressed and
0:19:17 the building is one of the ways you get out of that, but can you talk to that?
0:19:21 Can you take me to that place, to that time when you were at a low point?
0:19:25 So I was in Holland and I graduated university and I didn’t want to get a normal job and
0:19:28 I was making some money with YouTube because I had this music career and I uploaded my
0:19:29 music to YouTube.
0:19:34 And YouTube started paying me with AdSense, like $2,000 a month, $2,000 a month.
0:19:38 And all my friends got like normal jobs and we stopped hanging out because people like
0:19:44 in university hang out, you know, you chill at each other’s houses, you go party.
0:19:47 But when people get jobs, they only party like in the weekend and they don’t hang anymore
0:19:49 in the week because you need to be at the office.
0:19:50 And I was like, this is not for me.
0:19:52 I want to do something else.
0:19:55 And I was starting getting this like, I think it’s like Saturn return is, you know, when
0:20:01 you turn 27, it’s like some concept where Saturn returns to the same place in the orbit
0:20:02 that it was when you’re born.
0:20:03 Man, it’s like.
0:20:04 I’m learning so many things.
0:20:05 It’s like astrology thing, you know.
0:20:08 So many truly special artists died when they were 27.
0:20:09 Exactly.
0:20:10 Some of them were 27, man.
0:20:11 And it was for me.
0:20:15 Like I started going crazy because I didn’t really see like my future in Holland buying
0:20:18 a house, going, living in the suburbs and stuff.
0:20:19 So it flew out.
0:20:20 I went to Asia.
0:20:22 I started digital nomading and did that for a year.
0:20:27 And then that made me feel even worse, you know, because I was like alone in hotel rooms,
0:20:29 like looking at the ceiling.
0:20:30 Like what am I doing with my life?
0:20:33 Like this is like, I was working on startups and stuff and YouTube.
0:20:35 But it’s like, what is the future here?
0:20:40 You know, like is this, is this something while my friends in Holland were doing really
0:20:43 well and with a normal life, you know.
0:20:47 So I was getting very depressed and like, I’m like an outcast, you know, and my money
0:20:48 was shrinking.
0:20:49 I wasn’t making money anymore.
0:20:51 I was making $500 a month or something.
0:20:57 And I was, you know, looking at the ceiling, thinking like now I’m like 27, I’m a loser.
0:20:59 And that’s the moment when I started building like startups.
0:21:02 And it was because my dad said, like, if you’re depressed, you need to, you know, get
0:21:07 that sand, get a shovel, start shoveling, doing something, you can’t just sit still.
0:21:09 Which is kind of like a interesting way to deal with depression, you know, like it’s
0:21:11 not like, oh, let’s talk about it.
0:21:14 It’s more like, let’s go do something.
0:21:19 And I started doing a project called 12 startups in 12 months, where every month I would make
0:21:23 something like a project and I would launch it with Stripe so people could pay for it.
0:21:28 So the basic format is try to build a thing, put it online and put Stripe to where you
0:21:29 can pay money for it.
0:21:30 Yeah.
0:21:33 So it’s not sponsored by Stripe, but at a Stripe checkout button.
0:21:36 Is that still like the easiest way to just like pay for stuff, Stripe?
0:21:38 100% like I think so, yeah.
0:21:39 It’s a cool company.
0:21:40 They just made it so easy.
0:21:41 You can just click.
0:21:42 Yeah.
0:21:43 And they’re really nice.
0:21:44 Like the CEO Patrick is really nice.
0:21:47 Behind the scenes, it must be difficult to like actually make that happen.
0:21:52 Because that used to be a huge problem like just, just adding a thing, a button where
0:21:54 you can like pay for a thing.
0:21:59 Dude, dude, I know this because when I was at, when I was nine years old, I was making
0:22:04 websites also and I tried to open a merchant account that was like before Stripe you would
0:22:07 have like, I think it was called world pay.
0:22:12 So I had to like fill out all these forms and then I had to fax them to America from
0:22:15 Holland with my dad’s fax.
0:22:18 And my dad had to, it wasn’t my dad’s name and he did sign for this and he started reading
0:22:19 these terms and conditions.
0:22:23 It was like, he’s liable for like a hundred million in damages and he’s like, I don’t
0:22:24 want to sign this.
0:22:25 I’m like, dad, come on.
0:22:26 I need the merchant account.
0:22:27 I need to make money on the internet.
0:22:30 And he signed it and we sent it, we faxed it to America and I had a merchant account.
0:22:32 But then never, nobody paid for anything.
0:22:34 So that was the problem, you know?
0:22:35 But it’s much easier now.
0:22:37 You can sign up, you add some codes and yeah.
0:22:40 So 12 startups in 12 months.
0:22:45 So what, how do you, what, startup number one, what was that, what, like, what, what
0:22:46 were you feeling?
0:22:50 What were you, you sit behind the computer, like how much did you actually know about
0:22:53 building stuff at that point?
0:22:57 I could code a little bit because I did the YouTube channel and I made a website for,
0:22:58 I would make websites for like the YouTube channel.
0:23:02 It was called Panda Mix Show and it was like these electronic music mixes, like dubstep
0:23:04 or drum and bass or techno or house.
0:23:06 I saw one of them had like Flash, were you using Flash?
0:23:07 Yeah.
0:23:09 My album, my CD album was using Flash.
0:23:10 Yeah.
0:23:11 I sold my CD.
0:23:12 Yeah.
0:23:13 Kids, Flash was cool.
0:23:14 Flash was cool.
0:23:15 Software.
0:23:16 This is like the break.
0:23:17 Like Grandpa, you know, but Flash was cool.
0:23:18 Yeah.
0:23:19 And there was, what’s it called?
0:23:20 Boy, I should remember this action script.
0:23:21 There’s some kind of programming language script.
0:23:22 Yeah.
0:23:23 In Flash.
0:23:25 Back then that was the JavaScript, you know?
0:23:26 The JavaScript.
0:23:29 And I thought that’s gonna, that’s supposed to be the dynamic thing that takes over the
0:23:30 internet.
0:23:31 Yeah.
0:23:32 I invested so many hours in learning that.
0:23:33 Steve Jobs killed it.
0:23:34 Steve Jobs killed it.
0:23:35 Steve Jobs said, Flash sucks.
0:23:36 Stop using it.
0:23:37 Everyone’s like, okay.
0:23:38 That guy was right though, right?
0:23:39 Yeah.
0:23:40 I don’t know.
0:23:41 Yeah.
0:23:42 Well, it was, it was a closed platform, I think.
0:23:43 And closed.
0:23:45 But this is ironic because Apple, you know, they’re not very open.
0:23:46 Right.
0:23:48 But back then Steve was like, this is closed.
0:23:49 We should not use it.
0:23:52 And it’s as security problems, I think, which sounded like a cop out, like I just wanted
0:23:55 to say that to make it look kind of bad.
0:23:56 Flash was cool.
0:23:57 Yeah.
0:23:58 Yeah.
0:23:59 It was cool for a time.
0:24:00 Yeah.
0:24:01 Listen.
0:24:02 Animated GIFs were cool for a time too.
0:24:03 Yeah.
0:24:04 They came back in a different way.
0:24:05 Yeah.
0:24:06 As a meme though.
0:24:09 I mean like, I even remember when GIFs were actually cool.
0:24:10 Not ironically cool.
0:24:11 Yeah.
0:24:15 Like there was like, on the internet you would have like a dancing rabbit or something like
0:24:16 this.
0:24:17 Yeah.
0:24:18 And that was really exciting.
0:24:19 You had like the, you know, Lex homepage.
0:24:20 Yeah.
0:24:21 Everything was centered.
0:24:22 Yeah.
0:24:23 And you had like Peter’s homepage.
0:24:24 On the construction.
0:24:25 Yeah.
0:24:28 GIF, which was like a guy with a helmet and the lights.
0:24:29 It was amazing.
0:24:30 And the banners.
0:24:31 Yeah.
0:24:34 That’s how, before like Google AdSense, you would have like banners for advertisements.
0:24:35 It was amazing.
0:24:36 Yeah.
0:24:38 And a lot of links to porn, I think.
0:24:39 Yeah.
0:24:40 Or porny type of things.
0:24:42 I think that was where the merchant accounts people would use for.
0:24:43 People would make money a lot.
0:24:46 The only money made on the internet then was like porn, or a lot of it.
0:24:47 Yeah.
0:24:48 It was a dark place.
0:24:49 It’s still a dark place.
0:24:50 Yeah.
0:24:51 But there’s beauty in the darkness.
0:24:52 Anyway.
0:24:55 So you were, you did some basic HTML.
0:24:56 Yeah.
0:24:57 Yeah.
0:24:58 But I had to learn the actual like coding.
0:24:59 So I, this was good.
0:25:01 It was a good, good idea to like every month launch a startup.
0:25:04 So I could learn the codes, learn basic stuff.
0:25:08 And, but it was still very scrappy because it didn’t have time to, which is on purpose.
0:25:11 Like I didn’t have time to spend a lot of, I had a month to do something.
0:25:14 So I couldn’t spend more than a month and it was pretty strict about that.
0:25:16 And I published it as a blog post.
0:25:19 So people, I think I put it on hacker news and people would check like kind of like, oh,
0:25:21 did you actually, you know, I felt like accountability.
0:25:22 Cause I put it public.
0:25:23 They actually had to do it.
0:25:25 Do you remember the first one you did?
0:25:27 I think it was play my inbox.
0:25:31 Cause back then my friends, we would send, we would send like cool music.
0:25:32 It was before Spotify.
0:25:34 I think we would send like 2014.
0:25:37 We would send music to each other like YouTube links.
0:25:38 Like this is a cool song.
0:25:39 This is a cool song.
0:25:43 And it was these, these giant email threads on Gmail and they were like unnavigatable.
0:25:48 So I made an app that would log into your Gmail, get them emails and find the ones with
0:25:49 YouTube links.
0:25:53 And then make like kind of like a gallery of your, your songs, like essentially Spotify.
0:25:55 And my friends loved it.
0:25:56 Was it scraping it?
0:25:57 Like what was it?
0:26:01 No, it uses like a POP, like pop or IMAP, you know, it would actually check your email.
0:26:05 So that like privacy concerns, cause it would get all your emails to find YouTube links,
0:26:07 but then I wouldn’t save anything.
0:26:09 But that was fun.
0:26:13 It was like, and that, that first product already would get like pressed.
0:26:16 Like it went on, I think like some tech media and stuff.
0:26:17 And I was like, this is cool.
0:26:18 Like it didn’t make money.
0:26:23 There was no payment button, but it was a, it was actually people using it.
0:26:25 I think tens of thousands of people used it.
0:26:26 That’s a great idea.
0:26:29 I wonder why, like why, why don’t we have that?
0:26:35 Why don’t we have things that access Gmail and extract some useful aggregate information?
0:26:36 Yeah.
0:26:37 Yeah.
0:26:38 You could tell Gmail like, don’t give me all emails.
0:26:40 Just give me the ones with YouTube links, you know, or something like that.
0:26:41 Yeah.
0:26:44 I mean, there is a whole ecosystem of like apps you can build on top of the Google.
0:26:45 Yeah.
0:26:46 But people don’t.
0:26:47 Never do this.
0:26:48 They build.
0:26:50 I’ve seen a few like boomerang.
0:26:56 There’s a few apps that are like good, but just, I wonder what, maybe it’s not easy to make money.
0:26:59 I think it’s hard to get people to pay for these like extensions and plugins, you know?
0:27:00 Yeah.
0:27:01 Because it’s not like a real app.
0:27:02 So it’s not like people don’t value it.
0:27:03 People value it.
0:27:05 Oh, and a plugin should be free, you know?
0:27:08 When I want to use a plugin in Google Sheets or something, I’m not going to pay for it.
0:27:12 Like it should be free, which is, but if you go to a website and you actually, okay,
0:27:15 I need this product, I’m going to pay for this because it’s a real product.
0:27:18 So even though it’s the same code in the back, it’s a plugin, you know?
0:27:19 Yeah.
0:27:23 I mean, you can do it through like extensions, like Chrome extensions from the browser side.
0:27:25 Yeah, but who pays for Chrome extensions, right?
0:27:26 Like barely anybody.
0:27:27 Nobody.
0:27:29 So that’s not a good place to make money, probably.
0:27:30 Yeah, that sucks.
0:27:32 Like Chrome extension should be an extension for your startup, you know?
0:27:33 You have a product.
0:27:34 Yeah.
0:27:36 Oh, we also have a Chrome extension, you know?
0:27:39 I wish the Chrome extension would be the product.
0:27:42 I wish Chrome would support that, like where you could pay for it easily.
0:27:47 Because like imagine, I can imagine a lot of products that would just live as extensions.
0:27:49 Like improvements for social media.
0:27:51 Yeah, it’s like GPTs, you know?
0:27:52 GPTs, yeah.
0:27:54 Like these GPTs, they’re going to charge money for it.
0:27:56 Now you get a ref share, I think, from an opening eye.
0:27:58 I made a lot of them also.
0:27:59 Why?
0:28:00 We’ll talk about it.
0:28:01 So let’s rewind back.
0:28:04 It’s a pretty cool idea to do 12 startups in 12 months.
0:28:07 What does it take to build a thing in 30 days?
0:28:09 Look at that time.
0:28:11 How hard was that?
0:28:14 I think the hard part is like figuring out what you shouldn’t add, right?
0:28:16 What you shouldn’t build because you don’t have time.
0:28:18 So you need to build a landing page.
0:28:21 Well, you need to make the, you know, you need to build the product actually,
0:28:23 because they need to be something they pay for.
0:28:25 Do you need to build a login system?
0:28:26 Like maybe no, you know?
0:28:28 Like maybe you can build some scrappy login system.
0:28:32 Like for FotoEye, you sign up, you pay for the Stripe checkout and you get a login link.
0:28:36 And when I started, there was only a login link with a hash and that’s just a static link.
0:28:37 So it’s very easy to log in.
0:28:38 Yeah.
0:28:39 It’s not so safe, you know?
0:28:43 If you leak the link and now I have real Google login, but that took like a year.
0:28:47 So keeping it very scrappy is very important to, because you don’t have time, you know?
0:28:51 You need to focus on what you can build fast.
0:28:56 So money, Stripe, build a product, build a landing page.
0:28:59 You need to think about how are people going to find this?
0:29:01 So are you going to put it on Reddit or something?
0:29:04 How are you going to put it on Reddit without being looked at as a spammer, right?
0:29:07 Like if you say, hey, this is my new startup, you should use it.
0:29:10 It gets deleted, you know?
0:29:13 Maybe if you find a problem that a lot of people on Reddit already have on a subreddit, you know?
0:29:18 Like you solve the problem and say, some people I made this thing that might solve your problem
0:29:20 and maybe it’s free for now, you know?
0:29:22 Like that could work, you know?
0:29:27 But you need to be very, you know, narrow it down where you’re building.
0:29:28 Time is limited.
0:29:29 Yeah.
0:29:34 Actually, can we go back to the you laying in a room feeling like a loser?
0:29:35 Yeah.
0:29:36 I still feel like a loser sometimes.
0:29:45 What’s, what can you, can you speak to that feeling, to that place of just like feeling like a loser?
0:29:50 And I think a lot of people in this world are laying in a room right now listening to this.
0:29:51 Yeah.
0:29:52 And feeling like a loser.
0:29:53 Okay.
0:29:55 So I think it’s normal if you’re young that you feel like a loser, first of all.
0:29:57 Especially when you’re 27.
0:29:58 Yes.
0:29:59 Yeah, especially.
0:30:00 There’s like a peak.
0:30:01 Yeah.
0:30:02 Yeah.
0:30:03 I would not kill yourself.
0:30:06 It’s very important to get through it, you know?
0:30:08 But because you have nothing.
0:30:09 You haven’t probably no money.
0:30:10 You have no business.
0:30:11 You have no job.
0:30:12 Yeah.
0:30:13 Like Jordan Peterson said this.
0:30:14 I saw it somewhere.
0:30:16 Like the reason people are depressed because they have nothing.
0:30:17 They don’t have a girlfriend.
0:30:18 They don’t have a boyfriend.
0:30:19 They don’t have a, you need stuff.
0:30:20 You need like a family.
0:30:21 You need things around you.
0:30:23 You need to build a life for yourself.
0:30:25 If you don’t build a life for yourself, you’ll be depressed.
0:30:30 So if you’re alone in Asia in a hostel looking at the ceiling and you don’t have any money coming in.
0:30:31 You don’t have a girlfriend.
0:30:32 You don’t, of course you’re depressed.
0:30:33 It’s logic.
0:30:35 But back then, if you’re in a moment, you think there’s not logic.
0:30:37 There’s something wrong with me, you know?
0:30:38 Yeah.
0:30:41 And also I think I started going, I started getting like anxiety.
0:30:46 And I think I started going a little bit crazy where I think travel can make you insane.
0:30:50 And I know this because I know that there’s like digital moments that they kill themselves.
0:30:53 And I don’t, I haven’t checked like this, the comparison with like baseline people.
0:30:58 Like Susan Ray, but I have a hunch, especially in the beginning when it was a very new thing
0:31:03 like 10 years ago, that it can be very psychologically taxing.
0:31:07 And you’re alone a lot back then when you travel alone.
0:31:09 There was no other digital moments back then a lot.
0:31:11 So you’re in a strange culture.
0:31:13 You look different than everybody.
0:31:14 Like you’re in, I was in Asia.
0:31:18 Like everybody’s really nice in Thailand, but you’re not part of the culture.
0:31:19 You’re traveling around.
0:31:21 You’re hopping from city to city.
0:31:23 You don’t have a home anymore.
0:31:25 You feel this rooted.
0:31:29 And you’re constantly in the outcast in that you’re different from everybody else.
0:31:30 Yes, exactly.
0:31:31 But people treat you like Thailand.
0:31:33 People are so nice, but you still feel like outcast.
0:31:38 And, and then I think the digital moments I met then were all kind of like, it’s like shady business, you know,
0:31:41 but they were like vigilantes because it was a new thing.
0:31:43 And like one guy was selling illegal drugs.
0:31:47 It was an American guy was selling illegal drugs via UPS to Americans, you know, on his website.
0:31:50 There were like a lot of drop shippers doing shady stuff.
0:31:54 There’s a lot of shady things going on there and they were, they didn’t look like very balanced people.
0:31:57 They didn’t look like people I wanted to hang with, you know.
0:32:01 So I also felt outcast from other foreigners in Thailand, other digital nomads.
0:32:03 And I was like, man, I made a big mistake.
0:32:06 And then I went back to Holland and then I got even more depressed.
0:32:07 You said digital nomad.
0:32:08 What is digital nomad?
0:32:09 What is that way of life?
0:32:12 What is the philosophy there and the history of the movement?
0:32:16 I struck upon it on the accident because I was like, I’m going to graduate university.
0:32:17 And then I’m going to, I need to get out of here.
0:32:19 I’ll fly to Asia because I’ve been before in Asia.
0:32:22 I studied in Korea in 2009, like study exchange.
0:32:23 So I was like, Asia is easy.
0:32:24 Thailand is easy.
0:32:26 And I’ll just go there and figure things out.
0:32:27 And it’s cheap. It’s very cheap.
0:32:31 Chiang Mai, I would live like $450 per month rent for like a private room. Pretty good.
0:32:32 So I struck upon this on accident.
0:32:37 I was like, okay, there’s other people on laptops working on their startup or working remotely.
0:32:41 Back then nobody worked remotely, but they worked on their businesses, right?
0:32:47 And they would, you know, live in like Colombia or Thailand or Vietnam or Bali.
0:32:49 They would live kind of like in more cheap places.
0:32:51 And it looked like a very adventurous life.
0:32:54 Like you travel around, you build your business.
0:32:56 There’s no pressure from like your home society, right?
0:32:57 Like you’re American.
0:33:00 So you get pressure from American society telling you kind of what to do.
0:33:02 Like you need to buy a house or you need to do this stuff.
0:33:03 I had this in Holland too.
0:33:07 And you can get away from this pressure and you can find kind of feel like you’re free.
0:33:10 You’re kind of, there’s nobody telling you what to do.
0:33:14 But that’s also why you start feeling like you go crazy because you are, you are free.
0:33:18 You’re attached from anything and anybody.
0:33:20 You’re just attached from your culture.
0:33:23 You’re just attached from the culture you’re probably in because you’re staying very short.
0:33:27 I think Franz Kafka said, I’m free, therefore I’m lost.
0:33:29 Man, that’s so true.
0:33:30 Yeah, that’s exactly the point.
0:33:34 And yeah, freedom is like, it’s the definition of no constraints, right?
0:33:35 Like anything is possible.
0:33:39 You can go anywhere and everybody’s like, oh, that must be super nice, you know?
0:33:41 Like freedom, you must be very happy.
0:33:42 And it’s the opposite.
0:33:43 Like I don’t think that makes you happy.
0:33:45 I think constraints probably make you happy.
0:33:48 And that’s a big lesson I learned then.
0:33:50 But what were they making for money?
0:33:53 So you’re saying they were doing shady stuff at that time?
0:33:55 For me, you know, because I was more like a developer.
0:34:01 I wanted to make startups kind of, and it was like, there was like drugs being shipped to America,
0:34:05 like diet pills and stuff, like non FDA approved stuff, you know?
0:34:07 And they would like, there was no like effort.
0:34:11 They were like, they would sit with beers and they would laugh about like all the dodgy shit kind of they’re doing, you know?
0:34:12 That part of it.
0:34:13 Okay.
0:34:15 Kind of vibe, you know, like kind of sleazy, Ecom vibe.
0:34:17 I’m not saying all Ecom is sleazy, you know?
0:34:18 Right.
0:34:19 But you know, this vibe.
0:34:20 It could be a vibe.
0:34:22 And your vibe was more build cool shit.
0:34:23 Make cool stuff.
0:34:24 That’s ethical.
0:34:26 You know the guys with sports cars in Dubai, these people, you know?
0:34:27 Yes.
0:34:29 Ecom like, oh, bro, you got a drop ship.
0:34:30 Yeah.
0:34:31 And you’ll make 100 million a month.
0:34:33 Like those people was this shit.
0:34:35 And I was like, this is not my people.
0:34:36 Yeah.
0:34:38 I mean, there’s nothing wrong with any of those individual.
0:34:39 No, it doesn’t mean.
0:34:44 But there’s a foundation that’s not quite ethical.
0:34:45 I mean, what is that?
0:34:46 I don’t know what that is, but yeah, I get you.
0:34:47 No, like, I don’t want to judge.
0:34:49 It was more, I know that for me, it wasn’t my world.
0:34:50 It wasn’t my subculture.
0:34:52 I want to make cool shit.
0:34:54 You know, but they also think their cool shit is cool.
0:34:59 So, you know, but I wanted to make like real like startups and there was my thing.
0:35:02 I would read hacker news, you know, like my commentator and they were making cool stuff.
0:35:04 So I wanted to make cool stuff.
0:35:06 I mean, that’s a pretty cool way of life.
0:35:09 Just if you romanticize it for a moment.
0:35:10 It’s very romantic, man.
0:35:13 It’s very, it’s colorful, you know, like if I think about the memories.
0:35:15 I mean, what is some happy memories?
0:35:24 Just like working, working cafes or working in just the freedom that, that envelops you
0:35:26 for that way of life.
0:35:27 Because anything is possible.
0:35:28 You just get up and go.
0:35:34 It’s amazing. Like we would work, I would make friends and we would work until, you know,
0:35:41 6 a.m. in Bali, for example, with like, with Andre, my best friend, who is still my best
0:35:44 friend, and we would another friend and we would work until like the morning when the
0:35:48 sun came up, because at night the coworking space was silent, you know, there was nobody
0:35:49 else.
0:35:55 And I would wake up like 6 p.m. or 5 p.m. I would drive to the coworking space on a motorbike.
0:35:58 There was like 30 hot lattes from a cafe.
0:35:59 How many?
0:36:00 30.
0:36:03 Because there was like, there was like 6 people coming, or we didn’t know.
0:36:04 Sometimes people would come in.
0:36:06 Did you say 3030?
0:36:07 Yeah.
0:36:08 Nice.
0:36:10 And we would drink like 4 per person or something, you know?
0:36:11 Yeah.
0:36:12 Man, it’s Bali.
0:36:14 I don’t know if they were powerful lattes, you know, but they were lattes.
0:36:17 And we would put it in plastic bag and then we would drive there and all the coffee was
0:36:19 like falling, you know, everywhere.
0:36:23 And then we’d go in courses and have these coffees here and we’d work all night.
0:36:27 We’d play like techno music and everybody would just work in there.
0:36:28 Like this would literally like business people.
0:36:31 They would work in their startup and we would all try and make something.
0:36:37 And then the sun would come up and the morning people, you know, the yoga girls and yoga
0:36:40 guys would come in, you know, after the yoga class at 6.
0:36:41 And they’d say, hey, good morning.
0:36:43 And we’re like, we look like this, you know?
0:36:44 And we’re like, what’s up?
0:36:45 How are you doing?
0:36:48 And we didn’t know how bad we looked, you know, but it was very bad.
0:36:52 And then we would go home, sleep in like a hostel or a hotel and do the same thing.
0:36:54 And again and again and again.
0:36:58 And it was this lock-in mode, you know, like working.
0:37:00 And that was very fun.
0:37:05 So it’s just a bunch of you techno music blasting all through the night.
0:37:06 Yeah.
0:37:08 More like industrially.
0:37:10 Not like this cheesy.
0:37:15 For me, it’s such an interesting thing because the speed of the beat affects how I feel about
0:37:16 a thing.
0:37:21 So the faster it is, the more anxiety I feel, but that anxiety is channeled into productivity.
0:37:25 But if it’s a little too fast, I start the anxiety overpowers.
0:37:26 You don’t like drum and bass music?
0:37:27 Probably not.
0:37:28 No, it’s too fast.
0:37:31 I mean, for working, I have to play with it.
0:37:35 It’s like you can actually, like I can adjust my level of anxiety.
0:37:37 There must be a better word than anxiety.
0:37:41 It’s like productive anxiety that I like.
0:37:42 Whatever that is.
0:37:43 It also depends what kind of work you do, right?
0:37:46 Like if you’re writing, you probably don’t want drum and bass music.
0:37:50 Just for code, like industrial techno, this kind of stuff, kind of fast.
0:37:56 It works well because you really get like locked in and combined with caffeine, you know?
0:37:58 You go deep, you know?
0:38:01 And I think you balance on this edge of anxiety because this caffeine is also hitting your
0:38:02 anxiety.
0:38:04 You want to be on the edge of anxiety with this techno running.
0:38:06 Sometimes it gets too much.
0:38:09 Like stop the techno, stop the music.
0:38:11 But those are good memories, you know?
0:38:12 And also like travel memories.
0:38:16 You know, you go from city to city and it feels like, it’s kind of like Jet Set Live.
0:38:18 Like it feels very beautiful.
0:38:20 Like you’re seeing a lot of cool cities.
0:38:22 What was your favorite place?
0:38:23 Do you remember?
0:38:24 Did you visit it?
0:38:28 I think still like Bangkok is the best place.
0:38:30 And Bangkok and Chiang Mai.
0:38:32 I think Thailand is very special.
0:38:35 Like I’ve been to the other place, like I’ve been to Vietnam and I’ve been to South
0:38:36 America and stuff.
0:38:41 I still think Thailand wins in how nice people are, how easy of a life people have
0:38:42 there.
0:38:43 Everything’s cheap?
0:38:44 Yeah.
0:38:45 Good.
0:38:46 Well, Bangkok is getting expensive now.
0:38:47 But Chiang Mai is still cheap.
0:38:50 I think when you’re starting out, it’s a great place.
0:38:51 Man, the air quality sucks.
0:38:52 It’s a big problem.
0:38:56 So, and it’s quite hot, but that’s a very cool place.
0:38:57 Provincans.
0:38:59 I love Brazil also.
0:39:03 My girlfriend is Brazilian, but I do love, not just because of that, but I like Brazil.
0:39:06 The problem still is the safety issue, you know?
0:39:08 Like it’s like in America, like it’s localized.
0:39:11 It’s hard for Europeans to understand like safety’s localized to specific areas.
0:39:14 So if you go to the right areas, it’s amazing.
0:39:15 Brazil’s amazing.
0:39:17 If you go to the wrong areas, like maybe you die, right?
0:39:18 Yeah.
0:39:19 Yeah.
0:39:20 I mean, that’s true.
0:39:21 But it’s not true in Europe.
0:39:22 In Europe, it’s much more…
0:39:23 That’s true.
0:39:24 More average.
0:39:25 You’re right.
0:39:26 You’re right.
0:39:27 It’s more averaged out.
0:39:28 Yeah.
0:39:29 I like it when there’s strong neighborhoods.
0:39:34 When you like, you cross a certain street and you’re in a dangerous part of town.
0:39:35 Man, yeah.
0:39:36 I like it.
0:39:38 I like there’s certain cities in the United States like that.
0:39:39 Yeah.
0:39:40 I like that.
0:39:41 And you’re saying Europe is more…
0:39:42 But you don’t feel scared?
0:39:43 Well, I don’t.
0:39:44 I like danger.
0:39:45 BJJ.
0:39:46 No, not even just that.
0:39:48 I think danger is interesting.
0:39:49 Yeah.
0:39:52 So danger reveals something about yourself, about others.
0:39:54 Also, I like the full range of humanity.
0:39:55 Yeah.
0:39:57 So I don’t like the mellowed out aspects of humanity.
0:39:58 I have friends.
0:40:00 Like these are my friends that are exactly like this.
0:40:03 Like they go to like the kind of broken areas, you know?
0:40:04 Like they like this reality.
0:40:06 They like authenticity more.
0:40:07 They don’t like luxury.
0:40:08 They don’t like…
0:40:09 Oh yeah, luxury.
0:40:10 Yeah.
0:40:11 It’s very European of you.
0:40:12 Like…
0:40:13 Wait, what’s that?
0:40:15 That’s a whole other conversation.
0:40:24 So you quoted Freya Stark, quote, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the
0:40:27 most pleasant sensations in the world.”
0:40:28 Yeah.
0:40:32 Do you remember a time you awoken in a strange town and felt like that?
0:40:34 Were you talking about small towns or big towns?
0:40:35 Man, anywhere.
0:40:39 I think I wrote it in some blog posts and like…
0:40:41 It was a common thing when you would wake up.
0:40:42 And this was like…
0:40:43 Because I have this website.
0:40:45 I started a website about this digital nomad.
0:40:46 It’s called nomadlis.com.
0:40:47 And there was a community.
0:40:49 So it was like 30,000 other digital nomads.
0:40:50 Because I was feeling lonely.
0:40:52 So I built this website and I stopped feeling lonely.
0:40:55 Like I started organizing meetups and making friends.
0:41:00 And it was very common that people would say they would wake up and they would forget where
0:41:01 they are.
0:41:04 Like for the first half a minute, and I had to look outside.
0:41:05 Where am I?
0:41:06 Which country?
0:41:08 It sounds really privileged, but it’s more funny.
0:41:11 You literally don’t know where you are because you’re so disrooted.
0:41:13 But there’s something…
0:41:15 Man, it’s like Anthony Bourdain.
0:41:21 There’s something pure about this kind of vagabond travel thing.
0:41:23 It’s behind me, I think.
0:41:25 Now I travel with my girlfriend.
0:41:26 It’s very different.
0:41:32 It is a romantic memories of this vagabond individualistic solo life.
0:41:34 But the thing is, it didn’t make me happy.
0:41:35 But it was very cool.
0:41:36 But it didn’t make me happy.
0:41:37 It made me anxious.
0:41:39 There’s something about it that makes you anxious.
0:41:40 I don’t know.
0:41:41 I still feel like that.
0:41:42 It’s a cool feeling.
0:41:45 It’s scary at first, but then you realize where you are.
0:41:47 And I don’t know.
0:41:51 It’s like you awaken to the possibilities of this place when you feel like that.
0:41:52 That’s it.
0:41:53 It’s great.
0:41:55 It’s even when you’re doing some basic travel.
0:41:57 Go to San Francisco or something else.
0:41:58 You have the novelty effect.
0:42:00 You’re in a new place.
0:42:02 Here, things are possible.
0:42:05 You don’t get bored yet.
0:42:08 That’s why people get addicted to travel.
0:42:09 Back to startups.
0:42:14 You wrote a book on how to do this thing and gave a great talk on it.
0:42:15 How to do startups.
0:42:18 The book’s called “Make Bootstrapers Handbook.”
0:42:21 I was wondering if you could go through some of the steps.
0:42:24 Idea, build, launch, grow, monetize, automate, and exit.
0:42:27 There’s a lot of fascinating ideas in each one.
0:42:29 Idea stage.
0:42:31 How do you find a good idea?
0:42:33 I think you need to be able to spot problems.
0:42:36 For example, you can go in your daily life when you wake up and you’re like,
0:42:42 “What is stuff that I’m really annoyed with that’s in my daily life that doesn’t function well?”
0:42:44 That’s a problem that you can see.
0:42:50 Maybe that’s something I can write code for and it will make my life easier.
0:42:54 I would say make a list of all these problems you have and an idea to solve it
0:42:56 and see which one is viable.
0:42:59 You can actually do something and then start building it.
0:43:02 That’s a really good place to start.
0:43:05 Become open to all the problems in your life.
0:43:07 Actually start noticing them.
0:43:09 I think that’s actually not a trivial thing to do.
0:43:13 To realize that some aspects of your life could be done way, way better.
0:43:18 Because we very quickly get accustomed to discomforts.
0:43:19 Exactly.
0:43:21 For example, doorknobs.
0:43:22 Yeah.
0:43:24 Design of certain things.
0:43:26 New experiment doorknob.
0:43:32 That one I know how much incredible design work has gone into.
0:43:33 It’s really interesting.
0:43:35 Doors and doorknobs.
0:43:38 The design of everyday things, forks and spoons.
0:43:42 It’s going to be hard to come up with a fork that’s better than the current fork designs.
0:43:46 The other aspect of it is you’re saying in order to come up with interesting ideas,
0:43:49 you’ve got to try to live a more interesting life.
0:43:50 Yeah.
0:43:52 But that’s where travel comes in.
0:43:55 Because when I started traveling, I started seeing stuff in other countries
0:43:58 that you didn’t have in Europe, for example, or America even.
0:44:03 If you go to Asia, especially 10 years ago, nobody knew about this.
0:44:07 WeChat, all these apps that they already had before we had them.
0:44:08 Everything apps.
0:44:10 Now Elon is trying to make X this everything app.
0:44:12 WeChat, the same thing.
0:44:16 In Indonesia or Thailand, you have one app that you can order food with.
0:44:17 You can order groceries.
0:44:19 You can order massage.
0:44:21 You can order car mechanic.
0:44:24 Anything you can think of is in the app.
0:44:28 And that stuff, for example, that’s called arbitrage.
0:44:32 You can go back to your country and build that same app for your country, for example.
0:44:39 So you start seeing solutions that other countries already did in the rest of the world.
0:44:45 And also traveling in general just gives you more problems because travel is uncomfortable.
0:44:47 Airports are horrible.
0:44:49 Airplanes are not comfortable either.
0:44:51 There’s a lot of problems you start seeing.
0:44:53 Just getting out of your house.
0:44:57 But also in the digital world, you can just go into different communities
0:45:01 and see what can be improved in that.
0:45:05 What specifically is your process of generating ideas?
0:45:07 Do idea dumps?
0:45:08 Do you have a document where you just keep writing?
0:45:10 Yeah, I used to have…
0:45:15 Because when I wasn’t making money, I was trying to make this list of ideas to see…
0:45:17 I was thinking statistically already.
0:45:20 I need to build all these things, and one of these will work out probably.
0:45:23 So I need to have a lot of things to try.
0:45:24 And I did that.
0:45:29 Right now, because I already have money, I can do more things based on technology.
0:45:35 So for example, AI, when I found out about one stable diffusion game or chat GBT and stuff,
0:45:38 all these things were like…
0:45:40 I didn’t start working with them because I had a problem.
0:45:44 I had no problems, but I was very curious about technology.
0:45:48 And I was playing with it and figuring out…
0:45:50 First, just playing with it, and then you find something.
0:45:55 Like, okay, stable diffusion generates houses, very beautiful, and interiors, you know?
0:45:59 So it’s less about problem solving, it’s more about the possibilities of new things you can create.
0:46:03 Yeah, but that’s very risky, because that’s the famous solution trying to find a problem.
0:46:07 And usually it doesn’t work, and that’s very common with startup founders.
0:46:11 I think they have tech, but actually people don’t need to tech, right?
0:46:13 Can you actually explain…
0:46:16 It’d be cool to talk about some of the stuff you created.
0:46:19 Can you explain the photoai.com?
0:46:22 Yeah, so it’s like fire your photographer.
0:46:24 The idea is that you don’t need a photographer anymore.
0:46:28 You can train yourself as an AI model, and you can take as many photos as you want anywhere,
0:46:36 in any clothes with facial expressions like happy or sad or poses, all this stuff.
0:46:37 So how does it work?
0:46:38 Yeah.
0:46:43 This is a link to a gallery of ones done on me.
0:46:46 Yeah, so on the left you have the prompts, the box, yeah.
0:46:47 So you can write like…
0:46:49 So model is your model, it’s like treatment.
0:46:52 So you can write like model as a blah, blah, blah, whatever you want.
0:46:53 Yep.
0:46:56 Then press the button and it will take photos, it will take like one minute.
0:46:58 What are you using for the hosting for the compute?
0:46:59 Replicate.
0:47:00 Replicate.com.
0:47:01 They’re very, very good.
0:47:02 Okay, it’s cool.
0:47:06 Like this interface-wise, it’s cool that you’re showing how long it’s going to take.
0:47:07 This is amazing.
0:47:08 So it’s taking a…
0:47:11 I’m presuming you just loaded in a few pictures from the internet.
0:47:15 Yeah, so I went to Google Images, tapped in Lex Friedman, I added like 10 or 20 images.
0:47:19 You can open them in the gallery, and you can use your cursor to…
0:47:20 Yeah.
0:47:22 So some don’t look like you.
0:47:27 So the hit and miss rate is like, I don’t know, say like 50/50 or something.
0:47:30 But when I was watching your tweets, like it’s been getting better and better and better.
0:47:32 It was very bad in the beginning.
0:47:36 It was so bad, but still people signed up to it, you know?
0:47:39 There’s two Lexes, it’s great.
0:47:42 It’s getting more and more sexual, it’s making me very uncomfortable.
0:47:44 Man, but that’s the problem with these models.
0:47:47 No, we need to talk about this, because the models and diffusion.
0:47:51 So the photorealistic models that are like fine-tuned, they were all trained and born.
0:47:52 In the beginning.
0:47:54 And there was a guy called Hassan.
0:47:57 So I was trying to figure out how to do photorealistic AI photos, and it was…
0:47:59 Stable diffusion by itself is not doing that well.
0:48:01 Like the faces look all mangled.
0:48:05 And it doesn’t have enough resolution or something to do that well.
0:48:09 So, but I started seeing these base models, these fine-tuned models.
0:48:13 And people would train them porn, and I would try them, and they would be very photorealistic.
0:48:18 They would have bodies that actually made sense, like body anatomy.
0:48:22 But if you look at the photorealistic models that people use now, still,
0:48:25 there’s still a core of porn there, like of naked people.
0:48:27 So I need to prompt out the naked…
0:48:29 And everyone needs to do this with AI startups, with imaging.
0:48:31 You need to prompt out the naked stuff.
0:48:33 You need to put a naked…
0:48:36 You have to keep reminding the model, you need to put clothes on the thing.
0:48:38 Yeah, don’t put naked, because it’s very risky.
0:48:43 I have Google Vision that checks every photo before it’s shown to the user to check for NSFW.
0:48:45 Oh, NSFW detector?
0:48:48 Because you get the journalists get very angry if they, you know…
0:48:49 If you sexualized…
0:48:51 There was a journalist, I think, that would get angry to use this,
0:48:53 and it was like, “Oh, it made me… It showed like a nipple.”
0:48:55 Because Google Vision didn’t detect it.
0:48:59 So, there’s like, these kind of problems you need to deal with, you know?
0:49:00 That’s what I’m talking about.
0:49:02 This is with cats.
0:49:06 But look at the cat face, it’s also kind of mangled, you know?
0:49:10 I’m a little bit disturbed.
0:49:13 You can zoom in on the cat if you want, like…
0:49:15 It’s a very sad cat.
0:49:17 It doesn’t have a nose.
0:49:18 It doesn’t have a nose.
0:49:22 Man, but this is the problem with AI startups, because they all act like it’s perfect.
0:49:24 Like, this is groundbreaking, but it’s not perfect.
0:49:27 It’s like really bad, you know, half the time.
0:49:30 So, if I wanted to sort of update model as…
0:49:33 Yeah, so you remove this stuff and you write, like, whatever you want,
0:49:36 like in Thailand or something, or in Tokyo.
0:49:38 In Tokyo?
0:49:40 Yeah.
0:49:45 You can say, like, at night, with neon lights, like, you can add more detail.
0:49:47 I’ll go in Austin, do you think I’ll know?
0:49:48 Yeah, Austin.
0:49:49 In Austin, Texas.
0:49:50 With cowboy hats.
0:49:51 In Texas, yeah.
0:49:55 As a cowboy.
0:49:56 As a cowboy.
0:49:59 It’s going to go towards the porn direction.
0:50:00 Man, I hope not.
0:50:02 It’s the end of my career.
0:50:04 Or the beginning, it depends.
0:50:06 We can send you a push notification when your photos are done.
0:50:07 Yeah.
0:50:08 Alright, cool.
0:50:09 Yeah, let’s see.
0:50:10 Oh, wow.
0:50:13 So, this whole interface you’ve built, this is really well done.
0:50:14 It’s called jQuery.
0:50:16 Do I still use jQuery?
0:50:18 Yes, it’s still after 10 years.
0:50:19 After this day, you’re not the only one.
0:50:21 The entire web is PHP.
0:50:23 It’s PHP and jQuery.
0:50:24 It’s SQLite.
0:50:28 You’re just, like, one of the top performers from a programming perspective
0:50:31 that are still, like, openly talking about it.
0:50:33 But everyone’s using PHP.
0:50:36 Like, if you look, most of the web is still probably PHP and jQuery.
0:50:37 I think 70%.
0:50:38 It’s because of WordPress, right?
0:50:39 Because the blogs are…
0:50:40 Yeah, that’s true.
0:50:41 Yeah.
0:50:42 I’m seeing a revival now.
0:50:44 People are getting sick of frameworks.
0:50:48 Like, all the JavaScript frameworks are so, like, what do you call it, like, wieldy.
0:50:49 Like, they’re so…
0:50:51 It takes so much work to just maintain this code.
0:50:53 And then it updates to a new version.
0:50:55 You need to change everything.
0:50:58 PHP just stays the same and works.
0:50:59 Yeah.
0:51:00 And…
0:51:01 Can you actually just speak to that stack?
0:51:07 You build all your websites, apps, startups, projects, all of that with mostly vanilla HTML.
0:51:08 Yeah.
0:51:13 Uh, JavaScript with jQuery, PHP, and, uh, cool.
0:51:18 Like, so that’s a really simple stack, and you get stuff done really fast.
0:51:21 Like, can you just speak to the philosophy behind that?
0:51:23 I think it’s accidental, because that’s the thing I knew.
0:51:28 Like, I knew PHP, I knew HTML, CSS, you know, because you make websites.
0:51:33 And when my startups started taking off, I didn’t have time to…
0:51:37 I remember putting on my to-do list, like, learn Node.js, because it’s important to switch, you know?
0:51:40 Because there’s obviously much better language than PHP.
0:51:42 And I never learned it, I never did it.
0:51:44 Uh, because at the end of the time, I…
0:51:48 These things were growing, like this, and I was launching more projects, and I never had time.
0:51:53 It’s like, one day, you know, I’ll start coding properly, and I never got to it.
0:51:56 I sometimes wonder if I need to learn that stuff.
0:52:01 It’s still to do it for me to really learn Node.js, or Flask, or these kind of…
0:52:03 React.
0:52:05 Yeah, React.
0:52:12 It feels like a responsible software engineer should know how to use these.
0:52:18 But you can get stuff done so fast, with vanilla versions of stuff.
0:52:24 Yeah, it’s like software developers, if you want to get a job, and there’s like, you know, people making stuff, like startups.
0:52:27 And if you want to be an entrepreneur, probably you should maybe shoot.
0:52:32 I wonder if there’s, like, I really want to measure performance and speed.
0:52:34 I think there’s a deep wisdom in that.
0:52:39 I do think that frameworks, and just constantly wanting to learn the new thing,
0:52:42 this complicated way of software engineering, gets in the way.
0:52:48 I’m not sure what to say about that, because definitely, like, you shouldn’t build everything from just vanilla JavaScript,
0:52:50 or vanilla C, for example.
0:52:58 C++, when you’re building systems engineering, is like, there’s a lot of benefits for a point of safety, all that kind of stuff.
0:53:06 So I don’t know, but it just feels like you can get so much more stuff done if you don’t care about how you do it.
0:53:09 Man, this is my most controversial take, I think.
0:53:14 And maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like there’s frameworks now that raise money.
0:53:18 They raise a lot of money, like they raise $50 million, $100 million, $30 million.
0:53:24 And the idea is that you need to make the developers, the new developers, like, when you’re 18 or 20 years old, right?
0:53:31 Get them to use this framework, and add a platform to it, like, where the framework can…
0:53:36 It is open source, but you probably should use the platform, which is paid, to use it.
0:53:47 And the cost of the platforms to host it are a thousand times higher than just hosting it on a simple AWS server or a VPS on digital ocean, right?
0:53:49 So there’s obviously like a monetary incentive here.
0:53:57 Like, we want to get a lot of developers to use this technology, and then we need to charge them money because they’re going to use it in startups, and then the startups can pay for the bills.
0:54:09 But it kind of destroys the information out there about learning to code because they pay YouTubers, they pay influencers, developer influencers.
0:54:11 It’s a big thing to like…
0:54:14 And the same thing happens with nutrition and fitness or something.
0:54:20 Same thing happens in developing. They pay these influencers to promote the stuff, use it, make stuff with it, make demo products with it.
0:54:23 And then a lot of people are like, “Wow, use this.”
0:54:27 And I started noticing this because when I would ship my stuff, people would ask me, “What are you using?”
0:54:30 I would say, “I would just PHP, jQuery. Why does it matter?”
0:54:35 And people would start kind of attacking me, like, “Why are you not using this new technology, this new framework, this new thing?”
0:54:41 And I say, “I don’t know because this PHP thing works, and I don’t really… I’m optimizing for anything. It just works.”
0:54:47 And I never understood why… I understand there’s new technologies that are better, and there should be improvement.
0:54:51 But I’m very suspicious of money, just like lobbying.
0:54:54 There’s money in this developer framework scene.
0:54:59 There’s hundreds of millions that goes to ads or influencers or whatever.
0:55:06 It can’t all go to developers. You don’t need so many developers for a framework, and it’s open source to make a lot of more money on these startups.
0:55:11 So that’s a really good perspective, but in addition to that is when you say “better.”
0:55:16 It’s like, “Can we get some data on the better?”
0:55:24 Because I want to know from the individual developer perspective, and then from a team of five, team of 10, team of 20 developers,
0:55:34 measure how productive they are in shipping features, how many bugs they create, how many security holes…
0:55:37 PHP was not good security for a while, but now it’s good.
0:55:39 In theory, is it though?
0:55:40 Now it’s good.
0:55:49 Now, as you’re saying it, I want to know if that’s true, because PHP was just the majority of websites on the internet.
0:55:50 Could be true.
0:55:53 Is it just overrepresented? Same with WordPress.
0:55:57 Yes, there’s a reputation that WordPress has a gigantic number of security holes.
0:55:59 I don’t know if that’s true.
0:56:02 I know it gets attacked a lot because it’s so popular.
0:56:07 It definitely does have security holes, but maybe a lot of other systems have security holes as well.
0:56:15 Anyway, I just sort of questioning the conventional wisdom that keeps wanting to push software engineers towards frameworks, towards complex,
0:56:24 like super complicated software engineering approaches that stretch out the time it takes to actually build a thing.
0:56:28 100%. And it’s the same thing with big corporates, 80% of the people don’t do anything.
0:56:30 It’s not efficient.
0:56:40 And if your benchmark is people building stuff that actually gets done for society, if you want to save time,
0:56:52 we should probably use technologies that’s simple, that’s pragmatic, that’s not overly complicated, doesn’t make your life like a living hell.
0:56:56 And use a framework when it obviously solves a problem, a direct problem that you…
0:56:59 Of course, yeah, of course. I’m not saying you should code without a framework.
0:57:04 You should use whatever you want, but yeah, I think it’s suspicious, you know?
0:57:09 And I think it’s suspicious when I talk about it on Twitter, like this army comes out, you know?
0:57:13 These framework armies. Man, something my gut tells me.
0:57:19 I want to ask the framework army what have they built this week. It’s the Elon question. What did you do this week?
0:57:23 Yeah, did you make money with it? Did you charge users? Is it a real business?
0:57:26 Yeah.
0:57:29 So, going back to the cowboy, first of all…
0:57:31 Some don’t look like you, right? But some do.
0:57:35 Every aspect of this is pretty incredible. I’m also just looking at the interface. It’s really well done.
0:57:38 So, this is all just jQuery. This is really well done.
0:57:41 So, like, take me through the journey of photo AI.
0:57:49 Like, you don’t know… Most of the world doesn’t know much about stable diffusion or any of this, any of the generative AI stuff.
0:57:52 So, you’re thinking, “Okay, how can I build cool stuff with this?”
0:57:53 Yeah.
0:57:55 What was the origin story of photo AI?
0:57:57 I think it started because stable diffusion came out.
0:58:01 So, stable diffusion is like the first, like, generative image model, AI model.
0:58:04 And I started playing with it. Like, you could install it on your Mac.
0:58:07 Like, somebody forked it and made it work for Macbooks.
0:58:12 So, I downloaded it and cloned the repo and started using it to generate images.
0:58:16 And it was, like, amazing. Like, it would…
0:58:22 I found it on Twitter because you see things happen on Twitter and I would post what I was making on Twitter as well.
0:58:25 And you could make any image. You could write a prompt.
0:58:31 So, essentially, write a prompt and then it generates a photo of that or image of that in any style.
0:58:35 Like, they would use, like, artist names to make, like, a Picasso kind of style and stuff.
0:58:42 And I was trying to see, like, what is it good at? Is it good at people? No, it’s really bad at people.
0:58:45 But it was good at houses, so architecture, for example.
0:58:48 It would generate, like, architecture houses.
0:58:52 So, I made a website called ThisHouseDoesNotExist.work
0:58:56 And it generated, like… They called, like, HousePorn at that one.
0:58:58 Like, HousePorn is, like, a subreddit.
0:59:00 So, and this was stable diffusion, like, the first version.
0:59:03 So, it looks really… You can click for another photo.
0:59:07 So, it generates, like, all these kind of non-existing houses.
0:59:09 It is HousePorn.
0:59:11 But it looked kind of good, you know? Like, especially back then.
0:59:13 -It looks really good. -Now things look much better.
0:59:18 It’s really, really well done.
0:59:22 -Wow. -And it also generates, like, a description.
0:59:26 And you can upvote. Is it nice? Upvoted.
0:59:28 -Yeah. -Man, there’s so much to talk to you about.
0:59:31 -Like, the choices here is really well done. -This is very scrappy.
0:59:34 In the bottom, there’s, like, a ranking of the most upvoted houses.
0:59:38 So, these are the top-voted. And if you go to old-time, you see quite beautiful ones.
0:59:42 Yeah. So, this one is my favorite, the number one. It’s, like, kind of like a…
0:59:46 How is this not more popular?
0:59:50 It was really popular for, like, a while. But then, people got so bored of it.
0:59:52 I think because I was getting bored of it, too.
0:59:56 Like, just continuous HousePorn. Like, everything starts looking the same.
0:59:59 But then, I saw it was really good at Interior.
1:00:06 So, I pivoted to interiorai.com, where I tried to, like, upload first-genered interior designs.
1:00:10 And then, I tried to do, like, there was a new technology called Image to Image,
1:00:15 where you can input an image, like, a photo, and it would kind of modify the thing.
1:00:19 So, you see, it looks almost the same as photo. It’s the same code, essentially.
1:00:21 Nice.
1:00:25 So, I would upload a photo of my interior where I lived, and I would ask, like,
1:00:30 James is into, like, I don’t know, like, maximalist design, you know?
1:00:32 And it worked, and it worked really well.
1:00:36 So, I was like, okay, this is a startup, because obviously, interior design, AI,
1:00:38 and nobody’s doing that yet.
1:00:43 So, I launched this, and it was successful, and made, like, in a week, made 10K, 20K a month.
1:00:46 And now, it still makes, like, 40K, 50K a month.
1:00:48 And it’s been, like, two years.
1:00:51 So, then, I was like, how can I improve this interior design?
1:00:52 I need to start learning fine-tuning.
1:00:55 And fine-tuning is where you have this existing AI model,
1:00:58 and you fine-tune it on a specific goal you want it to do.
1:01:01 So, I would find really beautiful interior design, make a gallery,
1:01:05 and train a new model that was very good at interior design.
1:01:07 And it worked, and I used that as well.
1:01:10 And then, for fun, I uploaded photos of myself.
1:01:12 And here’s where it happened.
1:01:16 And to train myself, like, and this would never work, obviously, and it worked.
1:01:20 And actually, it started understanding me as a concept.
1:01:23 So, my face worked, and you could do, like, different styles,
1:01:28 like me as a, like, very cheesy medieval warrior, all this stuff.
1:01:29 So, I was like, this is another startup.
1:01:32 So, now, I did avatar.ai.me.
1:01:33 I couldn’t get to .com.
1:01:35 And this was–
1:01:38 – Still up? – Yeah, avatar.ai.me.
1:01:40 Well, now, it’s forward to Photiai, ’cause it pivoted.
1:01:43 – Got it. – But this was more, like, cheesy thing.
1:01:46 So, this is very interesting, ’cause this went so viral,
1:01:50 it made, like, I think, like, 150K in a week or something.
1:01:51 It’s the most money I ever made.
1:01:54 And then, big– this is very interesting.
1:02:00 The big VC companies, like Lensa, which are much better at iOS and stuff than me.
1:02:01 I didn’t have iOS app.
1:02:04 They quickly built an iOS app that does the same, and they found technology.
1:02:06 And it’s all open technology, so it’s good.
1:02:09 And I think they made, like, $30 million with it.
1:02:13 – Yeah. – They became, like, the top-grossing app after that.
1:02:15 – And it was– – How do you feel about that?
1:02:18 I think it’s amazing, honestly, and it’s not like–
1:02:20 You didn’t have, like, a feeling like, “Ah, fuck.”
1:02:22 No, it was a little bit, like, sad.
1:02:26 ‘Cause all my products would work out, and I never had, like, real fierce competition.
1:02:31 And now I have, like, fierce competition from, like, a very skilled, high-talent, like,
1:02:33 iOS developer studio or something that–
1:02:34 And they already had an app.
1:02:38 They had an app store for, like, I think, retouching your face or something.
1:02:39 So, they were very smart.
1:02:40 They add these avatars to there.
1:02:41 It’s a feature.
1:02:42 They had the users.
1:02:44 They would push notifications to everybody who had these avatars.
1:02:46 – Yeah. – Man, they made great–
1:02:48 I think they made so much money.
1:02:51 And I think they did a really great job.
1:02:53 I also made a lot of money with it.
1:02:54 But that was–
1:02:57 I quickly realized it wasn’t my thing, ’cause it was so cheesy.
1:02:58 It was, like, kitsch, you know?
1:03:02 It’s kind of like me as a Barbie or me as a–
1:03:03 You know, it was too cheesy.
1:03:05 I wanted to go for, like, what’s a real problem we can solve?
1:03:07 ‘Cause this is gonna be a hype.
1:03:09 And it was a hype, these avatars.
1:03:12 It’s like, let’s do real photography.
1:03:15 Like, how can you make people look really photorealistic?
1:03:17 And that was difficult, and that’s why these avatars worked,
1:03:20 ’cause they were all, like, in a cheesy Picasso style.
1:03:23 And art is easy, ’cause you interpret the–
1:03:26 All the problems that AI has with your face are, like, artistic,
1:03:28 you know, if you call it Picasso.
1:03:30 But if you make a real photo, all the problems with your face,
1:03:32 like, it just– you look wrong, you know?
1:03:36 So I started making photo AI, which was, like, a pivot of it,
1:03:41 where it was, like, a photo studio where you could take photos
1:03:43 without actually needing a photographer,
1:03:46 needing a studio, you don’t just– you know, you just type it.
1:03:48 And I’ve been working on it for, like, the last year.
1:03:51 Yeah, it’s really incredible. That journey is really incredible.
1:03:54 Let’s go to the beginning of photo AI, though,
1:03:58 ’cause I remember seeing a lot of really hilarious photos.
1:04:01 I think you were using yourself as a case study, right?
1:04:02 Yeah.
1:04:05 Yeah, so what– there’s a tweet here.
1:04:10 “Sold $100,000 in AI-generated avatars.”
1:04:12 Yeah, and it’s a lot. Like, it’s a lot for anybody.
1:04:13 It’s a lot for me.
1:04:16 Like, I can 10K a day on this, you know?
1:04:20 That’s amazing. That’s amazing.
1:04:23 And then the NASA tweet, like, that’s the launch tweet.
1:04:27 And then before there, it’s, like, the me hacking on it.
1:04:31 Oh, I see. So that– okay.
1:04:33 So October 26, 2022.
1:04:34 Yeah.
1:04:38 I trained an ML model on my face.
1:04:39 Sure.
1:04:40 Because my eyes are quite far apart.
1:04:42 I learned when I did YouTube.
1:04:44 I would put, like, a photo of, like, my DJ photo, you know?
1:04:48 My make-show– people would say I look like a hammerhead shark.
1:04:49 It was, like, the top comment.
1:04:51 So then I realized my eyes are far apart.
1:04:53 Yeah, the internet helps you–
1:04:55 Yeah, helps you realize how you look, you know?
1:04:57 Boy, do I love the internet.
1:04:59 So first– first trap.
1:05:01 Well, what is– is this– wait.
1:05:03 It’s water from the waterfall.
1:05:05 But the waterfall is in the back, you know?
1:05:07 So what’s going on?
1:05:09 So this is– how much of this is real?
1:05:10 It’s all AI.
1:05:12 It’s all AI.
1:05:13 Yeah.
1:05:15 That’s pretty good, though, for the early days.
1:05:16 Exactly.
1:05:17 So– but this was a hit or miss.
1:05:20 So you had to do a lot of curation because 99% of it was really bad.
1:05:22 So these are the photos I uploaded.
1:05:23 How many photos did you use?
1:05:24 Only these.
1:05:27 I will try more up-to-date pics later.
1:05:29 These are the– these are the only photos you uploaded?
1:05:30 Yeah.
1:05:33 Wow.
1:05:34 Wow.
1:05:36 Okay, so, like, you were learning all this super quickly.
1:05:39 What– what are some, like, interesting details you remember from that time
1:05:41 for, like, what you had to figure out to make it work?
1:05:46 And for people just listening, he uploaded just a– just a handful of photos
1:05:49 that don’t really have a good capture of the face.
1:05:50 And he’s able to–
1:05:51 I think it’s cropped.
1:05:53 It’s, like, cropped by the– by the layout.
1:05:54 But they’re– they’re square photos.
1:05:55 So they’re 5’12” by 5’12”.
1:05:56 Mm-hmm.
1:05:58 Because that’s stable diffusion.
1:06:01 But, nevertheless, not great capture of the face.
1:06:02 Yeah.
1:06:08 Like, it’s not– it’s not, like, a collection of several hundred photos that are, like–
1:06:09 Exactly.
1:06:10 I would imagine that, too, when I started.
1:06:13 I was like, “Oh, this must be, like, some 3D scan technology, right?”
1:06:14 Yeah.
1:06:16 So I think the cool thing with AI, it trains the concept of you.
1:06:20 So it’s literally, like, learning– just, like, any AI model learns.
1:06:21 It learns how you look.
1:06:26 So I did this, and then I was getting so much– I mean, I was getting DMs, like,
1:06:28 telegram messages, like, “How can I do the same thing?
1:06:29 I want these photos.
1:06:30 My girlfriend wants these photos.”
1:06:33 So I was like, “Okay, this is obviously a business.”
1:06:37 But I didn’t have time to code it, make a whole, like, app about it.
1:06:42 So I made an HTML page, registered domain name.
1:06:47 And this was not even– it was a Stripe payment link, which means you have literally a link
1:06:50 to Stripe to pay, but there’s no code in the back.
1:06:53 So all you know is you have customers that paid money.
1:06:56 Then I added, like, some type form link.
1:07:01 So type form is the site where you can create, like, your own input form, like Google Forms.
1:07:06 So they would get an email with a link to the type form, or actually just a link after the checkout.
1:07:08 And they could upload their photos.
1:07:12 So I entered an email, uploaded the photos, and I launched it.
1:07:16 And I was like, “Here, first sale, so it’s October 2022.”
1:07:20 And I think within, like, the first 24 hours was like– I’m not sure.
1:07:22 It was like 1,000 customers or something.
1:07:26 But the problem was I didn’t have code to automate this, so I had to do manually.
1:07:31 So the first few hundred, I just literally took their photos, trained them,
1:07:35 and then I would generate the photos with the prompts, and I had this text file with the prompts,
1:07:37 so I had to do every manually.
1:07:40 And this quickly became way too much, but that’s another constraint.
1:07:44 Like, I was forced to code something up that would do that.
1:07:47 And that was essentially making it into a real website, right?
1:07:50 So the first was the type form, and they uploaded through the type form.
1:07:52 Stripe checkout type form, yeah.
1:07:55 And then you were like, “That image is downloaded. Did you write a script to export?”
1:07:58 No, it’s downloaded. The image is myself. It’s a zip file.
1:08:00 And you unzipped it?
1:08:05 Yes, and then I– no, because do things don’t skill, Paul Graham says, right?
1:08:08 And then I would train it, and then I would email them the photos.
1:08:11 I think for my personal email, say, “Here’s your avatar.”
1:08:14 And they liked it. They were like, “Wow, that’s amazing.”
1:08:16 You emailed them with your personal email?
1:08:19 I didn’t have an email address on this domain.
1:08:21 And this was like 100 people?
1:08:24 Yeah, and then you know who signed up?
1:08:26 Like, man, I cannot say, but really famous people.
1:08:28 Like, really, really, like billionaires.
1:08:31 Famous tech billionaires did it, and I was like, “Wow, this is crazy.”
1:08:34 And I was like so scared to mess them, so I said,
1:08:36 “Thanks so much for using my sites.”
1:08:39 You know, he’s like, “Yeah, amazing app, great work.”
1:08:41 So it’s like, this is different than normal reaction, you know?
1:08:44 It’s Bill Gates, isn’t it?
1:08:46 I cannot say anything.
1:08:48 Just like shirtless pics.
1:08:49 GDPR, you know? Like privacy.
1:08:50 Right.
1:08:52 European regulation. I cannot share anything.
1:08:54 But I was very– I was like, “Wow.”
1:08:58 But this shows like, so you make something, and then if it takes off very fast,
1:09:00 you’re like, it’s validated, you know?
1:09:03 You’re like, “Here’s something that people really want.”
1:09:06 But then also I thought, “This is hype. This is going to die down very fast.”
1:09:08 And I did, because it’s too cheesy.
1:09:11 But you had to automate the whole thing. How’d you automate it?
1:09:13 So, like, what’s the AI component?
1:09:15 Like, how hard was that to figure out?
1:09:18 Okay, so that’s actually, in many ways, the easiest thing,
1:09:20 because there is all these platforms already back then.
1:09:23 There was platforms for fine-tune, stable diffusion.
1:09:25 Like, now I use Replicate.
1:09:28 Back then, I used different platforms, which was funny,
1:09:31 because that platform, when this thing took off, I would tweet.
1:09:34 Because I’d tweet always, like, how much money these websites make.
1:09:36 And then, so the– you called vendor, right?
1:09:38 The platform that did the GPUs.
1:09:42 They increased their price for training from $3 to $20
1:09:44 after they saw that I was making so much money.
1:09:47 So, immediately, my profit is gone, because I was selling them for $30.
1:09:50 And I was in a slag with them, like, saying, “What is this?
1:09:52 Like, can you just put it back to $3?”
1:09:55 They say, “Yeah, maybe in the future, we’re looking at it right now.”
1:09:56 I’m like, “What are you talking about?
1:09:58 Like, you just took all my money, you know, and they’re smart.”
1:10:04 Well, they’re not that smart, because, like, you also have a large platform,
1:10:07 and a lot of people respect you, so you can literally come out and say that.
1:10:10 Yeah, but I think it’s, like, kind of dirty to cancel a company or something.
1:10:12 I prefer just bringing my business elsewhere.
1:10:14 But there was no elsewhere back then.
1:10:15 Right.
1:10:19 So, I started talking to other AI model ML platforms.
1:10:22 So, I replicated one of those platforms, and I started DMing the CEO,
1:10:25 saying, “Can you please create, like, it’s called DreamBoof,
1:10:27 this fine-tuning of yourself.
1:10:30 Can you add this to your site, because I need this, because I’m being price-guarded.”
1:10:33 And he said, “No, because it takes too long to run.
1:10:35 It takes half an hour to run, and we don’t have the GPUs for it.”
1:10:37 I said, “Please, please, please.”
1:10:40 And then, after a week, he said, “We’re doing it. We’re launching this.”
1:10:44 And then this company became, it was, like, not a very famous company.
1:10:47 It became very famous with this stuff, because suddenly everybody was like,
1:10:50 “Oh, we can build similar apps, like avatar apps.”
1:10:54 And everybody started building avatar apps, and everybody started using Replicate for it.
1:10:58 And that was from these early DMs with, like, the CEO, like, Ben Ferris, very nice guy.
1:11:02 And he was like, “They never price-guile me. They never treat me bad.
1:11:05 They always be very nice. It’s a very cool company.”
1:11:09 So, you can run any ML model, any AI model, LLMs, you can run on there.
1:11:11 And you can scale.
1:11:13 Yes, they scale. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:11:16 And, I mean, you can do now. You can click on the model and just run it already.
1:11:19 It’s, like, super easy. You log in with GitHub.
1:11:20 That’s great.
1:11:23 And by running it on the website, then you can automate with the API.
1:11:25 You can make a website that runs the model.
1:11:28 Generate images, generate text, generate videos, generate music, generate speech.
1:11:30 Find two models.
1:11:32 They do anything, yeah. It’s a very cool company.
1:11:35 Nice. And you’re, like, growing with them, essentially.
1:11:38 They grew because of you, because it’s, like, a big use case.
1:11:41 Yeah, like, the website even looks weird now.
1:11:43 It started as, like, a machine-learning platform.
1:11:45 That was, like, I didn’t even understand what it did.
1:11:48 It was just too, too ML, you know?
1:11:50 Like, you would understand, because you were in the ML world, I wouldn’t understand.
1:11:52 Now it’s new-friendly.
1:11:54 Yeah, exactly. And I didn’t know how it worked.
1:11:57 And, but I knew that they could probably do this.
1:12:00 And they did it. They built the models, and now I use them for everything.
1:12:06 And we trained, like, I think, now, like, 36,000 models, 36,000 people already.
1:12:10 But is there some tricks to fine-tuning to, like, the collection of photos that are provided?
1:12:12 Like, how do you, like…
1:12:14 Man, there’s so many hacks.
1:12:16 It’s, like, 100 hacks to make it work.
1:12:18 What is some interesting…
1:12:20 Give my secrets now.
1:12:24 Well, not the secrets, but the more, like, insights, maybe, about the human face and the human body.
1:12:27 Like, what kind of stuff gets messed up a lot?
1:12:31 I think people, well, man, it’s a little thing, people don’t know how they look.
1:12:36 So, they generate photos of themselves, and then they say, “Ah, it doesn’t look like me.”
1:12:42 But then, you know, you can check the training process. It does look like you, but you don’t know how you look.
1:12:46 So, there’s a face dysmorphia of yourself that you have no idea how you look.
1:12:51 Yeah, that’s hilarious. I mean, I’ve got one of the least pleasant activities in my existence
1:12:54 is having to listen to my voice and look at my face.
1:12:57 So, I get to, like, really…
1:13:03 really have to sort of come into terms with the reality of how I look and how I sound.
1:13:06 And everybody, but people often don’t, right?
1:13:07 Really?
1:13:09 You have a distorted view, perspective.
1:13:14 I know that, like, I would make a selfie how I think I look, that’s nice.
1:13:17 Other people think that’s not nice, but then they make a photo of me.
1:13:20 I’m, like, super ugly, but then they’re like, “No, that’s how you look and you look nice.”
1:13:23 You know, so, how other people see you is nice.
1:13:27 So, you need to ask other people to choose your photos.
1:13:28 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:13:30 You shouldn’t choose them yourself because you don’t know how you look.
1:13:34 Yeah, you don’t know what makes you interesting, what makes you attractive, all this kind of stuff.
1:13:37 And a lot of us, this is a dark aspect of psychology.
1:13:39 We focus on some small flaws.
1:13:40 Yeah.
1:13:42 This is why I hate plastic surgery, for example.
1:13:46 People try to remove the flaws when the flaws are the thing that makes you interesting and attractive.
1:13:51 I learned from the hammerhead shark eyes, this stuff about you that looks ugly to you
1:13:55 and it’s probably that what makes you original makes you nice and people like it about you.
1:13:56 Yeah.
1:13:57 And it’s not like, “Oh, my God.”
1:14:00 And people notice it, people notice your hammerhead eyes, you know?
1:14:02 But it’s like, “That’s me, that’s my face.”
1:14:05 So, I love myself and that’s confidence and confidence is attractive.
1:14:06 Yes.
1:14:07 Right?
1:14:08 Confidence is attractive.
1:14:10 But yes, understanding what makes you beautiful.
1:14:12 It’s the breaking of symmetry makes you beautiful.
1:14:16 It’s the breaking of the average face makes you beautiful.
1:14:17 All of that.
1:14:18 Yeah.
1:14:21 And obviously different from men and women at different ages, all this kind of stuff.
1:14:22 Yeah, 100%.
1:14:28 But underneath it all, the personality, all of that when the face comes alive.
1:14:30 That also is the thing that makes you beautiful.
1:14:31 Yeah.
1:14:33 But anyway, you have to figure all that out with the eye.
1:14:34 Yeah.
1:14:38 One thing that worked was like people would upload full body photos of themselves.
1:14:40 So, I would crop the face, right?
1:14:43 Because then the model knew better that we’re training mostly the face here.
1:14:47 But then I started losing a resemblance of the body because some people are skinny,
1:14:48 some people are muscular, whatever.
1:14:50 So, you want to have that too.
1:14:54 And now I mix full body photos in the training with face photos, face crops.
1:14:56 And it’s all automatic.
1:15:01 And I know that other people, they use, again, AI models to detect like what are the best
1:15:04 photos in this training set and then train on those.
1:15:08 But it’s all about training data and that’s with everything in AI.
1:15:13 How good your training data is is in many ways more important than how many steps you train
1:15:17 for, like how many months or whatever with these GPUs, like the gold.
1:15:20 Do you have any guidelines for people of like how to get good data?
1:15:22 How to give good data to find, you know?
1:15:24 Like the photos should be diverse.
1:15:28 So, for example, if I only upload photos with a brown shirt or green shirt,
1:15:32 the model will think that I’m training the green shirt.
1:15:36 So, the things that are the same every photo are the concepts that are trained.
1:15:40 What you want is your face to be the concept that’s trained.
1:15:43 And everything else to be diverse, like different.
1:15:45 So, diverse lighting as well?
1:15:47 Yeah, outside, inside.
1:15:49 But there’s no like, this is the problem.
1:15:51 There’s no like manual for this.
1:15:54 And nobody knew we were all just, especially two years ago, we were all hacking,
1:15:57 trying to test anything, anything you can think of.
1:16:00 And it’s frustrating.
1:16:03 It’s one of the most frustrating and also fun and challenging things to do
1:16:06 because with AI, because it’s a black box.
1:16:11 And like Karpati, I think says this, like, we didn’t really know how this thing works,
1:16:14 but it does something, but nobody really knows why, right?
1:16:18 Like, we cannot look into the model of an LLM, like, what is actually in there?
1:16:22 We just know it’s like a 3D matrix of numbers, right?
1:16:27 So, it’s very frustrating because some things that would be,
1:16:31 you think they’re obvious that they will improve things will make them worse.
1:16:33 And there’s so many parameters you can tweak.
1:16:37 So, you’re testing everything to improve things.
1:16:40 I mean, there’s a whole field now of mechanistic interpretability
1:16:44 that studies that, tries to figure out, tries to break things apart
1:16:46 and understand how it works.
1:16:52 But there’s also the data outside and the actual consumer-facing product side
1:16:55 of figuring out how you get it to generate a thing that’s beautiful
1:16:58 or interesting or naturalistic, all that kind of stuff.
1:17:01 And you’re at the forefront of figuring that out about the human face.
1:17:04 And humans really care about the human face.
1:17:05 They’re very vain.
1:17:09 Like me, you know, like I want to look good in your podcast, for example.
1:17:10 For sure.
1:17:16 And one of the things I actually would love to rigorously use photo AI
1:17:20 because for the thumbnails, I take portraits of people.
1:17:22 I don’t know shit about photography.
1:17:25 I basically used your approach for photography.
1:17:28 Like Google, how do you take photographs?
1:17:31 Camera, lighting.
1:17:35 And also, it’s tough because maybe you could speak to this also.
1:17:39 But like with photography, no offense to any.
1:17:42 They’re true artists, great photographers.
1:17:45 But like people take themselves way too seriously.
1:17:48 Think you need a whole lot of equipment.
1:17:50 You definitely don’t want one light.
1:17:53 You need like five lights.
1:17:57 And you have to have like the lenses.
1:18:04 And I talked to a guy, an expert of shaping the sound in a room.
1:18:08 Because I was thinking, I’m going to do a podcast studio, whatever.
1:18:13 I should probably like treat, do a sound treatment on the room.
1:18:19 And like when he showed up and analyzed the room, he thought everything I was doing was horrible.
1:18:22 And that’s when I realized like, you know what?
1:18:24 I don’t need experts in my life.
1:18:26 You kicked him out of the house?
1:18:27 No, I didn’t kick him.
1:18:28 I mean, I said, thank you.
1:18:29 Thank you very much.
1:18:30 Thank you, great tips.
1:18:36 I just, I just felt like there is, you know, focus on whatever the problems are.
1:18:38 Use your own judgment, use your own instincts.
1:18:43 Don’t listen to other people and only consult other people when there’s a specific problem.
1:18:48 And you consult them not to offload the problem onto them, but to gain wisdom from their perspective.
1:18:53 Even if their perspective is ultimately one you don’t agree with, you’re going to gain wisdom from that.
1:19:01 And just I ultimately come up with like a PHP solution, PHP and jQuery solution to the PHP studio.
1:19:02 Like I have a little suitcase.
1:19:09 I use like just the basic sort of consumer type of stuff, one light.
1:19:10 It’s great.
1:19:11 Yeah.
1:19:12 And look at you.
1:19:15 You’re like one of the top podcasts in the world and you get millions of views and it works.
1:19:21 And the people that spend so much money on optimizing for the best sound for the best studio, they get like 300 views, you know?
1:19:22 So what is this about?
1:19:27 This is about that either you do it really well or also that a lot of these things don’t matter.
1:19:30 Like what matters is probably the contents of the podcast.
1:19:31 Like you get the interesting guests.
1:19:32 Focus on stuff that matters.
1:19:33 Yeah.
1:19:34 And I think this is very common.
1:19:37 They call it gear acquisition syndrome, like gas.
1:19:39 Like people in any industry do this.
1:19:40 They just buy all the stuff.
1:19:41 There was a meme recently.
1:19:46 Like what’s the name for the guy that buys all the stuff before he even started doing the hobby, right?
1:19:50 Marketing, you know, marketing does that to people they want to buy this stuff.
1:19:51 Yeah.
1:19:56 Like, man, you can make a Hollywood movie on an iPhone, you know?
1:20:03 If the content is good enough, it will probably be original because you would be using an iPhone for it, you know?
1:20:10 So that said, so the reason I brought that up with photography, there is wisdom from people.
1:20:20 And one of the things I realized, you probably also realize this, but how much power light has to convey emotion.
1:20:23 You just take one light and move it around.
1:20:26 You’re sitting in the darkness, move it around your face.
1:20:29 The different positions are having a second light potentially.
1:20:32 You can play with how a person feels just from a generic face.
1:20:33 Yeah.
1:20:34 It’s interesting.
1:20:35 Like you can make people attractive.
1:20:36 You can make them ugly.
1:20:37 You can make them scary.
1:20:39 You can make them lonely.
1:20:40 All of this.
1:20:43 And so you kind of start to realize this.
1:20:50 And I would definitely love AI help in creating great portraits of people.
1:20:51 Guest photos, yeah.
1:20:52 Guest photos.
1:20:54 For example, that’s a small use case.
1:21:04 But for me, that’s a, I suppose it’s an important use case because like, I want people to look good, but I also want to capture who they are.
1:21:06 Maybe my conception of who they are.
1:21:07 What makes them beautiful.
1:21:08 Yeah.
1:21:10 What makes their appearance powerful in some ways.
1:21:11 Sometimes it’s the eyes.
1:21:16 Oftentimes it’s the eyes, but there’s certain features of the face can sometimes be really powerful.
1:21:21 And I can’t, it’s also kind of awkward for me to take photographs.
1:21:28 So I’m not collecting enough photographs for myself to do it with just those photographs.
1:21:33 If I can load that off onto AI and then start to play with like lighting.
1:21:34 You should do this.
1:21:35 And you should probably do it yourself.
1:21:38 Like you can use photograph, but it’s even more fun if you do it yourself.
1:21:39 So you train the models.
1:21:41 You can learn about like control net.
1:21:45 Control net is where, for example, your photos in your podcasts are usually like from the angle, right?
1:21:49 So you can create a control net face post that’s always like this.
1:21:54 So every model, every photo you generate uses this control net post, for example.
1:21:56 I think it would be very fun for you to try out.
1:21:58 Do you play with lighting at all?
1:22:00 Do you play with lighting with post with the?
1:22:07 Man, actually this, like this week or recently there’s a new model came out that can adjust the light of any photo, but also AI image.
1:22:09 With stable diffusion.
1:22:11 I think it’s called relight.
1:22:13 And it’s amazing.
1:22:16 Like you can, you can upload.
1:22:18 Kind of like a light map.
1:22:24 So for example, red, purple, blue, and use that light map to change the light on the photo you input.
1:22:25 It’s amazing.
1:22:28 So this for sure, a lot of stuff you can do.
1:22:34 What’s your advice for people in general on how to learn all the state of the art AI tools available?
1:22:37 Like you mentioned, new models coming out all the time.
1:22:39 Like how do you pay attention?
1:22:42 How do you stay on top of everything?
1:22:43 I think you need to join Twitter.
1:22:45 X is amazing now.
1:22:48 And the whole AI industry is on X.
1:22:50 And they’re all like anime avatars.
1:22:55 So it’s funny because my friends asked me this, like, who should I follow to stay up to date?
1:23:02 And I say, go to X and follow all the AI anime models that this person is following or follows.
1:23:04 And I send them some URL and they all start laughing.
1:23:05 Like what is this?
1:23:07 But they’re real like people hacking around in the AI.
1:23:10 They get hired by big companies and they’re on X.
1:23:12 And most of them are anonymous.
1:23:13 It’s very funny.
1:23:15 They use anime avatars.
1:23:17 I don’t.
1:23:21 But those people hack around and they publish what they’re discovering.
1:23:23 They took out papers, for example.
1:23:25 So yeah, definitely X.
1:23:26 It’s great.
1:23:29 Almost exclusively all the people I follow are AI people.
1:23:30 Yeah.
1:23:31 It’s a good time now.
1:23:36 Well, but also just brings happiness to my soul.
1:23:39 Because there’s so much turmoil on Twitter.
1:23:41 Yeah, like politics and stuff.
1:23:42 There’s battles going on.
1:23:43 It’s like a war zone.
1:23:48 And it’s nice to just go into this happy place to where people are building stuff.
1:23:49 Yeah, 100%.
1:23:52 I like Twitter for that most, like building stuff.
1:23:54 Like seeing other, because it inspires you to build.
1:23:58 And it’s just fun to see other people share what they’re discovering.
1:24:01 And then you’re like, okay, I’m going to make something too.
1:24:02 It’s just super fun.
1:24:08 And so if you want to start going X, and then I would go to replicate and start trying to play with models.
1:24:13 And when you have something that kind of, you manually enter stuff, you set the parameters.
1:24:16 Something that works, you can make an app out of it or a website.
1:24:21 Can you speak a little bit more to the process of it becoming better and better and better, photo air?
1:24:23 So I had this photo AI and a lot of people using it.
1:24:27 There was like a million or more photos a month being generated.
1:24:35 And I discovered I was testing parameters, like increase the step count of generating a photo or changing the sampler, like a scheduler.
1:24:38 Like you have DPM, two cars, all these things.
1:24:43 I don’t know anything about, but I know you can choose them when you generate an image and they have different resulting images.
1:24:45 But I didn’t know which ones were better.
1:24:46 So I would do it myself, test it.
1:24:49 But then I was like, why don’t I test on these users?
1:24:51 Because I have a million photos generated anyway.
1:24:56 So unlike 10% of the users, I would randomly test parameters.
1:25:00 And then I would see if they would, because you can favor the photo or you can download it.
1:25:03 I would measure if they favored or like the photo.
1:25:11 And then I would A/B test and you test for significance and stuff, which parameters were better and which were worse.
1:25:14 So you started starting to figure out which models are actually working well.
1:25:15 Exactly.
1:25:19 And then if it’s significant enough data, you switch to that for the whole, you know, all the users.
1:25:21 And so that was like the breakthrough to make it better.
1:25:23 Just use the users to improve it themselves.
1:25:28 And I tell them when they sign up, we do sampling, we do testing on your photos with random parameters.
1:25:29 And that worked really well.
1:25:34 I don’t do a lot of testing anymore because it’s like, I kind of reached like a diminishing point where it’s like, it’s kind of good.
1:25:36 But that’s, there was a breakthrough.
1:25:46 So it’s really about the parameters, the models that choose and letting the users help do the search in the space of models and parameters for you.
1:25:56 Yeah. But actually, so like stable diffusion, I use 1.5, 2.0 came out as stable diffusion XL came out, all these new versions, and they were all worse.
1:26:01 And so the core scene of people are still using 1.5 because it’s like, it’s also not like what you call neutered.
1:26:06 Like they neutered, like to make it super like with safety features and stuff.
1:26:10 So most of the people are still on stable diffusion 1.5.
1:26:19 And meanwhile, stable diffusion, the company went like, the CEO left a lot of drama happens because they couldn’t make money.
1:26:22 And yeah, so they gave it, it’s very interesting.
1:26:25 They gave us this open source model that everybody uses.
1:26:28 They raised like hundreds of millions of dollars.
1:26:30 They didn’t make any money with it.
1:26:31 They’re not a lot.
1:26:34 They did an amazing job and now everybody uses open source model for free.
1:26:37 And they did, you know, it’s amazing.
1:26:40 You’re not even using the latest one.
1:26:44 No. And the strange thing is that this company raised hundreds of millions, but the people that are benefiting from it are really small.
1:26:48 Like people like me will make these small apps that are using the model.
1:26:53 And now they’re starting to charge money for the new models, but the new models are not so good for people.
1:26:54 They’re not so open source, right?
1:27:00 Yeah. It’s interesting because open source is so impactful in the AI space.
1:27:02 But you wonder like, what is the business model behind that?
1:27:07 But it’s enabling this whole ecosystem of companies that they’re using the open source model.
1:27:13 It’s kind of like this frameworks, but then they didn’t, you know, bribe enough influence to use it.
1:27:15 And they didn’t charge money for the platform, you know.
1:27:18 Okay. So back to your book and the ideas.
1:27:22 Who didn’t even get to the first step?
1:27:23 Generating ideas.
1:27:26 So you had notebook and you’re filling it up.
1:27:28 How do you know when an idea is a good one?
1:27:32 Like what, you have this just flood of ideas.
1:27:35 How do you pick the one that you actually try to build?
1:27:36 Man, mostly you don’t know.
1:27:39 Like mostly I choose the ones that are most viable for me to build.
1:27:41 Like I cannot build a space company now, right?
1:27:43 It would be quite challenging, but I can build something.
1:27:45 Did you actually write down like space company?
1:27:48 No, I think asteroid mining would be very cool.
1:27:52 Because like you go to an asteroid, you take some stuff from there, you bring it back, you sell it.
1:27:57 You know, it’s, but then you need to do, and you can hire someone to launch the thing.
1:28:00 So all you need is like the robot that goes to the asteroid.
1:28:02 You know, and the robotics is interesting.
1:28:03 Like I want to also learn robotics.
1:28:04 So maybe that could be.
1:28:07 I think both the asteroid mining and the robotics is.
1:28:09 Yeah, together.
1:28:13 I feel like.
1:28:15 No, exactly. This is it.
1:28:20 We do this not because it’s easy, but because we thought it would be easy.
1:28:23 Exactly. That’s me with asteroid mining.
1:28:24 Exactly.
1:28:25 That’s why I should do this.
1:28:27 It’s not nomadlist.com.
1:28:28 No, it’s not.
1:28:29 It’s asteroid mining.
1:28:31 You have to like build stuff.
1:28:33 Gravity is really hard to overcome.
1:28:38 Yeah, but it seems, man, it sounds like it is probably not, but it sounds quite approachable, like relatively approachable.
1:28:39 You don’t have to build the rockets.
1:28:42 Oh, you use something like SpaceX to get out the space.
1:28:46 Yeah, you hire SpaceX to send your, you know, this dog robot or whatever.
1:28:49 So is there actually exists a notebook where you wrote down asteroid mining?
1:28:50 No, I used, back then you used Trello.
1:28:51 Trello.
1:28:53 Yeah, but now I don’t really, I use Telegram.
1:28:56 I write it on like saved messages and I have like an idea I write it down.
1:28:57 You type to yourself on telegram.
1:28:59 You know, like, because you use WhatsApp, right?
1:29:00 I think.
1:29:01 So you have like a message to yourself.
1:29:02 I think also, yeah.
1:29:04 So you talk to yourself on telegram.
1:29:05 Yeah, use like a notepad.
1:29:06 Do not forget stuff.
1:29:07 And then I pin it, you know.
1:29:11 I love how like you’re not using super complicated systems or whatever.
1:29:13 You know, people use Obsidian now.
1:29:18 There’s a lot of these notion where you have systems for note taking.
1:29:20 You’re not your notepad.
1:29:21 You’re notepad.dx you guy.
1:29:22 Yeah.
1:29:27 Man, I saw some YouTubers doing this like, there’s a lot of these productivity gurus
1:29:30 also and they do this whole like iPad with a pencil.
1:29:33 And then I also had an iPad and I also got the pencil and I got this app where you can
1:29:39 like draw on paper, like, draw like a calendar, you know, like, like people students use this
1:29:41 and you can do coloring and stuff.
1:29:43 And I’m like, dude, I did this for a week.
1:29:44 And I’m like, what am I doing in my life?
1:29:48 Like I can just write it as a message to myself and it’s good enough, you know.
1:29:49 Speaking of ideas.
1:29:54 You shared a tweet explaining why the first idea sometimes might be a brilliant idea.
1:29:58 The reason for this, you think is the first idea submerges from your subconscious
1:30:02 and was actually boiling in your brain for weeks, months, sometimes years in the background.
1:30:07 The eight hours of thinking can never compete with the perpetual subconscious background job.
1:30:12 So this is the idea that if you think about an idea for eight hours versus like the first idea that pops into your mind.
1:30:18 And sometimes there is subconscious like stuff that you’ve been thinking about for many years.
1:30:19 That’s really interesting.
1:30:20 I mean, like it emerges.
1:30:22 I wrote it wrong because I don’t know.
1:30:25 I’m not native English, but it emerges from your subconscious, right?
1:30:27 It comes from the, like a water.
1:30:29 It’s just subconscious in here is boiling.
1:30:34 And then when it’s ready, it’s like, ding, second microwave comes out and there you have your idea.
1:30:36 You think you have ideas like that?
1:30:37 Yeah, all the time.
1:30:38 100%.
1:30:39 It’s just stuff that’s been like there.
1:30:40 Yes.
1:30:41 Yeah.
1:30:45 And I also, it comes up and I bring it, I send it back, you know, like send it back to the kitchen.
1:30:46 Not ready yet.
1:30:47 I feel more.
1:30:48 Yeah.
1:30:50 And it’s like a soup of ideas that’s cooking.
1:30:51 It’s 100%.
1:30:52 This is how my brain works.
1:30:53 And I think most people.
1:30:55 But it’s also about the timing.
1:30:58 Sometimes you have to send it back, not just because you’re not ready, but the world is not ready.
1:30:59 Yes.
1:31:03 So many times like starter phones are too early with their idea.
1:31:04 Yeah.
1:31:05 100%.
1:31:09 Robotics is an interesting one for that because like there’s been a lot of robotics companies that failed.
1:31:10 Yeah.
1:31:15 Because it’s been very difficult to build a robotics company to make money because there’s the manufacturing like the cost of everything.
1:31:22 The intelligence of the robot is enough is not sufficient to create a compelling enough product from which to make money.
1:31:27 So all, so there’s this long line of robotics companies that’ve tried that big dreams and they failed.
1:31:28 Yeah.
1:31:29 Like Boston Dynamics.
1:31:33 I still don’t know what they’re doing, but they always upload YouTube videos and it’s amazing.
1:31:38 But I feel like a lot of these companies don’t have a, it’s like a solution, look for a problem for now, you know.
1:31:44 Military obviously uses, but like, do I need like a robotic dog now for my house?
1:31:45 I don’t know.
1:31:47 Like it’s fun, but it doesn’t really solve anything yet.
1:31:49 I feel the same kind of VR.
1:31:50 Like it’s really cool.
1:31:51 Like Apple Vision Pro is very cool.
1:31:54 It doesn’t really solve something for me yet.
1:31:57 And that’s kind of the tech looking for a solution, right?
1:31:58 But one day will.
1:32:04 When the personal computer, when the Mac came along, there’s a big switch that happened.
1:32:06 It somehow captivated everybody’s imagination.
1:32:11 You could like the application, the killer apps became apparent.
1:32:12 You can type in a computer.
1:32:14 They became apparent like immediately.
1:32:17 Back then they also had like this thing where like, we don’t need these computers.
1:32:23 They’re like a hype and it also went like in kind of like, you know, ways.
1:32:24 Yes.
1:32:25 Yeah.
1:32:28 But the hype is the thing that allowed the thing to proliferate sufficiently to where
1:32:31 people’s minds would start opening up to it a little bit.
1:32:32 The possibility.
1:32:37 But right now, for example, with the robotics, there’s very few robots in the homes of people.
1:32:38 Exactly.
1:32:39 Yeah.
1:32:44 Robots that are there are Roombas sort of vacuum cleaners or they’re Amazon Alexa.
1:32:45 Yeah.
1:32:46 Or dishwasher.
1:32:47 I mean, it’s essentially a robot.
1:32:48 Yes.
1:32:52 But the intelligence is very limited, I guess, is one way we can summarize all of them.
1:32:59 Except Alexa, which is pretty intelligent, but is limited with the kind of ways it interacts
1:33:00 with you.
1:33:02 That’s just one example.
1:33:03 Yeah.
1:33:09 I sometimes think about that is like, if some people in this world were kind of born in
1:33:15 the whole existence is like, they were meant to build the thing.
1:33:16 Yeah.
1:33:19 You know, like I sometimes wonder like what my, what I was meant to do.
1:33:21 Do you have these plans for your life?
1:33:23 Do you have these dreams?
1:33:25 I think they’re meant to build robots.
1:33:26 Okay.
1:33:27 Me first.
1:33:28 Maybe.
1:33:29 Maybe.
1:33:34 That’s the sense I’ve had, but it could be other things.
1:33:39 He could hilariously not be the thing I was meant to be is to talk to people.
1:33:40 Yeah.
1:33:43 Which is weird because I always was anxious about talking to people.
1:33:44 Really?
1:33:45 Yeah.
1:33:46 I’m scared of this.
1:33:47 I was scared.
1:33:48 Yeah.
1:33:49 Exactly.
1:33:50 I’m scared of you.
1:33:52 It’s just anxiety throughout social interaction in general.
1:33:54 I’m an introvert that hides from the world.
1:33:55 So yeah.
1:33:56 It’s really strange.
1:33:57 Yeah.
1:33:58 But that’s, that’s also kind of life.
1:34:04 Like life brings you to, it’s very hard to super intently kind of choose what you’re
1:34:05 going to do with your life.
1:34:06 It’s more like surfing.
1:34:07 You’re surfing the waves.
1:34:10 You go in the ocean and you see where you end up.
1:34:11 You know.
1:34:12 Yeah.
1:34:13 Yeah.
1:34:15 And there’s universe has a kind of sense of humor.
1:34:16 Yeah.
1:34:20 I guess you have to just allow yourself to be carried away by the waves.
1:34:21 Yeah.
1:34:22 Exactly.
1:34:23 Yeah.
1:34:24 Have you felt that way in your life?
1:34:25 Yeah.
1:34:26 All the time.
1:34:28 Like, I think that’s the best way to live your life.
1:34:29 So allow whatever to happen.
1:34:31 Like, do you know what you’re doing in the next few years?
1:34:34 Is it possible that it would be completely like changed?
1:34:35 Possibly.
1:34:37 I think relationships, like you want to hold the relationships, right?
1:34:38 You want to hold your girlfriend.
1:34:40 You want to become wife and all this stuff.
1:34:46 But you should, I think you should stay open to where like, for example, where you want
1:34:47 to live.
1:34:48 Like, I don’t know.
1:34:49 We don’t know where we want to live, for example.
1:34:51 That’s something that will figure itself out.
1:34:56 It will crystallize where, you know, you will get sent by the waves to somewhere where you
1:34:57 want to live, for example.
1:34:58 What are you going to do?
1:35:00 I think that’s a really good way to live your life.
1:35:03 I think most stress comes from trying to control, like, hold things.
1:35:06 Like, it’s kind of Buddhist, you know?
1:35:09 You need to, like, lose control, let it lose.
1:35:10 And then things will happen.
1:35:14 Like, when you do mushrooms, when you do drugs, like psychedelic drugs, the people that start,
1:35:17 that are like control freaks, get bad trips, right?
1:35:18 Because you need to let go.
1:35:21 Like, I’m pretty control freak, actually.
1:35:25 And when I did mushrooms, when I was 17, I, it was very good.
1:35:27 And at the end, it wasn’t so good because I tried to control.
1:35:29 It was like, ah, now it’s going too much, you know?
1:35:30 Now I need to, let’s stop.
1:35:31 Bro, you can’t stop it.
1:35:34 You need to go true with it, you know?
1:35:36 And I think it’s a good metaphor for life.
1:35:39 I think that’s, you know, a very tranquil way to lead your life.
1:35:47 Yeah, actually, when I took Ayahuasca, that lesson is deeply within me already that you
1:35:48 can’t control anything.
1:35:51 I think I probably learned that the most in Jiu-Jitsu.
1:35:54 So just let go and relax.
1:35:55 Yeah.
1:35:56 And that’s why I had just an incredible experience.
1:36:01 There’s like literally no negative aspect of my Ayahuasca experience or any psychedelics
1:36:02 I’ve ever had.
1:36:06 Some of that could be with my biology, my genetics, whatever, but some of it was just not trying
1:36:07 to control.
1:36:08 Yeah.
1:36:09 Just surf the wave.
1:36:10 For sure.
1:36:12 I think most stress in life comes from trying to control.
1:36:16 So once you have the idea, step two, build.
1:36:19 How do you think about building the thing once you have the idea?
1:36:22 I think you should build with the technology that you know.
1:36:27 So for example, NomadList, which is like this website I made to figure out the best cities
1:36:30 to live and work as digital nomads.
1:36:34 It wasn’t a website, it launched as a Google spreadsheet.
1:36:36 So it was a public Google spreadsheet anybody could edit.
1:36:40 And I was like, I’m collecting like cities where we can live as digital nomads with the
1:36:44 internet speeds, the cost of living, you know, other stuff.
1:36:45 And I tweeted it.
1:36:47 And back then I didn’t have a lot of followers.
1:36:49 I had like a few thousand followers or something.
1:36:54 And I went like viral for my skill, viral back then, you know, which was like five retweets.
1:36:56 And a lot of people started editing it.
1:36:59 And there was like hundreds of cities in this list, like from all over the world with all
1:37:00 the data.
1:37:01 It was very crowdsourced.
1:37:03 And then I made that into a website.
1:37:07 So figuring out like what technology can use that you already know.
1:37:09 So if you cannot code, you can use a spreadsheet.
1:37:13 If you cannot use a spreadsheet, like whatever you can always use.
1:37:17 For example, a website generator like Weeks or something with Squarespace, right?
1:37:20 Like you don’t need to code to build a startup.
1:37:26 All you need is a idea for a product, build something like a landing page or something.
1:37:29 Put a strike button on there and then make it.
1:37:33 And if you can’t code, use the language that you already know and start coding with that
1:37:35 and see how far you can get.
1:37:37 You can always rewrite the code later.
1:37:40 Like the text tag is not actually, it’s not the most important of a business when you’re
1:37:41 starting out a business.
1:37:44 The important thing is that you validate that there’s a market, that there’s a product
1:37:46 that people want to pay for.
1:37:48 So use whatever you can use.
1:37:53 And if you cannot code, use, you know, spreadsheets, landing page generators, whatever.
1:37:54 Yeah.
1:37:58 And the crowdsourcing element is fascinating.
1:37:59 It’s cool.
1:38:02 It’s cool when a lot of people start using it, you get to learn so fast.
1:38:03 Yeah.
1:38:06 Like I’ve actually did the spreadsheet thing.
1:38:09 You share a spreadsheet publicly.
1:38:11 And I made it editable.
1:38:12 Yeah.
1:38:13 It’s so cool.
1:38:14 Interesting things start happening.
1:38:15 Yeah.
1:38:18 I did it for like a workout thing because I was doing a large amount of push ups and pull ups.
1:38:19 Yeah.
1:38:20 I remember this one.
1:38:21 Yeah.
1:38:26 And like, and, and while aside, Google Sheets is pretty limited in that everything’s allowed.
1:38:32 So people could just write anything in any cell and they can create new sheets, new tabs
1:38:34 and it just exploded.
1:38:39 And one of the things that I really enjoyed is there’s very few trolls
1:38:44 because actually other people would delete the trolls.
1:38:49 There would be like this weird war of like, they want like to protect the thing.
1:38:52 It’s an immune system that’s inherent to the thing.
1:38:54 It becomes a society, you know, in the spreadsheet.
1:38:59 And then there’s the outcast will go to the bottom of the spreadsheet and they would try to hide messages.
1:39:02 And they like, I don’t want to be with the cool kids up at the top of the spreadsheet.
1:39:03 So at the bottom.
1:39:04 Yes.
1:39:05 It’s fast.
1:39:08 I mean, but that kind of crowdsourcing element is really powerful.
1:39:15 And if you can create a product that use that as a, to his benefit, that’s, that’s really nice.
1:39:20 Like any kind of voting system, any kind of rating system for A and B testing is really, really, really fascinating.
1:39:22 So anyway, so Nomad List is great.
1:39:24 I would, I would love for you to talk about that.
1:39:32 But one sort of way to talk about it is through you building hoodmaps.
1:39:33 Yeah.
1:39:42 So you’ve, you did an awesome thing, which is document yourself building the thing and doing so in just a handful of days, like three, four, five days.
1:39:46 So people should definitely check out the video in the, in the blog post.
1:39:51 Can you explain what hoodmaps is and what this whole like this was?
1:39:54 So I was traveling and I was still trying to find like problems, right?
1:39:59 And I would go, I would, I would discover that like everybody’s experience of a city is different because they say in different areas.
1:40:00 Yeah.
1:40:01 So I’m from Amsterdam.
1:40:05 And when I grew up in Amsterdam or didn’t grow up, but I lived there in university.
1:40:09 I knew that center is like in Europe, the centers are always tourist areas.
1:40:11 So they’re super busy.
1:40:13 They’re not very authentic.
1:40:14 They’re not really Dutch culture.
1:40:16 It’s Amsterdam tourist culture.
1:40:25 So when people would travel to Amsterdam and say, don’t go to the center, go to, you know, southeast of the center, the Jordan or the pipe or something, more hipster areas.
1:40:28 Like it was more authentic culture of Amsterdam.
1:40:31 That’s where I would live, you know, and where I would go.
1:40:36 And I thought this could be like a app where you can have like a Google Maps and you put colors over it.
1:40:43 You have like areas that are like color code, like red is tourist, green is rich, you know, green money, yellow is hipster.
1:40:45 And you can figure out where you need to go in the city when you travel.
1:40:46 Because I was traveling a lot.
1:40:47 I wanted to go to the cool spots.
1:40:48 So just use color.
1:40:49 Yeah.
1:40:50 Color.
1:40:51 Yeah.
1:40:52 Yeah.
1:40:53 And I would use a canvas.
1:40:54 So I thought, okay, whatever you need, I need to.
1:40:56 Did you know that you would be using a canvas?
1:40:58 No, I didn’t know it was possible because I didn’t know.
1:40:59 I mean, this is the cool.
1:41:00 This is the cool.
1:41:01 Like people should really check it out.
1:41:02 Is this how it started?
1:41:10 Because like you’re honestly captured so beautifully the, the humbling aspects of the embarrassing aspects of like not knowing what to do.
1:41:12 It’s like, how do I, how do I do this?
1:41:14 And you like document yourself.
1:41:15 Yeah.
1:41:16 You’re right.
1:41:18 Dude, I feel embarrassed about myself.
1:41:21 It’s called being alive.
1:41:22 Nice.
1:41:32 So you’re like, you don’t know anything about canvas as a way to HTML5 thing that allows you to draw shapes.
1:41:33 Draw images.
1:41:34 Just draw pixels essentially.
1:41:35 So yeah.
1:41:38 And that’s, there was special back then because before you could only have like elements, right?
1:41:41 So you want to draw a pixel, use a canvas.
1:41:44 And I knew I needed to draw pixels because I need to draw these colors.
1:41:48 And I thought like, okay, I’ll get like a Google Maps, iframe embeds.
1:41:56 And then I’ll put a div on top of it with the colors and I’ll do like opacity 50, you know, so it kind of shows.
1:41:59 So I did that with canvas and then I started drawing.
1:42:04 And then I thought like, obviously other people need to edit this because I cannot draw all these things myself.
1:42:10 So I crowdsource it again and I, you would draw on the map and then it would send the pixel data to the server.
1:42:16 I would put it in the database and then I would have a robot running like a cron job, which every week would calculate or every day would calculate.
1:42:22 Like, okay, so Amsterdam center, there’s like six people say it’s tourist, this part of the center.
1:42:24 But two people say it’s like hipster.
1:42:25 Okay.
1:42:26 So the tourist part wins, right?
1:42:27 It’s just an array.
1:42:31 So find the most common value in a little pixel area on a map.
1:42:35 So that, so most people say it’s tourist, it’s tourist and it becomes red.
1:42:39 And I would do that for, you know, all the GPS corners in the world.
1:42:43 Can you just clarify, do you have to be as a human that’s contributing to this?
1:42:46 Do you have to be in that location to make the label?
1:42:50 No, people just type in cities and go like, go berserk and start drawing everywhere.
1:42:52 Would they draw shapes or would they draw pics?
1:42:55 Man, it drew like crazy stuff, like offensive symbols.
1:42:57 I cannot mention they would draw penises.
1:43:01 I mean, that’s, that’s obviously a guy would do the same thing, draw penises.
1:43:02 That’s the first thing.
1:43:05 When I show up to Mars and there’s no cameras, I’m drawing a penis on this.
1:43:08 Man, I did it in the snow, you know, but the penises did not become a problem.
1:43:12 Cause I knew that not everybody would draw a penis and not in the same place.
1:43:14 So most people would use it fairly.
1:43:18 So just if I had enough crowdsource data, so you have all these pixels on top of it.
1:43:21 It’s like a layer of pixels and you choose the most common pixel.
1:43:26 So yeah, it’s just like a pole, but in visual format and it works.
1:43:32 And we didn’t a week had enough data and, and there was like cities that did really well, like Los Angeles.
1:43:36 A lot of people started using it, like most data in Los Angeles.
1:43:40 Because Los Angeles has defined neighborhoods.
1:43:41 Yeah.
1:43:46 And not just in terms of the, the official labels, but like what they’re known for.
1:43:47 Yeah.
1:43:52 What are the, did you provide the categories that they were allowed to use as labels?
1:43:53 The colors.
1:43:54 Yeah.
1:43:55 As colors.
1:43:59 So it’s just like, I think you can see there, there’s like hipster tourist rich business.
1:44:01 There’s always a business area, right?
1:44:02 And then there’s a residential.
1:44:03 Your residential is gray.
1:44:06 So I thought those were the most common things in the city kind of.
1:44:09 And a little bit Mimi, like it’s almost fun to label it.
1:44:10 Yeah.
1:44:12 I mean, obviously it’s simplified, but you need to simplify this stuff.
1:44:14 You know, you don’t want to have too many categories.
1:44:19 And it’s essentially like, like using a, you know, paint brush where you select the color in the bottom.
1:44:21 You select the category and you start drawing.
1:44:22 There’s no instruction.
1:44:24 There’s no manual.
1:44:29 And then I also added tagging so people could like write something on a specific location.
1:44:34 So don’t go here or like here’s like nice cafes and stuff.
1:44:36 And man, the memes that came from that.
1:44:39 And I also added uploading so that the tags could be uploaded.
1:44:41 So the memes that came from that is like amazing.
1:44:44 Like people in Los Angeles would write crazy stuff.
1:44:46 It would go viral in all these cities.
1:44:48 You can allow, allow your location.
1:44:51 And then we’ll probably send you to Austin.
1:44:52 Okay.
1:44:53 So we’re looking.
1:44:56 Oh boy.
1:44:58 Drunk hipsters.
1:45:04 Airbrow and bros.
1:45:07 Airbrow and bros, hipster girls who do cocaine.
1:45:10 I saw a guy in a fish costume get beaten up here.
1:45:11 Yup.
1:45:12 That seems also accurate.
1:45:14 Overpricing, underwhelming.
1:45:18 Let me see.
1:45:20 Let me make sure this is accurate.
1:45:21 Let’s see.
1:45:25 Dirty Sixth.
1:45:29 For people who know Austin know that that’s important to label.
1:45:31 Sixth Street is famous in Austin.
1:45:33 Dirty Sixth, drunk fat boys.
1:45:34 Accurate.
1:45:36 Drunk fat bros, continued on Sixth.
1:45:37 Drunk douche bros.
1:45:40 West Sixth, drunk douche bros.
1:45:41 They go from fret to douche.
1:45:42 Douche.
1:45:44 I mean, it’s very accurate so far.
1:45:48 They only let hot people live here.
1:45:52 That’s, I think that might be accurate.
1:45:54 It’s like the district.
1:45:57 Because that’s freaks on the river?
1:45:58 Yeah, that’s true.
1:46:00 Dog runners, accurate.
1:46:02 Saw a guy in a fish costume get beat up here.
1:46:04 I want to know the story.
1:46:06 So that’s all music contributed.
1:46:09 Yeah, and that’s stuff I couldn’t come up with because I don’t know Austin.
1:46:11 I don’t know the memes here in the stuff cultures.
1:46:14 And then me as a user can upvote or downvote this.
1:46:16 So this is completely cross-course.
1:46:17 That’s because of Reddit, you know?
1:46:18 Upvote, downvote.
1:46:19 It’s from there.
1:46:21 That’s really, really, really powerful.
1:46:23 Single people with dogs, accurate.
1:46:27 At which point did it go from colors to the, actually showing the text?
1:46:30 I think I added the text like a week, a week after.
1:46:33 And so here’s like the pixels.
1:46:34 So that’s really cool, the pixels.
1:46:35 How do you go from there?
1:46:36 That’s a huge amount of data.
1:46:42 So there’s, we’re not looking at an image where it’s just a sea of pixels that call
1:46:44 different colors in a city.
1:46:47 So how do you combine that to be a thing that actually makes it some sense?
1:46:53 I think here, the problem was that you have this data, but it’s not locked to one location.
1:46:55 So I had to normalize it.
1:46:59 So when you click, when you draw on the map, it will show you the specific pixel location
1:47:02 and you can convert the pixel location to a GPS coordinate, right?
1:47:03 Like a ladder is longitude.
1:47:06 But the number will have a lot of commas or a lot of decimals, right?
1:47:07 Because it’s very specific.
1:47:09 Like it’s like this specific part of the table.
1:47:12 So what you want to do is you want to take that pixel and you want to normalize it by
1:47:15 removing like decimals, which I discovered.
1:47:18 So that you’re talking about this neighborhood or this street, right?
1:47:19 So that’s what I did.
1:47:22 I just took the decimals off and then I saved it like this.
1:47:28 And then it starts going to like a grid and then you have like a grid of data.
1:47:30 You get like a pixel map kind of.
1:47:32 And you said it looks kind of ugly.
1:47:33 So then you smooth it.
1:47:35 Yeah, I started adding blurring and stuff.
1:47:39 I think now it’s not smooth again because I liked it better.
1:47:41 People like the pixel look kind of.
1:47:43 Yeah, a lot of people use it and it keeps going viral.
1:47:48 And every time my my maps bill like map box, I had to stop using.
1:47:49 You first use Google Maps.
1:47:51 It went viral and Google Maps.
1:47:52 It was out of credits.
1:47:58 So I and I had to so funny during when I launched it went viral.
1:47:59 Google Maps.
1:48:00 The map didn’t load anymore.
1:48:01 It says over limits.
1:48:03 You need to contact enterprise sales.
1:48:06 And I’m like, but I need now like a map.
1:48:08 So and I don’t want to contact enterprise sales.
1:48:10 I don’t want to go on a call schedule with some counter.
1:48:13 So I switched to map box and then had map box for years.
1:48:18 And then it went viral and I had a bill of $20,000 was like last year.
1:48:20 So they helped me with the bill.
1:48:22 They said, you know, you can pay less.
1:48:26 And then I now switched to like an open source kind of map platform.
1:48:29 So it’s very expensive product and never made any dollar money.
1:48:30 But it’s very fun.
1:48:31 But it’s very expensive.
1:48:33 What do you learn from that?
1:48:38 So like from that experience, because when you leverage somebody else’s
1:48:39 or through the API.
1:48:40 Yeah.
1:48:44 I mean, I don’t think a map hosting service should cause this much, you know,
1:48:49 but I could host it myself, but that would be, I don’t know how to do that,
1:48:50 you know, but I could do that.
1:48:52 Yeah, it’s super complicated.
1:48:55 I think that the thing is more about like, you can’t make money with this project.
1:48:57 I tried to do many things to make money with it.
1:48:59 And it’s, it hasn’t worked.
1:49:03 You talked about like possibly doing advertisements on it or some.
1:49:04 Yeah.
1:49:05 But or people sponsoring it.
1:49:06 Yeah.
1:49:11 Well, it’s really surprising to me that people don’t want to advertise on it.
1:49:13 I think map apps are very hard to like monetize.
1:49:15 Like Google Maps also doesn’t really make money.
1:49:18 Like sometimes you see these ads, but I don’t think there’s a lot of money there.
1:49:21 You could put like a banner ad, but it’s kind of ugly.
1:49:23 And the product is kind of like, it’s kind of cool.
1:49:26 So it’s, it’s kind of fun to like subsidize it.
1:49:28 It’s kind of a little bit part of Nomadlist.
1:49:30 Like I put it on Nomadlist in the cities as well.
1:49:34 But I also realized like, you don’t need to monetize everything.
1:49:36 Like some products are just cool.
1:49:40 And you know, it’s like, it’s cool to have hoodmaps exist.
1:49:42 I want this to exist, right?
1:49:43 Yeah.
1:49:46 There’s a bunch of stuff you’ve created that I’m just glad exists in this world.
1:49:47 That’s true.
1:49:48 And it’s a whole another puzzle.
1:49:52 And I’m surprised to figure out how to make money off of it.
1:49:54 I’m surprised maps don’t make money, but you’re right.
1:49:55 It’s, it’s hard.
1:50:00 It’s hard to make money because there’s, there’s a lot of compute required to actually bring it to life.
1:50:01 And also where do you put the ad?
1:50:06 Right. Like if you have a website, you can put like an ad box or you can do like a product placement or something.
1:50:10 But you’re talking about a map app that where 90% of the interface is a map.
1:50:11 So what are you going to do?
1:50:14 You’re going to like, like it’s hard to figure out where is this.
1:50:16 Yeah. And people don’t want to pay for it.
1:50:17 No, exactly.
1:50:22 Because if you make people pay for it, you lose 99% of the user base and you lose the crowdsource data.
1:50:23 So it’s not fun anymore.
1:50:24 It stops being accurate.
1:50:25 Right.
1:50:29 So you kind of, they pay for it by crowdsourcing the data.
1:50:33 But then yeah, it’s fine. You know, it doesn’t make money, but it’s, it’s cool.
1:50:36 But that said, Nomadlist makes money.
1:50:37 Yeah.
1:50:39 So what was the story behind Nomadlist?
1:50:44 So Nomadlist started because I was in Chiang Mai in Thailand, which is now like the second city here.
1:50:48 And I was, you know, working on my laptop.
1:50:52 I met like other nomads there and I was like, okay, this seems like a cool thing to do.
1:50:56 Like working on your laptop in a different country, kind of travel around.
1:50:59 But back then the internet everywhere was very slow.
1:51:02 So the internet was fasting, for example, Holland or the United States.
1:51:07 But in a lot of parts in, you know, South America or Asia was very slow, like 0.5 megabits.
1:51:10 So you couldn’t watch a YouTube video.
1:51:13 Thailand weirdly had like quite fast internet.
1:51:20 But I wanted to find like other cities where I could go to like work on my laptop or whatever and travel.
1:51:22 But we needed like fast internet.
1:51:27 So I was like, let’s, you know, crowdsource this information with a spreadsheet.
1:51:29 And I also needed to know the cost of living because I didn’t have a lot of money.
1:51:30 I had $500 a month.
1:51:34 So I had to find a place where like the rent was like, you know, $200 a month or something.
1:51:37 Where I had, you know, some money that I could actually rent something.
1:51:41 And there was Nomadlist and it still runs.
1:51:43 I think it’s now almost 10 years.
1:51:47 So just to describe how it works, like, you know, I’m looking at Chiang Mai here.
1:51:49 There’s a total score.
1:51:50 It’s ranked number two.
1:51:51 Yeah, that’s like a normal score.
1:51:54 4.82, like by members.
1:51:57 But it’s looking at the internet.
1:52:14 In this case, it’s fast, fun, temperature, humidity, air quality, safety, food safety, crime, racism, or lack of crime, lack of racism, educational level, power grid, vulnerability to climate change, income level.
1:52:15 It’s a little much, you know.
1:52:17 English speed, it’s awesome.
1:52:18 It’s awesome, walkability.
1:52:19 Keep adding stuff.
1:52:21 Because for certain groups of people, certain things really matter.
1:52:22 And this is really cool.
1:52:23 Yeah.
1:52:24 Happiness.
1:52:25 I’d love to ask about that.
1:52:32 Netlife, free Wi-Fi, AC, female friendly, freedom of speech.
1:52:34 Yeah, not so good in Thailand, you know.
1:52:36 Values derived from national statistics.
1:52:38 Yeah, I like how that one.
1:52:41 I need to do it because the data sets are usually national.
1:52:42 They’re not on city level, right?
1:52:44 So I don’t know about the freedom of speech between Bangkok or Chiang Mai.
1:52:45 I know them in Thailand.
1:52:47 I mean, this is really fascinating.
1:52:48 So this is for city.
1:52:49 Yeah.
1:52:52 It’s basically rating all the different things that matter to you and internet.
1:52:54 And this is all crowdsourced.
1:53:05 Well, so it started crowdsourced, but then I realized that you can download more accurate data sets from like public source, like World Bank.
1:53:11 They have a lot of public data sets, United Nations, and you can download a lot of data there, which you can, you know, freely use.
1:53:21 Like I started getting crowdsourced data where, for example, people from India, they really love India, and they would submit the best scores for everything in India.
1:53:25 And not just like one person, but like a lot of people, they would love to pump India.
1:53:29 And I’m like, I love India too, you know, but that’s not valid data.
1:53:33 So you started getting discrepancies in the data between where people were from and stuff.
1:53:36 So I started switching to data sets.
1:53:49 And now it’s mostly data sets, but one thing that’s still crowdsourced is so people add where they are to add their travels to their profile and use that data to see which places are upcoming and which places are popular now.
1:53:54 So about half the ranking you see here is based on actual digital nomads who are there.
1:53:58 You can click on a city, you can click on people, you can see the people, the users that are actually there.
1:54:01 And it’s like 30,000 or 40,000 members.
1:54:11 So these people are in Austin now and 1800 remote work is in Austin now, which eight plus members checked in members who will be here soon and go.
1:54:12 Yeah, so we have meetups.
1:54:17 So people organize their own meetups and we have about, I think like 30, 30 per month.
1:54:19 So it’s like one meetup a day.
1:54:20 And I don’t do anything.
1:54:21 They organize themselves.
1:54:24 So I just, it’s a whole black box.
1:54:26 It just runs and I don’t do a lot on it.
1:54:30 It pulls data from everywhere and it just works.
1:54:34 The cons of Austin is too expensive, very sweating, human, now difficult to make friends.
1:54:35 Difficult to make friends.
1:54:36 Interesting, right?
1:54:37 I didn’t know that.
1:54:38 Difficult to make friends.
1:54:39 Austin.
1:54:41 But this all crowds, but mostly it’s pros.
1:54:42 Yeah.
1:54:43 Austin’s very fast.
1:54:44 Fast internet.
1:54:47 I don’t understand why it says not safe for women to check the data set.
1:54:48 It’s still safe.
1:54:52 The problem with a lot of places like United States is that it depends per area, right?
1:54:59 So if you get like city level data or nation level data, it’s like Brazil is the worst because the range in like safe,
1:55:03 and wealthy, and not safe is like huge.
1:55:05 So you can’t say many things about Brazil.
1:55:11 So once you actually show up to a city, how do you figure out what area, like where to get fast internet?
1:55:15 For example, like for me, it’s all, it’s consistently a struggle to figure out my code.
1:55:16 Still.
1:55:19 Hotels with fast Wi-Fi, for example, like a place.
1:55:20 Okay.
1:55:21 I show up to a city.
1:55:23 There’s a lot of fascinating puzzles.
1:55:26 And I haven’t figured out a way to actually solve this puzzle.
1:55:32 When I show up to a city, figuring out where I can get fast internet connection.
1:55:38 And for podcasting purposes, where I can find a place with a table that’s quiet.
1:55:39 Right.
1:55:40 That’s not easy.
1:55:41 Construction sounds?
1:55:42 All kinds of sounds.
1:55:45 You have to learn about all the sources of sounds in the world.
1:55:48 And also like the quality of the room.
1:55:59 Because the more, the emptier the room and like if it’s just walls without any curtains or any of this kind of stuff, then there’s echoes in the room anyway.
1:56:02 But you figure out that a lot of hotels don’t have tables.
1:56:04 They don’t have like normal.
1:56:05 It’s weird desk, right?
1:56:06 Yeah.
1:56:07 It’s not a center table.
1:56:08 Yep.
1:56:17 And if you want to get a nicer hotel where it’s more spacious and so on, they usually have these like boutique, like fancy looking, like modernist tables.
1:56:18 Tables that don’t.
1:56:19 It’s too designy.
1:56:20 It’s too designy.
1:56:21 They’re not really real tables.
1:56:23 What if you get IKEA?
1:56:24 Buy IKEA.
1:56:25 Yeah.
1:56:26 Before you arrive, you order an IKEA.
1:56:27 Yeah.
1:56:28 Like Nomezudas, they get desks.
1:56:31 I feel like you should be able to show up to a place and have the desk.
1:56:36 Like it’s not, unless you stay in there for a long time, just the entire assembly, all that.
1:56:39 Airbnb is so unreliable.
1:56:44 The range and quality that you get is huge.
1:56:47 Hotels have a lot of problems, pros and cons.
1:56:53 Like hotels have the problem that the pictures somehow never have good representative pictures of what’s actually going to be in the rooms.
1:56:54 And that’s the problem.
1:56:56 Like, fake photos, man.
1:57:00 If I could have the kind of data you have on Nomad list for hotels.
1:57:01 Yeah, man.
1:57:03 And I feel like you can make a lot of money on that too.
1:57:04 Yeah.
1:57:05 The booking fees.
1:57:06 Affiliate, right?
1:57:07 I thought about this idea.
1:57:08 Because we have the same problem.
1:57:11 Like I go to hotels and there’s specific ones that are very good.
1:57:13 And I know now the chains and stuff.
1:57:18 But even if you go, some chains are very bad in a specific city and very good in other cities.
1:57:21 And each individual hotel has a lot of kinds of rooms.
1:57:22 Yeah.
1:57:25 Like someone more expensive, someone cheaper and so on.
1:57:29 But you can get the details of what’s in the room.
1:57:31 Like what’s the actual layout of the room?
1:57:32 What is the view of the room?
1:57:33 Treaty scanners.
1:57:35 I feel like as a hotel, you can win a lot.
1:57:41 So first you create a service that allows you to have like high resolution data about a hotel.
1:57:43 Then one hotel signs up for that.
1:57:50 I would 100% use that website to look for a hotel instead of the crappy alternatives that don’t give any information.
1:57:54 And I feel like there’ll be this pressure for all the hotels to join that site.
1:57:58 And you can make a shit ton of money because hotels make a lot of money.
1:57:59 I think it’s true.
1:58:01 But the problem is with these hotels, like it’s same with airline industry.
1:58:04 Why does every airline website suck when you try book of flights?
1:58:05 Yeah.
1:58:06 It’s like very strange.
1:58:07 Like why does it have to suck?
1:58:08 Obviously there’s competition here.
1:58:09 Why doesn’t the best website win?
1:58:10 What’s the explanation for that?
1:58:12 Man, I thought about this for years.
1:58:15 So I think it’s like, I have to book the flight anyway.
1:58:19 Like I know there’s a route that they take and like I need to book for example Qatar Airlines.
1:58:22 And I need to get through this process.
1:58:26 And with hotels, similar, you need a hotel anyway.
1:58:30 So do you have time to like figure out the best one?
1:58:31 Not really.
1:58:37 You kind of just need to get the place booked and you know, you need to get the flight and you’ll go through the pain of this process.
1:58:43 And that’s why this process always sucks so much with hotels and airline websites and stuff because they don’t have any incentive to improve it.
1:58:51 Because generally, only for like a super upper segment of the market, I think like a super high luxury, it affects the actual booking, right?
1:58:52 I don’t know.
1:58:54 I think that that’s a good interesting theory.
1:58:56 I think that must be a different theory.
1:59:02 My theory would be that great engineers like great software engineers are not allowed to make changes.
1:59:08 Yeah, basically like there’s some kind of bureaucracy. There’s way too many managers. There’s a lot of bureaucracy.
1:59:14 And great engineers show up to try to work there and they, they’re not allowed to really make any contributions and then they leave.
1:59:17 And so you have a lot of mediocre software engineers.
1:59:19 They’re not really interested in improving any other thing.
1:59:30 And like literally they would like to improve the stuff, but the bureaucracy of the place, plus all the bosses, all the high up people are not technical people probably.
1:59:34 They don’t know much about what web dev, they don’t know much about programming.
1:59:36 So they just don’t give any respect.
1:59:43 Like you have to give the freedom and the respect to great engineers as they try to do great things.
1:59:45 That feels like an explanation.
1:59:50 Like if you were a great programmer, would you want to work at America Airlines or?
1:59:52 No, no.
2:00:01 I’m torn on that because I actually, as somebody who lost program, would love to work at America Airlines so I can make the thing better.
2:00:04 Yeah, but I would work there just to fix it for myself, you know?
2:00:09 Yeah, for yourself. And then you just know how much suffering you’re alleviated.
2:00:11 Yeah, for the world society.
2:00:18 Imagine all the thousands, millions of people that go to that website and have to click like a million times.
2:00:24 It often doesn’t work. It’s clunky, all that kind of stuff. You’re making their life just so much better.
2:00:28 Yeah, but there must be an explanation has to do with managers and bureaucracies.
2:00:31 I think it’s money. Do you know Booking.com?
2:00:32 Sure.
2:00:35 It’s the biggest booking website in the world. It’s Dutch actually.
2:00:45 And they have teams, because my friend worked there, they have teams for a specific part of the website, like a 10 by 10 pixels area where they run tests on this.
2:00:49 So they run tests like, and they’re famous for this stuff, like, oh, there’s only one room left, right?
2:00:52 With this red letter. It’s like, one room left, book now.
2:00:55 You know, and they got to find from the European Union about this. Kind of interesting.
2:01:01 So they have all these teams and they run the test for 24 hours, they go to sleep, they wake up next day, they come to the office and they see, okay, this performed better.
2:01:08 This website has become a monster, but it’s the most revenue generating hotel booking website in the world. It’s number one.
2:01:19 So that shows that it’s not about like user experience, it’s about like, I don’t know, about making more money and, you know, not every company, but, you know, if they’re optimizing, it’s a public company.
2:01:21 If they’re optimizing for money.
2:01:24 But you can optimize for money by disrupting, like making it way better.
2:01:29 Yeah, but it’s always startups. They start with disrupting, like Booking.com started to start up in 1997.
2:01:34 And then they become like the old shit again, like, you know, Uber now starts to become like a taxi again, right?
2:01:40 It was very good in the beginning. Now it’s kind of like taxis now in many places are better. They’re nicer than Ubers, right?
2:01:42 So it’s like the circle.
2:01:48 I think some of it is also just, it’s hard to have ultra competent engineers.
2:01:53 Like Stripe seems like a trivial thing, but it’s hard to pull off.
2:01:59 Like, why was it so hard for Amazon to have buy with one click? Which I think is a genius idea.
2:02:05 Make buying easier, like make it as as frictionless as possible.
2:02:08 Just click a button once and you bought the thing.
2:02:14 As opposed to most of the web was a lot of clicking and it often doesn’t work, like with the airlines.
2:02:20 Remember the forms would delete? You could like next submit and with 404 or something where your internet would go down, your modem.
2:02:21 Yeah, man.
2:02:23 And I would have an existential crisis.
2:02:29 Like the frustration would take over my whole body and I would just wanted to quit life for a brief moment there.
2:02:30 Yeah.
2:02:34 I’m so happy to form stays in Google Chrome now when someone goes wrong.
2:02:37 But Google, somebody at Google improved society with that, right?
2:02:42 Yeah. And one of the challenges at Google is to have the freedom to do that.
2:02:43 They don’t anymore.
2:02:44 There’s a bunch of bureaucracy.
2:02:45 Yeah, at Google.
2:02:50 There’s so many brilliant, brilliant people there, but it just moves slowly.
2:02:51 Yeah.
2:02:52 I wonder why that is.
2:03:00 Maybe that’s the natural way of a company, but you have people like Elon who rolls in and just fires most of the folks and always operate.
2:03:02 They push the company to operate as a startup.
2:03:03 Even when it’s already big.
2:03:05 Yeah, but I mean, Apple does this.
2:03:10 Like I started in business school, Apple does competing product teams that operate as startups.
2:03:11 So it’s three to five people.
2:03:12 They make something.
2:03:14 They have multiple teams to make the same thing.
2:03:15 The best team wins.
2:03:20 So you need to, I think you need to emulate like a free market inside a company to make it entrepreneurial.
2:03:21 Yeah.
2:03:26 And you need entrepreneurial mentality in a company to come up with new ideas and do it better.
2:03:30 So one of the things you do really, really well is learn a new thing.
2:03:32 Like you’re trying to, you have an idea.
2:03:37 You try to build it and then you’ve learned everything you need to in order to build it.
2:03:40 You have your current skills, but you need to learn just the minimal amount of stuff.
2:03:45 So you’re a good person to ask like what, how do you learn?
2:03:49 How do you learn quickly and effectively and just the stuff you need?
2:03:54 You did a, just by way of example, you did a 30 days learning session on 3D.
2:03:55 Yeah.
2:03:59 Where you documented yourself, giving yourself only 30 days to learn everything you can about.
2:04:00 Yeah.
2:04:02 I tried to learn virtual reality because I was like, this was like same as AI.
2:04:09 It came up suddenly like 2016, 2017 with, I think HTC Vive, this big VR glasses before Apple Vision Pro.
2:04:11 And I was like, oh, this is going to be big.
2:04:12 So I need to learn this.
2:04:14 So I, I know, I know nothing about 3D.
2:04:18 So like, I think unity and like blender and stuff.
2:04:25 And I started learning all the stuff because I thought this was like a new, you know, nascent technology that was going to be big.
2:04:29 And if I had the skills for it, I could use this to build stuff.
2:04:36 And so I think with learning for me, it’s like, I think learning is so funny because people always ask me like, how do I, how do you learn to code?
2:04:37 Like, should I learn to code?
2:04:39 And I’m like, I don’t know.
2:04:42 Like I’m, every day I’m learning, it’s kind of cliche, but every day I’m learning new stuff.
2:04:47 So every day I’m searching on Google or asking our chat GPT how to do this thing, how to do this thing.
2:04:49 Every day I’m getting better at my skill.
2:04:51 So you never stop learning.
2:04:53 So the whole concept of like, how do you learn?
2:04:54 Well, you never end.
2:04:55 So where do you want to be?
2:04:56 Do you want to know a little bit?
2:04:57 Do you want to know a lot?
2:04:59 Do you want to do it for your whole life?
2:05:02 Or so I think taking action is the best step to learn.
2:05:06 So making things like, you know nothing, just start making things.
2:05:07 Okay.
2:05:09 So like how to make a website, search how to make a website.
2:05:12 Or nowadays you ask chat GPT, how to make a website, where do I start?
2:05:14 It generates codes for you, right?
2:05:17 Copy the code, put it in the file, save it, open it in Google Chrome or whatever.
2:05:20 You have a website and then you start tweaking with it.
2:05:22 And you start, okay, how do I add a button?
2:05:24 How do I add AI features, right?
2:05:25 Like nowadays.
2:05:31 So it’s like by taking action, you can learn stuff much faster than reading books or tutorials.
2:05:32 I’m curious.
2:05:34 Let me ask for complexity.
2:05:36 How do I make a website?
2:05:38 I’m just curious what he would say.
2:05:43 I hope it goes with like really basic vanilla solutions.
2:05:46 To find your website’s purpose, choose a domain name.
2:05:48 Select the web hosting provider.
2:05:51 Choose a website, a builder or CMS website.
2:05:54 It tells like weeks or square spaces what I said.
2:05:55 Yeah.
2:05:56 The landing page.
2:06:01 What do I, how do I say if I want to program it myself?
2:06:03 Design your website, create essential pages.
2:06:04 Yeah.
2:06:05 Even tells you to launch it, right?
2:06:06 Like start promoting it.
2:06:07 Launch your website.
2:06:08 I mean, you could do that.
2:06:09 Yeah, but this is literally it.
2:06:10 Like it’s, this is.
2:06:11 If you want to make a website.
2:06:12 This is the basics.
2:06:13 Like Google Analytics.
2:06:14 But you can’t make Nomad lists with this way.
2:06:15 You can.
2:06:16 With Wix.
2:06:17 Like with.
2:06:19 No, you can, you can get pretty far, I think.
2:06:20 You can get pretty far.
2:06:21 These website builders are pretty advanced.
2:06:23 Like all you need is a grid of images, right?
2:06:24 Yeah.
2:06:25 That are clickable.
2:06:26 That open like another page.
2:06:27 Yeah.
2:06:28 You can get quite far.
2:06:35 How do I learn to program?
2:06:37 Programming language to start with.
2:06:38 You’re free.
2:06:39 Pout camps.
2:06:40 Good.
2:06:42 Work through resources.
2:06:43 Thematically.
2:06:48 Practice calling regularly for 30, 60 minutes a day.
2:06:49 Consistency is key.
2:06:50 Join programming communities.
2:06:51 Like Reddit.
2:06:52 Yeah.
2:06:53 Yeah.
2:06:54 It’s pretty, it’s pretty good.
2:06:55 Yeah.
2:06:56 It’s pretty good.
2:06:57 So I think it’s, it’s a very good starting ground.
2:07:00 Cause imagine you know nothing and you want to make a website.
2:07:02 You want to make a startup.
2:07:03 This is like.
2:07:07 That’s why the, man, the power of AI for education is going to be insane.
2:07:11 Like people anywhere can, can ask this question and start building stuff.
2:07:12 Yeah.
2:07:13 It clarifies it for sure.
2:07:14 And just start building.
2:07:15 Like keep.
2:07:16 Yeah.
2:07:18 Build, build, like actually apply the thing.
2:07:22 Whether it’s AI or any of the programming for web development.
2:07:23 Yeah.
2:07:24 Just have a project in mind.
2:07:30 I love the idea of like 12 startups in 12 months or like.
2:07:32 Build a project almost every day.
2:07:33 Just build the thing.
2:07:34 Yeah.
2:07:37 And get it to work and finish it every single day.
2:07:39 That’s a cool experiment.
2:07:40 I think that was the inspiration.
2:07:45 There was a girl who did 160 websites in 160 days or something.
2:07:46 Literally mini websites.
2:07:47 Yeah.
2:07:49 And she learned to code that way.
2:07:54 So I think it’s good to set yourself challenges, you know, like don’t, you can go through some
2:07:56 coding bootcamp, but I don’t think they actually work.
2:08:01 I think it’s better to do like, for me, how to deduct like self-learning and setting yourself
2:08:05 like challenges and just getting in, but you need discipline, you know, you need discipline
2:08:07 to keep, to keep doing it.
2:08:11 And coding, you know, coding is very, it’s a steep learning curve to get in.
2:08:12 It’s very annoying.
2:08:14 Working with computers is very annoying.
2:08:19 So it can be hard for people to keep doing it, you know.
2:08:20 Yeah.
2:08:25 That thing of just keep doing it and don’t quit that urgency that’s required to finish
2:08:26 a thing.
2:08:27 That’s why it’s really powerful.
2:08:32 When you documented this, the equation of hoodmaps, or though like a working prototype,
2:08:38 that there’s a, just a constant frustration, I guess, is like, how do I do this?
2:08:42 And then you look it up and you know, like, okay, you have to interpret the different options
2:08:43 you have.
2:08:45 You’re like, and then just try it.
2:08:50 And then, and then there’s a dopamine rush of like, ooh, it works.
2:08:51 Cool.
2:08:52 Man, it’s amazing.
2:08:53 And I live streamed it.
2:08:54 It’s on YouTube and stuff.
2:08:55 People can watch it.
2:08:58 And it’s amazing when things work.
2:09:01 It’s, look, it’s just like, I look very not, I don’t look far ahead.
2:09:03 So I only look, okay, what’s the next problem to solve?
2:09:05 And then the next problem.
2:09:11 And at the end, you have a whole app or website or thing, you know, but I think most people
2:09:12 look way too far ahead.
2:09:15 You know, they look, it’s like this poster again.
2:09:17 Like you shouldn’t, you don’t know how hard it’s going to be.
2:09:21 So you should only look like for the next thing, the next little challenge, the next step,
2:09:23 and then see where you end up.
2:09:26 And assume it’s going to be easy.
2:09:27 Yeah, exactly.
2:09:31 Be naive about it because it’s, it’s, you’re going to have very difficult problems.
2:09:34 A lot of the big problems won’t be even tech will be like public, right?
2:09:36 Like maybe people don’t like your website.
2:09:39 Like you will get canceled for a website, for example.
2:09:40 Like a lot of things can happen.
2:09:43 What’s it like building in public like you do?
2:09:47 Like openly, we’re just iterating quickly and you’re getting people’s feedback.
2:09:51 So there’s, there’s the power of the crowdsourcing, but there’s also the, the negative aspects
2:09:54 of people being able to criticize.
2:09:58 So man, I think haters are actually good cause I think a lot of haters have good points.
2:10:04 And it takes like stepping away from the emotion of like your website sucks because blah, blah, blah.
2:10:06 And you’re like, okay, just remove this, your website sucks.
2:10:08 Cause it’s personal, you know, what did he say?
2:10:09 Why did he didn’t not like it?
2:10:13 And he figured out, okay, he didn’t like it cause the signup was difficult or something.
2:10:14 Or it wasn’t the data.
2:10:16 They say, no, this data is not accurate or something.
2:10:17 Okay, I need to improve the quality of the data.
2:10:19 This hater has a point.
2:10:22 I think it’s dumb to completely ignore your haters, you know?
2:10:27 And also, man, I think I’ve been there when I was like 10 years old or something.
2:10:29 You’re on the internet just shouting crazy stuff.
2:10:32 That’s like most of Twitter, you know, or the half Twitter.
2:10:34 So you have to take it with grain of salt.
2:10:40 Um, yeah, you, man, you need to grow a very thick skin like on Twitter on X.
2:10:42 Like people say, but I mute a lot of people.
2:10:47 Like I found out I muted already 15,000 people recently I checked.
2:10:49 So in, in 10 years I moved to 15,000 people.
2:10:52 So that’s like, that’s one by one manual.
2:10:53 Yeah.
2:10:55 So 1500 people per year.
2:10:57 And I don’t like to block cause then they get angry.
2:10:59 They make a screenshot and they say, ah, you blocked me.
2:11:03 So I just mute and it disappear and it’s amazing.
2:11:04 So you mentioned Reddit.
2:11:08 So hoodmaps, that make it to the front page of Reddit?
2:11:09 Yeah, yeah, I did.
2:11:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah, I did.
2:11:11 It was amazing.
2:11:15 And my server almost went down and I was checking like Google Analytics.
2:11:17 It’s like 5,000 people on the website or somewhere crazy.
2:11:18 And it was at night.
2:11:19 It was amazing.
2:11:26 Um, I’ve, man, I think nowadays, honestly, TikTok, uh, YouTube reels, instant reels,
2:11:30 a lot of apps get very big from people tick, making TikTok videos about it.
2:11:34 So let’s say you make your own app, you can make a video for yourself.
2:11:35 Like, oh, I made this app.
2:11:37 Uh, this is how it works, blah, blah, blah.
2:11:41 Um, and this is why I made it, for example, and this is why you should use it.
2:11:44 And if it’s a good video, it will take off and you will get, man, I got like,
2:11:50 I got like $20,000 extra per month or something from a TikTok, from one TikTok video, like
2:11:52 it made a photo.
2:11:53 By you or somebody else?
2:11:54 By some random guy.
2:11:58 So there’s all these AI influencers that they write about, they show AI apps and they,
2:12:02 and they ask money later, like when a viral video goes viral, all I can do it, do it again
2:12:04 and send me $4,000 or something.
2:12:06 I’m like, okay, I did that, for example.
2:12:07 But it works.
2:12:12 Like, TikTok is a very big platform for user, um, acquisition.
2:12:13 Yeah.
2:12:14 It’s organic.
2:12:16 Like the best user acquisition I think is organic.
2:12:17 You don’t need to buy ads.
2:12:19 You probably don’t have money when you start to buy ads.
2:12:22 So use organic or write a banger tweet, right?
2:12:24 That’s can make an app take off as well.
2:12:29 Well, I mean, yeah, I finally meant to create cool stuff and have just a little bit of a
2:12:34 following enough to like, for, for the cool thing to be noticed and then it becomes viral
2:12:35 if it’s cool enough.
2:12:36 Yeah.
2:12:39 And you don’t need a lot of followers anymore because on X and a lot of platforms because
2:12:43 TikTok X, I think Instagram Reels also, they have the same algorithm now.
2:12:44 It’s not about followers anymore.
2:12:48 It’s about they test your content on a small subset, like 300 people.
2:12:52 If they like it, it will get tested to 1,000 people and on and on.
2:12:55 So if the thing is good, it will rise anyway.
2:12:59 It doesn’t matter if you have half a million followers or 1,000 followers or 100.
2:13:00 What’s your philosophy of monetizing?
2:13:02 How to make money from the thing you built?
2:13:03 Yeah.
2:13:05 So a lot of starters, they do like free users.
2:13:10 They sign up, they can use an app for free, which is, it never worked for me.
2:13:13 Well, because I, I think free users generally don’t convert.
2:13:18 And I think if you have VC funding, it makes sense to get free users because you can spend
2:13:22 your funding on ads and you can get like millions of people come in, predictably how much they
2:13:25 convert and give them like a free trial, whatever.
2:13:26 And then they sign up.
2:13:30 But you need to have that flow worked out so well for you to make it work that you need
2:13:31 like, it’s very difficult.
2:13:35 I think it’s best to start and just start asking people for money in the beginning.
2:13:37 So show your app.
2:13:38 Like what are you doing on your landing page?
2:13:40 Like make a demo or whatever video.
2:13:44 And then if you want to use it, pay me money, pay $10, $20, $30.
2:13:48 I would ask more than $10 per month, like Netflix, like $10 per month, but Netflix is
2:13:53 a giant company that can, you know, they can afford to make it so cheap, relatively cheap.
2:13:57 If you’re an individual, like an indie hacker, like you are making your own app, you need
2:14:03 to make like at least $30 or more on a user to make it worthy for you.
2:14:05 You need to make money, you know.
2:14:08 And it builds a community of people that actually really care about the product.
2:14:11 Also, yeah, making a community like making a discord is very normal now.
2:14:15 Every AI app has a discord and you have the developers and the users together in like
2:14:18 a discord and they talk about, they ask for features they built together.
2:14:19 It’s very normal now.
2:14:25 And you need to imagine, like if you’re, if you’re starting out getting a thousand users
2:14:28 is quite difficult, getting a thousand pages is quite difficult.
2:14:32 And if you charge them like $30, you have 30k a month.
2:14:33 That’s a lot of money.
2:14:35 That’s enough to like live a good life.
2:14:36 Yeah, live a pretty good life.
2:14:39 I mean, that could be a lot of cost associated with hosting.
2:14:40 Yeah, so that’s not a thing.
2:14:42 I make sure my profit margins are very high.
2:14:43 So I try to keep the cost very low.
2:14:45 I don’t hire people.
2:14:49 I, I try to negotiate with like AI vendors now.
2:14:54 Like can you make it cheaper, you know, which is I discovered is you can just email companies
2:14:56 and say, can you, can you give me discount?
2:14:57 Cause it’s too expensive.
2:14:59 And they say, sure, 50%.
2:15:01 I’m like, wow, very good.
2:15:02 And I didn’t know this.
2:15:03 You can just ask.
2:15:07 And especially in like, like now it’s kind of recession, you can ask companies like,
2:15:11 I need a discount or I kind of need to like, you don’t need to be asshole about it.
2:15:15 Say, you know, I kind of need a discount or I need to go maybe to another company.
2:15:17 Maybe like discount like here and there.
2:15:18 And it says, sure.
2:15:19 A lot of them will say yes.
2:15:21 Like 25% discount, 50% discount.
2:15:25 Cause you think the price on the website is the price of the API or something.
2:15:27 It’s not like, you know.
2:15:29 And also you’re a public facing person.
2:15:31 Oh, that helps also.
2:15:33 And there’s love and good vibes that you put out into the world.
2:15:36 Like you’re actually legitimately trying to build cool stuff.
2:15:40 So a lot of companies probably want to associate with you because you’re trying to do.
2:15:41 Yeah, it’s like a secret hack.
2:15:45 But I think even without, it depends how much discount they will give you.
2:15:49 You know, they’ll maybe give more, but you know, that’s why you should shit post on Twitter.
2:15:52 So you get, you know, discounts maybe.
2:15:55 Yeah, yeah.
2:16:03 But, and also the, when it’s crowdsourced, I mean, paying does prevent spam or help prevent spam.
2:16:05 Also, yeah, it gives you high quality users.
2:16:06 High quality users.
2:16:09 Free users are, sorry, but they’re horrible.
2:16:12 Like it’s just like millions of people, especially if AI startups, you get a lot of abuse.
2:16:18 So you get millions of people from anywhere, just abusing your app, just, just hacking it or whatever.
2:16:20 There’s something on the internet.
2:16:23 You mentioned like 4chan discovered hoodmaps.
2:16:24 Yeah, but I love 4chan.
2:16:26 I don’t love 4chan, but you know what I mean?
2:16:28 Like they’re so crazy, especially back then.
2:16:31 Like that’s, it’s kind of funny what they do, you know?
2:16:34 I actually, what is it?
2:16:37 There’s a new documentary on Netflix, Anti-Social Network or something like that.
2:16:39 That was really, was fascinating.
2:16:43 Just 4chan, just the, you know, the spirit of the thing, 4chan and HN.
2:16:44 People misunderstand 4chan.
2:16:52 It’s so much about freedom and also like the humor involved in fucking with the system and fucking with the man.
2:16:53 That’s it.
2:16:55 It’s just anti-system for fun.
2:17:04 The dark aspect of it is you’re having fun, you’re doing anti-system stuff, but like the Nazis always show up.
2:17:05 And it’s somehow.
2:17:06 That shit started happening.
2:17:07 It’s drifting somehow.
2:17:08 Yeah.
2:17:09 School shootings and stuff.
2:17:13 So it’s a very difficult topic, but I do know it’s, especially early on.
2:17:18 I think 2010, I would go to 4chan for fun and they would post like crazy offensive stuff.
2:17:20 And this was just to scare off people.
2:17:23 So we’d show it to other people, say, Hey, do you know this internet website 4chan?
2:17:24 Just check it out.
2:17:26 And it’d be, dude, what the fuck is that?
2:17:27 I’m like, no, no, you don’t understand.
2:17:28 Let’s just scare you away.
2:17:31 But actually when you go through a scroll, there’s like deep conversations.
2:17:35 And they would already be, this was like a normie filter, like to stop.
2:17:36 So kind of cool.
2:17:37 But yeah.
2:17:38 It goes dark.
2:17:39 It goes dark.
2:17:44 And if you have those people show up, they’ll, for the fun of it, do a bunch of racist things
2:17:45 and all that kind of stuff you’re saying.
2:17:48 But everything’s, I think it was never, man, I’m not a 4chan.
2:17:50 But like I, it was always about provoking.
2:17:52 It’s just provocateurs, you know?
2:17:59 But the, the provoking in the case of hoodmaps or something like this can, can damage the good thing.
2:18:04 Like, you know, a little poison in a town is always good.
2:18:06 It’s like the Tom weights thing, but you don’t want too much.
2:18:08 Otherwise it destroys the town.
2:18:09 It destroys the thing.
2:18:12 They’re kind of like pen testers, you know, like penetration testers, hackers.
2:18:14 They just test your app for you.
2:18:15 And then you add some stuff.
2:18:19 Like I add like a, I had like a NSFW word list.
2:18:20 They would say like bad words.
2:18:26 So when they would write like a bad words, they would get forwarded to YouTube, which was like a video.
2:18:33 It was like a very relaxing video that’s like kind of ASMR with like glowing jelly streaming like this to relax them, you know?
2:18:35 Or cheese melting on the toast.
2:18:36 Cheese melting nice.
2:18:37 Chill them out.
2:18:38 I like it.
2:18:44 But actually a lot of stuff, I didn’t realize how much originated in 4chan in terms of memes.
2:18:48 I didn’t, Rick Roll, I didn’t understand, I didn’t know that Rick Roll originated in 4chan.
2:18:49 Like there’s so many memes.
2:18:51 Like most of the memes that you think.
2:18:53 The word roll I think comes from 4chan.
2:18:58 Like not the word roll, but like in this case, in a meme use, like you would get like roll doubles.
2:19:01 Cause every, there was like post IDs on 4chan.
2:19:03 So they were, they were kind of like random.
2:19:05 So if I get doubles, like this happens or something.
2:19:07 So you’d get like two, two.
2:19:11 Anyways, like a betting market kind of on these doubles and these post IDs.
2:19:12 So much funny stuff.
2:19:13 Yeah.
2:19:17 I mean, that’s internet that’s purest, but yeah, again, the dark stuff kind of seeps in.
2:19:18 Yeah.
2:19:23 And you, it’s nice to keep the dark stuff to like some low amount.
2:19:26 It’s nice to have a bit of noise of the darkness, but not too much.
2:19:27 Yeah.
2:19:34 And but again, like you have to pay attention to that with, I mean, I guess spam in general, you have to fight that with Nomad List.
2:19:35 How do you fight spam?
2:19:36 Man, I use GPT for now.
2:19:37 It’s amazing.
2:19:41 So, so I have like user input.
2:19:44 I have reviews, people can review cities and I don’t need to actually sign up.
2:19:49 It’s anonymous reviews and they write like whole books about like cities and what’s good and bad.
2:19:55 So I run it through GPT for now and I asked, like, is this a, you know, is this a good review?
2:19:56 Like, is it offensive?
2:19:57 Is it races or some stuff?
2:20:03 And, and then since we met some telegram, when it rejects reviews and I check it and it’s, man,
2:20:05 it’s so on point.
2:20:06 Automated.
2:20:07 Yes.
2:20:08 And it’s so accurate.
2:20:09 It understands double meanings.
2:20:13 I have GPT for running on the, on the chat community.
2:20:18 It’s a chat community of 10,000 people and they’re chatting and they start fighting with each other.
2:20:23 And I used to have human moderates was very good, but they would start fighting the human moderator.
2:20:25 Like this guy’s bias or something.
2:20:29 I have GPT for and it’s, it’s, it’s really, really, really, really good.
2:20:30 It understands humor.
2:20:36 It understands like, like you could say something bad, but it’s kind of like a joke and it’s kind of not like offensive so much.
2:20:37 So it shouldn’t be deleted.
2:20:38 Right.
2:20:39 It understands that.
2:20:49 You know, I would love to have a GPT for based filter of like, of different kinds of for like X.
2:20:50 Yeah.
2:20:56 I thought this week like I tweeted like a fact check, like you can click fact check and then GPT for look GPT for is not always right about stuff.
2:20:57 Right.
2:21:00 But it can give you a general fact check on a tweet.
2:21:06 Like usually what I do now when I write something like difficult about economics or something or AI, I put in GPT for a second.
2:21:11 You fact check it because I might have said something stupid and the stupid stuff always gets taken out by the replies.
2:21:13 Like, oh, you said this wrong.
2:21:15 And then the whole tweet kind of doesn’t make sense anymore.
2:21:18 So I asked GPT for the fact check a lot of stuff.
2:21:20 So fact check is tough one.
2:21:21 Yeah.
2:21:29 It would be interesting to sort of rate the thing based on how well thought out it is and how well argued it is.
2:21:30 Yeah.
2:21:32 That that seems more doable.
2:21:33 That seems like more doable.
2:21:38 Like it seems like a GPT thing because that’s less about the truth and it’s more about the rigor of the thing.
2:21:39 Exactly.
2:21:40 And you can ask that.
2:21:41 You can ask in the prompt.
2:21:42 Like, I don’t know.
2:21:48 Like, for example, do you think create like a ranking score of X Twitter replies where should this post be?
2:21:54 If we rank on like, I don’t know, integrity, reality, like fundamental deepness or something.
2:21:55 Interestness.
2:21:58 And it would give you that pretty good score probably.
2:22:01 I mean, Elon can do this with croc, right?
2:22:06 He can start using that to check replies because the reply section is like chaos.
2:22:07 Yeah.
2:22:10 And actually the ranking that replies doesn’t make any sense.
2:22:11 Doesn’t make sense.
2:22:14 And I like to sort in different kinds of ways.
2:22:15 Yeah.
2:22:16 And you get too many replies now.
2:22:17 If you have a lot of followers, I get too many replies.
2:22:18 I don’t see everything.
2:22:20 And I love stuff.
2:22:23 I just miss and I don’t want to see the good stuff.
2:22:27 And also the notifications or whatever is just complete chaos.
2:22:28 Yeah.
2:22:32 It’d be nice to be able to filter that in interesting ways, sort in interesting ways.
2:22:35 Because like, I feel like I miss a lot.
2:22:41 And I, what surfaced for me, I just like a random comment by a person with no followers.
2:22:42 Yeah.
2:22:43 That’s positive or negative.
2:22:44 It’s like, okay.
2:22:47 I would comment that should happen, but it should probably look a little bit more like,
2:22:48 do these people have followers?
2:22:51 Because they’re probably more engaged in the platform, right?
2:22:53 Oh, no, if it’s, I don’t even care about how many followers.
2:22:56 If you’re ranking by the quality of the comment, great.
2:22:57 Yeah.
2:23:01 But not just like randomly, like chronological, just a sea of comments.
2:23:02 Yeah.
2:23:03 Yeah.
2:23:04 It doesn’t make sense.
2:23:05 Yeah.
2:23:06 Yeah.
2:23:07 X could be very improved with that, I think.
2:23:12 One thing you, you espouse a lot, which I love is the automation step.
2:23:18 So like once you have a thing, once you have an idea and you build it and it actually starts
2:23:20 making money and it’s making people happy.
2:23:23 There’s a community of people using it.
2:23:28 You want to take the automation step of automating the things we have to do as little work as
2:23:30 possible for it to keep running indefinitely.
2:23:33 Can you like explain your philosophy there?
2:23:35 What do you mean by automate?
2:23:36 Yeah.
2:23:39 So the general theory of starters would be that when, when it starts like, you start making
2:23:41 money, you start hiring people to do stuff, right?
2:23:44 To do stuff that you, like marketing, for example, do stuff that you would do in the
2:23:50 beginning yourself and whatever, community management and organizing meetups for anomalies,
2:23:53 for example, there would be a job, for example.
2:23:56 And I thought like, I don’t have the money for that.
2:24:00 And I don’t really want to run like a big company with a lot of people because it’s a lot of
2:24:02 work managing these people.
2:24:05 So I’ve always tried to like automate these things as much as possible.
2:24:09 And, and this can literally be like for anomalies.
2:24:11 So it’s literally like a, it’s not the different other stars.
2:24:16 It was like a webpage where you can organize your own meetup, set a schedule, a date, whatever.
2:24:18 You can see how many nomads will be there at that date.
2:24:21 So you know, there will be actually enough nomads to meet up, right?
2:24:25 And then when it’s done, it sends a tweet out on the nomads account.
2:24:27 There’s a meetup here.
2:24:31 It sends a direct message to everybody in the city who are there, who are going to be there.
2:24:35 And then people show up on a bar and there’s a meetup and that’s fully automated.
2:24:39 And for me, it’s like, it’s not, it’s so obvious to make this automatic.
2:24:42 Why would you, why would you have somebody organize this?
2:24:44 Like it makes more sense to automate it.
2:24:48 And this with most of my things, like I figure out like how to do it with code.
2:24:52 And I think especially now with AI, like you can automate so much more stuff than before.
2:24:55 Because AI understands things so well.
2:24:57 Like before I would use if statements, right?
2:25:02 Now you ask GPT, you put something in GPT for and in the API and it sends back like this is good.
2:25:03 This is bad.
2:25:09 Yeah. So you basically can now even automate sort of subjective type of things.
2:25:10 This is the difference now.
2:25:12 And that’s very recent, right?
2:25:13 But it’s still difficult.
2:25:21 I mean, that step of automation is difficult to figure out how to, is you’re basically delegating everything to code.
2:25:25 And it’s not trivial to take that step for a lot of people.
2:25:30 So when you say automate, are you, are you talking about like crown jobs?
2:25:31 Yes, man. A lot of crown jobs.
2:25:32 A lot of crown jobs.
2:25:41 It’s like I literally, I log into the server and I do like sudo crown tab dash E and then I go into editor and I write like hourly.
2:25:50 And then I write PHP, you know, do this thing dot PHP and that’s a script and that script does a thing and it does it then hourly.
2:25:51 That’s it.
2:25:53 And that’s how all my websites work.
2:25:58 Do you have a thing where it like emails you’re something like this or email somebody managing the thing if something goes wrong?
2:26:01 I have these web pages I make, they’re called like health checks.
2:26:03 It’s like health check dot PHP.
2:26:09 And then it has like emojis, like a, has like a green check mark if it’s good and a red one if it’s bad.
2:26:14 And then it does like database curious, for example, like what’s the internet speed in, for example, Amsterdam?
2:26:16 Okay, it’s a number.
2:26:17 It’s like 27 point megabits.
2:26:18 So it’s accurate number.
2:26:19 Okay, check.
2:26:20 Good.
2:26:22 And then it goes to the next and it goes on all the data points.
2:26:24 Did people sign up in the last 24 hours?
2:26:26 It’s important because maybe the signup broke.
2:26:27 Okay, check.
2:26:28 Somebody sign up.
2:26:33 Then I have uptime robot.com, which is like for uptime, but it can also check keywords.
2:26:38 It checks for an emoji, which is like the red X, which is if something is bad.
2:26:42 And so it opens that health check page every minute to check if something is bad.
2:26:46 Then if it’s bad, it sends message to me on telegram saying, Hey, what’s up?
2:26:47 It doesn’t say, Hey, what’s up?
2:26:49 It sends me alert.
2:26:51 This thing is down.
2:26:52 And then I check.
2:26:55 So within a minute of something breaking, I know it.
2:26:57 And then I can open my laptop and fix it.
2:27:01 But the good thing is like the last few years, things don’t break anymore.
2:27:05 And like definitely 10 years ago when I started, everything was breaking all the time.
2:27:11 And now it’s like almost it’s last week was like a hundred point zero zero percent uptime.
2:27:13 And these health checks are part of the uptime percentage.
2:27:15 So it’s like, everything works.
2:27:20 Yeah, actually making me realize I should, I should have a page for myself.
2:27:26 Like one page that has all the health checks, just so I can go to and see all the green check marks.
2:27:28 It feels good to look at.
2:27:29 It’s just be like, okay.
2:27:30 Yeah.
2:27:31 All right.
2:27:32 We’re okay.
2:27:33 Everything’s okay.
2:27:34 Yeah.
2:27:36 Now like you can see, like one was the last time something wasn’t okay.
2:27:41 And it’ll say like never or like meaning like you’ve, you’ve, you’ve checked.
2:27:45 Since you’ve last cared to check, it was all been okay.
2:27:46 For sure.
2:27:48 It used to send me the, the good health checks.
2:27:49 You know, it all works.
2:27:50 It all works.
2:27:52 But it’s been so often.
2:27:53 And I’m like, this feels so good.
2:27:57 But then I’m like, okay, obviously it’s not going to mean to hide the good ones and show only the bad ones.
2:27:58 And now that’s the case.
2:28:00 I need to integrate everything into one place.
2:28:02 That automate like everything.
2:28:03 Yeah.
2:28:06 Also just a large set of cron jobs.
2:28:11 A lot of the publication, this podcast is done all the, everything is just on automatically.
2:28:14 It’s all clipped up all the, all this kind of stuff.
2:28:15 Yeah.
2:28:17 But it would be nice to automate even more.
2:28:18 Yeah.
2:28:20 Like translation, all this kind of stuff would be nice to automate.
2:28:21 Yeah.
2:28:24 Every JavaScript, every PHP error gets sent to my telegram as well.
2:28:28 So every user, whatever user it is, doesn’t have to be page user.
2:28:34 If they run into an error, the JavaScript sends the JavaScript error to the server.
2:28:38 And then it sends to my telegram from all my websites.
2:28:40 So you get like a message.
2:28:43 So get like a uncaught variable error, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
2:28:44 And then I’m like, okay, interesting.
2:28:46 And then I go check it out.
2:28:48 And that’s like a way to get to zero errors.
2:28:50 Cause you get flooded with errors in the beginning.
2:28:53 And now it’s like nothing almost.
2:28:54 So that’s really cool.
2:28:55 That’s really cool.
2:28:57 But this is the same stuff.
2:29:02 People, they, they pay like very big SaaS companies, like New Relic for, right?
2:29:04 Like to manage the stuff.
2:29:05 So you can do that too.
2:29:06 You can use off the shelf.
2:29:08 I like to build myself as easier.
2:29:09 Yeah.
2:29:10 It’s nice.
2:29:11 It’s nice to do that kind of automation.
2:29:15 I’m starting to think about like, what are the things in my life I’m doing myself that could be automated.
2:29:16 In addition.
2:29:19 Ask your GPT for, you know, like give your daily, your day.
2:29:21 And then ask it, what parts should I automate?
2:29:25 Well, one of the things I would love to automate more is my consumption social media.
2:29:26 Yeah.
2:29:29 Both the, the output and the input.
2:29:30 Man, that’s very interesting.
2:29:31 I think there’s some startups that do that.
2:29:36 Like they, they summarize the cool shit happening on Twitter, you know, like with AI.
2:29:41 I think the guy called SWYX or something, he does like a newsletter.
2:29:42 It’s completely AI generated.
2:29:45 We have the cool, the cool new stuff in AI.
2:29:46 Yeah.
2:29:47 I mean, I would love to do that.
2:29:52 But also like across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, yeah, all this kind of stuff.
2:29:56 Just like, okay, can I, can you summarize the internet for me for today?
2:29:57 Summarize the internet.com.
2:29:58 Yeah.com.
2:30:04 It’s like, I feel like it pulls in way too much time, but also like, I don’t like it.
2:30:07 The effect that has some days on my psyche.
2:30:10 Cause like haters or just general content.
2:30:11 Just general.
2:30:12 Like no, no, just general.
2:30:16 Like for example, like TikTok is a good example of that for me.
2:30:19 I sometimes just feel dumber after I use TikTok.
2:30:21 I just feel like empty somehow.
2:30:24 And I’m like uninspired.
2:30:25 Yeah.
2:30:26 It’s funny in the moment.
2:30:29 I’m like, huh, look at that cat doing a funny thing.
2:30:34 And then you’re like, oh, look at that person dancing in a funny way to that music.
2:30:36 And then you’re like 10 minutes later.
2:30:40 Like I feel way dumber and I don’t really want to do much for the rest of the day.
2:30:43 My girlfriend said she saw me like watching some dumb video.
2:30:46 She’s like, dude, your face looks so dumb as well.
2:30:49 Your whole face starts going like, oh, interesting.
2:30:55 You know, so I mean, with social media with, with X sometimes for me too, it’s, I think
2:30:59 I’m probably naturally gravitating towards the drama.
2:31:00 Yeah.
2:31:01 Are we all?
2:31:02 Yeah.
2:31:05 And so the following ad people, especially ad people that only post technical content
2:31:06 has been really good.
2:31:09 Cause then I just look at them and I, and then I go on down rabbit road.
2:31:14 And I go down rabbit holes of like learning new papers have been published or good repos
2:31:20 or just any kind of cool demonstration of stuff and the kind of things that they retweet.
2:31:21 And that’s the rabbit hole.
2:31:25 I go and I’m learning and I’m inspired, all that kind of stuff.
2:31:26 It’s been tough.
2:31:27 It’s been tough to control.
2:31:28 It’s difficult.
2:31:32 You need to like manage your, your platforms, you know, I have a mute board list as well.
2:31:36 So I mute like politics stuff because I don’t really want it on my feet.
2:31:39 I think I’m muted so much that now my feet is good.
2:31:41 You know, I see like interesting stuff.
2:31:46 And, but the fact that you need to modify it, you need to like mod your app, your social
2:31:50 media platform, just to function and not be toxic for you, for your mental health.
2:31:51 Right.
2:31:52 That’s like a problem.
2:31:53 Like it should be doing that for you.
2:31:56 It’s some level of automation.
2:31:57 That’d be interesting.
2:32:02 I wish I could access X and Instagram through API easier.
2:32:05 You need to spend $42,000 a month, which my friends do.
2:32:06 Yeah.
2:32:07 You can do that.
2:32:10 No, but still, even if you do that, that you’re not getting, I mean, there’s limitations
2:32:15 that don’t make it easy to do like automate because they, the thing that they’re trying
2:32:20 to limit like abuse or for you to steal all the data from the app to then train an LLM
2:32:21 or something like this.
2:32:22 Yeah.
2:32:27 But if I just want to like figure out ways to automate my interaction with the X system
2:32:31 or with Instagram, they, they don’t make that easy, but I would love to sort of automate
2:32:37 that and explore different ways to how to leverage LLMs to control the content I consume.
2:32:41 And maybe publish that, maybe they themselves can see how that could be used to improve
2:32:42 their system.
2:32:45 So, but there’s not enough access.
2:32:46 Yes.
2:32:47 You could screen cap your phone, right?
2:32:50 It could be an app that watches your screen with you.
2:32:51 You couldn’t.
2:32:52 Yeah.
2:32:53 But I don’t even know like what it would do.
2:32:56 Like maybe it’s going to hide stuff before you see it, you know, like I have that.
2:32:57 I have Chrome extensions.
2:33:02 Like I write a lot of Chrome extensions that hide parts of different pages and so on.
2:33:03 Yeah.
2:33:09 For example, for my own, on my main computer, I hide all views and lights and all that on
2:33:14 YouTube content that I create so that I don’t, it doesn’t, yeah, so you don’t pay attention
2:33:15 to it.
2:33:16 Yeah.
2:33:17 I also hide parts.
2:33:20 I have a mode for X where I hide most of everything.
2:33:23 So like there’s no, it’s the same with YouTube.
2:33:24 I have the same.
2:33:25 I have this extension.
2:33:27 I wrote my own because it’s easier because it keeps changing.
2:33:32 It’s like, it’s, it’s not easy to keep it dynamically changing, but they’re really good
2:33:35 at like getting you to be distracted and like starting.
2:33:36 Related account.
2:33:37 Related stuff.
2:33:38 I’m like, I don’t want related.
2:33:42 And like 10 minutes later, you’re like, or something that’s trending.
2:33:45 I have a weird amount of friends addicted to YouTube and I’m not addicted.
2:33:50 I think because my attention span is too short for YouTube, but, but I have this extension
2:33:53 to like YouTube on hook, which like it hides all the related stuff.
2:33:56 I can just see the video and it’s amazing.
2:34:01 And, but sometimes I need to like, like I need to search a video how to, how to do something.
2:34:06 And then I go to YouTube and I had these YouTube shorts, these YouTube shorts are like, they’re
2:34:09 like algorithmically designed to just make you tap them.
2:34:14 And like I tap and then I’m like five minutes later with this phase like, and you’re, you’re
2:34:15 just talking.
2:34:16 And it’s like, what happened?
2:34:20 I was going to open, I was going to play like the coffee mix, you know, like the music mix
2:34:25 for drinking coffee together, like in the morning of jazz, I didn’t want to go to shorts.
2:34:28 So it’s, it’s very, uh, it’s very difficult.
2:34:31 I love how we’re actually highlighting all kinds of interesting problems that all could
2:34:33 be solved with a startup.
2:34:34 Okay.
2:34:36 So what, what about the exit?
2:34:37 When and how to exit?
2:34:41 Man, you shouldn’t ask me because I never sold my company.
2:34:44 And if you’ve never, all the successful stuff you’ve done, you never sold it.
2:34:45 Yeah.
2:34:46 It’s kind of sad, right?
2:34:49 Like I’ve been in, so I’ve been in a lot of acquisition, like deals and stuff.
2:34:54 And I learned a lot about finance people as well, as well there, like manipulation and
2:34:57 due diligence and then changing the valuation.
2:35:01 Like people change the valuation after, uh, so they, they, a lot of people string you
2:35:03 on to acquire you.
2:35:04 And then it takes like six months.
2:35:05 It’s a classic.
2:35:06 It takes six to 12 months.
2:35:07 They want to see everything.
2:35:11 They want to see the, the, your stripe and your code and whatever.
2:35:16 And then, um, in the end they’ll, they’ll change the price to lower because you’re already
2:35:17 so invested.
2:35:19 So it’s like a negotiation tactic, right?
2:35:21 And I’m like, no, and then I don’t want to sell, right?
2:35:26 And the problem with my companies is like they make, you know, 90% profit margin.
2:35:31 So the multiple, the companies get sold with multiples kind of multiples of profit or revenue
2:35:36 and often the multiples like three times, three times or four times or five times revenue
2:35:37 or profit.
2:35:40 So in my case they’re all automated.
2:35:44 So I might as well wait three years and I get the same money as when I sell and then
2:35:48 I can still sell the same company, you know, I mean, I can still sell for three, five times.
2:35:54 So financially, it doesn’t really make sense to sell unless the price high enough.
2:35:57 Like if the price gets to like six or seven or eight, I don’t want to wait six years for
2:35:58 the money, you know?
2:36:01 But if you give me three, like three years, nothing like I can wait.
2:36:08 So I mean, the really valuable stuff about the companies you create is not just the interface
2:36:13 and, uh, and the crowdsource content, but the people themselves, like the user base.
2:36:14 Yeah.
2:36:15 Well, normally it’s, it’s a community.
2:36:16 Yeah.
2:36:18 So I could see that being extremely valuable.
2:36:19 Yeah.
2:36:20 But normally this is like, it’s like my baby.
2:36:23 It’s like my first product I took off and I don’t really know if I want to sell it.
2:36:26 It’s like something you will be nice when you, you know, when you’re old to just still
2:36:31 work on this, you know, it’s like a, it has like a mission, which is like, um, people should
2:36:36 travel anywhere and they can work from anywhere and they can meet different cultures and that’s
2:36:37 a good way to make the world get better.
2:36:41 If you learn, if you go to China and live in China, you’ll learn that they’re nice people
2:36:44 and a lot of stuff you hear about China’s propaganda, a lot of stuff is true as well.
2:36:49 But it’s more, you know, you learn a lot from traveling and I think that’s why it’s
2:36:52 like a cool product to like not sell AI products.
2:36:56 I have less emotional feelings with AI products like photo guy, which I could sell.
2:36:57 Yeah.
2:36:58 Yeah.
2:37:02 The thing you also mentioned is you have to price in the fact that you’re going to miss
2:37:03 the company.
2:37:04 Yeah.
2:37:06 And the meaning it gives you, right?
2:37:07 Yeah.
2:37:10 There’s a very famous like depression after start upon and sell their company.
2:37:13 Like they’re like, this was my, this was me, who am I?
2:37:17 And they immediately start building another one, you know, they can have back and stuff.
2:37:21 So I think it’s, it’s good to keep working, you know, until you die, just keep working
2:37:22 on cool stuff.
2:37:26 And you shouldn’t retire, you know, I think retirement is bad probably.
2:37:31 So you usually build the stuff solo and mostly work solo.
2:37:33 What’s the thinking behind that?
2:37:35 I think I’m not so good working with other people.
2:37:38 Not like I’m crazy, but like I, I don’t trust other people.
2:37:41 To clarify, you don’t trust other people to do a great job.
2:37:42 Yeah.
2:37:47 And I don’t want to have like this consensus meeting where we all like, you know, you have
2:37:51 like a meeting with three people and then you kind of get this compromise results, which
2:37:52 is very European.
2:37:53 Like it’s very indomitable.
2:37:57 We call it pulled on model where you put people in the room and you only let them out when
2:37:59 they agree on the compromise, right?
2:38:00 And politics.
2:38:03 And I don’t think it, I think it, it breeds like averageness, you know, you get an average
2:38:08 at the average company, average culture.
2:38:13 You need to have like a leader or you need to be solo and just do it, you know, do yourself,
2:38:14 I think.
2:38:15 And I trust some people.
2:38:19 Like now I, like with my best friend, Andre, I’m making a new AI startup, but it’s because
2:38:23 we, we know each other very long and he’s one of the few people I would build something
2:38:26 with and, but almost never.
2:38:27 Yeah.
2:38:31 So what does it take to be successful when you have more than one, like how do you build
2:38:32 together with Andre?
2:38:33 How do you build together with other people?
2:38:40 So he codes, I shitpost on Twitter, literally like I promoted on Twitter, I, we set like
2:38:41 product strategy.
2:38:42 Like I said, this should be better, this should be better.
2:38:45 But I think you need to have one person coding it.
2:38:46 He codes in Ruby.
2:38:47 So I was like, I cannot do Ruby.
2:38:48 I’m in PHP.
2:38:52 So you literally, so you, have you ever coded with another person for prolonged periods
2:38:53 of time?
2:38:55 Never in my life.
2:39:00 So what do you think is behind that?
2:39:04 I know it was always just me sitting on my laptop, like I said, like just coding.
2:39:08 No, like you’ve never had another developer who like rolls in and like, I’ve had once
2:39:09 where every photo.
2:39:12 I, like there’s an AI developer, Philip, I hired him to do the, cause I can’t write
2:39:15 Python and AI stuff is Python.
2:39:17 And I needed to get models to work and replicate and stuff.
2:39:20 And I needed to improve photo AI.
2:39:22 And he helped me a lot for like 10 months.
2:39:26 He worked and man, I was trying Python, working with numpy and package manager, and it was
2:39:27 too difficult for me to figure this shit out.
2:39:28 And I didn’t have time.
2:39:34 I think 10 years ago, I would have time to like sit, you know, go do all nighters to
2:39:35 figure this stuff out with Python.
2:39:39 I don’t have the, and I don’t have the, it’s not my thing.
2:39:40 It’s not your thing.
2:39:41 It’s another programming language.
2:39:42 I get it.
2:39:43 AI, new thing, got it.
2:39:48 Well, like you’ve never had a developer roll in, look at your PHP, jQuery code and be,
2:39:53 and yes, like, you know, like in conversation or improv, they talk about yes and like basically,
2:39:54 all right.
2:39:55 I had for one week.
2:39:56 Understand.
2:39:57 And that ended.
2:39:58 What happened?
2:40:01 Because he wanted to rewrite everything in the, no, that’s the wrong guy.
2:40:03 I know you want to rewrite and what?
2:40:06 He wanted to rewrite the, he said is jQuery, we cannot do this.
2:40:10 I’m like, okay, it’s like, we need to rewrite everything in view, if you just, I’m like,
2:40:11 are you sure?
2:40:15 I want just like, you know, like keep jQuery is like, no, man, like, and we need to change
2:40:16 a lot of stuff.
2:40:19 And I’m like, okay, and I was kind of like feeling it like this, you know, we’re going
2:40:20 to clean up shit.
2:40:24 But then after a week, it’s not going to, it’s going to take way too much time.
2:40:31 I think I like working with people where like, when I approach them, I pretend in my head
2:40:34 that they’re the smartest person who has ever existed.
2:40:38 So I look at their code or I look at the stuff they’ve created and try to see the genius
2:40:39 of their way.
2:40:46 Like you really have to understand people, like really notice them, like, and then from
2:40:49 that place, have a conversation about what is the better approach.
2:40:50 Yeah.
2:40:52 But those are the top tier developers.
2:40:55 And they, those are the ones that are tech ambiguous.
2:40:59 So they can work with, they can learn any tech stack and they can, and that’s like really
2:41:01 few, like it’s like top five percent.
2:41:06 Because if you try hiring devs, like no offense to devs, but most devs are not, man, most people
2:41:08 in general jobs are not so good at the job.
2:41:13 Like even doctors and stuff, when you realize this, people are very average at the job, especially
2:41:15 with dev, with coding, I think.
2:41:16 So sorry.
2:41:20 I think that’s a really important skill for, for a developer to roll in and like understand
2:41:23 the musicality, the, the style of the, and like,
2:41:25 Empathy is like code empathy, right?
2:41:26 It’s code empathy.
2:41:27 Yeah.
2:41:28 It’s a new word, but that’s it.
2:41:31 You need to understand, like, go over the code, get a holistic view of it.
2:41:37 And man, you can suggest we change stuff for sure, but, um, and look, jQuery is crazy.
2:41:38 It’s crazy.
2:41:39 I’m using jQuery.
2:41:40 We can change that.
2:41:41 It’s not crazy at all.
2:41:45 jQuery is also the beautiful and powerful and PHP is beautiful and powerful, especially
2:41:53 as you said recently in the, in the, as the versions evolved, it’s much more serious programming
2:41:54 language now.
2:41:55 It’s super fast.
2:41:57 Like PHP is really fast now.
2:41:58 Yeah.
2:41:59 Yeah.
2:42:00 It’s crazy.
2:42:01 JavaScript.
2:42:02 Much faster than Ruby.
2:42:03 Yeah.
2:42:04 Really fast now.
2:42:05 So if speed is something you care about, it’s super fast.
2:42:06 Yeah.
2:42:08 Um, and like, there’s a gigantic communities of people using those programming languages
2:42:10 and there’s frameworks if you like the framework.
2:42:15 So that whatever, it doesn’t really matter what you use, but like also you, if I was
2:42:19 like a developer working with you, like you are extremely successful.
2:42:21 You’ve shipped a lot.
2:42:26 So like if I roll in, I’m going to be like, I don’t assume you know nothing.
2:42:28 I assume Peter is a genius.
2:42:31 Like the smartest developer ever and like learn, learn from it.
2:42:37 And yes, and like notice parts in the code where like, okay, I got it.
2:42:40 Like here’s how he’s thinking.
2:42:47 And now if I want to add another like a little feature, definitely need to have emoji in
2:42:48 front of it.
2:42:51 And then like, just follow the same style and add it.
2:42:56 And my goal is to make you happy, to make you smile, like to make you like, haha, fuck,
2:42:57 I get it.
2:43:02 And now you’re going to start respecting me and like trusting me and like, and you start
2:43:03 working together in this way.
2:43:04 I don’t know.
2:43:07 I don’t know how hard it is to find developers.
2:43:08 No, I think that exists.
2:43:11 I think I need to hire more people, need to try more people, but that costs a lot of
2:43:12 my energy and time.
2:43:13 But it’s 100% possible.
2:43:14 Yeah.
2:43:15 But do I want it?
2:43:16 I don’t know.
2:43:18 Things kind of run fine for now.
2:43:21 And I mean, like, okay, you could say like, okay, NomadList looks kind of clunky.
2:43:23 Like people say the design is kind of clunky.
2:43:24 Okay, I’ll improve the design.
2:43:27 It’s like, next time I have to do this, for example, you know, like I can, I’ll get there
2:43:28 eventually.
2:43:29 But it’s true.
2:43:31 I mean, you’re also extremely good at what you do.
2:43:34 Like I’m just looking at the interfaces of like photo AI.
2:43:37 Like you would jake, jQuery, right?
2:43:38 Like how amazing is jQuery?
2:43:45 But like you can, these cowboys are getting, these are, there’s these cowboys.
2:43:46 This is a lot.
2:43:47 It’s a lot.
2:43:49 But I’m glad they’re all wearing shirts.
2:43:52 Anyway, the interface here is just really, really nice.
2:43:55 Like I could tell you know what you’re doing.
2:43:59 And with NomadList, extremely nice, the interface.
2:44:00 Thank you, man.
2:44:01 And that’s all you.
2:44:02 Yeah.
2:44:03 That’s everything’s me.
2:44:08 So all of this and every little feature, all of this looks kind of ADHD or ADD, you know,
2:44:14 like it’s so much because it has so many things and design these days is minimalist.
2:44:15 Right.
2:44:16 I hear you.
2:44:21 But this is a lot of information and it’s useful information and it’s delivered in a
2:44:24 clean way while still stylish and fun to look at.
2:44:29 So like minimalist design is about like when you want to convey no information whatsoever
2:44:30 and look cool.
2:44:31 Yeah.
2:44:32 It’s very cool.
2:44:33 It’s pretentious, right?
2:44:35 But the function is useless.
2:44:39 This is about a lot of information delivered to you in a clean.
2:44:41 And when it’s clean, you can’t be too sexy.
2:44:42 So it’s sexy enough.
2:44:43 Yeah.
2:44:46 This is I think how my brain looks, you know, like it’s a lot of shit going on.
2:44:47 Like drawing based music.
2:44:48 It’s like very…
2:44:49 Yeah.
2:44:51 But it’s still pretty.
2:44:53 The spacing of everything is nice.
2:44:56 The fonts are really nice.
2:44:57 Like very readable, very small.
2:45:00 I like it, you know, but I made it so I don’t trust my own judgment.
2:45:01 No.
2:45:02 This is really nice.
2:45:03 Thank you.
2:45:06 The emojis are somehow like this is a style.
2:45:07 It’s a thing.
2:45:08 I need to pick the emoji.
2:45:10 It takes a while to pick them, you know.
2:45:15 Like there’s something about the emoji is a really nice, memorable, like placeholder
2:45:16 for the idea.
2:45:17 Yeah.
2:45:20 Like if it was just text, it would actually be overwhelming if you were just text.
2:45:21 The emoji really helps.
2:45:23 It’s a brilliant addition.
2:45:25 Like some people might look at it.
2:45:26 Why do you have emojis everywhere?
2:45:27 It’s actually really, for me, it’s really nice.
2:45:28 People tell me to remove the emojis.
2:45:29 Yeah.
2:45:30 What people don’t know what they’re talking about.
2:45:34 And then the, I’m sure people will tell you a lot of things.
2:45:35 This is really nice.
2:45:39 And then using color is nice.
2:45:41 Small font, but not too small.
2:45:43 And obviously you have to show maps, which is really tricky.
2:45:44 Yeah.
2:45:45 Yeah.
2:45:49 This is, this is, no, this is really, really, really nice.
2:45:54 And all of, I mean, like, okay, like how this looks when you hover over it.
2:45:55 Yeah.
2:45:56 It sees us transitions.
2:45:57 No, I understand that.
2:46:00 But like, I’m sure there’s like, how long does it take you to figure out how you want
2:46:01 it to look?
2:46:04 Do you ever go down a rabbit hole where you spent like two weeks?
2:46:05 No, it’s all iterative.
2:46:09 It’s like 10 years of, you know, add a CSS transition here or do days or.
2:46:12 Well, let’s say like, see these are all, these are rounded now.
2:46:13 Yeah.
2:46:15 If you wanted to like round is probably the better way.
2:46:19 But if you wanted to be rectangular, like sharp corners, what would you do?
2:46:26 So I go through the index.css and I do command F and I search border radius 12 px and then
2:46:29 I replace with border radius zero.
2:46:34 And then I do command enter and it gets deploys, it’s, it’s pushes to the github and then sends
2:46:38 a web book and then deploys to my server and it’s live in five seconds.
2:46:41 Oh, you often deploy to production.
2:46:42 You don’t have like a testing ground.
2:46:43 No.
2:46:50 So I, so I, I’m like famous for this because I’m too lazy to set up like a staging server
2:46:51 on my laptop every time.
2:46:57 So I, nowadays I just deploy to production and it’s, man, I’m going to cancel for this,
2:47:00 you know, but it works very well for me because I have a lot of, I have like php lint and
2:47:01 jcelint.
2:47:02 So it tells me when there’s error.
2:47:03 So I don’t deploy.
2:47:09 But my, literally I, I have like 37,000 git commits in the last 12 months or something.
2:47:14 So I make like small fix and then command enter and sends to github, github sends a
2:47:19 web to my server, web server pulls it, deploys to production and is there.
2:47:21 What’s the latency of that from you pressing command?
2:47:23 One second can be one to two seconds.
2:47:27 So you just make a change and then you’re getting really good at like not making mistakes.
2:47:28 Man, you’re 100% you’re right.
2:47:29 Like people are like, how can you do this?
2:47:33 Well, you get good at not taking the server down, you know, like, cause you need to code
2:47:38 more carefully, but it’s, look, it’s idiotic in any big company, but for me, it works because
2:47:39 it makes me so fast.
2:47:45 Like somebody will report a bug on Twitter and I kind of did do like a stopwatch, like
2:47:47 how fast can I fix this bug?
2:47:49 And then two minutes later, for example, it’s fixed.
2:47:50 Yeah.
2:47:54 And it’s fun because it’s, cause it’s annoying for me to work with companies where you report
2:47:55 a bug and it takes like six months.
2:47:56 Yeah.
2:48:01 It’s like horrible and it makes people really happy when you can really quickly solve their
2:48:02 problems.
2:48:03 So, but it’s, it’s crazy.
2:48:05 I’m, I don’t think it’s crazy.
2:48:09 I think, I mean, there’s, I’m sure there’s a middle ground, but I think that whole thing
2:48:14 where there’s a phase of like testing and there’s the staging and there’s the development.
2:48:19 And then there’s like multiple tables and databases that you use for the state.
2:48:23 Like it’s, it’s a mess and there’s different teams involved.
2:48:24 It’s, it’s not good.
2:48:28 I’m like a good funny extreme on the other side, you know, but just a little bit safer,
2:48:29 but not too much.
2:48:30 It would be great.
2:48:31 Yeah.
2:48:32 Yeah.
2:48:34 And I’m sure that’s actually like how X now, how they doing rapid improvement.
2:48:39 They do because there’s more bugs and complain about like, oh, look, he bought this Twitter
2:48:41 and now it’s full of bugs to the shipping stuff.
2:48:42 Yeah.
2:48:45 Things are happening now and it’s a dynamic app now.
2:48:46 Yeah.
2:48:47 The bugs is actually a sign of a good thing happening.
2:48:48 Yes.
2:48:50 The bugs of the feature because it shows that the team is actually building shit.
2:48:51 100%.
2:48:55 Well, one of the problems is like I see with YouTube, there’s so much potential to build
2:49:00 features, but I just see how long it takes.
2:49:07 So I’ve gotten a chance to interact with many other teams, but one of the teams is a MLA
2:49:08 multi-language audio.
2:49:09 Yeah.
2:49:13 I don’t know if you know this, but in YouTube, you can have audio tracks in different languages
2:49:19 for over dummy and that there’s a team and not many people are using it, but like every
2:49:24 single feature, they have to meet and agree and like there’s allocate resources, like
2:49:27 engineers have to work on it, but I’m sure it’s a pain in the ass for the engineers to
2:49:33 get approval to like because it has to not break the rest of the site, whatever they do.
2:49:39 But like if you don’t have enough dictatorial like top down, like we need this now, it’s
2:49:43 going to take forever to do anything multi-language audio, but multi-language audio is a good
2:49:49 example of a thing that seems niche right now, but it quite possibly could change the
2:49:50 entire world.
2:49:56 When you have, when I upload this conversation right here, if instantaneously it dubs it
2:50:04 into 40 languages and everybody consume, every single video can be watched and listened
2:50:09 to in those different, it changes everything and YouTube is extremely well positioned to
2:50:10 be the leader in this.
2:50:16 They got the, they got the compute, they got the, the user base, they got like they have
2:50:18 the experience of how to do this.
2:50:22 So like the multi-language audio should be hyper to feature, right?
2:50:23 Yeah.
2:50:24 That’s high priority.
2:50:26 Like that’s, and it’s a way, you know, Google is obsessed with AI right now.
2:50:29 They want to show off that they could be dominant in AI.
2:50:34 That’s the way for Google to say like, we used AI, like this is a way to, to, to break
2:50:36 down the walls of language craze.
2:50:39 The preferred outcome for them, for them is probably their career and not the, the overall
2:50:43 result of the, the cool product, you know, I think they, they’re not like selfish or
2:50:44 whatever.
2:50:45 They, they want to do good.
2:50:46 There’s something about the machine.
2:50:47 The organization.
2:50:48 Yeah.
2:50:49 The organizational stuff.
2:50:52 I have this when I report bugs and like big companies I work with.
2:50:56 I get, I talk to a lot of different people on DM and they’re all really trying hard to
2:50:57 do something.
2:50:58 They’re all really nice.
2:51:02 And I’m the one being kind of asshole because I’m like, guys, I’m talking to 20 people about
2:51:06 this for six months and nothing’s happening to say, man, I know, but I’m trying my best.
2:51:07 And yeah.
2:51:08 So it’s systemic.
2:51:09 Yeah.
2:51:13 So what it requires, again, I don’t know if there must be a nice award, but like a dictatorial
2:51:20 type of top down, the CEO rolls in and just says like, for you two, it’s like MLA, get
2:51:21 this done now.
2:51:22 This is the highest priority.
2:51:25 I think big companies, especially in America, a lot of it is legal, right?
2:51:27 They need to pass everything through legal.
2:51:28 Yeah.
2:51:31 And you can’t like, man, the things I do, I could never do it in a big corporation because
2:51:35 it’s everything has to be, probably get deployed has to go through legal.
2:51:40 Well, again, dictatorial, you basically say Steve Jobs did this quite a lot.
2:51:46 I’ve seen a lot of leaders do this, ignore the lawyers, ignore columns, ignore PR, ignore
2:51:51 everybody, give power to the engineers, like listen to the people on the ground, get this
2:51:52 shit done and get it done by Friday.
2:51:53 Yeah.
2:51:54 That’s it.
2:51:55 And the law can change.
2:51:59 Basically you launch this AI dubbing and there’s some legal problems with lawsuits.
2:52:00 Okay.
2:52:01 So the law changes.
2:52:04 There will be appeals, there will be some Supreme Court thing, whatever.
2:52:05 And the law changes.
2:52:09 So just by shipping it, you change society, you change the legal framework, and by not
2:52:13 shipping, being scared of the legal framework all the time, like you’re not changing things.
2:52:16 Just out of curiosity, what ID do you use?
2:52:23 Let’s talk about like your whole setup, given how ultra productive you are, I mean, you
2:52:26 often program your underwear slouching on the couch.
2:52:29 Is there, does it matter to you in general?
2:52:32 Is there like the specific IDs, use VS code?
2:52:33 Yeah.
2:52:34 VS code.
2:52:36 Before I use sublime text, I don’t think it matters a lot.
2:52:41 I think I’m very skeptical of like tools when people think it, they say it matters, right?
2:52:42 I don’t think it matters.
2:52:46 I think whatever tool you know very well, you can go very fast in, like, you know, the
2:52:51 shortcuts, for example, ID, you know, like, I love sublime text because I could use like
2:52:58 multi cursor, you know, you search something, and I could like make mass replaces in a file
2:52:59 with the cursor thing.
2:53:01 And VS code doesn’t really have that as well.
2:53:02 It’s actually interesting.
2:53:07 Sublime is the first editor where I’ve learned that, and I think they just make that super
2:53:08 easy.
2:53:09 So like, what would that be called?
2:53:13 Multi edit, multi multi cursor edit thing, whatever.
2:53:18 I’m sure like almost every editor can do that is just probably hard to set up.
2:53:19 Yeah.
2:53:24 If this goes not so good, I think, or at least I tried, but I would use that to like process
2:53:29 data, like data sets, for example, from World Bank, I would just multi cursor, mass, change
2:53:30 everything.
2:53:35 But yeah, VS code, I, man, I was bullied into using VS code because Twitter would always
2:53:38 see my screenshots of sublime text and say, why are you still using sublime text?
2:53:41 Like, boomer, you need to use VS codes.
2:53:42 And I’m like, yeah, I’ll try it.
2:53:47 I got a new MacBook, and then I never install like, I never copy the old MacBook, I just
2:53:52 make it fresh, you know, like a clean, like format C, you know, windows, like clean start.
2:53:55 And I’m like, okay, I’ll try VS code and it’s stuck, you know, but I don’t really care.
2:53:57 Like, it’s not so important for me.
2:53:59 Well, you know, the format C reference, huh?
2:54:00 Dude, it was so good.
2:54:04 You would install windows, and then after three or six months, it would start breaking
2:54:10 and everything was like, it gets slow, then you would restart, go to DOS, format C, you
2:54:16 would delete your hard drive and then install the windows 95 again, was so good times.
2:54:19 And you would design everything like, now I’m going to install it properly, now I’m
2:54:22 going to design my desktop properly, you know, like, yeah, I don’t know if it’s peer pressure,
2:54:25 but like, I use DMX for many, many years.
2:54:27 And I know, you know, I love Lisp.
2:54:30 So a lot of the customization is done in Lisp.
2:54:31 It’s a programming language.
2:54:35 It partially was peer pressure, but part of it is realizing like, you need to keep learning
2:54:36 stuff.
2:54:43 Like the same issue with jQuery, like I still think I need to learn no JS, for example.
2:54:46 Even though that’s not my main thing or even close to the main thing.
2:54:50 But I feel like you need to keep learning this stuff.
2:54:55 And even if you don’t choose to use it long term, you need to give it a chance.
2:54:58 So you get your understanding of the world expands.
2:55:02 Hey, you want to understand the new technological concepts and see if they can benefit you,
2:55:04 you know, it would be stupid not to even try.
2:55:09 It’s more about the concepts, I would say, than the actual tools, like expanding.
2:55:10 And that can be a challenging thing.
2:55:14 So going to VS Code and like really learning it, like all the shortcuts, all the extensions
2:55:18 and actually installing different stuff and playing with it, that was an interesting challenge.
2:55:20 It was uncomfortable at first.
2:55:21 Yeah, for me too, yeah.
2:55:22 Yeah.
2:55:23 But you just dive in.
2:55:26 It’s like neuroflex, like you keep your brain fresh, you know, like this kind of stuff.
2:55:27 I gotta do that more.
2:55:29 Like, have you given React a chance?
2:55:32 No, but I want to learn it.
2:55:36 I understand the basics, right?
2:55:37 I don’t really know where it starts.
2:55:42 But would you like, I guess you got to use your own model, which is like build the thing
2:55:43 using it.
2:55:45 No, man, so I kind of did that.
2:55:51 Like I kind of like the stuff I do in jQuery is essentially, a lot of it is like, I start
2:55:55 rebuilding whatever tech is already out there, not based on that, but just an accident.
2:55:59 Like I keep coding long enough that I build the same, I start getting the same problems
2:56:01 everybody else has, and you start building the same frameworks kind of.
2:56:05 So essentially, I use my own kind of framework of, you basically build the framework from
2:56:07 scratch that’s your own that you understand.
2:56:10 That’s kind of, yeah, with Ajax calls and essentially it’s the same thing.
2:56:14 Look, I don’t have the time, and this is, I think saying you don’t have the time is
2:56:18 like always a lie because you just don’t prioritize it enough.
2:56:21 My priority is still like running the businesses and improving that and AI.
2:56:26 I think learning AI is much more valuable now than learning a front end framework.
2:56:27 Yeah.
2:56:28 Like it’s just more impact.
2:56:32 I guess you should be just learning every single day a thing.
2:56:33 Yeah.
2:56:36 You can learn a little bit every day, like a little bit of React or I think now like
2:56:41 next is very big, so learn a little bit of next, you know, but I call them the military
2:56:42 industrial conflict.
2:56:45 So if I, you need to know, you need to know it anyway, so.
2:56:50 You got to learn how to use the weapons of war and then you could be a peacenake.
2:56:51 Yeah.
2:56:52 Yeah.
2:56:56 I mean, but you got to learn in the same exact way as we were talking about, which is learn
2:56:59 it by trying to build something with it and actually deploy it.
2:57:02 The frameworks are so complicated and it changes so fast.
2:57:06 So it’s like where do I start, you know, and I guess it’s the same thing when you’re starting
2:57:12 out making websites, like how, where do you start as GPT-4 I guess, but yeah, it’s just
2:57:13 so dynamic.
2:57:16 It changes so fast that I don’t know if it would be a good idea for me to learn it,
2:57:23 you know, maybe some combination of like view next with PHP, Laravel is like a framework
2:57:24 for PHP.
2:57:30 I think that would be, it could benefit me, you know, maybe tailwind for CSS, like a styling
2:57:32 engine that stuff could probably save me time.
2:57:33 Yeah.
2:57:37 But you won’t know until you really give it a try and it feels like you have to build,
2:57:45 like if maybe I’m talking to myself, but I should probably recode like my personal one
2:57:51 page in Laravel or even though it might not have almost any dynamic elements, maybe have
2:57:57 one dynamic element, but it has to go end-to-end in that framework or like end-to-end build
2:57:58 in Node.js.
2:58:02 Some of it is, I don’t, figuring out how to even deploy the thing.
2:58:03 I have no idea.
2:58:06 All I know is right now, I would send it to GitHub and then send it to my server.
2:58:08 I don’t know how to get JavaScript running.
2:58:10 I have no clue.
2:58:17 So I guess I need like a pass, like a, like Verso, right, or, you know, Heroku kind of
2:58:18 those kind of platform.
2:58:24 I actually kind of just gave myself the idea of like, I kind of just want to build a single
2:58:31 web page, like one web page that has like one dynamic element and just do it in every
2:58:33 single, like in a lot of frameworks.
2:58:34 Like just…
2:58:35 Ah, on the same page.
2:58:36 Same…
2:58:37 All the same page?
2:58:38 Kind of page.
2:58:39 That’s a cool project.
2:58:40 All these frameworks.
2:58:41 Yeah.
2:58:42 You can see the differences.
2:58:43 Yeah.
2:58:44 That’s interesting.
2:58:45 All it takes to do it.
2:58:46 Yeah.
2:58:47 Stopwatch time.
2:58:51 I have to figure out actually something sufficiently complicated because it should probably do, it
2:58:56 should probably do some kind of thing where it accesses the database and dynamically is
2:58:57 changing stuff.
2:58:58 Some AI stuff.
2:58:59 Some LLM stuff.
2:59:00 Yeah.
2:59:01 Yeah.
2:59:02 It doesn’t have to be AI alone.
2:59:03 But then you do API call.
2:59:04 API call to something.
2:59:05 Yeah.
2:59:06 To replicate, for example, then you have…
2:59:07 Yeah.
2:59:08 That would be a very cool project.
2:59:09 Yeah.
2:59:10 Yeah.
2:59:13 And like time it and also report on my happiness report.
2:59:14 Yeah.
2:59:15 I’m going to totally do this.
2:59:17 Because nobody benchmarks this.
2:59:19 Nobody’s benchmarked happiness, developer happiness with frameworks.
2:59:20 Yeah.
2:59:21 Nobody’s benchmarked the shipping time.
2:59:23 I like to just take like a month and do this.
2:59:25 How many frameworks are there?
2:59:26 There’s…
2:59:27 How many…
2:59:29 There’s like five main ways of doing it.
2:59:30 So there’s like…
2:59:31 There’s no…
2:59:32 There’s back-end, front-end.
2:59:34 And this stuff confused me too.
2:59:36 Like React now apparently has become back-end.
2:59:37 Yeah.
2:59:38 Or something that used to be only front-end.
2:59:40 And you’re forced to do now back-end also.
2:59:41 I don’t know.
2:59:42 And then…
2:59:43 But there’s not really…
2:59:44 You’re not really forced to do anything.
2:59:45 So like…
2:59:47 According to the internet.
2:59:48 So like there’s no…
2:59:52 It’s actually not trivial to find the canonical way of doing things.
2:59:53 So like the standard vanilla…
2:59:54 Yeah.
2:59:55 You go to the ice cream shop.
2:59:57 There’s like a million flavors.
2:59:59 I want vanilla.
3:00:04 If I’ve never had ice cream in my life, can we just like learn about ice cream?
3:00:05 Yeah.
3:00:06 I want vanilla.
3:00:08 Nobody actually…
3:00:09 Sometimes I’ll literally name it vanilla.
3:00:10 But like…
3:00:12 I want to know what’s the basic way.
3:00:16 But not like dumb, but like the standard canonical…
3:00:17 Yeah.
3:00:18 I want to know the dominant way.
3:00:19 Like the dominant way.
3:00:20 60% of developers do it like this.
3:00:21 Yeah.
3:00:22 It’s hard to figure that out.
3:00:23 You know?
3:00:24 That’s the problem.
3:00:25 Yeah.
3:00:26 Maybe all of them can help.
3:00:29 Maybe you should explicitly ask what is the dominant…
3:00:30 Because they usually know like the dominant.
3:00:33 You know, they give answers that are like the most probable kind of.
3:00:34 Yeah.
3:00:36 So that makes sense to ask all of them.
3:00:41 And I think honestly, maybe what would help is if you want to learn or I would want to
3:00:46 learn like a framework, hire somebody that already does it and just sit with them and
3:00:47 make something together.
3:00:49 Like I’ve never done that, but I thought about it.
3:00:54 So it would be a very fast way to take their knowledge out of my brain.
3:00:55 I’ve tried these kinds of things.
3:00:57 What happens is depends what kind of…
3:01:00 If they’re like a world-class developer, yes.
3:01:05 Oftentimes they themselves are used to that thing and they have not themselves explored
3:01:06 in other options.
3:01:12 So they have this dogmatic like talking down to you, like this is the right way to do it.
3:01:13 Yeah.
3:01:14 It’s like, no, no, no.
3:01:15 We’re just like exploring together.
3:01:16 Okay.
3:01:23 Show me the cool thing you’ve tried, which is like it has to have open-mindedness to like,
3:01:28 you know, no JS is not the right way to do web development.
3:01:37 It’s like one way and there’s nothing wrong with the old LAMP, PHP, JQuery, vanilla JavaScript
3:01:38 way.
3:01:39 It just has its pros and cons.
3:01:41 And like you need to know what the pros and cons are.
3:01:42 Yeah, but those people exist.
3:01:43 You could find those people probably.
3:01:44 Yeah.
3:01:48 Like if you want to learn AI, imagine you have Karpati sitting next to you, like he does
3:01:49 his YouTube videos.
3:01:50 It’s amazing.
3:01:53 He’s connected to like a five-year-old about how to make an LLM.
3:01:54 It’s amazing.
3:01:57 Like imagine this guy sitting next to you and just teaching you like, let’s make an LLM
3:01:58 together.
3:02:00 Like, holy shit, it would be amazing.
3:02:01 Yeah.
3:02:07 I mean, well, Karpati has its own style and it’s like, I’m not sure he’s for everybody.
3:02:09 For example, five-year-old, it depends on five-year-old.
3:02:10 Yeah.
3:02:12 He’s like super technical.
3:02:16 But he’s amazing because he’s super technical and he’s the only one who can explain stuff
3:02:18 in a simple way, which shows his complete genius.
3:02:19 Yes.
3:02:23 Like if you can explain it without jargon, you’re like, wow.
3:02:24 And build it from scratch.
3:02:25 Yeah.
3:02:27 It’s like top tier, you know, like what a guy.
3:02:31 But he might be anti-framework because he builds from scratch.
3:02:32 Exactly.
3:02:33 Yeah.
3:02:34 Actually, he probably is.
3:02:35 Yeah.
3:02:36 He’s like you before AI.
3:02:37 Yeah.
3:02:39 So maybe learning framework is a very bad idea for us, you know?
3:02:42 Maybe we should stay in PHP and like ScriptKitty and the…
3:02:48 But you have to, maybe by learning the framework, you learn what you want to yourself build
3:02:49 from scratch.
3:02:50 Yeah.
3:02:52 Maybe you learn concepts but you don’t actually have to start using it for your life, right?
3:02:53 Yeah.
3:02:54 And you’re still a mad guy.
3:02:56 What was a mad guy?
3:02:57 Yeah.
3:02:58 Yeah.
3:03:01 I switched to Mac in 2014 because it was because when I wanted to start traveling and my brother
3:03:02 was like, dude, get a Macbook.
3:03:03 It’s like the standard now.
3:03:04 I’m like, wow.
3:03:05 I need to switch from Windows.
3:03:09 And I had like three screens, you know, like Windows had this whole setup for music production.
3:03:13 I had to sell everything and then I had a Macbook.
3:03:18 And I remember opening up this Macbook box like, and it was so beautiful.
3:03:21 It was like this aluminium and then I opened it and I removed the, you know, the screen
3:03:22 protector thing.
3:03:24 It’s so beautiful.
3:03:26 And I didn’t touch it for three days.
3:03:27 I was just like looking at it really.
3:03:30 And I was still on the Windows computer and then I went traveling with that.
3:03:31 So I…
3:03:35 And all my great things started when I switched to Mac, which sounds very dogmatic, right?
3:03:37 What great things are you talking about?
3:03:38 All the businesses started working out.
3:03:39 Like I started traveling.
3:03:42 I started building startups, I started making money.
3:03:44 It all started when I switched to Mac.
3:03:49 Listen, I kind of, you’re making me want to switch to Mac.
3:03:56 So I use either use Linux inside Windows with WSL or just Ubuntu Linux, but Windows for
3:04:02 most stuff like editing or any like, any other products, yeah, yeah.
3:04:05 Well, you could use, I guess you could do Mac stuff there.
3:04:06 I wonder if I should switch.
3:04:07 What wouldn’t you miss about Windows?
3:04:08 What was the pros and cons?
3:04:11 I think the finder is horrible, Mac.
3:04:12 Like it’s like…
3:04:13 It’s the what is horrible?
3:04:14 The finder.
3:04:15 You don’t know the find…
3:04:16 So there’s the Windows Explorer.
3:04:17 Yeah.
3:04:18 And this Explorer is amazing.
3:04:19 Thank you for talking about it.
3:04:20 The finder is strange, man.
3:04:21 There’s like strange things.
3:04:25 This is bug where if you send like a test your photo on WhatsApp or Telegram, it just
3:04:29 selects the whole folder and you almost accidentally can click enter and you send all your photos
3:04:32 or your files to this chat group.
3:04:33 Happy to my girlfriend.
3:04:36 She starts sending me photo, photo, photo, photo, photo.
3:04:38 So finder is very unusual.
3:04:39 But it has Linux.
3:04:41 Like the whole thing is like it’s Unix based, right?
3:04:42 So you use the command?
3:04:43 Yeah.
3:04:44 All the time.
3:04:45 Like all the time.
3:04:49 And the cool thing is you can run, I think it’s like Unix, like Debian or whatever.
3:04:54 You can run most Linux stuff on Mac OS, which makes it very good for development.
3:04:58 Like I have my Nginx server, you know, if I said, if I’m not lazy and set up my staging
3:05:03 on my laptop, it’s just the Nginx server, the same as I have on my cloud server, right?
3:05:05 The same where the web says run.
3:05:09 And I can use almost everything, the same config files, configuration files.
3:05:11 And it just works.
3:05:15 And that makes Mac a very good platform for Linux stuff, I think.
3:05:16 Yeah.
3:05:17 Yeah.
3:05:22 Of course, real Ubuntu is like better, of course, but yeah, I’m in this weird situation
3:05:32 where I’m somewhat of a power user in Windows and let’s say Android and all the much smarter
3:05:36 friends I have all using Mac and iPhone.
3:05:40 But you don’t want to go through the peer pressure, you know?
3:05:41 It’s not peer pressure.
3:05:47 It’s like, like one of the reasons I want to have kids is there’s a lot of, like I would
3:05:50 love to have kids as a base, as a baseline.
3:05:53 But you know, there’s like a concern, maybe there’s going to be a trade off or all this
3:05:54 kind of stuff.
3:05:58 But you see like these extremely successful smart people who are friends of mine who have
3:06:00 kids and are really happy to have kids.
3:06:02 So that’s not peer pressure, that’s just like a strong signal.
3:06:03 Yeah.
3:06:04 It works for people.
3:06:05 Yeah.
3:06:13 So for the Mac, it’s like, like I don’t see fundamentally, I don’t like closed systems.
3:06:17 So like fundamentally, I like Windows more because there’s much more freedom.
3:06:18 Same with Android.
3:06:19 There’s much more freedom.
3:06:20 Yeah.
3:06:21 It’s much more customizable.
3:06:29 But like all the cool kids, the smart kids are using Mac and iPhones like, “All right.
3:06:33 I need to really, I need to give it a real chance, especially for development.”
3:06:35 It’s more and more stuff is done in the cloud anyway.
3:06:36 Yeah.
3:06:40 Well, anyway, but it’s funny to hear you say, “All the good stuff started happening.”
3:06:44 Maybe I’ll be like that guy too, when I switch to Mac, “All the good stuff started happening.”
3:06:45 I think it’s just about the hardware.
3:06:48 It’s not so much about the software, the hardware is so well-built, right?
3:06:49 The keyboard and…
3:06:51 Yeah, but look at the keyboard I use.
3:06:53 That is pretty cool.
3:06:55 That’s one word for it.
3:06:57 What’s your favorite place to work?
3:06:58 On the couch.
3:07:00 Does the couch matter?
3:07:02 Is the couch your home or is it any couch?
3:07:05 No, and you got hotel couch also in the room, right?
3:07:06 Yeah.
3:07:11 But I used to work very ergonomically with a standing desk and everything perfect, like
3:07:13 eye-height, screen, blah, blah, blah.
3:07:16 I felt like, man, this has to do with lifting too.
3:07:20 I started getting RSI, like repetitive strain injury, tingling stuff, and it would go all
3:07:21 the way on my back.
3:07:26 I was sitting in a coworking space, like 6 a.m., sun comes up, and I’m working and
3:07:31 I’m coding, and I hear like a sound or something, so I do like, I look left, and my neck gets
3:07:32 stuck.
3:07:33 Like…
3:07:34 And I’m like, wow, fuck.
3:07:37 And I’m like, what?
3:07:38 Am I dying?
3:07:39 You know?
3:07:40 And I thought, I’m probably dying.
3:07:41 Yeah, probably dying.
3:07:42 So I don’t want to die in a coworking space.
3:07:45 I’m going to go home and die in peace and honor.
3:07:51 So I close my laptop, and I put it in my backpack, and I walked to the street, got on my motorbike,
3:07:58 went home, and I lie down on like a pillow, like with my legs up and stuff, to get rid
3:07:59 of this.
3:08:00 Because it was my whole back.
3:08:03 It was because I was working like this all the time.
3:08:08 So I started getting like a laptop stand, everything economically correct.
3:08:13 But then I started lifting, and since then, it seems like everything gets straightened
3:08:14 out.
3:08:16 Your posture kind of, you’re more straight.
3:08:19 And I never have RSI anymore, repetitive strain injury.
3:08:23 I never have tingling anymore, no pains and stuff.
3:08:27 So then I started working on the sofa, and it’s great.
3:08:36 It feels, you’re close to the, I sit like this, legs together in a pillow and a laptop,
3:08:37 and then I work.
3:08:38 Are you like leaning back?
3:08:42 I’m kind of like, together like legs, and then.
3:08:43 Where’s the mouse?
3:08:47 No, so everything is trackpad on the MacOS, on the Macbook.
3:08:52 I used to have the Logitech MX mouse, the perfect economic mouse, and I used to do like this
3:08:56 little thing with the thing, one screen, one screen, and I used to have three screens.
3:09:00 So I come from the, I know where people come from, I had all the stuff.
3:09:05 But then I realized that having it all condensed in one laptop, it’s a 16 inch Macbook, so
3:09:06 it’s quite big.
3:09:10 But having it all in there is amazing, because you’re so close to the tools, you’re so close
3:09:12 to what’s happening, you know?
3:09:13 Is that working on a car or something?
3:09:18 It’s like so, like, man, if you have three screens, you can look here, look there.
3:09:20 You get also neck injury, actually.
3:09:21 So it’s.
3:09:22 Well, I don’t know.
3:09:25 This sounds like you’re part of a cult, and you’re just trying to convince me.
3:09:30 Wait, uh, I mean, but it’s good to hear that you can be ultra productive on a single screen.
3:09:32 That’s, I mean, that’s crazy.
3:09:36 Command-tap, you alt-top, like Windows Alt-top, MacOS Command-tap, you switch very fast.
3:09:40 So you have like one, the entire screen is taken out by VS Code, say, you look at the
3:09:45 code and then, and then, like, if you deploy like a website, you want to switch screens.
3:09:46 Command-tap to Chrome.
3:09:50 I used to have this swipe screen, you know, you could do like, um, different screen spaces.
3:09:51 Yeah.
3:09:53 I was like, ah, it’s too difficult.
3:09:58 You just put it on one screen on the Macbook and then he’d be productive that way.
3:09:59 Yeah.
3:10:00 Very productive.
3:10:01 Yeah.
3:10:02 More productive than before.
3:10:03 Interesting.
3:10:04 Cause I have, I have three screens and two of them are vertical.
3:10:05 Yeah.
3:10:06 Like on the sides.
3:10:07 Code, right?
3:10:08 Yeah.
3:10:09 For the code, you can see all.
3:10:10 Yeah.
3:10:11 No, man, I love it.
3:10:12 Like, I love seeing it with friends.
3:10:13 Like they have amazing, like battle stations, right?
3:10:14 It’s called.
3:10:15 It’s amazing.
3:10:16 I want it, but I don’t want it, right?
3:10:17 Like, you like the constraints.
3:10:18 There’s some.
3:10:19 That’s it.
3:10:23 There’s some aspect of the constraints, which like, once you get good at it, you can
3:10:24 focus your mind and you can.
3:10:28 Man, I’m suspicious of like more, you know, to really need all the stuff.
3:10:29 Like it might slow me down actually.
3:10:30 It’s a good way to put it.
3:10:32 I’m suspicious of more.
3:10:33 Me too.
3:10:34 Yeah.
3:10:36 I’m suspicious of more in all, in all ways.
3:10:37 In all ways.
3:10:38 Cause you can defend more, right?
3:10:39 You can defend.
3:10:40 Yeah.
3:10:41 I’m a developer.
3:10:42 I make money.
3:10:43 I need to, I need to get more screens, right?
3:10:44 I need to be more efficient.
3:10:47 And then you read stuff about like mythical man month where like hiring more people slows
3:10:50 down a software project, project that’s famous.
3:10:53 I think you can use that metaphor maybe for, you know, tools as well.
3:10:57 And I see friends just with gear acquisition syndrome that buying so much stuff, but they’re
3:10:58 not that productive.
3:11:03 They have the best, most beautiful battle stations, desktops, everything.
3:11:04 They’re not that productive.
3:11:05 And it’s also like kind of fun.
3:11:07 Like it’s all from our laptop in a backpack, right?
3:11:09 It’s kind of nomad minimalist.
3:11:14 Take me through like the perfect ultra productive day in your life.
3:11:17 Like say like where you get a lot of shit done.
3:11:18 Yeah.
3:11:23 And it’s all focused on getting shit done.
3:11:24 What are you waking up?
3:11:25 Is it a regular time?
3:11:26 Super early, super late?
3:11:27 Yes.
3:11:33 So I go to sleep like 2 a.m. usually, somebody that, and before 4 a.m., but my girlfriend
3:11:34 would go sleep midnight.
3:11:36 So we did a compromise like 2 a.m., you know?
3:11:43 So I wake up around 10, 11, then more like 10, shower, make coffee.
3:11:47 I make coffee, like drip coffee, like the V60, you know, the filter, and I boil water
3:11:50 and then I put the coffee in.
3:11:55 And then chill a little bit with my girlfriend and then open laptops, start coding, check
3:11:57 what’s going on, like bugs or whatever.
3:12:02 How long are you, like how stretches of time are you able to just sit behind in the computer
3:12:03 coding?
3:12:06 So I used to need like really long stretches where I would do like all nighters and stuff
3:12:11 to get shit done, but I’ve gotten trained to like have more interruptions where I can
3:12:12 like…
3:12:13 Because you have to.
3:12:14 This is life.
3:12:15 Like there’s a lot of distractions.
3:12:19 Like your girlfriend asks stuff, people come over or whatever.
3:12:20 So I’m very fast now.
3:12:24 I can lock in and lock out quite fast and I heard people, developers or entrepreneurs
3:12:25 with kids have the same thing.
3:12:29 Like before they’re like, “Ah, I cannot work,” but they get used to it and they get really
3:12:33 productive in like short time because they only have like 20 minutes and then shit goes
3:12:34 crazy again.
3:12:36 So another constraint, right?
3:12:37 Yeah, it’s funny.
3:12:39 So think that works for me.
3:12:45 Yeah, and then cook food and stuff, like have lunch, steak and chicken and we eat a bunch
3:12:46 of times a day.
3:12:49 So you say coffee, what are you doing?
3:12:53 Yeah, so a few hours later, cook foods, we get like locally sourced like meat and stuff
3:12:56 and vegetables and cook that.
3:12:59 And then second coffee and then go some more, maybe go outside for lunch.
3:13:02 Like you can mix fun stuff, you know?
3:13:05 How many hours are you saying a perfectly productive day are you doing programming?
3:13:09 Like if you were like to kill it, are you doing like all day basically?
3:13:13 You mean like the special days where like girlfriend leaves to like Paris or something
3:13:16 and you’re alone for a week at home, which is amazing.
3:13:17 Yes.
3:13:21 You can just code and you stay up all night and eat chocolate and that’s like…
3:13:22 Chocolate.
3:13:23 Yeah, okay, okay.
3:13:26 Let’s remove girlfriend from picture, social life from picture.
3:13:27 It’s just you…
3:13:28 Man, then shit goes crazy.
3:13:29 Okay.
3:13:30 Because when shit goes crazy…
3:13:31 Okay, now shit goes crazy.
3:13:32 Okay.
3:13:33 So let’s rewind.
3:13:36 Are you still waking up?
3:13:37 There’s coffee.
3:13:38 There’s no girlfriend to talk to.
3:13:39 There’s no…
3:13:46 And now we wake up like 1 p.m. at 2 p.m.
3:13:47 Because you went to bed at 6 a.m.
3:13:48 Yeah.
3:13:49 Because I was coding.
3:13:50 I was finding some new AI shit.
3:13:51 Yeah.
3:13:53 And I was studying it and it was amazing.
3:13:54 And I cannot sleep because it’s too important.
3:13:55 We need to stay awake.
3:13:56 We need to see all of this.
3:13:58 We need to make something now.
3:14:01 But that’s the times I do make like new stuff more.
3:14:06 So I think I have a friend, he actually books a hotel for like a week to like leave his…
3:14:07 And he has a kid too.
3:14:11 And his girlfriend and his kids stay in the house and he goes to another hotel.
3:14:13 Sounds a little suspicious, right?
3:14:14 Going to the hotel.
3:14:16 But all he does is like writing or coding.
3:14:19 He’s a writer and he needs like this alone time, this silence.
3:14:22 And I think for this flow state, it’s true, you know?
3:14:27 I’m better maintaining stuff when there’s a lot of disruptions than like creating new
3:14:28 stuff.
3:14:29 I need this…
3:14:30 It’s common.
3:14:31 It’s flow state.
3:14:32 It’s this uninterrupted period of time.
3:14:33 So yeah.
3:14:36 I wake up like 1, 2 p.m.
3:14:37 You know, it’s still coffee, shower.
3:14:40 We still shower, you know?
3:14:44 And then this code like nonstop, maybe my friend comes over, comes over anyway.
3:14:45 Just some distraction.
3:14:46 Yeah.
3:14:47 He also, Andre, he codes too.
3:14:48 So he comes over.
3:14:49 We code together.
3:14:53 We listen, you know, it starts going back to like the Bali days, you know, like a co-working
3:14:54 days.
3:14:56 So you’re not really working with him, but you’re just both working?
3:15:00 Because it’s nice to have like the vibe where you both sit together on the couch and coding
3:15:01 on something.
3:15:04 And you actually, it’s mostly silent or there’s music, you know?
3:15:09 And sometimes you ask something and, but generally like you’re really locked in and…
3:15:11 What music are you listening to?
3:15:19 I think like techno, like YouTube techno, there’s a channel called H-O-R with a umlaut,
3:15:22 like H-O, like double dot.
3:15:26 It’s Berlin techno, whatever it looks like it’s, they film it in like a toilet with like
3:15:29 white tiles and stuff and it’s very cool.
3:15:33 And they always have like very good like kind of industrial like kind of aggressive, you
3:15:34 know?
3:15:35 Yeah.
3:15:36 Yeah.
3:15:37 That’s not distracting to your brain.
3:15:38 That’s amazing.
3:15:42 Like, I think distracting man, jazz, like I listen coffee jazz with my girlfriend when
3:15:45 I wake up and it’s kind of like this piano starts getting annoying.
3:15:48 It’s like, it’s too many tones.
3:15:50 It’s like too many things going on.
3:15:55 This industrial techno is like, you know, this African like rain dances, it’s like, it’s
3:15:58 this transcendental trance.
3:16:04 That’s interesting because like I actually mostly now listen to brown noise, noise.
3:16:05 Yeah.
3:16:06 Wow.
3:16:07 Like pretty loud.
3:16:08 Wow.
3:16:10 And one of the things you learn is your brain gets used to whatever.
3:16:14 So I’m sure to techno, if I actually give it a real chance, my brain would get used
3:16:15 to it.
3:16:18 But like with noise, what happens, something happens to your brain.
3:16:21 I think there’s a science to it, but I don’t really care.
3:16:25 You just have to be a scientist of one, like study yourself, your own brain.
3:16:28 For me, it like, it does something.
3:16:32 I discovered it right away when I tried it for the first time.
3:16:40 After about like a couple of minutes, everything, every distraction just like disappears and
3:16:47 it goes like, you can like hold focus on things like really well.
3:16:48 It’s weird.
3:16:51 Like you can like really focus on a thing.
3:16:53 It doesn’t really matter what that is.
3:16:55 I think that’s what people achieve with like meditation.
3:16:59 You can like focus on your breath, for example, from the lungs.
3:17:00 It’s normal brown noise.
3:17:01 It’s not like binaural.
3:17:02 No.
3:17:03 It’s just normal brown noise.
3:17:04 Just like shh.
3:17:05 Yeah.
3:17:06 White noise, I think.
3:17:07 It’s the same.
3:17:11 It’s like fake noise, white noise, brown noise, I think is what it’s like bassier.
3:17:12 Yeah.
3:17:13 It’s more diffused, more dampened.
3:17:14 Yeah.
3:17:15 Dampened.
3:17:16 Yeah.
3:17:17 Casita.
3:17:18 No sharpness.
3:17:19 Yeah.
3:17:20 Sharp brightness.
3:17:21 Yeah.
3:17:22 Yeah.
3:17:25 Like walk around in life often with brown noise.
3:17:28 Dude, that’s like psychopath shit, but it’s cool, you know?
3:17:29 Yeah.
3:17:30 Yeah.
3:17:31 Yeah.
3:17:32 When I murder people, it helps.
3:17:34 It drowns out their screams.
3:17:35 Jesus Christ.
3:17:36 Yeah.
3:17:37 I said too much.
3:17:38 No.
3:17:39 Man, I’m going to try brown noise.
3:17:41 With a murder or with a coding?
3:17:42 Yeah.
3:17:43 For the coding, yeah.
3:17:44 Okay.
3:17:45 Good.
3:17:46 Try it.
3:17:47 Try it.
3:17:48 But you have to like with everything else to give it a real chance.
3:17:49 Yeah.
3:17:57 You could do techno-y type stuff, electronic music on top of the brown noise, but then
3:18:01 control the speed because the faster it goes, the more anxiety.
3:18:05 So if I really need to get shit done, especially with programming, I’ll have a beat.
3:18:06 Yeah.
3:18:07 And it’s great.
3:18:08 It’s cool.
3:18:11 It’s cool to play those little tricks with your mind to study yourself.
3:18:12 Yeah.
3:18:16 I usually don’t like to have people around because when people, even if they’re working,
3:18:18 I don’t know, I like people too much.
3:18:19 They’re like interesting.
3:18:20 Yeah.
3:18:22 In co-workerspace, I would just start talking too much.
3:18:23 Yeah.
3:18:24 Yeah.
3:18:25 So there’s a source of distraction.
3:18:26 Yeah.
3:18:30 We would do, in the co-workerspace, we would do like a money pot, like a mug.
3:18:34 So if you would work for 45 minutes, and then if you would say a pair of words, you would
3:18:36 get a fine, which is like $1.
3:18:38 So you’d put $1 to say, “Hey, what’s up?”
3:18:42 So $3, you put in the mug.
3:18:46 And then 15 minutes free time, like we can like party whatever, and then 45 minutes again,
3:18:47 I’m working.
3:18:48 And that worked.
3:18:50 But you need to shut people up, or they, you know?
3:18:56 I think there’s an intimacy in being silent together.
3:18:57 Yeah.
3:19:04 Maybe I’m uncomfortable with, like, but you need to make yourself vulnerable and actually
3:19:05 do it.
3:19:09 Like with close friends to just sit there and silence for a long period of time and like
3:19:10 doing a thing.
3:19:13 Dude, I watched this video of this podcast.
3:19:17 It was like this Buddhism podcast with people meditating, and they were interviewing each
3:19:19 other or whatever, and like a podcast.
3:19:25 And suddenly after a question, it’s like, “Yeah, yeah.”
3:19:27 And they were just silent for like three minutes.
3:19:29 And then they said, “That was amazing.
3:19:30 Yeah, that was amazing.”
3:19:32 I was like, “Wow, pretty cool, you know?”
3:19:35 Elon’s like that.
3:19:36 And I really like that.
3:19:41 And you’ll ask a question, like, I don’t know.
3:19:42 What’s a perfectly productive day for you?
3:19:43 Like I had just asked.
3:19:46 And you just sit there for like 30 seconds thinking.
3:19:48 Yeah, he thinks.
3:19:49 Yeah.
3:19:50 I don’t know.
3:19:51 That’s so cool.
3:19:57 I wish I was, I wish I could think more about, but I want to like, I want to show you my
3:19:58 heart, you know?
3:20:02 I want to show you, go straight from my heart to my mouth to like saying the real thing.
3:20:06 And the more I think, the more I start like filtering myself, right?
3:20:08 And I want to just throw it out there immediately.
3:20:09 I do that more with Tim.
3:20:13 I think he has a lot of practice in that I do that as well in a team setting when you’re
3:20:14 thinking brainstorming.
3:20:15 Yeah.
3:20:18 And you allow yourself to just like think in silence.
3:20:19 Yeah.
3:20:21 Just like, because even in meetings, people want to talk.
3:20:22 Yeah.
3:20:28 And it’s like, no, you think before you speak and just like, it’s okay to be silent together.
3:20:29 Yeah.
3:20:31 And if you allow yourself the room to do that, you can actually come up with really good ideas.
3:20:32 Yeah.
3:20:33 It’s okay.
3:20:34 This perfect day.
3:20:37 How much caffeine are you consuming in this day?
3:20:38 Too much, right?
3:20:43 Cause normally like two, two cups of coffee, but on this perfect day, like we go to like
3:20:44 four, maybe.
3:20:46 So we’re starting to hit like the anxiety levels.
3:20:48 So four cups is a lot for you.
3:20:51 Well, I think my coffees are quite strong when I make them.
3:20:55 It’s like 20 grams of coffee powder in the V60.
3:21:01 So like my friends call them like nuclear coffee, cause it’s quite heavy, so it’s quite strong.
3:21:06 Um, but it’s nice to hit that anxiety level where you’re like almost panic attack, but
3:21:07 you’re not there yet.
3:21:14 So, but that’s like, man, it’s like super locked in just like, it’s amazing.
3:21:19 But I mean, that’s, there’s a space for that, you know, in my life, but, uh, it’s a, I think
3:21:20 it’s great for making new stuff.
3:21:21 It’s amazing.
3:21:23 Starting from scratch, creating a new thing.
3:21:24 Yes.
3:21:29 I think girlfriends should let the guys go away for like two weeks, every few, no, every
3:21:35 year, at least, you know, maybe every quarter, I don’t know, and just sit and make some shit
3:21:40 without, you know, they’re amazing, but like no, the services, just be alone.
3:21:44 And then, you know, people can make something very, very amazing.
3:21:45 Just wearing cowboy hats in the mountains.
3:21:46 Like we showed.
3:21:47 Exactly.
3:21:48 We can do that.
3:21:49 There’s a movie about that.
3:21:50 With the laptops.
3:21:51 They didn’t do much programming though.
3:21:52 Yeah.
3:21:53 You can do a little bit of that.
3:21:54 Okay.
3:21:55 And then a little bit of shipping, you know, do both.
3:21:58 It’s a different, but they need to allow us to go.
3:21:59 You know, you need like a man cave, right?
3:22:00 Yeah.
3:22:01 To ship.
3:22:02 Yeah.
3:22:03 To ship.
3:22:04 Shit done.
3:22:05 Yeah.
3:22:06 It’s a balance.
3:22:07 Okay.
3:22:08 Cool.
3:22:09 What about sleep?
3:22:10 Naps and all that.
3:22:11 You’re not sleeping much?
3:22:12 I don’t do naps in the day.
3:22:13 I think it’s power naps are good, but I don’t really, I’m never tired anymore in the day.
3:22:16 And also because of Jim, I’m not tired.
3:22:19 I’m tired when I want to, you know, when it’s night, I need to sleep.
3:22:20 Yeah.
3:22:21 Me, I love naps.
3:22:22 I love naps.
3:22:23 I don’t care.
3:22:24 I don’t know.
3:22:25 I don’t know why.
3:22:26 Brain shuts off, turns on.
3:22:27 I don’t know if it’s healthy or not.
3:22:28 It works.
3:22:29 Yeah.
3:22:32 I think with anything, mental, physically, you have to be a student of your own body
3:22:35 and like know what the limits are.
3:22:39 Like you have to be skeptical, taking advice from the internet in general, because a lot
3:22:45 of advice is just like a good baseline for the general population, but then you have
3:22:52 to become a student of your own, like of your own body, of your own self, of how you work.
3:22:55 That’s, I’ve done a lot of, like for me, fasting was an interesting one.
3:22:59 Because I used to, you know, eat a bunch of meals a day, especially when I was lifting
3:23:05 heavy, like because everybody says that you have to eat kind of a lot, you know, multiple
3:23:11 meals a day, but I realized I can get much stronger, feel much better if I eat once or
3:23:12 twice a day.
3:23:13 Me too, yeah.
3:23:14 It’s crazy.
3:23:15 I never used to do this small meal thing.
3:23:16 Yeah.
3:23:17 It didn’t work for me.
3:23:21 Well, let me just ask you, it’d be interesting if you can comment on some of the other products
3:23:22 you’ve created.
3:23:27 We talked about Nomad List, Interior AI, Photo AI, Therapist AI, what’s Remote OK?
3:23:32 It’s a job board for remote jobs, because back then, like 10 years ago, there was job
3:23:36 boards, but it was not really specifically remote job job boards.
3:23:40 So I made one, first on Nomad List, I made like Nomad jobs, like a page, and a lot of
3:23:44 companies started hiring and they pay for job posts, so I spin it off to Remote OK.
3:23:50 And now it’s like this, number one or number two biggest remote job boards, and it’s also
3:23:54 fully automated, and people just post a job and people apply, it has like profiles as
3:23:55 well.
3:23:57 It’s kind of like LinkedIn for remote work.
3:23:59 It’s just focused on remote only.
3:24:00 Yeah.
3:24:04 It’s essentially like a simple job board, and discovered job boards are way more complicated
3:24:10 than you think, but yeah, it’s a job board for remote jobs.
3:24:12 But the nice thing is you can charge a lot of money for job posts.
3:24:14 Man, it’s good money, B2B.
3:24:19 You can charge like, you start with $2.99, but at the peak during when the Fed started
3:24:24 printing money, like 2021, I was making like 140k a month with Remote OK, with just job
3:24:25 posts.
3:24:30 And I started adding crazy upsells, like rainbow color, it’s job posts, you can add your background
3:24:35 name, it’s just upsells, man, and you charge $1,000 for an upsell, it was crazy.
3:24:40 And all these companies just upsell, upsell, yeah, we want everything, job posts would
3:24:46 cost $3,400, $4,000, and I was like, this is good business, and then the Fed stopped
3:24:52 printing money, and it all went down, and it went down to like 10k a month from 140k,
3:24:56 now it’s back, I think it’s like 40k, it was good times, you know?
3:25:03 I gotta ask you about back to the digital nomad life, you wrote a blog post on the reset,
3:25:08 and in general, just giving away everything, living a minimalist life, what did it take
3:25:12 to do that, like to get rid of everything?
3:25:15 10 years ago was like this trend in the blog, back then blogs were so popular, it was like
3:25:18 a blogosphere, and it was like a 100 things challenge.
3:25:19 What is that?
3:25:20 100 things.
3:25:22 I mean, it’s ridiculous, but you write down every object you have in your house, and
3:25:27 you count it, you make like a spreadsheet, and you’re like, okay, I have 500 things,
3:25:31 you need to get it down to 100, why, you know, this is the trend, so I did it.
3:25:36 I started like selling stuff, started throwing waste off, and I did like MDMA and XCC, like
3:25:43 2012, kind of, and after that trip, I felt so different, and I felt like I had to start
3:25:49 throwing shit away, like I swear, and I started throwing shit away, and I felt that was like,
3:25:53 it was almost like the drug sending me to a path of like, you need to throw your shit
3:25:59 away, you need to start, you know, go on a journey, you need to get out of here, and
3:26:01 that’s what the MDMA did, I think, yeah.
3:26:03 How hard is it to get down to 100 items?
3:26:08 Well, you need to like sell your PC and stuff, you need to go on eBay, and then, man, going
3:26:12 eBay selling or your stuff is very interesting, because you discover society, you meet the
3:26:17 craziest people, you meet every range from rich to poor, everybody comes to your house
3:26:20 to buy stuff, it’s so fun, it’s so interesting, I recommend everybody do this.
3:26:22 Just to meet people that want your shit.
3:26:27 Yeah, it was so, like, I didn’t know, I wasn’t living in Amsterdam, and I didn’t know I have
3:26:31 my own, you know, subculture, whatever, and I discovered the Dutch people, like, as they
3:26:33 are from eBay, you know, so I sold everything.
3:26:37 Was like the weirdest thing you had to sell, and you had to find a buyer for?
3:26:40 Not the weirdest, but like, what’s my mobile?
3:26:44 So back then, I was making music, and we would make music videos with like a Canon 5D camera.
3:26:49 Back then, everybody was making films and music videos, and we bought them with my friends
3:26:55 and stuff, and it was kind of like, I had to sell this thing too, because it was like,
3:27:00 it was very expensive, like 6K or something, and but it meant that selling this meant that
3:27:04 we wouldn’t make music videos together anymore, I would leave Holland, this kind of like stuff
3:27:07 we were working on would end, and I was kind of saying, this music video stuff, we’re not
3:27:11 getting famous in this or successful, we need to stop doing this, this music production
3:27:16 also, it’s not really working, and it was kind of like, felt very bad, you know, for
3:27:21 my friends, because we would work together on this, and to sell this like camera that
3:27:22 we’d make stuff with.
3:27:24 It was a hard goodbye.
3:27:29 It was just the camera, but it felt like, sorry guys, it doesn’t work, and I need to
3:27:30 go, you know?
3:27:33 Who bought it, do you remember?
3:27:39 There was some guy who couldn’t possibly understand the journey, the motion of it, because you
3:27:42 showed up here, here’s the money, thanks.
3:27:46 But it was like cutting your life, like this shit ends now, and now we’re going to do new
3:27:47 stuff.
3:27:48 I think it’s beautiful.
3:27:52 I did that twice a mile to get away, everything, everything, everything, like down to just
3:28:00 pants, underwear, backpack, I think it’s important to do, it shows you what’s important.
3:28:03 Yeah, I think that’s what I learned from it.
3:28:08 You learn that you can live with very little objects, very little stuff, but there’s a
3:28:09 counter to it.
3:28:12 You lean more on the stuff, on the services, right?
3:28:14 For example, you don’t need a car, you use Uber, right?
3:28:19 You don’t need kitchen stuff because you go to restaurants when you’re traveling.
3:28:23 So you lean more on other people’s services, but you spend money on that as well, so that’s
3:28:24 good.
3:28:28 Yeah, but just letting go of material possessions, which gives a kind of freedom to how you move
3:28:29 about the world.
3:28:30 Yeah.
3:28:32 It’s a kind of freedom to go into another city, too.
3:28:33 Yeah, with your backpack.
3:28:34 With a backpack.
3:28:35 Yeah.
3:28:36 There’s a kind of freedom to it.
3:28:39 There’s something about material possessions and having a place and all that that ties you
3:28:41 down a little bit.
3:28:43 Thanks spiritually.
3:28:46 It’s good to take a leap onto the world, especially when you’re younger.
3:28:52 Man, I recommend if you’re 18, you get out of high school, do this, go travel, and build
3:28:53 some internet stuff, whatever.
3:28:57 If you’re doing your laptop, it’s an amazing experience.
3:29:00 Five years ago, it’s still going to university, but now I’m thinking like, no, maybe it’s
3:29:01 skip university.
3:29:04 Just go first, travel around a little bit, figure some stuff out.
3:29:06 You can go back to university when you’re 25.
3:29:10 You can learn, be successful in business.
3:29:11 You have money at least.
3:29:15 Now you can choose what you really want to study, because people at 18, they go study
3:29:18 what’s probably good for the job market, right?
3:29:20 So it probably makes more sense.
3:29:23 If you want that, go travel, build some businesses, and go back to university if you want.
3:29:28 So one of the biggest uses of a university is the networking.
3:29:31 You gain friends, you meet people.
3:29:34 It’s a forcing function to meet people, but if you can meet people all into the world
3:29:35 by traveling.
3:29:37 Man, and you meet so many different cultures.
3:29:42 The problem for me is if I traveled at that young age, I’m attracted to people at the
3:29:44 outskirts of the world.
3:29:53 For me, not geographically, the subcultures, the weirdos, the darkness, me too.
3:29:58 But that might not be the best networking in 18 years.
3:30:00 If you’re smart about it, you can stay safe.
3:30:02 I met so many weirdos from traveling.
3:30:04 You meet, that’s how travel works.
3:30:06 If you really let loose, you meet the craziest people.
3:30:11 And it’s the most interesting people.
3:30:13 I cannot recommend enough.
3:30:19 See, the thing is when you’re 18, I feel like, depending on your personality, you have to
3:30:24 learn both how to be a weirdo and how to be a normie.
3:30:27 You still have to learn how to fit into society.
3:30:31 For a person like me, for example, who’s always in outcast, there’s always a danger of going
3:30:32 full outcast.
3:30:36 And that’s a harder life.
3:30:41 If you go to full artists and full darkness, it’s just a harder life.
3:30:42 You can come back.
3:30:43 You can come back to normie.
3:30:44 That’s a skill.
3:30:51 I think you have to learn how to fit into polite society.
3:30:57 But I was very strange outcast as well, and I’m more adaptable to normie now, you know?
3:30:59 After firties, you’re like, yeah.
3:31:02 But it’s a skill you have to learn.
3:31:08 Man, I feel also that you start as an outcast, but the more you work on yourself, the less
3:31:13 shit you have, you start becoming more normie because you become more chill with yourself,
3:31:17 more happy, and it kind of makes you unending, right?
3:31:18 Yes.
3:31:19 Yes.
3:31:21 Like the crazy people are always the most interesting.
3:31:26 If you’ve solved your internal struggles and your therapy and stuff, and you kind of become
3:31:31 kind of, you know, it’s not so interesting anymore, maybe.
3:31:34 You don’t have to be broken to be interesting, I guess is what I’m saying.
3:31:38 What kind of things were left when you minimized?
3:31:45 For the backpack, Macbook, toothbrush, some clothes, underwear, socks.
3:31:49 You don’t need a lot of clothes in Asia because it’s hot, so you just wear swim pants, swim
3:31:57 shorts, you walk around, flip flops, so very basic t-shirt, and I would go to the laundromat
3:32:01 and wash my stuff, and I think it was like 50 things or something, yeah.
3:32:03 Yeah, it’s nice.
3:32:09 As I mentioned to you, the show alone, they really test you because you only get 10 items
3:32:15 and you have to survive out in the wilderness, and it acts like everybody brings an axe.
3:32:22 Some people also have a saw, but usually it acts as the job.
3:32:25 You basically have to, in order to build a shelter, you have to cut down, cut the trees
3:32:30 and make, and like, learn the Minecraft.
3:32:36 Yeah, learn about life, learn about Minecraft, bro.
3:32:39 It’s nice to create those constraints for yourself to understand what matters to you
3:32:45 and also how to be in this world, and one of the ways to do that is just to live a minimalist
3:32:50 life, but some people, I’ve met people that really enjoy material possessions and that
3:32:53 brings them happiness, and that’s a beautiful thing.
3:32:57 For me, it doesn’t, but people are different.
3:32:59 It gives me happiness for like two weeks.
3:33:06 I’m very quickly adapting to like a baseline, hedonistic adaptation, very fast, but man,
3:33:12 if you look at the studies, most people, like getting a new car, six months, get a new house,
3:33:17 six months, you just feel the same, she’s like, “Wow, should I buy all the stuff?”
3:33:20 Studying hedonistic adaptation made me think a lot about minimalism.
3:33:26 So you don’t even need to go through the whole journey of getting it, just focus on the thing
3:33:29 that’s more permanent.
3:33:30 Like building shit.
3:33:31 Yeah.
3:33:35 Like people around you, like people you love, nice food, nice experiences, meaningful work,
3:33:41 those things, exercise, those things make you happy, I think, make me happy, for sure.
3:33:46 You wrote a blog post, “Why I’m Unreachable, and Maybe You Should Be Too.”
3:33:48 What’s your strategy in communicating with people?
3:33:49 Yeah.
3:33:53 So when I wrote that, I was getting so many DMs, as you probably have, you have a million
3:33:58 times more, and people were getting angry that I wasn’t responding, and I was like,
3:34:02 “Look, I’ll just close down these DMs completely,” then people got angry that I closed my DMs
3:34:06 down, that I’m not like, “Man of the people,” you know, it’s like, “You’ve changed, man.”
3:34:10 Yeah, you’ve changed, you got to, you know, like this, and I’m like, I’ll explain why.
3:34:17 I just don’t have the time in a day to, you know, answer every question, and also people
3:34:21 send you like crazy shit, man, like stalkers, and like, people write like their whole life
3:34:25 story for you, and then ask you advice, like, “Man, I have no idea, I’m not a therapist,
3:34:26 I don’t know.
3:34:27 I don’t know this stuff.”
3:34:28 But also beautiful stuff.
3:34:29 No, absolutely, sure.
3:34:33 Like, life story, I’ve posted a coffee for them, like, if you wanted to have a coffee
3:34:38 with me, and I’ve gotten an extremely large number of submissions, and when I look at
3:34:43 them, there’s just like beautiful people in there, like beautiful human beings, really
3:34:47 powerful stories, and like, breaks my heart that I won’t get to meet those people, you
3:34:52 know, like, and so this part of it is just like, there’s only so much bandwidth to truly
3:34:58 see other humans, and help them, or like, understand them, or hear them, or, yeah, see
3:34:59 them.
3:35:00 Yeah.
3:35:04 I have this problem that I try, I want to try to help people, and like, also like, “Oh,
3:35:09 let’s make startups,” and whatever, and it’s, I’ve learned over the years that generally,
3:35:13 for me, and it sounds maybe bad, right, but like I helped my friend Andre, for example,
3:35:16 he was, he came up to me in the coworker space, that’s how I met him, and he said, “I want
3:35:18 to learn the code, I want to do startups, how do I do it?”
3:35:22 And I said, “Okay, let’s go, install nginx, let’s start coding.”
3:35:29 And he has this self-energy that he actually, he doesn’t need to be pushed, he just goes,
3:35:32 and he just goes and he asks questions, and he doesn’t ask too many questions, he just
3:35:36 goes, goes, and learns it, and now he has a company, and makes a lot of money, has his
3:35:37 own startups.
3:35:41 So, and the people that, that I had to kind of like, they’d ask me for help, but then
3:35:44 I gave help, and then they started, they started debating it, you know?
3:35:45 Yeah.
3:35:46 Do you have that?
3:35:49 Like, people ask you advice, and they go against you, say, “No, you’re wrong,” because
3:35:52 I’m like, “Okay, bro, I don’t want to debate, you asked me for advice, right?”
3:35:58 And the people who need to push, generally, it doesn’t happen, you need to take this energy
3:35:59 for yourself.
3:36:02 Well, they’re searching, they’re searching, they’re trying to figure it out, but oftentimes
3:36:05 they’re searching.
3:36:09 If they successfully find what they’re looking for, it’ll be within, it sounds very like spiritual
3:36:13 saunee, but it’s really like figuring that shit out on your own.
3:36:18 But they’re reaching, they’re trying to ask the world around them, like, “How do I live
3:36:19 this life?
3:36:20 How do I figure this out?”
3:36:25 But ultimately, the answer is going to be for them working on themselves, and like, literally,
3:36:28 it’s the stupid thing, but like, googling and doing like, searching.
3:36:30 Yeah, so I think it’s procrastination.
3:36:33 I think sending messages to people is a lot of procrastination, like, “Lex, how do you
3:36:35 become a successful podcaster?”
3:36:36 Yeah.
3:36:39 Bro, just, you know, start, like, just go.
3:36:40 Yeah.
3:36:41 And just go.
3:36:45 I would never ask you how to be a successful podcaster, like, I would just start it and
3:36:47 then I would copy your methods, you know?
3:36:49 And say, “Ah, this guy’s a black background.
3:36:50 We probably need this as well.”
3:36:51 Yeah.
3:36:52 Try it.
3:36:53 Yeah.
3:36:54 Try it.
3:36:55 And then you realize it’s not about the black background.
3:36:56 It’s about something else.
3:36:57 So you find your own voice.
3:36:58 Like, keep trying stuff.
3:36:59 Exactly.
3:37:00 Imitation is a difficult thing.
3:37:02 Like, a lot of people copy and they don’t move past it.
3:37:03 Yeah.
3:37:06 You should understand their methods and then move past it, like, find yourself.
3:37:07 Find your own voice.
3:37:08 Yeah.
3:37:09 You imitate and then you put your own spin to it, you know?
3:37:11 And that’s like, creative process.
3:37:14 That’s like, literally, a whole creative, everybody always builds on the previous work.
3:37:15 Yeah.
3:37:16 You shouldn’t get stuck.
3:37:19 I mean, four hours in a day, eight hours of sleep, you like break it down into a math
3:37:20 equation.
3:37:26 90 minutes of showering, clean up coffee, it just keeps whittling down to zero.
3:37:30 Man, it’s not this specific, but I have to make, like, an average or something.
3:37:31 Yeah.
3:37:32 Firefighting.
3:37:33 I like that.
3:37:35 One hours of groceries and errands.
3:37:39 I’ve tried breaking down minute by minute what I do in a day, especially when my life
3:37:40 was simpler.
3:37:46 It’s really refreshing to understand where you waste a lot of time and what you enjoy
3:37:47 doing.
3:37:52 Like, how many minutes it takes to be happy doing the thing that makes you happy and how
3:37:54 many minutes it takes to be productive.
3:37:57 And you realize there’s a lot of hours in the day if you spend it right.
3:37:58 Yeah.
3:37:59 A lot of his wasted.
3:38:00 Yeah.
3:38:04 For me, it’s been the biggest battle for the longest time is finding stretches of time
3:38:10 where I can deeply focus into really, really deep work, just like zoom in and completely
3:38:13 focus cutting away all the distractions.
3:38:14 Yeah.
3:38:15 Me too.
3:38:16 That’s the battle.
3:38:17 It’s really unpleasant.
3:38:18 It’s extremely unpleasant.
3:38:22 We need to fly to an island, you know, make a man cave island where we can just, we can
3:38:27 just cold and for a week, you know, and just catch it done, make new projects.
3:38:28 Yeah.
3:38:29 Yeah.
3:38:32 But man, they called me psychopath for this because it says like one hours of sex, hugs,
3:38:36 love, you know, man, I had to write something, you know, and they were like, oh, this guy’s
3:38:37 psychopath.
3:38:42 He plans his sex in a specific hour, like, bro, I don’t have a counter for hugs.
3:38:43 Yeah.
3:38:44 Exactly.
3:38:45 Yeah.
3:38:46 Like, click, click, click.
3:38:50 It’s just a numerical representation of what life is.
3:38:51 Yeah.
3:38:55 It’s like one of those like when you draw out how many weeks you have in a life.
3:38:56 I’ll do it.
3:38:57 This is like dark.
3:38:58 Yeah.
3:38:59 Man.
3:39:00 Don’t want to look at that too much.
3:39:01 Holy shit.
3:39:02 Yeah, man.
3:39:03 How many times you see your parents?
3:39:04 Jesus is like, man, scary, man.
3:39:05 Yeah.
3:39:06 That’s right.
3:39:07 It might be only, you know, a handful more times.
3:39:08 Yeah, man.
3:39:09 You just look at the math of it.
3:39:10 If you see him once a year or twice a year.
3:39:11 Yeah.
3:39:12 Face time today.
3:39:13 Yeah.
3:39:22 I mean, that’s like dark when you see somebody you like seeing, like a friend that’s on the
3:39:27 outskirts of your friend group, and then you realize like, well, I haven’t really seen
3:39:30 him for like three years.
3:39:33 So like, how many more times do we have that we see each other?
3:39:34 Yeah.
3:39:37 Do you believe that like friends just slowly disappear from your life?
3:39:41 Like they kind of, your friend group evolves, right?
3:39:43 So like, if you don’t want to, there’s a problem.
3:39:45 Back on Facebook, you get all these old friends from school.
3:39:50 Like when you were 10 years old, back on Facebook started, like you don’t really, you would
3:39:51 add friend them.
3:39:52 And then you’re like, why are we in touch again?
3:39:53 Just keep the memories there.
3:39:55 You know, like it’s different lives now.
3:39:56 Yeah.
3:40:00 I have, you know, I don’t know, that might be a guy thing or I don’t know.
3:40:04 There’s certain friends I have that like we don’t interact often, but we’re still friends.
3:40:05 Yeah.
3:40:11 Like, like every time I see him, I think it’s because we have a foundation of many shared
3:40:15 experiences, many memories, I guess it’s like nothing has changed.
3:40:18 Like we’ve been, almost like we’ve been talking every day, even if we haven’t talked for a
3:40:19 year.
3:40:20 Yeah.
3:40:21 So that’s like, yeah, that’s deep.
3:40:22 Yeah.
3:40:26 So that, so I don’t have to be interacting with them for them to be in a friend group.
3:40:31 And then there’s some people I interact with a lot, so it depends, but there’s just this
3:40:39 network of good human beings that can, yeah, they have like a real love for them and I can
3:40:41 always count on them.
3:40:46 It’s like if any of them called me in the middle of the night, I’ll get rid of a body.
3:40:52 You know, I’m there, I like how that’s a different definition of friendship.
3:40:53 But it’s true.
3:40:54 It’s true.
3:40:55 True friend.
3:40:57 You’ve become more and more famous recently.
3:40:59 How does that affect you?
3:41:00 It’s not recently.
3:41:01 I think it’s a gradual thing, right?
3:41:07 Like it keeps, keeps going and, and I also don’t know why it keeps going.
3:41:12 Does that put pressure on you to, because you’re pretty open on Twitter and you’re just like
3:41:14 basically building shit in the open.
3:41:15 Yeah.
3:41:21 And just not really caring if it’s too technical, if there’s any of this, just being out there.
3:41:26 Does it put pressure on you as you become more popular to be a little bit more like
3:41:27 collected and.
3:41:29 Man, I think the opposite, right?
3:41:35 Like, because the people I follow are interesting because they say whatever they think and they
3:41:37 shape or whatever.
3:41:40 It’s so boring that people start tweeting only about one topic.
3:41:41 Yeah.
3:41:42 I don’t know anything about their personal life.
3:41:43 I want to know about their personal life.
3:41:46 Like you do podcasts, you ask about life stuff or personality.
3:41:49 That’s the most interesting part of like business or sports.
3:41:51 Like what’s the behind the sport, the athlete, right?
3:41:52 Behind the entrepreneur.
3:41:53 That’s interesting stuff.
3:41:54 To be human.
3:41:55 Yeah.
3:41:58 Like you, you shared that, you know, like I shared a tweet that went too far, but like
3:42:02 we were cleaning the toilet because the toilet was clogged, you know, but like it’s just
3:42:05 real stuff because Jensen and Wang, the Nvidia guy, he says he started cleaning toilets,
3:42:06 you know.
3:42:07 That was cool.
3:42:10 You, you tweeted something about the, the Denny’s thing.
3:42:11 I forget.
3:42:12 Yeah.
3:42:13 It was recent.
3:42:17 The Nvidia was started in a Denny diner table and you made it somehow profound.
3:42:18 Yeah.
3:42:24 This one, this one, Nvidia, a $3 trillion company was started in a Denny’s and American diner.
3:42:28 People need a third space to work on their laptops to build the next billion or trillion
3:42:29 dollar company.
3:42:30 What’s the first and second space?
3:42:34 The home office and then the in between the island.
3:42:35 I guess.
3:42:36 Yeah.
3:42:37 The island.
3:42:38 Yeah.
3:42:39 You need a space to like congregate.
3:42:40 Man.
3:42:41 And I found history on this.
3:42:46 So 400 years ago in the coffee houses of Europe, the like the scientific revolution, the enlightenment
3:42:50 happened because they would go to coffee houses, they would sit there, they would drink coffee
3:42:51 and they would work.
3:42:54 They would work, they would write or they would, and they would do debates and they would
3:42:58 organize marine routes, right?
3:43:02 They would do all the stuff in coffee houses in Europe, in France, in Austria, in UK, in
3:43:03 Holland.
3:43:09 So we would always be going to, we were always going to cafes to, to work and to have serendipitous
3:43:13 conversations with other people and start businesses and stuff.
3:43:17 And when I, like you asked me to come on here and we flew to America and the first thing
3:43:23 I realized was that I’ve been to America before, but we were in this cafe and like there’s
3:43:28 a lot of laptops, everybody’s working on something and I made, I took this photo.
3:43:31 And then when you’re in Europe, like large parts of Europe now, you kind of, you cannot
3:43:32 use a laptop anymore.
3:43:35 It’s like no laptop, which are in the stands.
3:43:43 But that is to you a fundamental place to create shit, isn’t that natural organic co-working
3:43:44 space of a coffee shop?
3:43:47 Well, for a lot of people, a lot of people have very small homes and co-working spaces
3:43:52 are kind of boring.
3:43:55 They’re not very, they’re private, they’re not serendipitous, they’re kind of boring.
3:43:59 Cafes are amazing because they, random people can come in and ask you, what are you working
3:44:00 on?
3:44:04 And not just laptop, people are also having conversations like they did 400 years ago,
3:44:06 debates or whatever, things are happening.
3:44:11 And man, I understand the aesthetics of it, like, it’s like, oh, startup role, shipping
3:44:15 is a bullshit startup, you know, like, but there’s something more there, like there’s
3:44:20 people actually making stuff, making new companies that the society benefits from.
3:44:26 Like we’re benefiting from NVIDIA, I think is the US GDP for sure is benefiting from NVIDIA.
3:44:29 European GDP could benefit if we build more companies.
3:44:34 And I feel in Europe, there’s this vibe and this, you have to connect things, but not
3:44:38 allowing laptops and cafes is kind of like part of the vibe, which is like, yeah, we’re
3:44:40 not really here to work, we’re here to like enjoy life.
3:44:45 I agree with this, Anthony Bourdain, like this tweet was quoted with Anthony Bourdain photo
3:44:47 with him with cigarettes and a coffee in France.
3:44:50 And he said, this is what the cafes are for, I agree.
3:44:56 But there is some element of like entrepreneurship, like you have to allow people to dream big
3:45:01 and work their ass off towards that dream and then feel each other’s energy as they interact
3:45:02 with it.
3:45:05 That’s one of the things I liked in Silicon Valley when I was working there is like the
3:45:10 cafes, like there’s a bunch of dreamers that you can make fun of them for like everybody
3:45:13 thinks they’re going to build a trillion dollar company, but like, yeah, and it’s awesome.
3:45:17 Not everybody wins 90% of people will be bullshit, but they’re working their ass off and they’re
3:45:22 doing something and, and you need to pass this startup bro, like, oh, it’s starting
3:45:23 on a level.
3:45:25 No, it’s not, it’s people making cool shit.
3:45:29 And this will benefit you because this will create jobs for your country in your region.
3:45:33 And I think in Europe, that’s a big problem.
3:45:37 Like we have a very anti entrepreneurial mindset.
3:45:39 Dream big and build shit.
3:45:40 This is really inspiring.
3:45:47 This is a pin, Twitter yours, all the projects that you’ve tried and the ones that succeeded.
3:45:48 That’s very few.
3:45:49 Mute life.
3:45:57 It was for Twitter to mute, to share the mute list, your mute words, fire calculator, no
3:46:04 more Google, make a rank, how much is my site project worth, climate finder, ideas, AI.
3:46:06 Airline list still runs, but it doesn’t make money.
3:46:11 And it’s like, compares the safety of airlines because I was nervous to fly.
3:46:16 So I was like, let’s collect all the data on crashes for all the airplanes while he’s
3:46:17 cable.
3:46:18 Nice.
3:46:20 That’s awesome.
3:46:26 Make village nomad gear, 3D and virtual reality dev play, play my inbox.
3:46:28 Like you mentioned, there’s a lot of stuff.
3:46:29 Yeah, man.
3:46:31 I’m trying to find some embarrassing tweets to yours.
3:46:34 You can go to the highlights tab as older, like the good shit guy.
3:46:35 There you go.
3:46:36 This was Dubai.
3:46:44 POV, building an AI startup while you’re a real influencer.
3:46:47 And if people copy this photo now and they, they change the screenshots, it becomes like
3:46:48 a meme.
3:46:51 Of course, you know, this is good.
3:46:53 Man, this is how Dubai looks.
3:46:54 It’s insane.
3:46:55 That’s beautiful.
3:46:56 Architecture.
3:46:57 This is crazy.
3:46:58 The story behind these cities.
3:46:59 Yeah.
3:47:00 The story behind for sure.
3:47:03 So this is about the European economy where like, European economy landscape is ramped
3:47:04 by dinosaurs.
3:47:08 And today I studied it so I can produce you with my evidence.
3:47:15 80% of top EU companies were founded before 1950, only 36% of top US companies were founded
3:47:16 before 1950.
3:47:17 Yeah.
3:47:22 So the median founding of companies in US is something like 1960 and a median of the
3:47:24 top companies, right?
3:47:27 And a median in Europe is like 1900 or something.
3:47:28 Yeah.
3:47:31 So it’s, um, here, 1913 and 1963.
3:47:32 So there’s a 50 a difference.
3:47:37 It’s a good, um, representation of the very thing you were talking about, the difference
3:47:40 in the cultures, entrepreneurial spirit of the peoples.
3:47:41 But Europe used to be entrepreneurial.
3:47:45 Like there was companies founded in 1800, 1850, 1900.
3:47:50 It flipped like around 1950, where America took the lead and, um, and I guess my point
3:47:53 is like, I hope that Europe gets back to, because I’m European, I hope that Europe gets
3:47:58 back to being an entrepreneurial culture where they build big companies again, because right
3:48:03 now the, all the old dinosaur companies control the economies, they’re low being with the
3:48:04 government.
3:48:08 They’re Europe is also, there’s like, they’re infiltrated with the government where they
3:48:11 create so much regulation, like I think it’s called regulatory capture, right?
3:48:16 Where it’s very hard for a newcomer to join in, to enter an industry because there’s too
3:48:17 much regulation.
3:48:20 So actually regulation is very good for big companies because they can follow it.
3:48:21 I can’t follow it, right?
3:48:26 If I want to start an AI startup in Europe now, I cannot because there’s an AI regulation
3:48:28 that makes it very complicated for me.
3:48:30 I probably need to get like no theories involved.
3:48:32 I need to get certificates licenses.
3:48:35 Um, whereas in America, I can just open my laptop.
3:48:42 I can start an AI startup right now, um, mostly, you know, what do you think about EAC effective
3:48:43 acceleration as movement?
3:48:48 And yet Beth Jesus on, I love Beth Jesus and, um, he’s amazing.
3:48:54 And I think EAC is, is very needed to similarly create a more positive, uh, outlook on the
3:48:55 future.
3:49:00 Like because people, people have been very pessimistic, um, about society, about the
3:49:07 future of society, um, you know, climate change, all this stuff, uh, EAC is like, is
3:49:11 a positive outlook on the future is like technology can make us, you know, we need to spend more
3:49:12 energy.
3:49:16 We should find ways to of course get like clean energy, but we need to spend more energy
3:49:22 to make cooler stuff and, you know, go into space and build more technology that can improve
3:49:23 society.
3:49:25 And we shouldn’t shy away from technology.
3:49:27 Technology can be the answer for many things.
3:49:28 Yeah.
3:49:29 Build more.
3:49:34 Don’t spend so much time on, uh, fear mongering and cautiousness and all this kind of stuff.
3:49:35 Something’s okay.
3:49:36 Something’s good.
3:49:42 But most of the time should be spent on building and creating on like, and doing so unapologetically.
3:49:47 It’s a, it’s a refreshing reminder of what made the United States great as all the builders.
3:49:51 Like you said, the entrepreneurs, like we can’t forget that in all the sort of discussions
3:49:54 of how things could go wrong with technology and all this kind of stuff.
3:49:55 Yeah.
3:49:56 It goes to get, look at China.
3:49:59 China is now at the stage of like America, what, like 1900 or something.
3:50:02 They’re building rapidly, like insane.
3:50:06 And obviously China has massive problems, but that comes with the whole thing that comes
3:50:09 with America in this beginning also massive problems, right?
3:50:16 Um, but I think it’s very, very dangerous for a country or a region like Europe to you,
3:50:20 you get to this point where you’re kind of complacent and you’re kind of comfortable.
3:50:24 And then, you know, you can either go this or you can go this way, right?
3:50:25 You’re, you’re from here.
3:50:27 You go like this and then you can go this or this.
3:50:34 I think you should go this way and, uh, yeah, go off and, and, uh, I think it’s the problem
3:50:36 is the, the, the, the mind culture.
3:50:39 So EOC, I made EUOC, which is like the European kind of version.
3:50:42 Um, I made like hoodies and stuff.
3:50:45 So a lot of people wear like this, this make Europe great again hats.
3:50:48 Um, I made it red first, but it became too like Trump.
3:50:52 So now it’s more like European blue, you know, make Europe great again.
3:50:54 All right.
3:50:56 Uh, okay.
3:51:02 So you had a incredible life, very successful, built a lot of cool stuff.
3:51:05 So what advice would you give to young people about how to do the same?
3:51:10 Man, I would listen to like, nobody just do what you think is good and follow your heart.
3:51:11 Right.
3:51:16 Like, uh, everybody peer presses you into doing stuff you don’t want to do.
3:51:20 And like they tell you like parents or family or society and tell you, but like try your
3:51:24 own thing, you know, cause it probably, it might work out.
3:51:27 You can, you can steer the ship, you know, it probably doesn’t work out immediately.
3:51:29 You probably go into very bad times.
3:51:31 Like I did as well, relatively, right?
3:51:34 But in the end, if you’re smart about it, you can make things work and you can, you
3:51:38 can create your own little life of things as you did, you know, as I did.
3:51:41 And I think that should be more promoted.
3:51:42 Like do your own thing.
3:51:46 There’s space in the economy and in society for do your own thing, you know, it’s like
3:51:49 um, you know, like little villages, everybody would sell, I would sell bread, you would
3:51:51 sell meat, everybody can do their own little thing.
3:51:57 You don’t need to, you know, be a normie, as you say, you, you, um, you can, you can
3:51:59 be what you really want to be, you know?
3:52:02 And like go all out doing that.
3:52:03 Yeah.
3:52:04 You got to go all out.
3:52:06 Cause if you do, if you have assets, you cannot succeed.
3:52:13 You got to go lean into the, to the outcast stuff, lean into the, um, being different
3:52:16 and, and just doing whatever it is that you want to do, right?
3:52:18 You got a whole asset.
3:52:19 Yeah.
3:52:20 Whole asset.
3:52:21 Yeah.
3:52:22 This was an incredible conversation.
3:52:23 It was an honor to finally meet you.
3:52:25 It was an honor to be here, Lex.
3:52:31 To talk to you and keep doing your thing, keep inspiring me and the world with all the cool
3:52:32 stuff you’re building.
3:52:33 Thank you, Matt.
3:52:36 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Peter Levels.
3:52:40 To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
3:52:46 And now let me leave you with some words from Drew Houston, Dropbox co-founder.
3:52:48 By the way, I love Dropbox.
3:52:53 Anyway, Drew said, don’t worry about failure.
3:52:56 You only have to be right once.
3:52:59 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
3:53:01 .
3:53:03 .
3:53:07 .
3:53:12 .
3:53:14 (gentle music)
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